Friday, February 25, 2022
With the Foo Fighters movie Studio 666 out today, I wrote a piece for Consequence about Dave Grohl's long history of film and TV cameos.
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 251: Silverchair
Monday, February 21, 2022
Back in October, I did a deep dive into Silverchair's discography to write a piece about the band's current whereabouts for Consequence, and while I was doing that I started piecing together this playlist. Since that piece ran, Daniel Johns has announced a new solo album, FutureNever, that will be out in April, and also made some even more decisive comments to the effect that Silverchair will never reunite. So I thought I'd return to this playlist and finish it up and post it with the knowledge the band is really and truly a done deal.
Silverchair deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Blind
2. Cicada
3. Leave Me Out
4. Suicidal Dream
5. Punk Song #2
6. Lie To Me
7. Pop Song For Us Rejects
8. Petrol & Chlorine
9. Spawn (with Vitro)
10. Emotion Sickness
11. Steam Will Rise
12. Point Of View
13. Minor Threat
14. Pins In My Needles
15. Too Much Of Not Enough
16. The Lever
17. World Upon Your Shoulders
18. Young Modern Station
19. Those Thieving Birds (Part 1) / Strange Behaviour / Those Thieving Birds (Part 2)
20. Insomnia
Track 1 from the Tomorrow EP (1994)
Tracks 18, 19 and 20 from Young Modern (2007)Tracks 2, 3 and 4 from Frogstomp (1995)
Track 5 from the "Freak" single (1997)
Tracks 6, 7 and 8 from Freakshow (1997)
Track 9 from Spawn: The Album (1997)
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from Neon Ballroom (1999)
Track 13 from the "Miss You Love" single (1999)
Track 14 from the "The Greatest View" single (2002)
Tracks 15, 16 and 17 from Diorama (2002)
In retrospect, I'm surprised I didn't like Silverchair more when they first came out. They were just a couple years older than me, all about the same age as my brother who I'd just started my first couple bands with, I should've been excited to see some teenagers in a platinum rock band, making the kind of grungy hard rock I was obsessed with. But I never dug "Tomorrow" that much, and I don't think it's aged terribly well. But Frogstomp is still impressive for how young they were when they made it, and it's cool to hear Daniel Johns make these big leaps and strides as a songwriter over the course of their career. I really dig some of the later stuff that Van Dyke Parks worked on and think they went out on top with Young Modern.
Since they only made 5 albums, I also dipped into their singles and EPs for some b-sides. "Blind" from their debut EP was later re-recorded for the Cable Guy soundtrack. As I mentioned in the Consequence piece, they covered Minor Threat's "Minor Threat" on one single, and two 2002 b-sides, including "Pins In My Needles," were kind of randomly just put on streaming services in 2020. And it's interesting to hear Silverchair participate in the rock/electronica fusions on the Spawn soundtrack, especially since Johns went on to do a lot of electronic stuff in his solo work and side projects outside Silverchair. A more conventional version of Spawn's title track, "Spawn (Again)," appeared on Neon Ballroom, but I don't think it's as interesting as the Vitro verison.
TV Diary
Thursday, February 17, 2022
I know that after "The People v. O.J. Simpson," we're doomed to get a prestige television miniseries about every major scandal of the 1990s, and "Pam & Tommy" may not be the worst, but it definitely feels like they're scraping the barrel. In the first episode, as the guy who stole their sex tape gets a backstory and even a flashback to his childhood, and an actor wears a big fake chin and does Jay Leno monologue jokes, it just felt so clear that there is not enough story here to fill 8 episodes of television. And after 5 episodes, it feels like they may eventually give Lily James's Pamela Anderson an empathetic three-dimensional portrait, but for now the tape thief, played by Seth Rogen, is a more fleshed out character. Sebastian Stan, who I didn't want to pass judgment on as an actor based on a bunch of Marvel movies, really feels like a non-presence who doesn't know how to play Tommy Lee -- it's a bad sign that even Machine Gun Kelly was far better in the same role in the middling film adaptation of The Dirt. Even the big hyped up scene where Sebastian Stan has a conversation with his prosthetic penis, voiced by Jason Mantzoukas, kind of falls flat. And obviously the music in the show didn't need to be all flop era Motley Crue or anything, but the particular strain of '90s nostalgia they mine with the music choices in "Pam & Tommy" just feels off, sometimes deliberately so but mostly in a kind of irritating and incoherent way that illustrates who the whole tone of this isn't quite right.
Of course, alongside the miniseries about '90s scandals, there's a whole wave of these shows about recent "scammers" in the news like Anna Delvey. "Inventing Anna" is kind of a mess, though, at least the first couple episodes I've seen. Julia Garner does a good job portraying this odd person and speaking in their unusual accent, but I think the story is being told badly, and not even entertainingly. I also don't like that so much of the show is a how-the-sausage-gets-made account of the New York Magazine article that made Delvey famous, but the fictionalized version of the writer is struggling to get their career off the ground while the real author of the piece was already successful and one of her other articles was being turned into a J.Lo movie at the time.
