On the old internet, conspiracy theories might be about the Beatles; now it’s a politicized and dismissive catch-all term.
The post How Paranoia Became Political appeared first on The American Conservative.
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Well, our favourites, at least…Formats come and go, but the importance of album artwork never truly dims.
Over 70 years on from the invention of the long player record, the album as a concept holds true, with a new generation embracing physical pressings.
While a plethora of visual options are available – from IG Live hang outs through to lavish music videos hosted on VEVO – there’s something about album artwork that holds a prime place in the imagination.
A direct visual representation of the music underneath, each generation has embraced and renewed the idea of album artwork having a meaning in its own right.
Clash writers picked out a few favourites, and we’ve tried to steer clear of those well-trodden paths – yes, we John Squire channelled Jackson Pollock for ‘The Stone Roses’, and Oasis went to Central London for ‘Definitely Maybe’. We’ve even read multiple interviews with the baby from ‘Nevermind’, too…
So, expect some lesser-heralded gems in this round up – but we’re not so obscure that we’ll pass up the odd classic or two…
Is your favourite not in here? Get involve in the debate on Twitter.
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Butthole Surfers – ‘Locust Abortion Technician’
‘Locust Abortion Technician’ was the third album by uncategorisable Texan group Butthole Surfers, released in 1987 by Touch & Go / Blast First. Recorded by the ‘classic’ line-up of Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary, Jeff Pinkus, King Coffey and Teresa Nervosa, the album recorded at a rented house with an 8-track tape machine after the band concluded that regular studios were simply too limiting. The result was a beautiful, sprawling mess, with lumpen metal riffs, messy punk bursts, tape loops and heavy doses of psychedelic wonkiness.
The sleeve painting of two laughing clowns and a dog was painted by Brooklyn-born painter Arthur Sarnoff, best known for his wry comedic portrait ‘Jack The Ripper’ of a group of dogs playing pool. Sarnoff worked extensively as a commercial artist for major US commercial brands and magazines, and was as well known for painting pin-up models as he was dogs.
Sarnoff’s image for ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ was called ‘Fido And The Clowns’ and it’s a strangely unsettling image befitting a strangely unsettling album. We see glimpses of beautifully-detailed Americana (the boater hat on one clown, the derby on the other) we see intense and unbridled joy, but thereafter it just gets odd. Notwithstanding the clowns (anyone afflicted with coulrophobia should avoid this album), there’s the proportions: is this a very small dog? Or are these huge clowns? Why is everything on the right-hand clown pointing upwards (the feather, his finger, his painted eyebrows)? Why do the clowns have such perfect teeth?
It is surreal, baffling and unexplainable… just like everything Butthole Surfers have ever done. (Mat Smith)
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The Avalanches – ‘Wildflower’
The Avalanches’ music is known for plundering other artists’ sounds and whisking them together, so it’s only right that their album covers do the same. Their immovable 2000 classic ‘Since I Left You’ sampled a portion of a 1920 Fred Dana Marsh painting for its maritime feel, and their celestial 2020 release ‘We Will Always Love You’ ran a photo of the creative director of the Voyager Golden Record project through a spectrogram.
‘Wildflower’ is the pick of the bunch, though, for revising the Stars and Stripes to add multicoloured flowers and their now-iconic butterfly logo. Its simplicity is what makes it so eye-catching, flowing as though it could be a GIF. Inspired by Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘There’s A Riot Going On’, Wildflower’s cover perfectly encapsulates the feeling of summer in a flag – nature, colour, sun, open air, and just a pinch of psychedelics. (Nathan Evans)
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Burial – ‘Untrue’
No album cover better projects the mood of its record than Burial‘s ‘Untrue’.
The ultimate music nerd sad-hours album, its cover is a cold, metallic scene that chokes any notion of light-heartedness out with its steely architecture. Notice the pencilled-in tally marks on the left-hand side of the wall, which could nod to London’s graffiti culture or suggest a prison-like atmosphere. Then there’s the main subject, the enigmatic figure cross-hatched in as though he’s invisible to the rest of the world.
When making this album, Burial would drive around London in the dead of night to literally road-test his nocturnal 2-step beats, and this artwork feels like the aftermath of that – sitting In McDonalds at 5am with a coffee too hot to drink yet, reflecting pensively on the city the defines him. (Nathan Evans)
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Travis Scott – ‘Jackboys’
This album artwork is so good, it makes you wish the music it covers isn’t so painfully bang-average. That’s right, this list isn’t just our favourite albums masquerading as an objective list like some publications.
Grainy photos are an easy way to make a photo look more artful, but the composition of the photo here is what truly entices. It feels like a window into the world of the album – a purple-sky street race far away from city feds, like an old Need For Speed game.
