TV Review - True Detective

I haven't posted anything in a little while because most of what I've been doing is catching up on series that I've been following for a long time and I didn't want to post a review of just like, Justified Season 4 when I didn't review 1-3 or How I Met Your Mother Season 9 when I hadn't done the others. For HIMYM I'm thinking of doing a show retrospective once the last episode airs next week. What I did just finished however and would love to talk about right now is True Detective.

True Detective is the new show from HBO, written and created by Nic Pizzolatto. The show was pitched as an Anthology format, like how American Horror Story is, meaning each season will be it's own self-contained thing, with it's own characters and story. This first season starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two State Police detectives in Louisiana, solving a crime and exploring their lives in a 17 year period. I think it's hard to talk about the show without spoiling it at the same time, so I'm going to talk in broad strokes about the season and my general impressions and then later in the post mark a spoiler section and talk about my complete thoughts.

This first season was fantastic. In the 00's we had just...an overload of crime shows, and although they kind of died off, we're starting to see a resurgence of crime shows in the last few years that all have a specific twist. In NBC's Hannibal, we have a character who has complete empathy with the killers, in BBC's Sherlock we have Sherlock Holmes and his brilliant observation skills. In this first season of True Detective, we have Rust, McConaughey's jack of all trades detective who sees connections others do not, and often speaks in philosophical riddles about what it means to be alive. What makes this show really work for me is that it's not about the actual crime they are trying to solve so much as the conversations that Rust and Marty (Harrelson) have around the situation. While Marty is our stereotypical alcoholic, cheating on his spouse, good ol' boy detective, Rust is our nihilistic, philosophy spouting outsider, who pretty much everyone hates, but he's damn good at his job. What makes their partnership work I think is that Marty does not like Rust. He pretty much hates him, but he knows the guy knows what the hell he's talking about when it comes to solving crimes. As they make it a point to show in the show, Marty is the only reason Rust has the job he does, as he sticks up for Rust and tells the state police to keep him on the force.

The set-up to the show is interesting, and shows some creative storytelling. We open the show with older, more downtrodden versions of Rust and Marty in 2012, being interviewed separately about a case they worked in 1995. We spend a large amount of the show in 1995, with much younger, more energetic and youthful versions of Rust and Marty solving their crime. We also get a middle period where they look slightly older and some interesting things happen, and we get a bunch of time with both of them in 2012. It's a show that literally takes place over nearly 20 years, and it's executed near perfectly. The characters look respectively older and younger, depending on the time period they are supposed to be in.

The show itself is a play on the Detective genre, particularly the pulp detective stories from the 20's-40's. The crimes are often gruesome, the sexuality is rampant, and the detectives are just the unlikely pair that are able to solve the case. However, the show does a great amount to subvert the genre tropes and make something interesting. When Marty goes on about how much he loves his wife and then is actively cheating on her, we are shown that it's wrong, and that it's actively destroying his life. While we see Rust be the detective who digs into old records and old cases looking for a new lead, which is normally lauded in standard crime shows, pretty much everyone tells him to stop and that he's wasting time and money doing so. They aren't praised for their genre-normative actions.

I'd almost go and say that this season of True Detective is Film Noir style. Colors are bleak, most characters don't get a happy ending, the philosophical questions that are brought up, and the narration of most of the season. Since I absolutely love the Film Noir genre, this is easily a new favorite show of mine. Another thing I liked was that the season is 8 episodes. They're tight, concise. It's exactly as much time as the show wanted to spend with those characters and nothing more. Before I found out the show was going to be an Anthology series I would have been all for more adventures with Rust and Marty, but the way it is now is exactly what you want from a show. You have enough of these characters to get a good idea of who they are and how they interact with the world and they get a story that spans 20 years. However, we want more of them, but we aren't getting any more, which might dilute their characters down and make us think less of them. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, in TV especially. The season felt like just enough story without running into filler, which can even happen in a show with just 12 episodes, like say, True Blood. Though that isn't strictly a good comparison, as True Blood is a show that is ostensibly about the town the show is set in and all the goings-on in it, while this season of True Detective was purely the story of Rust and Marty, everyone else was pretty much just there to serve the story.

