1) Last Nite – Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This Before – The Detroit Cobras

2) Me and the Bean – Girls Can Tell – Spoon

3) One More Time – Look Sharp! – Joe Jackson

4) It’s a Law – Beat Beat Heartbeat – The Natural History

5) Red Right Hand – Let Love In – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

6) Hands Down – Album Covers on M2 – Dashboard Confessional w/Michael Stipe

7) Drink To Me Babe Then – The Slow Wonder – A.C. Newman

8) Hong Kong Blues – Peel Session – Laura Cantrell

9) Portland, Oregon – Van Lear Rose – Loretta Lynn

10) Weight of the World – Sea Songs for Landlocked Sailors – Tarkio

11) More Gender, More of the Time – The Song is Love – The Quails

12) Dirt – ONoffON – Mission of Burma

13) Remember Today – Fuckin’ A – The Thermals

14) Winterlong – The Bridge – The Pixies

15) Every Day is Like Sunday – Live at the Lazy Lounge – Colin Meloy

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The director of Akira, Katushiro Otomo, has finally returned to directing with Steamboy, a film that has been ten years in the making and is apparently the most expensive Japanese animated film ever. The trailer’s here, and it’s pretty damn jawdropping.

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I’ve had a passing acquaintance with Spoon for a few records now, although I never really fell in love with them like a lot of other folks did. The closest I got to lovin’ Spoon was probably with “Girls Can Tell.” Lead singer/songwriter Britt Daniel visited Spaceland this weekend on a mini-tour, performing solo with just a guitar and a boombox. The tour is only five or six dates, so it was promoted as a pretty rare opportunity. It wasn’t a Spoon show, but it was close enough.

Britt Daniel hit the stage at about 11:30pm to a full, if not completely sold-out, crowd. With the solo setup, I thought the arrangements were a surprising success. Daniel was most effective when he was playing up his brooding sexiness with songs like “Everything Hits at Once” and “Anything You Want,” both of which got a solid swoon going on in the audience. The skeletal arrangement brought out the downbeat poignancy of “Me and the Bean,” one of my favorite performances of the night. Songs like “Paper Tiger” and “Stay Don’t Go” didn’t sound very different at all, while “The Way We Get By” was completely translated onto guitar without losing any of its infectiousness.

Daniel also dipped back a little further and played a few songs from “Series of Sneaks,” including a snappy version of “Car Radio” that sounded like the bastard love child of the Cars and the Replacements. These guitar-based tracks really popped more than the newer stuff did, and was the closest Daniel got to actually “rocking” all night. He played three new songs, the best one being the shambling narrative of “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentin.” He also covered a Fiery Furnaces song, but I have no idea which one it was.

There were a few problems with the overall experience though. The sparse arrangements often had to drop or simplify songs and particularly bridges, which caused a lot of the songs to drift and then suddenly end. The limited instrumentation meant there wasn’t much variation throughout the show. I’d say the solo experience is probably best for people that like and know Spoon well enough to fill in the gaps. It never rocked or got introspectively weepy, but maintained a general sense of loveliness throughout. Daniel’s performance was good enough to keep people interested, but I don’t think it was dynamic enough to convert anyone. Still, it’s a great chance to see a strong songwriter perform, which is never a bad thing. Even as a casual fan I enjoyed the show immensely, and more importantly, it left me wanting to see a full fledged Spoon show desperately.

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I know it’s only a couple of weeks into the season, but would you believe the Dodgers just swept the Giants and they’re in first place with a 9-3 record? I know they’re not going to play .750 ball all year, but it’s fun to watch for right now. I’m hoping the pitching stabilizes and Paul DePodesta will be able to get offensive upgrades later in the season to shore up the offense. Acquiring Milton Bradley really helped, but upgrading the middle infield offensively will help immensely when LoDuca/Beltre/Green cool off a bit. The end of our bullpen is looking deep, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see one of those guys on the move once Shuey comes off the DL.

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After the relentless action of the first half of Kill Bill, I came into the second expecting more of the same. Quentin Tarantino takes a little detour though, and settles into a more familiar QT groove of talk-talk-ripoff. I don’t say that disparagingly, as the best part of Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is “The Cruel Tutelage of Pai-Mei,” an extended homage to Shaw Brothers kung-fu flicks. Gordon Liu gets to ham it up with his great fake white facial hair, and the dialogue and camera works are perfect. When the camera snap zooms on Pai-Mei so hard that it has to backup and refocus, the love and attention to detail is obvious.

The problem with the movie doesn’t really start until the end, and then it just tends to drag on and on until its destined conclusion. It’s called Kill Bill, we all know she’s going to Kill Bill and jesus, can you just get to the part where she Kills Bill? In this case, delaying the inevitable doesn’t ramp up the tension or add depth, it just dulls a movie that was so finely honed before that. The last half hour really killed the fun for me, but it’s still a plenty good ride and it’ll be fun to watch it all in one sitting when that DVD comes out.

