New Work From Angel Olsen: “Special”
From Phases, a collection of B-sides, demos and covers, out today:
Thelma
Cinema can become a tool for the exorcising of demons. Repressions and life experiences can suddenly be evoked and shared with everyone in the theater or watching at home. Joachim Trie’s dark and perceptive film, Thelma (2017), is a gothic parable which serves as an interesting examination of the consequences of repression. A young girl becomes the receptor of her parents’ rigid, one could say Puritan, religious views of the world. Released in only a few arthouse venues and now available for streaming via Amazon, Thelma touches upon issues rarely gazed upon by mainstream/fantasy cinema. In an increasingly secular- albeit not rational- world, organized religion is being relegated more to a habit of the past. It even seems the Pope now claims hell does not exist. But for those raised within islands of dogma, belief is a very powerful and palpable part of life. [Read more…]
New Work From Honey Dijon & Tim K: “Love Muscle”
Featuring Nomi Ruiz:
Slowdive’s “Star Roving”
New Work From ShitKid: “Sugar Town”
From the debut LP, Fish
VoX LoW: “It’s 1940 In This Room”
L.A. Witch Push The Pedal Through The Floor With “Drive Your Car”
King Krule’s “Emergency Blimp”Fuk Yah!!
Fuk Yah!!
King Krule’s “Czech One”
Soul Pioneer Jackie Shane To Release Career Retrospective: Any Other Way
45 years ago, Jackie Shane, a 1960’s transgender soulstress, walked away not only from her career but from the public spotlight, not to be heard from again. Until now. A reluctant Ms. Shane is back with a two-disc retrospective titled Any Other Way, set to be released on October 20. Below is the title track from the new release, as well as an electrifying performance of Shane singing “Walking the Dog,” from 1965:
New Work From The/Das: Top Vibes
Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile’s Sweet New Track: Over Everything
The Florida Project
Writer/director Sean Baker does not make flashy films, but slowly unfolding, naturalistic narratives that’s revelations bloom for hours and days after you’ve first seen them. In 2015, he had critics raving over Tangerine, his heartwarming and at times hilarious breakout about a pair of trans sex workers. For his follow-up, Baker awes with his frank yet beautiful portrait of poverty-stricken Americans living in the shadow of The Happiest Place On Earth.
Set down the highway from Orlando’s Disney World, The Florida Project (2017) focuses on the people scraping by at a rundown motel called The Magic Castle. [Read more…]
New Work From King Krule: “Dam Surfer”
King Krule’s (aka Archy Marshall) new single, Dum Surfer, “is about as demonic as [things] can get. [Krule’s] voice, especially, is so tart and poisonous, that it’ll surely pucker one’s face. It’s as if in preparation for The Ooz [Krule’s new album] he was eating a box of nails and puffing at a pack of cigarettes every single day to get his vocals just right. The violent, bodily imagery of his lyrics, perfectly match this acerbic mood: he sings about his brains resembling “potato mash” and puking on a sidewalk. His backing band adds a dash of color to this bleak picture, with slinky guitar riffs and wiggly saxophone. In spite of all the doom and gloom, Marshall and his band have an innate groove. The accompanying music video breathes life in the sickly world Marshall imagines.” — Pitchfork Magazine
Blue My Mind
Becoming a woman can be a traumatizing experience. Your body transforms. It bleeds. Your hormones swing wildly, subjecting you to fits of rage, sadness, lust, and self-doubt. You may look in the mirror and see someone you don’t recognize. You might rebel against this lack of control by acting out with booze, sex, and drugs. In these regards, the 15-year-old heroine of Blue My Mind (2017) is pretty common. But where this Fantastic Fest entry takes a dramatic and sensationally strange turn is that she is not becoming a woman. She’s becoming a mermaid. Far from a fantastical and glamorous experience, it’s one swimming in trauma and body horror. [Read more…]
Get Out
Conceived in the waning days of Barack Obama’s presidency and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, four days after Donald Trump assumed power, the comedian Jordan Peele’s semi-parodic horror film Get Out (2017) has a complexity worthy of its historical moment.
Get Out opens with a familiar horror-movie trope. Someone walking alone down a dark street stalked by a mysterious force. That the setting is an idyllic suburb, the someone is a young, increasingly panicked black man, and the predator is driving a white car gives the scenario an unmistakable reality. “The scene grows discordantly disturbing because you may, as I did, flash on Trayvon Martin,” wrote Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. That the black youth is not shot but rather abducted is a dreamlike condensation of the movie to come. [Read more…]
New Work From Matthew Dear: Bad Ones (feat. Tegan and Sara)
Hagazussa
Reviewed by
[from old High-German, a Hagazussa refers to the fence sitter, or one who lives between two worlds]
Anyone who found the deranged cannibalistic excesses of Darren Arofonsky’s mother! a little too vanilla should feast their senses on the deliciously dark flavors of Hagazussa (2017). An atmospheric folk-horror fable that combines a constant undertow of creeping dread with a striking avant-gothic visual style, it marks the feature debut of Vienna-born, Berlin-based director Lukas Feigelfeld. The title draws on an ancient term used to describe witches and female demons across German-speaking Europe in the Middle Ages. [Read more…]