The Dear Hunter – "Act III: Life And Death" Review (4 out of 5)

If you are a fan of The Dear Hunter, and have heard this album, then you will fully understand this review.  This album, though I give it a 4 out of 5, is possibly the most disappointing album of this year.  Disappointing merely because it’s predecessor, Act II was so immensely better than this.  The choruses in Act III are not nearly as catchy and mind-blowing, the vocals still have an odd EQ thing going on to where certain notes just hurt my ears (I believe it’s the high-mids), and the songs are overall just bland compared to what they are capable of.

In my opinion, however, The Dear Hunter is one of the most overlooked and underrated bands of this generation.  They are a band that theatric bands like Panic At The Disco only fantasize about being.  Nearly every song from this band has an epic feeling to it.  There are strings, at many times horns, large vocally grouped harmonies, and piano.  If you haven’t heard them, I implore you, please, download their discography of Act 1 to Act III.  It doesn’t matter how many times I listen to them, I get amazed every single time.  This is why I was so disappointed by this current album.  Act I and Act II were so jaw-dropping and amazing that my expectations and hopes for the new was very high.  So much so that I was almost in anger when I got done listening to it.   From someone who has never listened to this band, the album would sound fantastic, hence the 4 out of 5.  But, from the standpoint of someone who has listened to the past two albums pretty religiously, this album comes as a huge disappointment.  Actually, I have an idea.  For those of you who haven’t listened to this band before, listen to this album first.  If you like it, proceed to listen to Act I and then finally the climax of Act II.  This album is a good example of what the band sounds like, but the past two albums just give so much more.

The Mars Volta – "Octahedron" Review (4 out of 5)

The Mars Volta would be like a modern day Led Zeppelin if instead of LSD they were addicted to crystal meth.  The moment they came on the scene they made a huge impact by being a continuation of At The Drive-In combined with even more chaos and catchiness.  Each album they put out seems to be a continuation of the previous, all being explosive and energetic.  Octahedron is no exception.  It starts off with the track “Since We’ve Been Wrong” which will immediately remind you of the song “Televators” off their debut.  It then delves into the rock explosion that is The Mars Volta.

With every album, it seems like there is only one or two songs that are highly memorable, with each album being amazing.  I know that sounds confusing, but when you listen to the albums, you can’t help but be blown away (again) by their talent.  They really are phenomenal musicians, but if you put all the songs on random, then more than likely you won’t be able to pin each song to each album successfully.  They kinda all sound the same.  They have such a signature sound that you instantly recognize it as The Mars Volta, but much of it is just more of the same.  So again, I am in firm belief in my theory that with each album, however amazing the entire album may be, there will probably be only two or so songs that you remember significantly.

With Octahedron, those two songs would be “Since We’ve Been Wrong” and “Desperate Graves,” and in some cases “Copernicus.”   These songs make my mind melt with a mixture of joy and intimidation; a powerful orgasmic punch to my face.  Other than these songs, the others are amazing, but just not as memorable.  And the reason I am not giving this album a full 5 out of 5, is because these songs just aren’t very original in the world of The Mars Volta.  This isn’t a band where a newcomer would have to listen to the beginning albums in order to enjoy the latter.  It’s almost like episodes of The Simpsons.  You don’t have to start watching the show from the first season, if you’ve never seen an episode you can watch any episode you find first and be able to enjoy and understand the premise.  If you’ve never heard The Mars Volta, you can listen to this album and not be confused.  Each album they have is a perfect interpretation of their type of writing.  Therefore, this album, however mind-blowing it may be, simply isn’t original.  And even when I write that, I realize how hard it would be for them to come up with something original. To sum it up, the only reason this album lost a start is because it isn’t really anything new, but it’s highly entertaining and amazing. 4 out of 5

Regina Spektor – "Far" Review (3 out of 5)

Admit it, even if you’re not a fan of the piano driven, singer-songwriter style, Regina Spektor is still your guilty pleasure.  You more than likely first heard of her when she debuted her single “Fidelity” off her last album, “Begin To Hope.”  That album had a pop-feel to it, even though it was really only in the song “Fidelity” and especially in the song “Better” (which quickly became my least favorite track on the album).  Regina is simply amazing.  If you are a fan, you love her ability to pair beautiful piano melodies with childish lyrics, giving each song a cryptic depression that makes your eyes tear up and calms your soul.  Now that I have that cheese out of the way, let’s get to how I feel about her new album, “Far.”

“Far” is…good.  It’s really an album for all of her fans.  It has the pop smoothness that fans loved about “Begin To Hope” and it also has the quirkiness that “Soviet Kitsch” so eloquently gave.  It’s almost like an audio summation of her career to this point.  It opens with the song “The Calculation,” allowing the pop fans to rejoice and clap along, and then continues later into songs like “Machine” and “Dance Anthem Of The 80′s” letting the eccentric indie kids have even more reason to wear skinny pants and low cut v-neck shirts from American Apparel.  The songs are good, the vocal melodies are more of what you love about Regina, and the instrumentation accompanying the songs give it a really nice boost.  The only thing is, the entire album has too much of a pop feel and not enough of a balance with the quirk.

It’s very, very hard to have a Regina Spektor song not be poppy when the drums are added in the background.  I’m not sure if it was just the drummer she found, but every time a song starts with its beautiful combination of Regina’s voice and her piano, I start to really enjoy it.  Then the drums kick in and the whole mood and feel of the song shifts into something resembling Vanessa Carlton.  Literally, the only song on the album containing drums that doesn’t have an obvious pop feel is the song “Machine,” and that’s more than likely due to the fact that it’s a programmed loop.  This is, by far, her most pop album.  But that isn’t really what bothers me most about the album.

Everyone who loves Regina loves her because her voice is angelic and her childish lyrics send shivers up your spine.  Yes, her voice is still amazing, but you can’t help but cringe sometimes when she seems to push some of the notes in a couple of the songs.  The opening track, “The Calculation,” has a second verse that starts nicely but midway through makes you want to turn the music down because she pushes two notes in the words “beating” and “bleeding” to the point of cringe.  You think it was a fluke until the next song “Eet” when only 1:10 or so into the song you hear an attempt to make the loudest falsetto possible on notes that should have remained at a quarter of the volume.   The song “Eet” itself is amazing, but the falsetto she hits nearly ruins it for me.

This is the feel for the entire album.  Each song is amazing in it’s own way, but there always seems to be one little thing about it that should have been left out or changed.  In most of the songs, you will listen to it and immediately think,”I’m not sure why there are drums in the background.  The song doesn’t call for it and it would have been much more beautiful without them.”  The drums and the beats in the background of nearly every song are a definite downfall of this album.  Songs like “Two Birds” should have been left without drums and probably about 15-20 bpms slower.  So many of these songs are pop when they shouldn’t be.

In summation, the reasons this album only gets a 3 out of 5 is because of the overly-pop feel, the few pushed vocals, and the overuse of drums.  If you liked her single, “Better” off the previous album, then this album is for you (so is a Coldplay album).  I know I may seem biased against pop music, but from experience of songwriting, producing, and A&R, I can pretty much tell you that pop music is the easiest genre of music to create and make popular.  Hence, my distaste for talented artists going the easy route to make radio.

"Up" Review – 4 out of 5

This movie was so close to being a 5 out of 5.  If you have seen this movie, keep reading and I will tell you why.  If you have not seen this movie, do yourself a favor and see it, and then proceed to finish reading this review.  This does contain spoilers.  I am so bothered by one certain aspect of the movie that I am going to get straight to the point without any preceding babble about the rivalry between Pixar and Dreamworks and me choosing which I like better (Pixar) by weighing out their top movies (Ratatouille and Wall-E beat the shit out of Shrek and Kung-Fu Panda).  This is a straight-to-the-point review because I saw it last night and I have to vent.

