all of my heroes are jagjaguwars

Four CD’s are making a rotation in my car stereo. When it comes time to leave for work I find myself having a playoff to decide which one has the honor of going with me. I divide them into two brackets and flip a coin in a best-of-seven decision, denoting one CD as heads and the other as tails and seeing which one prevails. It’s funny how every time I investigate Jagjaguwar’s yearly catalog I find a slew of new loves. This year it happened again, and they are competing for my affection. It’s also funny how all of my musical loves for the year are the work of musicians I already appreciated. Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade is proving to be an all-time hero, and everyone involved with Black Mountain is showing their versatility and skill. It’s impossible to say which I love more. Spencer Krug’s side project Sunset Rubdown released an album in 2007 called ‘Random Spirit Lover’ that I thought was record of the year. This year he is back with the rest of the band and another addictive release called ‘Dragon Slayer.’ I am close to crowning this record of the year already. Every time I listen to this album the songs surprise me with how good they are, which is a hard thing to accomplish. One thing I’ve always appreciated about Sunset Rubdown and Krug’s songwriting is that these songs sound like compositions. He didn’t just sit down with a guitar, strum out a riff, write some half-assed lyrics to go with them, and then repeat the process eleven more times to pad out an album. These songs sound like he thought out every measure, every harmony, every note to the point where nothing is disposable. These songs are great because everything is essential. Another thing I immensely appreciate about Krug is that the guitar is more than just a riff. The guitar is an instrument that blends with the rest, not just settling for a three-chord progression but playing a line that threads its way through the piece like a soprano singing an aria. You can get lost loving this music. Every song is worth listening to again and again but ‘You Go On Ahead’ is the one I find myself getting stuck on. On the same Spencer Krug token, Swan Lake are another new acquisition I can’t keep my hands off of. I had no idea Krug was a member of Swan Lake until I visited their myspace page. I listened to a couple of tracks, liked what I heard, scrolled down, and there was his picture. ‘Figures,’ I thought. ‘Enemy Mine’ is a more artsy endeavor than ‘Dragon Slayer.’ He teams up with Daniel Bejar of the New Pornographers and Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes and creates a sound that changes with each distinctive voice. All three of these men have an idiosyncratic voice, and the music adapts to each one. Krug’s high point on the album is ‘Paper Lace,’ which is actually a song that can be found on ‘Dragon Slayer.’ The Swan Lake version is a much mellower version than Sunset Rubdown’s, but it’s powerful nonetheless. Listening to these songs, I have to wonder if one of these men went through a nasty divorce in the last year or so, and I have to wonder if it was Krug. The cover of ‘Enemy Mine’ is a courtroom painting with lawyers and clients in front of a judge, and Carey Mercer’s homerun ‘Heartswarm’ is about seeing your ex with someone else: “Do my eyes deceive me/Or is it truly springtime in Paris for that piece of shit…Dearest darling, no one’s in it for the long haul.” And in ‘Paper Lace’ Krug sings, “The stupid house you made/Fell away like paper lace…Paper burns and paper fades/And paper crumbles into ugly shapes.” Whatever the case, I love this album. And now Black Mountain must have their way. I read about Lightning Dust on another blog and had to check them out. I reviewed ‘Infinite Light’ at amazon.com and said, “I want to marry Amber Webber’s voice.” I’ve heard Stevie Nicks comparisons, but regardless of my love/hate relationship with Stevie Nicks, let me say Amber Webber is light-years beyond Stevie Nicks. These are simple songs about ditching a wasted love and searching for something new, finding something new, and not necessarily being pleased with the result. I get lost with “Take It Home,” the last track. After an entire album of empowerment and self-improvement, the first line of this final track is, “Take it home and listen to a sad song.” You’ve moved on from that wasted love, but you’re still not happy. Will you ever be? Amber Webber made her mark in Black Mountain and in Lightning Dust, paired with Joshua Wells (also of Black Mountain), she proves her importance in today’s music. I love ‘Infinite Light’ so much I’m going to my first show in nearly two years this September to see them. Stephen McBean has his say this year, as well. With Pink Mountaintops and ‘Outside Love’ he makes me understand why I’m so picky with my music. It’s because I know what I like, and apparently so does he. These songs range in style from Jesus and Mary Chain to Neil Young, but they are all distinctly McBean’s. He employs the work of a number of other musicians, including a few from Black Mountain, including Amber Webber and Joshua Wells, but this effort stands on its own. They are all love songs – songs about passion, songs about breaking up, loving those intimate moments no one will see but you and the dark, loving the drunkenness of simply being alive. ‘While We Were Dreaming’ is an achingly beautiful ballad with the best line I have heard in a long time: “And if I could find your heart I would pull it from your chest and smash it with my fist ‘til it was beating.” It’s funny how after so many thousands of years of human creativity you’d think the love song would be a cliché by now, but it’s not. Every great love song is as though nobody ever wrote one before. I’m loving for the first time with Pink Mountaintops and ‘Outside Love.’ And I’ll be flipping another coin tomorrow morning before I go to work. Oh, Jagjaguwar! Bloomington, Indiana, is the epicenter of my favorite music.

