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Arts
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 — 5A
When most people think of the phrase “clams casino,” they
think of the popular clam dish. In this case, clams casino is a
clam on the half shell, covered in butter, garlic, peppers, bacon
and breadcrumbs. It is an exceedingly popular appetizer in
New England, and who can blame them? If you like clams and
bacon and peppers and butter, I’m sure it’s the perfect dish, but
in my mind, clams casino the appetizer is only the second most
important Clams Casino.
The most important and most influential clams casino is, of
course, the now-legendary cloud-rap producer. Clams Casino
got his start crafting ethereal, sample-driven beats for the likes
of Lil B, A$AP Rocky and Mac Miller in 2011. At the time, no
other producer was making beats like Clams, and if they tried,
they wouldn’t sound anywhere near as good as Clams. In 2016,
he released his solo debut album 32 Levels featuring the usual
suspect (Lil B, ASAP Rocky and Vince Staples)
and some new collaborators like Kelela, Alt-J’s
Joe Newman and Future Islands’s Samuel T.
Herring. It was a spectacle. A damn good one
at that, too.
With his most recent release, Moon Trip
Radio, Clams Casino has decided to take a
different approach. Rather than creating an
album flooded with outside voices, he decided
to keep things in-house and let the beats speak
for themselves. Evidently, this decision was a
good one because Moon Trip Radio is, no doubt,
Clams Casino’s most cohesive and infectious
work to date.
Lead single and album opener “Rune” is
a slow-burning track, but once it gets going,
it is white-hot. It’s classic Clams in the best
way possible. A down-pitched vocal sample
dominates the track and is backed by stuttering
drums and warm bell tones. It takes almost two
minutes and 40 seconds to reach the drop, but
when the time finally comes, there’s nothing
better.
Not only is Moon Trip Radio Clams’s most
cohesive work, but it’s also the warmest
and most inviting. Clams brings listeners into his world and
encourages them to stay awhile and explore the landscape. Songs
like “Healing” and “Twilit” have so many layers for listeners to
pick apart, from field recordings to resonating piano tones. In
particular, though, “Fire Blue” begs to be explored. It’s almost
cavernous in a way; it’s contained far below the surfaces of the
earth, but it’s also monumental in size. Clams gives the droning
main sample plenty of room to breath by utilizing minimalistic
drum hits and synth blasts. The only problem is, once the song
begins to show its true colors, it abruptly ends, sending listeners
to the next soundscape.
The flaws (if they’re even there) of Moon Trip Radio never
make themselves apparent. Sometimes though, it can be hard
to maintain focus on songs like “Lyre” and “In a Mirror.”
They’re a little too ambient, a little too aimless, especially when
surrounded by chillers like “Twilit” and “Soliloquy.” To be
certain, they’re good tracks, but they should’ve been scattered
throughout the album rather than back-to-back on the album’s
backend.
The beats on Moon Trip Radio are definitely chill, but no one
should ever attempt to study while listening to them — there’s
just too much to explore. Someone could listen to this album fifty
times and continue to find new pieces or textures that they never
noticed before. Moon Trip Radio presents a vast soundscape in
which everyone is welcome to explore at their leisure, and that’s
a good thing, because after one listen you’ll never want to leave.
‘Moon Trip Radio’ is Clams Casino at his most inviting
CLAMS CASINO PRODUCTIONS / INSTAGRAM
ALBUM REVIEW
JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer
Moon Trip Radio
Clams Casino
Clams Casino Productions
Pulling off fantasy in movies is hard enough. Adapting
an entire trilogy to TV is harder. When the 2007 film “The
Golden Compass” received harsh reviews, it seemed that may
have been the end of attempting to adapt Phillip Pullman’s
wildly popular fantasy series. “His Dark Materials” however,
seeks to revisit the series and explore the world it creates.
Based off the popular trilogy of the same name, “His Dark
Materials” follows a young girl named Lyra Belacqua (Dafne
Keen, “Logan”) as she investigates the many secrets within
her society, run by the oppressive Magisterium. Inspired by
her uncle, Lord Asriel (James McAvoy, “It Chapter Two”),
and his work in the northern territories, Lyra learns of a
mysterious “Dust” that the Magisterium is hiding from the
public and Asriel’s fellow scholars.
In the midst of her life at Jordan College in Oxford,
England, Lyra discovers that her childhood friend, Roger, and
a boy from a neighboring community have been kidnapped,
presumably by a group called “The Gobblers.” With the help of
her animal familiar Pantalaimon (Kit Connor, “Rocketman”)
and the gift of a golden compass, Lyra and a fellow explorer
Marisa Coulter (Ruth Wilson, “Luther”) sets out to uncover
the truth being concealed from the people.
While the visuals and world built in “His Dark Materials”
are undoubtedly beautiful, nothing about the show so far
sticks out as particularly incredible. In the backdrop of
a magical, Lyra’s world is more akin to “Harry Potter” or
“Lord of the Rings” than a fresh take on the fantasy genre.
The show’s relationship with its source material seems to be
its greatest weakness: Every piece of dialogue and exposition
feels inaccessible to viewers not familiar with the book
series, yet “His Dark Materials” feels far too generic to be
unique.
Within the series premiere, very little about the main
characters or their world is explained, which may be fine for
a better-known series, but Pullman’s fantasy trilogy seems
too niche to be understood by a wide audience automatically.
“His Dark Materials” doesn’t seem interested in answering
questions and would rather revel in its magical imagery
and government conspiracy subplot than make its storyline
clear.
