FILM: THE SUITCASE

My niece and nephew came to town last week and while they were here we made a short movie around downtown Toronto... It's a chase movie called The Suitcase.

This is the third or fourth one we've made, and the first following the instant classic Hide & Seek.

Hope you enjoy...

MUSIC: JENNY LEWIS' ACID TONGUE

Personally, I thought that Rilo Kiley -Jenny Lewis' former band- were pretty mediocre; and Rabbit Fur Coat, the album she recorded with The Watson Twins, which drove a lot of my friends gaga, left me feeling a bit cold. So when she released Acid Tongue in September of 2008 I didn't even blink. I'd kind of written Jenny Lewis off.

And then, over a year after it was released, I listened to it. And holy shit.

Somewhere in there, between plopping out not-particularly-great music in collaborations, Lewis became a genius.

I figure that the majority of female artists out there these days fall into a few categories:

There are the pretty and pretty vapid pseudo poets, best personified by Chantel Kreviazuk and (sorry Becca) Jewel.

There are the teen pop tarts, full of love and angst and singing about absolutely nothing at all, rightfully more known for what's written about them than for what they write, if they even write anything themselves. (Lindsey? Britney? Jessica?)

There are the distillations of what was once good, but devoid of the edge a sparkle of the originals... Avril Lavigne is meant to harness the fuck you attitude of Joan Jett but fails; Kelly Osbourne is a watered-down Blondie, or maybe Courtney Love.

And then there are the holy-fuck-we're so-weird-we-must-be-artists, like the bewildering Lady Gaga, La Roux or Peaches; none of which have a clue what art looks like. (Self-promotion is not art.) This is the new generation of Madonna wanna-bes (Madonna-bes?), but each lacking in her basic sense of melody or what makes a strong pop hook.

This was not always so. Once upon a time there were female recording artists; once upon a time female recording artists were the rule and not the exception once upon a time there was Emmylou Harris, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, June Carter, Joan Baez and Dolly Parton! And there were a million jazz singers: Sarah Vaughan, Etta James, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Carmen McRae, and on and on.

These were artists; these were master interpreters and creators.

And with Acid Tongue, released a year and a half ago, you can add to that list Jenny Lewis, with a voice that recalls Loretta Lynn especially, and not her own early self in any way. Acid Tongue is a rock & roll album with balls, rare enough to find from someone with balls, and insanely rare from someone without them. It's a tough record, but one that refuses to shy away from true beauty, in the way that, say, Courtney Love does. (And alternately, it doesn't flinch at adding a little darkness to the beauty, like the way opener Black Sands starts to turn a bit towards the end, or how the very pretty Bad Man's World opines "I've got a bullet left, but I can’t decide which scorpion I’m going to shoot; will it be me, or will it be you?")That said, when she needs unadorned beauty she can nail that too, as she does on Trying My Best to Love You.

Godspeed is one of the most incredible things I've heard in years, with a wonderful melody, and an almost hopeful bounce underlying the melancholy.

The chugging See Fernando is brilliant and Carpetbaggers (with a shockingly good, shockingly ferocious guest turn from the almighty Elvis Costello) is straight up aggressive in the best possible way.

Jack Killed Mom is a murder ballad / story-song that would make Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen smile with glee.

The whole thing has a kind of 1960's Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter, community-made feel to it, where every single note played by every single player was struck, plucked or sung with pride and a desire to create the very best art possible.

There's not a bad song in the lot, and although I might be two years late, I can't now recommend it any more strongly. I feel like your life is probably worse for not having this album on your iPod.

DESIGN: SHARKY TEA INFUSER

I don't drink tea (I'm adverse to hot liquids) but if I had this tea infuser, designed by Pablo Matteoda, I might.

MUSIC: THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

One of my very most favoritist bands around, The Drive-By Truckers, have announced that their new album -The Big To-Do- is going to be released on March 16, 2010.

These guys are incredible; if you like roots music this is the band for you. Their last full-length album, Brighter Than Creation's Dark, was made up of nineteen songs with nary a dud in the bunch. From the beautiful and tragic opener, Two Daughters & A Beautiful Wife -about a friend of the band whose entire family was murdered in a random home invasion- through to the album closer, Monument Valley, which imagines iconic director John Ford laying some knowledge on a protege, they strike not a single wrong note lyrically, musically or tonally. The album is a true work of art, the kind that rarely gets made in this era of 99 cent-per-song digital downloads.

