Boombox Serenade

Boombox Serenade's Ten Best Albums of 2008 (Really Eleven)

From fluent genre masterpieces to stunning freaks of nature, this years' crop has some brilliant stuff in it so filmmakers, please, step away from that copy of Beggars Banquet for a moment and venture out into the new.

1. Santogold - Santogold (Downtown). This M.I.A./Yeah Yeah Yeahs lovechild made it onto a lot of top ten lists this year, and rightly so for Santi White packs a metric fuckton of ferocity and style into every cut. Her urgent, siren (as in squad car) vocals rise and fall in glorious sine waves of swagger on "You'll Find a Way" and "Say Aha," but even when she's taking it down a notch ("Creator" and "Shove It") her delivery drips with attitude and tenacity that few others muster. "L.E.S. Artistes" is evidence of pop genius, a stalwart manifesto of independence, but one clear-eyed enough to acknowledge the personal cost. Meet the real Sascha Fierce.

2. The Renaissance - Q Tip (Motown Universal). This low key hip hop is so charismatic and atmospheric that it's easy to overlook how brilliantly worded it is throughout ("minimum wage in the Internet age"). Q Tip is more cognizant of the rhythm-rhyme connection than any other MC out there, and the way he laces words to beats makes for grooves tighter than a turducken. Parse the lyrics in real time or just get into the bean-bag-hangout vibe. Highlights on this album include "Gettin' Up," "Manwomanboogie," and "You."

3. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop). "Americana" doesn't begin to cover it. This sylvan masterpiece sounds like the offspring of a snowy owl and a cirrus cloud. "White Winter Hymnal" is clean and fresh as the landscape it worships, while "He Doesn't Know Why" is a strangely triumphant portrait of a down-and-out brother. "Oliver James" shows off how startlingly pure Robin Pecknold's voice is when stripped of all those angelic layers. 

4. Our Delight - James Moody and Hank Jones (IPO). Rich in old school panache,  these two jazz veterans joyfully pick up their conversation without ever over-noodling. Tart, structured sax and piano create a smart, tailored sound, yet it's clear that Moody and Jones also take a lot of pleasure doing what they do together too (hence the album title). Amiably, they stroll right past the hotel lobby set to deliver something with infinitely more personality, style, soul.

5. Una Dia - Juana Molina (Domino). Argentinian experimentalist Juana Molina is an absolute virtuoso of highly exotic grooves and remote polyphony, practicing all her strange and elastic arts on Una Dia, rightly called "a rare and beautiful animal" by Allmusic.com. Sounds like Bjork on peyote in the Andes. 

6. Los Angeles - Flying Lotus (Warp). Edge-pushingly hip and mostly instrumental, this lo-fi electronic gem is a pulsating, heavily textured artifact from outer space. Urbane neo-soul and trip hop influences float in and out of the downcast beats, but what remains is an unflagging attention to detail and hyper-keen sense of atmosphere.

7. & 8. Saturdays=Youth - M83 (Mute) and Oracular Spectacular - MGMT (Sony). All air and exultation, Saturdays=Youth is a flying dream of an album, with exquisite echoes of Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush throughout, yet somehow fresh and millennial too. (On good speakers, "We Own The Sky" makes full body goosebumps.) Oracular Spectacular is a more psychedelic but an equally airborne transcription of youth. MGMT sound like the Flaming Lips as teenagers. Both zeitgeist-y, both great. 

9. Made in Dakar - Orchestra Baobob (Nonesuch). Stylistic masters, these seminal Senegalese musicians move effortlessly from rumba, reggae and highlife to create some of the warmest, most appealing music ever made. "Sunny" is a word often applied to a particular kind of bleached-out California album rock these days, but Orchestra Baobob returns from a 16 year hiatus to remind us of what sunny really sounds like. Featuring guest vocals from Medoune Diallo and Youssou Ndour, who still sounds like God's gift. 

