The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 5
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 5
Saviors for'At the Movies'
COURTESY OF ANTI-
"I am the ghost of my former career."
M rooned a Bt se
min
0
Islands takes
iimalism too far
n its third LP
By JOSH BAYER
Daily MusicEditor
In order to fully grasp the musi-
cal juggernaut that is Vapours,
all it takes is a
quick look at the
album artwork:
a grainy, faded- inds
out headshot of
frontman Nick Vapours
Thorburn look- ANTI-
ing rather bored
and decaffein-
ated against a garish indigo-blue
background. That's it.
For those of you who want the
back story, Vapours - Islands's
third LP - is a turkey. Gone are the
lush orchestral flourishes. Gone is
the unchecked sense of adventure
that permeated every old Islands
track, regardless of quality. Gone
is the fun.
Vapours is Islands stripping
down - an action that would've
looked good on paper after the
oftentimes highfalutin Arm's Way
(the band's sophomore slump).
The issue with this minimalism
is it sheds everything that made
Islands likeable in the first place.
While Arm's Way took itself a
little too seriously, there was
a certain charm to its let's-go-
everywhere swooping mini-epics
haunted by Thorburn's inimitable
croon. There is absolutely nothing
charming about Vapours.
Built upon uninspired drum
machine loops and synthesizers
that range from farty to tacky,
Vapours sounds like it was made
over the weekend on McLovin's
laptop. But wait: There are real
guitars and bass! And an electric
sitar! What a novel concept! Sadly,
Islands isn't the first band to mix
the synthetic with the organic -
Dirty Projectors did it about 20
times better just a couple months
ago. And a concept means zilch
when the songwriting quotient
hovers dangerously close to non-
existent.
DO YOU LIKE
POETRY,
BOOKS,
MUSICALS
OR DRAMA?
WAIT, YOU
DO? LIKE,
SERIOUSLY?
HOLY SHIT!
YOU SHOULD
WRITE FOR
FINE ARTS!
Send an e-mail in iambic
pentameter to
battlebots@umich.edu for an
application.
Vapours is action-packed with
arrangements that don't go any-
where at all. Over the course of
"No You Don't," synths and gui-
tars build on each other, moseying
in and out of the mix. But none of
the individual parts do anything
other than loop incessantly or
shrug back and forth between the
same two chords (save for a15-sec-
ond electric sitar solo that doesn't
refresh so much as just tease). It's
pretty disturbing that six musi-
cians - and talented ones at that
- participated in the recording of
this album.
The record reeks of the trans-
parent effort to take the compo-
nent parts of low-grade club music
and mainstream radio synth-pop
and indie-fy them. This epic fail
of an experiment is especially
evident on the embarrassing
"Heartbeat," with Thorburn actu-
ally busting out the Auto-Tune. It
would've taken a hell of a track to
bring this bold move to fruition -
and Thorburn digi-whining over
a dumbed-down version of the
synth line from "Kids" by MGMT
is a far cry from irony. Rather than
taking conventional synth-pop
and subverting it, Islands simply
removed the hooks.
This brings us to the biggest
bummer of all: Thorburn's vocals.
It's as if Thorburn read all the
media spitfire knocking his flut-
tery histrionics on Arm's Way and
retreated back into the closet. His
usually taffy-like tenor is flat and
lifeless despite his obsequious
ooh-ooh-ing and stretched-out
vowels, making it sounds like he's
hiding behind a monotone win-
dow even as he's shifting octaves.
The aural end result is somewhat
akin to a washed-up glam rocker
on a reunion tour, and it isn't par-
ticularly pleasant.
The most painful thing about
all this is that Islands clearly
know how to write a killer pop
song. "Vapours," a funky, Bowie-
esque bopper laden with abundant
horn fills and tambourine shakes,
and "Disarming The Car Bomb,"
engorged with fuzzed-out bass
and glittery '70s nostalgia, show
that Islands hasn't completely
lost its edge (and that it probably
could've recorded a decent enough
glam rock album).
But the truth is that Islands
recorded Vapours, not Electric
Warrior: Part Two. So the best
you can do is look at Thorburn's
vacant expression on the album
cover and hope he wakes the fuck
up real soon.
The tide of film criticism
has ebbed and flowed
throughout the better part
of the last century, and for as long
as film itself has
been around. 4
Sometimes
casual moviego-
ers want a truly
well-informed
dissection of
cinema, anda
sometimes weIANDREW
just want a guy LAPIN
(or a couple of
guys) to tell us whether a movie
is worth seeing. And nothing has
epitomized our changing opinions
about other people's opinions more
than the TV show "At the Movies."
You still might know the show
as "Siskel and Ebert and The Mov-
ies," though that title is several
degrees removed from reality by
now. The basic concept remains
the same: Two unattractive men sit
and argue about the movies of the
week for 30 minutes. Gene Siskel
died in 1999; Roger Ebert left the
show in 2006 after treatments for
thyroid cancer rendered him with-
out a voice; Siskel's replacement,
Richard Roeper, quit the show in
2008 after parent company Walt
Disney announced it was planning
to take the decades-old program in
a new direction.
