Music Mondays: "Until We Can't (Let's Go)" by Passion Pit

After something of a break, I’m coming back to finish up my promised three-part series on Passion Pit’s Kindred. Today’s song: “Until We Can’t (Let’s Go)”.

(Also, this was supposed to actually go up on Monday, but then I fell asleep working on it two nights in a row, so that didn’t happen.)

“Until We Can’t” was the third song revealed from Kindred, and it brought my excitement even higher than “Lifted Up (1985)” or “Where the Sky Hangs” had, which was not an easy task. The song just feels immediately big, with a slow, shimmering build into crashing synth chords. Those chords essentially form the backbone of the song, returning for all of the huge choruses and giving the song a sense of purpose. The contrasts with the relatively restrained verses only serve to emphasize the highs and lows.

The lyrics are their own kind of special. They lack the poetry of “Where the Sky Hangs”, but they do feel like a lot of other Passion Pit works. While they’re a lot more direct than songs like “Little Secrets”, the lyrics do the same great job conveying a sense of unease and anxiety. Frontman Michael Angelakos has publically struggled with a variety of mental health issues, and his songs seem like they have been one of his ways of working through them. He’s great at conveying those emotions lyrically as well. Thankfully, “Until We Can’t” (and really, a lot of Kindred) feels like it finds him in a much better place than he’s been in the past, still confronting those issues but coping with them. There’s a sense of restlessness to it, feeling uncomfortable with where you are and wanting to start over; but also the sense that it’s not really the location causing the problem, but yourself, and you jut don’t want to address it. But through it all, there’s a definite sense of optimism to it-that you will find your way out of it eventually, and not stop trying until you do. This one might be my favorite song on Kindred (well, it’s either this, or the next one that I cover).

The Disappointing Case of Tomorrowland

If I were to boil down Tomorrowland to a single phrase, it would be “Meet the Robinsons’ dumb younger cousin”. I’ve long found Meet the Robinsons to be a solid movie, and an underrated entry in the Disney canon, but it took Tomorrowland for me to appreciate how the former does the concept of “optimism-powered, look how awesome the future is!” right. Spoilers ahead, although I’ll specifically mark big ones.

I think the biggest problem is that Tomorrowland is very self-assured that what it’s saying is intelligent without being able to back it up, instead offering up references to smarter things or pining for better times or attacking strawmen or just straight up not doing anything to cover up its problems. For instance, there’s a character named Hugo Gernsback (played by the extremely underutilized Keegan-Michael Key*). Like many things in Tomorrowland, I at first smiled when I discovered that the owner of the science fiction memorabilia store was named “Hugo”; it’s a cute little throwaway gag. Then it goes deeper and reveals that his last name is Gernsback, immediately becoming straight-up cheesy (and as if daring the audience to pick up on its reference-“are you one of the smart ones who will catch this?”). And then, it reveals that it really doesn’t have anything for Hugo to do, and he becomes a plot device before exiting the movie for good, no real impact on the story so to speak of.

 *Also underutilized is his partner Ursula, played by Kathryn Hahn. Based on the rest of the movie, I'm assuming they just didn't have the space to drop that her character's last name was "Le Guin".

Music Mondays: "Where the Sky Hangs" by Passion Pit

I swear I start these things on Mondays, but I need to get better about actually posting them on Mondays. Anyway, I’m going to try and make up for my lack of Music Mondays posts with (hopefully) three this week, and to keep it feeling like a single post, they’ll all be from a single album: Kindred, Passion Pit’s new album.

I’ve long been a fan of Passion Pit. Manners was an all-time classic album, and Gossamer topped even that (although it admittedly took me a few listens to come to that opinion).  I don’t know if I would call Kindred better than the latter, but I liked it to start with, and it’s grown on me as fast as Gossamer did, possibly faster.

I started getting excited for the album as soon as it was announced, and almost right away, Passion Pit added photos to Facebook of upcoming lyrics. All of the lines were great, and two of them came from one early-release song, “Where the Sky Hangs”. “I put my hands in the air, and my knees to the ground” (in Morse code), and “I get caught up in your heart strings”. I can’t really say why I got as excited for those images as I did; after all, they are just words. There is something beautiful about them, though.

Thankfully, the song itself lives up to the beautiful poetry. I’ve heard it compared to “Constant Conversation”, and I can see the comparison, but I feel like “Where the Sky Hangs” is the mature cousin of “Constant Conversations”, if anything. It feels so much smoother. The opening bass line sets this mood, and is a thing of wonder. Michael Angelakos brings his usual falsetto down a little for verses, which makes the jump up for the chorus feel that much grander. The whole thing is the usual lush and intricate arrangements of a Passion Pit, but at their best, with swirling synths over the funky bass groove and a smooth rhythm guitar. The bridge is broken up with beautiful staccato string sounds.

