MUSIC: The Best in Music for 2014

1. CARIBOU Our Love

I've been aware of Dan Snaith's Caribou project for years and occassionally would grab tracks or hear snippets and find it all pleasing, pretty, but a bit dull. So the announcement of another Caribou album left me with a case of the shrugs. I was wrong. This grabbed me from the first second I heard it and held me. Warm, sunny, shimmery, dancey, poppy, soft, mysterious, quiet and loud, romantic, brilliant. Love it.

2. FKA TWIGS LP1

Although she had released two under-the radar EP releases, this debut album seemingly comes out of nowhere...to slay. Modernized trip-hop, R'n'B put through the slow/churning/shadowy filter is on display here and it sounds fresh. Although the new genre of quiet, slow, "Blog-Hop/Blog'n'B" (look, I created a shitty music media genre name) has a reigning queen. You don't need to scream, oversing, and melisma to out-queen Snoreyonce. Twigs has more interesting ideas in her fingertip than most American divas do in their fame-hungry clutches.

3. DAMON ALBARN Everyday Robots

Even though his career has spanned nearly 25 years of releasing music, Blur/Gorillaz/etc. frontman Albarn had never released a solo album before. What a wonderfully subtle, quiet but steady LP. Acoustic guitar strums, plaintive piano chords, sputtering drum programming; it's like all of Blur's best ballads on one album. It's "Tender" meets "No Distance Left to Run" warm melancholic ache that Damon does best with his wounded vocals.  

4. ROBYN & ROYKSOPP Do It Again / ROYKSOPP The Inevitable End

Not one but two Royksopp releases greet us this year, along with the news that the band, although not splitting, will not release "albums" anymore; the new paradigm? Robyn is back in equal force on the EP and "Monument" may be one of her best tracks. After a teaser of an EP, Royksopp also unleashed what amounts to a double album of new material; the highlights feature The Irrepressibles' Jamie on a lion's share of vocal duties with his delicate croon. 

5. APHEX TWIN Syro

It was one of those Bowie-esque returns after a decade off, Richard D. James is back and it's like the '90s never disappeared. Not to say that all of these tracks were sitting on a shelf during a drum n' bass flurry of work; there is still plenty of dateless electronic squelching, squirming and slithering from James' master hands. 

BIGGEST "SURPRISED THAT I LIKED IT" OF THE YEAR

PERFUME GENIUS Too Bright - Neither of his previous albums did anything for me; quite the opposite, I found them grating. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really dug his third album. He's embraced a fuller band sound, electronics, and not too many fluttery, breathy, gaspy piano and vocal ballads.

TOP FIVE HOUSEY/POP MOMENTS

1. HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR The Feast of the Broken Heart - A great return after the lackluster 2nd LP. Fun, sexy and pure '90s house. John Grant oddly makes a great house vocalist

2. THE 2 BEARS The Night is Young - Needs trimming and not as good as their debut, but the good songs are actually great songs

3. MICROFILM Chemical Robotics EP - Yeah, it's us but it's good; download for free here: https://microfilm.bandcamp.com/album/chemical-robotics and Is This It? https://soundcloud.com/microfilmmusic/is-this-it-full-version

4. JESSIE WARE Tough Love (Cyril Hahn remix) - Best track on the pretty good new LP; hoping the album would have a few house bangers like "Imagine It Was Us"

5. AZALEIA BANKS Broke With Expensive Taste - Apart from being a turd of a person, the housey tracks on here are fun

TOP FIVE UNDER THE RADAR RELEASES

1. ARCA Xen - Happy to know that this South American gay electronic adventurer will be working with Bjork on her new LP; Xen is a sprawling spiky but pretty journey of an album

2. LEON VYNHALL Music for the Uninvited - melancholic art house music; house music for headphone listening; lovely

3. THROWING SNOW Mosaic - I always new trip-hop would come back in vogue, albeit modernized for this century

4. EAST INDIA YOUTH Total Strife Forever - An odd mix of instrumental synthscapes, techno, dark synth(not)pop

5. GAZELLE TWIN Unflesh - Don't be worried The Knife has called it quits this year, you have Gazelle Twin, a one-woman electro stark and dark soundscape

HONORABLE MENTION: OVERDUE WELCOME RETURNS

1. MORRISSEY World Peace is None of Your Business - So happy he still had something left in him; arguably his best work in 20 years

2. VASHTI BUNYAN Heartleap - This is the year I really discovered her; suppposedly her last album, so what a way to go

3. SOFT PINK TRUTH Why Do the Heathens Rage? - Bizarre high concept album that oddly and noisily works. Funny and scary and cool

