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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2012
ALBUM REVIEW
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Meek Mill's album "Dreams and Nightmares"
Meek Mill's new album falls flat
RYAN WRIGHT
rwright@kansan.com
Meek Mill generated buzz when he signed to Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group imprint last year. Now, after releasing two solid mixtapes that added to his hype, Meek Mill has released his first full-length album "Dreams and Nightmares."
The album's introduction "Dreams and Nightmares" sets the tone for the album. The track starts off with smooth piano strokes and angelic strings while Mill rhymes, calmly reflecting on his recent success, which gives the listener a sense of comfort. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the instrumental switches up to a more gritty, bass-heavy beat while Murf illuminates raps about everything from committing crimes to bragging about his fortunes. Sadly, after this stellar beginning, the album fails to keep consistency.
For the most part, the production on the album is solid, but it's repetitive. There's little variation with the production and a lot of the beats sound similar. This lack of variety makes the album quite boring at times.
Meek Mill has never been a very technical rapper. His flows are often repetitive, and his voice is sometimes annoyingly high-pitched. His wordplay is mediocre on tracks like "Lay Up," where he makes cringe-worthy basketball puns. Also, on the track "Young & Gettin' It," Mill's voice is so loud that it makes his words difficult to bear.
Most of the standout tracks are when Mill tones it down as he does on "Maybach Curtains" with Rick Ross, Nas and John Legend.
Mill also displays his great storytelling skills on "Tony Story Pt. 2" as he continues a story he started in his 2011 mixtape "Dreamchasers,"telling a tale about street violence. Mill also gets personal on tracks like "Polo & Shelltops" and "Traumatized." In "Polo & Shelltops," he explains the repercussions of street crimes. In a world of rappers gloring violence and drug trafficking, Mill brings light to a rarely discussed reality. With "Traumatized," he describes the pain he felt after his father's murder.
Tracks like these are where the album succeeds, but there's too few moments like them.
Meek Mill shows potential in his debut, but not enough. "Dreams and Nightmares" will not be remembered as a high point in his career.
FINAL RATING
Edited by Christy Khamphilay
ALBUM REVIEW
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Quentin Tarantino and RZA arrive for the 46th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 28,2004. The RZA and Quentin Tarantino worked together previously on the "Kill Bill" films.
RZA brings the ruckus
DUNCAN MCHENRY
dmchenry@kansan.com
"When you forge a weapon, you need three things; the right metal, temperatures above 1400 degrees, and someone who wants to kill."
Founding Wu-Tang Clan member and Kung Fu enthusiast RZA delivers these words in his signature, mush-mouthed accent on the new soundtrack for his directing debut, "The Man with the Iron Fists," RZA also stars in the movie, which is scheduled for release on Nov. 2, as a character called The Blacksmith who welds deadly weapons for a small village in 19th century China.
Given his extensive musical background and entrepreneurial spirit, it's not surprising that the soundtrack itself is a deftly sharpened blade. RZA learned the craft of movie directing by observing Quentin Tarantino's methods when he produced the music for "Kill Bill" in 2003, and he has brought the same cinematic
appeal to this compilation. The album is a swaggering brew of dark, Wu-Tang-style rap — complete with spoken word introductions inspired by classic Kung Fu movies — and glossier neo-soul numbers.
But the album isn't just another narrow, genre-specific movie soundtrack, as evident in appearances from soulful artists Corinne Bailey Rae and The Revelations. On the first song, "The Baddest Man Alive." The Black keys provide an ideal dosage of alternative grit and敏RZAs gruff
Many of the soundtrack's hip-hop songs are bass-laced Yakuza gang lullabies that seemed to a masked samurai fight at midnight. "Tick-Tock" is a menacing track that features a ticking time bomb noise as its dominant percussion along with bristling verses from rappers such as Pusha-T and Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon. Pusha-T cleverly refers to money as "The devil's pie," and raps, "Every street tax gotta come with an audit."
