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(05/09/18 11:39pm)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) began with “Iron Man” (2008). It was a risky move by a company that had spent most of the prior decades selling off movie rights to characters in order to stay afloat. It was a comeback story, one strengthened by the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as the eponymous hero, a man in need of a comeback himself. In the end, the film was a massive hit and set into motion Marvel’s vision for a massive interconnected universe of movies. Now, ten years and eighteen movies later, we have arrived at the beginning of the end for this initial chapter in the MCU. Ever since the post-credits scene of “The Avengers” (2012) revealed Thanos as the ‘big bad’ which the movies were building to, the question has been what would happen when he fully arrived on the screen. A second post-credits appearance at the end of “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015) and a few scenes in “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014) later, we arrive at “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018), directed by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo and the culmination of the promise to bring the comic arc of the same name to life. It is what each movie in the entire MCU has been leading to.
“Avengers: Infinity War” begins in the aftermath of “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017). Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his followers have overtaken Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the surviving Asgardians, laying waste to them and their ship. Here, we see the first glimpse of Thanos’ true power, as he tosses the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) around like a play thing. After a pair of courageous sacrifices, Thanos acquires the second of the six infinity stones that he is after, and we launch into the movie proper. So many interlaced storylines follow that it would be impossible to lay them out in any summarized fashion, but they all revolve around the same focal point: Thanos has the infinity gauntlet, a piece of equipment that will allow him to harness the power of the six infinity stones, which are scattered throughout the universe. If in the possession of all six, the stones and the gauntlet would give him the power to control every aspect of the universe, a power he would put to use with one goal: wipe out half of all life to achieve a “balance” in the cosmos. As a result, the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and assorted heroes must fan out across the universe to try and stop him.
At any given point in the movie there are at least four distinct storylines unfolding. Whether they be Iron Man/Tony Stark, Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Tom Holland) trapped on a spaceship heading for Titan, Thor meeting up with the Guardians of the Galaxy or Thanos in pursuit of a stone, there is never simply one story arc occuring. These narratives are all unified by Thanos but operate in different capacities of either supporting or opposing his quest. I knew going in that there would be much going on at once and maybe that helped my experience of watching it, but there were few moments where the movie seem to pull at the seams. For instance, the many narrative arcs became hard to follow when there was a tone shift between storylines, such as a comical quip from Tony cutting to a distraught Gamora (Zoe Saldana), but those were minimal. Some critics have maintained that there was too much going on to keep the story straight, but my experience was that the Russos stitched their world together quite well as a result of tactfully juxtaposed battles and a well-designed cascade of stories.
Making their jobs all the easier is a cast fully committed to the scope of the story. We have seen many of these characters evolve over a multitude of movies. For example, Tony has grown from a self-centered casanova into a paternal leader and Thor has gone from a lovable meathead to a remarkably complex character dealing with the grief of losing a homeworld and most of his family. The character-driven stories that preceded “Avengers: Infinity War” mean a remarkable amount of leg work has been done in developing these characters, much like the way a television show uses stand-alone episodes to build towards a season finale. Yet, for me, the most compelling performances came from characters with less backstory built into the MCU. At the head of this was Saldana, a performance inextricably tied to Brolin’s turn as her demonic adopted father Thanos. Having appeared in only two MCU films prior to this one, Saldana has nevertheless been a standout of the Guardians of the Galaxy cast, portraying a woman who has been shattered by the abuse her adopted father rained down on her as a child and pitting her and her sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) against one another. It is also through this relationship that much of Thanos’ complexity is contextualized. As a madman who wants to kill half of all life in the universe, there is evil enough to spare, but Brolin’s scenes with Saldana bear a charge of perverted paternalism that is more chilling than any universal domination plan. He killed half of the population of Gamora’s planet but truly believes he did the planet and her a favor. Their scenes carry a Learian heft which is the MCU at its best.
Furthermore, the duo of Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) became the emotional core of the movie for me. In the midst of a relationship that had only been hinted at in prior movies, theirs is the story of a romance besieged by the apocalyptic circumstances around them. At moments, they are challenged to choose between what would be best for the one they love and what is best for the world. It is the epitome of sacrifice, which becomes the de facto thematic unifier of the movie. In this story populated by nearly thirty heroes, there is not a single one spared from making an impossible choice at some point in the runtime. As a result, the tone of this movie is markedly darker than anything Marvel has put out before. The stakes seem real and though some of the many deaths in this movie will no doubt be reversed come the next Avengers in May 2019, there are a few that seem definitively final. We have lost characters in the MCU before, but none as central as those that meet their end in “Avengers: Infinity War,” which is both heartbreaking as fan and inarguably compelling as a possibility that Marvel is pushing towards a reinvention.
“Avengers: Infinity War” delivers on the epic tone that has characterized its marketing and buildup. Super-fans of the comics and casual viewers of the movies alike have spent years wondering how this film would play out and, at least speaking for this viewer, it did not disappoint. It is not a perfect movie, but as one half of the capstone for an era of Marvel filmmaking it is deeply satisfying and more emotionally compelling than any of the entries in the MCU that have come before. Only time will tell if the risk that Marvel chose to take here will pan out into a greater shift in the way that they make movies, but it is promising to think that even ten years and billions of dollars in the company is not ready to rest on its fandom’s laurels just yet.
(04/26/18 1:02am)
We seem to be living in the midst of a horror renaissance. In the past few years, we have been graced with critical and audience darlings such as “The Conjuring” (2013) and “The Babadook” (2014), and in just the past year the likes of “Get Out” (2017) and “It” (2017) have taken pop culture by storm. Horror has always served as wonderful thermometer for Americans’ cultural anxieties. Since these movies started to appear in earnest, the American public has had much to be anxious about, from heightened awareness of terrorist activity to a tumultuous election cycle. It is the tension from these fears and frustrations that no doubt inspires such horror on the big screen. Many of them feature truly visionary filmmaking which pushes the edges of both the horror genre and filmmaking writ large. Enter “A Quiet Place” (2018).
Directed by, written by and starring John Krasinski, “A Quiet Place” takes place in a post-apocalyptic world circa 2020. Few details are given about the circumstances which have pushed the world into disarray, but the vague facts we can pin down are these: a meteor of some sort landed and from the meteor a breed of monster has fanned out to hunt anything that lives. The brilliant caveat of these beasts is that they are completely blind, relying entirely on an elevated sense of sound to hunt. Lee (Krasinski), Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and their children live in the midst of this insanity, carving out a self-reliant existence on a family farm in a rural town. Within minutes of the film’s opening, their youngest son Beau (Cade Woodward), meets a ruthless end when he presses a button on the toy space shuttle he is playing with, which sets off a series of buzzes and beeps. The noise alerts a nearby creature who snaps him up before Lee can save him. From this point, we jump about a year into the future where the husband, wife and the two remaining children, Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe), grapple with the grief of losing a family member while just trying to survive.
The idea of a family surviving in a post-apocalyptic world is not a revolutionary narrative by any means, but how the film toys with the presence of sound sets it apart. Because these creatures hunt using sound, it constrains the amount of noise that any of the characters can make, and Krasinski and the sound mixers lean on this heavily. For instance, the family pours sand along the walkways they use around the house and walk only in bare feet to avoid making noise. Within the old farmhouse, there are patches of gray paint on the safe spots on the floor, spots one assumes have come from an enormous amount of trial and error, stepping on all the squeaky floorboards. Under the barn is the space that the family has converted into a home, insulated with layers of paper and a mattress thrown over the entrance to mediate any accidental sound that comes from within. The result is that any time one of them makes a noise, such as when Marcus knocks over a lamp in the midst of a game of Monopoly, it feels amplified beyond compare. We are brought so intently into this near-silent world that the terrified reactions which accompany any accidental sound seem completely believable, and it seemed to me that every person in the theater was holding their breath just as intently as the characters, wondering if that sound would be their last.
As the character most tightly connected to silence, Simmonds emerges as the magnetic center of the film. Simmonds is actually deaf, something that carries over into her performance as Regan. Most of the communication between the family members is done through sign language, subtitled for the viewer, and Regan’s deafness makes the signing seem an integral part of the family as opposed to a quick fix to help with communication. The entire cast possess wonderfully expressive features and exercises a precise control of their bodies to emulate the emotions they are feeling in such an expressive way that I never found myself wishing they would speak more, much in the same way as Sally Hawkins’ performance in “The Shape of Water” (2017). But it is Simmonds who I found myself drawn to again and again. It is her expression when Beau is killed, frozen in grief and terror, that resonated throughout the film. Furthermore, it is her guilt over having given Beau the toy that lead to his death and the perceived blame from her father, that motivates her throughout the movie. She desperately wants to prove herself to Lee and her brother wants nothing more than to stay away from the outside world, while their mother quietly keeps the peace amongst them all. At one point, Lee forces Marcus to go fishing with him even though the boy is terrified, while Regan begs to be taken along. Within this exchange we see the tension surrounding the gendered expectations of the children and the spectre of residual resentment on Lee’s part from Regan’s part in Beau’s death. All the while, Evelyn stands by to pick up the pieces when the fight has ended. It is the portrait of a family that could be painted onto any scenario, examining the fault lines that run between us all. Yet, here they also happen to live in a world that wants to make communicating all the more complicated.
When we are experiencing the world through Regan, the sound is completely turned off. We are brought into her personal interactions with the world as the movie imitates the silence which makes up her life. At times, it is incredibly poignant, such as when she visits Beau’s grave and we are resultantly entirely focused on the pictures and mementos she is seeing. Other times, it is terrifying, as we can see a creeping creature that she cannot hear. We are terrified for a threat she is completely unaware of, that we know she will never hear coming. In other films there is the chance something could alert a character to the threat, but here we can only hold our breath and hope. Krasinski insisted on casting a deaf actress in the role of his daughter to make sure that the true experience of being deaf was presented with nuance and care. His casting alongside the decision to build the sound design around her, by helping the viewer experience the world just as she does, is the most inspired choice of the movie.
While Krasinski as a director falls prey to an arsenal of familiar jump scares, and while the parents’ concern for the safety of their children is a compelling if tired narrative, the assemblage of set pieces and path towards family reconciliation that he puts together in the back half of the film make up for any less than original stretches in the first half. It is the film’s sensitivity to sound design which results in a family besieged by silence that make the second half of the film some of the most effective building of tension I’ve experienced in a movie. I will not elaborate on the final forty-five minutes because one of the true joys of watching this film is being scared out of your wits as you watch the characters desperately try to stay alive. I would hate to knock any of the air out of some truly innovative direction which left myself and the friends I was seeing the movie with squeezing all the feeling out of each others’ hands. It is a taught and lean thriller with nothing extra to bog it down, and while it may not tout the allegorical heft of “Get Out” or “The Babadook,” it is a profoundly effective bit of horror filmmaking.
