album review: 'dancer and the moon' by blackmore's night

In the fall of 2012, many mainstream music critics were hailing the new indie rock explosion, and at the forefront of that wave we had acts like Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers and Phillip Phillips. Now, granted, I was never a huge fan of any of these acts, but I understand what they do and they occasionally managed to impress me. Yes, even Mumford & Sons (I stand by my criticism of the act that they really don't contribute anything to music as a whole, but they certainly don't embarrass themselves that badly unless you dig deeply into their lyrics).

But what I took a little umbrage to at the time was the genre classification of the majority of these acts, and how people were calling them 'folk rock'. It wasn't that I disagreed, per se - indeed, if I were pressed to come up with a genre classification of these acts other than indie, I'd probably call them contemporary folk rock and run with that. But what annoyed me a bit was the level of mainstream acclaim these acts received. Once again, I wouldn't call any of these acts bad, but at least to me, they sure as hell didn't represent the folk rock with which I was most familiar.

And with that, let's talk about Blackmore's Night.

As I mentioned before, when I was younger, I skipped straight from pop music and Eminem to power and symphonic metal, and in the process of using that old, unreliable bit of vapourware Limewire, I came across several songs that were mistakenly noted as Nightwish songs. As most of you probably remember, getting accurate song titles and band names in the days of Limewire (to say nothing of album names) was a nightmare, and pre-Wikipedia (this was around 2005), it required a fair amount of legwork to figure out what these songs actually were. Eventually, I managed to discover that these songs came from a  medieval folk rock act known as Blackmore's Night, founded by former Deep Purple virtuoso guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and his wife Candice Night. 

And as a teenage fantasy nerd, I immediately fell head over heels for Blackmore's Night. Almost all of the elements clicked - Ritchie Blackmore's impressive guitar work, Candice Night's ethereal voice, the backing instrumentation was properly modulated to build to impressive crescendos, and the lyrics were steeped in fantasy and Wiccan culture. They immediately set in my impressionable mind the definition of what I thought folk rock was, and that definition persisted until my uncle introduced me to Bob Dylan. 

So coming back to Blackmore's Night as a more mature music critic, does the band hold up to my expectations? Well, for the most part, yes. As with Deep Purple, the instrumentation is easily the biggest strength of Blackmore's Night, and Ritchie Blackmore's guitar work has remained as solid as ever. And I must admit a certain fondness for Candice Night willowy, ethereal delivery that perfectly matches the quasi-mystical feel the band is attempting to cultivate. Unfortunately, while the band does have an impressive repertoire of material in myth and legend to draw upon, they do occasionally repeat cliches between songs a little more than they should. And while they are more innovative and interesting songwriters than Deep Purple, I would hesitate to put them on any sort of pedestal here. It also doesn't help that they've done some pretty hit-and-miss covers over the course of their careers (the most egregious example being of 'Times They Are A Changin', which is just awful and embarrassing).

But if anything, I think the biggest 'barrier to entry' with regards to Blackmore's Night is the fact that they're a bit difficult to take seriously, specifically due to their genre. As much as I have issues with Game of Thrones, I will admit that the one net positive the HBO series is doing is increasing the mainstream public's tolerance for fantasy in their pop culture (a process begun in most cases by The Lord of the Rings films). But even with that,  it can be tough to buy into an act that sings about magic and fae and fantasy with wholehearted sincerity, and Blackmore's Night doesn't have an ounce of cynicism or winking in their subject matter. They believe what they're selling, and thus it's absolutely no surprise that they only tend to play live at Renaissance fairs and smaller, medieval-themed venues - which also puts a definite ceiling on any mainstream success they're aiming to have. But then again, I'm not sure Ritchie Blackmore is actively looking for mainstream success in the same way he was with Deep Purple - to him, Blackmore's Night is a passion project, and he's not going to turn it into work.

So with all of that in mind, how is their discography? Well, I'd describe all of their previous albums as good, but I'd have a hard time calling them great, mostly due to inconsistency. Typically per album you'll get three or four great songs and a whole lot of passable material, but not much more. Their most recent album Autumn Sky (released in 2010) was probably on the lower end of that spectrum - not as shaky as their debut album Shadows of the Moon, but not as strong as Village Lanterne (yeah, they spell 'lanterne' with an extra 'e' - they're that kind of band).

So, in the past week, they released a new album, Dancer And The Moon - how does it fair?

album review: 'yeezus' by kanye west

I think it's necessary to discuss my original plan for how I was going to write this review, both so you can get a glimpse of my process and so I can add a bit of context to this whole thing.

You see, the second I heard that Kanye West was going to title his next album Yeezus, I got the immediate idea that it might be kind of fun to frame the review like a letter to Kanye West, to discuss his ego exploding out of control in a way that can only lead to cataclysmic disaster at some point down the road (bear in mind I still suspect this'll happen at some point - hell, I've been predicting it since My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy). You know, frame it like an intervention, a bit like the way I wrote my little letter to Taylor Swift that doubled as an a review of her album Red.

And make no mistake, I would have had plenty of material for this letter, because Kanye West's career has been one of the most intriguing adventures to watch for the past several years. He burst onto the scene as a hit producer and made three reasonably solid rap albums that I like a fair amount to this day. Granted, I didn't think they were anything all that special - Kanye's gift for sampling and production always made his instrumentation a treat, but his weaker flow and clumsy lyricism never really impressed me all that much. In that, I was content to slot him into the list of acts I considered good, but not great.

And then something happened to Kanye West. His mother passed away, his relationship ended badly, and the resulting crises of faith and loneliness drove Kanye to make one of the most influential hip-hop albums of the past five years, 808s & Heartbreak. A choice to dive straight into introspective, autotune-layered electropop split his fanbase violently and was hastily predicted by most to be a flop, but the subsequent critical acclaim and surprisingly strong sales proved them wrong - mostly because the album is incredibly good. Kanye's choice to use autotune as more than just pitch correction and instead use it to emphasize his loneliness and the isolating feelings of grief do wonders for the atmosphere of this album. And in contrast to the majority of fans and critics, I found 'Robocop' (which had a bizarre yet compelling tonal juxtaposition between lyrics and instrumentation) to be my favourite song on the album. There was grief there, but there was also light at the end of the tunnel, as it felt Kanye was finally gaining some context and moving towards something brighter.

That didn't happen, after an infamous incident with Taylor Swift, Kanye descended deeper into the nightmarish rabbit hole and made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which achieved incredible critical acclaim, with many critics declaring it his magnum opus. It took the mad genius of Kanye's production and married it to eclectic samples, a host of guest stars, and lyrics that didn't just expose Kanye's insanity, but brandished it proudly before the masses. 

Now I've had a, well, let's call it complicated relationship with this album. When I originally reviewed it on Facebook, I pissed off a lot of people by saying it's really not all that great, and certainly not the perfection that so many critics had claimed it was. And while I tend to revisit the album about once a year - sometimes you need unfiltered insanity and darkness - I'm increasingly convinced that while the album contains some of the greatest highs of Kanye's career (seriously, 'All of the Lights', 'Hell of a Life', 'Power', even 'Dark Fantasy' and 'Blame Game' are mindblowing), but ultimately doesn't work as a whole. Yes, the instrumentation and production are top-notch, but I've always had issues with Kanye's flow and there are enough awkward lines to knock too many of the songs off their pedestals. And this isn't even factoring in the extremely hit-and-miss guest star inclusions, none of which I feel really add much to the album.

