- FILTER Magazine

#44 • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER ’13
DISPLAY THROUGH SEPTEMBER ’13
ALT-J • DISCLOSURE
EDGAR WRIGHT
FATHER JOHN MISTY
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Out now: FILTER Issue 52: “The National: Emotional Transit”
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The National is a band of brothers. This familial impulse colors its unceasing honesty about loves
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Festival Editor
Father John Misty
get to know Jake Bugg, Bleached, Big Black Delta and Peace; kick back with !!!; and finish up with a look into how the comedic
Your guide to the unseen from the current issue of FILTER Magazine
8 filter good music guide
Unseen photo from FILTER Magazine Issue 52’s cover story, “The National: Emotional Transit.” Photo by Marc Lemoine.
good music guide filter 9
Your guide to the unseen from a forthcoming issue of FILTER Magazine
MAYER HAWTHORNE,
ON HIS STYLE:
“My motto is always ‘flashy but classy.’ You’ve got to be original
and stand out from the crowd and be your own person,
but you’ve always got to keep it classy.”
Unseen quote and photo from FILTER Magazine Issue 53’s upcoming feature on Mayer Hawthorne. Photo by Eleanor Stills.
10 filter good music guide
Barring some of FILTER’s younger readership, most of us grew up hearing the epic
tale of The Lollapalooza at least a few times, whether as a bedtime story or maybe,
like myself, you performed it as a class play in grade school. Reading back, it’s hard to
believe this morbid, and at times gruesome, story was actually intended for children.
When I first heard the passage toward the 4th cantos where the main character, a boy
named Narcissus, looks into his grandmother’s changing room mirror and is greeted by
the hoary visage of The Lollapalooza brandishing a mirror in which we see the image
of Narcissus as an old man, I refused to look into a mirror for months, much to my
mother’s chagrin. Not to mention that The Lollapalooza is eventually unmasked as an
incarnate nightmare of the grandmother turned flesh by the watchmaker’s magic. I
never looked at my grandmother the same.
These childhood tales irreversibly shape the culture we bring to life as adults,
sometimes in no small part. I imagine it is no coincidence that the music festival held
in Chicago, The City of Brotherly Wind, is named after the same story in which The
Lollapalooza is eventually slain only by the intense heat of the Sun and an army of
thousands of brightly colored zombies all pressing in on him simultaneously. Also, it is
interesting to note that Narcissus spends much of the first half of the story searching
high and low for extra armbands so that his lazy, needy friends can come drink from the
magical, free wine fountain in the secret garden. Even the story’s true antagonist, the
watchmaker, finds his way into the metaphor. His influence can be seen everywhere: the
colorful banners; the hypnotic, clarion messages for his wares that tempt and confuse
young Narcissus; and the food at his feast that slows his journey and “rots and roils in his
dewy, pink entrails” (paragraph 45, line 8).
By
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Famed children’s literati Harold Gnome had this to say about The Lollapalooza
nearly 30 years ago in his canonical masterwork Childrens: A Genre in Motion, and it
rings eerily true even now:
The Lollapalooza is a text in which the young reader finds his or herself in
confrontation with their future selves, much in the same way Narcissus does
in the classic scene in the grandmother’s changing room. While the mandate
of prominent children’s literature at the time seemed to be to retard, or even
crystallize in perpetual stasis, the appetites of infancy, The Lollapalooza is
a transitional text, wherein revisiting it after one crosses the threshold of
maturity is an inextricable part of enjoying it as a child, albeit retroactively.
What do we make of this analysis? Perhaps only that nostalgia for one’s formative
amusements requires more of (what Gnome classifies as) “an exertion of the present”
than merely thinking back fondly would suggest. Nothing in the text suggests
this more than the transubstantiation of the grandmother’s childhood nightmare
into the beast of the poem’s namesake. In The Lollapalooza we find adults living
like children, children living like adults, and at the center of it all, a beast that is
fulfillment of fantasy best left to the margins of make-believe. F
Disclosure
Brothers
Broadcast
THE
By Chloe Nguyen
With electronic dance music booming in the mainstream, the majority of songs filed under the evergrowing genre are fist-pumping, womp-womp-laced beats on loop as opposed to artfully crafted, thoughtful
tunes. The musicality that once defined the genre, it seems, is in short supply. English duo Disclosure,
however, are a breath of fresh air. At only 22 and 19 years old, Guy and Howard Lawrence, the brothers
behind Disclosure, just released their debut opus Settle, on which they deftly stitch together exciting
elements of garage and two-step to pop vocal hooks for a sleek and supple sound. 14 filter good music guide
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PG. 15: STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH. ALL OTHERS: JAMES MORENO
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But just because the vocal hooks are pop doesn’t mean Disclosure’s songs are
similarly intended. “I feel like a lot of dance music isn’t necessarily ‘designed.’ It’s
evolved into being made for the charts, whereas with our music we’re aiming for the
underground,” Howard explains, slouching back in his chair in a conference room at
Los Angeles’ mammoth Interscope Records building. “It’s almost an accident that it’s
getting so much attention.”
What isn’t an accident is how Disclosure came to be. The brothers boast an
impressive musical pedigree: their father is a rock guitarist; their mother is a vocalist;
their grandfather performs clarinet; their grandmother plays classical piano and
directs choirs. (Guy jests that if all the musicians in the family joined Disclosure, “it
would be a cross between house, choir, Christmas jazz and prog-rock.”)
With a musical heritage as rich as theirs, it’s no surprise that Guy began
banging on pots and pans as a toddler. “I made a mess in the kitchen,” Guy says,
a mischievous smile curling on his lips, “so my mom eventually bought me a drum
kit.” Howard picked up bass and piano around the same age, and though the two
were always encouraged to play music, their parents never urged them to write
their own. “We’d listen to songs purely so we could learn them on our instruments,”
Howard remarks, alluding to the basslines that drew him towards ’70s and ’80s funk
and soul and ’90s R & B.
It wasn’t until Guy got a fake ID and started going to see DJs that he and
Howard started producing music together. “I was heading out to clubs and showing
what I heard to Howard. We would copy it on our laptops and try to make something
like it…basically just trying to be like James Blake, Joy Orbison or other underground
DJs that we liked. From that, we got to the point where we wanted to write full songs.
Our goal was to write pop songs but in the production style of all that underground
stuff because: A, no one was doing it and, B, it just felt normal to us because we grew
up listening to songs with verses and choruses.”
The first song the two made, the synth-led, woozy “Offline Dexterity,” circulated
through Myspace in 2010, and was almost immediately released via Moshi Moshi, with
the shimmering “Street Light Chronicle” on the flipside. A couple of years, an EP and
a closing slot at Coachella’s Gobi Tent later, Disclosure have followed a remarkable
trajectory, from pots-and-pans percussionists to purveyors of bright and soulful dance
music that is unlike anything in the mainstream.
