I Saw a Show! John Vanderslice at Club Velour, 27 May 2009

Illustration titled "My Battle with a Leopard" by Gustav Rehberger from Coronet Magazine, September 1952

I reviewed the new John Vanderslice album earlier this week, but my Vanderslice love knows no bounds so I'm going to write about him again. He played two shows in Utah this week, and I attended the show at Club Velour with my special lady friend (who is also a big fan of the 'Slice.) The opening act was the Morning Benders from Berkeley, a bedroom-project-turned-band fronted by Chris Chu - they were pretty good, with a shoegaze/Neil Young guitar sound and some pretty good pop hooks. I think what we heard was not too close to the home recordings of the first Morning Benders album, but they have a new album called Big Echo coming out later this year, and the songs from that record sounded pretty good live.

After the Morning Benders finished their set, it was only a couple minutes before John Vanderslice took the stage. The thing about Vanderslice is that he's a friendly, no-nonsense guy, and he won't make the audience wait while he sits around backstage. He's onstage with a smile as soon as possible, talking about how we're all going to hang out and have a gelato-and-Beastie-Boys dance party after the gig. He takes song requests on the Internet and from the crowd - he's even been known to let audience members come up and play on songs (that didn't happen at this show, luckily). He immediately launched into "White Plains", one of my favorites, and I was impressed right away with his new backing band. It's always a challenge when a solo songwriter has to assemble a new touring band, and in my experience, Vanderslice's touring musicians have been hit or miss. But these guys were as good as the band he was touring with the first time I saw him play, and that band included longtime collaborator Scott Solter.

Keyboardist Ian and lead guitarist Sylvian were especially impressive, and the drummer Matthias was better than you'd guess from his porn-mustache-and-wifebeater look. The songs sounded great, and he chose a setlist of mostly upbeat numbers (with a couple exceptions, including a comedic super-slow rendition of "Angela" from Pixel Revolt that he played as part of a running gag about Ian being hopped up on caffeine.) The set was heavy on material from his two poppiest albums, Cellar Door and the new one, which was just what I wanted to hear. The band could even pull off some songs that I've never seen Vanderslice try to do live, like the pretty "Promising Actress" and Pixel Revolt's "Plymouth Rock". Before playing the latter song, Vanderslice admitted that it was one that he himself had trouble playing the song and that they'd only rehearsed it a few times during soundcheck. It didn't sound like he thought the band could pull it off, but before too long he was beaming as the band pushed the interweaving melodies to an impressive and note-perfect crescendo. "Plymouth Rock" is not a favorite of mine, and the chorus doesn't really have much of a hook, but this band made it sound as good as anything Vanderslice has recorded. Here's the setlist from the show:

Vanderslice played for over an hour and then did a nice four-song encore. As soon as the show ended, Paul's Boutique started to play over the PA, announcing the start of the post-gig dance party. Vanderslice seemed excited to get down to the merch table to chat with the fans, but he was immediately accosted by a girl with a camera who wanted him to stay onstage for an impromptu photo session. As we left the venue, he was gamely assuming some pretty cheesy poses and smiling for the camera, probably wondering where to get gelato for a couple hundred people at 11:30 at night. Sometimes it's not easy to be the nicest man in rock and roll.

"Plymouth Rock" by John Vanderslice

In Stores Now: Around the Well by Iron & Wine

Image from the cover of Chai Chen by Maurice Patton & the Melodians, c. 1970

It was around 2001 when the guys at Sub Pop records first caught wind of Iron & Wine. At the time, it was the name of the solo bedroom recordings made by Sam Beam, a cinematography professor from Florida. Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop liked the whispery folk he heard well enough to contact Beam and ask him for some more stuff. In response, Beam sent him two full CDs of home-recorded songs - Sub Pop made the right call by picking the best ones and releasing them immediately as Iron & Wine's debut album without any additional embellishment. When I heard that album, The Creek Drank the Cradle that year, I remember thinking, "This is the Internet age - the rest of the songs from those demo CDs must be online somewhere." Sure enough - I was able to track down those early Iron & Wine demos and make myself some pretty rough-sounding CDRs that still count among my favorite Iron & Wine "albums".

Most of those demos have been released in some form or other by now, but the best place to find them is on the first CD of Iron & Wine's new 2-CD rarities collection, Around the Well. It sounds kind of stupid to say this about bedroom demos, but the tracks sound a lot better here, and this is how many people like to hear Iron & Wine - it's like Sam Beam is whispering directly into your ear. It sounds kind of creepy when you say it like that, but these recordings have an intimacy that is what drew many people to Iron & Wine in the first place. Weirdly, that feeling seems to have gone from some sectors - a lot of critics are saying, "All these songs sound the same!" about Around the Well, which we could have said about The Creek Drank the Cradle when it came out. We didn't at the time, for whatever reason.

If the old Iron & Wine stuff sounds a little samey to you, the second disc of Around the Well may be the answer. This disc contains more recent non-album tracks, and many of these are studio-recorded with lush arrangements that complement Beam's folky tunes without drowning them (which is what happened to some of the songs on Iron & Wine's last album.) There are a couple weak songs in the middle of the disc - interestingly, they are the most stripped-down of the newer set of songs - but there are a lot of high points. Beam's sister Sarah provides lovely harmonies on "Communion Cups and Someone's Coat", and "Belated Promise Ring" is jaunty folk-pop with a nice bassline. "Serpent Charmer" and "Arms of a Thief" use creepy electronic noises to add a great sense of tension. This variety makes the disc play a lot like a standalone album, and it's among the best that Iron & Wine has released. This is particularly true in the way that the songs build up to the final song, "The Trapeze Singer", a song which proves to be the exception that proves the rule when it comes to ten-minute folk songs. A simple chord progression on acoustic guitar carries the song from start to finish, but the aching melody, evolving arrangement, and soothing backing vocal "oohs" make the song a masterwork in the Iron & Wine discography.

That song is too long to post here, and you really should go out and buy the collection to hear it (or buy the soundtrack to the Topher Grace rom-com In Good Company, where the song first appeared). My other favorite on this collection is "Kingdom of the Animals", one of Iron & Wine's few piano-based songs. The piano is bolstered nicely by wah-wah guitar and pedal steel, and the vocals of Beam and his sister are layered six deep, but in just the right way. The song picks up momentum, and a more country-ish feel, as it goes along, building to a nice big finish. It's funny to think that thousands of American teens are now swooning over Iron & Wine because of their inclusion in the movie Twilight - Sam Beam has come a long way from the day he dropped two CDs of his songs in the mail to Sub Pop Records.

