Category: music

Civil War! Radiohead!

Here’s hoping you all had as lovely a weekend as I did.

First thing’s first:  normally I’m very late to the party when it comes to seeing big blockbuster movies in a timely fashion.  I spent 20 years dealing with the insanity of seeing big movies on opening weekend in NYC, a process that, among other things, entailed getting to the theater at least 90 minutes before showtime to ensure getting even a halfway decent seat, and this eventually wore on my nerves.  So between that and our weird reluctance to hire a babysitter, my wife and I don’t often get to go to the movies together, and certainly not for big big movies like Captain America: Civil War.  (Or, for that matter, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  My wife and I both saw it separately, and it wasn’t until the movie had been out for several weeks that we were able to see it together.)

But somehow we were able to see it yesterday.

I don’t know how valuable my opinion is when it comes to evaluating Marvel movies.  I’m not a comic book guy, and so my primary exposure to anything involving superheroes is through film – and film will always be different than the source material.  My wife, on the other hand, is a Marvel girl through-and-through, and she devoured the Civil War run when it was in print – indeed, I think the primary reason she was excited about the idea of an Avengers movie in the first place is that it might eventually lead to a film of the Civil War.

My understanding is that the film’s Civil War and the comic book run couldn’t be more different, even if they had a number of common similarities.  Obviously, the comic wasn’t constrained by all the various legal issues that have split up the various Marvel franchises among rival film studios – my wife is an X-Men fan, and so their absence in this Captain America film is rather strongly felt.  The comic was also, if I understand it correctly, spread out over a long-ish period of time; the movie, on the other hand, appears to take place within a 72-hour period, and the one big superhero battle is rather self-contained, all things considered.  It’s more of a grudge match than a capital-W War, like when a fight breaks out between teammates on the bench during a baseball game.

But this is all besides the point; I didn’t read the comics, so it makes no sense for me to look at it from that perspective.  As far as the films themselves, I’ve enjoyed the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for the most part; some films work better than others, to be sure, but all the heroes are well cast and the films possess a buoyant energy – far more so than the DC films.*

Anyway:  of all the MCU films, this Civil War film is almost certainly the best one.  For an ensemble action movie – with an absolutely gigantic ensemble – it’s remarkable how well-paced it is, how every character gets enough space to have their requisite emotional beats, and especially how both Captain America and Iron Man have compelling and valid points of view.

And the action sequences are similarly remarkably well-framed.  Unlike other recent action movies I could name, you can always tell what’s going on, who’s punching who, and there’s none of the motion sickness that seems to be part and parcel with these sorts of set pieces.  There’s one chase sequence in particular involving Winter Soldier, Black Panther and Captain America that is absolutely fantastic, specifically because the stuntwork is excellent and is shot in such a way that you can actually see what the hell is going on.  (The shot of Winter Soldier grabbing the motorcycle is arguably the most exciting shot in the entirety of the MCU thus far.)

It’s been noted by better critics than me that if this movie has one downside, it’s that the villain isn’t particularly memorable, and also that the movie makes up for this by not really needing a villain in the first place.  The Cap’n and Iron Man have been getting under each other’s skin for several films by now, and this film’s conflict is less about current ideological differences and more about, as Tony Stark says, simply “wanting to punch you in your perfect teeth.”

I want to say more, but I don’t want to spoil anything; I just hope I get another chance to see it on the big screen before too long.

*  *  *

The other big cultural event of the weekend: the new Radiohead album, “A Moon Shaped Pool”, was released on Sunday.  I didn’t get a chance to listen to it until late last night, and even then I was being an idiot and struggling with the admittedly ridiculous decision as to how I should get it – iTunes? Amazon mp3? or hope for it to appear on Spotify before too long?

I’ll need a few dozen more listens before I can write about it with any authority, of course.  But even just on first glance it’s clear that this is a gorgeous album, with haunting melodies and Jonny Greenwood’s otherworldly string arrangements doing freakish things to my brain.  The thing about Radiohead albums – for me, at any rate – is that the production is always interesting, even on their lesser tunes, and on this album there are some rather startling and intimate sounds; the ones that got me in particular are how you can hear the piano’s hammers strike each string, as if the microphone was placed an inch away from the piano’s heart.  (I’m reminded of a Flaming Lips lyric – each press of a piano key is like “the softest bullet ever shot”).

It’s perhaps not the grand return to form I might’ve hoped for after the rather limp King of Limbs – I can’t help but wish there were a few more uptempo songs, though I feel certain that “Ful Stop” will absolutely destroy in a live setting – but this is definitely an improvement.  It’s hard to know what I expect from a Radiohead album anymore; the 1-2 knockout punches of OK Computer and Kid A will probably cloud everyone’s judgement on that score, not just mine.  But in terms of pure sonic beauty, this one’s a keeper.

*  *  *

Nothing to report on the games front; my digital copy of Uncharted 4 is already pre-loaded and that’s pretty much where I’ll be for the foreseeable future.

As for books – I finished re-reading Justin Cronin’s The Passage and am about halfway through my re-read of The Twelve, all so that I can get caught up for The City of Mirrors, which comes out in 2 weeks.  Those books are still great!

* I still wish that Edgar Wright had been allowed to make the Ant-Man film that he wanted to make; I bet it would’ve been spectacular.  But I suspect that his directorial vision would’ve been too idiosyncratic with the rest of the MCU; the final film feels constrained and reigned in, and it’s not nearly as joyous and charming as it wants to be.