The sleeper pick for best song on "The Man with the Iron Fists" soundtrack is Kane West's "White Dress". This is West at his most romantic and humorous, adding typical references to Christian Dior and private flights to Europe with lines such as: "You like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain / Or rocking flannels all summer like Kurt Cobain."
lyrics.
With the soundtrack for "The Man with the Iris Fists," RZA has expertly crafted a body of work as sharp and well-tempered as the weapons his character creates in the film. It accomplishes its purpose as a backdrop to the outlandishly gilded Kung Fu battles of RZA's imagination and manages to be a killer album in the process.
FINAL RATING
Edited by Megan Hinman
LIVE MUSIC
Jackpot hosting The Fresh & Onlys and Quilt tonight
EMMA LEGAULT elegault@kansan.com
The Lawrence music scene has a reputation for being eclectic and unique, which makes it a perfect locale for bands and artists flying under the radar. Two of these, The Fresh & Onlys and Quilt, both their own brand of indie folk rock, will be performing at Jackpot Saloon tonight at 8 p.m.
The Fresh & Onlys are a quartet hailing from San Francisco. They recently released their fourth album, Long Slow Dance, in early September. Quilt's self-titled album debuted in late 2011.
"Their sound is definitely a great example of how simplicity can go a long way," Creighton said. "The vocals complement the day-dreamy feel of the music."
Creighton described their style as "fluctuating between low-fi and an upbeat garage band feel." He believes they're a perfect example of the true American indie band.
A review by Steven Hyden posted on the Pitchfork website echoes Creighton's description, calling
the latest album, which complements themes of love with tones of rock and pop, "lush and love struck, with a light-as-air melodicism." Hyden further writes that Long Slow Dance "subly expands the band's sonic palette without overwhelming the band's appealing simplicity."
"Even though they can be defined by a handful of music genres, their music seems to take on its own creation of a genre. The amount of versatility they bring to their music is amazing." Creighton said.
While it doesn't have the grandeur of larger venues, Jackpot's smaller space gives audiences a unique experience. Creighton said he thinks it would be perfect for The Fresh & Onlys.
"It is a super intimate setting," Creighton said. "It allows both the band and the audience to get into the music."
The young Boston trio Quilt stepped on the scene in 2009 with an experimental, melancholy sound, personified by haunting harmonies. A review on their label's website (Mexican Summer) describes the album, released last November, as "made up of expansive, cinematic moments, brought home by those harmonies."
—Edited by Ryan McCarthy
MOVIE REVIEW
Quirky sci-fi romp 'Johnny X' impresses with infectious fun
LANDON MCDONALD
imcdonald@kansan.com
"They sing! They dance!
They're juvenile delinquents from outer space!"
Paul Bunnell's "The Ghostly Love of Johnny X" is a lovingly demosed humour to 1950s sciifi and beach-bop cinema, the kind of movie destined for a long and fruitful afterlife as a latterday cult classic, one worthy of comparisons to the work of Ed Wood, Russ Meyer and other purveyors of venerated trash. Locally financed and starring a cast of predominantly unknows, "Johnny X" was the toast of this year's Kansas International Film psychobilly, where it scored the coveted Audience Award for Best Narrative and consequently earned a limited theatrical release.
The movie, gorgeously shot on what may have been the last of Kodak's black and white film stock, opens with an intergalactic tribunal passing judgment on wild man Johnny Xavier (Will Keenan) and his gang of crooning alien greasers, known collectively as the Ghastly Ones. After much deliberation, the Grand Inquisitor (Kevin McCarthy) exiles the Ghastlies to the furthest, foultest corner of existence: a nondescrit
Enraged at the prospect of being grounded for eternity, Johnny's ex-girlfriend Bliss (De Anna Joy Brooks) splits from the gang to embark on a cross-country elopement with a love-stricken soda jerk named Chip (Les Williams), but not before hijacking Johnny's Resurrection Suit — a mind-control device that also has the power to raise the dead.