(03/08/18 2:49am)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro, “The Shape of Water” (2017) tells the story of Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman who works as a custodian in a government laboratory. She spends her days there with her coworker and friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer), and when she’s not at work she spends most of her time with her neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), an older man who paints in an apartment populated mostly by canvases and cats.
Del Toro introduces us to Elisa’s world with a montage that reveals the monotony of her days, from waking up, to punching in, to going to bed. Yet this all changes when Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) shows up in the laboratory with a creature (Doug Jones), half man and half amphibian, captured in the Amazon.
On its own, this would no doubt make quite a compelling set up for a film, but del Toro has more in mind as Elisa is mute, Giles is gay and Zelda is a black woman. All three are marginalized in the world in which they live.
This aligns them in turn with the amphibian man, who has been brought in to be studied and experimented on by Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his team of scientists under Strickland’s supervision. Elisa is enamored by this amphibious creature, and as they both begin to fall for each other, Elisa and her friends decide that they must break this fish-man out of his prison.
Standing in their way is Strickland, a candy-chewing egomaniac who wants nothing more than to pick the creature apart piece by piece. He is the personification of all that is intolerant and violent, belittling Elisa for her disability and Zelda for her race. In a movie where one would expect the amphibious creature to be the monster, it is Strickland that emerges as the antagonist. Elisa and her friends must overcome his vision of a world where anything that is different must be destroyed.
Del Toro has long been known as a master stylist, bending the rules of nature to suit his vision. Whether through the creatures he brought to life in “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and “Hellboy” (2004), or the breathtaking and disturbing architecture of “Crimson Peak” (2015), there is a look to all of his movies that distinguishes them. In the context of “The Shape of Water” it is hard to place exactly when you are until the Cold War aspects are integrated. It is obviously a period piece, sprinkled with 1950s-style cars and store fronts, but it works to the film’s advantage that there is nothing in its visuals to completely nail down this fairy tale’s time period.
Throughout the film, each setting has unique trademarks. Elisa’s apartment has impossibly curved windows, faux-victorian furniture and limited light, giving it a warm but lonely feel. Comparatively, the lab where she works is enormous, constructed from industrial steel, concrete and nondescript tiling that give it a dull and inhuman spirit. The only spot in the building with character is the room with the pool where our amphibian friend is housed. It is dark, but similar to Elisa’s apartment, the light playing off the water creates a sense of life despite the horrors that occurs within. It seems this is no mistake. This connection between places visually foreshadows the connection that will develop between the fish-man and Elisa. This is an emotiveness of setting that plays out throughout the entirety of the film and reveals del Toro’s remarkable attention to the detail of his world.
Completing this otherworldly experience is a cast committed to bringing each facet of this story to life. It is an ensemble of remarkable performances of which I could sing the praises for days, but for the constraints of a singular review I will focus on a pair of performances. First, as Elisa, Hawkins is positively captivating. Her performance recalls the greatest silent film stars, relying on facial expression and emotive motions to convey a depth of character as great as any spoken role. From the first moment when she is alarmed by the sight of this new creature, to when she brings him hard-boiled eggs and finally to when she stands in his embrace, the curves and motions of her face demonstrate the act of falling in love just as effectively as if she told us. I am brought back again and again to Elisa’s eyes, and one shot in particular when she makes eye contact with Giles over the shoulder of the fish-man: we only see half of her face, but the love radiating from her eye is palpable.
Standing there with her is Jones in full amphibian regalia. This is no new experience for him, as he donned a similar getup in “Hellboy” to play Abe Sapien, but del Toro and the make-up team have provided a costume unlike anything I’ve seen in modern film. The sapphire and turquoise hues of his skin give him an unmistakable presence, but it is the creature’s soul that Jones conveys so hauntingly. It is, while not silent, also a performance without a single spoken word. We see his terror upon his arrival at the lab slowly soften in response to Elisa’s affections. Together, Jones and Hawkins illustrate the most unconventional of love stories with a pair of unprecedented performances, all in the pursuit of the most human and natural of all acts, falling in love. I never found myself questioning the validity of the feelings they had for each other, or pulled out of the story because of whatever inter-species connection was happening. It is a poignant and romantic love story, and Jones and Hawkins deliver career-best performances in its service.
At its core, “The Shape of Water” is a love letter to all of its misunderstood and rejected characters, whether human or otherwise, who have been disregarded because of some perceived imperfection. The creature from the Amazon is not the monster. He is, by del Toro’s and the actors’ brilliant work, the romantic interest. The heroine cannot utter a single word, but tells us more about how to love and live beyond your limits than nearly any character I can recollect. Her confidants live in a world where central aspects of their identities are looked down upon, be that their skin color or sexual orientation, but they look beyond what the world thinks of them to do something incredibly moving. The film rarely delves into direct confrontation with the social issues it suggests, the exceptions being a pair of scenes in a diner where Giles develops a crush on the waiter, only to find out that he is both a racist and a homophobe, and a spattering of “your kind” comments made to Zelda throughout the narrative. What this seems to achieve is a permeated sense that the movie is not interested in focusing on what differentiates these heroes, but rather the common sense of moral integrity and empathy which they all feel. Del Toro has crafted a deeply moving film that reminds audiences that it is the humanity in each of us that binds us together, and that it should be stronger than anything we perceive as pushing us apart.
(01/24/18 10:52pm)
“The Florida Project” (2017) follows six-year old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) and her friends Scooty (Christopher Riviera) and Jancey (Valeria Cotto) through their summertime adventures among the string of motels in Kissimmee, Florida, just outside Disney World, where they all live. Moonee’s mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), leaves her daughter mostly unsupervised, a trend repeated by each of the children’s caretakers. Yet they are not without someone to watch over them, as Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the manager of The Magic Castle, the motel where Moonee and Halley live, acts as a crusty guardian angel. The children and their families are part of the forgotten homeless Americans who may have a roof over their heads week-to-week but have no plans or prospects for long-term housing. Director Sean Baker ushers the viewer into their world, taking an approach most comparable to Richard Linklater with Boyhood (2014), steeping us in the experiences of his characters. In fact, many of the supporting figures in the film are portrayed by actual residents of the motels, blending fact and fiction in this depiction of daily life.
Every directorial decision emphasizes the fact that this is a story about the children that populate this world. Baker’s camera often sits lower than is conventional, following Moonee and her friends as they hide under the stairway at The Magic Castle, a place completely their own because no adult would comfortably fit underneath its arches. The setting itself takes on an almost surreal feel, from the peeling lilac paint of The Magic Castle to the enormous fruit- shaped Orange World (a shop that we imagine specializes in orange related memorabilia). The very existence of a street sign for “Seven Dwarfs Ln.” suggest a child’s slightly mystified view of the world. It is as if Disney World spilled out from the confines of the park and expanded to fill the world around it, but grew only into a demystified image of its former self. Baker relishes the cognitive dissonance in how Disney lords over the narrative while only rarely directly entering in, saving its full debut for a moment I won’t spoil.
In one of his most haunting images, Halley takes Moonee and Jancey to the waterside to watch the park’s fireworks. They are far away and seemingly innumerable motels and freeways lie between them and Disney World. For a moment they sit in darkness, interrupted by the explosions. Under a red-stained sky, the three sit celebrating Jancey’s birthday, but all I could think about was the sheer amount of distance the shot conveyed. Just beyond their view are a multitude of families sitting under the same fireworks, enjoying the privilege of their decadent vacations. Halley and the girls are well aware of them, but there is no indication that those within the park have any idea of what sits just outside their “magic kingdom,” a fact that gave me a sense of profound sadness.
No story about children works without a talented child to anchor it, and the crackling ray of sunshine that is Brooklynn Prince does just that. Prince was only six at the time of filming, the same age as the character that she played, and the expressive range and performative talent she displays is truly remarkable. Giving a tour of The Magic Castle to Jancey, who lives at a neighboring motel, she tells her about each room, from the one with “the woman who thinks she’s married to Jesus” to another with a man who “gets arrested a lot.” Her delivery is natural and metered, with the wrist flicks and flourishes of an excited child showing off her world to someone new. It is shot through with genuine strokes that could easily seem forced, but never do. Baker recognizes what he has with Prince, and capitalizes on it. Near the end of the film, Halley sneaks Moonee and Jancey into a ritzy hotel nearby to take advantage of the continental breakfast, and Baker settles his camera in close-up on Prince as she eats. She lists the foods she’s having, and talks about how ‘pregnant’ she’ll look after breakfast. It is equally adorable and heartbreaking, a young girl finding joy in what many may consider such a small thing.
Hovering over and accenting Prince’s performance is the work turned in by Dafoe as Bobby. Throughout his career, Dafoe has made a name for himself playing memorable supporting roles that elevate the piece they are a part of. The Academy nominated him for his portrayal of the thoughtful and morally grounded Sgt. Elias in “Platoon” (1986), which brought empathy and humanism to the horrors of the Vietnam War. He was not the focus, but his domination of each of his scenes made him one of its most memorable parts. If it were not for the tour-de-force work that Prince delivered here, I believe the same would have held true. That withstanding, Dafoe permeates the story. The children may often see him as spoiling their good fun, but it is with a firm and caring hand that he steers them away from the greatest dangers that could befall them. At one moment, an older gentleman wanders onto the property and begins chatting with the children, who are innocently playing around a pair of picnic tables. Bobby is painting a layer of yellow trim on the motel, but he notices this new figure, and it distracts him enough that he drops the can of paint. We feel his concern mount, and when he walks over to confront the man it is with a smile and a deference that shield bubbling rage as we come to understand the sinister nature of this man’s intentions. Dafoe’s performance makes Bobby inseparable from the motel, and his deep sadness in trying to help these children without being able to save them is palpable.
Watching The Florida Project for me was one of those rare cinematic experiences when I have to remind myself I’m watching a fictional world. The care and precision with which Baker portrays this world is masterful, so that even with its seemingly heightened and carefully chosen details it’s easy to lose yourself within it. Each cast member, with the standouts Prince and Dafoe, seem so deeply woven into this world that all of their motions and lines blend into a work of beauty. There can be no real fairy tale ending for these children, nor for their real life counterparts out in the world, but that does not preclude them from deserving a story of grace and humor.
(01/17/18 10:30pm)
Irish playwright Martin McDonagh made his directorial debut with “In Bruges” (2008). That movie told the story of two affable hit men hiding out in Bruges after a killing gone wrong. Four years later, he followed it up with “Seven Psychopaths” (2012) about a screenwriter roped into an odyssey of malice and idiocy surrounding a stolen dog and an angry mob boss. These films are characterized by gorgeously wrought dialogue interspersed with scenes of often stunning violence filled out by leads who have none of the noble or restrained characteristics of your average protagonist. They are foul-mouthed, foul-tempered and violent, a step beyond simple anti-hero. McDonagh revels in human imperfection and does not shy from the complexity of emotion. “In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths” both did wonderful jobs of conveying this, but in his newest film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017), he seems to perfect it.
