Fave Albums
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Hands down the best album of year, In Ghost Colours is a spectacular sophomore effort representing the combined talents of Cut Copy's new dedication to song writing and Tim Goldsworthy's fantastic production. The band gets away from DJ-style sampling, and turns instead to a great mix of melody and beat, making for a flawless collection of dance and pop that never tires.
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
Friendly Fires deliver a nice surprise with this precise, ten song debut filled with creative percussion and memorable hooks. Solid throughout, the album will have you in full-on singlaong mode instantly.
Kelley Polar - I Need You to Hold On While the Sky is Falling
Those looking for some intelligent dance music need look no further than the pseudo-conceptual second album from violinist Kelley Polar. Polar manages to combine his classical training and his devotion to disco, all while distancing himself from his collborations with Metro Area's Morgan Geist. Smart and crystalline.
Ida - Lover's Prayer & My Fair, My Dark
Ida returned with a quiet force this year, releasing the gentle recordings of sessions made in the backwoods of Wooodstock, NY. After several years of inconsistent albums, the masters of slowcore go back to their roots, with warm, embracing harmonies and the gentle strum of folk songs that matter.
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
After the epic but empty, Don't Save Us From the Flames, Saturdays = Youth marks a significant step forward for Anthony Gonzalez's M83. He has intelligently imbued his compositions with a strong sense of structure, not just in the songs themselves, but also in the layout of the album itself. Sweeping synths and echoing drums aside, at its core Gonzalez tries to build an album more than a mood piece, and succeeds on all accounts.
TV on the Radio - Dear Science
Beautiful slices of weird pop and blues and even a touch of R & B get mixed into TVOTR's new and accessible Dear Science. The lyrics are poetry, the crescendoes are stellar, and the brass is hot. If Cookie Mountain proved TVOTR were capable of recording on a massive scale, Dear Science proves they have ultimate control over all the elements.
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Sweater-wearing preppy indie rock anyone? Even if you don't attend the Ivy League, the Paul Simon Graceland influenced Vampire Weekend are all the light-hearted fun needed to mobilize the shoegazer.
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Lush. Harmonies so steep and full you'll swear they were created in the base of a canyon. Evocative of snowy days and bare winter trees. Respectfully mournful of days past and brimming with hope to arrive with the sunrise.
Portishead - Third
Did anyone know that Portishead were still even together? And then they show up with this completely amazing album more upbeat than anything in their collective catalog. Like a little present from the gods, Portishead deliver the dark jazzy trip-hop promise no one asked for, but for which everyone is thankful.
Sigur Rós - Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust
Like the naked, frolicking men on its cover, Sigur Ros appear, for the first time in their collective career, jubilant and free. That's not to say that they aren't still falling back on their glacial, soaring, sometimes slow as molasses style, it's just that they've never done it better. Not to mention that when they aren't floating, the drums click and clack, the hands clap and they're up and away like a kite.
Robyn - Robyn
A consolation prize must go to the long-delayed U.S. release of the best pop album of 2004. Robyn's self-titled masterpiece is a selective grouping of indelible pop songs with hints of hip-hop, techno, and soul. Her star has never shined as bright as it should here in America, and I blame Universal's sloppy promotion for not sending this impeccable piece straight to the top of the charts. Enjoy selfishly.
Fave Movies
The Visitor
The best film I have seen this year is the story of a disenchanted college professor who has a life-changing run-in with two illegal immigrants camping out in his abandoned apartment. The Visitor is both a moving drama and a searing criticism of America's policies toward and profiling of the Other.
Persepolis
A visually brilliant exporation of Iranian history through a unique and animated perspective. Based on the titular graphic novels, Persepolis shares the autobiography of Marjane Satrapi in a style never before seen on screen. Revolutionary.
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan takes Hollywood to school on how to translate comic books to the big screen. How? Here's Batman at his coldest, Joker at his most lethal and insane, here's chaos and a chance for ethical redemption all wrapped up in a movie that transcends the superhero genre and ends up being the slick action detective story that Batman has always been in print.
Iron Man
While The Dark Knight went cold as ice, Iron Man succeeded along the lines of Spider-Man 2. Robert Downey Jr. was born to play the cynical and drunk Tony Stark, and with him in the starring role, we the audience had something to cheer. Yay!
Hellboy II
Guillermo Del Toro did not disappoint either, expanding the Hellboy franchise with more of his truly bizarre visuals. I'm a huge fan of Mignola's comic books, so I'm biased, but I thought this was the most fun I had at a movie this year.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
I could not stop laughing throughout this entire movie. Jason Siegel's brilliant comic writing, paired with his heartbroken, mopey performance would have been enough, but on top of that we get a cast of fully realized characters that are all as funny as he is. Can't wait for Siegel to take on the actual Muppets after seeing his Dracula musical.
Wall-E
Arthouse apocalyptic silent cinema for children? Wall-E is a tender movie that should fall flat on its robotic face, but somehow the geniuses over at Pixar have done it again, this time engaging an audience with characters who can't really speak, have limited motion, and live in a terrifying post-consumer universe.
