RAGINA’S NEW TAKE ON LIFE
CD Review: Soviet Kitsch
by Amanda Lerman
With a first glance at the CD cover, I entered a staring contest with a woman in a black and white picture contrasted by colorful Russian dolls. The woman on the cover, Regina Spektor, was sporting a sailor hat while chugging a bottle of beer. With not a clue of what to expect with music abilities and style; I took a peek at the names of her songs before going for the kill of pressing the play button. The album included song names such as “Carbon Monoxide” and “The Flowers”, seeming to have a strong mix of girlyness versus a rebellious side. My first impression of Miss Spektor’s attitude, based of the cover pictures and the names of the songs, was that she was a charter member of the Alanis Morissette fan club. Although I was a little frightened of what was to come, I was convinced this edgy girl had an inner “pink-lady”, reading Glamour in a bubble bath.
After finally pressing play, redundant piano beats filled my room and a voice began singing/saying, “The food that I am eating is suddenly tasteless.” My hopeful smile vanished and remained missing in action throughout the entire song, except for a few quick giggles when a cute line saying “won’t you help a brother out” was repeated a few times. Spektor’s first song, titled “Ode to Divorce”, embraced feelings of loneliness and owned an edgy, open-poetry reading kind of feel. This song was not exactly my usual type of musical taste, yet I did find Spektor’s unique vocal style interesting in how she stretched her vowels. She was brave as well to voice her inner thoughts for the public to hear.
Proving to have put her piano lessons to good use, her Jewish-Russian family is proud and supportive of Regina’s work. Regina is also very respectable in my eyes for she is grateful to her fans and is known for even handing out chocolates at her live performances. Not surprisingly, she has opened for The Strokes, for her album, titled Soviet Kitsch, was produced by The Strokes Gordon Raphael. With role models such as Bjork and Tori Amos, she wails her heart out with anything but predictable lyrics. A combination of Regina’s left hand working the piano tunes, her right hand tapping the drum stick and her heart projecting her views on life and love, she’s one of a kind in all that she has brought to the ears and hearts of her audience.
Aside from the fact that Regina and I bump heads on what we call music, I respect and admire Regina in her success and courage to put herself out there. I especially enjoyed the song titled “Your Honor”, which was however the only song that was upbeat and did keep my full attention throughout the entire song. Check Regina Spektor’s Soviet Kitsch out for a new, unique vision of the world and what life is about.
ROCK YOU TO SLEEP
CD Review: Queens of the Stoneage - Lullabies to Paralyze
9/10
by Justin Touretz
The lineup for rock masters Queens of the Stoneage (QOTSA) has always had a revolving door policy, with group members coming and going with each new release who have played with the likes of Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, A Perfect Circle, Foo Fighters, and Nirvana. But what makes QOTSA’s fourth album Lullabies to Paralyze unique is instead of alternating between like-minded collaborators who know from the get-go that they are playing on one album, they faced the dilemma of replacing a founding member in bassist Nick Oliveri. Oliveri left QOTSA after being unpredictably fired by front man Josh Homme for undisclosed reasons. The two had been longtime musical cohorts dating back to their pre-QOTSA days in their prior band Kyuss.
Homme who now becomes the undeniable heart and brain behind QOTSA, on top of his usual duties of singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter, faced quite the challenge in following up the 2002 mainstream breakthrough success of Songs For the Deaf which saw “Go With the Flow” and “No One Knows” rock national radio as well as find themselves firmly planted amidst MTV rotation. Homme refilled this year’s musical roster with rock vets, most notably drummer Joey Castillo who tries to fill the mighty big boots previously held by Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters). The notable detractions come as Castillo clearly doesn’t have quite the same power behind the pedals as Grohl can muster, and the loss of Oliveri means you shouldn’t expect any death-metal roars which he provided consistently throughout QOTSA’s catalogue.
