New (Leaked) Music: Primal Scream - Beautiful Future

Primal Scream confuse the hell out of me. Are they fuzzed-out Jesus & Mary Chain imitators, acid house innovators, boring old Rolling Stones worshippers, electro-punk agitators, or is it all just a big joke? Answer: yes. The question, really, is whether you like their breakthrough successes enough to forgive their sloppy, derivative missteps; in the interest of full disclosure, this reviewer totally does. Critical consensus hails both the funky Screamadelica and the aggressive XTRMNTR as era-defining masterpieces, but I'll even pull out 1997's Vanishing Point now and then, a half-baked tribute to a totally-baked film, filled with churning electro-grunge and eye-rolling stage whispers of "Soul on ice! Soul on ice!" It's fantastic. Like the Clash, even Primal Scream's mistakes are compelling; on Beautiful Future, they often retreat to retro-Stones pablum and skeezy lyrics, and it's still pretty great.

OK Politician's Anti-Gay Comic Book May Work Against Him

Via Queerty comes the story of Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart, who decided to utilize the innovative format of the comic book as a reelection campaign tool. The comic attempts to illustrate Rinehart's accomplishments including "veterans appreciation month" and "keeping the cross at the fairgrounds." But the pages getting the most attention focus on the commissioner's work against the agenda of "pedaphiles [sic], polygamists, and homosexuals." These pages are, for lack of a better word, awesome: it turns out not only do gays want to lure young boys out of the forest, we also do it while wearing togas. Click the "continues" button to enjoy the two pages in question or get the whole pdf file (it's worth it) at NewsOK.com here.

Watching the Watchmen Trailer A Little Too Closely

The actual movie's not due for another seven and a half months, but the trailer for Watchmen is out. (Watch it after the jump.) Which means I and other fans of the graphic-novel masterpiece that the movie's based on can get some answers to our nagging questions. Obvious questions like, Can a two-hour movie capture author Alan Moore's brilliantly constructed storyline and artist Dave Gibbons' impeccable yet pulpy atmospherics?

But beyond learning whether director Zack Snyder (300) has delivered a CGI-bloated mess, here's the practical if prurient question that's been lodged in my brain since adolescence, when talk of a Watchmen flick first surfaced: How will the movie portray Doctor Manhattan, the Smurf-blue, radioactive superman who likes to walk around with his, uh, nuclear facilities out in the open?

Top Five: Mopey Teen Playlist

After watching and reviewing American Teen this week, and listening to Party Ben's old, obscure cuts from the Cure, I got to thinking about how music enhanced many of my angry, sad, and mopey days as a teenager in the late '80s/early '90s.

At risk of completely dating/pigeonholing myself, here are a few choice cuts:

The Dark Knight: A Cartoonist's Take

Time was when comic-book fandom would keel over, twitching and gasping in excitement, when every decade or so a new movie based on a comic book hit the big screen. In my days as a younger, peppier geek, I too awaited each new comic-book movie with bated breath. Now, I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of offerings (not to mention burned by two decades of movies like Batman Forever, and both versions of The Fantastic Four).

Marvel alone seems determined to overwhelm theatergoers this year: The wildly successful Iron Man (and wildly less successful Incredible Hulk) will be followed over the next few years not just by more Iron and Spider types, but The Silver Surfer, Ant-Man (no, really), and an entire Avengers team-up.

Then there's rival house DC's Batman offering, The Dark Knight, opening this weekend. There's already talk of an Oscar nomination for Heath Ledger's performance; currently, the only actor to have won a posthumous Oscar is Peter Finch (for his iconic madman in Network).

Given the heavy media coverage of this summer's stylized films, maybe that's why the only comic-book adaptation that really fascinates me right now isn't a movie.

