FILM REVIEW: Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats)

Written/Directed/Edited By: Xavier Dolan

Starring: Xavier Dolan as Francis, Niels Schneider as Nicolas, Monia Chokri as Marie

I plan on gushing relentlessly about this film afterwards, so I’ll get the bad stuff out of the way first. Like most contemporary art films, Heartbeatsis occasionally weighed down by crowded, over-enthusiastic stylistic flourishes that sometimes border on tiresome. In the first half, slow motion is used hypnotically to hypersensualize Nicolas, the enigmatic sexual core of the film, and to underscore subtle ripples of tension that would’ve been overlooked in real-time. The excessive use of slow motion here is not only endearing in its overt poeticism, but also makes for some awesome LOL moments. In the second half, though, the use of slow motion stops being cute and starts becoming irritating, and comes across as a half-baked attempt at stylistic consistency that never succeeds at becoming more than a self-indulgent pretension. The slo-mo sex scenes are particularly aimless. The use of saturated neon lighting in the post-coital bedroom scenes immediately recalls Cam Archer’s Wild Tigers I Have Known, but while Archer knowingly uses it to create a separate space for Malcolm Stumpf’s most intimate confessions, Dolan simply uses it to make his film prettier. The script could’ve appropriated Bergman-esque candor to give these scenes more emotional weight and relevance (as they are, they don’t add much at all), but instead Dolan insists on homogenizing Heartbeats with pensive, wordless ambiguity, which is a decision that falls flat here. The use of flashing lights in the club scene when Marie and Francis are staring at a celebratory Nicolas begins too as something interesting, but the sheer excess of its application causes the scene to descend firmly into nausea territory. I mean, I really appreciated its use over the Marie/Francis stills, but it mostly just made a long, redundant scene an irritating, long, redundant one. The main plot is interspersed with various ‘confessional’ scenes (they’re hardly as intimate as Dolan would like to think), and a lot of them are excessively long and bewilderingly redundant. For example, one ‘confessor’ describes the entire Kinsey scale (wrongly, I might add), and the movie just progresses nonchalantly to the next scene. There is no punchline, no explanation, no practical use and no emotional relevance. Mostly, I’m a fan of non-explanations — but only when the script is already intelligent enough to hint at some kind of depth. In such scenes, the script is as superficial as the direction, and that’s inexcusable. Much of the film’s flaws must be attributed to Dolan; although he has much to convey and has demonstrated the ability to do so in a marvelous manner, his stylistic sensibilities are half-baked and his understanding of infatuation — which the movie depends on for its depth — is unimpressive. That said, Dolan was 19 years old when he did this film. NINETEEN. This is incredible, considering how much I like this film.

For starters, the acting here is absolutely superb. Xavier Dolan’s Francis reminds me a lot of Peter Dinklage’s Oscar-worthy turn as Finbar McBride in Thomas McCarthy’s The Station Agent, in that both of them are extremely complex, challenging creations that never reach out to the audience, and that bravely keep their emotions in check. Francis is child-like, awkward, self-aware and needy, but he is also ridiculously adorable, stylish and confident. He is tactful enough to be reserved in his affection towards Nicolas in front of Marie, but is brimming with enough adolescent angst to be angry at himself for it. He is mature enough to know what he wants, but not mature enough to accept it when things don’t go his way. Marie is a comparatively accessible character; she shamelessly goes for what she wants and isn’t self-aware enough to disguise her intentions like Francis. She is comically prudish, and wears pearls and vintage dresses for extra class cred, but isn’t actually classy enough to hold up her dignity like she can her immaculate hair bun. Niels Schneider’s Nicolas, who is casual, confident, cultured and effortlessly sexy, is a stunning exercise in subtlety. There are so many scenes when Nicolas could’ve potentially become an arrogant asshole, but Schneider takes care to never cross that threshold. Throughout the entire film, and even after he nonchalantly ‘breaks up’ with Marie and Francis, Nicolas is always sympathetic and always loveable. That’s an incredible feat for an actor. Anne Dorval, who makes a particularly memorable cameo as Nicolas’ bohemian mother, is quite magnificent too. She curses, flirts, leaps from self-conscious pity to casual abandon, and offers a brief peek into uncharted depth, all in the span of under 3 minutes. Her lines, to Dolan’s credit, are jaw-droppingly incredible. While Viola Davis’ similarly short cameo in Doubt had her spew out unmemorable lines in a memorable way, Dorval spits out excellent turns of phrases that are so inadvertently, insidiously powerful that they linger in the corners of Francis’ mind until the near-end of the film.

But enough about the acting; can we just talk about the magnificence of Xavier Dolan’s direction? The sheer range of his influences is incredible — and made even more impressive by his age. His predilection for dramatic romanticization harkens back to indie Gus Van Sant circa My Own Private Idaho, his employment of music and wordless ambiguity is derivative of Sofia Coppola, his inventive use of the camera is an obvious product of watching Jean-Luc Godard films, and his use of saturated colours reeks of Pedro Almodovar. AND HE’S ONLY NINETEEN. *swoon*

One of my favourite scenes is the one where where Nicolas and Francis laugh at Marie’s retirement after they flirt over marshmallows, not least because its use of dramatic irony is utterly stunning. Nicolas laughs because of Marie’s prudishness, and Francis laughs because of her jealousy; but in that moment when they’re laughing together, the reasons don’t matter — what matters is that their laughter functions as an assertion of solidarity. Meanwhile, the audience laughs because of the tentative awkwardness in Francis’ laughter. Towards the end of the film, we realize an even bigger irony that makes our initial reaction to this scene seem silly. SO MUCH GOING ON — and I think this scene pretty much sums up what I love about this film. Dolan employs simple, often even cliché film elements, and uses them as springboards to explore the inherent tensions and assumptions in relationships, bestowing them with new depth and significance. And while his scenes don’t actually provide any groundbreaking insights into human nature, they do much to expose the absurdity of our desires and the distorting lens through which we gawk at the subject of our infatuations. It’s not a particularly deep move on Dolan’s part, but it does make for good entertainment with an added dimension of satisfactory depth. I mean, I do appreciate films that are intellectual in both execution and content (RE: Certified Copy, The Silence), but such films are often solemn and inaccessible, and descend (for some) too much into philosophical meditation, and rarely provide as much fun as Dolan does here.

There have been many accusations directed at Heartbeats about its unoriginality, especially since many artsy gay male filmmakers (yes, Dolan is gay) tend to incorporate a similar brand of narrative disjunction, stylistic beauty and surrealist excess into films about sexuality and love. Of course, Dolan by far seems to be the most promising, but he is undoubtedly in the line of a genre with distinct conventions, and some are bound to find Heartbeats an uninspired rehash of pre-established conventions. I have much to say about this, because I think Dolan’s use of clichés is deliberate and self-knowing. Wild Tigers I Have Known, an extremely similar film, incorporates incoherent, near-irrelevant pixellated shots of children swimming and close-ups of tigers, mostly because it looks pretty and fills up space. Heartbeats, on the other hand, never once feels incoherent. It takes arthouse clichés and gives them meaning; it takes empty stylistic flourishes and fills them up with unrequited longing. This, of course, is supposed to be a parallel to how Heartbeats as a movie exposes and explores relationship dynamics. To be fair, I don’t think Dolan does all this very well, but I attribute this inadequacy to Dolan’s hitherto inability to harness his true potential, rather than to his general inadequacy as a filmmaker. Perhaps I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps my doing so is premature and unjustified, but the self-parodying highs of this film are much too brilliant for me to think that I’m underestimating his intelligence.

