“And so I killed my idols / They’re dead in the vinyl / Oh, the piece came out of my soul / It’s a recital / Now she won’t understand / the dark side of my heart / all the part-time wonders,” Sean Van Vleet sings on Empires’ “Please Don’t Tell My Lover,” one of eleven tracks on the band’s major label debut, Orphan (Chop Shop / Island, September 2014). For the follow-up to 2012’s Garage Hymns, the Chicago four-piece headed to Texas to work with Grammy-nominated producer John Congleton, resulting in an anthemic record of power pop that pays tribute to such late-1980s/early 1990 idols as My Bloody Valentine, U2, Talking Heads, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and even Chris Isaak. The album, which can currently be streamed here, also features such big-sounding songs as “Silverfire,” “Hostage,” “Honeyblood,” and “Stay Lonely.” Lead singer and songwriter Van Vleet, guitarists Tom Conrad and Mike Robinson, and drummer Max Steger will be at Baby’s All Right on November 14 with Cold Fronts and NGHBRS; admission is free with RSVP.
this week in music
DOC NYC METROPOLIS: SOME KIND OF SPARK
Pete Destil studies the flute with MAP mentor Gretchen Pusch in SOME KIND OF SPARK (photo by Ben Niles)
SOME KIND OF SPARK (Ben Niles, 2014)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Sunday, November 16, 2:00
Series runs November 13-20
www.docnyc.net
www.somekindofspark.com
Ben Niles’s Some Kind of Spark is a heartwarming and heartbreaking documentary about the importance of music education in children’s lives. Niles, whose award-winning 2007 film, Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, detailed the care and craftsmanship that goes into the creation of a grand piano, this time goes inside Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program, “a Saturday instrument instruction program for highly talented children from backgrounds underrepresented in American performing arts.” Niles follows six kids, between the ages of eight and fourteen, as each one is mentored by a member of MAP’s staff of professional musicians during a three-year course. Violist Kara Charles, trombonist Rahman Amer, trumpeter Abdullah Amer (Rahman’s twin brother), flutist Pete Destil, singer and bassist Ami Kone, and percussionist Alejandro Cediel are shown studying with their teachers (including Bill Ruyle and Mike Truesdell on percussion, San San Lee on violin, Gretchen Pusch on flute, Lubima Kalinkova-Shentov on bass, and Paula Bing and Huang Ruo on music theory) and talking to their families about what they’re learning.
Niles concentrates almost exclusively on the music; he doesn’t delve deep into the kids’ personal lives, the families’ financial situations, or what else the children might be into. The focus is on the playing, on the studying, and, more important, on the practicing. “Make sure you refuse to be the guy who just gets the notes. Do something greater,” mentor Weston Sprott tells Rahman. The most fascinating part of the film centers on Pete and Gretchen; prior to the program, Pete had never even picked up a flute, and Gretchen isn’t afraid to get tough with him if he’s not properly prepared, especially after a summer in which the young boy couldn’t practice at all because he can’t afford his own instrument. The tension builds as the kids decide whether to audition for a third year at MAP, try to make the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra, or apply to LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Some Kind of Spark is a truly inspiring film that never gets overly sentimental, instead revealing, with brutal honesty, the challenges these kids face, because the path they have chosen is not an easy one. But seeing their eyes shine as they experience music in so many different ways makes it all worth it. Some Kind of Spark is having its world premiere November 16 at the SVA Theatre in the Metropolis competition of the fifth annual DOC NYC festival, with Niles, editor Sara Pellegrini, and select cast members present to talk about the film. The festival runs November 13-20 and consists of more than 150 documentaries, panel discussions, and workshops at Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas, the IFC Center, and the SVA Theatre.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: THE LIVING KILLS
While readying their full-length follow-up to 2011’s Faceless Angels, due early next year, Brooklyn’s the Living Kills have tided us over with Odd Fellows Hall, a five-track treat that furthers the psychedelic garage rockers’ mission to scare the bejesus out of all of us. “Anywhere,” “And You Scream,” “Don’t Wait for Me,” “It Ain’t Easy,” and “The Tragic World of the Living Kills” contain plenty of screams and shouts, creepy organ riffs and thrashing drums, frightening guitars and eerie background noises. But, as the self-described “psychotronic” band sings on “Don’t Wait for Me”: “Don’t look for any meaning / There never was any meaning.” Lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Merrill Sherman, organist Jennifer Bassett — who also plays the moog! — guitarist Heron Furtwangler, bassist Erica Keller, and drummer Brian Del Guercio will be celebrating the November 14 release of the Odd Fellows Hall that night at the Knitting Factory with Bradley Dean & the Terminals. As with the best scary movies, we keep coming back to Odd Fellows Hall again and again and again. Be afraid; be very afraid.
