Dimple Records' In-Store Magazine, November 2010

neil young

Plugs back in

indie rock with a slice of green

cowbellmagazine.com

Animal Collective’s

avey tare

Mucks Around in Swampland

the green Mind guide

Kylesa

Propels Metal Into Interstellar Overdrive

How To Sustain Yourself Japan’s Nuttiest Haunted

house

Car

to

ev In R s n o

o lt

Take On Creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett

plus DarkStar, Julie Christmas, Post-Rock Heroes, Robert Mitchum’s Life Lessons & More

$4.95 | ISSUE no. 7

CD $7.99 V-White & The Politician Stimulus Package With a catalog of albums and over 10 years in the music industry V-White is a well kept secret except to the most diehard fans of Bay Area hip hop. Inking a deal with a major label, Priority Records, he released a hood classic “Bosses will be Bosses” with the regional hit “That Man” in Fall of 1999. Working with heavy hitters in the industry such as Too Short, Snoop Dog, Master P, and Mack 10, V-White is definitely a solidified influence in the Bay Area rap movement.

In 2007 he released “Perfect Timing” which was with perfect timing as the Bay Area was receiving a lot of attention in the midst of the “Hyphy Movement” he partnered up with upcoming producer/song writer/ rapper by the name of Big Zeke the Politician. Now V-White and The Politician are back with their new release Stimulus Package.

telly mac / YOUR NOBODY TIL SOMEBODY KILLS YOU DLK Enterprise Presents: Telly Mac (of the Gamblaz) back following up his last solo album “Project Celebrity” which was a Bay Area Classic, but was more of a compilation style album. Now all you true Telly Mac Gamblaz fans bout to get a real treat. With more solo songs than collaborations your getting the best of Telly Mac, “hands down” the most under rated rapper out the Bay Area!

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The Joshua Tree Limited Super Deluxe Edition

The Joshua Tree Deluxe Edition

COWBELL

Boy Deluxe Edition

War Deluxe Edition

The Unforgettable Fire Limited Super Deluxe Edition

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> music 18 Kylesa Psychedelic post-metal band goes way out 20 Darkstar U.K. trio brings icy synth-pop songs to the bass-heavy world of dubstep

> green mind 22 Julie Christmas Charismatically spooky singer turns out a harrowing solo debut

6 The Coming Famine A new book tells us why we need to change our eating habits, and soon

24 The Playlist The plugged-in, switchedon sound of post-rock

7 Gasland Documentary filmmaker Josh Fox tracks the troubles with natural gas

28 Neil Young The grand old man of wild rock guitar gets back to his roots 30 Avey Tare Animal Collective member goes into the swamp on his first solo album

8 D.I.Y. How to can your own veggies 10 The Green Mind Guide A brief look at how you can get started in the world of sustainable living

> movies 40 Night of the Hunter Robert Mitchum electrifies in this fairy tale noir classic 42 House Japanese notso-scary horror film takes us into the mouth of (hilarious) madness 44 Johnny Staccato John Casavetes’ breakout TV role points to his years as an indie maverick 45 Deadwood The revisionist western of the decade gets the box set treatment

34 Gorillaz

Celebrating a decade of the world’s biggest cartoon band

46 Pretty Great Performances Toshirô Mifune’s multi-faceted bandit is the heart of Seven Samurai 48 John Cazale Poignant documentary looks at the short life of the great character actor

cover & contents illustrations by jamie hewlett

COWBELL

3

> from the editor

publisher

Fantasy is everywhere these days, and the folks

consuming it can no longer be painted as repressed, marginalized geeks. Video games are aimed as much at mortgage-holding thirtysomethings as kids. Super hero comic books are reviewed, non-pejoratively, in the New York Times. Adults devour Harry Potter and Twilight novels without a hint of shame.

(The latter might not be such a positive development.) A movie starring elves and wizards and hobbits won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and no one blinked except a few culture-snob holdouts.

The old canard that we need to “put away childish things” as we become adults, leave cartoons and science fiction and rock ’n’ roll behind when we start paying taxes, well, that hasn’t been the case for a long, long time now.

The year’s biggest indie record is undoubtedly the Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, a serious record (more U2 grand than Pavement slack in approach) about a serious subject (the spread of suburban sprawl) that critics have taken very seriously indeed. Yet The Suburbs is total fantasy. The band makes growing up in the ’burbs into a sweeping struggle, on a Tolkein-sized scale, with shopping malls in place of Mordor and alienated art-school kids standing in for the hobbits.

But from the earnestness of their interviews to the Amish-grade rectitude of their stage garb, the Arcade Fire present themselves as anything but fantasists. They want to be taken seriously. They are making Statements About How We Live Now. This is fine, maybe even honorable, but such all-consuming serious can also get a little draining, especially when the music is thrilling precisely because it goes so big that it risks silliness to put its point across.

The Arcade Fire do what successful rock bands have always done: They inflate teenage melodrama to epic proportions. But acknowledging that they truck in melodrama, playing with it, having a little fun, would put them in the company of emo fans rather than NPR listeners. Teenagers know that fantasy can still grapple with the big questions. A lot of aging rock fans still persist in the belief that this music, built on teenage kicks, needs to present itself as part of real, grownup life in order to have an impact on real life grownups.

Personally, I prefer the approach of this month’s cover stars, Gorillaz. There’s nothing remotely “real” about Gorillaz; they’re a band that presents a literal cartoon front to the world. Their image is silly, excessive, completely fantastical. They do not give earnest interviews, even now that the humans behind the cartoons are the ones talking to the reporters.

And yet despite this surface layer of cartoon mayhem, their new album Plastic Beach also incorporates topics, like the environmental impact of mass-production culture, that have much to say to flesh-and-blood humans of all ages. It’s a best-of-both-worlds approach to music-making; Gorillaz take their record seriously while still having fun. They remain a singular act—the last 10 years haven’t exactly seen a glut of cartoon bands—but the first Gorillaz album in five years is a welcome reminder of two important points: Fantasy doesn’t always have to be escapist, and rock can still hit people even when it’s totally unreal.

Jess Harvell Editor-in-Chief 4

COWBELL

Alex Mulcahy alex@cowbellmagazine.com editor-in-chief

Jess Harvell jess@cowbellmagazine.com art director

Jamie Leary jamie@cowbellmagazine.com designer

Melissa McFeeters managing editor

Andrew Bonazelli contributing editor

Lee Stabert

production artists

Lucas Hardison

customer service

Mark Evans mark@cowbellmagazine.com 215.625.9850 ext. 105 writers

J. Bennett Raymond Cummings Jeanne Fury Gary Graff Joe Gross Jess Harvell Sean L. Maloney Michaelangelo Matos Bret McCabe photographers

Geoff L. Johnson Pennie Smith illustrators

Jamie Hewlett Melissa McFeeters published by

Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850

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/green_mind

Crash Diet

The title of The Coming Famine says it all—though there’s still time to fix things / by Jess Harvell

The Coming Famine

by Julian Cribb

[University of California Press]

Here’s a question you probably don’t think about too often: What do we do when our food supply runs out? It’s hard to imagine a famine scenario, especially in America, where there’s a grocery store full of edibles every few miles. But America and other developed countries are literally devouring the world’s food at a rate that leaves hundreds of millions scrambling to stay fed around the world. When you’ve got whole nations eating more than they produce, for decades, the system is bound to crash sooner or later.

Australian journalist Julian Cribb claims that crash is coming sooner than any of us would like to think, if it hasn’t happened already. In the opening chapter of The Coming Famine, he describes a dinner at the G8 summit in 2008, where leaders from the world’s eight richest countries met to discuss issues like the international food supply, in the kind of unctuous detail you’d expect from an article in Food & Wine. The G8 members dined on “hot onion tart and winter lily bulbs, followed by kelp-flavored Kyoto beef with asparagus dressed with sesame cream,” and that’s just one course.

After inventorying this Rabelaisian feast, right down to the vintages of the wines, Cribb delivers the gutshot kicker: “The cost of holding the G8 summit (500 million dollars) could have fed for a week the additional one hundred million people left hungry by

the emerging food crisis.” For Cribb, the G8 banquet is a symptom of the wider problem outlined in dizzying detail by The Coming Famine: The developed world’s priorities are out so out of whack, and have been for so long, that its leaders see nothing strange about drowning themselves in luxuries even as they meet to discuss the plight of the starving poor.

As you might have guessed from the slightly apocalyptic title, The Coming Famine is not a breezy read. It’s compact, but densely packed with information, the kind of book that makes its case through statistics. A lot of statistics. Drawing from hundreds of sources, Cribb’s more-than-thorough research predicts a full-on famine by the middle of the century without a radical overhaul to both wasteful farming methods that privilege wealthier nations and the eating habits in developed countries. “Population and demand [for food] are together rising at about two percent per year, whereas food output is now increasing at one percent a year,” Cribb writes. (See what I mean about the statistics?)

Essentially, there are too many hungry mouths on Planet Earth, and more of them every day, while farming yields are shrinking and farming itself is becoming “costlier and more energy-intensive” since “advanced farming depends entirely on fossil fuels,” which you may have heard are at a premium these days.

In countries where food becomes scarce, violence usually follows: “Since the early 1990s, more wars have been triggered by disputes over food, land and water than mere political or ethnic differences.” And though we might not see rioting in the streets, Americans may soon discover that items previously thought of as necessities, like bread and meat, have become prohibitively expensive.

Within the first 10 pages, Cribb makes a pretty good case that “civilization is running out of fresh water” and “hemorrhaging nutrients,” that the world is “running out of good farmland” and that “ocean fish catches could collapse by 2040.” Hooray!

Your first instinct upon reading Cribb’s grim forecast might be to throw up your hands and order a double cheeseburger before it’s too late. Yet he claims that “there is still time to forestall catastrophe.” It’s Cribb’s suggestions on how to avoid that catastrophe that ultimately make The Coming Famine a valuable read, especially for those of us with a weakness for meat, processed foods and other poisoned fruits of the current agricultural system. He offers practical solutions for how you can reduce your food footprint, which isn’t just a matter of eating less, as you’ll learn, but altering your diet so that you have less of an impact on the whole of global food supply. Cribb calls The Coming Famine a “wake-up call” and it’ll undoubtedly leave you rethinking your eating habits. One can only hope it’ll find its way into the hands of a few agribusiness execs as well.

Your first instinct upon reading Cribb’s grim forecast might be to throw up your hands and order a double cheeseburger before it’s too late. Yet he claims that “there is still time to forestall catastrophe.”

6

Cowbell

Frack This

Josh Fox hits the road to uncover the deadly impact of natural gas drilling / by Jess Harvell Gasland

directed by Josh Fox [New Video Group]

Here’s one of the more shocking moments in Gasland: A man turns on his kitchen faucet and a jet of flame shoots out, nearly engulfing his arm.

Sound cool? What if I told you it wasn’t a special effect, and that Gasland is a documentary? Director Josh Fox has found communities across America where the water is so polluted with natural gas that good old H20, the stuff of life, has become not just toxic, but flammable. Kind of makes you want to think twice before pouring that next glass straight from the tap, right?

Fox owns a plot of land in Northeastern Pennsylvania, near the New York border, that sits on top of the Marcellus Shale, a huge deposit of natural gas that stretches for almost 600 miles across four states. In Gasland, the Marcellus Shale is described as “the Saudi Arabia of America,” equivalent to Texas during the oil boom a century ago. Land in the Shale region has become a hot commodity as American oil deposits shrink, and foreign oil becomes more expensive due to scarcity and conflict in the Middle East.

When a drilling company offered to lease Fox’s land for the not inconsiderable sum of $100,000, the director discovered the practice of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” which “blasts a mix of water and chemicals 8,000 feet into the ground” so that “the intense pressure breaks up the rock and frees up the gas.” The problem with fracking, as Fox learned through interviews with people around the country who have the misfortune of living near gas-drilling fields, is that the natural gas then has a tendency to leak into the groundwater supply through the cracks in the rock, leading to health problems that range from extreme fatigue to lesions on the brain. And frackers are, sadly if unsurprisingly, almost entirely free from government regulation.

Gasland is not an easy film, though it’s very watchable. Fox has a knack for presenting hard-to-parse technical information in an easy-to-follow way, and he’s not shy about grilling drilling execs and politicians on the hard questions.

(They’re often as squirmy and evasive as you’d expect, especially when Fox asks if they’d like to drink some of the water he’s collected from contaminated areas.)

But again and again, Fox meets people who have been told that their health problems are completely unrelated to gas drilling, and that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why fireballs come flying out of their spigots.

Fox has come up against some opposition, particularly from those invested in the drilling industry.

Business magazine Forbes—as always a defender of the rights of the little guy—wrote a particularly dumb, dismissive review of Gasland, claiming Fox has distorted the dangers of natural gas drilling in order to “slur” energy companies. Forbes took particular umbrage at the scene where Fox lit the tap water on fire, and it’s true that the director is not above a good stunt for rhetorical effect. Gasland is a movie that wants to make viewers angry in order to wake them up.

But unlike many documentary directors who insert themselves into the action, and despite Fox’s banjo-playing hipster persona, there’s little that comes off as glib in Gasland. It’s an intense film, made at speed and with an interest in keeping eyes glued to the TV, but it’s also been rigorously researched. This is a subject Fox clearly feels very strongly about, and it’s not just a film for those unlucky enough to have a fracking operation in their backyard.

cowbell

7

/green_mind

How to Can Pickles

Winter is coming—keep yourself fed with this simple storage solution / by Jess Harvell

C

anning pickles is simpler than you might think.

You chop the vegetables, put them in a jar, add a preserving solution (like pickle brine), seal the jars, boil them and spend the next few months enjoying a healthy snack you made yourself. Okay, there are a few more steps than that, but as you’ll see, it’s far easier than an old-school industrial term like “canning” might imply.

We’ll be using canning jars (also known as Mason jars) with air-tight canning lids. You’ll need four quart-sized glass jars for this project. The metal lids come in two pieces: A flat top that you fit over the jar, which forms an air-tight seal when you boil the jars, and a ring that you screw onto the jar, keeping the top in place while boiling. You’ll also need a metal canning rack, which sits in the pot and will keep the jars from cracking.

And of course you’ll need a stock pot for the boiling process, large enough so that you can cover the jars with water. (Kitchen tongs and rubber gloves are also a good idea since we’ll be working with boiling water.) All of these items can be purchased at any large kitchen supply store for a reasonable amount.

This stovetop canning recipe is for making pickles. The acids in the brine will kill any potential bacterias or toxins during the boiling process. Low-acid, non-pickled veggies need to be canned

8

Cowbell

supplies ❑ A large stock pot ❑ A metal canning rack ❑ 4 quart-sized canning jars ❑ 4 air-tight, flat-top canning lids

with sealing rings

❑ Kitchen tongs ❑ Rubber gloves ❑ Your produce and supplies of

choice (see below for more info)

using a pressure cooker set at 240 degrees or above to ensure all the bacterias and toxins are wiped out. (Lists of high-acid and low-acid veggies can be found online if you’re unsure.) This canning process is both more expensive—you’ll probably have to buy a pressure cooker, for starters—and more involved. If you’re a canning newbie, get a few stovetop batches of these pickles under your belt before you move up to pressure-cooking.

You can make many different kinds of pickles, of course, from peppers to tomatoes, but for this recipe, we’ll be making traditional cucumber pickles, since they’re among the easiest canning projects for first-timers. You’ll need 24 pickling cucumbers, salt, vinegar that has an acidity level of at least five percent and whatever spices sound exciting. I use dill seeds, garlic and red flake pepper, but you’ll figure out the right combination for you with a little trial and error. And hey, you still get to eat the “errors.”

1. Sterilize your jars. Place the canning rack inside the stock pot and fill it with water.

Place the jars onto the rack, and then bring the water to a boil. Let the jars boil for around 10 minutes. Remove the jars and allow them to return to room temperature.

3. In a bowl, mix together four cups of

vinegar, two tablespoons of salt and your spices. (For instance: A teaspoon of dill seed, six chopped cloves of garlic and a teaspoon of red pepper. As always, adjust to taste.) This is your brine.

6. Once again gently place the jars onto

the canning rack, and return the water to a boil. Boil the jars for 15 to 20 minutes. This will both kill any remaining bacteria and seal the lids to the jars.

4. Use a measuring cup to add one cup

of brine to each jar. Make sure to leave a half-inch of space at the top of each jar.

7. Remove the jars. and allow them to

thoroughly cool. Once they’re back at room temperature, check lids to make sure they’re air-tight, otherwise your pickles will spoil.

2. Chop your cucumbers into halves,

quarters, slices or whatever shape you wish. Place them into the jars. Make sure you save room for around one cup of brine.

5. Dry both pieces of the air-tight can-

ning lids with a towel, and then seal the jars with the lids. Fit the lid tightly over the the top of the jar and then screw on the sealing ring.

8. Your pickles can be eaten as soon

as they cool, but once the lids are popped, you’ll have to eat them quickly. Keep the jars sealed and out of direct sunlight, though, and you can store your pickles for several seasons.

cowbell

9

/green_mind

gardening/farming

transportation food

energy

resources

The

Green Mind Guide

E

A brief guide to sustainable living and how you can get involved

very month we throw you into the world of Green Mind.

For six issues now, we’ve brought you interviews with public transportation advocates, urban gardeners, compositing gurus and more. Our D.I.Y. column has offered specific projects—from fixing a flat bike tire to building an irrigation system—designed to make your life a little more green-friendly. We’ve looked at books and movies and blogs and musicians devoted to environmental issues. Green Mind is designed to expose Cowbell readers—presumably music fans hoping to read about new records—to stories about the green movement and ideas for sustainable living. ¶ With that in mind, we’ve put together this little Green Mind guide. Broken into four sections— food, gardening, transportation and energy—we’ve included a variety of resources to help readers begin to incorporate sustainable practices into their daily lives. (There’s also a brief look at where you can find more info about green ideas, from books to blogs.) “Sustainable practices” may sound kind of dry, but trust us: When you’re elbow deep in soil, or biting into an organic tomato 24 hours after it came off the vine, you’ll realize how much fun (and pleasure) there is in going green.

10

Cowbell

FOOD One of the easiest ways to hook someone on the

value of sustainability is with food. Everyone eats, and everyone presumably wants to eat something fresh and delicious. But sustainable farming is about more than just the quality of the food. (Though, yes, an organic, handmade cheese is going to taste better than the kind where the slices come individually wrapped in plastic.) It’s also about supporting small-scale, local farmers.

Industrial farming, which provides us with most of our food, is resource-intensive. It relies on pesticides to boost yields, and those shipping trucks burn a lot of fuel taking tomatoes from one state to another. Not only do local farms produce tastier food, but their products are often safer and their working methods less wasteful.

Small farmers are also deeply tied to the local economy, rather than reporting to corporate shareholders. Feeding their neighbors, they’re community businesses in the best sense.

The quickest way to get involved with local farms, and to radically change your grocery-buying habits, is to join a community-sponsored agriculture organization. A CSA provides a direct relationship between a farmer and his or her customers. Consumers pledge a certain level of economic support for an individual farm, and then receive regular shipments (weekly is most common) of what the farm is producing that season. For some CSAs, that means just fruits and veggies, but others also offer meat, dairy, even bread.

The CSA setup means that consumers are on the hook as much as farmers if crops fail or yields are low. It also means you won’t be getting cucumbers if they’re out of season or not grown in your area. But it’s the most direct way to support local farmers and make sure you’re getting the freshest food. Local Harvest (localharvest.org/csa), a website devoted to sustainable farming, offers a searchable database of hundreds of CSAs across the country, along with tips on what to look for when choosing a CSA. You can search by city or zip code to find a CSA in your area.

If you’re not quite ready to take the CSA plunge, farmers’ markets are the next best thing. Most local farms sell at farmers’ markets, and you’ll be able to buy what you want, when you want. (Again, as long as it’s in season.) Local Harvest also has a searchable database of farmers’ markets (localharvest.org/ farmers-markets/) so you can find the market closest to you.

cowbell

11

/green_mind

GARDENING /FARMING But what if you want to grow your own food?

If you’ve got a backyard, obviously you’re in luck.

