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hail to the thief
Tag Archives: Hail to the Thief
disassemble [2021)
Way behind on Pauly Deathwish.
Right off with XTRMNTR.
Shoot speed.
Kill light.
Spirit of rock and roll.
His most popular track at this time.
Straight rock.
Bad boy.
Drugs flowing through the veins.
Overdose of light.
God is the ultimate drug.
Coming back from depression.
Girlfriend goes on a date with another bloke.
Big depression.
Drugs consume.
Always creative.
From London to Paris.
Vintage keys like French band Air.
Every touch from two tracks imbued with Radiohead experimentation.
Pink Floyd bass.
Waters lives.
Here come the warm jets.
Camera clicking photos.
Virgin suicides.
Tomita.
Amazing groove.
Levon and Robbie Robertson.
Rhythm of the saints.
This bloke has nothing to live for.
His girlfriend is a total fucking bitch.
Alone in the world.
Short circuit.
Trying to overcome.
She don’t give a fuck.
Melancholy.
Info op birthed.
Suicide Girls.
Anti-Antifa.
Bloke has sophistication in attack.
Philosophy.
Wars back started BLM.
Kept powder dry.
Amazing hip hop.
Stevie Wonder.
Shaft.
The Sea and Cake.
Jazzy Jeff.
Fresh Prince.
Young MC.
Stereolab as always.
Trump supporter smart.
Assessment of coup against Deep State.
Progress report.
Situationism.
Velvet Underground.
The balls to review his own albums.
Balls?
Toxic relationship.
Electronic music.
Chemical Brothers.
Dark side of the moon.
Fever dream.
Of the wall.
Oasis.
Noel feeding back.
Liam blowing harp.
Ringo’s son on drums.
Don’t believe the truth.
Soundtrack music.
Hanna.
How she lives now.
Soylent green…2022.
Beastie Boys.
Nigel Godrich as always.
Big Star Third.
Kanga Roo.
As important as the Velvets.
Drug withdrawal.
Big Star early albums.
Chiming.
Like The Byrds.
Phil Spector lives in the glockenspiel.
Lester Bangs lives here.
Lavage.
Many disappointed patriots.
Lamenting the shitty U.S. military.
While honoring the 13.
And Colonel Scheller.
A handful of gems in a culture of shit.
Astrology.
Drag balls.
Berlin.
I love faggots as much as anyone.
David, Lou, Iggy.
Heroes.
God is the only hope.
So I prayed tonight.
Twin peaks.
Nobody loves me.
Keeping real.
Mercury Rev.
See you on the other side.
Rolling the dice.
So long, Charlie.
I’m guessing you got the vaccine.
Poor bastard.
BBC.
AstraZeneca.
Elvis.
Gene Vincent.
Eddie Cochran.
Happy Hairy (?) Hardon Q.
QAnon Christian Slater.
The first of a long succession.
The Verve.
Anthemic melodies befitting Handel.
Air.
Matrix done right.
First song to mention Event 201?
“Follow the White Rabbit”.
Shhh/peaceful.
Very Jefferson Airplane.
Psychedelic march.
Woodstock.
Altamont.
Power to the people.
Pro-Trump psych rock.
Fucking awesome!
AMERICA!!!
Be a rebel.
Kanye poser.
No vaccines, asshole!
Good job.
Adapt.
Drozd.
Great snare work.
Verging on adrenochrome.
Hefner and Monroe.
Sexy dead bodies.
Pay to grind for eternity.
Absolute Flaming Lips.
Transmissions from the satellite heart.
Keith Cleverley.
What is God gonna do for America?
What is America gonna do for God?
Nation falling apart.
Amnesiac.
Hail to the creep.
Rollerskate Skinny.
Darth Vader.
Lloyd Austin.
Scorsese Glass Kundun soundtrack.
Well-done!
Carl Stalling project!
Helmut Lachenmann.
Deserter’s Songs.
Underture.
This is a SOPHISTICATED FUCKING RECORD.
Violent Femmes.
Tom Waits.
Bobby McFerrin.
AUSTRALIA, WAKE UP YOU CUNTS!!!
Invading Sydney!
Give me ANZAC!!
Let’s go!!!
ACK-ACK!!
Fucking awesome return to Bobby Gillespie.
Great fucking song!
“Australia, Here I Come!”
