The Records of our Youth

Standing Still's the Sun

I realize that i am a little late on the uptake here, but fuck it. I have been listening to Akron/Family a lot lately. I don't even know where to start, but I feel like they are a band that is not only worth listening to, but vital for any budding indie nerd to consider. They apparently got their start in Williamsburg, where they spent a lot of their playing in 'Gimme Coffee' before they were signed to Young God Records. Since then the members of the band have changed. One of the original members of the band, Ryan Vanderhoof went to live in a Buddhist Dharma center. But in spite of this absolutely awesome departure, the band is staying strong.

Their folk driven, near transcendental brand of music is real in a way that most music fails to ever be. Their lyrics tend to be simple yet dreamlike. Talking about real things in ethereal terms. They use just enough imagery to get the point across without making it overflow with wasted abstraction and they suit the music perfectly. When listening to Akron/Family you just get sucked in and pulled out at the bands whim. All the sounds blend together in a very intentional way, in a few cases even literally. At one point in Running, Returning' you hear this haunting vocalization and vibrating guitar noise. The two sounds blend until only a few seconds later you can't even tell which you can hear, and even in the midst of all this the feeling the artists are expressing are still clear.

Akron/Family even uses foley well. 99% of the time when i hear a band start sampling street sounds and similar recycled shit, it makes me cringe. But this band can sample everything from lightning bolts to chairs moving and every time the impact is spot on. They are not random noises they are vital parts of the song.

I can't wait to hear more from them...

Boots and Fists To Pound on the Pavement.

Seriously, this is fierce. It is just like the vampire weekend we all know and love from a few summers ago, only with a little more thought put into lyrical content. Also, less simplicity. In a way the band is using the same techniques they used on their self titled. Like Unconventional instrumentation, world music influence, and that lovely British class. Here i guess they are just using more of it. Pounding layer over layer seamlessly. The song is going to be released on their new album Contra, due for January 11th in the UK and 12th here.

Here is the download, just right click and "save link as"
Horchata

There's One In All of Us

When I saw the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are about seven months ago, I was blown away. From that point until the movies debut on October 18th, I was biting my nails in anticipation. Really, I don't remember caring that much about a film's release in at last a few years. First of all, this book, which was originally written in 1963 by the great Maurice Sendak was a pretty high on my list of favorite books as a kid. I remember feeling like the book was written about me. Max's trouble maker attitude and his world consuming imagination were both a huge part of my personality as a child. Well actually I guess they still are. So anyway, I had a lot of emotional connection with the story as it was. Second of all, Spike Jonze? The director I remember for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation was going to be the creative godhead behind the re-imagining of one of America's most beloved children's books. I'm not saying that I didn't have absolute faith in Spike's creative potential, not to mention his absolutely stunning take on cinematography, but this is someone that made a music video of a bunch of children running around baring the twisted face of Richard D. James summoning demon figures, killing and causing general havoc. I guess I'm just saying that at times I really didn't know what to think about the combination...and here's the video.



As I was saying, from the beginning it was pretty hard to not be curious about the direction the movie was being taken in, and admittedly the anticipation was not always the most optimistic. Was the film going to stay true the kind of innocence that is portrayed in the original book? Or was it going to go somewhere darker? Or god forbid, was it going to go somewhere unnecessary? It turns out it did go somewhere darker, much fucking darker. But at every point that the movie went to a dark place, it went there for a reason that was absolutely vital to understanding the character that you where seeing the world through. In fact, a big part of what I loved so much about the film was that it forced you to feel with Max(the main character). It forced you to see the world of the 'wild things' through his eyes. Because the world that you are looking at when you see the film is just that. It is his imagination and as such it's a world that reflects the hopes, fears and passions of this character. I am not really sure about what this means concerning whether or not the movie would be appropriate for kids. But Maurice Sendak told the parents that were concerned about the movie being "to scary" to "go to hell." So my immediate instinct is to go with him on this.

I am aware I'm not speaking from experience considering (fortunately) that I am not myself a parent. But it's pretty obvious that as a culture we have dumbed down what is appropriate for kids to be exposed to, to a pretty extreme point. The whole cycle needs to stop. So I say take your kid to see a movie that may be a little scary. Rather that then filling a kid's head with whatever retarded crap Disney is promoting.



Also, the parts of the movie that could be even loosely referred to as scary where really only about a minute grand total. So stop being so sensitive and stop ruining your child's range of experiences. Protecting your child's fragile little mind is not a good enough reason to do that.

At the end of the day Spike Jonze never even said that it was intended for children anyway. He said he wanted to make a movie "about childhood," not for children. The film just fell into place that way because of the original subject matter. But the original writer not only chose to endorse this filmmaker after turning down literally scores of others for the same pitch, but also even after its release praised it. It's beautiful and artistically pure in a way that I have not seen in a very long time, and no matter who you are you should see it.