Music Review: Little Broken Hearts
If there's one thing about Norah Jones that hasn't changed in the five albums she's released in the last ten years is that she's never been one to adopt unnecessary bells and whistles into her music. Every style of music she's recorded and dabbled into, no matter how far away from her previous recordings, that's one aspect that has stayed true to her sound. Jazz, roots, country and alternative/indie pop. On Little Broken Hearts, the sound is again very minimalistic, sometimes with just a light guitar strum with an accompanying cello and plucking bass combo supporting Norah's sweet delicate vocals.
The album starts with the gentle Good Morning which serves up the album's theme with the opening line "Good morning/My thoughts on leaving are back on the table/I thought you should know." While the title Little Broken Hearts might indicate the record is made up of self-pity, the next track Say Goodbye suggests otherwise with lyrics like "it's alright, yeah it's okay/I don't need you anyway/You don't have to tell the truth/'cause if you do I'll tell it too."
Despite that, there are moments where Norah breaks down and admits that she's feeling as we'd expect to. Some of the songs mention the need to escape "I guess I'll have to love you from afar/It's okay 'cause all I need's my car," from Out On The Road; the other girl, "does she make you happy?" from She's 22; or the fall itself, "after the fall, I still want it all," from After The Fall, perhaps purposefully written as such after her last album was titled The Fall. But on Happy Pills, Norah shows a glimpse of comfortable confidence as she announces "I gotta get ya out of my head/Get out" over a mid-tempo bouncy beat.
Two of the more striking songs on the record come from two emotional extremes. Both songs approach the other woman from different perspectives. On She's 22, Norah questions the authenticity of the relationship of her former lover who has moved on with a new woman, "your flowers grow in the frozen snow and I'd like to know if it's all a show." The noticeable quality of this song is the foggy production on the vocals resulting in very cloudy imagery and is the saddest song on the record. On the other hand, Norah doesn't hesitate to reveal the name of the woman her anger is directed at. Miriam is made up of cut-throat lyrics that sound even more menacing when one takes into account how mellow the song itself sounds with lines like "I've punished him from ear to ear now I've saved the best for you," or the killer ending verse
Oh Miriam
that's such a pretty name
and I'll keep saying it until you die
Miriam
You know you done me wrong
I'm gonna smile when you say goodbye
You know you done me wrong
I'm gonna smile when I take your life.
followed by an ominous humming that doesn't sit well but feels oh so right.
It's interesting to look back and see how Norah started off as a performing artist whose first two albums consisted mostly of covers. It wasn't until her third record that she let her own songwriting take centre stage. On her fifth album Little Broken Hearts, the pairing of Norah and Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) has resulted in some pretty distinctive writing styles. Most of the songs follow the basic verse-chorus-verse-chorus format, without the bridge and any chorus repetitions. Also, several of the songs lay out the two-side perspective with the one verse focusing on the "I" and the other on the self-perceived "you". "Bring me back the good old days/when you let me misbehave" vs. "Don't you miss the good ole days/When I let you misbehave," "Out on my own now/and I like the way it feels," vs. "Out on your own now/do you like the way it feels?" and "So you tried to replace me/but you didn't get far," vs. "And we tried to be faithful but didn't get far."
Norah hit the spot with her fifth album, covering all of the bases, delivering some solid emotions recorded in song and coming up with some striking lyrics, including what might be the album's best one-liner in Take It Back: "words spoken silently/I could never understand how breath delivers such poison to someone too weak to stand." Little Broken Hearts is further evidence of Norah's serious musicality as she owns what she sings but also is open to allowing an outside source mould her work into something even greater. ![]()
Tracklisting
1. Good Morning
2. Say Goodbye
3. Little Broken Hearts
4. She's 22
5. Take It Back
6. After The Fall
7. 4 Broken Hearts
8. Travelin' On
9. Out On The Road
10. Happy Pills
11. Miriam
12. All A Dream
Movie Review: The Avengers
Some of the most epic story-lines in superhero series' are when all of the bad guys of the superhero team up in one episode. It happened with the episode Night of the Rogues in Season 7 of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon (1987 version). While it wasn't executed as well as it could have been, it still always looks great on paper and makes for pretty dire situations whenever it happens in any cartoon series. Likewise, when all of the good guys team up against the one bad force that can take over the world, the resulting story can be pretty legendary because you know losing means the end of the world.
