Things That Don't Matter

A month or so ago I predicted that based on what I’d heard Jukebox the Ghost’s Everything Under the Sun was about to become my new favourite album of all time, dethroning Belle and Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit, not an easy challenge by any standard. So now that I have the album, and have listened to it many times over, the question is was I right? The answer, plain and simple, yes. Belle and Sebastian of course have the opportunity to take back the crown when their new album Belle and Sebastian Write About Love hits shelfs October 12th in the U.S., but for now Jukebox the Ghost has captured my heart. Their first album was fantastic, it was fresh, new, different, and inventive. I was almost a little worried that they wouldn’t be able to reach the same high standard with a sophomore album. They did, and in fact I think they went a step further, a giant leap further even. The album is very recognizably Jukebox the Ghost, not much if anything has changed, but in no way is that a bad thing. The band is far stronger in a number of areas, Ben and Tommy are clearly more experienced vocalists, and they’ve done an excellent job of meshing piano with guitar, two instruments with a tendency to vie for attention when used together creating a sense of disharmony. Jesse remains ever fantastic, listening to him play always depresses me a little because I think to myself, “Damn, I’m never going to be able to do that.” His drum parts are as much a part of the music as Ben’s piano and Tommy’s guitar. In some bands the drummer just keeps time, plain and simple, that is not Jukebox the Ghost. Jesse takes it to a whole different level, he play’s inventively, uses the whole set and then some, and at the same time plays with such speed and precision, it’s really just amazing. Okay that’s a lot about drums, but that’s the only instrument I really know much of anything about, and drummers don’t generally get the attention they deserve, and in this case attention is definitely deserved.

There is not one song on this album I don’t like, and I love most of them. Schizophrenia, The Popular Thing, and Nobody are all strong candidates for replacing Dress Up In You as my favourite song of all time, I’m not calling it just yet though because I have yet to see if they all stand the test of time and repeated listening. The great thing about this album though is that the songs not mentioned there are still great, they’re not just filler tracks as you so often find on LPs. Summer Sun although short is a gem of a track, The Sun and The Stars are both fun and energetic. Half Crazy and Carrying are infectiously catchy, but in a gimmicky sort of way that comes close to making me not like them, but they’re still fun to listen to. Empire and Mistletoe are also great, and if it wasn’t for that fact that I’d already heard them many times over prior to the release I would probably have been wowed by them as well. There is practically nothing wrong and everything right with this album, and it is absolutely necessary that everyone go listen to it.

Final score: 100/100

An update: For those of you who don’t know who Jukebox the Ghost are and are too lazy to go look them up I’ve embedded this video here of them playing Schizophrenia on Letterman.

This is one of the very rare occasions when I’ve actually seen something that’s been in theatres (spell check tells me that’s the wrong way to spell theatre but it’s TOTALLY NOT!) less than a week, but Scott Pilgrim was a movie that I knew I didn’t want to miss and it’s release having coincided with a week I was looking to fill with any and all kinds of distractions I grabbed a couple of my friends and saw it. It was wonderful. There was so much that I loved about this movie, I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with that Kieran Culkin (Igby from Igby Goes Down) is a most fantastic actor and he is perfect in this movie. His character Wallace was undoubtedly my favourite (THAT IS ALSO THE CORRECT WAS TO SPELL FAVOURITE GO AWAY RED LINE), he was wonderfully sarcastic and witty and his interaction with Scott was the best thing about the movie and if I could change one thing it would be to add more of it. The other thing I loved about this movie was it’s tendency to surprise me with pop-culture references. Now, you may be thinking, “What do you mean surprise? Half the point of that movie was to make pop-culture references,” and yeah, that was half the reason I went to go see the movie, but I expected mostly references to 90’s video games, and yeah there were a lot of those, but quite a few others that I didn’t expect. I won’t reveal what they are because being surprised by them was a large part of their entertainment value, but they’re there, and you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen the movie, or will when you inevitably do (because everyone should). As a whole the movie is fast paced, witty, action packed, and at moments endearing. A few people may feel a little alienated by the mass amounts of culture they won’t understand, but even without understanding some of the references I think most of the humour (Are you kidding me!? THAT IS HOW IT’S SPELLED.) and the story itself are relatable to a much larger audience than most people perceive.