Yes, I can't stop thinking about the Spider-Man musical. Bound for Broadway and featuring music by Bono and the Edge, Spider-Man put out this casting call for its three leads:

Aboriginal Singer Tops Australian Independent Music Charts

An indigenous Australian singer has topped the Australian independent record charts with an album recorded mostly in his native Yungul language. The 37-year-old singer, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, has been blind since birth, but has already become an accomplished self-taught musician—he might be known to some world music fans as a sometime member of the Yothu Yindi band. But it's his debut solo album that's causing a sensation, mostly due to Yunupingu's voice, which the Sydney Morning Herald called one of "absolutely transcendental beauty." The singer is a bit of a recluse, since he apparently speaks little English, and Australia's ABC News calls him "very shy." But that didn't stop him from selling out the Sydney Opera House twice last weekend, and the UK Guardian says Elton John, Sting, and Björk are fans.

After the jump, check out "Wukun," a track from the new album that foregrounds the clear, shiver-inducing tones of Yunupingu's voice against a simple guitar melody that's almost like a lullaby.

New Music from Around the Blogs: Machines Don't Care, Kid Cudi, Santogold, Lykke Li

The hotly-anticipated full length from electro supergroup Machines Don't Care (comprised of Party Ben faves Sinden, Herve, Trevor Loveys, and more) just released their full-length effort this week; The Docking Station has a few tracks and a mini-mix. Try out "Spycatcher" if you miss the old rave days but love the new wobbly bassline sound—it's got both! (For fans of: Moby, Joey Beltram, glowsticks)

For edgy hip-hop with some depth, check out Cleveland's Kid Cudi, whose "Day N Nite" has a melancholy style that's a throwback to '80s tracks like Oran "Juice" Jones' "The Rain." Remember that one? "I saw you, and him...?" No? Oh well. Gorilla vs. Bear's got the mp3. (For fans of: Lil Wayne, Paul Wall, Cleveland)

After the jump: taking the Clash back to their reggae roots, and hipster head-explosion fun times!

The Emmys: No Wire, Lots of Mad Men, Buckets of Yawns

A quick scan of Google headlines for "Emmys" tells the story: "The Emmys Wimp Out," "The Ineptitude of Emmy Voters," "Did They Get Them Right?" Oh yeah, and the requisite "Emmys Go Mad for Mad Men!" Give that guy a Pulitzer. Sure, the detail-obsessive AMC show deserves its 16 nominations (including Best Drama), and you gotta love 30 Rock, whose 17 nods include Best Comedy (and seven for guest actors, is that cheating?). But in that category alone, you also have the increasingly-irrelevant Entourage, the past-its-prime Office, the suitable-for-torture Two and a Half Men, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which, with all due respect, I didn't even know was still on the air. Flight of the Conchords, Family Guy, Monk, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, South Park, Weeds?

IvyGate to Facebook Gen: Watch Out

IvyGate, the snickering blog that chronicles the goings-on of all things Ivy League, is keeping a steady eye on your potential gaffes. Don't take that in an entirely Big Brother-y way—they're only watching you if you're at all related to the Ivies (Because that's where they think America grooms all its leaders.)

Of course, IvyGate is only a fraction of the machine that allows raunchy nights of adolescent debauchery to live on in virtual eternity. Perhaps the real lesson to politicians currently in office is to keep a closer eye on their Generation Facebook kids and relatives.

Remember last year when Rudy Giuliani's estranged daughter was revealed as an Obama supporter?

Top Five: Obscure Cure

Want to feel old? Chew on this: the Cure got their first record deal 30 years ago this September. Where's my walker? Fortunately, band leader Robert Smith isn't showing his age, and in anticipation of the band's forthcoming (as yet untitled) 13th album, they're releasing a single every month this summer. The latest installment, "Sleep When I'm Dead" (below) is a rerecording of a rejected track from the 1985 Head on the Door sessions, and it has that era's quirky, jaunty feel, like a darker "Let's Go to Bed."

Back in the day, it seemed like the Cure could do no wrong: even B-sides and obscure album tracks were amazing. After the jump: five great Cure songs that never made it to the hit parade.

New Zach de la Rocha Sounds Like: Rage

I guess it's no big shocker that One Day As A Lion, a new project fronted by Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zach de la Rocha, sounds pretty much kinda-sorta exactly like Rage Against the Machine.

