Disqus - Latest Comments for Sean

Re: This Anomalous Experiment

Sean — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:54:42 -0000

Good luck Tom. Venture far and wide.

Re: Suspecting Woody Allen: a Review of Scoop

Sean — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:46:46 -0000

Nicely stated, but I do suggest Allen lost it long ago. He's been treading water for years, playing to the same Richie-rich milieu, without the least bit of formal invention (who exactly thinks of this guy as a FILMmaker, anyway?)surprise or risk. I haven't seen Scoop, so I can't comment on it, but really at this stage of his career, what's the point?

Re: Our Generation

Sean — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 17:25:21 -0000

Re: Bigbalagan

There's no way anything can sound as "revolutionary" in 2007 as Are You Experienced did in 67. Impossible. It's like asking a young director to shock (or disrupt) in the same manner as say, Bunuel did with L'Age D'or or Un Chien Andalou. Fifty plus years into this rock thing and it seems every swath of headspace has been covered. From Hendrix and the Velvets, to the early Who, MC5, Johnny Thunders, Pete Cosey, Robert Quine, Sonny Sharrock, P-Funk, Clevelander's Pere Ubu and Electric Eels, Can, Punk, Joy Division, PIL, Thurston Moore, a slew of avant-gardists (i.e. Elliot Sharp), decades of metal, and a zillion others, there's nothing new under the sun. All bands can do beyond genre cut and paste is try to enliven, enlarge or improve upon certain aspects of what came before.
If its disruption your after there's hip-hop, Japanese psych (Acid Mother's Temple, Boredoms, Boris,)even lunacy like Scott Walker.
Just don't look for it in the "alt-rock" bins.

Re: Buzzing Oscar

Sean — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:11:54 -0000

They usually call the summer the dumb season at the movies, but they should bookend it with the late fall/winter season too. Sure there's bound to be something worthwhile floating around during the holidays, but it's also the time when the studios foist their blurb-addicted beached whales, prestige pics, and Oscar hopefuls on an all-too-suspecting general public. Morning shows kick up the buzz, Variety and Entertainment Weekly strike up the band, and people debate the nominations like they are doctrine.
How is Leonardo in The Departed?
He's fine. But he ain't one-fifth of what Tony Leung was in (the original) Infernal Affairs. Neither is the movie itself. Scorsese might have been "a great director" long ago, now he's just shrewd, calculating film historian desperate for affection from people he probably loathed 30 yrs ago.
Which of the nominees should you rush out and see? Certainly not Babel, which is just Paul Haggis' Crash gone global, with three times the helium. The Queen is competent, a nice nuanced Helen Mirren performance, occasionally moving, all-too-obvious. Maybe Letters From Iwo Jima?
Just look at Best Actress: there's the aforementioned Miss Mirren (who will win), Judi Dench, who has some nasty fun with her spinster history teacher in Notes On A Scandal, (pure Ken Russell camp), Kate Winslet (plenty of by-the-book yearning in another sick-soul-of suburbia movie) Penelope Cruz who holds her own in a softheaded movie by a former enfant terrible, and Meryl Steep who's pretty good until the movie tries to "humanize" her with crocodile tears. Five performances, none of which come anywhere close to Laura Dern's in Inland Empire a taxing, off-putting, genuinely experimental movie that no one's seen.
With the exception of a few cinematography noms, and the doc mention for Iraq in Fragments, the Oscars is as usual, a bust. Hope that helped.

Re: Operator, Can You Help Me Place This Call: Great Telephone Songs

Sean — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:07:23 -0000

Can i just add a few lines of yearing from Blondie:

It's good to hear your voice, you know it's been so long
If I don't get your call then everything goes wrong
I want to tell you something you've known all along
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone
Nice post Tony

Re: 49th Annual Grammys. Let’s Get Down Tonight.

Sean — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:02:21 -0000

Bizarre, they bring out Ornette--then make him give an award to carrie underwood?