So in my spoiler-free conclusion, this first season of True Detective was awesome. The acting is pretty much outstanding across the board, especially from McConaughey, whom it seems can do no wrong right now. The narrative and framing of the season keeps it engaging all the way through, and the writing is impeccable. I can't wait to see how they follow up this season, and how much will stay the same and how much will change. If you get a chance, check it out.

SPOILERS BELOW

One thing I wanted to address right off the bat the accusations that the show is heavily misogynistic and treats women poorly. To that, I'll say, not really. Aside from Rust using the term pussy, he treats women perfectly alright. The one time he does something poor to one is Maggie, Marty's wife, and that's because she intiates sex with him and then reveals that she specifically did it to get back at Marty. While he is responsible for having sex with a married woman, he always treats Maggie up to that point with respect, certainly more than Marty does. The character that treats women poorly is Marty, and it's not glorified. It's put right out there that he's wrong, and everyone but him thinks it's wrong to do. Against the criticism that the women characters all are just flat pieces of writing that aren't full characters...sure. But no one else is either, apart from Rust and Marty. The show is about them, and their perspectives in solving a case. Apart from them, we don't get full characters of anyone else, aside from our Yellow King, and even then he's still mostly left in mystery.

I know a lot of people also had problems with how the season ended, particularly the mystery around the Yellow King. A lot of people felt like it was anti-climatic, and I see their point. We start in the first episode with all these symbols and crazy stick built-things and crazy phrases like "The Yellow King" being thrown about, only to have it be some mentally-deranged hillbilly on a farm in the middle of nowhere. I agree that it was a little disappointing to me that we didn't get to see more of the connections there in how things went down. We just see that he's crazy, but we don't get to see him spout all the crazy stuff that led everyone to that point. Other than that though, I don't know what else I could have asked for. Our characters did all the difficult legwork to track down the bad guy, they put all the pieces together, ended up with a realistic confrontation scene and a very realistic take on what would happen afterwards to these two men. I was incredibly happy with how the season ended, otherwise. It answered all the answerable questions it asked, and it made me think about the point of life and existence and what it means to be alive and doing what you consider good.

Music Review - Pharrell Williams - G I R L

Pharrell had a tremendous 2013, being involved in a ton of high profile projects, including the latest Jay-Z, Beyonce, Frank Ocean's Channel Orange and Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, to name a few. The one that related the most to me was his work with Daft Punk on Random Access Memories. So when I heard Columbia asked Pharrell to record an album for them after his work with Daft Punk I got pretty excited. I like his production, and I like a lot of his contributions, but I've never been a huge fan of his solo work. Not that it's not good, just that I've never gotten into it. G I R L changed that for me. I'm real into this album in a big way.

Pharrell seems to have taken a page from Daft Punk and explored older styles of his own music that he could bring back into style, and this album is just layered with Soul and Funk on top of R&B. It's fun, carefree and catchy. After the negative press that Blurred Lines caught for being incredibly disparaging to women, Pharrell reportedly wanted to work on music that represented what he actually thought of women. As such, G I R L is an album dedicated to Pharrell's views on women. Though it can be raunchy, it's never the way Blurred Lines was.

My favorite track on the album, and the one that caught my attention most was "Gust of Wind" a track that has Daft Punk producing and providing some guest vocals for Pharrell, returning the favor for his work on Random Access Memories. It's a Disco-Funk tinged R&B jam. It sounds like an outtake from the RAM sessions, it fits so perfectly into their recent sound. I absolutely love it to bits. I thought the album as a whole sounded familiar to RAM, and then when looking it up found that Mick Guzauski, the man who mixed RAM did the majority of the tracks on this album, and you can tell. Every song he did sounds big, open and warm, dipped in 70's-80's R&B essence. Another thing I thought was interesting is that iconic film composer Hans Zimmer was responsible for the strings arrangements on a handful of songs. Huh, I wouldn't have called that in a million years, but those strings do sound damn good. I guess Pharrell was one of the session drummers for Hans' Man of Steel score and that is probably how they met. Whatever the case, I want Hans Zimmer arranging more damn strings. Happy is of course another standout track. Originally penned for the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack, it fits right at home here. It's just pure fun.