 

Weekend Recap: Fare Thee Well

1. I am a few years late to finally seeing Inside Llewyn Davis, I know, but these things happen sometimes.  I’m a much bigger Coen Bros. fan than my wife, who is actually somewhat turned off by their films; we’ve discussed this at length and at the end of the day it simply is what it is.  As for the film itself, well, obviously the music is fantastic and the acting is wonderful and the cinematography is impeccable… but the movie also fell a little flat for me; I couldn’t figure out what the movie’s purpose seemed to be.  The AV Club used to have this feature called Justify Your Existence where they asked musicians to explain why anybody should listen to their record; I would ask the Coen Brothers the same question with regard to this one.  Did they want to make a road movie that doesn’t really go anywhere, and indeed ends up ending the same way it starts?  Unlike other films of theirs, I simply couldn’t figure out what it was I was supposed to feel, beyond that Oscar Isaac’s character does in fact deserve to get the shit kicked out of him at the beginning/end.  Of course, as with most Coen films, I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since we watched it, and I’ve also been unable to get this song out of my head.  The way they sing the word “Fare” over that suspended chord in the chorus fucking kills me.

2.  This was a busy weekend, as it turned out; a good weekend – multiple trips to parks, a fun visit to the local zoo with some dear friends, and the knowledge that there would be no transit strike after all – tempered by our first homeowner’s nightmare, a small leak in the basement that necessitated a plumber’s visit.  This meant that I ended up staying home yesterday anyway, and so I was able to finally dive into The Division.

Actually, before I talk about that, I also just want to say that since I was home alone yesterday, I decided to bring my PS4 up from the basement and into the living room, where I could hook it up to our surround sound speakers.  And this should go without saying, but playing a game in surround sound is a completely different experience.  I can’t believe I’ve been so careless about my gaming audio after all these years.  I kinda want to play Bioshock and Red Dead Redemption again through those speakers, which already had some of the best sound design I can recall in recent years; I don’t necessarily need a 3DTV, but I do need surround sound and I need it right away.  (I’m honestly tempted to buy a second system for the basement, that’s how eye-opening it was.)

Anyway, so with regards to The Division:  I’m currently just over level 9, I think; I’ve unlocked all three wings of my main base of operations, and I’ve got some pretty good gear, and even playing solo I’ve been able to take down pretty much every mission I’ve come across without dying.

Every preview/review that’s come out so far has referred to The Division as Ubisoft’s answer to Bungie’s Destiny – an online-only, co-op friendly, shooter/RPG hybrid.  Which is absolutely fair, and I suppose this comparison will be mostly borne out in the level-cap endgame.  I don’t know that I’m going to stick around for that endgame, though, because I’m not terribly big on PvP (especially since The Division’s endgame is currently very much a work in progress).  I didn’t stick around for Destiny, either.

Comparisons to Destiny aside, I continue to feel that The Division reminds me more of Mass Effect, especially ME3.  The meat of the gameplay – the cover-based shooting – is actually quite solid and engaging, and even if the firefights still feel very same-y after a while, they’re also still satisfying (at least at this early stage).  I’m also far more inclined to simply wander around NYC, looking for hidden collectibles and materials and treasure chests and such; the city doesn’t necessarily feel like New York to me, but in and of itself it’s a very cool place to explore, and I’ve been content to simply turn my waypoints off and poke my way through alleys and open doors (which is where a lot of those collectibles end up being hidden).

I’m enjoying it, is what I’m trying to say, and I suspect I’ll enjoy it even more once I try it in co-op.  I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to grind out the endgame stuff, which is also why I haven’t bought my rental copy just yet, but for the time being I’m enjoying the game a lot more than I expected to.  The beta wasn’t a fluke.

3. To that last point – I’m not pre-ordering games this year.  I believe this was one of my new year’s resolutions, and here we are in March and I’ve actually stuck to it without realizing it.

I have a Gamefly account and last year I barely used it; all the games I’d rented were games that I was only merely curious about, and nearly everything I rented I ended up sending back within a few days, if not the same day.  This year, though, I’m adamant about not ripping myself off; I have the rental account, now I’m going to use it.  As an example, I rented Far Cry Primal, and after around 12 hours I think I’m starting to get a bit fatigued with it.  (That being said, it bears mentioning once again that experiencing that game with surround sound is something I wish I’d tried earlier; the sound design is far better than I’d initially given it credit for, and the experience of stalking prey through the forest is completely different when you can hear the forest around you.)

When I look at this year’s slate of upcoming releases, I’m hardpressed to think of anything that I absolutely have to own, no questions asked.  In fact, there’s only two games that I can think of that I would immediately pre-order purely out of reflex, and neither of them officially exist (yet) – Portal 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2.  I don’t know if this is simply me being a more discerning consumer, or if I’m just not looking forward to 2016’s slate, or what, but it is what it is.

denial, unravel, xcom 2

I’m not going to talk about the album today.  I’m not going to talk about how out of shape my singing voice is, or how my lyrics suck, or how I can’t seem to get any new ideas on tape that don’t suck.  Not going to do it.  I’m gonna talk about games instead, because that’s easy.

 

I am, for some reason, a member of EA Early Access on the Xbox One.  I don’t know why I did this, but it paid off last night because, after an hour or two’s worth of songwriting frustration, I was able to play the first level of the forthcoming Unravel, which is charming as heck.

