I'd Love to Turn You On #246: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2005)

It’s 2005: the Internet is skyrocketing, New Orleans is underwater, and the War On Terror is in full swing. America the Cultured is in a cultural ditch: Destiny’s Child is breaking up, Flavor Of Love is in pre-production, and in his first televised bed-shitting, Kanye alleges that the POTUS is a racist. On the other side of the pop spectrum, Rock’n’Roll has gone full-on Sad-Boi™ and seems to have completely sold itself to corporate media. Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco are being crammed down the throat of nearly every emotional pre-teen and baggy-eyed Clear Channel jockey out there, driving them both to suicide. Between looming threats of another 9/11 and another forced serving of “I CHIME IN,” it was a scary time to be a young American – yet this national state of paranoia could never be enough to faze socially awkward college kids with dial-up connections. A smart, college-educated Brooklyn hipster like Alec Ounsworth, for example, is far too busy playing and promoting his band’s debut, chock full of weird guitar songs about young love and “…Young Blood” to Manhattan crowds that are growing larger and more prestigious by the night. (Imagine singing, “You look like David Bowie”, directly to the David Bowie....)

Originally released in June 2005, the self-titled debut from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sounds as chameleonic as it does disciplined, and its distinctly “indie” lore remains intact to this day. Following exceptionally positive online buzz and culminating with a glowing review from an increasingly influential webzine called Pitchfork Media, demand for the album became so large that the band had to reprint and reissue the disc altogether, selling over 40,000 copies on their own by the end of September. They signed a deal with UK indie Wichita Records in October only as a means to get the physical disc across the pond. What started as a way for Ounsworth to channel his love of quirky 70’s/80’s new wave and 90’s alternative morphed into one of the Internet’s first overwhelming musical sensations – something reveled by both no-name bloggers and heavy-hitting industry titans (like Bowie and David Byrne who were both spotted at the band’s Manhattan shows).

In other words, freedom from the influence of label heads and industry execs allowed CYHSY total creative freedom, and this quality is immediately evident to the listener. The album’s off-kilter, unorthodox feel can be heard straight away in the eponymous opening track. On “Clap Your Hands!” a carnival Wurlitzer lays the red-paisley carpet for Ounsworth, the madcap master of ceremonies whose lyrics throughout the album are as nonsensical ("betray white water, delay dark forms") as they are woke ("Should I trust all the rust that's on TV/I guess with some distaste I disagree"). The record’s lyrical pinnacle is born on the powerful, Dylan-esque “Details Of The War”; here Ounsworth’s warbled “mezzo-tenor” croons “Nakedness, a flying lesson/Tattered dress, sunburned chest/You will pay for your excessive charm.”

After a point, it becomes futile to trace the sonic influence of CYHSY, as any two record connoisseurs will ultimately come up with different sources. While Ounsworth’s vocals do draw obvious comparisons to Byrne, and nods to Berlin-era Bowie are scattered throughout the otherwise sparse arrangements, the record also qualifies as an indie/alternative funhouse. Perhaps the most agreeable influence is that of Frank Black, whose Pixie-dust is sprinkled on the heavier, guitar-oriented tracks (“Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away,” “In This Home On Ice”), although another listener could easily make an argument for Pavement, or even Yo La Tengo at their loudest. The sonic sources become more ambiguous as the group channels everything from Stereolab (the euphoric “Is This Love”) to the Cure (the goth-pop of “Over And Over Again”), and utilized everything from toy pianos (“Sunshine And Clouds”) to digital Theremins (“Heavy Metal”). The album’s most ear-catching sound is the 8-bit synth patch heard on its only single, “By The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth,” which sounds like the soundtrack to your favorite old Game Boy game.

In this day and age, where every self-righteous “gifted” millennial is pirating Ableton on uTorrent and publicly claiming they’re about to produce the next channel ORANGE, the grassroots creation of CYHSY seems almost too good to be true. Although M.I.A. had blown up MySpace in the year prior, and the Go! Team had received serious praise from mp3 blogs, there had yet to be an unsigned act that tapped into musical virality. Even Merge, a renowned indie, was driving the seismic impact of the Arcade Fire. To that effect, CYHSY is one of the first and most lasting testaments to the power of post-millennium DIY culture; its recording and release chronicle a young band’s journey from virtually unknown local favorites to international sensation in the matter of weeks. It’s not quite Beatlemania, but the thing that hooked people onto CYHSY – what set them apart from the pack – was their status as a totally organic, bare-bones guitar band that built their sound, image, and promotional material all on their own apart from any major external force. Additionally, the one force that did catapult this group into the spotlight from obscurity was an exponentially budding music blogosphere that had not yet been swayed by money and corporate interests.

The main lyrical theme of the album – the disillusionment of intelligent youth, poor and heartbroken, in a superficially materialistic Western society that lives in constant fear of mass destruction – is something that is transcendent in the best of all Western pop music, yet Ounsworth’s freewheeling energy and epileptic delivery make these age-old themes seem urgent and uniquely contemporary. Still drunk off the mercurial splash that was Funeral, journalists and A&R men everywhere were desperately looking for an answer to the Arcade Fire, and (if you asked Bowie/Byrne) Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were it. In sound, structure, and style, this is as indie as it gets.

