redunradar_2023

Sharon Van Etten

Photo by Koury Angelo

// 26 Big Thief // 26

Sorry // 27 Shamir // 27

Khruangbin // 28

Dave Rowntree of Blur // 28

Young Jesus // 28

John Lithgow // 30

Still Corners // 30 Hot Chip // 31 Superorganism // 31

30 Most Iconic Performances By

Real Bands In Fictional Films // 31 Eric Appel on Directing Weird: The Al Yankovic Story // 32

30 All-Time Best Music Biopics // 33

Valerie June // 33 Skullcrusher // 33 The Mountain Goats // 34 Oceanator // 34

Miki Berenyi of Piroshka // 35 Will Sheff of Okkervil River // 35 Moonage Daydream: Brett Morgen on His New David Bowie Documentary // 36

40 All-Time Best Music Documentaries // 37 Wil Wheaton on Stand By Me // 38

Under the Radar’s Writers on Their Favorite Movies // 40 40 Most Iconic All-Time Fictional Bands // 41 Wolf Alice // 42

Rose Elinor Dougall // 42 John Grant // 42

Top 100 Movie Soundtracks of All Time // 44

The Linda Lindas // 48 alt-J // 48

The Decemberists // 48 Stella Donnelly // 48 Foals // 48 Grandaddy // 48

Shannon Lay // 49 Mdou Moctar // 49 Ruth Radelet // 49 Joel Mchale // 49 Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals // 50 Hayden Thorpe // 50 The Dears // 51 Johnny Marr // 51 SPELLLING // 52 Whitney // 52 Animal Collective // 53

A Conversation About Balancing Acting and Music with Will Oldham,

Maya Hawke, Marlon Williams, Jason Isbell, Mckenna Grace, and Neko Case // 54

Maya Hawke // 57

A Conversation About Film Composing with Danny Elfman, Mark Mothersbaugh, Trent Reznor, Stuart Braithwaite, and Dan Deacon // 58

Danny Elfman // 61

Dan Deacon // 61

Kevin Morby and Jason Schwartzman Discuss Rushmore // 62

As long as I can remember movies have been a huge part of my life. Growing up in the 1980s and ’90s with parents who were both cinephiles, formative cinema experiences include seeing TRON, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the alien mind controlling bugs that were placed in ears really freaked me out), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (equally traumatic was when a beating heart is pulled out of a man’s chest before he’s lowered into a swirling pit of fre), the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and, of course, the original Star Wars trilogy. Once when I was probably fve or six years old I was plopped in front of a TV alone at a relative’s house and unbeknownst to my mother, the next thing to come on was Jaws. I wouldn’t swim in the ocean for years after that and still if I wander too far out into the waves John Williams’ distinctive theme comes to mind and beckons me back to shore (yes, I know shark attacks are fairly rare in real life). I also remember attending a birthday party in middle school where all we did was watch the Nightmare on Elm Street flms on VHS in my friend’s bedroom (I’m still haunted by one scene where Freddy Krueger uses someone’s veins to control them like a puppet).

My parents divorced when I was quite young and I mainly lived with my mom, who would take me to flms that were either borderline inappropriate or went over my head. I remember bragging to my friends in my elementary school cafeteria about seeing Beverly Hills Cop II, an R-rated flm with lots of foul language, violence, and a scene where topless strippers dance to George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” (I rewatched it during the pandemic and the flm is actually incredibly misogynistic). Many years later we saw the infamous erotic thriller Basic Instinct together, a deeply

embarrassing and confusing experience for a 16-year-old boy and his mother. During a screening of Reservoir Dogs we attended, my mom couldn’t handle a torture scene and went to the bathroom, not realizing that the one-screen arthouse The Gate cinema in London pumped the sound into the toilets, so she still heard the screams of the police offcer as Michael Madsen cuts off his ear. But my mom also took me to Oscar-caliber movies I would better appreciate later in life. (With my dad I saw a lot of James Bond and Clint Eastwood movies.)

It was 1985’s Back to the Future that made the biggest impact on my childhood, I remember seeing it three times in theater the summer it came out, and it remains my favorite flm all these years later, sometimes tied with 1982’s Blade Runner, which I was too young to see in the theater when it was frst released, but later caught on VHS and on the big screen when the director’s cut was released. My wife Wendy likes to joke about how I own Back to the Future on pretty much every format possible and it’s true that I do have it on VHS, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, as well as a digital copy, although I do not own it on Betamax.

By the time I was in high school, movies had become an obsession and I was determined to get into Hollywood. Thus I went to USC Film School, one of the best flm schools in the world (notable alumni include iconic directors George Lucas, John Carpenter, Ron Howard, and Robert Zemeckis, as well as Kevin Feige, the architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). After graduation I tried to break into the flm business. I was a script reader for a division of Miramax Films. I interned for director Kathryn Bigelow (then best known for Point Break, but later to become

the frst woman to win the Best Director Oscar, for The Hurt Locker). And I worked for a low-rent flm company who made flms starring Sylvester Stallone’s brother and Robert Mitchum’s son rather than actual well-known actors. I wasn’t getting anywhere in the movie business and then I met Wendy and allowed my equal passion—music—to take over when we started Under the Radar (most of our original writers were fellow disaffected flm school graduates).

In 2019 we put out the My Favorite Album Issue, in which we asked musicians and actors to tell us what their all-time favorite album was, and we’ve long planned to follow it up with this My Favorite Movie Issue, where musicians reveal what their all-time favorite movie is. We’ve been working on it for over a year and sometimes when talking to someone about their new album we’d also ask them about their favorite movie. For the issue we also interview two actors about famous flms they starred in, as well as diving into the best movie soundtracks and the greatest music-themed flms.

Things have come full circle. Our daughter Rose is nine-and-a-half now and has seen more flms than most of her friends, and certainly more PG-13 flms than a lot of her peers. Her favorite flm is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. We worked out recently than she’s already seen 70 of the 100 top grossing flms in America of all time (not adjusting for infation). Even so, I think I’m being a little bit more careful about what she watches than my parents were. Jaws was recently re-released in 3D and I resisted the temptation to take her to it (and she also admitted she wasn’t ready to see it yet).

Mark Redfern Publisher/ Senior Editor

UNDER THE RADAR LLC 409 Honeysuckle Hill Lexington, VA 24450 Tel: (540) 348-8996 www.undertheradarmag.com

PUBLISHERS:

Mark Redfern and Wendy Lynch Redfern SENIOR EDITOR/MUSIC EDITOR: Mark Redfern mark@undertheradarmag.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Wendy Lynch Redfern wendy@undertheradarmag.com

MARKETING AND ADVERTISING SALES: Mark Nockels mark.nockels@undertheradarmag.com (323) 229-7512

BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITOR AND GAMES EDITOR: Austin Trunick austin@undertheradarmag.com

BOOKS EDITOR, METAL EDITOR, AND REISSUES EDITOR: Frank Valish frank@undertheradarmag.com

CINEMA EDITOR: Matt Conner matt.conner@undertheradarmag.com

KEEPING SCORE EDITOR AND PLAYLIST

EDITOR: Charles Steinberg charles.steinberg@undertheradarmag.com

LIVE PHOTO EDITOR AND INSTAGRAM EDITOR: Joshua Mellin joshua@undertheradarmag.com

LIVE REVIEWS EDITOR: Dom Gourlay dom@undertheradarmag.com

Staff Photos from 2001 and Favorite Albums of 2001

The Shining (1980)

Poltergeist (1982)

in Pink (1986)

Labyrinth (1986)

Heathers (1988)

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

(2011)

Titanic (1997)

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Airplane! (1980)

Anything (1989)

PODCAST EDITOR: Celine Teo-Blockey celine.teoblockey@undertheradarmag.com

POLITICS EDITOR: Steve King steve.king@undertheradarmag.com

PREMIERES EDITOR: Caleb Campbell caleb.campbell@undertheradarmag.com

TELEVISION EDITOR: Lily Moayeri lily@undertheradarmag.com

(1999)

(1993)

Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Ghost (1990)

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Trainspotting (1996)

Moonlight (2016)

Teo-Blockey

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS: Joey Arnone, Jimi Arundell, Stephen Axeman, Matthew Berlyant, Paul Bullock, Caleb Campbell, Lee Campbell, Matt Conner, Michelle Dalarossa, Chris Davidson, Hays Davis, Chris Drabick, Scott Dransfeld, Conrad Duncan, Mariel Fechik, Sean Fennell, Matt Fink, Dom Gourlay, Michael James Hall, Mike Hilleary, Stephen Humphries, Jennifer Irving, Kaveh Jalinous, Ben Jardine, Kyle Kersey, Ian King, Steve King, Samantha Lopez, Stephen Mayne, Candace McDuffe, Hayden Merrick, Lily Moayeri, Mark Moody, Kyle Mullin, Alex Nguyen, Blaise Radley, Matt the Raven, Mark Redfern, Nicholas Russell, Austin Saalman, Jim Scott, Sam Small, Haydon Spenceley, Charles Steinberg, Laura Studarus, Celine Teo-Blockey, Chris Thiessen, Carlo Thomas, Austin Trunick, Jake Uitti, Frank Valish, Paul Veracka, Andy Von Pip, and Jasper Willems

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Joey Arnone

PHOTOGRAPHERS: Koury Angelo, Ray Lego, James Loveday, Wendy Lynch Redfern, and Micah E. Wood

COVER PHOTOS: Front cover shot exclusively for Under the Radar by Koury Angelo in Los Angeles, CA. Back cover shot exclusively for Under the Radar by Micah E. Wood in Baltimore, MD.

MAGAZINE DESIGN: Wendy Lynch Redfern COVER DESIGN: Wendy Lynch Redfern

SUBSCRIPTIONS: subscriptions@undertheradarmag.com

DISTRIBUTION: Comag Marketing Group (CMG) – i-cmg.com

FACEBOOK: Facebook.com/UnderTheRadarMagazine

TWITTER: Twitter.com/Under_Radar_Mag

INSTAGRAM: Instagram.com/undertheradarmag

PATREON: Patreon.com/under_the_radar

Under the Radar is published around two to three times per year by Mark Redfern and Wendy Lynch Redfern. The opinions expressed within are those of the individual writers or the interview subjects, and not necessarily those of the publishers or the magazine as a whole. All content copyright Under the Radar, 2022.

Mark Redfern (Publisher/Senior Editor)

Wendy Lynch Redfern (Publisher/Creative Director)

Mike Hilleary

Kyle Mullin

Ben Jardine (Staff Writer)

Matt Conner (Cinema Editor/Staff Writer)

16.

CASS MCCOMBS “Music Is Blue” Heartmind ANTIhttps://cassmccombs.fm.to/ heartmind.NUK

17.

THE LOYAL SEAS

“Strange Mornings In The Garden”

Strange Mornings In The Garden American Laundromat www.alr-music.com

18.

SKULLCRUSHER

“Whatever Fits Together”

Quiet the Room

Secretly Canadian https://skullcrusher.fm.to/ quiet-the-room

19.

ART MOORE

“Snowy” Art Moore ANTIhttps://artmoore.fm.to/ artmoore.NUK

20.

WHITNEY

“MEMORY’

SPARK Secretly Canadian https://whitney.secretlyca.co/ spark

24.

YOUNG JESUS

32.

JEFFREY S. MILLER

MICHELLE RHEA GODDARD

“Border Wall” Breaking Bread: Songs of Reconciliation God’s Voice www.michellerheagoddard. com/album

26.

NEAR BEER

“Dead Drummers” NEAR BEER Double Helix www.doublehelixrecords. com

“Cause She’s in Love” (Feat. Joey Molland of Badfnger and Phil Solom of The Rembrandts) Songs For Silvia Jewel T Records, Tapes, CDs & DVDs www.tinyurl.com/3vbfe6km

33.

KATIE KNIPP

“The Gospel of Good Intentions” Katie Knipp Live at The Green Room Social Club Self-Released www.katieknipp.com

34.

HANS PUCKET

27.

YOTAM BEN HORIN

“Young Forever” (Feat. Jim Adkins) Young Forever Double Helix www.doublehelixrecords.com

28.

TONY XENOS

“Ascension Day” Music Heuristic Self-Released www.tonyxenos.com

PEEL DREAM MAGAZINE

“Hiding Out” Pad Slumberland https://li.sten.to/peeldreampad

22.

23. TALLIES

“Am I The Man” Patina Kanine www.tallies.bandcamp.com/ album/patina

“No Drama” No Drama Carpark www.carparkrecords.com/artists/ hans-pucket

35. DUMB

“Sleep Like a Baby” Pray 4 Tomorrow Mint www.dumbband.bandcamp.com

36. TIM BURGESS

“The Centre of Me (Is a Symphony of You)” Typical Music PIAS www.timburgessofcial.com 21.

29.

SUIT OF LIGHTS

“The Empty Vault” The Empty Vault Visiting Hours www.suitofights.com

30.

THE POPEBOY COLLECTIVE

“Ocean” Shepherd Head Saddle Creek www.saddle-creek.com/ pages/young-jesus 38.

37. GIRLPUPPY “Destroyer” When I’m Alone Royal Mountain www.royalmountain.lnk.to/ girlpuppy-when-im-alone

FRANCIS LUNG

“2p Machine”

ALLEY MATTRESS

“Happy Half Birthday” No Address Self-Released www.tinyurl.com/3nh6mmve

Short Stories EP Memphis Industries www.francislung. bandcamp.com/album/ short-stories

arlon Williams is beaming in from London. Fresh off the plane, he’s in the UK and Europe for a string of shows opening for fellow New Zealand singer/songwriter (and massive pop star) Lorde.

“Small New Zealand, all paths eventually meet,” says Williams with a grin.

Williams is excited to be on the road again, after nearly two years of isolation in New Zealand. The 31-year old singer/songwriter and actor (2018’s A Star is Born, Netfix’s Sweet Tooth) has a half hour set before Lorde, which he says will give him a fun opportunity to try some of the new songs from his third solo album, My Boy. “I’ll try a set the frst night and then completely swap it out on night two,” he says.

This is the kind of relaxed energy Williams exudes. He’s careful not to over-prepare a set list. At shows, he’s known to ask for requests, even stepping up to dust off some of his earliest songs, likely unrehearsed. This approach, Williams says, he’s learned in order to keep things fresh and his mind active when he’s on the road for a long tour.

That freshness is all over My Boy: a shape-shifting mix of tracks that range from the warm title track and its follow-up, “Easy Does It” (both of which blend Polynesian infuences and folk simplicity) to the drum machines and synths of “River Rival” and “Thinking of Nina.”

My Boy arose in quite a different fashion to Williams’ previous records. “It was a pretty disparate writing process,” Williams explains. “For this record, there was no M.O, which was scary. It was a process of having faith in whatever is consistent about me as a performer and as a writer, and having fun with it and not trying to force anything.”

My Boy was mostly written in Williams’ hometown of Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand’s South Island, during New Zealand’s lockdown from March to May 2020. Williams came through the New Zealand music scene of Lyttleton, a Christchurch suburb that also produced singer/ songwriters Aldous Harding and Delaney Davidson. Williams recorded My Boy in Auckland (on New Zealand’s North Island), and in Waipu, a rural town about two hours north of Auckland.

Like other records written and produced amidst a global pandemic, My Boy came about in isolation. Williams became obsessed with the FX drama, The Americans, which follows a family of Russian spies trying to ft into American life in 1980s Washington, D.C. The show directly inspired the

My Boy track “Thinking of Nina,” which shimmers like an early ’80s David Bowie track. Williams also drew inspiration from the synths used on songs by Duran Duran (Williams cites “A View to a Kill” as the album’s frst touch-point), Bee Gees, and John Grant.

In equal fashion, the 11 tracks on My Boy feature Williams’ gospel and spiritual sensibilities. Williams grew up singing in the Catholic Cathedral Choir, and while he himself is not Catholic, he notes that he cannot escape the infuence of spirituals in his music. “It’s a focus point, to be able to respond to, and to play with,” says Williams. “It’s like spirit for free. It’s always been there.”

While My Boy came about by tying together disparate threads, it does have distinct themes of masculinity, self-identity, role models, and family.

Williams grew up an only child, and says he had to “outsource” brotherly relationships. “I’ve always been infatuated with ‘big brother’ types,” he explains. “I’ve always had a lot of older men in my life. My dad, obviously, and then, playing music with men who were 20 or 30 years older than me, [those fgures] imparted a lot of wisdom to me.”

Those relationships elicited a fascination in Williams of the quietness of men, the reluctance to share emotion or analyze a situation. Williams notes that men often wear a mask, or cover up what’s really going on underneath. “I’m not praising that as a quality,” he quickly points out. “It’s an empathy for not talking, a sympathy for the quiet.” Moreover, Williams notes the danger of not discussing feelings, of covering up emotions and instead resorting to anger or rage. “The world can get itself in a really twisted shape because men don’t talk about things.”

That covering up appears all throughout My Boy , in songs that explore vulnerability with oblique jabs.

On “Soft Boys Make the Grade” Williams delivers the effortless line, “Was gonna write it all down in a letter/But here I am in your DMs,” a comment on our modern grappling with how to show affection in the Internet Age. Williams closes the song “My Heart the Wormhole” with the line, “I’m still a boy and you’re still the king,” which deepens the disparity between the relationship of father and son.

My Boy is a soothing, remarkably sensitive, and fashionable record from one of the strongest emerging voices in indie music. Marlon Williams has built further upon his reputation as a unique songwriter who takes risks, plays it cool and loose, but all the while making you tap your foot, smiling along with him. “For me, the most simple songs are the ones that really stay with me, the ones that stay in that proud zone,” says Williams.

We Need to Talk

Words by Ben Jardine | Photos by Ray Lego

Marlon Williams on Once Were Warriors (1994, directed

by Lee Tamahori)

As Told to Ben Jardine

More and more I think about that movie. I don’t think that movie would get made today, and maybe for good reason. It’s a dark, dark piece of work. Alan Duff, the writer [of the book the flm is based on], is a dark dude with a lot of, especially now, extremely controversial views on Māori and how they haven’t helped themselves and all this.

It is a brutal flm, and every time I watch it, it’s the one flm (aside from Dancing in the Dark with Björk) that will just absolutely destroy me every time I watch it, where I’m in the fetal position. It’s the crowning jewel of New Zealand flm, and flm in general. And Temuera Morrison’s horrible and ugly portrayal of Jake “the Muss,” it’s Brando-esque, it’s as disgusting as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. It’s extremely brave and powerful flmmaking. I think it’s just beautiful.

Julia Jacklin Relationships and Vulnerability

Words by Ben Jardine

“I

Was Neon,” the third single from PRE PLEASURE, the third album by Australian singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin, is a catchy, largely guitar-driven examination of oneself, exploring a dichotomy between acceptance of self and fear of losing that very acceptance. This track’s refrain—“Am I gonna lose myself again?/I quite like the person that I am”—perfectly encapsulates the themes and rhythms of PRE PLEASURE: an album all about openness and self-acceptance.

“Songwriting is all a process,” Jacklin says, “processing things and hoping that you will write a song and emerge at the other end with more understanding. This is true sometimes but I think most of the time, it’s not that cathartic.”

The pitfalls of “pre pleasure”—meaning if you work hard enough on things (music, relationships, life), you’ll eventually get to enjoy them—guide the album forward. Can we enjoy life in the moment? Where does this process of loving and acceptance begin and start?

“Sometimes you just have to enjoy things for what they are in the moment. There’s basically never anything on the other side of that,” reasons Jacklin.

Recorded in Montreal with Jacklin’s touring band and producer Marcus Paquin (The Weather Station, Arcade Fire), PRE PLEASURE came together rather quickly. Jacklin wrote 60 percent of the record at home in Melbourne, 40 percent in Montreal, and spent a lot of time in the studio arranging the tracks with her band. In Montreal, Jacklin would write in relative isolation in an apartment, mostly on a keyboard—a songwriting process that was fairly new to her.

“I was a bit like, ‘Oh, should I do this?’ And then I think Tamara [Lindeman] from The Weather Station was just like, ‘Oh, that’s what Leonard Cohen used to do. He used to write songs with the backing tracks from a Roland keyboard.’ So I thought, ‘If it’s good enough for him, I’ll give it a crack.’”

Throughout our conversation, Jacklin is articulate and honest with how she’s managed to write songs in the face of vulnerability.

“I think in the way that I’ve made the record and the way I’ve made all my records, I try to keep it very insular,” she says. “We don’t leave the studio

until it’s done, which I think helps with tricking yourself into believing that no one is going to hear it.”

And PRE PLEASURE is Jacklin at her most open. There are tracks that confront religion, sexuality, death and mortality, and parenthood. “Too In Love to Die” is a solemn, organ-backed refection on how fearless we feel when we’re in love, when we give someone a part of ourselves. “Moviegoer” paints a vivid picture of pretentious artists, and asks the question of who gets to make art. “Ignore Tenderness,” a song that Jacklin feels most proud of, is effortlessly funny and revealing. It’s largely driven by Jacklin’s lyrics (the sparse guitar and drums are mere punctuation), which describe masturbation, guilt, and coming-of-age. “Ignore the tenderness that you crave/Be naughty but don’t misbehave,” Jacklin’s voice soars at the song’s conclusion. “That’s just one of those songs that I always wanted to write,” she explains. “That song is very close to me and my tastes, and I probably wouldn’t have put that on my last record.”

When asked if she notices a difference in her songwriting on PRE PLEASURE versus her frst album, 2016’s Don’t Let the Kids Win, she says yes, but more in the way she works. She recounts a story of being confronted with her entire discography one morning at a cafe in Australia.

“I realized that the cafe was playing my music,” says Jacklin. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is a bit uncomfortable.’ It was a playlist of my songs in no particular order. I think it was the frst time in my whole life that I’ve sat and listened to my discography. And I honestly feel like that was the frst time where I was like, ‘Oh, you’ve really improved.’ There was this weird experience of being genuinely proud of myself for the frst time in a long time, just sitting there, listening to my own music and being like, ‘Oh, wow, you’ve written a lot of songs and they’ve gotten better.’”

On that frst album, Jacklin says, she was in a recording studio for the frst time. When she listens to those songs she can hear the timidness in her voice. “I can hear how much I’m holding back because I’m embarrassed that the engineer’s gonna think I’m stupid or something.

“I feel grateful to be a recorded artist, because of the ability to have these little time capsules in my life. Not many people get to have that. If I wasn’t doing this, I’m not sure I would have recorded my life in that way.”

Julia Jacklin photo by Nick Mckk.

alvvays

A Sip of Cape Breton

Words by Celine Teo-Blockey

Sipping Blue Rev, a sweet alcopop, at the local skating rinks in Cape Breton—an island in Nova Scotia, Canada—is a much cherished memory of singer, Molly Rankin, from Toronto-based dream pop band, Alvvays. It suggests a time of innocence and simpler pleasures and felt like the right antidote when Rankin, her partner, guitarist, Alec O’Hanley, and their keyboardist, Kerri MacLellan were writing their third album in the garage of their home, during the dark days of the pandemic. Blue Rev is also the title of the album.

“I think I just like the idea of being transported back to another era of your life by taking a sip of something,” explains an upbeat Rankin, who cites two polar opposite “Strawberry Wine” songs, one a 1996 country hit for Deana Carter, and the other by shoegaze icons My Bloody Valentine. “These little nostalgic touchstones, that make you confront or reminisce the different stages of your life,” she adds. “And also trying to incorporate some of my upbringing in Cape Breton, cultural things that seemed pretty unique like drinking behind a rink.”

While her memory is specifc, the nostalgia on Blue Rev is warm and universal. Its characters— “Pomeranian Spinster,” “A Very Online Guy,” and the girl of “Belinda Says,” who thinks she might keep her pregnancy and move to the country— are introduced to us like forgotten friends at a high school reunion. There’s no shade or negative commentary on their life choices.

“Belinda Says” refers to that time of youthful insouciance as “paradise” and riffs off Belinda Carlisle’s hit “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” “That song, I think is so uplifting for so many people and its just sort of stood the test of time,” says Rankin of the 1987-released pop hit that would have been played at the rink. But it wasn’t her that came up with that connection.

“The Belinda Carlisle line was actually Alex’s idea and it was one of the fnal pieces of the puzzle of that song, as was the line ‘Blue Rev behind the rink,’” Rankin explains. Both those things triggered a lot of excitement for them and the ideas that conceptually became the core of the record. “Alec kind of came in out of nowhere with that line that I think really hits right at the peak of that song in such a cathartic way.”

After two well received albums—award-winning debut Alvvays (2014) and Antisocialites (2017)— Blue Rev fnds its core trio more confdent than ever, despite losing their rhythm section (now Sheridan Riley and Abbey Blackwell) and surviving a home break-in where demos were stolen. These days, Rankin says she is more sure of what she wants and found working with producer Shawn Everett amenable. She is happy to see how O’Hanley and MacLellan have also grown in their roles.

“I’m really glad to have someone to bounce off ideas, good or bad,” she says of her songwriting partnership with O’Hanley. “Alec and I have been collaborating for so long and generally the bulk of

the melodic and lyrical ideas come out of my brain. But he’s always been such a great editor…and is able to help bring some variance to what I do and some depth sometimes with his theory knowledge.”

MacLellan too played a more expansive role in the mixing process. “That was so helpful because she had so much perspective on everything we sent her…. And I think it’s been really gratifying to see her grow in that regard.”

While previous albums have been more steeped in melancholia, with a sometimes vacuum-sealed feeling of being trapped in the past, Blue Rev has a future-facing, forward momentum. In part, aided by the lockdown, they had more time to explore and experiment sonically. There is a fair amount of distortion against Rankin’s demure vocals and the pleasing guitar melodies, plus a push to break previous rhythmic structures. The humor and thematic tone hints at a band frmly rooted in the present, glancing at the rear view mirror so as to contemplate a rosier outlook.

“As devastating as the pandemic was and is—I think it took a little bit of the pressure off,” says Rankin. “When you’re constantly touring, there are many things that fall by the wayside, whether that’s lingering health issues, friendships…seeing your family. So some of those fowers were able to be nourished in that time. And maybe there’s just something about the headspace that I was in, where things were coming out a little bit more hopeful than before.”

Alvvays photo by Eleanor Petry (L to R: Abbey Blackwell, Sheridan Riley, Molly Rankin, Alec O’Hanley, Kerri MacLellan).

for cutie

Context in the Chaos

Words by Mike Hilleary

ver the course of a two-anda-half-year pandemic thousands, if not millions of people across the country— and the globe—were forced into an extended,existential crisis, resulting in all kinds of self-refection and reevaluation on our emotional and mental wellbeing, the importance of a healthy work/life balance, and how we even want to interact with the rest of the world. Contrasting this inner focus was the even greater attention we placed on what was happening outside the confnes of our quarantined homes in and around our local and national communities. Like so many others, Death Cab for Cutie frontman and songwriter Ben Gibbard watched events around him play out with a heightened sense of dread.

“We in America had kind of taken for granted this idea that everything was just going to keep working,” he says. “That our institutions will continue to function, that the people in charge know what they’re doing, and that you have nothing to worry about. It just seemed as though many of the things that we took for granted were on the precipice of just falling apart. And I think that when you live with that sense of chaos you are made painfully aware of the fact that it was never functioning as well as you thought it was, and all it took was somebody just to push it a little bit.”

This pervading air of frustration, disappointment, and apprehension is something that weighs heavily within the core of Death Cab for Cutie’s 10th LP, Asphalt Meadows. Gibbard himself cites a line from one of the record’s standout singles, “Here to Forever”—“Now it seems more than ever, there’s no hands on the levers.”

“No one’s in control,” he argues. “And depending on our belief systems— if we are religious, we believe God is in control, if we are liberal, we believe

the government is in control—whatever it might be. And it felt to me, in this particular period, the curtain was kind of pulled back. To use a tired metaphor it was The Wizard of Oz, and you pull the curtain back, and there’s nobody there. There’s not even a guy. There’s no man controlling stuff. It’s running on autopilot and the machine is starting to kind of disintegrate. I think that the anxiety that I was feeling out of that particular time period was a real driver on this record.”

While Gibbard undoubtedly had an abundant wellspring from which to draw his lyrical ire, the logistics of actually demoing, developing, and recording the album’s songs posed its own set of challenges in the early stages of the pandemic’s social lockdown. Every Death Cab for Cutie song has always begun from Gibbard, with some kind of skeleton or scaffolding from which the rest of the band—bassist Nick Harmer, drummer Jason McGerr, guitarist Dave Depper, and keyboardist Zac Rae—could then physically get together in a room, sort through the material, and fgure out what was and wasn’t working. Spread out along the West Coast and state lines, that relied-upon system was a nonstarter. Instead of simply sitting on their collective hands, Gibbard reached back to a methodology that wasn’t all that far removed writing with Jimmy Tamborello for The Postal Service. “It was an approach that I think drew on the fact that we couldn’t all be together,” says Harmer. “Rather than making it a weakness, we turned it into a strength for us, which was really fun.”

Every week for two years, the members of Death Cab for Cutie played a game of musical telephone, with each individual getting assigned a rotating

Death Cab for Cutie photo by Jimmy Fontaine (L to R: Jason McGerr, Dave Depper, Zac Rae, Ben Gibbard, Nick Harmer).

day of the week. “If your day was Monday you started a song,” explains Harmer. “It could be a drum beat, it could a bassline, it could be a drum beat and a bassline, everything except vocals and melody—because that’s 100% Ben. In any case the only other rule was you had to have it fnished and sent to the next person by the close of business. Then the next guy would open it up. You could add to it, you could completely change the key, you could even delete all of it and start over. It really sort of put the trust in everyone to make good creative decisions. It really made everyone really want to elevate their contributions to keep the momentum and the excitement going through the week. In a weird way, it brought us together as a unit.”

While the approach wasn’t completely bulletproof— resulting in compositions that will never see the light of day—the body of work that makes up Asphalt Meadows is undoubtedly elevated by the rarifed context of its creation. “I don’t know if we’re going to continue to write like this moving for ward,” says Harmer. “But I certainly think that for this time, and this place of where we were at as a band, it was sort of the best thing that we could have stumbled across.”

Death Cab for Cutie’s Nick Harmer on Raising Arizona (1987, directed by Joel Coen)

Much like your favorite album, where so much of it is your mood and circumstantially dependent on where you’re at and what you want to experience. Sometimes you want a movie to make you think, and sometimes you want pure entertainment. I would say that one movie that’s had a lot of resonance for me in my life, and in a new way— I’ve always loved the flm, but a movie that I the layers of its brilliance more and more—is Raising Arizona by the Coen brothers. I loved it when it came out. I thought it was hilarious. And now that I am a parent, it is absolutely, to me, the most spot on movie about parenting in so many ways—the madness and the chaos of it. It’s got so many emotional layers on top of just being two of the fnest comedic performances between Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter. I can’t say enough about that movie right now, mainly because it took a change in my own life—becoming a parent—to suddenly recognize even more of the nuance and feel the sting of it.

The frst time I saw it was in college. There was a kind of this Coen brothers awakening that was happening for me. I worked at a video store when I was in college and so, you know, at a certain point you just start working your way through everybody’s output. Even early on the Coen brothers were superstars, but Raising Arizona just felt like such a screwball comedy, and then later in life, like I said once the context of my life changed a little bit and have some maturity under my belt, that I recognize just how layered it is.

The thing that really resonates with me is that pervading threat of the man on the motorcycle coming to get the kid. There’s just this feeling that the world’s coming to get your kid and you really want to protect them and keep them away from harm. It’s such a perfect embodiment of this dread of time coming for you and it’s a really a really powerful feeling that kind of pervades in that movie. Every once in a while when things kind of feel a little bit stressful, I think, “Oh the guy in the motorcycles is getting close.”

(Portions of Nick Harmer’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard on Do the Right Thing (1989, directed by Spike Lee)

Amovie that I continuously come back to, that I’m always kind of amazed by and inspired by is Do the Right Thing. I just think it’s one of the greatest flms ever made. The cinematography is incredible, the characters are incredible, just the scope of this movie taking place over the course of one day, the hottest day in New York in the summer with just all the tension that is occurring. And it’s just so multi-layered. You know I watched it relatively recently, and it was shocking how relevant it still felt. Sometimes when movies are kind of commenting on societal conficts or what ever it might be, they sometimes can feel frozen in a particular time, where someone could say, “I’m so glad we’re past that,” or “I’m so glad that these conficts don’t exist anymore.” And I wouldn’t say that about Do the Right Thing. Watching Do the Right Thing, especially in the wake of everything that happened in 2020, it feels like this movie came out today. I mean the end of the flm Radio Raheem is choked out and killed by the police. It’s pretty fucked up that this movie was made in 1989. We are not past the plot points in that flm.

There are scenes in that flm that are just so powerful and brilliant. There are a series of scenes in fact where Spike Lee is zooming the camera in on a character and they’re just unleashing a series of epithets. Danny Aiello is doing it, John Turturro is doing it, the Korean shopkeeper is doing it, the Puerto Rican dude on the block is doing it. And it’s incredibly powerful. It’s this shocking series of shots. And I think the brilliance of Spike Lee in that movie to include that is to highlight the tension between these groups that exists—and to an extent still exists today but was certainly existing in that time in the context of the flm and in the context of this neighborhood in New York on this particular day. But they’re saying it right to the camera, and the frst time you see it, you’re like, “Oh my god.” It seemed as if Lee decided to shoot it that way so that you would feel like the recipient of that hate, and to sit with it, and be like, “Wow. That is such a demoralizing and demeaning thing to have somebody say to you.”

Growing up in a predominantly white suburb across the water from Seattle in Bremerton. It was overwhelmingly white. There were a lot of Pacifc Islanders because of the Navy, but there really weren’t a lot of African Americans in my school or in that particular community. And so I feel like growing up where I grew up, in the time I grew up, no one told us who Marcus Garvey was during Black History Month. Nobody talked about the Black Panthers. Nobody talked about how when you call 911, in certain neighborhoods, they come in an hour. Growing up in the late ’80s, early ’90s, Spike Lee’s flms—specifcally Do the Right Thing—but also the music of Public Enemy, taught me more about what it was like to be Black in America. I obviously could never understand it. I could never relate to it. That was abundantly clear. But I was learning about Black history, learning about the Black struggle in America, not in school. I was learning about it through Public Enemy. I was learning about it through Spike Lee. From my generation, for those of us who were kind of listening to this music and watching these flms, it was incredibly revelatory to us, especially white people in the suburbs. It affected me greatly. There was no social media. There was no internet. There was no way to learn about people who were different and were having a different experience from myself. I think it allowed me a level of empathy, certainly not understanding, but it was a way for me to kind of learn about a different experience in this country that I would have no have no way of knowing about in that time.

(Portions of Ben Gibbard’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

As Told to Mike Hilleary

As Told to Mike Hilleary

First Aid Kit

Older, Wiser, and Happier

Words by Jake Uitti

It’s funny; sometimes the closer you are to something, the harder it is to remember how special it can be. It’s the root of the phrase, Absence makes the heart grow fonder . For the Swedish-born folk duo, First Aid Kit, they know this maxim well. Comprised of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, the group is known for its precise lyrical songwriting and blissful, angelic harmonies. But growing up, as the two sang together around the house, they didn’t think much of their vocal blend. It wasn’t until audiences raved and offered standing ovations that they knew they had something unique and lovely.

“I don’t think we realized it until we started playing live,” says Johanna. “Just from people reacting to us singing together in a venue. We were like, ‘We’re just singing…’ I don’t think we thought that our voices—we knew we could sing but…”

“We were just singing together,” continues Klara. “In the same room. Like, ‘Why the fuck not?’ That’s how it started. It wasn’t a plan, like, ‘Let’s do this because it will sound great!’”

The duo’s new LP, Palomino, their sixth full-length album, marks a return to the joy they felt early on making music together, before the taxing life of traveling star-artists took its at times harsh toll. It brought them closer to what they’ve always known for sure: making music together is fun, even paramount.

For the sisters, it began at home—both literally and in their music-loving homeland. And the real spark came with folk music—the stuff from artists like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, and more. Indeed, the sisters have always appreciated the storytelling and lyricism in this brand of songwriting.

Sweden was an “incredibly safe place to grow up,” says Klara. Though, she notes, that is changing to some degree these days as the infuence of American MAGA extremism infltrates the country, just as it has large parts of the United States and other foreign regions. The sisters say they’re often asked about their homeland’s infuence on their art. Is it in the water? What’s the secret? For the duo, they say they don’t really know. Other than it’s a supportive region where almost every child sings in choir growing up and music is a fostered art form. When it comes to (American) folk music, the sisters have always appreciated its narrative qualities.

“It was so much about the lyrics,” Klara says. “This medium where you could both have these stories and also be moved by this music. I felt like I belonged in that world. I felt for the frst time, ‘Okay, this isn’t manufactured. This is something I could do….’ And [it felt] like a home.”

First Aid Kit released their last LP of original work, Ruins, in January 2018. And almost directly after that, they began contemplating their next record of original songs, which would become the 2022 album, Palomino

“We wanted to just do something—and we usually do this—the polar opposite of what we did,” says Johanna. “We wanted to do something a bit more light and upbeat and hopeful, which is a challenge for us,” she laughs. “We usually write super sad songs!”

For Palomino they employed a co-writer for some of the songs, Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John. On his frst day with the band, he helped to write tracks such as the orchestral “Nobody Knows” and riveting “Out of My Head.” That was a good day, the sisters say with a chuckle. Now, with the lush album

done, on the horizon for the duo is a long slate of tour dates, spanning 2022 into 2023. Together, they’ve come so far from the early days singing on a lark around their childhood home.

“Whenever we make a record, I never know if we’re going to make another one,” Johanna admits.

Thank goodness, though, for their fans that they did. Not only does the new record pluck from the best of the band’s talents—lilting, beautiful harmonies, storytelling, lyrical prowess—but the LP also showcases the band’s next breakthrough. There’s an overarching life lesson on the record: Getting older is okay. Getting wiser is the goal. Anyway, what’s the alternative? Though Johanna says, “I’m just so proud of us. If we died today, I would still be so happy,” the reality is the sisters have plenty more to offer. To wit, their new album is named after the Palomino horse, which only gets more brilliant in color and style as it ages.

And after a challenging, though deep breathinducing pandemic, which itself came after some public burnout from Klara (“I’ve learned that eventually the body says no,” she says. “It’ll say no for you. You can push it but it’s going to eventually say no for you.”), there remain ample roads ahead where the duo can reconnect with fans, re-remember how special First Aid Kit is, and how they move audi ences to all sorts of emotions.

“Music makes me feel less lonely in the world,” says Klara. “I go to it for so much, for comfort, to just have a good sing-along in the car.”

“I think the bonds you make with the people you play with or sing with is just so special,” Johanna says. “It’s my favorite thing in the world. Everything else ceases to exist in that moment. It’s a spiritual experience.”

First Aid Kit photos by Olof Grind (L to R: Johanna Söderberg and Klara Söderberg).

First Aid Kit on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, directed

by Michel Gondry)

Words by Jake Uitti

Sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, who comprise the acclaimed Swedish folk duo, First Aid Kit, can recite lines from the Michel Gondry flm Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from memory. The flm, which stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, was named as one of the American Film Institute’s Top 10 movies from 2004. Written by legendary screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich), the romantically focused work features any number of great moments of dialogue and drama.

“It’s my favorite flm,” says Johanna, who says she rewatched it again recently.

She’d originally seen it as at 14 years old but now, at 31, the movie hits differently. She knows the wounds that heartbreak can offer more acutely. She knows the sorrow at lost chances and how time never goes in reverse. That’s the beauty of the flm, which focuses in on the couple, Joel Barish (Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Winslet), who fall in love but then break up and have their minds erased. The movie begins in the middle, with Joel trying to fgure out what’s happened. His mind has just been blanked of his time with Clementine. But what are these signs from the past all around him that no longer make sense? The surreal plot unfolds and, eventually, Joel and Clementine realize what happened, realize how diffcult love can be, and yet decide to dive headfrst into it again, together. Beautiful.

“It hit me hard,” says Johanna of the rewatch. “I hadn’t experienced what the characters were going through. It hit me on a completely different level.”

The sisters’ mother is a flm teacher. So, the two grew up with movies and engaging in conversations about flm analysis and who their favorite director is, and the like. They have detailed eyes when it comes to watching movies. And Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was so impactful on their psyches that they decided to honor the movie with one of their latest music videos, for their song, “Out of My Head,” from their new LP, Palomino

“It’s about trying to escape,” says Klara of the song.

“We know it’s a good song whenever we envision the music video,” says Johanna. “That’s what we do in the studio, we sit around and make Pinterest boards for music videos and write little stories.”

The two enjoy stories and storytelling so much, it’s what largely drew them to folk music in the frst place. They also grew up with books. Johanna says she wanted to be a novelist (or a painter) when she was younger. Now, they tell their tales in song and music videos. And their favorite flm was so impactful that they even wanted to shoot the “Out of My Head” music video in the town of Montauk, New York, where Eternal Sunshine in part takes place and was partially flmed. But in the end, they weren’t able to make it happen. But maybe one day.

“I really want to go,” says Klara.

A Blissful Freefall

Words by Jasper Willems | Photos by Ray Lego

“Ialways feel my process for making records is fguring out what I like and don’t like about making it, and then correct the course of the ship into the other direction,” John Ross ponders on the other end of a grainy Zoom connection. It might be a cold day in hell before the Wild Pink frontman records the album he initially sets his mind to making. You see, the Brooklyn band’s previous outing, 2021’s A Billion Little Lights , was supposed to become this expansive concept double album ruminating all the vast peripheries of the American West. Instead, it became a compelling spectral echo of that idea: one foot in grounded heartland rock, and another in ethereal synth explorations.

It was both serendipitous and strange for Ross to witness the rollout for A Billion Little Lights from a stationary place. During the pandemic, he found no interest in writing music, focussing his attention predominantly on freelance audio post-production jobs. He broke out of his months-long slump penning “Florida,” a gorgeous striding stand alone song that sounds like some extraterrestrial synthesis between Tom Petty’s Wildfowers and Laurie Anderson’s Big Science. It’s a piece of music that left these two ears confused, overwhelmed, and in awe.

To be joyfully blindsided by his own musical ambitions, as it seems, is what Ross is all about. On each Wild Pink release he ends up rolling with whatever fateful sucker punch distorts his creative trajectory. Finding out you have potentially fatal cancer six months into recording your fourth album—just as things start to slowly go back to “normal” from the pandemic—is quite the motherhumper of all sucker punches.

“Without going into too much detail, I caught it early and luckily was able to be successfully treated,” Ross says. “I’m in surveillance mode right now, but yeah, to your point, it was certainly jarring. There was nothing to prepare someone to receive that kind of diagnosis.”

Peculiarly, said fourth album, ILYSM, was supposed to signify a more gloomy direction for Wild Pink (whose lineup also features drummer Dan Keegan, bassist Arden Yonkers, and pedal steel guitarist Mike “Slo Mo” Brenner). But the diagnosis warped the context of the songs into something more cascading,

DET ECT ION

fragmented and volatile. “Initially for this album I wanted to make a dark record that had to do with love and obsession and different perspectives of love,” explains Ross. “But it ended up becoming a better record when I had no intention of that happening. So yeah, I don’t know. I basically rode a rollercoaster.”

That is but one way of putting it. ILYSM strikes like a geyser of moonstruck emotions stirring inside the simplest of sceneries. You can draw parallel to albums such as Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump or Sparklehorse It’s a Wonderful Life in how Ross’ frayed idiosyncrasies coalesce with his acute predicament. The tender-hearted Julien Bakerfeatured “Hold My Hand,” for instance, is an intimate testimonial by Ross about the moment before going under narcosis for surgery, and one of the nurses holding his hand as he drifts into a sleepless dream.

