Posts by markwatters:
No More Time to Pretend: Mixed Congratulations for this Mixed Bag
avril 26th, 2010
You think you know someone, then along comes their sophomore year.
It all began like a bad Disney movie: a couple of Brooklyn freshmen kids, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, sitting around their Wesleyan University dorm room dropping LSD and shootin’ the shit about their favourite jams. “We weren’t [even] trying to start a band », remarked Goldwasser, but what started out as a few laced-out jam sesh’s eventually blossomed into something much more strange. After being signed by Columbia Records and opening for such indie rock titans as Of Montreal, The Flaming Lips and Radiohead, these two psychedelic, electronic, noise-rock aficionados who started off under the title of ‘The Management’ (before realizing the name was already taken), began pumping out the type of genre-bending, pot-addled, hook happy pop tracks that would light up the airwaves for over three years. Indeed, Oracular Spectacular really did prove something of a spectacle and marked MGMT as the unofficial monolith of mainstream-indie electro-pop music. But like all great rags to riches stories, the heroic aura surrounding the band couldn’t burn on forever. And hell, by all rights, there’s a few tell-tale signs that it was never supposed to.
We all should’ve taken a hint on ‘Time to Pretend’ when Goldwasser (half?) sarcastically mused about how they’d “make some music, make some money, find some models for wives”. I’m sure there was some truth to those aspirations, but it was still laden with just enough indie irony (“I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin and f*** with the stars”) to satisfy the hipster skeptics who wanted so badly to believe that these guys really just didn’t give a shit. But that’s the tough thing about populist stardom and fame – what’s perceived as real to some comes off as ‘too weird’ to one end of the spectrum and ‘generic’ to the other. Unlike those hallowed days of the Beatles when good pop music was pretty easily digested by most of the mainstream public, today with such a splintered indie market, it’s near impossible to please everybody with so much of the mainstream running at cross-currents. I guess MGMT must’ve gotten the memo, because on their newest outing, Congratulations, they’ve finally crafted an album that comes down on one side of the fence. The weird one.
To be fair, MGMT – with their glam facepaint and impromptu harpsichord interludes – has always been a tad off-the-wall, but this time around their brand of strange is less ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and more ‘Rock Lobster’. Album opener ‘It’s Working’ tramples into the proceedings with a climbing bassline, loose backbeat jamming and ethereal vocals about dropping ecstacsy, but really never goes anywhere. The song may have been working if I myself had dropped E before listening, but to the unconverted it plays lazy, unmelodic and lacking in any sort of emotional or musical tension whatsoever. This unfortunately, proves the rule for much of the album.
‘Songs for Dan Treacy’ jaunts along with incessantly goofy organ chords like a modern ‘Monster Mash’ (not a compliment) and the equally perplexing homage piece ‘Brian Eno’ channels the atrocious (faux-?)reverence ethos of Aussie wanker Ben Lee’s ‘What Would Jay-Z Do’ and fuses it with a skanky melody that echoes ‘Rock Lobster’ (seriously…not a compliment). Still, the album isn’t entirely without its pleasant surprises: the sweet balladry of ‘Someone’s Missing’ sparkles with an otherwordly melancholic beauty and, after a calculated build-up, crescendoes with ethereal surfer synths that echo yesteryear ‘Electric Feel’. Incidentally, the hauntingly instrumental ‘Lady Dada’s Nightmare’ (which could’ve equally been titled ‘Lady Gaga’s Nightmare’ for how much it betrays mainstream sensibilities) provides perhaps the best glimpse into the sprawling, Flaming Lips-esque psychedelic cinematics that may be in store for MGMT in the years to follow.
These moments, however, are fleeting – for every succinct ‘Someone’s Missing’, Congratulations sports an overwrought, meandering indie-prog opus like ‘Siberian Breaks’. Perpetually trying to strike some elusive balance between My Bloody Valentine shoegaze vocals, Pink Floyd psychedelia and B-52s new-wave schizophrenia, Goldwasser and VanWyngarden’s tour through over three decade of musical influences brings them up short when it comes to wooing the mainstream (and likely most other ’streams’ for that matter). Indeed, if you were among the billions who loved ‘Kids’ and ‘Electric Feel’, this album will likely disappoint and frustrate in equal measures.
