Earn This

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006) – 4.5 stars

Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007) – 4 stars

Humbug (2009) – 4 stars

Years before Radiohead invited yet another wave of critical fawning by offering an album for free download, the Arctic Monkeys cultivated a rabid following by giving away demos of early CDs and eschewing the radio for the Internet (especially MySpace).  Reviewers documented the shift as a potential vanguard of 21st century marketing, which may be true, but let’s have people attribute most of the Monkeys’ success to their talent, yeah?

A key band in the recently departed decade’s post-punk/new wave revival, along with The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand, the Monkeys revved up their engines for their debut album.  After giving it an inaccessible title and terrible cover image, they watched it become the fastest selling debut album in UK history.  Given that country’s success with music, the sales’ numbers are staggering, but much of the hype is warranted.  Indeed, they’ve had a stronger start to their career than obvious influence Oasis, whose Definitely Maybe they knocked off the aforementioned chart. 

2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not swaggers through dense, punky gems and the occasional pull-back-on-the-reins ballad, with the band’s frenetic, aggressive playing style naturally complementing frontman Alex Turner’s lyrics about those clubs and girls he can’t get into and those drinks and girls that don’t get into him.  On tracks like “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” “Dancing Shoes,” “Still Take You Home,” and the wonderfully titled “You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me,” Turner skewers arrogant girls (“You’re probably just alright, but under these lights you look beautiful”) and the guys who play into their hands (“Those that claim that they’re not showing off are drowning in denial”), but never totally exculpates himself either.

Such tracks work so well because of his enviable gift for melody and the overriding sense that, despite whatever jealousy or bitterness gurgles over, they’re having fun.  The second half doesn’t quite match the first for original tunes, but by the time you hear Turner singing, “There’s only music so that there’s new ringtones” on the glorious “A Certain Romance,” you’ll probably be ready for another spin.

Follow-up Favourite Worst Nightmare finds the Monkeys, uh, dancing with what brought them.  Openers “Brianstorm” and “Teddy Picker” announce their intentions with a purpose, savaging the kind of preppy, obnoxious guys Turner can’t stand with more laconic wit and devilish hooks.  If they’d written those tracks in time for the second half of Whatever…, that would have turned into a veritable classic.  (Aside from the obvious reasons, watching them live is a treat, for the chance to see Turner stare out disdainfully into a crowd largely composed of preppy, obnoxious guys.)

The rest of this solid second album features more grinding, danceable riffs and quick wordplay; closer “505” once more shows off Alex’s skills at both writing a juicy hook and articulating ambivalent feelings about relationships: “I crumble completely when you cry / It seems like once again you have to greet me with goodbye / I’m always just about to go, I spoil the surprise / Take my hands off your eyes too soon.”

Unfortunately, aside from the aforementioned three tracks, plus melodic centerpiece “Fluorescent Adolescent,” much of FWN sounds vaguely indistinguishable—especially, again on the second half—enough so to encourage you to reach for its predecessor.  (The band has said they regret including inoffensive-but-fillerish “The Bad Thing” on the album instead of another track written during the recording.)

 
As Coldplay was putting the finishing touches on 2005’s X&Y, I recall reading a few music critics who noted that the third album often dictates the rest of a band’s career.  Sometimes you get Born to Run, London Calling, War, OK Computer, or Dookie and critics love you forever; other bands, like Oasis and the Stone Roses, can’t do much past two.  Perhaps aware of the stakes, the Monkeys enlisted Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme to produce and give their music a darker, more mysterious vibe.  For 2009’s Humbug, the pace has slowed, the bass has been cranked, and the musical palette gotten more colorful.  

In other words, as the digging-in, deliberate follow-up to two thrashers, Humbug is their Steady Diet of Nothing, with perhaps a hint of Red Medicine-esque color thrown in for good measure.  Within about ten seconds of pressing play, one will be able to tell that things have certainly changed.  “My Propeller” quite effectively demonstrates their newfound interest in atmosphere over aggression, while “Crying Lightning” quite simply strikes out territory they’ve never approached before.  Their heaviest (not fastest) rocker to date, the song makes good on its cleverly ambiguous title by exploring that irritating-yet-irresistible push-pull of unstable relationships; over a resoundingly explosive crunch, Turner alternates loving and hating those games, all the while providing more memorable lyrics: “You never look like yourself from the side / But your profile could not hide / The fact you knew I was approaching your throne.” 

Frustration over another’s flightiness mirrors the album’s overall tone; lyrically, Turner now strives primarily for consistent, adult connections.  Maybe it’s not true that “My propeller won’t spin / And I can’t get it started on my own,” but let’s find a partner anyway, no? (Indeed, “let’s make a mess, lioness.”  Rawr.) Elsewhere, the lovely “Secret Door” forms a paean to a celebrity unfazed by the bright lights (“She’s never been the kind to be hollowed by the stares”), while on the thickly bubbling “Potion Approaching,” Turner coos, “If I could be someone else for a week, I’d spend it chasing after you.” 

Despite the ten-song track order, Humbug has its share of duds, primarily the result of the band succumbing to boredom in the shift away from energy (“Fire and the Thud,” “The Jeweller’s Hands”) or not knowing whether to keep things fast or slow (the nevertheless quirky “Pretty Visitors”).  That keeps the album from climbing the heights of their debut, but all told, this is a more eclectic, interesting listen than anything they’ve put out to date.  And no quibbles, minor or otherwise, surround “Cornerstone,” the album’s second single and the one track all critics couldn’t stop talking out.  There’s a reason for that—it’s the band’s all-time high point, Turner proffering both his most indelible melody and heartbreaking lyrics yet. 

At first, it feels like merely a cute little ditty, with its protagonist running into all these girls who remind him of his ex.  But in the bridge, Turner uncovers his deeper thoughts and fears.  “Tell me where’s your hiding place,” he sings, his voice richer and more mature than ever before, “I’m worried I’ll forget your face / And I’ve asked everyone / I’m beginning to think I imagined you all along.”  The apparent confusion over whom he sees reveals a desperate desire for a lingering connection to hold onto and a fear that memories will fade too quickly.  No wonder that, when he smells that scent on the seatbelt, he “kept my shortcuts to myself.”  Tied together with impeccable restraint and undeniable style, the words bring about a spectacular song, one whose second 50 plays are better than its first 50.  They never could have written this song four years ago, and that realization, along with the increased musical range, is why, like Steady Diet and OK Computer, this third album will leave you feverishly anticipating what they’ll do next.

There are three indisputable facts about Justin Bieber.

1. He is a very talented singer.
2. He has a following that is astonishing in its size and its ferocity.
3. He is immediately charming and endearing.

Though two of these facts are completely positive and the third is arguably positive, I am not a Justin Bieber fan other than I find him and his following fascinating. I’m not sure there’s been a pop star in the past twenty years who has provided a more informative lens into America, and pop stardom, and more.

His second album came out just a couple days ago, so I figure there’s never going to be a better time for me to opine on exactly why I believe Bieber is an important figure, even if I don’t appreciate his music the way I occasionally do that of skillful, teenybopper pop stars (e.g. Taylor Swift).

The organic pop star

So just how popular is Justin Bieber, age sixteen of Stratford, Ontario? It’s hard to say with any level of specificity, but it’s pretty clear that a large portion of teenage America thinks he’s the bee’s knees. His debut album — a nine-track EP, actually — went Platinum in just over a month, a pretty major accomplishment. He’s already had four Top 40 hits, which isn’t an egregious amount until you consider that he hadn’t released a full-length LP before achieving the count.

He also is one of the top ten worldwide trending topics on Twitter essentially 24/7.  This is a periphery accomplishment, but I believe it is a crucial one as I’ll discuss in the third section of this article.

