Atlas Sound - Logos

For those not privy, or for those that haven't gotten the memo, Bradford Cox is pretty freakin' brilliant. Whether he's playing with his cohorts under the name Deerhunter or under his own moniker of Atlas Sound, this guy churns out gorgeous music like it's a bodily function. Logos is that kind of record; it's fluid and organic, almost like it transferred through Cox's fingers and onto the guitar through osmosis. And yeah, that's him nude on the cover of this album.

It's complex without overwhelming us. It's catchy, and pop-sensible, but not to the point of dragging us through the same hooks over and over again. Which, other than Quick Canal, most of these tracks clock in around three minutes. In my opinion, most pop songs shouldn't clock in longer than about three minutes anyways. Stretch that much further, and you're talking about getting pretty boring pretty fast (plus anything much longer disqualifies you from radio play). And that's not to say that this is necessarily all that much a pop album. I mean, it's certainly more pop-esque and more accessible than anything else Cox has made in the past, Deerhunter or otherwise.

What Logos accomplishes so well is riding that fine line between being outlandish and creative versus being easy to grasp and accessible. What hooks he does chose to employ come pretty simply, in forms such as acoustic guitars and vocal arrangements. These hooks, as I've said before, are just used sparingly, and just enough to the point that we are drawn into this mad world he slowly creates around us. But not everything heard on this record is "mad world" either. There are actually a lot of bright moments on this record, like the ambled crooning on tracks like Sheila or Walkabout, which features Animal Collective's "Panda Bear" Noah Lennox. These bright moments are interspersed with dark swoons, almost like the music is going through mood swings.

It's funny to me that this album almost never was, based solely on the fact that a lot of it was leaked prematurely. I think that the leaked stuff may have made the record a little more cohesive as a whole, because a lot of the songs on the finished version of Logos were recorded way back in 2007, whereas the rest were recorded in 2009. It makes the record feel a little disjointed at times rather than free-flowing, which is a quality I find very refreshing in most of his previous releases. Logos makes the most of it's problems, and I'm assuming that if the leak hadn't happened we wouldn't have been treated to some of the more gorgeous tracks here (like Criminals and Attic Lights). But who knows what might have been. Sometimes I think that in order for all of these tracks to work together then it has to be disjointed. Maybe this discombobulated feeling is what Cox wanted to get across in the first place. Either way, he makes the separation anxiety between his tracks feel pretty irrelevant. If you didn't read the album art, you probably wouldn't even guess that the album took almost two years to record.

Another thing that Cox mentioned in an interview was the fact that he was done with introspection. I'm sure that holds true for this record. After all, this is a gay/asexual man singing about being married to a woman forever and eventually dying with her. I think that the introspection this record is calling for is our the listener's introspection. It's asking us to review our state of being and mindset. It asks us that, but at the same time it pleads with us to be light-hearted about it. This is, at its core, a very light-hearted record. It's also very fun to listen to.

Lost: Recap and Preview (for the uneducated)

Okay, for the time being I want everyone to just go ahead and agree that Lost is the best thing that has ever happened to television. Period. I don't care if you've never seen the show, I'm about to educate you. For those of you who follow the show, you already know what it's all about. Well, at least you think you know. And those who haven't seen it, as my dad likes to say, "It's a bunch of people running around in the bushes going, 'Huh?! Huh?! What was that?' at strange noises." This is on a par with my dad's summation of The Lord of the Rings series, "There's some hobbits, wizards, a couple of towers, a ring that nobody wants...", but BELIEVE ME, if you only catch one episode of the series, that literally is ALL THAT IT IS. That's why you should really start from the beginning.

If you take the high road and actually watch the DVDs before the next season starts (72 hours to cover in 9 days, good luck with that), then you would be rewarded with a highly engaging, massively addicting television series that always has twists and always leaves you guessing. If you take the low road, and listen to what I have to say, you may be able to call yourself a bonafide wanna-be Lostie when the series ends and all your true Lostie friends are collectively going WTF. You'll be able to share in their camaraderie, and maybe even throw in a good, "Yeah I know, why didn't they answer THAT question?"

