Let me just get this out of the way right now, before we even talk about music. "Random Access Memories" is quite possibly my favorite album title of all time. It's clever, it fits with the theme of the band and the album itself, and it's a computer joke. As soon as I saw the ad that ran before my theater's showing of "Iron Man 3" (though most people apparently saw it on SNL) I knew I had to buy this album for the title alone.
I was also struck by how different it was from Daft Punk's usual sound. I grew up with Daft Punk, first exposed to their music in the same way a lot of nerds my age probably were, through the music video for "One More Time" that aired on Toonami a lot.
Aside from just being really catchy and cool, the ending of the video was incredibly maddening. I was a high schooler at the time and my Google Fu was still too weak to find out that this video was the beginning of the larger project, "Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem". Still, Daft Punk were more or less my first exposure into electronic music, and despite my love of technology, I'm generally not all that fond of electronic music outside of Daft Punk.
And to be perfectly honest, while I liked a number of Daft Punk songs, I'd never really say I was a "fan". When I was younger, I tended to listen to mixes of popular singles, so I tended to pick a very narrow sampling of Daft Punk's music. "One More Time", "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", and "Technologic" were pretty much their only songs that I heard more than once.
Once I got into college, I started listening more to entire albums rather than just playlists. I'm not sure what changed about my tastes, but if I had to guess, it probably had something to do with my sudden appreciation for "Coheed and Cambria". As I said in my review of "Afterman: Ascension" (and I'll review "Descension" eventually, I promise), the best way to listen to CoCa is to take in each album as a whole thing. That's the only way to absorb the story, the emotion, the themes, and things like that, and most of the songs don't really stand particularly well on their own. And as I started moving back to artists other than CoCa, I found that I suddenly liked listening to full albums of other artists for some of the same reasons. Not all albums hold together quite as well as others, but most good albums have a central theme or style that I like to marinate in. Plus, some songs are hidden gems that never get any radio play because they show up towards the end of an album and maybe require a number of listens before they work their way into your soul.
So it was during this time that I finally found "Interstella 5555" and got to see Daft Punk try to tie a narrative through the entire album of "Discovery". And while the narrative itself was a little... dull in parts, the album itself was really solid and cohesive. It also made me realize just how far down electronic music had fallen since Daft Punk left the scene.
"Human After All" doesn't hold together quite as well, but I give it a lot of slack because I really, really love "Technologic".
I just love how completely in-your-face this song is from beginning to end, how it's repetitive without being maddening, and how the video is a literal depiction of the most uncanny-valley-looking robot ever designed becoming self-aware of how horrifying and soulless it has become.
This video is actually kind of how I imagine Daft Punk felt about electronic music in the 2000's. As electronic as some of their music got, it always had a really solid foundation built on disco and pop. Mostly disco. But as years went on and auto-tune became trendy, electronic influence began to be used as a crutch by people who didn't understand it. Instead of being its own thing, it started to homogenize pop music into this perfect-pitch synth slurry of stupid. And by the end of the decade, things only got worse.
When we needed them most, Daft Punk were nowhere to be found. Instead, they were working on the original soundtrack for "Tron: Legacy", and I am still pissed that they didn't even get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score that year. A lot of people went to see that movie almost entirely for the soundtrack. And it was an amazing soundtrack.
But after 8 years, Daft Punk finally put out another album. And here we have "Random Access Memories".
If I were to put into words why Daft Punk's use of electronic sound works while will.i.am's doesn't... it would have to be like this:
Daft Punk are robots trying to be human.
will.i.am is (purportedly) a human trying desperately to sound like a robot.
Daft Punk are trying to find the music in what most would probably consider to be "noise". will.i.am just took music and turned it into actual noise.
So when they decided to come back, it's not surprising that they decided to tone down the electronic. It's still there, but most of the songs involve a lot more music from normal singers and standard electric instruments. This was to be their "back to roots" album.
This isn't unusual. After they've been around for a while, bands like to create albums to explore their roots. However "Random Access Memories" is different.
See, Daft Punk never forgot their roots. They've always loved disco and they've always paid homage to it, even in their most electronic music. No, we are the ones who needed the reminder. We are the ones who forgot that electronic music was not supposed to be this over-produced shit.
In a world where "artists" use technology to make themselves sound more talented than they are, Daft Punk decided to take them on with an album that used as little technology as possible to prove that good electronic music (and good music in general) is built on a solid foundation of musical understanding and ability.
The goal of "Random Access Memories" is very plainly stated with the very first song on the album: "Give Life Back to Music".
As for the album itself... it's good.
I'm not going to lie, much like Daft Punk themselves, I think I like the concept better than the music itself. That's not to say it's bad, far from it. I actually really enjoy this album, probably more than any of their other albums. But I can't say I love it. I love what it stands for, I love the band that produced it, and I love the title and the aesthetic. And I love a number of the songs.
"Giorgio by Moroder" almost feels like a documentary in music form and it's probably my favorite track on the album. "Touch" is trippy and almost feels like it belongs in a stage musical, and I mean that in the best possible way. "Get Lucky" is a great single and probably the best disco track in decades.
But I found that almost all of the songs I really loved on this album were the collaborations. The few songs that don't feature other artists simply aren't as good as some of Daft Punk's earlier work. "Motherboard" in particular feels like an empty void. It's not bad, just forgettable.
Also, when they do dip back into electronic, it almost feels too familiar. Like, I love the vocoder interlude of "Get Lucky", but it feels very musically derivative of some of the parts of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". Maybe that's part of the point? To show the underlying disco roots of some of their songs? I dunno.
