https://open.spotify.com/episode/6gEB1Iv8NSgKe9mxjcurLr?si=adb4bb2c055e41d9
Cinematic Music with Pauly Deathwish
Season 1 Episode 4
Tag Archives: The Virgin Suicides
MZFPK [2021)
Breakfast cereal video game.
Pauly Deathwish’s 3rd album.
I am behind.
I can’t keep up with this guy.
Out of the gates like Flaming Lips.
30,000 feel of despair.
The gash.
Right into Isao Tomita.
Doing Debussy.
Marching.
Martial.
Fantastic noises.
Like first Stereolab album.
Here Come the Warm Jets.
Cheyenne Mountain jams.
I can no longer see what I’m typing.
- What if I type in white? Ahh, yes. That does the trick. But it ruins my style. Louis-Ferdinand would not be happy. Totally Air. Pocket Symphony. Who is Kevin? Shields? Ayers? Fairlight. Synth clouds. Rich chords. Very sophisticated harmonies and arrangements. Cornelius from Japan. This sounds very modern. OH FUCK! Groove is in the motherfucking heart. Vogue! So on track two, we are straight up on a catwalk. But it could be Alan Vega or Martin Rev. Kinda Sun City Girls. Zoviet France. Fridmann never gets this crazy with bass. Wayne is driving it weirder. This was, from what I hear, done with ZERO budget. Is this a dance album? First you have poetry. Then you are prose. Amateurs. Into Odelay. That was a good drum break. The Strokes. Fuzzy vocals. Paliament/Funkadelic. Sly Stone! Later Stereolab. Tim Gane processing. Counter melody! For fuck’s sake. Somebody listen to this bloke. Whoa. What is up with this chorus? Roland Kirk? Like in Switzerland? Definitely hitting some Os Mutantes twee. Lo-fi as fuck. Great Godard tongue in cheek. Apparently about Neil Young and Rick James being in a band together when they were young and still in Canada. Yonge Street? Beats. Drake needs to hear this. Bit crusher lisp. Spiritualized at the grocery store. Swipe barcode. Song peaks at end. Masterful mix. A true climax. Savage mastering on every album. Whole mix jumps. It works. Needle skipping. American Supreme. Claustrophobic. COVID. Sad. Scared. Apocalyptic. The concept of the gaze in cinema. Bass drops in. Feel it in your sex organs. A sexy song. “Cobra Strike”. This is unequivocally a dance album. EDM all up in here. Lots of panning. Spliff it. Micro gestures. Pandemic planning. How long will it last? Soul-crushing. Zombie metaphor. Shaun of the Dead. Masterpiece. Beatle drums. First Velvets album. Rat trails. “Black Angel’s Death Song”. “The New Pollution”. Dr. No. Walther PPK. What does this kid know? He can’t possibly know, can he? Pure phase. Visconti. Lanois. Acid jazz. Nick Cave. Montage, mon beau souci. Flaming Lips. Jeff Tweedy drawl. Jesus and Mary Chain team up with The Cure. Disintegration. Heartbreak here. Who broke his heart? Bleeps and bloops. Robot noises. Heartbeeps. Jazz funk ’70s experimental upright. Great lyrics. Superimposition. Steenbeck! Fucking great lyrics on “Snip Snip”. Oh, damn. Glockenspiel at just the right time! Icy. Air. Virgin suicides. Dazed and confused. Blonde. Braids. Like glazed bread. German. Texas. Floating world. Old world. No one to smoke a doobie with and stare up at green trees. No tits. What is wrong with this world? Rambo. Fort Bragg. Delta. Boykin. Intelligence Support Activity. Send me. George Crumb. Black angels. Jungle echoes. 4thPOG. Ghosts. PSYWAR op. Make it loud. Romeo foxtrot. Shall we dance? Charlie don’t surf. Death on the dance floor. Public Image Ltd. Modes of limited transposition. Messiaen. Primal Scream. Standing with Johnny Rotten. #Trump2021 . But this is more about big tits. Giant opals. Garth Hudson. Telegraph. Total loss. Persona non grata. Window still missing. Swastika eyes. Paul Weller. XTRMNTR. Shoot speed. Kill light. Eyes owned 2020. The ugly had a chance. Masks work…if you’re ugly and need to get laid. Back with another block rocking’ beat. Private psychedelic reel. War metaphor. Is this about election? No. Too early. Look at liner notes. Living in COVID times was like a world war. War just beginning? Got my pina colada. Fuck it! Arizona. Living boldly. Masks have lost. Two weeks. Could have been a contender. Circuit bending. Talking about big titty schizophrenic. All footwork ruined. Toys. Falling apart gremlin workmanship. Awkward line about Thora Birch. Explicit warnings a little lazy. Getting a bit Lenny Bruce up in here. Russ Meyer. Second line. Double time. Crazy drums. Smooth as Sade. Tambourine is the star. One organic element. Wrote a song. She didn’t care. Wrote her 200 songs. She didn’t care. One has zero plays globally. She never bothered listening to it. Some things not meant to be. Liberals and conservatives. Go and create. Lobster. Work wasn’t. Bought her every flower imaginable. Thousands of dollars on flowers. Yoshimi laser warfare. A piano not standard. Some Tori Amos bullshit. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Only the finest pianos. Internationally famous. Neither deserve it. Pulled the plug at the wrong time. Would he have still kept the same track listing? Maybe so. Heartbreak to rehash. Goes by quick. Good drum programming. James Bond future theme. Brian Wilson. Phil Spector. Absolute Nigel Godrich. Cinematic. The album that never was. But this one is worldwide, motherfuckers. Third this summer. And a fourth already out. I can hardly keep up. I need to review movies. Doesn’t Pauly Deathwish know I don’t have time for Galaga? Falling apart. Short-circuit. Charlotte Gainsbourg. Flashback to Bucolic.
