My review of The Forgotten Woman appears in this week's Westender. Pick up a copy to check it out!
The Forgotten Woman
By Andrea Warner
Three stars
In a patriarchal society women quickly go from commodity to liability, and there’s no better evidence than The Forgotten Woman, Dilip Mehta’s devastating documentary depicting some of India’s 45 million widows who have been disowned by their families and blamed for their husbands’ deaths.
The women are shunned and exiled, many finding a home in Vrindavan, which is thought to be, literally, “heaven on earth.” The film reveals a holy ashram filled with women of varying ages living inside rooms no more than windowless cells, earning a mere six rupees a day for eight hours of chanting. And while one local villager proudly maintains Vrindavan’s divinity because “no one ever goes hungry there,” it’s still gut wrenching to watch the widows lined up for hours to receive a handful of rice or lentils.
There’s such an overwhelming sense of hopelessness in the first thirty minutes, it’s a personal triumph to be introduced to the Canadian woman who heads the Association for Strong Women Alone where widows are taught basic survival skills and support as they fight for their land rights. The film goes on to reveal how other widows live, and the disparity between those with privileges and those without. (Unsurprisingly, the severity of the widow’s living conditions is directly proportionate to education and affluence.)
This is an accomplished first film, but is a bit confusing at first. A few seconds of set up at the beginning would have provided context, permitting a more immediate grasp of the material. But, Mehta has captured, hopefully, the cusp of change as widows go from Grim Reapers in saris to women with basic human rights.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Young@Heart review
My review of Young@Heart appears in this week's Westender.
Young@Heart
By Andrea Warner
Four stars
Old people singing punk rock songs = funny stuff. But Young@Heart is more than a one-note joke: it’s an endearingly bittersweet and touching documentary that proves inspiration is ageless.
The film follows the Young@Heart chorus, a group of swingin’ seniors from Northampton, Massachusettes, who have found international stardom with their curious penchant for tackling everything from the Clash to James Brown. What could have been a novelty act has instead morphed into a fantastic opportunity for a second life, akin to what Johnny Cash’s did on his American Recordings.
Hearing such classics as Stayin’ Alive (check out the music video on YouTube and you’ll be first in line for the movie), I Wanna Be Sedated, and Golden Years as interpreted by this group is pure joy. Director Stephen Walker has been blessed with a motley crew of richly quotable and fascinating people, including one lovely flirt, famed for her recent burlesque act, who’s been with the choir since it began 20 years ago. She happens to be 93 years old. The Willy Wonka type at the helm is Bob Cilman, the tough choir director who takes delight in introducing the seniors to Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia.
Young@Heart’s second half takes on a much more somber note, but such is the documentary form and it’s subjection to real life. Detractors will fault the film’s sentimentality, but only the hardest of hearts will leave the theatre not wanting to call their grandma.
Young@Heart
By Andrea Warner
Four stars
Old people singing punk rock songs = funny stuff. But Young@Heart is more than a one-note joke: it’s an endearingly bittersweet and touching documentary that proves inspiration is ageless.
The film follows the Young@Heart chorus, a group of swingin’ seniors from Northampton, Massachusettes, who have found international stardom with their curious penchant for tackling everything from the Clash to James Brown. What could have been a novelty act has instead morphed into a fantastic opportunity for a second life, akin to what Johnny Cash’s did on his American Recordings.
Hearing such classics as Stayin’ Alive (check out the music video on YouTube and you’ll be first in line for the movie), I Wanna Be Sedated, and Golden Years as interpreted by this group is pure joy. Director Stephen Walker has been blessed with a motley crew of richly quotable and fascinating people, including one lovely flirt, famed for her recent burlesque act, who’s been with the choir since it began 20 years ago. She happens to be 93 years old. The Willy Wonka type at the helm is Bob Cilman, the tough choir director who takes delight in introducing the seniors to Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia.
Young@Heart’s second half takes on a much more somber note, but such is the documentary form and it’s subjection to real life. Detractors will fault the film’s sentimentality, but only the hardest of hearts will leave the theatre not wanting to call their grandma.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Afrocentric schools in Toronto
My article on Afrocentric schools in Toronto appears in the new issue of Passion Magazine, on newsstands now.
Going Beyond Black or White
Forty percent of Toronto’s black youth aren’t graduating from high school. Is an Afrocentric school the solution or a part of the problem?
By Andrea Warner
Amidst a media feeding frenzy, Torontonians Angela Wilson and Donna Harrow became unlikely spokespeople for the biggest education controversy to hit the city in years. For the past several months, school board meetings have served as the backdrop for the heated debate over Wilson and Harrow’s proposed Afrocentric schools. In January, a narrow majority voted 11-9 in favour of one school to be opened in 2009. Reaction has been mixed, to put it mildly.
The proposed Afrocentric school aims to provide an alternative for black youth who are falling through the cracks of the current administration —approximately 40 percent of Toronto’s black youth do not graduate from high school — by creating a curriculum that is more engaging. Louis March, a spokesperson for the African Community Heritage Association, feels the timing is crucial.
“There was a survey recently of 110,000 students in Toronto, and 75 percent of them said they don’t see themselves reflected in the curriculum. The colour, the shape of the students in Toronto is changing,” March says. “You cannot be talking about African history and just put two pages in about slavery. You have to be honest to history in its totality.”
Josh Matlow, a Toronto District School Board trustee, opposes the creation of an Afrocentric school. His website features lengthy blog entries and media clips on the subject, while his group on Facebook, the social networking website, is titled Don’t Divide Our Students By Race. To date, the group has 128 members.
“We have 558 public schools in Toronto, and we have black students in virtually every one of them. I don’t believe that going down this road will respond to the core challenge of helping black students or all students in our schools,” Matlow says. “The premise is a positive one, and it’s vital to change the way we teach kids about African and black peoples’ histories. However, I think it’s just as important to teach white kids, other kids, as it is to teach black children. Black students need to learn about themselves and their own identity, but all other students should learn to respect black heritage as well.”
The obstacles to graduation facing black youth in Toronto are plentiful: poverty, stress on single parent families, and the lure of gangs and violence to name just a few. Akiela Clarke is currently finishing her grade 12 year. She is one of the students for whom the system has worked, but she attributes that success to her mother’s strong influence and involvement in the academic process.
“I was fortunate to have parents who were pushing me, parents who went to university. [These other youth] don’t always have parents saying, ‘Go and do your homework,’” Clarke says. “Everything that I have learned wasn’t from school because school is taught from a Eurocentric curriculum, and everything I’ve learned is from an Afrocentric curriculum, and that’s what made me be strong. But, many of these students are not like me; they don’t have the same parenting background as me, so they don’t have that approach to learning.”
The academic challenges facing black youth have the potential to manifest more serious problems in the future. “Eight out of ten people in the provincial parole system in Ontario did not finish grade 12, so we know there’s a strong likelihood where they’re going to end up — in gangs, violence,” March says.
Preventative measures to help black youth succeed have become a top priority for many people. But, one question on March’s mind is how an Afrocentric school would be different than Toronto’s 36 existing alternative high schools?
“The school system is working for maybe 90 or 95 percent of the students. But there’s a student body there that is having major problems engaging in the system, so you don’t change the whole system because of 5 or 10 percent.
“You set up an alternative school because all students do not learn the same. And the government recognizes that, and that’s why they already have 36 alternative schools in Toronto, so it surprises us that we have to do a song and dance for 37. The school board identified the community that was having problems, and they set up a school for them, so that they can feel total or full in the education process,” March says.
TDSB trustee Matlow’s website currently touts a new arts-focused public school that promotes a “middle-school experience in an enriched arts environment.” Ultimately, he fully supports alternative schools, but feels an Afrocentric school crosses the line by dividing kids by skin colour.
“It would be a school that’s created for black students. You would never see anything in our policy that would say ‘black school only,’ and it’s not accurate when people say this would be a black only school,” Matlow says. “However, in practice it probably will be. But, if the premise of the creation of the school is to respond to the challenges we’re facing because there are too many black kids dropping out, it’s a reasonable assumption that it would be attracting primarily black enrollment. By doing that, we are creating a division based on race.”
This is one of the primary questions circling the school proposal: Is Toronto setting a dangerous precedent for race-based schools? Opponents to the school believe yes. In reading through the various news stories and discussion groups online, one word forms the foundation for much of the opposition: “segregation.”
Seventeen-year-old Clarke sees the Afrocentric school as a possible solution not a throwback to segregation. “People need to define what segregation is,” she states. “No one’s being forced. Segregation is the act of being forced to go somewhere beyond your will, and that’s what happened in civil rights. Many people use the argument that we’re taking a step back. No, it’s not a step back, it’s a step forward because how are we supposed to integrate if we don’t know ourselves?”
Matlow isn’t convinced. His website urges parents to contact their trustees to oppose the school, and the concerns he voices resonate with others who oppose the project.
“To say that an Afrocentric curriculum is what will connect them with their presumed culture is narrow. It doesn’t consider the individual well enough,” Matlow explains. “To divide students by the colour of their skin, to perpetuate artificial divisions is wrong for any reason. We want to teach kids that they can find love, support and care within a community that has a whole variety of different faces.”
March admits that the proposed school may not be perfect, but that it’s worth the effort if they can reach out to even a few at-risk youth.
“If we can save 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 kids, it will be worth it. Ninety to ninety-five percent of the students are doing fine, so this discussion is not for them. Either you’re doing well in the system or you have the socio-economic support to fill in the gaps,” March says. “For these kids, it’s not there. So, let’s do something about it. Let’s step up and let’s demonstrate wisdom and courage. Let’s monitor it and if there are aspects you can incorporate into the overall school system then do it. Of course we fear this failing because everyone will be lining up to say, ‘I told you so.’ But please do it right so that it has a fighting chance of succeeding, so our kids have a fighting chance of succeeding.”
It’s difficult to determine what will most benefit at-risk minority youth, but it’s an issue that requires creative innovation to ensure doors are open to every child. One thing is for certain: the answers are no more black or white than they are right or wrong.Monday, April 14, 2008
The Woodsman
My review of The Woodsman (on now at the Pacific Theatre) is in the Westender.
