Michael Abernethy - The Homegrown Snob

Since everyone agrees that the Grammys totally blew, we’re all happy to have the last of the award season’s nominations the day after the day after the day music died (Taylor Swift over Lady Gaga/Beyonce? Eminem over Q-Tip??? really?!).

So, phew, just before our heads collectively explode, here come the 2010 Oscar Nominations.

“Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” lead the noms with nine each. Surprisingly, “Inglourious Basterds” is just behind with eight. Other predictables are here, as well: “Precious” and “Up in the Air” and “Invictus” are heavily represented. Here are the list of movies I now HAVE to see, after a year of abstaining $9.50 ticket prices for surer bets at the cineplex: 1) “Inglourious Basterds” 2) “Precious” 3) “The Hurt Locker” 4) “Up in the Air” and 5) “A Single Man” (if only because I keep reading how great Colin Firth and Julianne Moore are together). My work is cut out for me.

Quick notes:  This year is the first that Best Picture noms were expanded to 10 entries, a move I think is smart because it will allow more comedies to squeak into recognition in the historically drama-heavy category.

Without further ado, the nominees are:

Best Picture:

“Avatar”
“The Blind Side”
“District 9″
“An Education”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
“A Serious Man”
“Up”
“Up in the Air”

Where is “Fantastic Mr. Fox” on this list? The “District 9″ inclusion is already controversial, but at least it might pull some votes away from “Avatar” so that “The Hurt Locker,” which — unlike James Cameron’s glitzy tripe —  is actually supposed to be a good movie.

Best Director:

Quentin Tarantino - “Inglourious Basterds”
Kathryn Bigelow - “The Hurt Locker”
James Cameron - “Avatar”
Lee Daniels - “Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Jason Reitman - “Up in the Air”

I’ve seen none of these films, but my sympathies go with Quentin Tarantino, if only because he’s earned it, and because all accounts exclaim that his direction is what made “Inglourious Basterds” such a fun ride.

Best Actor:

Jeff Bridges - “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney - “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth - “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman - “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner - “The Hurt Locker”

Jeff Bridges will win for a lifetime of being overlooked. I’m not sure it shouldn’t be pre-awards fave Colin Firth or Jeremy Renner.

Best Actress:

Meryl Streep - “Julie and Julia”
Sandra Bullock - “The Blind Side”
Gabourey Sidibe - “Precious…”
Helen Mirren - “The Last Station”
Carey Mulligan - “An Education”

Sandra Bullock (yay, NC) is the favorite.

Best Supporting Actor:

Matt Damon - “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson - “The Messenger”
Chirstopher Plummer - “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci - “The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz - “Inglourious Basterds”

I’d love to see Christopher Plummer finally be recognized for his work here, and the buzz on this role is that he and Helen Mirren are dastardly fun together in “The Last Station.” But, I’m pretty sure the award-fave Christoph Waltz will get it for his gonzo role in “Inglourious Basterds.”

Best Supporting Actress:

Vera Farmiga - “Up in the Air”
Mo’Nique - “Precious”
Anna Kendrick - “Up in the Air”
Penelope Cruz - “Nine”
Maggie Gyllenhaal - “Crazy Heart”

Hey there, Maggie Gyllenhaal! Great to see you here after a decade of small, wonderful roles. But you and everyone else on this list don’t have a chance in hell against Mo’Nique.

Best Original Screenplay:

“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“The Messenger”
“A Serious Man”
“Up”

I predict this will go to Tarantino, because this often goes to the film getting the second-most nominations that is skimped over for actual awards.

7.5/10

It was sometime around 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning listening to this record that I put my head in my hands and sighed.

I was tired. Tired of fighting to sleep during one of my habitual bouts of insomnia, but mostly tired of fighting with this record. I want to love Transference, the seventh album by Austin, Texas-based Spoon. What’s worse: I feel like I should.

But I don’t love it. I really, really like most of it and love certain sections of it. But there’s something missing and I can’t put my finger on it. I am a dedicated Spoon fan first, and a critic of theirs second. But the critic inside me keeps chiming in. “This ain’t as good as Kill The Moonlight,” he says. “Only a few of these songs would have made it onto Girls Can Tell,” he berates.

