Ives: Concord Sonata; Songs (2004) by Pierre-Laurent Aimard with Susan Graham

April 4, 2016 | No Comments
Categories: 1915, 1919, 1922, 2004, and Music.
Tags: 1915, 1919, 1922, 2004, Lieder, Modernism, Music, Piano music, and Post Modernism.

This is one of those discs that pairs two different types of music and so, right off the bat, kind of annoys me. Ives has plenty of songs to release a whole disc (or many discs) of them, without instrumental music. (For example, one of his collections is called 114  Songs.) And he’s got plenty of piano music to do the same. I know this is something I need to get over, but I don’t fully understand the reason to program like this. As to the actual music: Read More

Being Julia (2004, István Szabó)

February 29, 2016 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Movies.
Tags: 2004, Dark Comedy, Dramedy, Movies, Satire, and Theatre.

I haven’t read the novel (I gather it’s one of Maugham’s lesser regarded works) but I feel like the edge that I have always felt in his writing is present here, which is no small accomplishment. Benning gives a bravura performance in the title role (though everybody’s good) and the production design is excellent. But it’s all a little All Above Eve. 7/10 Read More

Friends Seen and Unseen (2004) by The Charlie Hunter Trio

February 9, 2016 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Blues, Fusion, Jazz, Post Bop, Post Free, and Soul Jazz.

This band plays pretty traditional jazz for the 21st century – sure, there hints of more radical stuff, including odd syncopation and some relatively out playing by Ellis. But, for the most part, this is pretty mainstream jazz., primarily rooted in the blues. What makes it more interesting is Hunter, who is a phenomenal player who manages to play both bass and rhythm or lead at the same time (on his custom guitar). Ellis’ range of instruments also helps create a wider variety of experiences for us. So this is basically just above average mainstream jazz. It’s good, but it’s Read More

Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (2004, Margaret Brown)

January 31, 2016 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Movies.
Tags: 2004, Biography, Country Music, Movies, and Townes Van Zandt.

Like most music obsessives, I know of Townes Van Zandt. But I don’t know his songs too well – I have only ever heard his debut and Steve Earle’s tribute album. This is an impressionistic film: though there is some attempt a chronological portrait of Van Zandt’s life, it is inter-cut with performance and interview footage and reminiscing. And though I am not inclined to agree with those who think Van Zandt was The Greatest American Songwriter of All Time (sorry folks, that’s Bob Dylan…by a lot), I do find this a compelling portrait, when it could have been messy. Read More

HONEGGER: Symphony No. 3, ‘Liturgique’ / Pacific 231 / Rugby et al. by New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Takuo Yuasa

November 10, 2015 | No Comments
Categories: 1920, 1924, 1928, 1933, 1946, 2004, and Music.
Tags: 1920, 1924, 1928, 1933, 1946, 2004, Impressionism, Music, Orchestral, Romantic, and Symphony.

This is a collection of some of Honegger’s works, pairing his three most famous pieces – the “symphonic movements” with one of his symphonies and a symphonic poem. The third symphony begins with a loud, fast movement that has been aptly described as “stormy.” It’s the kind of thing that makes me think maybe I was wrong to not invest more time in Honegger. Sure, it’s rather traditional for the era, but it’s the kind of thing I like. The second movement is considerably softer, more lyrical, though not exactly as somber as I might have expected (though it gets Read More

Black Books (2000)

September 30, 2015 | No Comments
Categories: 2000, 2002, 2004, and TV.
Tags: 2000, 2002, 2004, Sit Com, and TV.

This is one of those mildly amusing sit coms that everyone goes nuts for because it’s British. Okay, maybe that’s a little mean. But I feel like this premise (irascible shop owner and his friends) has been done before. To be honest, it took me a really long time to warm up to this show. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood. I do feel like it got funnier as it went on, even if the pattern of the jokes really didn’t change much. Sit Coms are generally boring. This is better than many, but hardly one of the great Read More

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007, Gore Verbinski)

September 19, 2015 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Movies.
Tags: 2004, Adventure, Family, and Movies.