“It’s the frst song I wrote after the cancer surgery,” Ross explains. “I felt it would be such a cool song for a duet, especially because it takes two people to hold hands. So the song lent itself naturally to another vocalist. Julien was the frst person that I thought of. I kind of can’t believe it worked out as organically and easily it did. Because I think that that song means a lot to me for a lot of reasons. But as far as the production of the album goes, it’s a very sparse song. Every instrument in it is acoustic, upright bass and piano. Acoustic guitar—well, there’s a tiny bit of electric guitar. But all the main components are like acoustic instruments. That’s a big departure from the previous record, which was very electric and digital, it has digital lacquer over it. On ILYSM I wanted to do the opposite of that. With that song in particular, I’m glad how handmade it came out.”

Like a tiny pebble swerving within a celestial storm, much of ILYSM’s devastation and exuberance lies in threadbare refections. Particularly the lyrics directed towards his wife feel like an intimate love letter that wasn’t meant to be read by prying eyes. Like giving into a vast gravitational pull, he repeats the words “I love you so much” various times in several songs, almost as if placing a marker for a rallying point. “I think that even taking it a step further by using the acronym, ILYSM, that’s potentially more cheesy than saying ‘I love you so much!’” Ross admits. “But when you lean into it so hard, it’s like, ‘If you play a wrong note you just keep playing it until it’s right.’”

Weasked musicians and actors one simple question: “What’s your all-time

discovered in childhood, for others it’s a film that influenced

in life. On the following pages there are horrors films watched at too young

snowed in with friends, and another film that was first viewed while

answer our question or narrow it down to just one movie,

Words by Cassandra Jenkins

As a Cassandra who was coming of age in 1990s America, I walked through the world in the shadows of two mythological fgures—the cursed Greek oracle known for her tragically denounced prediction of the Trojan War, and Wayne’s World’s romantic lead and frontwoman played by “Baberaham Lincoln” Tia Carrere. Thirty years after its release, the movie’s iconic stratocaster serenade “and her name was Cassandra” (sung in a Liverpudlian croon) continues to follow me through my days.

Wayne’s World has, after all, stood the test of time, and become a period piece hallmarking some of the best parts of a decade we can’t seem to shake. The movie features dual protagonists Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, mid-20s shock rock fans residing in the suburbs of Illinois, who through their genuine love of music and pop culture embark on an epic journey of following their dreams, falling in love, and reckoning with fame and fortune.

If Wayne’s World is a tale of good and evil wherein integrity is the good

guy and selling out is the villain, the good guy always comes out on top (excellent). As our catch-phrase spinning champions contend with their producer-turned-foe, a despicably handsome corporate executive played by Rob Lowe, we watch them strive to bring their home-spun public access TV show to a larger audience. We’re rooting for our heroes in part because as viewers, we’re always let in on the joke. With the fourth wall down from the get go, and camera facing winks from our hosts throughout, the movie’s self-awareness never—ehem—wanes. In an on set conversation between Wayne and Garth, for example, the play within a play succeeds in self-consciously contradicting it’s raison d’être to comedic effect when Wayne proposes, holding a bag of Doritos, “Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but for me, the beast doesn’t include selling out. Garth, you know what I mean, right?” and Garth, clad head to toe in Reebok affrms, “It’s like people only do things because they get paid, and that’s just really sad,” followed by a series of product placements.

For the fanatically inclined, it’s easy to love the ultimate fan movie and see ourselves in, if we haven’t indeed recreated, the iconic scene in the Mirthmobile when Wayne, Garth, and their devoted camera men blast their “Bohemian Rhapsody” cassette on the way to the local diner. Meanwhile, our lead bombshell Cassandra pursues her dreams as bassist and frontwoman of her band Crucial Taunt. She deftly navigates choppy waters in a sea of slimy sell-outs while Wayne fawns and fumbles, ultimately winning her over with his suburban charm. Though deep down I’ve

it’s a

always felt more like a Garth, I like to think we’ve all got a little Cassandra in us— confdent, sexually empowered, and unshakably cool.

With a supporting cast including Lara Flynn Boyle, Chris Farley, Meatloaf, and Alice Cooper, the lead characters grapple with the dualities they face on the path to success, and the movie closes with a series of narrated ending options, from tragic to “Scooby-Doo,” fnally landing on a happy ending with a record deal and morally enlightened former scumbags.

Wayne’s World taught me how to unapologetically celebrate the things I love, and to believe, against all odds (“she will be mine”), that I might some day get a stratocaster, a babe, and a record deal of my own. I revisited the movie earlier this year when I woke up, COVID positive, in a tour bus parked outside a hotel in Aurora, Illinois. As I watched the bus drive off to Chicago without me, it dawned on me that I was in the homeland of our beloved heroes with fve days of quarantine in store. So I did what any ’90s child would do—seek nostalgic comfort and watch Wayne’s World on repeat while drifting in and out of consciousness. When a friend called to check in on how the tour was going, I quoted our beloved Garth and said, “Sometimes I wonder if I’ll boldly go where no man has gone before. But I’ll probably stay in Aurora.”

(Cassandra Jenkins is a New York-based singer/songwriter. Her most recent album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, ended up on several notable best albums of 2021 lists, including Under the Radar’s, and its single “Hard Drive” also received much acclaim.)

favorite movie?” For some

classic they

their music or one that found them at just right time later

an age via irresponsible babysitters or while

skipping school. And while quite a few artists couldn’t

the following gave it a try.

CASSANDRA JENKINS on Wayne’s World (1992, directed by Penelope Spheeris)

Cassandra Jenkins photo by Josh Goleman.

MOVIE

FRED ARMISEN

on Brazil (1985, directed

Sometimes people pick a favorite movie, and just kind of stick to it just because it’s like what they decided, which is fne. When I ask myself, “What movie can I watch over and over?,” it remains Brazil. It still resonates. Especially during the early 2000s when there was so much paranoia about terrorism and stuff.

When it came out, I was in college. People can be pretty impressionable when you’re in college and everything just seems so new. First I read about it, and I was like, “Oh I have got to see this movie.” I like anything about England. The fact that it was called Brazil, and

that it was Terry Gilliam, and something about the way it looked already, I was already sold. And I was like, “I have got to see this movie.” I just loved it, I just kept seeing it. It was one of those movies that would play in art-houses for the next 10 years. All of a sudden it would be playing somewhere in some other city and I would go see it.

It’s just like an old record that you love and you just want to hear it over and over. For me it was like that. There’d be new little jokes I would fnd in it. Everyone in it is really great. There are just little physical, visual jokes all throughout, and it kept working. And even now it still doesn’t feel dated to me, it feels relevant. It looks great, and the music’s cool. And

Jonathan Pryce is so great in it and I love his apartment, his weird, little apartment, the way the streets looked, the way that they made the city streets and his commute to work, his toaster. And back then, it’s funny how our lives really have turned out that way with little devices that are supposed to be really effcient, but reallythey’re not. I don’t mean it as a cynical thing, I just mean that we have these inventions that are kind of silly and it’s part of life and it’s okay.

I remember seeing an interview with Terry Gilliam, where he described it as “the human spirit always survives.” So in the movie there’s all this destruction, but there’s still Christmas decorations. I’m paraphrasing, but he was saying there’s always a human spirit. We still put up Christmas decorations and I thought that really has resonated. I do think of it as an optimistic movie. The fantasies that he goes into about being far away and being up in the clouds, to me has some real optimism to it.

I grew up in New York, and then I moved to Chicago, and then I was in England for a little bit, and then LA, and then back to New York. There was a time before the internet where there would be that one movie house that would show, like Paris, Texas, that run of artsy movies, Wings of Desire. In my head, it feels like [I’ve seen Brazil] 100 [times] but it’s probably closer to like 50.

I’ve never met anyone from that movie and I wish I did. I’ve gotten to meet so many heroes and for some reason, I’ve never been able to tell Jonathan Pryce or Terry Gilliam or Michael Palin how much I love that movie.

I take confdence in [the notion] that if there’s some thing that you can’t tell what it is, if it’s comedy or not, then that’s okay. So in Brazil, there’s that gigantic metallic robot monster that he’s trying to kill in his dreams. But it’s in a comedy movie, and there’s no comedic take to it. There’s no joke to it, but it’s still part of a comedy. So for me, I trust that things can look like that and not have a comedic point and still be funny. Not that you’re laughing, but they can still sort of coexist in the same piece. There’s some serious stuff in that movie, but at the same time there’s something light about it.

As far as life experience, there’s a lot of paperwork in Brazil, with forms and fnding the right form and stuff like that. And I still get that feeling with going online and passwords. I’ve been trying to renew my driver’s license because the address is wrong and even that I’m like, “This is just like Brazil.” You can’t do it, you can’t go online and go, “Let me fx this.” You need this other thing and I’m stuck with this dumb driver’s license that I can’t fx. I’m kind of stuck, and that feels like Brazil to me.

I’m not making a grand statement about how hard life is, I just think it’s funny that whatever’s happening in Brazil is what happens in real life. It’s not a great observation, it’s just that that movie is that good.

There’s one joke that really keeps working for me, and it’s really subtle. Jonathan Pryce asks Michael Palin’s character how his twins are doing, he answers, “Now they’re triplets,” and then Pryce’s answer is “Wow, time fies.”

(Fred Armisen is a comedian and musician. He was a cast member on Saturday Night Live and is the co-creator/co-star of various TV shows, including Portlandia, Documentary Now!, and Los Espookys In 2022 alone the always busy Armisen has appeared in Toast of Tinseltown, Our Flag Means Death, The Kids in the Hall, What We Do in the Shadows, Spin Me Round, The Bubble, and Clerks III. Portions of Armisen’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

“It’s funny how our lives really have turned out that way with little devices that are supposed to be really efficient, but really they’re not.”

As Told to Ben Jardine

by Terry Gilliam)

Fred Armisen photo by Mitch Zachary\HBO.

My favorite movie right now is eXistenZ, a Cronenberg sci-f from 1999. Couldn’t walk you through the plot if I wanted to, as it’s a wildly convoluted story within a story within a story. The gist is that an electronics company is showing its new feshy VR gaming consoles (imagine an Xbox that looks like a gently pulsing fesh sack) to a focus group. There’s a group of assassins committed to destroying the devices, there’s the world-renowned game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) trying to escape them, and everybody’s entering the game via “bio ports” that are surgically inserted into their spines. One of the things I love about the movie, and Cronenberg flms in general, is how there are philosophical factions in his universes that extremize debates we have in real life. One side is committed to VR escapism and love inserting wires in their spine, the other side, the “Realists” are equally extreme, killing game creators and making up fun chants (“Death to realism! Death to the demoness!”). The movie’s aesthetics are great, it’s wild to think about the future of technology becoming more and more feshlike. Is cradling my phone in bed at night so different from snuggling a hairy little fesh pod?

While there is a plot to the flm, I kind of like thinking about it as an abstract train of thought that takes you through worlds within worlds and worlds outside of worlds. You never really know what’s real. And while there are some awesome twists, I might have enjoyed the confusing, ridiculous ride more than the beginning and end points that anchor the story. Another fun fact is that this came out around the same time as The Matrix, another amazing yet very different movie about technology and constructed realities. Makes sense that this one wasn’t as popular, but it’s fun to think of eXistenZ as The Matrix’s nastier evil twin. Anyway, there are guns made out of teeth, people licking each other’s spine holes, and Willem Dafoe as a spine installer dude named “Gas.” You should watch it!

(Singer/songwriter Mica Tenenbaum is one-half of the Los Angeles-based electro-pop duo Magdalena Bay, alongside her producer/partner Matthew Lewin. The duo’s acclaimed debut album, 2021’s Mercurial World, was recently re-released as a 28-track deluxe edition with a radically altered and expanded tracklist.)

MOVIE

It seems that there weren’t many who didn’t watch Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates during 2020/21 if you consider the sudden new burst of references to it in music videos and flm over the past couple of years. I was also one of the many who came across it on the BFI Player during the frst lockdown of 2020 and was utterly dumbfounded by its sheer scale and beauty.

LUCY DACUS on The Fall

(2006, directed by Tarsem Singh)

As Told to Mark Moody

Ifelt like I should say Citizen Kane or 8 1/2, but I’m actually going to go with The Fall, which is a movie by the Indian director Tarsem Singh that came out in 2006. Just because it’s a movie I would watch over and over and over. I think it’s really that good and a lot of people haven’t seen it. Lee Pace is in it along with this fve-year-old Romanian girl, Catinca Untaru. Pace plays a stunt double in the 1910s and gets injured. He ends up in the same hospital with the girl who broke her arm picking oranges with her family.

It’s a beautiful flm. Basically the two of them strike up a friendship and he tells her a story. So it goes from the hospital to the story and you start to see parallels between the story he is telling and his own life. And the girl gets so wrapped up in the story. Honestly, she ends up being the star of the movie.

It’s just beautiful storytelling and the type of story that I feel like I like to tell too. Which is coming from the space of depression, pain, or loss. Basically, you can buoy yourself out of that by reentering the social fabric and caring about other people. All of the locations are fantastic and they aren’t CGI. They shot in 18 different countries and it’s defnitely just this lush, lush movie.

The story, the settings, the performances—it’s just all perfect. I went to flm school myself, but ultimately dropped out. But I still feel like I think cinematically, even through everyday life. So it makes sense that some of my own songs are really long, because I can’t ft the story into a shorter song. It’s not because I set out to write long songs where I don’t quickly get to the point, they just have to be done the way they are done.

(Lucy Dacus is a singer/songwriter from Richmond, VA. Her most recent album, Home Video, came out in 2021 via Matador. In 2018 she teamed up with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers as the supergroup boygenius and they released a self-titled EP. Portions of Dacus’ conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

GWENNO on The Color of Pomegranates (1969, directed by Sergei Parajanov)

Words by Gwenno Saunders

I had watched Parajanov’s Ukrainian international hit Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors many times as a child, mesmerized by its folkloric imagery and music, even though I was missing a vital piece of the flm—its color, due to only having a small black & white TV to watch it on. But despite that, its impact was huge and it stayed with me, and it was wonderful to delve deeper into Parajanov’s work with The Color of Pomegranates celebrating the inner-life of 17th Century Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat-Nova.

The flm’s opening shot of an ancient manuscript and the narrator’s voice announcing that—“This flm does not attempt to tell the life story of a poet. Rather, the flmmaker has tried to recreate the poet’s inner world.”—sets the tone. This isn’t flm with traditional dialogue or narrative. It’s a series of frescos, a bombardment of imagery that would take years to dissect. Parajanov is a flmmaker who wants to tell the story of the ordinary people of Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia—his people,

through their stories, poetry, spiritual beliefs, and music. His flms are so culturally rich and full of life that you can almost taste and smell them jumping out of the screen. It’s incredible to think that he managed to make them under Soviet rule, with such strict restrictions on the types of flms that were allowed to be made. The Color of Pomegranates veers so far from the Soviet Authorities’ imposed “social realism only” policy at the time, and Parajanov was imprisoned on several occasions on questionable grounds.

The Color of Pomegranates embodies the great philosophy of flm as art, as poetry—flm in its purest form. A visual journey of moving picture and sound, transporting its viewer and transcending them through time. Expressing the dream state and the “inner-world” of not only Sayat-Nova but of Parajanov too, a perfect pairing of two souls who collected every last morsel of the artistic and cultural expression around them and transformed it into something so undeniably true-to-life as to be utterly magical.

Sergei Parajanov is a flmmaker for our time. With the rise of regressive politics, imperialism, and dictatorships, his work and life is a reminder that the greatest act of defance is to celebrate ordinary people, to place the highest value of all on life, and to do that through art.

(Gwenno is a Welsh singer/songwriter/musician who also releases music in the Cornish language and got her start in the indie-pop band The Pipettes. Her most recent album, Tresor, was shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize and is out now on Heavenly.)

Words by Mica Tenenbaum | Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern

Mica Tenenbaum of MAGDALENA BAY on eXistenZ (1999, directed by David Cronenberg)

Lucy Dacus photo by Erin Soorenko. Gwenno photo by Claire Marie Bailey.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

SUFJAN STEVENS

on Immersion in and Obsession with (Horror) Films

No Distractions

Words by Jake Uitti

n

The Grammy Award-nominated 47-yearold songwriter, Sufjan Stevens, says he has a fxation with flms. Yet, even more than most, Stevens can take that love of movies to another level. Stevens, who in 2021 released an entire record he co-wrote with fellow musician Angelo De Augustine called A Beginner’s Mind, inspired almost entirely by more than a dozen movies, can become subsumed by them. It’s as if the light emanates from the screen and both pulls in and melds with his eyes and ears and entire body.

“It’s such a full-on immersive experience,” says Stevens. “I think that’s where we go to lose ourselves and enter into another world and become infused with the world completely and entirely. It’s really a beautiful and full-on visceral, tactile experience.”

The, shall we call it, falling into the flm that Stevens feels happens both in a traditional, darkened theater and while at home with the shades drawn. In fact, that’s an important aspect either way: to allow yourself to experience the movie distraction-less, he explains. Due to the nature of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, to go to the movie theater was for a time either a rare or nonexistent reality. So, Stevens knows well the aim to watch a movie and the need to then put

away all phones. To be, as they say, in the current moment.

“When you go to the theater,” he says, “you’re fully present and entrenched. The full presence of mind, body, and soul is what makes it all so exciting.”

Stevens says that flms, in general, resonated early on in his childhood. He connected to them as a youngster, for all their moving parts. But it really all began with a certain genre: horror movies. That, combined with a lax babysitter, brought on the wave. Later in life, Stevens and his father would watch horror ficks together. Not slasher movies, he underscores. That was below the water level, so to speak. Not those more senseless movies where the “helpless woman is running away from the man with the knife.” Those

didn’t make the cut. Stevens has a little bit of discretion, he notes.

“I was more into the supernatural,” Stevens says, “the psychological or the science fction, fantasy realm. I’ve always been into those flms, for better or for worse. I’ve watched them all.”

For Stevens, though, his appreciations for movies began with The Exorcist at a probably all-too-young-age. He says he was about fve or six years old when he saw the 1973 classic. For those unaware, The Exorcist is about a young girl in a college town who gets possessed by a demon. Multiple priests try to exhume the devilish spirit from her. In the end, the girl lives, but not without changing everyone around her (including a few deaths). Thanks to his laid-back guardian on a random night, Stevens was in, crucifx-lineand-sinker.

“It was the result of an irresponsible babysitter,” Stevens says, “who wasn’t thinking this was inappropriate. And because the babysitter watched it, I watched it, and I loved it. It didn’t give me nightmares; I thought about it for days.”

From that formative night at home with a very chill babysitter and no parents to deride the decision to put on a scary movie, Stevens has since found an inspirational, titillating object of his creative passions, both outside and intertwined with music.

“That started an obsession,” he says.

Sufjan Stevens photo by Evans Richardson.

“Because the babysitter watched [The Exorcist], I watched it, and I loved it. It didn’t give me nightmares; I thought about it for days.”

MOVIE

TIM BURGESS of THE CHARLATANS on The Worst Person in the World (2021, directed by Joachim Trier)

As Told to Matt Conner n

I’ve had many, many favorite flms throughout my life. Once Upon a Time in America. Jaws. The Exorcist Lost Highway Blue Velvet The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But the flm I’m going to choose is The Worst Person in the World.

My friend saw it in Los Angeles and she said it was a fantastic flm and that I should see it. I went to see it in London, but I got a phone call halfway through that meant I had to leave. It was really important and kind of upsetting. A couple of days later, I went to watch it again, so I’ve seen it one-and-a-half times.

I like it a lot because it’s modern. It’s a tale about love and life and loss and the things you have to do to get through life. She’s a photographer who met somebody and that fell apart. She met somebody else and had an affair. It was just a wonderful portrayal of life, really. I loved it.

(Tim Burgess, best known as the frontman for The Charlatans, recently released his sixth solo album, Typical Music, via Bella Union.)

James Krivchenia of BIG THIEF

on Memoria (2021, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

As Told to Jasper Willems

One of my favorite flms right now Memoria, which is by this director whose name is super hard to pronounce as an English speaking American [Apichatpong Weerasethakul]. I was a huge fan of other movies of his; this one had Tilda Swinton in it, and it was his frst non-Thai movie, and it just happened to be playing the day before I left on this tour. And it was so amazing. One of the main characters in the flm is this sound that one of the characters is hearing, that only exists in her head. It’s a lot of things, but in the broadest sense, it’s this echo from the past invading her consciousness. There are so many amazing things about it: the flm talks about memory, loss, and technology. It’s really beautiful, and it’s got this really beautiful pacing too.

This director has a lot of scenes in his movies where you watch and be like, “I’ve never seen that.” There’s this once scene where Tilda Swinton’s character is with an audio engineer in a studio, trying to explain the sound. And he’s trying to make it. It’s like very long, like 15 minutes. It’s basically a scene about using plug-ins! It’s somehow completely riveting, almost suspenseful. Because they’re both listening to it; at one point the engineer shows a bunch of movie sound effects, asking her, “Is it something like this?” And they end up looping it and it becomes to this really loud thunderous sound: it sounds like a Hollywood stomach punch mixed with a gunshot. You just watch them sculpting it, like technology recreating some sort of supernatural phenomenon. It’s bizarre…. It’s a really cool movie and I kept thinking about it this past few weeks.

(James Krivchenia is the drummer in Big Thief. The New York band’s most recent album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, was released earlier this year via 4AD. This year, Krivchenia also released an experimental solo album, Blood Karaoke, via Reading Group. Portions of Krivchenia’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

Tim Burgess photo by Cat Stevens. Big Thief photo by Alexa Viscius.

Louis O’Bryen of SORRY on Pig

(2021, directed by Michael Sarnoski) n

Words by Louis O’Bryen

This might seem like a weird choice, and in many ways it is, but something about this movie has stuck with me for many months after watching it. I love war movies like Apocalypse Now or The Deer Hunter, they stir something in me. I also love Ryan Gosling in Drive. Asha [Lorenz] (my colleague in Sorry and bff) has a more acquired taste and loves Gaspar Noé, especially Enter the Void, and when younger Requiem for a Dream. I remember being 13/14 and fnding it very cool and kinda weird that she, from such an early age, liked stuff as intriguing and complex as those movies, and then in turn taught me to be open to that leftfeld side of culture. When you as a young human discover stuff as powerful as those aforementioned movies it has a big impact on the art you like and then the art you make. As you grow older it opens your mind to a different side of the world, it’s crucial. So I should probably choose a movie important to us, but instead I’m choosing Pig, which is Nicolas Cage playing the character Liam Neeson plays in Taken, but instead of Liam Neeson it’s Nicolas Cage and instead of his daughter being kidnapped it’s his pig. It’s weird and I love it, and that’s just how I feel.

Nicolas Cage is an interesting man. He carefully plays the line between a credible actor and a bit of a meme. That’s not an insult, I think there’s power in owning the path the world has created for you, and I feel Nicolas owns it perfectly, he knows

it as well. He is quite Sorry in a way, classics-focused but internet-weary, or internet-aware. In this movie he plays a character who hates the world, for good reason—he lost his wife, and now it’s just him and his pig against said world. Nicolas is grieving and he loves his pig, it’s simple, but nuanced and basically kinda funny. The relationship between him and his pig is very intimate, almost uncomfortably intimate, almost Mr. Hands-esque intimate (don’t check that reference). They share a cabin in the woods away from civilization and spend their days hunting for truffes, just a man and his pig— innocent, simple but it’s true love, and as heartbreaking as this is, Nicolas loses his pig. Some of the other characters in this movie are super annoying and badly cast, I won’t give too much away, but Nicolas Cage holds it down.

In all seriousness this flm is clever, witty (in a way it might not mean to be), it’s surreal and I recommend it. Movies on a whole are incredibly inspiring for us; moments, emotions, or lines can stick and create a song. Pig has yet to creep its way into our music but our next album after Anywhere But Here might be all about them! Stay tuned! “Have you seen my pig?” He’s actually grieving his wife. Genius.

(Sorry is a British post-punk band from London led by Louis O’Bryen and Asha Lorenz. The band’s second album, Anywhere But Here, was just released by Domino. Sorry’s lineup is rounded out by Lincoln Barrett, Campbell Baum, and Marco Pini.)

SHAMIR on Mistress America

(2015, directed by Noah Baumbach) n

As Told to Mark Moody

Mistress America is defnitely in my top fve movies. I’ve probably seen it 10 times and most recently watched it with my aunt and sister over the holidays in 2020. It’s similar to a lot of [co-screenwriter/director] Noah Baumbach and [co-screenwriter] Greta Gerwig flms, but I feel it’s one of the more underrated ones. The dialogue reminds me of a 1940s or 1950s flm with how fast paced it is, and I love that about it.

I lived in New York [where the flm is set] for about three months to record my debut album, Ratchet, before I moved to Philly. I lived in Brooklyn and I just came across so many people, specifcally women, but not necessarily gender-specifc, that reminded me of Greta’s character [Brooke]. And I was also the same age as Lola Kirke’s character [Tracy]. Those were my college years, but instead of going to college I was becoming a pop star. I remember looking up to beautiful messes, kind of like one of Greta’s characters. She’s a mess, but also bold. I felt like I could aspire to be like that, but in a more contained way. When I let people know about all the plates that I’m spinning, people are always in shock. It may be a little worrying, but I swear to people that it’s not overwhelming and that I’m actually getting things done. [In the movie, Brooke is pursuing multiple business ideas including opening a restaurant and a T-shirt business.] I don’t think I’m the most organized person, but I’m good with time management and completing

things. I think that’s always the biggest thing, like Greta in the movie. It’s not about having an idea or even starting it, but completing it before you go on to the next thing. I just love the relationship and vibe between Greta’s character and Lola’s character. It just feels so real to me. New York is a place where you can always be inspired. So many amazing things have been inspired by New York and that’s where my respect comes from. For me personally, it’s hard to be inspired by New York when I’m there because I’m simply overwhelmed. You don’t even have time to be inspired, but in relation to Mistress America it makes sense. There are the types of people you only get in New York. It’s not going to happen in L.A. There are still people hustling and bustling, but they are more nonchalant about it.

Basically, long story short, I love the movie. And I feel like I have continued to grow with the movie. When I frst watched it I felt like Lola’s character. Now that I’m getting older, I feel more like Greta’s character, but not as much of an ass. I hope not!

(Shamir is a non-binary singer/ songwriter originally from Las Vegas, Nevada. Shamir’s 2015released debut album, Rachet, was fueled by the iconic single “On the Regular.” Since then, Shamir has been prolifc, releasing eight albums in total, the most recent being 2022’s Hetrosexuality. Portions of Shamir’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

Sorry photo by Peter Eason Daniels. Shamir photo by Marcus Maddox.

Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr. of KHRUANGBIN on Beverly Hills Cop

(1984,

directed by Martin Brest)

Words by Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr.

When I got the call to contribute to this, I jumped at the opportunity. I said to myself, “This will be easy; a lay-up!” I was wrong. I did not anticipate having to put serious thought into this endeavor. There are a few movies that I could’ve gone to for this (honorable mentions being Coming to America and The Devil Wears Prada), but when I contemplated my overall enjoyment, and personal impact of a flm, Beverly Hills Cop swiftly reached the top of my list.

This classic is set in 1980s Detroit and Los Angeles. Undercover police offcer Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) goes rogue and uses his vacation time to investigate the murder of a childhood friend, which leads him to Los Angeles. Once there, he enlists the help of childhood friend Jenny Summers (Lisa Eilbacher), who is employed at an art gallery owned by Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff). *SPOILER ALERT* The art gallery turns out to be a front for a drug smuggling operation, which Axel and his newfound friends at the LAPD, Sgt. Taggart (John Ashton) and Det. Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), help uncover. The entire thing ends in a tense, bloody hostage shootout in the LA mansion of “art dealer” Victor Maitland.

As a kid (why was I watching this as a child?), I loved this movie, and growing into adulthood, it still holds up as a great flm. At the time, movies were a window into other parts of the world that I had not yet visited. Director Martin Brest captures the vibe and essence of both the blue-collar grit of Detroit, MI, and the fashionable glitz and glamour

of 1984 Los Angeles, CA.

The kicker that pushes Beverly Hills Cop over the edge to claim the title of my favorite movie is the soundtrack. The movie opens with an incredible stunt of Axel Foley attempting to make an undercover bust, and being caught in a medium-speed chase through the streets of Detroit hanging from the back of an 18-wheeler transporting cartons of stolen cigarettes, all set to the pulse of The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance.”

From there, the soundtrack is taken over by the brilliance of German composer Harold Faltermeyer. The theme, “Axel F,” is easily one of the most recogniz able synth melodies in movie music history. He plays on variations of this theme throughout the flm, creating moods and setting the tone from scene to scene. My personal favorite variation is “The Discovery,” from a scene in which Axel and Jenny break into one of Maitland’s warehouses to fnd crates of coffee grounds, with several bags of “sugar” hidden underneath. Unknowingly, these themes laid a foundation for my education in music and composition. In my opinion, it’s one of the most well executed flm/ soundtrack combinations to date.

(Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr. is the drummer in Khruangbin. The Houston, Texas psych-rock trio also features Laura Lee on bass and Mark Speer on guitar. Their most recent album, Ali, is a collaboration with Malian singer/ guitarist Vieux Farka Touré and was released in September via Dead Oceans. Earlier in 2022 they also released Texas Moon, the second of two collaborative EPs with Leon Bridges. Their last regular studio album was 2020’s Mordechai )

MOVIE

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DAVE ROWNTREE of BLUR on Sleuth (1972, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

Words by Dave Rowntree n

At frst sight the flm’s plot seems fendishly simple. Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) invites Milo Tindle (Michael Caine) to his country house to talk about Andrew’s wife Marguerite—a woman with whom both men are sleeping. Wyke proposes a solution that he says will give all three parties what they want.

What follows is a series of mind-boggling plot twists and turns, each of which causes you to completely re-evaluate everything you’ve seen so far. Caine and Olivier are both at the peak of their powers, and I can’t describe the joy with which they both slowly expose their characters prejudices and conceits. They clearly love working together.

Many interviews

these days involve talking about my favorite this or that. But the truth is, I don’t really have lists of favorite things. In the early days of Blur, bass player Alex [James] memorized the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He was able to rattle off a pithy line about pretty much any topic a journalist fancied. I should have done the same with favorites lists. It would have saved me any number of awkward opening paragraphs…

But I do have flms I love—flms that I’ve watched again and again. They’re comfort flms, where I can retreat from the chaos of life into the predictable and the familiar. My frst of these was the thriller Sleuth—the 1972 version, not the 2007 remake. I probably saw it on TV when I was about 10 years old, and must have seen it a hundred times since.

The score by the extraordinary composer John Addison manages to be both nostalgic and modern, setting the scene perfectly for a British country house thriller. It earned him one of the flm’s four Oscar nominations, as well as four from the BAFTAs and three from the Golden Globes.

It’s not a popular flm these days, so you may struggle to fnd it on your streaming service. You can see it on YouTube, or at a push buy it on DVD from Amazon. I promise you it’s worth it!

(Dave Rowntree is the drummer, and a founding member, of the iconic Britpop band Blur. One of the most important British bands of the 1990s, they have released nine albums, stretching from 1991’s Leisure to 2015’s The Magic Whip. In January 2023, Rowntree is releasing his debut solo album, RADIO SONGS, via Cooking Vinyl. Leo Abrahams produced the album.)

John Rossiter of YOUNG JESUS on The Matrix (1999, directed by The Wachowskis)

Words by John Rossiter

My

favorite movie is The Matrix Specifcally I love the scenes where:

1. Morpheus breaks free of his chains while Neo and Trinity are waiting in a helicopter outside the window.

2. Because of Love, Neo stops bullets and says, “No.”

There is something extremely goofy about The Matrix. Some performances are very strange. Some choices are super uncomfortable. But I love that it tries and fails. There’s a lot of beautiful art that is extremely controlled, meticulously crafted, and expresses some truths about the beauty or nastiness or

n

weirdness of the world. I’m thinking of Andrei Tarkovsky or Michael Haneke. And there’s some art that lets beauty in through the cracks, through the mistakes, creating a space for life to sneak in. But I think there is something specifcally Midwestern about The Matrix in that it is so completely sincere in its desire to Change Your Life with Big Ideas. I grew up in Glencoe, Illinois, north of Chicago, and I deeply relate to this. For a sensitive and strange kid in the Midwest, I’ve never had the cool remove of the fne artists. But I do have sincerity and I do sincerely believe in the need to say what’s in my heart. The trick of The Matrix is that it could fail, but it has something very few flms have: belief. Not in an organized religion sense, but in the sense of a deep connective feld that holds us together. And that’s the glue that bonds Morpheus and Trinity and Neo in the flm. That’s how Morpheus breaks free. And, through Trinity’s belief, Neo can rise again. If you believe, you can create something that, in trying and failing and trying and ultimately succeeding, expresses something closer to what we really are: messy beings looking for something greater than ourselves, fucking up along the way.

(John Rossiter is the main creative force behind Young Jesus. The band formed in Chicago in 2009. Young Jesus’ sixth album, Shepherd Head, was released in September by Saddle Creek. The album’s lead single, “Ocean,” features guest vocals from labelmate Tomberlin.)

Khruangbin photo by Pooneh Ghana. Dave Rountree photo by Paul Postle. Young Jesus photo by Brit Marling.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

John Lithgow in The Old Man

JOHN LITHGOW on His Favorite Roles

Direct Direction

Words by Kyle Mullin

What is John Lithgow’s favorite role, among the eclectic 60-plus movies he’s been in since the 1970s? Action fans would advocate for his scenery scarfng villains in Ricochet and Cliffhanger (which were less nuanced than his current nebulously intentioned antagonist on the FX TV drama The Old Man). Millions of children grew up hearing him voice Lord Farquaad in Shrek. Not forgetting Footloose, Harry and the Hendersons, Interstellar, and TV’s 3rd Rock from the Sun. And of course there’s his aheadof-its-time and Oscar nominated portrayal of transgender character Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp in 1982.

Aside from ranking high among many movie buffs, and being one of his most memorable experiences as a flm actor, Garp also helped Lithgow realize his preference for being directed. The 1982 movie, partially about a famous feminist author who founds a center for marginalized women, was helmed by George Roy Hill. The director—of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting fame—tasked Lithgow, stars Robin Williams and Glenn Close, and the rest of the cast with rehearsing for an above-andbeyond two weeks. Lithgow says that was more in line with a play, which suited him fne, considering his extensive Broadway background before breaking into flm. Lithgow also equates that rehearsal process with another medium. “That was George’s mode—to do the work before shooting even starts. Like a 1950s live television director, which is how he started,” says Lithgow.

Hill was also old-school in other ways. During his frst day on the Garp set—after two weeks of rehearsing in drag and doing all he could to become Roberta Muldoon—Lithgow began a famous scene where he is tied to a tree, pretending to be a damsel in distress while playing with children. “I was just mincing and camping it up. And at the end of our long day of shooting I asked George: ‘I don’t know. Rehearsing was one thing, but in front of the camera, I worry: was I excessive? Was it okay?’”

To which Hill replied: “I’m glad you brought that up.”

Lithgow’s heart sank into his stomach, and his face went white. “Then George roared with laughter, and said: ‘It was fne! If there’s something wrong, I’ll be sure to tell ya.’ I swear to God, that was the last

thing he said to me,” Lithgow recalls.

During an earlier conversation, Lithgow asked Hill a convoluted question about directing. Before he could fnish, Hill cut Lithgow off and explained: “‘Directing a flm is three things. The script. The casting. And the execution. That’s it.’”

That gruff confdence was the exact reassurance Lithgow needed. Because flm sets can be so chaotic, a director who communicates clearly can instil order, says the actor. “The best directors I’ve worked for, they don’t say much, but every word they say is what you needed to hear. You can put it to work.”

And while he thoroughly enjoyed working with Hill on that flm, Lithgow names another as the best he has worked on: one that came out a year after Garp, 1983’s Terms of Endearment. A dramedy directed by James L. Brooks, Terms depicted the complicated relationship between Aurora Greenway (played by Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger). Lithgow joined a deep bench supporting cast that included Danny DeVito, Jeff Daniels, and Jack Nicholson, the latter of whom he was nominated alongside for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Nicholson won (and the flm won Best Picture), but Lithgow couldn’t be happier with the results to this day, calling Terms of Endearment “the perfect family drama, that just deeply, deeply moves you. I mean, it’s the greatest demonstration of how a movie can break your heart.”

But when it comes to his favorite movie, purely as a viewer, Lithgow has diffculty narrowing the choice to one. Instead, he chooses an era: the 1970s. “A decade where I mostly worked onstage, not doing flms” that nevertheless saw many of his favorite ficks released, says Lithgow. From The Godfather flms to Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Raging Bull and Mean Streets, there was no shortage of classics in that period, he says. What’s more: that decade also saw Lithgow begin his pivot from stage to screen, and “two out of the three times I worked for Brian De Palma were in the ’70s,” he recalls of Obsession and Blow Out (the latter was released in 1981).

“You can’t even pick one of them. That’s a whole bunch of flms I’ve just rattled off,” Lithgow says with a laugh. “But you know that phrase ‘They don’t make ‘em like that anymore?’ It really does apply to the 1970s.”

Tessa Murray of STILL CORNERS on Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, directed by Peter Weir)

nWords by Tessa Murray n

My all-time favorite flm has to be Picnic at Hanging Rock, directed by Peter Weir. It’s a lean flm that’s mesmerizing and hallucinatory. I only have to listen to the frst few notes of the title theme and I’m transported to the hazy desert, wearing a Victorian smock dress and holding a parasol.

The flm tells the tale of a girl’s boarding school day trip that goes terribly wrong when three of the girls and a teacher vanish at Hanging Rock, a geological outcropping near the school. There’s not a huge amount of action in the flm, instead Weir creates a force you feel while watching. As the flm progresses you’re pulled in by this magnetism and enveloped by the heat and languorousness of an Australian afternoon. There’s a lovely juxtaposition of the girls pristinely dressed in white dresses and black boots against the primitive natural world all around them. We see lizards, birds, and fowers fourishing alongside the imposing rocks and countryside. It’s like the two worlds are living in parallel, or maybe the girls are encroaching on something deep and foreboding that should be left alone.

Few clues are offered as to what has happened to them. Even when one of the girls is found alive after a week in the bush, we learn little more about the mysterious disappearance. Maybe that’s the best thing about the flm, the questions that are left unanswered. What happened to them? They were never found. Where did they go? Maybe the rocks swallowed them whole. There’s this idea running through the flm that the land is mysterious and holds great power and it is not something the mind can completely process. You’re safe if you stay at home but if you wander outside you might just disappear forever.

The atmosphere of Picnic at Hanging Rock has long permeated our work. It reminds us that in a world where it feels like all the corners of the map are flled in, we need to keep looking beyond. We took inspiration from the flm for “The Last Exit” video where Greg flmed me being pulled into the mysterious rocks of Joshua Tree. I can’t imagine making an album that is not in part infuenced by the atmosphere of Picnic. It’s that powerful.

(Tessa Murray is the lead singer of the British/ American dream pop band Still Corners, alongside her partner, multi-instrumentalist/producer Greg Hughes. The duo’s most recent album is 2021’s The Last Exit, released on their own Wrecking Light label.)

John Lithgow photo by Kurt Iswarienko/FX. Still corners photo by Bernard Bur.

MOVIE

Alexis Taylor of HOT CHIP on The Producers (1969, directed by Mel Brooks)

Ithink I watched it as a teenager at home. My stepdad really liked it and introduced it to me. Maybe rented it from the video shop. I was hysterical (to quote the flm) on watching it the frst time.

The opening scene of this flm is just something I could watch forever. The script and the interplay between Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, and the way the scene gets more and more intense and funny, and wild and hysterical, is something that I just love. I fnd myself quoting Zero Mostel a lot. His asides such as “I’m wearing a cardboard belt,” for instance.

I really like the music. I used to

often play the song “Love Power” in DJ sets at university. I think that track is a prototype for the sound of the Washington, D.C. band The Make-Up, who I love.

(Hot Chip are a British alternative dance band that released their debut album, Coming on Strong, in 2004. The band’s most recent album, Freakout/Release, came out in August via Domino. Taylor has also released several solo albums, the most recent being 2021’s Silence. Hot Chip’s lineup also features Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle, and Felix Martin. Portions of Taylor’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

The 1980s were a golden age in regards to amazing real life musicians showing up as themselves on the silver screen. We’re talking scenes where fctional characters are in a club or at a concert and in the background some buzz-worthy musician is performing. Such performances are often superfuous to the plot, but add atmosphere to a scene or allow a director to show off his or her hip musical tastes. We have combed through decades of movie clips to highlight the 30 performances that were most iconic. To be clear, this isn’t about scenes featuring fctional bands or moments from music documentaries. This is a young Madonna performing “Crazy For You” as Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino dance for the frst time in Vision Quest Wilson Phillips singing “Hold On” at the wedding at the end of Bridesmaids while the cast mime along. David Hemmings wandering into a chaotic concert by The Yardbirds in swinging ’60s London in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. An Old West version of ZZ Top in Back to the Future Part III. And Oingo Boingo performing “Dead Man’s Party” at a college party in Back to School By Mark Redern

1. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in Wings of Desire (1987)

Nick Cave’s appearance with his then new band, The Bad Seeds, in Wim Wender’s poetic meditation on what it means to be human, set against the landscape of a divided city that itself epitomized our best and worst selves—is so simpatico between director and rock star, that it’s at the very crux of the flm’s action. The scene takes place at a concert after the angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) has relinquished his wings—a moment marked in the flm by going from monochrome to color Shot initially with no dialogue or script, Wenders, inspired by the angels in Rainer Maria Rilka’s poetry, wanted the city of Berlin rather than any heavy-handed plot to inform the flm. Cave, the personifcation of Berlin’s artistic underground at the time, belts the well-suited “From Her to Eternity” as the fallen angel encounters his true love for the frst time, as a mortal. (Wings of Desire is available on Blu-ray and DVD via The Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com.)

directed by

Nichols)

Ijust watched it because my best friend heard about it. The person who wrote it, Elaine May, I’m more familiar with. She’s done A New Leaf and some other great things. I haven’t watched too many of her flms, but she seems very cool and I like all the stuff that she’s done—the one’s I’ve seen at least. I was also familiar with a lot of the cast.

It’s just so funny to me. Humor is so important to me. If a movie makes me laugh, I’ll love it. I saw Jackass Forever when it came out, and it made me laugh so hard. I don’t remember laughing that hard in a movie theater in a long time. When I watched The Birdcage, I actually had pneumonia. I just randomly put it on and my best friend and I watched it together and laughed a whole bunch. It really saved me when I was dying from my lungs trying to kill itself.

It’s so full of good moments. One thing I always fnd funny is how the senator loves candy. I thought that was such an Elaine

May-specifc detail to put in a character. He’s always obsessed with candy. And also that he loves Nathan Lane’s character as a woman. I just thought that was so funny and a great thing to put in what’s supposed to be a stoic, conservative character.

On my Letterboxd, I wrote that it has “Disney Channel original movie vibes, indie cult movie vibes but with some classic actors at their fnest, and a lot of funny, quirky little character details.” The soundtrack is great. Stephen Sondheim did a couple songs for it. The set design is cool too and the colors are great. I think the poster is so weird. It doesn’t seem very ftting. It looks like a mid-2000s hotel comedy. That’s what I originally thought it was going to be, but I was totally wrong.

(Oronco is the singer in the indie-pop band Superorganism, which formed in London in 2017. The band’s lineup also features Harry, Tucan, B, and Soul and they released their sophomore album, World Wide Pop, in July via Domino.)