A lot of criticism has also been directed towards the superficiality of the characters and plot premise, although I think the former exists mostly only because critics tend to be dissatisfied with characters that don’t smother us in their personality and troubles. Francis and Marie are both characters that never quite reach out to the audience, because they want the audience to reach out to them. The protagonists of Thomas McCarthy’s The Visitor and Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere are both equally emotionally stunted, and critics have lashed out at them too for it — but their introverted lack of expression does not in any way mean that they don’t feel and think as we do. Just because there is no confrontational, confessional scene where they divulge every inch of their composition, does not mean that they have no depth. In Heartbeats, character depth is something that is explored (albeit tangentially) by subtleties in the actors’ facial expressions and in the insidiously powerful scriptwriting, even if this is not particularly apparent. Moving on. I can’t defend the weakness of the premise, but I do think that Heartbeats exemplifies how a film with an awful premise, if well-executed, can still be a good one. I too was skeptical about a film revolving around a love triangle, but Heartbeats is poetic, sensitive, delicate and witty enough to make an impact.

Generally, I’m quite skeptical towards new queer cinema, because the films produced are almost always excessively campy, self-indulgent and aimlessly outlandish (RE: Wild Tigers I Have Known, Were The World Mine, Shortbus). Dolan too occasionally has moments of excess, but he also has a rare (for gay male filmmakers) appreciation for subtlety and depth. Here’s hoping he’ll move forward in an appropriate direction and make new queer cinema something worth caring about.

KevinScale Rating: 4/5

FILM REVIEW: Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster

Directed By: Wilson Yip

Written By: Edmond Wong

Starring: Donnie Yen as Ip Man, Sammo Hung as Master Hong, Hwang Xiaoming as Wong Leung

Yes, please don’t die of surprise, I actually do watch Chinese films — even if they are often one-dimensional, self-serious, melodramatic bullshit — like this one (OH SNAP).

The first half of this film is particularly wonderful. Ip Man tries to get students, but they’ll only be his students if he can beat them. *cue fight scene* One of his disciples then gets into a fight with students from another martial arts sect *cue fight scene* but they play dirty and take him hostage. Naturally, Ip Man comes to rescue him — but a fuckton of students come to beat him up *cue fight scene*. Sammo Hung, ugly unkempt beard and fats and all, then makes Ip Man fight some martial arts teachers (including himself) to legitimize his authority *cue fight scenes on a table*. So yeah. That’s the first one hour of the movie: episodic fight scenes clumsily strung together with unconvincing transitions masquerading as justifications of some sort — which is bewilderingly ironic considering how emphatically the film underscores Ip Man’s general aversion to gratuitous violence.

The character development in the first half of the film is equally abysmal. I can almost deal with Ip Man’s students being portrayed as hot-headed testosterone-charged lunatics who should be made to pay fines for committing killer-litter, but I can’t deal with Wong Leung – the de facto leader of the lot – being an equally humorless, self-serious fucker. There is a marvelous 4-5second scene towards the end of the first half where Ip Man makes fun of Leung’s self-seriousness, but that scene alone is just painfully inadequate in compensating for a hopelessly shitty writing job. Ip Man’s wife here hasn’t changed much from the first movie, which means that she is still just an annoying bitch who complains with a vengeance. When she’s not complaining, she’s busy proclaiming her pseudo-noble intentions (she insists on not disturbing Ip Man when she gives birth), which in turn just makes her even more annoying. Can’t you just suffer in peace? Bigger things are going on here. Like Chinese pride and Chinese culture and Chinese integrity and Chinese dignity and shit. But I’ll get to that. Apart from rare bursts of wit, the other Kung Fu masters are generally devoid of personality. Master Hong, who apparently is the Queen Bitch (omg David Bowie reference) of Hong Kong, and who we are apparently supposed to give a shit about, mostly just gets by with angry glares and sour expressions. Mucho depth right hurr. Oh and someone really has to talk about the Western police chief guy. He’s only featured twice in the first half of the film, and in both scenes he is portrayed as an unsympathetic asshole who asserts some contrived form of Western superiority on the struggling Chinese working-class. There is an obvious, if painfully weak and/or unintentional, attempt to humanize him (the fat Chinese guy with weak eyebrows says something to the effect of THE WHITE BOY ALWAYS AVOIDS THE SUBJECT — as though subtly implying that he also has his own superiors to answer to) but this is completely undermined by the outrageously offensive second half of the film.

Then again, character depth has never been the strong suit of Chinese films, so maybe I’m just expecting too much. Fair enough. But what about the cinematography? If the character and plot developments are both shitty, surely the cinematography must be sufficiently compensatory? NO. The cinematography here is painfully uninspired. For dramatic effect, the camera swirls and zooms in. In preparation for a fight, the camera swirls and zooms out. To emphasize on the intimacy between two people, a classic medium two shot is used. So. Fucking. Boring. Where’s Zhao Xiaoding when you need him? 😦 I think the only scenes where there was anything remotely interesting going on were the ones in the boxing ring, in which Wilson Yip almost certainly took his cues from Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. Problem is, the strong fluorescent lighting here is not nearly as powerful or as unforgiving as those in “The Ram”‘s last match, and Yip’s intended effect just falls flat. Also, the use of jump cuts to draw parallels between Ip Man and Master Hong is a tragically obvious thing to do. There’s a lot of self-plagiarism going on here too. The use of slow-motion, and the interspersion of fight scenes with Ip Man rehearsing with his wooden man thing, which were already used ad nauseum in the first film, are both back with a moribund, anticlimactic vengeance.  MEH. Anyway, let’s move on to the second half of the film — or as I like to call it, xenophobic, self-aggrandizing trash.

Suddenly, “Twister”, British boxer (with a generalized Australian accent) insults Chinese people (“So this is Chinese boxing? You should stick to dancing”), makes a lot of Chinese people angry, and paves the way for a shitton of mediocre scriptwriting.

Sample lines:

Twister: The winners have to apologize to the losers? If I had to do that, I would have to apologize EVERY DAY.

Twister: BE WARNED. I WILL NOT HOLD BACK.

Twister: By the time this thing has burnt to the end, there will be no more Chinese boxers, BECAUSE I WOULD HAVE KILLED THEM ALL.

Twister: …I doubt that there’s any Chinese “fella” who has the guts to get in the ring with me.

Emcee (speaking for Ip Man): Although people have different status [sic] in life, he doesn’t believe that one person’s integrity is worth more than another’s.

*Vomits into a biodegradable paper bag*

Twister’s lines are mostly just extraordinarily silly attempts to incite hatred towards a person we already know we shouldn’t like. They are also written in extraordinarily bad grammar. Now, I’m not unreasonable — I don’t think Edmond should be expected to conquer English all on his own. But perhaps a translator? Or someone who can speak English? With some remote semblance of grammatical competency? I dunno, maybe that’s a silly suggestion. Silly me. Gigglez.