Planting a garden takes work, but it’s the best kind of work since you get to eat the end results. If you live in a city—or if you live in the suburbs, but don’t have a patch of soil to call your own—you might think you need to put your dreams of overalls and seed packets on hold.

Thankfully, community gardening/farming is enjoying a renaissance, with hundreds of community agriculture projects springing up across the country, from rooftop plots to full-scale farms. For urban dwellers, community gardens and farms offer many opportunities you might have thought were only available to people who live in suburban and rural areas: a chance to grow your own food, work with nature, beautify your community and reduce the impact large-scale farms have on the environment. For people who live in lower-income areas, where fresh produce can be harder to come by, community agriculture can become an important way to ensure health and well-being.

Most community gardens and farms are always on the lookout for new volunteers. The American Community Garden Association (communitygarden. org) provides a searchable database that lists community agriculture projects in your area. In addition to growing food for the community, many community gardens and farms also provide work opportunities for the homeless and underprivileged. So, even if you’d prefer to offer financial support, rather than literally get your hands dirty, you’ll still be helping individuals in need. If you’re feeling really industrious, you can even set up your own community garden.

There are tips at the ACGA website on how to get started.

TRANSPORTATION Transportation is a huge yearly expense, but switching to mass transit can save you thousands of dollars per year while reducing your carbon footprint in the process. And if you think your daily destination, whether it’s work or school, isn’t accessible by public transportation, you might be surprised. The American Public Transportation Association provides a clickable map on its website (publictransportation.org), which allows you to see what public transportation options are available in your area. Many businesses and schools offer programs that reimburse workers and students who use public transport; there are also tax credits available for those who choose mass transit over driving. Information about these programs can also be found at the APTA’s website.

One of the best ways to cut down on your transportation budget and reduce your carbon footprint is to start biking. A bicycle is an inexpensive investment, and the only fuel it requires is the food and water you consume. Bike clubs are a great way to get involved with your local two-wheeled community, from planned rides to bike advocacy to lobbying local and national politicians to improve bike lanes and paths. The League of American Bicyclists (bikeleague.org) has a searchable database that will help you find a bike club, bike shop or advocacy group in your area.

12

Cowbell

MORE INFO The “environmental” section in most bookstores

ENERGY Want to change a green skeptic’s mind? Just start talking about

the cost of keeping warm in the winter. High utility bills are one issue that unites everybody. There are the simple ways to cut down on your energy use, of course: Unplug appliances when you’re not using them.

Turn down the thermostat. Switch to energy-efficient lighting.

You can also recycle your older appliances—especially larger and more energy-intensive appliances like air conditioners and dishwashers—and buy newer models that comply with the Department of Energy’s Energy Star guidelines. Energy Star’s website (energystar. gov) has information on properly recycling appliances and electronics, along with tools to help you find a recycling center in your area.

One big way to lower your monthly utility bills is to conduct a home energy audit, which is a series of tests, conducted either by yourself or a professional, to determine just how much energy you use every month. We published a do-it-yourself weatherizing guide in our last issue (available at cowbellmagazine.com), which is a good place to start in the battle to keep your home from leaking energy.

But if you have an older home, or exceptionally high bills, you may need a professional’s help. The Energy Star website also allows you to search for a contractor in your area that’s licensed to perform an energy audit.

There are also financial benefits beyond your monthly bill when it comes to lowering your energy consumption. Federal, state and local government agencies, along with some utility companies, offer a wide variety of energy-related rebates for conservation-conscious consumers. The Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (dsireusa.org/) is an easy way to see what incentives and tax credits are available in your area for making your home more energy-efficient, switching to renewable energy sources like solar or building a new green home from scratch.

is seriously overcrowded at the moment. “Green” is currently hot, and so there’s been a flood of cashin books over the last few years. It’s hard to tell the worthwhile reads from the folks chasing a buck until the next trend shows up.

We’ve reviewed several excellent green-themed books in our most recent issues—now available at cowbellmagazine.com—including a few, like Bill McKibben’s Eaarth and Vandana Shiva’s Soil Not Oil, that belong in any library.

McKibben and Shiva provide a broader overview of the current state of the planet and ideas for how to extend sustainability into the future. Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma remains an impassioned, witty and rigorously researched look at how our diets have changed from the days of hunter-gatherers to our The Omnivore’s current industrialized dinners.

Dilemma by Michael Pollan And Amanda Little’s Power Trip is broad canvas look at America’s over-reliance on nonrenewable energy along with possible prescriptions for weaning ourselves off our dependency on fossil fuels.

In Eaarth, McKibben suggests that the internet has been one of the biggest boons to the Power Trip by green movement in the last 15 Amanda Little years. He’s right. There are now hundreds of websites—from radical sustainability message boards to green blogs run by mainstream newspapers—that offer environmental news, interviews with activists, how-to tips and more.

A good place to start is Grist (grist.org), a longrunning blog that has attracted some of the best environmental writers out there. Grist offers everything from essays by leading scientists to daily news coverage of environmental stories (like this summer’s oil spill off the Gulf Coast) and humor pieces designed to leaven the serious stuff. If you prefer something a little more straight-laced, there’s also the Green Blog at the New York Times (green.blogs. newyorktimes.com), which relies on the in-depth reportorial power of the Paper of Record to cover a wide range of environmental topics. cowbell

13

The best gifts are the ones they REALLY, REALLY want, and this year indie record stores have them.

Black Friday

Limited edition pieces.

Rare tracks. Special packaging. Exclusive titles. Truly something for everyone.

They hit the shelves on 11.26, so put your local indie record store at the top of your Black Friday to-do list.

CA32 B= 03 / 1=>

Grandmother’s wheelchair is sitting in the corner We all sure love her, but the little ones avoid her Cause she’s gray-haired and wrinkled and her burden looks heavy Ninety years of survival can look awful scary

Used to be a cop but I got to be too jumpy I used to like to party till I coughed up half a lung But sometimes late at night I can hear the beat a bumpin’ And I reach for my holster and I wake up all alone

Papa’s building something and has since history But what he’s building is still a mystery It’s big and it’s twisting and shaped convoluted It don’t have a function but you better salute it And it will never be ďŹ nished but I guess that’s the point It just gives him a ďŹ lter and psychological ointment He woke up real early but he’s late for his appointment And I sure wish that I had smoked me a joint

I used to have a wife but she told me I was crazy Said she couldn’t stand the way I ďŹ dget all the time Sometimes late at night I circle around the house I look through the windows and dream that she’s still mine

It’s Thanksgiving and Jesus, I’m thankful For abundance and bounty and a big tall stiff drink-full And the love of your mother and the love of mine too Thanksgiving’s almost over and Christmas is soon Mama is trying to live in the present Don’t let him have a heart attack before I pay off the presents Granddaddy’s gone but she still feels his presence He tried to call but he didn’t leave a message

2`WdS 0g B`cQYS`a â?– The Thanksgiving Filter

B63 B6/<9A57D7<5 47:B3@

I got scars on my back from the way my Daddy raised me I used to have a family until I got divorced Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too far to turn back so I just keep turning round in circles I used to be a cop but they kicked me off the force Used to have a car but the bank came and took it Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m paying for a house but that bitch lives in it now With the children that we had who now wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even look at me Guess thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing left to lose, nothing matters anyhow Got a scar on my arm from that bullet that once grazed me I keep it in a box to remind me where Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been That thin blue line was the only thing that could save me I used to have a badge but they made me turn it in

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Thanksgiving and Jesus Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m thankfulâ&#x20AC;Ś So put the food on the table and Papa says a blessing Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re cutting up some turkey and gobbling some dressing My auntâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s praising Palin and my niece loves Obama My uncle came to dinner wearing his pajamas Thank God for the ďŹ lter that enables some distance From the screaming and crying and the needs of assistance You wonder why I drink and curse the holidays Blessed be my family from 300 miles away Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Thanksgiving and Jesus Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m thankfulâ&#x20AC;Ś >ObbS`a]\ 6]]R AWZdS`b]\S 5cWbO` O\R A5 :SOR D]QOZ ;WYS 1]]ZSg :SOR 5cWbO` 8]V\ <STT :SOR 5cWbO` AV]\\O BcQYS` 0Oaa 0`OR ;]`UO\ 2`c[a 8Og 5]\hOZSh >WO\] O\R 6O[[]\R 0! O\R 6O`[]\g D]QOZa

I used to play football but I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t big enough for college But I passed the entrance exam, ďŹ rst try and on my way The police academy gave me the only thing I was ever good at But my temper and the shakes and they took that thing away Used to have a wife but she just couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t deal with The anger and tension that was welling inside me Sometimes late at night I circle round the house I look through the windows and I remember how it used to be >ObbS`a]\ 6]]R 5cWbO` O\R D]QOZa AV]\\O BcQYS` 0Oaa ;WYS 1]]ZSg :SOR 5cWbO` 8]V\ <STT 5cWbO` O\R AWbO` 0`OR ;]`UO\ 2`c[a 8Og 5]\hOZSh Ec`ZWbhS`

eee R`WdSPgb`cQYS`a Q][

:g`WQa( >ObbS`a]\ 6]]R ;caWQ( ;WYS 1]]ZSg >ObbS`a]\ 6]]R 8]V\ <STT AV]\\O BcQYS` 0`OR ;]`UO\ O\R 8Og 5]\hOZSh Â&#x2013; A]cZ 2c[^ ;caWQ 0;7

Both songs from the new DBT album 5] 5] 0]]ba Available #

>`]RcQSR 3\UW\SS`SR O\R ;WfSR Pg 2OdWR 0O`PS) 1VOaS >O`Y B`O\aRcQbW]\ AbcRW]a /bVS\a 5/ /aaWabO\b 3\UW\SS` 2`Se DO\RS\PS`U

;OabS`SR Pg 5`SU 1OZPW Ob AbS`ZW\U A]c\R <G1

B6/<9 G=C 4=@ AC>>=@B7<5 @31=@2 AB=@3 2/G

& Š 2010 ATO Records, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

88088-21719-1 ATO0091

8

80882 17191

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GASLIGHT ANTHEM 7â&#x20AC;? with a neverbefore released cover of the Rolling Stonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tumblinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Diceâ&#x20AC;?

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CEELO GREEN F**K YOU

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WRITTEN BY CEE LO GREEN, BRUNO MARS AND PHILIP LAWRENCE PUBLISHED BY GOD GIVEN MUSIC / CHRYSALIS MUSIC LTD. (BMI) / MARS FORCE MUSIC (ASCAP) / BUGHOUSE (ASCAP). ALL RIGHTS ON BEHALF OF MARS FORCE MUSIC AND BUGHOUSE ADMINISTERED BY BUG / ROC NATION MUSIC OBO MUSIC FAMAMANEM LP ADMINISTERED BY EMI APRIL MUSIC INC (ASCAP) / TOY PLANE MUSIC (ASCAP)

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/music

Spiraling Skyward Southern psych sorcerers Kylesa step out of their own shadow / by J. Bennett

K

ylesa guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants is wan-

dering the streets of Oakland, trying to get a cell signal. Tonight, her band will play across the Bay in San Francisco with tourmates High on Fire and Torche. It’s a well-selected bill; accolades for all three bands have poured in from sources as diverse as the most obscure DIY headbanger blogs to the less-metallically-inclined crowd at Spin. Not that Pleasants really spends much time thinking about that kind of thing: “I personally care what our fans think because they’re our fans and they’re really loyal, but do I really care what the masses think? Not as much. This music isn’t for everybody. We’re not a pop band.”

18

Even the most cursory listen to any one of Kylesa’s five full-lengths would confirm Pleasants’ assertion.

From the rumbling sludge-punk of their self-titled 2002 debut to the dizzying dual-drummer/dualvocalist/dual-guitar power-psych of their latest, Spiral Shadow, Kylesa have spent the last decade climbing toward the top of the heavy heap by touring relentlessly and writing increasingly complex and indefinable material. Spiral Shadow somehow manages to be the band’s most layered and least cluttered album, aligning Corey Barhorst’s booming robo-bass, Pleasants’ fret-tapping guitar melodies and Phillip Cope’s slashing chords in stereophonic constellation. The hard-panned drum kits circle a celestial perimeter that’s being constantly redefined—first by Pleasants’ vocals, then by Cope’s.

“W

e wanted to make a headphone record,” Pleasants offers. “We wanted this album to have a life of its own, this kind of pulsating movement throughout the songs. We wanted it to be the kind of record where you can hear something new every time.” There’s a distinct feeling of movement underneath every cascading bar of Spiral Shadow, your ear always catching some new shift in the sound. The album breathes, palpitates and oscillates in a way that most records in the ever-broadening metal pantheon do not.

“From day one, we decided to never pigeonhole ourselves musically because we all love different kinds of music that runs the gamut of what’s popular and unpopular,” Pleasants says. “We decided to play heavy music, but we never wanted to limit ourselves to a certain style. We shook on that years ago, and I think it’s been pertinent to our sound and our creative happiness. It’s not like I gotta start a bunch of side bands because I’m not getting my creative fulfillment in the band that I’m in. If I want to write something that’s really mellow and chill, I can do that. If I wanna write something brutal, I can do that, too.”

Formed by Pleasants, fellow guitarist/vocalist Cope and bassist Brian Duke in Savannah, GA in 2001, Kylesa suffered a devastating setback when Duke passed away as a result of an epileptic seizure just four days after the band’s first show. Soldiering on, they dedicated their self-titled full-length to their fallen comrade and eventually enlisted bassist Barhorst, who has been with Kylesa ever since.

Meanwhile, the band’s drummer situation has been almost comically unstable; ever since sticksman Carl McGinley joined in 2006, Kylesa have had a two-drummer lineup, thus doubling the potential for ex-members. As such, there are currently five former Kylesa drummers out there in the world— including Eric Hernandez, who split earlier this year.

“We laugh about it,” Pleasants says. “Our drummer problems are kind of a Spinal Tap thing.

Eric decided he wanted to go back to school and told us like a week before we were supposed to do a U.S. tour. We conSpiral Shadow is available now sidered the possibility of doing from Season of it with just one drummer, but Mist.

photo by Geoff l. johnson

we’d just gotten people used to the two-drummer setup, so we weren’t sure if we could get away with it. We scrambled and found a fill-in for two tours, and he did a decent job, but we didn’t want him in the band necessarily. Then Carl suggested Tyler Newberry, a friend of his from high school who actually did a tour with us back in 2007.”

With Newberry installed, Kylesa set to work on Spiral Shadow, their followup to last year’s critically acclaimed Static Tensions. “We were happy with [Static Tensions] overall as a record, but we didn’t wanna write that record again,” Pleasants says. “We also didn’t wanna go so far out into left field that people would be like, ‘What the fuck happened?’ So we wanted to expand on some of the ideas we started with on Static Tensions, as well as keep some of the riffage and structures that we’ve done in the past, but make everything a bit more concise and refined.”

Which is exactly what Kylesa have accomplished. Spiral Shadow is arguably the Kylesa album that works best as a cohesive whole. Where Static Tensions was populated with obvious standout tracks couched amongst less memorable material, Spiral Shadow unfolds as a hypnotic journey with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. Pleasants claims the unified approach wa s i nte nt i o n a l : “There were songs on Static Tensions I loved —Laura Pleasants and others I wasn’t thrilled about. Spiral Shadow is a whole piece. Every song is important, but they all go together.”

Lyrically, the album tackles the theme of distance. Given Kylesa’s difficult history and road-intensive lifestyle—not to mention the fact that Pleasants moved back to her native North Carolina for a year or so prior to recording—the words came naturally. “We’ve come a long way in the last decade, and we’ve physically traveled a lot of distance,” Pleasants says. “Some of us have had long-distance relationships that might’ve failed. There’s the mental and emotional distance within ourselves and everything that surrounds us. It’s a theme that has many connotations and meanings [for the band].”

The biggest leap for Pleasants was using her throaty roar more judiciously and working on actually singing for a change. “That was challenging, but I worked on it because I didn’t think some of the songs called for just screaming all over the place,” she says. “To be honest, I’ve never considered myself much of a vocalist, so it always took a backseat to my guitar playing. But I think Phillip and I have unique voices, even though we’re not professional singers. No one really sounds like us, and I think that’s kinda cool.”

“

There were songs on Static Tensions I loved and others I wasn’t thrilled about. Spiral Shadow is a whole piece.

Every song is important, but they all go together.”

19

/music

Boom Times

Darkstar prove there’s room for songs in the bassloaded world of dubstep / by Michaelangelo Matos

O

ne of the many byproducts of the recent explosion in and around dubstep—the U.K. dance style that’s become electronic music’s du jour over the past few years—is that the genre has splintered into sonic factions recognizable even to non-fans. Distended, bottomless bass frequencies are the primary weapon for veterans like Roska and Caspa, but their “wobble” sound couldn’t be more different if it tried from the elegantly wispy, sample-based expressionism of new producers like James Blake and Cooly G.

“

It’s a heady time. Dubstep artists like Ikonika, Burial, F, Joker, Joy Orbison and Benga are all making music that, more than anything, belongs recognizably to them, rather than any scene-specific sound. A few artists are swerving even further left, and one of them is Darkstar.

It can also be argued that the London group—who record for Hyperdub, the flagship label of new-era dubstep—are in fact turning sharply right. North, their debut album, might come as a surprise to fans of Darkstar’s three years’ worth of 12-inches, compilation tracks and remixes that preceded it. North is a downcast collection shaped like an old LP—10 songs, not tracks, in 40 minutes. Pianos and strings abound, and James Young and Aiden Whalley, who began releasing music as Darkstar in 1997, have hired a singer, James Buttery. It’s somber, but widescreen, and its appeal to a rock audience is obvious and immediate. In a way, it’s almost a singer-songwriter album.

Young politely disagrees. “Well, it’s a weird one,” he says over the phone from London, “because before that we were producers, just making tracks. It’s

We were just bored of doing tracks for clubs, really.

It wasn’t getting easy, but it was getting monotonous.”

—James Young

20

not so much a singer-songwriter thing as it is [coming] from a production point of view.” Fair enough, but it’s hard not to hear North as something akin to the dubstep take on the albums Matthew Dear releases as Matthew Dear. Dear tends to leave pure techno for his other aliases (most commonly Audion) while making like a house-savvy cross between David Byrne and David Bowie as himself.

Young sees Darkstar going in a similar direction.

“I think we’ll always go back to [making club tracks], just to do it, ’cause we do enjoy making some stuff like that. But I don’t think it’ll be very prominent in our future work. No, it’ll be quite fleet, and we’ll go back to and revisit it, then go on our way again, musically.

“I think we’re very much outside of the whole thing right now,” Young says of his group’s place in the dubstep firmament. “More so once people hear the album—I think that’ll kind of cement [our distance]. I’m not relying on [dubstep], I don’t think they’re relying on us, but at the same time, it’s kind of nice to be associated with it, because there’s a lot of artists around us that are quite inspiring.”

Young names names: Burial (Hyperdub’s star attraction), Actress (who released the excellent Splazsh on Honest Jon’s this summer), Mount Kimbie (ditto with Crooks & Lovers, on Hotflush) and James Blake (ditto again with the CMYK EP, on R&S). “I

think all these guys are very promising,” he says. “I think that there’s a group of artists who’ve got the potential to go places.”

Clearly, all of those artists are simpatico with Darkstar: both sonically ambitious—in more of a “did you hear that detail?” headphone-listening kind of way than the “take out the infrastructure of a city block” basslines of dubstep’s big headliners—and something close to song-oriented. That was true even before Darkstar became a trio and recorded North. “Need You,” a 2008 12-inch on Hyperdub, featured a heavily altered voice burbling over a jaunty little bounce that stayed on the right side of cute. But it came most directly to the fore in late 2009, when Darkstar released the first track they’d recorded for their debut album, “Aidy’s Girl Is a Computer.”

“Aidy’s Girl” was somehow both slinky and warm, a hip club jam that a Postal Service fan might go for.

It sounded like a big evolutionary step, and Young says he and Whalley perceived it as one straightaway. “We were doing much more song-orientated chord structures, and [our] direction was kind of moving away from dancefloor tracks. We had a group of tracks that were kind of similar to that, but it was quite unsatisfying working on stuff like that, so we changed direction.”

