Deep Album Cuts Vol. 84: Green Day
Friday, October 28, 2016
Green Day released their latest album Revolution Radio earlier this month, so I thought I'd look back at their catalog.
Green Day Deep Album Cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Going To Pasalacqua
2. One For The Razorbacks
3. Christie Road
4. Burnout
5. Coming Clean
6. F.O.D.
7. Emenius Sleepus
8. In The End
9. Chump
10. Panic Song
11. Armatage Shanks
12. Bab's Uvula Who?
13. Uptight
14. Jinx
15. Haushinka
16. King For A Day
17. Blood, Sex And Booze
18. Church On Sunday
19. Castaway
20. Give Me Novacaine/She's A Rebel
21. Whatsername
22. Murder City
23. Stay The Night
24. Stop When The Red Lights Flash
25. 8th Avenue Serenade
26. Say Goodbye
Track 1 from 39/Smooth (1990)
Tracks 2 and 3 from Kerplunk (1992)
Tracks 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 from Dookie (1994)
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from Insomniac (1995)
Tracks 13, 14, 15 and 16 from Nimrod (1997)
Tracks 17, 18 and 19 from Warning (2000)
Tracks 20 and 21 from American Idiot (2004)
Track 22 from 21st Century Breakdown (2009)
Track 23 from ¡Uno! (2012)
Track 24 from ¡Dos! (2012)
Track 25 from ¡Tre! (2012)
Track 26 from Revolution Radio (2016)
By the time Green Day broke through in 1994, I was a snobby little 12-year-old who had eagerly greeted most of the big alt-rock breakthrough bands up to that point, and had started moving on to slightly less popular stuff like Sonic Youth. So I was not impressed by Green Day at all initially, and kind of turned my nose up as people I knew got into them. This began a couple of decades of encountering their music casually -- my brother's cassette of Dookie, a promo of Warning that my friend who worked at a radio station gave me, etc. -- until I eventually warmed to the band.
But I absolutely hated what the band became with the huge comeback record American Idiot, and that kind of helped me realize what I liked about the band's '90s stuff. Listening back to their early work, though, it shouldn't have surprised me so much that Billie Joe Armstrong started writing politically charged rock operas or recording albums of Everly Brothers covers. There were some intersong segues and bits of acoustic guitar even on Dookie, and it only took two more albums to introduce violin and horn sections on Nimrod, an album that I think has aged pretty well. But I was kind of amazed to hear how fully formed their signature sound was from the very beginning on 39/Smooth, their first drummer is not as insanely talented as Tre Cool but he plays pretty much the same beats that Billie Joe's songs demand.
The ill-fated trio of 2012 albums contain a lot of my favorite later Green Day music, but obviously you'd have to wade through a lot of stuff to come up with a tight record there. But my favorite record they've made since Warning is actually the 2008 garage rock album by Foxboro Hot Tubs, one of a couple of Green Day side projects that are essentially all three members of the band operating under aliases. Sometimes I wonder if they're better off when they've shaken off the pressure of living up to being Green Day.
Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Movie Diary
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
I generally like Aaron Sorkin's work but think that his TV work has been on a solipsistic decline, while his hired gun film screenwriting has generally been pretty strong. I think maybe he just benefits from being given a story to fill with his verbose speeches so he doesn't go on Sorkin autopilot. And Steve Jobs is probably his stagiest script to date, it really feels like it could've originated as a play -- it's even pretty cleanly divided into three acts, three long scenes of people arguing backstage at major events in Jobs's life. I don't actually know that much about Steve Jobs besides what everybody knows, so I have no idea how much is true and how much is just Sorkinisms, but I was impressed with Fassbender's performance and found the movie more compelling than I expected to, even if I'm kinda glad it wasn't the highly awarded blockbuster it was built up to be.
b) Term Life
I feel like Vince Vaughn has this weird career where being funny in Swingers put him on, then he tried too hard to be a 'serious' leading man for a few years, became an actual movie star with a string of comedies, and then went back to making lousy dramas and that misbegotten second season of "True Detective." So here we are with this year's straight-to-VOD heist drama, where he has hilarious hair for some reason but otherwise was too dull to hold my attention.
I wasn't gonna watch this or the other ancient Egypt movie full of white people, Exodus: Gods And Kings, but my wife put this on the other night and we just marveled at how awful the CGI looked. Alex Proyas has such a weird career, Dark City is a cult classic and I, Robot was pretty good and had great effects, but this falls more into the pompous camp of The Crow and Knowing.
