Review: The Black Keys - El Camino

'El Camino' is The Black Key's wonderful seventh album. Hip hop mistro Danger Mouse is back producing and it is for the better, he produced their fifth album 'Attack & Release' and gave it a bit of an arty tinge. As with every Black Key's album 'El Camino' is full of awesome blues rock jams. It opens with the great first single 'Lonely Boy', and follows on with the not as great but still good 'Dead & Gone'. One of my highlights in this album was the future single 'Gold On The Ceiling' which is full of fuzzy guitars and and a sweet as organ riff. Another album highlight would be 'Little Black Submarines' which goes from a soft acoustic ballad to thrashing guitar halfway through and you'd swear Jimmy Page wrote it. Though the second half of the album is a little bit weaker it is still thoroughly enjoyable with songs like 'Sister', 'Stop Stop' and 'Nova Baby', along with many others. 'El Camino' would have to be one of my favourite albums of 2011. It's great driving music and every song is worth listening to.

8.5/10

Tomm

Review: Hugo

I will admit, I didn't have the highest expectations for Hugo, but these expectations were definitely exceeded. Hugo follows Hugo Cabret (played perfectly by Asa Butterfield), a 13-year-old orphan living in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. He owns an automaton, or a mechanical man, that is supposed to write with a pen. His father, a master clockmaker, found it in an old museum. His father had taught Hugo about clockmaking and they were fixing the automaton before Hugo's father died. Hugo went to live with his alcaholic uncle, who maintains the clocks in the train station. After his uncle leaves, Hugo is left to keep the clocks running, all the while stealing food to survive and parts for his automaton from a toy store without getting caught by the station inspector (played nicely by Sacha Baron Cohen). He makes friends with girl who also romes the station, but happens to be the god-daughter of the toy maker (Another great performance by Ben Kingsley). Together they uncover many secrets to the toy makers past and a link between the toy maker and Hugo's father.
Hugo is directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese, who won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for Hugo. He really has done well with this. There is the odd innacuracy in this film that I won't go into, but it doesn't pull the quality down one bit. Also a must see in 3D.
Great visuals, great acting, great story...Great movie.

8.5/10

The Awesominator

Review: Foster the People - Torches

Foster the People have followed up their huge hit single "Pumped Up Kicks" with their debut album, Torches, and the rest of the album really follows suit. It's full of psychadelic, poppy tunes with heaps of synth, bass and some nice, strong beats. "Pumped Up Kicks", "Houdini" and "Miss You" are the best on the album, but in saying that, there really isn't a bad song on there. There a few songs, such as "Life on the Nickel", "Call It What You Want", "Don't Stop (Colour on the Walls)" and "Waste" that do have, for lack of a better word, awkward introductions, but these develop into some really catchy and original tunes. Foster the People have really done well in writing this record and bringing us one of the best albums of the year.

8.5/10

The Awesominator

Review: The Adventures of Tintin

When I went to see Tintin I had high hopes, you'd have to looking a the people behind  it (Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright, among many others). Those expectations were definitely met. From the moment you step into this world you know it's going to be something special.  The opening titles are great, they follow Tintin and Snowy around through some of their previous adventures in silhouette backed by a great theme from the master, John Williams. After the delightful intro we get into the story, when Tintin purchases a model ship things start to turn pear shaped as he finds out that the ship has the secret to finding a lot of treasure. Along the way Tintin meets Captain Haddock (Played very well by Andy Serkis) and they develop a friendship.  Haddock is where a lot of the laughs come from and most of them are hilarious. One of the only gripes I have with this movie is the way Tintin looks but I certainly get over that once the story pulled me in. All of the voice acting is great and level of detail amazing. Spielberg and Jackson have definitely pulled it off.

9/10

Tomm

Review: The Rocker

I had high hopes going into “The Rocker”. I mentioned my excitement to Tomm and he thought the movie would be terrible and my excitement wouldn’t live long. I will admit that did put doubt in my mind, but I wasn’t disappointed.

Robert “Fish” Fishman is the drummer in the biggest up-and-coming band of the time, Vesuveus, but when Matchbook Records offer a contract, it states that Fish is to be replaced by the head of Matchbook’s nephew. The rest of the band reluctantly agrees and that sends Fish spiralling into a life of normal and boring. When Fish’s nephew’s band, A.D.D, needs a new drummer for a gig in two days, Fish agrees to play with them. The first gig is a bit of a dud and Fish is kicked out. But he offers a … If he gets the band a gig, he can stay. He has trouble finding this gig and when he does, It’s on the other side of the country (I presume). So sets off a chain of events that ends in a video of Fish drumming to one of A.D.D’s songs naked becoming viral. Matchbook Records see the video, hear the song and sign A.D.D to record an album, make a music video and open for Vesuveus.

I think Rainn Wilson did a great job depicting Fish, the immature middle-aged party animal, pulling out great one-liners like “Get out of here Moby…Dick” and “Some people carry lucky charms. I like to rock a pocket of puke.” There are also well played supporting roles from Emma Stone, Christina Applegate and a pre-Hangover Bradley Cooper. All-in-all, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Even though the ending is a clichéd high school music movie ending, it is very funny.

7/10

The Awesominator

Review: Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto

Chris Martin said he wanted to take  Coldplay's fifth album to different places and different avenues, but this really sounds a lot like a traditional Coldplay album to me, full of dull synth pop ballads aimed at commercial radio.  The album opens with the suitably dreamy title track that flows into 'Hurts Like Heaven' an alright boppy little pop tune.  Then we hear the album highlight 'Paradise' a nice uplifting track with just the right amount of strings to go with it.  The rest of this album is really quite bland with nothing really that striking on it. The next single 'Charlie Brown' is a just a whole lotta 'meh' that's made for the charts.  Overall this is just another average Coldplay album that shouldn't belong on your Christmas wishlist.

5.5/10

Tomm

triple j's Hottest 100 of 2011

The songs I voted for were:

Lana Del Raye - Video Games
M83 - Midnight City
My Morning Jacket - Holding Onto Black Metal
Neon Indian - Polish Girl
Real Estate - It's Real
SBTRKT - Pharaohs (ft. Roses Gabor)
Seeker Lover Keeper - Even Though I'm A Woman
Snakadaktal - Air
TV On The Radio - Will Do

and my favourite song of 2011 is...

Slow Club - Two Cousins

Tomm