ARTS The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 -11A Brothers bring hardcore rock to Detroit By Chris Gaerig Daily Arts Writer The underground music scene is a dangerous place to be: relentless critics, unforgiving fans and a seri- ous lack of cash and promiscuous sex. When most indie bands break through onto a major label, their sound drastically changes and their fans desert them; but not the Seattle quintet The Blood Brothers. The band is cur- rently tearing across America The Blood to promote its fourth full-length Brothers album, Crimes, bringing the tour Tonight at 7 p.m. to Detroit's Magic Stick tonight. The Magic Stick Since signing to V2, The Blood Brothers have slightly changed their sound, but continued their aural onslaught and brutal demeanor. Crimes, though released on a major label, is by no means directed or suitable for the mainstream. In 2000, The Blood Brothers exploded onto the underground scene with their debut album The Adul- tery is Ripe. Influenced by groups such as Refused, The Adultery is Ripe presented a wholly new per- spective on the hardcore genre. With their piercing vocals and spastic music, The Blood Brothers were single-handedly changing the once monotonous hardcore genre. Their second full-length, March On Electric Children, was much of the same punish- ing music and sounded cleaner and better produced than their debut. However, lead singer Johnny Whit- ney says, "With March On Electric Children, we were basically just trying to put a record together." It wasn't until their third album, Burn Piano Island, Burn, that The Blood Brothers began to draw seri- ous attention from those outside of the hardcore genre. On The Blood Brothers third full-length, they once again reinvented not only themselves but also the hardcore genre. The inclusion of keyboards and sound manipulation in addition to continuing their glaring vocals all added to this new vision of hardcore. On their latest album, they continue IL URIOIE, IIVET THE HOTTEST PICKS IN ENTERTAINMENT FROM A DAILY ARTS WRITER S "Alexander" - Did Aristotle kill Alexander the Great on the grassy knoll? While most scholars believe that either the West Nile Virus or a form of typhoid did in the Macedonian warrior, you never know who the conspiratorial Oliver Stone will pin the blame on in his next film. Courtesy of V2 Yeah, we are all related. the tradition of reinventing themselves. Crimes takes a more subdued approach but continues their aggressive attitude. "It's a bit of a departure from the completely spastic, all the time on our previous records," Whitney says. "I enjoy playing our slower songs almost more than playing our faster songs. It gives me a chance to relax and sing, and not just scream all the time." Crimes is not only less aggressive than earlier albums, but also deals with different emotions and feelings. While Whitney says that the album does not necessarily deal with one certain topic or per- sonal tribulation, it does reflect his life and the vari- ous experiences the band has encountered. "With this record I wanted to have songs with different feelings: different tones, different moods. Have some songs that are really fast and really short but also have songs that are more minimal." Even through the hype and anticipation that Crimes received, The Blood Brothers stay level-headed and truly appreciate what they have. Even the artwork on Crimes, mindless doodles juxtaposed against color prints, shows this maturity. "We wanted to have a record cover that incorporated images of us in a way that isn't super glorifying," Whitney says. "I feel very fortunate getting to see the country. I don't know any other situation where you would be in a different city every night." The Blood Brothers will bring their excitement and energy with them, tonight delivering another spastic performance in support of Crimes. Wilco's A Ghost is Born - Yes, it's four months old, but the lugubri- ous melodies and dyspeptic lyrics of Jeff Tweedy have an autumnal flavor to them that doesn't quite mesh with playing volleyball at the beach. Listen to it while orange and yellow leaves fall around you. "Freakonomics: Cheating School- teachers, Crooked Realtors and $ Crack-Selling Mama's Boys" - A University of Chicago economist and a journalist team up for this layman's guide - slated for release next year - to Steven Levitt's innovative and con- troversial scholarship on crack dealing, white-collar crime and other forms of miscreant behavior. Levitt and Ste- phen Dubner have already won the prize for the best titled economics book of all time, narrowly surpass- ing Milton Friedman's "A Theory of the Consumption Function." The New Yorker College Tour « - David Denby, Seymour Hersh, David Remnick and other luminaries from the world's most perfect magazine will be visiting Ann Arbor from Oct. 26 to 30. Stand-up comedy, film, fiction read- ings and political cartoons will descend on campus in the tour's first stop before head- ing off to the University of Texas-Austin and Georgetown University. " 'She Hate Me' plagued by inconsistent plot By Amanda Andrade For the Daily Hot lesbians, corporate greed, mafia bosses and lots and lots of sex abound in the absurdly titled "She Hate Me." The Spike She Hate Me Lee-directed film At the has at least two Mi, hida, Thpat*n inconsistent, so meandering and so mind-numbingly boring that it fails as a film on every level. The movie follows the exploits of Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie, "The Manchurian Candidate") who is fired from his high paying job after he turns corporate whistle-blower. Jack resorts to the only reasonable fallback occupation for a man in his position - impregnating lesbians. The film thus proceeds to jump from a legitimate condemnation of self-serving corpo- rate America to some kind of weird and unfunny sitcom. There is absolutely nothing to connect the two storylines apart from the actor, and the change in tone is so abrupt that whatever inter- est either story may have generated is quickly severed by the jarring shift. Lee wanders between these two disparate threads with no indication of what he's working toward. Just to make sure the film is as wildly uneven as possible, he throws in a mafia prin- cess played by Monica Bellucci ("The Passion of the Christ"), a few knocks at President Bush that even party-line Democrats will roll their eyes at, an extraneous family subplot, a Water- gate throwback, a "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" riff and a series of laugh- inspiringly earnest endings. This is a shame since the finale in which Jack comes to terms with himself was the only part of the movie that gar- nered any laughs. For a picture that bills itself as a com- edy, the film is shockingly unfunny. Worse yet, for a Spike Lee movie, which relies on controversy to sell itself, this project leaves the audience incredibly indifferent. Lee attempts to play on ste- reotypes ranging from the absent black father to the black sex superman to gor- geous sexually open lesbians. The point, presumably, is to shock and annoy his audience into paying attention with his avant-garde lack of structure and obtru- sive, heavy-handed camerawork. What happens, however, is that sometime in the first two hours of the film, the audi- ence stops being offended and starts heading for the exits. "I Am Charlotte Simmons" by Tom Wolfe - The incomparable Tom Wolfe's first full- fledged novel since 1998's "A Man in Full" hits bookstores on Nov. 9. The greatest jour- nalist of the 20th century went undercover at fraternity parties for this ethnography of American college life in the new millennia. Courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and conceivably five almost unre- lated storylines ocgan cu eaer Sony Pictures Classics DAILY ARTS. WE'RE NO DAVID SCHWIMMER AND YOU'RE NO JENNIFER ANIsTON. packed into an epic two-plus-hour run- ning time. This is ok for "Lord of the Rings," but this movie is so tonally m