M B V

I can't believe this album came out so far back into the year. I meant to write about it when it was first released but I guess I was just too damn busy listening to it. Honestly, I didn't have any doubt it'd be anything less than good, but I didn't know it'd be great; it sounds like a culmination of everything they've done so far, and then some on top. It needs writing about.

According to Shields and company, the songs have been developing since right after their now-classic album Loveless. Some of the material is brand new, some is an amalgam of two decades of work, and one thing that really surprised me is just how natural it all sounds. It's just MBV plain and simple, perhaps leaning towards traditional effects more than Loveless and certainly less rocking than Isn't Anything, but they've found a happy medium that has hopefully sated the appetite of their rabid fans after all this time. In places it appears to have settled into a quiet little groove, some of which is not unlike Stereolab's more subdued tracks; and then suddenly it'll kick you right in the mind with harsh wah-wah guitar or 3 minutes of a two second loop (which is actually better than it sounds on paper). Kevin's songs are more complex than those on Loveless, which was abundant with what he described as having "more in common with folk-blues music [...] just a verse and an instrumental passage, circular", as opposed to the non-linear song structures found on m b v, which often find themselves shifting in and out of different loops and patterns, sometimes getting into deep repetition towards the end of the track, which is far from tedious; these tracks tend to be the most involving and addictive of the bunch. Exemplifying this is Only Tomorrow, a fuzzed-out, pulsing song with brilliantly dreamy vocals and a coda half the length of the actual song.

As always, the guitar work is sublime. Nobody plays it like Kevin, and although he's not pushing the boat out any further than on Loveless (does he need to?), he shows variety within his niche on this album, perhaps even more than the two preceding ones. The opening track She Found Now features some of his most subtle and wonderful work yet, and as stated by those who went to their most recent tour shows, even live he gets every note and sound just right. And, as with the other two, there is an overall sound that connects the album. Isn't Anything was particularly raw sounding, not unusual for any band's earlier albums, but even then it had an ethereal feel, highlighted by Kevin and Bilinda's vocals. The music of Loveless sounded nothing like any music of this time or any other time. m b v is more rooted in the real world, similar to Isn't Anything in that sense, but is also largely more meditative than groggily dreamy. I've considered writing a track-by-track review for the album but I think that's selling the album short, because this is more than a great collection of songs, unified by a sound; it's an experience. The first time I heard the album I had to dedicate the correct time to it, because this isn't do-stuff-around-the-house music, it contains far too much detail for that.

You can't discuss this album, though, without at least giving an honourable mention to the track 'New You'. Similar in feel to Only Tomorrow, and having a similar coda, New You is apparently quite a fresh track in comparison to some of the others on the album, not even having a set name in their setlist until after the album's release. It's a track that has stuck with me, particularly in the vocals, which are among Bilinda's most endearing and beautiful ever. They layer up more and more as the song progresses, different little inflections each time. If this song is anything to go by as a 'new' My Bloody Valentine track, I'm certainly looking forward to the next album. Well, whenever that is...

The last few tracks on the album represent MBV's harsher and denser side; In Another Way has heavy drum-and-bass inspired drums and a very harsh guitar sound, and is one of the more memorable tracks in my mind, and Nothing Is seems like Kevin Shields is purposefully trying to divide his fans on whether the track is brilliant or bollocks; I'd say probably somewhere between the two. My initial reaction was along the lines of "What a waste of a track", but on closer inspection it's actually more detailed than it seems on the surface, with natural and organic volume swells and ever so slight tempo increases giving it some actual depth, and it has become an essential part of the album to me. And that's what the band has once again achieved: an album with no real chaff. Even the tracks that sound more like filler (Nothing Is, and Touched on Loveless) are representative of what they've achieved sound and texture-wise with each release, and thus have become indispensable to fans. Which brings me to one of MBV's true achievements (at least the MBV we know starting around the time Kevin Shields became their centre): not having a single bad track. This is undoubtedly due to Shields' borderline insane perfectionism, which is well documented around the Loveless era. If it's not up to his standards, we won't get to hear it. This is probably why the wait for m b v was so worth it: we get a true representation of one of our favourite bands both as they are now, and also, as ever, at their peak.

John Doesn't Die at the End

[Spoilers are included in this article. If you haven't read the book, then fucking do it.]

Is that you, David?

I decided to watch the movie adaptation of John Dies at the End last night, after finding it in a local supermarket, something I was pretty surprised at. The book is among my favourites, and as anyone in this situation I was kind of excited but also worried that it'd trash it and leave a bad taste afterwards. Luckily for me it wasn't the case, but it certainly wasn't perfect, either. One thing it did do however, was give me more of an insight into the way adaptations work. It essentially taught me what I already knew, put a lot of things into perspective; definitely a good thing. But overall it was unsatisfying.

The first thing I noticed, and for this I actually had to pause the film to explain where it had gone wrong to my long-suffering girlfriend (who is also a fan of the book, however); it hadn't followed the actual wording in the intro, and thus changed and actually ruined the opening point of the story. This segment is our sort-of-hero and surrogate Arthur Dent, David Wong, posing a question about whether an axe that has had both it's head and body replaced due to it breaking is still technically the same axe. It's a great little intro to the book, and later in the novel it becomes more apparent what he meant, in the context of other events that aren't included in the film adaptation. However, in the film a small change of wording changes everything. Originally, he had shot and killed a huge man, then beheaded him with the axe. Later, once both parts of the axe are replaced, the same (now zombified) man appears at his flat, head sewn back on, and shouts "that's the axe that beheaded me!", to which David asks, is he right? But in the film the man says "that's the axe that killed me!" – thus negating the paradox, because in no circumstance is that the axe that killed him. He was shot. And this kind of sets the bar for the film for me; although stylistically it's impressive, the little faults drag it down.

