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WEDNESDAY.JUNE13.2001
REVIEWS
4B • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MUSIC
Cheese matures with new album
By Rob Pazell writer@kansan.com
Success in the music industry cannot be measured just by money or radio play. It is also important for a band to explore its medium and decide when it is a good time to move on.
Enter The String Cheese Incident, a fivepiece band from Colorado that built its success on wacky lyrics and hot bluegrass. Their maturity has elevated leading to their latest studio offering, "Outside Inside." They have gone from lyrics about hallucinogenic mushrooms and "Johnny Cash not smokin' that hash" to lyrical soul searching. Musically, The Cheese has moved away from bluegrass and toward heavier funk jams.
The title track opens the disc with upbeat drums and funk. It eventually transitions into a psychedelic rock jam. Next comes "Joyful Sound," the only offering from bassist Keith Moseley. This tune takes poetic lyrics and creates a rock anthem.
"Search" is the album's only half cover. The music is supplied by Ernest Randrianosolo and the lyrics come from guitarist Billy Nershi. Its island groove makes you want to drink a daiquiri on the beach.
The band slows things down with Nershi's instrumental, "Drifting." The slow mellow beat gives an easy-listening vibe.
They pick up the funk again with the next two tracks. "Black and White" and "Lost." These include horns that tread even newer, funkier ground.
The disc then moves to old school String Cheese Incident. It starts with "Latinissmo", which uses the salsa beats characteristic of
the band. "Sing a New Song", another Nershi tune, has an angrier feel but stays with the soul-searching theme. Strong slide guitar dominates this tune.
Closing out the disc is "Up the Canyon." This is The Cheese's only dedication to their roots, with a bluegrass zvdeco style.
*Rollover* "comes in at number 10. It is by far the best offering on the album. The upbeat island-style track with a reggae chorus will thoroughly please die-hard Cheeseheads. It goes through a myriad of jams including rock, jazz and techno styles. *Rollover*" is their most representative offering to date.
String Cheese Incident fans will probably agree that this album conquers new territory for the band. It leaves behind many of the sounds that made it famous and adopts a funkier theme. Unfortunately, many bluegrass fans, like me, who fell in love with the Cheese's innovative "pickin" might be disappointed with the lack of the mountain music. Nevertheless, it shows a strong third-studio album from a band famous for its live performances.
Pazell can be reached at 864-4810 or writer@kansan.com
MOVIE
Moulin Rouge fails to keep eyes open
By Matt Zaller
writer@kansan.com
When a director morphs a musical into a film, interesting things happen. Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge is an entourage of color and theatrical excitement that numbs the senses. Set in Paris in 1899, it features the Montmartre district, which thrives with artists. Ewan MacGregor plays Christian, a writer who moves to Paris to discover love. Unfortunately for him, he finds it with Satine, played by actress Nicole Kidman, a dancer at the Moulin Rouge. After Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a non-fictional artist from the early 1900s, falls from the ceiling into Christian's lap, the Bohemian adventure begins. The ensuing action revolves around romance and the search for investment to keep the
Moulin Rouge afloat. While the Moulin Rouge ends in shambles, so does the film.
Nevertheless, the film provides a glimpse into the Bohemian lifestyle of Montmartre, a place frequented by artists such as Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Renoir, Manet, Cezanne and later Picasso, who lived right off the Boulevard de Clichy. The Montmartre district is and was Paris' red light district. Full of absinthe, brothels, dancing and painting, the film catches the vibrant colors of the artists' canvases and turns them into a different medium: film.
The film's cinematography is excellent. Cinematographer Donald McAlpine portrays scenes of Paris that singlehandedly merit viewing the film. Some shots are a grainy, filtered black and white, while others inside the Moulin
Rouge are blinding. The film blends the original Montmartre with its modern counterpart through camera work, costumes, theatrical adaptations and digital manipulations.
However, Moulin Rouge fails as a musical. Character and general plot suffer from cheesy lines and displaced actors. For example, Kidman cannot sing, and MacGregor should stick to roles such as Jedi master or a Glasgow heroin addict.
On the other hand, John Leguizamo is stellar as the real-life character of Toulouse-Lautrete, who is famous for his oil paintings and poster designs for the Moulin Rouge, Le Chat Noir and other publications of the time.
The original music, crafted by Craig Armstrong, lacks a decent melodic foundation. Worst of all,
the other half of the music is pirated from modern pop. The work of Madonna, Sting and Michael Jackson, among others, is incorporated into the original music of the film. The songs characteristically start like the original and merge into different songs. For example, Patti LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade" mysteriously changes into Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit."
If you want to see the Moulin Rouge, go to Paris not the movie theater. Once you get to Paris, tickets to the Moulin Rouge cost around 350 Francs or $50. If you are a Toulouse-Lautrec fan or a future cinematographer, you may like this one. Otherwise, Moulin Rouge is simply confusing.
Zaller can be reached at 864-4810 or writer at kanans.com
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