At first I was disappointed with this release. In previous efforts, American Analog Set had crafted a certain quasi-instrumental aesthetic, creating a world where vocals were not always necessary and, if occasionally long and droning, their songs reflected a certain neoclassical, Tortoise-like structure.

In altering that formula, though, I think the band has found a new pop sensibility that appears disposable but is in fact catchy enough to stay.

Though the band no longer produces music as interesting or original as it did, what appear to be slight, soft pop songs with little drive remained in my head - and pleasantly so - for days at a time.

Fans of dream-pop, Stereolab and Air will certainly enjoy these blissy pop numbers. The album is a soothing listen and there several tracks, notably "Punk as Fuck," "Postman" and "Kindness of Strangers" that shine through.

The shorter songs are as carefully crafted as the band’s earlier, longer pieces, weaving farfisa and vocals in and out over the steady drumming and repetitive guitar rhythm. There is little build and release or variation within songs here, but in its spare way, AmAnSet is working on its own hushed pop groove.

Rating: B+

Topics: albums

I once asked my old boss, who owns a comic book store and hundreds of thousands of comic books, why comics appealed to him. "In comics," he said. "You can do anything you want to. Characters can seamlessly have the appearance of flying. If you want to go to the moon, you can be there in the next panel."

Though computerized special effects are now approaching believable detail, comics and animation remain the only media where this is reliably true. It’s a fact that The Simpsons uses to absurd advantage. Waking Life, the new film directed by Richard Linklater, seeks to push that envelope, however. Instead of taking a live-action film into the possible worlds opened by animation, though, Linklater uses the movie to point out the differences - and the fuzzy line - between the two.

Linklater shot the film on a bouncing hand-held video camera, then gave the result to a group of animators, who painted over the backgrounds and characters, at times underscoring or exaggerating their real-life features. The result looks like animation but, in retaining so much naturalistic human detail, is also clearly a portrait of real life.

Live-action films that incorporate animation give themselves a lot of options for the fantastical. Linklater and his animators largely refrain, however, from flying epithets, surreal backgrounds or anything that would not appear in the real world.

Only occasionally, as when a character mimics a god throwing a thunderbolt and the trail behind his arm resembles lightning, do such manifestations appear. And even then, these symbols are literal interpretations of the discussion or action. When a character complains that she is tired of feeling like nothing more than an ant, she does not sprout antennae - though in one subtle touch a man does appear as a chimpanzee.

This restraint is particularly notable given the fact that the movie is about the differences between dreaming and the waking life of the title. Though more than 20 animators are each given a scene, the movie’s palette, mood and tendency toward abstraction stay relatively consistent.

The closest thing the movie has to a star is Wiley Wiggins, who reprises his role as Mitch Kramer from Linklater's Dazed and Confused. Wiggins wanders a bizarre world marked by strange encounters, receiving advice, confession or a lecture at every turn. The first third of the movie is almost entirely made up of several long monologues, some from real-life philosophy professors.

Just as the movie is starting to collapse under these speeches - both long and deep - a mystery emerges. Wiggins is unsure whether he is awake. Clearly some of the scenes he sees, like the bedroom discussion between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, are dreamt. Then he wakes up, wanders the streets, goes into the subway and watches TV like a waking person, only to discover he is still dreaming.

It is in this context that the lectures that begin the movie take on meaning. And once he realizes he is dreaming, Wiggins, with the advice of John Christensen, who died after appearing in the movie, is able to manipulate his surroundings and ask the people he meets how they feel as nothing more than figments of his imagination.

Deeper questions emerge too. One character Wiggins meets has a great idea for a soap opera, but it’s nothing Wiley would have ever come up with by himself. Where did it come from? And as Wiggins cannot wake himself, he begins to get the sneaking suspicion that he, like the dead, may never...

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Rating: A-

Topics: movies

To get a sense of the power actor Brian Cox presents, it's useful to watch two movies: Hampton Fancher's The Minus Man (1999) and Michael Cuesta's directorial debut, the new film L.I.E. It's also worth noting that Cox was the first Hannibal Lecter in 1986's Manhunter.

In The Minus Man, Cox seals the movie as an apparently well-adjusted, small-town man who is in fact going crazy, tormented with fantasies of his departed daughter.

