Now in select theaters and also available On Demand for $7.99, Fish Tank is a powerful British drama that doesn’t shy away from controversial material. It’s being compared to Precious, but Fish Tank hit me harder and didn’t feel as emotionally manipulative. It had a Mike Leigh vibe minus the eccentricity. Written and directed by Andrea Arnold, the movie takes a look at 15 year old Mia (Katie Jarvis), a lonely, neglected girl walled in by a public housing estate. She has no friends and interacts with her mother and younger sister essentially through screams and slamming doors. Her mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) is an alcoholic party girl. One day Joanne brings home Connor (Michael Fassbinder), a young charmer who Mia is instantly attracted to. It’s obvious that the feeling is mutual.

So much of the film rests on the performance of 19 year old Jarvis, and, honestly, she’s the Truth. She was discovered by Arnold at a train station, arguing with her boyfriend. She lived in a public housing estate in Essex and had a baby when she was 16. She may not have gone into this film with any acting chops, but she had plenty of experience with the material.

Arnold doesn’t really hide where the movie is headed. In fact, it’s easy to figure out early on where the film is headed. But it’s not really about what happens between Mia and Connor, it’s about Mia’s and her doomed existence. With a mother like that, she’s fucked from the starting gate. We’re given front row to this uphill struggle through Mia’s eyes. The camera sticks by her side throughout the film has a real voyeuristic feel. By the end, I wanted out of the stinkin’ projects as much as Mia.

Oh, Nas is in the title of the review because “Life’s a Bitch” plays over the end credits. It seems obvious at first, but it works. You’ll see why. Trust me.

Iraq war films are very unpopular with audiences. Hurt Locker is now wiping its ass with Oscars, sure, but it didn’t do well financially. People don’t want to see films about Iraq because they’re a reminder that everything is fucked. Stack a hefty recession on top of that and folks simply aren’t paying to be bummed out. Remember what a disaster Lions for Lambs was? But director Paul Greengrass (last two Bourne films) doesn’t seem to be out to educate or bum out audiences with Green Zone. It’s about how hyped up WMDs were and how there actually weren’t any. But everyone knows that. The plot of Green Zone may be too little too late, but that doesn’t stop it from being seriously entertaining.

Greengrass teams up with Matt Damon once again to deliver a perfectly paced, action thriller filled with politics and shaky cam out the ass. His frequent overuse of shaky handhelds has always been my only issue with Greengrass. I love the Bourne films, but the handheld work gets terribly nauseating. So against this background, Greengrass simply drops in Matt Damon as warrant officer Roy Miller and BAM…you’ve got a Jason Bourne film set in Iraq. It’s brilliant. Miller becomes this frustrated personification of the American. He goes “rogue” on his search for the truth. Anytime a movie involves someone “going rogue” I’m on board. It could be about a “rogue ice cream man” and I’d watch. Actually, that sounds awesome.

The cast also includes Greg Kinnear, Brenden Gleeson (who’s always amazing), and Amy Ryan as a journalist with a ponytail. Every female war correspondent in movies rocks a ponytail. Fact. The movie is based on the nonfiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, written by former Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Greengrass lightly brushes aside the politics and scandal of the book which people have already digested and brings in Bourne. Which is exactly what I want from a Greengrass film.

Vasaeleth – Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin (2010) [Profound Lore] // Grade: A-

I’m a fairly recent convert to Death Metal. I just wasn’t ever really into a lot of it. After I found that Entombed and Dismember were basically D-beat bands with skills and that Possessed was basically a thrash band with evil vocals, my downward spiral began. I’m still iffy on a lot of it though…especially the newer über-technical shit that feels more like 6 minute grind with too many solos. However after listening to Vasaeleth’s Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin I now have major faith that not all death/grind made in the last few years is strictly techdork shit.

Right off the fucking bat, the album starts with crushing Death/Grind with no fucking remorse. This has got to be downtuned a full 4 steps. Shortly after, it evolves into riffy doom/death shit with coffins-esque über-cookiemonster vocals. Not much changes throughout the album and yet it works like a charm.

