Frank Black - Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary

You know you're getting up there when your favorite, most influential post-High School albums start turning 30. How is Teenager of the Year three decades young? I mean, seriously? 

Last weekend, K and I drove up to Chicago for a few days. Saturday night I met up with a bunch of old friends and saw the first night of Black's Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary show at the Metro. Mr. Brown was in attendance, and it felt like such a full circle moment - Brown was the friend who got me into so much of the most influential music of my twenties. In 1995, I'd gotten out of a three-year relationship begun in High School.

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Watch:

Last Thursday, K and I had the distinct pleasure of catching Steven Soderbergh's new film Presence.

Not posting a trailer, partially because I haven't seen one and don't have the time to vet one of spoilers, partially because I LOVE the posters they've released for this film. Soderbergh is always a class act, and his film about a haunted house is exactly what you'd expect by being nothing you would expect. 

This film blew me away, and I implore any even remotely interested parties to seek this one out while it's still on the big screen. Mind you, this isn't a movie you have to see on the big screen, like The Substance or Nosferatu. However, the camera flows across that massive screen in a way that just intoxicates. In a way, this isn't a "Horror" film in that Horror films generally unfold via events, and there are not a lot of events here. This is a character study of a family first and foremost. That said, when things get fucked up, they get really fucked up. Presence has one of the most disturbing concepts in it I've seen in some time. 

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NCBD Addendum:

I wasn't going to pick this new SIKTC: Book of Cutter one-shot up, but due to this rolling disaster that is Diamond Distribution, my take-aways from Rick's felt pretty light on Wednesday, and I admit, I was very curious to learn more about the SIKTC mythology, which this book pays off with in droves.

Loved it. More prose than graphic fiction, Book of Cutter really delves into the order of St. George's history while also advancing Maxine Slaughter as a soon-to-be major player in the ongoing SIKTC book. Reading this made me excited about the overall world-building in a way I haven't been since shortly after realizing I love the flagship book but not necessarily the ancillary titles. Might be time to revisit House of Slaughter...

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Playlist:

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Jim Williams - Titane OST

Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow - Archive 81 OST

Portishead - Third

The Inmates - Runaway

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

Blood Incantation - Timewave Zero

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Sleep - Dopesmoker

Foster the People - Torches

Bauhaus - Go Away White

The Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues

Sunn O))) - Monoliths and Dimensions

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Frank Black Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary Tour

 

Got my tickets to join some of my best friends in the world for Frank Black's Teenager of the Year 30th anniversary tour. Mr. Black even has Lyle Workman back! 

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Watch:

Damian McCarthy first impressed the absolute hell out of me in 2022 with Caveat, a direct-to-Shudder film about a man talked into wearing a harness in an old house on a small island in Ireland. The man is supposedly been hired by a friend to watch his niece, but there are all kinds of WTF surrounding that idea, and the film, for all its slow-burn tendencies, rapidly escalates into a terrifying dirge of haunted guilt and bad decisions that culminate in...

Well, read the book. Or, ah, watch the movie. 

McCarthy's new film Oddity was on my radar but just barely, and I was SHOCKED and delighted to find that it opened at our Clarksville Regal this past Thursday. 

So far, it is neck-and-neck with Robert Morgan's Stopmotion for my favorite film of the year. I would post a trailer, but no. PLEASE, go see this in the theatre (it will most likely be gone after this week due to Deadpool) and DO NOT read, watch, or listen to anything about it. Go in blind, and I think this will smack you in the gob the way it did me—so much so that I have tickets to see it again tonight. 

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Play:

I've had Playdead's Inside for a couple years now, and while I have played and enjoyed it, it wasn't until this past weekend that I really fell in love with this game. Described as 'dream-like' in all the solicitation copy I've come across, I have to say, that's the perfect description. 

 

A week or so ago, my good friend Maddie messaged me about this game, saying that she remembered I had mentioned it and that she had recently become enthralled. This had me pull the game back out and pick at it off and on for a few days. Then, this past Saturday, I sat down in a darkened room with a beer and Adam Egypt Mortimer's The Obelisk on my turntable and the way the game and the music melded... it was just incredible. I left the sound up so I could hear all the atmospheric sound effects - hurried footsteps through standing water, giant industrial cranes and elevators moving and clanking, explosions, and, yes, dream-like wind and breathing - and my consciousness just folded into this world. It was beautiful. 

I don't want this one to end.

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Playlist:

Fear - Live For the Record

Frank Black - Teenager of the Year

Black Francis - Svn Fngrs

Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

Frank Black - Eponymous

Tomahawk - Mit Gas

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Irony Is A Dead Scene E.P.

Ministry - Rio Grande Blood

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me

The Besnard Lakes... Are the Roaring Night

Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk

M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us

Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Concrete Blonde - Eponymous

Phil Collins - Face Value

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Card:

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

• Knight of Wands 

• Four of Pentacles

• Six of Pentacles

The firey aspect of fire, pure white hot Intellect, stripped of all other human trappings. Here, it's being applied to Earthly matters, as we can see via the two Pentacles or Disks cards that follow. Four of Disks indicates stability, and the Six support or balance. What this tells me this morning is the balancing act I now maintain Monday - Friday may require an extra dose of reasoning to maintain. Not sure if this means this will be a heavy spreadsheet week (I'm only half joking and all cringe when I reference a spreadsheet in relation to the Tarot), or if I'll just have to side step emotional reactions to things that will require logical consideration instead of capricious emotion.

Frank Black's Headache

 It's an early Frank Black kinda morning, so I fired up Teenager of the Year. Love this record!

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Watch:

Last night I watched Roadhouse for the first time.

This movie is Ridiculous! I would have turned up my nose and made fun of this even ten years ago, but really, I've come to see a lot of these 80s studio action movies as major studios doing exploitation flicks, and that's essentially what this tries to be. Now, I believe there's a DVD out there with Kevin Smith doing the commentary back like 20 years ago. I'd be pretty interested in checking that out.

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Playlist:

22-20s - Eponymous

Various - Up Above the Stars Spotify Playlist (culled from Barry Adamson's Biography)

T. Rex - The Slider

David Lynch & John Neff - BLUEBOB

Metallica - 72 Seasons (pre-release singles)

Lamp of Murmur - Saturnian Bloodstorm (pre-release singles)

Lustmord - The Others

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

Ozzy Osbourne - Patient No. 9

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Willed transformation will result in an energizing new endeavor/perspective. I know exactly what this is referencing. Time to dig out something I've had on the backburner and give it another once over in between working on Shadow Play Book 2.