Here At The Home: Remembering Tribe

By Chelsea Spear

Photo from Tribe Online

An excerpt from my diary, circa seventh grade: “Listening to Tribe makes me feel like I’m drinking wine at a party with my parents, wearing a velvet dress.” Ah, the purple prose of preadolescence. Scratch the surface of my attempts at poetic music criticism, though, and you’ll find a grain of truth.

During their decade-long tenure, the Boston quintet created music that was both festive and formal. Their first local hit, the provocatively-titled “Abort,” was propelled by a galloping rhythm and built to an irresistibly shuddering crescendo that would be welcome at any house party. Their debut LP Here at the Home sounded like a treasure chest of lush melodies, gilded with sepulchral organ parts and choirs of background vocals. The band’s tight arrangements and singer Janet Lavalley’s wine-dark croon sounded heady and intoxicating, but the traditional song structures and melodies had a sense of sonic safety for a young listener. My tastes might never mature enough for more discordant sounds of the avant-garde, but at that time, Tribe was almost more subversive. Like the truths you’d heard at a party when you were up past your bedtime.

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Movie Review: The Red Machine

By Chelsea Spear

In the annals of unlikely buddy teams, the portrayal of a working relationship between a rock-ribbed naval officer and a wisecracking thief seems so obvious, it’s a wonder it hasn’t been done before. Stephanie Argy and Alec Boehm’s compulsively watchable heist flick The Red Machine hinges on such a surprising bond. Set against the conflicted relationship between the US and Japan in the years before World War II, Argy and Boehm create a fascinating world.

The place is Washington, DC; the time, 1935. The Great Depression is at its height, and war between the Allies and Axis powers is over half a decade away. Cryptologists in the nation’s capitol are working to decode a series of messages sent from the Japanese consulate. Two unlikely accomplices must work closely with one another to aid in the cryptologists’ plight: Eddie Doyle (Donal Thoms-Cappello), a voluble, fast-talking safecracker, and F. Ellis Coburn (Lee Perkins), a disgraced naval officer as mysterious as his first initial. Coburn regards Doyle with silent contempt, while Doyle works to get thrown off this project by trying to get on Coburn’s last good nerve. In spite of their fractious bond, the immovable object and unstoppable force work together to create a caper that will allow them to get the goods on their opponents.

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Toronto After Dark 2012: Wrap-Up & Award Winners

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto After Dark 2012 is over and the award winners have been announced. You can read the full list of winners on the Toronto After Dark website, but I’d like to call special attention to the films I saw and reviewed.

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Assemblog: November 2, 2012

Post Halloween blues by sachiko-no! on Flickr

I’ve got the post-Halloween blues! It’s been a long and exhausting month, and even though I skipped out on last week’s Assemblog, I’m going to have to skip this week’s, too. Sorry everyone. But we do have a lot of articles from this week for you to enjoy.

New this week on Popshifter: My review of the delightfully weird Wrong (for all my Toronto After Dark Film Fest coverage, go here); Jemiah describes The Ganzfeld EP from Matmos as a “pleasing appetizer” to their upcoming full-length; Cait has fun with the hilarious and nostalgic reissues of Zacherle’s Monster Mash & Scary Tales; Chelsea explains NaNoWriMo for the uninitiated; Elizabeth discusses fan-funded TV in this installment of “TV Is Dead, Long Live TV;” and I review three quite different but worthwhile new releases: ESP’s self-titled EP, Majeure’s Solar Maximum, and Wazu’s Robobo.

—Less Lee Moore, Managing Editor

NaNoWriMo 2012

By Chelsea Spear

I do my best work when I have a sense of structure, when I’m allowed to bash something out on a quick turnaround time, and when I can work independently within a community. Thus, National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo as it’s known to its fans and followers) seems like something so well suited to my sensibilities that it’s a wonder I haven’t done it before. November of 2012 will be my inaugural year working on NaNo.

For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is fairly straightforward. Aspiring novelists must write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Freelance writer Chris Baty founded NaNoWriMo in July of 1999, but later moved it forward to November “to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather” in his hometown of San Francisco. Throughout the years, NaNo has grown from a small event in which Baty participated with a small clutch of friends, to an event that spans the globe and has spawned a number of best-selling books. (If you read Water for Elephants or The Night Circus, congratulations: you have enjoyed the fruits of NaNoWriMo.) A lively community has sprung up among aspiring writers in Boston, replete with overnight write-ins and games of Word Wars on the regional board.

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Music Review: Wazu, Robobo

By Less Lee Moore

Being old enough to have lived through and enjoyed the fecundity of post punk and new wave music when it originally blossomed in the 1980s has advantages and disadvantages. I feel lucky to have experienced the excitement of those years first hand. On the other hand, I often find myself eyeing with suspicion new bands that fell in love with those same sounds decades later. Hearing “Councillor,” the first single from Wazu‘s new album Robobo provided mixed feelings along those lines.

The song is so obviously influenced by Depeche Mode it’s almost cute: chord changes, heavy guitar, chiming keyboards, buzzing industrial sounds. Still, it’s a fine song and quite good at paying tribute to the originators of the sound.

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Music Review: Majeure, Solar Maximum

By Less Lee Moore

The musical entity known as Majeure is A.E. Paterra, also known as the drummer for prog rock band Zombi (also one of the coolest band names in recent history). Solar Maximum, Majeure’s second album, is proof positive that all those ignorant cranks who think synth-based music isn’t “real” music are just that: ignorant cranks. The depth of emotion conveyed on Solar Maximum is quite real indeed.

Paterra, according to a review in AQ, has mastered an impressive array of analog synths and instruments on Solar Maximum. Score another point in the “synth music is real” camp. In all seriousness, though, Solar Maximum is a seriously good album.

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Music Review: ESP, ESP EP

By Less Lee Moore

My introduction to ESP was via the eye-popping video for their song “Serenade,” directed by Alexandra Pelly, and described as an homage to Yellow Magic Orchestra. As a fan of WTUL’s Techno 2000 radio show in the ’80s, I am familiar with YMO’s music, particularly that of member Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also worked with Japan and David Sylvian. Naturally my interest was piqued.

According to their press materials, “ESP is a new Los Angeles-based trio whose primary interest is, as their name implies, Extra Sensory Perception.” Apparently they seek to explore this phenomenon through their music. It’s a fitting title; their music is psychedelic but not beholden to the 1960s sonic palette normally associated with that word. Their lyrics are more about creating a mood than telling a story.

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Graveyard Smash: John Zacherle, Monster Mash/Scary Tales

By Cait Brennan

Ever since the creeping dawn of that undead-zombification machine known as television, monster movies and horror hosts have been joined at the hip, like a mad scientist and his freakishly deformed sidekick, like Jan and her pan, like Rosie Grier and Ray Milland’s racist head. From Vampira and Ghoulardi to Dr. San Guinary and Morgus the Magnificent, horror hosts were an indelible part of pop culture in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

But nowhere is there a horror host whose career—and life—has lasted as long as John Zacherle. The rockingest of horror icons, Zach got his start as Roland (pronounced “Roland“) on Philadelphia’s WCAU before pulling up stakes to New York and becoming “Zacherley” (same ghoul, different name). Now 94, the eternal Cool Ghoul is almost certainly the last survivor of the golden age of horror hosts, and he still looks as good . . . he still looks as . . . he still looks like Zacherle, and he’s still out there making convention appearances and delighting generations of horror fans.

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Music Review: Matmos, The Ganzfeld EP