What was unsatisfying? “We were just bored

of doing tracks for clubs, really,” Young says. “It wasn’t getting easy, but it was getting monotonous.” Enter James Buttery, Whalley’s old college mate. “We invited him ’round, and we did a Radiohead cover, ‘Videotape,’” Young says. Buttery was in.

Radiohead were a primary source of North’s tone. So, Young says, were the xx, North arrives November 2 “a lot of film scores, and random dancefrom Hyperdub. type stuff, anything from techno to house, bits of dubstep, and anything our friends brought around. We swapped a lot of files, know what I mean?” Looming largest of all was David Bowie. “There was a song called ‘Warszawa’ by Bowie that we listened to a lot. On [North], there’s three tracks that are beatless, just unrhythmicaltype soundscapes,” all of them inspired by the first song on side two of Bowie’s 1977 album Low. Also, like the LPs of Bowie’s Berlin era, North is compact. “It’s like a brief snapshot of what was going on,” Young says. “And also, [the albums of ] people around us, and what we’ve been listening to lately, are usually under an hour. We didn’t feel that we needed to expand on 10 tracks; it just felt natural to close it there.”

21

/music

Not So Silent Nights

Singer Julie Christmas trades “heavy” for “harrowing” on her first solo album / by Jeanne Fury

“D

ark and Stormy”: The joke’s not lost on me when Julie Christmas or-

ders such an appropriately named drink. Christmas is known for being a whirling dervish onstage with her bands Made Out of Babies and the now defunct Battle of Mice, hurling grotesque shrieks, blackened howls, and freakishly brittle whispers from the pit of her gut. Her balls-to-brickwalls performances can dissuade fans from approaching her, but in-person, Christmas is a charmer. She fits right in at Walter Foods, a tony restaurant in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood where we’ve decided to meet.

“Taste it,” says Christmas, pushing the glass of Music, Art and Performing Arts (a.k.a. the Fame toward me. She swears she never drinks rum, but high school), and spent her weekends playing mulikes the way this establishment mixes Bermuda’s sic in basements. For six months, she attended the national drink. The dark rum and house-made ginJulliard School. She eventually decided to get her ger beer is spicy, almost hot. But it’s one of those bachelor’s degree in biology, and for two years did drinks that’s dangerous—too many and you’ll be Alzheimer’s research at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. She singing karaoke at 3 a.m. in Koreatown with a didn’t like it. bunch of old men. Christmas is similar. Don’t get “I regularly had to slice off animals’ heads and take a part of their brain out in too cozy and think you know what’s coming. As she under a minute,” she says. “That was a part of my daily job. Rats, mice, rodents. has proved with her new solo debut, The Bad Wife, I started having nightmares. When you’re doing it that fast, you cut off other she’s only just beginning to reveal herself. things. Like, I was having nightmares about a tiny hand that I cut off… Then I Born and raised in the south Park Slope section started to get really numb to it, and that’s when I quit.” of Brooklyn, Christmas was the only white girl in Emotion is such an overwhelming part of The Bad Wife that one can easily her neighborhood. “The see how numbness is Christmas’s nemesis. Since racial mix and impact of forming Made Out of Babies in the mid-2000s, so many cultures being Christmas has made it clear—on albums and duron top of each other and ing live performances—that she needs to feel, needs so much cultural expoto communicate. (Her choice for all-time scariest sure all the time, I think movie is Altered States, where William Hurt unabsolutely informs you,” dergoes sensory deprivation experiments.) On Bad she says. “I grew up in Wife, her voice trembles with energy and acts as a an atmosphere where portal to other worlds where peculiar scenarios are exploring dark things unfolding. Her covers of Willie Nelson’s “I Just Dewas part of the norm. stroyed the World” and Jacques Brel’s “If You Go My parents were like, Away” induce goosebumps.

‘Don’t get pregnant, or An accordion’s wheeze (“The Wigmaker’s Widyou’re dead, and go have ow”), a sleepy and sinister acoustic guitar (“Sesome fun.’ They sort of crets All Men Keep”) and a hail of corroded guitars let me do what I want. (“Bow,” “Headless Hawks”): In each situation, I was responsible but Christmas expertly navigates her band’s musical trusted.” She attended wreckage, and not always with aggression. She posLaGuardia High School sesses a remarkable amount of restraint, which is —Julie Christmas

“

Blood, sweat, tears all came out here. I would also say urine.”

22

almost more powerful than her lung-clearing screams. Her versatility, range and intuition shine brighter with this album than with any of her previous projects.

When Christmas employs the creepy, higher registers of her voice, it’s as if she’s aiming to tame a pack of bloodthirsty wild boars by singing them a lullaby. You can just about smell the fear on her breath.

“I remember very clearly being little and being afraid a lot. I think there’s a lot of [childhood fear] on [The Bad Wife],” she says. “I can remember feeling little, and I still feel like that sometimes, and I don’t mean that in the sense that somebody’s going to be big and towering, but just feeling general hopelessness that most people experience.”

Later, we’re en route to Brooklyn’s Translator Audio, the studio where Christmas recorded The Bad Wife with engineer Andrew Schneider. “Andrew is the best. He’s also astoundingly rare because he hasn’t become so disillusioned with this business, even in this climate, to be immune to enthusiastically jumping into a project,” she says. Christmas also worked on all of the Bad Wife’s songs with Candiria’s John LaMacchia. “When you’re speaking to John, he sounds like a lighthearted guy, but you must have something about you if you can play guitar the way he can.”

Downstairs at Translator Audio, Schneider recalls The Bad Wife’s two-year gestation. “No process was the same from song to song,” he says. “It wasn’t really a band; it was usually Julie and John writing stuff and bringing it to me and trying to decide what musicians would be involved.

The Bad Wife There’s no map that could be followed.” will be available November 9 on “Blood, sweat, tears all came out here. I would also say CD and LP from urine,” laughs Christmas.

Rising Pulse.

Not a fan of writing lyrics in advance, Christmas came up with the words for The Bad Wife as she was going in to record the vocals. “It’s how I’ve always done it. When I was in high school, I had a couple of bands that all fell apart, as teenage bands do. And I decided I was going to start answering random ads that were looking for heavy singers,” she explains. “I developed a habit of doing everything on-the-spot.

There are some things I write beforehand, but for a lot of the stuff, some [lyrics] are there and some [lyrics] come in after.”

It’s time for a nightcap, but first Christmas wants to show me a place that reminds her of growing up in the neighborhood. We walk to St. Francis Xavier Church, a tall, granite and limestone Gothic Revival building on 6th Avenue in Park Slope. Christmas points skyward.

“Once my mom showed me the gargoyles at the top up there, I started to be obsessed with them to the point where if we tried to go home from school and she didn’t take me by here, I would…” she pauses to laugh. “I would have a fit.”

23

/music / the_playlist

►

the_playlist

Post-Rock

P

Computer kids and record collectors rewire rock at the turn of the millennium / by Jess Harvell

ost-rock was inevitable. As early as the late ’60s, rock was bal-

porous from the very beginning, looning with ideas swiped from avant-garde composers and eth- before American bands brought in the tricky metallic moves of nographic recordings and jazz. Songs stretched well beyond the math-rock, Steve Reich’s loopfour-minute limit of a jukebox single as bands became magpies, ing orchestral scores, even the stealing influence from wherever they could. But it took a few ma- country music rock originally jor changes to pop culture circa the late ‘80s—especially the ready sprang from. By the late ’90s, availability of cheap recording/music-making technology—before post- the sound of post-rock was so broadly defined that the name rock could truly take shape. seemed to have outlived its usefulness.

Even before the internet allowed you to access the whole of There were always some commonalities, though, including the recorded sound with just a click, used vinyl, zine culture and bore- most important aspect of post-rock, first pinpointed by Reynolds dom had expanded the tastes of a generation beyond classic (and in his genre-coining article for The Wire magazine in 1994: These then punk) rock. Samplers and PCs allowed bands to combine were all bands. Post-rockers were groups of people who were, to those new influences with a greater ease. “Post-rock” bands were quote Reynolds’ essay, exploring the “interface between real time, first given a name and a unifying identity by music critic Simon hands-on playing and the use of digital effects and enhancement.”

Reynolds. It initially described a group of young , early ’90s U.K. It wildly expanded the genre’s sonic vocabulary, but post-rock’s rock units who took more of a DJ’s approach to making music, legacy is also how it extended what bands were able to do, in the mashing up various combinations of shoegaze, sample-heavy studio and onstage. Post-rock’s animating ideas can still be heard hip-hop, electric jazz, dub, the drones of avant-garde minimalists, in current indie acts like Animal Collective, who look (and play) various forms of dance music. Post-rock’s borders were extremely like a rock band, but sound like nothing of the sort.

24

The Roots

Talk Talk, Spirit of Eden / Capitol (1988) Few bands have transformed themselves as thoroughly, in just 10 years, as Talk Talk. In the early ’80s, they were a second-string synth-pop band, the morose disco of 1984’s “It’s My Life” earning them their rightful place on any K-tel survey of the decade. Four years later, they were writing

THE CLASSICS

Bark Psychosis, Hex / Caroline (1994)

plugged his guitar into a sampler, what emerged from his amp was fractured birdsong, or the crunch of shattered glass, or fireworks popping overhead, rather than a nice, hummable riff The cheeky joke behind the title is audible within seconds on 1994’s D.I. Goes Pop. It’s an album where a band leaps beyond pop’s comfortingly familiar melodies to bend realworld noise into rock songs.

The placid flipside to D.I. Goes Pop’s crush of sound, 1994’s Hex is as lush as post-rock ever got. Bark Psychosis got their start as a teenage grindcore band, but BP’s members quickly ditched their adolescent rage as they discovered

groups like Talk Talk. After a few formative singles dabbling with the quiet-loud-quiet approach of Spirit of Eden, BP released Scum, a sweeping 20-minute one-track EP, cheekily named for Napalm Death’s first album, that builds ever-so-slowly from near-quiet to a thunderclap of guitar noise.

Having thus cornered the market on cathartic climaxes and predicted the sound that would make Mogwai semi-famous a few years later, the band decided to stretch out on Hex—liquid reggae basslines, brushed drums, serene yet driving rhythms, the forward pulse of Neu! slowed down and given an icy sadness.

Tortoise, A Lazarus Taxon / Thrill Jockey (2006) Tortoise made for one strange crossover act: no singing, few hooks, intricate jazz-like arrangements, little-to-no guitar, multiple basslines, a love for abstract electronic textures and rhythm as an end in itself, analogue instruments like the very un-rock marimba pushed to the front of the mix. And yet, for a brief period in the late ’90s, Tortoise were being touted

THE FUTURE

cacophony. Spirit of Eden’s drifting clouds of cello and church organ, punctuated by Tim Friese-Greene’s clangorous guitar, which recalled Crazy Horse-era Neil Young played at 16 rpm, liberated a generation of arty rock musicians in love with atmosphere, but not quite ready to give up songs, either.

Disco Inferno, D.I. Go Pop / Bar/None (1994) These two English bands represent the entwined paths post-rock took in the ’90s, one moving toward a digitally enhanced future and the other drawing from jazz, dub, and other organic delights.

Despite being the most quietly revolutionary rock band of the ’90s, Disco Inferno were all but ignored during their brief existence.

Beginning life as a band so obsessed with Joy Division that they actually named their debut album In Debt, D.I. evolved radically once they discovered sampling, thanks to hip-hop. Their songs continued to move to the bass-heavy sway of the Factory Records sound, but when frontman Ian Crause

THE CROSSOVER

20-minute art-rock epics like the three-song suite that opens Spirit of Eden. Drafting a chamber orchestra’s worth of dobros and bassoons, trumpets and cor anglais, the band edited hours of free-flowing improvisation down to compositions built on extreme dynamic shifts, from stillness to

as the future of indie rock. That never came to pass, obviously, but A Lazarus Taxon, a three-CD set collecting all of the band’s singles and remixes, remains a testament to what made Tortoise stand out during the heyday of sloppy lo-fi.

You could appreciate their oldschool virtuosity. “Gamera” offers the familiar thrill of a tight band locking into a groove, like Televi-

sion if John Fahey had subbed for Tom Verlaine one day. And you could marvel at their mixing desk ruthlessness, tearing down their own exquisitely sculpted music to rebuild it into new shapes, a dub-influenced approach to remixing that was one reason the band wound up embraced more by electronic heads than Pavement fans.

can still hit with the force of hard rock. It’s no coincidence that the lead single stole its beat from T. Rex, or that drummer John Stanier frequently lets loose with a good, hard bashing, as if suddenly remembering he used to be in Helmet. But they’re also a shit-hot live band who can pull off

arrangements that would make Tortoise blanche, all while using the laptop’s real-time processing power to take Disco Inferno’s guitar-meets-the-sampler approach to the next level, looping and chopping and layering their own riffs into ever-more-intricate shapes.

Battles, Mirrored / Warp (2007) Battles might just represent postrock’s next step. No one would actually call Mirrored post-rock, of course, but it’s hard to name another recent album that leans so successfully on all of the genre’s productive tensions (live vs. edited, melody vs. atmosphere, rock vs. everything else). Battles

25

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N

eil Young and a guitar—nothing could be sim-

Plugging In

pler, right? But as always with Young, no idea stays simple for very long. “I had the vision of it being a solo recording,” the rock iconoclast says of his new album, Le Noise. “Then Neil Young rediscovers his passion it evolved from being solo acoustic into being for untamed electricity / by Gary Graff solo electric, and once we heard the electric, we couldn’t stop. We started developing and found how much we can do with it.” ¶ Le Noise was indeed set to feature Young’s each for the bass and treble strings of Young’s guimusic in a stripped-down, unplugged setting, but it quickly tar, and an array of effects and loops, the two began to explore the instrument’s textures and tonalities. grew into something quite different thanks to his collaboration The results make one guitar sound like a million with producerDaniel Lanois, who has lent his atmospheric at once, closer to the rangy solos of Young’s ragged touch to records by U2, Bob Dylan and many others. Using a Crazy Horse glory days than the cleaner, more counvariety of techniques, including two separate amplifiers, one try-ish albums he’s released in the last decade.

28

Working only during full moons or new moons, Young and Lanois worked up a couple of acoustic arrangements when the project began, but one night Young went back to his hotel during a session, knowing he needed more material to bring into the studio the next day. He pulled out “Hitchhiker,” an autobiographical song he started writing in 1975 and has performed intermittently throughout his career. After adding a chord and changing the arrangement a bit, he had his “Eureka!” moment.

“I thought to myself, This is definitely going to be better electric than acoustic,” Young says. “‘Cause it is a rock ‘n’ roll song.” It’s also one of the best songs on Le Noise, with one of Young’s signature hypnotic riffs manipulated by Lanois until it sounds like it’s echoing across the Canadian prairie, a fitting accompaniment for the song’s lonesome, on-the-road lyrics. A month after the “Hitchhiker” breakthrough, on the next full moon, Young returned to the studio with his white Falcon, a guitar that has stereo pickups to separate the bass and treble signals, and “gave Dan more to work with than a mono guitar.” They recorded the album-opener “Walk With Me,” a blast of classic Young fuzz paired with his plaintive vocals, which, “kind of opened the door for us.”

“I felt freedom from that,” he continues. “There’s no band in the way. There’s no bass. The guitar was doing the bass and doing the rhythm, and I was playing the figure and singing the song. It kind of sounded like a band, anyway, and then Dan just went to town with it, and we kept doing it over and over again. Write another song for the white Falcon, do two [songs] a month for three or four months, and we got it done.”

Lanois, for his part, laughs when he says that “Neil didn’t really need me” to make an album; the producer was “just happy with this invitation to record [Young] solo. It didn’t really matter what the angle was.” But he concurs with Young that the spectral Le Noise—named after Lanois and his California studio—grew beyond what either man envisioned at the project’s outset.

“There was a subconscious force at play that brought this material to the table for us,” Lanois says. “We didn’t notice it at the time, but looking back I think it’s fair to say the initial successes of

“

I thought to myself, This is definitely going to be better electric than acoustic. ‘Cause [‘Hitchhiker’] is a rock ‘n’ roll song.”

[‘Hitchhiker’ and ‘Walk With Me’] provided the inspiration for the next stage. There was a sort of domino effect of nice compositions coming in.”

There was also what Young calls “a visual element to this program”—a video for each song, filmed

by Lanois associate Adam Vollick and included on deluxe and Blu-ray editions of Le Noise. “We’ve been developing this simple philosophy that as the magic moment is unfolding musically [in the studio], let the lens capture it with one camera,” Lanois says.

“That’s a rare occurrence and a commodity.”

Le Noise was also released as an iPhone/iPad app that Young says “is based on my Archives Blu-ray,” the 10 disc multimedia set he released in 2009, covering his work from 1963 to 1972. The Le Noise app comes Le Noise is available now with a variety of interactive from Reprise. extras including original lyric manuscripts, photos, a career timeline and possibly alternate or live takes of the songs, the latter from preview performances while he was on tour earlier this year.

“What it does,” Young says, “is bring you back to the album cover experience we used to get when the album cover was something tangible and big enough to actually read and see. I think that’s key to making an album an experience again, instead of just something to download, y’know?”

29

/music

Swamp Thing

Animal Collective’s Avey Tare gets stuck in the muck on Down There / by Raymond Cummings

N

oah “Panda Bear” Lennox is the yin of psyche-

delic twee-pop idols Animal Collective, cuddly as The Lion King. Dave “Avey Tare” Portner embodies the band’s neurotic, Woody Allen-esque yang. And from 2004’s Sung Tongs onward, Animal Collective have smashed together these very different perspectives. Meanwhile, the group’s neonspattered musical backdrop of trippy experiments with synthesizers, tribal percussion and distorted samples launched several thousand imitators.

30

needle

T

hree years, dozens of mainstream accolades and a handful of Grateful Dead comparisons later, Lennox unleashed Person Pitch in 2007, a Brian Wilson-on-more-acid-than-usual solo album as Panda Bear that’s become an indie touchstone. It’s an effervescent, yet melodically durable effort that’s soundtracked more than a few stoner-sessions. It also left Animal Collective fans pondering how a Portner solo album might sound.

Wonder no longer. Recorded last June by Animal Collective member Josh “Deakin” Dibb in an upstate New York church, Down There (Paw Tracks) is an eclectic, gothic, skeletal collection of songs that’s heavy on harsh electronics and pastel-tinted melodic accents. Down There is to the larger Animal Collective catalogue what Thom Yorke’s The Eraser was to Radiohead’s.

On “Glass Bottom Boat,” Portner samples vocal burbles that briefly float up to the music’s surface, as if from the bottom of Loch Ness, and then disappear back into watery synthesizers. “Laughing Hieroglyphic”—which Portner singles out as his favorite Down There song—glides along on organs warped by technology until they resemble hyperventilating accordions. The rhythm is carried by synth percussion that suggests a series of rubber bands snapping quickly in turn.

But if Down There could be said to have a centerpiece, it’s undoubtedly “Heather in the Hospital,” which snaps us out of the fantastical “ScoobyDoo soundtrack” atmosphere that shrouds the rest of the album. “Heather” gives up make-believe ghouls for real-life horrors: bedridden relatives, mortality, palpable dread, “machines of modern magic keeping folks above the ground.” Like the precocious “Kids on Holiday” from Sung Tongs, the song’s lyrical details are keenly observed, but they’re less wondrous than dour, somber. Meanwhile, the tune builds slowly, massing like a bad infection: ether-woozy keyboards, a percussive tic that sounds —Avey Tare like an arrhythmic heartbeat,

“

cavernous echoes that deepen like shadows as day surrenders to dusk.

In late September, Cowbell quizzed Portner on the genesis of Down There, how the Animal Collective songwriting process has changed over the years, and his fascination with swamps.

Your previous albums have been collaborations, with your wife and with members of Animal Collective or Black Dice. What was it like conceiving of and assembling a suite of songs on your own?

It was very slow. I really wanted to take my time, and I really wanted it to feel like it was a bedroom project. I think making music on my own is like making a collage... I had all these parts, and all these images attached to them, and it was really about taking the time to think about how to piece it all together. It’s very electronic, and I really wanted it to be—and stay—that way.