The Woodsman
By Andrea Warner
Pedophiles and child molesters don’t make sympathetic protagonists, but they do make complex ones. Written by Steven Fechter in 1994, in response to Megan’s Law—which required authorities to notify communities when a known sexual offender lived in their midst—the Canadian debut of The Woodsman tackles a child molester’s attempt at rehabilitation after returning to his hometown following 12 years in prison. While the volatile subject matter is handled with grace and dignity, the actual production boasts moments both compelling and clunky.
Dirk van Stralen is fantastically creepy-yet-human as Walter, a dead-man-walking the tightrope between his desire to change and his desire for 12-year-old girls. Walter wants to re-acclimate to society, and is frustrated that his time served and his therapy sessions haven’t made him “normal.” His choice of apartment across the street from an elementary school seems suspect to his brother-in-law, Carlos, and to the cop, Lucas, who watches his every move, but it also lets him spy on a man he calls Candy who seems to be scoping the schoolyard for little boys. Walter’s relationship with a co-worker, Nikki (Rebecca deBoer, who struggles with some of her line delivery), does little to banish his demons either, despite her belief he’s a “good man.”
The cast commits to the uncomfortable material with gusto and earnest heart. The show’s best moments are its toughest ones, particularly when Walter befriends a little girl in the woods. It’s impossible to know for sure at the play’s end whether Walter will remain part of the 20 percent of rehabilitated sexual offenders. This is the interesting grey area around second chances: Walter’s redemption will be a lifelong battle. Though bravely tackling these thorny issues, the script feels uneven, and certain smaller details detract rather than add (for example, the therapist’s reclamation of his Jewish ancestry feels pointless; it should either take up more space or none at all). The Woodsman packs strong muscle, but is ultimately hampered by its dull blade.
The Woodsman
By Andrea Warner
Pedophiles and child molesters don’t make sympathetic protagonists, but they do make complex ones. Written by Steven Fechter in 1994, in response to Megan’s Law—which required authorities to notify communities when a known sexual offender lived in their midst—the Canadian debut of The Woodsman tackles a child molester’s attempt at rehabilitation after returning to his hometown following 12 years in prison. While the volatile subject matter is handled with grace and dignity, the actual production boasts moments both compelling and clunky.
Dirk van Stralen is fantastically creepy-yet-human as Walter, a dead-man-walking the tightrope between his desire to change and his desire for 12-year-old girls. Walter wants to re-acclimate to society, and is frustrated that his time served and his therapy sessions haven’t made him “normal.” His choice of apartment across the street from an elementary school seems suspect to his brother-in-law, Carlos, and to the cop, Lucas, who watches his every move, but it also lets him spy on a man he calls Candy who seems to be scoping the schoolyard for little boys. Walter’s relationship with a co-worker, Nikki (Rebecca deBoer, who struggles with some of her line delivery), does little to banish his demons either, despite her belief he’s a “good man.”
The cast commits to the uncomfortable material with gusto and earnest heart. The show’s best moments are its toughest ones, particularly when Walter befriends a little girl in the woods. It’s impossible to know for sure at the play’s end whether Walter will remain part of the 20 percent of rehabilitated sexual offenders. This is the interesting grey area around second chances: Walter’s redemption will be a lifelong battle. Though bravely tackling these thorny issues, the script feels uneven, and certain smaller details detract rather than add (for example, the therapist’s reclamation of his Jewish ancestry feels pointless; it should either take up more space or none at all). The Woodsman packs strong muscle, but is ultimately hampered by its dull blade.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
True West
My review of True West (on now at the Playhouse) is in today's Westender.
True West
By Andrea Warner
Old-fashioned cinematic westerns typically depict the clash between good and bad, order and lawlessness, in the simplest of white-hats-and-black-hats terms. By avoiding this construct in favour of a more murky reality in True West, playwright Sam Shepard challenges the entire concept of the “Wild West,” that mostly fanciful cornerstone of the United States’ finely-crafted national identity. At True West’s tragi-comic centre are Austin and Lee, a pair of starkly contrasted brothers that Shepard uses to explore a variety of American myths throughout the dense 90 minutes, including “real” Western landscapes lost to suburban sprawl (Calgary, anyone?), what constitutes male identity in modern society, and that dramatic perennial, family conflict.
Austin (a flawless Vincent Gale) is the good son. A playwright trying to score a million-dollar deal, he struggles to hammer out a script in his mother’s kitchen. Lee (Brian Markinson) is a wanderer and a thief, whose sudden appearance is not an entirely welcome surprise. When a producer shows up to hear Austin’s pitch, Lee sidelines the meeting, successfully selling his own story about a “true” western . The brothers are forced to work together on Lee’s screenplay, their “good” and “bad” qualities morphing as Austin spirals into a drunken stupor and Lee tries desperately to prove he’s a capable writer.
Markinson’s Lee is complex and dangerous. Like Austin, the audience is suitably scared of his short fuse, but director Dean Paul Gibson allows Markinson to attack his first scene with such ferocity, he is left with little room to maneuver. A slower build would have created an even bigger payoff. True West’s final confrontation is tenser than a gunfight at high noon, boldly and wisely refusing to provide the audience with a cookie-cutter hero who rides off into the sunset.
True West
By Andrea Warner
Old-fashioned cinematic westerns typically depict the clash between good and bad, order and lawlessness, in the simplest of white-hats-and-black-hats terms. By avoiding this construct in favour of a more murky reality in True West, playwright Sam Shepard challenges the entire concept of the “Wild West,” that mostly fanciful cornerstone of the United States’ finely-crafted national identity. At True West’s tragi-comic centre are Austin and Lee, a pair of starkly contrasted brothers that Shepard uses to explore a variety of American myths throughout the dense 90 minutes, including “real” Western landscapes lost to suburban sprawl (Calgary, anyone?), what constitutes male identity in modern society, and that dramatic perennial, family conflict.
Austin (a flawless Vincent Gale) is the good son. A playwright trying to score a million-dollar deal, he struggles to hammer out a script in his mother’s kitchen. Lee (Brian Markinson) is a wanderer and a thief, whose sudden appearance is not an entirely welcome surprise. When a producer shows up to hear Austin’s pitch, Lee sidelines the meeting, successfully selling his own story about a “true” western . The brothers are forced to work together on Lee’s screenplay, their “good” and “bad” qualities morphing as Austin spirals into a drunken stupor and Lee tries desperately to prove he’s a capable writer.
Markinson’s Lee is complex and dangerous. Like Austin, the audience is suitably scared of his short fuse, but director Dean Paul Gibson allows Markinson to attack his first scene with such ferocity, he is left with little room to maneuver. A slower build would have created an even bigger payoff. True West’s final confrontation is tenser than a gunfight at high noon, boldly and wisely refusing to provide the audience with a cookie-cutter hero who rides off into the sunset.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Explosions in the Sky
My interview with Explosions in the Sky is in this week's Charleston City Paper. I've pasted the article below, but check it out at the CCP to see pictures.
A Happy Accident
Explosions in the Sky: four humble guys who will light up the night
By Andrea Warner
It took Explosions in the Sky nine years to make it to Charleston. They're astonished they've made it this far. This week's show is only one of several exciting "firsts" on a long list of springtime events that will sweep the Austin-based band up — including a trip across the Atlantic for a lengthy European tour and an opportunity to curate U.K. music festival All Tomorrow's Parties.
Checking in from a pit stop on the band's current American tour, drummer Chris Hrasky still can't quite believe the casual jam band he helped start almost a decade ago has morphed into an international indie phenomenon — and all without lyrics or a singer.
In a time filled with American Idol-style crooners ruling the charts, Explosions in the Sky opts for an instrumental approach. They specialize in intense live shows, creating waves of sound that crash in and then quietly recede.
Throughout the 15-minute conversation, Hrasky uses the words "strange" and "weird" every 30 seconds. His humble befuddlement at Explosions' success is endearing and refreshing. When asked if he had any idea that the band would go as far as they have, his reply is quick and resolute.
"No, God no," he laughs. "We just sort of started it as something to do after work, just the four of us playing music. We had no real ambition to go on tour or put out records or anything. It's still a surprise nine years later that this is basically our career, I guess. It's a strange way to make a living."
Success and all of its trappings have sidelined plenty of promising bands, but Explosions seem almost devoid of the types of ego that have toppled other greats. A deep camaraderie keeps the guys grounded, preventing any Metallica-sized clashes.
"One of the reasons we've been able to play so long together is we're best friends basically," Hrasky says.
"It's weird with a lot of bands, they record and then tour together, and then, when they're not doing that stuff, they never even see each other. It's just a crazy way to think of a band. I don't think any of us would even want to be in a band like that."With four studio albums to their credit, Explosions has continued to perfect their songcrafting skills, while focusing primarily on guitars and drums when playing live. Their new six-song collection titled All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone (Temporary Residence) was recorded by John Congleton (The Roots, The Mountain Goats). Mark Smith, Munaf Rayani, and Michael James (who also plays bass) comprise the rest of the lineup. While Hrasky denies developing a "sound" narrative, he admits hours are spent attempting to create the perfect mood for a song or a part.
"Being instrumental music, people just kind of adopt the songs themselves, you know?" he says. "Personalize it to their own lives, their own ideas, their own stories or whatever they can put along to the music. That's kind of our goal. To make music that engages people or moves people in some way."
As Explosions continued to build their reputation for being a killer live band, they noticed their fan base broaden from "dudes in their 20s" to include "13-year-old emo kids to 50-year-old Pink Floyd fans." The band is thrilled by the diversity and happy that the music they like to write is connecting with a gamut of people.
"It's just very strange," Hrasky says. "It's something I don't think any of us will ever get used to. Playing a show and there's 1,000 people there, in some town where you don't know anybody. It's very surreal. I kind of hope we don't ever get used to it."
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Hot Chip
My cover story on the band Hot Chip appears in this month's Discorder. Pick up your copy now!
Get Out on the Dance Floor!
Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard talks about turning teenage angst into toe-tapping dance music
By Andrea Warner
The path leading from the Beatles to Destiny’s Child is like a treasure map for the minds behind Hot Chip, the UK’s hottest, manliest, bust-a-move-revolutionaries. Their influences have more variety than a sampler cereal pack, and listening to Hot Chip’s music is akin to the best cram session ever in the evolution of rhythm. On tour to support their latest album, Made in the Dark, Hot Chip’s sound is beat-heavy, slyly amusing, and deceptively sincere. They are disciples of a simple cause: getting you sweaty on the dance floor.
