I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE SHINS-Wincing the Night Away (2007).

The best example of a crassly commercial attempt to sell music comes in the movie High Fidelity when John Cusack states “I will now sell 3 copies of the Beta Band’s 3EPs.” Because the tone is right, and he’s in a store, and he’s obsessed about music, it all works. And, because the song is great, you really want him to sell those records. Now, I’ve no idea A) if the Beta Band paid to have this done or B) if Cusack or someone else just really likes the Beta Band or C) if the movie had any impact on sales, but it’s still a great moment in movie/music synchrony. In Garden State, the movie, Natalie Portman says The Shins will change your life. This, to me, is rather more crass than the blatant sales pitch in High Fidelity, and maybe because I’m not sure that a song can change one’s life anymore (although perhaps in the context of the movie, with the characters hanging by a tenuous thread) a song can make all the difference.

This all goes a long way towards saying that even though the Shins benefited tremendously from the exposure (and “Caring is Creepy” is a great song!) it must be hard to live up to that billing. And so we now get to Wincing the Night Away. I know it did well sales-wise when it first came out, but I have no idea what has happened since. Regardless, this album has tapped into some kind of superior frequency that just exudes pleasantness. Every time I put this album on, and I do a lot, I find myself simply happy. And then when I take the record off, I can barely remember any of the songs. But when I put it back on, I know each melody as it’s about to happen. I try to sing along but I know almost none of the words (this I realized is because of their supremely irritating liner notes/song lyrics that stretch across several pages per song. Boo!). And yet, I still wind up humming along and being singularly happy. I think Grandaddy somehow taps into a similar frequency, where I just feel happy while listening to them. So good for them. And good for me.

[READ: May 2007] First in Space.

Being the faithful Oni Press reader that I am, I immediately jumped at this charming cover (because, yes, I always judge by the cover), about HAM, the first chimpanzee that NASA sent into space. It’s a pretty thrilling story full of intrigue with a rather sad ending (no, not the death of the chimp). The style is very clean, and welcoming with nice delineation between the several main chimp characters. It will make you long for the heyday of the space race.

The story is based in fact, and as such, there’s not a lot to be said about the story; however, there is a lot of emotion packed into this fairly short work.