The swamp to me sort of represents being stuck in the muck.

But I didn’t want it to be negative or hopeless-sounding.

I wanted it to remain warm in the same way a Southern swamp is warm, but sludgy and muddy.”

You’ve described Down There as “swampinfluenced.” Do you live near a swamp? Are you drawn to swamps, or to the idea of swamps?

I really like dark, swampy movies. There’s this movie called Eaten Alive by Tobe Hooper, and a movie called The Legend of Boggy Creek that really got me into the sort of scarier side of swamps when I was younger. I guess that feeling has stuck with me. Even a movie like Swamp Thing is very inspiring to me.

Those swamp shots with all the purple flowers are amazing. Swamps are very mysterious places. From afar, they seem pretty impenetrable, and for me to even look at one, I just feel something haunted 31

/music

about it. You always hear stories about people getting lost in them; they have this scary, wretched aura. But to me, that’s cool. I like to think about run-down cabins abandoned and left to decay in the middle of a swamp somewhere, or late-night trips on a canoe through the bayou with crocodiles all around.

Down There seems markedly different than [Animal Collective’s 2009 album] Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s not that Down There is hugely morose or depressive, but there’s kind of a festive darkness about the record, without ever going to the bleaker places some early Animal Collective albums went. And it’s thoroughly electronic without coming across as cold. Was there a specific vibe you were striving for?

Well, I was using a lot of oscillators and sequencers to make the songs, so I really went in that direction the whole way. A lot of what I was feeling inside and dealing with on a psychological level at the time of making it was pretty dark, and so I wanted the record to reflect that. The swamp to me sort of represents being stuck in the muck. But I didn’t want it to be negative or hopeless-sounding.

I wanted it to remain warm in the same way a Southern swamp is warm, but sludgy and muddy.

“Oliver Twist” is a really minimalist, spooky song, where the melody is more insinuated than stated. It reminded me, oddly, of early Korn.

[“Oliver Twist”] is about giving and taking, about what’s important to me in terms of possession. What I can live without. What’s special to me. Being selfish, or giving enough. Some images [were] associated with that, because music to me is very visual, like ratty thieves in tattered burlap coats, skeleton beggars, derelict ghosts. Sometimes the song is just a map of the planets with a large focus on Jupiter.

I wrote “Oliver Twist” on my Korg keyboard while sitting on the floor in my bedroom. I remember being really excited about the last part; I like that you think it’s spooky. I imagine hungry ghosts hiding in the cracks of a shanty town somewhere on the southern banks of Louisiana. Josh [Dibb] and I were very pleased with how it sounded right from the get-go.

Have you ever been a passenger on a glass bottom boat?

No, but my family and I used to go to Florida a lot when I was younger, and I’d always see these brochures for glass bottom boat rides. I think [“Glass Bottom Boat”] was sort of inspired by me thinking about a haunted version of that.

With yourself, Deakin and Panda Bear all set to issue solo albums in the next few months, this is a weird time for Animal Collective as a unit. Obviously it’s a banquet for your fans, but does it seem at all unusual to you guys to not be working together? Do you consult each other on your solo work?

I guess to me this way of working and making things goes back to the beginning of us meeting each other and starting to work on music. It’s different because everything was more immediate back then, and we made things so quickly because we were just messing around most of the time. And, for example, I could finish a track and then go over to Josh’s [house], where he and Noah would be inevitably playing their own stuff, and play a jam for them. Or Brian [Weitz] would come over to my house and I’d play him something, 32

Down There is available now from Paw Tracks.

or we’d record something.

Now I have to wait for Noah to finish jams in Portugal and send them to me, but I still get as excited because I don’t know as much about what he’s up to sometimes. It definitely feels different when we are writing together, because we each put our own personality into the songs we make as a unit. We also have each other’s ears to pick and choose sounds and directions and to bounce ideas off of. But when we’re working solo, we usually don’t play stuff for each other until it’s done these days. It’s kind of nice to have the collaborative side and also have stuff we can do on our own, because there’s things I do that none of the other guys would do, or vice versa.

Can you tell us a bit about the cover art for Down There?

I like to think about it as some kind of old artifact— like an old book or even a record that would wash ashore somewhere from some large body of water, or something that someone would find and have no clue as to what it was. Something very mysterious containing ancient or mysterious knowledge. I like old, occult-focused books or philosophical writings.

I guess these kinds of things are as equally inspiring to me as anything else; I read a lot. The crocodile is based on a photo I took of a croc head I saw in Peru this January. My sister crafted a version of it made out of cheese cloth. I wanted it to look very wet and damaged, like something decaying.

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34

Gorillaz

T

celebrate 10 years as the world’s greatest (not quite) fake band by bringing the humans onstage / by Jess Harvell

included not only a full score by Albarn and extensive design work by Hewlett, but also a cast of that even millionaire musicians now use Twitter. But dozens, all performing kinetic kung fu routines in there’s something kind of sad about it, too. It seems mid-air while singing Albarn’s songs. When you there’s this new, unfortunate guideline to success: Pop have to hire an acrobatic director, an aerial director and a martial arts director for a project, you’ve stars have to appear normal. They have to pursue the traveled far from recording demos in your bedillusion that they’re not all that different from their fans, thanks in part to the pseudo one-on-one intimacy of room while your buddy sketches alongside you.

“I think what we learned on that project was the internet. You can no longer be an alien who rides a unithat anything’s possible,” Hewlett says. “You can corn and lives on a castle atop a rainbow. You have to shop go from making a pop record to doing an opera. If at Whole Foods and watch HBO on Sunday nights. you can put up an opera where you’ve got loads of Chinese kids flying around on wires, fighting one Rather than crafting over-the-top fantasy perso- another and singing at the same time, with animations and bizarre costumes, then anything is possible, really.” nas, pop musicians often play up their everyperson Monkey was a cartoon come to life, a direct outgrowth of Albarn and Hewlordinariness, with Lady Gaga as the exception that proves the rule. These days you’re more likely to ett’s main work-in-progress: Gorillaz, the first true comic book band, aimed get that kind of glitter-covered, sparkler-twirling, as much at grownups as kids, silly but also snotty. It’s a band that can revel in I’m-really-from-outer-space vibe at an Of Montreal its own excessiveness, including but not limited to killing its own members gig. (Or a Dimmu Borgir concert.) Cartoonish specand then raising them from the dead, because none of it’s real anyway. That’s tacle isn’t the only way to present pop, of course, but the draw. Albarn and Hewlett may hold the copyright, but every Gorillaz fan it’s always been one of its most entertaining uses, knows the band’s “real” members are 2D, Murdoc, Russel Hobbs and Noodle, especially if the songs are just as strong. The over- the infamous, iconic characters designed and animated by Hewlett and brought blown comic book aspect of the music—the back- to life by Albarn’s songs. These four cartoon nogoodniks may not ride unicorns, flipping acrobatics and the guitars that look like toy but they’re definitely not normal. They may use Twitter, but they’re more likely ray-guns and the explosions-upon-explosions—can to crash a rocket into the side of Whole Foods. feel in jeopardy these days.

Albarn and Hewlett have developed Gorillaz through a multimedia barrage— Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, U.K. rock star music videos, animations, DVDs, TV specials, a heavily interactive website— and former underground cartoonist respectively, with a vibe that owes much to the knowing zaniness of classic Warner Brothtwo old friends and also one of the odder pairings ers cartoons. And their working methods sound very similar to the hothouse in modern pop, do not shy away from spectacle. In conditions that produced the Looney Tunes, where the animators and writers 2007, they produced Monkey: Journey to the West, were crammed into a tiny space on the studio lot dubbed Termite Terrace. an opera based on the ancient Chinese myth. It “We share a studio in West London, sort of like Gorillaz HQ,” Hewlett says. [ ]

here’s something silly and charming about the fact

35

/music “Everything’s pretty much done here, from the music to the mixing of the album. We do a lot of the animation here, the website’s built here. So we’re all in the same building. When we start a Gorillaz project, we do pretty much start at the same time, and it’s a case of listening to demos, early tunes, discussing ideas. And it grows from that.”

In Gorillaz, the flesh-and-blood humans labor behind the scenes, but it’s the cartoons who take all the credit, appearing on the album covers, in the videos and at the awards shows. For a time, these shaggy, slouchy, slightly psycho “virtual” musicians even gave the interviews, developing their own unique (and often abrasive) personalities along the way. (Enough so that each cartoon member of Gorillaz now has their own very detailed Wikipedia page.) Bassist Murdoc is a vicious drunkard, hilariously mean and kind of pathetic all at once, the kind of guy who sleeps with the frontman’s girlfriend, not once but twice. Drummer Russel is Keith Moon if the Who dynamo could rap and had once been literally possessed by the devil. Even Kanye would have a hard time topping that.

Gorillaz are many things at once: A playfully ironic commentary on rock stardom; a brilliant marketing strategy at a time when many musicians are worried that they can’t sell albums on songs alone; a chance to develop a legit “cross-platform” approach to pop music in the 21st-century; and a band, a real one, responsible for some of the best culture-crossing not-quite-rock of the last decade.

Albarn and Hewlett are obviously having a little fun parodying the clichés of rock excess and drama, but their cartoon foursome is also more interesting than 90 percent of human musicians. That includes Albarn himself, which is of course part of the joke: After all, when was the last time a human bassist trapped a human singer in an undersea prison guarded by a killer whale? Now that’s how you settle an inter-band beef.

Hiding in Plain Sight

It’s fair to say that no one expected any of this—the cartoons, the Grammy nods, the killer whales, the worldwide audience, the demonic possessions, the opera—a decade ago. Certainly nothing in either man’s career seemed to be pointing to Gorillaz at the turn of the millennium. Hewlett was a star within comics, but his closest brush with mainstream success had been the awful film adaptation of Tank Girl, the strip he’d co-created. By the late ’90s, he’d moved onto the more remunerative pastures of advertising and design. Albarn had helped light the fuse of the Britpop boom in the mid-’90s, and survived the inevitable bust by becoming one of 36

the U.K.’s most recognizable rock stars. Along the way, he recorded six albums with Blur, transforming the band from scrappy indie group to classically English act: Big bright guitars, even bigger sing-along choruses, and Albarn’s sardonic take on the pop song, which both mocked and reveled in Britpop’s nostalgic obsession with the ’60s.

Given all that, the debut of Gorillaz seemed doubly perverse—a rejection of not only Blur’s Britpop-inventing sound, but also their regular-blokes-in-aband persona. For one thing, here was a new band from Damon Albarn where Damon Albarn was nowhere to be seen. And sonically, you could hear a growing boredom with traditional rock ‘n’ roll. “To be honest with you, that’s been the case for about 10 years now,” he says. “I can’t say that I’ve listened to a rock record that’s blown my mind for a long time.” Produced by Dan the Automator and featuring Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Gorillaz’s self-titled 2001 debut was low-key, a little dark, built on moody loops that owed more to hip-hop and dub reggae than the Kinks or Pavement.

“I think [diversity] is necessary for the perpetuation of the [rock] tradition,” Albarn says. “It should be on at least page two of Starting a Band: ‘Listen to something other than rock music.’ Because rock music came out of people listening to something other than country music or easy-listening music.” In this spirit, Albarn’s spent the last decade-plus exploring sounds from across Africa, which still give him a jolt of the unfamiliar, something that filters down into Gorillaz. “I’ve listened to a lot of African music now, and I love when I don’t understand it,” he says. “I can feel it. But I don’t understand it.”

Everyone knew who was really responsible for Gorillaz, of course, right from the beginning. Even if early reviewers hadn’t given the game away, it would have been impossible to miss the duo’s work. Hewlett is one of the most recognizable stylists in comics’ history, fusing the density of old Mad Magazine gags, the psychedelic excess of underground comics, the ragged line of post-punk design and just a touch of cuteness to make the whole thing pop, in both senses of the word. And Albarn’s drowsy voice is unmistakable, even when it’s coming out of a cartoon’s mouth. Yet the striking look of the videos and the global mix of styles, which abandoned most of the Brit-specific references that had made Blur an Anglophile cult band, turned Gorillaz into Albarn’s biggest hit-to-date in the U.S.—though of course it was Murdoc who hogged the spotlight.

In 2001, Gorillaz might have seemed like a gimmick, or a one-off collaboration between Blur albums. But Blur went silent after 2003’s contentious more-orless breakup album Think Tank. And Hewlett and Albarn began to develop the Gorillaz’s madcap story in greater and greater detail, piling on the intrigues, cliff-hangers, bad romances, encounters with the supernatural, exotic locales and eye-popping Hewlett creations. By 2006’s Demon Days, the band’s second album, a sonically wilder and more concept-heavy set produced by Danger Mouse, Gorillaz were just as much an animated series and as they were a band.

The cartoon members of Gorillaz had become stars in their own right. Albarn and Hewlett really did recede into the background of their own band.

Of course, it’s still the tunes that have made Gorillaz a success among people with a limited time for web-exclusive animation. You don’t draft in half of the Clash, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, the most earnest and energetic band in human history, to play on your new album if you’re writing “novelty” songs. The two elements of the band can be enjoyed independently of each other—you don’t need to follow the band’s animated adventures in order to enjoy the records— but the videos, blog posts, interactive games and like are immersive in a way that make Twitter and Facebook seem pale and boring at best. At a time when many bands are thinking smaller, either out of economic necessity or a simple lack of nerve, Gorillaz are going for bigger, brighter, just plain more. You may not always dig the results, but you can’t really argue with the ambition.

Fantastic (And NotSo-Fantastic) Plastic

“In many ways, this is a ridiculous record,” Albarn says of Gorillaz’s newest album, Plastic Beach.

“The amount of people who’ve physically played on it, including the two orchestras, it must be like a 100-plus people. That’s a bit off the roadmap we set out with, which was me and my four-track and a drum machine, and Jamie doing cartoons. It still feels like Gorillaz, but since we’ve only done three albums in 10 years, the evolution might feel quite dramatic.”

Before the orchestras were hired and the guest stars were flown in, though, the process began, as always, with Albarn alone. “[Plastic Beach] evolved from a mad period of demo-itis for me, just recording really rapidly and not really taking a breath of air until I’d done around 80 pieces of music,” he says.

“Then you come up again, take a deep breath, dive Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett: The men down again and try to make sense of what you’ve behind the scenes done.”

But as with the first two Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach only came to life through collaboration. Without the input from other voices, other cultures—the band’s standard operating procedure being to draw inspiration from around the world—Albarn’s demos would have remained just that. The Gorillaz sound has a loose dance-rock base—rolling synth-beats, live basslines, even guitars now and then—but it’s really built on blending genres until they’re inseparable. Some of the album’s cut-and-paste constructions— the National Orchestra for Arabic Music meets London hip-hop?—would seem impossible to recreate on stage. And like the guest-heavy Demon Days, Albarn takes the lead vocal spot only intermittently, sometimes sticking to choruses, sometimes ceding the stage entirely to rappers like Mos Def and De La Soul, and singers ranging from the smooth-as-ever Bobby Womack to classic rock cranks like the Fall’s Mark E. Smith and Lou Reed.

Despite the fact that Plastic Beach still feels very much like a pop album, Albarn says its widescreen scale was a result of the Monkey project in 2007.

“Maybe that was my downfall,” Albarn laughs. “I just got used to working with orchestras and huge casts. I didn’t think there was anything abnormal about doing it again. I had no fear of long-format concepts after that. It’s like anything.

If you get used to running marathons, you tend to run marathons.”

That “long-format concept” is the “plastic beach” itself. Plastic Beach, in a loose and non-preachy way, is an “environmental” album, growing from a trip the duo took to the seaside a few years ago.

“Damon has a house in Devon [in England], and we always take our kids down there in the summer,” Hewlett says. “He was on the beach one day, and he noticed all the plastic on the beach. All the bits of rubbish that were becoming sort of commonplace.”

Staring at the trash-strewn dunes, Albarn said he wanted to call the band’s third album Plastic Beach, and an idea, a location, really, began to bubble in Hewlett’s mind. He envisioned an island, floating in the middle of nowhere, built from garbage. For years, humans had dumped their trash into the ocean, and all of this plastic detritus had coagulated into a new landmass.

“I found out the furthest point from any landmass on Earth, which is Point Nemo, the point of inaccessibility, which is in the middle of the South Pacific,” Hewlett says. “That’s where we put our plastic beach, and then later found out portrait by pennie smith

that [Point Nemo] is an area of the South Pacific where you do actually get islands of rubbish, that follow the currents and build up. There are these huge islands of floating rubbish in that part of the world.” The plastic beach became the setting for the most recent Gorillaz adventures—Murdoc has made it his home—and the theme (Albarn calls it a “meditation”) that binds the album’s disparatesounding songs together.

“You look on any beach and you see how many small granules of plastic there are and it makes you wonder just how much of that is in our food chain,” Albarn says. “But I also do like the perspective where you go, well, what is natural and what is synthetic? Do we really have as much control over the synthetic world as we like to think, or is it not just another product of nature?”

The plastic beach is a bit of a double-edged concept. On the one hand, it represents the perils of human excess, a floating pile of garbage that only exists thanks to over-consumption and laziness.

On the other hand, the plastic beach, at least in Gorillaz-world, is also a kind of wonderland, built out of flotsam from many cultures, synthetic and organic at once. Which is a pretty good metaphor for Gorillaz’s music when you think about it. And Albarn does reject the idea that Plastic Beach is explicitly anti-plastic. “That’s not interesting to me because it’d be a very Luddite attitude toward plastic,” he says. “Lou Reed opens his gambit with, ‘Me? I like plastic.’”

Cartoons in Revolt

The fact that the Gorillaz can encompass environmentalism and silly mayhem is a good indicator of the project’s elasticity. But while cartoons can do many things—travel to Hell, battle pirates, pen their own autobiography (2003’s Rise of Ogre, which 37

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was of course really written by Albarn, Hewlett and Gorillaz script-writer Cass Browne), sell more than 20 million records around the world—one thing they can’t do easily is play live on stage for an audience of human beings. Albarn and Hewlett have tried various ways to get around this fact over the years, including a six-night stand at the Apollo Theatre in 2006, hiding the human band behind screens and combining full-scale animated sequences with scene-stealing guest spots from folks like Dennis Hopper and Neneh Cherry. It was a triumph on its own terms—each show sold out, and the eventual DVD, Demon Days Live, was nominated for a Grammy—but more like musical theater than a rock show.

“In two albums, we’d probably done 20 shows,” Hewlett says. “The first time around it was behind a screen, which is kind of weird. The second time around the band was in silhouette and we had guest stars come on and off. We felt this time around everything should be visible.”

For “everything,” read “the humans.” For the first time ever, Gorillaz shows will feature carbon-based bipeds, standing in full-view under the stage lights,

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playing tunes supposedly written by a quartet of cartoons. This is heresy among a certain faction of Gorillaz fans, tantamount to Dorothy pulling the wizard’s curtain aside. Hewlett and Albarn have succeeded in making Gorillaz cartoon world so rich and detailed that many listeners don’t want to be reminded of the Englishmen who pull the band’s strings. On the other hand, with a live band that now includes Mick Jones on guitar and Paul Simonon on bass, Albarn can recreate the dense soundworlds of Plastic Beach, with even greater accuracy and intensity. And why would you hide the Clash behind a screen?

“In many ways, it sounds fuller than the album itself, because it’s a really, insanely good band playing,” Albarn says. “And Paul [Simonon]’s bass is just… well, it’s something I never tire of listening to. And he’s now so tight with the drummers that it’s weird. It feels like Chic at some points.” I mention Chic’s legendary metronomic precision, both live and in the studio, and ask if that’s a goal for Gorillaz dance-rock-rap hybrid. “Metronomic is great if it’s being played live,” Albarn says. “It’s incredible. If you can get to metronomic levels with people playing live, you’re in a good space for as far as the pleasure that an audience get out of it.”

Pleasure for the audience, work for the band. “It’s an obscene, obscene bureaucratic process,” Albarn says of planning a full-scale Gorillaz tour. “When you think about all of the [work] visas, all the travel. It’s crazy. Accommodations, everything. We’ve got five band buses. I don’t know what other band needs five buses. But they’re all packed; it’s not like there’s one for Axl Rose and another for Dave Gilmour, you know what I mean? They’re fully booked, all of them.”