And that isn't even touching album themes and the twisted pathology lurking inside this album. I will definitely admit that as a slice of the insanity inside Kanye's head, it's something entirely unique, but whenever it tries to build towards a theme or a coherent driving mechanism, it feels unfocused, indulgent, and oddly sloppy at points. Kanye tries to come across as an alpha-male douchebag or seductive predator on this album (and I can't help but admit there are moments here that the asshole I was throughout 2010 and early 2011 fucking adores), but it's undercut at every turn because there's no perspective and Kanye is too honest as a performer to embrace something remotely untrue. Instead of a coherent and focused work, we get Kanye attempting to explore his darkest neuroses and eventually finding them hollow and token. It reminds me strongly on a thematic level of Nick Cave's darker material, but while Kanye only found sadness and emptiness at the base levels of his psyche, Nick Cave actually found something darker, creepier, and genuinely gripping when he looked, a real horror - and his masterful skill was making all of us realize that we had that darkness too. But with Kanye, we don't get that connection in the same way, and I left feeling oddly distant from the album at the end of it. And considering how damn hard Kanye was trying to put it all out there and create that connection to curb his loneliness (seriously, go back through his material in recent years, it's a definite undercurrent that Kanye feels he has no true peers - although I'm conflicted whether or not his choice to expose his inner demons was the best way to win people over, which might have been part of the point, loneliness being his punishment), I can't help but feel it doesn't quite work for me.

So after two albums of material (a collaboration with Jay-Z in Watch The Throne, which was solid enough but didn't really stick, and Cruel Summer, a label launchpad collaboration that just did nothing for me whatsoever), Kanye was finally back with a new album titled Yeezus. Frankly, when I heard the title, I was just expecting a continuation of the shallower themes in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, just blown up to eleven. And given his material throughout 2012 and especially on Cruel Summer, I wasn't expecting much other than Kanye to wallow in his own ego. Hence, the 'intervention-review'.

I didn't get what I was expecting.

movie review: 'man of steel'

I like Superman more than Batman.

I'll give you a moment to go find your socks that just blew off, but let me also explain why, because it's key to certain elements of this review and why I don't think the rebooted Superman works all that well (spoilers, I'm not the biggest fan of Man of Steel, if you want the review in a sentence). This mostly has to do with certain misconceptions regarding the character and the mythos surrounding Superman, and I'm going to try and clear some of those up (yes, it's going to be one of those reviews).

To wit, when Siegel and Shuster created Superman, they were very much aware of the mythological parallels to the character such as Hercules and Moses, and they created him as a character who fought for social justice, an immigrant from another planet fighting for our world. It's also been theorized that Superman was considered a surrogate father figure, particularly to many of the young boys who read the comics in the 40s and 50s while their real fathers were engaged in the Second World War and the Korean War, not to mention the loss of Siegel's father in a robbery years earlier. Many, many writers who would follow them would take their own stabs and defining Superman, but in the end, a core distillation of Superman's role and values crystallized, as they did with Wonder Woman and Batman. 

Batman was the spirit of justice, Wonder Woman was the spirit of truth, and Superman was the symbol of hope.

I want you all to consider this for a moment. Superman is the symbol of hope, an alien from another planet, yet raised with our values and having a much stronger connection to Earth than he ever would the destroyed Krypton. He is a man who gains the most power not on his homeworld but on Earth, thanks to the yellow light rays of our sun. And yet he chooses not to represent himself as some ubermensch, some titan of power that rules us, but as a figure to which we all can look up. Many, many authors have played with the Christ symbolism in connection to Superman, and while I will argue there's definitely a grain of salt in that comparison, I don't think it quite encapsulates the other elements of his character - namely, his more human side. There's a degree of humility in Superman's choice of a secret identity - an unassuming reporter working for a newspaper, where he could inform the American public and ensure his travels could get him in places of danger that he could stop in his alter ego. His relationship with Lois Lane plays a big part in this story, both as a 'grounding' facet of his character and as a very real emotional link, showing his connection to us and our world.

Now, maybe it's just me, but that's potent material for writing a powerful story - but yet so many people don't see these elements in the character. Many tend to consider him a 'boring', 'stupid' character, overloaded with powers and strengths that make him invincible, and obviously a character without weakness can't have any notable threats. They don't understand why he doesn't just kill Lex Luthor or General Zod or why he doesn't enact the same brand of justice for which Batman is emblematic. Or, in a complete misunderstanding of the character, they point to things like this:

Yeah, it's a load of shit. As I stressed above, Superman is a person who has a much stronger and much more potent connection to his human roots than his Kryptonian ones. He was raised in Smallville, a little farm town in Kansas to be a good, compassionate, altruistic person (which is often where the 'stupid' adjective gets applied in the false equivalency where 'good'='dumb', which pisses me off to no end), and while he is aware his powers make him different from humanity, he does not think they place him above us. And from that, you can sketch out the best Superman stories, where it doesn't matter if he has incredible powers, but the ultimate futility of his task. He can't save everyone from everything, but he's going to try his damnedest anyway. He knows that people look to him as a symbol of hope, as someone whose values they want to emulate, and thus he must balance his very human desires with his chosen duty. He knows that people will look at him with fear and anger and jealousy and distrust, but he rises above that because he believes we all can be better.

It's no surprise kids fall in love with Superman. He's the adult who can fly and fight bad guys and shoot lasers out of his eyes, and he's going to do it no matter what and with a smile on his face once the bad guys are gone - in short, he's the idealized father figure for many of these kids. And yet the funny thing is that once those kids get past the teenager stage (where they all tend to embrace Batman over Superman because Superman 'isn't cool') and become adults, they tend to like Superman again, but for different reasons. They see him as the character who has to balance his love life and his job, who has to face impossible odds and somehow prevail, and who through all of it remains a good person. They don't care about his power set or his less-than-stellar gallery of villains - most can see past that and see someone deep down they want to emulate, an ideal to aspire towards.

That's potent stuff, there's real dramatic material there that has resonated time and time again, with the same archetypes stretching back through history. There's a reason Superman has persisted in the modern collective unconscious for as long as it has, perhaps putting the lie to Lois' first article in Superman Returns, 'Why The World Doesn't Need Superman'. And thus my interest was definitely piqued when I heard Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan were teaming up with a stellar cast to retell the Superman origin story yet again. And believe it or not, I immediately thought that while the choice of a director was solid (Zack Synder, despite all of the problems with him, has a gift for comic-book-esque shot composition and 'epic' scale if the script can support it), the problems might come from Nolan and his writing team. They understood Batman (mostly), but Superman's a tougher character to nail down and requires a bit more maturity and careful forethought. Could they pull it off?

album review: 'damage' by jimmy eat world

Ugh, I hate this. 

I hate that this is a factor in my enjoyment of songs, because it makes me look like the most nitpicking, audiophile asshole, the kind that bitches against iPods because of mp3 compression and only listens to FLACs, or the kind that remixes and remasters songs in his basement and because of that has an inflated feeling that 'he just knows music better'. Let me make this absolutely fucking clear - I completely get why people like listening to music at high bitrates, and I would be lying if I didn't say that I'd take the sound of good organic vinyl over some YouTube rip any day of the week. And yeah, I will completely stand behind artists like Nick Cave when he says that Henry's Dream didn't come out properly because of the shoddy production, and I will wholeheartedly support his choice to make a phenomenal live album where he basically replayed the album properly.