“His Dark Materials” has a lot of wonderful elements,
but seems to struggle with how best to put them together
for an undefined target audience. Not quite a kids’ show
and definitely not “adult” by any HBO standards, the series
doesn’t seem to know what its purpose is. The only thing
propelling the story forward so far is a vague prophecy
purposefully kept from the audience for suspense. In
concealing the plot like this, “His Dark Materials” has
lowered its own stakes in an attempt to raise them. With
a significant reliance on these types of fantasy tropes, the
show fails to bring a unique or nuanced take on its own genre.
After
an
underwhelming
first
episode,
“His
Dark
Materials” could redeem itself with a more self-aware first
season that acknowledges the well-worn territory of fantasy
while leaning into what separates Pullman’s original trilogy
from the pack. Instead of simply mentioning “Dust” or the
“Magisterium” or “Gobblers,” “His Dark Materials” could
embrace its own mythology directly and focus on its most
compelling details without overusing broader themes. With
some modifications, this adaptation could work. Without
revision, the show may fade into the same obscurity its film
equivalent “The Golden Compass” did.
‘His Dark Materials’ debuts with a lackluster premiere
TV REVIEW
ANYA SOLLER
Daily Arts Writer
His Dark Materials
Series Premiere
HBO
Mondays @ 9 p.m.
Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders emerged from the
stylings of Foo Fighters in the same way the latter did from
Nirvana. In 2004, before Foo Fighters even started working on In
Your Honor, drummer Hawkins pulled together a group of himself,
Chris Chaney and Gannin Arnold for their debut self-titled album.
The 2006 release bubbled under the radar but generated a steady
interest with rock fans and Foo Fighters devotees. It placed rock’s
favorite grungy surfer dude at the forefront with more leisure for
humor in rock music than Foo Fighters could ever permit — albeit
with a not too dissimilar sound. The Coattail Riders made their
return in 2010 with Red Light Fever, reuniting the trio alongside
a star spangled set of features including Brian May, Roger Taylor,
Elliot Easton and, you guessed it, Dave Grohl. Not surprisingly,
Queen influences tinged many tracks on the album.
And perhaps it was Hawkins’s destined inferiority to Dave
Grohl, or the waning traction for grunge rock, or the important
business of keeping up as Foo Fighters’s drummer, but the follow-
up for Fever seemed out of scope. Nearly a decade passed without
so much of a mention. However, at the very tail end of 2019, we
finally reach a continuation with Get the Money.
If Red Hot Fever was star-spattered, Get the Money is the Ringo’s
All-Stars of punk-rock. The album features contributions from
Dave Grohl, Jon Davison, Nancy Wilson, LeAnn Rimes, Roger
Taylor, Pat Smear and Mark King. Queen is yet again a touchstone
for Hawkins’s work, squealing guitar tips marking up track “Don’t
Look at Me That Way.” Classic rock influences touch nearly every
track. “Middle Age” beckons back to the rock age ruled by David
Bowie in the ’80s. A loving dedication to Hawkins’s daughter,
the track carries itself on angle-grinder guitars and thrashing
harmonies that feed into a synthy outro. It shouldn’t work given
the lyrical content, and it’s arguably doesn’t by
the end of the song.
Maybe the coattails he’s riding on are his
own; synth-laden metal intro “Crossed the
Line” burrows a snippet of Foo Fighters’s
“Best to You.” Grohl makes three appearances
across the album. Most notable is his feature
on lead single “I Really Blew It,” not so much
for his impressive, shrieking guitar but for
his screaming “I really blew it” repeatedly
throughout the intro. This is encapsulated
perfectly in the track’s music video, with his
disembodied head in a fireplace yelling.
Title track “Get the Money,” much like the
rest of the album, is a labyrinth of genres. A
psych-inflicted folk intro settles into a reggae
groove that reverts back before an absolute
guitar freakout that carries the last quarter of
the song. Similarly, “C U in Hell” begins with
a classic rock edge that morphs into a psych
rock element with spattered piano keys before
locking into a classic Fighters-esquechorus.
The lyrics, however, run trite. Hawkins croons
cliches throughout the song and especially in
the chorus: “Maybe these oaths were made/ To
be broken/ Maybe these paths we take/ Have
been chosen.” The same unfortunately rings true for the rest of
the album. “Kiss the Ring” presents perhaps the most creative
and crude rework, “You’re my queen/ And I’m your King/ I wanna
give you everything/ All you gotta do is kiss the ring.”
Despite its shortcomings, Get the Money does enough with its
classic rock worship and synth to not reinvent but toy with the
wheel a bit. In an age of music absolutely regulated by the push
and pull of media, rock is in a vulnerable state; it makes sense for
rock albums with classic artists like Taylor Hawkins to beckon
back to the sound of rock from the past. This is not to say that rock
is dead so much as it is to suggest that the shifts of the playing
field permit more variety in the ways we consume and consider
music — there’s no classic or grunge rock categories that prevail
anymore. Rather, rock and its newest artists have made names for
themselves by implementing newer elements. Hawkins, however,
has no interest in this and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Inspired by the oldies, the album feels a lot like it’s for fans of the
classics too.
‘Get the Money’ plays with the nostalgia of classic rock
ALBUM REVIEW
DIANA YASSIN
Daily Arts Writer
Get the Money
Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail
Riders
Geffen Records
GEFFEN RECORDS / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS