Posts Tagged ‘Arcade Fire

10
Jan
13

Treefiddy Review: Look Out Kid – Collide

Look Out KidThe Down Lizzo:

For starters, how long has it been since I last did an album review?!?! Useless!

To be frank, 2012 wasn’t a great year for music for me, I didn’t get properly stuck in and missed a lot of great albums that I’m scrambling to get my hands on as I write this. In the meantime, one of my readers sent me this one.

He’s more than just a reader though, Andrew Orkin is the guitarist for SA Band Look Out Kid and their debut album Collide is pretty much just what the doctor ordered for dreamy summer-day listening.

Collide is a melting pot of all the best elements folk, country, jazz, gospel and blues has to offer which makes for an album of polished, sultry jams that’s effortless to get into.

 

Sick Tracks:

“Collide” was the first track on the album that really spoke to me. A paradox of simple melodies woven together in complex arrangements, it calls to mind some of The Decemberists’ calmer, gentler tracks before building to a lush, Arcade Fire-styled bridge that showcases this band’s dextrous songwriting.

Like its name, “Safe House” provides comfort in the perfect synthesis of Orkin’s bluesey steel strings, jazz maestro Thembinkosi Mavibela’s amiable double bass and acclaimed jazz and gospel singer Zarcia Zacheus’s gorgeous, lilting vocals.

 

 

“Fish To Find” is also a winner. It’s a break-up song without all the cliched over-sentimentality that plagues similar tracks backed by melodies that sound like what Jack Johnson might write if he ever decided to release a Jazz album.

Should You Give A Shit:

Look, make no mistake this is not the kind of music I normally go for, which is a compliment in itself. There is only so much destructive stoner / desert / psychedelic / indie / folk / rock one man can listen to before something drastic happens.

Sometimes you gotta take it down a notch and that’s when I’ll spin an album like this. Something calmer, something classier, something you can chill out to that doesn’t bludgeon your eardrums to hell and back.

 

 

So kick back and dig “Collide” below and if that sounds like something you could dig, check out the band’s Bandcamp site here to download the album.

 

 

Final verdict: 7/10

-ST

25
Aug
10

Where The Music At Yo?

If you love this site as much as I do (not humanly possible) you might have noticed there haven’t been any music reviews as of late.

Reason being I’m now officially writing album review for a radass site called www.pulpmag.co.za.

So the deal is I publish a little taste of my reviews on this site, just the first couple of sentences, then if you wanna check out the full review, you click a HYPERLINK* included at the BOTTOM of the post that says “Read the whole enchilada here…” and ka-pow! It’s a done deal

So to kick things off, here are all the reviews I’ve written to date, enjoy!

Album Review: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

If Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero protagonist of The Catcher In The Rye, had to grow up and start an indie rock band, that band would be Arcade Fire.

 

 

This phenomenal Canadian group, which consists of no less than seven members, has a powerful grasp on nostalgic indie anthems that deal with themes of innocence lost and disillusionment with adulthood that would have made Holden proud.

Their debut 2004 album Funeral instantly became a firm favourite among music critics and aficionados the world over as did their 2007 follow-up, Neon Bible, which earned the band numerous awards and accolades and proved there was much more to this band than just their debut album.

And so Arcade Fire approached their third album which, many would argue, is the most difficult album to record. Repeat the material of your previous two albums and your audience will yawn in your face and move on. Stray too far from your roots and your fans will balk like skittish ponies, bitching and moaning all the while about how you either sold out or took WAY too many drugs this time around.

Read the whole enchilada here…

Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros

Before I start writing this, a confession. This is not a new album. It’s been out for just over a year now, BUT iTunes released the deluxe version of the album three weeks ago which, coupled with the fact that pretty much no one knows this band, is justification enough to review this gem of an album.

 

 

Not a whole lot is known about Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros and the few interviews I found with the band on YouTube are difficult to watch because frontman and lead vocalist Alex Ebert has taken a lot of drugs in the 32 odd years he’s been alive and has this way of staring off into the distance in interviews and making absolutely no sense.

That said, the band itself is nothing short of seriously awesome. Like Arcade Fire, Edward Sharpe is made up of enough people to start a slow pitch softball team. Everyone in the band sings, though Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos handle the majority of the vocals.

Read the whole enchilada here…

Also look out for the “Tiger Bites” section on the site. That’s where I wrap up the week’s news in the music world.

We live in interestin’ times I tell ya. Interesting times indeed…

-ST

*WARNING: NEVER click more than 5 hyperlinks a day, it’s like feeding gremlins after midnight…

22
Jul
10

A Vision Of USOMFA

William Blake. Now there was a crazy fucking cat. The dude used to sit naked in his garden with his wife (also naked) and re-enact scenes from his favourite plays. He also used to experience intense visions in which demons spoke to him and in one famous incident, gave him a guided tour of the afterlife.

 

 

Me, I get visions too, but they’re usually after I’ve drunk the house dry and I have to resort to straining meths through bread to get a few more kicks before the police come.

Tonight at 11.30 I get in a big ‘ol steel bird and fly the fuck to America. It’s my first trip over there so my head’s been spinning with all kinds of crazy-assed scenarios, like a mental collage of every American movie I ever watched, because I have no idea what it’s going to be like.

American food. What’s it taste like? What are the people like? Fuck, what’s jet-lag like? I’ve never even experienced jet-lag, hells bells!

More than that I’m thinking about J-Rab’s family who, I’m finally going to meet after three years of dating their belter of a daughter and sister. What are they like? Will they let me drink meths in the house?

