A review of the indie-pop band Starling Electric's debut album. It's kind of cool, but nothing earth-shattering.
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/61168/starling-electric-clouded-staircase/

"Wish"

nine inch nails w/A Place to Bury Strangers, Saturday, August 16, Houston, TX@ Toyota Center
Going to see nine inch nails in 2008 sort of made me feel like an old man. I had seen NIN twice before, but both times were in 1994. I'd had plenty more chances over the years to go see Trent Reznor and his band, but the combination of desire and other people to go with didn't coincide until this past Saturday. 14 years is a long time to go between seeing a band, especially for me, but a host of dvd's and live albums have kept me sort of in the loop as far as the NIN stage show goes. About a year and a half ago, after Year Zero was released, Reznor announced he was letting his band go and ready to try something completely new with his live show. That didn't really hold up, as his band was still the same instrument lineup as always. Reznor played frontman, doing all the lead vocals while occasionally playing keyboards and guitar. Along for the ride were a drummer, keyboardist, bassist, and longtime guitarist Robin Finck, back with the band after spending a decade in Axl Rose's version of G'n'R. But the show itself was very new, and very cool.

New York trio A Place to Bury Strangers opened up, playing for a little over a half hour to a disinterested crowd that was still slowly filing in. For only three guys they had a big sound, but a big arena was not really the place to appreciate their dense, feedback-filled rock. After a relatively short break, NIN took the stage, opening with "999,999" and "1,000,000" from this year's free-to-the-internet album The Slip. With a large bare stage and bright white lights, it was a hard-charging, bare-bones way to start the show. The opening section of the concert featured a lot of mid and uptempo songs, as the lights gradually got more elaborate. A curtain filled with lights adorned the stage behind the drummer and keyboardist, bathing the stage in deep blue for "Discipline" and in equally deep red during "Closer."

After a while, another curtain came down, leaving about 5 feet of space along the very front of the stage. Reznor, Finck, and the bassist came up front with small racks of synths and played a handful of songs from 2007's Year Zero. Behind them on the curtain, blobs of orange and blue silhouetted the band, before becoming more elaborate with pulsing red patterns as this mini-set went on. I'd love to tell you which songs were played here, but the truth is that as much as I liked Year Zero, between that album, 2005's With Teeth, and this year's Ghosts I-IV and The Slip, Reznor has released a hell of a lot of music in a short period of time. And I just don't know every song by heart. Anyway, after a few songs in this setup, the band retreated to a complicated, instrument-filled platform in the middle of the stage, between two of the curtains. The band then proceeded to play several songs from Ghosts while the curtains projected various landscapes. At first it was a desert, then a swamp. The swamp setting featured Reznor playing a marimba on one of the highlight songs from Ghosts, the slightly spooky song that, naturally, features a marimba.

The curtain effects increased with the energy of the music. When the band got to With Teeth's "Only", the curtains projected television static, which parted only in small spaces to reveal Reznor. A transitional effect featured blue sky-like images on the curtain which was invaded by extreme close-ups of Reznor, after which a roadie came out with a flashlight and erased all the blue. Next it was back to basics with Broken's "Wish" and Pretty Hate Machine's "Terrible Lie." The rest of the set continued to feature new songs and classics, including "Head Like a Hole" near the end of the main set. The band returned for an encore, playing "Echoplex" and "Hurt." Reznor also couldn't resist returning to "Reptile" from The Downward Spiral and its deep green lighting scheme. The show ended with another Year Zero song, against the backdrop of a city, slowing erupting into flames.

Despite the tendency of the band's newer material to run together, the show was completely worthwhile. Reznor has gone all-out with his stage show for this tour, and it's visually amazing. The band itself has a lot of energy, and Reznor is still a great frontman. The show has a lot of different styles and moods, which keeps it from being an all-out angstfest. The Ghosts material mid-show is a welcome chill-out, and the more aggressive material is still a blast. Between Radiohead at the beginning of the summer and nine inch nails at the end, it's good to see forward-thinking bands from the 90's taking full advantage of 21st century technology to create unique stage environments.