There are a lot of moments in this movie that could’ve been developed into interesting scenes, but Wilson Yip seems genuinely content with superficiality. The half-time scene when the white guy is given water, a bucket and a mouthguard, for example, could’ve been an opportunity to transform a weak contrast between the two cultures into a dryly/awkwardly funny scene. The scantily-clad girls who signal for the commencement of the matches could’ve been made into complex metaphorical representations of the movie itself (in its appeal to the Western predilection for non-stop action) or a symbol of some kind, but instead they just act as clumsy, lazy transitions between matches. This indifferent acceptance of sluts is also offensively ironic in a film that presents itself as a pseudo-exercise in pro-Chinese nationalism. The slo-mo close-ups of Master Hong having the shit beaten out of him are irritatingly redundant. DO YOU WANT US TO HATE WESTERNERS THAT MUCH? I mean, it is already clear from the very premise of the movie that we’re supposed to be siding with Hong, so why the attempts to garner even MORE sympathy? Just in case we’re too stupid to realize that? Or because the scriptwriter is? Why not take cues from Breaking Bad and focus instead on the blood dripping on the floor? WHY EMPHASIZE THINGS THAT ARE ALREADY OBVIOUS. We already know that Master Hong is going to lose, because Ip Man has to have the final battle and everyone is talking about Hong’s ASTHMA ATTACK, so why the slo-mo suspense bullshit? Oh right. Because this is a movie that caters to half-wits #lulz. The overhead shot of all the Chinese people rushing in and crowding Master Hong’s corpse while Twister celebrates alone could’ve been a stunning shot, but instead the director chooses to make it slo-mo and fade out into black. Seriously? What the fuck. There’s absolutely no appreciation for subtlety or depth. It is as though Yip here concedes that YES, the storyline really is simply a transition into fight scenes.

The sound editing here is also quite awful:

*cue orchestral bombast after Ip Man challenges Twister to a fight?*

*cue low, bad-boy electronic drones with sparse, hollow drums whenever Westerners do something bad*

*cue the same music when fat Chinese man siding with Westerners does something bad*

*cue the same music when fat Chinese man siding with Westerners does something good*

Where’s David Lynch when you need him? 😦

The film’s only saving grace is Donnie Yen, who plays Ip Man with unflappable calmness, self-effacing affability and quiet resignation. Also, the Chinese people drowning out the English-speaking emcee during the countdown to Ip Man’s win would’ve truly been something to behold — if only the film didn’t try so hard to make me hate it.

KevinScale Rating: 2/5

50 AWESOME ALBUMS 5/5: #nowplaying

1. Reign Of Terror – Sleigh Bells

When noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells released their critically-lauded LP “Treats” 2 years ago, I didn’t really think they deserved the props they were given. I mean, they had a distinct, bold sound, and Derek Miller (the album’s main creative force) demonstrated an incredible instinct for turning abrasive guitar riffs into shamelessly gratuitous club-bangers, but aimless songs like “Riot Rhythm”, “Run The Heart” and “Rachel” did much to expose his inability to write a catchy melody – which ultimately made the record less enjoyable. For “Reign Of Terror”, Alexis Krauss, the poppier half of the duo, was much more involved with the songwriting, and the results are quite spectacular. Lead single “Comeback Kid” is Sleigh Bells at its undeniable best; Miller’s guitar riffs are as bold as always, but Krauss’ presence is far more palpable. Her light soprano effortlessly soars over the production, leaping nimbly from one melody to the next. One cannot help but think of Krauss standing on top of the Willis Tower watching Chicago explode into oblivion, her singing sweet and casual. The production on this album is a lot more diverse than the guitar-driven “Treats”, and Miller even employs 80s synths/fingersnaps for extra cheesiness (“You Lost Me”) on his pop ventures. Thankfully, even on a record that seems like an obvious attempt to prove their versatility, Sleigh Bells has lost none of its original fearlesssness. I think it’ll be a long time before Miller’s explosive riffs get remotely tiring. Until then, clubs should really try to stop playing shit (like “Born This Way”) and start playing this album.

2. Person Pitch – Panda Bear

Panda Bear’s musical persona is a self-aware introvert who harbours a lot of disdain for the world, but who self-deprecatingly blames himself for his weirdness instead of lashing out and smothering everyone with fuck-the-world polemics. He has a lot of things on his mind, and he wants to get over them, but just doesn’t know how. He drifts through the world with child-like wonder and preternatural sensitivity. He also has a lot of heart. Distilling such a complex persona into music is ridiculously hard to do, and Panda Bear does it with ease. Every song on this record is warm, bright and immaculately produced. Bizarre sound effects (a cassette player opens and closes repeatedly on “Take Pills”, an electronic drone drowns out the last 30 seconds of “Comfy in Nautica”, and laughter, bird calls and planes taking off can distinctly be heard in “Bros”) fade in and out of the songs, as though Panda Bear is in awe of the sounds in his world and is inviting us to feel the same child-like wonder he does. When talking about “Person Pitch”, critics tend to leave out the genius of its lyrics, so that’s what I wanna talk about. The lyrics alternate between short post-it notes (“It’s good to sometimes slow it down”, “Try and have a softer inside/Shut up boy and be a soldier”, “Try to remember always/just to have a good time”) reminding him of how to cope with the alien world beyond, truncated apologies for his introversion (“I’m not trying to forget you/I just like to be alone”, “It’s hard/and hard enough/to keep it up when everything is so new”) and his hopes (“I don’t want for us to take pills/because we’re stronger and we don’t need them”). In short, this album is probably the most personal, accurate reflection of an introvert’s emotional world since Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds”. As a person who completely relates to Panda Bear’s child-like inability to perform like a normal human being, this album speaks volumes to me, and articulates what I would never have the courage to. Every song here is really special, but the best by far is the underrated “Good Girl/Carrots”, which begins with a sequence of claustrophobic samples (“Good Girl”) that repeats obsessively until the dark electronic production opens up into a keyboard-driven pop ditty (“Carrots”) in which Panda Bear turns his intimate confessions (“You kind of make me want to shut your mouth/Just to keep out all of those unfriendly feelings”) into a celebratory romp.

3. Shallow Graves – Tallest Man On Earth

He’s the closest thing we have to another Bob Dylan. Kristian Matsson’s voice is raw, weary, gritty, and nasal, his guitar-picking skills are jaw-droppingly incredible, and his lyrics invoke Beatnik abstractions without ever losing their personal and emotional relevance. “The Gardner” is about his insecurities, but Matsson challenges his listeners with a darkly humorous tale of a man who kills other “better” men to secure his lover’s heart (“So now he’s buried by the daisies/So I could stay the tallest man in your eyes, babe”). At other times, Matsson completely eschews the storytelling tradition of folk music for an imagistic, surrealist lyrical style, and allows his songs to wander aimlessly before his punchlines come crashing in like immutable revelations that momentarily bestow his rich imagery with heart-rending power. In “Pistol Dreams”, the album’s closest thing to a pop single, Matsson takes his time with references to hedonism (“And I will boil the curtains/To extract the drugs of springtime”), but rounds off the verse with an unexpected turn (“Throw me in the fire now/Come on”) that reveals an equally unexpected depth. Acoustic performances often tend to be one-noted and boring (“, but Matsson proves that a single guitar goes a long way.

