THE VIC CHESNUTT BAND
w/ Liz Durrett. The Starlite Room (10030-102 St). Sun, Nov 22 (8pm). Tickets: $20, available through Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.com).

“I play music because I inherited this gift,” Vic Chesnutt says over the phone from his Georgia home. “Music has an indescribable impact on me. I find listening and playing it and almost religious experience. It soothes the savage beast — I mean, it is a cliché and it is very true. Something about the way two or three tones come together creates magic and can change things in a big way.”

Sure, Chesnutt’s a bit obsessed with the idea of writing music — probably now more than ever. He penned his first melody when he was five, thousands of others since then that haven’t been recorded, and thousands more wandering his mind that still haven’t even been put down on paper. He says that as he watched his mother write songs and play music as a child, he became educated and inspired. The role music and the people close to him have played in his life started before he could even talk, it seems, and continue to this day.

“I hit it off with these guys immediately,” Chesnutt says, referring to Guy Picciotto and members of A Silver Mt. Zion and Godspeed You! Black Emperor who “back him up” on his latest two albums and current tour. “I’d never met them before we recorded [the 2007 album] North Star Deserter — I didn’t know them personally, but I definitely knew their music. We had a great deal in common both musically and intellectually. It just worked. I’m very lucky to be a part of it.”

It is an overpoweringly beautiful thing to see someone this confident in his art, especially considering the circumstances Chesnutt has faced to get where he’s at. At 18, he was involved in an auto accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and although this catastrophe dramatically changed the way in which he lived his life, it didn’t stand in the way of his passion and dedication to his craft. And like most of his material, Chesnutt’s most recent album, At the Cut, stares mortality square in the face. His themes are almost exclusively death and loss, yet there’s a quietly inspiring tone of optimism and hope running through these songs as well. At the Cut and Chesnutt’s new family came at an important time at his life.

“I mean, if I hadn’t broken my neck,” he says, “I’d still be playing music. But meeting these guys — the guys from Silver Mt. Zion and Guy, from Fugazi — was a real boost to my spirits. I was depressed before and I didn’t know what I was doing with my life and with my career. They really gave me a boost — it saved my life.”

The effects have been sonic as well as spiritual for Chesnutt. As anyone who listens to Godspeed can attest to, their distinctive, harrowing arrangements have enough energy and sensation to make something as ordinary as a bus ride seem larger than life; combined that sound with a singer-songwriter as raw and honest as Chesnutt is a potent synergy.

“Playing with those guys is a joyous occasion, man, absolutely joyous,” Chesnutt says. “It’s heavy and really emotional at times. But we laugh and smile a lot because we are interacting and basically jamming. This live show with this band is the best you can get anywhere — At the Cut doesn’t even touch the live show, really. I am a million times better on the stage than on record too because It’s a more complex, emotional thing.

“My longtime fans can’t believe the power of this new band, and the rock ’n’ rollers think it’s the most powerful band a singer/songwriter has ever had. And they’re right — there’s no doubt about that. There has never been a folk singer with a band this powerful. I mean it. It is an emotional experience. Now is not the time not to miss me.”

Anyone you know who admits to watching The Hills (or it’s much more engaging spin-off, The City) probably laugh off their infatuation by noting that they’re very in-tune with the pure insanity of this baseless programming, and this is what makes it okay. We all do it. We all love it too – many are so above calling ourselves a Hills fan, yet line up to soak it all up. We love to hear ourselves talk about grand insights and stimulating, imaginative thoughts on why The Hills represents our culture in some profound way, or conversely why watching The Hills is a completely absurd waste of time because it’s an insult to actual, Real people and the way they live their lives. People enjoy discussing sweeping thoughts on ‘Why The Hills pre-fabricated narrative doesn’t take away from the ‘reality’ of the characters because we are all smarter than the characters of the Hills’ anyways’ (Who hasn’t had the ‘it’s all pre-scripted’ conversation once or twice?). By indicating that we are simply mocking the norms and absurd nature of fashionable pointlessness, we are its fatalities. Pop culture has its place and its place is all-consuming. Finding a sufficient voice that can dissect the seemingly unimportant and vain in the trashy hallways of cultural oblivion has a very welcome space.

Nobody entices pop-culture junkies and anti-culture elites among us like Chuck Klosterman. By making connections on pop phenomena that seem to mean nothing, mean something, his forays into cultural experiences are both amusing and provoking. His riffs on things ranging from Billy Joel to Saved by the Bell are well-received opinions about the non-literal aspects of pop culture fabrications, and his timely dialogue about their significance in popular culture is wildly entertaining and more-than persuasive. Indeed, it is in Klosterman’s introspection about seemingly ordinary and superficial habits of modern existence that he has created a mini-legacy. Sure, there have been others like him before, the Hunter S. Thompson’s and Lester Bangs’ who flipped cultural beasts and made substantial impacts on their own culture by precisely calling out culture, but nobody represents Generation-whatever-we-are-now like Klosterman.

