Paul Schiernecker

Category: Reviews

  • Frankenweenie

    There is something magical about stop motion. It reminds me of watching The Clangers and Camberwick Green as a child. It’s not perfect. I think that’s what it is. You can see the slight imperfections in the movements, the fingerprints smoothed into the sides of faces, it looks homely. With that in mind I am not concerned that Burton has returned to stop motion once again because not only do I love stop motion, I also love the characters he creates and the morals he places in his stories.

    Frankenweenie is a re-imagining of the classic Frankenstein story but told almost for children. That doesn’t mean it’s all twee and pathetic like most, which seem to feel they have to dumb things down for children, this draws nicely from the original to the point that you know what is going to happen but the jokes thrown in between make up for any over familiarity. Look out for Colossus as a perfect example.

    What I like about Burton’s work is that he is always rooting for the loner/ weirdo/ underdog and that in the worlds he creates these people always prove to be in the right and generally everything comes through for them. Here we see that Victor’s love of science is lost on his family who feel he should be outside playing baseball like the other boys at school. In the end it is this that saves the town. Burton knows what it is to be left out, and he makes them the hero. That’s why it has such an appeal. It’s for anyone that has ever felt different and to put a horrible marketing term on it there will always be an audience for that.

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  • On The Road – a film review.

    It feels like this film has been coming at me forever, like headlights always sat on the horizon, but I guess that’s the danger of knowing too much too soon, and knowing that its circling around the festival scene before it will come to a five rowed studio screen in a cinema in Basildon. The love I have for the book was a catalyst for all this, the movement inspired my own writing and those characters changed the tides in ways that are very much unappreciated. They were all at the forefront, “the disillusioned twenty-first century poets” as my dear Kate said to me last night on the road to burgers and french fries. She wasn’t far wrong. They didn’t suffer the same restraints of their ancestors, by blood or by word, and yet they weren’t quite in the promised nirvana, it was a no mans land to do with as they wish and they shook to jazz and filled up notepads with Benzedrine jabberings.

    It was therefore a mild relief to watch a film that attempted to capture that, because for the most part it did. While it felt like certain scenes and chapters were rushed; Sal working on the cotton fields and his life with Terri for example, there were true moments of beauty to it all. The cast cannot be faulted, and as with Perks there are moments that look like they’ve been dragged from the book, through the sieve of my mind and then splashed up onscreen, it just fits exactly to what I had expected.
    For a skinny, pale, English boy drawn to the dead and the dying Sam Riley does an incredible job holding it all down as Sal Paradise, a character tweaked only slightly from Kerouac himself for his writing purposes. His accent is strong, and the way he sees things and writes and smokes is how you imagine Kerouac to work (with the limited catalogue of recorded work we have to judge these things by). Garrett Hudland also works well as Dean Moriarty although at times the sense of wonder Sal holds over him in the book is sold short on screen, as though there were points when he were too tired to keep up trying to be Moriarty, who as we all remember “burns, burns, burns”.
    As expected Kristen Stewart’s presence in the film dragged three teenage girls into the cinema with absolutely no interest in the beat movement, or the story, or even putting their phones on silent but her acting wasn’t bad. Maybe that’s because Mary-Lou isn’t particularly the most filled character, even if she is the most filled character. Regardless, she holds her own in a world of men. Viggo Mortensen’s brief appearance as Old Bull Lee is also brilliant but cut far too short, I could have watched a feature on him.

    I think overall the thing to note is that no film is ever going to catch the spirit of a book. It doesn’t have the time. Modern audiences don’t have the patience. It would look different to each person. It’s just not possible. There are however moments when On The Road catches onto the imagination and sucks on it hard, and when it does the sky is lit up for a brief moment before returning us to the darkness of the hushed auditorium.

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  • The 2nd Law – an album review.

    And so, like a battered spouse returning to a lover who hasn’t quite beaten enough sense into them this morning I streamed Muse’s 6th studio album, The 2nd Law. It wasn’t actually that bad to start out with, Supremacy is a good opening track, bearing in mind I was expecting the weeble and bob of dubstep to ring out before a guitar chord could be struck. It’s grandiose in a Bond opening track kind of way, and the riff is typically Muse in a good way, there’s a bit of Kashmir thrown in for good measure as well with the strings, I’ve got to confess that seeing how I set out to hate the album, and dismiss a band I have followed for over a decade it was starting to draw me in.

