Movie Diary

Friday, March 29, 2024

 






a) Mean Girls
Mean Girls is one of those movies I can watch over and over without getting tired of it. And I enjoyed watching this new version, which felt like Tina Fey punching up one of her best scripts with a few new jokes and having fun with it with a new cast, who can never really compete with the originals but are a lot of fun to watch, Busy Philipps and Renee Rapp playing mother and daughter was some inspired casting. And while I was open to the idea of Mean Girls as a musical, that ended up being a kind of forgettable aspect of the movie. Even though I'd listened to the soundtrack album before seeing the movie, and I'm a big fan of Rapp's album, the songs here didn't really stick with me, they were just there as pleasant filler between the funny dialogue. 

b) Dicks: The Musical
Another musical comedy with an appearance from Megan Thee Stallion, and one where the music felt a bit more successful -- "Lonely" in particular is a genuinely beautiful song. I enjoyed the sheer outrageousness of it, the first scene with the "sewer boys" is one of the most deranged things I've seen in a long time. And it felt like instead of simply making a very gay movie that might make some straight people uncomfortable, they made a hilariously gross movie that would make just about anyone uncomfortable by the time they get to the graphic slapstick incest sex scenes towards the end. 

c) Wonka
Since Timothee Chalamet finally won my genuine respect for his performance in Dune: Part Two, I thought I'd check out what seems like the worst idea of his career so far. I have a tendency to put on movies when I have writing to do, and treating it like background noise while I work, which I regret with some movies, but with this one I think it's fine that I didn't give it my full attention, it was visually just hideous and didn't seem to have much of a reason to exist as a prequel. Like even the cursed Burton/Depp one probably has more going for it. 

d) Fair Play
The debut feature by Chloe Domont, who worked as a writer and director on shows about competitive male-dominated businesses like "Billions," "Suits" and "Ballers," uses the familiar tropes of the erotic thriller but feels a little more thoughtful about what it's saying about gender and power dynamics. I was a little surprised to see just how acclaimed this movie was after watching it, though, Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich do their best but it felt like Fair Play rested on their shoulders and neither of them quite had the chops to carry it. 

e) Ricky Stanicky
Apparently Ricky Stanicky kicked around as an admired unproduced screenplay on the Black List and over the past 15 years James Franco, Joaquin Phoenix and Jim Carrey were attached to play the title role, before Peter Farrelly inherited it and cast John Cena. Maybe this had the potential to be something more at some point, but here it just feels like a formulaic Farrelly Brother(s) comedy with some fairly stupid physical comedy bits surrounding a really funny John Cena performance. But wow, Lex Scott Davis is so incredibly beautiful in this movie. 

f) Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
As Taylor Swift reaches greater and greater heights of historic success, the dichotomy between her stardom and the 'relatable' appeal of her very earthbound songs and image gets stranger and more distorted. She spends half of this movie dressed like a superhero, and the sheer scale of the production is overwhelming, but she never presents as an otherworldly talent like Michael Jackson or something, she's just a woman singing emotive and thoughtful songs about her life, so into her songwriter lore that she geekily announces  "the first bridge of the evening." The complexity of the stage show actively works against her emphasizing her talent, because instead of giving her best as a vocalist, she's constantly in motion, hitting her marks while the real dancers do elaborate choreography around her, posing and power walking from one end of the stage to the other. It looks pretty cool, and sounds just okay. Some of my favorite songs in her catalog, including "The 1," "Style," and "I Knew You Were Trouble" are pulled off really beautifully, and I get a kick out a song in 5/4 like "Tolerate It" being performed to a packed stadium. But the Disney+ version is 3 and a half hours, and there are a whole lot of Taylor Swift songs I don't care a bit about, so it dragged a bit. 

g) Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told
Listening to southern rap over the years, Freaknik has taken on a mythic quality as the ultimate party, the epitome of unruly '90s Atlanta. So it was interesting to hear people who were there explained Freaknik's rise and fall in this doc. It was really funny when somebody said "Freaknik became more about the freak than the nik," that should have been in the trailer. 

h) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The recent 20th anniversary of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Ariana Grande naming her latest album after it, reminded me that it's kind of silly that I'd never actually seen this movie and should give it a belated spin, given how much I like some of Charlie Kaufman's early movies. Parts of it have aged poorly as a certain kind of dated sadsack romance (it was the same year as Garden State, after all), which was the thing that probably kept me from watching it at the time, but mostly it's a pretty wonderful, original film with some great scenes, and Kate Winslet in this movie is, for me, about as beautiful as anyone has ever looked. I think it could've been a better movie with someone besides Jim Carrey, though, at 42 he was just way too old for the role and the exaggerated physicality he brought to some of the scenes was not really needed. 

12:20 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 354: Peter Frampton

Thursday, March 28, 2024


 
























Peter Frampton is nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Eric B. & Rakim, Foreigner, Jane's Addiction, Kool & The Gang, Lenny Kravitz, Oasis, Sinead O'Connor, Ozzy Osbourne, Sade, and A Tribe Called Quest.  

Peter Frampton album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)
2. Wind Of Change
3. Just The Time Of Year
4. White Sugar
5. Golden Goose
6. Sail Away
7. The Crying Clown
8. Nowhere's Too Far (For My Baby)
9. Day's Dawning
10. Doobie Wah (live)
11. I Wanna Go To The Sun (live)
12. Penny For Your Thoughts (live)
13. Lines On My Face (live)
14. (Putting Your) Heart On The Line
15. Rocky's Hot Club
16. Got My Feet Back On The Ground
17. Where I Should Be (Monkey's Song)

Tracks 1 and 2 from Wind Of Change (1972)
Tracks 3 and 4 from Frampton's Camel (1973)
Tracks 5 and 6 from Somethin's Happening (1974)
Tracks 7, 8 and 9 from Frampton (1975)
Tracks 10, 11, 12 and 13 from Frampton Comes Alive! (1976)
Tracks 14 and 15 from I'm In You (1977)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Where I Should Be (1979)

This year's Rock Hall nominees are heavier on radio-friendly crowd-pleasers who aren't necessarily considered critically acclaimed innovators and legends. Even in that field, though, Peter Frampton is probably the weakest case for induction. It's not entirely fair to call him a one album wonder -- Frampton Comes Alive! drew on the four studio albums he'd released at that point, plus a song from his days with Humble Pie. So it was the culminating moment of a career he'd been building for a decade (funnily enough, the best-selling Humble Pie album from Frampton's tenure with the group was also a live album, Rockin' The Fillmore). But other guys who broke through big with live albums, like Kiss or Bob Seger, kept making hits for a while after that, while Frampton never recaptured that lightning in a bottle. 

Before putting together this playlist, I only really knew Frampton Comes Alive! and not even the studio versions of those songs. I was pleasantly surprised that a couple songs are actually better in their original versions -- "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" in particular is a much longer and fuller song on Wind Of Change than the short acoustic rendition on Alive. Generally, though, I have not really revised my opinion that Frampton is a minor talent who just had the stars align right for a year or two. And it seemed like he kind of gambled away his burgeoning rock god status with the goofy pin-up cover for the follow-up, I'm In You, which is his only platinum studio album. That record features a fun Stevie Wonder harmonica cameo "Rocky's Hot Club," and on "Heart On The Line," Frampton brings back the popular talkbox guitar sound from Alive. 

6:00 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 353: Kool & The Gang

Tuesday, March 26, 2024









Kool & The Gang are nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Eric B. & Rakim, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Jane's Addiction, Lenny Kravitz, Oasis, Sinead O'Connor, Ozzy Osbourne, Sade, and A Tribe Called Quest.  

