There isn’t any previously unreleased material, nor any revealing demos, but a few treats from Pavement’s pre-Matador days, and everything has been re-mastered for audiophiles. It’s not a chronological retrospective, though. Instead, it’s more like a Pavement mixtape with the hits and some surprises, too. The hits include Crooked Rain’s  “Cut Your Hair,” which was the closest Pavement got to mainstream radio play; “Shady Lane,” from their most accomplished album Brighten the Corners; and “Summer Babe,” from their debut record Slanted and Enchanted. The surprises include “Heaven Is a Truck” from Crooked Rain and “In the Desert a Mouth” from Slanted; surprising because they’re gems for the initiated, not cuts that one would give a newcomer to Pavement’s style. If any of the band’s releases are underrepresented, it is their epic Wowee Zowee and their final release Terror Twilight, though neither is completely ignored.

I’d like to know if this is a release that the band wanted out there as a memoir, as their own reflections on their best work, or if the label simply wanted to cash in on their decision to tour again. The press people say that it’s compiled by the band, and one hopes that it presages new material in the future. Quarantine the Past will certainly generate new fans who might not remember the days when Lollapalooza was worth a damn, and when record stores and college radio were the path of exposure to new indie rock. For longtime fans, Quarantine the Past is a showcase of what we’ve always loved best about the music: the wandering melodies and the subtle shredding are reminders that Pavement isn’t just a descendant of Velvet Underground and Big Star, they are a rock classic in their own right.

Focus Features

It feels dangerous territory to criticize the Coen brothers. Without a doubt, they are intelligent and extremely well-versed in the language of cinema. Even when they misstep, it is only in the eyes of the viewers. Their films are made so deliberately, each perfectly capturing whatever vision they set out to make. In this way, what they make is most surely some of film’s finest examples of art. However, like all artists, some works transcend others. Films like Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou all represent the Coens at the height of their filmmaking prowess.

Here, with their most recent film, A Serious Man, they attempt to flip a cardinal rule of filmmaking on its head. They choose to center their film around Larry Gopnik, a middle-aged professor, who is the definition of passive. Passive people rarely have films made about them because, well, they just aren’t all that interesting. We like to watch people accomplish things, watch them change, or at least change others. Here we have a central character who things happen to — the journey is about forcing him out of the passivity.

But is that an interesting journey to watch? I believe the Coens’ intentions were to make a comedy, but the film barely managed to pull a smile out of me. I found the entire affair utterly depressing. I’ve never been shy to the genre of dark comedy and depressing humor, but here the Coens move so far in that direction that they negate the comedy entirely. Instead we watch a sad man have a sad life. We hope he breaks from his ways simply to change the pace of the film.

The script is brimming with fully-formed characters and biblical allusions, but when they aren’t ones you want to stay with anyway it feels pointless. By the time the film ends I was happy to leave. Even the smirk that is present in usual Coen brothers’ films seems bizarrely absent here, as though they failed to see the humor in all of this as well.

One problem, bizarrely, might be with the cinematography of Roger Deakins. If you know his name, you know why this is strange. Deakins is responsible for some of the most amazing and iconic looking films of the last 20 years — from The Shawshank Redemption, to The Assassination of Jesse James, and all of the Coens’ works. He is undoubtedly brilliant. And while A Serious Man does look absolutely beautiful, it doesn’t look like a comedy. The look fights against the laughs, making one feel more like the characters than an observer. And in this world, that’s not a good thing.

That might be the biggest problem with A Serious Man — it never quite knows what tone it wants to strike. It battles back and forth with feeling, never arriving at a solid and agreeable ground. However, as said before, the Coen brothers are artists. This is the exact film they set out to make, for better or for worse. If it’s the story you want to hear then you will be thrilled. But for the rest of us, it’s a film that feels too depressing, empty, and passive to want to return to. Is it worth seeing? Perhaps once. But I can’t see myself ever wanting to watch it again.

Motion City Soundtrack, contiguously the thinking man’s power-punk collective, are the closest thing the scene has produced the dreggy-haired indie faction can muster ovation for. Pumped full of elastic hooks, crunchy guitar four-steps, and genuinely catchy highlights, their latest, My Dinosaur Life, is (despite the outwardly annoying title) an undeniably solid packaging of the acceptable parts of pop-punk — borrowing more from hipster relics the dB’s and Big Star than the much more dubious sources of Yellowcard and Good Charlotte. Many will try, but you simply cannot deny a record that achieves its goals (exceptionally catchy, radio-ready pop music about love, rejection, and Xbox) with such polish. If you simply allow it to be good, it won’t disappoint.