Even uses the comma correctly 🙂
Riot city blues.
“Nitty Gritty”
MC5.
Baby won’t ya?
PERTH!!!
BON SCOTT!!!!
Love and Rockets.
Bitch who dumped me.
How?
By not giving a fuck.
By proxy.
By not participating.
By being a selfish cunt.
Q Team, come in!
How many years?
Second American Revolution.
Miles Davis.
There’s a Riot Goin’ On.
Late-Godard.
Second Pauly Deathwish song to mention Jean-Luc.
Who the fuck is this nigger?!?
Def Leppard.
She’s a fucking black hole.
I take it all back.
A pathetic bleeding vagina.
Money soothes all pains.
Paul Simon.
She’s a loser.
Jack Nitzsche all the way.
Rips your heart out.
Fucking hell.
I will die lonely.
Having given it all away.
Hear the typewriter click.
Are there two people?
Or one?
QAnon stylometric analysis.
Switzerland.
Obvious split in styles.
Who?
Final track.
Primal Scream.
Manchester.
Manchester City.
Gimme the rain, the rain, the rain, the glorious rain!!!!
Luton.
I got close.
Freezing your tits off.
Seeing your breath.
We coming for the sexy bitches.
With stellar boob jobs.
Jazz funk.
Acid.
Trip hop.
Acid house.
World party.
Factory Records above all.
Baggy as fuck.
Gimme them saggy titties.
Real better than fake any day.
Ain’t returning my messages.
Would love that bitch like Cleopatra.
Suck her toes.
Conspiracy theory king and queen.
Blew it several times.
Because heartless bitch usurper.
Same birthday as Lester Bangs and Nostradamus.
Ends with Pocket Symphony.
Everybody hertz.
Ya feel me?
iTunes.
Spotify.
-PD
zenith [2021)
Jesus and Mary Chain.
Black tar.
Caramelized sugar.
A dangerous confection.
Hit to Death in the Future Head.
Summer is here.
I hear.
Vacuum cleaner solo.
Theremin.
Race cars.
Boys peel out.
High-speed boats.
And again with the UPC scan.
Breaking up on reentry.
Serious audio fuckery.
And from this right into kung fu. Peter Sellers on Bowie’s Low. Trance. But really what we have here is excellent counterpoint. Lunatic Harness. Polyrhythms. Album breaks down soon. Fast. Abruptly. Mental block regarding Wuhan origin. Harmonic outline you would never find in China. Terry Riley. A Rainbow in Curved Air. Eno. Visconti. And the others involved. A beauty that inspired Philip Glass. This is what we have. Low and heroes. Symphonies. Glass. Riley. Minimalism. Album called zenith. Track two already hits “Nadir”. What’s the arc here? Arc-en-ciel? Arkansas? Immediately pensive. Very unnerving. Pop rock track. Into existential oblivion. Abrupt modulation. Uncomfortable. Eccentric. Was there a thought process behind this? Commerce ruins everything. Imperfect masterpieces. The rules of the game. Radiohead. Joseph Arthur? Sparklehorse. The Magnetic Fields. Gay baritone. Sad sack confessional poetry in the world of Berryman’s Dream Songs. Brian Jonestown Massacre. The Verve. Strung out in heaven. J. Spaceman shooting up while praying. Don’t knock it… Drug addiction is real. Mental problems are real. Here we are. 2020 fucked us up. And now we wait for the next shoe to drop. Smashing Pumpkins. “Silver Fuck”? Into Sonny Rollins? Epstein. Gene Ammons. Hard to tell it’s (not) real. Which parts? Yes. No. Fooling the ear with Dave Fridmann. A totally schizophrenic record so far. Here we go! “Belgian Lace, Pale Black Mascara…” This is more like it. Rollerskate Skinny. Martin Rev. Lots of counterpoint here. Fux me up. Disney xylophones. Internal rhyme-sanity. Dylan puking up brilliance. Always Roger Waters with the bass. Always The Wall. Pompeii. Hail to the Thief. Again and again. Trying to break new ground. And it does. Yerself is Steam. Album starts to make sense after five tracks. 