The Champion of Pleasantries: Jack Johnson's To the Sea

Jack Johnson has always been a songwriter who’s comfortable in his own skin. With the release of his fifth studio album, To The Sea, we find the former champion surfer back in Hawaii with his band-mates putting words to music in a most positive way without leaving the comforts of home.

This record, dedicated to his late father, is not as dark as 2008’s Sleep Through The Static; it’s a groove-laced album full of mid-tempo tunes aimed to please the ear and the heart. One of my favourites, "When I Look Up." is less than a minute long, yet it pulled me in immediately. “From the Clouds,” a great love song full of idealism, follows this short tune. Even when Johnson writes a tougher song like “Turn Your Love,” the feeling isn’t wrought with pain or angst; it’s more of a request for emotional balance from his partner in a most polite way.

Toy Story 3: Once Too Often To The Well

I wish I could say that Pixar’s Toy Story 3 is up to the high standards of most of their previous films. But it’s not and it also suggests something of a continuing slippage in quality control in the company’s output.

I’m actually not sure why the folks at Pixar felt the need to revisit Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the gang of toys, after the previous two excellent movies in the series, released in 1995 and 1999, respectively. Did Disney, which owns Pixar, pressure them to go with something familiar for Pixar’s second foray into 3-D, after Up? (Toy Story 3 is also being released in 2-D.) That’s possible because the film simply doesn’t do much that’s fresh with its likable and diverse characters and the film’s 3-D effects, fine as they are, seem to be driving the story instead of serving the needs of the screenplay, which was written by four writers, Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, who also directed the film.(Four writers on one film is two writers too many.)

Revolutionary Rastaman: An Encounter with Bob Marley

Bob Marley cannot seem to rest in peace. In 2008 director Martin Scorsese was working on a documentary about the reggae singer, who died of cancer in 1981, but dropped out last year due to scheduling conflicts. Jonathan Demme signed on, with blessings from the Jamaican performer’s family. The plan was to screen the finished work in February 2010, coinciding with what would have been Marley’s 65th birthday. When the rough cut displeased billionaire real-estate heir Steve Bing, the chief investor, Demme also exited the project. Somewhere in Rasta heaven, Marley must be jamming. As a prolific songwriter who regularly excoriated wealthy capitalists, perhaps he’s even referencing a line from “Stiff Necked Fools” to sum up his feelings on this cinematic stalemate: ”Yes, you have got the wrong interpretation/ Mixed up with vain imagination...”

Finding the World In One City: FIFA World Cup 2010

Okay, let's not delude ourselves. It's going to be at least two World Cups before Canada gets back to The Show (our last appearance was 1986 where we failed to even score a goal). Yet Canada, or at least Toronto, is embroiled in a wonderful every-four-year frenzy that is probably more exciting (for some) than the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup (two years at least, probably more, before they contend, so relax).

If the Olympics in Vancouver got Canada to puff out its chest with pride (see my blog on the CTV 2010 Vancouver Olympics DVDs on June 12th), the FIFA World Cup in South Africa gets us -- at least in the big cities across Canada where there are significant ethnic communities -- to embrace our heritage, but thankfully not at the expense of our Canadianness. People display their ethnic backgrounds during this time by proudly flying flags of their home countries featured in the World Cup that began on June 11 (and ends on July 11). If there is a victory, a spontaneous street party will break out, especially in ethnic communities with large population bases (the Italians, the Portuguese, the Koreans, etc.). It also gets us to open up to each other, especially in cold-hearted Toronto where you never EVER look at each other as you pass on the street, let alone dare talking to complete strangers. Yet, so far this week, I've started a brief conversation with a woman carrying a British St. George's flag. The flag became the signifier that said "it's okay to talk to me as long as it's about football." We discussed England's chances (she was convinced they'd do fine, but I'm not convinced, though I wasn't rude enough to say so). Then I bid her good luck and continued on my way.

Enduring Simplicity: Keith Jarrett's Jasmine

Recorded in March 2007, with Charlie Haden on acoustic bass, pianist Keith Jarrett captured the enduring quality of music in a timely way. In spite of the delay from ECM, this is an album of simplicity and there’s beauty in that simplicity. Jasmine as Jarrett writes in the liner notes, “is a night blooming flower with a beautiful fragrance.” The real reason for the delay, however, was the number of songs Jarrett and Haden had recorded and their trying to decide what to do with them.