- Ethan Griggs

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #176 - The Prestige (2006, dir. Christopher Nolan)

One of the best ways to flummox movie audiences is to release two very similar movies within a few months of each other. At some point, a majority will pick one Truman Capote, one asteroid headed for Earth, one erupting volcano, or one talking pig. Although success, either commercial or critical, can help tandem movies like these break away from the association with another film, some of these works languish forever in a blurry region of pop cultural memory. As odd as it may sound, two different, stylish movies about magicians set in Europe during the late 1800s arrived in theaters in the fall of 2006. Whereas The Illusionist amounts to little more than a predictable, yet pleasant looking vehicle for Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, The Prestige holds up as an absorbing statement on obsession and sacrifice, a well-paced and riveting mystery, and one of Christopher Nolan’s most satisfying films.

Just over a year after Christopher Nolan kicked off his Dark Knight Trilogy with Batman Begins, he recruited Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman to play the leads in an adaptation of Christopher Priest’s novel about rival magicians. Bale and Jackman earned their reputations as charismatic, bankable action stars as the two most important characters of the modern era of comic book movies. As Batman and Wolverine, respectively, these actors set the bar for portraying the kind of flawed, morally ambiguous heroes who have become the standard for contemporary action movies. Nolan leveraged the talent and range of these actors by challenging them with roles that stretched beyond their well-known characters and allowed both actors to add distinctive, new performances to their bodies of work. As Alfred Borden, the industrious, working class magician who blends technical mastery of his craft with a willingness to take risks, Christian Bale creates a character who can shift from sympathetic and admirable in one scene to emotionally distant and ruthless in the next. In the role of Robert Angier, a mysterious performer with a flair for showmanship that compensates for his humble talents in magic, Hugh Jackman depicts an enterprising dreamer whose considerable ambition slowly gives way to an all-consuming desire to prevail over his adversary. Borden and Angier begin working together as assistants for a successful, yet complacent magician, but a pivotal, tragic event during a show causes a rift between them that sparks the epic competition that comes to dominate the rest of their lives. Michael Caine lends his remarkable abilities to the role of Cutter, a magician’s engineer who serves as a mentor to both Borden and Angier, and supplies the film with its conscience. As Sarah, Rebecca Hall gives the film its heart by demonstrating the true cost of Borden and Angier’s conflict through a harrowing, memorable, and nuanced breakout performance.

Although The Prestige is a work of fiction, it draws upon historical details like Nikola Tesla’s scientific experiments in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This element of the plot not only allows Nolan to include several beautiful sequences filmed in Colorado, but also gives David Bowie the opportunity to inhabit the role of the brilliant, otherworldly Tesla. Although a cameo like this could easily distract from the rest of the movie, Bowie’s presence enhances the whole film and endures as one of his last great acting roles. When I went out one cool Friday evening in Vermont eleven years ago to see this movie, I wasn’t entirely sure what I might experience. At that point I had seen a couple of Nolan’s other films, but I didn’t have any notable preconceptions of him as a director. That night, The Prestige presented me with one of my favorite of life’s simple, yet elusive pleasures: the unexpected.

-         John Parsell

I'd Love to Turn You On At the Movies #68 - The Hunger (1983, dir. Tony Scott) Starring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, David Bowie. 96 mins. Rated R

These days, 21^st century America’s version of the fountain of youth spurts forth a steady stream of botox injections, facelifts, chemical peels and other torturous-sounding procedures promising a grasp at a newer, younger you. Although this trend has been many decades in the making, it really rose to public consciousness in the self-absorbed, consumerist 1980s. However, you wouldn’t necessarily include vampires in the target audience for discovering a youth serum - unless, of course, you’ve seen The Hunger.

Based on a book by Whitley Strieber (author of Communion), The Hunger tells the story of a centuries-old female vampire named Miriam Blaylock (played by the exquisite Catherine Deneuve), as she deals with the sudden accelerated demise of her taken lover John (David Bowie), who up until recently had been living alongside her, un-aged, through several hundred years old. The bloodlust that has satiated John’s needs and kept him pristine for centuries no longer has an affect on him, and his weakened state becomes compromising to his necessarily violent lifestyle -- as well as inconvenient for Miriam, who has already experienced this phenomenon with other lovers throughout the ages.

As she searches for ways to turn back the clock for her rapidly deteriorating lover, Miriam comes across a doctor named Sarah (Susan Sarandon) specializing in Hodgkins-Progeria, a medical condition with very similar qualities to the ones John is experiencing. As time quickly runs out, John is put out to pasture with her other, former lovers (in the attic coffin storage, naturally) and Miriam must make the decision to take on a new partner, whom she finds in Sarah during an erotically charged vampire seduction. But nothing is what it seems, especially in New York in the 1980’s, and Sarah has her own plans in store for the future.

