Assemblog: January 25, 2013

Evil Dead

New this week on Popshifter: Paul gives reasons to care about the upcoming Bioshock Infinite and ponders choice in the virtual world of gaming; I recommend the new Ty Segall reissues (The Traditional Fools, Reverse Shark Attack) from In The Red Records; Melissa loves Hard Core Logo, but not the sequel, and is over the moon for Don Rich and Buck Owens; Cait praises Rosie Flores’s new album Working Girl’s Guitar; and Julie describes the “exquisite collection of songs” on Wildlife, the new solo album from Gudrun Gut.

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Music Review: Gudrun Gut, Wildlife

By Julie Finley

Wildlife is the new album by Gudrun Gut, released on Gudrun’s very own Monika Enterprise label. Her last musical outing prior to this was her collaborative project known as Greie/Gut Fraktion (a partnership with Antye Greie), but Wildlife is an actual solo outing (her second official solo album since I Put a Record On from 2007).

Wildlife is an exquisite collection of themes that are definitely in touch with nature. What I mean is that the focus is on nature in more than one context. No, this is not a tree-hugging manifesto; it has more to do with being aware of your surroundings, in a physical, as well as an emotional manner. It focuses on the vulnerability of humans, as well as all other living organisms.

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Choice In A Virtual World

By Paul Casey

The Walking Dead

Please note that this article contains spoilers for both The Walking Dead and Mass Effect 3 games.

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.
—French Prime Minister guy (Léon Blum)

I have written a bit before about choice in video games, but the last year has again shown how divided the video game community is over this issue. Two games in particular have revealed a particularly ugly limitation among those who play video games: The Walking Dead and Mass Effect 3. This limitation manifests itself through the player failing to engage morally or philosophically with a game unless doing so opens up different content. For a disturbing amount of people, moral choices in video games are simply a euphemism for branching gameplay.

Branching gameplay is exemplified by Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain. “The player dictates the story told and every choice matters!” The player generally sees “every choice matters” to mean “every choice will branch the story in different ways.”

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Music Review: Buck Owens, Honky Tonk Man: Buck Sings Country Classics

By Melissa Bratcher

Another gem appears from the Buck Owens vault. Honky Tonk Man: Buck Sings Country Classics is a collection of musical backing tracks from Hee Haw with Buck’s reference vocals over them, which sounds like it wouldn’t be a treasure at all. But let me back up a moment.

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Music Review: Don Rich Sings George Jones

By Melissa Bratcher

Some people fantasize about going to Shangri-La, some people dream of winning the lottery. Me? I dream of going to Buck Owens‘s tape vault. Until a couple of years ago, it never crossed my mind, but with 2011’s release of Buck Owens’s Bound For Bakersfield collection of pre-Capitol demos (review), and now with the dual releases of Don Rich Sings George Jones and Buck Owens’s Honky Tonk Man, I want to go there. I cannot get my head around the fact that Don Rich’s lone solo record languished in the vault for 40 years. I can’t help but wonder what’s left in there, and desperately want to find out.

Don Rich was Buck Owens’s right hand: his guitarist, fiddler, and the man who brought harmony—a high tenor over Buck’s high tenor—to his tracks. They had an uncanny, beautiful way of harmonizing. Don’s smiling presence on Hee Haw, just over Buck’s shoulder, is my favorite thing about the show. Okay. That sounds a bit like fan fiction. Note to self: Don’t look that up. Ever.

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Music Review: Rosie Flores, Working Girl’s Guitar

By Cait Brennan

Rosie Flores is one of a kind. Fiercely independent, passionate, and soulful, Flores is a top-tier guitar virtuoso whose always-interesting work bridges blues and country; rockabilly and surf; and Southern California cowpunk and Tex-Mex to create her own strikingly original sound.

In the mid-’80s she fronted a great full-on Hollywood all-girl cowpunk outfit called the Screamin’ Sirens, but as fun as it was, it barely hinted at what was ahead. In 1987 Warner/Reprise released her solo debut, Rosie Flores, a pitch-perfect set produced by Dwight Yoakam’s producer and guitarist Pete Anderson. It was a brilliant pairing, and the record received near-universal praise from critics.

