Artist Spotlight: Gills and Wings

Richmond pop-rockers Gills and Wings are all about surprises. While their band name suggests an airy, twee-pop sound, it’s a misnomer: their music is dynamically rich and densely orchestrated, a throwback to a time when Queen ruled arena rock. Not content to simply rehash the songs of Freddie Mercury and Brian May, however, Gills and Wings add to their sound with the progressive electronic streak of Muse and the symphonic sensibility of Jon Brion. Playing on Saturday at DC9, they had no trouble painting the small venue with a major key palette of sounds.

The quintet augments standard rock instrumentation with Korgs and a drum machine, allowing the band to play with melody outside the range of your run-of-the-mill indie band. It also allows them to faithfully recreate the arrangements of their self-titled EP. Guitarist Alex McCallum manipulates his ax into making sounds that are more string quartet than Fender Jaguar (thanks to the trusty eBow, an electronic take on what Jimmy Page tried with the real thing). Santiago de la Fuente's harmonies complement the impressive vocal range of lead singer Danny Reyes, whose powerful singing voice is unrivaled in modern rock music.

The setlist covered their EP, along with a few new songs. Contrasts keep the listeners guessing, as sing-song lyrics over arpeggiated chords turn into full-throated cries, backed by chugging riffage and the pounding drumming of Andrew Hackett. As their songs take dramatic turns, the dynamic ebb and flow lends an operatic feel to the whole performance. Closing the set was standout track “Rebirth of a Nation,” a satirical look at the American Dream, with a chorus that calls for fists-in-the-air rocking out.

Modern pop-rock, or anything that could crossover these days, is usually too paint-by-numbers to really excite anyone, but Gills and Wings have the talent to surprise audiences, and shouldn't be missed. Catch them tonight at Jammin Java in Vienna. You won't be disappointed.

The Drive-by Truckers and the Southern Rock Opera

Part of TGRI Goes Country Week at TGRIOnline.com.

I'll admit it. The idea of a country music week on TGRIOnline took the form that many ideas on this site do: entirely out of left field, counter-zeitgeist, yet totally necessary. We're all music snobs to some degree, and if you answer "what type of music do you listen to?" with "everything... but classical/rap/country," that's a deal-breaker. So, with my musical depth of country music knowledge in the shallow end of the pool, I decided to let a band that understands country music to do the heavy lifting.

The Drive-By Truckers released The Southern Rock Opera on September 12, 2001, when Ground Zero was still an open-wound on the American psyche. Ironically, the album's dramatic arc focuses on a plane crash that happened nearly 25 years earlier: the October 20, 1977 crash of Lynyrd Skynyrd's charter in Gillsburg , Mississippi. The album is a meditation on Southern history, culture, mythology and music: a meta concept album very much of the 2000s but heavily rooted in the generations preceding it.

The Truckers are based in Athens, Georgia, but most of its members hail from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a place where some truly classic soul, R&B, and country rock music was made. The Shoals even show up in "Sweet Home Alabama:" "Muscle Shoals has got The Swampers, and they've been known to pick a song or two." And since band leader Patterson Hood is the son of Swamper bassist David Hood, the Alabama-Skynyrd -Truckers connection is deeper than any concept record gimmick. Call them alt-country, call them southern-rock, but the Drive-by Truckers haven't just lived the Southern, country music experience - they're a part of it.

Like many great concept albums, The Southern Rock Opera tells a familiar story: the rise-and-fall of a band called Betamax Guillotine (a stand-in for Skynyrd), formed through Hood's life experiences. Act I is about a Southern kid growing up in Alabama, trying to reconcile his love of the South and Southern rock with the ghosts of the South. In Act II, the kid grows up and gets to be like the rock stars he idolized, with the same bad decisions and tragic consequences.

The music is a modern take on the Skynyrd tradition: a three-guitar attack that lays down crunchy riffs and soaring solos. Hood's vocals have the gravelly, whiskey-washed tone of classic country, not the pop-twang of anything on CMT . And when he's not singing, Hood's spoken words literally narrate the story. The lyrics hit the traditional cultural touchstones: hard living and hard drinking, joy riding with loose women. But the greater story is an honest look at class and poverty that informs the Southern experience, laid out as the "duality of the Southern Thing:" the pride and shame of a region (and country) still feeling the repercussions of centuries of racism. "The Southern Thing" is Southern Rock Opera's "Another Brick in the Wall," paying tribute to rock operas past, and can be summed up in one lyric: "To the fucking rich man all poor people look the same."

