I approve this message from Governor "Conan the Anti-Authoritarian" Schwarzenegger
https://youtu.be/x_P-0I6sAck
Favorite Recordings of 2020: Part 2 (#35–#21)
This is the second part of my Favorite Recordings of 2020 countdown. (You can read the first part — the Honorable Mentions — here.)
I look forward to writing up this list every year. Then, I start writing, and I realize just how much work I've assigned myself! I hope that some of these notes — written hastily during a very busy (and unusually difficult) transition from one year (and one Presidency) to another — will inspire you to explore and discover some new music. All of these albums were highlights of my 2020.
35.
Idles — Ultra Mono
Idles' second album — Joy is an Act of Resistance —was my #1 of 2018, so this was one of the albums I was most looking forward to this year. And Album Three — Ultra Mono — is a blast, no doubt about it. It won't do much to dissuade listeners from the impression that Idles are one of the most thrilling live acts in the world.
But where Joy as an Act of Resistance struck a brilliant balance of unhinged punk energy and affectingly conscience-fueled anthems, this one finds them staggering off balance, a bit punch-drunk either from the punches 2019 and 2020 have dealt the world or from the punches this band has been throwing back. They stumble here too far into a broad-stroke rage and guitar-smashing rants. And even when they often sound like they're wrecking the stage, the production feels a bit glossier, a bit more... expensive?
So it says a lot that this record is still, in spite of its weaknesses, worth multiple listens. I had a significant appetite for raucous sets of righteous anger against the world's death-cults this year. Sometimes, after reading the daily news, I needed to get in the car and pound my fists on the steering wheel along with drummer Jon Beavis as he seems to be striving to single-handedly pulverize the advancing war machines of tyranny and prejudice.
https://youtu.be/mRkUt9VnaR0
https://youtu.be/eYGtGcJ8rKw
34.
Lo Tom — LP2
As with Idles, Lo Tom released another strong album that may not break enough new ground to last as one of my favorites, but it hit the spot in a year that was severely lacking in solid, straightforward, thought-provoking, arena-sized rock and roll.
David Bazan's lyrics continue to impress: accessible but also challenging, honest in ways that are compelling without being garish or self-absorbed, and poetic enough to invite various interpretations. The band checks all of the boxes — they swagger, they ache, and they sound hive-minded in their precise synchronicity, but also inspired and earnest, each musician playing to support the whole song rather than to get attention. And it's captured while they still sound excited about each song.
LP2 tells me this band has a promising future if they'll stick with it. Can they, though, and remain a distinct entity from Bazan's solo work and the reunited Pedro the Lion? Time will tell. For now, they're just separate enough in my mind, but I'd like to see Lo Tom move forward with a strong sense that the band is making decisions together rather than just following Bazan's lead, and I'd like to see them expand the songs with longer pauses and a greater spotlight on musicianship.
https://youtu.be/g2YgXZPQXS8
https://youtu.be/q_HoMoKPIYA
33.
The Innocence Mission — See You Tomorrow
How do we assess Innocence Mission albums anymore, as it's far more difficult to trace what makes them distinct from one another than it was in the early days? Remember their self-titled debut which rightly earned comparison to 10,000 Maniacs; then the discovery of a layered, gauzy sound-garden all their own in Umbrella; then the way they coaxed brighter and more joyful colors from that garden on Glow; and then they showed us that garden in a winter so spare and cold and anguished that Birds of My Neighborhood became their masterpiece for its harrowing honesty.
Since then, the records have given us varying instrumentation, with the dialing down of percussion being the most evidently deliberate and sustained aesthetic choice.
Karen Peris's lyrics —which continue to seem like intriguing and suggestive sketches of emotional experiences penciled into journals — have established her as a voice of deep empathy, humility, and watchfulness. She seems so superhumanly genuine and so anti-celebrity in everything she does that when I try to think of who she reminds me of I end up thinking about scriptures in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, holds things quietly deep in her heart... rather than of any other singer.
And Don Peris's guitars has ceased to sound like performances and exist more like an ocean view I like to visit to see just what the light is doing there today. I'm not likely to be surprised by anything, but the colors and textures will minister to me with a subtle healing influence.
Having said these things, I have warmed with time to some of these songs as stronger and more lasting than others in recent releases: "On Your Side," "Movie," and "The Brothers William Said" are so intimate and vivid. I love, in "Movie," the reference to film-projector reels as "California windmills," as she wishes she could turn back time as easily as rewinding. If I could rewind anything with this band, I'd turn the clock back to the days when we had a fighting chance of seeing them play live. It feels like a dream, that I got to see them on two different occasions in Seattle, both times with Sixteen Horsepower opening for them, the most unlikely and yet the most perfect concert pairing I've ever experienced — oil and water.
https://youtu.be/1DkjY_LAdCE
https://youtu.be/ss-rLKLF4Nc
https://youtu.be/4u2zWYkMOwo
32.
Lilly Hiatt — Walking Proof
I'm grateful to Thomas V. Bona for introducing me to Lilly Hiatt upon the occasion of Trinity Lane, a very impressive country-rock record that achieved a rare thing: It made me excited about going back for multiple listens of a contemporary country record. Perhaps I'm still overcoming a prejudice against a stereotype, but it's rare that I find a country singer who seems like more of an artist than an entertainer, whose lyrics have enough poetry to draw attention to their craft rather than just delivering new variations on the same simple sentiments.
Here, Hiatt makes an even stronger impression on me. The musicianship is assured and energetic, blurring genre lines just enough to be interesting, and the lyrics invite me into interesting stories with interesting characters. But what I really like is how the songs breathe — particularly "Little Believer," which is one of the few songs this year that I repeatedly sought out to heighten my heart rate on the morning commute.
Also, there's a song set in Portland. Can a country singer with a voice like Dolly Parton's make something out of Portland? Can any good country music come from Nazareth?
https://youtu.be/nSoNNgtBmSE
https://youtu.be/mb5L9mnq88s
31.
Thurston Moore — By the Fire
I miss Sonic Youth.
I miss their grungy, adventurous sound so much that I picked up a used CD of the Pump Up the Volume soundtrack a couple of months ago, feeling a particular urge to revisit "Titanium Exposé." (There are a lot of great songs on that soundtrack!)
So when I put on Thurston Moore's new solo album, I was overjoyed to find myself blissing out to that familiar sound, and to find such generous portions of it served up hot and savory. While he does sing on it, I haven't given the lyrics much attention yet because it feels more like an instrumental album to me — he jams, he explores, he rages, he dreams. And he shows no particular concern with "songs," turning these instead into multi-stage rockets that keep surprising with new tones, new colors, new moods. There aren't many rock guitarists anymore whose mastery can hold my attention for a whole record, but when Moore is in the zone, he makes magic sound effortless.
That picture of Moore on the cover is a pretty good imitation of me as I'm listening.
https://youtu.be/qQ0TtgsV1fY
https://youtu.be/3X5oK_61ETQ
30.
Public Enemy — What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?
Growing up in an 99%-white evangelical Christian high school — and attending college in a place not much more diverse than that — I found early hip-hop to be like music from another part of the world, or even from another world entirely. I felt threatened by it — it sounded angry (it was, but often righteously so), it sounded brusque (it was, often righteously so). I didn't understand it or want to.
Fast forward to 2020, and I am still not nearly as well-versed in hip-hop as I could be or should be, but I have found voices I find compelling and meaningful (thanks to Chance, Kendrick, Lauryn Hill, Run the Jewels, and more), and I am learning to take the position of a student learning from masters about lives, histories, hopes, and hardships that white privilege could so easily have prevented me from engaging. I am richer and wiser for how I am learning new languages in the arts, learning about the crimes of ignorance and prejudice in which I have been complicit.
2020 was a year like no other in as a social-justice gospel blazed hotter and hotter in music. Many of the voices at the forefront of that movement are new — you'll see some further up my list — but Public Enemy are veterans of the genre and I actually recognize their voices and styles, which says something about that magnitude of their influence. (How can I recognize it when I never listened to this music — even actively avoided it — in my younger days?) They've already woven their way into the fabric of essential American music for more than three decades.
So this is the first album of theirs I've experienced from Day One and in its entirety. I expected it might sound outdated or, worse, egocentric. Instead, I find the lyrics compelling, the beats irresistible, and the whole greater than the sum of its parts as a substantial answer to all of the troubles and horrors that the last four years have launched against not only Black lives in America but against whole the American experiment and dream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Eki4IEFYw...
https://youtu.be/w-9vTibHOgY
29.
Khushi — Strange Seasons
28.
Son Lux — Tomorrows I (with a nod to Tomorrows II)
These three records blur in my mind due to the adventures sonic experimentation, the cinematic textures and moods, the resistance to typical songwriting conventions, and a overriding sense of tender-heartedness in a context of anxiety.