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It’s a puzzle-y platformer (not unlike Little Big Planet, at least in terms of feel) wherein you manipulate lil’ Yarny through obstacles, avoiding traps and swinging your yarn about – but there’s also a wistful nostalgic melancholia that permeates each level, and I suspect that Yarny will ultimately serve as some sort of metaphor made real, about the impermanence of memory.  Or something.  The opening cutscene is of a grandmotherly figure, looking at old pictures, and so one might infer that Yarny’s subsequent adventures will help her retrace her steps through the past.  It’s incredibly sweet and Yarny is cute as a button.

The platforming is also, perhaps surprisingly, a little tricky!  You can make jumping bridges with your yarn at various spots of interest; you can also lasso yourself to high, out-of-reach places, and then climb up.  The button presses that enable these sorts of movements are somewhat complicated, and even in the first tutorial-ish level I found myself on the very fine line between elegant dexterous control and straight-up button mashing.

As far as I know, I only have access to the first two levels until the game’s finally out – and EA Access only gives you 10 hours to play with, anyway.  I’m inclined to wait it out until the game is finally released.  But it’s certainly charming and evocative and delightful, and I’m anxious to get my hands on the final game.

Speaking of feeling anxious about new games, XCOM 2 is out today, and I’m torn as to whether or not I want to get it.  As much as I liked the idea of the first game, I wasn’t particularly good at it – even on the easiest setting – and so I’m not really all that sure that I’d want to spend $60 or whatever on more of the same.  Then there’s also the matter of my gaming PC, which is in sorry shape; the latest trouble I’m having is that the USB ports occasionally turn themselves off, which means that my mouse/keyboard will stop working.  So that’s a problem.  I also remain convinced that there will be a console version of XCOM 2 at some point – hell, I have the first game on PC, 360, PS3, and my goddamned iPhone – so it stands to reason that there’ll be a console version before too long.  So I think I’m gonna wait.

 

where did monday go

1. I feel like I’ve been out of the general loop of things for a few days now; my son was sick for most of last week, and I stayed home with him twice, and between that and having yesterday off, I’ve simply lost track of time and space.  And all I can offer in response is a quote from one of the more haunting tracks on Blackstar:  “Where the fuck did Monday go?”

2.  I don’t like abandoning books; there’s something about the act of giving up that makes me feel guilty in ways that I don’t feel with regards to music, movies, games.  But I gave up on Paula Hawkins’ “Girl On The Train” over the weekend (for reasons I’m still struggling to articulate), and the only reason why I haven’t yet given up on China Mieville’s new novella “This Census Taker” is because it’s very very short, and I could probably finish it on the evening commute.  (I’m very hit or miss with respect to China Mieville – I’ve given several of his books a try and the only one I finished was “The City and the City”; there’s something about his prose that makes my scalp itch, I have to read and re-read every sentence 4 or 5 times because I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.)

3. Work continues (at a glacially slow pace) on the new album.  I need time to finish lyrics, but I don’t have the time; and when I do carve out the time, I don’t have the inspiration.  Even now, when work is somewhat slow, I’m simply not feeling it.  I’m tempted to sign up for this year’s RPM Challenge just as a way to kick myself in the ass and finish what I started last year.  I do have some friends who have been politely kicking me in the ass, too, but I think I need to stare a deadline in the face and deal with it head-on.

4.  Oh, but distractions continue to haunt me.  For example, the new iOS game, “Swapperoo“, which is maybe the best and most novel use of the match-3 template since Bejeweled.  I’m helplessly addicted and I’m just hoping that’s because it’s brand-new, and that I won’t be playing this until 3 in the morning for the next month.

5.  Some movies of note:  the wife and I finally saw “Ex Machina” over the weekend, and WHOA.  Absolutely fantastic; terrific screenplay, great cast (and it was especially neat to see Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac together in a non-Star Wars context), hauntingly evocative cinematography, incredible soundtrack (co-written by Geoff Barrow, of Portishead fame).  I’m a little troubled by an element of the plot that I’d rather not discuss unless we’re OK talking about spoilers, and I’m not sure that too many people who’ve read this have seen it, so maybe we’ll talk about that in the comments.  But man.  GO SEE THIS MOVIE.  It’s free on Amazon Prime, if you have that, and it’s totally worth it.

And the wife and I also finally got to see the new Star Wars together; it was my second time, her third.  It’s arguably even better the second time, now that I wasn’t distracted by my foreknowledge of spoilers and such.  I think Rey is the best, and I can not fucking wait for Episode 8.

A quick peek through the mental fog

I’m in a bit of a blur, and not just because of the allergy medication I had to take a little while ago.  I’ve been so focused on writing this freelance piece – currently at a little over 5600 words, and a bit of a jumbled mess at that – that I’ve totally put all my other creative stuff on hold.  The album I was hoping to finish is still going to be finished at some point, but in the meantime I’m going to be turning some of it into a 5-song EP – and some of those songs still need some tweaking.  Which I need to find time for.  Which is time that I simply don’t have.

I think I’d mentioned that I’ve been able to carve out a bit more reading time of late, which has been nice; the morning/evening trains are very conducive to reading without interruption or distraction.  And so it is that I finally finished My Struggle, Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgard this morning.  It is not the brilliant, earth-shattering book I’d been expecting, and it does tend to meander and wander from time to time – he (or his translator) is very fond of long sentences separated by commas – but it is insightful at times, and certainly very poignant, and his descriptions of places and times is downright novelistic in its specificity and clarity.  I suspect I will get around to the other volumes at some point, but I think I need a palate cleanser, so now it’s A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay.

