The Consumption: Nov. 23

CONCERT: Vic Chesnutt: Opener Liz Durrett held the crowd's attention with just a classical guitar, a well-used distortion pedal and a lovely, expressive voice (which reminded me somehow of both Sarah McLaughlin and Feist). Apparently her album is more fully orchestrated, but the sparse setting suits her, and the distortion was more than enough to add variety to the arrangements. A good way to set the mood for the evening, and another reminder of how absurdly well-behaved Marquee Room crowds are. Honestly, the last few shows I've seen there, you could hear a pin drop.
Even from a wheelchair, Chesnutt commands the stage. Actually, that feels like the wrong word -- he somehow seems too sweet to command anything, mostly thanks to his banter (asking where the cowboys were and then scolding the crowd for turning against their own when they laughed, reminiscing about staring at Emmylou Harris's behind when he played the Calgary Folk Music Festival). But musically, the Vic Chesnutt Band is a powerhouse. The members of A Silver Mt. Zion have restraint down to a science, refusing to add an extraneous note. Then, all hell breaks loose, with Chesnutt's distorted acoustic guitar trading blows with Guy Picciotto's electric, which occasionally sounds like a wounded animal. Then another slow, bluesy number, coasting on an easy groove, Chesnutt chatting with the crowd between verses. Both extremes seem entirely unforced.
Chesnutt's voice has bluesman confidence and world-weariness, but he's not afraid to wink. He dedicates one song to "The often-late Vic Chesnutt." In the encore, he plays a song from his first album, just him and his guitar. The chorus: "I am not a victim. I am intelligent. I am not a victim. I am an athiest." It's the closest thing he gets to an anthem, powerful even without the muscle of Zion and Picciotto.

The Consumption: Nov 19-22

Man... I need to stay on top of this.


THEATRE: TheatreJunction – The Country: Martin Crimp’s script is a tongue-twister, looping back on itself, interrupting itself, repeating phrases and traveling on hairpin tangents. As delivered by Mark Lawes and Fiona Byrne, though, it’s not much more than two actors getting through their lines as best they can without playing off each other in the slightest. Things improve when Raphaele Thiriet appears, adding casual charm, flightiness and a decent emotional range to the proceedings, but that just makes Lawes’s and Byrne’s performances seem all the more stuck up (though, to be fair, Lawes and Byrne are both far better in the second act than the first, which makes me suspect Chris Abraham’s direction is to blame). The tension and twists in the script still make it worthwhile on the whole, but this feels like a wasted opportunity.

FILM: Chaturanga – Four Chapters: A few technical issues aside, this adaptation of Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s novella has a good deal of appeal. As a bit of a skeptic, the opening two acts struck me the most, with the wise Uncle devoting himself to humanitarianism despite the religious and cultural pressures around him. The extended sequence where Uncle’s followers stay with a guru dragged, especially as the film made no attempt to portray the guru as anything but a sham, but still provided some interesting meditations on the balance between faith and reason. A little overly episodic on the whole, though.

FILM: Kanchivaram – A Communist Confession: In my top two at the Hidden Gems fest. The story of a man who sacrifices everything to provide his daughter with a silk sari, the film has elements of tragedy, but as the opening sequence amply shows, it has an energy and style that can only be attributed to the director’s past in Bollywood. Blends the political with the personal, encompassing everything from revolutionary fervor to familial obligation with the same confident hand.

GAME: The New Super Mario Bros Wii: Only tried this one briefly… It actually reminds me a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, in that it captures the classic feel of earlier series entries, and works as both a competitive and cooperative game. On early levels at least (World 3, I think), the level design is more than balanced enough to handle multiple players without feeling overly crowded, and even repeated deaths weren’t particularly frustrating, though this might change once the levels get more technically demanding. Still, seeing Mario return to side-scrolling glory on a console is more than just a nostalgic joy, it’s an incentive to revisit all of the classic NES and Super NES versions.

