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The Daytrotter Index

A Week With Dashboard Confessional's "Dusk and Summer": Day 3

30 June 06

By this time – three days into an intensive and exhaustive study of Chris Carrabba’s newest Dashboard Confessional offering – it seems fitting to delve into the minutiae of the individual twigs of this branch, this thick oak trunk of emotive material that snaps ladies into frenzies and contorts them into The Swooned, capitalized. The album begins with the single, a song that asks a female to let down her guard to allow the moment to happen, to sweep her. It also begins with 15 seconds of instrumentation that will trigger a latent recognition of that one Sixpence None The Richer song, “Kiss Me” (“You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress/Ohhhhh”), the one that you hate yourself for dancing like a feather to in your own private dreams. As far as Dashboard singles go, the tigress passion and the strength in a bruising chorus are missing from past singles, which shouldn’t be simply for the complete turnover from acoustic to electric. Bruise us, Chris, bruise us with that painful, bandaged heart of yours. Give your scars a gun and drop the hammer.

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Superman!! Review

Superman Returns: That’s right, he’s back! And it’s so nice to have him!

29 June 06

Words by Gabe Durham//Daytrotter illustration by Shannon Palmer

Just to clarify, the above title is not the gist of the review, it’s a plot summary of “Superman Returns.” Seriously.

Before we get to the plot, though, let’s talk about Jesus.

With the possible exception of Joseph Smith, Superman is the closest thing we’ve got to an American Jesus. Jim Caviezel probably knew that when he expressed his interest in the role of the man of steel, and Brian Singer probably knew it when he (wisely) turned Caviezel down. Maybe the studio knew that when they turned down Kevin Smith’s original script (“Superman Lives”) about the death and resurrection of Superman.

Those choices didn’t stop screenwriters Dougherty and Harris from putting Jesus all over this movie. Before the film even begins, a Star Wars-esque prologue characterizes Superman as “our greatest protector.” Later, Superman’s dad (Marlon Brando) says, via videocrystal, “I have sent them you, my only [begotten] son.” When Lois tells Superman, “The world doesn’t need a savior. And neither do I,” Superman counters, “Every day I hear people crying out for me.” Finally, the last line of the film is Superman’s promise of omniscience (Spoiler: He doesn’t die.), “I’m always around.” So be good for goodness sake.

Of course the Jesus-parallels were in the Superman story from the start, but that’s all the more reason to assume the audience members are smart enough to figure it out themselves. This Superman (Brandon Routh) suffers from the same savior complex that Neo did, and just like Neo, his acting is way too stoic for his own good.

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A Week With Dashboard Confessional's "Dusk and Summer": Day 2

29 June 06

An excerpt from Christopher Carrabba’s new song “Currents,” “If it is born in flames/Then we should let it burn/Burn as brightly as we can/If it’s got to end/Then let it end in flames/Let it burn all the way down.” A second day spent with “Dusk and Summer” makes it even more evident how much this tattooed Floridian brandishes the metaphors of passion to serve him best, right into the arms of the girls who’ve yet to become ghosts, as he sings in “So Long, So Long.” He works predominantly with the same pronoun and all those shes have stolen hearts from him, left him afraid of what’s coming next and uncertain about how it’s going to affect him. Carrabba seems stuck in a weird “Back to the Future/Groundhog Day” phase where the same problems are afflicting and conflicting him day-after-day (a la Bill Murray) and yet, there’s the notion that if things did advance, he’d find a way to return to them (a la Michael J. Fox and his handy flux capacitor). You feel like wailing, “Wise up! Learn from your mistakes, Chris!” What’s more unsettling is that the time has passed where he’s still writing for himself.

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A Week With Dashboard Confessional's "Dusk and Summer": Day 1

28 June 06

The first thing that comes to mind when you get oh so deep into Chris Carrabba’s latest creation is the old frat boy declaration: I keep getting older, but the girls stay the same age. Even though the songs are devoid of all jockiness and sung in that panting, sands-in-our-hourglass-are-almost-gone Dashboard Confessional way, they’re heard as if they were being delivered by Trip McNeely in “Can’t Hardly Wait.” There’s a clear card that Carrabba continues to play with his fans that remain stuck in their tumultuous teens, believing each night and each time they press the end button on a cell phone conversation is another cliffhanger, a dramatic too be continued that is bigger than Mt. Everest. How will they ever get what’s her name find out that they’re that prince charming she sighs about finding in her bedroom on lonely nights? How can tomorrow possibly get any worse? Can I survive the strain of this love? Why is this so hard? Why is love such a pain in the ass? Why can’t I get to that happy place faster? Why can’t I savor it when I finally get there? It seems like a lot of things to ask oneself, but it really just boils down into one general longing for something that life has taught is relatively unattainable: satisfaction.