Marvel's Avengers takes the second aforementioned scenario, years in the making, both for the movie itself and from the spectator's point of view. Five previous films were made and put out as the setup for the Avengers, the first of which was Iron Man from 2008. The only one of those five I had seen was Thor (2011) so my knowledge going into the Avengers was pretty limited. Not to be discouraged with my limited backstory familiarity, I went into seeing The Dark Knight knowing even less, having never actually seen a Batman movie before, and that film was absolutely top notch.
Joss Whedon faced a potentially uphill battle with the Avengers. While his cult following is beyond respectable considering some of his past work, taking multiple superheroes, each with their own universe, and collectively putting them into the same film is a pretty ambitious thing to do no matter who you are. Even more especially when taking into account that each of the main superheroes were played by big names, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) plus Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), adding the additional challenge of ensuring each gets relatively equal screen time so as to appease fans of both the actors and the superheroes.
While The Avengers is jam-packed full of action from nearly the very beginning, it's very delicate in how it treats the stars and their characters. While seeing the prior Marvel films is definitely an asset to the Avengers, it's not an absolute must. Some of the backstory is provided for the important characters and the rest fill in the blanks needed for the story to be told, without sacrificing the flow of story itself. Each superhero is given appropriate time to develop who they are, why they're there, their relationship with each of the others and ultimately what they have to do.
Some of the more notable aspects of the Avengers isn't so much in the script and the storyline itself. The script is full of one-liners made for the self-proclaimed geeks, to laugh and cheer at, who came out in droves to see the film for its midnights screening. While for the rest of the audience, Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, provides the comic relief that the outsiders can welcome with relief, often as the sole provider of such instances but also in combination with Mark Ruffalo's Hulk, aka Dr. Bruce Banner. Meanwhile, it is the work of the great camera work and angles that help to push this film beyond. Shots of the faces and expressions of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), for example, aren't necessarily threatening but they are menacing all-the-same. The battle scenes show other instances of how the camera's perspective works in favour of the superheroes, presenting them as a fighting team without focusing for too long on one individual battle.
The Avengers is a dream for any superhero fan, no matter what universe the superhero hails from. The challenges that likely faced before production were handled incredibly with a perfect level of action and humour, so much so that the overall storyline isn't even particularly significant because everything else is made to be much more important. ![]()
The Wanted vs.
The new era of pop music is upon us being led by One Direction and The Wanted. While One Direction seem perfectly fine being associated as being the Backstreet Boys of this generation, The Wanted might not be keen on being the 'N Sync competition. Rather than embrace their inevitable pop fandom, they have taken to lashing out at some of the biggest names in pop music. Some might commend them for not being afraid to stand up in the face of pop music's rulers, others like myself think it's a stupid move to do at this point in their careers.
It's not that I personally care about whether they find success or not but I think it's interesting to see the outcome of their recent actions. Calling out Christina Aguilera's attitude toward them during their visit to The Voice, where she is one of the judges. They straight out called her a bitch because she apparently refused to talk to them while on set. Meanwhile, once that media storm died down, they move on to Britney Spears and her supposed demand that they face a wall and not look at her as she once passed by them backstage.
Regardless of whether it was even Britney's wishes or the demands of a power-happy bodyguard, or whether what they said is even true, none of that matters as far as The Wanted's success is concerned. Their target audience is made up of fans of pop music and they've already been categorized as being a boy band, a title they may be stuck with from here on out. Pop music consists of people that consider themselves pretty passionate about the singers they "stan" for. Between Britney and Christina, they have and still rule the world of pop. By those two statements, the Wanted have immediately lost perhaps more than half of their potential audience and it doesn't even matter if they were telling the truth.
