Local Upstart Label Gets a Precocious Kid Brother
By Zach McCormick
Posted in Sound & Vision | Comments Off
Shane Vader and Clara Salyer engage in the proudest of high school band traditions for their weekly meetings: the Taco Bell run. Over what may well be the most questionable of foodstuffs, the two discuss life, music and, most importantly, their record label: the recently established Afternoon Records subsidiary Personal Best Records (and yes, they are aware of the irony of their acronym relative to their age).
Personal Best Records was the brainchild of Ian Anderson, who founded local indie label Afternoon Records while he was still in high school. Vader and Salyer had been friends with Anderson for several years, and the two seemed to be a natural fit for the new business venture. “The hope here is that with …
The new release by Atlas Sound, nee Bradford Cox, has one song that’s going to garner a lot of attention. “Walkabout,” a collaboration with Noah Lennox of Animal Collective fame, is a big-beat summer anthem that goes past feel-good and into brain candy. The real story here, though, is neither catchy singles nor star power; it’s the way Cox’s songwriting and arranging abilities have improved since his last record. The songs all sport beautiful, full-sounding arrangements that skillfully incorporate acoustic instruments, a far cry from the ultra-compressed, digital soundscapes of his debut. The music is still firmly entrenched in the ambient-pop genre so reliably promoted by Kranky records, but now it’s grown into something completely different; a mixture of swirling ambience, quality pop songs, and a willingness to throw acoustic and electric …
Built to Spill has always been political, but never like this. There Is No Enemy’s opener, “Aisle 13,” uses the phrase “Cleanup in aisle 13” as a loose conceit for America. It’s a song about passing the buck which is sort of what Mr. Martsch does in writing a song about it. Most of There Is No Enemy is entrenched in this brand of whiny finger pointing that I’ve never heard from this band. “Hindsight” is a song about universal healthcare with front man and perpetual fifteen-year-old Martsch at the megaphone for the coda “What about Canada?” It’s an album that means well, but even the title forces a sense of guilt on the audience for their part in creating the current state of American life. I liked it better when the …
Actor, comedian and author, Amy Sedaris is Sony’s ambassador in its venture into the world’s next frontier of digital media: the book. In her ad on Sony’s web site Sedaris jokingly says, “People always are asking me: Amy Sedaris, how is it that you’re so amazingly well read? And I say first of all it’s true, thank you very much. But I like to think that it’s because my reader touch edition.” Which begs the question: How long have “reader touch editions” been around?
alt='FN'/>Set in Minneapolis and St. Paul, nobody is a movie for MSP lovers, artists and indie folk. The movie stars Lindeman (local actor Sam Rosen), a frustrated graduate student at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. After being declared “done with therapy” by his shrink, he struggles to find a way to regain the ever-so-inspiring depression that had guided his previous projects. The drama of the film unfolds as Lindeman becomes more and more frustrated with a looming final critique and only a few ideas for his final sculpture that, in his words, “kinda sucks.” As he experiments with such subjects as death, love, homosexuality and militant veganism, Lindeman realizes whoring himself out to the various philosophies and radical lifestyles of his colleagues will not give him the unique identity he is looking …
Mason Jennings’ Sept. 15 release Blood of Man delivers a shift from the acoustic sound that dominated his earlier albums to more amplified, pulsing compositions. Although Jennings picks up the acoustic guitar only a few times, most of the record still carries a resemblance of calm intonations periodically culminating in raw crescendos and fretful callings. 
When discussing the state of the film industry, one can easily become overwhelmed by the seeming ever-growing number of questions one might confront. However, by venturing to answer these questions we can envision an aura of potentialities for the future of cinema. In an effort to promote transparency in the future of film, here are a few questions and issues begging to be given attention today.