"Only"


"Hurt"

Today, a short write-up of Toronto band Cancer Bats second album, Hail Destroyer. I didn't like this album much, but a lot of that stems from my problems with the hardcore punk genre in general. Not because they aren't good at what they do.
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/61959/cancer-bats-hail-destroyer

American Teen is a documentary following the lives of a handful of Indiana high schoolers during the entirety of their senior year. Director Nanette Burstein must've known exactly what she was looking for when she chose the students of Warsaw High School. Warsaw, in northern Indiana, is a small town, but not too small. It's rural, but not a podunk farm town. And it's about an hour from South Bend and Fort Wayne, and 2-3 hours from Chicago and Indianapolis. The school population, as student Hannah Bailey notes in her opening narration, is "mostly white, mostly Christian." Burstein finds her archetypes, though, concentrating on four students and their circles of friends. There's Hannah, the self-proclaimed outcast who wants to make movies and concentrate on artistic things and get out of Warsaw as soon as she possibly can. There's Colin Clemens, the star athlete at the school (in nearly any other location, he'd be the quarterback, but since this is Indiana, he's a basketball player) who needs an athletic scholarship to get into college. Megan Krizmanich is the classic popular girl, a very pretty student council member who is admired by many. And of course, the film wouldn't be complete without Jake Tusing, a clarinet player with a major acne problem whose first love is video games.

It's interesting to watch the film and see which events play out according to type and which surprise you. Jake targets a new-to-town student to be his girlfriend early in the school year, correctly figuring that she'll date him because she doesn't know any better. After a few months together, though, she clearly knows where Jake falls in the school pecking order and moves on. Jake keeps trying to date throughout the film, but he has difficulty because he doesn't seem to know the difference between endearing self-deprecation and insult. At one point, when talking with a girl about what they have in common, he throws out "We both suck at life" as an example. When she reacts by being offended, he responds, "Hey, I said both!" It's painful to watch. Hannah is free-spirited, spending time painting and playing guitar in a band. But she lives with her grandmother because her father lives out of state and her mother suffers from manic depression and "is basically impossible to live with." So an early scene that has her reflecting upon how much she loves her boyfriend and how he's the rock in her life is quickly followed by the immediate aftermath of him breaking up with her. Predictable, sure, but the lingering result is that Hannah misses at least 17 days of school, consumed with depression and self-pity that gradually changes into high anxiety about setting foot in the school, period.

Meanwhile, Colin Clemons has multiple arguments with his father about whether it's possible to afford college if he doesn't get a scholarship. Dad is adamant that he cannot and that Colin will have to join the military if he doesn't make it. This leads to a series of sports montages of Colin struggling in basketball games, becoming a ball hog, and having poor games when college recruiters are in the gym watching. Eventually the playoffs come along, though, and, in classic sports movie fashion- well, you can probably guess the rest. Which brings us to Megan Krizmanich. Clearly this is a girl who is used to getting her way. But she has her own pressure to deal with- the rest of her family went to Notre Dame for college. And her father absolutely expects Megan to follow in those footsteps and is pretty overt in that desire. But that doesn't excuse her behavior in the rest of the film. At one point we see her throw a temper tantrum when her prom theme loses out to the junior class's idea. She decides to go toilet paper the house of the person responsible. Then she gets out the spray paint, and has to face the consequences later on. Megan also has a bizarre passive-agressive relationship with Geoff, her childhood friend. During the year, a couple of her female friends get romantically involved with Geoff (at separate times), and she goes out of her way to sabotage them, even going so far as to completely ruin the reputation of one of her former friends. These scenes (and there are several) made me hope that once Geoff graduated he went to college out of state and that he never has to deal with Megan again. Because I think it would turn out very badly for him if he ever let Megan get into a real relationship with him.

American Teen is enjoyable in its reality show-style document of actual high school kids. It's interesting to see how much the classic high school stories apply to the students that Burstein chose to focus on. Some of the scenes in the movie do seem at least partially staged, but it's tough to tell how much of that is due to these kids growing up with reality tv and knowing "how to act" when the camera is pointed at them and how much is due to Burstein giving said scenes a little push to move the action forward. Regardless of the questions about its authenticity, I think it's safe to say that the film is mostly true to life and is definitely entertaining. 3.5/5

I go back to school next week for a week of staff days. Then, school starts for real on August 25. So my summer is basically over at this point. But really, as nice as it's been, I'm about ready to get back to work. Don't get me wrong, it's been great hanging out with Judy late into the night during the bits of the summer when we've both been around. And it's been good to actually whittle down my pile o' books and play through some of the video games that I've had mostly untouched since last Christmas. But after a while it gets kind of boring to sit around for most of the day. So I'll enjoy these last few days (nine inch nails concert on Saturday, whoo!) but I'm actually kind of looking forward to having something productive to do. Hey, maybe I'll actually use some of the stuff I learned at my two-week music class this summer.

Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express is the follow-up to last year's Superbad. A lot of movies in the past 15 months have had producer Judd Apatow's name attached to it, but Superbad was written by longtime Apatow actor and writer Seth Rogen, and his partner Evan Goldberg. They wrote that movie a a long time ago, though, so by the time Superbad hit theaters last August, the script for Pineapple Express was ready to go into production. To their credit, Rogen and Goldberg are trying for something significantly different this time. Pineapple Express is a hybrid- a stoner comedy/serious action movie. It's a difficult combination to get right, and they almost manage to pull it off.

Rogen plays Dale Denton, a process server who spends most of his day driving around stoned while looking for his targets. The opening scenes of the movie involve Denton tracking down various people, putting on disguises, and serving them subpoenas. We also meet Saul (James Franco), Denton's pot dealer, who considers Dale a great friend and sells him the titular type of marijuana. Dale doesn't particularly like Saul, though, and spends most of his time at Saul's place trying to buy the weed and get out of there. Later that night, Denton is parked outside of his latest target's house, waiting for the opportunity to serve him, when he witnesses a murder. Denton clumsily tries to get away, tossing his half-smoked joint out the window in the process. It turns out that the man, Ted Jones (the always-reliable Gary Cole), is the top pot dealer in town, two levels above Saul, and he recognizes the Pineapple Express. And Red (Danny McBride), the middleman between Ted and Saul, has only given Pineapple Express to Saul. Which makes it relatively easy for Ted's hitmen to track down Saul. After this complicated setup, things turn into a chase movie, with Saul and Dale trying to get away and hide while Ted's men try to find them.

The movie is filled with funny bits, a lot of them stemming from Saul's stoned cluelessness. It's great to see Franco doing a great acting job again, after years of dragging down the Spider-Man movies as Harry Osborn. He nails the perpetually high, completely distracted pothead role perfectly without going over the top. Rogen is his usual jovial self as Denton, but he also gets to spend a lot of the movie in panic mode, which is something we haven't seem him do a lot. Danny McBride is also funny as Red, the generally easygoing and virtually indestructible middleman. But stealing the movie is Craig Robinson (best known as Daryl on The Office), as a sensitive hitman. He grabs laughs every time he's on the screen, whether it's threatening the main characters or arguing with his partner (Kevin Corrigan).

Then there's the action. Early on, it's goofy and over the top and fun. The car chase is great, especially when Saul attempts to kick out the front windshield and gets his foot stuck instead. There's a big three-way fight between Saul, Dale, and Red that's painfully violent, but still funny. But as the movie goes on, the action gets more intense, and it doesn't quite fit tonally with the earlier parts of the film. The climactic showdown goes on for a good 20 minutes, and lots of people die in really violent ways. Somehow Rogen, Goldberg, and director David Gordon Green couldn't quite make this work comedically, at least not for me. Maybe they should've watched more of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz for an example of how to effectively mix the goofy comedy and all-out action. Still, Pineapple Express is a lot of fun with a lot of laughs and worth seeing. 3.5/5

Fucking hate it. I was pissed earlier this year when I found out Detroit's venerable State Theater, a venue I had been to dozens of times to see shows over the years, had been bought out and had its name changed to The Fillmore Detroit. Sure, The Fillmore is a legendary San Francisco venue and they had a New York City location, too, but it left a horrible taste in my mouth when they started buying up theaters across the country and slapping the Fillmore name on them. Live music clubs and theaters should not all have the same brand name! This was a pet peeve I wasn't even aware I had until this happened. Turns out that concert behemoth Live Nation owns the name, and there the ones responsible for this horrible idea, changing names of places in Philadelphia, New York City, Denver, and Miami Beach as well.

Still, Houston, despite its problems attracting some tours, has two very good mid-sized club venues, The Meridian and Warehouse Live. Between the two places, the concert slate is kept relatively full through the fall and again in the spring here. But this morning I stumbled upon a tour that listed "The House of Blues" as the Houston venue they were stopping at. Turns out there is a House of Blues opening here in Houston in October. I will most likely be going to this place to see TV on the Radio on October 29. Okay, as much as I hate the branding of The Fillmore, The fucking House of Blues is even worse. An ever-growing chain of the same exact club in different cities. The House of Blues doesn't just slap its name on old venues, they build new clubs and try to shove out the local places by throwing their name around. It was a cute Blues Brothers tie-in when they (and yes, Dan Akroyd and Jim Belushi have ownership stakes in the company) opened their first club in Chicago. With the Houston opening, though, they now have 18 Houses of Blues across the country and it pisses me off to no end. I'm sure the Houston venue will be a very nice, clean place to attend a show, as I'm sure each and every location is. But character can add a lot to a concert experience, and the McDonald's of live music venues is the opposite of character.