Maybe the goal of the boy band was to have that title dropped. To be associated as a boy band is limiting both in what type of audience they can win over and what type of music they'll be permitted and expected to make in the future. By attacking the queens of modern day pop music, they try to appear edgy in hopes of winning over music fans that already have negative perceptions of both. As we all know, the quickest way to win people over is to find common ground on an issue in which there is a them vs. us. it's classic social psychology at work, Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment.
But would it work? I doubt it. Even if people agree with the Wanted that Britney and Christina are bitches, they're still dealing with having the boy band label and their audience reach is limited to people that like pop but strongly dislike Britney, Christina and whoever happens to be next on their list. Judging by their album sales, that's a small number of people.
Enter: The Guardian
Alanis Morissette is coming back! Her first new album in over four years is titled Havoc And Bright Lights and is slated for release August 28th. The first single Guardian will hit radio May 11th and iTunes on the 15th.
Judging by the sound of Guardian, it would seem like Alanis is once again attempting to write a radio hit. Something she hasn't been able to achieve since Everything in 2004. The song is most reminiscent to her 2002 record Under Rug Swept however there are elements of Jagged Little Pill and Flavors Of Entanglement mixed in there as well - making it a career-spanning-sounding song. There's a neat hook amongst the layered production and the layout itself is very standard to the Alanis signature. Will it appeal to general audiences? Not likely. Should it? Maybe not.
Havoc And Bright Lights will also be Alanis' first independent album, finally finishing her contract with Warner/Maverick. That might suggest that she is no longer restricted by the demands (or requests) of a major label. An album for the fans, some might say? There doesn't seem to be a lot of change from this sound and much of Alanis' offering post-Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.
While I've often thought that radio is pretty much done with Alanis judging by the dwindling success of each subsequent album following Jagged Little Pill, it would seem pointless to make a song aiming for radio success - though stranger comebacks have happened. With that said, I'm unsure what to expect from this new album. Since the release of her last record, 2008's Flavors Of Entanglement, Alanis has gotten married and had a baby. That sort of settling down might be telling as to what to expect on this new album, although Alanis has said that every song has a monster chorus. Sounds promising.
For now, Guardian should sooth the fans that continue to stick by. I'll place it above Underneath and Everything for now as far as my favourite first-singles go while I anxiously await for the rest of the album to come out. So look for the single out May 15th on iTunes.
Seeing colours and forming personalities
There was a conversation about the idea of synæsthesia recently and when I did some reading about it, I learned that it's actually a neurological disorder in which people add additional qualities to things like numbers and letters or, as the original conversation entailed, music. Some people actually see colours with certain songs or attribute specific letters or numbers as having certain colours or even personalities. I thought this was interesting as it reminded me of a frame of thought I had when I was younger.
When in elementary school, maybe even primary school, i associated certain letters as being "bad", like the neighbourhood bullies. Of course, being letters, they don't have mean personalities and they don't beat up the other letters but thinking back, it was an odd thought that I had when I was 6 or 7. I called them the "bad boy letters." Even now, I am still slightly biased against these letters: J K Q X Z, while W and V were borderline. X and Q were the worst offenders.
As for music, I've always attributed certain songs as being associated with colours, but it's more along the lines of shades. When listening to songs, I sometimes think of them as having a specific colour. It's not something I actively can form or think about though. Typically, certain genres of music can encompass a particular colour but that colour isn't limited to one genre of music. For example, most rock songs tend to be dark brown, maybe black or some shade of grey depending on how hard it is. Metal music might most likely be black. Rap music can be a dark purple, black if it's hardcore rap, or some sort of pink or lighter purple if it's pop/rap. Folk and country is usually a pale green or brownish green with a cloudy yellow undertone if it reminds me of Sunday. Pop music can be yellow if it's mellow but moves toward red the more of a beat it has, singer/songwriter music might be a shade of blue.
