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January 2, 2009 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
eveningsout
Music that will give you a break from cabin fever
by Anthony Glassman
With the fire roaring under the mantel and a good book folded on a lap, thick cup of cocoa steaming on the side table, the one element lacking for the perfect winter night is a soundtrack, just something good to put in the CD player.
Fear not, we have you covered.
For anyone reading something spooky or mysterious by the fire, the soundtrack to Bruce LaBruce's latest film, Otto; Or, Up with Dead People, may be just the thing.
The movie, comes out February 10 on DVD on from Strand Releasing, with a twoday stop in Cleveland at the Cleveland Institute of Arts Cinematheque on January 29 and February 1.
It's about a gay teenage zombie looking for love in Germany. Yes, LaBruce is nuts.
Before then, however, you can get acclimated to the soundtrack, which has an opening that is unusually moody and restrained for the enfant terrible of Canadian and queer cinema.
The first two tracks, Mikael Karlsson's "Descent" and Jean-Louis Huhta's "Halfway Between the World and Death," are perfect instrumentals to start, and "Ascending the River" by 4th Sign of the Apocalypse throws in a bit of lounge-style chillout beats with a bit of sampled dialogue.
The Pandas of Black Metal bring the upbeat, house music craziness with "Kill Your Gods," before the soundtrack shifts gears again with the twee-pop sugariness of "Mario and Dario" by Misty Roses.
Swinging up into full rock gear, the Living Dead Boys (appropriate enough, given the film) take us to "Disco Hell," before No Bra slams the tempo back down with the charmingly titled "Doherfuckher."
The CD flits around the ethereal and the dirge-like before wrapping up with the chipper "Everyone's Dead" by the Homophones. That's not sarcasm-it really is a cute little song about two friends having fun, pretending everyone is dead except for them. They are the entire world.
Entries by All My Friends, Brittle Stars, Eyes and Teeth, Othon with Ernesto Tomasini, La Jovenc and Ultra Milkmaids + V round out the album, much of which sounds suspiciously like a 1960s Hammer Studios vampire film. It's certainly a startling counterpoint to the punk aesthetic in LaBruce's films.
Less gloomy, less moody is Tracy Chapman's Our Bright Future, produced by Larry Klein, who famously worked with Joni Mitchell.
The connection cannot be ignored, as Chapman always had the potential to be in that lofty echelon of women's music icons.
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Her one true fault, perhaps, lays in that she tends to play it relatively safely-she does what she does well, and seldom ventures out from it.
Certainly, in her song "I Did It All," she pokes a bit of fun at celebutards like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan who are often more famous for their offscreen exploits than their albums or film roles.
It's got a bit of the ragtime to it as well, with a mournful clarinet cutting through the cosmo-fueled haze of the lyrics.
The country-inflected "Save Us All" makes the point that faith is there for everyone, and that no single person or group has
a monopoly on God's love. Her voice, excellent as always, does not quite seem to be the perfect fit to the music, though. Perhaps someone with country crooner chops, like kd lang, would have taken it to the next level, with a tiny touch of twang that would have completed the left-wing Christian Patsy Cline vibe going on there.
The title track definitely has everything it needs to be a classic protest song. One can picture Chapman on the Dick Cavett Show or perhaps with Tom Snyder, talking about the Vietnam War and then singing this song. And yet, somehow, it is
also completely contemporary in sound. "Thinking of You" is a song in need of airplay, doomed to adult contemporary though it is. The instrumentation is creative and unique, and her lyrics are engrossing. She even gave it a verse-chorus-verse format that makes it beg for people to sing along.
Our Bright Future is out on Elektra, which means that keeping her mid-tempo guitar-oriented sound has, at the very least, kept her on a major record label in a day when artists get the ax left and right.
BARET
8330
FRIDAY, JANUARY 16,
8PM-MIDNIGHT
A night of performances inspired by the special exhibition Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique featuring New York's "cabaret sensation" Daniel Isengart and Cleveland's Baby Dee.
TICKETS $55, CMA MEMBERS $45
CASH BAR. FIRST DRINK ON US Tickets include hors d'oeuvres, entrance to Artistic Luxury, and cabaret performances. To › purchase ticket, call 1 888 CMA 0033 or visit www.develandart.org
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