Re: The Departed

Sean — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:05:49 -0000

A few thoughts on Scorsese:

1. Infernal Affairs may not have been great, but it sure was compact compared to Scorsese's padded work. One of the virtues of the original (outside of Tony Leung and Andy Lau)is the near absence of psychologizing. It's a clever, fast-moving genre piece, adroit with something useful to say about the choices we make. Onto this Scorsese has mapped all kinds of spurious philosophizing, replete with William Monahan's gratuitous high-art references (Freud, Joyce).

2. Remember when Scorsese had an ear for music? Remember "Be My Baby" floating over the opening of "Mean Streets?" There was a time when he could throw Bach, Bad Brains, and "Someone To Watch Over Me" into the mix, using each for effect or counterpoint or whatever. Now he's sounds like he's stuck on the same ipod playlist. How many times is going to use "Gimmie Shelter?"

3. While Chinese directors like Ringo Lam and Johnnie To and plenty others surely owe Scorsese a debt, the horror movies Hollywood has been leeching off have been Japanese:
Ringu remade as The Ring, Kairo as Pulse, and Ju-on as The Grudge. Each of the remakes are personality free

Re: The Rock Star’s Burden

Sean — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:57:02 -0000

I haven't heard Freedom Road, just the cheap, awful Chevy tie-in single "Our Country" which hounded football fans the last third of the season. (I heard it seven times in the first quarter of a Monday night game.) Honestly, I didn't know Mellencamp still made albums; he's been off my radar for about 20 yrs, since circa, Lonesome Jubilee. John's always been too hokey by (at least) half; dancing through the corn fields, playing the small town rube, doing his third-rate Guthrie schtick, even Kenny Aronoff couldn't save him.
Re that buried cut: Since Chevy paid for a heavy-rotated music video (a swift tracking shot from sea-to-shining sea thru the Greatest Generation, etc.)Mellencamp can rest assured that anyone that might be angered by "Rodeo Clown" will pony up the fifteen bucks without ever knowing the track is there. He can pretend to be all "fearless" and still take home a (modest) paycheck. Why else bury the song? Seems pretty lame to me.

Re: The Replacements Come to Monday Nights

Sean — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:53:27 -0000

I haven't seen it either, but if Haggis is involved I'll tread lightly. Thirtysomething never meant anything to me; the aspect of Million Dollar Baby worth saving is in Eastwood's handling of his actors; Crash was a disaster, and his Flags of Our Fathers screenplay was pretty pedantic. Maybe this is different.

Re: The Definition of Friendship

Sean — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:34:59 -0000

Just a couple of thoughts on Dan's response: Lester Bangs once called Jim Morrison, Bozo Dionysus, cause he knew that, despite his gibberish Morrison's shaman antics were good street theater if nothing else. Morrison's "American poet" mystique is just tired, crusty 60s myth. And just how was he the best lyricist of the era? Other than "Break On Through" (and maybe a few bootlegs)he/they never lived up to their Blake-derived moniker.Cut for cut the only passable album is their last. Hell, Arthur Lee had more to say.
As for Lennon, it's hard to imagine anyone, contrarian or otherwise, preferring the cloying Wings to, hard, bitter,rueful songs like "Gimme Some Truth" and "Working Class Hero," and "Isolation." The remarks about "diversity" and "musicality" are just vague, unsubstantiated pronouncements. I love the early Who (Sings My Generation, Who Sell Out) but Townshend's turned the band (and his solo career) into one long concept/opera/high art project after another. If that's "diversity" you can have it.

Re: Rock’s Greatest Covers: Patti Tops the List

Sean — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:29:20 -0000

Came to this post late. Husker Du's "Eight Miles High," P.J. Harvey's "Wang Dang Doodle," Cornershop's Punjabi take on "Norwegian Wood," Marshall Crenshaw's "Someplace Where love Can't Find Me," Sonic Youth's version of Neil Young's "Computer Age" (a throwaway from a tribute album, but fun nonetheless), Waco Brother's rip thru Cash's "Big River" and Roy Acuff's "Wreck On The Highway," The Minutemen's garage-funk of BOC's "The Red And The Black," The Clash's "Police And Thieves," and two hip-hop (kinda) reinventions: Tricky's (really his alter-id Martine's) "Black Steel" by Public Enemy, and Eric B. and Rakim's "Lyrics Of Fury."