It's cool to see someone who's been kind of Twitter-famous for years and years like Quinta Brunson get a shot at creating and starring in an ABC sitcom and totally kill it, "Abbott Elementary" has only been on for 2 months but they just hit the ground running in a way that very few sitcoms do. And another internet-famous person, Zack Fox, has stolen some scenes in a recurring role, but the entire cast is great, especially Janelle James and Lisa Ann Walter. Mostly I just love that they've managed to make a show about elementary school from the teachers' perspective that's relatable and universal as a workplace comedy but isn't shying away from addressing what's going on in public schools right now. I do find it a little irritating that a lot of online people are acting like this is the first good network sitcom in 5 or 10 years, but at least the show is worth the hype.
"Somebody Somewhere" feels like the most HBO Max show that HBO Max has ever made: a comedian's semi-autobiographical half hour dramedy, produced by the Duplass brothers, where they go back to their midwestern hometown after a death in the family and reconnect with people they went to high school with. But it's a pretty great little show, Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller have had a lot of bit parts in things and it's fun to see them as the leads.
e) "Bel-Air"
The idea of a serious dramatic modernization of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" was met with a lot of derision when it was first announced, but people have started to turn around and accept it now after watching an episode or two. And they do make a decent effort at making it good, but the whole premise just feels a little too ludicrous to me, it's like "Riverdale." Will pulling a gun at the basketball game, Carlton doing xannies, it's way too much.
This British miniseries is an odd little story about this big, beautiful, unique house that the architect/owner lets people rent for a low, affordable if they follow all of his rules. But the two applicants who he picks, as we see in parallel stories 3 years apart, look like each other, and we eventually find out that both women resemble his dead wife. Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo are great in it, but I'm not sure where this story is really gonna wind up, need to finish the last episode.
g) "Reacher"
In the Jack Reacher books, he's this big 6'5" tough guy, so fans of the novels understandably had a problem with the movies where he was played by Tom Cruise. But it feels like this new Amazon series is almost too self-congratulatory about Alan Ritchson fitting the description, there is so much dialogue in the first couple episodes of people commenting on his size. It's a good show, though, great fight scenes and a pretty engaging story, and Ritchson has great chemistry with Willa Fitzgerald. I'm kind of amused how Malcolm Goodwin is almost playing the exact same character he played in "iZombie," though.
A really good comedy on Freeform exec produced by Leslye Headland ("Russian Doll," Bachelorette) about an alcoholic getting sober. I especially liked the first episode where Sofia Black-D'Elia's character hits rock bottom, and then manages to hit rock bottom again immediately after 30 days of rehab, so you kind of are constantly expecting the worst but still rooting for her.
Netflix's "Murderville" is based on a BBC series and has a pretty fun concept: Will Arnett plays a detective, and in each episode his partner is a different celebrity guest (Conan O'Brien, Marshawn Lynch, etc.). Everyone has a script except the guest, who has to go around talking to suspects and witnesses with Arnett and collecting clues, and then at the end of the episode they try to correctly guess who the murderer is. As improv comedy it works surprisingly well, with Arnett just playing a ridiculous character and giving the guest something good to bounce off of, and the game/mystery aspect is fun too.
There was an infamous "How I Met Your Dad" pilot with Greta Gerwig right after "How I Met Your Mother" wrapped, but now we've got Hulu's sequel series starring Hilary Duff. I loved "HIMYM" at the time but will be the first to admit it hasn't aged spectacularly well, and it's kind of depressing that the things that they get right about emulating the writing/tone of the original show feel cheesy now. But I do like that they don't make an effort to gender swap the whole cast (I mean, maybe you could do a female Barney Stinson and make it less problematic, but it's probably best not to try). It's not good per se, but Francia Raisa's in it, so I will probably keep watching.
k) "Euphoria"
I was a big "Euphoria" skeptic from the beginning, but I liked the standalone Rue episode between seasons enough to tune in for the new season. And there are occasional great moments (the 'Oklahoma' bathroom scene!), but it feels like the prolonged break has just made Sam Levinson itchier to stuff way too much into every episode, every scene, all these flashy camera angles and endless music montages and goofy fantasy sequences. I couldn't even tell if the "menacing lowlife dancing to a Gerry Rafferty soft rock tune before getting violent" scene was a deliberate Reservoir Dogs homage or if Levinson just can't help throwing in these flashy derivative scenes. Plus I'm old enough that I'm watching this more as a dad than as a former teen, I'm not outraged by it but I find it exhausting. I'm ready for a 'Euphoria parents' spinoff since two of the moms are my '90s crushes Paula Marshall and Alanna Ubach.
I have had a lot of mixed feelings about Danny McBride's shows and movies, and while "The Righteous Gemstones" occasionally annoys me in the same ways (the extended projectile vomiting scene in the latest episode is a good example), it continues to be by far the best thing he's ever made. The cast is amazing, especially Edi Patterson and Walton Goggins, there's been a great run of guests this season, including Eric Roberts and Joe Jonas, and it just feels like they keep scaling things up in insanely entertaining ways like Adam DeVine's army of musclemen.
m) "Dollface"
"Dollface" was a slight letdown in its first season, but I'm still happy that Kat Dennings and Esther Povitsky are in a show together and either it's growing on me or the writing is getting stronger in season 2.
