// Category Archive for: Music

Assemblog: June 1, 2012

Holy Motors, 2012

New on Popshifter this week: a review of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life and the highly anticipated Prometheus. There are also fifteen (!) new articles from our May/June issue, True Patriot Love.

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Live The Life You’re Dreaming Of

It’s been ten years now, so I automatically assume everyone knows the story. But I should probably tell it again. First, I fell in love with Sloan. Then, I fell in love with Shaun.

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Waiting For Sloan Songs: Top Ten

By Melissa Bratcher

Photo © Marshall Angus

Sloan was the most recent band for whom I’ve had an all encompassing mania. I had been obsessed with bands before (Blur, The Dandy Warhols, The Monkees, Bay City Rollers), and the gripping excitement and absolute fervor that I felt about those bands washed over me when I found Sloan. I miss feeling that way about them. Passion fades, mania recedes like a tide, and I settled into simple, less enthusiastic fandom.

That said, when asked to come up with a top Sloan songs list, I had to. Then I realized, all of my favorite Sloan songs are Jay Ferguson songs and that’s not terribly interesting to anyone but me and possibly Jay Ferguson. So there’s a bit of a problem. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Chris Murphy’s clever, wordplay-riddled tunes, or Patrick Pentland’s balls-out rockers, or Andrew Scott’s more esoteric leanings, but hey, I’m a Jay girl. I love that his songs sound like proper timeless pop songs. And his voice is perfect for them.

In the interest of fairness, however, I have risen above. In no particular order, my Top Ten Sloan songs:

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The Barenaked Ladies Made Me Do It

By Charlie M.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the phrase “we broke up over irreconcilable musical differences” is a euphemism for “I was close to stabbing them to death with a pencil.” But can it ever be literally true? Is it possible to fall swiftly and irreversibly out of sync with a person simply because of a discord in melodic taste?
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When NoMeansNo Means No

By J Howell

What follows is a true story.
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Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (Vie héroïque), Directed by Joann Sfar

By Ann Clarke

Being a diehard Serge Gainsbourg fan, I have wanted to see this film since I heard it was being made like three to four years ago. It was just so long overdue!

Eric Elmosnino as Serge Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, 2010

Many biopics suck, but that’s usually because they are about people who aren’t even that interesting or they are poorly cast and scripted. Sometimes they suck because the person in question was not only an asshole in the limelight, but even worse in private. Serge Gainsbourg embodies those traits to a degree, but that depends on your definition of an asshole. In many ways he was, but at least he was an interesting asshole! What I will give him credit for over many other dead asshole celebrities: he lived out loud. His antics were never candy-coated. He did what he did, and didn’t really give a fuck about how it was received—but, he actually DID care (he just didn’t let the world know that he did).
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Charlie Parker; Dizzy Gillespie; Bud Powell; Max Roach; Charles Mingus; The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall

By Jemiah Jefferson

This new remaster of The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall—a truly historic convergence of five of the most celebrated musicians in jazz—is so classic, so iconic, that at first it’s hard to understand what’s so special about it. It really does take some schooling, and some careful and studied listening, before the true magic trick is revealed. For anyone with an interest in jazz, however, this album is essential listening, and can be enjoyed without knowledge of its importance.
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Things I Love: I’m a Monk, You’re a Monk, We’re All Monks

By Emily Carney

Remember the hilarious bowling alley scene in The Big Lebowski, in which Walter goes insane and brandishes a gun telling some poor sap with a mullet to “mark it zero”? The background theme forever passed into ubiquity—it is called “I Hate You,” and was one of The Monks’ signature songs.

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Assemblog: May 18, 2012

Donna Summer, 1948 – 2012

New on Popshifter this week: Reviews of the remastered reissues of The Bill Evans Trio’s Moon Beams and Thelonious Monk’s Misterioso, plus some righteous indignation about women and guitar culture.

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A Riot Of One’s Own: Women & Guitar Culture

By Kai Shuart

OK now, I’m gonna spout off about something very, very near and dear to my heart. Since I was about thirteen, I have loved guitars. I own a few. I play them. I find them sexy. You want to really see me geek out? Get me in a Guitar Center. I’ve been told I drool. Yet, while I have worshiped guitars from a very early age, there has been something I don’t worship: Guitar culture.
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