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.)

Fuck if I know anything about them.