Don’t let this new look fool you, Homme steps up to the plate and knocks one out of the park as Lullabies to Paralyze is one hell of a rock record. It is safe to say the Homme & Co. officially shed their prior labeling as “Stoner Rock” which has followed Homme from his days in Kyuss for a more mature sound. This is not to say that you can’t find a drug song, after all, this still is QOTSA. Check out the disc’s second track “Medication” to get your fix. Homme emerges as a power throughout all fourteen tracks and allows his eclectic and artful songwriting to come to fruition. Don’t get caught up in the lyrics for it is not the high achievement of Homme’s mastery, but instead focus on the ways his voice blends in and works perfectly with the instruments from start to finish.
Lullabies to Paralyze has already seen commercial success as “Little Sister” has been tearing up radio stations since its release. The odd thing is that “Little Sister” sounds more Foo-Fighters influenced than any track Grohl recorded on Songs for the Deaf. This however, is the only track like it on the album as the sound ranges from the somber ballad-like “Lullaby”, to the tuneful “Long Slow Goodbye”, the headbanging “Everybody Knows That You’re Inane”, and climaxing in a sexy, soaring rock epic of “ Someone’s in the Wolf.”
Lullabies to Paralyze is Homme’s claim to rock mastery as he proves his abilities as a musician and front-man for one of rock’s most unique and insightful bands. Standing as the only remaining member from any prior QOTSA release, Homme crafts an eclectic, yet addictive sound which is the first great rock record of the year, and will be remembered as such.
Short Stories of Staggering Genius
Book Review: How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers
by Mike Torsell
Anyone familiar with author and magazine publisher Dave Eggers has an opinion on the man and his work. Eggers rose to literary prominence in 2001 with the memoir entitled, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
Most of the people who hate him, cannot stand him because of his ego and his tendency to be gimmicky, and titles like that don’t help. The book tells the fascinating story of how a twenty-something Eggers raised his 8-year-old brother after his parents’ deaths. After the book became a hit, he launched his own literary quarterly and publishing company of the same name, McSweeney’s. In late 2004, Eggers came out with a collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry. The new book is an excellent and entertaining read, showing Dave Eggers is a talented writer who will hopefully be around for a long time.
How We Are Hungry contains 15 short stories. The stories themselves alternate between short vignettes of one to three pages, and longer pieces of 20 to 50 pages. Most of the stories revolve around Americans away from home in a variety of settings, in the US and abroad. Egger explores their sense of displacement and discovery afforded to the traveler, who often seems to be escaping something literal or metaphorical. The author’s sense of setting is excellent albeit occasionally vague. It’s hard to tell whether he has actually been to these places, but Eggers describes his backdrops enthusiastically, placing the reader in the same space as his characters.
Overall the short stories are interesting, with some weaker than others. The two strongest pieces are “Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone” which explores the modern spectacle of death and “Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly,” involving the story of a woman climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Each story deals with the protagonist’s doubts, conflicts of ideals and ethics in an otherwise careless world. It sounds cliché, but it works. While the majority of the pieces are told from a first person perspective, the characters never become completely transparent. Eggers often hints at deeper struggles and emotions but cuts it off before anything is elucidated. It is these blank spaces, left open for contemplation, that make How We Are Hungry interesting; chains of thought are cut up and the blank spaces in the text allow these stories to stick in your head for days.
Whether you love him or hate him, Dave Eggers possesses an admirable enthusiasm for writing and the world of literature. It is this enthusiasm that informs everything he does and it is evident in How We Are Hungry. What makes Eggers so refreshing is the obvious passion he puts into what he does. At times his writing may seem overtly ambitious but in the end it is this love of literature informing the pieces that makes his latest novel a must read.
EL RETURNO DE BECK
CD Review: Beck - Guero
8/10
by Evan Smith
Ever since he strolled out of a stop-animated coffin strumming an acoustic guitar and looking like a high school geek in his 1993 music video for “Loser”, Beck has intrigued the world with his eclectic musical styling and ingenious genre fusion. After almost three years since the release of his last album, everybody’s favorite hillbilly funkster is back with his tenth full length album and eighth major studio release entitled Guero.
Don’t expect to bust out your old leisure suit and dance to Guero in your bedroom mirror like you did ten years ago with Odelay. And certainly don’t think about purchasing scented candles and drawing yourself a bath, because this album draws even fewer comparisons to Beck’s mellow acoustic record, Sea Change.
