Friday, October 25, 2024
My Top 50 Albums of 1971
Thursday, October 24, 2024 
1. The Who - Who's Next
2. David Bowie - Hunky Dory
3. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
4. Joni Mitchell - Blue
5. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
6. War - All Day Music
7. The Allman Brothers Band - At Fillmore East
8. Sly And The Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin'
On
9. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
10. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
11. John Prine - John Prine
12. Carole King – Tapestry
13. Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
14. Jethro Tull - Aqualung
15. The Kinks – Muswell Hillbillies
16. T. Rex - Electric Warrior
17. Leon Russell – Leon Russell and the Shelter
People
18. The Doors - L.A. Woman
19. The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up
20. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
21. Loretta Lynn – Coal Miner's Daughter
22. Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality
23. Isaac Hayes – Black Moses
24. Little Feat - Little Feat
25. Elton John - Madman Across The Water
26. Grateful Dead - Grateful Dead (Skull and Roses)
27. Johnny Cash - Man In Black
28. Can - Tago Mago
29. Nick Drake – Bryter Layter
30. Van Morrison - Tupelo Honey
31. Badfinger – Straight Up
32. Traffic - The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys
33. Bill Withers - Just As I Am
34. David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name
35. Stevie Wonder - Where I'm Coming From
36. Willie Nelson - Yesterday's Wine
37. Todd Rundgren - Runt. The Ballad Of Todd
Rundgren
38. Paul & Linda McCartney – RAM
39. Rory Gallagher – Rory Gallagher
40. Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Love And Hate
41. Fraser & DeBolt – Fraser & DeBolt with
Ian Guenther
42. Link Wray – Link Wray
43. Carly Simon – Anticipation
44. Dolly Parton – Coat Of Many Colors
45. Loudon Wainwright III - Album II
46. Serge Gainsbourg – Histoire de Melody Nelson
47. Isaac Hayes – Shaft
48. Townes Van Zandt – High, Low, and In Between
49. The Flying Burrito Brothers – The Flying Burrito
Brothers
50. Yes - The Yes Album
I knew after reading David Hepworth's excellent book 1971 - Never A Dull Moment: Rock's Golden Year and the Apple TV+ miniseries based on it, "1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything," that this would be a really fun year to run down. But it's still just staggering to look at all these albums in a row and realize how stacked '71 is. It was hard to settle on a ranking because how do you compare your favorite Who album and your favorite Bowie album to your favorite Stones album and your favorite Joni Mitchell album? And there were some great canonical albums that I couldn't fit into my top 50 without making room for some personal favorites and cult classics.
Previously:
Movie Diary
Wednesday, October 23, 2024 
I'm always interested in directorial debuts from successful actors, and what the choice of project says about their ambitions. And I definitely didn't expect Anna Kendrick's first effort as a director to be a grim serial killer movie. I'd heard the story of how Rodney Alcala appeared on a 1978 episode of "The Dating Game" in the middle of his killing spree, and that's an irresistible plot for a movie. But in practice, it's tricky to figure out how much of the film to devote to Alcala's brutal murders and how much to devote to his appearance on a campy game show. And I think Kendrick pulled that off pretty well, she pulled off the period piece details and the disturbing subject matter with style and nuance -- it really felt like she probably watched Zodiac and took a lot of notes, even if her movie wasn't quite up to that high level of quality.
b) Challengers
After the incredibly obnoxious marketing for Challengers, I was pleasantly surprised that it was a pretty compelling movie with really impressive performances. West Side Story made me a fan of Mike Faist, Josh O'Conner is possibly even better than him in this, and this is easily the best Zendaya role I've ever seen (for what it's worth I don't think she's very good in "Euphoria"). I like the first half a lot more than the second, especially when they drag out the final stretch as long as possible with lots of gratuitous slow motion -- also a tennis movie should have one character smashing their racket in anger, not four different scenes with four different characters smashing their rackets. That stuff at least fits into the over-the-top operatic emotion of the thing, though, it's a memorable creative choice.
I collected some Gawker Media checks around the same era Cord Jefferson did, so I always root for him and enjoy seeing a blogger become an Oscar and Emmy-winning Hollywood power player. I wanted to love American Fiction and merely liked it, but it's still a pretty damn good debut feature. For a movie with a plot so similar to The Producers, it just felt like they could've made it a lot more viscerally funny, I never really got further than polite chuckles at the moderately audacious moments. Still, great cast, one of those movies where everybody was just perfect and memorable in their role whether they were in the movie for 5 minutes or two hours.