By Celine Teo-Blockey

2. Bauhaus in The Hunger (1983)

Tony Scott’s feature length directorial debut, The Hunger, is a cult, gothic horror flm starring the incomparable David Bowie as longtime companion of the equally iconic, Catherine Deneuve—a vampire who can grant her lovers eternal life but not eternal youth. The opening sequence is a studied exercise in ’80s horror cinema: macabre yet sleek. “Bela Lugosi’s dead,” drones Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy as the band performs the song of the same name while the über sexy vampires move in for their erotic, double kill, climaxing with blood-curdling monkey shrieks. The flm begins magnifcently, pity about its clumsy ending. Still, as key goth progenitors would cite Bowie’s “Starman” as the moment they took up their mantle, this opening scene would go down in history as giving name and shape to the new genre. By Celine Teo-Blockey

3. The Rave-Ups in Pretty in Pink (1986) We know the best musical performance in Pretty in Pink is actually Jon Cryer doing Otis Redding, but if we can all agree to eliminate obvious lip-synchers that top spot goes to L.A.-by-way-of-Pittsburgh rockers The Rave-Ups. Introduced to John Hughes by superfan Molly Ringwald, they were selected to perform two songs as the background to Andie, Blane, Duckie, and Iona’s outing at a club. Although the band never blew up like expected, their appearance in this core Brat Pack picture carved them out a little piece of ’80s immortality. By Austin Trunick

4. Siouxsie & The Banshees in Out of Bounds (1986) Nevermind that the movie itself is a real turkey, Out of Bounds features some great music. When Anthony Michael Hall unconvincingly turns into a Charles Bronson character to hunt down the drug lord who murdered his brother, his quest for vengeance takes him through some of L.A.’s hippest New Wave clubs, where we’re treated to a vintage performance of Siouxsie’s gothy pop hit “Cities in Dust” inside the famed and long-defunct Dirt Box pop-up music venue. By Austin Trunick

5. The Feelies in Something Wild (1986) The house band never gets any respect. Though appearing in damn near every second of the flm’s 10-minute long high school reunion scene, The Feelies didn’t manage to make it onto Something Wild’s offcial soundtrack. It’s no matter though as the extended scene really needs to be viewed not just heard. The band plays covers of The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” and David Bowie’s “Fame.” The latter of which fnds Jeff Daniels hilariously copping moves and busting them out on the dance foor with Melanie Griffth. But the movie’s indelible moment comes when the then little known Ray Liotta makes his frst appearance on the screen to the beginning notes of the band’s own “Loveless Love.” By Mark Moody

6. David Bowie in Christiane F (1981), 7. Madonna in Vision Quest (1985), 8. The Yardbirds in Blow Up (1966), 9. Wilson Phillips in Bridesmaids (2011), 10. Alice In Chains in Singles (1992), 11. 5.6.7.8’s in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), 12. Oingo Boingo in Back to School (1986), 13. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult in The Crow (1994), 14. Jonathan Richman in There’s Something About Mary (1998), 15. Lou Reed in Faraway So Close (1993), 16. ZZ Top in Back to the Future Part III (1990), 17. Franz Ferdinand in 9 Songs (2004), 18. The Plimsouls in Valley Girl (1983), 19. Aerosmith in Wayne’s World 2

Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire (Courtesy of The Criterion Collection) Hot Chip photo by

MOVIE

ERIC APPEL ON DIRECTING WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY

Deconstructing Biopic Tropes

Words by Kyle Mullin

Of course song-parody master “Weird Al” Yankovic wouldn’t be interested in a normal biopic. He instead satirizes biopic tropes with Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, mainly (but not only) by casting Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, despite the Harry Potter star’s lack of resemblance to the accordion wielding comedic musician behind hit spoofs such as “Like a Surgeon” and “Eat It.” Yankovic co-wrote the Roku Channel movie with director Eric Appel, with whom he’s been friends since the latter made a faux biopic trailer about a clichéd hard partying, hard rocking Weird Al for Funny Or Die in 2010.

So what does the director think of some of the biggest flms of the genre he and Yankovic are skewering? One that isn’t deserving of such barbs, according to Appel: Behind the Candelabra. During a recent Zoom interview the Weird director eagerly sang the praises of that critically acclaimed, Michael Douglas starring Liberace biopic, but couldn’t resist making one joke: “The opulent mansion that Weird Al moves into in our movie is very Liberace.” How about I’m Not There, in which Cate Blanchett pulls off the unlikely feat of portraying Bob Dylan? Appel admits to not seeing it, before quipping: “That’s as unconventional a biopic casting choice as you can make. Daniel as Al and Cate as Dylan—they’re neck and neck.”

It was another recent biopic, one that won four Oscars, including Best Actor, that helped motivate the making of Weird. “Bohemian Rhapsody was a big part of what inspired Al to approach me about turning our old fake biopic trailer into a real movie,” says Appel. “It played so fast and lose with the facts, and defnitely inspired our fudging of facts in Weird.”

The true muse for this project, however, might surprise fans. When Appel saw the hip-hop biopic Notorious in 2009 he was surprised that the rapper The Notorious B.I.G. was getting such a cinematic treatment just over a decade after his death (Appel now laughs at how quick the turnaround between events and biopics can take place). All that, and the controversies about Notorious’ inaccuracies, inspired Appel’s then latest Funny Or Die project: a trailer for a Weird Al biopic even though he was still alive, and that was 100 percent falsely salacious, instead of living up to Yankovic’s famous Behind the Music quote that he lives a life that is “controversy free.” After securing Yankovic’s email from Funny Or Die cohort Patton Oswalt, a friend of the music spoofer, Appel asked for his blessing. To his delight, Yankovic eagerly replied in no time and asked to meet up and be involved. Over coffee they watched biopic trailers, laughing at the clichés and mapping out what they’d lampoon in the would-be viral video that eponymously starred Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul.

Yankovic played the short flm during costume changes at his concerts for years, and contended with fans approaching him to ask when he was fnally going to release such a movie. He was certain the concept could only sustain a short trailer, and didn’t want to go through with an actual flm that would belabor the joke.

The ongoing fan enthusiasm, and the equally ceaseless popularity of factually dubious biopics, led Yankovic to change his mind. He and Appel wrote the movie just before the pandemic, and assumed it would be a slam dunk with studios, only to be surprised that none of those companies were interested on their round of pitching. Radcliffe, a lifelong Yankovic fan, was keen to take on the role, however. Appel says the star and his castmates are key to the flm’s success because they under stand the necessity of “leaning into the drama, giving grounded performances, and not winking at the camera,” which the director says makes the flm truly funny, and a hit with critics and audiences at its Toronto Film Festival premiere. Upon nailing those nuances and earning those raves, streaming service Roku was not merely pleased with the results. Appel says: “They were kind of like, ‘Wow, we didn’t realize what this could be.’ Because it’s not real spoofy, like Scary Movie or Nake Gun. Al and I intended all along to make it more interesting than that—and now I’m happy to see that that’s resonating with critics and audiences.”

n Photo courtesy of Roku (L to R: Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey and Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story)

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

committing suicide and goes to the hell she has created. Chris tries to save her, and in the end, they save each other. They end up in Heaven together and propose using reincarnation to experience life together again.

30 ALL-TIME BEST MUSIC BIOPICS n

Music biopics are notorious for fudging the facts a little, but the most enduring ones capture the true essence of an artist, even if things didn’t happen exactly the same way in real life. And the most memorable ones are often anchored by a magnetic star performance, one that goes deeper than simply copying the mannerisms and stage movements of an icon. This is our list of the 30 all-time best music biopics, voted on by our writers and stretching, by release date, from 1953’s The Glenn Miller Story all the way to this year’s Elvis. (Note: Our writers were not able to see Weird: The Al Yankovic Story prior to putting together this list, so it was not eligible.)

By Mark Redfern

1. 24 Hour Party People (2002)

Also known as FAC 401, Michael Winterbottom’s hilarious insight into the Manchester music scene from 1976 to 1992, zeros in on Factory Records and label head Tony Wilson (a standout performance from Steve Coogan). The movie glides from punk and post-punk through to the hazy, acid house and Madchester days of the early 1990s. The lion’s share of the story revolves around the interplay and soundscape of Joy Division, New Order, and Happy Mondays. Never taking itself too seriously (characters even acknowledge, straight to the camera, that certain scenes didn’t happen in real life), 24 Hour Party People perfectly captures the defning moments of a city that was at the forefront of sonic ingenuity and complete chaos. (24 Hour Party People is available on Blu-ray via MVD, www.mvdshop.com.)

By Lee Campbell

2. Walk the Line (2005)

The rock ‘n’ roll life of country legend Johnny Cash was brought to life on the big screen by director James Mangold with bravura lead performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Told in fashback from the site of his legendary show at Folsom Prison, the movie didn’t shy away from Cash’s numerous personal problems but had just enough Hollywood gloss to make it a favorite come awards season.

By Michael James Hall

3.

The Doors (1991)

Bombastic, bold, and sometimes brilliant, Val Kilmer’s embodiment of Jim Morrison

lifted Oliver Stone’s biopic high above the plentiful myth-making and hippie platitudes. As iconic and divisive as the band itself, this dark homage introduced a new generation of fans to the surreal strangeness of the ’60s legends. While the idea of Morrison as a visionary poet may still be in question, Kilmer’s astounding personifcation of him is not.

By Michael James Hall

4. Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Hip-Hop revolutionaries N.W.A were immortalized on flm by director F. Gary Gray in this kinetic, explosive, and ultimately moving love letter to the most controversial American group of the ’80s. A stellar performance from O’Shea Jackson playing his own father, Ice Cube, and frenetic recreations of live performances lent the flm an intangible, exhilarating quality. While some questioned the historical veracity of the tale, it was nonetheless a huge and deserving hit. By Michael James Hall

5. I’m Not There (2007)

Truly unique and bizarre in a way only a Todd Haynes flm can be, this fractured, often beautiful take on differing aspects of the life and work of Bob Dylan is as unbothered by fact as it is obsessed with meaning. Dylan is played by six different actors—Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw—all representing a different aspect of the singer’s public persona. A fragmented vision of an elusive artist, soaked in his music and informed by his quirks, it ultimately adds to his mythos rather than providing the clarity one might expect. By Michael James Hall

6. 8 Mile (2002), 7. Last Days (2005), 8. Ray (2004), 9. Control (2007), 10. Sid and Nancy (1986), 11. What’s Love Got to Do With It (1993), 12. Backbeat (1994), 13. Elvis (2022), 14. Love & Mercy (2014), 15. Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), 16. Rocketman (2019), 17. Immortal Beloved (1994), 18. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010), 19. Shine (1996), 20. Bird (1988), 21. Great Balls of Fire (1989), 22. Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), 23. The Pianist (2002), 24. Amadeus (1984), 25. La Bamba (1987), 26. Get on Up (2014), 27. Nowhere Boy (2009), 28. Behind the Candelabra (2013), 29. The Glenn Miller Story (1953), 30. Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)

VALERIE JUNE on What Dreams May Come (1998, directed

by Vincent Ward)

Words by Valerie June n

What Dreams May Come is one of my favorite movies. Initially, I was drawn to watch it because who doesn’t adore the actor, Robin Williams. He was so incredible in every flm. It’s very diffcult to capture the magic of other planes and realms of existence in the brilliant way this fave of mine does.

The movie also captures the power of co-creation and imagination at its height. It implies that we are able to co-create our own reality both while we are alive and when we die. Chris meets Annie, they have children, and viewers have their classic love story, but it’s when their family is torn apart by death and grief, that the true movie begins. Eventually, Chris dies and goes to the heaven that he created with his imagination. Annie ends up

It all seems very dark and deadly, but sometimes it takes darkness to really see the light. In my own work, I interweave these ideas through songs like “Astral Plane,” “Stardust Scattering,” “Slip Slide,” and countless other songs. My last two albums—The Order of Time and The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers—both touch on themes of life, death, before, after, and beyond. To visually capture these themes as the movie What Dreams May Come has is very diffcult. We tossed around ideas of how to capture life within the astral realm for the release of that song, but it defnitely takes a movie budget to tell a tale so otherworldly. Other worlds are hard to grasp because we are so busy trying to live in this one! It is only important to explore thoughts around other realms and planes of existence if it can teach us to live in greater appreciation of our limited time as Earthlings. This favorite movie gets fve stars for achieving that goal!

(Valerie June is a singer/songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Her most recent album was 2021’s The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, which was released via Fantasy. This year she also released Under Cover, a covers EP with her takes on songs by Mazzy Star, Nick Cave, Frank Ocean, Nick Drake, and more.)

way in an unknown world. She is alone and has to forge her own path and I think I’ve always related to that. I’m very drawn to art that illustrates the complexity of childhood and this is something I explore greatly in my own creative process.

SKULLCRUSHER

Words by Helen Ballentine n

My all time favorite movie is Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki. I chose this because it is a flm that has been with me since I was very young and sort of grew with me through the years. I think it captures change in such a beautiful way: Chihiro’s development throughout the flm is so subtle but immensely powerful. I think I’ve always related to her and appreciated the portrayal of this small, anxious, slightly annoying little girl having to make her

One of my favorite scenes in the flm takes place on a train and focuses signifcantly on Joe Hisaishi’s score. The song “The Sixth Station” plays as the train passes through the spirit world. There are wandering spirits, lonely houses, and expanses of water that seem endless. There’s of course a liminality to this scene as well as a melancholic sense of growth. Chihiro has found a kind of inner peace that becomes clear to us for the frst time. It’s really powerful but there’s also something sad there. She’s leaving her childhood and coming into her maturity. It’s a really simple notion but the way it’s portrayed here feels so vast to me. I deeply love it and I think I’ll always take comfort in it.

(Helen Ballentine is a Los Angelesbased singer/songwriter who releases music as Skullcrusher. Her debut album, Quiet the Room, was recently released on Secretly Canadian.)

on Spirited Away (2001, directed by Hayao Miyazaki)

Valerie June photo by Renata Raksha. Skullcrusher photo by Angela Ricciardi.

24 Hour Party People (Courtesy of MVD Entertainment Group)

John Darnielle of THE

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

MOUNTAIN GOATS

on Fiddler on the Roof (1971, directed by Norman Jewison)

Words by Mariel Fechik n

“Those songs are seared into me. I mean, I start crying when the movie starts now,” John Darnielle says as he settles onto his couch, having just sung a line from “Sunrise, Sunset.” The Mountain Goats frontman, known for his richly detailed songwriting (as found on the band’s latest album, Bleed Out, released on Merge in August) and deeply human not-quite-horror novels, was fve years old when his mom and aunt saw Fiddler on the Roof at the movie theater without him. A devastated young Darnielle was appeased with a vinyl recording of the musical, which he became obsessed with.

“That was good compensation because I would listen to the soundtrack and try to piece the story together from the songs and be thrilled by these Jewish melodies, which are not what you’re hearing most of the time. At that time, I was studying piano, but I was studying Bach, who came before anybody started incorporating Jewish themes into melodies in the 19th century, which was when you got Mendelssohn and people like that doing amazing stuff. I was fascinated by that.”

He doesn’t remember when it was that he fnally saw the flm, but remembers going back to it in college and being awed by its star Topol’s performance. “This is a guy in the early autumn of his career, and he’s like an old pro. I mean, the fact that the movie is as effective as it is is down to this guy going, ‘Oh, I got this one,’” Darnielle laughs. And truthfully, it is Topol’s performance as Tevye, with his joyful dancing, twinkling wit, and heavy grief, that makes the flm so devastating by the end.

“It has a lot about parenthood and daughterhood; within Judaism, gender roles were complex the whole time, but here, they’re about to undergo the great complexity of the 20th century. Of course, looking back,

you can’t watch it and not go, ‘What do you mean, the dad picks the husband?’ But at the same time, it’s about the need to keep the community together, specifcally so that the community members won’t be murdered,” Danielle says. “It’s not just about the vibrancy of a community, it’s the strength of the people in it. [The flm] is incredibly dense.”

As a writer, Darnielle is hyper specifc. His stories and characters are idiosyncratically detailed, so it isn’t surprising that a story like Fiddler would nestle itself so deeply in Darnielle’s psyche. “It speaks to things that are outside of Judaism, in part by being so specifcally in a single hermetic community. That’s the way it manages to universalize itself as an experience, that apartness is relatable through that lens.”

“It catches in your throat when you talk about it,” Darnielle says, pausing momentarily as he himself becomes choked up. “When they leave, that’s looking down toward the 30s, toward Germany. It’s so profound, because as Americans we’re so spoiled, when you think of people doing that, saying, ‘I have to leave, I have to leave all this stuff and I gotta get out of here.’”

It’s the story of many American Jews’ grandparents and great-grandparents, the ones who escaped Russia and the pogroms and made it to America—but also it’s the story of those who didn’t. “It’s looking down toward the century to come, which is not a happy century, specifcally for the people and the descendents of the people leaving in the carts at the end,” says Darnielle.

“[Topol] is amazing. The songs are amazing. The depth of its feeling. You know, with a lot of children’s movies, they trade on feeling. But they’re all very telegraphed, so there’s no weight. There’s no density to it,” Darnielle concludes. “Fiddler doesn’t do that on the cheap once. Every time it asks for your emotional response, it earns the right to ask for it.”

There’s a scene in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent where Pedro Pascal’s character asks Nicolas Cage, “What’s your favorite movie?” Nicolas responds that it’s an impossible question to answer because it depends on so many factors—mood, timing, etc. I feel the same. It’s hard to pick a favorite movie. There have been a lot of movies I’ve loved and gone back to over the years. The top position has been fairly nebulous. But one that came into my life at probably the exact right time and has really stuck with me is Heathers

I frst saw Heathers on TV one afternoon in high school. Flipping through channels, I landed on it, and something about it caught my eye. I caught it pretty close to the beginning and I ended up sitting there and watching the whole thing. As soon as it was over I got in the car, drove to the Best Buy, bought it, then brought it home and immediately watched it again. I ended up watching it 19 times in the next 17 days. I watched that movie so much that I had just about the whole thing memorized. If I was driving home and getting a little tired I would start reciting the whole thing out loud to keep myself entertained.

One thing that made it stand out for me was at that point I’m not sure if I’d seen many, if any, dark comedies. The humor and somewhat overblown absurdity of it really resonated with me and drew me in. Everything was a bit cartoonish, from the plot to some of the actors’ facial expressions. I also loved how it was a pretty typical high school story, just a little extra whacky, and with way higher stakes.

I think that part of how it has infuenced my work is everything is dramatic and life or death. That’s the same way I set up the world of a lot of my songs. I tend to gravitate toward art where this is the premise. It helps to illustrate the feeling and emotion behind situations that are more mundane, but in no way less important.

I haven’t watched the movie in a while. I did go see the musical in New York a few years ago and had a great time. I’m probably due for a rewatch. I still have the DVD on the shelf.

(Oceanator is the musical alias of singer/songwriter Elise Okusami. In April she released her sophomore full-length album, Nothing’s Ever Fine, on Polyvinyl. It was co-produced by Bartees Strange and her brother/bandmate, Mike Okusami.)

Words by Elise Okusami n

OCEANATOR on Heathers (1989, directed by Michael Lehmann)

The Mountain Goats photo by Spence Kelly. Oceanator photo by Alex Joseph.

MOVIE

MIKI BERENYI of PIROSHKA on Prick Up Your Ears

Frears)

Words by Miki Berenyi | Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern

Iwas 20 in 1987 and studying English Literature at North London Polytechnic (now the University of North London), where one of my units covered Joe Orton, so it seemed like kismet when Prick Up Your Ears came out, a biopic of the playwright with a screenplay by Alan Bennett. Plus I’d just that week seen one of its stars, Wallace Shawn (who plays Orton’s biographer John Lahr), on the tube who, noting my wide-eyed celebrity-spot, smiled at me warmly, which wasn’t the usual response I got from commuters given my punky looks.

Director Stephen Frears had already made a hit gay romance with My Beautiful Launderette, making a bleach-blond heartthrob of Daniel Day Lewis. But Prick Up Your Ears still felt risqué—documenting the exploits of an openly gay man (who lived at a time when homosexuality was still considered a sexual offence in England), unapologetically promiscuous and having the time of his life.

Alfred Molina puts in a brilliant performance as Kenneth Halliwell— Orton’s mentor and “frst wife”: liberated from his crushing insecurity and chippiness by his lover’s infectious joie de vivre, but hurt by betrayals as the playwright’s star rises, and fnally driven to deranged, murderous rage.

I’d seen Gary Oldman in Mike Leigh’s flm Meantime, where he played a skinhead thug, and as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy. I’d already become a huge fan, and here he lights up the scenes, effortlessly inhabiting the role of Orton, so cheeky and impish you delight even in his cruelty and selfshness, and can’t help but be swept along with his fuck-the-world energy.

The flm beautifully captures the grimy poverty of their 1960s lifestyle— the poky Islington fat tended by an eccentric landlady (“Do you notice I’m limping? Spilled a hot drink down my dress. My vagina came up like a football!”), the crappy meals (“Do you want the sardines with the rice pudding or separate?”), and the stifing boredom and bickering frustration of the two artists—so desperate to have their writing talent recognized, they end up in prison for defacing library books with obscene prank reviews. Certainly something me and my 20-something struggling musician friends could relate to, living in our own crappy rentals and squats in 1980s Thatcher-led Britain!

I’m not usually a fan of biopics, they tell one version of events and the players are invariably unjustly portrayed, but Prick Up Your Ears is simply great on its own merits. An amazing female supporting cast, too— Vanessa Redgrave, Frances Barber, Julie Walters, Lindsay Duncan, and Joan Sanderson. It’s a dark and tragic flm in many ways, but Bennett’s script is hilarious and presents a compelling and moving portrayal of how success can tip the balance of love and friendship.

(Miki Berenyi is best known as the singer/guitarist in beloved 1990s shoegaze pioneers Lush. She is also the frontwoman of Piroshka. The band—which also features former Moose guitarist KJ “Moose” McKillop, Modern English bassist Mick Conroy, and former Elastica drummer Justin Welch—released their second album, Love Drips and Gathers, in 2021 on Bella Union. This September she put out her acclaimed memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me from Success, via Nine Eight Books.)

WILL SHEFF of

OKKERVIL RIVER

on Slap Shot (1977, directed by George Roy Hill)

Words by Will Sheff

Idon’t know if I’m comfortable calling this my “favorite” movie (honestly, I’m don’t know if I’m comfortable calling anything my favorite anything), but I’m fairly certain the movie I’ve seen the most times—and laughed at every time—is the 1977 hockey comedy Slap Shot

I honestly don’t give a shit about hockey or pretty much about any sport, but Slap Shot isn’t really about hockey. Depending on which angle you look at it from, Slap Shot is about owners versus freelancers, about the pitiful pageant of manliness, about the capitalist ransacking of small-town America, about the zen-like meaning lessness of pretty much any endeavor, and—crucially to me—it’s about New England. Although if you were from Canada you’d think maybe it was about Canada. It’s also about hockey.

Going further: If you’re a beerswilling Neanderthal, you might think Slap Shot is about the inherent humor of getting so hammered you piss on the ice when someone body-checks you. If you’re a feminist you might think it’s a horrendously offensive relic (it is) or that it’s a razor-sharp dissection of what we now know as “toxic masculinity,” one whose scaldingly obscene dialogue fowed like delicious lite beer from the pen of Nancy Dowd, the genius screenwriter of Coming Home and Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains. If you’re a music fan, you might dig Slap Shot for the soundtrack stuffed improbably full of Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Leo Sayer, and Maxine Nightingale. And if you’re an afcionado of the ghastlier moments in 1970s men’s fashion, might I interest you in Paul Newman’s skin-tight butterfycollared suit of caramel leather?

For me, what hits the hardest about Slap Shot is how well it captures the rhythms of touring, especially as I

remember them from my youth— insomniac nights in miserable hotels, romantic relationships strained long past their breaking point, humiliatingly sparse crowds in venues whose fner days were decades ago, moments of deliriously asinine camaraderie, people under incredible duress making outrageously poor decisions. I’ve never seen a movie about musicians that ever quite captures any of this, because music movies all take musicians and music so seriously. Nancy Dowd clearly loves these characters, but she never lets us forget that they fundamentally are idiots.

It’s true that this is a flm that is jarring to watch in a modern context. The characters are, almost uniformly, emotionally stunted homophobes. They’re dickheads. They’re assholes. They’re losers—even and especially Newman’s character who (in a kind of reversal of The Graduate) ends the flm triumphantly oblivious that he has just shit-canned what might be his last chance at love. Maybe I’m similarly deluded, but I see—in the photo-negative image of Slap Shot’s man-children—something surprisingly prescient, almost a way forward. I especially see it in the flm’s fnal competition scene, where a hockey season of escalating violence and bloodshed culminates in Michael Ontkean’s character stripping off all his confning layers of uniform and padding and masculine armor to present his bare, jock-strap clad body to the gaze of his wife—a moment of touching and hilarious total disarmament that sends the whole crowd into a predictable rage.

(Will Sheff is the main creative force behind Okkervil River. The band’s last album was 2018’s In the Rainbow Rain. Sheff has just released his debut solo full-length album, Nothing Special, via ATO.)

(1987, directed by Stephen

Will Sheff photo by Bret Curry.

MOONAGE DAYDREAM

Lessons in Art, Creativity, and Life from a Visionary: Brett Morgen on His New David Bowie Documentary

Words by Celine Teo-Blockey

“M

y work is not me,” utters David Bowie about three quarters into Moonage Daydream, the latest music documentary from Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck director Brett Morgen. It’s a startling revelation as up to that point, we mostly see Bowie, as the consummate performer: On stage in London at peak Ziggy Stardust—in various guises but always fame-orange hair, kabuki-make up, and skinny unitard—singing over deafening screams, whilst outside emotional fans profess their adoration to him. It’s pandemonium again when he performs at packed arenas Stateside. One Los Angeles clip shot inside a limousine has a gaunt and cocaine-addled Bowie admit that he detests the city that he resided in for a year, and all it represents. He later confrms what lengths he will go to for his songwriting when he admits that he intentionally put himself through that experience for the beneft of his work.

From the outside, this single-minded quest where art can subsume life seems to track to the end. Blackstar, Bowie’s fnal record was recorded concurrently with the making of Lazarus, his Broadway musical, and all during the last stages of his battle with cancer. A month after Lazarus premiered on Broadway, and two days after Blackstar was released, Bowie died on January 10, 2016. Death merely hastened rather than stopped Bowie’s ambitions.

But in the documentary, Morgen signals to a changed man after Bowie meets Iman, his wife of 24 years. In this third act, Bowie retreated from the spotlight and touring but he remained ever-curious and prolifc. He started painting more earnestly, made experimental video art, released 2013’s The Next Day and eventually, Blackstar. When Bowie says “I put myself in my painting,” there’s a hint it’s more personal, raw, and vulnerable than his other pursuits. Unlike his music, he was less inclined to have it on public display. It is then a rare and delightful treat that Morgen gives us glimpses of these canvases.

The Bowie estate granted Morgen full access to personal archives, journals, drawings, master recordings, unseen flm of live performances, and obscure projects. But Morgen chose not to make Moonage Daydream a standard biopic-like documentary. Nor strictly adhere to a flm of just never-beforeseen footage. Moonage Daydream is experiential: a sonic onslaught occasionally bordering on too loud or long, and dizzy, psychedelic hues, with saturated animation, concert footage, and interviews, spliced between quieter moments. Interspersed scenes of him wandering alone, late at night in a Singaporean mall or sightseeing on a boat in Bangkok hark to the sense of isolation he explored in his music and the anonymity from the trappings of fame that he valued. There are no experts or jarring talking heads, which lends a dream-like quality to the flm.

“I’ve come to realize that my probably two biggest infuences on my aesthetic are Disneyland and Pink

Floyd’s Laserium,” says Morgen, over a Zoom video call from Los Angeles, pointing to the sensory overload of a theme park and the immersive laser and light show augmented by the band’s original master recordings. “I think that my entire career has been an attempt to recreate that,” he adds.

Back in 2007, Morgen had pitched a entirely different Bowie flm. “The piece that I discussed with David was going to be acted,” he explains, “a performance piece, though not a concert.” Unbeknownst to Morgen, Bowie had already had health concerns at that time. “He was in a sort of basically, retirement,” adds Morgen. “And the pitch I presented with would have required about 40 to 50 days of shooting. So Bill [Zysblat, Bowie’s business manager] called me the next day and said, ‘David really enjoyed the meeting. But…timing is not right here.’”

When Morgen revisited the project in 2016, Zysblat had been made executor of Bowie’s estate and gave him the all-important fnal cut. “That was incredible!” he says, having also secured fnal cut from Cobain’s executor previously and from National Geographic for the 2017 Jane Goodall documentary, Jane. “After working with The Rolling Stones I made a decision I would never make another flm that I don’t have full creative control over,” he says of his 2012 documentary, Crossfre Hurricane

Not one to pause between projects, Morgen worked on Moonage Daydream for fve years, suffering a heart attack midway. The onset of the pandemic and social distancing meant he had to also undertake the role of editor, in addition to

MOVIE

director and producer. An overarching theme of balance between art and life permeates the latter half of the flm and with direct quotes such as “All people no matter who they are, all wish they’d appreciated life more,” one can’t help but feel that Moonage Daydream is as much about its creator as it is about its subject.

“As much as this article will be more about you as it is about me,” retorts Morgen. He explains how important Bertolt Brecht was to him in exposing the machinations behind any work that claims to be nonfction. And with every work since his student flm, which went on to win an Academy Award, he strives to address the issue of subjectivity.

“I think with Bowie, I had fnally reached in many ways my fnal challenge, which is just forget everything else,” he says, “and it’s just now the immersive component. Let’s just strip away all that other shit.” That was his entry point, “but then I had a heart attack and then I changed.” He pauses then continues, “And then not by my choice, but by circumstances, I started to receive all of this sort of guidance from Bowie and then the flm went that direction.”

And while usually with the end of a flm, Morgen considers it the end of a chapter, in the way that he can no longer recite Nirvana lyrics, Moonage Daydream he insists, will stay with him. “This flm, more than anything that I will ever create, will guide me.”

40 ALL-TIME BEST MUSIC DOCUMENTARIES

documentaries tend to fall into two categories: ones that aim for some greater truth about a musician, movement, or scene and flms that hope to capture a notable performance or festival. And some try to do both. It’s hard to truly replicate the live music experience for cinema or home audiences, but the best performance flms not only make you feel like you were actually there on the night, but also give illuminating context to the event. Would the original Woodstock festival be so iconic without Michael Wadleigh’s documentary, released less than a year after the hippie event? Our writers watched or re-watched many of the most notable music docs and we came up with this list of the 40 all-time best. (Note: Most of our writers hadn’t yet seen the acclaimed new David Bowie documentary, Moonage Daydream, at the time of putting this together, so it wasn’t eligible.) By Mark Redfern

1. Gimme Shelter (1970)

To call Albert and David Maysles’ document of The Rolling Stones’ 1969 Altamont Free Concert a cautionary tale is somewhat beside the point. The frst part of the flm focuses on a relatively sedate Madison Square Garden date interspersed with efforts to get the one-day Altamont festival off the ground. The Stones’ attorney, Melvin Belli, is every bit the showman of Mick Jagger with his repeated insistence on using a speaker phone to conduct pre-show negotiations. But the fnal 45 minutes of Gimme Shelter are an absolute train wreck preserved to celluloid. From the Stones’ selected security detail of the not so chill California chapter of the Hells Angels to the total lack of a barrier between performer and audience, it’s a master-class in how not to hold an event. And the crowd shots are a truly harrowing carousel of the seven deadly sins set in motion that culminates in a homicide captured on flm. More a document of the shuttering of the decade of the ’60s than a concert flm, it is every bit an essential view fve decades down the line. (Gimme Shelter is available on Blu-ray and DVD via The Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com.) By Mark Moody

2. Stop Making Sense (1984)

Certainly there were other concert flms before Stop Making Sense, but Jonathan Demme along with Talking Heads turned the concept on its head. In one sense because it’s not just a bunch of white dudes (though there are some) playing guitars interspersed with crowd shots, but also for Demme’s roving eye right up on the stage. The slow roll of a start with just David Byrne and his boombox is revelatory, but the fur fies best here as the band is supplemented with bona fde legends from earlier eras (Bernie Worrell (RIP) and Alex Weir to name a few).

By Mark Moody

3. Dig! (2004)

Ondi Timor’s controversial documentary, shot over seven years and compiled from over 2,500 hours of footage, ostensibly investigates what happens when art meets commerce on the U.S. indie music scene. It examines the unraveling friendship and subsequent bitter rivalry between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Neither band cover themselves in glory as they become embroiled in petty ego-driven feuds. The Dandy Warhols sign to a major label, whilst The Brian Jonestown Massacre (fronted by Anton Newcombe) are constantly on the verge of implosion as they descend into a downward spiral of drug abuse punch ups and self-sabotage. Dig! manages to be gritty, shocking, tragic, and hilarious with some genuine This Is Spinal Tap moments as both bands seek rock ‘n’ roll immortality via very different paths. By Andy Von Pip

4. Let’s Get Lost (1988)

Bruce Weber’s black & white flm on trumpeter/singer Chet Baker is one of the more poetic music documentaries and also one of the saddest ones. It chronicles the jazz legend in his late 50s in Los Angeles, including participating in a recording session with a pre-fame Chris Isaak taking part, while also examining his troubled life as a junkie and featuring interviews with his semi-estranged children. It’s such a stark contrast to see a young Baker, so striking in famous 1953 photos by William Claxton, compared to his weathered face after years of abusing drugs (in the flm he looks 20 years older than he actually was at the time). Most tragic of all, Baker died at only age 58 soon after flming was completed and Let’s Get Lost premiered at the 1988 Toronto Film Festival only four months after his death, making it a ftting epitaph to one of the titans of jazz. By Mark Redfern

5. The Sparks Brothers (2021)

Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers is an extremely in-depth and orderly document of an underground American band (Sparks) that most of us know very little about. Noted primarily for their off the wall songs and theatrical productions (and maybe Ron’s mustache), brothers Ron and Russell Mael come off here as being disarmingly normal individuals content with what they have created over the course of a long career. Not your typical sex, drugs, and rock and roll documentary, which just adds to its already healthy level of charm. By Mark Moody

6. Don’t Look Back (1967), 7. The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005), 8. The Velvet Underground (2021), 9. The Last Waltz (1978), 10. Woodstock (1970), 11. Summer of Soul (…Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021), 12. The Clash: Westway to the World (2000), 13. Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021), 14. The Filth and the Fury (2000), 15. Pulp: a Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets (2014), 16. Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991), 17. Meeting People Is Easy (1998), 18. Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2006), 19. Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop (2003), 20. We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen (2005), 21. Upside Down: The Creation Records Story (2010), 22. Amy (2015), 23. Blondie: One Way or Another (2006), 24. Monterey Pop (1968), 25. 20,000 Days On Earth (2014), 26. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco (2002), 27. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015), 28. Amazing Grace (2018), 29. 1991: The Year That Punk Broke (1992), 30. Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), 31. Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé (2019), 32. No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), 33. The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna (2013), 34. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1973), 35. Buena Vista Social Club (1999), 36. Made in Sheffeld (2001), 37. The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), 38. Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night (1988), 39. Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009), 40. Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959)

Music

Gimme Shelter (Courtesy of The Criterion Collection)

WIL WHEATON

on Stand By Me The Innocence of Childhood

Words by Mariel Fechik

In a scene toward the end of Stand By Me, the 1986 Rob Reiner-directed adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body, Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton) and Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) stand side-by-side. They discuss the future and wonder what junior high will be like. As Chris walks away, the adult Gordie narrating the flm tells the viewer that Chris tries to break up a fght years later, forever the peacemaker, and is stabbed in the neck and killed. The Chris on-screen holds up a hand to wave goodbye, and then vanishes from view. The moment is quietly devastating, made more painful with the knowledge of Phoenix’s actual death in 1993. “That scene always landed on me really hard, even before River died,” says Wheaton, 36 years after the flm’s release. “Like, that’s such a powerful and sad thing, and it’s a thing that happens—people just fade out of our lives like that.”

Stand By Me (this writer’s favorite flm) follows four friends as they journey into the woods of rural Oregon to fnd the body of a dead boy. It is a two day long odyssey, flled with strange encounters and comedic beats. Like many popular flms of the 1980s, it’s a landmark of nostalgia, often referenced along with other movies such as The Goonies, E.T., and Back to the Future as a sort of shorthand for the era. But Stand By Me is about more than wistful longing for the summer days of childhood; the strange trickery of memory and the role it plays in grief and growing up is a major theme of both the book and flm.

“I remember very clearly feeling like we were making something special. I remember that being this energy that was in the air around everyone,” Wheaton says. “Now, I don’t know if that’s a trick that my memory is playing on me. I don’t know if that is something that I made up when I was 13 and I’ve forgotten about, but it is so clear how I recall feeling like, ‘This is a movie I’m going to be proud of and feel good about.’”

Over three decades on from flming, Wheaton views much of the experience through that hazy gauze of memory. Recounting how his relationship to the movie has changed over time, Wheaton says, “I have spent my entire life since Stand By Me adapting to its success and trying to fgure out how its success relates directly to my life and my career, as well as my place in the bigger picture of things. My memories of working on it are overwhelmingly positive and joyful. It was an incredible summer.”

Wheaton recalls the chemistry of the four boys

who played the flm’s leads. Joining Wheaton and Phoenix were Jerry O’Connell as baby-faced Vern Tessio and Corey Feldman as the angry, complicated Teddy Duchamp. The chemistry that exists on screen mirrored their real life friendships, with the slightly older Phoenix acting as arbiter and leader and O’Connell making everyone laugh with his deadpan comedy. But Wheaton also recalls moments of each cast member relating deeply to darker moments in the script, not quite understanding why at the time.

In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, the seemingly tough Chris fnally breaks down.

During a night watch at their campsite, Chris cries to Gordie about the betrayal of a teacher and being consistently assumed to be a bad kid. Wheaton recalls running through the scene repeatedly with Phoenix, who felt he couldn’t quite get into it. “I clearly remember him asking for another take,” Wheaton says. “Rob [Reiner] came over to the two of us at that tree, and I can’t remember if I was there or if I’ve just heard Rob say this so many times that I invented a memory—but Rob said [to Phoenix], ‘Why don’t you think about a time that you really trusted an adult, and that adult really betrayed you.’ Instantly, River was like, ‘Okay, I’m ready.’ I don’t

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

know what he drew on for that; I have suspicions. But it was very real. And it was very honest.”

In a later, equally gut-wrenching scene, Gordie sobs into Chris’ shoulder as he repeats, “My dad hates me” over and over. Wheaton remembers being incredibly anxious about the scene, but when they fnally shot it, he says, “I so clearly remember feeling like I was really into it, and I was crying really hard. I also remember feeling like I wasn’t done crying. But River needed to move the scene along. So he said whatever the next line was, and then I took these deep gasping breaths, pulling myself together. Here’s the thing: I was Gordie. I

was an abused kid. My dad hated me. I lived in a world where I wasn’t safe in my house, and I was invisible in my house.

“That is the reason I am so good in this movie,” Wheaton continues. “It’s not that I’m a great actor. It’s not that I had this incredible ability to intelligently process material and articulate a performance based on a deep understanding of that material. The reality is, I was Gordie; River was Chris; Corey was Teddy; Jerry was Vern. And that is what makes the movie work. We all show up when the demands are made of us. And I’m really proud of the younger versions of us for doing that.”

Stand By Me is a movie that hits differently depending on when you watch it. For Wheaton, as both actor and viewer, it’s doubly true. “When you’re a kid, it’s a fun adventure movie. When you’re an adult, it’s…boy, is it different. Then when you’re a parent, it’s something entirely different,” he says. “I didn’t know that I was drawing on my actual experiences when I was on the set, that they were physically informing the performance that I was being directed to give. But when I look at it now, it’s all extremely clear.”

Directly after Chris vanishes on screen, the viewer is transported decades into the future to watch a now-adult Gordie writing a manuscript on his computer. “Although I hadn’t seen him in more than 10 years, I know I’ll miss him forever,” he types. Wheaton, like Gordie, hadn’t spoken to Phoenix in several years leading up to his death. “[I believe] each one of us was deeply connected to our characters in ways that I don’t think any of us were consciously aware of. But Rob Reiner absolutely saw and understood,” Wheaton says. “I felt like River had lived too much and had been given responsibilities that were not his. I’m very careful with what I say now, because my memories are very old, and they are from a real particular time in my life. But I know who I remember as a 15, 16, 17 year old, when I was two years behind him every step of the way. And it’s just weird that I’m 50, and he didn’t get to be 25.”

The fnal line in the flm is the next one that Gordie types in his manuscript: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12—Jesus, does anyone?” Stand By Me is most often described as a coming of age story, but the reality feels more complex than that: it’s never fully clear whether the tone of that line is meant to be despairing or fond. “I have always felt that it refects a longing for this very brief moment in everyone’s lives that happens differently for everyone. For me, personally, it happened when I was 12, where we’re old enough and self-aware enough to feel like we’re stepping into adulthood with everything we think that means. But we still are very much protected by the innocence of childhood,” Wheaton says.

“And there’s that moment. It tends to happen around the time we’re 12, where we are moving out of that sense of safety that we’ve taken for granted forever. It happens so fast that we’re not even aware of it until we’re adults, when we look back and go, ‘Gosh, I guess I was about 12 or so.’”

Stand By Me © 1986 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures. L to R: Jerry O’Connell, River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman.

Wil Wheaton photo by Kaelan Barowsky.

MOVIE

UNDER THE RADAR’S WRITERS ON THEIR FAVORITE MOVIES

Arrival (2016, directed by Denis Villeneuve)

By Ben Jardine

Although a fairly recent release, Arrival combines everything I love in a movie: believable science fction, provocative themes, aliens, an incredible ambient soundtrack, and non-linear timelines. When I frst saw Arrival, I was 21 years old and it blew my mind.

The flm’s premise is simple. Aliens come to Earth. They use a complex form of circles to communicate, and linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is recruited by the military to decode the aliens’ message and learn what their purpose is here on Earth. What got me so excited about this movie is the way it pulls off the reveal that Dr. Banks is seeing visions of her future: her life is predetermined, and she handles this with such aplomb that we think we’re seeing fashbacks the whole time. The movie deals with the themes of free will and determinism in such a fascinating way that we don’t see that twist coming. It’s also a brilliant adaptation of Ted Chiang’s novella, Story of Your Life: staying close to the themes and tone of the source material, but building its own aesthetic along the way.

For years after, I would listen to the Jóhann Jóhannsson soundtrack and be immediately transported to the flm’s wide, cold shots. When Jóhannsson passed away in 2018, I revisited the soundtrack and the flm, moved by the way his death—like the death of Banks’ child in the flm—is both a beginning and an end.

Back to the Future (1985, directed by Robert Zemeckis)

By Mark Redfern

I don’t know why I have such a fascination with time travel in fction, but Back to the Future has been my favorite flm since childhood and Doctor Who is my all-time favorite TV show (with the original Quantum Leap being another favorite). Perhaps we all have a desire to revisit our past and legendary historical eras or to see if humanity’s future is shiny and bright or post-apocalyptic. Back to the Future’s co-writer/co-producer Bob Gale was visiting his parents and came across his dad’s old yearbook and wondered what his father was like in high school and whether or not they would’ve been friends. That became the genesis for the flm, with the script feshed out with the flm’s co-writer/director Robert Zemeckis.

High schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is accidentally sent back in time 30 years by his scientist friend Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd). Once in 1955, Marty unwittingly interferes with the moment that made his parents fall in love and he needs to fx it or else he’ll fade out of existence. With the help of a younger Doc, he also must work out how to return to 1985. Along the way he helps invent rock ‘n’ roll.

Back to the Future is as perfect a flm as there is. There are so many details that are set up in the frst act that pay off, often humorously, later in the flm. The making of Back to the Future, however, was somewhat troubled, with over a month of flming done with Eric Stoltz as Marty before Zemeckis realized he was miscast and was able to replace him with Fox (their original frst choice, but initially unavailable). The eventual flm is an effortless blend of science fction and humor, betraying no evidence of such behind-the-scenes drama, and it became the highest grossing flm of 1985 and one I saw three times in the theater as a kid and many more times since.