1 & 5. This is not bullshit. I don’t know about the jazz. I don’t know about the monotonous instrumentals. Absolutely “Car Wash Hair”. Suzanne Thorpe would be proud. Seems to be talking about tits. A good ride. Drum machine chugging away. Can still have a good groove. Wild Acoustic Chamber Orchestra. W.A.C.O. Woodwinds and glockenspiel. Boces. What the fuck is this shit? O.K. computer. Sounds like some QAnon stuff. I feel Carlos Santana coming on. This is what Assange jams out to. Lots of plays at Fort Meade. Salsa. James Brown. Puerto Rican funk. As AOC goes to jail. Serious national security issues for lyrics. Fictional charges? Tracers everywhere. This theory involves an actual conspiracy. Criminal conspiracy outlined. By players. Event 201. Short circuit. Johnny 5 is alive. Legalistic funk. QAnon wet dream. FISAgate. “Spy Gate”. Somebody send this to Sean Hannity. Obamagate. Where is John Durham? Ryan Dark White knows the truth about Rosenstein. How many coup attempts by the Left? Back to Billy Corgan. Ok, so we have an Alex Jones connection. Early-’90s goodness. Butch Vig. Dream pop. James Iha. Bet this guy knows the real story about the Standard Hotel(s). Great lyrics! Must be some inside jokes here. But HOLY FUCK! He nailed the “Holes” trumpet solo. Deserter’s Songs. God damn it. How did they do this? The liner notes say Pauly Deathwish has also produced all four of these albums. Kind of a Jimmy Page thing going on. Great drum sound. Yo La Tengo. “Mayonnaise”. Siamese Dream. Benjamin Britten reference? Slick! So this guy basically had a music education on par with Jack Nitzsche. And then went for scumbag rockroll like Phil Spector. Gotta respect this weird marriage. This fascination with grunge. Dinge. And the facility to clean it up like a chandelier. Very fucking impressive. No record label. Kinda sounds like no funding. No budget. The Delgados. Hate. The Great Eastern. More Spiritualized telephony. The Wall. Which is to say, Bob Erzin. And as dark as Berlin. Which is to say, Bob Ezrin. Neil Young vibe. Tonight’s the Night. Some dark-ass shit. Nick Kent, where y@t? IV Thieves. Coulda done this. What if Chris “Frenchie” Smith had produced this? This kid like a protege. I hear the moniker (stage name) was bestowed by Frenchie Smith. Strings good. Eastern European orchestra. Must have cost a small fortune. Arcade Fire. French cinema. Romantic-era harmony. But pierced. Sophisticated. Absolutely Floyd. “In The Flesh”. Last track on Harvest. Words between the lines. The promise of the ’60s went to shit in the ’70s. Where’s QAnon? Where’s Nakasone? Where’s CYBERCOM? Keith Alexander on Amazon board. Velvet Underground feeding back. Les Rallizes Denudes. Primal Scream. “Swastika Eyes”. ADAT. DAT machine. Sampling. Stereolab. Back to another standout track. “Chaconne”. Will Smith in the summertime. Some slick shit. Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood. Lyrics world-class. All those sand paintings. Write and destroy. Suicide girls. Thom Yorke’s brain doesn’t have this facility. He’s a great stylist. Definitely an homage. And to Godard. Snow white and psycho. Heavy shit for Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane to check out. Not far from Faust IV. So sweet. John Paul Jones. Ramble on. Charlotte Gainsbourg. Keren Ann. Last track noisy as fuck. Lo-fi. Tom Waits. Sticks together. Some sad shit. Music from Big Pink. Mournful trombone(s). John Simon. “Bird on a Wire”. They don’t make records like this anymore. David Bowie not dead. Great phrasing. Sinatra. Mark Linkous. It’s a Wonderful Life. Believable bass. Upright citizen. Bayou curious. Noise floor drops out. Some perverse humor here. An “album”. It is. Ten songs. Ten different directions. Some tracks stick together. Like a deck of cards shuffled. Lots of variety. Circus peanuts. The orange ones. Pure sugar. Chewy. Strange texture. Lots of melancholy here. What’s this bloke so sad about? Tell Thurston Moore. You gotta hear this shit. Pauly Deathwish’s 4th album (this summer!). Is this guy trying to set a Guinness record or something? And he already has a 5th one out. Christ!
-PD
Le Livre d’image [2018)
And so I’m back.
Sort of.
Maybe.
With Godard.
Can we go from back to front?
After having gone halfway from front to back?
