Lovers of the more overtly psychedelic side of Ghost Box’s output take notice: Large Plants are back with some medieval, baroque, Fairport Convention-inspired psych-folk-rock with November’s The Thorn.
Warbly, tape-distressed guitars twinkle over crisp, martial drumwork in a haze of deep reverie. Take your shoes off, grab your edibles, and find a shag carpet to lie on for this one.
The album releases on November 17 and is available for pre-order.
The Cocteau Twins-inspired cover art for White Poppy’s new LP Sound of Blue is indicative enough of the music therein: gauzy, dreamy, soporific. Cascading, reverbed-to-hell guitar chimes and whispering, coo-ing vocals wash over you for its short, 38-minute runtime.
Also be sure to check out her awesome Neocities site.
I’ll always recommend anything from this artist, so no surprises here. On the Not Not Fun label.
This is a punishing and beautiful shard of black metal from Italian outfit Morwinyon, from their forthcoming LP Wastelands.
It will be released on February 24, 2023 on Naturmacht Productions.
Chloë Grace Moretz accomplishes the difficult feat of carrying most of this 86-minute WWII sci-fi adventure thriller as Maude Garrett. Despite its short length, its central plot point is hollow enough that it’s a wonder it manages to keep things interesting for longer than half an hour, but it does. There are enough well-paced revelations and genuinely suspenseful action sequences to keep you pulled in for the duration.
Moretz’s Garrett is a tough-as-nails pilot dealing with predictable shit from her male flight companions, while a chimeric source of terror may or may not be stalking them in the air. Her stubbornness, dread, and anger make her a believable and memorable heroine who it’s impossible not to root for.
The other performances are a bit flat, especially as they are hamstrung by the necessity of the claustrophobic setting for most of the action — we rarely see another face other than Moretz’s. Some light special effects range from passable to ’90s B‑movie, enough to take you out of what should otherwise be gripping scenes.
Shadow in the Cloud is a fun film to watch, but suffers from its fairly threadbare story and lack of any depth of relationship between the characters. The soundtrack is pretty great, with a delightful appearance by Duchess Says.
It used to be simple: Netflix for on-demand movies, Hulu for on-demand TV, all for about twenty bucks. As we increasingly grow accustomed to not paying for things (or paying very little), I think many of us naively expected a future where these two services would be just about all we needed, accumulating more and more content, the Coke and Pepsi of cord-cutting (or maybe the peanut butter and jelly), the de facto winners in the fall of cable TV whose low fees and internet-first approach would permanently simplify how we pay for and consume TV.
Things aren’t panning out quite how people seem to have imagined, as NBC readies taking The Office to its own streaming service, leaving Netflix without one of its most streamed shows. Meanwhile, there’s currently a CBS blackout on AT&T services like DirecTV Now. It turns out à la carte TV may be more cumbersome and expensive than we thought. Maybe somebody should bundle all these channels together and sell them to us in one big package?
Another solution: grab an antenna (the best-selling Mohu antennae are currently 40% off with promo code “Mohu10Years”), a Blu-ray player (Wirecutter’s picks are $70 or less), and a copy of The Office on DVD for fifty bucks.
Listen, I know there aren’t a lot of good things in the world right now, and it’s a great time not to be cynical about the few decent things that come our way that are just supposed to make us happy. But this is really, as a friend put it, “unnecessary.”
I have loved versions of Tom Hanks but something about him lately strikes me as ingratiating? This movie looks ingratiating.