Peyton List plays the ghost of a teenage girl in Girl Haunts Boy, much as she does on the series "School Spirits." What a strange way to get typecast! This movie is moderately charming but somehow both more earnest and more cartoony than "School Spirits."
e) Terrifier
I've been curious about the Terrifier movies for a while now, and after Terrifier 3 hit #1 at the box office I decided to finally check them out. I've seen a lot of low budget horror movies that are roughly as stupid as the first Terrifier -- my wife and I watch horror movies every Valentine's Day, and we frequently pick some random B-movie based on an intriguing premise and then laugh our way through the bad acting and cheap visual effects. So it's weird to watch a movie as mediocre as Terrifier knowing that it would eventually become a lucrative franchise. I'm a fan of gore and creative in-camera effects, so some of the death scenes were entertaining, but sometimes it's just outright bad.
f) Terrifier 2
The second Terrifier movie is a huge improvement from the first without entirely being what I would call a good movie, or even an above average horror movie. I feel like they gradually get a handle on how to make Art the Clown a really charismatic, entertaining presence, though, and that's hard to do considering that he never talks and his face is buried under heavy makeup.
I grew up on Garfield comics and the cartoons with Lorenzo Music's voice. And while I recognize as an adult that that stuff hasn't aged terribly well, I'm still nostalgic enough for it to be offended by a computer animated Garfield voiced by Chris Pratt, with Samuel L. Jackson as Garfield's father in a weird origin story plot that really didn't feel like it fit with the Garfield canon. My son, who doesn't care about OG Garfield, liked the movie, which is all that matters I guess.
I've never really held Dazed And Confused in high esteem, or much of Richard Linklater's work in general. But I enjoyed what he and Glen Powell did with Hitman, and decided to check out the first time they worked together. It's almost impressive how Everybody Wants Some!! has even less actual plot than the kind of brainless old school coming of age comedies it's emulating, but the cast is great and it works as a loose series of extremely engaging scenes. And then the entire cast raps, in character, over the credits, which I did not expect at all.
The story in this documentary is pretty wild. I think every popular recording act's online fan community has its weird stories, but this one fan that hacked into Tegan's e-mail, posed as her to countless fans and shared demos and personal information, is just a real horrible piece of shit, and in the movie you see the toll that took on Tegan and Sara after they built this big passionate fanbase that really cared about their music, that they were taken advantage of and had to become a lot more private and more guarded. The worst part is, at the end of the movie, they're still not really sure who the culprit was or if they'll pull any of this stuff again. A real feelbad movie, but one I'd recommend anyway.
Monthly Report: October 2024 Singles
Monday, October 21, 2024
1. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars - "Die With A Smile"
"It Will Rain" from one of the Twilight movies has always been one of my favorite Bruno Mars songs, so I'm happy that he got back in his soundtrack power ballad bag for this song. A lot of duets between two pop superstars kind of wither under pressure but I like that Bruno and Gaga did something like this that taps into their shared love of '70s schmaltz. It's kind of funny that "Die With A Smile" is practically the only thing involved with Joker: Folie a Deux that's commercially successful, and it's not on any of the 3 albums released in conjunction with the movie (the soundtrack album, the score, and Gaga's fairly worthless surprise album Harlequin). Here's the 2024 singles Spotify playlist I update every month.
2. Sabrina Carpenter - "Taste"
Sabrina Carpenter has had a remarkable year that's included three #1 hits on pop radio. So far "Taste" hasn't quite broken into the top 10 but it's my favorite of her 2024 singles. I've been listening to a lot of One Direction this week after Liam Payne's death, and Julian Bunetta made so many great shiny guitar pop songs for 1D and "Taste" is his one Sabrina Carpenter production that gets closest to that vibe. I guess it kinda makes sense, then, that "Taste" is her biggest hit in the UK, with 8 weeks and counting at #1.
3. Victoria Monet f/ Usher - "SOS (Sex On Sight)"
Artists have been extending the lifespan of an album with deluxe versions more and more in recent years, but it really feels like there's been an insane glut of deluxe albums in the last couple months, several major ones every week. Victoria Monet's deluxe version of Jaguar II is probably the most essential of them because she essentially added a whole extra album, 10 new songs, although it's kind of a playful set with minor works like the very funny "Dick At Nite," collaborations, and a Sade cover. The Usher duet feels like the most significant addition to her catalog, but there's multiple potential singles on there. I like that DJ Camper is in her stable of producers now, he's been doing consistently great work for over a decade.
4. Chris Stapleton - "Think I'm In Love With You"
"You Should Probably Leave" from his last album is probably my favorite thing Chris Stapleton's ever done, so I like that something with a similar brooding groove is the second single from Higher.