(Columbia Records, 550 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10022)

There has never been as pronounced of a leap in style and scope as with Red Sparowes‘ latest offering. The Fear is Excruciating, But Therein Lies the Answer maintains their layered arrangements and swirling amplified crescendos, Americana noir soundscapes (punctuated by the extended pedal steel on “In Every Mind”), and gloriously triumphant melodies (“Giving Birth to Imagined Saviors”). Earlier records focused on the larger scope of the album, but the new album is song-centered, with the individual tracks harboring stronger independent identities. And where previous endeavors found the band propelled by enormous walls of sound, they now temper their monolithic progressions with distinct passages of separated and soft-spoken instrumentation. Red Sparowes were suspiciously absent from the playing field over the last three years, and now it’s apparent that they were busy drafting the grandest statement and finest achievement of their existence.

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Red Sparowes - Giving Birth To Imagined Saviors

British post-punk legends Echo & The Bunnymen are launching their first US tour in support of their acclaimed new album, The Fountain. The shows are hot on the heels of the band’s recent tour celebrating their landmark album Ocean Rain that included orchestral performances at New York’s Radio City Music Hall and the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.Their highly anticipated appearance at the Coachella Festival will kick off the tour.

The Fountain started to come together in 2007 when frontman Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant started working on new songs. For the next year, the group brought the album together in Liverpool’s Parr Street Recording Studios. McCulloch calls The Fountain “the best thing we’ve done since Ocean Rain.”

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Echo & The Bunnymen - Proxy

What made you guys decide that playing music was your thing? Any particular songs or bands that inspired you?
It’s really hard to cite one source of inspiration. The influence of society and hierarchical dictatorships (i.e., high school) left what seemed like no option but to gravitate toward punk rock and “anti-establishment” type music.

What kind of setup did you guys use to record, mix, produce, and sell 1,000 copies of your first full-length Leave the Lights On? I heard that you guys have a little something set up in the kitchen.
I went to school for music production, but have a history of fooling around with sound and recording that goes back to as early as six years old. I would get two cassette tape recorders and record a drum track (pots and pans being struck with pencils or wooden spoons) to one recorder. Next I would play back the first tape while recording an acoustic guitar to the second cassette recorder. If I messed up on the guitar the drum track could just be rewound and I could try again.

The current setup is temporarily in the kitchen and living room of our house — we live together. There is a four-room, 1000-square-foot building on our property that we just built to house my studio that should be done by late 2010. We record with ProTools LE with a few nice outboard preamps, compressors, and mics. The acoustics of the rooms are by far the weak link. Fighting the seven-foot ceilings is not easy. As far as Keep the Lights On [is concerned], we did that in an old house on the campus of Ohio University. The same setup and acoustic issues applied there.

Regarding the studio that you’re currently building in your backyard, how is the progress on that? What are you going to fill it with, and what kind of soundproofing techniques are you going to use — if any?
The studio is being built right outside of the house. The design took almost a year of reading acoustics books and web forums. This could be the basis of an entire interview — which I’d love to do — but I won’t go too far into detail here.

DIY tactics — like recording your own music, fixing your car, and modifying your clothes — have a history of being spread through books, zines, and on the web. Any books, magazines, or websites other DIYers should check out?
The internet is a wealth of knowledge. In building the recording studio I had to learn trades that take years of schooling for people to excel at. I had to be an engineer, draftsman, soil expert, bricklayer, roofer, heating and air conditioning guy, and so on, without the time and money to take classes. I got a quote of 5,000 dollars just for the labor in laying the bricks for the building. I couldn’t put that into my budget, so I watched YouTube videos about five hours a day for a week and I had enough [knowledge] to do some damage on my own.

I had so much fun that I couldn’t imagine paying someone else to do the work for me. It doesn’t mean I could go onto a job site and put up any building that is designed. I just gained the knowledge that I needed to do one project.