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Ever since the curtain fell at the Decemberist show in January, I’d been wanting to see them again. This feeling was only augmented with the release of The Tain EP, a 20 minute minor masterpiece that found the band performing a little alchemy with their anachronistic folk and creating some steely metal in its place. The Decemberists finally returned to Los Angeles last week on their “Never Send To Know With Whom The Van Rolls, It Rolls With Thee” Tour, I happily hit the Troubadour to see them again.

The Troubadour is twice as big as the last venue I saw them in, and they filled it to its capacity of 500 fairly easily. I was a little shocked, but I was happy to see that somehow word of mouth was spreading on the band, wherever it may be coming from. The band descended to the stage bathed in red light as a Russian choir sang (possibly Prokofiev?) in an entrance that any propagandist would be proud of.

Colin Meloy shyly began the set with “Los Angeles, I’m Yours,” simultaneously serenading and mocking the crowd with its wry lyrics. “I mean no offense,” he apologized as he finished, but the crowd was hot for it, standing to be insulted and paying for the privilege. The set continued with “Billy Liar,” a tremendous “July, July!” and a jaunty “Legionnaire’s Lament,” which is about as catchy a trio of songs as you’ll ever hear. It was as animated an audience as you could expect, mouthing the lyrics with fair accuracy and bouncing along to the pleading choruses.

The second segment of the set slowed down considerably, starting off with a creepy reading of “A Cautionary Song.” As usual, guitarist Chris Funk (AKA Crutchy McGee) stood their dancing during most of the song, until he stepped to his pedal steel to play a frenzied solo during the songs actual and metaphorical climax. The dead kid ballad of “Leslie Anne Levine” followed next, with Nate Query bowing his gigantic upright and causing the place to vibrate with a low thrum as Jenny Conlee continues to wow me with her haunting accordion work. Meloy dedicated “The Soldiering Life” to their home county in Portland for recognizing same-sex marriages, which got a huge response from the West Hollywood crowd.

With all the slower tempo stuff out of the way, the Decemberists fired up “The Chimbley Sweep,” which is generally their big live showcase piece. The song goes for almost three minutes on record, but it always lasts longer live, as Meloy and Funk do a little cuttin’ heads bit during an extended bridge. Trading licks back and forth between Meloy’s acoustic and Funk’s electric, the two duel with various tricks, including a little bit where they balance the guitars on their heads and also play with the guitars behind those same heads. Tonight, Meloy tries to finish Funk off by playing a little classical riff, exclaiming “That’s how Ralph Macchio won!” Funk polished him off before stepping to the mike and saying “Steve Vai salutes you.” As one of 20 people in the audience that had seen Crossroads, I laughed a lot.

Normally you wouldn’t follow “Chimbley Sweep,” but normally you’re not touring to support The Tain. Dedicating the song to “all the hair bands that played here before us,” the band ripped through the next twenty minutes with gusto. The Tain is a twenty minute song, but it has five distinct movements, so it doesn’t ever really get boring or monotonous. If you didn’t know it, you’d just think the band was going through five separate songs with just a few instrumental segues stitching it together. The first two movements have a distinct hard rock flavor, and the sprawling nature and the high concept (it’s based on a Celtic poem) suggest some of the more pretentious aspects of prog-rock. It’s dangerous ground to tread, but the Decemberists embrace their awkwardness and play with an endearing sense of humor which lets them get away with this sort of thing. During the 3rd (or is it 4th?) movement, Rachel Blumberg steps out from behind the kit to do solo vocals and play the melodica, with Colin Meloy taking her place at the drums. Blumberg’s voice has a soft child-like tone to it, and its a great change of place from Meloy’s exaggerated enunciations and affectations. Meloy’s drumming is serviceable but hilarious to watch, as he looks like an oversized marionette pounding the drums with his elbows and knees flailing all around. The transition back to the regular lineup after this bit was the only rough transition, as the audience interpreted the gaps between drum fills as a cue for applause. The Tain totally blew me out of my pantaloons and kept my short attention span at rapt attention.

The house was rocking after that and the band’s walkoff, so the encore began in short order. Meloy played “Red Right Ankle” on his 12 string, and it remains one of the more beautifully simple songs in recent memory. By the time Meloy reached the part about “crawling into your heart and tore your ventricles apart,” I heard more than a few people audibly sigh with their eyes all-a-flutter. This show was the last show of the last leg of the tour, and the Decemberists finished off the night with “I Was Meant For the Stage,” which slowly built until it’s cacophonous finish, which found the band going all out with the big rock: Meloy and Funk scraping and molesting guitars, special guest Tom Heinl whipping the band with guitar straps and Conlee pounding at her keyboards with whatever was handy. Meloy raced behind Funk and grabbed Funk’s mandolin and smashed it in the middle of the stage with enough force to splinter it completely. He’d probably been waiting all tour to destroy it, and he finally had his chance. Query grabbed its remains and bowed at his fallen upright with it, in a move that would have made Nigel Tufnel proud.

When the band was finally done trashing (but never truly injuring) their instruments, the “Never Send To Know With Whom The Van Rolls, It Rolls With Thee” Tour was finally over, and I was left just wanting to see it all again. The Decemberists go back on tour in June.