"Kingdom of the Animals" by Iron & Wine

In Stores Now: Romanian Names by John Vanderslice

Defaced photo of unknown boy
(from the Defaced Photos collection on Flickr)

San Francisco-based songwriter John Vanderslice has a new album out, and it's getting some mediocre reviews because his music has become "consistent" but no longer "exciting". It's true that Vanderslice has a sound that is pretty identifiable, but I think that his new record, Romanian Names, is a departure from his recent work, and a welcome one. Romanian Names is a glass menagerie - twelve delicate miniatures that each have their story to tell. There is something shining and crystalline about this set of songs, and I think it's one of the best albums Vanderslice has made.

Romanian Names is a definite departure from his last two albums, Pixel Revolt and Emerald City. Vanderslice had a pretty serious reaction to 9/11 and the Iraq War, and the two albums he put out during this period were a direct response, rife with politics and paranoia. These political songs ballooned into searing five-minute epics on Emerald City, which I didn't think played to Vanderslice's strengths. It was the first of his albums that I elected not to buy. Romanian Names is an audible sigh of relief - Vanderslice is in a better place now, and the songs benefit from it. The themes of this record are betrayal and displacement, but they are vignettes rather than personal journal entries. There is still a distinct sense of tension in the album, from the off-kilter tremelo of "Fetal Horses" to the sudden saxophone blares of "Forest Knolls" and the creepy atmospherics of "Summer Stock", but the mood is much less oppressive. Vanderslice is becoming a master of building soundscapes, and the wide open places of Romanian Names are a welcome change of scenery.

John Vanderslice has always had a troubled relationship with lyrics - his early albums borrowed extensively from famous poems or other contemporary lyricists (like the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle.) And every album had a few lines that were pretty cringe-worthy, my favorite being the following line from Cellar Door's "Heated Pool and Bar": "I've got a flak jacket on my soul with me tonight." On this album, Vanderslice declines to include lyrics in the liners for the first time, but the lyrics are a significant improvement over previous work. The song "Oblivion" has the unfortunate opening couplet "I took a blow to the head/mechanical pencil filled with lead," but most of the songs are interesting little stories told well.

My favorite song on Romanian Names is the album's brief title track, and it is a very spare arrangement of voice and guitar, not representative of the album's layered sound. But there is something very poignant about the way Vanderslice sees the young European gymnast in this song - the plaintive chorus of "still wide-eyed you," gets me every time.

"Romanian Names" by John Vanderslice

Cyril Ferguson (1951 - 2009)

Cover illustration from Little Big Book of Buck Rogers, c. 1940
(found at Golden Age Comic Book Stories)

I didn't intend to start this week on such a down note, but I was planning this In Memoriam piece for Monday and bumped it when I found out about Jay Bennett's sudden passing. I wanted to write a little about Cyril Ferguson, who I recently found out had passed away at home in the Bahamas in April, possibly due to diabetes. I'm no expert on the music of the Bahamas, but a while ago I picked up a Numero Group compilation of music that had been released by Grand Bahama International (GBI). The songs of Cyril "Dry Bread" Ferguson were immediately my favorite thing about the record. These songs captured a feeling that set the calypso-influenced pop and R&B music of the Bahamas apart, and a lot of people have recognized this feeling in Ferguson's music. I was surprised to discover that Phish has often covered "Yamar", a Ferguson composition, as part of their live set.

"Gonna Build a Nation" is one of Ferguson's best. Released around the time of the Bahamas becoming an independent nation in 1973, the song tries to capture the excitement and newness of achieving self-determination as a people. He calls for the Bahamian people to have "love, trust, and understanding" as a new country, and Ferguson had a chance to see his country develop over thirty-plus years. He never found widespread fame or popularity as a musician, but archivists like those at the Numero Group will make sure that his music is available to anyone willing to seek it out for years to come.

"Gonna Build a Nation" by Cyril Ferguson

Jay Bennett (1963 - 2009)

Advertisement for the Philadelphia Bulletin by Richard Decker, 1949

Songwriter and musician Jay Bennett died yesterday at the age of 45. His passing came much too soon - in recent months, he was working on securing the money to pay for a much-needed hip surgery and was not in good health. Like many musicians, Bennett didn't have great insurance coverage and had suffered the crippling pain of serious hip problems for years without receiving help. His cause of death is not currently known - he passed away in his sleep yesterday - but it is unfortunate that he was not able to get the health care he needed in recent years.

I'll admit that I haven't followed Jay Bennett's musical career lately, but there was a time when his songwriting was immensely important to me. He was heavily involved in Wilco during the period when they were my favorite band and he contributed extensively to the albums Being There, Summerteeth, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Summerteeth will always be my favorite Wilco album, and Bennett's fingerprints were all over that one. He has a co-writing credit on almost every song, and he reportedly took control of the production and recording from the other band-members. His bandmates resented this treatment, and this was part of what led to Bennett's dramatic exeunt from Wilco, but I can't argue with the results. Summerteeth has a dense and rewarding pop sound that was largely the brainchild of Bennett himself.

Unfortunately, it is his "firing" by Jeff Tweedy that Bennett is best known for. During the dramatic creation process and record label drama of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tweedy and Bennett had a falling out, some of which was captured on film in the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. At the time, I'll admit that I sided with Tweedy based on the footage in the film, but I acknowledge that Bennett's side was never completely represented. His subsequent discussion of Wilco in the press sounded like bitter grapes, like feeling the need to detail how much work he had personally done on YHF to the website Glorious Noise. He recently sued Tweedy over the documentary and writing royalties, but, in retrospect, these might have been "last resort" actions from someone who badly needed funding for medical treatment.

I need to go back and listen to Bennett's work with Wilco and maybe listen to some of his recent solo work and the pre-Wilco stuff with the power-pop band Titanic Love Affair. After YHF came out, I wanted to get my hands on the demos, so I could have a more stripped-down song-oriented version of the album. Luckily, the demos were available through file-sharing, and I found several YHF outtakes that were as good as anything on the album itself. These included a haunting Bennett-written number called "Venus Stops the Train". Today, I hope Wilco fans can set aside any past feelings about Jay Bennett and remember the excellent contributions he made to a favorite band.

"Venus Stops the Train" by Wilco

Title Fight: "I'll Come Running"

Photo titled "The students at the Imperial Military Academy doing sword drill" by Abdullah Frères, c. 1890

"I'll come running," is a real statement of devotion, and it appeals to the romantic in me. I'm very fond of two different expressions of this feeling, one from a female artist in 1965 and one from a male artist in 1975. The thing that is so interesting in the contrast of these two songs is how the gender roles play out.

