Sunday 25 May 2014

Review - Swans

SwansTo Be Kind

I only got into Swans recently, but they've fast become one of my favourite bands. Not only do they make some of the heaviest and simultanaeously the most sublime music I've ever heard, they've managed to stay together and keep their standards up for three decades. When I first started listening to To Be Kind, though, I was worried they'd started to slip. It sounds like a poor imitation of Tinariwen, and Michael Gira's vocals are extremely obnoxious - not in the good, aggressive way, but in a way that sounds like someone trying to do a Swans song and failing. Fortunately, things quickly pick up from there. That Tinariwen sound permeates the album - songs like "Just A Little Boy" have that strange desert drone that seems almost stereotypically "exotic" - but on most of the songs, it's done right, and mixed with that Swans mixture of vitriol and profundity, it works pretty damn well. "Toussaint L'Overture" is the stand-ou track, a half-hour epic that starts out with a relentless yet uplifting barrage of guitar, before simmering down to the same desert drone we've been hearing throughout the album, complemented with strange, otherworldly chanting from Gira. It gradually builds to a crescendo and then holds it - just holds onto the momentum, riding the riff, as if Gira is seeing how far he can ramp up the tension before the listener's brain explodes. Then, it drops off, and you're left with skittering rhythm lines and harsh, distorted guitar chords. From there on in, I won't ruin it for you, but it kicks some major fucking arse.

The downside of having such an amazing centrepeice is that it kind of overshadows the rest of the album. It's still a great record, but the gap in quality between "Toussaint L'Overture" and the other songs makes them seem lacklustre by comparison. Still, when listened to on their own, rather than as part of an album, songs like "Oxygen" and "A Little God In My Hands" are fantastic. If you've listened to Swans before, you know what to expect - jarring rhythms, sneering vocals, and a heavinness that seems almost meditative, as if the band are trying to induce a spiritual experience in the listener through sheer force of sound. It's great, basically - buy it.

Rating: 8/10

Also, this will be my last post for a while, as I'm going to be extremely busy with various things for the next month or so.

Monday 19 May 2014

Review - Elbow

Elbow
The Take Off and Landing of Everything

Guy Garvey is unquestionably one of the best lyricists this country has produced.  "The way the day begins / Decides the shade of everything / But the way it ends depends on if you're home / For every soul a pillow and a window please / In a modern room / Where folk are nice to Yoko" - Garvey belongs in the same category as Joanna Newsom and Bill Callahan, among those few who write lyrics that can be read as poetry. His lyrics are similar to fellow Manc song-poet Morrissey in their everydayness, but without the melancholy or the arch wit - rather, Garvey's literary voice (much like his singing voice) is warmer, less distant.

As far as the music goes, it's the same thing we've come to expect from Elbow. Somewhere between Radiohead and Coldplay, it lacks the experimentation of the former but avoids the unbearable blandness of the latter - these are tunes with soul. Basically, this album is another Elbow release - quality music and fantastic lyrics by one of the best songwriters of his generation.

Rating: 9/10

Wednesday 7 May 2014

Film review - The Amazing Spiderman 2

Well, they've rebooted the Spiderman franchise - I don;t know why, seeing as the original three films were fantastic, but then Hollywood logic is beyond the understanding of us mere mortals. This one stars Andrew Garfield as Spiderman, Jamie Fox as Electro and some emo kid as Harry Osbourne, Norman Osbourne's slightly androgynous daughter. Garfield quite wisely doesn't try to compete with Toby MacGuire's brilliant performance of a vulnerable, awkward Peter Parker, and chooses instead for a cockier, more confident take on the character - basically, a realistic portrayal of a teenager who's just discovered he has super powers. He plays it well, but I can't help but think that his is a rather shallow interpretation, nowhere near as dramatically interesting as McGuire. Aunt May is more interestingly written, and a more ambivalent character, in this film, so it's a shame she's played by an actor with the emotional range of cheese.

I was pretty excited when I heard that Electro would be the villain in this film - in the TVseries (which I loved as a kid) he's interesting as he's pretty much invincible, and the only way Spiderman beats him is by tricking him into beating himself. In the film, though, they've decided to turn him into a stalker who gets his powers when he's bitten by a radioactive electric eel (because fuck it, why not). They also decide to remove the whole near-omnipotent demi god thing, and make him basically another supervillain who uses electricity to blow shit up and lift up cars etc. So we can add electricity to the list of things that the makers of this film don;t understand. Also on that list: cinematography, character, plot, basic physics, and the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound (there's a scene where a song starts playing on the soundtrack and Spiderman says "oh, I hate this song". Fuck you, whoever wrote that. Fuck you so much.) - in fact, it'd be easier to list the good things about this film than the bad. So - Andrew Garfield's sexy accent, Gwen Stacey's legs, the first fight scene with Electro, and the last twenty minutes. That's the really annoying thing - the film's ending is great. The final fight scene, and everything that comes after it, is excellent, and that somehow makes me hate the film more, because I left the cinema feeling like I enjoyed myself but knowing I didn't. You can't make an hour and a half of mediocre, poorly written shite and then give it an awesome ending to trick people into thinking they liked it.

The plot is this: Harry Osbourne is dying of MacGuffin-itis and needs Spiderman's blood. Spiderman refuses to give it to him because it might kill him, which understandably pisses Harry off. Rather than doing what he looks like he'd do - listen to My Chemical Romance and write something bitchy in his diary - Harry makes a deal with Electro to kill Spiderman, and steal his blood. Oh, that's after the terminally ill kid who looks like he has the muscle mass of custard overpowers two security guards and breaks into a high-security mental asylum staffed by the German/Russian/European-or-something mad scientist Dr Kafka. Read that again. Doctor. Motherfucking. Kafka. That one name sums up just how retarded this film is, or at least it comes close, because nothing could possibly sum up the monumental stupidity of everyone involved in making this ridiculous, badly written, poorly plotted, terribly filmed abortion. And no amount of Andrew Garfiled's sexiness can change that fact.

Thursday 1 May 2014

Review - Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash
Out Among the Stars

Ok - the good news is, there'sa new album of previously unreleased songs by Johnny Cash coming out. The bad news is, the songs are from the eighties, that sad time in between cool, rebellious, young Johnny Cash and deep, soulful old Johnny Cash. So, mixed expectations coming into this.

It starts out well - the title track is a well-written story song that points the way towards the Cash of the American albums, pretty much universally regarded as his greatest work. It's not quite up to their standard, but it's still a decent opener. Things go downhill with the next track, a run-of-the-mill duet between Cash and June Carter, and they don;t get much better with "She Used to Love Me A Lot". This song sounds as if Cash was reaching for the profundity that he had acheived before, and would acheive again, but what comes out is just a rather boring love song. The next two tracks aren't really worth commenting on - they could be by more or less anyone, and I probably won;t remember them in five minutes' time. "If I Told You Who It Was" is awful, just cringe-inducingly awful. "Call Your Mother" is actually a pretty good song, but the saccharine Nashville production robs it of any real power. The same cannot be said for the rest of the tracks on this album. Ultimately, there's no reason to buy this unless you absolutely MUST own everythiong Cash ever released.

Rating: 2/10

And now I'm going to go listen to American V.