I refuse to fight with a Spoon record.

Girls Can Tell, Kill The Moonlight, Gimme Fiction and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga made Spoon the most reliable band of the ’00s. Even at their slightest (”All the Pretty Girls Go To the City,” “Eddie’s Ragga”) each song was part of the greater whole, so when you got to a killer ending like “Chicago at Night” or “Black Like Me,” you’d been somewhere musically and emotionally.

But with Transference, I’m not sure where I’m supposed to have landed, or even what it is I’ve been moving toward.  The album’s stuffed with singer and songwriter Britt Daniel’s standard amusements. “Is Love Forever?” is a blast of anxious guitars; “The Mystery Zone” full of trippy observations and tongue-tangling lines about mapping out the unknown. “Who Makes Your Money?” is another of Spoon’s inspired, minimalist oddities.  Along with the killer instrumental second half of “I Saw the Light,” which even without Daniel’s nasal vocals over top sounds unmistakeably like something only Spoon could create, those are Transference’s brightest spots.  Following them, the album meanders a little too much.

And that’s my beef.

Putting the angsty summer single “Got Nuffin” at the end of the playlist ought to mean more than it does here. Instead, it feels buried beneath a series of home-studio demos and half-finished stunners. And “Out Go the Lights” and “Nobody Gets Me But You” could have been stunners.

This reads like I don’t like this album. I do, I’m just a little disappointed that I’m not bowled over by it is all. I like that they’ve gone back to being a little murkier, like on Gimme Fiction. I enjoy the menacing undercurrent and the mess that they’ve made. And there are still pieces of each of these 11 songs that grab me and won’t let go: the bridge on “Written In Reverse,” the relative cacophony of “Out Go the Lights,” and the jauntiness of “Trouble Comes Running.”

Even after a week of heavy rotation, this one needs more plays. All Spoon albums deserve and require repeated listening. Even though I’m relatively disappointed now, this could wind up being an 8.5 or 9/10 in six months.

That’s just the way Spoon records happen. The best ones mean more over time.

7/10

The line on The Editors is that they’re Joy Division For Dummies.

The angular post-punk guitars, jagged bursts of sound, chilly atmosphere and singer Tom Smith’s pinched baritone on the band’s first two albums — 2005’s extraordinary debut, The Back Room, and 2007’s middling An End Has A Start — didn’t do much to dispel that rep. (When you sound like Ian Curtis and sing about depressing things, you’re going to be compared to him, favorably or not.)

I still say, of all the New Wave/Post-Punk flag wavers to emerge in the ’00s (Franz Ferdinand, British Sea Power, Interpol, The Bravery), The Editors feel the least studied and closest to what bands like The Cure and The Sound were doing  circa 1980-’83.

This third album finds them trading guitars and drums for synths, possibly out of a need to shake off the JD comparisons. It’s a risky move for a guitar band with a motive so clearly defined on singles like “Blood” and “All Sparks,” and it’s a risk that pays off more than it doesn’t on In This Light and On This Evening, out tomorrow (Jan. 19) in the U.S.

Atmosphere has always been important to this band, and there’s oodles of it on this record. Most times, the obvious comparison is to early Depeche Mode, New Order and OMD, but the song structures here are more oblique than the synth-pop tag allows. Choruses often come after several minutes of verses and sometimes never come at all. It plays like background music, but the instrumental hooks and lyrical quirks are strong enough to warrant repeated listens. The title track — with its multitude of Smiths moaning about the earth inhaling and rain falling – is the eeriest thing I’ve heard in a while.

Among the hooky exceptions are the pulsing “Papillon,” — currently making a bid for rotation on modern rock radio — and the darkly seductive “You Don’t Know Love.”

The experiment doesn’t always work. “Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool,” which comes towards the end of the tracklist, outstays its intial welcome with silly lyrics and a repeated chorus that nags. And there is a bit of monotony to the whole thing, simply because it’s all of a piece and formed from the same instrumental pallette. It would be interesting to see how some of these songs would fare under The Editors’ fractal guitars.