Re: Rock’s Greatest Covers: Patti Tops the List

Sean — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:03:33 -0000

OOC (69) The Cornershop is probably the weakest one I listed, I was doing it pretty much off the top of my head, but I don't mind it all. The Minutemen cover vastly improves the sluggish BOC original. And Tricky turns Public Enemy's tale of prision-break on its head: despite the guitars, "Black Steel" turns into a cul-de-sac, claustrophobic like the rest of Maxinquaye.

Re: Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

Sean — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:52:44 -0000

I don't remember much about the novel, read it many years ago and have no interest in returning to it. What I do recall is Atlas Shrugged, which is even more ridiculous, (in paperback his radio broadcast amounts to close to 80 pages I think)and completely inorganic. Whatever Objectivism is about--laissez faire Capitilism, self-interest, refuting Kant-- her books are dull tracts, not novels. (King Vidor actually succeeded in humanizing Roark, Francon and the rest more than Rand ever did. Those final shots in the ambulance have more empathy than anything she ever wrote.)

Re: Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

Sean — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:45:34 -0000

I don't think Rand is a novelist, but it has nothing to do with inability to write convincing dialogue, or the vagaries of plot construction, or the tenets of Objectivism. She's a dull, clumsy rhetorician (her short novel Anthem reminds me of one of those Twilight Zones where the moral is pounded home every 30 seconds or so lest the meaning be lost)who dispenses with all the irrationality, folly, unreason that make human nature what it is. Roark and Galt aren't characters, they're Platonic supermen, ego ideals of some Objectivist perfection with Rand's license to rule the world, but they're not human beings.
Also: Vidor's film does have stilted dialogue, and the acting does leave something to be desired--but look at the soucre material! Gary Cooper railing against small men and weak ideas...for some six minutes! But Vidor along with DP Robert Burks (who shot about a dozen movies for Hitchcock) get a few things right: the strong rigid lines, the light in the quarry and that final POV shot in the ambulance.

Re: Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

Sean — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:44:55 -0000

Richard if you find Objectivism something to live by or strive towards, or find her portrayl of the heroic inspiring, good luck reaching those exalted heights. Still doesn't make Rand a novelist--and that's where this thread began.
Your phrase "the more rational one is the more human" would pretty much eliminate the likes of Kafka, Joyce, Musil, Gombrowicz, Tanizaki and a zillion other 20th cetury writers (not to mention at least three-quarters of English Lit.)who rummaged around the corners of the psyche, cataloging the permutations, foibles, follies, lusts--and occasional beauty. So the anawer to your intial question Richard is no, I don't find it exciting because they're not men and women--they're Forms, big ego-Ideals that march thru the books in lockstep to rail, cavail, and hector all the miserable cretins who want to supress their abiding genius. Whatever Objectivist lessons she's teaching,it's not fiction. Compared to the dizzying leaps of her (birth-countrymen) Gogol or Bulgakov or even the early(recent) fiction of Victor Pelevin, she's pretty dull.

Re: Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

Sean — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:06:07 -0000

Richard, your posts are starting to SOUND like Atlas Shrugged. First of all my interest is primarily literary--the topic of discussion is was a novel not a philosophical discourse and that's where I am leaving it. As a novel it is didactic, histrionic, humorless and compared to say, Bulgakov's "The Master And Margarita" or "The Heart Of A Dog" or Gogol's "Dead Souls" (never mind his short stories) or even Victor Pelevin's "The Life of Insects" (all Russian) dull and nearly (to me) unreadable.) Atlas Shrugged, is merely The Fountainhead supersized.
Re: your notion that characters in fiction are not "literal humans," is not news to anyone save, say Harold Bloom, who thinks that Hamlet lives next door to him in New Haven or wherever he resides. Everyone knows that characters are projections of their authors--the HCE (Here Comes Everybody) of Finnegan's Wake is nice metaphor for such--but Rand's aren't even that, they're Ideals, signposts,(and unbearably pompous ones at that) she uses to hang her philosophy on. Art is not what "ought to be," (what artist could survive under that?) but the whole range of human nature: the loves, hates, fears, drives, etc.