Khushi is Kalim Patel, best-known as a producer for James Blake, but on the strength of this record I'd like to see much more from him. The epic track at the center of Strange Seasons — "This Is, Pt. 1 & II" — is one of the most sonically thrilling things I've heard all year. The lyrics reflect a personal journey of self-knowledge, suffering, and hope for salvation, but they also echo what has felt like a prevailing sense of pending apocalypse:
"There are
Things in me now, though they
Weigh me down, weigh me down
Maybe now, maybe now
I see
Coming in between the cracks
There seeps a light, there seeps a light
I hadn’t known, I hadn’t known..."
And then,
"And this is
Not quite what I intended
But it’s where I’ve ended, it’s where I’ve ended
...
This is
Not quite how I planned it, no,
But it’s where I’ve landed
It’s where I’ve landed...."
Son Lux — Ryan Lott, Rafiq Bhatia, and Ian Chang — explore feelings of anxiety and dismay in confrontational expressions:
"What are you doing, love? Are you doing love?"
"You're reaping what you've sown / But what you hoped would never grow"
"Count for me the cost
The number of tomorrows lost...."
But they balance the sense of dread and doom with appeals for love, forgiveness, and mercy:
"For nobody can see me
For who I will be
Please remind me
Come find me
It's not too late."
Both Son Lux records (I much prefer the first one; the second sounds rougher and vaguer) sound much more like a band, much less like Lott finding collaborators. The mix of songs and instrumentals cohere beautifully into something more like sound sculpture than conventional compositions.
Guitars often sound improvisational and playful, giving a lightness to the abrasive and ominous tones that sometimes threaten to give their sound an overbearing sense of horror. The drums are not scaffolds to support the other instruments; they are sometimes fitful, restless, surprising, and often surge into the foreground. Bold cello strains veer, careen, and drone with the severity of a Christopher Nolan film score.
And Lott's vocals reveal characters at breaking points of emotion, seemingly crumbling under the pressure of unspecified fears. It's hard to know whether the singers of these songs are confronting themselves or a society around them that seems hell-bent on sinking the very ship they've built while still on stormy seas. I can't say I know what was on the musicians' minds, but the strong sense of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty seems like a truth-telling expression of our 2020 world.
Cathartic and thrillingly creative.
https://youtu.be/rjvVK3tiVtk
https://youtu.be/TQELDRwesvc
https://youtu.be/RWVIu_8lgzI
27.
Son Little — Aloha
One of the first records I discovered and enjoyed in 2020 stayed with me all year long. I hadn't been familiar with Son Little previously, and I need to go back and hear his first two albums, but I found the story behind this record compelling — the achievement that grew out of disaster, a whole album lost to a failed hard drive. Apparently, the original recordings were more complex and more heavily produced, but one of the things I love about this is how human and organic it sounds. Producer Renaud Letang is best known for his work with Feist, which makes sense when I hear how selective he has been with each layer of these spare, bright productions.
https://youtu.be/xLo0a_mKmx4
https://youtu.be/UzTQtjCceHc
https://youtu.be/KTzEVH4f434
26.
Poppy — I Disagree
This stuff is hilarious.
AllMusic's Neil Z. Yeung strives to describe this sound: "a metallic storm, informed by pulsing beats, thrashing riffs, and crushing breakdowns. That fury is punctuated by atmospheric electronics and sugary vocals that support her deceptively confrontational lyrics."
Okay, yeah — it's a 21-car pile-up of genres, performed with such giddy enthusiasm and inspired inventiveness that I find it irresistible whenever my Shuffle springs a track on me.
And yet, I can't deny that the lyrics are often ridiculous. They have that mix of ignorance and pomposity that says "I'm being profound!" when, in fact, they're really just run-of-the-mill rebellion-for-the-sake-of-rebelliousness nonsense, attacking organized religion and any kind of authority or cultural norm without any consideration of what is being championed except a vague "You can be anything you want to be" sentiment. (Okay — whatever. Actions don't have consequences, so follow your whims and everything will be fine. And if you believe that, I've got more to sell you.)
But I'll highlight one exception: "BLOODMONEY" is an intriguing, indirect affirmation of Christianity insofar as the lyrics are a furious condemnation of religious hypocrisy, heavy with references to Judas's betrayal of Jesus. I guess I'm down with that.
Somehow, Poppy is both twice as fun to listen to as Billy Eilish and only half as thoughtful. I guess that evens out and makes that this year's answer to Eilish's breakthrough. I can't wait to hear what Poppy does next. But I hope she gets some good guidance and reads some good books first. What a joy this music would be if there was more substance in the style.
https://youtu.be/fJlDyRbUtxI
https://youtu.be/fiH9YPSPNlA
25.
Lonker See — Hamza
What's that? You really wish you had some new sax-and-guitar-heavy Polish-jazz-metal overlaid with Enya-like vocals right now?
Well, you're in luck.
This stuff is kind of amazing.
Check out the whole album for a whole palette of strange, psychedelic colors.
I kept coming back to this all year, because it was never boring. It's so unlike anything else in my music library that the adventure feels fresh every time.
https://youtu.be/hlz4pdv9IA0
https://youtu.be/GTOO798Dgd4
24.
Sufjan Stevens and Lowell Brams — Aporia
The first of two Sufjan Stevens records this year is the one I will listen to the most, even if it is the lesser accomplishment.
You might hear the opener "Ousia" next time you go in for a therapeutic massage, with its shimmering tide washing in and out while Eno-esque synthesizers play the part of morning sun on the waves. Then, a hint of a narrative buzzes in — perhaps a rowing team at practice, slicing rhythmically into view and then vanishing.
https://youtu.be/YDxynzGMht0
https://youtu.be/i1kraCe-_MU
23.
tone-cluster — KYO SHU
I wrote extensively about this record already here at Looking Closer, and for that piece I interviewed the tone-cluster mastermind Eric Gorfain. You can read that here!
https://youtu.be/l2OdLxWWjlc
https://youtu.be/BbRwEbQEAaI
22.
Smoke Fairies — DARKNESS BRINGS THE WONDERS HOME
I discovered this one thanks to Ken Priebe, one of the Looking Closer Specialists!
From the grungy blues-guitar riff that opens the album, to the sense of trouble and foreboding in the opening verses, to the harmonies of Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies that feel like a blend of Heart and Indigo Girls, with an occasional leaning in the direction of the rawness and roughness of PJ Harvey — I am hooked and ready to commit for a full album's journey.
The lyrics are unnerving, setting a toned of doomed resolution. "On the Wing" deals with a metamorphosis into something feathered, taloned, and dangerous. "Elevator" hints at a story of a compromising and damaging relationship in a dangerous Hollywood hierarchy. "Disconnect" could've been an end-credits track for a Twilight movie, as the singer berates the object of her desires for his detachment, even as she invites him in and asks him to teach her to detach and live disconnected as he is: "Teach me we don't need love / let me know it's true."
The overall effect is that of a collection of cautionary tales, of paths less traveled that make the traveler think back to that fork in the road and the moments that have made all the difference.
https://youtu.be/ldUknpLZxFg
https://youtu.be/5d-A7FZ9rWg
https://youtu.be/T4NmnxHlPT0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AYKJb0GT3o
21.
Sufjan Stevens — The Ascension
Epic, ecstatic, enervating, and absolutely saturated with electronics, Stevens' latest turns up the volume on the characteristics I find most difficult to appreciate in his music even as he sculpts and frosts lushly scrumptious seven-layer cakes of synthesizers and voices, making this sound much more like a record from the mad scientist who made The Age of Adz than the sublime singer-songwriter who made Illinoise. And he plays the hyper-spacey stuff with such energy and ambition that I'm exhausted by the halfway point and working to remind myself that he made my favorite album of the year just five years ago.
Having said that, there are some remarkable highlights in this apocalypse circus — particularly the lovely, gauze-y, dreamy "Run Away With Me," which plays in that tricky territory of being both erotic and symbolic. Right in the middle of the sighing appeals to run away as lovers in a dangerous time, he grounds the appeal in the here and now, with the vocabulary of Jesus calling to his faithful:
They will terrorize us
With new confusion
With the fear of life that seeks to bring despair within
And they will paralyze us
With new illusions
Let the dead revive the beast within
...
And I will bring you life
A new communion
With a paradise that brings the truth of light within
And I will show you rapture
A new horizon
Follow me to life and love within.
The prevailing theme is a lamentation over betrayal by a culture and a community that has turned against its ideals and promises and causes irreversible damage to the world. Lovers and dreamers, devastated, pledge love to one another and long for some escape beyond the burning world. And sometimes, they reach points of desperation manifested as some of the most abrasive sounds he's ever recorded. (I can barely endure the distorted vocals in "Ursa Major.")
"My love, I've lost my faith in everything," he sings to begin "Tell Me You Love Me." And then...
Right now I could use a change of heart
or a kiss before everything falls apart.
Can you tell me this love will last forever?
As the world turns, making such a mess
what's the point of it,
when everything's dispossessed?
Can we carry this love across the desert?
...
And as the world burns
Breathing in the blight
What's the point of it
If morning turns into night?
Following what sure sounds to me like a whole new genre — Pandemic Pop — he unloads "Ativan," which sounds like the anxiety attack of a believer whose faith has been shaken to the breaking point by the behaviors of his own congregation. For me, it doesn't get much more 2020 than that.