I won’t talk about Metal Gear Solid V here – because that’s what the freelance piece is about – other than to say that I’m enjoying the moment-to-moment gameplay far more than I thought I would.  The story is still garbage but I find that I don’t particularly care all that much; I’m not paying attention to it.  I don’t find myself needing any particular narrative motivation to get from point A to point B beyond trying to execute a mission as well as I can (though I don’t beat myself up if the stealth falls apart and I have to get physical; and I did resort to wearing the chicken hat just to get past a mission that I was too far into to bother restarting).  Is it the greatest stealth game of all time, as most of the internet seems to think?  I don’t know, and I’m certainly not far along enough to even begin to grasp what my eventual answer might be, but I’ll say this – I do aim to finish it, even if the freelance piece comes first.

I’m very much wanting to play SOMA, though I’m also a bit of a chicken shit and may end up waiting for some sort of PS+ promotion.

Beyond all that, life is good.  My allergies are a mess but everything else is good: the job is busy but not inducing panic; the house is always good to come home to; my son cracks me up every time I see him; my wife is the best.  I feel good.  That’s the important thing.

Back in the saddle, more or less

(blows dust off blog)

OK, so: I was on vacation last week, but given certain recent events both personal and professional, I apparently needed to unplug from the internet for quite a bit longer.

i am still here, in my mind.

It’s hard to write about games when you’re not playing anything; it’s hard to write about music when you’d rather have people actually hear what you’re doing instead of poorly describing the process of creating it.  Also it’s hard to write, in general, when certain professional obligations make it impossible to do so.

But:  I’m back from vacation now, with my batteries somewhat recharged (it’s hard to fully relax when you have a two-year-old who’s favorite words are “No!” and “Stop!”), and I’ve returned to a day job that is considerably less stressful now than it was before I left.  These are good things!  Hopefully this means I’ll be writing here a bit more frequently than in recent weeks.

I’ve been thinking a lot about loops lately.  I’ve been watching my two-year-old son get into these “fun loops” at the local playground; he’ll climb up a ladder, run over a bridge, climb some steps, go down a slide, and then run back to the ladder and do the whole thing over and over and over again; he will not be deterred; if a kid gets in his way he either waits for them to pass (if they’re bigger) or steps around them (if they’re smaller) and then continues along his path; he’ll accept a brief respite for me to wipe his nose but that’s the only interruption that’s allowed, and he screams bloody murder if it’s time to go.

Maybe he gets it from me.  I’ve had a thing about loops ever since I can remember.  Not just in terms of games or playing, either.  I remember when I was first getting into music – like, really getting into music, during endless adolescent afternoons, when I would just tune out the entire world and get thoroughly absorbed in a cassette tape – I’d get to a favorite part in a song, and as soon as it was over I’d have to rewind and hear it again, and I’d do this over and over again until I memorized exactly how long I needed to rewind before getting to the beginning of the section.  (I still do this, of course, but instead of memorizing rewind time, I’m now memorizing timestamps.)

The point being:  that famous Halo quote about “30 seconds of fun” would appear to be something that’s hard-wired into our brains from an early age.  Speaking of which, that link above gives that quote a bit more context, in that the guy who said it didn’t mean to imply that in Halo you’re doing the exact same thing over and over again, but instead they’re switching the context on you so that the 30-second rush is constantly new and fresh.  This applies to the music analogy, though, too – if I get caught up in a favorite music section, I’ll listen to something once and then focus on a specific part, and then rewind and focus on a different part, each successive time my brain holding on to something new and different.

I did play some games on vacation – and on my Vita, too, which is nice.  I’d bought a few things before we left – Shovel Knight and Titan Souls, while also still staying heavily engaged with Stealth Inc. 2 – but as it turns out I ended up getting sucked back into SteamWorld Dig, for some reason.  That game is pretty neat, I think.  I’m still very early on, but it seems to be doing this very neat open-world Dig-Dug thing, which I find very pleasing and enjoyable.

I beat the first boss in Shovel Knight, and that game is fun, but – as I’ve said elsewhere – I don’t have that much nostalgic fondness for the 16-bit era that it’s clearly emulating, and so I’m finding that while I appreciate its slavish devotion, I’m not necessarily hungry for it the way everybody else is.  (Same thing goes for Axiom Verge, too – and where’s the Vita version of that, I wonder?)

I’m not sure Titan Souls is for me, though I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand so quickly, given that I’ve only actually beaten the very first boss.

Last night I felt a bit restless (for reasons I’ll explain at a later date, if all goes well) and downloaded Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China for the PS4.  It’s an absolutely gorgeous 2.5-D stealth platformer that makes me really wish I was playing Mark of the Ninja 2; it’s still very Assassin’s Creed-ish, which means the controls don’t always work the way I expect them to, and the UI is still very crowded (which is annoying, given the aforementioned graphical beauty).  But it’s at least not the same old thing, as far as the AC franchise is concerned, and so I’ll try to stick with it for the time being.