Grade school chums Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor met at the age of 12 while attending the same school in a suburb of London. Their shared love of music fostered a friendship that still thrives today, which is refreshing in an industry that has so famously fractured dozens of bands in the past. Over the phone with Goddard, who is in London before embarking on Hot Chip’s North American tour, he’s humble, happy, and still a bit in awe of how far they’ve come.
As teenagers, Goddard and Taylor would hang out on Friday nights and play their acoustic guitars, singing covers of Oasis and Blur, “any band around 1994”. This lead to writing songs and recording on a four track, before Goddard started producing music on his computer in 1996.
“When we first began, myself and Alexis, it was very rudimentary,” Goddard says. “We didn’t have the capability to record lots of different layers of music or different things. We would do a little bit of electric guitar, acoustic guitar, a little bit of one old keyboard—my technology teacher at school gave me an old keyboard and we used to use that—and we would play very simple, almost kind of folk or country music. We were playing very different music.”
Goddard describes the Mexico EP, which was released during this period, as “quite sad and melancholy.” The slow, acoustic music of that EP does little to hint at Hot Chip’s future reputation as the dance band with the wild live shows. But, one thing from those days stuck.
“The band was actually called Hot Chip at that point,” Goddard says. “We actually made the name up, like on stage at one point. We started playing gigs in parks nearby the school, and then the kind of usual places small bands play, like pubs.”
The evolution of Hot Chip’s sound from acoustic to dance was just a part of growing up.
“It’s a kind of typical thing, isn’t it, the teenage angst? I guess it’s something to do with your personality developing. You have these melancholy ideas…I think what I feel is that we just kind of got a little tired of being melancholy all the time. We started to be inspired more by groups like Destiny’s Child or things that Timbaland was doing. We started to find that more exciting music and it influenced us to make more pop or R&B music.”
Hot Chip was also expanding the band to include Owen Clarke, who originally provided the artwork and the creative direction for the band’s self-released albums, before officially joining Hot Chip as a musician. (One of Clarke’s official musical credits on the band’s MySpace page is “hand claps!”) Stints at Cambridge and Oxford to attend university also helped complete the band’s lineup as Felix Martin and Al Doyle joined the group, and following graduation, the five devoted themselves seriously to making music. Hot Chip made their first commercially available album, Coming on Strong, and have been writing, touring, and remixing ever since.
Though they now earn enough money solely from playing music, Hot Chip has remixed over 30 songs for other bands including Kraftwerk, M.I.A., and Rilo Kiley. This is just one of the ways they have managed to diversify their money-making strategies as new bands everywhere are learning that big money no longer comes from record sales.
“For a long time in our career, we worked juggling other jobs to make money and get by,” Goddard says. “We kind of DJ’d to make extra money occasionally and do re-mixes for other artists. The record sales have slumped so dramatically in the last few years, bands need to have other ways of getting by financially—remixing, DJing, playing live. We try to balance all of those things.”
The band’s live shows have become a hot ticket for concert enthusiasts, and Hot Chip’s been tapped to play several of the largest festivals this year: Coachella and Glastonbury. The Vancouver show has been sold out for months.
“What some people find exciting about it is that we’re making electronic music and the way that most bands do that is by using just a laptop or having everything sequenced or controlled so it’s perfectly in time. It’s all controlled by a computer originally, so you get this very well-oiled slick dance music,” Goddard explains. “Whereas the way that we do it is much more organic. Like you’ll see the five of us on stage just playing together, like a rock band, but making the real house music or techno or R&B. We don’t do it in the same way that most people do it when they play live. That’s very important to us, to be very physical on stage, playing together and to be enjoying that and having fun and really working at it rather than just having it all pre-programmed.”
The energy from playing their complex songs live seems to fuel the crowd, which Goddard describes as “an electricity in the air” that happens at many of their shows.
“In Lawrence, Kansas, it just felt like a total party,” he says. “People were just really, really going for it, having fun. Those are the shows we feel good about when we can see people smiling and enjoying themselves. Luckily that happens quite often with us. We went to South America, Brazil, and played a show and there were maybe 20,000 people and a lot of them were really just dancing. It’s a fantastic feeling when it all goes right.”
The band has been touring extensively for the last several years, and the travel side is a major bonus for Goddard, who used to be an enthusiastic photographer, and loves experiencing other cultures.
“I’ve been to hundreds of places that if I wasn’t in this business I wouldn’t have had the chance to visit. I love being in Japan. I love the culture and the food there. I love the shops and the clothes you can find there,” he says. “We’ve had great visits in Texas, California. I’ve got friends in Boston that I see. New York is great. We’ve always had a great time when we’ve played in Canada in the past. Spain, Portugal—I love different kinds of world cuisine, trying local cocktails. It’s so rich in new experiences, I’m really thankful for all of that.”
And, even though touring can be exhausting, it’s also an incredible perk, Goddard admits, especially if your band mates are your best friends.
“When you’re touring on the tour bus you have a lot of free time to spend with the people you’re touring with. A lot of chances to just have fun with people: play games, listen to music, or just drink with people and talk,” he says. “It’s a very sociable thing to do. Obviously you get moments where you really want time alone, where you want some privacy, but most of the time it’s really a happy and joyful thing.”
If Hot Chip’s photo appeared in a teen magazine, the caption would likely read BFFs, or Best Friends Forever! Though they have worked with some of their biggest heroes (Kraftwerk, Robert Wyatt), and loved it, they don’t really want to branch out and take on big names for future albums.
“Most of the time, we’re kind of happy working just with each other,” Goddard says. “I don’t really have a strong desire to get lots of guests on our album or anything like that. We’re quite happy being quite self-sufficient.”
This might be the real key to why their music makes people so damn happy—the band genuinely likes each other, and loves what they do. There’s still a bit of innocent naiveté that fills Goddard’s voice as he describes Hot Chip’s good fortune, and how the five men have become “kind of brothers”, which includes all the good and bad that comes along with that relationship.
“When you spend three weeks on a tour bus being with each other all the time, we end up kind of needling each other, or slightly annoying each other, but when we’re apart, we really kind of miss each other,” Goddard says. “When we see each other again after break, it’s really kind of joyful and we make each other laugh a lot, and we enjoy each other’s company. It’s a strange situation because you start a band and not thinking it’s going to be your career. We started our band just because it was fun and exciting to us, but we didn’t ever really think it would be our day job.”
But, what a killer day job it is.
Get Out on the Dance Floor!
Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard talks about turning teenage angst into toe-tapping dance music
By Andrea Warner
The path leading from the Beatles to Destiny’s Child is like a treasure map for the minds behind Hot Chip, the UK’s hottest, manliest, bust-a-move-revolutionaries. Their influences have more variety than a sampler cereal pack, and listening to Hot Chip’s music is akin to the best cram session ever in the evolution of rhythm. On tour to support their latest album, Made in the Dark, Hot Chip’s sound is beat-heavy, slyly amusing, and deceptively sincere. They are disciples of a simple cause: getting you sweaty on the dance floor.
Grade school chums Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor met at the age of 12 while attending the same school in a suburb of London. Their shared love of music fostered a friendship that still thrives today, which is refreshing in an industry that has so famously fractured dozens of bands in the past. Over the phone with Goddard, who is in London before embarking on Hot Chip’s North American tour, he’s humble, happy, and still a bit in awe of how far they’ve come.
As teenagers, Goddard and Taylor would hang out on Friday nights and play their acoustic guitars, singing covers of Oasis and Blur, “any band around 1994”. This lead to writing songs and recording on a four track, before Goddard started producing music on his computer in 1996.
“When we first began, myself and Alexis, it was very rudimentary,” Goddard says. “We didn’t have the capability to record lots of different layers of music or different things. We would do a little bit of electric guitar, acoustic guitar, a little bit of one old keyboard—my technology teacher at school gave me an old keyboard and we used to use that—and we would play very simple, almost kind of folk or country music. We were playing very different music.”
Goddard describes the Mexico EP, which was released during this period, as “quite sad and melancholy.” The slow, acoustic music of that EP does little to hint at Hot Chip’s future reputation as the dance band with the wild live shows. But, one thing from those days stuck.
“The band was actually called Hot Chip at that point,” Goddard says. “We actually made the name up, like on stage at one point. We started playing gigs in parks nearby the school, and then the kind of usual places small bands play, like pubs.”
The evolution of Hot Chip’s sound from acoustic to dance was just a part of growing up.
“It’s a kind of typical thing, isn’t it, the teenage angst? I guess it’s something to do with your personality developing. You have these melancholy ideas…I think what I feel is that we just kind of got a little tired of being melancholy all the time. We started to be inspired more by groups like Destiny’s Child or things that Timbaland was doing. We started to find that more exciting music and it influenced us to make more pop or R&B music.”
Hot Chip was also expanding the band to include Owen Clarke, who originally provided the artwork and the creative direction for the band’s self-released albums, before officially joining Hot Chip as a musician. (One of Clarke’s official musical credits on the band’s MySpace page is “hand claps!”) Stints at Cambridge and Oxford to attend university also helped complete the band’s lineup as Felix Martin and Al Doyle joined the group, and following graduation, the five devoted themselves seriously to making music. Hot Chip made their first commercially available album, Coming on Strong, and have been writing, touring, and remixing ever since.
Though they now earn enough money solely from playing music, Hot Chip has remixed over 30 songs for other bands including Kraftwerk, M.I.A., and Rilo Kiley. This is just one of the ways they have managed to diversify their money-making strategies as new bands everywhere are learning that big money no longer comes from record sales.
“For a long time in our career, we worked juggling other jobs to make money and get by,” Goddard says. “We kind of DJ’d to make extra money occasionally and do re-mixes for other artists. The record sales have slumped so dramatically in the last few years, bands need to have other ways of getting by financially—remixing, DJing, playing live. We try to balance all of those things.”
The band’s live shows have become a hot ticket for concert enthusiasts, and Hot Chip’s been tapped to play several of the largest festivals this year: Coachella and Glastonbury. The Vancouver show has been sold out for months.