Re: The Host: A Mini Review

Sean — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:09:15 -0000

The Host is certainly worth its time. Bong Joon Ho also made 2005's polcier Memories of Murder. Aside from the creature which is tactile and believable, each character has his or her own quandry: immaturity, unemployment, failure, etc. Bong also has a good sense of humor: the media's rush to sentimentalize the Han memorial service (all those flashbulbs popping) is as clever as the kids who contaminate the crime scene in Memories.

Re: Wagner Visible

Sean — Tue, 08 May 2007 10:13:43 -0000

I really wanted to see this but the prices were, as you said, obscene. Unfortunately, money dictates and only those willing to pay the price of a coach airline ticket can go.
As for Salonen, he's always been forward thinking, with his approach to both the future of opera and classical (and his own music) and he's not afraid of pop. Same with Viola, who generally, even at 10 mins aims for rapture and dislocation. Anything to drag opera out of its dusty crypt and into the 21st century. Nice post.

Re: Storming the Gates

Sean — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:06:37 -0000

Schickel is a fool. Look at most of his reviews compared to the better film blogs and pity the poor Time critic. Like so many "critics" today writing about film and complaining about blogging he has little visual acumen (or ability to relate how he sees a movie to an audience), isn't a particularly sharp writer, and has fairly limited take (via Time mag) of world cinema. Blogging has made film criticism more adventurous, moving it out of the standard review, breaking down its aspects (poetics, cinema as memory, opening shots, etc ,etc.)creating an atmosphere where thumbs up/down is the least of it. My only problem with blogs (in general) is the kind of run-on logic of interminable posts. Since most writers good (and esp. not so good) require another set of eyes, so many posts belabor points, drift, or drag or merely overstay their welcome.

Re: Volver: A Feast of Banalities

Sean — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:35:00 -0000

Alas, one can't stay an enfant terrible forever (or at least into late middle age), but Almodovar is now the festival circuit's big cuddly teddy bear, his "outrageousness" indivisible from his sentimentality. He couldn't appear at the NY Film Fest Q&A (for Volver) we were told because he had to fly back to Madrid to accept "a lifetime achievement award" from the
Spanish government. At age 57.

Re: Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Army of Shadows’

Sean — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:32:06 -0000

Since you didn't elablorate on plot or anything else I will merely say that from its bizarre opening shot on the Champs Elysee to its climax (or climaxes, in a sense there are a few) Shadows is highly restrained emotionally. Yet in the end, restraint is only about a third of it.

Re: Damaged Goods or Why I Wasn’t Scandalized by Notes on a Scandal

Sean — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:41:54 -0000

No amount of "analysis" can do justice to their catfighting or Patrick Marber's silly screenplay. Overwrought is a good description for Notes, failed camp is another.

Re: 100 Plus 10

Sean — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:07:36 -0000

I'm with Dan on this one. This is like those Rolling Stone lists they wheel out every decade or so to make sure everyone knows their "blue-ribbon" panel is resting comfortably. Great to know that they find Toy Story, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption and oh, name any other of the 20 or 30 middlebrow diversions more memorable than
Mulholland Drive. Hope their CBS tie-in got the applicable ratings.

Re: Shooting A Blank: Army of Shadows and Letters from Iwo Jima

Sean — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:57:23 -0000

Good post. The moment in Army of Shadows that hit me hardest was just after Gerbier's yes, "all too-miraculous" escape. He holes up in some country home or cottage, amidst rain, wind, mud, dirt and, most of all, silence. A ghost, passing thru our world on borrowed time, he seems utterly destitute, utterly blank. If you consider yourself dead already does it lift the anxiety, the burden, of waiting for that day to come? I doubt it. I'm not sure if this is what Melville intended, it may have just been a transition, but coming after the near-fantasy of his rescue,
(so well timed! so grandiose!) his weather-beaten existence felt like last rights to me.