I'm always up for a good horror comedy, and this one had a strong cast and a ridiculous premise about a town full of vampires and zombies being invaded by aliens. But it kinda felt a little too impressed with itself to actually make me laugh, and it ended with this stupid scene of an alien voiced by Werner Herzog quoting Billy Joel that kind of summed up how knowingly wacky it was.
It almost feels pointless to praise a Meryl Streep performance, like yeah, obviously she's great, but I really enjoyed the weird tightrope she was on, being kind of a vain musician with no self awareness but also really throwing herself into a role that required a fair amount of onscreen musical performance. Movies about family dysfunction can stress me out, but this one resonated with me, it was cathartic to have the characters just air out their problems with each other. And the children of famous actors appearing in their movies can be sketchy, but Mamie Gummer is so good in this.
f) The Gift
Joel Edgerton often has a kind of creepy intimidating air about him onscreen, so it makes sense that he gave himself such a villainous role in his directorial debut. He looks completely different than usual, with a super fake-looking beard and hair that look like they came off of a lifesize doll, but that kind (intentionally?) enhances the unsettling aura around the character. I'm glad that I managed not to have the plot spoiled for me before I saw it, I was genuinely tense as the whole thing slowly ramped up to its stomach-turning conclusion. The movie also made really good use of Jason Bateman's smug charisma that can make him really likable or really unlikable in different contexts.
g) Sky High
This movie has been running on Cartoon Network a lot lately so my son watched it, apparently it was in theaters in 2005 and did okay, but I have no memory of it ever coming out. It's not bad, though, it's kind of a kid-friendly version of all those satirical superhero movies, with an overqualified supporting cast. There are entire scenes that are just Bruce Campbell and two Kids In The Hall (Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley) acting silly.
h) Being There
I read Being There (and several of my dad's other Jerzy Kosinski paperbacks) back in middle school and high school, always meant to watch the movie and I guess it only took me 20 years. As it often is with movies based on books you've already read, this doesn't totally line up with how I pictured the story, and it's missing something that Kosinski's prose gave the story. But obvious Peter Sellers gives a pretty amazing performance in this odd role. And I feel like the satire of the story is a little more pronounced -- there's a great scene of this simpleton who's stumbled into meeting the president and being treated as a genius, and the black woman who raised him seeing it on TV and just saying "It's for sure a white man's world in America."
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Here are some recent playlists I did for The Dowsers: a collection of Raphael Saadiq's collaborations and productions for artists like D'Angelo and Solange, and the Gang Starr songs that were used as episode titles for the first season of "Luke Cage."
Monthly Report: October 2016 Singles
Monday, October 24, 20161. Bruno Mars - "24K Magic"
It's a stretch to say that a retro pastiche artist as shameless as Bruno Mars could ever really surprise us, but I was kind of hoping that he would return with something a little unexpected, like "Locked Out Of Heaven" was at the time. As much as this song is an "Uptown Funk" sequel, though, it at least mines a different strain of '80s funk and it just kinds of feels like he's pushing further at the goofy pimpin' schtick in a way that is so dorky but still pretty infectious. I watched him on "SNL" and thought that he might be the only person in pop music right now who might possibly be having as much fun as Pitbull. Here's my favorite 2016 singles playlist that I add songs to every month.
2. Ro James - "Already Knew That"
Ro James's first single "Permission" has been incredibly resilient on R&B radio, bouncing around the airplay charts since February and only just recently falling out of the top 10. But I'm getting kind of impatient for the focus to move to the 2nd single, "Already Knew That," which has been one of my favorites since his album dropped back in May. This song just has a fantastic groove and it feels like Ro James is having so much fun playing with his voice and going on these little riffs and breaking into an impressive Marvin Gaye imitation. Some of my local stations already play it pretty heavily but it hasn't charted nationally yet.
3. Dierks Bentley f/ Elle King - "Different For Girls"
Dierks Bentley has this classic dopey good ol' boy country singer vibe that works best when there's a little bit of sadness under the surface, like on his minor masterpiece "Drunk On A Plane." And this song just surprised me with how affecting it is -- I don't know if I care for the thesis of the song and how it contrasts heartbreak along gender lines, but it's a well written thesis at least.
4. Mila J - "Kickin' Back"
I will always root for Jhene Aiko's less bland sister and this song really applies her voice and personality well to a classic west coast funk groove.
