According to Letterboxd, I’ve seen nearly forty movies that have had a 2024 release so far (a Boston-area theatrical release or, if there wasn’t one, a streaming debut.) Below are fifteen (in alphabetical order by title) to keep in mind six+ months from now when I’m compiling my year-end list. I viewed fouratTIFF last September, two at IFFBoston in May, plus two more at IFFBoston’s Fall Focus last October. As for the rest, all were streamed at home apart from Challengers and Robot Dreams, the latter perhaps my favorite animated feature in years. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (which I could not get tickets for at TIFF) is currently on MUBI and worth the price of a subscription; I plan on revisiting it soon, more than willing to take in its 163-minute running time again. As I wrote in my brief review, “(It uses) humor as a balm in expressing outrage at a world gone absurd” and may prove as essential to its own time as Parasite was five years ago.
Challengers
Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World
Egoist
Evil Does Not Exist
The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed
Pulp’s This is Hardcore was a hangover of a follow-up to their celebrated LP Different Class from two years before, and it’s emblematic of the time when it came out. Although never a single, “Dishes” instantly impressed me, and not just for its indelible opening lyric quoted above (only Jarvis Cocker would dare to make such a comparison.) Later, he sings, “A man once told me, beware of 33 / He said, ‘It was a not an easy time for me.’” I was 23 in 1998, but I could still relate—it was my first full year in Boston and I spent all of it in the graduate student interzone, with my life almost entirely focused on academia. Apart from my classes, I was alone most of the time.
As a film studies student, movies admittedly supplanted music as an art form to obsess over, although the latter barely diminished as a presence in my life. Not having cable/MTV and deliberately avoiding the top 40, I relied on Boston’s WFNX (by far the more diverse of the city’s two alt-rock stations) to discover some new music—I first heard “History Repeating”, “Lights are Changing” and “Slimcea Girl” there (and would likely never know the last one otherwise.) And with that, I was off on my own, feverishly awaiting new recordings from artists I already adored (Saint Etienne, PJ Harvey, Morcheeba, Tori Amos) and looking beyond commercial radio for new-to-me sounds from the past in the guise of college radio stations like WERS (an entirely different animal from what it is today) and WMBR.
Looking over this list now, I can’t find any rhyme or reason to it. I’ve gone on about alt-rock entering a rapid decline in the late ’90s, but this might be one of the last great years for top 40 pop as well: REM, Seal, Madonna and Sheryl Crow, as well as endearing electronica (remember that term?) novelties (Fatboy Slim, Stardust.) Note all the great one-offs too, from Komeda’s Stereolab-gone-pop to Billy Bragg and Wilco’s historic Woody Guthrie collab. I can even spot a few first-timers that will heavily figure into these playlists over the next decade and beyond: Canadian singer-songwriter Emm Gryner with an anthem from her only major label album; fellow Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright making quite the splash on his attention-getting debut; Calexico’s mariachi-inflected noir solidifying on a highlight from their second full-length.
Finally, one day I will write a longer essay on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine as I currently listen to it more than any other album from this year except for Good Humor.
1998: I Am Not Jesus, Though I Have The Same Initials
Propellerheads feat. Miss Shirley Bassey, “History Repeating”
Still making an effort to absorb new albums in 2024, though admittedly my listening as of late defaults to playlists, particularly the annual ones I’ve been posting on a weekly basis all year long. Nonetheless, I can easily name ten albums I will try to keep in rotation throughout the summer and fall. Few of these come close to Black Rainbows, Weather Alive or Queens of the Summer Hotel; then again, none of those came out in the first halves of their respective years, either.
The Great Transitional Year where I upended my life and moved to Boston. Before I did, I heard a lot of Top 40 radio while working a summer retail job (actually, it was an “Adult Top 40” station, which translated as Mostly White Without Rocking Too Hard). I must have listened to Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch”, OMC’s “How Bizarre” and The Wallflowers “One Headlight” (among many others) at least one hundred times each over a three-month period. I’d like to say it soured me off mainstream radio for good, but even without such overexposure, I’m positive those songs still would not have aged well enough to make my playlist below (though I’ve recently come around on the OMC, a harmless novelty when not played to death.)
At this time, I almost entirely stopped putting stock into commercial radio (even mainstream modern rock channels!). Of these 35 songs, the only ones I ever heard on the radio that year were White Town’s brilliant, genderfucked surprise hit, Sarah McLachlan’s last single resembling anything remotely “edgy” and maybe the Cornershop song (the latter probably only on Boston’s then-great indie-rock station WFNX). A few, like “Da Funk”, “Try”, “Stereo” and “She Cries Your Name”, probably came from 120 Minutes. “Smoke” was an exceptional album track from an LP I bought the first week of release, as was Blur’s great “Beetlebum” (number one in the UK but overshadowed in the US by their own surprise novelty hit).