Guero is mature sounding and well produced; upbeat enough to dance to, yet chill enough to relax with. Guero includes heavy shades of Latin influence, incorporating flamenco-sounding guitar riffs, and ethnic and tribal drum beats on almost every track. One of the prettiest sounding songs on the album entitled “Earthquake Weather” features a light Spanish guitar riff on top of the pulsing rhythm of a scratch post. But as he always does, Beck mutates the song’s genre with a funky harpsichord, a disco guitar solo and layered record scratching.
Contrasting “Earthquake Weather,” the track “Hell Yes” follows and sounds like one of his older hip-hop tracks in which Beck raps and includes his trademark robot-manipulated voice on the chorus. Another hip-hop track, and possibly the best song on the album, “Que Onda Guero” (Where are you going, white boy?) heavily marks the return of the Dust Brothers as part of Beck’s production team. The multi-layered hooks sound like something off of the Dust Brother’s work on the quintessential Beastie Boys album Paul’s Boutique, filling the record with spinning, sudden breaks, funky bass and ambient sound clips.
The one constant on this album is the texture of Beck’s muffled drawl which hasn’t seemed to change much over his decade and a half of music making. Beck’s lyrics on this album are exponentially more coherent than the free-association lyrics he has rambled out in the past, yet they still manage to retain a hint of mystic imagery about them. On the simple funk track that sounds as if it was recorded in a smoky night club, “Go It Alone,” Beck raps “Pullin’ my hair back / struck a match on a bathroom wall where my number was written / driving on the sidewalk / lookin’ back at the sky, it’s burning in the rearview mirror,” showing he’s still got it.
The main flaw to this album is that some of the 13 tracks are indistinguishable from one another. This is a problem that Beck hasn’t seemed to have encountered on any of his previous records, but the similarity in sound and flow between tracks like the album’s first official single “E-Pro” and the track “Black Tambourine” are undeniable. Many of the tracks are hard to mark because they are all built around funky bass lines, twangy guitar riffs and Beck’s cottonmouth voice.
Maybe I’m just caught in the past, but it seems to me that Beck will probably never be able to record an album as magically fresh as Odelay. Nonetheless, Guero is a solid album that any Beck fan will be sure to enjoy.
THAILAND IN AMHERST
Restaurant Review: The King and I
8/10
by Bobby Ellis
The King and I (2188 Kensington Ave.) serves up authentic Thai cuisine to the Amherst area, making the distant eastern culinary tradition of spice and curry available to UB diners who possess a patience that is capable of withstanding ten minutes in a car.
Their patience need not be longer than ten minutes, for once you step into The King and I, prompt service waits to escort you to the next available table. My date and I settled in a two-seater. These tables are lined along a wall that has a bench on which my date sat. I sat on a diametrically opposed chair, wherefrom I criticized the bench and stared at a blue wall for an hour and a half. But this view wasn’t without pleasure.
On the walls there is traditional Thai art, elaborately ornamented golden draperies, and sheer white curtains that cover the entrance and veil the external world. Blue string-lights follow the perimeter of the ceiling hanging above diners, arm chairs and a fire place, where waiting customers can warm up.
Main entrées include curry, stir fried, noodle, and rice dishes. I ordered the Ped Gra Pow ($13.95) from the House Specialties section and my date ordered the vegetarian Prew Wan ($8.95). The Ped Gra Pow is a stir fried dish with roasted duck in a chili sauce accompanied by a variety of veggies. The Prew Wan is a stir fry with fresh vegetables and pineapple in a sweet and sour sauce.
The entrées are very large and can probably be shared by two people who are not heavy eaters. A serving spoon comes with each dish allowing for multiple people to share one dish. If you want to try a variety of dishes, gather a group of friends, order many entrées and divvy the food up. This allows a group of timid and temperamental eaters to experiment with ethnic food while not fearing post-meal hunger.
For dessert, there is fried banana, banana cake, and custard. I ordered the banana cake, which is a fluffy vanilla cake with banana filling and creamy frosting drizzled with banana syrup. Because the banana cake is light, it is the perfect dessert to top off a large entrée.
