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I was so taken with the song “Holding on to Nothing” when I heard it on the following lovely Asian drama MV that I went off to find more about the band, and having listened to their music I am officially a convert.  If you like Secondhand Serenade, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus or any of those other rock/emo pop bands who occasionally craft amazing love songs, then you should like Lovers and Liars. A minty-new band from Tennessee, Lovers and Liars is a four-member band consisting of Stacy Hogan, Adam Nagel, Jason Stout, and Stephen Taylor. Formed about two years ago I think, they released their first EP, Before and After the Awakening, in fall 2009, and recently got signed by a major label (deservedly, in my opinion).

Download “Holding on to Nothing” by  signing up for their mailing list.

Their bio testifies: “We broke with rock tradition, trading Les Pauls and Marshall stacks for lead piano, drum machines, and synthesized textures. Switched straightforward rock shouting for a more diverse approach, using a variety of vocal deliveries to convey more complex sonic ideas. At the core, though, we stuck to hooky, personal songwriting, something that all too many of today’s otherwise worthy “experimental” groups seem to forget to do.”

Their Facebook page is beautifully tongue-in-cheek and humorous, and they’re clearly determined to have the personal touch with their small but devoted (and growing) fanbase, since one of them personally messaged me (in an entirely non-creepy way) when I joined their fans on Facebook.

Join their fans on Facebook
Lovers and Liars Myspace

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“We wanted to begin a band that sounded gigantic”, We the Living say on their website, but oddly enough, this 3-member indie rock/pop band from Tennessee mostly crafts songs that are beautifully contained and tender, even wistful. Their website is a little too wordy and cerebral (probably an influence of Ayn Rand, from whose book of the same name I assume they got their name) – their first album apparently is split into “heaven” and “earth” sections and their Myspace page lays forth a manifesto about “spread [ing] the idea that everyone needs a personal philosophy”. Since their music is lucid and unpretentious however I won’t hold it against them. Download their newest EP, “Boom Forest”, by signing up for the mailing list. I just did and the EP consists of 5 exquisite songs. Check out “Left and Leaving” and “Re: Stacks” below.

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You can also check out their website and Myspace page

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So new that they don’t even have a Wikipedia page yet, Color of Clouds has been described variously as indie folk and electroacoustic, though for the record I tend toward the former categorization. Color of Clouds is made up of a trio from Brooklyn which consists of singer-songwriter Kelli Scarr (formerly of Salt & Samovar), Dan Chen, former keyboardist for Nicole Atkins & The Sea, and producer Nate Greenberg. All three knew each other from electronic band(now disbanded) Moonraker, and got their start when Chen and Scarr, both recovering from breakups in 2008, decided to turn their loss into music. Greenberg was then recruited to polish and produce their songs. They released a debut E.P. entitled “The Look” in May 2009 which was well-received, with the title track being featured on One Tree Hill. They’ve also been featured on Ugly Betty, Damages and Mercy. Their self-released debut album, Satellite of Love, comes out April 6.

Color of Clouds Myspace

Satellite of Love Tracklisting:
1. Brother
2. Wonder
3. Satellite of Love
4. Left You
5. Lullysome
6. The Look
7. I Want You
8. Haunts Me
9. Let Go
10. Cinderella
11. Come Back to Me

Brother:

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Haunts Me(acapella):

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“Brother”, a wistful folk gem driven by Scar’s silvery vocals, reminds me oddly of some of Hansard and Irglova’s softer songs, particularly Irglova’s “The Hill”, with its exploration of a relationship riven with guilt and blame and love and loss.  “Haunts Me”, on the other hand, with its religious undertones and electronica-tinged pop, reminds me of State Bird’s  “The Golden Glowing Mask”. The final track, however, the only other one to  be pre-released, has more tinges of folk and country.

Read an excellent review here

Now we only have to wait until April 6th!