Regardless, I didn’t hear at least one-third of these until post-’97. I’ve already gone on about discovering Ivy four years later; Super Furry Animals, Sleater-Kinney and Teenage Fanclub would also become known to me in that rough period. “Lazy Line Painter Jane” had the most seismic impact in the summer of 2000 when it finally became commercially available in the US, eighteen months after I fell for If You’re Feeling Sinister. ’97 was still mostly pre-internet regarding hearing new music. I can only imagine how different this list might now be if I had YouTube or Spotify at my disposal back then.
On that note, streaming and re-releases are chiefly responsible for bringing the moodier sounds of Luna, Primal Scream, Morphine and Sneaker Pimps back into personal heavy rotation, while current TV series The Bear breathed new life into a standout from Radiohead’s venerated (if not by me at the time) OK Computer. As for former shoegazers Catherine Wheel, their sprightly, sparkling “Satellite” (from their mostly forgotten LP Adam and Eve) wasn’t even a single—not that it would’ve taken airplay away from Third Eye Blind, though one can dream.
In the last entry, I stressed how content and form can both complement and enhance each other in a film. One of my more important takeaways from studying the art in grad school was the importance of good writing (content) and acting (form)—the absence of either one often an automatic blemish on the final product. Obviously, not only performances determine form, even if they’re the most crucial component of it. However, one should not value a film’s style any less in establishing its overall worth. In particular, a sense of place via its production and sound design can be just as crucial in making a great film as its screenplay or actors (as long as they don’t overshadow either one.)
Roughly a decade after grad school, entering my mid-late 30s, I had by then seen literally thousands of movies (probably closer to around 2,000, but that qualifies.) As with any medium, the more one absorbs, the better one can critically assess. I reached a point where I began responding more strongly to qualities I hadn’t seen before, as opposed to those which had become tropes or rendered stale through repetition. Woody Allen, for instance, grew less interesting to me (controversy/cancellation aside): his 21st Century work offered little variation on what had come before (give or take a Match Point), rendering him irrelevant and mechanical (I took to dubbing him the “Wood-bot”.) Why waste time on someone obviously past their prime with so much new (and unseen old) stuff attempting something different or at least advancing a fresh perspective?
Naturally, I praised unique, innovative performances: Daniel Day-Lewis’ ultra-specific persona and accent in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, Lesley Manville burrowing deep as an unglamorous but sympathetic lush in Mike Leigh’s Another Year; Nicolas Cage going for broke and director Werner Herzog expertly guiding him in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I also valued screenplays that either told stories I hadn’t heard before (Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York pushing his trademark meta-ness to an extreme in exploring mortality vs. the permanence of art) or told in a way I hadn’t seen before (Leos Carax’s Holy Motors orchestrating an extended metaphor for what it entails to partake in a performance and inhabit many roles.)
Just as often, the look and/or sound of a film got my attention. I fell head over heels for Nicolas Winding Refn’s Driveand its deep dive into a Los Angeles milieu by way of its opening, splashy pink-font credits scored to Kavinsky and Lovefoxx’s seductive, retro-electropop “Nightcall”; I also found the throwback, low-budget, black-and-white New York of Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha incessantly charming. I instantly loved the near-magical conjuring of 1965 coastal Rhode Island Wes Anderson crafted for Moonrise Kingdom and the melancholy, concrete greys of Greenwich Village set just a few years before in Joel and Ethan Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis. Of course, each of these titles also had exceptional screenplays and performances (Frances Ha is unimaginable with anyone other than Greta Gerwig as the titular character) but their visual tableaux and soundtracks were beautifully in sync with them, creating multi-dimensional experiences one couldn’t replicate solely on the page.
Frances Ha
Of the new filmmakers to emerge in the 2010s, Peter Strickland was one of the most driven by an uber-particular sense of style. Born in Britain in 1973, he broke through with his second feature, Berberian Sound Studio (2012). Toby Jones (then best known for starring in the Truman Capote film that was not Capote) plays a meek sound engineer working on a 1970s Italian horror film (the subgenre, giallo, is best exemplified by Dario Argento’s 1977 masterpiece Suspiria.) Strickland’s work is more of a psychological horror film, with Jones’ character’s sanity gradually ebbing as his personality fractures and real life becomes indistinguishable from the movie he’s working on. Rather than keeping tabs on an ever-more-convoluted plot, the film is most striking for its style, heavily drawing on giallo tropes (bold colors, intrusive music, graphic violence, an enveloping feeling of dread and the macabre) and also painstakingly recreating the look and feel of a period long since passed.