Kool & The Gang album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Sea Of Tranquility
2. Pneumonia (live)
3. N.T. (live)
4. Soul Vibrations
5. North, East, South, West
6. Heaven At Once
7. You Don't Have To Change
8. Jungle Jazz
9. Cosmic Energy
10. L-O-V-E
11. The Force
12. It's All You Need
13. Got You Into My Life
14. Night People
15. Stop!
16. As One
17. Rollin'
18. Surrender
19. Broadway

Track 1 from Kool and the Gang (1969)
Track 2 from Live At The Sex Machine (1971)
Track 3 from Live At PJ's (1971)
Track 4 from Music Is The Message (1972)
Track 5 from Good Times (1972)
Track 6 from Wild And Peaceful (1973)
Track 7 from Light Of Worlds (1974)
Track 8 from Spirit Of The Boogie (1975)
Track 9 from Love & Understanding (1976)
Track 10 from Open Sesame (1976)
Track 11 from The Force (1977)
Track 12 from Everybody's Dancin' (1978)
Track 13 from Ladies' Night (1979)
Track 14 from Celebrate! (1980)
Track 15 from Something Special (1981)
Track 16 from As One (1982)
Track 17 from In The Heart (1983)
Track 18 from Emergency (1984)
Track 19 from Forever (1986)

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has never had a lot of room for acts associated with disco. The Bee Gees and Donna Summer got in, while Chic was nominated over and over without getting in, and the Hall eventually gave Nile Rodgers a Musical Excellence award and stopped nominating his band. So I don't know if Kool & The Gang will get in, but as I put together this playlist, I became more and more impressed with the band's talent and catalog, and if I was making a ballot they'd be on it. Bassist Robert "Kool" Bell is the only member from the band's classic years who's still with Kool & The Gang today, and only a handful of guys who were in the band in the '70s, including vocalist James "J.T." Taylor, are still alive, it'd be cool for them to be able to receive that honor now. 

Of course, Kool & The Gang started in the '60s, long before disco existed, and they slowly evolved and combined jazz, funk, soul, disco and pop over the course of a couple decades. I have to admit I grew up mostly knowing ubiquitous hits like "Celebration" and kind of took for granted that they weren't a very interesting group, but the musicianship and variety on their records is crazy. There are some silly songs on here, like "The Force," released just a few months after Star Wars dominated the box office, but there are also some incredibly funky shit. I knew that some of their hits had been sampled in big rap songs, but I was a little astonished at how much their more obscure early work had inspired famous songs, and ended up making that the focal point of this playlist, and I was able to cram in one track each from their first couple decades (although they've made about 9 more albums since their last significant commercial success in the mid-'80s). 

"Sea of Tranquility" was heavily interpolated on D'Angelo's "Send It On." "Pneumonia" was sampled on Ice Cube's "You Can't Face Me/JD's Gafflin'." My jaw just about dropped about 3 minutes into "N.T." when Ronald Bell's solo suddenly turns into the sax loop from Nas's "Ain't Hard To Tell." The main horn riff on "Soul Vibrations" was sampled on Joe Budden's "Pump It Up." "Heaven At Once" was sampled on the Fugees' "Nappy Heads." "North, East, South, West" was sampled on Quasimoto's "Return of the Loop Digga." "You Don't Have To Change" was sampled on Pete Rock's "We Roll." Even when Kool & The Gang were kind of riffing on their previous hits for album filler, they came up with killer grooves worth sampling. "Jungle Jazz" is just an extended vamp on "Jungle Boogie," but it has a monster drum beat that was memorably sampled on Jade's "Don't Walk Away." 

10:17 AM

The 2024 Remix Report Card Vol. 1

Monday, March 25, 2024




 







As I said in my 2023 wrap-up, the number of official rap remixes has really exploded in recent years. I covered less about 30 remixes a year in the mid-2010s, but there are 34 songs with remixes here just from the first quarter of 2024 (granted, some of those are 2023 remixes that I hadn't covered yet). Here's the Spotify playlist:

"Act II: Date @ 8 (Remix)" by 4Batz featuring Drake
In light of how many remixes are coming out these days, it's interesting to note that Drake seemed to have soured on remixes at some point. In the 2010s, he'd often jump on a hit by a rising artist and give an early co-sign to Future, Migos, ILoveMakonnen, Wizkid, Fetty Wap, or Summer Walker. Drake still collaborates with a lot of new artists, but remixing their songs is rare -- 4Batz is only the second artist this decade to be anointed with a Drake remix, after Yung Bleu. I'm generally not against songs being under 2 minutes, but the original "Act II: Date @ 8" never totally felt like a complete song to me, just a miniature to establish 4Batz's schticky "high-voiced guy sings romantic lyrics in a ski mask" schtick. So Drake showing up to riff on 4Batz's melody and double the song length actually works pretty well, I think. 4Batz's style meshes with Drake here, and for once Drake gets to be "the deep-voiced guy on teh track," 4Batz doing an EP with OVO isn't a bad idea. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Barbie (Remix)" by JaidynAlexis featuring Blueface
L.A. rapper Blueface had a brief run of chart success 5 years ago, but he's had a long tail of trainwreck tabloid fame with his on-again-off-again relationship with a Baltimore woman named Chrisean Rock (they met on his OnlyFans reality show. which you'd think would be a good foundation for a healthy relationship). Last year Blueface and Chrisean had a baby and broke up, and Blueface is now dating JaidynAlexis. "Barbie" is a gross little song that's full of mean references to Chrisean, with Blueface approvingly ad libbing all over the track (yes, JaidynAlexis is mocking the woman who gave birth to her boyfriend's child six months ago). Now there's also a remix with a typically shit Blueface verse on it, where he also disses Soulja Boy and NLE Choppa. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: F 

"Benjamins Deli (Shaq Mix)" by JRitt featuring Trina, Shaquille O'Neal and Zekedon
Late last year a Florida producer named JRitt made a track called "Benjamins Deli" out of samples of Puffy Daddy's "It's All About The Benjamins," Ice Spice's "Deli," and Blaqstarr's Baltimore club classic "Get My Gun." It became a dance challenge on TikTok and Jimmy Fallon and a million other people made videos to it, and now a song made of a random assemblage of samples also has a remix with a random assemblage of guests. I mean, JRitt and Trina are both from Florida and Shaq played for Orlando, maybe that's the connection? In any sense, it's very weird to write about Shaq in two consecutive Remix Report Cards. Even weirder, Shaq sounds better on this track than Trina, who I love and who usually kills guest verses, but she's going for some kind of ballroom emcee vibe on here that doesn't totally work. And whoever Zekedon is pretty much ruins the remix with a bad Lil Jon impression, like literally doing a bunch of famous Lil Jon ad libs verbatim, almost like it was a scratch vocal and they were hoping to get the real Lil Jon. 
Best Verse: Shaquille O'Neal
Overall Grade: C

"Best Thing (Shemix)" by Inayah featuring Trina
Another remix with Trina on an atypical track, but this one works out a little better. Apparently Houston-based singer Inayah released "Best Thing" way back in 2019, but I'd never heard it before, and it's a really lovely song, a downtempo guitar-driven track that borrows its melody from the Luniz hit "I Got 5 On It." For whatever reason, Trina remixed the song this year, and it's really good, there's a little more percussion on the remix than the original but it's not a full-on club banger remix (although there was a bounce remix with Big Freedia back in '19). 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"Blick (Remix)" by ScarLip featuring NLE Choppa
ScarLip and NLE Choppa doesn't seem like a great combination on paper, but they're both good on this track, although ScarLip's hook is pretty annoying.  
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Bow Bow Bow (F My Baby Mama)" by Sexyy Red featuring Chief Keef
Now and then, a really unpolished rapper with a lot of raw charisma grabs the zeitgeist and becomes a phenomenon, and people tend to either love them or think they're a harbinger of the downfall of society. Chief Keef played that role a decade ago, and right now Sexyy Red is playing that role, so it makes a weird sort of sense for them to be on a track together. There was a moral panic when Big Sexyy released "Bow Bow Bow (F My Baby Dad)" while pregnant, but it's at least kind of a goofy, lighthearted song. On the remix, Chief Keef raps longer and with more passion than I've ever heard from him before, he goes like 44 bars plus doing his own personalized versions of the hooks, threatening violence and murder several times, it really sounds like he genuinely hates his baby mama's guts and was just unloading all is anger at her, it gets pretty uncomfortable at some point. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C

