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Test Spin: Thao Nguyen

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Every detail composing We Brave Bee Stings and All, situates the singer Thao Nguyen as the perfect Juno MacGuff doppelganger. Thao’s androgynous voice stands in for Juno’s ballsy but completely female attitude.

Also shared is that pithy and kinda witty language: Juno said, “Hi, I’m calling to procure a hasty abortion …” and “They call me the cautionary whale.” Thao sings, “As sharp as I sting / It still soothes you, doesn’t it?” And then, “We don’t dive / We cannonball.” In the end, Thao relishes in the same aesthetic as the hit movie Juno: Animated and spunky and a little bit predictable. But there’s undeniable appeal in magically recognizing a tune at first listen.

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Quirky Aussie Not Short on Soul

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Dap, duh-doom, dapping drums; tap, tip, tapping tambourine; and then, “Pick me up in your arms / Carry me away from harm,” sings the Australian vocalist Sia on “Day Too Soon,” the first single from her recently released solo-album Some People Have Real Problems, which is now shrink-wrapped and available for your convenience at Starbucks.

She continues, “You’re never gonna put me down / I know you’re just one good man / You’ll tire before we see land.” The band mimics the cadence of this imagined boat swaying at sea. Chip, chuck, chipping cymbals and slowly slithering synth simmer and, finally, voices ascend in a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs.”

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Beat of the Week (2-19-08)

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It’s slightly heartbreaking that drama-geek heroes Panic! At The Disco have morphed into a carbon copy of those band-geek heroes Polyphonic Spree with their glorious new single “Nine in the Afternoon.” I long for the good old days when boys could be girls: wear pasty white mascara, black-eye liner and a corset, and prance around a music video fashioned like some Victorian nightmare-cum-Carnivale masquerade. This is, if not a sin, then certainly a tragedy.

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Test Spins: Draw the Curtain

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Will Hoge begins Draw the Curtains with the lyrics, “Two years, three months and five days.” But Hoge begins the album by singing, “Two years, three months and five day-ay-zzzz-ahh-ha!” It’s that annoying affect of affliction that too many “soulful” singers suffer from: the heightened breathy type of whiny-whimpery-crying groan thing. It’s supposed to be a little flare, like frosting on a cake, stressing the artist’s emotion. Michelle Branch suffers from the same disease when she sings, “Turn it inside out so I can see-ee-eugh-ya-ah.”

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Off the Beaten Path

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Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Sponge Bob Square Pants, of course — and his pet snail Gary, who oddly purrs like a cat. Other eccentrics living down there include a squid in a collared shirt, a crab that sells hamburgers and a Texan squirrel in a scuba diving suit. Although this motley mix of characters is unequivocally charming, even the most peculiar aspects of this famed cartoon have become commonplace, thanks in large part to the commercialization of the show and the fortification of the Sponge Bob Empire (shadowed only by the Nickelodeon Universe).

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27 Blehs

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For better or for worse, 27 Dresses struts down the narrow aisle between romantic comedy cliché and romantic comedy, well, romance and comedy. At its best, the film is genuinely sweet, somewhat subtle and kind of funny. At worst, it feels not dissimilar from the 27 other films — like the 27 other weddings — in this generally archetypal genre.

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Record Review: Jason Isbell

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Jason Isbell’s songs are straightforward and simple. He’s a country-rocker-cum-singer/songwriter whose lyrics paint clear images. But we all know that in order to be taken seriously, your metaphors need to be oblique and your emotions need to be obscured. Take Wilco: loved by critics, yet their lyrics make no sense: “I am an American aquarium drinker/ I assassin down the avenue.” Unfortunately, a clear alternative is equally as grim. Take, say, Tim McGraw: “I had a barbeque stain on my white t-shirt/ She was killing me in that mini-skirt” — Yikes!

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Legends, Zombies and No One Around

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In the first episode of the Twilight Zone, “Where Is Everybody?” (1959), a lost man finds himself in a town completely without humans. The mundane objects and places that compose the town — an ice cream parlor, a police station, a phone booth and a mannequin — become weird, creepy and even frightening in this environment without people. The man eventually loses his mind from the solitude.

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Legends, Zombies and No One Around

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In the first episode of the Twilight Zone, “Where Is Everybody?” (1959), a lost man finds himself in a town completely without humans. The mundane objects and places that compose the town — an ice cream parlor, a police station, a phone booth and a mannequin — become weird, creepy and even frightening in this environment without people. The man eventually loses his mind from the solitude.

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Old New England and the Big Hint

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A mussel reef hangs above big, black block letters to the right on the wall just inside the doorway of the main gallery in Tjaden Hall. You could say the reef crowns the title of Ben Shattuck’s ’08 new art show, New England: Fantasy, Love, which will hold a reception tonight at 5:00 p.m.
“The mussel reef is an old New England tradition,” Shattuck said. “Taught to me by my mother.”
Shattuck grew up in New Bedford, Mass. — known as the “Whaling City” — on a New England farm. He calls his mother a birder — someone who watches, identifies and studies birds — and his father a landscape painter. This past summer, Shattuck spent time in the Isles of Shoals, Maine helping endangered bird species. There, he took many photographs, which helped inspire one group of paintings in his current exhibit: the section entitled “Birds.”