2022 Music Resolved: Blue Rev

Alvvays – Blue Rev

I talked about Alvvays’s Blue Rev on a semi-recent podcast, so I don’t need to go into it too deeply, but it’s worth sparing a few words for since it is undoubtedly one of my favorite albums of the year. This has been a bit of a surprise since I once unfairly wrote Alvvays off as nothing more than another very good mid-’00s indie-pop band during an era when such a thing was starting to feel less and less essential. However, five years and a pandemic later, they’ve dropped this absolute stunner of an album that has all of the things that made this band so likable in the past, and yet there’s a newfound boldness mixed with an open-hearted sincerity that makes the album both affecting and highly listenable at the same time. Continue reading →

2022 Music Resolved: I Walked with You a Ways

Plains – I Walked with You a Ways

Speaking of albums that walk (heh) the line between alt-country and indie rock, here’s the debut album from Plains, a collaboration between singer-songwriter Jess Williamson and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. I did not go to many live music shows in 2022, but Plains was one of them, despite being a group that has existed for barely a year. This is because there were several instances where I wanted to see Waxahatchee on her oft-delayed tour in support of one of my favorite albums of the past few years, St. Cloud. However, every time she came to town (or even a nearby city like Wilmington) I was somehow in another part of the country. Fortunately, Plains did play a few St. Cloud tracks when I saw them, and even more fortunately, the interplay between these two recently unified collaborators was a delight to witness. Continue reading →

2022 Music Resolved: CAZIMI

Caitlin Rose – CAZIMI

As is the case with past years on this blog, I’ll be using the last month of the year to write short reviews of albums I enjoyed over the year, but never got around to reviewing. However, in 2022 I stayed pretty on top of talking about albums I liked with my monthly and seasonal recaps of my recent listening trends. So for the most part, the albums I’ll be writing about this December will be ones that came out during the past few months.

This may come as a bit of a surprise, but CAZIMI by Caitlin Rose was undoubtedly my most anticipated album of 2022. Or at least, it would have been if I’d had any preconceived notion that Caitlin Rose would be releasing an album this year, as I’d more or less resigned to the fact that she’d never release another album again. After all, she’s not an artist with the highest profile and the fact of the matter is, making a living as a musician these days wasn’t easy before COVID hit, and now it’s even worse. So I really couldn’t fault Rose if she chose to pack it in. Continue reading →

The Pick: The Money Pit

This episode took us a little while to record, since our own Sean Lemme was busy moving into a new house, not unlike Tom Hanks and Shelley Duvall in this episode’s film, albeit with less destruction. As our lone Hanks-giving pick this year (if you can even call it that considering it’s December), the movie provides a nice snapshot of Hanks’ pre-Big stardom, and is also an interesting early endeavor of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. There’s also an unexpected discussion of the “just guys bein’ slobs” genre of sitcoms as well as a game in which we try to guess the most bankable stars of 1986. Continue reading →

Horrorble: Black Adam

Black Adam

I was never going to hate Black Adam as much as other people do. For one, I like Dwayne Johnson. I think he’s an interesting person, he’s got oodles of charisma, and a fun take on what a modern movie star should be. Also, since I still care a lot about comic book super hero movies but — as unlikely as it sounds — don’t care at all about the DCEU or the Black Adam character, I’m just about as easy to please as any thinking person who saw Black Adam. Which… there must have been at least a few of us, right? It’s been the most popular movie in the world two weeks in a row. Early buzz about Black Adam described its titular antihero as a super hero version of Dirty Harry. That sounds cool, right? Unfortunately, what we got was a lot more The Enforcer than Magnum Force. And if you get that reference, hi dad! Hope you’re having a nice day.

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Shocktober: Bodies Bodies Bodies

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Well, Happy Halloween boils and ghouls, as they say (and by “they”, I mean John). As I close out my batch of Shocktober reviews, it seems as though after doing a Blumhouse movie, I also couldn’t go without reviewing an A24 film when talking about the state of modern horror. While I’m not sure Bodies Bodies Bodies is the most typical A24 horror movie, since it’s not nearly as weird as many of their other offerings, it still has the sharp look and off-kilter quirks you’d expect. Also, while it perhaps does play into a lot more traditional tropes than the recent spate of arthouse horror movies that have cropped up over the last few years, it does have its share of unique touches to offer the genre. Continue reading →

Shocktober: V/H/S/99

V/H/S/99 (2022)

I have a short attention span, so naturally I love anthology films. “Bored with a story? Don’t worry there’s another on the way!” That’s my motto. I’m also a defender of Found Footage films. Some people say found footage is cheap and nauseating. Which are both valid complaints. Though I appreciate the art form as a storytelling technique. Would a film like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity be as effective if they weren’t found footage? No. Found Footage works because it takes the fantastic and grounds it in reality.

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