First off, the movie is amazing.  It really is.  Especially in 3D.  It’s visually incredible, the voice acting is top-notch, and the story will have you balling your eyes out at times and laughing your ass off at others.  Once again, if you haven’t seen it, GO SEE IT.  There is, however, one major plot hole that I can’t get around.  Here it goes:

Ok, so remember when Carl and the kid first meet  Charles Muntz on Paradise Falls?  It was a pretty awesome moment.  They get to go into Muntz’s blimp and check out all the findings from his adventures and Charles gets to eat a meal with his childhood hero.  Muntz’s reason for being on Paradise Falls for so long was that he was hunting a giant bird that everyone accused him of fabricating tales about (oddly enough, Carl and the kid were able to find the bird without any hunting experience or training whatsoever.  Funny how that happens, right?).  So Muntz is in the middle of telling the story about how he plans on capturing the bird and bringing it back to the United States after decades of searching so he can finally clear his name and let people know that he wasn’t lying.  He actually stated that he wanted to bring it back alive; that he had no plans of actually killing or harming the bird.  Then, for reasons of simply creating conflict for the storyline, Carl attempts to keep the fact that he and the kid already had befriended the bird a secret, as if Muntz’s plan was to capture the bird, kill it, and exploit it in the United States.  Up to this point in the story, Muntz is seen as a good guy; an explorer who was wrongly accused of lying and is desperate to rightfully clear his name.  Suddenly, the plot instantly points the finger at Muntz as the bad guy and a poacher of some sort.  The story then continues with Muntz vs. Carl and the kid, the winning prize being the bird, whether it would be set free or taken to the United States.

This is what bothered me about the movie so damn much.  Muntz was not a bad guy.  The reason he was trying to sabotage Carl and the kid was because he was under the impression they were out to capture the bird and bring it back and claim credit for it themselves, ignoring the decades of work put in by Muntz.  So not only was Muntz misunderstood and completely under the wrong impression of Carl and the kid, but he even dies at the end.

I know what the Pixar writers are capable of doing.  Did you see Ratatouille? Did you see Wall-E?  Those are possibly the greatest animated movies of all-time.  Their story lines were perfect.  The fact that the writers made such a huge mistake almost ruined the entire movie for me.  True, it’s hard for me to complain about such fiction when it’s about an old man who ties a shitload of balloons to his house and successfully floats all the way to South America, where there are communicative dogs and a villain who according to his timeline, was probably close to, if not older than, 100 years of age.  But in every fictional film there is still a realm of fictional reality, and if the plot crosses the boundary of that fictional reality, it bothers the shit out of me.  The fact that later in the movie, the dogs even fly planes and have swooping attacks on the house, that doesn’t even bother me as much.

If the storyline stayed within the realm of fictional reality set up by the plot, the movie would have been over very quickly without any major conflict.  After hearing Muntz’s story, Carl should have said, “Holy shit! Really? I totally just captured the bird by accident! Let’s go clear your name! I mean, I’d like to set my house down at the Falls so I can fulfill my promise to my dead wife, but that could just be a stop on the way! We can finally clear your name and then I can come back and live the rest of my peaceful life! Yay!”  Even with that, they could have still had a great conflict.  Muntz told Carl that there had been explorers there before that have tried to hunt the bird and take credit.  Let’s say that a pack of about half a dozen explorers come that want to kill the bird and it’s species to make a dress out of the feathers for some random queen or something.  Like if poachers came and they were the bad guys.  There is just so much that they could have done to fix this plot hole, but instead they just continued almost as if it was due to laziness.

I know this review was long, and I apologize profusely to your newly-exhausted eyes.  Reviews shouldn’t be this long and whiny.  I just had to vent.  And I know it sounds like the movie was ruined for me, but I still give it a 4 out of 5.  It really is a fantastic movie.  If you can look past this plot hole, then you will certainly fall in love with the film.  I am going to now take a deep breath and maybe have a beer.  Until next time, thanks for reading.

-The Dune Review