I love the first season of "State of the Union," ten quick, snappy 10-minute episodes scripted by Nick Hornby, of Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd as a couple with a troubled marriage, meeting in a coffee shop to pregame before each week's couples therapy session. Season 2 is the same formula with a different couple, played by Brendan Gleeson and Patricia Clarkson, and it's had some good moments so far but I'm not enjoying it as much. Partly it's that Gleeson is playing kind of an oafish conservative guy and there's a lot of predictable 'un-woke' banter, plus some unpleasant echoes of his depiction of Trump in "The Comey Rule."
The biggest different between "Disenchantment" and predecessors like "Futurama" and "The Simpsons" is a lot more continuity and big story arcs, to make it more true to the whole epic fantasy genre it's parodying. But I don't necessarily care about the story, so every time they come back with new episodes, my wife and I are kind of like "huh, what the hell is going on again?" But the characters and the jokes are still pretty enjoyable.
I've come to the conclusion that the format of turning these Reddit "two sentence horror stories" into an anthology series just doesn't work, fleshing out these simple intriguing premises almost always falls flat, save for a couple episodes in the first season. Plus the "bad two sentence horror" Twitter account is way more entertaining than the show.
An Italian 'erotic drama' on Netflix, watched a bit of it but got bored of it easily.
Kind of a charming, soapy Arabic show on Netflix about a woman whose husband leaves her.
This Portuguese series is by far my favorite recent Netflix import, some really sharp dialogue and playful storytelling, engaging cast.
People tend to think of me as this hypercritical Kanye West detractor or someone who wants the "old Kanye" back, and honestly I have been over him, as a person and as a musician, for over a decade, a lot longer than other people have started to sour on him. But I was just a huge fan in the early days, I can still remember reading his name in Jay-Z liner notes, becoming a fan of his beats and then getting the Get Well Soon mixtape and rooting for him as a rapper, and seeing it all get weird after that. So this 3-part Netflix doc, which the duo Coodie & Chike have been filming since 1998, is pretty fascinating and comes at an especially weird time in Kanye's life. And there are things in here that I didn't even know about, like Dug Infinite dissing him on the radio, that really breathe new life into the familiar story of Kanye's rise. I don't know what kind of emotions the next 2 installments will bring up, but the first one is pretty bittersweet.
Apparently the all-Black comedy night on Tuesdays at the Comedy Store really launched a lot of standups' careers in the '90s and was a big influence on things like Def Comedy Jam. And this 3-part Amazon miniseries has a lot of great stories about that era, and interviews with most of the big comics that were starting out back then.
I've never been much of a fan of Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight Show," and the way he's turned a lot of it into a series of mini-game shows. But some of those games are pretty fun, particularly the music-oriented ones, and I like the way they've spun them off into a show unto itself (with Fallon also hosting, which again, not a huge fan, might like this more with someone else in the gig). The first episode of "That's My Jam" with all the current "Voice" judges was the best one, because Ariana Grande and Kelly Clarkson are the perfect people for a show like this, but all the episodes are pretty entertaining, even when some celebs don't have much musical talent or knowledge (cough cough, Taraji P. Henson).
Steph and Ayesha Curry host this show that's kind of a celebrity couples game show, sort of a very chill and casual "Newlywed Game" sort of thing. It's fun, interesting to contrast the kind of HBO show Steph made with LeBron's less scripted but more serious "Uninterrupted."
I haven't read Shea Serrano's book Basketball (And Other Things), but I guess this Hulu series is kind of a television version of it, lots of basketball players and celebrities talking about different topics involved to NBA culture and NBA history and the different sort of issues that players encounter.
Gordon Ramsay's latest show is sort of an "American Idol"-style tournament to find good mid-level chefs and pick one to really elevate to stardom. But in practice it's kind of just like all the other Ramsay shows, which is fine if you're into that kind of thing, I occasionally find it entertaining to see how different cooks handle the various challenges.
I'm always kind of amused when cutesy cartoons aimed at young children have these actors that are just moderately famous even among adults. Like, why do we need dachsunds to be voiced by Mark Duplass and Nasim Pedrad? It's just weird that professional voice actors are always getting pushed out for screen actors even when they aren't super-famous.
Monthly Report: February 2022 Singles
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
1. Maren Morris - "Circles Around This Town"
After Kacey Musgraves got passive-aggressively kicked out of country Grammy categories and radio playlists on her last album, I'm glad Maren Morris is still getting country airplay for her new single which, while produced by Greg Kurstin and co-written by Julia Michaels, sounds sufficiently country. I love how the second verse is kind of Maren's origin story with references to her first two successful singles, "My Church" and "'80s Mercedes." Here's the 2022 singles playlist I update every month.