4. NENEH CHERRY The Blank Project - Not your '80s Neneh. Stripped down and loose and darkly pop. Cool

5. CIBO MATTO Hotel Valentine - The lovely sense of fun and inventiveness is back

FIVE RELEASES THAT ARE GOOD, BUT TREADING WATER; I NEED MORE FROM THEM

1.WILD BEASTS Present Tense - A slight improvement over Smother, but more of the edges are being sanded off

2. THE HORRORS Luminous - A poppier, slicker version of 'Skying'; pretty and spot-the-references fun, but I want a bit of the angularity back

3. LANA DEL RAY Ultraviolence - A nice twist to not repeat the trip-hop influence, I just wonder how much gas she has left in her

4. THOM YORKE Tomorrow's Modern Boxes - A pleasant listen but evaporates right after.The Eraser-lite

5. ZOLA JESUS Taiga - She wanted this to be her big "pop" album, but it was too dark, grand, and same-same to make it

DISAPPOINTMENTS

1. ERLEND OYE Legao - I don't know where to begin with my disappointment; reggae-lite? Snoozy, boring, bland, and aimless. His first solo studio album in...11 years is this? And he currently thinks electronic music is "boring"? Try this instead: https://microfilm.bandcamp.com/track/johnny-x-lost-his-girl-to-erlend-oye-the-world

2. LA ROUX Trouble in Paradise - Tinnier than the debut, even though it has slicker production. A long wait to be unimpressed.

3. LYKKE LI I Never Learn - Her last LP was one of my faves of that year so a bit disappointed how blah this all sounds as a whole.

4. JJ V - I forgot I was listening to it as I went on. I wonder if the magic has faded with these guys?

5. SINEAD O'CONNOR I'm Not Bossy... - The lead single "Take Me to Church" was amazing, the best song's she's done in decades easily, but I was not as thrilled by the rest, sadly.

Sorry for the delay; life happens.

"Where do you get this stuff from...T-shirts?" - Showgirls, 1995.

I'll be posting a year-end Top 10 movies and Top 10 albums list soon, but in the meantime, enjoy:

FILM: 'Lucy' in the Sky with LOTS of Blue Diamonds

Summer movies are a time for big-budget, popcorn-level ridiculousness. But is it too much to ask us to use our brain? OK, how about 1.4% of our brain.

Brain power is the topic at hand in French director Luc Besson's new film Lucy. Besson is a man not known for subtlety, realism, or depth, but they all can't be Bergman can they?

The conceit of Lucy (let me keep it brief as not to offer too many spoilers) is that humans normally only use 10% of our cerebral power (a widely spread cliche), so what if by chemical means, humans could use more: 20, 30, 40, up to 100%? The means? Obviously, it is having massive amounts of synthetic hormones surgically inserted into your body as a drug mule (in a very unsafe looking thin plastic sack).

Scarlett Johansson is one such (albeit unwitting) drug mule. The fun of the "get to the chase" set-up of the movie is palpable. There is barely an intro to her character before she is thrust into a world of killer Taiwanese mobsters, locked briefcases, assassins, chases, guns blazing, and mysterious surgeries.

The Run Lola Run fast-paced flight of the film is a gas. Taiwan to Berlin to Paris, it all whizzes by. No matter how this party girl student becomes knowledgeable in heavy firearm use, acrobatic fight choreography, learning foreign languages, massive amounts of cash to buy designer heels and same-day international, first-class flights from Asia to Europe (she's a student, right?), it can all be explained away.

Bright blue crystal superdrugs.

You should expect no less from the creator of The Professional, The Fifth Element, and a Joan of Arc reboot. Besson is ridiculous and if you shut off your brain, you can learn to love him too.

MUSIC: Time for 'Church'

Sinead O'Connor's new album I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss is out this month and this, the lead single is out now. Her last album, 2012's How About I Be Me, was a better than you'd expect, a somewhat return to form. Even with that DREADFUL cover art, it was her best album since 1994's Universal Mother.

The new single is a big anthemic pop number, Sinead in 'rock-out' vibe. Every one of her album's has a few to go along with the delicate, beautiful ballads. She'll never be 19 and angry again (we have to let it go), so it will never be The Lion and the Cobra (just as The Cure will never get back Kiss Me, Morrissey will never get another The Queen is Dead, etc.)

For a 47-year-old mother of four, she can still rip off wigs, rock bald heads, and strike a guitar chord in a tight dress like a true star.

MUSIC: La Rude

Taking five years to make your long-awaited second album has killed careers. If you don't believe me, check out The Stone Roses' Second Coming or Elastica's The Menace. They both never recovered.

