Arcade Fire are bastards and they are hogging all the talent and ingenuity.

So I just stumbled across the new interactive music video (of sorts) for Arcade Fire's We Used To Wait, taken from their current album The Suburbs. It's... a bit... good. You enter the address or postcode of your childhood home and it mashes together images of some kid running through a pretty typical-looking suburban setting with images of (and here's where it gets... a bit... good) the place you grew up in. The images are taken from Google Earth and Streetview so maybe that's a bit creepy but whatever, it works. It's actually genuinely quite affecting. Seems best to download Google Chrome if you don't already have it (I didn't) but it's probably worth sparing the few seconds it takes. The results might even leave you feeling a little choked. Go on. Let it out.

I saw Arcade Fire headline the Main Stage at Leeds Festival on Friday and besides making every other band who'd played that day look like a Year 9 garage band, they also insisted on each playing a different instrument for almost every other song. Just because they could. It's not fair on the rest of us that they get to be so... fucking... good.

Make your own video for We Used To Wait here.You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hate yourself a little more for not being in Arcade Fire.

Image via Google

(Via BeatCrave)

Will Pop Culture Make a Man of Me Yet #1: The Expendables

Every now and then I feel like some area of popular culture has stared me blankly in the face and muttered at me to just be a fucking man. I spent yesterday afternoon alone in the cinema watching The Expendables. Sly Stallone gurned, Jason Statham grimaced and some Latino bird got a bit damp. I felt inadequate. And I took some notes. Here's 5 things The Expendables taught me about drinkin', fightin', male-pattern baldness-defyin' masculinity:

1.) When your girlfriend leaves you for some basketball-playing douchebag, there'll be no weeping and wailing. Real men don't snivel into the answerphone at 3am. Just jump on your Ducati and full-throttle it to Mickey Rourke's tattoo shop. If, upon your arrival, Sly Stallone is ready and waiting bent over a motorbike, you can relax: this is all you'll ever need.

2.) Abducting women is fine, as long as you think it's in their best interests. Especially when they're Latin-American and therefore, you know, probably pretty thick.

3.) Putting too many super-hunks into any one scene can only lead to super-hunk cameo overload. Cutting between John McClane, Rocky and The Terminator inevitably leaves you with something that looks like an advert for a chain of celebrity-endorsed gyms. Or baby oil.

4.) If picking off individual targets is proving a tad finicky - and frankly a waste of time better spent guzzling beer in Mickey Rourke's tattoo shop - just stop messing about. Use a rocket launcher. It's like the tough-guy equivalent of your dad spending ten minutes in his garage trying to carefully disassemble an old Ikea wardrobe, then grunting 'Fuck it' and smashing the bastard to smithereens with the back of a spade.

5.) Watching soggy middle-aged men throw punches at each other is really fun for about forty minutes. And then you remember the first time you saw Carrie Bradshaw in a tutu, way before that last racist movie - and your heart flutters.

'What's wrong with this picture?'

'Everything.'

Images via Google

What do Carrie Brownstein, Woody Allen and Isaac Brock have in common?

I guess each of them has been involved in some kind of sex scandal (not that you'd actually use the phrase 'sex scandal' to describe ex-Sleater-Kinney frontwoman Carrie Brownstein's outing by Spin magazine; put it alongside Woody's mantel-piece-tarnishing misdemeanours and it seems a bit less juicy), but other than that - not loads.

Except this:



So somehow Carrie Brownstein, Woody Allen and Isaac Brock all feature in the new Thermals video I Don't Believe You. Okay, unsurprisingly Woody doesn't ACTUALLY make a cameo, but he does get a name-check when star of the show Brownstein scatters books out from her bookshelf on the hunt for that bloody racket. Blink and you'll miss it, but if you haven't got anything better to do today (I haven't), it might bring a smile to your face. The real money shot is Isaac Brock in his PJ's at 10.22am during the coda, looking grizzled and slightly bonkers. I'm hoping for a similar sight the morning after Modest Mouse's Main Stage performance at Leeds Festival later this week. I'll let you know how that goes.

I Don't Believe You is the first single to be taken from the forthcoming album Personal Life, which is due for release on the 7th September on Kill Rock Stars. Watching the video again, I got to thinking, you know that game where you pick your dream dinner party guests? How about Carrie Brownstein, Woody Allen and Isaac Brock. If nothing else, it's a guaranteed sex scandal.

(via Stereogum)

'See, what people don't understand is that we choose to live like... free... free... free people'

Since Harmony Korine is probably the preferred film-maker of fuck-ups the world over, I think it's appropriate that the first post on this blog should turn to his latest offering, Trash Humpers. Cinema showings over here were pretty few and far between during its UK theatrical release a couple of months ago (local example: a single screening at the Showroom in Sheffield) but the film is due to see a UK DVD release on the 20th of September. Korine describes it as 'a new kind of horror; palpable and raw'. Watching the trailer and a few scraps floating about online, it looks like he might have abandoned the bitter-sweet optimism (and conventional narrative) of 2007's Mister Lonely. This one's about hillbillies in Bo Selecta masks fucking bags of rubbish. And drooling over obese hookers. And stuff. Wouldn't be surprised if some kid turns up to drown a kittie before the end credits roll, like in 1997's Gummo, because it seems Korine hasn't lost his appetite for pissing people off. After eight years in the wilderness, two burned down houses and one lost masterpiece (which, if you believe what you read, is pretty much how Korine's life went between 1999's Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely), I guess you can't stay chipper forever.

Anyway, in honour of the lo-fi and distinctly anti-digital stylings of Trash Humpers, The Brudenell Social Club in Leeds are showing the film 'on various old school VCR's and tv's, and also on a big screen and through gig PA to provide a unique full effect audio', with a band playing afterwards. Here's the link. The event is on Tue 31st August and me and my mate Pete are dead excited about it. If you watch the trailer below, you'll get excited too. Promise.

Image via Google