I was going to get all “reviewery” here but fuck it, this is the listening note from “Curse Seeping Through Flesh”:

Fuck me running this is heavy. Normally I’d find shit like this pretty boring but it’s so fucking awesomely riff driven and rich that I’m loving it.  Though their page claims them to be Death/Black Metal, I really hear very little to do with Black Metal. Maybe their lyrics have something to do with trees or blackened abyssal peaks of infernally doomed goat raping or something. Pretty much to me, the only black metal part about this shit is sometimes they use the drum beat. That’s a damn good thing in this case

Basically, Vasaeleth is and heavy and fully adept, but not annoying or trying too hard.  That’s the key to this album. Also, the production fucking rules for their sound.  It feels like the whole thing was recorded in an endless cave of despair. Funny enough, for such a “metal” album, I think it’s the hints of punk seeping through are what really draw me in and hold my attention. Every song is based on fairly simple structures, solidly defined riffs, and feature a surprising lack of solos and general wankery. Shit, the album even comes in at 30minutes pretty much on the dot. A refreshing change from the seemingly eternal length of most metal albums of late.

Basically Vasaeleth is in the business of unadulterated heaviness, and business on Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin is fucking great. If you’re into either Portal and Coffins you’ll love this shit.

Gorillaz – Plastic Beach (2010) [EMI] // Grade: A+

The theme with Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz project seems to be one album about every half decade and right on that mark, Albarn and his rag tag bunch of always unexpected collaborators satiate anticipation with a third album, Plastic Beach. Derived from the Gorillaz unfinished Carousel project, Plastic Beach pulls from cross-cultural influences, tapping a wide variety of collaborators including Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Kano, Lou Reed, Gruff Rhys, Snoop Dogg and The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music on a record that’s more pop than anything else.

Plastic Beach is wildly inventive and once you give the album a few listens in its entirety, you’ll agree that no one else but Albarn under the Gorillaz moniker could have pulled off cartoon pop with this much creativity and charisma. Albarn executed the majority of the album’s production himself and his ear for pairing his guest vocalists with just the right backing tracks is an artform in itself. The carinvalesque electronic big band beats of “Sweepstakes” host a slew of dizzying, woozy rhymes from Mos Def. Unexpectedly, Lou Reed is at his best we’ve heard him in years lending the slowly-paced tongue of his classic years to “Some Kind of Nature” over a bright landscape of light poppy beats met by an orchestral chorus. All three of Plastic Beach’s singles “Stylo”, “Superfast Jellyfish” and “On Melancholy Hill” are excellent, but “Stylo” is the standout of the bunch, one of the album’s strongest tracks, taken to another level via Bobby Womack’s politically-charged, impassioned wailing.

Plastic Beach crashes through cultural and music barriers, mixing hip hop with space pop, world music with funk and every possible combination in between. It’s perhaps a less conceptual album than the previous Gorillaz releases, but easily nabs Albarn the long-deserved title of creative visionary. Kudos to Albarn for keeping the Gorillaz going a decade and only getting more inventive and original along the way.

The Art Museums – Rough Frame (2010) [Woodsist] // Grade: C

The Art Museums are a lo-fi Bay area duo for who have been garnering attention with their throwback to the Scottish indie pop sound of the 80s . Their debut LP Rough Frame is  tough nut to crack… While stand out tracks “Oh, Modern Girl” and “Paris Cafe” are catchy very easy to embrace, the rest of the album, while enjoyable is also forgettable as songs mostly blend together. Part of the problem, is that like most Woodsist releases the album is very much mired in the raw and unfinished lo-fi sound the label has been cultivating for years. And truthfully that isn’t doing The Art Museums any favors.

For example take opening track “We Can’t Handle It”… the bands lackluster and rudimentary drum machine sequencing almost totally overshadow the strength of the vocals and guitar melodies. And while sure that could be (and has been) a charming rough touch, on Rough Frame it just one of many examples of strength of song clashing with presentation. So while I can appreciate the ambition (and a few tracks), it’s the end result that fall short here.