The muted colour palette does not eliminate how sleek the cars look in all their tuned-up glory, true to Travis Scott’s main appeal of evoking boyhood fantasies in real life. Whether it’s monster trucks, action figures, rollercoaster parks or street racing, Scott’s brand has always beamed from the covers he selects. (Nathan Evans)
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Funkadelic – ‘Maggot Brain’
The artwork for Funkadelic’s third studio album ‘Maggot Brain’ encompasses the sonic mood of the record. Wailing vocal powerhouses over uber-funky melodies. A pinnacle for 1970s funk; ‘Maggot Brain’ is a where psychedelia meets deep earthly delights.
Most recognisable for the ten minute title track performed by guitarist Eddie Hazel, ‘Maggot Brain’ certainly feels like one of George Clinton’s greatest works – of which there are many. The opening monologue, written and performed by Clinton under the influence of LSD, takes the listener on a contemplative and emotional trip. The artwork of model Barbara Cheeseborough breaking through the dirt has an inviting magnetism – a record the listener feels compelled to reach for. (Amelia Lloyd)
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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – ‘Infest The Rat’s Nest’
A band equally as recognisable for their aesthetic vision as their musical, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s ‘Infest The Rat’s Nest’ has a mythical and dark album cover highly in keeping with the record. Created by the band’s resident artist Jason Galea, King Gizzard do the most for their album covers – and it shows. The process of creating the cover can be seen over on Galea’s Instagram; documenting the original pencil sketch, creating a sculpture, photographing and editing it into the brooding work of art it became.
Unafraid to transcend aesthetic boundaries, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s album artworks vary with each release. Capturing the lost essence of 1970’s album art, ‘Infest The Rat’s Nest’ is definitely up there with some of the most enticing album artwork seen in recent years. (Amelia Lloyd)
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Flying Lotus – ‘Cosmogramma’
The exceptionally eclectic set of influences Flying Lotus draws on in ‘Cosmogramma’ are perfectly represented in its striking cover art.
Taken from the work of his art mentor Leigh McCloskey, it consists of complex lines and circles, abstract yet indicative of the album’s concept, which has been linked to lucid dreaming and psychedelics. Such an artwork is fitting for an album so maximalist, with tracks packed with sounds comprehensible only after a hundred listens. (Jack Oxford)
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Metronomy – ‘The English Riviera’
With its bold, clean design, the cover of Metronomy’s third studio album ‘The English Riviera’ has become the band’s most iconic look. The simplified image of a palm tree in front of sand, sea and ever-stretching sky was adapted from a 1982 travel poster depicting the Devon coastline where Metronomy vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Mount was born. Originally designed by British graphic designer John Gorham, the travel poster’s colours have been deepened on the album cover and the text removed for a more modern look.
On the back, the band’s name and album title are written in a stylish vintage typeface from 1974 called ‘Penny Farthing’. By paying homage to 20th century designs, the art complements the album’s nostalgic tone and mirrors the sophisticated, laidback sound that the English quintet display in standout songs ‘The Bay’, ‘Everything Goes My Way’ and ‘She Wants’.
With its sleek, summery aesthetic and understated design, ‘The English Riviera’ stands up a decade after its release as an album cover that is both independently brilliant and perfectly accompanies the music inside. (Rebecca Sibley)
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The Beatles – ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
The Beatles were doing easter eggs before easter eggs were a thing. Featuring over 50 different figures, both past and present, this cover deserves a place on the list by merit of its sheer intricacy. The four live Beatles were positioned in front of a cast of cardboard cut-outs and figures (including wax versions of their younger Beatlemania selves to the left) in a shoot that seems almost unimaginably complex in the age of CGI.
The cover brings together high and low brow figures, including Edgar Allen Poe, Bob Dylan, and Karl Marx, mashing together poets, politicians, and The Beatles’ musical contemporaries. At this point, the group were reinventing themselves under a growing hippie influence, and this cover showcases the band’s desire to move forward while acknowledging their established importance to British musical culture.
The vinyl also comes with a set of carboard pop-outs including a moustache, badges, and The Beatles in their satin costumes. While the cover subverts pop culture, the pop-outs allow fans to partake in fandom even as The Beatles were questioning their role as British public figures. (Sasha Mills)
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Bring Me The Horizon – ‘POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR’
Designed by Oli Sykes’ wife Alissa Salls, the artwork for Bring Me The Horizon’s latest album ‘POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR’ references and takes inspiration from Hindu deity, Lord Krishna.
Directly inspired by a religious painting depicting Krishna enjoying lunch with friends in the forest, Alissa’s artwork offers a modern-day, end of the world take on what we find enjoyable in this era of time that often feels post-human.
Look closely at the cover and you’ll find references to man-made problems we suffer from in the 21st century, including everything from drug abuse, gun violence and tobacco consumption to addictive smartphone use, fascism, meat consumption, and even sugar addiction.
As a protest album that’s angry about inequality and environmental menace, the artwork rings out with the idea that we as humans have become something that once would not have been considered normal; something unnatural that we have the power to do something about.
