Remember those schlocky songs from the 50s and 60s like “Purple People Eater” and “Monster Mash”? Thankfully, we have White Zombie to thank for keeping the tradition alive. Based on a KC and the Sunshine Band track, “Boogieman” probably wasn’t supposed to be a campy Halloween track. On the other hand, we’re talking about White Zombie, the coolest goth death metal band for high school alternative kids with a sense of humour. For bonus points, track down the video to the song. No particular reason—it’s just that stuff like this will ensure White Zombie gains a place in the history books, right next to Twisted Sister.
Archive for October, 2005
White Zombie
I'm Your Boogieman
The Crow: City Of Angels (1996, soundtrack)
Troublemakers
Everyday Is Just An Extension Of Yesterday
Everyday Is Just An Extension Of Yesterday (2004, single)
I’ve only heard the last track off the Troublemakers’ first album, Doubts and Convictions, but everything I know about the French electronic duo leads me to believe Express Way is simply a bigger, bolder and better version of the first album: jazz-influenced film noir soundscapes, complete with lines written to evoke cinematic scenes—at least, when the vocals aren’t ripped wholesale from movies themselves. “Black City,” the one track I’ve heard off Doubts and Convictions, is anchored by Travis Bickle’s line from Taxi Driver: “Some day, a real rain will come and wash the scum off the streets.”
For Express Way, the Troublemakers went a step further—they actually shot an hour-long film to go along with the album. Apparently there’s a version of the album floating about that includes the movie, but I can tell you the import release I have doesn’t have an extra disc with a film attached. Another thing the album doesn’t have—to its great detriment—is this vocal mix of the leadoff track, available only on a Blue Note promo vinyl. The Express Way instrumental oozes tension, but it really doesn’t hold a candle to the vocal mix. I can’t find any information on the woman or the monologue she recites feverishly; all I can tell you is that parts of the monologue found their way onto Rhythm Unlimited’s “Reflections.” The trance track might have been recorded before “Everyday Is Just An Extension Of Yesterday,” or perhaps not; in any case, the pedigree of the monologue from the woman whose friend is losing his mind will remain a mystery.
Gemma Hayes
Hanging Around
Night On My Side (2002)
Okay, I admit it. The only reason I downloaded a Gemma Hayes song was because I saw one of her videos. And the only reason I watched one of her videos was because Frank posted a picture of her, and as it turns out, she’s stunningly beautiful. Well, go on, have a look for yourself. Can you blame me?
Having heard far more than my fair share of female singers and female-fronted bands (though probably not quite as many as Robbie at Womenfolk), I’d like to think that I’m not completely shallow when it comes to music. There are plenty of traditionally attractive women out there who put out shite music, and there are plenty of non-traditionally attractive women whose songwriting gems are overlooked by an ignorant audience. So it’s with a clear conscience that I can say I’m now a fan of Gemma Hayes because she’s got some great songs under her belt. In reality, she fills a lot of roles that have been neglected lately; she can not only wield a mean guitar and put up a wall of sound as well as anyone, but she can play the folkie singer-songwriter without penning painfully precious or melodramatic songs. She’s not blandly adult contemporary (hello, Sarah McLachlan) nor is she overproduced and over the top (hello, Michelle Branch). Gemma Hayes is many of the things I had hoped Beth Orton would continue to be, but no longer is: soulful, charming, a bit eclectic. If Hayes comes to the role by way of My Bloody Valentine instead of the Chemical Brothers, so be it.
