Highway Tunes

Summer Road Mix: The best 2010 songs for a road trip warrior

Yes, you want these guys in your car. MGMT's "Congratulations" is a must play.
Forget where the open road will take you, it's all about what you're listeningto along the way.
Gaslight Anthem has a lot of Springsteen in their sound — which make themperfect for the road.
The boys from Vampire Weekend are made for summer.

As you get ready to hit the road for you summer vacation destination, you need to have the proper tune-age to ease you on down that road (and drown out the kids/in-laws/insert-your-own-annoyance-here screaming in the back seat.)

With that in mind, here is a list of the best songs of what’s been a particularly fruitful first six months of 2010. Now get downloading, or else prepare to, heaven forbid, make conversation in the car.

“Crown On The Ground” by Sleigh Bells

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We’re going to start off with a little cheat here, because this was actually released as a single last year. But we’ll allow it because the album which contains it came out just last month, and because its thunderously catchy beat might act as a homemade hydraulic system for your car.

“Bloodbuzz, Ohio” by The National

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Quite simply the best song from the best album released so far this year. Plus it gives us a one-two start from bands based out of Brooklyn, even though The National’s darkly compelling beauty bears little similarity to Sleigh Bells in-your-face bounce.

“Horchata” by Vampire Weekend

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This was a band made for the summer, and the breezy, marimba-fueled groove they concoct here practically conjures up warm breezes by the force of its will. It’s only when you listen closer that you notice the melancholy aftertaste of Ezra Koenigs’s lyrics.

“Kiss Like Your Kiss” by Lucinda Williams with Elvis Costello

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I guess it’s impossible to avoid vampires this summer, so let’s slow it down a bit with this lovely duet from the True Blood soundtrack. When these two vets harmonize, they summon heartache that you don’t need to be undead to feel.

“Melancholy Hill” by Gorillaz

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"Plastic Beach" was a triumph for Damon Albarn’s comic-book collective. Here he steers clear of the hip-hop and guest stars that permeate much of the album and delivers a picture-perfect pop song, all wistful and gorgeous.

“Bushwick Blues” by Delta Spirit

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It’s unusual to hear an indie band leave cynicism at the door, but this single is full of open-hearted romanticism, and it’s quite refreshing. Coupled with the tightness of their guitar attack, you’ve got an irresistible track that deserves a big audience.

“Crash Years” by The New Pornographers

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If a mad scientist went into a lab with the intention of creating a band that was made for car stereos, he would likely come out with these Canadian power-poppers. With Neko Case on lead vocals, this one has more hooks than a pirate convention.

“The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire

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They’ve been slowly leaking tracks online, whetting everyone’s appetite for the early August release of their third full-length. For my money, this moody song, with piano borrowed from 10CC and suburban outlook borrowed from David Lynch, is the best of those four killer preview tracks.

“Congratulations” by MGMT

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Many people didn’t know what to make of the prog-rock moves of this buzzy duo’s second album. Too bad, because it’s a trippy winner. But if you’re one of the timid, you can stick with this song, the album’s title track and most accessible song of the bunch, a clever ode to the pitfalls of believing your own press clippings.

“You Must Be Out Of Your Mind” by Magnetic Fields

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Summer can’t be all roses and sunshine. You need a little bit of Stephin Merritt’s acerbic humor, here combined with a Baroque-pop arrangement and his unerringly catchy songwriting skills, to balance things out.

“Hurricane J” by The Hold Steady

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This Minnesota band’s latest set was a bit of a step backward as a whole from the heights they had reached on their previous albums. This song, however, a hard-charging tribute to a girl whose self-sabotage knows no bounds, is an undeniable winner.

“Old Haunts” by Gaslight Anthem

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Like the Hold Steady, this group has a lot of Springsteen in its sound. On this swaggering rocker they find a groove all their own, as frontman Brian Fallon spits out verses warning about the dead ends of nostalgia.

“The Ghost Inside” by Broken Bells

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You’d never guess that James Mercer could be funky from his work with The Shins. Thanks to the influence of producer and collaborator Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, Mercer channels Prince on this bumping track, even pulling out a knockout falsetto.

“Take Care” by Beach House

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What better way for a summer mix to go out than with a band named Beach House? This is also the perfect closer because of its dreamy atmospherics and the way Victoria Legrand’s voice cuts through it all with the sweet promise, “I’ll take care of you.”

If that doesn’t cure you of road rage, you’re beyond help, my friend. Have a great summer!

Movie Review

Live action Lilo & Stitch remake offers up frenzied fun and nostalgia

Lilo & Stitch

Courtesy of Disney

Lilo & Stitch returns to theaters this weekend.

The project to turn every single Disney animated movie into a “live action” film has rarely seemed like anything but a money grab by the movie studio. Most of the films have failed to update the original in any meaningful way, and in many of the cases, they’re almost shot-for-shot remakes, making the reason for the new film’s existence even more confusing.

Having almost exhausted the supply of their 20th century movies, Disney has now remade 2002’s Lilo & Stitch. The film follows an alien experiment, originally known as 626 (voiced by Chris Sanders), created by Jumba ( Zach Galifianakis) for the benefit of an alien race led by the Grand Councilwoman (Hannah Waddingham). Unfortunately, 626 is too uncontrollable for them, and is banished to the faraway planet known as Earth.

Landing in Hawaii, the creature soon to be known as Stitch gloms on to a young girl named Lilo (Maia Kealoha), who mistakes it for a dog while looking for companionship following the death of her parents. Tracked by Jumba and fellow alien Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), now in human form, Stitch leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes, much to the chagrin of Lilo’s older sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong).

Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp and written by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, the film will surely be a blast of nostalgia for anyone who was a kid when the original came out. The now-3D Stitch is just as chaotic as ever, and they even included cast members from the first film like Tia Carrere (now playing a social worker for the orphaned sisters) and Amy Hill as a kindly neighbor.

But for all of the frenzied fun that Stitch offers, there’s very little else that holds the story together. For one, the Lilo character as a real person doesn’t work as well as she does in animated form, as there’s something fluid that happens in animation that feels stilted when it’s an actual little girl. Perhaps sensing this fault, the film is loaded to the hilt with bite-sized moments that try to make the audience laugh, but do little to give the story any meaning.

The difference between animation and live action is never more evident than with Jumba, Pleakley, and CIA agent Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance). Characters that are goofy and enjoyable in animated form come off as weird and off-putting in human form. They’re supposed to bring a sense of fun and even suspense to the film, but instead they feel like characters who are getting in the way of a better story.

Kealoha, making her professional debut, is definitely cute and offers up some interesting moments opposite Stitch and Nani, but her lack of experience shows. Agudong turns in the best performance, giving a bit of emotional weight to a film that needed more. Galifianakis and Magnussen would have been better served as voice-only roles; neither comes off well when their characters turn into humans. Hill is like a warm hug every time she comes on screen, and the story could have used more of her.

The new Lilo & Stitch is not an abomination, but like most of the Disney live action remakes before it, it fails to stand on its own merits. Never given a chance to be its own thing and featuring storytelling too disjointed to be effective, the film is another so-so effort from a studio that knows how to make much better movies.

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Lilo & Stitch is now playing in theaters.

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