He was just wandering through the city today. There was nothing he had to do  for anyone, nothing on his mind, his headphones on he went out the door and  started walking towards the bus stop. The same voice he’d heard all month  starts singing to him again. The guy is talking about parties and beaches and  dancing to the tom-toms, it sounds like a waltz. He met a girl there but she  was married, so… Is this year better than the last one? He gets on the first  bus that comes along, pushed by the echoing guitar that tells him it’s OK to  loiter. He finds a free seat by the window and looks at the sky. He hears the  guy singing about the decades flying by.  “I’ve been doing this for awhile”,  he whispers to himself. The sky looks cloudy but it’s better that way. “It’s  gonna be a good year. Out of the darkness and into the fire”

So there’s a bit of a storm coming along.  “Well, doesn’t matter”, he thinks  to himself. “I’m going away to the islands tomorrow; maybe I won’t even come  back for awhile. Would seven years be enough for a holiday?” He reaches for  his inside pocket and takes out a bottle. He takes a sip of the hard stuff,  and soon enough things start moving faster, and everything’s spinning a bit.  “Maybe I’ll send her a postcard: <<I keep seeing you in the stars, the  half-moon and the setting sun>>. That sounds kinda lame though. I should get  off this fucking bus.”

The sun is setting by now. The sky is red, and he hears a song called “Red  Moon”. The wind is getting rough, he can feel some raindrops on the back of  his hand. The piano, the gentle strumming, then the Mexicans playing their  trumpets and horns. The chorus ends on a major chord, but we need to go  through a minor to reach the verse.  The wind is blowing dust in his eyes, but  the waltz keeps playing calmly and everything looks beautiful. Tomorrow  morning, there’s hope that she’ll be home, by his side. He remembers how  they’d go out dancing to this place she knew, and the band would always be  playing some song they both loved. He takes another sip of the hard stuff to  drive the memory away. “It’s just that I still call you mine, I’m still  hanging on”.

By now there’s no one left in the streets, the thunder and lightning drove  everyone away, the sky is black and blue. He finds himself in a familiar  neighborhood, it’s the one where his friend Sophia lives. He knocks at her  door and later on, things get hectic. She’s always a good friend, but he can’t  see her face through the cigar smoke.

Well, he wakes up about two hours after midnight, feeling like shit. “Bad  luck, you’ve come for me. What am I doing here, I don’t need this”. Now he’s  leaving in the middle of the night, just as he came in the evening, everything  just the way it was found. He grabs a cab to the airport, wondering what  happened to him as he replays through the days that have brought him here. All  he wants to do now is wander down an open road and keep going.

* * *

Now he’s on a plane, he’s flying higher, back on his own, towards a new  country. Well this is it. Things are looking up now. He’ll just go see the  world. When was it that he fell asleep exactly? And when did he start dreaming  all of this? “If she would just throw me a line, I’d probably jump at it. Why  does it feel like the world is ending“.  The trumpet and the trombone are  still echoing in the hall, but he’s waited long enough. It feels like I’m  gonna wake up soon. It’s just that dreaming is all a man can do. You know how  you sometimes have those dreams, especially when you’re young, where you’re so  perfectly happy that you wish you’d have never woken up?

– stiev

9/10

the walkmen @ myspace

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Film noir directed by the great Billy Wilder, starring the also great Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson. This was a truly thrilling watch for me.

Barbara Stanwyck waiting for her man

The three major characters are all flawless, but I think E G Robinson deserves a special mention: he plays the insurance claims investigator so passionately, he almost elevates insurance to an art form. Also, I’d seen him before, playing the old guy from Soylent Green, but I only realised it when I looked him up.

Edward G Robinson is a badass dude

Double Indemnity has everything you could ask of a film noir: the decadence, the suspense, the badass cool talk – all supported by wonderful direction, acting and script. I think my favourite bit of dialogue would be:

Walter: Afraid, baby?

Phyllis: Yes, I’m afraid. But not of Keyes. I’m afraid of us. We’re not the same anymore. We did it so we could be together but instead of that, it’s pulling us apart, isn’t it, Walter?