Alissa also previously designed the cover art for the band’s EP ‘Music to…~GO~TO~’, and is more commonly known under the moniker Alissic for her avant-pop musical solo work. (Samantha Hall)
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Skepta – ‘Konnichiwa’
Skepta’s glass ceiling shattering 2016 album ‘Konnichiwa’ is – in retrospect – a modern British classic, a record that sent expectations soaring and helping to bulldoze the global barriers place against UK rap.
Yet the North London artist achieved this by remaining utterly true to himself. A record in which his grime roots are worn loud and proud, the ‘Britishness’ of his music extends to the cover art, a simple yet also deeply subversive letter from Skepta to the world.
Inverting the design of a postage stamp, he places the First Class insignia over his own music, while the London postmark acts as a brand. Stark and wholly effective, it seems to stand on its own terms – visually arresting, it makes no apologies for the locality of the reference points, much like the music within. (Robin Murray)
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While Disney hasn’t completely abandoned the summer box office, it did eliminate a major element of its traditional release strategy by moving Pixar’s “Luca” from theaters to Disney+. Not only did Disney lose box office revenues from the industry’s most reliable animated hit-maker, but it also deprived studios of a good test for U.S. families’ willingness to return to movie theaters in the midst of an ever-wider post-pandemic reopening. So far, there have been a handful of family films that have performed decently given the restrictions of the pandemic recovery period. Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s “The Croods: A New Age” legged out for months while infections skyrocketed during the winter, grossing $58 million domestically and $170 million worldwide. Disney posted its own solid run in the spring with “Raya and the Last Dragon,” which stands at $54 million domestic and $133 million global while recently finishing its three-month run as a premium Disney+ title.But since Memorial Day weekend, results for family films have been much more mixed. Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s “Spirit Untamed,” which is aimed specifically toward families with younger girls, has grossed $13.8 million domestically and $19.1 million worldwide over three weekends. Sony’s “Peter Rabbit 2” has posted a 10-day domestic total of $20.1 million and a global total of $90.8 million.
“Peter Rabbit 2” (Sony Pictures)
While “Peter Rabbit 2” will easily cross $100 million globally and should turn a modest profit from post-theatrical runs, the numbers so far are a sharp drop from the $48.4 million 10-day domestic total of the first “Peter Rabbit” back in 2018. At this point, it is difficult to gauge how much of that drop is attributable to audience reception and how much is due to the slow-but-steady recovery process that the industry has long expected the box office would go through. But “Luca” would have been a good test case for the viability of theaters for family audiences. While it’s not a sequel like “The Incredibles II” and lacks the transcendent acclaim of last December’s “Soul,” Pixar’s latest film about two merfolk boys befriending a girl in the Italian Riviera has been praised by critics and audiences as a fun summer frolic, sporting Rotten Tomatoes scores of 89% with critics and 88% with audiences. There would have been no better test of family moviegoer interest than a well-received, original title from the most popular animation studio in the world. Instead, Disney has decided to give up that box office potential to make “Luca” part of its new digital-first strategy, as the company reorganized last year to make streaming its top priority. It is one of several films that Disney has moved from theatrical to Disney+, along with “Soul” this past Christmas and Peter Jackson’s upcoming Beatles documentary “Get Back” this November.Now analysts can only make guesses at where the family section of the theatrical market currently stands in the post-pandemic era. Bruce Nash, owner of box office data site The Numbers, said that his team’s analysis has found that families are actually slightly ahead of general audiences in terms of general interest and comfort in returning to theaters. But the lack of wide-appeal titles like “Luca” is making it difficult to judge how theaters can compete with other options for families’ time and money.“If the opportunity for kids to socialize is so limited that going to a movie theater is the only way they can do something exciting, then maybe that’s what has boosted the family entertainment sector so far,” he said. “But maybe that is starting to wear off now that theme parks and other entertainment options are reopening.”
As for those families that haven’t shown up to theaters yet, Nash suggests that some parents might be reluctant to take their kids back to theaters as the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine is still being studied for kids 12 and under. While the vaccine has been approved for use in teens, health experts are split on whether it should be recommended, let alone mandated, for minors before they return to school in the fall. Without “Luca,” the next best title to gauge family interest would have been in late July with “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,” an installment of a proven franchise with theatrical exclusivity. But on Friday, Sony announced that it was moving the film to Oct. 1 to return the series to its roots as a Halloween family title. If audiences are more comfortable with moviegoing and the virus stays contained in the U.S., it could give the film a chance to match the $44 million opening and $167.5 million domestic total that the last “Hotel Transylvania” grossed in 2018. But that move leaves July with two animated films that will be released both in theaters and on streaming at no extra charge: Warner Bros.’ “Space Jam: A New Legacy” on HBO Max and Universal/DreamWorks’ “The Boss Baby: Family Business” on Peacock.