Features on the album other than Daft Punk include Justin Timberlake and Timbaland on Brand New, Kelly Osbourne on groovy album opener Marilyn Monroe, Miley Cyrus in Come Get It Bae, JoJo on Lost Queen and Alicia Keys on featured duet Know Who You Are. Though I wasn't a huge fan of Timberlake's verse on Brand New, the production and added beatboxing from Timbaland made it feel like a crossover of male R&B world's. Lost Queen is a nearly 8 minute song about how Pharrell falls head over heels for a women, asking what planet this girl is from, because she must be a lost queen, meaning she is this amazing and powerful person and no one else is like her, so clearly she must be missing from the place she's actually from because there is no way she could be from the same world as he is. It's a charming epic, and an unexpected turn. One thing I noticed is that this album seems to have taken a lot of it's song-structure idea from Justin Timberlake's 20/20 experience, in that several songs are two part-ers, finishing off one song idea, then having an interlude and finally switching up to a second half. It's most evident on Lost Queen due to it's 8 minute length and very clear two half split, but it also happens on opener Marilyn Monroe. While I don't think it's necessary, it provides an interesting dynamic to the songs it happens on.

All in all, I really dig this album. I'm not huge into R&B, but I enjoy Justin Timberlake and some female R&B artists, but if more people took this kind of retro-look at the genre I'd probably jump right into it. I like big horn sections, big strings, and infectious beats and melodies on traditional instruments. As much as I love the sound of synths, it's nice when someone can create something that still sounds like them but in a style that isn't as popular anymore. This album is 10 tracks and lean at 45 minutes. No filler, this is the exact album that Pharrell wanted to make, and I can respect him for that. G I R L is one big 45 minute exercise in fun with 70's-80's R&B style.

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Movie Review - Kick-Ass 2

One of my most anticipated films of last year, which quickly diminished to expected disappointment after the reviews came out. I ended up not seeing Kick-Ass 2 while it was in theaters and only just now got around to watching it. I know it's pretty late now to effect anyone going to see it now, but I figured that since I watched it, I'd write about it.

I was a big fan of the first Kick-Ass from 2010, though I do easily acknowledge that is has it's own problems. The first half of Kick-Ass is a fantastic satirical look at the origin stories of superheros and how they would look set in a real life environment. Then, about halfway through, it just becomes the kind of movie it's satirizing. That isn't to say it's bad, but it switches tone from funny and violent superhero parody to violent and dark superhero film. I still enjoy watching it, but I feel it could have been better. I never did read the comic, though I have wanted to. Amidst stories stating that the book was finished at the same time as the movie, I figured I'd get the same basic story from watching the movie. Later I found out a lot of people like the movie more because it's somehow more reserved than the comic. The movie does have a lot of fun moments and it's action is as enjoyable as it is violent. The actors all put in great performances, especially Nicolas Cage, who was unbeknownst to the cast and crew at the time doing an Adam West impersonation. Chloe Grace Moretz did a fantastic job and Aaron Taylor-Johnson did a pitch-perfect rendition of what I always hope Spider-Man will be, though less smart and more of a loser. The soundtrack uses a few songs from The Prodigy's album Invaders Must Die multiple times and they help give the movie some music motifs along with the movie's score. It's also shot and edited very well, it's infinitely watchable.

I said all that about the first film to make this one point; Kick-Ass 2 has hardly, if any, of these qualities. The writing is stupid, the cinematography is bland, and the soundtrack generic. The acting from Chloe Grace Moretz is still great, in fact, better than ever, but it's hard to recognize that when you just get bogged down with so much stupid.