"Can't Get Enough (Remix)" by Jennifer Lopez featuring Latto
"Can't Get Enough" is a pretty middling single, but it sounds a lot better when Latto's verse comes in over that beat switch. When JLo performed on "Saturday Night Live" a few weeks ago, Latto showed up to do the "Can't Get Enough" remix, but Redman also made a surprise appearance to rap a new verse over another beat switch, to his 1999 hit "Da Goodness," I kinda wish there was a studio version of that. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Doomsday Pt. 2" by Lyrical Lemonade featuring Eminem
"Doomsday" was recorded way back in 2019 with Cordae and the late Juice WRLD going bar-for-bar over the beat from Eminem's "Role Model," but the song didn't get released until this year for Lyrical Lemonade's album. So the album also features a sequel track with Em rapping over a sort of remix of the "Role Model" beat with the same guitar loop slowed down over a more loping beat. Some people think Eminem hasn't made a listenable song in over a decade and some people think he's still one of the best rappers alive, I don't feel too strongly either way. But this is one of his better verses in recent memory, he's not rapping in Slim Shady LP flows or anything but he's a little more calm and casual, none of that yelling over-the-top shit, even though he's dissing Benzino for most of the track. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Drift (Remix)" by Teejay featuring Davido
"Drift (Remix)" by Teejay featuring French Montana
For a decade, French Montana was the artist who turned up in Remix Report Cards the most often that I was never happy to see, the king of filler verses to make songs more Hot 97-friendly. "Drift" is a little darker and more aggressive than most of the Afrobeats/dancehall that's crossed over to American radio in recent years, so it makes a little sense to put a rapper on it, but I like that Davido adds a little more melody in his remix. 
Best Verse: Davido
Overall Grade: B-

"Drug Trade 2" by Smoke DZA & Flying Lotus featuring Benny The Butcher and Black Thought
Benny sounds pretty good on this beat but he's not fucking with Black Thought's verse from the original "Drug Trade." 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Ghetto & Ratchet (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Dave East
"Ghetto & Ratchet (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Don Q
"Ghetto & Ratchet (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Jenn Carter
"Ghetto & Ratchet (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Kyah Baby
"Ghetto & Ratchet (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Remy Ma
"Ghetto & Ratchet (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Shani Boni
"Ghetto & Ratchet (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring 26ar
I hate that we barely ever get posse cut remixes anymore, but some songs will have several remixes with one guest rapper on each of them, it's so stupid. The Remy Ma remix has about three times as many streams as the other six streams combined, and it might as well be the only that exists, nobody cares about any of these other rappers, especially Dave East. Of the others, Don Q is the best and Jenn Carter is the worst. 
Best Verse: Remy Ma
Overall Grade: C+

"I Want Her (Remix)" by Hoodtrophy Bino featuring Kalan.FrFr
I've never heard L.A. rapper HoodTrophy Bino before, but apparently he sucks enough that Kalan.FrFr sounds really good by comparison. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Last Laugh (Remix)" by Ceechynaa featuring NLE Choppa
London rapper Ceechynaa only has two songs out, but they're great and filthy and funny, and I feel like she has a lot of potential to have more success in America than the average UK rap star. NLE Choppa is kind of the mid-level southern rap star that gets on everybody's remix these days, though, and his sex rhymes are really kind of gross and over-the-top, he's really turning his brand into "freaky frog," I don't think this has a better chance of blowing in America than the original "Last Laugh." 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Lavish (Remix)" by Jacari featuring TiaCorine
Not really into this song by Florida singer Jacari, but I like TiaCorine and her voice adds a little something to the track. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Made For Me (Ghost Town DJ's Remix)" by Muni Long with Ghost Town DJ's
The So So Def group the Ghost Town DJ's are one of the great one-off acts of all time for their classic 1996 single "My Boo," which has inspired many subsequent songs, including Muni Long's excellent 2022 single "Baby Boo." And I guess since Muni Long's latest hit "Made For Me" was produced by Jermaine Dupri, she was able to hook up with Ghost Town DJ's to remix the song, which is pretty badass. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Mmhmm (Remix)" by BigXthaPlug featuring Finesse2tymes
I just raved about this song last week, I didn't have high hopes for Finesse2tymes being on the remix, but he kicks kind of a different flow than I've heard from him before, maybe he's not as predictable and one-dimensional as I thought. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: A-

"My Fault (Remix)" by Pretty Porcelain featuring Trina
This is the billionth remake of Silkk the Shocker's "It Ain't My Fault" and not a particularly good one, Pretty Porcelain has a terrible rap voice, but Trina comes through and puts the right attitude on the track. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Nasty (Remix)" by Grouptherapy featuring Baby Tate
Grouptherapy is apparently a group comprised of three former child actors. Tyrel Jackson Williams was funny on "Brockmire" and "Party Down," but I don't think much of him as a rapper, his verse almost sounds like the engineer didn't line it up to the beat right. The beat's nice, though, and Tate has a funny, filthy verse. 
Best Verse: n/a 
Overall Grade: B 

"Never Lose Me (Remix)" by Flo Milli featuring Bryson Tiller
"Never Lose Me (Remix)" by Flo Milli featuring Lil Yachty
"Never Lose Me (Remix)" by Flo Milli featuring SZA and Cardi B
This song started out as kind of a remix of Rob49's "Ron Artest," so it's funny that "Never Lose Me" itself now has several remixes. The Lil Yachty and Tiller remixes came out last year, and then in early 2024 the Flo Milli solo version blew up. Some of the local radio stations here persistently play the Yachty remix as if the song needs him, when they haven't played Yachty with any regularity in 5 years, and so I've really grown to hate his verse, which features charming lines like "snack on yo booty like Scooby" and "put it in your three holes like a looseleaf." Flo Milli teased way back in January that another remix with SZA was on the way, and it took so long that the song had started to lose momentum, but then it finally dropped with another huge star on it as well, and it really felt like it was worth the wait. 
Best Verse: SZA
Overall Grade: B

"River of Oblivion (U.S. Remix)" by Catnis featuring 2 Chainz and B. Taylor
"River of Oblivion" is the debut single by Catnis, a "Belgian R&B/pop vocalist with Moroccan roots" who doesn't to appear to have much of an audience in Belgium or Morocco or anywhere else. 2 Chainz is usually an entertainingly outlandish guest rapper, but he just takes his check and turns in a nice solid verse with nothing too memorable, while this terrible no-name B. Taylor immediately says some goofy shit about riding a camel is in his first line on the song.
Best Verse: 2 Chainz
Overall Grade: C-

"Run (Damian Marley Version)" by Killer Mike featuring Damian Marley
I'm not much of a fan of Killer Mike, but the original "Run" had an excellent No I.D. beat and a good Young Thug verse, and the remix has neither, so this generic reggae track feels like a downgrade to me.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: D

"She Ready 2" by Myles Brando featuring Lola Brooke, Eric Bellinger and Byron Messia
If there's a sample that's been done to death even more than "It Ain't My Fault," it's Sister Nancy's "Bam Bam," and "She Ready" does absolutely nothing with the track that hasn't been done before. I like Lola Brooke's verse on the remix, though. 
Best Verse: Lola Brooke
Overall Grade: B-

