Album of the Week

I have a subscription to a music service, but I found I haven't been good about listening to new music. This week, I decided to listen to eight albums that I hadn't heard before in hopes of hearing something fresh and adding to my collection.  I enjoyed the experience so much that I'll probably do it again in the future, and each time I'll choose the album of the week.

Album of The Week:

Edge of The Sun, by Calexico

There wasn't a track on this album that I would skip, as each song creates a mood, and on Edge of the Sun Calexico accent their sound with strings and excellent harmonies featuring guest vocalists. Different styles abound here, so I never felt that Edge of The Sun was in any way tedious or repetitive.

Best tracks:

"Moon Never Rises"

"Tapping On The Line"

"World Undone"

 Other albums listened to, in order of preference:

Hudson by Jack DeJohnette, Larry Grenadier, John Medeski, and  John Scofield

Different styles of jazz, most of which I enjoyed. I don't really care for stuff that isn't too structured,  and a couple of songs got on my nerves.

Best tracks:

"El Swing"

"Lay Lady Lay"

Sour Bridges by Sour Bridges

Sour Bridges played in the Milwaukee area recently, and although I didn't go, I thought I'd check out their latest. Lively bluegrass, and some songs made me laugh.

Best tracks:

"Meet You There"

"Carry On"

                                                           
First Comes The Night by Chris Isaak

Sarah checked The Baja Sessions, an older Isaak release, and that has a very relaxed sound. I wanted to see what Isaak's most recent release sounded like, and he's a guy who can vary his style from track to track. 

Best tracks:

"Please Don't Call"

"First Comes the Night"

 Windy City by Alison Krauss

I hadn't listened to anything of Krauss's except Raising Sand, which was an album she did with Robert Plant. I highly recommend Raising Sand, but this one wasn't my cup of tea.  She does a great version of "Gentle On My Mind", a classic song by the late Glen Campbell.

You Don't Own Me Anymore by The Secret Sisters

I had seen The Secret Sisters open for Brandi Carlile once, and this album was produced by Carlile and her bandmates Tim and Phil Hanseroth.  The harmonies are great, but overall I thought You Don't Own Me Anymore was kind of monotonous.

Best tracks:

"You Don't Own Me Anymore"

"He's Fine"

                                                           
                                                           

Middle Western by Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Sarah and I had seen H & HG live, and they put on a very lively show, but I discovered where my preference lies with bluegrass, and it's more along the lines of Sour Bridges. Middle Western was a little too twangy and manic for me.

Best tracks:

"Forest For The Trees"

"Make One Today"

And then we get to Eternally Even by Jim James.  I do run hot and cold on My Morning Jacket, James's band.  I think some of their songs are fantastic, and others test my patience.  My patience was stretched beyond its limits with Eternally Even, which has an instrumental lasting six-plus minutes and doesn't really go anywhere.  The other songs are kind of murky, and there wasn't a song I wanted to hear again on the album.

99 Homes

In 99 Homes, Dennis Nash (played by Andrew Garfield) is evicted from his home. Desperate to move back in to this home with his mother Lynn (played by Laura Dern) and son, he decides to work for the realtor working for the bank that seized it. This realtor (played by Michael Shannon) entices him with the ability to make quick money, but his operation proves not to be above board. Dennis suddenly is able to make the money to at least move his family back into his home, but he's not able to tell his mother and son what he does, and he sometimes has a hard time looking himself in the eye.

 

99 Homes is a very tension-filled film from beginning to end. The film opens with a gut-wrenching sequence in which Dennis and family are evicted and given a short time to collect some of their belongings while the rest are thrown out on the front lawn, and eventually Dennis is in Rick Carver's shoes, responsible for getting people out of their homes so that those homes can be sold. 

I'd recommend the film for the performances of Shannon and Garfield. Michael Shannon almost always is worth the price of admission, and here he plays a captivating villain. Garfield's face shows the constant struggle that his character is undergoing. His heart's in a good place, but his head's telling him something isn't quite right.

One quibble I had with the film was that it was a bit on the repetitive side once Dennis starts working for Rick. Another was that I thought Lynn would have pieced things together a little bit faster than she did.  Overall, though, 99 Homes is a tense two hours with some great performances.  In my movie standings for 2017 (link below) I'm placing it just below Split, a film that to me was even more intense.
 
2017 Movie Standings: https://letterboxd.com/mfrets78/list/matts-movie-standings-2017/

A Moment For Mom

 I was rocking a fussy Levi in the nursery at 2 in the morning in late April, thinking about the transition to parenthood.  It's a transition, no doubt.  Two people who are used to sleeping through the night, coming and going as they want, are now beholden to a newborn's schedule.  Naps are suddenly very necessary for both mom and dad.  It's possible to go out, but it's not as simple as it was.

