Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist combines two juvenile genres—the teen love story and gross-out comedy—to sub-par effect. The story is slight, the dialog often stilted, and the availability of clubside parking in NYC beggars belief. Michael Cera shines in his role as the lovelorn Nick, but he doesn’t shine bright enough to carry this film. This is Diablo Cody Lite.
More noir than cabaret, Jill Tracy’s The Bittersweet Constrain is a mesmerizing example of a musical endeavor that lives and breathes its own atmosphere. Like a trip down the back alleys of a metropolis in decline, you never know where the album is taking you; like an audioflaneur, you may find yourself strolling by the scene of a crime (”Room 19″), finding decadent delight in Faustian bargains (”Sell My Soul”), or becoming obsessed with fatal longing (”In Between Shades”). By turns seductive, dangerous, and knowing, Tracy’s voice is pure chanteuse, irresistible even in the face of the beckoning downward spiral. Colored lightly in the hues of torch song and morbid nightclub songbird, the album takes its time to unfold, lulling you with waves of dissolute dreams as it subtly pulls you under the tide. Backed by her own tenebrous piano and a host of musicians dubbed The Malcontent Orchestra, The Bittersweet Constrain is a very dark album that avoids unnecessary bleakness. Though the record contains paeans to the barbarity of torture devices and other metaphoric references to the torments of love and lust, the raw emotional hunger of Tracy’s voice indicates that the agony of “the bittersweet constrain” is, inevitably, all we have. A downbeat ending fit for the rain-drenched, black-and-white conclusion of a noir thriller to be sure, but with music as compelling as this, it is a proposition difficult to argue against.
With each release, Rabbit Junk carves deeper into a unique, self-created musical niche. This Life is Where You Get F__cked is a triptych record: three sections, three songs per section, three “transmissions” announcing the transition to a new sonic cycle. The first section, “The Struggle,” will probably sound the most familiar to long-time Rabbit Junk fans; it showcases the project’s upbeat, punked-out digital hardcore style with big beats, thrashing guitars, electronics, and dual male-and-female vocals that give a nod to Alec Empire and Hanin Elias. The next section, “Ghetto Blasphemer,” attempts a fusion that shouldn’t work, but inexplicably does. Marrying gangsta hip-hop beats, synth lines, and record scratches to black metal-infected guitars and throat-shredding vocals sounds like the recipe for a car crash of epic proportions, but Rabbit Junk not only makes it work, but effectively creates a new genre out of the opposite ends of the extreme music spectrum. The final section, “This death is where you get life,” returns a bit to the sound of the first section, but amps up the melody and drops in dollops of electroclash for good measure. This is truly innovative music, and easily the best record I’ve ever heard about bicycling your way to freedom.
With Memorias Atras, Mexico’s Hocico turn in a fairly standard example of the aggrotech genre of EBM. If you’re familiar with the generic conventions, you already know what to expect: distorted electronic drums, harsh vocals, and sequenced synth lines. Memorias Atras has a few above average dancefloor-designed tracks such as “About a Dead” and “Fed Up,” but Hocico is oddly at their best when the tempo slows down on songs like “Stop My Madness” and the instrumental “Metamorphous,” which manage to at least evoke a bit of atmosphere. Memorias Atras is a decent, club-oriented album, but there really isn’t much here that hasn’t been done before.
Dawn of Ashes fair only slightly better with The Crypt Injection. Working from the same basic formula of effected vocals, trancey synths, and pounding kick drums, The Crypt Injection doesn’t break much new ground. Flavoring their aggrotech assault with horrific imagery and samples from splatter films, Dawn of Ashes could be an industrial Alice Cooper for the Hostel generation. Even so, their blasphemous, gorehound shtick wears a little thin at points and you start to wish they had pored more of their inspiration into the music rather than their theatrics. Despite being a little lackluster as a whole, you’ll likely be hearing tracks like “Torture Device” and “Still Born Defect” on heavy rotation at your local industrial club. (Probably sandwiched between something by Suicide Commando and Psyclon Nine.) But hey, there’s also a music video included on the disc that’s a bit like Saw set to music.
Hocico – Memorias Atras
Dawn of Ashes – The Crypt Injection
It sounds as though Nick Cave has brought more than a bit of the sweaty rock ‘n’ roll swagger that informed the Grinderman album home to roost with his Bad Seeds. Fuzzed-out organs (”Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”), wah-wah pedals (”Today’s Lesson”), psychedelic textures (”Midnight Man”) and stumbling rhythms (”Lie Down Here”)…this may not be the Nick Cave you’re used to. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is neither the piano balladry of No More Shall We Part or The Boatman’s Call, nor is it the threatening outlaw music of Murder Ballads or Henry’s Dream. Instead, it’s a noisy ramble somewhat less profound and less precise than many albums in Cave’s back catalog, but the album truly has a fire in its belly. Of course, Cave always has a way with lyricism, but it’s good to see him play this one so close to the rough-hewed bone. In place of the visionary poet, we have the wide-eyed corner drunk with a profound insight. And he’s brought a band of fellow miscreants to stir up the dust and put forth quite a din while he rants and raves. Put it this way: it’s more Beat Generation than Tortured Romantic.
