12/06/2013

Noah Baumbach’s Evolving Perspective

Noah Baumbach is terrified of failure. He likes to make movies that explore the psyches of confused and over-educated people who don’t have any idea of what to make of their lives, and thus often end up making a mess. His debut film, 1995’s Kicking And Screaming, detailed four young men who had just graduated from college and refused, at least in their minds, to enter into the adult world. The Squid and the Whale gave us an adolescent’s perspective on what it’s like to see your well-to-do family unravel right before your eyes. The film was based almost entirely on Baumbach’s own childhood, raised in Brooklyn by two aspiring writers. His last film, 2010’s Greenberg, dealt with a failed musician in his mid-40s who has let his life pass him by. His life had turned him into a bitter coward who was all but unbearable to those around him.

His new film explores similar themes from the other side of the fence. Frances Ha documents the wanderings of an attractive 27-year-old dancer who has trouble connecting to the world outside of her head. Shot beautifully in black and white, the movie is a throwback in style and substance to the New York Woody Allen defined in Manhattan and Annie Hall. It’s something of a lover letter to youth and indecision, which is to say that it values character over plot. Frances’ (played by Greta Gerwig, who also co-wrote the script with Baumbach) struggles are entirely unexceptional. Her friend moves out, she needs an apartment, she’s broke, she’s not really doing what she knows she should be doing, etc.

Frances’ non-life-threatening mental gymnastics are easily relatable to anyone who’s ever felt cheated by the dissolutions of youth or the promises of higher education. But unlike the characters of Greenberg or The Squid and the Whale, Gerwig’s character doesn’t let life’s grim realities sour her worldview and turn her bitter and cold. Maybe there’s a sequel for that down the road. For now she seems ready to approach adulthood cautiously, one step at a time, without losing her identity in the process. It may seem like a small victory, but it’s a victory nonetheless.


Lane Koivu 
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05/06/2013

Ariel Pink’s Teenage Symphonies

Ariel Pink has never been easy to digest. Viewed by critics and fans alike as a scuzzed-out L.A. drug zombie, his music can come off as confusing, charged full of pop hooks, nonsensical lyrics, unexplainable instrumental wanderings and spoken-word interruptions, and a fair dose of 60s folk-pop references. Many of his songs would fare well alongside The Byrds and Donovan on am radio, while others are so bizarre and nonsensical that they make The Butthole Surfers seem as chart-friendly as The Everly Brothers.

It’s hard to know where to put him in the pop lexicon, but like all successful songwriters, his appeal lies in his ability to forge new ground while keeping one foot firmly rooted in traditionalism. Ever since landing a record deal with Animal Collective’s startup label Paw Tracks in 2003 he’s been on a steady upswing, releasing select work from his back catalog before moving to 4AD and blowing up with 2010’s artistic and critical breakthrough Before Today. That record cemented Pink’s reputation as the idiot savant of lo-fi bedroom pop, something like the 21st Century’s answer to Brian Wilson: an erratic pop craftsman in his early 30s writing near-perfect songs about people in their early 20s for people in their teens romanticize and obsess over.

“Round and Round”, the lead single from Before Today, has become the “Good Vibrations” for the twenty-something crowd. Former Girls’ frontman Christopher Owens called him our generation’s greatest songwriter, and the critics are on board. Pink himself said that the song was a mashup of three separate tracks he had written over a decade-long period, a process that would serve you well to keep in mind when listening to his music. On his latest, 2012’s Mature Themes, tracks change direction without warning (“Is This The Best Spot?”), lyrics make absolutely no sense, at least on a front-brain level (“Kinski Assassin”, “Farewell American Primitive”), while perfect pop nuggets fly out of nowhere (“Mature Themes”, “Baby”, “If Only In My Dreams”. His live shows are notoriously unpredictable. It can get confusing, but that’s part of the fun. Either way, what he’s doing is hard to put down and walk away from. More often than not, you ask yourself, is Ariel Pink an idiot or a genius? His entire career seems to be casually answering your question with a question: can’t it be both?

