Posts tagged as Culture (And TV)
PJ Harvey, "Written On The Forehead"
This just in: A new PJ Harvey song from her forthcoming album Let England Shake, which comes out next February. The song is a half-spiky, half-spacey track that finds Harvey exploring the upper register of her voice the way she did on White Chalk; it is called "Written On The Forehead," and it's definitely not what I expected after hearing other songs she'd been working on. (A sampling of artists/labels name-checked by friends who'd heard the track: Deerhunter, Cocteau Twins, the Knife, Kate Bush, "early 4AD," "almost Stones Throw.") But what fun would the predictable be? Stream after the jump. READ MORE
Patrick Stump, "Spotlight"
I have been patiently (OK, semi-patiently) waiting for the release of the first full-length by Patrick Stump, the former Fall Out Boy lead singer and ex-Law & Order guest star who also happens to possess one of the best voices in pop today. He also has finely tuned musical instincts; I saw him play a brief set at SXSW in March, where he pulled off a Jon Brion-at-Largo style "play all the instruments then loop them" bit and a Bobby Womack cover. (It was awesome. Too short, of course, but awesome.) Last night he released the first single off his forthcoming record, "Spotlight," in not one but two forms! Let me say that again: !!!! READ MORE
Liveblogging The 2010 American Music Awards: Teenage Dreams Of Prom Themes Past
Because nothing makes popular music more fun than typing alongside friends, it's time to do that "liveblogging" thing in honor of the 2010 American Music Awards, which celebrate the most popular of the most popular music that this country has to offer, complete with the sort of pomp that only the most craven enterprises can possess. Join me after the jump for the Black Eyed Peas, Christina Aguilera, Katy (sigh) Perry, the results of allowing 13-year-olds to vote (online) (for their favorite male pop stars), and OMG NEW KIDS AND BACKSTREET BOYS TOGETHER!! READ MORE
Cee-Lo, “Old Fashioned”
Hey, remember a couple weeks ago, when Cee-Lo performed that great, uncensored version of "Fuck You" on Later With Jools Holland? Well, turns out he performed another song from his soon-to-come Lady Killer album that night, too. "Old Fashioned," it's called. And that's the way it sounds, too. But in a really good way.
Flicked Off: "Jackass 3D" is the Most Important Documentary of Our Era
In the history of serious documentary film, there are two strains, it seems fair to say. One has been on the recent upswing: the advocacy documentary, propelled along by Michael Moore and that Al Gore-with-a-deadly-PowerPoint movie, which, TL;DW. (Really, I remember thinking when that came out: The planet's going bad? Just send me a position paper, and if I want to watch Al Gore I'll turn on C-Span 2 or whatever, and, no I probably won't, I'm just being polite.) The advocacy documentary is probably good for the world, as with all kinds of advocacy projects, whether they be litigation or burning cop cars on Rue d'Whatever in favor of not having to work for two more years into one's 60s. But at some point-that point likely being "about six years ago"-I joined my fellow Americans in not being willing to sit through another film that reminds me about how chickens in America grow up neck-deep in their own shit. I know that! I don't eat the shit-raised cannibal chickens! I'm not stupid. And if you are stupid enough to eat American commercially raised chickens, well you're probably not watching documentaries about food, are you now. So then there is the other, more noble strain of documentary. READ MORE
31 Days of Horror: "Hardware"
Hardware is a movie about a cyborg that hunts a woman relentlessly, murdering everyone who gets in its way. It had the misfortune to be released as the hype was building for the return of the robotic Austrian weightlifter who redefined emptiness of expression and creativity in parking. This inadvertently invited inevitable, illogical comparisons and doomed it to obscurity along with the rest of the rubbish killer robot knockoffs released off the back of the Terminator hype. This is a shame, because Hardware is probably the best sci-fi slasher movie ever made. And sure, its competition is basically the psychedelic Jason X and probably some "Doctor Who" episodes, but that's still an achievement worth honoring, right? READ MORE
New on DVD: The Human Tautology, or, The Branding Centipede
When the first announcements surfaced on the Internet in the late summer of 2009, it sounded like a low-budget, energetic, insane Japanese special-effects flick, a la Yoshihiro Nishimura, of Mutant Girls Squad and Tokyo Gore Police semi-fame. A couple festivals in midnight or horror series and it could head to DVD, where it'd get passed around by Takashi Miike fans and brought up on forum threads by gorehounds playing that game where they try to out-cite each other as to who's seen the most outré flick. READ MORE
Prada Unveils New Shoes of Great Monstrous Evil!
First I hated the Prada camouflage line, which, to be fair, grew on me! A little. It was still obviously ugly and the worst thing is, you know, you're wearing those clothes and everyone's like, "oh there's those Prada camouflage clothes." It's too much on you. And now? And now? BUT AND IF AND? Here. THE "CREEPER WINGTIPS PLATFORM" SHOES.
The Dark Bloom On Young Axl Rose
Reflections on youth at a moment in time: "He isn't pretty yet, he hasn't begun to think of himself as a rock star. He's a boy-man, with a trace of fear in his pugnacious stare. I can't remember what he'd done, that time. Stolen another kid's bike, I think. Or destroyed another kid's bike. When I first saw his hair, I understood something Dana had told me hours before, at a bar: that when they were children, Axl was Raggedy Ann in the Christmas parade. Looking longer, a person could understand something else, too, about the Midwestern darkness in his voice."
In Defense of the Season Finale of "Mad Men"
According to the always-reliable Internet, many people were unhappy with this season's finale of Mad Men. Most of the criticism seems to be either one of two things: first, that it was just too nonsensical, too fast: the sudden engagement, Don's off-putting happiness, or just the general tenor of LA and its aftermath. The second complaint seems to be that "nothing really happened." (There's a third complaint, from "Lost" creator Damon Lindelof, that it wasn't made clear that the whole cast has been dead through the entire show, but he was pretty much the only one to raise that objection.) Well let's get the first, and seemingly the most ridiculous, out of the way. READ MORE