5. Dreezy f/ T-Pain - "Close To You"
I kind of wish the singles from No Hard Feelings highlighted Dreezy's talent as a rapper a little more, but it's hard to complain about such a great slow jam duet with another famous rapper turned singer. I wish we got this side of T-Pain a little more often.
6. Amine - "Caroline"
Like most people, I was initially exposed to this song via the video (which has 20+ million plays on YouTube though the song hasn't really broken through to radio yet), and I wasn't sure what to make of it. But it's really started to grow on me, it has this weird squirrely energy with these surprising melodic tangents, and the beat doesn't quite sound like anything else out there right now.
7. Flume f/ Kai - "Never Be Like You"
The first I heard of Flume was in probably the worst album review I've read this year, but this song has grown on me. It's like all those girly EDM power ballads by The Chainsmokers except it has all of these overly fussy percussion flourishes, almost like a drum solo playing over the whole song.
8. X Ambassadors f/ Jamie N Commons - "Low Life"
The drums on this song have an awkward hesitating groove that kind of reminds me of the Flume track, the whole thing just has a weird trembling feel, a lot more intriguing and left-of-center than X Ambassadors' previous singles.
9. Eric Benet - "Sunshine"
Eric Benet's music never really caught my ear before "News For You" a couple years ago, and I like this one almost as much, not much of a singer but I love the arrangement.
10. Janet Jackson - "Dammn Baby"
One of my favorites from Unbreakable that's gotten a little airplay in the album's extremely low key singles campaign. It amuses me that the song she had out when it was announced that she's having a baby at 50 years old is called "Dammn Baby." Here's hoping her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination comes through.
Worst Single of the Month: Jon Bellion - "All Time Low"
I almost started to enjoy this song before dude said "I was the prototype like 3 Stacks on that CD." Jesus Christ, who told all these dorky top 40 dudes to start doing awkward rap punchlines.
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Friday, October 21, 2016
This week The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced the nominees for its 2017 inductees, and the most prominent and unsurprising name in the list was Pearl Jam, who will almost certainly be inducted in their first eligible year. They were my first favorite band, and they still mean a lot to me, so it's easy for me to pick favorite songs or talk about them.
Pearl Jam Deep Album Cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Porch
2. Deep
3. Why Go
4. Rearviewmirror
5. Rats
6. Blood
7. Satan's Bed
8. Whipping
9. Last Exit
10. In My Tree
11. Mankind
12. Present Tense
13. MFC
14. Brain Of J
15. Insignificance
16. Grievance
17. You Are
18. Get Right
19. Come Back
20. Supersonic
21. Infallible
Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from Ten (1991)
Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from Vs. (1993)
Tracks 7, 8 and 9 from Vitalogy (1994)
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from No Code (1996)
Tracks 13 and 14 from Yield (1998)
Tracks 15 and 16 from Binaural (2000)
Tracks 17 and 18 from Riot Act (2002)
Track 19 from Pearl Jam (2006)
Track 20 from Backspacer (2009)
Track 21 from Lightning Bolt (2013)
I decided to avoid the many album tracks never released as singles that nonetheless became huge famous hits ("Better Man," "Black," etc.). But really the band was so huge in the '90s that I probably heard every song from Ten and Vs. on the radio at one point or another. I previously did a "box set" of four playlists representing the band's work with the four drummers they've recorded albums with.
I could practically pick these songs in my sleep, at least for the earlier part of their career that I know by heart. The last three albums I never really revisited much after they were new, so I had to refresh my memory a bit. Pearl Jam will probably always be their weakest album to me, the last two were a little better, "Infallible" is probably their best studio work with Boom Gaspar, the organ/piano player who's toured with the band since 2002.
I was 10 when I bought Ten, and "Porch" was pretty quickly my favorite of the songs I hadn't heard on MTV, and remains for me one of the band's key songs. At this point my favorite albums by the band are probably Vitalogy and No Code, a couple of anguished experimental records from when they were such huge stars that they could get away with it. It's tempting to include some of those albums' weirder experiments like "Bugs" or "I'm Open." But I stuck with the genuinely great songs that have some unique cachet, including "Mankind," the only Stone Gossard lead vocal performance in the Pearl Jam catalog, and "Satan's Bed," the only song on which a drum machine takes the place of a drummer who was taking a sick day.
Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
I put a new Western Blot song, "Sore Winners," up on Bandcamp, as a preview from the album I'm releasing next month on my new label, Cassowary Records. The song features lead vocals by Shawna Potter (of War On Women), very excited to share this song and finally get the album out into the world.