Inspired by the classically structured songs that they grew up with, Guy and
Howard aim to craft lush, vocals-centered tracks that seamlessly weave two-step
garage rhythms with deep house basslines. Since Disclosure’s inception, the siblings
have gotten closer to making the music they’ve envisioned for themselves as artists.
The result is Settle, a sophisticated collection of songs that sounds like the dance-pop
lovechild of their biggest influences: Chicago and Detroit house from the ’80s and
’90s, instrumental hip-hop (think J Dilla’s Donuts) and neo-soul. Featuring loops of
fervent, uplifting lyrics (“When a Fire Starts to Burn”), Aluna Francis’ bubblegum
voice superimposed on capricious beats (“White Noise”) and a sample of Kelis’
“Get Along With You” (“Second Chance”), Settle focuses heavily on vocals, with Ed
Macfarlane of Friendly Fires, Eliza Doolittle, Jessie Ware and even the younger half
of Disclosure lending their pipes. A brilliant concoction of everything that Guy and
Howard love about music, Settle drips with the happiness the brothers believe should
compose the core of dance music.
“We want to bring a bit of musicality back to dance music,” says Guy, “because
we always wanted to write proper music, and we’re just really lucky that it’s connecting
to so many people.” F
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By Laura Studarus
photos by noah kalina
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After taking last year’s Mercury Prize with its debut album An Awesome Wave, Alt-J is quickly becoming
the scrappy band that could. Comprised of college friends Joe Newman, Gwil Sainsbury, Thom Green
and Gus Unger-Hamilton, the Leeds quartet seemingly knows neither genre (Pop? Art rock? Weird?)
nor borders (their a cappella harmonies, soaring piano and guitar lines and jittery grooves have been
well received on both sides of the Atlantic). Whatever the magic—be it Illuminati (pressing Alt and J
on a keyboard produces the delta symbol, which has long been associated with the secret society) or
plain old musical chops—it seems to be working.
Ahead of the band’s Lollapalooza performance and forthcoming concert DVD An American
Wave, the Guide spoke with Unger-Hamilton, the Alt-J keyboardist. He filled us in on personalizing
pop culture, childhood fears and the band’s current Illuminati status.
fter taking last year’s Mercury Prize with its debut album An Awesome Wave, Alt-J is quickly becoming the scrappy
band that could. Comprised of college friends Joe Newman, Gwil Sainsbury, Thom Green and Gus Unger-Hamilton,
the Leeds quartet seemingly knows neither genre (pop? art-rock? weird?) nor borders (their a cappella harmonies,
soaring piano, guitar lines and jittery grooves have been well received on both sides of the Atlantic). Whatever the
magic—be it Illuminist (pressing “alt” and “J” on a keyboard produces the delta symbol, which has long been associated
with the secret society) or plain old musical chops—it seems to be working.
Ahead of the band’s Lollapalooza performance and forthcoming concert DVD An American Wave, the Guide
spoke with Unger-Hamilton, Alt-J’s keyboardist. He filled us in on personalizing pop culture, childhood fears and the
band’s current Illuminati status.
Should I be addressing you as “Mr. Mercury Prize Winner” now?
Gus Unger-Hamilton: I should get some initials after my name. But “Gus” is fine.
Since you’ve been interviewed so many times since An Awesome Wave’s release, and we’ve
cleared the misconception that you’re part of the Illuminati, is there anyone else that you’d
like to out as a member?
They’ve stopped letting us come to meetings [laughs]. So I’m not clear on who’s in and who’s out. They
said we were capitalizing on their symbol.
Given that your songs contain so many references to films and books, are you pop culture
buffs?
Writing a song about a book or a film, we’re not trying to be highbrow. It’s just stuff that we find
interesting. Anything that moves you or sticks in your mind can end up in a song. It has an effect on
you. If we are writing about personal stuff, sometimes it’s in the guise of writing about a piece of pop
culture. You can make references to pieces of culture that other people know, in order to make a point.
Is there anything on your debut that you can point to and say, “that’s personal, that’s about
me”?
A song like “Breezeblocks” is like that. It doesn’t directly relate to something that happened to any
one of us, but it’s an imaginary situation, one that I think everyone can relate to. Someone you love
tries to leave you, and you’re not wanting them to go. It’s something we’ve all felt, even if we haven’t
experienced it directly.
Given that “Breezeblocks” references Where the Wild Things Are—which deals a lot about
the nature of fear—what were you scared of as a kid?
20 filter good music guide
Should I be addressing you as “Mr. Mercury Prize
Winner” now?
Is there anything on your debut that you can point
to and say, “That’s personal, that’s about me”?
Gus Unger-Hamilton: I should get some initials after my
name. But “Gus” is fine.
A song like “Breezeblocks” is like that. It doesn’t directly
relate to something that happened to any one of us, but
it’s an imaginary situation, one that I think everyone can
relate to. Someone you love tries to leave you, and you’re
not wanting them to go. It’s something we’ve all felt, even
if we haven’t experienced it directly.
Since you’ve been interviewed so many times since
An Awesome Wave’s release, and we’ve cleared the
misconception that you’re part of the Illuminati, is
there anyone else that you’d like to out as a member?
They’ve stopped letting us come to meetings [laughs]. So
I’m not clear on who’s in and who’s out. They said we were
capitalizing on their symbol.
Given that your songs contain so many references to
films and books, are you pop-culture buffs?
Writing a song about a book or a film, we’re not trying to be
highbrow. It’s just stuff that we find interesting. Anything
that moves you or sticks in your mind can end up in a song.
It has an effect on you. If we are writing about personal
stuff, sometimes it’s in the guise of writing about a piece of
pop culture. You can make references to pieces of culture
that other people know, in order to make a point.
Given that “Breezeblocks” references Where the
Wild Things Are—which deals a lot about the nature
of fear—what were you scared of as a kid?
Sometimes when I was going to sleep, I could convince
myself that my whole family was dead. I could really scare
myself doing that. It was quite weird.
How deliberate is your writing process?
We don’t really know what we’re doing when we’re
writing songs. We don’t know what the chorus is
and what the verse is. We don’t understand bridges
or middle eights or anything like that. Sometimes
[songs] just have one verse, and a really long chorus or
something like that. We do it in an unorthodox manner.
How did An American Wave, your concert DVD,
come about?
We noticed this weird thing where, in the Midwest—like
Kansas City and Salt Lake City—we were playing venues
that were much bigger than anywhere else, and tickets
were selling far faster. We imagined that we’d be most
popular on the East Coast where they’re slightly more
European in their outlook. We knew we had this big gig
coming up in Kansas City, and we decided we wanted to
film it, because it was a special night. It’s a bit like therapy
in a way. Understanding who we are, and who we are for
our fans. It turned into a film accidentally.