Ariel Pink plays Irving Plaza in New York on June 6th.

Lane Koivu 
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22/05/2013

Bukowski’s Lost Drawings

Los Angeles writer Michael C. Ford was going through his desk at the LA Free Press one day in 1974 when he stumbled on a handful of drawings by one of the publication’s famed contributors, Charles Bukowski. The drawings weren’t much more than doodles, quick line sketches in black ink on standard-sized 8 ½” x 11” printer paper. Most were made to accompany “Notes of Dirty Old Man”, Bukowski’s column for the LA Free Press (The Freep), and they featured Bukowski doing many of the things he liked to write about: staring at women, admiring legs, watching horses at the racetrack, and drinking port wine and beer in bed. Ford tracked down Bukowski, who wrote for the Freep until it folded in 1969, and offered him his drawings back. “Ah, you hang on to ‘em, kid,” Bukowski said, “they might be worth something someday.”

He was right. As Book Tryst’s Stephen Gertz points out, Ford’s collection resurfaced earlier this year at the 46th California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Pasadena, ushering in a new wave of appreciation for these obscure and highly original sketches. With their deadpan wit, it’s hard to wonder why these drawings fell by the wayside in the first place. They were originally published alongside the column, but have been omitted from both collected volumes of writing, Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969) and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns (2011).

“Notes” originally began in 1967 in the underground paper Open City and moved to The Freep when Open City folded in 1969. The column branded Bukowski a savage outlaw and made him a minor celebrity in LA, and was loosely syndicated in other underground columns across the country until the column folded altogether in 1976. Like his best writing, these drawings demonstrate Buk’s uncanny ability to communicate complicated emotions concisely, humorously, and without apology.

Lane Koivu 
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17/05/2013

Gestalten’s new Velo 2nd Gear: Bicycle Culture & Style

We have already been thinking about the bicycle as a significant accessory that can define a look. Buying one is like picking a pair of sneakers or a sweater; it can reveal a lot about your personality and taste. Choosing a model over another one means being closer to a certain type of lifestyle. But the lifestyle of bicycles is not just appearance, it’s a real culture community.


“Gestalten’s new Velo-2nd Gear: Bicycle Culture and Style book” is on the other hand a medium to showcase the most beautiful bikes around the globe, but also a narrative process that retraces the whole world behind the item, style included. Edited by Sven Ehmann and Robert Klaten, respectively the Creative Director and the Editor, the edition presents itself as a celebration of cycling, avoiding the commonplaces based on the green and healthy lifestyle.

The crucial aspect of this book is the way they tell the viewer the entire story behind the pictures, so that one has the impression of being part of the travel itself, and through the pages one can discover a street culture that is not just aesthetic but also cultural and technological, a continuously evolving millennial mean of transport.


You’ll find behind-the-scene photos of famous contemporary manufactures along with best shops and showrooms worldwide, as well as underlined all those inventions that improved – and still do – the structure of the bike itself, the most extravagant designs, the most special accessories and clothing, and importantly enough also the people who ride these wheels.

In a 256-pages edition the reader gets the chance to completely embrace the culture of a very complex and varied universe; not stopping only to old school fixies but also beach cruisers, light-framed racers, mountain bikes and a section dedicated to specialized tour routes.


Francesca Crippa – Images from the book Velo—2nd Gear, Copyright Gestalten 2013 
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17/05/2013

Ballet in Berghain – Masse by Staatsballett Berlin

On a Saturday evening in the beginning of May, it wasn’t the usual party crowd lingering outside the club Berghain in the former east Berlin, the techno palace and former power station building that has come to sum up the whole idea of Berlin as the number one party capital. For the world premiere of Masse, a co-production between Staatsballett Berlin and Berghain, classical ballet dancers and choreographers came together with some of Berlin’s finest DJ’s and music producers, to create a triple bill in one of the halls of the gigantic building.