5. PsiRyn - "Sober"
With the dearth of girl groups in modern R&B, I'm glad that someone like Kandi Burruss, a member of Xscape who wrote huge hits for Destiny's Child and TLC, is trying to revive the tradition by mentoring a new group and writing songs for them. "Sober" is very promising, hope it's the beginning of a big career, the name PsiRyn is a little goofy but it's fine.
6. Halle - "Because I Love You"
Chloe X Halle's Ungodly Hour is probably the best R&B girl group album of the last decade, but they pretty quickly moved onto solo projects when Halle Bailey got The Little Mermaid gig and Choe Bailey released "Have Mercy." There was an assumption that Halle would be making more wholesome all-ages solo music while Chloe did the sexy clubby stuff, and her first couple non-film soundtrack solo singles bore out that impression. But "Because I Love You" is a step more into the grown-and-sexy lane and it's really good, feels like the closest either of them have come to Ungodly Hour in the last few years.
7. Muni Long - "Make Me Forget"
I absolutely love the piano sound on this song. It's funny that Muni Long has made pop and country and all these different kinds of music for the first decade of her career but she's an absolute natural with straight up R&B.
8. Neon Trees - "Bad Dreams"
Neon Trees are one of the definitive two hit wonders of the 2010s, but I wish they had more sustained success because they've got a lot of songs just as good as "Animal" and "Everybody Talks."
9. Benson Boone - "Slow It Down"
Sometimes an artist has such a huge song that has such a long run that it makes things hard for a follow-up single to get a foot in the door. "Beautiful Things" hasn't left the top 10 on pop radio in months and is still going strong, while Benson Boone's next single "Slow It Down" only got to #11 on pop radio before dropping off. And that's a shame, I really like this one.
10. Luke Bryan - "Love You, Miss You, Mean It"
Luke Bryan is one of those Nashville stars that doesn't write much of his own material, and I don't particularly like his voice. So even when he occasionally releases a single I like, I start wishing someone else recorded it, but he does well with his one.
The Worst Single of the Month: The Weeknd - "Dancing In The Flames"
I'm firmly on the record as preferring The Weeknd's sellout pop stuff with Max Martin to his edgy mixtape stuff, but man this is such a dud, just garbage from the first listen.
TV Diary
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 
a) "Disclaimer"
It's kind of become a running joke that Apple TV+ has all these shows with Oscar caliber actors and directors that the average person has never heard of, and the latest to add to that pile is Alfonso Cuaron's "Disclaimer" starring Cate Blanchett. Thematically, it kinda feels like Blanchett is going back to a "a respected public figure worries about being canceled when a shameful chapter of their past is brought to light" project pretty soon after Tar. But Cuaron has a strong visual sensibility as always, even just the camera movements are interesting to watch, and the story is unraveling in a slow but intriguing way. Also, I'm happy to see Kevin Kline in a substantial role for the first time in a while.
This new HBO series produced by Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes isn't entirely just "Veep" on the set of a Marvel movie, but that's definitely some of the appeal. There are so many people so perfectly cast in this, Daniel Bruhl as the pretentious director, Himesh Patel as the put-upon AD who keeps everything running, Billy Magnussen as the insecure actor playing the hero, Richard E. Grant as the obnoxious theater-trained actor playing the villain, Aya Cash as the anxious producer, Darren Goldstein as the intimidating studio rep. Right off the bat, you recognize the fraught power dynamics between all these people and the comedy just flows from that.
I think I've said here before that the romantic comedy genre is traditionally contained to feature films, but over recent years there have been more and more attempts to transfer it to series. When it has worked, it was usually anthology/miniseries situations like "Love Life" or "Modern Love," where it's still a self-contained story. But Netflix's "Nobody Wants This" was such an instant hit that it's already been renewed for a second season, so I guess we'll see how well they can sustain it. I really liked it, though, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody have real chemistry, and they allowed Bell to be kind of likeably mean and flawed like she was in "The Good Place," which I think works well for "Nobody Wants This," gives it a little bit of a charge. And they don't mess around with taking forever for the main characters to meet or get together, or gratuitously split them up and reunite them, it's most pretty plausible hurdles that they work through.
I like that it seems to be part of the whole deal of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" becoming a historically long-running sitcom that the actors all get a long leash to do other stuff and star in other series. Kaitlin Olson plays a cleaning lady at a police department who turns out to be so brilliant and insightful that she gets hired to help the detectives solves crimes, which is a fun, slightly cheesy premise adapted from a French series that feels, at times, like Good Will Hunting with cops or "House, M.D." with cops. This could so easily be total network TV sludge, but it's got a lot of talent behind and in front of the camera making it pretty enjoyable. Rob Thomas ("Party Down," "Veronica Mars") was the showrunner at first, but exited after a few episodes, so I just hope the show keeps up this level of quality after that change.
