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IN THE NEWS THIS WEEK:
• Atkins to face off against Lifflander in 41st Dist. Democratic primary
• Georgetown gets a look at UD economic analysis
• Delaware State police investigating Long Neck drive-by shooting
• UD president talks to local chamber/rotary about possible Sussex campus
• Millsboro, Georgetown Majors win tourney openers
• And more! Click here to read the full stories
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• REVIEW: 'THE DARK KNIGHT'
As we were headed toward the Midway Movie Theater late last night, on our way to see a midnight showing of The Dark Knight, a friend piped up: “There’s just no way this can live up to all the hype.”
He might be right. But that doesn’t change the fact that Christopher Nolan’s second venture into the Batman franchise is a smashing success and a fitting tribute to the genius and tenacity of its fallen star, Heath Ledger.
Much has been made of Ledger’s re-imagining of the Joker, and his presence looms even larger over the screen in death than it would have in life, as he takes the character back from Jack Nicholson’s hammed-up 1989 version and gives it the anarchic, creepy update it deserves in an age of terrorism and seemingly senseless violence.
And the Joker’s violence is truly senseless. Watch as his “pranks” to get Batman’s attention – and to force the caped crusader to reveal his true identity and turn himself in – continue to expand in terms of both scale and cruel intensity, becoming bizarre Lord-of-the-Flies-style social experiments designed to drive all of Gotham City to insanity.
Ledger commands attention in every scene and sets the audience on edge beginning with his character's formal introduction, in which he dispatches a mafia thug with a "magic trick." The Joker constantly appears to be on the edge of spastic violence, whether he's telling lies about where he got his carved-scar smile (he tells at least two totally different versions, usually while holding folks at knifepoint) or just sitting in a jail cell clapping.
And his psychosis is manifested outward as well as inward. As the film barrels into its second hour (it’s two-and-a-half hours long, just in case you’re thinking about hitting up the 10:45 p.m. showing… Midway Movies looked like the land of the dead when the theaters let out), his makeup begins to crack and peel, creating a physical link to his backslide into complete anarchy and making his appearance gradually grimier with each frame.
But wait a minute… this flick is supposed to be about Batman, isn’t it?
Actually, it’s about how billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is getting a little sick of running around (flying around?) Gotham getting hassled by both the criminals AND the cops, who are tired of being shown up by his vigilante antics.
In fact, Wayne begins preparing himself for the day when Gotham won’t need Batman anymore, and he can finally settle down and get together with assistant DA Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal brings some grit and feeling to the role that Katie Holmes played like a cheerleader in Batman Begins). The Joker doesn’t like that one bit, and his tactics serve the dual purpose of both terrorizing the city and forcing Batman’s hand.
“I need you,” the Joker tells him during an interrogation, and this strange yin-and-yang relationship is what gives the interaction between the two an extra dimension. Each brings out the best (or worst, as the case may be) in the other. Wayne is at his most effective and heroic when he’s battling to save Gotham from his greatest enemy; the Joker is at his most frightening when he’s taking a vicious beating from Batman, cackling maniacally and telling him to keep it coming. And as much as they appear to hate one another, death is not the idea. Witness the Joker willing Batman to come over to the dark side, grunting “Cmon! Do it! Hit me!” as the Batpod speeds toward him. But Wayne can’t make himself do it, nearly crashing in the process. The push and pull between the two gives the film a potent core.
And all of this is to make no mention of Aaron Eckhardt’s DA Harvey Dent and his transformation into Harvey Two-Face. Batman doesn't feel so bad about giving up crime-fighting, because Dent seems to have it well in hand. Eckhardt nails the noble authority in a DA who is trying to find his place as “Gotham’s white knight,” as several characters, including Bruce Wayne, call him. Dent is supposed to be the man who will save the city from crime without the need for “those wonderful toys,” but he gets caught in the middle between the Joker and Batman, and suffers some serious collateral damage. He also sets up a third installment in Nolan's Batman universe, and even allows for the possibility of a return by the Joker, although it's hard to imagine trying to recast that role given Ledger's performance.
Are there missteps? Sure. Christian Bale brings heft and weight to the role of Bruce Wayne, but his "superhero voice" when he's in the Bat suit (think gravel in a blender doing “Hamlet”) is pure cornball. And while Nolan stages the bank-robbery opener in fine fashion, some of the other action sequences are a little confusing to follow (you know what’s happening, but it’s tough to follow it visually).
