Performance review: Iron and Wine with Calexico at the Wiltern

Wow.

So, I generally avoid writing about music because, frankly, I don't have the right vocabulary. Kasha berates me for not being able to explain why I love what I love and hate what I hate in terms as precise as those I can use to describe, e.g., a piece of fruit of a type she's never seen. But while I know what I mean when I say I like something because it's "swoopy" or "intense," those words certainly have no specific musical meaning, and certainly wouldn't necessarily mean the same thing to someone else. In fact, it is one of the great areas where I fall back on the immortal line of Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter re: pornography: "I know it [music I like or dislike] when I see it." I suppose this isn't entirely true; the better analogy may be to wine, which I also lack the vocabulary to decribe in terms that wine people might understand. I tend to fall back on generalizations such as "I generally love Alsatian whites and dislike Italian reds" or "I like anything in waltz time but don't care for reggae." Just don't press me on the whys or wherefores, or I'm gonna be Stewart Potter again.

However.

Last night, I saw a really great show. I was expecting it to be good, I've liked what I've heard of each band's music, but this performance was really something quite a bit greater than the sum of its parts.

Iron and Wine is, more or less, one heavily-bearded guy with a guitar. With the exception of the "Woman King" EP, which had a fair amount of additional instrumentation, a lot of the Iron and Wine stuff I've heard has been in the same vein as Elliot Smith when he was at his most prettily acoustic (but with less depressing themes). Calexico, on the other hand, is a musically eclectic band whose music I would describe, if forced to at gunpoint, as alt-country indie folk-rock inflected with mariachi. Um, and stuff. The two groups recently teamed up to produce an EP called "In the Reins," so this was a tour in support of that.

There was an opening act, which I think was Califone, who I think I once randomly saw play a concert in my friend Emily's yard, but who I think at the time were a Spinanes-style boy/girl indie rock combo, though this was a guy with a guitar and a pleasant folky country vibe. ETA: I'm smoking crack. The band that played my friend's lot party was Penifore (see comments below). WTF, yo. I'm getting old, and it was 1998.

Calexico was next, and they were, as I said to Cate, "the band you move to Austin because you feel like that's what you'll get to hear EVERY WEEKEND." In a good way. They were much blues-ier than I've heard them be on their recordings, and on at least one song built up the kind of wall of sound that's more commonly associated with U2 or Radiohead. In a good way. Indie guru uber-bassist Mike Watt came out and played for a song, too.

After a brief break, Iron and Wine took the stage. The guitarist was joined by a female violinist/singer/tambourine player and occasionally by a percussionist and... I think a bassist. Many of the songs were in the quiet acoustic vein, but most of the songs from "Woman King" were in the same surprisingly (at least relatively) down-and-dirty blues-y vein as Calexico's had been. "Jezebel," one of my favorite folk-y songs from "Woman King" became more of a... dirty bouncy fox-trot of sorts. At one point shortly after the singer smiled that the crowd was "remarkably well-behaved," someone decided to, you guessed it, yell "Freebird!!", which I guess is now.... funny again in a post-retro-ironic way? Or something? Regardless, the singer obligingly smirked and grinned into the mike, "if I leeeeeeaaaaave here tomoooooorooww...." Hee.

The real treat, however, was watching the groups play together. There was no real break between the end of the Iron and Wine set and the beginning of the joint set; instead, the stage suddenly became full of musicians. I, again, do not have the vocabulary to describe what they were all playing, but there were between 10 and 12 people on stage during the entire set. There were two full drum kits and an additional percussion stand, the violinist/singer/tambourine player, a lap steel, 4 to 5 people at any given time on guitar/bass type instruments, and what must have been at least thirty different instrument stands. The opening song was the opening track of "In the Reins," which is my favorite song on the EP, in no little part due to its being (duh) a waltz. And it. Was. Amazing. Cate and I kind of looked at each other a bit slack-jawed when it was finished, and agreed afterward that as much as we loved everything that came after, we almost wished that song had been the end of the set, because it set such a high standard. Recorded music can obviously be produced to sound fantastic, but this was live, and so complex but perfect it was just a treat to hear. And that's not even the corniest thought I had about it, but I'm not going live with the other one.