If that DVD were to contain footage of your first
Alt-J show, what would it look like?
There is footage on YouTube of our very first show. It
was in our living room in our house in Leeds. It’s so
grainy. I think it’s shot on someone’s mobile phone. We
played sitting down. It was a real struggle for us to stand
up and play. But there’s a certain raw energy to it. It was
quite nice, in a weird way. F
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By Kurt Orzeck
Photos by Brantley Gutierrez
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Josh Homme could be the Evel Knievel of rock and roll. The singer/guitarist pulls a new, death-defying stunt with each successive album by Queens of
the Stone Age, tinkering with the band’s lineup and stretching its artistic limits to the max. His latest challenge to himself and fans is ...Like Clockwork,
an introverted and morbid anti-rock record that documents a near-death experience he had while recovering from surgery a few years ago. As Homme
recently revealed to FILTER, that incident wasn’t Homme’s only brush with death in recent years—in March, he scraped up his 1967 Camaro in a
bizarre accident on the day QOTSA were leaving town to play their first tour in 18 months.
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Has it been a smooth reentry for you?
Josh Homme: I got in a car accident with a girl from One Tree Hill the day we were leaving
for South America to play Lollapalooza. There were only two lanes of road. I was making a
right-hand turn. She was in my lane, making a left-hand turn. So I headed for a fence. She
said to my wife, “I’m in One Tree Hill.” And I said, “I’m in one Camaro in a fence.”
Have you been in many accidents?
No. I grew up in a masculine place [Joshua Tree, California] where you got mocked if you
rolled your car or got it stuck in a desert. Guys are really good drivers out there.
Did you ever drag race?
I’ve never been too into dick-waving comparisons.
You’ve got a pretty sweet ride, though.
Yeah, but it’s muted. It’s silver, not red. I’ve always liked a big engine under a raspy hood.
I don’t like things that are too flashy.
pleasing yourself, and you can just let it go. It’s not about trying to anger someone else as a way
of making your first step. Like, “Hi, my name is Go Fuck Yourself.” [ed. Homme has attended
multiple anger management programs.] It’s not really my style anymore. It’s not too mature.
You have to start by learning the rules. Then you understand how they’re made.
Then you need to be told how to be a polite and classy person while you figure out how
to break things.
What made you such a contrarian in the first place?
Are you instilling that idea into your children?
I never understood peer pressure. It didn’t make sense to me. Just because you guys are
doing it, I’m supposed to do it, too? And if I don’t do it, you feel bad? So you want to make
me do it by making me feel scared to do it? At a young age, I was like, “That doesn’t work
for me.” I’m not a huge rulebook guy, either.
I certainly didn’t learn enough rules when it came to making music, so breaking
them was as much accidental as it was on purpose, initially.
I’m trying to find a way to introduce it, but it’s hard. If you do it too early...if you
say, “Question everything,” then in the first grade, they’re like, “Do I really have to
go to school?”
Did you learn how to play guitar the “right” way before you learned how
to play it “wrong”?
No, I never had the desire to be trained classically. You tend to walk to what you’re
looking at, right? So if you’re looking at this master and doing exactly what they did, you’re
learning this great set of tools, but what to do when they turn off that target on the wall?
They don’t know where to go.
I put a lot of pressure on myself. If you set the bar even
higher than you can touch, then who can touch you?
—Josh Homme
Your musical gear doesn’t seem too flashy, either.
I really like colors. When you run [a piece of music equipment] through something, it
changes it, and that’s what they call “coloring.” There’s some gear that sounds so nice it
doesn’t change anything. It’s precise, clean, controlled. But I’m a little more ham-fisted at
things like that. Transparency, sonically, is not my strong suit.
You used to run your guitars through bass amps, right?
Yeah. In the beginning, it was like, “Whatever everyone is doing must be wrong.” So I
said, “OK, you’re not supposed to play guitars through bass amps? OK, so do that. You’re
supposed to tune to E? OK, so don’t do that.”
When you’re a kid, you almost arrogantly do that: “I’m not doing what you’re doing.”
It’s very reactionary. But it’s also earnest.
But you’re not like that anymore.
I’m not very contrarian now. You go through stuff, and at some point you’re just OK with
28 filter good music guide
What did you learn by collaborating with one of the masters, John Paul Jones,
for Them Crooked Vultures?
John is the consummate musician. He’s always playing, and it’s never enough. He’s also
a great family man: father, husband—has a wonderful wife. He’s somehow negotiated all
that stuff.
The darker I got [with Them Crooked Vultures], he was like, “Go.” We just bonded.
It wasn’t learning to be yourself. It was reinforcing “just be yourself.”
If I thought too much [about playing alongside him], I’d have been like, “Who’s the
last person who sang for [Them Crooked Vultures drummer] Dave [Grohl]? Who’s the
last person who played guitar with John?” I’d fuck myself up.
So through John Paul Jones you learned that the only rule is that there are no rules?
Rules are there to keep most people in line, I get that. But I don’t want to follow
something just because someone older than me wrote it down. I don’t respect age as a
general wisdom. You meet people who are wiser than their years. You meet someone
who listens more and talks less.
What did you learn in your youth as a musician?
When you’re younger, there’s safety in failure. You take these daring leaps. But they’re
not really emotional chances sometimes.
What do you mean by “emotional chances”?
We used to have all this audacity. It was like, “Let’s have three singers, no one has
that.” But it was a way to be emotionally safe. We were building walls. We wanted to
stick out like a Gaudí among apartment buildings. But when you do that, you’re more
peacocking than you are talking about what goes on inside the walls.
So, what was going on inside the walls?
At the end of [2002’s Songs for the] Deaf, there were big problems. [Singer] Mark [Lanegan]
was going to die [from drug abuse] and [bassist] Nick [Oliveri] was upside-down, basically.
We all loved each other, but something had to be done. The band started to become about
people, not the music. We were becoming these personalities, which I hate.
So I fired my best friend [Oliveri] and didn’t say much about it. I thought people
who cared about it would say, “Wow, that must’ve been hard to do. There must’ve been
a reason.” Instead they said, “You just wanted to sing more.” And I was like, “I’m sorry,
why am I even talking to you?”
My natural instinct is to let go. So is Nick’s. We’re from a small town. It’s just about
making music at the end of the day, and anything that will take it back to that, I will sign
my name on. Music is the only thing that’s never wrong.
With [2005’s] Lullabies [to Paralyze], I thought I’d play my way out of [the
band’s problems] and keep it simple and say how I felt by wrapping it up in a fairy
tale—but it’d be real. And I thought, “People will understand, the music will prevail.”
Some people were like, “I’m not listening to this record, because you’re a fucking
dick [for firing Oliveri].” It’s a moment where people picked a side for no reason.
