Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman in Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier (2007).
Hotel Chevalier, Wes Anderson’s prologue of sorts to his 2007 film The Darjeeling Limited, marks an interesting departure for a director whose strengths usually revolve around his ability to fashion compelling characters out of conventional—and literate—narrative arcs. Here, the best Anderson can do with his two actors (Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman) is evoke a mood of melancholy longing; on that basis, this 13-minute piece works incredibly well. To the strands of Peter Sarstedt’s inimitable “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely),” Anderson crafts a sexy, funny, and ambiguous film about one couple’s encounter at the titular hotel. If nothing else, the image of Portman wearing a yellow robe, staring out from a balcony (pictured above) makes Hotel Chevalier worth watching.
The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002).
"I was waiting on a moment/But the moment never came."
The Flaming Lips’ 2002 release Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots has to be one of the nicest and most honest albums in recent years. That might sound strange for a record whose cover makes its science fiction title quite literal, but somewhere behind all of the talk of black belts defeating robots is an emotional core not unlike that which is all too present in John Lennon’s seminal album Plastic Ono Band (1970). Yoshimi opens with “Fight Test,” a lovely track whose childlike sense of the world does not keep it from being achingly beautiful and disarming. Wayne Coyne’s vocals have rarely sounded more wounded than when he sings, “I don’t know where the sun beams end and the star/Light begins it’s all a mystery.” The title song is likewise interested in the melancholy shadings of the world as seen through the eyes of youth; how else could one explain the poignancy that lyrics like “Oh Yoshimi/They don’t believe me/But you won’t let those/Robots defeat me” gain from the Flaming Lips’ treatment? As good as all of these songs are, the greatest track, for me, has always been “Do You Realize??” Over the span of three and a half minutes, Coyne crafts one of the most enchanting evocations of mortality and the wonders of life that I’ve ever heard. Elsewhere, the band plays on, and we swoon.
No Age's Nouns (2008).
Carrying on the legacy that John Cale cemented during his time with the Velvets, experimental rock duo No Age (guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt) arrive with their incredibly assured sophomore release Nouns, a tightly-crafted collection of songs set against layers and layers of sound. To be perfectly honest, this particular type of rock or experimental music has never exactly been my cup of tea, but I decided to give it a try based on a few convincing recommendations. And while the opening track, a barely two-minute song with indistinguishable lyrics called “Miner,” did prepare me for the worst (though I’ve actually grown to like that song), there’s quite a bit of loveliness in what follows. I was even able to make out some of the lyrics after a while. The best of these songs—“Keechie,” for instance, which has more than its share of Enoesque ambiance—work wonderfully as part of the album, making Nouns as a whole quite a compelling listen, if not a collection of tracks that all stand out.
Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007).
“She made my heart soft, wore an aiguillette on her arm.”
If there’s a band in recent memory that’s made a better straight-up rock album than Spoon with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, I haven’t heard it. The White Stripes and the Strokes may come to mind, but neither makes music that sounds anything like this. Spoon, an Austin band now on their sixth album, opens their latest with “Don’t Make Me a Target,” which is reminiscent of their earlier work while still doing a perfect job in setting up the brilliance to come. Next up is “The Ghost of You Lingers,” the most experimental track on the record, with Britt Daniels’ vocals finding their way around while an incessant keyboard plays on. The results, needless to say, are amazing; the lyrics, structured mostly as a series of short phrases, work beautifully (“I had a nightmare nothing could be put back together”). “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb” is among the loveliest tracks on the album, as well as the easiest to sink into, with Daniels sounding both heartbroken hopeful. “Don’t You Evah” is a cover of a Natural History song, but you wouldn’t know it from the band’s spot-on delivery and playfully aggressive lyrics (“Bet you got it all planned right/Bet you never worry never even feel a fright”); it’s now a Spoon song now, no doubt about it. Following the theme of misspelling certain words, “Rhthm and Soul” has both and plenty to spare. The next two songs are, for me, the highlight of the album. “Eddie’s Ragga” is simply one of the coolest tracks I’ve heard in a long long time. Jim Eno’s drumming is perfect, as is Rob Pope’s bassline, to say nothing of Daniel’s cheekily fragmented lyrics—“Someone that I knew but I hardly met/Told me, it’s hopeless I’m a slut for the New York Times.” “The Underdog” is likewise essentially perfect, but for somewhat different reasons. The song is most notable for its use of horns and some light percussion in the background. Also, the last minute or so of the track may be the best in the entire album. For some, “My Little Japanese Case” is the album’s only true error, but I think its singular sound adds plenty to the album’s unique texture. “Finer Feelings” is upbeat yet restrained, longing yet reserved. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga closes with “Black Like Me,” which, along with a somewhat misleading title, also has some of the album’s softest melodies. And after 35 or so minutes of staggeringly luminous music, we couldn’t really ask for more.
