// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Movie Review: Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

By Less Lee Moore

When I first heard Big Star, I wondered “Why weren’t these guys huge?” like all their other fans have been wondering for the last 40-plus years. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me answers the why, but their lack of mainstream success still boggles the mind. When Brian Wilson sang “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” he could have easily been singing about Big Star.

The story of Big Star is full of both good things—talent, camaraderie, ambition—and terrible ones—bad luck, personal demons, and death. This mixture of the bitter and the sweet is a good metaphor for Big Star’s music, which fuses the two in an unforgettable aural and emotional experience. This is what drew fans and critics to the band and what continues to characterize their legacy.

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Music Review: The Three O’Clock, The Hidden World Revealed

By Cait Brennan

“You like pop, right?”

The grizzled, ancient record clerk—god, he had to be at least 28!—leaned over the counter.

“What, like Phil Collins?” I asked. Oh, it’s 1984 in Phoenix, by the way.

“God, no, that’s like—bubblegum or something,” he coughed, like he ate a big black bug. “Here,” he flips through the in-store play copies and pulls out a record with some weird pasty kids making kissy faces under a dilapidated pagoda. This crazy sugar-crash stomp comes storming out of the store speakers, swirling keys and guitars ringing in my head like the bells of Notre-Dame. And then the singer, with a voice like none other: “sitting complacent, are you there where I see you, with a cantaloupe girlfriend . . .” What?!

“They’re the Three O’Clock, man,” says he. “A little twee for my taste, but I kinda figured you’d dig it.”

The clerk got my $4.98 and I got Baroque Hoedown, the first EP by the Three O’Clock. It’s at least 20 years later before I even begin to suspect what a cantaloupe girlfriend might be, but I dive headlong into this “paisley underground” thing, rifling through record bins until I have all their stuff, which at that time included their album released as The Salvation Army, and their full-length LP, Sixteen Tambourines. They would go on to release great albums on IRS and Prince’s Paisley Park records, but for me, their stuff on the brilliant Lisa Fancher’s Frontier Records is still the greatest.

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Music Review: Dave Davies, I Will Be Me

By Julie Finley

As a “lifer” in regards to being a Kinks fan, I felt that I should definitely review my childhood idol’s newest release, that idol being Dave Davies. I won’t give a history lesson on The Kinks (as there are enough online sources out there that could clue you in), but I do need to note that Dave’s relationship to his brother Ray has been well-documented as being unrestrained, to say the least. It is no mystery that Ray prefers that Dave live in his shadow, and that the competitive dysfunction between the two of them is one of the things that has led to both having a prolific output of work throughout both of their lives (even outside of The Kinks).

Quite honestly, though, Dave’s career is still often overlooked despite the fact he has been even more fruitful in his endeavors regarding the creation of new material. Ray hasn’t had that much solo material since The Kinks stopped recording in the mid-’90s, but the solo work he has put out is mostly rehashing his old catalogue with a few albums of brand new content. Dave has actually put out more original material than Ray since the ’90s! Yes, some of that has been re-releasing long-lost music that was never released as The Kinks, but the bulk of his output has been original material.

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Music Review: Hirsute Pursuit, Tighten That Muscle Ring

By Ann Clarke

It’s been a while since I’ve written any reviews about anything, mainly because I can’t fucking stand new shit, because that is what it is—SHIT! However, sometimes you hear something and it compels you to expel your thoughts in a written context, basically excreting your reaction upon observation. In this particular case, that would be the album Tighten That Muscle Ring by Hirsute Pursuit. This might not be a brand new release (it came out in 2012, so it isn’t old, either), but it is new to my ears.

I wanted to publish this review during the month of June since it’s Pride Month and because I have NEVER heard anyone that is as proud to be gay as the fellas in Hirsute Pursuit! They take their pride to parts unknown. With the Supreme Court ruling on DOMA and Prop 8, the gay pride is at an all-time high, but for the two that are Hirsute Pursuit (Harley Phoenix and Bryin Dall), they clearly aren’t thinking about anything marital when composing their songs. In fact, these are the types of guys that would be out even if it meant the death penalty! Laws or not . . . these guys are going to cause some butt-hurt to someone!