I’ve generally enjoyed these movies way more than I ever thought I would, but this one is so ridiculous, so convoluted, so unbelievable that whatever goofiness really doesn’t make up for the mess. (Though, I can’t help but think that the second one was maybe more of a mess than I remember.) It shouldn’t be this hard to figure out what is going on in what is, essentially, a kid’s movie. The character motivations are entirely – and I mean entirely – at the service of the plot. And it’s sooo long. Oh, and the weird Once Upon a Time Read More

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004, Kerry Conran)

September 7, 2015 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Movies.
Tags: 2004, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Historical Fiction, and Movies.

A manchurian slave camp?!?!? Seriously, who writes this stuff? There’s no fear of consequences for anyone because so many of the background characters are animated and it feels like most of the human characters will make it. Super worshipful of old comics, old movies and particularly Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (not one of my favourites). But beyond that film, did anyone really make movies like this? It actually feels more indebted to old comics that nobody alive would have read. (Well, most people.) I feel like this is supposed to be part of a serial as the Sky Captain doesn’t Read More

House of Secrets (2004) by Otep

June 12, 2015 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Emo, Metal, Music, and Nu Metal.

Not having heard the initial album, where she apparently rapped, I can’t say what exactly about this is supposed to be nu metal (though I’m hardly a nu metal expert). To me it sounds more like what I might call emo metal, way to metal to be emo, but way to artsy fartsy to be straight up metal. Also, it’s signicantly more hardcore (or rather metalcore, yuk yuk yuk) than most nu metal I’ve heard.The relatively straight-forward metal is made less enjoyable by the sheer ponderousness and pretention of the concept, which makes me wish that some people just weren’t Read More

The Universe: Cosmology Quest (2004, Randall Meyers)

March 24, 2015 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Movies.
Tags: 2004, Astronomy, Cosmology, Documentary, Movies, Origins of the Universe, Philosophy of Science, Science, and Universe.

Full disclosure: I never once took physics in high school and I certainly never took physics after that. My math background is so far in my past that I cannot rely on it. So you have to take everything I have to say about the physics of this film with a grain of salt. But before I get to the nature of the content, let me just say that this is a poorly made film: the narrator is brutal (his voice is given some kind of effect to make him sound like he’s from “Deep Space” and the script is Read More

Camouflage (2004) by Acoustic Ladyland

January 9, 2015 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Covers, Fusion, Hard Bop, Jazz, Jimi Hendrix, Post Bop, Post Free, Soul Jazz, and Tribute.

Coming at an artists backwards is always a big of an issue. Not only as it’s sort of unfair to the artist – we get our notions of what the artist sounds like when they are “mature” and try to apply that to their early work – but also as it’s unfair to the listener, often, because we don’t have a chance to grow with the artist, to learn from whatever journey they’re on. For example, I had no idea Acoustic Ladyland actually started out as an acoustic band performing Hendrix covers. I mean, I did know that intellectually, but Read More

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron)

January 8, 2014 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Movies.
Tags: 2004, Fantasy, and Movies.

It’s amazing what a great director can do with material that might otherwise turn you off. The wife assures me that the third book is considerably better than the first two, and that may be true, but it’s pretty much astounding to see the quality improve so drastically with the change in direction. Cuaron practically reboots the franchise here: the colour of the students has changed and they now represent multicultural Britain instead of the white private school of the first two movies; and whether or not its closer or further from the source material, Cuaron’s Hogwarts is drastically redesigned Read More

Carlo Gesualdo Madrigaux a 5 voix (1988) by Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie and Tenebrae responsories for Maundy Thursday (2004) by the King’s Singers

January 6, 2014 | No Comments
Categories: 1590s, 1610s, 1988, 2004, and Music.
Tags: 1590s, 1610s, 1988, 2004, Choral Music, Music, Polyphonic Chant, Renaissance, and Vocal Music.