Bieber’s popularity precedes his pop charts presence. He’s one of few stars – maybe the only true North American star – whose roots are on YouTube. His parents put recital videos online for family friends. A few people noticed, and his popularity spread by word of mouth until he had amassed 10 million views and earned the attention of a few major players in the music industry, including Usher and Justin Timberlake.

I’m a little sketchy on this transition, but I know there was something of a bidding war for this kid who was clearly tailor-made for pop stardom. Eventually, he was signed and Island Records and had his debut EP promoted by the Universal-owned label.

I think the fact that we can witness his transformation from chorus boy to superstar first hand is a key to Bieber’s popularity. In two or three clicks, you can see a normal thirteen year-old with this astonishing voice belting out Alicia Keys on what looks like a community church choir stage. A few clicks later, you can see his multimillion dollar music video. This growth into a full-fledged star is right in front of all of us. It’s not just the fame: you can see his form gradually improve, too.

While he gradually gets better as you watch more and more recent YouTube videos, there’s also a fully-formed stage presence and confidence in his early videos. It lends him a certain type of legitimacy: He had this same flair for capturing an audience’s heart even before anyone knew his name.

Compare this to the products of The Disney Machine. Would Miley Cyrus be a multi-platinum future-skank if marketing teams hadn’t developed every aspect of her image? Could she have made it big if her dad didn’t sing “Achey Breaky Heart”? I think we all know that the answer to this is a resounding “no.” What about The Jonas Brothers? They clearly are more talented than Hannah Montana, but it took a multinational corporation to turn them from a born-again Christian band produced by their dad into huge celebrities.

Bieber’s image belongs to himself and to his fans who discovered him themselves. If they ever want to remember just how “real” he is, to verify Bieber is fuh-real and as dreamy as he seems in the glam shots, they watch his early videos. They have this guarantee (or, perhaps, illusion of guarantee) that Bieber really is a charmer who could just as well have lived down the street from them. Now he’s living the dream, and he didn’t have to sell out or change. He just had to be himself.

In this way, Bieber is a different kind of star. It’s rare for success cases to evolve so organically and to leave such a trail of evidence that can be revisited at any time. One for American Idol’s success is that it taps into this same process, although it has another commercial layer to it that YouTube doesn’t. Also, the Idol’s true normal-to-superstardom stories are pretty rare (Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson).

If there’s a part of Bieber’s celebrity status that I actually like — as opposed to find intriguing — it’s this verification that America is not all-consumed by the idea of celebrity to the point where they don’t care about substance. Sure, Bieber is still a celebrity with a rabid base of fans, but there is in fact something real about him: It’s something that Paris Hilton never had, that John Mayer is rapidly losing, and George Clooney just radiates. Sometimes the celebrity makes the person. Sometimes the person makes the celebrity. Most of the time it’s a balancing act, and Bieber gingerly navigates this equilibrium.

His success might just be his pretty-boy smile or his floppy haircut or his soulful baby voice, but I give America a little bit more credit than that. We detect that Bieber can walk the walk. Or, rather, he can sing the sing.

Just north of the border

As much as he’s both home-grown and front-page, Bieber also embodies two other polar disparities: the comfortable and the exotic. As I discussed in the previous section, part of Bieber’s charm is that he could’ve been any boy who lived down the street. He’s certainly WASPy. He has a baby face but not one that would seem out of place on the high school football captain.

But it’s more complicated than that: His following is largely white suburban teenage girls, yet Bieber sings “black” music. His early YouTube videos covered Ne-Yo and Aretha and Alica Keys. Like Justin Timberlake, he’s rooted in a musical style pioneered and popularized by black musicians. From the perspective of a wealthy, white, American teenage girl, Bieber makes accessible this foreign, licentious R&B.

His music videos play off of this: He plays video games like a normal suburban fifteen-year-old one minute, and parties with Usher the next. Bieber’s key audience are at the age where they’re just starting recognize the thrill in a fast lifestyle he half-advocates, yet they still long for safe comfort, a place where you sit and play video games and listen to your parents. So far, Bieber’s success has depended on this balance.

I also think it’s important for American audiences that he’s from Canada. There’s something appealing and intoxicating about everything foreign: It’s as if “real America” is no longer real, and the only place where you can find something genuine and exciting is outside of the borders of these states. Canada may or may not be “the 51st state” culturally (depends who you ask), but there’s still an element of mystery and otherness about him.

Further, Bieber is silly and playful in ways that are just on the verge of being sexual. He hasn’t quite crossed that line the way Timberlake forcefully (and awkwardly) did with FutureSex LoveSounds. But he doesn’t deny the wild-boy-soon-to-be-man inside of him. “Yeah so i like girls…im a 16 year old boy who can blame me. Nicole [Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls] is hot..i had to hit on her,” says Bieber on his Twitter.

Whether or not he’s really this way — and even if the corporate types have refined this image a little bit — he convincingly displays bad boy flair and good boy discipline (something that’s further enhanced by the fact that his fame as at least partially self-made). This is what America — at least the suburban America I know — longs for. Danger without the terror. Bieber has it, just like Britney did for a few years and like so many iconic pop stars through the ages have: Sexiness without the sex.

Bauer vs. Bieber

Why is Justin Bieber a nonstop trending topic on Twitter? Nothing and nobody else commands even a fraction of the global control of Twitter that Bieber exhibits.

There are a few explanations. One is that, so far, Bieber’s been basically all buzz and tease, and Twitter is all about buzz and tease. If there’s one thing Twitter isn’t, it’s substance, just like Bieber’s career lacks notable substance.

Next, his hits have been pretty global. He’s had recent top five hits in at least four continents. Unlike hits that connect with primarily with regional audiences — gangster rap in the US, metrosexual dance pop in the UK, guy singers who look like girls in Japan — Bieber’s crooning has appealed to worldwide masses.

But I believe something deeper is at play here. Try this experiment: Do a Twitter search for Justin Bieber and see how many names you have to scroll down until the user’s name refers to Justin Bieber. I give you an over-under of 6.5. An astonishing amount of these usernames follow this format: “[Name]Bieber##”.

It really doesn’t take much research to realize that a bewildering number of girls want to marry Justin Bieber. Not just that — but, when given a dozen or so characters to capture their essence, these girls chose to signify their desire to marry him.

This is the type of insight into the developing adolescent female that would’ve been impossible a decade ago. Thousands and thousands of professors and writers and academics spend their time at universities writing about “gender studies” and “American feminism” when really, they can only speculate and guess how the female psyche works.

And yet, here is a direct insight to surpass any set of hypotheses or speculative arguments: Girls, when given a chance to summarize their identity in a few characters, focus on the fact that they want to marry the guy of their dreams. In other words, young women want nothing more than they a comfortable place in traditional patriarchy.

In a seminar about the depiction of terrorism in the media, we recently debated whether Jack Bauer in the anti-terrorism show 24 is fighting to preserve traditional, American patriarchy as much as he is national defense.  A few of the feminist thinkers in the seminar objected to this: Bauer cares less about patriarchy than he does his own masculinity, they claimed. Really, he wants to solve people’s problems (and he wants to do it NOW) because he’s insecure about his own pudgy-looking, average existence, they argued.

The two sides of this battle really never came to a healthy truce, because we conceded there’s really no way we can ask the masses what subconscious reasons they root for Jack. But we were wrong; Twitter can give us this answer. So is it his struggle with mortality and insecurity viewers empathize with? Or is it his defense of the comfortable, prototypical American family unit where the man provides and the woman supports?

Bieber’s Twitter following not only suggests that it’s the latter, but that Jack’s stance is appreciated by developing women who long for nothing more in this world than the firm, loving grip of a man to take care of them and stay with them forever. Justin Bieber: sabotaging America’s progress in feminism since late 2009.

(Note that my tongue remained at least partially in cheek for the duration of this article.)