And I'm not saying that Daft Punk have run out of talent. Not even close. I think they just work best when they have a mission. With "Tron: Legacy", they had a narrative to build around. With their collaborative tracks, they had other artists to merge styles with.
To speak in more technological terms, Daft Punk are machines (metaphorically-speaking) and machines work best when implemented by people. If left on their own, they tend to produce the same patterns and are fairly easy to dissect and predict. But while collaborating, they show a very powerful understanding of what their music is capable of and use it to enhance the quality of whatever they're collaborating with without diluting it.
It really does raise this question of the fate of electronic music. What merit does the human element truly have? As much as Daft Punk clearly love technology, they clearly don't want it to replace what they consider to be the soul of music. But are they right?
I certainly think that a lot of artists are abusing technology without fully understanding it, but I do think that there's nothing wrong with throwing out the rulebook and making an entire song through bits and boards. For some reason it all reminds me of this little speech from Battlestar Galactica:
Regardless of the place technology has in the music to come, this album still reminds us of the place music of the past had in influencing it. For that reason alone, I would highly recommend this album, even if it's not something I necessarily love completely from beginning to end. But even saying that, this album has more than enough great music to make it worth the purchase.
Continuing my trend of discussing music (in a manner of speaking), I'd like to review the film "Les Misérables", which I saw last night.
This was a film that I was very much looking forward to seeing since the initial teaser trailer. "Les Mis" has always been my favorite non-Sondheim musical and one of my favorite stories in general. As my review of "Cloud Atlas" probably made clear, I'm a sucker for huge, sprawling stories involving a huge cast of characters, particularly when the characters are neither decidedly evil nor good.
I would honestly prefer the book over the musical simply because the musical does a couple of things I dislike. First of all, it overemphasizes the religious motifs a LOT. Yes, Jean Valjean became a more religious man after being saved by Myriel, but what I liked about the book was that Valjean initially refused to heed Digne's command. He went back into the world with no intention of changing. He then steals a 40-sous coin from a little boy, who then runs away. However, to his shock, he finds that he is immediately remorseful of this action. He is unable to find the boy and is consumed by guilt. He then discovers that his theft had been reported to the authorities, forcing him to flee Digne. In the musical, he just has a existential crisis, finds Jesus, and tears up his papers because apparently God wants him to break the law.
For similar reasons, I prefer the version of Javert in the book to the one in the musical. Don't get me wrong, Javert is still my favorite character in the musical, but he is somewhat cheapened by the song "Stars", which casts a religious light on Javert's actions and beliefs. It's not that I'm against religion, but part of what makes Javert interesting to me is that he does his duty because he believes the law is an infallible good, not for some divine reward after death. To Javert in the book, the law might as well be his god, and that makes his actions all the more poignant and terrifying. That being said, I get that the musical is trying to draw parallels between Valjean and Javert and making them both religious accomplishes that and also saves time.
Even so, "Les Mis" is a spectacular musical and I had been wanting to see it filmed for quite some time.
However, filmed musicals have a bit of a nasty track record as of late. "Sweeney Todd" was passable at best, "The Producers" was god-awful, "RENT" was worthless with the exception of Tracie Thoms and Rosario Dawson (and also for the soundtrack, which I'm ashamed to admit I prefer to the Original Broadway Cast version, mostly because I can't stand Rubin-Vega's voice), "Mamma Mia!" sucked before it was filmed, "The Phantom of the Opera" requires heaping helpings of irony to enjoy (though I admit I do enjoy it)... if it weren't for "Hairspray" and "Chicago", the past decade would have been a complete wash for filmed adaptations of Broadway shows.
I've also felt that the relationship between Broadway and Hollywood has gotten a lot less healthy recently. If you look at Broadway's current list of musicals, about 30% of them are adaptations of movies. While that may not sound too bad, 100% of the current Broadway musicals are based on something. And really, if you think about it, when's the last time we had a mainstream Broadway musical that told a completely original story with completely original music? "Avenue Q" springs to mind, but it definitely takes heavy amounts of inspiration for the works of Jim Henson. "Urinetown" fits the bill, but that's from a decade ago. I get that Broadway isn't as popular as it once was and the easiest way to get an audience is to adapt something they're already familiar with, but maybe if the budgets of the shows weren't inflated to a ridiculous degree (which "Les Mis" and other Cameron Mackintosh musicals are admittedly largely responsible for), they could afford to take more chances. OK, tangent over.
My point is, in the past decade a lot of otherwise good musicals were turned into awful movies, and otherwise good movies were turned into awful musicals.
Had I heard about "Les Mis" before I saw the teaser trailer, I likely would have been incredibly skeptical, but thankfully I didn't hear about it until I saw an interview with Anne Hathaway where she discussed it and they showed bits from the teaser. So my first impression for this film was Anne Hathaway's stunning performance.
Perhaps my expectations were a little too high to start with, but the more I saw, the more I liked. As much as I disliked Tom Hooper's "A King's Speech" -- which turned the life of a fascinating historical figure into an oversimplified feel-good story about how a king conquering his speech impediment also somehow fixed the classism of 20th century Britain and defeated Hitler -- I gave him a lot of rope here.
As a fan, my standards for a "Les Mis" movie were maybe a little too specific. "I Dreamed a Dream" needed to be painful. "Master of the House" needed to be funny. "A Little Fall of Rain" needed to make me cry. Gavroche needed to sing at least a tiny bit of "Little People". "Javert's Suicide" needed to send chills down my spine. And to the movie's credit, most of these standards were met.