    After Supremacy comes Madness which doesn’t sound as out there and awful as an album track as it did when I first heard it on YouTube as a single track, it fits nicely, and while it’s not Uno or Muscle Museum or Bliss or Hypermusic or even Invincible, it’s not wholly dreadful despite the bass sounding like someone was messing about and forgot to return the settings back again before releasing it. It starts heading into this strange Queen vibe with the solo, and that’s not a wholly terrible thing either. If Muse want to continue down the stadium rock avenue then Queen are a good band to draw from. The closing vocal harmonies are also very Mercury. After that comes Panic Station which sounds like Queen being covered by Scissor Sisters, it’s not Muse but it’s not unlistenable either.

    From there it starts to completely lose me though. Survival still sounds like Muse were given twenty minutes to pull a song together about the Olympics, it doesn’t fit and it’s lyrically one of their worst. Then unfortunately we get to Follow Me which starts out meaning well but soon ‘drops’ into the kind of chorus that would make me head to the bar, it’s very of the moment and I don’t mean that in a good way, I mean it’s very lazy and derivative and just not the band that I thought they were. I completely understand that bands do need to develop, especially by the time they’re releasing a sixth album but this is not growth, it’s not even enjoyable.

    Just as we are getting somewhere again afterwards, and I’m slowly accepting the way the songs are going, the layers of vocal and the choppy U2-esque guitar we get to Unsustainable, which to me should be called Unforgivable. I am not a fan of dubstep but I don’t think what is displayed here is even good dubstep, it sounds like a fad track and I hope it’s something that Muse will later laugh off, like it’s their Frog Chorus, that’s how it feels. Even for them the news report intro is heavy-handed and obvious and then it just descends like a car losing control and plummeting off a cliff edge.

    I can’t say I hate it, but it’s got a lot of skipability as an album. I’ll buy it, because there are some genuine moments of brilliance on there, but I wonder what is to come. I worry that I’ve lost a band that I once truly loved, that they’re going for a wider audience and that isn’t necessarily a good thing.

  • Babel – an album review.

    Every person I’ve spoken to who has heard Babel seems to be very much in love with it. Every review of Babel I’ve read criticises Mumford & Sons for not breaking boundaries or pushing things forward. Quick question; why break boundaries when you can do so well on a second outing under the same heading? The truth is that the album is an absolute triumph and I’m glad that Marcus and co haven’t cut back on the wild banjo-plucking builds or the choruses that already sound like they’re echoing across festival sites and in amphitheatres. That’s what we want them for.

    The only correct notion I’ve read in a review is that the cover looks like an M&S advert but I was always taught not to judge a book by its cover, and extend this to albums and films. Gathered inside Babel are fifteen songs that instantly feel comforting, like the smell of a loved one’s jumper. From the opening and title track to Where Are You Now it brings everything we all love about Mumford & Sons to the table of homemade preserves and cave cheese.

    What I say is let the critics carry on, critics gonna critique and all that. They’d be complaining if Babel was a space jazz odyssey as well. Time will tell on this one but I think they’ve done well, and I look forward to the summer when we will all be dancing round our ciders to Whispers In The Dark and I Will Wait.

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  • Behind NME Lines.

    As my good friend Ben said yesterday, ‘I wish I had come up with that title’. Behind NME Lines is an exhibition of NME magazine covers over the last 60 years taking place at NEO Bankside until 6th October. As it turns out this is just round the corner form work for me so I headed down there yesterday to check it out with my banter-ridden Sahara companion Terri who it turns out knows absolutely nothing about music.

    The exhibition in itself isn’t that big, imagine an open plan downstairs of a house, fill it with blown up NME covers on easels and in frames and you are pretty much there. The interesting part is the layout of the magazine over more than a decade, a lot of that is down to technology of course but stylistically we have also come a long way, it seems bands are all too aware of what it means to get on the cover of NME (I’m instantly reminded of the scene in Almost Famous where Stillwater are told they’re going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone). The other thing it is easy to forget is just how many famous band shots were done as NME shoots. The Jackson Pollock-esque Stone Roses shoot, the Union Jack and still babyfaced Libertines first cover shot, Cocker flicking the V’s; these are all deep in our group consciousness and they are all here, it’s quite a humbling thing to behold. I can only look back on ten years worth and remember where I was in the world at the time that I bought that particular issue, but for some it must be a real walk down memory lane to see The Beatles and The Who on the cover and remember what that meant to them at the time, and also to think of how many bedroom walls those covers have been on.