The unfortunate schism between the original U.K. and subsequent U.S. releases of her debut, Night On My Side, has thrown completists an extra curveball; extra tracks were added to the U.S. release, others were tossed, and then the whole album was resequenced for good measure. At least the reboot was Hayes’ own idea; in any case, the more obvious standouts like “Hanging Around” stuck. It appears there will be no such retooling for the imminent The Roads Don’t Love You, due at the end of the month. This may be because there’s no definite word of an American release this time; as with far too many albums this year, The Roads Don’t Love You sits in this odd import limbo, somewhere between “definitely not available except from Britain” and “soon to be released by an American label.” It’ll be interesting to see how Hayes’ music holds up with a new set of studio musicians and a recording studio in L.A.; these are the unmistakable signs of someone trying to go big, and I’m not sure it’s a wise path for Hayes to take. Even if she does have the looks of a starlet.
Tamara Williamson
Paradise Homes
The Arms Of Ed (2001)
Tamara Williamson has always been very good at atmosphere. One of her first tracks was an eerily claustrophobic song called “Houses.” Part of a collection of self-recorded tracks not originally intended for release, “Houses” would eventually be released in 1998 on Nightmare On Queen Street, after Williamson handed the tracks over to a couple of producer friends to see what they could do.
From those humble solo beginnings (Williamson had previously led Toronto band Mrs. Torrance, who would put out one album before dissolving) Williamson improved on her haunting voice and majestic songcraft. Where the following year’s Unconscious Pilot was a brighter, well-rounded album, 2001’s The Arms Of Ed was a brilliantly melancholy album. The addition of Karen Graves’ violin to a number of tracks, including album ender “Paradise Homes,” raised the ante in the mood sweepstakes without turning the tracks into overwrought messes. The haunting presence of “Houses” was still evident on the album, though its eight-track claustrophobia was opened up thanks to the new arrangements. “Paradise Homes” is the most epic of the tracks on The Arms Of Ed, all soaring violins and searing vocals. The final track paints a vivid picture, full of stormy skies and fading sunlight—all the tension and drama Mother Nature herself could conjure.
Cat Power
The Greatest
The Greatest (2006)
The next Cat Power album’s set for January 2006. Here’s the title track—an unusually lush waltz-like number from a singer-songwriter known best for far more barren and downbeat numbers like “American Flag,” off 1998’s Moon Pix, and the haunting “Names” from 2003’s You Are Free. Fans of Chan Marshall’s earlier work might balk at this first taste of the new album, which could be construed as a concession to more mainstream tastes; after all, between her occasionally difficult material and her often difficult live performances (Marshall’s best-known attribute is her unpredictable stage fright), Cat Power’s appeal is hardly universal. I, for one, appreciate the sound of the new track; there’s a new confidence, possibly lent to her by the backing band of Memphis musicians she’s assembled. Marshall’s fragile persona is only so compelling, but if “The Greatest” is anything to go by, it’s possible she may have finally gotten the awkward shrinking violet out of her system.
Ann Magnuson and Dave Rick
Dr. Mom
Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel (2001)
Finally, to round out the mini-suite, a song on a soundtrack album for a movie that doesn’t exist. Well, not really. Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel was really conceived as a compilation with an actual storyline, but the way the whole thing plays out is not dissimilar to a soundtrack. There are instrumental interludes, a theme song (of sorts) and a reprise, and a lot of the titles have direct correlations to events in the “movie” (Poster Children’s “Back In Uniform,” Mary Timony’s “Doom In June… The Secret Order Of The Caterpillar,” the Minders’ “Mandatory Rebirth/Prerequisite Afterlife”).
And then there are songs that have only the slightest of connections to the story of a wayward colonel and his crazy dreams. Take, for example, “Dr. Mom,” a nine-minute opus by Bongwater alums Ann Magnuson and Dave Rick. Magnuson is also an actress and a performance artist, which may explain the incredibly odd nature of both this song and a lot of the Bongwater catalogue; I haven’t heard it all, but if I could describe Bongwater in one phrase, it’d have to be “frenzied stream of consciousness.” It’s utterly delicious, the way Magnuson sounds like she’s constantly losing her mind, and it’s worth getting the album for this performance alone. All stoner rock riffs and frantic ramblings about polar bears and dirty school bathrooms, “Dr. Mom” really ends all too soon; I wish Magnuson would whisper insane nothings into my ear all day.
