One thing you can give Zooey Deschanel credit for, she’s a hard working woman. Regardless of your feelings about her status as a reigning icon of twee (a love it or hate it proposition if there ever was one), she doesn’t really ever seem to stop. Since She & Him’s debut Volume One dropped in 2008, it’s been followed up by Volume Two, A Very She & Him Christmas, not to mention Deschanel’s roles in six different movies and her own television show. For his part as the latter half of the duo, M. Ward has released two solo albums, been part of a joint effort with Monsters of Folk, along with his often overlooked session work. That’s a lot for any two people, and frankly, Volume 3 may be beginning to show signs of the duo slowing down.

This isn’t to say that the album is of poor quality. Since its inception, She & Him has always had a very mellow, whimsical sound, completely appropriate for romantic comedy soundtracks and sunny road trips. That’s a huge part of the duo’s charm; combined with Deschanel and Ward’s earnest appreciation of AM Gold, it makes for music that’s absolutely pleasant, studio-crafted pop. But four albums in, the formula is beginning to wear a little thin. The latest batch of songs presented on Volume 3 are simply not quite as catchy, not quite as captivating as “”Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” or “In the Sun,” while still being constructed of the same basic elements. Deschanel’s contralto remains as distinctive, and her ability to write a melody is still underrated. Ward’s guitar work is as fine as ever, with some of the most low-key, deceptively skilled chops around, and his production work adds the same warm layer as on their previous albums.

But, to put it bluntly, the songs just aren’t up to snuff. As with a bewildering number of recent releases in the musical world (Bowie, Depeche Mode and the Knife also being offenders), the album feels overly long at 14 songs. Although those tracks clock in at just over 42 minutes, there’s far too much filler. Truth be told, even the duo’s best songs tend to sound fairly similar, using the same tempos and instrumentation, and many of Volume 3’s songs are forgettable. Tracks like “Snow Queen” and “London” sound pleasant enough, but they don’t have strong enough melodies to distinguish themselves from the rest, coming off nearly as interstitial music at times. Even the initial single “Never Wanted Your Love,” with its orchestral swoop and Ward’s twangy guitar, sounds somewhat lifeless.

There are highlights to the album, to be sure, but She & Him sometimes overplay their hand there as well. While covering Blondie’s “Sunday Girl” is an interesting direction to go, Deschanel’s choice to add the alternate French verse may push it too far into quirk for even dedicated listeners. “Turn to White” benefits from relatively spare instrumentation and one of the singer’s finest vocal performances, while “Together” is the standout of the album, in large part because it departs from their usual style, adding a nearly funky guitar and backing brass to an already sterling hook. But too much of the album sounds like ideas nearing exhaustion. While their work is still pleasant to hear, Volume 3 threatens to become the kind of lightweight background music that She & Him have managed to avoid in the past. They might want to take some time to recharge before another outing.

For good and (mostly) ill, A Crack Up at the Race Riots is clearly the work of enfant terrible director Harmony Korine. Comprising half-filled pages of micro-shaggy-dog stories, handwritten notes, mucked-with photos and other disjointed elements, Crack Up bears the distinct stamp of its auteur, whose films unfurl in a similarly scattershot, collapsing anti-structure. As with his filmed vignettes, fragments of dialogue and description routinely end with left-field diversions or intrusions so random they do not even qualify as anti-joke punchlines, instead adding another element of some demented cosmic humor or observation. Barely 170 pages long, the book would probably fill less than 100 if all the page breaks were removed, yet this minimalistic layout perversely gives Korine’s text the feeling of being three times as long.

Disconnected from the natural flow of text from page to page, Crack Up does not offer characters, nor even clear themes to propel the reader. Rather, one must use Korine’s wisps of recurring subject matter as signposts to move forward. Topics include incest, confused sexual identity, ethnic caricature, cultural references and little people (referred to exclusively as midgets). Occasionally, a name like Clint Eastwood or “Silent Night” lyricist Joseph Mohr is invoked, offering the dim possibility of some kind of satiric foothold from which to get one’s bearings. But these figures serve as neither touchstones of a cultural free-for-all nor even ironic inversions of themselves. Instead, they are yet more mouthpieces for Korine’s podunk Weltanschauung, an affection for the marginalized that often betrays the position of privilege from which the author views them.

In many ways, the literary version of Korine’s brand of artistic communication is easier to digest than his films; by removing the visual component from the equation, there is that much less to puzzle over in his dubiously earnest underclass overviews. But it also divorces Korine from much of his empathy, trading the spontaneity and occasional ecstatic truth of his perverse observations for a concocted jumble of elements that do not seem so unforced when actively committed to paper. In Gummo, Korine’s camera hangs with a group of local teens whose conversation tips suddenly (and without the director’s foreknowledge) into open racism, a disturbing but revealing moment that inadvertently brings out the boys’ real selves, uncomfortable as that may be. In Crack Up, however, dialect-ridden Tupac letters and loose sketches of ethnic freaks who fell out of the worst frames of Robert Crumb comics turn Korine’s nonjudgmental approach into full appropriation. By offering no real characters from whom he can establish a perspective, Korine has nothing to hide behind when the unsettling implications of this half-doodled work trace back to him.

First released after Korine made Gummo, A Crack Up at the Race Riots shows off the worst of the artist. Trapped in a nebulous realm between sincerity and irony, Korine’s sketches name-check S.J. Perelman but lack the wit and the spontaneity of the great comic writer. Perelman could spin a complete short work from a phrase, where Korine’s idea of wordplay comes across in awkward, forced puns like, “Annie Lennox’s first job was as a fish fileter. At least it gave her plenty of opportunity to practice her scales.” In its more lucid moments, the book demonstrates the quality that makes Korine so hard to gauge as an artist, his general refusal to attach a narrative or a moral to his caricatures. Compared to other provocateur filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke, Korine does not shove a message down your throat, which can both ease the exploitative aspects of his work and exacerbate them. Korine’s subsequent film work, starting with the following year’s Julien Donkey-Boy and leading up to this year’s transcendent Spring Breakers, shows an artist coming into surer control of his talents, but this mostly forgotten curio too often brings out the worst in Korine. Perhaps that’s the book’s greatest contribution to Korine’s oeuvre, consolidating the worst of him to the page to make possible his greatest work elsewhere.

It’s hard to admit that next year marks the 20th anniversary of OutKast’s debut, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. It’s even harder to admit that fresh and clean, fur coat-toting, Ms. Jackson-apologizing feeling of Stankonia turns 13 this year. One moment you’re the hip hop flavor of the month and the next you’re royalty, a survivor, especially when your crew is defunct or low-burn simmering on indefinite hiatus. For those old enough, it’s hard to transition, recognize the up-and-comers such as Odd Future and Black Hippy have already seized the mantle. It just doesn’t seem fair.

But last year proved that hip hop isn’t just a young man’s game. E-40 continues to bust out one strong release after another while Nas fulfilled Jay-Z’s prophecy and finally made something that can stand up to Illmatic. Rising above it all was 38-year-old Killer Mike, the Atlanta MC who shot to prominence 12 years ago with a spot on the OutKast single “The Whole World.” Working with El-P, Killer Mike put out R.A.P Music, a release that towered over even great albums by Kendrick Lamar and Pluto, marrying the hardness of ‘90s rap with El-P’s claustrophobic beats.

Killer Mike is using 2013 to take a victory lap, opening shows for Big Boi, hitting up numerous summer festivals and then embarking on another trip with El-P later this summer. Doing his best to swallow up an empty stage, Killer Mike concentrated heavily on R.A.P. Music material during his set, dipping back to early albums with cuts such as “Ric Flair.” Less Dirty South than West Coast, Killer Mike tore into songs like “Big Beast” and “Reagan” with vicious intensity. Although his voice was ready to give out by the time “God in the Building” rolled around, Killer Mike proved that one MC and one DJ can still put on an engaging and forceful performance.

For every ounce of Killer Mike’s minimalism, Big Boi instead reveled in excess. Featuring a live band and a giant screen beaming OutKast videos and other promo clips, Big Boi played a nearly two hour set heavy on the material he ushered into the world with André 3000, carefully side-stepping most of the new material on his poorly received Vicious Lies & Dangerous Rumors. With Dungeon Family’s BlackOwned C-Bone filling in for his missing OutKast companion, Big Boi’s set floated by on more on the strength of the material than pure skill.