Today’s George Clooney day at EarnThis, where we’ll examine Up in the Air, recently nominated for Best Picture, and Michael Clayton, likewise nominated in 2008.  Clooney’s career has advanced considerably thanks to both films, but one holds up a lot better than the other.

Rating: 2 and a half stars (out of 4)

Melding that sort of comedic-drama tone that critics love, George Clooney, and topics that hit home to many in today’s economic climate, Up in the Air swept its way through the late-season awards period towards Oscar recognition.  Final hardware didn’t quite match the initial critical buzz, but most saw this movie as another positive step for Clooney and director/writer Jason Reitman (Juno).  Like Juno, Air is one of those relatively plotless and occasionally charming films that succeed or fail on the basis of their characters, themes, and ending.  My feelings about Air have come back to Earth the more I’ve thought about it; parts of it excel, but it takes too long to hit its stride, and the ending is way too inconsistent to wrap everything up. 

Based on a novel (of course), Air focuses its camera primarily on Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, a man who lives in airports and airplanes.  As a consultant hired out by companies to do their dirty work of firing employees, Bingham sails around the country more than 300 days a year.  Hotels and airports aren’t his home away from home; his empty apartment domicile is.  Air spends a long time, probably too long, emphasizing how much Ryan loves the skies—the endless quick shots of him packing up suitcases take Martin Scorsese’s brief collection of a Leonardo DiCaprio quick-pack in The Departed and add steroids—and making us brace for the inevitable come-down, literally and figuratively.

After a so-so first twenty minutes or so, Up in the Air really hits its stride in the midsection.  Ryan takes a young buck with a new business plan, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), under his wing, amusingly showing her the ropes about flying (get in line behind the Asians, he says, who travel very light) and engaging in some tete-a-tete banter about their profession (he’s horrified by her idea to fire people over a webcam).  Fortunately, the film doesn’t pair these two up romantically; Ryan instead swaps naughty repartee (and bodily fluids) with Vera Farmiga’s Alex, a fellow corporate traveler turned on by his, uh, mileage. 

It’s here in the middle part that the joys of this widely-praised film can be found.  A simple conversation with the three protagonists over relationships, inspired by Natalie’s breakup, is funny and touching.  Young Natalie, mercifully, doesn’t cower under the presence of Ryan (and Clooney), challenging his feelings towards Alex is a delicately handled scene on a boat dock.  For a while, the film begins to challenge the viewer as well, presenting a secretly disappointed lead character who, if not wholly original, makes us ponder the harsh side effects of glamorous but soulless lives. 

And there are a number of small moments that could have deteriorated into farce that wisely don’t—see the moment when a statue falls into water, or when a boat ride suddenly goes dark.  Ryan’s extended family gains greater prominence as the film goes on, with his sister’s upcoming marriage, and note that when he asks to walk her down the aisle, she declines, poignantly informing him that she’d already chosen someone else, someone who’d been a bigger part of her life.  Up in the Air is a sad movie at its core, in its depictions of failed relationships (everywhere, right down to Ryan’s aunt) and the almost painfully real scenes of people being fired.   

Flying and sleeping with anyone you want without commitment—Clooney’s Ryan Bingham trades on every 13 year-old boy’s fantasies.  Of course, this won’t come as much of a shock to anyone who’s been following his career, as he’s officially taken up the mantle (from Harrison Ford, perhaps) of the guy-who-knows-he’s-madly-charming-and-yet-still-gets-away with it.  In movies like Ocean’s 11 and Michael Clayton, this worked well, in large part because of their considerable additional strengths.  By this point, however—and after hearing that Reitman wrote this part with Clooney in mind—it’s beginning to seem that Clooney is being glorified for past successes.  He’s still wildly charismatic in Air, but somewhat limited; there were several moments when I was anticipating more from him, and nothing came.  He was better in Clayton; here, his character vacillates too much, although maybe the dramatic parts aren’t written thoroughly enough for him to do much with.  Farmiga and Kendrick, for what it’s worth, were fine but hardly notable, making their joint Oscar nominations equally puzzling.    

Ultimately, what keeps me from wholly recommending this movie are its treatment of its characters and the points it seemed to be making.  It mirrors a common trend in movies by refusing to seriously condemn its characters; nowadays, films seem too afraid to make a statement and possibly offend someone, and so they want us to love everybody on screen.  Yeah, Ryan isn’t allowed to walk his sister down the aisle, but then his aunt turns to him for a critical conversation with the reluctant groom, and given not only Ryan’s absence in their lives but also his attitude toward commitment, that makes no sense (other than to have us admire him more).   

The ending amplifies the film’s qualities and flaws, inspiring both praise and mad frustration.  Overall, it did the right thing by keeping Alex and Ryan apart, and there’s a truly sad moment when he shows up at her door and gets his heart broken.  When we think back to her coyly inviting him to do that, we can very easily understand—she thought he’d never call.  But then, kind of like the last Lord of the Rings, the film goes on, and on, and on, seemingly ending about four times.  We don’t need that phone call between him and her after the rejection in which she bizarrely seems to suggest that she would indeed take him in return for moderate commitment.  We don’t need the final plot twist with Natalie and the suicide mention.  The action, rather than falling after the climax, jumps up and down like a tracker of the stock market, and I lost track of how many times I felt would have been right for the movie to end.    

And afterwards, the film just left me with too many nagging, irritating questions.  Although I liked the lighthearted tone, I don’t think I agree with too many of the beliefs being indirectly put forth by Reitman.  Doesn’t his decision to ask the real people who were laid-off to re-enact their worst moments on camera scream exploitation?  Who let Bingham masquerade as a motivational speaker when he encouraged people to care less about things they cherish, including people?  Why is a film invariably “for its time” just because it centers around people getting fired?  And why are we made to view Natalie as heartless for wanting to fire people online and yet extol Ryan for his levity and pluck?  His in-person method may be slightly kinder, cosmetically more appealing; but, at the end of the day, what’s the difference?  The person on the other end is still being fired.

Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 4)

There is a scene early on in Michael Clayton in which George Clooney’s character denies the assertion that he’s a miracle worker; “I’m a janitor,” he says.  But what happens when a janitor decides that the mess he’s cleaning up should be exposed for the world to see?  That represents the question at the heart of this engrossing, complicated film, which centers on Clooney and his relationship with a powerful law firm.

Clooney is the firm’s “fixer,” the nearly invisible guy who takes care of its dirty work.  The firm’s latest case forces them to defend a pharmaceutical company, uNorth, whose product has probably caused the deaths of numerous people.  Tilda Swinton plays Karen Crowder, uNorth’s lead attorney.  Among her concerns is the behavior of Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), one of the firm’s attorneys who suffers from manic depressive disorder and has stopped taking his medication.  Not only is Arthur getting arrested for things like running around naked outside, but he’s also starting to publicize evidence against uNorth. 

Written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who’s tagging himself as a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood (he co-write all three Bournes and State of Play individually), Michael Clayton spends not one minute in the courtroom and instead focuses on the changes engulfing Michael: controlling Arthur (and a man who refers to himself as “Shiva, the god of death” probably should require multiple handlers); a $75,000 debt from a failed restaurant venture with his deadbeat brother; an imminent sale of the firm and the task of defining his role to new people; and people on both sides of the case targeting him as his loyalty vacillates.

These pressures circle around them tighter and tighter as the film masterfully builds psychological tension through a series of exceptional scenes.  There’s one when Michael asks the firm’s lead partner Marty Bach (excellently played by Sydney Pollack) for a loan, and the dialogue expertly moves over to all the other issues at play.  Likewise, you’ll want multiple viewings of the one between Michael and Arthur in a New York City alley (the bread scene), where the participants say all the right things, all the things you’d want them to say, and then still leave Michael, afterwards, more rattled and pressurized, ready to implode.  This is the rare film fascinated with the minds of its characters, that cares less about making pat judgments and more about showing how their idiosyncrasies and habits can be used against them. 