"Soak City (Remix)" by 310babii featuring Mustard, Blueface, Tyga, OhGeesy and BlueBucksClan
One of the biggest west coast songs of the past few months, I was surprised that Mustard produced it because I really don't like this track as much as I usually like his productions, it just sounds really goofy and overstuffed. I'm almost impressed by how bad the Blueface verse is, like it's notably worse than his usual terrible rapping, he sounds like he just woke up and raps a lot about hot dogs and buns. The OhGeesy verse really runs circles around most of the other versese on the remix, especially when it ends with a pretty funny Boyz N The Hood reference.
Best Verse: OhGeesy
Overall Grade: B-

"Standing Next To You (Remix)" by Jung Kook featuring Usher
K-pop is always pretty heavily indebted to "TRL"-era R&B, and Jung Kook has worked that angle especially hard lately, which is probably why he's had the most solo success in America out of any member of BTS. Putting the one and only Usher next to someone he's influenced is a little unflattering though.  
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"Take It Up (Remix)" by Deela featuring Flo Milli
The "Take It Up" beat already sounds like the kind of track Flo Milli likes, so she slides onto this song really naturally and steals it, although I like Deela, she's got some potential. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"3D (Remix)" by Jung Kook featuring Justin Timberlake
Just like Usher on "Standing Next To You," JT shows up on "3D" to show Jung Kook what he's really trying to do and demonstrates the talent gap, with the added bonus of Timberlake replacing Jack Harlow's regrettable "dead body" verse from the original "3D." 
Best Verse: n/a 
Overall Grade: B

"Tomiloka (Remix)" by Jay Eazy featuring Flo Milli
It's a weird quirk of doing these posts in alphabetical order by song title that I have this funny Jung Kook/Flo Milli/Jung Kook/Flo Milli section. Jay Eazy is from the Bronx and "Tomiloka" is a NYC-style soul beat that uses the same Ponderosa Twins Plus One sample made famous by Kanye West's "Bound 2." A different kind of track for Flo Milli, but she sounds good. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Too Much (Remix)" by Bossa featuring Kanii
Bossa is a teen rapper from Palm Springs and this song is fucking awful, Kanii's verse is alright but can't save it. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"UGOMDN pt. 2" by ChloTheGod featuring Mick Jenkins
I really dig this independent single from North Carolina singer ChloTheGod, I might have to check for her music in the future. And Mick Jenkins, who released one of my favorite rap albums of 2023, sounds great on this beat. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+

"the von dutch remix with addison rae and a.g. cook" by Charli XCX featuring Addison Rae and A.G. Cook
Hyperpop, the glitchy, warped take on Top 40 pop beloved by hipsters and critics, has become sort of a shrewd career path for once-aspiring mainstream pop divas to pivot into a cooler type of niche stardom. Charli XCX was one of the first to make that transition and is now kind of the queen of hyperpop, while others like Rebecca Black and Kim Petras have followed in her footsteps. Now Addison Rae, who tried to parlay TikTok fame into major label stardom in 2021 and became a cult hero for her leaked tracks, is the latest hyperpop refugee, and she got the big co-sign of appearing on a remix of Charli XCX's lead single. "Von Dutch" was kind of a below average Charli XCX song, in my opinion, and I much prefer the remix for how A.G. Cook overhauled Finn Keane's track and how Charli and Addison trade lines back and forth. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Vultures (Havoc Version)" by Kanye West & Ty Dolla Sign featuring Lil Durk and Bump J
Bump J (formerly Bumpy Johnson) was one of the more street rap-leaning Chicago guys in Kanye West's orbit during his rise. Bump J signed a deal with Atlantic, released a Kanye-produced single, got dropped, then, uh, robbed a bank in 2008 and didn't get out of prison until 2017. So he missed what would've been the best years to be a Kanye sidekick and now finally gets the opening verse on a Kanye single in his most embarrassing washed era, pretty sad stuff. Havoc of Mobb Deep's beat for the remix sounds a lot better than the original track, but it's still nothing special, nor is the Durk verse on the remix. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C

"West Side (Remix)" by Dream Ear Productions featuring E-40, Too $hort and Mistah F.A.B.
The original "West Side" had two Bay Area vets, Too $hort and Mistah F.A.B., and the remix adds a third, E-40. Unfortunately, Dream Ear Productions is a terrible rap and this song sucks, so it feels like a waste of a good 40 Water verse. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Yes, And? (Remix)" by Ariana Grande featuring Mariah Carey
When I saw that Mariah was going to be on a remix of this song, I thought it was interesting because it was the best chance Mariah has had in a while to top the Hot 100 again and tie the Beatles' record for the most #1s. The reaction to the remix was pretty mixed, though, and it did not send the song back to #1 or get even close. I think some of the criticisms of the remix were stupid, but it's definitely a little anticlimactic and I kinda wish they'd wanted until Ariana had a more ideal song to remix with Mariah, or they had just written a new song together. My favorite part is Mariah belting over Ariana's sprechstimme bridge, that's pretty fun. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Your Friends (Remix)" by Hunxho featuring Summer Walker
Atlanta rapper Hunxho's breakout hit is total dogshit, a whiny AutoTune track where he berates a girlfriend about how he doesn't like her friends. So a remix with the reigning queen of "toxic" R&B, Summer Walker, is kind of inspired, because she basically comes in where the original song ends and sings the other side of the argument and makes some good points, making it into dueling perspectives like Gotye and Kimbra on "Somebody That I Used To Know." I still don't like the song much, but this version is tolerable, this is one instance where the remix becoming the definitive version of the song would be an upgrade.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

10:16 AM

Saturday, March 23, 2024

 





I wrote a couple quick Spin pieces about Alice In Chains and the Wonderfront Festival. 

12:20 PM

TV Diary

Friday, March 22, 2024

 








a) "Manhunt"
Steven Spielberg's Lincoln did not depict the president's assassination, as Spielberg figured, probably correctly, that that would become the focal point of the entire film if it was included. And that leaves the lane wide open for something like "Manhunt," an Apple TV+ miniseries which focuses on the 12 days from John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln to Booth being caught and killed (with frequent flashbacks to the last year of Lincoln's presidency). I have spent probably over 100 hours in Ford's Theatre for work over the past decade -- I have run teleprompter for events in a little room directly beneath the balcony where Lincoln was shot, and the night we did an event on the 150th anniversary of the assassination, I left the building through the same back alley exit where Booth escaped, which was really spooky. So watching the assassination dramatized where it really happened at Ford's in "Manhunt" was fascinating to watch, they did an amazing job with that scene, although obviously that's just a brief moment at the beginning of the series. The protagonist of "Manhunt" is really Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), Lincoln's Secretary of War who organized the hunt for Booth, and the guy who famously said "Now he belongs to the ages" or "Now he belongs to the angels" (in "Manhunt," they go with "angels"). Hamish Linklater is an inspired choice to play Lincoln, he has the perfect height and physicality for it but I never would've thought to cast him. Patton Oswalt and Matt Walsh play supporting roles, and while they're perfectly good dramatic actors, I think it's kind of to their detriment that they're so successful in comedy, I feel like I'm watching "Drunk History" when they show up onscreen. 

b) "Apples Never Fall"
My wife read the novel Apples Never Fall, which takes place in Australia. And as we started to watch the Peacock series based on the book, we realized that the show takes place in Florida, but was still filmed in Florida, and half the cast is Australian. And just to make it even weirder, one character is still Australian, and he's played by Sam Neill, who's from New Zealand. I just want to know how they wound up with that. But it's a good show, I'm more interested in the characters than the mystery, just because I feel like I'm always let down by the plot in shows like this. 

c) "The Girls On The Bus"
This Max series is loosely based on female reporters who covered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, but it takes place in a fictional primary full of fictional candidates, which is probably smart, opens them up to tell different stories with obvious real world parallels. It's a little frothy and tonally reminds me of "The Sex Lives of College Girls" more than "The West Wing," but the cast is really good, I'll watch anything with Carla Gugino in it. 