Anne Hathaway's version of "I Dreamed a Dream" is easily the best I've ever seen, and we're talking about one of the most overdone showtunes in recent memory (thanks, Susan Boyle). Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are inspired as the Thenardiers. Back in "Sweeney Todd", I was convinced that Helena Bonham Carter didn't have the chops to play a part as bombastic as Mrs. Lovett, but "Les Mis" pretty much convinced me that she's either improved a lot in the past 5 years, or Tim Burton just sucks at directing musicals. As for Sacha Baron Cohen, he was pretty much the only actor in "Sweeney Todd" that was worth a damn and he's just as good here (he's also the only character who actually attempts to replicate a French accent). While Samantha Barks' Éponine is very good and Eddie Redmayne's Marius is a revelation (more on that later), "A Little Fall of Rain" didn't really get much out of me... though it was still good. Gavroche not only sang a few lines of "Little People" (though the full song is understandably cut), but he kicked a ton of ass. "Javert's Suicide" on the other hand was... awful.
OK, let's talk about Russell Crowe. I'm not entirely sure how he got the part of Javert. He doesn't really look the part, he's not a very good singer, and he's not exactly the Oscar Bait he once was. I mean, it was very impressive back in 1999-2001 where he got nominated three years in a row, but it's 2012 now. He hasn't even been in a critically acclaimed film since 2007. The movie already has enough Oscar Bait in Tom Hooper, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen. Whatever the reason, Russell Crowe ended up with the role of Javert and he's easily the weakest part of the movie.
That's not to say Russell Crowe absolutely sucks in the role. I've certainly seen worse performances of Javert in my lifetime and if nothing else, Russell Crowe's interpretation is definitely in-character and consistent. His singing isn't even that bad. The problem is mostly that everyone else in the film is just so well-suited to their roles that Russell Crowe sticks out like a sore thumb. Javert is meant to be intimidating and impressive, but Crowe almost never manages it. Thankfully, he actually does a decent job during "The Confrontation". When Jean Valjean starts to try and smooth-talk his way out of getting arrested, Crowe responds by unsheathing his sword in the least efficient way possible. Also, his delivery of the "I come from the gutter too!" line is probably the best he gets.
His singing, while rarely ever awful is almost always flat and lifeless. Yes, Javert is meant to be rigid and cold, but he still has a deep passion for his duty. The best Javert performers roar like lions, but Crowe whines like a dog. Since we don't believe his passion, his suicide is kind of inconsequential and almost funny. I shouldn't enjoy seeing my favorite character die.
That being said, Russel Crowe is not the only part of this movie that struggles. The other big issue is with the way it is filmed.
When we got to "I Dreamed a Dream", I was blown away with how utterly perfect Hathaway's performance was, and what's even more impressive is that she sang it live and all in one take. It made the performance really moving and involving.
The problem is that this is how Tom Hooper films almost every damn scene.
Now, I love that Hooper decided to go with live singing. If nothing else, this film will hopefully set the standard for all movie musicals going forward. Live singing is a vast improvement over lip-syncing and it's a wonder it took this long to seriously attempt it in a big-budget movie musical.
I also like that a good deal of the performances are done in one take, allowing them to feel more consistent.
But almost every scene can be summed up like this: Extreme close-up on the person who is singing, follow them around while they pace, but never cut to a wide shot, and then finally cut to a sweeping crane shot as they hold their last note at the end.
There are, of course, exceptions to this. "Master of the House" is wonderfully shot and actually makes use of the gorgeous set design. Aside from that, every time someone is singing, we just get one handheld shot of their head for the duration. And while this works well for moving, introspective songs like "I Dreamed a Dream" and "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables", it just feels lazy the rest of the time.
I think I get what Hooper was going for. He was trying to make the film stand on the performances of the actors alone rather than on overproduced set pieces and stuff. That's all well and good, but if he wanted to do a version of "Les Mis" that stood on the strength of the actors alone, he probably should have just directed a version for the stage rather than for film. Film is a visual medium and with rare exception, there's not a lot to see here. It seems like there's a lot of really good set design, but we almost never get to see much of it. It's almost like Hooper was trying to film it like a documentary 95% of the time.
Douglas Ingram, the guy who storyboarded "Les Mis", also storyboarded "Captain America: The First Avenger" as well as a few other movies with a good sense of visual style. I imagine he drew a lot of really excellent, detailed storyboards for this film. Then Hooper set them on fire and made Ingram watch as he laughed maniacally.
Whenever the camera decides to detach from the actors, we get some really cool shots. There's this one shot that we see both in "Stars" and "Javert's Suicide" where Javert walks along the edge of a high place. It's a really cool visual cue. There's also a hilariously awesome shot in "Stars" where Javert is standing next to a ridiculous stone statue of an eagle or something. It actually made me laugh, but I was honestly just glad to see something other than Russell Crowe's sweaty pores. Thank God this movie wasn't in IMAX.
Russell Crowe and camerawork aside, there's a lot of excellent stuff here. As I mentioned, most of the cast is absolutely amazing, but I want to make particular note of newcomer Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche. Gavroche is a tricky character. Most productions I've seen usually cast some random kid and don't even get him to sing much, which is why "Little People" is often cut from the show. However, 12-year-old Daniel Huttlestone is fucking amazing in the role. There's this extra bit that Gavroche sings in "Look Down" that I think comes from the original French version but isn't included in any English version I've ever seen, but I absolutely loved it. Something about a cockney-sounding street urchin pontificating about French history made me actually give a crap about their pitiful rebellion. I'm calling it right now. Daniel Huttlestone will be huge when he grows up.
