Local Natives, the mesmerizing, harmonizing, Los Angeles-based four-piece, has successfully avoided the sophomore slump with the release, last week, of its second album, Hummingbird. It follows their bright and bouncy 2010 debut Gorilla Manor, which landed them tours with the likes of Arcade Fire and The National. In fact, The National's Aaron Dressner was so enamored with Local Natives that he decided to help them produceHummingbird.
The night after the album's release, a sold-out crowd greeted Local Natives at Oakland's 2,800-seat Fox Theater. "This is a big night for us," vocalist/guitarist Taylor Rice said from the stage. "Our second record came out yesterday. This is the first time we've played Oakland. And this is the biggest show we've ever played." He was visibly humbled by the size and reaction of the audience.
It's refreshing to see a zombie movie that isn't political in nature. Too often it seems as if every zombie (or zombie-ish) movie is a critique of consumer culture, or the War in Iraq, or widespread racism, or the federal government, or something else important.
Warm Bodies—based on this 2011 novel by Isaac Marion—is a zombie movie packed with synth-pop and classic rock that focuses on a forbidden love between a walking-dead male called "R" and a girl named Julie. (Get it???) The film takes place in a post-zombie-apocalypse America in which the humans hunker down in their fortress and the undead prowl the deserted cityscapes. "R" is a good-natured zombie who, as we learn through his voiceover narration, is always morally "conflicted" about his need to feed on human flesh and brains. After he meets Julie (during a bloodbath in an abandoned building during which "R" devours Julie's current boyfriend), they soon start a romance that sets off a chain reaction that alters the fate of the post-apocalyptic world forever.
Remember all the excitement when the San Francisco 49ers became the first NFL team to make an "It Gets Better" video in support of bullied LGBT teens? Now the Niners are the first NFL team to have its "It Gets Better" video pulled from Dan Savage's site.
What brought this on: In the same week that 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver said at Super Bowl media day that he "don't do the gays, man," and that gay players wouldn't be welcomed in the locker room following news reports that effectively outed former Niners offensive lineman Kwame Harris, two more San Francisco players, Ahmad Brooks and Isaac Sopoaga, then denied any involvement with making the "It Gets Better" video—even after a reporter showed them the clip on an iPhone.
The 49ers issued a statement Wednesday separating the organization from Culliver's comments. He apologized—but not before offending even more people by riffing on menstrual cycles in a since-deleted tweet. Some teammates and coaches have voiced their concerns; Seattle Seahawks punter Jon Ryan thinks the NFL should suspend Culliver.
Anyway, if you're still on the fence about Super Bowl XLVII, here's a helpful reminder: Brendon Ayanbadejo plays for the Ravens.
After six years on the air, Tina Fey's beloved NBC comedy is ending its run with an hourlong series finale. The series, which is set behind the scenes at an Saturday Night Live-like sketch comedy show, earned a devoted fanbase with its cultural satire and rapid-fire wit. 30 Rock premiered on NBC in 2006, just as the network was launching Aaron Sorkin's highly anticipated drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip—another series revolving around a fictional sketch comedy program. Strangely enough, it was Sorkin's hugely politicalStudio 60 that tanked, while Fey's goofier series became the award-winning critical hit. (As a sidenote, it's worth remembering that when Tina Fey first pitched the show, her original idea was basically the same premise behind Sorkin's latest series, The Newsroom.)
Matthew Rhys, left, and Keri Russell.Courtesy of FX
"The American people have elected a madman as their president," a softly bearded Russian general says to KGB officer "Elizabeth Jennings" (played by a terrific Keri Russell), in obvious reference to TheGipper. The general continues: "He makes no secret of his desire to destroy us. Our war is not so cold anymore...Our enemy is strong and capable. We must meet the challenge." The year is 1981, the Reagan era has dawned, and communist sleeper agents are apparently running around Washington, raising their families and seducing Justice Department officials.
The Americans, a new series premiering tonight at 10 p.m. ET on FX, focuses on Elizabeth and her husband and partner-in-counterintelligence-crime Phillip (Matthew Rhys, the "Welshman who plays a Russian playing an American"). Their marriage was arranged by the KGB during the Khrushchev era. The two live in an upper-middle-class neighborhood with a young daughter and son, both of whom are blissfully ignorant to mommy and daddy's real allegiances. For years, the duo has hidden in plain sight, running a small travel agency, while fulfilling their mission to subvert the United States government and funnel valuable information back to the Kremlin. Elizabeth is the true believer of the household: "I would go to jail, I would die, I would give up everything before I would betray my country," she shouts. Phillip is the non-ideologue who is far more interested in his family than in ensuring Soviet global domination: "America's not so bad. We've been here a long time; what's so bad about it, you know? The electricity works all the time, the food's pretty great, the closet space..."
