review

Judgment Call: Slow Club’s Yeah, So

in: under scrutiny

The U.K.'s Slow Club

More Folky Twee Pop, With a Twist
Slow Club manages indie pop that feels both familiar and fresh

The folky twee pop of the U.K.’s Slow Club is not revolutionary or even novel. The band, hailing from Sheffield, England, is a boy-girl indie pop duo whose debut album, “Yeah, So,” is a charming compilation of love songs. Yeah, so? Though the band’s sound nearly replicates the delicacy of its contemporaries, the album is interesting in its penchant for sheer delight and momentary surprises. With only a few slight missteps, “Yeah, So,” is a pleasantly cutesy soundtrack to warm summertime romance, imbued with the occasional wisdom of viewing youth – and all romantic foibles – in hindsight.

Slow Club formed in 2006 and released “Yeah, So” in Europe in July 2009, though the album didn’t officially debut in North America until late March. The band’s folk instrumentation is typical of indie pop but with a twist – the music, silly, fun, sharp and unpolished, incorporates unusual musical instruments into the equation, from water-filled glass bottles to spoons and even the occasional wooden chair. It’s with this small defiance of the norm that Slow Club really hits their stride. The instrumentality becomes a brutish force, a whirlwind of percussion and faster tempos engaging in an excitable playfulness which truly allows Slow Club to thrive in an over-saturated genre.

In its most frenetic, percussive moments, “Yeah, So” plays like a thrash pop album, not an ode to love stories. Charles Watson (vocals, guitar) and Rebecca Taylor (vocals, guitar, percussion), the duo behind Slow Club, produce Beach Boy-inspired delicacies, but when the tempo slows, the tracks meander to dwindling musical theater. “Our Most Brilliant Friends,” the loping and lengthy closing track, features Taylor’s soft and delicate vocals but is, in its first half, a plaintive serenade, sappy and overwrought. Only when, as the song closes, Watson and Taylor employ their usual strangeness (particularly in lyricism, with lines such as “And I definitely want to be a rapper/But I’m just a northern girl from where nothing really happens/And the bones inside my shins are crumbling (x5)/ It’s from all the crunking I’ve been doing”) does the song become original and divergent from the band’s peers.

While these comparisons seem inevitable, the continued change in tempo and vocal timbre makes “Yeah, So” truly interesting. With each track comes another comparison to be made. The first track, “When I Go,” could easily be confused for a “Let’s Get Out of this Country”-era Camera Obscura, while track four, “It Doesn’t Have to be Beautiful,” shares the jangly, loose-lipped qualities of 1970s Buzzcocks. “Apples and Pairs,” one of the album’s final tracks, could readily be mistaken for a Sondre Lerche B-side, but even these comparisons, these similarities to other artists, emphasize the uniqueness of Slow Club. Watson’s voice takes on one sound after another, channeling first the jaunty sweetness of She & Him’s M. Ward and then the gruffness of Chicago’s Horse in the Sea. Each song is independently mixtape-worthy, with the childish chorus of “Our Most Brilliant Friends” effortlessly juxtaposed beside any number of other sentimental pop love songs.

Taylor and Watson often sing in unison, and their voices melding together make for the most rockabilly sing-a-longs, set to the raucous percussion of the majority of tracks on “Yeah, So.”  More than anything, “Yeah, So” and the persona of Slow Club is adorable. This quality, the ability of the band to sound simultaneously wise and youthfully earnest, is the album’s biggest charm. The album progresses from cheery optimism to a reverent kind of resignation, from the opening plea to make a pact to spend their lives together on “When I Go” to the realization that a partner “was hard to please,” in the album finale, but it remains always pleasing. The familiarity of these sentiments, and of Slow Club, make “Yeah, So” feel cozy and well-worn, but the pop ditties are optimistic and catchy enough to make any similarities to other acts negligible. Slow Club achieves romanticism and vulnerability without being melodramatic, and the percussive rowdiness makes the album just fun enough to forget any purported lack of innovation.

Judgment Call: Hot Tub Time Machine

in: under scrutiny

Hot Tub Time Machine
When it comes to this murky man-com, skip the time travel

“Hot Tub Time Machine” is not a thinking man’s movie, but, to be fair, to anticipate any more of it would be hopelessly expectational.

The story follows four losers – three in their 40s and one in his early 20s – seeking excitement and, for the first three, a return to lost youth.

Recently-dumped insurance salesman Adam reunites with old pals Lou and Nick after Lou lands in the hospital from a Mötley Crüe-induced carbon monoxide poisoning. The men, each feeling unfulfilled, plan a road trip to their former haunt, a ski resort, dragging along Adam’s Second Life-obsessed nephew Jacob.

The men find the resort, the site of so many of their fondest memories and consorts, is now no more than a hole in the wall. The group is constantly reminded of what the resort used to mean to them, from a vulgar carving in the wood furniture to the now-one-armed bellhop, portrayed with gusto by the ever-creepy Crispin Glover. The decrepit lodge provides little opportunity for the wild fun they remember, so the men opt instead for a whirlwind night in the hot tub. When they awake from their drunken stupor, the men find themselves in 1986. Their vehicle of time travel is, of course, the titular hot tub, and the change in decades is indicated by a poor quality trip-fest of bright colors and rapid camera movements.

The transformation is all ‘80s clichés, from neon tracksuits to Aquanet hair, complemented by a lame Michael Jackson skin color gag. In 1986, the three older men have scores to settle: For Adam, it’s the girl who got away (and impaled him in the process); for Lou, it’s the fight no one supported him in; and for Nick, it’s a burgeoning musical career abandoned for an antagonistic wife. All wish to make amends but worry of the sci-fi phenomenon known as “the butterfly effect” (“a great movie,” Lou replies, referring to the 2004 Ashton Kutcher flop).

The result is a bawdy tale of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (if introducing the Black Eyed Peas to 1986 can really be considered “rock ‘n’ roll”) which fails to amuse. The dialogue is an endless barrage of ‘80s cultural references, and the rest of the pithy conversation is inundated with the ethos of masculinity and, worse, misogyny.

Poor John Cusack seems nostalgic for his 80s celebrity, and his Lloyd Dobler-esque romanticism late in the movie seems forced and contrary to the gross-out vulgarity of the brunt of the film. Not a single character is likable or even remotely appealing – you don’t root for their success or even their happiness.

Even the comedic forces of Clark Duke (“Greek”) as Jacob and Craig Robinson (“The Office”) as Nick can’t salvage the pathetic “The Hangover” meets “Back to the Future” hybrid. It’s a bro-flick of grown men attempting to reclaim their youth that doesn’t resonate even with the generation familiar with the ’80s. The actors, notably Cusack and the strangely cast Chevy Chase as the hot tub mechanic, seem out of place and tragically grasping a lost kind of celebrity. “Hot Tub Time Machine’s” convenient ending neatly wrapped together the loose ends, with a brash decision to change the past resulting in pleasant futures for the protagonists, but the resolution seems rash and hurried. It serves as a cheeky way to conclude a bland comedic film that relies far too heavily on cultural relevance.

If only this time machine really did exist – to take me back to before I decided to watch it – twice.

(editor’s note) This could have been so much funnier as an “SNL” short. Or as a “30 Rock” publicity joke. As is, this is merely a semi-self-aware 80s “Snakes on a Plane“-esque nostalgia-fest.