The sequels are classics too, although I prefer Part III (the one in the old west), as Part II is a bit more dated now

that we know 2015 didn’t alas have hoverboards and fying cars. On top of owning various items of Back to the Future merchandise, I even dressed as 2015 Marty for Halloween a few years ago.

Before starting Under the Radar, I briefy worked for Steven Spielberg’s non-proft Shoah Foundation, which was tasked with documenting holocaust survivors via video interviews. Their offces were on the backlot of Universal Studios in Hollywood and I would often eat my lunch on the same town square set where Back to the Future’s fctional town of Hill Valley was flmed. I’d eat my sandwiches with a view of the flm’s iconic clock tower, each day co-existing in the same space where my favorite flm was made. In a small way, I was time traveling (as we all do when we watch an old movie).

Boyhood (2014, directed by Richard Linklater)

By Kaveh Jalinous

The funny thing about my appreciation for Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is that it wouldn’t exist if I had discovered the flm earlier or later than I did. Linklater’s flm is simple. It captures the life of Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane), from 6 to 18, using the same actors throughout the flm’s 12-year production. Given the risks involved, it’s almost a miracle that everything worked out the way it did.

Every time I revisit Boyhood, I am always struck by how the almost three-hour flm’s quotidian and effortless fow. Linklater’s strong screenplay gracefully subs large climactic moments for gentle coming-of-age revelations and loud characters for those who are expertly grounded in reality. During these rewatches, I often fnd myself drifting to the memory of seeing the flm for the frst time when I was 12. I vividly remember the overwhelming feeling of being utterly engulfed by the events fashing in front of me, experiencing a crippling sense of anxiety as the central character and I ventured into his unknown future together. At that age, I could connect with Mason’s mid-2000s childhood and witness his journey towards adulthood, recognizing that parts of his future would eventually echo my own, for better or worse.

Considering Boyhood now, especially having passed Mason’s age when the flm ends, I always feel nostalgic, not just for my own life, but for Mason’s too. I often wonder what story Linklater would tell if he had the chance to follow up with these characters. I’m glad he didn’t, though. Only seeing 12 years of Mason’s life makes Boyhood feel just as small as it does grandiose.

Cinema Paradiso (1988, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore)

By Celine Teo-Blockey

I’m a sucker for love. All my favorite movies are love stories—Franco Zeffrelli’s Romeo and Juliet, Betty Blue, When Harry Met Sally. But at the top of the pile sits Cinema Paradiso, about how one can’t ever quiet the loss felt in childhood or with a frst love but it can spur us on to craft beautiful things.

It begins with Salvatore Di Vita (Jacques Perrin) a successful but jaded director, being bestowed yet another award. A phone call from home then acts as a portal to step into his past. The frst act establishes the wonderful relationship between the grandfatherly-projectionist Alfredo (the warm heart of the flm and beautifully portrayed by Philippe Noiret) and his mischievous helper, nicknamed Toto (an eight-year-old version of Salvatore, played by Salvatore Cascio). Toto’s father has just died in the war and he not only

fnds comfort in being with Alfredo but is quickly smitten by the romance of the cinema and the whirr of its projector.

To protect the modesty of the small, Sicilian town and not incur the wrath of the local priest present at every screening, Alfredo is tasked with cutting the saucy bits out of every flm. This includes kissing scenes and passionate embraces. Toto starts to steal these from the cutting room foor for his own amusement.

The second act sees Toto as a teenager (now played by Marco Leonardi) in a doomed romance. And in the third act, Salvatore returns home to the old Sicilian town he left 30 years ago and never looked back.

The cinematography is stunning. The performances by Noiret and Cascio are charming in the way that kindly but cantankerous elders can be with young children. The sweeping Ennio Morricone score is a star all on its own and, like much of the flm itself, pulls at the heart-strings without being cloying. I ugly cry every time I watch it, then feel more alive after. My younger son, Alfe, is named Alfred in homage to Alfredo.

Cinema Paradiso is a postcard from a bygone era that centers a love for cinema and all that it represents. Sure, it’s nostalgic but in an ever-encroaching imperfect world, it’s a reminder that pain and loss are as much a part of us as love and joy, and experiencing that from the safe confnes of a darkened room is comforting.

The Coen brothers’ magnum snowpus is more than a spree of clumsy killings, an austere landscape, and a bunch of goofy accents. Fargo is a guidebook for how to live a humble and contented life while the rest of the world goes to shit. The story’s orienting force—and the audience’s counsel—is pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson (played by Frances McDormand), who is tasked with investigating a roadside murder that hastily unravels into around-the-clock bloodshed caused by incompetent, selfsh men. Juxtaposing these grisly scenes, however, are those in which Marge interacts with her sweet-natured but taciturn husband Norm (played by John Carroll Lynch); the down-home couple are the movie’s heart, setting it apart from those crime ficks that interrogate little more than the meaningless chaos of life.

Marge and Norm relish in life’s uncomplicated, wholesome pleasures—sharing food (“ya got Arby’s all over me!”), making art (Norm is a painter), doing kind things for your loved ones (“I’ll fx ya some eggs”), going at your own pace, and being satisfed with your lot. Chiefy, they understand that “there’s more to life than a little money, ya know. Don’tcha know that?” as Marge asks the antagonist in the back of her prowler at the flm’s denouement. Despite the hedonistic greed and unconscionable cruelty that Marge witnesses and refutes throughout the movie, her morals, the contentment she draws from life, prove unshakeable. In the fnal scene the couple are sat propped up in bed. Norm’s mallard painting is going to be on the three-cent stamp. There are two more months until the baby arrives. Heck, they’re doing pretty good.

The Florida Project (2017, directed by Sean Baker)

By Mark Moody

It’s not easy to pick a favorite movie and Sean Baker’s flms aren’t necessarily easy ones to watch.

Baker’s characters live life on the margins and the reality of that can make for more than a handful of

Fargo (1996, directed by Joel Coen) By Hayden Merrick

MOVIE

wincing moments. I live within 100 miles of the Magic Castle motel where The Florida Project was flmed and ironically grew up not too far away from the setting of Baker’s subsequent flm, Red Rocket. Though my own life is far removed from that of Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) and her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), the proximity of their reality makes an already outstanding movie all the more compelling. And Willem Dafoe gives one of his career best performances in an understated but complex role as Bobby, the manager of the Magic Castle and de facto guardian of the property’s younger population. In spite of the challenging themes of the movie, it also is shot in a stunning color palette. At one point Dafoe is slathering fresh paint on the exterior of the motel as if he were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. And the child actors do an amazing job of conveying the irrepressible drive to fnd fun and adventure in spite of their surroundings. Moonee describes an undercover trip to a nearby breakfast buffet as “better than a cruise,” and it’s hard not to get caught up in her moment of joy.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, directed by Frank Capra)

By Andy Von Pip

It’s a Wonderful Life’s underlying message of how we measure success and failure still resonates today. On the surface, it’s the ultimate Christmas movie, but it could also be viewed as one the Hollywood’s most subversive. The flm pits a cooperative bank run by George Bailey (James Stewart) for the good of the community against a rapacious capitalist businessman, Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), for the good of his wallet, at a time of communist paranoia meant the flm attracted the FBI’s scrutiny who noted “a malignant undercurrent in the flm.”

Stewart gives a remarkable performance as George, a man frustrated with life in small town America whose ambitions have been constantly thwarted. One snowy Christmas Eve a desperate George fnds himself on the brink of bankruptcy and scandal and when contemplating suicide, is saved by a visit from his guardian angel, Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers). When George says he wishes he’d never been born, Clarence shows him what the world would have been like without him. Through a series of eerie set pieces, it slowly begins to dawn on George that he really had lived a quite wonderful life, as Clarence tells him, “Strange isn’t it George, how each man’s life touches so many others, and when he isn’t around, it leaves an awful hole.”

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001, 2002, and 2003, all directed by Peter Jackson)

By Caleb Campbell

Choosing my favorite flm is certainly not easy, so I’ve cheated somewhat in this case by picking The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But while it is a trilogy, all three movies were flmed back-to-back, and I usually watch them in a 12-hour marathon of the extended editions. They feel cohesive and inseparable enough that I usually can’t begin the frst moments of The Fellowship of the Ring without watching all the way to The Return of the King, even if I am only dipping in and out of Middle Earth while I go about my day.

My love of the movies began young and has since settled into an enduring comfort watch. I saw The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers on DVD, and was introduced to the series just in time to see The Return of the King nearly a half dozen times in theaters. Since then, the trilogy has turned into a family tradition. Every year, on the day after Christmas, my family watches the entire trilogy together and some of my favorite Christmastime memories were made playing with my brother while Frodo and Sam made the trek to Mount Doom in the background.

But beyond the nostalgia the movies evoke for me personally, they also are some of the most beautiful and moving flms ever made. Everything on-screen, from the costuming and props to the New Zealand landscapes, is impeccably crafted and painstakingly shot. Meanwhile, the story and characters are timeless, transcending the very fantasy tropes they helped to create. Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be as brave as Aragorn, enduring as Frodo, and as loyal as Sam. To this day, I can’t watch Sam carry Frodo up Mount Doom without tearing up a bit. They are my favorite flms and I expect them to continue to be for years to come.

40 ALL-TIME MOST ICONIC FICTIONAL BANDS IN MOVIES

Cinema history is flled with a multitude of fctional bands we wish we could experience in real life. A select few have even leapt from the silver screen to the concert stage, but most have remained trapped in celluloid. Some make-believe bands only appear in the background, such as The Weird Sisters (a supergroup fronted by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and also featuring Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway), who perform at a school dance in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Many others are interregnal to the plot, such as Blackgammon in The Sound of Metal, an Oscar-winning flm about a metal drummer going deaf that featured a cameo from Under the Radar, with the band appearing on a fake cover of our magazine. We took stock of all the notable fctional bands from movies and came up with this list of the 40 most iconic. By Mark Redfern

1. Spinal Tap from This Is Spinal Tap (1984) Arena shows, hit singles, and Glastonbury appearances are not the usual fate of fctional bands. Debuting on The T.V. Show in 1979, the crass, stunningly stupid mock-rockers not only created innumerable quotable moments with their beloved 1984 flm, This Is Spinal Tap, but continued their “career” intermittently for nearly 40 years and counting. Forever known for amps that go up to 11 alongside an unending parade of doomed drummers, genius comedian/musicians Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean created a meta metal troupe with tropes that somehow still ring true today. Oh, and their songs are great By Michael James Hall

2. The Blues Brothers Band from The Blues Brothers (1980) John Landis’ 1980 musical comedy The Blues Brothers has always been comedy gold—especially for musicians and Chicagoans. Most notably, the fctional band may have been fronted by comedians Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belushi, but it also included real-life musicians, all of whom played supporting roles in major music history—Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Steve “The Colonel” Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Murphy Dunne, Willie “Too Big” Hall, Tom “Bones” Malone, “Blue Lou” Marini, and “Mr. Fabulous” Alan Rubin. By Mariel Fechik

3. Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem from The Muppet Movie (1979) These spaced-out, funkadelic legends are Dr. Teeth on vocals and keyboards, Animal on drums (who clearly inspired Dave Grohl), Floyd Pepper on vocals and bass, Janice on vocals and lead guitar, and Zoot on sax. The movie gig also featured Scooter in a cameo percussion appearance on the toe-tappin’ monster of a song, “Can You Picture That?” They are, dare we say, the greatest puppet band of all time as well. By Lee Campbell

4. Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes (aka The Cantina Band) from Star Wars (1977) With their matching outfts and woodwind instruments, Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes were an iconic quartet. They rose to prominence on the intergalactic music circuit, frst under contract with Jabba Desilijic Tiure and later as a mainstay of Chalum’s Cantina. Their music is a particular swing style, in the genres of Jizz and Jatz, that is noted for its lack of vocals.

By Ben Jardine

5. Stillwater from Almost Famous (2000) One can hardly blame Stillwater for being what the late-great Lester Bangs called “a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations.” After all, they did peak at a dangerous time for rock & roll. Plagued by ego-driven infghting, Stillwater’s pursuit of stardom resulted in truly forgettable post-Zeppelin blues rock. However, it’s precisely their mediocrity that renders the group unforgettable. By Chris Thiessen

6. Wyld Stallyns from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020), 7. School of Rock from The School of Rock (2003), 8. Sex Bob-omb from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010), 9. Crucial Taunt from Wayne’s World (1992), 10. Marvin Berry and the Starlighters from Back to the Future (1985), 11. Sexual Chocolate from Coming to America (1988), 12. Sonic Death Monkey (aka Kathleen Turner Overdrive or Barry Jive and the Uptown Five) from High Fidelity (2000), 13. Big Fun from Heathers (1988), 14. Citizen Dick from Singles (1992), 15. The Weird Sisters from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), 16. The Wonders from That Thing You Do! (1996), 17. The Soggy Bottom Boys from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), 18. Blackgammon from The Sound of Metal (2019), 19. Maxwell Demon and Venus in Furs from Velvet Goldmine (1998), 20. PoP! from Music & Lyrics (2007), 21. The Clash at Demonhead from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), 22. Infant Sorrow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) and Get Him to the Greek (2010), 23. Autobahn from The Big Lebowski (1998), 24. Josie and the Pussycats from Josie and the Pussycats (2001), 25. The Lone Rangers from Airheads (1994), 26. Conner4Real from Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), 27. Jim and Jean from Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), 28. The Rutles from All You Need Is Cash (1978), 29. The Dirty Dishes from Band Aid (2017), 30. The Commitments from The Commitments (1991), 31. Hedwig and the Angry Inch from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), 32. Dewey Cox from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), 33. Eddie and The Cruisers from Eddie and The Cruisers (1983), 34. The Folksmen from A Mighty Wind (2003), 35. Low Shoulder from Jennifer’s Body (2009), 36. The Stains from Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982), 37. Otis Day and the Knights from Animal House (1978), 38. The Ain’t Rights from Green Room (2015), 39. The Carrie Nations from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), 40. Sing Street from Sing Street (2016)

Spinal Tap photo provided by Alamy Stock Photo.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

Number one, I know fuck all about flms…but I’ve chosen Dig! because it brought loads of people that I’m friends with together. It’s a documentary about The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols in the ’90s.

It’s kind of less that I want to talk about the flm and more how the flm brought me into having loads of great friend ships with other musicians. I remember watching it at my best friend’s house on YouTube broken into parts, so you have seven minutes at a time. I remember there was a group of about seven of us lying on the foor watching it and just being in awe of how cool it was and

how great the music was. I feel like it’s one of those things where if you’re on a night-out and you see someone and you get onto the topic of talking about Dig!, you can get lost in that memory of how inspiring and also horrible it seems to be in a band with all those crazy heroin addicts. It’s just a spectacular music documentary.

( Theo Ellis is the bassist in the English band Wolf Alice, alongside singer/ guitarist Ellie Rowsell, guitarist Joff Oddie, and drummer Joel Amey. The Mercury Prize-winning band has released three acclaimed albums, the most recent being 2021’s Blue Weekend.)

JOHN GRANT on Adaptation (2002, directed by Spike Jonze)

As Told to Austin Trunick

Adaptation was sort of unlike anything else I’d ever seen. I loved every character, and I thought the story was really incredible. I connected with both of the twins [played by Nicolas Cage] really deeply, but mostly the main one, Charlie Kaufman [also the name of the flm’s screenwriter]. I suppose it was just one of those really selfsh things where I saw myself in that character, and so I connected deeply with it.

When my last album came out during COVID, people were like, “Okay, well, this is the way the world is now, and this is what you’re expected to do.” I was supposed to get a TikTok account and start doing that. I was like, “I’m not going to become a different person. It’s not happening.”

you need to zoom in or zoom out on a problem. In this movie, the main character, Charlie Kaufman, most of the time his problem is not zooming out. He’s focused on the microcosm, and the minutiae of everyday life.

[Charlie] belittles his brother because he’s going to a seminar to learn screenwriting, which he fnds quite laughable. He thinks that you’ve either got it or you don’t. But the brother with the positive attitude goes to the seminar anyway, like, “Well, okay, maybe it’s stupid, but I’m just gonna do it, because this guy’s really talented, knows what he’s talking about.” And then the Charlie Kaufman character ends up going to that guy later in the movie for advice.

ELINOR DOUGALL on

Roeg)

Ithink I frst saw this when I was about 15 years old. Obviously, the director Nicolas Roeg has such an incredible eye and it’s also scored by John Barry, who is one of my all-time favorite composers. There’s something about those tremulous strings that only he can do, and the Walkabout main theme is my favourite piece of music ever, which is why I picked it!

It’s such a rich piece of work, it’s so brutal, tragic, visceral, sexual, and sad. There are these huge vast landscapes highlighting the brutality of nature set

against a kind of primal human endeavour but it’s done in such a subtle intimate way. And of course, it’s a coming-of-age movie, which really resonated with me when I frst saw it.

(Rose Elinor Dougall is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. She was a member of The Pipettes and has worked and performed with Mark Ronson. She also writes and records as a solo artist and has released three critically acclaimed albums. Her latest musical project is The WAEVE, a collaboration with Blur’s Graham Coxon, and their self-titled debut album is due for release in February 2023.)

That really sent me into a spiral because it forced me to look at this giant world where everybody seems so full of confdence. Everybody is fucking hilarious, and everybody is super talented. Everybody can fucking sing, and everybody sings it better than the original. Everybody’s just as talented as a motherfucker, right? These days when you hear people talking about their process, it can seem like everybody knows exactly what they’re doing. Everything now is studied in-depth, inside and out. There’s a hyper-awareness of everything. People can be very, very particular about genres. “Oh, you’re doing that? Then you have to use these tropes, they’re what make up that genre.” I’ve never really bought into that. I just thought you did what you wanted to do. You are infuenced by myriad things in your life. What you as an artist produce is basically an amalgam of everything you’ve ingested, and then fltered through your particular personality, which is unique and different. You have to fnd that, and you have to let that part of it shine through more than the other parts.

When you’re getting through your day, I think a lot of the obstacles that you encounter come from your inability to recognize whether

Sometimes you just need to give yourself a fresh perspective. I used to think that if you can’t come up with a hit every time you sit down to write a song, then you aren’t meant to be a songwriter. I know that sounds absurd, but I’m just telling the truth.

It’s all about this zooming in or zooming out thing. I can’t tell you how many times this movie helped me realize that becoming what you’re supposed to become in life is not about you being born with a gift and then just kicking ass the rest of your life. Even when you’re good at what you do, you still need help, and you still need to go back to the drawing board. Doing that doesn’t mean that you’re not good at what you do.

What really resonated with me [about Adaptation] is that people who are as talented as Charlie Kaufman can feel like they have no idea what they’re doing.

(John Grant is an American singer/songwriter currently based in Iceland. In addition to being a dedicated cineaste, Grant has released fve acclaimed solo albums and was previously a founding member of the The Czars. Grant’s most recent album is 2021’s Boy From Michigan. Portions of Grant’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

Wolf Alice photo by Andy DeLuca. John Grant photo by Hör ð ur Sveinsson.

TOP 100 MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS OF ALL TIME

When putting together a list of the Top 100 Movie Soundtracks of All Time we set out some rules. Firstly, albums that were purely a flm’s orchestral score were out (sorry John Williams, Ennio Morricone, et al.). The soundtracks had to feature songs used in the flm (a few score tracks added in as well was fne). In general, musicals were out, especially those based on Broadway stage shows (although at least two musicals snuck on the list). The albums didn’t just have to include songs written especially for the flm; plenty of great soundtracks consist of mainly pre-existing songs curated by a music supervisor and director. Soundtracks featuring the songs of just one artist (looking at you Prince, Badly Drawn Boy, Curtis Mayfeld, Air, Madonna, Queen, and Björk) were fne, but concert flms and traditional biopics were out. It didn’t necessarily matter if the flm was forgettable, as long as the soundtrack was memorable.

Looking at our eventual selections, as decided via a comprehensive vote with many

of our writers submitting ballots, it’s clear that certain flmmakers have a real knack for this soundtrack thing. You’ll fnd represented multiple flms each by Quentin Tarantino, John Hughes, Cameron Crowe, Edgar Wright, Wes Anderson, Sofa Coppola, Paul Thomas Anderson, The Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese, Amy Heckerling, and Gregg Araki.

The best soundtracks work as complete listening experiences whether or not you’ve seen the flm. However, there is often no escaping fashes of your favorite scenes when putting on the soundtrack to a movie you adore. Some songs are forever tied to cinematic moments. Wayne and Garth jamming out in their car to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in Wayne’s World Ewan McGregor’s Mark Renton foating while high on drugs in “the worst toilet in Scotland” while Brian Eno’s serene “Deep Blue Day” plays, near the beginning of Trainspotting Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) skateboarding through Hill Valley, late for school, as Huey Lewis and the News’ “Power of Love” plays, at the start of Back to the Future. Christian Slater’s teenaged pirate radio DJ Happy Harry Hard-on opening every show with

Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” (even though it’s Concrete Blonde’s cover of the song that’s on the offcial soundtrack). Indie record store owner Rob Gordon (John Cusack) declaring in High Fidelity, “I will now sell fve copies of The Three E.P.s by The Beta Band,” before putting on the band’s song “Dry the Rain” and doing just that. All these songs and moments are forever collected on wax and below are the soundtracks we consider the best. By

Mark Redfern

1. Purple Rain (1984)

Not only is Purple Rain Prince’s biggest album—one of the best-selling albums of all-time, and one of the most well-known and well-regarded soundtracks as well—it’s also perhaps Prince’s most accessible work. Though, as usual, the vast majority of the instruments were played by Prince himself (not to mention the fact that he produced and wrote everything here,

too, again as per usual), it feels more like a “band” oriented work (as it is credited to Prince and his backing band The Revolution) than many of his other albums from the same time period did. It’s also the beginning of where he started to experiment with psychedelic pop, as evidenced by the lesser-known but great album cut “Take Me with U.” Elsewhere, everyone knows the title track, “When Doves Cry,” and “Let’s Go Crazy,” but dig if you will the rest of the album, such as “The Beautiful Ones” and the messianic-themed “Baby I’m a Star.” Oh and there’s “Darling Nikki,” the song so explicit by 1984 standards that it helped start the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center), with the song topping their Filthy Fifteen list in 1985. By Matthew Berlyant

2. Trainspotting (1996)

Few movie soundtracks capture a distinct moment in a distinct subculture in a distinct country than the Trainspotting soundtrack. The songs

featured in the movie represent a who’s who of rock music, spanning ’70s rock (Iggy Pop and Lou Reed), ’90s Britpop from Blur and Pulp, and British dance music (Underworld and Primal Scream). All of these tracks color a different aspect of drug culture in Britain: the characters would actually listen to these tracks. Some songs—tonal and aesthetic infuences for director Danny Boyle—were even omitted from the fnal cut of the flm and offcial soundtrack, and were included in a second offcial soundtrack. The flm’s great musical moment is in the fnal scene, when, over Underworld’s “Born Slippy (Nuxx),” Renton (Ewan McGregor) slips out of the hotel room with thousands of pounds and decides to turn his life around, once and for all. The song, about an alcoholic, matches perfectly with the scene’s movements, mood, and escalation. Legend has it that Boyle approached Noel Gallagher about contributing an Oasis song to the soundtrack, but Gallagher refused, thinking the movie was actually about trainspotters.

By Ben Jardine

3. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Driven largely by surf rock, Pulp Fiction’s soundtrack opens with Dick Dale’s cover of the Mediterranean folk song “Misirlou.” The Tornadoes, Link Wray, and The Lively Ones help round out the surf rock sound, which writer/director Quentin Tarantino apparently chose to emulate Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks. Tarantino chooses classic rock and R&B cuts for these iconic character driven moments. We get Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” (played over the infamous twist contest scene between John Travolta’s Vincent Vega and Uma Thurman’s Mia Wallace), and of course, Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” which plays over Marsellus Wallace’s (Ving Rhames) monologue to Butch (Bruce Willis). By Ben Jardine

4. Almost Famous (2000)

Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical homage to ’70s rock ‘n’ roll excess is perfectly captured on its essential soundtrack. Featuring legendary but carefully curated tracks from The Who, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, and indeed from the makeshift fctional band at the center of the flm, Stillwater, Crowe’s beloved flm is nothing without its music. Following its use in the flm’s most memorable scene, no viewer could possibly hear Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” again without being reminded of its darkly comic magic. A box set of the complete soundtrack was recently released and is well worth seeking out.

By Michael James Hall

5. Jackie Brown (1997)

Accompanying writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s third and arguably best flm, this soulful sojourn boasted some of the most powerful music of the 1970s. Bobby Womack’s iconic “Across 110th Street” (itself drawn from the

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

soundtrack to the 1973 flm of the same name) and the irresistible “Street Life” by Randy Crawford stand out. It’s bound closely to the movie via the inclusion of some killer dialogue, a Tarantino trademark (“I didn’t know you liked The Delfonics”). It also offers another meta layer by including cuts from 1973’s Coffy, which helped inspire Tarantino’s flm and also starred leading lady Pam Grier. An undeniable, evocative exercise in sweet soul and soundtrack smarts.

By Michael James Hall

6. About a Boy (2002)

About a Boy was a tall order for Damon Gough (aka Badly Drawn Boy). Partially because he was coming off the critical and commercial success of his Mercury Prize-winning debut album, The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, and partially because the album is the soundtrack to the high-profle movie of the same name. Created wholly for About a Boy, the flm, Gough’s poignant songs provide a compassionate component to the narrative that Hugh Grant’s man-child main character lacks. And when the songs center around the titular boy, an adorable Nicholas Hoult, the heartstring tugs are palpable. By Lily Moayeri

7. High Fidelity (2000)

A movie ostensibly about music appreciation, High Fidelity needed to have a soundtrack that featured unanimously “good” music. And the tracklist doesn’t disappoint. Songs from classic rock bands, such as The Kinks, 13th Floor Elevators, and The Velvet Underground, mix nicely with tracks from more contemporary underground artists, like Smog and The Beta Band. Music in High Fidelity acts to punctuate the flm’s emotive moments, but it also works as a character in and of itself: serving to deepen our understanding of the flm’s characters. The musical crescendo of the flm is when Jack Black’s character performs Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On,” uniting the characters and wrapping up the flm. By Ben Jardine

8. Reality Bites (1994)

Ben Stiller’s divisive delve into the lives of Texan Gen Xers had, at the very least, some choice cuts to accompany the drama. It not only includes belters from Dinosaur Jr., The Posies, and The Juliana Hatfeld Three, but also genre-hops to hits from the mainstream such as U2’s “All I Want Is You” and Lisa Loeb’s huge “Stay (I Missed You),” which ended up in the flm because co-star Ethan Hawke was neighbors with Loeb (who was fairly unknown at the time). Classics from The Knack and Squeeze round things out, and you’d be a fool to miss Hawke’s bizarre cover of Violent Femmes’ “Add It Up” on the 10th anniversary reissue.

By Michael James Hall

9. Pretty in Pink (1986)

John Hughes’ Brat Pack rom-com may have been as formulaic and trite as it was endearing and adored, but its soundtrack is an unmitigated triumph. Psychedlic Furs’ majestic, melancholic title track apart, Echo & The Bunnymen’s brilliant “Bring on the Dancing Horses” made its debut here, alongside OMD’s hit “If You Leave.” It represents the mid-’80s alternative scene with further classics from Nik Kershaw, The Smiths, New Order, and INXS. Sadly, Otis Redding’s ‘Try a Little Tenderness’, famously lip-synched by Duckie (Jon Cryer) in the flm’s most iconic scene, is omitted.

By Michael James Hall

certainly be heard throughout the flm and its soundtrack album—not just in the spotlighted tracks from his own bands, Chromatics and Desire. The additional songs chosen were not only perfect matches for the flm’s ethereal vibe, but utilized fawlessly, with Kavinsky’s “Nightcall” setting the movie’s opening tone and College’s “A Real Hero” perfectly closing it out. By Austin Trunick

13. Until the End of the World (1991)

10. Superfly (1972)

Even without the soundtrack to the 1972 Blaxploitation flm Superfy, Curtis Mayfeld would be a legend for his work with The Impressions, his songwriting and production work, and his other incredible solo records as well. However, Superfy asserted his place in the cultural pantheon, in the process becoming more memorable than the flm itself as well as his most famous work. The title track has also been misinterpreted constantly as a pro-gangster song, when in reality the entire soundtrack album is an antidrug concept album detailing the perils of a life on the streets. Tracks such as “Freddie’s Dead’ (memorably covered by Fishbone), “No Thing on Me (Cocaine Song),” and others are among his best work as well.

By Matthew Berlyant

People will have varying degrees of patience for Wim Wenders’ 158minute (or 287minute for the director’s cut) dystopian vision, but most would agree on the excellence of the post-modern musical melting pot that ac companied it. Wenders asked contributors to anticipate what their music would sound like in 1999, when the flm was set. Bleak, doomstricken offerings from Wenders regulars Nick Cave, Crime & the City Solution, and CAN nestle alongside R.E.M.’s stunning “Fretless” and U2’s title track. With almost all the tracks being originals commissioned by Wenders, Elvis Costello’s gorgeous take on The Kinks’ “Days” and Julee Cruise’s cover of Elvis Presley’s hit “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears” add nostalgic texture to this shadowy, downbeat beauty. By Michael James Hall

14. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

11. Singles (1992)

The soundtrack to the movie that defned a movement, this is an almost perfect snapshot of the burgeoning early ’90s Seattle grunge scene. Though there is, famously, no Nirvana, and the key duo of songs written and performed for the flm were by Minneapolis native Paul Westerberg (The Replacements), this introduced a generation to bands such as Smashing Pumpkins, Alice In Chains, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, and Pearl Jam, whose contribution here, “State of Love and Trust,” is arguably the best song of their early career. It’s hard to listen to this and think of a more representative document of such a vital musical era.

By Michael James Hall

The soundtrack of Reservoir Dogs is seamlessly woven into the flm’s narrative, albeit in a peculiar way: through a fctional radio show called “KBilly’s Super Sounds of the ’70s,” where we intermittently hear pop songs from the late 1960s and 1970s. The opening scene, which foreshadows the fates of the flm’s characters, is punctuated by the bassline of “Little Green Bag” by George Baker Selection. Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You” is also the perfect choice of track for a terrifying torture scene in the safehouse, where the surviving characters are in a kind of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the feel-good music of the ’60s and ’70s acts as a gripping contrast to the intensity of the flm.

By Ben Jardine

15. Pump Up the Volume (1990)

12. Drive (2011)

Nicolas Winding Refn hand-picked Chromatics’ Johnny Jewel to score his dreamlike 2011 thriller. While the studio pulled a last-minute audible and hired Cliff Martinez to compose a more tradi tional score instead, Jewel’s infuence can

This post-Heathers Christian Slater vehicle is as iconic as they come for a certain kind of ’90s kid. During its angsty, rebellious runtime Slater’s pirate radio DJ Hard Harry (aka Happy Harry Hard-on) delights us with tunes from Descendents, Soundgarden, Pixies, and other bands that formed the foundations of a million musical tastes. While this soundtrack doesn’t include all of the key tunes as featured, it does offer an exciting snapshot of where alternative music had its roots (Concrete Blonde’s triumphal cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” Henry Rollins and Bad Brains’ take on MC5’s “Kick

Out the Jams”) and where it stood in 1990 (Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation,” Sonic Youth’s “Titanium Expose”). By Michael James Hall

16. Baby Driver (2017)

In Baby Driver, we hear what Baby (Ansel Elgort) hears. The flm opens with a bank robbery and car chase, all timed perfectly to music (The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms”), which Baby is playing through a pair of headphones. Music is a way for Baby to connect with the world and with his fellow criminals: “Egyptian Reggae” (Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers) plays during a confrontation with Jon Berntal’s character, and Queen’s “Brighton Rock” serves as a way for Baby to connect with Jon Hamm’s character. Baby even makes music, using dialogue he’s recorded on his various heists. And there’s even music in the conversations Baby and Debora (Lily James) have about who has more songs named after them. Baby has more.

By Ben Jardine

17. Labyrinth (1986)

For his second foray into fantasy flm making, Jim Henson sought a performer whose persona and musical style could help shape the movie, and considered names like Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, and Sting before arriving on David Bowie. Luckily the superstar had writing songs for a children’s flm on his career to-do list, and was especially attracted to the freedom that Henson and crew provided him. This yielded what are arguably several classic Bowie tracks, including “Magic Dance” (you can sing the intro, go ahead), “Underground,” and “As the World Falls Down,” and birthed an all-new generation of Bowie fans. Trevor Jones’ score, too, interspersed throughout the pop songs, helps bring the flm’s fairy tale-like quality to its soundtrack album.

By Austin Trunick

18. Back to the Future (1985)

Back to the Future’s soundtrack is brief, but it’s a cultural landmark. The flm’s theme by Alan Silvestri is instantly recognizable. Two tracks from Huey Lewis and the News (“The Power of Love” and “Back in Time”), both written for the flm, became charttopping hits. But perhaps the most classic musical moment of the movie is when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) busts out an early rendition of “Johnny B. Goode” before an unsuspecting audience of teenagers in 1955, three years before Chuck Berry’s version (the original) appeared. The scene appears in the flm’s emotional (and musical) crescendo: McFly has just saved his own future and this rendition is clearly a catharsis.

By Ben Jardine

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

19. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

The soundtrack to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a thrilling, vibrant collection of hip-hop and pop that perfectly complemented the progressive, crowd-pleasing delights of the movie. It would have been tough in 2018 to select songs from a more appealing set of super stars who, like the flm itself, combined such cool with commercial appeal. Originals from artists such as Blackway and Black Caviar, Post Malone and Swae Lee, Duckwrth, and Lil’ Wayne captured the imagination in a way that’s rare for the soundtrack to, of all things, a Marvel movie. It’s a special creation indeed; a soundtrack that captures the zeitgeist as perfectly and unexpectedly as the movie it partners. By Michael James Hall

20. Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Todd Haynes’ crazed, erratic glam rock cult favorite didn’t score the David Bowie back catalogue he initially requested, so instead he got creative. Teenage Fanclub (with Elastica’s Donna Matthews) do New York Dolls, Placebo do T. Rex, and an all-star Brit band—The Venus In Furs, including members of Radiohead, Suede, and Roxy Music—lock eyes with the equally luminous Wyld Rattz, featuring Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and Minutemen alumni. Co-stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan McGregor get in on the action too. It’s bizarre and ambitious, a wild ride, offering reinterpretations that excellently mirror the fctionalized Iggy Pop/Bowie relationship depicted in the flm. By Michael James Hall

21. Good Will Hunting (1997)

Gus Van Zandt’s beloved flm, whose funny, moving script won an Oscar for screenwriters Matt Damon and Ben Affeck and a best Supporting Actor nod for the greatly missed Robin Williams, also brought the equally lamented Elliott Smith to mainstream attention. His material makes up most of this record, with tracks largely drawn from his classic album Either/Or, creating a melancholic, claustrophobic listening experience. “Say Yes,” “Between the Bars,” and “Angeles” back up Smith’s marvelous “Miss Misery” for which he himself was Academy Award nominated. Seek out his Oscars night performance for a profoundly strange, beautiful pop culture moment. By Michael James Hall

22. The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Air used director Sofa Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides as an opportunity to

shift away from Moon Safari’s Space Age fever dream, the duo opting instead to become stuck, much like that glob of Lux Lisbon’s chewing gum in the “Playground Love” video, to each piece of paisley print polyester, each twilit corsage and billowing funeral gown to be found across the haunted 1970s Midwest. Air’s soundtrack remains a solid pop recording, playing a central role in Coppola’s flm. One cannot imagine the flm’s existence without the melancholy keys of “High School Lover,” which punctuate some of its most devastating moments. By Austin Saalman

23. The Breakfast Club (1985)

While this writer would argue that there are soundtracks to other John Hughes/Brat Pack ficks— especially Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful—that work better as albums, none of them bring to mind memorable scenes from the movie quite like The Breakfast Club’s soundtrack. It’s hard not to picture each and every one of the mismatched teens’ ridiculous dance moves as you’re listening to Karla DeVito’s “We Are Not Alone”—and it’s downright impossible not to raise a fst in the air like Bender when you hear Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” Go ahead, try it! You won’t make it to the chorus without feeling an upward pull in your shoulder muscles. By Austin Trunick

24. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Home to Sean Penn’s breakthrough performance as stoner Jeff Spicoli, Amy Heckerling’s teen romp is a total, near mindless joy. It’s mirrored by the songs that adjoin it. An all-time classic from Jackson Browne with the shimmering yacht rock of hit single “Somebody’s Baby” rubs shoulders with Don Henley’s overblown ballad “Love Rules” and Sammy Hagar’s anthemic, borderline ridiculous title track to create an imperfect snapshot of more innocent times. Add Donna Summer, The Go-Go’s, and Oingo Boingo to the mix and you have a glorious grab bag of early ’80s rock and pop. By Michael James Hall

25. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

With a star-studded production team, including Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck, Metric, Broken Social Scene, and Dan the Automater, the soundtrack to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is dynamic, diverse, and jam-packed. The flm follows Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) and his fctional band, Sex Bob-Omb, as they com pete in a battle of the bands competition, with Pilgrim having to defeat the seven evil exes of his love interest, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The flm’s fctional bands were all inspired by real bands: Sex Bob-Omb take after Beck, who wrote all of the band’s music, The Clash at Demonhead

was based on Metric, and Crash and the Boys was based on Broken Social Scene. By Ben Jardine

26. Once (2007)

27. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) 28. Lost in Translation (2003)

29. School of Rock (2003)

30. The Muppet Movie (1979)

31. The Big Lebowski (1998)

32. The Graduate (1967)

33. Shaft! (1971)

34. Natural Born Killers (1994) 35. Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) 36. Batman (1989) 37. Amateur (1994) 38. American Graffti (1973) 39. Goodfellas (1990) 40. Saturday Night Fever (1977) 41. Flash Gordon (1980) 42. The Return of the Living Dead (1985) 43. Sixteen Candles (1984) 44. Boogie Nights (1997) 45. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) 46. Say Anything (1989) 47. Vanilla Sky (2001) 48. The Harder They Come (1972) 49. Midnight Cowboy (1969) 50. Selmasongs: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack “Dancer in the Dark” (2000) 51. The Lost Boys (1987) 52. Easy Rider (1969) 53. Into the Wild (2007) 54. (500) Days of Summer (2009) 55. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) 56. Marie Antoinette (2006) 57. Splendor (1999) 58. Dazed and Confused (1993) 59. Juno (2007) 60. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) 61. True Stories (1986) 62. The Crow (1994) 63. The Perks of Being a Wallfower (2012) 64. St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) 65. Dirty Dancing (1987) 66. Repo Man (1984) 67. The Boat That Rocked (aka Pirate Radio) (2009) 68. Wayne’s World (1992) 69. 24 Hour Party People (2002) 70. Call Me By Your Name (2017) 71. Dead Presidents (1995) 72. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) 73. The Departed (2006) 74. I’m Breathless: Music From and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy (1990) 75. Nowhere (1997) 76. Empire Records (1995) 77. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) 78. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) 79. Clueless (1995) 80. The Doom Generation (1995) 81. Judgment Night (1993) 82. 8 Mile (2002) 83. Streets of Fire (1984) 84. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) 85. Times Square (1980) 86. Flashdance (1983) 87. Magnolia (1999) 88. Romeo + Juliet (1996) 89. A Star Is Born (2018) 90. Storytelling (2001) 91. Donnie Darko (2001) 92. Transformers: The Movie (1986) 93. Batman Forever (1995) 94. Kids (1995) 95. The X-Files: The Album (1998) 96. Black Panther (2018) 97. Tank Girl (1995) 98. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) 99. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) 100. Lost Highway (1997)

Between school, cat care duties, releasing their 2022 debut album Growing Up, and being the buzziest new punk band on the planet, the teens in The Linda Lindas don’t have much time to watch movies. “Oh, I haven’t watched a movie in a while,” guitarist/ vocalist Lucia de la Garza admits when asked for their favorite big screen pick. But those familiar with the band’s backstory—or Japanese alternative cinema—will know that one flm is an integral part of their existence. “We were named after this Japanese indie flm called Linda Linda Linda, that actually has Korean actress Bae Doona in it,” bassist Eloise Wong reveals. The 2005 movie was directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita and features an original instrumental score by The Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha.

“It’s where a bunch of high school girls get together and they form a band for the school talent show,” Wong continues, with her young cousin, drummer Milla de la Garza, adding that the aspiring musicians don’t actually know how to play instruments. Luckily, punk rock is non-discriminatory, and the teens in the movie are able to pick up a few songs by the real life Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts, who were active for a 10-year stint that ended long before any of The Linda Lindas’ members were born. “That’s what we’re named after,” Wong grins proudly. The name was initially suggested by her father, Martin Wong, the man behind the infuential Asian American magazine Giant Robot, who said that it “sounded like a band from the ’50s but could also refer to the Japanese punk song or art movie.”

Of course, another movie played a big role in The Linda Lindas’ story: Amy Poehler’s 2021 flm Moxie, in which a disillusioned teen starts a feminist zine and distributes it throughout her school. The Linda Lindas—whose line-up also features guitarist/vocalist Bela Salazar— appear as themselves, and rip through covers of “Rebel Girl” and “Big Mouth” on stage at a party. It seems that even if they’re too busy to watch movies, cinema fnds its way into The Linda Lindas’ story after all.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

Words by Ben Jardine

I just think it’s a really nice flm. 10 out of 10, nice. Knowing the backstory of Ben Affeck and Matt Damon going around the houses trying to sell the script and it being a nightmare and they won that Oscar. It ruined them.

(Alt-J is a British art-rock trio whose line-up also includes Thom Sonny Green and Gus UngerHamilton. Their lastest album, The Dream, came out earlier this year via Canvasback

)

Stella Donnelly on Relatos salvajes (2014, directed by Damián Szifron) and Six Shooter (2004, directed by Martin McDonagh)

As Told to Mike Hilleary

I very much like dark comedies, there are two flms that I recommend to people all the time, Relatos salvajes (aka Wild Tales) which is an Argentinean movie directed by Damián Szifron and also Martin McDonagh’s short flm Six Shooter. Both of these flms capture human chaos in really sly and hilarious ways. I love flms where you’re not sure who the hero or the villain is.

(Stella Donnelly is an Australian singer/songwriter. Her most recent album, Flood, came out in August via Secretly Canadian.)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead did the soundtrack. It mainly revolves around Day-Lewis’s performance. It’s well-worth watching. It’s based on a book by Upton Sinclair called Oil. All about greed in America, oil and capitalism in the early 1900s. It’s bangin’ man!

Around the same time was No Country for Old Men. That was astonishing from the Coen brothers. That was such an amazing year for movies with the combination of the two together. They were both dealing with masculinity and America. They had weirdly parallel themes in them. They also had a lot of space and silence. Two fascinating movies to come out the same year. They obviously had many differences but they have lodged in my brain in a way that not many movies of the recent era have. You’ve got Chigurh [Javier Bardem’s character], who plays the sinister baddie who also has a fantastic haircut, a classic bulk-up.

I saw both of those movies in the cinema when I was still living in Oxford, at an independent cinema called The Phoenix. I used to pop down on my bike. I’d have a can of pop and maybe a beer afterwards occasionally.

(Yannis Philippakis is the frontman of the British rock trio Foals, whose lineup also features Jack Bevan and Jimmy Smith. The band’s most recent album, Life Is Yours, came out earlier this year on ADA/Warner UK Ltd. Portions of Philippakis’ conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

As Told to Jake Uitti

I just think that it’s brilliant. It’s funny—it’s sort of, you know, it’s incisive. It cuts to what it is. I feel like it’s timeless in a way that even at the time, as a kid, seeing it for the frst time, I couldn’t believe it had been made in the ’60s. It felt very current and I think it continues to. I think Kubrick is a genius. I could also say 2001: A Space Odyssey might be my other favorite. I just think he’s a visionary.

