05.25

Pet Sounds (The Beach Boys)

I actually listened to this before in Colorado but not too attentively.  I'm pretty obsessed with it now though, it's so uniquely transportive.  I'm not sure about the kinda goofy Navy song, and the two preachy ones are only justified by the quality of the rest, but goddamn this is good.  Also, Hang on to Your Ego > I Know There's An Answer.

Choice cuts: God Only Knows, Here Today, Caroline No

Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles, 1967)

At this point it's so hard to tell at all how much I would've liked this if I'd previously heard the songs never instead of a million times.  Though it was easier to parse the second time.  I don't really get the concept thing, it seems like other than the reprise of Sergeant Pepper there wasn't anything unified about the songs.  I don't know if I really underrate The Beatles or if it was just a fluke, but A Day in the Life blows me away every time I hear it, it seems like it's on a different plane than the rest of their stuff.

Choice cuts: Within You Without You, When I'm Sixty-Four, A Day in the Life

Pitfall (Andre de Toth, 1948)

One of the better noirs (and just melodramas) I've seen, with three of my favorite slept-on noir superstars, Lizabeth Scott, Dick Powell, and Raymond Burr.  Morally ambiguous and pretty disturbing, and a proto-Mens' Rights antagonist.  Kind of reminds me of Vertigo but more Ray (which is maybe a disservice to Toth).

05.24

Passion Grace & Fire (John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola and Paco de Lucia, 1983)

Very pleasant but just that I guess.  Very samey too.

05.21

What's Going On (Marvin Gaye, 1971)

Hardly understated, but pretty great.  I love the overall sound.  I think it'd benefit from more listens.  Hard to pick favorite tracks since it sounds so much like a unified thing with different acts.

He Walked by Night (Alfred Werker and Anthony Mann, 1948)

Cool procedural in some ways but the characters seemed so undercooked given the halfhearted attempts to develop them.  It all seemed on point but never really clicked with me until the postapocalyptic sewer finale, which I'd like to imagine is the part Mann directed.

05.20

Super Fly (Curtis Mayfield, 1972)

Great for a soundtrack album, but maybe it needs that disclaimer?  For something so dedicated to one theme it never feels preachy until No Thing on Me, but that one feels deserved.  I really like how each track seems structured around a specific idea, usually expressed in the hook.  Beautiful orchestration and it flies by.

Choice cuts: Pusherman, Think, Superfly

Crack Up (Irving Reis, 1946)

Starts with an awesome mystery which presumably will be the focus of the bulk of the movie but which instead is quickly and lamely solved in favor of a boring art forgery plot.  Quite unengaging despite an exciting start but there is this one awesome foggy shot and kind of a cool hodgepodge of ideas thrown around.

05.17

Neighbors (Nicholas Stoller, 2014)

Not only funny as shit, but also has a rhythm that's very aesthetically pleasing to me...very full.

05.16

Hot Buttered Soul (Isaac Hayes, 1969)

Magnificent.  Walk on By is clearly the biggest and best song of the album, but I like things that climax in unexpected places, and something that's mostly denouement is bound to be special.  One Woman actually has the best lyrics, like by far.  Not quite sure what to make of that very very long talking part on the last song.

Choice cuts: Walk on By, One Woman

05.15

Borderline (William Seiter, 1950)

(I'm pretty sure that shot's not actually in the movie.)  Border noir is one of my favorite subgenres, and after a slow start this certainly does it justice.  One great setpiece (I'm not sure that's the right word) after another, especially their first hotel and the beach where they have to land their plane after it runs out of gas.  And a few distinctly anti-teleological, decidedly awesome touches that I'm not sure who included or how they got into a studio B-movie.  Something stops it from being great, but it's enough to rejuvenate my interest in noir.

05.14

Run of the Arrow (Samuel Fuller, 1957)

Profoundly strange and vaguely godawful; both renews my faith in Fuller and makes me want to wait awhile before watching anything else of his.  The shot with Steiger talking to the officer about the war is one of the best conversations in Hollywood history.  I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching movies about the interaction between whites and Native Americans because I don't think I'll ever find one that comes close to capturing what it was really like.

05.13

The Racket (John Cromwell, 1951)

Apparently this was reamed by a lot of critics at the time, which reaffirms my befuddlement at what sort of criteria were used to judge genre pictures in the pre-Farber/Cahiers days.  For all I can tell they were throwing darts at a one to ten scale.  It's weird how standards can change to the point of unintelligibility in less than a century.  Anyhow, perfectly adequate crime drama.

05.09

The W (Wu Tang Clan, 2000)

One of the critics called it "not quite the masterpiece it sounds like after the first few tracks," but for me it was the opposite, it took a while to get into, but when I did, damn, it might be better than Forever.  Something feels pretty experimental about a lot of the tracks despite being probably more similar to 36 Chambers than anything else.  An ODB / Snoop Dogg collaboration album would've been one for the ages.