The main plot of this film is Dave Lizewski coming to terms with what it means to be a superhero. As we start the film, he's angsty and frustrated that all these superheros have come out because of what he did, but he's promised to not be Kick-Ass again for the sake of his worrying girlfriend. Mindy Macready has taken to skipping school every day and hanging out in her dad's lair, training up her superhero skills. When Dave decides he needs to be Kick-Ass again he tries to recruit Mindy but due to her new parental figure telling her he won't tolerate her being Hit-Girl, she continuously says she's out of the game. We spend the rest of the movie with Dave meeting up with the Supergroup Justice Forever and him trying to bring Hit-Girl in while Mindy holds out and tries to be a normal high school girl. At the same time, Chris D'amico who was one time faux-hero Red Mist has decided to become the world's first actual supervillian.

That basic plot isn't bad. We spend a lot of the first movie showing how woefully unprepared for the superhero life Dave is. He's a bare minimum hero that is essentially a figurehead while people like Hit-Girl and Big Daddy do actual work. It makes sense that in this movie he's retired. At best he was a figurehead for the superhero movement, but at worst he was a catalyst for a lot of bad things happening to people around him. We also spend a lot of time with him trying to win the affections of a girl who admired Kick-Ass, but made him promise to stop once they were together because she cared about him too much. So we open this movie with Dave saying he can't be a superhero because of his girlfriend. He then does nothing but try and get back in the game from there on out and ignores the wishes of his girlfriend. When she sees Dave and Mindy talking together often in the halls and witnesses a conversation out of context, she immediately thinks Dave is cheating on her, which...would make a lot of sense. However, when asked to explain himself right then and there he doesn't, which makes sense because they're in a crowded hall in a public place. But he...then never tries to explain to her in private that it was about superhero business and that she was Hit-Girl and nothing was going on and they just break up. A relationship that was one of the primary focuses of the first movie is just thrown aside. Once we meet Justice Forever you can figure out why.

So already we've lost one of the primary focuses of the first movie, his girlfriend, which he worked pretty damn hard for in the first film. And she's gone in the first half hour and that's the last we see of her. Then there's the focus on Dave's friends. Clark Duke gets a pretty good role in this film, about as good as the first one, and he gets about all the same one liners as he did before. Unfortunately his other friend Todd just gets absolutely screwed. In the first film, Todd, played by Evan Peters, is just as equally Dave's friend as Clark Duke's character Marty is. In this film, Evan Peters was busy filming American Horror Story, so they recast Todd and made him one of the worst damn things of this movie. Todd went from every bit of Dave and Marty's equal to being just shy of mentally retarded. You don't understand why Dave and Marty would hang out with this guy in the first place, and it makes sense later why they'd stop hanging out with him, even if they were being jerks about it. This leads to one of the dumbest things in the whole movie, but it spoils a whole lot of the end so I'll save that for later.

When we get introduced to the Supergroup Justice Forever, it's mostly just sad and not the funny you want it to be. They went the serious route with everyone except Marty who is now a clone of Captain America in costume, and Donald Faison's Doctor Gravity. Colonel Stars and Stripes, played by Jim Carrey becomes the Hit-Girl violence replacement for the time he's on screen. A former gangster inforcer who is a born-again Christian. The rest of the team includes a girl who's sister was an unsolved murder, a husband and wife who's young son went missing and never found and a gay guy who was bullied and decided to step up for those who can't stand up for themselves. Donald Faison's Doctor Gravity is a guy who just wants to go and do cool superhero shit and goof around. See the difference here? Doctor Gravity, Colonel Stars and Stripes, Marty and Kick-Ass all feel like they're fun, goofy characterizations of superheros that would fit with the light-hearted but violent tone the first half of the first movie takes. The rest of them are all these super grim and depressing characters that don't feel like they exactly belong in this world. Well, either they belong or the others don't. Having both exist is what feels weird.