But with all of that in mind, music should be about music, not production. While there is a fine art to good production and mixing, it's arguably the least important element in comparison to the instrumentation and lyrics. The notes being played and the words being sung are the creative element, the raw spark of art - production and mixing are the editing desk, the polish, the filter from which the art is passed to us. It shouldn't matter if 'Satisfaction' by the Rolling Stones is played mono or stereo or if it was run through a high pass filter or the reverb is a little too high on Jagger's microphone, it's still 'Satisfaction' by the fucking Rolling Stones. 

But as much as I don't like it, I can't help but admit that production and mixing matter. They might be the least important element in this process, but they're definitely an element in this process that is disastrous to overlook. And not for the first time, I can't help but feel that if an element of the production for this band had been improved, I'd like them a lot more.

So with that, let's talk about Jimmy Eat World, yet another entry in the list of acts that I can definitely acknowledge is good and that I can kind of like, but I can never quite love, no matter how hard I try. But unlike a case like Radiohead, I can pinpoint exactly where Jimmy Eat World doesn't work for me: the vocal production and placement in the mix has never consistently worked.

Let me expand. The band burst into the underground in 1994 with their self-titled debut, which was decent enough to score them a small cult following that was quickly squashed by their 1996 follow-up Static Prevails. Now, there are a slew of other problems with Static Prevails beyond the vocal production mix, mostly in that the songwriting was pretty lousy and the instrumentation wasn't as polished, but most of these problems were cleaned up by the 1999 album Clarity. And yes, I'll be the first to acknowledge that the best elements of Jimmy Eat World's sound - the extremely solid guitar work, the bigness in their sound, their heartfelt (if occasionally self-obsessed) lyrics - were all here. But as much as I tried, I could never get over the fact that lead singer Jim Adkins' vocals were buried midway in the track behind the guitars, and were more often than not barely audible. 

That was the other factor that always annoyed me about Jimmy Eat World, namely that the vocal performance was never very strong, as Adkins' vocals always struck me as rather thin. Fortunately the band compensated for that on their next release Bleed American, pulling the vocals more to the front of the track and adding reverb and backing vocals to support Adkins, and sure enough Bleed American was their strongest album yet. They'd follow it with Futures and Chase This Light, both albums I really like but don't quite love, mostly due to the swarm of little irritations that always seemed to leap to the forefront of my mind, mostly surrounding Adkins' vocals and the occasional sloppy or immature bit of songwriting (the worst thing I'll ever say about the instrumentation is that on a few occasions it got a little cluttered or repetitive). And yet always the persistent problem I had on all three of those albums is that every so often - often enough to be noticeable and frustrating - the vocals were just drowned out entirely behind the roar of the guitars, and while I'll admit that this will always be a pet peeve of mine, it rankles here all the more because of how much Jimmy Eat World consistently got right.

And then they released Invented in 2010, and... well, I'll be more polite to it than some of the more rabid fans and say it was uneven. Sure, the trademark elements of Jimmy Eat World were here, and the vocals were high enough in the mix that they could usually be pulled out, but the attempts to add electronic elements and a female backing vocalist did nothing to help matters, and the songwriting hadn't improved (both in technical proficiency or subject matter) since Chase This Light in 2007. But it was on Invented they let lead guitarist Tom Linton sing lead vocals, and it was here that my problem with Jimmy Eat World finally crystallizes - the vocal production on Jim Adkins' voice never fits with the production of the rest of the track. Sure, his thin tenor matches the subject matter of the songs fairly well (Jimmy Eat World has always been one of the wussiest bands in alt rock and power pop, and that's saying something), but in comparison to the crashing, epic sounding guitars and pounding bass and drums, he always sounds drowned out, which ultimately comes down to an issue of vocal production. In comparison, Tom Linton's rasp might have less range but the vocal production done for his part of the mix flows much better.

But now it's 2013, and Jimmy Eat World have been active for over nineteen years - surely on their most recent album Damage they will have figured out the vocal production balance, right?

album review: 'the wack album' by the lonely island

As I've mentioned in a previous review, I don't tend to like reviewing comedy albums, and this is mostly rooted in two factors. For starters, everyone has different tastes in comedy, and I've long ago accepted I have differing tastes in comparison to the general population. Thus, if I'm going to be judging a comedy album (and since, I'll stress, my reviews are my undiluted opinions and thus are framed through my contextual vision), I feel that my review might be misleading, even if I explain my point of view in advance.

But even if I did lay all my cards on the table ahead of time, I'm still not sure I'd be a good comedy album reviewer, mostly because my knowledge of comedy is - at least in my point of view - somewhat limited. I don't tend to consider myself funny, I understand the fundamentals of setting up a joke but really have difficulty grasping some of the subtleties, and I haven't seen a lot of the comedy gold standards. Sure, I'm trying to catch up, but in comparison with my knowledge of music (I can play an instrument and sing, I can read sheet music, I've done a bit of production work, I have an in-depth knowledge of the charts, and I listen to a grotesque amount of material), I don't think I'm at a level where I can speak to comedy with the same expertise.

So why am I reviewing the new Lonely Island album, an act formed by three SNL actors that is fairly explicitly a comedy act? Well, here's the funny thing: I have a hard time dismissing them as a purely comedic exercise. Or to put it another way, like with Weird Al, I actually will give them credit as musical artists. That's something I don't often say about comedy acts, or even comedians attempting to be musicians (in case you all forgot, Eddie Murphy had a semi-successful singing career).

Now some of you are probably asking why I give The Lonely Island a pass here, particularly when you break the act down to its disparate elements, they really only have one main joke: taking the shallow conceits and style of modern hip-hop and rap and talking about sillier material, with the joke being that it's inherently funny to see a trio of white goofballs behaving like hardcore gangstas. Now there's more in the details, but The Lonely Island have structured a great deal of their career off of this joke, and for the most part, it has held up. And I do not mean to dismiss the talent or the ingenuity of The Lonely Island at all here - while they occasionally go for the gross-out humour more than I prefer, they still have great comic timing and a wide variety of subjects they tackle well. It also helps that unlike former SNL acts of the past - namely the Blues Brothers featuring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd - The Lonely Island aren't trying to be taken as 'serious' musicians or demanding respect from the musical community.

But here's the thing - in a bizarre twist that could only be explained by the changing trends in hip-hop and rap, The Lonely Island got respect from the musical community, and the incredible plethora of high-profile guest stars they continue to recruit for their work speaks to it. And while part of it likely comes from the fact that some pop stars wanted to jump on the bandwagon after Justin Timberlake and take the piss out of their own material, the major point is that in the shallow and increasingly ridiculous pop and rap landscape of the late 2000s, The Lonely Island fit in astoundingly well. Songs like 'Jizz In My Pants', 'I'm On A Boat', 'Jack Sparrow', 'Dick In A Box', 'I Just Had Sex', and many more did surprisingly well on the pop charts because their lyrical content wasn't that far removed from the pop scene as it was. And coupled with the fact that Andy Samberg and the rest of his crew knew how to write decent hooks, it's not entirely surprising why The Lonely Island did as well as they did. Hell, I'd argue on the musical front they managed to beat a fair number of the 'legit' artists that were putting out material during the club boom, with the most immediate comparison point being LMFAO (with their one joke from 'Sexy And I Know It' being 'Heheheh, butts'). 