The film tells the story of Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), who rents out the eponymous billboards to put pressure on the local police department led by town celebrity Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Mildred thinks they have failed to aptly investigate her daughter Angela’s (Kathryn Newton) violent rape and murder because nearly a year after the event no arrests have been made. The billboards, in bright red and black, read “Raped while dying. / And still no arrests? / How come, Chief Willoughby?” Her billboards have the desired effect, bringing Willoughby and his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) to attention. The billboards divide the small town of Ebbing, Missouri, many feeling that it is unfair towards Willoughby, who is dying of cancer. Life in Ebbing seems to center around one main street, where the advertising agency that owns the billboards sits across from the police department. Apart from the gift shop where Mildred works, the billboards, and her home, we see her nowhere else. But the town intrudes to offer their opinions. Father Montgomery (Nick Searcy), the town priest, comes to Mildred, telling her: “Everyone’s on your side about Angela. No one’s on your side about these billboards.” However, he is wrong about that. The film unfolds just as Dixon characterizes it, as a “war” between Mildred, who refuses to allow her daughter’s death to fade away, and those who would rather it be stricken from the public eye.
In this sense, “Three Billboards” is at its core a brilliant character study that centers on Mildred. She is motivated by a pure fury that is equaled only by her grief, and we empathize in a profound way with this image of a mother who wants nothing more than justice for her daughter. Yet, Mildred has the general disposition of sandpaper, grating and irritating almost everyone and everything she comes into contact with, employing a rather majestic lack of restraint. She is the character we needed in 2017: a woman who refuses to take shit from anyone and who will follow her gut through any debris that may fall in her way. McDonagh writes for Mildred some of the most affecting lines he ever has, and she is brought to life by Frances McDormand.
McDormand is, in my eyes at least, the single most talented actress alive today. Looking at her filmography, from “Fargo” (1996) to “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), she has never turned in a bad performance, whether she sits at the center of the plot or as a supporting figure. She disappears into her roles, mastering different accents and physical ticks to accentuate each character. Here, decked out in a red bandana and a blue jumpsuit for most of the film, she seems a direct dismissal of the classic ‘leading lady.’ Even at a dinner date later in the film she stays in this outfit, presenting a clear message to the town and the viewer: this woman cares little for what you may think of her, only concerned with delivering the justice her daughter deserves. When Father Montgomery delivers his criticism in her kitchen, she leans in the doorway and delivers what may be the finest speech McDonagh has ever written about the culpability of Catholic priests, and how little right he has to criticize her. It is deft, measured, and somehow, hilarious. McDormand finds the core of McDonagh’s writing, giving the performance of her career.
All of this is filmed with an elegance and beauty that gives the film the sheen I would imagine William Faulkner’s novels would look like if brought to life. The mountains that rise above the billboards convey a sense of scope and sadness with the mist rolling from their peaks, a range of crying giants with their gazes fixed on Mildred’s grief. McDonagh alternates between breathtaking long shots of the town and landscape and close ups of the people that populate them. We see them and the town as they see each other, up in their faces with little ability to stretch out and look away. This makes the interspersal of medium shots that much more of a punctuation. Mildred awaiting Willoughby’s interrogation at the police station stands out to me as one of the most beautiful shots in the film: light filters through the drawn shades while she sits behind a beige desk, arms crossed, defiance radiating from her every pore. McDonagh picks his images carefully, staging two pivotal conversations about Angela’s death with Mildred sitting beside Willoughby first, and Dixon second, on a set of swings. McDonagh focuses our attention on the innocence suggested by the swings, an instrument of childhood, and then contrasts it with the gut-wrenching description of the crimes committed and what has been done to investigate them.
‘Stagey’ or ‘theatrical’ have often been treated as dirty words when it comes to movies. No director wants their movie to seem like it’s just a play that has been photographed, but I think the blanket statement misses the intricacy of theatrics. McDonagh is primarily a playwright, and I believe it is this sensibility that makes his movies so well constructed. There is not a wasted word in his script, and within the composition of each scene his motifs and focus bring our attention right where he wants it. You have such limited visual ability on stage that you must be quite precise about what you fill the space with. It is this theatrical intuition that makes Three Billboards so effective; each image, word, and detail seems to have been considered with such attention that they fit together in nearly flawless fashion. It makes me wish that McDonagh would increase his output, giving us more than one movie every four or five years. But, then again, if each of them is as good as this, it’s well worth the wait.
(11/01/17 10:55pm)
In 1968, Philip K. Dick asked us to ponder a question: do androids dream of electric sheep? His novel about what makes the human experience so human inspired director Ridley Scott to bring his vision to the big screen with “Blade Runner” (1982). It subsequently took Scott five attempts to tell Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) story, culminating in “Blade Runner: Final Cut” (2007). The series is a case study in the revisionary practices of art, a constant attempt to improve. Since its release, “Blade Runner” has shifted the science fiction landscape of filmmaking, leaving filmmakers like “Ex Machina” (2015) director Alex Garland and “Arrival” (2016) director Denis Villeneuve indebted to the vision Scott brought to life. So it is without surprise that we find Villeneuve at the helm of a continuation of Scott’s world with “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), an equally challenging and intriguing puzzle-box of science fiction.
Set 30 years after the conclusion of the events of “Blade Runner”, the film begins in a car with K (Ryan Gosling). Like Deckard before him, he is tasked with hunting down replicants, the bio-engineered disposable workforce of this future, who have gone astray. K himself is of a new generation of replicants, created by Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), made without the rebellious impulses of the originals. In a desolate landscape of dust and satellites, K tracks down Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), a rogue replicant who has settled into a life of farming. Tender is not a word that usually describes Bautista, but that is exactly what he is here. K has come to kill Sapper, a fact both men are well aware of. Yet the tension only builds as the two talk of garlic, and the protein Sapper makes before K “retires” him.
“Blade Runner” made us question the essence of humanity through the mystery of whether or not Deckard was a replicant. There is no mystery here. We know both K and Sapper are replicants, but Bautista makes Sapper effortlessly human, while Gosling keeps K the bland, company man he was trained to be. Sapper fought against this completely obedient design, and to him it must seem that K has given in too easily to the demands of his boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright). By beginning the film with this pair, Villeneuve presents the questions we will be challenged to ponder through its almost three hour runtime: what, if anything, makes a replicant less than human, and more unsettling, what makes us human anyways? A discovery that K makes in Sapper’s house sends him on an odyssey that forces him to consider these very questions.
In order to convey such a heady concept, the world must be believable. We must feel every particle of radioactive dust, each snowflake as it melts on skin, and every ember as the cities smolder. Villeneuve enlists legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins to capture his expertly designed world, and Deakins, who has crafted worlds for everything from “Shawshank Redemption” (1994) to “Skyfall” (2012), excels. This may be his finest work. After K lands in bombed out Las Vegas to find Deckard, he walks through air saturated with red dust. Half-seen statues loom around him. He and another replicant do battle on what seems to be the edge of the world, and in a haunting moment, Deckard comes face to face with a ghost from his past. Deakins makes this whole world feel real.
Together, Villeneuve and Deakins have crafted a world like nothing I have ever seen. Frame by frame, they fashion a world of out of images as poetic as anything that has been put to page. They and the production team rely sparingly on CGI, opting to build massive sets instead, matching each with its own particular palette: the streets of L.A. are shown in greys and blues, Deckard’s Las Vegas is coated in reds and oranges, and the headquarters of replicant manufacturer Niander Wallace are an endlessly unsettling scheme of mustard and black. It would be challenging to find a still from this film that is not worthy of framing.
I have intentionally not lingered on the performances in this film because it strikes me that what the actors do seems rather subsidiary to how they look while doing it. Gosling is fine in the role of K. The performance is bland, seemingly intentional in its detachment. Gosling is clearly the protagonist of the film, but it is the supporting cast that stand out. Bautista is superb, and Sylvia Hoeks as Luv, Wallace’s hand-crafted second-in-command, is a scene-stealer. She manifests the internal battle between wanting to make her creator proud, and hating the control he exercises over her and the other replicants. Wright turns the possibly one-note character of a police lieutenant into a deliciously pulpy genre transplant: she seems to have walked out of a 1950’s film noir and into this new world. It is a treat to see Ford return as Deckard, and he is given more to do here than in his last turn as Han Solo in The Force Awakens (2015).
I don’t think Dick, Scott, or Villeneuve have the answer to the questions they pose, which I am grateful for. The attempt to comprehend what makes us tick has inspired gifted artists to grapple with the question on the page, on the canvas, and on the screen. “Blade Runner 2049” exposes us to the dystopian landscape so completely that we are forced to consider what it would mean to be person within it. The idea of replicants and the repercussions of such advancements were terrifying in the original “Blade Runner” and it remains so 35 years later in “Blade Runner 2049”. But that is the joy of it. Villeneuve has no intention of answering Dick’s question, or shutting the door on the world Scott introduced us to. He has instead lent his vision to the oeuvre of humanistic exploration, and we are better for it.
(09/21/17 12:09am)
All is not well in Derry, Maine. Luckily for those of us from Maine, Derry does not actually exist.
“It,” published in 1986, has already seen one adaptation, in the form of a 1990 miniseries with Tim Curry taking up the mantle of the clown, Pennywise. Twenty-seven years later, Andres Muschietti brings “It” (2017) to the big-screen to introduce a new generation of filmgoers to King’s manic clown.
The film opens on brothers Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) and Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott). It is a stormy day, and Bill lovingly assembles a paper boat for his brother. Muschietti follows each fold and crease, and it is a truly beautiful piece of filmmaking, and emblematic of much of his style. He lingers on small details, here and when it comes to the scenes of horror later, such as an exceptionally inventive bit where a painting comes to life to hunt one of the children. He shows off the lush production design that went into making Derry and it’s characters come to life.
Muschietti, particularly in this opening sequence, charges his images with ideas of innocence and the subsequent loss of it. As Bill puts the finishing touches on the boat, called the “S.S. Georgie,” he sends his brother to the basement to fetch the wax so the boat will float. Standing at the top of the dark basement steps, Georgie utters a line which is as much for him as it is an ethos for the audience: “Be brave.”
Brave we must be, for after Georgie brings the wax and Bill completes the boat, it is out into the rain for the little boy. The camera follows him and the boat down the street until it is swept into the gutter, and we are brought to the films most controversial scene. Here, Georgie meets Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgård), an introduction he does not survive.