Berberian Sound Studio makes a formidable impression but its obtuseness doesn’t fully satisfy—by the end, while dazzled by its style and impressed by Jones (a gifted and consistently great character actor), I didn’t feel much of an emotional connection to what had transpired. Thankfully, Strickland avoids this trap with his next feature, The Duke of Burgundy (2014). Ostensibly set in what appears to be a small European village (it was shot on location in Hungary but its location is never explicitly identified onscreen), it has a style and sense of place as richly textured, realized and dominant as its predecessor; it’s also a big step forward in how he expertly utilizes these facets in service of his narrative, which is nearly as complex but far more resonant in how it invites the viewer to respond to its characters within this environment.
The film opens with Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), a younger, pixie-like woman kneeling at a bucolic stream in what resembles an enchanted forest out of a fairy tale. She looks up longingly at the sky and then takes to her bicycle, riding through the woods as the opening credits commence. Scored, like the rest of the film to the baroque chamber pop of duo Cat’s Eyes (with breathy, Francoise Hardy-esque vocalist Rachel Zeffira), the credits resemble a picture book or perhaps a procession of twee, self-knowing The Smiths or Belle and Sebastian album covers, employing freeze frames, matte effects and various animation techniques (including fluttering butterflies—remember them.) It concludes once Evelyn reaches her destination: the posh home of Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen).
A single, middle-aged lepidopterist (one who studies butterflies and moths), Cynthia greets Evelyn with a curt, “You’re late” before letting her into the house. One immediately detects how curated the place is, as eloquently considered and conceived as anything out of Architectural Digest. Between the furnishings and the characters’ hairstyles and clothing, it also easily looks like it could be the 1970s, yet there’s something not-quite-restricted to that period suggesting this could be reasonably set during any time since that decade (it’s also devoid of devices such as cell phones or computers that would render the palette a deliberate anachronism.) Certainly, such an environment feels like a deliberate provocation, meant to invoke something retro without placing it in a concrete context. It fascinates not because it necessarily begs us to ask when is this actually taking place but more like why does it look like the past frozen in amber?
It’s a question that surfaces in nearly all of Strickland’s work, especially his next feature In Fabric (2018), which delves deep into home furnishings, fashions and department store interiors straight out of the 1970s and 1980s while not necessarily tied to either of those decades beyond their looks (really, the tale of a dress that murders people can be set anytime, anyplace!) In The Duke of Burgundy, however, it’s a tad more subtle. One could simply chalk it up to the director’s preference for era-specific stylistic choices—a love for visual motifs from the years constituting his own childhood. It surely distinguishes itself from an alternate universe version of the film explicitly set in the present where Cynthia and Evelyn post on social media and include slick PowerPoint presentations in the former’s lepidoptery lectures.
While unignorable, however, Strickland’s stylistic choices primarily help to set an overall tone—an off-kilter one, for sure, as The Duke of Burgundy occasionally shifts into experimental, dreamlike sequences that do not so much move the narrative forward as offer peeks into Evelyn’s and especially Cynthia’s subconsciouses. In direct contrast to heightening this overall sense that something’s just a tad awry, these visuals also end up exuding a sense of coziness, maybe even some warmth. Cynthia has obviously put a lot of thought and care into designing her home and every consideration from its mood lighting to the textures of its furniture and knickknacks feels welcoming: a real, lived-in home rather than a sterile museum. The idyllic, heavily forested and sun-kissed (even when perpetually rainy, somehow) village settings are similarly pastoral and inviting.
This blend of peculiarity and familiarity is also palpable after Evelyn enters Cynthia’s home and the later commands of her, “You can start by cleaning the study.” It initially appears that Evelyn is Cynthia’s cleaning lady, and not a sterling one at that. Cynthia comes off as a stuffy taskmaster, sitting in her chair and reading while ignoring Evelyn as she scrubs the floor beneath on her hands and knees. Cynthia remains unsatisfied, ordering Evelyn to rub her feet and then wash her underwear by hand in the bathroom sink. Still disappointed by Evelyn’s work, Cynthia announces that it’s time for “A little punishment.” She takes her by the hand, dragging her into the bedroom where, behind a closed door, we hear what sounds like Evelyn being repeatedly spanked, or perhaps whipped.
Evelyn scrubs, Cynthia ignores.
