Enon - High Society
(Touch & Go)

It might not happen the first time you hear Enon. It might not even happen the second time. But sooner or later, if you continue to listen, it will suddenly hit you: this band kicks ass.

What started off as a low key collaboration between John Schmersal (formerly of Brainiac) and Skeleton Key members Rick Lee and Steve Calhoon, has quickly evolved into one of the more eclectic and exciting musical experiments this side of the Flaming Lips. While their first full-length release, Believo, was more of a lo-fi indie rock experience, the new record High Society has introduced a futuristic pop sensibility that takes their music to a whole other level of addictiveness.

The new dimension in Enon’s sound seems to be mostly a result of adding Toko Yasuda, formerly of Blonde Redhead and The Lapse, to the band. Her cute female vocals mix beautifully with Schmersal’s alternately high-pitched and gutteral yelps.

High Society presents several distinct songwriting styles, all wrapped up in one colourful little package. Most of the songs on which Yasuda sings are danceable synth pop numbers that meet somewhere along the lines of Devo, bis and Cibo Matto. Songs like “In This City” and “Disposable Parts” are guaranteed to get your body moving one way or another.

One the other hand, there are a number of straight-ahead big rock songs lead by Schmersal’s crunchy guitar riffs and unpredictable vocal delivery. “Old Dominion” sounds like it could pass for a demented Weezer song, while “Pleasure and Privilege” is the closest Enon come to recalling the spasmodic freak-out rock of Schmersal’s old band Brainiac. The album’s single, “Carbonation”, is the culmination of mixing both synth pop and rock styles, and it finds Schmersal and Yasuda sharing vocal duties over fuzzy guitars and synthesized pops and crackles.

But wait, there’s more! The unforgettable “Native Numb”, features a creepy distorted bass and vocal backdrop complimented by erratic guitar and electronic melodies, while the album’s title track is a sombre ballad that feels more like something left over from Believo.

Does this mixture of musical styles have you intrigued yet? It should, because High Society is one of the most innovative yet listenable albums to come out this year. It is bizarre and challenging but smoothed over with pop hooks that will leave your head spinning. While High Society may be more accessible than Believo, it is in no way less satisfying to listen to.

This is one band I will be following closely in the future. Who knows what kind of ingenious recordings they will come up with next? I can only hope it it will be something remotely as enjoyable as High Society. — Sean

Ultimate Sunshine Tour
Featuring The Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, Cake, De La Soul
Tuesday August 20, 2002 @ Phoenix Plaza, Pontiac, MI

How far would you go to see the Flaming Lips play? Would you travel through the depths of hell and back just to see them perform one song? Would you cut off an arm and a leg just to be able to afford the cost of admission?

Hmm… if you answered yes to those last two questions, then you definitely have some issues. Thankfully, we didn’t have to travel through hell to see a Flaming Lips concert, although the experience may in some ways be comparable.

Pontiac Michigan is a suburb of Detroit, no doubt owing its name to one of the many fine automobile lines manufactured right there in the Motor City. Although I preferred to see a show in a suburb as opposed to braving the dangers of crime-infested Detroit (I don’t want to experience Judgement Night first hand), I have to admit that Pontiac did leave something to be desired. It seemed as dirty and depressing as the images of nearby Flint from Michael Moore’s movie Roger & Me… then again, maybe we were just on the bad side of town.

At any rate, I was surprised that Pontiac was only about a 4 hour drive from the St.Catharines/Toronto area, and the drive on the way there was fairly smooth. We even encountered the friendliest border guard ever… I don’t think I’ve ever met a nice one before, at least not in our neck of the woods. After we told him we were going to a rock show, and we assured him that we weren’t going to be messing around in the “mash” pit (or was it “nash” pit?), he let us continue on our merry way.

When we finally reached our destination we were surprised to find that the venue was on top of a parking garage, with what quite possibly may be the biggest American flag ever made flapping in the breeze overhead. It was pretty strange. Of course, I had been oblivious to the fact that the concert we had come to see was actually one of those blasted outdoor festival deals… the “Unlimited Sunshine Tour” it was called I believe. Past experience has taught me that these things rarely make for a satisfying musical performance, but after driving 4 hours I was willing to give it a shot.

As we arrived, we caught the last half of Modest Mouse’s set. I’m not overly familiar with their music but I liked what I heard. Raw, lo-fi indie rock… there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Their set kind of went downhill when someone joined them onstage with a banjo however. He was a member of the Hackensaw Boys, a country/bluegrass band that played briefly after Modest Mouse, while De La Soul were setting up their gear. The Hackensaw Boys seemed to get the crowd worked up, but they just turned me off. The place already had an authentic country hick atmosphere to it, they didn’t need to shove it in our faces. They did invite everyone to stop by their van and smoke some J’s afterwards though.