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Imagine Leonardo DiCaprio, never fallen from the wave of his Titanic popularity and still a popular darling to end all popular darlings. Then imagine Tom Cruise, on steroids which double his charisma and acting ability. Now combine those two, and you’ll come pretty close to Shahrukh Khan. Shahrukh Khan isn’t just a legend  in India – he’s practically an institution. I have it on good authority that there are people in India who literally worship him as if he were a god. A one-man phenomenon, there was a point in time when to co-star opposite Shahrukh meant that you had made it. Better known as SRK or sometimes just “The King”/”King Khan”, he’s won literally dozens of popular and critical acting awards over the course of a long and successful film career which began in 1992 with Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, which as far as I know was a not particularly spectacular film but which gave him his start (he’d previously appeared in a few television series). After Raju he starred in a film every year, but it wasn’t until 1995 with Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (read the C&I review of it here) that his career really took off. The longest-running film in Bollywood history, Dilwale Dulhani Le Jayenge, otherwise known as DDLJ or The Brave Heart will Take the Bride, was a smash hit to end all smash hits and became an instant legend and Bollywood classic(it is still one of the most famous Bolly films ever made). Shahrukh’s co-star in the film, Kajol, also became a superstar largely due to her performance in the film, and Kajol and Shahrukh remain one of Bollywood’s favorite onscreen pairings, having appeared together in three other highly successful films. Since DDLJ, Shahrukh has starred in a host of both popular and not-so-popular films, but his star has never faltered and by and large the movies he chooses tend to be hits, and as one of Bolly’s most sought-after stars he has worked with some of the best directors and producers, to the extent that a list of Bollywood’s “best” and/or most famous films reads at least partially like a Shahrukh filmography (see Veer-Zaara, Devdas, etc.). An extremely hard-working actor, he’s appeared in at least one film every single year since 1992, and his popularity has never really faltered since DDLJ, making him one of the few bona-fide film stars in the world today. He has since branched into film production and television producing. IMDB puts it as “There is not a dot in Bollywood that does not carry Shahrukh Khan’s name”. He was named one of Time Magazine’s 20 Asian Heroes under 40 in 2004. In 2008, Newsweek named him one of the 50 most powerful people in the world

Despite all this fame and power , Shahrukh has not become an egotistical maniac ala Tom Cruise. Amazingly, he married very early in his career and has remained a faithful husband to his wife, carrying the mantle of King of Romance and yet sometimes refusing to kiss his co-stars for the sake of his wife. Highly charming, he comes across as confident and yet not drunk on success,  and while I don’t expect much from him, any superstar who can stay married and refrain from jumping on couches has my vote. Endlessly versatile and talented, Shahrukh sometimes seem as if he wasn’t just born for the screen – he seems to own it.

IMDB profile

Follow on Twitter(iamsrk)

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Like your romance repressed and sizzling? You’re in the wrong place. Head over to my period drama post and make yourself right at home. Like your romance nuanced and well-developed? Go check out my Asian drama posts. If, on the other hand, you prefer your romance epic and fiery, Bollywood is right up your alley(I love all three genres but require very different moods to watch them).

Why You Should Watch Bollywood Cinema:

Sweeping sets, exquisite cinematography, general hilarity, stunning locations, epic love stories, amazing acting

Why You Might Not Like It:

Too much singing, bipolar plots, over-the-top acting, 3-hour-lengths

Want kisses/love scenes in the rain? Spiderman ain’t got nothing on Bollywood, friends. Want ridiculously romantic scenes set in beautiful locations ala the 2005 Pride and Prejudice walk across the moor (okay, so it was a field. you get my point) in the end? Bollywood’s got it.

Bollywood is like Titanic – gorgeous and epic and generally high-concept, with sweeping swets, iconic music and beautiful leads who often have intense chemistry. It can also, in its turn, be heartbreakingly tragic, brilliant, gritty societal commentary, and the fluffiest of fluffy romantic comedies. In general, however, the Bollywood trademark is the tragicomic high-budget romance.

Films to start with:

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge – click on the title for my review, but suffice to say that DDLJ is not just one of the best Bollywood movies I’ve ever seen, but in the top 50 movies I’ve ever seen. A smash hit to end all smash hits in India, it had the longest-running theater run(something ridiculous like 10 years I believe) of any Indian film ever. In many ways it’s the Indian Titanic, only much, much funnier and somewhat less cliched. It’s also one of the films most often recommended to Bollywood newbies, and one of their most famous films in general.

Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham – Bollywood’s most expensive film ever as of 2001 and the first to open at #3 at the British box office, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is an excellent blend of family saga and intimate romance, and stars three generations of Bollywood’s best and/or most famous actors. Not quite a tragedy and not quite a comedy, it’s just a good, entertaining film. (and yes, um, if the actors look similar to the ones in DDLJ, it’s because they are the same)

Veer-Zaara – If you don’t want to start with the romantic comedy of DDLJ or the tragicomic romance/family tale of KKKG, then this bittersweet epic might be right up your alley. I have no hesitation in calling Veer-Zaara brilliant – if anyone should ever challenge the idea that Bollywood films can be high cinema, Veer-Zaara is the answer to that. With a star-studded cast including Shahrukh Khan, Kajol, and Rani Mukerjee(the latter of whom at least gave the performance of her career), this high budget, visually stunning epic has shades of both The English Patient and Pride and Prejudice, and is compelling from start to finish.