2009 saw the debut album release of the androgynously elfin Elly Jackson (aka La Roux). Released amid the "Girls with Synths" flush of 2008-09 (a genre I also coined as 'The L Word Ladies'; La Roux, Little Boots, Ladyhawke, Lady Gaga; I know I'm missing a few), her debut album stood out among the clan. Not only did her junior Tilda Swinton looks disengage her from the blonde sexpots, her flutey, sometimes shrill vocals made her even more distinct. It's 21st century pop; you've got to stand out somehow because the market is flooded.

After years of resting up, throat issues, splitting with bandmates (Ben Langmaid was her writing partner/keyboardist, the silent/hidden other half a la Will Gregory of Goldfrapp), nerves, etc., she's come back with Trouble in Paradise (indeed). Gone is most (not all) of the tinny, trebley, shrill "electronics only" approach of the self-titled debut. Having said that, gone is a lot of the thrill of her laptop take on the early '80s synthpop of Yaz and Eurythmics. There is no 'Bulletproof' here.

Trouble has a warmer, slightly fuller sound to combat the cries of her being a one-style wonder or aping the debut. But where as La Roux was full on 1983, Trouble is full on 1986. It should be written in stone somewhere, the early '80s beats the mid '80s every time.

There are a few bright spots on the album though, don't get me wrong. Opener 'Uptight Downtown' adds the strum of funk guitar and a smoother singing style overall (keeping this up for most of the album):

Several tracks on the LP follow this style, sort of if a lightweight version of Grace Jones' early '80s backing band was fronted by a young Annie Lennox. OK, maybe not as cool as that sounds.

Trouble does get its mid 80s spirit right; the album is only nine tracks long - some killer ('Sexotheque', some filler ('Paradise is You'). But I have faith in Jackson to come back with another album sooner rather than later. Here's hoping she follows kindred spirit Lennox's path, but avoids the "We like guitars!"/rock-isms of Eurythmics' Revenge and goes straight for Eurythmics' Savage.

MUSIC: Morrissey is None of Your Business

Morrissey had everything stacked against him once 2014 began. It had been five years since he last released an album (the career nadir that was Years of Refusal; I refused it.) Countless cancelled shows and tours, health woes, increasingly over-the-top political and social statements, and dumping his long-term opening act/friend Kristeen Young for giving him a cold; the man was teetering on becoming a buffoon cartoon and then falling in head first to irrelevance.

Needless to say, I had low hopes when a new album was announced late last year. Then, the long-gestating Autobiography was released and I read it with relish. Despite one-fifth of the book being devoted to his late '90s court case alone, it contained so many insights into the making of a male diva. By the last page, I had renewed faith in Moz.

Oh yeah, that album - World Peace is None of Your Business. It was finally released this week. After reading a middling review on Pitchfork and a glowing review on The Quietus (my two main musical news outlets), I had to get to the bottom of it. I bought the Deluxe Edition (True to the description, it adds six additional songs, ostensibly making this the first (studio) double album of Morrissey's entire career; too much?) I decided to test out my first listen in the most un-Morrissey of locations: on the elliptical machine at the gym.

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. Does it sail to the solo triumphs of the late '80s/early '90s? Of course not, but it is his most solid offering in many, many years and probably his most musically interesting in decades. We all know Morrissey isn't a musician per se and pretty much plays producer/bandleader/yes or no man for his group of musicians/songwriting partners. Thankfully he's let them spread their wings this time. No more albums full of guitar/bass/drums mid-tempo plodding rockers. I couldn't take another album of them, honestly. Moz needed to give up his need to "ROCK." I wasn't convinced he could. I was wrong.

Flamenco guitar, harps, piano, accordion, organ, horns and more pepper this album; a didgeridoo (of all things) opens the affair! The man has trusted his band to expand their palate and they take him up on the offer. Morrissey also embraces his appetite for ballads again and places a few of them neatly throughout the album. I thought his ballads were going to be a lost art.

Flashes to his past shine through, in both music and lyrics. The chugging drums and bass come in at 2:43 on "I'm Not a Man" reminding me of the thrust of "The Last of the Famous International Playboys," while the sprightly strum of "Staircase at the University" could have been a Bona Drag outtake. "Kiss Me A Lot" is a sequel to 2004's "Let Me Kiss You"; in fact, sequels seem to appear elsewhere on this album. 'Istanbul' is the flipside of 'Piccadilly Palare' - father searching for a city-bound runaway teenage son. 'Kick the Bride Down the Aisle' follows the story of The Smiths' 'William, It Was Really Nothing': wedding-craving, wanna-be bride and Morrissey 30 years later, still sticking his nose in.

A new interest in life outside of the English kitchen-sink dramas shows that Morrissey is no longer as provincial as his critics like to clamor on about. Places name-checked on this album include Turkey, Spain, Scandinavia, Egypt, Greece, "Ukraine to Bahrain"; Morrissey's interest in the world around him has expanded further than anyone could have imagined from the Meat is Murder days.

