The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Friday, March 27, 2009 -- 5 Ascend ing to NB C's throne All-out aural 'Blitz!' The Yeah Yeah Yeahs go avant-garde and play off retro music cliches By WHITNEY POW Senior Arts Editor The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are more baffling than your average band. In an attempt to hype up its third studio release It's Blitz!, YYYs released a series *** of short films called the "SNAKESWEAT TRILOGY." Yeah Yeah The films, according to the YeahS band's blog, provide an inti- mate look into the "day to day It's Blitz! recording activities" involved DGC/Interscope in the making of its music. The films themselves, how- ever, are crazy and avant-garde: They're filmed in black and white, set in the desert and star guitarist Nick Zinner setting Barbie dolls on fire and drummer Brian Chase doing yoga on an industrial oil drum. Perhaps the films really do document YYYs's daily recording routines, but, then again, probably not. One might venture to guess that It's Blitz!, the album the odd "SNAKESWEAT" films endorse, is similarly ironic. Just as the films play off avant-garde art cliches, the album plays off retro music cliches - namely dance music of the '70s and '80s - with an abun- dance of kick-drum-heavy beats, an excess of Enya-like synths and twangy disco guitars. The sound is a step removed from sophomore album Show Your Bones's acoustic center, and it's a leap away from first studio album Fever To Tell's art-house rock. But It's Blitz! is still infused with the previous albums' penchant for the dark and brooding hidden beneath catchy melodies and sexy vocals. It's a welcome move toward a more genre-specific sound that, while playing off cliches, is ironi- cally fresh. It's Blitz! doesn't try to appropriate disco music per se, but instead creates a moody, dark parody of it; it's a dance album filmmak- er David Lynch (in his "Blue Velvet" period) would have made had he possessed the musi- cal chops. While the album contains a copious amount of upbeat dance grooves, its lyrics, sung by the versatile Karen 0, are hauntingly ironic and oddly macabre. On "Heads Will Roll," while Chase knocks out a "Heart of Glass"-like beat, Olashes out, honey-sweetand reverb-heavy, "Off with your head / Dance 'till you're dead / Heads will roll / on the floor." Songs like "Soft Shock" and "Dull Life" showcase O's voice as an essential instru- mental component backing the drums and guitars; her voice presents the album with a necessary driving force with its sharp breathy intonations and deep-throated moans. Still, certain songs on the album lose their momen- tum when the band tries to back-track and revisit sounds from previous albums. "Skel- etons," with its calming, atmospheric synths and sparse drummer-boy percussion, tries too hard to imitate YYYs's single "Maps" with heartfelt yet overly reminiscent lyrics: "Love my name / love left dry / Frost or flame / skel- eton me." Another such song is "Shame and Fortune," which revisits Show Your Bones's sound with its loud, fuzz-heavy guitar lines and plain, predictable rhythmic beat that doesn't strive to achieve It's Blitz!'s twisted retro dance sound. The album, however, makes intriguing headway on tracks including "Dragon Queen," where YYYs consciously uses harp plucks and Bee Gees-reminiscent disco guitars to create a dark dance feel, and "Zero," which relies on addictively droning keyboards and Moog synths. It's Blitz!'s movement towards a new sound is a welcome one, but the band on occasion slips back into safer territory, preferring, at times, sounds that've been done before. Per- haps a more gutsy move into dance territory would have made the album much more out- standing, but YYYs has already cemented itself into an art-rock oddity not only with its Barbie-melting film series but with It's Blitz!'s conscious foray into uncharted musical terri- tories that still retains the band's characteris- tically macabre feel. By RACHEL HANDLER DailyArts Writer "Kings," NBC's overly ambi- tious attempt at retelling the bibli- cal story of David and Goliath, is* essentially a soap opera dressed in .n prime-time dra- ma's clothing. The Sundays at plot is complex 8 p.m. and occasionally NBC baffling, making the rewind func- tion on a DVR more necessary than ever. But its allegorical overtones and resonating themes eventually make it something more than just arcane melodrama. The two-hour premiere intro- duced an alternate reality, a sort of pseudo-New York City in which King Silas Benjamin (Ian McShane, "Deadwood"), ruler of the nation of Gilboa, unveils his newly built capi- tal city of Shiloh. Silas continuously waxed poetic about the moment God told him he would be king, and a group of butterflies landed on his head in the shape of a crown (view- ers were beaten over the head with this symbolism throughoutthe pre- miere). All of a sudden, it was two years later, and viewers were intro- duced to newly war-torn Gilboa through the eyes of David Shep- herd (Christopher Egan, "Resident Evil: Extinction"), the aptly named populist hero with a heart of gold, a love for his country and an uncanny resemblance to Matt Damon. David and his brother Eli (MichaelMosley, "The Insurgents") are Gilboa's answer to white trash - the siblings initially lived athome with their mother and ran a car repair business out of their garage. The two are now ridiculously moral and good-natured soldiers fight- ing against the northern nation of Gath. When Jack, King Silas's whiny playboy of a son (Sebastian Stan, "Law & Order"), was taken hostage by Gath's soldiers, David defied his superiors' orders and ran haphazardly across the border into the looming headlights of Gath's tank, predictably named Goliath. David wasrewarded handsomely