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 words: Brianna Shore

Sasha Frere-Jones(z) is getting mucho flacko for his recent essay on the mass Colgating of ’00s indie rock. And we have to agree. The rock music that rules the Internets is primarily decided by people who go to Jelly. Sunset Rubdown? Jose Gonzalez? The fucking Virgins? Used to be, those were the into-the-stacks, underproduced “cult” artists ruffled through out of boredom, now they’re the insecure rock stars of our bleak times. It’s strange that Sasha doesn’t go into how Dre stole/sampled his beats from George Clinton, the true godfather of funk. White rockers don’t have the balls to steal anymore, they just squeal into a microphone like they’re fighting a strong suburban breeze and reserve a middle track for Black Dice-like abstractness. You can call this progress exciting, but in private, you listen to so much classic rock now and enjoy it for a reason. Postscript: When you watch that video above, how cool are old FBI piracy warnings? Also, how stupid does the label “the Gay ’90s” look in retrospect?

Band of Horses remind us so much of the current president that we throw-up listening to them. You should as well.

image : ignore Magazine

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image from Mister Lonely

Remember that old photo of Harmony Korine and an inflated-head Ol’ Dirty Bastard in an embrace friendlier than sangria? It’s good to know that one of the ’90s stalwarts of sordidness still walks the planet. Harmony, now 34 (!) and apparently sober, is currently on the festival circuit with his new film Mister Lonely. Last we checked, the film concerned nuns jumping out of airplanes sans parachutes to display their unshakable, unsplattable faith in the almighty. Now it seems, that is an aside, with longtime Korine-supporter Werner Herzog, playing a priest, making the pious airborn. As you can think with the image above, the majority of the film focuses on a Michael Jackson impersonator who falls for a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and concurrently moves to a commune populated with impersonators ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Buckwheat.

Something about that description makes us think of a long rehab, old played-out ’90s indies and David Salle, but then again, so does Lars and the Real Girl, and we’re there for that one. If you’re in New York, an exhibit with portraits of Mister Lonely characters by Brent Stewart is on display until tomorrow at Cynthia Broan. Simiilar to Wu-Tang’s newly cancelled tour, there’s no set U.S. release date for the flick yet, which is being distributed in the States by IFC Films.

More stills from the film after the non-airborn jump.

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photo source: Daily Mail UK

“Once the ear has fully developed [performance artist Stelios Arcadious] hopes to get a microphone implanted as well: ‘I hope to have a tiny microphone implanted to it that will connect with a bluetooth transmitter; that way you can listen to what my ear is hearing.’”

Somewhere John McEnroe and Larry David are giddily sending emails.

Look at this!

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words and photos of Black Lips at Logan Square Auditorium: Andrew McLees

No chickens; no vomiting; no dinks; no band violence; no airborne metal chairs; no Voodoo; no cure for herpes (sorry, South Florida); no problemo? Theoretically, any band with a live presence that precedes its musicianship is in serious trouble the instant Mr. Exhaustion answers the phone, takes messages and then rolls and smokes them. And let’s face it, that is happening a lot nowadays! When the body says “nah yo, fuck you,” you have to obey. Here come Black Lips (hi, bummed porn seekers), with their seemingly bottomless supply of delinquent vigor, nearing an impossible end to an endless tour, dogged by exhaustion, crazed boyfriends and whatever else their arduous schedule throws at them (glass bottles), and they still manage to turn up the chutzpah and raise hell.

Click here to see Black Lips get frisky.

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attached at birth: Count Dracula, a Russian Viggo and the Gipper

Like most of David Cronenberg’s cinematism, theatrical audiences (you?) have politely passed by Eastern Promises like a body at a wake in search of mindlessness. We couldn’t do that, specifically our new writer Jesse Bullington, a funnier human Z-Channel with a huge mustache (done right), couldn’t do that. What’s up with smarmy New York critics writing bloated, trite essays on Eastern Promises‘ use of gore, he asks, before pissing all over their vintage Hushpuppies and Oxford commas.

Click here to read a discourse on Eastern Promises that will wash away your lethargic sin.

image: Paramount Vantage

Any movie with Emile Hirsch, washed-out tones and a puppy can’t be all bad, right? It would take, let’s say, Sean Penn filling an entire movie screen with the word “alone” carved into a tree to screw that up. And while we’re at it, what if he poured on lots of scenic wilderness photos and had a guy write his diary all over them to convey a sort of Tiger Beat-ish version of Walden Pond? If he did that, finally renting Grizzly Man might be in order.

Click here to read Shawn Wines’ discourse of Into the WIld. And, yes, Emile eats a moose and dies at the end. And how awesome (as in fittingly not) would it have been if this film was sponsored and co-produced by Levi’s?

There has been a mercurial airlift exodus from Miami as of late but you wouldn’t thunk it from hearing MC Spank Rock’s new tag team effort with Benny Blanco Bangers & Cash. Seems like jus’ ‘esterday that everyone at the 36th street bar was saying, “Wait, that’s Amanda Blank? No wonder she rolls with Oxy,” and now Spank has 30,000+ Murdoch cronies. Rolling Stone, for the sake of high art, put the dude on your cover getting head under an American flag already, not because it would mean anything, jus’ because it would look good next to our framed 1978 Hustler.

Here’s Tiffany Rainey with a discourse of Bangers & Cash.