Setlist:

Los Angeles, I’m Yours
Billy Liar
July, July!
The Legionnaire’s Lament
A Cautionary Song
Leslie Anne Levine
The Bachelor and the Bride
The Solidering Life
Grace Cathedral Hill
The Chimbley Sweep
The Tain
–
Red Right Ankle
I Was Meant For The Stage

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When Freaks and Geeks aired in 1999, I never watched one episode. In a certain sense, I’m partly responsible for its premature cancellation. The rest of the blame falls pretty squarely on NBC, who barely promoted the show at all, dumped it in bad time slots and repeatedly shifted schedules on the show before finally dropping the axe after thirteen episodes.

Four years and bazillions of fan letters later, Freaks and Geeks is finally available in its entirety on DVD. The set is a monstrous compilation of all 18 episodes, including a staggering 29 commentary tracks from cast and crew. I heard nothing but good things about the show, so I decided to take a flyer on the set this week, and the show is twice as good as I ever heard.

Freaks and Geeks is a teen drama about outcasts growing up in suburban Michigan in 1980, something of a Reagan-era Wonder Years. It focuses on the stoner burnouts (the titular Freaks) and the socially awkward nerds (the Geeks) shuffling through high school on the lower rungs of the caste system. My high school was about as far away from suburban Michigan as you can imagine, but pretty much every plot in the show still seemed scarily familiar. The show doesn’t really have a grand story, but it’s mostly about the little battles you have daily as a high school kid. It’s just about as realistic portrayal of high school social systems as I’ve seen on TV. Mix in copious amounts of Rush and Dungeons & Dragons, and you have a show that seems built to make me laugh and cry to unreal degrees.

The show is mostly about Lindsay Weir, an academic superstar that starts hanging with the wrong crowd out on the smoking patio. The great thing about the character is that she’s not “tempted” by some bad boy lifestyle. She’s bored and she just wants to experience something different. Even when she starts running with the freaks, she is still the reticent square and doesn’t go under some sudden transformation into a wildchild pothead. That’s what I loved most about the show. The characters always changed and did the unexpected, but it never felt strained or just for the sake of shock.

By the time I finished watching the series I was really wrapped up in all the characters, and I was sad to watch it end. The creators of the show had enough foresight to shoot the season finale early, so the series actually has an appropriate ending. In retrospect, I’m kinda glad I didn’t watch it during the first airing, because I would’ve been irate at its cancellation. This just happened to me with Wonderfalls, a great new show that FOX just cancelled after 4 episodes, and it kills me just thinking about the nine episodes of that show sitting around in a vault somewhere. I can only hope that it can get a DVD treatment like Freaks and Geeks did.

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Every now and then all these weird things that I like will all converge at once and it will seem like the universe is creating art just for ME. Apparently Andre3000 from Outkast is set to guest star in the season finale of the Shield… as a comic store owner who is complaining about the hookers loitering outside his store. What part of that sentence do I not like? NOT ONE PART.

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It’s only been up for a few days, but I’m totally in love with KINJA. The people at Kinja don’t want to say it explicitly, but Kinja is essentially TiVo for blogs. You bang in the list of webpages you read (it can be any sort of page that uses a dated journal type format), and it digests it and displays it all on one page. You can skim the page all at once and go to the stuff that looks interesting and skip the rest. I’ve been doing this with various RSS plugins but Kinja’s a lot easier to use and web accessible. You can check out my Kinja reading list by clicking here.

The only real problem with Kinja is that it saves me tons of time on reading internet web crap, and one of my primary objectives with reading internet web crab is to waste as much time as humanly possible. Can’t be perfect, I guess.

Posted in I Heart The Interweb 1 Comment »

Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is one of my favorite comics, so I approached the new Guillermo Del Toro film with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. The books are a delicate balance of Lovecraftian horror and an awshucks pulp adventure sensibility, and the possibility of it all getting fucked up in the adaptation was fairly probable.

It’s not an awesome movie, but I think Del Toro hits more than he misses, and overall did a fantastic job adapting something that plays so perfectly in its original form. When Hellboy focuses on how down-to-earth the demonic paranormal investigator protaganist is, it really shines. Perlman’s just great as an average joe hellspawn, funny and physical and poignant as the movie calls for it. Abe Sapien’s fishman and the Clockwork and Sand Ninja Nazi Cyborg Zombie known as Kroenen are both incredible movie monsters in concept and execution.

The problem with Hellboy isn’t in the little moments, which are perfect, but the big picture. It just feels like there’s too much in the movie and it’s overstuffed. The hugest concepts get lip service explanations and none of the action seems to have much weight. Despite it being the end of the world, I never really got a sense of dread or fear either. By escalating the scale of everything, Del Toro loses a lot of focus and connection. The events of the movie don’t really make that much sense as a cohesive whole at all. As a result, I think it’s a great movie for the fans, but I don’t think it’s got enough to convince the casual movie goer.

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