And we're not even halfway through the album, which will culminate in an epic crescendo of rage and heartbreak simply called "America," a finale equivalent in ferocity to the one on Phoebe Bridgers' Punisher and second only to Bob Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" in its ambitions for answering this year of disillusionment and despair.
https://youtu.be/JjRSCm67bL4
https://youtu.be/Od_0EIZVR_A
Favorite Recordings of 2020: Part 1 (Honorable Mentions)
Isn't it too late to post year-end lists?
Not for me. I like to wait until I can give good attention to even those things that were arriving right at the end of the year.
Then I need time to reflect, revisit, reconsider... and write.
For me, writing is the best practice of thinking, and I often come to new discoveries and new understanding as I write. And part of good writing is reading — I want to engage the conversation beyond my own experience, learn from others' listening, and deepen my appreciation of what's in front of me. I don't want to join my list to just be a bunch of "likes." I want to share something personal, a story about how a work of art has made a difference — big or small — in my life, knowing well that our experiences, beliefs, passions, education, and questions influence our appreciation of art.
"Your mileage may vary," as they say, because we are very different, you and I.
But I offer these recommendations not as any claim that these are "the Best" — nobody is qualified to make such a claim about something as subjective as art. (I make this disclaimer with stubborn regularity.) Rather, I would testify that I was blessed by these contributions of imagination, beauty, and truth. I hope some of them open doors of discovery, delight, and challenge for you.
So... before I post my list of more than 30 favorites, I'll begin with a bunch of "honorable mentions" — albums I enjoyed for one reason or another, and that I think are worth mentioning. While there were very few records released this year that are likely to stand with my all-time favorites, there were so many wonderful sounds worth recommending. And in a year of relentless troubles and hardships, I needed music more than ever.
If you have thoughts about any of these records — general impressions, favorite tracks, declarations of passion — feel free to share them. I might even excerpt some of those notes and add them to this post!
Let's begin.
Overstreet's Favorite Recordings of 2020: Honorable Mentions
Ásgeir — BURY THE MOON
If there were an award for Best Josh Garrels Impression, Ásgeir would be a strong contender. On this English-language album from the 27-year-old Icelandic artist, his lyrics aren't as poetic as Garrels' writing, but he does write from a place of deep conscience. His sound is richly layered, lush, and melodious. His writing leans sentimental at times, but the songs are catchy, singable, and often beautiful. He shows a lot of promise here; I'll be watching for his next record.
HIGHLIGHTS: "Breathe," "Living Water"
https://youtu.be/JOWE1fyXZww
https://youtu.be/rMb5bjHX8Xw
Sam Lee — OLD WOW
"Old Wow," the title of Sam Lee's third album, is a reference to the awe and inspiration we often feel when we attend to the natural world. You can sense the deep roots of these songs — new arrangements and interpretations of traditional songs — and you'll appreciate the gift of Lee's voice. If you're a fan of Cocteau Twins, take note: There's a duet here with Elizabeth Fraser on "Wild Mountain Thyme." But the big highlight, for me, is "Lay This Body Down."
https://youtu.be/LBmVRZE1lRo
https://youtu.be/XxKyfPR5nls
The Dream Syndicate — THE UNIVERSE INSIDE
If that album cover art gives you any suspicion that this might be a psychedelic experience, one that opens a portal to some danger and some beauty, you're on the right track. The Universe Inside sounds like a series of strange, drawn-out performances by an aging jazz-rock combo playing at the Roadhouse — the bar imagined by David Lynch for the Twin Peaks universe, where every live band has one foot in hell and one foot in the real world singing about their longing for heaven. Droning guitars, relentless percussion, and saxophones veering from ecstasy to anxiety to anguish. This music kind of felt like the world I lived in throughout 2020, every day an excruciating struggle between despair (when I look at America's disintegration) and longing (when I am rescued by the beauty of memory and dreams).
Mark Deming at AllMusic knows more about the band's history than I do. He writes, "While this music is a long way off from the Dream Syndicate's roots, it's smart and visionary music built out of jamming that avoids being lazy or poorly focused. The group's first two post-reunion albums were fine and deeply satisfying, but The Universe Inside goes someplace most fans would never have expected. It's bold, challenging, and dreamlike stuff that stakes out new territory for the band and unexpectedly succeeds on the level of their best work."
Highlights: The 20-minute long nightmare jam called "The Regulator" and the restlessly determined riffing called "Dusting Off the Rust."
https://youtu.be/k4rALGC0_P0
https://youtu.be/Md-aHUXtJKg
Poliça — WHEN WE STAY ALIVE
Do you miss Portishead as much as I do? When I listen to Channy Leaneagh's voice slipping and sliding over slick electronica, I'm playing on a similar playground. But if you pay attention to the lyrics, you'll find her making much of the ordeal she's been through. This is the sound of an artist taking the stuff of her calamity and sculpting it into a thoughtful vocabulary of metaphors.
From Pitchfork: "In the winter of 2018, Poliça singer Channy Leaneagh was clearing ice off her roof when she slipped and fell 10 feet to the ground. The landing broke a vertebra, damaged her spine, and left her unable to walk. What at first seemed like a curse—being stuck in a brace prevented her from working or taking care of her children—quickly became an opportunity, giving Leaneagh time to sit with her thoughts and confront traumas old and new.
"Poliça’s fifth album, When We Stay Alive, features some of the most piercing lyrics of Leaneagh’s career, half of which were written after the accident."
Highlights: "Fold Up," "Forget Me Now," "Driving"
https://youtu.be/PqJCunA-7YM
https://youtu.be/Qt65OeuA5cI
HAIM — WOMEN IN MUSIC PT. III
You don't need me to convince you of this one, I suspect. It's been one of the year's most beloved and celebrated albums. And yet, it took me a while to warm to it. Somehow, I've never seen this band — either live or even onscreen. And their songs have subtle virtues. But I eventually started humming along, and the band's chemistry took hold.
Then I started reading, and I started to understand the difficult circumstances within which this band somehow found the strength and will to keep working. At AllMusic, Heather Phares — who is far more familiar with Haim than I am — writes:
Alana's best friend died; Este struggled with her health — and career-threatening Type 1 diabetes; and Danielle had the double whammy of post-tour depression and her partner Ariel Rechtshaid's cancer diagnosis. They confronted these issues head-on in their life and in their music, and the directness — and genuine emotion — of 'Women in Music Pt. III' adds welcome depth to their catchy, genre-mashing songs.
My admiration grew.
And now, I've come around to putting it on just for hooks and the harmonies.
Highlights: "The Steps," "I Know Alone," "Man From the Magazine," "Hallelujah"
https://youtu.be/qMM-BnYnn2A
https://youtu.be/vfZSgr_si4I
https://youtu.be/QcsJxkje-AA
Elvis Costello — HEY CLOCKFACE
"Love is the one thing we can save."
Is that line a lament or an encouragement? It sounds more dire to me than anything... and timely, as the future teeters on a precipice while madmen in power rampage unchecked.
It's a surprisingly bold beginning for anybody, even Elvis Costello. And what follows that spoken-word opening is an album that sounds like he wants to record ALL of the albums left in him right now, before it's too late. The result is all over the place. But there is more than enough here to remind me of the master at his peaks (which, for me, are Imperial Bedroom, All This Useless Beauty, When I Was Cruel, and Painted From Memory).
Highlights: "No Flag," "They're Not Laughing At Me Now," "What Is It That I Need That I Don't Already Have?"
https://youtu.be/58Q2q6HIftY
https://youtu.be/w7aQtVfB-88
https://youtu.be/wE3G8du1qcU
Drive-By Truckers — THE UNRAVELING
The nation that preaches to the world about freedom, generosity, equality, and "justice for all" has, in the last several years, seemed to say "Just kidding!" Specifically, the Republican party has pledged allegiance to a man who idolizes tyrants and war criminals. For the sake of power, wealth, and white supremacy, they have performed a downward spiral into cruelty and injustice, confirming the most exaggerated caricatures of their hard-heartedness — abusing immigrants, torturing refugees, sanctioning the slaughter of Black Americans, locking children in cages, and fanning the flames of a pandemic until the disease is devouring its own people.
In the middle of this, Drive-By Truckers take the position of the prophet at the gates of the city, raging and lamenting in sackcloth and ashes. The Unraveling is their Apocalypse Now, a diagnosis of malignant tumors called Greed, Hate, and Madness. It also features, as Mark Deming declares at AllMusic, "the most potent and nuanced performances this band has ever summoned. ... [T]hey've rarely merged words and music quite as skillful as they have here."
Highlights: "Armageddon's Back in Town," "Thoughts and Prayers"
https://youtu.be/REHXeCDc-C8
https://youtu.be/tkD4xSqNVII
EOB — EARTH
On the strength of its irresistible opening track, Ed O'Brien's uneven solo debut Earth is full of cool surprises, catchy melodies, and reminders that he is essential to the layered genius of Radiohead. It's co-produced by Flood — the genius who produced Zooropa, Is This Desire?, and so many more of my favorite records. There's even a duet with Laura Marling to wrap it up. In an interview with NPR's Bob Boilen, O'Brien talked about living in Brazil with his family several years ago and how that time of withdrawing from the familiar and the busy into isolation and quiet resulted in inspiration that exploded into this colorful record.