d) "Palm Royale"
"Palm Royale" features a great cast of funny women (Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Allison Janney, Carol Burnett) in a show about a faded beauty queen trying to fake her way into high society in 1969 Palm Beach. I feel like it's kind of slow going so far, but I like it. I was trying to figure out how to describe the tone of this show and I saw that the creator, Abe Sylvia, was an exec producer on "Dead To Me," I think that's a good comparison point, if you liked "Dead To Me" you might like this. 

e) "Boarders"
Tubi has a reputation as the lowest tier of streaming services, a free ad-supported streamer that gets old castoffs from other networks and makes such low quality original films that "Tubi movie" has replaced "straight-to-video" as the most crushing euphemism for a shitty movie. So it's a pleasant surprise that Tubi is the American distributor of "Boarders," a pretty charming BBC Three show about boarding school teenagers that could probably be a hit with the same people that love "Sex Education" or "Derry Girls." 

f) "Animal Control"
As someone who still likes network sitcoms, I'll admit that there's pretty slim pickings these days outside of "Abbott Elementary," so I'm glad "Animal Control" got a second season, please just keep Vella Lovell on TV as much as possible.

g) "Girls5eva"
Nowadays, every show that gets canceled too soon mounts a campaign to get picked up by another network, and they're almost always unsuccessful and I get bummed out by the false hope and multiple letdowns. So it was gratifying to hear that "Girls5eva" made a jump to Netflix when Peacock didn't pick it up for a third season, and I hope Netflix just keeps it going for years as a successor to "Kimmy Schmidt." The whole cast is fantastic but I feel like Renee Elise Goldsberry and Paula Pell are competing for the biggest laughs this season, I loved the episode that takes place in Maryland that reveleas that Wickie is from Howard County but tells everybody she's from some other hardscrabble part of the state. 

h) "Invincible"
As someone who doesn't "binge watch" and always has different stuff to watch, I personally like when shows split seasons into 2 parts with a break of a few months in between. But I know that's generally an unpopular move, especially with a show like "Invincible," where people had to wait two and a half years for season 2, and then didn't get it all at once. It doesn't help that so far "Invincible" is way less gripping in the new episodes without Omni-Man in the action. It's still a good show, but pulling away from the character that made it a great show in the first place was probably a bad idea for sesason 2, even if they're playing the long game on the overall story arc. Also, it's starting to really bug me how quiet the show is, lots of scenes with no score or music mixed very low, which can be effective when the dramatic tension is high, but lately it hasn't been. 

This French series about Paris crime families is one of the most promising Netflix imports I've seen in a while, I like how the action's choreographed and the look of the show, the colors really pop. 

When you make a film or series about the pornography industry, from Boogie Nights to "The Deuce," there's usually a conscious effort to really prove you're seriously making art and telling a story, that even if the nudity and sex is inevitable, it's not gratuitous. "Supersex," a Netflix series based on the life of Rocco "The Italian Stallion" Siffredi, is unburdened by those kinds of ambitions, it's practically soft porn, with more sex scenes per episode than perhaps any TV show I've ever seen. 

A Polish show on Netflix about a washed up rock star with memory issues who's trying to find his missing son. 

l) "At The Moment"
I like this Taiwanese anthology series on Netflix, each episode is a different love story set early in the COVID-19 lockdowns. "Modern Love" was a good show, too, I kinda wish there were more anthologies like this. 

Unlike the other recent live action versions of "One Piece" and "Cowboy Bebop," I haven't seen the original animated version of "Yu Yu Hakusho," so I don't have as much of a context for it. But I kind of like this trend, the bright colors and stylized action of a live action anime are really visually exciting to watch. 

"Onimusha" is a recent Netflix anime series based on a video game, and once again I have no frame of reference to compare it to the source material, but I find it entertaining anyway. It's cool to watch an animated fantasy that takes place in roughly the same time period as "Shogun." 

Five years ago, Netflix aired one season of "Rhythm + Flow," a sort of hip hop "American Idol" with T.I., Cardi B, and Chance The Rapper as the judges. It was a decent show and the winner, D Smoke, has gone on to have a moderately successful career, but it definitely felt like a hard sell for rap fans and the viewing public, and I'm not surprised that Netflix never did a second season. They have, however, taken the format international, and the French version was a hit and is already on its second season, while an Italian version was recently launched. Knowing very little about European hip hop, this is kind of a strange, fascinating watch for me, but it's cool how each judge represents a different city and is trying to find a new star to represent their scene. 

This Netflix docuseries is about Brazilian singer Luisa Sonza, and again it's kind of interesting as an American music fan to just watch things about pop music in other countries and see the familiar parallels and the cultural differences, although I didn't really get much of a sense of Sonza's music, just her typical creative struggles and public controversies. 

q) "Queens"
NatGeo's new nature doc series focuses on the female members of various species, from lionesses to mother foxes, with narration by Angela Bassett and lots of needledrops of triumphant female empowerment pop songs. A pretty simple concept, delivered in a fun and satisfying way. 

Another excellent new NatGeo series that focuses on the lives of professional nature photographers. It's cool because you get their personal journeys of how they got started in their careers but also get to see a lot of them in action, taking amazing pictures in the middle of nowhere. 

s) "Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War"
Someone rightly figured that there'd be an audience for a Netflix docuseries about the history of atomic and nuclear bombs after the success of Oppenheimer, and "Turning Point" is really good. Christopher Nolan's movie was very deliberately about Oppenheimer's life and didn't show the bombs drop in Japan or the perspective of anyone outside America, which is a decision some people thought was fine and other people really hated. So I appreciate "Turning Point" showing that perspective very significantly, interviewing several Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. 

This Peacock reality series is about as ridiculous as you'd expect from the title, but I must say I cackled when they threw out the word "threelationship." 

"Ghost train fire" sounds like a cool post-punk band but apparently there was a real tragedy in 1979 where a "ghost train" amusement park attraction in Sydney, Australia caught on fire and several people died, and this Netflix docuseries gets into what happened and theories about it being an accidental electric fire or perhaps premeditated arson. 

In the late '70s, a single mother and her two young daughters lived in a London house with one of the most extensively documented poltergeist cases of all time, objects being thrown and furniture moved, all sorts of crazy stuff. I need to finish this Apple TV+ series at some point, it's a fascinating story. 

I literally grew up on "Late Night with David Letterman" in the '80s, when my parents would tape the show and watch it in the daytime. And of course when I was a little kid, my favorite part of the show was the "stupid pet tricks" segment, and I'm surprised it took this long for it to get spun off into its own series. Sarah Silverman hosts it, and there's lots of silly cameos from Letterman and other comedy luminaries, it's moderately amusing and there are some genuinely impressive pet tricks. I get anxious seeing them herd animals onstage with a live band, though, like that has to make some of the animals nervous. 

This CBS game show is based on traditional Mexican bingo, kind of fun to watch but I guess it didn't catch on, they pulled it from the schedule after a few weeks and have yet to schedule the rest of the episods they produced. Sheila E. is the bandleader/co-host, that's kind of cool. 

Apparently C-list movie star Josh Duhamel directed a comedy called Buddy Games a few years ago, based on some kind of informal drunken Olympic games he and his friends grew up playing. And then it was turned into a CBS reality show hosted by Duhamel, pretty goofy stuff but I feel like it's more fun to watch than the average overly serious reality competition show. 

"Snake Oil" is a decent concept on paper, a parody of "Shark Tank" that's also a functioning game show where contestants have to figure out which pitched businesses/products are real and which are jokes. David Spade's too boringly snarky and deadpan to host a show like this, though, should've been someone else. 

12:19 PM

Thursday, March 21, 2024

 





I was a teenage Pitchfork writer and reviewed about 30 albums for the site in 2000, and then was quickly fired, years before they were paying anyone or there was any real prestige in the gig. I shared some of my memories of Pitchfork 1.0 with Nitish Pawha for Slate's oral history of Pitchfork, alongside lots of people who had much longer and happier tenures with the site. 

