Skyfall

I was going to try to fit bone into the headline somehow…but with our recent conversations about 007 and his genitalia, but I thought this was more appropriate. Or inappropriate. That’s what you call diverse writing.

This was the first movie I’ve ever seen in a theater by myself. Well I wasn’t really by myself. I was surrounded by 200 elderly people hacking up their lung butter every time Bond was trying to make sexy lady moves. I couldn’t help but thing maybe that was why he wasn’t getting very lucky this time around.

Anyway, Skyfall is all about Bond and how he’s losing a step, becoming “old balls” if you will. After a near-death experience, Bond isn’t quite what he once was. He’s on edge, jittery. He’s lost his marksmanship, he’s lost as step physically and we find out that his upbringing was less than ideal, leading to some mommy/daddy issues.

Thankfully this is all just in time for homosexually-charged Javier Bardem to get a list of all the MI6 agents and starts pickin’ em off one by one. As if Bond didn’t have enough shit on his plate, he’s gotta deal with this now. At this point in the movie he’d only gotten laid once.

So basically I felt that two over-arching themes “pop, pop”ed out to me in this installment. The first was the old, “I’m getting too old for this shit” shit. I really had a hard time buying into this, since it seems like the series was rebooted to have Daniel Craig portray a younger Bond. We’re only three movies in for heaven sake and he’s already too old for this shit? I wonder at what point in the Roger Moore was getting to old for the shit. Maybe he never did. Although in Craig’s defense, the toughest thing Moore ever did on-screen was…look handsome? Nah, probably the clown thing.

The second theme I saw…well it’s hard to put a finger on. The film was basically trying to tell us what the James Bond franchise is all about. I watched the 60 Minutes interview with Craig the other day, and they asked him why the movies weren’t as campy and fun. He basically said that they had to earn that right. They literally leveled the franchise, because Die Another Day was so bad, that they had to start from scratch.

You can see in this movie, they slowly are starting to add the themes back in. Tastefully I might add. We have Q, but he doesn’t give him that much cool stuff, he’s merely introduced. We see a couple of one liners. While not the greatest, they still made me feel fuzzy. I smiled and felt apart of the movie as a Bond fan. There’s some other great moments that harken back to the days of Connery, but I won’t spoil too much.

Lastly, the thing that made this movie great was they reminded us that no one in Bond is irreplaceable. The reason the franchise has been able to survive for this long is because although actors may come and go, characters, positions, themes…all the reasons we keep coming back for more are still there. Bond is still Bond, and while Daniel Craig isn’t my favorite 007, he’s growing on me fast. At least he’s not emotionally stunted George Lazenby.

Titus Andronicus – Local Business

For a bunch of self-loathing schlubs from Jersey, Titus Andronicus sure created something ambitious with their last album, The Monitor.  At the time, I didn’t feel like I’d ever heard any band that had managed to take punk rock and turn it into something as sprawling and epic as that album, and for that it quickly became one of my favorite albums in recent memory.  Still, considering the kind of scruffy garage-punk aesthetic that Titus Andronicus have always embodied, I kind of figured that they wouldn’t ever stand a chance of creating something nearly as satisfying.  So did Local Business prove me right?  Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean that these guys still haven’t turned out a solid album full of songs that rock hard while still trying to make sense of being young, drunk, and angry.

I guess being on the road as much as Titus Andronicus was in support of their last album took a toll on a lot of the members, since pretty much the whole T.A. lineup on Local Business is made-up of newcomers apart from drummer Eric Harm and lead singer/songwriter Patrick Sickles.  And that’s fine, since Sickles really seems to be the guiding force of the band.  The album opens with the comically world-weary lines “I think by now we’ve established everything is inherintly worthless / And there’s nothing in the universe with any kind of objective purpose”.  And it’s those kind of lyrics that remind me why I love both Patrick Sickles’ heady existential lyrics as well as the “fuck the world” mentality of this band as a whole.

On our recent podcast about concept albums, Sean talked about how he always felt a little worn out by the second half of The Monitor because of the longer, less-rocking songs.  That’s kind of how I feel about Local Business, since the first three songs serve as an exhilariting suite of balls-out rockers, but the back half contains some longer tracks like “In a Small Body” and “Tried To Quite Smoking” that are fine, but don’t really feel as captivating or immediate as this band’s best work.  Still, it’s an album that has more than it’s share of exciting moments, and sees these punks continuing to fight the good fight as long as the enemy is everywhere.

Favorite Tracks: “Ecce Homo”, “Still Life With Hot Deuce On A Hot Platter”, “In A Big City”

Ben Gibbard – Former Lives

People like Death Cab for Cutie right? They’re hip with the kids. They even had a song in one of those Twilights I’ve heard so much about. Then why is it that frontman Ben Gibbard’s debut solo album was so quickly forgotten? Maybe people just didn’t know. I certainly didn’t see much publicity for Former Lives before it was released. In that case, consider this one for the diehard Death Cab fans. As one of those presumably “hip” fans I can gladly say that Former Lives is everything I could want in a Ben Gibbard solo album.

Those looking for a departure from the settled sound of Death Cab have come to the wrong place. Ben Gibbard’s solo material is more or less interchangeable with the material he writes for Death Cab. The only slight difference is Former Lives more stripped down approach. Former Lives is populated primarily by acoustic driven songs and a stronger pop sensibility. It’s exactly what you’d expect from Gibbard and your overall opinion will most likely be shaped by how much you like his schoolboy softness (poor choice of words) going in.

With Gibbard still in the wake of his divorce to Zooey “New Girl” Deschanel you can’t help but wonder if these songs about love and loss reflect that relationship. Putting that into consideration adds some dimension and makes the overall tone a little bittersweet. I’d like to add that as a Pacific Northwesterner I support Team Ben and will until I die a violent caramel macchiato-soaked death.

For anyone who found the last Death Cab too experimental this should be more to your liking. Songs like; “Dream Song”, “A Hard One to Know” or “Teardrop Window” should give you just the amount of optimistic pop pep you need. “Bigger Than Love” might be a pleasant surprise with a complimentary vocal performance from guest vocalist Aimee Mann. Not to be forgotten is “Duncan, Where Have You Gone?” a soothing ballad that calls back to Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s 1970 song “Forever”.

Some tweens may like Death Cab but when it comes to Ben Gibbard’s solo career I feel like I’m the intended audience. I’m an indifferent twentysomething from the Pacific Northwest. Former Lives is more or less the ideal soundtrack for a guy like me. Most will see it as a footnote in Death Cab’s career but I’m on the other end of the spectrum. Former Lives is a tender display of Gibbard’s sophisticated pop sensibilities that shouldn’t be ignored.

Favorite Tracks: “Bigger Than Love”, “Duncan, Where Have You Gone?”, “Dream Song”