Re: I can name that great TV tune in…

Sean — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:21:01 -0000

When I was 7 yrs old I loved the Mannix theme, (Lalo Schifrin, like Misson Impossible), I also liked The Wild West, Mary Tyler Moore (kinda precious just like Mary herself), Dr. Who, Good Times. Do spoken word themes count like that annoying control voice on the Outer Limits? Or The Twilight Zone?
Last TV theme to get stuck in my head: Nerf Herder's taut, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Re: Two Cents

Sean — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:14:55 -0000

I just watched in again recently and I think it still holds up pretty well (barely remember the Martin version). The best thing I've read on Pennies is by the critic Howard Hampton in his book Born In Flames.

Re: The Great American Rock and Roll Band

Sean — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 00:31:56 -0000

I like Workingman's Dead, American Beauty and I think Live/Dead is beautiful but I never cared much for their traveling roadshow. I'm with OOC on Sonic Youth (25yrs and counting), Velvets, Television, etc. And what about P-Funk? "One Nation Under A Groove" not American enough?

Re: The Great American Rock and Roll Band

Sean — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 01:01:21 -0000

There's far more to Sonic Youth than "intellectual novelty" whatever that means. Noise (and innovation) is only part of the package; hooks (see pretty much anything from Daydream Nation on) and genuine beauty show up too. They've done it for a quarter century, and what's more they rock harder than The Smiths or U2 ever could. And unlike the latter they actually have a sense of humor.

Re: The Great American Rock and Roll Band

Sean — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 01:05:38 -0000

Jason wasn't trying to sell you on P-Funk--I was reminding the rest! And yes Public Enemy deserves a mention. They've been thru so many incarnations, and still there's SOMETHING going on (though their sound is starting to date some.

Re: They’ve Got A Great Beat (And You Can Dance To Most of Them)

Sean — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 01:30:53 -0000

A few of the albums I've been listening to alot: Battles, "Mirrored" ("Atlas" in particular), The National's "Boxer" ("Mistaken For Strangers" and "Fake Empire" esp,) Miranda Lambert's "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" two albums by the Japanese guitarist Michio Kurihara, ("Sunset Notes," and "Rainbow") and two "blues" albums, the Moaners "Blackwing Yalobusha" and the new (frustrating) White Stripes.
The Battles album is a bit too whimsical at times but at least it sounds like it was made in , and for the 21st century. The National is way moodier, with songs about losing your illusions and feeling miserable at 2 am, but the drummer kicks the songs home pretty well. The two Kurihara's couldn't be more different: the former sounding like soundtracks to imaginary Leone movies, the latter, a collaboration with his psych friends Boris. The two White Stripes cuts I've played the most are the title track and the fairly ridiculous "Conquest."

Re: They’ve Got A Great Beat (And You Can Dance To Most of Them)

Sean — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:18:20 -0000

Ooc, I believe its Annie Hall.

Re: Barbara Stanwyck: The Professional’s Professional

Sean — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:59:34 -0000

How about "The Furies" or "Night Nurse"?

Re: Rocks Requiem Part IVXIII…

Sean — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:08:27 -0000

I like "Toxic" too. The whole notion of "authenticity" and "sincerity" seems beside the point. JT's promblem's not "computer-driven" but persona driven, he seems like a cipher with a measure of talent unsure of what he wants to say. I like guitars as much as anyone else around here but the whole punk rock playbook is all but exhausted and there are times when I think I never want to hear another roots rock record again. Until someone rewrites the rules, (not an easy thing to do at this late date) the template is just too narrow.
But there is still plenty to listen to. Rock as a commercial force may be stone cold dead, but its basic components, guitar, bass drums, power-chords, etc. travel well and have been assimilated for the past two decades (at least) by any number of indigenous musics from the Balkans to Algerian rai to Japanese psych and beyond.