That includes the A/V crew, of course. Hewlett’s kinetic style, where everyone looks like they’ve just stuck their finger in a light socket, seems to mirror the energy required for Gorillaz rate of production. He’s created all-new animations for the tour, which he says outdo the batch debuted on the closing night of 2010’s Coachella Festival. But when the cartoonist took to his drawing board, he found, as usual, that the characters seemed to be leading him around as much as vice versa.

“There’s this sort of battle going on between the animated characters and the real band, which is proving to be quite funny,” Hewlett says. “Because when you’ve got Paul Simonon and Mick Jones in your band, obviously that draws a lot of attention from the press. Suddenly everyone is going, ‘Oh my god, it’s half the fucking Clash. And Damon Albarn.

And De La Soul. And Bobby Womack.’ Suddenly you’ve got a super-band. So these crazy animated characters are like, ‘What about us?’ There’s this sort of internal struggle going on, and we’ve touched on that in the new live show. The animated characters make a few appearances throughout the show, and I won’t spoil it, but for us it’s becoming amusing, the wall between the cartoon world and the real world and all the things that can happen from that. That wasn’t expected when we started. Obviously we knew we were putting this band together, and obviously we knew the press was going to leap on the fact that Paul and Mick are in the band. It’s great, though, because this is the thing I like about Gorillaz. It’s very organic and it grows. And because it’s such a crazy and ridiculous idea, you can add stuff to it as you go, until it almost has a life of its own. So at the moment, Murdoc is not particularly happy about the fact that there are these live musicians singing ‘his’ songs. And we’re having fun with that.”

That’s the surreal tension that makes Gorillaz work, of course. The humans seem to be in charge. But the cartoons always seem to have ideas of their own.

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The Little Story of Right-Hand, Left-Hand

W

Charles Laughton only directed one feature film in a four-decade hen Charles Laughton passed away in career—but it was an all-time 1962, he might not have been considered masterpiece by Bret McCabe

the consummate British actor of his generation, but he certainly helped define the mold. Trained at the Royal Academy of Drama, Laughton started off a stage actor in 1920s London before moving into motion pictures, becoming the first British thespian to be awarded a Best Actor Oscar for his turn in 1933’s The Private Life of Henry VII. He would earn two more nominations for his Hollywood work, and by the 1950s he was esteemed enough to return to the stage, directing and acting, and spent the rest of his career a success on both fronts.

Unlike his countryman Laurence Olivier, however, Laughton didn’t enjoy the same success behind the camera as he did in front of it. His lone directorial effort, in fact, was a commercial and critical disappointment when it was first released, and conventional film history considers that box-office snubbing the reason why he never directed again. Of course, now that the Criterion Collection is giving that 1955 movie its reverential treatment, it’s also possible that Laughton never felt the need to direct again because his The Night of the 40

cowbell

Hunter is so damned near perfect.

Based on by Davis Grubbs’ 1953 novel of the same name, Hunter was inspired by a real-life Depression-era serial killer in West Virginia. The Rev. Henry Powell (Robert Mitchum) considers himself a man who spreads the Lord’s word—he even he has “love” and “hate” tattooed on his knuckles, using his hands to dramatize the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil. Doing the good work, however, sometimes might involve going against man’s laws—such as stealing a car or, well,

murdering a woman for her wanton ways.

And during one stint in the slammer, Powell bunks with Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who is sentenced to hang for killing two guards during a bank robbery. The $10,000 he stole was never recovered, and Powell believes it is divine fate the he was roomed with this man. God wants him to have that money; all he has to do is marry Harper’s widow Willa (Shelley Winters) and find out where it’s hidden.

To do that, he’ll have to get it out of Harper’s kids: young John (Billy Chapin) and

his little sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce).

Powell’s god-fearing ways and stentorian voice seduce Willa and Pearl, but John remains skeptical of the interloper. And for good reason: Powell soon reveals his wickedness, and the kids have to run for their lives—in a skiff downriver to a farm owned by Lady Cooper (Lillian Gish), an older woman who takes in foundlings.

On the surface, The Night of the Hunter tells a rather ordinary crime yarn, not that different from the stories being told in film noir at the time. What makes this movie so unique is how it’s told. Laughton and his co-screenwriter James Agee treat Grubbs’ novel almost like a child’s bedtime story, where the evil that men do isn’t a fact of life, but a metaphor for the forces pushing and pulling at a young country called the United States of America itself. Gish’s Cooper introduces the movie, telling her children—in effect, the audience—Bible stories, specifically Matthew 7:15, the one about false prophets. Her voiceover accompanies an overhead shot that descends to a group of boys playing in a field by a house. They accidentally stumble upon a woman’s body, which the camera captures only as a pair of legs stretched motionless across a stairwell.

This demure tone is what lends the movie its power. It’s told almost entirely from the point of view of children, whose sense of right and wrong is still being formed, but who haven’t had to settle for the gray areas of adult compromise. It’s a narrative point of view that enables Laughton to portray Powell as almost purely evil, but only the movie’s kids—and the audience— are privy to such information. The adults in the movie, such as John and Pearl’s mother Willa, have to realize that fact the hard way.

Visually, cinematographer Stanley Cortez shoots this tale in a chiaroscuro of dramatic shots and expressive compositions, which amplifies its almost fairytale mood. Dark shadows get cast across a wall.

Severe camera angles view Powell as a monstrous figure. And in one spellbinding scene, Willa lies motionless in bed as Powell raises his arm over his head, turns to her, and approaches. The geometry of the composition makes the bedroom look like a church and Powell is about bless her, only he’s holding a knife in his hand.

Such is the violence in The Night of the Hunter—implied, but never witnessed, in a

Of course, now that the Criterion Collection is giving that 1955 movie its reverential treatment, it’s also possible that Laughton never felt the need to direct again because his The Night of the Hunter is so damned near perfect. way that complements the movie’s theme.

Foreign directors have consistently delivered sly insight into American mores: German emigre Billy Wilder made a career out of comically teasing the hypocritical tension that exists between America’s Puritanical posture and its ordinary sexism; Ang Lee zeroed in on the anxious anomie of 1970s suburban America in The Ice Storm; and Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter captures a young country forever torn by its collective religious beliefs and its primal individual instincts. Powell, indelibly realized by Mitchum, isn’t merely a bad man: He’s the inevitable id that can spring up whenever religious zealotry collides with the individual pursuit of happiness.

The pathological Powell is offset by Cooper, whom Gish plays as a seemingly dotty old bird who happens to be a badass.

Gish’s casting here is near-brilliant: The silent era doyenne didn’t easily move into talkies and spent most of the 1930s and ’40s on the stage. By the time of Hunter,

the former screen beauty looks more like an average older lady, and Laughton turns her into a American visual icon—the old woman sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. Only in this instance, she’s got a shotgun sitting across her lap.

Such subtle twists snowball to intoxicating effect in The Night of the Hunter and make it such a potent force. It’s a child’s tale of atrociously adult crimes.

It’s naiveté confronting the worst that people can offer. And it’s a fable where good eventually triumphs, but what children learn from this life lesson is that evil is out there, hunting for prey. And the only way to overcome it is to endure.

The Night of the Hunter will be released on DVD and Blu-ray November 16 from Criterion.

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/movies

Realms of the Unreal House is the most spectacularly damaged film of the year—even if it was released in 1977 / by Jess Harvell

F

or the last 10 years, horror films have been tyran-

nized by realism. This was not always the case. The directors known for cold, clinical, realistic horror flicks—from Hitchcock to Kubrick to Cronenberg— still indulged in lurid fantasy when it suited them. The ’80s gave us many cheap slasher movies set in drab suburbs, but the same decade also gave us plenty of colordrunk phantasmagorias. Yet, from the grimy locales to the murky colors, many 21st century horror films (think the Saw and Hostel series for starters) seem to exist in a world even blander than our own, where college students and office temps are terrorized by schlubs with knives, and instead of haunted mansions we get sets that look like gas station bathrooms.

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Sure, not every modern horror auteur fits this bill. Sam Raimi and Robert Rodriguez would object, loudly, to the idea that Drag Me to Hell and Planet Terror lacked for visual flair, and plenty of low-budget freaks are still out there making eyepopping effects on a D.I.Y. level. But surveying the horror landscape of the new millennium, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve lost the spirit of Technicolor excess that defined the exploitation films of the ’70s, where coherence took a backseat to sheer freaky spectacle. Where are the lecherous floating heads that try to eat peoples’ butts? Or the possessed house pets with sparkly eyes? Or the buckets of neon blood? And where, for that matter, are the musical montages that resemble outtakes from The Partridge Family?

Judged by those criteria, it’s certainly safe to say that no recent horror film can compare to 1977’s House. But then few films of any era, in any genre, can compare to House. A sui generis stew of styles, genres and moods, too intense to be camp and too silly to be truly scary, it is a film possessed as much by the spirits of Jim Henson and Jean-Luc Godard as Roger Corman and Dario Argento. Is it a Saturday morning cartoon come to life, or an excerpt from one of your crazier nightmares? It’s actually both at once—House maintains a pitch somewhere between dreamlike and manic for 87 minutes. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll stare in disbelief. Some films have just one great inexplicable moment where you’re forced to turn to the person next to you and ask: “Did you just see that?” House is made up of only those moments. This film is many things— experimental, cheesy, jaw-shatteringly inventive, cheap as hell, lush as anything produced in during the high days of old Hollywood, totally inane, possibly a work of fierce individualist genius—but only a lunatic would call it realistic.

Director Nobuhiko Obayashi made his name in the Japanese advertising biz, and his success with eye-catching TV spots is the only explanation for why an establishment studio like Toho, a company devoted to box-office success above all, would release something as deranged as House, Obayashi’s first feature. In America, House would have been thrown to the sleazy wolves of drive-in distribution, booked between a women-in-prison flick and a giant

insect epic and promptly forgotten after a week’s run in Poughkeepsie. The film was little more than a rumor on the cult circuit for years, all but forgotten outside of Japan, where Obayashi has become a director of festival-friendly psychological dramas, until Janus Films recently did all of us a favor and freed House from its vault.

The film begins with a premise as simple and familiar as a fairy tale, or a b-grade horror flick. Visiting her aunt, a teenage girl discovers that the old lady’s house is haunted. With that time-worn nubbin of plot in place, Obayashi treats the film as an excuse to unveil one over-the-top setpiece after another, seemingly indifferent as to whether the whole messy mass of trick photography and cut-rate animation actually makes a lick of sense. Inspired by an idea from Obayashi’s daughter, House has the rambling feel of a campfire story told by a small child who’s yet to wrap House is her head around conavailable now cepts like “plot holes” on DVD and Blu-ray, from and “narrative logic,” a The Criterion kid who is very clearly Collection.

Some films have just one great inexplicable moment where you’re forced to turn to the person next to you and ask: “Did you just see that?” House is made up of only those moments. making things up as she goes: Here’s the scene where one girl gets eaten by a piano!

Oh, and now here’s the scene where another girl gets eaten by a lampshade! (Take that in for a minute: a killer lampshade.) I won’t attempt to actually describe how all of this plays out onscreen. Just know that it involves lightning, stop-motion puppetry, animated skeletons, geishas in full-dress regalia, walls that spew blood, fluffy white kitties possessed by spirits, psychedelic light shows, spinning body parts, dance sequences and much, much more.

If you require the traditional comforts/bourgeoisie indulgences of threeact structure and believable character motivations and so on, this is not the film for you. Japanese genre films have always been good for images that brand themselves into your memory, but House takes the aesthetic to another level, where a movie becomes an opportunity to revel in pure visual overload. Making low-tech into a virtue, the special effects haven’t aged a day, because they looked just as goofy and obvious in 1977 as they do in 2010. The old-school colors are so unnaturally vivid that they should make any modern director rethink the idea that muddy digital video is “the future.” And Obayashi never lets up on the slam-bang-pow pacing. If anything, the epilepsy-inducing editing becomes even harder to process as the film barrels to its batshit not-really-a-conclusion. Better to just kick back and (try to) take it all in. I’ve experienced House three times so far, and I think I’ve almost got it figured out, but I’m still not sure figuring it out is even the point. All I can say for sure is that it’s the most baffling and brilliant film I’ve seen all year.

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/movies

Bop Gun for Hire

Before he was an indie film legend, John Cassavetes brought one of TV’s oddest detectives to life / by Joe Gross

B

efore John Cassavetes was “John Cassavetes,” but after

he had started to acquire a reputation as an actor of unique energy and intensity, he starred in Johnny Staccato, a 1959 show about a less-than-great post-bop piano player who made ends meet as a private detective. This allowed for the tag line “Television’s Jazz Detective,” which is one of the all-time most-awesome high-concepts, up there with “adventuring archeologist fights Nazis” and “xenomorph with acid for blood.”

The show lasted for one season, 27 episodes of (mostly) hardswinging TV noir. Forgotten for decades, tapes of Johnny Staccato began circulating here and there in the ‘90s, as hipsters began to glom onto Cassavetes as an American genius. (See also: Fugazi’s “Cassavetes” and Le Tigre’s “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?”) The full run of the show eventually showed up in the Trio Network’s “Brilliant but Cancelled” series. (The irony of which is, of course, that the brilliant Trio network was cancelled in 2005.)

This no-frills three-disc set collects the entire run of the show. Cassavetes, all of 30 at the time but already looking carved out of rock, plays a dude who would rather be playing piano. Yet he is not good enough at what he truly love to do it full time. “I put my musicians’ union card in mothballs five years ago when it dawned on me that my talent was an octave lower than my ambition,” Johnny says in the pilot’s voiceover. So he hangs around his beloved local bar, Waldo’s, playing jazz and waiting for people to come in and ask for his help.

Staccato is somewhere between Sam Spade and Jim Rockford, both in terms of his generation and in worldview. He’s jaded, but not Johnny in a curdled way. He hits on pretty much everything within sight. He Staccato is available now got beaten up a lot and struggled with his own honesty. (Look, Elizaon DVD from beth Montgomery in a backless top would make anyone think bad Timeless Media Group. thoughts.) The show’s crisp black-and-white photography and jazz vibe isn’t as energetic as, say, Peter Gunn, but Staccato is the more interesting lead. For an actor so into his own intensity and emotional openness, there is a distance to Cassavetes as Staccato. Was he not that into the show? Is it the aftereffect of his occasional scene-chewing? (Cassavetes could be subtle or bombastic, sometimes within the same sentence.)

Cassavetes also had a hand in the show’s casting and music. A jazz nerd himself, he occasionally stuck in musicians such as Red Norvo, Red Mitchell and Barney Kessel.

44

The stories are, frankly, not all that great—the dazzling scripts of, say, The Twilight Zone stand out in sharp relief here—but you watch for the mood more than the plots. One minute we’re on Hollywood sets, and on the real New York streets in just the next scene. (The mind boggles at the vibe that could have been created by a production shot entirely in New York.) Cassavetes also had a hand in the show’s casting and music. A jazz nerd himself, he occasionally stuck in musicians such as Red Norvo, Red Mitchell and Barney Kessel when appropriate. He also worked with a murderers’ row of guest stars from Martin Landau and Dean Stockwell, to Mary Tyler Moore and a baby-faced Michael Landon as a singer with a Colonel Tom Parkeresque manager.

Taking the part in order to finance the ongoing production of Shadows, the movie that many consider the start of the American independent film movement, Cassavetes also took a hand in directing early episodes of Johnny.

His work certainly drew attention to itself more often than not, and this is a mixed blessing. You notice an episode—“Evil,” about a huckster preacher, or “A Piece of Paradise,” about a friend framed for murder—is under his control within about 10 seconds. You can see Cassavetes try to balance his more expressionistic directorial urges with the show’s noir feeling and the confines of 1959 television. Even here, Casavettes’ stuff is starting to move like nobody else’s. After Johnny, it wouldn’t ever again feel like the work of another director.

Westward Implosion

Deadwood shoots big, bloody holes in the myth of American progress / by Sean L. Maloney

I

f you’ve already watched Deadwood, the HBO drama

that ran from 2004 to 2006, then you can skip to the next article, because you know exactly what I’m going to say: Deadwood is the best western in the history of American television. Invoking the grit and violence of the Spaghetti Western genre without descending into that genre’s more ludicrous terrain, Deadwood displays enough unflattering historical accuracy to punch a huge hole in the Great American Western mythology without casting it aside completely. Landing somewhere between the gonzo grime of Euro-westerns like Django and the reverential nostalgia of Gunsmoke or Have Gun—Will Travel, Deadwood raised the bar for all 21st century tales of the American frontier.

Also, it most likely holds the world record for most uses of the word “cocksucker” in a single series. Just sayin’.

Deadwood: The Complete Series is available on DVD now from HBO.

Created by David Milch, the brains behind NYPD Blue and the dead-on-arrival John From Cincinnati, the series takes place deep in the as-yet-unincorporated camp of Deadwood, located in pre-statehood South Dakota in the 1870s. Starring Timothy Olyphant as a trigger-happy U.S. Marshal (a role he has reprised with minor variation in everything else he’s ever done), exceptionally talented Ian McShane as the whiskey-and-women-pimping town patriarch, Molly Parker as the wealthy widow and the criminally unappreciated Brad Dourif as the camp doctor, alongside scores of Hollywood’s best character actors, Deadwood has some of the richest, most enthralling characters the genre has ever seen.

More than anything—the badass gun fights, the constant flow of curse words, the historical boobies—what makes

Deadwood great is the way the characters cope with the encroachment of civilization. Without detouring into spoilerville, the men and women that you meet in Episode One of Season One are not the ones you leave behind when the credits roll on Episode 12 of Season Three. The concepts of good and evil, in the Great American Western-sense, become so jumbled, so fuzzy that you’ll probably never be able to sit through another black-hat-versus-white-hat movie on cable the same way. Likewise, the stereotypes that have propped up westerns from the genre’s earliest days—the villainous boss, the upright lawman, the helpless widow and the hooker with a heart of gold—are so thoroughly upended by the series’ end that repeat viewings are required just to cope with the breadth of the creators’ paradigm shift.

There’s a tendency in westerns to gloss over the fact that Manifest Destiny was a pretty ugly policy, one that spread greed and genocide across an entire continent. Deadwood manages to skip the patriotic chest-thumping; it reconciles the inevitability of westward expansion with the cruelty and inhumanity necessary to implement it, all without painting either side as victim or victor. Similarly, the show tackles the constant give-and-take between America’s more libertarian tendencies (note the small “l” on libertarian) and the need for some sort of order, simultaneously indicting America’s past, present and future. All of which might make Deadwood sound a lot less fun than it plays onscreen: With all this talk of politics, it should be noted that moments of levity are frequent and action is plentiful, despite the fact that serious political philosophy is constantly being kicked around with a violence usually reserved for bar fights.

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Pretty Great Performances*

Toshirô Mifune’s slapstick bandit hides the rage and pain of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai / by Joe Gross

I

t begins with the sword. It’s enormous, comically

so. Yet look how casually the man carries it—over his shoulder, like a baseball bat, leaning his body forward or sauntering like it ain’t no thing. Maybe it looks like he’s overcompensating with this swagger, but on some level, you also know that he does not give a fuck. ¶ You can also see it in his crouch—observant, coiled, a bundle of potential energy, confident even while surrounded by men assumed to be his betters. Or maybe go straight to the monologue in the middle of the film. This is the moment when the man reveals a depth of character that makes his peers—thus-far dignified, smart and even jolly—seem unsophisticated and unwise in the ways of the world.

It’s hard to know where to start talking about Toshirô Mifune’s performance as the initially buffoonish hanger-on to paid bodyguards in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. It is both outsized and knowing, broad and profoundly wellobserved, a tension Mifune carries throughout the whole of the 207 (!) minute movie.

The briefest of plot summaries, then: A small farming village is being exploited by a small army of bandits. The village hires a samurai named Kambei Shimada to take care of the problem. Kambei in turn recruits five others to join him in protecting the village. A clownish wannabe named Kikuchiyo follows them around, eventually being welcomed into the fold. The bandits eventually attack.

A simple narrative, perhaps, but it led to one of the very best and most influential movies ever made.