The price of entrées ranges from $7.95 to $13.95, but prices may exceed the upper limit depending on seasonal conditions that influence seafood availability. Luncheon combination platters, which have prices from $5.95 to $8.50, are available from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Since this is a full service restaurant, a tip is necessary, but the bill does not have to be too large. If you order entrées that are on the cheaper side and skip dessert, you can get dinner for two for about $22, a heavier price than home cooking or fast food but reasonable for more special occasions. So if you’re curious about Thai food, The King and I is a good restaurant to visit with a group of friends and a taste for experimentation.
THIS WOOD IS FAR FROM DEAD
Television Review: Deadwood Season Two
9/10
by Raph Tombasco
In March 2004, executive producer David Milch (NYPD Blue) unleashed the HBO Original Series Deadwood onto an unsuspecting public. This savage tale of the Wild West garnered much praise from audiences and critics in its first season by emphasizing quality storytelling and taking its time to establish its characters in a living, breathing environment. Now, only four episodes into its second season, it is apparent that Deadwood can only get better.
The story of Deadwood, South Dakota and its early denizens is a controversial tale rooted deep in the darkness of our nation’s early years. The city itself is ripe with history. Founded as a mining camp in 1876, towards the end of the Great American Gold Rush, Deadwood is the final resting place of some of the West’s greatest gunslingers, including Wild Bill Hickok, Seth Bullock, and Calamity Jane.
The first season of the show dealt mainly with the slow and violent transformation of the lawless settlement into a self-sustaining town. The narrative began just weeks after Custer’s fall at the Battle of Little Bighorn and was highlighted by the murder of Wild Bill (played by Keith Carradine) and the rise of an ex-Marshall from Montana, Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), to the position of Sheriff. In its unique presentation, the first season of Deadwood stood apart from glorified John Wayne cowboy tripe and embraced the Wild West with a gritty realism.
The second season is no different in this respect. The two-part season premiere entitled “A Lie Agreed Upon,” pushes Deadwood far beyond the show’s previous accomplishments and ever closer to pure brilliance. Part of this is due to the skill of the participating actors and actresses, most of whom have returned. Olyphant (Go, Gone in 60 Seconds) reprises his role as the reluctant gunslinger, Bullock, Ian McShane (Sexy Beast) is back in his Golden Globe award-winning role as corrupt saloon owner Al Swearengen, Powers Boothe (Tombstone, Frailty) is Swearengin’s opponent in the saloon business, Cy Tolliver, Robin Weigert plays the troubled, alcoholic Calamity Jane to a drunken “T,” and character actor Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Lord of the Rings) returns as the generally concerned and caring Doc Cochrane. The actors completely absorb the characters they are given and work with each other to bring the late 1870s to life. The dialogue is Shakespearean in its execution and the subtleties of living habits and non-verbal nuances are frighteningly accurate. The award-winning production team is right along with them in continuing the tradition of excellence started in Deadwood’s first season. As always, the cinematography is top notch and the costumes and sets are right on with the time period.
In narrative structure, Deadwood is similar in many ways to the Spaghetti Western films of the late 1960s. With the tension between the characters building slowly over time, the audience becomes well acquainted with their various quirks and ticks. When shit finally hits the fan, it splatters. “A Lie Agreed Upon” picked up with the growing conflict between the newly appointed Sheriff, Bullock, and the malevolent Swearenger. The camera cuts with great fluidity between the rising action of Bullock and Swearenger’s fight and the arriving carriage of new settlers (Bullock’s wife and stepson). The two figures stand, bloodied and battered in the mud, having just toppled over the balcony of a saloon in their brawl in front of the carriage. While Swearenger sheathes a knife he intended for Bullock’s throat, he smiles, broken as he is, and welcomes the man’s family to town.
Television programs don’t usually offer truly visceral moments like this – moments so real they surpass any contrived drama or reality presented by the networks. This is pure entertainment. The entire production of Deadwood is unmatched in its dedication to historical accuracy and representing the human condition in the Wild West. Thankfully, Will Smith is in no way involved. The second season is well under way, Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on HBO. Watch it.
