The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Mock Media’s Rat Bastard sounds beamed in from some time and place that’s far removed from its true origins.
In reality, the album is a Canadian quartet’s recently released third LP,1 but Rat Bastard has the sound of a dispatch from long-gone scenes that generated far more cultural currency than financial capital for its key figures.
The album varies greatly from song to song, bouncing without warning from archly theatrical bass-forward anthems to synthy new wave bops to straightforward reggae to worldly dance tracks to lean, mean rockers. It’s a listening experience that could pass for sitting down with a mixtape of rough cuts and hidden gems from the CBGC extended universe and still-on-the-dole U.K. acts.
It’s a welcome and refreshing approach to incorporating music from an era that recently has loomed large over commercial successes and critical darlings alike. While everyone else pillages the mid-career output of the Cure, New Order and the Talking Heads for post-punk plaudits, Mock Media is stitching together pieces from Sparks, early Television, Gang of Four, the Clash, plus a few leftfield influences and jolting them to beating-heart life.2 It’s a lighter, faster, weirder side of what’s becoming increasingly well-trod terrain, and that’s a very good thing since it gave the world the squirming, group chant excellence of “Mock City Rock.”3
There is some tonal whiplash inherent to this largely enjoyable approach. Rat Bastard’s title track is an ultra-catchy blend of palm-muted Cars-aping joy and “Marquee Moon” guitar weaving.4 The next song, “Fell from the Top,” is a mix of hazy reggae and even more reggae that seems totally out of place at first, but winds up presaging the extraordinarily Clash-coded 2 tone of “City’s on Fire.” The aptly titled “Built for Speed” is a fist-pumping, head-banging barnburner with howled falsetto vocals. It’s a callback to the days when Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were as heavy as heavy gets, and it is completely unique within the context of the album. For further dissonance, it happens to land between the dark dance music of “Turn the World” and “Straight Line.” The latter track incorporates elements of traditional Canadian folk music and electronic dance music, bringing the LP to a striking end.
The variance is a double-edged sword. Mock Media pulls off every genre the band attempts, and it’s exciting to be totally unsure what’s going to come next. However, individuals with strong preferences for the Mael-minded high-energy stuff might not click as strongly with the reggae dalliances, and folks who really want to hear skank upstrokes might be put off by detours into dance or metal territory. A “little something for everyone” approach can feel downright antagonistic when a band fully capable of excelling at a genre you like is instead working on a mode you’re less partial to.
However, inconsistency as consistently good as Rat Bastard makes building up any real resentment impossible. Mock Media made a very good record; it just happens to have the heart of a compilation album.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
This week I'm breaking format to rank the albums I've written about this year.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Superstore, Season One, Episode Seven, “Color Wars”
“I called it. You can’t be that tall and live.”
“He’s probably in bird heaven.”
“You think so? He was so violent.”
“I will kill myself before I go back to 2D ultrasounds, okay?!”
“Lates?”
“You’re a lady! And I respect you!”
“Is that what you want? A party with no clowns?”
“I guess I’ll spend that extra money on lotto tickets. Although what are the odds of winning twice?”
“Grills! Football! Porn!”
“I wish I had a better helmet… was the first full sentence when I learned how to speak again.”
“Brett sold the nacho cheese dispenser.”
“He’s a closer.”
“I have an idea.”
“Who cares? I have ideas all the time.”
“I just want to get you out of her before–”
“Adam?”
“–that happens.”
The Odyssey
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. You’ll have heard that this is of a piece with Oppenheimer, which is true – it’s effectively Oppenheimer with a conservative protagonist – but it’s also of a piece with all his other films. It’s effectively Odysseus gradually recovering his memory, a kind of riff on Memento in that we are experiencing that process of remembering alongside him (as opposed to the process of forgetting). Like the Batman films, it’s about the nobility dealing with the emotional weight of rule; like Dunkirk, it tracks that weight as it hits regular-assed soldiers; like Interstellar, vast years are stolen from the hero in what feels like minutes.
(I’m sure there are ways it ties into his other movies and I’ll figure that out later)
SPOILERS from this point.
What this all adds up to is not repetition, as you’d expect, but consolidating a career’s worth of study into one film and weighing up where it’s gone. The most brilliant piece of originality in the film is tying it into the collapse of the Bronze Age; specifically, the incredibly cheesy and incredibly heartfelt moment where Penelope observes that the mysterious Sea People were actually Odyseuss’s army fleeing Troy (which is a variation on an actual theory about the Sea People). This movie is Nolan’s meditation on where his conservatism has actually gotten the world, and that he may personally have hastened this through that very conservatism. Odysseus’s exile at the end comes off less as punishment and more as an observation that he can no longer live in the world he’s created.
Cinematically, my favourite part of the film was the Cyclops sequence – it managed to be both an action scene and a horror scene, with the Cyclops emerging from the darkness to kill the soldiers. I also deeply appreciated that Telemachus contributed to the final fight by fighting the guy trying to drop weapons to everyone, and then dropping the weapons to his dad. Also: the music fucking owwwwwwneeeeed.