“What some people find exciting about it is that we’re making electronic music and the way that most bands do that is by using just a laptop or having everything sequenced or controlled so it’s perfectly in time. It’s all controlled by a computer originally, so you get this very well-oiled slick dance music,” Goddard explains. “Whereas the way that we do it is much more organic. Like you’ll see the five of us on stage just playing together, like a rock band, but making the real house music or techno or R&B. We don’t do it in the same way that most people do it when they play live. That’s very important to us, to be very physical on stage, playing together and to be enjoying that and having fun and really working at it rather than just having it all pre-programmed.”
The energy from playing their complex songs live seems to fuel the crowd, which Goddard describes as “an electricity in the air” that happens at many of their shows.
“In Lawrence, Kansas, it just felt like a total party,” he says. “People were just really, really going for it, having fun. Those are the shows we feel good about when we can see people smiling and enjoying themselves. Luckily that happens quite often with us. We went to South America, Brazil, and played a show and there were maybe 20,000 people and a lot of them were really just dancing. It’s a fantastic feeling when it all goes right.”
The band has been touring extensively for the last several years, and the travel side is a major bonus for Goddard, who used to be an enthusiastic photographer, and loves experiencing other cultures.
“I’ve been to hundreds of places that if I wasn’t in this business I wouldn’t have had the chance to visit. I love being in Japan. I love the culture and the food there. I love the shops and the clothes you can find there,” he says. “We’ve had great visits in Texas, California. I’ve got friends in Boston that I see. New York is great. We’ve always had a great time when we’ve played in Canada in the past. Spain, Portugal—I love different kinds of world cuisine, trying local cocktails. It’s so rich in new experiences, I’m really thankful for all of that.”
And, even though touring can be exhausting, it’s also an incredible perk, Goddard admits, especially if your band mates are your best friends.
“When you’re touring on the tour bus you have a lot of free time to spend with the people you’re touring with. A lot of chances to just have fun with people: play games, listen to music, or just drink with people and talk,” he says. “It’s a very sociable thing to do. Obviously you get moments where you really want time alone, where you want some privacy, but most of the time it’s really a happy and joyful thing.”
If Hot Chip’s photo appeared in a teen magazine, the caption would likely read BFFs, or Best Friends Forever! Though they have worked with some of their biggest heroes (Kraftwerk, Robert Wyatt), and loved it, they don’t really want to branch out and take on big names for future albums.
“Most of the time, we’re kind of happy working just with each other,” Goddard says. “I don’t really have a strong desire to get lots of guests on our album or anything like that. We’re quite happy being quite self-sufficient.”
This might be the real key to why their music makes people so damn happy—the band genuinely likes each other, and loves what they do. There’s still a bit of innocent naiveté that fills Goddard’s voice as he describes Hot Chip’s good fortune, and how the five men have become “kind of brothers”, which includes all the good and bad that comes along with that relationship.
“When you spend three weeks on a tour bus being with each other all the time, we end up kind of needling each other, or slightly annoying each other, but when we’re apart, we really kind of miss each other,” Goddard says. “When we see each other again after break, it’s really kind of joyful and we make each other laugh a lot, and we enjoy each other’s company. It’s a strange situation because you start a band and not thinking it’s going to be your career. We started our band just because it was fun and exciting to us, but we didn’t ever really think it would be our day job.”
But, what a killer day job it is.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Shared Vision Q & A
My Q & A with Luke Hogan appears in this month's Shared Vision. Pick up a copy or go to Shared Vision to see the full story.
Living from Ground to Jar
By Andrea Warner
Luke Hogan believes it takes a healthy diet and his special brand of TLC to make his customers feel their best. A certified herbalist, this is one man who isn’t afraid to get dirty to help other people feel good. His products are homegrown and harvested with his own hands, ensuring only the best ingredients make it into ours.
Luke’s biggest inspiration: “The healing power of plants. I think it’s amazing that we can make natural health and beauty products that work and are actually good for us.”
On the challenges of using all-natural ingredients: “I came to the realization that to maintain a high level of quality control at every stage, I needed to grow the herbs we use.”
Royal Herbs’ most sought after item: “Our face creams. There’s a day cream that features CoQ10, which is an antioxidant. Many people take CoQ10 internally for cardiovascular health, but topically it will fight damage caused by the sun or the environment.”
Luke’s hottest beauty secret: “I think a healthy diet is really important. A good regime of a nice, natural cleanser, moisturizer, and you’re set.”
His biggest cosmetic pet peeve: “The ingredients found in most mainstream health and beauty products. Many of them are unnecessary and some are potentially harmful to us, and our environment.”
In his former life, he worked as “a driving instructor. When you’re sitting on the other side of the car you don’t have a steering wheel, but you have a gas and a brake pedal. I can’t tell you the countless times that I [helped] avoid an accident.”
Luke wishes all 12-year-old girls realized that “they won’t always be 12.”
Vampire Weekend
We reviewed Vampire Weekend's show Thursday night. Go to Beyond Robson to see the full review and pictures!
Vampire Weekend
By Andrea Warner
While no blood was actually shed at the Vampire Weekend show at Richard's on Thursday night, I have the pulled neck and bruises to prove I was front and centre for the best show Vancouver's seen this year.
Vampire Weekend
By Andrea Warner
While no blood was actually shed at the Vampire Weekend show at Richard's on Thursday night, I have the pulled neck and bruises to prove I was front and centre for the best show Vancouver's seen this year.
Opening band YACHT took the sold-out crowd by storm, turning Richards on Richards into a head-bopping, ass-shaking, sweat-filled aerobics class. Lead singer Jona and new sidekick Claire worked the stage like kids who forgot to take their Ritalin, all sexy-awkward high kicks, jumps, and bumps 'n grinds. Jona looks like the real-life manifestation of Napoleon Dynamite. A dance off between the two would be heaven.
When Vampire Weekend came out about a half-hour later, the excitement from YACHT's set still hadn't worn off. The band looked like nice college kids who'd just come from the library, until they ripped in to their very first song, Mansard Roof. It's impossible to know whether a super-hyped band (like Vampire Weekend) will live up to all the buzz, so it's a huge relief when they do. The set was tight, the audience knew all of the words, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be won over by Vampire Weekend's shyly befuddled smiles of 'how the hell did this happen?'Friday, March 28, 2008
Punk Rock Warlord
My review of Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten appears in the newest edition of Fast Forward Weekly.
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
By Andrea Warner
He became the poster boy for the punk movement, as famous for his politics as he was for his snarling stage presence. Now the lead singer of The Clash is the subject of Julien Temple’s fascinating but spotty Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. While Unwritten effectively illustrates how a collection of moments can affect the zeitgeist of a generation, it never quite gets inside the mystery of the man himself.
Born to a diplomat father who was known for challenging authority, Strummer and his older brother David lived in five different countries by the time they were in grade school. Temple gets the details right and lingers for the perfect amount of time on some of the tough revelations, such as David’s suicide and Strummer identifying his brother’s body, all by the age of 18.
The large midsection of Unwritten is devoted to The Clash, and there’s plenty of volatile material here that should have been covered in an entirely separate film. Strummer’s politics provided the thrust of The Clash’s power-to-the-people message, but it wasn’t all he was. Yet Unwritten devotes more than half of its running time to The Clash’s hirings, firings and ego explosions, while the 10 years Strummer spent trying to exorcise that band from his system is wrapped up in about six minutes.
Referred to briefly as the “wilderness years,” Temple treads very lightly on Strummer’s own dark period following the breakup of The Clash, when he retreated from the public. The film hints that he may have become a preacher for a short time. Say what? This is the consistent frustration with Unwritten: the dots aren’t connected enough to fully realize Strummer as an icon and as a person. Friends, musicians and a variety of celebrities appear throughout the film, but Temple makes no attempt to identify individuals beyond their names, and offers no explanation about their connection to Strummer. It's distracting when Johnny Depp suddenly shows up, but it’s downright disconcerting when Matt Dillon comes aboard.
That said, Unwritten has plenty of momentum, and there are many reasons to recommend it. The imagery is wonderful and intersperses archival footage, fictionalized scenes, animations of Strummer’s art, scenes from Orwell’s Animal Farm and present-day interviews with a truly varied assortment of people gathered around campfires. Throughout, Strummer often acts as a narrator to his own life, with sound clips culled from interviews and his popular radio show, London Calling. Like The Clash’s music and the do-it-yourself punk ethos, Unwritten feels like it colours outside the lines of the traditional documentary form, and this is where it succeeds as a fitting tribute to the original “punk rock warlord.”
8 x 10 Glossy
My story on the Leaping Thespians' newest production, 8 x 10 Glossy is in the latest edition of Xtra West!
8 x 10 Glossy preview
By Andrea Warner
Leaping Thespians director Karen White read over 50 scripts before 8 x 10 Glossy caught her eye.
To her, the play's myriad themes — sexuality, political activism, and family dysfunction — felt particularly relevant for a 2008 audience, even one steeped in modern liberations.
Written by Sarah Dreher, 8 x 10 Glossy is set in 1984. At its centre is Carter, a lesbian activist and photojournalist, who returns home on the one-year anniversary of her father's death to face her sister, Julie, a repressed and unhappy housewife, and her mother, Kettie, finally free after years of abuse. Julie's attractive new friend, Lisa, and the unseen nosy neighbour round out the cast.
Having come out herself in 1978, White strongly identifies with the sexual themes the play explores, and recalls the struggles facing the lesbian community during that pivotal time.
"The majority of people were against gays at the time," White explains. "I knew many women on the fringe of the lesbian-feminist community who didn't call themselves lesbian; they 'just happened to be in love with a women.' It was still very much the love that dare not speak its name, except in the safe enclaves of lesbian culture: the bars, softball teams, and many feminist organizations."
Times have changed but modern audiences will likely be able to draw many comparisons between then and now, White suggests.
"Every young woman coming out now, even though she's coming out in a different world, wants the approval of her family. Lots of women now, even though they know it's okay to be a lesbian, still don't think they are. They're surprised by feelings for a woman."
In 8 x 10 Glossy, Carter may be out and proud, but she's still desperate for Julie's approval. Julie, afraid of her own feelings for Lisa, can't help but lash out at Carter.
The sisters' relationship is complicated, fraught with expectation and disappointment, but the underlying love between the siblings fuels every scene.
Taylor Stutchbury plays Julie and is empathetic to the struggles her character faces in confronting her sexuality.