The process of weeding through the music was a challenge because they didn’t want to release anything “over-played”: again beauty in simplicity. I don’t know who first said it, but the most difficult thing to create is something simple, something unpretentious and so it is with this music. “Where Can I Go Without You,” by Victor Young and originally sung by Peggy Lee is an exquisite example of simplicity. The playing also has nuance since the musicians articulate the lyrics without vocalizing them. But just when you thought the album would slumber under the weight of that sad tune, the duo comes back with an up tempo version of “No Moon At All,” a Redd Evans/David Mann once sung by the likes of Julie London, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. But it isn’t all standards from a bygone era. Jarrett and Haden provide a sweet version of Joe Sample’s tune called, “One Day I’ll Fly Away,” recorded by Sample with Lalah Hathaway in 1999. Again, the R&B flavoured ballad is slowed to a more introspective tempo under the hands of Jarrett and Haden whose sensitive touch to their respective instruments creates the delicate mood of the piece; it’s textured in a detailed way like fine silk lace.

True Blood #2: Fear And Trembling On The Bayou

Last night, HBO’s True Blood returned from its long sleep. In September 2009, the show about vampires in a small Louisiana town ended its second season on a high, firmly establishing itself as HBO’s most watched series since The Sopranos. The series, Alan Ball’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed and much beloved Six Feet Under (also on HBO), certainly owes some of its popular success to the recent pop cultural vampire phenomenon, but make no mistake: these are not your daughter’s vampires. The show is unabashedly sexual and graphically violent, often at the same time. Everything about it is excessive, and as a result, despite its ratings success, it tends to divide audience and critics alike.

Set in fictional Bon Temps, Louisiana, the series is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries, a book series by Charlaine Harris. It’s been a couple of years since vampires have “come out of the coffin” so to speak, and they are struggling as a community with issues of bigotry and integration. Though placing it in the South brought to the fore much of the allegorical weight of those themes, the first season played out mainly like a supernatural whodunit, as the town hunts a serial killer in its midst. Along with the growing mystery, we met our main players: Sookie Stackhouse, a mind-reading bar waitress, played by Anna Paquin; Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a Civil War-era vampire returning to his home town after over a century; Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten), Sookie’s randy but slow-witted brother; and Sam Merlotte, the owner of the bar, with thinly-concealed feelings for Sookie and a secret of his own, played by Sam Trammell.

When the show premiered in 2008, I watched the first several episodes largely as a guilty pleasure. Though invariably fun and playfully shocking, it initially suffered poorly in comparison to both the exquisiteness of Ball’s Six Feet Under and to the more emotionally and narratively ambitious TV vampire fare like Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But by the end of the first season, the show had successfully found itself on its own terms, and its second season played out with renewed focus.

True Blood #1: Complex Vampires, Stock Christians and Uneasy Comparisons

Alan Ball, the creator of HBO’s True Blood, which begins its third season tonight, has generally failed to match the quality of his previous show, Six Feet Under. That HBO series, which dealt with a family of funeral directors in Los Angeles, was a smartly written, superbly acted and directed show, which raised challenging questions about life, death, family, love and all the other big questions which have galvanized humanity since the beginning of time. True Blood, a vampire series about creatures that rarely if ever die, while not without merit, isn’t nearly as smart about the issues that matter to us all.

Based on Charlaine Harris’ series of novels, True Blood centres around a world where vampires -- having come of the coffin just a few years ago -- are agitating for equal rights as the latest put-upon minority in the United States. True Blood sticks reasonably close to the books, which I admit I have only been able to skim (they’re pulpy and not all that well written). Its main character is Sookie Stackhouse (The Piano’s Anna Paquin, now grown up) -- a virginal Southern lass, who can read minds. The show is set in Bon Temps, a small town in rural Louisiana, where Sookie has lived her entire life and where she works in the local bar, Merlotte’s, owned by Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), who has a power of his own. Her eventual lover Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), is an undead Civil War veteran, who’s the gentleman caller of the vampire world. He’d rather not kill humans, or even drink their blood, and he doesn’t regard us as prey that exist simply for his community’s predations. Because a Japanese scientist has invented 'Tru Blood,' an artificial blood substitute that can meet the vampires’ nutritional requirements, Bill and his compatriots don’t have to drink the real thing anymore. That invention is also the reason that the vampire community has decided to reveal itself to humanity. Unfortunately, not all the undead want to live in peace with their human hosts.