When I think about it, not every song is associated with a colour and I rarely think of it at all but at the same time it's interesting. I do wonder if my listening habit is based on colours as well. I can't listen to one kind of music for too long and while I don't get sick of songs too quickly, I do get sick of particular genres of music and if there's too much of what I'll call 'one colour of music', I'll get incredibly burnt out on it.
I don't think I have this neuralogical disorder though. It's certainly not hindering in any way nor do I really consciously think about it but it is pretty fascinating when I do think of it and then I wonder how common it might be.
Movie Review: We Need To Talk About Kevin
A relationship between a carefree new mother Eva (Tilda Swinton) and her son Kevin (Rocky Duer, Jasper Newell and Ezra Miller) is the focus of this Lynne Ramsey-directed film in which the title describes the goal that is never quite achieved.
From the beginning, the bond between mother and son is never quite made even though Kevin gets along fine with his father Franklin (John C. Reilly). There are periods in which Kevin clearly expresses distain toward his mother while admiration toward his father in the same conversation in which all are present yet Franklin passes it off as a phase.
The film is presented in two different times both of which focus on Eva. The present day in which she is clearly alone and trying to pick up her life again and the past in which she is raising Kevin. What we see through Kevin's actions are of slight unpredictability but always through the eyes of Eva. There's always that ounce of doubt and that maybe what we are seeing is a tarnished point of view from a woman who hasn't quite got a full grasp upon motherhood. Kevin's actions are never presented directly to the audience which the level of mystery that surrounds his intentions remain thick and downright eerie.
Tilda Swinton's ability to completely capture the feelings of Eva are incredible. How she can play a role and capture the entire movie is a talent that few can do and Tilda is one of those. My first experience with her in a movie was rather late in her career when she was the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. That character was the ultimate highlight in that movie because of how incredibly bitter cold she was. She has that level of strength that comes with playing such a character, whether the White Witch, Gabriel or Eva, that also comes with a vulnerability.
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a chilling story with a extraordinary performance from Tilda Swinton that makes the film worth watching just to see her. It's enough to make me want to explore her past performances because she's incredibly convincing. ![]()
Music Review: Love Is A Four Letter Word
Even before hearing the songs, before reading the title, the album cover is an accurate giveaway about the theme of Jason Mraz's fourth album: Love. Love is no stranger to being the theme of Jason Mraz songs. Tracks from his first album centred on the topic like You And I Both and what remains his greatest song On Love, In Sadness. But Jason Mraz used to also be playfully cocky in his songs like Curbside Prophet and Geek In The Pink, where he suggested that his girl could "take your toys out of your drawers then/I ain't coming home/I don't need that attention."
On Jason's fourth album Love Is A Four Letter Word, the playfulness is absent and is instead replaced by sentimental lyrics and melodies that fit right in with the subject matter, as cheesy as it is. As a result, the album confines Jason to being an adult contemporary artist rather than the singer/songwriter that used to fuse elements of pop, rock, folk, hip-hop and reggae with guitars and horns aplenty.
With Jason's last album, 2008's We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, Jason evolved his sound a bit to incorporate more personal events of his childhood into his lyrics. While he was showing signs then of growing maturity compared to his first two albums, there was still his signature blend of all of the above without sacrificing the usual fun that Jason had the tendency to put into his songs. All while still offering up mushy love songs like hit mega-smash I'm Yours.
The first single I Won't Give Up follows in the footsteps of that record-breaking single I'm Yours but with heavier lyrical undertones that serve as the highlight of the album. In the case of both songs, Jason presents them with simplicity but does it in a way that is difficult to replicate on a similar level: "And when you're needing your space/To do some navigating/I'll be here patiently waiting/To see what you find" are lyrics that are simple but still very Jason-esque.