Amanda Seyfried is excellent as Cosette (I'm not usually a fan of too much vibrato, but she somehow nails it) even though Cosette is really kind of a boring character. During "A Heart Full of Love", a fucking butterfly shows up out of nowhere when she starts singing. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't planned and butterflies just naturally appear whenever Amanda Seyfried starts singing.
The biggest shocker for me personally was Eddie Redmayne as Marius. I typically loathe Marius, mostly because he's a privileged, naive rich kid convinced that his bland love story is the greatest ever told and gets Éponine killed. But for whatever reason, I found myself actually giving a shit about him. Maybe it was because Gavroche made me give a shit about the rebellion. Maybe it was because Enjolras and the other revolutionaries are all played wonderfully. Or maybe it was just because Eddie Redmayne was just that good.
It's really hard to talk about anything other than the cast in this movie because, as I mentioned, that's pretty much all this movie has. It may sound nit-picky, but because Tom Hooper apparently can't give a shit about the world outside of these characters' heads, I found myself having a hard time giving a shit about the characters. Even the characters I normally liked like Éponine generally left me feeling "meh". Hooper refused to contextualize most of the movie. I'm generally fond of directors that try and focus on the actors, but because each character is generally shot in a vacuum, we have a lot of really well-refined ingredients (and Russell Crowe) that are never really put together in a convincing way. Marius and Éponine work really well on their own, but during "A Little Fall of Rain", it feels like this was the first time they met even though they shared a number of scenes together, mostly because they were almost never in the same frame at the same time before that moment.
It's not just about getting sick of seeing the actors' faces for 3 hours. It's about Hooper's unwillingness to actually tell a story beyond what it written on the page.
Hooper deserves credit for making some bold choices. Some of the new bits work really well and the decision to do live singing really paid off in spades, but those sorts of choices could have been made by an executive producer. A director needs to try and put together a cohesive narrative and with a sprawling epic like "Les Mis", that's quite a huge undertaking. I wouldn't have minded if Hooper tried and missed the mark a little bit. I usually don't mind when directors fall a little bit short of their huge ambition. But it felt like Hooper didn't try at all. If you gave a robot a steadycam, the movie would have looked just about the same.
All in all, I'd say the movie is worth seeing if you're a fan of the musical or if you've always been curious to see what the show is like. I'd say this is a faithful adaptation of the show, if nothing else. I don't, however, think it stands particularly well on its own as a film. If you don't give a shit about this story going into it, the movie won't do much to convince you otherwise.
Still, I don't think we'll ever see a better film adaptation of the musical in our lifetimes. We may see a better film adaptation of the story itself, but I think that the only way you'll get to see a better version of the musical is if you go see it at the West End.
Of all the things I'm passionate about, the one thing I've probably talked about the least on this blog is music. I do love music a great deal, but perhaps the reason I don't talk about it as much is because I'm not really all that good at it. I mean, pretty much all of my teenage years were spent learning about music, but I wouldn't say I ever really had a particular gift or talent for it. I worked at it, sure, but not nearly as much as I should have if I wanted to be serious about it. So once I got into college, I stopped performing and now music is something I enjoy privately. Perhaps that will change at a later point in my life, but for now, I've got enough to keep myself busy.
Music as Abstraction
One of the reasons taking music seriously has always been difficult for me is because I'm always apprehensive about showing an unfiltered version of myself to people I'm not 100% comfortable with. I can perform on a stage fine so long as I've practiced and prepared. I can practice in an isolated room with other people that I know without problems because they are usually playing with me and we are all learning the piece together. But performing music at home by myself where other people can hear me make mistakes and replay the same problem area over and over is really difficult for me. It was hard enough when I was at home with my family, but as soon as I started living in dorms and apartments, the idea of practicing music where complete strangers could hear me just petrified me.
Of all art, music is one of the most transparent in regards to its creation. In order to develop a finished product, you must first develop a series of imperfect versions. If you make a mistake, you have to play the entire piece from the beginning to know whether or not you've got it down. At least with writing, you're able to keep it to yourself until it has gotten to a point where you are ready to share it. With music, anyone within earshot will hear your growing pains. If writing shows you at your most refined, music shows you at your most vulnerable.
For that reason, serious musicians tend to be very open people. They tend to be confident, passionate, daring, and honest. This comes with the territory of being able to develop and practice music while other people listen. However, interestingly enough, the opposite tends to be true as well. Sometimes, musicians are very reserved and can only express themselves through music. This was actually one thing I liked about the earlier episodes of "Glee". The characters were marginalized and socially awkward so they depended on music that resonated with them to express themselves. They sang the things they couldn't say. This was of course before their song choices were determined less by character necessity and more by the Billboard charts of that week, but I digress.
The point is, sometimes we need a certain level of abstraction to express ourselves or talk about our thoughts and feelings, and music is no exception. I also think this is why sci-fi/fantasy tends to be popular with young, awkward people. It's hard for us to explore our feelings, so we need a level of unreality to separate ourselves enough to be comfortable with it. A down-to-earth drama about a boy finding himself and taking up his estranged father's legacy? Sounds like it could be an Oscar nominee, but it's a little too "real" for me. Turn that boy into a space-faring psychic with a laser sword and turn his father into a cyborg? Suddenly you have "Star Wars". A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Enough Of That, Talk About Coheed!
This brings me to Coheed and Cambria, one of my personal favorite bands. I know a lot of people who don't like them, and it's for good reason. Front-man Claudio Sanchez has a very strange voice. I'd be inclined to call his singing "bad", but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. He has an impressive amount of control over his voice, he generally has a good sense of tone, and he has a great deal more passion than almost any other living singer I can think of. His voice may be tight and squeaky, his pronunciations may be bizarre, and he may put far too much strain on his vocal cords, but dammit, his voice is his. He absolutely owns his bizarre vocal quality and is completely unashamed of it.