Canadian Swagger: CTV Vancouver 2010 Olympics DVD

Back in February as Canadians went on to win more Gold Medals ever as host country in a Winter Olympics, we all walked around with our chests (somewhat) puffed out, strutting our stuff, the cock of the walk. And yet, even within that braggart moment, we managed to maintain the legendary (mythical?) Canadian niceness. Want proof? Take a saunter through CTV's five-disc DVD of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics that recently arrived in my mailbox (it was promised to arrive six weeks after the Games - in other words mid-April, but in fact came out last week of May/first week of June).

I've not managed to make my way through all five discs (one disc alone on the hockey takes up four hours of Disc 2), but what I have watched -- the intro documentary, the recap of the early rounds of the men's hockey, the final minutes of the Canada-US men's final, men's skeleton, women's and men's short-track speed skating and men's half pike snowboard finals -- is beautifully presented. Except for the recap docs, most of it is just commercial-free, pristine versions of what was broadcast, broken up by the occasional (but generally not intrusive) set-up commentary by principle host Brian Williams. And that's okay, because what this is all about is a memory piece that tries to allow us to recapture the feeling of pride and excitement we had during those ten days of competition.

Some of it works really well:

Roads Not Taken: The Tug of Broken Bells

Every now and then, a song gets up in my head. Lately, that empty space has been reserved for “The High Road,” an ethereal and esoteric ballad by Broken Bells. Before an invasion of the brain snatchers, I was only marginally familiar with Danger Mouse, a multi-instrumentalist producer who reverts to his given name of Brian Burton for the collaboration with James Mercer, lead singer-songwriter of the Shins -- previously not on my limited musical radar. This cut from the new band’s eponymous debut album is literally mesmerizing; I feel compelled to close my eyes and let it carry me away every time. Maybe I’ve got some sort of zen thing going: An experience beyond rational thought; a universal spirit that can zip through each of us, bringing enlightenment.

I wish somebody would enlighten me about the meaning of “The High Road.” On the material plane, the lyrics seem to obliquely address the post-traumatic stress disorder plaguing many veterans, a form of psychological damage that was once called battle fatigue. There are several specific military references: “This army has so many heads/ to analyze...” and “A solider is bailing out/ His lips curled on the barrel...,” for example. Apart from that, however, the imagery is beautifully elusive. The minimalist music video features co-composers Burton and Mercer walking at night down a forlorn two-lane blacktop with flashlights in their hands. They encounter random apparitions -- a traffic accident, a child with a remote-controlled toy car, a burlesque dancer in what appears to be a one-woman girlie show -- but no symbols suggesting the armed forces. The words do not batter a listener with messages. Yet, a sense of foreboding seeps in thanks to lines such as “I don’t know if I’m dead or not/ to anyone...”

Getting it Wrong, Getting it Right: Beyond the Sea and Ray

Whenever Hollywood produces a film biography of a famous figure it’s seldom about the nature of their genius. More often than not, it’s a redemption story. Ron Howard’s Academy Award-winning A Beautiful Mind (2001), for example, contained little of the John Nash one found in Sylvia Nasar’s intelligently absorbing 1998 biography. Where she thoughtfully examined how the schizophrenia of this mathematical genius became permanently intertwined with his gift, the movie is about how John Nash gets redeemed by love. Often an assumption gets made by producers that audiences won’t respond to the unique gifts of the film’s subject so they conceive a concept perceived as accessible to a mass audience – a concept that ensures box office success and potential awards. The irony, of course, is that without the special gifts of a John Nash there wouldn’t be a movie about him in the first place. Back in 2004, there were two radically different movies made about two great American musical figures (Bobby Darin and Ray Charles) that attempted to get at what made these artists fixtures in American popular culture – but only one of those films got there.

Mazel Tov: Dick Dale's Hava Nagila

When an Israeli friend of mine got married last summer, she was trying to think of a unique version of “Hava Nagila” to play after the traditional breaking of the glass. Without question, I told her the most original version I know is Dick Dale & His Del-Tones’ surf-rock arrangement from the mid-'60s.