"I was closer to Carter in realizing my orientation, yet sexuality is something which has evolved for me over time and it is there where I can understand Julie's struggle," Stutchbury says. "Sexuality for me has to do with acceptance of yourself. Julie's internalized homophobia is something I struggled with when I was younger and it still pokes out its head as I age."
"Women who proclaimed their lesbianism often lost custody of their children, a theme only alluded to in this story but a strong undercurrent," White points out, noting the potential costs of coming out for Julie are not the same as for her sister.
"For Julie, being a favoured young mom in the town, getting her identity from others, doing what is expected of her is second nature," White explains. "So many women lost close connections with family after coming out, there was a lot to lose. A lot to lose especially if you are not sure, and how can you be sure until you try?"
Eroca Zales, who plays Kettie, sees an ugly similarity between 8 x 10's 1984 politics and the current political condition. She recounts a pivotal scene where Carter likens the persecution of gays to the holocaust, and asks, "It's happening again, isn't it?"
"Of course that is happening now in the States with the Christian right," Zales says. "It's a very dangerous political movement. Very repressive to many people — women's right to choose, gays, Muslims, on and on."
Like many plays that prove timeless, 8 x 10's gift is Dreher's dialogue: honest and unpretentious, with plenty of moments of dark wit, tense confrontation, and cute flirting.
We're introduced to Carter and Lisa within minutes of the curtain rising. Lisa is obviously at home in Kettie's backyard, and Carter is intrigued by the stranger who seems so close to her sister. The two women who are competing for Julie's affections circle each other with caution, friendship, and a spark of attraction.
Great dialogue also propels the rise and fall of the heated exchanges between Carter and Julie as they butt heads and then back down, only to keep the pattern on repeat.
Leigh Burrows plays Carter, and while she acknowledges the play touches on important issues about sexuality, she feels the main focus is family.
"What makes the story universal is the way the family interacts, the way we keep up appearances," Burrows says. "Even though there is all this stuff that goes on behind the scenes and behind all the closed doors."
"When I first told one of my sisters that I was a lesbian, it was in a public place in Fredericton, New Brunswick. At the time she worried about [what] people would think when she gave me a hug," Stutchbury recalls. "Years later she came out as a lesbian and it gave me better understanding about what had been going on for her."
8 x 10 Glossy preview
By Andrea Warner
Leaping Thespians director Karen White read over 50 scripts before 8 x 10 Glossy caught her eye.
To her, the play's myriad themes — sexuality, political activism, and family dysfunction — felt particularly relevant for a 2008 audience, even one steeped in modern liberations.
Written by Sarah Dreher, 8 x 10 Glossy is set in 1984. At its centre is Carter, a lesbian activist and photojournalist, who returns home on the one-year anniversary of her father's death to face her sister, Julie, a repressed and unhappy housewife, and her mother, Kettie, finally free after years of abuse. Julie's attractive new friend, Lisa, and the unseen nosy neighbour round out the cast.
Having come out herself in 1978, White strongly identifies with the sexual themes the play explores, and recalls the struggles facing the lesbian community during that pivotal time.
"The majority of people were against gays at the time," White explains. "I knew many women on the fringe of the lesbian-feminist community who didn't call themselves lesbian; they 'just happened to be in love with a women.' It was still very much the love that dare not speak its name, except in the safe enclaves of lesbian culture: the bars, softball teams, and many feminist organizations."
Times have changed but modern audiences will likely be able to draw many comparisons between then and now, White suggests.
"Every young woman coming out now, even though she's coming out in a different world, wants the approval of her family. Lots of women now, even though they know it's okay to be a lesbian, still don't think they are. They're surprised by feelings for a woman."
In 8 x 10 Glossy, Carter may be out and proud, but she's still desperate for Julie's approval. Julie, afraid of her own feelings for Lisa, can't help but lash out at Carter.
The sisters' relationship is complicated, fraught with expectation and disappointment, but the underlying love between the siblings fuels every scene.
Taylor Stutchbury plays Julie and is empathetic to the struggles her character faces in confronting her sexuality.
"I was closer to Carter in realizing my orientation, yet sexuality is something which has evolved for me over time and it is there where I can understand Julie's struggle," Stutchbury says. "Sexuality for me has to do with acceptance of yourself. Julie's internalized homophobia is something I struggled with when I was younger and it still pokes out its head as I age."
"Women who proclaimed their lesbianism often lost custody of their children, a theme only alluded to in this story but a strong undercurrent," White points out, noting the potential costs of coming out for Julie are not the same as for her sister.
"For Julie, being a favoured young mom in the town, getting her identity from others, doing what is expected of her is second nature," White explains. "So many women lost close connections with family after coming out, there was a lot to lose. A lot to lose especially if you are not sure, and how can you be sure until you try?"
Eroca Zales, who plays Kettie, sees an ugly similarity between 8 x 10's 1984 politics and the current political condition. She recounts a pivotal scene where Carter likens the persecution of gays to the holocaust, and asks, "It's happening again, isn't it?"
"Of course that is happening now in the States with the Christian right," Zales says. "It's a very dangerous political movement. Very repressive to many people — women's right to choose, gays, Muslims, on and on."
Like many plays that prove timeless, 8 x 10's gift is Dreher's dialogue: honest and unpretentious, with plenty of moments of dark wit, tense confrontation, and cute flirting.
We're introduced to Carter and Lisa within minutes of the curtain rising. Lisa is obviously at home in Kettie's backyard, and Carter is intrigued by the stranger who seems so close to her sister. The two women who are competing for Julie's affections circle each other with caution, friendship, and a spark of attraction.
Great dialogue also propels the rise and fall of the heated exchanges between Carter and Julie as they butt heads and then back down, only to keep the pattern on repeat.
Leigh Burrows plays Carter, and while she acknowledges the play touches on important issues about sexuality, she feels the main focus is family.
"What makes the story universal is the way the family interacts, the way we keep up appearances," Burrows says. "Even though there is all this stuff that goes on behind the scenes and behind all the closed doors."
"When I first told one of my sisters that I was a lesbian, it was in a public place in Fredericton, New Brunswick. At the time she worried about [what] people would think when she gave me a hug," Stutchbury recalls. "Years later she came out as a lesbian and it gave me better understanding about what had been going on for her."
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Into the Woods
Into the Woods is on now until March 29th. You should go!
My review appeared on Beyond Robson last week, and I've posted it below as well.
Into the Woods
By Andrea Warner
Long before Shrek, there was another twisted, more sophisticated take on fairy tales to answer the question of "What happens after happily ever after?"
My review appeared on Beyond Robson last week, and I've posted it below as well.
Into the Woods
By Andrea Warner
Long before Shrek, there was another twisted, more sophisticated take on fairy tales to answer the question of "What happens after happily ever after?"
Into the Woods, on now at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, is the hit Broadway musical from Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street). More than any of his other productions, Into the Woods is stuffed to the brim with memorable characters and witty, wonderful songs.
Many of our nostalgic favourites get the revamped treatment, their intentions and their morals as compromised as any real person: Jack, with the bean stalk, is lovable but dim-witted; Little Red Riding Hood wields a knife with delectable pleasure; Rapunzel is a traumatized Virgin Mary, held captive by a wicked witch who just wants to be a mother.
The cast is fantastic, and the energy is high. A few performances to note: Jonathan Winsby and Ryan Reid as the two vapid but charming Princes are fun lotharios, and their voices blend beautifully on their two duets. Linda Quibell as the Witch alternates between heartbreak and evil, her powerful voice propelling many of the more emotional songs in the second half. Ultimately, it's Ingrid Nilson, as Little Red Riding Hood, who steals the show with excellent comedic timing, a unique voice, and a striking resemblance to a shrunken Reese Witherspoon.
It's a family friendly production to some extent, but some of the themes are mature (infidelity, revenge), and the body count is high throughout the more somber second half. The venue is small and intimate, and it's rare to attend a musical that isn't distorted by microphones. This is Patrick Street Productions' first show, and it's gratifying to see them tackle such a large-scale production so successfully.
Into the Woods continues until March 29th at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Never Back Down
My review of Never Back Down appeared in Thursday's Westender.
Never Back Down
1 star
By Andrea Warner
Borrowing heavily from every movie involving a wise mentor and an angry young man with issues, Never Back Down attempts to disguise violent brawls as life lessons about responsibility, growing up, and forgiveness. A vicious roundhouse kick to the jaw? That’s the sound of men beginning to heal.
Sean Faris (who looks like a young Tom Cruise) plays Jake, the new kid in school whose reputation as a fighter precedes him through the magic of YouTube-like videos showcasing his “mad skills”. When he immediately falls for the hot blonde, laughably named Baja, it’s no secret that she’ll be the girlfriend of his future nemesis, Ryan, the sociopath leader of the underground fight club that’s permeated this Orlando community.
Jake finds a mentor and a father figure in two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou’s Jean Roqua, a mixed martial artist with his own skeletons in the closet, demanding that his clients only fight inside his gym, not on the street. Hounsou’s acting talents are wasted here, but his bulging biceps bring believability to his character’s reputation as The Best Fighter Ever.
The conclusion is anti-climactic and formulaic, and the quick-cut editing tries to hold the attention of the ADD crowd. The script feels stale, even with the modern, digital tweaks—every kid has a cellphone to record the action and make a celebrity out of winners and losers via the miracle of the Internet. It’s Gossip Girl meets Fight Club, without the cleverness of either.
Never Back Down
1 star
By Andrea Warner
Borrowing heavily from every movie involving a wise mentor and an angry young man with issues, Never Back Down attempts to disguise violent brawls as life lessons about responsibility, growing up, and forgiveness. A vicious roundhouse kick to the jaw? That’s the sound of men beginning to heal.
Sean Faris (who looks like a young Tom Cruise) plays Jake, the new kid in school whose reputation as a fighter precedes him through the magic of YouTube-like videos showcasing his “mad skills”. When he immediately falls for the hot blonde, laughably named Baja, it’s no secret that she’ll be the girlfriend of his future nemesis, Ryan, the sociopath leader of the underground fight club that’s permeated this Orlando community.
Jake finds a mentor and a father figure in two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou’s Jean Roqua, a mixed martial artist with his own skeletons in the closet, demanding that his clients only fight inside his gym, not on the street. Hounsou’s acting talents are wasted here, but his bulging biceps bring believability to his character’s reputation as The Best Fighter Ever.
