Video of the Day: Colourmusic, “Beard”
Ryan Hendrix — up close and personal.
– Lang
Video of the Day: Let’s Wrestle, “In Dreams Part 2″
In my dreams, there were Pokemon beating me up. I punched Pidgeotto right in the face.
– Lang
Video of the Day: The Lonely Island featuring Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga, “3-Way (The Golden Rule)”
“Two Jack Trippers and a Chrissy — ‘The New Three’s Company.’” JT and Andy Samberg are 3 for 3 with these.
Video of the Day: Kate Bush, “Deeper Understanding”
This is a remake of a song Kate Bush wrote and recorded for 1989′s “The Sensual World,” and this is Bush’s modus operandi for the forthcoming “Director’s Cut,” a collection of songs from that album and 1993′s “The Red Shoes,” rethought and re-recorded. Bush directed the video, which stars Robbie Coltrane as a middle-aged man entranced by a computer program.
In a recent interview with Pitchfork, Bush talked about her reasons for revisiting this material, saying that she wanted to let them “breathe a bit more.” In some cases, these songs are being done the way she intended — “Flower of the Mountain” is a retitled and reworked version of the title song from “The Sensual World,” with the original James Joyce-inspired lyrics she was unable to use in 1989, when she was denied their inclusion by the Joyce estate. Fortunately, Joyce’s family reconsidered.
The Pitchfork interview includes a few tracks from the album, and the first-impression takeaway is that Bush, now 52, is singing in a lower register these days — not a crushing defeat by any means, considering the helium tones she used on her first single as a teenager, “Wuthering Heights.” While I’m not generally fond of people re-recording their earlier songs, this can actually be thoughtful and artistically relevant in the right hands. Consider Frank Sinatra’s half-century recording history: he surveyed the “great American songbook” almost constantly, and each of the five times he recorded “Night and Day,” he brought something different to the song. With “Director’s Cut,” Bush is trying to correct some mistakes she made during her 30s, when she was throwing every musical idea she had into the mix. Beyond that, a song like “This Woman’s Work” can find different resonance points when sung by a woman at middle age.
Bush is currently working on an album of new material, her first since 2005′s “Aerial.”
– Lang
Blu-ray Review: “Betty Blue (37°2 le matin)”
Rating: 88
Now a 25-year-old exponent of cinema du look, the artful renegade film movement that also spawned Luc Besson’s “La Femme Nikita,” Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Betty Blue (37°2 le matin)” was Beineix’s follow-up to “Diva” and an intensely beautiful tragic romance. It is almost impossible to imagine any other actress as the luscious but unhinged Betty: With her bee-stung lips and transfixing range of expression, Beatrice Dalle seemed born to play Betty — perhaps too much so.
Betty lives with Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a handyman in charge of painting beach shacks along the French coast. Zorg is also a frustrated writer, and when Betty discovers his spiral-bound novel, her manic side takes over. “Betty Blue” is all about the dark side of what film critic Nathan Rabin calls the “manic pixie dream girl” — Betty is disarmingly beautiful and brings a kind of dangerous excitement to Zorg’s life, but the same things in Betty’s brain chemistry that make her wonderful will also betray her.
Here is Dalle’s audition reel intercut with a recent interview. Francophone abilities might be helpful, but really it’s the visuals that show why Dalle won the role.
In 1986, Dalle was the toast of French cinema, but her own eccentricities and brushes with the law undid a promising career. After Jim Jarmusch’s “Night on Earth,” the next 20 years of freak roles and drug busts were more than a little dispiriting for “Betty Blue” fans. This Blu-ray edition offers a beautiful digital restoration of the film’s original theatrical cut and look back at Beineix’s glory days, but on the downside, this is the 115 minute theatrical version. True fans of the film will want the full three-hour director’s cut, which is still available on DVD, but there is no timetable for such a Blu-ray release. Considering how difficult it was to find a U.S. release of any kind for much of the past decade, this “Betty Blue” will do until then.
OK Sweetheart’s “Home” featured on the CW’s “One Tree Hill” tonight
Tune in to the CW at 7 p.m. Tuesday to hear our much-hearted OK Sweetheart’s title track from “Home.”
