The Next Big Thing?

The word on the street is that the next big pop act is the UK's Lily Allen. Already a huge success in the UK due to self-promotion and word of mouth about her myspace profile, Allen's first single, "Smile" debuted at #1 on the UK charts. Inexplicably, the label she's linked up with in the US is delaying the release of her album until January. The good news is that you can listen to her lounge and hip-hop influenced pop music on her myspace page.

Lily Allen makes some kick ass pop music with a vicious bite to it. Check out "Smile," which gloats over an ex-boyfriend who wants her back, or "Knock Em Out," which is the absolute most tactless way to turn down a guy at a pub. Awesome shit. Don't say I didn't warn you.

High Fidelity: The Musical?!

My Desert Island, all-time top five least favorite things:
5. Tom Cruise
4. Sitcoms with laugh-tracks
3. People who baby-talk their pets
2. Fundamentalsit religion
1. Musicals

That's right, musicals. And now, the Nick Hornby novel that became a John Cusack movie, "High Fidelity," is set to become the next big Broadway Musical. My only question: Who could possibly have thought that this would be a good idea?

"High Fidelity" is about the maturation of its lead character, Rob, from a self- and music-obsessed middle-aged man-boy to an actual real live grownup. The context of all this is a group of people who actually love music. Sure they are snobs, but they characterize each other and every stranger they meet by each person's musical taste. In this light, turning a novel about a brooding, depressed guy into a glitzy, up-beat Broadway Musical is just preposterous. The kitschy, campy, and melodramatic style of Broadway just doesn't fit the characters who revel in their intimate knowledge of The Smiths and The Pixies and Sonic Youth.

In a story on NPR's Weekend Edition, Nick Hornby says that he finds different adaptations of his book interesting and that the idea of the musical doesn't bother him. For the sake of his fans, he should have fought to prevent this ridiculous monstrosity from being produced.

Zero 7

"The Garden"
Zero 7
Atlantic Records
2006

NPR's "World Cafe" show called "The Garden" from British production team Zero 7: 'a rainy evening's ideal soundtrack'. That's about as good a description as any to sum up the groups latest effort. Some may be familiar with their song "In the Waiting Line" which was featured in Zach Braff's film "Garden State." The core of Zero 7 are producers Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker. They mix the tunes with a blend of synthetic and acoustic sounds and bring in guest vocalists to sing. "The Garden" features two such vocalists in the form of Jose Gonzalez and Sia.

From the very first strains of "Futures" to the end of the album, one can't help but wonder if they are listening to a long lost Yes or Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album because "The Garden" has a very distinct 70's prog rock feel. The music has a thick texture with synthesizer sounds, ranging from horns and strings to just straight up electronic beeps, coupled with harmonizing backup vocalists that complement the two lead vocalists. Sia sounds kind of like Nelly Furtado when Nelly Furtado used to sing and Jose Gonzalez has a subdued indie voice somewhere between Nick Drake and The Shins' James Mercer. Together all these elements become an ethereal musical experience.

My favorite songs on the album are "Pageant of the Bizarre", "This Fine Social Scene", and "Crosses" but everything on the album is wonderful, especially on a rainy day like today. The big negative about "The Garden" is that the lyrics are more or less irrelevant. The function of the vocalist on these tracks is to add to the overall texture of the music. "The Garden" is the perfect background music to study to or to just zone out with.

In the end, "The Garden" is a profoundly beautiful soundscape that is soothing and relaxing.
I give it $10.

Gomez Redux

I just got back from the Gomez concert tonight at the Newport so I figured I'd give a brief review considering I already wrote about their latest album, "How We Operate".

Matt Pond PA opened and gave a pretty solid performance. For those of you that aren't familiar with them, they are kindo of a dreamy-sounding rock band in the mold of The Shins and Rogue Wave. The highlight: they have a pretty cute keyboardist/cellist. The cello really adds a cool texture to their songs that feature it. The only songs of theirs I recognized were "Halloween" and "So Much Trouble" but everything they played was enjoyable.

Gomez took the stage to a packed house of people form ages probably 16 to 60, really wierd crowd, and rocked out. They were loud and they were energetic, but they only played a few songs from their new album. All the other songs were amazing too, so I'll have to get ahold of their older albums. "How We Operate" featured an extended jam at the end of the song which was pretty fun. Other than that, it was everything I expected. The highlight: singer Ben Ottewell apparently had a friend in the crowd whose friends he invited onstage for one song. Hilariously bad dancing ensued.

Next concert: Nov 5 Ben Lee and Rooney; Bhuddist acoustic rock and teenage garage rock, what's not to love! And tickets are only $5 at the Newport now.

Science of Sleep

"The Science of Sleep"
Written and Directed by Michel Gondry

I was very excited, yesterday, to have the opportunity to see the new film from Michel Gondry of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" fame. I was hoping for another surreal psychological adventure and I was not in the least bit disappointed.

"The Science of Sleep" is the tale of a young man, Stephan, played ably by Gael Garcia Bernal, who has trouble distinguishing between his dreams and reality. The film in fact opens with Stephan dreaming of himself as the host of a tv program in which he explains to his imagined viewers how dreams are made. He fills a large pot with various ingredients such as 'random thoughts' and 'reminiscences of the day' which look to us like a tube of paint and spaghetti. This transitions to him returning to his childhood home in Paris after the death of his father from cancer, whom he had been living with in Mexico. This juxtaposition of fantasy and reality becomes the basis for the movie.

Stephan fancies himself an artist but his crowning achievement is a series of colorful drawings for a calendar in which each month features a rendering of its most famous disaster. Stephan ends up working as a copy boy for a promotional calendar company with 3 other confrontational coworkers. Stephan encounters a love interest in his next store neighbor, Stephanie, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. She is also an amateur artist who sews little figures from felt and cloth. Her big idea is to put a felt boat in a felt forest so that the boat is 'searching for its mer', with mer/mere being a french play on the words for sea and mother.

"The Science of Sleep" is funnier than "Eternal Sunshine" and the comedy comes in three varieties: there is the intra-office banter and pranking at the calendar company, Stephan's own social awkardness and at time vulgar contributions to conversation, and then of course you have the surreal nature of his dream world. One memorable scene of the latter is when Stephan gets bogged down at work in his dream and suddenly realizes he has hands as big as the rest of his body. He proceeds to flog his colleagues with his giant hands with a very comic result.

Gondry's film is also, at times, thouroughly confusing and disorienting. Those who were confused by "Eternal Sunshine" will be even more lost watching "The Science of Sleep." Just as Stephan inverts dream and reality, there are some scenes in the movie in which the viewer can not clearly tell whether it is a dream or reality. One such scene features Stephan being honored for his calendar idea by his boss. The ceremony and ensuing party do not feature some of the fantastical elements of Stephan's dreams but are at the same time incongruous with the previously established character of the boss. After thinking a lot about this film, I believe that this kind of confusion is intentional on Gondry's part. I think that he wanted the audience to feel the same uneasy kind of disorienting feelings that the principal character has. The end of the film, and this is not a spoiler, is also uncertain. My friend Becky noted, "I don't know whether that was a happy or sad ending."

The cinematography and art direction in this film are also fantastic. The reality sets beautifully render the cramped quarters of a Parisian flat and the clutter that comes along with living life. The fantasy sets show a great deal of imagination and child-like dreamscape that comes to life on the screen. The cast, all relatively unknown in the US, also work toghether very well. They also, with the possible exception of Stephan and minor character Zoe, are not very conventionally attractive. I think this really lends to the realism side of the film. Life is not full of Venus and Adonis look-alikes. Furthermore, Gael Garcia Bernal's portrayal of Stephan is more multidimensional than Jim Carrey's overly mopey Joel in "Eternal Sunshine." Bernal is at times mopey but also vital and even manic. Bernal fully displays the emotional journey of a character with such bizarre circumstances.

In short, I have not been this visually and mentally stimulated by a film in a while. "The Science of Sleep" is as conceptually clever and even more beautifully assembled as "Eternal Sunshine." Gondry draws you in and makes you experience Stephan's odyssey along with his characters. "The Science of Sleep" is no sophomore slump for this talented and imaginative director. I give Gondry's "Science of Sleep" $20.

Hold Steady

"Boys And Girls In America"
The Hold Steady
Vagrant Records
2006

With great anticipation, I rushed from class this afternoon to my local record shop to pick up the brand new Hold Steady CD. I hurried straight home and popped the disc into my computer to hear what I hoped would be my new favorite Hold Steady album.

For those uninitiated to the Hold Steady, their first two albums on French Kiss Records brought us the ongoing saga of Hallelujah and Charlemagne, two suburban kids with a healthy dose of rock and roll, party drugs, and sexual appetite. "Almost Killed Me" gave us an introduction to the world of Minnesota skaters and hood rats on a drug-fueled journey. "Separation Sunday" was the religious allegory that came as a follow-up to "Almost" in 2005. These two albums gave the world a new brand of culturally literate, guitar-driven rock and roll with a delightfully quotable lyric narrative. Craig Finn's raspy speak/singing delivered such lines as "Holly wore a cross to ward them off/She says 'If they think you're a christian, then they won't send in the dogs/and if they think you're a Catholic then they'll want to meet your boss.'"