Walter: What are you talking about?

Phyllis: And you don’t really care whether we see each other or not.

Walter: [kissing her] Shut up, baby.

Ohhh yes, this movie just oozes all kinds of cool. The less said about the plot the better, you just have to experience it really.

– prowler

9.8/10

torrent | imdb

What do you know about Northern Europe? Damn right, it’s cold. Last summer I went to Denmark and had to wear three shirts at once, while the locals walked around in shorts and tees. That’s pretty hardcore, and probably has a lot to do with their Viking heritage (btw, they pronounce “Viking” as “Wiking” – haha that’s hilarious). Those people knew how to live – eat tons of meat, have sex with blonde chicks and kill people. ‘Course, times have changed, and nowadays the North (including Iceland) are better known for their music. Give Scandinavian people musical instruments and they’ll either create some gay crap that you’ve heard a million times before or something truly special, that shines out like the Northern Lights. Also, some of them worship Satan, but may be included in either of the aforementioned categories.

Detektivbyrån hail (you always have to use the word “hail” when referring to Vikings) from Sweden, a country sadly upstaged musically by its neighbours, ever since ABBA split up. I’d like to be able to say that their music is influenced by Swedish folk tunes, but I can’t imagine people gathering around igloos and playing the accordion, I just can’t. So to me Wermland sounds like some sort of carnival music. Or, rather, it makes me think of and old organ grinder, playing his ditties in the street, as a dance troupe of graceful polar bears perform ballet.

See, it’s like this. First we hear the glockenspiel. In this context it sounds like someone is gently tapping icicles, while inside a cave atop a mountain. This is the point where the polar bears come in and do their merry acrobatics. The audience is relaxed; a few people smile and go “Heh.” Helga takes Harald’s hand for the first time. A child looks at his grandpa and believes him dead; the old man is just caught up in reverie. A man yawns, but just then the accordion kicks in.

Now, the song becomes either a bittersweet lament (Sista Tryckaren) or a good old polka (Generation Celebration – not polka really, but you get the picture). Most of the time the instruments play in unison; occasionally one of them cedes the spotlight to the other, but only for a brief moment, and the lead part one musician plays is repeated (yet still sounding fresh) by the other, a little later. Fom time to time, a synth that kinda sounds like a theremin takes over lead duties from the accordion. This change is seamless, and in no way detracts from the folk beauty of the music.

By the end of the album, I found the accordion a bit tiring (we’ve all heard that pam-ram-pam, pam-ram-pam thing). I played it again and concluded that as it was both melancholic and full of mirth, it must be about as much fun as you can have wearing three shirts at once.

– moceanu

9.3/10

detektivbyrån @ myspace

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“Punk’s not dead, it just smells bad.” Never have these words rung truer than in the case of Young@Heart, a documentary about the eponymous chorus, which is made up of really old people. The members’ average age is 80, yet they sing hits by The Clash, the Ramones and Sonic Youth. “If it’s too loud, you’re too old”? Nah, these grandpas and grandmas (one is even a great-great-grandma) are down with the scene like you wouldn’t believe.

Yeah, right. The chorus coordinator is a crazy funky-haired manchild whose greatest skill is picking the most moronic songs for the elderly to perform. Irony runs rampant throughout the film, but without blinking they rehearse I Wanna Be Sedated, Fix You, and motherfucking I Feel Good. They even cover Schizophrenia by Sonic Youth, which is a bad song to sing unironically, but coming from the mouths of people who may very well be suffering from that illness, it’s unbearable.

Halfway through the film, some of the chorus members die. We are told that one of the older members had to retire from touring at some point, after having a heart attack on stage. Yet more irony, given the chorus’ name, but throughout his monologues on why he enjoys singing and what his tombstone will read, he remains oblivious.

The climax is a would-you-believe-it sold-out concert at some theatre. The unremarkable but crowd-pleasing I Feel Good gets the most applause, while the audience sits patiently through Schizophrenia, whose performance I find amusingly similar to a school play. The people paying for this… thing are satisfied, although I have a sneaking suspicion that if it were midgets on stage singing, instead of old people, they would still say it’s “very very very good.”

