Some unexpected delays this month, so I’ll be postdating this month’s mix. Brief comments, because otherwise it would be even later than it already is.

1) Twin Cinema – Twin Cinema – New Pornographers

new new pr0n. This sounds more Slow Wonder than Mass Romantic, with Case’s vocal buried way back in the mix. Does Newman have some kind of crazy pop machine in his basement? Dude’s got more hooks than Kareem.

2) Paul Simon – Our Thickness – Russian Futurists

Matthew Hart’s tinkertoypop experiment goes grand. I don’t think the song ever mentions Paul Simon, but that huge horn section is straight outta Graceland.

3) In a Funny Way – Secret Migration – Mercury Rev

I never get tired of the drums from Be My Baby. The Spector haunts us all.

4) After All – Vagenius – Vagenius

bleep boop i sound like postal service bleep boop but thats ok

5) Six Months in a Leaky Boat – Sharkbite Sessions – Ted Leo / Pharmacists

The breakdown is too bloody irish for me, but otherwise I’m still totally in love with Ted Leo.

6) Rollercoaster – The Woods – Sleater-Kinney

This song’s got an overactive cowbell. The middle part of the ride has too sweet girlgroup vocals over an increasingly violent backbeat and when the rush is over all you hear is the wind.

7) Tear Me Down – Wig in a Box – Spoon

Yanked from that great Hedwig comp that came out last year, “Tear Me Down” has that distinct Spoon vibe with the negative space tricks. I’m always down for that Townshendesque ringing open chord too.

8) Better Half – I Guess I was Hoping for Something More – Tarkio

The interplay between the banjo and the strings is absolutely killer. This is supposed to be re-released by KRS fairly soon.

9) Soulful Shade of Blue – The Tigers Have Spoken – Neko Case

Like lots of Case’s covers, this crashes country/western licks directly into motownesque vocals and comes out no worse for wear.

10) Bandit Queen – Live – The Decemberists

A hilarious country waltz that never made it to Picaresque, this version features one of my favorite rock cliches, when the singer calls out the soloist. In this case, the softly spoken “Jenny Conlee” that pops up before her accordion solo. Not as ridiculous as Bono yelling “COME ON EDGE, PLAY THE BLUES” in the middle of one of those U2 Rattle and Hum numbers though. I believe a studio version will be available on the upcoming Picaresquities EP.

11) Jezebel – Woman King EP – Iron & Wine

Sam Beam’s beard scares me. There’s a heartbreaking banjo solo in this one.

12) Birds and Ships – Mermaid Avenue – Billy Bragg and Wilco featuring Natalie Merchant

I used to stuff this song on the end of mixtapes all the time, because it’s really short and it’s a great slowdown piece to end a tape on. It’s also got the kind of complicated credit you only see on a hip-hop single.

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The Decemberists live on KCRW is up and archived! Listen or Watch.

New Sleater-Kinney site is up and about, including a video for their new single, Entertain, a blog, Janet Weiss’s mixtapes and a Sleater-Kinney quiz.

According to the remarkably difficult quiz, unsurprisingly:

“I Am The 4th Member of Sleater-Kinney”
Either you are a good guesser or you have been living inside our heads for the last ten years. When people want to know about Sleater-Kinney, they call you instead of Sub Pop. You feel a little upset when you see people in baseball caps at the shows. You notice things like the band members wearing the same thing two nights in a row on tour, and you make sure to post about it on your blog. You don’t have the band member’s phone numbers, but that’s not for lack of trying.

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You know why Matthew McConaughey looks so smug? Because he stole my fucking $10. Sometimes you get a little too bored and you end up at shit like this, even though you should know better.

Sahara, apparently based on some franchise adventures by Clive Cussler, has got to be the single most boring action adventure I’ve ever seen. Maybe I had a little too much to drink before hand, but I was nodding off repeatedly since there’s no actual “adventure” until maybe an hour into the movie.

There’s a reasonably workable plot about treasure hunter Dirk Pitt obsessively trying to find an abandoned Civil War ironclad in the middle of Africa, transported there by some sort of biblical flood (!), but there’s no humor or fun to be had anywhere. It’s not bad enough to mock heartily like Tomb Raider, or tightly woven enough to generate any sort of rush like National Treasure. I saw that Roger Ebert gave this three stars, which has to be one of those deals where he gives two stars based on the lead actress being hot.

By the way, just to ruin the movie for everyone, they find the ironclad. It is just below the surface of a sand dune, so all they needed to find it was a really big metal detector.