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The Rentals

The Rentals: Matt Sharp Is The Jack Hanna Of Temperamental Synthesizers

27 June 06

By Sean Moeller

Last Thursday, Matt Sharp lost his car to a flying piece of rubber from a shedding 18-wheeler he was following on the Los Angeles highway. He sent the poor banged up thing to the repair shop and was left helpless and trapped in his residence, feeling the walls closing in.

“It’s going a little rough,” he said. “I’m stranded.”

The Rentals main man, former Weezer bassist and only breakout star (Pat Wilson’s Special Goodness and Brian Bell’s Space Twins make this a simple claim) complicates his life further with the company he keeps. When he’s not taking his vehicle to a mechanic, he’s taking his pals to the doctor. If only he just didn’t neglect those friends for years and years, leave them to leisurely gather dust. Synthesizers have feelings too, but as Matt Sharp rambled off to rustic Leiper’s Fork, Tenn., to make solo recordings with his acoustic guitar, he abandoned his menagerie of Korgs and Moogs and their cousins. Now, as Sharp tries to roust them from their seven-year slumbers, he’s finding that they’re grumpy, much grumpier than a car can ever get.

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Nacho Libre: Review

Nacho Libre: Leetle Hug, Leetle Kees, Beeg Black

26 June 06

By Sean Moeller

Sometimes grown men wear stretchy pants and sometimes when a friar shares some hard toast in private quarters with a foxy nun it leads to two people breaking their godly vows and getting married. Sometimes watching a man in white dress shoes and those stretchy pants climb a jagged cliff to guzzle the yolk of an egg to summon magical eagle powers that will allow him to perform figure-fore leg locks better than any other man in stretchy pants, it is funny. Sometimes Jack Black is too much. Sometimes he’s just enough.

As Nacho, in the second offering from “Napoleon Dynamite” creators Jared and Jerusha Hess, Black walked into the film as all of his previous characters combined. In doing this, we saw the lead singer of Sonic Death Monkey, Hal, the guitar player from Tenacious D, the Neil Diamond impersonator and Dewey Finn and Black failed to give Nacho – the one-track-minded man of the cloth who moonlights as a luchadore to (eventually) raise money for the orphans he works and lives with – the kind of unique personality that would have carried this movie beyond the cheap fart jokes, the questionable nods to scenes from Chris Farley’s last, “Almost Heroes,” and “Dumb and Dumber” and the so-so writing that was lacking the same pop that the Hesses gave to “Dynamite.”

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Frog Eyes

Frog Eyes: The Finer Art Of Pissing And Moaning, Taught By The Godfather Himself

25 June 06

By Sean Moeller

Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!)

Cobble together an image of Chris Farley telling David Spade that he’s the one with the thin candy shell after a left-hand turn rolls an entire bag of M&Ms into his car’s ventilation system and then hand mix it with an image of vein-popping Lewis Black doing an impression of The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn or Dee Snider singing “We’re Not Going To Take It,” beet red and looking to kill or at least sounding like the look to kill. You’re getting close to the methods of the controlled and combustible mayhem that Frog Eyes lead singer Carey Mercer grills with. Were he fireside making s’mores, he’d probably keep the marshmallow in the flames too long, leaving the white glob of sugar stemming with orange heat. He’s a furnace who acts like the audience and every listener on the other side of his records was a dartboard and every single word he slings forward is a deadly projectile seeking a mushy bed of cork to rest in. This kind of music cannot come from anywhere but the heart of someone whose lungs act as machine gun fire and constructively rational irrationality, if that makes an inch of sense.