De La Soul were next, and although I don’t have much to say about them, I will say that old school hip-hop is fun to watch live, at least for a short period of time. They had a lot of fun on stage, and interacted well with the crowd. They were playful and yet respectful of the fact that many people at the show were not necessarily “hip-hop heads”, and were more interested in the rock bands on the bill. For a few moments, I actually felt a sense of unity among the audience. Sort of. They brought a guest MC on stage for a few songs near the end (Dres from Black Sheep), and he added even more energy to the performance.

As you know, The Flaming Lips were the band we had come to see, and just as they sun was sinking below the horizon, they emerged on stage and lit up the darkening sky appropriately. Although I wasn’t well acquainted with their discography either, I was thoroughly impressed. Their stage show was among the best I have ever seen at a rock concert.

There were people in animal costumes shining flashlights through green smoke, and giant balloons filled with confetti being jostled through the crowd until they popped and showered their contents everywhere. They had huge rotating mirrorballs on stage, as well as a projection screen with synched up video footage for each song. Many of their songs were introduced with video clips of past performances from various late night talk shows. The very first clip was definitely the best however, as it was taken from their appearance on Beverly Hills 90210. It’s hard to believe that the Flaming Lips were actually that popular at one point in their career. To quote Steve from the same episode: “I’m not really into alternative music, but these guys rock the house!”

They opened with the first single from their new album, “Do You Realize”, which electrified the whole place and kickstarted the rock. The additional instrumentation in the song was filled in by a backing tape, but the song nonetheless gave the impression that they were conducting some sort of bizarre orchestra on stage. For the most part they performed as a 3 piece band. Some songs had pre-recorded drum parts, which allowed for live keyboards to be played, but other times they switched up and laid down live drums instead.

One thing quickly became clear… the Flaming Lips are great musicians, but they are also a very visual band. During one song, frontman Wayne Coyne put fake blood all over his face and made use of a camera attached to his microphone to project an extreme close-up of his face onto the video screen.

Another highlight was the title track from the new album, “Yoshimi Battles The Evil Robots”. Coyne had a strange attachment to his acoustic guitar that allowed him to make weird electronic noises when he passed his hand over it. They focused mostly on new material from this album, with the exception of their big hit, She Don’t Use Jelly, which sounded even more raw and vital when performed live.

The truth is, for about 8 songs, I was completely in awe of their show. Unfortunately, it was about then that they stopped playing. Only 8 measly songs, and no encore! I guess it was understandable, considering that it was a festival and all, but I had been hoping that, being one of the headlining bands, they would be allowed to play longer. Short sets do leave the audience wanting more though, which is generally a good thing. The performance probably seemed even more stellar because of the fact that it was cut short.

After The Flaming Lips abruptly finished, we joined all the passed out stoners on the grass (no pun intended) to watch part of Cake’s set, which was quite dull in comparison. Then we were on the road again, headed back to St.Catharines, all in the same night. Despite a bit of a scare when our fuel level dropped very low (warning: there are no 24 hour gas stations along the 403), we made it home safe and sound, feeling exhausted, and yet more enlightened than we had been when we left.

Was it a little silly that we drove 8 hours and paid like 50 bucks to see a 40 minute set by the Flaming Lips? Yes. The road trip was part of the fun though. Next time I do it, I’d rather see a band in a slightly more scenic setting, that’s all. (No offense to Pontiac, Michigan… your giant flag was quite nice.) More than anything, I think the experience left me wanting to see the Flaming Lips play their own show sometime, and the next time they roll through your town, you’d be smart to check them out too. — Sean

One Hour Photo
Written and Directed by: Mark Romanek
Starring: Robin Williams, Eriq La Salle, Michael Vartan, Connie Nielsen, Dylan Smith, Gary Cole

The roles that Robin Williams has been taking lately are not what you would expect from him. The guy who is best known for his loveable comedic characters in family films like Mrs. Doubtfire and Flubber has taken serious roles in the past and shown potential for acting dramatically, but with recent films like Insomnia and Death To Smoochy he is exploring a different, darker side of himself. At first I thought it would be annoying, just another example of Williams trying to prove his versatility as an actor, but after seeing Insomnia I realized that he is completely believable as an unstable serial killer-type. In One Hour Photo he treads a similar path and the result is, in my opinion, one of his best performances ever.