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Blu-Ray Review: The Rambler

By Less Lee Moore

The Rambler is like a Jim Thompson science fiction novel adapted into a film. Its panoply of bizarre characters could be interpreted as either being influenced by David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky or just pretentious. Yet, most of the seemingly random bits make a strange kind of sense in the world of an already nonsensical film. Everything is so specifically odd that it must mean something and not be an accident. There are only a few times when things appear to be weird for the sake of it. These scenes persist for so long they transform from disgusting to hilarious. Perhaps that’s the point.

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Music Review: Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me Soundtrack

By Cait Brennan

There’s a part of you that gets wistful sometimes when you see some secret treasure you love finally get its day in the sun. You think back to the day, seven worlds ago, when a friend of a friend handed you a cassette tape of some band you never heard of called Big Star, on an obviously fake record label called PVC Records. The friend gives you a knowing look and you don’t know; you don’t know you have a universe in your hand, that this grubby little tape is going to change your life, it’s going to detonate some ecstatic explosion inside you, and you will never be that person ever again. And a thousand miles later you chance across another copy in the cutout bin of some strip-mall record shop and you buy it for 49 cents and you put it in the hands of someone you love who’s never heard it, and you look at their uncomprehending expression and think “that was me, once upon a time.” And if you’ve chosen wisely and the quantum entanglement is aligned just so, the chain reaction goes on.

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Music Review: Bosnian Rainbows, Bosnian Rainbows

By Chelsea Spear

Remember the ’80s? Not the kitschified dayglo era of synthesizers and Patrick Nagel portraits, but the pre-Nirvana era of college radio, fly-by-night indie labels, and adventurous bands with eclectic influences. Bosnian Rainbows, a Latin alternative supergroup-of-sorts, exemplifies the magpie musical styles and willingness to experiment that made the previous generation’s proto-alternative bands so addictive.

Bosnian Rainbows trade in expansive, cinematic melodies, driven by curlicuing guitar riffs and strong arrangements. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the creative force behind the band, perfected these skills with his previous band, the Mars Volta. Reacting to what he saw as a dictatorial manner of producing and fronting a band, the guitarist opted for a more democratic experience with his next band.

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Music Review: Dream Affair, From Now On EP

By Julie Finley

Dream Affair are a trio of musicians from various locales that started out in Philly, but are currently based out of Brooklyn. They have undergone a few line-up changes since their inception, but the primary figure has been Hayden Payne (vocals, guitar, and various electronics). The other members are Abby Echiverri (synths, violin, and vocals), as well as Bryan Spotlore (bass). I am not sure if they classify themselves in a genre per se, but their music tends to be filed under “post-punk,” “new wave,” “cold wave,” “Goth rock,” etc.

From the sound of their latest release, From Now On, those various genre labels wouldn’t be too far off the mark. The problem with those specific genre labels is that any band falling under that umbrella is inevitably going to be compared to Joy Division or The Sisters of Mercy. Yes, there are many newer bands that clearly take their cues from their forefathers, but this is what I find different about Dream Affair.

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Movie Review: Nightmare Factory

By Less Lee Moore

There’s a fantastic quote from the mother of special effects wizard Greg Nicotero in Nightmare Factory, a new documentary from filmmaker Donna Davies. When she was pregnant with her son, Mrs. Nicotero says, she read a lot of “blood-curdling” novels, all the ones she could find. “It was fun and exciting to be scared,” she adds. This is why horror junkies are horror junkies. The obsession with the craft of special effects is what’s explored in Nightmare Factory, but it’s clear that the fear factor is the spark that ignites the flame.

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Movie Review: iLL Manors

By Less Lee Moore

iLL Manors, the turbulent, invigorating debut film from Ben Drew (a.k.a. hip hop artist Plan B), begins with Drew rapping about the harsh realities of life in a council estate. It’s the kind of intro that will either suck you in or turn you off immediately, but it will definitely get your attention. You should stick with the film, though, because it reveals an incredible depth of insight into and sympathy for a segment of society that is so frequently misunderstood, ignored, or forgotten: kids who grew up in the social services/foster care system and whose lives have been shattered as a result.

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