This fiercely honest tribute to Ed Koch, the hard-nosed and exuberant figure who ruled New York City from 1978 to 1989, briskly strings together interviews with the late former mayor, grainy archival footage, harshly critical testimony from Koch's contemporaries, and a rollicking classic-rock soundtrack. The result is a documentary that intrigues and intoxicates like a David Mamet stage play.
The finest moments in the film, which premieres Friday in New York City, focus on Koch's rise to power in the late '70s, when the Big Apple was a powder-keg metropolis engulfed in financial disarray and a crime wave. Koch—a closeted homosexual and iconoclastic liberal—is depicted as the consummate political shark, siphoning off key constituencies during a gang-fight-like mayoral election in 1977. Neil Barsky, a former hedge fund manager and economic reporter for the Wall Street Journal, directs with a gritty cinematic zeal.
Ed Koch spent his final days as he always was: charmingly megalomaniacal. "This belongs to me…Thank you, God," Koch, 88, says as he reminisces about his tenure as chief of the Empire City—where he pissed off scores of feminists, Jews, African Americans, and hardened lefties alike. Overall,Koch is a riveting portrait of a towering and polarizing man.
It's also great fun, so watch it with plenty of buttered popcorn. Trailer here:
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The Kronos Quartet recently played its first concert of 2013, a year that marks the group's 40th anniversary, at the Napa Valley Opera House. The night's program by this famously genre-stretching, culture-swapping string quartet pushed the boundaries of traditional and experimental music and so blew me away that I was compelled to reach out to founder David Harrington to chat about the group's origins, cross-cultural mashups, and music as activism.
Mother Jones: With the work that you do, playing new music from some unheard composers and others that are constantly innovating, I've sort of come to think of Kronos Quartet as musical activists. What do you think about that?
David Harrington: I feel honored to be called an activist. It stems from the work that I want to do and the function of being a group in our time and in our culture. To me the two violins, a viola, and a cello create an almost infinitely moldable sound. As a force in society it can tackle all sorts of issues. The other night you heard music from Syria, India, Serbia, and a lot of places that you wouldn't normally think of string quartet music necessarily coming from. I've spent my entire 39-plus years at Kronos trying to extend the reach of music and bring elements into the work that maybe hadn't been considered before.
From Ben Harper with Charlie Musselwhite's Get Up!
STAX/CONCORD MUSIC GROUP
Liner notes: All hell breaks loose on this raucous track as crashing drums, Musselwhite's blistering harmonica, and Harper's furious vocals forecast impending disaster.
Behind the music: Versatile California singer-songwriter Harper won a Grammy for his 2004 collaboration with the gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama. Born in Mississippi, Musselwhite has long been a leading exponent of the driving blues style pioneered by Little Walter, the only harmonica player ever inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Check it out if you like: Bands such as the Black Keys, North Mississippi Allstars, and Alabama Shakes—all experts at updating primal sounds.
This review originally appeared in our January/February issue of Mother Jones.
Chaz Bundick, the improbably named 26-year-old behind the impeccably titled project Toro y Moi (Spanish and French for "Bull and Me"), built his reputation on his contributions to the genre known, unfortunately but evocatively, as chillwave: slow, gauzy music anchored by simple beats and looped samples. Yet he's always leaned towards more straightforward funk and pop in songs such as "New Beat," from his second album, Underneath the Pine. On his new release, Toro y Moi takes those once-peripheral elements and puts them front and center.
"Harm In Change," the opening track from Anything in Return, is at once catchy and seductive: "Don't let me hold you down/We could be there now," Bundick sings, in what seems like a reference to his recent move from his native South Carolina to California, where his girlfriend goes to grad school. "So Many Details" is a beautifully downtempo, sensuously melancholy song with shades of the Weeknd—though Bundick's voice is a bit too thin to pull it off, and the instrumentals get overproduced and murky towards the end.
Liner notes: Is it old-school progressive rock or newfangled art-pop? This head-spinning epic neatly splits the difference, wrapping a cool female voice in fractured noise to riveting effect.
Behind the music: The Brooklyn-based Aron Sanchez and Arone Dyer often play musical instruments of their own devising, among them a modified buke (baritone ukulele) and the gase (a hybrid of guitar and bass).
Check it out if you like: Engaging musical innovators such as tUnE-yArDs, Dirty Projectors, and St. Vincent.
This review originally appeared in our January/February issue of Mother Jones.
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