But still, there’s just something about the chorus that really, really makes the song for me. “I get/Caught up in your heartstrings/Way up/Where another sky hangs” is just such beautiful imagery, and with the sounds gives a soaring sensation.

Man, just writing about it again is making me reconsider my initial ranking of Kindred. There’s more to come from this album later, though.

Music Mondays: "Get It" by Matt & Kim

I’ve been a little busy the last few weeks, explaining my lack of Music Mondays, but I will try and make up for that (this one was actually started on a Monday, at least). To start with, I’m covering “Get It” by Matt and Kim.

I recently got to see Matt and Kim live, and while I’ve liked their music for several years now, seeing them in concert gave me a new appreciation for their music. I honestly have no idea how anyone could keep up that energy night after night of touring.

“Get It” is pretty close to what I would consider a perfect representation of a Matt & Kim song. The duo thrives on its simplicity, with a simple but bouncy and catchy synth riff and drums. For a while, and for some reason I can’t quite articulate, I used to think the simplicity of their music was downside. I can’t see now why I thought that; Matt & Kim’s music doesn’t need anything more than what it is. The keys and drums provide more than enough of a groove to feel lively, and it fits with the lyrics.

The lyrics also gave me that vibe for a while, but like the music, they are exactly what they need to be; super honest and heartfelt odes to happiness, with an infectious catchiness. Again, here “Get It” fills the Matt & Kim idiom, with lyrics about enjoying the night. Matt belts “At 1 AM, oh yeah/goddamn, goddamn/we don’t want to go home”, about making mistakes, and so on.

I suppose that all feels very vague and superficial on paper, but to music, it works. And in concert? Well, that’s part of my new appreciation. For as easy as it may be to assume otherwise, Matt & Kim are totally sincere about all of this. Being able to tour is, to them, quite clearly a rush. This is the pair of them, just making the music they want to, enjoying life and celebrating with other people, putting all of that out there for an audience. Seeing it all together only reinforces how catchy everything about their music really is. 

Music Mondays: "Killer Whales" by Smallpools

I’ve been wanting to write more about music than I have been, and considering my best music of 2014 article (the pop version is here, the full list is still forthcoming) made me think about it several different ways. Specifically, I found it much, much easier to write about what I didn’t like than what I did. I want to work on that. So, I’m going to try and make a weekly feature where I write a little bit about a song that I’m listening to recently and why it specifically out of all the things I’m listening to piques my interest.

To start, I’ll be looking at “Killer Whales” by Smallpools. The song technically came out a few months ago, but I’ve been listening to it a lot again this week with the release of their debut album LOVETAP!

Best Billboard Top 100 Songs of 2014

After some delay, here it is:

I found writing this that writing about good stuff is so much harder to do than writing about bad stuff. With bad stuff, like my “Worst of 2015” list, it was mostly easy to narrow down what bothered me and write about that. With the good stuff, I sometimes found it difficult to pinpoint exactly what I liked. Plus, there was a lot more to talk about. But I tried to at least throw in a sentence or two for each as I went through them in chart order.

Worst Billboard Top 100 Songs of 2014

Now that 2015 is here, I think I can officially look back at all things 2014. And as a music fan, the year’s music seems like a good place to start. I’ve always wanted to write about each year’s music, and now that I have Out of Left Field, there’s a natural place to write my thoughts down.

Let’s start with a more contained list before I move on to the year at large: Billboard’s Top 100 songs of the year. I listened to every song on the list at least once to get a feel for what I liked and what I didn't, and I have to say, it was easier for me to narrow down to the songs on the list that I didn’t like. I mean, it makes sense; these songs got popular for a reason. Even if I didn’t think the best songs of the year made the list, there was still plenty of good stuff out there.

However, there was still plenty of lackluster, disappointing, or just not good stuff there, so we may as well get the negative out of the way. Let’s start discussing the songs on the top 100 that I think were bad before I name my worst of the year. I’ll be going in order, starting at the bottom. Also included a links for reference.

The Contrasting Cases of Guardians of the Galaxy and John Carter

Over the course of Christmas Day, I was watching movies with my family. And by some chance, we decided to cover a double feature of two recent science fiction blockbusters, namely Guardian of the Galaxy and John Carter. I had seen both before (in fact, I wrote my thoughts about Guardians here), but watching them back-to-back gave me a reason to compare and contrast the two.

Obviously, the two films enjoyed vastly different levels of success. While Guardians just became the highest grossing film of the year, John Carter barely made back its budget, likely ending any chance at a franchise. What exactly caused such a

Well, there probably isn’t one simple answer. Or rather, there is: Guardians is just a better victory overall. But that’s not too helpful unless we break it down into the minutiae. And while there are several reasons that Guardians is better, I’d like to focus specifically on one specific storytelling aspect.