In L.I.E., Cox has is haunted not by girls but little boys. As Big John Harrigan, a wealthy, popular Long Islander, he is tempted to take advantage of gay boys, offering them needed emotional support while often extracting psychological abuse. The movie's most sublime moment comes in a totally confused expression on Cox's face that embodies this conflict as a young man, Howie Blitzer, seeks his embrace.

Howie, 15, the movie’s protagonist, has recently lost his mother, the family anchor, in a car crash on the L.I.E. - the Long Island Expressway. We get the sense his father, a breadwinning asshole caught up in a legal scam, is never around for the erudite but naïve boy.

Howie's friends, including Gary, who is known to all but Howie as a "salami swiper" - a male prostitute - hang out near the freeway, under high-tension power lines or behind strip malls, smoking, swigging beer and talking tough. While James Dean was clearly older than the high schooler he played in Rebel Without a Cause, these boys look much younger, their braggadocio undermined by the whitebread world around them.

Cuesta, who shares writing credits with two others on the movie, has an eye and an ear for these suburban brats, who are fascinated by bodily functions sexual and excretory but also by the greater possibilities of life. His Long Island of watered lawns and homogenous high schools could be ten minutes from any big city.

Howie's "sensitive" nature is never addressed head-on. Rather, Cuesta attacks the doom that all boys - even Howie's father - face in these amoral environs.

Howie joins the boys on their burglary sprees, breaking into wealthy homes and, like the children they still are, heading for the refrigerator. Gary soon takes Howie under his wing, and the tension building between them rings familiar to former teens of any sexual persuasion.

From his salami escapades, Gary knows that Big John's house holds some valuable treasures, so he and Howie break into it during John’s birthday party. Though they escape, it's not long before Big John puts a few things together and is hot on Gary’s trail.

As John realizes that Howie is not really responsible for the theft, however, their relationship deepens. At first the elder tries to seduce the younger, offering him rides in a mint Cutlass, but it is not long before their positions are reversed, as Howie quotes Walt Whitman to the elder statesman.

Both quickly realize that Howie needs support more than anything else. Abandoned by friends and bullied at school, Howie is completely alone. As his father's legal and financial worries spiral (implausibly) out of control, Howie is left on his own.

Like Todd Solondz's Happiness, L.I.E. lifts the stone of society, putting the gross and disgusting that slither below on uncomfortable display. While Solondz seems content to point at the squirming creatures, Cuesta feels the Howies of the world...

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Rating: A-

Topics: movies

Sometime in the last year or so, motion picture studios have made the bold step of explaining what caused the MPAA to give the films the ratings they did. Underneath an average "R" Rating, you may see such creative reasons as "Western Violence" or "Explicit Situations." And, while "Pervasive Drug Use" may be enough to keep away the CAP crowd, it would stand to reason that it has the (possibly) unexpected side effect of drawing in all those who want to know exactly how much drug use has to be portrayed in a film for it to be considered "pervasive."

So it was really only a matter of time before one of the studios realized that by playing up all the non-family friendly aspects of their film, as determined by a fair and non-biased (chortle) orgnization like the MPAA (smirk), they could get some extra street cred among their audience.

One of the TV spots for the upcoming William Castle remake Thirteen Ghosts does just that. Instead of the voice over guy reading something like "In a land where houses were made of glass and scary monsters...," he simply reads the disclaimer, informing people that the MPAA has determined that Thirteen Ghosts contains Horror Violence and Gore, Nudity, and "Some Language" (The rest of the film, we presume, is naught but screaming) If there are words besides Gore, Violence, and Nudity that draw horror fans to the movie theatres, I don't know what they are.

Rating: A (It's About Time)

Topics: advertisements

I was riding the Big Blue Bus to work one morning and at the Sepulveda and Pico stop I saw an Earthlink billboard featuring the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. "GET LINKED" and "STAY CONNECTED" it said in black and pumpkiny-orange Earthlink fashion.

First I thought, "Clever! Hehehehe 'get linked' - good one, dude!" and then the frat boy police inside me kicked me in the head and said, "Stop that, you sicko!" And it was right to do so. What the heck was Earthlink trying to say?