10. Midnight Boom - The Kills (Domino). Ferociously sexy, The Kills capitalize on their intense chemistry  to create a dirty rock sound that makes you want to shake your hips, maybe even find yourself a nice pole to dance on. The irresistible groove of "Getting Down" is rapidly followed by the tender rocker "Last Day of Magic," both with that big, restless boom-kick sound that gives this album so much forward motion. The closer, "Good Night Bad Morning" is a gorgeous ballad both downcast and hopeful—a lullaby that slowly rocks and rolls you into an unlikely state of grace.

11. Saint Dymphna - Gang Gang Dance (Social Registry). In Catholicsm, Saint Dymphna is the patron saint of mental illness, so it's an apt title for this incredibly eccentric album of free range electronic music. With production chops to match their grandly artistic ambitions, Gang Gang Dance fluidly invoke dub, grime, world, hip hop, trip hop, reggaeton and more. Serious headphone candy.

Some other great 2008 releases to check out:

• Lightbulbs - Fujiya & Miyagi (indie pop)
• Zero Life Night Vision - Kap Bambino (alt rock) 
• Alegranza - El Guinchino (experimental world) 
• Stop Drop and Roll! - Foxboro Hot Tubs (rock)
• Soul Science - Justin Adams (world / blues)  
• Alpinisms - School of Seven Bells (dream pop)
• Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill - Grouper (Americana / freak folk) 
• Does You Inspire You - Chairlift (dream pop)
• Youth Novels - Lykke Li (indie pop) 
• Heart On - Eagles of Death Metal (rock) 
• Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair (disco / dance) 
• Microcastle - Deerhunter (alt rock) 
• Lay it Down - Al Green (soul / r&b)
  
• What does it all mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective - Steinski (hip hop / funk / turntablism)

Top Ten Alt Christmas Radio Stations on the Interwebs

 

Feel that thrill of hope, weary world? Christmas time is here and Barack Obama takes office in less than a month! I'm taking quick break from my usual posts to help you find relief from Johnny Mathis overload.

1. Xmas in Frisko. One of San Francisco's finest exports, SomaFM has come up with the all-time best, most wackiest Christmas music anywhere.

2. Bluegrass Christmas. Home spun and hickory smoked Christmas music from bands with names like "Clarke Family and the Pine Street Musicians" and "Larry Sparks & The Lonesome Ramblers."

3. Scrooge Tunes Yes Virginia, there really is an Internet radio station of punk rock Christmas music. I just experienced "Little Drummer Bitch" and "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus" there, so I can attest. (Scroll down to the bottom of the Yahoo page to find it)

4. Motown Christmas. The maximum number of "shoo-be-do-wops" are folded into your Christmas favorites like so much cocoa to your schnapps, and there are lots of high powered gospel numbers too. The righteous indignation on some of these tracks makes for some interesting moments, like just now when the vocalist was angrily insisting over and over that "it ain't about Santa Claus."

5. Dysfunctional Christmas. The folks at Slacker.com may have made baby Jesus cry with this one, but they made us do the opposite of cry.

6. Lagniappe Christmas. Highly eclectic holiday music from the Big Easy, where they spike their carols with Bourbon Street style and serve up the occasional cheeseball of rock too, such as AC/DC's, "I Want a Mistress for Christmas."

7. Holiday Hip Hop. This is a shared station on Pandora where you'll hear "Santa Baby" like you've never heard it before, including a wish list that has "jobs in the ghetto" as one of its top requests.

8. 181 FM's Christmas Swing. Skip right over "Christmas Power" and the other schlock and head straight for "Christmas Swing," a holly jolly line-up of vintage tracks from the 20's, 30's and 40's. Lots of stuff you've never heard before.

9. The Holiday Sub-Channels at Accuradio. The Holiday Jazz channel here goes down smooth as hot buttered rum and the "Non-Standard Christmas" channel is good too, although jeez, the folks at this site could sure use some help with naming their stuff.

10. Christmas Remixed. A sleekly cosmopolitan little cocktail of downtempo electronic Christmas music. Really helps when you feel Bing-Crosbied-to-death.

