Slices of Fried Gold - 9/15/08

This week in Slices of Fried Gold we have a very music heavy group. That's okay though, as there is only a finite amount of time to do things and music has a tendency to overlap over nearly everything for me. No less, on with the show.

Music: The Walkmen - You & Me

The Walkmen have long been a very frustrating band to me. They always have had the potential to be a great band in my opinion, but their other albums have always been composed of great elements that never seem to jive together. It's like they could never bring everything together.

With You & Me though, they've seemingly developed the cohesion they were missing out on and made a truly great album. This is a hard one to not spin on repeat for me.

Music: Dr. Dog - Fate

Hannah and I were sitting at Barnes and Noble and I was looking through Paste Magazine when I saw this album. It was one of the bands to watch out for according to the magazine, and I pointed them out to her. She responded with "Oh, I just bought that!" I hadn't noticed her bag, but while we were separated for a few minutes, she went and purchased it.

Thankfully, she let me rip it and we've cofounded a new genre just for Dr. Dog - precious pop. This band creates a folky mix of 60's pop that's full of dreamy background vocals and the most fun sorrow you've ever heard. Stellar album from a band that I'd never heard of before a few weeks ago.

Music: The Stills - Oceans Will Rise

I'm a big fan of these Canadians, as I own their two previous albums (Without Feathers and Logic Will Break Your Heart) and quite like the both of them. Picked this up at the same time as the Walkmen, and initially I was blown away and liked it more than the Walkmen. With more listens, this album has been downgraded a bit (repeat spins have revealed it to be mood music, not any time music) but it's still a good one from a great band.

It may not have the standout tracks of Logic or the eclectica that filled out Feathers, but it is consistently good.

Comics: DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke

Two prefaces to this: I'd already seen the animated movie before reading this, and I'm as close as you can possibly get to being a Darwyn Cooke (the Spirit) fanboy.

With that said, it blows the movie and Cooke's other work out of the water. In fact, it has to be considered one of DC's seminal works about the DC Universe, right up there with Kingdom Come and the original Crisis. Cooke perfectly captures the feel of comics from yesteryear but infuses that with the modern day political and dark edges that were absent from 99.9% of the comics of that era. He nails every character, from stars like Batman and Hal Jordan, all the way to more unknown characters like the Challengers of the Unknown, Rick Flagg, and King Faraday.

Even better? His art, which is the perfect amalgam of Jack Kirby and Tim Sale. The guy is a ridiculously talented interior artist, and the fact that he can make his art look both modern and retro is incredible. A must own for DC fans.

Movies: The Iron Giant

I first saw this movie in theaters at Totem in Anchorage with my Mom and Dad, and strangely I think it was the only movie that all three of us outright loved. Sure, Dad wasn't a huge fan of the thinly veiled anti-gun angle the movie took, but it's such a good movie that it's hard not to love.

Last night, instead of putting in Toy Story like I planned, I looked over and saw a mini-documentary about Brad Bird and had to watch the Giant, as Bird directed that and to this day it maintains itself as one of my all time favorite animated movies (and movies overall). It's a very funny, sad, and beautiful to look at movie, and it features standout vocal parts by Harry Connick, Jr., Eli Marienthal, and even the man himself, Vin Diesel (as the titular hero).

It's one of the only movies that seriously gets me choked up. Gets me every time, cursed movie. Why do you have to be so good? God, I'm getting misty eyed just thinking about it.

If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to check it out.