But now it's 2013, and the hip-hop/rap world has changed a bit. The wave of darker, more serious-sounding PBR&B isn't as easy to parody. Well, that's not quite true, but I'd argue that serious, more conscientious rap is a little tougher to make silly jokes about than the avalanche of ridiculous club music. And there's also the legitimate concern that The Lonely Island, by attempting to sound like the darker, bleaker rap might lose some of their lightweight and fun personality. So, can they pull it off?

album review: 'grinning streak' by the barenaked ladies

What, you actually thought I wasn't going to open with this clip? Tsk, tsk, it's almost like none of you know me at all.

And yet, the clip raises an interesting point, and for an American audience, one could easily think that Jeff has a point here. After all, are The Barenaked Ladies that relevant or essential in today's day and age? Why do so many people leap to defend the band, when they've never quite earned the critical praise or success to merit such a reaction? To put it simply, why do people care about The Barenaked Ladies?

Well, I'm sure everyone has their reasons - I know I like them because they're excellent lyricists, have a gift for catchy hooks, and a real poignancy that runs through their best tracks - but I think it comes down to one simple fact: The Barenaked Ladies are a musical personification of the awkward yet adorable teenage nerd. Putting aside all of the songs that seem to be clearly written from that perspective, The Barenaked Ladies might be one of the nerdiest bands to ever perform. Sure, Devo and Depeche Mode fall into the same category, but The Barenaked Ladies seemed to be of a different type in that they clearly embraced their distinct lack of coolness and used it to make unironic, incredibly sincere music. And yes, there was plenty of hidden depths and darkness in some of their material, but for the most part, their discography is much lighter and happier than most would expect, particularly for an alt-rock band from the 90s. And in an era soaked in ironic detachment and a morose 'whatever' attitude, The Barenaked Ladies' wholehearted embrace of sincerity stood out. And thus, it makes sense why people cherish their memories of The Barenaked Ladies: they were the solitary rays of sunshine in the grunge-ridden alt-rock scene of the 90s.

That said, I also get why Jeff has a certain distaste for the band, and as a fan of The Barenaked Ladies, I would be hardpressed to consider all of their output solid. Part of me knows that their major label debut Gordon wouldn't have been nearly as popular without the bootlegging phenomenon of the time period, and while that album is indeed one of the best albums of the 90s, it's not surprising that many people thought the band would flame out, particularly considering their subpar followups with Maybe You Should Drive and Born On A Pirate Ship. Fortunately, the band had recovered by the end of the 90s and put out Stunt and Maroon, two ridiculously great albums that seemed to fit perfectly in the sunny, optimistic music scene of the time, even despite the occasional biting satire and hidden darkness lurking in each album.

And then 9/11 happened, and happy, optimistic music evaporated from the charts, taking The Barenaked Ladies' success along with it. It's really the only explanation I can think of why The Barenaked Ladies stopped having hits, because it wasn't as if they got less witty or their material got worse. In fact, many critics argued that their next few albums got even better, with sharp wit and an uncanny knack for memorable hooks anchoring their material. But this was the era of post-grunge and emo-driven pop rock, and while some alternative rock acts managed to notch hits, The Barenaked Ladies wouldn't have really fit well with modern radio. I hesitate to use the term 'too good' for airplay, because I don't think it's apt - no, if anything, I think The Barenaked Ladies stopped having hits because their music defiantly lacked a surface 'edge' to it. They never were a 'sexy' act, they were distinctly uncool, and while their songwriting had plenty of cutting words and barbed themes, I can definitely see where mainstream radio wouldn't have accepted them.

It didn't help matters that in 2009, Steven Page left the band amidst rumours of cocaine addiction. This was a big problem for The Barenaked Ladies, half because Steven Page was one of the faces of the band, and half because he was also one of the better songwriters of the act. His music tended to be more sour and complex, utilizing his acrid wit to disguise some real darkness in his material, and a lot of people thought that The Barenaked Ladies couldn't really survive without him. Yet in 2010, they put out the reasonably sold album All In Good Time, which worked as well as it did by focusing tightly on the departure of Steven Page and making that loss the emotional core of the album. And for the most part, it worked, mostly on the strength of Ed Robertson's incredibly emotive delivery and the lyrics that seemed to leap straight from the heart. 

But outside of the mild chart success of 'You Run Away', The Barenaked Ladies got nowhere with All In Good Time, mostly because alternative rock was getting nowhere on the charts. Keep in mind this was 2010 - the club boom was in full swing, and modern rock radio was on life support, subsisting on the Foo Fighters and whatever was left in the post-grunge wasteland. Even if The Barenaked Ladies had released another Gordon or Stunt, they wouldn't have broken through the club hits that year.

But now it's 2013, and the charts are much more receptive to rock music. 90s and 70s nostalgia is in, and if there was a band that could define the 90s 'mood' in popular culture, I'd probably cite The Barenaked Ladies. And on cue, they have a new album, albeit with the disquieting title Grinning Streak (those two words just sound awkward together, at least to me). So will it be the hit to catapult them back into stardom, or the final blow to sink their careers for good?

album review: 'charlemagne: the omens of death' by christopher lee

Let's talk about vanity projects.

You all know the ones. These are the dreams of the rich auteur that nobody could expect or predict, the passion projects to produce something for which mainstream society did not ask. The artistic endeavours of solitary vision, often entirely bankrolled and controlled by the auteur himself. These aren't pieces to fill out a balance sheet or made for contractual obligations, these are works made often for their own sake, or to convey some artistic vision for which the auteur must have absolute control. These are projects like Tommy Wiseau's The Room, the new Will Smith movie After Earth, and Kanye West's Runaway short film.

But let me make something absolutely clear: just because something is a vanity project doesn't mean it has to suck. Indeed, you could argue that in some cases giving the auteur absolute control can produce art of mad genius that would have been inevitably axed on the cutting room floor. But there's a reason that most vanity projects tend to have a negative stigma, and that's because such works become rife with the absolute best and worst traits of the artist, and without a steadying hand, these projects can run wildly over budget or completely out of control. They're a nightmare for studios, because they're often rightly terrified that such projects will ultimately fail and potentially destroy their creators, not to mention prove ruinous to the financial backers.

So when Sir Christopher Lee decided to create his own record label and make a heavy metal album, it's hard not to see it as a vanity project, particularly considering the subject matter. I mean, it's a symphonic metal concept album based around the life of Charlemagne, Frankish king and first Holy Roman Emperor, filled with meticulous historical accuracy - outside of the sheer novelty of it, where is the audience for this?

Well, perhaps novelty would be enough, if not the sheer audacious awesomeness of the project. Keep in mind that in 2010, Christopher Lee was nearly ninety, with a massive career in film spanning over two hundred movies and several iconic roles (oh, and plus he was in the British S.A.S. and worked as a real Nazi hunter, in addition to playing Dracula and Saruman). And while he had done voice work before and even collaborated with other metal acts like Manowar and Rhapsody of Fire, it was a little hard to believe that now he wanted to make his own full-length metal album.