Happy Holidays from Boombox Serenade!

aworldofhelp.com

Soundtrack Cliche: Enough With La Vie En Rose Already

Ok, within the space of one week I have now seen three films with the song "La Vie En Rose" in the soundtrack: Shira Geffen's Jellyfish, Spike Lee's Summer of Sam, and Andrew Stanton's WALL-E.

Filmmakers, it's time to just say "non" to this one...mkay? I don't care if Grace Jones sings it in Hebrew, "La Vie En Rose" is officially played out as a soundtrack choice. Move on.

Note for Note: Gus Van Sant's Musical Sense of Cinema

In Milk there's a moment so subtle that it could easily be missed if you're not paying close attention. It features a nighttime shot of the Eureka Valley (as it was then called) and during this shot the score dwindles down to six distinct notes, intoned very softly on piano. If you watch carefully, you can see off in the distance, as each note sounds, a different letter on the sign of the Castro Theater is lighting up, one by one:

C, A, S, T, R, O.

That sign is, to me, the ultimate symbol of San Francisco, so Van Sant may as well have been plucking each one of my heart strings when he did this. He did so again many times throughout Milk, but most memorably at the end when Sean Penn is speaking some of Harvey Milk's most well known words:

"I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you... and you... and you... Gotta give em hope."

For a fleeting second, just as that last "and you" is uttered, Van Sant abruptly repeats a tiny snippet of film we've just seen, like a skip in a record. The reprised footage is of San Francisco's City Hall, where Milk was assassinated by his colleague, Dan White. I think that by introducing this deliberate flaw at precisely this moment, Van Sant is breaking the fourth wall and applying that final "and you" to the viewer. It took me out of the film and made me feel the personal implications of Harvey Milk's message in a way that I hadn't before.

As meaningful as such moments are, I mention them also as examples of Van Sant's subtly brilliant arrangements of image and sound. The music in Milk (mostly comprised of the Danny Elfman score) is more conventional than most Van Sant soundtracks and yet he treats certain moments in his film almost as if they were, themselves, phrases in a score. Images can attain rhythm from individual notes and/or words in his work--a level of detail with which most filmmakers never bother. It's one of the reasons why even a biopic by Van Sant is more artful than the most wildly estoteric attempts of other directors.

When I got home, Mike Huckabee was on The Daily Show talking about Proposition 8 and why institution of marriage should not include same sex couples. I'm sure Huckabee doesn't understand how directly his views are connected to the kind of violence that ended Harvey Milk's life, and yet I'm equally sure that Milk wouldn't have wasted too much time wringing his hands over such a man and his ilk:

"I have tasted freedom. I will not give up that which I have tasted. I have a lot more to drink. For that reason, the political numbers game will be played. I know the rules of their game now and how to play it."

More than thirty years later, Milks' statement is still sharply relevant. For some further insight on this, read Rob Epstein's Huffington Post piece, What Harvey Milk Tells Us About Proposition 8 and if you haven't seen Milk yet, run don't walk. 

Soundtrack of the Day: The Wickedly Subversive Music of Danny Boyles' "Shallow Grave"

Warning!  Here be spoilers!

It's Throwback Thursday here at Boombox Serenade, and I'm still on a Danny Boyle kick, so today I'm unearthing his first-ever feature, Shallow Grave. The film debuted in 1994 at the Cannes Film Festival where three extra screenings had to be added to meet viewer demand.

Anyway, seeing this film again confirms my suspicion that Boyle loves him some montage. There's a particularly great one in Shallow Grave just after three Edinburgh flatmates discover their new roommate dead in his room with a suitcase full of money.  They're remarkably unphased by this and in the ensuing montage—set to Nina Simone's rendition of "My Baby Just Cares for Me"—Boyle shows just how merrily life continues to roll along for them despite the corpse in the spare room.

