Marie Antoinette

Before I begin this review, we need to get one thing straight. I love Marie Antoinette the person. Being something of a history buff, I’ve always been fascinated by 18th century European monarchs: the opulence, the over-indulgence, the utter cluelessness as to what was going on outside the walls of their palaces. And of these rulers, Marie Antoinette has always been the most fascinating to me.

Her story is one of riches to rags; betrothed to the young Dauphin of France, she waits seven years before her marriage is consummated. After having her first child, she has her husband build her a cottage on the outskirts of Versailles, where she cheats on him. The events leading up to her eventual downfall and execution contain enough plotlines to fill up 39 trashy novels; how many other historical figures can make that claim? But, my bias aside, let’s talk about the film.

Marie Antoinette has come to be remembered as one of the most villainous monarchs in history. But Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette suggests that maybe this should not be the case. Although she was one of history’s most notorious big spenders, draining the French treasury on lavish parties and haut couture, it could have all been a product of her environment. She was doing what so many queens had done before her; Marie Antoinette was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This film is a character study about why Marie Antoinette might have been so foolish. In the opening scene, the young Antoine (Kirsten Dunst) kisses her mother the Empress Maria Teresa goodbye on her way to become the Dauphine of France. This naïve teen girl makes her way by carriage toward France, and in an elaborate hand-over ceremony where she is stripped of everything Austrian (including her dog) she emerges Marie Antoinette. She was just a teenager when she left for Versailles. At an age when most modern day people aren’t even old enough to wake up without the help of their mothers, Marie Antoinette was shipped to a foreign land and forced into a marriage with a person she had never met (Louis XVI, played by Jason Schwartzman of I Heart Huckabees). It must have been terrifying! She and her husband were forced to grow up fast, and as the film suggests, this was one of the reasons that they met their ultimate demise. Neither of them were ready to take on the responsibility of a ruler, and they met their deaths because of it.

I started reading Antonia Frasier’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey (the biography on which this film was based) last summer; unfortunately, college reading took over and I never got a chance to finish the book. But I remembered vivid scenes from my reading as I watched this film, and from what I could tell this was a pretty historically accurate representation of the court of Versailles and the life of Marie Antoinette. Coppola did a nice job of keeping the film close to life. But even while keeping it historically accurate Coppola gives the film a modern twist, juxtaposing modern rock music (i.e. “Whatever Happened” by the Strokes) next to the harpsichord tunes of the day. The opening sequence has a feeling of rock star glory with hot pink credits rolling over a black background and Gang of Four’s “Natural’s Not In It” blaring.

Did I mention that the film is gorgeous to watch? The costumes (decadent), the jewels (enormous), the set (The Palace of Versailles). That’s right, Sofia Coppola had special permission from the French government to shoot this film where the actual events took place, inside the walls of Versailles. The elaborate sets that you see were not built for the film – oh no, it is actually where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI lived. So, if you’ve ever wanted to get a closer look at the Palace of Versailles, I’d suggest you spin this DVD. You will not be disappointed.

But even if the historical aspect doesn’t strike your fancy, Marie Antoinette is beautiful just to watch: the colors, the angles, the lighting. Coppola did an awesome job making this film pleasing to the eyes. A scene that comes to my head when I say this is one of Kirsten Dunst running through a field of flowers at sunset. It’s almost surreal to watch: the close-up shots, the saturated colors and the backlighting. Also, make sure not to watch Marie Antoinette while hungry. Coppola includes many scenes of Kirsten Dunst picking out new clothes and eating decadent pastries. Seeing the food actually made my mouth water. It was all so colorful, so rich, so delicious.

The special features on the DVD are also worth watching. The “Making of Marie Antoinette” featurette is interesting to watch for anyone who wants to know more about the costumes or filming in Versailles. It also gives further explanation to Coppola’s vision of portraying Marie Antoinette as a confused girl rather than a villainous aristocrat. Along with a few deleted scenes and the film’s trailers, the special features are definitely worth watching. The funniest part of the special features section is called “Cribs with Louis XVI.” It follows Jason Schwartzman through the halls of Versailles as if he were on the show MTV Cribs. Not only does it give a better idea of the opulence of a few rooms in Versailles, it is also absolutely hilarious.