More importantly: WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH?!?
I’m guessing JLG might relish such a reaction.
But really.
Le Livre d’image (The Image Book) is a thoroughly fucked-up film.
Music stops and starts.
Ok, standard Godard.
Images run and then go to black screen.
Again, standard Godard.
But something is further about this film.
Perhaps the most accessible touchstone would be the glitchy music of Radiohead circa Kid A and Hail to the Thief (to name my two favorites).
To wit: Godard seems to be enjoying fucking with his audience.
Every possible convention of cinema is destroyed and frustrated by his anti-art approach.
It is Swiss. It is dadaist (in a certain sense).
But it is stranger…
Which brings us to a crossroads.
Is Godard getting senile?
I mean, seriously: is this the work of someone falling apart?
It may be.
There is an achingly-sad moment near the end when we hear that trademarked Godard narrative voice break up.
Coughing.
Too many cigars.
Almost 90 years old…
But there are other possibilities.
Indeed, The Image Book hearkens back to the Godard of his Dziga-Vertov years.
Extremely obtuse.
Painful cinema.
A cinema of cruelty (for Artaud).
We catch glimpses (literally) of Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Yes.
There is a pessimism here.
But mostly a hard reality.
And yet, is it reality?
The Image Book is surreal…while being mostly in a stark cinematography.
A bit like Picasso’s Guernica.
But more boring.
Can I say that?
Boring.
When you’re 88 years old (like Godard), perhaps things move slower.
Perhaps you could call it “slow cinema”.
But it is FAST and boring.
Many cuts.
Many, many cuts.
Painstakingly (painstakingly?) spliced.
It seems.
Also seems random.
Aleatory.
I Ching.
John Cage.
But onto another aspect.
That of revision.
Revisiting.
The Image Book is to Godard’s oeuvre as Histoire(s) du cinéma is to film history as a whole.
Le Livre d’image could be said to be a sort of CliffsNotes to the work of Jean-Luc Godard.
But there’s just one catch.
You would need to know the oeuvre in its totality to really make much of this pithy summation.
So it is, in a sense, useless.
But it still speaks.
Galileo.
And yet it moves.
Godard is not dead.
Not yet.
And he should know that he will never die.
Not with the timeless body of work he has contributed to humanity.
And yet, that tobacco cough says otherwise.
To live in those lungs.
To feel the weight of mortality pressing down.
Le Livre d’image is a frustrating piece of work.
It has very little (almost none) of the lyrical poeticism that its predecessor Adieu au langage had.
Indeed, perhaps this is a purposeful “let down”.
Like Neil Young’s On The Beach or Lou Reed’s Berlin.
To extend the metaphor there, it is mostly like Metal Machine Music.
It is jarring.
Annoying.
It gets under your skin.
But it makes you think.
And perhaps that is the whole point.
Perhaps Godard is reaching for a new filmic language.
He may not be there yet, but he is reaching.
This is essential, cranky cinema.
The bleeding edge…
-PD
A King in New York [1957)
I once went to rather extraordinary lengths to see this film.
Doing such a thing often makes one appreciate the rarity of the moment.
But now I revisit this testament for the purpose of placing the film in my own history of the cinematic medium.
As you might know, I don’t often review new films.
For what is important to me is not the hackneyed novelty of Hollywood today, but rather the breadth of motion pictures down through time as an art form.
What is attractive about the movies is that they are barely 100 years old.
It is not much of a stretch to say that the seventh art (as Ricciotto Canudo eventually called it) was short of being a mature mode of creation in 1916.
For though Charlie Chaplin was already making important contributions, his first feature as a director and actor wouldn’t come till 1921’s The Kid.
In many ways A King in New York was Chaplin’s last film. Namely, it was the last in which he both starred and directed. [He would direct one final effort: 1967’s A Countess from Hong Kong starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren.]
And so it was that with A King in New York Chaplin returned in some ways to the themes of The Kid.
Michael Chaplin (his son) is brilliant as “the kid” Rupert here in the film under consideration.
And Charles (Charlie) is equally timeless as the foil to Rupert’s Marxism.
Yes.
This was a brave film to make.
It was a humane film to make.
And it is insightful even today.
We may no longer have the communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era, but we still have the same brain-dead stupidity (as exemplified by Fox News).