"Use us and you and your friends and family can be just like these two people who were bought from the Thai government by a merchant who profitted from exhibiting them and then sold his rights to them to another merchant until they ended up in P.T. Barnum's freak show. Yes, you too can be shown off as chattel! Then you all can retire, become farmers, marry [that part sounds kinda interesting], have money problems, go back on tour, come back and have drinking problems and then die, two hours apart."

Oh yeah! I want to be so linked to friends and family that I want to share a liver with them through a piece of skin at our chests, I never want to know a moment's peace, and I can never be disconnected else I'll die!

Ok, maybe I'm reading too much into it. At least Earthlink isn't AOL. Plus, who woulda thunk I knew so much about Chang and Eng?

(I still don't like the ad though.)

Rating: D ('cause I thought it was clever at first)

Topics: advertisements

The Ashtray Hearts call their songs "apartment music," which is an apt description. But it is the music of an old apartment, with dirty wood floors, old iron radiators and large windows. It is cold and windy outside, and the plumbing makes clanking noises.

The band's slow, sad, spare songs are the kind that made Elliott Smith and Damien Jurado famous. But this music is much richer, snare and guitar complimented with organ and a beautiful droning accordian. The production blends these instruments perfectly.

The 7" asks to be played at 33 1/3, of course. "New York" clocks in at a little less than three minutes, a tale of funerals and drunks. "There's nothing in New York City," it goes. "It's hard to get drunk; it's hard to get home."

"Country Bar," the glorious b-side, steals the show, however. After a creeping introduction that could have played over Dustin Hoffman's lonely moving walkway ride, the raspy vocals, an odd mix of David Lowery and, er, Adam Duritz, build to a strong crescendo as the song approaches its sixth minute.

Rating: A

Topics: singles

D-Plan has heard it all - emo, punk, funk, pop and good ol’ barroom rock and roll. Just about every descriptor you could put before four guys on stage with guitars, bass, drums and an old synthesizer.

Perhaps because they hail from the Washington, DC area, there are clumsy comparisons to Fugazi. Though the band’s rhythm section is pretty Dischordant, the Plan harkens back to two earlier bands - Talking Heads and the Clash - who fused the above influences around them into something slightly different, something undeniably bouncing and rocking, and - as those who’ve attended their sweaty shows, the ones with the high schoolers dressed like robots charging the stage, threatening bodily harm to the band even as the rock continues - something for the children.

Playwright Edward Albee once lampooned the need to categorize by referring to a fictional work of art's "quietly noisy relaxed intensity." So too Plan fans will heap on the labels to assure that the band fits into whatever scene the sycophants need to be part of. My attitude: just enjoy it.

Fans of earlier albums will not be disappointed, nor will they find something that sounds entirely similar to what came before. "Change" is not a radical departure; still present is the wailing organ, the tight bass lines, tighter drumming and vocal storytellings of lead singer Travis Morrison.

Morrison also retains his uncanny ability to capture - poetically, I’d venture - moments, like little personal essays, of life in these days, these ages, these cities.

"As kisses go, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary," begins "Face of the Earth." Morrison then tells us, in reverse, looking back from that first kiss, a relationship exploded and ended. On "Ellen and Ben," he returns to the ramblings that made "You are Invited," from the band’s previous full length, "Emergency and I," so enjoyable.

Some of the band’s melodic choices may come to longtime listeners as a dissonant shock. You realize in listening, however, that the band has made a conscious choice: evolve, experiment and don’t choose the obvious melodic paths. The progressions make sense.

Rating: A- (If nothing else, Jessica Hopper does the band's PR)

Topics: albums

How do you describe a band who says its influences are XTC and Richard Davies when it's clear to you that they sound more like Guided by Voices and Yo La Tengo? Here's what I've said to everyone who's asked: "It's what the Magnetic Fields would sound like if they were an Elephant 6 band."

Clearly, this band also would like to be from New Zealand. But they're from Minneapolis. So if you find youself listening to this record and waiting for the rock to begin, you will be disappointed.

If, on the other hand, you’re expecting 44 lo-fi pop songs that rarely clock in at more than two minutes yet transcend their length, Work of Saws' debut record is for you.

This sprawling CD ranges from acoustic instrumentals to show tunes to Pet Sounds harmonies, offering weird pop ditties that recall both Olivia Tremor Control and Quasi.