And let us not forget the words, his stock in trade. Although for some bewildering reason the Deluxe Edition of this digital album does not come with a lyrics booklet (grrrr), just hearing his crisp elocution, you can hear that the man has not lost his edge, even when 18 tracks seems a few too many. Maybe writing 457 pages of an autobiography made him reset his lyrical mind.

"Neal Cassady drops dead/and Allen Ginsberg's tears shampoo his beard/Neal Cassady drops dead/and Allen Ginsberg's hosed down in a barn"

"Or they will disable you with tasers/that's what government's for"

"Don Juan picaresque wifebeater vest"

"Staircase at the university/she threw herself down/and her head split three ways"

Oh, I live for his attention to detail. He's one of the reasons I wanted to become a lyricist. Just those few gems (of many here) made me smile. Maybe he didn't pack up shop back in the mid '00s, after all.

MUSIC: 5-10-15-20: Me at: 10 (1982): Culture Club 'Kissing to be Clever'

I believe my first piece of recorded music I bought with my own money was The Go-Go's 'We Got the Beat' 45. I bought it for 25 cents from a neighbor kid; his loss. I was also a pro at taping songs off of Top 40 radio; this was the era of blank audio cassettes, mind you. What a mind-blowing invention, one that had kids across America holding up portable tape recorders to TV sets and speakers to record the music.

But the first full album that I bought (on cassette, of course) was Culture Club's Kissing to be Clever. That quick trip to K-Mart with my mother that day brought me closer to pop fandom.

I had seen the band on 'Solid Gold', America's version of the UK's 'Top of the Pops' (plus sexy dancers), the week before. Watching Culture Club perform 'Time (Clock of the Heart)' with my older sister, I was mesmerized by Boy George's look, presence, and of course, voice.

"You know that that's a guy, right?" my sister told me.

"No way!" I said. Ten-year-old mind blown.

It threw me into a world of New Wave, British pop, and music videos. I was sold.

MUSIC: 5-10-15-20: Me at: 5 (1977): Meco 'Star Wars Disco'

OK, so I'm cribbing the idea from Pitchfork's ongoing series '5-10-15-20,' but since they aren't going to be interviewing me anytime soon, I thought I'd start my own version for this blog, ages 5-40. I recommend to my readers to do their own. It's a clever and rewarding experience to dig through your own musical past.

Me at: 5 (1977)
Song: Meco - 'Star Wars Theme - Disco version)

Obviously, when you are only five-years-old you are at the musical whim of whatever your parents are buying or listening to. I was five to my brother's eight and we were both obsessed with Star Wars, as was any child of our age/generation. Anything Star Wars, everything Star Wars. Even a rinky-dink 'disco' cover of the theme song. It's novelty records like this that are made for children. They don't see the stupidity of it all, only the fun.

I remember my parents record player in the basement. Picture a giant, seven-foot long brown wooden credenza; open the lid and you'll find the record player and the storage for all those 45s. Is five to young to operate a stereo and load up 45s on the turntable? I was a pro. I remember endlessly twirling around to this Star Wars theme on the basement floor.

My alternate jam and second favorite 45 was ABBA's 'Knowing Me, Knowing You.' I think I stared at this cover for hours in my childhood, thinking they were sooo beautiful, even though Benny and Bjorn looked kinda like neighborhood dads. Maybe if I walked around my snowy Minneapolis in 1977 I would have seen these two couples in the window?

MUSIC: It's Raining Today

Speaking of 30th anniversaries, the weekend of May 4th, 1984 gave us two genius artistic presents: the previously blogged about 16 Candles and this beautiful gem, Echo and the Bunnymen's fourth studio album Ocean Rain.

Before you even hit play, you could gaze at that cover image for hours. Such beauty in the cobalt blue glow of it all. Then there's the music:

This single 'The Killing Moon' (given a re-evaluation, after its striking placement at the beginning of the film Donnie Darko), is gorgeous encapsulation of this album. It's the post-punk gloomy rock of the band's origins, but put through a filter of strings and tinkling synths.

Album opener 'Silver' bustles with spirit and is anthemic in a different way than their contemporaries/rivals U2. This album has all the drama and majesty of U2's War and The Unforgettable Fire, but none of the Christian imagery or self-righteous pomposity. Ocean Rain is a much more romantic, melancholy, surreal, dreamlike experience than Bono and co.'s mid-'80s output.

It's hard not to get lost in the epic sway and beauty of the title track:

The Bunnymen are about to release a new studio album, Meteorites, this month. The lead single 'Lovers on the Run' has a slight Ocean Rain resemblance without aping the sound. Kudos to the band for coming back again with a great new single, 35 years on from their origins.