If I’m allowed to digress for a moment, I saw OutKast in concert in the height of their Stankonia days, playing alongside Moby and the Roots on the ill-conceived Area:One Festival. I still maintain it was one of the most disappointing performances I’ve ever seen. Flash forward 13 years. Big Boi may be better on wax than live, but watching the man break out “Bust,” “ATLiens” and “Rosa Parks” right at the show’s beginning was exhilarating.

Unlike Killer Mike, who owned his songs, Big Boi seemed to hide behind the material. With his mike turned down low and him hidden beneath a cap, sunglasses, thick chains and a camouflaged jacket, Big Boi had the moves and the energy but rarely emerged and grabbed the songs by the balls. While it was fucking awesome to hear “Ghetto Musick” segue into “B.O.B.” and sing along to “Ms. Jackson,” none of the performances transcended the recorded versions.

This feeling was only compounded when Killer Mike joined Big for a few songs such as “Ready Set Go” and a particular bouncy version of “The Whole World.” As Mike bellowed into his mike, Big sounded particularly inaudible, and while the headliner stood a few feet back, Mike hovered on the lip of the stage, even plucking a joint from the audience, taking a puff and handing it back.

Meanwhile, the ghost of Dré 3000 hung over the show, his image constantly flashing at the rear of the stage in the video shows. Let’s give Big Boi some credit: he’s out there busting his ass, making new music and staying away from Gillette commercials. As the packed audience sang along to “The Way You Move” and “In the A,” Big Boi easily topped that shitty OutKast performance from years before. But unlike Killer Mike, Big Boi seems moored in the past, content to play a show with truncated versions of old hits rather than taking the snot-nose upstarts, who are watching the throne, to task like he easily could.

Three friends come together for a quick vacation on a small, unpopulated island off the coast of Maine, a place they’d spent time as girls. Sarah (Kate Bosworth) is the instigator of the trip, having separately invited Lou (Lake Bell) and Abby (Katie Aselton), neglecting to tell either of them about the other’s presence. Lou and Abby haven’t been on speaking terms since an incident involving one of Abby’s boyfriends, and this is Sarah’s way to try and mend the broken friendship. They will go out to this island and rough it together, finding their kinship through a little good old fashioned bonding in the wild. Little do any of them know that it is going to get very, very rough indeed.

Black Rock is the brainstorm of Aselton, a filmmaker who’s the spouse of and frequent collaborator with Mark Duplass (perhaps most notably co-starring with him on the FX series “The League”). She handed him the story idea, he wrote the screenplay and then they did what all modern, scruffy creators do and turned to Kickstarter, earning pledges totaling more than $30,000 for the project. Aselton has said she wanted to make a more realistic horror film, one that draws on the notion of genuine relatability for the audience. Instead of mystical creatures or heavily contrived motivations for the antagonists, Black Rock is about simple, understandable bad decisions and the repercussions that stem from them.

When the women encounter a trio of men who’ve also come to the island, on an out-of-season hunting trip, they invite them for a group night around the campfire. Abby, drunk and reeling from emotional turmoil at home, starts flirting with Henry (Will Bouvier). When some messing around in the woods starts to go wrong, Abby defends herself with a nearby rock, mortally wounding Henry and enraging his two friends (Jay Paulson and Anslem Richardson), fellow veterans who credit Henry with saving their lives in an especially ugly incident in Afghanistan. The three women are left fighting for their lives, struggling to stay safe on isolated terrain where trained killers are determined to exact revenge.

As a director, Aselton is patient without really knowing how to turn the measured pace into suspense. Although there are a few surprises, Aselton and Duplass concentrate on a logical progression of events, sometimes providing that sense of realism that is the stated goal, but sometimes it makes the film feel somewhat rote. The characters often have overly plain motivations. No matter how game the cast is, they can only draw so much out of their roles. Bell particularly has vivid presence in her scenes, but even she can get only so far with slender material.

The aspect of Black Rock that works best is the messy physicality of it. Aselton stages action scenes with a deliberate lack of panache. When people fight, it is messy, clumsy, scrappy. Even with that approach, the director manages to always provide visual clarity as to what is going on, and there are times – as when the woman are trying to swim to salvation and the boat seems impossibly distant – when she frames the image especially well. Aselton may not have pushed her notion far enough to make a film that’s wholly satisfying, but the germ of her good idea is often present enough to make Black Rock intriguing. If only it had some depth to match its leanness, Aselton may have wound up with a film that delivered its aspirational impact.