The Consumption: Nov. 19-ish

FILM: The Third Man: First and foremost, the zither score is fantastic. I want it as a ringtone, which is not something that usually occurs to me, because I have never used a tone other than chimes. But the mood that it sets is so... off. The music is upbeat but not exactly happy. It's propulsive but not hugely energetic. It's just... singular seems like a good word for it.
Aside from that, it's gorgeous. Black and white always looks better, but the old Vienna setting is beautiful and the actual photography is beautiful, vivid... they supposedly hosed down the roads to make the cobblestones more reflective, to give an idea of the amount of effort they put in. And as for the actual film, it's classic noir, with an effortlessly good turn by Orson Welles as Harry Lime, the dead man who drives all the film's action. Understandably classic.

VINYL: The Turtles - Happy Together Again: "Happy Together" is the song that most people know, and "Elenore" is the reason I bought it, but I was still surprised at how good the rest of this two-disc collection is (yes, yes, I'm overwhelmingly positive in this blog, but why would I go out of my way to consume crappy things?). I'd known that the two main Turtles went on to back up T. Rex and work with Zappa, but that was always an oddity to me. Listening to this, it now makes more sense. The songs are pure pop (they were reliable hitmakers) but the chords are a lot more interesting than you'd think. Even in "Happy Together," if you listen to the lead guitar, there's more going on than you likely remember.


CD: Tom Waits - Glitter and Doom Live: Last time Waits went live, it was on the stone classic Big Time, which brought even more bark to tunes like "16 Shells from a 30.06." But that was pre-Bone Machine, pre-Mule Variations, Alice, Blood Money... all of which leaves a lot of room for Glitter and Doom to play. On the plus side, he goes as far back as Rain Dogs and touches on some tracks from most of the albums up to Real Gone and Orphans (though Alice and Blood Money are conspicuously absent) but the trouble is, he's stuck solely in gruff-man vocal mode. Which means "Dirt in the Ground" doesn't have the falsetto that made the original so haunting, for example, and the whole thing starts to wear a bit thin by the end. Seeing it live would've been something, as the stage experience is supposedly quite elabourate, but it's missing something here. A second disc of rambling storytelling and banter is almost more entertaining, somehow, and makes a great addition.

The Consumption: Nov. 15 and 16

Maybe someday I should start adding images into these, but for now, I just don't particularly care.

FILM: Gone With the Wind: For some reason, I've long been apprehensive about this one. It's always portrayed as the uber-romance, a heartbreaking epic of southern chivalry, damsels swooning and "yessum, mastuh" servants, which didn't much entice me. There's some accuracy to that, but I don't know that I would even categorize it as a love story. It's more a character study of Scarlet O'Hara, a mostly awful person with moments of true humanity. She's manipulative, cold, calculating, seemingly incapable of real love... and a whole lot more interesting than the belles that surround her. Clark Gable is perfect throughout -- he has an inhumanly perfect smirk, and while his character is nearly as self-centred as ol' Scarlet, he's both more honest about it and more prone to demonstrating the soul beneath the persona. Better than I expected, mostly because it's more cynical than I expected. Anyone who talks about classics being overly saccharine just hasn't watched them; mainstream movies these days are far more emotionally straightforward.

FILM: Zero Bridge: Halfway through the Indian movies now, and this one's my favourite of the three by a good margin. That could just be me showing a cultural bias -- the minimal production and low-key performances are a lot closer to North American indie filmmaking than the other two have been. Still, Mohamad Imran Tapa is great as the bright but self-centred main character, who verges on a life of crime because the world offered by his illiterate uncle (played superbly by Ali Mohammad Dar), and Taniya Khan is just plain gorgeous as the sort-of love interest. Has the same kind of documentary feel as films like L'Enfant and Police, Adjective... this one'll be hard to top.

The Consumption: Nov. 14

EVENT: 24th Annual Gemini Awards: Being in the press room was possibly even less exciting than watching the broadcast on TV. A few decent tidbits (learning that an award was actually turned down and packed away, finding out that they cut a joke about torture in Syria at the last second) and good/geeky to ask Veronica Mars' dad how to kill a guy with two tea bags and some wax paper, but too many back-stage press scrums, not enough glitz and glamour of Canadian television.
But, those two ladies from Corner Gas were kind of hot.