What is it about movies focusing on psychopaths and slightly deranged people that make them so compelling to us? Maybe it’s the fact that insanity allows these characters to see things that the rest of us don’t. And that is, in many ways, what One Hour Photo is all about. Sy Parrish (Robin Williams) is a photo lab technician at a department store and he takes great care in developing photos for the customers. In fact, he is a little bit obsessive about them, always working extra hard to make sure the photos come out looking as crisp and colourful as possible. He is a lonely guy, and through his job he shares in the lives of all the customers, which makes him feel happy and needed.

But his obsession goes further than that.He is not really satisfied with photos because they do not provide a complete picture of people’s lives… they neglect details that he deems important. There is one family that Sy feels particularly close to, as they have been taking their film to him for over 6 years. Whenever the Yorkins drop off some film to be developed, Sy prints off a copy for himself. As he becomes more and more fixated on them, he feels the need to be physically involved in their life… he wants to do favours for them to win them over, and he daydreams about being called “Uncle Sy”. Then he learns of some marital problems between Nina (Connie Nielsen) and Will (Michael Vartan, looking a heck of a lot like Tom Cruise here) Yorkin, and he is eventually pushed to take matters into his own hands. The cast also includes E.R.’s Eriq La Salle as a cop, and Gary Cole from Office Space as Sy’s supervisor.

It would have been easy for this movie to turn into a typical, cliched stalker flick, but Mark Romanek is too clever to let the movie fall into these traps. His direction is quite impressive for someone coming out of a music video background.

In a lot of ways One Hour Photo has a David Fincher style to it, and it reminded me a lot of his movie, Se7en. (Perhaps the connection there is that Romanek directed the Nine Inch Nails video for “Closer”.) There are many interesting camera angles and movements, lots of use of shadows, lighting and colour, and some cool special effects shots that show the insides of a camera working and film being developed in an AGFA machine. The movie has a dark, sinister look as the story progresses, but by contrast, the scenes in the department store are almost painfully bright white and sterile.

The music is also a stellar component of the film, from the edgy build-up of the orchestral score to the schizophrenic electronic beats that echo loudly when we enter Sy’s head… there’s even the laughably mindless muzak that plays in the background of the department store, and I would think that alone is enough to explain Sy’s mental instability.

Probably the thing that I liked the most about One Hour Photo is the fact that it feels realistic, which is a credit to the story and the acting. Sy’s character is not a complete nutjob from day one, and even by the time we reach the movie’s climax, we’ve really learned to empathize with the poor guy. In truth, that’s what makes his character so interesting — he’s not completely off the deep end, he’s just waded in a little farther than the average person would go. Throughout the film, Robin Williams plays this angle perfectly. He acts like a polite and reasonable human being, but then he’ll just go that one step further, and as a viewer your stomach knots up at the tension and anxiety created by his lack of social awareness and his creepy habits.

I should mention that there is one part of the story I found slightly questionable… I know that anime is all the rage with the kiddies, but do they really play with Neon Genesis Evangelion toys nowadays? Let’s be serious here!

One Hour Photo is an engaging, suspenseful and artistic thriller that once again proves that cutting edge indie films are where it’s at. Robin Williams is to be commended for his performance, and indeed, even just his involvement in this movie. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Now that this film has been given a wider release due to its success, it should be playing at a theatre near you. Just remember, after seeing this movie, you’ll be thinking twice the next time you drop off some film to be developed at your local Wal-Mart. — Sean

Stealing Harvard
Directed by: Bruce McCulloch
Written by: Peter Tolan, Martin Hynes
Starring: Jason Lee, Tom Green, Leslie Mann, Dennis Farina, Chris Penn

Bruce McCulloch can’t direct. I don’t need to say much more than that, but I will. The former Kid in the Hall has failed us, big time.

“Stealing Harvard” is a generic, unoriginal comedy that is about as memorable as it is funny, which is to say, not very much.

On paper, this movie seems like it could work. The comedic styles of movie stars/skateboard powers Jason Lee and Tom Green seem like an unstoppable team, despite the rampant unoriginality in the script. However, Bruce McCulloch simply cannot frame or time his talented cast enough to make Stealing Harvard worth, at the very most, a Tuesday admission price. And this is coming from one of the very few left who worship the ground Tom Green walks on.