FILM: 46 Candles...but who's counting?

[This promo photo for the film obviously never happened in the film, just an image to inspire fan fiction]

Sunday, May 3rd is the 30th anniversary (30 YEARS!) of the release of the epic 16 Candles. One of the first American films to take the journey of a teenager from the girl's perspective as the lead. And what a lead: Molly Ringwald.

If you didn't want to date her, you wanted to be her, or be her BFF, or just steal her clothes and music collection. Is this from the '80s? Those are some serious AggroPastels [product placement]:

OK, maybe not that track but how about the soundtrack to the moment your crush sees you while he's dancing with his heartless Stepford teen girlfriend ("God, I love it when your parents are out of town. I fantasize that I'm your wife and we're the richest, most popular adults in town.")

Or the moment you're crying to yourself in an empty school hallway at the dance, while Stepford and her minions walk by with a casual "How'sitgoin'?"; "Let's blow off this dance; I'm bored to the brink of insanity."

I think millions of straight girls and gay boys may have sat in study hall, post-1984 and dreamed of their own Jake Ryan. Oh, dreamy Michael Schoeffling and those boots; I wanted them (both):

But it all comes down to missing your sister's wedding reception, driving in a cherry red Porsche (duh; it's the '80s), getting a big birthday cake and sitting on a glass-top table (hoping it doesn't shatter under the weight; has this happened post-1984?)

"Make a wish."

"It already came true."

MUSIC: 'Sisy' Boy Sufjan

[The lead photo is just a gratuitous chance to feature Sufjan Stevens in a swimsuit]

NYC (via Michigan) folksinger turned indie darling Sufjan Stevens is a wonder. And that is not just due to the ageless nature of his beauty, it's the way he's taken a 180 from the balladeer and character study-driven songwriting on two albums devoted to two Midwestern states' history (Michigan and Illinois), to become an electronic experimenter.

After coming to fame with his 2005 Illinois album (and some years off to do an endless train of Christmas records), he snuck back in with 2010's The Age of Adz - a sprawling album with Sufjan's folk stylings covered in synths and drum programming.

Now Sufjan has a new band, Sisyphus (named after the disappointed, rock-rolling mythological character) and a full-length album. Joined by electronic artist Son Lux and rapper (yes, I said rapper) Serengeti, Sisyphus makes modern rap/indie RnB style jams. If you're a devotee of his odes to the Lord from his acoustic Seven Swans album, you might have your head twisted hearing his latest collaboration: https://soundcloud.com/sisyphusmusic

I'm not a fan of the rap elements (which comprise a large portion of the album); they are too standard and boring. I would have been more impressed if Sufjan had released this as a solo album under his own name. It is a slick, well-produced modern pop/RnB/hip-hop album and coming from him, that's a bit crazy.

Watch the sublime video for the stand-out song 'Take Me' - lush, beautiful and very modern sounding. NSFW-video, with flashes of bare chests, so beware if that's a problem:

Much like how U2 went all Europop, dance and electronic with their three '90s albums, only after Pet Shop Boys shocked them with their 1991 cover of 'Where the Streets Have No Name,' Sufjan heard my band's 2007 electronic cover of his orchestral anthem 'Chicago' and a few years later came back with a synth-coated take on his own work. Right? Stranger things have happened.

Oh and I leave you with this coz...do you need a reason?

MUSIC: The Same Deep Water as Robert

Today marks the 25th anniversary, a quarter century, of the release of The Cure's pinnacle album, Disintegration. There seem to be very few bands who release an album and you know immediately that this may either be their last work or the last truly great thing. This album was one of those moments. [Note: I have to give credit to their 1992 follow-up Wish for being quite a great record in retrospect; it would have been a sweet swan song...but no, it was not the last.]

What an anniversary for this piece of art on a day when it will be sunny and 90 degrees in Portland. Well, the freakish element of the weather is something Robert Smith would love...from the shadow of his mansion's darkest, coolest room.

With every tinkle of our neighbor's wind chimes in their backyard (i.e., any time the wind blows more than a whisper), I'm immediately brought back to the pretty intro to the album, right before the crash of an opulent strings (all keyboards?) comes in on 'Plainsong' and starts of the journey.

The slinky, creepy 'Lullaby' is Robert Smith at his best, making nursery-rhyme lyrics come alive alongside the darker ends of modern pop music. No one else was getting into the UK Top 10 with singles like this.

All of the epically long dirges on this album are the crystalization of what this band does best: sustained mood, longing, sadness:

Even the upbeat songs on Disintegration ('Love Song,' 'Fascination Street,' the title track), carry an undercurrent of gloom or melancholy. It is The Cure, of course.