I love that while the Trojan Horse is Odysseus’s ultimate original sin here, so to speak, he’s also undone, in classic Greek fashion, by hubris, both in prioritizing his own disdain for Agamemnon and the war he’s put them through to the point where he refuses to follow Agamemnon’s safe, established route home and in simply believing his uncharted course will work in his favor anyway. (Narrator: “It did not work in his favor.”)
Although I don’t feel like I’m seeing the conservatism point here, so I’d love if you could say more about that. There’s an obvious anti-MAGA stance towards the end, where the violation of hospitality codes has plunged everyone into an apocalypse of human disregard and everyone will repeat these mistakes in the future (our present), but I still see plenty of Nolan’s particular breed of conservatism that Grant talked about back at The Solute, especially re: Odysseus and his men. Their independence and attempts to organize without him consistently work out badly for them, while his intervention saves them (the swine), his lies protect them (Scylla and Charybdis), and his warnings are for their own good (the sun god’s cattle). Admittedly, this does exist in a world where he’s already fucked them over by the aforementioned route thing, but since that was through a decision to ignore the established order–like his Trojan horse, for that matter–the fact that works out badly feels consistent with a kind of genuine small-c conservatism. So is the Sinon bit, where–appropriately for the time Nolan’s portraying–any emphasized evil is entirely small-scale and personal, situated in Antinous’s manipulation and betrayal of a child, not in Odysseus’s lot system that could easily have sent that child to war anyway. What gets everyone in trouble here is disrespect and changing the way things have always been done.
Yeah, your take is pretty much my take on the conservatism; in terms of that system fucking people over, I found something significant in the fact that the main voice complaining deeply about Odyseuss’s leadership style and how it has personally fucked them over is played by a trans man, where the system necessarily has to chew people like Sinon – who trusts that Odysseus’s plans are going somewhere – up for the sake of the greater good (the greater good). Although I admit it’s more complex than I initially made it out to be.
Oh, that’s a good point about Sinon, who also doesn’t get to be in on the plan, literally or figuratively, so he has to die safeguarding a (kind of) society that doesn’t fully welcome him. Agreed that choosing Page to embody that definitely feels significant.
Honestly, The Odyssey sounds less like a fun movie and more and more like a chore, and a pretentious one at that. And bringing in the Sea Peoples just feels wrong, since there is zero about the Odyssey that really connects to actual history. But I assume I will see this eventually (at home so I can pause and take bathroom breaks).
The Amusement Park
Why did I watch this when I know that I find seeing older people in distress incredibly, viscerally upsetting?
But outside of my inexplicable decision to ruin my own day, this is incredible and pure Romero: a brutal, unsparing, and poisonously whimsical nightmare about being old in an impatient and short-tempered society that runs on money and clout. Full of precise, cruel touches–my “favorite” is how many of the bandages we see before Maazel’s man finally gets one himself; in retrospect, each one is its own horror story–and both empathy and fury.
Maazel is incredible here, and I’m unsurprised Romero had him back for Martin. And he lived to be 106, so I hope his own years in the amusement park were nothing like this.
The Black Pirate
Swashbuckler Summer #10. My first Douglas Fairbanks movie! Is there any better introduction to an actor than watching him ride down a sail by slicing it in two with a knife, surely the coolest way anyone has ever gotten anywhere?
This is sometimes a bit muddled in terms of conveying its plot, and the romance is perfunctory, but to make up for that, it’s got plenty of action and a lot of striking visuals even beyond the stunts (that swimming sequence, for example.) It also really makes the most of its enormous cast, cramming them into every corner of the ship until it’s as packed as a clown car. It adds a real sense of disorientation and menace.
I hope someone has worn this Fairbanks outfit to a gay nightclub by now. Or at least a gay Halloween party.
Frasier, “Goodnight, Seattle” – The end. So much squeezed into an hour: Martin and Ronee’s wedding, Daphne giving birth, three of Daphne’s brothers show up, Roz becomes station manager, and Frasier decides it’s time to move on. To San Francisco, for a new job? No, to Chicago and his new love Charlotte. We get the last farcical items – the wedding happening in a hurry and under the supervision of Niles and Frasier, who get carried away; Simon LaPlagia joined by Richard E. Grant and Robbie Coltrane as Daphhe’s brothers; Eddie swallowing the wedding rings, leading Niles and Daphne to go to the vet, where her water breaks and Jason Biggs and Arlene Sorkin have to make the delivery; and Frasier wanting to make his big announcement only everyone thinks he is going to say he is dying and not moving. Some of this misfires, most does not. But we are not here for the last laughs, but for the upsurge of feelings as the show comes to an end, and as Frasier recites Tennyson’s “Ulysses” in his farewell broadcast, the cast and many members of the crew watching outside the studio.
The result is possibly my favorite series finale. Everyone gets not a happy ending but a happy new beginning. Frasier’s fate is left open, but I doubt any fans didn’t believe in their hearts that this time, after so many false starts, two failed marriages, and Diane Chambers, Frasier would be happy too. Everything feels just right. And while I have many reasons for never wanting to watch the short lived revival of the show – the bad reviews come to mind – the main reason is that in order to bring back Frasier, his romance with Charlotte needed to end. Sometimes it’s best to just leave things alone.