Actors/Actresses:

5 actors to know: Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Saif ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor

5 actresses to know: Kajol, Rani Mukerjee, Preity Zinta, Kareena Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai

Terminology:

jodi- chemistry or pairing, basically refers to an onscreen couple

masala -a type of film/cinema which mixes different

Finally, see this much more extensive Introduction to Bollywood for more in-depth information

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Art Brut is an English and German indie rock band which I discovered via a side project of one of their members, Eddie Argos, who formed a band with Dyan Valdés from The Blood Arm called Everybody Was In The French Resistance…NOW. He and Valdes just put out an album called Fixin’ the Charts (Volume 1), which is apparently a collection of responses to particular pop songs, and from the moment I heard “G.I.R.L.F.R.I.E.N (You Know I’ve Got A)”, a single from it, I was hooked with a capital H.”“G.I.R.L.F.R.I.E.N (You Know I’ve Got A)” is a response to, you guessed it, Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”.

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Download

Here is their insanely cool album cover-

I haven’t listened to the rest of the album as yet, but you can check out the Stereogum Fixin’ the Charts premiere article and a (negative) review from LineofBestFit (like I said, I haven’t listened to the album yet, but I’m interested to see if I agree with his criticisms), and you can also can buy it from Amazon or Itunes.  The Amazon description goes as such:  “2010 debut from the British outfit featuring Eddie Argos from Art Brut and Dyan Valdes from The Blood Arm. Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now are correcting the mistakes of Pop songs past. So far, they have defended the belittled blue-collar worker from Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger,’ told Gerry And The Pacemakers that, in fact, it is okay to walk alone, dumped the manipulative Martha Reeves on behalf of poor Jimmy Mack and have taken the misguided instructions of a 17th century ballad to its logical conclusion. They are ‘fixing the charts’!”

This led me in turn to check out Art Brut itself, and while I think overall I prefer Everybody Was In The French Resistance…NOW(and yes, every one of those words should be capitalized, and yes, that last “now” should be in caps, before you ask), Art Brut itself is also quite interesting. Their debut album, Bang Bang Rock & Roll, was released on 30 May 2005, with its follow up, It’s a Bit Complicated, released on 25 June 2007.  Their name comes from a kind of outsider art, “art brut”, defined by French painter Jean Dubuffet’s as art by prisoners, loners, the mentally ill, and other marginalized people, and made without thought to imitation or presentation.

I hate their music videos but it can’t be helped so here goes-

Art Brut on Myspace

Official Website

Review: (most of which can also be applied to Everybody Was In The French Resistance…NOW) The good first – they’re funky and funny, aggressively cheeky and offbeat, a bit in-your-face and always tongue-in-cheek. What they have essentially done is taken an original concept(I’ve never quite heard their brand of screamo-tinged angst, conversational-rock-not-quite-rap-rhythms, and sarcastic societal commentary before) and having found what they with some reason consider to be a good thing, run with it quite consistently.  The bad – I would categorize the band overall as a an excellent mix-seasoner(ie one or two Art Brut tracks per playlist) rather than a consistently pleasing artistic effort, because once the novelty wears off their songs all sound pretty much the same. There’s only so much clever-but-angry almost-screamo I can take at one time, and while I am very much a lyrics-focused person, when I’m forced to fall back on lyrics alone to differentiate between songs which all have essentially the same rhythm and beat, I begin to think that perhaps the songs are too intensely lyrics-driven. Despite my appreciation of their musical playfulness and innovation, it feels as if Art Brut got lazy once they’d invented their own particular musical style, applied it haphazardly and without restraint to all their songs, and then settled down to write clever lyrics (hint: the “without thought to presentation” aspect of art brut only works if you’re making music for purely self-indulgent purposes). The result is that more often than not the lyrics get lost in the dominant choruses. Also, Art Brut faces the danger of any band with anger as a part of its repertoire – that the line between angry and whiny is very, very, very thin. It has been the undoing of many a more brilliant group than this one. If they can learn to tone down and focus their admittedly exciting brand of energetic sarcasm, they could become something great (or at least good).

Having said all that, Art Brut is delightfully offbeat group and I will certainly keep an eagle eye on them in future (they remind me, inexplicably, of Flight of the Conchords, a group whose brand of cheery-instead-of-angry societal mockery and constantly-morphing playfulness Art Brut could do well to take a page from).

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Quite Interesting, better known as QI, is a perenially popular Brit comedy show hosted by the amazing Stephen Fry, whom I’m most familiar with as quirky Dr. Gordon on Bones but whom some of you may recognize as the old guy who dies in V for Vendetta(apparently he also used to do a comedy act with Hugh Laurie).

I’m not a huge fan of the show – the humour is just a little bit too British for me to really “get it”- but it can be quite funny, even for me, as in this clip-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13VEonU3hWU

and if you want to check out more there are lots of clips on Youtube

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