It is quite easy to draw that particular parallel when viewing the newscast which comes on King Shahdov’s hotel television periodically throughout this movie.
And while the hysteria of anti-communist “vigilance” has largely faded into history, another equally virulent strain of bigoted ignorance has taken its place.
Terrorism as religion.
That phrase may sound weird, but let me explain.
When you pick up The Wall Street Journal, you are viewing a religious newspaper.
And the religion?
Terrorism.
When you watch Fox News you are entering an alternate universe in thrall to terrorism.
Terrorism is the manna from heaven for the neoconservative global elites.
They are a one-trick pony (terrorism being their only trick).
But let me illuminate my point.
NONE of the other major American news outlets (print or televised) are any better.
CNN ABC CBS NBC…all worthless. And let’s not forget the woeful New York Times.
Which brings me to a very important point.
This past week, a PhD professor at Florida Atlantic University in the United States was dismissed from his tenured position for questioning the very suspicious “mass shooting” supposed to have occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
I have not read every bit of critique which Dr. James Tracy (the unfortunate professor) has written concerning this “massacre”, but what I have read harmonizes with my own take on the event (namely, that it was a staged, false-flag type psychological operation).
And so Dr. Tracy has become a parallel to all of those poor souls who had to suffer the ignominy of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in May 1960.
Why do I focus on this particular hearing? Because it was released as an LP album in 1962 by the invaluable Folkways Records (today Smithsonian Folkways).
Find this record.
Listen particularly to Witness #5.
Spotify lists each track as being by the artist “Unspecified”.
This is the same type of recognition which would have accrued to topless mothers in the Sahara singing their babies to sleep (while the tape recorder preserved their performance for all time).
Americans had become nameless.
And so next time someone asks you about your favorite musical artists you can refer to the Folkways catalog and answer, “Well, I’m a big fan of ‘A young girl singing’, but I also like ‘A young woman’. But then, not much beats ‘Aboriginal Songman’. In fact, I met him once and I was quite nervous. I said, ‘Mr. Songman. Can I call you Aboriginal? Al??? I would really appreciate an autograph!'”
But I digress…
Dear friends, we can rescue the names from history. Witness #5 is actually still alive. He is and always will be William Mandel.
Mr. Mandel took the stand and railed against the bigots in San Francisco on that Folkways LP of the “Un-American” hearings.
In the estimable Mr. Mandel we have a parallel to Mr. Macabee (Rupert’s father) from A King in New York.
The trials which inspired Chaplin were to continue (1957 film, 1960 LP).
The trials continue today. Dr. James Tracy is now a “conspiracy theorist”. If the New York Times says it’s so, then it must be so.
No.
Until we drop like flies, we will continue to speak out like Rupert.
We will continue to combine art and politics like Charlie Chaplin.
No profession gives one a free pass to opt out of engagement. Disengagement is a decision.
Chaplin fought back. The world’s greatest funnyman felt compelled to speak up.
Perhaps Rupert is really 6079 Smith W.
Perhaps Room 101 is betraying oneself. Being eaten alive. By cowardice. Until death.
Occasionally pop art transcends. Witness Radiohead’s “2 + 2 = 5” from the perfect album Hail to the Thief. At the height of the Bush junta this British avant-pop band had the stones to dish out a God-save-the-Queen to the slimy bastards dragging the world down.
The late David Bowie made a valiant effort on his best album Diamond Dogs.
We speak, of course, about 1984 and the protagonist Winston Smith.
Orwell’s novel was a mere eight years old in 1957.
Perhaps little Rupert is an evocation of Winston Smith. And we know that Rupert’s fortitude lived on in the aforementioned William Mandel.
But now we come to a new era. A new era which is so old.
The lamentable treatment of Dr. James Tracy.
The enshrinement of Terrorism as the new state religion of the United States.
Even for a non-communist such as myself, it is apparent that capitalism must always expand.
When it comes to terrorism (both “foreign” and “domestic”), the Ministry of Truth has spoken.
Our only hope is the voice of opposition. It is therefore quite apt indeed that Dr. Tracy’s excellent blog (which incidentally led to his thoughtcrime conviction by FAU) should be named Memory Hole… (http://memoryholeblog.com/).
And it is hopeful that said blog has more hits than the Wikipedia page for “Memory hole”.
-PD
paulydeathwish 