Okay, I’m really terrible at writing about things I like, so here’s the fun part, what I didn’t. To be clear, all of my issues with this movie are trivial, I include them only because I enjoy complaining. My biggest issue is that I didn’t see what was so attractive about either of the two main characters. I mean I liked Scott, I love Micheal Cera and I thought he did a terrific job, but what he did a terrific job of was playing a character who’s 22, lives across the street from the house he grew up in, has no job, and plays bass (yes, I did just italicize bass as a method of expressing disdain, deal with it) in a band that I wouldn’t expect to ever be popular anywhere beyond their hometown, if that. What then do Ramona and Knives see in him? That wasn’t the worst of it though, to an extent I can accept girls going for some guy for no reason apparent to me, mostly because I’m not a girl and never understand what they see in anyone (who’s not me anyway), but as a guy I didn’t get Scott’s infatuation with Ramona at all. I think I can probably for the most part blame it on her hair, which was first pink (ick), then blue (eh), then green (ghastly). With the right clothing (or lack thereof) you could see that she had a pretty nice figure, but not on its own deserving of what Scott went through in pursuit of her. Now that is of course extremely shallow but I don’t think she had a very interesting personality either. Her character is largely supine (I had to look that up to make sure it had the definition I thought it did, it does) and little is revealed about her not directly pertaining to the exes that control her. I can understand being enticed by the mystery but I didn’t get the sense that there was much of anything that interesting to be discovered. Again, it’s probably all because of the hair.

I think that what made me love this movie, instead of just really really liking it, is right there in it’s title, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This is probably something that holds true for most people who have seen or will see the movie, I was able to empathize with Scott’s battle against insurmountable odds, and it was satisfying for just this one time to see the world lose. Plus it’s hilarious.

Final Score: 95/100 (All 5 points off for the hair.)

So you take two great things, The Beatles and Rock Band, and you put them together. You should get something great right? I mean where can you go wrong? Actually there’s probably a whole bunch of ways you could go wrong but thankfully we don’t have to contemplate them because this game doesn’t go wrong. The Beatles: Rock Band is the perfect union of two totally awesome things, it’s everything I expected and more. What I expected was Rock Band with Beatles songs, and this definitely has that, but there’s much more, it’s an experience. I sat down with this game on Saturday and played through the whole thing from start to finish, and even though it only took a couple hours (you only have to play each song once) the way that they arrange the songs in order with detailed recreation of their performances and recording sessions I felt like I too had been a part of their decade long career. They clearly worked very hard on the graphics for game and one thing they’ve done is made the note run a little transparent so even when you’re playing and focusing on your part you can still see what’s going on in the song’s cinematic which are either recreations of their live performances or imaginative “dreamscapes”. There is much more detail in the character animations so it really looks like they’re all playing their instruments. But these really are all just things that fill out around the edges, the essence of this game is the music, and the question on everybody’s minds is “Are The Beatles’ songs any good to play in Rock Band?” The answer: an emphatic yes. Now, as a (Rock Band) drummer, I have to admit that the drum parts for this game are not very challenging as far as not failing goes. The only song I failed the entire time was “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”. The rest generally have easy to keep beats but what I love are the fills. When I first heard that for this game they were going to be taking out the option to make up your own fills at certain points I was a little annoyed, but I since have found out why: because Ringo’s are so perfect anything you tried to play would just make a mess of things. I can’t really speak to any of the other instruments as I almost never touch them but a friend of mine told me he thought they’d much improved the way the game reads vocals (which probably means that it just doesn’t), and guitar seems to be pretty much the same as it’s always been. There aren’t many extremely hard to play finger blistering songs (except Helter Skelter of course) but I’ve never really enjoyed those as much as playing along to songs that I like regardless of the difficulty, and these are all songs that I like. I can’t really think of much they could have improved on except maybe some of the song choices (no Hey Jude!?) but that of course is being addressed by DLC.

Final Score: 99.5/100, with the .5 being taken off for the songs that weren’t in the game but should have been.