2. The Weeknd - "Sacrifice"
I had fun writing my GQ piece about Dawn FM but the album is as hit-and-miss as The Weeknd has always been for me, and predictably what I really like best is one of the more pop-leaning singles. It's kind of funny that Swedish House Mafia and Max Martin produced a Weeknd song that sounds like the Weeknd/Daft Punk collaborations probably should have sounded, love how they flip the Alicia Myers sample.
3. Muni Long - "Hrs And Hrs"
It's such a rare blue moon occurrence that it's kind of exciting just to see a pretty traditional R&B slow jam like "Hrs And Hrs" from a relative unknown do really well on the Hot 100, I guess it took off on TikTok as things tend to now. Interestingly, Muni Long is the new stage name of Priscilla Renea, who had a major label deal a decade ago and had one really bad Benny Blanco-produced synth pop song, "Dollhouse," on Top 40 radio for a second, definitely feels like she reinvented herself into something better.
4. Sam Fender - "Seventeen Going Under"
Sam Fender's second album was awesome, really glad to see the title track getting some traction on American rock radio. The second verse of "Seventeen Going Under," that's just great songwriting.
5. Blu DeTiger - "Blondes"
I wrote about Blu DeTiger in Spin's "artists to watch in 2022" piece on the strength of the EP she released last year, but while the article was in the works she signed with Capitol and released this new single, which is really excellent, hope it blows up.
6. Key Glock - "Proud"
I can't really imagine what it's like to be a close friend and collaborator of someone like Young Dolph when they die tragically, and Key Glock was sort of his main protege for years and had just scored his first top 10 solo album right before Dolph's death. And Key Glock's song on the new Paper Route tribute project Long Live Young Dolph is great, not an overly sentimental "I'll Be Missing You" sort of thing but pissed off and anguished and defiant, moving in its own way, with Dolph's ad libs at the end kind of encouraging Glock from the afterlife.
7. Ella Mai - "DFMU"
I was recently lamenting on Twitter that Ella Mai's career had seemingly stalled after she had a huge multi-platinum debut album, then released one underperforming single and kind of disappeared, releasing nothing for 16 months. So when she released a new single a couple days later, I felt like I'd kind of willed it into existence. "DFMU" is co-produced by Mustard but is a little more in the vein of "Not Another Love Song" than her earlier hits, so I don't know how it's going to do on radio, but I like it, hopefully she gets that second album out this year.
8. Nardo Wick f/ Lil Baby and Future - "Me Or Sum"
Nardo Wick's breakthrough single "Who Want Smoke?" got much bigger from an all-star remix, so it really feels like he's going big on features from established rappers to get a follow-up hit, which is probably smart, he's really not much of a rapper. Future in particular really carries "Me Or Sum," pretty much does the whole intro section himself, so it's kind of funny when he says "Nardo, you got you one with this one" at the end.
9. Ne-Yo f/ Yung Bleu - "Stay Down"
Like Nardo Wick's "Me Or Sum," this song has kind of a intro beat switch where the first minute or so sounds completely different from the rest of the song, feels almost more like the structure of something like Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" than recent trendy beat switch rap hits like "Sicko Mode" that feel like random parts stitched together. I'm not much of a fan of Yung Bleu becoming absolutely inescapable on rap radio, but this song is pretty good, I'm glad Ne-Yo is still in the mix and making hits.
10. Jessica Darrow - "Surface Pressure"
Last month I wrote about the breakout success of Encanto's "We Don't Talk About Bruno," which is now #1 on the Hot 100. And I'm not surprised that "Surface Pressure," which in some ways is the most 2022-sounding pop song in the movie, is also a top 10 hit in its own right.
The Worst Single of the Month: Polo G - "Bad Man (Smooth Criminal)"
I'm not the biggest Polo G fan but I respect the way he's carved out his own lane and has succeeded with an identifiable sound of his own. But it feels like he's taken it as far as he could and now he's just desperate to keep getting bigger and this horrible Michael Jackson interpolation is the hackiest way he could do it. MJ would be embarrassed by this, shit even Alien Ant Farm should be embarrassed by this, Polo should've just shelved the song after he performed it at Rolling Loud and nobody liked it. Somehow it's even worse than the "Hey There Delilah" interpolation on the new Rod Wave single.
Movie Diary
Wednesday, February 09, 2022
I'm enough of a philistine that I've never seen a Jane Campion film before The Power Of The Dog, but I liked it. In some ways I felt like it was a better There Will Be Blood, right down to a less obnoxious Johnny Greenwood score. Benedict Cumberpatch is pretty amazing, he can really become a character so thoroughly and convincingly, and the story didn't really go where I thought it was going to in a good way. I don't know how old Peter was supposed to be or if they specify his age in the novel, but it felt like Kodi Smit-McPhee was too old for the role -- we're used to 25-year-olds playing teenagers in all these high school shows, but I think the ending would've had more impact if Peter wasn't this full grown 6'1" man towering over the rest of the cast.
