Shopping the Music Stash #1 - Cat's Eyes

I noticed a few weeks ago that I was in a right rut with my music playlist.  I was trapped in the repetitive abyss of seeking solace in the recently-played playlist, which ensured that even songs I love dearly have become over saturated in my under-stimulated mind.

It all began after catching up on the "What's in my Bag?" videos on Amoeba's Youtube channel.  Even if your taste doesn't match the featured artist, it is the passion with which they speak about their chosen albums that made me yearn for a similar emotional connection with music.  I mean we all have it, and when I started thinking about what I would pick out if given the chance to run wild in the Amoeba store, the list and reasons were numerous.  But still, I couldn't shake a feeling that I was occupying a bit of a musical wasteland.

First I hit HMV with abandon, yet bought classic albums that I wanted to catch up on.  You know, the kind that belong on "listen to this or you will die" lists.  Then my mind wandered to a musically fertile time in my life.  Why, it was just last summer.

I wanted new music to join my library in a an effort to help fight the cause of mundanity while the leader, moi, was writing and editing her thesis.  While most albums were listened to, a few fell through the cracks of the expansive back-catalogue.

The first album I'm going to talk about in this little series is going to be Cat's Eyes's eponymous debut.

Ordinarily with a duo such as this, I should give a little background information considering Faris Badwan comes from a background with British band, The Horrors, and Rachel Zeffira is of a classical background, as Wikipedia would suggest.  But because I know nothing about The Horrors's music and nothing about Zeffira, I will just briefly say that I heard about them through Nylon magazine and my interest was piqued.  But then the album was abandoned in the annals of my iTunes, only to resurface a fortnight ago.

Straight off, it comes across to me as spooky sixties pop.  I'm not talking Monster Mash and the like, there is no kitsch here, and rather than merely reference, they have adopted the structure and dreamy, LSD-soaked sound of the late sixties.  Plus, I think Brian Wilson would be impressed with the layers going on throughout these songs.  Thus it came as no surprise that when I finally did my research on these guys, that Cat's Eyes was conceived after Fadwan introduced Zeffira to the girl groups of the sixties.  

Their sound is more mature and muted than that of sixties girl groups, but Zeffira's lyrics and vocals mirror that same complexity of vulnerability, innocence, and strength at the forefront of the girl group oeuvre.  

The closest to a classic ballad you will find on this album, epitomizes the spooky pop feel I spoke of earlier.  

I'm not Stupid

One of the stand-out tracks on the album Over You is something akin to what a James Bond theme would sound like if it was sung by a Bond girl done wrong by Mr. Shaken not Stirred. It is everything that is right about sixties pop, a la Nancy Sinatra.   

Over You

Apologies for not being able to find a better clip, but hey I just figured out they are really good live, good translation of song from album!  So Bandit would have to be the stand out track for me personally, I would describe it as the older sister to Over You.  It's a wise woman speaking about a man who done her wrong, but instead of thrashing him, she's just warning the others.  Simple as.  Perfection.

Bandit

It is pathetic that I was deliriously pleased with this album.  You know when you take a chance on a record that you know nothing about and then feel bitterly disappointed that it fails to move you in any way?  Luckily I struck gold with this.  The talent is palpable, and after studying postmodernism, I always appreciate a good reference.  This is a slightly askew ode to the sixties, making it personal and unique and leaving me anticipating more from Cat's Eyes in the future.  I'd highly recommend it, especially for those nights with the wind howls outside.  It'll add to the atmosphere.  Maybe accompany it with Wuthering Heights?  I feel like they would go together. 

Really need...

I really need  to stop catching up on so many TV shows and get back to movies...

but first more Spaced!

Shopping the Film Stash #3 - Frankenstein (1994)

So how grossed out were you when Frankenstein was covered in amniotic fluid?

Overall I think this film was unintentionally hilarious.

Good day!

Shopping the Film Stash #1 - Heathers

As I now live two hours from a decent cinema that offers variety and limited release choices, I have been both gathering and diving into the DVD archives.  I have found myself creating a list as long as my harm, a bucket list of films to see, to study, to learn.  Directors, script-writers, and actors constantly site various source material when speaking of their craft, and throughout the last year while writing my thesis and pouring over various film reviews I have learnt that a film critic is no different.  The annals of film is a critic's bible when writing an objective review.