At any rate, the set was fantastic, and included both songs from the EP and not, the latter including covers of "All Tomorrow's Parties," "Always on My Mind" (with Victoria Williams), and "Wild Horses" (in the encore).

So if they're coming to your town, go see this show. It's a pretty damn great combo, and not one you're guaranteed to see again, since this EP was probably a one-off.

In which nature, if not red in tooth and claw per se, is damn disturbing enough

So.

Many of you have heard the story of how, when I was in Austin, TX, in 1999, my friend Liz and I witnessed a squirrel murder.

We were walking around the capitol building grounds, having duly noted the confederate memorial, but more happily noting the perfection of the early spring day. We saw a pair of squirrels happily frolicking, or so we thought, on the grass. As we continued on our way around the vast expanse of lawn in front of the capitol, we saw one squirrel (henceforth to be referred to as Squirrel A) chasing the other squirrel (HTBRTA Squirrel B) at a breakneck pace that more or less was forming an.... arc that would have an endpoint at the part of the lawn to which our stroll would soon be tangent (wheee, tenth grade geometry, don't fail me now). The squirrels were wrestling a bit as we approached, which we thought was really cute until Squirrel A started a weird repetitive pounce attack on a now-prostrate Squirrel B, shortly after which red stripes began to appear on Squirrel B's stomach, and then Squirrel B stopped moving and Squirrel A ran off. It all happened so quickly that we went from charmed to slack-jawed with horror in the space of about two minutes. "Oh my god, "I said. "We just witnessed a squirrel murder!"

I have never been one of the many people who are freaked out or disturbed by squirrels; in fact, I find them terribly Beatrix Potter-y and adorable, despite having witnessed this seemingly pointless instance of squirrel-on-squirrel violence. I am particularly charmed by the black squirrels that popped up in Chicago and Evanston last Christmas. Until this past week, I felt that the squirrel murder I witnessed was some kind of aberration, rather than the norm.

I may have to reassess, and add squirrels to the short list of Animals Whose Continued Existence I am in Favor of, as Long as it Involves no Interaction with Me, Thank You Very Much. That list currently looks like this:

a) Monkeys

b) All Other Primates who are not Gorillas, because they seem Mellow and Kind of Cool

This antipathy was fostered during my trip to Africa, when I realized that most common monkeys are basically like really smart, really big rodents with opposable thumbs, a gang, and a plan to Take Your Shit. Not to mention creepily human little baby faces. And baboons I don't even want to talk about, because... ten times bigger, with FANGS, and.... yeah. The not-very-good movie The Rundown endeared itself to me permanently through its excellent use of baboons as vehicles of terror. Said antipathy was cemented when Henry told me about a recent incident where a couple was severely and viciously mauled by a couple of chimpanzees (who, it should be noted, are NOT AS LARGE AS BABOONS, not to mention the humans they were mauling). I'm not saying that we probably don't deserve whatever the primates decide to dish out, what with the years of experimenting and monkey-skin jackets and all, but I would like to be nowhere near that particular type of retribution if I can help it, thank you very much. This is not a phobia, it is a WELL-INFORMED (or at least anecdotally un-contradicted) decision.

Anyway. Squirrels, despite my having witnessed their intra-species homicidal potential, were not on that list. Possibly because I don't feel that they have quite the same wherewithal, what with being a)small b)non-bethumbed and c)not so bright, really.

However.