Shy Child – Liquid Love (2010) [Wall of Sound] // Grade: C+

Before I argue that Shy Child’s latest feels glossed over and redundant, let’s pause to appreciate its little bit of charm: Liquid Love does a fine job of skittering between two disparate sorts of 80s schtick. Type A: JC Penney dressing room 80s. Back-to-school shopping in humid August with Hall & Oates and Phil Collins, Heart’s “These Dreams” and racks of neon bike shorts. Type B: Moroder 80s. Tron and Wendy Carlos 80s. Robots and dystopia and fast, futuristic cars. Hell, let’s even throw a little John Carpenter in there; a few moments of first single “Disconnected” (maybe the best track on the album) have a serious, if fleeting, Big Trouble In Little China vibe.

Still: Shy Child’s latest—a major POV shift from the duo’s hysterical, explosive dance on Noise Won’t Stop—feels glossed over and redundant. All the Wendy Carlos in the world can’t save Liquid Love from itself, because you know what? This market’s already been cornered. Pop-funk electro retro: we’re lousy with it. And it’s not just that Datarock and Junior Boys have already saturated (and perfected) a similar sort of situation; so many of the songs on Liquid Love fade and fizzle and fall asleep on themselves, it’s difficult not to walk away feeling just as overwhelmingly ambivalent.

The first half is better. “Take Us Apart” and its grumbling, propulsive bass. The title track’s Fleetwood Mac samples and a bunch of floaty, falsetto vocals that complement more often than they distract. “Criss Cross” goes full-on Moroder, and though it chugs through seven minutes when it could’ve ended at four, it’s a cool, crisp bright spot. But by the time we get to “The Beatles” and an almost shockingly lackluster “Depth of Feel”, Liquid Love’s pretty much hit the hay. You can sense the energy (or at least sense that there’s supposed to be some), but actually feeling it?  Not really. It’s a shame to feel so nothing about a band that previously inspired at least a little excitement—even if you hate Shy Child, you can’t deny their exuberance—but here we are. Give the first bits a spin, but the rest? Eh. Up to you.

Blasphemophagher – For Chaos, Obscurity and Desolation (2009) [Nuclear War Now!] // Grade: B

To say Blasphemophagher embodies a certain shock value is an understatement. They use monikers like Atomic Incinerator of Necronuclear Collapse & Plutonium Winds, R.R. Unholy Bastard & Phosphene Wargas and Necrovomiterror for their names (written in Gothic whenever possible) and a sephia filter for their promotional photos. Somehow they pull off a mix of Motörhead meets army surplus store in the middle of Florida as their style and being Italian, they go over the top with that. Their presence, along with their healthy mixture of black, thrash and death metal, has earned Blasphemophagher a name, or at least a buzz, in the metal scene and helped keep their label, Nuclear War Now! Productions, in business.

For Chaos, Obscurity and Desolation mashes up every significant band in the past few decades. From Bathory to Napalm Death, this album, like the band, is all over the place. Brutally engaging vocals, sharp riffs and stomping drums fill the 40-minute long album. “Intro – Descending into Extermination”, gives you a foul taste of what to expect; rotten flesh in a blender. If you don’t like the way this decrepit intro tastes after the initial sip, you won’t want to down the rest. “Chaos Obscurity & Desolation” gives us a gift in the form of a blast-beat canker sore. More menacing vocals, courtesy of Unholy Bastard’s infected windpipe. Each track in the album kinda runs together after this point. There’s no real break from the onslaught; but at 40 minutes, do we really need one?

“Ascending to Chaosthrone – Outro” is my favorite track and coincidentally, the last. Which is a saving grace for Blasphemophagher. It’s one hell of a way to end the album. Again, it’s mostly blast beats and raspy growls, but that’s the name of the game. As the track fades out, the band engages in a twisted and typically-demonic incantation. What did you expect? Actual singing? For Chaos, Obscurity and Desolation is a great mixture of genres that I admire, combined in an above-average attempt at capturing stage presence in a 40-minute LP. For some reason, I think you, Beelzebub and Blasphemophagher would agree with that.

Liars – Sisterworld (2010) [Mute] // Grade: A

Context is very important when it comes to the music of the Liars. Often influenced by geography, their experimental sound is full of exciting unpredictability. Each of the Liars’ previous four albums have existed in their own space, standalone works that speak to the band’s creative prowess. For Sisterworld, their fifth full-length album, the Liars head to LA, and create an unsettling but ultimately beautiful collection of songs based around the faces that lurk in the fringe of a city known for plastic glamour.