How we remember the past is always fascinating. They say the winners write history and that’s fine when it comes to political violence, but how relevant is that to art? Why exactly was Gesualdo forgotten for a couple centuries? Very briefly, the story with Gesualdo is that he was considered a minor Renaissance composer and then completely forgotten. When he was “rediscovered”, contemporary musicologists and composers were shocked to hear how adventurous his music was for the era; in fact little of the baroque and classical eras was this daring in terms of chord changes and the use of dissonance. Read More

Unspeakable (2004) by Bill Frisell

November 6, 2013 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Fusion, Guitar, Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Music, Post Fusion, and Soul Jazz.

I think there is a real tendency to look at a few of the moments on this disc – when Frisell really lets loose in the ways he can – and decide that this is some kind of return to form – for those people who do not enjoy his Americana obsession. My problem isn’t with his playing – though occasionally he does play it too straight – it’s more with the music surrounding his playing. I’m all for artists taking risks and this is a real curve ball given the kind of music he had mostly been making over Read More

N’ecoutez pas (2004) by Fly Pan Am

September 12, 2013 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Avant Garde, Avant rock, Music, and Post Rock.

I feel like they really are on to something on the first track, like some kind of unholy mixture of post-hardcore and Stereolab. But the second track – and all future noise fillers on the album – is just pseudo-avant-garde nonsense – honestly people have been making “music” like that since at least mid-’70s (and likely the 1950s). “Autant zig-zag” is I guess a little closer to what I thought I would be getting; like a more directionless GY!BE without the chamber influence and with more of a not so obvious pop – or at least Krautrock – influence, but Read More

Himalaya with Michael Palin (2004)

August 27, 2013 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and TV.
Tags: 2004, Documentary, Michael Palin, Mini Series, Travel, and TV.

This is yet another excellent Michael Palin travel series with the usual: great scenery, fascinating places and people, and Palin’s general affability. The only thing I can really say in criticism is that it seems a shame they were only able to get 6 hours out of 6 month trip through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. I am guessing that a longer series would have involved endless shots of him walking up or down or along a mountain. Well worth seeing for any fan of travel documentaries, as is always the case with everything he has Read More

Berlioz: Les Nuits d’Ete; Faure; Ravel (2004, Virgin Classics) by David Daniels, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris conducted by John Nelson, et al

August 25, 2013 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Cello, Concerto, Impressionism, Lieder, Music, Romantic, and Song Cycle.

I have always sort of been annoyed by our collective obsession with vocalists. The human voice is indeed a powerful instrument, but it is hardly the only instrument out there. And I always am mystified when I see releases credited to vocalists when that vocalist isn’t even present on every track. Now, the music here is intended to feature a vocalist but there are moments that do not and one piece that does not include vocals at all. Why feature it under a vocalists name? It doesn’t make any sense!!!!! Alright, I’m over it. Now, the real review begins: Frankly Read More

The Secondman’s Middle Stand (2004) by Mike Watt

February 22, 2013 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Alternative Rock, Music, Post Hardcore, Rock, and Rock and roll.

Watt’s second album is an interesting thing: a guitarless trio playing what I guess you could call post-hardcore rock and roll with lyrics that often seem almost country. I’m not sure if that description sums it up. Idiosyncratic might do a better job. The musicianship is excellent – this is Watt after all, perhaps the best bass player to emerge from the various American punk scenes of the ’80s – and the arrangements are consistently interesting. The songs aren’t the most compelling despite, or perhaps because of, their idiosyncratic nature. It’s certainly a unique beast. 7/10 Read More

Strange Liberation (2004) by Dave Douglas (featuring Bill Frisell)

January 13, 2013 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Jazz, Music, Post Bop, and Post Fusion.

This is a very solid “post-fusion” album, you might say. I say post-fusion because this is mainstream jazz that has been made in the awareness of fusion (and free to some extent, as well) but it is hardly readily identifiable as fusion. Everything here is great: the tunes, the playing, the moods. The one problem is that it isn’t exactly new. 8/10 Read More

The White Diamond (2004, Werner Herzog)

October 29, 2012 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Movies.
Tags: 2004, Documentary, Herzog, Innovation, Movies, and Nature.