In 1965, Lulu was 17. She'd had a minor hit with a cover of "Shout", and she released an album called Something to Shout About. Part of the album was recorded with her first group, the Luvvers, but ,"I'll Come Running" is not one of those songs - it was recorded with a group of studio musicians, including Jimmy Page on crunchy rhythm guitar. Page's guitar riff sets the stage, and Lulu growls a half-hearted apology over the top of it in her famously husky voice. She told some lies, and she's sorry she made you cry, but if you stop being a baby about and give her a call, she'll come running over and give you some of her "loving". There's something decidedly masculine about the whole package here, from Page's in-your-face guitar to Lulu's aggressive delivery and unsympathetic lyric. It's surprisingly unsentimental, considering the title, but it's a favorite of mine nonetheless. I especially like Page's solo - he only gets a couple bars, but he really makes the most of it.

Brian Eno recorded his "I'll Come Running" in 1975 for his third album Another Green World. By this time, Eno was becoming progressively more interested in instrumental and particularly ambient music (which he was in the process of inventing). Another Green World's instrumentals don't hold my interset, but I love the album's vocal tracks that are influenced by his new approach. The piano-and-treated-guitar arrangement of "I'll Come Running" is the best on the record, with a nice lyric about retiring to a room somewhere to wait for the return of true love. There is something so passive about the sentiment and so delicate about the arrangement, that it is much more in line with traditional femininity. Unlike the teen-aged Lulu, Eno is definitely messing with gender in a very conscious way. I'll admit that the repeated chorus and layered vocals at the end of the song really distill for me what it means to say, "I'll come running." And Robert Fripp's guitar solo is as good as Jimmy Page's counterpart, but with a very restrained, soaring feel to it that adds to the song's poignancy.

I think I may have to disqualify Lulu on a technicality here, though. Doing a little supplemental research just now, I found out that her song may have originally been called "I'll Come Running Over". I'm not sure why its title is listed as "I'll Come Running" on my Girl Group Sounds box set, but I think this little issue is enough to push it over the top for Eno.

Winner: BRIAN ENO

"I'll Come Running" by Brian Eno

"I'll Come Running" by Lulu

Probabilistic Jukebox: "If I Love You?" by Brian Jonestown Massacre

Illustration from front cover of Modern Woman magazine, March 1944

It's true that I've been called a "punctuation pedant" - I've always assumed that it's a term of endearment. But it's a title that comes with a price. For instance, I see a dependent "if" clause followed immediately by a question mark, I see red. I doubt that the Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe has the same set of priorities that I do, though, so I'm going to help him out with his little punctuation SNAFU. Here's a little dialogue in which that use of a question mark would be appropriate. Such is my love for this song.

Him: I don't think I can be friends with someone who drinks Diet Dr. Pepper. Nothing you can say or feel can change my opinion about that!

Her: Will you still be my friend if I say that I prefer Mr. Pibb?

Him: No.

Her: If I let you borrow my SEGA Dreamcast?

Him: No.

Her: If I show you that birthmark you've been asking about?

Him: No.

Her: If I love you?

Him: *stunned silence*

AND ... END SCENE. CURTAIN DROPS. STANDING OVATION FROM THE SOLD-OUT AUDIENCE.

"If I Love You?" by Brian Jonestown Massacre

In Stores Now: My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura

Illustration titled "The Gallant Rescue" by Susan Austel from Peter Parley's Annual, 1865

Glasgow's Camera Obscura has been around since 1996, so it's not surprising that they make mature-sounding music, even though they have only released four albums during that time. Grafting a love of Northern Soul and girl group melodies to a UK-indie aesthetic, the band relies heavily on the writing of frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell and classic pop arrangements. Their new album (and first on 4ad Records) is called My Maudlin Career, and it has as many great pop moments as any album they've made. Oddly, though, they don't really add up to a remarkable album for me, and I've been trying to figure out why.

The album starts strong with the single "French Navy", a Tamla-style number that bursts out of the gates with a great vocal from Campbell. It's not quite as good as their best singles, "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken" and "Suspended from Class", but it's a lot of fun. "James" is one of the best ballads they've done, and "The Sweetest Thing" is an excellent homage to girl-group grandeur, starting with heart-melting harmonies and a bouncing drumbeat. "Swans" makes a lot out of a very simple nursery-rhyme melody, something that is deceptively difficult to pull off, and the album's title track sparkles in a way that is directly at odds with its title.

Even though the songs on My Maudlin Career sound great in isolation, the album recedes into background ambiance for me when I listen to it all the way through. By the fourth track, I'm having trouble giving it any attention. Certain things still stand out, like the tinkling ascending piano on "My Maudlin Career" and the glockenspiel intro in "Swans", but the rest is one big swirl of generic string arrangements and too-familiar rhythm patterns. I don't want to place the blame on Sweden (where the album was recorded), but I think these songs are a little too dressed up and have a sheen that detracts from the identifiable charm of their earlier albums. The album also follows a pattern of two slightly uptempo songs followed by two slightly slower songs, and this creates a feeling of monotony after a while.

Overall, My Maudlin Career may not be a big step forward from their amazing Let's Get Out of the Country, but I still enjoy the songs. And Tracyanne Campbell's songwriting chops are still improving. "The Sweetest Thing", for instance, has a heavenly intro and lovely lilting melody, but there's something darker going on in the lyrics. The optimism of the title is sincere, but it's the result of setting your expectations tragically low - the song's chorus is "When you're lucid, you're the sweetest thing/I would trade my mother to hear you sing."

"The Sweetest Thing" by Camera Obscura

In Stores Now: Philippe Debarge by the Pretty Things

Illustration by Louis Wisa from Howard Garis's Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, 1912

In the mid-60s, UK rock band the Pretty Things had a pretty standard R&B-influenced sound, and they had some decent hits with "Don't Bring Me Down" and "Honey I Need". Not content to be Rolling Stones imitators, the Pretty Things were talented musicians and songwriters in their own right and, by the 1968, they had embraced psychedelia and were developing a sound of their own. They released the much-loved S.F. Sorrow in 1968 and followed it with Parachute in 1970 (it was Rolling Stone's Album of the Year that year). What were they doing in 1969 then? The Pretty Things were pragmatists, as can be seen in the extensive soundtrack work they did for low-budget and porno films as the Electric Banana, and they got an offer in 1969 that they couldn't refuse.