The true wonder of the piece is Ledger, who creates a frightening, magnetic Joker that is sure to delight audiences and scare the hell out of the eight-year-old that some dad dragged to the midnight showing (don't bring the kids; The Dark Knight is about as close to R as PG-13 gets without using a lot of cursing).
Is it perfect? No, but movies rarely are, summer movies in particular. Is it the best movie of the year so far, bar none?
Absolutely..
• REVIEW: 'Modern Guilt,' by Beck
Both Beck and DJ Danger Mouse can be acquired tastes. The former’s experimentation fusing multiple genres of music together can come off as novelty to some; the latter’s out-there work with Cee-Lo Green as Gnarls Barkley can do the same.
But they’re also both capable of working magic, as evidenced by Beck’s previous effort, The Information as well as Danger Mouse’s genius pairing of Jay-Z and the Beatles on 'The Grey Album' and his expert sonic backdrops as one half of DangerDoom on 'The Mouse and the Mask.'
Additionally, there’s little doubt that both could be the co-editors at Obscure Music Quarterly (props to sports reporter The Jeff Mitchell for that one), so it should come as little surprise that when they got together to compare notes on their favorite old-school psychedelic rock, the result would be a lovely and weird psych-folk record that doesn’t sound immediately like either artist.
On first listen, 'Modern Guilt' seems like what would have happened if Beck and company had recorded 'The Information' with a lot more acoustic instruments and reverb. The tight, thickly-layered harmonies of 'Information’s “Strange Apparition” feature prominently, and the melancholy-future-paranoid vibe is still firmly in place.
And like much of Beck’s other work, the old coexists anachronistically alongside the new: the skittery drum-and-bass percussion with the otherwise lilting “Replica”; square-wave synthesizer fills with the chugging title track. But several songs are straight-ahead band numbers, with minimal tinkering on Danger Mouse’s part: the haunting, conspiracy-theory “Chemtrails,” the stomping “Soul of a Man,” and the surf-music-on-a-bad-acid-trip “Gamma Ray.”
And while 'Modern Guilt' is easily Beck’s most mature-sounding record – one could make an argument for 'Sea Change,' however – it’s still a bit tricky making sense of his lyrics (“Trying to hold/Hold out for now/With these ice caps melting down/With the transistor sound and my Chevrolet terraplane /Going round, round, round/Come a little gamma ray /Standing in a hurricane /Your brains are bored /Like a refugee /From the houses burning /And the heat wave's calling your name,” from “Gamma Ray”). It’s best to just enjoy the imagery, and the subtle touches of ’60s psychedelia sprinkled throughout the record work well with Beck’s stream-of-consciousness wordplay, as well as give it a rootsier sound that could just as easily appeal to boomers as to their children.
Danger Mouse seems to bring out an excellent side in whoever he’s working with, whether it’s Cee-Lo, the Black Keys or MF Doom. While it may not be Beck’s best album, 'Modern Guilt' is a very enjoyable step in yet another slightly new direction.
Modern Guilt will be released July 8.
• REVIEW: 'Untitled,' by Nas
From the opening bars of “Queens Get the Money,” which is basically just a few piano loops and Nas, it’s pretty clear that this untitled album – which features the Queens MC with an ‘N’ whipped into his back and was supposed to be titled “N*****” (like, with an “er” at the end) – is not by the same kid that brought us “Illmatic.”
Witness the beginning of the second verse of “You Can’t Stop Us Now,” which takes on the Michael Vick arrest, namechecks PETA and Dateline and asks a pointed historical question all in about 10 seconds: “Yo on Dateline the other night/they was showin’ hate crimes/Gave a blood time ‘cause he fought with his canine/Bestiality, humane society/Go to China, go out to dine/See what they eat/Better yet, go ask PETA/which animal died to make suede/Without suede, would you have survived the Dark Ages?”
Far be it from me to call Belly a landmark film, but ever since he played a character who longed to learn more about himself and his African roots, Nas seems to have taken on the role in real life. He brought more political weight to his rhymes, which were always sharply-detailed anyway, but there was an extra dimension to many of his best verses on songs like “One Mic” and “My Country.”