Yes, the Young@Heart chorus is just a novelty act, one that claims that anyone can sing any song. Bullshit. Having a wrinkled 92-year old woman (who fancies herself some sort of hot sexy babe throughout the film, ironically of course) recite the first lines of Should I Stay Or Should I Go is kinda funny when you think about it, but you’d only think of putting that into practice if you were really drunk and out of touch with reality. The singers have lost their grip on reality themselves – they think that singing punk songs (IRONICALLY) is good for their health, but it’s just a healthy dose of escapism.

– moceanu

5.5/10

young@heart – imdb | trailer

It’s a film about a Jew gradually remembering his time before and during this massacre of Palestinian refugees in 1982. It’s presented as a documentary, interspersed with flashbacks that occasionally take the form of music videos. At the same time, it’s a very personal picture; director Ari Folman himself is at the centre of the film and his uncovering of memories is what carries the film forward.

Unfortunately, Waltz with Bashir ends up being a collage that for me lacked cohesiveness, and soon made me stop caring about the people on screen.

It’s for viewers like me probably that Folman showed real images of the aftermath at the end – his intention was to remind us that this wasn’t just an animated movie, and what happened there was real; instead it just felt manipulative and tacky, and I didn’t buy it.

There is such a thing as a good dramatic war animation film, but Waltz with Bashir ain’t it. I give it points for the cool visual style and the handful of nice scenes.

Oh, and even the title is deceptive: I don’t remember hearing any waltzes in the film. Unless Jews waltz in 7/8, that is.

– prowler

5.2/10

website | imdb

interview with the director, where he correctly describes the film as being basic and banal in substance

Hi there. I am currently free from the burden of employment. As such I have lots of spare time, which I spend sat on a chair, with music blasting into my ears and radiation slowly burning my eyes away. From time to time I sip coffee, in an effort to prolong this behavior. As a consequence, I think I might have developed ADD. This prevents me from reading more than a few sentences in the span of 60 seconds and listening to songs longer than three minutes in a single session. Remember the ‘60s, when every song was at most three minutes long? Man, those were the days; too bad Bob Dylan went and ruined it for everyone with an awesome organ riff.

But, hark! I am in luck, for my playlist holds the debut album of three ladies who cater to the needs of my Internet-burned brain. When I first heard the Vivian Girls, I looked back to the time I first heard the Ramones. There I was: a teen-age metalhead prostrating myself at the well-dressed feet of Yngwie Malmsten, when out from my speakers came this fast, catchy, danceable music played without a hint of pretension. It was immature, sure, but therein lay its charm (I have since abandoned the growls of angry northern men and settled comfily into my Converse shoes and Beatles hairdo).

I, for one, can’t have fun with an album if I don’t feel that the musicians were having fun when they recorded it. This record gets top marks in that department, let me tell ya. Dance-y beats abound, there are a few surf riffs here and there, but most of the 21 minute playtime is bubblegum-y pop with distortion. The pretty vocals and lo-fi production go beautifully together, conjuring up in my mind a favorite party number – 52 Girls by the B-52s. Just as that seminal track, here the lyrics are less important – she could be singing about Russian foreign policy and I would still shake my ass. Oh yes. Anyway, what was I saying?

Err…. yeah. It took a tremendous effort (with liberal use of the backspace key) on my part to write these three paragraphs. Thankfully, Vivian Girls is really easy to listen to. So easy, in fact, that you may not notice it when it first flies by. Upon a second listen-through, you feel compelled to turn the speakers up. By the time you’re listening to the album for the third time, you’ve pushed your chair somewhere to the back of the room. Fourth play: “I BELIEVE IN I BELIEVE IN NOOOOTHING I BELIEVE IN I BELIEVE IN NOOOOOTHING NOOOOTHING NOOOOTHING” <- that’s you.

– moceanu

8.5/10

vivian girls @ myspace

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