So, did the music prevail?
[With Lullabies to Paralyze] I was trying to create an answer to what I thought had happened
with Deaf. It was always my intention to make three records, break up the band, start with a
new name and parlay it into something else. But with Nick and Mark gone, I didn’t want to
stop the band, because then it would be like: with them gone, I couldn’t do it. Plus, I wanted
to prove to myself that I could. I wanted to prove that being myself was enough.
I put a lot of pressure on myself. If you set the bar even higher than you can touch,
then who can touch you? F
maki ng An
Everyman Hero Film
By Alejandro Rubio
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It used to be
that film heroes
were nameless cowboys, renegade policemen
or
cybergenetic
organisms:
unstoppable,
unconscionable and wholly un-relatable. They were
celluloid projections of an idealized masculinity
that was far, far removed from the doughy, neurotic
dudes in the audience stuffing their faces with
buttered popcorn. But that all changed in 2004
when director Edgar Wright and comedian Simon
Pegg collaborated to write Shaun of the Dead, thus
introducing an “everyman hero” who struggled as
much with the pressures of adulthood as he did with
the burden of saving the world.
Wright and Pegg would go on to create the socalled “Cornetto Trilogy” (or, the “Blood and Ice
Cream Trilogy”) that includes—in addition to Shaun
of the Dead—2007’s Hot Fuzz and, finally, this
summer’s The World’s End, firmly establishing the
Everyman Hero as a not-quite-as-healthy alternative
to the Stallones and Schwarzeneggers of cinema.
Here, Edgar Wright offers us a few pointers on how
to make an Everyman Hero come to life—in the
movies, at least.
Simon and I tend to gravitate towards the underdog. We grew up with cinema
where you had a kind of superman, whether it was superheroes or Rambo or
Schwarzenegger, and I think that started to change with John McClane in Die
Hard—at least in the first movie—who was a more fallible hero. I think when we
make movies like Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz or The World’s End, it’s really
about somebody you can relate to, and we tend towards somebody with realworld problems before the otherworld problems come into it. In The World’s
End, it’s a bit more of a grey area with Gary King, Simon’s character, because
he’s both the hero and the villain of the piece. He has an obsession that may be
detrimental to his friends; he’s as much of a threat to his friends as the aliens are.
They key thing is to make your hero flawed. In Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz
and The World’s End, the hero hits rock bottom before the final act. He has
nothing and so he has no option but to rise up. I think [the problem with] a lot
of the heroes in cinema while we were growing up, especially in sequels, was
that they became increasingly cartoonish. Like, Dirty Harry is actually one of
my favorite films, but after the first movie they sort of started to remove the
political ambiguity in his motives and he just becomes a cartoon character.
When I first met Simon in 1996, eight years before we actually released Shaun
of the Dead, I thought, “I want to make a movie with this guy,” because he has
a sense of humor; he’s a great actor and I felt like he was somebody I’d want
to see in a movie. He was a British comedy actor and I felt like he represented
somebody that I sympathize with. In that case, with the movies we made, we’ve
written the parts for him. It was never the case of writing the Shaun character
and then going out for actors. We wrote that film as a vehicle for Simon. He is
a great Everyman because Simon almost has the same qualities as somebody
like Jack Lemmon in that he’s extremely likeable and relatable—he’s a really
great dramatic actor and his comedy timing is second to none. I think one of the
reasons that Shaun of the Dead and the other films have echoed for many years is
because people just relate to that performance and [Simon’s] problems resonate
with them.
What we try and do is make relationship comedies, in a sense, and the genre
mayhem is sort of decoration for that. We always had this theory that the Shaun
of the Dead screenplay could work even if you didn’t have the zombies in it—
that if it was another problem, it would work just as well. Usually the films are
centered around the relationships and character dynamics within the movie, so
you feel like Shaun and his varied problems could fit in any genre, essentially.
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PG. 31, 33, 34 (TOP), 35: COURTESY OF FILM SOLUTIONS. PG 32, 34 (BOTTOM): LAURIE SPARHAM/FOCUS FEATURES
I think what we try and do—and the new film is absolutely no exception—is make the
character concerns and genre elements dove-tailed together, and in The World’s End the
two problems are running side by side. On one hand, you have a hero who is on a mission
to recapture his glory days, and this means recreating this wild night of drinking he had
when he was 18; and, on the flipside, the sci-fi element is completely interlinked with [his
friends’] own bittersweet feelings about the fact that that their town has changed without
them. So the whole premise is when you go back to your hometown, you wonder: has the
town changed or have you changed? And the twist is: both.
In our movies, pretty much all of the humor comes from our reaction to these genre
incidents. In Shaun of the Dead, the zombies don’t really do anything funny. There are no
jokes with the zombies; all of the humor comes from the cast’s reaction to the situation.
That’s sort of the rules for the comedy. We were very strict on ourselves that the zombies
shouldn’t be doing anything funny or doing pratfalls or getting spoofy. The zombies stay
scary and it’s Shaun’s reactions that make the movie. It’s kind of like that in The World’s
End and Hot Fuzz—we make the threat sort of serious or at least very vivid, so nearly all
of the laughs and your connection to the material is coming from the idea that you might
say, “That’s what I’d do in that situation.” Because in other thrillers where the heroes are
completely infallible it seems like complete fantasy. Nobody would be that quick-thinking
or that quick-witted. So we try to do that, where they react like normal human beings would
and don’t always have a great line for everything. Part of the joke is their lack of reaction.
I guess the goal is to make sure the character element and the resolution of the character
arcs don’t get lost in the mayhem. We try very hard, especially in the new one, to keep the
story of the characters at the forefront of the movie. Despite the world literally ending, it’s
actually really about these friends and their internal problems. F
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TOP: EDGAR WRIGHT ON THE SET OF SHAUN OF THE DEAD
BOTTOM: NICK FROST, SIMON PEGG AND PADDY CONSIDINE IN THE WORLD’S END
OPPOSITE: HOT FUZZ
good music guide filter 35
One-Liners:
a miniature take on selected Filter Magazine reviews
........................................................................................................................................
(Go to FILTERmagazine.com or pick up Filter Magazine Issue 52 for full reviews of these albums)
Sigur Rós
Kveikur
XL
87%
Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires of the City
XL
Like nothing you’ve ever heard before…
except for Sigur Rós.
83%
Baths
Obsidian
ANTICON
No longer just a well-mannered gang of
Graceland-aping prepsters, the Vamps
succeed in modernizing their sound on this
oftentimes-thrilling, occasionally flubbed set.
This one-man Los Angeles band soaks
listeners in a subterranean cavern of
electronic blips and careful, fragile melodies.