It’s hard to fault Columbia and Def Jam for not wanting a record by one of their premiere hip-hop artists to have a racial slur plastered all over it, but, I mean, that’s kind of the reason Nas wanted to call it that, I would guess.
Musically, the album has the most pop touches of any Nas record: lots of big synths, R&B hooks by Chris Brown and Keri Wilson. In some places, it works very well; the tinkling melody line and big beat in “Hero” has a very Kanye-West, hip-hop-in-space vibe. In other places (“Make the World Go Round”), it just kind of sounds plastic and glossed-over. For someone like me, who first nodded his head to Nas via the dirty, dusty sounds of his 1994 classic, “Illmatic,” it would be heaven to hear these rhymes over beats by DJ Premier and Pete Rock, but whatchagonnado?
Lyrically, Nas is on point throughout the entire disc, throwing barbs at hypocrisy in “America,” taking issue with Rupert Murdoch (“the sly fox/Cyclops/locked in the idiot box”) over rock guitars in “Sly Fox” and depicting the life of a creepy-crawly midnight snacker over the jazz-inflected “Project Roach.”
And while the record execs kept it off the cover, they couldn’t stop Nas from naming a song “N*****,” and it’s certainly the centerpiece of the album, a stark depiction of the perils and paradoxes of black America that touches on the past, present and future as he sees it (“They say we N-I, double G, E-R/We are much more/Still we choose to ignore the obvious/Man this history don’t acknowledge us/We were scholars way before colleges/We are the slave and the master/What you lookin’ for?/You are the question and the answer”). Even so, the album’s most creative and interesting move is definitely “Fried Chicken,” where Nas and Busta Rhymes use the metaphor of a love-hate relationship to explore the pros and cons of fried chicken and pork products.
The delicate art of the hip-hop message song is difficult enough by itself; putting together a whole message album is downright dangerous. With this many heavy songs, it’s hard to avoid the occasional image of Keenan Ivory Wayans yelling “MESSAGE!”
But by and large, Nas’s deft wordplay overcomes occasionally-weak production to craft a record that’s got enough pop moves to keep the mainstream listening – although it’s tough to figure what would make a good single… maybe “Make the World Go Round” or “Hero” – and enough political exploration to get the average pop-radio listener to think twice.
• REVIEW: 'T.O.S. (Terminate on Sight),' by G-Unit
I want to like 50 Cent. Really, I do. He’s got a great voice for rapping, and if you’re talking street cred, you couldn’t ask for a better backstory than the whole shot-nine-times-and-lived thing.
And as far as Top Forty rap music goes, “T.O.S. (Terminate on Sight)” is not bad, but for the most part, it rarely elevates above one steady theme: "G-Unit is great, and your crew is not. What?"
Production from Swizz Beatz, Timbaland, Ron Browz and Polow da Don relies on heavy, mixtape-style minor-key beats for the most part, and while none of it is all that groundbreaking (personally, I thought the whole ‘vocal-pitch-autocorrect’ thing was kinda corny when Cher did it back in the “I Believe” video… it’s gotta be played out by now), it’s consistently decent.
If there’s one thing you can say for G-Unit, they have a way with the chorus, and everyone can hold it down lyrically, even though the subject matter is generally confined to what will happen to you if you mess with Young Buck, Lloyd Banks or anyone else in the crew (hint: the original title for the album is said to have been ‘Shoot to Kill’).
And look, no one’s calling the G-Unit’s street cred into question, but it’s hard to see 50 Cent leaving his Vitamin Water commercial shoot with the London Philharmonic and then banging on Queens corners. I’m not sayin’… I’m just sayin’.
But that’s not the point. The point is to throw a thug party and prove that the G-Unit is the baddest group of MCs on the planet. And that means crushing all comers over hard-hitting, bouncy beats.
In fact, there’s not really a standout radio-ready single; the album seems more in the mode of a street mixtape – albeit without the ubiquitous air-horn blasts and DJ promos interrupting the music every 30 seconds. But from his multiple endorsements to his legendary reputation for business acumen, 50 Cent’s built-in fan base will assure that “T.O.S.” sells.
Is it the hip-hop record of the year? No. Is it an alright outing from one of rap’s top dogs? Sure.