If the HoB Houston actually turns out to have character and doesn't seem like a cookie-cutter place, I'll be sure to make the "I was wrong" journal entry here the next day. But until then, my annoyance and frustration is in full effect.

The Midnight Meat Train

The Midnight Meat Train starts with a simple conceit: Vinnie Jones is ****ing creepy. And it goes on from there. Okay, that's not really the conceit, but it's one of the things that makes this movie so effective. Jones, a former English football player (yes, that means soccer) became an actor right around the time Guy Ritchie leapt onto the scene with Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. After playing heavy-duty thugs in those two films, he's made a career out of similar roles for the past decade. And he's the main bad guy in Midnight Meat Train, a man in a very nice suit who dispatches innocent subway riders with a big, heavy hammer and a particularly nasty meathook. I should also mention that Jones is much more effective when he doesn't have to say much. Appropriately, he's nearly completely silent in this movie. It's intimidating, to say the least.

But Jones isn't the only thing The Midnight Meat Train has going for it. It's based on a creative Clive Barker short story, one with a simple premise and a believable main character. The movie also has director Ryuhei Kitamura at the helm, a Japanese action/horror auteur with a list of fanboy-loved but not completely engaging films like Versus, Azumi, and Godzilla: Final Wars. His American debut turns out to be the film where he finally puts it all together. Having fresh source material seems to have energized Kitamura well beyond the American efforts of his peers such as The Ring Two's Hideo Nakata and The Grudge's Takashi Shimuzu, both of whom were saddled with watered-down remakes of their original Japanese horror movies. Kitamura uses inventive camerawork throughout, both in his shooting of the brutal deaths of the hapless victims and his use of the camera lens of his main character, photographer Leon Kauffman.

Kauffman is played by Bradley Cooper, who has a long list of tv credits and a shorter list of film credits, but who is probably still best-known for his role on Alias as Sydney Bristow's reporter friend Will Tippin. Cooper excels at playing a regular guy, and the movie takes its time showing Leon's life during the first act. He's a photographer with a jones for New York City, trying to find the city's heart through his photography. A meeting with influential art patron Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields, impressive in a small role) convinces him that he isn't going far enough with his pictures. He shies away from shooting confrontation, which is apparently the real heart of the city from Hoff's perspective. Leon's fianceé Maya (Leslie Bibb) disagrees, telling him that he should shoot what makes him happy. Leon listens to Hoff, though, and heads down to the subway to shoot a group of street thugs harassing a woman. He intervenes before anything serious happens, though, and watches the woman get away on a subway train. But the next morning she turns up missing, and the wheels start turning. One thing leads to another, and Leon stumbles onto Mahogany, the Vinnie Jones character, which eventually leads him to the titular subway train.

Midnight Meat Train is a hard-core horror film. The death scenes are ugly and frequent, but there's a palpable sense of tension to it, as well. It's difficult to pull off a horror film that's both gory and produces chills. Too often the gore itself is mistaken as the source of the horror, but here there is tension effectively created by the anticipation of what may happen to the characters. We know how brutal Mahogany is from the beginning, so when we see potential victims on the subway, it's cringe-inducing. And as the primary characters get more and more involved in the final third of the film, the tension level rises. The premise itself is bizarre, but not unexplainable. The story doesn't spoon-feed the audience the answers, though, so for much of the film we have no idea why there is a man on the subway killing people. By the end, though, we know, and it all falls into place.

It's a shame that a shakeup in management at Lionsgate Films has caused this movie to get buried. Originally scheduled to be released with much promotion in May of 2008, the new boss at the studio apparently didn't care for the film. So instead of being released nationally with the kind of horror movie marketing that made hits out of the Saw franchise and Hostel, the studio has chosen to release the movie in just 102 second-run theaters around the country, for one week, with no advertising of any kind. Putting the movie in dollar theaters and not telling anybody is a great way for studio executives to say, "We released the movie in theaters, but it didn't make any money and nobody came to see it." As I write this, there are probably only about 3-4 screenings left of the movie for the day, and then it will be out of theaters. The rest of the horror aficionados will have to wait for the dvd release to see it. This is a film that deserved far better treatment than it received. 4/5

Today I am ridiculously excited because, after 8 months of writing album and concert reviews for PopMatters, I have my first headline, feature piece! It's sort of a long read, but if you want to know what it's like to go to the San Diego Comic-Con, head over to http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/61613/comic-con-2008-bigger-than-ever-but-does-that-mean-better/ and check it out.