Quasimoto
Yessir Whatever
STONES THROW
78%
86%
She & Him
Volume 3
MERGE
These dozen rare tracks are a surprisingly
fitting introduction to Madlib’s heliumvoiced, brick-throwing space alien alter
ego…puff, puff…puff, puff, puff, puff…
puff…give.
82%
John Grant
Pale Green Ghosts
PARTISAN
Apparently
Zooey’s
career
transformation from being underrated
to “adorkable” didn’t influence
Volume 3 as much as her personal
transformation to singlehood did.
All is quite slick—it’s a touch proggy and
bitter, but not without the piquancy of
sauerkraut.
Mikal Cronin
MCII
MERGE
80%
Little Boots
Nocturnes
ON REPEAT/KOBALT
77%
85%
Tijuana Panthers
Semi-Sweet
INNOVATIVE LEISURE
Reflecting odes of mid-20s anxiety, Ty
Segall’s collaborator/BFF produces the
year’s most earnest and appealing piece
of power-pop.
The Long Beach garage-surf rockers
pine for the romanticized boardwalk
days of old, when the whole world
idealized Southern California for its
sunshine and tasty waves.
Victoria Hesketh throws almost every
producer that she can find into the stew
that is Nocturnes, but it still ends up tasting
pretty bland.
Savages
Silence Yourself
MATADOR/POP NOIRE
84%
Surfer Blood
Pythons
KANINE/WARNER
The Blank Tapes
Vacation
ANTENNA FARM
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79%
What happens when you bring together
the sunny sound of surf-rock and the
underlying emotional turmoil resulting
from a serious arrest? The results are a
little lopsided.
FILTER
ALBUM
RATINGS
Jehnny Beth’s angsty yelps are backed by a
band whose post-punk pedigree sounds like
a time capsule buried in Ian Curtis’ arms.
a great album
above par, below genius
respectable, but flawed
not in my CD player
please God, tell us why
74%
70%
Matt Adams and crew take us on a holiday of
familiar scenic stops, but we’d much prefer
the staycation.
Music,
etc.
.......................................................................................................................................................................................................
Washed Out
Paracosm
SUB POP
88%
Ernest Greene is perpetually late to the
party. As a fixture in the chillwave scene, his
debut full-length, 2011’s Within and Without, was actually
released well after that term had been happily junked.
Now, with pop music veering towards minimalism, Greene
is doubling down on Paracosm, a lush and atmospheric trip
down Reverb Street. Greene may be behind the wave, but
thank goodness for it. Paracosm is a beautiful, beautiful
album. Washed Out still casts a lot of two-chord tracks, but
they are complex nets of harps, orchestral loops and dusty
beats in a warm and pleasant way. Songs like “Don’t Give
Up” and “Paracosm” pulse and radiate life. What Green
lacks in lyrical ambition, he makes up in pretty, nearperfect songcraft. With birdsong and a car idling and the
sound of children shouting across a park in the distance, it’s
as if the whole album was overheard floating through the
air of an Indian summer. ZACHARY SNIDERMAN
book
The Wes Anderson Collection
Matt Zoller Seitz
ABRAMS
87%
In Wes Anderson’s 1998 comedy
Rushmore, private-school legend Max
Fischer is asked for the secret to his
success. “I don’t know,” ponders Max. “I guess you’ve
just gotta find something you love to do and then…do it
for the rest of your life. For me, it’s going to Rushmore.”
And for Mr. Anderson, it’s making movies. Here, movie
critic Matt Zoller Seitz compiles several of his own
interviews with the director into a lengthy conversation.
Each page of this book—filled with conversations,
photographs and artwork surrounding each film—
showcases Anderson’s pop-culture inspirations from
Hitchcock and Star Wars to Jacques Cousteau and the
French New Wave. Better than most of their kind, the
talks reveal a candidness and honesty between critic
and director, allowing Seitz to dig around Anderson’s
vault and share his discoveries. JEFF MURRAY
Superchunk
I Hate Music
MERGE
86%
Superchunk’s 10th album is advertised as
having a “dark undercurrent,” but to the
extent that there is one, it’s buried far beneath the band’s
reliably chipper chords and sunny choruses. This record
finds Chapel Hill’s greatest export at its most vibrant
and emotive since 1994’s Foolish (despite the ironic
title, which calls to mind 2001’s Here’s To Shutting Up).
There’s a punk song that lasts barely one minute (“Staying
Home”), a hard-rocker (“Void”) and a smattering of
introspective tracks (“FOH,” “Trees of Barcelona”).
Superchunk continues fishing for perfection—and, as
always, the band brings the hooks. KURT ORZECK
No Age
An Object
SUB POP
87%
As soon as the first bright notes of An
Object wave you over to the album’s
distorted incandescence, you realize that something
is going on. It’s the same realization people must’ve
had when they first heard the baby piano on The
Velvet Underground & Nico or the opening drum roll
on Sandinista! It’s the realization that what you’re
listening to is the culmination of everything rock and
roll has produced up to that point and everything that
is to come. Some of you won’t agree—that’s cool—but
those of you who do will remember exactly where you
were and how you felt when you heard No Age’s soonto-be seminal contribution to the history of the genre.
ALEJANDRO RUBIO
The Dodos
Carrier
POLYVINYL
89%
Carrier finds The Dodos continuing
to refine their music with a new focus
on electric guitar, while simultaneously returning to
the balance of Meric Long’s soft melodic vocals and
acoustic guitar fingerpicking punctuated by Logan
Kroeber’s drumming that defined their earlier sound.
Less sonically aggressive than 2011’s No Color, the
lyrics on Carrier stand as the most meaningful in their
catalog, making their newest album stand once again as
the band’s best yet. JEFFREY BROWN
blu-ray
Mud
LIONSGATE
90%
Drawing from the veins of Spielberg’s
coming-of-age adventures like The
Goonies and Empire of the Sun,
Jeff Nichols’ Mud follows Arkansas
teenagers Ellis and Neckbone
through the brown-water bayous of the Mississippi
and into the path of a drifter named Mud. Not
only is the film held up by strong performances
by Matthew McConaughey (who brings natural
Southern swagger to the title role), Reese
Witherspoon, Sam Shepard and Nichols’ powerplayer, Michael Shannon, but the haunting
cinematography and deeply compelling story
make this Palme d’Or–nominated feature one of
the year’s best. JEFF MURRAY
Ty Segall
Sleeper
DRAG CITY
81%
It’s no original story that Ty Segall is an
insanely prolific purveyor of recorded
music—that much has been well documented. What does
ring unique about Sleeper, his sixth solo record in five years
(plus three collaborative releases), is Segall’s newfound
ability to—save one fleeting moment of weakness—curb
his fuzz addiction, cold turkey. Acoustically driven and
relatively droopy, the apropos Sleeper may or may not be a
vaguely allegorical concept album, in the vein of mythic mid
’70s folk rock, which pits a class known as “sleepers” against
the “keepers.” Think Aqualung on codeine, sans flute,
swapping vagrants for couch potatoes. KYLE MacKINNEL
PLAYBAR UNLEASH YOUR TV SOUND. UNLEASH ALL THE MUSIC ON EARTH.
