the naked city | feature
[ glowing landscapes and beatific faces ] ³ rock/pop
Refrigerator’s last release was a disc of demos in 2011. Their last fully formed album dates to 2007. Patience, therefore, is a virtue common to Refrigerator fans. The aptly named Glacial (Shrimper), a collaborative project from Refrigerator frontman Allen Callaci and singer/songwriter Adam Lipman, rewards the patient listener. Lipman’s introspective lyrics and sparse arrangements solicit close attention and repeated plays. Callaci’s voice is as evocative as it was 20 years ago, when the Mountain Goats declared with feigned envy and genuine admiration, “I wish I could sing like Allen Callaci, and then you would know how sad it was.” —Matt Hotz
While Belle and Sebastian’s early singles and EPs were aesthetically discrete entities, those from the period collated on The Third Eye Centre (Matador) — roughly 2003 to 2011 — felt, at the time, decidedly more ancillary. But that doesn’t make these 19 B-sides (including three remixes) any less delightful. This was, remember, the era when the band really loosened up and started having fun, and the spirit running through these bold, colorful takes on ’60s pop, blue-eyed soul, funk, ska, bossa-nova, Euro-disco, country, etc. is too infectious to remain —K. Ross Hoffman solely the province of die-hards.
Rodney Anonymous vs. the world
³ bluegrass/country Jonathan Byrd and Chris Kokesh’s
³ house/techno German producer Marek Hemmann performs a decidedly unshowy (but still, somehow, magnificent) balancing act on his excellent second full-length, Bittersweet (Freude Am Tanzen) — 10 tracks of matter-of-fact tech house that’s studiously detailed but never dry, cheerful but not aggressively upbeat, melodic but never at the expense of trusty underlying thump-and-wiggly syncopations. More than any other straight-ahead electronic record I’ve heard this year, —K. Ross Hoffman this one is just a pure, consistent, quiet joy.
flickpick
The Barn Birds (Waterbug) starts off with a pair of sparse originals — just two voices and thoughtful lyrics supported only by his guitar and her violin. The fun starts when Kokesh trades honky-tonk trash talk with Byrd on “One Night at a Time.” They move on to evoke the early days of bluegrass on “Paint the Town Blue.” “It’s Too Late to Call It a Night,” promises romantic shuffling and belt-buckle polishing around the dance floor. —Mary Armstrong
[ movie review ]
AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS
A story as simple and iconic as a folk ballad.
³ LET’S GET SOMETHING clear, right up front:
You need to own this CD. And now, the review… Along with “literally,” “survivor” and “Sandusky,” the word “punk” seems to have lost its original meaning: something young, energetic, fresh and joyously rebellious. Punk has now become the generic adjective used, describe everything from Lady Gaga’s wardrobe to crappy Minor Threat cover bands. This vocabulary shift is doubly tragic, as (by the yardstick of punk’s earliest connotation) Krystal System’s Rage is definitely one of the Most Punk records released in recent years. It’s also one of the best. There are 13 tracks on Rage,and each one merrily assaults the listener’s synapses in a unique way, starting with the hyper-industrial post-punk rantcore of the opening title track, through the piano-laden stompabilly of “I Wanna Be” and into “Tyler’s Waltz,” which intermingles snippets of dialogue from Fight Club and a haunting 3/4 beat. If you don’t fall in love with the driving-yet-danceable “Parasites,” then you are a sad person who should be dragged, screaming, from your home and executed in the street to the tune of the haughty taunts of your neighbors’ children. If the flawlessly crafted “26 Days” isn’t your cup of tea, then you need to switch to strychnine. Put this CD on when friends come over. If they don’t like it, they’re not your friends. They’re robots. Verdict: There’s no excuse for not owning a copy of Rage. None. If you visit someone’s home and don’t spot this release in their CD collection, immediately ask to use their bathroom and take a dump in their tub. (r_anonymous@citypaper.net)
✚ Krystal System
Rage (ALFA MATRIX)
19
TAINTED LOVE: Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) breaks out of prison to reunite with his wife Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara).
If they don’t like it, they’re not your friends.
P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R | A U G U S T 2 2 - A U G U S T 2 8 , 2 0 1 3 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T |
[ C+ ] THE OBLIQUE STORYTELLING, the magic-hour rural milieu, the young lovers mumbling poetically in wheat fields — Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is so deeply indebted to Terrence Malick that in the early going it seems like it could only be a clone or a parody. Director David Lowery eventually settles into his own rhythm, even if he never escapes the gravitational pull of his more freethinking influences. Determinedly elliptical, Lowery is stingy with plot details, but the story is as simple and iconic as a folk ballad. The ill-fated lovers, Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara), discover they’re expecting a baby just before they pull off a robbery that ends in a farmhouse shootout. Ruth wounds a cop, but Bob takes the blame, learning of the birth of his daughter when the news is shouted down the cell block where he’s serving a 25-year sentence. Back at home, the injured officer (Ben Foster) checks in regularly on Ruth and her daughter, hoping to supplant Bob in her life. Bob escapes from prison, shadowed by a trio of ruthless killers, and bloodshed inevitably ensues. But Ain’t Them Bodies Saints aims to be as lyrically obscure in its narrative as it is in its title, averting its gaze from gunplay and action to bask in glowing landscapes and beatific faces. Lowery’s influences — maverick ’70s filmmakers like Malick and Robert Altman — are ever-present in his film. While their work deconstructed and distilled the essence of genre film, turning the then-prevailing mode of storytelling inside out, Lowery’s contribution feels a generation removed from such reinvention. That’s not to say Ain’t Them Bodies Saints doesn’t have its lovely moments or that the cast isn’t adept at conveying a depth beneath the director’s ornate constructions. But the characters are telling a thin, surprise-free story filled with evasive meanderings that feels less like a deconstruction of narrative than like hiding an empty space behind elaborate filigrees. —Shaun Brady
FRANCE!
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³ rock/pop/soul
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