I have heard Marie Antoinette criticized for the fact that it tries to be modern while at the same time being historically accurate. However, I believe this is one of the reasons that Marie Antoinette is such a good movie. It takes something we’ve learned about in history books and presents it in a way that is historically accurate, visually pleasing, and enjoyable to watch. Just think of it as the most exciting high school history lesson you wish you could have had. Marie Antoinette is totally worth the two-hour time investment. It’s exciting to watch, and you might even learn something in the process.

- Cole Merkel

Marie Antoinette Official Site
IMDb Listing
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Black Diamond Heavies: Every Damn Time

It’s never wise to underestimate the effects of the blooooze on impressionable white teenage males. By now, I’m tempted to believe that it’s somehow encoded into our DNA; the catalyst these days might be a snatch of Led Zep on classic rock radio or our parents’ dusty old copy of Are You Experienced or the White Stripes on the Grammys, but the effects are always the same. Within months we’re discussing Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson sides like grizzled old experts: studyin’ evil, dustin’ our brooms and fixin’ to die with the best of them. Some of us even start bluesy bands of our own – though the sad truth is that for every scraggly crew of Caucasian blues-rockers who actually walk it like they talk it, there’s a baker’s dozen of pretenders who think jamming on eight bars for twenty minutes and affecting Southern drawls is what the blues is all about. And that’s why coming across a band like Black Diamond Heavies is such a treat: like fellow-travelers the Black Lips and the Immortal Lee County Killers (and unlike those aforementioned Blueshammer types), these white boys have soul.

Listen to the choogling opener of the Heavies’ Alive Records debut, “Fever in My Blood,” and that soul, that (now here’s a charged word for you) authenticity becomes immediately obvious. With nothing but a Fender Rhodes piano, a voice like nicotine incarnate and some seriously busted-ass drums and amps, John Wesley Myers (keys/vox) and Van Campbell (drums) tear out of the gates like there really is a hellhound on their trail…and you believe ‘em, too. Sure, the religiously rock-oriented might bemoan the lack of guitars, but when keyboards are played this loud and this viscerally, trust me, you won’t miss ‘em. Instead, Every Damn Time might just be the best advertisement for rock’n'roll piano lessons since the days of Little Richard: the manic anti-cocaine rant “White Bitch” comes peppered with blasts of organ feedback that would put most six-string squealers to shame, and when Myers cranks up the Rhodes in “Poor Brown Sugar,” he digs a groove so deep you can sink to your waist in it.

Of course, the main way in which Black Diamond Heavies set themselves apart from the pack – other than the whole no-guitars thing, anyway – is with their slow numbers, which somehow manage to be even better than the boogie stuff while still remaining every bit as raw. “All to Hell,” a slow-burning soul ballad just over eight minutes in length, is one of the best heartbreak songs I’ve heard in some time, right down to the cathartic gospel organ build-up. And their cover of the aforementioned Lee County Killers’ Delta blues dead-ringer “Stitched in Sin” may even surpass the original, so suited is it to Myers’ Waitsian croak and churchy electric piano groove. In the end, while the prospect of more Heavies in general is enough to set my mouth a-waterin’, I for one wouldn’t mind hearing more of the pretty songs next time around; after all, in a world where any skinny kid from the suburbs can learn a few slide licks and think he’s Muddy Waters, we can never have enough bands who’ll put a shake in our hips and a tear in our beers, all in one glorious half hour.

- Zach Hoskins

Black Diamond Heavies’ Official Site
Buy It from Amazon

The Departed

It’s a well-known – if only tacitly acknowledged – fact that beneath every tough-as-nails, big-talking, machismo-oozing gangster flick is a Freudian saga of sublimated sexuality, Oedipal crises and castration anxiety just begging to come out. What makes The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s remake of the Hong Kong action juggernaut Infernal Affairs (2002), so brilliant is that it actually admits this subtext; in fact, the film damn near foregrounds it. Yeah, yeah, in telling the parallel and intersecting stories of two undercover “rats” – one spying on an Irish mob boss for the Massachussets State Police, one spying on the “Staties” for the mobsters – The Departed is at surface level what the critics are calling a “tale of questionable loyalties and blurring identities” (All Movie Guide). But fuck that. This is a movie about male repression, pure and simple.