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* Directors often get

all the credit when it comes to great films, and great TV shows are often seen as ensemble pieces. But what about the actors who help elevate a flick to classic status, or the unsung stars who take a show to the next level? Each month, Pretty Great Performances looks at the actors who rescued a project from failure or added that extra layer of awesomeness.

The careers of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are impossible to imagine without it—or without Kurosawa’s work in general—let alone such direct tributes as The Magnificent Seven or Battle Beyond the Stars. Any movie ever in which an action team is assembled: It all comes straight outta Seven Samurai.

Perhaps we should start with this fact: Mifune was not considered a comic actor when this film was released. He was known for striving criminals (Drunken Angel, his first of 16 movies with Kurosawa), young detectives (Stray Dog), a savage rapist/bandit (Rashomon) and for inhabiting some of the greatest warriors in human history. (He played near-mythic feudal Japanese hero Musashi Miyamoto a couple of times.) “Buffoon” was not written on the back of his headshot.

Yet Mifune’s portrayal of the nameless hero in Seven Samurai—his companions eventually give him the name Kikuchiyo, a moniker that doesn’t really mean anything—is one of the most startling performances in film. Initially seeming almost goofy, it becomes clear that Mifune is operating on an almost operatic scale because that’s just the kind of guy Kikuchiyo is. He doesn’t have

the samurai’s control; he has the passion and rage of the dispossessed. He is the only figure in the movie who fully understands the relationship between the samurai and the farmers, the hideous cycle of dependence and exploitation that he alone has seen both sides of.

We first see our man shoving folks aside to check out a crisis in the town. A bandit is holding a child hostage. Kikuchiyo’s enormous sword is over his shoulder and then at his side as he stares at Kambei, scratching himself out of nervousness. Kambei rescues the child and Kikiuchiyo’s intrigued. Later, Kikuchiyo shows up hammered—staggering, frustrated. Nobody has ever looked cooler fall-downdrunk than Mifune. Bumping around, he’s pissed off at the world, and isn’t completely sure how to express it yet.

He follows the samurai from a distance, almost like the humility they refuse to acknowledge they are, on some level, falsifying. They know they are crucial to this village’s survival, and while they are ronin, samurai without a master, thrilled to just have a job, they also know they are well above the

farmers in station and bearing and class.

But Mifune, brilliantly, is also an outsized parody of samurai mores—neither fully peasant, nor a true samurai, but a warrior. He swaggers while they walk calmly, his sword is huge while theirs are normal-sized. He can grab fish out of the stream while they eat rice on the shore. He vanishes into the trees and surprises them—we realize that were he not a goof, he easily could have killed at least one. And they must realize it as well.

Later, after he sounds a false alarm which causes the farmers to panic and the samurai to come running, he berates the farmers for worshipping the samurai.

When he finds armor in the village, the other samurai are furious. It is clear that it has been stripped from dead warriors. Kikuchiyo rails at them: “What do you think of farmers? You think they’re saints? Hah! They’re foxy beasts!”

He’s yelling, almost into the camera. “They pose as saints but are full of lies! If they smell a battle, they hunt the defeated! They’re nothing but stingy, greedy, blubbering, foxy and mean!”

The samurai look ashen. They are not used to being schooled, especially by a fool. Kurosawa once said he admired Mifune’s ability to get to and display the emotional core of the scene so fast. “The ordinary Japanese actor might need 10 feet of film to get across an impression,” goes the famous quote. “Mifune needed only three.”

Yet Mifune’s not finished: “Who made them such beasts?

You did! You samurai did it! You burn their villages! Destroy their farms! Steal their food! Force them to labor!

Take their women! And kill them if they resist! So what should farmers do?”

At this point, even Kambei has tears in his eyes. Kikuchiyo is on the team. He is the triangle on the battle plan where Seven Samurai is available now the others are circles. He is special.

DVD and And he is. Children follow him around the town, hypno- on Blu-ray, from tized by his mix of buffoonery and drama. He bellows at the The Criterion Collection. peasants he’s trying to train: “I hate wretched people!” Why? Because he is the true spirit of revolution here. Kikuchiyo would love the farmers to be able to defend themselves against bandit and samurai alike. He naps between battles while others fret, but after the samurai’s first major defeat, he runs back to the town, grabs the battle-flag and plants it on the goddamn hill. He is not going out like that and nor should anyone else.

This monologue made Mifune a god, but the most powerful scene comes later, when he runs into a burning mill to take a now-orphaned baby from its dying mother’s arms. He looks almost bewildered; he cannot believe the gods have done this to him: ‘The same thing happened to me! I was just like this baby!”

He sobs into the child’s shoulder. He isn’t filled with rage and sorrow—dude is Rage and Sorrow.

Kikuchiyo’s end is one of the greatest in film. Rain pouring, the village turned to mud, a bandit has just shot Kyuzo—the most skilled and serious swordsman among the samurai—in the back with a rifle. It is cowardly and shameful.

Kikuchiyo bolts after the guy, in an almost berserker rage. He turns into the shack where the bandit is holed up and is shot. He wobbles to his feet, staggers into the barn where a group of farmers is frozen in fear, runs the bandit through and dies as the bandits flee. He is Paul Muni, he is Han Solo, he is Wolverine. He’s the savage and the cunning revolutionary. He’s the martyr and the fool. Here, Mifune does it all—often in just three feet of film.

But Mifune, brilliantly, is also an outsized parody of samurai mores— neither fully peasant, nor a true samurai, but a warrior.

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career, abbreviated as it was. Through stories and remembrances from Streep, De Niro, Pacino, et al., a portrait of the reserved, intense Cazale emerges, qualities that would inform his acting choices and make his performances so unforgettable.

In fact, after watching I Knew It Was You, it becomes even more difficult to separate Cazale the actor from the uneasy people he portrayed onscreen.

His Stanley in The Deer Hunter is the weakling among his buddies that go off to fight in Vietnam.

His Sal in Dog Day Afternoon is a psychotic criminal who somehow manages to be touching and tragic.

And in his most infamous role, Fredo Corleone in the first two Godfather movies, he all but defines the family misfit, the brother who feels stepped over and left out of the family business, and whose efforts to prove his worth seal his fate. It’s a shockingly vulnerable performance that still stings. It’s the rare actor who is willing to portray complete and utter A new documentary looks at the brief but failure onscreen. Cazale doesn’t just go there; he appears to let impotence and incompetence permeate overwhelming filmography of John Cazale every cell of his body.

by Bret McCabe The documentary suggests Cazale knew what ix years, five films—that’s the entire cinematic made these people tick. Lumet, Pacino and Kane career of John Cazale, an actor claimed by cancer recount that Cazale came up with so many of the reasons that made Dog Day Afternoon’s Sal so trouin 1978 at the age of 42. All five of Cazale’s features bling and comic, and Lumet confesses that one of are seminal examples of 1970s American cinema; Sal’s most poignantly telling lines—when Pacino together they garnered 40 Oscar nominations and asks him what country he wants to go to and he rethree took home Best Picture. Cazale, a character ac- sponds, “Wyoming”—was a genius improvisation.

The little choices and performance quirks are tor, dominated these movies from the sidelines, helping to what Cazale’s peers and fans admire so much, and make them significant with his extraordinarily human persome of the best observations come from people formances. He was a master at onscreen social awkwardness, who never worked with him. Steve Buscemi, Philand his most memorable role is arguably the most realistic ip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Rockwell and director Brett Ratner talk about Cazale with borderline awe. portrayal of a family’s black sheep ever set to celluloid.

Buscemi and Rockwell are so familiar with Cazale’s Richard Shepard’s touching I Knew It Was You, performance in The Deer Hunter they dissect every little produced by HBO, features a small army of perform- non-verbal thing he does in the film, picking up on how ers who are considered acting legends today, all re- seemingly throwaway moments—such as checking to see membering their co-worker and friend. And they— that his zipper is up in one long shot—combine to create including Cazale’s former fiancée, Meryl Streep, this character. Rockwell even notes that, in Dog Day AfAl Pacino, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, ternoon, Lumet cuts to Cazale for reaction shots because Gene Hackman, Sidney Lumet, Olympia Dukakis, the look in his eyes is so anxious, so unnerving.

Richard Dreyfuss, John Savage and Carole Kane— Despite all those Oscar nominations, Cazale didn’t receive unanimously recall Cazale with sincere respect. a single one. I Knew It Was You, though, suggests the man I Knew It The reason they remained so impressed with him behind the performances wouldn’t care about the recogniWas You will is how easily he disappeared into his roles. The brisk tion, and would be more than happy that in his scarce screen be released November 9 from documentary spends little time with Cazale’s early time he delivered work that continues to offer nuances to Oscilloscope. life and focuses almost entirely on his stage and film be discovered.

The Small Touches

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METAL CLUB STORES ROCK AS HARD AS YOU DO, AND THESE SPECIAL RELEASES PROVE IT. FIND THEM AT METAL CLUB STORES FIND YOUR METAL CLUB STORE AT

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Only 3000 of these exist, and Metal Club stores have them now. Featuring tracks from the latest album Warp Rider.

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NOVEMBER 2

10 Things I Hate About You 25TH Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concerts Abba: Gold Singles AC/DC In Performance Adriatic Sea of Fire Afterlife Experiments Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Geraldine McEwan Collection Alec Baldwin Triple Feature Alice Cooper: Theatre of Death Amours Imaginaires Angelina Jolie Triple Feature Anthrax/Megadeth/Metallica: Big 4 Live From Sofia Bulgaria Anywhere But Here Bad Ass Beatles in America Beauty and the Beast/Puss in Boots/Jack the Giant Killer Behind the Lines Behind the Wall Bellydance Superstars: 3D Superstars Vol. 2 Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete Series Beverly Hills 90210: The Tenth Season Bing Crosby Collection Bing Crosby: White Christmas Bishop Paul S. Morton Celebrates 25 Years of Music Bob Dylan: Masterpieces Bon Jovi: Classic Live Performances Breakin’/Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo Bruce Willis Triple Feature Cadfael Collection Care Bears: Giving Festival Movie Carmelo’s Way Cars Toon: Mater’s Tall Tales Celine Centurion Cher: The Film Collection Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story Christmas Child Christmas in the Clouds Clint Eastwood: 35 Films, 35 Years Cold Feet Colossal Squid Come Hell or High Water Cook’s Country: Season Three Coronation St. Romanian Holiday Danger in the Sea Darkman Darkman Trilogy Davey & Goliath Vol. 3 Deadfall Trail Deadliest Catch Season 6 Deal/52 Pick-Up Demon Kiss Dennis Hopper Triple Feature Denzel Washington Triple Feature Destricted Dhamma Brothers Dirty Pair: The Original TV Series Part 1 Diva Doctor Who: Return of the Cybermen Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis – The Extended Version Douglas Fairbanks Collection Dragon Hunter

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Earth: Final Conflict Season 5 Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct: Lightning Edge of Never Eegah Elf Exterminators Facts of Life Season 5 FBI/CIA Films Declassified First Time Flipping Out Season 1 Follow the River/The Inheritance For Sale by Owner Frank Sinatra Concert Collection Freezer Burn: The Invasion of Laxdale Frontline: Law and Disorder Fugitive: The Fourth and Final Season Vol. 1 Ganz Schon Turbulent Gene Hackman Triple Feature Gods of the Stadium: Making of the Calendar 2011 Goonies Gray Man Guns N’ Roses Story Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino Season 2 Hannah Montana Forever: Who Is Hannah Montana?

Hayate the Combat Butler Part 7 Head of State Hilltop Hoods; Parade of the Dead Homeless for the Holidays Horde Hungry Ghosts Hush!

I Am Imagine There Is No Lennon Imogen Heap: Everything InBetween – The Story of Ellipse In Old Claiente Infideles John Candy Triple Feature John Gray: Laughter in Black + White John Wayne Collection Judas Priest Story Just Stick It In Kaboom Kids: Let’s Learn Kaboom: Let’s Solve Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List – The Complete Season 2 Katt Williams: 9 Lives King’s X: Live Love in London Lady Gaga: One Sequin at a Time Larry Sanders Show: Season Two Larry Sanders Show: The Complete Series Lawman/Kentuckian/Unforgiven Leading Ladies of TV’s Golden Age Legacy of the Iron Horse Legally Blonde Triple Feature Lodge Long Riders/Stagecoach/The Way West Love & Distrust Mad About You: The Complete Fifth Season Man of the West/Hour of the Gun/ Duel at Diablo Marty Stouffer’s Wild America: 12 Complete Seasons Plus Specials Material Girls/Sleepover/The Dust Factory/Her Best Move Men Aloud: Live From Wales Menage a Trois Mexican Midsomer Murders: Village Case Files Monster Walks Murderland Murphy’s Law: Series 3 Mutant X Season 4 My Little Assassin My Son My Son Mysterious Island/Merlin’s Apprentice Nightmare Before Christmas Nikolai Volkoff Shoot Interview

nov 2 Beverly Hills 90210

The Complete Series 90210 has always been a fantasy vision of Gen X life.

Like all soap operas, there was absolutely no pretense that this show was taking place in the real world, despite some superficial similarities, like pants and automobiles and grunge bands, to the planet we inhabit. It probably won’t appeal to anyone who wasn’t there at the time. (This is not a show renown for emotional resonance, strong plotting or decent acting.) But from Jason Priestly’s flattop to the occasional inexplicable musical guest like the Flaming Lips, it’s a nice way to reflect on what was hilarious and entertaining (sartorially, musically, televisually) about the ’90s. (Paramount) Nip/Tuck: The Complete Series Noble Things Nosferatu Not of This Earth Nova: Building the Great Cathedrals Nova: Crash of Flight 447 Nova; Trapped in an Elevator Ocean Life Ocean Odyssey Once Fallen Orny Adams: Takes the Third Other Side of the Game Pacific Palo Pinto Gold Phantom from 10,000 Leagues Phil Collins: Going Back – Live at Roseland Ballroom NYC Pink Floyd: Reflections on the Wall Please Remove Your Shoes Primary Colors Randolph Scott Collection Ready or Not Red Dragon Red Green Show: Toddlin’ Years Richard Gere Triple Feature Ring Riverman Rolling Stones: Let’s Spend the Night Together Rolling Stones: Singles 1962-1970 Ron Clark Story/Fielder’s Choice Saddam Hussein: Weapon of Destruction

Salt Secret of the Andes Short Track Silent Sam Simon & Garfunkel: Across the Airwaves Sleeping Beauty/Hansel and Gretel/Rumpelstiltskin Snow White/Red Riding Hood/The Emperor’s New Clothes Song From the Heart/Angel in the Family Sound of Music: Anniversary Edition Space: 1999 – Season 1 Spacecamp/Wargames Spirit Bear/The Song of Hiawatha Spirit of the Eagle/Sign of the Otter Splinterheads Star Dreams: Mystery of the Crop Circles Status Quo: Live at BBC Status Quo: Live Legends Support Your Local Gunfighter/ Support Your Local Sherriff TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Astaire & Rogers TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Busby Berkeley Musicals Terror Within/Dead Space Terrorist Next Door Thicker Than Water/Uncross the Stars Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage Thunderbirds TNA Wrestling: Hardcore Justice 2010 Toughest Man in the World Toy Story 3 Toy Story Trilogy Trouble With Dee Dee Twisted UFC 118: Edgar vs. Penn 2 Ultimate Fighting Championship: The Ultimate 100 Greatest Fights Uta-Kata Collection 1 V: The Complete First Season Vampire Diary Van Gogh: Brush With Genius Visioneers Visitor War Ship War Zone Way We Get by What Happened on the Moon: Hoax, Lies and Videotape What Lies Beneath Wifey Winnebago Man Wow: World of Disney WWE: Hell in a Cell 2010 X Games: Evolution of Skate ZZ Top: Rockpalast – Deguello Tour NOVEMBER 9

10 2010: The Year We Make Contact 41 Acts Africa Against a Crooked Sky Albert King/Stevie Ray Vaughan: In Session Altered States Amar a Morir American in Paris Analyze This Angshumaner Chhobi Antichrist Architects of Civil Rights Arsenic & Old Lace Article 32 Asia’s Survivors Assassins Atlas 4D Auntie Mame Avengers Badlands

nov 9 Scott Pilgrim

vs. the World

Directed by Edgar Wright Man did this movie split critics/audiences down the middle, generation-wise.

Depending on your age and general inclinations, Scott Pilgrim was either a visually thrilling action rom-com aimed at a generation that thinks of video games as art, or a loud, garish mess of special effects and cardboard characters. Actually it’s kind of both. Edgar Wright is one of the funniest, and most surprising directors, working in mainstream film, and it’s a damn shame older multiplex audiences haven’t realized this yet. But Michael Cera comes off flat and unengaging as both action star and romantic lead. Scott Pilgrim is nothing if not memorable, but it would have been more so if the lead actor could keep up with Wright’s manic invention.

(Universal)

Barney: Best Fairy Tales Before Sunrise Bill Moyers: On Faith & Reason Bing Crosby Television Specials 2 Blast From the Past Blessings: The Tsoknyi Nangchen Nuns of Tibet Boiler Maker Boondocks: The Complete Third Season Boys on the Side Brazen Bull Californication: The Third Season Camelot Cannes Man Car Bomb Celestial Films: Soul of the Sword Charlie St. Cloud Chet Atkins in 3 Dimensions Chief Chosen Christmas Carol (1972) Chronicles of Narnia Box Set

Circus Cobra Coma Comic Party Revolution TV: Complete Collection Compulsion Contestant Conversation With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Cuba: The Accidental Eden Damned by Dawn Dangerous Man Days of Wine & Roses Dead Enders Deadly Rivals Death of a Snowman Defending Your Life Demolition Man Detroit Metal City Discover Christmas/The Meaning of Christmas Discoveries… America, Special Edition: Artists in Motion Discoveries… America, Special Edition: Musicians & Their Music Dry Land Edgar Broughton Band Elia Kazan Collection Encyclopedia Asthmatica Vol. 2 Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010 ESPN Films 30 for 30: Two Escobars Esquizofrenia Executive Decision Faded Glory Famous in 31 Days Fire Down Below Flight of Faith Four-Faced Liar Franny’s Feet: Farmhouse Friends Ghetto Fights 6 Ghetto Stories: The Movie Ghosts of Mississippi Gigi Gingerdead Man/Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust God Delusion Debate God on Trial Golden Girls: 25th Anniversary Complete Collection Goodbye Girl Great Cities of Europe Part 2 Great Ziegfeld Grown Ups Haunting Hell’s Kitchen Season 4 Hi-5: The Complete Series Hide and Go Kill Hide and Go Kill 2 Hubert H. Humphrey: The Art of the Possible Hunchback of Notre Dame Hunt to Kill I Knew It Was You Ice Blues: A Donald Strachey Mystery Jaffa John Fogerty: Live by Request Jungle Beat Knucklehead Korn: Pandemonium Lady Gaga: Love Games Last Vampire on Earth Led Zeppelin: Untold Story Legacy of Roscoe Holcomb Lie to Me: Complete Second Season Lifetime Movies Collector’s Set VOl. 2 Light Gradient Living Dead Girl Locked Down Love Ranch Love Simple Love the Beast Lovely Still Majestic Australia Man Who Would Be King Mayor of Strawberry Fields Men of a Certain Age: The Complete First Season

Meridian/Decadent Evil Metalocalypse: Season Three Michael Bernard Beckwith: The Answer Is You Mystery Science Theater 3000: XIX Network North by Northwest Nothing Else Matters Nova: Dogs Decoded Nova: Quest for Solomon’s Mines Nova: Secrets of Stonehenge Nurse.Fighter.Boy O.J.: Monster or Myth?