Highlights: "Shangri-La," "Brasil," "Cloak of the Night"
https://youtu.be/N7Djc5z-EMg
https://youtu.be/5yx1ysQjiPQ
https://youtu.be/xefWbfWUbrQ
Moses Boyd — DARK MATTER
Why was it the UK that offered us — from my vantage point, at least — the best artistic expressions of the suffering, the rage, and the hope so many of us felt in 2020? I'd argue it was the London scene that best amplified laments over injustice, affirmed that Black Lives Matter, vented righteous anger, and celebrated the Truth that we are all brothers and sisters.
Moses Boyd's album Dark Matter was a force to be reckoned with on my stereo this year, empowering my spirit as I blasted these tunes in the car on my way to and from work. These sounds often helped me transcend anger and bitterness into a remembrance that the darkness of prejudice cannot overcome the exultant glory of Black imaginations in art.
Boyd's percussion weaves delirious jams — jazz, pop, psychedelic trippiness, and danceable electronica — together with a host of spirited collaborators here into something I find difficult to classify. Along with the Dream Syndicate album I mentioned earlier, Dark Matter expands 2020's dreamscapes — and I needed the escape that these dreams provided
Highlights: "B.T.B.", "Only You," "2 Far Gone"
https://youtu.be/IZqfLBBmC78
https://youtu.be/GE5SmJ69OAA
https://youtu.be/CruvyNH8PGk
Ethan Gruska — EN GARDE
I get such strong Elliott Smith vibes from Ethan Gruska — not what I would expect from somebody I looked up simply because of the curious detail that this is the son of John Williams. (Yes — THAT John Williams.) And, in this record's finer moments, I hear the potential for melodies on a Paul Simon level.
And when I start reading, I find that, yes... Smith and Simon are two of the most common connections for critics listening to this record.
I love the how every song is richly layered without ever sounding overcrowded or demanding. It's a fizzy, groovy, light-hearted affair. Its flashiest track is the one with Phoebe Bridgers ("Enough for Now"), its strangest is "Haiku4U," its most sonically adventurous is an instrumental surprise package full of twitchy sound effects, and its most ambitious anthem may be "Event Horizon." But the quieter moments ("Drunk Dialing") are good too, and he saves the best for last — the irresistible "Teenage Drug."
Also worth mentioning: One of the most delightful album covers of the year!
Highlights: "Teenage Drug," "Event Horizon," "Enough for Now"
https://youtu.be/xBI-p78yr6I
https://youtu.be/r_T_H0aqJA8
https://youtu.be/_eNumVa7H1s
Andrew Bird — HARK!
File with the Over the Rhine Christmas albums under "Why do you hate Christmas?"
This is full of beautifully sad, gloriously melancholy originals, covers, and creative reinterpretations of classics — including an Andrew Bird special: "O Holy Night," the whistling version.
https://youtu.be/SkkP0u9wrlY
https://youtu.be/IbbsnJmcMw8
Midnight Oil — THE MAKARRATA PROJECT
It's one thing for a once-great band to resurface and jam like the good old days for a good cause.
It's another thing for them to sound like they never took a break; like they're still able play like they did at their peak; like the music is an event in itself, even before you attend to the What & Why of the lyrics.
Looking around at what has already been written, it seems the proper focus for a critic here is the *purpose* of this music — so let me sum up what I understand:
The First Nations National Constitutional Convention, calling for a "Makarrata Commission," prepared the Uluru Statement of the Heart. It gave new life to the old Aboriginal Australian term 'Makarrata,' which means "coming together to find peace and enact justice following a conflict" (See the AllMusic.com review — link in Comments below).
If that sounds like the kind of social-justice cause that bands of the late '80s like Midnight Oil would get excited about, you're right. Peter Garrett and company have always been a cause-driven band. They've always summoned their audiences to concerts and then to a living-out of the ideals elevated by and embodied by the music. This EP of new songs is directly focused on the plight of indigenous peoples of Australia and the case for reparations. Nobody's going to praise this album as a work of subtle poetry — this is activism, meant to educate, inspire, and fire people up for the sake of love and justice.
Okay, there are plenty of places to read in more detail about the history and hope at the heart of this project. But messages are messages and music is music. And I just want to say how great it is to hear Midnight Oil resurrected and as riveting as ever. I'm tempted to complain about the guest voices — but that's my weakness, my sentimentality, my nostalgia talking. It's better for me to say that they're doing what's important to them — thank God! — and if I respect them, I will pay attention to the What and the Why. They're bringing their own inspirations directly into their music, directly onto the stage to share their microphones, because it isn't about them. It never has been.
Still, it's no small thing to say that it's that music again — that sound. It doesn't matter how grand your cause is — if your music is mediocre, if it doesn't reinforce a sense of mystery and beauty and something grander than ourselves, then you're just a marketer making commercials and enhancing speeches with soundtracks.
Other than U2 and R.E.M., I can't think of another '80s band with a sound that energizes me in a way that makes me want to take to the streets and march for the dignity and the liberation of the oppressed. Garrett and company worked so hard in the '80s and '90s to build such righteous associations into their sound — they worked those guitars, those drums, those melodies into not only my consciousness but my *conscience.* I would say they're a band that has done things right and done them well. We need more like them. The education, the motivation, the moral conviction — these things have taken root in me because I fell in love a sound and stepped into it. That's where I started to care.
Highlights: "First Nation," "Gadigal Land"
https://youtu.be/wU77EBykmiY
https://youtu.be/wuWgE-u4keg
Sylvan Esso — FREE LOVE
Kelly Lee Owens — INNER SONG
Two albums I played a lot while driving just for the playfulness and energy of the beats and the sweetness of the vocals. Also, it takes guts to start your record with a surprising Radiohead cover, but Kelly Lee Owens pulls it off by making it something new.
https://youtu.be/2eruW1KHcxc
https://youtu.be/tF6RA5RJiC4
https://youtu.be/YXZyqrJP84U
https://youtu.be/59WxXL5nBDQ
Adrianne Lenker — SONGS AND INSTRUMENTALS
Taylor Swift — FOLKLORE
Norah Jones — PICK ME UP OFF THE FLOOR
Two gifted songwriters of strikingly different styles and — Adrianne Lenker and Taylor Swift — turned their pandemic isolation into a workshop. I prefer the Lenker project, particularly for the lengthy instrumentals that made for moody and inspiring writing soundtracks. Her lyrics are always challenging, deeply personal, and full of rich observations and poetic imagination. She sounds 30 going on 40 in her wisdom.
By contrast, Taylor Swift sounds 30 going on 21. I've never been a Swift fan — believe me, I've tried to catch the fever, album after album. (I might have been a fan if I'd heard her when I was 16, during my Amy-Grant/Belinda-Carlisle phase.) But her lyrics have never particularly inspired me. Her preoccupation with love affairs keeps her songs squarely in the zone of Freshman-in-College-Obsessed-With-Boys rather than someone exploring larger questions or the world beyond her own feelings. But I acknowledge her strengths when it comes to pop song-craft, and this mellower, more introspective, more narrative-driven project was the first record of hers I've enjoyed enough to play several times. (Oh, and if you're wondering — I listened to Evermore once and nothing really grabbed me. I knew I would do better to invest my time elsewhere.)
Now, Norah Jones, by contrast, may not be a detailed storyteller in the songs on Pick Me Up Off the Floor, but she sounds like someone who spends a lot more time thinking about the world beyond her own social calendar and romantic history. As a result, she's so much more interesting. Her voice is as enchanting as ever, and there's an improvisational character to these songs that makes listening feel like an intimate performance where you're right up close to the piano. Also, she has Brian Blade at the drums beside her. And the whole thing is warm, human, and fulfilling. A good end-of-the-day record.
https://youtu.be/Bs4MffKz9rk
https://youtu.be/ialzg6VNm_Y
https://youtu.be/osdoLjUNFnA
https://youtu.be/OuFnpmGwg5k
https://youtu.be/Hjv2mxOiej4
https://youtu.be/HO8yy1Nj2lY
Car Seat Headrest — Making a Door Less Open
I've had some difficulty warming to the sound of the indie-rock phenom Will Toledo who has risen quickly to a sort of cult-rock superstardom under the moniker Car Seat Headrest. His lyrics have leaned into a king of "performance angst" that I find off-putting, reminding me of certain undergrad pseudo-intellectual poets who have decided that they are the next Dylan; and his vocals, urgent as a young Elvis Costello's, strike me sometimes as a bit too strident.
But it's hard to deny the impressive confidence and the speed with which he turned out song-cycles with intimate narratives architecture and challenging poetry in those early albums.