Although Dale became an amateur surfer in Los Angeles, he was actually born in Massachusetts to a Lebanese father and Polish mother. Although I suspected that there probably wasn't much of a surfing legacy there, my friend Naomi Boxer (with tongue-in-cheek) asserted otherwise. "On a historical note, regarding Poland and surfers, perhaps you have made a slight oversight here? Have you not heard of the (in)famous Minsker Boys? There is strong historical evidence that they were a Jewish group of surfers from the city of Minsk. Usually part of Poland but slurped up by Russia during The Partition of Poland. According to the cultural lore that I've heard, they surfed the Black Sea in the earlier part of the 20th century in home-made (by their mothers of course) water-proof clothing with layers of chicken fat for warmth. The image that the Minsker Boys evokes certainly flies in the face of traditional Eastern European Jewish stereotypes." Who would have guessed?

Chick Flicks: A Bogus Phrase for a Bogus Genre

If ever there was film genre term that I wish would disappear it’s the chick flick. As one who always champions movies as a democratic art form, it’s beyond ludicrous to hear people – usually women – dismiss the opinions of men when it comes to (mostly) romantic stories just because they happen to be a member of the wrong gender. I first encountered this dubious term back in 1993 when I told a group of women that I found Nora Ephron’s romantic weeper Sleepless in Seattle rather creepy. In the movie, Meg Ryan pursues (you could say stalks) a wistful widowed man (Tom Hanks) until he finally hooks up with her. I suggested that I didn’t find the premise the least bit romantic because if the roles had been reversed, and it was Hanks shadowing Ryan, the picture would have been a sleazy thriller. Think Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) rather than Sleepless in Seattle. A few of the women though dismissed my observation and stated that I just didn’t get Sleepless in Seattle because I was a guy and didn’t understand a chick flick when I saw one. (My response: What the fuck is a chick flick?)

Following the insanity of that line of gender demarcation, it would stand to reason then that only guys should review action films that blow up shit real good. And maybe only blacks should weigh in on anything starring Denzel Washington and Queen Latifah. Perhaps Jews are the only ones qualified to discuss the oeuvre of Adam Sandler. Anyway, I think you get the idea. I thought of all this when reading the reactions to Toronto Globe and Mail film critic Rick Groen’s pan of the second Sex and the City movie. A number of women (and a few men) cried foul because, since Rick was a man, he obviously didn’t understand what made the movie appealing to females. First of all, the idea of designating such a limiting, condescending term as chick flick to movies like Sex and the City is insulting to both men and women. It suggests that only women like romantic stories, so therefore they should only be allowed to review them. Forget that I know many women who love action fare and despise sentimental movies, just as I know many men (including me) who loved Gillian Armstrong’s stirring adaptation of Little Women (1994). And while we’re at it, why not bring up director Katherine Bigelow, a woman who made a number of (mostly) redundant violent action pictures until, with The Hurt Locker (2009), she finally made a powerful film about the very underpinnings of the genre.

Lost Moment: Clint Eastwood's Invictus (2009)

There just wasn't enough time. When Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa in 1994, he was already 76 years old. After spending 27 years in an apartheid prison on Robben Island, few would have condemned him for seeking a measure of justice, if not outright revenge, for his treatment at the hands of South Africa's whites. Instead he chose a higher road. He wanted to reconcile with the white South Africans in an effort to end the cycle of violence that could have easily continued when the apartheid regime finally collapsed in 1994.

When he became President, he accomplished many things, especially trying to bring peace to his fractured country. It was as simple as using both black and white bodyguards (that integration itself spoke volumes to the nation), and as complex as embracing South Africa's national rugby team, the Springboks -- a team that was a symbol of white rule in South Africa -- on the cusp of South Africa hosting the Rugby World Cup in 1995. The Springboks were a woeful team that everybody assumed would make an early exit from the tournament. For Mandela, the success of the team became a personal mission. He contacted the team's captain, Francois Pienaar, and encouraged him to win the World Cup for South Africa. It was a tall order. With the assistance of a new coach, Pienaar's drive, and Mandela's complete support, the Springboks trained like demons and, remarkably, went on to win the title. Both these decisions were symbols, nothing more, but they were symbols of what can come out of hope.This is the material that is covered in Clint Eastwood's flawed film, Invictus (latin for 'unconquered') and it is a matter of historical record.

