Uptown Magazine Online - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

May 22, 2008


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2008-05-22

Ashes Divide

Keep Telling Myself It's Alright

(Island/Universal)

Website: http://www.ashesdivide.com

I'm not sure how many layers of melancholy you're allowed to pack into a single song, but Billy Howerdel (A Perfect Circle) must have approached the legal limit about eight times on the slightly grungey rock disc Keep Telling. I like the Deftones approach to melancholy: you contrast and amplify it with aggressive dynamic shifts. The Ashes Divide approach just doesn't do that, and the result feels a little like being pelted with cotton balls for about an hour. Things get more imaginative toward the end of this moody 11-tracker, but you might have lost interest by then.
— Mike Warkentin

Brian Jonestown Massacre

My Bloody Underground

(A Records)

Website: http://myspace.com/brianjonestownmassacre

Anton Newcombe has fronted Brian Jonestone Massacre since the early '90s and remains its only constant member. As musically diverse and prolific as he is mentally unstable, Newcombe's latest offering is a headtrip back to the band's first album ('95's Methodrone) and then some. An experimental drone of an album, this new record is thick, layered and filled with digs at former Beatles and their former wives (Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills' Wooden Peg). If you're new to BJM, hold off on this and check out Tepid Peppermint Wonderland or the film Dig! before attempting this one.
— Nick Friesen

The Cat Empire

So Many Nights

(Outside Music)

Website: http://www.thecatempire.com

Every band has stories. Some can be told in mixed company, and some are just way too out there for public consumption. Australia's The Cat Empire shares some vignettes from its world travels on So Many Nights. Stories of lovers, fashion flops, and voodoo cowboys create vivid mental images. The band fleshes them out with funky bundles of horns, bass and keys that dance their way across your brain. The Cat Empire is a party band and it comes across loud and clear on this rollicking new disc, from the acid trip of The Darkness to the pure pop of So Many Nights.
— Chris Brown

Children of Bodom

Blooddrunk

(Universal/Spinefarm)

Website: http://www.cobhc.com

Children of Bodom is one of the most consistent metal bands. Every album is packed with the same four elements: hatred, shredding, keyboards and then more hatred. That's the pattern on new disc Blooddrunk, which finds the evil Finns kicking out technical Eurometal that won't disappoint any of their fans. I'd say the approach will need a little tweaking to stay fresh by the time another album is due in two or three years, but for right now, these guys are just fine doing it by the numbers - which are, of course, 666.
— Mike Warkentin

Jack Johnson

Sleep Through the Static

(Brushfire Records)

C+

Website: http://www.jackjohnsonmusic.com

There's a line in the opening song that goes, "I want to take the preconceived out from underneath your feet," and Jack Johnson's fifth album starts to fall short of his vision and our expectations right there. While 2001's Brushfire Fairytales was a delightful discovery of Johnson's easy-going, surfer-dude/pop-prophet personality, this is just too much of the same-old same-old. There is a thoughtful sensibility to the lyrics and an easy bluesy folk-rock groove to the music but unless you're prepared to listen long and hard the, charms will elude you - and truth is, pop/rock like this shouldn't make you work that hard.
— Jim Millican

We Are Scientists

Brain Thrust Mastery

(Virgin)

D+

Website: http://www.wearescientists.com

From the look of the cover art, it would appear that We Are Scientists has a sense of humour, but judging by the group's second major-label album, this doesn't seem to be the case. The duo seems bored and detached throughout, and the lyrics are about as deep as a kiddie pool. The album has lots of synthesizers and electronics covering the songs. Done properly, this can add depth to a song - here, it just makes it sound cold and detached. We Are Scientists has potential, but on this album, it comes off sounding like a depressed teenager with a drum machine.
— Mike Sherby

Scarlett Johansson

Anywhere I Lay My Head

(Atco/Rhino)