Now, somewhat established in his sound and his style, he seems restless and eager to strike new veins of inspiration gold in the harder rock of the higher elevations. And he does in what I find to be his most engaging, interesting record yet (although it seems his audience may not feel the same way). I like the sonic, often-electronic adventurousness here.
Agnes Obel — Myopia
AMAARA — Heartspeak
This was a year of so much grief, suffered by so many people, in so much isolation. No wonder much of the music expressed unfathomable depths of sadness and struggle. And some of that music helped us find a sense of community in the darkness and a vocabulary for our trouble.
With Myopia, Agnes Obel made me imagine what might have happened if Enya had sung a soundtrack for Laura Palmer's scene in Twin Peaks: This is a deep dive into an "melancholy abyss" of dream imagery: a sea of willow trees, twisted ropes, and soft pillows.
With her EP Heartspeak, actress, filmmaker, and songwriter Kaelen Ohm (of the series Hit and Run) struggled through the aftermath of a divorce by sculpting cinematic, panoramic songs that made me want a full album. At Ghettoblaster, Tommy Johnson writes,
An organic collaboration with her longtime bandmate and engineer Brock Geiger from Reuben and the Dark, Heartspeak is the result of ten days of stream-of-consciousness songwriting, recording, and producing in Geiger’s spare bedroom studio. Writing all of the songs herself, Ohm sat at the piano or with a guitar first thing each morning until a song was found and the two would collaborate on production and instrumental performance as they spent the rest of the day laying down tracks.
Oscar-bait extravagance: Mank is a mess
If I didn't know that director David Fincher made this film on the foundation of his own father's unfinished screenplay, I would think he had made it with one thing in mind: Oscars. I'll accept that it may well be the younger Fincher's labor of love to realize Fincher Sr.'s passion project.
But it's hard to deny that Mank has, as its backbone, one of the most successful formulas for winning the votes of Academy members — voters who are typically middle-aged or older, white, ambitious enough to feel like their genius has been underestimated, and obsessed with "the magic of the movies."
Like 2014's Best Picture-winning Birdman, Mank plunges into an elaborate and busy show business environment to follow a misunderstood genius on zigzagging tour. Like Roma, it's personal and sprawling and full of shock-and-awe widescreen compositions. Like The Darkest Hour, it stars Gary Oldman in a showy performance. And like The Artist, it's a nostalgia-drenched celebration of a filmmaking era gone by. Going one giant step farther, it associates itself with what many consider to be the greatest film ever made — a film that, yes, was famously denied many of the Oscars it deserved.
And it's David Fincher's time, right? Many have recently heralded The Social Network as the best film of the last decade. And Fincher has build a strong reputation as an auteur of exemplary technical virtuosity. He's never won an Oscar, but with a track record that includes Seven, Panic Room, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and The Social Network, he's one of those rare filmmakers who has won the respect and even the adulation of the arthouse crowd and the Friday-night casual moviegoer.
And who knows? He might have pulled it off. The Academy likes nothing more than a big star-studded movie about Hollywood, especially if it has enough arthouse cred that they avoid embarrassing themselves.
If I sound like I'm sneering at Fincher, forgive me — I'm a fan. I saw the trailer for this and found myself hoping that this would be the movie that shows him graduating to a new level of artistry and ambition.
Well, you can't have everything. It's certainly his most ambitious film. But for this moviegoer, for all of the genius at work in it — not just Fincher himself, but the outstanding cast, the glorious production design, and the daring digital approximation of old-fashioned black-and-white film — the end result is less than the sum of its parts.
Too much information, not enough soul — Mank feels like a movie inspired by film history textbooks, and thus is likely to frustrate anyone who doesn't get excited about the idea of seeing figures like Louis B. Mayer or David O. Selznick brought to life onscreen. Even those who love that history may find the narrative less than compelling, and the manifestation of the film's protagonist, Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, strangely unconvincing. Textbooks may well be written about this film's techniques, allusions, and inspirations. Fincher is clearly having fun styling everything from the credits to the transitions after 1940s film conventions, packing his script and his images with trivia, and highlighting the contemporary relevance of his depiction of the era's political tensions — particularly the ways in which Republicans stoke the flames of cultural hysteria about socialism. Every scene offers up cleverness in everything from lighting to writing.
But I doubt that the results will inspire many love letters. Sure, the handsome, extravagant production design recreates the time and place with a radiance that will become an enchanting, immersive experience for those susceptible to nostalgia. But if you're not already enamored with this time and place, you're not likely to be vulnerable to the film's few charms. I struggled with the heavy-handedness and simplicity of the film's lament over Hollywood's famous disrespect for writers. I struggled with its characterization and performances, too. I was aggravated by it feeble nods of respect to its female characters, when it's clear that this a movie that loves its hyper-masculinity. And — for all of its visual extravagance — the movie never offers a single image that I'll remember it for.
In making the film's legendary focus, legendary Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, a man who is incapable of saying anything that wouldn't stand out as quotable in one of his screenplays, the Finchers exalt him as a sort of superhero of wit and eloquence that makes him seem inhuman and out of reach.
Gary Oldman is a great actor, no doubt about it, but he's in over-eager Oscar mode here. Try though he might to find a soul in this shambles, he always seems a little lost in the vastness of his context. His greatest strength — his eloquence — never catches fire because it's so caustic and relentless. There wasn't a moment in this film when I sensed a flesh-and-blood human being within the bluster, the drunken stumbling, the clever comebacks. Oldman just can't find a way to give Mank any magnetism. What's more, he's miscast: He's about 20 years older than the historical figure he's playing and he doesn't do anything to disguise that. Is the age difference deliberate? Are we to assume that what we're seeing is journey back in time from the protagonist's older self? If so, it isn't clear and it doesn't work.
(I had to agree, on the morning after seeing the film, when I discovered that Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver and writer-director of First Reformed, had posted on Facebook that Mank "fails the first obligation of telling the story of a flawed protagonist, to convince the viewer that this character merits two hours of their time." He's right.)
But with a cast like this, we should still find plenty to bedazzle us, yes?
What about Amanda Seyfried who, as starlet Marion Davies, is so radiant that she seems to be the source of her own key lighting? Much of the early buzz on this film was more about Seyfried than Oldman, and the role is clearly designed to spark Oscar talk. And, yes, she looks luminous — but she's not given nearly enough to do beyond that.
As if worried that the film will be discredited for a lack of diversity in its show-business fight club, Fincher carves out enough room for three more supporting roles for women. There's Lilly Collins as Mank's sexy young assistant (the fancy word is amanuensis) — and, alas, she's little more than eye candy. There's Tuppence Middleton in the thankless role of Mankiewicz's loyal but exasperated wife Sara (and it doesn't help that characters knowingly refer to her as "Poor Sara" — we might as well say, "Poor Tuppence.") And there's Monika Gossmann as Fräulein Frieda, Mank's German masseuse and caretaker. Middleton makes the strongest impression — she's as persuasively human as anyone in the film — but that's a credit to what this actress does with the weak-sauce dialogue she's been served.
If Seyfried wins awards, it'll send critics (well — me, anyway) into epic rants about the 2020 performances of heart and soul that were passed over for the sake of sentimentality, glamour, and a few slick line readings. The effect of her performance is primarily to remind us of what people mean when they say that "the camera loves" an actress. How, when it comes to recapturing imitating classic Hollywood leading ladies, is this performance more impressive than Scarlett Johansson's in Hail, Caesar!? (I've seen this and I've seen First Reformed and I still don't get why Seyfried's held in such high regard by arthouse filmmakers. Are they just suckers for her eyes? If it's eyes like headlights you want, cast Anya Taylor-Joy who is so much more interesting; there's a mischievous intelligence in her performances that I just don't get from Seyfried.)
Few of the actors make strong impressions either. It's as if their performances have been coached to death; they feel more like catalogues of mannerisms than human beings. The only one that conveys substantial power and intelligence is Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst. This is no surprise – it's a role that plays to Dance's strengths: He needs to look distinguished, regal, and slightly dangerous, and he needs to build a commanding presence through watchful silences so that when he does speak, everyone listens. Whether he's conveying complexity and wisdom with a subtle smirk or erupting erupts with a volcanic speech to close out the film's climactic Mank meltdown (saving a scene that runs too long and finds Oldman at his flamboyant worst), Dance is a joy to watch.
Charles Dance is William Randolph Hearst in Mank.
I'm so surprised to find myself so underwhelmed, because Mank is about questions I care about. Where does great art come from? Why is it so rare in an industry with such vast resources for creating it? Why are writers treated so poorly in this business?
Answering the first question, this movie succumbs to the easy drama of alcoholism, treating it like a magic potion that produces an uninterrupted flow of brilliance from the drinker's cynicism. We're to believe that Mank is a witness to the Republican party's mastery of cultural manipulation, and that he's converting his fury into a takedown of Hearst. But it ends up being like watching a superhero without any origin story: He can just do this, and we're left wondering how... or why we should care.
As a commentary on America's contemporary political polarization, Mank makes obvious connections with our current election-season madness. But it does so with lines that are so on-the-nose that I rolled my eyes more than once.