Although already being compared to his breakthrough, 2004’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman takes on a highly-introspective analysis of himself in Eating the Dinosaur. Rather than merely digesting and discussing his love/hate relationship with bubblegum pop of all forms, Klosterman digs deep into his own psyche as part of a bigger pop-culture creature. Because now, not only being a critic of entertainment and a passionate and wonky authority on the complexity of it, he has actually become the celebrity and the critiqued; he has people interviewing him and wanting to delve into his thoughts about the pop culture he is now a part of. Modern culture is not just a result of our society’s fascination with pop. Klosterman argues that modern culture is obsessed with these forms of popular culture and how creative we are in coming up with anecdotes about something like The Hills is its result. "We are latently enslaved by our own ingenuity, and we have unknowingly constructed a simulated world,” Klosterman notes. "As a species, we have never been less human than we are right now.” This has Chuck Klosterman truly concerned.

Klosterman seems to be mainly searching for a type of human authenticity in Dinosaur. And it is when he starts to write about his own personality and the actual process of writing that this oddly existential side of himself emerges. At the forefront of each essay it seems there is a sense of Klosterman’s inner-doubt shining through and even though he is writing about everything from the connection between David Koresh, the Branch Davidian’s and Kurt Cobain’s desire to make In Utero a poor album, to Garth Brooks transformation into the ambiguous pop brand of Chris Gaines, he longs for an answer to human authenticity – yet he notes that authenticity is necessarily elusive and probably won’t be discovered. He can’t even discover why (or when) he is being authentic to himself or about himself, never mind trying to discover this quality in other things.

Klosterman comes across as some kind of maniacal thought-machine. It’s like he is a suffering from chronic insomnia, and rather than stare at the ceiling, he’d rather gaze at a computer screen and attempt to logically ponder why the Unabomber’s manifesto is an under-appreciated masterpiece, why the NFL is Marxist organization, or how laugh tracks in Friends episodes often cover uninspired, drab writing. His thought experiments are as developed in Eating the Dinosaur as they are in his previous works, and although he finds himself at a completely different juncture in his most recent book, the results are perhaps more raw and less self-conscious than his others writing. If you were to take my advice (you’ve read this far, after all), I would suggest reading his work in the order it was produced. Klosterman isn’t as much of an icon as I’ve made him out to be, I suppose – and he likely would even suggest that I’ve put way, way too much thought into this already. But ask your token hipster friend if they’ve read Klosterman and chances are they have. Chances are they consume it like Ritalin, and chances are they (secretly) like The Hills.

Various Artists
New Moon (Original Soundtrack)
(Atlantic)
***1/2

Vampires and indie-rock kids have a lot in common: they both hate sunlight and they both hate hanging out with anyone who’s not part of their exclusive clique. But the star-studded soundtrack to the upcoming Twilight sequel New Moon promises to appeal to Pitchfork-reading hipsters as well as the teenage girls squealing over Robert Pattinson. I can’t imagine how they talked half of these acts into playing the teen-vampire prom: Death Cab for Cutie, Thom Yorke, Lykke Li, Bon Iver, St. Vincent, Grizzly Bear all join in this improbable monster mash. Indie fans will probably never admit to buying (or downloading) this soundtrack — but you can be sure they’ll be listening all the same ... and docking the bands a few cool points while they’re at it. The truth is, though, while New Moon the film is likely horrendous, the same definitely can’t be said for the soundtrack. Had these songs been released under some other umbrella — perhaps as the soundtrack to some new Sofia Coppola movie — it would be a massive success.

Watch as Thom stares at you..(probably a better video than the movie)

Gravity Wave
Gambol
(Fuzzy Logic Recordings)
***1/2

“Bang! Our shit got bang!” chants Gravity Wave 23 seconds into “Bangs” from their psychedelic pop journey Gambol. I couldn’t find a better way to sum up these Torontonians’ arty kaleidoscope of sound than their own words. Sorry, but this half-band, half-visual art apparatus full of completely wacky drum and bass measures is really, really difficult to pin down. But I suppose their complete abnormality is what makes them so appealing. There’s a lot of creativity riding on the Gravity Wave — and if you can’t pick up on that from listening the trippy Gambol, their live show should seal the deal, at least if the advance hype is even halfway true. (Matching hooded unitards, anyone?) Myself, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing one of their peculiar performances, but if they can recreate even a fraction of the colours I envision while listening to this album (imagine Tom Waits at his zaniest combined with Ziggy Stardust at his most theatrical), they should melt the walls and minds at The ARTery when they play there on Nov. 18.

http://www.myspace.com/gravywave

While the Students’ Association implemented online voting in hopes of increasing voter turnout, the result was only a four per cent increase from last year, coming in at only 10 per cent.

Perhaps this is not a statement that students simply “don’t care” or that they are uninterested in the direction MacEwan is taking, but rather a statement on the structure of student politics.

“Voter turnout doesn’t say anything about MacEwan spirit or culture,” said MacEwan Political Science professor Dr. Gaelan Murphy.

“The fact of the matter is that these elections don’t matter very much and so it is unreasonable to expect a high voter turnout. For that matter I’m not even sure a high voter turnout is desirable since a high voter turnout would be indicative of a highly politicized process. It isn’t a good thing if the student association becomes heavily politicized.”