So, where is Robert Smith now? The Cure have been dormant for over five years now and the output of the last 20 years has been hit or miss, mainly miss (or a haze of guitar boredom). Will he ever rise from his slumber and give us something that even comes near Disintegration? No, Bloodflowers wasn't it.

MUSIC: Damon the Robot

It's been 20 years now since Blur hit the big time internationally with that slice of Duran Duran-inspired dance pop 'Girls and Boys.' Frontman Damon Albarn has been through many musical incarnations: Blur, Gorillaz, The Good, the Bad, and the Queen, and now a debut solo album 25 years into the music biz.

Everyday Robots is a mellow affair. In a way, it's like Albarn's own  version of Bjork's Vespertine: quiet, sparkly, intimate, hushed - with field recordings of children playing, simple percussion, and his trademark melancholia still intact.

Albarn sings a lot about disconnection, non-connection, and technology taking us away from each other instead of closer together. Not entirely the most original lyrical idea, but he is an adept lyricist at this point and all the descriptive details really set the songs above hum-drum talking points.

Plaintive piano and acoustic guitar are some of the main sounds on the album, which only slightly breaks the formula on the upbeat 'Mr. Tembo' adding a gospel choir and a lively pulse that is absent from a lot of the rest of the collection.

Some of my favorite Albarn songs are the ballads: Blur's 'To the End' and 'The Universal,' Gorillaz' 'Empire Ants,' and The Good, the Bad's... 'Kingdom of Doom' to name just a few. The addition of downtempo Damon is right up my alley.

One of my favorite albums of the year so far.

FILM: Not Skin Deep

I haven't seen a mindscrambler/sit-with-it-for-days type of movie in ages until I saw the new Jonathan Glazer film Under the Skin yesterday. Haunting, creepy, meditative, weird, hypnotizing.

I won't give away too much of the plot (what there is of one) but think of it as a modern re-imagining of the '70s cult film with David Bowie, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Instead of searching for water on Earth, like Bowie, Scarlett Johansson, the main character of the film, searches for...well, male flesh(?) I end with a question mark because you never really know what she is taking from these men she picks up in desolate urban and rural Scotland.

It seems to follow a horror bent, like a reverse slasher film, with the woman as predator but evolves into psychedelic sci-fi death traps.

The movie has so many echoes of other films but never apes anything too overtly. Ideas come from Blade Runner (non-humans replicated to look like humans who try to feel like humans), David Lynch dream logic a la Inland Empire or Mulholland Drive, a bit of Lars Von Trier's studies of a woman's suffering, the existential aimlessness of Lynne Ramsey's films like Morvern Callar, maybe Kubrick films too, like 2001. Most overtly, my mind kept going back to the weird late '70s/early '80s psychedelic sci-fi of the 2010 film Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Who knew ScarJo could come back from the brink of comic book/cheeseball action flicks? I was hoping that former indie darling could do it, and she did.

One of the best films of the year.

MUSIC: Another Day in Paradis

I studied film for a year at the University of Warwick in England and that's where I stumbled across a treasure-trove of UK (the beginnings of Britpop) and Europop.

I kept hearing the UK Top Ten single 'Be My Baby' out and about at stores or on the radio. It sounded like a modern-day Supremes song, so I had to find out who sang it. It was Vanessa Paradis, a French singer/model/actress who had become famous at 14 for singing 'Joe Le Taxi' a song that spent three months as a Number One single in France in 1987. The video has a bit of Six Flags Make Your Own Music Video vibe about it:

After appearing in a famous Chanel ad:

And having French legend Serge Gainsbourg write a full album for her while still a teenager (I'm sure there was nothing salacious about his intent), she hooked up with (creatively and romantically) Lenny Kravitz and recorded her first English-language album, 1992's self-titled collection, written almost entirely by Kravitz. The album, like a lot of Kravitz's work, tries hard to recreate an authentic '60s/'70s RnB/funk/pop sound. Her light, airy voice is no powerhouse talent, but it's fluffy and fun and makes you wish Kravitz did more music like this, instead of his constant attempts to do "ROCK."

The girl-group cute Be My Baby:

The Monkees-style 'Sunday Mondays':

The Madonna-like 'Future Song'

She went on to do more albums (mainly French language) and act, but she never came back to that English-language pop crossover moment again.

MUSIC: OOO the World of a Lost Classic

25 years ago was a weird time for the music industry, when they had more money than they knew what to do with and threw it at anything that remotely smelled like a hit.

Sire, a subsidiary of Warners, that housed both Madonna and The Smiths at the same time, decided to take their own stab at this ever-growing club trend of house and acid house music. But how does one market that to an American mainstream audience that has no idea what 'house' is, let alone 'acid house'?