TV Diary
Friday, October 14, 2016
a) "Westworld"
The first two episodes of this show felt more like a 2-part pilot, although I'm glad they weren't aired together, I hate 2-hour pilots and am glad there have been fewer of them this year than in other recent years. In a way the second episode felt like it could've come first, or at least it did a better job of pulling me into the story. This show has a bit of the same tone as Jonathan Nolan's screenplays for his brother's films, which is to say it's a little humorless and more interested in the concept than the characters, and that's potentially a much bigger problem with a TV series than with a one-off movie. But so far there are already some characters who feel like more than stoic mannequins to move through the premise, which is impressive since some of those characters are actually the AI robots (and I'm now inordinately fond of Evan Rachel Wood ever since she sang a Geraldine Fibbers song). This show has such a huge impressive movie star cast that it feels like the show is still slowly introducing everyone and setting things in motion. It's all very cool-looking and ambitious but I hope it's going somewhere good, but with a J.J. Abrams show you have to kinda wonder. Some of my favorite stuff so far is the people who work on the 'narrative' of the fantasy world and talk like TV showrunners or people creating a video game.
b) "Haters Back Off"
I try not to dismiss people who got famous off of YouTube too reflexively, especially since "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" and "Insecure" turned out to be really good shows. But I've always been skeptical of the 'Miranda sings' phenomenon and amazed by the size of the venues Colleen Ballinger tours with this character. And the show, which attempts to build a whole backstory and family sitcom life around basically a girl who sings badly and makes weird faces, I don't know, it doesn't work. You have this bland competent narrative around this incredibly obnoxious character with these goofy Ed Grimley mannerisms, and it doesn't really succeed in humanizing her, it just takes for granted how funny that one 'joke' is.
c) "American Housewife"
I thought Katy Mixon was a really promising comedic actress a few years ago when "Eastbound & Down" and "Mike & Molly" had just started out and she was one of the best things about either, but I lost interesting in both shows pretty quickly. So I'm glad she finally has a lead role in something that really feels like an ideal vehicle for her, even if it's kind of a cookie cutter 2010s network sitcom about a family that's always saying inappropriate things. The funniest parts of the first episode were in the ads, which I guess is to be expected, and I'm not crazy about the voiceover, but overall it was pretty funny.
d) "Divorce"
I would like to think I created this show with a tweet last year. But anyway, I will forever ride for Thomas Haden Church, but after one episode, I'm not too sure how much fun it will be to watch a show about a marriage dissolving, even if it's a comedy. There were a few funny moments,
Also, it amused me that the pilot took place at Molly Shannon's character's 50th birthday party because, y'know, Sally O'Malley.
e) "Luke Cage"
Netflix's Marvel shows have been flawed but good so far, and Luke Cage was great as a supporting character on "Jessica Jones," so I was looking forward to this. It's been moving a little slow for me, though, I've only gotten to the third episode so far. A lot of people have written interesting things about the show's kinda weird conservative politics, I've only just started to really note it in the early episodes. Simone Missick is the bomb, though.
f) "Crisis In Six Scenes"
I still watch and dislike just about every new Woody Allen movie for the last decade, even the ones that have been well regarded, so I didn't have high hopes for his Amazon series, which both Allen and audiences seem to have already dismissed. It was better than I expected, though -- the 6 episodes felt less like a show than a Woody Allen movie than ran an hour longer than usual with lots of extended chatty dialogue scenes, but it was funnier than his last few comedies and made more sense taking place in the '60s than most of his movies that take place in contemporary times but feel like they'd make more sense in a '60s or '70s setting. Elaine May is a delight, and Miley Cyrus is just painful to watch but isn't even in the entire first episode (also, holy shit at Miley Cyrus saying lines like "I used to sleep with the black in an effort to kind of absorb some of his political rage").
g) "The Exorcist"
The original The Exorcist is one of my all time favorite movies and none of the sequels or prequels ever really hit the mark. This show is pretty promising, though; other than the basic framework (old priest and young priest, adolescent girl is possessed) it's not the exact same story with the same characters, and with a series they have the room to fill in the blanks more on the those characters and have some different things happen and not totally mimic the film's big iconic moments (although it's early in the story, those moments may still be to come). There were a few moments in the first couple episodes that have really given me chills. The second episode ended with a whole thing with a band of killers taking people's internal organs and I have no idea what it has to do with the exorcism story, but it was suitably creepy.