6:00 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 352: Foreigner

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

 





Foreigner are nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Eric B. & Rakim, Peter Frampton, Jane's Addiction, Kool & The Gang, Lenny Kravitz, Oasis, Sinead O'Connor, Ozzy Osbourne, Sade, and A Tribe Called Quest.  

Foreigner album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Headknocker
2. At War With The World
3. Starrider
4. Lonely Children
5. Spellbinder
6. Love Has Taken Its Toll
7. The Modern Day
8. Rev On The Red Line
9. Seventeen
10. Girl On The Moon
11. Don't Let Go
12. Woman In Black
13. Tooth And Nail
14. Stranger In My Own House
15. Out Of The Blue
16. The Beat Of My Heart
17. No Hiding Place
18. Hole In My Soul
19. Can't Slow Down

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from Foreigner (1977)
Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from Double Vision (1978)
Tracks 7, 8 and 9 from Head Games (1979)
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from 4 (1981)
Tracks 13 and 14 from Agent Provocateur (1984)
Tracks 15 and 16 from Inside Information (1987)
Track 17 from Unusual Heat (1991)
Track 18 from Mr. Moonlight (1994)
Track 19 from Can't Slow Down (2009)

Bands who are nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are sometimes excited or embarrassed or indifferent about the whole thing, but Foreigner have engaged in an unusually aggressive Oscars-style campaign this year. Guitarist Mick Jones's stepson, the very successful producer Mark Ronson, has obtained endorsements for Foreigner's induction from a bunch of big names in a series of videos, including Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl. Along the way, Jones revealed he's been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, and Ronson said they decided to go big to try to get the band in this year for that reason, which I can respect -- it'd be nice if Jones could get his flowers and perform at the induction ceremony now while he's able and Foreigner is still touring, rather than wait and see if it takes another 5 or 10 years. Foreigner already have Chuck Eddy's vote -- he recently called them and Kool & The Gang "the two most consistently interesting/enjoyable artists on the ballot." 

Growing up, Foreigner and Journey were kind of synonymous with each other as the epitome of a certain kind of slick '70s/'80s band that dominated classic rock radio without commanding respect like, say, Led Zeppelin. Over the past decade or two, Journey and "Don't Stop Believin'" have experienced a big surge in prestige and pop culture canonization, with Journey inducted into the Rock Hall in 2017. Meanwhile, Foreigner's legacy feels pretty much the same as it ever was -- they feel more like they're on even footing with Bad Company now. Still, "Feels Like The First Time" and "Juke Box Hero" go hard every time I hear them on the radio, I've got love for some Foreigner hits, I wanted to give their album cuts a chance. 

Mick Jones played in Spooky Tooth (alongside another future star, Gary Wright) before forming Foreigner, and he's been the only constant member throughout the band's history. Jones never sang lead on a Foreigner single, but he sang lead on occasional album cuts including "Starrider" and "The Modern Day," and his voice definitely feels a bit anonymous and meek compared to frontman Lou Gramm. It's also kind of jarring to from an American singer on most of their songs to a British accent on occasional songs. Gramm is not the most distinctive singer himself, but he's got a great voice and really belts shit out with infectious conviction, I almost wish he had gone all the way metal like Rob Halford or Bruce Dickinson. Gramm has been in and out of Foreigner over the years, and the first guy who replaced him on Unusual Heat, Johnny Edwards, didn't have the right sound at all. But the singer on Can't Slow Down, Kelly Hansen, pretty much sounds like Lou Gramm, they've got a solid stand-in these days, much like Journey. 

5:00 AM

Monthly Report: March 2024 Singles

Monday, March 18, 2024

 





1. BigXthaPlug - "MMHMM"
Tennessee's Bandplay has been one of my favorite southern rap producers of the last few years for his work with Young Dolph and Key Glock. And it's cool to see him branch out with more artists from other areas, I love the way he flipped the Whispers sample on the breakout hit by Dallas rapper BigXthaPlug. Here's the 2024 singles Spotify playlist I add songs to every month. 

2. Key Glock - "Let's Go"
Key Glock has been on a trajectory of making bigger and better solo music since Dolph died, happy to see him thriving even without his mentor. There's been some great "Let's Go" memes out there. 
https://twitter.com/RapAllStars/status/1750550213905768918

3. 21 Savage - "Redrum"
Using the backwards version of the word "murder" from The Shining is a brilliant workaround for making a radio song about killing people. I kind of hate the part at the end where someone is reciting a few of Jack Nicholson's lines from the movie, though -- it's actually Usher, as confirmed by 21 Savage's manager, though, which is hilarious. 

4. Pearl Jam - "Dark Matter"
After more than 30 years, I still get a little twinge of the excitement I felt as a kid when Pearl Jam released the first single from a new album. Very often they've subverted expectations with lead singles that are slower (or faster) than their biggest hits, but "Dark Matter" is a little closer to their comfort zone, it reminds me a bit of the more aggressive songs on Vs with some of the gnarlier guitar tones Mike McCready has favored in recent decades. I'm not surprised to see that it's the band's first #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart since "Given To Fly."

5. Twice - "I Got You"
I always feel like I'm more into K-pop in theory than in practice, I just think an industry so focused on the most superficial bubblegum aspects of pop music should have more bops. Now and then, though, I stumble across a song that really appeals to me, and "I Got You" unsurprisingly has American origins -- it was co-written by two members of the American boy band Why Don't We, probably originally intended for their group before they went on hiatus in 2022. 

6. Mariah The Scientist - "Out Of Luck"
Mariah The Scientist has a supporting role on the terrible Tee Grizzley/Chris Brown song that's on R&B radio constantly, it's kind of sad that that's the biggest hit she's ever been a part of. I really like the KAYTRANADA-produced solo track that's been getting spins lately, though. 

7. Carrie Underwood - "Out Of That Truck"
Carrie Underwood's most famous song is about bashing up her ex's truck, so I chuckle at the memory of "Before He Cheats" when I hear her sing a more bittersweet breakup song where she just tells her ex that everything about his truck is going to remind him of her. 

8. Loui f/ NLE Choppa - "No Distractions"
I liked Atlanta rapper Loui's single with Saweetie, "Talkin' About," from 2-3 years ago. Then I kinda forgot he existed, but he's got another good one with a very different vibe here. 

9. Miley Cyrus and Pharrell Williams - "Doctor (Work It Out)" 
A few weeks ago I made a Miley Cyrus deep cuts playlist, and talked about how I much I hated her Bangerz era compared to most of her other music. So imagine my surprise that she released a Bangerz outtake as the lead single to a new album, and I actually like it, easily more than the handful of other Miley/Pharrell songs that were released a decade ago. 

10. Luke Combs - "Where The Wild Things Are"
"Where The Wild Things Are" is the very good follow-up to Luke Combs's massively popular cover of "Fast Car." But it peaked at #3 on country radio, making it, weirdly, the least successful single of his career so far -- he's got sixteen #1s plus one song that peaked at #2. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Kanye West & Ty Dolla Sign f/ Rich The Kid and Playboi Carti - "Carnival" 
Before "Carnival" hit #1 on the Hot 100 last week, it'd been sixteen years since Kanye's last solo #1, twelve years since his last feature on a #1, and almost three years since his last production credit on a #1. Obviously he's done a lot to hasten his commercial decline, including being a horrible person aligned with all sorts of right wing idealogues, but there's still this passionate fanbase of Kanye believers, and they finally got him with a song that's repulsive on several levels. Rich The Kid, an Atlanta D-lister who hadn't been relevant since 2018, delivers a generic swag rap hook that's turned into a soccer chant by actual Italian soccer hooligans, Playboi Carti tries another "cool new voice" that circles back around to being just a Lil Yachty impression, and Kanye drops a bunch of embarrassing reactionary cancel culture bars, ending with some divorced dad grievances about his kids being in a school that is somehow more "fake" than Donda Academy. It sounds like Yeezus: Midlife Crisis Edition. 