Other than the voice, it's also reasonable to criticize CoCa for having nonsensical lyrics. Sentences will change tenses at the drop of a hat, certain words will be used again and again in song after song, and some of the imagery is Insane Clown Posse levels of what-the-fuck. Beyond that, CoCa's albums all center around a mythology called "The Amory Wars" and even if you do fully understand what is happening in each album, you still won't completely get how each song connects to it. I've read all of the Amory Wars comic books and I still can't for the life of me figure out what the hell is going on in some of those songs.
So why do I love them so much? Well, first of all, go ahead and fault the vocals all you want, but no one can deny that the instrumentals of pretty much all of their albums are fucking amazing. Even people who absolutely hate CoCa still can't deny how awesome the opening instrumentals on "Welcome Home" are. Second of all, I don't generally like listening to individual songs. I'm more of an album person. And when it comes to CoCa, you pretty much HAVE to listen to their stuff in album form. Each album has a different story (or a part of a story) and many of the songs bleed into one another. Sure, certain songs can stand well enough on their own, but most of their songs only work within the context of the album as a whole. I love the crap out of "Wake Up", but only if it comes directly before "The Suffering".
The last reason I love Coheed and Cambria is because... well, remember what I said earlier about levels of abstraction? CoCa has about three levels of abstraction going on. First of all, Claudio Sanchez is a pretty reserved guy. He's changed a bit in recent years, being a little more open about his inspiration and separating himself from being just a musician, but he still isn't big on talking during a concert and when he tries it usually ends in embarrassment. Plus he's kind of a huge nerd (in case the sci-fi and comic books weren't a dead giveaway) so it makes sense that he talks about his feelings through music in the context of a space opera. Pretty much all of the CoCa albums are inspired from his real life, then he takes the basic elements of those personal stories or feelings and changes them around so that they fit into the Amory Wars narrative. Then that narrative is, by itself, abstracted through the comic books and other media that explain the narrative in a simpler, chronological context. You can't really listen to the albums and get a clear understanding of what the hell is going on in the story and, inversely, reading the comic books doesn't give you a complete understanding of the songs either.
To use a song from the recent album as an example, "Key Entity Extraction I: Domino the Destitute" is about the departure of band member Michael Todd, who got addicted to drugs and convicted for armed robbery (yeah, that was pretty fucked up). If you take away any names and specific mythology from the song, it's fairly easy to see the connections. In the context of "The Amory Wars", however, it's about a character named Domino who becomes a famous prize fighter but gets swept away in drugs and mob bosses and ends up getting his brother killed before killing himself, becoming absorbed into a mystical energy force called the Keywork (more on that in a second). And the only reason I know all this is because the deluxe version of this album came with a little book that explains the mythology (probably because Claudio knew that it would a long time until this stuff got covered by the comics) and because Claudio did a thing on Billboard.com where he talked about the real-life inspiration for each of the songs.
A Brief History of Heaven's Fence
Just to help you understand things a bit better, I'm going to give a quick run-down of the story behind "The Amory Wars" and the band itself. Essentially, all these stories take place in a planetary system called Heaven's Fence. It's a system of 78 planets that do not orbit around a star. In fact, they do not move at all. They are instead all held together by the aforementioned Keywork, a cosmic force made up of the souls of the dead. The Keywork binds them together, keeps them stable, makes life possible, keeps the stars from obliterating them, etc. The bulk of the stories thus far have followed Claudio Kilgannon (gee I wonder who he's supposed to represent), the child of the titular Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon. Coheed and Cambria were cyborgs developed to be used as weapons for... look, it's a long story, but suffice it to say that they escaped their lives, had their memories erased, and started a family. Then shit caught up with them and they were forced to kill all their children except Claudio and then died in a massive fight that fucked with the Keywork, allowing 9 planets and one of the suns to go free, turning into a solar system. This was all orchestrated by a dude called Wilhelm Ryan who is basically Alien Space Hitler. It turns out that Claudio is destined to defeat Ryan and then destroy the Keywork, in turn destroying all life in Heaven's Fence.
The first four albums all focus around Claudio's journey, which at this point is finished, though I honestly have no clue how it all pans out. Claudio Sanchez has been pretty tight-lipped about the specifics regarding the fourth album and we likely won't know how it all turned out until he gets around to writing the comics for it, but if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that he either ends up fulfilling his destiny and destroying the Keywork for the sake of the souls trapped within it, leaving only the 9 planets which end up becoming our solar system (making this story essentially an origin for the world as we know it) or he ends up sacrificing himself and using his limitless power to fuel the Keywork on his own, allowing the other souls to go free and saving Heaven's Fence.
The fifth album acts as a prequel, detailing the lives of Coheed and Cambria before they lost their memories and started a family, as well as Wilhelm Ryan's rise to power.
The newest album, "The Afterman: Ascension" is the first part of a double album and it is also a prequel, but more on that later.
It's a very weird universe, at once very dark but also completely bonkers and pulpy.
Boy, That Sounds Really Fucking Stupid
Now it's easy to call this pretentious, and you might not be wrong. If Claudio wanted to write a song about Michael Todd, why dress it up into some thinly-veiled meta-narrative? Or if he just wanted to write songs about a sci-fi mythology, why not be more explicit and make that narrative the focus of the album? Make it more like a rock opera in the same vein as "The Protomen" or something.
It might seem like everything is really half-baked, and I can't really blame you for thinking that. After all, an author shouldn't have to sit down and explain to you what he meant when he wrote something in order for you to enjoy it.
