Funnel Cloud, Hem’s third studio album, is a warmly written and produced record that too often feels like a Sunday afternoon drive that is a little too slow, with too much time to count every tree of every forest. It is definitively music that is aching to sound like the America of small towns and big cities, moonlight and hotel light bulbs. Of William Faulkner or Ansel Adams.
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Some musicians are meant to be experienced, to be seen playing hell out of their instruments. This can be said of Jake Shimabukuro, a ukulele virtuoso from, where else, Hawaii.
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Science, as defined by the OED, is ‘knowledge acquired by study.’ An interesting premise for a narrative film then, a study of sleep to gather knowledge of it. (One is reminded of Seinfeld’s George Costanza and his original idea for the Jerry sitcom: people driving to work, working, driving home, reading, eating, sleeping, eating again…)
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I couldn’t figure out how to write about Sean Lennon’s music without writing about his dad. It was like having to mention Garfunkel when you solely wanted to talk about Simon. Or mentioning one member of Monty Python without referring endlessly to MP sketches. I couldn’t figure, also, whether it mattered or not, this tight-lip about the dad. I thought things like, ‘The bass, namely “Tomorrow,” sounds McCartney-like. But don’t say that.’
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