Anyway, I was thinking about all this, and it seemed to me that there had to be an acceptance of all this eventually.  Three weeks in, it all still felt a bit surreal, as surreal as the idea of being a parent was nine months ago. There's a new member of the family in the house to care for, to love, to see grow.

Levi was slowly calming down, breathing was becoming deeper.  I was holding him to my chest, and I had a CD on that had a heartbeat over soft music and sound effects.  My mind began to wander back to the weekend before.  The three of us had gone to South Shore Terrace Beer Garden along with my brother, and something about the location seemed very familiar to my brother and me.  It seemed like we had been here as little kids.

I asked my dad about it, and he said that we had been there.  He shared a detail that I vaguely recalled.My mom had packed so many toys when we went to the beach that other kids started to drift over and ask if they could play with them. 

I don't know what it was about remembering this with the heartbeat in the background and Levi in my arms, but I started to remember THAT mom, mom before she developed multiple sclerosis, mom who took care of us before she started needing care.  I realized that when she passed away two years ago that I had never really mourned THAT mom.  I felt my mouth start to tremble. Something had been unlocked.

My mom did pack us a lot of toys when we went to the beach, just as she packed a box of stuff to do when we went on long car trips.  Her sons were not going to be bored.  We had books, games, you name it, we had it in the back seat. 

My mom really scheduled us out in the summertime.  She wanted us to get a taste for many things, so we had sports camp, journalism camp, drama, tennis team.  She fought for us too.  One time, she told me that if I passed this swim class, I could have this book that I wanted.  Last day of swim class, we had the final tests.  One of them was treading water, and I kind of thought something was kind of funky about the way the test had gone.  I mentioned it to her and she marched down to the instructor, who must have conceded that something was awry because we were re-tested and I passed the class.



Levi wriggled in my arms a bit, let out a deep breath, and went back to sleep. 



I continued to remember my mom, who from an early age passed on her love of reading.  She always had stacks of books on her nightstand, and she'd be up until the early hours of the morning working her way through another page-turner.  One night when I was a sophomore in high school, she and my dad were out, and she called home to tell me that the library was hiring.  She brought home an application, and I wound up working there for just over six years.  My first job was as a library page, mostly shelving but also working the front desk, which I really enjoyed, but my favorite role there was being in charge of the volunteers during the summer.  The volunteers helped the little kids and parents when they returned their reading logs and earned prizes or prize entries.  I felt like part of a family at the library, so incredibly fortunate.

My mom lived in assisted living for almost four years when she passed away.  I came every week (usually on Tuesday nights) to deliver groceries, her audiobooks, and to talk about life, TV, and current events.  For months after she passed away in the hospital, I had this lingering feeling that I was only remembering my mom as she was the last few years. 

As my son slept contentedly in my arms, I blinked through the tears and smiled.

Let's See Where This Goes

Wow, I see it's been over a year since I've been on here.  Long time, no blog.  The last year hasn't been a slog, but a joy.  We went and had ourselves a boy.  He's a happy, healthy lad, which makes his mom and me glad.  Always something new, whether it's smiling, cooing, or watching the mobile on his swing go round and round.  Always something to be found, like his fists, which he looks at with wonder.  What do I do with these?  He'll figure it out later.  All that is to come, all the milestones.  The smiles make up for the whines and moans.  The lack of sleep, it's not for keeps, as he's starting to nap for longer.




The days of going to the movie theater regularly are gone for us, but I don't feel a great void.  The previews leave me annoyed.  Dear oh, I'll quote Tina Turner:  we don't need another hero, and my interest in them is zero.  Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Ant Man, they all seem like blunders, but not the Woman of Wonder.  There's room in the world for her, no doubt, but with last year's best pictures I had a falling out.  Lion had me bored to tears, Arrival tried to solve interplanetary fears.  I needed a bigger screen for Moonlight's trance, La La Land did not make me dance.  Manchester was the best of the bunch, and after that, Hidden Figures seemed like a picnic lunch.


I'll break out of the rhyme soon, but TV leaves me more over the moon.  Jimmy McGill's backsliding wonderfully on Better Caul Saul.  I love that each episode doesn't solve all.  About each character slowly we learn, and sometimes it's an exceedingly slow burn.  Of Red Oaks (Amazon) we made short work, and Paul Reiser plays a wonderful jerk.  Catastrophe (Amazon) is what happens when all heck breaks loose, and I liked it, I won't be obtuse.  These last three shows never hit the skids, but I wouldn't recommend them around the kids.