Out for Justice Paulo Mattioli: Anyone Can Play Djembe Philadelphia Story Pit and the Pendulum/Castle Freak Port Cook – Deepwater Haven Vol. 1-2 Presumed Innocent Pursuit of the Graf Spee Ramona and Beezus Red Planet Rio Bravo Road to Avonlea: Season 3 Robbie Williams: In and Out of Consciousness: Greatest Hits 1990 – 2010 Robin-B-Hood Rolling Stones: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead Running America Running the Sahara Scooby Doo: The Movie/Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! Seasons 1-3 Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics Sesame Street: Elmo & Friends – The Letter Quest and Other Magical Tales Sex and Mrs. X/Another Woman’s Husband Shaolin Rescuers Sherlock: Season One Shinsengumi Chronicles: I Want to Die a Samurai Shiver of the Vampires Singin’ in the Rain Soldier Something to Talk About Sommersby Song of the Little Road Steven Wilson: Insurgentes Stiff Stomp Ultimate Streetcar Named Desire Streetfight Striptease Stuck!

Super Hero Squad Show Vol. 2: Quest for the Infinity Sword Superman/Shazam! The Return of Black Adam Take My Advice Tequila Sunrise Thirtysomething: The Complete Final Season Three and Out Time Machine TobyMac: Moving Pictures Tony Jaa: Born to Fight Trilogy Tree of Heaven Trial Trial/The List Tsubasa: Season Two Victory Visions of a Universal Humanity Voladora Vreid Goddammit Wake Up Wake Up Waterfalls Westworld Whale Wars: Season 3 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane

What’s Up Doc Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Wild Bunch Willie K: Uncle Willie K: Live at Mulligan’s World’s Most Beautiful Places World’s Most Beautiful Places: Mountains World’s Most Beautiful Places: Sunrises & Sunsets Xam’d: Lost Memories Collection 2 You Lucky Dog Zombie Girl: The Movie NOVEMBER 16

16 Wishes 2 Million Stupid Women 31 North 62 East Alchemy: Secrets of Philosophers Stone Emerald Tablet America’s Railroads: All Aboard – Legacy of the Iron Horse Ancient Aliens: Season One Andy Williams Collection Avatar Extended Collector’s Edition Back From Hell: A Tribute to Sam Kinison Ballistica Barbie as Rapunzel Barking Water Bearcity Bee Gees: In Our Own Time Beneath the Blue Best Worst Move Between Heaven and Hell Beyblade: Metal Fusion Vol. 1 Bizet: Carmen Boy Who Cried Wolf British Rail Journeys: South West England Brotherhood Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore Coopers’ Camera Crime Crowley Cunning Little Vixen Dark Metropolis Disney’s A Christmas Carol Don’t Look Back Doreen Cronin Collection Dudu Fisher’s Kindergarten: Jerusalem Ecstasy of Gold Edge: Perspectives on Drug-Free Culture Egypt: Pyramids and Mummies Elsewhere Endless Summer Evening With Tito Puente and Della Reese Exam Extra Man Eyes Wide Open Fear Me Not Fifth Element Frank Zappa: Evening With Frank Zappa During Which… The Torture Never Stops Gangland: Season Six Gauguin: The Full Story Ghost Machine Girl From Cortina Glee: The Complete First Season Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods Great People of the Bible Guadalcanal Gulliver’s Travels (1939) Handy Manny: Big Construction Job Heroes: The Complete Series In the Flesh Is It Just Me? Israel: A Journey of Light It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child Kasperpop Kids Are All Right Last Airbender

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/movies/new_releases Leading Ladies of Television’s Golden Age Lego: Hero Factory – Rise of the Rookies Lightkeepers Lottery Ticket Lovely Still Luftwaffe Bombers: Double Pack Lure Mafia Metropia Metropolis Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey’s Numbers Roundup Modern Times Monk: Season 1 Monk: Season 2 Monk: Season 3 Monte Walsh Mrs. Miracle National Geographic: Great Migrations NHL: Alex Ovechkin – The Great 8 Night of the Hunter Office: Overtime – Digital Shorts Collection Opposite Day Oracle: Reflections on Self Ozzy Osbourne: Blizzard of Ozz – Diary of a Madman Tour 1982 Perry Mason: Season 5 Vol. 2 Portrait of an Artist: Donatello – The First Modern Sculptor Possession of David O’Reilly Puppet Master Collection Red Hot Zorro Robo-Geisha Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Shaolin Mantis Share the Moon Sherlock Jr. /Three Ages Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes Sondheim: The Birthday Concert Special Ops Spider-Man SpongeBob SquarePants: Legends of Bikini Bottom Status Quo: Pictures of Status Quo Staunton Hill Steam Dreams Double Pack 1 Swashbucklers Taisho Baseball Girls: Complete Collection Tanztraume Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker They Came to Play Thomas & Friends Adventure Pack TNA Wrestling: Victory Road 2010/ No Surrender 2010 To Kill a Killer Trekking the World True Story of the Three Little Pigs UFOs: The Secret History Ultimate Summer Bruce Brown Surf Collection Vampire Knight Vol. 3 Velvet Revolver: Live in Houston, Texas Vengeance Walter Sickert vs. John Singer Sargent: The Lives of Britain’s Masters of Moder n Art Why Lie? I Need a Drink Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Fly Us to the Moon WWE Legends of Wrestling: Andre the Giant & Iron Sheik WWE Legends of Wrestling: Heatseekers WWE Legends of Wrestling: Hulk Hogan and Bob Backlund WWE Legends of Wrestling: Jerry “The King” Lawler and Junkyard Dog

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WWE Legends of Wrestling: Roddy Piper and Terry Funk WWE: The John Cena Experience Wycliffe: Series Five Wycliffe: Series Four Yankeeography: The Core Four Collection NOVEMBER 23

2010: Moby Dick 7th Heaven: The Complete Series 7th Heaven: The Final Season 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s African Leaders: Amilcar Cabral & Frantz Fanon America Lost and Found: The BBS Story American Frontier Classics: Baker’s Hawk American Legacy American Psycho/Fall Time/ Confidence/Rain of Fire Animals Around Me Discovery Kit Asia: Heat of the Moment: Live Baker Gurvitz Army: Live 1975 Batman Beyond: The Complete Series Beauty and the Beast Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder Big Country: The Final Fling Bishop Paul S. Morton Celebrates 25 Years of Music Black Metal: The Music of Satan Brian Wilson: Songwriter 1962-1969 British Rail Journeys: South West England BX Thug Soldiers Celtic Thunder Christmas Charlie Hunter: Solos – The Jazz Sessions Chernoe I Beloe Countdown to Zero Cramps: Live Cream: Sunshine of Your Love Live in Concert Cross the Line David Bowie: Rare and Unseen Deadland Der Starke Ferdinand Desert Punk: The Complete Series Desirable Teacher 2 Dio: The Legend – Live Disappearance of Alice Creed Drake: Successful Durham County Season 2 Eat Pray Love Edge: Perspectives on Drug-Free Culture Erik Friedlander: Solos – The Jazz Sessions Essence Music Festival Vol. 3 Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Seasons 4 & 5 Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Seasons 8 & 9 Expendables Fair Warning: Talking Ain’t Enough – Live Fall Fire & Ice: The Dragon Chronicles Fishmen and Their Queen Fist of the North Star: Series Vol. 2 Flipped Front Man Furry Fun: Life Lessons for Kids Part 2 Ghost Sweeper Mikami Ginger Baker’s Airforce: Live 1970 Girl From Cortina Girls Bravo Complete Set Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods Greaser’s Palace Greg Osby & John Abercrombie: Solos – The Jazz Sessions Grotesque Groucho Marx TV Classics Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss Hit Favorites: Animal Tails If You Could Say It in Words

nov 23 I’m Still Here

Directed by Casey Affleck Casey Affleck’s supposed documentary was revealed to be a mockumentary shortly after its release. It turned out that Joaquin Phoenix didn’t have a complete metal breakdown, perhaps only a minor one, and his string of bizarre public stunts (quitting acting, reinventing himself as a rapper, being a slobby weirdo on TV) were just that, stunts. So while I’m Still Here is no longer recommended for cultural rubberneckers— you’re watching a former Hollywood up-and-comer fake his way through a freak out, rather than actually freaking out—there’s still a bit of mean fun to be had as Affleck and Phoenix attempt to psychologically yank down the pants of everyone from Diddy to D. Letterman.

(Magnolia) I’m Still Here In/Significant Others Jazzie Vol. 1 Jeff Beck/Steve Lukather & Guests: Japan Live Session 1986 Jesus Guy John Lennon in New York John Scofield: New Morning – The Paris Concert Jolene Journey of a Contract Killer Justin Bieber: A Star Was Born Kaleido Star: Season 1 Kaminey Katy Perry: Good Girl Gone Bad Kobayashi Four Lady Gaga: Revealed Lazarus Phenomenon Leather Jacket Love Story Lennon Naked Leona Lewis: What Dreams Are Made Of Lorna the Exorcist Love, Pain & Vice Versa Luftwaffe Bombers: Double Pack Luther Lvoe Shack Matthew Shipp: Solos – The Jazz

Sessions Mock Up on Mu Motorhead: Grind Ya Down Murder, She Wrote: The Complete Twelfth Season Nanny for Christmas National Geographic: Gulf Oil Aftermath Nature of Existence Nicki Minaj: The Nicki Minaj Story – Unauthorized Not Since You NY Export: Opus Jazz Oblivion Off Jackson Avenue Once Upon a Stable Pastor Shepherd Phantom From Space Phantom Planet Pillars of the Earth Planet Outlaws Pride Fighting Championships: Shockwave Collection Reagan: An American Life Red Hot Zorro Regina Spektor: Live in London Rick Wakeman: Classical Wakeman Vol. 1 – Live at Lugano Rick Wakeman: Journey to the Centre of the Earth Roaring Across the Horizon/ Rhapsody of Spring Sacred Triangle: Bowie, Iggy & Lou 1971-1973 Saturday Night Live: The Best of Eddie Murphy/Chris Rock/Tracy Morgan/Adam Sandler Savage Holocaust Search for Santa Paws Seekers Guide to Harry Potter Sekirei: Complete Series Shawty Lo: Bowen Homes Carlos Sherlock Holmes: The Archive Collection Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles Shooting Johnson Roebling Show Me Science Advanced: Fuel Technology – Transportation Innovations Show Me Science Advanced: Solar Power – An Alternative Energy Source Silver Dream Racer Sinner: Diary of a Nymphomaniac Sister Smile Snoop Dogg, Ja Rule & Jadakiss: Live! Box Set Socalled Movie Soulive: Bowlive Space Precinct Steam Dreams Double Pack 1 Steel Gaze: Clint Eastwood Strange Is Normal: The Amazing Life of Colin Wilson Strictly Ballroom Super Spook Sure Looks Good Target Practice Taylor Swift: Her Life, Her Story – Unauthorized Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives Trade In Tudors: The Complete Series Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family: The Play Uriah Heep: Early Years Live Vampire Sisters Victoria, and the Pursuit of Happiness Wagon Train: The Complete Season Two White Lion: Concert Anthology 1987-1991 Who? Wild Animal Safari Discovery Kit Winning Season World of Colors Discovery Kit WWE Bragging Rights 2010 Yes: Yesacoustic Zookeeper

nov 23 The Expendables

Directed by Sly Stallone There is enough unchecked, unironic machismo in this film that anyone—man, woman or child—who comes into contact with it will start to grow chest hair. Ten times better than the 21st-century Rambo reboot, the Expendables finds auteur Sylvester Stallone embracing the clichés of ’80s action movies with agreeably shameless gusto. The all-star tough guy cast is appropriately grizzled-beyond-belief, including most of the younger actors, and they all deliver their excruciating jokes and dramatic speeches with the same ball-peen-to-theforehead intensity. This isn’t a knowing tribute. It’s an outand-out dumbly funny excuse for explosions. (Lionsgate)

NOVEMBER 30

2010 World Series Alarm American Pie 2: Collector’s Edition American Pie Presents: Band Camp American Pie Presents: Beta House American Pie Presents: The Book of Love American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile American Pie: Collector’s Edition American Wedding Another World Away We Go Baby Mama Best of British Classics Vol. 2: Naked Fury/Cover Girl Killer Birdy the Mighty: Decode Part 2 Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story Braconne Cairo Time Collection 3: Escape From Prison David GOodis to a Pulp Don Cherry’s Hard Hitting Hockey Vol. 3 Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement Fantasia Anthology Forgetting Sarah Marshall Hair High by Bill Plympton

Have Gun, Will Travel: The Fifth Season Vol. 1 Hell Girl: Three Vessels Collection 2 Henry Jaglom Collection Vol. 1: Love and Romance House Arrest I’ll Be Seeing You Knight and Day Knocked Up Life in Flight Liverpool Looney Tunes Super Stars: Foghorn Leghorn … Barnyard Bigmouth Looney Tunes Super Stars: Tweety & Sylvester – Feline Fwenzy Lucy Show: The Official Third Season Lulu Mad Dog and Glory Marvel Knights: Iron Man – Extremis Meet John Doe Meet the Fockers Meet the Parents Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers Circle of Trust Collection Michael Douglas Film Collection Midnight Run Music From the Twilight Saga Soundtracks: Videos … Vol. 1 Mystery Men Nanny McPhee National Geographic: The President’s Photographer – Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office New Faces Parenthood: Special Edition Parks and Recreation Season 2 Paul Mellon: In His Own Words Pit of Darkness/The Marked One/ Murder Can Be Deadly Prince of Egypt/Joseph: King of Dreams Radio One’s Family Comedy Tour Role Models Samantha: An American Girl Holiday Selectred Films by Mark Street 2 Shadowland Sicilian Girl Sid and Marty Krofft’s Greatest Saturday Morning Hits Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas/ Road to El Dorado Soldiers of Fortune 1955-57 Sorcerer’s Apprentice Special Relationship T’Pau: Montreux Trapped: Haitian Nights Valhalla Rising Vampires Suck Walking Sleeping Beauty Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Walt & El Grupo Zombie Driftwood DECEMBER 7

12 Men of Christmas 20th Century Fox: 75th Anniv. Coll.

300 Killers 40-Year –Old Virgin About Last Night Absence of Malice Across the Line: The Exodus of Charlie Wright Adaptation Against All Odds Age of Innocence American Nitemare American Pop America’s Music Legacy: Blues America’s Music Legacy: Dixieland Jazz America’s Music Legacy: Folk America’s Music Legacy: Soul Ana Popovic Band: An Evening at Trasimeno Lake And Justice for All Annie’s Point Anywhere U.S.A. Apt Pupil

Armed and Dangerous Awakenings Awakenings/The Fisher King Barry Munday Bastard Swordsman Belly of the Beast Belly of the Beast/Half Past Dead Bellydance Superstars: Behind the Shimmy Betty White: In Black & White Big Bad Mama/Big Bad Mama 22 Big Hit Big Lebowski Big River Man Blind Date Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice Bob Hope Collection Bonanza: Official Third Season Vol. 1 Boy Meets World Season 4 Butterflies Are Free Caged Animal California Suite Chevalier d’Eon: The Complete Series China: Centuries of Mystery Classic Adventures Collection Vol. 1 Closer Cocaine City #14: The Extendables Edition Collector Crazy Mama/The Lady in Red Cronos Curious George: Sweet Dreams Dancing Across Borders Dark Metropolis Darkness Falls Death: Live in Japan 1995 Deep Deliverance Dennis Hopper: The Early Works Disciples of the 36th Chamber Dismal Doctor Faustus Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation Dog Year Dolphin Dragnet: Season 3 Duchess of Malfi Echo: An Elephant to Remember Escape from Zahrain Euphoria Eye of the Beholder Final Frontier Fisher King Fistful of Brains Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor & Other Fantastic Films Furry Fun: Life Lessons for Kids Part 3 Gad Guard God in America Good Boy Goth Vampire Nation Graham Parker & The Figgs: Live at the FTC Greg Stump Classics Half Past Dead Half Past Dead 2 Happy Holidays With Bing and Frank Harpoon: Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre Heavy Metal Thunder: The Movie History of the Black Church Hoarders Season 2 Part 1 Hollywood Knights Hot Karl Hot Wheels Battle Force 5: Season 1 Part 2 Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel Hunter Prey Hush I Do: Do-It-Yourself Wedding Plan…

I Love Rockets I Love You to Death I Told You Not to Call the Police Idle Hands Into the Void: The International

Space Station Island Destinations of the Mediterranean Jagged Edge Jawbreaker Jet Li: The Man From Shaolin Jet Li’s The New Legend of Shaolin Joe Strummer Tribute Concert: Cast a Long Shadow John Wayne: Bigger Than Life Johnny Mnemonic Kimikiss: Pure Rouge Collection 2 King Diamond: Into the Darkness Kiss: Meet the Press Learn Mahjongg With Susie Legend of the Sky Kingdom Les Gamins LInkin Park: DVD Collector’s Box Living Legend: A Rock Legend at a Turning Point Lockdown Mademoiselle Chambon Marcus Miller: Live in Tokyo Medallion Men of Peace Milk of Sorrow Milton “Butch” Jones: The Detroit Connection 1 Missy and the Maxinator Money Train Motley Crue; Press Crue Must Love Death My Friend Rabbit Season One My Normal New Morning: Paris Concert Nothing in Common Nowhere to Run Odessa File Once Upon a Time in China Only When I Dance Order Patrik Age 1.5 Paul Mooney: … End of the World People vs. Larry Flynt Prayers for Bobby Principal Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome Rainbow: Rockin’ Night – Live in Japan 1984 Random Hearts Razorblade City Red Rock West Reformat the Planet Restrepo Retro Bye Bye Vol. 2 Return of Bastard Swordsman Riptide Rising From the Rails: The Story of the Pullman Porter School for Scandal See No Evil, Hear No Evil Short Circuit 2 Shrek Forever After Shrek Forever After/Donkey’s Christmas Shrektacular Shrek: The Whole Story Quadrilogy Slackers Sleepwalkers Smash Cut Snapped the Kill Collection Complete Season 1 & 2 Soldier’s Story Spectacle: Season 2 Spice and Wolf: Comp. First Season SpongeBob SquarePants: Season 6 Vol. 2 St. Elmo’s Fire Stealing Harvard Stir Crazy Sturcz Quartet Featuring Al DiMeola: Live Suspense Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye Complete DVD Collection Thomas & Friends: Lion of Sodor To Die For Year of Getting to Know Us Yogi Bears All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper Zula Patrol

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11.02.10

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/music/new_releases Ready Set To Icon Railway Architecture An Introduction to Elliott Smith Soundtrack For Colored Girls Soundtrack The Sound of Music: 45th Anniversary Soundtrack The Tillman Story Statler Brothers Icon Bryn Terfel Carols & Christmas Songs Train Save Me San Francisco (Deluxe) Various Artists Afrocubism Various Artists Blow Your Head Various Artists Dancelicious Various Artists People Take Various Artists Punk Goes Pop Volume Three Various Artists The 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame War Icon Weezer Death to False Metal Weezer Pinkerton (Deluxe) Welcome to the Future Welcome to the Rileys Barry White Icon Witchfinder General Death Penalty Roscoe Dash Scorpions Silvery Elliott Smith

NOVEMBER 2

The 1900s Return of the Century 3 Doors Down The Better Life 7 Walkers 7 Walkers Jason Aldean My Kinda Party Sunshine Anderson The Sun Shines Again Jessica Andrews Icon Baby Jamz Presents P Christmas Bachman-Turner Ov… Icon Barn Own Ancestral Star Bear Hands Burning Bush Supper Club Harry Beckett The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett Black Dub Black Dub Bleu Four Dave Brubeck Original Album Classics Buckwheat Zydeco Buckwheat Zydeco’s Bayou Boogie David Campbell On Broadway Mariah Carey Merry Christmas II You Eric Clapton Eric Clapton Joe Cocker Mad Dogs & Englishmen Elvis Costello National Ransom Darkstar North LP Neil Diamond Dreams Discharge Apocalyp0se Now Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea Escape the Fate Escape the Fate Evil Survives Powerkiller Fair Game Fair Game The Fall Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall The Flower Machine Lavender Lane Steve Gadd & Friends Live at Voce Marvin Gaye Let’s Get It On Gigi w/ Material Mesgana Ethiopia Good Charlotte Cardiology The Hentchmen The Hentchmen The High Dials Anthems for Doomed Youth Brian James The Brian James Gang Harry James Performance Jodeci/K-Ci & Jojo Icon Joe Home Is the Essence The June Green Fields and Rain Kabanjak Tree of Mystery King Kobra Kollection Lazer Sword Lazer Sword Huey Lewis & News Soulsville Carmen Liana Who I Am Russell Malone Triple Play Matt & Kim Sidewalks Paul McCartney & W… Band on the Run John McLaughlin Promise Megamind Megamind Men Aloud Live From Wales Metallica/Slayer/ The Big 4: Megadeth/Anthrax Live From Sofia Bulgaria Mini Mansions Mini Mansions Bishop Paul S. Morton Celebrates 25 Years of Music N.E.R.D. Nothing Neu! Neu! 86 Neville Brothers Authorized Bootleg No Doubt Icon Kenny Nolan All Time Greatest Performances Oak Ridge Boys Icon Ok Go Of the Blue Colour of the Sky (Deluxe) Old Light The Dirty Future Brad Paisley Hits Alive The Parties Coast Garde The Priests Noel Puddle of Mudd Icon Ravage Wrecking Ball The Red River Little Songs About the Big Picture Smokey Robinson Solo Albums 2