by King Silas, who threw him a lav- ish banquet, allowed himto date his daughter Michelle (Allison Miller, "17 Again"), and gave him a shitty apartment in Shiloh where he'll work as army liaison to the press. Naturally, country boy David was uncomfortable with all the atten- tion and all them crazy city folk, and he spent the rest of the episode either silent or enigmatically poet- ic. Conflict ensued when it became apparent that not everyone in Gil- boa is on David's side, including Silas himself. In any other time or place, this show may have been solely ridicu- lous. And in some ways, it still is. The premiere got off to a slow start, but divulged shocking plot develop- ments at an alarmingly rapid rate during the second hour. We found out within a matter of minutes that Jack is gay and Silas has been hav- ing an affair for years, has an ille- gitimate son and married his wife for the financial support of her brother - who's now refusing to let him end the war with Gath. The head-spinning duplicity of every single character is enough to make our own reality seem almost inviting. And unfortunately, the most cringe-inducing moient occurred in the very last scene, when David found himself sur- rounded by you guessed it - a When allegory meets dystopia. group of butterflies, descending upon his head in the shape of a crown while Silas looks on in hor- ror. "Kings" manages to simultane- ously echo Shakespeare, the "Bible" and "The O.C." And somehow, in 2009, "Kings" manages to feel relevant. It has all of the right allegorical ingredi- ents: There's the nameless, faceless enemy and the completely inexpli- cable war; there's the young idealist demonstrating the futility of fight- ing to stop a war that's being waged for all of the wrong reasons; there's the bright, initially flawless leader with dark secrets and complicated interpersonal relationships; and finally, there's the premiere's end- ing, which hinted at a sharp and protracted economic downturn for Gilboa. Despite its soapy overtones and potentially outlandish plot, "Kings" runs deep, hitting some of the right nerves. Its intellectually developed characters, oft-believable dialogue and timely subject matter save it from being too much of a guilty pleasure. An animation celebration at the AAFF By ANDREW LAPIN Daily Film Editor The short films of Oscar-nom- inated animator Don Hertzfeldt employ varying degrees of seri- ousness. Some An Evening shorts, like his wjt Don absurdist black Hertzeldt comedy "Billy's Balloon" (about Tonightat a child's balloon 7 p.m that tortures its At the Michigan owner), are just meant to make people laugh. Others, like his four- years-in-the-making opus "The Meaning of Life," leave audiences amazed and in awe of the sheer creativity and animation prowess on display. Then there's the darker side of Hertzfeldt - the side responsible for his 2006 Sundance winner "everything will be ok" and its sequel, the just-released "i am so proud of you." . Both films follow the sad, strange journey of Bill, a stick figure who lives every day of his life in exactly the same way until he suffers a mental break- down and must compromise his suddenly meaningless existence with the possibility of death. The films reflect the grim thoughts of a man shaken out of his banal state of mind to confront his own mortality, and their dark nature stands in direct contrast to the bright and chipper exteriors of most mainstream animation. Yet, on closer inspection, perhaps all of Hertzfeldt's work shares this bleak motif. "I think all of (my films) are coming from more or less the same place," Hertzfeldt wrote in an e-mail interview. "A friend once pointed out that the chain between all the films, beneath the comedy, is 'quiet dread' ... which sounds like an underground goth band. But I don't know, maybe it's true." "i am so proud of you" will be holding its regional premiere tonight at 7 p.m. at the Michigan Theater, when the Ann Arbor Film Festival presents its program "An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt." The event will showcase many selections from the filmmak- er's past and present, including "every: Ballooi his Os and th mission which1 Anima D( ex n Mike Hertzf and an screeni Hert movies increas ern fil everytt can tak few mi He e digitall thing will be ok," "Billy's bined techniques as "a hybrid way n," "The Meaning of Life," of getting the best of both worlds, car-nominated "Rejected" which I think all filmmakers do e sublimely silly "Inter- now to some degree." n in the Third Dimension," . He acknowledges his spe- toured with the 2003 "The cific style can only be achieved tion Show," produced by with 35mm: "I'm not exaggerat- ing when I say that, visually, my last four films would have been on JHertzfeld impossible to create without this old camera.: amines e s "There's so many ways to see a movie these days, and so many nieaning via different forms of media buzz- ing around people's heads that tick figures. any captive audience anywhere is a blessing for any filmmaker," Hertzfeldt said, commenting on his perceived status as a fringe Judge ("Office Space"). filmmaker and his return visits eldt will hold a question to the AAFF. "I'm just as happy swer session following the to screen at a festival like Sun- ing. dance or Ann Arbor as I am at zfeldt shoots all of his Cannes or at the small local Mud- on 35mm film - an berg film festival in the middle of ingly rare sight in mod- nowhere." mmaking - and animates The filmmaker will next tackle hing by hand, meaning it the final installment in his "Bill ke him years to finish just a trilogy," and its eventual comple- nutes of footage. tion will almost certainly warrant dits and mixes all the sound another visit to the Ann Arbor ly, and he views these com- Film Festival.