But, just as the band moves from French Kiss to Vagrant Records, "Boys and Girls" is a departure for The Hold Steady as well. While the first two records were based on a paradigm of clever narrative lyrics backed by drums, guitars, and keyboards, "Boys and Girls" has a bit more complex, polished, and arranged sound. The album features many guest musicians on viola, violin, sax, trumpet, trombone, and lap steel guitar as well as a much larger role for the previously subdued organ/keyboard player. Another big change for the band is the addition of background vocals that were conspicuously absent from the first two albums. All this adds up to Craig Finn's voice sometimes getting buried under layers of instrumentation. But none of this additional production really improves upon The Hold Steady as a band. If anything, it obscures what were the best characteristics of the band. The clever narrative and the simple pounding drums and driving guitars were all that was needed to bring a fun rock and roll story to life in the first two albums.

While "Boys and Girls," to some extent continues the narrative of the first two albums, it can stand alone without the context of the band's back catalogue. "Chips Ahoy!" deliver's a fun punch with the chorus that asks, "How am I supposed to know that you're high if you won't even dance?" "Hot Soft Lights" and "Same Kooks" are the tracks that most sounds like the 'classic' Hold Steady. Furthermore, the song "Citrus" is an entertaining ode to mixed drinks, opening, "Hey Citrus, Hey Liquor, I love it when you touch each other," and concluding with my favorite line on the album, "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere." "Boys and Girls" also leaves many of the cultural references that formed some of the cleverness of the first two albums behind in favor of straight up narrative. This is a move that I think will make the new album a bit more accessible for listeners, as one no longer requires an extensive knowledge of music, tv, or biblical history to fully appreciate the Finn's lyrics.

Another feature that i think gives this album more mass appeal than the first two is that The Hold Steady sound, more than ever, like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. While the comparison has been made before, the added production on this album, combined with the addition of back-up vocals, bring a more E Street sound to the mix.

All in all, "Boys and Girls in America" is another fun and energetic album from The Hold Steady about sub-culture in suburbia. While the production is a dparture for the band, it is not necessarily worse or better than their previous efforts, just different. It will not stand as my favorite Hold Steady album, it will definitely remain in heavy rotation on my music player for a while.
I give "Boys and Girls in America" $18

Gomez

"How We Operate"
Gomez
ATO
2006

Fans of the show "Grey's Anatomy" may recognize the title track from "How We Operate" by Gomez from a recent episode but the band deserves to be recognized much more by the mainstream. Gomez is a well known band in the British Isles and the winners of the prestigious Mercury Prize in British music in 1998, but they have yet to really make it big in the US. I personally cannot understand why not. They have well written and well produced pop songs with universal appeal but with a talent that well surpasses most of the mainstream pop schlock that gets constant radio play in the States these days.
"How We Operate" starts off with a lamenting brit-pop ballad called "Notice" and then turns to a more upbeat song in "See the World". Then comes the title track, which really is the shining moment on the album. It begins with a little bit of picking on either a ukulele or a mandolin which is shortly joined by a banjo, followed by the throaty rasp of singer Ben Ottewell. By the time the drums and bass join the party, we have quite an unconventionally catchy melody on our hands. The song stands out as a darker sound than most of the rest of an album featuring songs like the Travis-esque "Girlshapedlovedrug" and "Cry On Demand".
The whole album, though, is a fantastically fun Brit-pop record that deserves your attention. Part of it's appeal is the collaboration ofthe band's three lead singers and two drummers. With one grungy-sounding lead, one indie, and one pop voice, "How We Operate" packs a variety of sounds into one solid album that is enjoyable the whole way through.
I give "How We Operate" by Gomez $16

For those intersted, Gomez in in the middle of a US tour through the end of October. See their Myspace page for details. I may post a concert review after I see their show in Columbus on October 10.

First Post

Welcome to my blog. This will be my first foray into pop culture criticism. First of all, let me introduce myself: I'm Nate, a college student from Chicago. I have an unnatural obsession with TV, music, and movies and I certainly have far too much time on my hands. This will be my outlet to review whatever new music, movies, or TV shows that I stumble across. I hope that my reviews can help me to develope my writing skills and maybe expand the horizons of whoever may stuble across this site. The title of the blog, Everyone's a Critic, comes from one of my favorite bands that noone's ever heard of, The Hold Steady. I will have a review of their new album, Boys and Girls, on Tuesday.

Note: For Music and Movie reviews, I will be using a $1-$20 rating system to indicate how much I'd be willing to pay for such media. If you've got a better idea for a rating system then leave me a message.