The Pretty Things were approached by Philippe Debarge, a young Frenchman who was a playboy of sorts and pharmaceutical-fortune heir. Debarge wanted to be a rock star and, having almost unlimited resources, sought out great musicians that could help him make this vision a reality. The Pretty Things agreed, and Debarge flew the band's songwriters Phil May and Wally Waller down to his vacation home in St. Tropez to hammer out the details. The Pretty Things had some new material, as well as some Electric Banana tracks, that could be donated to the project. They went to London with Debarge recorded a full album of songs in at Nova Studios. Debarge had a large budget set aside for the project, allowing the Pretty Things to experiment with new sounds as they recorded to 8-track for the first time. Debarge contributed lead vocals to the songs and spent the rest of his time in the studio, watching the Pretty Things do their thing with avid interest. In the end, everyone was happy with the album they put together, and Debarge took it back to France, hoping to use family connections to get a record company to release it. That never happened. By 1976, Debarge was living on a barge (appropriately) in the Seine, depressed over his father's mysterious death. In the 1990s, Debarge also died under mysterious circumstances, never having seen his 1969 recordings with the Pretty Things get a proper release.

This year, the Pretty Things' May and Waller assembled the best available versions of the Debarge tracks and released them as Philippe Debarge through UT Records. Considering that the Pretty Things did this project at their creative peak, it's not a surprise that the album is impressive in its musicianship and songwriting. It starts with "Hello, How Do You Do", a great introductory song with an R&B flavor and the title chanted by Debarge and the Pretty Things, who bolster his vocals with harmonies and group singing throughout the album. This works well only because the Pretty Things were excellent vocalists and harmonizers. The second track "You Might Even Say" is an impressive Love-style acoustic number with Debarge's vocals unobstructed and at the forefront of the mix. And you know what? He sounds okay - the Pretty Things reported that he was not always easy to work with and his vocals were not always strong. As a result, Philippe Debarge has a lot of repetitive gang-style vocals and instrumental passages, and the album sounds a little too slight as a result. But the Pretty Things were obviously doing the best they could to make a good album under the conditions. This re-release even features a new Pretty Things song dedicated to Debarge called "Monsieur Rock" - it's a decent song and a nice tribute to a patron, but it doesn't belong here, tacked onto the end of a very singular recording.

The sound quality is a definite step up from the Debarge bootlegs that have been floating around forever. There are a few spots of murky sound and the closing song "All Gone Now" has some sibilance issues, but the biggest issue is the pops and clicks that remain in the album's middle suite of songs, "Peace/Eagle's Son/Graves of Grey/New Day". It's too bad that there wasn't a better source for these tracks because they are easily the album's high point. "New Day" is particularly impressive, boasting the album's most intricate arrangement. It starts with Debarge singing over an acoustic guitar, but the Pretty Things join in on the vocals and a nice harpsichord enters the mix as well. The album has a long instrumental bit in the middle where the lead guitar and harpsichord play off each other nicely. Debarge sounds very good here (and almost exactly like Phil May) and he'd probably be very proud that this song has finally seen the light of day.

"New Day" by the Pretty Things (with Philippe Debarge)

I Saw a Movie: Star Trek (2009)

Illustration by Masura Matsuda from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 1967

The only Star Trek movie I've seen in the last five years was a recent viewing of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, viewed by many as the worst Star Trek movie ever. In my defense, I saw it with Riff Trax with some friends and it was hilarious, okay? I should start by saying that I liked J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek better than The Final Frontier. More suprisingly, though, I liked it as well as (or better than?) my favorite Star Trek movies - II, IV, and VI of the original movies. The things I thought would be weak were unexpectedly good, although I was let down by a few things that I thought would be obvious strengths.

I knew from the opening sequence of Star Trek that I was going to like the script written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. The introductory scenes are gripping and have an unexpected amount of emotional heft that caught me offguard - Chris Hemsworth and House's Jennifer Morrison are excellent as James Kirk's parents. It's a better beginning than my previous favorite, the world being destroyed by a giant space Ho-Ho and heavy rain in Star Trek IV. The story is structurally sound throughout, balancing action and character development, references to familiar Star Trek tropes and new stylistic touches and humor. I was worried about the movie's use of time travel - an overused crutch in Star Trek movies - as a central device, but it allows the reboot to connect to the old Star Trek while doing some things (one in particular!) that constitute obvious sacrilege to hardcore fans and get away with them.

There are a few weaknesses in the story - various plot holes and weird coincidences are glossed over or rushed past at an un-Star-Trek-like pace. Kirk's childhood scenes are pretty bad (Spock's are all right, though.) The big hole in the movie is the villain - Eric Bana is totally misused here, and it's too bad. It might be a necessary sacrifice to make in a story that is trying to do a lot of things at once, but the Romulan pirate Nero is as much of a cardboard cut-out as the ones of Trek characters you find in MIT dorm rooms. And the new thing of having a bad guy who speaks in regular-dude colloquialisms really doesn't work in the context of a Star Trek movie. I am actually quite hopeful for the sequels that are in the works - without all the reboot baggage, a Star Trek movie with this cast AND a great nemesis (not like the one in Star Trek Nemesis obviously) would be great!

And I should comment on how much I liked the cast in this. I was really worried about the smirking frat-boy Kirk I saw from Chris Pine in the previews, but I was almost entirely unbothered by his smarminess - he managed to evoke a young James Kirk without being really irritating. The rest of the core Star Trek characters are quite good - Karl Urban's Dr. McCoy was particularly great and deserved more screen time. I thought that the kid from Charlie Bartlett was not right for Chekov, and his accent bugged me (although it's obviously a reference to Walter Koenig's old performance) but looking at his bio I see that Anton Yelchin was actually born in Leningrad. And John Cho, Zachary Quinto, and Simon Pegg were all quite good. So I guess I should just leave these things to people who know what they're talking about.

Star Trek does a good job of having a broad appeal, while also including enough references to old-school Star Trek to keep a fan occupied. Hours after the movie ended, I found myself wondering if the use of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" in an early scene was a reference to the plan of Ensign Valeris (Kim Cattrall!) from Star Trek VI or to William Shatner's notorious mispronunciation (Youtube) of the word in the original series. Knowing how carefully constructed and smart this Star Trek is, it's probably both.

