The Good Ship Albion’s Neighborhood

Fanfarlo ♥ photo by Dave

Indie pop isn’t usually described as epic. Adorable, precious, and cloyingly cute? Yes. But epic? Not so much. Fanfarlo seems to be the exception, and they proved this point on Friday night, when they had a man suspended upside down from the rafters and escape from a straitjacket. This happened within the first five minutes of the show, during the orchestral behemoth that is “The Walls are Coming Down.” It was like a Bruce Willis movie, but with less explosions and more glockenspiel.

The straitjacket incident was obviously the most epic moment of the night, but the theatrics didn’t end there. There was interpretive dancing, rogue boomerangs, and a pretty intimidating box accordion. Throw in a picturesque stage setting and a watering can attached to the drum kit, and it wasn’t an average Webster Hall show. The band managed to take a spacious, relatively normal venue and shift the atmosphere to match that of the album: warm, enthusiastic, and frenzied.

Frontman, Simon Balthazar, led the charge in a bowtie and further proved my belief that Swedes are musical messiahs when it comes to penning a good pop song. Though he was the lead singer, the audience seemed to focus on the band as a whole as they constantly exchanged instruments and shared singing duties. The arsenal of instruments that night included a banjo, mandolin, violin, clarinet, and a brightly colored melodica – the required instrument for every chamber pop band out there. True, they occasionally succumbed to a few clichés (see: the rampart Arcade Fire comparisons), but their sincerity shone through. When you take away the fanfare, there’s still a pulse to their music that drives it past most conventions. Hence the epic-ness.

With only one album, they had a limited supply of songs to play. My personal favorite, “I’m a Pilot,” drew from the band’s most appealing quality: their infectious camaraderie. This was most apparent during the encore, when they had run out of songs to sing, so they resorted to the obligatory cover, Low’s “Just Like Christmas,” featuring opening band, Freelance Whales. Anything holiday-related is instantly a cheese-fest, but throw in a cavalcade of instruments and a dozen earnest musicians and it becomes easy to suspend any cynicism.

(I really wanted to end this review by writing, “...and by the end of the night, you could say that the entire audience had shed an emotional straitjacket – and put on a fringed vest of love.” But I won’t.)

Photos by Dave:

I like love Samurai series like Lone Wolf and Cub and Hanzo the Razor (while Lone Wolf is all about bloody violence, Hanzo is all about sex & ultra-violence). I only mention Hanzo, because the "hero" is played by Shintaro Katsu, who also play one of Japan's most popular Samurai, Zatoichi. If you've never heard of Zatoichi, he's a blind swordsman, who wanders Japan in the Edo period as a masseur (although he seems to make most of his money at dice games).

The Zatoichi series ran 26 movies (1962-1982) and a television series ran for five years (1974-1979). Twenty years later, Takeshi "Beat" Kitano reinvented Zatoichi with his version of the character. This was easily one of my favorite movie at the time, I saw it at the independent theater twice in 2003 and ordered a region 3 release of the DVD as soon as it was available on import. Incidentally, to show support for the US market, I also bought the US edition of the DVD, which came with a bonus Sonatine movie (which was originally released in the states by Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder productions).

Considering the movie did quite well, critically and (I'm assuming) in sales, I was hoping for a follow-up movie by Kitano, but unfortunately there's no such plan. However, interestingly enough, one of my all-time favorite Japanese director, Takashi Miike* directed a stage adaption of Zatoichi for live performances in 2007.

I'm happy to report that, I saw a very good re-imagined of the familiar character, reinvented as a female protagonist, called Ichi. I wish the producers had kept the brand of "Zatoichi", as people who hear "Ichi" does not always associate the name with the blind swordsman. To be fair, Ichi is the original character's name. The term "zato" means low-ranking blind person (low-ranking in the Todoza guild). Logically, they could've named this movie Gozeichi, because Goze refers to blind musician women of that time period.

Anyway, beside my gripe about the Ichi name as the movie title, I also didn't like the idea that a model (Ayase Haruka) is playing the part of the protagonist. All that was really not worth worrying, because the whole movie is quite entertaining and enjoyable, and there is only once where Haruka is seen 'dolled up' for a music performance (most of the movie, she's covered from head to toe in dirty rags). However, there are at times when the director Fumihiko Sori choose to stay too long on Haruka's beautiful unblemished face. We get it, she's cute.