B-movie regular Jud Reden channels the Three Stooges as Sluggo, Johnny's clumsiest enforcer, while fans of Brian De Palma's camp musical "Phantom of the Paradise" may recognize songwriter and Bob Balaban clone Paul Williams, who appears here as sardonic talk show host Cousin Quilty.
The pacing occasionally lags and the lead performers are amateur at best, but the fun they're having quickly turns infectious. Brooks and Williams in particular possess a madcap brand of chemistry, one featured prominently in a duet titled "These Lips That Never Lie." Scott Martin, the film's composer, certainly has a gift for writing infernally catchy doo-wop numbers.
planet called Earth.
On the run from a vengeful Johnny following a jazz-handy diner brawl worthy of "West Side Story", Chip and Bliss take shelter in a theater owned by King Clayton (Reggie Bannister), an unctuous Hollywood concert promoter obsessed with resurrecting the career of rock 'n' roll gargoyle Mickey O'Flynn (Creed Bratton from "The Offce"), whose undead Elvis look must have taken inspiration from real-life psychobilly superstar Unknown Hinson.
"The Ghastly Love of Johnny X" also features the final performance of acting legend Kevin McCarthy, who lived just long enough to complete his scenes as the Grand Inquisitor before passing away in 2010. His career, which arguably peaked with the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" back in 1956, lends special significance to his appearance as a grim emotionless overlord.
When "johnny X" screened at KIFF, Bunnell called the film a labor of love, a salute to the high-concept, low-budget movies that inspired him as a child. That love is evident in every frame of his bizarre, wonderful creation.
FINAL RATING
— Edited by Laken Rapier
THEATER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former football player transitions to opera
NEW YORK — Keith Miller was a bruising backout out of the University of Colorado who never quite made it to the National Football League. He has, however, become a star at the Metropolitan Opera.
How Miller made the unlikely transition from football to the pinnacle of opera is an all-American story of reinvention, made all the
more amazing by the fact that he had no formal musical training when he set out to become a singer.
"This is the real thing. This is the juice."
"This is the real thing. This is the juice," said the 38-year-old
KEITH MILLER
Actor, former football player
Miller. "Instead of a number, you're a character, but the spirit of competition is the same, and you do it for the love of the art versus the love of the game."
Then he got some real opera recordings, singing along in his bass-baritone voice, "kind of like karaoke."
It began almost by chance in 1994, while still at Colorado, when he took his girlfriend to see a traveling production of the Broadway musical "The Phantom of the Opera." He was so enthralled that tears rolled down his face. He bought a CD and learned the songs.
But it was still nothing more than a hobby. Singing along to "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Don Giovanni" was something he did to pass the time while the 6-foot, 265-pound Miller lifted weights, ran sprints and studied playbooks in
pursuit of a pro football career.
In 2001, he was in Fargo, N.D., training for a workout with the Denver Broncos, when he saw
Miller, a three-year starter at Colorado best known as a blocking back for 1994 Heisman Trophy winner Rashaun Salaam, bounced around the fringes of professional football. He played in the European league, the Arena Football League and U.S. spring football leagues, always keeping in shape for a possible shot with the NFL.
flier announcing an open opera audition for the Pine Mountain Music Festival in Michigan.
On a whim, he showed up.
"I figured, what the heck!" said, his voice
ripping into a low laugh that echoes his rich singing bass.
He performed the only aria he knew, from Mozart's "Don Giovanni." To his surprise, he got the job, plus four other offers.
Miller then had to learn the whole part, poring over the score and picking out notes on a piano late into the night.
"It was like a baby learning to walk," he said.
He still had to be formally trained
He still had to be formally trained — for four years at Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts, a top grooming ground for future stars. Then, days before his 2006 graduation, came the decisive break.
He auditioned for the Met's Young Artist Development Program and didn't get in. Instead, the company actually hired him for Puccini's "Madame Butterfly"; broadcast live in high definition to movie theater worldwide.