"Black Hole" by She & Him

"Thoughts collide and die, splitting inside your skull"

Drawing used for Harman-Ising MGM cartoon short The Pups' Picnic, 1936 (from Michael Sporn's Splog)

Some people make me sick. They have so many talents that my own paucity of natural gifts seems even more meager by comparison. Leland, Michigan's Tobin Sprout is one such individual - he's an artist with an impressive talent for photorealism, and he has recently published his first children's book, Elliott, which is available from Mackinac Island Press. As if that wasn't enough, Tobin Sprout is also one of my favorite songwriters, although he hasn't released any new music in several years. Sprout was a member of Guided By Voices during their "classic line-up" period, and he released five albums of great lo-fi guitar pop after leaving the band. I'd like to see him get back to making music, but he may be getting busier with his kids' books - the latest news is that the initial run of Elliott sold out pretty quick, and now New York publishers are in a bidding war over the rights to the book and a set of Elliott chapter books Sprout is working on. I'm happy for him, though - I love my copy of Elliott, and children's lit seems to be an area that allows him to use his talents as a writer and illustrator in combination.

If his writing and painting was unsuccessful, though, maybe Sprout would go back to making music. He was once a fairly prolific songwriter (although he could never hope to keep up with bandmate Robert Pollard), and I liked almost everything he ever released. Sprout has a knack for combining the trebly guitar hooks of lo-fi indie-pop with Syd-Barrett-style psychedelia, and some of his best songs are very hard to find these days. "High Rise" is a great song, and it was only ever available on the vinyl version of Sprout's Demos & Outtakes collection. It has the classic Tobin drum machine sound, with a single guitar and melody. But I like the lyric a lot, and the chorus of "Doin' the high rise/Doin' the high rise/Doin' the high rise/Yeah!" always makes me wonder what a dance called the High Rise would look like.

"High Rise" by Tobin Sprout

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Matter vs. Space" by Beulah

Photo titled "Bashkirskīi pes (Bashkir Dog)" by Prokudin-Gorskii, 1910

One of the good things about choosing random songs from my collection to write about is that I end up listening to albums I haven't pulled off the shelf in a long time. When "Matter vs. Space" came up on the Jukebox, I realized it had been months (years?) since I listened to Beulah's second album When Your Heartstrings Break. At one time, it was a very important album to me - I remember the day I bought it during a stop in Portland on a road-trip with my brother. These days, when I'm in the mood for some Beulah, I usually reach for their swan song, Yoko, which is too bad because there's a lot to be said for the breezy Beach-Boys-isms and blaring brass of Heartstrings.

Beulah probably had a few good albums left in them when they broke up in 2004, but Miles Kurosky and his guys couldn't soldier on anymore. Kurosky's had a tough time since then, having undergone multiple surgeries on his shoulder and kidneys, as well as being diagnosed with a fairly serious intestinal condition. There have been periods in the last five years when he couldn't even play the guitar to write songs. Things are looking up, though, and Kurosky should be releasing a new record later this year. You can hear one track - a fairly Beulah-esque song called "An Apple for an Apple" on Kurosky's Myspace.

Along with the opening and closing tracks of When Your Heartstrings Break, "Matter vs. Space" was the song that struck me most when I first heard Beulah, and it's still a favorite of mine. It has an excellent intro with a rush of horns following a burbling synth fade-in, but the song itself is deceptively simple California pop. However, a careful listen reveals that the lines of the verse are stitched together from multiple vocals, and a variety of sounds pop up in the mix and then disappear again. The verse and chorus blend together in a rush of hooks and cooing backing vocals, making for a weird hurried feel only broken by the nice instrumental interlude that slows things down in the bridge. The lyrics may or may not be doggerel, a mix of party and showbiz imagery that, in my mind, evoke the feelings of a starlet at an industry house party or something. Is she thinking about physics or is the title just a red herring?

"Matter vs. Space" by Beulah

"It's the numbered head, and it's too close!"

Illustration by Maginal Wright Enright from Twinkle and Chubbins: Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland by L. Frank Baum, 1911

Reading the tracklist to SCORE!: The Covers, the recent Merge Records covers collection, one selection struck me as odd. Why would Ted Leo and the Pharmacists be covering "The Numbered Head" by Robert Pollard? Most people wouldn't think much of the choice, but there's some history there. Back when Pollard was with Guided by Voices, they played a show with Ted Leo. It was a festival or one-off of some kind - at a college, maybe? The details are shrouded in the mists of time, but the point is that Leo was upset with Guided by Voices over some issue. I think he was angry that their set had run long and cut into his band's time. The situation quickly devolved into a brawl and, based on the assuredly unbiased retellings of GBV fans who heard about it from a friend of a friend, Leo and his guys got their asses kicked. The one detail from the fight that has risen to quasi-legendary status is that GBV guitarist Nate Farley give one dude a "heater" - a punch in the face with a lit cigarette between the knuckles. Today is also Nate Farley's birthday so, "Happy Birthday, Nate and stay classy!"

I like to think that this is Ted Leo's way of burying the hatchet. What better way to say "no hard feelings" to a musician than doing a carefully crafted cover of one of their songs? Leo's version lacks a little of the edge the original version had on Pollard's From a Compound Eye, but it's obvious that Leo likes the song a lot. Pulsing prog-rock is not really his bailiwick - he's more of a pop-punk guy - but he embellishes the song nicely with some spacey effects and layered harmonies. Leo even goes the extra mile in showing his admiration by throwing in some shout-outs to other Pollard rarities during the song's "freak-out" section, yelling random lines from "Give Up the Grape" and "He's the Uncle". I enjoy a good cover, and this one's a little bit more fun because it has helped ease the "Why are mommy and daddy fighting?" dissonance that I've had as a fan of GBV and Ted Leo.

"The Numbered Head" by Ted Leo & the Pharmacists

In Stores Now: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Background from the Goofy short cartoon "The Big Wash", 1948

What do you mean, "This album came out in February?" It's still "In Stores Now", isn't it? Actually, I kind of wish I'd written earlier about the self-titled debut album from New York youngsters The Pains of Being Pure at Heart because, at this point, it's all been said. They've been called "naive", "unoriginal", and "derivative" in their positive reviews - Rolling Stone bafflingly described the album as "a dark bodice-ripper for the buttoned-up-cardigan set." What is that supposed to mean? But the Pains of Being Pure at Heart (referred to hereinafter as "TPBPaH") do deserve some of these labels - they are obviously mining every vein of '80s and '90s indie-pop heritage they can rip off competently, including several British genres that are esoteric to most Americans. There's a genre called "C-86"? "Anorak" is a thing?

But the best description of TPBPaH came from some message board I was reading: "I can't not like this band because they have been genetically engineered specifically for my enjoyment." That pretty much sums up how I feel - if I love My Bloody Valentine, Talulah Gosh, Felt, the Field Mice, Jesus & Mary Chain, the Smiths, and the Vaselines, how can I not love the mutant offspring of all these bands combined? Especially when they can write songs with excellent pop hooks. The album's not perfect - at thirty-five minutes, it's a little too short. A couple tracks seem like window-dressing ("Come Saturday", "Stay Alive"), and the singles stand out a little too much. And they don't quite have enough tricks in their repertoire - it's bad news when you can sing the chorus of one of the songs on Side A over the top of one of the songs on Side B.