A warning to U.S. consumers: The UK version of this record featured only nine tracks, but the American version will have 14 and include b-sides and other cuts from the sessions In This Light was built from. That’s far too long for a genre experiment and will test anyone’s patience. But the bulk of those first nine tracks are winners and once the mood grabs you, this is an addictive record.

Of what little I’ve seen of 2009’s movies, “(500) Days of Summer” is my early favorite.

I saw it Friday, albeit in a weakened state (fresh out of Mecklenburg County traffic court on 2.5 hours of sleep), and was completely taken by it.

It’s fresh, clever, funny and even a little heartbreaking. It’s a romantic comedy, but tells you up front that it’s not a love story. Joseph Gordon-Levitt — as Tom, a hopeless romantic — and Zooey Deschanel — as Summer, a good-time girl too busy living to settle down – are a delight.

The nonlinear story is told by juxtaposing different events in the 500 days of their relationship from Gordon-Levitt’s point of view.  Marc Webb’s writing and direction are a sight to behold — using split screens, visual cues and repeated scenes to tell his story.

And after all that, the soundtrack is an enviable collection of mainstream hipster faves (Spoon, The Doves, Regina Spektor), indie classics (The Smiths, The Pixies, The Clash) and even Hall & Oates.

If you liked ”Garden State,” “Stranger Than Fiction,” “Lars and the Real Girl” or even “Love, Actually,” I can’t imagine you not enjoying this movie, which should have been the sleeper hit of the summer and should have won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy/Musical last night.

Here’s the trailer:

**Update: the YouTube video is down. Go to Sade’s official site to see the video.**

So here’s the new video for Sade’s new song, “Soldier of Love.”

Sade (Sade Adu) is best-known for the 1984 hit “Smooth Operator,” and for her smooth-as-glass, even-toned vocals. She’s made a career out of singing ballads and love songs that are monotonous, but enthralling on individual plays. The new album’s due out in February, her first since 2000’s Grammy-winning Lover’s Rock (Which for my money is her best album, easy.)

“Soldier of Love” is being used in ABC’s “Lost” promos. Though I’m not sure how I feel about the song (”wild, wild west”? Really, Sade?) this video is something special. Check it out before YouTube yanks it!

America’s Best Band (that’d be Spoon) will release their new album next Tuesday, Jan. 19.

NPR is streaming the record, Transference, from its website. I haven’t heard it yet, but am anxious to. The first single from it (”Got Nuffin”) , released in July, was a rough-and-tumble slice of Britt Daniel’s slanted pop-rock. This is the first record Spoon have produced themselves.

To quoth:

But, as with most of Spoon’s work, Transference’s genius lies in what isn’t said. If the songs lack obvious sonic adventure, they more than compensate with flawless execution and an unshakable sense that something darker or more mysterious is lurking beneath the glittering riffs and poppy beats. Daniel and company know that art is more compelling when it plays with the audience’s imagination. In the case of Spoon, that exercise in restraint makes Transference memorable and alluring.

 Spent the weekend downloading and listening to lots of albums from 2009 I hadn’t heard yet and wanted to share some of the odd, wondrous things I found with you. I used Metacritic.com’s Best of 2009 critics’ lists as my guide.

1. The Low Anthem: Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

This is Americana/rock/folk, but it’s not pretentious. Reminds me a little of Drive-By Truckers, but less brash, and if you liked Monsters of Folk, this is for you. Lots of smaller, quieter moments (”Charlie Darwin”) balance out the rawk moments (”The Horizon Is A Beltway”).

2. Biffy Clyro: Only Revolutions

This was the biggest surprise for me. While reading up on them, I found this was once a has-been, god-awful Scottish version of Blink-182. God have mercy. But this, according to the reviews, is their breakthrough. Remember how everyone liked Jimmy Eat World that one summer (I think it was ‘02), but then that band disappeared? This sounds like what I would have wanted them to do next. This is slick, slick pop-rock, but all these songs are super tight and super catchy and just generally well-constructed. We’d be so lucky if this were what mainstream American rock radio sounded like instead of Daughtry.