Less character-driven but more structurally complex than the comparable A Civil Action, Clayton demands to be seen multiple times.  The plot is involuted, but there’s a difference in walking out of a movie confused about what turn out to be plot holes and walking out knowing that a second viewing will clear up the details.  You’ll actually be guessing at what comes next (especially given the flashback device), and then repeated viewings will allow the story to flesh itself out.  I’ve watched this movie four times and still feel like I could get more out of it tomorrow.

Though its protagonist does what he feels is right against the odds, the film doesn’t play as a conventional, feel-good hero story.  It’s too complex for that.  Like A Civil Action, it’s interested in the curious aspects of the law, like the fact that powerful firms will vehemently defend unscrupulous behaviors just to sign everyone’s check.  And that’s microcosmic of the way it portrays the inherently flawed system that destroys everyone—Arthur, Michael, Karen, and Marty among them.  Clooney’s meticulous, burning performance (his career apex) shores up the inner circle (Michael’s arc), but the wider issues concern the battle between loyalty and conscience, blurred lines separating good and bad people, and mental stability.  The de facto ‘bad guys’ almost seem to be acting as mere clogs in a system that siphons away their free will.  Michael Clayton’s wonderfully understated closing shot—a textbook example of triumph without glee—shows us one man who was finally able to break free.

Pablo Honey: 4.5 stars

The Bends: 4.5 stars

OK Computer: 5 stars

Kid A: 4 stars

Amnesiac: 3 stars

Hail to the Thief: 2 stars

In Rainbows: 3 stars

Radiohead’s career trajectory resembles that of an old-time baseball slugger, before steroids fucked up the typical pattern of rises and falls.  They started out with promise, honed their skills in the middle of their career, and then gradually fell off as they got older.  In their prime, they demonstrated a flair for the dramatic that few have, but as they aged, they fell back into comfortable and less idealistic patterns.  How old-school of them.  It’s almost enough to make you pull out your dusty radio and rocking chair to listen to a game on your front porch.

Most critics see the band’s career differently, of course.  Indeed, their latest release, 2007’s middling In Rainbows, confirmed two sad realities: that Radiohead have pretty much reached that U2/Bruce Springsteen plateau whereby music critics apparently sign a contract forbidding them from criticizing any aspect of their new music simply because it bears their marks; and that they’ve never been farther from their peak.

Back in the 90s, though, the young prospect made you vibrate with the excitement of what was to come next.  Influenced by 90s alternative and early U2, debut album Pablo Honey works much better when most of the songs are played live.  (That fact makes it difficult to rate—if I listen to all its songs in their studio versions, it has to be docked at least half a star.)  Breakthrough hit “Creep”—at least when nailed live—is transcendent, a tough and moving anti-anthem on which Yorke’s lyrics (“I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul / I want you to notice when I’m not around / You’re so fucking special / I wish I was special”) rewrite Ian Curtis for the crass and sarcastic (in other words, the 90s cohort).  The song of high school for me, and I doubt I’m alone.  “Prove Yourself” achieves similar success—“I want to breathe / I want to grow / I’d say I want it, but I don’t know how / … I’m better off dead” with another riveting melody.

Those aren’t the only songs of note, but the album’s lesser tracks reveal themselves as a band searching for its alternative niche.  But Radiohead hit the big leagues with sophomore effort The Bends, its Joshua Tree; mainstream enough to garner widespread acceptance, it’s full of anthemic choruses and a deft push-pull between Yorke and guitarist Johnny Greenwood.  The midsection sags a little, and it doesn’t sound as timeless as OK Computer, but it’s still an essential 90s landmark; the title track and “Fake Plastic Trees” hit cathartic instrumental explosions, and the drama is reined in wonderfully by tender ballads “High and Dry” and the sleep-inducing (in a good way) “Street Spirit,” on which Greenwood applies understated guitar texture at only the right moments.

They then proceeded to blow everyone’s minds with OK Computer, which frequently shows up in “Best of the 90s” lists.  The guitars hadn’t yet disappeared, but everything sounds darker, denser, more paranoid, more colorful, more experimental, and full of that indefinable it.  Many billed the album as a warning against technology and the future, but the real treasures lie in the intensely personal songs: “Exit Music” and “Climbing Up the Walls” are both legitimately haunting, while “Karma Police” unfolds with perfect pacing and genuine heart.

Yet nothing compares to “No Surprises and “Let Down.”  The glockenspiel on the former almost achieves the same degree of I-still-remember-when-I-first-heard-it awe as those chimes on Joy Division’s “Atmosphere,” and lines like “I’ll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide / With no alarms, and no surprises, please” make quiet resignation feel like the only valid option in the world.

Similarly, on the breathtaking “Let Down,” their all-time best song, Yorke captures that in-between feeling of despondency, confusion, and search for beauty that has been fascinating singers (such as Curtis) for years.  His second-verse—culminating with “Don’t get sentimental, it always ends up drivel”—breaks my heart every time, but I’m lifted up by the gorgeous melody, the exquisitely placed guitar, and those heartbreaking, multi-layered vocals, spinning around from ear to ear over the conclusion.  These tracks possess that rare form of intoxication found in songs like “One”—they achieve incredible emotional climax without ever making you realize it until afterwards.

“Radiohead’s response to all the acclaim,” Rolling Stone wrote, “was to get even weirder,” resulting in the electronica-heavy Kid A and Amnesiac.  And that’s where the critical opinions start to diverge from my own, as most have seen such works as additional stops along the train ride towards revolutionary immortality.  The former is the better album, RH still hanging on and providing otherworldly peaks like “How to Disappear Completely” and “Idioteque.”  Yorke moaned “I’m not here / This isn’t happening” over end-of-the-world atmospherics, and then switched to a pulsating rallying cry of “This is really happening!”  But the album couldn’t always keep up, introducing filler (despite the 10-track length) such as the irritatingly overlong “The National Anthem” and “Motion Picture Soundtrack.”

However, sister album Amnesiac begins the band’s real decline.  Here, the atmosphere sounds somehow faded and less intense than Kid A, perhaps because the electronic sounds and keyboard tinkles have taken over for song-craft even more.  There’s nothing as compact as the two aforementioned songs, so you have to enjoy the individual elements—the pretty piano on “Pyramid Song,” or Yorke’s provocative, repeated line “I’m a reasonable man, get off my case” on the opener.  The album will work when you’re in the right mood, but that won’t happen very often.  It’s not aggressive enough for the bitter and paranoid—on too many songs (“You and Whose Army?” “I Might Be Wrong”), you really do just want the band to let loose—nor does it have OK Computer’s sonic, lamentable beauty.

On the bloated and scattershot Hail to the Thief, though, everything goes ass.  Here, the songs really only work if the piano sounds pleasing.  But the band sounds like they’re trying to experiment just for experiment’s sake, to be difficult listening just to be difficult.  Guitars feature more prominent than on the previous two releases, but the vitality of both Jonny’s axing and Yorke’s voice have been dulled, scraped off as though by a coin on a lottery ticket.  In their desire to be different, they seem to have forgotten the necessity of qualities like melody, emotional release, or sonic agreeableness.

Tracks like “We Suck Young Blood” and “The Gloaming” skitter along electronic sounds that never break out of their shells—really, it’s incredibly boring, even though it may be sacrilege to say so.  Radiohead seem to have settled into an unassailable niche, whereby one gets discredited as unintellectual and/or ignorant of quality music if he dares attack them.  SPIN Magazine bucked this attitude with a recent feature challenging the notion that their every move sparkles with gold.  Writing of a recent concert, they recounted, “Radiohead began their set with… “15 Step”: an open-ended groove with a quirky electro beat, two-chord motif, and airy, abstract singing.  Then they did the 2001 song “Morning Bell/Amnesiac”: an open-ended groove with a quirky electro beat, two-chord motif, and airy, abstract singing.  Then they kept going, one groovy tone poem into another…an immersive experience of sound, light, pattern, rhythm, and utter, paralyzing boredom.”