But Christopher Lee was undaunted by age or typical conventions of what most people in their 90s do, so he made the album anyway, releasing Charlemagne: By The Sword and The Cross in 2010 and winning the 'Spirit of Metal' award in the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden God ceremony. What I have found interesting, though, is that while many people have acknowledged that it is indeed awesome Christopher Lee was releasing metal albums at his age, very few people have actually listened to the album, or bothered to leave any sort of critical review on it. And really, who am I to criticize one of the greatest badasses - both on screen and in reality - who ever lived, a man with the passion and ambition to make heavy metal albums at his age and deliver a characteristically imposing performance?

And indeed, all of that is true. But having actually listened to Charlemagne: By The Sword and The Cross, I can't help but feel slightly underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, it isn't bad by any stretch of the mind - Christopher Lee has done far worse throughout his career, believe me - but there are problems with this album that are really difficult to ignore. For starters, while the level of historical detail is impressive, too often the lyrics read like a history textbook, and certain segments become hard to follow. Another problem is that it really isn't as heavy or booming or impactful as you would expect a Christopher Lee metal album to be, and while the man has a great voice, there are too many times you feel that more energy on his part would have greatly strengthened the drama he was trying to create. And while some of the performers on the album do all right, I can't really think of any standout moments in the instrumentation or the lyrics or the performances. 

Once again, it's not a bad album - it's clear that it's a labour of love and it's incredibly articulate - but the lack of poetry in the lyrics and instrumentation doesn't lend itself to a good dramatic presentation of Charlemagne's life. And considering that Christopher Lee definitely chose the right genre and tone to encapsulate this bloody time in history, it's a little disappointing that he doesn't quite get the emotional stakes consistently. After all, there have been plenty of metal albums about war and bloody conflict and European history, but the best of the material tends to ground the stories in potent emotion and humanity, and there really isn't enough of that here. In comparison to, say, Les Miserables, which could have done well to appropriate some of the greater historical weight of Victor Hugo's novel, Charlemagne: By The Sword and The Cross could have done well to try for greater emotional stakes. As it is, the album sometimes feels a little inert, stylistically sound but lacking true soul.

Fortunately,  Christopher Lee wasn't quite finished with his Charlemagne story, and this year, he has released a new album of material (along with rumours that there was going to   be an adapted musical of By The Sword and The Cross, which might not really be a bad way to go). One thing that definitely intrigued me was Christopher Lee's statement that this album would be less symphonic metal and more death metal, heavier and darker. So what do I think of Charlemagne: The Omens of Death?

album review: 'the devil put dinosaurs here' by alice in chains

What do you do when a member of your band dies?

It's a question that no act ever wants to consider, but it's a sad fact of life, and being a rock star seems to only shorten that brief span between the cradle and the grave. The hard partying lifestyle, the drug abuse, the bouts of suicidal depression, any one could be enough to kill a musician, and while those musicians are often deified, the question of if/how the band can carry on is an entirely different minefield. Some acts fall apart, never to reform, mostly because the man/woman who died was near the nucleus of the group (Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis of Joy Division, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Freddie Mercury, the list can easily go on). Some acts carry on, and for better or for worse the replacement member will always be compared with the original (Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, Bon Scott of AC/DC, Cliff Burton of Metallica). Unfortunately, many of these talented musicians to replace their fallen originals never really rise out of the shadows (obviously in the list I provided above, all three are highly arguable exceptions).

So thus it proved very interesting when Alice In Chains announced announced their fourth studio album of new material to be released in 2009, featuring the replacement of late lead singer Layne Staley with singer William DuVall. This hadn't the first time a band member had left/been replaced (bassist Mike Inez had replaced Mike Starr in 1994), but Layne Staley had left a long shadow thanks to his role as one of the leading figures of grunge and for his excellent voice. And while DuVall had done a bit of touring with the band, there were many questions whether or not he'd be able to fill Staley's shoes.

Fortunately for everyone, Alice In Chains' fourth album Black Gives Way To Blue turned out to be pretty excellent, and fans embraced DuVall's vocals like AC/DC fans did with Brian Johnson's after Bon Scott's passing. It was the sort of reception that you don't typically see in the hard rock/metal scene, and it spoke of good things to come. And in 2011, fan interest was piqued when it was announced a follow-up album was on the way.

Now, I'll admit straight out of the gate that grunge isn't typically my thing. Sure, I like Pearl Jam and Nirvana and the occasional Bush or Soundgarden song, but I wouldn't exactly qualify it as a genre of choice for me. I tend to feel the same about 'traditional' heavy metal like Metallica and Slayer and Megadeth - I can definitely acknowledge quality when I hear it, but the genre's never really caught my fancy. I mention this because my liking for Alice In Chains significantly more than the majority of their contemporaries on both sides of grunge and heavy metal has always struck me as a bit odd. But really, I think it comes down to a few factors: a strong hook where the guitars and bass complimented the singing, vocals I could actually understand (yes, i can tolerate dirty vocals and growling, but I do like being able to make out the lyrics), and subject matter that was willing to be serious without devolving into undefined rage. Ultimately, that's why I think I like Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains a bit more than their contemporaries, and it helps both bands had a gift for minor key melodies and a bigness of sound that definitely worked to their advantage.

All of these factors are on display with Black Gives Way To Blue, and as a album about dealing with grief and the darkness of the past, Alice In Chains returned in the best possible way by acknowledging and accepting the past while bringing a new singer to the table. And boy, did it pay dividends, with critical acclaim, solid sales, and general fan acceptance, even though it was their heaviest album yet. Some critics even compared some of the riffs to doom metal, and while I wouldn't go that far in the comparison, Black Gives Way To Blue was an album where that tone fits surprisingly well. It's an album about grief and moving on from suffering, and thus it made sense that it was heavier and darker.

So what do I think of Alice In Chains' follow-up, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, coming into a landscape where post-grunge is near-extinct and indie rock now rules the shelves?

album review: 'random accessed memories' by daft punk

You know, for every terrible will.i.am or Chris Brown album I review, there's one great benefit to this gig, and it's a fairly simple one: getting the chance to go through the discographies of the greats.

It's a real thrill of anticipation, knowing that you're going to be perusing the collected works of acts that have amassed critical praise and massive success, but that you've never really had the chance to enjoy in detail. It's that amazing feeling when you realize you've discovered an artist for the first time (in your mind, at least) and you're experiencing something special, getting the chance to listen or watch something that can open your mind to all new possibilities. Because as fun as it can be to tear the justly deserving a new one, it's even more fun to find an act that has experienced critical praise and discover for yourself just how and why they got it. And while you will run into occasional duds or stretches of mediocrity, more often than not you find greatness. Of course, it's even more fun to find an unjustly overlooked act and sing their praises to the high heavens (which was my Nick Cave experience), but sometimes it's just as revelatory to join with the crowd.

And thus it becomes so cruelly ironic that it is only now I'm examining Daft Punk, one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved electronic acts of all time, and one that has built so much of their music on the principle of bringing people together. I'm completely serious here: up until this week, my experience of listening to Daft Punk has been confined to the few singles I've heard and a viewing of Interstella 5555 a long time ago. I've known they're great - they're one of the few unequivocably great things about TRON: Legacy - but I've never really had the chance to delve into the Daft Punk oeuvre.