To bring some more art cred to the project, the Berlin based artist Norbert Bisky, considered one of the most important contemporary painters, created the stage design backing up all of the three choreographies. Created by Xenia Wiest, Nadja Saidakova and Tim Plegge, the three very different pieces are performed to techno by big names such as DIN, Henrik Schwarz and Marcel Dettman & Frank Wiedemann.

17 meters high, the performance hall used to serve as the boiler house of the combined heat and power station, built in 1954/55 as part of the GDR building masterplan including nearby monumental Soviet-style boulevard Karl-Marx-Allee. As of Masse, the room is open for the public for the very first time, meaning that this place is somewhere where not even the most regular Berghain clubber has ever set foot in. And it is an incredibile venue for a project like this; the raw, unfinished textures and industrial concrete, meeting the grace and power of some of Europe’s best classical dancers to dark and deep music.

The most magic happens already in the first piece, Quinque Viae – Dynamics of Existence, when two unbeliveable dancers meet in a furious pas de deux. I’m not sure it was because of the lack of air in the hall or because of the beauty, but the result was actually breathtaking. And for those who didn’t know – ballet and techno is a match made in heaven.

Masse is performed until the end of May, tickets are all sold out.

Helena Nilsson Strängberg 
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15/05/2013

DFA Turns 12, Throws Massive Party

The Red Bull Music Academy is in full swing here in New York City, and despite not having much use for the energy drink, the events they’re putting on throughout the city are the bee’s knees. The cat’s meow. The cream of the cream of the crop. You understand. There was that illustrated talk with Brian Eno, a conversation with Erykah Badu, a string of Sunday afternoon conversations about classic David Bowie albums featuring Tony Visconti and Nile Rodgers, a $5 Four Tet concert, etc. etc. The only problem is that most of the events somehow manage to sell out before they go on sale. But most of the events, and all of the lectures, are available for free online. Because let’s be honest: most of us won’t make it.

Next up is a sold-out show celebrating the 12th anniversary of the venerable New York dance label DFA Records, at Grand Prospect Hall on May 25th. DFA was founded in 2001 by producers James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy and former Nickelodeon child star Jonathan Galkin. They’ve been virtually bullet-proof since dropping The Rapture’s single “House of Jealous Lovers” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvtSF6JYln8 12” in 2002. Murphy went on to form LCD Soundsystem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve9Y-dl40sQ, one of the decades most adored and influential bands, and the label seemed to effortlessly release ass-shaking singles from the likes of Hercules and Love Affair, Hot Chip, The Juan Maclean, Black Dice, Shit Robot, and YACHT. DFA Records made it cool for white kids to dance again.

The Red Bull party is set to be the biggest in the label’s history and will feature (in order of appearance): James Murphy, Jonathan Galkin, The Juan Maclean, The Crystal Ark, Pat Mahoney, Nancy Whang, Tim Sweeney, YACHT, Vito & Druzzi (The Rapture), Factory Floor, Prinzhorn Dance School, Planningtorock, Larry Gus, Dan Bodan, Black Dice, Still Going, and Marcus Marr. They’re more New York than Kat’z Deli: Too old to be new, too new to be classic.

I know most of you live in Europe and whatnot, but if you’re in New York and can’t make it into the DFA party, Mr. Murphy will also be giving a Red Bull-sponsored talk at NYU on May 27th. It’s $5, it’s sold out, but it’s well worth a try.

Lane Koivu 
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08/05/2013

Marc Maron Is Finally Enviable

Marc Maron has always been a jealous guy. For years the veteran comedian has watched pals like Louis C.K. and Jon Stewart become household names while he’s struggled to stay afloat — gigging in small clubs, running a largely ignored one-man off-Broadway show, hosting unsuccessful radio and TV shows — while also battling two divorces and a debilitating drug addiction. Over the years he’s begrudgingly come to be known as, for lack of a better term, “the comic’s comic”. Case in point: he’s appeared on Conan O’Brien more than any other comedian, 47 times by his count, but most people couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup. “There’s no such thing as a career in comedy,” he’s famously joked, and, for him at least, that seemed to be the case.