Both films, along with “Luca,” have followed a pandemic-era pattern for studios to release major titles day-and-date or as streaming exclusives. It all began when Universal released “Trolls World Tour” as a premium on-demand offering last spring. For families looking to save money, streaming or PVOD is a generally cheaper option for a family movie night than buying tickets and concessions at a theater. And for studios, family audiences are an easy target to boost subscriber numbers for their new streaming services. But at least for this summer, that has left an audience that has traditionally been a major section of the box office without much exclusive content to lure them to theaters. And that puts more pressure on horror hits like “A Quiet Place — Part II” and upcoming blockbusters like Universal’s “F9,” Disney/Marvel’s “Black Widow” and Warner Bros.’ “The Suicide Squad” to restore profits for movie theaters trying to rebound as quickly as possible.Related stories from TheWrap:’In the Heights’ Box Office Bust: Why It’s Not HBO Max’s Fault and 5 Other TakeawaysPeter Jackson’s Beatles Doc ‘Get Back’ to Skip Theaters, Expand to 3-Episode Docuseries on Disney+AMC in Talks to Acquire Former Pacific Theaters Locations at the Grove and Americana
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This review was first published at its premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Near the beginning of Edgar Wright’s documentary “The Sparks Brothers,” actor Jason Schwartzman comes on screen to make an unusual admission. “Honestly, I don’t want to see this movie,” he says of the film about the rock band Sparks. “I don’t want to know too much about them.”
It’s a playful admission and an interesting way to kick off two hours and 20 minutes that tell us a whole lot about Ron and Russell Mael, the brothers who make up Sparks. After all, if one of the people that Wright has recruited to tell us how great they are doesn’t even want to watch the film, what’s the point?
The point, of course, is that Schwartzman’s demurral is entirely in keeping with the idiosyncratic nature of Sparks, a band that has managed to be influential and vital for almost 50 years, without ever giving away too much and without losing an air of mystery. They’ve had hits and near-hits with hyperactive glam rock, synthesizer-heavy dance music, quintessential quirky ’80s new wave, big melodramatic ballads and flat-out art music. Confusing an audience that embraces that confusion has been their m.o. all along, so why should a movie about them be any different?
Also Read: Why Edgar Wright Made His First Documentary About ‘The Sparks Brothers’ (Video)
And Wright takes that confusion and that playfulness to heart in “The Sparks Brothers,” which premiered on Saturday at the virtual Sundance Film Festival. We may learn lots of facts about Sparks during the course of the movie, and more than a few myths and legends as well, but there’s no sense that this is the definitive chronicle or that we’re getting to the heart of what makes these guys tick. Instead, it’s an obsessive fan — or, in this case, a whole lot of obsessive fans — blathering on about why Sparks is so great, and then showing you the video clips and concert footage to make a convincing case.
It’s excessive and exhausting and elusive, and entirely in keeping with the curious career of the Mael brothers.
Wright is a director whose narrative films (“Baby Driver,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Shaun of the Dead”) make extensive and essential use of pop music, so it’s no surprise that he brings similar passion and mischievousness to his first documentary. He calls Sparks “underrated, hugely successful, influential and overlooked at the same time,” and uses the film not to explain those contradictions but to revel in them.
The Mael brothers grew up in Southern California, with a mother who once drove them to Las Vegas to see the Beatles and parents who would take them to the movies without any concern for when the films actually started. (Walking in mid-movie may have influenced the rather jagged sense of narrative in Ron’s lyrics.) Younger brother Russell was the quarterback of the football team in high school, but athletics was less enticing than music, which they started playing together in the 1960s, influenced by bands like the Who and the Kinks.
Also Read: ‘Last Night in Soho’ Trailer: Edgar Wright Sends Anya Taylor-Joy Into a Colorful Nightmare
But they didn’t sound or look like those bands. With a shaggy-haired lead singer (Russell) who looked like a teen idol but was fond of singing in an odd, strangled falsetto, and a deadpan keyboardist with a disturbing little mustache, they brought a theatrical brio to music that sounded as out of time in 1967 as it does in 2021.
The brothers tell some of this story sitting side-by-side in elegant black-and-white interview segments. They’re amiable and a bit affected, dropping anecdotes without ever giving the sense that they’re ready to do any soul-searching for the cameras. And Wright surrounds them with an array of talking heads and with clips assembled with an ADHD editing style. His barrage of images doesn’t always contain footage of the Maels but always has some peripheral connection to what’s being said — so if, for instance, Todd Rundgren uses the word evolution in talking about Sparks’ early music, we’ll see one or two seconds of a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, and if we’re told that their second album was more experimental than their first, here’s a shot of a car driving off a cliff.
The obvious questions aren’t addressed in the slightest. We don’t know why Russell, a singer who said he was influenced by Roger Daltrey and Ray Davies, would so often affect that high voice, or what made Ron decide to grow a very Hitleresque mustache. (Chaplinesque, too, but the Hitler comparison is the one that got all the attention.)
