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

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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