Needle - Nov/Dec 2010 by Sunrise Records

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Various Artists Much Dance 2011 MUCH DANCE 2011 features 16 of the year’s biggest hits from Adam Lambert, Enrique Iglesias, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Taio Cruz, Usher and more!

Lil Wayne I Am Not A Human Being Featuring 13 new tracks with guests Nicki Minaj, Jay Sean, Tyga & others. Includes the banger “Right Above It” featuring Drake.

Hedley Go With The Show CD/DVD Bon Jovi Greatest Hits Coming November 9. A comprehensive collection of Bon Jovi’s best including the new hit song “What Do You Got”.

Coming November 9. CD contains 17 live tracks featuring the previously unreleased song “Beautiful” and all of Hedley’s hits! DVD contains an exclusive 60-minute road documentary + three live songs, official videos and more. www.hedleyonline.com

Rihanna LOUD

Coming November 16. Rihanna returns with her fifth studio album featuring the smash single “Only Girl (In The World)”. LOUD is a return to the up-tempo dance songs of her earlier records and the deluxe edition includes DVD with exclusive making of LOUD footage.

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(not actual artwork)

Stereos Uncontrollable Coming December 14.

The brand new album from Stereos. Includes the song “Uncontrollable”.

Nelly Furtado The Best Of Nelly Furtado Coming November 16. Nelly Furtado celebrates her first 10 years of recording with her first greatest hits compilation, The Best Of Nelly Furtado. The deluxe double CD features all the hits, a bonus disc of collaborations and three previously unreleased recordings.

Nicki Minaj Pink Friday Coming November 22. Includes the hit songs “Massive Attack” ft. Sean Garrett, “Your Love”, “Check it Out” with will.i.am, and the latest smash “Right Thru Me”.

CHECK OFF MORE GREAT ALBUMS ON YOUR HOLIDAY LIST! Available Now Taylor Swift – Speak Now

Coming November 2 Mariah Carey – Merry Christmas II You

Coming November 9 Kid Cudi – Man On The Moon 2 Jamiroquai – Rock Dust Light Star Jann Arden – Spotlight CD/DVD

Coming November 16 Bryan Adams – Bare Bones Nelly – 5.0 Annie Lennox – A Christmas Cornucopia

Coming November 22 Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Ne-Yo – Libra Scale Justin Bieber – Acoustic Girlicious – Rebuilt Jay Z – The Hits Collection Vol. 1 Fefe Dobson – Joy

Coming November 30 The Black Eyed Peas – The Beginning

Coming December 7 Duffy – Endlessly OST – Tron Legacy All album dates are subject to change without notice.

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/music

The Year in Pop

Ten great albums and the stories that made music matter in 2010 / by Jess Harvell and Maura Johnston

t’s harder than ever to sum up a year’s worth of pop music. There’s just

so much out there, so many styles and artists competing for your attention, that it’s tough to know where to begin, let alone how to capture that range in a few short paragraphs. In 2010, for instance, pop meant Lady Gaga, whose over-the-top disco brought performance art shenanigans into American living rooms, but it also meant Taylor Swift, whose girl-next-door sweetness makes Gaga seem doubly out-there. Swift’s also a country artist, which proves just how far country’s traveled from its honky tonk roots. But even country’s still got room for gritty mavericks, whether they’re selling-out bars or making appearances at shopping malls. Meanwhile indie rock continued to crash the mainstream, or maybe indie’s just become indistinguishable from the mainstream. Bands on tiny labels played iconic entertainment temples like Madison Square Garden in 2010, and climbed into the upper reaches of the Billboard pop charts. An indie band like the Arcade Fire now shares the airwaves with Nickelback, a surreal development that was impossible to predict five years ago. R&B and hip-hop exhibited more ambition than they have in a while, with artists like OutKast’s Big Boi and sci-fi diva Janelle Monae releasing albums that incorporate high opera and ’60s psychedelia. (Plus Kanye West will have releases his new album this month, and even if it’s not actually any good, it’ll certainly 6

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be an event.) You also can’t forget all of the older artists who’ve released great records this year, or the deluxe reissues of classic material. And then there’s… Well, you see what we mean. So where do you begin? Here are our choices for 10 of the best albums released in 2010. They come in a wide range of flavors—soul and rock, country and hip-hop, young artists and pop veterans. Chances are good that at least one will grab your attention, but all come highly recommended. We’ve also included a timeline of 2010’s big musical events, so you can either catch up on what you missed, or relive the ups and downs of a very packed year.

Sade

Jamey Johnson

(Sony)

(Universal)

Soldier of Love

The Guitar Song

Soldier of Love is the first album in 10 years from the British quartet Sade, and it definitely has an out-of-time quality. In 2010, when producers cram in as many sonic bells and whistles into a song as they possibly can, the songs that make up Soldier have ample room to breathe. The fingerpicked guitar and dry drums on “Long Hard Road” and the sultry kiss-off “Skin” provide a striking yet unobtrusive backdrop for the band’s namesake and lead singer Sade Adu. Adu’s voice will be instantly familiar to anyone who remembers Sade from their MTV heyday—her rich alto has an intimacyl that can be breathtaking—and the band’s thankfully avoided the digital manipulation that has made so many older singers uncomfortably unrecognizable in the 21st-century. Adu’s singing is an instrument that’s used to the most incongruous effect on the title track, which pits her lyrics about weathering a particularly stormy romance against a minimalist, militaristic beat. “Timeless” is an adjective thrown around a little too frequently when discussing records by vintage artists, but using it can’t be helped when describing Soldier Of Love. Adu’s deliberately guarded heartache is a quality that most listeners will relate to instantly. And songs like the gently rolling “Bring Me Home” and “Be That Easy” slot alongside the rest of Sade’s catalog so effortlessly that it’s tempting to wonder if the band preserved all the recording equipment used on 1984’s Diamond Life in order to keep its aesthetic completely intact. (MJ)