For almost 30 years now, LL Cool J has been the poster boy for perpetual relevance in hip-hop. Famously urging us to not call his returns “a comeback” on his monumental 1990 single “Mama Said Knock You Out,” he’s really been the few rap artists to have both longevity and commercial success. While he’s by no means the only hip-hop artist to age gracefully over the years (lest we forget how Scarface, E-40, Too $hort and Snoop Dogg have also been active for ages), Cool J’s been touring the world rapping since a time when you had to actually explain to a crowd what rap was. After 12 studio albums on Def Jam, Cool J’s finally stepping out for the first time on his own with his latest release Authentic.

To date, Cool J’s been able to both chart and find a niche within several generations of hip-hop audiences. This is because his albums have followed a certain formula: mixing the trademark hard-hitting LL aggression or smooth Cool J ballads with an up-and-coming artist who’s just fresh enough to benefit from the Cool J co-sign, or re-introducing the veteran MC to the genre’s latest listeners. Whether it was a DMX or a Juelz Santana, this strategy has allowed Cool J to perpetually have a spot in the rap world without sounding dated or pandering. Authentic abandons this time-tested method in favor of a music industry seniors tour. I’m a bigger fan of Seal than most, but seeing him alongside Earth, Wind and Fire, Monica and Eddie Van Halen (all talented in their own right) on what’s supposed to be a contemporary hip-hop album is a bit perplexing. The youngest artist on here is Travis Barker, who contributes an absolutely unnecessary and out-of-place drum solo to “Whaddup.” Is this the same LL Cool J who managed to stay at the forefront of a youth culture spanning four decades?

Of course, if we take Cool J by his lyrics, his aims are different now. On “Closer” he raps, “Couldn’t give a damn if a young boy’s my fan / Long as his mama two-step to my jam.” This line of thought is completely contrary to what’s made hip-hop such a vibrant youth culture. It comes off hypocritical considering the man’s discography, and is outright painful considering what a tremendous downgrade in quality Authentic is compared to the rest of his catalog. Cool J’s never been one to follow trends per se, but he’s been versatile enough to create his own niche in every moment’s hip-hop soundscape. This is his one album that clearly doesn’t.

What makes this declaration even more puzzling is how, given the famous names alongside him and the way the album actually sounds, Authentic is desperately trying to sound like a 2013 release but doesn’t fully grasp what’s happening in hip-hop today. If Cool J wants Authentic to be as “authentic” as he’s boasting it is, he should take a page out of the Beastie Boys’ To the 5 Boroughs playbook and just make a neo-classical old school rap album. When he channels that trademark Cool J bark on the Snoop Dogg-assisted “We Came to Party” or the subtle soul of “Give Me Love,” we’re reminded of the classic Cool J moments that’s made his most famous records so iconic. Instead of that, or even rapping about his uniquely interesting day-to-day (like when he released a song in 2009 about his “NCIS” TV series, or rapped from the perspective of a genetically modified shark on the Deep Blue Sea soundtrack) we get him literally bragging about being the “oldest man at the club.” We don’t even get the benefit of an outrageous “message” song like this year’s headline-grabbing “Accidental Racist.” (Brad Paisley DOES appear here on the much tamer “Live for You.”) The only real moment of LL having some thought-provoking hunger comes at the album ending semi-banger “We’re the Greatest” where he, out of nowhere, exclaims, “I got a lot of crazy crazy on my mind / Like what’s the real reason that the Pope resigned?” The topic is then immediately dropped and never returns, effectively giving us too little, too late. It always seems that when Cool J is at his lowest, he finds a way to return with something great. If Authentic is any indication, his next album should be an all-time classic.

On a superficial level, the National should be relegated to cult status, critically-lauded and beloved by a core audience. Their unflinchingly honest portrayal of 21st Century malaise and despondence, social anxiety and regret should be a lead weight holding them back. And yet, what should be so limiting has conversely come to be the spark that launched them into the stratosphere. Perhaps it’s that whatever despair plagues their work is persistently tempered with a desire to persevere. And as shown throughout Trouble Will Find Me, the National maintains their modus operandi of zeroing in on individual alienation, the tales composing their sixth record standing as microcosmic examples of unfulfilled longing in a globalized, digital age. That pervasive feeling of isolation clearly resonates on a large scale, as proven by the National’s newly cemented status as a headlining, in-demand group.