This is one of Herzog’s least coherent recent documentaries but despite that, it is still full of powerful moments and, as always, contains an interesting portrait of someone driven to extreme behaviour. Herzog seems even more interested in following his whims here than in most of his other docs: he goes to a diamond mind, he examines a rooster, etc. But he has also found an interesting subject (I’m guessing he looked into Plage’s death and that is how he found this guy). Herzog’s tendency to focus on people longer than their prepared statements last lets us see the real Read More

Contraband by Velvet Revolver (2004 RCA)

May 1, 2012 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Classic Rock Revival, Hard Rock, Music, Post Grunge, and Rock.

I remember the instant hipster derision when this came out. Specifically, I remember watching the lead single’s video, and a friend of mine – a hipster if memory serves – was nearly apoplectic when Slash stepped forward to play the solo. Apparently such a longstanding expression of “rock” authenticity was just totally uncool, at least at that moment in time. Read More

Seven Circles by the Tea Party (2004 EMI)

April 16, 2012 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Alternative, Music, Pop Rock, and Post Grunge.

Though hardly the most original band ever, the Tea Party are clearly extraordinarily talented musicians (if not much else). Their second album, The Edges of Twilight, boasts as many instruments as you can possibly imagine on a mid-’90s rock album. And though they were never original (and they stole a little too much) they were at least remotely interesting in their desire to be so out of touch with the rest of the musical world of the early ’90s. So its sad to see what has happened. Yes, there were hints of their descent on their last album, but there Read More

The Greatest Songs Ever Written (by Us) by NOFX (Epitaph 2004)

October 12, 2011 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Compilation, Music, and Pop Punk.

When I was a little more musically naive I used to believe that NOFX were preserving something, let’s call it the ‘essence of punk’ or something silly like that. I didn’t believe this because I listened to them, but rather because the guys I knew who were into punk (I wasn’t really into punk at the time, except for the Clash) all liked them and seemed to think they were one of the few real punk bands around. Ten years or so later, I certainly think the idea of an essence to punk (or any other genre) is relatively silly, Read More

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance (Reprise 2004)

September 13, 2011 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Emo, Music, Pop Punk, and Post Hardcore.

Totally over the top, totally histrionic… and that’s okay. I mean, that’s sort of why it’s not shitty. There could be some terrible emo balladry here and there really isn’t any. Instead there’s just immediacy. It’s short, it’s “sweet” (kidding). It’s enjoyable. It’s not ATDI, but what could be? It would help if the guitarist could play things other than arena rock cliches when he decides to solo or fill, but whatever. 7/10 Read More

Once by Nightwish (Roadrunner 2004)

September 13, 2011 | No Comments
Categories: 2004 and Music.
Tags: 2004, Music, Power Metal, and Symphonic Metal.

Can’t say I’ve ever heard this “symphonic metal” thing before. It isn’t very metal, really, but whatever. It’s extraordinarily ambitious, fairly overproduced and full of too many ideas. And part of that is pretty cool (not the over the top production). It’s super melodic and lacks anything in the way of memorable guitar solos (I think there is like one guitar solo). Keyboards dominate and they aren’t even great keyboards (would it kill some of these guys to discover an organ or something? Jesus). But honestly, even though I sort of want to hate it for being overly catchy and Read More

The Music Master by Benny Carter (Proper 2004)

August 16, 2011 | No Comments
Categories: 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1952, 2004, and Music.
Tags: 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1952, Big Band, Bop, Box Set, Compilation, Jazz, Music, and Swing.

First, a disclaimer: my library only has the last three discs so I am not reviewing the first disc. Though this music (at least the music on the second and third discs) is not really my thing, I find myself becoming a big admirer of Mr. Carter. He appears to have mastered three separate instruments as whether he is playing sax, trumpet or clarinet one beli3ves they are hearing a definitive soloist of his era. The music on the final disc is slightly more my style and here Carter is more middle of the road as there were so many Read More