Now, those of you who have read these reviews before likely know why I've been slow to listen to Daft Punk, but I'm sure a few of you are asking, 'well, if you knew Daft Punk was so goddamn great, why the hell didn't you listen to them before?' And really, that's a completely fair question - unlike Nick Cave or Depeche Mode, Daft Punk really don't have the massive backlog discography that would render tearing through their early albums all that strenuous. But those of you who have read my reviews before likely remember my general objections to reviewing electronica, mostly because I'm still not all that sure how to do it properly. That's one of the reasons you never saw a review of Armin van Buuren's new trance album that came out early this month - as much as they'd make my reviews considerably shorter, I tend to respond better when it comes to more lyrical material that relies more on words and less on feeling. And considering so much of electronica is based on feeling and mood (unless you're a serious sound nerd who can pull apart individual pieces of the song and assign meaning to them - I've seen a few of these guys and they're something else), I feel a little unqualified to talk about it.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I can speak at great length about an electronic act like The Chemical Brothers, of whom I'm a big fan. But this, I think, comes down to an issue of construction - so much of The Chemical Brothers' material is based upon judiciously chosen samples and a semi-coherent narrative that I find them more accessible, at least for reviewing purposes. It's a little easier to chart out album themes and messages with lyrics or samples, instead of just coming from the musical 'feel', per se.

But Daft Punk were different, at least on their early albums. They came onto the scene in the late 90s with Homework, and were immediately distinguishable from the rest of the Eurodance with an embrace of funky electronica and an array of weirdness in their audiovisual style. Like the rest of their contemporaries, the thematic elements of their music were about bringing people together to dance and have a great time, but the introduction of funk into the mix gave their music a strange edge that was distinctive, but not confrontational. In comparison to the sugary, super-optimistic dance tracks of the mid-to-late 90s, Daft Punk were expressing the same emotions but filtering them through a very different aesthetic, which gave their music a lot of character and personality. Their embrace of mid-to-late 70s funk tunes might seem a bit confrontational for electronica, but by filtering the energy and looseness of funk through their unique vision they created a sound unlike any of their contemporaries. It was a fusion of two musical genres very different in tone and theme, but very alike in energy and passion, creating something very much unlike anything else in modern music.

Then came Discovery and Interstella 5555, and at least to me, these two are halves of the same incredible whole. The music so perfectly matches the animation that considering one without the other feels a little incomplete, but it's a real testament to how great the disco-inspired album is that it still manages to hold up as an incredibly solid album on its own. If I was forced to make a choice between Discovery and Homework... damn, that's a tough choice, but I'd probably go for Discovery if only due to the fact that it's a little tighter and the disco melody lines are a little stronger. Plus, the sound is a bit more varied and there's a lot of emotional texture on Discovery that I really appreciated. As it is, it's one of the greatest electronic albums of all time and I can't help but place it in the upper echelons of great music.

And then Daft Punk made Human After All, and I'll be the first one to say that I don't dislike this album with the same intensity that a lot of Daft Punk fans do. Yes, it's not nearly as good as Homework or Discovery, but I still dug the hell out of the sludgy, rawer feel they were looking to create. The problem was that they didn't quite deviate enough from the formula, which got old and tired pretty fast. But while I'm convinced Daft Punk could have made a stronger album here with the material they were pursuing, it was enough to push Daft Punk back towards the material that made them stronger and iconic. 

And with that, after a series of live cuts and soundtracks, they made Random Access Memories, the now critically-acclaimed album that has been embraced and beloved by many? So what do I think of it?

album review: 'love, lust, faith, and dreams' by 30 seconds to mars

I've written extensively before about good acts that I just don't care about. These are groups or singers that I can acknowledge are talented and good, but they don't provoke any reaction from me, and despite my efforts, I can't get excited about these bands. It really does bug me, but everyone has their own personal tastes and I can understand why some acts just aren't my thing.

So what about the acts that I don't care about who aren't good? Well, for the most part, they don't get a lot of thought or energy from me, because I'm not one who enjoys hating things just for the sake of hating them. It's a lot of energy giving a shit about things I despise, so really, when I discover acts that don't provoke a reaction from me and who suck, the only thing I can do is just ignore them. And really, this works out rather well, because I don't have to worry about pissing off fanboys or about maintaining a steady stream of vitriol.

And for the longest time, 30 Seconds To Mars was one of those acts. I knew they existed, I knew they had fans, I knew that some people I liked in university liked their music, and really, that was the extent of my knowledge of this band. And when faced with the choice to review either the new 30 Seconds To Mars album or Random Access Memories, the new Daft Punk album that seems to be the second coming of Saturday Night Fever for the modern age, I chose to buck the trend. Instead of reviewing the new Daft Punk like everyone and their cat, I chose to go after 30 Seconds To Mars. I mean, I was expecting a mediocre act, and I had always heard that lead singer Jared Leto was a little pissy, so I didn't exactly hope for much when I started going through their discography. I had low expectations.

album review: 'modern vampires of the city' by vampire weekend

Let's talk about hype.

Yeah, I know it's crass and populist and it's the sort of thing most established critics won't deign to discuss, but I think it's important to at least talk about, particularly considering we critics are often responsible for it. As much as trailers and news and media buzz will get seats in the theaters and records off the shelves, critical praise can be instrumental in moving product, particularly when it comes to the independent music scene, or acts that never achieved mainstream acceptance. 

For an example, I published my review of Now What?! by Deep Purple on April 29th, and I gave it a very positive review (because it deserves it, that album was awesome). And since then, I've noticed my review of that album has been linked on a couple music blogs and forums. And while I'm extremely grateful for those hits and those links, it also cast into sharp relief the fact that people will spread the opinions of critics they like, and thus the critic has a certain responsibility to manage expectations. And as a critic who has a reputation for analyzing material likely more than many consider it is worth, I can definitely understand why some cynical types would denigrate my reviews as contributing to the 'hype' machine, convincing the gullible that there is some greater meaning in the music. 

And while I consider that opinion disingenuous and a little insulting, I can't deny that critical opinions have weight in the popular context. Sure, you'll have your fair arsenal of skeptics who will want to be convinced and they'll ignore the critics, to say nothing of fans who'll buy everything certain acts put out regardless of substance, but people look to critics because they want to make intelligent purchasing decisions with regards to their entertainment. And that's one of the reasons the critic's voice does have some weight in popular culture - when they have access to the entertainment before most, they can contribute to the hype machine in both positive and negative ways. Positive hype can spin a lot of money for an act by convincing undecided buyers, while negative hype can be absolutely poisonous. And while larger properties are less likely to be shifted by hype, one way or another, a smaller act can be crushed by bad hype or elevated beyond their wildest dreams by critical praise.

And incidentally, this raises yet another problem I have with Pitchfork, namely because the site has had a publicized desire to push the indie and hip-hop culture landscape towards whatever might be deemed 'the next big thing' in the underground scene, and given that their album rankings have demonstrable power to increase sales, they have had some success in trying to define the sound of the indie and hip-hop scene. Take, for instance, the massive success of Channel ORANGE, an excellent album that would have likely been overlooked without the critical praise showered by every critic, including Pitchfork, and it's no surprise that the muted PBR&B sound that Frank Ocean created on that album has become prevalent in the modern R&B scene. 

