The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher Than Stars EP (2009) [Slumberland] // Grade: A

Oh to be sixteen again, to trip over your heart and fall in love so hard you can barely move, crying as often as you’re smiling. It’s been a very long time since I was sixteen, but the music of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart take me back to my teenage years with such realness that I’m not reminiscing, but reliving.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s newest EP, Higher Than The Stars, picks up where their self-titled debut left off, with the band continuing to channel every single act that defined my teenage years. Like their album, Higher Than The Stars doesn’t do anything that bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Cure weren’t doing 15+ years ago, but it’s their ability to pull off combining the influence of so many esteemed bands without sounding tacky that makes their music so intensely connective. When you listen to the music of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart you know they shared tears at sixteen to the same soundtrack, shared smiles at seventeen over the same live shows. Higher Than The Stars sees the band continuing to solidify a sound that really is a rip of postpunk, twee, shoegaze and indie pop’s past, but executed so authentically you just shrug it off, grin and continue singing along.

Higher Than The Stars features four new tracks from the band and a remix of the title track from Saint Etienne. Every track on the EP is just as great as the next. The title track is a hazy vocaled, dreamy standout, wrapping drowsy melody in twinkling synths. The most upbeat of the EP’s selections, “103″, consistently brings to mind one of my favorite tracks from my teenage years, Sleeper’s “Statuesque”. Guitar-heavy and more sophisticated than the other three tracks on the EP, “Twins” is likely to be a favorite for many listeners, but it’s the least polished of the release’s offerings, the slumberous, starry-eyed lover’s lullaby, “Falling Over” that tugs my heartstrings to their breaking point.

It’s odd to feel that a band that so directly replicates the sound of a specific era of music’s past is creating something important, authentic and memorable, but that’s how I feel about the music of  The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

Off With Their Heads – Keep Falling Down

Philmont – Back Down

The Maine – Into Your Arms

Girl Meet Girl – You Burn My Heart Up

The Have Nots – One in Four

In Jonathan Mostow‘s Surrogates, the majority of the world’s population conduct their public life through glossy avatars, known as surrogates. Since people rarely leave the comfort of their homes, crime, especially murder, is a rarity. So when a double surrogate-homicide occurs outside of a nightclub, FBI agents Greer (Bruce Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) are assigned to the case. The unique weapon used by the killer sends a charge through the surrogate’s motherboard, and actually fries the brain of the user at home. The case becomes even more dense when it’s discovered that one of the victims was the son of Lionel Carter (James Cromwell), the creator of surrogate technology. Carter intended for the technology to aid the disabled and ill, and he was forced out of the company when he opposed its rampant overuse.

People vehemently opposed to the use of surrogates, known as “dreads,” are lead by The Prophet (Ving Rhames) and live in designated Surrogate-Free Zones. While tracking down the killer, Greer’s surrogate is destroyed and the FBI insists that he take some time off to recuperate. But in true hard-boiled form, Greer eventually goes out on his own; stepping out of the house into a landscape (Boston) inhabited by Barbies and Kens.

2009 seems to be the year for exploring the moral aspects of avatar technology on the big screen, with Gamer, Surrogates, and the upcoming Avatar all respectively addressing these themes. Stylistically, Gamer and Surrogates are worlds apart – Surrogates being infinitely more somber in tone. And while Gamer is more entertaining and successfully satirical, Surrogates takes greater leaps in addressing how humanity will be affected by technology. This, in my opinion, makes Surrogates more successful as science fiction. I’m biased though, because I fucking love the “softer” sci-fi that only briefly explains the ins-and-outs of the technology and essentially focuses on how working stiffs are affected. Surrogates is a complete success in this department. The relationship between Greer and his wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike) and how their marriage is affected/helped/doomed by surrogate technology is fleshed out really well.

I’m not going to waste a lot of time talking about Bruce’s acting. Honestly, he’s one of the most reliable actors working today and is always on-point when it comes to playing grizzled badasses. There’s one scene in particular where he goes from pure badass to vulnerable, emotionally broken-down husband in about a minute. I’m a huge fan of Humphrey Bogart, and I’ll be damned if Bruce didn’t channel that hard-boiled/vulnerability that Bogie mastered so well. James Cromwell also delivers here…at’ll do, pig.