Jamey Johnson is both old-school and his own man. Burly and wildly bearded, he looks and sounds little like the camera-ready dudes-in-hats who strut the red carpet at the Country Music Awards. The 35-year-old Alabama native is already a Nashville vet, recording four albums in the last eight years and penning singles for country-radio mainstays like George Strait, but his own music is wilder, bound to tradition without being cowed by it. He’s definitely in the genre’s mainstream—unlike a lot of alt-country guys, Johnson can really sing—but this isn’t the slick pop-with-fiddles you get from crossover stars like Taylor Swift. As with not-quite-country bands like the Drive-By Truckers, Johnson’s albums are a little more ragged, a little more downcast, a little more real. He also thinks a little bigger. At two CDs and 26 songs, the Guitar Song is a statement, Johnson announcing himself a major artist, delivering the kind of album that’s rare in a singles-driven genre like county these days. Thankfully Johnson’s diverse enough as a songwriter to work with such a big canvas, while his themes are pure country, the joy and pain of everyday life, the good times spent in bars and the regretful morning-afters. He splits the joy and pain onto separate discs—the “White Album” and the “Black Album,” respectively—but he brings the same energy to the light stuff and a certain tenderness to the heavy stuff. (The production might be glossy, but Johnson’s band kicks in a way that puts most preciJamey Johnson sion-tooled country session ensembles to shame.) A little out-of-time and right on schedule, Johnson’s got the raw edge of Merle Haggard, but his tunefulness suggests he’s spent equal time studying the George Jones songbook. (JH)

january

The acid-tongued Simon Cowell tells

Soul pioneer Teddy Pendergrass dies after

reporters at the Television

suffering respiratory fail-

Critics Association press

ure. The singer, who rose

tour that American Idol’s

to fame in Harold Melvin

ninth season will be his last

In response to the devastation wrought

by the earthquake in Haiti,

The Department of Justice approves the

Taylor Swift becomes the youngest artist to

merger of the ticketing

win the Album of the Year

a slew of stars—including

behemoth Ticketmaster

award at the Grammys

Justin Timberlake, Madon-

and the concert-promotion

when her second album,

and the Blue Notes before

na, and Jay-Z—participate

giant Live Nation, despite

Fearless, takes the trophy.

behind the judges’ table,

striking out on his own solo

in the Hope For Haiti Now

concerns from industry-

Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” is

and that he plans to bring

career, was 59.

telethon.

watchers and concertgoers

awarded Song of the Year,

his British talent show X

that the two companies

while Kings of Leon’s “Use

Factor to the States in 2011.

joining forces could set up

Somebody” takes Record of

a monopolistic structure in

the Year honors.

the live-music business.

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Mojo

(Reprise)

Mojo is first studio album by Tom Petty and his longtime backup band since 2002’s the Last DJ, and it has a loose-limbed feel. So much so, in fact, that it gives the listener a kind of voyeuristic thrill: This feels less like an album, and more like a collection of jam sessions that were illicitly recorded by someone just hanging around the studio. Of course, when you’re dealing with musicians who have been road-testing material for as long as the Hearbreakers, that loose, lived-in feeling isn’t a bad thing by any stretch. The interplay between the band members is effortless, even if the music they’re playing represents something of a stylistic shift from the crunchy rock for which they’re best known. Mojo is Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “blues” album, and in the PR blitz for the record, Petty told a reporter that the band’s foray into the genre came in part from the blues serving as the Heartbreakers’ “after hours” music. Fans wondering if the band was going to scrap its normal sound to recreate the vibe of old Mississippi juke joints can rest easy. You can draw a definite line between the songs on Mojo and Petty’s classics. (Although listening to Petty sing reggae, as he does on “Don’t Pull Me Over,” is a bit jarring at first.) If anything, using the blues as an anchor has humanized the band. Mike Campbell’s guitar has an added layer of sweet sadness—particularly on the delicate “No Reason To Cry” and the plea for patience “Something Good Coming ”—while Petty plays the role of the weathered (and softened) sage who isn’t afraid to plumb the depths of his own sorrow. (MJ)

february

Soldier Of Love, the first album in 10 years

from the sultry R&B group

Vampire Weekend Contra (XL)

Indie rockers Vampire Weekend arrived in 2007 with a buttoned-up preppy look and a sharp-but-cuddly sound to match. Critics talked up the spiky melodies purloined from African music, the tumbling harmonies straight from Paul Simon’s Graceland, but the best thing about the band’s debut album was how tight the songs were. Here were four kids, Columbia grads with their ears open to the scope of world pop, who’d grown up listening to new wave, and who’d internalized the genre’s rules for writing punchy three-minute pop gems. Each song on Vampire Weekend had an indelible chorus, while the band played with an admirable minimum of fuss and enough rhythmic snap to keep things brisk. Indie kids argued over what it all meant—were VW sons of privilege ripping off music from the third-world?—but the hooks allowed Vampire Weekend to connect with an audience who wanted something catchy, even if it wasn’t “authentic.” So when VW’s second album, Contra, dropped this year, fans were wary of the advance notice, with the band enthusing about how they’d begun to experiment with styles like reggaeton and R&B. Would the experimentation compromise the catchiness? The answer came within two minutes of pressing “play”: Nope. With a tumbling rush of CaribVampire bean drums, album-opener “Horchata” was the Weekend most rhythmically tricky composition Vampire Weekend had yet written, and singer Ezra Koenig’s wordplay had grown even more ornate. (Seriously, who tries to build a chorus around a word like “horchata”?) And yet the song felt as purely pop as anything on the band’s debut. What’s amazing, and what’s proving to be Vampire Weekend’s real skill, is how they manage to arrange all of these tricky, ornate, global sounds into something that still retains rock’s stripped-down rush. The band hasn’t entirely abandoned the wiry new wave framework that made their first batch of songs so memorable, either. “Cousins” and “Holiday” even manage to make a ska revival seem like a good idea. (JH)

march

Apple announces that the iTunes Store,

Tongue-twisting MC Lil Wayne begins his

The Quentin Tarantinoinfluenced video for

Alex Chilton, the leader of the seminal power-

which launched in 2003,

eight-month stint in a New

Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s

pop group Big Star, dies af-

Sade, debuts at No. 1 on the

has sold its 10 billionth

York prison on a weapons

duet “Telephone” debuts.

ter suffering a heart attack

Billboard 200 with 502,000

song: “Guess Things Hap-

possession charge.

The ambitious 10-minute

in New Orleans. He was 59.

sales in its first week of

pen That Way” by Johnny

clip is full of product place-

release.

Cash.

ments, and sparked controversy for both its stylized violence and Gaga’s skimpy costumes.

