Ideas

Today at work I was thinking that maybe the problem with the new Wolf Parade album is that it builds more tension than it releases. The last album released more tension by virtue of tighter, choppier, more staccato rhythms and more centrally placed guitar, but here we have lazy keyboards and lazier rhythms that don't fill the space. This uneven balance of tension reminded me of My Bloody Valentine and maybe other bands that I find it hard to listen to. For further exploration.

To rectify this I listened to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which is constantly building and releasing tension in spectacular fashion, not least in "King of Carrot Flowers," parts 1 & 2. The best thing about this first climax is that the guitar is so dirty and compressed that the sound increases in intensity without seeming to take up any more space, a kind of tidy explosion.



And tonight Brendan and I got on the subject of Vince Vaughn and how he ought to do something great instead of another bad Christmas movie. This may be a moot point since he's starring in a David O. Russell project to be released in 2010, but anyway I thought for a while and suggested that he would be magnificent in Clark Gable's role in a remake of It Happened One Night. Since this is my idea, you probably already knew that Richard Linklater would direct. (Like a higher stakes version of Before Sunrise, maybe?)