Choice cuts: Careful (Click, Click), Conditioner, Jah World

05.08

Dead Serious (Das EFX, 1992)

On paper it might sound right up my alley, but it's actually stunningly annoying.  That iggedy shit gets old real quick too.

Choice cuts: Looseys, uh...

05.07

Take a Look Around (Master Ace, 1990)

Grade A pasteurized battle rap sprinkled with awesome concept songs.  Marley Marl's production has never been better either, it's gotten so rich by 90.  Great cover too.

Choice cuts: Four Minus Three, Brooklyn Battles, Take a Look Around

The Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismaki, 1990)

Judging by this and Le Havre, Kaurismaki's style is right in my wheelhouse but I wasn't too thrilled other than the framing and the editing.

05.06

Wanted: Dead or Alive (Kool G Rap and DJ Polo, 1990)

After my week or so hiatus from rap I started out like, oh yeah, that's the good stuff, and then as it kept going I was like hoooooly shit.  My comparison of Streets of New York to a medieval fresco is one of my more apt musical observations, I think, Money in the Bank is a great posse cut, especially Large Professor's verse, and the battle raps are definitely a step up from Road to the Riches.  But the surprise hit that puts this over the edge is probably the best sex song I've heard: "fillin all three holes just like bowling;" "change the sheets, you must be kiddin / you gotta change the whole box spring, I ain't bullshittin;" "only thing missin on my dick is a cape;" "why certainly I'm squirtin / I bust a nut and get up and wipe my dick on your curtain."

Choice cuts: Streets of New York, Money in the Bank, Talk Like Sex

05.04

Innervisions (Stevie Wonder, 1973)

I wasn't too thrilled with this frankly.  It's certainly nothing like what the title or cover art would suggest.  It has a cool sense of encapsulating an era though.

Choice cuts: Visions, Living for the City, Jesus Children of America

05.03

The Fast and the Furious (Rob Cohen, 2001)

Jesus Vin Diesel is a great actor.  He pulls off even the worst dialogue with flying colors.  Other than him being the man, this was pretty tight.  The car chases especially are really well directed.

05.02

In the Aeroplane over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel, 1998)

I wasn't really feeling this one.  I like the scope, which gives it kind of a self-containedness, but throughout a lot of it the idea seems better than the execution.  I can't believe they thought The Fool was a good enough instrumental to devote a track to.  The lyrics are sometimes brilliant and sometimes reminiscent of Hallmark cards.  I definitely had a sense of a journey's culmination as it wrapped up but I get why Robert Christgau called it "a funereal jape that gets my goat."

05.01

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Pavement, 1994)

Holy moly this was great.  It's hard for me to adjust to the alt-rock thing, but even so after a few tracks I was so hooked into it.  I had no idea the lyrics would be so goofy and out-there, they're by far the best I've heard outside of rap, and so appropriately delivered.  Pretty much all the songs are on point, but beyond its components it's an astonishingly well put-together album.  Each track is singularly evocative of a certain thing, but they're arranged in such a way that they all feel like facets of a bigger subliminal thing.

Choice cuts: Unfair, Range Life, Heaven Is a Truck

What a Diff'rence a Day Makes! (Dinah Washington, 1959)

Ooh, these pre-album days are tough.  The first two songs are so rich in smokestack noir imagery and atmosphere that my hopes were way up, then there's a run of how-on-earth-did-they-let-such-similar-songs-play-back-to-back cuts, then there's this banging almost experimental rendition of Cry Me a River whose orchestration I'm pretty sure the 007 theme song ripped off, and then it's hit and miss after that, with the highlight being this gorgeous city symphony slash love ballad Manhattan that has the tightest internal rhymes and a latent grotesque side that comes out in lyrics like "we'll go to coney and eat baloney on a roll" and "the city's clamor can never spoil the dreams of a boy and goil."  Needless to say the singing is gorgeous throughout and the overriding aesthetic is always gonna be up my alley.

Choice cuts: I Thought About You, Cry Me a River, Manhattan

04.30

The Bootleg of the Bootleg EP (Jean Grae, 2003)

I feel like Jean Grae's one of the most authentic artists in hip-hop, and either because of that or something closely tied to that she'll never make an album as good as less authentic artists.  But damn, she can spit, and her individual songs are awesome.  As the album went on I felt like I was getting an increasingly complete portrait of her as a person, and a much more upbeat portrait than her debut presented.  I get into such a nice groove listening to her monotone for long stretches, which the guests throw off, so I wish she had kept those just in the EP part of it, especially since they increasingly hogged the spotlight towards the end, which felt like it should've been her time to shine.  My only complaint about her rapping is sometimes I get the sense she thinks her lines are more profound or clever than they really are, like she'll hype up something she's just said or is about to say and I'll spend awhile with the music paused trying to figure out what it was about that that was supposed to impress me so much before concluding that there's nothing there I didn't get the first time around.  On the other hand, maybe she's a genius and it's just all over my head.

Choice cuts: Code Red, High, You Don't Know

04.29

Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950)

Minor, but typically delightful.