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Big Boi

Neil Young

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (Def Jam)

Big Boi’s first solo album is a testament to tenacity. Label politics and artistic conflicts led to it sitting on the shelf, pretty much finished, for nearly a year. Yet it still sounded absolutely vital upon its release this summer, thanks to the fact that Big Boi is constantly pushing his art forward. When you’re always a few steps ahead, delayed releases don’t mean quite as much. Those OutKast fans who, despite the cultural ubiquity of the hip-shaking “Hey Ya,” preferred Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx to Andre’s The Love Below when that split-personality album was relased in 2003, couldn’t help but feel rewarded by the long-denied release of Chico Dusty, which uses hip-hop as a launching point for exploring all sorts of musical styles. The robo-funk of “Shutterbugg” rubs shoulders with the looped snatch from Verdi’s Aida that propels “General Patton,” which exists on the same planet as the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes sample that glitters behind “Shine Blockas.” Through it all, Big Boi plays the trickster, stringing along verses that are so dense with internal rhyme and tongue-twisting complexity and (crucially) a wicked sense of humor that they revitalize and reframe the English language Big Boi for the listener. It’s a testament to Big Boi’s singular personality that despite the album being crowded with skits, styles and guests—a whopping 15 of them, including legends like George Clinton, superstars like T.I. and up-and-comers like the acid-tongued Alabama MC Yelawolf— Chico Dusty is a singular statement. Big Boi’s lyrical prowess and seeming compulsion to explore the musical landscape until every option’s been exhausted make for a thrilling combination. One hopes that his next foray into making albums comes quickly, with a minimum of corporate red tape. (MJ)

april

Justin Bieber’s My World 2.0 de-

buts at No. 1, making

Le Noise (Reprise)

You can read more about the making of this album in this month’s interview with Neil Young, but it bears repeating here: Le Noise is one of the best albums ol’ Shakey has released in the 21st-century. Young’s always been equal parts folkie and rocker, torn between the sweet, simple charms of the acoustic guitar and his urge to let loose with a raging, ringing electrified solo. The country-tinged Harvest may have been the album that cemented Young’s rep as the poet of the post-hippie generation, but from 1969’s “Cowgirl in the Sand” to 1979’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” to 1989’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” Young has never quite given up on the liberating, amp-frying power of really loud guitars. Le Noise combines these two sides of Young in a wholly unique way. It’s a solo set, and the most emotionally naked collection of performances he’s released in years, closer in spirit to the blasted, melancholy feel of 1974’s On the Beach than 2009’s raucous and slightly undercooked concept album Fork in the Road. There’s a real beauty to some of these songs; if there’s one thing Young’s fragile voice has always been good at selling, it’s loneliness. But Le Noise is also loose and raw, full of ragged riffs and the kind of feedback he used to need Crazy Horse to kick up. The gorgeous noise is thanks in part to producer Daniel Lanois, who might deserve second-billing here, and together they prove that, deep into a career built on swerving left when fans were expecting him to go right, Young’s not done surprising us just yet. (JH)

may

Former American Idol winner

Carrie Underwood is

Pioneering hardrock vocalist

Ronnie James Dio

Eminem’s “Not Afraid,” the first

Lee DeWyze, a 24-year-old

Kanye West’s “Power,” the first

single from the re-

house paint salesman

single from his fifth

the 16-year-old Cana-

named Entertainer

dies after a long bout

bounding MC’s album

from Mt. Prospect,

studio album, leaks

dian heartthrob the

of the Year at the

with stomach cancer.

Recovery, debuts at

Illinois, is named the

online. The song,

youngest solo male

Academy of Country

The singer, who was

No. 1. It’s the second

winner of the ninth

which samples King

artist to hit the chart’s

Music Awards. Spitfire

known for his stint

hip-hop single to

season of American

Crimson’s “21st Cen-

summit since 1963,

Miranda Lambert and

with Black Sabbath

achieve that feat; the

Idol. DeWyze beats

tury Schizoid Man,” is

when Stevie Wonder’s

balladeers Lady An-

and for popularizing

first was Puff Daddy

out dreadlocked folkie

full of invective to-

The 12-Year-Old Ge-

tebellum also pick up

the “devil horns” hand

and Faith Evans’ “I’ll

Crystal Bowersox to

ward West’s critics.

nius was the country’s

multiple honors.

gesture, was 67.

Be Missing You,” which

take the title.

biggest-selling album.

bowed at the top of the charts in 1997.

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Arcade Fire

Mavis Staples

(Merge)

(Anti)

The Suburbs

You Are Not Alone

The Canadian indie rock collective Arcade Fire had grand ambitions in its earliest days, marrying a ramshackle thrift-store aesthetic with choruses that seemed destined to be shouted from the rafters of stadiums by teeming crowds of people. The plan succeeded—the anthemic “Wake Up,” from the band’s lauded debut Funeral, was even used during the Super Bowl—but on its second full-length, 2007’s Neon Bible, the band turned inward. With the Suburbs, however, the Arcade Fire is once again grasping for the attention of the masses, perhaps because reaching out is a natural reaction to the isolation that, for some kids, seems to come with living in subdivisions and gated communities. The Suburbs is an album for long drives through half-finished housing developments, for cars stuffed with teenagers staring at the sky, wondering what else the world might hold. The dreams expressed in the lyrics often involve little more than catching a glimpse of the world beyond the cul-de-sac: “Let’s go downtown and watch the modern kids / Let’s go downtown and talk to the modern kids,” frontman Win Butler sings on “Rococo,” a grandiose track that’s draped in swooping strings and pleading electric guitars. But as anyone who’s made it out of an isolating experience knows, even the briefest glimpses and conversations can have seismic effects on the needs and wants of people with hampered vistas. That yearning for a new life reaches its breaking point on “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” a pulsing dance track that recalls new wave pioneers Blondie, shape-shifting singer Kate Bush and the chilly Swedish electronic outfit the Knife all at once. Vocalist Régine Chassagne sings of ambitions crushed by the drudgery of the everyday, but they’re not as snuffed-out as they seem. “They heard me singing and they told me to stop,” she trills, her direct defiance serving as its own sign of ultimate triumph. (MJ)

june

Actor-turned-rapper Drake releases his

Mavis Staples is a septuagenarian who sounds as committed as ever when making a new album. For five decades, both solo and with her famous family, Staples has been blurring the lines between soul, R&B, gospel and folk music. She recognizes that, though they might occupy separate racks in the record store, and in listener’s minds, these genres are more alike than not. Her church-reared voice, cut with a hint of the roadhouse, sounds at home with all of them. She handles booming protest songs just as well as tender ballads. (Often she’ll sing the protest songs as if they really were ballads all along.) She also has a knack for choosing young producers who can bring her music into the present without totally abandoning the long and hard-won tradition behind it. Of course “young” is a relative term when you’re talking about an artist who’s 71. Her collaborator on You Are Not Alone, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, is 43, which means he’s put in plenty of work himself at this point. Plus Tweedy’s always been a traditionalist, even with Wilco’s occasional forays into experimental art-rock, and You Are Not Alone is a very traditional album, closer to the bluesy swing of the albums Staples was releasing 40 years ago than anything currently playing on R&B radio. The arrangements are lean and a little rough-in-the-good-way—the guitar isn’t flashy, but it also isn’t polite—and the band sounds like they’d be equally at home Mavis Staples on a bar’s bandstand or behind the pulpit. Tweedy also knows when to soften things up, as on Staples’ cover of Randy Newman’s “Losing You,” where the singer proves that a little experience goes a long way when trying to put across the pain of a broken heart. (JH)

august

Eminem’s Recovery debuts at No. 1 after

“Mine,” the plaintive first single from

Billboard announces that 4.95 million al-

Kanye West announces G.O.O.D.

selling 741,000 copies

Thank Me Later, which goes

in its first week out. The

Speak Now, is rush-re-

week ending August 15,

one free song online every

on to sell 447,000 copies in

sales tally is the highest

leased to radio after leaking

making it the worst week

Friday until Christmas.

its first week of release.

single-week sales total

online two weeks before its

for album sales since the

The first track in the series,

since October 2008, when

planned release date.

start of the SoundScan era

the sprawling “Monster,”

in 1991.

is a collaboration between

784,000 copies.

bums were sold during the

brooding debut album

AC/DC’s Black Ice scanned

Taylor Swift’s third album

Fridays, his plan to release

West, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj and singer-songwriter Justin Vernon.

