I saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day last night for the first time. Only eighteen years after it was released. And despite it being eighteen years later, it was one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Let’s break it down into five points: More »« Less

I got the new Magnetic Fields album, Realism, last night (thanks, Nonesuch!). I listened to it once while falling asleep, and I’m on my second listen through today. At 33:17 in length, it’s a zippy little burst of an album, with crystal-clear production. First impressions of 5/13 of the tracks:

• “We Are Having a Hootenanny Now” is the sort of form study, nearly drained of content, at which Stephin Merritt excels. I love the multi-part vocals, with Merritt’s canyon-low creak holding down the bottom, and Claudia Gonson’s light-as-a-feather voice floating over the top.
• “The Dolls’ Tea Party” features what sounds like a great toy piano and banjo combo, and I love the refrain.
• “Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree” is unparalleled in its 60s sound, coming across almost like an alternate universe early Cat Stevens.  And has this great couplet: “Stop mumbling and cheer up/Put down the book, pick beer up.”
• Is “Always Already Gone” a nod to Derrida? I think Stephin Merritt is perhaps the last great Post- structuralist, so I wouldn’t be surprised. What a beautiful idea, applying it to a ballad.
• And of course, of course, I completely love “The Dada Polka.” Listening to this last night, in that liminal place between waking and sleep, I was giddy and grinning during it. I love the weird underlying sound effects during the pauses, like the void is about to sweep in and take away the musicians, and the return of layered group vocals like in “We Are Having a Hootenanny.”

I love The Magnetic Fields so much that it’s almost a palpable relief to have more music by them released into the world. And this album is a great little taste of more of that TMF genius. I’m going to relisten to Distortion, the companion album, over the next few days, and hopefully attempt a side-by-side review later this week.

One of my favorite movies is Capote. It’s a gripping portrayal of Truman Capote’s yadda yadda yadda, but what I really like is how SMOKING HOT Catherine Keener is as Harper Lee. Oh yes. The best way for me to explain this to you would probably be to say that it’s similar to how I imagine how you, dear reader, feel about Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. I don’t care who you are; I’m sure you have good feelings about that.

I was considering watching this fine cinematic venture the other night, and did a little impulsive googling, which yielded one of the most incredible film reviews I have seen in a long while. Behold this excerpt, all emphasis mine:

Truman had a lot of friends: homosexual, black-what have you, including the woman female novelist Harper Lee with whom he had a lesbian relationship. Wearing an unflattering wig, Catherine Keener’s Harper Lee was a volcano of seething lesbian ambition. The way Philip Seymour Hoffman pursed his lips while slurping on a Tom Collins really captured the character of this homosexual bon vivant like a photograph. It was almost eerie. Hoffman played this role with the relish of a born homosexual. He has said in interviews that he took up acting to meet girls after a football injury, but we don’t buy it. We know a homosexual when we see it!

I was both saddened and unsurprised to find that the dynamic duo responsible for this were composing in the vein of satire, but their prose still thrills. I will be hanging my hat upon the phrase, “a volcano of seething lesbian ambition,” for a long time to come!

My friends The Minor Leagues just released their latest (final? no one ever knows) album, This Story Is Old, I Know, But It Goes On (props for the Smiths reference!). I picked it up at their live show on Saturday night, but if you weren’t there or didn’t have the scratch, you’ll be able to get your own copy in November from datawaslost, their label.

In the meantime, you can quell your sadness by listening to this jazzy track from it, “Little Angel”:

The Minor Leagues – “Little Angel”

Move over, Scott Walker, because there’s some great new pop rock out in the world name-dropping the Queen City (not this song specifically, but on the album, you see). This song is a great jazz duet (full disclosure: two of my favorite people are doing the dueting!), with a fantastic melody held together by a) bass, b) guitar, c) trumpet, and d) piano. It pulls off one of my favorite tricks in the book, sharing the bass line between the left hand of the piano and the bass guitar, lending the verses a full-throated sense of intrigue and impending misadventure.

I haven’t given the album more than a couple of listens so far, but I’m sure I’ll have more to say once it’s sunk in. In the meantime, try to find a copy of your own!

I recently had the rare joy of being able to score a free ticket to something I gladly would have paid full price to see: Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips playing their (mostly) original score to 13 Warhol screen tests, which were commissioned by the Warhol Institute in Pittsburgh.

I’ve loved Dean and Britta in pretty much all of their incarnations (for at least the first track, “Night Nurse” on their 2003 album L’ Avventura, for their work in Luna, for Dean’s work in Galaxie 500, and for Britta being Jem’s singing voice (truly outrageous!!!)). Clearly, I would have paid good money to see them without the face-melting hotness of having Warholian screen tests projected behind them. And let me tell you, my face is completely melted. There’s nothing left. I’m writing this as Skeletor.

Warhol’s screen tests were shot between 1963 and 1966, and are all black and white, on 100 ft rolls of film (2.75 minutes), which in Warhol slowmo means that they’re four minutes each, just the right length for a song. They weren’t actually screen tests in the Hollywood sense, I think, but yet another way for Warhol to capture the fleeting beauty and sensuality of his cast of characters.

The 13 picked by/for Dean and Britta are especially fantastic. Among others, we have Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, and Dennis Hopper. A shitty picture taken with my phone:

Wareham (and occasionally Phillips) gave brief bits of information before or after a lot of the screen tests. A few folks are still alive, but a lot died or disappeared not too long after their filmings. Speed seemed to be involved in several of the stories, unsurprisingly.

What I liked best was the ways in which the music and film interacted, some literal and some more sweetly subtle. A lot of the songs are lyrically related, either chosen because they thematically relate to the life of the subject, or are covers of a song by the artist. Lou Reed gets a cover of a recently discovered VU song, “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore,” and for Nico a very moving rendition of “I’ll Keep it With Mine,” originally penned by Dylan.

Beyond the literal, there was a frequent phenomenon that I like to call the “Jets to Brazil” effect, named after the poster in Breakfast at Tiffany’s that says “Jets to Brazil,” which will recall to many modern viewers the contemporary band. Filmed over forty years ago, many of the screen test stars appear to be smiling at or bobbing their heads to Dean and Britta’s melodies. In the Dennis Hopper piece the music builds to an emotional crescendo that breaks loose just as Hopper breaks into a wide grin, nodding his head in time. Ingrid Superstar strokes her face with her fingers, moodily mugging at the camera, but her sleepy grin seems to conspire with the faint rockabilly twang of her song on the soundtrack.

I’m looking forward to finding the DVD and hearing the songs again, but I’m thrilled that I got to see this live and in person. It exceeded all expectations, and with any luck I’ll spend tonight dreaming of Jane Holzer brushing her teeth.