SONG OF THE DAY: “BEYOND” BY THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE
While birthdays tend to show up once a year, Canadian synth rockers the Birthday Massacre are not quite so regular, but every time they come around, you can be sure it will be one helluva party. Formed in 1999 as Imagica and rechristened the Birthday Massacre in 2001, the band has a loud, aggressive, propulsive sound that melds together multiple genres, including heavy metal, goth, dance, electronica, industrial, and, perhaps most endearingly, the ’80s power ballad, on such roaring records as Violet, Walking with Strangers, and Pins and Needles. Their latest sonic assault, their seventh album in fifteen years, is Superstition, out November 11 from Metropolis, featuring such overpowering, cinematic tracks as “Divide,” “Surrender,” “Trinity,” the absolutely epic “The Other Side,” and “Destroyer,” on which cofounder and lead singer Chibi proclaims, “This is a fantasy / a projection of vanity / a quiet illusion controlling me / It took the best of me / dissolving my sanity / a silent intrusion destroying me.” As big as the sound is on record — and it’s pretty damn big — it expands and explodes onstage, where Chibi, guitarists Falcore and Rainbow, synth player Owen, drummer Rhim, and bassist Nate Manor (we don’t know what he did wrong to have to use two names) really rock out and immerse you in their dark but inviting world. (Just check out that album cover, which is scary cute, and not in a Hello Kitty way.) The Birthday Massacre will be at Webster Hall’s Marlin Room on November 12 with New Years Day and the Red Paintings. Prepare to be blown away.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “CREATION MYTH” BY CELESTIAL SHORE
Back on October 30, Brooklyn’s Celestial Shore held a release party for their new Hometapes full-length, Enter Ghost, at Baby’s All Right. But the follow-up to last year’s 10X actually comes out November 11, so the three-piece is having another musical celebration for the record November 12 at Shea Stadium with Leapling, Cave Cricket, and Flashlight O. Guitarist and lead singer Sam Owens, bassist Greg Albert, and drummer Max Almario dip into the British psychedelic ’60s (think the White Album covered by the Count Five, Thunderclap Newman, and the Zombies) on Enter Ghost, which features such tracks as “Gloria,” “Same Old Cult Story,” the propulsive “Pass Go,” the blistering, chaotic “Shell Shocked,” and the groovy “Creation Myth.” Heavenly, indeed.
MoMA NIGHTS
There will be legs everywhere on Saturday night as MoMA stays open until ten to celebrate the coming holiday season (photo of Robert Gober’s “Untitled Leg” courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, © 2014 Robert Gober)
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, November 8, $25, 5:30 – 10:00 pm
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
It seems that everyone is getting into the act of celebrating the holiday season earlier and earlier, and the Museum of Modern Art joins the party on November 8 with a special late-night slate of activities. The museum will stay open until 10:00 with pop-up gallery talks, a cash bar, DJ Diggy Lloyd spinning tunes, a screening of Louis de Witt’s Joe Bullet, and more. The current exhibitions include “Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor,” “The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters,” “Analog Network: Mail Art, 1960-1999,” “A Collection of Ideas,” “Cut to Swipe,” “Jean Dubuffet: Soul of the Underground,” “Bill Morrison: Re-Compositions,” and “Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs,” which requires advance timed tickets.
TICKET ALERT: AN EVENING WITH DARREN ARONOFSKY, PATTI SMITH, AND NOAH
SCREENING + LIVE EVENT: NOAH (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Monday, November 17, $25, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Oscar-nominated, Brooklyn-born director Darren Aronofsky, whose impressive oeuvre includes Pi, Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, and The Wrestler, scored his biggest box office hit yet with the biblical epic Noah, his first film to open at number one. A unique, somewhat controversial take on the story of Noah and his ark, the film stars Russell Crowe as the title character, Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Anthony Hopkins as his grandfather, Emma Watson as his daughter-in-law, Ray Winstone as Tubal-cain, Frank Langella as Og, and Nick Nolte as Samyaza. On November 17, Aronofsky will be at the Museum of the Moving Image for a special screening of the film, joined by Patti Smith, who wrote and performed (with the Kronos Quartet) the lullaby “Mercy Is” for the soundtrack, her first original composition for a film. The discussion will focus on the collaboration between Aronofsky and Smith on the song, which is also sung in the film by several characters; Smith will also perform the song at the event. “It might seem like a modest little song, but it was a complicated task,” she told Rolling Stone last month. “I went back and looked at the scriptures. I really studied Darren’s script. . . . The song is supposed to remember Eden and hope that the Father will come and deliver us back to Eden, the hope of a new world. . . . Just writing, going, trying to say something with simplicity is a laborious process. But I worked very hard. I had Darren’s feedback. I made one historical error, so he corrected me.”