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Janelle Monáe

The Rolling Stones

The ArchAndroid

Exile on Main Street (Deluxe Version)

(Atlantic)

The ArchAndroid is the debut album from Atlanta singer Janelle Monáe, but the scope and ambition of the record suggest that it’s the work of someone who’s been honing her art for years. A concept album with a futuristic bent could have been a disaster, something that turns into bad prog rock very quickly. Instead, The ArchAndroid defies pigeonholing. It’s based in funk and soul, but that grounding doesn’t prevent Monáe from scooping up the past 50 years of popular music and flinging styles around with abandon. “Tightrope” is jittery James Brown-inspired funk; “Wondaland” is spacy pop that recalls Esquivel and other titans of the exotica era; and the epic “Mushrooms and Roses” plays the scuzz of Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On against a choir of voices that seem to have been heaven-sent. There’s a sense of glee to The ArchAndroid that’s palpable even on the record’s more staid tracks. Perhaps it’s because listening to an album that’s so ambitious, yet so effectively realized, is a supremely satisfying and ever-more-rare experience for a listener. Or another emotion could be at work here. After all, for a record that’s all about the rise of the machines, The Archandroid sure is full of heart. That’s not an accident, either. Since the release of this album’s teaser EP, the Metropolis Suite, there’s been a meticulousness to every detail of Monáe’s persona, from the songcraft to her siren-like voice to the impeccable suits she wears onstage. It’s an effect that could only be accomplished by someone who’s both fascinated by the idea of planting her artistic flag and head-over-heels with the notion of making a personal connection with each member of her audience. (MJ)

(Universal)

This is a bit of a cheat, of course. Exile on Main Street is one of the all-time great rock albums—raunchy and tender, confessional and theatrical, full of grownup regret and the band’s last burst of youthful energy. It would slay the competition in most any year since it was first released back in 1972. But when it comes to reissues, this was undoubtedly the year’s best. It was also, infamously, an album that initially dismayed critics: What happened to the rollicking, snotty, devil-may-care, fighting-in-the-streets Stones? Over time, though, Exile revealed greater feeling (and pain) than many thought the Stones had in them. Before Exile, Mick Jagger was many things—jester, lothario, every parent’s nightmare—but few except his own mother would have called him “sensitive.” Yet while “Rocks Off ” sounded like the band that’d once barreled through sardonic good-times anthems like “Get Off My Cloud,” albeit weighted with the knowledge of what happens to body and mind alike after tenyears of hard partying, the rest of Exile felt like the Stones asking “what’s the point?” while not entirely ready to give up on rock The Rolling Stones ’n’ roll. The music snarls, but only because the band’s been so bruised. Exile exists in a strange space between regret and defiance. The reissue appends almost an album’s worth of unreleased or under-heard songs from the Exile sessions, many of which are as good as anything on the original LP. Even the alternate takes are revelatory, the guitar pushed way up to the front of the mix, which has the effect of turning “Loving Cup” and “Soul Survivor” from brass-tinged R&B songs to snarling country music. The second disc allows you to look at Exile in a whole new way, showing just how hard the Stones worked to create an album that exudes such an off-the-cuff, on-the-edge-of-running down feeling. (JH)

september

Eminem and Jay-Z kick off the “Home

october

Lady Gaga wins eight Moon Men statuettes—

and Home” concert series,

including the Video of the

during which they’ll play four cameo-studded con-

Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler and

After flooding during massive rainstorms

Nominations for the American Music

diva Jennifer Lopez are

in the spring of 2010, the

Awards are announced,

Year award for her hyper-

introduced as the newest

Grand Ole Opry House in

with Eminem and Lady

stylized “Bad Romance”

American Idol judges. They

Nashville reopens its doors.

Gaga leading the pack. For

certs—two each at baseball

video—at the MTV Video

replace Simon Cowell, Kara

During the gala concert,

the first time, the nomina-

stadiums in their respec-

Music Awards in Los An-

DioGuardi and Ellen De-

singer Blake Shelton is

tions are culled from data

tive hometowns of Detroit

geles. Gaga accepts the

Generes; the only original

invited to be the next mem-

using BigChampagne’s

and New York.

VOTY award while wearing

judge remaining is pro-

ber of the 85-year-old Opry.

Ultimate Chart, which

a dress made of meat and

ducer and former Journey

incorporates data from

matching meat-accessories.

bassist Randy Jackson.

social networks and musicstreaming sites, in addition to the traditional information on sales and airplay. needle

ELTON JOHN/LEON RUSSELL THE UNION Produced by T Bone Burnett. Recorded live in the studio with Elton and Leon on duelling pianos, the album features a variety of musical genres from R&B, soul, gospel, country, pop and rock. Icons Neil Young and Brian Wilson provide guest vocals, along with legendary R&B organist Booker T. Jones, steel guitarist Robert Randolph and a 10-piece gospel choir.

THE SECRET SISTERS Executive produced by T Bone Burnett. Sibling duo Laura & Lydia Rogers perform classics from Hank Williams, Buck Owens, George Jones and more. “Alabama sisters call in T Bone Burnett for killer roots debut. Laura and Lydia Rogers sound like something dreamed up by NPR… the album mixes country, folk and classic pop… they make you believe, for three minutes or so, the lie that music was purer and better way back when.” – Rolling Stone “Utterly endearing… a sound that harkens back to an era of musical artists like The Everly Brothers.” – LA Times