But it’s sort of exhilarating to run through Sparks’ career not belaboring the obvious but celebrating the glorious, whether it’s the energy of the breakthrough “Kimono My House” album, which made them stars in England, or the left turn of their work with disco producer Giorgio Moroder on songs like “The Number One Song in Heaven,” or the nerve of late-peri0d songs like “Stravinsky’s Only Hit.” (Always self-conscious about working in pop music, the songs were replete with references to other music and name-drops of famous performers and composers.)
Also Read: Rita Moreno Rages Against Persistent Hollywood Racism: ‘It’s Still the Same Damn Problem’
For a documentary that’s playful in how it’s put together, “The Sparks Brothers” is pretty standard in the way it’s organized: It starts at the beginning and moves chronologically through the band’s entire career, 50 years of peaks and valleys and consistently inventive work. (The title, by the way, is an in-joke: After the Maels’ first album flopped under the band name Halfnelson, a record company executive suggested they change their name to the Sparks Brothers, which they immediately rejected as being much too stupid.)
While the brothers themselves are a delightful presence in the film, they’re not terribly prone to introspection or analysis — so Wright brings in a huge array of colleagues to deliver the history, and famous fans to deliver their versions of What Sparks Means to Me. The devotees range from Bjork to Flea to Beck to members of New Order and Depeche Mode, from Fred Armisen to Mike Myers to Neil Gaiman to Amy Sherman-Palladino, all of them wildly passionate and most of them pretty articulate.
At a certain point in the film’s chronology, though, all of the famous fans’ testimonies to Sparks’ persistence, endurance and reinvention start to sound awfully repetitive — they’re a cinematic version of the Sparks song “My Baby’s Taking Me Home,” which repeats that single lyric over and over. And anyway, the clips of the band’s work makes those points without needing so much help.
Also Read: ‘Summer of Soul’ Film Review: Questlove’s Vibrant Concert Film Captures a Pivotal Harlem Moment
“If you don’t like this, we don’t care,” Ron Mael says of their later work in the film. “That’s kind of like the essence of what pop music should be.” But it’s hard to imagine encountering “The Sparks Brothers” and not finding something to like — and if you come into it as a fan of, say, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” or “Angst in My Pants” or “Cool Places” or “When Will I Get to Sing ‘My Way’” or their collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, the film will likely show you lots of other intriguing things to explore in the band’s discography.
And if you get to the end of “The Sparks Brothers” thinking you know the band, Ron and Russell will reward you with a mid-credits sequence in which they offer a number of outlandishly amusing myths about the band and the brothers. If Jason Schwartzman makes it all the way to the end of the movie, he’ll no doubt approve.
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Forget it, Jake — it’s late-stage capitalism. Director Steven Soderbergh has been following the money throughout his career, going at least as far back as the “Ocean’s” movies, where financial institutions take a hit at the hands of the strivers and scrabblers. Since returning from his “retirement” from movies, he’s offered stories as disparate as “High Flying Bird,” which suggests the possibility of labor wresting control from management, and “The Laundromat,” a messy exposé of shell companies and offshore tax shelters that at least tries to gin up audience outrage over a seemingly unsolvable dilemma.
Now he’s back with “No Sudden Move,” which allows the director to revel in his love for dark comedy, criminal capers, period detail, and all-star ensembles, and while all of those elements make the film entertaining, the story ultimately feels like a hopeless recitation of doom: The rich and powerful will always be rich and powerful. The house will always win, and the police and the government and every other tool of the establishment will always crush the Have Nots if it makes another nickel for the Haves.
If a movie’s going to take us to “Chinatown,” it needs to come up with a new and different path to get there. Instead, the film revels in its genre trappings, only to grab at gravitas in the last ten minutes with the sudden introduction of historical iniquities into the story.
To its credit, even if the screenplay by veteran writer Ed Solomon lurches into its final destination, it gets there via the scenic route. It’s a script that film schools could use to illustrate how to create exposition for an audience that’s paying attention; we get thrown into a situation with a lot of characters and backstories and agendas, and it takes the entire first viewing to get all of them (plus not one but two MacGuffins) sorted out.
Those characters include Curt (Don Cheadle) and Ronald (Benicio Del Toro), small-time hoods in 1954 Detroit who both get hired by Jones (Brendan Fraser) to “babysit” the family of auto exec Matt (David Harbour); Matt’s wife Mary (Amy Seimetz) and kids Matthew (Noah Jupe, “A Quiet Place Part II”) and Peggy (Lucy Holt) will be held hostage while Matt is taken to his office at gunpoint to retrieve some important documents.
What starts as a take on “The Desperate Hours” soon gives way to a cavalcade of betrayals and double-crosses. Curt and Ronald keep angling for leverage, but both of them have big targets on their back: Curt is in possession of a notebook that everyone in the underworld wants, particularly fearsome boss Watkins (Bill Duke), while Ronald has been having an affair with Vanessa (Julia Fox, “Uncut Gems”), who’s married to high-ranking mobster Frank (Ray Liotta).