4. Warm Heart of Africa – The Very Best

GIVERS (and perhaps Weezer’s awfully bizarre “Love Is The Answer” — but I like to pretend they never made music after making “The Blue Album” and “Pinkerton”) is the perfect exemplification of what worldbeat music has become in American hands — straightforward pop cheese with superficial influences from African folk music. Don’t get me wrong, I love “Ceiling of Plankton” and “Up Up Up”, but those are exceptions in an album that mostly falls flat by mistaking worldbeat for a one-dimensional collage of footstomps and bizarre vocal stylings. Above all, African music is bold, freeform and celebratory – and for all their pop brilliance, GIVERS fails to embody that spirit. This is an album helmed by Malawi musician Esau Mwamwaya, whose voice is exuberant, vibrant and unpretentious, whose harmonies are sweetly infectious, and whose melodies are catchy but are defiantly anti-Americanized. Also, all his verses are sung in his native language, Chichewa, which makes the effortless accessibility of his songs all the more impressive. The album’s production, managed by Radioclit, is also quite wonderful. A diverse assortment of African tribal instruments frame the album, and electronic bleeps and club stomps sometimes take the music into an unexpectedly modern direction (“Angonde”). MIA, infamous iconoclast and determined purveyor of awesome world music, makes a particularly fantastic cameo here (“Rain Dance”). Surprisingly, her deadpan monotone and effortless catchiness only almost steals the show – and that’s how good this album is.

5. Era Extrana – Neon Indian

Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo, unwitting leader of the chillwave moment, took the indie world by storm with his debut effort “Psychic Chasms”, a cutesy take on psychedelic reverb and a resolutely digital update of classic 80s pop cheese. With “Era Extrana”, Palomo ventures away from the feather-light danceability of his previous LP and firmly into darker sonic territory. His production here is rife with abrasive sounds (“Fallout”, “Halogen”, “The Blindside Kiss”) and even though some remnants of his previous musical identity still remains more or less intact (“Polish Girl”, “Future Sick”), his bubbly synths are now even more distorted than before. His placement of sounds, which used to be strategic and neat, is now decidedly messy, making this album a much more experimental and (almost) anti-pop one. Like so many crossover experimental artists, Neon Indian continues to take cues from Animal Collective, and ensures a gratuitous abundance of catchy tunes even when they threaten to be submerged by quasi-radical experimentalism. One thing I really liked about “Psychic Chasms” was its ability to make vocal-less songs ridiculously catchy (“Terminally Chill”, “Laughing Gas”). Here, Palomo knowingly frames the album with instrumental “Heart” songs which confirm his ability as an electronic musician and bestow the album with a cohesiveness that “Psychic Chasms” occasionally lacked.

6. Bon Iver, Bon Iver – Bon Iver

This wasn’t an album that I enjoyed at first, because it is so radically different from Bon Iver’s debut album “For Emma, Forever Ago”. That album was characterized by its sparse production, its soulful delicateness and its silent resignation to solitude. “Bon Iver, Bon Iver” is almost the direct opposite of that, and this is made apparent from the very start. Album-opener “Perth” fills the vocal-less silence with a neat arrangement of guitar riffs, flutes, saxophones and eclectic rhythm-heavy percussion, and the production swells to a breathtaking crescendo that clangs and sighs with dramatic intensity. Musically, this album more obviously resembles the work of a band, which in turn firmly disassociates Bon Iver from Vernon’s broken-man-alone-in-cabin sob story. It also does much to develop Vernon’s artistic persona. In “For Emma, Forever Ago”, Vernon presented himself as a prideful scorned lover who dramatized his self-victimization and who lashed out at his ex-lover with a tragic immaturity (“I told you to be patient/and I told you to be kind”, “Someday my pain will mark you”, “I am blindsided”). “Bon Iver, Bon Iver”, above all, marks Vernon’s growth as a person. In the Grammy-nominated album centerpiece “Holocene”, Vernon sings “At once I knew/I was not magnificent”, the single most powerful line in the entire album. It is a knowing acknowledgment of his hubris and a dignified documentation of his maturity, and what we feel is nothing less than heartbreaking devastation. On much of the other songs though, Vernon eschews self-indulgent confessions for poetic abstractions that are grounded not in Tallest-Man-On-Earth-imagism but in sheer phonoaesthetic power. In “Towers”, the album’s poppiest, most accessible moment, he sings “Fuck the fiercest fables, I’m with Hagen”, and what matters is not the meaning (it’s probably meaningless) but the determination and the insidious ferocity that the words bring to his soulful falsetto. This is one of the best albums of 2011, and rightly so.

7. Love You Gotta Lose Again – Nicolas Jaar

Nicolas Jaar is one of the newest faces in downtempo electronic music, and he makes Air’s “Pocket Symphony” look unexciting. In a 12-minute EP, he manages to showcase an impressively eclectic musical range while carving out a very distinct musical niche. His productions tend to be very quiet and minimalistic, and he intersperses repetitive sparse, hollow tribal beats with electronic drones and distorted melodic vocal samples that fade in and out at irregular intervals. In “Wouch”, guitar riffs and naked keyboard lines wander in when the production tends to stagnate, and gradual sonic distortions constantly keep the listener interested. I mean, when a musician is bold enough to use spanish guitars, synths, African tribal drums and electronic bleeps in one 3-minute song, you know that you’re listening to someone awesome.

8. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes is the best folk band in the last 20 years, and this album is fucking fantastic. End of story.

9. James Blake – James Blake

James Blake is one of Pitchfork’s latest projects; ever since he started releasing his EPs in early 2010, P4k was already pushing for him to become one of the most talked-about musicians in the indie circle – and succeeded they have, due in no small part to the ingenuity of this record. “James Blake” is an album with an extremely sparse production, repetitive vocal phrasings, looped piano riffs and hollow drum beats. It adapts Philip Glass’ minimalism into digestible pop tunes with simple, powerful lyrics, and re-appropriates dubstep noise to underscore emotional tensions and to uncover unexplained psychological depths. Emotional ideas are stripped down to their very core, condensed into individual refrains, which are then repeated again and again over perpetually-evolving productions until every drop of meaning is wrung out. This album is personal, heartbreaking and sometimes devastating, and Blake’s voice is nothing short of magnificent.

10. Strawberry Jam – Animal Collective

I still don’t get the fuss over “Merriweather Post Pavilion”. Lead single “My Girls” was obviously Animal Collective’s best song yet (that is, until “What Would I Want? Sky” was released a year later), but the album itself often comes across as a half-baked attempt to adapt “Person Pitch” into a group-oriented effort. It lacks the sonic and stylistic consistency of their previous efforts, and while Panda Bear and Avey Tare sounded positively incredible together on “Sung Tongs”, they often struggle to find balance on “Merriweather”. Avey’s contribution to “Guys Eyes” is particularly redundant. “Daily Routine” sounds too much like what Panda Bear would do on his solo albums, and “Brother Sport” is an obvious retread of “Derek” from “Strawberry Jam”. “Bluish”  sounds too much like a retread of “Flesh Canoe” from “Feels”. The worst track on the album “Lion In A Coma” even bizarrely dabbles in MIA’s naked sample-heavy aesthetic, except with none of her finesse, none of her inventiveness, and all of her cheapness. Of course, when their ecstatic harmonizing/call-and-response vocal stylings do work, the results are phenomenal (“My Girls”, “Summertime Clothes”, “Also Frightened”). On “Strawberry Jam”, Avey’s presence is a lot more palpable, and the Panda Bear-led songs (“Derek”, “Chores”) are simply introduced as short, wonderful interludes that build up to Avey’s explosive centerpieces (“For Reverend Green”, “Fireworks”). This allows for much more cohesiveness and much more focus, which ultimately makes this album a much better one. The sound on this album is relatively naked and accessible, and is decidedly associated with Avey’s idiosyncratic voice. Here, Avey’s voice is clearly foregrounded, and Avey screams and blares with a precarious emotional volatility, startling vocal strength and joyful abandon. The album is laden with “Ooo” hooks that are sung only by Avey, and when Panda Bear is featured on his cuts (“#1”, “Unsolved Mysteries”), they never take attention away from each other, and both contribute to a larger, intricate musical conceit. It just seems sad that “Merriweather Post Pavilion” will probably be eternally hailed as the band’s best crossover effort, because this album has so much more to offer – if only people would pay it more attention.