When they hit their stride, though, TPBPaH are capable of tweaking eight different endorphin-producing parts of my brain at once by reminding me of eight of my favorite bands. For instance, on "The Tenure Itch", they give me the jokey title wordplay of the Lucksmiths, the lyrical sincerity of the Field Mice, the high boyish vocals of Miracle Legion, the chiming guitars of early Wedding Present, and the propulsive drumming of ... I dunno, some seminal indie band that had a good drummer. Sure, it's all stitched together from things that have been done before, but when I'm smiling this hard I can't see the seams for squinting.

"The Tenure Itch" by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart

It's New To Me: Her Handwriting by Trembling Blue Stars

"The Enchanted Net" by Edmund J. Gates from Frank G. Smedley's Mirth and Metre, 1855

I've never found an entirely satisfying album by the UK indie-pop band Trembling Blue Stars, but I refuse for some reason to believe that they're just a singles band. I decided that maybe the answer was Her Handwriting, the Trembling Blue Stars' debut album from 1996. Trembling Blue Stars was never meant to be an ongoing concern - indie-pop songwriter Bobby Wratten wanted to record a single solo album of songs about his relationship and breakup with Annemari Davies. The two had been in the seminal Field Mice together and then Northern Picture Library, so there was a lot of history there that Wratten wanted to get out of his system. And so a single sad-sack indie-pop record somehow turned into a ten-year string of sad-sack indie-pop records.

Her Handwriting isn't the kind of tortured breakup record that can be really hard to listen to. Wratten's penchant for atmospherics and wry humor lighten the mood somewhat, and it's hard to build oppressively dour songs on drum machine and jangly guitar. The bad news about Her Handwriting is that it doesn't have a home-run single like "I Still Feel the Bruise" or "The Ghost of an Unkissed Kiss". the song that is often touted as the Trembling Blue Stars' crowning achievement, "Abba on the Jukebox", is found here, but I have to admit that it doesn't do anything for me. At seven and a half minutes, it has two verses (no chorus) and a whole lot of ambient washes that go nowhere. I might like the 7-inch version of the song better, but I haven't heard it. Her Handwriting also has the common Wratten problem of songs being stretched to the five-minute mark just for the sake of it. This debut doesn't suffer from it as much as later albums, but there are plenty of songs here that could lose two minutes of repeated arpeggios or a really slow fade-out.

The good news about Her Handwriting is that it is a more consistent than any other Trembling Blue Stars record I've heard - it's much more like a Field Mice record in that way. There is none of the obvious filler that disrupts more recent releases. Once you get past a rough patch at the beginning - "Abba on the Jukebox" and the tracks before and after it - you have seven of the best songs Bobby Wratten has ever written. "Less Than Love" and "Do People Ever" are excellent acoustic ballads, while "Last Summertime's Obsession" and "Saffron, Beautiful and Brown-Eyed" have nice Eastern-tinged psych touches. The album closes with the piano-and-harmonica-driven "To Keep Your Heart Whole", a real heart-breaker with some pretty direct words about Wratten's breakup: "I thought it would be the easiest thing to keep your heart whole - To keep your eyes dry - To never drop your hand - To always hold it tight."

My favorite song on Her Handwriting might be "A London Story". It's a reminiscence of better times as a couple, leading to Wratten wishing he could recapture the feeling of that time and asking, "Has she never thought along those lines at all?" The jangly guitar and synths are joined by cello and drum-machine castanets on the choruses in a clever arrangement that shows why Bobby Wratten is considered one of the direct forebears of modern indie-pop. Maybe Trembling Blue Stars are more of a singles band than anything else, but Her Handwriting is worthwhile for being a cohesive set of great songs, especially since there is no Greatest Hits collection to be had for now.

"A London Story" by Trembling Blue Stars

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Your Unchanging Love" by Marvin Gaye

Illustration by Richard Williams from The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin, 1966 (via The Thief)

In 1967, things were going pretty well for Marvin Gaye. He was having great success as a duet artist with the beautiful Tami Terrell - they had three Top 20 hits that year from their United album, including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". So it's odd that Marvin took time out during this period to record a song that, at first listen, sounds like a thin retread of his '65 hit "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)". But "Your Unchanging Love" is not without its charms - it's a Holland-Dozier-Holland number with nice backing vocals from singers who may or may not be the Supremes. The tinkling piano line behind the verse is just short of saloon-style kookiness, and Marvin's vocal delivery is great, especially one lines like the ones that start the second verse: "I used to have more friends - Mmmmmm - than I could count."

You might question Marvin Gaye doing this single during his successful period with Tami Terrell - time that would be more precious in retrospect when she tragically passed away from a brain tumor in 1970 at the age of 24 - but Motown knew what they were doing. "Your Unchanging Love" was a Top 40 hit, one of many during this prolific time for Marvin Gaye.

"Your Unchanging Love" by Marvin Gaye

Title Fight: "The City"

"Ross Castle, Lower Lake - Killarney" from Souvenir of the lakes of Killarney and Glengariff by T. Nelson and Sons, 1892

I grew up in a big city (one of the top five largest in the world, I think), and, in my experience, that environment really shapes the way you think and interact with people. I have two favorite songs called "The City" by two very different artists, and they look at the City very differently.

The Dismemberment Plan, the biggest indie band to come out of D.C. in the late '90s, made a name for themselves with complex jazz-derived rock songs and Travis Morrison's unique voice and lyrics. Unfortunately, time hasn't been kind to them. In the decade since they released their best album Emergency & I, their reputation has been tarnished somewhat by a sudden break-up and Travis Morrison's attempts at getting a solo career going. I still love them, though, and a lot of today's bands on the spazzier end of the music spectrum today owe a debt to the D-Plan. Their "The City" comes from Emergency & I and has a nice arrangement of chiming guitar and busy jazzy percussion. Morrison sings to a lover who has moved away because she hates the City, and he expresses sympathy while conflating his feelings for the City with his feelings about her leaving. In this song, the City is the enemy, driving people apart with its cold lifelessness.