But despite the label’s effort to angle Flores as the female Yoakam, she was impossible to pigeonhole, and the following year she hightailed it to Austin, where she formed a new band featuring fellow luminaries like Junior Brown on pedal steel. Austin and Flores were nigh made for each other, and 1995’s Rockabilly Filly cemented Flores’s place in the firmament with a mighty collection of tunes featuring giants like Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin (the “Female Elvis,” whose work Flores has championed on many occasions.)

Flores is one of the finest guitarists alive, with nitro-fueled guitar solos that evince an expressiveness and fire that few of her contemporaries can match. Her custom “SteeltopCaster” guitar rings out like lightning on her new album Working Girl’s Guitar, a blazing set of rockabilly, rock, and blues classics interspersed with some fine new originals.

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Blu-Ray Review: Hard Core Logo: All Access Edition

By Melissa Bratcher

There are few movies I love more than Bruce McDonald’s 1996 Hard Core Logo. It’s a rock mockumentary about an obscure Canadian punk band who reunite for one last tour, hoping to recapture what fleeting fame they once had. When it came out in the States, it was advertised as a movie in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap. While it is occasionally hilarious, it has a dark, seamy underbelly. It’s not a feel good movie.

Hard Core Logo’s two stars, Hugh Dillon and Callum Keith Rennie, share an electric chemistry. Their scenes together don’t feel like acting. Dillon hadn’t acted a great deal before Hard Core Logo, and what he doesn’t have in technical “acting” skill, he makes up for in sheer magnetism. His character, Joe Dick, is by turns funny, malevolent, pathetic, and always fascinating. He is a mostly charming manipulator.

One of the finest actors around, Callum Keith Rennie is his icy cool counterpart. Rennie’s Billy Tallent is a gifted guitar player, just about to break through with another band after years of paying his dues slogging with bands like HCL. He reluctantly rejoins his comrades for a last tour, with an eye to the end, where he’ll join with indie sweethearts Jenifur.

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Music Review: Ty Segall & Mikal Cronin, Reverse Shark Attack (Reissue)

By Less Lee Moore

The second of two Ty Segall reissues, Reverse Shark Attack features Segall and his current touring bassist Mikal Cronin (who has quite a few releases with and apart from Segall). While just as dirty sounding as The Traditional Fools (review), these tunes are less garage rock and way more psychedelic, with brain-asplodin’ feedback that seems to lurch forth physically from the speakers.

It’s patently obvious that I’m going to be biased towards a song called “I Wear Black,” but it also happens to be good, snatching the heavy beat from “Wild Thing” and inserting a growling chorus of the song’s title.

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Music Review: The Traditional Fools, S/T (Reissue)

By Less Lee Moore

The prolific and talented Ty Segall has another album out today. It’s actually a reissue, but one that was previously only available on vinyl and has been out of print since its release. The Traditional Fools—comprised of Segall, Andrew Luttrell, and David Fox—put out only one album, but it’s killer. Its intensely dirty sound is more akin to Segall’s Slaughterhouse than Twins, but it is instantly loveable. It helps that despite the lo-fi recording, these guys were tight as hell.

The opening track, a cover of “Davey Crockett” by beloved legends Thee Headcoats, will either thrill or piss off fans of the original, but it’s obviously coming from a place of respect. It also sounds fantastic.

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Reasons To Care About Bioshock Infinite

By Paul Casey

Bioshock, released in 2007, is in my estimation, the greatest video game of its generation. My feelings on that game and its importance are documented elsewhere on Popshifter. As we approach the release of Bioshock Infinite on March 26, it seems prudent to expand on why Irrational Game’s new work has a good chance at taking that title from its predecessor.

Those who value Bioshock above most or all other video games are proponents of a different value system. The thought that the first-person shooter mechanics are not the most important part of the game is alien to most who spend their time playing competitively online with Halo or Call of Duty. That horrendous cliché of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” is wielded in these instances with folded arm assurance. Bioshock, along with other games like Uncharted, Heavy Rain, and most recently The Walking Dead, shows, though, that all of the other things around those core mechanics matter just as much, if not more, to a fair heft of people.

Bioshock Infinite has a good chance of being the definitive game of 2013, and the end of a console generation that has gone on longer than any before it. Much talk has been spent on the delays of the game. There has also been chatter about the exits from the company, including art director Nate Wells who left last August. There are, however, some good reasons to think that Ken Levine and his team at Irrational Games will still hit their mark.

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