FEBRUARY 8, 2013

THE PIONEER LOG ARTS

Poet Williams FIDLARs talent resounds by track but bleeds cacophony as an album ist Greg Kuehn. This heritage rings experience and it works for them. Coast. shares work at LC BY EMMA CARLBLOM
BY BECCA LILL
STAFF WRITER According to Detroit-based poet Crystal Williams, who had a poetry reading at Lewis & Clark on Thursday Jan. 31, we are all nasty pieces of work. But all hope is not lost; Williams turns to poetry to understand how to be a better person. I very deeply believe in the power of language to transform our lives, she says. At the reading, Williams read and discussed poems from her first book, Troubled Tongues, and in her newest collection, Detroit As Barn. A graduate of New York University and Cornell, Williams now teaches at Reed College, where she also serves as dean for institutional diversity. She has been recognized in publications including Court Green, Tin House and The American Poetry Review and has been invited to participate in the International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua. Williams poetry is raw, honest and impossible to ignore. She tackles issues such as poverty, greed and the pain of death with a very realistic approach to human suffering. People say things will get betterthats a lie. Things dont always get better. Its not all dark, though; Williams also writes about beauty, patience and the capacity for human compassion. According to Williams, aspiring writers often fear revealing too much about themselves and allow this fear to inhibit their creativity. Urging the poets in the room to overcome this inhibition, she says that it is the job of poets to say what other people are afraid to say. STAFF WRITER The titles of the songs on Los Angeles garage-punk band FIDLARs self-titled debut LP are telling. They follow a pattern, mostly relating to partying or the SoCal lifestyle. The bands name itself is an acronym meaning Fuck It Dog, Lifes a Risk. They come from a lineage of earlier punk bands, both musically and literally. Two of its members are the sons of T.S.O.L. keyboardtrue stylistically. In FIDLAR, one can hear the likes of everything from the Descendants to Blink 182 to the Black Lips. Many view FIDLAR as the band that crafts anthems for the party. They do sing about getting wasted with great enthusiasm. However, songs like No Waves and Wake Bake Skate convey these themes with undertones of apathy and disillusionment. FIDLAR is proficient at turning songs into a completely sensory Translating their individual YouTube hits onto an album does not resonate as smoothly. This album has too many holes and too much repetition to call it truly enjoyable. A song with catchy group vocals and surfy guitar chords will flow to another song with catchy group vocals and surfy guitar chords. By the end, one feels a little worn out. The duds overcloud the standouts. It also does not include some of their best songs, like Oh and West

A brief review

As a society that has shifted from long to shorthand, book to Kindle and album to mp3, we often value the quick satisfaction over longer, subtler forms of pleasure. FIDLAR reflects this shift. They know how to create a good song, but they do not know how to create a good album. Maybe they should leave it that way. Maybe as we shift the way we experience music, some bands should focus on creating excellent albums while others focus on songs.

A new take on the Cold Wars post-apocolyptic scene

BY TAIGH PANZER
STAFF WRITER Threads, a recent film by director Mick Jackson, depicts the honest story of a large-scale nuclear conflict. There are no winners. All systems fail. Civilization is helplessly tossed back millennia in spite of all the government propaganda about surviving and rebuilding after a nuclear war. This is the essence of Threads. Jackson shoves the viewer into the shoes of a middle class couple in Sheffield, England against the backdrop of a growing conflict between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in Iran. Before anyone in the city of Sheffield can even comprehend the stakes of this conflict, two nuclear warheads explode in the Middle East, setting Sheffield, a synecdoche for all of England, on an irreversible and unwarranted course toward its fate. Jackson masterfully cultivates an aura of perseverance with the side plot of Sheffields city council CEO as he executes a series of clandestine and seemingly prudent moves in the face of impending nuclear Armageddon. Ironically, after the nuclear event over Sheffield and the ensuing firestorm, trapping the provincial government underground, and leaving the institutions to aide Sheffields people who are all utterly overwhelmed and unprepared for this devastation. Perhaps even more disturbing than the firestorm is the scene prior, in which a uniformed marching band plays God Save the Queen as police arrest the subversives gathering in protest of nuclear conflict. This scene carries a greater weight than even the protagonists endurance after the event; Sheffields citizens no longer have a say in determining their untimely demise. Threads is not meant to entertain audiences despite its tense and optimistic plot before the nuking starts. Threads is meant to jolt audiences into realizing the horror and impracticality of nuclear warfare.

Maybe youve heard of them and maybe you havent, but 2013 wont forget them
BY CJ MACLEOD
STAFF WRITER The champagne bottles have been popped, the party hats put away, Auld Lang Syne has been sung and, just like that, 2012 is over. Though it may be a new year, a few truly great records from the past 12 months keep making frequent appearances in this snobs current musical rotation: 1. King Tuff S/T (Sub Pop Records) Brimming with glam-filled goodness, the Sub Pop debut of this Vermont native twists and turns, weaving between full-blown rock anthems and spaced out pop gems. Recorded in an abandoned elementary school, the record is full of the tripped-out kookiness that can only be achieved by being recorded in a haunted building. 2. Mean Jeans On Mars (Dirtnap Records) Equal parts drunken mess and pop genius, this record earns a well-deserved slot in the top five of 2012. After releasing their first LP in 2009, these local Portlanders hit the woodshed in a big way. While their first record was packed full of fast-paced, Ramones-tinged three-chord burners, the 2012 offering from Mean Jeans finds the bands emphasis placed squarely on melody and songwriting. With songs so shout-along-able, On Mars makes us all pine for the adventures we never had in space. 3. Ty Segall Twins (Drag City Records) The third and final full length offering from Segall in 2012, Twins surprisingly proved to be the strongest offering from the Ty since 2010s Melted. Psych-leaning in the best way possible, this record seamlessly transitions between freaked-out psych jams and wire-y, angular guitar songs, built on walls of feedback. By far the loudest of Segalls 2012 offerings, Twins proved that the only thing needed to craft catchy pop is a guitar, a fuzz pedal and a youthful exuberance for noise.

These are just a few selections, see the rest of CJs picks of 2012 at www.piolog.com!

KLC SHOW OF THE WEEK

BY KATHERINE JERNIGAN (13) livening up the airwaves with
STAFF WRITER Tune into KLC radio on Friday afternoons, and you may find the eccentric Webster Rasmussen his show, Webster? The name was born out of a communication failure and may change to Esoterica and Shit. During his hour, Rasmussen plays a variety of

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PHOTO BY KATHERINE JERNIGAN

tunes peppered with basic music information, occasional guests and, as Rasmussen described it, lots of profanity. It features all kinds of music really, he said. Theres a wee bit of contemporary music on it but it mostly digs back into kind of hits from the 70ssome rock, some blues. Theres pretty much always a song by the Flaming Lips and Tom Waits. Its kind of an eclectic combination of stuff, Rasmussen said. Occasionally I do really exciting things like read obituaries to Reed College over DeVotchKa. Rasmussen has a position on the KLC Board handling the miscellanea of the station. He explains, Some of the stuff that we get in from various bands that are sending us demos and stuff Im like, This guys pretty pimp. I should put this up here. Whether Rasmussen is eating Twix on air or head banging, his show is always entertaining. He says, Its pretty much where the partys at, mostly because its a collection of weird wild stuff that I like to groove to. Its nothing more than that. Listen to Webster? Fridays at 2 p.m.

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