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Sexy without being raunchy, Woody Allen's latest is a nice treatise on love's realities and failings. His aimless Scarlett Johanssen sells, but the real star here is Penelope Cruz's scene-stealing maniac, who chews through everything she kisses. Engaging and intelligent. This begs the question, why aren't all Allen's movies this good?
Rachel Getting Married
John Demme has slapped his camera into some kind of Benetton-ad wedding farce here, which could spell out disaster. Luckily, beneath the overtly diverse occassion, we are invited to a terrific standout performance from Anne Hathaway, who, as Rachel, evolves and breathes anew while almost tearing her family apart.
Fave Books
Kevin Brockmeier's View from the Seventh Layer
Stories inside ride the line between literary short fiction and science fiction, even taking small steps (particularly in one story) into fan fiction. The collection directly addresses the conflict between genres, what Michael Chabon describes as the plight of the so-called bookstore sci-fi/fantasy ghetto (see below). The ultimate success here is the choose your own adventure story, which serves as both an existential narrative and a puzzle. The View From the Seventh Layer is triumphant, quiet, dazzling and wonderful from beginning to end.
Nick Harkaway's The Gone Away World
The mimes, ninjas, soldiers, and people - real and imagined - that populate the Gone Away World are at once engaging and fascinating. Harkaway's debut builds a reality so strong and pulls the rug out so fast that Jean-Paul Sartre would be proud. The book questions the very nature of why things exist in ways never explored. Brave and delightful.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road
The Road is biblical; a sprawling epic told in sparse, minimal prose. It is immediately a classic and a worthy successor to Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea or even Homer's Odyssey. The book horrifies as it sneaks peaks into the depths of human evil in the face of survival, and manages to cry out for hope and good in the midst of depravity. Where No Country for Old Men stood as a testament to the undying nature of wanton destruction, The Road holds a candle to the darkness and asks that we believe in the power of the individual and the power of the love between a father and a son. To consider that this love could conquer in a world decimated is to continue the testament this amazing piece of literature leaves behind.
Junot Diaz's The Short Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Fast, brutal slayer of a book. Took me by surprise, got its hooks into me, and I couldn't put the damn thing down. Well deserving of all the heaping praise and criticism including the Pulitizer. Manages to be a significant portrait of urban slang, geek-centrism and Dominican history all at the same time. No slight feat. Wonder if people fifty years from now will be getting the references, or if like Ulysses, they'll decode Oscar Wao with a reference guide. Loved it through and through.
Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin's Three Cups of Tea
Slow to start, the story of Greg Mortenson's humanitarian aid to Pakistan becomes a fascinating model for fighting the so-called "war on terror" with education instead of missiles. Mortenson's life doesn't exactly seem desireable, but there's no denying that his accomplishments are staggering. Three Cups of Tea reaffirms that America cannot simply invade wherever it pleases and abandon the civilian casualties.
Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach
On Chesil Beach is a welcome, if morose, new creation from Ian McEwan. Where Saturday went from being a moment by moment masterpiece to a contrived mess, Chesil Beach has no room to devolve. In four scant chapters, McEwan manages to create the two leads, their families, and all the history that leads up to the moment when two young strangers are meant to consummate their marriage. McEwan writes frankly and believeably about sex from both male and female perspectives, and stages the story in a historical context that creates an added tension. Easy to read in a single sitting, Chesil Beach exists as a serious, pessimistic and realistic version of a Nicholas Sparks love scene for the lit crowd.
Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends
If you're a fan of Chabon's fiction, you'll appreciate not only his book reviews (which double as suggested reading) but also his reflections on writing each of his novels. Enjoyed this from cover to cover. I agree 100% with Chabon on the over-genre-fication of the bookstore and literary criticism. Mystery and SF and Fantasy can be and often is "serious" fiction. Yet these artists remain in the B&N ghetto. Maybe with more writing from popular contemporaries like Chabon, everyone can relax and enjoy reading a little more.
Italo Calvino's Baron in the Trees
The Baron was the perfect read for my recent trip to Italy. We actually passed the main location of the book just hours before I started reading. Calvino's story of a boy who goes to live in the trees is not only silly but outrageous. Who writes a book about such an outlandish idea? But he succeeds in not only making the situation plausible but also deeply interesting and moving.
Christopher Priest's Inverted World
Christopher Priest has created a very strange world-within-a-world within a version of our own world here with Inverted World, and if that didn't make any sense, try reading the prologue and the first chapter back to back. Attempting to connect the dots is the fun of this strange story, and while all the cards aren't on the table to guess the ending, when all the pieces do fall together you're in for a nice twist. I love how Priest throws in suggestions of the medieval to start you off and then slowly gives you hints of language that make you say, "Wait - what?" This was an NPR pick, and I wholeheartedly agree that any sci-fi or mathematics fan would enjoy Inverted World. I usually hate math, but trying to calculate along with the main character is actually fun.
