Less Stuff Please
I recognize that I’ve been drowning you in recommendations so there’s considerably less stuff “for you to check out” in this week’s newsletter. New Killers album better than I thought possible also Boston’s Sweeping Promises is fucking sick and I develop a working theory on video-game movies.
The Killers are Just Interpol (but better)
I have to disclose the fact that the best moment of my concert-going life is when I saw The Killers open their 2015 Firefly music festival set with “Mr. Brightside.” Just escape from quarantine with me for a minute here. This was the last set that I was going to see of this festival, it was on Sunday night. I was running on fumes, red bull, and vodka. Upwards of 50,000 people are gathered at the main stage, the lights go out and that mystical riff gets going. Lights up on Brandon, the fucking crowd screams every goddamn word.
I was kind of at a crossroads at that time. I had just finished my first year of college and I was making a kind of transition from my teenage experience with popular music to my adult experience with popular music. In the previous school year, I had been introduced to true college radio and the people who were real diehards for independent music, but I was still interested in the astroturf indie that WBRU (R.I.P.) played in the airways around Providence at that time. Being in college dorms, I saw examples of artists that the cool kids liked crossing over into the mainstream and becoming artists that were played at parties.
Acts like Tame Impala, Kendrick Lamar, Jamie XX, and Grimes made albums that were themselves at a bit of a crossroads that year. I guess Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly is a bit of an exception as this was an artist who inched his way into the mainstream by playing a bit more of an avant-garde auteur angle--his previous album is arguably a lot more accessible. But the rest of these artists were making some of their brightest music to date in that time and tapping into a wider audience because of it.
At that festival I basically absorbed music across all these categories with a smile. The one exception is that 2015 also happened to be the twilight hour of music festivals primarily being helmed by bands rather than more straightforward pop-stars, so artists like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé , or Ariana Grande, I wasn’t completely down for at this time (I’ve since grown out of the hating pop-stars phase too).
Anyways, I saw artists that have stood the test of time like Modest Mouse, Morrisey, and Paul McCartney and I also saw artists that kind of suck like Bastille and Walk the Moon and Matt and Kim that I would probably enjoy for the last time in my life. “Mr. Brightside” basically falls in at the exact center of it all. It’s tied very directly to my generation--if you went to a suburban middle school in the 00’s, you know all the words to this song--but it will live forever. It’s kind of silly but it’s also kind of perfect.
The new Killers album is the working definition of “it’s kind of silly but it’s also kind of perfect.” It’s all giant choruses and bright, brash synth leads. Propelled by lyrics like “If I don’t get out of this town/I might just be the one who finally burns it down” and “baby we’re a dying breed,” the band seems like they’re trying to conjure the best gay Springsteen knock-offs since “Run Away With Me.”
I will say that somewhat similarly to Taylor Swift’s Folklore, this is their play at pleasing the cool kids. The credits list a member of the band Foxygen (Jonathan Rado), Shawn Everett (the dude who mixed Golden Hour and all the War on Drugs albums), Alex Cameron, Weyes Blood, K.d. Lang. Basically, if you want an album to be labeled your “best in 10 years” by major indie-rock blogs, this is “Avengers assemble.” Still, this album showcases a band unleashing all their funnest attributes, ignoring any current trends, and not taking themselves too seriously--it’s just a joy-ride.
There’s some nice surprises too. When I initially listened to the singles (Caution/Dying Breed/My Own Soul’s Warning), I liked them but I did notice that they’re all the same basic structure. But luckily, you get songs like “My God,” which splices together a choir with Brandon’s campy romp of a hook; or “Imploding the Mirage” which goes for a slightly more subtle and breezy chorus; and the shameless 80’s fluff of “Lightning Fields” to shake things up. If there’s a major weakness it’s definitely the lyrics, which are more broad-strokes than anything Springsteen would put his name on, but I mean, it’s the Killers. They’ve always been in the U2 school of big feelings and imprecise language. It’s not fan service, but if any part of you has ever liked this band, this album is guaranteed to scratch that itch.
Sweeping Promises
Feel It Records is probably worth a deep dive but remember it’s less content week so I’m just going to talk about Sweeping Promises, who’ve just released Hunger For a Way Out with the label.
Okay, I lied a little bit. Do you ever have that thing where you listen to a band and later find out that the singer was in a band that was on one of your podcasts? No? This is an insane series of events that I’m about to describe.
In 2017, I didn’t know what to do with my summer other than listen to Tyler, the Creator, Lorde, and SZA (and work mornings in the Pawtucket School district as a janitor) so, I found this radio station in Boston called WBCA and emailed them asking to be an intern. They pitched me the idea of helping them start a show called WBCA Presents where they would have local bands come in, record a brief live-set and get interviewed (the works).