But with a new book, a new show, and a thriving podcast now in its fifth year, it’s safe to say that Marc Maron is finally having his moment. A personal memoir, “Attempting Normal“, came out earlier this month, and his new show, IFC’s “Maron“, debuted last week. In it Maron plays a dramatized version of himself as he navigates past missteps, relationships, and newfound success. Like Louie C.K.’s show “Louie“, Maron finds the comic examining real-life failures through the lens (shield?) of meta-comedy. In the show Maron is selfish and cowardly, but he’s also very insightful and charming. After watching a few scenes one begins to wonder if he even had to write anything that resembled a script before the cameras started rolling.

Such unfiltered honesty lies at the heart of Maron’s charm. WTF With Marc Maron, his homespun twice-a-week podcast, has more than 2.5 million listeners each month and ranks second in iTunes top comedy podcasts. He goes back and forth with comics, celebrities, and musicians such as Amy Poehler, Ben Stiller, Jon Hamm, Mel Brooks, and Dick Van Dyke about everything from failed relationships (mostly his own) to the entertainment industry to past drug and alcohol addictions. He is revered for being able to catch his subjects with their guard down. One episode finds Maron and Louis C.K. having a frank talk about why their friendship fell apart; another has him talking about alcoholism with Robin Williams. If his show is even half as genius and insightful, he should be just fine. “People say stuff to him that you can’t imagine them saying to anyone else,” Ira Glass, host of This American Life, told The New York Times in 2011. “And they offer it. They want to give it to him. Because he is so bare, he calls it forward.”

Lane Koivu – Middle Image from NY Times 
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01/05/2013

Dear Diary – David Sedaris Returns

At 56, David Sedaris still keeps a regular diary. “It’s how I start the day,” he recently told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “By writing about the day before.” He’s kept one since 1977 and only misses one or two days a year. Most of his essays and stories come out of it. More than 130 volumes of his diary entries are tucked away and will remain private (at least in his lifetime, wink wink). Talking to NPR about his new book, Let’s Talk Diabetes With Owls, he recounts the story of a seven year-old who once asked him: What’s the point of writing things in your diary?

“That’s a question I’ve asked myself everyday since September 5th, 1977,” he said. “It’s not that I think my life is important, or that future generations might care to know that on June 6th, 2009 a woman with a deaf, drug-addicted mother-in-law taught me how to say I need you stop being an asshole in sign language.”

It’s a question that keeps him going. Sedaris has been a lot of things: an art-school dropout, a meth-head alcoholic, a Manhattan nanny, a closeted gay teenager in rural North Carolina, and, most recently, a volunteer trash collector in West Sussex. But he’s best known for his witty observations about the absurdities of everyday life. No other writer today can touch his sought-after mix of self-deprecation, intuition and resolve. His books, which include Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day, have sold nearly ten million copies since he was first discovered by Ira Glass in Chicago in the early 90s. His readings sell out in minutes. Let’s Talk Diabetes With Owls, his first new collection of non-fiction in five years, won’t make it any easier to get a ticket.

There’s certain topics Sedaris won’t touch, sex and politics among them. Even in his journals, he said, he refers to having sex as “getting romantic”. It’s interesting coming from a guy who has no trouble writing about smoking meth in an abandoned warehouse and making a chair out of pubic hair. “There’s the ‘you’ that you present to the world, and then of course there’s the real one,” he told Gross. For all of his assumed unveiling, Sedaris likes to keep most things to himself. “People say to me, ‘Oh, you’ve exposed everything about you’— no I haven’t. I just give that illusion.”

Lane Koivu 
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22/04/2013

Neglected Holiday

Other than required high school reading, what do Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac and E.B. White have in common? Each crafted some of their most celebrated essays (Capote’s “A House On the Heights” and White’s “Here Is New York” among them) for a largely forgotten magazine called Holiday, a travel rag that, during its heyday in the 50s and early 60s, ranked right up there with Life and Esquire. So why have so few people heard of it?

