Word: thebackground
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...thus ostracized from the group. Truly a person left to "the Karen Carpenter table, "Cue camerapan over to a table containing several emaciatedgirls sitting bleakly with no food in sight. Moresubtly, as the girls create a crime scene in Liz'sbedroom with the corpse, the song blaring in thebackground is, ironically enough. The Cars "LetThe Good Times Roll." It's at those moments whenJawbreaker lives up to the classicdefinition of a "black comedy...
...lyrics are not only intelligent andhonest, but also remarkably simple. True, sheoccasionally overshoots and ends up withimpenetrable babble: "We left the men and we wentfor a walk in the gatineaus / and talked likewomen like women would / womyn to womyn would?"But when she tightens up her meaning and finds thebackground in which to frame it, the result isoften perfection. "I Was Hoping," for instance, isthe best track on the album simply because itscatchy melody is complemented, rather thantrivialized by it lyrics. No line repeats in thesong, preferring to move in a limitlessprogression...
R.E.M. at its best is a band that you sleepwith playing on your stereo, that you have in thebackground when a couple friends are over justhanging out or that you sing with when the sky isclear and the stars are low. Even R.E.M.'s "happy"songs like "Shiny Happy People" and "Stand" seemto cross over the line of carefree pop into amulti-faceted festival. Up proves that R.E.M.hasn't lost it; "it" just went on vacation overthe past six years or so. The band is different,but they've recaptured their old glory and that iswhy "the all-new R.E.M...
...bestwhen he is pushed to the edge of frustration anddespair. It is wonderful to watch his anguishedlooks of confusion suddenly take coherence as hecomes up with another cockamamie scheme to dighimself out of the hole he is unwittinglyenlarging. Smith's innocent, if somewhatslow-witted naivete plays well against thebackground of madmen into which she is unwittinglydropped. And Carmichael all but exudesgood-nature; his portrayal of the delightfullycorrupt bellboy is such that would charm the pantsoff any man... err...woman...
...going to be doing a much broaderapproach--not just Cambridge, not just theparticular history but also something of how lifeworks and the mentality. What is thebackground--social, economic political,historical--that makes a [a city] work...
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