CONCERT: DINOSAUR JR: There's no denying that a lot of their songs sound the same (they all boil down to volume + guitar wank), but there's also no denying that the band truly delivered. Mascis can rip out solos with the best of them, but the real key seems to be Lou Barlow, who is a fucking monster on the bass (and no slouch on the vocals, either). My ears are still ringing. As long as it stops within a day or so, I will consider this worthwhile.

Interview: Ron James, set to host the Geminis

Last year’s Geminis drew 62,000 people, which is less than a tenth of what your average CBC special brings in. Why are you doing this?

[Laughs] Listen man, just jump right in, that’s what I say. Look, I could always use another 62,000 viewers, too, you know. I’m doing it because I had a riot doing it last year at the non-broadcast night, I did the news events. I’m in the industry, I’ve got my own series on CBC now, and after last year, they asked me if I’d commit. I said sure, sounds like fun. The same company that produces my television show is producing the Geminis, and I knew I’d be right in my comfort zone.

I love the west, and when I heard it was going to be open to the public, I thought, sweet, it’s not going to be such a corporate gig, you know? I could push the envelope a bit.

Was it important for you to have the live audience involved?

Yeah, it was definitely an encouraging thing to hear. It loosens the night up and takes it out of the corporate realm, and allows the material to be not so much inside [industry], but embrace a broader perspective. I can talk about Calgary, I can talk about the West. I’ve toured there extensively over the last 10 years, I’ve worked from Lethbridge to the oil patch, and I think that now the West is playing a crucial role in the national zeitgeist, and, you know, why not embrace that when we’re talking about Canadian culture as well?

Are you going to be tailoring the show more towards the west, or since it’s a national broadcast, is it a national focus?

I’m going to be touching down on all sorts of spots. I’ll touch down on TV, touch down on the West itself, touch down on the nation, H1N1, you know, whatever hot button points are in the news. You have to go by instinct, too. If you’re touring — I’m in the middle of a tour of Atlantic Canada, so there’s some material that I was going to play universally that I’ll be playing there, that I’ve been honing on the road. There’s some material that I’ve played out West that’s never been on TV that I’ll be utilizing, and stuff the writers have come up with that pertains directly to TV.

When you’re doing stand-up, how is that different from sketch TV and this kind of live broadcast?

Well, absolutely. It’s a customized gig, isn’t it? It’s not just me winding the engine out for two hours, with a paying audience who paid $50 to see my show. I can say what I want to say there, as long as I don’t lose the room. But, you know, the same rules apply: Get laughs or get off. After 16 years in the trenches of Canadian comedy, I like to think that I’ve learned a few things about how to work a room. The same rules apply, it’s just that you have to tailor them a little differently for the arena you’ve found yourself in.

You seem to be having a better go of it now, but you’ve had some bitter experiences in the television industry —

Tell me, who hasn’t after 30 years in. How old are you?

I’m 26.

Twenty-six. You spend 30 years in the newspaper business, you tell me you haven’t had a bitter experience. Here’s the thing. Every hammer a carpenter picks up, he doesn’t build a mansion. You’ve got to learn. And if you’re referring to the bitter experience of Blackfly, that was two years that I was on, and it was a validation of the imagination, and I learned a great deal. The most important thing I learned doing that show was that you’ve got to surround yourself with great people who are taking their ship in the same direction, and that’s what I have with this particular series I’m doing now, which is why we got 811,000 viewers last Friday night. You work just as hard to get a show that receives mediocre reviews as you do to get one that receives stellar reviews and numbers. And I enjoyed the cast I worked with on that series, I enjoyed the struggle of the work. But you’ve got to have writers and you’ve got to have a team of writers who believe in your funny. And that’s what I have with the series The Ron James Show. I’ve got (Gerry Campbell), who honed his chops — as executive producer and head writer — honed his chops in Los Angeles for 10 years writing for Mad TV, Jeff Foxworthy, Roseanne, you name it. And I have (Liv Harvey), the executive producer who’s produced my last five national specials, and I’ve got my love of the work, which is a marriage of stand-up and sketch. I get to perform with people who come to play, and so, you learn from experiences that may not necessarily win you accolades. Your teachers come in many forms.

Some notable exceptions like your specials, Corner Gas and This Hour has 22 Minutes aside, it seems like Canadian television has a hard time capturing the national imagination. What do you think is the biggest source of difficulty for Canadians to capture Canadian audiences?

