THE ‘AMERICAN’ WAY MAKES GOOD
Fashion/Retail Review - American Apparel
(5 out of 5 G's)
by Audrey Odhner
American Apparel is raising the bar; they have a mission. For years, garment manufacturer American Apparel has been committed to creating a quality line of versatile knit clothing whose practicality and style transcend the fickle appetite of trend, and at the same time does so with a set of progressive business practices which mirror the sustainability of their products. Using no subcontracting or offshore labor, all stages of production take place in a downtown Los Angeles factory, which employs over 3,000 people at this one location where products are designed, knit, sewn, and marketed.
This “vertical integration” of the company allows American Apparel to respond quickly to market demands, stay competitive, and pay their workers the highest wages in the garment industry—one notoriously noted for use of sweatshops, inflated profits, and labor abuses. In addition they offer employees a wide range of benefits and accommodations from naturally lit work areas and affordable insurance to on-site massage.
However, the real success of American Apparel is in its ability to pioneer these high standards in business and labor relations while making a stellar product. A range of basic knits is available in a wide variety of colors and flattering, youth-oriented styles, including some offerings spun in organic cotton. “‘Sweatshop free’ is a nice story with a violin, but also, hey, we’re good at what we do,” CEO Dov Charney recently told the New York Times. “I’m constantly trying on garments: Is it too wide? Is the sleeve too long? How is this cuff? No one knows why Levi’s 501s are so perfect…. The real seduction is this subliminal thing.”
“As we say in Yiddish,” she added, “It’s fucking perfect.”
Indeed, this commitment from the top down to quality and style is apparent in everything from the website presentation, reasonable price, fit, and wash of American Apparel clothing. The online store, americanapparelstore.com (the closest retail locations to Buffalo are in Toronto), is easily navigable, and offers multiple photographs, measurements, and information from wholesale availability to quality of screen-printing results on each logo-free piece. Made for “real people,” like their non-professional models, sizes range from extra-extra small to extra-extra large, and, from experience, the clothes wash and wear exceptionally well, without loosing shape or color.
Overall, the American Apparel operation exudes with a pervasive, practical self-awareness instead of the “hippy-ish” liberal political correctness it has the potential to fall into, which makes the shopping and dressing experience enjoyable and all-around positive. As their mission statement concludes, “Not to suggest that we are more ethical than the next business. We’re just out to try something different, to make a buck, to bring people the clothes they love, to be human, and have a good time in the process. So far, so good.” Agreed.
BUST OUT THE MANISCHEWITZ!
Music Review - LeeVees: Hanukkah Rocks
by Jared Dobbs
Everywhere you look, Christmas is being celebrated because it’s embedded into American culture. Even the great Jewish songwriters, from Irving Berlin to Lieber and Stoller, only wrote Christmas songs. But, once in a while, something miraculous happens like the story of Hanukkah when the oil lasted eight days and saved the Maccabees. Well, here is yet another Hanukkah miracle, but this time it comes in the form of rock music.
Released on October 25, Hanukkah Rocks is the debut album from the LeeVees, an all-Jewish band featuring Adam Gardner (Guster) and Dave Schneider (the Zambonis). The new album features ten rockin’ indie-pop songs, and yes, every one of them is about Hanukkah. Some say such a concept is a bit obsessive but Gardner and Schneider prefer the phrase “extremely focused.”
The story behind the band is recounted on their website, leevees.com. In April of 2005, the Zambonis went on tour with Guster. On the bus somewhere between Denver and St. Louis, Gardner said to Schneider, “We should write some songs together!” Schneider apparently responded with a blasé, “Yeah, that would be fun,” and strode over to the sink to make some tea. “We should only write songs about Hanukkah!” Gardner exclaimed. Schneider froze, his brain wheels spinning with excitement. He turned to Gardner and was about to ask him if he was serious, but before he could even say it, Gardner blurted out, “I’m serious.” The two quickly grabbed some acoustic guitars, went to the back of the bus and wrote the first two LeeVees songs: the Beach-Boys-in-yarmulkes anthem “Latke Clan” and “Applesauce vs. Sour Cream”—in less than an hour. Fittingly, they wrote all the songs for the album in only eight days, truly a Hanukkah miracle!
Gardner and Schneider really hit it off with this album because it speaks to every generation of Jew and non-Jew alike. Each song has its unique feeling like “How Do You Spell Channukkahh?” which is set it to fun and catchy music. The classic punk feel of “Gelt Melts” provides plenty of fist-pumping sing-along action while the ballad of “Nun Gimel Heh Shin” is bursting with Jewish pride, and let’s not forget about “Jewish Girls (at the Matzoh Ball)” and “At the Timeshare”—both couldn’t be any more pertinent.
Gardner hopes that the LeeVees’ festive, rocking Hanukkah songs will bring happiness to the Jewish community and to the world at large. Schneider is hoping that being in a cool all-Jewish rock band will finally get him something he has never had: a date with a Jewish girl. Really, it would make his mother very happy. Make sure to check out the LeeVees on tour with the Barenaked Ladies from November 28 to December 14.
IF X = MOVIE, THEN PROOF = GOOD USE OF TIME
Movie Review - Proof
by Zach O’Neill
In the mood for a movie about math? What? No? Figured that would be the response considering most of the math geeks are reading the Reporter.
