Julian Schnabel’s switch from painter to filmmaker was one of the more surprising reinventions in contemporary culture. For Declan Tan, however, his most recent effort is a serious anticlimax Julian Schnabel has more than impressed, actually he has excelled in his past features, all biopics of wildly varied personalities and very different nationalities. First there […]
The Fighter (David O. Russell)
Is there more to the Christian Bale Method than weight loss and accents? Declan Tan views his ‘return to acting’ As unimaginative and uninvolving as it is, The Fighter still manages to (insert boxing pun) throw a few punches before (here’s another one) the final bell, though admittedly it’s identical to every other underdog boxing […]
Gerald Locklin: An Interview
Gerald Locklin has, in his lengthy career, alternately been called a “people’s writer”, a “stand-up poet” (co-credited for coining the term) and, by his friend and contemporary, Charles Bukowski: “one of the great undiscovered talents of our time”. In a fascinating interview, Declan Tan hears about the influence of comic books, the giants of modernism […]
Gillian Welch: The Harrow and The Harvest (Acony Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger First album in eight years for the 43-year-old folkie, who became a more prominent strand of the genre’s fibre upon her production and song-slot on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. We’re looking at a step back in her progression after her getting stuck in an empty void of music […]
Farewell Drifters: Echo Boom (Crash Avenue Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger With the help of an against-the-Nashville-grain producer (Neilson Hubbard), this Kentucky five-some are, as advertised, new-and-improved relative to their first LP Yellow Tag Mondays. Obvious clean-teens, the record purports to be an homage to their parents’ generation of 60s/70s music. But this sort of uppity bluegrass is more native to Mumford […]
Hyperbubble: Drastic Cinematic (Bubblegum Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger San Antonio’s response to Freezepop, Hyperbubble are possessed of a fetish for retro-80s synthpop, which, as a dead art, requires mass tonnage of hype to get any traction. Being from the tech mecca of Boston, Freezepop has always had the advantage, nowadays thriving in their design/video-game day-gigs while Hyperbubble does God […]
Deathface: Fall of Man (Trouble and Bass Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger Chop-screwed drum’n’bass for metalheads. Johnny Love was half of Guns N’ Bombs and is now all of Deathface, aside from a few random screeches from psycho-posturing chick singer Adri Law on ‘Sick of It’. ‘Gift of Fury’ is desolate and hard-ass at turns, what you’d expect if Acumen Nation tried their […]
Brontosaurus: Cold Comes to Claim [EP] (self-released)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger This smarmy experimental effort sews together patches of swamp-goth, gloom-prog, chamber-pop and baroque, covers it with un-pro, barely tolerable Ben Gibbard-influenced vocals that make it seem a lot less earnest an effort than it may be, and sort of wanders around like a stoned college kid at a jock bar trying […]
Razer: Dark Devotion [expanded] (Blind Monkey Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger Expanded version of of the Sony-propelled release from the melodic-nu-metal crew, who’ve opened for Judas Priest and whatnot in their native Phoenix. Like so many Metal Blade-level non-thrashers, there are tales of brushes with near-fame along their journey, in this case one of the guys touring as second-banana guitarist on such-and-so-guy-from-Mastodon’s […]
TV Eye: HBO’s Entourage
In the first instalment of a new column on TV programmes, Jacob Knowles-Smith reviews Entourage As anyone who has ever read Casanova’s memoirs knows, even the Great Seducer was knocked back once or twice. But it took seven seasons of Entourage and a drug problem for Vincent Chase, arguably a modern-day equivalent, to get himself […]
Exit Through The Gift Shop (Banksy)
Declan Tan revisits Banksy’s documentary on street art and the transformation of Terry Guetta into ‘Mr. Brainwash’ Pretension is a subject seemingly dear to Banksy. It’s all over his work, from his mordant stencils which inspired a boisterous surge in ‘street art’ popularity, to his grand socio-political satires plastered across the most daring of locations, […]
All Experience Devolves To Gratitude: Dan Fante
Carrying the torch passed on by Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr, for many Dan Fante is America’s most vital writer. Interview by Declan Tan Dan Fante is one of the last surviving writers of his generation that could be called a “maverick”. Having spent years in his own personal wilderness, and never touching a typewriter, […]
Army of the Universe: Mother Ignorance (Metropolis Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger The endless dichotomy in the goth-metal world continues, with most bands (are we still supposed to call one-man and two-man operations “bands”?) offering catchy but disposable tunes and the rest sacrificing melody at the altar of whiz-bang android noise. This Italian duo leans more toward the latter, even if their next-gen […]
