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Saturday, February 06, 2010 ( 2/06/2010 10:09:00 AM ) Bill S.  “THE BAWDY MELODY OF A REQUIEM” After listening to their debut album for weeks, I can’t decide if Philly band Drink Up Buttercup’s name is meant to be celebratory or disturbing. (Maybe a little of both?) In any event, Born and Thrown on A Hook (Yep Roc) is a rollicking disc of smart-pop: a collection of energetically neurotic psychedelic/glam/art rock packed with stuttering circus-y keyboards (courtesy Farzad Houshiarnejad) that recall an intentionally funny ELP, rhythmic hop-scotching and bellowing choruses wrapped around sing-songy lyrics about less-than-beautiful losers.At times, the results remind me of Duck Stab era Residents (“Mr. Pie Eyes,” “Sosey Dosy”) if that group of Brechtian performance geeks had an actual vocalist like the deceptively angelic James Harvey or an inclination to display some genuine musical chops. “Young Ladies” musically recalls Kurt Weill and John Lennon in turn, while the folksy “Lovers Play Dead” treats young love like a Romero horror film. “Pink Sunshine” acts like it could be an album track off of some sixties era band’s attempt at aping Sgt. Pepper -- which may sound like a putdown, but isn’t meant to be to these ears. This is a band, after all, that isn’t afraid to quote the Archies in “Doggy Head” (great melodica sound in that ‘un!), evoke Leo Sayer or insert a brief instrumental out of some Lon Chaney silent in between tracks, than follow it with an organ/bass concoction from the Deep Purple Book of Heavy Rock Moves. Born is all over the map, in other words: held together by Harvey’s high vocals and a sharp eye for low-class dives in high-class towns. Barrels of fun for lovers of poppish quirk -- and I’m betting they just kill in a smoky Philly rock club. Labels: art-pop # |Friday, February 05, 2010 ( 2/05/2010 07:24:00 PM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: Here's a recent head shot of Ziggy Stardust (a.k.a. Dusty), our geezerly Aussie/Sheepdog mix:  THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | Wednesday, February 03, 2010 ( 2/03/2010 01:41:00 AM ) Bill S. MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: From a poppishly quirky album that I’ve been playing way too much over the past few weeks, Kate Miller-Heidke’s Curiouser (Review to Soon Follow): # | Tuesday, February 02, 2010 ( 2/02/2010 06:39:00 AM ) Bill S.  “NOT SINCE I REGAINED MY WILL HAVE I UNLEASHED MYSELF SO COMPLETELY.” As someone who knows nada about the massive World of Warcraft game franchise, I was mainly looking for one thing from Tokyopop’s latest graphic novel World of Warcraft: Death Knight: a simple coherent sword-and-sorcery fantasy that wouldn’t require a heavy dose of supplemental reading for me to get the basic story. This I did get, from solid comics pro Dan Jolley and Argentinian artist Rocio Zucchi: a prequel to lord-knows-what about a young would-be warrior named Thassarian, who's killed by a nefarious type named the Lich King and transformed into an undead warrior slave. In thrall to the wicked King, Thassarian slays his own mother, but before the book’s finish we know he’ll break away and take arms against the rotter.In other words, WoW: Death Knight provides a quick, no nonsense back story to a major figure in a popular multi-player online role-playing game. As such, it may carry more emotional resonance to those readers actively invested in the game, but for an outsider, Jolley’s script comes across flat and characterless. Even the death of Thassarian’s mom doesn’t carry much weight since we don’t know much about her in the first place -- in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.” Zucchi’s art is at times more expressive than the cliche characters deserve, though once her figures become the pupil-less undead, she has her work cut out for her. Would love to see what she can do in a comic not so hamstrung by the contrived requirements of a game-playing rule book, though. Labels: modern comics # |Sunday, January 31, 2010 ( 1/31/2010 07:37:00 AM ) Bill S.  “IT SOUNDS MORE POWERFUL WHEN KOGUMA SAYS IT.” Though the frame of this shojo series reads rather rickety – physically “unbalanced” boy and girl find each other through a mutual love of kimonos(!) -- Miku Sakamoto’s Stolen Hearts (CMX) proves an engaging comic romance, in large part due to its central couple. Seventeen-year-old schoolgirl Shinobu Okuma strikes up a relationship with the scariest teen in school, Miharu Koguma, after she accidently spills milk on a kimono from the shop of Koguma’s feisty grandmother. A towering figure, Koguma has the reputation in school for being dangerous, in large part because his height prevents his fellow students from being able to look at him on an eye-to-eye basis.Once she gets to more closely know him, however, Shinobu makes it her mission to get her classmates to see the nice guy Koguma truly is. “I want to show them his charms so badly, I can’t stand it,” she tells the reader at one point, but her new boyfriend is so accustomed to folks seeing him as a hulking bruiser that he doesn’t make things easy for her. He frightens off small children when he kneels down to be friendly to ‘em; his size and strength prove an irresistible lure to local bullies, who at one point kidnap Shinobu to lure him out to fight 'em. Our girl’s desire to reveal her beau’s cuddly side leads to a series of comic incidents, largely revolving around the workings of the entrepreneurial grandma’s kimono shop. We learn a lot about kimono fashions and accessories in the process, but the meat of the story lies in the Sakamoto’s high school update on Beauty and the Beast. Regularly throughout the book, we get panels of the six-foot-plus boy walking hand-in-hand with the four-foot-ten Shinobu: the incongruity is meant to be sweetly comic, and so it is. As an artist, Sakamoto clearly luxuriates in the design and rendering of kimono fashion. She gets such an obvious kick out of it, you half expect to see some cut-out doll pages appended to the story -- much like American comics for girls used to do back in their commercial heyday. Instead, the first volume in this charming teen-rated romance series concludes with four Coloring Pages for Young Maidens, all featuring the lead characters in kimonos, of course. Perhaps some paper dolls for volume two? Labels: sixty-minute manga # | |
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