50 AWESOME ALBUMS 4/5: classicawesome

These albums need no explanation. If you haven’t listened to any of them, it’s time you did.

1. Pet Sounds – The Beach Boys

2. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel

3. Small Talk At 125th And Lenox – Gil-Scott Heron

4. Otis Blue – Otis Redding

5. 1999 – Prince

6. Pinkerton – Weezer

7. Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan

8. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill – Lauryn Hill

9. Exile In Guyville – Liz Phair

10. Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye

50 AWESOME ALBUMS 3/5: poppyawesome

1. Speak Now – Taylor Swift

Like all guilty pleasures, pop music is almost always sinfully sweet and gloriously superficial. “Speak Now”, an album that might very well become the best of Swift’s career, is a perfect embodiment of that. When she’s not bitching about sluts-who-steal-my-men (“Better Than Revenge”, “Speak Now”) or about men-who-I-dumped-but-now-miss (“Mine”, “Haunted”, “The Story of Us”), she’s dreaming about men-not-stolen-by-sluts-and-who-won’t-dump-me (“Enchanted”, “Ours”, “Sparks Fly”). But for an album that exemplifies, for the third time, Swift’s remarkable lack-of-depth as a person and songwriter, this is absolutely delectable. Every song has a wonderful melody that reflects the emotions conveyed in the lyrics, and every single melody is catchy as fuck. I mean, it’s completely ridiculous how Taylor Swift can alternate so effortlessly between sad/catchy (“Back To December”, “If This Was A Movie”) and happy/catchy (“Ours”, “Sparks Fly”), and do so without the help of other co-writers. By far, the best pop album of 2010. OH. And Taylor Swift rocking a banjo in “Mean” is 4shiz badass.

2. Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie – Alanis Morissette

When Alanis Morissette exploded onto the international music scene in 1995, she was an LSD-popping, harmonica-wielding, baggy-t-shirt-wearing 21 year-old creep whose first hit (“You Oughta Know”) referenced how she gave an older man blowjobs in movie theaters. Naturally, her album “Jagged Little Pill” sold 33 million copies worldwide – the most for a debut album in history. This is the album that alienated at least 90% of Alanis Morissette’s fanbase, and that is so radical in its experimentalism that it immediately triggered Morissette’s descent into obscurity. While “JLP” condenses Morissette’s armchair psychology into laconic bursts of bitter wit, “SFIJ” is simply overflowing with words. To complicate everything, the hooks on this album are far more inaccessible, the song structures are far more diverse and idiosyncratic (“I Was Hoping” is a stream-of-consciousness rant, while “Unsent” is a collection of unsent letters to Morissette’s ex-boyfriends, “That I Would Be Good” has no chorus), the influences are far more eclectic (“Baba” incorporates elements of world music, “So Pure” is dance-pop, and almost all songs have beats derived from grunge music) and the subject matters are far more intellectual (Alanis talks about suicide, fame and disillusionment, sanctimony, and obvs — herself). I think this is the best mainstream pop album of the 90s, but it does take time to really get into it, especially if you’re not accustomed to listening to good music. #LULZ

3. The Eminem Show – Eminem

Speaking of introspective neuroticism, here’s Eminem at his best. Before I start though, I would like to say that “Recovery” is an awful album and everyone who thinks otherwise should not be reading this blog. Then again, only uh…four people read this blog. PLEASE DON’T GO *sobbing* anyway, Eminem is a humorless, boring rapper on “Recovery” who makes cheap shots at outmoded pop culture and who dumb-downs his material to appeal to a dumb audience. Here, on “The Eminem Show”, Eminem adroitly alternates between Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady, the former being the self-interrogating introvert and the latter being the self-aggrandizing psychopath. However, there are never any overly deliberate attempt to explain or humanize himself, because he doesn’t “give a fuck about what you think”. If only he still didn’t. Oh, he’s also pretty fucking hilarious. In “Superman”, Eminem replies a sweet-talking woman (“Oh boy you drive me crazy”) with “Bitch you make me curl” – which, you’ve really gotta admit, is a stroke of self-parodying genius. “My Dad’s Gone Crazy”, my personal fav, features Eminem threatening to blow a slut’s brains up while his daughter chuckles cutely in the background. Of course, Marshall Mathers has a palpable presence here, but instead of criticizing himself and blabbering about his flaws (Yuck, Em. Yuck.), he knowingly dissects rap culture and and emphatically highlights the contrivances of his persona, and challenges his audience to conclude (BY THEMSELVES?!?!?!? OMG HOW) that he isn’t the homophobic, misogynistic, sex-crazed white boy he makes himself out to be. Before Eminem started pilfering melodies from nursery rhymes (“Mockingbird”), he was already making songs intimate enough to soundtrack fan-made music videos of corny soap operas (“Hailie’s Song”).

4. Rated R – Rihanna

Like all great pop artists, Rihanna reinvents herself with every new album, and this trend of reinvention began with following “Good Girl Gone Bad” (one of the most successful albums of the 2000s decade) with “Rated R”, an insanely radical move that produced what is currently still her most cohesive and inspired album. Vocally, this record features Rihanna at her most diverse. She is wistful and miserable (“Stupid In Love”, “Cold Case Love”), fragile and sleepy (“Fire Bomb”, “The Last Song”), and sometimes exudes an air of sheer badassery (“Rude Boy”, “Hard”). There are moments where the girl-like fragility in her voice comes through, and her fuck-the-world persona becomes a little less convincing (“Rockstar 101”, “G4L”), but when the album does work, Rihanna makes a pretty awesome rock star.

5. The Sea – Corinne Bailey Rae

There are many reasons why I don’t take the Grammys seriously, but the fact that “The Sea” didn’t receive a single Grammy nomination despite its critical acclaim (it was nominated for a Mercury Prize and was slated to be an early contender for Album of the Year) was one of the huge ones. I mean, if the other nominations were genuinely great albums, I wouldn’t be complaining. Objectionable contenders include RECOVERY, TEENAGE DREAM, and NEED YOU NOW. Seriously? Urgh. This album is really, really special. It delves into a whole spectrum of varying genres ranging from retro-pop (“Closer”, “Paris Nights/New York Mornings”), minimalist funk-rock (“Paper Dolls”, “The Blackest Lily”, “Feels Like The First Time”) and experimental neo-soul (“The Sea”, “I’d Do It All Again”). The song structures are haphazard, the productions swell, expand and contract and an impressive diversity of instruments frame the album. Rae’s voice demonstrates a marked growth since her debut LP, and it shimmers with experience, elegance and pain. As a lyricist, Rae has always had a knack for invoking beautiful imagery (Remember “sapphire and faded jeans/you go and get your dreams”?), but now she writes with an ineffable poetic power (“So I peeled off my skin/I just slipped right in/And I become alive”).

6. Take Care – Drake

Drake is probably the best mainstream artist in the world right now, not because his lyrics are extraordinarily deep, or because he sings/raps particularly well, but because he is probably the only artist in the world right now that can expertly incorporate free-form electronic ambient music and experimental post-dubstep minimalism into his songs and still score a top 10 Billboard hit with them. Case in point: “Take Care”, the title track off Drake’s album, peaked at #9 on Billboard; yet, at the 3.16 mark, the song is momentarily interrupted by a looped Gil Scott-Heron backed by African tribal drums. This shit be unheard of. “Marvin’s Room” is one of the most genuinely touching songs here, while “Make Me Proud” is an outstanding slice of rap awesomeness – and a testament to Drake’s rapping prowess.