But that's just it. Yes, understanding all the little details of each album is difficult and requires a great deal of material outside of the context of the album itself, but you don't need to understand those things to enjoy the album. The album is still great even if you haven't the slightest clue what is going on. If you can get used to Claudio's unique vocals, there is some undeniably excellent music here on the surface.
All of the extra levels of abstraction don't detract from the work. They actually give it a greater sense of depth. When I listen to a good song (or even a great song), once I learn all the lyrics and pick up on all of the imagery and fully understand the emotion behind it, I'll likely put it down for a long time and probably only listen to it occasionally. But with CoCa, there's always a sense of mystery or discovery surrounding each and every song. Understanding what each element represents for Claudio Sanchez and what it also represents in his fictional universe is an unsolvable puzzle that will leave me forever mesmerized. Even though the comics fill in a lot of the blanks, there are a lot of things left unsaid that will always allow the albums to retain their sense of wonder.
On top of that, the levels of abstraction allow Claudio to be very open and honest in a way that few musicians are. My personal favorite album from CoCa is "Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness" because it's Claudio's most emotionally vulnerable work. In it, he writes himself into the story as The Writing Writer, who is essentially the God of Heaven's Fence, who has to decide whether or not to kill the character Ambellina, partially to make his story work but also to help him get over his recently failed relationship. The Writing Writer ends up writing himself into the story as an omnipotent being that kills Ambellina and forces Claudio Kilgannon to accept his destiny. In real life, Claudio Sanchez had hit a rough patch with his then-girlfriend (they eventually worked things out and now they're married). So basically, in order to deal with his own relationship issues, he wrote himself into his story as a character who writes himself into a story to take vengeance upon an analog for his lost love in order to deal with the pain and to help a character who ALSO acts as his analog to accept his destiny. You can't get much more convoluted than that, and yet it somehow works specifically because Claudio allows enough space for reflection and self-assessment. Rather than just write his girlfriend into the story and kill her, he chose to write a writer who would do it for him. This extra layer of abstraction allows us to see his full intention while also acting as a barrier to keep him comfortable and emotionally honest. It creates a separation between the art and the artist without cheapening the raw emotional power of those feelings.
When a singer writes a song about a bad relationship, it's hard for them not to sound petty. Some musicians can work it out if they're clever. Gotye managed it in "Somebody That I Used To Know" by including the perspective of the woman. Jonathan Coulton managed it in "Not About You" by using heavy amounts of irony, emphasizing how petty it is. But in general, it's hard to write a song about a bad relationship without it coming off as pathetic or mean-spirited. The songs in "Good Apollo" are not really all that nuanced on their own. They are every bit as petty, pathetic, and sometimes downright misogynistic as any other stupid emo break-up songs. But because of the context of the album, I don't come away from it feeling like Claudio actually hated his then-ex-girlfriend. I simply see it as a side of the pain he was going through at the time that he expresses through song. It's a snapshot of who he was in that moment rather than just some vague emotion surrounding it.
OK, We Get It, Review the Album Already
Which brings us to "The Afterman: Ascension". Probably one of the shortest album names CoCa has ever had. It is also the first part of a double album, the second half of which comes out in February.
The in-canon story behind this album is actually relatively easy to sum up, at least when compared to some of their other work. This is the story of Sirius (pronounced "SI-rus" because Claudio sometimes pronounces words weirdly for reasons I can't quite comprehend) Amory, the man who learns about the nature of the Keywork. His wife asks him not to go investigating it, but he does it anyway. In the first album he falls into the Keywork. In the second album, he falls out of it. While in the Keywork, he discovers that it's inhabited by all of the dead souls from Heaven's Fence, a number of which temporarily possess him and force him to experience their lives.
That is pretty much the whole story. An astronaut falls into a big glowy thing, weird shit happens, and then he falls out of it. Most of the songs are about individual characters (the "entities") that possess Amory during the middle bits and have little to no relevance beyond that one song.
Similarly, each song has a very specific correlation to an event in Claudio Sanchez's life. Rather than making the whole album about a certain aspect of his life story, this album comes off as more as a series of short anecdotes that often share a similar theme of love and loss. As such, this is one of those albums where Claudio is very open about specifically what each song means in all contexts.
From a musical side, this is the first album without Michael Todd on bass (because drugs and prison) and it's also the return of former drummer Josh Eppard since his departure after "Good Apollo". As a result, this album feels very light on the bass, but it also feels more rhythmically familiar than the previous two albums did. I loved Chris Pennie ("Guns of Summer" is a fucking powerhouse because of him), but he was perhaps a little too aggressive to really match the tone from CoCa's earlier years. The return of Josh Eppard feels right and I hope he sticks around. I also hope that either Michael Todd gets his act together or CoCa finds a new bassist that they're comfortable enough with to let him/her experiment a bit more.
Like most CoCa albums, each layer of "The Afterman: Ascension" works well enough on its own. The music by itself is definitely a step forward in terms of style and I very much look forward to heard the second half come February. The story is simple and interesting, which is rare for CoCa, but it doesn't sacrifice the level of emotional honesty that we're used to getting from Claudio. I actually think it would work well as an entry point for anyone interested in learning about the band. It's certainly more accessible than most of their other work. The songs work well enough on their own and the occasional robot voice talking about the entities is just enough to give the casual listener the impression that something deeper is going on beneath the surface, begging to be discovered. And that's really the strength of this whole "concept album" approach that Claudio takes with his writing. If you just want to listen to the music, you'll be fine, but if you want to go deeper, there's pretty much no end to how complex it will get.