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NOVEMBER 9

This Is War (Deluxe) Fast Lane Pschogrotesque Colour Blind The Collection Apartheid Is Nazism Cocody Rock Jerusalem AB III England/Blondel An Evening of Yes Music Plus Congratulations, Thank You + I’m Sorry As I Lay Dying The Powerless Rise Super Deluxe Fan Box Atheist Jupiter Atlantean Kodex The Golden Bough Gene Autry The Last Round Up Charles Aznavour Sur Ma Vie Bad Books Bad Books Dave Barnes Very Merry Christmas Syd Barrett An Introduction to Syd Barrett Count Basie The Big Band Leader Shirley Bassey I Capricorn/And I Love You So Bethel Live Here Is Love Big City Blues Big City Blues The Big Pink Tapes Blink 182 The Document BMF Street Certified Andrea Bocelli My Christmas (CD/DVD) Ian Boddy Pearl Bon Jovi Greatest Hits Bone Thugs N Harmony Rise of the Bone: Greatest Hits Boz Boorer Miss Pearl c/w My Wild Life Boulevard Blvd Boulevard Into the Street Bowfire Live in Concert Susan Boyle The Gift British Lions Live at the Waldorf Brokencyde Will Never Die Bronco Country Home/Ace of Sunlight Bronze Nazareth School for the Blindman Joe Budden Mood Muzik 4 Bullet for Pretty Boy Revision Revise Kate Bush The Document C64 Lowest Moments Cali Swag District The Kickback Canadian Brass Spirit Dance Bryon “Mr. Talkbox” My Time Chromatic Black Chromatic Black Mike E. Clark Murder Mix Volume 2 30 Seconds to Mars 3D Aborym Dave Allen Mose Allison Alpha Blondy Alpha Blondy Alpha Blondy Alter Bridge Amazing Blondel Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe Animal Prufrock

Orange Juice Nov 22

Coals to Newcastle Orange Juice were the sunniest band to come out of U.K. post-punk in the early ’80s, a period better known for stark, grim music that took the pleasure out of rock ’n’ roll. Led Edwyn Collins, these Scots were the hyper-literate boys-next-door, penning garage rock love songs with hooks swiped from old soul records, playing Collins’ deep and slightly stuffy croon against the enthusiastic tumbling of the music. It’s as stripped-down and revved-up as most post-punk, but a hell of a lot more fun.

This new box set includes eight discs that collects every studio song Orange Juice ever laid down, along with video clips, a live gig and various bits of ephemera. It’s a slightly imposing document, but the music is too joyous to be for completists only. (Domino) The Opening Central Avenue Breakdown Exilarch Truth Against the World Fierce I’m Yours Once Upon a Night 2 Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa Creation’s End A New Beginning Crosby & Nash Bittersweet Sheryl Crow The Lowdown Billy Ray Cyrus I’m American Miley Cyrus X-posed Daniel & Tarazara Behind the Mask Darkthrone Panzerfaust Wolfgang Dauner Knirsch Deaflock Reality of False Pasts Deathspell Omega Paracletus J Defrancesco, Vito … One Take Volume Four Depeche Mode Tour of the Universe: Barcelona Marlene Dietrich Falling in Love Again Dimmu Borgir Stormblast Dio Dio at Donnington UK: Live 1983 & 1987 DJ Felli Fel Thump Ridaz Mix DJ Micro Caffeine 2011 Fats Domino Million Sellers Vols. 1 & 2 Erk tha Jerk Nerd’s Eye View Evocation Apocalyptic Facebreaker Infected Family Fodder Classical Music DJ Mark Farina Mushroom Jazz 7 Jose Feliciano Light My Fire Fist Turn the Hell On The Floacist FLoetic Soul Lita Ford Stiletto John Francis The Better Angels Judy Garland Over the Rainbow CD/DVD Robin George Dangerous Music Luke Gibson Another Perfect Day Giuffria Giuffria Giuffria Silk and Steel Cloverseeds Nat King Cole Conjure One Corn Farmer Shamus Patrick Cornelius Don Cornell Ferry Corsten Cradle of Filth

713 the Album Salvation From Sundown The Battle Rages On Coal Miner’s Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn Luisa Maita Maita Remixed Maserati Pyramid of the Sun Dave Matthews Band Live in New York City Max and Ruby Max and Ruby Bunny Party MC Yogi Elephant Powered Remixes and Omstrumentals Reba McEntire All the Women I Am Messengers Anthems Stephan Micus Bold as Light Minitel Rose Atlantique Mirror System The 69 Steps Vol. 4 Modern Superstar 1 Part Saint, 2 Parts Sinner Molice Catalystrock Marilyn Monroe Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend Oliver Mtukudzi Greatest Hits: The Tuku Years (998-2002) Aaron Neville I Know I’ve Been Changed Nitzer Ebb Industrial Complex No More 7 Years (1979-1986) Ken Nordine Word Jazz: The Complete 1950s Recordings The Ocean Antropcentric Oceano Contagion B Osborne & Rocky … Memories Ounaskari/Mikkonen Kuara Charlie Parker Chasin’ the Bird Tom Petty & Heart… Damn the Torpedoes (Deluxe) Kelly Joe Phelps & C … Magnetic Skyline Pimp C The Naked Soul Of Place of Skulls As a Dog Returns Poison Nothing But a Good Time Box Bud Powell Tempus Fuge-It Powerworld Human Parasite Elvis Presley Viva Elvis Pretty Things Rockin’ the Garage Protoculture Love Technology Psyche The Hiding Place Quartetto Gelato Christmas Quartz Stand Up and Fight Queensryche Empire: 20th Anniversary Edition) R.E.O. Speedwagon This Time We Mean It/R.E.O. Reach Around Rodeo … Dark Days, Dark Nights Django Reinhardt Musette to Maestro 19281937 Renaissance Live in Chicago Rhapsody Tales Form the Emerald Dword Saga Jonathan Richman O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth Roy Rogers The King of Cowboys Mario Romano Quartet Valentina Ross the Boss Hailstorm Royksopp Senior Ruff Endz The Final Chapter Jane Russell Pamper Me (CD/DVD) Sargeist Let the Devil In Screeching Weasel Television City Dream Seim/Utnem Purcor Shangri-Las The Leader of the Pack Todd Sharpville Porchlight Blake Shelton Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton Shonen Knife Free Time Tommy Simms Then the Archers Bowed and Broke Their Bows Sister Sledge We Are Family Stan Sly: Quazedelic Anutha World Smoke DZA George Kush Smoke or Fire The Speakeasy Soft Circle Shore Obsessed Sons of the Pioneers Cigareet The Sorrow Blessings From a Blackened Sky The Sorrow Origin of the Storm + Bonus Sounds … Ground Kin Lil Keke Lance Lopez Charlie Louvin Loretta Lynn & …

Kanye West nov 22

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Just in time for Thanksgiving, here comes Kanye with what promises to be either a giant overstuffed turkey or a banquet for fans of good beats and unchecked ego-tripping. On the minus side, Dark Twisted Fantasy has got to be the worst album title in recent memory from a major artist. (Even a Juggalo would roll his eyes.) On the other hand, the advance singles from DTF have featured some of the best music Kanye’s released in the last two or three years.

The beat on “Monster” is such a banger that you’ll almost (almost) forget that ’Ye was angling for the “Chris Carrabba of AutoTune” title back in 2008. Whether it’s a return-to-form or a big pile of mess, this is undoubtedly the last event-sized album of the year. (GOOD Music/Universal) The Good Ones Kigali Y Izahabu Cee Lo Green The Lady Killer The Greenhornes **** Gregory and the Hawk Leche Grown Ups More Songs Gucci Mane La Flair Str8 Drop Presents Gucci Mane La Flair Woody Guthrie Bob Dylan’s Woody Guthrie Selection Gwar Bloody Pit of Horror H$E Hustlaz Stackin’ Ends Tim Hardin Tim Hardin 1/Tim Hardin 2 Harm The Nine Harmonicana Mississippi Saxophone Annie Haslam Woman Transcending Hawthorne Heights Midwesterners Hellogoodbye Would It Kill You? Helloween 7 Sinners Hipower Collectables Mr. Capone His Name Was …

His Name Was Yesterday Isengard Hostmorke Mahalia Jackson Sings Vol. 1 Michael Jackson Do You Remember?

Ultimate M Jaimovitz w/ J M… Meeting of the Spirits Tommy James & Sh… Live Jesus on Extasy No Gods Marcus Johnson Flo Chill Vol. 2 Robert Johnson Me and the Devil Blues Quincy Jones Q: Woul Bossa Nostra The Judge Band The Judge Band Kid Cudi Man on the… II King Crimson In the Court of the Crimson King Box Set A King/Stevie Ray V… In Session Deluxe (CD/ DVD) M Kolbe & R Illenberg Waves Kryoburn Three Years Eclipsed Kylesa Spiral Shadow Lake Street Dive Lake Street Dive Janeene Lavelle Janeene Lavelle Danuab Lazarus Fabric 54: Damian Lazarus Jerry Lee Lewis Live Liberace Classic Piano Favorites Lil Boosie, … Trill Fam Trill Fam: All or Nothing Lil C H-Town Chronic 4.5

I Am Into the New Live in London Songs for the Incurable Heart Stray Valhalla String Cheese Incident Rhythm of the Road Volume One Summer Camp Young Tallest Man on Earth Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird Tangerine Dream The Epsilon Journey: Live in Eindhoven TC Kross TC Kross Tenebrae in …/Krohm Split Lillo Thomas Come and Get It Thrall Away From the Haunts of Men Thunderball 12 Mile High Tonight Drummer Man Mel Torme A Foggy Day Trinidad Steel Combo Trinidad Steel Combo Tsushimamire Sex on the Beach Ike & Tina Turner Ghetto Funk Twista The Perfect Storm Underoath O (Disambiguation) The Uniques Absolutely Rocksteady United Jazz + Rock … Break Even Van Der Graaf Gen… Live at the Paradiso April 2007 Vanna The Honest Hearts EP Various Artists 100 Greatest American TV Themes Various Artists 100 Greatest Musicals Various Artists 21 Swing Band All Time Greats Various Artists 5K1 Soundtrack Various Artists Annual 2011 Various Artists Christmas in the Park Various Artists Dance Party 2011 Various Artists DJ Star Vol. 3 Various Artists Edgar Allan Poe: The Dramatic and Fantastic Various Artists Energy Waves Various Artists Gay Happening Present Pride Party Hits Various Artists Groove Merchant Turns 20: 14 Selections Various Artists Hi-Grade Ganja Anthems Various Artists Holy Hip Hop Volume 9 Various Artists I Love J-Rock Various Artists It’s Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas Various Artists Just for Christmas Various Artists Let’s Hear It for the ‘90s Vol. 2 Various Artists Let’s Hear It for the Boy Vol. 9 Various Artists Masters of Hardstyle Vol. 3 Various Artists Miami/Southbeach Tunes Vol. 1 Various Artists Now 36 Various Artists Now ‘90s Various Artists Pacha Ibiza: The Italian Collection Various Artists Rebel Rave Various Artists Texas Guitar Summit Various Artists The Complete Christmas Various Artists Tradi-Mods vs. Rockers Various Artists Triton Festival 2010 Various Artists Ultra 2011 Virgin Steele The Black Light Bacchanalia Sina Vodjani Karma, Love and Compassion Gary War Police Water War From a Harlot’s … MMX Josh White Achor White Boys Blues White Boys Blues Wild Orchid Children The Wild Orchid Children Are Alexander Supertramp Courtney Williams Reflections of a Perfect Gentleman Cassandra Wilson Silver Pony Johnny Winter The Progressive Blues Experiment Soundtrack Amy Speace Devon Sproule Stemm

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Wise-Magraw Wyatt/Atzmon/Ste… Z’ev & Chris Watson Murray ZGold Zion I

How the Light Gets In For the Ghosts Within East African Nocturne Doctor Who Series 4: The Specials Atomic Clock

NOVEMBER 16

Bare Bones Double Play Double Play Angel Witch 30th Anniversary The Autumn Defense Once Around Bee Gees Mythology Bizzy Bone The Greatest Blue Angel Lounge Narcotica Bombay Bicycle Club Flaws Brooks & Dunn Double Play Dennis Brown Crown Prince of Reggae Dave Brubeck Legacy of a Legend Camel Rainbow’s End Kurt Carr Double Play Cassidy C.A.S.H. The Church Heyday The Church Séance Julian Cope Floored Genius Vol. 2 Curren$y Pilot Talk II ADay to Remember What Separates Me From You John Denver Double Play Alexandre Desplat Harry Potter Deathly Lee Dewyze Live It Up Lee Dewyze So I’m Told Dub Syndicate The Royal Variety Show Dvas Society Jackie Evancho O Holy Night Kirk Franklin Double Play Nelly Furtado The Best of Nelly Furtado Gallery Best of Ginger 10 Glee Cast The Music: Xmas Halestorm Live in Philly 2010 (CD/ DVD) Fred Hammond Double Play Harmonious Bec Her Strange Dreams D Hayman & The Se… Essex Arms Heaven & Hell Neon Nights Jimi Hendrix BBC Sessions (Deluxe Edition) Jimi Hendrix Blues (Deluxe Edition) Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock Jimi Hendrix West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology Freddie Jackson For You Jakko M. Jakszyk The Bruised Romantic Glee Club J Jamison & J Peterik Extra Moments Waylon Jennings Double Play Jesu Heart Ache & Dethroned Billy Joel The Hits Norah Jones Featuring Kid Rock Born Free Killing Joke Absolute Dissent Kisses The Heart of the Nightlife Korn Double Play Larry the Cable Guy The Best Of Annie Lennox A Christmas Cornucopia Magnum On a Storyteller’s Night John Martyn Live at Leeds (Deluxe) MC5 Purity Accuracy (6CD box set) Martina McBride Double Play Donnie McClurkin Double Play Loreena McKennitt The Wind That Shakes Method of Defiance Incunabula Motorhead Another Perfect Day Motorhead No Remorse Motorhead Orgasmatron Motorhead Rock ‘N’ Roll Necro Die! Nelly 5.0 Ocean Colour Scene 21: The Boxset Bryan Adams Yolanda Adams Alabama Angel Witch

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COWBELL

Original Cast Things to Ruin Robert Owens Art Brad Paisley Double Play Pink Greatest Hits… So Far!!!

The Pipettes Earth vs. the Pipettes Elvis Presley Double Play Rascal Flatts Nothing Like This Rihanna Loud Smokey Robinson The Solo Albums 3 The Russian Futurists The Weight’s on the Wheels Thomas Schumacher Presents Get Physical The Sights Most of What Follows Is True Soundtrack Burlesque Soundtrack Skyline Soundtrack Tangled Regina Spektor Soviet Kitsch Bruce Springsteen The Promise: Darkness on the Edge of Town Micah Stampley Release Me Status Quo Live at the BBC Stereophonics Performance and Cock Stereophonics Word Gets Around Strawbs Live at the BBC Supertramp Breakfast in America The Teardrop Explodes Kilimanjaro Thin LIzzy Shades of a Blue Orp Thin Lizzy Thin LIzzy Thin Lizzy Vagabonds of the West Chris Tomlin And If Our God Is for Us The Up Rising Keith Urban Get Closer Various Artists Big Band Legends Various Artists Essential Guide to Salsa Various Artists Kids Rap Radio Vol. 5 Various Artists The Fire & Fury Doo Wop Story Stevie Ray Vaughan Double Play Hezekiah Walker Double Play The Warlocks Rise and Fall, EP & Rarities The Who Live at Leeds (CD/DVD)

ESG dec 7

Dance to the Best of ESG ESG were a once-in-a-lifetime act, three sisters plus a couple of pals who grew up in the South Bronx, just as hip-hop was beginning to spread across the Five Boroughs, deciding to recreate the bouncing roller rink music of the early drum machine era with a garage band’s spirit. A decade earlier they would have been playing beginners-level funk at the Apollo Theater’s amateur night, but ESG’s moody, minimal music caught something in the air at the time, and instead they wound up signed to post-punk label 99 and produced by Joy Division’s studio maniac Martin Hannett.

Their best songs sit somewhere between minimalist dance-punk and minimalist bubbglegum R&B. (Fire)

NOVEMBER 23

Psychedelic Sounds Of In Dreams Magic and Mayhem Dynasty H.F.M. 2 Hunger for More Little Italy Third Coast Born Guns n’ Butta C Doley’s Organ Donors Tension Dulce Maria Extranjera Primera Evensong Evensong Fair Warning Talking Ain’t Enough: Fair Warning Live Five Finger Death … Way of the Fist Deluxe FM Static 3 Out of 4 Ain’t Bad Fred Frith Eye to Ear 3 Allen Ginsburg Beat Poet Figurine Haste the Day Concerning the Way It Was Have Heart 10.17.09 Hipower Collectables Mr. Criminal Hi-Power Ent. Pres… Hipower Holiday The Irish Tenors Ellis Island King’s x Live Love in London Ramsey Lewis The Movie Album/Dancing in the Street Lil C Rap Game, Trap Game Lucky Luciano Flyest Meskin Alive Lunatic Soul Lunatic Soul 2 MacDonald Sisters Solas Clann Dhomhnaill Yngwie Malmsteen Relentless Marz Lovejoy This Little Light of Mine Morly Grey The Only Truth Norma Jean Birds and Microscopes Ozric Tentacles Strangeitude Johnny Paycheck Someone to Give My Love To Marty Robbins I Walk Alone/It’s a Sin Tabu Ley Rochereau Voice of Lightness Vol. 2 Johnny Rodriguez Introducing/All I Ever 13th Floor Elevators After the Burian Amorphis As They Sleep Lloyd Banks Lloyd Banks Bell’Aria C Note Cam’ron and Vado

Klaus Schulze Klaus Schulze Tabi Bonney Trademark Da Sky… Trae Trouble Trouble Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Muddy Waters

Meant to Do Was La Vie Electronique 5 La Vie Electronique 6 Fresh Supervillain Issue # King of the Streets Vol. 2 Live Palatine 1989 (CD/ DVD) Live Schaumburg 1993 (CD/DVD0 100 Beats: Chilled 100 Beats: Ibiza Essence Music Vol. 3 Slovenia U.S.A> Total Breakdown They Called Me Muddy Waters

NOVEMBER 30

We Can’t Fly Craig Campbell Joy Only 1 Flow (Pt. 1) Summer House Mr. I Ninja Tune XX Presents King Cannibal Tim McGraw Number One Hits Chrisette Michele Let Freedom Reign Joell Ortiz Fee Agent Phil Shoenfelt Paranoia.com Simian Mobile Disco Delicacies Slim Thug Tha Thug Show Soundtrack Black Swan Jazmine Sullivan Love Me Back Terror Danjah Undeniable Dinah Washington The Fabulous Miss D! David Wrench Spades & Hoes & Plows S Wynn & Miracle 3 Northern Aggression Aeroplane Craig Campbell Fefe Dobson Flo Rida Gold Motel Ronald Isley King Cannibal

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ION T I D E ’S R O LECT L O C L A I C E SP DECIBEL

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The Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street DELUXE EDITION

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Queens Of The Stone Age Rated R DELUXE EDITION

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The Rolling Stones Stones In Exile

In the words of the Stones and archival footage, the story of their time in France, recording Exile on Main Street.

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