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.1
On My Heart Is A Room With No Cameras In It, Victoryland takes an approach to indie rock that is both admirably ambitious and charmingly disheveled.
The latest release from Julian McCamman’s Brooklyn-based project2 is loaded with layered, gradually evolving and decidedly mid-fi songs. Tracks tend to start at a simple center and reveal their full bloom petal by scruffy petal. Album-opener, “Here I Stand,” works as a perfect introduction to the album’s standard operating procedure.
It starts with tenuous notes that sound like they were carefully negotiated from a mandolin, although their exact origins are difficult to pinpoint. The plinking picks up speed, martialed on by clicking percussion, until it sounds like a hand-cranked music box pushed just past its intended speed. The clicking stays steady, and the progression repeats, becoming a sine wave loop for gentle acoustic guitar to coast along. By the time McCamman’s troubadour timbre arrives, the music is simultaneously busy and meditative. It’s the sound of assembly line robots piecing a machine together or an ant colony in the flow state of collective labor. Its pieces are disparate but complementary.
It’s an additive style that likely stems from the collaboration that created My Heart Is A Room With No Cameras. McCamman’s home demos provide the foundation for the LP, and his compositions were fleshed out and further formed with help from producer Dan Howard.3
It’s tempting to describe the process as Howard polishing McCamman’s work, but that’s not quite right. Half-songs, loops and elements of the original recordings made their way into the finished album. They’re deployed in a way that creates a sense of scope and momentum, but the production style leaves a healthy patina of fuzz and grit devoid of the crisp, clean quality that polish implies. It’s a winsome case of slightly baroque reach exceeding the grasp of available resources that echoes a type of guitar-driven music with scuffed-up bells and whistles that was in vogue about a quarter century ago.
“No Cameras,” the LP’s de facto title track, is the sort of playfully adventurous, slightly ragged and super catchy song that would have made sense on Elephant 6, Flying Nun Records, or even DFA shortly after the turn of the 21st century.4 It’s equal parts driving drums, muffled screeching sounds, bright chiming notes and loose guitar. Melodramatic lyrics, wordless vocal fills, and McCamman’s occasional use of Isaac Brock-style bark singing also deepen that sense of connection to the ‘00s indie canon.
Just like back then, the strongest stuff is often the most immediate material. When blown-out sounds and gradual ramp-ups are among an LP’s calling cards, having something bright and infectious to hold onto from the jump is a big help. Not every song has an easy handle, but the ones that do shine.
“No Cameras” finds its undulating, shrill throughline almost immediately, and it proves to be an improbable earworm. “You Were Solved” wastes little time revealing the reverb-heavy, nearly chicken scratch riff that serves as the song’s backbone. It gains volume as it goes and winds up being an album highlight. Album-closer “I’ll Show You Mine” reaches maximum richness early with percussion, bass, keys and at least two guitar tracks on the mix within its opening seconds. It’s a great contrast for the song’s grim lyrics — “Lie to me/ I liked it when you lied before/ And won’t you lie with me, and we can try something we’ve never tried before/ like two dumb dogs just bleeding out on the concrete floor in a room somewhere“). McCamman’s delivery, simultaneously quivering and laconic, goes a long way toward selling the atmosphere that brings the album to a strong, slightly acrid close.
It’s a delightfully imperfect and hummable end to an album that’s often both of those things at once.
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
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.
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?
The Kids In The Hall, Season Five, Episode Two
“How does she eat?”
“She calls the pizza boy, he takes it in. He’s got nerves of steel that one.”
“Right now his thoughts are in a raw, pure state. They haven’t had time to fully crystalise. Do you want them to tumble out of his mouth prematurely into this world?” = me
“His thoughts can range from the simplest – ‘gee, my ass is itchy’ – to the most profound: “If there is a God, does he have a job?”.” = still me
“I’m back.”
“A triumph for feminism? Who can say.”
Dave Foley’s performance in the sketch where he plays the guy doing a document of his life is incredibly funny.
“You know, Ben, I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I do remember you called me a pus-head.”
“Get out of my office.”
“I’d love to, Roger, but I’m afraid I have to go.”
“I mean, you got human hair all over you there.”
I always felt Foley’s strengths as an actor were the Kids’ secret weapon.
You can really see what he brought to Dave on Newsradio – extra depth and comedy to a character who could have been a blank slate.