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/music

Talking it Out

Taylor Swift discovers what she’s learned about life and love on her third album / by Karen Bliss

think, as far as love is concerned, it’s all gonna be a different shade of

wrong until it’s right,” says Taylor Swift down the phone line from Nashville, Tennessee. ¶ That simple statement sounds as if it would make the perfect lyric, but the country-pop singer whose first two albums sold more than 13 million together is just talking naturally, answering a question about the inspiration behind the song “Mine” from her third and newest release, Speak Now. “Write that down,” she’s told. “Okay,” she laughs, before returning to her thought. “As far as that song goes, I wanted to tell a story about a real relationship and how I see that and how it’s not perfect and how it’s not going to be smooth sailing when it eventually happens. There are going to be times when you doubt it, but that’s when, with the right relationship, the person steps in and says, ‘Don’t doubt this.’” “You were in college working part time waiting tables / Left a small town never looked back / I was a flight risk with a fear of falling / Wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts / I say can you believe it? / As we’re lying on the couch / The moment I could see it / Yes, yes I can see it now,” she sings in the first verse. From there, Taylor — who penned all the songs on Speak Now by herself — manages to write about an entire relationship in one song, not just one incident or one emotion, but the ups and downs, the long haul. In “Mine,” every line counts, the pacing of how the story unfolds in each verse and chorus important: “Flash forward and we’re taking on the world together” to “You put your arm around me for the first time” to “And I remember that fight, 2:30 a.m.” back to “You said I remember how we felt sitting by the water.” “I’m really happy you said that,” Swift says. “That 14

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really makes me happy because I appreciate that you noticed all of that. That song, ‘Mine,’ is about me visualizing what it would be like if I found a relationship that felt safe. I think we’re all a product of our past relationships and what we know so far is all we know. “So if you’ve been hurt before by love or seen people get hurt by love enough times, you stop running into it head first, you know what I’m saying? And the way that we can become cautious when it comes to approaching love, I think what I am looking for, and what would make me stop doing that and stop running away from things, would be finding someone who made me feel so safe, someone who would run after me and say, ‘No, I’m not going anywhere; you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not anybody that you’ve known before and we’re going to be different.’” Swift has only just turned 21 (December 13) but speaking with her, she has a maturity and insight that is really quite unusual for someone her age. Some people, let alone artists, can’t put into words their thoughts, feelings, observations, motivations, but Swift does so very easily. She has, in all fairness, been a working girl since the age of 12, expressing herself through songwriting and being around other musicians and producers more than twice her age. “I’m very verbal about how I feel, just hanging out with friends or talking to someone that I have feelings for, but in certain intense situations where you want to say something that is very important to you, growing up you learn that if you say something stupid, people are gonna laugh at you, or if you say too much you’re going to get rejected, or if you put yourself out there too much someone’s gonna walk away from you,” she says. “So with sentiments like ‘I actually love you’ or ‘Actually I’m sorry’ or ‘I thought that I could trust you, but I can’t,’ or ‘I miss you and I want you back,’ those are all scenarios where I don’t say those things for fear of one thing or another.” Instead, Swift puts them in songs.

Speak Now is available now from Open Road Recordings.

She’s been doing that since the age of 12. Growing up in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, she regularly sang at public events from state fairs to the U.S. Tennis Open and as early as 11 went to she Nashville armed with a demo tape of her singing karaoke covers. But the following year she had picked up the 12-string guitar and was writing her own material. Two years later, her family moved to Nashville, where she signed a publishing deal with Sony / ATV Tree Publishing at 14 and a record deal at 15 with the newly formed Big Machine. Swift was an immediate success. Her 2006 selftitled debut album, produced by another newcomer Nathan Chapman (with whom she has worked ever since), spent 24 weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. country chart and eventually sold more than four million copies worldwide. The 2008 follow-up, Fearless, was even bigger, selling close to 9 million copies. Speak Now will likely do similar business. It is about experiences she’s had over the last two years. “The album is about all of these moments in life where I’ve walked away from situations and realized two minutes too late exactly what I should have said,” Swift explains. “There’s a song called ‘Back To December’ that’s the only song that —Taylor swift I’ve ever written that’s

“

The album is about all of these moments in life where I’ve walked away from situations and realized two minutes too late exactly what I should have said.”

been an apology. There’s a song called ‘Story of Us’ which is about running into an ex boyfriend at a public event and feeling like you’re standing alone in a crowded room — that’s actually one of the lines in the song. And there’s a song called ‘Speak Now,’ where I realized the moment at a wedding where the preacher says, ‘If anyone thinks these two shall not wed, speak now or forever hold your peace,’ I saw a big metaphor in that, about all the times that we don’t speak up and then, at the last minute we finally say everything.” Swift doesn’t have to work another day in her life. That’s the truth. At 21, she is a multi-millionaire. Forbes magazine estimated her pay from June 1 2009 to June 1 2010 at $45 million, taking into account her 100 live dates (grossing $54 million), retail and download sales and endorsements with Sony and CoverGirl. So what keeps her motivated? “I think with me, I just always try to be very realistic. Everything that I know and everything that I know about the music industry, or any industry in general, is that it’s best to be competitive with yourself; and it’s best to work as hard as you possibly can if you want to keep what you have,” Swift says. “Hard work is really sort of fun for me because I get to write all my own songs and it makes me care more, which makes me want to work harder which is this cycle which fuels itself.” needle

/music

One Day at a Time Eminem takes his comeback in stride

/ by Gary Graff

minem would be justified in busting out with a big boast or

two about the showing of his seventh album, Recovery, this year. The set, which quickly followed the Detroit rapper’s successful 2009 comeback album Relapse, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, and held the top spot for seven non-consecutive weeks. It spun off a pair of chart-topping singles—“Not Afraid” and “Love the Way You Lie” with Rihanna—and netted a pair of MTV Video Music Awards and five American Music Awards nominations, including Artist of the Year.

Eminem is not interest in thumping his chest—he was, after all, the top-selling artist of the ’00s, moving more than 78 million albums—and instead offers a more modest assessment of his recent successes. “I’m obviously happy with the way that people have received the album,” he says from his studio in suburban Detroit. “As far as what I’ve accomplished with it, I don’t know. I’m just happy to be here. I’m happy to be able to have a career as long as I’ve had. I feel truly blessed to be in the game as long as I’ve been in it.” That career was in some degree of jeopardy before Relapse. In 2005, the rapper was laid low by an addiction to painkillers and sleeping pills, checking himself into a hospital for rehab and subsequently suffering a methadone overdose in 2007. He also suffered through a second divorce from his wife, Kim, and the shooting death of his close friend, DeShaun “Proof” Holton. By the time Eminem was finally sober in the spring of 2008—with acknowledged help from good pal Elton John—there was plenty of wreckage to sift through, including his relationship with his daughter, 14-year-old Hailie. (He also helps raise a teenage niece and his ex-wife’s younger daughter.) “This whole recovery process has been a learning process for me,” 16

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he says. “As I’ve gone through it, I’ve kind of changed as a person over time. There were a lot of baby steps that led to bigger and bigger things... but just finding my footing again, that was a journey in itself.” Recovery, however, has put him back on track both commercially and artistically—more so than Relapse, which he considers “kind of flat, emotionally”—and he’s hoping what comes next is even better. Recovery introduced a team of new producers and collaborators to Eminem’s universe, and he still spends “probably about five days a week” in the studio, which means he can drop new music just about any time he wants. “Basically, man, I try to stay busy,” he explains. “I just make music and always like to write just to stay mentally on my game. I’m kind of taking everything as it comes, like a step at a time, and seeing what the next thing’s gonna be. I haven’t really planned too far ahead as far as what I’m going to do next or whatever. We’ll just see.”