However, the next shot reveals what’s really going on: as the two women lie in bed together, lovingly caressing each other, we see that Evelyn is more than just Cynthia’s maid (or perhaps not one at all.) The whole thing is a charade, an act, a BDSM relationship between the two women with defined dom and sub roles. Suddenly, Cynthia’s brusque demeanor makes perfect sense, as does much of her odd behavior—for instance, exactly why she drinks copious amounts of water before one of Evelyn’s subsequent visits is never shown but discreetly implied that it has something to do with urination as a sexual act. That it’s all a performance is a clever twist; had this been a short rather than a feature, it would’ve been a neat place to end on.
Fortunately, Strickland takes this further by gradually revealing another turn: while Cynthia plays the part of the dom, it’s clearly Evelyn calling the shots in their relationship, making suggestions and writing down what Cynthia should be doing and saying when playacting with her. Increasingly, Cynthia can’t help but relay her discomfort with her role, which as an actress Knudsen expresses beautifully to the point where it’s heartbreaking to view her growing distress. At one point, a platinum blonde and potential femme-fatale only known as The Carpenter (Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed) visits them to provide measurements for a coffin-like container which Evelyn could sleep in under Cynthia’s bed. Once determined this object could not possibly be completed in time for Evelyn’s birthday (it’s a gift!), the carpenter suggests an alternative present called a ”human toilet”: note the childlike glee on Evelyn’s face at this mention and, in contrast, the utter bewilderment on Cynthia’s, who abruptly leaves the room, citing another appointment as an excuse for her brash departure.
Real, unignorable emotions increasingly invade the performative aspects of Cynthia and Evelyn’s relationship. Cynthia finds herself unable to recite her lines with conviction while Evelyn, tempted by The Carpenter, becomes impatient, telling her love, “It would be nice if you did it without having to be asked.” If it sounds like pure soap opera, rest assured stylistically it is far removed from that genre. As the relationship becomes strained, the score is less melodic with electronic droning noises threatening to completely smother the strings, harpsichord and cor anglais from before. Similarly, the lighting gets darker and opaquer while the camera moves ever-more-deliberately with copious slow-as-molasses vertical pans nearly rendering both interiors and bodies as abstractions.
Evelyn and The Carpenter
The film’s title refers not to European royalty but the English term for a species of butterfly, Hamearis Lucina. Why Strickland chose this particular species is best left to lepidopterists, but his use of butterflies as a motif is more relevant. When considering this insect, one can’t help but think of the notion of transformation—how a caterpillar passes through multiple stages to become something radically different (from a ground dweller to a flier with colorful wings.) In that sense, both Cynthia and Evelyn struggle (to varying degrees) in transforming themselves and each other. A stark reminder of this is omnipresent in Cynthia’s home: cases and cabinets teeming with pinned butterflies, all of them transformations that eventually hit a dead end, preserved as memories but not ongoing entities like our heroines. The two women reach a cathartic moment, Evelyn consoling Cynthia about their playacting, “If this is what it does to you, I can change.” Rather than evolving like a successful transformation, however, this relationship more resembles a Mobius strip—following this confrontation, the film ends as it begins with Cynthia once again drinking her water and reviewing her notecards as Evelyn shows up at her front door.
Still, the butterfly motif is not just there for the benefit of the film’s central relationship. In the lecture scenes, one learns that Evelyn herself is a budding lepidopterist, her desire to dominate made flesh as she asks a lecturer pointed questions seemingly to bring attention to herself while a vaguely embarrassed Cynthia looks on. As the camera slowly pans across the lecture’s audience, not one man is present, only women. Further heightening the film’s off-kilter sensibility, some of the women are so extensively made-up they resemble men in drag (much like a Roxy Music album cover); the gleeful presence of the occasional mannequin in the background of said audience pushes this off-ness even further. Gradually, one realizes there are no actual men in the entire film! The Duke of Burgundy is itself a transformative realm, a society of women playing all parts. The butterflies themselves are remnants of a completed evolution; its central love story conveys that whatever our aspirations may be, humans as individuals are subject to a continual evolution without end; as couples, an end only arrives when one participant or in some cases, both are no longer willing to evolve.
We leave Cynthia and Evelyn at an impasse—their relationship is intact, for now, but who is to say what potential it has when it appears to be stuck in a cocoon? Similarly, one can appreciate new films for their familiarity, but when do they start seeming stale? Like The Duke of Burgundy, the remaining titles in this project will emphasize new ways of seeing and storytelling as recent examples of the medium’s continued evolution.