Films directed by famous actors have a mixed track record, but you can reasonably expect them to get a good cast and help them shine, which is certainly true of Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut, which got Oscar nominations for Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. "Yellowjackets" recently overcame my weariness of stories that require different actors to portray the same characters at different ages, and Colman and Buckley pull it off pretty amazingly here too (although I think of Buckley's nomination as a belated apology for being snubbed for Wild Rose). The Lost Daughter feels like the kind of novel adaptation where some of the character's psychological states or thought processes were easier to get across on the page and become a little labored in the movie, but overall a really strong directorial effort for Gyllenhaal.
Guillermo del Toro is someone that I always want to have a blank check to make whatever he wants, good bad or ugly, and after The Shape of Water he probably pretty much has that. Nightmare Alley is a remake of a 1947 film I'd never heard of, starring someone I'm kind of sick of, Bradley Cooper. But the ensemble does great work (Dafoe, Collette, Jenkins, Straithairn, Steenburgen) and I enjoyed it even if it didn't leave a huge impression on me.
Biopics have always been awards season bait, but this year's Oscar nominations really lay bare how much they've almost become these unapologetic actor showcases that are seldom great overall films. 8 of the 20 nominated actors this year are from 5 biopics, only one of which got a Best Picture nod. The Eyes Of Tammy Faye's 2 nominations, for Jessica Chastain's performance and for Beset Makeup and Hairstyling, are entirely due to Chastain's tranformation into Tammy Faye Baker. And it's impressive, yeah, but the movie itself feels kind of flat and dutiful, and Andrew Garfield is as ill-fitting and miscast as Javier Bardem was in one of the other nominated biopics, Being The Ricardos.
This was a pretty fun, above average Marvel flick, although that scene on the bus in the beginning was so much better than the rest of the movie that the other action sequences felt anticlimactic.
Emily Blunt at one point seemed to almost exclusively pick projects I enjoyed, but listen, I'll settle for her being good in a substandard movie now and then if that's what she wants to do. Dwayne Johnson had some lines that gave me a sensible chuckle in the exact way the guides on the jungle cruise ride gave me a sensible chuckle last time I went to Disney World a couple years ago, so mission accomplished there.
Monthly Report: January 2022 Albums
Thursday, February 03, 2022
1. Amber Mark - Three Dimensions Deep
Amber Mark, an R&B singer who's from Tennessee but has a Jamaican father and spent a few years growing up in India, has a great worldly sound that takes a bit from everything the way the best R&B often does. She was nominated for a Grammy a few years ago for a 'mini-album' and has collaborated with a weird range of people including The Dirty Projectors and Empress Of, but Three Dimensions Deep is her proper Universal-distributed debut album, and it's fantastic. My favorite track "Most Men" starts with just an organ line and then builds to this simple, funky beat, and the way her voice really carries the track and switches from raspy runs to lush harmonies is masterful.
2. Elvis Costello & The Imposters - The Boy Named If
I recently did a piece for Spin ranking all 31 Elvis Costello albums, and The Boy Named If came in at a respectable #18, right between Almost Blue and Brutal Youth. Excitement for Costello's new records albums usually enjoys an uptick when he makes a 'rock' record with the Attractions or the Imposters, but I rarely find it useful to measure those albums by how much they resemble his early work. The Boy Named If, however, genuinely sounds more like This Year's Model than any record he's made since 1978. Part of that is become Steve Nieve kind of stays in a narrower lane than usual with buzzy organs, but as always there's a nice variety of tempos and moods here, Pete Thomas is really and truly one of rock's greatest drummers.
3. FKA Twigs - Caprisongs
I have mixed feelings about FKA Twigs -- I think she's a really unique talent, but her music isn't the sort of thing I necessarily need a lot of, and while I love LP1 I just kind of listened to Magdalena once or twice and then forgot it existed. But Caprisongs, which is positioned as 'mixtape' rather than album, feels brisk and accessible in a good way, with features (The Weeknd, Daniel Caesar) and producers (Sounwave, Mike Dean, Cirkut) that put her in a slightly more pop context -- although the video with The Weeknd is just hilarious. Maybe she'll follow this with a proper album that's even better, but for now I think this works pretty great as a project unto itself. I think "Oh My Love" is my favorite track but "Thank You Song" is a really killer closing song.
4. John Mellencamp - Strictly A One-Eyed Jack
I listened to this album a lot while prepping for my GQ interview with John Mellencamp, and it's really a remarkable album. Even though Mellencamp has kind of been on this trajectory of making his records rootsier and more intimate for about 35 years now, he's gone to such an interesting extreme, you could play some of these songs for people and they wouldn't be able to guess it's him. There's always been this existential streak in his songs, "Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone" is kind of a famously dark sentiment for a fist-pumping classic rock anthem, but "I Am A Man That Worries" and "I Always Lie To Strangers" feel like he's just willing to stare into the void and not blink. The 3 songs with Bruce Springsteen bring a little more color and hope to the proceedings, but even one of those songs, "A Life Full Of Rain," kind of ends the record on a down note, which I like.