(Colin Meloy is the frontman of the Portland, Oregon indie rock band The Decemberists. Their most recent album was 2018’s I’ll Be Your Girl. Meloy also wrote The Wildwood Chronicles, a children’s fantasy book series that was illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis.)

As Told to Lee Campbell

In terms of recent stuff, there’s two really in the last fve or ten years that I fell in love with. There Will Be Blood, I watch that a lot. It’s not the lightest of viewing, but I think it’s one of the best pieces of cinema, it’s an all-time great movie.

As Told to Hays Davis

I would have to go with Cool Hand Luke I could watch that movie every day for the next year. It’s so deep, and it’s so good. It’s so profound. The actors, and the characters—it’s poetry. It’s a

Joe Newman of alt-J on Good Will Hunting (1997, directed by Gus Van Sant)

and Infectious.

Colin Meloy of The Decemberists on Dr. Strangelove (1964, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

Yannis Philippakis of Foals on There Will Be Blood (2007, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) and No Country for Old Men (2007, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen)

Jason Lytle of Grandaddy on Cool Hand Luke (1967, directed by Stuart Rosenberg)

Words by Hayden Merrick n

THE LINDA LINDAS on the Japanese Film That Inspired Their Name

The Linda Lindas photo by Zen Sekizawa. alt-J photo by George Muncey. The Decemberists photo by Holly Andres. Stella Donnelly photo by Olivia Senior. Foals photo by Edward Cooke. Grandaddy photo by Koury Angelo.

symphony. I just love it.

(Jason Lytle is the main creative force behind the Modesto, California band Grandaddy, whose 2020 album, The Sophtware Slump, is considered a key turn-of-the-millennium record. Their most recent album was 2017’s Last Place )

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

have it on.

(Shannon Lay is a singer/songwriter from California. Her most recent album, Geist, came out in 2021 via Sub Pop. Portions of Lay’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

As Told to Mark Moody

I was hesitant to put Dazed and Confused as my favorite because it’s portraying a ’70s vibe [before my time], but it feels like such a ’90s movie. It fts in with that crowd for sure. I just love how it feels very fy on the wall, just watching these kids growing up and evolving. Nothing about it is over the top. It feels like this is happening right now somewhere. And the number of actors in it that are now huge is crazy. Parker Posey is great in it. Ben Affeck is in it as the bully and he’s such a good dick. An amazing douchebag. I didn’t think of him at frst because everyone thinks of Matthew McConaughey.

I feel like the guy Matthew McConaughey was playing [David Wooderson] can’t really exist anymore. People that are a little bit older and you wonder, “Why is that guy hanging around with us?” Those were the people that would show you the cool music or give you your frst cigarette or something. They were pivotal in the hierarchy of the school of life. But your parents would say, “You can’t play with so-and-so, they’re 30 and they’re an alcoholic!”

I just love the dynamics of the movie. It’s just so fun to watch people fguring themselves out and trying to ft in and make it. It’s all so relatable. And it’s cool how it’s just one school day into the night. That energy of being the last day of school before the summer. You can remember that. You can feel that. The only thing I always wished had happened [at my school] was that everyone would throw their shit out of their lockers and go crazy. I never got to experience that myself. It’s a great movie to put on in the afternoon, maybe you are doing something else, just to

As Told to Ben Jardine

The Fast and the Furious, to me, is like what’s happening around me. I love racing, and I’m a nomad. It’s a tradition for us. We already have a wellrespected tradition of camel racing and horse racing. So I love watching racing. And there are a lot of people who are skilled at driving in the desert as well.

(Mdou Moctar, real name Mahamadou Souleymane, is a Tuareg singer/ songwriter/guitaritst based in Agadez, Niger, who fronts a band also named Mdou Moctar. The most recent Mdou Moctar album, Afrique Victime, came out in 2021 via Matador.)

JOEL MCHALE on Not Being Able to Choose His Favorite Movie

As Told to Jake Uittie n

Oh my gosh! It’s a tough question because there’s so many good ones. You know, in my head always pops Dr. Strangelove. Through my childhood and adolescence, I always loved that movie. Obviously, Stanley Kubrick is one for the ages. Blade Runner is another one that is always in my top 3-5. But, you know, I love the movie Green Room, which was just a revelation when I frst saw it. And Back to the Future! So, I’m not very good at—if I have to choose, I will. But there’s quite a number.

(Joel McHale is an actor and comedian, best known for hosting The Soup and starring as Jeff Winger in the beloved NBC sitcom Community, a forthcoming movie of which has recently been confrmed. He also plays Sylvester Pemberton/Starman in the DC Comics TV show Stargirl )

plays out like a Greek tragedy. Al Pacino and Marlon Brando’s performances are masterful, and Nino Rota’s score is hauntingly beautiful. The movie takes us on a journey through a multitude of emotions, and although few people can relate to the specifcs of the storyline, there are universal themes in the flm that resonate deeply with many: family, loyalty, honor, love, loss, betrayal, sacrifce. Who holds the power and why, and at what cost.

as we look at him through Kay’s eyes in the fnal scene. On a lighter note, I always found Al Pacino to be hope lessly good looking in the flm, and Michael Corleone has been one of my longest running movie crushes.

Words by Ruth Radelet

I can’t remember when I frst saw The Godfather, but it’s been a part of my consciousness for almost all of my adult life. I’ve watched it countless times and it never gets old. With each viewing I notice new details, and I still can’t imagine a more perfect flm. Every shot is magnifcently crafted, and the story

I am always most drawn to flms with complex characters, and in The Godfather the hero can also be seen as the villain. It’s fascinating to watch Michael Corleone’s transformation from naive college boy into mafa boss as the torch is passed from father to son. We fnd ourselves rooting for him as he organizes the murder of his enemies, but we doubt ourselves

The Godfather is meaningful to me mostly because of its greatness. Observing greatness inspires me more than almost anything else, whether it be in flm, art, music, sports, dance, or simply the way someone lives their life. It provides a goal post—something to strive for. Because this greatness exists I know that it’s possible for it to exist again in another form, which gives me energy and helps me stay motivated to create.

(Ruth Radelet was formerly the lead vocalist in Chromatics. She has recently released her debut solo EP, The Other Side.)

Shannon Lay on Dazed and Confused (1993, directed by Richard Linklater)

Mdou Moctar on The Fast and the Furious (2001, directed by Rob Cohen)

Ruth Radelet on The Godfather (1972, directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

Shannon Lay photo by Kai MacKnight. Mdou Moctar photo by WH Moustapha. Ruth Radelet photo by Jake Bottiglieri. Joel McHale photo by Cliff Lipson.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

GRUFF RHYS

of SUPER

FURRY ANIMALS

on The Holy Mountain (1973, directed

The history of the flm is kind of seeped in connections to the pop world. I suppose there’s so many musical connections in that it was funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in part and it’s got the Don Cherry soundtrack. And Finder’s Keepers Records released [the soundtrack] a few years back. In a way it’s a kind of movie that feels like a music video in a sense. There’s not much dialogue and it’s a kind of pop flm in its own weird way.

What I love it about it as well is that it’s shot in Mexico City, which is probably one of the greatest cities that I’ve ever gotten to visit. It kind of uses the building from Mexican modernism back to the colonial cathedral and then the pre-colonial Kukulkan pyramids. It’s a kind of tour of Mexico City, a kind of visual feast. The composition of the shots and the clothes and the colors…you know there’s elements of a Wes Anderson flm or something in that it’s sort of tightly shot but obviously very different stylistically. I suppose it’s the most accessible Jodorowsky flm. Not all of his flms are to my taste. He has his own particular tastes and you know it can be kind of diffcult to watch. In this one he’s combined his idiosyncrasies to a huge motion picture budget. It’s really compelling.

But it’s also a kind of flm that couldn’t be done today. I’m not looking at it critically. There’s a whole “zoo” of animals for example, and people have much more respect for animals today. I mean you get the whole history of colonization using frogs in costume. It’s a curio of its time.

I like how it ends as cinéma vérité and the symbolism and mysticism of the flm is kind of close to the reality of the situation. I really like that in a punk rock sense—it’s a very good twist for me at the end. It strips

away the artifce, which is really helpful I think.

I had a copy on DVD which I watched a few times. And there was a reissue in the cinema a few years back. It was spectacular, but I haven’t watched it again, I only went to see it in a cinema. But the soundtrack came out in the meantime. You know there’s a record shop in LA named Mount Analog, named after the book it was based on. All these things that were infuenced by it visually keep popping up in music videos. I keep seeing it everywhere.

I did two kind of tour flms. I did one called Separado! Which came out in 2010. It was shot in South America. Because it was a South American flm, we used magical realism as a sort of motif. It seems like fair game to use that kind of imagery. It was a super low budget flm. But Holy Mountain was one of our visual inspirations in its use of color.

My father was a mountaineer. That was his thing, he was completely obsessed with mountains. In his free time when he wasn’t working in his desk job, he was going up mountains. Films like Holy Mountain and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are important to me because they deal with some kind of obsession with mountains. That adds a kind of personal refection for me. Not in a bad way, it’s a nice connection.

(Gruff Rhys is the frontman for the Welsh band Super Furry Animals. They have released nine albums, stretching from 1996’s Fuzzy Logic to 2009’s Dark Days/ Light Years, but are currently on hiatus. Rhys has also released seven solo albums, the most recent being 2021’s Seeking New Gods, as well as two albums with Boom Bip under the name Neon Neon. Portions of Rhys’ conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

HAYDEN THORPE on Lost in Translation (2003, directed by Sofia Coppola)

Words by Hayden Thorpe

Iwas 17 years old, I’d just passed my driving test and I would sometimes skip school to drive to Manchester in my mum’s car. I’d look around the upmarket shops and restaurants with a kind of detached fascination—city life was highly exotic to me. On one occasion when Manchester’s weather was typically apocalyptic, I found shelter in a nearby picture house. (I was up for watching anything so long as it was warm and dry inside.) The flm that I opted for was Lost in Translation—I fgured it seemed arty enough to fulfl my excruciatingly poetic aspira tions at the time. I was about to experience a piece of cinema that would ingratiate me into a whole new genre of inner feeling—an emotion which I knew was there but couldn’t quite locate. I’d describe it as ambient melancholia, like a gauze over everything which softens and darkens the world but doesn’t smudge it out entirely. It’s an openhearted state in which the blinds are angled steeply to diffuse incoming light and spare you any shock.

The platonic relationship between Bob and Charlotte made me ache—it was their state of longing but never-having which created the energy to sustain the flm. I’d heard many people comment that nothing really happens in the movie, which set me up to hold an us vs. them loyalty—you either experience the micro-epic taking place, or you don’t. Bill Murray’s character is just that bit too old while Scarlett Johansson is budding

with potential. Director Sofa Coppola walks a fne line, swaying perilously between creepiness and the best aspects of friendship. The flm operates like an album would, mood pieces orbiting around a fxed point. I always think the frst and last songs on an album are the most important. It’s interesting then that the frst scene in Lost in Translation is a prolonged shot of Scarlett Johansson’s bottom. It holds for just long enough to agitate and knocks you out of your day and into their story. The last scene is a fnal goodbye in which Bob whispers unheard words into Charlotte’s ear amongst the throbbing masses of a Tokyo street. Devoid of dialogue, we’re left with an addiction—we must invest ourselves in the imaginings of what was said.

The soundtrack was tasteful beyond my teenage remit and opened me up to artists like Squarepusher, Roxy Music, and My Bloody Valentine—music of delicate violence. The sonics perfectly matched the images of a hyper-real Tokyo and made me thirsty for otherness. Lost in Translation belongs so precisely to those early post-millennium years when the internet brought about proper globalisation, but social media hadn’t yet exploded the sanctity of the moment. It makes me nostalgic in ways that I don’t often allow myself.

(Hayden Thorpe was a founding member of British art-rockers Wild Beasts. Since the band’s 2018 break-up, Thorpe has gone on to release two solo albums for Domino—2019’s Diviner and 2021’s Moondust for My Diamond )

As Told to Paul Veracka

by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Gruff Rhys photo by Karina Lax. Hayden Thorpe photo by Jack Johnstone.

MOVIE

JOHNNY MARR on His Favorite Bond Film and Working with Hans Zimmer

Words by Murray Lightburn n Words by Kyle Mullin n

My memory of seeing Blade Runner for the frst time is fuzzy. After all, I was only 11 years old when it came out and I didn’t see it in the theater. I’m pretty sure my older brother Peter did and later hipped me to it. Over time I’ve come to watch the flm on a regular basis. It has become a “comfort flm” for me. I have watched it so many times that I know most of the dialogue by heart. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I’ll put it on headphones and only listen to the flm; by the time we meet Rachael, I’m out cold. This is the only flm that I watch this way and I like a lot of flms.

Of course: We could talk about Blade Runner 2049 and how it was “okay.” There were some great performances and it was a valiant effort to contribute to and update the story. We could also talk about Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut or even the (25th anniversary) Final Cut. However, I grew up watching Blade Runner in its “original” form, the 1982 theatrical release version. (The debate about Deckard’s gumshoe voiceover is not arguable to me. It’s part of the experience of enjoying this flm.) This is still the only version I watch regularly. I haven’t watched any other version or 2049 more than once. Even when they are on television, maybe I’ll watch until a commercial break before changing the channel. The thing about a great flm is that every last component in it has equated to an absolute perfectly whole experience. This flm—the “original” version—is that. I don’t really care how it came together or how diffcult it was to make or how miserable (apparently) Harrison Ford was while flming it. None of it matters. When I watch it, I am totally

immersed every single time. I cannot count how many times that even is.

What I love most about Blade Runner is that it embodies everything I love about science fction which, of course, is my favorite genre. The world in it is so far out there and unimaginable and yet so close at the same time. When a flm takes you to the edge like that I feel that’s what it’s supposed to do. I love being able to disappear when I watch it and easily come back from it. There isn’t a flm that I can think of that does this the way Blade Runner does. Yes, there are so many science fction movies of worlds and universes that will never exist and some of them are very good. The idea that Deckard is or may be a replicant is more obvious to me but only from watching the flm a million times. How many flms leave you with such a deep and profound existential question in such an unsuspecting fashion? Maybe I need to see more flms.

When I think about how I came to watch Blade Runner and how I cannot actually recall the frst time, I fnd that strange. It makes me wonder: do I even love this flm that much? Why can’t I remember the frst time watched it? Who knows; maybe I’m a replicant and the whole thing was implanted in my brain.

(Murray Lightburn is the frontman for the Montreal, Canada-based band The Dears, which he leads with his wife, keyboardist Natalie Yanchak. The band’s current lineup also features Jeff Luciani, Steve Raegele, and Rémi-Jean LeBlanc. The Dears’ most recent album, Lovers Rock, came out in 2020 via Dangerbird, with a deluxe edition of the album released this year. Lightburn’s last solo album was 2019’s Hear Me Out )

“Ping! Ping! Ping!” go the message notifcations on Johnny Marr’s speakers, interrupting his answers during a Zoom interview until the Mancunian guitarist says, with faux indignation: “Go away, Hans Zimmer!”

His friend and collaborator on a number of blockbuster movie soundtracks was messaging Marr in the weeks before audiences could fnally see the long delayed new James Bond installment, No Time to Die, and hear the duo’s fttingly debonair and dangerous accompanying music. Keen as Marr was for 007 diehards to fnally see the new movie after it was pushed back several months throughout the pandemic, current Bond Daniel Craig isn’t ex-The Smiths’ guitarist’s favorite to take on the role. Instead, he loves the 1969, George Lazenby starring classic On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

There are a few reasons why that flm, which underperformed at the time but has since accrued a cult following, is Marr’s favorite Bond installment. “It came out when I was a kid. And I love the music—it’s always about the music for me. It was my favorite score.” He goes on to call the late composer John Barry—who was awarded the Order of the British Empire and penned music for flms such as Dances with Wolves and Out of Africa, not to mention the iconic music for most of the Bond flms in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s—“a genius, and he’s from

my part of the world, which is really nice.”

Regardless of his affnity for vintage 007 ficks, Marr (who released a new solo album, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, in 2022) still relished working on a new Bond flm’s score with Zimmer. “For a lot of the music he sent me for the Bond movie, my job was not just to put guitar in there, but to make the voice of the guitar interesting. Sometimes that was a challenge, which is good, and sometimes it was obvious what I needed to do,” Marr says of his contribution to No Time to Die.

Marr then mentions how he and Zimmer, and their respective families, have all become quite close since both disparately backgrounded musicians began working on flm scores. “You’re dealing with a European intellectual, who also has the soul of a rock musician,” the guitarist says about Zimmer, adding: “He stays up late turning his brain inside out in the studio. Then later he can talk to you about some sort of complex psychological or philosophical theory.”

When it comes to their working dynamic, Marr recalls he and Zimmer’s early pairing on Christopher Nolan’s sci-f spy fick Inception, where the composer told the guitarist: “You’re being too faithful to my thing. Go make it sound like you.”

That trust and generosity meant a great deal to Marr. The guitarist adds of Zimmer, with a smile: “He’s not the most successful composer of all time for nothing.”

Murray Lightburn of THE DEARS on Blade Runner (1982, directed by Ridley Scott)

Johnny Marr photo by Andy Cotterill. The Dears photo by Misael Hiram.

MOVIE

SPELLLING on The Wiz (1978, directed by Sidney Lumet)

Words by Mariel Fechik n

SPELLLING (stage name of musician Chrystia Cabral) makes music that feels like what the inside of a crystal ball would sound like. Her most recent album, 2021’s The Turning Wheel, is a theatrical wonder, draped in red velvet curtains and jewel tones, that simultaneously pulls from soul and R&B and more avantgarde pop artists like Kate Bush. It’s no surprise, then, that her favorite flm is the 1978, Motownproduced version of The Wiz, based on the Broadway musical.

“My mom was a big fan of the movie and we would watch it around Christmas time with family. I became instantly obsessed,” Cabral says. “I also loved Labyrinth with David Bowie. Those together kind of forged my early fascination with musicals and fantasy and costume.” The Wiz, now considered something of a cult classic, was a commercial fop in 1978. Despite having a massive budget and starring beloved Motown star Diana Ross, as well as a young Michael Jackson, it was considered campy and strange. The sets, by today’s standards, appear somewhat piecemeal, and they look more like they belong in a low-budget stage production than a flm.

But Cabral, whose music videos often possess a surrealistic, homemade quality, loves the obviousness: “[I remember] noticing how apparent the hand was in the making of the costumes in The Wiz Everything’s kind of inside out, like with the Scarecrow’s costume; you can see how everything’s patched together. I loved that transparency.

It’s made very apparent that these are the materials of the surroundings, like it being based in Harlem and built with the materials of the city and all the aesthetics of that being wrapped up into the costumes.”

In the original story of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is a young girl who longs to escape her farm and must learn the value of home. With a 33-year-old Diana Ross playing Dorothy, the story’s ethos was fipped on its head. “With Diana Ross being this very introverted Harlem school teacher who can’t fnd her voice, that was very relatable to me, having a resemblance to her physically, but also relating to that disposition of feeling like there are a million reasons to be intimidated by the world around you,” Cabral says of her childhood self.

“Looking back as an adult and seeing all these underpinnings of how it twisted that tale to be, to me, an early example of Afrofuturism in flm. It’s a simple story, but it combines sci-f, fantasy, magical realism, and has this critique of history, as far as what real liberation feels like.” Prior to becoming a musician, Cabral says she was teaching kindergarten, much like Ross’ Dorothy. “There was this big obstacle about trusting myself and fnding my voice, so I highly relate, even more now, to this movie.”

Ultimately, Cabral sees the flm as having done something that “Black artists are still struggling to accomplish, which is to portray Black joy, as well as portraying the reality of our experience at the time. To me, it’s one of the early examples of success in portraying the spiritual fortitude of the Black community and achieving that with beauty and musicality.”

WHITNEY on

Another Round (2020, directed by Thomas Vinterberg) and Chungking Express (1994, directed by Wong Kar-wai)

Words by Mark Moody n

Leave it to the duo of Whitney to choose favorite movies from far-fung corners of the Earth—as wide ranging as the sounds from their latest album, SPARK. Drummer/ singer Julien Ehrlich’s mind has been on Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, while guitarist Max Kakacek leans towards Chungking Express, directed by the Hong Kong cinema master Wong Kar-wai. Wong’s freewheeling flm and Vinterberg’s more sobering one seemingly have little in common outside of one scene of alcoholic overindulgence in Chungking Express. A constant state of inebriation is the glue that bonds the characters of Another Round together, led by Mads Mikkelsen as a washed up high school history teacher.

Kakacek shares of Wong’s classic 1994 flm: “I frst watched it when I was in my early 20s. And then more recently when I was going through a breakup last August. So it’s the go-to breakup movie for me.” The movie recounts two separate stories that link briefy about a third of the way through the flm. The breakup of the frst part of the movie is more devastatingly intense, while the latter portion (with a different cast) features a more lighthearted and slow-to-bloom romance in the aftermath of another dissolved relationship. “The times I have watched it, I’ve defnitely been more [in the frame of mind] of the frst half of the movie type breakup, where it was like, ‘This is terrible.’”

Wong’s style and choice of soundtrack songs also greatly appeal to Kakacek. “His directorial style is really unique,” he explains, “slow shutter speeds, with really blurry and chaotic scenes. In the second part, The Mamas & The Papas’ ‘California Dreamin’’ is played frequently and then Faye Wong, who plays the character

Faye in the movie, sings a cover of The Cranberries’ ‘Dreams.’”

Ehrlich’s choice of the study of overindulgence of Another Round, though focused on an older age group, more closely mirrors the early years of playing in a band. A group of male friends, led by Mikkelsen in an uncharacteristically understated performance, are convinced they can be better teachers, husbands, and friends if mildly buzzed and more relaxed. Of course, that starts to spiral into heavier drinking and diminishing returns.

“It’s not totally relatable to the touring lifestyle, because it doesn’t dip all the way down into the reality of substance abuse. But it does nail it for a moment,” Ehrlich explains. “But the best part of the movie is the ending that opens up to the absurdity of life in general. The ending is so fucking incredible to me.” After a movie that moves seamlessly from loss to redemption and back in several different sequences, it all ends in a dance scene unlike any committed to flm.

“Mikkelsen [who is a classically trained dancer] and some of the others break out into a ridiculous dance. It’s one of my favorite dance scenes that I’ve ever seen,” he concludes.

Ehrlich has not seen Chungking Express, but both band members have watched Another Round together. Therefore, Kakacek sums up the commonalities in the flms. “In a sense, both movies are about addictive personalities,” he says. “The characters in Chungking Express have very weird, obsessive natures or behaviors. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the characters in Another Round, suffering from a lack of excitement, turn to an addiction to try and fnd a solution.” Regardless of their similarities and differences, both movies are worthy of Whitney’s admiration.

SPELLLING photo by Maiwenn Raoult. Whitney photo by Tonje Thilesen.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

So, we watched it and it was really amazing, and everybody kind of left to go outside. And Dave and I who were still on mushrooms sat and talked to each other about how in addition to it being a great movie—and we were huge horror fans— the score was really special to us. We were like, “Remember this part of the movie and there was this music going? What do you think that was?” So, we decided to rewind the tape and watch it again, but only to listen to the music and have conversations about how music was used in the movie.

We had long talks about delay. At the time all the music we were making was infuenced by Pavement and Silver Jews, Palace, like all this stuff on Drag City. That was the night when we were curious about like, “How do you make echo?” Even all the modern classical music like Krzysztof Penderecki or György Ligeti, we were listening to those moments in the movie. We saw in the credits it was performed by an orchestra but like it confused us because we never thought about classical sounding like it did there.

Center]. We found this one guy at a record fair who got what we were looking for. He turned us onto musique concrète and he told us about that and like 20th century avant-garde classical. And that all came from watching The Shining Especially for someone like me, that’s the role I have in the band still, 30 years later almost, is adding abstract textures to the music that seem like they enhance it. Even at the time I played guitar and could play piano, but I’m not the most intuitively melodic person. It was kind of tough to be in a band where someone’s like, “I wrote a song and here’s the chord progression.” I never felt like I was expressing anything that really resonated with me in terms of an aesthetic.

Hearing music in that movie had such an effect on me. It made me realize, you don’t have to be melodic or be a great drummer. All these things that traditional musicianship seems to value, you don’t need any of them to make interesting sounds. Not like I thought that would translate to the whole world, but for myself that was liberating.

As it relates to the music that I make and that Animal Collective makes in general, it was really an eye-opening experience the frst time I saw it. We were like 15, it was Dave [Portner, aka Avey Tare] and me, and we were snowed in at a friend’s house. There were a bunch of people there.

Dave and I had some mush rooms and we took them, and somebody suggested, “Oh we should watch The Shining.”

We were snowed in and this was ’94 or ’95. It was before cellphones, and nobody made plans or looked at the weather so we all just called our parents and said, “We’re stuck here.”

nThen we just started going to record stores and record fairs around the Maryland area and we had made a little list about what was in The Shining credits. We were asking these old guys with milk crates at record fairs like, “What is this, what genre, what bins should we be looking in?,” and that led us into early electronic music and tape music like what was done at Columbia-Princeton [Electronic Music

(Brian Weitz, who performs as Geologist, is a founding member of Animal Collective. The Baltimore experimental band also features Avey Tare/David Portner, Panda Bear/Noah Lennox, and Deakin/Josh Dibb. Their most recent album, Time Skiffs, came out in February 2022 via Domino. Portions of Weitz’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

As Told to Paul Veracka

Brian Weitz (aka Geologist) of ANIMAL COLLECTIVE on The Shining (1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

Animal Collective photo by Hisham Bharoocha.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

SOUND AND VISION

A Conversation About Balancing Acting and Music with WILL OLDHAM, MAYA HAWKE,

MARLON WILLIAMS

MCKENNA GRACE

Once showbusiness rang hollow for a young Will Oldham, he went from aspiring actor to a seemingly even tougher second act in indie music. But the challenge made sense to the would-be avant-garde Americana cult favorite after acting in John Sayles’ 1987 movie Matewan So “extraordinary” was the independent movie maverick’s set says Oldham—not to mention castmates like James Earl Jones and a young Chris Cooper—that he later sorrowfully learned “it was the complete exception, in terms of the respect of everyone involved in the production.” He grew disillusioned enough to stop pursuing the craft he’d shown so much promise in since his boyhood performances at the renowned Actors Theatre in his native Louisville, Kentucky.

“I gradually began to realize most of my energies outside of acting had been put toward the musical world here in Louisville, Kentucky. And I then started to make music. Not necessarily because it was easier, but because it was more independent and interdependent in ways that I understood and appreciated. More than the movie business was,” says Oldham of the solidarity he found among fellow DIY, boundary pushing musicians. He began performing and recording as Palace Brothers, before re-stepping into the (relatively small, but nevertheless fulflling) indie music spotlight as Bonnie “Prince” Billy in the late ’90s—an alias he still performs under to critical acclaim.

In more recent years Oldham has grown into one of the few performers fnding fulfllment in both music and acting, all on his own terms. While too many musicians embarrass themselves after becoming famous by accepting acting offers they are unft for—not to mention actors fumbling to realize their rockstar dreams—Oldham gracefully toggled between recording acclaimed albums and earning similar raves in shoestring indies like Old Joy. Some younger talents who spoke to Under the Radar have been similarly nimble, such as Maya Hawke (known for Netfix’s Stranger Things and her new album MOSS), New Zealand singer/songwriter Marlon Williams (who was cast by Bradley Cooper for the smash hit 2018 remake of A Star Is Born), and Mckenna Grace (who not only co-starred in Ghostbusters: Afterlife but also had one of her songs featured on its soundtrack).

These interviewees rank among, or at least have

JASON ISBELL

,

and NEKO CASE

,

Words by Kyle Mullin

,

the potential to stand alongside, artists that move fuidly between both mediums. Among the all-time greats, singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson who not only gave a number of unfussy but authentic silver screen turns in Lone Star (which Sayles coincidentally wrote and directed), the 1976

version of A Star Is Born (for which he won a Golden Globe), and other acclaimed flms after penning country classics like “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Musicians indeed seem to have better luck making the switch—be it Lady Gaga’s Oscar-nominated turn in the 2018 A

Will Oldham Will Oldham

photo by Jessica Fey.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

Star Is Born remake; Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg topping frst the pop charts and then the box offce; or artsier talents from David Bowie to Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein starring in more offbeat productions. No shortage of actors stepped up to the mic, especially blues and country inclined leading men such as Kevin Bacon, Bruce Willis, and Billy Bob Thornton, none of whom were taken very seriously as musicians (and the latter of whom almost derailed his career by taking himself too seriously). Eddie Murphy may have had a #2 hit with his 1985 single “Party All the Time,” but the actor mainly launched his music career because of a bet he had with fellow comedian Richard Pryor, who said Murphy couldn’t sing.

But even if musicians appear to have a higher batting average when it comes to making that transition, plenty of songwriters don’t feel confdent about it. Neko Case, who made her acting debut this summer in the low budget sci-f western Quantum Cowboys, says, “I was mostly thinking about shitting my pants” throughout her scenes, even though director Geoff Marslett specifcally wrote the character as a “Sissy Spacek meets Neko Case type.” Case had almost graced the silver screen years prior, for a much more down to earth and contemporary western. None other than the Coen brothers asked her to audition for No Country for Old Men (an eventual Oscar Best Picture winner), though Kelly Macdonald went on to get the part. Case smiled during a recent Zoom interview while recalling, “Of course they went for her. I would have too. It didn’t feel bad.” A major consolation for Case: how the Coen brothers “were so giving, and made me feel good for showing up. That was one of the steps that led me to take this risk [with Quantum Cowboys]. Because, earlier in my career I had been offered chances to audition. No one would even call me back to say I didn’t get the part. I guess that’s par for the course, but I’d then think I was obviously not hot enough to be cast. So when I auditioned for No Country, at the behest of the Coen brothers, I’d think, ‘Why am I fucking doing this?’ But they were so nice to me.”

Case was on the Quantum Cowboys call sheet with Lily Gladstone, who she and Marslett call a star in the making, especially since she was cast in Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated flm Killers of

the Flower Moon. That flm features not one but two beloved musicians, both of whom arguably vie for title of top Americana artist of our time: Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell. Isbell said, during a phone interview between days on set last summer: “It’s so cool to see for myself the grand scale of it [this production]. I’ve been out there with Marty every day. And De Niro. I was really impressed with how hard he works. Leo [DiCaprio] too—sweating in tweed suits everyday, just working his ass off.”

Isbell contributed the song “Maybe It’s Time” for an earlier star-studded award hopeful, A Star Is Born. Director/star Bradley Cooper cast another alt-country favorite for a role in that movie, Marlon Williams. The New Zealand singer/songwriter—who sounds like Roy Orbison’s haunted reincarnation—says he wanted to do music videos as an extension of songwriting, which got him into acting. But when Cooper gave him the role on A Star Is Born he didn’t think of him as an actor. Instead, the director heard Williams’ singing, went to the Troubadour to see him live, and decided to cast him. But that doesn’t mean Williams was disappointed. On the contrary, he relished the opportunity, and marveled daily at Cooper’s ability to “be able to direct the world around him while being in it. It was an incredible thing to watch. It also taught me that you can’t do that without being an incredible delegator and team leader.” Many musicians don’t need to hone such skills, says Williams, because of their options to record solo in their rooms, with a band and producer in a studio, or anything in between. With that, “you’re not beholden to anyone else’s ability to screw up your ideas. So a lot of letting go had to happen for [Cooper] to be able to see it through at all,” adds Williams, who has since acted in Netfix’s DC Comics adaptation Sweet Tooth and just released a new album, My Boy Oldham speaks of John Sayles’ far less commercial, but arguably more acclaimed flmmaking with similar reverence. “He put a lot of faith and respect into the abilities and energies of every member of the cast and crew, as far as I can tell,” Oldham says of working on the Matewan set. “I think he just kind of expected you to do your work, and that your work would be supported by everyone else’s, and vice versa. It just seemed so natural to me, that it took me years to realize that’s not a standard way of thinking or working at all.” Oldham remains in

touch with Sayles, and crew members from that production, visiting members of the latter recently while in New Hampshire. “They’re people that still inspire me, that I’ve been friends with since I was 16. And I’m 52 now. And they see Sayles every week. And when Sayles and his partner Maggie Renzi come through Louisville, I see them.” And what is it like to spend time with the helmer of Lone Star and Passion Fish (not to mention Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” music video) these days? “Sayles’ brain is unique. It’s a good brain,” Oldham says. “For a variety reasons, principal among them it’s hard to get funding for independent movies, so one thing he’s done is continue his parallel career of being a writer. And when he puts a book out, he’ll often do reading tours and Q&As. If you ever get a chance to see that, you’ll see his brain in action, and it’s kind of humbling. Because it’s just so perceptive. And generous.”

Burgeoning actress Mckenna Grace is roughly the same age now as Oldham was on the set of Matewan. She has enjoyed similar generosity and inspiration as what he describes. The young Nirvana and Radiohead fan penned a song called “Haunted House” and later sent it to her Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman on a lark, only to be surprised by his offer to use the song in the movie. She went on to release the song “Post Party Trauma” this summer, promoting it in between shooting scenes for the Peacock true

“Both movies and music are about communication and telling a story.” – Maya Hawke

Maya Hawke

Mckenna Grace

Mckenna Grace photo by Gus Black. Maya Hawke photo by Celine Sutter.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

crime limited series Friend of the Family, which co-stars Anna Paquin (X-Men), Jake Lacy (The White Lotus), and Colin Hanks (The Offer, the Fargo TV series). Rather that lounge in her trailer between takes, Grace says: “Whenever inspiration strikes, I write. I’ll always bring an instrument to set. And Colin has this huge ukulele in a holder next to his chair. Sometimes I’ll get inspired and start strumming!”

Grace says both music and acting are “like therapy. It’s very, very nice to go on set and spend a day crying, getting all the emotions out. Music is a different therapy, because I’m writing it all out. In music I’ll discover: ‘Oh, this is why I felt that way.’”

Maya Hawke—a 24-year-old rising star that broke through this summer as a Stranger Things co-star and for her critically praised album MOSS says acting and music “affect my life differently. I have more independence and control in my music. And music is generally a bit faster—maybe a two week run, where we’ll [her collaborators and producer] work all day long.” For movies and TV, however, require “waiting in your trailer, waiting in auditions to be chosen. But both movies and music are about communication and telling a story.” Hawke, the daughter of established actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, has also been working with Bradley Cooper, co-starring in the upcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro, which Cooper again both directs and stars in.

Oldham also fnds acting and music to be fulflling in different ways, and loves how one affected the other while he worked on the fawned-for indie Old Joy, released in 2006 Because “the vision, for lack of a better word, was in that case in director Kelly Reichardt’s hands. And my brain doesn’t need to keep track of anything except my character, and my relationship with Kelly and the rest of the crew. Which leaves a signifcant portion of my brain free to do things that it often times doesn’t get to do. And I didn’t know what I was going to do with that.” His mind wasn’t idle for long, thankfully. During the flming of Old Joy, his friend, the recording engineer and producer Mark Nevers, asked him write a song

for veteran singer Candi Staton, and Oldham found that, “Yeah, my brain was just waiting for that assignment. Also, in another way I was making music for somebody else. Of course I did have to adhere to my own codes of quality, but I mostly needed to satisfy the demands of what Candi, as a recording artist, might be able to use. So submitting myself to a flmmaker can be quite liberating.”

However, Oldham diverges from Grace and Hawke’s fuency in both music and stream ing series. He far prefers flm for acting, even though its opportunities appear to be dwindling in this period of pandemic-box offce returns and TV series inundation. “It’s funny, and I don’t mean ‘ha ha,’ that movies were a medium created for a certain kind of experience, a certain kind of practical display, that just doesn’t exist anymore. Because movie theatres are, for the most part, garbage. And that’s what the medium was created for. And people don’t go to them, except for big amusement park ride movies. So the idea that cinema, as far as I understand it, is kind of dead, because the movie business is driven by things that are so alien. As a kid I thought acting was the thing to do. And I don’t recognize anything that I call acting in most movies now. It’s people staying physically ft so they can stand on green screens stages for hours a day for months at a time.”

as much of a red tape free life as possible. Crews are massive! Budgets are huge! And the money’s being spent on, what? Nothing related to what you see onscreen, I think.”

Fortunately, Bonnie “Prince” Billy is more upbeat about the future for musicians like himself. Oldham admits: “It’s kind of universal in print and fction writing, in music, and in flm—just understanding the relationship between creator and audience, as things have shifted so considerably over the past 10 or 15 years. It’s frustrating.” However, as Oldham began a slow post-peak-pandemic return to “touring, and having dialogues with other people along the way. It has been truly exciting. So I’m optimistic that things are happening that can’t be quantifed or even described by my experience of online worlds. Or journalistically nurtured perceptions. Things that are happening person to person and community to community are really happening. And the only way to witness it is to participate and experience it. So yeah, music is pretty great right now.”

Oldham adds that prestige TV isn’t flling that void for him, despite the hype. As a co-star of Old Joy, he needed only to communicate with seven or eight collaborators between his castmate Daniel London, Reichardt, and the crew. There were more people bogging down the email thread for a recent animated series he lent his voice to—assistants and assistants of assistants CC’d the joy out of his creative process. Even more byzantine bureaucracy led him to walk away from a series he was cast in—he raises his hands in quavering indignation next to his head while recalling the copious emails that “had nothing to do with the work. I like to have

Neko Case photo by Ebru Yildiz. Marlon Williams photo by Ray Lego. Jason Isbell photo by Alysse Gafkjen.

Marlon Williams

Neko Case

Jason Isbell

MAYA HAWKE

Bravely Cringing

Words by Kyle Mullin

“What else have I failed at recently?” Maya Hawke smiles and asks rhetorically about the seemingly unthinkable. She’s talking about guttering during her frst crack at bowling. But fans would be forgiven for thinking she can do no wrong. After all, Hawke had a winning summer with both the new season of the widely watched Netfix drama Stranger Things and with her sophomore album MOSS, 13 tracks of gently strummed and whisper-sung folk-pop Both left fans and critics raving. Those triumphs built on her role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood And her fans have plenty more to look forward to, such as her upcoming roles in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City

But success hasn’t gone to the musician/ac tress’ head. Or at least the daughter of ’90s idols Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman sounds deter mined not to let it. “You learn about yourself when your ego gets checked,” she says. “Because when you get a little success, people can set you up to succeed. They’ll get you parts like the ones you’ve played, or surround you with musicians that can make your record sound good.”

So earlier this year, she swung and missed at bowling, rock climbing, and standup comedy. And she auditioned for a musical. As it turns out, Hawke’s talents for understated folk and acting didn’t make her a showtunes shoo-in. “I can’t hit

notes like a Broadway singer,” she admits. Hawke—who has her mom’s looks and mannerisms, but sounds a lot like her dad—is equally self-deprecating, surprisingly enough, when talking about MOSS. She says her collaborators such as co-producer Benjamin Lazar Davis, frequent Phoebe Bridgers associate Christian Lee Hutson, and guitarist Will Graefe (with whom she duets on the MOSS swoon-anthem “Crazy Kid”) “all gave me the space, even though I’m not really a musician, to use the skills I do have.” Modesty aside, what does she bring to the table? “Being a good communicator. They let me communicate with them, in the ways I know how, to make the music sound the way I wanted to. And they gave me permission to learn about production.”

When they began working on MOSS, Hawke would fumblingly describe how “‘I want it to sound here like there is no sound.’ But by the end of the recording, I’d learned enough to say ‘I want a sidechain on this,’” she recalls, contrasting her earlier humility by all but beaming with pride and enthusiasm.

She also learned plenty about lyricism from Hutson. She calls him “the Bob Dylan of our generation of minute observations that are meaningful. These specifc details that make up a life—he takes the short story or play out of the details, and sets you in an environment that tells a story.” Unlike her 2020 album Blush, whose songs boast captivating narrative arcs, MOSS “is more

washes of feelings and observations. Christian does it a lot better than me. But I’m still learning.”

Though you’d never guess it because they so quickly clicked as co-writers, Hawke frst met Hutson during the MOSS sessions. That period grew from an originally planned few days of recording between Hawke and Davis to several weeks after one of her movie shoots fell through. Given the additional time, Hawke asked Davis if he wanted to record more songs, for which he invited Hutson and Blush guitarist Graefe.

“So I found myself with the three of them, looking through old journals and jotting new lyrics down, just pulling songs from the past and out of my present,” she recalls.

Though she praises those collaborators for being generous, Hawke also extended that kindness to herself. That meant songs like “Plan B,” whose lyrics “only seemed to be a list” at frst, were given their just due.

“There are lyrics on MOSS where I wish I could take a red pen and cross them out,” she says with a grin. But instead of giving in to that urge, she told herself: “An idea may be stupid. But I do feel that stupid feeling. So instead of twisting it into something that sounds smart, I’m just going to say the stupid thought.”

Make no mistake, she says: “I am in charge. No one’s making me put this record out. Are there lyrics that make me cringe? Yes. Do I actually want to change them? No.”

Maya Hawke photo by Celine Sutter.

MOVIE

SOLO COLLABORATIONS THE TRANSITION FROM THE MAIN STAGE TO THE BIG SCREEN

A Conversation

Words by Nicholas Russell

John Barry’s frst score as a composer came in 1960 with the British coming-of-age romp Beat Girl starring teen idol Adam Faith. Performed by the composer’s own band, The John Barry Seven and Orchestra, Beat Girl’s soundtrack, incidentally the frst British score to be released on vinyl LPs, boasts a fanfare horn section and a distinctive lead guitar amongst other typical orchestral elements. At this point in cinematic history, what role music served was still in fux. The earliest silent pictures—showcased as the pioneering Lumiere Brothers’—were in exhibition spaces, came accompanied by live musicians, photo play music taken from repertory scores and improvised to suit the mood of each screening. The oft-told, but apparently apocryphal origins of flm compositions—that they were merely implemented to cover up the sound of the projector—survives to this day.

Over the coming decades, musical innovations from the likes of Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Ennio Morricone reoriented the emotional capabilities of flm scores as well as the genre infuences they might contain, to say nothing of the instruments used. Radio, Broadway, traditional theater, and the cinema all transformed

in tandem, with composers moving between and being inspired by these different worlds. Alex North’s seminal compositions for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951 incorporated jazz as well as classically infected orchestra, a dash of the modern mixed in with the traditional. Leonard Bernstein’s score for On the Waterfront three years later elaborated upon the infuence of jazz, playing with rhythm and harmony in seemingly improvisational bursts. Still, the reigning perception of the music of cinema is that of a conductor leading an ensemble of strings and winds toward some beautiful, swelling crescendo, the symphonic grandeur of Star Wars to the pastoral epic of The Lord of the Rings

John Barry’s era adds another favor to the mix, foregrounding the sound and directness of a band, never more iconically than in Barry’s decadeslong contribution to the James Bond franchise. The musician-turned-composer is, by now, a fairly commonplace occupation, though it’s fair to say the transition, for the musician as well as for the industry that accepts their place, is key. These are turning points in the historical sonic direction of cinema, by turns as formally disruptive as the introduction of needle drops and the synthesizer, and as commonly rote as dayplayer work. Some of the biggest pop and rock stars ever to do it

About Film Composing with Danny Elfman, Mark Mothersbaugh, Trent Reznor, Stuart Braithwaite, and Dan Deacon

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Mark Mothersbaugh

Mark Mothersbaugh photo courtesy of the artist.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

have contributed their music to flm, from one-off featured songs to entire orchestral suites, but not all are memorable. Which is to say, the very fact of a musician becoming a composer does not guarantee originality or novelty in the music itself. There has to be some sort of marriage between a director’s understanding of what the musician is capable of and the musician’s ability to achieve a sense of creative freedom within the confnes of what the narrative requires. This is tension as collaboration and vice versa, ego balancing with service to a project far larger and more expansive than any studio album. In the best cases, some of the most distinctive and trend-setting flm scores in history come out of this process.