It is a brutal and deeply disturbing scene, but I believe it is necessary to understand the core function of the film. The beauty of the opening moments set up the profound connection between brothers, and so we are able to conceive of the story as Bill’s reckoning with the grief of losing Georgie, and the overarching loss of innocence that accompanies such a discovery. It is Bill who inspires his friends, known collectively as “the Losers Club,” to investigate what happened to Georgie, and therefore leads them to Pennywise.
A story about childhood does not succeed without a talented cast of children, and “the Losers Club” is that and more. There is an immediate chemistry between Bill, Richie (Finn Wolfhard), Bev (Sophia Lillis), Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) and Mike (Chosen Jacobs). Wolfhard is now well-known as Mike Wheeler on Netflix’s “Stranger Things” (2016–), and it is refreshing to see him play a more energetic and comedic character here. They are not all great performers, but as an ensemble they lift each other up, never losing the necessary energy.
The standouts in the cast are Lillis and Taylor. Taylor’s character, Ben, is the “new kid,” but it is whose research into Derry’s mythos brings a greater understanding of the town’s menace. Taylor is a scene-stealer in ways both comical and dramatic, but it is really Lillis who stays with you. It is through her story that we fully understand a second vital aspect of the plot: No matter what Pennywise conjures, reality can hold demons much more menacing. Ultimately, the rag-tag band of “the Losers Club” find themselves combating evils natural and demonic.
The screenplay slowly reveals more of the kids’ backgrounds, finding ways to take each of their deepest fears, which Pennywise exploits, and have them overcome it. A refrain by the “Losers” is “it’s not real.” They fight to recognize that fear is only in their minds, and if they can battle it than they can vanquish it, be it demonic or human in nature.
Regardless, King’s story is nothing without its monster, and what Skarsgård brings to the performance of Pennywise is truly, deeply unsettling. When Tim Curry first brought the role to life in 1990, it was a rather campy affair. Watching it now, the terror is undercut by rather unintended humor. That is never a problem in this new production. Aided by a remarkable team of special effects technicians, the many forms and appearances of Pennywise permeate the film with a constant stream of dread. You never quite know when he’ll pop up, or how he’ll look when he does. Muschietti is not remarkably inventive with his jump scares, and fills his film with many of the tropes one would expect in a monster movie, but it is nevertheless terrifying. I challenge you to sit through Pennywise’s introduction without trying to shrink into your seat away from the creature.
As a horror movie, Muschietti has done nothing to reinvent the wheel. The jump scares, as noted, are all rather well-trod. They do their job, but unlike this year’s brilliant “Get Out” (2017), there is no freshness to them. But, fresh or not, watching a nightmarish creature appear from the darkness is effective. Benjamin Wallfisch provides an extraordinary score that at times evokes both his mentor Hans Zimmer as well as John Williams, but Muschietti relies on the screech of violins to telegraph fear at times when more inventive direction would have made the sound cue unnecessary.
Even so, the film succeeds in telling a truly moving story of grief and redemption. From the start, Georgie is linked to the imagery of his bright yellow raincoat. He is wearing it when he is taken by Pennywise, and at each moment that the thing attempts to attack Bill, the imagery of Georgie and that raincoat factor in. When we reach the films climax in the heart of Pennywise’s lair, it is less the floating children that stick with you, but the image of Bill finding his brother’s torn raincoat. It was our entrance into this world, and it is the heart of the films urgency. There are unspeakable evils in Derry, but it is the undying love between brothers, and then friends, that give hope to the “Losers.”
(03/10/16 12:37am)
On Saturday, Feb. 27, the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) revealed BØRNS as the headliner for this year’s spring concert. The announcement was made during the Winter Carnival Ball. The process of choosing and booking BØRNS for the concert began in the fall amidst speculation of who would be picked to follow last year’s artist, T-Pain.
“We’re really excited to bring BØRNS to campus this year,” Concerts Committee member Sara Hodgkins ’17.5 said. “The very weekend after he performs at [the College], BØRNS will travel to California to perform at Coachella, one of the most prominent music festivals in the world.”
Contrary to what many fans expect from the name BØRNS, Garret Borns is not of Scandinavian decent, but instead was born and raised in Grand Haven, Mich.
“I just did it because it looks cool. It also makes it easier to find “BØRNS” via search engines and hashtags,” he revealed during an interview with InStyle in October. Finding distinction in the mob of musicians trying to make a name for themselves can be a challenge, but the decisions Borns makes seem to be working.
Borns trained in magic as a child, but has since moved from small town magic tricks to headlining his own international tour. The rock-star life took the 24-year-old first to New York, and then Los Angeles as he searched for an opening to make the music he wanted to. That opening came when he met Tommy English.
English co-produced BØRNS 2014 EP Candy, which featured “Electric Love,” the single that made people take notice of this newcomer. BØRNS followed up the EP with his full-length album, Dopamine, which was released in October of last year.
“The Michigan singer looks and sounds like he’s stepped out of Velvet Goldmine, high-fived Lana Del Rey, added an unnecessary accent to his surname and gone into the studio with the sole purpose of making girls in crochet shorts feel like they’re having the time of their lives but also a little sad at the same time,” Kate Hutchinson wrote in her review of the album for the Guardian.
With the prevailing positive response to Dopamine, BØRNS is poised to become a bonafide star.
The process of bringing any act to campus is a challenging one. The undertaking of booking and arranging for BØRNS to play began in September on the six-person Concerts Committee.
“Our Committee has a role in what they think their friends and the student body wants to see,” says Concerts Committee Co-Chair Izzy Kannegieser ’17.
The Committee combines their opinions wih direct input from the student body at large.
“This year we did a survey that a lot of people filled out,” says Katherine Brown ’18, the second Concerts Committee Co-Chair. “The survey results came back and the student body was in favor of [an] Indie/Alt Pop band.”
Once all of this information was compiled and reviewed, the Committee assembled a list of artists and suggestions on more general aspects such as genre, and sent it to a booking agency based out of Boston that assisted them in honing in on the most fitting performance. This process is more complex than it may initially seem. An array of constraints must be taken into account when narrowing down a list of possible performers. One of those constraints is cost.
“We have a budget,” says Brown, “we’ll send [them] a name and [they’ll] tell us ‘Okay, you guys can never afford that. Here’s what you can.’”
In addition to cost, Middlebury’s location plays a distinct role in dictating who can play the show. Only bands that are touring in the area around the time of the concert are feasible.
“Often we’ll have artists that we really like, and we reach out to them and want to book them, and they would love to come but they’re touring on the West Coast over those dates,” says Brown. “If you’re in Boston Middlebury’s not so far, but if you’re really anywhere else it’s not an easy one-stop flight.”
When BØRNS was settled on as the act, the logistics of securing the space for the show became the next hurdle.
“People might think ... ‘Oh, of course Kenyon will be available this weekend at this time,’ but actually it’s a long process,” says Kannegieser.
When the space is secured, the committee must book a crew to come in and take care of the physical preparation of the stage and sound. This show will be handled by Atomic Professional Audio, a local business based out of North Clarendon, Vt.
Nonetheless, the set-up is a hands-on experience for the Co-Chairs as well. “The day of the concert we’re there at 8 a.m. getting the stage set up. We’re actually moving things off of the truck and getting things set up, and after the concert we’re there making sure it all gets taken down,” says Kannegieser.
Even with the logistics of the act confirmed, a concert is nothing without an audience, so marketing is essential. The Co-Chairs describe a balancing act of deciding on ticket prices and sale times with the Box Office. MCAB does not make a profit off of the show, but whatever revenue is brought in is used to fund the Midd Mayhem show that happens later in the year. Generating excitement for the show is key to it being a success both financially and socially as an enjoyable experience for the concert-goers. They focus on spreading details such as the best time to arrive and the opening act, which often gets lost in the announcement of the headliner. This year, local Burlington band Madaila, who have toured with the Flaming Lips and played with Grace Potter, will open for BØRNS. “They are Burlington’s hottest band for sure,” says Kannegieser.
“Our job is to bring a show to campus that every single person is going to find something exciting about, whether it’s just that it’s spring and it’s an event, or that they love the artist, we want to put on an event that everyone will enjoy,” says Brown.
Tickets for the April 9 show will go on sale for students on March 20. They are $8 if pre-ordered at the Box Office, and if not sold out, they will be available for $15 at the door.
(03/03/16 12:03am)
In the mind of bandleader Michael League, Snarky Puppy was born out of a passion for jazz. League studied the form and started the band of like-minded musicians at the University of North Texas. The band later transplanted to a base of operations in Brooklyn, N. Y., and has grown in both members and musical dynamism since its debut album in 2006. Lovingly known as “the Fam” to their fans as well as to one another, the rotating 24 plus member group consistently charts unprecedented pathways through funk, with welcome detours into jazz, soul and every turn of music they can handle.
Recorded live, as most of their albums are, in New Orleans, Family Dinner Vol. 2 is a direct descendant of the group’s 2013 album Family Dinner Vol. 1. Assembling a flock of virtuosic musicians and performers, League and company deliver a genre-defying set of music that incorporates both original pieces written by “the Fam” and their guests, as well as inventive takes on already recorded music brought to the table by the visiting performers. Family Dinner is an apt name for the album, for it has the feel of a meal prepared by many hands that somehow manages to hit each distinct flavor of music without spoiling your appetite for the next course.
The album begins with “I Asked,” which features American folk and jazz singer Becca Stevens, as well as members of the Swedish folk band Väsen. It begins as a chiefly acoustic track that features Stevens’ voice, but after four minutes it evolves into an atmospheric bit of prog rock, with a sparse electronic and percussive instrumentation overlaid with vocals that border on chants. It is arguably the weakest installment on the album, but if nothing else it reinforces the risk-taking tendencies of a group that is willing to do anything, as long as they have never done it before.
Latin rock and salsa infused “Molino Molero” follows this up, and with guest turns by legendary singer-songwriter Susana Baca and guitarist Charlie Hunter, the song is infectiously good-natured. Baca’s voice is perfectly backed by the instrumentalists, and when she cedes the floor to Hunter the arrangement puts his playing on full display. Hunter dances through a nearly two-minute solo that feels right out of any of Carlos Santana’s best work, which crescendos to bring back Baca and the rest of the band for the end of the song. It works as an ideal segway into the upbeat tone of the majority of the album.
With another 180-degree twist, “Liquid Love” is an overhauling of guest singer Chris Turner’s soulful rocker. “The Fam” gives center stage to Turner and his back-up singers, but also serves as a proper introduction to the stellar horns sections Snarky Puppy is blessed with. Turner turns in a vocal performance that is dripping with sultry tone, and even though the song goes on a bit too long when all is said and done, the song builds well on the energy and fun of “Molino Molero.”
