Captain Obvious

40. Department Of Eagles - Teenagers
(from In Ear Park)


39. The Acorn - Crooked Legs
(from Glory Hope Mountain)


38. The Black Keys - Lies
(from Attack & Release)


37. Colour Revolt - Naked & Red
(from Plunder, Beg And Curse)


36. Wolf Parade - Language City
(from At Mount Zoomer)


35. The Walkmen - Four Provinces
(from You & Me)


34. Ray LaMontagne - I Still Care For You
(from Gossip In The Grain)


33. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
(from Microcastle)


32. Johnny Flynn - Leftovers
(from A Larum)


31. Ra Ra Riot - Oh, La
(from The Rhumb Line)


Tags: Mixtapes, Captain Obvious, Top Albums, Captain Obvious Mixtape

These year-end lists have become arbitrary these days and they are, in a word, bullshit. Everybody has an opinion so there will never be a definitive list. I won't claim to have heard everything that came out this year, but I've heard enough to make this list incredibly annoying to assemble. That being said, I humbly present to you my completely subjective, undeniably folk-centric, and hastily compiled list of 50 favorite albums of 2008. You're gonna see Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago on a lot of lists because of its re-release on JagJaguwar this year, but I'm omitting it. It was my favorite album of 2007. EP's are also out of the running. I've included a track from each album. Enjoy.




50. The War On Drugs - Arms Like Boulders
(from Wagonwheel Blues)


49. Crooked Fingers - Cannibals
(from Forfeit/Fortune)


48. Frontier Ruckus - Orion Town 2
(from The Orion Songbook)


47. Liam Finn - Wide Awake On The Voyage Home
(from I'll Be Lightning)


46. Motel Motel - Coffee
(from New Denver)


45. Blitzen Trapper - Furr
(from Furr)


44. The Hold Steady - Sequestered In Memphis
(from Stay Positive)


43. Dr. Dog - The Old Days
(from Fate)


42. The Dodos - Walking
(from Visiter)


41. Calexico - Two Silver Trees
(from Carried To Dust)


Tags: Mixtapes, Captain Obvious, Top Albums, Captain Obvious Mixtape

COTV



Tags: The Acorn, Crooked Legs, Captain Obvious

1997 Best Picture Nominees Revisited: Part 5 of 5


It’s common to dog pieces of pop culture once they attain remarkable levels of success. The root causes of this impulse are many, oversaturation being the most fervent. But more strongly, I think, than endless media attention and constant water-cooler/message board chatter, major success breeds a palpable level of self-disgust in some consumers. In order for an album or a film or a book to be anywhere and everywhere, reaching any manner of all-time status, capital-E Everyone must see it and, to some degree, enjoy it. This becomes a big problem for certain sects of listeners, viewers and readers; you know, the ones who absolutely cannot reconcile the fact that they like a piece of pop culture that ‘everyone else’ (=‘the masses’) likes just as much. It’s simple elitism. The trouble, though, is that in such cases the piece of pop culture can suffer, perhaps unjustly, because of this consumer self-consciousness.

This is all germane because I’m writing about James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) on an entertainment blog that strives to be eclectic, sophisticated and, let’s be honest, high-brow. I think it’s safe to assume that most of CO’s readership, and I include myself here, rarely elevate movies like Titanic above the status of ‘guilty pleasure.’ I think it’s safer to assume that most of us relegate the likes of Titanic to the same place we store memories of wearing M.C. Hammer pants or listening to Vanilla Ice or walking around with shitty haircuts or cooing on the phone with our high school boy/girlfriends—basically the place where we compartmentalize our immature pseudo-traumas and the poor decisions and unrefined sense of aesthetic that caused them. How could I have ever liked that shit?

And, boy, did we like Titanic. A lot. Nearly ten years later, the numbers are staggering: $600 million domestic gross, $1.8 billion worldwide, 28 million soundtracks sold globally, etc. To call it the biggest movie of all-time hovers on understatement. Back in late ’97, early ’98, I saw it three times in theaters. I had friends proclaiming it the best film they’d ever seen (even today, a colleague of mine watched the movie for the first time and was pretty enthralled). Though I never went that far, it was tough not to be swept up in the Titanic phenomenon, the collective sense of “Wow!” Not surprisingly, the film swept the Oscars, the Best Picture award being the biggest foregone conclusion of all.

Fast-forwarding to now, Titanic is simply unwatchable. In preparing for this piece, I tried to watch the film on three separate occasions, turning it off each time right around the point Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) utters the indefensibly bad line “I guess you could say I’m just a tumbleweed blowing in the wind.” (I feel compelled, nay, obligated to add that the one Oscar for which Titanic did not receive even a nomination was Best Screenplay.) Even for a melodrama, the plot lacks substance. The love triangle formed by Jack, Rose (Kate Winslet) and Cal (Billy Zane) never rises above the soap opera clichés that inspire it. Similarly, the inane past-and-future dueling narratives are shoe-horned into a plot that doesn’t need them and clearly exist only so Cameron can show-off his budget-killing deep sea explorations of the Titanic’s wreck-site (This footage would later get a documentary of its own, 2003’s Ghosts of the Abyss.). It took a chance television encounter to actually get me to the film’s end. On a recent Saturday afternoon I happened across Titanic on TNT, right as the ship began sinking in earnest. It is still the film’s highlight and an amazing and vivid sequence. Two shots, in particular, stand out for their mix of jar and poignancy: i) as the ship bobs upright like a cork, a man that hangs on a railing loses his grip and crashes first into one of the ship’s massive propellers and then into the angry, churning surface of the water; ii) an aerial, god-like view of the half sunken ship, it’s electricity flittering in and out, surrounded by seemingly infinite pitch-black sea and sky.