Over the vacation I finished the Valis trilogy by Philip K. Dick.  That’s the first PKD I’ve ever read, by the way, and I’d probably guess that it’s not the best way to start off with him, especially since I’m not what you’d call a religious person by any means.  It’s certainly very interesting and thought-provoking, of course, and after reading VALIS I’m certainly interested in at least thumbing through PKD’s Exegesis, though I know that’s probably a bit too much for me to chew right now.

I did end up breaking my “no new books until I finish the backlog” rule.  (Look – when I go on vacation, I tend to splurge – and given the sort of emotional stress I was going through before we left, I maybe went a bit overboard.)  I bought a bunch of stuff, all of which I really want to get to, but I ended up going with Arthur Phillips’ “The Song is You”, which is exactly what i’d hoped it would be (I really liked his “Egyptologist“, and when I’d read the description of this book I knew I had to read it as soon as humanly possible), and it’s also feeding me lots and lots of lyric ideas, which is useful, given that I really need to get back to work on the album.

OK, so, that’s it – I’m alive, I’m well, I’m getting back to work.  (And if you can, please cross your fingers for me; I’ll explain later.  It’s good news, if the finger-crossing works out, is all I’ll say.)

Weekend Recap: Noodling Around

MUSIC:  If we’re judging the new album’s progress solely by how much I’m uploading to my Google Drive folder every week, then obviously I’ve slowed down rather considerably since February.  But I’m still working / thinking / contemplating / scribbling down lyrics whenever they pop into my head, nearly every day.

My beta listeners might disagree with my analysis, but as of right now, out of the 20-odd demos I’ve uploaded, I’ve narrowed my attentions down to 10 of them.  One of those 10 is a brand-new thing I recorded the other night, which I was tempted to upload and share immediately after I bounced it to mp3, even though I probably shouldn’t.  I really like it, but I also am fully aware that it’s a nearly 5-minute-long guitar noodle, similar to the looping stuff I was doing about 15 years ago; and if it were to actually make the cut and appear on the album, I’d be doing some drastic edits in order make it a bit less self-indulgent.   (Ironically, this is why I’m tempted to post the original version in all its noodle-tastic glory, given that it’s almost certainly not remaining in its current form.)

I’ve also reached the inevitable crippling self-doubt phase, which is what happens when I listen to these demos too many times and end up either (a) hating them or (b) getting too attached to their rough-draft imperfections and wanting to keep them as is.  That second part is also why it’s hard to make second drafts out of these things sometimes; even though it’s a relatively minor thing to simply cut/paste sections over a few measures to insert some extra time for a verse or whatever, I’ve gotten so used to how these things already sound that even though the adjustment makes the song better, I don’t like it as much.

I might need to take some time away from the demos and simply listen to this stuff in my head for a while.

I also might go ahead and post this new thing anyway, or at least a little snippet of it.

BOOKS:  I realize I haven’t talked about what I’m reading in a while; I’ve been slowly going through David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet for the last few weeks; last night I started Part 3.  I was always apprehensive about starting it (which is why it’s been in my backlog for as long as it’s been), given that I’m not particularly drawn towards historical fiction, especially in an era that I have absolutely no prior knowledge of (in this book’s case, the Dutch/Japanese trade of the very late 1700s).  But Mitchell is still a hell of a writer, and I suspect that his reasons for setting this book in this very specific period and place will make sense, and in any event it’s very cool to see characters from his other books show up in this one.

FILM:  I don’t usually talk about movies in this blog, if only because I simply don’t have the time to consume film the way I used to.  But I did want to take a few minutes to talk about Interstellar, which the wife and I finally saw over the weekend.  I’ve been a devout Christopher Nolan fan ever since Memento exploded my brain – that’s one of the few films I’ve bothered to see in a theater twice – and I’ve enjoyed everything he’s made ever since, despite their varied flaws.  (My biggest problem with Inception, besides the fact that it gave me a panic attack when I saw it in the theater, is that there’s no character development in any line of dialogue; everything’s flat and expository and it’s a credit to his actors that you feel anything at all towards them; a similar line of attack could be levied towards the Batman films, too.)  In any case, I’d heard mixed things towards “Interstellar” but I knew I had to see it for myself anyway, and so I did, and I absolutely loved it.  It’s not without its flaws (though I wouldn’t dream of taking issue with its science; it’s out of my depth anyway, and whether or not it’s 100% scientifically accurate is somewhat besides the point, I think) and I saw certain twists coming, but I still gasped at their reveal, and I can’t help but admit that Matthew McConaughey (an actor I’m not terribly fond of) was really, really, really good.

Side note:  in the wake of the Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke lawsuit and the troubling precedent it could set, I can’t help but think that Philip Glass could sue the pants off of Hans Zimmer for essentially ripping off Glass’s soundtrack for Koyaanisqatsi.  Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the “Interstellar” soundtrack immensely; it just sounded somewhat familiar to me, and then I listened to it on Spotify and realized why.

GAMES:  Lots to talk about.

