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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Deafheaven - Magnolia

 

So much music unfurled while I was doing David Lynch week and then in Chicago for three days. Shit, I haven't even mentioned the Frank Black Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary I attended yet. I'll get to all that, but first - holy smokes! I'll tell you that, while I LOVE Infinite Granite, I was hoping that would prove a detour. I don't need the Deafheaven to only play brutal music, but to me, the mix they achieve on Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is perfect. Regardless of what we get on Lonely People With Power, out March 28th (pre-order HERE), "Magnolia" fills me with faith that, as my cousin Charles' friend Dave predicted, the band made Infinite Granite for them, and it had nothing to do with their overall ambitions/directions. 

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NCBD:

This is a new Rick Remender book. I've missed out on the last few he's released; hell, I've actually not read anything he's done since A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance, so I'm due. I tried the first issue of a few series since then and didn't really 'feel it,' so here's hoping The Seasons moves the needle.

Published through Remender's Giant Generator, I grabbed the first issue of Dust to Dust and dug it, so I'm coming back for more. Unfortunately, this Diamond bankruptcy is killing my shop, and I've already heard this is outstanding, much the same as the latest issue of What's the Furthest Place From Here has been for weeks now. 

Also confirmed as delayed due to Diamond's BS. I'm still really on the fence with Mark Spears' Monsters, but I figure I'll round out the first four-issue arc and reassess after. 

This is one I'll need a full re-read on once it's all out, but I've been enjoying the hell out of this second Last Ronin series. I've said it here before, but the dystopian Frank Miller-isms of this series really scratch an itch. An itch for when Frank Miller wasn't a douche bag. 

This cover is the stuff from which dreams are made. 

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Watch:

I caught the trailer for Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk's Hell of a Summer on the big screen last week, and it kinda blew me away. 

Yeah, it's more throwback, but I don't care. This looks fantastic.

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Playlist:

Moon Wizard - Sirens

The Veils - Asphodels

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Nothing - Guilty of Everything 

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Card:

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

Remember your Art (XIV in Thoth) when bogged down in Earthly matters. Enlightenment lies in balancing the two. 

David Bowie/NIN Hurt

 

Full disclosure. While I am a NIN fan, I've never really been a fan of The Downward Spiral. That's unbelievable to some, and honestly, it's not for the best of reasons. Thanks to a friend's older brother, I found Pretty Hate Machine six months to a year before the Broken E.P. came out, and it was just such a different sound than anything I'd heard before that I was immediately obsessed. Broken's switch to guitar-driven industrial metal confused me, but the band still felt fresh and like it was "mine."

When "Closer" hit the radio two years later and suddenly every jock and cheerleader in school became a super fan, I got salty. Because of this, it took me years to ever give The Downward Spiral a fair listen. Cunty, but what can I say? Seeing a Geo Tracker full of football players ahead of me in a Taco Bell drive-through one Saturday night in 1994, "Closer" blaring while one 'round-the-waste flannelled Quarterback jumped up and down and screaming, "Nails, man! Nail!" just put me off.

After eventually going back later in life to try and reassess, I still found I didn't care too much about TDS. When David Lynch talked lovingly about the album in the March 6th, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone (dedicated to Lost Highway), I tried again. 

Nothing (pun intended).

Eventually, I've come around to some of the record. However, both The Downward Spiral and its follow-up, The Fragile, are albums I never feel moved to listen to, and arguably the most famous song off TDS, "Hurt," has always been a particularly sore spot for me. "Hurt" sounds like a cheaper version of "Something I Can Never Have," still a masterpiece in my mind. "Hurt" has always struck me as egregiously sad, with the lyrics often evoking a one-upmanship technique. Sort of a proto-emo Madlib exercise, if you will. I'm not saying I'm right - I realize I am almost definitely wrong; that my bias stems from very much the wrong place; my high school, elitist "I liked that band first" mindset is bullshit. However, I feel how I feel. I continue to try, but nothing really moves the needle.

Until now. 

Over the weekend in Chicago, I stopped in a record store and found this in the Bowie section.

I've had a hard time establishing what exactly this performance was. The cover says, "Live Radio Broadcast," however, from the little bit I've seen online, this appears to be a soundboard recording taken from a full live set of the '95 tour, where Bowie and NIN each do a set and overlap on several songs. The thing here is it sounds to me like, on "Hurt" for example, it's Bowie's band doing the song and Trent joining them (which seems to be backed up by the video I posted above). Maybe because of this, I LOVE this version of "Hurt." I mean LOVE. The track listing is spectacular, with the older Bowie songs being reworked with the Outside era's aesthetic; in particular, this makes "Look Back in Anger" and "The Man Who Sold the World" very interesting. 

SIDE A:

Hello Spaceboy

Scary Monsters

Look Back in Anger

Wish (NIN)

AndyWarhol

SIDE B:

The Man Who Sold the World

Hurt

Terrible Lie

March of the Pigs

Closer

A word on the track order. Being a bootleg, I'm not sure if the compiler mixed in NIN's performance of "Wish" with an otherwise Bowie-centric side to further give the illusion of a completely unified performance; that was certainly my excited read upon first seeing this in the shop. Either way, I'm super psyched to have this and have already listened to it a number of times since returning home from my weekend in Chicago last night.

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Watch:

Sasha Rainbow's Grafted is now on Shudder and, oh man, I cannot recommend this one enough!

I'm already thinking of this as 'this year's The Substance.' Although it's not quite as cinematically bombastic as Coralie Fargeat's film, Grafted is a super fun, super gorey Body Horror Film with a weirdo score by Lachlan Anderson and an outstanding visual aesthetic that visually works the film's metaphors into color palette, setting and design.