10:06 AM

Movie Diary

Friday, March 15, 2024


 























a) Dune: Part Two
I've never been big on Dune (I think I read half of it as a teenager) and I thought Villeneuve's first movie was fine. But my wife and I went to check out a matinee of Dune: Part Two last week and I thought it really lived up to the hype, fantastic movie. I thought Villeneuve chose a good way to break the story up into different movies, especially for Paul's story arc, because it just felt like Michael Corleone's transformation from the first Godfather movie to the second. I've been something of a Timothee Chalamet skeptic but he really rose to the occasion here and stood out in a movie full of great performances by Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, and Austin Butler, among others. 

b) Poor Things
I can understand how some people didn't enjoy this movie -- I found Yorgos Lanthimos's whole deal off-putting with The Lobster and especially The Killing of a Sacred Deer. But I loved Poor Things, it's probably my favorite of this year's Best Picture nominees, I was rooting for Lily Gladstone but I thought Emma Stone gave an incredibly strange and funny performance that deserved the awards it got, this movie probably would not have worked half as well with anyone else in that role. And the colors, the sets, the costumes, Willem Defoe's face, the whole thing was really fucked up and creative and stood out in a year that all its competitors were very good but far less bold or original. 

c) Damsel
This Netflix movie with Millie Bobby Brown turned the usual fantasy book trope of the damsel in distress on its head with a young woman rescuing herself from a bad situation. I found myself comparing it unfavorably to The Princess, a similarly themed Hulu movie from a couple years ago starring Joey King. But Damsel was pretty good too, I loved Shohreh Aghdashloo's creepy performance as the voice of the big CGI dragon. 

d) Leave The World Behind
I feel like Sam Esmail's first feature since creating "Mr. Robot" should've gotten more attention, or at least been a brief water cooler sensation like other Netflix apocalypse movies like Bird Box. Esmail is just so good at using carefully framed shots and reveals to build tension, Leave The World Behind felt very Hitchcockian, and Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali were great as these very different people thrown into a scary situation where they had to trust each other. It also felt a lot more true to the confusion we'd feel if some kind of huge societal collapse did happen,

e) Bottoms
I called Shiva Baby my favorite movie of the decade so far, so I was excited to see Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott's next collaboration. I thought Bottoms was just good and not great, but as a deliberately silly comedy, maybe it would grow on me on a second or third watch. One of Ayo Edebiri's funniest performances and Ruby Cruz was a great scene stealer, there were just a lot of moments where it felt like they were throwing kind of predictable gags at the wall. 

f) Cat Person
Kristen Roupenian's 2017 New Yorker story Cat Person was one of those rare moments where a piece of short fiction briefly gripped the world, or at least a certain corner of the internet, and it wasn't surprising to see it get adapted into a movie. I always feel like short stories are a little underrated as a medium, and in many cases would make better source material for features than novels. That said, Cat Person is one of the most worthless movies I've ever seen, like I can't imagine anyone who'd read and enjoyed the story thought they did a good job with it, and for people that hadn't read it, it probably seemed like a really hapless, vaguely pointless, tonally inconsistent movie. The strength of the story was that it was a well written slice of life about a young woman's awkward experience dating a slightly older man, getting weird vibes, and breaking it off (he claims to have cats, but when she goes to his house, there are no cats). The story ends with the guy sending a few mean, accusatory texts, ending with him saying simply, "Whore." The movie, however, goes on for about a half hour after that, with a violent confrontation and a house fire, trying to turn the whole thing into a psychological thriller, and it's just embarrassing. I get that the original story only had a couple of characters and not a lot of actual scenes, but it just felt like they padded the whole thing out with so many unnecessary supporting characters and over-the-top moments. The guy doesn't just not have cats, he has a dog! Gasp! 

g) Nimona
I hadn't heard of this movie until it was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, and I put it on last weekend and my 8-year-old and I just loved it, such a fun, funny movie with a really unique animation style. Apparently Blue Sky Studios of Ice Age and Rio fame was making Nimona a few years ago when Disney bought the studio and then shut it down, so the movie was completely canceled for a year until another studio revived it and it was released on Netflix, so it's just an amazing feelgood story that it even got made, let alone got an Oscar nomination. 

h) Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
The first one was fun if by no means a masterpiece, I hoped the sequel would at least be entertaining but it just felt wrong all the way down. Patrick Wilson was a good antagonist for the first movie but when the brothers team up and it becomes a reluctant buddy comedy in The Lost Kingdom, it just doesn't work, Wilson's not funny, no chemistry there.

i) The Greatest Love Story Never Told
Jennifer Lopez recently went on a publicity blitz for her first album in a decade, with a 'visual album'-style film of the album, a making-of documentary, and a streaming concert special. The album is actually alright, I thought she was just starting to get good at making albums on 2014's A.K.A., but the documentary is actually pretty interesting, JLo very earnestly admitting that nobody is clamoring for a new album from her, but she had this passion project she wanted to make, and so she puts her own money into this big expensive thing. The Bennifer spectacle made them both seem less likeable at the time, but now that they've reunited and married 20 years later, it's kind of sweet and poignant, Affleck seems a little bewildered to be in the documentary but very loving and supportive about the project, they have some really funny candid scenes in this. 

11:32 AM

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

 






I ranked Soundgarden's albums for Spin. 

11:00 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 351: World Party

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

 





A few months ago, I was driving one afternoon and a World Party song came on the radio and I was like "oh right! World Party! they're awesome! I should make a deep cuts playlist of them!" and made a mental note of it. But I hadn't gotten around to it yet, and then on Monday, the news broke that Karl Wallinger had passed away at the age of 66, which sent me diving into their music again. 

World Party album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. World Party
2. It Can Be Beautiful (Sometimes)
3. It's All Mine
4. Hawaiian Island World
5. Sweet Soul Dream
6. Love Street
7. When The Rainbow Comes
8. And I Fell Back Alone
9. What Is Love All About?
10. Sunshine
11. Hollywood
12. Piece Of Mind
13. Vanity Fair
14. Always
15. It Is Time
16. Who Are You?
17. I Thought You Were A Spy
18. I Want To Be Free
19. Waiting Such A Long Long Time

Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from Private Revolution (1987)
Tracks 5, 6, 7 and 8 from Goodbye Jumbo (1990)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 from Bang! (1993)
Tracks 12, 13, 14 and 15 from Egyptology (1997)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Dumbing Up (2000)
Tracks 18 and 19 from Arkeology (2012)

My first memory of World Party is my brother and I seeing the video for "Call Me Up" in 1997 and my brother buying Egyptology soon after (it's very possible I'd heard "Way Down Now" or something before that and didn't know who it was by). That was right around the time I was starting to shake off being a grunge kid and develop a deep appreciation for power pop and piano-based bands like Ben Folds Five and music that sounds like the Beatles, including the Beatles, so that was really the right time for me to hear World Party. Two years later, we heard the Robbie Williams cover of the Egyptology track "She's The One," which hit #1 in the UK. World Party member Guy Chambers was a frequent collaborator with Williams, so I always assumed it was a friendly, mutually beneficial thing that Williams made a World Party song into a pop hit, but apparently Wallinger didn't know about the cover until it was out, and was always irritated about it (and Williams casually claiming in concert that he wrote the song himself). 

Eventually I reached back and heard Goodbye Jumbo and other World Party records and kind of realized that that's the stuff the band was primarily known for, not Egyptology, which is still the album I know the best, although I think the first four albums are all on a pretty equal level of quality. I also really like the band Wallinger played in before founding World Party, The Waterboys. And I've come to be really fond of that '80s/early '90s moment of '60s nostalgia, World Party may have been the most Beatles-obsessed band in England in the years before Oasis showed up (World Party drummer Chris Sharrock later toured with Oasis, as it happens). 