1.  I finished The Order: 1886.  I stand by my earlier faint praise, though now that it’s all over I can see why people would be disappointed:

  • The game’s premise is still very intriguing – the Knights of the Round Table are quasi-immortal knights currently engaged in a war with vampires – but nothing particularly interesting is done with that premise.
  • For all the game’s cinematic aspirations, it doesn’t stick the landing at all.
  • Any game, film or book that contains a scene between adversaries that has a variation of the line “We’re not so different, you and I” is now getting docked a full point in my arbitrary and non-existent rating system.
  • The combat system never really evolves.  You mostly fight human soldiers, usually head on although there are some stealth sequences here and there; maybe three or four times you fight some beasties, who have a much different attack pattern; and then I think there are two “boss” fights against these monsters which are mostly QTE-enhanced.  I don’t hate QTEs as much as most people, but I don’t necessarily like them all that much either; I don’t mind them here, but that’s also because they don’t pop up all that often.  (That said, the very last shot in the game has a QTE prompt in the dead center of the screen, which robs the moment of whatever gravitas it was aiming for.)
  • The “hidden collectible” aspect of the game is dumb and underdeveloped and a waste of time.

But:  it is absolutely gorgeous, and it’s relatively bug-free (which is very impressive in today’s AAA space), and I think a sequel could be something truly special, if it’s done right.

2.  During this weekend’s 2K sale on Steam, I ended up buying both Civilization Beyond Earth and Sid Meier’s Starships.  I keep forgetting that I need to be in certain moods in order to really get into Civ games, and I was not in those moods this weekend.

3.  On a whim, I decided to get back into Shadow of Mordor, which I’d put aside a few months back.  Decided to start over, from the very beginning, to remember how to play it properly.  Lo and behold, I’m enjoying it about a thousand times more than I did the first time; I don’t know what happened to my brain between then and now, but something about it finally clicked, and now I’m really enjoying it.  I’m also much better at it this time around, for whatever reason; the first time I was getting my ass kicked left and right, but in this second go-round I’m holding my own much better.

4.  My almost-2-year-old son is infatuated with the Lego Movie – and given that I enjoy it as well, I don’t mind him watching it over and over again.  So I decided that this would be as good a time as any to replay the game again, if only so that he could control Emmet directly.  The game is still buggy as hell, but whatever – if Henry wants Emmet to jump, Emmet jumps, and he gets quite a kick out of it.  (Also, my dog Lily is an expert-level photobomber.)

press x for ethics in game journalism
press x for ethics in game journalism

Invisible Ink

I’m in something of a holding pattern right now with respect to the new album; well, maybe “holding pattern” isn’t the correct phrase.  What’s the best way to say “I’m starting to work on lyrics and I’m incredibly intimidated because I’m not as good a writer as I’d like to be and I really want these lyrics to matter“?  There’s one song in particular – it’s been one of the stronger songs right from the beginning – and I think I’ve come up with a chorus for it, but now I need to find a verse.

As I said the other day, writing lyrics is really, really difficult for me.  It’s particularly difficult this time around, though, because I’m not just writing one song; I’m writing an album, mostly from scratch, and while I’d hesitate to call it a “concept album” (because ugh) there’s definitely a thing that spurred this whole project on, and that thing is where all of this music is coming from.

I’ve never been a lyrics-oriented listener.  With a few notable exceptions, when I sit down with an album I almost never pay attention to the words; I’ll listen to the voice, but I’m almost always focused on everything else.  And when I was in my songwriting heyday (1993-1999, back when I was in bands and thinking about music 24/7), I almost always wrote lyrics only because I needed something to sing, rather than because I had something I needed to say.  I dearly wish I could simply be abstract the way Beck and Stephen Malkmus are, but I can’t (and believe me, I’ve tried, and it’s awful).  More often than not, I’m painfully and awkwardly sincere, and to my eyes and ears the words I come up with are cliched and lack any poetry.

I’m trying my best, is all I can say.  In the absence of a lyric-writing partner, that’s about all I can do.  And I’m hoping that with a little creative focus, the words can come a bit easier.

In the meantime, I’m also trying to keep myself distracted, because nothing impedes lyric creativity more effectively than me staring at a blank page for hours at a time.  So I’m getting back into my gaming backlog.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I bought a bunch of indie games; now I’m starting to play them.

I remain frustrated by the Xbox One’s apparent inability to download stuff while in a powered-down state, which was a feature I heartily enjoyed on the 360 and which I still enjoy on the PS4.  It means that I had to leave it powered on all night in order to finish downloading Ori and the Blind Forest, which I’m hoping to get my hands on this evening.  (It doesn’t help matters much that my apartment’s internet is spotty at best, which makes a 7GB download take that much longer.)

I am currently mostly enjoying Never Alone, which is absolutely gorgeous and fascinating and charming and adorable, but marred very occasionally by frustrating controls and unclear platforming puzzles.  Be that as it may, when it works, it’s wonderful.

I’m a little frustrated with Pneuma: Breath of Life; like I said the other day, its over-the-top self-awareness can get exasperating, and not all of its puzzles are fun to solve; it doesn’t do the greatest job of teaching you its rules, and while I certainly don’t need my hand held at all times, I’d appreciate some sort of guidance, however opaque it might be.  Still, though, Achievements!

I was tempted to buy Hotline Miami 2, but then I remembered that I’d never gotten terribly far in the first one on the PC, and that I’d maybe want to replay the first one to make sure I’d even be interested in the sequel, and you know what?  I don’t really like that game.  The controls make no sense to me at all, and one-hit-kills make the learning process incredibly frustrating.  It’s got style out the wazoo, but as a game it makes a rough first impression.

I’m also dabbling in Munin on the PC, which is a puzzle game I bought during the most recent Steam sale.  I forget why it was on my wishlist, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless; it’s a 2D platformer where you progress through each level by rotating each area on the screen in order to move; it has some sort of mythical Nordic art style, and it’s rather beautiful.