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Playlist:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

JD McPherson - Nite Owls

Miranda Sex Garden - Velvetine single

L.A. Witch - Eponymous

Crime Weekly - Rey Rivera (part 1)

Bandsplain - Talking Heads (part 1)

Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets - Indoor Safari

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food

The Cactus Blossoms - Every Time I Think About You

David Bowie - Outside

NIN - Not The Actual Events

The Jesus Lizard - Westside (single)

Bandsplain - Talking Heads (part 2)

Anthrax - I'm the Man EP

Testament - Demonic Refusal (single)

Vanessa Williams - Dreamin' (single)

David Bowie & NIN - Back in Anger 

Deafheaven - Magnolia (single)

Deafheaven - Black Brick (single)

Deafheaven - Roads to Judah

David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)

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The Jesus Lizard's Yellowjacket's Season Three Trailer

Another new stand-alone track from The Jesus Lizard? Holy smokes - something's brewing.  

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Yellowjackets season three is right around the corner, and we have a new trailer! One I almost didn't post because of their choice of music - come on folks, do we really want to bring back the 00s trailer trope of using *ahem* drowning pool's let the bodies hit the floor? 

Very excited. Apparently, a lot of folks thought the second season dried the show out. I did not. Aside from the heartbreaking death I wish didn't happen (but 100% applaud the creators for having the stones to do so), I haven't a single complaint. 

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Playlist:

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two OST

Spoon - They Want My Soul

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Bohren and der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Black Sabbath - Vol. 4

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Nothing - The Great Dismal

The Cactus Blossoms - Every Time I Think About You

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Card:

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

• Seven of Cups

• IV: The Emperor

• Page of Swords

Emotional stakes at the hands of perceived oppressors trigger impetuous reactions. Don't give in to the pull of chaos. Breathe.

Very fitting for multiple reasons, some having to do with work, others the point that the main character in Black Gloves & Broken Hearts actually uses a mantra I learned from my good friend Missi.

"Just. Breathe."

Goodbye, David Lynch

 

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ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ - Moutains Falling

From David Lynch and John Neff's 2001 BLUEBOB album, technically titled ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ, but I don't know a good way of typing that stylization outside of the clunky cut-and-paste from other websites, and then, see, you get comic sans or whatever that is. 

One of my favorite albums ever, and "Mountains Falling" is probably my favorite track. There's something so eerie and beautiful about the guitar, about the entire song. Very compelling and wonderfully utilized in Mulholland Drive. 

Tomorrow will bring us full circle on David Lynch's passing, and although technically the week-long celebration would end today, I'm extending it to Thursday for symmetry. That said, I wanted to start to get back into regular posting.

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NCBD:

This week's pull list from Rick's Comic City:

And then there's last week's books, which I completely forgot to post. How is that possible? More on that in a second.

Okay, so yeah, how did I forget to post last week's books? Well, besides being so busy at work that I didn't even make it into the shop until Thursday night, and that was only to give myself some normalcy after spending the day with the news of David Lynch's passing? There's something else at work here, though.

I recently realized I no longer have a tent pole book. I like everything I'm reading, but there's nothing that I absolutely cannot wait to read. This is always a rough patch because the older I get and the more media changes, the more I become concerned that one of these patches might stick. That seems unlikely, but even if an indie book really grabs me at some point in the near future, chances are it will either be a limited series or will be released in seasons, with gaps in between. I miss having something that really drives me. There was Preacher,  Stray Bullets, and The Walking Dead. Most recently, it was the Krakoa-era X-Men, and after that, I thought for sure the Energon Universe would carry the torch, but that's just not happening. With the exception of DWJ's Transformers, my favorite books last year were all indie titles that were published sporadically or as mini-series. Of everything I read, SIKTC comes closest, but goddamn, these hiatus intervals! Hahaha. I know JTIV is busy working on a lot of books people love - myself included - but that just means there's only sporadic consistency with all of his stories.

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Watch:

I really just found myself wanting to hear David talk today. About anything. How cool, then, that I found this:

 

From the Simple Tom YouTube Channel, which I recommend you check out. The full video for this is in the description.

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Playlist:

Man Man - Rabbit Habits

Man Man - Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between

Circle Jerks - Group Sex

The Halloween Scene - Pitch Black Manor

The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World

The Cure - The Head On the Door

David Bowie - Station to Station

David Bowie - John I'm Only Dancing (Sax Version; Single)

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Tonight

Raven Chacon - Los Subliminados (single)

Drug Church - Prude

David Lynch & John Neff - BLUEBOB

David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

David Bowie - Reality

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Limited Event Series OST

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Music From the Limited Event Series

David Bowie - Stage

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

James Brown - Funky People Vol. 3

James Brown - Hell

Hemlocke Spings - going... going... Gone!

Rina Mushonga - Narcisc0 (single)

Jocelyn Montgomery & David Lynch - Lux Vixens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two OST

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

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Card:

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

• Knight of Cups

• XIV: Temperance (ART in Thoth)

• Ace of Pentacles

Couldn't be clearer. Emotional despondency at the loss of an Artistic influence should inspire a breakthrough in Process (the alignment of time and resources, both the Earthly realm of Pentacles). I'm planning on ending my period of obsessive mourning tomorrow with a full-on bounce back into Creative Fire

Rockin' Back Inside My Heart

From Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into the Night, co-written and produced by David Lynch and  Angelo Badalamenti. Nothing can compare to how this and As The World Spins are used in the original Twin Peaks series. 

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