1) I Wanna Hold Your Hand – Green Is Blues – Al Green

Best part? The random guy that yells "SHUT UP AL GREEN!" at the very beginning.

2) We Can Work It Out – Motown Sings The Beatles – Stevie Wonder

‘nother cover snaked from the folks at Outof5.

3) Dance Me In – The Repulsion Box – Sons and Daughters

Sons and Daughters make music that vibrates right out of the speakerbox. Frenetic fun.

4) Lover’s Walk – Trust – Elvis Costello

The Bo-Diddley drumbeat isn’t quite as awesome as the Spector "Be My Baby" beat, but it has it’s fair share of great songs too.

5) Teenage FBI – Do The Collapse – Guided By Voices

This GBV track somehow ended up on the NCAA Football 06 video game, so I heard this on my XBox probably 30-40 times this month.

6) Gold Star for Robot Boy – B-Sides and Rarities – Jon Auer

Here’s a GBV cover from one of the Posies. I might even like it more than the original.

7) Once Things Look Up – Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking? – The Like

I’m still listening to the Like. Are they hugely famous yet?

8) The Greatest – The Greatest – Cat Power

Cat Power too. The new track is wonderful, with touches of soul and r&b sneaking their way into Chan Marshall’s supersadfolk.

9) No Way Out – Ones And Zeros – Immaculate Machine

I love how Kathryn Calder repeats lyrics in the song, as if she were reassuring herself at every step. Normally it’s a cheat for not having enough material, but it works here as a lyrical proxy for the character’s suicidal indecision.

10) It’s Gonna Take An Airplane – Your Blues – Destroyer

I love Dan Bejar’s loopy deliveries. He always sounds higher and drunker than he actually is.

11) The Jessica Numbers – Twin Cinema – New Pornographers

Carl Newman likens the drums in this song to the fibonacci sequence, which is funny and true at the same time. Count ‘em off for fun.

12) Pictures of Success – July 1st Live at KUCI – Rilo Kiley

You know what I love? NATURAL HARMONICS PLAYED ON GUITAR. That would be the only thing this song has in common with Rush’s "Red Barchetta."

13) Soon Enough – Tournament Of Hearts – Constantines

Fake Bruce Springsteen is still pretty good.

14) Thunder Road – Live 1975-85 – Bruce Springsteen

Real deal is much better. I like this version of "Thunder Road" because the rest of the band never comes in to vamp all over it. When Springsteen says "I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk," there’s no guitar solo at all, which just adds to the small town suffocation and the song’s adolescent desperation.

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New Stuff Bought, from Clint Reno (He of all the DoneWaiting Posters):

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Look for my favorite movie of 2005 on the shelves of your local dvd retailer …

*actual cover may look slightly different.

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Photo by Timothy Norris / IceCreamMan.Com

Remember how a month ago I thought that the New Pornographers were so terrific that I thought they could carry on just as well without Neko Case? Boy howdy, I suck at judging these things.

As a band, I think the New Pornographers have proven just how much teamwork there is involved in weaving their magic. It’s not just Case but it’s also the songwriting of Carl Newman and Dan Bejar, the wildman drums of Kurt Dahle and the multi-instrumental flourishes from Blaine Thurier and John Collins. But having Neko Case come over the top sure helps.

Hitting the Henry Fonda Theater with the full, full lineup for the first time ever, the band crowded the stage with an unruly amount of musicians. On top of the standard six lineup, Newman’s niece Kathryn Calder has been added on keyboards and vox, and Destroyer Dan Bejar would stumble on stages occassionally to sing. Every time Bejar showed up, the whole thing looked like one of those all-star jams at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Tons of people on stage, a couple holding no real instruments except for tambourines and beer bottles, everyone singing way too loud because it’s too much fun singing these songs.

Cutting through all the noise, of course, was Neko Case, who is so loud and so dominating that it’s impossible not to watch and listen to her. Even in between songs, she was going on wild tangents about animal husbandry and tugboats filled with kittens and commanding the spotlight. Oh, she sang too, busting out “Mass Romantic,” “All For Swinging You Around” and eventually “Letter to an Occupant” like you wouldn’t believe.

Besides the Neko Case led tracks, the glorious choral blowout of “Bleeding Heart Show” and sweet, sweet harmonies of “Streets of Fire” rang truest of the Twin Cinema material. The “oldies” off Mass Romantic and Electric Version riled up the crowd the most, especially the jaunty “Slow Descent Into Alcoholism.”

They played for 90 minutes and two encores, and yet I wanted to hear so much more, like “Three or Four” or their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” that they’ve been floating live. The whole show was like that… it was so good that I wanted this lineup to be the norm and not just a special occasion, and I wanted more New Porn, all the goddamn time.

:: Tons of pics from this show available at Ice Cream Man ::

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So I log into Amazon today and the highlighted recommended purchase for me was this:

The Philips Home Defibrillator Kit

Does Amazon know something that I don’t? Should I lay off the bacon intake this week?

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As explained in the trailer, History of Violence has Viggo Mortenson as Tom Stall, a small town diner owner who becomes a small town celebrity when he kills a pair of stickup artists when they attempt to rob his business. The publicity brings in east coast bad guys though, who swear that Tom Stall is not a normal guy, but a man with a shady, violent past.

I’m a little surprised by the raves that History of Violence is getting. It is certainly a good movie, well shot and well acted and so methodically paced that when it explodes in fits it has a genuinely visceral effect. After leaving the theater and letting it sit in my head a little bit, you sort of realize how thin it is, in terms of plot and character development. Once its concepts are laid out, it really is a matter of getting through the checkpoints. It is agonizingly slow at times, but this is mitigated by a 90 minute running time. It was better than Road to Perdition, at any rate. Warning: there is some unintentional comedy involved with the wide range of “Philadelphia” accents used in this movie. William Hurt, in particular, seems like he’s from a whole ‘nother planet.

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The long awaited (by nerds) big screen version of “Firefly” is pretty much that. They do make the western allegory a little less literal, but for the most part there isn’t much different from the show, and I don’t see it converting a lot of fans.

All that aside, it is witty and smart and touching and all the things that big screen versions of anything aren’t anymore. That was a poorly constructed sentence, but who cares. When the middle section sags there’s still lots of funny to go around, and the characters’ extreme likability is what really kept the series going as long as it did. For those completely unfamiliar, imagine Star Wars if it was about Han Solo’s smuggling days instead of boring-ass Luke Skywalker. Also imagine if it was well written. Hah, sorry. Poking at George Lucas never gets old, really.

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Brief notes on the Black Keys in Santa Ana a few weeks ago:

1) Holy crap the place was crowded. It was literally standing room only, and I was shooed out of 5 to 6 spots by the ushers because where I stood was a fire hazard.

2) It was a much more eclectic mix than the usual crowd I see, with indie kids bumping up against fratboys and old fogeys alike. It made for a fun show, with lots of whooping and hollering from all factions.

3) There were people air guitaring like it was Van Halen show. Some of them had mullets. THIS WAS AWESOME.

4) The band’s pretty good.

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