But with that being the case, there's a very real problem that comes with hype generation, and that's the rationality behind the hype. Too often it feels like Pitchfork is seeking to jump on new trends not because they hold depth or interesting new sounds or because they represent provocative artistic direction, but because they're simply the next new thing. It's the consumerist desire to be trendy and 'in', and while this attitude has taken root in hipster culture, it has come at the loss of sincerity. Yeah, I really like Channel ORANGE, but I don't love it in the same way I love The Zac Brown Band's Uncaged or Ke$ha's Warrior (both I consider to be 'better' albums, by the way), and it gets more than a little irritating when it's held up as some great transcendent album. This was similar to one of the many issues I had with Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and while I've warmed to it a bit more two and a half years later, I'm still very conscious of the fact that it didn't come close to earning the avalanche of critical praise it got. 

And look, I like liking things. I like being able to agree with the rest of the critics and saying that an album is as good or as bad as it really is. I like being able to say something is awesome and showing as many people as I can. But I like to explain why I like or dislike something, and I feel that too often the hype machine shuts down this critical discourse. And sure, most people won't care to justify why they like something, but the job of a critic is to explain why they think something works or doesn't work, and when they become part of the hype machine, the problem is exacerbated. 

And with all of that, let's talk about Vampire Weekend, one of the most hyped acts indie rock has seen in a long time.

movie review: 'star trek: into darkness'

"I've never really been a fan of Star Trek.

Granted, I've seen the movies, but I've never watched the TV show, and while I have vague ideas about certain popular elements of the franchise (most drawn from when I had to research elements of the franchise for a high school debate), I've never really cared about it all that much. You could say that it was because I was exposed to Star Wars before Star Trek, but for the most part, I just have never really been interested.

That being said, I respect Star Trek for what it is, and Gene Roddenberry's original vision of the franchise. It was a series filled with great dreams of manifest destiny, of going to places where no human has gone before, exploring that last great frontier. As a guy with more than a passing interest in science, I have huge respect for that drive, and I'm still pissed that the US space program, once one of the frontrunners of science and technology in the world, has been gutted over the past several years.

So with that in mind, it might not come as any surprise to most of you that I never really liked the Star Trek reboot. Oh, don't get me wrong, McCoy and Scotty were great, and Spock was pretty good, but the writing was very subpar (even on the standards of Star Trek) and Chris Pine has the emotional range of a tree stump and is maybe a tenth as likeable. He is a terrible Captain Kirk, and I sincerely hope that they don't continue this franchise - I mean, when your writing sucks and your leading man is awful, your franchise doesn't have much hope."

I wrote those paragraphs a bit less than two years ago as a part of my Transformers: Dark of the Moon review that I published on Facebook (spoiler alert, that movie was shit), and to the most part, I stand by them. Having had more of a chance to get familiar with the Star Trek franchise (albeit not to the level of serious fandom), I can definitely see why the franchise earned its place among sci-fi and pop culture. There have been rough patches and bad spots, but generally the series had some respectable concepts and occasional moments of absolute brilliance.

And really, so much of my admiration of the Trek franchise comes from two factors: the embrace of intelligence and philosophy in the plotting (at least in the better episodes); and the thematic undercurrent of futuristic utopianism. Star Trek, unlike some of its counterparts, tended towards an optimistic belief in humankind, that we as a species were good enough to go where no man has gone before, that we could indeed begin to colonize the galaxy.

And then J.J. Abrams reinvented the franchise as a popcorn action flick for the lowest common denominator.

And you know, as much as I strongly disagree with Abrams being selected as the director of the upcoming Star Wars film, I'd take him as a director there over Star Trek any day of the goddamn week, mostly because Star Trek is a franchise that at least tries to have more intellectual heft than Star Wars. To see a franchise like Star Trek boiled down to an at-best action blockbuster isn't just bad, it's depressing. It reflects the state of modern action movies, which has absolutely no faith in the intellect of its audience, and where elements of legitimate science are tossed aside in favour of ridiculous action setpieces that can only hope to make some vestige of sense on a good day. It gets even worse when I saw The Daily Show interview with J.J. Abrams where he flat-out admits he didn't like the original Star Trek series because it was 'too philosophical' - that's the fucking POINT! It's science fiction, and so much of science is inherently linked to philosophy that when you strip away the philosophy, you lose the rich undercurrent of meaning that made the Star Trek movies at least engaging! 

And frankly, that's one of the reasons J.J. Abrams has never endeared himself to me as a director of anything - because I look at him and I don't see anything besides some decent technical chops in direction and writing. Yes, the man can write a decent homage and build a decent mystery. But so many of the pay-offs to those mysteries are so limp and lacking in meaning that all the weight of his films gets sucked out the airlock. As a filmmaker, I have no goddamn idea what Abrams is trying to say or any underlying philosophy behind his work, and as much as he clearly worships Spielberg, he has none of the genuine heart and optimism in his direction and composition that makes his movies feel like Spielberg. Looking at the great popular directors - Kubrick, Spielberg, Lucas, Mallick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese - all of them had deep thematic resonance in their films that made them stand out and mean something, damn it! There's a reason that so many gangsters began adopting Vito and Michael Corleone's mannerisms after seeing The Godfather, and it wasn't just because they 'sounded cool' - it was because on a subconscious level the performances and script had a resonant power and dignity and class that so many gangsters deeply desired.

Hell, take a look at the modern wave of directors. Shane Black, Neil Blomkamp, Michael Mann, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, Zack Snyder, Christopher Nolan, they all have something to say with their direction that can elevate their films. Hell, even fucking Michael Bay and Uwe Boll and Tyler fucking Perry have something to say through their direction and writing when they make films! Sure, it might be absolutely incompetent or repugnant, but at least it's something attempting to add weight and mood and atmosphere and meaning to what they put on screen. But with directors like J.J. Abrams and Tim Story, I see none of that ambition, none of that underlying philosophy that steers their camera. At best, I see technical proficiency - that's it. At worst, I see a complete misunderstanding and disregard of theme and symbolism, to say nothing of the intellectual properties from which their films are derived.

And coming back to Star Trek, it really doesn't help matters when you replace William Shatner (who isn't that good of an actor, but has had some great moments) with Chris Pine, the biggest walking dearth of charisma this side of Tyler Perry (who was, incidentally, in the Star Trek reboot in 2009). Coupled with a lightweight script and a forgettable villain, Star Trek is a film that might have satisfied box offices with impressive revenue, but did so by catering to the lowest of the cultural demographic.

But to be completely fair, Chris Pine has improved marginally as an actor in the past four years, and when buzz began to circulate that Benedict Cumberbatch (he of the magnificent Sherlock BBC series) would be joining the cast as the main villain, I was intrigued despite myself. Sure, I had no hope in J.J. Abrams as a director, and I had no illusions that the writing would be good, but at least they'd have to take the film in an interesting direction, right? They've already established the new cast, that'd mean we'd be forced to see character development now that the origin stories are out of the way. It couldn't be that bad, right?

Oh, I was wrong. It wasn't just that bad - it was worse than I ever could have imagined. In fact, Star Trek: Into Darkness stands as a colossal failure of a movie - and to discuss it, I'll need to go into deeper detail on why it fails, and that'll require spoilers, which I will place after the jump and/or the next several paragraphs. Like with Iron Man 3, you will have plenty of warning.