Trouble Will Find Me, then, is the album of a band on the other end of a world conquered by 2010’s High Violet, and it is their declaration that such conquest was no fluke. Quieter overall than High Violet, in the same way Boxer was to predecessor Alligator, Trouble Will Find Me forgoes immediate reward for slow-rising simmer. As a result, the melodies are not as instantly recognizable. Instead, brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner create evocative mood pieces, the threads of which are woven together in a layered tapestry. Frequently, the songs start with minimal instrumentation, beguiling the listener as they subtly grow expansive. The tendency of the music to swell and break is underpinned by the rhythm section of the band’s second set of brothers, Scott and Bryan Devendorf. The latter’s unconventional drumming style is the National’s ace in the hole, going with a downplayed shuffle in “Fireproof” and one-two-three power blasts in “Sea of Love,” one of the album’s few avowed rockers. Such a pairing of the rhythmic Devendorfs with the more esoteric inclinations of the Dessners manifests in a marriage between dirges and hymnals, the seemingly oppositional forms most closely linked on “Heavenfaced.”

At the center as always is Matt Berninger and his insightful words delivered through rough yet consoling baritone pipes. As a lyricist, Berninger again makes his case as one of the finest in the indie realm, speaking from perspectives of the desolate and the insecure, reassuring the lonely that they are not as alone as they may believe. Opener “I Should Live in Salt” finds a meeker-than-usual Berninger providing a deprecating tale of two lovers living like planets orbiting the same sun, never managing to collide. The song starts like a whisper, epitomizing the paradigm employed so often on the record of building into a cathartic exhalation. As such, it is the first of several bedroom anthems of self-realization, wherein Berninger bemoans his decision to leave one behind, but is unable to keep from picking at the scab, repeating, “I should leave it alone/ But you’re not right.” He invokes the imagery of a desert of salt as what he believes to be a fitting punishment, implying the sucking of moisture from his body, leaving him a brittle husk. Such self-deprecation could be melodramatic, but the musical accompaniment of the Dessners and the Devendorfs saves Berninger’s words from that pitfall and leaves them genuinely moving.

With lead single “Demons,” Berninger begrudgingly champions the integrity of holding onto misery rather than compromising for relief. His narrator makes the case that it’s better to own your demons as essential to your identity instead of taking the chance of casting them out and winding up hollow. A theme of stagnancy, and of that stagnancy’s ability to become comforting and to supersede the drive to evolve, pervades the record. In particular, “Slipped” stands as a sequel to “Demons,” the speaker fixed to a pole in his past, the past itself a roadblock to personal development. “I keep coming back here where everything slipped,” Berninger sings mournfully, before declaring with recalcitrant pride, “But I won’t spill my guts out.”

Entwined with this theme of emotional fixation is that of demythologizing the sunshine-and-rainbows concept of love. The pinnacle of revered feelings is treated as an addiction in “This is the Last Time,” initial exhilaration leading to desensitized dependence. The protagonist has a masochistic bent as he repeatedly indulges in a surreptitious hookup. He seeks resolution to a fling that cannot end pleasantly, yet he can’t help but relapse when the song’s rising momentum collapses at the end. That debilitating quality of love flares up again on “I Need My Girl,” the music swirling as a whirlpool around Berninger as his character circles the drain with the repeated, “I keep feeling smaller and smaller.”

The record splits its zenith between “Graceless” and “Don’t Swallow the Cap.” The former, which is bound to be an encore staple when the National plays live, serves as Trouble Will Find Me’s equivalent to High Violet’s “Conversation 16.” There are some particularly clever turns of phrase here, in particular, “God loves everyone/ Don’t remind me” pointing out how vapid that trite attempt at comfort is, and “I’m trying but I’m gone/ Through the glass again,” a Lewis Carroll reference mirrored with that of alcoholism. Meanwhile, “Don’t Swallow the Cap” features Berninger giving a firsthand account of mental illness and institutionalization, numbly reciting a litany of observations as he details the hoops one must jump through to convince hospital staff that you are okay.

Trouble Will Find Me is in every way the logical continuation of the National’s previous offerings, and it marks their fourth success in a row. It’s virtually assured to top High Violet’s mainstream recognition, showing the National have proven in this era of technology-saturation and interpersonal disconnect that valid, artistic music can be appealing on a mass scale.

