Music Review: The Waitresses, Just Desserts: The Complete Waitresses

By Chelsea Spear

To bite a phrase from The Simpsons, is there a more misunderstood and underrated new wave band than the Waitresses? Those familiar with them in these post-millennial times probably only know their trio of radio hits—”I Know What Boys Like,” “Christmas Wrapping,” and the theme song from the sitcom Square Pegs. While these songs don’t misrepresent their work, their songs were weirder, complex, and more interesting than those three tracks would suggest. For many years, the only way curious listeners could hear the band’s deep tracks was to seek out The Best of the Waitresses, a remastered-for-CD compilation from 1990. Omnivore Recordings has finally given the Waitresses their Just Desserts with a two-disc collection of their recordings for Polydor.

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Music Review: Blitzen Trapper, VII

By Melissa Bratcher

Blitzen Trapper‘s Eric Earley has a story to tell. Loads of them, in fact. Blitzen Trapper’s seventh studio album has a seriously Southern Gothic vibe, which is pretty damn amazing for a guy from Portland, Oregon. VII is full of tantalizing, vivid details and stories that evoke dusty roads and swamplands and rusted out cars. It’s one hell of a ride.

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Music Review: Sunset Graves, Variant

By Jeffery X Martin

Sunset Graves is the creative brainchild of Andy Fosberry. Their debut album is called Variant.

That’s all I know. I kind of wish I didn’t even know that much. I want it to remain this beautiful, ethereal thing, a gift we won’t be able to understand until much later.

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Electric Lady (Kiss) Land: Blade Runner and R&B

By Paul Casey

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain. Time to die.”
—Roy Batty in Blade Runner

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DVD Review: V/H/S/2

By Jeffery X Martin

Here’s a fun experiment to try! Sit ten people around a campfire on a moonless night and start telling scary stories. Everyone takes a turn. What you’ll find quickly enough is that not everything scares everybody. One person may be frightened by ghost stories. Another may be terrified of demonic possession tales. One never knows.

That’s the joy—and the potential for failure—found within any horror anthology film. They’re all scattershot. Even the most ambitious of them (I’m thinking The ABCs of Death) have sections that miss the mark completely (although “D is for Dogfight” was a harrowing piece of storytelling).

2012’s V/H/S was the most consistently enjoyable of the new wave of anthologies, gathering together a conclave of great directors, such as Ti West and Adam Wingard, and letting them do what they do best: scare the shit of people. There are some genuinely unsettling moments in the film (that final sequence, directed by Radio Silence, still haunts my thoughts).

This year’s sequel, V/H/S/2, is better in every regard. The framing device is tighter, the stories are better and the scares are more frequent and more intense.

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Assemblog: September 27, 2013

I stole this photo from SPIN. It’s totally appropriate.

New this week on Popshifter: LabSplice says DO NOT WANT to Ulli Lommel’s Black Dahlia; Chelsea likes the way Gimme The Loot portrays a side of New York that’s normally unseen; Jeff learns about double entendres in “Midnight at the Oasis”; Paul gets to know Irish singer/songwriter Tiger Cooke; Lisa compares Daniel Jacksons in her article on Stargate; Melissa reviews lots of new releases: Tom McDermott, Allen Toussaint, Kelley Stoltz, and Headstones; I think Simon Killer is an outstanding film and encourage everyone to check out the new Blu-Ray of Two Men in Manhattan; and say a sad farewell to Pat Fear.

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Music Review: Headstones, Love + Fury

By Melissa Bratcher

Canada’s Headstones are back after a long hiatus and their return is welcome. Their brand of straightforward, damn the torpedoes and hang-on-to-your-wigs-and-keys rock is refreshing in this age of . . . well, you know the state of popular music today.

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Random Rant: Confessions Of A Stargate Apostate

By Lisa Anderson

Daniel Jackson

Every self-described genre fans harbors some unpopular fannish opinions. Me? I love the 1994 movie Stargate, starring James Spader and Kurt Russell. That’s not the unpopular part, of course —I’m not alone in that at all. What sets me apart from other sci-fi fans and fans of the movie is that I’ve never watched Stargate SG-1, or any of the other shows and direct-to-DVD-movies that spun off it. For a long time, I resolved that I never would. Even now, with my objections gone, I have no immediate plans to see them.

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In Memory Of: Bill Bartell, a.k.a. Pat Fear of White Flag

By Less Lee Moore

Photo by Patrick Houdek

When I heard the news that Bill Bartell had died, I felt like I’d been kicked in the guts. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to a world without him in it.

I first met Bill in 1994, when White Flag played a show in New Orleans. The exact date and location escapes me (but no doubt, Bill, with his insanely proficient memory would remember). I went with a friend and we both wore Redd Kross T-shirts in an attempt to “impress” him. Haha, if only I had known.

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It’s White Flag’s World, We Just Live In It: An Interview With Pat Fear

By Less Lee Moore

Note: this interview was originally published in May 2010.

Recently we’ve been treated to new music from the venerable White Flag, an excellent EP called Keepers Of The Purple Twilight. Released on Target Earth in March of this year, all five songs are fantastic, featuring the White Flag hallmarks of clever, witty lyrics, which are often belied by hooky, but rocking tuneage.

One intriguing factor is that lyrically, the tunes are pretty introspective, perhaps pondering where a band like White Flag, who has been consistently making music but continually underrated over the years, fits into this weird world of American Idols and Justin Biebers.

If you haven’t been paying attention to White Flag, we’re here to help fill in those gaps for you. What follows is a conversation with singer, guitarist, songwriter, and main Flag-waver Pat Fear about the history of the band, including just a few of the “28 years of stories” he’s accumulated about punk rock, playing Greenland, The Shaggs, Os Mutantes, Gasatanka Records, and being the most connected band in the universe.

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