7. 4 – Beyoncé

Vocally, this album features Beyonce at her best, which really means that it features the best vocals of any album in recent history. “1+1” is a minimalist rock ballad that has Beyonce singing as though it’s her last performance ever, and the results are quite spectacular. The pop highs of this album are pretty awesome (“Love On Top”, “Best Thing I Never Had”, “Party”, “Countdown”, “End of Time”) – they sparkle with old-school retro-pop vibes and soul. The lyrics never really match up to the quality of the singing and the production values (“I Care” and “I Was Here” are particularly irksome), but pop music was never about the lyrics anyway.

8. Is This It – The Strokes

When “Is This It” was released in 2001, everyone knew that “this” really was it: no garage-rock band would ever make an album quite as good as “Is This It”. That’s fine though, because this album is perfect. Julian Casablancas’ voice distorted through a megaphone filter, hard rock guitars and hook-laden songs are more than anyone could ever ask for in life.

9. The ArchAndroid – Janelle Monáe

This album is so good, I will even disregard the fact that Monae’s “Cold War” video is a shameless rip-off of Alanis Morissette’s “Head Over Feet” music video. Like all inventive contemporary albums, this record wisely takes influences from every genre possible, and adroitly blends the tracks together to produce a seamless, cohesive whole. What is really amazing, though, is Monae’s vocal versatility. She can rap (“Dance Or Die”), coo in a haunting, operatic falsetto (“Sir Greendown”, “BaBopByeYa”), scream (“Come Alive”, “Tightrope”), and hold her own in uptempo dance songs (“Faster”, “Tightrope”). The sheer speed and ambition of this record is mindblowing.

10. Blackout – Britney

Pop wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without the inventiveness of Britney’s records, and “Blackout” is hands down Britney’s best, most inspired record. I mean, “Heaven On Earth” alone provides the original template for the opening of LCD Soundsystem’s “I Can Change” and the backing track of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”. Every song here is flat-out brilliant. Okay maybe not “Get Naked”, but even that song is crackling with electronically-synthesized sensuality.

50 AWESOME ALBUMS 2/5: sleepyawesome

1. I Wish My Brother Rob Was Here – Milo

Contemporary rap (with the exception of Eminem and Drake) is a relatively homogenous genre generally characterized by static 4/4 beats, uninspired samples (because most rappers have no idea what a melody constitutes – then again neither do most pop artists), inane punchlines (I quote Lloyd Banks here: “I’m fresh I’m fly/ I’m so damn high/more than 500 horses when I roll by”) and enough braggadocio to irk even the most self-righteous of theists. Naturally, Milo, in his philosophical self-interrogation and awkward wit, is a breath of fresh air. This is a record dedicated to Milo’s best friend Rob who drowned a few months prior to the album’s release, and some of the songs here (“Just Us”, “One Lonely Owl”) are genuinely heartbreaking. Musically, Milo draws influences from minimalist electronic music, producing a hazy, unfathomable backdrop that is at once haunting and inspired.

2.Ultravisitor – Squarepusher

Tom Jenkinson, or Squarepusher, is one of the most radical electronic musicians today. His most acclaimed album, “Music is Rotted One Note”, is an idiosyncratic combination of Aphex Twin’s brand of experimental IDM and free-form improvisational jazz music – a sound that separates Squarepusher firmly from legions of Aphex Twin imitators. Over the years, he has never really produced anything quite as inspired, but Ultravisitor comes the closest to an artistic step forward, to an exercise in stylistic maturity. Here, his song structures are a little less random, his melodies are a lot more accessible, and his sounds are a lot less abrasive. Think of this as Squarepusher’s ‘pop’ album. For good measure, he even intermittently delves into slow, acoustic guitar strumming (“Andrei”, “Every Day I Love”) and soft keyboard solos (“Tommib Help Buss”), as though Jenkinson is thoughtfully reaching out to less-tolerant ears. “Iambic 9 Poetry” finds a stunning balance between the old and new Squarepusher, and the controlled drumming gradually builds up into a dramatic crescendo that rings with joy and emotion.

3. For Emma, Forever Ago – Bon Iver

Before Bon Iver was a Grammy-dissing, Kanye-collaborating badass, it was a humble musical project involving only its current frontman Justin Vernon. The indie circle would be familiar with the story: man breaks up with girlfriend, man is overcome with grief, man hides in a cabin during winter solstice, man makes ridiculously good music. “Bon Iver, Bon Iver”, Justin Vernon’s Grammy-winning 2nd LP, is known for its refined, Fleet Foxes-like harmonies and polished productions, and “For Emma” is its rawer, grimier counterpart — most of its songs only consist of Vernon’s voice and acoustic guitars. Normally, heartbreak tunes are trite and uninspired, but Vernon’s abstract poeticism (“Down to the lockdown/Boards, nails lie around”) bestows the singer-songwriter cliché with new power. And and his voice sounds really good even when he’s not singing in his beautiful falsetto (“Skinny Love”).

4. Tapestry – Carole King

Speaking of the singer-songwriter cliché, this is the woman who provided the perfect template for its ubiquity. “Tapestry” is an album with simple production cues, simple arrangements and basically, simple everything. It’s an album that solely depends on King’s gorgeous alto voice and the sheer power of her songwriting. The melodies are indelible, the lyrics are simple but they resonate with power and clarity. Even when King descends into mushy sentimentality (“You’ve Got A Friend”, “Beautiful”) and sings lyrics like “You got to get up every morning/with a smile on your face/and show the world all the love in your heart”, it never once feels contrived — it just feels like King is singing about the things that she wishes people would tell her, but never do.

5. Blue – Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell is widely considered to be one of the greatest artists in music history, and “Blue” her magnum opus – and there are so many reasons why this is the case. Her voice here is obstinately untrained and unpolished, but it leaps between octaves with youthfulness and dexterity. Her songs make use of some ridiculous chords and unheard-of chord progressions. Also, “Blue” is probably the first album ever to feature a dulcimer. While King’s lyrics are simple and general, Mitchell’s lyrics are disconcertingly specific and personal. When she sings “I am a lonely painter/I live in a box of paints”, or “On the back of a cartoon coaster/in the blue TV screen light/I drew a map of Canada”, you will literally die.

No, I’m not sorry I used literally figuratively.

6. James Blake – James Blake

So enough of minimal production, let’s talk about minimal lyrics. James Blake can make 5-minute songs that consist of only one lyric (“I Never Learnt To Share”, “Wilhelm Scream” and can make songs out of a Feist chorus (“Limit To Your Love”), without one ever losing interest. Now that’s talent. Blake takes his time with each song, spacing out each dubstep beat with loads of silence, and uses his voice minimally and only to accentuate the main melodic lines.

7. Have One On Me – Joanna Newsom

She sings like a little girl. Her lyrics are very pretty. She plays the harp a lot. Even the strictly acoustic songs here have more inventiveness than most experimental releases.  There is very little more to say. It’s not for everyone. Just listen to it 4realz. I hope you like it. I really do.