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/music

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

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.”

/music

Boom Times

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

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

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.”

/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.”

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.”

/music / the_playlist

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the_playlist

Post-Rock

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

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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.

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

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.

needle

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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Gorillaz

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

/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,

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

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

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.

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.

/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

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

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. 45

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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

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. 46

* 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

S 48

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Stan Michna

Five Memorable Criterions of 2010 Choosing the best Criterions is like choosing which ex-wife was best at… no, wait.

Make that, choosing which is your favourite child; or, cutest kitten in the shelter; or, hottest vampire ever. In any case, except as a grammatical rule of extreme comparison of adjectives or adverbs, “best” is a hopelessly ramified term. So let me approach this year’s profligately bountiful releases this way: First, by limiting them to English-language films only (one of the selections is silent, but—as Foghorn Leghorn might say, “Get your glove higher, son. Joke comin’ over your head”— silent in English). More crucially, single out those films with resonance, whose engagement with the viewer’s emotions and/or intellect linger, sometimes disturbingly, long after the credits have rolled. Films that stick in the gut and poke at the brain. Listed alphabetically and chosen purely subjectively: Bigger Than Life (1956) may be the most subversive jeremiad of the 1950s. When James Mason bellows, “Well, God was wrong!” the blasphemous echo rattles more than pulpits. From the sanctity of family life to the dirty little secret of entrenched classism, supposedly solid institutional foundations on which America was built teeter under director Nicholas Ray’s baleful eye. And while he’s at it—by chronicling the alarming side-effects of cortisone, then touted as a miracle drug—Ray manages simultaneously to foretell the sinister control over people’s lives Big Pharma was soon to achieve. An unappreciated, if alarming, treasure. Black Narcissus (1947) is the eye-popping, mesmerizing creation of Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and cinematographer Jack Cardiff, arguably the most influential, idiosyncratic and daring mainstream filmmaking team of the sound era. This tale of emotionally ill-equipped young nuns opening a hospital in an abandoned seraglio in the Himalayas, gradually succumbing to its sensually intoxicating atmosphere, pushed hard against the era’s prevailing moral orthodoxy. The ensuing outrage— horny nuns!—missed the point (Kathleen Byron’s sex-crazed, homicidal frenzy notwithstanding), as do those today who fail to recognize that the film is as much about clashing civilizations as clashing emotions. Far from dated, Black Narcissus is timeless. Make Way For Tomorrow (1937), is the movie for which Leo McCarey claimed he should have won the Best Director Oscar (he won that year, instead, for The Awful Truth). Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore play senior citizens whose house is repossessed, and none of whose five grown children wants them living in their homes. Two of the children agree reluctantly to take one parent each, but tensions soon force the mother into an indigent women’s home for the elderly; and the father cross-country to live with yet another child. Tacitly acknowledging that they’ll probably 50

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never see each other again, the two enjoy one last nostalgic, bittersweet day together. Three hankies. Three hankies and whiskey if your parents are still living. Mystery Train (1989) is lovable oddball director Jim Jarmusch’s homage to the oddballs whose fanatical love for Elvis mocks all logic. Three stories are set mostly in a barely solvent, dumpy hotel in a Memphis defined by the weeds sprouting among rusty railroad tracks. Uniting all the characters—two obsessed Japanese tourists, a pair of loopy women and their dysfunctional circle, and the exotic goofballs running the hotel—is total oblivion to reality around them. But then, what is reality when a ghostly deus ex machina-like Elvis appears? Or Screamin’ Jay Hawkins sings a little number? Jarmusch is the only filmmaker alive who can bring to the screen the honoured tradition of the picaresque novel. (Probably the only one who knows what it is, too.) Goofy doesn’t come sweeter.

3 Silent Classics By Josef von Sternberg features films made just on the cusp of sound, when technical achievements were at their zenith, but before Sternberg’s fetishistic obsession with Marlene Dietrich began. Though each has its this-is-a-masterpiece champions, Underworld (1927) is the most influential, creating the template for every gangster movie ever made. In his book Legs, William Kennedy has real-life, prohibitionera gangster Legs Diamond going to see Underworld for tips on how to dress and behave. And apparently Diamond wasn’t unique among fellow gangsters, precursors to a later generation of mobsters who took their cues from The Godfather. Artistic greatness is always assured when real-life criminals begin to imitate art. And two to look forward to . . . Videodrome (1982): The Blu-ray release of David Cronenberg’s eerily prescient examination of pornography and technology, and—a recurring Cronenberg theme—the dangerous dichotomy between appearance and reality. Night Of The Hunter (1955): Crazy preacher Robert Mitchum’s tattooed knuckles (L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E) are only one of many memorable images in the only film ever directed by Charles Laughton. Extras include one of filmdom’s Holy Grails: actual footage of Laughton giving on-set directions. Questions or comments? Email stan@sunriserecords.com

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NOVEMBER 2

10 Things I Hate About You Abba: Gold Singles AC/DC In Performance Adriatic Sea of Fire Afterlife Experiments Alice Cooper: Theatre of Death Angelina Jolie Triple Feature Anthrax/Megadeth/Metallica: Big 4 Live From Sofia Bulgaria Anywhere But Here Bad Ass Beatles in America Behind the Lines Behind the Wall Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete Series Beverly Hills 90210: Tenth Season Bing Crosby Collection Bing Crosby: White Christmas Bob Dylan: Masterpieces Bon Jovi: Classic Live Performances Bruce Willis Triple Feature Cadfael Collection Carmelo’s Way Cars Toon: Mater’s Tall Tales Celine Centurion Cher: The Film Collection Chitty Chitty Bang Bang 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 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 Diva Doctor Who: Return of the Cybermen Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis – The Extended Version Douglas Fairbanks Collection Dragon Hunter Earth: Final Conflict Season 5 Edge of Never First Time Flipping Out Season 1 Follow the River/The Inheritance For Sale by Owner Frank Sinatra Concert Collection Fugitive: The Fourth and Final Season Vol. 1 Ganz Schon Turbulent 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

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In Old Claiente Infideles John Gray: Laughter in Black + White Just Stick It In 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: 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 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

NOVEMBER 9

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)

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 V: The Complete First Season Vampire Diary What Lies Beneath Winnebago Man Wow: World of Disney WWE: Hell in a Cell 2010 X Games: Evolution of Skate ZZ Top: Rockpalast – Deguello Tour