to hear the voice

She walks into the coffee shop almost unseen. A blur steps through the door and passes in front of the Plexiglas splashguard. On instinct I speak. “Hello.” She says hello, and I smile, but I don’t see a thing as I continue with my macchiato machinations. The steam wand smothers her order, and her marked cup enters line behind four drive-thru patrons and another café customer. I process the forgettable orders and find two iced cups, CRF and L. I make the frappucino first and call it out. Then I make the latte, and there she is, taking both drinks, smiling when I tell her to have a good day. She’s a pretty girl, but then again aren’t they all. The dark blue of her jeans somehow takes hold of her brown hair and floats on an ocean. The green and white tee-shirt dances when she moves, but you can’t look for long. Those blue eyes say it all. She’s pleased, and it’s over. You let it go. She’s a customer and there’s nothing else to be said. Go back to the line and keep making drinks. She tucks away in memory’s backlog, another pretty face to forget until the next pretty face comes along and replaces all who came before. I pass two more drinks to drive-thru and she’s there at the café handoff, saying something, but the headset is blaring in my ear. I lift the earpiece an inch and ask her to repeat herself. She smiles and says she hates to be a bother but do iced coffees come in flavors. She wonders if it will cost extra to add a flavor to the latte, but I would give her an entire bottle free at this point. That accent. I have lived in what claims to be the South for six years and have never heard an accent like hers. Music when she speaks and it’s nothing but half country and half sophistication, but my heart skips a dozen beats and I’m begging God to let me take her latte just to risk a passing fingertip glance. Let me connect just once if once is all I’ll ever get. Let her keep speaking because in her voice I see a fire that could burn indefinitely. I want to be with that accent. I want to hold that accent. I want to crawl in bed next to that accent. I want to love that accent and be loved, but then he is there. He is everything I am not. He is the male equivalent of her, and he says he doesn’t need a flavor. They joke and giggle and she nudges him, and my heart breaks because it’s absolutely right. I’m the man behind the Plexiglas and she is with the one who ought to be with her. In a blink she is gone. My line of drinks is three deep and I set back to work with a treacherous memory pushing her to the surface of my thoughts. The irreplaceable song. Longing is a gift the Devil gives man.