• STEVE EARLY TO PLAY THE GRAND IN SEPTEMBER
Steve Earle, rock's "Hardcore Troubadour," will bring his politically-charged brand of music to The Grand this fall, with a Sept. 6 performance accompanied by his wife, fellow musician Allison Moorer.
Tickets range from $28-$35, and can be purchased by calling 800-37-GRAND or 652-5577, or at The Grand’s Box Office located at 818 N. Market Street, Wilmington (19801).
Earle has released several albums over the years, most with a heavily-political bent, and has also played a supporting role in the critically-acclaimed HBO series "The Wire."
• REVIEW: 'Seun Kuti & Fela's Egpyt 80' (self-titled)
For fans of Nigerian legend Fela Kuti’s epic African funk, listen and rejoice to the new album from his son, Seun.
In fact, even when Seun Kuti’s voice finally begins to sing, around the three-and-a-half-minute mark of the opener, “Many Things,” you might still think it’s his father. Leading the members of Fela’s former band, the Egypt 80 (and make no mistake, between intrumentalists, dancers and other assorted riffraff, there are actually 80 of them), Seun hits on many of the same political points as Dad.
Actually, the record’s strongest point may be its weakest. While it’s great to hear the rock-solid syncopated grooves of Fela’s old bandmates, there is not much to distinguish Seun from his pops. It really sounds, at times, like a Fela tribute album.
But no matter. It’s still all one heck of a good time. When the horn section kicks in on “Think Africa,” just see if you’re not bouncing in your chair, if not up and dancing. “Mosquito Song” begins with the whiny buzzing sound of its namesake, before dropping into double-time funk and settling in for a meaty trombone solo before more mosquito buzzing brings in a raving wave of pure polyrhythm and voice.
Much of the vocals, particularly the chorus of women’s voices that join Seun during the more-energetic sections of songs, are in a Nigerian dialect, but for English-speaking listeners, it’s all about the feeling.
And the feeling, just like with Seun’s dad, is nothing but funky.
• REVIEW: 'Sujinho,' by Jackson Conti (Madlib & Mamao)
Madlib, an eccentric hip-hop producer from Oxnard, Calif., is mainly known for crafting jazzy, off-the-wall beats for underground rappers. But he also has a deep love for jazz itself, having formed a side project, Yesterday's New Quintet, that consists of a whole bunch of made-up personalities that are actually just Madlib, messing around in the studio.
His latest 'solo' project from the Yesterday's New Quintet 'band' is Jackson Conti, who is apparently a big fan of all things Brazil. In a collaborative effort with Mamao Conti, the drummer for Brasilian jazz-funk group Azymuth.
The result is a solid 70-plus minutes of off-kilter tropicalia and jazz that alternates between chunky, polyrhythmic funk and relaxing samba, all of it shaded by Madlib's hazy production and vintage instrumentation.
"Berumba" opens the album with keyboards floating and tumbling over a loping drum line; but "Praca de Republica" represents how a project like this can go astray if you keep it rolling for nearly 80 minutes, as an okay groove just repeats and repeats for more than two minutes before a sax solo livens things up.
But there is plenty to like: the inverted drum patterns and pounding piano in "Brazilian Sugar" is big-city samba; Madlib feeds a keyboard through a wah-wah filter to mimic an accordion in the smooth "Casa Forte," and 'Waiting on the Corner' could be elevator music, if it weren't for the skittery drums that back it up and turn it into an uptempo run through the tropics.
In the end, while much of Madlib's earlier work as Yesterday's New Quintet has proved to be a lot more experimental and sonically interesting, 'Sujinho' is certainly packed full of enough solid grooves to satisfy.
• REVIEW: 'Rockferry,' by Duffy
Anyone over the age of 40 will automatically think one thing when they hear the opening bars of Duffy's "Rockferry."
"Sounds like Dusty Springfield!"
And kind of, yes, in both voice and sound. Where recent critics' darling Amy Winehouse incorporates a lot of '60s sounds into her more-modern songs, Duffy wouldn't sound out of place opening for Springfield on the Dick Cavett Show.
And that's meant as a compliment.
"Warwick Avenue" builds a low-key groove up with a little string action before busting out into the chorus, and while the lyrics can sometimes skew generic ("I'm leaving you for the last time, baby/You think you're loving but you don't love me/I think of you stayin' on my mind lately/You think you're loving but I want to be free"... eh), but she has an excellent delivery and presence that makes up for it.
