Assemblog: August 16, 2013

How I Live Now

New this week on Popshifter: Lisa calls The Conjuring one of the best movies of the year; Brad takes a look at Antiviral, My Amityville Horror, Swamp Thing, and The Incredible Melting Man, all out now on home video; Ricky wants to go to a strip club in Hell if they’re going to play Demon Queen’s Exorcise Tape; Jemiah is impressed with Into The White with Rupert Grint; Chelsea hopes The Hot Flashes does better on home video than it did in theaters and suggests Los Nuggetz for garage rock fans who are looking for something they haven’t yet heard; Melissa calls Intoxicated Man 1958 – 1962 a tantalizing glimpse into the early work of Serge Gainsbourg; and I am touched by the music documentary A Band Called Death and amused by the new video from Big Black Delta, “Money Rain Down.”

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Music Review: Serge Gainsbourg, Intoxicated Man 1958 – 1962

By Melissa Bratcher

Serge Gainsbourg was a provocateur. That cannot be disputed. He wrote songs about subjects that raised the eyebrows of the world (Incest? Check. Sodomy? Check. Cigarettes? Heaven forefend, but check) and courted notoriety. Still, the man was a poet and a great wit.

Intoxicated Man 1958-1962 is a tantalizing glimpse into the origins of Serge Gainsbourg. A vast collection (66 tracks), it illuminates his early career as a chanteur, singing story-driven songs. Full disclosure: I know only the most rudimentary French. I could pick out the occasional word I understood (like window and love— he sings quite a bit about windows), so I missed some of the nuances of lyrics. It was a challenge.

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Music Review: The Fun Boy Three, The Fun Boy Three

By Melissa Bratcher

The re-release of The Fun Boy Three’s eponymous debut album makes for fascinating, exhausting listening. A mix of musical styles—ska, rocksteady, jazz, dancehall—primitive percussion, sharp horns, and smart harmonies, it all seems so light and pleasant. Until you listen to the lyrics. Politically aware and a capsule of the fear and paranoia of Thatcher’s Britain in the early 1980s, these are not songs for a blithe singalong. Which is good.

Hatching fully formed from the forehead of The Specials after feeling creatively stifled, Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Neville Staples created something bold. These songs didn’t need to be arranged for horns and female vocalists (though on several tracks they are joined by Bananarama, to great effect) and the result is stripped down and innovative. The Fun Boy Three sounds immediate still.

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Music Review: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite

By Melissa Bratcher

Both the liner notes and the back cover of I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite posit that Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart’s association with the Monkees hurt Boyce & Hart’s legacy—that by having written for a “made-for-TV” pop band somehow diminishes their songwriting credibility. Every Monkees album, save for the soundtrack to Head, had at least one Boyce and Hart song on it. And most of those songs were perfect little pop diamonds, carefully crafted and catchy as anything.

I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite is a collection of the best of Boyce & Hart. Full of complex pop songs with amazing production, these songs will make you wonder just why they aren’t revered like Goffin/King or Mann/Weil. It’s pure joy in your ears.

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Music Review: The Blow Monkeys, Feels Like A New Morning

By Melissa Bratcher

The Blow Monkeys have returned and I didn’t even know I’d missed them. The aptly titled Feels Like A New Morning is a collection of hopeful songs, sung by a man who is clearly at a crossroads, and who sounds pretty damn comfortable with himself. I dig it.

In the eighties, The Blow Monkeys were known for their jazzy, poppy confections with thought-provoking lyrics (and Dr. Robert’s hair, because that was amazing). Now older and wiser, Robert Howard is still writing thinky lyrics, and knows his way around a hook. But these songs aren’t confections; they’re a bit more savory.

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Assemblog: July 12, 2013

The Heat

New this week on Popshifter: Paul has some surprising but apt suggestions in his two-part series on Horror Movies For Kids; Melissa loves bands with tuba players and as a result, raves about That’s It! from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band; Jeff will crack you up with his review of the probably unnecessary Thank You from Duran Duran; Chelsea enjoyed the “irresistible prose” and vast wealth of stories in Curtis Harrington’s memoir Nice Guys Don’t Work In Hollywood; I strongly recommend Desperation, the latest album from the Oblivians and share my thoughts (and a couple of photos) from last week’s IO Echo/CSS show at The Mod Club.

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Music Review: Preservation Hall Jazz Band, That’s It!

By Melissa Bratcher

An important fact that not everyone knows is this: If a band has a tuba player in it, it is generally worth going to see live. This goes double for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band was founded in 1961, dedicated to promoting traditional New Orleans jazz. Their new album That’s It! is their first album of entirely original music in their entire 50-year history. Produced by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Preservation Hall’s Creative Director, Ben Jaffe, That’s It! is an album of future standards.

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DVD Review: The Cary Grant Film Collection

By Melissa Bratcher

An Affair To Remember (1957)

It is nearly impossible to write about Cary Grant without mentioning the words suave, dashing, elegant, or handsome, so let’s just get all of those words out of the way now. Twentieth Century Fox has released a six-DVD box set of a collection of Cary Grant films and it’s a decent overview of his career.

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Music Review: True Blood: Music From The HBO Original Series, Volume 4