SPIN acknowledge that their opinion carries few supporters; indeed, the piece headlined an issue devoted to debunking popular rock ‘myths.’  And the pervasive critical adoration of In Rainbows (88 score on Metacritic) just confirmed the disconnect I now feel between popular perception of the band and my own.  Rolling Stone’s 4.5-star review, describing the album as “typically hard-rocking Radiohead,” makes me wonder whether I happened to buy a different set of tracks from everyone else.

From refusing to play “Creep” live after it jumpstarted their career, to turning their backs on adored albums, Radiohead have never particularly seemed to mind pissing off their core supporters.  And Rainbows, a hybrid of sorts between Thief and The Eraser (Thom Yorke’s solo effort released in 2006), proves they’ve completely forsaken the 90s.  There may be nothing wrong with that in theory, but, no matter what Rolling Stone says, the album abounds with mellowness, but not in that epic, Cure- or old Radiohead-way.

Instead, songs like “Faust Arp, “House of Cards,” and “Reckoner” all project the same dull, taupe-colored mood—a new manifestation of boring, if you will.  Yorke’s pet project, “Nude,” reminds me of U2’s “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”—it was worked on for years and hyped by fans as the Next Great Thing, and yet it registers barely a blip on the radar screen.  All throughout, a feeling of temperate melancholy dominates—and the apparent oxymoron of that statement explains a lot of my ambivalence about the album.

The band’s capabilities have now been reduced to providing calming tranquility, as they can do on “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.”  But if The Bends was a soaring flight over cliffs at sea, OK Computer a journey through an empty ocean, and Kid A a figure staring out over the cliff into the water below, In Rainbows is that person turned around, standing comfortably on dry land.  Yorke’s lyrical concerns have shifted towards such mundane things as being a girl’s lover rather than friend and getting someone’s number at a bar (the admittedly neat “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”).

In other words, with the reduced diversity and increased simplicity of the music and more day-to-day lyrical concerns, Radiohead have struck new ground once again—but not on solid footing.  On their best albums, Radiohead were never been easy to explain or understand, never created music that could pass without comment—good or bad—and never conveyed the feeling that they were content with themselves.  Sometimes they were too weird or too overbearing, other times exceedingly brilliant, but they never felt satisfied—until now.  And as the second half of their career has eschewed cathartic guitar rock for droning beats, prolonged songs that often don’t go anywhere, and vague wails that don’t resonate, it’s made me start to re-align their place in my musical pantheon.  No longer a band who can do no wrong, they’re simply one that recognized extraordinary potential for a brief span of time, but then fell short of other ambitions.  A sort of Michael-Jordan-playing-baseball thing, if MJ had been ‘only’ one of the game’s 2 or 3 best at his prime and baseball had accounted for about 40% of his athletic career.

As they’ve diminished both their muscular power and melodic grip, Radiohead have eliminated themselves as a band whose new album I’ll buy without hearing anything about it.  And maybe I’m harder on efforts like In Rainbows and Amnesiac than I would be if they came from someone else.  But the more I listen to their early work, the more I marvel at the specific emotion captured in a random, unhyped track like “Lurgee” or the masterful timing exhibited in the climax of “Fake Plastic Trees”; whereas, the more I listen to their later works, the less provocative they sound.  In various parts of the latter half of their career, one can still hear Radiohead’s talent, but the overall impact leaves me thinking that a band that was formerly mine has left me behind.

“The reasons we go to war always fucking matter!”

Rating: 3 stars (out of 4)

That line serves as both the kiss-off and take-away message of Green Zone, the adroitly executed new thriller from the Matt Damon/Paul Greengrass team.  Green Zone functions perfectly as a balance between real-world issues and fantastical action thrills, a sort of 2010 version of Blood Diamond.  This is the rare action movie with a brain, a perfect sense of pacing, no cringe-inducing dialogue, and real actors.  It knows exactly what buttons to push: just when you’re ready for exposition to cease and the action to accelerate, it does that; and right when it needs to slow down, it does that. 

Such feelings are given a purpose beyond mere entertainment thanks to a story that, although it doesn’t quite make this movie into a classic in the genre, may make the hairs on your neck stand up.  Damon plays Roy Miller, a chief warrant officer in the U.S. army deployed shortly after the start of the Iraq War in 2003 to find WMDs.  When Miller’s crew keeps coming up empty at sites fingered by credible sources, he refuses to accept the red tape that he gets as answers.  He thus becomes that classic American hero, the lone soldier off in search of the truth.  This time, however, we know what the truth is, and we know that he’s not going to like what he finds. 

That’s why it doesn’t matter that Green Zone isn’t purely factual—indeed, it would have failed as such.  It’s enough to have a basis in fact from which we can be entertained.  Adapted loosely from Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book The Imperial Life in the Emerald City (by Brian Helgeland, writer of L.A. Confidential and Mystic River), its central question—plus the energy level—place it on much more inherently interesting footing than the typically turgid ‘war is hell’ movies.  It’s not necessarily an anti-war film, but it’s an anti- ‘war film.’   

Helgeland’s film introduces several characters accepted to be unnamed stand-ins for certain Iraq War players.  Amy Ryan’s reporter peddling pro-Bush administration stories can be assumed to represent The New York Times’s Judith Miller, and Greg Kinnear’s Pentagon-connected bureaucrat could be lots of people.  Miller finds help primarily from CIA lifer Marty Brown (an effective Brendan Gleeson) and an Iraqi native called Freddy who’d just like some measure of normalcy in his country (Khalid Abdalla with the most stirring performance).

All of this is put together with an excellent tone that’s neither ponderous nor flippant.  Helgeland’s script briefly touches on deeper questions people might be inclined to discuss afterwards, like whether we should have involved the Iraqi army more after Saddam fled.  The ending narrows the perspective a little bit, as tends to happen in thrillers, and so it will take repeated viewings to really determine what place Green Zone has in the pantheon of action thrillers.  But the gaps are filled in by Damon, who continues his remarkable run of the last seven months (after 2009’s The Informant! and Invictus) and does such a good job that I can’t really imagine any other actor in the role.   

I anticipated Green Zone for almost a year, but I also worried that it would become the next Kingdom.  Damon and Greengrass and Helgeland wouldn’t let it.  As it went along, I noticed no awkward scenes, no unnecessary characters, and no choppy dialogue, all of which were eschewed for crisp plotting and Greengrass’s own considerable skills.  That’s a wonderful sense to have as you sit and watch a movie, and such warm and fuzzy feelings are embellished by the expert direction.  No specific set pieces here compare to the best of the Bournes (what do?), but Greengrass continues his ascension to the top of the ranks of action directors, his visual style again imparting incredible energy and intensity without ever sacrificing clarity.  Working off a slightly-tamed version of the Bourne shaky cam, Greengrass uses long takes and then fast cuts, off-center visuals and ever-so-briefly seen critical pieces of information that he congeals together in a perfectly coherent hole.  He’s the only director I know who could have me sit for hours in a cool theater and walk out sweating.

He commented that Green Zone wouldn’t appeal to everyone, and there’s no doubt it doesn’t suffer from the puppy-dog desire for universal appeal that dooms many mainstream features.  It doesn’t indict George W. Bush, but assumes that America was duped by a few powerful men who wanted an excuse to remove Saddam Hussein.  That’s hardly the kind of material upon which most war films are based, but the applause that greeted the credits at my showing reveals not just the film’s execution but also how much we’ve changed since 9/11 generated overwhelming pro-military, pro-Bush support.