h) "MacGyver"
With all the original ideas thriving on TV these days, it's kind of amazing to me that the networks are still going for reboots of old properties. "The Exorcist" at least has potential, but "Lethal Weapon"? "MacGyver"? What the fuck? This one cracks me up because the cast is these kids who are a few years from Disney Channel/Nickelodeon shows, but it's not like they can make "MacGyver" cheesier, it just is what it is. The most ridiculous thing is that they'll actually caption some things, like MacGyver is hanging underneath a plane and little words pop up on the screen telling you where the engine and the electronics are because MacGyver knows that stuff but nobody's there for him to explain it to. I feel bad for George Eads, he did 15 years on "C.S.I." and this is the follow-up gig CBS throws him.
i) "Pitch"
I'm really impressed with this show so far, I thought that maybe it would be kind of a generic 'inspiring' sports show about a theoretical first woman in major league baseball. But they've really explored the premise in a smart way, really playing out all the messy ways that the media and other players would react to something like that happening, it feels very true to what athletes deal with these days, for better or worse, things like the Michael Sam backlash. And the whole cast is really solid, Mark-Paul Gosselaar is a great choice to play the kind of jerky kind of likable veteran player. Also the violin-driven score gives the show a great unique feel.
j) "Designated Survivor"
Anyone who's ever seen the news things about the 'designated survivor' who stays away from the State of the Union Address has probably thought about how that's a cool phrase and could be the premise for a badass movie or show, so inevitably that finally happened. But of course, it's not just a neat little show about someone who never ran for anything unexpectedly becoming POTUS, it's about someone becoming POTUS directly after a catastrophic act of terrorism on the Capitol, and it's also another gloomy show about Kiefer Sutherland fighting terrorists. There were some moments in the pilot that were interesting but it quickly has turned into something I don't wanna watch.
k) "Bull"
At first, I was offended that they made a courtroom show called "Bull" that isn't a "Night Court" spinoff, and then I was offended because they made a show about Dr. Phil's pre-TV career with a handsome guy playing the role based on Dr. Phil. But after watching it, I realize this is just an all around awful show that tries to make the whole weird pseudoscience of modern jury selection into a cool noble profession like practicing law, it's just odious.
l) "Van Helsing"
Neil LaBute has had this odd career, starting out 20 years ago writing some really distinctive plays and films about misanthropic and emotionally manipulative relationships and then kind of becoming this undistinguished jobbing director who does stuff like Lakeview Terrace and that awful remake of The Wicker Man. I would've thought getting into television would allow him to return to his earlier style, but instead he created a Van Helsing reboot for SyFy, where Van Helsing's daughter Vanessa Helsing is resurrected in the future to save the day after a vampire apocalypse. It's perfectly okay for a goofy SyFy show but it's just odd to think that it's by the In The Company Of Men guy.
m) "Son Of Zorn"
FOX has been importing creators and tropes from Adult Swim with varying degrees of success for this years, and this show feels kind of descended from Adult Swim, with a "He-Man"-style character who lives in the real world, an animated superhero walking around a mundane live action world. I like the cast and there have been a few laughs in each episode, but the whole thing just feels like a misfire, the premise just isn't as funny as they think it is and there's kind of a disconnect between Jason Sudeikis's animated character and the rest of the cast.
n) "Atlanta"
This show has continued to be very good since the stellar premiere, although what I'm really interested in the way the show started out rooted in pretty realistic, straightforward storytelling but has slowly drifted out of that with things like, say, the black actor playing Justin Bieber and dropping n-bombs left and right moving the show into more high concept satire, more of a live action "Boondocks" kind of thing. I'm curious if this show will play out a bit like "Louie" where they eventually drop any pretense of traditional sitcom continuity.
o) "Better Things"
This show feels in some ways very unremarkable and unambitious but I really like its feel for family life and parenting, it just rings true to my experiences in a way that a lot of 'realistic' shows don't.
p) "Queen Sugar"
I respect this show a lot but it feels very heavy handed with its themes and melodramatic, I get a little exhausted watching it and don't even feel in a rush to get to the next episode.
q) "The Circus: Inside The Greatest Political Show On Earth"
This Showtime series, a weekly half hour about the presidential campaign, has really been one of the few non-comedic things on TV about the election that I've enjoyed watching in this year of tedious and mishandled CNN coverage. It's not the whole story by far, and is more about strategy and polls than issues, but it's a pretty interesting window into life on the campaign trail, and it was at its best back during the primaries madness, but some of the recent episodes about Clinton and Trump have been pretty interesting. I feel like this show will be a good time capsule for this crazy year someday.
