having gotten around to seeing all the significant films of 2007 i wanted to go back and redo my top 10 movies list. so here we are. Justin’s new and improved best films of the year.

1. No Country For Old Men- bleak as fuck. unrelenting. violent. best movie villian since Darth Vader. the Cohen’s are at the top of their game. this better win best picture.

2. Control- the best musical biopic ever. looks amazing. wonderfully acted. emotional. reminded me why Joy Division is one of my favorite bands of all time.

3. There Will Be Blood- Daniel Day Lewis gives the best acting performance of the year. it seems obvious that he’ll be walking away with the best actor Oscar. Paul Dano is great as the creepy preacher. and PT Anderson makes Oil and Religion at the turn of the century into some interesting ass shit to watch on film.

4. The Darjeeling Limited- Wes Anderson has been making the same movie over and over again. he’s basically become the new Woody Allen. great soundtrack. Adrian Brody is the man. plus Natalie Portman’s ass. what’s not to love?

5. Zodiac- i love serial killer movies when they are done well and despite the fact that you KNOW they aren’t gonna catch the killer this still ended up being the best suspense movie of the year.  too bad it came out back at the beginning of the summer and got completely forgotten during awards season.

6. Knocked Up/Superbad- i hate to lump these together, but they really are kindred spirits…and not just because it was the year of Jud. these movies are both basically about the same thing. growing up fucking sucks, but it sure as shit can be made funny with enough dick and fart jokes.

7. Juno- i’ll go ahead and call it the worlds first twee pop movie. it was so fucking precious that Kindercore shoulda put out the goddamn soundtrack. Dan and Ryan, you guys fucked up. i thought it was cute and funny and not at all worthy of all these Oscar nominations it’s getting. we’ll call it the Little Miss Sunshine effect. i fully expect a cute little feel good indie to get nominated the next few years until the genre is tired and old. it’s actually kind of funny to me that the only movie nominated for best picture this year that isn’t bleak as hell is the little indie movie. i guess the times are a changin’.

8. Grindhouse- the most fun i had at a movie all year. the fact that it bombed proves how fucking stupid everyone has gotten in America. the fact that these were broken up into two seperate movies for DVD and without the fake trailers is a crime against movie fans.

9.  Hotfuzz- lampoons and also pays homage to one of the greatest genre’s of all time, the buddycop movie and ends up being a pretty awesome movie all the same.

10. 30 Days of Night- best vampire movie since Lost Boys. gory as fuck. totally ruled.

honorable mentions- Wristcutters: A Love Story, 3:10 to Yuma, Eagle vs Shark, and Sunshine (best Sci-Fi movie of the year)

Posted by justin on 31 Jan 2008 at 03:26 pm

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is right HERE. Thanks Mat!

Posted by ryan on 31 Jan 2008 at 01:19 pm

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Well Edwards is out of the running and some would say just in time (*ahem* Travis Fox). As much as I love Edwards and everything he stood for, I feel like he has served a great purpose and now it is time to let Obama take down Hillary so we can get down to the general election! Edwards helped put poverty and social issues at the forefront of the ‘08 campaign and will hopefully be rewarded with a running mate or Attorney General spot on the Obama ticket.

So, let’s grab a moment of silence for the blue collar American dream and then… as the ever lovin’ blue eyed Thing would say: “It’s Clobberin’ Time!!”

Posted by ryan on 30 Jan 2008 at 02:01 pm

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Ruby Isle has decided to take a break from the ongoing elbo.ws cover project so we can finally get down to business on our own record. We have been neglecting it because the covers have been so much fun and if we don’t get back to it, it may never get finished.

The 8 tracks we recorded are compiled below for your enjoyment. We really learned a lot from this project and it has completely transformed our sound. So much so, that we have actually gone back into the catalog and turned all of our previous recording on their heads. Here is what Mark had to say about what we are taking away from this experience:

“I’ve never been one of those people who believes the Internet is destroying the music business, it’s just taking focus away from the profit margins. Ruby Isle are a band who live in different cities. Whereas to some bands the essential thing is there amps, guitars, or there van, the Internet is imperative to our existence. We are a culture of relevance. I think, sometimes, musicians become wrapped up too much in history, and not enough in the now. When Ruby Isle first covered Hello Blue Roses, we were aware that we were covering a song before the album had even been released yet, but I don’t think we were really cognizant it’s “relevance”. We covered “Shadow Falls”, to get our minds off the record we thought we were making. Upon listening to it, I think it dawned on the whole band how we hadn’t realized our own sound yet. In the end, the irony of the whole project is that by covering other artists we were able to see more clearly who we are as a band. Songs need to be turned on there head, shaken, and emptied out to see how they fit or don’t fit into the culture. It’s hard to do that with your own material. I look at each one of the songs and artists we’ve covered as a tribute, and I’m grateful to all the musicians of the world who are fighting the good fight out there.