So to train my amateur writing hand a little better I am setting out on a little exercise and visiting some cult classics, films that have come to my attention over the last year but have so far been somehow neglected, and perhaps even some oldies that I love!

All in the hopes of extending my film vocabulary....


Heathers (1989)

I remember seeing Mean Girls in the cinema thinking it was refreshingly different from the other teen comedies that had been circulating around that era (the era I speak of is that Golden Age of Millenia-teen films, 10 Things I Hate About You, Down To You, She's All That, but to name a few, I guess Mean Girls was a few years after, but you get my drift).  Mean Girls came along and set about debunking the romantic notions of teenage-hood, and decided to shed some light on the harsh realities of High School.  There was less, I stress less, of a focus on the girl-likes-boy dilemma while the examination of the fickle foundations of female friendships really takes center stage.

Though Tina Fey's originality and wit are boundless, Mean Girls, its plot, and characters owe everything to Heathers.  Heathers is a far superior, satirical, more sinister commentary on the tenuous years of High School.  It villainises these characters, giving them unprecedented power, the exaggerated (but not altogether unimaginable) murder plot parodying the usual hormonal deviations of an American teen.

"I just killed my best friend"

"And your worst enemy"

"Same difference"

Well hello, shoulder pads...

Veronica, the oft under-appreciated Winona Ryder, is a girl who is not named Heather but who has been given divine access to the elite Heathers clique, for reasons unknown.  At first she feels privileged to be included and is even enthralled by the warped superiority of the malevolent lead Heather.  She is enamoured by Heather's philosophies, that in fact justify her tyrannical ways, "Dear Diary, Heather told me she teaches people real life."  The film is full of gems like this, Fey wishes she could be this raunchy and self-assured in her writing.  Heather 1 is like a cacophony  of teenage-hood and adulthood, she is self-possessed, relishing her youth yet outgrown the anxieties of her peers.  She is acutely aware of her surroundings, so much so that she has created her own glossary, according to her authority, "very" marks a seal of coveted approval, Heather desires very, because she desires excess and vitality.

She blithely critiques the stereotypes of youth, and condemns her followers for falling victim, "Grow up Heather, bulimia is so '87."  Still inevitably lacking sympathy, Heather's independence is what makes her both enviable and caustic.

She eventually tethers nerves, leading Veronica to naively succumbs to her new boyfriend's scheme to throttle the queen bitches, after unwittingly becoming an accessory in Jason's murder plot, when Heather 1 ingests her poisonous end.

Christian Slater plays Jason Dean, and though in Jack Nicholson's psychosis The Shining mode, when clothed in leather jacket and straddling a motorbike he personifies James Dean 2.0.  He is an 80s incarnation, the upper-class rebel without a cause who sets about invigorating a spirit into an era that lacked the rebellious attitude that drenched the Hippie 60s and 70s punks.

Slater, making evil acceptable in 1989.

Though murder and mayhem landmark her journey, Veronica is actually an admirable character, even somewhat a feminine role model.  She takes a stand, an intense one, against bullying.  And though they are the MTV generation's Bonnie and Clyde, when she realises that she has descended into psychotic territory with her boyfriend she transcends this too.  She evolves beyond the suburbia complex, the vacuous pandering of unmitigated angst.  Even this is tackled ironically, when after further rampage, Veronica consults her diary again, professing that "...my teen angst bullshit has a bodycount."

Veronica's rebellion from standards is where it is actually a reverse of Mean Girls.  Mean Girls begins with Cady and her friends devising a plan to conquer and destroy the influence of The Plastics.  Cady herself is blinded by power leading to a somewhat smaltzy ending where everyone learns their lesson and lives happily ever after.  Heathers' resolution, if it can be called that, is far more cathartic.  It abandons sentiment, a pitfall that much mainstream American cinema.  Both film's exhibit climatic scenes in a school gym, both are executed extremely differently.  Mean Girls looks like an after-school special in the shadow of Heathers' explosive metaphors.

The final word on Heathers.  How very.