The deal with this station is that it was actually brand new. From my understanding, the station was created in the wake of the Boston Marathon Bombing because the city wanted a FM line available for them to broadcast a bunch of information in case of emergency. In the meantime, a sort of time-share was developed where this local TV station (BNN) could broadcast radio for part of the day, and Boston College could have another slice of the day. All this to say, I had to literally start from scratch and I had four months. It was hectic, I spent an inhuman amount of time looking up bands in Boston and trying to sell them on this idea. I had some relative success. This rapper Cliff Notez showed up with a trumpet player and everything which was sick and this insane punk band Spectramotiv got high in the bathroom and borderline wreaked havoc.
I was definitely too committed to this thing which did little for me other than occupy my time for four months, but there was one episode where another intern at the station asked if he could try and book a band so, he did and did a session without me there (i.e. I slept that week). This was at the tail-end of my time, so I didn’t really think about it much because I didn’t have to edit it.
Fast forward to about a year ago. I do little other than sit on the computer or the train all day and look up new bands. The legend Jes Skolnik tweets something about the band Pleasure Leftists and I am hooked, they perfectly blend soul-baring vocals and post-punk riffage, I buy their CD immediately.
Fast forward to three days ago. I run this newsletter and need bands that aren’t being reported on elsewhere so I go back to the record label that released the last Pleasure Leftists album (This is pure music discovery, baby). Their latest release is by Sweeping Promises and it is very good, so I want to know more. All I can find on them is their singer’s name (Lira Mondal) so I google her. It turns out she’s kind of a walking, talking music industry and is in a slew of different bands, one of them sticks out to me. Mini-Dresses. That’s right folks:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN. Probably nothing, but god, what a weird series of events. This is just like that time I worked for a greeting card company (yes, just like 500 days of summer) and went to headquarters and found a custom New Year’s card with my friend Ben on it just lying on the ground (Ben will probably be the first person to read this newsletter so shout out to him and his Dad’s insane new year’s card habit) (he’ll probably yell at me for linking the website so be sure to click on it.)
Anyways, back to business. Similarly to Pleasure Leftists, Sweeping Promises is plucky bass-line driven post-punk with a tasteful touch of pop-inflected melodies and vocals. I do have to admit that there’s a lot of music out there in this general vein and I think that Mini-Dresses might be a marginally better band. They’d fall somewhere under the dream-pop umbrella, but I think they’re album Heaven Sent escapes the slightly overdone washed-out reverb vibe and instead captures this nice vintage sound. It’s an album that is distinct from the rest of dream-pop in a way I feel Sweeping Promises isn’t necessarily distinct from the rest of post-punk. Still, no matter what Mondal is involved in, she gives it life and never seems too bored or cool or despondent. This Splitting Image EP is an expert 10-minute shredder:
A final note on the “generalizations about Lira Mondal’s bands” section, she mentioned in a piece with Boston Hassel that guitarist Caufield Schnug (epic name) is her partner in all things, so that’s cool. I think it’s interesting that she plays bass and sings so, she sings the melodies and grounds them with the bass playing. If I had to guess, based purely on the listening experience, I probably would’ve thought that she’s a singer who has a particular bass player that helps support the songs, but as the pair described on WBCA Presents, they have a very collaborative songwriting process so Schnugs involved in the melodic and lyrical material.
He’s also, of course, the guitarist, but I don’t really feel like there’s a specific throughline with the guitar playing. In contrast, Mondal’s bass playing is very distinguishable in all these projects. Schnug did mention interest in manipulating lap-top recording in different ways so maybe he’s more of a George Daniel-type general studio-use guy. Maybe that’s where you get a release like Dee-Parts, which basically sounds like “what if we took the bass playing and singing of Lira Mondal and pushed it somewhere else!” (It’s a much more atmospheric sound than the Hunger For a Way Out.) Regardless, another part of the story of this music is the partnership between Mondal and Schnug.
Hunger For a Way Out is probably the pair’s most well-produced album. Like Gang of Four’s big post-punk classic Entertainment!, it's a nice example of distilling your sound down to a skeletal foundation that you can later add things on top of. Whether it’s some doubles of Mondal’s voice, or some nice synth-lines, or even something as simple as the the drums switching over to a ride cymbal to make the whole texture a little looser, these songs build up momentum throughout giving the whole album a nice sense of propulsion.
It’s also amazing how many different emotional colors the pair pull together. “Safe Now” and “Hunger for a Way Out” have this kind of dire intensity, whereas “Atelier” is a bit more deadpan. Overall, the album is one where a cursory listen won’t shock you, but the more you hear, the more the band surprises.
