Monday, October 12, 2009

speaking of



Pink Flag & the Homewreckers - Introducing... (listen) It is a pretty good marketing strategy to give yourself the same name as an iconic album that is not available through the (my) usual online outlets. Or maybe I am all wrong about that like I was with Kurt Vile and Pink Flag is the singer's actual born name. Maybe her parents are record store clerks. Also I wonder how many bands in the world are called "the Homewreckers." I know there is at least one blues band in this town with that mantle, possibly a second. But whatever, there is room in rock history for two iconic Heartbreakerses, so why not. Why Wire's Pink Flag is not readily available after a weekend of reintroducing myself to Chairs Missing in a fun yet aborted car trip this weekend is beyond me, but this raucous hormone rawk party by its namesake is not a bad second string replacement.


Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy (listen) Speaking of, have you checked out the son of Mr. and Mrs. Vile? The Philadelphia Viles? He's a long-haired rocker in the long forgotten sense of the word. Here he is unleashing "Hunchback" on the good people of his hometown.


Speaking of Philadelphia, we watched the documentary In a Dream about artist Isaiah Zagar who fills every corner of his life with his rather dazzling take on folk art environments, particularly his Magic Gardens, filling it to the point that he chokes everything else out. I found the artists generally unlikeable by the end of it but when his art is on, the results were spectacular. The filmmaker is his son and no dis on his efforts to tell a story that is important to him, but that situation always proves to be problematic when trying to show something in the most effective way. Personally, I'd have liked this to be a thirty-minute portrait of the art as opposed to an 80-minute trudge through what we want the artist or our family or anyone to be.

Camera Obscura "The Sweetest Thing" - I got to interview Traceyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura over the weekend, who is done up like Paul Simon in their video for "The Sweetest Thing," viewable on but not embed-able from Pitchfork. Kinda totally love this record the more I listen to it.

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