If Lynyrd Skynyrd / Betamax Guillotine are the heroes of the opera, the villain is George Wallace, Alabama's governor for life who will forever be known for his work for the segregationist cause. Wallace's eponymous song is a bluesy number, narrated by the Devil (a fellow Southerner, according to Hood), who welcomes him to Hell, not for his political record, but for his blind ambition and for being a pawn for most of his life. Hood knows that racism will forever be associated with the South because of men like Wallace; for this, he cannot be forgiven.

The album is filled with musical and lyrical references to the greats of the arena rock era, before it got silly and bloated and turned into cock rock and hair metal. "Ronnie and Neil" explores the controversy between Ronnie Van Zant and Neil Young (another look into the duality of the South). And while the narrator never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd , he saw .38 Special, AC/DC, Molly Hatchet, Ozzie Osbourne (with Randi Rhodes), and dropped acid at a Blue Oyster Cult show. A life both saved and doomed by rock and roll.

The final three songs of Act II, "Shut Up and Get On the Plane," "Greenville to Baton Rouge," and "Angels and Fuselage" find Betamax Guillotine following the path of their idols to the logical conclusion. When life is "dirty needles and cheap cocaine / some gal's old man with a gun," death is a cold bitch right around the corner, and there's no use fighting it. So as the engines start failing, our narrator can only think of "smoking by the gym door, practicing my rock-star attitude," and how for a Southern man, your dreams can only take you so far.

For Your Consideration: Big Fan

The word "fan" is short for "fanatic," a casual abbreviation that doesn't imply the extreme, uncritical zeal of a fanatic. Most people are fans of a musician, TV show, or sports team, but a rare few would cop to being fanatics.

Big Fan, the directorial debut of The Wrestler scribe Robert Siegel, is a character study of a fanatic. The titular character is Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswald), a NY Giants devotee who works as a parking garage attendant and lives in Staten Island with his mother. Siegel (who also wrote the film) painstakingly illustrates the sad life Paul has crafted for himself, from the shrine to his favorite player to the moisturizer on the nightstand. The minutiae and the cinema vérité style give us a well-formed character in a very specific place. The same can be said of Paul's friend (singular, Kevin Corrigan perfectly cast as Sal) and family, from his bus bench defense lawyer brother to his orange-tanned, fake-titted sister-in-law. Siegel's grip on Staten Island is as tight as it was on Elizabeth, NJ in The Wrestler, with a wintery, jaundiced palette.

Paul's life revolves around the Giants. Paul and Sal are too broke for tickets, so they tailgate and experience the game from the parking lot. The highlight of his day is calling sports talk radio and spitting out his rehearsed diatribes, even if his mother interrupts his late night calls, without fail.

A chance encounter with Quantrell Bishop, Giants linebacker and Paul's idol, should be the highlight of his pathetic life. Following Bishop's crew from Staten ("Maybe he's here to see the Wu-Tang," Paul ponders unironically) to a NYC strip club, Paul and Sal embark on a homoerotic Hardy Boys adventure. They try to get Bishop's attention, and when buying him a drink doesn't do the trick, Paul improvises. However, when the ruse of this chance encounter is revealed, Bishop flies off the handle and viciously beats Paul.

The beatdown doesn't affect his fanaticism. On waking from a three day coma, Paul's first questions are Giants related. Much to his dismay, Bishop has been suspended indefinitely. Without their playmaker, the foundering G-men can't keep it together - and neither can Paul. A case study in battered woman syndrome, Paul still wears his attacker's jersey, and even blames himself for the assault. He lies to the cops to protect Bishop, and refuses to sue, which is the first instinct of his scumbag brother, who instigates a lawsuit anyway. Things are spiraling out of control. The after-effects of the hematoma are not pretty; Siegel utilizes a disorienting, feedback-heavy soundtrack to great effect here.

Whats left of Paul's life is ruined when his on-air nemesis, "Philadelphia Phil," outs "Paul from Staten" as the victim of the attack. Paul finally takes things into his own hands, going undercover in an Eagles bar, armed and ready to confront Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport in another bit of choice casting: as a loud-mouthed d-bag). What does Paul have left to lose, as the clocks ticks and the "Giants suck" chants crescendo? Suffice to say, the film takes a bit of a film-school turn during the finale, but stays true to its characters.

Big Fan isn't Misery or The Fan; Paul isn't a psychopath, he's a man-child, very happy with a life others find unfulfilling. Maybe watching the film in a post-Jersey Shore world tainted the experience. I've definitely had my fill of douchebags from NY/NJ. But still, it probably says more about the quality of the "real" people of Jersey Shore than the caricatures that Siegel has crafted. As a character study, it presents a modern, less exploitative look into fanaticism. As a film, however, it displays some of the paint-by-numbers filmmaking expected from a first time director - the only thing that kept me from enjoying it more.

Three and a half out of five footballs.

For Your Consideration: Up in the Air

In returning to my roots and blogging about film, I've decided to start a "For Your Consideration" series about the best films (based on the consensus of critics, audiences, and clever marketers) of 2009, in advance of the Oscars. I really slacked on seeing films in the theater in '09, so I'm making do with the help of the Internet. Forget winter, it is (bootleg) screener season! Without further ado...

Up in the Air

Up in the Air is the first true film of the 2009 recession, a happy accident thanks to writer-director Jason Reitman's early successes. Rather than making this film in 2002 as originally intended, the director's work on Thank You For Smoking (2005) and Juno (2007) pushed this film to the backburner, causing the recession to dominate the tone of the film in a way that the economy wouldn't have during better times. With double digit unemployment, only the ever-charming George Clooney could make corporate downsizer / motivational speaker Ryan Bingham a sympathetic character.

Ryan is a creature of habit, constantly flying around the country and doing the work that managers and executives are too afraid to do. The precision of his routine is captured by Reitman's smooth cuts and repetitive sequences as Ryan packs, moves through security, and jets to the next destination. Even his predictably Spartan apartment is basically a hotel room. His obsession with brand loyalty and the elite perks of corporate dedication is an easy target for satire, as Ryan and fellow frequent-flyer Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) trade cards in a scene that recalls the business card exchange in American Psycho. Alex is a perfect foil, as she tells Ryan to think of her as himself "with a vagina." Farmiga is as cool and cocky as Clooney, and their no-strings-attached relationship gives new meaning to the term lay-over.

Ryan's world is thrown into chaos as his firm decides to go digital, bringing in Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, of the Twilight series) to make their business "glocal," corporate-speak combining global and local. They take the show on the road, as Ryan teaches Natalie how to lay-off someone face-to-face before the new system goes live. The majority of the film follows a familiar pattern, as old and young learn from each other; Ryan's romantic notions of his job versus the cold calculations of this twentysomething with a Myspace page. When Natalie's boyfriend breaks up with her via text, the irony isn't lost on Ryan. But Natalie also lands her punches, eviscerating his "cocoon of self-banishment" and total dedication to not connecting to possessions, people, or places.

Except for notable sequences with Zach Galifianakis and J.K. Simmons (among others crucial to the plot), the appearances of the newly-unemployed are of real people who had been laid off. The veracity is heart-breaking, with reactions that run the emotional gamut. When Natalie tests her system (with the target in the adjacent room), the real reaction is hers, not the grown man crying next door. Will she be able to cut it in this world, or is Ryan's cocoon a necessary evil?

As Ryan heads home to attend his sister's wedding, he brings along Alex, as the life lessons and questions about the future start to pile up. The wedding sequence moves from objective to subjective and feels more like a home video than a corporate instructional one, a tonal shift reflected in Ryan's character. The last act of the film finds Ryan finally making decisions, with a turning point at a seminar called GoalQuest (the name is too cute by half). Unfortunately, the twists are a little too by-the-numbers for me, which lessens the emotional punch as the film ends.

George Clooney is the only actor of our time who comes close to mirroring the range and talent of Cary Grant: confident and cool, but multi-dimensional. His casting, along with Vera Farmiga as Alex and Jason Bateman as middle-manager Craig Gregory (is he getting type-cast, or what?), works well, although I couldn't help but see someone like Kristen Bell in the Natalie role. Reitman continues to develop his directorial style, although the script's satire isn't as sharp as that of Thank You For Smoking. Still, this is a very entertaining film with cleverly crafted characters and, with the context of the recession, real resonance.

Four out of five frequent flyer miles.