The introduction of Night Bitch is the whole reason they got rid of Katie, so Dave could start hooking up with her as Kick-Ass. They spend a good amount of time cementing how close they are as a replacement relationship for Dave, but then when a certain event happens about mid-way through the film, they just drop it.

Jim Carrey's performance as Colonel Stars and Stripes is wonderful. Apparently he's only on screen for roughly 8 minutes of an hour and forty minute movie, but he's one of the most inspired characters of the whole thing. I wanted more of him. Along with Chloe Grace Moretz, I think he has the best performance of the movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson does what he can, but the writing is just not the same. In the first film he's a comic-book loving nerd who has the crazy notion that he could become a superhero and right some wrong-doings. In this movie he's just your standard boring superhero, but with even less motivation for half the things he does. Christopher Mintz-Plasse does a fine job as The Motherfucker, but he was just an older version of the same guy as the first movie, I expected nothing more or less from him.

The writing is awful. I already mentioned the destruction of Todd and Dave is hardly any better. Mindy gets fine writing treatment, but I think that's mostly because her sub-plot was already covered in a separate book that wasn't being published as the same time as the film was made. The rest of the movie though is just so dumb. For every good thing that the movie does for itself, it takes two steps back within minutes. They traded in the wit and common everyday man style dialogue for crass jokes. There is a device in this film that makes people vomit and shit themselves when it's pointed at them. Not only that, it's used for comedic effect and as an important game changing device. I hated every second on screen. The fact that they went through the trouble of making it look like a high school girl is violently uncontrollably shitting and vomiting in a school cafeteria is all I need to say about the quality of the writing. That would not have happened in the first movie. Sure, there were jokes about jerking off, but it's not like it showed you a geyser of jizz shooting out and that being the joke. It's hard for me to say that a joke about jerking off with Jergens and tissues is a refined joke, but in comparison to the shit (literally) in this film, it totally is.

Before I go into spoilers I'll say this. The cinematography is for the most part boring, the soundtrack is generic, the editing is nothing like the first film. It's just...all wrong. A lot of the acting takes a dive because they have nothing to work with and the plot is largely dumb. I still enjoyed the film, but it's not one that I will enjoy like Kick-Ass. It's one to watch for a continuation of the story when you need something dumb and violent on, but not something that can just be appreciated as a good film, because it's not. If you were a fan of the first movie, you'll probably still like this one, just not as much. Jim Carrey's performance is worth seeing however, and Chloe Grace Moretz does a fine job. The film has some interesting concepts but squanders them in search of crude humor. If you were midly interested, skip it. This one just barely makes the cut of an enjoyable film for me. I'll watch it again, but probably not by first choice. Maybe if a third one comes out I'll re-watch it. But it's nothing like the first movie.

Spoilers

I had so many problems with this movie that by the end I was just mad. They literally made Todd a bag of bricks. The plot needed something to bring Hit-Girl back, because Mindy was done with that. So what do they do? Why, they just have Todd walk into the fuckin' bad guy's lair and tell him who Kick-Ass is. I don't care if your two best friends are becoming famous superheros and they were being jerks to you, you don't go up to the nortiously bad, bad guy, who in a few scenes prior had a fuckton of cops murdered, and just tell him where your best friend is. The worst thing is, they don't play it like Todd's getting revenge on Dave. That would have still been dumb, but at least he reasoning is there. Instead, they just have him fuckin' tell him like he couldn't connect the dots. "Oh, you're looking for Kick-Ass? Yeah, that's a guy I know. Hey, you want to know who that guy is? I'll tell you because I've been one of his closest friends and you two should clearly meet up and have a chat. I did a good thing just then, I tell you what." He gets Dave's dad killed which was totally unnecessary because they already gave Dave the anti-superhero origin story of his mom dying of like a brain tumor or something in the first movie. Now both his parents are dead because they needed a reason for Hit-Girl to get involved. Not only was it unneccessary, the death of Colonel Stars and Stripes served the exact same purpose for everyone except Hit-Girl. They did two deaths for the same exact reason except the first time was for all the other characters and the second time was just for Hit-Girl.