If your thought at this synopsis is, “I love this cast, and I love crime movies,” then you won’t leave “No Sudden Move” unsatisfied. Solomon’s dialogue is delectably off-kilter — Matt apologizes profusely before beating up a superior for the contents of his safe — and the performers (including Kieran Culkin as a twitchy mobster and Jon Hamm as the cop trying to straighten all of this out) tackle the material with relish.
It’s a consistently impressive ensemble, with standouts that include Fraser (intensely deadpan and clearly enjoying the “character actor” phase of his career) and Seimetz, who finds the grace notes of what could have been a stock role. Kudos also to casting director Carmen Cuba, incidentally, for pairing Seimetz and Jupe, who really do look like mother and son.
Once again pseudonymously acting as his own DP, Soderbergh uses a lot of fish-eye lenses, keeping his central characters in crisp focus while the background dwarfs them and distorts. When he’s shooting more directly, post-war Detroit — from mansions to row houses, oak-lined meeting rooms to seedy motels — is recreated with beauty and specificity by a hard-working art direction and set decoration team. (And while David Holmes’ score is stirring and exciting, it frequently paraphrases Henry Mancini’s music for “Charade.”)
What’s most frustrating about “No Sudden Move” is its sudden pivot, in the last ten minutes or so, to trying to be About Something. What had been a film about lowlifes and their petty crimes and sordid affairs suddenly wants to be a metaphor about housing discrimination and the duplicitous conspiracies of the Big Four auto manufacturers, and it’s more than the movie can handle.
Those are absolutely historical facts worth exploring, but they play more like a tacked-on moral than as part of the story’s underbelly. Had Solomon and Soderbergh been content with “merely” making a first-class genre film, they might have made a clean getaway.
“No Sudden Move” premieres on HBO Max July 1.
Related stories from TheWrap:Yes, Steven Soderbergh Is Dressed as ‘The Fifth Beatle’ in His Oscars Head ShotAmy Seimetz Accuses Ex Shane Carruth of Strangling Her, Threatening to Kill HerJon Hamm and Tina Fey to Star in John Slattery Comedy ‘Maggie Moore(s)’David Harbour Says Red Guardian in ‘Black Widow’ ‘Was the Captain America of His Day for Russia’
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The underground is bustling…The United Kingdom has always been home to some of the world’s greatest rock bands, with obscene examples of talent dotted along the spectrum of tone; all the way from the smooth, buttery melodies of The Beatles to the edgy and eccentric anthems of groups like Black Sabbath, there is truly no shortage of British acts to headbang (or at least nod) to.
The genres accommodating the heavier rockers have proven to be no exception, with dominating forces like Motorhead and Judas Priest calling various cities of our country their proud home. However, with the overwhelmingly fast induction of short attention spans and an imposed focus on delivering quick, snappy and easily digestible tunes, a lot of meteorically talented modern groups have been pushed further underground than their older brethren were ever forced to.
This is particularly true when a global pandemic is omnipotent in its ability to disrupt the cosmic energy manifested in the crowds of rock shows. Fortunately, there is one shining light providing hope for all – a 10k capacity pilot version of the ever-present Download festival.
Here we highlight a few gems you might be lucky enough to catch at this year’s event, and some that are destined for similar stages when their talent is free to blossom.
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Blackwaters
Max, David, James and Ollie met in Guildford while studying towards music diplomas, and Blackwaters was quickly formed in a burning desire to pursue music. This now Sheffield-based four-piece honed their craft with a plethora of aberrant punk-rock tracks starting with the coincidentally aptly-titled ‘Jarr’ed up Generation’ and leading into definitive moshpit-starts ‘Down’ and ‘Fuck Yeah’. Throughout the five years of releases, this group have maintained a core DIY element evident in their artwork and attitudes; a grounded perspective helps these lads give back to their communities and feed further underground arts.
More importantly, though, their tunes are undeniably hefty, with 2018 EP ‘People Street’ cemented their status as underappreciated kings of the local scene. However, the grunge drawl swiftly transitioned to a search for boppy melodies with ‘I’m Not Your Man’, a single that simultaneously heightens the catchy appeal of the band while raising the walls of sound higher than ever before. A flurry of equally immersive releases over the last two years has us questioning: where will they be next?
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SHEAFS
Fellow city-of-steel rockers SHEAFS deliver further tight and sharp bangers, expunging their concerns on 2020’s debut EP ‘Vox Pop’ that serve as an injection of adrenaline for their listeners. Lawrence, Chris, Charles, Charlie and Cal (confusing, we know) danced around the blue-pint-soaked floors of Sheffield’s greasiest clubs before coming together to radiate energy and attitude across the country. Embodying and elevating the post-punk movement, the quartet shaped their sound with the assistance of Spring King/Dead Nature’s Tarek Musa, someone they’d watched from afar as they traded places on stage across a series of rowdy festivals.
