Waiting To Be Changed

Atlas Sound “Quarantined” – After seeing a Deerhunter show earlier this year, my friend told me that he thought the deer in the band’s name was a reference to Bradford Cox, like he was this frail, delicate bambi about to get gunned down, presumably by online music critics. That’s a clever thought, mainly because it zeros in on something really essential to most of Cox’s music: He always comes off as this fragile and bewildered waif who could be literally or figuratively blown away by the sounds on the recordings, whether they are blaring drones or gentle hums. Nearly everything on his debut album as Atlas Sound falls into the latter category, but if anything, he sounds even more vulnerable and exposed. Whereas the noisier songs on Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey gave him room for cover and offered moments of ecstatic release, the Atlas Sound tunes hover in limbo, and exacerbate a sense of awkward passivity. The two most compelling songs on the record are a diptych that foreground this notion: “River Card” is a delirious, lovesick ballad about feeling helpless in the presence of a poisonous, predatory lover, and “Quarantined” finds the singer drifting off aimlessly while he is “waiting to be changed,” as if mutation, maturation, and evolution are things that just sorta happen to us. (Click here for the Atlas Sound MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: Emily Gould is pretty right-on about Juno, but she doesn’t really get into how incredibly dated the movie seems. More than anything else I’ve seen or heard this year aside from maybe that Black Kids EP, Juno just seems like something that’s here to show us all that it’s time to move on from the dominant “indie” aesthetic of the past seven years and figure out something for the next decade. Juno has its moments, and Ellen Page is pretty remarkable in the title role, but the script is nothing special — much of the snarky humor is just warmed-over quips in the style of Joss Whedon and Amy Sherman-Palladino, and most of the movie comes across like an extremely dumbed-down prequel to Gilmore Girls. It really doesn’t help matters that the art direction and soundtrack* are fucking terrible, even when they throw in unimpeachable tunes by Belle & Sebastian and Cat Power. When you get beyond the slightness of the story, the big problem here is that anything that could be considered charming and novel in the film is just past its cultural expiration date. A lot of Juno would’ve worked really well if it came out six years ago, but at this point in time, it’s just tired, deeply unimaginative, and a bit embarrassing, as if one of your friends ran out over the weekend and got a “more cowbell!” tattoo on their arm.

* Seriously, movies and ads have got to stop using “I’m Sticking With You” by the Velvet Underground. Like, right NOW. It worked in Morvern Callar, but that’s it. I was annoyed with it coming up in the Savages, but man, it was soooo much worse in Juno. I mean, come on, for God’s sake, it’s got to be the worst Velvet Underground song ever, right?