Murphy specifies that while elections seem to be an integral part of the general university ethic and that we can embrace the de-politicized structure of the university, they do little to indicate a diminished sense of character of the voters and non-voters alike.

“The only time you will see truly high voter turnout in non-compulsory elections is at moments of political crisis—when the voting public is dissatisfied—in which people still have confidence in the efficacy of the vote and how their vote proves relevant. This is a pretty rare occurrence. Thus low voter turnout can also be a positive indicator of the health of an institution because it demonstrates that people are relatively satisfied with the way things are.”

When we look towards the students of the institution, the results are analogous to Murphy’s commentary. Voters of MacEwan seem to realize the significance of the elections—as part of a tradition or otherwise—but fail to see tangible value from their efforts.

Recent Political Science graduate, Shawn Bernard, feels that the institution’s arrangement itself is partially to blame for slumping voting numbers.

“I believe that voter apathy at MacEwan stems from the way the college was and is currently organized. Being essentially (until just recently) a transfer school, the populous has no vested interest in the responsibilities of SA,” argued Bernard.

“While I did vote in every election while I attended MacEwan, I can say with only a few exceptions, that my votes were for the most part random or at the very least based on aesthetics. I did not care, and only voted out of some vague sense of not wanting to viewed as either a hypocrite or disingenuous. I cannot recall a single issue raised which warranted investing any time”.

Murphy said that it comes down to a matter of student responsibility and action that will assure that the voice of the student populous is heard in more ways than by voting.

Voting responsibility is one thing, however, if the student feels detached from the processes of the student government, where does this leave us?

“If someone cares (about student politics) then they should involve themselves at some level in the day to day operations of the university whether it is the Students Association or the Political Science Club, what it is doesn’t matter, just be involved with your community,” Professor Murphy emphasized.

“Voting doesn’t change this calculation at all. Conversely voting apathy doesn’t change it either. Voting doesn’t matter - involvement does.”

Swedish Pop
Kings of Convenience
Declaration of Dependence
(Astralwerks)
***1/2

There’s a certain type of proudly downhearted music that comes exclusively from Scandinavia — depression’s the new folkesykdom in Norway. (That’s Norwegian for “national illness,” if you didn’t know.) And Declaration of Dependence, the new album from Erlend Øye and Eirik Bøe, better known as Kings of Convenience, embodies the Norwegian spirit. Incredibly lush, warm tones? Quiet desperation in the singers’ voices? A sense that love is fleeting and remorse is forever? Declaration of Dependence has it all. Take “My Ship Isn’t Pretty,” which takes the hushed guitar strums and pleasant vocal harmony of Simon & Garfunkel, and injects a uniquely Scandinavian melancholy. “Is this destruction or just quiet protest against loneliness?” the Kings ask. It’s not just the words that express how they feel about love; the very texture of the songs evokes Norway’s desolate climate and their lonely place within it. And yet the music is so lovely and sincere that you almost want to feel the way they do. Norway’s apparently a pretty sad and barren land, but this album might make it a little more bearable.

Their Van Was Wrecked,

But Not Their Hopes

A band can only play hometown shows for so long before they need to spread their sound into the unknown — and that first tour can be a miserable failure or a first step into rock stardom. Taking it in stride is the only way to stay sane when you’re out there risking it all for a chance at winning over a few more fans.

Two short hours into their first jaunt outside of Alberta, a mishap befell The Raptors that would have caused more faint-hearted bands to turn around and call it a day. “We’re, like, 10 minutes outside of Edson and we hit some ice, and ... demolished our trailer,” says Raptors frontman Jon Lovell with a laugh. “Right out of the gates we ran into trouble. We barely made it to our first show in Victoria. But we’re committed to doing this. We’re not slowing down. As long as no one got injured or killed, we’re good. The show must go on.”

The band has chosen not to take that accident as a bad omen. Sure, their trailer got destroyed, but that’s only a tiny setback on their road to success — their definition of success, anyway. “I suppose your definition of ‘making it’ depends on many things. Is it selling millions of records, being world-tour famous and opening up for U2? That’s maybe something I thought about when I was maybe 16, but now that I’ve been playing music and playing in bars for 10 years, it’s not really what I aspire to do. Maybe I aspire to be potentially making my living doing this, but we take it in little steps. For our first full-length, my goal was to sell 1,000 records, and we did that. Now we want to take it on tour and see if people are receptive to it. It’s important to take positive steps forward and try not to become stagnant.”

The drive to get outside of Edmonton is a big step for Lovell and The Raptors, who are rounded out by Terence Sanan and Orion Schelle. They cut their teeth playing shows in Edmonton, but now it’s time to venture outside their comfort zone.

“A lot of bands that play for a while see a bit of success with all of their friends coming out and then they sort of stop,” Lovell says. “But there’s a huge difference between friends and fans. In your own city, you can always get friends to come out and see you play, but when you tour, you have to develop and find people that honestly appreciate and love music and not just be your friends. When we’re playing, I don’t care if it’s for 100 people or it’s for one. The show must go on. It has to go on!”