An Incomplete Catalog of Video Game Cinema
If you read my Madden essay, you know that I’m open to the idea of video games pushing real life culture. So, what about movies? A couple weekends back, I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Speed Racer, and Tomb Raider and it felt like a syllabus on video game movies. Scott Pilgrim is the most literal of the three, but each of these movies all show an awareness that they’re a little ridiculous and they use that to great effect.
I think movies vs. video games can be a little bit of a chicken and the egg problem. Animation predates video games so it’s not like I can say that video game cinema is when movies break down realism and go for more outlandish effects. Also, a lot of trends in gaming go hand in hand with blockbuster movies. I mean some video games are literally made to be interactive versions of them, just this week Suicide Squad (the game) released a trailer the same day that Suicide Squad 2 (the movie) released a teaser.
Even outside of the direct movie-to-game pipeline though, movies and video games seem to move parallel to one another. Dating back probably to The Dark Night in 2008, there’s been a push this decade to take comic book movies more seriously and some video games like The Last of Us and Skyrim push to be a little bit more straight-faced than y’know Street Fighter. How do we measure these trends? Well, it’s hard. Did Christopher Nolan binge a bunch of Call of Duty in 2003 and then say “what if this were Batman?” Maybe?
I think the crux of video game movies is putting live-action characters in self-consciously unrealistic scenarios, which is the essence of gaming. Graphics are always getting better and games are always getting more immersive, but even more so than watching a movie, where you can turn your brain off and let it the film wash over you, you’re always aware that video games aren’t real--there’s a goddamn controller in your hand calling all the shots. I also think the structure of video games is important to video game movies. Co-op is possible, but I think having an individual character that has to face boss battles and small missions/tasks to fulfill a greater goal is key.
I’m tempted to then exclude the Michael Bay Transformer movies. These movies have giant battles and they obviously look like video games, but I think without the individualism, they don’t really feel like video games. Sure, Shia LaBeouf is in there ostensibly helping the robots, but does he actually do anything or does he just run around and yell a bunch? I also don’t think Michael Bay is trying to show any awareness that the robots aren’t real. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Tomb Raider, and Speed Racer, however, understand video game structure and style.
Scott Pilgrim and Speed Racer have developed cult followings since their release, but I think Tomb Raider is honestly kind of underrated. I’ll admit that its “concept,” if there is one, is simply “this is a popular video game, let’s make it a popular movie,” whereas Speed Racer and Scott Pilgrim have a lot more intention behind them.
With Scott Pilgrim, the video game stylization serves to showcase how immature and emotionally stunted the main character is by putting personal growth in the only terms he could understand: comic books and childish video games. Somehow, this Buzzfeed article has some of the most nuanced quotes from the Wachowskis about what they were trying to achieve with Speed Racer: “We were interested in cubism and Lichtenstein and pop art, and we wanted to bring all of that stuff into the cinema aesthetic.”
Nonetheless in all these movies, ridiculous things happen and nobody really questions them and each of them essentially feature one character with a pretty direct path going forward. For Scott Pilgrim, he has to defeat all the exes of his newfound girlfriend in order to date her, Speed Racer has to take down the corrupt racing industry by winning two major races, and Lara Croft has to go on a quest to unite two halves of a magic triangle to prevent its time bending powers from getting into the wrong hands.
All these things, I suppose could happen in other movies. Tomb Raider is basically Indiana Jones, for instance. But the way the plot advances is much like stuff you encounter in Super Mario or Zelda (or Tomb Raider lol). There’s lots of puzzles to find maps, maps that are puzzles, physical challenges that are also basically just giant puzzles. There’s this scene where Croft has to jump onto a swinging pillar in order to give it enough momentum to unlock the next step in the Tomb. Raiders of the Lost Ark, on the other hand, is more of a chase movie, it doesn’t completely focus on his quest to find the treasure, he also has to elude the Nazi’s. For Croft, the triangle also happens to unlock the end of the tensions with her rivals.
Aside from these movies, I think we can see the essence of video-game movies in other films. John Wick isn’t exactly a new formula, one man taking on an army in the name of vengeance, but the constant head-shots on all his targets is very third-person shooter. The wolverine movie this decade was called Logan and focused on a very Mad Max looking portrayal of the x-man. Even Whiplash’s searing individualism (an odd choice for a movie ostensibly about jazz, which is probably the most collaborative music ever) feels a little video-game. It definitely feels a lot more like those youtubers who are still posting videos of themselves playing guitar hero on expert than it does like a human being playing music with other human beings.
Like anything, this can also be bad. One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen is the latest Aquaman movie. This movie’s complete and utter obsession with oscillating action shots and straight-faced acting made it just completely joyless and even Christopher Nolan had the self awareness to know that he shouldn’t take this guy:
and turn him into something gritty and serious. But, when executed correctly the video game film can surely be a lot of fun.
-Donovan Burtan