Inside No. 9, “Cold Comfort”
Strong, tense episode filmed via static monitoring/security cams at a crisis hotline. Pemberton plays a new volunteer whose first day on the job throws him into the deep end with a young girl’s on-the-line suicide; when he has to go straight from that to the next call–an old woman who’s mired in grief over losing her beloved cat–he botches it badly, with unexpected consequences. Further events only make things worse. Good acting, good bitter satire of corporate culture even in non-profits like this. Very good ending.
Inside No. 9, “Nana’s Party”
Beautifully done compact storytelling that ratchets up the comedy until it turns into drama. This is a suburban birthday party full of apparently minor clashes–Jim (Pemberton) wants to finally one-up his practical joker of a brother-in-law, Pat (Shearsmith); Angela (Claire Skinner) wants to keep things decorous and orderly in the face of her drunken, very disorderly sister (Lorraine Ashbourne)–and it presses them until all hell breaks loose, and everything else breaks loose along with it. Bit of Mike Leigh-adjacent class stuff here in places, although it’s more on the edges. Shearsmith is especially good in this episode, handling Pat’s turn from especially annoying comedic character to very moving dramatic character perfectly.
Inside No. 9, “Seance Time”
A fun horror episode to close out S2. Shearsmith plays a disgraced prank show TV host just starting to claw his way back to the no-longer-that-big time: the revived show’s latest stunt means tricking unsuspecting people into attending a seance and scaring the daylights out of them with some practical effects and a “blue demon dwarf,” who’s actually a mistreated actor who just wants to hang with the rest of the cast. Pemberton arrives as another mark–one who starts off completely unaffected by the atmosphere–and then things take an unexpected turn. Another good comedy-to-drama swing here, this time by Pemberton, who’s sincerely affected by the proceedings. The bigger turn is a little too predictable, and a little less scary, than I’d like, and the ultimate ending feels like it needs a little more oomph, but it’s all still pretty fun.
No duds in S2 at all. Even the slightly weaker episodes were engaging and had a ton of high points, and the best of the best were stunners. This show was made for me.
Coma
Caught this before it left WatchTCM. I didn’t love it quite as much as I’d hoped to–maybe other paranoid ’70s classics have set the bar too high–because it drags in spots, especially early on, and it’s jarring that Geneviève Bujold’s character seems to know from the jump that she’s in a paranoid thriller. But it goes to some good, weird places–the image of the comatose patients “stored” suspended from wires, bathed in eerie disinfecting light, is terrific–and has a knockout suspense sequence (that’s actually pretty romantic as well) where Bujold and Michael Douglas finally fall into a top-notch, wordless partnership as he sees she’s right and immediately acts on that knowledge to save her life. Douglas is very good in this in general.
No Other Choice – hmmm. I thought the trailer made this look like it could be an excellent, extremely dark comedy and when it does get into that territory it’s largely very good. But I’m not sure it gets there often enough to sustain a meandering 140-minute runtime – I know Korean films do generally seem to stretch out to around this length a lot of the time and I’m often OK with it but in this case I feel like the core plot (which I won’t compare to the source material, because I have not read it) could have used a tighter focus, as a lot of the other material around the edges (family drama, dancing, cello etc.) didn’t really work for me. Four or five absolutely killer scenes though and it’s a good-looking film – but not among this director’s best work, for me.
Read the source material, it is superb! And I think you are right here — for a bit of context, the protagonist of the novel has six people on his list instead of the three in the movie, which I think was probably the right call overall (the book can give condensed yet meaningful details on these guys in a way that would be harder on film) but winds up being terribly off-balanced considering how much time is spent on the first dude. And the stuff around the edges has some overlap but in the novel it is crucially perceived as edge by the first-person narrator and by extension the reader — here it is very clearly Other Stuff and this diffuses things further.
The Pitt – Up to S1E6, there’s definitely some cheese here and the odd bit of very obvious dialogue (“You’re not a burden, you’re my mom!”) and yet most of it works, or gets undercut by a strong dramatic touch. (After saying this to the mother she’s been caretaking, the daughter ghosts her, for example.) Big highlight is the running gags like everyone betting on who stole the ambulance (“I’ll bet twenty on methheads”) and poor Whitaker getting every kind of fluid on his scrubs (piss, blood, pus) and continually having to change.
Notes: Some character stereotypes abound and the actors still push through them, like intern and nepo baby Javadi being the daughter of a high-pressure Indian doctor. Of all the characters, she seems the least cut out to be a doctor and the one most forced into the role. Good dramatic kick to Mohan’s status as “Slo-Mo,” she invests in patients and this is anathema to a hospital understandably obsessed with metrics and waiting times. The guy playing Langdon has a good deadpan. (“You mean my brain is gonna be a worm graveyard forever?” “Well, they are resting in peace.”)