Beck
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, soundtrack)
In case you haven’t noticed, October’s turned into soundtrack month over here; this wasn’t really on purpose, but far be it for me to turn my back on a good theme. Beck is someone else I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to lately; really I’d lost sight of him around the time of Midnite Vultures, and didn’t bother coming back for Mutations or Guero. If more of this sort of material was waiting for me, however, then missing out on Beck’s later career will have been a mistake; this cover of a 1980 Korgis song, produced with the help of wunderkind Jon Brion (whose most recent claims to fame include helming Kanye West’s latest and walking the plank off Fiona Apple’s latest) doesn’t sound like the Beck I recall, save perhaps for the particularly downbeat Beck of “Nobody’s Fault But My Own.” Brion’s involvement may be the reason why; Beck’s main contribution was his evocative vocal performance.
Neatly bookending the film, “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes” is a rain-soaked treatise on change. In a sense, it’s fitting that Jim Carrey’s character tosses a tape of the song out his car window in a fit of frustration at the beginning of the film (technically after the prologue, of course; damned non-linear timelines), and only reappears at the very end; the song is a very simple one, but it’s almost as though Carrey’s character isn’t ready to accept its message just yet, that we have to coax him through the two hours of the film before he sees the light. But aside from whatever significance the song may have to the film’s plot, it’s also a heartbreakingly beautiful song. For a film that could so easily fall into the hipster arthouse trap of putting together a buzzworthy soundtrack full of indie luminaries and old pop classics—I’m looking at you, Garden State—Eternal Sunshine is amazingly well scored. There are few recognizable “songs,” and the one we notice—Beck’s contribution—fits the material so well, somehow weightier than the haphazard selections of other films, that it ceases to exist solely as music. It becomes inextricable from scenes of the film: the shattered cassette tape on the storm-soaked road; the beach house our protagonists explore one night; the final loop of the two playing on a snow-covered beach on Long Island.
David Byrne
Glass, Concrete and Stone
Grown Backwards (2004)
One of the first albums I bought, on a whim, was recorded by most of the original Talking Heads, then reformed under the legally evasive name of the Heads. David Byrne, frontman for the Talking Heads and the the key holdout, vetoed the rest of the band’s attempt to reuse the Talking Heads moniker; the ensuing battle was hinted at by the title of the first and only Heads album: No Talking Just Head. I bought it on the strength of the first single, a moody industrial number sung by Johnette Napolitano of the Concrete Blondes, another band I’d never heard any music from. “Damage I’ve Done” was very much a song of its time; listen to it now and its age is painfully evident. Most of the album was forgettable, the album tanked both critically and monetarily, and the Heads disappeared into obscurity, forever destined to be completely and utterly overshadowed by the far more successful band they once were.
David Byrne has never had such trouble; not only have his solo efforts been far better received, but he’s also managed to branch out beyond his musical projects and achieve success in other fields. He has a couple of films to his name, and has put together numerous art exhibitions—including a treatise on Powerpoint as an artistic tool. But because of that initial experience with the Heads, combined with my general irrational reluctance to buy any album recorded before the mid-90s, I’ve never looked very far into either Byrne’s solo work or the Talking Heads catalog.
“Glass, Concrete and Stone,” the first track off his 2004 album Grown Backwards, also plays during the end credits to the Stephen Frears film Dirty Pretty Things, about a group of illegal immigrants in London faced with a disturbing crime ring based out of the hotel they work at. Byrne wrote the track for the film with the assistance of Frears, but not before some stops and starts; originally Byrne recorded a Verdi aria for the film because he didn’t feel up to the task of writing a song to compliment the emotional power of the film. It’s the perfect sendoff to the film, which ends on a quietly upbeat note; as the credits roll, “Glass, Concrete and Stone” distills the protagonist’s emotional motivation without making direct reference to anything in the film (which may explain the song’s subsequent inclusion on the soundtrack to the 2004 film In Good Company, which has nothing to do with migrant workers or illegal immigrants). It sounds like the final scene of the movie in microcosm: the breaking of sunrise after the passing of a long storm.