The conclusion is anti-climactic and formulaic, and the quick-cut editing tries to hold the attention of the ADD crowd. The script feels stale, even with the modern, digital tweaks—every kid has a cellphone to record the action and make a celebrity out of winners and losers via the miracle of the Internet. It’s Gossip Girl meets Fight Club, without the cleverness of either.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Funny Games
Here's my review of Funny Games from this week's Westender.
Funny Games
3 stars
By Andrea Warner
Horrifying, disturbing, and unsettling. Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s remake of his own film of the same name, is a chance to watch your own worst nightmare come true: two angelic looking psychopaths torture and terrorize a family for no other reason, it seems, than “entertainment”.
Naomi Watts and Tim Roth are Ann and George, a wealthy couple arriving at their summer home with their young son, Georgie. The family’s quaint and quiet perfection is in the details: a large vacation home, hidden behind a huge gate, nestled on the water; car trip games of guess the opera; state of the art golf clubs. They appear to be a family entirely untouched by violence; lives lived in a fragile bubble.
Until they meet Peter and Paul who are “visiting” neighbours. The tension is almost unbearable from the first ten minutes onward. Michael Pitt’s Paul is coolly persistent, his exaggerated politeness both mocking and terrifying. Brady Corbet’s Peter has a penetrating gaze, creepy in its vacancy, and a genuinely intimidating unibrow. The games alternate between psychological and physical torture, and the vicious outbursts keep the family, and the audience, on edge.
Haneke makes interesting and unusual choices with the action, periodically breaking through the fourth wall as Paul stares deeply into the camera, addressing the audience directly, or “rewinds” an entire portion of the film in a bizarre twist on create-your-own-ending. Funny Games is the darkest of thrillers, relentlessly violating its characters, but it’s the audience that bears the blunt force of the trauma.
Funny Games
3 stars
By Andrea Warner
Horrifying, disturbing, and unsettling. Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s remake of his own film of the same name, is a chance to watch your own worst nightmare come true: two angelic looking psychopaths torture and terrorize a family for no other reason, it seems, than “entertainment”.
Naomi Watts and Tim Roth are Ann and George, a wealthy couple arriving at their summer home with their young son, Georgie. The family’s quaint and quiet perfection is in the details: a large vacation home, hidden behind a huge gate, nestled on the water; car trip games of guess the opera; state of the art golf clubs. They appear to be a family entirely untouched by violence; lives lived in a fragile bubble.
Until they meet Peter and Paul who are “visiting” neighbours. The tension is almost unbearable from the first ten minutes onward. Michael Pitt’s Paul is coolly persistent, his exaggerated politeness both mocking and terrifying. Brady Corbet’s Peter has a penetrating gaze, creepy in its vacancy, and a genuinely intimidating unibrow. The games alternate between psychological and physical torture, and the vicious outbursts keep the family, and the audience, on edge.
Haneke makes interesting and unusual choices with the action, periodically breaking through the fourth wall as Paul stares deeply into the camera, addressing the audience directly, or “rewinds” an entire portion of the film in a bizarre twist on create-your-own-ending. Funny Games is the darkest of thrillers, relentlessly violating its characters, but it’s the audience that bears the blunt force of the trauma.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Queer + Asian = ?
My story appears in today's Xtra West!
Caught Between Two Sets of Expectations
By Andrea Warner
A panel discussion at the University of British Columbia (UBC) raised more questions than it answered when it brought together an assortment of participants to talk about what it means to be queer and Asian.
Hosted by UBC's Asian Canadian Cultural Organization, the Mar 7 discussion capped off two days of workshops regarding Asian experiences.
Titled Queer + Asian = ? it was touted as a safe haven for people to share their own stories about being queer, racism in the gay community, struggles with coming out, and the cultural give and take between Asian family values and more Western norms.
The most wide-ranging discussion stemmed from the concept of coming out.
"Western culture advocates the individual, whereas Asian culture is more about the collective," says Allen Chen, a 21-year-old UBC student, who says being Asian-Canadian and queer means being caught between two sets of expectations.
For many of the panelists, being gay is only one facet of their identity — and not the dominant facet at that. In contrast, many felt the norm in Vancouver's gay community is to identify first by sexual orientation, then by ethnicity, cultural association, or career.
Being gay isn't a topic generally discussed with family members, panelists noted.
"In Chinese culture, straight or gay, we all hide our relationships," says Lydia Luk, who works at The Centre on Bute St.
Luk has been in a relationship with a woman for over four years but has never told her family. But, she points out, several of her straight friends are also in long-term relationships and haven't told their families either. It's not so much a secret, she says, as a culture founded on respect and privacy.
"There's the idea of a Confucian duty to carry on the family line," Chen says. "As long as you fulfill the public duty, you can live your private life." It's not uncommon for men to marry, have children, and continue to have sex with men on the side.
Asian communities can be incredibly small and close knit, notes Luk, so word gets around very quickly if someone comes out. That's why, she explains, "sometimes we're out in certain communities and sometimes we're not."
Coming out to family also means finding the right words, something that can be difficult in some languages.
"I haven't been able to say I'm gay in Chinese," Chen says. "It's a bad word. It's immediately connoted as negative."
Several people echoed having similar difficulties. For instance, there is no equivalent to "coming out" in Cantonese, as the terms are all very technical. Even if some people wanted to have the conversation, it could prove almost impossible.
For Asian Canadians who do decide to come out, many have difficulty finding resources that reflect their own cultural realities. The majority of resources target English speakers, and while translations are available, language barriers may muddle the meaning and intention of the words.
Additionally, many Asian cultures don't seek support networks outside the family. There are currently no Asian members of PFLAG, a statistic the organization is desperately hoping will change in coming years.
Asian Canadians may also face discrimination within the gay community, an idea that's referred to as a "pecking order" of idealized looks, cultures, and experiences. One of the questions raised by the panel was: is racial preference simply preference or is it racism? And, just because you're attracted to people of the same sex, does that mean you're automatically accepted into the gay community?
Several people in the room pointed to gay personal ads that tell Asians not to bother responding.
"We're supposed to be a community that is oppressed, so we should be aware but I just as quickly realized, no, it doesn't necessarily work that way," says Luk. "And that's too bad."
Caught Between Two Sets of Expectations
By Andrea Warner
A panel discussion at the University of British Columbia (UBC) raised more questions than it answered when it brought together an assortment of participants to talk about what it means to be queer and Asian.
Hosted by UBC's Asian Canadian Cultural Organization, the Mar 7 discussion capped off two days of workshops regarding Asian experiences.
Titled Queer + Asian = ? it was touted as a safe haven for people to share their own stories about being queer, racism in the gay community, struggles with coming out, and the cultural give and take between Asian family values and more Western norms.
The most wide-ranging discussion stemmed from the concept of coming out.
"Western culture advocates the individual, whereas Asian culture is more about the collective," says Allen Chen, a 21-year-old UBC student, who says being Asian-Canadian and queer means being caught between two sets of expectations.
For many of the panelists, being gay is only one facet of their identity — and not the dominant facet at that. In contrast, many felt the norm in Vancouver's gay community is to identify first by sexual orientation, then by ethnicity, cultural association, or career.
Being gay isn't a topic generally discussed with family members, panelists noted.
"In Chinese culture, straight or gay, we all hide our relationships," says Lydia Luk, who works at The Centre on Bute St.
Luk has been in a relationship with a woman for over four years but has never told her family. But, she points out, several of her straight friends are also in long-term relationships and haven't told their families either. It's not so much a secret, she says, as a culture founded on respect and privacy.
"There's the idea of a Confucian duty to carry on the family line," Chen says. "As long as you fulfill the public duty, you can live your private life." It's not uncommon for men to marry, have children, and continue to have sex with men on the side.
Asian communities can be incredibly small and close knit, notes Luk, so word gets around very quickly if someone comes out. That's why, she explains, "sometimes we're out in certain communities and sometimes we're not."
Coming out to family also means finding the right words, something that can be difficult in some languages.
"I haven't been able to say I'm gay in Chinese," Chen says. "It's a bad word. It's immediately connoted as negative."
Several people echoed having similar difficulties. For instance, there is no equivalent to "coming out" in Cantonese, as the terms are all very technical. Even if some people wanted to have the conversation, it could prove almost impossible.
For Asian Canadians who do decide to come out, many have difficulty finding resources that reflect their own cultural realities. The majority of resources target English speakers, and while translations are available, language barriers may muddle the meaning and intention of the words.
Additionally, many Asian cultures don't seek support networks outside the family. There are currently no Asian members of PFLAG, a statistic the organization is desperately hoping will change in coming years.
Asian Canadians may also face discrimination within the gay community, an idea that's referred to as a "pecking order" of idealized looks, cultures, and experiences. One of the questions raised by the panel was: is racial preference simply preference or is it racism? And, just because you're attracted to people of the same sex, does that mean you're automatically accepted into the gay community?
Several people in the room pointed to gay personal ads that tell Asians not to bother responding.
"We're supposed to be a community that is oppressed, so we should be aware but I just as quickly realized, no, it doesn't necessarily work that way," says Luk. "And that's too bad."
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Anne Murray interview
My Anne Murray profile appears in the Charleston City Paper today!
Cool Is Her Middle Name: Anne Murray rides the 'chick bus' into Charleston
By Andrea Warner
Anne Murray is as Canadian as hockey, maple syrup, and beaver tails. She's rocked the same hairstyle since 1986. Her name may not be synonymous with cool, but evidence keeps mounting to the contrary: she was best friends with the late Dusty Springfield, she hung out with the Beatles, and her latest album, Anne Murray Duets: Friends and Legends, took Billboard's country and internet sales charts by storm.
Murray's voice, a powerful contralto, is as rich as her career is long. Her current cross-country tour boasts stops in over 50 cities, where she proudly rides on a "chick bus" with her daughter and the three other women in the band. (The guys get their own buses.) Though the pace can be exhausting, she's feeling well rested when we connect over the phone.
Speaking from her hotel in Florida, where the weather has turned unseasonably cold, Murray is ill equipped for the dip in temperature, but her laugh is like her reputation: warm and generous. The fans that crowd her shows know what to expect, but the uninitiated audience will likely be humbled by the family-like camaraderie. That, and the 40-plus years of performing experience she brings to the stage.