 From the opening scenes featuring the heavily shadowed, skeletal face of gaunt goth-rocker Peter Murphy as he sings “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” while spasmodically dancing behind a steel grate, to the stylized music-video-esque editing, the film has visual elements that are stunning and, at the same time somewhat pretentious. With a decidedly 1980’s aura and a visibly (and self-described by director Tony Scott) “operatic” feel, the whole film might very well suffer from a case of overly tortured hip-ness if not for the superb acting and artistic license taken with the characters and their settings.

Yes, there are eye-rolling eighties elements that might amuse some more sophisticated and modern movie-goers, like the constantly billowing curtains, strobe lights, and thick, smoky atmospheres (there is a cigarette in almost every shot, after all), but the scenes are still filmed with a photographer’s eye -- Scott admitting that he was heavily influenced by the works of Helmut Newton and fellow directors like Nicolas Roeg and Stanley Kubrick. Asymmetrically balanced shots, moody lighting and sharp angles lend a harder edge to the visuals while subduing the more gory aspects, which are still actively present in the flowing rivulets of bright red blood streaks throughout. Detailed but sleek wardrobes by Italian costume designer Milena Canonero bring an air of couture-laden fashion that aptly represents New York at that period, and the fitting soundtrack features works by classical composers like Bach, Delibes, Schubert and other haunting classical pieces.

The DVD special features include an informative commentary track from director Tony Scott and lead actress Susan Sarandon, who look back with both fond and strained memories of the making of the film as well as the critical reaction to it following its release.

--Shove M., Used Buyer, DVD Witch and Grab Bag Wrangler

Gabriel's Angels

It has been hard times. A long, troubled, bleak time. A time of confusion. A time of drought, a time of want. But now is the time for change. Now is the time of enlightenment. A time of adventures, a time of discovery. For, finally... the third and final installment in the Genesis reissue series is here.

At last, Genesis have seen fit to give the world what it wants - a sexy box set covering its golden period with Peter Gabriel and Charisma records (1970-1975). Crammed with audio and video goodies and inevitable deluxe packaging, this completely remixed/remastered set has given Genesis fans like me a reason to live of late.




PART ONE The enigma of the Lamb

To kick off, I want to talk about my favourite (sic) Genesis LP. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the multi-hued sheep of the Genesis family, i.e. something of an oddity. A Labyrinthine tale told through a murky, psychedelic haze, some clever people say The Lamb is the Genesis masterpiece, and the pundits may be correct on this one. It is also starkly different from every other Genesis release; gone is the very English whimsy of the early albums, the Victoriana, the fairy tale macabre, the sweetness. Like much of the Gabriel-era Genesis stuff, these are surrealist tales, but this time they are fed through a vile, twisted metropolis instead of the English countryside. The Lamb is a striking mélange, full of forboding, street talk, the supernatural and the grotesque, and even, gasp...short hair. Yes! The reverse mohawk, giant flower and foxhead of yesteryear have, by the time the Lamb hit Broadway, morphed into a shorn Puerto Rican street tough with cabalistic tendencies.

As a story (like most concept albums), things get pretty baffling by the 4th or 5th track, but the steady flow of provocative ideas engages and enthralls throughout. The Homeric journey of the protagonist Rael (think: Gab-Rael) is simply the method actor frontman's own cod-schizophrenia played out in a nightmarish Gotham wonderland. Only contemporary Bowie in his ambitious Diamond Dogs period can hold a candle to Gabriel in his role of a lifetime.

There are no weak moments on this LP. The Lamb is a double album of great pop songs ("Counting Out Time," "It," "Lilywhite Lilith"), prog epics ("The Cage," "Colony of Slippermen"), gorgeous ballads ("The Lamia," "Carpet Crawlers") and sublime slices of classic rock ("Back in NYC," "Chamber of 32 Doors," "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"). There are also several tracks of great experimental music; quasi-musique concrete and free jamming that still sounds superb. Although he doesn't play on the LP, Brian Eno is credited for assisting with effects and general mood. This is most evident on instrumental tracks like "The Waiting Room" and "Hairless Heart." All in all, The Lamb ought to appeal to any fan of quirky 70s rock.

Genesis deserve to be rated among the finest art-rock acts of the 70s, y'know- Roxy Music, Kraftwerk, Bowie, The Pistols. As a musical unit, they were endlessly melodic and creative, and with Phil Collins on board, Genesis were a major powerhouse. The kick drum on this record is a rival to Zep IV as best ever. For Phil, believe it or not, is Prog's greatest drummer. You heard me, Mr. Bruford.

The Lamb is enigmatic not only because of the strangeness of the recording, but also because of the filmic images that accompany it. The cover (a Hipgnosis gem), liner notes, costumes and stage show all have an otherworldly vibe, and because the original tour was never filmed (do I need to say that again?), we can only imagine the power of the original, and so the enigma grows. Listen on headphones, and gaze at 1974 tour photographs and you too will feel a sense of wonder.


With the release of this tremendous box the world ought to realize how cool Genesis were.


- Ben Sumner