Some people say that it’s all been done before. I believe that all art is one big soup of perpetuated ideas. As Dan mentioned in a previous post - we made a reference to ANOTHER song within each of the covers, some are obvious, some are less. These song-hints were decidedly opposed to the tunes we were covering, and yet elemental in seeing both songs in a whole new way. Here they are (download):

1. Shadow Falls - Hey Ya (Outkast)
2. Aly Walk With Me - Gimme More (Britney Spears)
3. Tyrant - Master of Puppets (Metallica)
4. Foam Hands - Don’t Stop Believing (Journey)
5. Gila - Hollaback Girl (Gwen Stefani)
6. Baltimore/Paper Planes - Expressway to Your Skull (Sonic Youth)
7. Sax Rhomer #1 - With or Without You (U2)/No One (Alicia Keys)
8. Cherry Tulips - Road to Nowhere (Talking Heads)

At the core of it, I keep returning to the same word, relevance. I read an interview where Billy Gibbons said, “I’m more of a historian than I am a musician.”  And, while that quote has always inspired my own music, I’ve also realized what a crutch the music history can become. We tend to mythologize music history in an unhealthy way. The present is the form of all life, and while I’d have no qualms whiling away eternity in Lennon/McCartney-ville, I must always ascertain what’s happening in the music world around me. I recommend anyone who writes music to go out and cover a #1 song they’ve never heard before, and I guarantee you’ll learn something. It is our duty to the future, to make history now. I read it in a supermarket checkout line once, “rolling around in the muck of the past is not the best way of staying clean”"

Mark is certainly analytical, isn’t he? I will just close by saying that this was super fun and you can definitely expect more of these covers in the future whether we jump to billboard, the hype machine, or stay at home in the indie world of elbo.ws has yet to be seen, but when we get finished with our own songs we will definitely dive back into the covers.

Here is the lot of them, have fun and as always, please let us know what you think!

1. Shadow Falls - Hello, Blue Roses
2. Aly Walk With Me - Raveonettes
3. Tyrant - Black Mountain
4. Foam Hands - Destroyer
5. Gila - Beach House
6. Baltimore/Paper Planes - Stephen Malkmus/MIA
7. Sax Rhomer #1 - Mountain Goats
8. Cherry Tulips - Headlights

Posted by dan on 28 Jan 2008 at 12:43 pm

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Read it all HERE.

Posted by ryan on 24 Jan 2008 at 12:11 pm

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Posted by justin on 24 Jan 2008 at 10:07 am

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Come see us for FREE:

Posted by ryan on 22 Jan 2008 at 04:51 pm

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As luck would have it, we were in the middle of remixing Headlights’ “Put us Back Together Right” for their upcoming remix album and their track “Cherry Tulips” went to #1 on elbo.ws. Needless to say it has been quite a Headlights week for us. We were really happy to see them at number one because we are actually pretty good friends and it is great to get to cover one of our friend’s songs! Here is what Mark had to say about the track:

“We all spend a lot of time trying to figure out what songs are about.  My friend, Lisa, got all bent up cause tulips don’t grow on trees.  I said “The singer is using her artistic license.  She is so in love with this person that she wants to all the cherry trees to blossom fat red tulips.”  This woman, Erin Fein, is pining all night for Cherry Tulips.  But, there are no such things - she is overcome with a reckless abandon, and there is an earth shattering hurricane of
cuteness.  What will she do?  She wants the whole sea! And if she does in fact get it, where will the cherry dolphins swim? 

Structurally, the tune follows a straight forward major chord progression with a minor 6 thrown in for good measure.  The middle of the tune is host to a turnaround at the 4th and 5th then back to the refrain.  Combine that with the 108bpm March in double time and its aural heroine time.  I flirted for a while with dropping this cover into the relative minor, as an example of how chords account for 50% of the narrative in a lyric, but I was feeling bittersweet about our covers project coming due, so I scrapped it.  On a production level, this tune comes closest to the Beach House song we covered earlier in the project, real gooey and wet, all verbed out and what not.   Our version is sped up, sort of, to 120.  The feel of the song totally changed when the drums were cut to half time - that’s probably the most dramatic change in the song.  Oh, and the original doesn’t have a telephone solo in it either!  Thank you, Headlights, for writing such a lovely song for us to cover. Maybe I’ll write a song called Cherry Dolphins. hmmm.”

As I said, I was just putting the finishing touches on the remix as this one went number one so it was very easy for me to transition over to the new track. I actually didn’t listen to the original before I started working on the cover. I figured remixing them would give me enough of the sound I needed to create the backdrop for the cover. Mark sent me guitar and vocals and I built a simple little pop song around them. This is probably the most straightforward of all of our covers and is actually probably the most “kindercore” song ruby isle has ever recorded. Mark’s little addition of “Road to Nowhere” was  a pleasant suprise to me as Mark and I grew up listening to Talking Heads records together. It was really fun to throw in that little treat. Actually, ever cover in this series actually references another song aside from the cover we are doing. If you are bored it could be a fun little game to go back and listen to all of them and find the secrets…

 Here is this week’s: Ruby Isle - Cherry Tulips (headlights cover).mp3

Posted by dan on 21 Jan 2008 at 06:11 pm

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The search for Bobby Fischer has ended friends…and looks like he’s dead. i know nothing about chess, but i really liked that movie when it came out. Bobby Fischer beat the Russians, so that means he goes up there with Rocky and the Patrick Swayze lead Wolverines in the pantheon of great Americans. Fischer died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday of kidney failure. pour a 40 out for your brother while you are drinking and celebrating your freedom tonight fool.

Posted by justin on 18 Jan 2008 at 02:37 pm

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Read it all HERE.

Posted by ryan on 18 Jan 2008 at 01:59 pm

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