I did like the majority of Mindy's side story however. Her trying to fit in and be a normal girl and have it backfire when the other girls are Mean Girls ripoffs. It almost had a nice resolution too, with her deciding to be herself but still embrace her feminine side, and then she uses a poop machine on them. Then they brought the poop and vomit machine back for the final battle and it plays a part in saving someone's life. Utterly stupid.

One thing I never liked about the first movie was that Big Daddy "traced the location of Kick-Ass through his IP address through his postings on Myspace." That is not how that works, but I was able to forgive it because essentially it leads to nothing. In this movie, the police trace the location of Kick-Ass through his IP address through postings on Twitter. Come on. That's even less valid because Twitter is generally a mobile phone app. Unless he was posting only from his room there would be many more than one solid location from his postings, and a mobile device not on Wifi would use the IP Address of the nearest tower it is connecting to. Even then, you can't just look at a post and go "hmmm, this post came from here!" Because IP addresses are based on an approximate location. You can track IP Addresses to neighborhoods, not houses. They find out where Kick-Ass lives and set Dave's dad on the path to death on something that does not happen.

The attempted rape scene I kind of liked, because it serves a purpose. Chris D'Amico is trying to be as stereotypically evil as he can but, but he being shown repeatedly just hiring people to do the dirty work for him. He attempts to commit an evil act such as rape and can't do it. I think that's a good character-building insight. I've heard that in the comic he actually does commit a rape and does many other evil things. I think that would have been a total misstep in the movie world. In the first movie Chris is never evil, just misguided because the person he looks up to most happens to be a very bad guy and when he gets caught in between being a hero and being the person his father was, he loses focus. His father does get murdered, that's enough to drive someone over the line between good and evil in my book. But in this movie you can tell that he's not truly evil, he just wants to do what he thinks is the way to exact revenge for the death of his father, by being the most bad guy he can be to counteract the most evil act he has ever witnessed.

The shark was the one of the dumbest things ever. You can't just say half a dozen times that the shark should be dead because he literally should be, and just have one character continuously state that it's just hungry. That doesn't make sense. They said exactly that it was in the wrong kind of water and it's implied it hasn't moved in days. It's a dead fucking shark. It's not hungry. It doesn't sit perfectly still in the wrong kind of water for days on end just because a character says it's hungry. So what does it do when The Motherfucker lands in the water in the end? It eats him because it was hungry. Fucking stupid. What's more, after the credits Chris D'Amico is revealed to not be dead, just that it ate his legs and his dick off. One last dick reference in the movie in case you forgot, and a totally implausible outcome to the situation. Everyone around him was dead except for the good guys, who did not take him out of the water. He falls into the shark tank and pools of blood come up. How could he have gotten out of there by himself? He couldn't have. They just couldn't kill him because he needed to be around for a third movie and also to make reference to not having genitals anymore.

This movie was stupid. It has it's fun moments but is greatly outweighed by the dumb and nonsensical. I went into this movie expecting a piece of shit, and I got a fun piece of shit. You've been warned.

Music Review - Burning Brides - Anhedonia

Back in August I saw Black Sabbath. It ruled, and my life will never be the same. While me and my buddies were out camping at the concert site, we had our nearest neighbors hang out with us for most of the time. They were two 40-something dudes from Portland and we spent hours swapping music recommendations and stories. One band they recommended was Burning Brides, so in honor of Kenny and Larry, I'm reviewing Burning Brides' 2008 album Anhedonia.