Still, this is an unconventional career path for musicians to take, a risk gambled on something potentially thrilling or depressingly anticlimactic. Uncertainty seems to play a large role for many of the musicians we spoke to and is usually the place where their careers in flm and TV started: with an unexpected call.

The way Mark Mothersbaugh describes it, movies and the eccentric machinations of his band Devo

went hand-in-hand. “We were making flms long before MTV and the only place to show them was at clubs,” he explains over Zoom. “We’d hang a sheet and play some flms before a show and people would be like, ‘Yeah, this band comes out and shows flms of themselves playing songs then they come out and play the songs again!’”

Mothersbaugh’s fascination with cinema stretched back to childhood, but his frst crack at a soundtrack happened almost by accident. “Dean Stockwell asked me to score an Ionesco one-man play for an Off Broadway show that he was doing for Russ Tamblyn and I thought, ‘Okay, I can do that.’” Around the same time, Stockwell and Tamblyn, both former child actors who grew up to become acclaimed character actors, were working with Neil Young on the 1982 comedy Human Highway. “We did this long jam on ‘Hey Hey My My,’” footage of which was subsequently used in the flm. “But when he was putting that flm together, Dean took some of the music that I had written for this Off Broadway show and said, ‘Hey, check this out.’ He and Neil had cut it into the flm as an underscore. I had never intended for that music to be in the movie and I thought it

sounded really good. And some time later, I got asked to score Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

Pee-wee is the unexpected link between Mothersbaugh and one of the most prolifc working composers, Danny Elfman, who spoke over the phone as he was prepping the release of the remix album Bigger. Messier., a companion piece to 2021’s Big Mess, which was his frst album of non-soundtrack work in over 25 years. Elfman’s flm career really begins with the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo, an early ’70s theater troupe based in LA started by his older brother, Richard. “I transcribed old jazz. We did a lot of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington,” he says. “I had to learn to transcribe those parts and I had to teach myself to write. Then I started doing my frst compositions.”

After the Mystic Knights disbanded, Elfman took the musical remains of the group to form the iconic 1980s New Wave band Oingo Boingo, a period of time Elfman looks back on with a measure of ambivalence if only because he found that the band’s music wasn’t formally challenging. “Then, in ’85, I got Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and all the hard work I had learned with the Mystic Knights came

Danny Elfman

Danny Elfman photo by Blixa Bargeld.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

approaching music. Trent Reznor embodies this sentiment well. We spoke to him in August right before the flm Bones And All, which he and Atticus Ross scored, premiered at the Venice Film Festival and before Nine Inch Nails commenced their frst tour since 2018.

“Usually I have a story I’m trying to tell as a songwriter, with an emotional response as the main goal. How do I help tell the story with music or sound so that you feel a certain way? Once I thought about flm scoring in that light, it made the process easier to understand.”

back. I wouldn’t have taken on that score had I not had those earlier years.” The distinction inherent in the music of the most recognizable composers seems to be a product of idiosyncrasy as much as project-specifc necessity. Elfman’s love of flm scores translated into his flm work, specifcally what he termed “full-on, crazy, plastic flm scores, none of this pop shit.” His collaborations with director Tim Burton (starting with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Burton’s debut feature-length flm) only emboldened that quality, though Elfman is a consummate professional and works in just about any mode you can interest him in, from genre-fare to serious drama.

A more recent crop of musicians-turned-composers have, in the last decade or so, made their mark by virtue of how popular their original solo or ensemble acts were before they shifted into the movie business, people like Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor. In a media landscape overstuffed with period nostalgia and pandering, obvious needledrops, there is a danger for a solo artist to attempt original music specifcally for flm and TV if that music isn’t a featured single. Part of this is the perception of vanity, the sense that an artist is overextending themselves beyond the bounds of their ability. Another is the simple fact that some who try wash out from their inability to play well with others.

Stuart Braithwaite, guitarist and vocalist for the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, which has scored a number of flms and TV shows, most recently Apple TV+’s Black Bird, spoke of the need to not be precious with what’s put on offer for a project. “Sometimes you’ll be pushed in a direction that you would have never gone in. It doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing, but it can detach you slightly from it. It’s a collaboration.” To elaborate, Braithwaite is slightly more candid than other musicians we spoke to. “To be honest, we hand over music and if the director doesn’t like it, that’s fne. Maybe in the early days, we would get a little bit touchy about it, but at the end of the day, it’s their movie.”

The nitty gritty of this process is almost never linear. Dan Deacon, the electronic musician, whose solo work ranges from the bright and melodic to the atmospheric and dissonant, illustrated the back-and-forth nature of his work on Theo Anthony’s 2021 documentary All Light, Everywhere. “I would be like, ‘Here’s 20 pieces of music that are 5 to 20 minutes each and here’s all the stems.’ Then Theo would go through and do these crude stem-level adjustments and send them back,” Deacon explains. “Then I would retranslate his automations and write a new piece based on that adjustment and send that back. He would do it again, I would do it again. It was sort of a call-and-response and meanwhile, the edit of the movie started to conform to these changes as well. At a certain point, for a sequence, I was working on this super dense piece of music then Theo was like, ‘I cut 30 seconds out of this scene’ and I was like, ‘Fuck, man!’ But that’s the nature of it.”

Across each conversation with the musicians we spoke to, there was the reiteration of a core appreciation for and love of flm as the primary factor in their continued work. But there was also the fact that it’s a fundamentally different way of

We asked Reznor about what continued to attract him to composing following the score he and Ross did for David Fincher’s 2010 flm The Social Network, critical and awards success notwithstanding (Reznor and Ross won the Oscar for Best Original Score for the movie).

“Film scoring is me as a musician trying to collaborate and help tell someone else’s story,” Reznor says. “After I did a few, I realized it felt really good not to be the boss. It felt liberating, in a way, to be like, ‘My job is to do the best I can over in this corner and see how I can enhance this thing and put my ego on the side.’”

Some of the veteran icons like Elfman have historically felt that a tradeoff had to be made between solo work and scoring, especially given the all-consuming nature of each. In Elfman’s case, he describes how Oingo Boingo obviated his composing skills in the same way that composing left him little time, until the pandemic, to focus on rock music. But the unique position of the working musician who dabbles in flm is that one mode of creativity often enhances enthusiasm for the other. “I think it’s made us better musicians, able to work in different modes,” Braithwaite says. “We’d probably have done a lot more holidays if we didn’t have soundtracks.”

As for Deacon, he says, “I’ll probably sit here in flm scoring more than I do in the other world. I’m writing more music than I ever have in my life. It’s almost like me as a musician is my hobby.”

“Film scoring is me as a musician trying to collaborate and help tell someone else’s story. After I did a few, I realized it felt really good not to be the boss.” – Trent Reznor

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Mogwai

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross photo by Corinne Schiavone. Mogwai photo by Antony Crook.

MOVIE

DAN DEACON on There Will Be Blood (2007, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

As Told to Nicholas Russell n

Iused to have this thing on tour called Dan’s DV days, where I would buy a DVD every day on tour, particularly from gas stations, because that’s the number one place you go as a musician on tour is to a gas station. And they used to have these massive bins of DVDs, some of legitimate flms, like There Will Be Blood, but most of the time I was trying to buy knockoff title movies you could only see if you bought a DVD at a gas station.

My favorite is The Lord Protector, made to look like Lord of the Rings Transmorphers is really good. Billy Owens and the Secret of the Runes is a Harry Potter ripoff that’s really good. And I buy one of these a day. It was a fun hobby and a fun collection.

But I bought There Will Be Blood because it must have been around the time when Blockbuster was like, “We’re fucked. We aren’t selling 700,000 copies of The Parent Trap. Do you know anyone at Pilot gas stations that can help us unload these?” So every once in a while I would buy a title that had been released theatrically. And I was like, “Oh, There Will Be Blood. I wanted to see this.” So I bought the DVD and I didn’t watch it on tour, waited until I got home. And I was just foored. I was also disappointed that I hadn’t seen it in theaters. But I think it gave me a real appreciation for the score because I got to listen to it on headphones, which is a very different movie watching experience.

The score is very subtle when it wants to be subtle and it’s maximus when it’s maximus. But I think what I loved about the score is how fuidly it lives with the source music, the needle drops. I understand the controversy around the score and why Jonny Greenwood didn’t get the Oscar

nomination because I think a lot of people confused the license music with score. Because the score was of equal caliber. For a score that’s intermixed with so many classics of 19th cen tury music it ft very, very fuidly. And I thought that was one of the score’s strengths.

I think it really stuck with me and on repeat viewings. There’s always new things that I hear when I listen to it. And I think the relationship that Greenwood and PT Anderson have is just every flm composer’s dream. They’re really building every time and they really focus in on the era and the genre, really masterfully.

At that point in my life, I wasn’t scoring for flms at all, it was just a rad movie with a beautiful score. It’s a beautiful take on a Western and the use of period electronics to incorporate sounds that a modern listener has grown accustomed to.

I’d say it’s my favorite flm, I’d say without a doubt. When I had a day off in London a few years ago they were screening it at the Southbank Centre with a live orchestra with Greenwood playing. And I just didn’t think how many Radiohead fans would be there. There were so many and I was like, “Oh, yeah, this dude’s from Radiohead.” I forgot about that. He’s not just a guy from There Will Be Blood, he’s got a side project.

(Dan Deacon is an electronic musician and flm composer based in Baltimore, Maryland. His latest album, Mystic Familiar, was released in 2020 by Domino. Recent scores by Deacon include for the Netfix flm Hustle and the documentaries All Light, Everywhere and Ascension, which was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar. Portions of Deacon’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

DANNY ELFMAN

on Composer

Bernard Herrmann and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951,

directed by Robert Wise)

As Told to Nicholas Russell n

Iliterally don’t have a favorite flm. I’ve got 10 categories of favorite flms that do different things in different places. Favorite flms tend to be, with everybody, it’s about the age we encountered something. Way up on the list of favorite flms would be Psycho, way up on the favorite flms list would be so many flms, Polanski flms, Kurosawa flms.

What I tend to notice, when people talk about this stuff, I’ll say, “You know, what was the scariest flm you ever saw,” for example, they’ll tell me a flm they saw at a very specifc age. If you’re a certain age, and you saw Jaws, it’s like, “Oh, my God, I couldn’t go in the water for years, the ocean.” And for me, I didn’t think twice about going in the ocean, I didn’t give a shit about sharks. I really, really enjoyed the movie, but it didn’t have any kind of emotional impact on me because I was the wrong age. So it’s all about being impression able, with favorite songs and favorite flms, and to be somewhere between late adolescence and college years. And, inevitably, the favorite song it’ll be something like, “I was in college. I fell in love.” Emotions that go along with it. And you could never dispute or argue these things. We make emotional at tachments to things.

The reason I listed The Day the Earth Stood Still is, I don’t think by far it was the best made flm or just in terms of great flms, it probably wouldn’t make my Top 10 list. Yet, it was the flm that made me notice flm music. So it had this great impact on me. I was probably about 12 or 13 and I remember seeing the movie in the theater. I went to the theater every weekend of my life as a child. And it was the frst time I noticed the music. And I noticed the name of the person who did the music. Up until

that point there was no consciousness, like most young people, the music’s just there. And the editing just happens. You don’t think about it, until suddenly, you notice. And at that point on, I started listening to flm music. And every time I saw the name Bernard Herrmann I said, “Oh, this is going to be special.” And then his name reappeared on three or four or fve other favorite flms of my youth: Journey to the Center of the Earth, one of my favorites, Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. These are the flms I grew up on. So suddenly if I saw what I called the two majors: Harryhausen and Herrmann. Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animator, did many of those fantasy flms in the ’60s, although he started way back on King Kong. So if it had those two names, I already knew it’s gonna be my favorite flm of the year. It’s like, “Oh, my God, it’s got Herrmann and Harryhausen. It’s going to have Bernard Herrmann’s music, it’s gonna have Ray Harryhausen stopmotion animation, I’m gonna love this flm.” You have to really fuck it up to not be my favorite.

And so that’s the reason I’m listing The Day the Earth Stood Still, is the music caught my attention. It didn’t sound like other scores. It was emotional to me in a way that was curious. And so I’m calling out that flm because it was the beginning of being a flm music fan.

(Danny Elfman is an Oscar-nominated and Grammy and Emmy winning flm composer known for his work with Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, and countless other flmmakers. He was also a member of the band Oingo Boingo and released a new solo album, Big Mess, in 2021 via ANTI-/Epitaph. Portions of Elfman’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

Dan Deacon photo by Micah E. Wood. Danny Elfman photo by Blixa Bargeld.

MOVIE

KEVIN MORBY and JASON SCHWARTZMAN

RUSHMORE Discuss

The Tree of

Words by Mark Moody

Influence

We interviewed many musicians for the My Favorite Movie Issue, but what we might not have seen coming was the deep connection that some artists have with their favorite flm. There are some hilarious comedies that people claim as their favorite, but for some the impact of their favorite movie goes much deeper than that. Such as Ezra Furman’s lifelong relationship with Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, and seeing herself in Harvey Keitel’s character. Or in this case, how Kevin Morby resonated with Jason Schwartzman’s character, Max Fischer, in writer/director Wes Anderson’s 1998 flm Rushmore, the frst time he saw it as a teenager.

Morby and Schwartzman made an immediate connection over our nearly two-and-a-half hour Zoom interview. Ironically, both of their partners, Schwartzman’s wife Brady Cunningham and Morby’s partner Katie Crutchfeld (who records music as Waxahatchee), hail from Alabama. Which brought the possibility of a holiday meet-up and an exchange of cell numbers. Amusingly, Cunningham’s and Crutchfeld’s names were the ones that appeared at the bottom of each artist’s Zoom window.

Both artists have had incredibly busy schedules and were gracious to squeeze in this time to talk. In addition to releasing a highly acclaimed album this year, This Is a Photograph, Morby was set to kick off a European tour within a few days of our conversation. And outside of music, Morby had recently thrown out

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the frst pitch for his hometown Kansas City Royals and also interviewed one of his favorite authors, Rachel Kushner. Add this interview with Schwartzman to his list and he’s decidedly on a roll. Prior to launching his solo career in 2013, the 34-year-old musician was also in the bands The Babies and Woods.

Schwartzman has a full slate of cinematic projects on tap. Including, having just wrapped flming for the upcoming new Wes Anderson movie, Asteroid City, in Chinchón, Spain. And similar to Morby’s departure plans, at the time of the interview the 42-year-old actor was gearing up to travel to Germany to flm a prequel to The Hunger Games’ movies. A musician (previously he was the drummer in Phantom Planet) and music buff himself, Schwartzman also has plans to bring back his crate-digging adventures to Sirius XM Radio, through hosting his Coconut Radio show sometime in the near future. And lest you think Hollywood movie stars aren’t punctual, Schwartzman was the frst to beam into the call. [Note: The full interview between Schwartzman and Morby has been edited down to ft into the print magazine. What follows are the high lights, focusing mainly on Rushmore. At some point we might run the complete unedited interview online.]

Mark Moody (Under the Radar): Hi Jason, thanks for joining us to do this.

Jason Schwartzman: Oh, no, honestly, I’m fattered and a little embarrassed. [Laughs]

Mark: That Rushmore is Kevin’s favorite movie?

Jason: Well, yeah. I don’t know how to react. It’s really

nice, especially when someone [you respect] likes your movie. I think that is so great.

Mark: Hi Kevin. I appreciate you both agreeing to do this. I had volunteered to interview Kevin, and then Kevin asked if we could get Jason involved, so that’s really cool. That it all worked out. Ironically, I’m from Houston, where the movie was flmed, and my dad graduated from Lamar High School in 1952, where part of the movie was shot. So where Max got expelled to, not the nice school. [Laughs] So that’s pretty wild.

Jason: The school was nice. Just so you know. I don’t want to tarnish your father’s legacy.

Mark: Kevin, I know you recently threw out the frst pitch at a Kansas City Royals’ game. How was that?

Kevin Morby: Honestly, so scary. I pitched as a kid and I love baseball, even though I chose rock and roll over sports ultimately. But I still have the muscle memory of being able to pitch. So I was like, “Oh, I got this.” And I was practicing with my dad. The day [of the game], I woke up, and I felt so nervous. And I was like, “I don’t want to do this.” [Laughs] And when I was in the bowels of the stadium, they took me to this tunnel, and they’re like, “You can practice here.” So I brought my dad back. And I was practicing and I was so nervous that I was fucking the ball up and I was throwing it right into the ground. And then I’d overthrow too high. Really scared. My hand was really sticky was the problem, because of the nerves. And then I had to go through all this offcial stuff when you’re meeting people. When I fnally walked out I [somehow] managed to get the pitch off. It went well.

Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore (Courtesy of The Criterion Collection)

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

Jason: No bounce? Good.

Kevin: The mascot actually didn’t catch the ball. And they warn you about that. But it was just too fast for him. [Laughs]

Jason: He wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t ready for that kind of heat.

Mark: So do you all want to talk about the movie?

Kevin, you’re supposed to be interviewing Jason, but if you could also get in there why you picked Rushmore as your favorite movie, that would be great. And then we can just kind of go from there.

Kevin: Yeah. All right, let’s do it. Let’s do it, Jason. Jason: I’m very excited. I appreciate you thinking of the movie.

Kevin: Absolutely. Well, okay, so something that I do is make lists. I get terrible insomnia when I’m touring. I can’t sleep, and I often make lists. It’s something that I really like to do even if I already kind of know what the list is going to be. So I’m like, “What are the best live shows I’ve ever seen? What are my favorite records of all time, my favorite movies of all time?” And I really stand by Rushmore, scene by scene, and the impact it’s had on me and the sheer amount of time that I’ve watched it and how often I still do watch it. Rushmore is number one. There’s no competition.

Jason: Amazing.

Kevin: It’s really, really incredible. And I watched it the other night sort of in preparation for this interview, though I don’t need to watch it because it’s embedded in my brain. But what I want to say about it is that I grew up in suburban Middle America, and I always got terrible, terrible grades. Music obviously changed my life. Certain artists at a certain age really changed everything for me. But I’m telling you the truth when I say when I saw Rushmore as a 15-year-old, it gave me so much validation.

Jason: Oh, wow.

Kevin: Because from the ffth grade, until I dropped out of high school in my junior year, I was the worst student ever. Terrible grades. But there was some part of me that was like, “I feel like I’m smart in certain ways, but I just really don’t ft into this structure.” And I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City and Oklahoma, [where there wasn’t much culture]. And though I would listen to music and I really related to that, it was still very much stuff that existed on the coasts or in a different time period. I love Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. But it happened in the ’60s, I could never be like that. But something about seeing Rushmore, and I didn’t see it in the theaters or anything, it would be many years after that. But I got my hands on it, for whatever reason, sophomore year of high school and I watched it and was the same age as [Schwartzman’s character] Max Fischer. And it blew the ceiling off my mind. I was like, “Wow!” I just felt validated. It was crazy validation. I watched it every day after school and, of course, the soundtrack and the cinematography. I’d never seen anything like it before. But you, as Max Fischer, just really did something to me. Literally, within a year, I had dropped out of high school and took a train to New York City and moved there and I joined Woods. And I met Jarvis [Taveniere], I met Jeremy [Earl], and then from there at 18 years old, I’ve been a professional musician ever since. And I directly relate that to the character of Max and your performance because it did something to me. And it’s one of those movies now that it’s like, you know when you love something so much, it just becomes like shorthand. Same as my favorite record. I don’t even need to listen to Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited anymore because it’s always inside me. That’s how Rushmore is. So I want to say thank you not only to doing the interview, but that it also makes me emotional. It was just such a pivotal part of my life. My girlfriend, I don’t know if you know her music. She

plays under Waxahatchee [Katie Crutchfeld].

Jason: Of course, yes.

Kevin: She’s amazing. And Rushmore literally came up when we frst started dating. It was like, “What’s my favorite movie? This is my favorite movie.” It was one of those. It just always been this thing in my life.

Jason: That’s just beautiful. I mean, there’s nothing I can say. Now anything I can say would just seem… Let’s just let that exist because that’s just so special. Kevin: That’s cool.

Jason: It means so much to me. And I know that feeling of how much something can mean to someone. I kind of teared up a little bit. So hard to hear. That was so sweet. It’s funny, I grew up in Los Angeles, but I never thought I could be in movies. I remember getting my hair cut and the person who cut my hair had these kids’ headshots on the side of the mirror and they had so much gel and just an attitude. I just remember thinking that’s a different breed of kid that they feel so good that they can do that. And also, you go see movies on the weekends, I’d go and I just love being in the theater and seeing big comedies and stuff, but I never thought I could be a part of them. And records, for me, and being able to walk around with a cassette player to have music you can take with you. It always meant so much to me as a kid to play music. And it was funny because records meant so much to me and movies were some other thing. When I was 10, I got a drum set after wanting one for a year. And I would literally just go play drums by myself for hours after school. And I also played drums in my band. I was very happy. I loved being back there. Yeah, I just didn’t feel

comfortable at school. I’d be dressed like an ice cream delivery man or something, whatever. I felt like I needed some kind of trick to ft in. But it was a small enough school where everyone ft in and everyone didn’t ft in, I guess. But I remember I had written a play when I was 15 and directed this play at a family-style camp. It was just my family members. I remember just loving the experience. And so as a young kid, my mom took me to this playwriting festival. And we went to the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, which is in Connecticut. It’s just a place for people to practice plays and work on plays. And I lived far away from it, but as a kid they let me work at the bar. [Laughs] And I could go see all the plays and listen to all the actors talking. And it felt like truth, just when people were talking about their plays and going through Q&As and you could watch them all rehearse. It just really it seemed wonderful. [Much later], I remember when I got the script of Rushmore, [it was the best thing I had] ever read in my life. I never thought about acting. In fact, when the person [that gave me the script] came up to me, I said, “I’m a drummer.” And I said, “But you should talk to the singer, my band’s singer.” I remember reading the script and having a feeling of like, “Oh, so much of the things that I fnd funny and strange or that one would want to highlight. They’re in this thing.” I’ve never related to something like that. And I remember thinking, I never in a million years thought I would get the part in the movie. In fact, I was doing it just as an experience to audition. But I remember reading and going like, “Man, whoever gets to be in this movie [laughs], it’s going to be so cool. I can’t

Kevin Morby photo by Chantal Anderson.

Kevin Morby

MOVIE

wait to see it.” I couldn’t wait to see it, with someone else in it.

Kevin: It sounds like you were relating to Max Fischer as a character. And I also like the idea that this movie means so much to so many people, but they are just watching it. Obviously, you’re literally in it, so you can’t separate. But I’ve never done that before. I’ve wondered about your reaction the frst time you saw the screening. But I never thought about your reaction to reading the script. And I love that it’s almost like you’re reading a book or something. And I love that you were like, “It’s great. Whoever’s going to get this is going to have so much fun.”

Jason: Yeah, I was just so excited for whoever was going to be in it. But then I had another moment right after that, when I gave the script to my mother, and she said, “Can I see it?” And then she’s like, “I’ll be right back.” And I remember she went out and rented three movies I had never heard of. But they were The Graduate, Dog Day Afternoon, and Harold and Maude. And I had never seen them. I had a fever or something. And I put in the VHS of Dog Day Afternoon and then watching it and this feeling came over me that I’ve never had with a movie but that I had had with albums. It’s weird, it just feels really good. And I remember in that moment going like, “I’m not going to be in this movie. And I really would like to make records and tour. But whatever I’m going to do with my life, I don’t know what this feeling is. But I’d like it to be sort of near this feeling.” I just thought, “This just feels so much better than a lot of other things that people talk about wanting to do with their lives.” And obviously, it’s an extremely lucky, great thing to get to do. I don’t know, I thought, “Maybe I can work on a movie or set or work on a recording.” I didn’t know what I was doing, but I needed to hover around this feeling. And I just remember those movies. I don’t know why it never occurred to me, but just like thinking like, “Oh, wow. You can do things with your body that you can’t really do with an instrument.” Or just like the way the camera [creates] a different dimension. That’s why each art form is so unique. It offers you its own special superpower. But the frst time watching those movies it was like, “Wow!” Because there’s a scene where Al Pacino, the way he takes this shotgun out of this box.

Kevin: Yeah, that’s so good. Obviously Harold and Maude and The Graduate make so much sense, but

I would’ve never guessed Dog Day Afternoon. And it’s very keen of your mom to get that because that is a sort of like Max Fischer in a way. I know it’s a true story, but he’s [Al Pacino] fying blind. He has no plan and he’s just going through this thing and he’s like, “I’m just going to convince the world I have this plan, but I know I don’t have a plan.”

Jason: Yeah.

Kevin: And that’s so good. I really love that. And it’s so funny just watching some of those old movies and obviously, Wes Anderson is a master on his own. Because I’d never seen anything like that would be a Criterion Collection movie in my life. Life for me was all just whatever’s on the radio. Whatever’s playing at the movie theaters in suburban Kansas. And so to see something like Rushmore, it was exactly like that feeling you got with those movies. I felt like, “I don’t even know what this is. It feels like old but new.” The music’s so good and I’ve never seen actors like this before. It transformed everything I thought was real. Jason: And that’s exactly why I was bringing it up. Because I’m fattered that you feel that way about Rushmore. And I know the feeling of loving things a lot. And these things mean so much to me, and it’s hard to compete with a moment that’s happening in real-life. Sometimes you feel, “I’d really just love to listen to that song right now.” It’s hard to compete with that [thought].

Kevin: Sure.

Jason: Like how can this barbecue compete with that album that’s so great and I could just go listen to. [Laughs] I don’t know. But also like how much movies and music and things have meant to me. It’s just so hard to not compare them to just like lunch. “I don’t know, what are we supposed to talk about right now? Lunch?” I could just go be alone and listen to an album or watch this movie. And that’s one reason I’m so excited to talk to you because I love your music. I’ve loved it for a long time, and I play it on my show [Coconut Radio]. And it’s really hard, too, because one of the things about having this show on Sirius XMU, is the frst year you have all these songs, and you know why you love them, and it’s part of you. Like you’re saying, “Here, here’s another one.” But you fnd, it’s really hard to describe why you like something, especially something as ephemeral as music. And I’ll be like, “I love this song because of the hi-hat sound.” There’s just like three seconds of a hi-hat sound. To

me, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. It’ll just be like cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha. I know like on Paul McCartney’s frst solo album there’s one song, and it’s just going along and then cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha. It happens like one time in the song. It’s a crazy weird delay thing, and I’m thinking, “That was incredible.” But going on to associate the words “hi-hat” to it, is hard because all the stuff exists outside of language.

Kevin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason: That’s why it’s hard to convey what your music is to me. Where it’s a similar thing to what you were describing where I was like, “What is this that I’m hearing right now?” I remember hearing a song many records ago, since you’ve made so many now. But you have an ability to say something and I’ll say, “Holy shit, I think I know what he means,” and I don’t know if I’m right, and I don’t want to know if I’m right, but I think I know. “Piss River” is an example where you sing, “Oh my God Mama I’m scared.” I will be walking around my house, and I’ll have that song playing in my head, but no one else is hearing it. And so I’m looking at my kids, and I’ll just be like, “Oh, goddamn.” And they’re like, “What’s going on?” “Sorry. I’m sorry about that. I was coming in with the chorus of the song.” And so it becomes a part of you. It’s like “Mama, I’m scared,” and just the way it’s voiced and even the lyrics. It’s just amazing. That’s three words right there. But the way that it comes on those chords, the way you say it, everything just lines up. It’s like a constellation. And it’s just like, “Oh my God, I don’t know what just happened, but I feel so much better when I hear that than I did before I heard it.” And that’s why I think music is so wonderful is because you can take it with you and it can feel like armor. I guess it’s like people also work out to music, so I’ll walk around and have headphones on just like when your new album came out, which I just love so much. I feel like I’m okay because I’m listening to this and no one else is having [this same experience] right now in this room. I just feel stronger because I’ve got the music on, and I’m connected to this thing. Anyone can join in if they want, but it’s like you feel great because you have this [inside track]. And I love all the demos you’ve been putting out too, like “Bittersweet, TN” on the new album. Because that’s one thing I’m so blown away by is like the process of fguring out, “That’s something. Oh, yeah, that’s something,” and knowing whether or

Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore (Courtesy of The Criterion Collection)

Kevin Morby

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

not something [is good]. I always wonder if a novelist knows, for instance, that’s such a different art form. Like what’s the demo of a novel? Do you write a hundred pages and go, “Nah, I don’t think it’s going to work,” you know what I mean?

Kevin: No clue. That art form, to me, seems the craziest. I can’t even imagine because it’s so internal and with music or flm it’s music or sound, you’re pulling sound out. Writing is like there’s your brain and there’s the page. I took a creative writing class, actually in the pandemic in 2020. And I left the class feeling that it would be insane to write a book. I don’t know how anyone does that.

Jason: Yeah, I know because with music even if the song isn’t good, or going to be used or anything, at least you can say, “Here’s something I did.” And you could hear it. But if you’re writing a novel, everyone writes differently, of course. But from people I’ve interviewed, it’s like, “What did you do today?” And they say, “This paragraph.” It’s so much slower and how do you know what you’re working towards. There’s less evidence of it at the end of each day.

Kevin: You almost can’t show it until it’s completed. It’s just a lonelier process. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of touching on something I wanted to ask you. It’s funny, literally, right before I was doing this, I was getting ready to upload the “Bittersweet, TN” demo. Whenever I post those demos, I’m thinking, “Where’s the moment where I knew this could be a song?” Because I do this all the time, and a lot of it’s throw away. But there’s something, for whatever reason, that you’ll be like, “Oh, wow. That’s the thing.” And I don’t know what that feeling is, but it’s almost like a personal experience mixed with how you could interpret someone else hearing it, with all these things coming together. And I know nothing about the flmmaking process. I’ve never done it. I’ve made music videos, but with something that has become as special as Rushmore, was there a moment when you’re reading the script and you were like you said, “This is special.” But when you were making it, was that feeling there? Was there just an electricity? Because even from afar, you look at it and there’s this second wave of Bill Murray, and it’s your frst movie. And Wes Anderson is on the rise. He has a little bit more of a budget than probably Bottle Rocket [Anderson’s frst flm]. It seems like that very special sort of “it only happens once,” but there’s two sides to that fence. When I think of Rushmore, I think it’s made so much better by its budgetary restrictions. You can feel the homemade nature to it. But it’s also more than Bottle Rocket. And obviously, Wes Anderson kept coming with bigger stories, bigger budgets, and then was kind of off to the races from there. But I feel like there’s just something when I think of Rushmore, there’s just so many things converging to make this very special thing. Did you feel that at the time? Would you say that was in the air?

Jason: Well, because I had never worked on a movie, I really had nothing to compare it to. I think in retrospect, frst of all, you go, “Wow, that’s really like special experience.” But Wes and I were staying at this hotel and he was four doors down from me.

Kevin: What hotel, may I ask?

Jason: The Houstonian.

Kevin: I’m always so interested in this idea. I think growing up in Middle America, you always think that people on the coast, people in New York and LA are the ones to be in movies. So I love you saying, “No, I didn’t relate to that.” But I always am so interested in people coming from LA and then living in [someplace like] Houston. I wonder what that experience was like for you. And at that rate, what I love about it being Houston is, to someone outside, you don’t know where it’s flmed. It could be anywhere. It could be England. Or it feels like Kansas City. You know what I mean? Or

someone could tell me it’s LA and you’d be, “Oh, yeah, sure.” So, I’ve always been curious as to, you’re so young, you’re doing a movie for the frst time, how did you fnd Houston? How did you fnd Texas?

Jason: I loved it. Well, frst of all, it was wild because I was going into my senior year of high school and [my band] had been recording a record and I remember I had to get a tutor. It all happened really fast, by the way. There was no time to think. I think that I met the [casting] director in October and we were shooting in the beginning of November. It was really fast, I believe. That’s how I recall it. I could be wrong, but I just recall it happening so fast. And being around Bill Murray, I describe him as like a calculator. I just never do life without a calculator. There’s always been a calculator. The most incredible version of that. This person who’s literally been in all my favorite movies. And I found out he was going to be in it. And by the way, when I did the audition, I remember this other feeling of going out so scared. And I saw Wes had these Converse sandals. And I had never seen Converse sandals. And it threw me off. I was like, “Whoa, those are one stars? What

are those? Where do you get those?” We were just talking about these shoes and it was so nice. It was so pleasurable that I had this feeling. Like after we were done talking about it, I was like, “Well, thank you for your time.” Because I remember thinking, “I really like this person.” I didn’t know what I was expecting on the other side of this door. But, when you go to an audition, it’s just like test taking and you sit in the room and there’s other people who are possible contenders for this thing. And you’re sitting in there and each person’s name gets called. They walk in and you kind of hear them [auditioning]. I remember one time I was doing an audition and the person was crying and screaming. This is later on. And I remember thinking, “Did I read the same script?” I didn’t even think there was anything sad. Like, “What am I doing? What did I do wrong?” I remember the door opens, the actor is like wiping his eyes. Why is he getting slapped on the back? Like, “Great. And that was so good, you did great” And I was just like, “I think let’s leave you guys to enjoy that, because this ain’t going to work.” But I remember [for Rushmore] walking in and talking and having this feeling similar to reading the script, where I was like, “I don’t think I’m going to get this part,” or whatever, but I think that we are going to be friends.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jason: I felt super locked in with Wes very instantly. It’s almost like there was the movie, but then there was this person, and I felt that was the magic. Because also, he said, “What are you doing the rest of the day?” and I said, “Nothing. I skipped school to be here.” And he’s like, “Why don’t you go walk around this area and come back in a little bit, and we can keep working on this?” and I was like, “Okay.” I didn’t know if that was unusual for an audition or not. But I came back, and then I read with the actors playing Bill Murray’s kids. And I remember just having so much fun and I

remember it being the frst time that an adult, who wasn’t in my family, was actually asking me what I thought about something and looking at me in the eye like it really mattered. Do you know what I mean? I don’t know why. But to me, it just felt like this person actually wants to talk to me. And when I say we were at this hotel, and I was staying three doors down, it’s a very important time. I was there on my own. I moved there on my own. I had a guardian assigned to me, but I left my family in Los Angeles and I went to live in Houston and this was like the frst time I saw a lot of movies. We had HBO. So I saw a lot of very weird movies, like this one called The Peanut Butter Solution. Very weird. That has a crazy plot for a movie, by the way, if you ever happen to fnd it. It’s about a kid who loses their hair because they’re scared, then walks into their kitchen at night and these two people are in there and they give him this recipe for a solution that they can paste on your head to make your hair grow back. But he gets the ingredients wrong, puts on too much and his hair starts to grow too fast. But then they realized that if you cut this [new] hair and you paint a painting with this hair, you can then go into the painting. So this evil person kidnaps him and chains him up and there’s this shot where he’s at the top of a warehouse chained down, and his hair grows all the way down onto a conveyor belt where other kids are chopping it and making paintbrushes. It’s the most insane thing ever. So that was the kind of movie I’d seen a lot of. I had also gotten really into Human Highway, the Neil Young movie. Neil Young directed it and Devo was in it. And so I had a great friend in high school, who just somehow, naturally knew the movies to watch and things that really kind of blew my mind. So we were watching Human Highway and Sgt. Pepper ’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the movie. So that’s what I was into in high school. But I had never seen [the cinematic movies]. No offense to those other movies. It became this friendship [with Wes] where after work every day we would have dinner in his room and we would talk about the day’s work and the next day’s work and also watch movies. He loved movies and knew so many great ones. And so he was showing me all these movies and it was the frst time I was being exposed anything like that.

Kevin: What were some of those movies?

Jason: Well, one was Stolen Kisses by François Truffaut. He did this whole series of movies called the Antoine Doinel series. There’s The 400 Blows, there’s a little short one, and then there’s Stolen Kisses, Love on the Run

Kevin: I know 400 Blows. I love 400 Blows

Jason: Yeah. And you should watch [this segment] on Criterion. There’s a great thing, they’re interviewing all those kids from the movie. You can see the director interviewing all those kids. It’s amazing to watch. And you see where he’s about to choose this kid who’s going to go on to make all these movies. And these kids are really little 12-year-old French men. [Laughs] They’re so incredible. But to me, the magic or the feeling to me was always that the relationship meant so much to me. And I was so aware of that at the time. That was the thing that meant I could feel so connected to this person, really connected to this person and locked in, in a way with an adult that wasn’t in my family for the frst time in my life. He was like a mentor, in the true sense of word. They come into your life at this perfect time. I’m 17 and it’s just like, “Have you ever heard of this? Have you ever heard of this?” And I’m like, “No.” “Have you ever heard of this record or this thing?” And having a love of music and being able to share music and talk about albums with this person. And to this day, such a big part of our relationship is sharing. When I see like, “Oh, what book is that? Darn, is that a whole new thing?” And I’ll be like, have

you

“I was a kid in high school and then all of a sudden I’m with a Ghostbuster. It was freaky for me.” – Jason Schwartzman

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

ever heard this song, “City Music?” Anyway, I’m going to send him This Is a Photograph because I just know he’s going to love it so much. And I want him to know it. It’s just a kind of a built-in given

Kevin: Thank you.

Jason: But [getting back to the movie] I was also thinking here I am with this Ghostbuster [referring to Murray’s iconic role]. I was a kid in high school and then all of a sudden I’m with a Ghostbuster. It was freaky for me. So I almost think of it in terms of the work. I didn’t know what we were doing. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it’s a weird almost negative space way to work. Like if someone said, “Here are some gloves. Go into the ring with Mike Tyson.” Or

this one thing because I was just worried about “What does this person think of me? Bill Murray.”

Kevin: Yeah. Sure.

Jason: And Wes just said, “Stay with me. Stay locked in with me, and we’re going to do this together.” And that was kind of my protection, my guiding light. Just be near Wes and he’ll get me through it.

Kevin: And it is so interesting to think of that because it’s his frst time working together with Bill Murray as well. And now he’s been like in every of Wes’ flms.

Jason: I think so. Yeah.

Kevin: Just so fun. I’ve never thought about it before. What was the last thing you shot?

Jason: The last thing we shot? It’s a great question.

octagon for those keeping score.] Anyway but it’s just this overwhelming space. It’s beautiful. But I remember the frst thing when I got back from school from shooting and I was walking on campus and my English teacher telling me that I had failed, that my paper could have been better. It was just not nice. And I hadn’t really told anybody where I had been.

Kevin: No one really even knew what you had just done?

Jason: I don’t even know. My school was small enough that people would have known I was gone. But, I will say that I remember thinking that was my [last] acting experience. So now I’ll go back to music and fnish my album and that’s it. I didn’t ever think that there was going to be another one ever. I felt like that was that experience and now I’ll go back to recording music and hopefully go on tour and fgure out if I’m going to go to college or not. I didn’t get into any colleges. I wrote to all the colleges but didn’t get into any.

Kevin: Because you failed that English paper.

Jason: I failed. It really sucked. And so yeah, I think that I was kind of like, “Well, I’m back now and no one really knows what I just did.” I had this incredible experience with this person and this adult who listened to me and we had all this fun and now I’m back and I don’t feel that way anymore.

Kevin: So sort of like a [concert] tour in a lot of ways. I know you were just in one place, Houston, but you form these connections and then you’re just back and the thing is over. But it’s interesting because unlike a tour, it’s going to come out and the world is going to see you up on the big screen, right? And how old are you then when it came out? Were you out of high school at that point?

Jason: Eighteen, yeah.

Kevin: And the school year had ended.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, next year. And I wasn’t in college. Yeah, and this is a really weird thing to say but I remember when I saw [Rushmore] for the frst time I remember looking at it going like, “Wow, it looks real. It looks like a real movie.” [Laughs]

maybe it’s not fghting. Maybe it’s like, “Here’s a race car. Basically what you do is you do this, this, this, and this. And now you’re going to go work with these great professionals.” To me, I wasn’t thinking about winning or [doing well] I was just like, “How do I not crash the car?”

Kevin: Sure. Sure.

Jason: “How do I fnish the race?” I don’t even care if I’m anywhere near winning. How do I just not crash this car? So every day in my mind I was saying, “Survive!” I wasn’t like, “How am I going to be great?”

Kevin: You’re like, “Even if I strike out, do I look like I know what I’m doing.”

Jason: Yes. And especially I remember the frst day at work, we shot at this big factory where I go see Bill Murray and I ask him for all this money. And then later that same day we shot these scenes where it’s all these training montages. And Wes was saying, “Jason, so you’ll do these things and Bill just follow him.” And I remember just going like, “Wait, he’s going to do what I did?” This doesn’t make sense to my brain.

Kevin: That’s the frst thing you shot, those were the frst things?

Jason: Yeah, the very frst thing shot is me riding my bike on to the premises. I remember that morning too, I was so scared. I remember we were in the car and we were driving to the set. I opened the door and I realized that I still had my toothbrush in my hand. I hadn’t let it go since brushing my teeth. I was like, “Oh my God, this is crazy.” I was literally that unaware. Of course, I was so panicked. But yeah, we shot that and then built up to where I asked him for money. And then this training montage for the frst few days, it was really intense. I was so freaked out. And I think Wes just said

Gosh, I don’t even know. But for some reason, I feel like it was sort of the Vietnam [play] scene. Yeah. And then the dance and everything. I remember feeling like it had a culmination to it in real life too. But I do remember, just my memory of being there. And also at that time too, what I did in Houston was listen to so much music and try to feel at home. That’s my frst time being away from my house and no one was with me and I was defnitely into it.

Kevin: What was it like post Rushmore or maybe even before it was released. What was the moment like when you got back to LA and now you had flmed this movie? And then also what was it like when the flm came out?

Jason: Well, when I got back to LA, I remember I was still in school so I had been doing my homework still on set. And I had a great art teacher, this guy Tony de los Reyes, who was like, “Look, you’re not going to really be able to do an art history class from abroad. I don’t know how it’s going to work.” So he says, “In Houston there’s the Mark Rothko Chapel.” I think that’s what it’s called, I don’t know the name of it.

Mark: Yeah, that’s right. Rothko Chapel.

Jason: Yeah. He’s like, “The Rothko Chapel. What I want you to go to is go there on the weekends and sit in there and then write about it for your grade.”

Kevin: What a great teacher.

Jason: Right? He was so nice to me. And so I did that. I’d go and sit in the Rothko Chapel. I think it’s nondenominational and has, I believe, texts from various religions. When you walk in it’s maybe an octagon or a pentagon. I forget. I don’t want to get it wrong. Look at me, I did a report on it and don’t remember. [It’s an

Kevin: I love that.

Jason: When we were on set, it was just like we were there but now I’m looking at it and it looks like a real movie. And I also remember thinking it was a real lesson to me. I was like, “I was there with Bill Murray. I was there and yet didn’t see any of this.” I did all of this stuff and some of [what he did] was so slight and subtle. I was like, “When did he do all of these things I’m seeing in this movie? I was there opposite this. When was he doing this? When did he do that?” It was like some other thing had been done that I didn’t notice in real life.

Kevin: Right. Right. That’s so funny. So you mean the parts that you weren’t in?

Jason: No, the parts that I was in! It was like, I was in that scene and it wasn’t like this.

Mark: Yeah. So one scene I just love is when you and Bill Murray were on the elevator coming down in the hospital. That blows me away. That had to be so intimidating just standing next to him and not saying anything.