8. Talkie-Walkie – Air

Air is a French downtempo electronic band, and they’re one of my favourite things ever. Their two singers sound like little girls too. But then I guess so do most French guys, so that’s k. “Talkie Walkie” is undoubtedly Air’s ‘pop’ album (and I use that term loosely), because it focuses much more on melodies than atmospherics, and its production values are much less abstract than on, say, their debut album “Moon Safari” or “Pocket Symphony”. As always, their songs are nostalgic and melancholic, while their lyrics and voices are dripping with longing (“We could be togeeeeeeeeeether/lovers foreeeeeeeeeeeeever”).

9. Yellow House – Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear is more well-known for its infectious single “Two Weeks” from its more well-known album Veckatimest (which was featured in every possible TV show desperate for artistic credibility), but before Ed Droste’s vocals really took rein, Grizzly Bear was an acoustic psych-folk band that was big on choral harmonies. Album-opener “Easier” pretty much sums up what this album is about: slow song progression, droning background vocals, gentle and repetitive guitar strumming, epic crescendos that take unpredictable turns. The result is an album that is suffocating in its intimacy and stunningly dramatic in its execution.

10. Drukqs – Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin has always been polarizing, in that one not open to abrasive sounds and songs without conventional structures would hate him. This album, in particular, is polarizing even among people who actually do like IDM. It is much less accessible than Twin’s “Richard D James Album”, and it’s also much less hectic. “Ziggomatic V17” is probably the busiest, craziest song on the 30-track album, but it’s not a very challenging listen. As with all other Aphex tracks, it ripples with vibrancy and energy – but unlike his best songs, it never takes a surprising turn. For some, this predictability would be comforting and calming (most songs here are useful when studying), but for others it might prove boring. Of course, there are some genuinely cool moments here (“Afx237 V7”, “Cock/Ver 10”), and “Drukqs” generally feels very cohesive as an album, but this is an album that is not really for close listening, and more appropriately soundtracks late-night philosophizing.

50 AWESOME ALBUMS 1/5: weirdbutawesome

So I thought I’d finally get to doing something about music. And what better way to spend 2012 than getting into weird music?

1. Young Prayer – Panda Bear

You’d probably be severely tempted to spend all your time wondering what the hell he’s saying, but why not spend your time productively instead and spend it wondering why you’re so sad? Panda Bear’s acoustic psych-folk gem has unintelligible lyrics, idiosyncratic melodies and no recognizable song structure, and it is one of the most moving things I have ever heard. By the time you’ve reached “Untitled 05” with its rousing clap/stomp production, you’ll want to cry and laugh and sing along – if only you knew why.

2. Richard D. James Album – Aphex Twin

The album opens with “4”, a track grounded in full, plushy synths. While IDM mostly eludes mainstream recognition because of how it foregrounds lacerating, unpredictable percussion, the tracks on this album (with the exception of the urgent, disconcerting “Peek 824545201”) strike a pretty balance between lush atmospherics and spastic drum solos. This is an album that is occasionally moving (“Goon Gumpas”), occasionally danceable (“Corn Mouth”), but always warm and always interesting.

3. w h o k i l l – tUnE-yArDs

The music video for “Bizness” begins with a bunch of kids organizing a riot of sorts (ikr, cuteness overload), and rapidly dissolves into a whirl of bright colours, jump cuts and awesome dance moves. The music of the album is just like that: it starts out with a dense cacophony of out-of-synch instrumentation reminiscent of a 1st-grade music class, then evolves into an unstoppable drum loop-driven summer romp with incredible punchlines like “With my eyes open/how can I be happy”. But ultimately, what really makes w h o k i l l stand out from ubiquitous worldbeat pop acts such as Vampire Weekend is Merill Garbus’ voice, which is as dizzyingly powerful as her music videos. When she wants to, she can coo in a delicate falsetto (“Wooly Wolly Gong”) and scream with fearless abandon (“Gangsta”). Mostly though, her voice ferociously plows through each song with an imitable urgency.

4. Circulatory System – Circulatory System

Think Beach Boys gone radically experimental, and replace Carl Wilson’s tentative tenor with Will Cullen Hart’s delicate, breathy coo – and that’s essentially this album. There are very few bands that I think match up to the genius of the Beach Boys, and Circulatory System is definitely one of them. As in Pet Sounds, songs here are rife with baroque instrumentation, but haphazard sound effects give the relatively straightforward folk songs an experimental edge and make them a tad less accessible to the pop-accustomed ear. Album-opener “Yesterday’s World” glistens with Brian Wilson’s child-like innocence, and Hart’s droning vocals give the song a warm, nostalgic feel; when he asks “Can we go back in time?”, however, the suffocating sense of futility is palpable.

5. Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished – Animal Collective

After 2009, Animal Collective officially became “That Weird Band on Letterman” only known for their modest pop hit “My Girls” – which is a real shame. Before Panda Bear took over the reins and started pushing the band into an admittedly ‘pop’ direction, Animal Collective was deservedly Avey Tare’s. He screams, he whispers, he arbitrarily adds some white noise to drown out his intricately crafted productions and he tweaks his electronic squeaks so high they sound like aliens imitating orgasm sounds. Animal Collective used to be really fucking weird. Thankfully, Avey’s knack for catchy hooks was there from the start, and through the twisted folktronica vibe of the record, his warm melodies give the record the extra push it doesn’t really need to become the record that everyone really should need.

6. Down There – Avey Tare

After 10 years with Animal Collective, Avey finally released his solo LP in 2010, an album that occasionally drowns itself out with its experimental atmospherics but that is frequently nothing less than heartbreaking. “Oliver Twist” and “3 Umbrellas” are obviously the album’s more danceable, poppy moments, but more often than not the songs here are inaccessible, gloomy and crowded. Through the thick, dank productions, Avey’s voice stands out with the near-frightening vitality and vocal dexterity that made Animal Collective such an intriguing listen in the first place.

7. On Avery Island – Neutral Milk Hotel

Most NMH fans favor the legendary “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” to the band’s mostly-forgotten debut LP On Avery Island – and I would agree – but this album is too special to just be disregarded entirely. Jeff Mangum’s voice here is hardly as dramatic as it is on ITAOTS, and that would undoubtedly prove disappointing to fans of that record, but it is no less beautiful. Where it was urgent and pleading, it is vulnerable and tentative here. “Naomi” is one of Mangum’s most beautiful compositions, and “Song Against Sex” has so much groove it makes “Holland, 1945” looks meh.

8. Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One – The Olivia Tremor Control

“Hideaway” is one of the most important songs in indie rock history. More than 10 years after its debut, hundreds of Elephant 6 Collective-worshipping artists still view it as the acme of experimental indie pop, because for all its bold experimentation, it is never once drowned out by its own weirdness; it achieves a perfect balance between inaccessibility and catchiness. There is a perfectly good reason why Bill Doss’ “The Sunshine Fix”, his take on revamping the OTC sound, never really resonated with the indie crowd — you don’t mess with perfection.

9. /\/\/\Y/\ – MIA

Nothing in MIA’s repertoire prepared anyone for this record. It’s abrasive, loud, and often completely ridiculous. Here, she completely eschews her world music influences and steps firmly into industrial/noise music territory. As always, there are some really gold pop moments here (“XXXO”, “Tell Me Why”, “It Takes A Muscle”), and sometimes MIA becomes startlingly intimate and even moving (“It Iz What It Iz”, “Space”). But on the other hand, the album is littered with some batshit insane sound effects (“Teqkilla”, “Steppin’ Up”), and the lyrics are mostly trite and nonsensical. So when MIA says “I don’t give a damn damn damn” on the Sleigh Bells-butchering “Meds and Feds”, you best believe it, bitches.