Scarlett Johansson's Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008).
The first time I saw Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 film Ghost World (an indie classic if there ever was one), I was rather taken by this Scarlett Johansson. I mean, Thora Birch is fine and all, but she’s always been annoying, and Johansson is prettier. Since then, she’s gone on to star in some fairly decent movies—2003’s Lost in Translation and 2005’s Match Point—if not in an outright masterpiece. But, chick’s 23, so I’m sure she still has it in her. Who knows? Woody Allen might even pull a fast one and remake Manhattan (1979) with Johansson as Mariel Hemingway’s Dalton senior. All of this is to say that I had no idea what to expect from Johansson’s album of Tom Waits covers, released last month under the name Anywhere I Lay My Head. I’m not exactly a big Waits fan (I own Rain Dogs [1985], but haven’t really taken it upon myself to seek out much else), but I was intrigued enough to give the album a listen. The eleven tracks on display here (the album opens with an instrumental titled “Fawn,” appropriately, I might add) are charming enough. Johansson’s not the best singer in the world, but she’s never boring to listen to either; let’s say she’s much more Nico than Joni Mitchell. The album’s title track is rightly cathartic, with Johansson delivering Waits’ brilliantly offbeat lyrics (“My heart is in my shoe/I went and set the Thames on fire”) with a considerable amount of force. “Song for Jo,” the album’s sole original song written by Johansson and producer David Andrew Sitek, finds our singer’s vocals buried under several walls of sound (some nicer than others). AILMH’s highlight, however, might very well be “I Wish I Was In New Orleans,” not least for the music box melody playing behind Johansson’s heartfelt vocals. So, then, even if this album doesn’t mark the beginning of a stunning musical career for this lovely actress, it’s also as far away from a vanity project as any of us could have hoped. If nothing else, Johansson will make you want to listen to Tom Waits again; and how could that ever be bad, really?
Vampire Weekend's Vampire Weekend (2008)
Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut is, at this time of writing, my favorite album of the year. Its eleven tracks (spread out over 34 minutes) are so compulsively listenable and cheery that it’d be hard to imagine someone not falling in love with them. Most reviews of Vampire Weekend have focused on the band’s world music influences—particularly from African pop—and certainly VW’s marvelously catchy use of percussion is one the album’s highlights, but there is also much more in store here. For one, lead singer Ezra Koenig’s wonderfully odd voice engages from the first track, “Mansard Roof,” a perfect opener that introduces the listener not only to the band’s unique sound, but also to some lovely and fragmented storytelling (“The Argentines collapse in defeat/The admiralty surveys the remnants of the fleet”). Next are “Oxford Comma” and “A-Punk.” The former is one of the album’s truly great songs, an offbeat ditty about the importance of being honest, but most notable, perhaps, for name-checking Lil’ Jon—“he always tells the truth,” Keonig sings. “A-Punk,” a short vignette about finding something to do after college, leads to “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” possibly the album’s most fully-realized track, as well as the most characteristic of the band’s sound. “M79,” with its lush string section and talk of “coronation rickshaw grab,” highlights the band’s quirky interests, as does “Campus,” a more straightforward narrative about awkward college romance, which also contains the album’s most memorable use of alliteration: “Walk to class/In front of ya/Spilled kefir/On your keffiyah.” “Bryn,” the next track, has the prettiest lyrics on the album, and Koenig’s delivery and Chris Tomson’s percussion perfectly accentuate the three short verses, culminating in the conclusion that “no Kansas-born beetle could ever come close to that free.” “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)” is infinitely cute, but I think I would like any song that points out how “English breakfast tastes like Darjeeling.” The next song, “I Stand Corrected,” is not as good as what follows or preceded it, but even as the album’s only true misstep, it allows the band to try out some pretty interesting stuff. The penultimate track, “Walcott,” the song that most directly addresses the band’s privileged background (although most of these songs do touch on that theme), urges the titular character to leave Cape Cod, given that “The Bottleneck is a shit-show/Hyannisport is a ghetto.” Not since Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990) has self-aware preppiness been so endearing. VW’s closing track, “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance,” with its forceful rhythm section and Koenig's dead-on delivery, ends the album in very much the same way that it began: beautifully. Pondering the possibility of Vampire Weekend becoming one of the best bands in recent memory, I’d say they stand a pretty good chance.