The first song, "Wild International," which was made available on MySpace this week, is alright, but it could easily be mistaken for a middle-of-the-set song performed by Rage at Lollapalooza in the early 90s.

About That New Yorker Cover...

If you were one of those who thought the Right couldn't possibly look at the New Yorker cover and see it as an accurate or even semi-accurate representation of the Obamas, I give you G. Gordon Liddy:

"I don't suppose you've, by any chance, have seen the cover of the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine, which is, you know, a huge thing. It's got Obama in his Muslim dress with a turban, and he's there with his wife. His wife has a "mad at the world" afro, circa 1968, she — she's got bandoliers and an assault weapon, and there in their fireplace is burning the American flag. The New Yorker finally got it right."

When the cover came out, I was largely dismissive of the controversy. America needs to get a sense of humor. But I'm changing my position. G. Gordon Liddy knows the cover is satirical, knows it is hyperbole, even knows it is intended to make fun of people like him. But that isn't going to stop him and those like him from using it as anti-Obama propaganda.

Do these people make a mockery of themselves? Of course. Do they vote? Absolutely.

New Documentary: American Teen

On the off chance that you haven't had your fill of this genre, in August you'll have the opportunity to see yet another set of jocks, popular girls, and band geeks prance around the screen in a new documentary called American Teen, directed by Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture).

Three MoJo staffers attended the San Francisco sneak preview on Monday. Read our discussion here.

Is Weeds Secretly Being Directed by Lars von Trier?

Danish director Lars von Trier is nothing if not a rabble-rouser. His best-known films, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville have inspired both critical praise and accusations of sadistic misogyny; in each, the female central character suffers brutally, as events seemingly conspire against her, agonizing twist after sickening injustice. After watching the latest episode of Showtime's Weeds, another half hour in which every possible thing goes wrong for our noble heroine, I wondered: is von Trier secretly manning the cameras?

Do GLAAD Network Ratings Matter?

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation just released its annual "Network Responsibility Index," an exhaustive look at television programming that counts the percentage of a network's shows that feature LGBT people or characters. Once again, ABC was the queer juggernaut, so to speak, with gay-inclusive fare like Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty adding up to a whopping 24 percent of the network's prime time. The CW made it to 21 percent on the strength (?) of America's Next Top Model, and below that, things take a turn for the pathetic. Queers show up on CBS 9 percent of the time, on 6 percent of NBC's shows, and just 4 percent of whatever Fox does. Cable did a little bit better, as an FX viewer runs the risk of spotting a homophile 45 percent of the time, with HBO and Showtime just behind. A&E, Spike, TBS, TNT, USA all received grades of "Failing." Bravo doesn't seem to have been ranked, I'm assuming because it would have completely thrown off the grading curve: I'm sorry all other netverks, you are AOUUT, auf Wiedersehen.

New Radiohead Video Made Without Cameras

Unless you count super-geeky spinning laser detection systems as cameras. On the haunting "House of Cards" from last year's In Rainbows, Thom Yorke seemed to exhort a lover to let her old life dissolve and "get swept under" with him; exploring this theme of dissolution by pointing lasers at a suburban party and using computers to reconstruct the reflected data into a surreal, pointillist 3-D image of the scene may seem a bit on the elaborate side, but remember, this is Radiohead we're talking about. The end result is pretty interesting, although in the end it's the flickering image of Yorke himself that seems most compelling -- that shot of electrical towers collapsing is a little too reminiscent of the terrible Stephen King movie The Langoliers.

[Update: Aspiring video directors, take note. The band will partner with Google to allow fans to make "remixes" of the video footage; there is a specific YouTube page dedicated to the new versions as well as an iGoogle gadget that lets you stream the videos on your web site. Fun.]

Via the UK Guardian comes a "making-of" video that's actually slightly more interesting than the video iteslf. Watch that after the jump.