"A lot of people are surprised by the sense of humor and the fun that we have," she says. "This group has been together a long time. We're like a family, and we have fun on stage. And, I have nothing left to prove anymore. I go out and sing and have a good time, and I think people enjoy that."
Murray grew up inspired by musicians who also enjoyed having a good time with their craft. Her musical tastes are all over the map — a fact she attributes to her parents and the eras in which she grew up.
"I listened to every kind of music, Murray says. "My parents listened to Bing Crosby, Perry Como, the Mills Brothers. I loved Doris Day, Patty Page, and Rosemary Clooney. I went through the rock 'n' roll era, then the folk era. All of those things had an influence on me. And then The Beatles came. The Beatles were like the second coming to me. Then Dusty Springfield was in there. She was my favorite. She's always been one of my favorite female vocalists."
Duets is entirely devoted to women vocalists, and the contributors couldn't be more diverse: Shania Twain, Olivia Newton John, Carole King, and Celine Dion, to name a few. Murray's own sound has influenced artists like Nelly Furtado, Jann Arden, and Sarah MacLachlan, and she readily admits that some of the contributors to Duets were more than a little apprehensive to meet her.
"Some of these girls, like k.d. lang, Shania, Nelly Furtado, were weaned on my music," Murray says. "They were a little intimidated and nervous, but not for long."
Some might imagine that an album boasting hugely successful singers would mean massaging a lot of egos, but Murray speaks of the process with nothing but fondness.
"There wasn't a diva in the lot. Everyone came really well prepared. Everyone had a lot of fun doing it. It was just a great experience," Murray says. And there were some pleasant revelations along the way.
Murray initially had zero interest in making the album. Her record company spent a lot of time convincing her to give it a try. Lured by the idea of creating a collaborative album, she finally agreed.
"I wasn't interested at all," she remembers. "But, they kept pushing and they had a big meeting with my management people and their people and they twisted my arm. And, here we are: two Juno nominations [the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys] and double platinum. It's been a shocker. Goes to show you I don't always know what's best for me."
British Sea Power at the Plaza
You can read my review of British Sea Power at the Plaza on Beyond Robson.
Here's a preview:
A combination of crappy crowd and uninspired performances came close to making British Sea Power at the Plaza on Wednesday night a complete wash.
Here's a preview:
A combination of crappy crowd and uninspired performances came close to making British Sea Power at the Plaza on Wednesday night a complete wash.
The lackluster Elizabeth opened the show, and they tried to get the audience engaged, but it wasn't happening. A three-foot circumference remained empty around the stage for the majority of Elizabeth's set, until the lead singer finally implored the audience to come closer. With just one song left, it felt a bit too little too late for such antics. And, nothing's sadder than a failed clap-along.
Well, except two failed clap-alongs. colourmusic followed Elizabeth, and also failed to make any kind of connection with the crowd. Major problems with the sound prompted an uncomfortably long break between sets, and colourmusic never seemed to recover from the off-putting start. The band's white track suits make a great visual statement, but they, too, failed to get the audience moving. The sound was muddled, which may or may not be more of an issue with the venue. colourmusic have a lot of huge ideas, but the concept felt lost that night. It'll be interesting to see them the next time they come to town. It felt like there was promise there.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Elias interview
I sat down with Elias for a profile in March's Discorder. Pick up a copy if you can--the pictures are worth it.
They Work Hard for the Money
Elias Interview
By Andrea Warner
Elias, the alternative indie band from Vancouver, is perched on the brink of success—they have a major talent agent behind them, the brand new album All We Want, and camera-ready faces to get the girls’ hearts racing. So how does a fledgling local rock band make the jump from local following to national (or international) fan favourite?
Hard work.
The Elias boys continue to work hard to pay their dues. Cross-Canada bus tour horror stories? Check. Labour-intensive day jobs to pay for their demo? Check. Long, long hours rehearsing to perfect their sound and stage presence? Check.
There is even photographic evidence of lead guitarist Rob Tornroos as a five-year-old strumming a tennis racket while rocking out to Jon Bon Jovi. So, check off embarrassing/endearing childhood dreamer off the list, too. Elias is ready to kick it up a notch and take Canada by storm with their sweet sound and urgent rhythms. Oh, and to find Rob a girlfriend. That’s also on the agenda.
Elias was still pretty far in the future when the band started to take shape in 2000. Lead singer Brian Healy and his brother, bass player Jonny, joined forces with Rob and drummer Dominic Coletta, and by 2005 they’d released a self-titled EP that garnered media attention and had built a loyal fan base through dynamic live shows throughout Western Canada. This is also where Elias attracted the attention of the venerable booking agency, and Canada’s largest, Sam L. Feldman & Associates.
With careers and futures entirely intertwined, the teasing and self-deprecating humour Brian and Rob share over coffee make it easy to assume the entire band is like a family.
“You get to know how to push each other’s buttons pretty well, piss each other off. Rob and I actually live next door to each other now, and work together and are in a band together. He’s sick of me,” Brian jokes.
And, that’s not even the familial bond at Elias’s core. Brothers Brian and Jonny contend with personal and professional dynamics, and minimize the impact on the band.
“We fight all the time,” Brian says, while Rob laughs knowingly. “Had a fight earlier today. Not physical, but I might have punched him once. Usually it’s just verbal abuse and as fast as it happens, it’s resolved.”
“Well, it’s over,” Rob interjects. “I don’t know if it’s resolved.”
Right now Elias isn’t living the glamorous rock star lifestyle. They spend at least three or four nights a week rehearsing in a Gastown space, and have played almost every venue in Vancouver. They’ve also spent long road trips in a cramped van driving from Vancouver to Toronto, meeting new fans, getting on each other’s nerves, and discovering their own personal Bermuda Triangle: Regina.
“We broke down three times going across the country, and every time it was in Regina,” Brian says. “Every time!”
All We Want has also been a labour of love, and it pretty well sums up Elias’s dream to play music and bring their music to a wider audience.
“We’ve been recording All We Want for about two years,” Rob says. “Some of the songs we wrote before, but we kept writing while we were recording.”
“I think the newer songs, inevitably for a band, will ring more true because they’re more current,” Brian says. “The meaning behind them is more recent and the music’s fresher for them.”
Musically, All We Want has received comparisons to Radiohead and Mars Volta, to name just a few. And while Brian and Rob can list off a long list of bigger bands who have influenced their sound, they are also mindful of the smaller bands who have found big success through smart choices.
“Arcade Fire’s celebrity is incredible, because they sort of did it themselves,” Brian says. “In the past it was about getting that label to sign you, but that’s not ideal anymore. It’s better to get out on the Internet or over the radio that way and enable yourselves. Like Rob says, go overseas and tour more. That’d be ideal. We had MySpace feature us in the spring and that brought tons of people and crazy plays.”
By day, Rob and Brian toil as landscapers, facing off against dirt, heavy lifting, manufactured greenery, and buckets of Vancouver rain. Their outlook is refreshing in its determination: these day jobs paid to produce Elias’s debut album, and the band is doing it their own way. The hard work is starting to pay off, and the perks, though not plentiful, have a neat shine.
“We played North by Northeast last May and we went to the Feldman barbecue held at their Toronto office and there’s lots of signed acts there. You’re partying and drinking with a bunch of people you recognize,” Rob says, of one memorable experience.
“We opened up for the Subways once at the Commodore and that was an incredible experience,” Brian says. “We’ve seen umpteen shows of our favourite bands and here we are walking out on stage. I remember, almost in that pause-time moment, walking out on stage and being like ‘here we are’. This is so bizarre to me. Looking out where you were looking in before.”
“And we opened up for Fiction Plane at the Plaza Club, Sting’s son’s band, a couple nights before the Police tour kicked off here in town, and that was pretty surreal because Sting showed up,” Rob says. “After we had played, but regardless. We looked up and everyone’s staring at Sting. We are huge Police fans so it was just crazy.”
The mixture of the heady fun stuff and daily real-life grind does take it’s toll, though.
“It’s tiring and stressful. You just pick yourself up and keep going,” Brian says. “Come home from work and motivate yourself to head back out.”
“You get a half hour off [between work and rehearsal], and then head back down to Gastown,” Rob says.
And the coming year won’t be much of a reprieve, as Elias burst headstrong into 2008 with a list of goals to achieve.
“We want to do a lot of that background stuff,” Rob says. “More videos, touring to support the album, and getting the word out there across Canada. Maybe branching out to the UK or the US.”
And, finding Rob his life mate, of course, by turning this article into a personal ad.
“I’m a single, 25-year-old male, searching for a suitable life partner,” Rob says. “Must like watching movies,…”
“Long walks on the beach,” Brian adds.
“Long walks anywhere. Driving and holding hands. And cats. Can you put that in there?”
“And a picture. No shirt,” Brian says.
Elias may be the hardest working local band, but boys will be boys.
They Work Hard for the Money
Elias Interview
By Andrea Warner
Elias, the alternative indie band from Vancouver, is perched on the brink of success—they have a major talent agent behind them, the brand new album All We Want, and camera-ready faces to get the girls’ hearts racing. So how does a fledgling local rock band make the jump from local following to national (or international) fan favourite?
Hard work.
The Elias boys continue to work hard to pay their dues. Cross-Canada bus tour horror stories? Check. Labour-intensive day jobs to pay for their demo? Check. Long, long hours rehearsing to perfect their sound and stage presence? Check.
There is even photographic evidence of lead guitarist Rob Tornroos as a five-year-old strumming a tennis racket while rocking out to Jon Bon Jovi. So, check off embarrassing/endearing childhood dreamer off the list, too. Elias is ready to kick it up a notch and take Canada by storm with their sweet sound and urgent rhythms. Oh, and to find Rob a girlfriend. That’s also on the agenda.
Elias was still pretty far in the future when the band started to take shape in 2000. Lead singer Brian Healy and his brother, bass player Jonny, joined forces with Rob and drummer Dominic Coletta, and by 2005 they’d released a self-titled EP that garnered media attention and had built a loyal fan base through dynamic live shows throughout Western Canada. This is also where Elias attracted the attention of the venerable booking agency, and Canada’s largest, Sam L. Feldman & Associates.