- -PD
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist [2008)
The great director Samuel Fuller said in a cameo during Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou that, “Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word…emotion.” Writing about film is often an intellectual parlor game. Drop the right reference. Sound erudite. But one must confront the emotion of film with the emotion of criticism…in a harmony of pathos.
This film makes me cry. We’ve all heard a similar phrase, but perhaps never applied to this new classic from director Peter Sollett. When this film came out, I needed this film. It restored my faith in the romantic quest–to find a soul mate.
From the opening titles this film hits all the right notes. Much has been made of Sofia Coppola’s prescient use of music in her films. To not only employ the proto-shoegaze of 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” (The Virgin Suicides), but also follow it up with some MBV (Lost In Translation) before Kevin Shields and company mercifully reformed a few years later is, in a word, genius. However, Peter Sollett and crew (editor Myron Kerstein and music supervisor Linda Cohen) score a coup right off the bat which sets the stage for a brilliant cinematic experience…intertwined with the trappings and longings which a life in music (whether as performer or enthusiast) weaves into our thoughts and very being.
Simply put, “Speed of Sound” by former Big Star member Chris Bell is my favorite song off of his posthumously released masterpiece I Am The Cosmos. To know that someone else felt the same way about this particular composition is really what Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is all about.
Chris Bell was a homosexual heroin addict in the deep South (Memphis) who got kicked out of his own band, ended up working at his dad’s hamburger restaurant, and (like Marc Bolan) died when his car collided with a tree. That such a sensitive soul was subjected to such unbefitting circumstances and then layed down the tracks at Château d’Hérouville for the sublime strains which open this picture is truly touching. Sure, “In The Street” by Big Star (from his time in the band as co-writer) was used as the theme for That ’70s Show, but the song placement for “Speed of Sound” long after his death is a tribute to both his genius and the artistry of Peter Sollett and his team.
But here I have up and gone on a tangent…and deviated from my goal of emotion for emotion.
Reset. A few days ago. My birthday. I walk into Barnes & Noble with a fistful of dollars. I look at almost every DVD in the joint. Criterion, action, sci-fi/fantasy, thriller, drama, comedy…even family! And I come out of the place with one film: the one under review.
The reason is simple. Kat Dennings is an acting goddess among (mostly) prattling girls. With this film she took up the reins which Thora Birch strangely released after Ghost World. Peter Sollett has made a timeless film of equal to the cinematically stunning aforementioned Terry Zwigoff gem.
But back to Dennings. There are moments in this film (very few) where her acting might be termed hesitant, but in retrospect I believe this to be part of the Norah character which she was conveying with the utmost thespian delicacy. For the vast majority of her screen time, she shines like the new star which she is. I imagine that I’m not the only one who came away from this film wishing that her character was real and that I might meet a Norah around the next corner (just as Thora Birch had made me believe that Enid Coleslaw was really out there somewhere).
A word about Michael Cera. I didn’t think much of his acting on first view, but I realize now that his droll comic timing might just presage his emergence as the Woody Allen of this generation. He is, without a doubt, talented beyond many of his peers.
Kudos to writers Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (as well as to screenwriter Lorene Scafaria) for working the Where’s Fluffy? idea into this tapestry (almost like a nod to The Residents…mysterious anonymity in rock music). Likewise, the supporting cast here is essential and outstanding (particularly Aaron Yoo and Rafi Gavron). Also indispensable is Jonathan B. Wright in the small role as Lethario.
Two final bits about this music-infused juggernaut… The Electric Lady Studios portion (particularly the potentially unwieldy orgasm segment) is director Sollett at his finest. As the VU meters monitor a keyed mic in the main room we are brought the irresistible symbology which the auteur has been tracing throughout this hipster Easter egg chase in a yellow Yugo…perhaps zipping past the parking garage where Warhol’s Factory used to stand…speeding with exhilaration over the Velvets’ old stomping grounds…the deli where Max’s Kansas City once stood (but now with a mile-long sneeze guard around its salad bar)…maybe past the empty hole where the Mercer Arts Center once stood before it collapsed. Director Sollett takes us “into the red” at just the right moment…just as Lou Reed knew when to step on the stompbox after delivering the line “and then my mind split open” in the song “I Heard Her Call My Name” from the classic angst-fueled White Light/White Heat album (1968).
Last bit…Mark Mothersbaugh delivers just the right dose of simpatico for this journey to the end of the night. Thank you friends. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.
-PD
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