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book
Let’s Start A Pussy Riot
Curator: Emely Neu
Editor: Jane French with Pussy Riot
ROUGH TRADE
84%
When the wave of Pussy Riot broke,
it exposed two very relevant pieces
of information:
1. A balaclava is not a delicious pastry.
2. Putin is a humorless asshole, reigning over
his frozen tundra with a fascist fist when he’s not
molesting polar bears for photo ops.
Basically, a bunch of girls in neon leggings
scared the crap out of an archaic system polluted with
oppressive machismo and unregulated authoritarianism,
and that gets a slow clap from me. Whether you think
Pussy Riot are attention-whoring feminazis or a
brave tremor in the impending quake to bring down
the Patriarchy ultimately doesn’t matter. This book
isn’t a condemnation nor a celebration: it’s merely an
interpretation of a very complex subject by people you
will find genius or insufferable. And isn’t that what this
is all about? CAMILLE ROUSSEAU
Jagwar Ma
Howlin
MOM + POP
84%
If you’re looking at a map of Earth, the chunk
of land in the bottom right of the rectangular
world has recently become the home for innovative and
addicting psychedelic rock. And Sydney-based duo Jagwar Ma
is one of its latest most-buzzed-about exports thanks to this,
their debut LP. Drenched in echoed vocals and layered synth
lines, Howlin maintains an incredibly optimistic, carefree tone.
Maybe the band says it best themselves: “When you’re gloomy,
howlin looks so good to me.” BAILEY PENNICK
Julianna Barwick
Nepenthe
DEAD OCEANS
85%
Julianna Barwick decided to call her most
heavenly record Nepenthe after a death
in the family occurred in the middle of recording—
40 filter good music guide
which took place in Reykjavík, Iceland, working with
Alex Somers (Sigur Rós collaborator/producer, Alex
of Jónsi & Alex—taking its title from a magical drug
of forgetfulness from Greek literature. Appropriately,
the Brooklyn ambient-musician’s incandescent-yetstentorian release acts as a warm and pacifying salve for
the heartbroken and exultant alike. KYLE LEMMON
Zola Jesus and J.G. Thirlwell
with Mivos Quartet
Versions
SACRED BONES 82%
Inspired by a string quartet–backed
performance at New York’s Guggenheim Museum,
Versions delivers what the name implies—alternate takes of
songs from her back catalog. At times, Nika Roza Danilova’s
opera-trained voice sounds overly formal against the stringonly instrumentation. But the compositions benefit from
her willingness to shed her electro goddess skin. “It hurts
to let you in,” she sings on heartbreaking closer, “Collapse.”
We can truly feel her pain. LAURA STUDARUS
Daughn Gibson
Me Moan
SUB POP
80%
In 1987, Patrick Swayze starred in Dirty
Dancing and a couple years later he swapped
the leotard for Levi’s in Roadhouse. Both became cult
classics and while the success of these pictures never
inspired a project combining risqué rhythms with cowboy
shenanigans, the synthesis is here in Daughn Gibson’s Me
Moan. Although there are moments on the album that,
despite its ambition, simply feel like fool’s gold, others—
like the honky-tonk-slash-futura-disco of “Phantom
Rider”—shine like veritable gold flakes. Nobody puts
Dalton in a corner. ALEJANDRO RUBIO
Gogol Bordello
Pura Vida Conspiracy
ATO/CASA GOGOL
80%
As 2013 sees violent protests tear through the
complex fabric of corruption from continent
to continent, it’s thrillingly appropriate to be hit with the
exhilarating, barricade-storming opener of Gogol Bordello’s
newest album, fittingly titled “We Rise Again.” What
Ukrainian firebrand Eugene Hutz lacks in vocal prowess,
he again decisively makes up for in fervor and philosophical
certitude. And Gogol Bordello’s incomparable brand of
swaggering gypsy punk hasn’t lost a whit of its euphoric
urgency. We predict a riot. KEN SCRUDATO
King Khan & The Shrines
Idle No More
MERGE
79%
King Khan & The Shrines shouldn’t take
themselves as seriously as they do on Idle
No More, wherein lackluster soul-stirrers edge out their
usual garage-punk ferocity and much of the fun, too.
In his prime, Khan’s voice was raspy and his persona
raunchy, and it suited the group more than his seemingly
unsure delivery here. Their Nuggets-meets-Stax sizzle
emphasizes the latter this time, but the rawness they once
portrayed has dwindled; Idle withers in the bright light of
their past work. ZACK KRAIMER
dvd
The Bling Ring
LIONSGATE
83%
“Um, hi, police? So all these, like,
kids or whatever came into my house
while I was in Vegas and took, like,
a bunch of my stuff or whatever!
Totally! Um, like, a bunch of hot
clothes, hot jewelry, hot shoes and stuff. Probably
like a bazillion dollars’ worth. What? Yes it was
locked! Yes, I’m sure, hel-lo! Well, it was hidden…
um, under the mat? No, it wasn’t obvious! Listen,
guy, don’t tell me where to hide my house key, OK?
Just find these kids, get all my stuff back, then tell
Sofia Coppola to make a movie about it, and then
I’ll be in it for like half a second, and they can film it
in my actual house, and then maybe people will like
me again? Hello? Officer? Hel-lo?” He sounded
hot. Maybe they can get Brad to play him in the
movie. SCHMARIS SCHMILTON
White Fence
White Fence [reissue]
GOD?
83%
Is it any surprise that restless
freewheeler Tim Presley has dug up
yet another one of his lo-fi masterpieces? Probably
not, but our ears and hearts sure don’t mind. This
time it’s White Fence’s debut, a jangling precursor
to his extensive catalog of bedroom recordings. Like
the rest we know and love, whimsical tales of ugly
love through peach-tinted guitar loops and analog
tapes are alive here, especially on the twangy “Sarah
Snow” and the yearning “The Love Between.”
blu-ray
Andrew Cedermark
Home Life
82%
UNDERWATER PEOPLES
The surprisingly effective opening track of
Home Life is a freewheeling cover of Bill
Withers’ 1972 staple “Lean On Me.” Yet it is Cedermark’s
streaking yowl that comes off leaning, reaching out in
darkness for reverberating pine trunks in serious shades
of Mangum. It’s a thought-provoking prelude to a record
that, like its forerunner Moon Deluxe, feels like quite a
personal effort from the former Titus Andronicus guitarist.
