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Frank Black recommended Le Noise by Neil Young in Music (curated)

 
Le Noise by Neil Young
Le Noise by Neil Young
2010 | Singer-Songwriter
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"With Neil Young, it’s all down to his songs. At least half of his songs really turn me on. Even the ones that don’t as much are still really damn good. It’s about getting onto the right wavelength. On this record, when I first heard it, I thought: ‘Ah, this is the big Neil Young, Dead Man soundtrack thing’. I love that sound but initially I was only tuned in to the shallower aspects of it. But after a while I started to really get the poignancy and the emotional voice that cuts through and thought: ‘Oh! I really love these songs.” I really respect what he’s trying to say. They’re beautiful songs. Sometimes Neil Young has a real ability to say something – to give a song an emotional stroke, to say ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I don’t understand’, to express a human frailty. These older guys – Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Neil Young – when they make a good record as an older guy, they say shit. They might rhyme ‘moon with spoon in june’ but they do it with such heaviness, charm and humour. They drop these one liners that are like ‘Woah! That can only come from a guy who has been around the block 50 times.'"

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Frank Black recommended Franks Wild Years by Tom Waits in Music (curated)

 
Franks Wild Years by Tom Waits
Franks Wild Years by Tom Waits
1987 | Rock
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Tom Waits really brings a lot of showbiz into his records. It’s in there in the actual songwriting. He knows how to strip things down and get to some skeletal place that’s really strong. He’s trying to be true to his Jazz and his Blues. That is to be admired. There’s a lot of the textures you don’t hear so much. All that vocabulary is really seductive. I think that he’s a good songwriter whatever record you talk about of his. It’s not because there’s some fucking guy playing a saw. It’s like the Bruce Springsteen thing. It’s stripped down, universal, folky bluesy stuff. He’s trying to say: “You guys think you can change things overnight. Forget the new thing. What about Django Reinhart? Son House?” It’s like the Grand Duchy thing. People get obsessed with our production like, “What’s the new story?” It’s admirable when people say: “What about 1949, man?!” At first, I heard a cool White Stripes record and thought: “Who do you think you are, Robert Johnson?” And I get jealous. Fucking A! man. It’s like primal Led Zeppelin or something. But at the end of the day, I always end up respecting Jack White. [Black does an impression of the 'Seven Nation Army' riff.] Jack White has some believability."

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Kirk Bage (1775 KP) rated The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) in Movies

Mar 3, 2020 (Updated Jul 9, 2020)  
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
2018 | Comedy, Drama, Western
7
7.1 (13 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
First up, the latest Coen Brothers effort, the slightly offputtingly titled The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I mean, it sounds like a working title at best, and doesn’t exactly draw you in. Oh, and it’s a Western, and Tim Blake Nelson sings in it – those Coen’s never did much care about box office, huh? And what’s more it is an anthology film; five or six short vignettes vaguely set in the same dusty landscape of pre industrial America.

I didn’t even know it was an anthology from the trailer, or poster. I thought the entire thing was about the crooning Blake Nelson, and as much as I love the Coen’s back catalogue, I wasn’t overly keen. Then the reviews, and a few Oscar nominations made me sit up a bit, feeling a bit silly that I had ever doubted the partnership that has offered the most consistently interesting off-kilter films of the last 40 years.

Immediately, I was struck by two things: a sense of a whimsical mood, and a breathtaking cinematography capturing a landscape. This was definitely a Coen film. I found myself enjoying the humour and inventiveness effortlessly. And then being surprised to find we were moving on to another story before even 15 minutes had passed!

A bit with James Franco and an unfortunate lynch mob / hanging situation; a wry piece about Tom Waits panning for gold and protecting his find; a more serious (and mood breakingly longer) piece about an unlikely love between a worldly wagon trainer and a naive young woman; and finally something like a Western ghost story as strangers talk inside a carriage heading to a mysterious location. And with a somewhat anti-climactic end… we were out. Did I miss something? Then it must have been forgettable.

I liked all the sections to degrees, and admired how they were all unique but dovetailed together well. There is certainly plenty to enjoy and even love in this strange experiment of a film. The Tom Waits section was my favourite, and the long wagon train section my least favourite, in simple terms.

However the overall impression is that it somehow isn’t quite fully there… something doesn’t hold it together as a complete film. It is hard to put your finger on it, but it is something to do with the story arc in terms of energy. It would maybe have been better served with a more upbeat climax. But who am I to question these guys?

Would I watch it again? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to everyone? With caution, yeah sure. Will I be adding it to any best of lists any time soon? Capagorically not. Enjoy it for what it is. Even watch each piece in isolation maybe. Look in wonder at how Joel and Ethan can still frame an image or capture a detail. And then let it fly away, as inconsequential as a dream.
  
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Beth Orton recommended Blue by Joni Mitchell in Music (curated)

 
Blue by Joni Mitchell
Blue by Joni Mitchell
1971 | Folk, Rock, Singer-Songwriter
9.2 (6 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I first encountered that record when I was 16 and in college and a boy came round to my house. He was a boy who I really thought was so beautiful and I never thought that he'd even notice me, quite honestly. I had this tiny little box room in a shared house with a bunch of blokes, one of which never came out of his room - (at the same time that he never came out of his room, Tom Waits released that song 'What's He Building In There?' He never came out! I was just living next to that character and you would hear these strange bangs...) - and in that room I had a little single bed, and I'd brought my only other piece of furniture, my grandmother's huge wooden record player, with built-in speakers and the record player in the middle. This boy brought round a copy of Joni Mitchell's Blue, and I had never heard anything like it in my life before. We hung out all night and he played that over and over again. When he left in the morning, all my heart aflutter, he left that record with me and I was just enthralled by it, and I still am, to this day - I just never get bored of listening to it. Every time a song starts, it's like a really good old friend walking in a room. It's just always, always welcome."

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