Tom Burke is Fincher's Orson Welles in Mank.
And when it comes to movies about the travails of artists who must suffer the humiliations of Hollywood's compromises, or about how writers often bring troubles upon themselves, give me the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink, which is always engaging to look at, to listen to, to laugh over, and to reflect upon. It never once lets its reverence for classics squelch its own inspirations. And when it comes to Welles-adjacent films, I'm far fonder of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, which may not make its mark as great cinema, but which more than makes up for it with the warmth of its heart. That little movie moves me. (What's more, Christian McKay makes a far more engaging and convincing Welles than The Souvenir's Tom Burke.)
I was disappointed by all of these aspects of the film. But what I came to Mank most excited to see was the panoramic dazzle that the trailer promised. Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt has fun alluding to and approximating many of Citizen Kane's famous photographic innovations (deep focus dioramas, etc.), and everything looks impressively glossy. But I don't come away thinking about any particularly memorable images — just compositions that read like studies of other images, scenes that stand as tributes to scenes created in the era that this movie worships.
Fincher's widescreen compositions are ambitious, shimmering, and comparable to some of the panoramic scenes in Cuaron's Roma.
All in all, the film comes off feeling like an adaptation of a 1,000-page Hollywood history text by a politically opinionated film-studies professor. Fincher Sr.'s screenplay is so busy educating us on the footnotes of Hollywood history and the dark side of show business that it never makes me care about people. Writers are often slighted when we talk about cinema. But this movie makes that point with so much writing I weary of the talk. And the pictures, while precise, lack poetry. If you're a Welles wonk, you'll probably have a grand time with this. If you want some suspension of disbelief or a story that will stick with you, look elsewhere.
As the credits rolled, I was surprised by how disappointed I felt. It wasn't that I'd had my heart set on greatness; David Fincher's films, always technically impressive, don't often move me. (I don't know that I've liked anything he's made more than his breakout hit, Seven.) What was it that so discouraged me?
I'm inclined to think that, above all, it's Oldman. There was a time when he was one of the most commanding big-screen presences, a character actor with an edge who left indelible impressions. Even if he only made a cameo, his name could sell me a movie ticket. I miss the fierceness of the Oldman who did wonders with one-scene appearances like that scene-stealingly wicked turn in True Romance, which remains one of the reasons that trashy Oliver Stone/Quentin Tarantino collaboration is so rewatchable. I miss the genius of his Foghorn Leghorn line delivery in Luc Besson's wacky The Fifth Element. I miss his effortless comic timing and his chemistry with Tim Roth in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. His best lead performances have been subtler and more mysterious: Above all, I love how his Smiley blazes with quiet intelligence and such a deep sense of loss in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's disappointing to see him devolve into a hammy over-actor who seems drawn to awards-bait roles. I hope somebody remembers what made him such a star in the first place and gives him a role that reconnects with his gift for surprising us.
Letterboxd Spotlight: Glen Grunau on contemplative cinema and Peter Jackson's war movie
It's often the first website I check in the morning. It's often the last one I look at before I cut the cord for the night.
Letterboxd — a flourishing online community of casual movie fans, professional film critics, and cinephiles of all stripes — has become my favorite place to go for cinema-specific insights, surprises, challenges, and laughs.
I've discovered so many great films there in the last decade, and I've made a lot of new friends too. I'm going to start sharing some of my favorites from time to time here, and I'll kick it off with one of my favorite Letterboxd voices.
Introducing... Glen Grunau!
I've been impressed with Glen Grunau's attention to — and appreciation of — poetic and profound films, films that ask viewers to rise to a challenge in order to come away with insights instead of just feelings.
Grunau is, in his own words, "a recent semi-retired mental health therapist" who is "appreciating the extra space in his life to watch movies." He tells me he has come to find that close attention to movies can become a "spiritual practice" — an idea I wholeheartedly embrace.
And now he has worked with friends from an Abbotsford community called SoulStream to compose a list of 100+ Contemplative Movies.
The SoulStream community has a mission "to nurture contemplative experience with Christ leading to inner freedom and loving service."
It's a remarkable, dynamic list full of films that I love and others I look forward to discovering.
What is a "contemplative film"?
Grunau gives us a variety of ways to explore that question. He finds it "important to acknowledge here that no matter how we may define a contemplative film, it is ultimately the posture of the viewer that will result in a contemplative movie encounter. Yet it also seems that there are some films that more readily support a contemplative viewing experience than others."
He offers detailed descriptions of four criteria from Mubi: plotlessness, wordlessness, slowness, and alienation.
Uh-oh. Not the first four words that spring to your mind when you're scrolling for something to watch?
Look closer. Grunau's reflections here strike me as a path to finding wisdom through art. These are the kinds of challenges that will distinguish rich, rewarding experiences at the movies from the comforts of the easy and familiar.
He concludes with this: "We invite you into a relationship with contemplative cinema. Try out some of these films. Alone or with others. And if you happen to experience one of these films in a particularly transformative way, reach out and tell someone."
You can see for yourself why I enjoy Grunau's notes on movies at Letterboxd by reading this perspective (republished with Grunau's permission) on Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old that he posted on November 11.
Grunau on They Shall Not Grow Old:
What these oral historians were able to capture from WWI veterans to accompany the actual video footage of this great war was impressive. The full range of opinions and recollections of this war were represented.
Some waxed eloquent as they nostalgically recalled the bravado and the glory of enlisting at age 15 and 16 and then recalling “quiet” days on the battlefield as if they were enjoying a mere campout with their buddies.
Others coloured their memories with black humour of dead and wounded bodies, one recalling putting a pipe in the mouth of a wounded German soldier with internal organs hanging out, before shooting him dead.
But in the final analysis, the general consensus was that there seemed to be no clear benefit to a futile war in which 1 million British Empire soldiers had been killed.
One important element that seemed mostly missing from this encapsulation of war was the immense toll of mental trauma that must surely have been suffered by the hundreds of thousands of survivors on both sides of this war. Perhaps a representation of an era when men needed to show a brave face rather than confess any emotional vulnerability.
This morning as we watched the Canada Remembrance Day services in Ottawa, I was touched by the army chaplain as he called all of us to remember those soldiers who had lost all hope and could not find a way through their despair, ultimately taking their own lives. This is what war does to men.
On our national news this evening, veteran Dan Taylor was interviewed. His father fought in WWII and his grandfather was killed in WWI. When asked what he most remembered on this national memorial day, this was his tearful response:
The tears. Thousands of tears. In my lifetime, standing with the troops and seeing civilians crying, soldiers crying, just like I’m doing. It’s too emotional!
Perhaps if we fully face into the dehumanizing, emotionally devastating impact of war on those whom our shortsighted and oh so “bold” and “courageous” politicians send off to die on the battlefields, we might just do a little more caring . . . and possibly avoid such devastating wars in the future.
Today I honour my Uncle Henry, a Canadian soldier who was killed on the battlefield in WWII, tragically as a victim of “friendly” fire.
Babette's Feast: The Leftovers!
Whether you are finishing up your Thanksgiving leftovers (if you are so blessed), or if you have been deprived of a feast this year, I am grateful to report that Alissa Wilkinson and Sam Thielman, hosts of a podcast not-so-seriously titled Young Adult Movie Ministry, are inviting you to a "feast" of a conversation about the movie Babette's Feast.
I had the privilege of listening to them, learning from them, and offering some thoughts of my own in this feast-focused podcast episode.
Highlights? Why, yes — I'll share a few:
1) Listening to Thielman bravely soldier on with his commentary while somebody in the background (of his studio, or Alissa's?) leans on their car horn repeatedly.
2) Listening to Wilkinson testify about discovering the secret to her own podcast-equipment technical difficulties.
3) Hearing Thielman talk about his first experience of Jurassic Park.
4) Hearing Wilkinson talk about her first experience of Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy.
5) Getting to share stories about what happened in the English Literature class my senior year of high school.
6) Hearing Wilkinson say with surprise "This is probably the most Christian episode we've ever recorded!"
I am grateful that she and Sam have set aside time for this regular conversation of wit and wisdom. It was such a blessing to experience it with them.
And now, it's free for you to enjoy!
Wolfwalkers and the Rise of Cartoon Saloon — a conversation with Dr. Lindsay Marshall
In September, I tuned in to a special Toronto International Film Festival streaming premiere of Wolfwalkers, the long-awaited animated feature from Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, and the Cartoon Saloon team that brought us The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea. It did not disappoint.
Then, I called up my friend Dr. Lindsay Marshall to talk with her about the film. (She had caught the streaming premiere as well.) Marshall is currently the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her expertise on indigenous peoples, history education, and environmental history uniquely qualifies her to appreciate the wisdom and art in this film.
Anticipating that some of you might want to listen in, I recorded that discussion.
And now, here it is, preceded by my own first-impressions review of the film. (Note: The conversation includes spoilers.)