Liz Taylor is not his style
And even Lana Turners' smile
Is somethin' he can't see
My baby don't care who knows it
My baby just cares for me

The song is all warmth and lilt, and in the beginning, it seems the montage will be perfectly aligned with that tone. The flat is shown looking neat as a pin. The mail continues to arrive on time. Then, Boyle cuts to a medium closeup of the suitcase full of money gleaming conspicuously on the kitchen table and then to a closeup of the dead guy, looking ever more sunken among some red satin sheets. The montage ushers us from the realm of normalcy to that of creeping anxiety about what's happened and because "My Baby Just Cares for Me" is a congenial, mid-tempo jazz tune of the exact sort you'd hear at Starbucks, it becomes an increasingly subversive choice as the sequence continues.

It's a style Boyle reprises in the film's big finish, in which Alex (played by Ewan McGregor) is pinned to the floor by a knife to the shoulder as Andy Williams belts out his exuberant 1968 single, "Happy Heart."

It's my happy heart you hear
Singing loud and singing clear
And it's all because you're near me, my love

So hooray for Danny Boyle and his sophisticated ways with music. I think Slumdog Millionaire is great of course, but I hope he digs up his dark side again soon.  

I am powerless to resist posting this

Being, apparently, the very last person on the entire Interwebs to discover LOLcats, I am still endlessly amused by it and found this one today. Forgive.

You Lost Me at Hello: The Fatal Musical Misstep in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Last night the buttons on the remote control burned brightly in the deep December darkness, so we dialed up Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for ourselves and sat back to take in the spectacle of it all. We had that cozy feeling you get when your entertainment needs are modest and highly likely to be met, so we welcomed the big budget buffet of artifice and A-listers that was coming our way. We wanted the catacombs and crystal skulls. The Soviet agents and sardonic one liners. Cate Blanchett in an improbably stylish military jumpsuit. 

As it turns out, we were not only disappointed but utterly un-transported by this film. We couldn't manage to suspend disbelief for even a single minute, despite being perfectly primed to do so. For me the deal-breaker happened within the first few seconds of the film, and I didn't even try to engage with it again after that. It was game over already, and all because of a single song.

Spielberg apparently aged his characters in "real time" for Crystal Skull, so when we meet up with them it's the year 1957. The film begins with some unidentified teenagers taking a joyride in a convertible. Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" is blaring from the car radio.

Spielberg uses the Elvis track in a very prominent way in this scene and does that thing where allows the music to sound as if it's coming from the car radio (source) for awhile, but then shifts and expands it to become the larger soundtrack sitting atop the whole scene. It's one of those road-tested directorial devices used to heighten mood. Reliable.

So, what's wrong with it? Well, "Hound Dog" (as in "you ain't nothin but a") is precisely the track you'd expect to be playing on a teeny boppers' radio in 1957, so as a music choice it's at best boring and at worst, deeply unimaginative. When "Hound Dog" was first released in the United States in 1956 it acted as an absolute lightening rod to the still nascent genre of rock, and it has remained in ultra-heavy, practically planetary rotation ever since, so it is—quite literally—the single most obvious choice Spielberg could have made for that scene, and a tip-off to the viewer that she's about to experience about a squillion other things she's experienced before.

(I think even a slightly less well known top-100 hit from 1956 like Little Richard's "Keep a Knockin" or "Matchbox" by Carl Perkins might have made me want to follow that car, but Presley? Hound Dog? Come on.)

Salon critic Andrew O'Heir observed that Crystal Skull contains an absolute barrage of 1950's tropes within the film's first few minutes: A-bombs, the Red Scare, Roswell, drag racing... it's completely fine that Spielberg really goes for that broad, comic book style so appropriate to the franchise, but with Crystal Skull he rockets over the fine line between icon and cliche so willingly that it's hard to stay engaged with the film even when that's your explicit goal.

As it turns out, I was so removed from the experience that it's already receded into a wash of bad Russian accents and Wild One allusions. It's too bad. Spielberg comes by his mainstream preferences honestly, but in a tale this grandiose you need a real foothold, and I just couldn't find one. It was all too slick.