Carey Mercer is the Godfather or one of the godfathers of much of the indie rock and roll coming out of Canada and so few people know it. He once roomed with Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown vocalist Spencer Krug for a spell. (Mercer’s complaints of Krug as a roommate are as follows: ate lots, stayed up late watching TV while I was trying to sleep, ordered in Dairy Queen burgers, cooked ground beef, played in our band, listened to Ligeti all the fucking time, rented “Titanic.”) His band tours regularly with both of those bands, partly out of convenience because of a shared band member and partly because whether it’s spoken or unspoken there’s a debt of gratitude being paid to Mercer’s gift of slippery wordplay, wildly entrancing jitteriness and more urgent, needle-ish songs – that just knock the piss out of themselves – than any one person should rightly possess. You know how guys like Oscar Robertson, Jesse Owens and Bob Feller never made much money when they were athletic heroes, but lesser heroes like Dwayne Wade, Maurice Greene and Brad Radke will live handsomely off of lesser talents many years later? That fate should never happen to Mercer, wife and drummer Melanie Campbell, sometime keyboardist Krug and bassist Michael Rak, who were visionaries before they knew it back six years ago when they released “The Bloody Hand,” “Blue Pine,” “The Golden River” and “Emboldened Navigator and the Seagull Dots” within a two-year period. These records pre-dated what came next, two years ago and especially on last year’s ballyhooed “Apologies to the Queen Mary,” Wolf Parade’s debut full-length.

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Tilly and the Wall LIVE

Tilly and the Wall: Hummingbirds On Red Bull And Fake Palm Trees Abound

24 June 06

The Vaudeville Mews
Des Moines—June 3
By Jake Henneman
A pink flamingo was stooped atop Tilly and the Wall keyboardist Nick White’s instrument, its legs curved and widening as they stretched to the ground. It stared out at the audience with a statuesque pose. Questions swirled about my head. What was the meaning of the flamingo? Why are flamingos pink? Should I go down to ground level or stay in the balcony? And why are there palm tree streamers hanging from the ceiling?

After the fourth song, “Love Song,” it was announced that this summer would be “The Hot Tropical Vibes Tour.” It made sense as you looked around the stage. The five shiny, plastic, palm trees and the mic stands were decorated with strings of lush flowers, and on occasion, one or more of the bandmates adorned themselves in thin leys. The band
Exclaimed, “We’re on a tropical island in Iowa!” Maybe we were on a tropical island. It felt like it. The Mews was a sweltering place, the tightly packed goers fanned themselves off and panted for a cool breath, but the musicians on stage didn’t ever seem to be fatigued by the heat.

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Blackpool Lights

Blackpool Lights: Thirty-Five Minutes Of Ten Minutes And No Get Up Kids Reunion In Sight

21 June 06

By Sean Moeller

This is not a story of bitterness and feuding, slamming doors and calling people nasty, earmuffable names. But there are elements of that. You can just picture it, can’t you: The Get Up Kids, backstage at the Allstate Arena in Chicago or any other venue on that tour in 2004, Dashboard Confessional singer Chris Carraba’s touchy-feely singing coming through the dressing room walls, loitering in the air with the smell of catering and Rolling Rock and here comes a box of new band T-shirts with lead singer Matt Pryor up front and Jim Suptic and the rest of the Kids are tucked back in the shadows. An uproar ensues and Billy Crudup pulls a shirt from the box and says, “No, no, no, these shirts let you say everything you’ve always wanted to say.”

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Casey Dienel

Casey Dienel: Shining A Floodlight On The Humanness Of Strippers And At Least One Ladies Man

18 June 06

By Sean Moeller

Casey Dienel is stirring when she speaks of the first time she ever visited a strip club. This all happened in Portland, while she was visiting, barbequing with the distinguished head honchos of Hush Records, the quaint indie label that offered us The Decemberists long before the big label goons came sniffing around the barn. The 21-year-old Dienel is enchanting speaking of the night she threw gold coins in lieu of dollar bills onto the stage, just as she would be ruminating about her first Halloween costume or the first time her mother tied her hair off into pigtails. She’s universally enchanting, is what I’m saying, whether she’s talking about pole-dancing or the conventional cutenesses that grandmothers and kindergarten teachers tell the neighbors over the fence or over lemonades. Her pretty jejune bangs of blond hair and a shy, delicate smile that sparkles like a lake when she shows it (which is almost continuously), give off the adorable sense of youth uninhibited. And it is, but it isn’t. There is, within her that genuine tug of worldly wonderment that somehow becomes jaded with age, but there’s also within her a real tenure that can be seen as wisdom beyond years. You can’t believe she’s telling you about a strip club visit (or more exactly a fictitious stripper named Sugar in her song “Better in Manhattan”) and yet you know fully well that she probably knows and has thought more about strip clubs than you ever have.

Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!)

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