Of course, that interpretation might come as a bitter pill for more literally-inclined fans of Scorsese’s brand of macho cops’n'crooks epics to swallow – because if nothing else, The Departed is a return to the Martin Scorsese of Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995) and Mean Streets (1973), a side of the director whose “comeback” they’ve been awaiting since the beginning of his half-decade detour into documentary (The Blues, 2003, and No Direction Home, 2005), historical fiction (Gangs of New York, 2002) and prestige “Old Hollywood” biography (The Aviator, 2004). But Scorsese’s latest opus exudes a psychosexual self-consciousness (not to mention a thoroughly projected self-confidence) which none of those earlier films possessed. Its tale of two men infiltrating the classic mirror-image institutions of patriarchal law – the police force and the crime underworld – teems with repressed drives, tensions and the affected bluster of masculinity. The undercover cop, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), pops pills to deal with the strain of pretending to be someone he’s not; the mob informer, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), can’t get it up. Even the apparently sexually prodigious, 70-year-old mob boss himself (Jack Nicholson, who in one scene has a hooker snort coke off another one’s ass before, presumably, screwing both of them), is later revealed to be shooting blanks.

Is it any wonder that the one female character worth mentioning, played by relative newcomer Vera Farmiga (Breaking and Entering, 2006), is a female psychiatrist who tries to get both Billy and Colin to open up about their feelings – and does so only by sleeping with them? Or that Nicholson’s Frank Costello, surely his most eccentric and prototypically “Jack” character in years, seems to conceive of his crime syndicate at least partially as an Oedipal war against the symbolic “Father” of the Irish Catholic Church? Or, while we’re on the subject of Oedipus, that Costello’s relationship with Colin is like that of father and son? I would also mention the scene where Costello meets his son-figure in a porno theatre (that traditional enclave of anonymous masculine desires and sublimated sexuality), feigns masturbation in the seat in front of him, then whirls around and whips a huge, black dildo out of his trenchcoat, but I think I’ve already made my case.

Admittedly, this being Oscar season, any talk of The Departed would be lacking (oops, Freud again) without at least a little speculation about whether Scorsese will be coming home with that long-denied statue; so, for the time being, I’ll let my psychoanalysis rest. The fact is, while The Departed is a hell of an entertaining movie (and not just for the reasons enumerated above), even a virtuosic one, a testament to its director’s long-honed skills as a craftsman, its return to the situations and subject matter of Scorsese’s “classic work” does not necessarily make it of the same calibre. If Scorsese wins this year, it will only be because the Academy knows his time to win has long passed.

Where the film most excels, instead, is in its lead performances: DiCaprio’s Costigan, while lacking the element of surprise which made his Aviator performance so striking (“wait, that Titanic kid can act?”), is convincing both as a cocky hood and as an actor rapidly deteriorating into his role. Nicholson, though drawing as much criticism as begrudging praise for his over-the-top Costello – apparently that dick shot was a gag too far – goes so over-the-top he comes back under again; he towers over the rest of the cast in presence alone, and for children of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) like myself, it’s magnetizing to watch. Damon is charming as usual, but his performance, for me, is most commendable in the sense that it adds up to one big phallic symbol: Colin’s posture, giving the appearance of a man in uniform whether he’s dressed in policeman blue, business attire or just boxers and a T-shirt, is as erect as his member is not, as false as his perpetually assumed identity. As for the Oscar-nominated Mark Wahlberg, his performance is all bravado and no depth, his supporting actor nod explicable only if the Academy just couldn’t resist playing the scene where Martin Sheen says “you’re rising fast” and he says “yeah, like a 12-year-old’s dick” at the awards ceremony.

In the end, The Departed, like most good films, is what you make of it. If you’re one of those folks who eagerly awaited Scorsese’s return to the crime drama, you’ll probably love it. If you just can’t get past the fact that one of the central characters here twitches like an overstuffed rat and brandishes a gigantic strap-on, you might hate it. But if you take the
penis jokes and the Freudian commentary not as distractions to the plot, but as the very texture and fabric of the film’s commentary, it’s a whole different movie. Just trust me on that.