Green Zone achieves entertainment first and foremost, but there’s a point, there’s always a point for Damon and Greengrass, as there should be in nearly every movie.  As Damon talks to Ryan’s befuddled report or Kinnear’s look-the-other-way bureaucrat about why we went to war, you can feel the discomfort in the audience and the way it relishes that aforementioned line.  Damon and Greengrass are bumming me out by hesitating to sign up for another Bourne flick; but if they keep churning out films like this one, I might not mind.

Do you know about The Moonlighting Fallacy? It’s an incorrect theory that TV shows can’t resolve conflict or change any of their fundamental dynamics because it will cause the shows to crumble creatively and commercially. It primarily applies to U.S.T. – unresolved sexual tension. The most common victims are sitcoms and/or dramedies. Shows are scared to do something like put a couple together in a stable relationship because, then, what will keep the viewers coming? What juicy conflict will drive the show and hook bigger and bigger audiences?

The Moonlighting Fallacy (named because the bizarre downfall of a TV show called Moonlighting after it hooked up two of its main characters) has had all sorts of negative effects, minor and major, on shows throughout the years through gutless television writing and plotting. I hate gutless TV because it doesn’t trust viewers to differentiate between quality and comfortable familiarity. The worst part is that shows usually decide to start living by The Moonlight Fallacy right at the top of their game, or at some sort of pivotal turning point. I’ll get to some examples in a few paragraphs.

It’s like when the Patriots decided to start playing conservative football for the first time all season in the Super Bowl against the Giants. Everybody favored the Patriots in that game, and the Patriots seemed to bank almost entirely on this fact instead of playing the kind of football that got them that far.

In short, I hate it when shows I like don’t trust me to still like their show even if they take creative risks and change the dynamic of the show. It infuriates me. Here are a few of the worst examples that have been on my mind recently.

(I figure I might as well make what I assume to be an implicit spoiler warning explicit here. I talk freely about shows’ plots in the upcoming paragraphs.)

Friends

This is perhaps the most nefarious example of all. After an a’ight pilot, the show gradually improved in quality throughout the first season. By the second season, the writing was great, the characters likable, the romantic tension truly compelling. Ross is the lovable lug who had long secretly pined for Rachel. How long will it take her to realize it?

And then she finally does! And she realizes how great he’s always treated her, and that she’d love to be with him, too! She makes this discovery while Ross is on a business trip. But of course, Ross finally decides to move on from Rachel. He gets a new girlfriend while on his trip.

In the interest of not ruining Ross’s relationship, Rachel decides not to reveal her new feelings. So now, their roles are reversed. This was a pretty brilliant scheme: The writing was good enough and the characters developed enough that the situation-flip allowed for a hilarious alternate reality from the first season.

And then finally, Ross realizes that Rachel is into him. (Leading to one of the show’s all time great lines, after Rachel lies in a drunken phone message “I’m over you,” Ross says “You’re over me? You’re over me? When were you… under me?”) Of course, then Ross had to make the difficult decision to end things with his steady girlfriend or start over with the girl of his dreams.

But when he makes the tough decision to ditch Julie and date Rachel, the gutless television writing begins. We’ve had Ross pine for Rachel. We’ve had Rachel pine for Ross. They’ve decided they want to be together. There’s an obvious next logical step: Try putting them together. Roll with that for awhile. The characters are well-developed and the writers are competent.

Instead, the show pulls out some half-assed obstacle to keep the two pining for each other. If  you want to see an episode that will make you angry, go see The One With the List, the eighth episode of the second season. It’s incredibly frustrating.

I suppose the new obstacle presented a slightly different dynamic, where Ross overtly pined for Rachel instead of secretly pining for Rachel, but it was really the same thing, so all of the gags seemed tired and redundant. An incredible episode, arguably the best in Friends history (The One with the Prom Video) finally hooked them up, almost making the stupid delay worth it.

And, for awhile, the show creatively explored new area with Ross and Rachel together. It captured the beginning of their relationship, the disconnect between the two’s personalities, and their friend’s responses — all done pretty credibly. Unfortunately, somebody in charge, whether it be a writer or a producer, decided the show was losing steam. People don’t love Ross and Rachel when they stay together, these people decided. They love Ross and Rachel when they long to be together and eventually get together briefly. Who needs character development?

So they repeated this plot. For eight more years. No, seriously. This same exact plot for eight more years. Talk about gutless. Alright, there are a few spins on it. One season they get together at a beach house! One season Ross almost gets together with someone else but says Rachel’s name at the altar, so he gets together with Rachel instead! One season they get together while drunk in Vegas and get married! They always break up (often blaming it on this one time Ross sort-of cheated on Rachel even though, as Ross claims about 1000 times, they “were on a break!”), but they keep on keeping on. Getting together one more time won’t hurt, right?

It is heartbreaking to witness the gradual downfall of a great sitcom into an unfunny, self-mocking farce by its tenth season. And guess how the show ended? Yep! Ross and Rachel get together. Just like the people always wanted.

The Office

I know what you’re expecting. I’m going to complain about how Jim and Pam, obviously perfect for each other, keep finding reasons to stay apart for three full seasons!

Wrong! This is probably the best a TV show has ever handled a romance. I challenge you to find me a better, more rewarding TV romance. I’ve looked, and I couldn’t find one. The pacing is quite slow, but there’s a deliberate plan, and every obstacle develops the characters a little bit more. Six seasons in, the Jim-Pam elements have been perfect about 80% of the time, and the flaws have been minor the other 20% of the time.

But The Office has had its share of gutless elements, particularly in the past two seasons. I briefly want to discuss two of them.

First, the character Holly. What a great character. Seriously, Holly is one of my favorite TV characters of all time, even though we only see her for seven episodes. After four seasons of witnessing Michael bumble through two awkward relationships – notably, a vitriolic hell with former boss Jan Levinson – the writers decide to try something much more challenging: A perfect match for the out-there, dysfunctional manager!

And so we meet Holly Flax at the very end of season four. She’s funny and dorky and kind and vulnerable. Credit actress Amy Ryan: all of this instantly detectable even as Holly is functional and seemingly normal as an HR officer. She and Michael hit it off pretty quickly. The irony that kills Jim is that Michael actually seems to have more moves than Jim. This juxtaposition is really one of the more brilliant moves that The Office writers have made, which is why the end of season 4 and beginning of season 5 are some of my most rewatched episodes.

Just as we see Michael developing a healthy, steady relationship that gives him growth… It disappears. Holly gets shipped away because the CEO is worried. I suppose this could be thematically intentional. Perhaps the writers see Michael as a Sisyphus character, doomed to repeat his suffering forever for metaphysical reasons. The world just works against him. It’s also possible that the show simply couldn’t afford Ryan as a regular, or she would’ve rather focused on movies.

But I don’t like it. I call it gutless. We get Holly and Michael for a whopping six episodes, who call it off just as it starts to settle down between them. I will credit the show for making the break-up just as moving and saddening as any real breakup. There’s no deus ex machina thrown in, like Holly secretly being a vampire or having a secretly evil personality, to prevent the break-up from being challenging to viewers.

If the show had to break up the characters, I’m glad they did the way they did. It nearly brought me to tears. I just know that the characters would’ve and should’ve stayed together longer then they had. There was a lot of plot and character growth to milk from a romantically stable Michael Scott. More than a few episodes worth.

This brings me to the other instance of gutless television writing in the show’s fifth season: The Michael Scott Paper Company. It’s not the plot arc itself, or really any part of it, that I have a problem with. It’s the arc’s length. The show slowly built up to this climactic change to The Office dynamic: Michael leaving Dunder-Mifflin. It gave the characters several great moments leading to Michael starting the company.

But, for some reason, after all that hard and brilliant work setting up The Michael Scott Paper Company, the show gave up after four measly episodes, two of which were about the company’s first couple of days. It really had the potential to last at least half a season, if not a whole season. The change in dynamic was a breath of fresh air for a show that otherwise was bordering on tiredness.

