“I just don’t see you being a cog in a big machine” – Theo Ross (Simon Pegg)
Films have the ability to transport us to fantastical realms, to spaces and places that appear aesthetically and narratively detached from our reality – worlds that feel completely unlike our own. But they also can root us in the harshest and grittiest of realities, unsympathetically displaying depictions of suffering, social anxieties and complex subject matter. Katharine O’Brien’s directorial debut, Lost Transmissions, is one such film, offering an intricate, honest and poignant portrayal of characters dealing with mental illness. It’s a beautiful, indie melodrama that is, in more ways than one, far from being a cog in a big (cinematic) machine – a breath of fresh air in an industry that, at the present time, is becoming (thanks to all-encompassing monopolies and post-broadcasting platforms) even narrower.
Inspired by a true story, Lost Transmissions begins with Hannah (Juno Temple), an aspiring Los Angeles pop-songwriter, meeting Theo (Simon Pegg), a gifted record producer, at a party where she’s summoned to sing, whilst he plays the piano. This is A Star is Born without the glamour and amorous passion. As the pair bond, it becomes increasingly apparent that their friendship is a mutually beneficial relationship: whilst Hannah gains a chance to write for pop superstar, Dana Lee (Alexandra Daddario), thanks to Theo’s guidance, it surfaces that Theo is a schizophrenic, who needs Hannah’s help after he stops taking his medication because he feels it’s a “shame to live life with a filter over it”. As her career begins to take flight, Theo’s conditions starts to deteriorate – which is unaided by a pitiable, mental healthcare system and his painfully unhelpful and inept friends. Through helping Theo, Hannah begins to confront her own problems with anti-depressants and wavering emotions but, as she does so, she begins to question whether she’s illogically assisting an unstable individual that she doesn’t really know and issues that she herself doesn’t fully comprehend.
Perhaps the most poignant and heart-wrenching moment comes when Theo, not taking his medication, is in the car with Hannah and he begins to play with the car radio, turning up the volume and stating that “if you listen really carefully, you can hear the transmissions” and patterns that are permeating beneath the static and between the stations. It’s a sequence that also typifies where the film really shines: Pegg’s performance. Estranged from the distinctive comedic performances that we associate with Pegg (his starring roles in The Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy or as Benji in the Mission Impossible film series to name a few), he seems to truly find his feet as a natural dramatic actor – in a manner akin to Adam Sandler’s outstanding, performative shift in Uncut Gems. It’s a true testament to his skill in this film that as Theo suffers, we, as audience members, suffer with him. Pegg manages the complexity of portraying a character dealing with schizophrenia with delicacy and I, for one, couldn’t help but be captivated.
Temple’s Hannah is equally compelling and she handles the nuances of Hannah with care but, in many ways, she gets overwhelmed and (sadly) outshone by Pegg’s vulnerable performance – though that’s not necessarily a fault of her own (its more that Pegg’s portrayal is wonderful). The same, unfortunately, can be said for Daddario whose part is fleeting and her ability is somewhat wasted.
Beyond those performances, the film’s second and third act don’t match its compelling and promising opening and consequently the narrative tends to dwindle and, towards the end, falls flat. Similar to Temple and Daddario’s performances, we can’t help but want and, based on the opening, expect more. Whilst the conversations are meticulously written and you do feel for the characters, the narrative just never gets to where you want it to go. It promises so much but the payoff is, to an extent, lacklustre.
Whilst Pegg offers a compelling and nuanced performance that is simultaneously refreshing and heart-breaking, Lost Transmissions, frustratingly, fails to keep the pace that its first act promises. Though O’Brien handles the complexities of schizophrenia and mental illness with care and the film feels like an inspirational take on dense subject matter, it doesn’t altogether realise its potential. It’s not entirely lost in its own transmission, just not quite there.
Following the release of 2018’s acclaimed In a Poem Unlimited, indie rock outfit U.S. Girls return with a new album titled Heavy Light, out now via 4AD. The latest from singer-songwriter Meghan Remy was produced by Remy herself and recorded live with 20 session musicians, including E Street Band saxophonist Jake Clemons. Named after Franz Kafka’s aphorism “a faith like an axe. As heavy, as light”, a press release describes the songs on the album as “reflections on childhood experiences that are collaged into moving spoken word interludes”. The album features reworked versions of the previously released ‘Statehouse (It’s A Man’s World)’, ‘Red Ford Radio’, and ‘Overtime’, as well as 10 new songs.