Not content to settle into soul and stay there, “Soro (Afriki)” provides a dramatic shift in tone from the closing notes of “Liquid Love.” It features guest vocals from Salif Keita, a singer-songwriter from Mali known as “the Golden Voice of Africa,” as well as solos from South American musicians Bernardo Aguiar on drums, and Carlos Malta on flute. Snarky Puppy delves further into the world music genre. It opens with Malta’s solo, and gives way to Keita and a contingent of back-up singers who blend traditional African music with the jazz provided by “the Fam.” The piece as a whole possesses a highly cinematic quality. It moves through different tones and modes in a narrative fashion, presenting distinct segments of sound that would not be out of place backing a Quentin Tarantino movie.
“Sing to the Moon” harkens back to the soul of “Liquid Love,” but while Turner focused on a sexy soul, Laura Mvula, who here provides a powerhouse vocal on a reinterpretation of her song, settles into a slow build performance that is haunting in its beauty. As the song progresses, it builds from minimal instrumentation that evokes the quiet moonlit that Mvula sings of, and bursts forth into a passionate crescendo with all hands on deck. It is easily a highlight of the album that shows how much can be done with so little when a song is in the hands of master craft musicians.
The last three songs of the album, “Don’t You Know,” “I Remember” and “Somebody Home” are a trio of pieces that bring the musical works full circle. “Don’t You Know” features English prodigy Jacob Collier on a piano part that ebbs back and forth equal parts Duke Ellington and Maurice Ravel. “I Remember” sees American electronic duo KNOWER channeling their inner Michael Jackson with saxophonist Jeff Coffin bringing out the best in the horns section with his animated playing. After these two pieces centered on crackling performances of pure musical energy and camaraderie, “Somebody Home” revisits the folk introduced on the first track, but this time in a much quieter fashion celebrating a man who has been in the business for decades: David Crosby.
“Somebody Home” is Crosby’s, and he takes a minute to introduce the song, joking with the audience and talking with the band. What follows is the most reserved performance on the album. Much of the song is solely Crosby on acoustic guitar. When Snarky Puppy does join, they do so with a tenderness that showcases their ability to go from bombastic to gentle seamlessly. While many bands may be tempted to send an album out on an energetic piece, “the Fam” sees an opportunity to slow down and enjoy a performance with another legend.
As a whole piece of art, Family Dinner Vol. 2 displays a group that celebrates musicians of the past and future that all bring a distinct and celebratory tone of creation to a group devoted to the exploration of the craft. The sprawling instrumental sections may not be the most accessible music on the market, but for those who will take the time to sink into it, there are many rewarding moments.
(01/28/16 12:52am)
Music has long been a source of community. Concerts have a way of bringing a cross-section of people together to appreciate the art unfolding before them. Middlebury is no exception to this tendency. With a population made up of those associated with the College and those who have never been involved with its programs, it is sometimes difficult to bridge the gap that exists between the two worlds. Music provides this bridge. Middlebury is home to many gifted musicians, many of whom have played with world-renowned bands and performers. This is the case of Soule Monde, a locally based funk duo that will have played two shows at 51 Main by the end of the academic year.
51 Main is a restaurant and social space created by a group of students who wanted an off-campus setting to enjoy good food, art and conversation. Since its opening, its musical programming has grown alongside its business.
“The music scene ... kind of started by accident,” manager Karen Laflamme said. “There was just an opportunity to have music a couple times and then it seemed like there was a good response from the community.”
In particular, the community has shown an overwhelmingly positive response to Soule Monde’s shows.
Consisting of drummer Russ Lawton and organist Ray Paczkowski, the duo perform a distinct repertoire of original funk tunes. Both men live locally, but have played with musicians known the world over. The two met while playing in the Trey Anastasio band, founded by the guitarist of Phish.
From there, the two began playing gigs under the title Ray & Russ until settling on the name Soule Monde, which comes from a combination of Lawton’s middle name, Soule and Ray-mond.
The blending of their musical influences results in a distinguished sound. A pianist first, Paczkowski cites Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk as musical inspirations.
“I don’t claim to have [Monk’s] melodic or harmonic concepts at all, but his feeling of rhythm, and the bands that he worked with I always loved,” Paczkowski said.
The jazz influence is apparent in his playing, and complemented nicely by Lawton’s drumming. Lawton cites Santana, who the duo had an opportunity to play with in 2003, as a major influence.
“That definitely got my style a lot; it was kind of Latin rock. It just had some swing to it,” Lawton said.
Writing songs for the nontraditional pairing of organ and drums as sole members of an instrumental group presents the opportunity for remarkable experimentation. These two men were the perfect match to take it on.
“When we started the [band], Ray had some songs he’d written, and I had a bunch of beats, and then maybe a little bit of melody,” Lawton said. “So what I do now is cool for me as the drummer ... I have a nice microphone that plugs right in [to a phone]. Then I just send it to him.”
The result is a richly original collection of compositions that show off the individual instruments just as well as they prove that drums and organs were meant to be performed together. The band fully commits to delivering the most memorable show possible every time they take the stage.
On Jan. 16, the duo put their talents on full display at 51 Main, where it was clear that they have earned the heartfelt respect of the community.
“You know, they stop at 11:00, and people are just begging for more still, and they just find it in them, they just keep going,” Laflamme said. “They don’t even think about the fact that they’ve been playing two hours straight, they haven’t had anything to drink, they’re probably delirious from hunger, but they just keep going.”
This mutual respect between the duo and their fans is amplified by their involvement as members of the greater Middlebury community. Lawton gives drum lessons to both residents of the town and Middlebury students, and Paczkowski has long-standing relationships with many local residents.
Showing up at 7 p.m., Russ and Ray spent an hour bringing in their instruments and setting up. In the midst of assembling a drum-set and a Hammond Organization, the two men stopped to hug and talk to everyone they knew. Half an hour before the show, every table in the restaurant was occupied, and fans without a seat assembled around the equally crowded bar. No one seemed annoyed. No one seemed angry that they could not sit. They were here to see their friends play, and socialize with the students who had ventured out to hear the impressive band playing just downtown. By 8 p.m., the scheduled start time of the show, there was not a patch of unclaimed floor, and every audience member was careful to hold on to their sacred ground until the final number at 11:15 p.m.
Soule Monde is scheduled to play at 51 Main once again on Apr. 9 from 8 to 11 p.m.
(01/21/16 12:20am)
Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, Nikola Tesla and a Goblin King. These are a mere glimpse of the faces and bodies with which David Bowie entranced the world. From the moment he fell to earth until he rocketed beyond all of us last week, he had the courage to be anyone he imagined. We all fantasize of dressing ourselves up in the essence of our dreams, and Bowie cloaked himself in his. He was the physical embodiment of that stardust that fuels dreamers everywhere, and to this stardust he has now returned.
The man, David Robert Jones, was born on Jan. 8, 1947 in Brixton, England. He learned how to play the saxophone, and had his own band by the age of 15. As he began his ascension to fame, he found that he needed to change his name to avoid confusion with Davy Jones, the lead singer of the Monkees. He chose Tom Jones, but this turned out to be equally entangling. From this, David Bowie was born, a name inspired by Jim Bowie, the American frontiersman. It is fitting that Bowie found inspiration for his name in the history of a frontiersman, for a pioneer he became.
His eponymous debut album was released in 1967. An amalgamation of genres and themes that refused to blend in with the folk rock of the day, his debut showed all the signs of a musical innovator. However, it was not until his second album, 1969’s Space Oddity, that Bowie went interstellar. The title track was released just days before the Apollo 11 mission launched. It was no mistake that Space Oddity tapped into the upward gaze of the world, embodying what may be the defining principle of Bowie’s music: he constantly created a feeling that reflected, through his collection of kaleidoscopic key changes and harmonies, the transformative property of his time period.
A series of astonishing albums elevated Bowie’s popularity throughout the 1970’s. First came The Man Who Sold the World in 1970, and then 1971’s Hunky Dory, with which Bowie scored his mega-hit “Changes.” However, it was not until 1972 that the world truly saw what he was capable of. That year, he released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Decked out in glitter and the occasional eye patch, topped with a shocking red mullet, the character Ziggy Stardust ushered in the glam rock image that would secure Bowie a spot as a certified superstar. Nonetheless, Bowie was not satisfied being stagnant, and with his next album, 1973’s Aladdin Sane, he discarded Ziggy for Aladdin to once again find an identity eagerly waiting for him. This practice continued through everything world was privileged enough to hear.
Alongside this musical success, Bowie began playing characters on screen in earnest, with 1976’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, followed by 1978’s Just A Gigolo. The man of so many faces was perfectly suited for movies, and so his enchanting aura enterd a new medium.
In 1986, a perfect synthesis emerged in the form of Jim Henson’s musical, Labyrinth. Bowie plays Jareth the Goblin King, who lures teenager Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) into his labyrinth by fulfilling her wish to take away her baby brother, a wish she realizes she deeply regrets. In Labyrinth, Bowie is given a world of puppets and fantasy to dance and sing in, crafting an equally seductive and disquieting performance that stands tall in his career.
After decades of such creative overflow, from the glam rock and funk of the 70’s, to his 80’s new wave and pop forays making way for electronic orchestrations in the 90’s, it is astounding to imagine that Bowie could sustain such output, but somehow he always did.
Then, he reached 2004. It seemed that maybe the man had attained a well-deserved retirement after health problems took him out of the studio. For nearly ten years, Bowie maintained relative radio silence. Without warning, he released The Next Day in 2013. The album revealed a virtuosity still capable of inspiring craftsmanship, a fact supported further by the release of his 27th studio album, Blackstar, on January 8th, the day of his 69th birthday, and two days before he succumbed to liver cancer.
Blackstar, elevated by the context of Bowie’s newly-revealed battle with cancer, displays a level of experimentation on par with his best. Bowie revisits the jazz influences that inspired him to first pick up his saxophone, and deepens it with a set of seven songs that embody a tone of contemplation. It opens with the nine-minute-long “Blackstar,” a musical saga of discovery tied together by a branching saxophone solo. This is followed by “Tis’ a Pity She’s a Whore” which feeds into many of the same jazz influences in terms of instrumentation, but the song feels like it would have been right at home alongside “Changes” on Hunky Dory.
With the news of his death, the third song on the album, “Lazarus,” becomes mesmerizing. Bowie sings of his career, his life and his musical journey. The song is moody, with soft horns and a driving drum beat, leaving plenty of space for his voice to take center stage. Equal parts pained and hopeful, the lyrics state, “Oh I’ll be free / Just like a bluebird / Oh I’ll be free” after reminding us that he has “scars that can’t be seen.”
We now know were at least a few of those scars came from, and after what must have been a painful battle, he has become as free as his bluebird. When we play his music and watch his movies, he will forever rise from the dead as Lazarus. Wherever you may be, Ziggy, give the best to Major Tom from all of us sitting down here at Ground Control.
Rest in peace, David Bowie.
(12/03/15 1:51am)
In 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton and was inspired deeply by his story. A few months later he read what he called Hamilton Mixtape at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word accompanied by Alex Lacamoire.