Again, it’s not the way the show handled the abrupt conclusion — “Broke,” the episode Michael reunites with Dunder-Mifflin, might be one of the five best in the series history — it’s more the existence and timing of the abrupt conclusion. Again, I blame fear or tepidness of fundamentally changing the show into something a little bit different and more complex.

Unfortunately, it seems these questionable instances of TV writing during the fifth season were foreshadowing to the sixth season which is a monogamist with gutless plotting. Don’t even get me started on this season’s downfall of arguably my favorite TV show ever.

How I Met Your Mother

I want to stress that perhaps the most frustrating part of The Moonlighting Fallacy is that TV writers decide to stick to it at the most pivotal times, even if they’ve been bravely defying the fallacy so far. This especially applies to my least favorite instance of gutless television from the past half decade, the fifth season of How I Met Your Mother.

The show spent all of the third and fourth season scaffolding a pretty major change in dynamic that violated another long-assumed sitcom rule: Don’t have a main love interest hook up with another character than the one they’re originally linked with. I call this the Joey-Rachel Axiom after the brief affair between the two Friends’ characters in the ninth and tenth seasons that just felt so unnatural.

Yet, HIMYM credibly pulled it off, and with its most caricatured main character: Barney. On the other end was main character Ted’s initial interest, Robin. The show spent all of season three slowly and successfully building chemistry between the two. The fourth season beautifully allowed Barney to mature from his womanizing ways as he learned to live with the tender part of his personality.

Finally, the show eased the characters together in the Season 4 finale and the opening episodes of Season 5. The show seemed poised to pace the romance over several seasons, if not until the end of the series. It showed a different side of the characters that was a comfortable breath of fresh air.

And then… they flush it all down the toilet seven episodes in. They pull a cheesy breakup episode with almost no emotional fallout in subsequent episodes. After two seasons of hard work to make the two a credible, entertaining, maturing couple, they decide they like simple, debauchery-loving Barney over human character Barney.

At first, I convinced myself the “breakup” was more of a temporary break, a roadblock for the RoBarn couple. But interviews and later confirmed that this was a permanent breakup. Even worse, interviews with the writers confirmed that the choice to break the pair up was intentionally gutless television; they didn’t want to lose one of their “big draws,” Barney the single womanizer.

I’m highly offended the writers believe people watch the show because of a recurring gag and not because of funny writing, well-developed characters, and attention to detail. I know for me it was the overall quality of the show, not a few funny elements.

Anyways, these are a few of the examples of otherwise good shows losing their courage at the worst times. I have about a dozen more I could share, but I’m sure you can think of plenty on your own.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

I distinctly remember negative emotions towards American Idiot when it first came out. My habitual response is still negative. Why? The same reason any level-headed guy comes to despise a good, popular album he should like: Overexposure.

Green Day immediately went from the most underrated band in America to the most overrated, as far as I was concerned. The band’s transformation from “those jerks who made that Dookie album” to “the next generation’s poet laureate arena rockers a la U2″ was too abrupt for me. From my 2005 perspective, they weren’t just sell-outs, but something worse: artists who were suddenly loved because they sold out.

A half-decade later, I’ve amended and cooled down from that perspective. American Idiot isn’t really a selling-out album because it’s not overtly commercial. It’s subtly commercial. It is very angry, which platinum-selling rock isn’t supposed to be. But this anger is so broad and general – to the point where it feels operatic – that it’s relatable to every American citizen.

Much hubbub was made by rock critics and news headlines about the political tones in the album but, honestly, I don’t think those are very important to the album’s success. The thinkers and writers who wanted to believe that this album’s success foreshadowed a liberal, politically active generation failed to realize a key point.

Almost no one under the age of eighteen who listened to this album connected with it politically. I’d estimate about half were concerned solely with having loud, catchy guitar riffs blasting from their stereos. The other half connected with the album socially: They feel lonely and bitter and disenfranchised (what this album is about) because they’re awkward adolescents, not because of the neo-conservative military complex or the subversive media machine.

In 2005, Green Day’s key demographic couldn’t have cared less about Bush or Guantanamo Bay or Fox News. So, I tend to downplay the whole “protest album for this generation” angle. (By contrast, the song that best captures the aged 15-25 generation’s political viewpoint is “Waiting on the World to Change” by John Mayer.)

Where this album shines are the most emotionally bare and direct moments. “My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me.” — “Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are.” — “You taught me how to live in the streets of shame where you’ve lost your dreams in the rain.” Granted, these moments are entirely depressing and pessimistic. But I think a lot of adolescents and young adults in America are highly depressed and pessimistic, so it fits.

Billie Joe has this great voice that connects with just about anyone. It’s always been Green Day’s x-factor, and it really elevates American Idiot from good to borderline great. He doesn’t really have tenderness or vulnerability. It’s more resonance and clarity. It’s the rare kind of voice where you feel like you know the guy just from hearing him sing. His voice added an eerie, almost paradoxical brilliance to the self-contradictions of Green Day’s early work.

It’s these contradictions and small-scale wonders that I miss the most in American Idiot versus their older work. The album is content to go bigger, louder, more powerful. It lays the riffs on heavy. It also indulges in nine-minute suites that are mercifully listenable. The more operatic elements of the album sink the package down a little bit. Any of the lyrics that tackle a third-person narrative fall flat compared to the first-person lyrics of the singles.

But just recently listening to the singles and the good album tracks like “Whatsername,” I thought the album sounded even better than it did a half decade ago. Then again, maybe it’s me that’s changed. When I hear “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” I no longer have to battle the sensation that this song would be great if it wasn’t on the radio every five minutes. I can straight up enjoy it, because it truly is a great single.

I don’t doubt ithat the album dubbed an instant classic upon its release will one day be a true classic.

In honor of last Sunday’s Oscars, here’s a movie that should be honored at next year’s ceremony (but, given that Sandra Bullock just won Best Actress for Blind Side, clearly won’t be).

Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 4)

I had no designs of liking The Book of Eli—none.  Due to an uninspiring trailer and tepid reviews, the only thing compelling me to a viewing was the presence of Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman plus some winter-inspired malaise.  I walked out as stunned as I’d been by a movie in years; it’s not my favorite film since the summer of 2007, but not since the third Bourne have I wanted to do nothing but sit in contemplation of a film so much afterwards.

Directed by the Hughes brothers, with whom I was unfamiliar, Eli is set in a post-apocalyptic world decades after a ‘flash’ wiped out civilized societies and many defining pieces of culture.  Eli (Washington) stalks around forests hunting feral cats for food, feeding pieces to rats, perhaps because they’re the only companionship he has.  The visually stimulating world realized by the Hughes brothers paints life in desert-like grays and dark greens, with remnants of the apocalypse still manifest in unmoved wrecked cars and bodies hanging from a noose in closets.  There are some aspects of graphic novels (especially with the visuals and Eli’s extreme fighting skills) and western themes, but The Book of Eli proceeds in a rather straightforward manner.

Eli steadfastly pursues an undefined course—heading West—and eventually comes upon an abridged version of a town lorded over by Oldman’s Carnegie.  Carnegie’s pursuit of the last remaining copy of the Bible stems from a hope to use it as a persuasive force to expand his reign and justify his dominance.  When he finds out that Eli is carrying said book with him, he tries to lure him over to his side, but Eli wants nothing other than to keep heading West.  He seems to have a strange sort of protection over him, but that doesn’t prevent Carnegie from chasing after him when he calmly escapes the town.

This well-paced film plays out more cogently and philosophically than I ever imagined it would.  Washington and Oldman are both as good as ever, but the film has so many other things going for it that it leaves them behind—they’re almost ancillary.  I noticed numerous parallels to 2006’s Children of Men, notably with a lead protagonist fighting to secure the human race’s last hope amid apocalyptic anarchy and chaos.  And Eli finds nearly as much warmth and humanity as did Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece.