That’s what I thought too until I came across Proof. The cast looked great with Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Moonlight Mile), and the film has an accomplished director, John Madden. I’m talking about the man who is responsible for Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, not the football announcer. With credentials like these, why not take a chance? The movie’s poster said it best: “The biggest risk in life is not taking one.”
Paltrow plays Kathy, the daughter of a recently deceased math genius, Robert Lou Ellen (Hopkins) who went nuts near the end of his life. Kathy, distraught after losing the afflicted father that she had to care for over the last five years, is facing the fear that she herself may be losing a few nuts and bolts as well.
She ends up gambling with her emotions and putting all her trust on one of her father’s ex-students, Hal (Gyllenhall). Hal has been working on finding out if his former professor had been in the midst of anything groundbreaking at the end of his life by going over his notebooks. So, he and Kathy develop an attachment over their encounters and he’s the only one there during her time of grief.
The scenes in the movie are well done and very realistic with strewn books beaten and colorful, an old, worn-down home, pealing paint on the outside, and clutter and dust on the inside. The score is intense and keeps you captivated in what is a slightly dramatic story. Look, it is about math. It can’t get too fiery.
There is an entertaining amount of dry wit as well. When Kathy finally opens up to Hal she says, “I feel like I’m gonna crack... like an egg or one of those French cheeses you cut and ooze out everywhere.” There is a small inquisition about jojoba and a remark on vegetarian chili. At one point there is a talk about proofs and Hal throws out the line, “If it’s a proof of what I think it’s a proof of, then it’s a very important proof.” Sounds almost like it came right out of the Mad Hatter’s mouth.
The only fault is that the movie does go a bit deeper into the math world than most people are really willing to go and still be entertained. Sometimes the jargon can leave you out from time to time. And to cover for a lot of the not-so-dramatic math sequences there are too many montages, or clips strewn together with only music (for a famous montage example think a Rocky work out scene). The performances are what really makes Proof work.
LIONS AND TIGERS AND PANDA BEARS, OH MY!
CD Review - Animal Collective: Feels
by Evan Smith
Animal Collective’s jerky rhythms and jaunting vocals are some of the most difficult to approach on the indie rock scene. In the past, their noisy concoctions have bordered disorder nearly as much as they have resembled music, allowing only brief glimmers of pop-sensibility to shine through. With Feels, the NYC collective’s third major release on Fat Cat Records, these animals have made their most accessible album, with tracks rooted in anthem pop and a good deal less ambient slithering to weed your way through.
For diehard admirers of the Animal Collective’s prior tracks such as “Kids on Holiday” or “Whaddit I Done” this album’s minimal divergence from unconventionality may be a bit disappointing, but, in general, this album’s slight shift towards the mainstays of Western musicality makes it their best work to date while managing to maintain just enough distorted vocal assault and electro-freak out psychedlics to keep all interested parties pleased. This shift may be accredited to the fact that this is the band’s first romp as a complete four-piece instead of a “whatever-whenever” guest appearance conglomerate. Avey Tare and Panda Bear are joined by now full-time members Deakin and Geologist on Feels, and with this album the Animal Collective makes an escape from their strained label of a freak-folk act, distancing themselves somewhat from comparisons to artists such as Devendra Banhart and Iron & Wine.
The album opens with an eerily joyous track called “Did You See the Words,” which shows the album’s immediate intentions by delivering a deliriously catchy and uplifting chorus. As the first track ends we are immediately hurled into the rock opera style of “Grass” that sounds as if it could have been plucked from the Rocky Horror Picture Show until a chorus of vibrant screams and smashing symbols enters the musical landscape giving the tune an odd yet settling release.
“Flesh Canoe,” “Daffy Duck,” and “Bees” are all reminiscent of the more ambient work of the Collective, with the latter of the three being the album’s greatest failure. Then there is “Loch Raven,” a song that perfectly fuses the band’s ambience-of-old with their new direction towards injecting their music with pop-sensibility. A shimmering chime radiates throughout the track as floor toms provide a staggered beat on top of which Tare chants out muffled lyrics.
The centerpiece of this album (and one of the best songs of the year) is an eight-and-a-half-minute anthem entitled “Banshee Beat.” It takes nearly two minutes for a drum beat to squirm its way on to this track underneath Tare’s beautifully sad singing, and as the track blossoms, tympanis boom towards us from the distance and a frantic, fluttering string of “do-do-do’s” melt their way into the song. Tare displays his vocal nimbleness clawing his way through a whispered verse towards a peak of crashing drums complemented by a hair-raising howl. “Banshee Beat” also seems to lyrically encompass the Prozac-happy glow of this album as Tare sings “but I don’t wish that I was dead / no a very little thing a man once said / that any way you look at it / you have your fits, I have my fits / but feeling is gooooood.”
It’s hard to describe Animal Collective’s sound. Take Björk’s weirdness times four, add more clicks, bleeps, and honks than the Beta Band used in their best day, and top it off with as lush a vocal landscape as the Beach Boys achieved during their most psychedelic phase, and you’re half way there. This album may still be a bit out there for some people, but if you’re not going to give it a chance with your fifteen dollars at the record store, at least do yourself a favor and download “Banshee Beat” and “Did You See the Words” because they are two of the most unique and spectacular songs that have been recorded this year.