5. Gunna - DS4EVER
I've always said that Gunna has yet to have a solo hit -- for a long time all his biggest songs were features or Lil Baby collaborations, and even now his biggest songs have features. His signature solo track is probably an album track like "Drip Or Drown" or "Who You Foolin," not a quickly forgotten single like "One Call" or "Skybox." In any case, Gunna thrives when he has company, and DS4EVER gives him plenty of it, although I think my favorite song is the solo track "Poochie Gown." It baffles me a little that Gunna beat The Weeknd for a #1 album, doing better first week numbers than his mentor Young Thug has ever done, but I've always felt like people were clamoring for Lil Baby and Gunna to filter Thug's sound through a more conventional Atlanta rap aesthetic.
6. Our Lady Peace - Spiritual Machines II
I always liked Our Lady Peace's singles in the '90s but I didn't really get to know their music better until I met my wife, who's a huge fan. And 2000's Spiritual Machines, sort of a concept album with spoken interludes by Ray Kurzweil, is one of their best albums. So it's interesting to hear them revisit that whole idea with a sequel two decades later, following up on Kurzweil's past predictions about the future and making new ones about the 2030s. Spiritual Machines II is kind of a musical departure for Our Lady Peace, though, a little less guitar-heavy and more groove-driven, produced by TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek and featuring Pussy Riot on one song.
7. Cat Power - Covers
Cat Power is one of those bands that makes me feel like an indie snob because I really liked them a lot more before they were popular, especially those first three albums when Tim Foljahn and Steve Shelley were in the band. 2000's The Covers Record was kind of the beginning of the end of me being an active Cat Power fan, but that's where a lot of people started paying attention. Chan Marshall's third album of Covers is appealing to me a little more than most of the stuff she's made in the 20th century though. Her covers still very often abandon the vocal melodies and musical arrangements of the originals -- apparently Marshall was planning on making an album of new songs but kept finding herself singing other people's lyrics over what her band was playing -- but things are a little more fleshed out than they were on the stark and simple The Covers Record. And this album has her most interesting range of covers, uniting the classic alternative canon (Nico, The Replacements, Iggy Pop) with the modern alternative canon (Lana Del Rey, Frank Ocean) and even things in the classic rock canon like a weirdly good, dramatically different arrangement of Bob Seger's "Against The Wind."
8. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Butterfly 3001
It's hard for a band that's released 18 albums in under a decade to stamp any one of them as an especially important one. But King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard leader Stu Mackenzie has called 2021's Butterfly 3000 his favorite, and now they've made it the source material for the band's first remix album. It's cool to hear their sound filtered through the aesthetic of guys like DJ Shadow and DaM FunK, and my favorite remix also has my favorite title, because the song that namechecks the Beach Boys is reworked as "2.02 Killer Year (Bullant's Fuck Mike Love Mix)."
9. various artists - Summer of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Stevie Wonder is the biggest name in Summer Of Soul and part of the film's amazing opening scene, so it's a little bit of a letdown that he's the most notable absence from the soundtrack album. But it's still an awesome document that starts out on fire with the Chambers Brothers and B.B. King and builds beautifully to the climax of the Sly and the Family Stone and Nina Simone performances toward the end of the album.
10. Powerz Records - Billboard Top 100 of All Time
Powerz Records is a Baltimore label that has been doing a series of covers albums featuring local musicians covering Billboard hits of yesteryear. I checked out the latest installment because my friend Mat Leffler-Schulman made a cool "Call Me Maybe" cover for it -- Mat's a prolific producer/engineer who's worked on pretty much all my records, but this is the first track of his own that he's put out since the last album from his Mons project back around 2003. There's some fun stuff on here, it's interesting to see what people pick when their choices are the biggest pop hits ever, there's "Hey Jude" but also some less predictable songs. I particularly like Dave Fell's "Too Closer" cover and Liz Vayda's take on "How Deep Is Your Love."
The Worst Album of the Month: Aaron Lewis - Frayed At Both Ends
Even at Staind's peak, Aaron Lewis was the doleful acoustic balladeer of the nu-metal world, and it wasn't that surprising a decade ago when he embarked on a career as a country singer. But he's been chugging along with this second chapter of his career and picking up steam: now he's signed to the hitmaking country label Big Machine and the lead single from his fourth solo album topped Billboard's country chart. That song, "Am I The Only One," is a vague, monotonous political ballad about "screaming 'what the fuck' at my TV" and choosing to "quit singin' along every time they play a Springsteen song," so cranky and aimless that it makes Toby Keith's right wing anthems seem like high art. The rest of the album isn't quite that bad -- sometimes he sings in a lower register and sounds like a better rock-frontman-turned-country-solo-artist, Darius Rucker -- but the whole Staind-goes-country vibe is still pretty terrible. I'm disappointed in Vince Gill for appearing on this album.
Wednesday, February 02, 2022
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2022 nominees today, and I broke down what's interesting and historically noteworthy about the slate for Spin.