Thomas & Richard Frost were musicians from a different era, and they saw the City very differently. The Frost brothers were well-known session/back-up musicians in LA in the late '60s, playing in Sonny & Cher's band and in the band Powder. The brothers were writing their own material on the side, though, and in 1969 they recorded Visualize and released the single "She's Got Love", which was a minor hit. The album itself was canned at the last minute, though, because of record company problems. Finally issued by Rev-Ola a couple years ago, Visualize is a real treat and a cohesive album, and the Rev-Ola release has a couple other singles they recorded tacked on at the end. The Frost brothers love the City, and their ode to it is about finding true love in the crowded streets. Starting with a delicate harmonized guitar riff by Richard Frost and the amazing-named Mars Bonfire (who later wrote "Born to Be Wild"), the song's melody is a fragile Donovan-like folk-pop line, and the brothers harmonize nicely on the song's brief chorus. Strings and piano are added to the arrangement on the second verse and, although it's really a slight song, "The City" is quite lovely.

The contrast between the two songs is pretty impressive. The City is either bringing people together or tearing them apart. It is cold and empty or warm and full of life. Interestingly, both songs evoke the City at nighttime and reference streetlights in the first line. I admit, though, that I like what Thomas & Richard Frost see in the City. Even though the City is bringing people together, they admit that it's difficult to make a real meaningful connection, saying, "You look at me, but you don't see. Excitement grows inside your head from the City. I ponder on - the night has just begun."

Winner: THOMAS & RICHARD FROST

"The City" by the Dismemberment Plan

"The City" by Thomas & Richard Frost

I Saw a Movie: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Panel from Fawcett Movie Comics Ten Tall Men with Burt Lancaster, 1952

I'm a sucker for superhero movies. I have fond memories of reading comics as a kid, and I still pick up the occasional graphic novel. In fact, I'm currently rereading Mike Allred's excellent Red Rocket 7. I loved the Tim Burton Batman movies, as well as the recent Nolan ones (the ones in between I've never seen, believe it or not). I'll defend the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies against all comers. I liked the old school Superman movies, Iron Man, The Incredibles, and Hellboy. I'm even fond of Ang Lee's incomprehensible Hulk. And there have been good X-Men movies - the two that Bryan Singer made were a lot of fun if lightweight. Unfortunately, X-Men Origins: Wolverine continues the hyphenated terribleness of Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand. My complaints about the new Wolverine flick may sound like the issues of a superhero-hater. But that's not me, so I think that the terribleness of X-Men Origins: Wolverine must be a matter of degree, taking usually tolerable flaws and expanding them to a level of intolerability.

Directed by Gavin Hood, an inexperienced director and former attorney and action-movie also-ran (did he really play "German Champion" in Kickboxer 5?), X-Men Origins: Wolverine was bound to exhibit a certain dullness and lack of artistry. But the movie's problems are deep and structural, mostly due to it being a prequel that only fits into the timeline of the previous X-Men movies when you use a certain twisted logic. This tenuous connection is then compromised by X-Men Origins: Wolverine setting itself up for its own sequels (or se-prequels?) And prequels are always at a disadvantage anyway. They have all the downside of a sequel, lacking the newness and freshness of something original, without having the advantage of building on the escalating drama of the preceding film. It's unoriginal, AND it's starting from scratch in the momentum department.

It doesn't help matters that the plot of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a muddled mess. I'm familiar with the need to reboot superheroes every decade or so to prevent them from having to age at all, but I still find it jarring to see Wolverine in pre-superhero form working as a government agent in Nigeria in the mid-90s. I'd been reading X-Men comics for nearly a decade by that time, so I can vouch for the fact that Logan already had an adamantium skeleton. And that's the biggest problem with the movie - I don't want to ruin the plot (so-called) for those who haven't seen it yet, but the machinations required to turn Logan into Wolverine are so convoluted that they strain even the threadbare logic you usually apply to superhero movies. At one point the villain tells Wolverine, "If you go down this path, you're not going to like what you find." Boy, is he right.

The movie does have its good points. The fight scenes are choreographed well, and the special effects rarely look cheap (although one surprise cameo at the end seems to have been quickly stitched together with bad CGI). Many of the actors turn in surprisingly good performances, particularly Liev Schreiber and (most surprisingly!) will.i.am, although some actors with good chops, like Taylor Kitsch and Dominic Monaghan, get nothing to sink their teeth into. And Ryan Reynolds? Seriously? Ryan Reynolds? Just one bafflingly bad choice among many, I suppose, but it's the kind of thing that totally tanks a project that by its nature could only ever have been fairly good in the best hands. There's probably another sequel/prequel in the works already after its boffo box office last weekend, but, at this point, I'd be more excited for X-Men Origins: Dazzler.

"Folded Claws" by Robert Pollard

It's New To Me: Island in the Sky by the Tuneful Trolley (1969)

"Jack Slayeth the Giant, and Delivereth a Knight and his Lady" by Richard Doyle from Edward Dalziel's The Story of Jack and the Giants, 1851

The 1969 album Island in the Sky by six Long Island teens called the Tuneful Trolley is not really a lost classic or neglected masterpiece. But it's a really good pop album with a great story behind it, and that can be almost as good. The kids in the Tuneful Trolley were originally called the Mark of Quality, and despite all being under eighteen, they were competent songwriters and performers. They played their songs at shows around Long Island, and before long Sandy Yaguda of Jay and the Americans discovered them and signed them to his band's label. He took the band under his wing, helping them to flesh out their compositions and encouraging them to change their name to the Tuneful Trolley. The band resisted the name change (not hard to see why) but they eventually went along, and Yaguda agreed to produce their debut album. Sneaking into the Brill Building after hours to use the recording facilities, the kids in the Tuneful Trolley ended up having access to some great resources and musicians. As a result, these inexperienced teenagers were able to produce a mature-sounding album of baroque pop tunes with horns, oboes, piano, and excellent harmony vocals.

Island in the Sky opens with "The Tuneful Trolley Theme", a fairly good fanfare piece with cool backing vocals and percussion, but you can almost hear the band cringing at the corny-sounding band name imposed on them. Most of the band's compositions are Beatles-Beach-Boys hybrids with titles like "Sunny Days", Lovely Day", and "I Got You Around". They try for more ambitious psych-pop with "Lady (with the Tangerine Blouse)" and "Written Charter", with both songs featuring fuzz guitar and awkwardly spliced-on intros, like an amateur-hour Sgt. Pepper's. The album has some goofy numbers like "M.A.C.K." and two songs about pie for some reason, but the album's highlight is "Hello Love", the only non-original composition found on the record. It has a nice Association vibe to it and an excellent verse-chorus dynamic and horn break that stands out on an album of excellent songs.

