// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Music Review: Holograms, Forever

By Less Lee Moore

The first time I heard Holograms’ second album Forever, I got goosebumps. It was like being transported back to 1985, listening to college radio late at night, rushing to press the RECORD button on my stereo, waiting for the DJ to reveal the name of the band. But Holograms is not a post-punk ripoff.

The album takes off like a rocket with “Sacred State”: booming drums, bass dancing around the jagged guitar edges, and enormous vocals from singer Andreas Lagerström. The frenetic energy is undeniable. It’s tempered only slightly by a instrumental bridge towards the end that prepares you for a melodic assault of guitar slowly building to an intense emotional peak before the vocalized chorus joins in again. And that’s just the first song.

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Blu-Ray Review: Frankenstein’s Army

By Less Lee Moore

Frankenstein’s Army is the feature debut of director Richard Raaphorst, who’s worked as a concept artist and visualizer. A few years ago, he released some impressive teaser trailers for a planned film called Worst Case Scenario, which unfortunately never came to fruition because his financing fell through. Fortunately for us, he used many of those ideas in Frankenstein’s Army.

Frankenstein’s Army is less like a straight-up horror film and more like a home movie of a haunted house or a survival horror video game, but don’t let that scare you away, because then you’d be missing out on some incredible visuals.

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Music Review: Glen Campbell, See You There

By Melissa Bratcher

There’s debate on the Internets regarding whether releasing Glen Campbell’s See You There is exploitative. Campbell is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and some say this album—stripped down versions of his greatest hits—is just an attempt to cash in. I disagree, utterly. See You There is touching and triumphant—and painful to hear, but in a good way.

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Music Review: San Fermin, San Fermin

By Melissa Bratcher

San Fermin‘s self-titled debut is wildly ambitious. Full of songs that are like journeys, but journeys that end up in an entirely different place than you thought you might go, it’s a challenging, interesting listen. San Fermin is the brainchild of Yale-educated composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, and he is ably backed by vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig (of Lucius) and Allen Tate.

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TIFF 2013 Review: Brazilian Western

By Less Lee Moore

“Rich people design it; poor people build it.”
—João in Brazilian Western

If you’ve heard the song “Faroeste Caboclo” by Legião Urbana, the storyline of Brazilian Western will be familiar to you. For those who haven’t, it follows the song’s same storyline: a poor young man named João moves to the city for a better life, becomes a drug dealer, and falls in love, only for his life to end in tragedy.

Revealing this information won’t ruin your enjoyment of the film. From the opening scenes—which are very much in the style of a Western—we already know the ending is a sad one. Watching the events unfold is what makes Brazilian Western worth seeing.

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Blu-Ray Review: I Come In Peace (Dark Angel)

By Brad Henderson

Just when I thought Scream Factory has outdone themselves, they have the balls to release Dark Angel (a.k.a. I Come In Peace). I honestly don’t know where to begin with a film like this. First, it has Dolph Lundgren. Second, it has Dolph Lund . . . wait. It doesn’t matter what else it has; this film is insanely badass.

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Music Review: Barrence Whitfield & The Savages, Dig Thy Savage Soul

By Chelsea Spear

The legendary Barrence Whitfield cut a curious figure during Boston’s college rock boom of the ’80s. As the frontman for the Savages, Whitfield attracted a diverse audience with his raucous live shows. The man could rock a high noon set at a street fair like it was a tiny, sweaty juke joint, and his cover of “Stop Twistin’ My Arm” lit up left-of-the-dial rock stations like WBCN. Sadly, no recording studio could quite represent Whitfield’s talent and energy. The kindest thing one can say about the compressed, high-endy production on his previous albums is that he stayed away from synth charts and gated drums.

Whitfield’s shows with the Savages won him the Best Live Act award from the Boston Phoenix, and he frequently embarked on well-attended tours of Europe. In the past fifteen years or so, though, he’s remained more visible as a clerk at the Record Exchange in Salem, MA, than on the concert stage. With labels like Third Man, Dap-Tone, and Bloodshot releasing new material by R&B legends, an interest in new material from Whitfield seemed inevitable. And so it came to pass that the venerable Barrence Whitfield and the Savages would release Dig Thy Savage Soul, an all-new record, in 2013, showing listeners around the world how it’s done.

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Blu-Ray Review: Deranged

By Brad Henderson

Most people know names like Dahmer, Manson, Gacy, and Bundy, but one name always seems to slip under the radar when serial killers are mentioned: Ed Gein. Some might think that name sounds familiar; most people know of the films The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, and Silence of the Lambs. All were inspired by the slayings of Ed Gein and his weird, emotionally f-freaking-uped mind.

Arrow Films recently released a film called Deranged. It is also based on Gein’s life and comes pretty close to the actual storyline. Even for 1974, Deranged pushes all sorts of limits; it has a dark and unexpectedly twisted side. About midway through the film it takes a turn into the unknown, into the psyche of Ed Gein. We get to see his disturbed mind from the inside out.

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Music Review: Various Artists, Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980 – 1988

By Less Lee Moore

For those of us who still listen to much of the same post-punk music we listened to in the ’80s, discovering new bands from that time is as exciting as hearing those new bands who are obviously influenced by those same sounds. The recent release of Mutazione by Strut Records is cause for celebration. Mutazione is a fabulous, two-disc compilation with 26 tracks of Italian post-punk music from 1980 – 1988. The arrangement of the songs is superb, like an excellent mixtape made by a music-savvy friend. For that we can thank Alessio Natalizia of Walls, who curated the collection.

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Music Review: Ty Segall, Sleeper

By Less Lee Moore

Ty Segall‘s music frequently shreds, so one wonders what the contingent of stage divers at his shows must think of his newest release Sleeper. Perhaps it’s the sonic antithesis to Fuzz, the upcoming project from Segall, guitarist Charlie Moothart, and bassist Roland Cosio, whose name describes the band accurately. Sleeper is mostly acoustic, but “Ty Segall Unplugged” it is not. There are amps and distortion, although both are kept to a minimum.

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