‘Thinking Out Loud’ opens their concise EP with narrative and introspective commentary before three tracks carry the consistent mood across ‘Vox Pop’. Ultimately, though, their current discography peaks at it’s closer ‘Care Less’, a sonically aggressive bop that secretly has a positive message: “you’ve got to care less about what [people] say.”
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SPIT UK
Moody, black-leather-wearing trio SPIT UK consists of Rico, Dave and Rob. Hailing from down South, they encourage those tuning in to “get loose and roll your bones” to their tunes – they’ve dropped three addictive rockers over the last year, but have yet to truly manifest their deserved audience. We all love jumping on a band we know will make big moves in the future, and ‘Love Like A Pill’ certainly evidences the potential for SPIT UK to do exactly that. Simple but effective riffs cut through thundering basslines, a fast and loose vocal performance and some killer drum fills.
‘Sky’ and ‘Bali’ ebb and flow through soothing soundscapes and over mountainous guitar shreds, bolstering further notches on their collective, distinguished belt – try it on and see how it fits, had-rock fans.
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WARGASM (UK)
The first of these highlights to worm their way onto Download’s 2021 pilot bill, alt-rock duo WARGASM produce “angry songs for sad people” from their base in London. Milkie & Matlock clearly let off almost literal steam with screaming vocals, stadium beats and psychedelic electronic sounds that merge with a punk attitude and a guitar grounding, resulting in angsty songs that jump between sombre reflection and pure aggression.
Boasting a Saturday main stage slot at this year’s special event, the pair are ready to bring that essential mosh energy along with them, served up in neat not-so-little numbers like very recent single ‘PYRO PYRO’ which promises to set crowds, stages and maybe even speaker systems alight. If you find yourself experiencing a performance from these two, be prepared for extremities in almost every way; sounds, volume and certainly in aesthetic.
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Strange Bones
Another act that uses a range of experimental sounds to intensify their rock’n’roll sensibilities, Strange Bones hails from Blackpool and consists of brothers Bobby, Will and Jack Bentham, alongside pal Nathan. Self-described “electro-punks”, these true noisemakers push the edges of their sonic environments until they are no longer definable. An openness to any sound, theme and aesthetic allows them to weaponise their music, and this approach has cultivated a significant following over six years of non-stop experimentation.
Huge amounts of thematic and sonic distortion ripple across their ever-growing discography; a trait that allows any act to truly stand the test of time. Across two EPs, several collaborations and a bunch of high quality singles, the hype has never dwindled – these guys were born for the bigtime, and made for the stages of the future.
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Sprints
Karla, Colm, Jack and Sam and are a shit-hot act operating under the ‘garage noise’ label; grabbing at elements of rock, post-punk and raw indie, they throw sharp hooks and a driving rhythm in a melting pot with passionate lyricisms and vocal delivery on their debut EP ‘Manifesto’. Cutting melodies grab you from within spoken word sections that dramatize every last drop of sound on the record, offering four solid tracks that embody everything the group is about: authenticity, bluntness and sharing experiences.
Finishing this EP just before lockdown numbero uno – a true throwback at this point – the band’s momentum is currently in full force, and you should expect to see Sprints on a stage soon if you haven’t had the pleasure of previewing Dublin’s next big export already.
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Tigercub
You can’t talk about great, underrated UK rocks with huge potential without mentioning the name Tigercub. This Brighton trio have been around since 2014 and have never tried to serve up the same release twice. An everpresent groove underlies their discography from initial singles to their debut LP ‘Abstract Figures in the Dark’, onwards into a series of EPs and reaching the explosive project that is their second record ‘As Blue As Indigo’.
A venture into solo project Nancy has clearly instilled frontman and songwriter Jamie Hall with a fresh sense of bravado in addition to an increased desire to dive deeper into his own psyche. Delicate fragile moments shatter and implode into luxurious riff walls providing a cathartic release from the morbid thematic explored here.
Best of all, this top-tier band have also landed on the line-up for Download’s pilot where this tunes can finally be unleashed upon a hopefully deserving audience. Tigercub epitomise the exciting talent bubbling beneath the mainstream surface of the UK’s rock scene.
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Words: Finlay Holden
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A look back at his influence on the Fab Four…Let’s say we have a TARDIS and travel back in time to Friday, August 28th 1964. We’ve dematerialised into a room within the Delmonico Hotel on Park Avenue and 59th in New York City. In this room with us are five of the biggest musical icons of all time: Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. We are witnessing the fab four encounter the folk-singing scarecrow-prophet for the very first time. As we observe the prodigious musicians meeting, the folk-legend offers the excitable young scousers their first ever smoke of marijuana.