Songwriter Brock Davis makes poetry out of weird juxtapositions in his tales of death, friendship and silliness. This should be apparent from the album's title and songs like "Reading Material and the Silence of Cement," "Hopeful Missiles," "Smaller Ink on Maps," "Baritone Astronaut Quartet," "I, Son of Math," "Crown State Rhino" and "Buttercup, You're a Canyon."

While the titles and lengths might strike you as throwaways, the songs are actually poignant more often than not. The catchy "Kenny Rogers was Lonely" is preoccupied not with the irony of a has-been but with mall life.

To quote, at random, from, uh, "Losing Vertical Hold:"

Never was I one to sit here alone
The rain will rust my ear to the phone
I think I think you’re making a home out of me.
Sure I’m losing veritcal hold
A sharpened smile will never grow old
I think I think you’re making a home out of me.

There's certainly the burden of consistency on any artist who puts out an album with this many songs on it. There’s also a burden of quality on artists who insist on writing songs that by many standards are no longer than a chorus or a bridge.

The burden is mostly - but not wholly - met. Only a couple songs are throwaways, but others seem to begin promisingly but come to an end after a mere minute. But given the band's claim that they selected 44 songs from hundreds the prolific Davis has written, the style is an art form I'm willing to allow. Plenty of non-album tracks are on their Web site for download!

If only... among Davis's stable of musicians is one singer with a lisp, which is ever so distracting at the quieter moments during the songs on which he sings.

Rating: A- (If you think "Her Majesty" is the best song on Abbey Road, run, don't walk...)

Topics: albums

I guess Providence is a lot more succesful than I realized. I don't watch it, and, until recently, I didn't know anyone who did. But, given that the fall 2001 TV season contains not one, but two, Providence knock-offs, I have to surmise that Providence, like JAG is one of those alternate world smash hits. Earth-2 Superman and his wife Lois Lane (or is it Kent now?) probably sit around and watch nothing but Providence. They are, of course, a Neilsen family, so their super-viewing habits clearly account for the industry perception that the American viewing public needs some more gentle professional dramas about young women balancing careers and dealing with aging parents.

And so we get Crossing Jordan and Philly, two largely interchangable shows with 30-something female protagonists. Both pilot episodes feature the protatgonist woman (both of whom either have or had the surname "Cavanaugh") doing their job (crime scene investigator or defense lawyer), yelling at Kyle Secor, and dealing with parents, all set to a vaguely Irish-sounding score.

Crossing Jordan should be a better show, given the absence of Steven Bochco and his "edgy" style, as well as the slightly less overmined field of forensic science. Unfortunately, Crossing Jordan doesn't seem intent on revelling in the gruesome minutiae of forensic science, which is what makes C.S.I. such a fun show to watch. The plots are, honestly, pretty boring. Last week's episode featured a murder in which we were given three suspects in quick succession with no particular reason to think any of them did it, mostly because the suspects never talked. I suppose they needed to cut those scenes in order to show her talking with her father about his decision to go on a date instead of visiting his dead wife's grave. Bleh.

Surprisingly, Philly isn't quite as bad as it could be. They had the good sense to keep Kyle Secor on in a recurring role, despite the fact that they have him cast as an asshole. They keep the parental interaction to a minimum and, most surprisingly, the plots aren't bad. Granted, I don't watch a lot of courtroom drama shows, but this seems better than my dimly remembered memories of L.A. Law. Not to say I'll go out of my way to watch it, but it will do in a pinch.

Rating: B- (On Average - B for Philly, C+ for Crossing Jordan)

Topics: dramas, television

I have mixed feelings about makeoutclub.com, a sort of online personals listing for indie kids, emo kids, straightedge kids, and the like. The listings tend to be kind of similar, and fall into certain distinctions.

First off is a name, which inexplicably has a lot of extraneous Xs in it, e.g. ‘xgarden_of_beatricex’, or ‘xpurplishtrudyx’; those which do not have extra Xs are still often semicryptic, as in ‘eyelinerhearts.’ Often they will also have the word ‘plastic’ included: ‘plasticheartstuff,’ ‘plasticassie.’* AOL Instant Messenger names are included and similar, and website links, ICQ numbers, etc. are listed when applicable.

*All names,descriptions, and accounts reproduced in this review are fictitious, but would not be out of place, unless otherwise specifically stated.