Charles Mingus.
As you may or may not know, this blog is largely devoted to my taste in movies, one which I've tried to develop (to varying results, of course) over the course of several years. And if I'm still as thrilled about the thought of watching films as I've ever been--and I do think I am--I've also become more interested in music over the past few months. Soon enough, I think, I should be writing about albums somewhat regularly. Much like my early writing on film, chances are that a lot of the reviews will concern old releases, as I try to zero in on the past before turning my attention to more recent things, which, to this day, I've been unable to achieve even when it comes to movies. In any case, I expect most of the music reviews to be rather short, maybe a paragraph or two (no more than three, I promise). And, if nothing else, I hope it'll help me cement my affinity for a certain type of music.
And since I love, love, love lists, I'll soon be posting (in chronological order) an ever-evolving list of my favorite albums.
Oh, and my favorite album of all time is Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (1966), so there's that...
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg converse in bed in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960).
All discussion regarding Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) must begin and end with Jean Seberg’s miraculous performance, one of the most affecting in all the cinema. Sure, Jean-Paul Belmondo gets all the attention, and nobody looks cooler imitating Humphrey Bogart or reading a newspaper than he does, but it’s Seberg that gives Godard’s feature-length debut its emotional weight; she is what separates the fun from the fundamental.
In typical Godard fashion (before we knew it to be Godard fashion, of course, given that he lays all the groundwork with this film), Breathless opens with a crime. A charming hoodlum (Belmondo) with a penchant for talking to himself while driving around the Marseilles countryside kills a cop and heads to Paris to meet a lovely New Yorker (Seberg) he met in Nice a few weeks earlier. Belmondo’s persona is pretty well-established from the get go; he’s channeling not only Bogart, but also James Dean and possibly Godard himself. The film, then, is merely enjoyable until we see Seberg strolling down the Champs-Élysées selling copies of the New York Herald Tribune in a t-shirt, capris, and flats. She likes Belmondo, but also appears to be either too wise or too refined for him. He wants them to go to Italy; she wants to enroll at the Sorbonne.
In talking about this film, many people get caught up in the formal elements of its cinematography—most notably Godard’s liberal use of the jump cut, in which he literally splices the film in the middle of a scene, sometimes even while his characters are speaking, giving it all an air of gritty discontinuity. And while Raoul Coutard’s inventive photography is definitely one of the film’s many strengths, one should also note that even this early in Godard’s career, most of his verbal affinities are there, which may be even more startling than his structural decisions. Seberg quotes Faulkner, tells Belmondo about her new Renoir poster, and interviews director Jean-Pierre Melville at a press conference near an airport. People may not give Godard much credit for these lovely asides because they just figure he was making it all up as he went along (which he probably was), but nobody else was able to play around with the elements of a film while still keeping a swing like this. The only comparable example in American cinema up to that point would have to be John Cassavetes’s Shadows (1959), which, like Godard’s film, was heavily improvised. But Cassavetes was always more interested in naturalistic portraits (culminating with 1976’s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie). Godard, on the other hand, wanted his audience to know his films were just that, making his use of Brechtian techniques that possibly alienated a lot of people—including the jump cuts, as well as his innovate use of sound design coupled with the fact that his actors always appear to be quoting—integral to his purpose.
The 1960s would prove most fruitful for Godard. He went on to make more melancholy (My Life to Live, 1962), more playful (Pierrot le fou, 1965), and more political (Weekend, 1967) films, but none would be as revelatory as this one. Breathless is a tragic love story for the ages.