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 Barney: Best Fairy Tales Before Sunrise Bill Moyers: On Faith & Reason Bing Crosby Television Specials 2 Blast From the Past Boondocks: 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 Death of a Snowman Defending Your Life Demolition Man Detroit Metal City Discover Christmas/The Meaning of Christmas Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010 ESPN Films 30 for 30: Two Escobars Fire Down Below Flight of Faith Four-Faced Liar Franny’s Feet: Farmhouse Friends Ghetto Fights 6 Ghetto Stories: The Movie Ghosts of Mississippi God Delusion Debate God on Trial Golden Girls: 25th Anniversary Complete Collection Goodbye Girl 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 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 Presumed Innocent Pursuit of the Graf Spee Ramona and Beezus Red Planet Rio Bravo

NOVEMBER 16

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) 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 Shaolin Rescuers Sherlock: Season One Shinsengumi Chronicles: I Want to Die a Samurai Steven Wilson: Insurgentes Thirtysomething: The Complete Final Season Time Machine TobyMac: Moving Pictures Tony Jaa: Born to Fight Trilogy 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: Sunrises & Sunsets Xam’d: Lost Memories Collection 2 You Lucky Dog Zombie Girl: The Movie

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 Exam Extra Man Eyes Wide Open Fear Me Not Fifth Element 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 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 Monk: Season 1 Monk: Season 2 Monk: Season 3 Monte Walsh Mrs. Miracle National Geographic: Great Migrations 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 Special Ops Spider-Man SpongeBob SquarePants: Legends of Bikini Bottom 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 NOVEMBER 23

2010: Moby Dick 7th Heaven: The Complete Series 7th Heaven: The Final Season 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s Asia: Heat of the Moment: Live Baker Gurvitz Army: Live 1975 Batman Beyond: The Complete Series Beauty and the Beast 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 Drake: Successful Durham County Season 2 Eat Pray Love 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: The Series Vol. 2 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 I’m Still Here In/Significant Others Jazzie Vol. 1 Jesus Guy John Lennon in New York John Scofield: New Morning – The Paris Concert Jolene Justin Bieber: A Star Was Born Katy Perry: Good Girl Gone Bad Lady Gaga: Revealed Lennon Naked Leona Lewis: What Dreams Are Made Of Luftwaffe Bombers: Double Pack Luther Lvoe Shack Matthew Shipp: Solos – The Jazz Sessions Mock Up on Mu Motorhead: Grind Ya Down 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 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 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 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 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?

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Bryn Terfel Carols & Christmas Songs Train Save Me San Fran. (Deluxe) 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 NOVEMBER 9

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 Christmas Bachman-Turner Ov… Icon Barn Own Ancestral Star Bear Hands Burning Bush Supper Club Black Dub Black Dub Bleu Four Dave Brubeck Original Album Classics Buckwheat Zydeco 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 N.E.R.D. Nothing Neu! Neu! 86 Neville Brothers Authorized Bootleg No Doubt Icon Kenny Nolan All Time Greatest Perform… Oak Ridge Boys Icon Ok Go Of the Blue … (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 … Big Picture Smokey Robinson Solo Albums 2 Roscoe Dash Ready Set To Scorpions Icon Silvery Railway Architecture Elliott Smith Introduction to Elliott Smith Soundtrack For Colored Girls Soundtrack The Sound of Music: 45th Anniversary Soundtrack The Tillman Story Statler Brothers Icon

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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 The Powerless Rise Super Deluxe Fan Box Atheist Jupiter Gene Autry The Last Round Up Charles Aznavour Sur Ma Vie Bad Books Bad Books Dave Barnes Very Merry Christmas Count Basie The Big Band Leader 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 …: 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… 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 Cloverseeds The Opening Nat King Cole Central Avenue Breakdown Conjure One Exilarch Corn Farmer Shamus Truth Against the World Patrick Cornelius Fierce Don Cornell I’m Yours Ferry Corsten Once Upon a Night 2 Cradle of Filth Darkly, Darkly, Venus … 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 …: Barcelona Marlene Dietrich Falling in Love Again Dimmu Borgir Stormblast Dio At Donnington 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 30 Seconds to Mars 3D Aborym Dave Allen Mose Allison Alpha Blondy Alpha Blondy Alpha Blondy Alter Bridge Amazing Blondel Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe As I Lay Dying

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 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 … Woody Guthrie Dylan’s 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 Lil Keke 713 the Album Lance Lopez Salvation From Sundown Charlie Louvin The Battle Rages On Loretta Lynn & … 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 … 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 … Oliver Mtukudzi Greatest Hits: (1998-2002) Aaron Neville I Know I’ve Been Changed Nitzer Ebb Industrial Complex No More 7 Years (1979-1986) The Ocean Antropcentric Oceano Contagion B Osborne & Rocky … Memories Ounaskari/Mikkonen Kuara Charlie Parker Chasin’ the Bird Tom Petty & Heart… Damn the Torp. (Deluxe) Kelly Joe Phelps & C … Magnetic Skyline Pimp C The Naked Soul Of Place of Skulls As a Dog Returns Nothing But a Good Time Box Poison 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

Sex on the Beach Ghetto Funk The Perfect Storm O (Disambiguation) Absolutely Rocksteady Break Even Live at the Paradiso April 2007 Vanna The Honest Hearts EP 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 Wise-Magraw How the Light Gets In Wyatt/Atzmon/Ste… For the Ghosts Within Z’ev & Chris Watson East African Nocturne Murray ZGold Doctor Who Series 4: The Specials Zion I Atomic Clock Tsushimamire Ike & Tina Turner Twista Underoath The Uniques United Jazz + Rock … Van Der Graaf Gen…

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) Stand Up and Fight 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 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 Soundtrack I Am Amy Speace Into the New Devon Sproule Live in London Stemm Songs for the Incurable Heart Stray Valhalla 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 Quartz Queensryche

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 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 Loreena McKennitt The Wind That Shakes Method of Defiance Incunabula Necro Die! Bryan Adams Yolanda Adams Alabama Angel Witch

Nelly 5.0 Ocean Colour Scene 21: The Boxset 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 Chris Tomlin And If Our God Is for Us The Up Rising Keith Urban Get Closer Stevie Ray Vaughan Double Play Hezekiah Walker Double Play The Warlocks Rise and Fall, EP & Rarities The Who Live at Leeds (CD/DVD) 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 Meant to Do Was Klaus Schulze La Vie Electronique 5 Klaus Schulze La Vie Electronique 6 Tabi Bonney Fresh Trademark Da Sky… Supervillain Issue # Trae King of the Streets Vol. 2 Trouble Live Palatine 1989 (CD/ DVD) Trouble Live Schaumburg 1993 (CD/DVD0 Various Artists Total Breakdown Muddy Waters They Called Me Muddy Waters 13th Floor Elevators After the Burian Amorphis As They Sleep Lloyd Banks Lloyd Banks Bell’Aria C Note Cam’ron and Vado

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Paul McCartney Archive Collection

Paul McCartney & Wings Band on the Run The Epic No.1 Album Newly remastered at Abbey Road Studios

Standard CD

Expanded with previously unreleased

180 Gram Double Vinyl

tracks and rare footage

Special 2 CD + 1 DVD Edition Deluxe Collectorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Edition Book 3 CD + 1 DVD Digital Download

www.paulmccartney.com

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Nirvana

Motรถrhead

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Styx

War

Erykah Badu

No Doubt

Barry White

The Cranberries

Vince Gill

Trisha Yearwood

HQT On available titles only, while quantities last.