Wallinger worked with Sinead O'Connor before her rise to fame -- she sang backing vocals on a few World Party songs, including "Hawaiian Island World" and "Sweet Soul Dream," and Wallinger arranged O'Connor's classic "Black Boys On Mopeds." Wallinger was the musical director for Reality Bites, and I always really liked the World Party song on the soundtrack, "When You Come Back To Me." So it's annoying that it's one of the few songs on the soundtrack album that isn't currently available on Spotify. 

The 5th and final proper World Party album Dumbing Up was released in 2000, and Wallinger later revealed that he'd suffered a brain aneurysm in 2001. After a few years of recovery, though, Wallinger did return to touring with World Party, and also worked on the 2008 project Big Blue Ball with Peter Gabriel. World Party's 2012 box set Arkeology featured five discs of rarities and archival material as well as a bunch of new studio songs, and that's pretty much the last music we got from World Party. I wasn't shocked to hear of Wallinger's death considering what he's been through, but I hope he enjoyed his later years, he was a really great musician and songwriter. 

10:15 AM

Monthly Report: February 2024 Albums

Monday, March 11, 2024



























1. Mary Timony - Untame The Tiger
Mary Timony is a "real heads know" indie rock legend who never really got the credit she deserved for her work over the years. But it feels like she's started to get appreciated a little more thanks to her longevity, she's arguably gotten better and better with later records like The Shapes We Make, Ex Hex's It's Real, and now Untame The Tiger. I hear a lot of Television in this album on songs like "No Thirds" and "The Guest," albeit filtered through Timony's distinctive voice and guitar tone. Here's the 2024 albums Spotify playlist that I add new releases to throughout the year. 

2. J Mascis - What Do We Do Now
J Mascis is another indie rock lifer that I'm really glad is still making great music today. Most of Mascis's music is in the familiar Dinosaur Jr. roar, but some of his solo albums have been quiet acoustic albums. What Do We Do Now a little different because it's mainly uptempo rockers with drums, but the rhythm guitars are all acoustic, and then the leads are electric, and he breaks out all the crazy distortion pedal sounds for the solos. The combination surprised me at first, but it works, and Mascis is a fantastic drummer so I always like hearing him behind the kit. I think my favorite is "I Can't Find You," I love that twangy lead guitar on the chorus. 

3. Madi Diaz - Weird Faith
Madi Dias has been making albums for over a decade, but I only heard of her recently, she's been building momentum touring with Harry Styles and working with Kacey Musgraves, who appears on Weird Faith's "Don't Do Me Good." And the album grabbed me right from the first song, "Same Risk," she's got a great voice and some sharp lyrics. I don't always vibe with the newer generation of really self-aware confessional singer-songwriters, I roll my eyes a lot at the things the members of Boygenius write, but I like Diaz. I'm surprised "Girlfriend" wasn't one of the singles, that feels like a real standout track. "Kiss The Wall" is really catchy, too. 

4. Usher - Coming Home
The last time Usher released an album 8 years ago, Hard II Love staggered through a long, aimless promo campaign before finally landing awkwardly with cover art everyone hated and 3 days on Tidal before it was available everywhere else. By comparison, Usher had a great rollout for Coming Home, building momentum with the Tiny Desk Concert, the Vegas residency, radio hits, and then the Super Bowl halftime show the same weekend the album dropped. And yet, despite the very different optics, I think Coming Home and Hard II Love are pretty similar in quality and overall commercial performance, when you look at the lowered expectations for an aging R&B star. There are some minor irritating moments on Coming Home (The-Dream's cheesy lyrics on "Bop," the Billy Joel sample on "A-Town Girl") but there's a lot of great stuff too, from "I Love U" and "Please U" to "Kissing Strangers" and "Coming Home" 

5. Catherine Sikora and Susan Alcorn - Filament
Last year I met a musician I've admired for years and years, experimental pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, to get a couple quotes from her for my High Zero Festival piece, and to profile her in a longer piece that will be in the first issue of a new zine called Rantipole later this year (I'll post here again when it's out). Alcorn told me about three upcoming albums she had in the can, including November's Canto, and Filament, which just came out a couple weeks ago as I was finishing up my article. Catherine Sikora plays saxophone, and she and Alcorn had just met before the live performance recorded for Filament, so it's got that interesting charge of two improvisors feeling each other out for the first time, I particularly like the second track where it feels like they start to loosen up and get louder. And in the last half hour, Sikora does some really cool rapid runs. 

6. Laura Jane Grace - Hole In My Head
This is a nice potent little 25-minute record, some rockers and some wordy coffeehouse folk punk. I particularly like the title track and "Mercenary," might be my favorite album Laura Jane Grace has made since Against Me!'s classic Transgender Dysphoria Blues. 

7. The Paranoid Style - The Interrogator
Another very wordy rock record -- Elizabeth Nelson is an unapologetically verbose songwriter and music critic, who packs her songs with clever verbiage worthy of Elvis Costello. "The Return of the Molly Maguires" and "That Drop Is Steep" probably have the biggest hooks of the album, I also really dig the pounding piano and screaming lead guitar on "The Formal." 

8. Scott Siskind - Let It All Calm Me EP
I'm a huge fan of Scott Siskind as a vocalist and songwriter from his band Vinny Vegas as well as his two solo EPs, I felt very fortunate to work with him on a few Western Blot songs. He's so good communicating emotion and drama with his voice, in fact once or twice I had to ask him to lighten up his delivery, because I just don't write sad songs like he does. "Fresh Eyes" and "Tell Me Where I Am" on this EP are some of the best stuff he's ever done, I think

9. The Last Dinner Party - Prelude To Ecstasy
As I said a few weeks ago, I really like all the singles The Last Dinner Party has released over the last year, and they're all on Prelude To Ecstasy, but they're probably the best songs. And the way they reference the Red Scare podcast and have a song called "The Feminine Urge" makes me just feel like this band is too online in an obnoxious way, but I guess it all squares with the posh theatricality of their whole sound and image, which I mostly like. 

10. Ryan Leslie - You Know My Speed
Ryan Leslie had a nice little run there with his first two albums in 2009, and writing and producing the first Cassie album, where it seemed like he'd follow Ne-Yo and The-Dream in being R&B's next big songwriter-turned-star. But then Cassie left Ryan Leslie for Diddy, something we know now had a whole dark side to it, and Leslie lost his major label deal and released a series of independent albums where he was rapping more and more, and it just felt like he got too far out of his R&B lane and it didn't work. But You Know My Speed, his first project in nearly a decade, is pretty solid. It kind of sounds like he could've made it in 2009. but that's not necessarily a bad thing, he was on fire in 2009. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Mick Mars - The Other Side Of Mars
Mick Mars was always the odd man out in Motley Crue, the little weirdo who's about a decade older than the other members of the band, a relatively shadowy figure in a group full of glammy natural born rock stars competing for the spotlight. When the only guitarist in a hard rock band is its least famous member, you know something unusual is going on. That dynamic was really entertaining in the book Motley Crue wrote together, The Dirt, and you always got the sense that Mars was on his own musical trip and probably would make very different music without them. But Mars retired in 2022, and was replaced with a new guitarist in Motley Crue, and they've been embroiled in a public feud and lawsuit for the past year. So Mars finally had the time to make a solo record, promising "something weird, special, great and loud," and I was rooting for him to actually deliver something at least moderately novel, like C.C. DeVille's Samantha 7 side project. Unfortunately, The Other Side Of Mars is just a bland hard rock record with a couple of anonymous singers delivering boilerplate lyrics over Mars's occasionally cool riffs and solos. It's that same kind of brooding mishmash of hair metal and grunge that Motley Crue was making in the John Corabi era, and it's disappointing that Mars waited decades to make something like this. 

10:05 AM