TV Diary
Tuesday, February 01, 2022
Christopher Miller, one half of the Lord & Miller team that directed 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, created this Apple TV+ series that's both a broad comedy and a murder mystery that twists into yet another genre in each episode. A pop star (played by Dave Franco) dies at his house after a high school reunion, and a cop (Tiffany Haddish) interviews all his high school classmates who were at the party and could be the killer. In the first three episodes, Sam Richardson is a lovelorn character whose recollection of the night's events plays like a rom com, Ike Barinholtz is a macho jerk who remembers everything an action movie, and Ben Schwartz is an aspiring musician who tells his story like a musical. It's all pretty creative and energetic, and John Early steals a lot of scenes, but it's also a little exhausting.
b) "Peacemaker"
The Suicide Squad was a much better movie than its predecessor, and that's largely thanks to James Gunn and the new additions to the cast. So it was a pleasant surprise when a spinoff series about John Cena's character debuted just 5 months after the movie, with Gunn writing and directing almost the entire season. And it's just a wildly entertaining gorey little action comedy with a hair metal-heavy soundtrack, including the completely absurd title sequence where the entire cast dances like it's the frigging "Cosby Show." DC Comics adaptations get a lot of flak, some of it deserved, for taking themselves a lot more seriously than the comparatively lighter, brighter MCU, but I like that they've made room for more overtly comedic things like this and the "Harley Quinn" animated series.
There have been a few shows in the last few years with autistic characters that have handled the subject matter pretty well, but "As We See It" is a really singular and impressive show. The three main actors are all on the spectrum and give incredible performances of characters, all in their 20s and living in an apartment together with an aide that's helping them lead adult lives without their families. And those characters are drawn with a lot of complexity, particularly Sue Ann Pien as Violet, each of them dealing with their own issues and setbacks. And Jason Katims, formerly showrunner of "Friday Night Lights" and "Parenthood," is just incredibly good at these poignant tearjerker moments where you really feel every character's personal triumph or breakdown and genuinely, true to the title, get a glimpse of what life is like for them and empathize. Sometimes it's a little too much to take because things seem to come to a head in almost every episode, but maybe that's just because I liked this show so much that I watched several episodes in a row.
Last year I watched and really enjoyed Australian director Abe Forsythe's Little Monsters, which followed in the footsteps of the established zombie comedy genre but had its own unique voice (he'ss also directing the next RoboCop movie that Neill Blomkamp was at one point attached to). Forsythe's Peacock series "Wolf Like Me" is a bit like Little Monsters in that it's got a lot of elements of modern horror I've seen before, and this "person trying to hide that they're a werewolf" thing has been done many times, but I found it really memorable and distinct. The biggest surprise is that Josh Gad is a compelling dramatic lead and has real romantic chemistry with Isla Fisher, there are moments of comedy but it's largely kind of a moving story about loss and fate. It's nice to see Fisher in anything after she's been in so little over the last decade, and she's great in this, but it was a little disappointing to see her play an American in a show that takes place in Australia, let her use her delightful real accent, dammit.
I'm not really sure why the Star Wars powers that be decided to launch their big wave of Disney+ series with "The Mandalorian," a show inspired by the popularity of Boba Fett but not actually about Boba Fett, and then turn that character into sort of a spinoff series after "The Mandalorian" became popular. It all feels kind of backwards. And while "The Mandalorian" managed the unlikely feat of establishing the protagonist's personality and making viewers care about him when he's always wearing a helmet, it feels harder to connect with Boba Fett in "The Book of Boba Fett" despite him not wearing the helmet most of the time. It's still a pretty entertaining show, though, I have always adored Ming-Na Wen and I think this is a great role for her. And I've enjoyed the episodes with Danny Trejo and Sophie Thatcher from "Yellowjackets" as a badass biker cyborg.
When I saw that Kristen Bell was starring in a parody of a certain trendy wave of psychological mystery novels/movies like The Woman in the Window and The Girl on the Train, I was really excited, I thought this was gonna be hilarious. But satirizing a genre that is by nature slow and portentous can be tricky, you can't necessarily go joke-a-minute like a Zucker Brothers movie, and "The Woman" may have erred too far in the opposite direction -- my wife actually had to ask me several minutes into the first episode if it was a comedy, which is not a good sign. It picks up the pace a little after a couple episodes and I have hope that it's building to bigger laughs by the end, but it's not quite what I anticipated.
g) "Archive 81"
This is a pretty interesting creepy show on Netflix where a video archivist restores a bunch of tapes from the '90s and finds this footage made by a woman who disappeared. I haven't gotten too far into it yet but it seems pretty cool.
I try not to dismiss shows just because they have similar premises to shows that already did it well, but "In From The Cold" kind of is "The Americans" if it was a trashier, weirder, more lowbrow Netflix show. And honestly, that's not a bad thing, I like a good lurid spy thriller, and Margarita Levieva from "The Deuce" is really gorgeous.