Uninhibited and jubilant as it is fully realized, Cedermark
might be sturdier than he lets on. KYLE MacKINNEL
PAULA MEJIA
Crocodiles
Crimes of Passion
FRENCHKISS
74%
An emergence and attempted escape
from the mundane(-ish) streets of San
Diego—affinity toward guitar-pop aside—it’s tough
to believe Crocodiles haven’t achieved their goals.
Crimes of Passion flows with an upbeat swagger;
they’ve toned down Summer of Hate’s gloom, kept the
catchy melody lines and turned up the volume. A bit
less intriguing experimentally, Crimes doesn’t quite
stand out—save the occasional chaos of “Marquis De
Sade” and the fantastic penultimate “Virgin”—but is
consistent to say the least. ADAM VALEIRAS
Robert Pollard
Honey Locust Honky Tonk
GBV INC.
82%
If you smile instead of feel cheated by
a 45-second pop song that ends after
one verse, then you probably like Bob Pollard. His
23 rd solo record (and 16 th since 2004) has a bunch of
those. But smooth gems like “Airs” and “Who Buries
the Undertaker” offset it with a relatively taut, clean
sound that sometimes even recalls major-label-era
Guided By Voices. Not sold? Wait a few days, when
he presumably releases a follow-up. KURT ORZECK
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Julia Holter
Loud City Song
DOMINO
84%
Julia Holter’s first deep dive into the
studio is a headphone-friendly marriage
of songwriting and quiet architecture. Tragedy and
Ekstasis were expertly crafted collections that lifted
from new-age sky-gazing and layered Cocteau Twins–
esque sound sculpture. And here, Holter shows an
even greater grasp, building up tracks into a fusion
between the early vocal Eno records and Joni Mitchell’s
divisive Hissing of Summer Lawns. Everything comes
together, creating an album as deep and wide as the
vistas it conjures up. JON PRUETT
Dent May
Wet Blanket
PAW TRACKS
81%
Dear Aerial Ballet,
Hello, my name is Wet Blanket and my
mom says you are my dad. Her name is Sunflower and
she said you liked her “dark California optimism” once.
She said it fit good with your “tragic and whimsical
imagination.” I know we've never met but Mom says
I’m a well-produced and sunnier combination of
both of you, whatever that means. I live in Oxford,
Mississippi, and my birthday is coming up. Bye.
ALEJANDRO RUBIO
Kon-Tiki
ANCHOR BAY
88%
In the battle for “Most Insane
Explorer of the Century,” few could
compete with Norwegian lunatic
Thor Heyderdahl, who in 1947
piloted a simple raft built to archaic specifications
across the Pacific to prove his theory that
Peruvians first settled the Polynesian Islands.
Kon-Tiki was the name of his ship, and it’s also
the name of this Norwegian dramatization that
was nominated for the Best Foreign Language
Film Oscar. Pål Sverre Hagen plays Heyderdahl
with grit and aplomb, choosing to focus on his
character’s courage and resolve rather than the
unicorns and fairies that were no doubt clouding
his every waking thought. Kon-Tiki is a far more
thrilling man-in-the-boat yarn than Life of Pi or
even The Story of O. SHANE LEDFORD
Travis
Where You Stand
RED TELEPHONE BOX/KOBALT
84%
Five years on the sidelines seems to have
reinvigorated the Glaswegian outfit Travis.
While Fran Healy and company haven’t exactly laid
dormant, they certainly hadn’t set the world on fire
with their past few albums, either. But their seventh
studio effort is a welcome change. Combining anthemic
Britpop with alt-rock, their finest effort since 2001’s
The Invisible Man proves that it’s never too late for a
band to get their mojo back. DANIEL KOHN
Stereophonics
Graffiti on the Train
STYLUS
83%
Hugely successful in the UK, and to
a lesser extent Stateside, thanks to a
workmanlike dedication to consistently releasing quality
product, Stereophonics’ muscular riff-rock always aims
for mass appeal. Thankfully, the band’s eighth album
has loftier goals at heart and ranks among their most
imaginative. At once grand and intimate, singer Kelly
Jones infuses each song with passion, while the band
weaves cinematic glory around him. ADAM POLLOCK
Anna von Hausswolff
Ceremony
OTHER MUSIC
83%
Ceremony, the second record from Anna
von Hausswolff, buffets us with a cold,
yawning beauty, like a rack of candles inside a dark
Viking church, or the glimmers of dawn teasing their
way across the tundra. Certainly some of the electric
frenzy of black metal stomp through these tunes,
which are then flanked to great effect by steadily rising
harmonies on pipe organ and synthesizer, conjuring
a beautiful suspension of light and dark, heaven and
earth. LOREN AUDA POIN
True Widow
Circumambulation
RELAPSE
84%
There’s been a shift toward exploring
sludgy, metal-steeped sounds, made
accessible by balancing equal footing with shoegaze
and drone overtones (see: Deafheaven, Pallbearer).
Texas trio True Widow has released a quiet masterpiece
of a third album, Circumabulation, an unassuming take
on those shoegaze-singed soundscapes. It comes on
slow, seeping into your memory through dusty riffs as
expansive as Texas plains. Ear-numbing drones blend
beautifully on sprawlers such as “Four Teeth,” with
vocals throttling in and through each other, and through
you. PAULA MEJIA
Moderat
II
MUTE
85%
In this age of mega EDM, there’s something
reassuring about the genuineness of
Berlin electronic music. And the Modeselektor–
Apparat melding Moderat is something of a stylistic
banquet, showing off the astonishing range of each
artist’s musical proclivities. From gossamer dream-pop
(“Let In the Light”), to rarefied funk (“Therapy”), to
haunting, celestial elegies (“This Time,” “Ilona”), to
inescapably infectious nouveau-soul ( “Bad Kingdom”),
II is the perfect 21st-century escape from so much banal
guitar music. KEN SCRUDATO
book
Maurice Sendak: A Celebration
of the Artist and His Work
Justin G. Schiller & Dennis M.V. David
Edited by Leonard S. Marcus
87%
ABRAMS
Wild things are all around us but
the ones we know best came from
the mind of Maurice Sendak. His
children’s books have been celebrated for years upon
years and his talent for illustration is both formidable
and inviting, cartoonish yet starkly familiar. In Maurice
Sendak: A Celebration of His Life and Work, there’s
plenty to fawn over in the form of 12 essays by the
artist’s friends and numerous sketches and drawings
by the man himself. Endowing his creatures with
humanity and his humans with abstraction, the book
shows how Sendak created a world often capable of
making more sense than our own. MACK HAYDEN
Gauntlet Hair
Stills
DEAD OCEANS
77%
A collage of strange, variously effected
keyboards,
sharp
guitar
hooks,
freewheelin’ bass and some minimalistic drums, Stills,
on paper, is a mess of instrumental overhaul. Whatever.