the basterd is back

Sitting here in the First Team Subaru service waiting room, surrounded by middle-aged ladies clucking over the latest on Michael Jackson’s autopsy on Headline News, I feel the urge to begin blogging again. I saw Inglourious Basterds last night. I heard both sides of the reviews. On one hand I heard the positives – the newspapers and websites praising Quentin Tarantino for another hip epic and raising the bar for every subsequent movie in the genre. On the other hand were the negatives – the magazine claiming the must-see deleted scene is Shirley Temple liberating Buchenwald to the soundtrack of Glenn Miller, freeing the Jews and then leading the SS guards to the gas chambers. As with anything the best voice to acknowledge is the voice within yourself, so here’s what I saw. Not that you have to agree with my voice. While Inglourious Basterds does have a few issues, the positives far outweigh the negatives. I’ll begin with the negatives. I have two problems with Inglourious Basterds. First, for all of Tarantino’s skill and for as good as this movie was, watching this movie was like watching another Kill Bill. His use of chapter headings to divide the movie into parts is good, but if he keeps doing this it will turn into a gimmick. On the same token the soundtrack for Inglourious Basterds features Ennio Morricone, a staple sound from the Kill Bill films and an obvious choice to illustrate a movie about outlaws in the French countryside of World War II. A movie’s soundtrack needs to play a character, adding its own imprint to the story’s emotional drive, and this soundtrack is effective. However, Tarantino goes so far as to use exact tracks from Kill Bill. Not just similar tracks, but exact tracks. He needs to put a leash on this before his soundtracks become typecast. Style is one thing. Repetition is another. I did enjoy his use of David Bowie’s “Cat People (Fighting the Fire).” When our French-Jewish heroine is preparing for her night of revenge she stands in her window wearing a stunning red evening gown, gazing across the Paris cityscape with thoughts of fear and determination oscillating in her eyes. This scene felt like it was straight out of Streets of Fire. Loved it. My second issue with Inglourious Basterds is that for a movie titled Inglourious Basterds one would think the movie is about the Inglourious Basterds. They occupy only half of the story, and even then only Brad Pitt has meaningful dialogue. Most of the Basterds are voiceless faces who may cheer as a cohort beats a German sergeant to death with a baseball bat. I wanted more out of the Basterds, but we only have a few fleeting glimpses. They are all good actors and very interesting characters. Unfortunately they are one of three competing storylines and are sidelined as the other two play out. When the climax occurs I find myself wondering why the Basterds are even necessary for the plan to succeed. Limit the story to two or only one storyline and this would be a more powerful movie. But this is a really good movie. Christoph Walz plays Colonel Hans Landa, aka “The Jew Hunter,” and he deserves to go down in motion picture villain history. He’s the anti-Colombo, knowing our heroes are up to no good and toying with them until he’s had enough. When faced with a dog and pony show all Landa can do is laugh so hard in derision that he has to excuse himself to catch his breath. He will get his man, or woman. And he does. Then we have Diane Kruger cast in the role of German actress Bridget von Hammersmark. I read today that she was not Tarantino’s first choice for the role. When the original actress dropped out Kruger literally begged Tarantino to give her the part. After an audition she got her wish, and rightfully so. I was only familiar with Kruger from Joyeux Noel (goes to show how many movies I’ve never seen), and seeing her in this role was like seeing Richard Gere in I’m Not There. When you see Gere in I’m Not There you think, “That’s the guy from Pretty Woman,” which is exactly what Todd Haynes was going for. You want to see this man as a storied artist known for particular roles escaping into exile but unable to shake the stigma brought on by those roles. When I saw Diane Kruger playing the elegant German actress I thought, “That’s the woman from Joyeux Noel,” which is exactly what you need to think when you see Bridget von Hammersmark. You need to think this is German celebrity transplanted into a violent world of espionage, and you have to question whether or not her choices will work. Brad Pitt of course is Brad Pitt and nails Lieutenant Aldo Raine. His best line is at the end, after the plan explodes and his German prisoner declares he will be shot for such behavior. “Nah,” Raine says. “More like chewed out. I’ve been chewed out before. I can take it.” Director Eli Roth plays a significant role as one of the Basterds, and Melanie Laurent is superb as Shosannah Dreyfus in her quest for vengeance. Inglourious Basterds is a fun movie. I laughed more than I thought I would. Tarantino has done it again. By way of a PS, the man on the First Team wireless internet log-in page looks like he’s wearing a judge robe. What I’ve listened to since I last blogged: Bob Dylan, Flight of the Conchords, Bob Dylan, Neko Case, Bob Dylan, Supergrass, Bob Dylan, Orchestral Manouvres In the Dark, Roxy Music, Bob Dylan, Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake, Pink Mountaintops, Lightning Dust, and Bob Dylan.