A few days ago I made a very very bad mistake. I watched the pilot episode of Lost. The first four seasons of Lost were added to Hulu a couple weeks ago and I originally stayed away from them because I am not normally a fan of TV shows that aren’t comedy. However it consistently hovered in about the #4 spot on the Popular Shows list and one day finding myself with nothing else that interested me in the slightest I watched the pilot episode part one. This was a very bad mistake. It was a mistake because then I had to watch part two, then the third episode, then the fourth, then the fifth, and so on. Now, not five days from when I started, I’m about 2/3 of the way through season 2, close to 30 hours of TV, and I can’t stop. I think one of the things that makes Lost great is its large cast. An episode generally focuses on a subset of the main characters, so you don’t get bored with them because they’re not featured in every episode. The other thing that they do very well is the mythology/supernatural element. It works solely because of their isolation. Many shows, for instance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, try to mix a supernatural element with everyday society. Buffy does it better than most but even then I still often find myself jarred from a plot line by the thought that people would probably notice what’s going on. With the cast of Lost stranded on an undiscovered island there are no people around to notice. The other reason the supernatural element works is because it’s surrounded with mystery. If any explanations were to be provided it might become a little bit harder to believe but because neither you nor any of the islanders knows what’s going on there’s the possibility of a logical explanation to all of it. It’s something they’ll have to be careful with when wrapping up the show at the end of season six. The thing that keeps me coming back is the way they very slowly reveal little bits of the mystery. It does an excellent job of making me want, or rather need, to know what’s going on, and dangling it out in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey. There are however a couple things that annoy me about Lost. In every episode they choose a character to do flashbacks to their previous life which of course some how relate to what’s happening on the island and are placed as if they’re memories triggered by an event. I’ve gotten pretty good at predicting them, the most common lead in is a character being asked something after which they stand there with a stupid expression on their face for a few seconds before it cuts away to the memory. The character background stories are normally pretty predictable, and I’m never anywhere near as interested in what happened to them before as what’s happening to them now so when they place one of these flashbacks in the middle of a pivotal moment I get a little annoyed. Sometimes it feels like Lost could function perfectly well as a 22 minute show of just them on the island instead of a 44 minute show with flashbacks and constant “previously on Lost” reminders which can sneak up on you in the middle of an episode and feel placed there just to take up time. The other thing that gets to me a little is that there’s supposed to be 40 other people on the island with them but you almost never see any of them, not even in the background. It’s obvious that in a situation like this people would get together every now and then as one group to make decisions, but I’ve never seen more than 20 people in a shot. The main main character Jack tends to make all the big decisions and then it seems like the verdicts are just supposed to be spread around by word of mouth. The creators of Lost seem to realize this too and occasionally poke fun at it by having all the main characters never be able to remember any of the extras’ names, specifically one guy named Steve who everyone calls Scott who was an extra that died way at the beginning. The only other thing that annoys me is that the picture Hulu put on the Lost main page features all of the main characters standing together. It does not however feature ALL of the main characters, only the ones still alive, presumably at the end of season five, a point I have not yet reached. So I recommend not looking too closely at that if you go to Hulu to watch and don’t want to know of such things. At this point it would appear that I’ve written more bad than good about Lost but I don’t feel that the bad in any way outweighs the good, I just have more fun and find it easier to complain about things than to praise them. On the whole Lost is pretty awesome, if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be unable to stop watching.

So by this point you’ve probably gathered that as far as modern music goes I’m into the alternative/indie genre, except I really hate having to tack on that “indie” because the bands I like pretty much all have deals with major record labels. Of course, an exemplary example of this genre is Death Cab for Cutie. DCFC is about as well known a band as you can afford to be while remaining a part of the indie/underground scene and while their music isn’t always as interesting or wonderfully pretentious as The Decemberists’ they have a good sound and there is always room for them on my iPod (which to most people doesn’t mean much but keep in mind I have a 1GB shuffle). About a week ago I purchased their relatively new EP The Open Door and have since decided I really like it. EPs are my favorite form factor for music releases because singles always leave you wanting more and albums always end up filled with the not so great tracks that you find yourself skipping over when they come up. The EPs that I’ve come across so far generally have about 5 songs, all of them good, and in this case available for $4 in the Amazon mp3 store. I’m actually really bad at writing about music other than saying I like it and don’t see how anybody else can not like it so I guess the best thing to do is just to put this video here of the first song on the EP, “Little Bribes”. The only thing I really have to complain about is that the video is pretty unimaginative but I didn’t pay for that so I don’t really care.

