Random 10 for Jan. 18, 2008
1. Jim Noir, “I Me You.” A Mancunian with sharp pop skills, Jim Noir made a minor splash with the direct melodies on 2006’s “Tower of Love (My Dad).” I’m particularly a fan of “Key of C,” a bright little synth bauble that might have made a great Howard Jones song in 1983 if only Noir infused it with a little more fromage. Super Furry Animals fans, inquire within. And while we’re at it…
2. Super Furry Animals, “Juxtaposed With U.”
3. Spoon, “The Underdog.”
4. David Bowie, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.”
5. Chromeo, “Tenderoni.” Remarkably faithful replication of early ’80s Vocoder-drenched electro-soul in the vein of Midnight Star (“Freak-A-Zoid”) from a couple of Montreal laughing boys named Dave One and Pee Thug. And no, this isn’t an Andy Samberg joke.
6. Shivaree, “Bossa Nova.”
7. Sam Prekop, “Something.”
8. Phoenix, “Long Distance Call.”
9. CSS, “Off the Hook.”
10. Rilo Kiley, “Dreamworld.” Speaking of homages, “Dreamworld” could be an ultra-plush leftover from Fleetwood Mac’s “Tango In the Night” — Rilo Kiley is even signed to Warner Bros. these days. All they need to do is start hanging out in Topanga Canyon a lot and develop serious, 1970s-style addictions. This is one of Blake Sennett’s lead tracks from “Under the Blacklight,” an album that did not get the kind of love it probably deserved last year.
DVD Review: “The Invasion” * 1/2
Nicole Kidman hides from the agent who signed her up for “The Invasion,” “The Golden Compass,” “Bewitched,” “Margot at the Wedding”…
What a mess. “The Invasion” was supposed to be a philosophical take on Jack Finney’s 1955 novel “The Body Snatchers,” which had previously been made into films in 1956, 1978 and 1993. Oliver Hirschbiegel, director of the superb “last days of Hitler” film “Downfall,” seemed like a perfect choice. But when the completed film did not play like an Xbox game, producer Joel Silver had Larry and Andy Wachowski (“The Matrix”) rewrite half the film, and their protege, James McTeigue, direct some slam-bang action scenes.
Viewers can see all the stitches: A tsunami of exposition sets up the plot, in which a virus piggybacks on the space shuttle and turns the infected into conformed, emotion-free automatons. Dr. Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) starts noticing that everyone around her is zombified, and it’s up to Carol and fellow physician Ben (Daniel Craig) to stay awake, avoid the body snatchers and protect the last few sentient people around them.
But the competing visions do not serve “The Invasion” well. Meditative scenes collide with frenetically edited, adrenaline-overdosed monstrosities. Someday, Hirschbiegel’s original might see the light of day. But in its current form, “The Invasion” feels as if its mind was stolen.
Music Review: Lupe Fiasco “The Cool” (1st and 15th/Atlantic) * * * 1/2
While most of hip-hop’s regional fiefdoms crank out dumb-as-dirt party music and deny their art form’s potential for speaking real truths, Chicago is emerging as home to the most thoughtful exponents of the genre: Common, Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco. In 2006, Fiasco’s “Food and Liquor” expanded rap’s subject matter with the miraculous skateboarding anthem “Kick, Push,” and his new disc, “The Cool,” continues to make hip-hop bigger and brighter.
“The Cool” is reportedly a concept album about one man’s struggle between two supernatural forces, “The Game” and “The Street.” Well, good luck with that. “The Cool” is best enjoyed for its constituent parts, especially the expansive, Coldplay-esque single “Superstar” and the scathing indictment of low-aiming rappers, “Dumb It Down.” Apart from a collaboration with UNKLE and the engaging, Snoop Dogg-fueled rave-up “Hi Definition,” Fiasco keeps his collaborations Chicago-centric, and the biggest surprise of the disc is “Little Weapon,” a Virginia Tech massacre anthem produced by Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy.
“The Cool” wears its brains on its sleeve, but it also has plenty of heart. The love anthem “Paris, Tokyo” boasts a smooth jazz melody worthy of Steely Dan and a high-flying romantic narrative. With Fiasco, modern hip-hop finally has a crusader for truth, justice and a sense of real purpose beyond the endless party.
Film Review: “Cloverfield” * * *
Face it — watching a guy in a zipped-up Godzilla costume knocking down cardboard boxes simply does not work anymore. Even the slick-but-stupid computer-generated version from a decade ago bored viewers to death with its lizard-brained script.
The solution delivered in the bracing, revisionist monster movie “Cloverfield” is to put viewers squarely in the path of a marauding beast and make it as realistic as home video of a child’s birthday party. Shot on what looks like commercial-grade digital video, “Cloverfield” is a first-person account of destruction for the YouTube age.
