New Music From Alabama Shakes!

When I say new, I should specify I am way behind on this one - looks like it dropped two weeks ago! Funny, as I just listened to Sound & Color for the first time in a while last week and had a moment of forlorn reflection that it's been ten years since that album was released. I don't know if this new track heralds an upcoming album, but I sure hope so. 

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Watch:

Where K and I would normally have seen The Long Walk on opening night this past Thursday, we had the opportunity to see John Carpenter's The Thing on the big screen (our second time) during Regal's Cine: A Month of Masterpieces. This series has me in awe: We're seeing Sunset Blvd tonight (also a second time on the big screen for us), I'm going to try like hell to see GDT's Pan's Labyrinth on Wednesday, then we have Psycho on Friday. And we're still in the second week of the month!!!

However, it's Francis Lawrence's The Long Walk I want to talk about right now. Adapted from a Richard Bachman - aka Stephen King - novella of the same name, with the adapted screenplay coming to us from JT Mollner, the Writer/Director of one of 2024's best films (Strange Darling), The Long Walk feels, in this moment, like the best adaptation of King's work to date. Ten years ago, that might have been a no-brainer until you stop to consider The Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me (I've always heard The Green Mile is up there as well, but I haven't seen that one). But we've had a spate of pretty good adaptations over the last decade, top among them Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep and Gerald's Game. In the Tall Grass, and while I don't love the Andy Muschietti IT films, they're better than the original. Castle Rock - while not officially an adaptation of any one King story, is a super solid amalgam of his work. So we're light-years from the days of Langoliers and Needful Things. But The Long Walk feels like it has all of them beat.

I'm largely unfamiliar with Francis Lawrence's work as a Director. Yes, I've seen Constantine, and it puts me in a tough spot, as if they had not based that on John Constantine: Hellblazer, I would have loved it. Some fantastic images and ideas, but it just doesn't work with Reeves as JC and Chas being anyone but a hulking ex-Football hooligan. Other than that, though, looking at Lawrence's IMDB, I see he is mostly known for working with Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. I tried and couldn't get twenty pages into the first book, so I didn't even bother with the films, partially because the entire thing feels like a watered-down version of The Long Walk and Battle Royale. His history doesn't matter, though, because this film is excellent. A complete gut-punch in the best possible way, and King's knack for male camaraderie and how it can be a shortcut to major life epiphanies really shines through in this film. The characters are fantastic, and it hurts to see what happens to them. Cooper Hoffman confirms he is an excellent actor, following in his late father's footsteps, but David Jonsson - wow! In two movies (the other being Alien: Romulus, where he plays Andy, Rain's synthetic "brother"), he has demonstrated charisma and range that have me watching for his next film, genre or not.  

I'd recommend catching this one in the theater. If you want to hear more, hit the widget at the upper right-hand side of this page for The Horror Vision's new episode, where we start with a spoiler-free review, then give ample warning before veering into a full-spoiler comparison between the book and the film. Also available on YouTube HERE. 

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Playlist:

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

Hellbender - Hellbender OST

HEALTH - Ordinary Loss (pre-release single)

HEALTH - Rat Wars

David Bowie - Outside

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Entropy - Dharmakāya

Deftones - private music

Godflesh - Streetcleaner

Blut Aus Nord - Shadows Breathe First (pre-release single)

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmoniu - Nahab

Dreamkid - Daggers

Faetooth - Labyrinthe

Alabama Shakes - Another Life (single)

Netherlands - Vapor

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Queen of Swords

• Six of Wands

• Page of Wands

A major creative period is happening, but it will take clear judgment to navigate. 

I love when these are so spot on. I've been working pretty diligently on Shadow Play Book Two, and there are SO many ideas at play right now. So many historical themes to tie into this century-spanning saga, so it's an immense creative rush, but I have to keep asking myself, "How much is too much?"

What You Can Find When You're Not Looking...

As good as I can be burrowing in and finding obscure music in the worlds of Rock, electro, Metal and Avant Garde, the two areas of music I dig that I have trouble finding a foot in the door with is the more obscure, rootsy Soul and Gospel music of mid-twentieth century America. I always get a twinge of jealousy when I hear something in a movie or find it mentioned in a book, find it and then realize that other than that particular piece or artist, I'm stumped. A lot of this is just a facet of inkling and time, as I'm sure if I really burrowed into a group like the Del Fonics - who I was formerly introduced to in Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown - falling into the associated chains of wikipedia pages associated with them and their producers, etcetera, I'd probably come up with some more artists to sate my thirst for dusty old Soul. That hasn't happened though; I'm overly self conscious in these areas and I tend to require gatekeepers. Irvine Welsh's novel Skag Boys turned me onto the tradition of Northern Soul - which previously had simply been the name of my favorite album by The Verve - and newer artists like Jamie Lidell, Charles Bradley and Alabama Shakes make access to the genre's evolution easier than digging, but it's just not the same thing, finding a new artist or finding an obscure, older artist. And really, I'm not even addressing Gospel here, as so much of that isn't easily accessible. In the 60s and 70s almost anyone can and did press records - you see evidence of this in thrift stores all the time - but today? Well, today we have youtube, which I am seriously beginning to believe is the collective consciousness of the human race made accessible. 'Cuz everything is on it. Case in point, Pastor T. L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir. Listen to this, it's awesome! But how did I find the music of a neighborhood Chicago Pastor and his Choir? How did I pull that from the din?

I found this via a gatekeeper: the cool, hazy sample that ends the Algiers record? It's from this. I love the way that sample ends the record; it has a cosmic, time-machine flavored influence that reminds me a lot of the looped sample that ends Zen Guerilla's cosmic masterpiece Positronic Raygun.

And then once I started researching off the Algiers sample I found that, of course, this is another case of the absolutely amazing Light in the Attic Records has put out some of this man's music.

Yes, that's Isaac freakin' Hayes w/ Barrett. ISAAC HAYES!!!

I need to remember that: Light in the Attic. Always check back in with them. Get on their mailing list (why didn't I do that right after the first Black Angels E.P.? Or after the Louvin Bros. Or the Donnie and Joe Emerson record?

(Pause while I actually go do that...)

Then it gets even weirder. Go to the short bio for Pastor Barrett on LITA's site, right here. Being from the South Side of Chicago I remember when these pyramid schemes were big news. Crazy how something like my favorite album of the year so far - that immaculate Algiers eponymous - can bring something from so long ago back around again.