Vampire Weekend: Dog Shit Sandwich?

As this blog seems to be slowly degenerating into some sort of unnecessarily vindictive and crass archive of unfair criticism, I feel it's only appropriate to mention another one of the bands I hate. Shit, I'm in too deep now, eh? Might as well continue.

So, next on my list is Vampire Weekend. As if the name wasn't enough fodder for you to deduce that these dicks are just (an incredibly homoerotic) foursome of clueless prats then maybe you should go back to school and redo your Year 6 English SATs because you are obviously retarded. I'm already sick of typing Vampire Weekend so from here on in I'll refer to them as 'The Shits'.

Let me just clarify that I have no personal problems with The Shits, my thinking that their music is the audible equivalent to Hiroshima has nothing to do with them as people. This differs to my opinions expressed in my article about Crystal Castles, who I'm sure are just the worst kind of Mephistos jizz.

Where The Shits really yank my scrot is with their monotonous sound. Monotonous, simplistic sound does work sometimes, don't get me wrong, but when that sound is the sound of a thousand Venezualan tramps scratching their long, dirty fingernails on a thousand different chalk boards, accompanied by a banshee orchestra, then I find it to be a less than pleasurable listening experience. Arguably The Shits' most popular song, 'A-Punk', is a perfect example of their inability to A. create a varied and interesting sound, and B. create a sound that doesn't make me want to tear off my arse and suffocate my self with my own buttocks.

Usually I would forgive a band for releasing a song like this, but with The Shits, it's every fucking song. I don't know why they do it. I'm not going to lie, when I heard they had a new song out, aside from my obvious feelings of impending doom at the prospect of it becoming popular, I had a vague sense of hope. Maybe The Shits have cleaned up their act? Maybe they're producing something of interest that doesn't remind me of simultaneous flushing bogs?

Alas, no. 'Horchata' was terrible. Arfican drums interspersed with tacky synth and lead singer Ezra Koenig's bile inducing vocal work make for, yet another, painfully shit song. Only a few days ago I heard their first official new single, 'Cousins'. Do you even need me to tell you what I think? Go and listen to it, it barely qualifies as music, as if they went into the studio, threw the drum kit at the microphone and got a 12 year old novice guiutarist who's heavy into high pitched thrash solos to guest on the track, then 'Cousins' is what you'd get.

Fuck you, The Shits, you're making my life worse than it needs to be.

Crystal Castles Is The Sound Of The Apocalypse

If there's one gaggle of 'musicians' I loathe more than those dirtbags down at Vampire Weekend, it's the syphilitic duo known as Crystal Castles. Fronted by pseudo enigma and general ugly bitch Alice Glass (her real name is obviously something like Gladys Prole), this unreal tripe is truly an insult to anyone with functioning ears. You know what, it's an insult to everyone, functioning ears or no. I reckon even deaf people can feel the shit in the vibrations. Basically some cunt has discovered how to make Super Mario sounds on his little machine and thought "Yeah, people will go for that." Soon after he discovered young Glass, who's talk-warbling fitted perfectly with his not-fit-for-contra video game shite. Glass is quoted as saying that she ran away from home at the age of 14 due to an existential crisis. Are you having me on, Glass? Are you actually having me on? Any 14 year old who claims to be having an existential crisis needs a swift jaw realigning with a spikey iron glove.

After she willingly moved out of her house to join the echelons of drug addicts, tramps and rapist alcoholics, she was discovered by SNES brained, mentally quadraplegic arse Ethan Kath. Together they were to spawn the worst thing to happen to music since... Well, just the worst thing to ever happen to music, ever.

Crystal Castles' one song that I've managed to stomach a minute of without jamming sharp pencils in my ears, "Crimewave" is as much of a pretentious flapping as the name suggests. Lacklustre lyrics coupled with just the worst vocals that literally sound like a robot trying to force a spanner out of itself, and of course, a sub par Nintendo inspired backing track all make for a revolting display of anti-talent.

Basically, I don't like Crystal Castles. D:<

Fight Club Review

Director David Fincher’s career has been based around dark films. From the biblically gruesome thriller Se7en to the troubling hunt of a cryptic serial killer in Zodiac, Fincher’s filmography is decidedly brooding.
Perhaps Fincher’s magnum opus, however, is his adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club. The story revolves around an unnamed protagonist, (Edward Norton (let’s call him Joe)) who suffers from insomnia, and resorts to attending group sessions for terminally ill people to help him sleep. He is tired of his materialistic and monotonous lifestyle and, after his apartment explodes, seeks help from ‘single serving friend’ Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). As a condition of lodging with Durden, Joe must start a fight with him, an action which evolves into weekly meetings of fatherless, aggressive men, wanting to exert their rage. As the story progresses, so does the club, eventually morphing into a revolutionary group of soldiers, ‘Project Mayhem’, willing to do anything that their leaders say. Stirring up trouble in the middle of this maelstrom of anarchy is Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman Joe meets at a support group, and subsequent love interest for Tyler.
All the characters in Fight Club are stars in their own right, from the frenetic and boisterous Durden to the reserved and afflicted Joe, played sublimely by Pitt and Norton respectively.
The cinematography in Fight Club is really quite impressive, surrealistically fluctuating from conventional filming and shifting frames with subliminal flashes, always keeping the real intentions of the film ambiguous, something which is affirmed in the final scenes. I’m reminded of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream in certain scenes, the dark subject matter punctuated by dazzling picture.
Fight Club is a fantastic piece of film, a sharp stab at consumer culture, and excellent example of book-to-film adaptations. So often there are films that never really capture the magic of the novel, failing to draw the appropriate imagery, disappointing many people. Chuck Palahniuk is quoted as saying that he prefers the ending of the film to the ending that he gave the book, and as someone who has experienced both, I’m going to have to agree with him.