Rhythm King (see previous blog entry) released UK artist Baby Ford's debut release, an EP called 'Ford Trax' in 1988, songs that added a vocal element to the squelches and noise of early acid house.

For a debut album, Ford went for a more pop slant. With a voice that was a fey cross between Neil Tennant and Boy George, he cooed and whispered his way through a T.Rex cover:

Haunted us with the eerie and pretty swirling psychedelic 'Milky Tres/Chikki Chikki Aah Aah':

Needless to say, none of these tracks bothered any of the U.S. charts and Ford was dropped from his major label moment after the even bigger commercial misfortunes of his next release. 

This release, 1992's 'BFORD9', an album that stripped out almost all vocals, left us with early moments of minimal techno and a new direction for Ford.  

MUSIC: I Was a Teenage Rhythm King Fan

Amidst the barren late '80s American musical landscape (Mr. Mister or Cutting Crew, take your pick) where import magazines become your paper internet, I somehow managed to stumble on a series of records by UK dance/pop label Rhythm King. Not bad for a Minneapolis Catholic schoolboy in a musical wasteland surrounded by Guns n Roses and classic rock.

Rhythm King started as a Mute label offshoot (odd) and floundered a bit before hitting a stride at the beginning of 1988 with the Cookie Crew-assisted single by The Beatmasters, 'Rok da House':

1988 was the beginning, and probably the peak of their powers. We got the #2 UK single 'Beat Dis' by Bomb the Bass, one of the first sample-heavy singles in the charts:

Similarly sampladelic, on a more RnB/disco tip, S'Express made an even bigger splash with their 'Theme' tune, which became arguably one of the first acid house-tinged #1 singles anywhere; this actually slightly dented the U.S. charts:

The Beatmasters had a sadly neglected debut album and really pushed the subgenre of 'hip-house'; MC Merlin was omnipresent on multiple Rhythm King artists' releases, including this:

Every scene needed a pretty diva and Betty Boo was Rhythm King's, even if her releases didn't hold up as the label's best:

The label really had a pop heyday (1988-90) before creating offshoot labels (Outer Rhythm that released Leftfield and others) and getting a distribution deal with Sony. By the mid-90s they were signing rock acts like Echobelly and Sultans of Ping before ultimately closing by the end of the century.

But who could forget their late '80s moment of not only being on the pulse of pop/dance music but creating it.

MUSIC: Tricks and Treats

I stumbled across a CDR from 2008 with several band names written across the top; Tricky was one of them. I didn't know which album of his it was, so I put it in the car stereo during a night drive somewhere. It was the remastered version of his debut and his immediate zenith, Maxinquaye. 

A simple sidenote to the album is that it birthed the career of Alison Goldfrapp, that's how epic and genre-shaping this album was, and is. Nearly 20 years later (next year will hit that anniversary), it still sounds fresh.

Even though Portishead's Dummy had come out in the fall of '94, Maxinquaye was the quintessential 'trip-hop' album for me. Born from the collective of Massive Attack, Tricky mined darker territory - biographically, lyrically and sonically.

The gem in Tricky's crown was his teenage compatriot Martina Topley-Bird, a smokey-voiced chanteuse who sounds shockingly older than her age and stuck with Tricky (creatively and romantically) for four albums.

From Maxinquaye:

From Nearly God (a Tricky album in all but artist name):

From Pre-Millennial Tension:

From Angels with Dirty Faces:

By the dawn of the new millennium, Tricky had lost the plot a bit. A series of weak albums carried him through most of the decade. In 2008, after a five-year gap of not releasing music, he came back with the decent Knowle West Boy and has completed a trio of albums that may not be as groundbreaking as his early work but restore the quality of his output.

His '90s work is hard to match, even for a modern day Tricky himself.

MUSIC: RoMo No-No

In the fall of 1996, on one of our many (OK, one) transatlantic phone calls, Neil Tennant (lead singer of Pet Shop Boys) and I discussed the current state of UK pop for a newspaper interview.

"How do you feel about this new New Romantic revival?" I asked.

"You mean RoMo? Neil asked, with a laugh. "You know, that never even really happened."

"You mean it was just a press thing?" I asked.

"It wasn't even a press thing. It was only in the Melody Maker!" he laughed again. "But it would have been nice to have a counterpoint to the whole Britpop thing, which is getting a bit 'laddish' at the moment."

[Reminder: find someone who can transfer audio cassette to either a CD or MP3 audio file. It's a great 45 minute interview]

'RoMo' (short for 'Romantic Modernism' - how pretentious, right?) was a short-lived fad in the mid '90s that was a reaction to the 'everyday lad/bloke' look of Oasis and their sound-a-like children. No more jeans and hoodies. RoMo was the first musical retro look back to the '80s.