When John (Lee) makes a promise on tape many years back after his daughter loses in a spelling bee (She cant spell “tarp”), he ends up sacrificing the 30,000 dollars he has saved to buy his wife and himself a new home. Unable to tell his wife the truth, John recruited Duff (Green), his loser friend from high school, to find a way to get the money. So they turn to a life of crime. Its been done, but the idea should make for a funny movie. And trust me, the supporting cast is there (Megan Mullally of “Big Daddy”, Dennis Farina of “Snatch”), and the lines are there, but the timing is off and dare I say, unrehearsed, Tom Green has actually been too toned down (though the way he stammers his lines, so very un-movie-star-ish, still made me smile) though made the focus of most scenes, Lee has been made somewhat wooden in his Everyman character (it would seem Lee is only affective when angry and sarcastic, as he is eternally in Kevin Smith’s films). The situations don’t necessarily build to anything, and the resolution to the film comes very easy.

One can’t help but wonder if the pending Hollywood strike kept this movie from receiving the extra attention and help it needed to turn from a barely passable “C” film to a comic gem, which it very well could have been with a responsible, capable filmmaker at the helm. Sorry, Bruce, I love you, your cameo is quite funny, your albums are great. But you need to learn how to frame people and tell people when they need to do something over. Its that important, especially when I have to pay almost twice the price for your movie at Silvercity instead of at AMC. — The Goon

Sparta - Wiretap Scars
(Dreamworks)

The fact that At The Drive-In never got to record a follow up to their major label debut Relationship Of Command is one of the bigger disappointments in recent years of music. A band like ATDI doesn’t come around too often, and as far as I’m concerned they deserved all the hype they got (although I’m still not too sure how the mainstream audiences would have filed them in their music collections). Regardless, every cloud has a silver lining, and in hindsight the break up of At The Drive-In has allowed each of the band members to grow and continue their own musical evolution with a freedom they would never have known had they still been together as one unit.

The debate will rage on about whether it is Sparta or The Mars Volta who are the true heirs to the At The Drive-In throne, and at the moment I can offer no clear answer to that question. I will, however, point out that it takes one great band to be split in half and still produce two other solid and innovative bands that are still better than just about anything else in rock music today.

Sparta, admittedly, are perhaps the less innovative of the two, and yet their first full length release, “Wiretap Scars” will no doubt surprise many people with its brilliance as the band contains the 3 less prominent, non-Afro sporting ATDI members. Wiretap Scars proves that Jim, Paul and Tony (along with their newly recruited friend Matt) feel quite at home when it comes to writing their own songs, and you can tell that there is a real chemistry at work here.

So exactly how much does this album sound like At The Drive-In? Well, Jim’s vocals will remind you of ATDI right off the bat, but contrary to what some people have said, he isn’t purposely trying to sound like ATDI’s frontman Cedric. Many people do not realize that Jim sang backup vocals quite often in At The Drive-In’s songs, which is why his voice sounds so familiar. Although he does not have quite the same vocal range as Cedric, his voice does have a great texture, particularly when he screams, and other times it floats over the music gently. He carries the songs quite well.

Wiretap Scars contains 3 of the 4 songs from Sparta’s Austere EP, and also 3 other songs that were made available on the internet as early demos. Among these early demos was the song Cut Your Ribbon, which stood out as one of my favourites, and is a great choice as the album’s first single. It makes you realize that Jim and Paul were probably more responsible for some of the heavier At The Drive-In riffs from songs like Catacombs, Invalid Litter Dept, and One Armed Scissor.

Not every Sparta song is as abrasive and heavy as Cut Your Ribbon however, in fact it may well be the most aggressive song on the album. Songs like Air, Collapse, and Light Burns Clear, which are more commonplace, execute a progression from delicate and dreamy to explosive and visceral (and back again).

There are also touches of experimentation in Sparta’s sound: bits and pieces of keyboards, piano and electronic drums scattered throughout songs such as Cataract and Echodyne Harmonic, but they are still much more of a straight-ahead rock band than At The Drive-In or The Mars Volta. There isn’t a lot of quirky, guitar noodling in their songs (that was Omar’s department in ATDI), instead they opt for a thicker, layered guitar sound, with some occasional digital delay effects thrown in.

Now that I think about it, this album actually has a lot of similarities to the latest release from another recent Dreamworks signee, Jimmy Eat World.

While Wiretap Scars does not quite have the feel of a masterpiece, it is definitely a pleasant surprise and makes for an excellent record nonetheless. Fans of At The Drive-In should not miss out, and fans of aggressive guitar-based rock in general just may find that Sparta are their new favourite band. — Sean