EDIT TO ADD: Remarkably bad usage of music in the film. The soundtrack was straight Freedom Rock, including “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Magic Carpet Ride,” and “We’re an American Band.” I think I heard some Marshall Tucker Band and some Canned Heat as well. The only connection I could make was that McConaughey is a Texas stoner so DIRK PITT must have been as well.

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It has already been blung! (as seen on tv)

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The LA Weekly ran a nice little interview with Petra Haden this week. Haden is a fixture in the LA music scene, as part of both that dog and the Rentals and a session player on albums by Beck to Mike Watt. It was Watt that convinced her to do her acapella reading of “The Who Sell Out,” and her all-vocal, all-cover album is garnering her quite a bit of attention. She also quietly snuck into the Decemberists and is currently on tour stealing hearts across the nation.

The most intriguing mention in the article is the prospect of a live version of Petra Haden: Sings The Who Sell Out.” Putting together a 10 woman choir (and possibly more), Haden is looking to put together the show some time during the summer of 2005.

I’m. Totally. There.

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Somewhere down the line, I narrowed my focus to three or four bands, and really didn’t care much more about anyone else. One of these bands is a Donewaiting Favorite, the mighty Decemberists of Portland, Oregon. After their last trip, I’ve now seen the Colin Meloy play seven times since January 2004. That’s a LOT. Each time the Decemberists have returned to Los Angeles, the venue size has virtually doubled. This time, they were booked in the cavernous Henry Fonda Theater that holds about 1500 picaroons, and they sold the place out.

The band stepped on stage and there were a few immediate differences. Instead of the Russian National Anthem, they entered to the whale calls that open up Picaresque. Gone is drummer Rachel Blumberg and added are the Jicks’ John Moen on drums and L.A. resident Petra Haden on violin and vocals. In an added bit of theatricality, the group no longer shows up in jeans and t’s, but the custom-made matching outfits you see in their press photos.

John Moen was onstage before anyone else, knocking out the galloping drumbeat of “The Infanta” as everyone slowly meandered on. All at once, the group entered the fray and then followed directly into a jubilant “July, July.” The focus was mainly on new “We Both Go Down Together” felt like “Losing My Religion” in a good way and “The Sporting Life” was a crowd favorite, the song busting into a tambourine extravaganza during the break. If you’re in the middle of the crowd and towards the right, Meloy will be tossing a tambourine your way, so watch out. “Engine Driver” and “On the Bus Mall” were played as a pair, and both were transcendent. The only new songs that didn’t really appeal to me were “From My Own True Love” and “Bagman’s Gambit,” two numbers that are just a bit slow and repetitive in the live setting. The Decemberists also tossed in a cover of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” which newcomer Petra Haden takes lead vocal on. The song lives at the top end of Haden’s range, but she tackled it with abandon and you could see the joy on her face as she knocked each progressively more difficult part.

The live show has become progressively more interactive each time I’ve seen the band. This night, it was reaching all new levels. During the climax of “16 Military Wives,” the crowd threw crumpled up pieces of paper at Meloy, renacting the bombardment of Henry Stowecraft at the end of the video. With the now customary “Los Angeles, I’m Yours,” Meloy led the audience in a rhythmic footstomping as well as letting the masses sing lines of the song without him. When he sang “I can see your undies,” a dozen pair of panties flew on stage. It’s bordering on Rocky Horror, and I’d recommend to Meloy not to write any songs about rotten food or heavy projectiles. The new joint activity came with the main set finale of “Mariner’s Revenge Song,” where the band asked the audience to groan and scream “as if swallowed by a whale” when that part of the song was reached. The kitschy community theater aspect of the show continues to grow, but right now the audiences are still lapping it up.

The encore started with a solo “Red Right Ankle,” with Meloy prompting the audience to sing the melodica solo in Rachel Blumberg’s stead. The show was already over the hour mark, but the band and crowd were hot and Meloy picked up the electric and blasted into the 20 minute epic of “The Tain.” I’d assumed that the song cycle was retired, too indulgent and exhausting to integrate into the regular rotation, but there it was, grandiose and magnificent as ever. It was the glorious capper to an amazing evening.

Without a doubt, this was best show of the year (so far). Since Donewaiting is once again booking the Decemberists in Columbus, I have no doubts everyone reading already has their tickets. Right?