For more awesome music you should also check out The Crickets

No, this isn’t one of my stories or some opinion article on relationships. The Hazards of Love is the latest album from The Decemberists. Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “Dear god when is he going to shut up about The Decemberists what is this the third time he’s written about them? They can’t be all that interesting I mean seriously write another short story or something you uninspired bore.” The answer is I am never going to shut up about The Decemberists, as long as they continue to make music I will continue to write about it, this is largely because The Decemberists are one of the very few modern bands that I like, and therefore I enjoy being able to keep track of their new releases and such. Now, about the album, the one obvious things to talk about is the way they’ve put it together. Each song flows into the next and it’s often very hard to distinguish one song from another. It’s almost like it’s one big hour long song, and I’m as yet undecided on whether or not I like this. It’s interesting and it allows the narrative to flow uninhibited by track changes, but on the other hand it’s hard to pick out one or two songs that you really like from the album like you would normally, you really have to have an hour to devote to listening from one end to the other. I thought that the beginning of the album felt a little too much like background music, for me it really picked up when they hit “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid”. I thought that at some times it was a little too soft and slow, although The Decemberists can pull that off better than most, and at other times it was a little too heavy, but for the most part I really enjoyed listening to it. A big aspect of the album is the narrative, which is interesting, but has some inherent flaws. The words to a song can often be very hard to decipher, and trying to understand all the words as they’re being sung can really distract from the music. Also, it means that you have to sit for an hour and pay close attention, you can’t really go around doing other stuff while it plays if you want to understand what’s going on. I have a hard time trying to come up with an occasion to which this album is best suited. It doesn’t really work for social occasions because it requires attention, and because it’s hard to pick out single songs you like it’s hard to fit into a mix or shuffle through on an iPod. To me it feels like the kind of thing for a rainy depressing Sunday afternoon with nothing going on and you can lie down and lose yourself in the music and the narrative for an hour. Overall I think it’s a pretty great album although I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed by it probably due to “The Rake’s Song” setting the bar extremely high. I think I like some of their previous work better, especially The Crane Wife which contained the first songs I’d ever heard from them. Listening live to the webcast was a lot of fun although they didn’t take the stage until 1 am and then after an encore all was said and done at around 2:30. I think lead singer Colin Meloy said it best right before they played their last song, “It’s late man, it’s late. It’s time for you to be in bed.” I look forward to more from The Decemberists in the hopefully near future. In other words, yeah, you made a pretty great album, now get back to work and make another one!

Update: Today I got the CD and I don’t really know why but the studio version sounds a lot better than the live version they did. The whole beginning seems much more… I don’t really know how to describe it… there, than it did before. It’s pretty much the same really but I think the tweaks and tuning make it feel a lot more together than it did live. I’m considering placing it above The Crane Wife. Actually, I’m not just considering, I am.

Final score: 92/100

So today I got Rockband, and then my afternoon disappeared. Rockband is a lot of fun. Originally I was worried that I would have to have friends around to play the game properly, that fear was quelled both when the game didn’t seem to care whether I played alone or with others and when my little sister immediately jumped in. This is really one of the better things about Rockband, I hardly ever do anything with my little sister other than begrudgingly go to a recital of some sort, it really is a fun family game. I’d played Guitar Hero at other people’s houses before, so I knew what to expect from guitar, and immediately jumped on the drums, which Harmonix did a great job with. I never played with the RB1 drums, but supposedly the RB2 ones don’t clack as much when you hit them and have a little more bounce. They are extremely satisfying when you hit your stride, and not that hard to pick up. There’s a big debate raging out there over whether the RB drums serve as an intro into real drums. Obviously guitar is completely different from game to real life, but as far as drums are concerned it’s still pretty much the same thing. Obviously you would have to adjust a little to a real drum kit, but when you see someone able to do this you have to admit it would probably not be a big step for them. This afternoon alone I ascended from hardly being able to keep a simple beat in the drum trainer to medium difficulty and there’s some songs I can do on hard. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get better yet. Rock Band 2 has by far the best track list of any music game to date. Looking at the list before purchase I knew it was for me even though I didn’t recognize a majority of the songs. So far I don’t actually hate the other stuff as much as I expected. Unfortunately there’s too much metal, too much being any. What I want from this game is classic hits most people know and can easily get into with maybe some lesser known modern stuff thrown in, and Rockband 2 comes oh so close to that mark. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best yet. You can also fill out your track list with songs downloaded from their store, admittedly at a cost, but if you absolutely hate most everything on the disc you’ll almost definitely find something there. You get “Still Alive” from the excellent video game Portal and “Charlene (I’m Right Behind You)” by Stephen and the Colberts as free downloads, they’re both great. For some reason games like Rockband often seem to be the butt of jokes on the grounds that you’re standing in front of your TV pretending to be a rock star, except that you’re not. When I play FPS games I don’t pretend that I’m gunning down men with lives and families, I just play the game, it’s a challenge of reflexes and little more. The same goes for Rockband. You may say that there’s a big difference between playing instruments and shooting people, but I say that it’s a comparison I’m going to continue to make so deal with it. A lot of people say how about you go out and buy an instrument and learn to play it. OK then, while I’m at it I’ll buy a gun and learn to shoot it. Again you’ll say that there’s a big difference to playing instruments and shooting people, but I say tell that to elementary school orchestras everywhere, those concerts can be excruciating. What’s weird is that often the people who tend to be hardest on Rockband are musicians. This is a big budget video game with a huge following that has practically created its own culture fad dedicated entirely to what you love and do for a living, why are you not excited about that?