That’s a good question, man. Well, what do you mean capture Canadian audiences — are you talking in terms of numbers or are you talking in terms of pure enjoyment?

I’m talking in terms of numbers, because enjoyment is a much trickier thing to measure, really.

Well, when your budget for a show each week, like Mad Men, is $15 million, you’re gonna have production values. And you’ve got American spin, you’ve got the hype, you’ve got the power of an empire that’s got 177 military bases around the world, you know: Better start watching our shows or we’ll invade you.

That’s a cheap shot, but, I don’t know. I don’t pretend to be an authority on the semantics of the differences between Canadian and American TV. I just know that when Canadians find something that appeals to them, they’ll watch. I know that when I started in standup comedy, too, people said that, ‘Oh, you’ve got to lose all that material if you want to be successful in the States.’ Well, I put three years down in Los Angeles in the early ‘90s, and when I came home, I wanted to make it work here. And I came to learn that 2,000 people laughing in a snowstorm in Edmonton sounds exactly the same as 2,000 people laughing in Los Angeles where it’s warm.

When stories reflect the Canadian zeitgeist, and when they reflect and embrace the iconography and mythology of people and place, and try to figure out what it is that makes us tick, Canadians will watch. Look at the success of Corner Gas. And they will feel represented. Whether or not the nominating committee of the Gemini Awards feels the same, that’s a different issue altogether.

That is another thing — last year, Corner Gas, despite it being it’s last year, was shut out. When people see something like that, does that give them a reason to look away from the awards show, if they don’t see it reflecting what they’re actually interested in?

Well, I think it’s something that definitely the Academy has to begin to look at, period. I mean, the fact that Corner Gas was shut out last year by Cocked and Loaded that nobody watched lends one to assume that something’s rotten in Denmark, and I just can’t understand it. It just perplexes me — and it perplexes everybody in the industry. Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn by this, but — what odds, it’s what I do for a living — but I think that the consistency of that show and the seamlessness of the cast and its standards, the fact they were overlooked can only be explained by internal jealousies. You know? That’s all. And I’d like to see more consistency from that area in the comedic categories, absolutely. We’re always eating at the little table, and then when you finally do have a great show, for some reason or another, it’s overlooked. It’s almost that old Canadian adage, ‘Oh, they’re successful, we want to make sure that they don’t get a big head, so we’re not going to nominate them.

But the country knows, and Brent knows, and the people who created that show know how great it was. And it is. Period.

You do seem to see a lot of the time that “Gemini nominee” and “recently cancelled show” go hand in hand.

Once again, I can only comment on things that affect me and that I know about, and I don’t know about those semantics of why they’re cancelled and why they’re nominated and things. I mean, I’m sure that’s network decisions or a myriad number of decisions. I know it takes an awful long time to line your planets up and to have a successful show, there’s numerous elements of the show that go in to make it successful. Success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan.

In all these awards shows, there’s people that are overlooked. It happens at the Academy Awards, you know, Dr. Strangelove loses out to My Fair Lady or whatever it was, and there’s glaring omissions, and sometimes that’s bound to happen. But I think that for the most part, I’m pleased with the way things are looking this year for Canadian television. Flashpoint is sold to, how many, 19 countries around the world? That’s outstanding! That’s the universality of the storytelling, and that’s really important.

In your view, what would be the key thing to change to get a wider audience for the Geminis — aside from having it on basic cable this year and not on specialty cable like it was last year.

Oh, is that what it was? I was on tour, I didn’t see it. I think they’re on the right track with opening it up to the public and not keeping it insular. The more that you, why should the public be excluded from an awards show and seeing it, when it’s the public who feeds us. You know, it’s the public who pays our bills. I mean, those are the ones who are watching, so bring ’em in. We’re all one big happy family.

That’s my motto, anyway. I’m just going to approach the gig with the same passion I bring to my live show. If the ushers aren’t wiping the seats down, I haven’t done my job.

One last thing — I noticed that one of the nominees for best host of a variety show this year is Jason Priestly for hosting last year’s awards.

[Laughs] Oh, is he?