The Departed is available on DVD in a staggering five different versions: bare-bones full-screen, bare-bones widescreen, HD, Blu-Ray, and the inevitable two-disc special edition. I don’t have one of those newfangled high-definition players (hell, my shitty combination TV/DVD just died last week), and can’t personally vouch for the special features on the two-disc edition. But the copy I watched included a whopping two “features,” and those were French and Spanish subtitles and audio tracks (though I’ll admit the prospect of hearing Marky Mark say “like a 12-year-old’s dick” in two foreign languages is a tough one to resist). So, if you’re the feature-fetishizing type, you’ll probably be better served by the deluxe package, which includes additional scenes introduced by Scorsese, a feature-length Turner Classic Movies profile on the director, a profile on the “real-life gangster behind Jack Nicholson’s character” (did he pack a 10″ dildo, too?), and a featurette on “how Little Italy’s crime and violence influence Scorsese’s work.” Oh, and a theatrical trailer. Am I the only one who actually likes to watch those?

- Zach Hoskins

The Departed Official Site (and MySpace!)
IMDb Listing
Buy the DVD from Amazon

Live: Brett Dennen

This Valentine’s Day, instead of sitting alone on my couch watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I went with one of my friends (also single this year) to see Brett Dennen with her at The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor. I’d never heard of Brett Dennen, but I agreed to go to the concert anyway; I’m always ready to try out new music.

By the time Valentine’s Day rolled around, I had listened to Dennen’s album So Much More once or twice, so I would at least be familiar with his music. It seemed pretty relaxed, so I was looking forward to a pretty relaxed show in the middle of the week. Frankie D’Angelo, Dennen’s opening act, was what my friend described as “another whiny boy on an acoustic guitar.” I agreed with her on that point. Although D’Angelo’s music was soulfully inspired (mostly by ex-girlfriends, as is often the case), it wasn’t anything that hasn’t already been done before. His sound was a bit too much like Howie Day’s for me to call him an original.

After another opening act, this time by Dennen’s guitarist, Brett took the stage. The person whom we’d been waiting for, Mr. Brett Dennen, looked like the fourth-grader who had never gotten out of his pre-pubescent growth spurt. He was tall, gangly and awkward. In short, he didn’t have the stage presence I was expecting. Dennen opened the concert with a representative from an Ann Arbor company working to replant trees in the surrounding areas. Portions of the proceeds from that night’s show (along with every other show on the tour) were going to that and similar organizations across the United States. So, I figured, if nothing else I was at least helping the environment by being there. Thank God I had that idea to fall back on…

Dennen opened his set with one of his many odes to love and friendship. His high-pitched voice grabbed the crowd, and I suppose that he held my attention for a while. But soon he lost me. After about five songs I had to ask myself if he had started the set over again, it all so much alike. Between songs Dennen told long stories and some anecdotes about the tour, about Valentine’s Day and about love. He began taking himself way too seriously, this becoming apparent when he dedicated one of his love melodies (probably written to a girlfriend) to the leaders of our nation, under the pretext that sometimes “all you need is love.” That may be the case, but I don’t think Condoleeza Rice would be willing to take the immature opinion of Dennen’s teenage love into account when advising George W.

It was apparent, however, that Dennen was very much into his fans and that his fans were into him. At the end of the set he grabbed a middle-aged woman who had been dancing for the entire concert and began to waltz with her on stage. This made the crowd uproarious. Perhaps I missed something. Perhaps I was the only one in the Blind Pig that night who felt like this, but by the end of the night I felt that Brett Dennen had given a pretty mediocre performance of pretty mediocre songs, and is therefore deserving of a pretty mediocre review.

- Cole Merkel

Brett Dennen’s Official Site
Buy So Much More from Amazon

Flags of Our Fathers

In order to demonstrate how different Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers is from just about ever other war movie in recent memory, it’s worth comparing its “bookend” scenes to another big-budget Hollywood film about World War II: Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998).