If I were to find fault with this album, my first complaint is simply that it's too short, but that's understandable since it's part of a double album. My only other complaint is just that I don't get the impression that Claudio tried very hard with most of the lyrics. Some songs are better than others, but I'm starting to get tired of him using "hurt" as a noun rather than a verb. Dude needs to crack open a thesaurus more often is all I'm saying.
As for the individual songs, it's hard for me to pick standouts since I generally judge CoCa albums as a whole, but obviously they are very proud of "Key Entity Extraction I: Domino the Destitute" since it's the second song on the album, despite being the first part in a four-part sequence that doesn't come until later (not that CoCa has ever been known for chronological consistency), and since it deals with touchy subject matter. It also has a decent music video.
As a fan, it's obviously tough to deal with the loss of another long-time member of the band, particularly now that Eppard is back, and a part of me hopes that in a few years, the whole family will be back together again, but at the same time, what Mic did was far worse than what Josh did and I wouldn't blame Claudio if he refuses to work with him again, particularly since this seems to have cut a lot deeper than the situation with Josh did.
It's also a testament to the style of the band that they can deal with such fresh wounds in a way that doesn't burden the music with uncomfortable drama and still manages to feel genuine. So if I was to pick a favorite song, it would probably be Domino.
If I was to pick a least favorite song in the album, it would probably be a toss-up between "Goodnight, Fair Lady", which is a really catchy and enjoyable song about...a date-rapist (-_-) and "Key Entity Extraction II: Holly Wood the Cracked", a rather lackluster song about a psychotic and obsessive fan. I'd probably go with "Holly Wood" just because it's kind of the low-point of the album for me musically (it's very atonal for the most-part and a little overproduced), but "Goodnight, Fair Lady" is one of those times where learning more about the underlying story of the song actually lessened my enjoyment of it. I mean, Claudio's had songs about creepers before, but "Goodnight, Fair Lady" makes me feel guilty for enjoying it. Ah well.
So would I recommend the album? Well, yeah. If you don't care about the sci-fi bullshit, that's fine because if you don't get too caught up in the lyrics, there's still some really solid prog rock music here. If you want to get into the mythos, this is probably a decent entry point. If you're just fishing for singles, I'm not sure if you're looking in the right place, but there's a couple standalone gems here too.
Is it for everyone? No. But the great thing about music is that it's very easy to know whether or not you like a song. Just listen to it. Like it? Don't like it? It's up to you. But I definitely recommend you give it a try.
I have a tendency to fall in love with shows that end up going down in flames either in terms of quality or in terms of gathering an audience.
Most recently, I decided to finally watch "Community" to see what all the fuss was about and literally JUST after I finished watching the last episode of the most recent season, it was officially announced that the show-runner wasn't returning for the next season, effectively dooming it. I just have the worst luck with TV.
Of course, it's better for a show to be given a premature death than for it to grow into something despicable. I'd much rather have "Sym-Bionic Titan" or "Firefly" over the mess that became "Heroes" or "The Simpsons".
Still, it's usually nice to see a show that tries something different succeed with mainstream audiences. It feels good knowing that a genuinely good TV show is getting the attention in deserves because then it suggests that they won't feel the need to pander in order to get ratings.
This is partially why I really don't get "Glee" anymore.
Let me back up for a minute and make something clear so that I can immediately incinerate any lingering respect my readers might have for my taste.
I like "Glee".
"Glee" reminds me of a part of my life that I've largely been disconnected from since high school. I used to be REALLY involved in theater and music during high school, but after graduating I mostly stopped it altogether with the exception of being a Assistant Technical Director for a derivative production of "Company" and directing "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" two years in a row, which I don't think counts. Anyway, my point is, I like "Glee" because at its best, it offers a much more genuine portrayal of high school than you usually get on TV. Notice I said "genuine", not "realistic". Occasionally characters break through and remind me of my own struggles in high school and they might also make me care about a character I probably would have hated if I went to high school with them. The show is usually entertaining, but more than that, it often actually gets me personally invested in the fate of its characters.
Still, it's hard to deny that "Glee" has been going the route of "Heroes" after the first 13 episodes. Characters have become muddled, plot points get repeated ad nauseum, the song choices have largely been reduced to "whatever is on the radio this week", and most episodes are either a "tribute" episode, a "guest star" episode, or a "very special" episode.
I still watch the show, even though the most recent season was, at times, REALLY tough to sit through. Pretty much everything that involved Quinn was a train wreck. The Christmas special was the worst episode since "The Rocky Horror Glee Show". The writers kept second-guessing their trajectory every few episodes. It was largely a mess.
Even so, I wouldn't keep watching it if I didn't like it. The thing about "Glee" is that it's very extreme. When it succeeds, it REALLY succeeds, and when it fails, it REALLY fails. A word I would rarely use to describe the show is "boring". The best word I can think to describe it is "frustrating".
That being said, when I found myself wondering why I'm still watching the show, I just kept telling myself, "Finn, Rachel, and Quinn are graduating." Pretty much all of my problems with the show can be pinned on these three characters, and knowing that they wouldn't be around as much next season (at least in theory) gave me a lot of hope.
You see, when it came to the similarly troubled "Heroes", I was convinced that show would have worked if they just dumped the cast every season, or at least drastically changed the approach of each season. One of its biggest weaknesses was that the characters were clearly not designed to last longer than a season (except maybe Hiro) so they struggled to give the characters things to do and arcs to develop in. "Glee" is suffering a similar fate.