Winona Zelenka Interprets J.S. Bach’s Six Suites For Solo Cello: Earthy And Immediate

Completed in 1723, the J.S.Bach suites BWV 1007 – 1012 are a rite of passage for the cellist. The history of the composition and its reputation for cello players around the world has produced high expectations due to their familiarity with audiences and with fellow musicians. For Canadian cellist Winona Zelenka it must have been a rather daunting task to record the suites and then be subject to comparison to every cellist who's come before. Mstislav Rostropovich, Mischa Maisky, Yo Yo Ma, Anner Bylsma and the great Pablo Casals, to name five, have recorded the Six Suites for solo cello.

The cello suites offer a musician a technical and emotional trip than is demanding, playful and contemplative. As Baroque compositions, they offer dances and rhythmic variations that require the deepest commitment and concentration of the player. This has, to my ear, been a mixed blessing for Zelenka, who makes tempo changes more frequently than her predecessors whose interpretations were based on either Baroque or Romantic styles of playing. (Baroque style favours more use of open strings) In other words, a level of expectation about "how" to play these pieces leaves little room for interpretation, strictly speaking. That said, how does this recording measure up? To begin, the suites have been separated on two CDs: Suites 1, 3 and 5 on disc one and Suites 2, 4 and 6 on disc two. Already a statement in itself, separating the suites says something about our expectations: should we listen to them in sequence? Zelenka would suggest 'no'. (or at least her producer may have thought so) Curiously, they weren’t recorded in sequence or in one or two weeks. The recordings were made between 2007 and 2010 as clearly stated in the liner notes. Perhaps I didn’t need to know that in advance, but time can alter a musician’s approach to music, either emotionally or technically.

Martin Campbell: Hollywood's Best Unknown Director

When you put your hard earned bucks down at the box office for a film directed by New Zealand-born/England-trained Martin Campbell you are generally assured of a very good return on your investment. Since the 1980s, Campbell has crafted a series of episodic TV episodes and motion pictures that actually put the motion back into pictures.

Campbell first came to my attention in 1983 when he co-directed the twelve-part series, Reilly: Ace of Spies about Sidney Reilly (Sam Neill), considered England's first and best spy. Set during the first 25 years of the last century, the show was both exciting and sexy. Campbell directed the most vital episodes, 2 through 4, 8 and 9 and the finale. The secret to this show (and every film and TV show he's made) was not the espionage and action, but the way that Campbell helped the actors construct their characters within the tension. Every show that Campbell has touched has always been first and foremost about the characters.

He next made an impact on me with another six-part series, Edge of Darkness (1985 - basis for the Mel Gibson movie just-released on DVD that Campbell also directed). Again the solving of the mystery of why Ronald Craven's (Bob Peck) daughter (Joanne Whalley) was murdered right in front of him took a back seat to the people. What mattered to Campbell was examining the grief and pain that Craven's character was living through as he tried to get revenge for his dead daughter (I'll talk about the remake later). Campbell's first film in the US, Criminal Law (1988), was a bit lame, but a lively cable movie, Cast A Deadly Spell (1991), that successfully combined the hard-boiled detective and fantasy genres (trust me, it worked) put him back on track.

Family Legacies: Jeremiah Zagar's In a Dream

Is it just my imagination or have families that are not crazy become as rare as the northern hairy-nosed wombat? Environmentalists believe only about 113 of these marsupials still exist in Australia. Dysfunctional homo sapiens, on the other hand, now number in the billions worldwide. The word ‘dysfunction’ is relative, of course. But when it comes to my relatives, there’s madness aplenty running through our intermingled bloodlines.

So, somehow it did not surprise me to learn that a distant cousin I’ve never met -- Jeremiah Zagar -- made a documentary titled In a Dream that chronicles the meltdown of his nuclear family. My maternal grandmother was a half-sister of his maternal grandfather, ancestors who both died before we were born. In the 20th century, the entire clan left Poland (just a few steps ahead of the Nazis, who would obliterate their Jewish shtetl) and landed in America. Later, my immediate kin remained in New York while his settled in Pennsylvania.

Four Films About Love

Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas in The English Patient. 

"Love means never having to say you're sorry," the dying Ali McGraw told hubby Ryan O'Neal in that popular tear-jerker Love Story (1971). But not only did the movie excuse you from having to apologize, it also saved you from the complexity of love’s transgressions. Love Story said that love could transcend all of life’s tragedies and could cure us all of life’s ills – it might even ennoble us. Lou Rawls once sang that “love can be a hurtin’ thing,” but if you want a hit movie about painful subjects, love best be a healin’ thing. Hence, redemptive dramas like Terms of Endearment (1983) or Ghost (1990) became box office triumphs whereas more ambivalent pictures like James Gray’s Two Lovers (2008) didn’t (in this picture’s case, it was also criminally underrated).

