Physical Forms debut at Pehrspace 08-31-10

• I resisted hyperbole and approached my Buzzbands writeup as objectively as I could. On the inside, I was absolutely beside myself over the set. OMGSOMUCHFUN.

• Much how beneath the punky veneer of The Mae Shi was a pop band, behind the glitchy armor of Physical Forms is soft, fleshy arena rock warrior. But if I had to reduce Physical Forms’ sound to a single genre (an absurd proposition) I’d choose power pop.

• Regan Farquhar was really terrific. If I were to do a profile on the guy, I’d want to explore the difference between Regan the emotional singing frontman and his silver-tongued rapping Busdriver persona. I’ve seen Busdriver a couple times and I found Farquhar to be unrecognizable. Dude needs to pull the mic back when he projects his voice, though.

• If Physical Forms start to gain notice, I guarantee you that they’ll draw a lot of comparisons to Gnarls Barkley, or maybe Gorillaz. (i.e. – a couple top talents surround themselves with proven veteran guest players to explore a genre of music they’ve longed to inhabit, but felt restricted from due to their notoriety in another genre.) The comparisons are a bit reductive, but probably fair. For my money, Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom is a better analog.

• On a personal note… as longtime readers know, The Mae Shi are one of my all-time favorite bands and it was just wonderful to see Jeff Byron performing again. Jeff was the first musician I ever spoke to as a music blogger (at the ’07 Sweater Fest) and he has always been very kind and forthcoming to CGT. (As were all the other Mae Shi boys.) Jeff looked really, really happy to be up there on stage and was all-smiles after the show. Good to see.

• Not to get too Access Silverlake on you, but at least a couple ex-Mae Shi were in attendance to show support.

• I have an appreciation for the Sean Carnage scene, but it isn’t mine. I’m glad those kids all have a place to go and experiment with their identity (truly) and I’m inspired by the fresh excitement and energy that permeates the clique… but I just can’t relate to the costumed youth. I’ve an adverse reaction to the overtly stylish, regardless of taste.

• On that note… those kids adore Nicole Kidman (Jon Barba), but his shtick is just too fucking precious for me. (Imagine if Ween covered the Moldy Peaches.) The guy had the rest of the room wrapped around his finger, though. Impressive in that respect.

• Generation, on the other hand… look, I like performance art as much as the next weirdo. I don’t care for long-haired, dirty, shirtless blipsters making terrible cacophony in an enclosed space… but hey, I guess mock occult rock at a club night that plays 90′s hip-hop between sets is kind of funny and Kaufman-esque… You know what is not kind of funny or Kaufman-esque? Lighting a fire inside a packed, claustrophobic, DIY art gallery that features a single exit and is occasionally visited by law enforcement and the fire marshal. That’s fucking stupid. And dangerous. Pehrspace is such an important place to so many people and I don’t respect those who’d threaten it’s existence for a little bit of attention. Just horrible.

Film School – “Fission” (Hi-Speed Soul Records)

The first thing you’ll notice about Fission is that bassist Lorelei Plotczyk sings on the album. A lot. It totally changes the equation, extrapolating Film School’s dark shoegazer sound from it’s dreary place of origin into something more sonically biodiverse. The fully-evolved Film School is at times beautiful and sunny, if not outright peppy, and all the songs (including the moodier ones) enjoy a certain degree of freedom not always found in this era’s shoegaze / dreampop contemporaries.

Production-wise, Fission is tightly edited, saturated, and barely atmospheric. (Good!) The lead-off single “Heart Full of Pentagons” is an obvious standout, but Fission is rife with gems that span an inspiring range of rock and pop trivia. (The straight-up rocker “Distant Life” is a pet fave of this writer.)