Next, a picture. Usually a webcam shot, almost always grainy, filtered, or otherwise a combination of arty intention and low self-esteem fuzziness; there are a good number of pictures of people looking away from the camera, a kind of anti-picture, which somehow isn’t too at odds, given the context, with the idea that technically you probably don’t have to include a picture at all. Of course, one girl has a picture of Milk from Milk & Cheese, and that’s okay by me. Another has several bottles of prescription drugs and an unopened can of Crystal Pepsi, which who has an unopened can of Crystal Pepsi?

Then there is a profile, which falls onto one of these simple sides:

-Wordy

These tell about the person, the general idea of a personal ad. Most common by far is the musical list, which is usually something like this:

"Dashboard Confessional, The Faint, Jimmy Eat World, Pedro the Lion, Modest Mouse, Juliana Theory, Weezer, Poison the Well, Elliott Smith, Braid, Bright Eyes, Le Tigre, Promise Ring, Jets To Brazil, Ataris, Belle and Sebastian, Alkaline Trio, Saves the Day, Ultimate Fakebook, Moz, American Nightmare."

[Different musical types condensed into one list for simplicity, but this is fairly accurate.]

-Brief

These one- or two-sentence descriptions are the most bipolar. Some are aggressively unhelpful, like "Why do you care?" or the like, which seem to be very much at odds with the principle of posting a listing in the first place, though at times makeoutclub.com seems as much a badge of inclusion as much as an attempt to interact. Tangentially here, many people do post their profiles without romantic intent, as evidenced by their indignant statements that they are spoken for and will not suffer any approach by suitors.

Other brief listings are somewhat nonsequitous ("Hiya cheeseeeeeaters!"; "I am going to watch cartoons all day today."), though many are merely song lyrics or movie quotations of varying inside jokiness. At least two I have seen so far include only an extended quotation from a John Hughes film. Close to my heart is one girl whose profile reads only: "My son’s name is also bort"

Overall the personals are as varied as regular personals, only with a decidedly indie slant. There is occasional brilliance to be found ("emo is the abercrombie of the ‘underground’"), as well as a decent amount of unpleasant poetry-ish stuff. One can get lucky if one is patient and willing to endure some repetition; for every five girls claiming to like tall sexy emo boys, there are a couple who do not, and there is one girl whose profile includes a reference to the long-dead MTV sketch comedy farce The State, and one State reference out of...

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Rating: B (compared to regular personals)

Topics: websites

I've come to the conclusion that Freaks and Geeks is the best television show ever. Hands down. I've watched every episode a half-dozen times, and it's still perfect. One short season, and they still managed to give all the characters at least one episode where we really got to learn about them. It gave us more characterization in one episode than on the entire run of Law & Order.

That having been said, I'm glad they cancelled it. Sure, at the time it seemed like an insanely bad idea and the ultimate example of network incompetence, but in retrospect, I'm not sure I could ever be satisfied with another season. The first season ends perfectly, and watching Daniel hang out with the geeks as Lyndsey closes her relationship with Nick and becomes a Deadhead with Kim is such a perfect way to leave this world that we were so lucky to watch for eighteen hours of our lives. I'm fairly convince there is simply no way they could have continued with that level of quality for another season.

As if to underscore that point, producer/writer Judd Apatow has assembled many of the crew and a few of the cast of Freaks and Geeksfor a half-hour sitcom about college life, entitled Undeclared. Given that each episode is half as long, he loses the "Freaks" end of the equation and just focuses in on a handful of geeks, which is probably fair, given that everyone is a geek freshman year of college. Jay Baruchel plays Steven, the king of the geeks, who, while admittedly a fine geek, just doesn't have that vulnerability that John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, and Martin Starr were able to project so admirably. Carla Gallo is fine as the girl who is having trouble with her boyfriend at home (played with amazing brilliance by another Freaks and Geeks refugee, Jason Segal), but nothing special.

I don't know. The show's funny. The writing is good. The acting is good (especially Monica Keena as the initially stressed-out, now apparently drug-hazed girl). It's a good show.

But it's not Freaks and Geeks.

I know I should move on, but it's hard, especially with regular appearances by F&G cast members. I'm hoping I'll grow to accept this show as it is, but, until then, it's just kind of disappointing.

Rating: B+ (It Has Some Big Shoes to Fill)

Topics: sitcoms, television