Before I get started, I should probably preface my recap of Lost by saying that this is mostly satire, but not entirely satire. It should also be noted that I will probably miss A LOT of things. By no means is this to be considered complete, exhaustive, canonical, or even anywhere close. Lost is a very complex show with lots of characters going in and out. So, for the sake of time, this will be nothing more than a brief overview. Nothing more. That said, let's get started!

Lots of people are riding on a plane from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles. Their plane hits a patch of bad turbulence and starts to break apart mid-air. They crash, and a lot of people die in the crash. Some people from the midsection of the plane survive, and they land on a mysterious island. Inexplicably, a good deal of people aren't hurt, and in fact some people are better. One man, who was previously (PREVIOUSLY ON LOST) paralyzed from the waist down can walk again (insert Keanu "Woh."), and a dude whose boys couldn't swim before can now miraculously make babies. Also one lady is preggers with the Antichrist (maybe). Anyways, there's a lot of amazing people who are connected in ways even they cannot fathom. Then, they start hearing things.

It's some sort of "monster" in the bushes. They decide to start looking around, because hey, water. They find the cockpit and the pilot, who is alive, but not for very long as he gets eaten by the "monster". A very smart ex-Iraqi interrogator fixes a walkie that they find on the pilot and they hear a strange transmission in French. "They're dead, they're all dead," she says (insert Charlie "Where are we?")

FF

"I just shot a polar bear!"
"She's a con."
"You made my daddy kill my mommy."
"Two players, two sides. One is light and one is dark."
"You speak English?"
"Where is Alex?"
"The others."
"There's a plane on top of the cliff."
"Teresa falls up the stairs, Teresa falls down the stairs."
"You all everybody!"
"Ethan's not on the list."
"There's a hatch."
"I'm supposed to do this damn it! Don't tell me what I can't do!"
"4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42"
"We need dynamite."
"ZZZ!"
"I think that was your dad."
"I think I'm going into labor!"
"No wait! Stop! No you can't! The numbers are bad!"
"That button has to be pressed every 108 minutes."
"This is the orientation video for the Dharma Initiative."
"See you in another life, brother."
"We have to find the other section."
"My name is Henry Gale."
"Sun is pregnant."
"Just give me back my son."
"We live together, or we die alone."
"You are free to go."
"I think I crashed your plane, brother."
"I was wrong."
"I love you, Penny!"
"They have Jack, Kate and Sawyer."
"My name is Juliet."
"My name is Benjamin Linus."
"Hey! You got yourself a fish biscuit! How'd you do that?"
"I find out that I have a tumor on my spine, and a spinal surgeon just so happens to fall from the sky."
"A guy needs somebody-to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick."
"Turn your eyes and look north."
"Damn it, Sawyer!"
"We're not exactly in Portland."
"This swallow is more than you'd make in a year."
"Charlie, you're gonna' die, brother."
"Roger Workman?"
"I am Mikhail Bakunin, the last living member of the Dharma Initiative."
"Magic box?"
"PAULO LIES."
"The fence was not set to a lethal level."
"Pregnant women die on this island."
"You wanna' go to hell?!"
"Help. Me."
"Peanut butter."
"NOT PENNY'S BOAT"
"That's for taking the kid off the raft."
"Kate! We have to go back!"
"I'm one of the Oceanic Six!"
"I was going to be the pilot of that flight."
"You kill for me, Sayid."
"I need to do the dishes."
"Two out of three. That's progress."
"You need to find a constant, Desmond."
"We have to get to the Tempest."
"The Island won't let you die, Michael."
"Alex! We have to run!"
"But if we cannot negotiate then I'll guess you'll just have to shoot her!"
"John. You have to move the island."
"Where's Jin?!"
"Penny?"
"We've got to bring him too."
"The window will open in 70 hours."
"We can't go to a hospital! Everyone knows that's the last place you go. They're gonna' kill him! Like in the Godfather!"
"Charles Widmore."
"This place is death!"
"Board Ajira Airways Flight 316"
"He's the man who killed me."
"I take people where they need to go."
"LaFluer!"
"Nameste, and welcome to the Dharma Initiative."
"He's our you."
"You are all going to die, you know."
"I think our problems have already been solved. I just killed Benjamin Linus."
"This process will change him forever."
"Dead is dead."
"Maybe you should just talk to him. I bet Luke would've been better off if he had."
"If it doesn't work, then everyone on the island will die."
"What lies in the shadow of the statue?"
"They're coming!"
"Come on you son of a bitch!"