One might too quickly surmise Film School has merely rounded-up all the sounds that registered trendiest in the last five years, ripping off everyone from The Raincoats (“Sunny Day”) to the Jesus and Mary Chain (“Waited”); but whereas the latest snot-nosed fad band approaches these touchstones as rare little Pokemon Cards to be grotesquely flaunted on the indie kid playground, Film School’s take has grown-up over the course of a decade. It is telling of Film School’s authenticity and position of authority that they initially branched-off from such acts back when Pitchfork was almost exclusively touting garage rock.

Something tells me the indie elite who lacked the prescience to appreciate Film School over the years won’t dare praise them now. (As is the custom.) So before Fission is reduced to a silly decimal number, let’s set the record straight: Candidate for Album of the Year.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

You can buy Fission at Amazon.com or iTunes (w/ bonus track).

Film School will tour North America in September and October, including an October 21st stop at The Echo in Los Angeles.

Sept 19 – San Diego, CA – The Casbah
Sept 20 – Tucson, AZ – Plush
Sept 22 – Dallas, TX – The Nightmare
Sept 23 – Austin, TX - The Parish
Sept 24 – Baton Rouge, LA – Spanish Moon
Sept 25 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade
Sept 27 – Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506

Sept 28 – Washington, DC – DC9 (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Sept 29 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Sept 30 – Brooklyn, NY – Glasslands (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 01 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 02 – Cambridge, MA – TT The Bears (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 03 – Montreal, QC, Canada – Pop Montreal at Casa Del Popolo (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 04 – Toronto, ON, Canada – El Mocambo (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 06 – St Louis, MO – Firebird (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 07 – Newport, KY – Southgate House (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 08 – Chicago, IL – Schubas Tavern (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 09 – Milwaukee, WI – he Cactus Club (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 10 – Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 11 – Omaha, NE – The Waiting Room (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 12 – Denver, CO – Hi Dive (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 13 – Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 15 – Seattle, WA – Sunset Tavern (w/ The Depreciation Guild)
Oct 16 – Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios (w/ The Depreciation Guild)

Oct 19 – San Francisco, CA - The Independent (w/ Love Like Fire)
Oct 20 – Santa Cruz, CA – The Crepe Place (w/ Love Like Fire)
Oct 21 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo (w/ Love Like Fire)

Shai-Hulud!

This post is an update of sorts:

• On the Meatworld professional front, I just finished working on the Creative Arts Emmy Awards with a lovely group of professionals. I’m at the same company for at least another month, helping to develop some nifty reality TV ideas. (More docudrama than freakshow exploitation.) I have guaranteed work through September, and if you have any leads for PA / assistant / coordinator work after then, I’d love to hear from you.

• On the screenwriting front, I got 32 pages into the vomit draft of a cyberpunky corporate thriller script before I shelved it; I’m just not sure the central conceit is good enough to devote so much energy. Instead I’m working on an ensemble heist comedy about the various kinds of people who seek-out a very niche rare indulgence. It’s all character writing, which is fun. (Think along the lines of A Fish Called Wanda or Burn After Reading.) I’ve got about 12 pages of “vomit draft,” but I’m really still doing research and writing fictional backgrounds. Following that, I have a TV pilot idea for a licensed property that I want to spec. Right now, my goal is to seek representation around March 2011.

• I’ve got three short science fiction stories going. One is finished, the other is rough around the edges, and the third needs an ending. They are about 1) the afterlife, 2) advancements in child birth, and 3) a 16-inch cybernetically-enhanced penis. I’ve been doing research on avenues of short fiction publication and I hope to send things off to publishers in the next couple months.

• On the blogging front… things aren’t perfect. I’ve lost a lot of traffic since the move to WordPress. I think it’s in part because I’m not tagging, which I need to begin doing, as well as go-back and retag some old posts. Doing CGT “right” is a balancing act between trying for some SEO without letting blogging become my life again.

• Anyways, I’d love to do a review post on last Thursday’s Spaceland show… but if I don’t get to it, Lord Growing covered it quite well. (My short version: Smokers in Love are a Band To Watch, the new Death to Anders lineup sounds great, Radars to the Sky will always have my heart, and The Henry Clay People played a sloppy slacker drunkfest reminiscent of their shows from two years ago.)