Kevin: I love that scene, too. There’s so many iconic scenes, like I said earlier I truly believe in Rushmore there’s no scene left behind. The elevator scene is so iconic but there’s also all these quick [takes]. It feels like maybe you did a bunch of takes and then it’s almost like you’re splicing the takes together.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: That’s so interesting. So you’re saying, “I was there for this but it didn’t feel how it looked up on the screen?”

Jason: Right. Well, for instance, the idea of [Bill Murray] smoking the two cigarettes is funny but in real

Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore (Courtesy of The Criterion Collection)

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

life when we were doing it, it did not seem funny. It just seemed totally normal, like what we were doing.

Kevin: Oh, I see what you’re saying Jason: I remember seeing it with the audience laughing at things. And I was like, “I didn’t think that was funny doing it.” You know what I mean? Also, things that were funny. It’s just like how did he [Murray] do that? But it’s just what makes people them. I remember going, “That’s a Bill Murray thing right there.” I just saw it. I didn’t even feel that when it happened. But I remember he shaved his mustache off at the end of flming and I saw him after it was over. I was like, “Whoa!” Yeah, I mean, it’s just like one experience, but nothing will ever be like it again. But it’s also just nothing will ever be like anything again. That’s sort of why I have this thing, especially with movies, anything where I fnd I’ve seen people get uncomfortable when they’re like, “This is not the way I need to do this thing,” and I see them so uncomfortable. And that’s why I feel like everything is different. And so in every movie situation, you have to fgure out the way it works for these people, and just go with it. That’s sort of my feeling. Every brain is so different that it’s like a musician thing. It’s like feeling out what the band is like. How loud am I supposed to be? I don’t know. I’ll see when I get there and see what the room is like.

Kevin: Yeah, see what the room is like and let people play to their strengths or it’s always shifting. It can shift tour by tour, especially in the studio when I go to make a record. The producer of a record is like the director of a flm, it’s always like, “Yeah, I’ve done this six or seven times before, but now I’m in a new room with a new person.” I think it’s so much of it, too, because even if it’s the same people, circumstances can always change. You always want a baseline goal, get the race car to the fnish line, right? I think it’s just one of those things where it just feels like everything about it was so special to everyone [involved and] that comes through the screen. And it doesn’t feel conventional. It feels like its own thing. Like in the studio where I hear music back and I’m like, “That sounds like a record.” That sounds like no one’s ever thought of that.

Jason: Right, right. You do have to have the confdence to well, frst of all so to be able to just leave for New York City, I mean, that’s so frightening. Did you know anybody?

Kevin: No, I knew one and a half people. When I think about the train ride that I took from home to New York, it was so terrifying. But I literally, and I’m not just saying this, I had Max Fischer in the back of my mind.

Jason: Oh, that’s crazy.

Kevin: You just do it. You just kind of fake it until you fucking make it, just like Max Fischer does. You know what I mean?

Jason: Right, right, right, right.

Kevin: Let me segue all that into one thing I want to ask you about, which is, did you see Licorice Pizza?

I saw Licorice Pizza, and I thought it was so good. And it’s funny, too. And then I thought about Alana Haim. She’s also a musician who was acting like herself. She’s so great in that. I love the movie and a big thing for me I was like, “I love that. This is for me, the new Rushmore.” I saw so many correlations to it. I don’t know. I’m sure you’ve met a lot of people like me who are just people who like the movie. But do you feel like Rushmore is out in pop culture. You know what I mean? Maybe not pop culture, but [Max] still existing to infuence people. And that’s why I love that movie [Licorice Pizza]. But a big part of that for me was, “I really think that this may not exist without this other thing. That’s really special.” It’s just going

to keep going. I always get into infuence because I always think that the trajectory of infuence is so powerful. And I always think about when young people are infuenced by something that they have no idea about. If Kim Gordon had not done this one thing in the ’80s, or taken this one press photo that infuenced this person in the ’90s, and then this band might not exist in 2022. That’s my big thing in the world.

Jason: It’s amazing. There’s this guy, this artist, fuck me. What is his name? Pete Frame. You can look him up. He does these tree diagrams. He’s been doing these diagrams for years. I have his books. I just found them in a bookstore one day, and he basically like makes these rock family trees about infuences. Check this out [showing a screen shot]. These are all by hand. He’ll do The Velvet Underground and then how it broke off into the fnal destination. So you were talking about infuence, so I just thought you would like that if you’re interested in that.

Kevin: Oh, amazing. Yeah, I should look this guy up. I love that…. Have you ever read that book, Lonesome Dove? You know that book?

Jason: No. Is it the movie? Like the movie?

Mark: Larry McMurtry wrote that?

Kevin: Yeah, Larry McMurtry.

Jason: Yeah. I never read the book.

Kevin: It’s like a thousand pages long. And it’s like the greatest book ever written. It’s so good. I highly recommend it. It’s the greatest Western and it’s so amazing. But there’s this phrase in it that is Latin and they actually never tell you what it means so you have to look it up on your own. But the phrase translates to, “When a grape sees another grape, it ripens.” And it’s all about no matter who you come in contact with, everyone’s going to infuence the next thing. And it’s just something that’s always been, and again, like seeing Rushmore where I’m like, “Wow, it’s so cool.” Like, you could be someone young and not understand that this thing was infuenced in some part by this other flm. And that flm was infuenced by all these other flms.

Jason: Right.

Kevin: I love that lineage. When I see stuff out in the wild where it’s great to know that it’s still in the universe. Like I was saying, this person might not even know [they were infuenced by it]. It’s my favorite thing in the world.

Mark: Well, and Rushmore got put in the Library of Congress. So it is immortal.

Kevin: That’s immortal. Yeah. Well, if you were going to just make a closing statement on Rushmore. In fve words or less, can you just sum up your feelings on it?

Jason: Just, I thank you for talking about it with me and how it affected me. It changed who I am. The experience. And so, literally I would not be me without the experience. So that’s really what it is. It’s just like it’s almost like your frst love or tragedy or just some meal that made you never want to eat that meal again or made you fall in love with that food again. It’s one of those moments where I don’t think about it as something that I did. It’s just something that I was a part of, that I experienced that made me who I am.

Kevin: Right. That’s what I’m saying about my relationship to Rushmore. I don’t even need to watch it, it’s just so in there with me.

(Rushmore is available on Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com. Kevin Morby’s This Is a Photograph is out now via Dead Oceans.)

Burning Bright

Words by Mark Moody Photos by Micah E. Wood

On brief hiatus between a cut short U.S. tour in support of her new All of Us Flames album and an upcoming string of European dates, Ezra Furman’s mind is on anything but herself. We connected via Zoom the day after Hurricane Ian made landfall not far south of my Tampa home and before its devastation was fully known. Furman was in her Massachusetts home, comfortably casual but focused on going deep on what drove the creation of her latest work. Furman considers her most recent album her least personal even if it weaves in aspects of her Jewish faith and her identity as a trans woman. Its themes and concerns may be her own, but the songs themselves are focused on the collective. Whether it’s the historically persecuted Jewish people, an oft maligned queer community, or the homeless and destitute who at best elicit indifference, Furman fnds herself a part of these groups or empathetic towards them.

By way of background, at the same time Furman was budding as a musician in her teens, she was also dealing with issues of fnding her own group to ft into. In 2020, Furman shared with Celine Teo-Blockey on the Under the Radar podcast what it was like to fnd a place where she ft in. At the time, Furman said, “I was in a Jewish youth group called B.B.Y.O., B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. I hated high school pretty much and had very few friends there and then on the weekends I would see my friends at this Jewish youth group and I was so passionate about it. I was a social outcast everywhere except there.”

Given her own struggles to belong, the mix of complex thought and compassion that defne Furman’s worldview is evident at the outset in the care that went into the composition of All of Us Flames’ cover art. The image of a cross dresser from an earlier era under arrest, that makes for the centerpiece of the album’s cover, is multi-layered in and of itself. But the scrawled word “BOY” on the side of the photo, whether put there by crime beat photographer Weegee or some other documentarian, takes the gravity of what is presented to another level. The trans woman in the policeman’s grasp exudes an air of defance, but whoever later vandalized the photo itself clearly intended to use words as a slur, as a further affront. Furman agrees with that thought and adds, “That person is glowingly being the illegal thing that she’s being in that moment. Despite the repressive empire breathing down her neck, she’s still burning bright. That’s the thematic heart of the record.”

Furman has an interest in other famous photographer’s images that have graced album covers as well and took her own selection seriously. Specifcally she mentions the cover photo of Rain Dogs, the 1985 album by ANTI- labelmate Tom Waits. Swedish photographer Anders Petersen’s work that makes for Rain Dogs’ album cover is often mistaken for a photo of Waits himself. “Everyone thinks it’s him. It’s not him,” Furman states. An admirer of Waits, Furman goes on to joke that she hopes to meet him at the ANTIChristmas party.

In concert with the cinematic scope that All of Us Flames’ songs convey, the album cover also displays a full set of credits as an homage to a movie poster. From the members of her band, to the producer (John Congleton), to the recording studio (Los Angeles’ Sargent Recorders), Furman sends a clear message that her view of subsets of populations extends to her own art as well. “The album feels like a movie to me and it also feels collaborative in the way making a movie tends to be. I mean all records are collective efforts, but I’ve been thinking lately more in a sense of collectivity,” she says. The album also contains a song titled “Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club,” as a further nod to cinema and Furman’s connection with Sheedy’s character, Allison Reynolds.

COMPASSION AND COMMUNITY

All of Us Flames concludes a loosely themed trilogy of albums started with 2018’s Transangelic Exodus, both of which albums bookend the punk rock fueled Twelve Nudes, which was released in 2019. The LPs were inspired in part by Furman’s love of Bruce Springsteen’s albums, which are often given over to storytelling. All of Us Flames’ closing track, “Come Close,” sounds a little like a super slowed down take on Springsteen’s 1975 classic “Thunder Road.” When confronted with this thought Furman mumbles out, “The screen door slams…,” quoting the opening line to “Thunder Road,” and says, “Oh my God, that didn’t occur to me.” She also considers “Come Close” to be a prayer for those that

are crushed by the weight of a society that overlooks them.

Furman says the song is one of the few on the album that is in fact autobiographical. “All of those things happened. The hand job and the guy with the bottle and trench coat that asked me for a kiss,” she says. “The song is about broken hearts and it’s a riff on Psalm 34. God is close to the brokenhearted. Your spirit being crushed and being hopeless somehow opens you up to divine connection. The world doesn’t always seem like a safe place to me and I wonder sometimes what separates me from being drunk and homeless and asking strangers for physical touch.”

In spite of the stridency of “Come Close” and the fears at its heart, Furman’s last few years have also contained brave actions and declarations. Though she didn’t reveal it until April of 2021, Furman has been a parent to her son who is closing in on his fourth birthday. And in the same announcement, Furman declared herself to be a trans woman. At the time, she made it clear that the purpose of revealing her motherhood was to provide support to others as she had “zero examples” of seeing trans women raise children. “Part of my impulse was that this could be useful. Trans people or anyone who has trans people in their life haven’t seen a model of trans futures,” she says.

By vocation, Furman considers herself primarily to be a writer. In 2018, Furman wrote a book on Lou Reed’s 1972 album Transformer, as part of the 33 1/3 series. Not only does it profle Reed’s album, but also Furman’s own journey to that point. She shares, “The book is about the album, but it contains a good deal of memoir and it is about me as well.” In the book, Furman posits that perhaps queerness is defned by being in a continual state of transformation. Conversely, she also wrote, “And eventually, maybe, you stop worrying so much about it. I don’t know yet; I’m only 30.”

Having recently turned 36 and having made some defnitive statements about the core of her being, Furman contemplates the question of whether

her own transformation is concluded. “I think it’s healthy to grow and change throughout your life. That’s what it is to stay alive,” she says. “But I’ve gotten more into commitment and accepting there are some things I am and some things I am not. And that it’s not the worst thing in the world to accept a label.” Thinking back to when Furman wrote the Transformer book, she adds, “I was more into the mode of ambiguity than I am now. I sort of burned out on being an undefnable gender. If you are desperate to be free of anyone else’s control, you never really get to be anything if you can’t make a commitment.”

Though one of the subsets that Furman identifes with is the “queer girl gang” that appears on All of Us Flames’ “Lilac & Black,” she says the making of the album didn’t necessarily coincide with her decision to come out as a trans woman and a mom. Furman says that the more declarative songs on the album and her decision to come out are related but don’t come from the same place. She admits that saying publicly that she is a trans woman does bring a level of peace. “To not actually have to decide every day, it anchors you a little bit,” she says and then continues with a thought on being a parent as well. “There are some anchors in the ocean foor when you are a parent, and it’s good for you. If you don’t keep changing course you can go deeper down the paths that you choose.”

If All of Us Flames’ themes of being attached to and a part of the queer community are readily apparent, Furman also addresses her part in the Jewish community as well. On “Throne,” Furman sings of the “ancient strain” that runs in her blood. The song bears resemblances to the “prepper” mentality of Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime,” but is also set to the pace of one of Josh Ritter’s stomping apocalyptic rockers. Though Ritter is not a name that typically comes up in a discussion of Furman’s work, both artists pull from Biblical themes (whether of the Hebrew Bible or otherwise). In fact, Furman says that Ritter’s “Ole Black Magic” was the framework for “Throne.”

“THE WORLD DOESN’T ALWAYS SEEM LIKE A SAFE PLACE TO ME AND I WONDER SOMETIMES WHAT SEPARATES ME FROM BEING DRUNK AND HOMELESS AND ASKING STRANGERS FOR PHYSICAL TOUCH.”

GOING DEEPER

Though “Throne” blasts through the speakers with a doom laden undertone, Furman doesn’t believe in the “capital A” Apocalypse as it’s biblically defned (i.e. the end of the physical world and the return of Christ). “I guess you better call [the feel of some of the songs] post-apocalyptic, because I don’t believe in the Apocalypse. I don’t think that the world is just going to end or believe in the implication that our problems will just be over. That would be easier, but in fact we have to take care of each other and do the unglamorous work of keeping human civilization running,” she explains.

“We have to make a society that works, regardless of what system or empire falls. It’s funny, because my record starts with just that on ‘Train Comes Through.’ The empire falls and the poor and righteous are vindicated. That’s actually something I do believe in,” Furman says. And if not already deep into serious subjects, Furman goes further into the complex and delicate topic of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. “If there’s a message of the Jewish tradition, one of the main focal points is how you treat a vulnerable subpopulation. Literally, how to love the stranger,” she says using the Roman alphabet translation of the Hebrew word for stranger as “ger.”

While certainly the history of the Jewish people (and queer people for that matter) emanates from being a persecuted class, Furman also sees the challenges that the state of Israel has brought about. She points out

that Israel didn’t become an empire as most have come about. Namely by conquest of other states or religions. “Recently [in the scope of historical time], we have the frst real Jewish statehood in the state of Israel. And lo and behold, abuses of power are happening,” she says. “It’s not morally black and white to me. But I do see that kind of power, as well, coming from the Christian empire of America. I see how being the ones in charge can quickly slide into becoming the oppressor. That’s a spiritual crisis that I think Judaism is in.”

ANSWERING THE ALARM

Rule governed by religion creates inherent challenges, but on All of Us Flames Furman focuses on hope for a way forward. “COVID was the frst time in my life that everyone on Earth was basically facing the same problem,” Furman states. Ironically, the same pandemic that started in early 2020 is also what claimed the last few dates of Furman’s U.S. tour in 2022. “Most crises these days have become global because of how the world has become a little village,” she continues. “And it changes what social responsibility means. That’s heavy stuff, but I folded it into All of Us Flames’ songs.”

Interestingly, another subgroup that Furman already touched on she also sees as the subset that might become the catalyst of true change. And that would be those that are writers. Furman leaves the room she has been talking from and returns with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s book

The Future Is Disabled in order to share an epigraph that comes from science fction writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s speech at the 2014 National Book Awards: “Hard times are coming when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”

Furman’s focus is on challenges, whether they be those facing the communities she is a part of or global issues. But not all of Furman’s past few years have been given over to seeking solutions that call for desperate measures. Between this year’s release of All of Us Flames and 2019’s Twelve Nudes came 2020’s Sex Education Original Soundtrack. The producers of the popular Netfix series approached Furman about using her existing songs along with some newly penned ones to help underpin the soundtrack to the show’s narrative, which revolves around the relationship challenges of the students of the fctional Moordale Secondary School in England and in particular one student, Otis Milburn (played by Asa Butterfeld), who is the son of a sex therapist (played by Gillian Anderson) and starts dispensing advice to his classmates. Furman also made a cameo appearance in one of the episodes. When asked about how her contributions to the show have added to her fan base, Furman quips, “It’s like a bat signal up in the clouds of popular culture. Certain people [hear my songs on the show] and they follow where they’re coming from. They fnd what I think of as my real work. It’s a corporate gig and it pays the bills. I put a lot of soul into it and I’m proud of it, but it’s less mine.”

A student of her Jewish faith, a member of her self declared “queer girl gang,” and an admirer of Bob Dylan, Springsteen, and Waits, in no particular order, Furman is thoughtful, dynamic, and complex. But as she points out, maybe less complex now that she wakes each day as a woman and inextricably a mother as well. With critical aspects of her identity squared away and her trilogy of Springsteeninspired albums wrapped with the bow of All of Us Flames, her answer to the interview’s fnal question comes quickest and with no contemplation required. Much of the discussion has been given over to weighty and ponderable matters, but when asked what’s next for Ezra Furman, she concludes through a quick-to-form smile, “Whatever I want.”

EZRA FURMAN on

Mean Streets (1973, directed by Martin Scorsese)

As Told to Mark Moody

Ifrst saw Mean Streets when I was in college. I was already in love with Taxi Driver and there was a time I would say Taxi Driver was my favorite flm. And then I saw Mean Streets and I just think it’s a superior flm. The main character, Charlie [played by Harvey Keitel], is quite repressed. He’s waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and thinking about eternal punishment in hell. He’s trying to be some version of a spiritual person, but he’s in this world [of gangsters] where he’s completely blocked by the culture he’s in. And that is where I was a lot of my own life. I’ve been trying to reach toward beauty as something I’m not allowed to have.

I’m not sure at the time I frst saw it, that I could have put into words why I loved it so much. But I understand it more in retrospect, because I really felt quite trapped. Charlie is always thinking about, “How can I be in the world I’m in, but also be like St. Francis.” He wants to be spiritual and no one around him will listen to him. And then he has to take care of Robert De Niro’s character [Johhny Boy] who is his girlfriend’s cousin. It’s heartbreaking because he’s trying to teach decency to somebody who doesn’t give a shit about anyone. So I really felt trapped by the world and by my own repression. So that’s why I connected to the movie.

Also at the time I had recently gotten super into ’60s girl groups and I guess I will always have that. It’s part of my musical DNA. And there are all these great scenes in the movie like The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” in the opening scene or the fght scene in the pool hall with The

Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman,” playing. I’ve always been into juxtapositions of violence and bubble gum pop. It’s this combination of being feminine where you have to be cute, but you may also get killed. Be nice, and cute, and pretty, but you also have to carry pepper spray or a gun. The song “Dressed in Black,” from my new album [All of Us Flames] is sort of my take on a girl group type of song, but it’s a lot more violent.

[Like Charlie], I’m obsessed with God and also a practicing Jew. Having a spiritual life sometimes feels like you can’t share with anyone. He’s doing Christianity as a totally inner lonely thing and that’s how I was doing Judaism. There’s no room for him to even allude to spirituality, and that’s how the social scenes were that I grew up in. I think it’s better for people to not defect entirely away [from religion] and give it up. The more people who are emphatically caring and willing to let tradition bend for the sake of human dignity and survival, the more people I’ll have looking out for me. But, yeah, sometimes it feels like all the queer people, understandably but regrettably so, get as far away from [religion] as they can.

The whole movie is just emotional to me and how Charlie was so hard on himself. My inner life has often had that kind of tone, but I don’t feel so trapped in my own head [these days]. I’ve learned to speak with other people, to tell the truth. I’ve learned it matters who you hang out with. So I spend more time with queer people and with people who can hear me.

(Portions of Ezra Furman’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

Safe From It All

We’re barely a minute into saying hello to one another when Sharon Van Etten’s small terrier Lindy decides to introduce itself with a volley of attention-seeking barks. Naturally this all-too-familiar sounding call prompts my own clueless canine into delivering a frantic response, going so far as to rush to a window to see if her possible new best friend is somehow outside on the lawn. Unfortunately for my overeager labradoodle, Van Etten—and her dog—are roughly 3,000 miles away, connecting via Zoom from the kitchen table of her Los Angeles home.

Van Etten—who spent years cutting her teeth and building her musical career as a resident of New York City—moved to L.A. in 2019. The seeds of the address change occurred the year prior when Van Etten was put on retainer for six months for the Netfix supernatural/sci-f series The OA, in which she had a recurring acting role playing a woman held captive with a group of other human test subjects who’ve all had near-death experiences. (She’s since gone on to have supporting roles in small flms such as the 2020 abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always and 2021’s end of the world comedy How It Ends, while also contributing original songs to their soundtracks and appearing as herself in the 2018 revival of Twin Peaks). With plenty of time to kill stuck in L.A., Van Etten ended up recording her ffth album, Remind Me Tomorrow , during that period. Somewhere along the way Van Etten says, “I fell in love with Los Angeles, this certain neighborhood, and fell in with this really wonderful group of musicians, feeling a sense of community that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.” With her partner, former drummer turned manager Zeke Hutchins, and their young son, Van Etten traded their old Brooklyn apartment for a sunnier, suburban locale. “We found this two-bedroom, one-bath house with a cookie cutter backyard, like Edward Scissorhands landscaped it,” she says. “It has my favorite jacaranda trees in the front yard. It was perfect.”

Perhaps the most appealing feature of the property however—at least to Van Etten—was the inclusion of a garage that had previously been converted into a studio space. “I used to work out of a studio in Brooklyn and it was in a basement,” she says. “It was awesome, but it fooded, smelled like mold, and I had to share it.” With a little help from friends, Van Etten made quick work of turning this new room into her personalized outpost for writing and demoing, capable of housing a multitude of acoustic and electric guitars, amps, a drum kit, piano, and synths, along with soundproofng, closet space, and honest-to-God windows to let in natural light.

The house as a whole would come to represent many things for Van Etten in those frst few months of its occupancy: a place that would allow her to slow down, a place to spend more time with the family she

had made for herself, a place that could offer her that rare sensation of feeling settled. It wouldn’t be long however, when the house would come to represent other, unanticipated things as well: a bubble of safety from a fast-spreading and deadly virus, a potential casualty of California’s climate-change-affected wildfres, an observation deck to a country’s political and societal unraveling, and a panic room for Van Etten’s existential anxieties as a mother, partner, and artist. It’s perhaps why the house is a visual focal point on the cover sleeve of Van Etten’s latest full-length record, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, capturing Van Etten as she stands in front of her home, the air around her embellished with a fery, end-of-days orange and red glow.

“I wanted to encapsulate a time where I wasn’t avoiding talking about the realities of that period, that I wasn’t there to make a pop record,” says Van Etten. “There are still songs about love, and deeper love and family and connections and domesticity and parenthood and distance and just mortality. It’s not too far from what I used to write about, but in a much more specifc way.”

Angel Olsen—who collaborated with Van Etten on the standout, standalone single “Like I Used To,” released last year (and #3 on Under the Radar’s Top 130 Songs of 2021 list), and performed together across the country as part of an extensive span of shows featuring the two musicians alongside fellow singer/songwriter Julien Baker called The Wild Hearts Tour—puts it another way. “Sharon has always seemed to write from a personal place, and that speaks to me more than anything,” Olsen says. “[We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong] is kind of about getting back into your body and into your self, making an alter for your truest place.”

BATTENING DOWN

When the unprecedented occurred and people throughout the world were told to stave off the spread of COVID-19 by means of self-imposed quarantine, Van Etten recalls giving little thought to the idea of making a record. “My intentions were just to be cooking and to be present for my son, to be creative with him, drawing and writing and reading and keeping him active,” she says. She wanted her family to just make the most of their lives—albeit in a very contained fashion. And while that was certainly achieved by turning the backyard into a makeshift playground, scheduling family movie nights, taking trips to the beach, camping, and a whole host of other distracting activities, Van Etten couldn’t help but steal away to her new workspace, slowly accumulating material.

Van Etten’s writing process typically occurs in two phases: inspiration

Words by Mike Hilleary | Photos by Koury Angelo

and objectivity. The inspiration phase often comes as a result of Van Etten not having a great day. “That’s when I tend to start something new, when I’m feeling something in a darker space,” she says. With her instruments in hands’ reach, Van Etten will run around the room playing notes or chords or progressions until something connects with her in the moment. From there she starts singing as she calls it, “without words. It’s all feelings.” Eventually she’ll stumble upon or fnd a melodic phrase that can go from a verse to a chorus, will start recording herself, and sing stream-of-consciously. “I’ll usually just sing until I feel better and feel like I got something out emotively,” she says. “And then I’ll hit stop, I’ll put it aside, and I’ll go about my day and do the dishes or something.”

It can take weeks, months, or even years before Van Etten will revisit one of these collected recordings. But that’s kind of the point. In those moments when she’s not roused with creativity, when she’s not in that dark place, but feels compelled to work, Van Etten will dig back into those recordings, put on her headphones, take out her notebook, and start putting words, phrases, and feelings into lyrics. With enough distance from an emotion that she didn’t know how to express yet, she creates something new.

While Van Etten operated within this system at her own open-ended pace during the country’s interminable lockdown, she would get frequent check-ins from friends and bandmates inquiring into what she was potentially working on to, as she says, “light some fre under my ass.” One of these external motivators was musician, engineer, and producer Zach Dawes, who had worked with Van Etten on her previous album, 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow, as well as on a cover of Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” that featured Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. “He saw a lot of promise in the songs where I wasn’t sure at the time,” says Van Etten. Booking some time at L.A.’s The Village Studios with a small cadre of collaborators, the two worked on six tracks together, feshing things out to fgure out what it was Van Etten wanted sonically from the material. Though resulting in some beautiful takes, Van Etten knew the spirit and tone of the record that was forming had to be something darker. “I had this moment. I knew that this was a

building block to where I wanted to get to, but I knew from those recordings that these are going to be a lot more apocalyptic sounding than where we are right now,” she says.

Van Etten tapped into this state of living catastrophe by cultivating and twisting the instrumental palette she had come to embrace on Remind Me Tomorrow, employing the use of drones and suffocating synths, but also minimal and bleak arrangements, leaning into the heaviness of her feelings rather than some sought after silver lining. Throughout her career Van Etten has had the innate ability to scratch at the exposed nerve of her own soul, conjuring catharsis from broken things. “You chained me like a dog in our room/I thought that’s how it was/…it made me love more.” “It’s not because I always hold on/It might be I always hold out.” “I can’t wait until we’re afraid of nothing.” “I’m a sinner, I have sinned/We’re a halfmast fag in the wind/It’s our love.” Delivering lines such as these across her discography, Van Etten has always managed to address the complexity of pain, whether self-inficted, perpetrated against her, or some combination of both.

With We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, her perspective of this pain has changed from someone examining the remains of something that couldn’t be repaired or saved, to the pain that could potentially dismantle that which she has come to hold most dear, namely her family.

Like millions of other Americans during the pandemic, Van Etten was weighed heavily by the unknowns of COVID-19, at the same time masking her own anxiety and fear to create a positive environment for the wellbeing of her son. “I defnitely had many days where it was like, ‘It’s the end of the world, and nobody’s telling us, but I’m not going to do

us any favors by freaking out,’” she says. “But I also had my harder days. The diffcult part is you can’t stay in them very long because you have to be present for your family and go through the motions, even when it’s hard. Your kid is only as happy as you are, or at least as happy as you’re pretending to be.”

She adds, “I think that whenever you love something so much…I never thought I’d be in love as much as I am with my partner and I didn’t know I’d love someone as much as my child. These are indescribable feelings, and as much as it is joyous it’s also terrifying. It’s like you want to do nothing else but to protect them and do anything you can, whether it’s jumping in front of a bus or just going to the grocery store. I mean you hit a certain age where you start thinking about your own death, and you realize what a reality that is. And then when you’re also surrounded by events and news that feel so apocalyptic—you just realize how precious life is. So then you just want to hold on to things even tighter.”

ALL THAT’S WORTH PROTECTING

Van Etten’s passionate, anxiety-fueled need to safeguard the life she’s made for herself and the people she cares most about is incredibly rational when you look at who she was and what she had experienced over a decade prior. “I think about who I was then, I was kind of a wreck—an emotional wreck—who hadn’t really come to terms with anything in my past that had occurred,” explains Van Etten. “But I was still so blindly driven with music without having any real plan or any real goal.”

Almost told to the point of becoming lore at this point, Van Etten grew up a native of New Jersey before enrolling in Middle Tennessee State University to study music recording. Dropping out a year later, she fell into an abusive relationship with a partner who actively discouraged her from playing music. While everyone assumes it was this toxic boyfriend that caused her to pack what she could carry and leave in the middle of the night, another signifcant impetus for her departure was the post-traumatic stress she suffered after being sexually assaulted by a stranger. “I was having all these fght or fight responses and my sister few me out to where she was living at the time,” says Van Etten. “She let me live with her for a while until I got back on my feet. But I didn’t know that I had PTSD. I didn’t know what it was. I was just chain smoking and being very anxious. I didn’t realize my way of dealing with my panic attacks and my anxiety was to use smoking as an excuse to leave the room or have my own space. I would go outside, and I would sneak a smoke and I would calm down. I didn’t realize that it was actually really the act of breathing and space that would help me slow down.”

With the encouragement of her sister, Van Etten reached back out to her parents, with whom she hadn’t spoken to for a number of years. With the condition that she would go to therapy, she moved back in with them until she got back on her feet. The therapy sessions, Van Etten says, were the beginning of her learning how to deal with her anxiety, learning how to talk about her experiences, being able to understand what triggers her, and knowing how to either avoid them or work through them. One of the ways she accomplished the latter was writing songs. “All these emotions that I didn’t know how to express

would come out,” she says. “And even if I didn’t always come up with the right [lyric], just the act of singing, that catharsis helped me so much. My therapist, she was a singer back in her day, and she encouraged me moving to New York. She was like, ‘I think these are positive things for you to work towards, it makes you feel good. You have to work with that and focus on the things that make you feel good and make you feel better, while you also work through your anxieties.’”

Adopting an unrelenting drive, Van Etten committed herself to the goal of being a music artist. At points living out of her car and touring cross country, staying with friends, apartmentsitting, and subletting in the city, Van Etten would give away burned CDRs of her self-recorded songs and say yes to just about every opportunity she could get to perform. “I busted my ass, but I didn’t feel like I was busting my ass,” she says of those early days. “It was super fun. I just liked being busy, having this funny, blind ambition without expecting any kind of outcome other than to play.” She did all of this despite still be riddled with anxiety (“I cut my hair on purpose so that my bangs fell in front of my face so I didn’t have to make eye contact with people because I got panic attacks all the time”), eventually catching the attention of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner, who would deliver a nameelevating cover of Van Etten’s song “Love More” at the 2010 MusicNOW Festival in Cincinnati. The fandom of Van Etten became so genuine that it would eventually lead to her opening for The National on tour and Aaron Dessner going on to produce her 2012 breakthrough record Tramp Olsen isn’t at all surprised by the status Van Etten has come to hold as an artist. “[She] just truly feels things and means what she says,” says Olsen. “There’s no wall. She’s right there with you when

“I [USED TO] CUT MY HAIR ON PURPOSE SO THAT MY BANGS FELL IN FRONT OF MY FACE SO I DIDN’T HAVE TO MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH PEOPLE BECAUSE I GOT PANIC ATTACKS ALL THE TIME.”

she speaks and when she sings. And she’s right there with her fans too. It’s not about fame or recognition. It’s very much a way to connect and to share in a safe, limitless environment.”

After years of delivering critically acclaimed records, exhaustive tours that have her taken her across the U.S. and Europe, side ventures into television and flm, the irony is not lost on Van Etten that at the time of making We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong—despite a global pandemic, the country’s growing political and culture divides, and her own inner fears and insecurities—she was experiencing what was arguably the most stable chapter of her life up to that point. “I’m doing all the things I said I was going to do as an artist,” she says. “I’m settling down with someone that I love. We have a beautiful child and we have a home. We’ve set this up and worked so hard, we can slow down a little bit to enjoy it, just like I kept saying I wanted to do. Now here we are, and it’s like you’re evaluating your life and how much you’ve worked—I think everyone is. And when your life choices are under the microscope, that’s the main difference. I’m in much more of a solid place in my life than [when] I made any other record.”

She adds, “I’m on the path that I didn’t know I even wanted to be on, you know? I didn’t know I’d get this far in music. I didn’t know I could get this far in love. I didn’t know I’d be living in California. I mean, these aren’t things that I planned or set out for—ever. As your roles change in your life and in your work and in your family, there’s different expectations, and there’s different goals to set. So much of it is just reacting in the moment. I think you only know where you are by refecting on where you’ve been.”

As for her future, aside from fnally marrying Hutchins (the two were supposed to tie the knot in May of 2020, right when the pandemic was taking hold), Van Etten isn’t foolish enough to predict what huge life events may be in store for her down the road, or for the world at large. That doesn’t stop her of course from setting her own smaller scale aspirations. “All I know is that I want to fgure out how to be more present and slow down work, so that I can be home more and better myself in other ways, to use different parts of my brain, and be available to my family, and not be on the road so much,” she says. “I mean, those are just general ideas. But I want my kid to grow up watching his parents challenge themselves. I want him to remember us being there for it. I’m not done. There’s always gonna be this feeling like, ‘I need to do more. This isn’t it!’ I gotta keep fghting. If I just think I’m done then my life is over. There’s so much to be had.”

SHARON VAN ETTEN on The Sandlot (1993, directed by David Mickey Evans)

As Told to Mike Hilleary

In the midst of making this new record one of the biggest memories I’ll have is just having family movie nights [during the pandemic], and us clutching each other, you know, my partner and I just not knowing how to express our fear, but also feeling strangely calm. We went through a bunch of classics like Bad News Bears to The Karate Kid, sharing with our son all our favorite flms.

I remember a particular day—and we had watched this movie a bunch because it was his favorite, and has become mine—but on this particular day we were watching The Sandlot. It was during one of those moments where things were looking better in the pandemic and then something else happened to set things back, and so we were in this crazy, dark kind of space where this one line during the movie just hit me. It was when the kids are all trying to get the ball signed by Babe Ruth back from over the fence. And I’m snuggling with my son and we’re playing footsie across the couch, and we’re all snuggled up with our dog. And the kids keep trying to get the ball and they don’t get it and they don’t get it and they don’t get it, and then fnally the incidence occurs where the vacuum cleaner explodes and the one kid, he looks at his friends after trying to shake off the dust and he says, “We’ve been going about this all wrong.” And I had seen that part so many times and laughed. But that night it was the frst time that I heard the line and I just teared up. And I wrote it down. I was like, “There’s something about this line.” I didn’t know what it was, but I put it on a post-it note and put it on my computer for a very long time. And I’ll just remember that one particular moment forever because that became the album title.

The second part of this story is that by the time the end of the movie happened, where Benny has the ball and there’s the big chase and then he jumps back over

the fence, the dog jumps over the fence, and then the fence falls on the dog. And then Smalls is the only one that tries to save him and then Benny and the rest join in and the dog comes out and then licks Smalls in the face. Well, my son jumps on our dog, who was sleeping, and in an attempt to mimic the flm, licked our dog. And the dog, being startled, bit my son’s tongue! It was a bloody mess! My son is hysterical and we have to calm him down. The dog meanwhile has completely forgotten what has happened. And again it’s the height of the pandemic and I’m texting my friend who’s a doctor, sending pictures of my son’s tongue asking about how bad he thinks it is. It’s somewhere around 10 o’clock at night and we’re just trying to get the blood to stop just to see how deep this wound is, all the while thinking about how we don’t want to have to go to the hospital. We’re freaking out. Finally, we get it to stop bleeding, but my friend is like, “It’s probably better to go to the hospital tonight than it would be in the morning and have a risk of infection. It doesn’t look like he needs stitches, but he might need some antibiotics.” So we’re getting everything ready to go to the hospital, we put the dog in its crate, we get all our stuff packed up in the car, and we’re sitting in the car about to start the ignition when our son goes, “Where’s Lindy?” I mean after all that’s happened, here I am thinking, “Is he going to be forever afraid of our dog now?” And he was like, “Where is he?” Like nothing happened. So yeah, “We’ve been going about this all wrong.” It all happened around the same time. It was both dark and funny.

(Portions of Sharon Van Etten’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow, as well as clarity and grammar.)

Archers of Loaf Reason in Decline (MERGE)

After 24 years away, Chapel Hill’s Archers of Loaf return with their ffth album, the follow up to 1998’s White Trash Heroes

If you arrive at Reason in Decline expecting a continuation of the loose-limbed, wild-eyed, and reckless Loaf of old, you will be surprised at what you fnd. Their appeal back then lay partly in their delectably haphazard nature, Eric Bachmann’s screamed melodies and vicious lyrics striving to surface through crashing waves of Eric Johnson’s guitar.

Here, though, slacker cynicism has turned to focused stoicism; fast and loose now measured and taut. There’s no pretence of recapturing the shabby, shimmering thrills of the past—this is absolutely, defnitively not a nostalgia record— instead offering a modern, masterful document of the personal and political, turning its dark, hard themes fearlessly into phenomenal rock songs.

“A fash in the dark/A knock on the table/ Beautiful dreamer/Pitiful failure,” sings Bachmann on the beguiling, spectacular “Saturation and Light,” while on the throbbing “Screaming Undercover” he notes, “Everybody’s dreaming but the dream is a lie.” As earnest and honest now as they were cynical and cryptic then, these songs aren’t calls to arms, but unerring observations of how we try to remain human in the face of the horrors of the modern world. As Bachmann brilliantly puts it on the enthralling “Mama Was a War Profteer”—“We kissed as everything burned to the ground.”

There’s hope here among the wreckage, as on the epic “In the Surface Noise,” where we fnd “Teenage infdels/Forming rebel cells,” but conversely, on the plaintive “Aimee,” the acceptance that “I don’t mind if we can’t fnd our way home.”

It’s a tough, heartfelt record that marries hard-edged, emotionally complex lyrics to skyscraping sounds and delivers a thrilling, vital whole. These feel like the perfect anthems for our times, the past be damned. (www.archersofoaf.net)

By Michael James Hall

Arctic Monkeys

The Car (DOMINO)

For anyone yearning for an Arctic Monkeys record that revisits the “505” or fake tales of San Francisco, you’d probably best look away now. While the era that frst put them on the map will always hold a special place in people’s hearts, one thing Arctic Monkeys can never be accused of is living in the past.

Every subsequent release since the band’s

debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, came out back in 2006 has strived to open doors into pastures new, often confounding expectations but never disappointing. And while 2018’s sixth LP, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, strayed away from the heavy guitar led compositions we’d been accustomed to, it also seemed the logical next step for a band that’s long since departed their South Yorkshire roots.

So, with The Car as their preferred vehicle of choice, Alex Turner and co’s next journey is one of heartbreak and refection, with a soothing undertone and the occasional foray into discoera David Bowie for good measure. Written and recorded last summer at the height of the European Championships where England narrowly lost on penalties to Italy in the fnal, The Car is a deftly constructed, lavishly produced, smooth runner of an album that undoubtedly reaffrms Turner as one of the great romantic lyricists of his generation.

Lead single “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” might just be the greatest lament to a fractured relationship that Scott Walker didn’t write. While the haunting “Big Ideas” talks about “The ballad what could have been” over a poignant orchestral backdrop. “Sculptures of Anything Goes” takes aim at an unnamed subject (“Puncturing your own relatability, with your horrible new sound”) over icy synths and drum codas reminiscent of the Ultravox classic “Vienna.”

“I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am”—already a live favorite despite only being part of the set for a handful of shows—furrows the same wah-wah funk heaven as Bowie and Nile Rodgers did on “Let’s Dance.” “Hello You” also takes inspiration from the same era, fusing overwrought synths with swooping strings as Turner delivers his most self-refective paean (“Hello gruesome, there’s just enough time left to swing by and readdress the start”).

As the title track and introspective “Mr Schwartz” continues The Car’s lovelorn message unabated, closing number “Perfect Sense” bravely declares, “Revelations or your money back.” Nevertheless, it’s a satisfying ride worthy of a return ticket many listeners will undoubtedly be repeating over the coming months.

Welcome back Arctic Monkeys, your pensive musings have been greatly missed. (www.arcticmonkeys.com) By Dom Gourlay

Benjamin Clementine

And I Have Been (PRESERVE ARTISTS)

Who is Benjamin Clementine? The British singer/songwriter is mercurial, genre-defning. He sings in poetics, and is a virtuoso at the piano. Yet, on his third studio album, And I Have Been, the 33-year-old reckons with himself, his path, and his future.

Written and recorded in Clementine’s home in Ojai, California, during the COVID-19

pandemic, the album deals with love, marriage, parenting, and depression. “Like everyone,” said Clementine in a press statement, “I was also confronted with a lot of lessons, complications, and epiphanies to do with sharing my path with someone special.”

After his second studio album, I Tell a Fly (2017), Clementine got married to singer/ songwriter Flo Morrissey and had two children. And I Have Been immediately appears like a letter to Clementine’s younger self, and you can hear him say, “Look who we were, look what we did, and look where we are now.”

The lead-off single, “Genesis,” shows Clementine reckoning with his own origins. He’s had a diffcult life, living on the Parisian streets in his early career, and the woozy rhythm— slightly French, slightly maritime—of “Genesis” propels forward this self-portrait.

“Auxiliary” feels like a direct response to the pandemic and the universal isolation therein, which Clementine uses to describe his relationship to his wife and their parenting journey together.

While the more reserved instrumentation of And I Have Been is a comfort, the tracks tend to lose the magnitude that Clementine is so known for. But there’s a deeper comfort in witnessing Clementine fnd himself in the sparse piano and direct lyricism.

Clementine has said that And I Have Been is just one half of a larger album, an album that has been hinted at as his last. He wants to pursue other artistic endeavors: acting (Clemetine had a minor role in 2021’s Dune), fashion design, and poetry. If this is one half of a swan song, it certainly feels like a triumphant one. (www.benjaminclementine.com)

By Ben Jardine

origin story that’s diffcult to separate from the effects of the COVID pandemic and its associated quarantines. Last year’s debut album, New Long Leg, was recorded quickly and disjointedly during lockdown. Now, after months of touring and some successful festival sets, they return with their excellent sophomore record, Stumpwork, which explores the effects of isolation, connection, and the lack of it, delivered as only vocalist Florence Shaw can.

Dry Cleaning’s hook (or deterrent, if you don’t like talk-singing) is, as ever, Shaw’s deadpan recital of non-sequiturs overtop guitar-led post-punk. Where in New Long Leg the idea was crunch; in Stumpwork the idea is jangle. In fact, the vibe this time around is less anxious, with more keyboard textures and a more deliberate pace, not to mention a whole lot of melodies per square inch. The ’80s-R.E.M.reminiscent “Kwenchy Kups” and highlight “Gary Ashby” pack the triple-punch of catchy melody, cool chord progression, and sick guitar tone. Most of the tunes here are quick and tight, but a few songs in the album’s second half sprawl out, like the contemplative “Liberty Log.” Overall Stumpwork has a more compelling and consistent fow than any of Dry Cleaning’s past output.