Keeping The Past Alive

In today’s edition of Three Things, I’m going to get the easy stuff out of the way first.

GAMES:  Finished the GTA V campaign (again).  Now I remember the finale’s “choice” that I mentioned I’d forgotten in last week’s entry; in the heat of the moment I chickened out and did what I did on the 360 (the “suicide mission”) for two very specific reasons:  (1) I don’t want to have to play this goddamned game again, and (2) I recall hearing that in these re-releases, there was going to be an L.A. Noire-ish mission for Michael to do, and I wanted to keep my options available if that was indeed the case.  Haven’t yet encountered it, and it may not in fact be in place just yet.  After that, I decided to give Shadow of Mordor another try, but it needed an 8GB download first, and I wasn’t about to wait that long.

BOOKS:  Finished J.M. Ledgard’s “Submergence”, which is admittedly very beautifully written, but I don’t understand why it exists.  Its two main characters meet in a hotel and fall in love and then go in wildly different directions, never meeting again, and it’s totally unclear to me what their parallel stories had to do with each other – especially since the book is not told in chronological order, meaning that their affair is interspersed with current action throughout, and there’s no discernible rhyme or reason that I can make out.  It’s a quick read, so it has that going for it.  I’m now reading Charlie Huston’s “Skinner”, which I’m enjoying even though it’s unnecessarily difficult to figure out who is talking in any given scene, given that every character talks in short bursts, and nobody is properly identified, and because this is a spy novel, it’s impossible to know who knows what – which is to say, in a conversation that’s almost entirely devoid of verbs, either person could be speaking at any given time.  It’s deliberately disorienting and it’s almost annoying.

MUSIC:  It’s March 1, which means the RPM Challenge is over.  Did I complete the Challenge’s objectives?  No, though of the 15+ things I recorded, I did bounce 11 of them to mp3, and I’m quite happy with 4 of them.  I’ve also figured out how to trick my Mac into recording guitars and MIDI stuff at the same time, which means I now have a much bigger arsenal to work with.  I always kinda knew in the back of my head that this project wouldn’t really kick into the next gear until I could figure that part out, and now that I’ve figured it out, I can continue writing brand-new stuff while also expanding some of this new material into fully-fledged songs.  This is exciting.

Even if I’m no longer carrying this burden of melancholic nostalgia around with me, I’m still working with it as a source of inspiration, and as such I’m still going through my old notebooks, looking for who knows what.

This brings us to this entry’s title, because poor archiving – in any medium – is a big deal.

I’ve always been a lousy lyric writer.  In my high school band, I wrote tons of lyrics, but I never paid attention to how good they were; it just mattered that I had something to sing.  In the bands I was in during college, though, I suddenly became very aware of how terrible they were, being that I was surrounded by English majors, one of whom was not at all shy in letting me know that my stuff wasn’t very good.  Eventually I got to the point where I simply made them up during shows; I knew that nobody was able to hear the singing anyway during a performance because, at least in my experience, nobody wants to turn their amps down on stage.  (I also had a terrible time memorizing my own lyrics – which is odd, considering that I never had trouble memorizing lines for plays; it also should be noted that the band I was in at that particular time was more interested in jamming than in songwriting, and we were especially interested in playing at very loud volumes, and in any event none of us were clear-headed enough to notice whether or not I was singing actual English words.)

Point being:  the other day I started thinking about one of these new songs, and a random lyric couplet suddenly popped into my head.  As I said, my lyrics are mostly forgettable, but every now and then I come up with something that’s not terrible, and so in this case I immediately started wondering if there was more at the source.  I started going through my old notebooks and diaries and discovered that even though I referred to it (“Farewell”) on numerous occasions as one of that band’s better songs, I never actually wrote a chart for it, or a formal set of lyrics.  I found the relevant couplet, but the only other relevant bits were these sketches, neither of which ring any bells.

Farewell 2 Farewell 1

My only other option was to go through my gigantic box of rehearsal cassettes and hope that I had a recording of it somewhere.  Sadly, I don’t.  This song – however great it might’ve been – is gone, forever.

Going through my old cassette tapes, I did find another gem; one of this band’s last gigs was a very strange 3-hour show at a dimly-lit East Village dive, and someone recorded it for us; and within that gigantic mess of noise was, as I recall it, a pretty amazing cover of “Starla” by Smashing Pumpkins.  I found that tape, and found that jam, and was able to convert it to mp3.  Sadly, my memory of it is much different from what it actually turned out to be, even if I found myself able to air-guitar along to it perfectly after not hearing it for almost 15 years; in its 10+ minutes, there’s a very beautiful quiet section that maybe isn’t quite as orgasmically incredible as I remember, but there’s also a whole bunch of nonsense at the end (most of which I am largely responsible for – at the climactic chord change, I stomped on my distortion pedal and walloped a D chord that inadvertently broke at least 2 guitar strings, resulting in a ridiculous cacophony, and instead of dealing with it I ended up going with it, playing louder, which – hearing it now – was perhaps not the greatest idea).

Not everything from that era needs to be saved, of course, but the sad truth is that those tapes are all I’ve got left of that era; while the bands I was in from 1995-2000 taped nearly every rehearsal, we only ever made perhaps 3 or 4 formal recordings, and we never took the time to convert those cassette tapes into something more permanent.  I can’t speak for the other guys, but I always assumed I’d have a cassette player handy if I ever wanted to hear that stuff again; it’s alarming how quickly tapes died out once iPods appeared on the scene.