I wasn't too sure about their choice of actors. John in particular really just didn't click for me. It's like whoever did the casting really hadn't even bothered to read the descriptions of him we get in the novel, which presents him as being tall, and pretty scruffy, with "a head of curly long hair like a deflated afro". A perfect image, I thought, but in the film he's far more clean-cut and almost jock-ish. Again, these small details left me unfulfilled; his band is similarly unrecognisable, only having the one bassist and not having John as the guitarist. Even the song structure of 'Camel Holocaust' is different. I understand artistic license but when it changes something from quirky and hilarious to generic it's quite frustrating. The portrayal of David isn't altogether hopeless, though. Again, not spot on in my mind (I imagined him being more snarky, sarcastic deadpan than crazy, wide-eyed deadpan), but it did raise an interesting point in my head: the film is showing the events as they happened, as opposed to the book, where David is telling us the story, so is more liable to make himself seem less freaked out than what he would have been. My realisation of this made me far more accepting of the film overall, too. One other way I thought of it was not to think of it as just a movie adaptation of the book, but an in-universe film of David and John's story. Maybe they had to change some of the real names (Amy Larkin?) and trim some of the characters (perhaps Jennifer Lopez refused to allow them to use her name or likeness). And perhaps the film producers left out the Shadow Men because they didn't want to be 'disappeared' themselves. This adds an interesting layer to the film and certainly makes it easier to watch as a fan of the book.

The whole intro to the characters, the party in the field, and particularly the Fake Jamaican, I all thought was done pretty good. The Fake Jamaican was definitely fake, all right. He was even pretty creepy, I can imagine for a first-time watcher he might even produce the same dread-chills I got when I first read it. But once it all starts kicking off, it's like it has realised that it hasn't given itself enough time to get anywhere, and after the pretty good first half it starts to get a bit muddled up in itself, stuffing as many of the essential plot details in as possible without really developing them much, i.e. Robert North, Marconi, Shitload, riding with Shitload, Detective Appleton/Morgan Freeman, the Ghost Door, Shit Narnia etc. etc. Most of my favourite bits of humour were absent, although I did appreciate Morgan's eyes exploding. But when you are adapting a novel such as John Dies into a film, where do you start with it? It's a novel in two parts, so it's difficult to make it into more than one film because most film companies are only interested in trilogies or tonnes of sequels, rather than two-parters. The novel has enough plot for three films easily, but not enough plot markers. Vegas would have to be the ending of the first one, Shit Narnia the second. But I'd much rather have seen two films rather than one rushed one. Leaving out the entire "Missing Girl" segment is the real shame, because in my mind that is the pinnacle of the book; it's scary, it's tense, everything comes together and it's also fucking funny. You could make just that bit into a film, if it were possible without having to relay tonnes of backstory to the viewer. Instead, not even Vegas made it, and even the main characters are no longer the real heroes of the tale.

To me, it is inevitable that a movie made of John Dies would be sub-par; it's simply got too many brilliant details for it to flourish in the same way the book does. In fact, as I made the transition from watching too many films to reading more books I've realised it's all too easy to miss the point of a book when adapting it. Among the more modern books I've seen adapted, only a few, such as Fight Club, have brought the feel and attitude of the book to the big screen while still giving itself artistic license and doing well with it. But most of these films are big-budget affairs that can afford to put all the money it likes into it. John Dies retains an incredibly B-Movie-like feel, some of the effects being really quite impressive with others being suitably laughable. Although, I say suitably; in the book, although the situation is usually bizarre, the danger is real. In the film a lot of that is taken away by the FX being done in a similar way to Tim & Eric's Awesome Show, and once I made that connection in my mind there was no going back; I'd kind of ruined it for myself.

I could go on and on about the elements I thought were misrepresented, but in the end it's all personal opinion. I'm sure some of the fans of the book thought it was great, but I can't imagine any were overall completely satisfied, and I find it a shame that people reading it after seeing the film may have the film's imagery stuck in their head. But I have to give the film some credit, as the settings were basically exactly as I imagined. Undisclosed looked great, but it was nonetheless still sadly underused. But this is how it goes with films; you have a limited amount of time to work with and have to get the essential elements in, and have to keep the pace up to keep it interesting for first-timers to the story. But I can't help but think it'd have benefited from having David Wong/Jason Pargin more involved in it. He'd have no doubt written a far more cohesive screenplay for it, he'd have been able to include the most humorous parts without sacrificing the excitement. Overall, all it really did was provide entertainment; not a failure entirely, then. I haven't seen director Don Coscarelli's other work (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), but his unique B-Movie style has definitely gotten me interested and I'll be watching his other work soon no doubt. He clearly really enjoyed John Dies and really wanted to do it justice, and in all fairness, he probably did the best he could personally. But without Dave Wong himself involved, it felt like it was not aimed at the fans of the book, but instead just acting as a standalone project aimed at fans of silly and over-the-top movies, but I do consider it worthy enough to own the DVD. If you love the book and haven't seen the film yet, then watch it, and take it all with multiple pinches of salt. If you haven't read it or seen it yet, then get the book; absorb it, and let it absorb you, because it's one of the funniest and most original horror/comedies of the last few decades.