    It is definitely worth checking out, and literally faces the sloped entrance of the Tate Modern if you need another excuse to get out of your life for a bit.

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  • Reading on review.

    Morning.
    Or if it isn’t morning, where have you been?
    I feel I need to clarify a few points before I write this post.
    The first is that despite what I am due to say I very much appreciate the opportunity to see live music, I feel privileged to get to enjoy the music I like, and to spend time with a good friend.
    The second is that if you recognise yourself or your characteristics in the people I describe then that’s fine.

    Yesterday I got to spend the day with my friend James, I hadn’t seen him in about a year and while I know that he follows this blog fairly religiously (he pointed out the link to it on the homepage of his iPhone to me yesterday) I don’t think I’ve ever written anything about him, and I know this causes him more pain than when we discovered Burger King was shut at one o’clock this morning. When I was fresh out of Uni I got a job as a ‘data entry’ clerk in a bank, it was supposed to be a stop gap, but it lasted nearly two years, and just led me to the job I’m in now. On my second or third day I got in the lift after a cigarette break with who I thought at the time was the coolest man I had ever met. He had the skinniest jeans on you can imagine, a deep V-cut t-shirt and an oversized beanie holding back his mane of curly dark hair. We have talked about our meeting since and it was pretty much exactly the same as when Summer and Tom meet in (500) Days of Summer. I was wearing a The Queen Is Dead t-shirt and James said:
    ‘you like The Smiths?’
    and the rest, as they say is history. This was a big deal for me. James was the first person in that office to take the time with me, and in a way that will make me cringe (and probably make him laugh) he served as a big brother character.
    Two years ago; and with his hand forced slightly behind his back, James moved to Birmingham for work (despite the fact I repeatedly told him he would get stabbed) and my visits up there, and his visits home have been sporadic at best so it was nice to spend yesterday with him. That’s a bit of backstory for you. Onto the main event…

    We arrived at Reading at about twelve, having been caught up in traffic for about two hours, and taking in the brilliant new Bloc Party album Four alongside Scroobius Pip and Jack White. Trying to find a cashpoint I couldn’t help but notice the ‘scene’. Rather than it seeming like everyone was in their disposable dusty t-shirts it seems a trend has arisen for ‘festival wear’. This basically means boys in vest with bold kaleidoscope triangle prints, skinny jeans or skinny shorts and boots and girls in high waisted shorts, t-shirts promoting bands they have neither heard of or intend on hearing, and wellies. It’s a bold look when there are several thousand of them queuing outside a petrol station and it led me to tweeting that it looked like the worst episode of skins imaginable.

    When we got onto the site we headed to the Main Stage and caught Blood Red Shoes set which had a lot of heart considering its slot, and had an impressive haul of fans stretched out across the front. After that I got my one and only cider of the day and we settled in to watch Mystery Jets on the barrier, by this point my level of disdain for the majority of the people at the festival was rising, like that moment before The Hulk starts lurching forward in agony and fucking shit up. Mystery Jets were very good, as they have been each time I’ve seen them, and the songs on Radlands fit comfortably into their set. In a move that I don’t think I will ever fully understand Odd Future were on after Mystery Jets. For those of you who don’t know (and up until yesterday I’d have probably been writing this for me if that were possible) Odd Future (or to give them their full title Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) are an American alternative hip-hop collective from Los Angeles (yes, I did take that from Wikipedia). Their leader Tyler, The Creator is a fan of controversy and his lyrics have caused a stir for their homophobic and mysoginistic views. The set was one of the weirdest things I had ever experienced, and people went absolutely fucking crazy for it. There were; by my count, eight people onstage and they rap over each other and over the kind of deep bass grime thing that I don’t really good. They were entertaining though, constantly diving out into the crowd, miming sex moves on the security staff and generally just seeming a lot cooler than I’ll ever be able to comprehend, eventually the sound was cut on them for overrunning their set and I was left with the feeling that I was missing out on something (rather than my usual feeling that everyone else had it wrong).

    It was James’s decision to watch Odd Future, and as I said yesterday, I’ll always try and see bands at a festival that I wouldn’t usually see just for the experience of it so that’s fine, but I got to see The Shins after who have been a firm favourite since the exchange about them in Garden State. They played a set that was completely parallel to the one I saw at the HMV Forum earlier this year but that’s in no way a dig, because it was very well done, and covered all four of their albums nicely. After The Shins were Enter Shikari who I cannot condone in any way shape or form I’m afraid so I went to get some noodles and took James to see the end of Miike Snow’s set. We arrived just in time for Animals (which I suppose is the song isn’t it? From there we slowly made our way back to the Main Stage and accidentally caught the last song of Enter Shikari’s set. We then waited for all the clones of my youngest brother to clear from the front of the stage and that got settled in for The Vaccines. It was an odd experience, because I felt a bit like Dorothy amongst the Lollipop Guild (what a fruity example, please excuse me). It didn’t help that all of the boys seemed to be dressed like this:

    I began to grow very aware of how much older than everyone else I felt, James and I spoke about it afterwards and concluded the best word was surreal. While we were waiting I was scanning around the audience trying to work out a way to describe them. You know how in Less Than Zero everyone is described by Clay as being ‘tan, blonde, dark glasses’, it was like that, there as such a mould to everything and I started to get pissed off about it. Twenty years ago Nirvana played on that stage and here we were with a bunch of clones dressed like little Topshop mannequins. Then something strange happened. The Libertines was blasted out over the PA and every single person in the audience sang along, then Cage The Elephant was played, and every single person in the audience sang along, and it happened a couple more times and I had this incredible revelation that it didn’t matter, that the majority of them were here for the music, that they wouldn’t have crammed themselves in around us if it wasn’t for their love of music and that perhaps the reason I was so pissed off with them is that they represented a part of my life that had long since gone out of the window, I have (albeit very few) responsibilities now, I think in logical terms all the fucking time, I don’t really do reckless (although I seldom ever did) and I was jealous of them all. With that in mind I enjoyed The Vaccines set with renewed vigour, and have to say that I’m looking forward to how songs like Ghost Town sound on the new album because live it sounded incredible.

    After The Vaccines sweatfest we wandered around waiting for The Cribs to start on the NME/Radio 1 stage. James and I have been long serving fans of The Cribs, I remember them being one of the first bands we discussed together as we prowled around in circles figuring each other out. Their set was incredible (as they always are) and the songs from In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull sound better live than they do on the record. We left after Be Safe (a personal favourite) to catch the Main Stage headliners Kasabian, and they absolutely pulled the place apart. It’s hard to describe the atmosphere surrounding the headline set at a festival, there is such energy that can never be explored or contained and when the band took to the stage people just went absolutely crazy, it was brilliant. Usually I get to a point in any set beyond an hour where I start to wonder how long it will continue for but it felt like I didn’t have time to check the time before they were walking off again, it’s easy to forget just how many belting crowd-pleasing songs they really have, it was an attack and they had an excellent strategy.

    What I will say of the day is that it has confirmed I couldn’t camp at Reading again, the sites and smells of the campsite are different to any other I have experienced and it would take an incredible across-the-board line up for me to consider staying there overnight but the snatches of the festival I do get, the Saturday of indie brilliance, is something I adore, and I hope that it will long continue, hopefully with James by my side.
    The good ship Albion sails on course.

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  • Joy Formidable at The Lexington.

    It’s fair to say that prior to last night my interest in Welsh three piece Joy Formidable was a passing one. Despite my girlfriend’s desperate pleas that they are one of the best bands of the last decade. We got to see them at a 200 person venue in Angel/Islington last night and I couldn’t look away.

    It’s fair to say Kate (my girlfriend) has a super girl crush on Joy Formidable’s lead singer Ritzy and I can see why. She’s a diminutive thing, who on first sight could get lost behind a guitar but as I watched her I realised that she really knows how to play. I think that’s part of the appeal, when she’s onstage your eyes can’t avert, and she knows how to play up to it, especially when she can address individual catcalls between songs.

    Bassist Rhydian layers thick heavy riffs over anything going on, and the dynamic is very much a grunge thing of quiet verse/loud chorus used highly effectively with effects pedals and loops to create a sound much more dynamic and epic than usually possible of a three piece (other than Muse (early Muse anyway)). Their drummer Matt doesn’t get the chance to say a lot but who needs to when you can play like that. It was amazing.

    I have to say (and this is just my acoustic sensibilities of late) that my favourite track of the night was Wolf’s Law taken from their upcoming second album, it was just one of those rare moments at a gig where you forgot who you were. Buoy, Greatest Light and Everchanging Spectrum were also fantastic live.

  • Menthol Kisses – a review.

    The world really has it in for Logan Day.
    Menthol Kisses is the debut novel by Abby Stewart, available to buy here. It tells the story of Logan, a high school girl in Texas completely swamped by the melodrama that seems drawn to her like a magnet. It’s a story that follows what I will call her ‘lost weekends’, that period in a teenager’s life when they quite spectacularly fall out with themselves.

    Logan becomes swept up in a world of questionable influences, drugs and the service industry and as she continues on this downward spiral you can’t help but wonder where salvation is going to come from. While she hates her surroundings she appears simultaneously drawn to them, every person she comes into contact with seems doomed and every party she attends could be her last.

    The real honesty of the piece is in Logan’s relationship with her sister Shannon who heads off to college at the start of the novella and could be seen as being the tipping point. Without the calming influence of her older sister and with the knowledge that she escaped, Logan feels more trapped than she could have done when there were the two of them. While Logan turns to anger over her abandonment, as a reader it highlights the importance of breaking free of those small town shackles and seeing the world, trying something new, finding yourself, and any other new age cliche you can think of.

    The story also brings to light some of the terrifying judgemental and racist views still being practised in the southern states of America today. Logan’s friend Javonte, who is one of only a few positive things in her life is often the victim of some terrible words and actions as a result of the colour of his skin. He acts as a conscience when everyone else seems so hellbent on fucking themselves and Logan up.

    As you read, and as Logan disappears from her description of herself in the opening chapter you can’t help but wonder where Abby Stewart drew all of this from, and hope it isn’t too personal, because if so, it’s an incredible story to be able to tell.

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  • The Dark Knight Rises – an almost review.

    I finally got to see the final slice of the Dark Knight trilogy and my god it’s beautiful. If you’re still waiting to see it then read no further.

    Right…

    Have they gone?

    …

    Oh man, it was amazing. Wasn’t it amazing. I was literally hooked the whole way through. Nolan is some kind of film god, the way he span that thing out demands a new kind of respect. It looked amazing, it sounded amazing (thanks Hans) and I can’t really bum it enough. I’d go as far to say I enjoyed it more than The Dark Knight, a view which I know will come up against some competition (I’m looking your way Floyd).

    The mood of the film just seemed that much darker, there was a real sense of hopelessness, as though all of the lights had faded, in a similar way to The Empire Strikes Back ending on such a down-note. The mad genius and backstory of Bane are something you don’t get from most villains or even most characters and Hardy is some kind of animal once he is behind that mask. I’ve heard people gripe about the overdubbed voice but take it as part of the package and it works. There were times watching it when it was hard to imagine that there was man in the costume, as though it really were a comic book fantasy, he was that deep in.

    Another unpopular opinion. I don’t really rate Christian Bale and as such won’t comment further other than saying he’s done a lot worse.

    Anne Hathaway was spot on. I might have had my doubts because I was thinking of ditzy romcom Hathaway but she completely pulls it off. She’s badass. There’s something about a woman in a leather catsuit leaning over on a motorbike that fucks with my equilibrium.

    Gordon-Levitt kept good pace as well, another surprise because I think of him as being Tom Hanson from New Jersey (because I watch (500) Days far too much). The film left the idea of him physically becoming Robin up in the air which I would argue is for the best, I never really like Robin, too sidekicky and camp. I’m sure if Nolan wanted to he could completely change that preconception but only time will tell on that one.

    I think I want to go and see it again, and that rarely happens.

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  • No Direction Home.

    Last night I watched the first half of Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home. It trails Dylan from his upbringing in Hibbing, Minnesota through to his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. The second half covers his change to using The Hawks as a backing band and the outrage over ‘Dylan going electric’.

    It’s a strange thing to observe now. When you think about the way music has changed and the fact that it makes little impact if an artist goes from acoustic to electric performances. A lot of bands have a couple of acoustic songs on an album or in Bombay Bicycle Club’s case an album of acoustic songs. It’s hard to imagine why people would get so bent out of shape over something that seems so superficial. I prefer Dylan with the band. The songs on Blonde on Blonde, Freewheeling and Bringing It Back Home are vastly superior to his self titled first album or Another Side.

    I think it just shows the impact Bob Dylan had on people. Nobody else could do that and from what I’ve read of him he makes a habit of antagonising purists by constantly messing about with the format of his songs, something I’m completely aware of having seen him perform at Hop Farm in 2010.

    I need to watch the second half when I get the time, to see him strung out on speed, a big tangled head of hair rocking back and forth on stage with the power of The Band behind him.