When you recorded your EP, Straight. No Chaser., did you guys go into a studio with a producer?
Straight. No Chaser. was recorded, mixed, and mastered by me in the kitchen studio. It was originally just being recorded for our own personal demo purposes to aid in the writing and composure of those songs, but when we signed with GC Records they wanted material to release, so we just used that.

What has it been like being signed to GC?
Shahab at GC is what punk rock is all about. He’s a super nice guy devoted to helping his bands get to the next level, whatever that may be. He’s a very busy person with a pretty big roster. We came to this label being a band that has done almost everything itself. Not much has changed about that mentality. The label has been an awesome help with distribution, as well as just the fact that our name shows up with GC attached to it. We hope that GC feels our name helps them as well.

It seems like you guys will be touring for a chunk of 2010, and following that up with another full-length in 2011, correct? What can we expect from the new album?
We plan to tour as much as possible. We have this East Coast thing booked right now, but we’re hoping to be out for three months of this year.

The new record will contain the five songs from the recent EP, as well as some new stuff. All the songs will be recorded over in the new studio. Since the recordings on the EP were intended to be our own private demos, the record should offer enough variance to make it marketable to those whom already own Straight. No Chaser.

Can we expect you on the West Coast any time?
We have been in talks about touring the west. It might go down in late fall of 2010 — if not, very shortly after. We have done a lot on the east and southeast coasts, so going back gets a little easier every time, but out west is something we’ve never done — it’s always hard to pioneer new lands.

What’s the coolest place you’ve played on tour?
Amish Electric Chair loves Florida! There are some really great people down there — Greg in Tallahassee and Brett in Gainesville — that always make it a treat to tour down south. The Wayward Council in Gainesville is a really cool spot with a great history, always a must-stop for us.

Any embarrassing road stories?
Last winter we made our first stop in northern Georgia and got the skateboards out to go shred for a bit. We got two blocks from the van and John goes to gap a small patch of grass, just to get to the other side, and bites it. All kinds of ankle fractures and such. Skating was done for the rest of that tour.

I read a story about an incident you guys had in Jellico, Tennessee. You ran out of gas, and ended up calling a shady tow-truck driver that turned out to be the owner of a local chop-shop. Your van was stolen. Later, you found another tow-truck driver who helped you steal back the van. It worked! The mission was a complete success. Are you ever going to go back to Jellico?
We have driven through Jellico twice since the “incident.” We made sure to fill up long before Jellico so there would be no chance of needing to stop. We have joked about playing a show there — if we’re ever well-known enough to pull a crowd into that shit hole!

You guys have a song called “NIMBY (Not in My Backyard).” I’ve done some reading into that and it seems like that phrase has been used and interpreted a couple ways, but is well recognized as a pejorative term. What is your application of the phrase; who are you calling out?
This song was written [during] a transition period between our old and new bass players, as well as a former guitarist [Jese Wilkes]. The song was really written around the bass line. I was experimenting with some ideas of overlapping chords with the bass and guitar, similar to how the words in “Row Row Row Your Boat” overlap. The idea of “NIMBY” was Jese’s idea. The chorus came first. I really just liked the way the words sounded together. I then interpreted that into making the verses match. It really is one of the least poetic/thought-out songs I’ve done, but it’s one of my favorites. The song is about friendships and how sometimes, no matter how hard you try to hang onto them, they can fade. This particular friendship is a conflict of taste and moral values. It was not written about anyone in particular.

I read on a blog that you guys played a show with the band Five Foot Forward in which you played a song that lacked lyrics so you sang about chocolate milk. Any comments?
(laughter) Yeah that was quite some time ago, but it’s true. The song ended up being “NIMBY.” The lyrics were free-styled, and mostly just about how much ass Yoo-hoo kicks even though it gets a bad rap from people who call it chocolate flavored water. There was a crowd of about four people at that show. That song may not have made the set list had it been a busier night.

What advice would you give to a band in terms of recording, setting up their own tours, and creating their own merch revenue?
The first thing is to mean what you are doing. If you are into music for the wrong reasons, you’ll most likely expect someone to do the hard work for you. Do it for yourself and for your band mates. Also, play with your friends. If there are internal conflicts, doing things together as a group can become fatiguing.

Does it ever hit you that you’re living the dream, or is it too early to ask that?
We have recognized the fact that we are living the dream. Regardless of how it ends or how “big” our name ever becomes, we are doing something that not very many people ever have the chance to do. We are forever grateful and will never take for granted that fact.

Verbicide Free Download: Click here to download “Not in My Backyard” by Amish Electric Chair

It is far from hyperbolic to enthusiastically assert that this album — Blunt Mechanic’s first — is Barnett’s finest work to date. Considering the critically-acclaimed and cultishly-followed body of work he has amassed over the past 15 years, it’s understandable that one could lazily dismiss that claim before having heard the onslaught of unstoppable, charming hooks, impeccably constructed songs, heart-wrenching, moving, uplifting storytelling, brilliant turns of phrase and vocal/instrumental interplay that defines World Record. Barnett has here created the culmination of his musical and personal explorations in a way that is powerful, relatable, inspirational, ineffable and communicable, and there’s just no stopping that kind of force.

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Blunt Mechanic - Less Beat

As early as their third studio album, the direction that they would grow became clear. Appropriately utilizing their considerable talents as an accomplished, diverse collection of proficient musicians, the kings of Celtic punk began branching out into a more adult-alternative influenced sound; while the rowdy punk anthems never disappeared, songs like “Factory Girls” from Within a Mile of Home (featuring Lucinda Williams, fittingly) and “The Story So Far” from Float provided a mix of folk, alternative, and country — with just a hint of punk — that would fit in nicely on NPR.

I’ve always considered Flogging Molly to be a live band first and foremost, and they had no problem incorporating the more mid-tempo material into their sets; with a barrage of raucous crowd-pleasers to deploy whenever necessary (“Salty Dog,” “What’s Left of the Flag,” “Seven Deadly Sins,” “Black Friday Rule,” etc.) there was no trouble dropping a “Tomorrow Comes A Day Too Soon” or an “If I Ever Leave This World Alive” into the set. They are masterful and magnificent on stage — one friend of mine who never particularly cared about them saw a performance and was instantly converted.

Capturing an experience like that, however, is tricky. The stated aim of their new live package, Live at the Greek Theatre, is to present both a gift to loyal fans and an introduction to first-time listeners. The first goal, unmistakably, is met: the two-disc album and DVD of the same name captures a typically entertaining show, covering the whole of the band’s catalogue thoroughly and throwing in a few unexpected gems as well (“The Wrong Company,” an excellent acoustic “The Sun Never Shines (On Closed Doors”). The DVD looks good, and has fine extras, including the band’s entire music video catalog.

However, serious fans had already been given an elaborate gift in the form of 2006’s Whiskey on a Sunday, a documentary DVD accompanied by a disc of rarities and live tracks. Furthermore, Flogging Molly fans — myself included — know how great the live show is, and will be loyal whether or not we’re presented with a “thank you” compilation every few years.

As such, I can’t help but feel that the true targets of Live at the Greek Theater are the uninitiated. It seems that these discs are meant to serve not only as an illustration of the live show, but as a greatest hits compilation; I can’t think of many missing items from the 22-track set list, and with the videos on the DVD, the studio sound is represented as well. I think that what we are meant to do with this set is buy it for our unenlightened pals.

Evaluating it on those grounds is trickier. For one thing, punk never lends itself well to live recording. Punk concerts are meant to present an overwhelming wall of sound — furious music fired out of walls of speakers in an energizing wave. Compressing that to your car stereo (or worse, your laptop) robs the experience of its power, and inevitably sounds muddled and harried compared to studio recordings. This is true of almost every live punk album, even among the titans of the genre — try to honestly enjoy The Clash’s Live: From Here to Eternity if you don’t believe me.

That it’s a funny way to introduce someone to a band like Flogging Molly is my point — especially when each of their studio albums is a minor classic in its own right. Furthermore, quantity is not always the best thing on an introductory package; two discs of music, a DVD (of the same performance), and a boatload of extras are a lot for a new fan.

I could be wrong about this supposed intention. Perhaps the idea with Live at the Greek Theater was simply to release the best live set possible. And it is thoroughly enjoyable, with a number of truly remarkable moments. Fans — who continue to be treated extraordinarily well by this band — will be thrilled, and should certainly indulge in this collection. If you’re trying to get someone into Flogging Molly, don’t bother with this, though. Give them a copy of Swagger or Within a Mile of Home —  or better yet, just take them to the show.