Anna Calvi’s new record is a reworking of her acclaimed 2018 album Hunter, featuring an impressive list of collaborators including Courtney Barnett, Joe Talbot (IDLES), Charlotte Gainsbourg and Julia Holter. “During a break from touring I went back and listened to the first recordings I ever made of ‘Hunter’,” the singer-songwriter explains. “These recordings capture the very moment I first wrote these songs, and recorded them on my own, in my attic studio. I find something especially intimate about sharing these most private recordings with my favourite singers and asking them to lend their voices and artistic sensibility.”
Singer-songwriter Caroline Rose has come through with her fourth studio record, Superstar. The follow-up to 2018’s Loner, which saw her going in a more pop-rock direction compared to her folk country roots, tells the story of an artist who leaves their life behind in pursuit of fame and is inspired by movies like The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Mulholland Drive, and Drop Dead Gorgeous. Caroline Rose explains: “To me, there’s both humor and horror in hubris and what it takes in order to be successful. I wanted to make a story out of those parts of myself that I find largely undesirable and embarrassing, then inject them with steroids.”
Alternative rock duo Phantogram have released their fourth studio album, Ceremony, out now via Republic. The band, consisting of lifelong friends Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, recorded the album largely at Barthel’s new home studio as well as Rancho de la Luna studio in Los Angeles. The long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s Three was influenced in large part by the death of Barthel’s sister, Becky, due to suicide. Barthel explains: “Life keeps going while you’re in your album cycle bubble and when it pops, you have to pick up the pieces. And once you stop, all the distractions go away and you’re left with a lot of feelings, feelings that got trapped outside of the bubble. And those are what came out on Ceremony.”
Post-punk outfit HMLTD (formerly Happy Meal Ltd.) might wear their influences on their sleeves, but the way they blend and combine such a wide range of styles lends their music a wildly refreshing edge. Their debut full-length album, West of Eden, seamlessly brings together elements of art rock, spaghetti western, pop, and even trap in ways that keep surprising the listener from one turn to the next without losing its fervour. It opens with the lyrically sharp, musically riveting cultural apocalypse of ‘The West is Dead’, which includes the iconic line: “The Dalai Lama wore Dolce & Gabanna in vermilion red”. ‘LOADED’ bolsters a swaggering guitar lick and infectious hook, while tracks like ‘To The Door’ and ‘Satan, Luella, and I’ showcase the band’s dynamic songwriting and signature campiness, a feature that makes them stand out from their contemporary avant-rock peers. That sense of theatricality resurfaces later on the sister tracks ‘Joanna’ and ‘Where’s Joanna?’, which deal with gender dysphoria while employing Dresden Dolls-esque cabaret punk instrumentals. And if experimental rock isn’t your thing, West of Eden is also packed with a few pop-leaning tracks that wouldn’t sound out of place on mainstream radio: ‘Mikey’s Song’ is an earnest synthpop tune that’s reminiscent of The Killers, while ‘Nobody Stays in Love’ fuses a conventional electropop formula with the kind of cynicism that transcends it. With West of Eden, HMLTD have delivered an exciting debut that’s bound to be one of the best rock albums of the year.
Following the surprise release of 2012-2017 in 2018, which compiled five years of work into a delightful and excellent house record, Nicolas Jaar returns once again as Against All Odds with a slightly different but no less compelling effort. Despite treading on very much similar ground – the record is filled with creatively utilised samples and patient yet groovy compositions – 2017-2019 is darker in tone, trading accessible, crowd-pleasing classical house for a more challenging brand of gnarly, minimalist techno. Opener ‘Fantasy’ wonderfully repurposes a sample of Beyoncé classic’s Sean Paul collaboration ‘Baby Boy’ into an entrancingly scuzzy dance tune, while ‘If Loving You is Wrong’ follows a similar formula to that of 2012-2017 with the distortion kicked up a notch. Things get even more ominous as we dive deeper into the album: ‘Deeeeeeefers’ stands out thanks to its unrelenting intensity and monstrous synths, while ‘If You Can’t Do It, Do it Hard’ is the album’s most uncompromising and memorable highlight, with its pounding percussion and influential no-wave artist Lydia Lynch’s striking spoken word: “Because you can’t beat ’em, kill ’em/If you can’t kill ’em, fuck ’em.” Whether this was Jaar’s intention or not, judging from the change in tone between the two albums, 2017-2019 certainly seems to evoke the general sense of sociopolitical unrest that pervaded those last three years.