"Serious" could easily be an Aretha Franklin song, but there's an extra bit of sass in the lyrics - "I'm a trophy on your arm/You wear me like a charm/An accessory that suits/Your new suede boots" - that gives it an up-to-date twist to keep everything from sounding too nostalgic.
There are a few straight-up throwbacks that do sound a little dated: "Sleeping Stone" is very Diana Ross, and "Mercy" kind of sounds like someone remixing Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang" before ratcheting things up into a generic soul rave-up.
Most of the album, however, rides pleasant soul grooves, and Duffy's upper-register alto, while it can be a little nasal at times, works well with the strings that flesh out much of the vintage-style production.
Recommended for fans of Amy Winehouse and Dusty Springfield.
• REVIEW: 'Desert Crossroads,' by Etran Finetawa
As foreign voices speak a faraway desert dialect and the first few loping bars of “Saghmar N Nanna” creep in, Desert Crossroads, the second disc by North African blues group Etran Finetawa, sounds like it might be just a vaguely Middle-Eastern-sounding folk record.
But it all changes when an electric guitar starts picking some very familiar blues figures at the beginning of “Kel Tamascheck,” before running through a few decidedly northern African scales and settling into a hypnotic rhythm that at once conjures up the wide-open deserts of countries like Mali and Niger.
In fact, if Keith Richards had been wandering around the arid land of north Africa instead of the rainy glum skies of England, he may very well have ended up as Etran Finetawa’s lead guitarist – before the tinny vocals to “Jama’aare” kick in, its introduction could be the opening bars to a live version of “Moonlight Mile.” Fans of Jimmy Page’s Eastern-flavored work in some of Led Zeppelin’s work will be able to hear some of the sounds that may have inspired him, and certainly gave some creative juice to partner-in-crime Robert Plant, who used northern African sounds and musicians for his Mighty Rearranger album.
The six instrumentalists that make up Etran Finetawa, in the same sort of way that reggae inverted the beat of soul music, invert the central rhythm of acoustic folk, employing exotic percussion that seems to keep its beat ahead of the music, creating a loping, trance-like backdrop, with twin guitars spinning staccato webs around one another, alternating between Eastern scales that keep the music firmly rooted in the desert sun and licks that wouldn’t sound out of place on a John Lee Hooker record.
Make no mistake: there’s not a word of English on the whole album. All of the songs are sung in either the Tuareg dialect called Tamasheck, originating in Mali, or in the Wodaabe dialect called Fulfulde, spoken in Niger, where most of the group comes from.
But what they’re saying is not really important – besides, neither of us is ever going to learn to speak Wodaabe – and the music, while it can get repetitive at times, makes it easy to bob your head and conjures up a foreign world with a few familiar touches.
• REVIEW: 'Anthology,' by Marlena Shaw
So, is it just me, or do you find yourself humming along to that 'California Soul' song from the new Dockers khakis commercial? Well, music dork that I am, I spent [probably way too much] time tracking down just who it was, and as it turns out, 1970s singer Marlena Shaw, the woman who performed it, might be one of the best old-school soul artists you never heard of.
"Blues ain't nothin' but a good woman gone bad" - you gotta love that, the tag line to "Liberation Conversation," which chugs along with the warm, solid funk that characterizes most of Anthology. It opens with "Woman of the Ghetto," a heavy piece of political funk very reminiscent of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" (and incidentlally, I had also heard it before, as a sample from a Black Moon rap song... see, I'm a seeerious music dork), before dropping into the reverb-drenched strings of "California Soul," which will probably now and forever be known as "That Song From The Dockers Commercial."
Shaw does justice to old-school covers of "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," "Feel Like Makin' Love" and "Wade in the Water," and "Loving You is Like a Party" walks the fine line between slinky R&B and smooth jazz, with a few well-placed bawdy lyrics to keep it from going too soft.
The back half of the album has a tinge of '80s production that seems just a little too glossy to fit in with the grittier songs toward the front, but if you're tapping your toe all the time and annoying co-workers by constantly singing, "Like a sound you hear/That whispers in your ear/But you can't forget/From sundown to suuuuUUUUUNSET, now," this is the record for you.
Read the full stories and more at the Countian's Web site.
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