Music Review: Luke Winslow-King, The Coming Tide

By Melissa Bratcher

I once saw Luke Winslow-King perform a miracle. He was opening for Jack White, which is, of course, miraculous in and of itself, and Jack White’s audience was less than receptive to this man in a seersucker suit with a guitar, a woman playing a washboard, and a fellow with a standup bass. The most amazing thing was watching the audience’s attitude change. By the third song in his set, Luke Winslow-King had made fans. His performance was engaging, wickedly tuneful, and pretty much brilliant. The interplay between him and washboard player/backup singer Esther Rose was charming. By the time his set was over, the merch table was flooded with people buying his CD.

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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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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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Movies: Ten To Watch In 2013

By Less Lee Moore

Passion

I still haven’t seen all the 2012 films that I wanted to and I’m already thinking about what 2013 has in store. Those who complain that there aren’t any good movies anymore are just not paying enough attention. It was tough to pick from the three Ryan Gosling films scheduled for this year and I guess I cheated a little by including two Noomi Rapace flicks on this list, but I will not apologize. I also didn’t include the requisite blockbusters like Star Trek: Into Darkness, Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, Thor: The Dark World, and Iron Man 3 because that’s just too easy (plus, I’ll likely see them all anyway). If Terence Malick’s Knight of Cups comes out this year, go ahead and pencil that in at #11.

Here are ten films that I do not want to miss in a theatrical setting this year.

1. Dead Man Down (March 8, US)
Noomi Rapace teams up with Colin Farrell and his real Irish accent. Farrell is New York hitman Victor who has been blackmailed by his new neighbor Beatrice (Rapace) into killing his crime lord boss, played by Terrence Howard, the man who brutalized her and left permanent scars on her face. Dominic Cooper and Isabelle Huppert also star. As much as Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was visually superior to Oplev’s, consider those films were made for TV and at a fraction of the budget for the big screen adaptation. They’re still excellent movies, anyway, and with a cast like this, I can’t be anything but excited. (trailer)

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Assemblog: January 4, 2013

The Place Beyond The Pines

New this week on Popshifter: We’ve got Best Of 2012 lists from me as well as Megashaun. You can also peruse all our Best Of 2012 lists, if you’re so inclined.

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Assemblog: August 31, 2012

Cruising, 1980

New this week on Popshifter: John talks about the secret handshake and Booker T. and the M.G.s’ Green Onions reissue on Stax; Melissa B. wonders if Harry Shearer’s Can’t Take A Hint is timely; guest blogger and author Alex Bledsoe gives the deets on Rafael Sabatini and pirates; Chelsea loves Micah Sheveloff’s Exhibitionist and the singer/songwiter’s “lived-in marvel of a voice”; I proclaim Big Black Delta’s Tour EP to be “diverse” and “thrilling”; and I share some photos from FanExpo Canada 2012.

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Harry Shearer, Can’t Take A Hint

By Melissa B.

Can a record that relies as heavily on current events as Harry Shearer‘s Can’t Take A Hint stand the test of time? Political humor is almost ephemeral, and the political climate and players mercifully change so quickly. Songs about Herbert Hoover, for example, are so rarely sung today, and sea shanties about the Great Fire of London have fallen out of favor. So how does one approach a record in 2012 that has songs about the 2008 election, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, and the Iraq war? If this album had arrived two years ago, it might have been cutting in its satire. At this point, however, it feels a bit creaky.

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The Talented Mr. Rennie

By Melissa Bratcher

At a certain point in my life, I made anyone who spent any amount of time at my house watch the movie Hard Core Logo. This continued for a couple of years. I couldn’t articulate what I liked best about it, but it seemed important that every one of my friends be exposed to it. I love the relationship of Joe and Billy, unhinged John and the ridiculous Pipefitter, as well as the Joey Ramone cameo. The music was good, the story was engrossing, and I loved it.

Hard Core Logo, 1996

I think, though, the thing I liked best was Callum Keith Rennie. He was completely mesmerizing. Handsome, rangy, and angular, but he was more than that. He had intensity, a barely subdued violence just bubbling under the surface. Every time he showed up, he was the most interesting person on the screen.

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Waiting For Sloan Songs: Top Ten

By Melissa Bratcher

Photo © Marshall Angus

Sloan was the most recent band for whom I’ve had an all encompassing mania. I had been obsessed with bands before (Blur, The Dandy Warhols, The Monkees, Bay City Rollers), and the gripping excitement and absolute fervor that I felt about those bands washed over me when I found Sloan. I miss feeling that way about them. Passion fades, mania recedes like a tide, and I settled into simple, less enthusiastic fandom.

That said, when asked to come up with a top Sloan songs list, I had to. Then I realized, all of my favorite Sloan songs are Jay Ferguson songs and that’s not terribly interesting to anyone but me and possibly Jay Ferguson. So there’s a bit of a problem. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Chris Murphy’s clever, wordplay-riddled tunes, or Patrick Pentland’s balls-out rockers, or Andrew Scott’s more esoteric leanings, but hey, I’m a Jay girl. I love that his songs sound like proper timeless pop songs. And his voice is perfect for them.

In the interest of fairness, however, I have risen above. In no particular order, my Top Ten Sloan songs:

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