Loma's "Don't Shy Away" asks us to delve and discover
"...Don’t Shy Away is an invitation. It honors the sacred space of uncertainty, acknowledging lingering darkness while trusting in the possibility that brighter, more brilliant worlds lie within reach." — Allison Hussey, Pitchfork
If you've ever walked alongside someone suffering from terminal cancer, and struggled to make meaning as the disease advanced, you have some sense of what the last five years have often felt like for me and for many other Americans. As toxic evils have erupted from subterranean reservoirs and spread in broad daylight — Christian Nationalism and white supremacy, for starters — corrupting and consuming so much that was vital and beautiful and life-giving, and as a pandemic has swept around the world like an Old Testament plague... times have become hard for just about everyone.
And times have become difficult in very particular ways for artists. Not worse, mind you — I don't mean to compare their challenges to those suffering direct hostility or ventilator-deathbed crises. I just mean that I'm seeing so many creative visionaries struggle to find their muses, as if they've been separated by social distancing. Creativity flourishes when artists can lose themselves in unselfconscious imagining. And dark times unsettle us, upset us, and make possibilities seem dim and distant. It's difficult to play. It's difficult to experiment, take risks, ask "What if?" — especially when you checking the skies, checking the headlines, checking your pulse. These days, a simple glance at my phone can drive me from surges of fear to feelings of helplessness, from helplessness to rage, from rage to grief, and, on a good day, from grief to prayers of lament and appeals for help... where I should have started in the first place.
As a writer, I should know that the dark times, though they inspire no feelings of gratitude, can become material. These days and nights can be the hard winters that prepare us to bloom in some future season. And those who have been driven underground, or who have withdrawn into themselves, might redeem the time by seek veins of gold there. As Sam Phillips sang, "When you're down / ... you find out what's down there."
But that doesn't mean it's easy — especially in the thick of things.
And yet, a spirit of interior excavation and opportunity is alive in the mind of lyricist Emily Cross and her bandmates Dan Duszynski and Jonathan Meiburg (of Shearwater) on their second album as the band Loma. And perhaps that's why this record — Don't Shy Away — is speaking so deeply to me.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps it's just that the sounds on this record are enthralling me with a rare power, sounds that remind me of records that shaped my imagination and worked their way into threads of my DNA during my formative years as a writer. I'm recalling symphonic art-rock records like Peter Gabriel's So and Us and Kate Bush's Hounds of Love and The Sensual World. Those are records that seem to rise up from soulful collaborations between human visionaries and a holy spirit, their poetry casting nets made of images around ideas that are otherwise impossible to harness. Don't Shy Away is dazzling me in a way no sequence of songs has for years, reminding me just how deeply I can fall in love with the full-album experience from a band at the peak of their powers.
Cross's softly haunting vocals — which remind me at times of Luluc's Zoë Randell, at times of Cat Power, at times of Cowboy Junkies' Margot Timmins — offer up her lyrics in a spirit of suggestion rather than insistence. And the images hum with thematic synergy, always moving half in mystery and half in wisdom, bringing something beautiful and true close but just out of reach so that I'm always reaching, always trying to capture them in words and falling just short.
Don't Shy Away is a celebration of redemption and discovery through imagination, but it isn't shiny or happy — it's a wilderness of surging and intertwining sounds, riven with scars, heavy with hardship, and yet flaring with unexpected blooms and colors. The hope is all the more inspiring for the darkness against which it glimmers. I emerge from every listen feeling grateful, as if I've learned to bring back precious stones from dangerous depths: diamonds of beauty and insight.
The album opens with a hushed testimony of finding hope in worlds within:
Stuck beneath the rock
I begin to see the beauty in it
I begin to see the hardness
And the function of it
That pressure, that obstruction becomes a canvas on which imagine possibilities: "I draw some little pictures on it / They are my world."
https://youtu.be/sCqHV6Vq1vQ
And then, in "Ocotillo," as if rising from tangled blankets and dark dreams, as if she has struck the rock and found its hidden reservoir, the singer blooms with strength and the sounds come blazing into color. That's appropriate, considering the song's namesake: a cactus-like plant that erupts with vivid red flowers in the desert. In the song, this plant is named alongside creosote, that dark and toxic substance that can be a fertile foundation. There is a sense of new life growing in the presence of suffering, life that will eventually tear free and tumble with the wind. And the song tumbles to a glorious finale, recalling Radiohead's "National Anthem," a riotous march of synths, guitars, bass, and horns.
https://youtu.be/oq5X2G5qKQI
In "Half Silences" — probably the closest thing to a single, with a strong Shearwater vibe (I'm guessing it's Meiburg's melody) — the singer turns against the flow of the culture of self-interest, self-promotion, and self-absorption, to discover reservoirs of life, creativity, and faith in paths of humility and unselfconsciousness:
When I remove myself
From the picture
When I reduce myself...
I generate light
Generate heat
Generate breathing
I forget myself
Forget my life
Remember believing
I never get used to your tongue...
https://youtu.be/_UwsP3ioiks
In "Elliptical Days," which spices up the sounds of Peter Gabriel's "The Rhythm of the Heat," Cross appeals to something — a creative force, an emotion, a vision — wanting to break free: "I hear you scratching all night / What do you need?" Then, in an echo of Leonard Cohen's assurance that our wounds and cavities are "how the light gets in," she sings of "Light gathering / fills the open places / bright batteries ... / in the open spaces." It reminds me of one of my favorite Suzanne Vega songs, "Rusted Pipe," which is about a resurrection of creativity: "Somewhere deep within / hear the creak that lets the tale begin...."
https://youtu.be/JkDXIcpQs2Q
"Thorn" turns an incidental, half-whispered clip from one of Cook's podcast monologues — something about a rose and a thorn — into a haunting choral chant that picks up where last album's transcendent closing track "Black Willow" left off. (And by the way, that's the song that enchanted the great Brian Eno and led to his collaboration on this record's similarly haunting final track: "Homing.")
https://youtu.be/PoMoo7nWXFQ
And in "Breaking Waves Like a Stone," another Peter Gabriel-esque synthesizer riff that strobes its way into a polyrhythmic anthem, Cross offers more meditations on the not-yet-known:
In a possible sound
In a possible time
There is work to be done
There is drag in the line....
She sounds like she might be reading David Lynch's book on creative inspiration: Catching the Big Fish. (And by the way, that bass line is the work of Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, another band whose work may come to mind as you play this record again and again.)
https://youtu.be/gY-DfCFR7Fo
"Blue Rainbow" runs on an insistent low-note pulse like a Christopher Nolan film score wearing slippers. It stalks in and out of dissonance, while Cook leads us into ever more abstract and surreal territory:
I feel a pulse, back of my eyes
Blue rainbow
I went down catacombs
I thought it wasn't possible....
https://youtu.be/OlO0cleZq-g
Cross isn't kidding around in her earnest hope of finding beauty in dark places, as music journalist Mark Newton found when interviewing her for Daily Progress:
“I’ve always been interested and fascinated by death,” she said, explaining she isn’t driven by personal tragedy but rather a desire to make the dying process “as beautiful as birth is.”
She operates a nonmedical practice, Steady Waves End of Life Services — named for a Cross Record song — in Austin, where she helps families work their way through their emotions and the paperwork associated with death. She also tries to engage younger people. One way is through a “living funeral,” where each participant “dies,” is memorialized and then “comes back to life.”
Whatever you make of these endeavors (I tend to be skeptical of any celebration of death as a blessing), you will find it hard to deny that Cross's musical investigations of dark places are revealing new rays of light. This is not one of those bands risking danger for the sake of swagger or cool, nor delving into darkness for darkness's sake. These are earnest and ambitious quests to affirm that there is no abyss into which we can fall that we cannot find hope in the depths, running like subterranean rivers, ready to nourish new seeds.
I have no idea whether Cross has studied St. John of Chrysostom's The Dark Night of the Soul, but I haven't heard a record that sounds to me so much like a work of deep prayer in a long time — that kind of prayer we pray when we come to the end of our vocabulary and our religion and find a Holy Spirit waiting for us there, praying for us, praying in us, "with groanings too deep for words." By inviting us into communion in difficult places, Cross is finding sounds that I find heartening, increasing my sense of what is possible even now, while storms go on raging.
https://youtu.be/zoxKsSubtpk
November 7, 2020: Relief, Elation, and Gratitude
https://youtu.be/j8no814jH2U
It's Saturday, November 7, 2020.
And, as The Innocence Mission song goes, "I have not seen this day before."
I am standing above Waterfront Park in Edmonds, Washington, and the natural world seems to be feeling the same elation that I'm feeling.
I feel such gratitude, knowing that I have so much good company in the world — people who have endured the last few years with me, and spoken up for love, compassion, freedom, and justice. My own safety and security come largely due things beyond my control — advantages that I was born with due to the color of my skin. So I have no right to complain about anything that has been happening to me directly. But I have been heart-sickened by the rising hostility in this country toward more vulnerable populations around me. I am grieving over the betrayals of the Gospel I have seen among professing Christians who have given their support to compulsive liars, misogynists, and racists whose political agendas harm the poor, the sick, immigrants, refugees, and people whose skin is a different color from mine.
