(1) Favorite election film: “You Don’t Own Me” PSA (YouTube). “I’m Lesley Gore,” says the sixty-six-year-old onetime pop star, “and I approve this message.” It’s powerful to see dozens of women and girls lip-synching to the song that, so long after its moment on the charts (produced by Quincy Jones, #2 in 1964), has become such a touchstone—here, for abortion rights. As there is in the final-judgment almost–Law & Order bang! bang! of the music, there’s a sense of menace in the pacing of the quick but somehow hesitating cuts from one woman, duo, or trio to the next—directed by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Maximilla Lukacs, the little movie has the feel of Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. With the men in the “Top Comments” section hitting back (“Who would want to make love to the unlovable women hating men that open their big yaps on here?”), the spot, which is sure to be back, or remade, for all foreseeable elections to come, was an election in and of itself.
(2) Corner Laughers, “(Now That I Have You I’m) Bored” from Poppy Seeds (Mystery Lawn Music). Led by singer and ukulele player Karla Kane, this San Francisco combo has its feet in the pool of the Smiley Smile Beach Boys—the supposedly throwaway music (“Vegetables,” “She’s Goin’ Bald”) they made after they gave up on Brian Wilson’s Smile masterpiece. It’s sometimes sun-blindingly bright, never less than sweet. It may not wear any better than the singles of another San Francisco band, the long-forgotten Sopwith Camel of “Hello, Hello” fame. But for bringing new life to the dying art of parenthetical titling, this song would make my chart anyway.
(3) Brokeback, Brokeback and the Black Rock (Thrill Jockey). Douglas McCombs is focusing the textures of Tortoise, his better-known band, into something close to pure concept, but a concept so formally open there’s never a feeling of aesthetic claustrophobia. In other words, after the opening track, the harsh “Will Be Carrying,” this slips away into desert surf music, all guitars and reverb, a fantasy soundtrack to Kill Bill Volume 3—or, if Quentin Tarantino ever finishes it, who knows, the real thing. It’s slow, relentless, unforgiving, all landscape and bad weather—music so quietly grand it hardly needs the puny figures acting out the plot.
(4) Andrew Loog Oldham Presents the Rolling Stones ‘Charlie Is My Darling—Ireland 1965’, directed by Peter Whitehead (abkco DVD). An expanded version of a film that played briefly as a short and then went on the shelf—and though the concert footage can be hot (especially an...
You have reached your article limit
Sign up for a digital subscription and continue reading all new issues, plus our entire archives, for just $1.50/month.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
