Music Review: The Gap Band, Gap Band VII

By Melissa Bratcher

For the first time on CD and remastered like it’s spanking new, The Gap Band’s 1986 Gap Band VII, is a strange, unsatisfying blend of things. There are moments of pure brilliance and pleasure, and there are moments of uninspired insipidness. The moments of brilliance nearly make up for those. Nearly.

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Music Review: CSS, Planta

By Chelsea Spear

Listening to the latest CSS album may inspire listeners to develop a vicarious crush on the object of the band’s affections. Washes of fizzy synths sound like the rush of dopamine one experiences while in the throes of infatuation, and the thumping, staccato rhythms pulse with exuberant energy.

Since their first album dropped in 2006, CSS have put their own spin on ’80s synth pop, investing the underrated genre with a sassy personality and a dollop of post-riot grrrl feminism. Compared to its predecessor, La Liberacion, Planta takes a more introspective lyrical approach, with songs that depict the giddy highs of falling in love and note the heartbreak of unrequited emotions. While the lyrics to individual songs might seem bratty and shallow, the album as a whole has such a desperate, obsessive quality that it comes off like the soundtrack to a film version of Orpheus and Eurydice as adapted by John Hughes.

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Music Review: British Electric Foundation, Dark – Music Of Quality And Distinction, Volume 3

By Emily Carney

BEF’s first volumes were released in the halcyon days of white-boy soul, respectively in 1980 (Music for Stowaways, 1982—Volume 1) and 1991 (Volume 2). BEF’s excursions into the world of pop-music covers encompassed Tina Turner (who did a version of “Ball of Confusion” in 1982 which pretty much still blows everything out of the water) and Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory covering Glen Campbell’s country chestnut “Wichita Lineman.” Oh yeah, this “collective” is also basically Heaven 17, now sans Human League founder and legendary disappear-er Ian Craig Marsh.

Now it’s 2013, and BEF is back with a set of new covers. Dark pretty much mines old material with the same players, including Kim Wilde (who covers “Every Time I See You I Go Wild”), Andy Bell from Erasure (who covers Kate Bush’s “Breathing”), and Boy George (who does The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog”), among others. There are a few newer artists on the disc, including Shingai Shoniwa of the Noisettes (whose version of “God Only Knows” is a godsend), but I wish the disc included more new artists and perhaps newer songs.

Dark is essential for BEF and Heaven 17 completists, but those interested in being introduced to this family of music should check out 1981’s Penthouse and Pavement and 1982’s Music of Quality and Distinction Volume 1 which remain amazingly undated. While some of the versions of songs on Dark are standouts (Kim Wilde’s song contains all the electronics snaps and beeps we expect from BEF), don’t expect an epiphany here.

Dark, the British Electric Foundation’s third volume, is out today through The End Records. For ordering information, visit the BEF website.

Movie Review: Peaches Does Herself

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Angel Ceballos

You don’t need to know her music beforehand to “get” the new concert-cum-performance-art film from Peaches, but even fans will marvel at how accurately the songs in Peaches Does Herself tell the story, as if they were written expressly for the film. Furthermore, although the narrative is fairly simple, the concepts within it are complex, including sex, romance, gender, confusion, anger, and acceptance.

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Movie Review: After Earth

By Lisa Anderson

If you’ve been to any of the tentpole genre movies that have come out this summer (or even in the last year), you’ve probably seen ads for After Earth. This sci-fi vehicle features real-life father and son Will and Jaden Smith as Rangers who get stranded on a hostile Earth in the distant future. What you may not know, because the marketing downplayed it, is that it was directed and co-written by M Night Shyamalan, who was once lauded as a brilliant auteur but who has fallen into disfavor.

I never have been in the Shyamalan-hate camp. Like most people who saw it, I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, but I also enjoyed his other movies that I’ve seen. Signs and Unbreakable put a novel twist on the alien-invasion movie and the superhero movie, respectively, even if looking back on it, the big reveal in Unbreakable is kind of problematic. The Village had an interesting take on the post-9-11 security era, even though you rarely see that discussed. I even have an unreasonable love for the much-maligned Lady in the Water, although admittedly I’m a myth-geek who first encountered Joseph Campbell in grade school.

With all of that said I will admit that I haven’t yet seen The Last Airbender, The Happening, or Devil, which have as much to do with the sinking of Shyamalan’s stock as his earlier work. And After Earth is unlikely to be the movie that rehabilitates his reputation.

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