Hey Buffy Fans: Joss Whedon Back with Online Special

It turns out some people put their down time during the recent writers' strike to good use: Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon got around the TV- or film-writing prohibition by penning a musical for the intertubes. Because that's what you do, right? The result is "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," a 75-minute superhero spoof starring Neil Patrick Harris (!) as a maniacal supervillain, or at least someone who wishes he was a maniacal supervillain. The miniseries was produced on the cheap, using affordable (and sometimes real) locations, and Whedon fans will be pleased to know it features some old Buffy, Angel, Serenity and Firefly cast and crew. You'll be able to watch it for free at the Dr. Horrible web site, but the schedule is a little tricky: Act One debuts tomorrow (Tuesday, 7/15), Act Two starts Thursday, July 17th, and Act Three will be posted Saturday, July 19th. The videos will stay up on the site for free viewing through Sunday, July 20th, at which time Whedon promises they will "vanish into the night like a phantom." Or, maybe they'll be available on DVD or something.

[Update: Well, it turns out "Dr. Horrible" is pretty terrible at javascript too, or something, since there have been a ton of problems since the first episode went live at midnight. International viewers can't seem to use the site's Hulu player, the promised iTunes download apparently doesn't work, and overwhelming traffic crashed the main website, drhorrible.com, this morning. As of 3:30pm Pacific time, the site is still down. Boy, remember when you'd turn on this box across from your couch and shows would just be there? Those were the days...]

Holy Fist Bumps: New Yorker Obama Cover Features Turban, Afro, Flag Burning, bin Laden, Complete Lack of Concern for Humanity

Weren't we just having a discussion here on the Riff about the thin line satire walks, between being the opposite of a thing and an endorsement of a thing? Well, brace yourselves, because the New Yorker has jumped right into the middle of that argument with a cover that made my jaw actually drop. The July 21st issue features a be-turbaned Barack and an afroed, gun-toting Michelle Obama, celebrating their arrival in the White House with a good old terrorist fist-bump. They've also apparently done a little redecorating, tacking up a portrait of Osama bin Laden and tossing an American flag into the fireplace for good measure. The illustration, called "The Politics of Fear," is described in a New Yorker press release as satirizing the "scare tactics and misinformation in the presidential election"; as the Huffington Post put it: "all that's missing is a token sprig of arugula."

After the jump: the full cover, the campaigns' responses, and when did the New Yorker become America's chaos-inducing art terrorist psycho?

New Music: Ratatat – LP3

Maybe you've been watching TV lately and you've seen the Rhapsody commercial where there are a bunch of balloons floating around that magically make logos and stuff, and there's an intriguing instrumental track underneath it, funky like '70s soul, but quirky like '00s electro, and there's also a tiger roar in it, nonsensically? Well, that's "Wildcat" by New York duo Ratatat, and it's a pretty great little tune from their 2006 album Classics. (See completely ridiculous fan-made video below). That track hinted at a new path for American electronic music, experimental but organic, an intriguing answer to European austerity. On their just released new album, the unfortunately-titled LP3, they seem to be on hold, turning again to the same disco-rock beats for an album that's sometimes intriguing but often fades into the background.

Slang White People Like, Part 2: The Bro-ening

Debra seems to be taking a lot of guff from commenters over her piece on the possibly-ironic use of "holler" in an e-mail from a random publishing house, but I have to say I'm 100 percent behind her.

Seriously, who says "holler" unless they're singing along with Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On?" Even then you'd better be pretty drunk.

Esquire GQ (like I can tell those magazines apart) recently tried to pin down the best terms guys can call other guys, and since the ironic use of out-of-date buddy terms is a topic I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of, cap'n, I found their shakedown fascinating. It focuses on the current overuse of the term "bro" amongst, well, those doofy white guys with baseball caps and Linkin Park CDs who wish they were your bro but are not your bro.

Apparently first noted in a 1968 edition of Current Slang, the word has come a long way from its original expression of black unity, and now GQ calls "bro" the "most grating, embarrassing word a guy can use":