Parts of the record have a breeziness that gives it an easy-to-digest sound perfect for summer nights, making the timing of the release perhaps appropriate. Living In The Moment and The Woman I Love, specifically, might not be interesting in the way a standard Mraz song would be but playing it on the back deck in August would fit the situation.
To go from Waiting For My Rocket To Come to Love Is A Four Letter Word is a journey that ends in mostly uninteresting and sometimes bland songs. There are similarities between each of Jason's records but as he advances with each one, he's leaving behind aspects of his music that perhaps are lost with a growing sense of maturity. What made Jason stand out from the John Mayers and Jack Johnson's of the mid 2000s are decidedly removed to soon blend him with the Seals, Michael Bubles and James Blunts. Seemingly gone are the days of fast-lipped, folk-hop, pop/rock songs that would make your mother blush: here to stay are corny love ballads that even she might pass on. ![]()
Tracklisting
1. The Freedom Song
2. Living In The Moment
3. The Woman I Love
4. I Won't Give Up
5. 5/6
6. Everything Is Sound (La La)
7. 93 Million Miles
8. Frank D. Fixer
9. Who's Thinking About You Now
10. In Your Hands
11. Be Honest [featuring Inara George]
12. The World As I See It
Summer plans, wishes, desires
It seems that I've become synonymous with going places. A common question people ask me now usually somehow comes in the form of "are you going anywhere soon?" or "any trips planned?" Part of me feels some level of pride for being associated with being a little traveler but at the same time, I'm unsure as to how to feel about that. There seems to be some level of irresponsibility that comes with being a wreck-less traveler, that is, being someone that makes a last-minute (or nearly so) plan to go to another province or country - and doing so as often as I do. That's not to say I'm someone that will just decide that tomorrow I'm going to go on a road-trip but if the opportunity were to arise, as long as my bases were covered, why not?
Traveling is one of a few things I definitely want to do this summer. I enjoy going to new places, or places I've been a few times before. It brings perspective and a new appreciation for things on multiple levels. With that said, this week kicks off the start of summer in that sense. Adam and I will be making our semi-routine road-trip to Boston for a few days.
Other plans for this summer? There are a few concerts coming up that I'll want to attend. Kathleen Edwards is the basis behind the Boston trip as she's playing in Maine next week so we'll be seeing her on the way back. Serena Ryder and Sarah Harmer are headlining a music festival in Lockeport, Nova Scotia in July. Bruce Springsteen is doing Moncton in August which I would love to go see and admittedly, I do want to see Hanson when they play the Casino in Halifax August 23.
Pride Week is always a fun time in Halifax in the middle of July. I typically only take part in a few events each year but every year I tell myself that I'll participate in more so we'll see how that works out this year.
There have been talks of a trip to Vancouver at the end of the summer as well. Nothing concrete has been planned at this point but I've always wanted to go to the west coast. I have images of Vancouver in my mind that I want to see whether they're close to reality or not.
As for some things I want to do this year includes what is becoming a life-long goal of losing 30lbs. I've begun biking again in hopes of helping to kickstart some sort of a routine that results in me being able to fit into my barely worn yet lovely jeans I got a few years ago. In the middle of bike riding and imaginary sports-playing, I do have a lot of books I want to finish. The Hunger Games trilogy is first on my list but I also have the entire TinTin graphic novel series to read as well as a few books on photography because I'm finally going to (a)learn how to use my Digital-SLR camera and (b)get back into photography and maybe turn that into a side-hobby again (along with every other side-hobby I have... and there are a lot). All of these can be accompanied with spending time in the parks. The Public Gardens, Point Pleasant, etc, reading and photography. Makes for a nice way to spend a relaxing sunny day.
At the end of the summer, I'm sure I'll be recounting what I've done this summer. Hopefully I can recount some great memories and lots of stories set in 25 degree sunny day weather!

