And that brings us pretty much up to speed. I know that probably reads like an extended PREVIOUSLY ON LOST reel to most people, but it's really the only way I can cover most of the bases. So what's next for Lost? I don't really know. I like to just sort of be surprised by this show rather than guessing. I find that it makes the show way more entertaining and fun. Expect a few updates in the coming weeks as new episodes come out. I'll be reviewing them here regularly.

Conan/Leno Debacle Weigh-In

Good. Now I have no reason to wait for Leno to be over. When it comes to picking or being on "Teams" (e.g. Team Coco or Team Leno), I'm the guy who refuses to play such a stupid game. I'm on America's team, and do you know what America wants? To pull the plug on NBC late night completely. Conan's great and all, and I honestly believe that with a proper lead-in he might have succeeded, but seriously. NBC! Can anyone say, "face-palm"? Them trying to figure out late night hosts is more confusing and aggrivating than watching Eric Mangini try to decide which horrible quarterback to start. Imagine how you would feel if you were told you were going to be starting quarterback for an elite franchise, and then get booted by some has-been (Favre, anyone?).

Obviously, NBC has the best intentions. Their quarterback (Conan) isn't producing. They wanna go back to their seasoned veteran (Leno). Makes sense. Except that when Conan was starting quarterback, they slid Leno into the position of center (Conan's lead-in), a position that no late night quarterback has ever been in. What resulted was a seven month long fumbled snap between a horrible excuse for a show and the Tonight Show.

Some have argued that NBC should have never moved Leno in the first place (duh). Some say he should have just been canned and asked to find work elsewhere (double-duh). Whatever your stance is, Leno's move was obviously the result of piss poor management. So, I say instead of down-voting Leno in this situation, even though he deserves all the down-votes EVER, we really should be pointing the finger at NBC here. I say we boycott late night altogether. Then the affiliate stations will really be pissed. They'll be like, "All your movin' and a-shakin' of late night hosts put us at the bottom of the pile! Again! Erm...since forever!" Yeah. That and leading-in with American Gladiators a year ago.

NBC. What a disaster.

Up In The Air

Trust me, I had my doubts about this movie. I wondered what could possibly make it so special a movie occasion. I'd heard all the accolades from several hundred people fortunate enough to have seen this film before me, but I still had my doubts. I mean really, a movie about a guy who flys around firing people? And George Clooney? Don't get me wrong, the guy is the man. He's classy, upbeat, and damn fun to watch. But I had my hesitations. Was this going to be another movie where George just out-classes everyone and goes about his business? I figured this movie for a total idolization of George Clooney as a star, and of his character in this movie. Can you blame me? George walks on the scene and it changes the atmosphere of an entire movie. The air just screams, "This guy is a movie star." And not the Christian Bale, "You and me, we're DONE professionally"-outburst, kind of movie star either. I'm talking our generation's Clark Gable.

But enough hamhanded Clooney worshiping. There's a movie he's in called Up in the Air!

George Clooney may out class everyone ever, but aside from being a frequent-flyer rock star, his character, Ryan Bingham, is a pretty average guy. Unlike most of his films, every time he entered the room, I did not think "movie star". I thought, "Hey, he kinda looks like my dad." For all I know, this guy could be my dad. Or rather, my dad could be doing his job. Either way, I know that my dad wouldn't be doing some of the things he does in this movie. He flies first class. He flies more every year than an astronaut. He has one-night stands. He fires people. Okay, so does my dad (my dad could fire your dad), but not frequently and not for a living. At first glance, Ryan Bingham could be just an average, alright guy. Once you get to know him though, you can see he's missing something.

First we're thinking it's success. How he constantly craves it throughout the movie is one of the "big themes". And yet we know it's got to be more than that. He preaches that to truly succeed, we must do away with material things and relationships. We must keep them from bogging us down. But in a way, isn't what he's striving for also material? Towards the end of the film, we see Ryan getting exactly what he wants, and in some cases what he's always dreamed of, but he isn't fulfilled. I think we all realize at some point in our lives that what we shoot for isn't always what we really want.