The Liars are no easy listen. Their song structures are often complex and they’re not afraid to clash their vocals with their instrumentation, should they decide it produces a more artistic result. In that respect, Sisterworld is at times a difficult listen, but this is where context wins over. Ambient sounds, alienated rhythms and brooding vocals that alternate with lunatic explosions effectively create a no rules landscape of fringe dwellers and societal dropouts.

Inspired by a murder frontman Angus Andrew witnessed, “Scarecrows On A Killer Street” is an aggressive track of noise that gradually dissipates to a pulsing sprawl. Immediately following, “I Can Still See An Outside World”, picks up the dreamlike instrumentation, hitting its peak with an unexpected cloud of dark, loud guitar. It’s these kind of moments across the album, where juxtaposed tracks pick up and play off each other’s subtle elements, that unites Sisterworld through smartness and creativity.

If you’ve ever seen (and found yourself fascinated by) Marc Singer’s documentary Dark Days that follows a group people living underground in the abandoned NYC Freedom Tunnel, Sisterworld evokes that same feeling of unrest and unpredictability, a place where  lost souls forging their own world in the shadows.

White Car – S/T EP (2010) [Rainbow Body] // Grade: A

It makes so much sense that White Car are from Chicago. Where else? Over 20 years on since Wax Trax! shoved the city (okay, the world) into some of the flat-out best industrial and EBM, and this wicked two-piece are ready to revive the CHI tradition in all its menacing grandeur. Only a pocketful of bands have embraced this surging throwback so well—Passions, //TENSE//, pick your poison—and this debut EP puts White Car right there among them.

Think Front 242 and With Sympathy-era Ministry: undulating EBM with a real creep-funk vibe. And though the four-song EP nails a lot of influences in an itty-bitty time frame, it manages to do so with pretty minimal fanfare; White Car doesn’t teeter on a soapbox screaming HEY GUYS, WE’RE INTO INDUSTRIAL AND STUFF! until you’re forced to pay attention. Each track is its own simmering, smooth burn, from the pulsing arpeggios of “The Bridge” straight through to the full-on smash and crash of “Not Right.” So perfect.

Of course, like any good EP—and this one’s on a limited run, so grab the vinyl fast—White Car leaves you nearly pining for more. Get your fix at Glasslands tonight and hope for a full-length (or at least another EP) ASAP.

jj – n° 3 (2010) [Secretly Canadian] // Grade: A-

Lest you worry that the rampant acclaim of jj’s last album put them in a more somber, austere sort of place, rest assured: n° 3’s opening track is essentially a Game cover. They’ve shoved it into a real boozy little ballad—Frida Hyvonen on Dilauded or something—but it’s still Game. It’s still jj.

But we don’t really know jj, do we? Be it aesthetic decision, run-of-the-mill social awkwardness or some combo of both, the Swedish indie-pop duo (meets modern soul and ambient twee and whatever else) are clearly fond of operating under a lead cloak of mystery. It’s a ghostliness that made n° 2 even more immediate: a discovery, an unearthing. The kick of digging into an album that had few discernible roots. And though we understand them a bit more now—thanks in part to their signing with Secretly Canadian—n° 3 has that same sense of unreality. I mean, I know the pair’s from Sweden, but these songs could very well have come from, like, Atlantis or something.

“Let Go”. All baroque twinkles; an underwater boardwalk dream. The hasty new-age bossa “Voi Parlate, Io Gioco”. “And Now” and its ballooning strings, the danceable glitter of “Into The Light”. There’s not a corner of n° 3 untouched by a sort of teal enchantment, even while Elin Kastlander—what a throaty, red-wine sort of girl—croons heartbreak and reluctant happiness, the endless hope for escape. Thematically, or at least sonically, the album is little more than a second leg to n° 2. But listen again: it’s fuller, more immersed. If n° 2 was the sound of kids forced to grow up way too fast, n° 3 is those same kids actually growing up.

Of course, that doesn’t kill the the occasional bout of  rough and tumble whimsy, if such a thing is possible. See: Game’s “My Life”, the Knife-like thump of “Golden Virginia” and a whole bunch of jaunty rhythms that giggle at themselves just as often as they evoke melancholy. Still with the sense of humor. Still so tough and lovely. Still jj.