Let's start with the good. Most of the characters aren't bad - Karl Urban as McCoy, Zoe Seldana as Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and even John Cho delivers impressively as Sulu. The score is excellent, and for the most part, the film seems well-shot (although I'd still argue Abrams moves the camera around way too much and the lens flares do get aggravating). The dialogue can occasionally be witty or humorous, with Zachary Quinto's Spock getting some great laughs simply by giving Chris Pine's Kirk a look or simply due to some awkward silence (although I will say the audience I saw this film with was way too eager to give this film any sort of laughter, which was frustrating).

As for new characters, Peter Weller did deliver as the Starfleet Admiral, and it's always nice to see Robocop take the screen. And yeah, the inner Sherlock geek inside of me loved Benedict Cumberbatch's intense terrorist John Harrison and it was more than a little awesome to watch him kicking all amounts of ass. Cumberbatch is working his ass off here, trying to invest his character with as much depth and complexity as he can, and on a surface level, he's kind of awesome.

And that's also precisely where I have to stop talking about the good things and go into the real, disastrous problems with this movie (before discussing the spoilers that make me and other Trek fans scream bloody murder). For starters, as occasional beautiful as this film can be, it has a strange weightlessness to it that really threw me off, mostly due to the camera's gymnastics and the extreme overuse of CGI. I had a really hard time getting invested in the characters and the plot because too much of the direction stripped away the weight of the film. This comes from a major issue of pacing, which is half a problem of the script (I'll get to this) and half the issue of the editing, which is very choppy and doesn't allow the film to breathe in the slightest. Say what you will about the 2009 Star Trek movie, but at least it took the time to have slower moments and get acquainted more with the characters and what they think and feel. Into Darkness, on the other hand, feels rushed in the worst possible way, and has no idea how to build to a proper emotional climax. For a quick example, Kirk loses captaincy of the Enterprise and gains it back within ten, absolutely tension-less minutes, right at the beginning of the film.

Granted, any character development feels like it was blasted out the nearest airlock, because no character goes through the slightest bit of an arc in this film, or at least not one that hadn't been blatantly recycled from better movies, mostly from the 2009 reboot. Kirk's in particular feels like a major retread from the last film, with him learning absolutely nothing by the end of this movie. Now, I could typically overlook some of this, but Chris Pine's terribly wooden acting and the awful, awful script just make it shit-blisteringly obvious. I wouldn't be surprised that if at some point, they just copy-and-pasted dialogue straight from the previous movie.

And speaking of dialogue, this is also an issue where the script falls apart completely - mostly because nobody in this film talks like a reasonable human being!  Sure, you can get away with hammy dramatics (this is Star Trek, after all), but when you contrast it with the weak witticisms that feel forklifted in from your average sitcom, the tone completely collapses. And while Simon Pegg and Karl Urban play their characters damn near perfectly, neither of them are on screen long enough to save this film. The one thing that Cumberbatch does that's inestimably good for this movie is add real heft and emotion to his lines, so much to the point where his character was a lot more engaging than the rest of the film.  

And now I have to get to spoilers. No jokes, after this paragraph, I'm going to spoil every single one of the twists that Abrams piles into this shit and explain why they turn this film into the colossal pile of junk it is. If you want my advice, skip this movie. Sure, on the surface, it's the average popcorn flick and if you have an air-cooled brain and just want to watch flashing lights on the screen, you'll probably find this movie engaging. But if you're looking to think in this movie, or you're a fan of Trek at all, this movie isn't worth the heart palpitations you're going to get coming out of this movie. Do not see this, do not give Abrams any of your money to see this, do not validate his filmmaking or his 'mystery box' ethos of plotting. And I'm about to smash that mystery box apart in the next paragraph: you have been warned.

album review: 'demi' by demi lovato

You know, I tend to delve into the ‘deeper meaning’ of pop music more than most, and because of this, I tend to get hit with the comment that I ‘read too deeply into things’. And I can understand the reasoning behind that criticism, the point being that most pop acts don’t put nearly as much thought into the deeper meaning behind their songs, and when they do, it often appears haphazard and slapdash, excuses hurriedly pulled together to weakly rationalize questionable lyrics.

And I guess to some extent that could be true – I do tend to hunt for thematic elements and narrative through-lines more than most when I analyze albums, and one could argue that the pop artists aren’t paying as much attention to these elements as I am, if they even consider them at all. And as much as I’d like to counter that argument with the point that I might be picking up on subconscious elements that the artists themselves don’t quite know the best way to articulate, that does make me come across somewhat pretentious and up my own ass. And frankly, if I hold to my view that the artist’s POV is sacrosanct, I guess I have to buy the occasional poorly-articulated nonsense that some artists use to explain the merits of their music.

All of that said, I still believe that pop music, even at its most plastic, can say something of meaning, or can have emotional resonance like any other genre. For example, I recently relistened to S Club 7’s S Club album from 1999, and I was surprised how much the shallow bubblegum pop made me feel in a better mood. Sure, the platitudes they espouse aren’t particularly unique or well-defined, but they deliver everything with such energy, cheer, and exuberance that I can’t help but enjoy it (the superb production really does help here as well). For another example, I remain surprised at how well Britney Spears’ ‘Lucky’ works for me, a pop song that grows all the more poignant every year Britney’s career takes another wrong turn

Really, this emotional response can be extracted from any artist, whether they be a bearded indie rocker or a teenage pop starlet, and I’m not one to deny myself from liking something because of the performer (my unabashed love of Ke$ha is proof enough of that). And sure, while I can’t deny that somewhere inside of me buried deep down is a squealing teenage girl who is eagerly awaiting every new teen pop sensation (saying things like ‘OMG BACKSTREET BOYS ARE COMING OUT WITH A NEW ALBUM THIS YEAR AND IT’S GOING TO BE AWESOME’), I’m not one to deny my own feelings towards a pop song or artist when things work. I’m definitely going to intellectualize and explain those feelings – because that’s who I am – but I’m not one for denying my liking for something just because of the artist’s identity or personal life.

And with all of that in mind, let’s talk about Demi Lovato.

Demi Lovato is the sort of pop act to which most music critics don’t pay a lot of attention, and it’s not hard to understand why. Like her fellow ‘teen Disney princesses’ Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, and newcomer Ariane Grande, Demi Lovato is – on the surface – reminiscent of the teen pop sensation of the late 90s, and was marketed as such. Attractive, making generic synthetic pop, one could easily say that she was as plastic as the brand of toys that undoubtedly accompanied her Disney roots.

And as a member of the three who have had the most impact on the pop charts (the other two being her friends Selena Gomez, who I’ll talk about in greater detail when her album comes out this year, and Miley Cyrus), Demi Lovato was probably the act I liked the least. It wasn’t that she was bad, but she lacked the sleek elegant production of Selena Gomez’s better tunes and the rawer edge of Miley’s stronger tracks. Compared to Selena’s ‘Naturally’ and Miley’s ‘See You Again’, Demi couldn’t really match that level of intensity, despite being arguably the best singer of the trio. And really, it grew all the more disappointing considering her public life had taken dark turns into eating disorders and self-mutilation, very little of which added deeper emotional resonance to her material. Now granted, this isn’t entirely surprising, given the severe drop-off in songwriting credits as her career progressed, but it does feel like a squandered opportunity to add a bit of ‘reality’ to the teenage pop starlet’s material.

And now Demi Lovato is the first of the pop starlets to drop an album this year, buoyed by the success of her hit single ‘Heart Attack’. How does it turn out?