Video of the Day: Low Covers Toto’s “Africa” on The AV Club’s “Undercover”
The song is still intestinally processed meat, but Low proves that even awful things can be made presentable.
– Lang
Video of the Day: The Lonely Island featuring Michael Bolton, “Jack Sparrow”
In nearly 20 years of existence, this is the first time that Static, StaticBlog or anything Lang-related has endorsed anything Bolton-related. Enjoy it while it lasts. “Turtleneck and Chain” comes out tomorrow.
– Lang
Music Review: Colourmusic, “My _____ is Pink”
Rating: 92
Roughly a year after the release of 2008′s comparatively lilting “f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13,” Stillwater’s Colourmusic started performing those sweet songs with uncommon, sweat-dripping ferocity, and by the time they appeared at the 2010 Norman Music Festival, they sounded positively feral. But “My _____ is Pink” proves conclusively that a band can toughen and serrate its sound without banishing its melodic powers. There are no losses to mourn: Colourmusic’s second full-length album is beautiful, rhythmic, soulful and searing, taking the kind of musical chances most groups simply avoid for fear of failing.
A fine example: “You For Leaving” begins with tabernacle pipe organ and transforms into an R&B breakup song from the mouth of madness, with Ryan Hendrix snaking his high whine around a sinewy groove, singing “Just take another look at me” as gospel backup vocals shout him down. “You For Leaving” is hard, scary but beautiful in its own right, as are Nicholas Ley and Nick Turner’s tribal polyrhythms on the instantly addictive pounder, “Tog.” In another era, “Tog” would be considered borderline industrial, except Colourmusic balances the power of the drumming with a sense of loose-limbed funk. Yes, Colourmusic’s big, pink secret is that they are the most unexpected soul men in indie rock.
Every track has layers of different aesthetics and sensibilities: “Dolphins and Unicorns” features a rubber bassline from Colin Fleishacker over a rollerskating rhythm and wah-wah guitars, but then Hendrix overlays vocals that impose a sense of dread. After the five-part epic “The Little Death,” “My ____ is Pink” downshifts into more tranquil territory, ending the “Whitby Harbour,” which is roughly three minutes of ocean sounds — a fitting conclusion, given how Colourmusic stirs up its own waters on this beautifully baffling, often brilliant album.
Music Review: Beastie Boys, “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two”
Rating: 90
Beastie Boys created their own shadow evolution of hip-hop, an alternate reality in which their beloved art form rolled forward and absorbed the culture like an ultra-chill snowball. Their alt-reality hip-hop reveres the past while forecasting the future and this is the core trait of the trio’s first rap album since 2004, “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.” Adam Yauch, Michael Diamond and Adam Horowitz do not execute a radical shift with “Hot Sauce,” but the familiar elements of this superb set all get power-fitted for a better hip-hop tomorrow.
From the exhilarating party-spiking opener “Make Some Noise,” which manages to reference both Eggo waffles and the third season story arc for “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the Beasties are playing live and playing it lively. The immediate effect is not far off from the “Check Your Head”/ “Ill Communication” era on “Noise” and “Nonstop Disco Powerpack,” but the structure of these tracks feels sharper. And serious expansion takes place on “Hot Sauce,” notably the sunny Santigold-fortified reggae workout “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win,” the thrash-and-burn punk-rap of “Lee Majors Come Again,” and the minor-key cinematic epic “Long Burn the Fire.”
Shortsighted pop watchers thought Beastie Boys would have the longevity of a stick of Fruit Stripe gum, but 25 years after “Licensed to Ill,” the Beasties continue to build their skills. Beyond the first-rate production by the band and Philippe Zdar (Phoenix’ “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”), the Beasties maintain their lyrical sharpness on “Hot Sauce,” and Yauch, whose now-in-remission cancer pushed the album back two years, is fit, raspy and ready for lyrical throwdowns. The references come fast and furious on “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two,” in which Beastie Boys prove they’ll always have more hits than Sadaharu Oh.
– Lang