Do you think you’re a shoo-in for next year’s nomination?

Oh, goes without saying, I can’t wait. I’m going to buy a winery like Jason did, too, after next year.

The Consumption - Nov 13

FILM: 2012: I was expecting the disaster movie to end all disaster movies, and on that level at least, director Roland Emmerich delivers. 2012 basically just takes scenes from every apocalypse flick ever made (a bit of Deep Impact here, some Volcano there, even some Titanic for good measure) and strings them together with the flimsiest pseudoscience and most saccharine dialogue that Emmerich and go-writer Harald Kloser could half-ass together. It's fairly hilarious, even with Woody Harrelson mugging it up as a parody of his eco-activist persona, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is solid (and stolid) throughout. Not a good movie by any stretch, but I've spent 2 1/2 hours on worse things before.

The consumption: Nov 12

Alright, "Daily" is probably going to be stretching things, but I'll keep this as regular as I can. I haven't really taken in all that much in the last four days anyway, but let's keep this going:


CONCERT: No More Shapes w/Beneath These Idle Tides and Free Nude Celebs: Weeds Cafe isn't my favourite venue in town, but the cramped quarters really did help make this one feel special — 60 people in the back room of a coffee shop listening to avane-garde noise can't help but warm your heart. Shapes and Tides collaborated for the opening set, and the warm drones of the latter provided a sturdy foundation for the more freeform explorations of the former. BTIT's solo set started off familiarly enough, with a simple melodic line filtered through the most powerful reverb this side of... um... a really large room, but actual, clearly defined picking patterns actually emerged at the end — a welcome development. The real suprise, though, was Azeda Booth frontman Jordan Hossack's Free Nude Celebs set. Dressed in hippie garb that would've made Ken Kesey blush in 1967, the singer abandoned the falsetto and electronics that have served him well in favour of an erratically strummed acoustic guitar. The strumming patterns were steady enough to provide momentum, but off-kilter enough to keep things on edge. Lyrics were a bizarre mix of poetry, self-confession and humour, all delivered with an almost superhuman transparency — Hossack seems completely incapable of artifice. He's a thoroughly weird dude, and that can be off-putting, but there's a real brilliance behind each of his bizarre tunes.


CD: Dr. Dre - The Chronic: Yes, I should have heard this album a decade ago... Seventeen years of mainstream gangsta posturing have dulled the album's danger, but that only makes it easier to appreciate the actual music on the disc. Dre's production is impeccably funky, but I'm more impressed with his vocal delivery, ghost-written or not. It doesn't blow me away technically, but there's a toughness that just isn't there in the Eminem cameos that introduced my high school self to Dre. Plus, Snoop actually seems more than half-conscious on his verses, which is a plus.

Daily Consumption: Nov. 8

FILM: Parallel Folds: Second of the Indian movies I'm judging. Slightly unfair, because a fair number of scenes are quite overexposed, which makes the subtitles completely illegible for stretches, but I'm pretty sure I followed the whole thing. I'm also pretty sure it's overly melodramatic, and whatever insight it has into the idea of dignified/voluntary death are overwhelmed by some soap-opera calibre characterizations. Definitely won't be my pick.

VINYL: Them - Featuring Van Morrison: A little baffled by the exclusion of "Baby Please Don't Go," but otherwise this is extremely worthwhile. Less raunchy garage a la "Gloria," more emphasis on the R&B jams, which is a good trade. Morrison occasionally sounds more like Jagger than Mick ever did, and the band's tighter than the Stones ever were. Plus, I'm pretty sure this album's the source of Beck's samples on "Devil's Haircut" and "Jackass," which is neat.

Daily consumption: Nov. 7

COMEDY: Louis CK: His second set of the day, and he did seem a bit worn down, but that didn't particularly detract. Aside from seeming to drop one anecdote, everything was pretty much spot on, with the usual knack for finding the right vulgarity for any situation and the right mix of insight and depression. It's odd: he mostly does jokes about kids and there was a good chunk of airline humour at the start, but he makes it all work.

CD: Maxwell - Black Summer's Night: God, it's good to hear a genuine horn section again. Neo soul with a bit of Curtis Mayfield falsetto, but when he kicks into the regular register, it hits the groove much harder. Solid stuff.