Linda Sinclair (Julianne Moore) is a 40-something high school English teacher, and a good one. She loves her job and fine literature, inspires students and is well respected in her community. Former student Jason Sherwood (Michael Angarano) accidentally surprises her late one night at an ATM, and, after recovering from the pepper spray, manages to tell her how encouraging she had been in high school. In fact, he has just graduated from NYU, but, despite his best efforts, couldn’t get a production of his thesis play mounted. Linda reads his play, loves it and decides it should be presented by the high school theater troupe. Things quickly spiral out of control, as things tend to do in romantic screwball comedies, and Linda’s life takes a beating as she weathers the major changes brought on by this decision.

Despite its quirky stylization, complete with stuffy British narration provided by Fiona Shaw, The English Teacher is just another iteration of a common romantic cliche: a woman with standards is a woman destined to die alone. All the usual sitcom tropes are deployed to this end, including the running conceit of Linda silently grading every man she meets. By the time Linda pepper sprays Jason, the film has made it clear that she is judgmental and unduly suspicious, and these traits are dangerous to all around her. It’s a variation of the hysterical woman stereotype, and the film doesn’t even try to hide it; when Linda is told she just needs to get laid, she storms off in outrage, but a moment later is crying as she buys several pints of ice cream to nurse her loneliness.

Though the film’s judgment of Linda is unfair, she does make her share of mistakes. She embarks on an ill-advised fling with Jason, unaware that he is misleading her about his life and also dating Halle (Lily Collins), the high school lead of his play. Campy theater teacher Carl Kapinas (a typecast Nathan Lane) is an opportunistic liar, and the school wants to censor the play for content. Despite this being a situation where many people screwed up, Linda takes the brunt of the blame. Everything that goes wrong is laid at her feet, the result of her alleged need for a man.

Not that Jason gets any better treatment. He’s a whiny, crotch-scratching loser, though clearly seen in a sympathetic light, primarily because we go through most of the film without realizing the kind of person he is. Once we do realize it, he essentially disappears from the film, and the character is never made to suffer any kind of cinematic karma. Linda meanwhile is flattened by a 2-ton comedy-sized anvil full of cinematic karma — not to be confused with actual karma — that involves her accidentally rubbing pepper spray into her own eyes and crashing her car.

Much of the film is spent as major characters scold her for their perceptions of her misdeeds, perceptions that rarely match what actually happened. Dr. Tom Sherwood (Greg Kinnear) is intended to be a voice of reason, but Kinnear tones Tom’s moralizing down, and to great effect. His performance adds necessary realism that the film itself tries hard to avoid, but shouldn’t. There is also a really great moment with Jessica Hecht as Linda’s principal, who threatens and scolds, but you can tell in her eyes she knows she’s at least half wrong to do so. Though Moore gives a solid turn and never lets her character be demeaned — humiliated and embarrassed, yes, but never demeaned — one wishes she would have taken a lesson from her co-stars and toned down the hysterics, or maybe used one of her outsized facial expressions when confronted with obvious lies at her expense.

In the service of paralleling Jason learning to grow up and take criticism, Linda takes all the criticism she gets without comment, as though making decisions based on others’ lies is the same as an artist coming to terms with good faith critiques of their work. It’s presented as personal growth for her, and there is the germ of a point here, and an interesting discussion could be had on the roles of artists and critics, as well as directors and producers. But the film spends too much time metaphorically viewing the situation from Jason’s side of the story, wallowing in the unfairness of ill-informed criticism.

It’s a sulky artist’s revenge fantasy, subjecting a critic to criticism of their personal lives, even though the two types of critique are simply not parallel; a teacher being punished for serious breaches of conduct is in no way similar to a playwright receiving a terrible review, and it’s ridiculous, even in the highly stylized world of The English Teacher, to claim otherwise. There are entertaining moments and some fine performances, but ultimately, it’s difficult to see the film as anything but barely-disguised payback against critics and teachers, concealed inside a thick coating of safe sitcom humor and the stereotype of a lonely, hysterical middle-aged woman who just needs a man in her life.