The central conceit of “Cloverfield” is that this is not a traditional narrative movie — it is a tape discovered in an area “formerly known as Central Park,” documenting the last hours in the lives of several Manhattanites as they watched their city being destroyed. It begins with a surprise party for Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David), who is moving to Japan the next day and recently had a falling out with his girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman).
Just as the party gets going, fireballs light up distant buildings in midtown, and reports of an earthquake soon give way to something otherworldly and unstoppable. In the video, shot by a dim partygoer named Hud (T.J. Miller), this creature is only seen in fleeting moments. Hud and friends Rob, Lily (Jessica Lucas) and Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) are too busy running away to focus on their predator.
This film will be compared endlessly to “The Blair Witch Project,” but its structure is far more similar to the 1988 cult movie “Miracle Mile,” in which a man finds out about an imminent nuclear attack and must run to reach his girlfriend before the bomb hits. In “Cloverfield,” Rob is trying to reach Beth before the monster does, and the video chronicles the friends’ catastrophic journey to her apartment near Central Park.
The setup for “Cloverfield” lets viewers know that things will not go well for these travelers: The tape was found, after all, so something terrible probably happened to the cameraman. These aren’t the most scintillating characters found on this tape, but their fairly mundane problems and response to crisis would be less believable if they were clever — this is supposed to be an everyman account of the world ending.
And here’s fair warning: Viewers expecting to learn everything about this creature — where it came from, what it’s named, who’s its daddy — will go away disappointed and possibly angry at director Matt Reeves and producer J.J. Abrams for inflicting an unfinished, wrapped-up story on an unsuspecting public.
But in many real-life attacks, the motivations aren’t always clear. Like “Blair Witch,” “Cloverfield” will not stand up to repeated viewings, but for 84 minutes, it’s monstrous.
Random 10 for Jan. 17, 2008
1. LCD Soundsystem, “New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down.” Of all the songs from Sound of Silver, “All My Friends” gets the most attention, and by all means, it’s one of the best songs written about real life and friends getting away from you while you were busy building yourself up. But “New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down” is a ballad, which would appear to be something definitely outside James Murphy’s wheelhouse, except that he shows himself to be a master. The lyrics are some of the best I’ve heard in years, not just in content but in their meter. This is Cole Porter level stuff, or at least Randy Newman in his Sail Away prime. (Sven, that’s your cue.)
2. The Field, “Everyday.”
3. Kings of Leon, “Ragoo.”
4. Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Yo Yo Man.”
5. The Flaming Lips, “Bohemian Rhapsody.” An early highlight during the New Year’s Eve show at the Cox Center, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was done perfectly, with karaoke sing-a-longs on the half-moon video screen. Magnificent. (Photo by Matt Strasen, The Oklahoman)
6. Papas Fritas, “Guys Don’t Lie.”
7. Metric, “Poster of a Girl.”
8. Tahiti 80, “Changes.”
9. Le Tigre, “Hot Topic.”
10. Lovage, “Sex (I’m a…).” This is a cover of the 1982 Berlin song that caused such a stir in PMRC days for its libidinous moaning and such. In this case, the lust noises are committed by Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, Peeping Tom, etc.) and Jennifer Charles, the lead singer of the avant-goth band Elysian Fields, and produced by Dan “The Automator” Nakamura. And yes, of course it’s better than the original. And yes, Mike Patton makes scary sex noises.
“American Idol” and the Ultimate Low
Carly Hennessy
Seven years ago, I received five promotional copies of a compact disc that became a music industry legend. Now, with “American Idol” returning to Fox for its seventh season, millions of people are hearing about Carly Hennessy, the would-be pop star who became infamous for the spectacular failure of that debut CD.
I remember unpacking all those copies of Hennessy’s Ultimate High, and the ridiculous level of promotional overkill ultimately worked. I cracked open the jewel box, listened to it and liked it enough to give the Irish singer a positive review, primarily on the strength of its production and songwriting work by Gregg Alexander.
Alexander had abdicated his role as a pop star when he folded New Radicals, which scored a hit in 1998 with “You Get What You Give.” I’ve never been able to decide if Alexander was a great and distinctive songwriter or a lucky guy with a few melodic tricks in the bag — the 2003 song he wrote for Santana and Michelle Branch, “The Game of Love,” could be identified as one of his spawn in its first 10 seconds.
Alexander, along with former “Archie Bunker’s Place” child star and fellow New Radical Danielle Brisebois, crafted Hennessy’s Ultimate High from top to bottom. It sounded like a New Radicals disc, albeit with an 18-year-old Irish girl singing lead.