Assaulter: Boundless (Metal Blade Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger One can always count on Australians to deliver camp with their serious-ass whatever-they’re-doing, in this case a Savatage-meets-Bathory take on death-extreme metal. In normal human talk, that means cutesy exorcist-shriek vocals over nods to early Misfits by way of Anthrax, but what makes this so Australian is the no-budget production, a […]
Portrait: Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae (Metal Blade Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger The words “Sweden” and “metal” in the same sentence of a review usually indicate speed, Beelzebub, white makeup, that kind of thing. Even worse, sometimes it means the band standing trial is a bunch of simpletons who have a fave Priest/Maiden tune they hope people have forgotten about and they’re shoving […]
Conviction (Tony Goldwyn)
Reviewed by Declan Tan Conviction is a sickly and cynical bit of force-fed fluff, masquerading as serious drama as it squeezes all life out of its once-dignified story, dragging it through the shit heap of Hollywood to exploit its working-class subjects with predictable execution. Not the first, and not the last time this will happen. […]
West Is West (Andy DeEmmony)
A decade after its hugely successful predecessor, Declan Tan encounters an entertaining but lightweight imitation second time around As the long-awaited sequel to the 1999 breakout hit that was East is East, comes scribe Ayub Khan-Din’s West is West, a continuation of the Salford-set story of Sajid (Aqib Khan), jumping us forward five years to […]
On Curling Up In A Ball: Ronald Dworkin: Justice For Hedgehogs
Ronald Dworkin’s latest book attempts to engage with moral truths and the pursuit of a meaningful life. Jacob Knowles-Smith reviews No mention of Professor Dworkin’s latest work, Justice for Hedgehogs, can pass by without the following: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. So goes the old fable. The hedgehog, […]
The Bebop Trio: The Bebop Trio (Creative Nation Music)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger The most casual reader of this column identifies me as a non-fan of clarinetists. Did you know Alan Greenspan, the insane Ayn Rand devotee who almost single-handedly destroyed the US economy, played clarinet? It’s an odd quirk of fate that I even tore off the shrink wrap off this one, and […]
Honey Ear Trio: Steampunk Serenade (Foxhaven Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger Caveat emptor if you’re looking for a primer on the steampunk genre; this is actually a mildly experimental jazz quartet. I was drawn more to this by the promise of some modicum of electro (from the laptop of most-of-the-time bassist Rene Hart), however the bulk of this, to further shy away […]
Young Widows: In and Out of Youth and Lightness (Temporary Residence Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger This Lousiville noise-rock trio sound like a tank-led mop-up operation during wartime, depressing drone punctuated by metallic guitar stompings. They’re in line with the Temporary Residence stable insofar as comprising a dark yin to the moderately more agreeable yang of Explosions in the Sky, but this could have fit just fine […]
Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)
Derek Cianfrance’s labour of love reviewed by Declan Tan If you’ve happened upon any of the interviews with director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance talking about his 12-year project, Blue Valentine, you’ll notice there’s a through-line to all of them. As wearied as his two main characters become of each other, Cianfrance, in his routine exchanges […]
The Design of Jonathan Walker’s Five Wounds
Five Wounds is something of a contemporary classic: a manuscript crossed with Kit Williams’ playful imagination, informed by the language of graphic novels. Although very much a book, in the tactile sense, it has half an eye on what a book might be in a digital era. Jonathan Walker, the author of Five Wounds shares […]
Charlie Hill: The Space Between Things
Reviewed by Declan Tan Charlie Hill’s debut novel seems already to have been pigeonholed as a love-story, a certainly tragic one, between its narrator, Arch (a character who has already made appearances on the independent literary scene) and Vee, the counterpoint to Arch’s solipsistic, inward-looking existence. Set in the early 1990s, the novel begins at […]
Tim Larson and The Owner Operators: A New Deal (American Pharaoh Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger “Survival is the new American dream,” sings Larson on ‘Own to Rent’, the bummed-down rocker that opens this LP, and even the most ADD-afflicted cynic has to stop in the face of it. An asphalt worker in a past life and formerly of Irish band The Drovers, Larson does know first-hand […]