Roofman — At first this action/romantic comedy about a goofy thief who lives secretly behind a bike display at Toys ‘R’ Us and becomes involved with one of the workers there seems like a departure for Cianfrance. But the glimpses we get of how scary his robberies really are develops a low-lying hum of anxiety even when Tatum is being “John”’s charming and outgoing self. The problem is that these tones don’t quite mesh in what is, for most of its runtime, an easygoing family comedy about starting over. I understand that the filmmakers want us to feel the falsity of this illusion, but it still pushes against the goal of any particular scene. That it works as well as it does is down to a totally guileless performance by Kirsten Dunst, showing you every flick of emotion on Leigh’s face as she first falls in love with John and then starts to see past the façade.
I’ve been meaning to check this out, the tonal whiplash sounds like it works a lot better as concept than reality but it still sounds worthwhile and it sounds like the performances are really good.
What did we listen to?
Random music listens including a bit of 60s Sinatra – a lot of his good stuff but some things that are pale copies of the good stuff – and a few days tapping into various and sundry classical music bits and pieces. Spoiler: Bach is good.
Nelson Riddle’s arrangements of Sinatra (I wanna say in the Fifties?) are the best, perfectly suited to his voice and he really rises to the grandeur they need.
Snocaps, Snocaps
I fell into one of the categories of people Ben mentioned would like this–i.e., I just really love “Right Back to It,” one of my favorite songs of the last few years–and sure enough, I did indeed like it. There are maybe no spectacular highs here, but it’s a warm, immersive, beautiful album that I’m sure I’ll revisit. I hope the Crutchfields come back together for a second one.
Screen Drafts
Lots and lots, but most recently the Brad Anderson Super Draft (in which The Shield got a shout-out!), Classic Disney Live Action Adventure Draft, and part one of the Disney Animation Studios Mega Draft (I do wish the draft picks in this one got elaborated on more: it’s surprisingly breezy, and while it’s all pleasant, I love a bit more discussion. That being said, I’m glad everyone agrees about the fox in Robin Hood). These are all adding movies to my watchlist: the only Brad Anderson films I’d seen were Session 9 and The Machinist, though I’d seen more of this TV, since he’s a major workhorse there with a wide, genre-spanning career.
Starting the day off with the new PTA Super Draft.
No spoilers pls but I’m hoping Happy Accidents did well for Brad because I love that film, and I recently had a conversation with a friend who declared it “awful” so I need backup.
1001 Albums etc.
Cocteau Twins – Treasure: there are a couple of Cocteau Twins songs that I really love, so I had them in “maybe I’ll become a full-on fan when I explore deeper” territory. I found this album a little too inconsistent to fulfil that hope, but it is gorgeous in places.
Minor Threat – Out of Step: I’ve heard a bunch of Fugazi but never really went back to check out Minor Threat. Short, punchy, angry – hit the spot on a day when I was miserable at work (which is most days lately).
Van Halen – 1984: I still find “Jump” pretty delightful even though it’s overplayed, and there are a few other songs here that balance the virtuoso playing and the hooks almost as well. Other songs prioritise the shredding over the songwriting and lose me completely.
Prince and the Revolution – Purple Rain: it took me a long time to appreciate Prince but I do think he’s pretty great now. This has a few songs that I love (“Take Me With U” and “I Would Die 4 U” are my favourites) and none that I dislike, although I do find the title track outstays its welcome a little bit (sorry).
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Langkamer – No – it’s early days but this is easily my favourite album of the year so far. Killer fuzzy indie-rock with good melodies and interesting song structures.
Nev Clay – mentioned seeing this guy live in yesterday’s post, and I’m really enjoying his recorded work too. Despite a 30+ year career as a live musician he’s only put out a couple of proper albums, the rest of his output is live recordings and home demos and to some extent I prefer those, his lyrics are so good and guitar playing so pretty that additional polish buffs out some of the magic.
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Critical Darlings – enjoyed their episode about the Oscar nominations, they’re doing a good job getting me more interested in the awards season than I ever have been before.
Screen Drafts – I’ve had more limited podcast time recently so it’s taking me a week or more to get through episodes of this, I think I finished the “best of 2000” draft this week which was a lot of fun and highlighted a lot of undersung stuff. I’m on Paul WS Anderson now, and I want to listen to the Brad Anderson one too but Paul T Anderson might be too tempting… need to check out the No Other Choice episode of Blank Check now that I’ve seen it too, I guess I need to plan some long drives or chore-days or something.