Conclusion: Rockband rocks! 98/100 (Two points deducted for heavy metal music).

Let me first explain something about my review process. I review things as I come to them, not as they are released. I’m generally too cheap or too lazy to go get new stuff all the time, I read or watch whatever I find when it gets to me. Mirror’s Edge was released over a month ago and just about everyone has complained about it and moved on, but not me, deal with it.

I really really wanted to give Mirror’s Edge a good review. It was the only game released this year that tried something different, and the demo was excellent, but it seems that that was as far as they got with the polishing. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun with the rest of the game, but it had a tendency to annoy the hell out of me at certain points that I just cannot forgive it for. One thing this game sorely misses is a quick save, and maybe that will be in the PC version, but on the PS3 you’re left to respawn wherever the game feels like putting you, it can either be right where you were, or miles back, it tends to put you further back at the more difficult parts. The story is lacking, it might have been better off without it, and the cut scenes look like esurance commercials, they jar you from the game’s otherwise clean appealing graphics. They would have done much better to keep you in the first person the whole time, Half Life style. One of the things I did like about the game was the camera, the motions and flailing limbs at the edges of the screen really put you in the game. A friend of mine sitting next to me pointed out that I was rocking back and forth on the couch as I swung from bar to bar. It was a lot of fun when you knew what you were doing and could string together a bunch of moves, but that would undoubtedly bring you to unfamiliar territory in which you would fumble for another five minutes before again managing to fluidly complete the next section. The combat was also annoying. The game makes a big show of teaching you how to punch and kick, but I hardly ever used them. In almost all cases using disarm is the best option, not only do you take out the enemy in one fell swoop, but you take their gun as well. When enemies are shooting at you, they have unlimited ammo and could fire at you forever, although a moment is all that’s necessary to take you out, but as soon as you pick up the gun you have one clip, and it runs out fast. Your accuracy at long range is non existent, it is very easy to fire at a far off target only to run out of ammo without hitting them once and leave a long empty space between you and your ever firing opponent. I liked it when there where one or two enemies in your path that you could work into your routine, treating them like any other solid obstacle, but the game occasionally presents you with an area with a number of enemies and not a lot of room to maneuver, which is annoying and doesn’t fit with the play style the rest of the game has.The motion sensing is insensitive, so for the most part I went with the button controls, but in the case of rolling, even that barely ever worked. The game wanted you to hit the button as you approached the ground, but not too close, finding this magical sweet spot eluded me for the entirety of the game, it seemed to work when it felt like it. Here’s a clever metaphor I came up with: EA is a student, and Mirror’s Edge is a paper they have handed in to me, the teacher, entitled Someday I’ll Be President. In order to not crush this child’s dreams forever I write good effort, but know that this child will never ever be president (although good effort seems to be about all it takes these days, but that would be admitting that Bush actually put effort into being president, which I doubt he did). The paper, although of good substance, is poorly written and full or grammatical errors.

Although I have mostly complained about this game, I really did enjoy it, and look forward to a hopefully improved sequel. Final score: 75/100.