And it was good, but while MCA Records could give Ultimate High away to a few gullible music reviewers, the company only got a few actual, flesh-and-bone music buyers to pony up. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company spent $2.2 million making and marketing Ultimate High, which means it cost MCA $5,820 to move each of the 378 copies it sold in its first three months.
You read that correctly: 378 copies. That is a number that would send a local band selling CDs out of its van into an existential crisis. I’m sorry to say that I probably drink more Diet Cokes than that in three months.
Flash forward seven years. Hennessy’s name recently leaked as one of the singers most likely to appear on the seventh season of “Idol” — she previously competed in Season 5, but did not make the finals reportedly due to visa problems — and her possible presence this season ignited a mini-controversy among “Idol” watchers. Web sites such as VoteForTheWorst.com have called Hennessy a “plant,” and she has been referred to as “a ringer” in various online news stories. If she wins, she would be the first “American Idol” champ with a major record contract on their resume.
But honestly, why such a hue and cry over this? Has “American Idol” presented itself as some kind of music industry paragon of virtue, an institution so pure and chaste that its virginal divinity cannot be sullied by a singer with experience?
Furthermore, making fun of Hennessy for selling fewer than 400 copies of a record is completely inappropriate. That number reflects more on her label’s inability to sell a reasonably good pop record. I wonder if anyone made fun of Universal CEO Doug Morris because one of his labels committed one of the biggest marketing bellyflops in the history of the music industry.
If Hennessy does well, I will cheer her on. But consider this: “American Idol” winners are tanking left and right: Taylor Hicks and Ruben Studdard recently lost their recording contracts, and so did runner-up Katherine McPhee. Season 6 champ Jordin Sparks’ self-titled debut has yet to be certified Gold.
Carly, do you really want to take a chance with these people? You might consider something more reliable. Like Powerball.
Random 10 for Jan. 15, 2008
2. Ween, “Where’d the Cheese Go?” This is a 29-second jingle that Deaner and Gener created for Pizza Hut in 2002, and naturally, the multinational flat food purveyor gave our boys the bum’s rush. In a 2003 statement, Ween said it “is one of the best tunes we wrote all last year,” and it truly is a track that you want to loop about four times just to get some mileage out of the groove. True to form, after getting sliced by Pizza Hut, Ween made a funnier and decidedly more explicit version, just so you know where they stand.
3. Sonic Youth, “Incinerate.”
4. Common, “The People.”
5. Club 8, “Heaven.” Ultra-brite summer pop from the Swedish duo Johan Angergard (Acid House Kings) and Karolina Komstedt, included on the duo’s first disc in five years, The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming. Songwriting and production have improved considerably since 2002’s Strangely Beautiful, which was already pretty great, but “Heaven” is more organic — Club 8 sounds truly flesh and bone here instead of the sexy robots we heard before.
6. The High Violets, “Cool Green.”
7. My Latest Novel, “Sister Sneaker Sister Soul.”
8. Jay-Z feat. Bilal, “Fallin’.”
9. Led Zeppelin, “The Song Remains the Same.” If I can scrounge the time, I’m going to do a track-by-track assessment of Mothership, the new collection of remastered Zeppelin that came out just in time for stocking stuffing last year. It’s nice to hear this music with some dynamic range now instead of those flat, straight-from-tape digital versions that were dumped into stores 20 years ago.
10. Photocall, “Silver Clouds.”
Platinum Music? Pass.
Josh Groban
That death rattle you hear has a bad beat and you cannot dance to it.
This week, Nielsen SoundScan made it official: the music industry cratered in 2007. Total compact disc sales fell 19 percent over last year, and while digital downloads were on the upswing, the rise in online sales was not enough to make up for the CD shortfall. The total drop in album sales — digital or old school plastic — was 15 percent.
And the biggest-selling album of 2007 was Josh Groban’s Noel, which moved 3.7 million copies during the final three months of the year. That figure should feel like cold steel through the music industry’s gut: seven years ago, 3.7 million would not have gotten Groban into the Top 10, and after Jan. 1, the desire to hear Groban’s sonorous baritone moaning “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” falls precipitously.
Bad news does not stop there. The second-place finisher was the High School Musical 2 sound track, an album without a radio hit. And third place went to Eagles’ Long Road Out of Eden, a recording that was only available through Wal-Mart stores and the band’s Web site.
By the way, those shrinking CD sections at retail stores are not mirages. Major retailers are taking away floor space from music and redistributing square footage to video games, an industry that officially became more lucrative than music in 2006.
The industry’s efforts to stem this foul tide look pre-packaged for the dustbin of history. In an effort to maintain presence at brick-and-mortar retail, Sony BMG is selling a retrograde odd duck called a Platinum Music Pass. This is essentially a gift card that allows the purchaser to buy exactly one album from Sony’s download site.