These are dark times, and many hardships lie ahead — consequences for the past few years of devastating and disgraceful behavior on the part of those entrusted with leadership in this nation.
But it is good to know that so many Americans recognized the damage being done, rejected the lies and the hatred that were a betrayal of America's ideals (many of which are inspired by the Gospel). It is good to see so many fighting for a future in which we can seek liberty and justice for all people — no matter their financial status, their language, their color, their gender, their sexual orientation, their country of origin, or their religion.
Every day, America can move toward that Gospel-inspired vision or away from it. We've been hurtling in the opposite direction for a while now. By distorting Christianity into Christian Nationalism, Americans have advertised a counterfeit Jesus, and made the Gospel seem toxic to many who need the comfort and hope Jesus offers. It feels good to feel that some have gained enough of a political advantage — by God's grace — to apply the brakes, slow our rapid descent into fascism and totalitarianism, prepare to turn the wheel, and chart a course for better things.
May God bless those efforts — not for my good, but for the good of my neighbors in need.
I post this as the first video in a new series of more personal posts at my website — LookingCloser.org — in hopes of expanding the range of subjects I explore there. I hope you've enjoyed the video at the top of this post — this glimpse of the glory that played out in front of me at the close of this beautiful day.
Four years ago this week, my wife Anne was rushed into five-and-a-half hours of emergency brain surgery and neurosurgeons — let's be clear, I'm talking about healthcare workers and scientists, some of the good Americans who have been consistently slandered by our outgoing President — saved her life by the grace of God.
This morning, Anne and I opened a bottle of champagne that we were given four years ago, soon after she arrived back home.
Today feels a little like the moment the neurosurgeon came to find me in the hospital lobby and told me that the surgery was successful and that Anne was alive and well. We have suffered many difficult days since then due to lingering effects of the brain tumor and the surgery. And more hard days lie ahead for many years to come. But she is alive and well.
So, yes... it seemed right to open that bottle this morning when we heard the good news.
And as we read more and more reactions to the conclusion of the 2020 election, I kept thinking of this moment in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. I know I wasn't alone in that.
https://youtu.be/FyzE9thQIPo
Grace and peace,
Jeffrey Overstreet
P.S.
Now I'm going to take part in that longstanding American tradition that celebrates all things good and true. I'm going to shop the the Barnes & Noble 50% Criterion Collection sale.
And by the way... if you want to hear some inspiring ideas, here are some great ones.
https://youtu.be/JdJ4x3lkdl4
Yes God Yes (2020)
[This post was originally titled "Caution: Raunchy Christian high school sex comedy may cause flashbacks!"]
I found Yes God Yes, a raunchy but sincere little indie comedy from writer-director Karen Maine (Obvious Child), streaming on Kanopy, and it was just the kind of mildly amusing distraction I needed to take my mind off of this grueling week of election results.
Yes God Yes follows the angst-addled journey of Alice (Natalia "Stranger Things" Dyer), a young Catholic high school student, from her first awkward and unexpected sexual awakening (during an encounter with internet porn) into a labyrinth of temptations, fantasies, fraught relationships, obscene rumors, humiliations, and — worst of all — righteous reprimands from condescending Christian adults. Unfortunately for moviegoers, once Alice is all hot and bothered by her impulses and her typical teenage relationship issues, it's easy to predict what she'll discover along the way that she can play as her trump card in the final showdown with her tormentor. Worse, it arrives in time at a disappointingly preachy little conclusion, one that feels far too simplistic for the questions raised by the film.
But I'll leave the details for you to discover.
Like Brian Dannelly's Saved! — a much, much funnier comedy similarly set in a Christian high school context of teenage hormones and horrors — Yes God Yes settles for taking very, very easy shots at private Christian schools and Jesus camps. I'm not saying either film is inaccurate in their jabs; I'm all too familiar with the ways in which Christian teens learn to lace their boasts and their cruelty with churchgoer vocabulary — I used to be a pro at that very thing. And I recognize these scenes as fun-house-mirror reflections of the world I grew up in from first grade through high school. But I can't quite tell, due to the film's fierce focus on religious legalism, if Maine has a personal axe to grind with Christians, or if this portrayal of Christian community is based solely on other media exaggerations, two steps removed from the real thing. It all feels a little too easy, like shooting Jesus-fish in a barrel.
Still, there are moments along the way when the movie warms with wisdom — wisdom that (like the wisdom in Saved!) could have been found in almost any other context of adolescence. It's not as much about cultural Catholicism as it thinks it is. This is a movie that I think most teens would find very "relatable" (to use a word very much in vogue with young adults). After all, who hasn't struggled through adolescence with problems of peer pressure and hormones? Who hasn't had to deal with condescending adults who turn out to be either ignorant, hypocritical, or both? On some level, Yes God Yes is also about the ways in which small communities, responding to fears about things they don't understand, establish dehumanizing methods of control. Change the context, change the culture, change the vocabulary, and you get almost the same movie.
Fortunately, Yes God Yes doesn't throw the Baby Jesus out with the Bathwater of Hypocrisy. I kept expecting an all-out condemnation of religion. But instead, Alice, like the protagonist of Saved!, discovers a meaningful distinction between the behaviors of "believers" in her evangelical bubble and the actual teachings of Jesus. But, then again, the movie isn't brave enough to take faith very seriously either, reducing Jesus (like Saved! does) to just another Nice Guy who recommends we all, I don't know... respect each other and stuff.
Oh well.
For what it's worth, while I cringe and laugh and nod at so many embarrassing evangelical-culture idiosyncrasies in this film, I'm left looking in vain for any awareness that earnest and rewarding explorations of faith also take place in these contexts. I experienced as much of the latter as the former during my K–12 Christian school journey in the '80s.
Sure, there was plenty of the cheap evangelical lingo I recognize in this film being thrown around those hallways. We had our "testimony" times in which high emotion was a sort of currency, a mark of authenticity. I felt the pressure to manufacture dramatic stories of sin and salvation to earn my Christian credibility points, just as Alice does here. Perhaps the film's most startlingly realistic flourish comes when the Jesus campers form a circle and their pastor introduces them to Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes," asking them to imagine that the eyes belong to God. Ouch, that hits a bit too close to home!
And yes, I remember it all too well: My classmates and I suffered the typical bewilderment of hormones, first dates, first kisses, rumors, gossip, and struggles to keep up with the "urban dictionary" of sex. Like Alice, I suffered through plenty of maddeningly uncomfortable situations in which adults who were anxious and uncertain about sexuality tried wrestling the forces of eros down into some hilariously clinical and pragmatic ceremony. While we were never told that an indiscretion would "send us to hell for all eternity" — I think that's the film's most laughable exaggeration here — we were certainly conditioned to expect nothing less than lifelong shame if we gave into our impulses before marriage.
Scared out of my wits by what I was feeling, I remember seeking out the counsel of a Baptist minister (my first girlfriend's father, actually), to ask for guidance on restraining sexual impulses. He looked at me gruffly and ended the conversation abruptly: "Adolescence. I survived it. You'll survive it. Everybody does." And that was that.
By the grace of God, the fraught territory of what the film calls "figuring out our shit" eventually became little more than amusing footnotes in a personal history, one with far more meaningful narratives playing out. The meaningful relationships I found among Christian school classmates and my extraordinary teachers deepened, and many continue for me more than 30 years later. Those friendships were forged in experiences of epiphany, belief, and wonder that planted the seeds for a fearless faith — the kind powerfully recommended by, you know, the actual Bible.
And speaking of The Bible, the greatest gift that my Christian high school teachers gave me was unconventionally thoughtful and sophisticated training in what the Bible is and how to read it. You won't see any curiosity in this film about such matters. But while so many professing Christians misguidedly treat the Christian Scriptures as some kind of Textbook or Law from which they can cherry-pick convenient verses that enable them to judge and control people who discomfort them — a practice Jesus strictly forbids — I was taught to read the Bible with close attention to context, to the genre of each passage, to the spirit of the teaching instead of the letter of the law. And so, the Bible remains for me a glorious revelation of storytelling, history, eyewitness testimony, letters, psychedelic visions, and poetry (erotic and otherwise). It's a collection of texts so deeply and artfully assembled around its primary revelation — the life and teachings of Jesus — that I rarely ever open it without being blessed. I got that from a private Christian school. And I'm so grateful for it.
It'd be interesting to see a movie that doesn't assume we have to escape religion in order to find meaningful lives — or even meaningful sex lives. Yes God Yes, like so many films that dismiss Christianity as a culture for shallow and suffering hypocrites, suggests that the enlightened will eventually escape religiosity into into the relief of worldly freedoms (represented by a lesbian motorcyclist with war stories about Catholicism, of course). By my lights, Alice is just letting her conscience be her guide in escaping a distortion of Christian community and arriving at something closer to true Christian freedom. I can hear one of my more legalistic teachers now: "What would Jesus think if he found you watching this movie?" And I know how I would answer her: I think Jesus would laugh in loving recognition at the ways human beings find their way, fumbling — as Sarah McLachlan would say — towards ecstasy.