Burning Brides are a Hard Rock band from Philadelphia, and while I'd never heard of them until this weekend, they've toured with several of my favorite bands, including The White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, Mastodon and even Peaches. The band is mainly comprised of lead singer and guitarist Dimitiri Coats and his wife Melanie on bass. Anhedonia is a 13 track affair, with the majority of songs within the 3 minute or under range, which is something I always enjoy. As much as I like songs that go longer, I think it's sometimes more interesting to see what a band can some up with in such a short time frame. An example of this is the second track, Summer Leaves, which has a cool riff and is supported by a QOTSA style vocal, and it comes in at two minutes and one second. It's in and out in two minutes and I still find it incredibly memorable.

The whole album feels kind of like a mix between QOTSA and Foo Fighters, but never as hard rockin' or distinctive as either. This isn't exactly a bad thing, as both of those bands are led by very recognizable people who keep their distinctive style no matter what they do. So on Anhedonia, Burning Brides have seemed to capture what makes both bands good that doesn't encapsulate either of those band's most prominent features.

I think my favorite song might be Fire Escape, it might also be the most Foo Fighters'-y track the album has to offer. The riff is just really nice and light and Dimitri is doing a total Dave Grohl vocal melody. It's just...pleasant. I think that's my overall feeling of this album. It's not going to win any awards for being unique, but it's just nice. It's a band that knows exactly where they want to be and what they want to accomplish and them going for it, and you know what, more power to them. Not everyone is cut out to be the big, unique, stadium-filling band. Some bands are just good enough to be recognized by those other bands as just as good.

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Music Review - Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here

An earlier album from Anathema, Judgement, is one of my favorite of all time, and I've written a review of it, which you can check out here.

The Cavanagh brothers and the rest of the guys behind Anathema have been releasing a steady stream of solid albums. Each time experimenting, tweaking with their proven formula of catchy-hook laden riffs with deep, emotional lyrics. On 2010's We're Here Because We're Here, the main change is the use of piano and choral vocals, which, while present on previous albums, is really prominent here. In fact, the album opens with  Thin Air, with upbeat, beautiful guitars, a driving beat, and a vocal that is just as full of emotion as ever. While the vocals aren't as haunting as they were on Judgement, they still carry just as much emotion, weight and depth. The piano work is a nice addition and the ethereal choral vocals really put the song over the top. More nice piano work on Summernight Horizon, as well as beautiful female vocals that compliment the Cavanagh's. The album is representitive of Anathema as a whole. The songs change album to album, but you always have this feeling of underlying despair wrapped up into this dream-like optimism. It's like if a band like Coldplay actually had heart. Songs like Dreaming Light and Everything have a wonderful uplifting energy to them, with great vocals, guitars and piano work from the Cavanagh brothers.

Anathema started as a Doom Metal band in the early 90's, and even though they sound nothing like that style of music now, you can still sense that sensibility in their music. In Doom Metal, the vocals or the riffs will just have this weight to them that feel heavy, like they have a weight to them. Anathema kept that part of their early days with them, the vocals can come in like the singer is lifting a burden off his shoulders, or a guitar riff can just strike you to the core. These days, Anathema are much more akin to Prog-Rock, but make no mistake that a part of their Doom past doesn't stay with them. We're Here Because We're Here makes a conscious effort to sound light, musically. Much more bare piano and light-as-air vocals, strings, even the lyrical content. We're Here to me seems to be taking the positive approach to something incredibly dark, death. This album sounds like what I might imagine someone thinking to themselves in their last moments one Earth. On Thin Air, lyrics include "And it feels like we're already flying, But the air is too thin and we're dying. The clouds all around take us higher, The world far below is on fire. I hold out my hand just to touch you."

Granted, this theory of mine is just a theory, but I feel like the album supports this, especially with the spoken word piece in Presence. The thoughts of someone about to die. Someone coming to terms with who they love, who might not love them, how everything will be over soon and they'll live forever. It's all over the album, in songs like Everything and especially Angels Walk Among Us. In taking to much more positively-styled lyrics over say, songs from Judgement, Anathema have, in my opinion, made the most powerful album about death that I have ever heard.


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