FILM: NFB Shorts: I'll lump these all together for brevity's sake. Cordell Barker's Runaway just has me more confused about his career -- how has he only made 3 shorts in 21 years? Great bit of slapstick with not-so-subtle social commentary. Also of note: Spare Change, which moves from a conversation between two homeless people (probably taken from late animator Ryan Larkin's real experience) to an odd, impressionistic musical number; How People Got Fire, more for the gorgeous pencil-sketched portions than the other, rotoscope-looking bits; and Land of the Heads, a nicely macabre little ditty about a vampire-thing, his picky wife and the innocent girls whose heads they steal.

FILM: Damned Rain: First of four films I have to watch for the Hidden Gems film fest I'm judging. The tone is odd, focussing on a struggling farmer and his wife, who is worried that he'll commit suicide. I'm still not sure if her constant monitoring of him is supposed to be funny or worrying (or both), and the story arc is downright depressing, but well told. The musical interludes feel like they're there mostly out of deference to Bollywood tradition (there's no song and dance, but the lyrics read like they exist solely to reinforce the mood), which drags it down a little.

Daily Consumption: More Nov. 5

CONCERT: Clea Anaïs w/Deadhorse: Nice to see the Marquee Room packed on a Thursday night; Clea's idea to give away her new EP for free was also pretty brilliant. The sound didn't really do justice to her cello-guitar-drums sound, as the loop peddles tended to get muddy, but it was clear enough that her and Brock Geiger make a great musical pair. Too bad she didn't get her dad up to sing a song with her.
I was expecting a bit more from Deadhorse. They've got the potential to be a great party band, but at the moment, their covers are more confident and energetic than any of their originals, which is surprising for a band that has three members of the Consonant C. But those covers did show that the band has a lot of potential, and they know how to work a crowd. Maybe Calgary will get a solid party band yet.

Daily Consumption: Nov. 5

No entry for the 4th, because I didn't actually manage to listen to a single new record or watch a new movie. Hooray for days off.

FILM: Pirate Radio: The British version was criticized for its length, but I doubt that'll be the main issue with the new, 20-minute-shorter cut. It's a heck of a fun film and the soundtrack is absolutely killer. Chief issues: The subplot with Kenneth Branagh's government official trying to shut down the radio never seems to connect with anything that happens on the boat, and too much of the movie is reaction shots of radio listeners grooving out. Also, the fact that very, very little of the movie reflects the reality of pirate radio at the time is a bummer — it colours the whole thing as yet another slab of boomer mythmaking.

CD: Blue Rodeo - The Things We Left Behind: Consistent but also depressing. The lead track has a chorus about how sometimes it's better to be dead inside, and while the rest doesn't sink that low, there's a melancholy aura over the whole thing. It's also a very competent album, though — BR could probably put out songs like this in their sleep, but it doesn't feel tossed off, either. I've never paid much attention to them, but a few tracks have just the right Beatles-with-twang sound that I might have to give it another spin.

CD: Betty Davis - Nasty Gal and Is It Love or Desire: Pair of reissues on Light in the Attic records of Davis's supremely funky mid-70s output. Slap bass, gruff vocals, attitude like crazy. I can't think of what to say other than Supremely Funky.

CD: On Fillmore: Extended Vacation: Have to admit, I wasn't expecting quite so many animal sounds on a Dead Oceans release. In the office, at least, the nature sounds only distract from what would otherwise be a decent slab of ambiance. Didn't finish it.

Old and Notable: Reissues and live sounds from times gone by

Leonard Cohen

Live at the Isle of Wight 1970

Sony Legacy

Age has been kind to Cohen, and this year’s Live in London (recorded in 2008) contained versions of 40-year-old songs as definitive as any in Cohen’s catalogue. Isle of Wight is more reflective of the singer-songwriter’s folk roots (there’s no wailing saxophone in “Bird on the Wire,” for example), and Cohen’s serene stage presence is already firmly entrenched, but the performance feels monotone compared to the current, more elaborate arrangements. DVD footage directed by Murray Lerner gives context through recent interviews with Cohen’s Wight contemporaries, but the abridged track list makes the CD the more essential component.