Ryan's protege, Natalie Keener (played by Anna Kendrick), realizes this when she is dumped by her boyfriend over text message. In a brilliant scene where she, Ryan, and his casual woman of interest (Vera Farmiga) are waiting for a flight, they discuss the mythical fantasy of having an awesome career and getting married to the perfect man. Natalie then comes to grips with the fact that her dreams were really just that - a dream. Then she has a one-night stand of her own.

Then there's the people Ryan fires. One beautiful thing about this movie is how often the attaining of success is interwoven with the misery of total ruin. It feels like the lives of all these poor people are crumbling beneath them. Why? Because their livelihoods, nay their very idea of being a successful person, rides on whether they've got a job or not. Losing that is an incredibly scary thing. Ryan says he's providing a path for them to take towards a new beginning. It is a new beginning, but not one that most people want to have to take. It's a pathway to a better, more fulfilling life for them in some cases. In other cases, it's a path to destruction.

Either way, Jason Reitman gives us a very human movie, filled with very human moments. It's rare to find a movie so ordinary and yet so extraordinarily devoted to expressing the human condition. What we learn from Ryan Bingham isn't all about his tragic fate, but what he realizes from his fate. He was doomed to his fate from the beginning. Unless we can find more to life than what we strive for, so are we. Then maybe getting fired would be a step in the right direction.

Beach House - Devotion

I think at one point or another we've all dreamed of starting a band. But if you're anything like me, you know a couple of the key pitfalls: 1) You haven't the skill to play all (or in some cases any) of the instruments yourself, and 2) Bands mean artistic conflicts of interest, scheduling problems, band meetings (Bret - present), and everything dramatic that comes with a band. So, although going solo or perhaps bringing a wingman into the mix would be ideal, it almost never works. You think to yourself, "Man, if I could just play the piano - then I'd throw a drum machine behind me and have someone else play guitar. That'd be great!"

So, you start tooling around on Garage Band, and you realize, "Man, this music shit is HARD!" And it is. Ask just about any artist in the business. They'll probably also be quick to inform you that they don't get paid squat for what they do. Then you start saying things like, "Man, this music shit is CRAZY." Tell me about it.

So needless to say, it takes a lot of guts to make music. In the case of Beach House, they've been making music for a few years now, and have some experience doing the "band thing". But I imagine that Victoria Legrand started much in the same way as every upstart adolescent crooner - with a dream and a drum machine. After she picked up a guitarist for a wingman and started cranking out the tunes, she got herself a couple records made and is currently signed to Sub Pop records with another album on deck. So, what's the key to her success? Isn't this genre of music reserved for up-start wanna-bes?

What Victoria dares to do, that so few of us dare to do, is take such a simple idea and turn it into something much more than that. She takes so eloquently a bare-all approach to music that it almost feels like she's undressing and saying, "This is me, take it or leave it." Now that's gutsy. It's not always the brightest move, but for Beach House, it works. The attitude that their music sets us up with leaves us wanting a bare-souled contralto hovering over it. Legrand's vocal subtleties lend themselves to the band's simple instrumentation and drum machine style, and the music lends right back.

With Devotion, and with their self-titled debut, Beach House proves that simple instrumentation doesn't necessarily mean simple music. Devotion reaches a level that their debut couldn't quite grasp, but experience does great things for any band. Their sound has evolved dramatically, and I suspect will continue to evolve in the albums to follow. More and more, Devotion sounds like Beach House's sound, not just any other dream-pop/synth-pop/chamber-pop group. It's unique in style, yet humble enough to expose its simplicity. It's a warm and inviting sound, almost as if they're trying to bring you into their mystical, dreamy world. Legrand's vocals swirl in a tone of darkness and subtle agony. It's actually almost like being in a dream. It's almost like seeing your dreams of one day having a band becoming a reality.

I suppose it shouldn't be considered ironic, then, that their next album is titled Teen Dream. It's due to drop in the next couple of weeks. It's bound to be more of the same, and it's bound to be an improvement on Devotion. Perhaps more complexities will weave into Beach House's psyche as they become more comfortable with their craft. But maybe complexity isn't always better. Just keep telling yourself that.