Does America even have meths?

 

 

The next post I bang out will be on American soil and I plan to stack it to the max with a whole bunch of pics so you guys can see the crazy shit me and J-Rab got up to. Keep in mind there’s a 6-hour time difference though, so I’ll be blogging from the past, hitting you with posts at all kinds of fucked-up times, that’s how we roll in America.

Too fucking crazy guys, FUCK I’m excited as a kid at Christmas.

So think of me as you’re drifting off tonight, I’ll be way up there in the clouds somewhere while you’re counting electric sheep, en route to Amsterdam for a 4-hour stop over and then straight to Logon Airport in Boston to meet the parents.

One last question before I go though – Arcade Fire, The Black Keys, The National, The Dead Weather or Kings Of Leon?

Choices, choices 😉

Later party people.

-ST

18
Jan
10

Movie Review: Where The Wild Things Are

I went into Where The Wild Things Are with high hopes after watching the trailer numerous times and hearing from a lot of people that the book, written by Maurice Sendak and published in 1963, was one of their favourite childhood stories.

 

 

Also, the movie was directed by Spike Jonze, who worked with writer Charlie Kaufman on two of my favourite movies of all time, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Besides that, Jonze mainly directs music videos and TV commercials, for which he has received numerous awards.

I have only the vaguest recollection of reading the book when I was young, and as such, went into the movie hardly knowing anything about the plotline or the characters, which was probably a good thing as the original children’s book was only 48 pages long and thus had to be expanded and changed considerably to make up the 100-odd minute screenplay.

Sadly, I found the movie didn’t live up to my expectations. The feeling I got from watching the trailer (which features the epic Arcade Fire song ‘Wake Up’) was that this was a deep and significant piece of filmmaking that was guaranteed to pull at the heartstrings and was loaded with meaning and profundity.

The actual experience of watching the film was very far from being meaningful or profound and I left the cinema feeling like I’d missed something, some kind of vital clue to help unlock this movie for me, because I found it disjointed and largely inaccessible.

 

Where The Wild Things Are tells the story of Max (played by Max Records), a troubled young boy who’s parents have divorced and who lives with his mother and sister, both of whom he has a difficult relationship with. After a huge fight erupts with his mother one night, during which Max dons his wolf suit and bites her, he ends up running away from home and finding a small boat, which he sails to a distant land, inhabited by the large, oafish Wild Things of the story’s title.

At first, the Wild Things want to eat Max and in a scene that takes a nightmarish turn, they surround him and are on the verge of devouring him when he convinces them that he has magical powers and can explode their heads at will. They then decide to make him their king after which he leads the Wild Things on a ‘rumpus’ through the woods that consists of them smashing trees and rocks, tackling one another and laughing all the while.

Yeah, just wait, it gets weirder.

After the rumpus, the Wild Things all collapse in a huge pile on top of one another and go to sleep, happy and content with their new king, who was sworn in on the condition that he would keep all sadness away forever.

The next day Max goes on a tour of the Wild Thing’s island with Carol (the Wild Thing in all the movie posters, voiced by James Gandolfini). Max is shown a model of the island that Carol has built in a secret cave where Carol likes to be alone. This inspires Max to command the Wild Things to build a massive fort, something that brings them all together as they unite toward a common purpose.

 

 

However, before the fort can be completed, Carol’s ‘love interest’ KW brings her friends Bob and Terry (who are owls) to the fort which causes Carol to become angry and overwhelmed with jealousy.

Without explaining the entire plot, let’s just say that relations degenerate even further from this point and eventually force Max to board his tiny ship again and leave the island. Back at home, he finds his mother waiting up for him with his supper, which he eats ravenously while his mother falls asleep watching him with a happy smile on her face.

The End.

My biggest problem with Where The Wild Things Are is the dialogue in the movie. The Wild Things all speak like children, which is understandable as the implication throughout is that the island Max has discovered is based purely on his imagination, however it makes all of the interactions between the characters in the movie really bizarre to the point where you’re never sure what to take seriously or what to dismiss as inconsequential banter.

This becomes a problem when the story approaches its major turning points because for me, none of them felt very significant. For example, Max decides to initiate a big ‘dirt clod war’ in an effort to bring the Wild Things together and encourage them to have fun, which ends in even more in-fighting when KW accidently steps on Carol’s head.

Watching the scene unfold all I thought was, ‘OK, so she stepped on his head and now he’s furious. Huh. Is this supposed to be important?’

At this point I can almost hear you all shouting ‘But it’s supposed to be a kid’s movie! Stop analysing it like an adult!’ to which I have only the following to say, the story of Where The Wild Things Are that Spike Jonze tells is far too laden with sadness, loneliness and melancholy to appeal to most children, trust me, most of the kids in the audience looked like they were about to fall asleep.

 

 

I strongly suspect that Where The Wild Things Are is a film that takes on a much greater significance the second time you watch it, or at least I hope so, because the first time I confess that I think I missed the point entirely.

Max Records’ acting can’t be faulted however and damn! That kid’s gonna grow up to be some kind of tri-athlete – he runs everywhere in the movie and is filled with a kind of wild energy that suits the film’s theme well.

All in all, I would recommend watching this film because it’s so different from other films in its genre, but definitely don’t shell out your hard earned bucks to go and see it at the movies because honestly, I don’t think it’s worth it. Oh, and the awesome Arcade Fire song in the trailer? It’s not in the movie, or even the movie soundtrack. Fail.

Final Verdict: 6/10