Into the brain

Lots of media here and there...

I remember reading Batman: Gothic when it came out. It was the second story arc in the Legends of the Dark Knight series, and ColdNorthGamer and I had dutifully gone over the to Great Escape on out monthly and probably parent-abetted trek.

The arc is one of the rarer Batman stories in that it's got a very strong religious/supernatural bent to it as Batman is effectively fighting a villian who has sold his soul to the devil in return for three hundred years of life and unnatural power. There doesn't turn out to be any sort of scientific explanation, no hocus pocus to explain things, just a simple and effectively creepy soul to the devil gig.

The creepiest part is that it turns out the bad guy - the shadowless Mr Whisper - was one of young Master Bruce's schoolmasters at his childhood boarding school and was all prepared to abuse and kill Bruce until Daddy Wayne had stepped in.

Honestly, this story doesn't work for me as a Batman story. I like to think of my Batman as a little more pragmatic, a little less willing to accept that his father has been visiting him in dreams and that the bad guy is powered by the devil. He steps right into the mythology of the evil godless abbey in Switzerland (or somewhere, I forget and I've already returned the volume to the library).

The tale is well written and drawn with an outstandingly matched art style that is a bit blocky and all together crrepy, but it's just a tale that is right for Batman for me.

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As Calen pointed out, I've got a little thing for Kate Nash.

And she's a new, coming artist, so I thought that instead of waiting for the library to come into a copy of Made of Bricks, I'd go ahead and drop the $8.99 at Amazon to send a little business her way. I know it's not exactly like she's going to get the full $9 from me, but at least her record company knows to keep pressing her discs for me and the rest of the Kate Crue.

So, the disc itself...pretty much every review I've read has matched my opinion: about half the songs are great and the other half are okay if a bit rushed. Even most of the great songs are covered up by too much production.

Take, for example, the song "Birds". Here's a stripped down version that Nash did at a festival...


Now, here's the same song as recorded on the album...


From the first strains of the overly sappy, syrupy electric guitar, it's a lesser production, and that's what happens on a number of the songs on this album. The simplicity of the songs - and a number of them are wonderfully well written - are just drown in the "special touches" of a half dozen different producers. And in the end, a solid debut is still a solid debut, but it could've been better.

So, head to iTunes and grab the good ones - "Foundations", "Mouthwash", "Birds", "Pumpkin Soup", "Merry Happy", and another that's got a D at the front of the title and that I can't exactly type here. Then head to YouTube and check out some of her live performances to see what could've been.

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I picked up Sky Blue Sky when it first came out.

I'm a giant Wilco freak, so I even made sure to pick up the edition with the bonus DVD so I could see the band recording the album. You know, 'cause I needed to know that in order to enjoy the songs.

But when they - as they have on the last three albums now - re-released the album with a bonus disc of six (this time five) songs and called it the Tour Edition, I ponied up another dozen bucks or so to get that, too. It's a completists disease that I clearly get from The Mom.

For three new songs - and two live versions of songs already on the album - it's a bit of a premium to pay, but as I said, I'm a sucker for Wilco. One of the new tracks is very familiar, having already been included in a VW commercial and played in concert a time or two that I've heard. "The Thanks I Get" is a winner and well worth having - the other two aren't wonderful but are nice enough. The two live tracks are plain enough, too.

Sky Blue Sky is somewhere between good and excellent - not quite so perfect and instantly wonderful as to grab you right off the bat but more like if you're willing to listen to it a few times it'll worm its way right into your brain and stick there. If you're a Wilco junkie, go for the Tour Edition and forgo (like you hadn't already gotten it) the with-DVD version.

If you're not a Wilco fan, two things - one, you should be...two, you should go with just the standard edition.

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I'd heard the name Band of Horses once or twice before, but I hadn't heard their music anywhere until a teacher with whom I work and share musical tastes loaned me Cease to Begin, their second album.

I haven't heard the first album, but the second one's a winner. It's good stuff and of an ilk with Wilco and - as the allmusic review points out - My Morning Jacket. Starts out with the grabber "Is There a Ghost" and slows down a bit from there, maintaining, however, a pretty high quality through stuff like "Ode to LRC"

This disc's one to check out, and I'll be hunting down the band's first, too.

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And a new slice of Cake to go with all of this? How much better can it get?

It's actually not entirely new Cake, but it's at least a collection of B-Sides & Rarities, covers of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", Kenny Rogers's "Ruby", the Muppet classic "Mahna, Mahna", Sinatra's "Stranges in the Night", Barry White's "Never Gonna Give You Up", and a couple of instrumentals.

It's not a great album as it's just a good ol' odds and sods collection, but Cake takes all of the covers and rocks 'em, just pretty much knowcks them out of the park and makes them their own. From start to finish, the covers are top notch. The two instrumentals are decent if a little bit down from the covers, and the two live tracks at the end of the disc aren't exactly revolutionary, either, but the covers are knock outs.

Plus, it's scratch 'n sniff.

I got grape, in case you're curious.

If you have any doubts, try out "Mahna, Mahna" for free.

Plus Cake has an awesome website - not flashy or fancy but kinda personal and environmental. Dig it...

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There have also been a couple of comics read this last while - the more enjoyable of the two was Spider-Man & the Fantastic Four - Silver Rage whose title is dramatically too long but whose story is a fluffy bit of fun. There's pretty much no reliance on continuity and no worries about fitting the tale into anything bigger, but it's an enjoyable read.

Alien shows up and threatens to join human with some symbiotic race, and Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four have to stop them. No bare knuckles brawling, no major planet-wide throw down or anything, just the typical dorky science type solution that Mr. Fantastic seems to thrown down between his morning and afternoon constitutionals.

Thankfully, this collection is dopey fun...an old school kind of story that wraps up well enough after a few issues and heads on its way, not trying to do anything spectacular, not trying to show any depth of story, just a quick, fun read.

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I slagged Green Lantern Corps, but I found The Dark Side of Green to be a decently entertaining read. The collection has two stories - the first is a bit of Justice League Elite kinda thing where Guy Gardener (who seems to be as close to a main character as this series gets) goes undercover to do the jobs that the rest of the Corps aren't willing to do. It's an entertaining enough tale that works well to show Guy as the moral - if immaturely so - compass of the series.

Then we get a second arc that didn't work as well for me as it's clearly a set up for the Sinestro Corps story arc that came after this volume. Apparently the Corps have a bunch of people/groups who hate them, and the li'l blue guys are noticing that it all seems to be hitting the fan together.

It's not a great series, but it's a fun little read - particularly the first half of the collection.

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I didn't expect what I got from Lucky Number Slevin.

I thought it was a snappy, quick-moving case of mistake identity with a few funs thrown in. Turns out that it's a movie full of red herrings and with a surprisingly slow pace, but it turned out to be an enjoyable one.

Some of the reviews of the film have suggested that it's got a few too many twists and turns, and I'll admit that things could have been a little clearer, but I thought it was an entertaining enough tale. Yeah, things could be a little clearer here and there, but it worked well enough for me.

Don't go in expecting anything even approaching a quick pace because it's much closer to glacial in its revelations, but if you've got nothing else to do on the first day of a three-day weekend and you're entirely avoiding the grading that you should probably be doing, you could do worse.