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COVER STORY | NEWS & VIEWS |
DIRT | ARTBEAT December 27, 2007
CD: Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo Rivers Cuomo, the frontman of Weezer, once famously remarked that to be a true fan of his band, you have to hate it. Weezer injected a much-needed sense of playfulness to the grunge era with Weezer (“the Blue Album”)(1994) and Pinkerton (1996). In fact, the fresh-faced earnestness of those records spawned a generation of bands that play a kind of rock music whose hallmarks are awkward outpourings of emotion delivered in the most wounded of croons. Most people who loved the first two Weezer albums, who came of age with them, have in fact hated Weezer for the entire 21st century, a century in which, so far, Cuomo seems to be bent on using to destroying everything that gave his band a sizeable cult following: systematically stripping away his confessional lyrics, dumbing down his complicated guitar-melody counterpoint, alienating his bass players until he ended up with a dude who used to play in Vanilla Ice’s band. But finally, Cuomo has thrown fans a bone: Alone, a collection of home demos, is mostly songs he wrote before Weezer started sucking. The real treat here is the handful of tracks Cuomo wrote for Songs From the Black Hole, a rock opera intended to be Weezer’s second album but abandoned in favor of the equally high-concept Pinkerton (itself based loosely on Puccini’s Madama Butterfly). These songs are Cuomo at his most ambitious and impassioned: “Longtime Sunshine” is piano ballad longing for the comforts of domesticity, prettier than almost anything released by Weezer, and “Superfriend” is almost orchestral, a duet about the conflicted romance that was, presumably, to be the storyline of the album. But it’s “Blast Off,” a tortured rocker that somehow expresses Cuomo’s own disillusionment with rock stardom by telling the story of a futuristic spaceship crew, that steals the show here. It’s the perfect blend of brashness and self-doubt, as Cuomo throat-shreddingly cries, “Somebody’s givin’ me a whole lotta money to do what I think I want to, so why am I still feelin’ blue?” His rudimentary drumming lends just the right amount of brutality, and the end of the song even foreshadows the quirky acoustic guitar riff that would become “El Scorcho,” Pinkerton’s underrated first single. “Blast Off” may have been the high point of Cuomo’s creativity, and it’s a joy to behold. Honestly, though, a lot of the other songs on this record are terrible — particularly Cuomo’s experiments with R&B and rap — and many others are puzzling: Why didn’t the brilliantly catchy “Crazy One” end up on a Weezer album? Why did Cuomo bother releasing unlistenable Gregg Alexander and Ice Cube covers? You probably won’t want to buy Alone unless you’re an OG Weezer fan. Which means you already hate Weezer anyway. So what are you waiting for? — Joel Heng Hartse, Journal critic
Manufactured Landscapes In some ways watching Manufactured Landscapes made me think of another famously slow documentary, Baraka. But at least in that 1992 film — a montage of stunningly rich moving images of the modern world — director Ron Fricke (cinematographer for Koyaanisqatsi) uses a combination of time-lapse photography and energetic music to help keep the viewer awake. Manufactured Landscapes, which showcases the large-format photography of Edward Burtynsky, assumes that being either a fan of the photographer or a Sinophile is reason enough to sit through the film. Manufactured Landscapes opens with a painfully slow scene of the inside of a Chinese factory. The camera pans down the factory’s endless aisles while workers busily produce the stuff that satiates global consumer appetites. Then we are outside, on the factory grounds, gazing out over a stream of black-haired factory workers, so long that it fades into the smog in the distance. “The new landscape of our time is the one that we change ... in the pursuit of progress,” Burtynsky says. Without much narrative, the film introduces us to a variety of such landscapes, including images of dusty cities being dismantled brick by brick in a soon-to-be-flooded area near the Three Gorges Dam project, a sprawling Shanghai with its modern high-rises and dilapidated low-rises and a village whose inhabitants scavenge the valuable metals from spent computer parts, known as e-waste. Burtynsky insists that his photos neither celebrate nor damn his subject matter: They “just show it as it is.” Nonetheless, there are telling moments in the film when Burtynsky’s assistant pays people to pose for the artist’s photos. I couldn’t help but wonder how the photographer’s images are themselves partly manufactured, and how that conflicts with the just-the-facts portraits of a world in flux he claims to be showing us. Admittedly, Burtynsky’s photos of natural landscapes that have been transmogrified by cities and industry are seductively beautiful. And having lived in China for over