Taking cues from early Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell and Human League, among many others, RoMo celebrated synths and boys in make up. Club nights sprung up in London to play these early '80s synthpop hits. But dancing to records wasn't enough and soon RoMo bands sprouted up; a few of the bigger names were:

Orlando

Sexus

By 1996 it had gone mainstream, with a piece about RoMo on Sunday TV in the UK:

By then the fleeting interest had dissipated. By 1997, RoMo was another footnote. All hype, no hits. Some thought that RoMo was just a precursor/think tank for the more successful Electroclash movement that bubbled up three-to-four years later. The Electroclash looks may have been more subtle, but the music was better.

MUSIC: The New Wave of New Wave of...this trend never happening.

Now that I'm on the subject of 20th musical anniversaries (see previous blog entry about Hole), I was one of about 15 Americans who cared about this new 1994 sub-genre: The New Wave of New Wave (TNWONW; yes, there was an acronym too).

During my most voracious period of music consumption (hell, my entire 20s/the '90s basically), I was attuned to all of these microgenres (I'll do a piece on RoMo next) and reading NME, The Face, Melody Maker, Select, Q, etc. constantly.

TNWONW consisted of British bands aping the sounds of late '70s NYC (Blondie, Talking Heads) and late '70s post-punk (Wire, The Stranglers) with a post-Grunge twist. Some of these bands were one-hit wonders (in the UK) but most were no-hit wonders.

I saw These Animal Men live at the 7th St. Entry in Minneapolis (1995); it was all about the Keith Richards moptops. This is better than I remember:

S*M*A*S*H (OK, you've got to admit that's a great band name) never came to the U.S. but I still bought their LP (did they have anything else?) Hmm, they were a bit too noisy for me after all. They never became the new Clash they so obviously wanted to be.

This microgenre ran out of steam before it started, but two of the artists escaped on lifeboats and sailed in to Britpop's safe and open arms. Both had a poppier edge and were female-fronted. Once again, women save another musical genre from oblivion:

Echobelly - A British woman of Indian heritage sounding like the lovechild of Debbie Harry and Morrissey

and the most famous refugee-turned-Britpop stars, Elastica. Their first single/video relishes in the bare-bones, punky minimalism of the white backdrop, but we know they wanted to be glossy stars. TNWONW was dead already.

MUSIC: Live Through Twenty

This month is the 20th anniversary of the release of Hole's Live Through This... and some singer's suicide.

I was too busy being excited about Madchester (1990), then Shoegaze (1991-2), then the early signs of Britpop (1992-3) to care about America's attempt at a '90s music genre. It all seemed like new heavy metal to me. I never cared about anything to do with Grunge...except this Hole record, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream and, tangentially, PJ Harvey's Rid of Me.

I guess it's all the women of Grunge (Courtney, PJ,..umm...D'Arcy Wretzky) and the fey men (Billy Corgan) that I found truly interesting and adventurous.

FILM/MUSIC: Tigre is Forever

Just stumbled upon the 2013 documentary 'The Punk Singer' on cable, about Bikini Kill/Le Tigre/Julie Ruin lead singer/frontwoman Kathleen Hanna.

Though definitely a DIY/make-it-up-as-you-go-along career, I have more respect now for Ms. Hanna, 25 years or so on from her origins. Her story has just more cultural weight and significance (Riot Grrrl, the Cobain connection, zine culture, pre-internet music making, etc.) as the '90s now seem like a cozy, but culturally-rich, nostalgic era.

MUSIC: Tame Jackson

Do guilty pleasures exist anymore? I feel like it's a "thing" for young hipsters to be ashamed of liking cheesy pop music. But as one gets older, I feel like it's safe to throw off those shackles of caring about what's cool or not anymore. I'm getting another year older next week.

Fact: I bought a CD copy of Michael Jackson's 'Blood on the Dancefloor' (new album/remix collection combo) at Amoeba in San Francisco in 1998...un-ironically. Yeah, I liked it. Sue me. I love that track 'Morphine'; so creepy. "Demerol...Oh God, he's taking Demerol." Michael had issues, clearly.

So great to hear that one of my fave new rock bands (trust me, I don't like a lot of them) Tame Impala has done a cover of the 'BOTDF' (in the know acronym) track 'Stranger in Moscow' and it's a shoegazey, shoegauzey treat. Effects on top of effects. It may be Tame Impala-by-numbers, but it's sweet.

They just missed the creepy ghostly scream at the end of the original track: a kid in an echo-y street screaming 'Michael!'

Tame Impala cover Michael Jackson