Music Review: Lowell, I Killed Sara V.

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto and London-based Lowell has the kind of voice that veers dangerously close to being exploited in an iTunes commercial. Which is why it’s significant that her new EP I Killed Sara V. opens with the blisteringly original “Cloud 69.” That music and those lyrics could never be used to sell hybrid cars. The crush of percussion and synths and the descending “oooooh” in the chorus make the heart pound faster. It’s an extraordinary song and unlike anything else I’ve heard.

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New Video: Dub Thompson, “Dograces”

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Ward Robinson

Based on this interview from The Independent, Dub Thompson members Evan Laffer (drums) and Matt Pulos (vocals/guitar) sound like the kind of 19-year-old guys who play music and have not yet been indoctrinated into only responding to interview questions with pre-packaged sound bites. Which is refreshing.

Also refreshing is their new song and video, “Dograces,” from their upcoming debut 9 Songs (it has eight tracks). It looks like one of those ’70s videos that you used to see on MTV Classic back in the day but then it looks like it might be a new video that was intended to look that way. The song itself is an odd mix of disaffected vocals and heavy bass, with a burst of shiny keyboards serving as a chorus of sorts that will either annoy you or intrigue you. Or both, especially when the band sort of gives up about two-thirds of the way through and leaves the stage. Speaking of which, who are those people, anyway?

9 Songs was recorded by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, who also plays keyboards for the band at their live shows. It will be out on June 10 from Dead Oceans. In the meantime, if you live in New York, you can catch them on April 3 at Pianos and on April 4 at Baby’s All Right.

New Video: The Cybertronic Spree, “Nothin’s Gonna Stand In Our Way”

By Less Lee Moore

The Cybertronic Spree
Photo © Paul Hillier Photography

If you haven’t heard of The Cybertronic Spree, listen up. It’s a band of Transformers—well, Hot Rod, Arcee, Rumble, Unicron, Spike, and a Quintesson, to be exact—who perform songs from the soundtrack to The Transformers: The Movie.

Interested yet? They also perform these songs live and in full costume. It’s pretty amazing. They recently released a video of an in-studio performance and recording of “Nothin’s Gonna Stand In Our Way” that must be seen to be believed.

Here’s a video of them performing “Instruments Of Destruction” last August at the Horseshoe in Toronto, as part of Nerd Noise Night.

And yes, they do perform “The Touch.”

For the full spectrum of the band’s online presence, check out TheCybertronicSpree.com

Movie Review: A Field In England

By Less Lee Moore

Reviewing a film like A Field In England almost feels impossible and insulting. While it takes place during the English Civil War of the late 17th century, a historical drama it is not. It is a Ben Wheatley movie and if you’ve seen his others (Sightseers, Kill List, Down Terrace), you’ll know that means you’re in for something entirely different than a standard cinematic experience.

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DVD Review: In Fear

By Less Lee Moore

Maybe I’ve watched too many horror movies or I’m just exceptionally paranoid, but I can absolutely relate to the slowly creeping terror experienced by the protagonists at the beginning of In Fear. Tom (Iain De Caestecker) and Lucy (Alice Englert) are a young couple on their way to a music festival who decide to stop at what they think is a quaint hotel on the way. And of course, with a title like In Fear, you can probably figure out pretty quickly that their plans go terribly awry.

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Music Review: Beck, Morning Phase

By Less Lee Moore

Morning Phase, Beck’s newest album and his first on Capitol Records, has been described as a companion piece to 2002’s Sea Change. Since I hadn’t heard Sea Change in a while, I thought I’d compare the two albums. What I discovered surprised me.

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Music Review: Wild Beasts, Present Tense

By Less Lee Moore

Present Tense, the latest album from Wild Beasts, is like the feeling of holding your breath and fighting back tears while watching an emotionally distressing movie in a quiet theater. You want to give in to your emotions, but the strain has a profoundly exquisite painfulness. Present Tense is darker and more somber than the band’s previous two albums and features far less florid prose. This doesn’t mean the lyrics are any less insightful; it simply means listeners must work harder to decipher them and reveal the beauty within. There’s nothing that’s not beautiful about Present Tense, even when it paints unpleasant portraits.

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Music Review: Big Ben Tribe, Lè Travo, Victrola (Dark Entries Reissues)

By Less Lee Moore

Dark Entries has quickly become one of my favorite labels, via both their new releases as well as their reissues of more obscure New Wave and dance music from the ’70s and ’80s. Their most recent reissues are from Big Ben Tribe, Lè Travo, and Victrola.

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Music Review: Temples, Sun Structures

By Less Lee Moore

When the time comes move with the feeling,
Lend your young ears to the sound of day.
—Temples, “Move With The Season”

Upon a first listen to Sun Structures, the debut album from Temples, it’s tempting to wonder if they’re time travelers. Sun Structures is drenched in late ’60s and early ’70s psychedelia, full of fuzzy, chiming guitars, phase shifters, mellotrons, faux sitars, and harps. Certainly there are curmudgeons out there who would roll their eyes at “England’s premier retro-futurists,” sputtering the names of a long list of bands from whom these four young men are blatantly stealing. Yet Temples cheerfully admits to their influences, with dozens of YouTube clips posted on their Facebook page indicating who has provided inspiration.

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DVD Review: Concussion

By Less Lee Moore

The tagline on the DVD for Concussion is the kind of lurid text that implies we’re going to watch a Lifetime movie from the 1990s: Wife. Mother. Escort. When you examine the plot—middle-aged wife and mother gets hit on the head and then creates a secret life as a prostitute—it doesn’t do much to dissuade that notion. Yet Concussion isn’t a cautionary tale and the head injury doesn’t produce dissociative fugues; no one gets blackmailed, kidnapped, or murdered. It’s a frank examination of dissatisfaction and desire that could easily be transposed onto a heterosexual relationship, but in Concussion the married couple are lesbians with two kids.

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