3. St. Vincent: The Actor

I put off listening to this lady too long, but my first listen (pre-coffee Saturday a.m.) caught me off-guard. Her stuff has a mellow exterior (acoustic guitars, woodwinds, subtle orchestration) but the lyrics underneath are so lucid as to almost be disturbing. It leaves me at a loss whom to compare her to.

4. The Avett Brothers: I and Love and You

I’m going to be honest: The title of this record made me smirk for a while and I refused to listen to this Concord/Greenville, N.C.,-based  band. I also didn’t want to be perceived as another North Carolina hanger-on now that this acoustic/folk/Americana trio is starting to go bigtime. This one’s produced by Rick Rubin and is a tad one-note, but I’m told their stuff isn’t always this downcast. Either way, a lot of what’s here is lovely and the title track – a soaring early Wilco/Jayhawks kind of thing — is sublime.

5. Seven Worlds Collide: Sun Came Out

Boy did I drop the ball on this one, guys, which would have been a highlight of summer ‘09 for me. This is the second of Neil Finn’s (Crowded House, Finn Brothers) Seven Worlds Collide projects, which pull together musicians from across the globe to perform concerts in Auckland, New Zealand, every so often. Last time (2001), it was Eddie Vedder, Radiohead’s rhythm section, Johnny Marr (The Smiths), Lisa Germano and his brother, Tim. Everyone but Vedder went back in Dec. 08/Jan. 09 to record a studio album and play a series of concerts. Added to the mix were Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, KT Tunstall, Finn’s wife Sharon and eldest son Liam, Bic Runga and others.

This record — especially the first track, “Too Blue,” a written/sung duet between Marr and Tweedy, which plays like a Motown/Nashville/Phil Spector track – is loose, great fun. It’s tuneful, upbeat, and shows a wide variety of singers and songwriters doing their thing without any ego attached. Even Radiohead’s drummer, Phil Selway, gets his chance at the mic on his own song and is pretty good. “You Never Know,” which turned up on last year’s Wilco (The Album), gets a rough little dry run here that I almost prefer to the finished version. If you’re into ramshackle, jangly pop, these songs will make you happy.

This video clip from Discovery Channel’s “Man vs. Wild” with Bear Grylls is making the internet rounds.

“Trapped” on a raft in the South Pacific, Grylls has no clean water to drink. There’s bird poop and other offenders floating about in the ocean, so he couldn’t just gulp that down. No iodine to clean it. No way to boil it. So what does he do?

He gives himself an enema.

Logical!

I refused to watch this for a day or two, but eventually my morbid internet curiousity won out. It’s as unpleasant as you think it would be and begs the question: if it’s too dirty to drink… um… isn’t it too dirty to butt-ingest? (I’m pretty sure that “butt-ingest” is a scientific term, and not one I just made up.)

Viewer discretion is advised. The graphic stuff is blurred out, but even Grylls himself, as he’s shimmying up to his makeshift tube says, “I’m not expecting this to be particularly pleasant.” Well, he was right.

I think this is it. I think humanity has reached the end of its usefulness.

U2’s Bono has a legendary ego.

Thankfully, also, most folks know he’s pretty talented and fairly smart, too.

In case you need proof, he wrote a guest column in the NYTimes on Saturday with 10 ideas to think about as we move into the second decade of the 21st century. There’re some truly compelling ideas here, even if you don’t care that your car isn’t a sex object (item #1).

The stuff here has kept me thinking all weekend, and the ideas on revolution and change in the world are inspiring. Here’s a taste on why Time Warner ought to be bearing the brunt of the music industry’s wrath over file sharing.

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

Read and ponder. This is a fascinating list on a range of topics, from medicine to religion to teleportation. (Thanks to Jim for the link.)

Those clever, clever animators at Jib Jab are at it again.

This time, it’s a year-end re-cap of all the reasons 2009 was irritating, droll, dull, sad or hilarious.

So long, 2009: Don’t let the Tea Party hit you on your way out.