Making Your Own Sound: Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz

I was recently having lunch with Critics at Large colleague John Corcelli and he was telling me about reading this “exhaustive but fascinating” new biography of jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. While enthusiastically describing the various ways the book identified Monk as the originator of be-bop jazz, John got me thinking about one of my favourite books about jazz, one that didn’t dispel the myths surrounding those legendary figures, but rather examined the source of their power: Geoff Dyer’s But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1991).

The way Dyer writes about jazz, the sound of the music burns through the lines on the page like some subliminal jukebox. Dyer’s not so much a soloist improvising on a tune; instead, he evokes the feeling of the music and the sound at the core of the individual who plays it. “Jazz was about making your own sound,” he explains, “finding a way to be different from everybody else, never playing the same thing two nights running.”

Geoff Dyer writes, in eight very succinct and visually evocative vignettes, of some great – and very different – jazz artists: Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ben Webster, Bud Powell, Chet Baker and Art Pepper. And Dyer weaves quite an impressionistic tapestry. But Beautiful illustrates the different kinds of artistic temperaments responsible for this uniquely American music. For in his view, jazz music was the perfect artistic expression for talented and inspired outsiders who often demonstrated very idiosyncratic behavior. And, in America, most of these outsiders who discovered and created jazz were black. But Beautiful is both illuminating and inventive because Dyer – a novelist who wrote The Colour of Memory (1989) and The Search (1993) – has constructed this biographical journey in the style of a novel. Drawing on anecdotes, scenes from documentary films, photographs and conjecture, Dyer concocts his drama out of snapshot impressions.

Produced and Abandoned: The Triumph of Love

During the horrific 9/11 attacks, I was covering the Toronto International Film Festival for Boxoffice Magazine in Los Angeles. Like most catastrophes, I can still remember where I was before and after the terrorists struck. There were also two movies that framed the event, and as it turned out, they were movies that would both be eventually produced and abandoned. The night before, I had gone to Roy Thompson Hall to see Fred Schepisi’s stunning adaptation of Graham Swift’s novel Last Orders (which David Churchill wrote perceptively about for Critics at Large back on January 15th); the other, which I viewed on September 12th, was Clare Peploe’s marvelous adaptation of Pierre Marivaux’s 18th-Century play, The Triumph of Love.

Watching a movie was probably the last thing I wanted to do that day, but I had a job to do. While fully understanding that I was - on one level - "enjoying" the picture, I was also aware that I felt distant from the screen, unable to let anything penetrate the state of shock that I was in. It was much worse trying to write the collection of reviews that were due at the conclusion of TIFF. Writing essentially seemed like an insignificant act, a negligible gesture in the face overwhelming horror. While I eventually got my enthusiasm for reviewing back, it took a few years to return to The Triumph of Love. When it barely made a dent at the box office and closed quickly, I had to wait for the DVD release to fully acquaint myself with the pleasure of experiencing it, which was more than I could do in 2001. I came to realize upon watching the DVD that the sensual lyricism of the material couldn't be fully appreciated right after a day of mass murder.

Blast Furnace Soul: The Black Keys' Brothers

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney certainly spell it out on their new release with a cover that states, “This is an album by The Black Keys." The name of this album is Brothers with the back cover announcing: “These are the names of the songs on this album” and “These are the guys in the band.” Why they felt obligated to indicate precisely what the recording was all about remains part of the mystery surrounding the band and for that matter the music.

This record is a super-heated, funk-based album featuring 9 of 14 tracks recorded at the Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama. The Muscle Shoals “sound” always inspired many a struggling musician. The Rolling Stones were reborn here after recording "Brown Sugar" in 1969. Paul Simon wrote and recorded most of the songs from his debut-self titled, solo album featuring “Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock,” bringing the power of gospel music and mixing it with the southern R&B with a dash of country for good measure. Due to its size, which isn’t much larger than the one-room Sun Studios in Memphis, Muscle Shoals requires your full attention as a musician. The close confines can either work against you, or help you focus if you’re a member of a multi-piece band. Ironically The Black Keys, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, can’t possibly do much work “off the floor” like a rock-n-roll band because they’re a duo. But what they do accomplish with this record is the “feeling” of a spontaneous band session.