Re: Rocks Requiem Part IVXIII…

Sean — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:29:51 -0000

Jason--
I haven't heard the new Tinariwen but I'm looking forward to--their last one was a grower--a bit reticent at first but one of my fav's of 05.

Re: Confession of a Hater

Sean — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:39:59 -0000

Funny post Dan but most of your targets (Joel, Eagles, The Police, Bruce Willis, Jonathan Franzen) are fish in a barrel, way too easy. Thing is as much as I dislike all the above I doubt I could work up much HATE for any of them. Joel is utterly innocuous, sure, the Eagles a combination of genteel melancholy and fast last schmaltz, and Franzen merely the most annoying prestige novelist around. Still, I doubt they are worth the bile. Criticism sure, but hate? Nah. Way over the top. Sting? Possibly, (his self-importance makes Bono's look quaint) if I spent any time thinking about him.
Also: Rick Moody was Dale Peck's whipping boy, but Peck moved on to bigger targets: Joyce, DeLillo, Stanley Crouch (who slapped him in the face in an encounter in a restaurant)in his book "Hatchet Jobs"

Re: Bergman: The Last of the Great Ones

Sean — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 03:54:44 -0000

"Smiles Of A Summer Night" is the Bergman for me. Also: "Shame," "Monika," "Persona" and probably "The Silence" But there is also alot of things that seem stilted or dated ("The Seventh Seal," the death/nightmare imagery in "Wild Strawberries," and "The Hour Of The Wolf")or needlessly pious.
I agree with weepingsam: Hou, Lynch are still young enough to break new forms/modes, Marker's always in search of a subject, and maybe DeOlivera can live to 150. (Has Oshima made anything since Taboo?)

Re: Steely Dan’s Top 10 Guitar Records

Sean — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:06:38 -0000

I'm with you on Countdown To Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, and most of Katy Lied. "Bodhisattva" sure, plus "My Old School" but I'd add "Black Friday" from Katy Lied, not the most propulsive solo but one tied to the most vicious song they ever wrote, which gives it an extra kick.
I can't get with most of what follows (Royal Scam, Gaucho, Aja,
etc) which is way too tasteful. Their "slickness" which plays off the solos/lyrics on those early records seems to dominate the latter ones.

Re: Dead Rock Stars: Heaven’s Best Pick-Up Band (Or Hell’s)

Sean — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:05:22 -0000

D. Boon (Minutemen)

Re: Inland Empire, or, David Lynch Loses His Marbles

Sean — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:24:39 -0000

Mulholland Drive is still the best thing I've seen this decade, instinctual, moving, self-referential in the best sense. Inland Empire is, as one critic put it, a You-Tube nightmare, too long, taxing, and as far as I'm concerned, beautiful. But, like OOC i am not out to convert anyone to Lynch's wavelength. IE comes closer to mapping the processes of (distressed)thought (from the inside) better than anything I've seen, and Laura Dern holds all these personae (shards, really) in place expertly, until the rabbits upstage her.

Re: The Grammy Awards: Yours and Mine

Sean — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:45:53 -0000

The Grammys like the Oscars and the rest, have always been terrible but everyone knows that. Yeah, there's no center anymore, and there probably never will be again outside of Boomerville, where the focus is on the past and reunions and whatnot. Music mutates too quickly these days for that "shared cultural identity" to mean much but there's plenty around to listen too, even if the Grammy's remain clueless.

Re: Huh?: The RnR HOF Class of 2008

Sean — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:38:52 -0000

Jason, you coulda conjoined your grammy post to this one and saved alot of time. I hate the R&R HOF because its another tired industry showcase for the wealthy. Remember Robert Plante's Zep acceptance speech, how "We thought we'd always be rebels" and such to a thou-a-plate crowd? Any Hall with Joel, the Eagles, Mellencamp, James Taylor, etc, ain't my kinda place.

Re: Drive-By Truckers: Coloring Outside the Lines

Sean — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:34:11 -0000

Brighter's good, to me their best since Decoration Day which is still tops by me.Since these guys like narrative so much I wish a bunch of these cuts had more exposition/didn't fade out so quickly. I do prefer Hood's songs to Cooley's but they do compliment each other fairly well. Gonna check them out live in a few weeks...

