My Month of Entertainment - September 2006

May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006

Another new era started this month as I finally welcomed iTunes and an iPod into my life. Combined with our experiment with Netflix, I'll never have to leave the house for entertainment again!

CDs

Actually, I guess "CDs" isn't the correct term anymore since I don't actually own a hard copy of any of these. With the iPod came a $50 iTunes card, and with a magazine I bought came a "25 free downloads" trial offer with eMusic.com. In other words, I didn't actually pay for any of the music below (though I obtained all completely legally...I swear!).

Continuum, John Mayer - Being that John Mayer hates his teenage fanbase as much as I do, I feel it's okay to continue to (secretly) buy and enjoy his albums. His live album, Try!, with his John Mayer Trio, showed off his incredible guitar chops and his overall good taste in music (covering Ray's "I Got a Woman", among others), and it was a nice palate-cleanser for his new album with his previous band. Continuum is, in a word (or two) laid back. I really like "Waiting for the World to Change", along with a couple songs that were also on the Try! album, "Gravity" and "Vultures." There's no "Daughters" or "Your Body is a Wonderland" on this album (thankfully), and really there are only a few standout tracks (though he does an extremely credible job of covering Hendrix' "Bold As Love" toward the end), but it's still a solid listen. Just don't tell anybody you're listening to it.

Ganging Up On the Sun, Guster - Speaking of laid back...this is easily the calmest Guster album ever. It's pretty and melodic, but the energy of Lost and Gone Forever-era Guster. And for that, I partially blame their record company. Seriously. With LAGF, Guster established themselves as a solid mid-level band, getting solid radio play with "Fa Fa" and building a hardcore fanbase through touring with a fun, high-energy live show. They were unique in that they used pretty much only acoustic guitars and had no drummer...only a percussionist. Major labels don't like unique.

To push Guster to the next level, their label (I won't name their actual label here...I like to focus on a more general evil) decided to force them to use a drummer and electric guitars. Yup, you've heard this story before...Guster went into the studio to record the follow-up to LAGF, showed their work to the label, who basically said "I don't hear a hit single or a hit album here...go back and try again." Guster's percussionist, who has maintained the single funniest online Road Journal in the history of online Road Journals for the last, I dunno, eight years or so (you can find it at Guster's website), absolutely shredded their label on their website...then removed the post, apologized, and Guster dutifully went back to start over. The long between-albums delay killed any LAGF momentum, and Guster released the drum- and electric-guitar-filled (and aptly-titled) Keep It Together in 2003. It was really solid, and it contained the catchiest pop song they've ever recorded ("Amsterdam"), but not surprisingly, it brought them no more commercial success than LAGF had, and they had to rebuild their foundation of fans that had started looking elsewhere during the long delay.

So...that said, Ganging Up on the Sun is a solid, mature pop album by a group of solid, mature musicians...and there's no real single on the album at all. Thank you, Reprise Rec...I mean "major labels."

Return to Cookie Mountain, TV on the Radio - TV on the Radio has the distinct honor of having the first album ever reviewed on Good Nonsense (talk about accomplishment!). I've only listened to Cookie Mountain once so far, and it's weird enough that it's going to take me a couple more listens to get an honest grasp of what's going on here. On first listen, I don't like it as much as their debut album, but this has "will grow on you significantly" written all over it.

Post-War, M. Ward - My first eMusic download. Not sure what made me choose this one...hadn't heard a lot about M. Ward before getting this, but WOW was this a nice surprise. My favorite album of the month so far (until Cookie Mountain grows on me some more). M. Ward is classified as "country" and/or "alt-country", but I don't hear it. It's just acoustic music with a ton of originality and some political lyrics. Does that make it folk? Country? Americana? Not sure, but whatever it is, it's good. My favorite tune (download it now!) is "Right in the Head."

The Craft, Blackalicious - While I wasn't amazingly impressed with them at Lollapalooza, I'll admit that it's hard to do an old-school hip hop show in front of a festival's worth of people. Fact is, their last album (Blazing Arrows) was really strong, and so is this one. They're in that class of underground hip hop artists with groups like Jurassic 5, Dilated Peoples, Aesop Rock, and Lyrics Born, and they're probably my second-favorite of the group behind J5.

Clouds Taste Metallic, Flaming Lips - Continuing with what seems to be a "buy one Lips album a month" trend, I got this one in September, their follow-up to Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (the one with "She Don't Use Jelly" on it). Honestly, this is my least-favorite so far, but that doesn't mean there aren't highlights on it. They really don't cover any new ground that wasn't covered on Transmissions, but when you're this unique, that sometimes doesn't matter.

Pitchfork Music Festival Sampler - The Pitchfork Festival took place in Chicago in late-July (the week before Lolla), and the list of performers pretty much comes straight from a list of "Best Indie Artists." It's currently a free selection at eMusic. I just got this yesterday, so I haven't listened to everything on it yet, but it's got a lot of popular indie acts like The Mountain Goats, Mission of Burma (haven't listened to their new stuff yet, but I love their '80s work), Yo La Tengo, Aesop Rock, The Futureheads, and The Walkmen. So far my favorite track is The Walkmen's "We've Been Had."

DVDs (a.k.a. Movies We Rented from Netflix...I didn’t actually buy a single DVD this month)

CSA: Confederate States of America - Erik at Alter Destiny reviewed this recently, and I pretty much agreed with every word. Great idea, bad execution.

Failure to Launch – Don’t ask me about this one. I didn’t watch it. I love me some Terry Bradshaw, but no.

Munich – Quite long, and it lost The Butterfly’s attention after a while, but it kept mine. I complain so much about movies that are “based on a true story”, which means the premise is based on a true story and the ending is totally and completely fabricated, so I must praise movies like this and Good Night and Good Luck, which just ended when the story was finished. No car crashes, no long-lost love being reunited, no bloody shootout, no game-winning shot at the buzzer...the story was over, and the movie ended. Refreshing.

Shopgirl – I grew up loving Steve Martin, and I still greatly appreciate him, but it’s really easy for a Steve Martin vehicle to fall into a soft, predictable rhythm after a while, and this would have been no different if not for Jason Schwartzman...whose weirdness made the movie watchable despite absolutely, dreadfully, awfully cheesy lines like “Now I’m your watch.”

Brick – You can’t ever go wrong with a high school film noir, right? The kid from 3rd Rock and 10 Things I Hate About You pulls off a really tough role, and the movie itself pulls off the always tough “You’re confused for 2/3 of the movie, but you’re enjoying yourself anyway, and the ending actually makes sense.” Gotta like that. This was probably my favorite of the Netflix rentals so far.

Next up: Lucky Number Slevin and X-Men 3.

Books

Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon – I decided to get into Chabon’s work (Kavalier and Klay, Mysteries of Pittsburgh) a while back because I loved the movie version of Wonder Boys, but I just now was able to obtain a copy of Wonder Boys without ordering it. So there you go.