That being said, this album wasn’t written for you. Congratulations isn’t a victory lap, nor some sophomore slump on the way to a healthy mainstream recovery – these Brooklyn boys are addicted to the wackness and I’d wager that they have no intention of going clean. To quote the band from a comment made on their website following the release of Congratulations, “We’re not going to buy into any sort of spin, like we’ve turned from an electro-pop duo into a psychedelic rock band, because we feel like we always were a psychedelic rock band and we never were an electro-pop duo.” Touche salesman.
So I guess those of you hipster kids who aren’t cowering in a corner, reeling from the violent rape of your expectations for this album can at least extend a guarded congratulations to a band who, not unlike their psychedelic rock mentors, The Flaming Lips, has recently dared to give a big ‘f*** you’ to the mainstream and write the kind of whacked out fringe fodder that their core psychedelic rock fans always wet dreamed of. For all the rest of you, I’m confident that Empire of the Sun will be coming out with a new album sometime in the next few years.
61/100
Finish Them!: Fang Island Bites Hard into Indie Music Peers
avril 15th, 2010
These New York pranksters have managed to slam together an album which is both euphoric and life-affirming; the type of album that not only re-teaches you how to enjoy feel-good music, but which also re-teaches you how to enjoy a feel-good life.
FOR SEVERAL YEARS SINCE ITS DISCOVERY through a friend, the Onion news has become a hallowed mainstay in my daily activities. Typically between the hours of 14:30 and 16 sharp, when the post-lunch carb-coma starts kicking in, the Onion will weasel its way onto my desktop and into my work schedule, providing a much needed dose of levity between the many inane reports and files. (Personally, I recommend it be prescribed to and by all employers, though I doubt this will catch on.) More to the point though, one Onion article in particular has proven particularly life changing for me and most of the indie music world.
The article was released on March 17, 2004, describing the plans of then U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to host a No-Holds-Barred Martial Arts Tournament (not unlike that demonstrated in the classic movie, video game and all-round worldwide phenomenon, Mortal Kombat) at his remote fortress on the mysterious Fang Island. Though shy and modest in its comedic strokes, this poetic little report caught the attention of one budding Brooklyn indie band whose members were inspired by its whimsical conception of secret island lairs in which wacky, epic misadventures could be staged. And thus the chronicles of indie pop magicians, Fang Island, began.
Basically everything about these guys, not unlike the Onion news itself, is one big joke (I think); though equally similar to another of this generation’s satirical wizards, Steven Colbert, it’s hard to tell if they’re bullshitting you the whole time or not. Beyond their description of their own aesthetic as ‘everyone high-fiving everyone’, their well publicized free concerts in kindergarten classrooms and their outrageous acid-tripping music videos, the songs themselves play like a goddamn fourth of July party. Seriously, album opener, ‘Dream of Dreams’ actually opens with fireworks! (F***ing fireworks!) This is of course right before jubilant chants kick in, shouting, “They are all within my reach/ they are free!”, like an elated nine year old who just saw WALL-E for the first time. If you can’t already tell, I’ve got a lot of time for these guys.
Still, if their ‘high-fiving’ self-description isn’t satisfactory for all you music snob douches out there (of which this publication hosts many) then I’ll sharpen my gaze a bit: Fang Island, the album, channels the type of ‘Party Hard’, dick-wagging moxie that Andrew W.K. would if he traded in his mullet for a Renaissance wig and spent more time with Win Butler listening to old Queen LPs. First single, ‘Daisy’, sounds like a ridiculous fusion of indie pop quirk, crashing Bohemian Rhapsody guitar licks and Mufasa-driven chants from The Lion King OST, for a rousing, jubilant feel-good romp that closes with the telling reproach of yuppie cynics: “Don’t matter what, you will find, on the way to find it/I take my eyes, off the prize, it never was there/Your ideas stick, in the mud, like the trees they are.” Forget the mud though, this jam’ll be stuck in your head for weeks after the first listen!