r) "Rosewood"
I really thought this show had a strong cast with good chemistry from the jump and have been a little annoyed at how they've started to pad out the cast more, first with Sam Huntington's very annoying character towards the end of season 1 and now Eddie Cibrian in season 2. But maybe since the show got renewed and seems to have a future they're just figuring out how to do 24 episodes a year without Morris Chestnut and Jaina Lee Ortiz carrying the whole show so they're making it more of an ensemble. I kinda hate the way they broke up Tara and Pippy, though, their relationship was initially a really refreshing part of the show.
s) "Documentary Now!"
I liked this show in the first season but I feel like I really started to appreciate it this year, just how much fun it is to see some of these ex-"SNL" guys do these half hour pastiches of various classic documentaries that aren't really 'pop culture' enough to do on a sketch show. And Bill Hader and Fred Armisen just go all out as performers and the production values are incredibly detailed but they ultimately do these silly funhouse mirror versions of the movies. The episodes based on The War Room and Stop Making Sense have been my favorite this year, but I'm really looking forward to the The Kid Stays In The Picture one. Someday I might try and watch each episode back-to-back with the actual movies.
t) "Blunt Talk"
This is such an odd little show with so many characters dealing with their own particular psychological and sexual quirks and it's gently amusing but it also still makes me miss "Bored To Death."
u) "You're The Worst"
This show has been pretty consistently amazing but I feel like in this season it's gotten back to being really viscerally funny and firing off one-liners a little more than in the second season. Samira Wiley's therapist character seems like kind of a predictable 'straight man' to bounce off of Aya Cash but their scenes together have been really hilarious.
v) "Halt And Catch Fire"
This week AMC announced that "Halt And Catch Fire" was renewed for a 4th and final season and aired the season 3 finale, which basically jumped forward from 1986 to 1990 (where it seems the 4th season will take place, rather than a one-off 'flash foward'). And I'm still processing how I feel about that. This show's fictionalized version of the home computer revolution has always made my head hurt a little, just watching these characters say ridiculously prescient things and invent technology that often wasn't invented until much later, and it really went overboard in the finale, where they had these long dialogue scenes basically predicting the next couple decades of the Internet. Plus, it really bummed me out that the relationships I actually found interesting about the show (Donna and Gordon's marriage and Donna and Cam's friendship) were effectively broken up in the last few episodes while the Joe and Cam pairing seems to be back on the table. And I'm frustrated with these developments mainly because this was probably the best and most interesting season of the show to date.
w) "Masters Of Sex"
"Masters Of Sex" has the benefit of being a period show that's about actual people who really lived and did the important work depicted in the show, so the thing about a show like "Halt" that bothers me isn't an issue. It's a frustrating show in its own way, at times, but so far this season has been good. They're now in the swinging '60s and there's a whole subplot with Playboy and Hugh Hefner (and a cameo by Andre Royo doing a really impressive Sammy Davis, Jr.). But mostly I finally feel some kind of affinity for the characters and just enjoy watching them interact, the 'key party' episode felt like one of the show's best because of the way the story was told backwards and it was so character-driven and not really about the big overarching narrative.
x) "The Mindy Project"
The season 5 premiere marked the end of Chris Messina as a series regular on "The Mindy Project" and seemingly the end of the Mindy/Danny relationship, which was interesting, since that long seemed kind of the center of the whole series. And it felt like they very deliberately let Danny become a total asshole on his way out so that you'd welcome the change. Which is fine, I guess, since I like the show mainly for the one liners and not the plot, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. But the show also still doesn't really know what to do with Garrett Dillahunt, and they very quickly started and then torched an unconvincing romantic plot between her and Mindy, so it just kinda feels like this show's awkward handling of its revolving door supporting cast will never settle down.
y) "Once Upon A Time"
My wife has been a fan of this show since the beginning, and now as it drags into its 6th season, she's still watching, but she keeps talking about maybe or maybe not finally giving up on it. I just kinda sorta watch it if I'm around when she has it on, but I think even if I watched it faithfully I'd find all the stories hard to follow, I mostly like it for the hot Evil Queen lady.
z) "Saturday Night Live"
It's been interesting to see how "SNL" has handled the Trump candidacy -- obviously they dropped the ball hugely by having him host during his campaign and I think that'll always be one of those dark chapters in the show's history. But they also had Taran Killam's Trump impression totally flop, and then brought back Darrell Hammond, who is still kind of on the show (as the announcer and occasionally doing Bill Clinton) but has handed the reigns to Alec Baldwin to do Trump this season. Hammond's Trump is kind of a familiar classic at this point, but Baldwin's Trump in the first two episodes this fall has just been hilarious and better written than any of the Trump sketches last season, even if I find it kind of disturbing to see a portrayal of a more handsome Trump with the piercing blue eyes of a Siberian husky.