Elvis Costello

Live at the El Mocambo

Universal

Costello was still an angry young man when this set was recorded in 1978 at Toronto’s El Mocambo club. Songs from My Aim is True sound significantly tougher here thanks to the presence of Costello’s new backing band The Attractions (replacing Clover, who would go on to join Huey Lewis’s News), while “Radio, Radio” and “Pump It Up” from the not-yet-released This Year’s Model are appropriately splenetic. If only he still sounded this passionate today.

Sunny Day Real Estate

Diary & LP2

Sub Pop

The 10th anniversary of the pioneering emo outfit’s debut (and an upcoming reunion tour) is all the excuse Sub Pop needs to reissue Sunny Day Real Estate’s first two albums. Mild remastering and scant bonus material don’t justify repurchasing either disc, but for newcomers, these handsome editions are a perfect way to hear a much-maligned genre in its infancy. Singer Jeremy Enigk’s vocals define post-adolescent angst, while the rhythm section went on to join fellow Seattle outfit Foo Fighters in time for The Color and the Shape.

Various Artists

Tumbélé!: Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds from the French Caribbean, 1963-74

Soundway

England’s Soundway Records specializes in unearthing forgotten sounds from around the globe, and Tumbélé! continues that invaluable tradition. Forget the steel drums and relaxed vibes that dominate cheesy cruise ships — these Caribbean sounds are rhythmically dense and energetic beyond belief. The psych-garage guitar that kicks off Les Loups Noirs D’Haiti’s “Jet Biguine” is worth the price of admission for crate-diggers, and the rest is equally laden with sublime finds.

Daily consumption: More Nov. 3

FILM: The 400 Blows: Aside from accidentally asking for a ticket to The 200 Blows (lowered expectations, maybe?), this one went fairly well. A fantastic movie, although it's hard for me to see exactly what was so revolutionary about it. I assume it's just that it offers a realistic depiction of youth and juvenile delinquency that doesn't reduce the world to "rotten kids are rotten." Soundtrack was oddly joyful for such a downbeat film.

CD: The Dutchess & The Duke - Sunset/Sunrise: The first Dutchess & the Duke album hit me hard as a great, Stones-y acoustic pop album, but over time the tunes started to grate on me. I doubt that this one'll run into the same problem — the songs are considerably more laid back and hookless; there's hardly a rough surface to grip, let alone grate. Dull, in other words.

CD: Thao and the Get Down Stay Down - Know Better Learn Faster: Herky-jerky rhythms, overt sexuality and catchy tunes. Exactly what modern rock should be. I have a feeling this will be getting more than a few spins.

Daily consumption: Nov. 2 and 3

I am going to attempt to make note of all of the movies I watch, CDs I listen to and so on for as long as I can keep up the habit. Likely, this will not last, but it seems worth a shot. Most of the CDs are on in the background while I work, so reviews are hardly authoritative. Also, only includes things that are new to me, unless it's particularly noteworthy.

Nov. 2:

CD: Clea Anais - Heartstrings: More chamber-poppy than expected, and the song by her dad certainly comes out of nowhere; production's a bit rough, but considering she's giving it away for free, it's hard to complain. And the songs themselves are fairly wonderful; looped cello, creative melodies. Surprised how much I dig it.

FILM: A Town Called Panic: Along with Hausu last week, one of the most random films I have ever seen. They stretch the shorts to feature length by letting the plot go wherever they want, which turns out to be the right approach. Scientists fighting mammoths, a house crushed by 50 million bricks; this is what more kids' movies should be like. Props to Belgian translators for using the phrase "No probs" twice.

Nov. 3:
CD: Le Loup - Family: Seems to lean closer to the first album than the live show, which is definitely a good thing. Reverb-soaked vocals and rising vocal melodies aren't as immediately grabbing the second time around, though, at least on first listen. Will have to give it another try sometime.

CD: Blockhead - The Music Scene: Smooth, diverse mix. Transition from the vocodors of Four Walls to the old-school soul of Pity Party's a good reminder of how useless auto-tune is for the most part. Whole thing feels like background music in the good sense of the term - something to throw on when the party's almost died and everyone's just chilling with the last of the wine.