Ryan Murphy has had a lot of shows on TV at once for many years now, but it feels like we're currently at peak Ryan Murphy with "Grotesquerie" and "Monsters" and "American Sports Story" and "American Horror Stories" and "9-1-1" and "9-1-1: Lone Star" and "Doctor Odyssey" all starting seasons in the space of a few weeks. "Grotesquerie" feels vaguely promising so far, a horror story that's tonally not quite like "American Horror Story," but I'm not entirely hooked yet. Also seeing Jason Kelce in a stupid commercial while watching the show where Travis Kelce makes his acting debut really underlines how thirsty those guys are to break into show business.
Ryan Murphy's other new show on ABC feels like such anonymous network TV filler that I didn't even realize that Murphy was involved until after I watched the first episode. The lovely Phillipa Soo deserves better than this. Am I wrong or is Joshua Jackson not a good actor at all? I feel like he's just reciting lines from the script every time I see him, there's no performance or presence happening there, he's just a guy who lucked into a career saying words on camera. And it becomes more glaring if you actually put him in a lead role.
Apparently NASA's first space station, Skylab, crashed in Australia in 1979, and "Last Days of the Space Age" is an Australian show that's kind of a character-driven drama set against the backdrop of that particular moment in history. I've only watched one episode but it seems pretty good so far.
h) "Penelope"
Mark Duplass's latest series is about a 16-year-old girl who leaves home and tries to live in the wilderness. Strange concept for a show, but the strength of the storytelling and Megan Stott's performance makes it compelling, she was good in "Little Fires Everywhere" but now I'm really convinced she has a great career ahead of her.
This dippy Fox show is about lifeguards in red swimsuits, so it feels almost like someone was trying to reboot "Baywatch" but couldn't afford the rights to the name and just gave it the first stupid name that came to mind.
A pretty entertaining adaptation of a British mystery novel. I'm annoyed that PBS doesn't leave episodes on demand very long, I already missed some episodes and couldn't keep up with the show, but what I saw was good.
I thought the first season of "The Old Man" was fantastic front to back, but the second season is off to a slow start, just didn't have the same dynamic now with Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow together on the same team and Amy Brenneman's character out of the picture for a few episodes. I really like the cast and the overall tone of the thing, though, it's damn good TV.
The latest crap Fox is putting on Sunday nights next to zombie "Simpsons" and zombie "Family Guy" is this overly familiar animated sitcom about suburban dads loafing around, but with the timely hook that they were giving universal basic income after they lost their factory jobs. I think UBI is still a relatively unknown or misunderstood concept in the American mainstream so I kind of resent this show for even existing, I don't know if they're trying to send a message or mock it or just use it as a zeitgeist-y hook for the show, but it's just so boring and dumb, I'm almost disappointed in Fred Armisen for being involved in it.
I'm kinda bummed that my kid doesn't particularly want to watch Lego Star Wars anything, I enjoy this goofy-looking stuff.
Zack Snyder's work is so caught up in adapting graphic novels and doing CGI-heavy live action stuff with an over-the-top cartoon or anime sensibility that it's funny to think it took him this long to actually do a fully animated project. And "Twilight Of The Gods" is pretty good, I like the style of animation and his sensibility translates pretty well to this format.
My wife loves "Vox Machina" and the Critical Role podcast but we've only watched one of the new episode so far, neither of us really remembers what happened in the last season so we might go back and do a rewatch.
p) "La Maison"
I started watching this at the same time that I was catching up on "The New Look," so it was kind of funny to be going back and forth between two Apple TV+ shows about the fashion industry in Paris, one with English dialogue and one with French dialogue. "La Maison" has a good cast but they kick the story off with the head of a major fashion house going viral for a racist rant and it's just hitting these 'cancel culture' buttons that are getting pretty stale for TV drama.
Apparently indigenous Oaxacan culture has had a 'third gender' for a long time and this new Mexican show on Netflix explores that in a modern storyline with a trans protagonist, pretty interesting to get that as the backdrop of a 'two childhood friends bonded by trauma reconnect' plot.
A soapy Italian show on Netflix about an older woman who takes a young lover. Monica Guerritore does a lot of nude scenes at the age of 66, and respectfully, good on her.
Apparently Vince McMahon tapes all his interviews for this Netflix docuseries before a lot of the really bad allegations about him surfaced, and he walked away from the project and tried to prevent it from being released. So the producers of the series really had an opportunity to just expose him with his own words, and to some extent they did. But it almost feels like they already had their 6-hour celebration of WWE wrestling and all these other people and storylines and didn't really take the bad stuff as seriously as they should've by getting caught up in the show business of it all.