Re: Bruce Springsteen’s Dream

Sean — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:38:22 -0000

" But unless you’re the hipper than thou type who needs your rock angst-ridden or not at all, you may find, as I do, that this is Springsteen’s most listenable album of original tunes in many years. "

Ah, the old angst-ridden, hipper than thou types. If you don't like Springsteen's incessant recycling, you must be one of those hipsters. Sounds pretty condescending to me.
Twenty-two years ago I really took to Tunnel Of Love (it was tough, tender, funny, modulated somewhere between Nebraska and Born in the USA, and on "One Step Up" heartbreaking) but I cannot fathom what he's been doing since. Tom Joad is dullsville to me. The Rising, an admirable failure with a few worthwhile stabs at 9/11, but too much of his usual corn/nostalgia thrown in as well. Devils and Dust was slow, arid and not very compelling. Magic had "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" and "Long Walk Home" but "Radio Nowhere" was as clueless as "57 Channels." As for the new one, I've heard it twice and it sound pretty tepid to me. "Outlaw Pete" is what, exactly? And the title cut is not slight, it's transparent, invisible, not there. ("CCR chug?" Now I know why I no longer read Jon Pareles") Really, I don't get any of this. Even in his early days when I didn't fall exactly in line behind a record I still understood his appeal, found him funny (say "Darlington County") or overwrought ("Jungleland") or devastating ("Atlantic City") the music was there. Over the past two dacades much of what I've heard sounds listless, tired, reworked. (You mention "Sinaloa Cowboys," which is a great idea but a dreary execution.)

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Sean — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:20:40 -0000

Jason, gotta agree with you about the Who. I loved their early records (Sings, Sell Out) and I still occasionally listen to them, but for the most part anything later kind of makes me queasy. I go on jags myself but I try to intersperse other things or I would lose my mind. Been on a Miles one lately: mostly electric (almost endless) plus other stuff like the Braxton box, the Franco reissue. Plus new stuff. Always new stuff. Discovery is what its about for me whether it's new or old. Though it's impossible to stay completely current at a time when a zillion records come out each year, I try to listen as wide as possible. There are times when I never want to hear another roots rock record. But then I hear Drive By Truckers or Miranda Lambert and I put that aside for awhile. Anyway, that's a few of my habits.

Re: Together Through Life: Darkness in the Groove

Sean — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:27:21 -0000

I don't think you have to be a Dylanologist (which I'm not) or an "obsessive critic" (whatever that may be) to think Together Through Life is barely a pastiche. Really, he's been mining this stuff way too long. Love and Theft was many things, breezy, funny, even offhandly apocalyptic. Modern Times was ok too. But Together seems to barely exist: "My Wife's Home Town," "Shake Mama Shake" are throwaways, "Life Is Hard," and "If You Ever Go To Houston" labored and generic. Even "All Is Good" is kind of a Sharpie-like sketch for something greater like, say, a sequel to "Desolation Row." "I Feel A Change Comin On" is indeed beautiful, "Forgetful Heart has some presence, and some of the melodies are memorable but mostly Together seems cobbled from a bunch of obvious, indistinct parts. And I don't think it's "dark" in the least. David Fricke's remark that this sounded as if it was made in Touch Of Evil's border town: oh, if only the album sounded that desperate.

Re: Together Through Life: Darkness in the Groove

Sean — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:12:12 -0000

I'm not expecting Dylan to be anything other than Dylan. But the "new sound" is really just the old sound slathered in accordion, the album middling at best. I'm not expecting "Desolation Row" but "It's All Good" which carries the portent of one of those blasted-landscape finales ( like"A'int Talkin, from Modern Times) is more outline than song. I'm a fan but his travels in "old, weird America" seem pretty tepid.

Re: Best of the Decade Derby POLL: Best English language film from 2000

Sean — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:55:16 -0000

Absolutely, House of Mirth. Would make my own list of a dozen or so this decade.