Miranda was fascinated with the story of the maverick founding father who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to champion the U.S. Constitution, found the New York Post and defeat competitors such as John Adams, Aaron Burr and others who did not want to take the risks he saw as necessary to help the fledgling nation. Miranda’s interest gave birth to a project of rare creativity and historical importance. In February 2015 Hamilton-An American Musical, with music, lyrics and book written by Miranda premiered Off-Broadway, and in August it made its Broadway debut.
In telling the under-appreciated story of Hamilton, Miranda assembled a cast made up of underrepresented minority American actors. The music itself is an astonishing eclectic mix of genres rooted by a phenomenal collection of hip-hop and rap numbers, which, alongside its unceasingly original production, deeply distinguishes itself from the majority of the other shows playing on Broadway. The show has received immensely positive critical acclaim and an unprecedented box office response. In September, Atlantic Records released a studio recording by the Original Broadway Cast of the 46 original songs from the show. The result is a remarkably album that allows a glimpse of the incomparable show for all of us who don’t yet have the opportunity to see the show on the stage.
The soundtrack opens with “Alexander Hamilton.” We are introduced to the eponymous hero when Aaron Burr asks us “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, / Dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence / Impoverished, in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” He may be asking us, but the musical intends to tell us in explicit detail the rise of the man. This first song works as one part historical lesson and one part soaring R&B piece that introduces the musical and lyrical themes that will be repeated throughout the soundtrack. This is a practice employed wonderfully by Miranda, who introduces specific genres and melodies with different characters to ground them in their music.
The first act details the landing of Hamilton in New York where he meets Aaron Burr and becomes involved in the politics of the fledgling nation. The song “My Shot” is Hamilton’s first solo song and shows us his inner thoughts. Miranda, who plays Hamilton, is a formidable performer and he unloads in this song encapsulating the drive of the soon-to-be-Federalists who rap about their need to create a truly free nation. Shortly after we are introduced to “The Schuyler Sisters”: Angelica, Eliza and Peggy (two of whom will fall in love with Hamilton and provide a touching love story and deliver musical highlights throughout the play). In their introductory piece the sisters sing about “the Revolution happening in New York” and the need for Thomas Jefferson to include women “in his sequel” to the Declaration of Independence. Following the expository pieces of the first act, “You’ll Be Back” is a brilliant song delivered by King George, who is quite sure that the silly American colonies will come crawling back when he sends “a fully armed battalion / To remind you of my love!”
The remainder of the first act delivers other brilliant songs including “Satisfied”, a powerful ballad where Angelica delivers a toast at her sister Eliza and Alexander’s wedding realizing she wishes she could be beside Hamilton, and the hip-hop piece “Ten Duel Commandments,” which introduces the concept of a duel, which returns later in the play. But all of these songs lead up to “Non-Stop” at the close of Act One, which is one of the standouts in the show. The nearly seven minute song details the non-stop pursuit of equality and reformed government by Hamilton, and builds to a series of emotional crescendos that set-up the tribulations of Act Two, and encompasses the run of the musical themes in Act One. In Act Two, Miranda fully reveals his melodic and lyrical talent. The second song of Act Two, “Cabinet Battle #1,” is a rap battle face-off between now Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson over Hamilton’s financial plan. Jefferson fights against the idea of the consolidation of state debt because Hamilton can’t “tax the South cuz we got it made in the shade,” but Hamilton retorts with his hot-headed and passionate beliefs by pointing out that most of the South’s economic base is gleaned from slave labor. The framing of the debate as a rap battle infuses it with energy and it has both striking and humorous lyrics. Following up a few songs later, we hear “The Room Where it Happens” (my personal favorite song from the show) detailing the conversation between Madison, Hamilton and Jefferson to agree on a financial plan while ceding that the capital would reside in Washington D.C. The song is a daunting jazz composition that is bookended by themes of hip-hop.
To avoid any spoilers for those who do not know the remainder of Hamilton’s story, I will end my review here. Even outside of the context of the show itself, the songs of “Hamilton” are a remarkable feat of songwriting. It is an album that contemplates the way that history is told and who chooses what is remembered by the ages. Miranda has chosen a powerful figure to base his songs off, and his talent will no doubt make his brainchild a musical accomplishment for the ages.
(11/13/15 4:00am)
Last Friday night, Nov. 6, a nearly sold-out crowd gathered in the MCA Concert Hall to listen to the California Guitar Trio perform a varied set of pieces that spanned multiple genres. They covered music that ranged from Bach to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and the performers proved to be just as eclectic as their pieces.
The California Guitar Trio was formed in 1991 by Paul Richards of Salt Lake City, Utah, Bert Lams of Affligem, Belgium and Hideyo Moriya of Tokyo, Japan after the three met at a series of Guitar Craft workshops put on by Robert Fripp, who was the lead guitarist of King Crimson, a band known for its soaring and inventive progressive rock epics. They became close friends during the workshops and formed the trio four years later. Over the past three decades, the group has recorded 14 studio albums populated by both original compositions and covers, and had their music featured in Olympic broadcasts and wake-up calls for the astronauts on the NASA shuttle Endeavor.
This show was their first at the College, and judging by the audience reception they did not disappoint. The concert began as the trio walked out on stage to their respective positions and slid right into their first song, an original titled “Yamanashi Blues.” Their musicianship was immediately apparent as they blended the distinct tones of their guitars into this mid-tempo number that introduced the crowd to their style. After finishing “Yamanashi Blues,” Richards stepped forward to introduce them and say a little bit about the piece; the band continued to explain their songs throughout the night, showing that the group placed as much importance on the stories behind their songs as their composition.
After another original entitled “Melrose Avenue,” which was written while they were driving down Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles to their first show together, the group changed gears dramatically and delivered a cover of a 1959 song by Santo and Johnny titled “Sleepwalk.” Richards played slide guitar delving into a country sound for the first, but not last, time of the night. After finishing, he then stepped forward to introduce the next song, another original composed by Moriya titled “Cherry Blossoms” that would most effectively be classified as new age. The song is a strikingly beautiful composition, and it tenderly emoted the experience of watching cherry blossoms float down from their branches in the spring. Such clear evocation of images and emotions was apparent in the other original pieces the trio performed, which conveyed the feeling of anticipation Lams felt in walking into the first Guitar Craft workshop, and Moriya memories of walking through sunbeams in the forest near his home.
Amongst their more reflective pieces, the group took time to have fun on stage and play a number of more high energy pieces deftly interspersed throughout the program. A standout was their interpretation of Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo á la Turk,” a jazz piece blended with Turkish music that Brubeck heard on a trip through the country. It is hard to imagine a Brubeck song without his characteristic pianoriffs, but the talent of the trio more than compensated. Another highlight came with “Ghost Riders on the Storm,” a medley of “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” by Stan Jones and the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.” The two songs accented each other wonderfully, and showcased the group’s compositional ability to bring out the best in the work of other artists. Moving to another period entirely, Bach was presented by the trio in an orthodox and impressive playing method they learned from Fripp called circulation. They played a Bach prelude (not specified as such by Richards while presenting it) with each guitarist playing a single note one after another, effectively cutting the song into thirds. Apart from the technical skill displayed by this difficult method, the piece was played beautifully. Lams is a Royal College of Music graduate in classical guitar, and as noted by the group he leads the group on their classical outings.
After delving once again into jazz on“Spiritual” by Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, and country on a rousing cover of a Buck Owens instrumental called “Buckaroo,” they returned to Bach for the end of their set to perform a spectacular rendition of “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” After the first of three standing ovations, the group returned to the stage to fulfill their promise and played “Bohemian Rhapsody,” encouraging the audience to join in and sing along. The night’s music was concluded on a high note, choosing Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” as their final song, showcasing Moriya’s surf rock background and sending the show out with one final burst of energy.
As they left the stage after their rousing encore, the California Guitar Trio left no doubt as to their remarkable musicianship. Their survey of so many genres and styles made the show a hit among the crowd, and I did not see a single person, whether a student or community member, leave the show without a smile.
(10/21/15 11:50pm)
A debut album is an unpredictable beast. With a multitude of talented musical acts vying for the limited attention span of the public audience, it becomes an undertaking to make an original musical statement that can project itself above the cacophony of the airwaves. A Wolf in the Doorway marks a standout debut that does just this. The Ballroom Thieves are a three-piece band out of Boston, made up of Martin Earley (acoustic guitar and vocals), Devin Mauch (percussion and vocals) and Calin Peters (cello and vocals). The three have been making music together for the past few years. I have had the pleasure of seeing them live twice and was excited to see if their remarkable energy and distinct blend of instrumentation translated fully onto their first full length album. Spoiler - it does.
The album begins with one of the stand out tracks on the album, and one of my personal favorites of theirs, titled “Archers.” Starting off with a sparse heartbeat of a drum line and Earley’s vocals over top, he is joined by his bandmates in a striking harmony, and they join together in a crescendo that reaches its first climax on a chorus of “Well, you can let your arrows sing! / I’ve never met a man of iron skin, / but you know, archers never made good kings, / fly headfirst into everything.”
The song is an exceptional example of the groups musical synergy, and an introduction to the abundance of inventive and insightful lyrics in their repertoire. It is refreshing to hear a group that blends strong writing in both facets of song craftsmanship so effortlessly.
The next track, “Lantern”, leaves no doubt that replacing a bassist with a cellist was a stroke of genius. For the first few bars, there is nothing but the repeated notes of Peter’s cello that creates a driving character that can be lacking in your average bass line. The lyric features a lovely extended metaphor in which a lantern represents an object of desire, stating “You’re shining still / You’re a lantern on a hill /And I would burn into the ground / To take you home.” The group shows many of the musical tendencies that made so many fall in love with Mumford & Sons, possessing arguably stronger lyrics than the popular band.
From there we are treated to a trio of tunes that showcase the tonal diversity of the album: “Bullet” features two minutes of hauntingly rich music that takes us through the trials of a failed relationship before breaking into a foot-tapping jam of a final minute, “Saint Monica” floats along with the sparsest backing on the album so far and gives one of my favorite lines on the album, “Maybe if I begged some old saint for her patience / And then sold it to pay for her time” and “Wild Woman” returns to the groove of the first track and turns in a beautifully poetic take on a woman that will not be tamed by love.
In another stark change of pace, “Oars to the Sea” stands as a raging piece of blues work, introducing the first electric orchestration on the album. The group tears joyfully into it with a chest-thumping underline provided by Mauch and Peters while Earley rips into his electric guitar. The breadth of the group’s musical sensibilities is stunning, and putting a surprise like this halfway through the album was a stroke of genius. It also makes the next track, “Bury Me Smiling,” even more captivating in its tenderness. Peters lends her voice to lead vocals for the first time on the album, and the results are wondrous. The song’s lyrics talk of death, but in no way as a sad or morbid subject. She sings “A heart like a wild sea / No man could own me / Won’t be the words, upon my stone.” I challenge you not to fall in love with this woman’s voice and hope there are more features of it in the future.