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It's Been A While. Let's Catch Up.

Wow, my last post on here was about The Peanuts Movie.  So much has happened since then.  The Packers suffered heartbreak, the Badgers had a fun run in the tournament... it always comes back to sports for me, I guess.  Better than thinking of other things, like politics, which I don't much like to discuss anyway.  People's veins and eyes start to bulge when politics and politicians are being discussed.  Want to really get your blood boiling?  Get on Facebook and see what's trending, and then start reading the responses to the stories.



What's safe, then?  Entertainment, of course.  It's what I usually do on here.  Last month the story broke that the new head of AMC Theatres wanted to open up some theaters to texting.  Said that not allowing it basically told millennials to cut their arms off above the elbow.  I believe that to be true.  People can't part with their phones long enough to walk across a street, let alone live without them for two hours.  There should be a commercial showing someone texting and walking to illustrate the dangers of texting and driving.   Seems like the more technology we have, the less attention we pay to what matters. 

Enough talk about the tiny screens.  I've seen some good stuff on the big screen this year.  I decided to let the Star Wars hubbub die down a little bit before hitting the theaters, but installment number seven is still the best thing I've seen all year.  I was a little worried when I arrived (half an hour early, which gives a person time to worry), but it took all of five minutes to completely hook me.  I loved just about everything, but the pacing was fantastic and I loved the blend of new and classic characters. 

I've been ranking the movies I've seen this year on Letterboxd, and the worst one I've seen so far this year is the new Pee Wee Herman movie Pee Wee's Big Holiday.  The second worst was Concussion, which could have been the worst, but at the end of the day Concussion had a purpose and a story to tell, while Big Holiday just felt kind of stale and pointless.

Eye In The Sky was a gripping and engrossing film that really highlights the way wars are fought now.  A drone mission to eliminate high-ranking terrorists in the Middle East is complicated by a girl who starts selling bread outside a house where the terrorists are preparing to carry out a suicide attack.  No-win decisions have to be made by a team with members in multiple places, and most of the film is very tense. 

TV-wise, I watched the fourth season of Veep, in which Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) must now campaign to win her own term in the White House.  This was my least favorite season to date.  It's not that it wasn't funny, but a couple of the episodes were more obnoxious than amusing. 

That'll do it for now.  I'm hoping to see a couple of movies in the next couple of weeks, most notably Sing Street (directed by John Carney, who also directed Once).  I've also read a lot of good books this year (including some Pulitzer Prize winners picked out by my brother), so I'll get into that next time.  I'm currently in the middle of Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo, which is his follow-up to his early 90s novel Nobody's Fool.  So far so good.  It'll be interesting to see what twists and turns Russo throws in. 

Letterboxd list:

http://letterboxd.com/mfrets78/list/matts-movie-standings-2016/

Playlist- May 15, 2016

Today's playlist features some songs that I heard for the first time in the last few weeks.  I love the new Alicia Keys song "In Common", and Yuna's last album was one I really enjoyed, so it's good to hear the new tunes, including a track that features Usher.  "Are You Serious" is the title track from Andrew Bird's latest.   "In My Own Way" is a solid track from Ray LaMontagne's latest. 

The Peanuts Movie

There's no new ground broken in The Peanuts Movie.  Ordinarily, that's a criticism, but for me (and I would imagine most Peanuts fans), it was completely welcome.  I knew going in what I was going to see:  a kid who feels that he can't get anything right and has that feeling confirmed over and over again.   Kites won't leave the ground when Charlie tries to fly them.  Baseballs that he throws are hit back at him so hard that his clothes wind up scattered around the mound.  Charlie can't even pick out a normal Christmas tree without fouling it up.

Charlie's problems continue in The Peanuts Movie, and chief among them is shyness.  The little red-haired girl (she's still not given a name) moves in across the street and is in Charlie's class, but he can't work up the nerve to spit out a syllable in her direction.  How will he get her attention?  The film builds to that by the end, and in between Snoopy has some airborne adventures trying to rescue his love Fifi from the red baron.

It's really refreshing to see something like Peanuts brought back and not be messed with.  I was nervous heading in to see what might change, but really, the style and message of Peanuts is not altered at all.  The voices sound really similar to the Christmas special, and it was good to see that Peanuts was not really modernized (Charlie Brown's still using that blasted fountain pen, Snoopy's still plucking away at his typewriter).  I had a pretty goofy grin going during The Peanuts Movie.  For once, something I loved didn't change, and that was just fine with me.