two years, I’m always excited to get a glimpse of places usually off limits to foreigners. But the film is an empty shell. The combination of An Inconvenient Truth-style shots of Burtynsky lecturing about his work, the artist’s photographs hanging in a gallery somewhere and footage of him shooting on location, mostly in China but sometimes in Bangladesh, never gels. Even if you know very little about modern China, Manufactured Landscapes won’t do much to deepen your understanding. Yes, China’s population of 1.3 billion is unfathomably large, Shanghai is an enormous metropolis with a shocking wealth gap and the Three Gorges Dam project is an even bigger endeavor than the construction of the Great Wall, but these things just scratch the surface of what makes China so interesting. I expected more than oohing and aahing from a serious documentary. Reading an insightful book on the Middle Kingdom, like China Wakes by Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-and-wife team Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryll Wuddun, and then Googling some of Burtynsky’s disturbingly beautiful photographs will save you a couple of bucks at the video store and might actually teach you something useful. — Japhet Weeks
Little Kingdom Originally spawned as a studio-only project by Ezra Feinberg and Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, Citay quickly garnered critical acclaim within independent music circles with their 2006 self-titled debut, a release well noted for its warm and vibrant tones, lush harmonies and discerning compositions. It is a formula that the band, which currently numbers over a half a dozen members, has expanded in its latest effort, Little Kingdom, an album marked by a maturity and melodic complexity that promotes their musical vision not as a mere product, but more as an alluring and magical destination. Citay is clearly influenced by the worlds of ’60s and ’70s rock, folk and psychedelic music, but the band does not necessarily wear the names of such influences on its sleeve. This is not to say that it is impossible to point at specific bands in an attempt to describe Citay’s sound, but such attachments here need to be considered with caution, for Feinberg and company have a tendency to isolate an artist’s lesser known attributes and develop them to suit their own needs. Little Kingdom certainly does not sound like a Pink Floyd record, but the band does incorporate choral and keyboard arrangements reminiscent of Floyd’s Meddle era. No one is going to think that Citay has recruited a successor to Jimmy Page, but it is worth noting that the disc’s acoustic strummings are rooted in the more obscure and uncelebrated tracks of Led Zeppelin’s III. It is the result of all of this calculated maneuvering that separates Citay from their pop-psych contemporaries and speaks strongly to the astuteness of their songwriting. And to the band’s credit, when they do decide to offer clear homage to their heroes of yesteryear, it tends to be directed at artists often overlooked by others, such as the psych-folk pioneers The Incredible String Band and progressive music guru Mike Oldfield. Listening to Citay is an ethereal experience, to say the least. And while crisp production contributes greatly to the band’s aesthetics, it is the keen attention paid to instrumentation and musicianship that allows Feinberg and company to deliver their vision to the listener. The swirling mass of acoustic, electric and twelve-string guitars, mandolin, flute, electric piano and moog synthesizer blends to create a shimmering ambiance that brings daydreams to life. In an effort to intensify the listening experience, the band combines sharp major chord progressions with dual guitar leads that sail to incredible highs. From the gentle unwrapping of “First Fantasy” to the final stirrings of “Moonburn,” Citay soars majestically above their musical landscape, each track exposing deeper layers of self-indulging bliss. Spiraling swathes of keyboard glide freely over subtle rhythms and steer each song’s sublime journey to new heights. Even when “Former Child” appears to signal a mournful descent, bittersweet harmonies sweep the listener further along into an elevated dream state. Little Kingdom stands predominantly as an instrumental affair, strategically reserving the use of vocals as enhancements to the band’s desired emotional response. The result of such purposeful execution resonates powerfully in songs like “On the Wings,” which drifts upon tender choral harmonies that evoke images of the heavenly divine. Citay’s strength truly lies in their ability to gently wrap the listener in a warming embrace and provide an idyllic escape from the harsh realities of life. Their music is the sound of sun-drenched summer afternoons and glittering night skies. Perhaps the best way to appreciate Little Kingdom is to accept it as an invitation and head inside. — Michael Mannix, Journal critic
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