I was out walking my dog, and, on returning to my house, saw a peculiar... bundle of squirrel at the far edge of my lawn. Basically, I saw a fairly large mass of brown fur and two bushy tails, so I pretty much assumed I was witnessing some early morning squirrel coitus. Then the squirrel on top lifted his head and I realized that, in fact, he was carrying another squirrel IN HIS MOUTH, with that squirrel's tail draped around his neck like a feather boa. He then proceeded to RUN UP A PALM TREE, still carrying the other squirrel in his mouth. Now, I don't know if it was an entire squirrel or just... the... lower half of one, but it was NOT MOVING, and... rather disturbing.

So. Squirrels. One murder away from going on The List.

Movie Review: Serenity. Long, with some minor spoilers

First of all: Spaaaaaaaaaaace Mooooviiiieeeeeee!!! (Hi, Em!)

Secondly: I apologize in advance for any ridiculous Wesleyan-boosting contained in this review. What can I say… some people have schools whose teams play in Bowl games, we have alums who do cool shit. In this case, however, it’s actually pertinent, because if Joss Whedon (’87) didn’t actually take one of Professor Slotkin’s "Myth and Ideology at the Movies" classes (or one of their siblings- all of the Slotkin classes I took were elegantly structured complex variations on a relatively simple theme), he for damn sure had a friend who did, or he read Gunfighter Nation. Possibly the whole damn trilogy, in fact (Regeneration Through Violence, indeed).

I was actually shocked by how much I liked Serenity. Not just because the officially released trailers looked like crap (which they did), and not just because I didn’t particularly care for what little of Firefly I saw when it was actually airing on Fox (for those who don't know, it was cancelled after 11 episodes, which aired inconsistently and out of order, but became something of a smash hit when released on DVD, which led to the movie’s finally being made). Both of those concerns had been more or less dealt with by the Sci-Fi network’s re-airing of the series over the course of the summer. Getting to see more of the show than the first few introductory episodes, which were… well, largely awkward and stilted, to be honest, finally made me understand at least a little of what the series’ fans were so worked up about. In addition, Sci-Fi aired teasers for the movie during the shows’ commercial breaks that were actual coherent scenes from the film rather than choppily edited attempts to woo video game-obsessed fourteen-year-olds.

However, as much as I was amused and intrigued by the world Whedon had created (basically, 500 years in the future, Earth is used up and a Chinese-Western coalition has colonized another solar system or galaxy or something, and there was a civil war between the civilized inner planets and “wild” outer planets, after which Our Heroes became Han Solo-esque space pirates), it seemed like it was probably best suited to the hour-long format. Whedon had often stated it was his desire to make a “space western.” When the series made fun of this conceit (as in the “Hero of Canton” episode), it was fun and funny. When it was overt or taken too seriously, however, it felt labored, with the most glaring example being the folksy faux-western patois (mingled, intriguingly, with untranslated Mandarin curses and slang) the Firefly crew spoke. Although the actors settled into it as the series progressed, it never felt quite as organic as Whedon’s quirkily inventive Buffy-speak (with the exception of the use of “shiny” as a synonym for “cool,” of course). Similarly, the series seemed to work best when it forgot it was a western and remembered it was exploring the lives of some typically atypical Whedon archetypes. Given that the movie would have to have enough exposition to appeal to viewers who had never seen the TV series, and that the intended first two episodes of the series had been written more or less as a short movie (which I’d read and mildly enjoyed long before the series aired), I didn’t really think the movie could be entirely successful.

I was wrong. Serenity was not just thoroughly enthralling and enjoyable, with genuinely tense action scenes and lots of humorous moments, it’s an actual goddamn western, with encroaching civilization (AKA the Railroad), Indians (known here as Reavers, and genuinely the bearers of fates Worse Than Death), shootouts, showdowns, and last stands. And it all works. Quite frankly, if George Lucas doesn’t see this movie and feel deeply, deeply ashamed of himself, he really has lost interest in everything but the set design. Whedon packs as much political back story into the first fifteen minutes of his movie as Lucas managed to stretch out over two and a half freaking movies, and does it in a way that both creates character depth AND feels like it might be a plausible future for our own world.