Perhaps most surprising, however, is the fact that most of the punchlines on the album don’t come from lyrics but from the riffs themselves. In fact, true to honest post-punk form, most of the songs have very few lyrics, if any. ‘Careful Crossers’, for instance, which directly follows album opener ‘Dream of Dreams’ is almost three minutes of shucking and jiving power chords that jump around like a new puppy who just found his master’s Snickers stash. The only difference is that the song doesn’t die in the end, so much as explode into the above-mentioned ‘Daisy’. Similarly, the mostly word-less victory lap of ‘Sideswipers’ seems as if it would only be complete played alongside videos of Optimus Prime round-housing Megatron into a volcano. Oh, and its homage to John Cougar Mellencamp’s ‘Jack and Diane’ makes the original sound like a slow jam by Bryant Gumbel.
All in all, these New York pranksters have managed to slam together an album which is both euphoric and life-affirming; the type of album that not only re-teaches you how to enjoy feel-good music, but which also re-teaches you how to enjoy a feel-good life. As already suggested above, their infectious anthems evoke archetypical images of triumph and victory: Maverick running flybys with Goose; Frank the Tank ‘doing one more’; Gandalf mowing down an entire army of Orcs in an M1 Abrams tank. God dammit, these guys know how to party and we should consider ourselves f***ing honoured to be invited along for the ride!
I think it’s safe to say that Fang Island, which was voted the #1 most buzzed about band at last March’s SXSW music festival, and whose album is apparently in contention for ‘Best Debut of the Year’, will become a mainstay soundtrack for any keg party, Mortal Kombat tournament/re-creation, or fireworks spectacle this summer. Furthermore, I can sleep easy now, knowing that even if my bosses one day block the Onion news due to abuse and indiscriminate time mismanagement, I’ll still have the Fang on my ipod to bring that special ray of retardedly bright sunlight into an otherwise prizeless workday.
87/100
Golden Archipelago Escapes the Flood
avril 3rd, 2010
Islands are disappearing at an alarming rate these days. Seriously. The other day I read in The Economist that The Maldives and Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Island (among several others) will be gone before most of us our kids have a chance to learn about them in school. Oh, and apparently Haiti’s going to get hit again. Sobering stuff, right? The flood waters are rising on the old days of isolation, but not just because of global warming. Oh no, it’s global everything. That same Economist edition featured, without a hint of melancholic irony, the obituary of J.D. Salinger – a great island of a man who apparently kept his oasis afloat until his very last breath. That just kills me.
All that being said, from time to time, islands still do appear – almost as if out of nowhere – to surprise us all. These islands take many forms: some are reclusive men who try to cloister themselves from the blustering swells of the world around; some are tiny plots of land off in the middle of the ocean; some are structures in society that stubbornly resist the effects of ravenous global capitalism, and some are thirty-eight minute long sonic escapes from the monotony of daily toil. Shearwater’s Golden Archipelago, follow-up to 2008’s critically acclaimed Rook, represents a sort of meditation on all four.
If you’re unfamiliar with Shearwater, you may initially be struck by how much these dudes sound like early Elbow or recent Okkervil River. You’ll be even more surprised to discover that the former is a total sonic coincidence and the latter is virtue of the fact that Shearwater is actually a side project of the same introspective Austin, Texas boys that brought us such critically lauded gems as Black Sheep Boy and Stage Names. If you are familiar with these guys, you shouldn’t be surprised to discover that this side-project, just as with another side-project formed by a fellow North American indie band, has released one of the best concept albums of the past several years. Though, rather than focusing their thematic crosshairs upon silver moons, nightingales and dragonslaying as did Montreal’s Sunset Rubdown (side project of also critically lauded indie sweethearts, Wolf Parade) on their outstanding 2009 release, Dragonslayer, Shearwater has gone after a bigger kind of kill (or smaller depending on how you look at it) and decided to tackle islands. That’s right, islands.
In the beginning, through the efforts of the Beatles with Sgt Pepper’s and that of the Beach Boys with Pet Sounds in the 60s, the concept album came to represent a sort of rejection of the canned 3-minute pop song and a return to the deep, long sweeping epics of old. It spoke not only to the audience that preferred continuity on their records but to those who wanted more of a story, than just a musical distraction in their daily musical mix. A decade later, pissed off punkers came into the fold and labelled the rock opuses of Pink Floyd and the like to be bloated pieces of pretentious shite, thus making it a little less cool to sit back in your basement listening to The Wall for an hour with your headphones on. The ebbs and flows of popular demand have since seen the concept album crash in and out of style to the point where today, it’s not so much out of style, as just not particularly in demand by the mainstream. Once again, most artists are back to the game where they’re expected to say a hell of a lot in a very short period of time, making the concept album something of a white whale in the modern music industry.