Measuring in at a hefty 11 by 14 inches, Holiday ran from 1946 through 1977 and, at its height in the 1950s and early 60s, drew more than one million subscribers each month. “The magazine, in effect, sold an idea of travel as enrichment, a literal path to intellectual and spiritual betterment,” Michael Callahan wrote recently in Vanity Fair. “What Vogue did for fashion, Holiday did for destinations.” Part of it was timing. Holiday came about just as World War II was winding down, and many Americans were eager to explore the globe. As Roger Angell explained to Callahan: “It was a peacetime world. And you could see that all of these places that we had become aware of in horrific circumstances were not peacetime places that you wanted to go.”

The magazine boasted one of the most dynamic editor/art director relationships of the 20th century, Patrick Henry and Frank Zachary. Henry provided the words: John Cheever, John O’Hara, and Joan Didion all contributed to its pages. Ray Bradbury wrote a mind-boggling story about how Disneyland’s childhood fantasies are better than adult’s revisionist histories, saying: “Disney liberates men to their better selves.” Stories like Didion’s “Notes from a Native Daughter” and Kerouac’s “Alone On a Mountaintop” are good examples of popular stories originally commissioned by Holiday editors that went on to go viral on their own.

For his part, Zachary’s art department — which included illustrator Ronald Searle and legendary photographers Arnold Newman and Slim Aarons — designed some of the most mind-blowing magazine covers known to man. Zachary’s goal, he said recently (he’s now 99 and living in Long Island), was simple. “I just wanted to make the finest magazine.”

Lane Koivu 
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15/04/2013

The Diffusion of Responsibility

Talking about my country’s cultural aspirations, George Carlin once joked that “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” Just about everyone is blissfully zonked out in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, an absurd meta-pop film that simultaneously critiques and celebrates American hedonism, violence and general irresponsibility in its most hilariously desperate and depressing form: through the eyes of college girls, in Tampa Beach, sometime in March. Want to know what mainstream youth culture looks like in America? Watch this film.

Spring Breakers follows four young bombshells (Candy, Faith, Brit, and Cotty) who rob a chicken shack with squirt guns and ski masks in order to fund a last-minute spring break trip to the Florida coast. “Pretend like it’s a video game” one of them says. “Act like you’re in a movie.” This advice isn’t specific to the robbery, it’s a mantra for their entire way of life. No one seems to have a clue who they are, and no one takes responsibility for their actions. It’s a familiar feeling.


Korine is obsessed with America’s glorification of sex, violence, drugs, and how those components shape individual identity. Like Kids, Spring Breakers is focused on a group of young people (mostly women) who don’t know where they fit in, trying to be cool, exhausting the possibilities. Each character attempts to be something they’re not, with humiliating and sobering consequences. The film isn’t realistic (nor is it meant to be), but it’s characters’ desires are.

After going broke and getting busted for snorting cocaine at a random party, the girls wind up in jail and are bailed out (financially and legally) by a drug dealer/rapper named Alien (played to a tee by James Franco). “Some kids want to be president, others want to be a doctor,” he tells his new friends by way of introduction. “I just want to be baaad.” Alien is not bad. But he is rich, free from the burdens of work or school, and living alone in a big mansion on the beach full-time. In his world, as he likes to say, it’s “Spring Break forever.” But what does that mean, exactly?

Alien’s got everything the girls want, but the problem is that they want the wrong things. But there’s something missing. Alien is all image and no substance, a sharp warning of the type of person you end up becoming when “having shit” becomes your motivating goal in life. Alien needs an audience to justify his existence, but he has no friends. He has the guns and the ego to point them at his rival drug dealer (played by Gucci Mane), but not the heart to use them, which turns out to be a fatal flaw. Paradoxically, the girls have the heart to hang with Alien, but only because they’re too stupid and media-saturated to know just what it is they’re getting into. They think that’s what they should be doing, which might just be the real lesson here. Take Spring Breakers literally, as many critics have, and you’re sure to be offended. Take it as satire, as you should, and you’ll be amused at the cultural introspection lying beneath the glossy surface.

Lane Koivu
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