The contemplative mood is expanded with the succeeding track, “The Loneliness Waltz.” It approaches loss as its preceding track does, but with less smiling. Here the three instruments and voices intertwine in a song that plays with the tone of an aged soul reflecting on all that they have seen dance away from them. The ache is reflected in the strikingly poignant line “All the parents and the poets can cry in their graves / From the lack of the love you gave.” It is a gorgeous meditation on the power of loneliness.
After the first half of the album that generally sides with upbeat and energetic songs, the second half of the album settles into a much more mood oriented and slower mode. The wonderful fact, however, is that this change of pace loses none of the inventiveness. The vocal harmonies of “Here I Stand” are some of the most beautiful on the album, while “Anchors” has an almost cinematic quality of orchestration, and the last two minutes of “Oak” feature an instrumental string section that ties in “Bury Me Smiling” for a stunning piece of music.
The album finishes with “Wolf,” which switches back into a rock mood, and brings back the electric guitar with the addition of a trumpet, a piano and a banjo. Earley sings “You are a queen honey / I am a wolf” and the band delivers a memorable end to an immensely memorable album. Their work embodies such a breadth of musicality and talent that I eagerly wait for their next offering quite impatiently. I hope their debut continues to reach prospective fans because they are more than worth paying attention to.
(10/01/15 3:46am)
When the name Annie Lennox is mentioned in conversation, it invariably leads to someone providing their perceived best take on “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” which no one had asked for. When Eurythmics released their second album in 1983, which shares its name with the song, the soaring and haunting voice of Lennox was propelled into the realm of obsession. More than 20 years later that reality has not changed. Outside of her work with Dave Stewart in Eurythmics, Lennox has released six solo albums at a crawling pace, of which Nostalgia is the most recent. This one is special, however, because instead of staying within the realm of electronic rock and pop, which she has reigned over for decades, she adds an album of standards to the throng of similar endeavors by aging pop stars. But unlike some, which miss the mark astoundingly (I’m looking at you Rod Stewart), Lennox brings her incomparable panache to a varied pack of songs.
The album opens with “Memphis in June,” which takes no time proving that Lennox knows exactly how to light upon each note with a tenderness that brings it to our attention softly: she lays the melody before us with the grace of a performer who sees precisely where it must land. This tenderness is deepened as Lennox lets her soulfulness loose and delivers a synth backed rendition of “Georgia on My Mind.” It may not be Ray - no one can ever equal him - but she succeeds because she doesn’t try to replicate him. Her musical choices accentuate the longing at the lyrics core in a lovely way.
With the beauty of the first two tracks, Lennox decides to mix it up and unleash the full strength of her voice. With a sparse piano opening that lends intense focus on her voice, “I Put a Spell on You” has an biting funk that outpaces any of the multitude of covers the song has endured. In this track she adds an attitude that should obliterate any doubt of her ability to rock.
From this point on the album settles NOSTALGIA into a more subdued, but no less energetic or entertaining string of standards. Above anything else, this album exists as a collection of unexpected choices that Lennox has compiled to touch on an astounding range of emotional registers. The stunning soul of “Georgia on My Mind” has a partner in “God Bless the Child,” which reveals what a gospel album from Lennox would sound like. The arrangement begins with the sparseness of accompaniment found across the album, but the track builds into a crescendo adding a peppering of voices and organ behind Lennox, growing into a triumphant choir of sound and fury leaving a powerful impression as the notes fade.
Tapping into quite a different vein of sentiment, “I Cover the Waterfront” and “I Can Dream Can’t I” communicate a longing worthy of Patsy Cline. The aching hopefulness of waiting for love without knowing if it shall return becomes visceral in the hands of Lennox on “Waterfront,” and in the latter, the emptiness of unrequited love has never sounded quite so heartbroken as it does here. The songs work powerfully as a pair, both featuring lyrics telling tales of love separated by an ocean. The remainder of the album is not left to emptiness and longing, for it holds a tremendous duo of love songs that stand out as highlights on the album. On “The Nearness of You” we find Lennox’s voice at her most vulnerable, and my personal favorite track on the album, “You Belong to Me,” may be the most openly, sweepingly romantic track Lennox has ever recorded in her esteemed career.
Every track on the album has had every drop of emotion distilled from it and brought forth. The simple fact is that Annie Lennox’s voice is so perfectly suited to the collection that it becomes difficult to argue against including her renditions in any discussion of the best. Her technical skill is irrefutable, but it is her instinctual attraction to the evocative emotional strains in songs that allows her to deliver truly spectacular albums time and again, and Nostalgia is no exception from that truth. Keep them coming Annie, we will all be waiting.
(09/24/15 1:08am)
The beginning of the new school year brings excitement and anxiety, and this disposition provides the perfect atmosphere for an event to bring the campus community back together. The S.O.S. Music Festival, put on by WRMC on Sept. 19-20 filled that slot well. Over the course of two nights, the folks at the radio station brought in five bands that stretched across varied musical palettes to ring in the new school year with style.
Night one kicked off with the locally based five-piece band Crazyhearse. The crowd took a while to build up beyond a handful of students, but when it grew, everyone was treated to the highlight of the night. The band immediately slung into gear and stormed through an impressive array of musical sensibilities. Instrumentally, the band consists of a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, a keyboardist and a banjo player, who complemented each other neatly. Providing a high-energy performance, the band started the set with a string of country/folk infused numbers, and then settled into the second half of their set which came to a high point with an 80’s synth-infused cover of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi,” a huge hit with the crowd. It was exciting to see a local band own the stage, and seeing them enjoy themselves with such ease transferred palpably into the crowd, who responded with overwhelming positivity to their fantastic set.
Unfortunately, the watermark laid out by Crazyhearse was far from equaled when the second act, the Boston based three-piece rock band Vundabar, took the stage. After an uncomfortable interim where the band seemed unable to convey the levels they wanted for their monitors, it became clear that technical balance was not their biggest issue. With the sound of a mediocre California pop-band-gone-grunge, and with no outstanding forms from either genre, Vundabar sacrificed intricacy and backed away from fleeting moments of musicality, instead playing a string of nearly identical numbers. They relied on sheer volume and shock factor, and could not muster even an ounce of credibility, at one point referring to their venue as “UVM.” It would be comforting if I was able to say the set was forgettable, but unfortunately something that lousy sticks in the brain.
The night finished off with an enjoyable set from Philadelphia-born Hop Along. The band is led by lead singer and guitarist Frances Quinlan, whose presence is both the group’s biggest asset and its most obvious detractor. On many songs, Quinlan began with her voice sitting comfortable in a placidly cool tone that rests on a level with her best indie rock contemporaries before springing into a rasp that harkened back much further to the tendencies of Janis Joplin. While Joplin knew when to hold back and when to set the full content of her monstrous vocal chords outward, Quinlan seems to still be learning the balance of what is most effective when. Nonetheless, Hop Along delivered an accomplished set that blended grit and grace. The band’s lead electric guitarist, Joe Reinhart, executed a handful of impressive solos, and with their last few songs the group hit peak stride and provided an elevated end to the night.
Night two began with Brooklyn based experimental pop band Pavo Pavo, who immediately established a wonderful presence. Their lush melodic approach instantly reminded me of indie band Grizzly Bear, and their dynamic musical experimentation harkened back to the heyday of progressive rock, when Genesis and Pink Floyd were king. The lead vocals hovered effervescently over an instrumental mix of synth and guitar based orchestrations, and their sound quickly revealed the passion that these musicians have for their chosen art. The band is very new, with their debut album set for release later this year, and it’s exciting to imagine where their form will take them. Their sound made me wish for a bit more variation at moments, but with a sound that is so pleasant and well-constructed, it’s a minor mark of criticism on a truly top-notch performance from Pavo Pavo.
Closing off the night and festival was Lucius, another band from Brooklyn, a group whose consummate musicianship and showmanship proved that WRMC truly did save the best for last. Instantly electrifying, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig’s mesmerizingly fierce vocals meant the group owned every inch of McCullough lawn. Flowing deftly from driving rockers to stand out ballads, such as the truly unforgettable “Wildewoman”, Lucius had not a single misstep in the entirety of their time on stage, and their crowd was the most impassioned of the whole festival. The best performers make you ache for more the moment they finish, and the fervent chants for “One more song!” from the crowd brought them back out accompanied by Pavo Pavo to bring an outstanding end to the night. Zack Peters '18.5 said, “Lucius seemed to feed off the energy of the crowd more than the previous night’s band, and the synergy of the two lead singers was incredible.” An irrefutable sentiment, and a solid endorsement of a successful festival that leaves me looking forward to next year.
(04/29/15 9:04pm)
In 1980, Billy Joel was established as a global superstar in the music world. He had released a string of remarkably successful albums, starting with 1976’s Turnstiles, which brought him well into the public eye with anthems such as “New York State of Mind.” This popularity exploded the next year when he released the mega-popular The Stranger, which included such Joel standards as “Only the Good Die Young” and “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” further garnering Joel with his first Grammy for Album of the Year. In 1978, he released 52nd Street, which scored him a second Album of the Year Grammy and seemingly solidified his place at the top of his game.
This success did not leave him immune to criticism. Music critics and his peers began to comment that Joel was a master of melody, but that he would become obsolete with the rise of rock and punk. Joel saw this as an enticing challenge and his response was 1980’s Glass Houses. The title of the album is itself quite a statement: those who thought it was fit to criticize him in their “glass houses” should be careful, because he can throw his stones. The reception to the album was overwhelmingly positive. The tracks acted as a bit of an exploration of the different themes present in the history of rock n’ roll, and listeners took notice. He scored his first number one single and walked away with a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, proving once and for all that he could rock if he wanted to.
Now, in celebrating its 25th anniversary, I will take a look at an album of remarkable work from the one and only Piano Man.
The album opens with the sound of shattering glass to introduce “You May Be Right,” a none-too-subtle stab at those who would doubt him. Joel sings “You may be right/I may be crazy/But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for,” and one can’t help but understand that he knows he is going out on a limb but that he has a feeling that is exactly what people want. The track is quite a starting punch to the album, amplified by a steady guitar and a Joel staple in Richie Cannata’s roaring saxophone. Following it up is “Sometimes a Fantasy,” which stays directly with the drive and cheekiness of the opener: it is a song about that 1980’s wonder: phone sex. Guitars and drums dominate the track, making two in a row which are a far cry from Joel’s normally-piano-driven fare, but they both give the man a chance to let loose and have quite a bit of fun for us at the microphone.