So, thank God for side-projects. The ’side-project’ has, throughout the years, come to represent a safe and solid outlet for musicians to air their most art-house laundry without alienating the fans of their original projects. It’s like having a serious day job that pays the bills and a night job as an actor (no offence actor, but seriously?). As such, it’s little surprise that we find modern side-projects releasing some of the most avant-garde and experimental music of our generation. The only surprise is how goddamn great most of it really is.
Golden Archipelago opens with the arcane chants of what sounds like a Hawaiian island tribe before flowing into acoustic strums and the falsetto’d cooes of frontman Johnathan Meiburg. And flow is definitely the right word (not only in context with the whole island theme either): the arrangement of the album is so cohesive and the transition between songs – emotional and musical – so smooth, that it feels as if each song was recorded in order and the album built organically from the ground up.
With the haunting fadeout of slow-burn album opener, ‘Meridian’, we’re led into the blustering horn intro of ‘Black Eyes’: a pounding piano riff kicks in and a thunderous drum beat comes crashing through as Meiburg conjures up the the kind fire and brimstone fantasy imagery that would make Robert Plant blush. The rousing stomp trickles into the melancholic, cathartic swoon of ‘Landscape at Speed’ and resolves the arrangement with emotional resonance and a boatload of gusto.
These first three songs play like a triptych suite – a neatly packaged sampler of the controlled chaos to follow on Golden Archipelago. Ultimately, just about everything (with the exception of the puzzling ‘God Made Me’) finds its balance and counterpoint on this record; whether or not intentional, the melodies and crescendos really do flood in like the swells of a tide and dissolve just as quickly. The rest of the album proceeds in this fashion with it thunderous highs and its simmering canyons, taking a chance here and there to go outside expected convention and really shine.
Still beyond the immaculate construction and content of the record, it should be noted that it’s also a meticulously layered sonic experience: Meiburg’s voice sounds as clear as ever and his musical range, perhaps even more pronounced. You can almost hear the twang of strings being plucked and the thunder of percussion in a way that a keyboard mixer just can’t re-create. The addition of acoustic instruments for texture since the release of Rook is notable in the warm base that it provide to all the proceedings and the use of marimbas plays less like a trite gimmick than a bona fide homage. All in all, despite its extraordinary production, this island feels more like an authentic tropical escape than just a slick all-inclusive resort.
It’s important that I clarify something at this point: it’s no mere coincidence that I mention Sunset Rubdown’s Dragonslayer in comparison to Golden Archipelago; while Shearwater’s most recent outing may lack the levity and whimsy of Spencer Krug’s latest ‘party’ (his words, not mine), they certainly share the same sense of epic and romantic escapism that constitute some of indie music’s most beloved treasures. Indeed, those of you who cherished Arcade Fire’s Funeral for its heartbreakingly enduring optimism and capacity to find disarming beauty in the face of a devastating reality, will find the same love for this confident little record, far removed from the sea of its peers. To be sure, this is an album not simply about islands, but about their isolation, simplicity and freedom from the madness of a world that tries to package and control them.
As I write this review, the Caribbean sea is breaching Havana’s Malecón promenade and flooding into lower Vedado. No sir, islands certainly won’t be around forever and I daresay we should enjoy them while they still last. God knows that in a world of finite frontiers and disquietingly reliable GPS, it’s very difficult to tread new ground or discover uncharted territory. But not entirely impossible. And so while Meiburg’s work here may not represent a brand new world or even a re-imagining of old tropes like some of his contemporaries, it still represents a beautifully and meticulously constructed raft towards whatever new islands may be found for Shearwater and our sonic pallets on the horizon.
81/100
Broken Bells: Caring’s Still Creepy, but these Jams be just Fine
mars 27th, 2010It seems that caring eventually proved too creepy for The Shins after all. In Spring 2009, The Shins keyboardist Marty Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandova took the high road (or low, depending on with whom you’re speaking with from the troupe) and made tracks, leaving the band a very different beast from the indie titans that pumped out the type of jangle-pop gems that led an epileptic Natalie Portman to proclaim that the band would ‘change your life (I swear)’ in the shy, little 2005 breakout, Garden State. And it’s very likely that the band did change a life or two, not least that of frontman James Mercer.
