Monday October 3, 2005 arts.michigandaily.com artspage@michigandaily.com (Th Jbr A1n i tUU laU RTrS 5A Courtesy or Mataaor Chest hair is awesome. " Post-punk foursome drops ambitious LP By Aaron Kaczander Daily Arts Writer To a certain extent, it feels as though each of the four members of The Double play in their own band. The instruments are frenzied and withdrawn, the produc- tion is sparse, and the vocals meander. So it becomes safe to say that these guys have no business playing under the The Double same bill - much L less on the same Loose In the Air record. The surpris- Matador ing element of this equation is that it actually works on Loose in the Air. Somehow, The Double, a group of morose-sounding Brooklyn shoe gazers, manages to make a record that is both thick and atmospheric, yet also an enjoyable listen. The Double's loose, experimental play- ing tendencies are liable to gain them the ambient-pop label. Fortunately for the already overly crowded post-punk scene, 1 Loose in the Air has the mobility to lean toward a more accessible, impatient listen- er. At 10 tracks, all it takes is two, maybe two-and-a-half spins to realize that these guys may not be another East Village- copycat band. They immediately sound like dozens of contemporaries, but as an entire album, Loose's dizzying musical style proves to be more ambitious. Take, for example, the detached vocal infections of singer David Greenhill. Apart from his own introspective whine, he evokes a variety of other glaringly spe- cific musical voices. At one point, he has the slack-jawed saunter of Pavement's Ste- phen Malkmus ("Hot Air"), and the next he's toying with the timbre of Interpol's Paul Banks ("In the Fog"). Greenhill's distant, almost careless vocal arrangement threads airy bass and screeching guitar in with a seamless suture. "Idiocy" is the album's siren song, a track labeled with a galloping drum beat and catchy vocal tick. In the No. 2 spot, this sets a high standard for the rest of the record. Though few other tracks contain the vivacity and drum-along mood of the potential single, each song conjures another mood of sarcasm and filthy New York moodiness. Greehnill's vocals aren't the only effects-laden additions, and it some- times feels the whole album was dipped in a vat of reverb and hung to dry next to a stinky Brooklyn dumpster. Loose sags when The Double let their dis- tant complexities become too distant, leaving the listener well near tears of anticipation for when the reverberating wail and mopey whine will cease. For instance, two minutes of near silence precede the seven-minute snoozer "Dance." Fortunately, this aura of elit- ism is masked by The Double's con- stant stabs at musical reinvention. Loose has a beckoning replay value that, until after the second listen, is almost invisible. But it's albums like this that provide trinkets of pleasure after careful consideration time and again. Though it lags in the well-tread- ed waters of Brooklyn post punk, it proves that this foursome means to cre- ate more than just a well-dressed ambi- ance and dirty martini. Courtesy of New Line "I suggest you wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, Mr. i-last-starred-in-'Radio.' " RHISTORY LESSON CRON EN BERG CRAFTS HARROWING MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE By Amanda Andrade Daily Arts Writer The common assumption goes like this: A pri- mal urge for slick violence and sweaty, glammed-up sex are all that seduce teeming crowds of 9-to-5 Americans A History of away from their fist-clenched Violence dollars and into the sensory deprivation of a stadium-seated At the Showcase multiplex. Movie studios stake and Quality 16 millions on the principle that New Line kung-fu, AK-47s and busty babes in skimpy tops - preferably side by side - sell. David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" is a masterful subversion of precisely that flesh-market mentality, crafting an unsettling indictment of a cul- ture of violence and voyeurism. The film opens in a familiar small town, where a diner owner named Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen, "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) becomes an unwitting hero after killing a pair of murderous thugs in self-defense. Tom is a family man, devoted completely to his wife, Edie (Maria Bello, "Secret Window"), and their two perfect children. The hoodlum she kills are sociopathic killers - Cronenberg wants to make this easy. But things turn nasty when a shady figure from Philadelphia named Carl Fogerty (Ed Harris, "A Beautiful Mind"), with a bum eye and a pair of gorilla bodyguards, accuses Tom of being a mob man by the name of Joey Cusack. Determined to protect himself and his family, Tom stumbles into an unbreakable cycle of violence that only seems to escalate with every attempt to end it. Eventually, circumstances summon the hero back to Philadelphia where a run-in with the sublimely funny William Hurt ("The Village") allows Cronen- berg to compose his final crescendo with the pops and bangs of gunfire, and the splatter of warm blood on a cold and rugged face. It's the hyper-real violence, simultaneously repul- sive and mesmerizing, that transforms the film from a conventional underdog fable to something haunt- ingly relevant. The camera doesn't pull back from smashed noses, bullets to the head or a dying man with his face to the tile floor, choking for air through the dark stream of his own blood. Cronenberg also plays extensively with movie archetypes - the arrogant sports bully, the outland- ishly accented mob boss - even Mortensen's limp resembles the John Wayne gait of a shining movie superhero. And true to form, the audience has no doubt that, faced with a room full of heavily armed killers, the defenseless hero will saunter off unharmed into the bloody sunset. By playing so close to filmic conventions, Cronenberg subverts them. From the media thirst for gory detail to the audience's perverse longing for the next good punch in the face, this is more than just a violent film. It digs into the very heart of violence in American culture. To that end, leading-man Mortensen is perfect. Not only does the actor possess the matinee-idol looks and dripping-testosterone sex appeal of an action- star god, but he carries all the hero baggage of his orc-slaying days in Middle Earth. It doesn't hurt that his performance is as shaded and nuanced as the film itself, or that his chemistry with Bello is genuine and complex. In one of the film's most disturbing scenes, the desperate couple finally marries Hollywood's passions for exploitative sex and aggressive violence - too bad it's among the least commercially appeal- ing scenes ever shot on film. (i 5 C0 E CCED Everything you need for high-speed Internet access. 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