And thus marks my second time through the show (and my third time watching the first five or so seasons). I doubt I will make another full voyage, but I do expect to return to the best episodes now and then. I still consider the show start to finish one of the finest sitcoms ever, with one of the single greatest (and steadiest) casts. It had ups and downs, of course, with some episodes that are terrible and some moments that turn Frasier into an absolute lout. And after Daphne and Niles finally got together, some of the spark was gone. Plus the “play for TV” approach of the first season never came back and I wish it had. But the highs are still very high, the times the show stepped out of its comfort zone were greatly appreciated, and for a show that ran eleven years, it held together well. And no other TV show I have ever watched is as smart. Yes, it made lots of fun of intellectual pretense and Frasier’s snooty tastes, but it also looked at the arts and literature as important things, respected psychiatry, and every so often did things like quote Tennyson unironically. I love this show and always will. Goodnight, Seattle.
Elementary, “Under My Skin” – Two EMTs and the patient in the ambulance are murdered, and before long we learn that the patient was an unwitting drug mule whose lap band surgery in Brazil was something else. We are in some pretty outlandish territory, but at least all the pieces seem believable at first. Fisher Stevens isn’t exactly a big name, but he is big enough that he is obviously the killer (or rather, a killer as there are several). Meanwhile, Sherlock tries to help his sponsor with a situation, but is told that they are not friends so Sherlock has to butt out. So Sherlock helps anyway and fires Alfredo as his sponsor because he would has come to see Alfredo as a friend. It’s all rather sweet.
The Odyssey – yeah that’s an odyssey alright. Slightly annoyed they missed the PERFECT opportunity to have one of the guys say “damn, we’re in a tight spot!” while trapped inside a horse. Otherwise, solidly enjoyable if unusually familiar: I saw The Return last year and all of the Ithaca-set stuff was very similar, moreso than I expected from two very different projects and material old enough to essentially require liberal adaptation. Nolan definitely improves on that take in most ways – as you might expect, given that he had $230m additional to play with – but I kinda thought his version of the climactic bow / axe scene didn’t work as well as the one Ralph Fiennes and co. pulled off on a Euro-budget. Some restraint and significantly less shaky-cam action stuff worked in their favour for sure.
The Samantha Morton witchy section and the trip into Hades were probably my two favourite “episodes”, and on the whole the way the home / away sections come together was very satisfying, I loved the moment with the hunting dog and Telemachus finally figuring out what’s going on. Also agreed with Tristan on the effectiveness of the Bronze Age tie-in and the Horse being an act of deception that effectively fractured society. It’s a very brisk three hours and I left satisfied but not blown away, which is generally how I feel about all Nolan if I’m honest.
Slightly annoyed they missed the PERFECT opportunity to have one of the guys say “damn, we’re in a tight spot!” while trapped inside a horse.
BRB, lowering my rating by a star to acknowledge this omission now that you’ve brought it up.
I also found myself thinking a lot about The Return once we get down to business in Ithaca. I’d agree with you that the suitor-showdown was more effective in The Return.
Nolan’s showdown just felt a bit too generic-action-movie for me, The Return had its fair share of brutal archery but it felt more considered in a way I appreciated.
Tales From The Crypt, blew through a bunch of these, including “Dead Wait”, “The Reluctant Vampire”, “Easel Kill Ya”, and “Undertaking Palor”. My favorite was “Reluctant Vampire” with McDowell not quite STRETCHING as a vampire who works at a blood bank but getting to play a rather sympathetic one, and it results in some extremely funny and fucked up moments. “Dead Wait” indulges in more of the exoticism that seems inherent to adapting 50’s stories from an era where everyone was obsessed with voodoo and jungle magic, and nevertheless co-stars Vanity and has great nasty gore. Same thing with “Easel Kill Ya” and “Undertaking Palor”, the latter mixing the kind of kids who’d be in a Spielberg joint with some fucked up shit like pouring acid straight down a gullet.
Oh, this sounds thoroughly like my shit.
Year of the Month update!
And for August, send us your pieces on any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 2001!
TBD: James Williams: Millennium Actress
Aug. 2nd: Tristan J. Nankervis: Ocean’s Eleven
Aug. 7th: Gillian Nelson: Recess: School’s Out!
Aug. 14th: Gillian Nelson: The Princess Diaries
Aug. 16th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Mulholland Drive
Aug. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Disney’s California Adventure
Aug. 27th: Cori Domschot: The Mummy Returns
Aug. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Walt Disney Treasures
And there’s still time to write about any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1979.
TBD: James Williams: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Jul. 21st: Lauren James: Flowers in the Attic
Jul. 24th: Gillian Nelson: Don Bluth
Jul. 28th: John Bruni: All That Jazz
Jul. 29th: Lauren James: Ghost Story
Jul. 31st: Gillian Nelson: Big Thunder Mountain