• I also need to chime-in on The Colts before the regular season starts. I think Indy has its best offensive squad since they broke the touchdown record in ’04.

• Lastly, a 13 year-old kid died racing crotchrockets in Indy this past weekend. Bob Kravitz should win an award for his moving piece on the matter.

Radars to the Sky – “Supra / Infra”

Radars to the Sky occupy the same emotional space as bands like Modest Mouse, R.E.M., Spoon, and The Arcade Fire; mature if melancholic indie rock that is if at times reflective, never introverted. In the spirit of indie rock dating back to post-punk, Radars to the Sky don’t shy away from experimenting and expanding their rock core with a variety of sonic flavors, (from grungy grime to rock freak-outs to pretty pop trumpets) and in this way their music could be best traced back to The Cure. Radars to the Sky have often drawn comparisons to Built to Spill, comparisons the band welcomes.

But the Los Angeles-based band has made a record more intimate than any released by the afformentioned bands, and after shedding guitarist Seamus Simpson they’ve evolved into something that, if still very much a fully fleshed-out indie rock band, is ultimately a husband-wife duo at its core. Some of Simpson’s guitar work remains on the record, but overall Supra / Infra relies on guitar hooks much less than the Big Bang EP that preceded it.

Supra / Infra is masterfully balanced, well-recorded, and demanding of multiple listens to process. (Side note: All Dave Newton has ever done is help to produce great LA indie rock records that the blogging elite have inexplicably ignored.) I’ve played Supra / Infra front-to-back about seven times and still feel I don’t have a solid grasp on it. That’s a good thing and the track order on this sucker is masterful.

Standout tracks include the album-opener “You Take it to Heart” (most addicting melody of the year?) and the seven-minute long sprawling tour-de-indie “As Much As You Love You”. Kate Spitser’s turn on vox on “Nine Months” is another highlight.

Frontman Andrew Spitser has clearly poured himself into this album. And at times, the lyrics might be a bit too earnest. But Radars to the Sky were never too concerned with maintaining a too-cool-for-school image and the passion evident on Supra / Infra speaks well for itself. Supra / Infra also lacks an obvious infectious hit waiting to take the blogosphere by storm, but it’s not that kind of record, either. This one is for the grownups in the room. Can I pull a Bronson? Okay, here we go: Recommended.

Buzz Bands and Brand X have samples for you to listen to.

Buzzbands.la presents…

Thursday, August 26th
Radars to the Sky
Death to Anders
Smokers in Love
The Henry Clay People (super-secret midnite slot)

Spaceland
1717 Silverlake Blvd.
Silverlake, CA
9pm
21+
$7

The reason there have been two substandard X-Men pictures after two terrific efforts is because 20th Century Fox loses the license if a certain number of years pass without an X-film. Director Matthew Vaughn allegedly existed X-Men 3 because of the oppressive Fox deadline policy. Now Vaughn is back to the franchise and is casting X-Men: First Class.

The massive roster of characters slated to appear includes:

Professor X (James McAvoy)
Magneto (Michael Fassbender)
Sebastian Shaw (rumored) (Kevin Bacon, confirmed to be in the film)
Emma Frost (January Jones)
Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence)
Beast (Nicholas Hoult)
Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones)
Havok (Lucas Till)
Dawrin (Edi Gathegi)
Angel  (Angel Salvadore, not Warren Worthington III) (Zoe Kravitz)
Azazel (Nightcrawler’s father) (Jason Flemyng)
Moira McTaggert (Rose Byrne)

The first thing worth noting is that Bryan Singer (who is helping develop this X-Men prequel) has said that this film takes place in the early 1960′s, and that Professor X will have hair. Origins: Wolverine took place at least six years after Vietnam. At the end of that film a pre-teen Emma Frost appears and is rescued by a bald Professor X. January Jones is going to play an adult Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class, and Professor X will have hair. The continuity makes no goddamned sense.

