this week in music

COUNTRY BRUNCHIN’: McCABE & MRS. MILLER

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie heat up the screen in Robert Altman classic

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie heat up the screen in classic Robert Altman anti-Western

NITEHAWK BRUNCH SCREENINGS: McCABE & MRS. MILLER (Robert Altman, 1971)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, December 7, and Sunday, December 8, $16, 11:30 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Robert Altman’s self-described “anti-Western” starts off gently enough, as John McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides slowly into a dark, dank northwestern town in 1902, Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song” playing over the opening credits. But Altman (M*A*S*H, Nashville) is merely setting the stage for what is to come, the electric combination of Julie Christie and Beatty as two businesspeople building a new town in the Old West. Beatty plays gentleman gambler John McCabe, who is soon joined by madam Constance Miller (Christie) in running the local brothel, and pretty much the town itself, which catches the eye of a mining company that decides it wants in on the action, something McCabe and Mrs. Miller are not about to let happen, at least not without one helluva fight. Filmed mostly in sequential order, McCabe & Mrs. Miller unfolds like an epic poem, thanks to Altman and cowriter Brian McKay’s imaginative and unpredictable script, based on Edmund Naughton’s 1959 novel, McCabe, and Vilmos Zsigmond’s gorgeous cinematography. The film is visually spectacular, as Altman cuts from the dreamlike red velvet interiors of Mrs. Miller’s brothel to the expansive land outside, bathed in the beautiful yet ominous falling snow. The Oscar-nominated Christie and Beatty do the love-hate thing to perfection, something they would duplicate in 1975 when they teamed up in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo and again in 1978 in Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait. A clear influence on such Clint Eastwood gems as High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a marvelous picture that ranks right up there with the best Westerns — “anti-“ or otherwise — ever made. The stellar cast also includes Rene Auberjonois, Michael Murphy, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, William Devane, and John Schuck, with Cohen contributing several more songs to the soundtrack. And the ending — well, it’s one of cinema’s most unforgettable finales. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is screening December 7 & 8 at 11:30 am as part of Nitehawk Cinema’s “Country Brunchin’” series and will be preceded by a live performance by Brooklyn’s own Birdhive Boys Bluegrass Band.

THE 33rd ANNUAL JOHN LENNON TRIBUTE

Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Friday, December 6, $65-$105, 8:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.lennontribute.org

Every year since 1981, a group of musicians has gotten together to pay tribute to John Lennon, who was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of the Dakota on December 8, 1980. A proponent of peace and love in his life and career, Lennon was only forty years old at the time of his death and had just released his first album in five years, Double Fantasy, with his wife, Yoko Ono. On Friday, December 6, the thirty-third annual John Lennon tribute will be held at Symphony Space, featuring performances by Steve Earle, Raul Malo, Joan Osborne, Teddy Thompson, Dana Fuchs, Bettye LaVette, Dan Bern, Toshi Reagon, Rich Pagano, the Buffers, and Joe Raiola, the MAD magazine senior editor who created the tribute. The event is presented by Music Without Borders and Theatre Within, an organization dedicated to supporting the performing arts. A portion of the proceeds from the concert will go to Spirit Foundations, a nonprofit that was founded by John and Yoko in 1978 to help “charitable and humanitarian causes around the world.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “I’M STONED” BY FAULKNER