Today, Mercer seems a much less obscure, but far more uncertain figure in the indie music limelight – a somewhat begrudging shift that is exemplified perhaps nowhere better than on his newest side-project outing Broken Bells with R&B/hip-hop wunderkind, Brian Joseph Burton, (better known by his stage name, DJ Danger Mouse).
Now, I’m not certain if this is Mercer’s attempt at some sort of atonement, but if so, it’s something of a puzzling paradox; typically when you’re trying to make amends to a jilted ex you don’t do so with your new beau hanging off your arm – especially if the rebound is the prettiest girl at the prom. Nevertheless, this odd coupling is actually something of a pleasant surprise and has managed to cobble together a surprising and poignant collection of song about loss, longing and redemption that will likely prove to be one of the best jams this year.
The outstanding opener ‘High Road’ kicks off with a waning, bluesy synth before dropping the beat and trading in the wily Mercer who penned ‘Know Your Onion!’ for a far more world-wearied crooner. The music video for this track features the two collaborators, bruised and battered, wandering alone along a dark highway, assumedly survivors in the fallout of some unspecified apocalypse. Thing is, even in the face of the end, they never stop walking.
That’s the thing about this album. Even when Mercer’s falsettoe’d pre-chorus apathetically implores us to ‘come on and get the minimum’ we can’t help but feel these are the dejected musings of a jaded optimist who still doesn’t entirely believe his own line. The haunting ‘Vaporize’ thrusts onwards with little more than an acoustic guitar, a drum loop, organ chimes and Mercer’s soul-slicked cries to paint a portrait of an unfulfilled live and the hope of redemption. Indeed, this record may be far more ‘Dangergloom’ than it is ‘Dangerdoom’, but still sparkles through with undercurrents of such heartbreaking optimism and idealistic hope for a ‘dawn to end all nights’ that we can’t help but jump onboard and walk alongside these two wandering souls.
The next two songs bring Mercer and Burton back into their respective comfort zones: the ethereal echoing harmonies of ‘Your Head is on Fire’ likely wouldn’t have felt entirely out of place as a B-side on The Shins’ previous outing Wincing the Night Away, while the subsequent ‘The Ghost Inside’ rings like an upbeat throwback to Burton’s days mixing on the Gorillaz’s Demon Days and would make an interesting listen alongside ‘Kids With Guns’. In a sense, the two tracks serve as a nostalgic reflection of what ‘used to be’ for these soul-searching troubadours before delving back onto their new road.
The gorgeous, gothic ‘Sailing to Nowhere’, whose title pretty much says it all, continues the romantic ride off into some faraway sunset (albeit, a sun that may not rise again in the morning); its swelling synths ebb and flow for much of the track before drowning Mercer out and giving way to tinkling pianos and sweeping strings that wash everything away. ‘Trap Doors’, on the other hand, while perhaps the catchiest and most straighforward pop song in the proceedings (in sound and structure), presents few moments of surprise or gravitas, but leads nicely into the dynamic, soul-slicked piano stomp, ‘Float’.
Still, perhaps the greatest surprise on the album is the synth-storming ‘Citizen’; a downright creepy jam that echoes the haunting female harmonies of Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife and crashes along with the urgency of a paranoid Midwesterner piling into a fallout bunker. (And with lyrics about suffering mothers, broken culture, and seeping ‘tiny vengeful lives’ I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly the imagery Mercer and Burton were shooting for). ‘The Waiting Game’ jaunts along like the lazy cousin of The Organ’s ‘Brother’ (sorry), sporting a few fun, but ultimately fleeting tricks throughout the midsection, while album closer, ‘The Mall and the Misery’ opens like a hidden track from the Kill Bill Volume 2 soundtrack before abruptly shifting into a somewhat less interesting post-punk shakedown.