Is this a not-so-secret message from Reggio, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it central nugget in a film named after a Hopi word that means “1. Crazy life. 2. Life in turmoil. 3. Life out of balance. 4. Life disintegrating. 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living”? For a movie that begins and ends with juxtaposed ancient paintings from Utah’s Horseshow Canyon and a rocket ship exploding into the night, Koyaanisqatsi is likely Reggio’s best approximation of the aboriginal idea of Dreamtime, an exploration of a planet careening towards obliteration.

Reggio has said that “it is up to the viewer to take for himself/herself” what Koyaanisqatsi means, that he set out to make a purely cinematic experience. But I think the director is being coy as his film has deliberate and separate movements that slide towards the idea of man-made extinction. Much of the film’s first segment is time-lapsed beauty of clouds roiling over the vacant deserts and canyons of the American Southwest. Demystified from the ghosts of Hollywood that surround the region, Reggio’s Southwest is a place of quiet desolation, one that is untouched by the ill effects of mechanization.

If Reggio’s long shots of natural pillars, swales and arroyos isn’t mesmerizing enough, Philip Glass’ mesmeric score plays as a haunting elegy to these haunting corners of the world. Shifting away from the splendor of this unspoiled wilderness, Koyaanisqatsi becomes a cacophony of urban images, belching smokestacks and spider veins of highway that are choking the life out of the planet. Reggio may wait until the end of the film to show us the definition of its title, but its images make it plain that there is a mission statement at play here.

Besides Glass’ score, Reggio is also armed with cinematographer Ron Fricke who would go on to director the similar Baraka. Much of Koyaanisqatsi’s cityscapes are shot in frenetic time-lapse, presumably to show all of the human cogs at work to keep the city alive and fed. Fricke would later re-use many of these motifs in Baraka, but the assembly lines, brokers scurrying across the floor of the Exchange and New York traffic in fast motion made their first appearances here.

Koyaanisqatsi features a mix of images both beautiful and horrific. Its final images are among its most haunting. A rocket ship hurtles upward into the sky, escaping a planet ridden with pollution and madness. But just a few seconds into its ascent, the rocket explodes (a combination of footage from the Saturn V launch and the explosion of an Atlas-Centaur rocket from the early ‘60s). As Glass’ score intones in the background, the camera remains transfixed on a piece of the rocket as it plummets back to the earth, a white plume of vapor cutting into the pureness of the azure sky. The piece of the rocket continues to spiral downwards, Reggio never allowing us to look away from its mad dance of death. Is this the Icarus effect? Have we gotten too close to the sun for our own good?

There are songs on the album that fall outside of the main topic area – the a capella lament on soldiering and war “Tender Comrade,” justice system takedown “Rotting on Remand” and, most notably, “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards,” one of Bragg’s signature songs – but the bulk of the album has a striking unity. This is the long, sorrowful story of a man who has fallen in love with the wrong woman and paid for it in misery. Bragg writes with a piercing honesty and perfect sense of insightful detail, making it the perfect album for wallowing in the sadness of dashed romance. On “Little Time Bomb,” he sings, “He holds your letters, but he can’t read them/ As he fights this loneliness that you call freedom,” cutting right to the core of the pain of being dumped, a pain that is heightened by the sense that the other party is moving on with an alarming sense of relief.

Befitting the downbeat subject matter, most of the music on the album is somber and slow (album opener “She’s Got a New Spell” is one of the few that has the stridency of Bragg’s anthemic protest songs), but that doesn’t mean it’s sparse, just a man and a guitar strumming out his anguish. Workers Playtime is co-produced by Joe Boyd, who’d done significant work with the likes of Nick Drake and Fairport Convention, bringing a sense of fullness and drama to the individual tracks. There’s a richness to the production that avoids becoming overly busy or intrusive, always highlighting Bragg’s emotive vocals. The clarity and directness of “Valentine’s Day Is Over” and “The Price I Pay” (“There’s something inside that hurts my foolish pride/ To visit the places we used to go together/ Not a day goes by that I don’t sit and wonder why/ Your feeling for me didn’t last forever”) is enhanced by the studio care that’s been brought to them, the kind attention that becomes the production equivalent of a sympathetic ear, always listening with the goal of complete understanding.