The film is being advertised as an action movie, which is sad because there’s so much more going on here, and honestly there are about two really brief action sequences for the whole hour and a half. The twists are pretty predictable, but other than that, this film is pretty pitch perfect and has a great ’60s sci-fi, short story feel. A cautionary tale. If I’m not mistaken, the movie takes place during an undisclosed year, but can be read as 14 years in the future. And generously, the technology presented isn’t ridiculous or unbelievable. Think back 14 years when no one carried a cell phone and you had to masturbate to magazines or lingerie catalogs. The world moves fast. So get out of the house, you fucking nerds.

I need to get back in the habit of doing Digging For Fires more regularly, maybe getting things going with a 7″ will be just the trick.

45 Grave started up during the monumental LA punk movement of the late 70′s who have had an on again, off again career for almost 3 decades now. The band at one time featured members of the Bags and Germs., but it’s only constant has been the dark heart and soul of the band from the beginning, singer Dinah Cancer.

More so than any of their other LA punk cohorts 45 Grave were always much gloomier, darker and an even stronger fascination with Horror. The band even ran under the name Vox Pop concurrently to 45 Grave, using that alias to experiment with a more proto-industrial sound until the whole projected was killed off in 1981 to focus solely on 45 Grave. By the time they released their debut album Sleep In Safety, 45 Grave was already full on Goth & Death Rock to the bone.

Black Cross is their debut 7″ and sees a band coming into their own… two of my favorite LA Punk era tracks that in many ways sound like X gone Goth.

45 Grave – Black Cross 7″

Judging by the comments and emails from the Wavves post below, you guys desperately want to know where you can find one of those Troll 2 tees that Greg is wearing.

They’re made by our buds at Mondo Tees, the same guys who produced the Ring of the Demon Scourge with us and Lamour Supreme. The shirt is illustrated by Jon Vermilyea, who’s done a ton of work for us,  and is an officially sanctioned Troll 2 product!

The shirts are online in the Mondo Tee shop, available in both Black & Green.

The crew from Wavves dropped by 350 Broadway for some gear and apparently a case of Colt 45? The band rocked packed houses at both Santo’s & Market Hotel this past week and are currently halfway through their US tour with Ganglians.

Go get their new album Wavvves and see them when they come by your town. Seriously one of the most fun acts I’ve seen live this year!

P.S. They have a pretty sweet Garfield tee they’re selling at their shows.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave.
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

DJ Khaled – Go Hard (Feat. T- Pain and Kanye West)

Young Jeezy – Put On Remix

Trick Daddy – Shut Up

Caspa – Rat-Tat-Tat (Feat. Dynamite MC)

HavocNDeed – Bass Fo Ya Face

Bonus:
Bombaman – Crookers Dot Net Mix Sept ’09

Oh shit! Dollhouse Season Two! Which means, if it’s as good as Dollhouse Season One, it’ll be a flaming hunk of dog shit with sparkles of diamond throughout! Let’s rock!

The season two premiere opens with the same standard bullshit every episode has opened up with so far. Yeah, Echo is totally going on some top-secret mission, and we can’t guess it quite yet! But here’s a hint, you’ll probably find out right before the credits roll! Cue OMFG moment.

The episode wraps this usual Dollhouse formula around the also standard season-premiere exposition that catches the viewer up on what’s been going on! We see Adelle handling Victor and going WOW YOUR SCARS ARE FADING. Time must have passed since we last saw these cats! Wowzers.

About two minutes into the episode my attention span was already crumbling into dirt and demise. And then they’re like, hey look, Echo’s getting married for the assignment. But then they show whom she’s getting married to, and I’m like, fucking LEE ADAMA?! My attention in insta-hooked back in.

Well played Dollhouse, you know how to jerk off your nerdy fans.

The entire episode is some agonizing effort to give Helo…err, Paul Ballard reason to become Echo’s handler. Apparently Apollo is some sort of drug-running-dirty-bomb-using action movie cliché, and Ballard and Echo are high-fiving and teaming-up to thwart generic bad guys! Yes! So we see Ballard having to listen as Echo and Apollo bang and have sloppy post-wedding sex from his secret FBI truck. Just part of his job, and more importantly his tortured, brooding character.