This ABC miniseries is about the tragedy of Emmett Till and how his mother Mamie Till-Mobley became a civil rights activist. And while they tell a complicated story sensitively and Adrienne Warren is great as Till-Mobley, it just felt like the bright, chintzy ABC production values fell way short of what this could've been, it's easy to imagine HBO or something doing this a lot more justice.
j) "Billions"
Last week Consequence published my list of the 10 best Showtime series ever -- a few hours later news broke that two shows on the list, "Black Monday" and "Work In Progress," had been canceled. But I'm glad that the highest current show on my list, "Billions," is getting a chance to wrap things up with its 6th and final season. Season 5 surprisingly ended with Damian Lewis exiting the show, and I'm interested to see how they fill that void. Corey Stoll's character is primarily in his place right now, and is well written enough that I think it's still a compelling show, but I'm still kind of hoping that the show ends with Asia Kate Dillon's character arc going somewhere interesting.
Apparently this Peacock show is adapted from an Australian series where normal people sit down with the two hosts and tell the best story of something that happened to them, and actors dramatize it. The U.S. version is hosted by Ed Helms and Randall Park and has a lot of familiar American comedy people in the dramatizations, so it reminds me a lot of "Drunk History" -- minus the drinking, of course, but it's still pretty silly and playful.
I haven't seen "Critical Role," which is a web series where professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons, but apparently this is a spinoff of that on Amazon Prime. I'm really enjoying it, I just started playing D&D once a week with my wife and her family the last two years and I feel like I'm still getting the handle of it all but it's fun to see this kind of thing animated and kind of relate the story to what we've done in our game.
The latest Korean hit for Netflix is about a zombie outbreak in a high school, and it's pretty fast-paced and entertaining, they really hit the ground running and get some novelty out of isolating the action on school grounds.
This Brazilian show on Netflix feels like a lot of American shows, a bunch of hot young people working at a resort, just a sort of blank sexy nothingness.
o) "Chosen"
This Danish series on Netflix is about a small town that's become a tourist attraction after a meteor landed there, but then a teenage tour guide starts to find out the real truth about the meteor. The first episode is really entertaining, looking forward to watching more of this.
Few pop stars of Janet Jackson's huge level of success have been more private and guarded about their personal life, and I think for good reason. So it was pretty surprising that she decided, at 55 years old, to do a 4-part documentary talking openly for the first time about a lot of her life and career. I've only watched the first part but it's really interesting to hear the Jackson family saga from her perspective, even though I think she's very diplomatic about her father and everything it still feels very revealing. I'm looking forward to getting into the later episodes and hearing more about her classic albums.
This CNN miniseries sets out to be sort of a course correction to the conventional wisdom about Marilyn Monroe. Every writer or historian or actor or filmmaker they interview for the doc is a woman, they look really critically at her work and her life story and the historical context, and explain what was great about her performances and how she carried herself as a public figure, it's pretty cool.
This Netflix docuseries is about a conman who posed as a British spy, pretty crazy story, can't believe I had never heard of this guy before.
Mexican food is pretty much my favorite kind of cuisine, so watching this show on Netflix is really appetizing but also kind of torture, I can only watch so much of shows like this if my stomach isn't full.
A pretty cool Netflix show looking at the nightlife in cities like Tokyo, Seoul, and Mumbai, sort of an interesting lens through which to learn more about these places I've never been.
"The Simple Life" kind of minted a particular kind of stupid reality show about rich privileged celebrities attempting to do normal working class jobs, and E!'s "Relatively Famous: Ranch Rules" is kind of a bottom-of-the-barrel new version where the children of David Hasselhoff and Ray Parker, Jr. work on a farm. Pat Benatar's daughter is a babe, though.
v) "Hype House"
This show is about the famous 'Hype House' in L.A. where a bunch of popular young TikTok creators live together in a mansion. It's kind of a well made reality show in that it just kind of neutrally depicts these people's bizarre ridiculous lives, but I still find it pretty hard to watch.
This Netflix show is about soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo's wife, and it's kind of endlessly glamorous and aw-shucks about this luxurious life she married into. And maybe I'm just pulled into the show because she's really beautiful but it's kind of nice to see a reality show about rich and famous people who actually seem happy and just kind of feel like, well, I hope they continue to have a nice life.
I grew up on all the Jim Henson shows but I think "Fraggle Rock" is even closer to my heart than "The Muppet Show" or "Sesame Street," I just have so many fond memories of watching it at my grandparents' house because they had HBO and would tape episodes for us. So I was excited but apprehensive about Apple TV+ doing a new version, and I'm happy to say that it feels just like the old show. Even though most of the voice actors are different now, they did an insanely good job with all the characters sounding the same, other than that Doc has been replaced with a young woman it feels like it picks up exactly where they left off in the '80s.
y) "El Deafo"
This Apple TV+ animated series is based on Cece Bell's graphic novel about losing her hearing as a child and growing up deaf. And it's a really affecting story and it's nice to see this done in a way that kids would be able to understand, and the sound design of simulating the hearing loss is really well done, clever things like making voices more faint when the lights are dim and she can't lip read.
"We Bare Bears" was one of my kids' favorite Cartoon Network shows that ended its run a couple years ago, and there were frequent flashback episodes of the three titular bears as little cubs. So it was kind of a no-brainer spinoff to do a new show that's just that, and it's pretty cute but I don't think it's as funny as the original series.