Much of the tension in the movie is created by Whedon’s lack of interest in pulling punches. People die in the movie, and not just the people that genre would demand. Very early on in the movie, Mal, our Solo-esque hero, kills a young man by shooting him between the eyes. This is a fairly normal gunslinger move, except that the circumstances are not what we expect. The young man has been explicitly figured as a hero (though the movie makes just as clear that the concept of a hero is a vexed one at best), and he has just pleaded to join Mal’s crew. At the moment of his death, he has been captured by Reavers, and is being dragged off to meet his fate. Is Mal a good guy because he spares the young man that fate? A bad guy because he didn’t either take him aboard the transport or stop to fight the Reavers (both of which would likely have gotten his own crew killed or injured)? Both? Neither? Of course he’s our wise-cracking tough guy hero, but in strictly generic terms, he’s the rebel soldier who goes west because he can’t stand the union and can’t stand to stay in his own homeland either. In fact, in strictly generic terms, the Alliance is a stand in for the Victorious Union… and the march of civilization, industrialization, and progress (or “progress).

Politically, of course, I can’t imagine that Whedon is any kind of unreconstructed Confederate… rather the opposite, in fact. The Alliance is a multi-planetary corporate mega-monster, served by true believers who think that progress must be achieved at any cost. The only thing that can stop them is a galaxy-wide media moment that exposes their lies and corruption. Does this sound like a familiar fantasy?

The final third of this movie had me on the edge of my seat, not least because I wasn’t entirely convinced Whedon wouldn’t kill EVERYONE. Angel ended on a Lady or the Tiger moment with the series’ heroes facing impossible odds (afterwhichtheyareprobablyalldead, but you didn’t hear me admit that). I’ve always chosen to stick my fingers in my ears and chant “la la la la la la it’s the lady la la I can’t HEAR you la la la,” but after the second major character death in Serenity, I’m pretty damn convinced that Whedon’s response would be “duh…. Tiger.” One of the movie’s appealing strengths is that it’s slightly less necessary to suspend disbelief than usual. The clothes (of the FUTURE!!) aren’t ridiculous, and the town/frontier dichotomies even make some aesthetic sense as an extrapolation of current and past retro-futurist design movements, whether they’re high-culture design or low-brow nostalgia. It makes sense that a burnt-out earth would be replaced by recreations of various groups’ visions of its idealized past. Similarly, injuries in this movie look like they really HURT (there’s a shot of Nathan Fillion with a blood-rimmed iris that distracted me for a good three minutes, because… are there really contacts that do that? Or did he actually get punched accidentally?), vehicles have a rickety physicality that makes you feel like they could have the space equivalent of a blow out at any time, and it’s a good bet that all the dead people are going to stay well and truly dead. Furthermore, the actors all have such an ingrained sense of their characters at this point that the genuinely come to life, and none of them feels disposable. When people die (and even when they're injured), it's shocking and painful in a way that few films of this genre manage (go ahead, try to tell me you got teary when Luke Skywalker found his aunt and uncle's farm destroyed. Thought so).

In the end, the film manages to both build on and expand the world of the TV show, without being alienating to new viewers. I'm going to state that categorically because, of the four of us seeing the movie, I'd seen the most of the show, and I've only seen around half the episodes. It has a satisfying resolution that leaves the door wide open for more movies, but resolves unanswered questions from the series (the explanation of the Reavers' origin is particularly satisfying, and chilling, and is a nice literalization of the po-mo discussion of how we create our own monsters in the mirror of the Other). Should you see this movie? Well, it all depends on how you feel about the original Star Wars trilogy, I’d say. If it was either inherently too sci-fi for your taste, or not sci-fi enough, Serenity is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you really liked the first Star Wars movies despite a niggling sense that they should really be better-written and probably better-acted, and, uh, maybe have fewer aliens, Serenity is probably going to feel like a good old-fashioned time at the movies.



And, um…. Go Wes.