Florida rapper Denzel Curry and producer Kenny Beats team up for a short but playfully exhilarating collaborative LP on Unlocked. Fresh off his trap-heavy 2019 release, ZUU, Curry broadens his musical palette beyond that of his Miami roots, while Kenny Beats once again expertly tailors his production to accommodate Curry’s gritty but impressively dynamic delivery. Brimming with tension while also being incredibly catchy, ‘Lay_Up.m4a’ reveals the the project’s quirkily cartoonish nature, which lends its way perfectly to the Adult Swim-esque animated short film that accompanies the 20-minute album. ‘DIET_’ showcases both Curry’s lyrical dexterity and his versatile delivery, as he goes from faux-casual on the verse to hard-hitting on the DMX-inspired hook. The heaviest tracks on the album are generally the best, as Kenny Beats’ bass-heavy instrumentals naturally complement Curry’s style, but looser, more downtempo moments like ‘So.Incredible.pkg’ also stand out. While it may lack the depth and innovativeness that has characterised much of Curry’s work, Unlocked is an enjoyable and colourful outing that adds another hit to his increasingly consistent creative streak, while further cementing Beats’ status as one of the most competent hip-hop producers around.
Much of the conversation around Miss Anthropocene, Grimes’ first full-length album in five years, has been less about the music than the context surrounding it – inevitable, as Grimes’ profile has skyrocketed since she started dating tech mogul Elon Musk, not to mention the controversial “make climate change fun” narrative behind the album’s promotion. But looking at the album itself, it’s clear that Grimes is making some of the most creatively inspired music of her career, as Miss Anthropocene, a concept album about the “anthropomorphic Goddess of climate change” witnessing the end of the world with a pun on “misanthrope” and “anthropocene” as its title, marks her most thematically and sonically ambitious project to date. The album’s dark atmosphere may at first seem like the polar opposite of the upbeat, straightforward pop of 2015’s Art Angels – an excellent project that Grimes has since described as a “stain on [her] life” – but it’s more like a fusion of that album and its more experimental predecessor, Visions. ‘So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth’ is an ethereal, evocative opener that sets the mood for what’s to come but slightly overstays its welcome, while on the other end you have tracks like ‘4ÆM’, a frenetic drum and bass banger with Middle Eastern elements, and the infectious industrial pop fusion of ‘My Name is Dark’. The catchy ‘Violence’ might sound questionable until you realize it’s about humanity’s ‘abusive’ relationship with the Earth, while on the slow piano ballad ‘New Gods’, Grimes potently sings: “So I pray, but the world burns/ And still, you need to come first.” Miss Anthropocene might not be the era-defining record it aspires to be, but it certainly displays Grimes’ astounding versatility as an artist.
With 2018’s Clean, Sophie Allison aka Soccer Mommy reframed her sound and delivered a punchy yet strikingly vulnerable slice of infectious indie rock. Her latest effort, Color Theory, sees her further developing her sound, though this time a huge cloud hangs over the album, colouring it in darker hues – the themes of self-doubt and depression that were hinted at on the previous album weigh heavy here. If Clean was a spark marked by tight, short arrangements, Color Theory is a shadow that stretches across the album with patient, slowly-unfolding mid-tempo arrangements and piercingly honest lyrics. The centrepiece of the record, ‘yellow is the colour of her eyes’, is just over 7 minutes, featuring one of Allison’s most ambitious instrumentals, complete with a ‘November Rain’-esque guitar solo, as if she’s trying to extend the song’s runtime as a means of holding onto time itself. Throughout the record, her descriptions of mental illness are both affecting and sharp, as she keeps coming back to feelings of falling apart and sinking in: “My room is a kingdom/ For the princess of screwin’ up/ And I’ll be the dragon/ I’ll hold me captive/ My world is sinking/ I am the captain of it all,” she sings on the brilliant ‘royal screw up’. Clean might be more catchy and memorable, but Color Theory is a more mature record where the bleakly introspective lyrics perfectly line up with the musical palette of the album. It might not be a colourful one, but it sure is rich and wonderfully rendered.