Disq

Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet (SADDLE CREEK)

It would be easy for a band who debuted days before COVID-19 shut down America to have slumped on their sophomore effort—but the time Wisconsin-based rock band Disq didn’t spend touring seems to have been spent fne tuning their charmingly garage-rough sound and pouring it onto their energetic, sonically eclectic record Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet. The album is noisy, clever, and fun, with a cleaner approach to production than on 2020’s Collector that doesn’t compromise the group’s DIY feel. Fans of Pinkerton-era Weezer and Post Animal’s frst album will delight in the album’s playful melodies and subtle comedy. (www.thisisdisq.com)

By Mariel Fechik

So yes, the band rocks even better on this album, but once again the real star is Shaw and her poetry-recital vibe. And I do mean poetry— her lyrics are completely distinct, obliquely observational, and oddly metered. “Weird premise/Weird premise/Staying in my room is what I like to do anyway/If you like this… you may like…” Shaw says at the beginning of “Liberty Log,” which along with the gaming mouse shouted out in “Don’t Press Me” and the line “Woah, just killed a giant wolf!” suggest lyrics borne of time alone at home, gaming on PC, and watching Netfix. She’s also got a knack for absurd imagery (“I thought I saw a young couple clinging to a round baby/But it was a bundle of trash and food”) and purposefully unfnished lines (“I’m not here to provide blank/ They can fucking provide blank”). Her mostly tuneless delivery may not be for everyone, but in consideration of her lyrical style and the band’s knotty arrangements, it really coheres in a satisfying way.

Dry Cleaning may not get mentioned in the same breath as other young London art-rock groups like black midi or Squid, but they should. Stumpwork proves that this band’s style has legs. (www.drycleaningband.com)

By Scott Dransfeld

Brian Eno FOREVERAND EVERNOMORE (VERVE/UMC)

Dry Cleaning Stumpwork

(4AD)

Like many young bands in 2022, Dry Cleaning have an

Brian Eno’s latest album, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE, explores the deep mind meditation side to ambient music. The tracks are musically peaceful and unthreatening: synths, gleaming prolonged notes, and the sound of birds and ASMR

L to R: Benjamin Clementine photo by Akatre Studios. Brian Eno photo by Cecily Eno. Dry Cleaning photo by Steve Gullick. Frankie Cosmos photo by Pooneh Ghana. Plains photo by Molly Matalon. girlpuppy photo by Brandon McClain.

breathing. Lyrically, the 10 songs attempt to pack a punch, a warning of climate change: about species dying out, capitalism, and the lack of global leadership in the face of an environmental and ecological crisis.

Eno calls the songs “landscapes but with humans in them.” And those humans are angry, questioning. The only issue is that the listener doesn’t always feel that insistence come through, amidst the calm instrumentation.

Yes, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE shows Eno singing on a studio album for the frst time since 2005’s Another Day on Earth. But his vocal delivery sounds tired, lacking action.

Album opener, “Who Gives a Thought,” is a glistening and beautiful synth vista, with dooming lyrics about what we choose to focus on and applaud. “Who gives a thought about the nematodes/There isn’t time these days for microscopic worms/Or for unstudied germs of no commercial worth,” sings Eno, his voice low and drawn out.

“We Let It In” is soothing, “Icarus or Blériot” a droning meditation that feels like it came straight out of a sound bath session. Only “Garden of Stars” delivers any real sense of urgency.

But perhaps that’s the point. While FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE sounds more like spa music, which, after three or four tracks, makes the listener want to get horizontal, it is a welcome break from the structure and form of contemporary music. Eno is attempting to make you pause, and think, and feel

The album’s redeeming note is “There Were Bells”: a swelling, emotive existential piece about the end of the world. Eno frst performed the song live in August 2021, with his brother Roger, at UNESCO World Heritage site, the Acropolis in Athens. During the concert, wildfres were raging just outside the city and the temperature had hit record heights. “I thought, here we are at the birthplace of Western civilization,” said Eno. “Probably witnessing the end of it.” (www.brian-eno.net)

By Ben Jardine

of their problems, but leads to a recognition of the growing void between them. It also provides yet more unassailable evidence that it’s impossible for the sisters to record an album without somehow referencing Gram Parsons.

There’s plenty of nimble guitar picking, “ooh oooh oohs,” and sweeping ballads such as “Turning Onto You,” the beautiful “The Last One,” and “Nobody Knows,” as well as the more jaunty pop of “A Feeling That Never Came,” which has an air of fellow Scandie singer/songwriter Lene Marlin’s ’90s classic “Sitting Down Here.”

While Palomino represents a slight shift in First Aid Kit’s sound, its evolution, not revolution and there’s plenty to admire in terms of the Söderberg’s unerring ability to craft beautiful celestial harmonies and conjure a sense of the mystical and magical out of the ether. (www.frstaidkitband.com)

By Andy Von Pip

Harvey is at her offbeat best on her debut LP, When I’m Alone, when her songs have a little more spring in their step and something unusual to say.

First Aid Kit

Palomino (COLUMBIA)

You wouldn’t think that the lush, rugged Swedish scenery would give rise to music that seems to evoke a mythical arenaceous American landscape. But for around a decade and a half and over four albums, Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg have done just that as First Aid Kit, fashioning music that seems to owe more to dusty Americana-style vistas than it does to glaciers, snow, and mountain lakes.

On each album, the sister’s crystalline harmonies and huge heart-swelling choruses have gained them an army of fans, awards and critical acclaim. On their ffth album, Palomino, they strike melodic gold once more with some of their most uplifting and pop-centric songs to date. There’s still a sense of open hearts and broken hearts, of wishes and kisses being carried off on the desert wind, but perhaps what comes through on this album is a feeling of liberation, freedom, and hope. Indeed, the title track itself is a symbol of escape.

The album opens with the timeless pop rock of “Out of My Head,” written with producer Björn Yttlin and a track Fleetwood Mac would certainly have been proud of. Lead single “Angel” is as soaring and anthemic as anything they’ve previously written, mixing vulnerability with a pragmatic sense of acceptance whilst showing just how beautifully the sister’s mellifuous vocals combine.

“Wild Horses II” is more traditional Americana fare, with vivid imagery and details of down-at-heel motels replete with Bibles in the drawers, thin walls, and ghastly, dated foral linen. It centers on a couple undertaking (or perhaps “enduring”) a road trip together. While playing the car stereo, they realize that liking different versions of the titular song is the least

Frankie Cosmos

Inner World Peace (SUB POP)

Frankie Cosmos have come a long way since the band’s DIY roots. In her teenage years, singer/ songwriter Greta Kline shared a number of lo-f records through Bandcamp, establishing her prolifcacy at a young age. Her lyrics acted as diary entries, satiating a desire to account for every personal memory, thought, and feeling. These bedroom pop tunes endeared her to indie audiences, spanning everything from her dog to growing up.

More than a decade into their career, Frankie Cosmos balances Kline’s poetic lyricism with a sturdy indie pop foundation. The band have solidifed their chemistry to a degree where they feel free to experiment sonically. The tracks take a playful approach to tempo, suddenly quickening as Kline’s delivery grows in intensity. On “Empty Head,” from the band’s new album, Inner World Peace, she hurriedly sings, “Sometimes I’m always bursting at the seams/And tell you about my dreams/I wish that I could quiet it.” “Aftershook” sees Frankie Cosmos add psychedelic elements and a fuzzy guitar solo to their ’00s indie rock tendencies, while Lauren Martin’s synths on “Empty Head” combine with Alex Bailey’s subtle bass groove to form an almost ambient opening. However, the band’s attempts to diversify their sound often fall short of growing out of their repetitive riffs, leading many of the tracks to blend together in a pleasant but rather predictable experience.

However, the storytelling displays Kline’s openness to vulnerability. On Inner World Peace, she observes her ever-changing universe by looking inward. The opener, “Abigail,” refects on the years gone by—“It’s good sometimes to cut her slack/That version of myself I don’t want back.” Kline doesn’t want to completely let go of her younger self, declaring, “Abigail, I want you to be alive with me.” It’s a sentiment that many listeners will relate to as they grow and fgure out who they are amongst the messiness of life.

(www.frankiecosmosband.com)

By Alex Nguyen

With the exception of “Destroyer,” the latter half of the album drags in places (“Emma Marie” and the title track in particular) and Harvey’s tendency to longer running times does those moments no favors. But an earlier song on the slower side (“Somewhere”) benefts from a string arrangement and a classic Elliott Smith-inspired melody. Fortunately though, for most of When I’m Alone a more energetic vibe prevails. The clangorous “I Want to Be There” fnds Harvey using a stitched-together approach not unlike Alex G’s, whose bandmate Sam Acchione serves as co-producer here. While the traipsing beat and groove-heavy melody of “Teenage Dream” fnds Harvey pondering her demise in the bathroom à la Elvis Presley. When I’m Alone makes for a fne debut that shines best when the songs are quickly paced and subtly quirky. (www.girlpuppy.com)

By Mark Moody

that you’re seeing me this way,” apologizes lead singer Ashrita Kumar just before the band tears in with all of the force of a bulldozer. That searing energy and visceral vulnerability are the two twin hearts of the band’s debut, a record that is both pummelling and purposeful.

Kumar spits, snarls, and soars as guitarist Paul Vallejo crafts whirlwind riffs and Myron Houngbedji’s muscular drumming sets the record’s breakneck pace. Through nearly the entire LP, the band conjure the cathartic magic of punk, playing so fast and loud they should seemingly come apart at the seams.

All along, the band walk a fraying edge between frenzied confessions and righteous fury. They explore the nihilism of a generation growing up with an uncertain future, the wounds of trauma and abuse, and the alienation of living unapologetically in a hostile world. Yet, they emerge at the other end unbowed, unbroken, and powerful. The resulting record is a stellar punk debut, claiming Pinkshift’s spot among the genre’s next generation, a future that is both more inclusive and angrier than ever.

(www.pinkshiftmd.com)

Martha

Please Don’t Take Me Back

(DIRTNAP/SPECIALIST SUBJECT)

Durham, England indie pop punk band Martha are a testament to consistency. They have a steadfast formula and haven’t drifted too far from it in their 10 years as a band, though they’ve released a trio of excellent power pop records along the way. Take careening punk guitars, quick-fre emotive lyricism, openhearted twee charm, and heaps of pop hooks, and you have the makings of a great Martha record. Yet, for a band that has innovated in increments, their new album, Please Don’t Take Me Back, may be the best distillation of their formula yet.

Like most great power pop records, the appeal of Please Don’t Take Me Back is simple and universal. Most of all, Martha are here to have fun. They’re a band that thrives on the serotonin rush of an irresistible melody, an amped-up guitar riff, or a shouted gang vocal. The choruses of “Beat, Perpetual,” “Baby, Does Your Heart Sink?,” or the title track are so elementally catchy that anyone can sing them word-for-word by the end of the song.

Yet, while Martha crafts their songs on sugary pop foundations, they also approach their music with a heart and maturity that is uncommon to the genre. “Hope Gets Harder” fnds the band searching for a way to stay positive amidst ongoing overlapping crises, while “I Didn’t Come Here to Surrender” takes a defant angle toward an uncertain future. It all culminates in a fnal moment of catharsis with the closer, “You Can’t Have a Good Time All of the Time,” a track that is possibly the most joyous and communal song about facing climate disaster ever written.

By Caleb Campbell

Plains

I Walked With You A Ways (ANTI-)

Lest there be any question that the collaboration between Katie Crutchfeld (Waxahatchee) and Jess Williamson would be country-fried, opening track “Summer Sun” hits the listener mid-twang. Both off of career-todate best albums in Crutchfeld’s Saint Cloud and Williamson’s Sorceress, the Plains project serves as more of a showcase of their individual talents than a full time gig. That being said, Crutchfeld brought Saint Cloud producer Brad Cook to the party along with his brother Phil. Both handle a myriad of instrumentation along with Spencer Tweedy on drums and Watchhouse’s Andrew Marlin on mandolin and acoustic guitar.

Although the assembled backing band is just as tight as Crutchfeld’s Bonny Doon support on Saint Cloud, unsurprisingly the star of I Walked With You A Ways is the strength of the duo’s songwriting. Two of Williamson’s songs here (“Abilene” and the title track) are so jaw-droppingly devastating that one can only wonder what she has tucked away for herself. The brush fre of a kiss off that “Abilene” involves itself with makes for a defnitive song for the west Texas city if there ever was one. All the others with same titled songs, namely Sheryl Crow, Dave Alvin, and George Hamilton IV (R.I.P.) can go take their rightful place in the back. Williamson’s songs here focus on moving along and the closing track, “I Walked With You A Ways,” makes for a ftting tribute for the project, but is so universally heart tugging that it no doubt will claim more than a handful of tissues.

girlpuppy

When I’m Alone (ROYAL MOUNTAIN)

Perfect pop songs are normally the purview of the three-minute and under crowd. So Atlanta based girlpuppy’s (aka Becca Harvey) “Destroyer” clocking in well over the fveminute mark is decidedly out of bounds. It’s also every bit the perfect pop song and one of the best on offer this year. The song’s driving rhythm effortlessly shifts from frst, to second, to a drum driven third gear and never lets go.

Many bands mix the political with the personal, but few bands make both into hopeful collective experiences like Martha does, all while remaining one of the most consistent bands in indie punk. One could question how long the band can go without changing things up, but if they continue delivering records as good as Please Don’t Take Me Back, they could go on forever and nobody would complain. (www.marthadiy.bandcamp.com)

By Caleb Campbell

Pinkshift

Love Me Forever (HOPELESS)

Love Me Forever, the debut record from Baltimore punks Pinkshift opens with a roar: “I’m so sorry

Likewise, Crutchfeld reveals a clutch of gems here as well. Lead single “Problem With It” has broad crossover appeal and shows her recent hangs with legends like Lucinda Williams and Wynonna Judd were not just a passing phase. Her strongest moment though comes on the self-referential “Hurricane,” where she takes an accounting of being anything but a shrinking violet. But the fnal hook of the vulnerably sung line, “I know you’ll love me anyway,” cements the song’s mature take on relationships. And the country lilt of the co-write with Kevin Morby, “Last 2 On Earth,” is a surefre charmer.

Though a bit of a minor quibble, the one cover song here, “Bellafatima” (sung beautifully by Williamson), pales next to the artists’ own creations. The song stacks metaphor on metaphor that don’t add up to the effort Williamson gives it, while also following two of the best songs here. The true crime though of I Walked

Whitmer Thomas

The Older I Get The Funnier I Was (HARDLY ART)

Following up the soundtrack album for his autobiographical HBO comedy special The Golden One, Whitmer Thomas has dropped his faux-Brit post-punker singing voice and gone au naturel on The Older I Get The Funnier I Was. The shift better suits his confessional style of music and comedy—as Thomas sings in “navel gazey,” “you gotta commit to the cringe and let it eat you alive.” From the playground pop of “Rigamarole” to the wistful “South Florida,” Thomas demonstrates he’s as talented a musician as he is a comic. (www.whitmerthomas.com)

By Austin Trunick

Wand Spiders in the Rain (DRAG CITY)

Weyes Blood And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (SUB POP)

On 2019’s Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering of Weyes Blood echoed a hurting world as she poured out her fear of loneliness, desire for love, and need to belong over grand swells of cinematic folk-pop. Her yearning heartache—expressed with deep spirituality rather than mere romanticism—resonated with many, and yet, Mering caveats her feelings on the song “Everyday,” singing, “Then again, it might just be me.” She qualifes the importance of her insights, wondering if she can trust her read on humanity or if she’s just projecting herself on her surroundings. But subsequent years of universal loneliness would prove Mering’s concerns unfounded. Her perception is true, and she lets it run free on her new album, And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, where she opens with the essential answer to her previous self: “It’s not just me, it’s everybody.”

It can be dangerous for someone with a strong prophetic voice like Mering to speak for “everybody.” Yet the authority of lines like, “Living in the wake of overwhelming changes/ We’ve all become strangers” or “We know that we’re not free/

Even though we wanna be free” or “It feels like we’re burning/ Makin’ ashes of our joy” feels earned. It can be equally dangerous to eschew optimism in favor of eschatalogical claims like, “They say the worst is done/But I think it’s only just begun,” especially in a world desperately trying to end some of the worst years many have experienced. But Mering is no fre and brimstone preacher making doomsday predictions. Instead, by situating herself within a universal “We” (a pronoun used a staggering 51 times across the album), Mering has made a hopeful case for our communal interdependence.

Musically, In the Darkness is perhaps her grandest, most elegant work to date—a perfect culmination of her past experimentalism and deep devotion to graceful melodies that lift from the deepest parts of the soul up to the heavens. The droning meditation that closes “God Turn Me Into the Flower” or the Pet Sounds-like mix of melancholy and elation on “Children of the Empire” feel like Mering is lovingly embracing the listener, reminding them that all we’ve experienced since 2019 is meaningful. That our brokenness isn’t in vain. That every act of togetherness is an image of a greater future. Even if the worst is yet to come, Mering’s music reminds us that community, empathy, and beauty have revolutionary power that glows unfadingly in any darkness. (www.weyesblood.com)

By Chris Thiessen

With You A Ways is that it’s over quicker than the fading moments of the Texas sunsets that color it. The album’s 30 minutes of triply tight writing, harmonies, and playing pass by way too quickly. Making the smart move here to sit a spell and marvel at the songs word-by-word and note-by-note. (www.plainsband.com)

By Mark Moody

Ruth Radelet

The Other Side EP (SELF-RELEASED)

This frst solo endeavor from Ruth Radelet is very much in line with the music that the singer/songwriter had been making as the centerpiece of Chromatics for the better part of two decades. This EP collects material composed during a chaotic, two-year stretch full of personal changes, and was framed as if it were Radelet’s way of tying up loose ends on the previous phase of their creative career. It’s all too short, but what’s here will please Chromatics fans and leave listeners wondering what direction the next era of Radelet’s music might take. (www.ruthradelet.com)

By Austin Trunick

Suede Autofction

(BMG)

Suede have pulled off arguably the most successful reformation and comeback in recent years. The band opted to call it a day after their ffth album,

2002’s A New Morning, didn’t meet expectations, but then they regrouped seven years later for some live shows and, soon after, 2013’s comeback album, Bloodsports. It’s a move that hasn’t just paid dividends, but has also cemented their status as one of the most consistent bands from the past 25 years, while also introducing them to a new audience in the process.

Autofction—their fourth album since getting back together (and ninth album overall)—more than lives up to the standards set by its predecessors. Already described in interviews by vocalist and songwriter-in-chief Brett Anderson as the band’s punk record, Autofction represents a vast departure musically from Suede’s last record, 2018’s The Blue Hour. Yet at the same time, it easily identifes as a Suede album.

Recorded at London’s Konk Studios with long time cohort Ed Buller on production duties, Autofction is as live and direct as a Suede record gets. Indeed, this back-to-basics approach works wonders in terms of the album’s fow. The album opens with the guttural post-punk of “She Leads Me On,” a kindred spirit of Joy Division/New Order’s “Ceremony” sonically. The equally boisterous “Personality Disorder” and “15 Again” follow suit, while “The Only Way I Can Love You” and “That Boy on the Stage” continues Autofction’s autobiographical context.

The piano-led “Drive Myself Home” at the album’s midpoint is perhaps the most obvious Suede sounding song on the record for those familiar with the band’s extensive back catalogue. But it’s towards the tail end of Autofction when the record gathers momentum once more, particularly on “It’s Always the Quiet Ones”—which is reminiscent of Night Time-era Killing Joke—and closing couplet “What Am I Without You?” and “Turn Off Your Brain and Yell.” The latter’s grandiose statement of intent almost certainly assures Autofction’s presence in the upper echelons of 2022’s “Best Of” lists. (www.suede.co.uk)

By Dom Gourlay

There are two versions of the band Wand. There was the earlier, skronky, guitar-based, metal-adjacent Wand, and the newer, art rock, more arranged version that now exists. Listeners are able to celebrate a decidedly scuzzy version of the band on the new live album, Spiders in the Rain. Live albums are often a good entry point for any band, and this one isn’t really an exception. They present an opportunity to rearrange old material into something different. Spiders is more the former than the latter, and as such seems inessential but pretty darned good. (www.wandband.info)

By Chris Drabick

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Cool It Down (SECRECTLY CANADIAN)

Cool It Down is certainly an apt title for Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ffth studio album. There’s a real sense of a band comfortable within their own skin, and unlike some of their peers, this isn’t a futile attempt to rekindle or recreate the swaggering insouciance and frenetic energy of their youth.

Cool It Down is the sound of the band maturing elegantly without losing any of their creative fre. Perhaps because each member has been busy with solo projects, it’s hard to believe this album marks their frst new material for nine years (since 2013’s Mosquito). Clearly the pandemic has played its part giving the band a fresh impetus to regroup as Karen O explained that previously she’d taken the ability to make music for granted—“I felt, for the frst time, ‘What if we don’t get to do it again?’ That thought had never crossed my mind before and I really felt it profoundly during the pandemic.”

So when O reconvened with fellow members Nick Zinner and Brian Chase, as well as Dave Sitek (“basically a fourth member of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, at this point”), there was a sense of gratitude and a ferce curiosity to explore what they could create together after the collective trauma of a global pandemic.

The result is one of their fnest albums to date, kicking off with its frst single, the exquisite “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” a track which unfurls with an epic elegance and sees Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas cast as the perfect foil for O’s dramatic soaring vocals.

Highlights include the majestic “Lovebomb,” which could be an alternative Bond theme if Bond eschewed the bombast for understated beauty. The propulsive “Wolf” is glorious, replete with an absolute killer synth riff allied to O’s spellbinding vocals. Elsewhere “Burning” conjures up the sophisticated “soul rock” the likes of Mattiel are so adept at, with O putting her own unique stamp on it, whilst “Blacktop” is imbued with a Lana Del Rey sense of doomed grandeur. The album closes with the spoken word “Mars” (which coincidently happens to be the name of the NYC bar where Karen O frst met Nick Zinner), in which O has a dream-like conversation with her son. It may be sparse but it also manages to be incredibly moving, otherworldly, and utterly magical.

Cool It Down may be only eight tracks long but there’s so much to admire that you certainly don’t feel shortchanged, in fact, it reinforces just how much they have been missed. It’s great to have them back and in such sparkling form. (www.yeahyeahyeahs.com)

By Andy Von Pip

Weyes Blood photo by Neil Krug.

The End

Elizabeth Stokes of

What’s your favorite ending to a movie?

I love Marta sipping from her coffee mug at the end of Knives Out.

What’s your favorite last line in a book?

When Big Nutbrown Hare hits Little Nutbrown Hare with “... and back.” He really got him there.

What’s your favorite series fnale last ever episode of a TV show?

I think series fnales are usually bad, right? There’s so much pressure, so many loose ends to tie up. 30 Rock is probably my favorite comfort food show. I watched it back to front so many times, and I know the last seasons are a bit strained. I get a bit teary when Liz and Tracy say goodbye in that last episode though.

What’s your favorite last song on an album?

“Road to Joy” on [Bright Eyes’] I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning

I can’t bring myself to believe there really is one, which is I think part of why I’m so terrifed of death. It was probably the hardest thing to accept when I started losing my faith.

What would be your own personal version of heaven if it exists?

I mean the version I grew up with seemed pretty great to be honest (my mum is Catholic). Everyone you love is there, everyone is wearing white linens. If you can guarantee dogs go there, I’m sold.

What would be the worst punishment the devil could devise for you in hell, if he exists?

I’m so hungry but I’m with a large group of people and I have to decide where to go but they just keep rejecting my suggestions forever. Every now and then we decide on a place but we go there and they won’t accept a large group without a booking. The process starts over.

To conclude, we ask Elizabeth Stokes of The Beths some questions about endings and death.

The New Zealand band formed in 2014, with vocalist/guitarist Stokes originally meeting guitarist Jonathan Pearce in high school. The current lineup also features bassist Benjamin Sinclair and drummer Tristan Deck. The band’s harmony-laced indie pop backs up Stokes’ often-wry and autobiographical lyrics. After all, the band’s 2018-released debut album was amusingly titled Future Me Hates Me and their recently released third album is titled Expert in a Dying Field. The new album was launched by “Silence is Golden,” a decidedly loud and energetic frst single in contrast to its title. “The song is about stress and anxiety manifesting as an intolerance to noise,” said Stokes in a press release announcing the album. “Where each new sound makes you more and more stressed.”

Expert in a Dying Field was mainly recorded at Pearce’s studio in Auckland in late 2021, until a four-month national COVID-19 lockdown forced the band to work on the album remotely. The album was fnished and mixed during a U.S. tour

at the start of 2022, including during a three-day session in Los Angeles.

Read on as Stokes discusses how she’d very much not like to die, what songs she’d like played at her deathbed and funeral, her favorite endings, and why hell is trying decide on where to eat.

How would you like to die and what age would you like to be?

Man... I really don’t want to die. I am very afraid of death, and of anyone I love dying. Very scared. So I would like to be 100 but somehow in really good shape (this is unlikely) and also everyone I love is still alive. Maybe I get struck by lightning or something.

What song would you like to be playing at your deathbed?

I think something cheerful and distracting. Maybe “Skymall” by Vulfpeck.

What song would you like to be performed at your funeral and who would you like to sing it?

“More Adventurous” by Rilo Kiley. I’d like Jenny Lewis and my best friend Chelsea Jade to sing it together. I’d come back to life for that I reckon.

What’s your favorite last album by a band who then broke up?

Bressa Creeting Cake’s self-titled record from 1997. They are a cult NZ band that were released on Flying Nun. The music is hard to explain, but the songs are great. “A Chip That Sells Millions” and “Egyptian Tanker” are a couple of my favorites.

What’s your favorite way a band broke up?

Jonathan was at the last Mint Chicks gig where they apparently came to blows and broke up right there onstage. I don’t think I’d say it is a “favorite,” that’s not very nice, but I guess it was memorable?

If you were on death row, what would you like your last meal to be?

My mum’s Nasi Goreng with Sambal Goreng Tempeh and Sambal Telur.

What’s your concept of the afterlife?

If reincarnation exists, who or what would you like to be reincarnated as?

I’d like to be a kererū on Tiritiri Matangi Island, which is a bird sanctuary island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf. Kererū are big, green woodpigeons with tiny heads. I’d like to be able to fy, and on Tiri I’d be safe from predators. Kererū also famously sometimes get drunk on fermented fruit, and I think that would be fun.

What role or achievement would you most like to be remembered for?

I’d like my songs to be remembered. I don’t mind myself being remembered so much. Imagine writing a song that became a standard or a folk song, a song that people played for years after you were gone, without knowing who wrote it? That would be pretty wild.

What would you like your last words to be?

I love you.

Words by Mark Redfern

The Beths photo by Frances Carter (L to R: Ben Sinclair, Elizabeth Stokes, Jon Pearce, Tristan Deck).

Esmé Dee Hand-Halford of THE

ORIELLES

on The Night of the Hunted (aka La Nuit des Traquées) (1980, directed by Jean Rollin)

Words by Esmé Dee Hand-Halford

After watching a good flm I often fnd that my memory falls victim to an unrelenting force and I am unable to interface with my mind, now assailed by the audiovisual stimuli that has pleased it so for the 100 minutes just passed, in order to extract any kind of cohesive gleanings. It’s that experience of a mood, so intangible and too challenging to really put into words, that I love about cinema and music and all forms of art that I often end up calling my favorite. That beautiful feeling of when a flm causes the brain fog to supersede any understanding of a world that is barely presenting itself as real, and to be understood.

I want to talk about a flm that I saw recently that I fell in love with because of how it epitomizes this feeling that I fnd so favorable. The Night of the Hunted likely loses a portion of its viewers within the frst 30 minutes if mistaken for softcore porn from the ’80s, (an aesthetic some but understandably not all would be on board with), and ultimately the bold decision to start the flm this way, made by director Jean Rollin, only really makes sense in retrospect, once we have the context of the full flm and its leading lady Brigitte Lahaie (an ex-pornographic actress). During the flm we attempt to solve the mystery of a

woman, found running naked through the night, who has some kind of amnesiac condition pertaining to the disintegration of any prior memories. But the true enigma of this flm, for me, lies within the indeterminacy of the fctional world, which aligns me as the viewer with Lahaie’s Elysabeth, in a sleepy, drugged, somnambulistic search to understand something within the alien void of this flm. And it’s that searching feeling that offers something so satisfying, distracting, and almost, to the opposite effect, mindful.

There are many moments that tease clarity but essentially leave us feeling more lost and unable to decipher the cold, melancholic unconsciousness of this world. Elysabeth arrives at a clinic flled with people sharing her condition, which resembles an empty offce space in what appears to be a high foor of a high rise building, and here it is always night. It reminds me of what Mark Fisher says about the labyrinthic landscapes of our dreams, that often the most familiar spaces feel uncanny and haunting due to their liminal, bureaucratic reality. In this building people run around frantically asking questions and searching for answers, exchanging false (or maybe true) memories in order to alleviate one another’s suffering for only a feeting second, all whilst giving off the impression of knowing—like that uncertain smile you give to a stranger who you feel that you

should know. But we are ever reminded, by the dizzying shots of Brutalist buildings, a lesser seen France amidst the wash of New Wave centric cinema, that even the camera is a lonely, lost character within this flm.

Through murder and sex the antethesis to this brain fog feeling is enacted, expressing (in an extreme way typical of any ’80s flm) that only the body remembers. But despite this bodily remembrance, the main characters resemble nothing more than plants by the end, casualties of the apocalypse of the mind that is memory loss and left to sway in the wind of their fate in a shot so powerful that it might be one of my favorite ever flm endings. Although the ending seems to point to answers, I doubt them to be true, as anything understood from this world of memory-loss is unreliable, and thus the feeling of ambiguity is one that I much prefer to submit to. For me all of the best art induces this brain fog feeling, at once satisfying in effect meanwhile refusing to satisfy.

(Esmé Dee Hand-Halford is the singer/bassist of the British art-rock band The Orielles. The band’s latest album, Tableau, was released in October via Heavenly. The Orielles’ lineup also features Sidonie “Sid” B. Hand-Halford on drums and Henry Carlyle Wade on guitar and vocals.)

The Orrielles photo by Neelam Khan Vela.

n

Ian Devaney of

NATION OF LANGUAGE

on Phantom Thread (2017, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) n

Words by Ian Devaney

To begin with, Phantom Thread might be the most beautiful looking movie I’ve ever seen. That was the frst thing that drew me in, followed closely by the presence of Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps, both of whom are so striking in their look and intensity that it’s hard to turn

away. After my second viewing I came to the conclusion that a lot of my love for the flm is not only how it looks, but how it sounds.

The whole movie has an almost ASMRtype quality to it. A lot of time is spent focusing on people quietly and carefully doing things

with their hands, harnessing their craft: designing and making fne clothing. Such a thing is not generally an interest of mine but there is something about watching someone with a particular skill utilizing it with concentration that makes a part of my brain melt. The sound design is beautiful and also painful at times. The smallest noises poking through the silence amplifes your empathy for the characters. Daniel DayLewis, for example, plays someone who cannot stand the sound of other people eating or drinking. In turn, every scrape of butter over bread, every sip of tea, feels like it’s happening an inch from your ear.

But what really made this movie stick with me was the ultimate question of what it takes to make a workaholic control-freak pause and surrender, if only for a short time. In the broadest possible sense the answer might be love, but in this movie it’s not nearly that simple—it’s about the desperate places love can take a person, and the twisted things it can make them do. It almost feels like a Leonard Cohen song in that way, and as I write that, I realize this is probably what elevated it above my other possible choices, There Will Be Blood or Inherent Vice I must really like Paul Thomas Anderson.

(Ian Devaney is the frontman of the Brooklyn, New York-based synthpop trio Nation of Language. The band’s lineup also features Aidan Noell and Alex MacKay. Nation of Language’s most recent album, A Way Forward, came out in 2021 via [PIAS]. The band also contributed to Under the Radar’s Covers of Covers album.)

“The sound design is beautiful and also painful at times. The smallest noises poking through the silence amplifies your empathy for the characters.”

Nation of Language photo by Shervin Lainez.

Maria Elena of SPECIAL

INTEREST

on All About My Mother (aka Todo sobre mi madre)

(1999,

directed

Words by Maria Elena

by Pedro Almodóvar)

We’re all huge Pedro Almodóvar fans in Special Interest. Truly. Deeply. I have Rossy de Palma’s face tattooed on my body. Despite my love for so many of Almodóvar’s flms I’d have to say my all time favorite movie is defnitely Todo sobre mi madre [aka All About My Mother].

It truly has it all: torrential maternal emotions, psychedelic color, extreme wit, sensitive mundanity, fabulous costumes, a woman named Smoke, an errant nun, dyke drama, drug drama, problematic dialogue, Spanish guitar as a train traverses the countryside montage, cryptic noir-esque monologues performed by strong hurt women! Life, death, forgiveness, hope! Ceclia Roth is utterly captivating as the fawed, perfect mother, but for real, the performances across the board are just incredible. Agrado (played by Antonia San Juan) is, in my opinion, the greatest stand out as a fully developed, multi faceted trans character in a flm that came out in 1999. Her character is hilarious, warm, and intuitive. I’ve carried the VHSs (and DVD back ups)

of Almodóvar’s flms with me for every move of my adult life and there’s not a better medicine when you’re homesick than crying to his movies. If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching this classic I strongly urge you to drop everything—if you’re emotionally well enough to cry your heart out. Also I could write pages on how exciting La

Movida Madrileña-era Almodóvar is, but it’s in the late ’90s and early 2000s that a self refection and nostalgia of Movida gets totally epic as he also invites the viewers into what feels like an immersive play played by the cast of dreams. There’s a lot of flmmakers that make movies that feel like plays—specifcally [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder, whom Almodóvar nods to often in many of his movies—but a new pinnacle is reached because of Almodóvar’s unabashed love of women. He’s not a perfect queer exemplar, and side note, I’ve got a few more pages on the outmoded-ness of holding artists to be infallible because of what they represent to us. There’s a lot of valid critiques with his flms and I totally agree—especially now that I’ve been to Spain. But damn he is good and this movie is honestly fucking amazing.

(Maria Elena is the guitarist in Special Interest, a no-wave punk band from New Orleans, Louisiana that also features Alli Logout on vocals, Nathan Cassiani on bass, and Ruth Mascelli on synthesizer/drum machine. The band’s new album, Endure, was just released by Rough Trade.)

Special Interest photo by Alexis Gross.

“I’ve carried the VHSs (and DVD back ups) of Almodóvar’s films with me for every move of my adult life and there’s not a better medicine when you’re homesick than crying to his movies.”

TJ Freda of GIFT on The Matrix (1999, directed by The Wachowskis)

Words by TJ Freda

The Matrix is my favorite movie of all time. I frst saw The Matrix when I was 11 (maybe a bit too young?) and loved it for the sci-f and fghting scenes. The soundtrack of the movie exposed me to industrial and nu-metal music at an early age. Mainly The Prodigy, Rage Against The Machine, and Rob Zombie—bands that were fusing noise and rock with electronic music. Those bands turned me onto bands that I would deep dive into during most of my childhood, like Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein. Those bands were a segue into earlier bands like Joy Division, New Order, and Gary Numan. The intersection between electronic music and rock music has always been a big interest of mine, which had a big infuence on [GIFT’s debut album] Momentary Presence.

As I got older The Matrix was a go-to movie for me, the world it creates is both peaceful and eerie. The color grading of the movie is one of my favorite parts. When the viewer is in The Matrix, the screen has an unsettling green tint. This is because of the relationship to the computer code that makes up the simulation that is The Matrix. When in the real world, the colors are pure and

blue, almost biblical. The dynamics between going back and forth between both worlds are done really well, and create a sense of both chaos and stillness throughout the movie.

Years later I still kept coming back to the movie, almost as a comfort flm, though the flm is not particularly comfortable at times. I started to understand the meaning the more I watched

it. I realized the movie was all about perception. Life is perception. The people in The Matrix do not know they are in a simulation. The Matrix is reality for them. Someone’s truth is based on their perception. In The Matrix, The Oracle spoke to the paradox of truth and reality. In the movie, The Oracle tells Neo not to worry about breaking the vase, he promptly turns around bumping into a vase and breaks it. Neo asks how she knew he was going to break the vase, The Oracle responds, “Would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?”

Thinking about perception, truths/reality very much changed the way I felt about my own anxiety, existentialist thoughts, and worries. A big inspiration while I was writing Momentary Presence.

I love how The Matrix makes you question what is real and what is not real. Is this paragraph you just fnished reading real?

(TJ Freda is the frontman for the Brooklyn, New York-based psych-rock/space-rock band GIFT. The band’s line-up also features Jessica Gurewitz, Kallan Campbell, Justin Hrabovsky, and Cooper Naess. GIFT released their debut album, Momentary Presence, in October via Dedstrange, a label created by A Place to Bury Strangers’ Oliver Ackermann.)

“I started to understand the meaning the more I watched it. I realized the movie was all about perception. Life is perception.”

GIFT photo by Jena Cumbo.

Charlie Burchill of

SIMPLE MINDS

on Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979, directed by Werner Herzog)

As Told to Lee Campbell

I’ve thought about it long and hard. I’m a big fan of Werner Herzog, the director who did Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God. However, I would have to say Nosferatu, with the actor Klaus Kinski, would be at the top of my list.

It was the music in it that got me. Popol Vuh is the artist who did the soundtrack and it was the frst time I had heard this enchanting, weird musical soundtrack that had this sound. It was a horror movie, but it was more like a silent horror movie, which of course, it was in its original form in the 1920s.

Herzog has a particular atmosphere that he always has in his movies. Just the way that he combined the music, the way it was shot, and all this poetry in it. I must have watched it about 50 times. I know it inside out like the back of my hand.

It was in a Notting Hill Gate cinema in London [where I frst watched it]. We used to go to these nights in the ’80s. I think we were making Sparkle in the Rain [at the time]. These evenings were Friday night, they showed great, art-house movies. I remember seeing Nosferatu and thinking,

‘Wow!’ All of Herzog’s movies turned out to be amazing flms, groundbreaking in fact.

I watched it again about a year ago. They had done a movie based on the movie, so to speak, with Willem Dafoe. It’s called Shadow of the Vampire. It was with him and John Malkovich. It

was about the making of Nosferatu the movie, the [1922] original. I really enjoyed that. It was a funny, weird movie, so I thought, I need to revisit the [Herzog version] again. It’s great to say that, all the emotional stuff that I got from the frst time I watched it, I still got from it. It’s just so redolent, the atmosphere of it all.

When I was younger, my dad and I used to watch the old classics together. Directors like Kubrick, Herzog, and Eisenstein. Fantastic! I love all the arthouse stuff.

(Charlie Burchill is lead guitarist and a founding member of Simple Minds. The band’s current lineup also features vocalist and fellow founding member Jim Kerr, alongside bassist Ged Grimes, drummer Cherisse Osei, and vocalist Sarah Brown. The band’s new album, Direction of the Heart, was released in October via BMG. Simple Minds came to prominence in the 1980s thanks to hit singles such as “Alive and Kicking” and “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” recorded for the John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club. Portions of Burchill’s conversation have been abridged and edited for structure and fow.)

Simple Minds photo by Dean Chalkley.

“Herzog has a particular atmosphere that he always has in his movies. Just the way that he combined the music, the way it was shot, and all this poetry in it.”

JOANIE on

Words by Chardine Taylor-Stone

It’s always diffcult to answer the question “what is your favorite flm” because it all depends on where my head is at that moment. However there is something to be said about the impact a flm can have on you as a teenager, a time when you are starting to work out who you are and your place in the world and the movie that I still hold close to my heart is John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink

In my fuzzy memory I frst saw it when I was about 12 years old on a random cable channel as a re-run 20 or so years after it had frst been released. It was repeated every week and I watched it each time. The opening scenes of Andie [Molly Ringwald] getting dressed in her quirky ’80s pastels to the punky soundtrack of The Psychedelic Furs had me captured from the frst drum beat. Though far away from the suburbs of Chicago, in my little council house in the Midlands I understood how it felt to be the weird girl from “the wrong side of the tracks.” I thought Duckie [Jon Cryer] was the coolest guy ever, (weird boys in brothel creepers are the entry drug to queerness I swear!). I wanted Andie’s vintage car and I wanted to work in a record shop and hang out in cool smokey clubs with the freaks and the geeks. All of which I kinda

did along with pink becoming my favorite color. I probably watch a scene or listen to the soundtrack at least once a year. It’s comforting and even as an adult there’s still a part of me that responds to the honesty of teenage emotions, those of frst love, unrequited or reciprocated, and of course the inevitable heartbreak. These days I’m less an “Andie” and more an “Iona,” the slightly eccentric

aunt/mentor trying to fgure out how to be a grown up and support the new Andies out there, whatever gender they are.

The flm turned me on to so much music that infuences me today—Otis Redding, The Smiths, and Echo & The Bunnyman (“Positively Lost Me” by The Rave-Ups is an underrated ’80s punkabilly classic). It has had other long-lasting infuences too, to always remain true to myself, embrace being an outcast, but most importantly of all I have never dated anyone whose name sounded more like a major appliance than a name!

But, unlike Andie, I will always, always choose the Duckies in this world.

(Big Joanie are a self-described “Black feminist punk band” from London, England. Chardine Taylor-Stone is the band’s drummer and backing vocalist and the trio also features singer/guitarist Stephanie Phillips and bassist/backing vocalist Estella Adeyeri. The band’s latest album, Back Home, was just released by Kill Rock Stars. John Hughes wrote and co-executive produced Pretty in Pink, which was directed by Howard Deutch. In the original ending to the movie, Andie ended up with Duckie, but test screening audiences booed it and so the ending was reshot.)

Chardine Taylor-Stone of BIG

Pretty in Pink (1986, directed by Howard Deutch)

“There is something to be said about the impact a film can have on you as a teenager, a time when you are starting to work out who you are and your place in the world.”

Big Joanie photo by Ajamu X.

Words by Kelcey Ayer

My all-time favorite movie is a bat-shit sci-f flm called The Fifth Element. It’s one of the most creative, fun, insane movies ever made, and I can’t believe this was only Luc Besson’s second English language flm (he went from Léon: The Professional to this). It’s got all the hallmarks of a great adventure flm: humor, some scary moments, incredible action sequences, romance, but with all these wild quirks that only a cocky French flmmaker could pull off. It’s so colorful in every sense of the word, from the expansive sets to the garish costuming, plus some of the cutest, wobbly, chunky alien robot guys you’ve ever seen.

And while Besson should be canonized for taking the chances he took, it’s the performances that seal the deal. Every side-character had enough charisma to carry their own movies: the mugger outside Korben’s apartment, the General, the Chinese-food proprietor, the airport ground crew getting high off their fame-thrower while killing rainbow parasites, Korben’s mother, the blue

alien opera singer, the deaf body-builder Royalty dude in white faux-fur boots… I forget what his deal was, but the list goes on and on.

Then there are the main players, every one of them pitch-perfect. From Bruce Willis as the reluctant hero Korben, to Milla Jovovich’s unfinching commitment as a million-year old alien, to Gary

Oldman as a lovable psychopath (per usual, but in space!), to Ian Holm as the faithful, nervous priest. But the greatest of them all, the pièce de résistance, has to be Chris Tucker as radio DJ personality Ruby Rhod. This is one of the most bonkers, unabashedly famboyant, and amazing performances ever captured on flm, and he should have been nominated for an Oscar for it (I know it’s not an “Oscar” role that should have won, I’m just saying could have been their Jack Sparrow-nom for that year). Plus the movie has Tricky in it, and in 1997 you don’t get cooler than that.

Citizen Kane can eat my ass! The Fifth Element is the greatest movie ever made! Rosebud? Try Ruby Rhod! Not a good comparison? B-zzzzzz!

(Kelcey Ayer is the singer/keyboardist/guitarist in the Los Angeles-based band Local Natives. The band’s lineup also features Taylor Rice, Ryan Hahn, Matt Frazier, and Nik Ewing. Local Natives’ most recent album was 2019’s Violet Street. Ayer also has a solo project, Jaws of Love., and his sophomore album under that name, Second Life, is a November 2022 release.

Kelcey Ayer photo by Joey Wasilewski.