Enter Ben Lyons and Ben
Mankiewicz, the poster chil-
dren for this "new direction" of
film criticism. The 42-year-old
Mankiewicz, former talking head
on Turner Classic Movies, gives
faceless, generic opinions that
would go down smooth with your
nightly glass of warm milk. And
the 28-year-old Lyons, a former
Michigan dropout (he says he got
"restless" here after only a few
months), came direct from the
MTV/E! News school of film crit-
ics: lots of sound bites projected
at a loud volume accompanied by
toothy grins aimed squarely at the
lowest common denominator.
At the risk of sounding (even
more) unfathomably geeky, I will
now admit that "At the Movies"
was my
teenage
start w
era, I w
the bac
show -
bullish(
other in
to get tc
Whic
son, the
was sot
but eve:
represe
everyth
ic. He w
His ide:
Basterd
cast" -
leave it
enEye"
not bec
]
M
Ber
an
because
64 vide
multipl(
texting
Not lon
chair, L
vile hat
even a v
ons.comr
It see
thirsted
cism w
Hollyw
"critic-I
week. T
site Rot
down e
or not, t
for easi
so the n
Ben Lyc
revamp
voice of
favorite TV show asa where. I accepted this outcome and
r. Even though I didn't prepared to holda candlelight vigil
atching until the Roeper for the show that made me fall in
as instantly enthralled by love with movies.
k-and-forth dynamic of the But then something amazing
the way the two smart-yet- happened: The Bens tanked. No
critics were engaged each one watched their show, and this
nonstop verbal tennis just August they were yanked from
heir opinions heard. their chairs for poor ratings (iron-
h is why this past TV sea- ic, since they had been brought on
first season of "The Bens" to boost ratings). So Ben Lyons was
painful - not only to watch, stopped, and at the beginning of
n to think about. Ben Lyons this month, we met "new" faces of
nted the exact opposite of "At the Movies:" A.O. Scott, a New
ing I admired in a film crit- York Times critic, and Chicago
vas boorish and uneducated. Tribune critic Michael Phillips. I
a of praising"Inglourious say they're "new" sarcastically for
s" was to say it had a "great two reasons: first, because both of
list the cast members and these guys put in extended guest
at that. He named "Gold- appearances at the show during
as his favorite Bond film, Ebert's long illness; and second,
ause of the film itself, but because the producers of "At the
Movies" are desperately trying
to prove to us that these guys are
old-school critics who take movies
Hie went to seriously.
In web-exclusive clips, the pair
lichigan, but demonstrate their film knowledge
to us, first by riffing on direc-
SLyonsis still tor Steven Soderbergh ("The
Lyon Informant!") and then by talking
asinine fool. about musical scores to Fellini
movies. "Look at us," they seem
to demand. "We care about mov-
ies much more than you do." As
it inspired the Nintendo well they should. Unlike the Bens,
o game. And according to Scott and Phillips are more than
e reports, he was often seen qualified to take over the "At the
during preview screenings. Movies" balcony.
g after taking Ebert's old Does this mean that America
yons became the subject of will once again embrace the true
red on the Internet; there's role of the critic as someone who
website called StopBenLy- provides valuable insight into film
n. instead of just pumping out poster-
emed like those of us who ready quotations? Not as long as
I for intelligent film criti- Rolling Stone's Peter Travers is
ould soon be SOL. After all, still employed. But we can dream.
ood releases more and more Still, the show has at least come
proof" blockbusters every full circle, and the Ben Lyonses of
'he rise of review-aggregate the world have been vanquished
ten Tomatoes has boiled for the time being. And I, for one,
very opinion, beit educated couldn't be happier. The saga of
to a single percentage point "At the Movies" finally has a Hol-
er public consumption. And lywood ending.
ext logical step was for
ons to find success on this
ed "At the Movies" as the
moviegoing morons every-
Lapin is just bitter because he
sucks at "GoldenEye." Challenge
him at alapin@umich.edu.
ii
h+ 'mow;-:-,
YK
To learn more about Ave Maria School of Law,
come meet a representative at the
Universityof Michigan LawDay
on Wednesday, September 231, 2009
338S.State St. :
; Ann Arboryc.
Congratulations,
Professor Karen Bird!
Dr. Karen Bird, a Lecturer in Accounting and
Associate Director of Instructional Development at the
University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, is a
winner of the first annual Ernst & Young Inclusive Excellence
Award for Accounting and Business School Faculty.
Along with four other professors, she is being recognized
nationwide for mentoring diverse students and for
supporting minority students and diversity-related
organizations.
"Karen Bird has profoundly impacted many students,"
says one admiring colleague. Adds another, "Her ability
to work with diverse students and encourage them to
consider the field of public accounting has made a serious
impact in the percentage of underrepresented students
who enter the accounting profession each year from Ross."
Learn more about Dr. Bird and the Inclusive Excellence
Award at ey.com/us/facultyinclusiveaward.
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