The final scene of Ryan finds protagonist James Francis Ryan, now an elderly war veteran, standing before the military gravesite of the man who saved his life in Normandy, Captain John H. Miller. He gives an emotional speech about the sacrifice Miller made and the debt he owes, and salutes the grave. Patriotic music swells. Credits roll.

The opening scene of Flags of Our Fathers, on the other hand, takes place in an empty, desolate battlefield. Protagonist John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), his breathing ragged, runs into the center of the frame. The camera tracks around his dirty, frightened face as heavy artillery explodes in the distance. Someone shouts, and he runs in another direction, only to come to a halt, staring again at the camera. Slowly, devastatingly, as his face turns into a mask of horror, the camera dollies in, Phillippe’s features becoming muddied and abstracted, the frame turning black. Then we cut to Bradley, now an elderly war veteran in bed, jolted out of his sleep, sweating, panting. His wife, comforting him, asks what’s wrong, and he sinks back into his pillow, silent. Fade out.

This comparison to Saving Private Ryan is worth making for more than just binary judgements. For one thing, Ryan is the most famous World War II film in years, and as such, despite its focus on the European rather than the Pacific Theatre (assuming one cares about such things), undoubtedly the film against which Flags of Our Fathers will be judged. And for another, Ryan’s director (Spielberg) is also a producer of Flags; but where Ryan compromised its genuinely horrific and realistic images of warfare with the above ending, a jarring concession to war-movie convention and patriotic rhetoric, Flags does no such thing. Instead, it’s that rarest of war films: one which neither uses the reputation of WWII as a “just war” to defend contemporary conflicts (Franklin J. Schaffner’s Patton, 1970), nor outright condemns war as an evil unto itself (most Vietnam films). It is a film which gives no easy answers; thankfully so, because its subject makes the concept of “easy answers” seem patently absurd.

Of course, another film with which Flags will inevitably be compared is Unforgiven, Eastwood’s 1992 “revision” of the Western as a gritty, raw and morally ambiguous essay in violence. But in retelling the story of the soldiers depicted in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” photograph, Eastwood takes his abilities in postmodern genre-reinvention one step further, making Flags of Our Fathers less revision than deconstruction. Sure, all of the usual genre conventions are present and accounted for. There’s battle footage – astonishingly shot, too, with the colors bled so white that everything but the explosions look almost monochrome, suggesting the classic war movies of Hawks and Ford or the Iwo Jima photo itself come to life – and scenes of brothers-in-arms camaraderie, and even the inevitable reunion between the G.I. and his girl at the train station. But Eastwood’s construction systematically interrupts these conventions, cutting between the battlefield and the soldiers’ bittersweet homecoming in a manner which leaves the viewer not fully comfortable with either, while suggesting the implicit connections between the two.

In one remarkable segue which recurs throughout the film, the sound of explosions on the beach of Iwo Jima becomes the sound of fireworks popping over the heads of the flag-raisers, as they travel the country selling war bonds on the back of their newfound fame; a task with which none of them – the ill-fated Ira Hayes (Windtalkers‘ Adam Beach) in particular – were very comfortable. This seamless transition of image and sound tells us eloquently that for these men, the war was far from over. As we have seen from the film’s first moments onward, it was a nightmare from which they could never quite awaken.

Indeed, representations of war as nightmare pervade the film, and are the real reason why Flags of Our Fathers stands apart in the war-movie canon. Yes, as a movie about the Iwo Jima flag-raisers and the historical “truth” behind their achievement, the film has some fascinating things to say about the construction of “heroes” during wartime. The details of the flag-raising itself – that the one captured in Rosenthal’s camera was actually the second time the flag had been raised, the first flag having been taken down at the request of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal; that this supposedly pivotal event actually occurred only five days into the battle, with 35 more to go before Iwo Jima was actually “taken”; and not least that one of the men depicted in the photo had actually been misidentified as another soldier, who had participated in the first flag-raising – are all foregrounded as proof of the falsifying, glamourizing process of “official” history, and raise questions about the use of such easily digestible “heroism” in recent times: particularly Thomas E. Franklin’s literal homage to the Iwo Jima photo, taken in the wake of 9/11, and the controversial use of prisoner of war Jessica Lynch as an icon early in the Iraq War.