Ringo takes the first puffs – chugging through the joint as if his lungs are built from steel, blissfully ignorant of dope etiquette. He shifted into a giggling mess, Paul McCartney believed he’d attained true mental clarity for the first time, Beatles manager Brian Epstein became so stoned he could only squeak “I’m so high I’m up on the ceiling” and Dylan lost his cool and screamed “This is Beatlemania here!” down the phone to the hotel lobby. Whilst this might seem like a meet up of cool prolific musicians just hanging out and having a smoke on tour (or very strange Doctor Who fan-fiction), this encounter is one of the most important, ground-breaking, and colossal moments in rock and roll history.
This meeting was timed perfectly at the height of Beatlemania. The Merseyside rockers were growing tired of screaming fans at every corner, and as Dylan was already considered a folk legend, he was becoming enamoured with the same thing. As the musical geniuses went their separate ways, they didn’t look back on this night as a casual night smoking weed – both parties saw it as a complete turning point for their careers, and it was subsequently a turning point for music history. Dylan and The Beatles certainly admired each other musically prior to their meeting, but their exposure to each other’s unique and powerful individual characters influenced the musicians to make changes.
From The Beatles’ perspective, they released three albums from the point of the meeting until the end of 1965: ‘Beatles For Sale’, ‘Help’, and ‘Rubber Soul’. With each record, the scouse rockers began to free themselves from the shackles that Parlophone had bound them in back in 1962. Their sound became a mine of their interior lives for personal and self-examining songs such as ‘Yesterday’, ‘Michelle’, and ‘Norwegian Wood’, a stark contrast from the formulaic, shallow, and soppy love songs that attracted hordes of screaming fans.
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But from Bob Dylan’s perspective, the aftermath of this infamous night resulted in him creating an entirely new genre, the acclaimed, yet at the time controversial, folk-rock. The next album Dylan released after the meeting was 1965’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’. This record marked the first time Dylan embraced electric guitar and rock and roll blues styles inspired by the likes of Chuck Berry and The Beatles combined with the leftist, folk tradition of the folk revival that Dylan pioneered. Dylan had created a new kind of rock and roll and continued this style with his next two albums, 1965’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and 1966’s ‘Blonde On Blonde’. This trio of records is widely considered as the greatest subsequent albums released by an artist of all time.
Back in the mid-60s though, Dylan’s new era didn’t arrive without controversy. He played two very well received performances at the famous Newport Folk Festival in both 1963 and 1964, dazzling the audiences with just him, his acoustic guitar and harmonica. Upon his return to the festival in 1965, he played another well-received acoustic set on the Saturday night including songs such as ‘All I Really Want To Do’ and ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’. Dylan then played a second set on the Sunday night and made the spontaneous decision to challenge his audience by playing with a full electric backing band. This indeed shocked the audience, with some sections booing Dylan and his new band which lead members of the folk movement to criticise him for moving away from politically charged song writing and for adapting to electric.
The angry audiences grew to the UK where one member of an audience in Manchester screamed “Judas!” This didn’t faze Dylan however, and he continued to tour with his band and continued recording and inventing what is now known as folk-rock.
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Folk-rock would go on to import the social conscience of traditional American music into the rock ‘n’ roll sphere, thereby providing a counterculture for its national anthems. With both Dylan and The Beatles holding worldwide influence by the end of 1965, their musical turning points and reinvention would inspire an entire planet. The Beatles played around with folk elements and genre bending, Dylan created folk-rock which The Beatles then adopted and adapted, and both parties showed the world that free-spirit, creative freedom and innovation had the power to truly change the world. We all know the influence Dylan and The Beatles had on the world individually, but without their wild paths crossing, would the effect have been the same?
Let’s go back to our hypothetical TARDIS and take it to August 1964 and stop Bob Dylan and The Beatles from meeting. We’ll never know what that would result in, and there’s no doubt both parties would eventually meet anyway as that’s what the biggest people in their fields did, just like it was inevitable for The Beatles to meet Elvis. But what would the butterfly effect be if we stopped the meeting at that time? Would folk rock ever exist? Would The Beatles go on to create their later music that inspires to this day? Would rock and roll have turned out the way it did? But undoubtedly the biggest question is, would music be the same today?
Dylan and The Beatles were both on very similar paths at the time of the hotel meeting. They weren’t sure where and how their paths would continue, but this infamous stoner meeting in retrospect shows that both parties more bricks for each other’s paths to find their new direction, subsequently building the path for the direction of music in the late 20th century. The famous age-old debate of who really was the fifth Beatle will never truly be answered – but it’s undoubtable that Bob Dylan is a true contender.
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Words: Kieran MacAdie
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Les Fradkin is a Producer and Composer virtuoso Guitarist and an innovator on the Starr Labs Ztar. He employs futuristic playing techniques realising Progressive Neo-Classical Rock from the Pioneer of MIDI Guitar. Les captured headlines as the Original Cast George Harrison in the mega-hit Broadway show “Beatlemania” in the 1970s and has played with The… Read more »
The post Turn To The Movement from American rock pioneer Les Fradkin. first appeared on PRUnderground.
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The Beatles in India: ‘With their long hair and jokes, they blew our minds!’ The Guardian
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