Fat Joe's new Starz interview series feels kind of slapdash - the guests in the first 2 episodes, Method Man and Omari Hardwick, are both actors from 50 Cent's Starz shows. But Fat Joe is personable and always seems to have a genuine interest in who he's talking to, it's not bad. He does an intro at the top of every episode and concludes by saying the words "Fat Joe talks," followed by a theme song where he raps the words "Fat Joe talks!"
A Hulu docuseries about teenagers and social media, I like some of the slice of life stories, I don't know if they're really building to any particular message or thesis but it's interesting. Also I now have a son in high school so I'm really starting to see this stuff more as a parent than from my perspective of remembering being a teenager, which is weird.
I love noodles, man. Pasta, Asian noodle dishes, everything, what an excellent food, this Netflix series was good background noise for an afternoon or two.
w) "Starting 5"
This Netflix docuseries followed around LeBron and Anthony Edwards and a few other big stars during NBA's 2023-24 season, which is a great idea, I hope they do this every season. I especially like the stuff of just these guys chilling at home with their families, and getting that in the context of their careers and the season.
This Amazon Prime docuseries is also cool in a similar way because they got to capture Angel Reese during her last year as a college player, along with some other big college athletes, in an examination of the change of the NCAA policies and athletes being able to profit off of their name and likeness.
As someone who doesn't follow sports at all but still has different degrees of passive interest in various sports, hockey is one I really love, I went to one NHL game in the '90s and if I had to pick one pro sport to see in person it would probably hockey or soccer. So I like this show, just getting a better sense of the personalities in the league and the dynamics of the teams.
A recent PBS miniseries hosted by John Leguizamo, I love that he's transitioned from really wild over-the-top comedy to a wide range of screen work and now stuff like this where he really takes his role as a representative of his culture seriously.
Monthly Report: September 2024 Albums
Friday, October 11, 2024
1. LL Cool J - The Force
I've always thought LL Cool J deserves to be revered even more than he is, and that he had more potential to come back and make some great music again. I didn't necessarily think it would happen since he's been making good CBS money for a long time now, but I thought it could, and I feel very vindicated by The Force. The fact that Q-Tip produced the album and brought this out of him is great, too, just a cool full circle moment for Queens rap, and Tip gave him such a funky and playful backdrop that's more interesting than just a full-on nostalgic boom bap record. Like, even the songs with Eminem and Saweetie are awesome, when I would've expected those to be weak links, and the opening track "Spirit of Cyrus" is this really bold, thought-provoking song about Christopher Dorner. There's longevity in rap, and then there's LL Cool J making an album this good 39 years after Radio, just unprecedented. Here's the 2024 albums Spotify playlist with all the new records I've listened to throughout the year.
2. Chase Rice - Go Down Singin'
Chase Rice's I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell was one of my favorite albums of 2023, a total midcareer revelation from a guy that had a lot more going on musically and lyrically than I'd ever realized. And I'm glad he's stayed on that path with Go Down Singin', even if it's taken him further away from country radio playlists. "Oklahoma" and "Key West & Colorado" were standouts on the last album, and "Oh Tennessee" and "Arkansas" are two of my favorites on this one. So... keep naming songs after states, I guess, Chase Rice!
3. Jackson Dean - On The Back Of My Dreams
When I interviewed Jackson Dean last year, we talked a bit about how he re-recorded "Fearless" for the single release because he'd improved so much as a vocalist in the years of touring since he recorded his major label debut. And you can really hear his growth as a singer with On The Back Of My Dreams, "Another Century" may be his best vocal performance to date. He's stretching out a little musically, too, there's nothing on his previous records that sounds like "Long Goodbye."
4. Gallant - Zinc
Zinc is Gallant's first album for Mom + Pop, after two Warner Bros. albums and a couple of indie projects, and I think that's a really good label for him. His sound is pretty unique and genre-blurring and I don't know if Warner Bros. ever really know what to do but to just market him as an R&B singer. "Monorail" is probably my favorite song on Zinc, it has some guitars and an almost drum'n'bass-style rhythm track, but his vocal is still really soulful.
5. Kassi Ashton - Made From The Dirt
Missouri singer-songwriter Kassi Ashton has grazed the lower reaches of the country radio charts with singles like "Called Crazy" and "Dates in Pickup Trucks" where she kind of plays a flirtatious femme fatale. But the tracks on her debut album that I think make the best use of her voice are the sad slow songs like "The Straw" and "Angels Smoke Cigarettes," she's got more emotional range than I expected.
