A Double Post – Cinema and Music

This week, I was planning on going to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. Ignorantly, I did not consider how many people would want to go see a movie that the state would only play twice this year. So I ended up just watching another movie with my friends instead.

However, although I was unable to go to the screening with my friends and have, what I would assume, a fucking blast, the fact that the state has these interesting screenings got me thinking – how fucking awesome is it that we have theaters like the State and Michigan on campus. To a certain degree I have been taking them for granted.

Not only will they be playing movies like “Birdman” and “Interstellar”, two upcoming movies that I really wish to see – they also have special screenings such as the “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” as well as the current series of Studio Ghibli films. On top of this they are doing a speaker series as well.

This isn’t really what I want to talk about but…I don’t know, it was just a cool (epiphany? – of incredibly low merit).

Instead, I want to talk about the new Foxygen record, because it is just too fun.

I never thought Sam France (Foxygen’s front man) was a particularly great singer in the sense that all the talent shows and vines (or instagram videos – I don’t know what the fuck they are I don’t use them) of people singing suggest as ‘good’ singing. Rather, France’s singing was far more stylized, evoking the voices of his influences throughout the bands songs, switching with such vigor that some songs make you feel tired as it reaches the end.

I was first introduced to the band through their album “Take the Kids Off Broadway” which got me hooked right away, because they sounded like they had so much fun recording it. Of course, this also made me have fun listening to it. It featured great songs like: “Make it Known”, “Take the Kids Off Broadway”, “Middle School Dance (Song for Richard Swift)”, and “Waitin’ 4 U”.

Then came their far more successful album, “We are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic”. A fucking mouthful of a title. I’ll be honest, I love every single song on this album, it is one of the few albums were I am not bored throughout the whole play through. There is no moment where I feel like skipping or just not listening to. To a lesser extent, I felt the same way about their last album as well. But to be fair, both of these albums were short, ‘Broadway’ being seven songs long and ‘Peace and Magic’ clocking in at nine songs. But honestly, who cares, they are awesome records.

Actually maybe they cared, or other people pressured them? Theories…all theories. But their new album, “…And Star Power” has 24 songs making it a double album with 82 minutes of material.

Do I love all the songs on this new album? No. But for some reason, this album works for me best when I have the time to listen to the whole thing, instead of just picking songs here and there – which I could do for their last album. Some songs on this album that I would probably not enjoy as much were I to listen them on their own, sound so much better when I listen to them in conjunction with the songs before and after it.

Is this a good thing? I don’t know because by all means I am no music expert. I mean I quit violin when I was young and I never really got into the whole high school band life. Ask me about notes and musical theory now; I won’t know a fucking thing. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I like.

I like this new album. Certainly not as much as the previous two, but I like it in its own way. It is quite different in terms of the influences and there are more noise pieces in this album – pieces that I normally don’t like that much. But the songs “Cold Winter/Freedom” and “Can’t Contextualize My Mind” are pretty fucking cool, and it comes back to the same word…it is fun (and kind of terrifying regarding the former – that adolescent voice of France pretending to have a radio channel is edgy and scary to a certain extent).

Speaking of fun, I only recently found out, but it turns out Foxygen released, as a free download, their recordings that were not studio albums. The core duo of Foxygen, Sam France and Jonathon Rado, met in (middle school) I think. So they messed around and recorded a bunch of stuff before they were a band with a studio record.

(here are the links to the downloads if you want to check it out)

Jurassic Explosion Philippic
(They recorded this one ^ when they were 15 apparently)

Kill Art and Ghettoplastikk!

(they posted it themselves, it isn’t illegal)

I can’t say this band is for everyone but check it out, you might be surprised by how much you like them, or maybe you will just find a couple of hidden gems and take away a couple of songs you really like. Maybe San Francisco?