The story is uncomplicated, Ichi wanders into some town with an inept sword-drawing samurai Toma (the name is close to a slang "tonma" for idiot or fool). The town is in trouble from the Banki gang, and in Zatoichi fashion, Ichi and Toma saves the town. During the course of the film, there are the tried-and-true Zatoichi moments like slashing out the lights and Ichi triumph in complete darkness, the use of sound to throw Ichi off, and, of course, the Cho-Han Bakuchi dice gambling.

What made the film interesting, at least to me, is that the soundtrack is by Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard! So throughout the movie, you do hear that ethereal vocals, similar to her efforts on Ridley Scott's Gladiator. I suspect she only wrote the vocals, the credit I have for composer is Michael Edwards, who previously worked with Gerrad on her solo material. The soundtrack was a bit of a surprise to me, generally these J-movies' music and production team are usually kept inhouse. Although, having said that, the one outro credit song is by Korean J-Pop singer SunMin.

Ichi the movie will be made available in the US market via Bluray and DVD in two days (December 22^nd), just in time for last-minute xmas shoppers. Hopefully those Best Buy tonmas will be smart and order some copies for their store (however, if it costs over $25, I'd rather order it online, or not own it at all - hey times are tough!).

* I love all three billion of his movies! Audition, City of Lost Souls, One Missed Call, Ichi the Killer, Fudoh, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Zebraman, Sukiyaki Western: Django, etc.

Ever since I've first heard "There is a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends" in 1991, I've always known that Morrissey and I would be friends. Longtime readers will know that I'm a huge fan, but post-Ringleader, I found myself not actively collecting various editions (a good example of this is the "expanded" editions of Southpaw Grammar and Maladjusted). While I would love to have them in my collection, I feel like I've already bought them the first time around and I'm contented with the original cd and vinyls.

For this Christmas, I did buy myself Swords deluxe edition via my favorite store, amazon. It was a bit pricey for a CD/DVD combo ($23 vs $12 for the standard disc), but I'm worth it.

I actually have had a digital copy of the B-Sides compilation since late October, thanks to pen pal friend Mel, as it was a "bonus" if you had preordered tickets to see Morrissey in live in 2009. And of course, like most fans, we still buy the physical release anyway, so it's a bit of a win-win situation for everyone.

I'll briefly summarize Morrissey's history: he's a bit of a sensitive, indie songwriter with The Smiths. He went solo in "nineteen-eighty-hate" with some classic modern rock hits with "Suedehead" (aka that "I'm So Sorry" song) and "Everyday is like Sunday". He went a bit rockabilly with Your Arsenal (his previous album Kill Uncle was heading to this direction, especially with the B-Sides and singles from this era), and pretty much stayed in this "muscular" rock type music since. As I previously mentioned, I think this has to do with his musical collaboration with Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte.

If you're new to Morrissey, I don't think Swords would be a good starting point for you. I would recommend starting with Bona Drag, a weird mix of b-sides and oddities. Most of the songs on Swords were co-written by Alain Whyte, and there's a nice cohesive feel to each song as they have similiar song writing structure. When you do run into a non-Whyte song, such as "Sweetie-Pie", it just feels out of place. In fact, I think this is possibly one of the worst Morrissey song, right up there with "Michaels Bones".

There is one non-Morrissey-penned song, and it's a live recording of "Drive-In Saturday" (live at Omaha on 11 May 2007). Morrissey's music obsessions tend to be from the 60s and 70s era, so it didn't surprise me to hear him doing a David Bowie cover from the Aladdin Sane time period. But the two are friends, I know that Bowie showed up at a Morrissey show in Los Angeles in the early 90s to do a duet of a T.Rex's song for "Cosmic Dancer", and, of course, Bowie would later record a soul-ish version of Morrissey's "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" in 1993.

Also, it seems in post-2008, Morrissey's songs have been about fatherhood and retirement. Just looking over his titles: "Good Looking Man About Town", "Don't Make Fun of Daddy's Voice", "Teenage Dad on His Estate", "Children in Pieces", that "constipated look" for Swords, and that controversially album cover for Years of Refusal ... you would think that he's married with kids. Maybe that's not a bad thing, with Morrissey's heath in question, maybe he should take it easy. We all can't be like James Dean, you know.