But the script (co-written by William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis, whose work here more than makes up for his maudlin and obvious, if Oscar-winning, 2005 directorial debut Crash) keeps coming back to the effects of war on its characters, and so that, to me, is the heart of this film. After the battle ends, both in “real life” and on screen, we see each of the three surviving soldiers cope with the things they saw, and the friends who didn’t come home, in different ways. Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford of The West Wing) plays along with the bond tour, only to be left jobless and ignored once his fifteen minutes are up. Hayes, the most tragic character of the film and its history alike, is torn between unwanted accolades for what he feels is an unearned “heroism” and stigmatization due to his Native American heritage (in one troubling scene, a senator joshes, “I hear you used a tomahawk on those Japs – is that true, chief?”); he descends into alcoholism and ultimately dies of exposure, face-down in his own vomit. And Bradley, though arguably the best-off of the three, remains haunted by the war and the horrifying death of his friend “Iggy.”

None of these stories are played for heavy-handed “Statements,” though, and therein lies one of Flags‘ greatest strengths: never do Eastwood, Broyles and Haggis allow their subjects to be depicted as the “heroes” history has made them. They are not crass enough to suggest that World War II was out-and-out “wrong”; nor are they naive enough to claim that its big-picture justifiability was enough to excuse the damage it did to these three young men and so many others. Those who see the film as a blow against the current presidential administration’s military policy (why waste 55 million dollars and two-plus hours of screentime for something as simple as that?), and those who accuse it of anti-war, anti-American proselytizing, are missing the point. Flags of Our Fathers is a proud achievement in war cinema and American cinema history alike; a film which successfully interrogates its subject, its genre, and the writing of history itself. It may not provide the simple, palatable answers which most war films give us. But in the end, causing us to think for ourselves – and about far more than just the pictures on screen – may be its greatest achievement of all.

Unfortunately, if Flags of Our Fathers itself stands as a great achievement, its recent DVD release falls far short. To put it simply, Paramount’s DVD gives new meaning to the word “bare-bones”: the only options on the title screen are “Play” and “Set Up,” without even a chapter menu for us to navigate (and in case you’re wondering if there’s a chapter list inside the case itself, nope – the packaging is as empty of inserts as the disc is of special features). Granted, the film still looks great, and I’ll admit to being one of those people who hoards special-edition DVDs without actually paying much attention to the bells and whistles. But if you’re a special-features junkie, you might want to keep an eye out for the inevitable expanded edition…maybe when Letters from Iwo Jima comes down the home-video pipeline.

- Zach Hoskins

Flags of Our Fathers Official Site
IMDb Listing
Buy the DVD from Amazon

Catch and Release OST

Look, there are some soundtracks out there that are worth listening to even if you hated the movie: The Graduate, Big Night, Purple Rain, Parade… Jesus, I’ll even throw in Garden State. The Catch and Release soundtrack, however, is not to be included in these ranks.

Instead, this CD is totally unfulfilling, because its line-up seems to have been chosen for its quiet batch of indie similarity rather than attempting to be evocative of any moments in the film. Judging merely by the sounds of its music, Catch and Release appears to be the most miserable, “throw a blanket over your head” film geared toward catching a young alternateen audience ever. Even worse, while Doves’ “There Goes the Fear” is a terrific song, it feels like a terrible cliche when it’s slapped at the end of a record such as this. I know that it’s supposed to make us feel hopeful, yeah yeah yeah, but after all of that misery, “There Goes the Fear” feels akin to taking a Xanax and hoping for the best.

And maybe that’s all you can do after buying a record like this: take a Xanax and hope for the best. Even if you’re a fan of any of the artists included (The Magic Numbers, Doves, ALASKA!, Gary Jules, shit, even the Foo Fighters), you don’t need this record. Really, forget it.

- Megan Giddings

Catch and Release Official Site
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A Valentine’s Playlist for the Brokenhearted

Growing up in Michigan, February has always been my least favorite month. By February, it’s usually been at least two months since I’ve seen the sun, and I always have to wear 12 layers in order to face the tundra of a “Michigan Winter.” Add on to this disgusting weather some candy hearts, chocolate kisses, red and pink cupids and a variety of other love treats, and you have enough to make me want to vomit.