I love the idea of a 60′s swinger-era Hellfire Club X-Men movie. But if they’re fucking with the Emma Frost continuity, why not reboot the entire franchise and do it with the actual original five X-Men? Why throw Emma Frost continuity to the wind but insist using Havok in place of Scott Summers? It makes my fanboy glands rupture with hot hate.

(The reason, by the way, is that producer Laura Schuler-Donner finds Cyclops to be utterly boring. Fox has always hated that he had to be the leader of the X-Men. Well! Havok is even more boring unless he has Scott around to piss-off!)

I don’t have to tell you that this film is packing-in way too many new characters. Of the characters included, only Professor X, Magneto, Emma Frost, and Beast could be properly termed as “beloved” by fans. My fear (if not certain conviction) is that Fox has cast this X-team based on CGI effects, erm, I mean mutant powers. (Why else include Angel Salvadore, who is only interesting when paired with Beak? Her character doesn’t serve a purpose otherwise.)

The only thing that gives me hope is the involvement of Singer and Vaughn. Kick-Ass was great and I believe that Bryan Singer deep down inside knows that leaving the X-Men film franchise was the worst career move he ever made. Singer’s X-Men movies soared whilst they spat on the source material in a myriad of ways. But Singer preserved the core traits of every character and his two X-films are basically a series of scenes between opposing characters strung together; “Get Wolverine and Iceman alone. What happens? Get Nightcrawler and Mystique alone. What happens?” Etc. I’m hoping, my throbbing fanboy doubts notwithstanding, X-Men: First Class is a return to character-driven X-Men films.

Alright, want to geek-out? Here’s my dream X-Men trilogy:

I do my first X-Men movie with the original five (Cyclops, Ms. Marvel, Iceman, Beast, and Angel) with Magneto as the villain. It’s a swashbuckling mutant romp. (Rated PG, even. No Wolverine. Not yet.) When the government unveils its Sentinel machines in the third act, Magneto reluctantly agrees to help Professor X defeat them.

In my second film, the original team is captured by Apocalypse in the first 12 pages. So Professor X recruits new mutants from around the world to save them. (Giant Sized X-Men #1!) Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, etc. The Wolverine / Sabretooth subplot weaves through this one, showing opposite sides of the same coin. Ultimately, Xavier’s new X-Men rescue the original X-Men team though poor Angel is now turned to Archangel, and you have a magnificent down ending a la The Empire Strikes Back. They don’t defeat Apocalypse, they merely escape from him.

My third film would feature a fractured X-Team and an Apocalypse stronger than ever. Cyclops and Jean round-up whomever they can muster (Archangel, Nightcrawler, Colossus) plus some new recruits. (Gambit, Rogue) Meanwhile, Apocalypse’s reign of terror reinforces Magneto’s beliefs and he forms his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (various mutants seen in the first films, including Sabretooth) to take-down Apocalypse his way. The X-Men have two foes to face and Xavier’s dream to fight for and, much to Scott’s chagrin, they need the help of Wolverine to pull it off. Professor X and Magneto are killed in the climax, but the dream of mutant equality lives on… and in the epilogue, a rogue geneticist who calls himself Mr. Sinister claims to have a cure…

Then, for a fourth, I blow everyone’s mind and do Days of Future Past.

I’m sympathetic to the plight of paper-and-dice roleplaying game industry. Videogames have very much stolen their fire, often presenting fantasy adventures more interesting and vivid than the mind’s eye of paper-and-dice gaming’s median player. When there are lots of players to sell to, you can make plenty of money selling supplementary materials such as adventures and the like. But when the customer pool is smaller, the only road to financial viability is to republish the core rules every two or three years.

Unless you move to an online subscriber-based system, which is what WotC plans to do.