B+

Website: http://www.scarlettalbum.com

For this, her first album, starlet Scarlett Johansson worked with producer Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio), guitarist Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and even David Bowie. Going the same route as Holly Cole on 1995's Temptation, she also chose to release a collection of Tom Waits covers. Her deep, breathy vocals blend wonderfully into the layered backdrop that Sitek provides, sending chills on Falling Down and the pretty, music box-fueled I Wish I Was in New Orleans. Diversity rolls in with the help of a New Order-inspired I Don't Want to Grow Up and the instrumental Fawn. As surprisingly good as this ambitious project is, Karen O shouldn't get too jealous.
— Nick Friesen

Jordan Zevon

Insides Out

(New West)

Website: http://www.jordanzevon.com

Son of Warren Zevon, Jordan has spent his life kicking around musical circles, playing in forgettable bands and working as a record-industry wank. When both his father and mother passed away from cancer within a year, he re-evaluated his life and dedicated it to making music. The result is this interesting pop-rock album. The songs are thoughtful and memorable, especially The Joke's On Me, which won a U.S.A. Songwriting Award in 2006. Musically, it's all been done before but I think there is potential here. I'll be watching for Jordan's next record.
— Chris Brown

Mahogany Frog

Do 5

(Mafrogany Hog Ltd.))

Website: http://www.mahoganyfrog.com

Disc of the Week

Mahogany Frog's fifth release is a sprawling, psychedelic album. The disc has nine songs on it but, harkening back to the good ol' days of vinyl, it's separated into two sides, A and B. The Winnipeg band has been described as Canada's answer to The Mars Volta, but that doesn't begin to do it justice. There's no self-indulgence here, and no 10-minute passages of guitar wankery. Instead, this is an album that's concerned with creating atmosphere. The standout track is T-Tigers & Toasters, which builds from ambient electronic bleeps and pretty piano lines into a soaring epic.
— Mike Sherby

All the tea in China

Documentary follows tea connoisseur David Lee Hoffman on his search for the best brew in China

(All in This Tea, May 24 & 25, 7 p.m., Cinematheque)

In a career spanning nearly 50 years, documentarian Les Blank has created amazing portraits of mavericks (Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, 1979), traditional American musicians (The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins, 1970) and general iconoclasts (The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists, 1994). Blank's soft-spoken nature and eagle eye for 16mm compositions have lent him the kind of stranger's fly-on-the-wall access that is the dream of documentary, in many circles.

Blank's new documentary (co-directed by Gina Leibrecht) was long-in-coming (he shared unfinished snippets from 1997 with workshop attendees, here, in early 2007), and combines his interests in curious individuals and his proclivity for the finer things in eats. All In This Tea follows tea connoisseur David Lee Hoffman as he jaunts about China, searching for the best in independently-grown fine tea. It also marks Blank's initial foray into the world of digital video (which - sadly - does little to improve his story-telling capabilities).

The film's title comes from the onscreen appearance of Blank's former subject Werner Herzog, who describes the smell and feel of wet jungle floor as being captured in the cup of brew he drinks, along with Hoffman, in his kitchen. Herzog's limited cameo feels like a favour called in, but his point is constantly reiterated by nearly every expert talking head in the film: drinking tea connects you directly with a history and geography, often halfway around the world.

With this revelation in mind, for people who still drink Red Rose, All In This Tea should open up a world of refined wonderment. Aside from Blank's tracking of Hoffman, the film provides whirlwind history lessons (including a link to tea's origins in the meditation-alertness strategies of the Bodhidharma), some nice, activist-y polemics on the struggle of independent organic tea farmers in remote China and the spectrum of expertise in tea from around the world. (Talking head James Norwood Pratt, author of The Tea Lover's Treasury, sees tea as a living archaeology and looks for "shavings of angels wings" in his teacups.)

Eventually, after watching tea-drinkers in the film swoon over the beverage, you might even perceive the tea-talk akin to stoner-yammering about prime bud; naturally. the Dalai Lama has the best shit.

Blank's characters know their stuff and the odds are 'steep(ed)' that you will be inspired to imbibe something more rarefied after watching the film.
— Walter Forsberg

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