Much of the album also plays as an exercise in tribute to the many facets of rock music that came before him, and this is most explicitly laid out on the song that would become Joel’s first-ever number one hit, “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.” He sings “Hot funk, cool punk, even if it’s old junk/It’s still rock and roll to me,” which was undoubtedly aimed at those who were discounting his ability to rock along. He continues this rock and roll fantasy throughout the album with tracks such as the punk-tinged “All For Leyna,” “Close to the Borderline” – which is an Eagles-style reflection on the anxiety and insanity of the Vietnam years Joel grew up in – and the standard drive of “Sleeping with the Television On,” where he gives more time to the sexual frustration he started in “Sometimes a Fantasy.” While each of these tracks takes the rock and roll he sang about in a different direction, they all have the common thread of showcasing his musical abilities in different ways. He allows himself to use the piano as more of a support for his voice than as a showcase on its own, which gives us a different flavor of Joel.
Nonetheless, a Billy Joel album wouldn’t be a true Billy Joel album without its fair share of the melodic piano he became famous for. He takes the time to croon and deliver a set of more laidback tracks that stay true to his roots while incorporating the themes of the album. On “Don’t Ask Me Why,” Joel channels Paul McCartney and shows off his piano virtuosity by incorporating a solo closer to salsa than pop. A few tracks later, Joel revisits this groove on “I Don’t Want to Be Alone,” but he slows it down more to express the sexual frustration that is present on multiple tracks. It is an upbeat song, but much of this theme can be attributed to Joel’s deteriorating marriage at the time to Elizabeth Weber Small. In contrast, “Through the Long Night” is a touching song about staying around even when the dark moments outpace all others. He sings “No, I didn’t start it/You’re broken hearted/From a long, long time ago/Oh, the way you hold me/Is all that I need to know/And it’s so late/But I’ll wait/Through the long night with you with you,” and on that line, Joel seems to put all the unrest of the album to sleep with its final chords.
After almost a decade of widespread appeal, Glass Houses marks the end of Joel’s greatest stretch of albums. He would score a resounding success with An Innocent Man in 1983, but that album was made up of songs written to mimic the pop and soul he grew up on. For avid Joel fans, there was still much great music to be heard and discovered but the average listener who judged him only on his hits may have written him off as a has-been. 25 years after this album, and 34 years after the release of his first album, the continued success of his concerts and songs sings a very different tune, proving that Joel is very much still rock and roll to an ever-growing number of fans.
(04/08/15 3:39pm)
There are some names that, when you hear them spoken, just seem to to be made for music. They have a memorable ring that keeps them floating around in your head until you hear it spoken again. The trick for any artist is crafting songs that are equally as memorable as their name. For me, one of the artists who continues to do this album after album is Griffin House. House is a Nashville based singer-songwriter who grew up in Springfield, Ohio and turned down a large scholarship from Ohio State to pursue a musical career. He has gained a faithful audience on his circuit since his first album, Upland, was released in 2003.
House is a triple threat of a musician in that he is a gifted singer, songwriter and guitarist, which means each song he releases conveys the deeply personal process inherent in his music’s creation, and in turn he gives the listener a look into the mind and interests of the man, not just the musician. His music cannot be defined easily as one specific genre. Indeed, he blends aspects of folk, rock, country and even jazz. The influence of such greats as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan can be felt in the strains of his music, and on his 2007 album Flying Upside Down, he worked with Benmont Tench, the longtime pianist for Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. He picks his idols well, and by drawing on these icons he presents inventive new material tinged with homages to the past.
In February 2013, after a three-year hiatus from the recording studio, House released his seventh studio album, entitled Balls. It can be tempting to many musicians to try and reinvent themselves drastically to gain more widespread appeal, but House seems immune to this. He earned his first major hit off of 2007’s Flying Upside Down with “The Guy that Says Goodbye to You is Out of His Mind,” and instead of changing his music with a now wider audience, he stayed faithful in 2010’s follow-up The Learner, and only expands upon that well-versed base with Balls.
The album opens with “Fenway,” a song about realizing a fragmented identity fraught with disappointment amongst a place as iconic and loved as Fenway Park. It’s an interesting choice for House to use a New England icon after growing up so far away from it, but it can be taken as an accent to the song’s theme of lack of self and place. He sings, “I was faking what I’m taking/Now I’m breaking in the cheap seats/Waiting for an outfield catch.” In his immensely introspective way, he reveals that maybe he hasn’t reached the place he wants to be in his career, but maybe there will be something around the corner if he waits long enough. This introspection is a staple of his music, and the album opens with three tracks of the same fiber, following the opener with “Vacation,” a song about his dire need for a break from the rush of a musician’s life, and “Go Through It,” an anthem for confronting the complex struggle between relationships and personal baggage invading that space.
After looking inward for inspiration, House turns to a wider frame of reference with “Guns, Bombs, and Fortunes of Gold.” He is no stranger to the protest song, and this entry is a plea to the world to “Lay down your fortunes of gold/Forget the lines that we have drawn/They won’t do any good for anyone,” seeming to beg those facing off on the world’s stage to realize the err of their ways and try to fix the wounds that have seeped into every crack of the human experience. The song has its lyrical shortcomings with a few lines that feel clichéd, but the sentiment is true and we would do well to listen to what he has to say.
On the idea of sentiment, House has written and delivered more than his fair share of poignant love songs, and “Real Love Can’t Pretend” is a nice addition to his repertoire. It sculpts a moving portrayal of a man grappling with how to reveal the depth of his emotion to the woman beside him. This song is balanced nicely with “Colleen” two tracks later, which is a much cheekier and outwardly sexual song than the former, and House allows himself to have a little more fun with the idea of courtship after baring a bit of his soul in “Real Love Can’t Pretend.” He sings “I got a heart made of gold/And I would never be mean/But you make it real hard for me/To keep this dirty mind of mine clean,” and gives as much time to this equally genuine side of relationships as the purely romantic one before. It is an enjoyable change of pace.
Of the last few songs of the album, the highlight can be found in “Haunted House.” It is an atmospheric and creepy tune as much about an actual haunted house as the use of this uncomfortable place as a metaphor for relationships. Amongst a driving bass House floats above with lines such as “I get lost and no one knows/They’re keeping me over till I’m/Falling closer to the moon.” It is a marked change from the rest of the album, in which House embraces his darker side and the love he has implored before. The album is a strong effort from a gifted artist, and, if not the highest point of his discography, worth more than just a passing listen.
(03/04/15 4:26pm)
Forty-six years ago, an unknown four-man rock band out of London cut and released their eponymous debut album. Thirty-eight years later and one member down, they played what is widely believed to be their final show in 2006 to a crowd of eighteen thousand lucky fans out of the twenty million that applied. That band was, and remains, Led Zeppelin. All three surviving members have made their musical mark, but the argument can be made that the enigmatic frontman, Robert Plant, has created the water mark of solo albums and all-star collaborations to which all other post-Zeppelin accomplishments should be compared. With his new solo album Lullaby and ... The Ceaseless Roar he does nothing less than solidify his place as lifetime rockstar.
In 2007, Plant collaborated on Raising Sand with Allison Krauss, exploring many of the folk tendencies embodied in much of his Zeppelin songwriting, as well as delving into country and western tinged tunes with the impact of Krauss on display. This trip into acoustic folk was expanded upon in his 2010 record Band of Joy in which he covered songs from the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Richard Thompson by giving them a reinvigorated life. On Lullaby, Plant goes beyond the acoustic jams he introduced on Band of Joy, and with the help of his current road band, the Sensational ShapeShifters, he writes and performs a set of eleven British folk-inflected songs that comprise an album that is more of a consuming experience than a simple set of performances.
The album opens with Plant’s take on a traditional tune called “Little Maggie,” introducing the listener to an aesthetic of the acoustic base one would expect, but with an added edge of electronic production pulsing underneath. This lends a sense of urgency to the song before Plant imparts his captivating tenor to the melody and the album begins to take form. With the closing notes of “Little Maggie” the listener is taken to “Rainbow,” where the pulsation takes center stage and provides a jumping off point for a song that is very much a meditation of the career Plant has enjoyed. He croons, “And I will be a rainbow/Oh, while your storm is gone/And I will bring the song for you/And I will carry on,” imbuing the promise that while he has been around for quite a while, he has no intention of letting up anytime soon. From there the album expands upon the introspective mood with “Pocketful of Golden” and turns up the pace more than just a touch with “Embrace Another Fall.” On “Embrace Another Fall” Plant begins to bring us back to the rock one associates with the man who brought to life the monstrous Zeppelin standard “Kashmir,” but by employing the vocal back-up of Julie Murphy he builds the tone and then lets us sink into a haunting and psychedelic mix of strings, drums and alluring atmosphere. This rocking standard is continued into the aptly titled “Turn it Up.”
After a set of songs contemplative in subject but still sharp in delivery, Plant fully embraces his softer side and delivers quite possibly the most tender and loving song he has ever performed with “A Stolen Kiss.” The song puts his voice on full display, which even after more than four decades of pouring all of himself in the music has remained stunningly emotive. With only a sparse backing of subdued piano for most of the song, we are drawn to the poetry Plant delivers at each turn, such as when he sings, “I am drawn to the western shore/Where the light moves bright upon the tide/To the lullaby and the ceaseless roar/And the songs that never die,” giving us a full look into the mind of a master musician who has never forgotten where he began.
With the listener effectively fully present in the emotions and mind of Plant himself, he begins to build once more with “Somebody There,” a subdued song that lends itself a feel of perfect concert material waiting to be evolved into the lengthy takes the Sensational Shape-Shifters are known for. Next up is a hidden gem from the album in “Poor Howard.” With many inspiring solo moments for his talented band and a rich choir-like backing, it is possibly the most entertaining song on the album, seemingly Plant and company just having a little fun which we are lucky enough to have the privilege to hear. On the next track, “House of Love,” Plant returns to the introspective state, singing, “I’m tearing the walls down I’m spinning the world ‘round/And yesterday’s dreams lie in pieces on the ground/The heart is a heavy load/Familiar, this lonely road/And I am no stranger to this solitary song,” bringing the listener’s thoughts to the end of Led Zeppelin and his subsequent solo recordings, amplified by the fact that he and Jimmy Page recorded a song with the same title on their collaboration album No Quarter. On an album full of retrospect, “House of Love” is Plant’s most poignant look at the love he and his bandmates shared for so many years in Led Zeppelin and coming to terms with the end of the line.
Plant finishes the album with the enjoyable yet forgettable “Up On the Hollow Hill (Understanding Arthur)” and the follow up to the albums opener, “Arbaden (Maggie’s Baby).” With this song Plant brings this album of emotion and poise to a close by adding his own flair and creativity to the traditional tune that is “Little Maggie,” leaving us with an album that will not soon be forgotten. Rock on, Mr. Plant.