My gaming friends and I have had many interesting (No, really!) debates on the merits of the various editions of D&D rules. I subscribe to what I call the Geometry Theory: basically, the dice rules game mechanics have a “shape” and flavor the game. AD&D 2nd Edition, my favorite version of the game, has all kinds of oddities and extremities. There were so many supplements and sub-classes, each with their own rules, that you could explore the mechanics just as you explored fantasy worlds while playing the game. D&D 3.0 was much too “round” and every dice roll, whether you were healing a sick person or slaying a dragon, was essentially the same.

D&D 4th Ed was scarcely better. At low levels, the rules system was terrific. The basic rules mechanics were still boring and limiting, but each classes abilities were truly unique. But the game was flooded with new classes and races that made everything, again, taste the same. And every time you leveled, you got one to three new powers — all operating on the same formula (“Attack with one of your skills + bonus vs. the target’s relevant skill + bonus”). My current 4th ed. character has something like 25 note cards of powers with rules and conditions; the game feels less like D&D and more like using a card catalog at the library. (This is what happens when you try to make World of Warcraft into a paper-and-dice game.)

D&D Essentials (I guess we call it D&DE?) is allegedly a simpler version of those 4th ed. rules… except not… because D&DE doesn’t directly contradict D&D 4.0. There is now a “4th ed. fighter” and an “Essentials fighter” and both, allegedly, will be compatible with the same game. The idea behind the “Essentials” classes, it seems, is to return to diversity in the game mechanics of the individual classess, which I like.

Of course, all of this mixing-and-matching and rejiggering means that D&D Essentials will be online subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee in order to be privy to the rules updates, moving the game even closer to replicating the MMORPGs that are taking away from D&D’s market share.

At this point, I don’t see why anyone would want to buy new D&D rules. If you want paper-and-dice gaming for its strengths — cooperative storytelling, roleplaying, and puzzle solving — then all the classic 1st and 2nd edition rules are available for free in the form of a giant torrent that has hundreds of PDFs. Those systems serve Dungeons and Dragons, as I know and love it to be, best.

And if you want “character builds” and all that other crap, why not just play World of Warcraft?

The current state of Dungeons and Dragons accentuates what I hate most about gamers: that they are, at the end of the day, perverse in their consumerism. Unable to form social bonds, successfully create commercially, or achieve meaning in life otherwise, they find their identity in the purchase of meaningless shit. Critical failure.

Radars to the Sky will be celebrating the release of their superb album Supra / Infra (more on that in a later post). Full disclosure: each band features a friend of mine; a career adviser, a former roommate, and a poker buddy. I might be a bit biased, but trust me, I keep good company. Thursday at Spaceland promises to be a terrific night of LA indie rock.

Buzzbands.la presents…

Thursday, August 26th
Radars to the Sky
Death to Anders
Smokers in Love

Spaceland
1717 Silverlake Blvd.
Silverlake, CA
9pm
21+
$7

For what it is worth, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a movie based on a comic book about boys who like video games and indie rock, and I chose to see The Expendables on opening weekend instead. So did my coworker who imports Star Wars branded clothes from Japan.

I absolutely loved the movie.

Much how the value of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to the viewer is allegedly proportionate to how much time the viewer has spent playing videogames, the value of The Expendables to the viewer is directly proportionate to how much time one has spent watching movies like Commando and Red Scorpion. And guess what? Most everyone has spent a late night watching bad movies on the USA Network.

The Expendables is a film about a bunch of buddy-chum mercs for hire who take a job knowing they’re only being used as “expendable” men by the C.I.A., but the film is about the careers of a bunch of old guys whom Hollywood used as a bunch of expendable men. Audiences love a comeback story, especially me. Many critics have lambasted The Expendables for being mindless, poorly plotted, and absurd. Says I, they’ve missed the point: Sylvester Stalone has written and directed a movie that says “Hey world? I’m a person. A human being. Me and my friends, we still matter.”

It’s a universal theme.

(That the movie featured some badass kills didn’t hurt.)

So go play some Crush the Castle until I come back.