6. Michael Kentoff - Michael Kentoff
The new solo album by The Caribbean's Michael Kentoff is produced by Chad Clark of Beauty Pill, and as always they work really well together. But since it's Kentoff solo and not his entire band, I think Clark's fingerprints are much more clearer here, in a good way -- it often sounds like Beauty Pill's trippier, more loop-heavy songs, but with a different vocalist and a slightly different but still very vivid and surreal lyrical sensibility. I particularly like "The Slight Brigade."
7. Future - Mixtape Pluto
I recently worked on Complex's updated ranking of Future's catalog, and I was basically given my choice of the 8 project Future has released in the last 5 years to write about. And I didn't write about Mixtape Pluto because it had just come out and I really didn't know where to rank it or what to say about it yet. And even now all I can say is that it's a solid middle-of-the-pack Future tape with some good production, but no features or really immediate songs jumping out as obvious hits. I've never been the biggest Wheezy fan but I think he's got the best tracks on here, I love the creepy atmospheric synth lines on "Ready To Cook Up" and "Ocean" and "MJ."
8. MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
Last year the North Carolina band Wednesday's album Rat Saw God was one of those indie rock records that was so widely celebrated that I listened to just see what all the fuss was about, and I thought it was pretty good. This year, Wednesday guitarist's new solo album racked up even more acclaim, just months and months of advance buzz, and then Pitchfork formally canonizing it as one of the best albums of the past 5 years within a month of its release. MJ Lenderman's colorful lyrics are what really separate him from other similar-sounding acts -- it's like a Son Volt record if Jay Farrar liked to sing words like "himbo" or "cum" or reference video games or Pixar movies. I get the appeal, though, Americana records could generally use more personality and specificity. It does start to feel like a schtick at times, though, the opening lines of "Rip Torn" are awful.
9. various artists - Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin
I've always thought of the Sweet Relief as a real force of good in the music world, raising money for musicians who need help covering healthcare costs and also putting these cool all-star tribute albums into the world that shine a light on cult artists like Victoria Williams and Vic Chesnutt. I didn't know much about Jesse Malin -- I didn't even realize he was the frontman of D Generation before his solo career -- but this album was recently released, with proceeds going to his Sweet Relief fund, after he suffered a rare spinal stroke last year. And Silver Patron Saints has an incredible lineup of 27 artists, including so many I love -- Dinosaur Jr., Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Butch Walker, just to name a few -- that I felt like I had to listen to Malin's originals as well as the covers, and I'm glad I did, he's got some great songs.
10. Thurston Moore - Flow Critical Lucidity
Thurston Moore's post-Sonic Youth solo albums have more or less sounded like Sonic Youth albums if Moore sang all the songs, especially compared to Kim Gordon's solo records. Flow Critical Lucidity does to an extent, it very much reminds me of Sonic Youth's albums from Murray Street onward, but the backing band is less 'rock' and it's a very mellow, textural record, "Shadow" and "Rewilding" in particular sound great. Moore has an unfortunate tendency to come up with a great guitar part, and then mirror it with the vocal melody instead of coming up with a countermelody, that becomes a little more glaring and tiresome on his solo albums.
The Worst Album of the Month: various artists - A Whole New Sound
In 1988, Hal Willner produced Stay Wake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films, a Disney-sanctioned tribute album that featured left-field artists like Tom Waits, Sun Ra, Michael Stipe and the Replacements covering music from animated classics. Now, though, there's just a constant churn of tribute albums with modern rockers covering music from whatever canon you can think of, and A Whole New Sound, which features mostly Warped Tour era punk pop bands covering Disney songs, feels like a gruesomely dull counterpoint to Stay Awake. It's not like Bowling For Soup or Simple Plan were particularly good bands to begin with, but something like this might've at least felt a little fun if it had been made 15 or 20 years ago when these bands were at their peak.
Tuesday, October 08, 2024
I did another fun interview for Stereogum's We've Got A File On You with Dexter and Noodles from The Offspring. We talked about their new album, Dexter's next HIV research paper, Crazy Taxi, and being parodied by "Weird Al" Yankovic.
Movie Diary
Friday, October 04, 2024 
a) Wolfs
Most of the times we've seen George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the same movie, top shelf directors like Soderbergh or the Coen brothers have been involved. So I was a little skeptical that Wolfs is directed by Jon Watts, best known for the Spider-Man movies with Tom Holland, would not be up to the job. Wolfs is really good, though, they get a lot of mileage out of the simple premise of two fixers who always work alone being forced to cooperate with each other. Austin Abrams is also a great foil for Clooney and Pitt's exasperated tough guys, the movie gets in and out briskly in 108 minutes without letting you learn most of the character's names and throwing a few good twists in there to keep you interested.