By this year, music permeated my life more than it ever had before. Between regular used record store visits (including dollar vinyl bin dives), library CDs dubbed onto blank cassettes and “Ten Albums for the Price of One” record clubs (Columbia House, BMG, CD-HQ—I did ‘em all), I amassed a collection of more product than I could ever absorb. I stopped at a record store that September after a few weeks of deliberately avoiding them to save up some cash, about to burst at the seams with joy upon seeing all the new records I wanted to buy. I selected six of that year’s releases for my 100 Albums project and just as easily could’ve picked at least four more (Diary of A Mod Housewife, Viva! La Woman, Endtroducing… and Nine Objects of Desire, for starters) if I didn’t feel weird about including ten for a single year.
As with 1995, my age obviously factored into this. Everything at 21 still felt so new and limitless to me where music was concerned. While the alt-rock bubble had burst, it had not yet fully soured into the dubious mutations (nu-metal, mook rock and Smashmouth) that overtook it in the late ‘90s. Like any other year, this one had its share of pedestrian (311), overplayed (oh, I don’t know, “Macarena”?) and just plain godawful (hello, Bush!) hits. But look at Primitive Radio Gods topping the modern rock airplay chart for six weeks! Or agreeable novelty hits from Fountains of Wayne, Beck and Geggy Tah! Not to mention all the wonderful stuff not on your radio, from Sloan’s Chicago (the band)-gone-indie-pop gem to an improbable but divine duet between Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue!
The relative lack of real obscurities here (even Cibo Matto got on MTV) suggests indie’s infiltration of the mainstream was at one of its intermittent peaks though I suspect many listeners have never heard “Percolator”, “Power World” or even “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone”. I myself did not hear DJ Shadow’s expansive, sample-built mood collage or Belle and Sebastian’s version of indie-pop more informed by Vince Guaraldi than Tom Verlaine until later (though in the latter’s case, not too much later) but both influenced particular musical genre strands that remain in heavy rotation through this day, even if I don’t care too much about recent work by either artist.
1996: One Was Magenta, The Other Was Blue
Beck, “Devil’s Haircut”
Aimee Mann, “Choice In The Matter”
Belle and Sebastian, “Seeing Other People”
Fountains of Wayne, “Radiation Vibe”
Super Furry Animals, “Something 4 The Weekend”
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds with Kylie Minogue, “Where The Wild Roses Grow”
Pet Shop Boys, “Se a Vida E (That’s The Way Life Is)”
Cowboy Junkies, “Something More Besides You”
Morcheeba, “Small Town”
Jason Falkner, “I Live”
Suzanne Vega, “World Before Columbus”
Sam Phillips, “Power World”
Amy Rigby, “20 Questions”
Fiona Apple, “Sleep To Dream”
Squirrel Nut Zippers, “Put A Lid On It”
Gillian Welch, “Pass You By”
Cibo Matto, “Know Your Chicken”
Patti Smith, “Summer Cannibals”
Sloan, “Everything You’ve Done Wrong”
R.E.M., “Binky the Doormat”
Luscious Jackson, “Naked Eye”
The Divine Comedy, “Becoming More Like Alfie”
DJ Shadow, “Stem/Long Stem”
Stereolab, “Percolator”
Sheryl Crow, “Home”
Ani DiFranco, “Adam and Eve”
Tori Amos, “Hey Jupiter”
Pulp, “Mile End”
Suede, “Trash”
Sleater-Kinney, “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone”
Geggy Tah, “Whoever You Are”
Steve Wynn, “Shelly’s Blues (Pt. 2)”
Tom Petty, “Walls (Circus)”
Primitive Radio Gods, “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand”
By 1995, “Alternative” was the mainstream. I spent that Memorial Day at a music festival sponsored by WLUM, Milwaukee’s corporate modern rock radio station. Violent Femmes were the hometown headliners, but their most recent album, Rock! would never get an official domestic release (and is still not streaming anywhere); in fact, none of the bands I saw are on this mix. Next to the Femmes, the highlight was seeing the Ramones on the second stage on one of their last tours. They ran through 30 songs in 40 minutes, and more than made up for having to sit through the Flaming Lips (whom I’ve never cottoned to) and Thank You-era Duran Duran (yes, they played their versions of “911 Is A Joke” and “White Lines” from this misbegotten covers album).
However, I don’t mean to reduce an entire year to a single event, even if this particular one points to how alt-rock, after having built up considerable goodwill in the decade’s first half instantly began to curdle. Fortunately, a superb left-field hit would occasionally emerge amongst all the Live, Sponge and Alanis: “Connection”, “Down By the Water”, “Better Than Nothing”, “A Girl Like You”, “Queer”, “Judy Staring At The Sun” and “1979” are all tracks I first heard via rotation on WLUM, and all of them sound good today. Other tunes, like “Downtown Venus”, “Happy Sad” and “Somebody’s Crying” might not have fit that radio format, but they were present elsewhere—on other stations, in people’s cars or perhaps (gasp) even on MTV! Plus, Britpop was at its peak (if Oasis/Blur/Pulp aren’t your thing, try Echobelly), trip-hop was close to getting there (Tricky representing) and even a band as wacky as Southern Culture on the Skids was on a major label.
That summer, I occasionally worked a graveyard shift as a desk receptionist at the Biltmore, an early 20th century hotel converted into a graduate and non-traditional student residence at Marquette. I was living at my parents’ south side home and it was a thrill to drive downtown late at night, secure street parking and sit behind the front desk in the building’s cavernous lobby until 3 AM (sometimes later), listening to music on the old boombox I donated to the post. I might have heard a few of these selections on the radio (incidentally, I still recall hearing WMSE airing Oscar the Grouch’s “I Love Trash” late one night there), although most of what I played came from dubbed cassettes (it’s where I absorbed stuff like Blue, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and The Best of Blondie.) I mention it here because this experience felt parallel to the new music I was discovering elsewhere at the time—a sense of infinite possibility that naturally permeates the air when you’re twenty and in academic limbo between childhood and becoming a responsible adult. Stuff like folkie Eddi Reader’s ethereal, unusually electronic Batman Forever soundtrack cut, the Cardigans’ slightly loopy lounge pop, That Dog’s sophisticated take on indie-rock, Morphine’s lightness-cloaked-in-darkness—all were on the margins but undeniably in the air, exuding stimulation and promise the following years would often struggle to replicate.
1995: Feeling Good (For Now)
Elastica, “Connection”
P.M. Dawn, “Downtown Venus”
Jill Sobule, “Good Person Inside”
Jen Trynin, “Better Than Nothing”
That Dog, “He’s Kissing Christian”
PJ Harvey, “Down By The Water”
Ben Folds Five, “Best Imitation of Myself”
Teenage Fanclub, “Sparky’s Dream”
Chris Isaak, “Somebody’s Crying”
Autour de Lucie, “L’Accord Parfait”
The Smashing Pumpkins, “1979”
Saint Etienne, “He’s On The Phone”
Edwyn Collins, “A Girl Like You”
Kirsty MacColl, “Caroline”
Southern Culture on the Skids, “Camel Walk”
Garbage, “Queer”
kd lang, “Acquiesce”
Tricky, “Aftermath”
Morphine, “All Your Way”
Bjork, “I Miss You”
Eric Matthews, “Fanfare”
Pulp, “Something Changed”
Luna, “23 Minutes In Brussels”
Blur, “The Universal”
Pretty & Twisted, “Ride!”
Eddi Reader, “Nobody Lives Without Love”
The Cardigans, “Daddy’s Car”
Alison Moyet, “Solid Wood”
Towa Tei, “Luv Connection”
Echobelly, “King of the Kerb”
Erasure, “Fingers and Thumbs (Cold Summer’s Day)”
Grant McLennan, “Horsebreaker Star”
Pizzicato Five, “Happy Sad”
Suddenly, Tammy!, “Beautiful Dream”
Catherine Wheel & Tanya Donelly, “Judy Staring At The Sun”
As 1964 was for British Invasion Pop and 1977 for Punk, 1994 now emerges as the year for Alternative Rock. The early ’90s may have produced more innovative stuff, but 1995-on saw a sliding off of sorts as quantity overtook quality. It’s inevitable now that a genre clearly defined by name as to exist outside the mainstream would implode once it achieved a certain level of popularity.
I spent the year in transition from a commuting college freshman to a sophomore living in a dorm. I was at the obvious age and in the ideal environment to take to alt-rock; shortly after moving on campus (and about six months after the demise of WARP-AM), Milwaukee got its first commercial radio station in the genre (then called “New Rock 102ONE”), exposing us all to new sounds we mostly hadn’t heard before. That is, until a few months on when they became painfully familiar due to the sort of repetition you’d find on any Top 40 station, of course.
This is a long way of justifying why my 1994 mix is heavily alt-rock, although I’ve sidestepped the era’s most heavily saturated artists (like the bands mentioned in Pavement’s sardonic and lovely “Range Life”) in favor of definitive but less overplayed (and in some cases, near-forgotten) selections (Tori Amos, Morrissey, Indigo Girls, Liz Phair.) I’ve also included some longtime personal faves/non-hits by Milla (dropping the “Jovovich” for her brief music career), Sam Phillips, Luscious Jackson and Soul Coughing and a few token pop hits outside the alt-rock spectrum (Erasure’s fluke late hit, M-People’s retro-house crossover).
Of course, Britpop theoretically overlapped with alt-rock, even if little beyond Oasis’ best single crossed over here. Blur’s arguably best album track, The Auteurs’ more cerebral take on the sound and Echobelly’s distaff Smiths notwithstanding, one could stretch the definition of the term. After all, what is a terrific Alison Moyet single (why it never became a drag lip-synch standard is puzzling), an electro-folk epic from Saint Etienne or a sun-kissed but still salty almost-hit from Scots The Jesus and Mary Chain (with Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval) great British pop? Aussies (the proto-Belle and Sebastian twee sweetness from Frente!) and Canadians (Sloan, Nova Scotia’s finest) also showed Britpop could scan as an attitude that didn’t even necessarily need to be from the UK.
Tracey Thorn is easily the year’s MVP, both for an artistic comeback with her own duo Everything But The Girl (their big hit from the same LP would not hit big until the following year) and her indelible collaboration with Massive Attack, whose trip-hop (also repped here by Portishead and the perpetually trend-spotting Madonna) resonated more deeply with me than alt-rock ever did. I haven’t even addressed the lithe fragility of Jeff Buckley, the underrated omnipresence of Michael Stipe (both with his band and as a guest on a Kristin Hersh song) or Sinead O’Connor stripping down newly deceased Kurt Cobain to his essential core. But “Bad Reputation” still sounds remarkably fresh today–hearing it always reminds me that I should explore Freedy Johnston’s back catalogue a little further.
1994: Nobody’s Going To Tell Me Who To Love
Tori Amos, “God”
Luscious Jackson, “Deep Shag”
Jeff Buckley, “Grace”
Sloan, “Coax Me”
Milla, “Gentleman Who Fell”
Freedy Johnston, “Bad Reputation”
Everything But The Girl, “Rollercoaster”
Ani DiFranco, “Overlap”
Kristin Hersh, “Your Ghost”
Sam Phillips, “I Need Love”
Echobelly, “Insomniac”
Erasure, “Always”
Alison Moyet, “Whispering Your Name”
The Auteurs, “Chinese Bakery”
M People, “Moving On Up”
Soul Coughing, “Casiotone Nation”
Indigo Girls, “Least Complicated”
Saint Etienne, “Like A Motorway”
Massive Attack, “Protection”
Madonna, “Bedtime Story”
Sugar, “Your Favorite Thing”
Frente!, “Accidentally Kelly Street”
Steve Wynn, “Wedding Bells”
Liz Phair, “Whip-Smart”
Pavement, “Range Life”
Ween, “What Deaner Was Talking About”
Roxette, “Sleeping In Your Car”
Sinead O’Connor, “All Apologies”
Portishead, “Glory Box”
The Jesus and Mary Chain, “Sometimes Always”
Oasis, “Live Forever”
Blur, “This Is a Low”
Morrissey, “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get”
Named after a terminally ill 16-year-old girl (played by Lola Petticrew), she is but one of three main characters in writer-director Daina O. Pusić’s feature debut. The other two are Tuesday’s mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and a feral, multi-hued parrot who can change size at will and speaks in a sinister, garbled, near-stoned voice (by Nigerian born British actor Arinzé Kene.)
It’s really all one needs to know as it’s best to go into this cold. Before the film’s screening, a collective buzz between members of my film group and I speculated that it was to be an unusual one, possibly a slow, oblique art film along the lines of Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin; from the first scene, however, it was more readily apparent that this was simply batshit insane and fortunately, refreshing and unique. Even once one gets the gist of what’s really going on, the weirdness doesn’t cease; nor does an ability to surprise (one moment in particular is like nothing else I’ve seen outside of a Warner Bros cartoon.) Tuesday has the feel of a future cult classic and it’s certainly not for everyone but it is assured, intriguing and unpredictable. Iconic for multiple comedic performances, Louis-Dreyfus has rarely played such a dramatic, heartbreaking role, although as in the most effective dramas, there is so much humor laced throughout that it’s almost inseparable from the serious stuff. I’m not sure if this is as great of a film as it is an original one, but I look forward to revisiting it. Grade: A-
THELMA
June Squibb found success late in life, well into her 70s and beyond when she appeared in small but acclaimed scene-stealing roles Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt and Nebraska; in both of these and many other film and TV roles, her tart irascibleness emitted the presence of an esteemed character actress. Until now, no one has built an entire film around her; enter director Josh Margolin, whose feature debut is based on his own grandmother (played here by Squibb), a victim of a phone scam bilking her out of $10,000.
The thing about good character actors is that, given the opportunity to shine in a lead role, they usually knock it out of the park. 93 when it was filmed, Squibb’s timing and verve is undiminished, but with a naturalness and gravitas that transcends the “wacky old lady” trope. She also leads an above-average ensemble populated with other great character actors (Parker Posey, Clark Gregg) and in his final role, an affecting Richard Roundtree. The film itself is as light as air (almost verging-on-silly), but Margolin’s awareness of this and the script’s gentle satire of suspenseful Mission: Impossible like theatrics turn Thelma into the summer blockbuster alternative you probably never knew you wanted. B+
PURPLE HAZE: A CONSERVATION FILM
Alternate title: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Purple Martins (and Should Thought To Have Asked.) The largest species of swallows in North America, the Purple Martin resides exclusively in nesting structures in order to ensure their survival. Filmmaker Zach Steinhauser noticed how these birds tended to thrive in man-made bird houses constructed from holed-out gourds around his home in central South Carolina, sparking an interest in the species, following them as they migrated to warmer climates (most notably the Amazon rainforest) and back to their domestic homes which are increasingly threatened by environmental deterioration and lack of awareness. This is the type of documentary you’ll only see at a film festival: a little rough around the edges but impassioned and heartfelt in its agenda. Steinhauser is obviously working with a limited budget, but you rarely question his interest or dedication to the subject matter, which goes a long way in rendering this a better-than-average film about birds. B
HAPPY CAMPERS
Amy Nicholson’s documentary tries to be the low-rent trailer park equivalent of Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven, offering a deadpan look at the last summer of one said establishment off the Virginia coast before it closes for redevelopment. Forgoing context and narration for a verite-like, interview-heavy approach, it’s a pleasant, gently rambling view into working class Americana, a community of tchotchke-filled mobile homes that might seem downtrodden if not for flashes of recognition all but the most elite vacationers will pick up on or the sincerity in how its inhabitants are portrayed. Unfortunately, it stretches out a nifty idea for a short film into something that’s a bit repetitive even at 78 minutes. B-
A transitional year. Just as I graduated from high school and began my first semester at Marquette, for me, new music felt stuck between 1992’s discoveries and, as we’ll see, 1994’s eventual, inevitable mainstreaming of modern rock. Truthfully, I spent more time in ’93 listening to classic rock and jazz, cultivating an appreciation for older music than actively seeking out new stuff; thus, many of the selections here are obscurities I stumbled upon: Mekons’ irony-drenched, Sally Timms-sung ode to sugar daddies, Teenage Fanclub’s drone-pop with its genius dumb outro repeating the same four measures sixteen times, Terence Trent D’Arby’s unclassifiable stab at Beatles-esque psych pop, Gutterball’s jaunty little comic noir. I first heard that last one via a friend who also introduced me to “Ugly On The Outside”, perhaps the most ebullient, non-sappy, queer-leaning (!) love song of its era–it should have been as big as “Linger” (which itself holds up rather nicely, by the way.)
My hometown’s first “alternative” radio station appeared this year, the automated (i.e. no-DJ) WARP-AM. It would be defunct not even midway through ’94, but it was a lifeline among the more idiosyncratic offerings left of the dial (including the freeform WMSE, still on the air today!) In addition to the Teenage Fanclub song referenced above, it’s also where I first heard songs below by The Posies, Juliana Hatfield, Deacon Blue, Concrete Blonde, Matthew Sweet and Crowded House—all stuff that might’ve aired on MTV’s 120 Minutes but not in rotation anytime else on that channel (WARP was also where I first (!) heard The Smiths’ nearly decade-old “How Soon Is Now”.) The Cranberries, The Breeders and Belly were notable crossover exceptions at the time.
Elsewhere, a mix of the usual suspects (latest singles by Kate Bush and Pet Shop Boys), 80s artists reinventing themselves (Aimee Mann’s look-back-in-wonder gem from her solo debut; Nick Heyward older/wiser/years-removed from Haircut 100) and clarion calls from what would become some of my favorite artists of the decade (Saint Etienne, Bjork, Liz Phair.) Combing over this playlist now, one never knows then what will endure decades later. Still fresh today: Mazzy Star’s pillow-soft shoegaze (and prom-friendly) balladry, James’ eccentric-but-catchy jangle pop, and an eerie, rich-in-texture track from Sarah McLachlan’s breakthrough album that shows she possessed a considerable edge pre-Lilith Fair.
1993: Something Hidden, Something Free
Belly, “Feed The Tree”
The Juliana Hatfield Three, “My Sister”
The Posies, “Dream All Day”
Nick Heyward, “Kite”
Mazzy Star, “Fade Into You”
Digable Planets, “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)”
Haunted Jukebox 