If it seems like this should add up to a grand bummer of an album, the end result is paradoxically the opposite. There’s such a sense of catharsis throughout the album that it becomes almost invigorating. It’s sadness worn with pride or at least a survivor’s strength. On “The Only One,” Bragg expresses his sense of isolation: “I long to let our love run free/ Yet here I am a victim of geography/ And oh you cannot hear me/ Oh you cannot hear me/ Can anybody hear me out there?” On Workers Playtime, Bragg is making sure he’s being heard, just as surely as he did before, when he was aiming his acoustic guitar and sing-along songs at the greater injustices of society. Making a similar impact when dwelling on far more personal matters of the heart showed that Bragg has greater range than was previously thought. Maybe the subtitle should have been “The Transformational Fourth Album.”

There’s been something of a resurgence of industrial music. It’s never gone away entirely, of course, but until recently it hasn’t enjoyed the same impact on popular culture that it did in the ‘90s. Trent Reznor’s all grown up and he’s got himself a nice haircut and a good job rubbing shoulders with Hollywood directors and legendary music moguls like Jimmy Iovine. Ministry’s Al Jorgensen is still doing his thing, but there are only so many times you can loop a metal riff over presidential speech samples before the formula gets a little tired. It would almost appear that there was just nothing to be angry about anymore. So if you’re an industrial music artist in 2013 and you’re looking for something to bark into a filtered vocal effect while a dance floor is attacked with an angry 140 BPM thumper, what do you complain about? Army of the Universe has decided to begin with hipsters.

Why are our pencil-mustachioed friends taking such a beating? I’ve never met a hipster who even had an opinion on dark electro music, and believe me, if they did, they’d give it to you. The title alone suggests an opportunistic attempt to render the band as a bunch of meanies. It’s not even a metaphor – this is really about hipsters. The truth is that it doesn’t matter much. The lyrics fade into insignificance rather quickly. Album opener “The Hipster Sacrifice” introduces us to an electro groove straight out of a techno toolbox before the accompaniment of metal guitar riff samples kick in. Littered throughout the song are rapid-fire squelches, which emerge to give the song some punch. The vocals are fairly typical of the genre and even more so of their home region – think Ramstein doing Willie Nelson’s “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”. It’s a weird thing to say but in all my years of listening to industrial and EBM music I can’t recall hearing a German band who didn’t sound, to some extent, inappropriately sinister while singing relatively mundane lines. “A Visionary Story” seems like a straight up pop rock track but for the requisite electro bass, then vocalist Lord K croons, “Why are you so afraid/ To become one with me?,” the latter half delivered with a cringe-inducing vocal emphasis. You can almost envision the band down-stroking their keytars and glaring stalker-like over some too-tiny opaque spectacles.

These days it’s artists like vProjekt, ESA and Die Sektor who are doing the innovating, and the scene, despite having crawled under a rock for the greater part of a decade, has actually evolved considerably. For this reason, The Hipster Sacrifice comes off more like a throwback record which fails as modern industrial but succeeds at electro-rock. There are undoubtedly some catchy, head nod-inducing rhythms on the title track, and the first single, “Until the End,” is equally appealing inasmuch as it’s easily mistaken for something by KMFDM. Also worth noting is the band’s heavy use of dubstep-style synths that have been increasingly bubbling up in other genres. While they’re not pioneers here (hat tip to Front Line Assembly’s AirMech and Die Sektor’s The Final Electro Solution), it definitely adds a refreshing update to the sound. A dark bass wobble here, a liquid warp over there – it all helps make what would otherwise be a mediocre record that much more appealing.

Fans of Lords of Acid, Stabbing Westward or Econoline Crush will find a lot to love here, possibly even the follow-up record they wished had been made. “Coin Operated Girl” is the most compelling track, if only because the band strips it down to barer components. The beat is minimal but consistently fast, and the vocals are buried a little deeper in the mix, peeking out from behind a great distortion-washed line. It’s merciful that there are no ballads on the record, particularly as the subject matter seems to hover around the usual pop tropes and relationships. “In Another Place” is a completely laid-back rock ‘n’ roll track which shows an uncanny aptitude for a powerful pop hook. “The Weight of the World,” in fact, throws down a sampled guitar hook that wouldn’t be out of place on a Rick Springfield single. Each of the tracks has obviously been given the same level of attention and the level of production quality shows.

While this won’t appeal to industrial or EBM purists in any way, it will undoubtedly fill a void for the in-betweeners who aren’t ready to dive into the gothic depths of the genre’s anger and despair. For those who prefer instead flirt with danger without straying too far from the club floor, they have The Hipster Sacrifice.