Even more frightening is that everything else I recorded on my own between 2000 and 2014 only exists in my Macbook’s iTunes.  Between dead technologies and crashing hard drives (and my stepbrother accidentally taping over a solo show that contained the only decent recording of maybe the best songs I ever wrote), I’ve lost all of the original files, and if my Mac dies, that’s it.  It might not matter to anybody else, but it matters to me, and for all my obsessive documentation I never actually backed up the stuff that matters.   (This is why, when I finally release this album, I’ll most likely put the demos and sketches up too, just so that they’ll exist.)

Where You Been

Has it really been over a week since my last post?  I’ve said repeatedly that I’m tired of apologizing for a lack of updates, but usually that’s just for a brief 2-3 day hiatus, not a week-long vanishing act.

There are several reasons for this break, I suppose, if that counts for anything:

  1. I’ve been unusually busy at work, which severely curtails my potential posting availability;
  2. I hit something of a wall last week working on music, and haven’t quite re-found my footing; and
  3. I’ve been a bit under the weather, including a bit of a headcold over the weekend and a vicious stomach bug that laid me out all day yesterday.  (My stomach is much better today, but the cold has returned; I’ll gladly take this over the reverse, though.)

GAMES:  I’ve been playing (some might say “rushing”) through GTA V‘s story mode on the PS4; I’m in the middle of setting up for the final heist.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD (Greg, please skip past this part)

Part of the reason why I’ve been rushing through it is because of this AV Club / Gameological feature about difficult choices; as far as GTA V is concerned, I have literally no memory of being faced with any particular decision (especially because in my post-complete state on the 360, everybody was still alive).  If I had to do it over, though – and I guess I do, given that I’m heading that way – I’m thinking I might pull the trigger on Michael.  As I’ve been going through this second run, I find him absolutely impossible to like.  I loathe every word that comes out of his mouth.  The “family therapy” scene is especially disgusting – I recall it being gross the first time around, and it’s arguably even more infantile and awful the second time.  I do not empathize with him at all, and I try to play as him as little as possible.

END SPOILERS

Beyond that, I’ve mostly been playing Alto’s Adventure on my iPhone – it’s an absolutely gorgeous 2D side-scrolling, snowboarding endless runner.  Obvious comparisons can be made to Ski Safari, another excellent iOS game, but its artistic flourishes recall both the sand-surfing level in Journey and the pristine environments of Monument Valley.  It’s also one of the few games that doesn’t absolutely destroy my iPhone’s battery, which is necessary these days as even just the simple act of leaving my phone turned on during my subway commute can drain the battery nearly 60% by the time I get to work.  I really need to upgrade, but I’m not eligible for Verizon’s discount until June; I’m hoping I can last until then.

MUSIC:  So, yeah – as stated above, I hit a bit of a wall, and it’s entirely possible that the thing below is what broke me.

If you can’t see it, here’s the note I wrote to accompany it:

yeah, so: this probably isn’t going to be on the upcoming album/ep – at least not sounding like this. it’s too long, it doesn’t build, it’s very noodle-y. BUT. my inner prog-rock-obsessed 15-year-old would love the hell out of this. and i might just have to figure out how to arrange it so that it can stay. (It’s not actually in 19/8 – it’s one measure of 7/8, then one of 12/8, but the only way Logic would record and not freak out was to combine it all as one.)

I have done some minor tinkering to it since this demo was uploaded, and it now has a better build and a more focused structure, but I might just have to re-record the whole thing in order to get it right, and I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.

I’ve also recorded some more sketches here and there, but none of them are particularly good, and on second listen a few of them appear to be subconscious re-workings of earlier sketches I’d worked on a long time ago.

I’ve said for a while that I’m treating the RPM Challenge’s commandments as more of a guideline than a rule, and to that end I’m not feeling particularly bummed that I most likely won’t meet the 10 songs / 35 minutes threshold.  Participating in the challenge was really just a way for me to kick my ass into gear, and in that respect I consider this a pretty wild success; I’ve not been this prolific or productive since I was writing songs during classes in high school.  Most importantly, I wanted to establish a routine for myself, which I’ve never really had before; I also wanted to work under circumstances where I could allow myself to record first drafts and just let them be before listening to them to death.  And I have succeeded on both counts, which is why the Challenge was worth it.

And even if I’ve hit a wall now, that doesn’t mean I’m done; I’m letting my batteries recharge and I’m getting back into the studio as soon as possible, which hopefully means tonight (I do have to finish my taxes, of course).

BOOKS:  I finished Richard Powers’ Orfeo, which is a beautiful, beautiful book that has a lot to say about music and art and science and memory and permanence and loneliness, but which also doesn’t necessarily have the strongest characters or a plot that carries any momentum.  And the ending felt… I don’t want to say forced, but it didn’t feel nearly as effortless as everything else.  I would recommend this book to lovers of 20th Century classical and avant-garde music, though, and I’d strongly recommend listening to a Spotify playlist of the music he writes about, and reading along while you do it.

I’m currently about 2/3rds through Terry Hayes’ I Am Pilgrim, which at first glance appears to be the sort of mystery/thriller you’d pick up in an airport, and which reads very much like the screenplay that will most likely be coming very soon.  It’s great fun, even if it’s not great art, and to that end I’m enjoying it quite a bit.