Flight of the Conchords is an HBO sitcom starring Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, who play themselves as novelty folk musicans who have moved to NYC from New Zealand to make it big. Supporting the comedic duo is a supporting cast of characters: their ineffectual manager, their stalker-groupie, their pawn shop-owning friend, and a few girlfriends who come and go. While trying to make their band, the eponymous Flight of the Conchords, a success, the boys are forced to negotiate a series of ridiculous situations and absurdist cultural differences. The best part of the program is that the narrative tends to drop away at opportune moments, allowing Clement and McKenzie break into song—Flight of the Conchords are both hilarious with a firm grasp of parody and pastiche and talented musicians with a keen eye toward playing off of musical convention. Each mini-music video is like the prize in your morning cereal: while the whole bowl is sweet, you know what the real payoff is. For a sample of what you can expect from Flight of the Conchords, check out this video for Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros.
China Dub Dubs is, supposedly, a dubbed-out remix album of China Sound System’s Made in China, but whereas most dub remixes tend to cool off the original tracks and take them to the far reaches of inner space, the reworkings on this album actually push the audio collage experimentation of Made in China into more manic territory. There are moments on China Dub Dubs where things slow down and the spaces between the sounds breath and bounce, but overall Martin Atkin’s percussion crashes and bangs even with the addition of massive reverb. Make no mistake: this is a noisy affair. China Dub Dubs is both hypnotic and jarring; it lulls you into a rhythmic pattern, then snaps you out of it with a startling burst of cacophony. Not the most relaxing listening experience, but it is an interesting play on the concept of dub music.
When I first heard the self-titled single from Revue Noir, I hoped it was the start, just the merest taste, of what was to come. Nicki Jaine’s voice defies explanation; how can someone so young sound so world-weary, so filled with the despair that decadence brings? The musical backdrop of piano, acoustic guitar, accordion, violin, and Sam Rosenthal’s keyboards and electronics provides the perfect atmosphere of decay, desire, emotion, and artifice. Truly, Revue Noir is a rare bird that could boast of being both faithful to the cabaret spirit of the Weimar Republic and creating music that is vital, authentic, and new.
I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the label “dark cabaret.” It seemed like an attempt to label something that didn’t yet exist, or an early bet placed on what might become the next big thing. Even so, Revue Noir is dark cabaret. Their music is all about atmosphere, and that atmosphere is smokey, sultry, and desperate. It is at once a funeral song for a moment that is slipping away, and a celebration of the inevitable, marching progression of modernity.
Anthology Archive collects the totality of Revue Noir’s musical output. Outstanding originals such as the Marlene Dietrich-esque “Sometimes, Sunshine” and the torch song balladry of “Strange Little Show” mix freely with noir’d covers of David Bowie, Black Tape for a Blue Girl, Weill and Brecht, and The Velvet Underground. I would be lying if I didn’t disclose that I’m currently haunted by the track “Sunshine IV,” a prefect fusion of ethereal cabaret and the organ music soundtrack to the film The Carnival of Souls. And those of you who missed out on picking up on the original Revue Noir CD single should note that all three of those tracks are included on this collection.
As much as I am already in love with this release, it is, admittedly, a bittersweet kind of love. In a sense, Anthology Archive feels like a summation of something that was just beginning, something that held a great deal of promise. The only real problem with this release is that you will want more, more, more. Still, Anthology Archive is a surpassing deep recording, and like the end of the Weimar era, it comes with a hope for some future day when this spirit will live on.
I’ve found that my students tend to start the semester laboring under the assumption that the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries is dry, dense, sexless stuff. To break them of that notion, one of my favorite authors to start a new class off with is John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester. (Johnny Depp played Rochester in the filmThe Libertine, for those who need a cinematic reference point.) Rochester’s poetry is delightfully ribald and earnestly perverse; he used the kind of language Mike won’t let us get away with here at Liar Society. Rochester’s most famous poems are, of course, “The Disabled Debauchee” and “The Imperfect Enjoyment,” poetic explorations of impotence and premature ejaculation, respectively. To get a full sense of what Rochester’s poetry is all about, consider that one of his best verses is titled “Signior Dildo.” Yes, it is about exactly what you think it is.
And yet, complete as it is, I cannot in good faith recommend this particular collection of his work. The Filiquarian Publishing edition commits a cardinal sin: it clothes lovely words poorly. To be blunt, this book is ugly. The cover is a hideously pixelated scan of the portrait that hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery. The font is legible, but plain. And the amount of wasted white space in the book is simply unforgivable. While I encourage all and sundry to seek out Rochester’s poetry for its, ah, edifying, properties, I must insist that they do so elsewhere. This volume would be an embarrassment to the better dressed texts in your library.
It is almost as if the people who are raving about the summer’s big blockbuster saw a different movie than I did. The Dark Knight isn’t a bad movie, but I did leave the theatre feeling distinctly underwhelmed. There are good aspects of the movie (the fight scenes are less murky and wooden than in Batman Begins, replacing Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal was a smart move) and bad aspects (the plot line is convoluted, the rebooted franchise still can’t decide if it is gritty and realistic or comic-style fantasy). Instead of inspiring repeat viewings, The Dark Knight makes me want to rent Tim Burton’s Batman.