Monthly Report: September 2016 Albums
Thursday, October 06, 2016
1. Mick Jenkins - The Healing Component
I enjoyed last year's Wave[s], which kinda felt like it was bursting at the seams with the ambition to be more than an EP, and this feels like the big album statement he was ready to make. The earnest serious tone isn't really my thing usual, but it feels like Jenkins is just being himself, and the new Audio Push album had a similar tone but kinda pushed into a preachy area where I just didn't agree with the message, whereas Jenkins feels a little more personal and empathetic. And the production is just really layered and creative and kinda matches the depth of the subject matter well. This and the other albums I've been listening to are in my 2016 albums Spotify playlist.
2. Flock Of Dimes - If You See Me, Say Yes
I remember about 5 years I saw one of the first Flock Of Dimes shows (maybe the first?) at Soft House, and just being amazed that Jenn Wasner was playing and singing over these beautiful dense self-produced beats and developing a new skill set in addition to everything she does as one half of Wye Oak. The material at those early shows was mostly released on singles, but now she's finally assembled a full-length Flock Of Dimes album in the same vein, and it's really lovely, inventive stuff, I love hearing the way her guitars and synths tangle together on songs like "Minor Justice." As a fan of hers, it just feels like an embarrassment of riches to get this album just 3 months after Wye Oak's Tween.
3. Usher - Hard II Love
Protracted, confusing album rollouts from major artists are still pretty common in the age of the 'surprise release,' but few have been more awkward than Usher's. For 28 months, Usher released single after single, ostensibly for his 8th album, first called UR and then Flawed and then finally Hard II Love. And at some point he rebooted the whole process and R&B radio hits like "Good Kisser" and "I Don't Mind" were left by the wayside (which were so good that I still really wanna hear the 2014 album he shelved). Hard II Love does have a hit in "No Limit," but it feels like the whole thing was handled so badly, from the weak title and cover he ended up with, to the Tuesday release on Tidal that did nothing to help sales for a Friday retail release, that the project has already been deemed a failure. And that's a shame, because I think it's a much more consistent and cohesive album than Looking 4 Myself, which got a lot more credit for its scattershot ambition. Hard II Love is thematically old news -- the spoken "I fucked up...I'm man enough to admit" stuff that opens the album feels like almost a verbatim retread of lyrics from Confessions -- but vocally he's holding up well, and musically it holds together well with radio-ready songs like "Bump" and "FWM" and the Steely Dan-sampling "Missin U" as well as more ambitious tracks like the 8-minute slow jam "Tell Me."
4. Against Me! - Shape Shift With Me
Transgender Dysphoria Blues is one of the greatest rock albums of the decade and won me over to a band I'd never really been into before, so I'm still slowly getting into their earlier stuff. The songs on this album haven't stuck with me as much so far, but it's definitely carrying on in the same spirit, I think "Dead Rats" is my favorite right now.
5. Witty Rock - Birthday Boy 2 EP
Witty Rock is a part of 9% Camp along with JuegoTheNinety, and really they've been one of my favorite rap crews in Baltimore the last couple years. This is the second time Witty Rock has released a record on his birthday, which appears to be the same as Beyonce's (September 4th), it's a pretty upbeat record, I feel like Witty Rock is a little less intense than Juego, but they're both really skilled rappers who aren't afraid to pick some noisy beats and twist their voices into odd shapes. Check it out on Soundcloud.
6. T.I. - Us Or Else EP
T.I.'s ability to rap and make great songs has really not faded much at all, considering how long he's been at it. But a lot of the urgency has been drained out of his career due to a number of reasons, including the way every bloated album he's made since Paper Trail has been an eager-to-please attempt to cater to every possible constituency. So these sharp little 20-minute EPs he's been making lately, Da' Nic last year and now the more politically motivated Us Or Else, are really refreshing. I just wish he had the confidence to make a whole album that sounded like this.
7. Entrance - Promises EP
I first saw The Entrance Band, which is kind of the loud rock combo version of Entrance, which tends to be quieter, open for Sonic Youth a few years ago, and was surprised to learn that Guy Blakeslee is actually originally from Baltimore. This is Entrance's first release on Thrill Jockey and it's kind of a teaser for a new album coming out in February, but this record is pretty strong in its own right.
8. various artists - The Get Down: Original Soundtrack
I had mixed feelings about the first half-season of Netflix's "The Get Down," but there were certainly some great musical moments. And while the soundtrack is kind of a hodgepodge of old songs, covers of old songs, and retro-flavored new songs, the strength of the assembled talent really makes it work.
9. Bruce Springsteen - Chapter And Verse
Most of this album is familiar classics, but the first few tracks are some really exhilarating glimpses at Bruce's early pre-E Street bands that I'd read about for years without hearing. And, as I wrote last week, it's just kind of remarkable to hear one disc span 46 years of recordings.
10. Isaiah Rashad - The Sun's Tirade
I can't remember the last time my opinion of an album sunk more from the first listen to the second listen than The Sun's Tirade. I'd never really checked for Isaiah Rashad and had only skimmed Cilvia Demo (although there was about a year that he followed me on Twitter for some reason, and probably unfollowed because I make fun of TDE's weird label decisions so much). I like that he's taking the TDE sound and putting his own spin on it with southern influences, and there are some undeniable standout moments in the first half. But then it keeps going and it just feels like there are some really dull songs where he's just playing around with his voice and muttering and it doesn't really work.
Worst Album of the Month: Skylar Grey - Natural Causes
About 5 years ago, Skylar Grey was briefly an industry savior for writing a series of blockbuster hip pop power ballads. Now, she's still releasing major label albums and still has the support of Eminem, but it's really hard to see the point of her doing poverty Sarah MacLachlan songs over trap beats, it's just incredibly bland.
Movie Diary
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
a) Storks
Last week my son turned 7, and he loves going to the movies, so I took him to see Storks. And it was pretty fun and silly, the voice cast with Andy Samber and Kelsey Grammer was solid, and my kid liked it. The story made no sense, I mean just to come up with a movie that tries to make a backstory for the whole 'storks delivering babies' thing has to be pretty deliberately ridiculous, so I felt like they just went for it with gusto.
b) Deadpool
I've known since "Two Guys, A Girl, And A Pizza Place" that Ryan Reynolds had the jerky manic charisma to be a star, but man, it really took him a long time of bumbling through generic leading man stuff to finally get a project out that, for better or worse, packages his personality this effectively. This movie's sense of humor is like a dirty dad joke, and that can wear on you. But the comic relief in Marvel movies has been so numbingly samey for so long that I ended up laughing pretty hard at this movie just because it kept you on your toes, going through the action movie motions and then interrupting them with something absurd or filthy. I thought that it was kind of unfortunate that the premise necessitated Deadpool wearing a mask for most of the movie and Reynolds recording a lot of his dialogue as a voiceover -- his physical and vocal performance just felt a little divorced from each other.
c) The Forest
My wife and I thought this movie sounded pretty intriguing from the trailers, just that there's a real forest in Japan where people go to commit suicide and they used that as the premise for a horror movie, that's incredibly creepy. I really felt like they failed to make use of that with any good creepy atmosphere, though, and some of the CGI was just plain bad and took me out of the movie, kind of a disappointment.
This is one of those movies I put on in the background on a writing day so I don't really remember much about it, one of the Hemsworths hunts a whale I guess.
e) Truth
The last movie I saw Robert Redford in was A Walk In The Woods, where I thought he was unconvincing as Bill Bryson, but I'm pretty impressed by his performance as Dan Rather in Truth. He isn't made up too much to look like him but gets the voice and mannerisms down without being too obvious about it. The actual movie, though, I dunno, it felt like propaganda to get me to reconsider that entire episode of journalism history and it was hard to be swayed by something that was trying so hard to sway me. I'm still rooting for Topher Grace for some reason, though?
f) All Stars
I put this on not really knowing what it was, and was disappointed to realize that it's basically a semi-mockumentary directed by the guy who played Proctor in the Police Academy movies. And Fred Willard is in basically in a cheap knockoff of the Christopher Guest movies he was actually in. It's just kind of not very funny, and a waste of a cast that includes John Goodman and Illeana Douglas.
I think this movie was more intense than I anticipated and I really wasn't ready for it, it was pretty sad and graphic. I don't know if Gerard Butler can really carry a movie like this, though.