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As a fan of pro-wrestling and someone generally intrigued by its history, I was pretty disappointed with Lipstick and Dynamite, Piss and Vinegar : The First Ladies of Wrestling, Ruth Leitman’s new documentary about the old dames of the sport. The doc isn’t bad, and it’s stocked with tons of solid archive material and old ladies cussing up a storm, which is always good for a laugh. The best interviews come from Killem Gillem, the oldest living lady wrestler (82 years young!) and The Fabulous Moolah, the former world champ who is still working occassional matches with the WWE.

Unfortunately, there’s not much of a narrative to hold it together. There are four or five key interview subjects, but they only crossover in rare spots, connected mostly by the male promoters that they slept with and were beat by. The movie gets across how tough it was in this world, and how tough the ladies were, but not much else. I expected the main interviews to be buffered by some more historical experts, but that never really happened. The problem with interviewing pro-wrestlers, particularly ones that worked in the wayback, is that many of them still talk to reporters as if wrestling were not scripted. There’s only a few interviews that seem to acknowledge that. When a lot of the backstage politicking can be more interesting than the results in the squared circle, you got the feeling that you weren’t getting the whole story.

It’s a great tribute these tough broads from yesterday, but it lacks depth. The really brilliant documentaries tend to stumble onto some unexpected turn of events that they can turn the movie around, but that never really happens for Lipstick and Dynamite either.

P.S. After the screening there was actually a Q+A with the director and four of the wrestlers. The women were great (if a tad long-winded), but I have never experienced a longer string of dumb questions in my life. Questions about the stiffness of the mats and breast implants and one fan who desperately tried to get them to talk about Andre the Giant… it was excruciating!

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You know, if you’re looking for the Sin City website, you really have to be careful. If you don’t type http://www.sincitythemovie.com exactly, YOU WILL END UP BURIED IN PORN. The movie itself is pretty much as advertised. For better or worse, it is an exact replication of the books.

It’s visually stunning with its stark panels of black and white splashed with color, with computer generated backgrounds that carry the grit of reality as well as an elastic, exaggerated physicality that’s more reminiscent of Looney Tunes cartoons. The hard boiled voiceover needs to be pulled back a few notches. There’s lots of times where the voiceover is routinely describing the action on screen, which is bad in comics and awful on the big screen. The acting ranges from fantastic (Mickey Roarke) to pretty dang sucky (Michael Madsen, I look in your general direction).

Frank Miller’s Sin City books really wanted to be adult, but they’re not really mature, if you catch my drift. They’re gratuitously violent and there’s nudity everywhere, justified or no. The movie reproduces this as well, ratcheting up the violence just a touch and easing up on the nekkid. The stories never really go beyond “tough dudes have hearts of gold, protect girls that are nice, even though they work in the sex industry.” All three parts follow that template, give or take, and even by noir genre conventions that’s pushing it.

It’s pretty cool in some parts and it made me wince in others, but overall it was a decent enough way to kill an afternoon. Anyone that claims it’s the greatest movie ever made is probably a nerd, and will change their opinion when Star Wars: Episode III comes out anyway.

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After a disappointing opening day, the Dodgers took two easy wins from the hapless Giants and look like early favorites for the NL West crown. Hee-Seop Choi still can’t hit and Jose Valentin still can’t field, but those look like better bets to correct than the Giants suddenly getting younger or the Padres getting talent.

Random Observations:

Choi’s swing need a whole lot more work than it got this spring. He’s got huge holes in from front to back and it seems the advice to “be aggressive” has got him swinging at absolute junk more often.

While most shortstops convert to 3rd pretty easily, Valentin was a bad candidate to do so. He was a rangy error-prone shortstop, so 3rd is a position that cuts down his strengths (range to his left and right) and puts a spotlight on his weakness (consistent throws). He’s got the arm but is wilder than Nuke Laloush.

Hey we’ve got two sidearm pitchers now! Those guys are just fun to watch.

The Giants outfield defense is old and superslow. In game two there were about four balls that fell for hits, even though they were just lazy pop-ups. The Giants are just old in general. I think every player in their starting lineup is older than Paul DePodesta, the Dodgers general manager.

Anyhow… 159 games to go. Go get ‘em Blue.

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On my way home today, I see a guy dragging a 12 foot tall crucifix down the sidewalk. Swear to god! He had his shoulder underneath the intersection and was dragging it just like Jesus himself. It was right out of the Passion… except for one small thing. I noticed that at the bottom of the cross, there was a little wheel. A wheel!

What kind of half-assed crucifixion was this guy headed to? I predict that in the future, everyone will bear their crosses with assistance from a Segway.

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