That 2000 draft finally got me to watch Wonder Boys, even if it didn’t wind up finding a place on the actual list. I’d like to see The House of Mirth, too–I should revisit the book, which didn’t work quite as well for me as The Age of Innocence (I felt like Lily was maneuvered into her tragedy a bit too obviously) but which probably deserves a second chance.
I haven’t seen Wonder Boys since probably 2001 or 2002 but I remember really liking it, was surprised it was so controversial! Terence Davies is a complete blind spot for me but House of Mirth did sound really interesting and has definitely made it onto the watchlist.
I sleep under a Prince painting so he had me at “The Beautiful Ones”. “Purple Rain” may be my favorite song and the recent remaster makes me weep – tried to describe the effect to a friend as “feeling the overwhelming love of the artist for everyone.”
Adventures in Musicals: Listened to Wicked the whole way through for the first time since I was 14 and there are good songs here. “Popular” is a fantastic pop number and “Wonderful”, always my favorite, is the best combination of wit and actual complexity (“There are precious few at ease/with moral ambiguities/so we just pretend they don’t exist!”) But this is what the word “trite” was made for – Wicked doesn’t have much to say about good and evil and the violence of the state, and what there is gets flattened by the narrative structure. (Act Two being famously bad.) It doesn’t help that the protagonists are motivated by love for characters who are essentially assholes – Boq, Nessa, even Glinda – and the extra characters are dogmatic and simple-minded…which is a pretty good rationale for the Wizard’s totalitarianism. It’s the Harry Potter issue: the author is more sympathetic to a “sheeple” mindset than they know.
Meanwhile, A Gentleman’s Guide To Love & Murder, a musical adaptation of Kind Hearts & Coronets featuring Jefferson Mays as all eight aristocratic family members, rules, akin to Gilbert & Sullivan and Porter in the dizzying lyrical play and very British music structures. It’s also cheerfully amoral, merely observing the way the class system makes everyone a monster, scraping and striving until no one gets out alive. (The soundtrack records May’s death sounds several times, including his screams as he drowns, and it’s very nastily funny.) Highlights include the amazing “I’ve Decided To Marry You” and “Poison In My Pocket.” Give it a shot. (Hee hee.)
The Practice, “Eyewitness” – Oh joy, another twist ending. Here a minister comes forward during a trial and says that a parishioner confessed to committing the murder that Lindsey and Jimmy’s client is accused of. Only he refuses to say who that person might be. And insists that the defense team betrayed him by making him appear in court. The judge rules that this little bit of possible evidence is hearsay and doesn’t allow it to get to the jury…and then tosses the verdict since he (and Jimmy and Lindsey and maybe even Helen) believe the minister is telling the truth. But wham, after the not guilty verdict, Jimmy discovers the minister and the defendant having a gay kiss, oh my! I am not sure what I like less, that we get something “scandalous” or that the show jogs out another twist ending. There is also a second plot where Ellenor is propositioned by a (married) DA she was friends with in exchange for leniency, but this kind of feels like it doesn’t achieve much besides revisiting all of Ellenor’s insecurities.
Fraiser, “Cheerful Goodbyes” – At NBC’s insistence as part of a 75th anniversary event – hey, NBC will be 100 next year, consider yourself warned – cast members from old shows were guesting on current ones. So naturally, the reunion with any Cheers cast members we hadn’t seen took place. (The only one who never shows up is Kirstie Alley). Frasier, in Boston for a conference with Niles but having brought Martin and Daphne as well, ends up at a retirement party for Cliff, and hijinks ensue. Some clever bits – like Niles hearing some embarrassing canonical tales of his brother, and Martin and Norm hitting it off – and the classic cast hits the right notes as if they never stopped playing the parts. Doesn’t hurt that Heidi Perlman, who wrote for Cheers and at this time joined the staff on Frasier, gets both sets of characters. But a little time with Cliff and Carla is enough to remind both why I liked the show and why I have little desire to rewatch it.
Year of the Month update!
Coming in February, we’ll be looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 2nd: Tristan J. Nankervis: Throne of Blood
Feb. 6th: Gillianren: The Story of Anyburg, USA
Feb. 13th: Gillianren: The Truth About Mother Goose
Feb. 16th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Incredible Shrinking Man
Feb. 20th: Gillianren: Our Friend the Atom
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
And there’s still time to sign up for January! Here’s some of the movies, albums, books, TV, and games you can write about.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 29th: Cori Domschot: Jewel of the Nile