When "Glee" first started, you could tell that the creators didn't expect the show to last. They probably thought it would be another "Firefly" and so they put all of their effort into the first 13 episodes. Then they became a huge phenomenon and they needed to reset character development in order to manufacture more drama and story. That's why Finn, Rachel, and Quinn have basically gone through the same character arcs in pretty much every half-season.
Fortunately, the show had a saving grace. Time was not standing still. Characters would inevitably graduate. So long as the story focuses on the high school, they will be forced to turn some of the lesser explored characters into the primary characters. So while Quinn was, once again, obsessed with restoring her "perfect" life, or while Finn and Rachel were, once again, unsure about the future of their relationship, I just kept telling myself that next season would HAVE to be different.
At least, that's what I hoped.
While the new season is still a few weeks away, and while I'm not following it as obsessively as I once was, I have learned that the first episode is going to be called "The New Rachel".
Strike one.
Look, it's not so much that I DISLIKE Rachel as a character concept. The sort of brutally honest, egotistical perfectionist who is obsessed with Broadway and is irritatingly talented is an archetype that I'm pretty familiar with. I enjoy that part of her character. I DON'T enjoy her story arcs where she sends potential rivals to crackhouses or does pathetically transparent manipulations to improve her personal life, and sadly, that's mostly what she's been doing since the end of the first season.
I'm not so much against the idea of bringing Rachel back into the show in some fashion, but what I absolutely don't want is for the bulk of her story to be about whether or not her relationship with Finn will work. I am TIRED of that story. I don't CARE. Yet, that's what they seem to KEEP DOING.
The problem is, the producers of "Glee" seem to think that they need to pander. They forgot that they massively succeeded with their first season not because of stupid love triangles or pointless drama, but because it tried to be different. It knew what it wanted to be and it didn't care if people liked it or not. In fact, it probably expected people NOT to like it. But now they're trying to have some sort of strange mass appeal that I think is actually self-defeating. It even seems like they will often rewrite the direction of their show based on the reaction of their audience, which sometimes works when mitigating huge missteps, but also tends to create rather large plot-holes. They try WAY too hard to be popular, which really makes no sense since they already ARE popular. It's pathetic.
Of course, I'm HOPING that the next season will in fact be a breath of fresh air. I'm hoping that we'll finally get to focus on some new and underused characters and give the show a chance to evolve somewhat. But they're making it very hard for me to keep hoping.
Since I REALLY like to punish myself (and because I have a strange addiction to offbeat reality TV) I decided to watch the latest season of "The Glee Project", where they put a bunch of kids through the ringer in order to find one that will be a new character on "Glee". In the last episode, we were left with three kids. A really talented American Muslim girl with a great personality and a lot of sass, a really talented girl in a wheelchair who was ACTUALLY disabled and had a really bubbly, fun personality, and a really talented and attractive bland white guy.
Personally, I thought this was a no-brainer. In fact, one of the other kids stated it pretty perfectly. While she may not have been the most talented actress, the Muslim girl would take the established perception of Islam in America and burn it to the ground, offering inspiration to thousands of girls who are grossly underrepresented and widely misunderstood. The positive impact of including a character like that in a mainstream television show on Fox would be admirable and inspirational and that's kind of what "Glee" is all about. If not her, then the girl in the wheelchair would have been the next logical choice since one of the biggest complaints from the disabled community about the show is how the actor who plays Artie (the kid in the wheelchair) is not actually disabled, and this girl would offer a more genuine perspective. Plus, she's adorable. Anyway, either of the girls would have been great, in my opinion.
So who did they pick?
The bland white guy.
Strike two.
OK, don't get me wrong, the kid is talented. He probably was the most talented person in the competition. But the show isn't really about talent.
As they said in the last episode of "The Glee Project", the main inspiration for the competition was Chris Colfer, the actor who plays Kurt. Originally, he auditioned to play Artie and wasn't right for the character, but because they really liked him and they felt like the show needed a character like him, they wrote a new character for him. And while he certainly improved a lot over the course of the show, Chris Colfer was probably the least talented actor in the show for the first season. He had trouble staying in tune, his voice was very wispy, and he very clearly struggled through a lot of his solos. Next to Cory Monteith, he was probably the most frequently auto-tuned character. But in a way, that's what made him so popular. He came off as a genuine portrayal of a gay theater kid in high school because that's basically exactly what he was and about where his talent level was. And exposing a character like Kurt to mainstream audiences was unquestionably a good thing.
The thing is, I feel like if Chris Colfer had tried out for "The Glee Project", they would have picked the bland white guy over him because he was more talented or professional or "a star".
You know what, "Glee"? You ALREADY cast a "star". Sam Evans, the character played by Chord Overstreet. He's talented, good-looking, and has a Beiber-cut. And you know what? Most viewers don't give a shit about him! Granted, he's improved since the last season now that we know what kind of character he's supposed to be (the "poor kid"), but he's largely really boring. He doesn't come off as genuine or interesting. Sure he's a good singer and a good actor, but I really don't think he'll ever make me give a crap about him.
So what do you plan to accomplish by casting ANOTHER bland white guy? I'm not saying he can't be an interesting character, but he certainly can't be a groundbreaking character and he certainly can't be a character that real kids can relate to.
The bland white guy was the safe choice, and that is the attitude that bothers me the most about "Glee". They seem more interested in playing it "safe" then actually making a good show. They seem to just want to maintain their ratings in order to keep selling their covers of pop songs.
I'm sorry, but I'm at my wits end with this show. If the first episode of the next season just seems to be a retread of the same old shit but now we have to contrive reasons to involve the alumni as well, I'm officially out. I've probably been way too patient with the show as it is.