In the digital age, is it easier or harder to wipe out the past and reinvent oneself than it was when music was primarily heard on records and the radio? One band that appears to be doing just that is Faulkner. “A change may be just around the corner,” the Venice, California, band recently tweeted. The four-piece, which was not named after the Nobel Prize–winning southern author of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying but was given its name by an Egyptian shaman, is preparing its debut full-length, Street Axioms, working with producers Mark Needham and JP Bowersock. According to the band’s Facebook page, the group was founded in 2013, while the (of course) unofficial Wikipedia page claims they started in 2012. Meanwhile, an April 2010 profile on the band in USC’s Daily Trojan begins, appropriately enough, “Faulkner is a band that is just as eccentric as its namesake.” (Another site dates their beginnings to 2007.) The USC article also says that the band has released five music videos, but the only one that is currently easily accessible online is 2012’s “Triumph of the Underdogs,” which garnered 1.55 million hits last year and on which the band declares, “Changes are coming.” It’s also difficult to find out much information about Faulkner’s Global Ambition EP, which consists of “California Skies,” “Soul Black Absentee,” “I Did It on My Terms,” “Triumph of the Underdogs,” and the title track and can be heard on Artists First Music. Oddly, since we’ve been inquiring into the band’s history, various links to videos and songs have been taken down or no longer work. It’s most likely tied to the departure last year of lead guitarist and vocalist Brennan McGuire, who left the band because of a family emergency that affected his ability to travel on a regular basis. “It does not surprise me in the least that the band now appears to have ‘formed’ in 2013,” McGuire confirmed via e-mail, “as we had done this after each of the first three incarnations of the band Lucas [Asher] and I started in 2008.” McGuire, who is now back with Hooville Homebrew, was replaced by Eric Scullin. (You can see McGuire with Faulkner in this video interview for Sunset Sessions.) E-mails to the current edition of Faulkner have gone unanswered as of press time. Conspiracy? Coincidence? In the end, perhaps it really doesn’t matter as much as the music itself, and that’s something you can check out when Faulkner — singer, rhythm guitarist, and lyricist Asher, singer, lead guitarist, and producer Scullin, bassist and arranger Dimitri Farougias, and drummer Christian Hogan — makes its New York City debut with two shows this week, at the Bowery Electric on December 3 with Roto’s Magic Act, Merrily and the Poison Orchard, and Louise Aubrie and at Mercury Lounge on December 4 with HITS and Chainwave. “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension” is another recent Faulkner tweet. So who cares about the past?

THE PUNK SINGER

Riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna opens up about her life in intimate documentary (photo courtesy of Pat Smear)

THE PUNK SINGER: A FILM ABOUT KATHLEEN HANNA (Sini Anderson, 2013)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., 212-924-7771
Nitehawk Cinema, 136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave., 718-384-3980
Opens Friday, November 29
www.thepunksinger.com

A cofounder of the riot grrrl movement, Kathleen Hanna was an outspoken feminist as she toured the world with Bikini Kill and then Le Tigre starting in 1991. But it all came to a mysterious halt in 2005 when the Portland, Oregon, native suddenly went on what became a long hiatus for undisclosed health reasons. Director Sini Anderson gets to the heart of the matter in the intimate, revealing documentary The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna. Incorporating rousing archival footage and photographs along with new interviews, Anderson, in her feature debut, gets Hanna to open up about her life and career, discussing such influences as Kathy Acker and Gloria Steinem as well as the serious health problem that kept her out of the public eye for five years. Hanna also talks about her childhood, a sexual assault that happened to her best friend, her photography and fashion work in college, her zine writing, and the formation of her bands, along the way always pushing her message. “We didn’t give a shit,” she says about the beginnings of Bikini Kill. “We weren’t making money; we knew we were never going to make money. And it was really important that we made our music. We were on a mission. We were going to do what we did whether we got attention or not.”

Kathleen Hanna gets her message out with Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and the Julie Ruin

Anderson also speaks with such former and current Hanna bandmates as Johanna Fateman, JD Samson, Kathi Wilcox, and Tobi Vail, musical icons Joan Jett and Kim Gordon, Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, and Hanna’s husband, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz; many are interviewed in the back of a snazzy van during a Hanna tribute concert at the Knitting Factory in 2010. Anderson weaves in plenty of music clips that display Hanna’s powerful stage presence, including snippets of such songs as “Rebel Girl,” “White Boy,” “Distinct Complicity,” “Hot Topic,” “Deceptacon,” and “Aerobicide” from Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and the Julie Ruin. The Punk Singer is a gripping portrait of a fearless, talented woman who continues to do whatever it takes to get her message out. “What is the story of my life?” Hanna says near the end. “I have no fucking idea.” But now, thanks to Anderson, we do, even if that story is still being written. The Punk Singer opens November 29 at the IFC Center and Nitehawk Cinema; Anderson, cinematographer Jennie Jeddry, and editor Bo Mehrad will be at the Nitehawk to participate in Q&As following the 7:30 and 9:55 screenings on Friday night, and Hanna will be at the IFC Center for Q&As moderated by Lizz Winstead after Friday and Saturday’s 7:55 and 9:55 shows. In addition, Hanna will be signing copies of the new album by the Julie Ruin, Run Fast, at 10:00 on Saturday.

MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE AND BIG BALLOON BLOW-UP 2013

77th St. & Central Park West to 34th St. & Seventh Ave.
Big Balloon Blow-Up: Wednesday, November 27, free, 3:00 – 10:00 pm
Parade: Thursday, November 28, free, 9:00 am – 12 noon
212-494-4495
www.macys.com

In 1924, a bunch of Macy’s employees joined forces and held the first Macy’s Christmas Parade, as it was then known. This year Macy’s celebrates the eighty-seventh edition of this beloved American event. (For those of you going crazy trying to figure out how 1924 to 2013 makes 87, the parade was canceled from 1942 through 1944 because of World War II.) The 2013 lineup features sixteen giant balloons, including Hello Kitty, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Julius, Spider-Man, Pikachu, The Wizard of Oz, Toothless, Finn & Jake, and Snoopy & Woodstock; thirty floats, among them the Enchanting World of Lindt Chocolate, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Winter Wonderland in Central Park, Mount Rushmore’s American Pride, and the Oneida Indian Nation’s True Spirit of Thanksgiving (seriously); fourteen novelty balloons, from Arrrtie the Pirate, Uncle Sam, and Baseball and Football to Pumpkins, Planet Earth, and Virginia; and three balloonicles, highlighted by the Spinning Dreidel, all making their way down Sixth Ave. from Central Park South to Herald Square. (However, heavy wind conditions could ground many of them.) The myriad clowns and marching bands will be joined by such performers as Richard Simmons, Miss America, Gavin DeGraw, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Fall Out Boy, the cast of Duck Dynasty, Jimmy Fallon and the Roots, Goo Goo Dolls, Mannheim Steamroller, Joe Namath, Mike Richter, and other athletes, singers, and actors, headed by ringleader Amy Kule. To get a start on the parade, head on over to Central Park West and Columbus Ave. between 77th & 81st Sts. the day before, November 27, from approximately 3:00 to 10:00 to check out the Big Balloon Blow-up. Watching the annual inflation-eve blow-up of Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons is a growing tradition, with crowds getting bigger and bigger every year, but it’s still a thrill to see the giant characters raised from the ground, reborn every Thanksgiving to march in a parade viewed by millions and millions of people around the world. (For further information, you can get the official parade app here.)

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “ADULT DIVERSION” BY ALVVAYS

“Is it a good time / or is it highly inappropriate?” Molly Rankin asks in “Adult Diversion,” the first single from Toronto’s Alvvays. You can decide yourself when the group plays Mercury Lounge (incorrectly identified as “Always”) on November 25, opening for Honey Wild, Hippy, and the Sanctuaries, and at Glasslands on November 26, headlining for Jacksie, Boytoy, and No Kill. Singer-guitarist Rankin, the next generation of Nova Scotia folk favorites the Rankin Family — her father, fiddler John Morris Rankin, died in a car accident in 2000 when Molly was twelve — formed Alvvays with her Cape Breton childhood neighbor, keyboardist Kerri Maclellan, later adding guitarist Alec O’Hanley, bassist Brian Murphy, and drummer Phil MacIsaac. The band has posted two songs online, the dreamy indie pop duo “Adult Diversion” and “Archie, Marry Me,” a pair of infectious tunes highlighted by Rankin’s lilting vocals. Alvvays is currently putting together its debut record for Royal Mountain, working with Canadian musician Chad VanGaalen, Graham Walsh of the Holy Fuck, and John Agnello (Sonic Youth, the Hold Steady). The disc is due next year, but you can catch the group this week and check out more of their sweet sound at these two area shows.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “III” BY PERFECT PUSSY

Formed at the spur of the moment when lead singer and lyricist Meredith Graves was asked to perform a song in the upcoming Scott Coffey movie Adult World (starring John Cusack and Emma Roberts), Syracuse-based punks Perfect Pussy are out on the road in support of their demo/EP, April’s fearsome four-track, thirteen-minute I have lost all desire for feeling. Her voice buried in the mix, well-read art aficionado Graves channels early Sonic Youth as she screams, “I’m a real piece of shit / I’m a real lost cause / Dare to act like you’re surviving and get thrown to the dogs,” in “IV,” continuing, “Every dog deserves forgiveness / no matter who he bit / I’m a real lost cause / I’m a real piece of shit.” But Perfect Pussy is no lost cause, tearing through vicious songs that even feature an occasional synth line and, of course, lots of feedback. Yes, as in Graves’s previous band, Shoppers, the songs are titled with sequential Roman numerals, although she claims it is not for artistic reasons this time around but just that she couldn’t decide what to call the deeply personal confessions. Well, we call them fuckin’ awesome. Graves, guitarist Ray McAndrew, noise synthesist Shaun Sutkus, bassist Greg Ambler, and drummer Garrett Koloski will be at 285 Kent on November 22 with Beach Fossils and on November 23 with Shannon and the Clams, then the band will be back for a show at NYU’s Kimmel Center on December 5 with Ceremony, White Lung, and Sleepies.