This Valentine’s Day, like all the others, I will once again be single. So, in order to fight the V-Day blues, I’ve compiled a playlist for those who, like me, want Hallmark to give up its sales pitches, want to shoot all love-birds in the face with a bazooka, and most of all, want to curl up on the couch with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, watch Love, Actually, and pretend that this holiday doesn’t exist. If you’re one of those people, then this playlist is for you!

- Cole Merkel

The Shins: Wincing the Night Away

Thanks a lot, Zach Braff. Since rolling the Mainline dice and finding out that I would be the one to review the Shins’ Wincing the Night Away, I’ve been excited to get back into the record reviewing game. Even before the new album came in the mail, I was already thinking of things to write about the Shins. In fact, I would say that I had a million ideas about the record, until I’d listened to it once… then twice… and then a third time. What happened? Garden State happened, you son of a bitch.

Even though I haven’t seen the movie since it was released in the theatres, as I listened to Wincing the Night Away I was worried for my indie credibility. Would giving the album a positive review make me a member of the Braffite army? Did it mean that I would have to think a lot of deep thoughts about being past the age of (gasp) twenty? Or did it just mean that I was sticking to my integrity and giving a good album a good review? And what if I wasn’t liking some songs because I was buying into a backlash against the waves of kids who were starting facebook groups entitled “GARDEN STATE CHANGED MY LIFE, DUDES!!!”?

Despite these doubts, however, I did come to one conclusion: even if I wasn’t as moved or impressed by that film as a lot of other members of my peer group, it was effective in building the Shins an audience. The moment when Natalie Portman enacts every straight indie guy’s dream scenario of a hot girl urging him to ignore her and just listen to music helped to explode the Shins’ popularity. Three years after that moment cemented itself onto everyone’s brains, Wincing the Night Away is now the #2 record in the United States.

So, what about the album itself? In a sense, it’s exactly what you might expect from a Shins record: unless a moment happens to especially showcase the music, it doesn’t really grab at at the listener. Instead, it floats and wisps through the speakers, frontman James Mercer emoting with his usual soft grace. Album opener “Sleeping Lessons” is fiercely evocative. Even when the Shins begin to “rock out” (well, um, turn up their amps), the moment doesn’t break its dream world feel; instead it’s a propulsion, as if the listener had suddenly sprouted wings and catapulted into a vast sky of sound.

By the second track, however, it’s clear that this is a new direction for the Shins. “Australia” is a sweet indie-pop follow up, but somehow in there, it feels as if the Shins decided to try doing an upbeat, bouncy song with Morissey-lite lyrics. Mercer wails a lot. The production feels very indie-’80s; which is awesome. And unlike a Morissey or Smiths song, there’s no smartass pay off. (I know it’s weird to feel this way, because “Australia” sounds like a sweet song, but I would have been really gratified if after “find a handsome young mate for you” there was a great big “…Fatty”.) And if you want to feel even more as if you’re listening to the Smiths-lite, try “Phantom Limb.” Shit, I’ll bet you that James Mercer was wearing a priest’s collar and trying to comb his hair into a pompadour while singing Wincing the Night Away in the studio.

Despite all of the Smiths references (or perhaps because of them), I genuinely enjoyed this record. But for long term fans who are more used to the Shins which seemed to have sprung from the indie rock womb listening to Donovan, Big Star, and Badfinger, both Mercer’s singing and the production on a good number of tracks is going to seem like a huge surprise. It wasn’t until “Red Rabbits” that I could completely remember the Shins of past records. Yet, for those willing to steer away from being a stereotypical indie rock fan (and yes, I do mean all of you who are saying the Shins are played-out now that they’ve had a top ten record), the Shins’ Wincing the Night Away is well worth a listen.

- Megan Giddings

The Shins’ Official Site
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Megan’s Top 10 Records of 2006 (In No Particular Order)

Now, we (finally) conclude our 2006 coverage with a list from Megan…