With careers and futures entirely intertwined, the teasing and self-deprecating humour Brian and Rob share over coffee make it easy to assume the entire band is like a family.
“You get to know how to push each other’s buttons pretty well, piss each other off. Rob and I actually live next door to each other now, and work together and are in a band together. He’s sick of me,” Brian jokes.
And, that’s not even the familial bond at Elias’s core. Brothers Brian and Jonny contend with personal and professional dynamics, and minimize the impact on the band.
“We fight all the time,” Brian says, while Rob laughs knowingly. “Had a fight earlier today. Not physical, but I might have punched him once. Usually it’s just verbal abuse and as fast as it happens, it’s resolved.”
“Well, it’s over,” Rob interjects. “I don’t know if it’s resolved.”
Right now Elias isn’t living the glamorous rock star lifestyle. They spend at least three or four nights a week rehearsing in a Gastown space, and have played almost every venue in Vancouver. They’ve also spent long road trips in a cramped van driving from Vancouver to Toronto, meeting new fans, getting on each other’s nerves, and discovering their own personal Bermuda Triangle: Regina.
“We broke down three times going across the country, and every time it was in Regina,” Brian says. “Every time!”
All We Want has also been a labour of love, and it pretty well sums up Elias’s dream to play music and bring their music to a wider audience.
“We’ve been recording All We Want for about two years,” Rob says. “Some of the songs we wrote before, but we kept writing while we were recording.”
“I think the newer songs, inevitably for a band, will ring more true because they’re more current,” Brian says. “The meaning behind them is more recent and the music’s fresher for them.”
Musically, All We Want has received comparisons to Radiohead and Mars Volta, to name just a few. And while Brian and Rob can list off a long list of bigger bands who have influenced their sound, they are also mindful of the smaller bands who have found big success through smart choices.
“Arcade Fire’s celebrity is incredible, because they sort of did it themselves,” Brian says. “In the past it was about getting that label to sign you, but that’s not ideal anymore. It’s better to get out on the Internet or over the radio that way and enable yourselves. Like Rob says, go overseas and tour more. That’d be ideal. We had MySpace feature us in the spring and that brought tons of people and crazy plays.”
By day, Rob and Brian toil as landscapers, facing off against dirt, heavy lifting, manufactured greenery, and buckets of Vancouver rain. Their outlook is refreshing in its determination: these day jobs paid to produce Elias’s debut album, and the band is doing it their own way. The hard work is starting to pay off, and the perks, though not plentiful, have a neat shine.
“We played North by Northeast last May and we went to the Feldman barbecue held at their Toronto office and there’s lots of signed acts there. You’re partying and drinking with a bunch of people you recognize,” Rob says, of one memorable experience.
“We opened up for the Subways once at the Commodore and that was an incredible experience,” Brian says. “We’ve seen umpteen shows of our favourite bands and here we are walking out on stage. I remember, almost in that pause-time moment, walking out on stage and being like ‘here we are’. This is so bizarre to me. Looking out where you were looking in before.”
“And we opened up for Fiction Plane at the Plaza Club, Sting’s son’s band, a couple nights before the Police tour kicked off here in town, and that was pretty surreal because Sting showed up,” Rob says. “After we had played, but regardless. We looked up and everyone’s staring at Sting. We are huge Police fans so it was just crazy.”
The mixture of the heady fun stuff and daily real-life grind does take it’s toll, though.
“It’s tiring and stressful. You just pick yourself up and keep going,” Brian says. “Come home from work and motivate yourself to head back out.”
“You get a half hour off [between work and rehearsal], and then head back down to Gastown,” Rob says.
And the coming year won’t be much of a reprieve, as Elias burst headstrong into 2008 with a list of goals to achieve.
“We want to do a lot of that background stuff,” Rob says. “More videos, touring to support the album, and getting the word out there across Canada. Maybe branching out to the UK or the US.”
And, finding Rob his life mate, of course, by turning this article into a personal ad.
“I’m a single, 25-year-old male, searching for a suitable life partner,” Rob says. “Must like watching movies,…”
“Long walks on the beach,” Brian adds.
“Long walks anywhere. Driving and holding hands. And cats. Can you put that in there?”
“And a picture. No shirt,” Brian says.
Elias may be the hardest working local band, but boys will be boys.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Threat From Outer Space
This is my Discorder review of Threat From Outer Space's latest album.
Threat From Outer Space
Bleeding the Dying Elephant
By Andrea Warner
Threat From Outer Space label their live show as a ‘barn burning dance floor graveyard”, and damned if they don’t make the energy transcend the boundaries of stereo speakers, bursting through with the shoulder-bobbing, booty-shaking new album, Bleeding the Dying Elephant.
The five-piece from East Vancouver take elements of rap, hip-hop, and indie pop, and sets them against a grand backdrop of humming, synthesized beats and grand flourishes of trumpet. The sound is familiar to more mainstream fare, but the unique rhythms keep things fresh.
One of the album’s best tracks, “I’ll Get Over”, brings on the funk with searing trumpets while another stand out, “Beginning of the End”, the album’s last track, brings the volume down with a voice that’s almost a dark whisper before flaring into a full-bodied chorus layered with electronics.
“5:40 AM” is exactly the kind of song you want to end the party on with its slow groove and subtly suggestive beat. “Stay Awake” offers up sinfully slow bass and an awesome Q & A chorus to counteract the track’s sing-speak resonance.
Even the lyrically tired “Guesswork”, which offers a recycled groaner like “9/11 was an inside job”, can’t mute the pulsing beats and charming brass that pushes the song from mediocre to good. “Worldwide” attempts to highlight the global intricacies of war, environment, and poverty—it’s pretty far-reaching, and at times feels more like a sermon than a solution or exploration, but at least it’s thought provoking.
TFOS’s socialist approach to making music lists the “key players” in the band, but doesn’t isolate the contributions. It’s just one more oddly confounding detail about this East Side gem.
Threat From Outer Space
Bleeding the Dying Elephant
By Andrea Warner
Threat From Outer Space label their live show as a ‘barn burning dance floor graveyard”, and damned if they don’t make the energy transcend the boundaries of stereo speakers, bursting through with the shoulder-bobbing, booty-shaking new album, Bleeding the Dying Elephant.
The five-piece from East Vancouver take elements of rap, hip-hop, and indie pop, and sets them against a grand backdrop of humming, synthesized beats and grand flourishes of trumpet. The sound is familiar to more mainstream fare, but the unique rhythms keep things fresh.
One of the album’s best tracks, “I’ll Get Over”, brings on the funk with searing trumpets while another stand out, “Beginning of the End”, the album’s last track, brings the volume down with a voice that’s almost a dark whisper before flaring into a full-bodied chorus layered with electronics.
“5:40 AM” is exactly the kind of song you want to end the party on with its slow groove and subtly suggestive beat. “Stay Awake” offers up sinfully slow bass and an awesome Q & A chorus to counteract the track’s sing-speak resonance.
Even the lyrically tired “Guesswork”, which offers a recycled groaner like “9/11 was an inside job”, can’t mute the pulsing beats and charming brass that pushes the song from mediocre to good. “Worldwide” attempts to highlight the global intricacies of war, environment, and poverty—it’s pretty far-reaching, and at times feels more like a sermon than a solution or exploration, but at least it’s thought provoking.
TFOS’s socialist approach to making music lists the “key players” in the band, but doesn’t isolate the contributions. It’s just one more oddly confounding detail about this East Side gem.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Jon and Roy's Another Noon
This album review appears in March's Discorder!
Jon and Roy
Another Noon
By Andrea Warner
Jon and Roy new album, Another Noon, is reminiscent of great folk music like Simon and Garfunkel or Cat Stevens. Another Noon is a quiet and engaging companion to a day spent inside watching the rain fall, or drinking coffee while holding hands with someone adorable.
The album’s opening track, also doubles as the album’s title, and is an engaging little ditty, while “DT Stylee” offers up handclaps, a winner every time. The countrified “Little Bit of Love” is a foot-stomping charmer.
The entire percussion section comes out in “Moonlight”, and the guitar sounds like a literal interpretation of someone moseying down a backcountry road. On “Long Road”, moseying gives way to galloping horses. “Thanks For That” offers up a lovely and bittersweet lilting shrug.
The interesting give and take between Jon’s voice and his guitar contrasts nicely with Roy’s restrained percussion. If anything, the guitar is sometimes too omnipresent, almost obliterating Jon’s voice on several tracks. However, the biggest criticism Another Noon might face is the “sameness” of the songs—they’re not terribly distinguishable from each other on first or third listen.
That said, Another Noon is consistent and cohesive—there’s not a single song that feels out of place. Throughout, the guitar and drum offer something quick, like feet skipping, and it’s easy to imagine Another Noon scored across a cheeky and poignant independent film. Almost every song gives the illusion of moving forward while looking fondly behind you. The implied motion somehow provokes happy feelings, the album’s very quaintness catching on like a smile.
Jon and Roy
Another Noon
By Andrea Warner
Jon and Roy new album, Another Noon, is reminiscent of great folk music like Simon and Garfunkel or Cat Stevens. Another Noon is a quiet and engaging companion to a day spent inside watching the rain fall, or drinking coffee while holding hands with someone adorable.
The album’s opening track, also doubles as the album’s title, and is an engaging little ditty, while “DT Stylee” offers up handclaps, a winner every time. The countrified “Little Bit of Love” is a foot-stomping charmer.
The entire percussion section comes out in “Moonlight”, and the guitar sounds like a literal interpretation of someone moseying down a backcountry road. On “Long Road”, moseying gives way to galloping horses. “Thanks For That” offers up a lovely and bittersweet lilting shrug.
The interesting give and take between Jon’s voice and his guitar contrasts nicely with Roy’s restrained percussion. If anything, the guitar is sometimes too omnipresent, almost obliterating Jon’s voice on several tracks. However, the biggest criticism Another Noon might face is the “sameness” of the songs—they’re not terribly distinguishable from each other on first or third listen.
That said, Another Noon is consistent and cohesive—there’s not a single song that feels out of place. Throughout, the guitar and drum offer something quick, like feet skipping, and it’s easy to imagine Another Noon scored across a cheeky and poignant independent film. Almost every song gives the illusion of moving forward while looking fondly behind you. The implied motion somehow provokes happy feelings, the album’s very quaintness catching on like a smile.
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