This means purchasing a card that allows the buyer or the lucky gift recipient to download only Carrie Underwood’s Carnival Ride or only Jennifer Lopez’ Brave. On the plus side, the files are digital rights management-free mp3s, but still: an iTunes gift card allows the customer to download, well, just about anything. This is a lot better than having a crazy aunt buy you the latest J.Lo album, which would soon be landing in a cut-out bin near you anyway except that cutout bins barely exist these days.
This all sounds perfectly awful and depressing, and the worst part is that there is no easy solution. Yes, we all need the industry to champion better music and stop trying to shove Fergie and OneRepublic into our ear canals, but it will take more than just a good season of releases to turn this around.
We need a sustained improvement in the industry’s celebration and promotion of great talent. Excellent music was made in 2007, and most of it was barely heard. I’m not even talking about the music that is difficult to absorb, like M.I.A.’s “Kala.” Instead, let’s talk about the best R&B record that U.S. audiences could not hear in 2007 without paying $30 for an import: Amerie’s “Because I Love It.”
Amerie, Because I Love It, 2007
For those who loved the singer’s 2005 hit, “1 Thing,” a song that evoked classic “go-go” dance rave-ups while riding a Supremes-style melody on top of a drum sample from the Meters, “Because I Love It” was pure manna from Heaven. The horns were wilder, the rhythms were organic, Amerie sings her heart out on the disc, and her overseas single, “Gotta Work,” was a killer. Furthermore, and not to be crass about it, but Amerie is, shall we say, extremely marketable?
But her label, Sony, delayed the stateside release of “Because I Love It.” Then it was delayed some more. Then EW.com released a list last week of artists who were either dropped from major labels or jumped willingly. Amerie was near the top of the list.
If you cannot market Amerie, you probably couldn’t sell ice in Ecuador. I don’t want to dump unduly on Sony — there is plenty of blame to go around. But the funny thing is, I might have even bought a Platinum Music Pass for that one.
WGA Reaches Deal with United Artists
Now Hiring: United Artists
According to Variety, the Writer’s Guild of America has reached an interim deal with United Artists that would allow its members to return to work. This is a similar deal to the one reached with David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants, and could point to other deals with small studios such as the Bob and Harvey Show and Lionsgate.
Dave McNary at Variety writes that this deal with the Tom Cruise/Paula Wagner-run UA is part of the WGA’s “divide and conquer” strategy of signing individual deals, thus forcing studios left out in the cold to settle up — it doesn’t affect parent MGM or grandparent Sony, but it could have a trickle effect.
If so, consider this: my ideal scenario would have a network — say, for instance, fourth-ranked NBC — strike a deal with the WGA. Then, NBC could claim that it will be the first to come back with your favorite shows — that is, if you haven’t fallen in love with “American Gladiators” or “Celebrity Apprentice.” The other networks would be persuaded to ink deals in short order.
Random 10 for Jan. 4, 2008
1. Lucky Soul, “Get Outta Town!” This starts out with the riff from “Cherry Cherry” and then comes on like a dance-craze sensation from 1962. Lucky Soul is just the latest exponent of my beloved genre known as Northern soul, the British answer to classic American R&B that the original mods came to worship and then the neo-mods revived in the early ’80s. Ye olde Style Council/Orange Juice/Tracie fans, your prayers are answered. And, for whatever reason, this is neo-soul day on the Random 10.
2. The Autumn Defense, “City Bells.”
3. Sonic Youth, “Incinerate.”
4. The Bigger Lovers, “Emmanuelle.”
5. Joy Denalane feat. Lupe Fiasco, “Change.” There isn’t a great known history of German soul music — not to disparage my heritage, but whenever I hear the phrase “German soul,” I think of Frank Farian selling America a bill of goods in 1989 when two guys with elaborate weaves lip-synched and danced “the running man” while non-photogenic session musicians toiled in the background. Based on the old school soul riffage of “Change,” featuring the ultra-talented Mr. Fiasco, Denalane, who is of German and South African lineage, is much more of a real deal. Common also used her on his remix of “Go” before Denalane released her first English language disc, Born and Raised, in 2006. Another great way to mark time until Lauryn Hill gets her head on straight.
6. The High Violets, “Cool Green.”
7. My Latest Novel, “Sister Sneaker Sister Soul.”
8. Jay-Z feat. Bilal, “Fallin’.”
9. The Budos Band, “Chicago Falcon.” This Brooklyn big band is all about ’70s-style soul instrumentals — cop funk, “blaxploitation,” what have you. If you love Roy Ayers’ soundtrack to “Coffy,” you must own Budos Band II.
10. Dean and Britta, “You Turn My Head Around.”
