Turn Up the Sound - Gotye Reinvents Pop

Photo: Courtesy of Gotye.com

Reinvent (verb): To create anew. To replace with an entirely new version.

**Start the video below now.

Continue reading.**

Gotye, pronounced like Gaultier the French designer, is the professional name of Wally DeBacker, a 31 year-old musician born in Belgium and raised in Australia, whose third album Making Mirrors is dazzling the pop music world and raising the quality bar dramatically.

If you've already heard Gotye's hit single "Somebody That I Used To Know," and chances are you have, you probably initially wondered when Sting reunited with his former bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers to record a new Police song.

Comparisons between Gotye and The Police are fair and accurate, particularly on tracks like "Somebody" when Gotye sings at the top of his vocal register, but happily, the similarity is just a glimmer on the surface of a deep well of inspired and imaginative pop music.

"Somebody" is firmly entrenched in the 80s, but if you give a listen to Making Mirrors in its entirety, you'll quickly find yourself immersed in a sea of diverse styles and sounds. "State of the Art" blends reggae beats and electronica seamlessly, while at several moments on the track "I Feel Better," the only thing needed to round out the 60's Motown sound is a backup vocal loop from Martha and the Vandellas.

Make no mistake though - Gotye isn't mimicking the past, he is reinventing it.

As you make your way through Making Mirrors, you discover tracks that are simultaneously innovative and familiar, a host of songs rife with recognizable threads sewn together in ways you never imagined. Gotye is like a boy genius who has locked himself in his mother's attic for weeks on end, only to eventually emerge with a stunning original work of art fashioned from boxes of old photos and forgotten family heirlooms.

In a fascinating online documentary short, Gotye described his musical process as stumbling upon the "fortuitous meeting of sounds" that were somehow "meant for each other." Making Mirrors is proof that he has mastered the imagination, instruments, and technology needed to marry those sounds together with awe-inspiring artistry.

With songs that are sometimes reminiscent of so much other music, it might seem that Gotye has stolen something from the music that came before him. If that were true, he didn't steal something - he stole everything. I would make the case, instead, that Gotye has stolen nothing. He has absorbed sounds from the past, allowed them to ricochet and resonate inside his mind, and given them back to us - sometimes as musical cousins of pop music we recognize, and sometimes as something strange and beautiful we've never heard before. Regardless, each track on Making Mirrors is unique and worthwhile.

Don't believe me? Try another.

If you're reading this on Saturday April 14, the day I published this post, you can see more Gotye on television tonight, when he appears as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.

You can buy Gotye music everywhere, and you can get addicted, as I have, to a wide array of Gotye songs and videos here on his YouTube page.

The Artist - Good, But Not Best Picture-Worthy

Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo,
stars of The Artist

I readily admit to feelings of dread and despair when I first heard that a new silent film had been released and was receiving universally rave critical reviews. A French director making a movie about the decline of the silent film era and using no spoken dialogue in the process? None for me, thanks. Call me skeptical by nature, and you would be right; call me shallow, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong. I imagined The Artist to be a haughty artsy thing, filled with cryptic imagery and laced with industry insider references, an esoteric critic's wet dream (albeit in black and white), that set out to prove something. As it turns out, my fears were mostly unfounded. 

The Artist revolves around the tragic demise of a silent film star named George Valentin and the smoldering passion of starlet Peppy Miller, his secret love interest. Third billing goes to Uggie, George's wonder-dog and constant companion, who provides charm and laughs, and a save-the-day rescue effort that would make Lassie proud. With these three stars, a more-than-adequate supporting cast, and a team of technical wizards, director Michel Hazanavicius does a phenomenal job of creating a film that manages to look like the films that were made eighty years ago, without feeling dated or out of place. 

There is no doubt that The Artist should be a major Oscar contender in the "style" categories - art direction, costumes, musical score - stuff like that. The performances of the lead actors, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, are also sublime and noteworthy. Considering the boldness of the concept and the aforementioned technical prowess of the film, Hazanavicius should be a top contender for Best Director as well. 

Having said all that, it's only logical for The Artist to be my choice for Best Picture, right? Not so fast.  For all that is has going in its favor, there are a few gaping holes in The Artist that all the style and technical mastery in the world just can't fill.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier - Winner in the Theater

The Golden Globes have come and gone, and Oscar season is here. With only a few weeks to go until awards night, it's time for me to seriously step up my moviegoing game. As I get into theaters and check films off my "must see" list, I'll review a few of them, and I'm starting with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Based on a John LeCarre novel, Tinker Tailor is a cold war espionage thriller about an MI-6 officer who is resurrected from a shameful forced retirement to ferret out a Russian infiltrator from the British intelligence service.

This film stands out for a host of reasons. Tinker Tailor is complicated, as a spy thriller should be, but without being overly dense. The pace of the film is incredibly deliberate, but never butt-cheek numbingly slow. It's as realistic an international spy movie as I can imagine (and having been rejected by the CIA in my twenties, imagination is all I have to go on), without ever feeling documentary. When the closing credits rolled, I felt as though I had just seen a compelling "action" movie, and yet Tinker offers a generally quiet tone and nary a car chase.

'Jack and Jill' - Worst Drag Ever

This is the look you will have on your face if you
pay movie theater ticket prices to see Jack and Jill.

I confess, I haven't seen the new Adam Sandler movie Jack and Jill, and apparently, neither should you. This just released flick, in which Sandler plays two roles badly (a man and his twin sister), has mustered only a 3% critics approval rating on RottenTomatoes. To give you some context, this means Jack and Jill has received less than half the critical praise given to Gigli, the 2003 hot mess starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez that garnered a whopping 7% approval rating.

When a movie sucks as bad as Jack and Jill, the critics really step up their game. Critic Mike Ryan wrote a great tongue-in-cheek piece entitled, Jack and Jill: The Most Important Movie Ever Made, and several other critics have outdone themselves as well. Here's a sample of some of my other favorite comments about the new Sandler movie.

• "Movies like this should be stricken from film history and put in a closet never to be seen again." - Matthew Razak (Flixist.com)
• "Howard the Duck, Gigli, Showgirls, From Justin To Kelly. What do they all have in common? They're all widely considered to be among the worst big studio movies ever made. You know what else they have in common? They're all better than Jack and Jill."  - Mike McGranaghan (Aisle Seat)

...and the winner...

• "Guess what's showing in movie critic hell?" - James Verniere (Boston Herald)

If you're looking for big blockbuster movie fun this weekend, all is not lost. While there may be no worthwhile films opening in theaters (sadly, J. Edgar is languishing at just the 41% approval mark), you can still enjoy an entertaining afternoon reading about movies on Rotten Tomatoes. Staying home and reading the reviews of Jack and Jill will provide more laughs than actually seeing the movie, and you'll save $10 or $11 bucks on popcorn.