The movie may seem overtly religious, but it emphasizes the distinction between people like Eli and those who want to use religion without really knowing what it means or just to convince people that what they’re doing is right.  Carnegie’s feverish pursuit of what he unashamedly calls a weapon should give the film an immediate resonance for viewers.  And, while the power of religious texts is promoted, note that the Bible is placed as just one book amidst others, and amidst other works of art and culture, at Eli’s final destination. 

The real religious undertones come not so much via the promotion of one particular faith, but rather the underlying themes: blessed are the poor and meek and injured (as we ultimately come to learn of Eli); do more to others than you do for yourself; and never be blinded so much by ideals that you can’t see the commonsense right thing to do.  The most important of these concepts, though, shows that death is preferable to a life of misery and immorality.  Rebuilding societies isn’t always a good thing, Eli tells us, as it’s not hard to see that we’d rather have not survived the apocalypse than to live in Carnegie’s town. 

These ideas are put forth via intense violence and conversational quiet, with a series of perfectly executed scenes that show us details of the world: the way people look for ‘shakes’ in someone’s hands to reveal cannibalism; the association that forms between street beggars/prostitutes and gangs; and the methods of survival practiced by an old couple living without a neighboring house for miles.  The shootout that takes place there is fantastically filmed, in sharp contrast to the chaotic presentation of most such scenes; the Hughes brothers provide an incredibly long take, going at least two minutes without a cut (another Children of Men similarity), during which the camera zooms from the attackers into an open window like a missile and curves around to show the devastation inside.

Reluctantly, Eli acquires a travelling companion in the form of Solara (Mila Kunis, better than most actresses in such roles, which is to say inoffensive), the prettiest girl in Carnegie’s town.  Eager to get away from Carnegie’s oppressive rule of her and her blind mother (Jennifer Beals), she weasels her way into Eli’s care.  Her escape from a car of Carnegie’s men is a little hard to fathom, I’ll grant, and the script seems to introduce an annoying plot hole by saying that  Carnegie’s car lacks gas.  Solara’s seems capable of driving for hours, but this could have been easily avoided by Carnegie preferring to just go back to open the book, so it doesn’t really harm anything.

All told, I love a film that doesn’t bother to explain everything right off the bat as though you’re a little child.  I love one that proclaims the power of books (and you’d think more would, considering how films and literature share almost all the same properties).  And the twist both floored me and validated a suspicion I had from about the five-minute mark on—it’s guessable, but not obvious, and it makes everything that came before seem more interesting, not less.  Just one of the many accomplishments in this strongly underrated film.

Well I guess it began towards the end of 1996 when I received a call from [head of Magna Carta Records] Pete Morticelli and [head of Shrapnel Records] Mike Varney who wanted to put together a couple of “Super Groups” (for lack of a better term!).  One turned into the Black Light Syndrome project with [Frank Zappa drummer] Terry Bozzio and they asked me if I’d like to help construct the other….

So… They asked me to compile a “Wish List” of all the musicians I’ve always wanted to work with.  With Frank Zappa and John Lennon no longer being options, I came up with some other names.

These words were taken from the liner notes of the self-titled debut album by Liquid Tension Experiment, whose eventual lineup consisted of drummer Mike Portnoy (the author of the notes), bassist Tony Levin, guitarist John Petrucci, and Jordan Rudess on keys.  With no clear frontman and no vocalist in sight, this all-star prog rock dream team laid down some of the most fluid, engaging, virtuosic instrumentals ever unleashed.

They will be remembered as Mike Portnoy’s second-best supergroup.

Before the turn of the century, in fact, Portnoy worked with multi-instrumentalist Neal Morse to assemble Transatlantic: the contemporary equivalent of Asia, the grown-up future selves of A Perfect Circle, the prog rock version of… I don’t know, Chickenfoot.  Let me introduce the cast.

Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater is the premier living prog metal drummer.  What he lacks in jazz chops – and I say “lacks” only relative to the absolute greats – he proves unimportant through the inimitable crossover success of his primary project.

Neal Morse, now a solo Christian artist with a string of religious concept albums under his belt, rose to international fame as the mastermind behind Spock’s Beard, America’s answer to Genesis, founded in the 1990′s.

Roine Stolt, Sweden’s gift to prog, has achieved greatness foremost with The Flower Kings with his songwriting and lyrical prowess.  His work on guitar, no less, brings to mind a young Steve Howe.

Pete Trewavas has played bass for Marillion ever since Fish was there… which is a statement I encourage you to investigate on your own if its gravity is lost on you.

These accolades are leading somewhere, I assure you.  Transatlantic congregated for a week or two to throw together a brilliant masterpiece in each 2000 and 2001.  Almost a decade later, these musical giants of our day have graced us with one more taste of teamwork, entitled The Whirlwind.

As we should expect, Transatlantic used up just about every second of the 80 minutes a mass-produced cd can hold, filling that space with one continuous piece of music demarcated into twelve thematic tracks.  All four guys bring their own sounds to the table and everybody can be heard singing lead at some point or another.

A seven-minute instrumental overture gives way to the bookend motif “Whirlwind,” which lyrically sets the stage for tales of life’s oppressive confusion and how we can overcome it.  Soon after, “On the Prowl” lays down the sickest jam you ever did hear.  Killer drum licks pair with a genius jazz bassline to hold the ground while Stolt’s guitar and Morse’s keys take to the sky, cruising through a wild array of styles and rhythms with adept elegance.  That solo session stands as a clinic on how to show off technical ability while remaining genuinely melodic and engaging, all off the top of your head.

Expansive vocal harmonies draw your attention in “Out of the Night” while the striking guitar commands your toes to tap.  It is one of many tunes to evidently showcase team songwriting – in fact, this is true of every song on the disc.  Influences from Spock’s Beard and The Flower Kings take turns directing the overarching mood of each passage while Trewavas and Portnoy invent whatever ideal companion of an undercurrent they’d like to produce at any given time.

In truth, there isn’t much Dream Theater to be heard here.  Portnoy’s brand of rock is an outlier next to relative poppiness around him in Transatlantic.  However, in “Is This Really Happening?”, the metal beast is freed and a sonic onslaught of punishing rolls and blast beats coerces Stolt into some serious dark shredding.

Only one standalone instrumental was written for the album, “Pieces of Heaven,” and though it is shorter than one might have expected, each of the other songs contains a host of solos and constructed melodies enacted sans vocals.

Just before the reprise of the bookend motif, Neal Morse slips in some of his least obscured religious undertones in “Dancing with Eternal Glory.”  That man is a singing preacher at heart who has no reserves about his evangelical calling.

The Whirlwind closes with every bit of grand majesty becoming of a progressive concept album.  If anything, I was surprised that equal magnificence and pomp did not decorate the first few minutes of the overture, but the greatest swell was saved for last.

So as to provide some small facade of objectivism, let me critique the performance of all four musicians on this album in the department of vocal performance.  Neither Stolt nor Morse, who split the major part of the singing duties, will ever win an award for having a pretty voice.  Certainly both are capable, but with unspectacular ranges and what some might call an elderly tremolo to their sound.  Trewavas and Portnoy are nothing if not unremarkable vocally.

The music in The Whirlwind is at times technically extreme and often improvised or elaborated.  What will be far more salient to non-proggers is that the songs are long and, from a mainstream standpoint, circuitous.  Verses and choruses together make up only half of the 80 minutes, a fact which can leave unfocused listeners feeling lost.  This is all a matter of the target audience: some people find Transatlantic cumbersome in style while others see them as monoliths of ability.  Fortunately, those who have cause to stumble upon the group tend to fall into the latter set.

Mike Portnoy’s “Wish List” of musicians didn’t include a single vocalist.  Yet a couple of years down the road he and Pete Trewavas joined two frontmen to form a powerhouse collective of prog’s most famous standard bearers into the new millenium.  Any predictions for who will be part of his next collaboration?