Soundtracking

What do you listen to when you're writing a film about a doomed wireless operator running around Nazi-occupied Paris?

Why, The Last Broadcast by Doves, of course ;)

No, seriously, it's a great record.  I've owned it for years, but I'm just now warming to it.  While songs like "Words" and "Pounding" are rock solid pop songs in the vein of Ride, it's the short, orchestral-ambient bits that inform the proceedings with a sense of cinematic grandeur and rough-hewn beauty.

The perfect suite is the simple, folksy "M62 Song" fading into the astral "Where We're Calling From" exploding into the hallucinatory "N.Y."

Check it.

Script Update

The WWII spy "thriller" biopic has a name now -- The Calling.  I was supposed to be done with this weeks ago.  There are scenes scattered all over the place and the third act's on it's way, but it's all starting to congeal.  Finally.

What has been completed is on scripped.com, and when it's finished it'll be up on my website.  And then a movie theatre near you.

Right...?

Fascination Island update

Exciting news!  We are currently putting the finishing touches on the Fascination Island EP, which we are tentatively calling Street Level Women.  Look for tracks online soon.

Here's the (likely) Street Level Women tracklist:

1. Garden Fence
2. Dry Bones
3. Tin Hat
4. Earth Vacation
5. Fine Suit

More later...

Sophomore Slump

MGMT's Congratulations is released this week.

I've never been one to put much stock into the idea of the "sophomore slump" when it comes to pop records.  Reaction to artists' first two albums are usually wholly predicated on expectations and contexts that have nothing to do with the artists themselves (something Vampire Weekend soapbox about on Contra).  Nonetheless, there's no denying that simple saying:  "Your debut is a lifetime of experience in the making.  Your second, two years."  Something like that.

Here's what Metacritic has to say on it in light of MGMT's willfully difficult Congratulations.

http://features.metacritic.com/features/2010/best-and-worst-second-albums/

Soju Plan

Happy Hour drink of choice: A bottle of Yogurt Soju for about $20.  Light w/out being too sweet, and you can barely taste the buzz that's about to hit.

Space 212 @ 319 E 32nd St. - go after work, and the place barely looks open.  What is important is that it is open, and the staff is very accomodating.  More like a cafe than a lounge.  Club floor downstairs appropriately obnoxious late night weekends, silent for the rest of the week.