His Three Daughters stars three actresses I adore, and they're all kind of playing the kind of characters they're generally great at playing. Natasha Lyonne is a sarcastic stoner, Carrie Coon is stern and talkative, and Elizabeth Olsen is fragile and emotive. And they spend pretty much the entire movie in an apartment together waiting for their father to die. It's very stagey, sometimes the actresses feel typecast to the point of self-parody, and Carrie Coon gets these stilted monologues where she's saying hundreds of words at a time, but it's mostly a very good movie with a lot of great performances. Jovan Adepo, who worked with Olsen and director Azazel Jacobs on the great series "Sorry For Your Loss," really gives High Three Daughters a dramatic charge in his brief appearances, and the scene toward the end with Jay O. Sanders is a real emotional gut punch.
c) The Fall Guy
I only have the most vague memory that there was a show called "The Fall Guy" on TV when I was a kid, and I'm over 40, so it feels pretty obvious to me why a film adaptation did not make a ton of money. The Fall Guy is really fun and entertaining, though. I'm generally a Ryan Gosling skeptic who only grudgingly admits when his movies are guy, but The Fall Guy and The Nice Guys are the ones that get my wholehearted endorsement, made good use of Emily Blunt, Stephanie Hsu, and Winston Duke.
During the COVID lockdowns, Will Ferrell received an e-mail from a friend he hadn't seen a while, a comedy writer he'd worked with at "Saturday Night Live" and on several subsequent projects, who was coming out as a trans woman. And Will and Harper decided to go on a road trip together to celebrate Harper's new life, and get Harper comfortable with being out in the world as a woman, and they filmed a documentary along the way. Will & Harper is a really beautiful tribute to friendship above all else, and it's probably putting a lot of good into the world just to show a beloved movie star accepting his friend's new identity and caring enough to do this. But two people who've made a lot of broad, goofy comedy together were not going to let this just be a touchy-feely tearjerker movie, there's some fun little tangents, I get the feeling there was a really silly cut of this movie that they held back from out of fear of undermining the serious parts.
I Used To Be Funny is one of those movies that tells the story out of chronology with lots of flashbacks, sometimes jumping across three different periods of time within a couple of years. I don't think it was executed that well, the plot wasn't exactly confusing, but the jumbled order mostly served to withhold how dark the story was for the first hour before plunging you into some really sad, upsetting stuff. By the last stretch of the movie, when you understood everything that had happened, they brought it to a satisfying conclusion, but I have mixed feelings about the storytelling.
f) Pearl
I thought X was pretty good, but the Mia Goth multiple role gimmick was, I thought, the least successful part of the movie. And I was skeptical about it becoming a whole trilogy with a prequel movie, this just doesn't feel necessarily. Some good scenes, but didn't need to exist.
It's weird watching this movie version of a 'scary' game for kids, it really has the vibe and visual language of an R rating but pulls back just enough to be PG-13.
h) Spread
I know 'Tubi movie' is a pejorative that mostly translates to dramas and action movies with incredibly bad production values, but this is a solid little comedy starring Elizabeth Gillies, who I think is just great, I got to meet her for a minute recently when I worked on the stage show she does with Seth MacFarlane.
I wouldn't say the original Bird Box was a great movie, but it was a nice little zeitgeist-grabbing thrill ride that maybe could've been a franchise. Instead, Netflix quietly released a spinoff over five years later that takes place in Spain, and it just feels like it has none of the juice the original had, a couple exciting scenes but I just didn't care when I was watching it.
Thursday, October 03, 2024
I always love doing We've Got A File On You interviews for Stereogum, and this week I did one of my favorites ever. I got to ask Raphael Saadiq about his work with Tony! Toni! Tone! and Lucy Pearl and his productions for Beyonce, D'Angelo, Brent Faiyaz, and Solange. We talked about real studio nerd stuff like Mellotrons and Clavinets and how recording to tape is different that recording digitally. He told me which of his songs made Prince dance in the rain, and which one inspired what a lot of people named their daughters.
My Top 100 Singles of 1972
Tuesday, October 01, 2024
1. Stevie Wonder - "Superstition"
2. Al Green - "Let's Stay Together"
3. Lyn Collins – “Think (About It)”
4. Faces - "Stay With Me"
5. Yes - "Roundabout"
6. The Who - "Baba O'Riley"
7. The Eagles - "Take It Easy"
8. Chicago - "Saturday In The Park"
9. The Rolling Stones - "Tumbling Dice"
10. The O'Jays - "Back Stabbers"
11. Elton John - "Tiny Dancer"
12. Steely Dan - "Do It Again"
13. America – “Ventura Highway”
14. Curtis Mayfield - "Superfly"
15. Derek And the Dominoes - "Layla"
16. Van Morrison – “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven When You Smile)”
17. Bill Withers - "Lean On Me"
18. Jackson Browne - "Doctor My Eyes"
19. Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose – “Too Late To Turn Back Now”
20. David Bowie - "Suffragette City"
21. Sly & The Family Stone - "Family Affair"
22. The Doobie Brothers - "Listen To The Music"
23. Paul Simon - "Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard"
24. Harry Nilsson - "Jump Into The Fire"
25. The Temptations - "Papa Was A Rolling Stone"
26. Alice Cooper - "School's Out"
27. The Isley Brothers - "Work To Do"
28. Gary Glitter - "Rock And Roll Part 2"
29. Joe Tex - "I Gotcha"
30. Al Green – “I’m Still In Love With You”
31. David Bowie - "Ziggy Stardust"
32. The Stylistics - "You Are Everything"
33. War - "Slippin' Into Darkness"
34. Carly Simon - "Anticipation"
35. Aretha Franklin - "Day Dreaming"
36. The Kinks – “Supersonic Rocket Ship”
37. The Osmonds – “Crazy Horses”
38. The Isley Brothers – “Lay Away”
39. The Raspberries – “Go All The Way”
40. Todd Rundgren - "I Saw The Light"
41. The Dramatics – “In The Rain”
42. Harry Nilsson - "Coconut"
43. Thin Lizzy - "Whiskey In The Jar"
44. Elton John - "Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)"
45. Neil Young - "Old Man"
46. Mott the Hoople - "All The Young Dudes"
47. Argent - "Hold Your Head Up"
48. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes – “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”
49. The Rolling Stones - "Happy"
50. T. Rex - "Children of the Revolution"
51. Roberta Flack – “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face”
52. Tanya Tucker – “Delta Dawn”
53. The Allman Brothers Band - "Melissa"
54. Elvis Presley - "Burning Love"
55. Steely Dan - "Dirty Work"
56. War – “The World Is A Ghetto”
57. The Moody Blues - "Nights in White Satin"
58. Bread – “Sweet Surrender”
59. Yes – “And You And I”
60. The Stylistics - "Betcha By Golly Wow"
61. George Jones - "We Can Make It"
62. Rod Stewart – “You Wear It Well”
63. Al Green - "Look What You Done For Me”
64. The Doobie Brothers - "Jesus Is Just Alright"
65. Johnny Nash - "I Can See Clearly Now"
66. Curtis Mayfield - "Freddie's Dead"
67. Marvin Gaye - "Trouble Man"
68. Bill Withers - "Use Me"
69. Jethro Tull - "Thick As A Brick"
70. Stevie Wonder - "Superwoman (Where Were you When I Needed You)"
71. Todd Rundgren - "Couldn't I Just Tell You"
72. The Bee Gees – “Alive”
73. Joni Mitchell - "You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio"
74. Yes – “Yours Is No Disgrace”
75. Al Green – “You Ought To Be With Me”
76. The Who - "Join Together"
77. David Bowie - "Starman"
78. Neil Young - "Heart Of Gold"
79. Bread – “Everything I Own”
80. Elton John - "Honky Cat"
81. Don McLean - "American Pie"
82. The Eagles - "Witchy Woman"
83. George Jones - "Loving You Could Never Be Better"
84. The Isley Brothers – “Pop That Thang”
85. O.B. McClinton – “Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You”
86. Paul Simon - "Mother And Child Reunion"
87. Sly & The Family Stone - "Runnin' Away"
88. Stevie Wonder – “Keep On Running”
89. Bread – “Guitar Man”
90. Elton John - "Crocodile Rock"
91. America - "A Horse With No Name"
92. Loggins and Messina - "Your Mama Don't Dance"
93. Donna Fargo – “The Happiest Girl In The Whole U.S.A.”
94. Chuck Berry - "My Ding-A-ling"
95. Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band – “Garden Party”
96. Tom T. Hall – “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine”
97. The Eagles - "Peaceful Easy Feeling"
98. The Kinks – “Celluloid Heroes”
99. Eric Clapton – “Let It Rain”
100. Marvin Gaye - "You're The Man"
Another pretty amazing year, feels like 30 or 40 songs that would've been a lock for my top 10 in a normal year. Of course, some really overexposed stuff like "American Pie" or "Rocket Man," I probably put lower than they deserve to be, but I'm comfortable with this being my canon and not trying to be objective or anything.
Previously: