Whether as the lead guitarist for Wednesday, the Asheville band fronted by ex-girlfriend Karly Hartzman, or backing up Katie Crutchfield on Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood, Mj Lenderman seems to thrive on collaboration. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that, on this third solo album, Manning Fireworks, he sounds disgusted with others to the point of wanting to be left alone forever. “I’ve never really left my room/I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hero,” he proclaims on the closing track, “Bark at the Moon,” just before an abrasive six-minute feedback-driven drone kicks in, as if to signal that it’s time for everyone else to get the hell out.
Manning Fireworks is indeed something of a solitary affair: Lenderman performed most of the album himself, centering his rusty nail guitar work and laidback drawl, with a few scattered contributions from friends, including Wednesday bandmates...
Manning Fireworks is indeed something of a solitary affair: Lenderman performed most of the album himself, centering his rusty nail guitar work and laidback drawl, with a few scattered contributions from friends, including Wednesday bandmates...
- 9/2/2024
- by Jeremy Winograd
- Slant Magazine
Last year, Asheville, North Carolina’s Wednesday put out a collection of cover songs called Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘em Up. Not only was it the best lawn-care referencing release by a North Carolina band since Superchunk’s classic 1992 single “Mower,” it also served as a killer distillation of Wednesday’s own unique strain of downhome indie-rock. The tracklist had Nineties shoegaze (Medicine), new shoegaze (Hotline TNT), tragic sad-guy legends (Vic Chesnutt, Chris Bell), a punk-guitar hero (Greg Sage), touchy-feely alt-rock (Smashing Pumpkins), alcoholic alt-country (“Drive-By Truckers’ “Women...
- 4/7/2023
- by Jon Dolan
- Rollingstone.com
Death Cab for Cutie hit Jimmy Kimmel Live Tuesday night to perform a cover of TLC’s “Waterfalls,” a cut from their Georgia EP. The record is a collection of covers by artists from the titular state in celebration and support of the Democrats’ victory in the Georgia runoffs.
The band performed the 1994 song from their respective homes, turning the R&b jam into a more indie-fied track. Before you ask, Ben Gibbard does not attempt Left Eye’s legendary rap.
The band initially dropped the new EP in December...
The band performed the 1994 song from their respective homes, turning the R&b jam into a more indie-fied track. Before you ask, Ben Gibbard does not attempt Left Eye’s legendary rap.
The band initially dropped the new EP in December...
- 1/27/2021
- by Brenna Ehrlich
- Rollingstone.com
A week after the Democrats’ victory in the Georgia runoff elections, Death Cab for Cutie have released The Georgia EP — a collection of covers of Georgia artists — on streaming services.
The Georgia EP was previously only available via Bandcamp for one day in December, when it helped raise over $100,000 for Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight organization.
“Fair Fight is grateful for the support of Death Cab for Cutie in our fight for free and fair elections in Georgia and nationwide,” Abrams said in a statement Wednesday. “The Georgia EP helps tell...
The Georgia EP was previously only available via Bandcamp for one day in December, when it helped raise over $100,000 for Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight organization.
“Fair Fight is grateful for the support of Death Cab for Cutie in our fight for free and fair elections in Georgia and nationwide,” Abrams said in a statement Wednesday. “The Georgia EP helps tell...
- 1/13/2021
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Death Cab for Cutie will release a new covers EP, The Georgia EP, this Friday, December 4th, with all net proceeds benefiting Stacey Abrams’ voter’s rights organization Fair Fight Action, ahead of the state’s two crucial Senate runoff elections.
The five-track project will feature covers of songs by famous Georgia artists TLC, Neutral Milk Hotel, R.E.M., Vic Chesnutt, and Cat Power. The project will be available to purchase and download on Bandcamp for just 24 hours starting at 12:01 a.m. Pt.
Death Cab for Cutie recorded...
The five-track project will feature covers of songs by famous Georgia artists TLC, Neutral Milk Hotel, R.E.M., Vic Chesnutt, and Cat Power. The project will be available to purchase and download on Bandcamp for just 24 hours starting at 12:01 a.m. Pt.
Death Cab for Cutie recorded...
- 12/2/2020
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Thursday night, as Georgia trended toward a historic victory for the Democratic party in the 2020 presidential election, Jason Isbell mulled the idea of sweetening the event with a new recorded project. Rather than a batch of original songs to follow 2020’s Reunions, though, Isbell says that if Joe Biden takes the state, he’ll be putting his spin on tunes originally recorded by Georgia artists.
“If Biden wins Georgia I’m gonna make a charity covers album of my favorite Georgia songs- Rem, Gladys Knight, Vic Chesnutt, Allmans, Cat Power,...
“If Biden wins Georgia I’m gonna make a charity covers album of my favorite Georgia songs- Rem, Gladys Knight, Vic Chesnutt, Allmans, Cat Power,...
- 11/6/2020
- by Jon Freeman
- Rollingstone.com
Nineties nostalgia is still peaking, especially these days, when the former decade’s languid news cycle, easygoing economic conditions, and casual creative climate seem achingly distant from the miserable way we live now. And, of course, new bands are bands constantly cropping up that sound like Matador and Kill Rock Stars heroes of the Clinton-era underground. A new book out this month perfectly captures that artistic and cultural heyday. Now Is the Time to Invent!: Reports From the Indie-Rock Revolution, 1986-2000, from Verse/Chorus Press, collects writing from Puncture,...
- 10/9/2020
- by Jon Dolan
- Rollingstone.com
Mainstream cinema culture is reluctant to reconcile the digital video versus film stock debate. As with any story of king and pretender to the throne, it is too easy to dichotomise and thus deny the possibility of a fruitful dialogue between past and future. When contrasts are characterised as oppositions, the space in between gets totally lost. Yes, film’s incumbency is on the wane and digital cinema’s ubiquity has arrived, but the instant that a paradigm shifts is hard to recognize and impossible to isolate. More likely, it is the very idea of competing film and digital aesthetics that will, in the future, be pointed to as the characteristic sentiment of the vague time during which the old film technologies were put away for good. But for now, we have purists on both sides advocating the essentialness and relevance of their chosen media, more or less to the exclusion of its alternative.
- 6/2/2015
- by Tom Stevenson
- MUBI
Nashville staple Lambchop’s latest, Mr. M, travels through each of its 11 tracks leisurely. It could be because this release marks the morph-happy group’s eleventh release, or it could be because mainstay Kurt Wagner just needed to deal with some serious curveballs in life, the most serious of those being the 2009 suicide of his close friend and fellow South-based songwriter Vic Chesnutt. In loving memory, Lambchop dedicated Mr. M to Chesnutt, bundling pastoral psalms of sadness enjoyed only sans haste. The best example of that pacing comes five tracks in, with instrumental “Gar.” It pulses lovely and sad. Mounting...
- 2/21/2012
- Pastemagazine.com
He's been the toast of Sundance three years running, but the charismatic cult leader from Martha Marcy May Marlene says 'one of my strengths is that people don't know who I am'
Actors are supposed to bask in glory when it comes, but right now John Hawkes seems to be grimacing through it. Partly that's because exposure is the last thing the Texan actor was seeking, partly it's because his latest role has also taken its toll on his body. He's just got back from this year's Sundance Film Festival, where his movie, The Surrogate, received awards, standing ovations and the biggest sale ($6m). Playing a polio-stricken poet in search of sexual experience, Hawkes had to spend most of the movie lying in bed. "His spine is horrifically curved and he can only movie his head 90 degrees," he explains. "So it was my idea to make a soccer ball-sized piece...
Actors are supposed to bask in glory when it comes, but right now John Hawkes seems to be grimacing through it. Partly that's because exposure is the last thing the Texan actor was seeking, partly it's because his latest role has also taken its toll on his body. He's just got back from this year's Sundance Film Festival, where his movie, The Surrogate, received awards, standing ovations and the biggest sale ($6m). Playing a polio-stricken poet in search of sexual experience, Hawkes had to spend most of the movie lying in bed. "His spine is horrifically curved and he can only movie his head 90 degrees," he explains. "So it was my idea to make a soccer ball-sized piece...
- 2/4/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Vic Chesnutt died in an apparent suicide at the end of 2009, but his memory will at least live on in a forthcoming new documentary, with Michael Stipe backing the project. The R.E.M. frontman and former Chesnutt collaborator announced late last week that he was attached as executive producer to "It Is What It Is," a concert doc of one of singer-songwriter last shows on Nov. 21, 2009. According to the flick's Facebook site, it'll be out by year's end and features members of his backing "supergroup," including Guy Picciotto (Fugazi), members of Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Godspeed! You Black Emperor,...
- 5/16/2011
- by Katie Hasty
- Hitfix
It would be incredibly difficult—if not downright impossible—to corral four guitar players more dexterous than Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, Greg Leisz and Buddy Miller. Individually, these session musicians and solo artists tend to improve any song they play on, and their combined résumé represents a wide swathe of Americana: Steve Earle, Tom Waits, Vic Chesnutt, Madeleine Peyroux, Sam Phillips and John Zorn, among too many others to count, let alone name....
- 3/3/2011
- Pastemagazine.com
Getty Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams’ tenth studio album finds the singer-songwriter getting out of her own head. Williams has long been acclaimed for her songs of heartbreak and yearning, and on “Blessed” she explores topics beyond her own romantic difficulties. Songs on the album address such subjects as the suicide of cult musician Vic Chesnutt (“Seeing Black”) and war (“Soldier’s Song”) .
On the latter song she juxtaposes the horror of war with scenes from the home front. “I shot...
Lucinda Williams’ tenth studio album finds the singer-songwriter getting out of her own head. Williams has long been acclaimed for her songs of heartbreak and yearning, and on “Blessed” she explores topics beyond her own romantic difficulties. Songs on the album address such subjects as the suicide of cult musician Vic Chesnutt (“Seeing Black”) and war (“Soldier’s Song”) .
On the latter song she juxtaposes the horror of war with scenes from the home front. “I shot...
- 3/1/2011
- by WSJ Staff
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
The best of your comments on the latest films and music
For the benefit of those who were slightly baffled by the whole thing, we'll begin with a quick summary of the comments beneath last week's Beady Eye interview. (Some paraphrasing has been employed.) Liam Gallagher is a cock. Liam Gallagher is not a cock. Oasis were terrible. Oasis were the greatest British band in decades. Oasis ripped off the Beatles. Liam Gallagher thinks he's John Lennon. Liam Gallagher is no John Lennon. The Beatles ripped off loads of people. What do we really mean by the concept of heredity? Radiohead are boring. Radiohead are miles better than Oasis or Beady Eye. People who like Oasis and Beady Eye are stupid. People who don't like Oasis and Beady Eye are posh and patronising.
That dispensed with, let's move on to explosions, the subject of Anne Billson's column last week, in...
For the benefit of those who were slightly baffled by the whole thing, we'll begin with a quick summary of the comments beneath last week's Beady Eye interview. (Some paraphrasing has been employed.) Liam Gallagher is a cock. Liam Gallagher is not a cock. Oasis were terrible. Oasis were the greatest British band in decades. Oasis ripped off the Beatles. Liam Gallagher thinks he's John Lennon. Liam Gallagher is no John Lennon. The Beatles ripped off loads of people. What do we really mean by the concept of heredity? Radiohead are boring. Radiohead are miles better than Oasis or Beady Eye. People who like Oasis and Beady Eye are stupid. People who don't like Oasis and Beady Eye are posh and patronising.
That dispensed with, let's move on to explosions, the subject of Anne Billson's column last week, in...
- 2/25/2011
- by Michael Hann
- The Guardian - Film News
A wash of noise reminiscent of Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine introduces one of the strongest tracks on Dirty Side Down, the latest effort by the jam-band road warriors in Widespread Panic. The track wasn’t written by John Bell and company; it’s a cover of “This Cruel Thing” by the late Vic Chesnutt, complete with delicately plucked guitar and a thoughtful croon that perfectly evokes the longtime Panic collaborator. The rest of the record trades on greater complexity and more varied instrumentation—like the alternately hard-driving and ethereal opener, “Saint Ex,” or the title track, which layers a ...
- 5/25/2010
- avclub.com
May traditionally is a busy month for brick-and-mortar and digital music retailers. Among this month's future album releases are Bo Bice's 3 that's coming out May 18th, and Widespread Panic's Dirty Side Down that drops on May 25th. The following are interviews with Bice and Panic's John Bell during which they talk about their new projects, parenthood, the late Vic Chesnutt, a little social consciousness, and The Little Prince's author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A Conversation With Bo Bice Mike Ragogna: What's Bo Bice up to lately? Bo Bice: Well, we're about to have our press tour, and I'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks. I'll be in New York, L.A., doing all the TV runs for a while, doing some press for the new album. Right now, I'm at home and in the studio for the day, got a little...
- 5/17/2010
- by Mike Ragogna
- Huffington Post
Good evening everybody, and welcome to the live blog for the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, which are beaming live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Though a handful of awards have already been handed out, the big contests tonight will include only the biggest superstars in music, including Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Jay-z, Eminem and countless others.
(Click here for all the hottest photos from the Grammy Awards red carpet!)
Tonight will also be about the live performances, including an all-star tribute to the late Michael Jackson in addition to a surprise duet partner for Lady Gaga and a hip-hop tag-team with Lil Wayne, Drake, Travis Barker and Eminem. So stay right here for the blow-by-blow of music's biggest night, and be sure to stay tuned to MTV News for the rest of the big stories coming out of tonight. And as always, make your voice heard in the comments below!
(Click here for all the hottest photos from the Grammy Awards red carpet!)
Tonight will also be about the live performances, including an all-star tribute to the late Michael Jackson in addition to a surprise duet partner for Lady Gaga and a hip-hop tag-team with Lil Wayne, Drake, Travis Barker and Eminem. So stay right here for the blow-by-blow of music's biggest night, and be sure to stay tuned to MTV News for the rest of the big stories coming out of tonight. And as always, make your voice heard in the comments below!
- 2/1/2010
- by Kyle Anderson
- MTV Newsroom
Not only is the week nearly over, but the year is just about over as well. But before you drink too much cheap champagne, dress a baby up in a sash that says "2010" and finish that screenplay you swore you were going to complete before the decade was out, be sure to check out everything that happened this week in the MTV Newsroom. Sure, it was quiet, but that doesn't mean we weren't talking about news and keeping track of all the stars you love. Be safe, enjoy the long holiday weekend and be sure to check back in with us in 2010.
» The week opened with a bit of melancholy, as the music world reacted to the death of singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt, who passed away due to a drug overdose over Christmas.
» Chesnutt wasn't the only tragic loss this week, as the rock world was shattered by the passing of...
» The week opened with a bit of melancholy, as the music world reacted to the death of singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt, who passed away due to a drug overdose over Christmas.
» Chesnutt wasn't the only tragic loss this week, as the rock world was shattered by the passing of...
- 1/1/2010
- by Kyle Anderson
- MTV Newsroom
The world of music took a hit on Christmas Day when they lost a talented star. Indie folk rock singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt died from an apparent suicide in his hometown on December 25th. He was 45 years old. Chesnutt was known for his dark musical style and often collaborated with Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses. It was Chesnutt's good friend Hersh who first announced that he was hospitalized following an overdose of muscle relaxants on her Twitter account. On December 23rd, she tweeted, "i can tell you what i know, but no one knows much ...
- 12/28/2009
- by By Actress Archives
It was a sad Christmas for the friends and family of singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt, as the artist passed away on Friday (December 25) after spending two days in a coma thanks to an overdose of muscle relaxers. Chesnutt was 45 years old. The Athens, Georgia-based Chesnutt was something of an icon in the indie rock community who wrote spare, darkly comic tunes about love and death. His famous fans included R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe (another Athens native), Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and former Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh.
When he was 18, Chesnutt was in a car accident that left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, but he did not let his disability stop him from writing or performing. Stipe discovered him and produced his first two albums Little and West of Rome. He put out a total of 13 records over his career (including two in 2009), though he is...
When he was 18, Chesnutt was in a car accident that left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, but he did not let his disability stop him from writing or performing. Stipe discovered him and produced his first two albums Little and West of Rome. He put out a total of 13 records over his career (including two in 2009), though he is...
- 12/28/2009
- by Kyle Anderson
- MTV Newsroom
Vic Chesnutt, one of the greatest songwriters of our time and as charismatic a concert performer as Springsteen despite being confined to a wheelchair, committed suicide through an overdose of muscle relaxants. His tragic life was inextricably intertwined with his art. At age 18, driving drunk, a car crash left him paraplegic; never much of a reader before that, he started reading voraciously. He also began to take music-making much more seriously, and his reading eventually influenced his lyrics. His physical abilities varied from night to night; how well he functioned could determine his set lists, and for a while he played with his guitar pick superglued to his fingers.
Overcoming adversity, from 1990 through this year he had 14 albums released under his own name plus two as brute. in a collaboration with the band Widespread Panic.
read more...
Overcoming adversity, from 1990 through this year he had 14 albums released under his own name plus two as brute. in a collaboration with the band Widespread Panic.
read more...
- 12/27/2009
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Vic Chesnutt, the folk-rocker whose sometimes dark reflections on life were influenced in part by a car wreck that left him paralyzed, has died. He was 45. Family friend Christina Stuckey, who answered the phone at Chesnutt's home, confirmed the death to The Associated Press. Chesnutt's record label, Constellation Records, said in a statement on its Web site that Chesnutt died on Christmas Day, Friday. The brief statement says "Vic transformed our sense of what true character, grace and determination are all about." Chesnutt worked with such notable artists as R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe and guitarist...
- 12/26/2009
- by Associated Press
- Hitfix
Singer and songwriter Vic Chesnutt is dead at 45. The low-key "Sponge" penner was known for his dark, witty tunes, which have been covered by the likes of Madonna, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins and Hootie and the Blowfish. Chesnutt died Friday in a hospital in Athens, Ga. He had been in a coma for a week since taking what a family spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times was an "intentional" overdose of prescription muscle relaxants. In an interview with the newspaper earlier this month, Chesnutt discussed his country song, "Flirted With You All My Life," which he said served as a sort of confrontational letter to his own thoughts about suicide. "I've been a...
- 12/26/2009
- E! Online
“Coward,” the first track on Vic Chesnutt’s At The Cut, finds the oft-morbid songwriter whipping himself to the edge of the abyss, with eerie death-march strings and excoriating electric guitar from members of A Silver Mt. Zion and Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto gnashing at his back. This is much the same band that collaborated with Chesnutt on 2007’s North Star Deserter, and this time around they find leaner, tighter chemistry between Chesnutt’s songwriting and Zion’s booming chills. Lyrically, Chesnutt has converted his psyche into something between a short-story collection and the final act of King Lear ...
- 9/29/2009
- avclub.com
Vic Chesnutt: At the Cut (Constellation)
This continues the style shift started on North Star Deserter, Chesnutt’s first album on Constellation, recording in Montreal using a similar mix of musicians including Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto (who had the most input regarding production and arrangements), Frankie Sparrow’s Chad Jones and Nadia Moss, and labelmates Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. Like its predecessor, it has stormier musical outbursts than his previous work usually contained, including the outright anthemic “Chinaberry Tree,” but there’s still plenty of room for acoustic guitar-centered songs.
read more...
This continues the style shift started on North Star Deserter, Chesnutt’s first album on Constellation, recording in Montreal using a similar mix of musicians including Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto (who had the most input regarding production and arrangements), Frankie Sparrow’s Chad Jones and Nadia Moss, and labelmates Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. Like its predecessor, it has stormier musical outbursts than his previous work usually contained, including the outright anthemic “Chinaberry Tree,” but there’s still plenty of room for acoustic guitar-centered songs.
read more...
- 9/26/2009
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
On September 16, after battling leukemia for many years, 72-year-old Mary Travers succumbed to cancer in Connecticut's Danbury Hospital. Joining singer-songwriters Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early sixties, Travers completed the legendary folk-pop trio Peter, Paul & Mary, a group that had a profound effect on American culture. Though Pp&M achieved five Grammy® Awards, their influence on Baby Boomers went beyond hit albums and singles. They helped mold the opinions of millions, persistently trying to open the minds of everyone who listened to their recordings or saw them perform live. Over the years, "Puff, The Magic Dragon," "Blowin' In The Wind," and "If I Had A Hammer" were required learning for children while their parents belted out the big chorus of "Leaving On A Jet Plane" whenever it played on the radio. Mary Travers was that warm,...
- 9/17/2009
- by Mike Ragogna
- Huffington Post
“I don’t know what this is,” said Jem Cohen, in his introduction to last night’s screening of his new work Empires of Tin at the IFC Center. He went on to call it “a documentary musical hallucination,” which really only chips the surface of this astounding, frustrating, one-of-a-kind piece. Here’s my go at further explaining it: Empires of Tin the movie is an expanded documentation of Empires of Tin the performance, commissioned by the Vienna Film Festival in 2007. Collaborating with musicians like Vic Chesnutt (who Cohen described last night as “a great American”), Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, and T. Griffin, Cohen put together a so ...
- 8/12/2009
- by Karina Longworth
- Spout
Radiohead's Thom Yorke, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, ex-Pixies' Frank Black, The National, Dinosaur Jr. and nearly two dozen other artists have contributed exclusive recordings to tribute album "Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy." The 21-song set will be released via Shout! Factory on Sept. 29, with proceeds to directly aid songwriter Mulcahy, who has been raising his twin daughters by himself since his wife Melissa died in September 2008. Other talents include Vic Chesnutt, Mercury Rev, Josh Rouse, Frank Turner, Ben Kweller, Juliana Hatfield, Artists like A.C. Newman, Laura Viers and Buffalo Tom also lent a hand to a...
- 6/25/2009
- by Katie Hasty
- Hitfix
A paralysed singer has recalled how Rem frontman Michael Stipe flipped him out of his wheelchair for his own good. Vic Chesnutt, who covered the band's 'Everybody Hurts' at a tribute show at Carnegie Hall last night, told the New York Post about the incident. Chesnutt said: "One time in the early '90s, Michael came over to my house. "He pushed right in the door, pushed me into the living room very forcefully and then flipped me over backwards in my wheelchair and said: 'Look. I heard you're (more)...
- 3/11/2009
- by By Mayer Nissim
- Digital Spy
Southern Gothic mysteriousness meets psych-rock to splendid results
With his meandering intonation, lyrics and sense of meter, Vic Chesnutt is a singer-songwriter who is seemingly best served by a solo album—or at least with a few supportive but firmly-in-the-background instrumental players. It’s odd, then, that the best of his dozen solo albums is The Salesman and Bernadette, a collaborative project with Lambchop. A kindred wandering spirit, perhaps?...
With his meandering intonation, lyrics and sense of meter, Vic Chesnutt is a singer-songwriter who is seemingly best served by a solo album—or at least with a few supportive but firmly-in-the-background instrumental players. It’s odd, then, that the best of his dozen solo albums is The Salesman and Bernadette, a collaborative project with Lambchop. A kindred wandering spirit, perhaps?...
- 2/26/2009
- Pastemagazine.com
Many songwriters expose their heart and soul, but Vic Chesnutt hoists up his spleen, too, venting gnarly proclamations, wry observations, throwaway potty-mouth jokes and Southern Gothic vignettes. And, sometimes, the dude needs help. The versatile, prolific Athens, Ga., songwriter’s 12th studio album, Dark Developments, is his latest in a long line of collaborative highs and lows. Here’s a breakdown.
- 10/29/2008
- Pastemagazine.com
The Rough South of Larry Brown
IFP West
Los Angeles Film Festival Reviews
It's only fitting that a documentary profiling the origins and work of highly regarded Southern writer Larry Brown is as colorful and evocative as his gritty literary milieu.
Keeping the talking-heads quotient down to an intimate two -- those of the Mississippi fireman-turned-author and his supportive but pleasantly candid wife, Mary Annie -- filmmaker Gary Hawkins artfully intersperses the down-home interviews with several dramatizations of Brown's short stories.
Each has its own distinct look and flavor. While "Boy and Dog" blends a range of film stocks with archival footage to tell a story from a kid's perspective, and "Samaritans", featuring actors Will Patton and "Sling Blade"'s Natalie Canerday, sticks to Super 16mm, "Wild Thing" is told through a montage of still black-and-white images.
Although the influence of such avant-garde directors as France's Chris Marker and Yugoslavia's Dusan Makavejev is apparent here, Hawkins, whose companion film, "The Rough South of Harry Crews", won a regional Emmy, gets maximum mileage out of the technique, which, when paired with Vic Chesnutt's compositions, allows the viewer to get a fairly authentic taste of Brown's often booze-soaked prose.
Ultimately, this spirited portrait of the man and his profession has just as much to say about his relationship with the woman who has allowed the man to pursue that calling -- raising the kids while he was out haunting the bars and the lonely stretches of road -- to find the inspiration for those Southern-fried slices of life.
Los Angeles Film Festival Reviews
It's only fitting that a documentary profiling the origins and work of highly regarded Southern writer Larry Brown is as colorful and evocative as his gritty literary milieu.
Keeping the talking-heads quotient down to an intimate two -- those of the Mississippi fireman-turned-author and his supportive but pleasantly candid wife, Mary Annie -- filmmaker Gary Hawkins artfully intersperses the down-home interviews with several dramatizations of Brown's short stories.
Each has its own distinct look and flavor. While "Boy and Dog" blends a range of film stocks with archival footage to tell a story from a kid's perspective, and "Samaritans", featuring actors Will Patton and "Sling Blade"'s Natalie Canerday, sticks to Super 16mm, "Wild Thing" is told through a montage of still black-and-white images.
Although the influence of such avant-garde directors as France's Chris Marker and Yugoslavia's Dusan Makavejev is apparent here, Hawkins, whose companion film, "The Rough South of Harry Crews", won a regional Emmy, gets maximum mileage out of the technique, which, when paired with Vic Chesnutt's compositions, allows the viewer to get a fairly authentic taste of Brown's often booze-soaked prose.
Ultimately, this spirited portrait of the man and his profession has just as much to say about his relationship with the woman who has allowed the man to pursue that calling -- raising the kids while he was out haunting the bars and the lonely stretches of road -- to find the inspiration for those Southern-fried slices of life.
- 7/16/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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