10. Head Hunters – Herbie Hancock

This is often cited as Hancock’s pop concession, but I think this is utterly misleading. Heavily inspired by Philip Glass’ minimalism, this album is not like any conventional improv-based jazz record. Instead of saxophones and trumpets, he uses flutes, synthesizers, distorted organs and abrasive electronics. Sometimes, the electronics drown out the bubbly interplay between the cacophony of random instruments, but when this album does work, it really works.

FILM REVIEW: City Lights

“[Charles Chaplin is] the only genius to come out of the movie industry” – George Bernard Shaw

Okay. So that’s a gross overstatement. As a performer, Chaplin was obviously incomparably talented; as a filmmaker, however, he was remarkably one-noted. His works are invariably episodic, self-indulgent revenge fantasies about working-class disillusionment, while his plots perpetually involve arbitrary romances with random chicks (i.e. weak attempts to give his stuff some heart). Every gesture is unabashedly in-your-face in its significance/symbolism, and most plot elements feel like careless contrivances employed only to allow Chaplin to display his remarkable plethora of talents. To be fair, Chaplin does have mad skillz (In The Circus, he does some particularly crazy shit with a tightrope) as a performer – but an impressive lead actor does not make a brilliant film – a point I’ve probably made with my previous review of Monster. To make things worse, years of repeated plagiarism have worn the farce genre thin, and the originality that Chaplin was once known for no longer applies to much of his work. Thankfully, the-powers-that-be (I’m an occasional advocate for a secular form of spirituality – when I’m not smoking pot) always have a way of coaxing great things from great people, and advents in film/sound technology cemented Chaplin’s place among film greats.

By 1930, ‘talkies’ (or sound films) were already ubiquitous, and Chaplin became increasingly convinced that his brand of silent film would be rendered obsolete. It was with this resigned bitterness, this semi-hopeful, semi-fearful emotional convolution, this intoxicating uncertainty, that his best films (namely The Circus, City Lights and Modern Times) were made. While his previous films were purely light-hearted camp fodder, his new films were progressively self-aware, self-referential, and even bitter. With City Lights, Chaplin crafts a film that is equal parts farce and heart, equal parts superficial laughter and tentative ambiguity.

As mentioned earlier, his earlier films seem to employ romance as a convenient plot device, and the love between The Tramp and Random Girl often comes across as disingenuous, haphazard and convenient. Here, the romance is so pure and so fucking adorable that it’s impossible not to be drawn into its huggable awesomeness. When The Tramp asks the Blind Girl “May I see you home again?”, one is immediately brought back into a time before this exhausting era of sexualized romance and armchair psychology – when love was about holding hands and staring wordlessly into each other’s faces, when people didn’t have to overanalyze and rationalize every fucking thing and when life was just generally less crowded and delineating. When The Tramp is released from prison and serendipitously finds his newly un-blinded Florist Girl, his eyes light up instantly with genuine joy. In any modern film, romantic gestures are often derided for their cringe-inducing disengagement from reality; here, romantic clichés find new significance, and feel refreshing in their stark bareness. At the risk of my purist cred, I’ll admit that I am actually very much reminded of Lars and the Real Girl (I AM SERIOUSLY NOT REFERENCING GOSLING MOVIES ON PURPOSE TYVM), a film that is over-the-top corny, but that is so dedicated to its own utopian implausibility that it inadvertently becomes a heart-rending lament about the loveless, soulless hole our world has become. City Lights is, ultimately, a story about a man who thinks so little of himself and so much of some random blind girl, that he is willing to do anything to secure her happiness – without asking for anything in return. Yeah. I know. SWEETNESS OVERLOAD. *sobbing* But being impossibly cute and mind-numbingly idealistic only makes for a fantastic guilty pleasure; films with genuine artistic merit are the products of so much more.

As with his best films, City Lights manages to retain Chaplin’s campy sense of humor while casually drawing attention to broader thematic concerns both socio-political and personal in nature. OH. And he does so with such effortless finesse, he makes the cult of Groundhog Day sycophants look like fools. Let’s take a moment to really appreciate/translate just a few of Chaplin’s throwaway jokes:

1) Replace mayor’s speech with pompous-sounding gibberish (FUCK YOU TALKIES)

2) Everyone leaps to attention once Star-Spangled Banner (FUCK YOU MINDLESS SUPPORTERS OF THE USA-FOUNDED LEAGUE OF NATIONS)

3) The Tramp pretentiously admires chicken trinket while ogling at a naked female body (FUCK YOU PRETENTIOUS, PERVERSE ART-LOVERS)

4) The Millionaire’s self-important butler is unsympathetic towards The Tramp, but becomes mechanistically welcoming upon the request of his master (FUCK YOU CLASS DELINEATIONS)

5) The Tramp hides behind the referee as he throws some well-timed punches at a trained boxer (FUCK YOU CENSORSHIP)

But the jokes aren’t all that contribute towards the broader web of rich symbolism that envelopes the film; Chaplin’s characteristic employment of sympathy ploys here too find a more complex meaning. Notice how he immediately tries to run away from the Flower Girl because he (partially, anyway) doesn’t believe himself worthy of love. Notice how he bows his head in stoic resignation when random kids make him the unwitting target of their cruel pranks. The Flower Girl here no longer plays The Tramp’s quintessential female counterpart, but instead acts as a stand-in for an audience trying to negotiate its appreciation for silent cinema in the advent of the talkie. The kids here no longer represent the cruel social forces that repress the lower-classes, but instead are stand-ins for Chaplin’s personal demons and fears. Chaplin, helpless and uncertain of his relevance to a world swept by change, can do nothing but walk away, defeated. This new dimension of meaning confers on City Lights the very substance that his previous films lacked, and bestows upon it a strange sense of self-awareness that was revolutionary for its time. Actually, 80 odd years into the future, Chaplin’s idiosyncratic, hybridized brand of farce, metafilm and romance is still untouchable; no less than a film great can pull this shit off and still make it a poignant, entertaining ride.

More than any other film of its time, City Lights embodies the magic of silent cinema. In its ending sequence, there are two intertitle sequences: “You can see now?” and “Yes, I can see”. If these lines were to be said out loud, Chaplin’s beautiful illusion would immediately be shattered, because dialogue is necessarily grounded in reality. Written text, however, is not. That is to say, the audience is free to read and understand the words on the screen without realizing how corny it would sound if said out loud. When Chaplin bites his nails and bursts into a smile, we know immediately what he is thinking. There is no explanation, no word uttered, because any explanation would be unnecessary and any word would spoil the sheer beauty of the scene. In a single smile, Chaplin conveys his hope for a world that continues to embrace him, for a world unbent on brute progress, for a world of simplicity and for a world of love. Talkies spend monologues after monologues on these things, and still say less than what Chaplin doesn’t need words to say in 5 seconds. Now that’s something great.

Personally, my favourite Chaplin film is The Circus, because it is a magnificent, self-referential compilation of Chaplinian conventions. That is, it simultaneously revels in and mocks its own absurdity, savors its own self-indulgence and casually acknowledges its own irrelevance. It is a breathtaking exercise in self-awareness and artistic self-reflexivity. City Lights is not nearly as self-interrogative as The Circus, but it has so much more heart – and as such it should be lauded as Chaplin’s finest cinematic achievement.

So it’s episodic. So it’s slapstick. I don’t care. And if you’ve watched the ending of City Lights, I don’t understand why you would either.

KevinScale Rating: 5/5