Why is the ship’s demise so hypnotic? The old joke, popular when the movie was storming the box office—Why would I want to see Titanic? I already know the ending: the ship sinks.—describes exactly why the movie, at least to me, is appealing today. Let’s add to this the film’s love story appeal, which, hackneyed as it may be, still hypnotizes many a Titanic fan. To speak in crude psychoanalytic terms, Cameron appeals to two of the viewers’ most powerful drives: sex and death. Every viewer knows going in that the ship will indeed sink. And Cameron recreates this event with extraordinary accuracy and attention to detail. The love story, too, depicts simple infatuation and lust common to teenagers (which, lest we forget, Jack and Rose pretty much are). This is not a love story. This is two teenagers in an oppressive and repressive society temporarily removed from their strict land-based hierarchies, allowed to interact where they normally would not and act on their impulses and emotions. To this end, the only scene containing any true-blue chemistry or heat occurs with Jack and Rose technically hidden from view, behind a thick coat of sex-induced fog on the inside of a car window, fog which Rose passionately traces with a post-coital stroke of her hand. Though I never made it to that point in my recent re-viewings, I still remember it vividly. That’s a hot scene!

So are sex and death really driving forces behind Titanic’s enormous success? Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, because I do believe this is a plausible argument, that sex and death are the answer. The implication, then, is twofold. First, a talented filmmaker manipulated consumers across the world by appealing to two of their most basic impulses. Is this shameful? Not really. Teams of marketers and advertisers and politicians and religious figures do this everyday, for better or worse. But another thing such manipulation is not: it is not artistic. Cameron’s audience manipulation does not work towards any higher purpose, morally or thematically. The movie is vapid.

The second implication is a bit more interesting. Whether or not you’ve read early Freud or modern psychology, or believe in any sort of death drive or life drive or sex drive, the fact remains that people are fascinated by sex and death. So to have been at one time drawn into a film, even a film as mainstream and mass-market as Titanic, that appeals to our most primitive instincts is really in no way embarrassing or a mark of poor judgment. In fact, it could be seen as affirming, reminding us that we are people motivated by instincts and drives and emotions. In this sense, Titanic is raw and even lurid. The experience of this film, in this one sense, can be understood as a vacation from the ceaseless aesthetic judgments we, especially from us elitists that make up CO’s readership, are always making: a spectacle to be enjoyed as spectacle.

I think this is why Titanic does not hold up well in re-viewings. Any visceral spectacle must be enjoyed and experienced ‘in the moment.’ Attempts to return to that moment are usually met with diminishing returns. Today, I cannot help but judge Titanic as a film, a discrete work of art—not an event, a phenomenon or a spectacle. And as a work of art, it just is not that good. But it certainly is memorable.

Classic, Rewatchable, Lock it in the vault and throw away the key: Lock it in the vault and throw away the key -- M. Pemulis

Tags: Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet

You Should Know


I've loved Aaron Roche's album Travel for a good while now thanks to my friend Ben's recommendation, and I was going to let him contribute an entry on Roche but he's partaking in a work/study program in Switzerland so I'd assume he has much better (and more picturesque) things to attend to than slapping together a write-up for CO. Hailing from Nashville, the multi-talented Aaron Roche offers up a series of lyrical tableaus on his aptly titled album Travel. Each track, whether accompanied by vocals or not, could be interpreted as a pit stop on the roadmap of life. While the spiritual undercurrent at play in Roche's material is undeniable, it never approaches the extent of heavy-handedness. And the songs, which range from bare-bones acoustic affairs to horn-laced folk-rock, just sound beautiful. Whether it's the gentle lull of "Jane" or the Sufjan-esque "My Love Is Grown," which features children on backup vocals, Roche displays a wonderful knack for melody and arrangement. If postcards with oceanic scenery and cryptic one-line messages from someone you love/loved came with a soundtrack, Travel would be that soundtrack. -- Capt. Obvious
Listen:
MP3: Aaron Roche - Jane
MP3: Aaron Roche - Admission Of Confusion

Tags: Aaron Roche, Travel, Review

SIDE A
1. Chad VanGaalen - City Of Electric Light
2. A.C. Newman - There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve
3. Deer Tick - Long Time
4. Little Joy - Brand New Start
5. Peasant - The Wind
6. Conor Oberst - Gentleman's Pact
7. Ketch Harbour Wolves - So Long To The Ground

SIDE B
1. Matthew Ryan - American Dirt
2. The Uglysuit - Chicago
3. The Acorn - Glory (1st Version)
4. The Jealous Sound - Got Friends
5. Vetiver - See You Tonight
6. The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition
7. Gramercy Arms - Looking At The Sun

Tags: November Mixtape, Mixtapes, Captain Obvious Mixtapes, Captain Obvious

COTV



Tags: Phosphorescent, Wolves, Captain Obvious