For some reason, the album was not promoted by the record company in spite of the connection to Jay and the Americans, and the Tuneful Trolley went back to high school and everyday life. The reason for their lack of success is an elephant in the room that is not addressed anywhere in the extensive liner notes of the Island in the Sky reissue. I get the impression that the Tuneful Trolley may have been seen as "too ethnic" for commercial viability in 1969 - with names like Bordonaro, Ciccarello, and Riolo, these Long Island kids were pretty Italian. Unlike the guys in Jay and the Americans (who changed their real names - Kirschenbaum, Rosenberg, and Yaguda - to ones more suitable for musicians), the kids in the Tuneful Trolley were not self-conscious about who they were. You can see this from their promo photos as well.

Whatever the reason, it's unfortunate that Island in the Sky never reached a broader audience. Now, thanks to the Now Sounds re-release of the record, though, you can hear these talented teenage psych-poppers and wonder how they would have matured on subsequent albums if things had turned out differently for them.

"Written Charter" by the Tuneful Trolley

It's New to Me: A Place Where We Could Go by Jeremy Jay

"Peri raiko (Commodore Perry's Delegation)" from a polyptych by unknown artist, 1852

My initial interest in K Records troubadour Jeremy Jay came from seeing his "Lite Beam" video. The song was a kind of stripped-down dancey indie-pop that you don't see much from US artists, but I was disappointed to find that "Lite Beam" is only found on the Love Everlasting EP, a companion piece to his new album Slow Dance. In doing this research, though, I was intrigued by the description of Jeremy Jay's first album, A Place Where We Could Go. Produced by Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson, the album was supposed to be even more stripped down pop, with only drummer Chris Sutton supplementing Jay's guitar and occasional piano.

A Place Where We Could Go really delivered on its promise, too, with a set of minimalist pop songs that really reveal Jeremy Jay's interesting songwriting style. With touches of pre-Beatles rock and French chanson music, the biggest influence on his style may be early David Bowie (bonus track "Oh Bright Young Things" bears a similarity to Hunky Dory that goes beyond its title). It's no surprise that Jeremy Jay splits his time living in Hollywood and Paris - where else would this music make any sense at all? His goofy, romantic lyrics go well with his fey voice and odd sense of phrasing. The wistful "Heavenly Creatures" and "Someone Cares" represent the twee-er side of his songwriting, while songs like "Beautiful Rebel" and "Escape to Aspen" have a slightly edgier earthy sound, with nice surfy guitar leads.

One of my favorites on A Place Where We Could Go is "Hold Me in Your Arms Tonite". It starts with a familiar guitar strum and Jay's echoing vocals. A trebly guitar lead adds a '50s pop feel to the song and, after two short verses about love and nighttime, Jay hums wordlessly over an extended outro. Short, sweet, and a little corny, it's not the kind of thing I'm always in the mood for. But, on certain Spring days, music like this really hits the spot.

"Hold Me in Your Arms Tonite" by Jeremy Jay

I Saw a Movie: Observe and Report (2009)

Photo titled "Our Baby Doffer" by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee, 1910

A week ago, I had a spirited defense of the mean-spirited mental-illness comedy of Observe and Report, but I'm not really feeling it anymore. In retrospect, I admire the chutzpah of the filmmakers in making a shocking (and shockingly funny!) comedy that has sparked a lot of good dialogue about what comedy should be. I am still upset at how the movie was poorly marketed as an easy-going comedy about a doofy mall cop, when the previews basically should have just said, "Here's the deal - this is a gritty, uncompromising movie that's about some disturbing issues. But we really tried to make it as funny as possible. This is not Paul Blart: Mall Cop!" I'm just having some trouble getting riled up about it anymore, so I'll keep this short.

As a young dude, I had some friends who were kind of like Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogan), the bipolar anti-hero of Observe and Report. It's hard being a young dude who has a fairly serious mental illness that seriously limits your life opportunities. None of these friends were gun-obsessed security guards, but they were doughy losers that lived with their moms and went through their days with a mix of weird passionate energy and medication-induced lethargy. And this is where Ronnie is when Observe and Report begins - he's in a dead-end job as head of mall security, but he has his coworkers and his alcoholic mom and his dreams of love with the girl at the makeup counter. And then the triggering event happens - a series of indecent exposure incidents and robberies at the mall throws everything out of whack for Ronnie. Suddenly, a weary cop (Ray Liotta) is encroaching on Ronnie's territory by investigating things at the mall, and the makeup counter girl Brandi (Anna Faris) is actually giving Ronnie some attention.

And this is when Ronnie does the thing that all my friends went through at some point - he decides that its his meds that are holding him back. He stops taking his pills and Ronnie's life steadily spirals out of control, leading to a violent redemptive ending. It's weird to me that most critics mostly ignored the handling of the central theme of mental illness in Observe and Report, limiting their analysis to a single reference to Taxi Driver. My synopsis makes the movie sound like a big downer, but Observe and Report is actually a very funny movie, with a consistent stream of funny moments. Granted, most of the "jokes" are character-driven and awkward humor driven by Rogen, Liotta, and Faris, and this kind of thing isn't for everyone. Writer-director Jody Hill is definitely open to accusations of not having any sympathy for his characters here - Faris's character in particular is light on redeeming qualities - but I think the characters all have their good points and are lovingly rendered and portrayed. Also, some of the supporting players, particularly Danny McBride and Aziz Ansari, make the most of their hilarious single-scene bits.

A lot of people complained about the end of Observe and Report, and I'd like to address it a little here, hopefully without spoiling anything. The ending is really the movie's most interesting aspect, setting up one kind of ending before pulling the rug out from under the audience and going a totally different direction. I think that this last defiance of expectation is the key to the movie, and it's a "happy ending" that is among the most disturbing conclusions I've ever seen. If, like me, you can understand and identify with Ronnie at all (and that's the key to enjoying this movie), the ending will mess with your head more than a little. Jody Hill has made a gross-out comedy that provokes discussion and was savaged by some critics only because they chose to hold it to a higher standard than other comedy. And I'm all for comedy being held to a higher standard - it's more interesting that way.

For me, the cherry on top of a movie with an original premise, great script, and competent cast is a good soundtrack. The use of under-appreciated UK pub-rockers Patto is excellent, and tracks by the Band, Yardbirds, and McLusky all enhance particular moments of Observe and Report. I was especially excited to hear "Brain" by the Action used in one scene. The song is a lost classic from George Martin's second-stage proteges - recorded in 1967, their aborted album didn't get released until 2002. The album has a rough sound to it because it's basically a set of demos, but the Action really captured a great feel in the raw vocal and tremelo guitar line.

"Brain" by the Action