From Two Daughters & A Beautiful Wife: "Memories replay before him; all the tiny moments of his life: Laying round in bed on a Saturday morning. Two daughters and a wife; two daughters and a beautiful wife."

And from Self-Destructive Zones, written from the point-of-view of a hair metal band at the beginning of the nineties, being overcome by the grunge movement: "It was 1990, give or take I don't remember, when the news of revolution hit the air; the girls hadn't even started taking down our posters when the boys started cutting off they're hair. The radio stations all decided angst was finally old enough it ought to have a proper home. Dead fat or rich nobody’s left to bitch about the goings' on in self destructive zones."

The Drive-By Truckers are a remarkable group of musicians and songwriters. They're a career band, making music to last; they might not storm the charts or get hounded by paparazzi, but in a perfect world they'd have their television network, broadcasting their music twenty-four/seven.

DESIGN: STAIRS WITH FREAKING SLIDES ATTACHED!

Becca and I have talked about the possibility of maybe one day possibly buying a house... If we do, I'm going to insist on having one of these:

Holy crap, that's awesome. Could you imagine? The people who built this house obviously love their children very, very much, and so do these parents:

They are stairs. With slides attached to them. I can't even begin to express how cool this idea is. Why don't all stairs have slides attached to them? In a perfect world...

There's been a long history in music of the powers that be searching for a white artist who sounds black. Labels have always thought that if they could just harness the power of black music (which, for some reason, means authenticity)but put a white face on it, they would hold the Holy Grail; a palatable, critic-proof, television-friendly artist that suburban moms and dads can't complain about. That's what Elvis was about, and Jerry Lee Lewis; people were initially taste-tested with Rick Astley's songs but weren't shown his picture, and the resounding reaction was that he was a talented black singer; The New Kids on the Block were put together with the specific intention of creating a white version of New Edition and The Jacksons, and in the same vein came along The Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC, not mention how the execs must have been salivating when they heard the R&B inflected, Michael Jackson influenced Justin Timberlake on his own; Remy Shand was the first white artist signed to Motown, because they thought he was going to be the white Stevie Wonder; and labels have been searching high and low for viable white rappers, from House of Pain through to Eminem.

In the last, say, ten years things have changed a bit; black artists rule the charts, and for artists -both white and black- authenticity is almost a dirty word; as I write this, the highest charting white artist on the Billboard Hot 100 is Kesha, whose name I refuse to spell with a dollar sign because it's stupid. Umm, Taylor Swift? James Blunt? Nickelback was the most successful band of the nineties, in terms of record sales? And what the hell's happened to U2? (To be fair, black artists seem as adverse to authenticity as white; The Black-Eyed Peas went from a socially conscious hip hop act to an idiot-baiting bubblegum pop group that doesn't so much record songs as they do jingles; rapper Ludacris has recorded with the latest white suburban teenage flash in the pan, Justin Bieber; why the fuck does anybody but fourteen year old girls listen to Rihanna???)

In the 1960's protest songs ruled the charts; led by the great Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, John Lennon railed against the government and stood as the soundtrack to the civil rights movement, becoming huge stars in the process. Music meant something at the time, it set out to accomplish something, and listeners were inspired by it. Today, music is a trifle, a diversion; people put on their headphones to tune out and get away from thinking. They blast computer-made, heartless beats into their ears, and revel in computer manipulated and corrected voices; guitars and rums, which at the birth of rock and roll were gloriously ragged and human, are now processed so completely that they rarely sound like guitars and drums even when they are real.

DESIGN: LETTERHEAD

Great design can be found in the simplest places; I present to you, courtesy of LEADERHEADY, well, letterheads...

The great artist, Roy Lichtenstein, circa 1971. (I HEART ROY LICHTENSTEIN.)

Marvel Comics, c. 1982.

My childhood favorites, Laurel & Hardy, c. date unknown.

A Special News Bulletin from the Office of Johnny Cash, c. 1960.

One of the most brilliant entertainers ever, P.T. Barnum, c. 1891.

And the bizarre:

The Church of Scientology, c. 1976.

Go HERE to see more.