Also, for some inexplicable reason, Ballard turns out to be Echo’s client in this episode? Huh? What the fuck is going on here. Maybe I’m missing something, but Ballard was supposed to be some dubious, uh, security consultant at the end of the last season. Maybe the writers – like me – had no fucking idea what that mean and had to write this yarn ball to figure it out.

Meanwhile back at Camp Sexy Zombies, Topher is trying too hard to be funny as usual. He’s lucky though, because he gets to star in easily the worst scene in the episode. Topher and the sexy scarred Dr. Saunders discuss consciousness and state of being, and blah blah, and they all finger themselves on top of a copy of Descartes’ Meditations. You see, Topher created Dr. Sexy Scars to be someone who would TOTALLY QUESTION him and his motives to when he imprinted her as the doctor of the Dollhouse. But, Topher says with stunning and earth-shattering gravitas,

I never programmed you to hate me.

Jaw drop! Let’s jerk off to more pandering on the ideas of identity and how it is formed!

Invariably Echo goes insane because she has seventy-three identities in her head and she blows her cover. Apollo realizes that she is some double agent, and that he’s gone from the best sci-fi show on television to this abortion, and flips out. He smashes her god damn head off of some old desk and I clap to myself.

With her cover blown, of course, Paul Ballard has to save the day! Totally of course Echo’s currently handler didn’t notice some spike in her something-something chemicals that mean she was in danger, and he has to swoop in.

What results is the coolest part of the episode, because it involves a fistfight between Ballard and Captain Adama in some abandoned hangar. This can only happen of course after Ballard pulls Echo out of her standard crisis of identity that occurs every episode. She’s going bananas because she’s got more voices in her head than my Nana, and can only pull it together after Ballard punches her like fifteen times in the dome. Apparently that’s how you get schizos to take on the personality you want them to.

After that though, Ballard and Apollo throw down for reals. They’re all throwing elbows and screaming “Frak you!” while Echo runs around the hangar and shoots like seven hundred people. Would you believe that they saved the day?

And that’s about the episode. Ballard clearly needs to be Echo’s handler. Topher is totally tormented by his role in creating Sexy Scarred Chick’s identity as the Dollhouse doctor. And Boyd, formerly Echo’s handler, wants to bang the hell out of Sexy Scarred for reasons unbeknownst to me. Season Two, here we go!

Good evening, ladies and germs. Were you too busy repelling out of helicopters and robbing cash depots to catch all the sexy posts from the past week? We gotcha covered.

• Bloglin senior sports columnist Caps takes on the NHL’s southern strategy, along the way, he mentions Lisa Simpson which is the only thing I understood in the article. Caps also shared his thoughts on the Dolphins. Sports!

• Caffeine Powered loves Brutal Legend so much he would tell it he’s going to pull out, not pull out, and refuse to let it get an abortion, arguing that “it’s just as much my kid as it is yours!” Dr. Dinosaur is still getting to know the new 2-D Sonic the Hedgehog game, and doesn’t want to rush into a relationship.

• The Obake Dog Mask C from Secret Base has dropped and Мишка is the only store in the U.S. of A selling it! How do you like them apples, other stores?! The Ninjasonik Art School Girls shirt also dropped.

• Ellen Stagg had some work up in the Nixon Art Mosh Party and treated us to some samples.

• Hateball seems to only read good books, and you should too. Check out his latest recommendation, Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman. I’ve never met Hateball, but I always picture him as Wilfred Brimley from Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, who also like pies.

• Lil Jon has good taste in clothes.

• In the 8th installment of Ken Burn’s Creepy Touch, Toilet Cobra ventures to Philly for the Mad Decent Block Party. If you’re uncomfortable jumping in halfway through the season, check out the Creepy Touch reruns here. And while you’re at it, pick up your Creepy Touch shirt, they only come in black so they’ll hide most stains.

• The Juggalettes have gone wild, come in all sizes, and have dropped their nuts.

• And this weeks valedictorians are (drum roll please) Hospital of Death’s Surge Kill Steal, Times New Viking’s Born Again Revisited, and Ghostface’s Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry. The Flaming Lips’ Embroynic was merely tolerable.