The album closes with Mercer’s final telling revelation: “I know what I know/ But nothing will fill the hole/ So let your mind go (Let my mind go)”. The verdict is still out on whether Mercer been able to manage that last bit, but it’s clear that this cathartic and solid little collection is a big step on the high road to recovery for the old indie heavyweight and just about anybody else who’s got an axe to grind with the powers that be – musical or otherwise.
83/100
Similes for me
mars 3rd, 2010I’ve never actually been to Pandora, but I highly suspect that 
wherever it is, those wacky blue giants listen to Eluvium all day long. Yes, I recognize that, in reality, James Cameron hired some other dink named James Horner (Titanic, Aliens, The Terminator, The Abyss) to re-create the sonic serenity of Pandora, but we all know that he and Cameron were just a couple of wide-eyed tourists on that big green rock compared to us bonafide anthropologists suffering from Post-Pandora Withdrawal (PPW…seriously, check it in the DSM-IV). Well, the bad news is that most of us lacking a history of mental illness and/or access to intense barbiturates will likely never actually visit Pandora, but the good news is that Eluvium’s newest album, Similes, is just about the next best thing.
I was first introduced to Eluvium back in February 2007 with the release of their forth ambient electronica album, Copia, which I picked up before leaving on a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Solid combination, right? I sustained a violent sunburn after falling into a five-hour oceanside trance in the 32-degree sun listening to Copia on loop and enjoyed several more entranced hours healing and peeling in my hotel room for the remaining days. Still, I learnt a valuable lesson on that trip about combining ambient music, alcohol and prolonged sun exposure and also walked away with that album’s angelic swells tattooed to the back of my brain. So much so, that when I saw Avatar for the first time, I didn’t actually hear much of what anybody was saying over the sweeping strings of Matthew Cooper’s orchestral arrangements in my head. (The second, third and twelfth time, I actually followed the dialogue…though I wish I hadn’t).
Listening to Eluvium has always sort of been like having a warm, chubby Buddha snuggle you for about an hour – all without saying a goddamn word. Now, with the release of Similes, it’s like having him snuggle you for about an hour whilst whispering sweet nothings and pearls of wisdom into your ear. Unfortunately, the babbling eventually gets a little tiring.
First off though, let’s be fair. We can’t really blame Cooper for switching things up a little bit: he’s been running the same neoclassical ambient racket for the past seven years; it was only a matter of time before he realized, “hell, I could probably get away with mumbling behind all that pretty shit I do with my mixers!” God (and anybody who has listened to post-2000 Greenday) knows that it’s hard enough to get your point across to most spheres of the public using mind-numbingly simple lyrics, let alone with just a bunch of strings, drums and electric ticks. So, in a sense, what we see here on Similes is a more populist Eluvium, one not afraid to be a little more explicit and provide a deeper look down their sublime little rabbit hole. That being said, anybody who’s familiar with Eluvium’s catalogue knows that the most enjoyable thing about their past work was tumbling down all by yourself.
Cooper’s built himself a pretty solid career making the type of music that simultaneously makes you reflect on the whimsy of your childhood, the bleak future of humanity and, for some reason, the movie Gone With the Wind. That trademark balancing act of wonder, melancholy and romantic yearning has always been at the heart of Eluvium’s work and that hasn’t really changed on Similes. What’s changed is the songs – namely that there actually aresongs, in the most ‘pop’ sense of the term. While perhaps not exactly AABA form, verses and choruses eventually do bubble up through the shimmering walls of electronic fuzz and waltz through tinkling piano overtures like goddamn Fred Astaire.
Whereas Copia and all other previous Eluvium outings have sounded far more like congruent but abstract streams of consciousness, the song-based album structure of Similes opens the door for far more eclecticism. So while much of Similes, including album opener, ‘Leaves Eclipse the Light’, the twinkling piano-driven « In Culmination », the ‘Aphex Twin-esque’ « Nightmare 5″ and the long flickering closer « Cease to Know » still echo the neoclassical, wordless sparkles of a yesteryear Philip Glass, there are moments throughout that provide a glimpse of a very different band to come. ‘The Motion Makes me Last’, for instance, rings of a more lethargic, but uptempo Twilight Sad, channelling the melodic verse structure of ‘Cold Days from the Birdhouse’ – though, instead of inquiring about some heartless bitch’s manners, Cooper opts for prose that reads more like something out of an alchemist’s cookbook.
And hell, would you really expect any less? Eluvium’s always been sort of different that way. Even when their muttering is barely audible, it makes itself cryptically profound without falling into the realms of melodrama. At least, for now.
We’ve seen in the recent work of RJD2 what nightmares may come when talented instrumental and production artist decide to jump behind the mic. And, so while I wouldn’t compare Similes to the likes of the massively disappointing The Third Hand, I am nevertheless inclined to believe that something intangible has indeed been lost in translation on Eluvium’s newest album and taken away from the abstract beauty that made their records such a distinct and skin-peeling pleasure in the first place. I guess that’s the tricky thing about paradise – nobody wants to be told what it to looks like by somebody else.
It still remains to be seen whether Cooper’s foray into vocalism on Similes becomes the exception or the rule for Eluvium in future outings, but for now we can snuggle easy with their newest album as it takes us away to distant memories, to the rolling hills of the American South with Clark Gable and Vivien Laigh, or to some great big green planet, way off in our minds.
74/100
Shudder Island
février 25th, 2010
Okay, so you’ve got Martin Scorsese and M. Night Shamalyan (sp?) stuck together on a small deserted island. Ben Kingsley isn’t there. Neither is Dicaprio or Mark Ruffalo. The two directors are all alone. Resources are scarce; medieval weapons, abundant. Now, who do you think will come out on top? The certainty of your answer (which is contingent upon you faith in these men as film directors) will depend upon whether or not you’ve seen Scorsese’s newest film, Shutter Island. Which, unfortunately, I did.
I don’t particularly like Mr. Shamalan, and I’m consistently insulted by the sloppiness of his more recent filmmaking (which may, or may not explain why I haven’t even bothered googling how to properly spell his name). But in his defense, that little Indian dude used to know how to nail the kind of twist that could make Hank Ballard blush (probably before most of your time).
That being said, I should probably also begin by mentioning that I take issue with twists endings on the whole and am therefore very bias here. It’s not only that I feel the device is intrinsically flawed (which I do), but rather that it opens the door for far too many shortcuts to be taken and faults to be made in basic storytelling. At the risk of simplistically generalizing a complicated topic, I believe there are three basic types of twist endings: the rewarding type that provides depth and emotional resonance to the story – which is very rare (see: Christopher Nolan’s Memento); the gimmick type that leave the story hollow and basically pointless – which is very common (see: every Shamalyan flick after Signs); and the cop-out type that completely betrays the story in an attempt to reach false, but necessary closure – which is even more common (see: Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales...actually, come to think of it, please don’t see that movie). Ultimately, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island so badly wants to be the first of these three, that it locks itself into a Shyamalyan-esque dead-end narrative and chases its own tail for the majority of its running time to justify its outrageous conclusion (which ironically slots it comfortably into the infamous ‘category two’!).
The story, set in a bleak and gray 1954, fittingly opens with Teddy Daniels (Leonardo Dicaprio), decorated war hero and U.S. Marshall extraordinaire, vomiting in a sink beside his partner, the (mostly) steadfast Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). The two of them are set on a rusty, calcified old steamer approaching an insane asylum off the coast of Massachussettes on the spooky, misty Shutter Island, ostensibly to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a facility inmate who murdered her entire family. Still despite the superficially ominous appearance of the island, Daniels is greeted warmly by all upon his arrival (red flag?)! The head officer on the island talks to him with the patronizing tone of a retarded farmer lauding his 8 year old son for shooting his first gopher, while the patients all wave familiarly to Daniels and whisper sweet, cryptic somethings to him, leaving the audience to think, « Gee whiz! It’s almost like he’s been here before! » The saddest part is that I felt exactly the same way.
We’ve all been to Shutter Island before, whether it was watching The Sixth Sense, The Truman Show, A Beautiful Mind, or half of the films directed by David Fincher, we’ve all sat through the kind of twists that such mystery thrillers have to offer – the only difference was that, at the time, they were actually mysteries, rather than paint-by-numbers genre homages, and they actually thrilled us enough to want more.
I won’t say much about the middle of the film, mostly because none of it matters. In the end, everything that occurs throughout the film’s two hour and eighteen minute running time proves to be in the service of what turns out to be one big cheap gimmick. The film proceeds through the motions with few thrills and minimal mystery, desperately trying to convince us that ‘Daniels’ really is still a U.S. Marshall and (spoiler alert) not long-time patient of the Shutter Island facility, Andrew Leitus, unwitting subject of a massive psychological role-playing game put on by facility warden, Dr. Cawley (the undeniably impeccable Ben Kingsley), in an attempt to shake Leitus out of a deluded psychosis brought on by the murder of his own family. But we’re never really convinced – not only because the film spends half of its time artlessly dropping hints about the wardens game, but because the pacing of the story is so off and the film’s flashback and other expository sequences, so heavy-handed, that we all know Daniels (/Leitus) is basically batshit crazy right out of the gates. Indeed, dramatic irony is a hell of a thing: it can be lots of fun when you’re screaming to the chesty blond on the screen that the axe murderer is hiding behind the Toyota in her garage, but quite a different thing when you have to sit through over two hour of cinematic masturbation to have your most pessimistic suspicions confirmed.
Still yet, perhaps the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal is that Shutter Island’s got all the right stuff to make a perfectly respectable video ga – er, movie: great lighting, apocalyptic mood, haunting score, solid source material, a creepy supporting cast that skulks around like Gollum on Valium, a mysterious warden who has a very ‘German’ colleague just a little too soon after WWII, tons of cryptic holocaust imagery, and some of the greatest talent working in film today. So what’s not to like? Well, that’s just it: there should be plenty to like. But the execution of all these parts ultimately comes off as awkward, disengaged, formulaic and just plain lazy. Rather than reflecting a modern master at the top of his game, Shutter Island’s conclusion sounds of the hollow clunk of a heavy cheque being cashed; of the ‘mystery thriller’ section on Scorsese’s 2010 scorecard being punched.
Hell, even the distinctly Scorsese-esque claustrophobic close-up shots only lasts for a few early scenes before fizzling out, almost as if someone told the director halfway through filming, “I think they get it”. In general, many ideas and characters are toyed with and then discarded once they seem to have served a purpose (although we’re never entirely certain exactly what those purposes are ). In particular, I’m drawn back to several flashback scenes which place Teddy Daniels as one of the liberating American soldiers at Dachau. Now, I personally believed that these scenes were meant to reinforce the doomsday mood of the whole thing as well as provide some justification for the protagonist’s fragile mental state, but really, your guess is as good as mine, since that plotline never really goes anywhere either.
I haven’t read the original source material from which the story was lifted, but I’ve been told that the novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) provides a pretty solid jumping-off point for Scorsese, making his blunder all the more puzzling. About halfway through the second act of Scorsese’s newest mystery thriller I found myself desperately hoping for Jack, Hurley, and the rest of the Lost gang to come barreling through the scene in the Darma van with the smoke monster in hot pursuit to dispatch of all the characters on the island. Now that would’ve been a twist. Alas, that never happened, and the only real mystery that plagued me once I left the theatre was how the film ever made it out of the editing room.
I’ve always believed that if you absolutely insist on pulling the rug out at the end of a show, the act’s base must be good enough that you needn’t spend the entire gig awkwardly relocating furniture in the room to make sure you don’t break anything. In this case, Shutter Island represents the cinematic equivalent of musical chairs, though much less fun, twice as awkward, and the only person left at the end of the game is Dicaprio sitting there scratching his head, wondering what the hell went wrong. Indeed, a true magician sets up his parlour perfectly, before his audience even enters, and then proceeds through his trick with subtlety, poise and grace. Mr. Scorsese’s most recent outing displays about as much of those things as Lady Gaga trying to play the harp with her labia and feels like it was rushed so quickly from the editing room for a late-winter release that its producers forgot to check whether the film had already been made – which it has. Several times over.
Now, I can forgive plotting flops, poor pacing, and even hollow characters (with the exception of Dicaprio and Kingsley), but the only thing more disappointing than a really good magician screwing up a classic magic trick is having to sit through him sheepishly explain its obvious machinations. When the explanation takes twenty minutes and insults your intelligence, it goes beyond disappointment and turns into sheer irritation. Shutter Island took twenty-one – I timed it while I searched the trailer for Shamalyan’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ on my iphone. And how’s this for a twist: it actually looks pretty sweet.
2/5