The result is intuitive, cohesive and uniquely dreary.
Each song seems to follow its own instinct, reaching
odd but necessary, sensible plains. It’s not perfect, but
strong songwriting philosophy like this deserves to be
noted and heard. ADAM VALEIRAS
oOoOO
Without Your Love
NIHJGT FEELINGS
81%
Chris Dexter, the San Francisco
soundscaper behind the mind-bogglingly
titled moniker oOoOO, trades in the same mood-altering
atmosphere as fellow electronic escapists Clams Casino
and Forest Swords—that is to say, lushly cinematic,
pure visionary ecstasy. After two impressive EPs for Tri
Angle, his debut Without Your Love continues to thrive
on subterranean nighttime pleasures, echoing infinitely
down through the dark unknown. Dive deep and don't
bother coming up for air. BREANNA MURPHY
Demon Queen
Exorcise Tape
RAD CULT
77%
Vocoder-loving synth maestro Tobacco
makes his twisted melodic tendencies
stand out on any project he touches. The same is true
for his beats with Demon Queen, the psychedelic hiphop collaboration with falsetto fiend Zackey Force
Funk (among other rappers of varied skill). Tobacco
shares the foreground, but he’s really the reason the
project works. Exorcise Tape is still satisfyingly grimy
and warped, but Tobacco’s usual gripping intensity
is less present to make room for some appropriately
off-kilter verses. ZACK KRAIMER
Soft Metals
Lenses
CAPTURED TRACKS
76%
Upon the initial listen of Soft Metals’
sophomore full-length album, one
might find it difficult to differentiate between
songs, with synthesizers obviously signature looming
reliably over the docile vocals of Patricia Hall.
However, each listen evinces the subtleties hidden
throughout—off-signature synth notes and lyrics
that pull you in further and further. It’s an album
that takes patience, but its reward is somewhat
gratifying. GIANNA HUGHES
good music guide filter 43
Pure Bathing Culture
Moon Tides
PARTISAN
83%
In nine short songs, Pure Bathing
Culture’s Moon Tides whisks the listener
to a desolate, sunny, Scandinavian beach for an alltoo-brief while. With shimmering Galaxie 500 guitars,
Stephin Merritt melodies and huge choruses with
focused pop production, it’s near perfection for a
debut. “Twins” jangles before the joy of the chorus
dawns majestically; “Only Lonely Lovers” croons as a
lullaby on a sunny day. In short, the band brilliantly
harks back to the nearly forgotten art of blissful pop.
JON FALCONE
Alexander von Mehren
Aéropop
THE CONTROL GROUP
79%
Listening to Alexander von Mehren’s
debut is like being inside the hippest
elevator around; as pleasant as the music is,
you’re still just in transit to your true destination.
Through the 20 tracks—13 with words and 7 aptlytitled instrumental “aérosuites”—the 29-year-old
Norwegian multi-instrumentalist/producer keeps
his sound light and fun, but without a truly lasting
impression on the listener. While there’s no doubt
of Mehren’s talent, Aéropop’s highlights (“Winter
Comes,” “Natural Selection”) are few and far
between. BAILEY PENNICK
Weekend
Jinx
SLUMBERLAND
78%
On Jinx, Weekend has sanded down and
polished up the jagged edges from its
capable debut album, Sports. The Brooklyn-via–San
Francisco rock trio’s love for The Killing Joke and
The Cure is still present, but Shaun Durkan (vocalist/
bassist/guitarist), Kevin Johnson (guitarist) and Abe
Pedroza (drummer) continue to show a pinpoint focus
for rafter-raising melodies and a lustrous production
aesthetic. These post-punk/new-wave tracks rumble
by with a forcefulness not heard since the ’80s. Soak
up the gleaming destruction. KYLE LEMMON
Glaciers
Mirrored Through The Ancients
sound of glaciers
80%
Forgoing their last album’s crushing
maritime vibe for an equally crushing
land-based, almost-Cormac-McCarthy-esque sense
of epic doom, San Francisco–based Glaciers seem to
have found the perfect place to unfold their cathartic
instrumental jams. Recorded by Phil Manley (Life
Coach, Trans Am), each of the five new tracks follows
the form of: establish riff, elaborate on theme, pummel
listener into either awe or submission. “Veil of the
Phoenix” stands out for its brevity and immediacy,
but the band’s full power is best exemplified by the
sunburnt death dirge of “Southwest of Heaven.”
JON PRUETT
Editors
The Weight of Your Love
PIAS
The Civil Wars
The Civil Wars
SENSIBILITY/COLUMBIA
83%
The Civil Wars’ multifaceted sophomore
effort again provides the delicate
balance found in the band’s oxymoronic moniker.
There’s a tumultuous contention found in bold lyrics,
juxtaposed against tender music of heartache and
longing. The pitch-perfect duo has included full
instrumentation here, rather than only its signature
guitar, channeling a new, focused direction. Its
inability to be contained within one genre is the
band’s strength and triumph. GIANNA HUGHES
NEVIN MARTELL
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
75%
COMMUNITY MUSIC
KT Tunstall
Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon
BLUE NOTE
MUSIcFeStnw.coM/
SchedULe
Young The gianT + animal ColleCTive + neko Case
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Bonnie
74%
With the departure of founding guitarist
Chris Urbanowicz, Editors clearly felt
the need for a reinvention. This new set still possesses
the majesty and moodiness of earlier efforts, while
finding new inspiration in late ’70s and early ’80s
Springsteen, REM and The Cult. (If you don’t believe
the latter, listen to “A Ton of Love” and Sonic Temple
back-to-back.) There are a few thrilling moments
here—notably the cinematic ballad “Nothing”—but
the band mostly flounders as it seeks a new direction.
FULL
SchedULe
oUt now!
Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros act as cool as a
summer breeze. Their self-titled LP has the troupe’s
familiar indie-“folk”-meets-psychedelia soundings,
yet adds some new wrinkles (the Beatles-aping “If
I Were Free”; the haunting “They Were Wrong”).
With bouncy hooks and back-and-forth harmonies
combined with singer Alex Ebert’s lyrics, the group
knows what they are—and they’re perfectly fine
with that. DANIEL KOHN
82%
Instinctively moving ahead of the
curve as “real instruments” started
making appearances on the pop charts, KT Tunstall
completes the transformation from indie cover girl
to a new singer–songwriter-themed release. Invisible
Empire // Crescent Moon is 13 acoustic-guitar-andpiano-based compositions that meander along like
the prairie winds that blew outside the Arizona
studio where they were recorded. The focus here is
on Tunstall’s voice, which presents itself delicately,
and with a poignancy that suggests that the artist is
just now coming into her own. ADAM POLLOCK
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44 filter good music guide
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48 filter good music guide
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