Mychael Danna and Sarah Polley
Courage
The Sweet Hereafter (1997, soundtrack)
Canadians have heard the tragic tale of the Tragically Hip so many times that it’s practically become part of the national canon: the arena rock band that’s too intelligent for its own good, never able to find favour with the Americans despite the best efforts of a nation of fans. It’s practically the Canadian crisis in microcosm: the United States’ biggest neighbour and ally, but also its most invisible. So it’s odd that some Americans have come to the Hip not through concerts they’ve played in the States, or their Saturday Night Live appearance in the mid-90s, but through another vaguely obscure Canadian artist.
Toronto director Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter is the story of how a small Canadian town comes to deal with the devastating crash of a school bus, killing nearly everyone onboard. A lawyer comes to town, intent on filing a class action lawsuit, and begins soliciting the parents of the kids killed in the crash. Among the survivors is a budding singer who was left a paraplegic by the accident. She’s played by Sarah Polley, a Canadian actor forever engraved in the Canadian consciousness through her roles on CBC dramas and various Canadian movies, but best known outside the country for her work on Hollywood films like Go and the recent Dawn of the Dead remake.
What most of us, Canadians included, didn’t know was that Polley is also a decent singer; several of her vocal performances ended up on the soundtrack, including this cover of the Tragically Hip’s “Courage (For Hugh MacLennan).” One reviewer, having come to the Tragically Hip by way of Egoyan and Polley, was slightly disappointed; she had found “poetry taken into the arena rock forum” in the Hip, words that evoke the sensation of seeing something familiar through a stranger’s eyes. To at least a couple of others, Polley’s languid, delicate take on “Courage”—not the charging guitar and the signature vocals of Gord Downie—is the definitive version. And it’s certainly good enough to qualify; set against the backdrop of The Sweet Hereafter’s wintery Canadian town and recalling the Celtic pedigree of Atlantic Canada in its arrangement, Polley and score composer Mychael Danna have created a song very different and yet equal to its predecessor.
The Katamari Zoo
Scorching Savanna
Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy (2005, soundtrack)
Considered by many to be the most innovative video game of 2004, Katamari Damacy was an extremely simple game full of charm and wonder. The basic idea is you roll a ball (or katamari) around the level—say, a cluttered living room—and pick up stuff lying around, like erasers or paper clips. Slowly but surely, your katamari gets bigger and bigger until you can start picking up larger items—a pencil, a remote control, a coffee cup, the cat—until you get big enough to leave the living room and start rolling around the town, picking up bicycles, mailboxes, people… the list goes on. At the end, your katamari becomes a star based on how big you get it. Surrounding this basic premise is a wealth of oddities: you’re rolling up stars because your father, the King of All Cosmos, got drunk one night and smashed all the stars in the sky. There’s a side story about a Japanese family trying to figure out where all the stars have gone. There’s a level where your sole goal is to roll up as many crabs as possible. It’s a quirky, cute game that’s won the hearts of many. And a lot of that has to do with the original music created for the game—bright, cheery and perfectly in tune with the game’s content.
The sequel, We Love Katamari, has recently been released in the States, and the Japanese have had it for several months (under the name Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy—loosely translated, it means Everybody Loves Katamari Damacy). In addition to new levels that match the quirkiness of the original (one level has you “demolishing” a gingerbread house by rolling up all the candy parts), there’s a new soundtrack. To go along with the new zoo level, the wizards at Namco penned “Scorching Savanna.” Basically, it’s a five minute medley of the original Katamari Damacy tracks—as sung by zoo animals. Yes, it’s as awesome as it reads on paper.