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Susan Boyle

Paul Potts

The Gift

Cinema Paradiso

Inspirational and breathtaking, ‘The Gift’ is the highly anticipated seasonal album from the top selling international artist Susan Boyle.

The orchestra’s contribution to the soundtrack creates a dramatic and full epic sound. Each track is completely evocative of the film from which it came.

November 9th

Available Now

Rod Stewart

Elvis Presley

The fifth stunning chapter of the Songbook album series is an all-new collection of American classics...it’s Rod’s most danceable Songbook yet!

Viva Elvis is a masterful modernization of classic Elvis hits, described as “the sound Elvis would make if he was recording today.”

Available Now

November 9

Tribute to Loretta Lynn

Pitbull

The Great American Songbook Volume 5

Viva Elvis

Planet Pit

Various Artists

Features the smash-single “Hey Baby (Drop It To The Floor)” featuring T-Pain.

From Carrie Underwood & Garth Brooks, to The White Stripes and Kid Rock, this is one tribute that’s gonna impress one iconic Coal Miner’s daughter.

November 9

NOT ACTUAL ARTWORK

December 7

The Priests

Burlesque

The Priests’ first Christmas album of spiritual, classical and sacred music including “Ding Dong Merrily On High,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Sussex Carol to Silent Night”.

The Brassy Powerhouse is back in the booth Christina Aguilera joins forces with entertainment and pop icon Cher. With twelve soulful tracks that capture the energy of the two pop icons, there’s no doubt this is one of the most anticipated motion picture soundtracks of the year.

November 2

November 16

Neil Diamond

Bob Dylan

Noel

Dreams

Various Artists

The Witmark Demos: Bootleg Series Volume 9

Dreams includes works originally recorded by such legendary artists as The Beatles, The Eagles, Randy Newman, Bill Withers, Leon Russell, Leonard Cohen and more.

The Original Mono Recordings

November 2

Available Now Sunrise

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Glee Volume 4

Glee Christmas

New Directions do their versions of seven legendary “Rocky Horror Picture Show” tracks. Join the Glee Club take on one of the world’s most famous musical soundtracks ever to hit the big screen - prepare to Time Warp.

The holidays aren’t just for the hustle and bustle of the never-ending shopping, or the warm, cozy nights in front of the fireplace. They’re for belting out your favorite holiday jam. The New Directions remind us that the holidays are full of love, joy, and most of all – fun.

Glee Cast

November 30

Glee Cast

NOT ACTUAL ARTWORK

November 16

Kings of Leon

Bruce Springsteen

The follow-up to the hugely successful Only By The Night, which sold over six million copies worldwide and garnered four Grammy Awards. It’s yet another bold and expansive statement by the Nashville, Tennessee-based quartet who, in the last two years, have become one of the biggest bands in the world; also one of the most creatively restless.

An album displaying the versatility of Springsteen – pop opus, superb-soul-based, hilarious, utterly haunting, and fully orchestrated masterpiece – were all adjectives used to describe Springsteen’s The Promise. “There’s no weak card in this album – it’s simply a great listening piece.”

Available Now

November 16

Come Around Sundown

The Promise

Garth Hudson

P!nk

A Canadian Celebration of The Band

Greatest Hits… So Far!!! Greatest Hits…So Far!!! is right. A full album of bad-ass tracks that’ll make you laugh, cry, and scream at the top of your lungs. P!nk’s not going anywhere, and she’s sure to let us know that this is the best – so far.

Almost 35 years after The Last Waltz, original member of The Band, Garth Hudson, rounds up some of Canada’s most talented musicians to celebrate the songs he most enjoyed playing with the legendary group The Band (including a few Bob Dylan songs).

November 16

INXS

Ash Koley Inventions

Original Sin

Their sound is an amalgamation of diverse influences including everything from Abba to the Eurythmics and from Peter Gabriel to Radiohead. The result is a band that is a full embodiment of what they each bring to the duo – quirky charm, and upbeat classic pop music.

Classic INXS songs has re-worked and re-recorded with a wide range of talented singers and artists including Ben Harper, Tricky, Nikka Costa, Rob Thomas, Pat Monahan and JD Fortune.

November 30

Available Now

Ke$ha

Black Dub

7 brand new tracks plus one new remix from the Queen of Trash-Pop.

A trio of well established musicians, focused on one goal – great music. With fans begging the band all over numerous sites for the release of their album, Black Dub has a sound everyone can enjoy.

Cannibal EP

November 22

Black Dub

NOT ACTUAL ARTWORK

November 2

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Cecilia Bartoli Sospiri

Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble Officium Novum

Jonas Kaufmann Verismo

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CHRISTMAS CLASSICS & YULETIDE JAZZ

Nikki Yanofsky Nikki

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Andrea Bocelli My Christmas

The Canadian Tenors The Perfect Gift

Vince Guaraldi A Charlie Brown Christmas

Diana Krall Christmas Songs

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Oscar Peterson The Songbooks 5CD Set

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Miles Davis Miles Davis 10CD Set

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday 10CD Set

Charlie Parker Now’s The Time 10CD Set

Thelonious Monk Thelonious Monk 10CD Set

Alicia De Larrocha Piano Concertos 24-27 2CD Set

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Best of remastered

The best of “Red 1962-1966” 2CD / 26 tracks remastered

The best of “Blue 1967-1970” 2CD / 26 tracks remastered

Includes Yesterday, Help!, She Loves You, A Hard Day’s Night, From Me To You, Love Me Do, Michelle...

Includes: Hey Jude, Let it Be, All You Need is Love, Strawberry Fields Forever, Magical Mystery Tour, Come Together...

Digipack packaging, 32 page booklet, new liner notes, rare photos

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THE BEATLES STEREO BOXED SET! All 13 original albums plus the Past Masters, remastered!

Or get them together! “4 cd pack” “red” + “blue” for a limited time!

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