New Min

I tried to go to openings last night but it was rather hot and quite crowded. Easily thwarted, I decided to partake in that recent Twilight movie, New Moon. This attempt at immersion in a viable phenomenon was (pleasantly) interrupted midway, by a phone call from Bruce Benderson. We gabbed about hustlers and movies then I got back to Bella and that man with the chest. The Twilight movies do a very good job at world creation, I must say. Watching them, one embodies this alienated and disenfranchised ethos that is the heart of teen adolescence. For the cashcow that it is, it's really cheap looking. Those wolves are SO cg! I've got to think that it lends to the world creation in some way, as if the digital sheen that washes the film creates a membrane on the filmworld or something, that colors everything in that Pacific Northwestern town a hue more mysterious than ours. Actually, emergence of the wolves (at the Hour 1 marker!) was as far as I made it. Interrupted again by a text from d, I opted to go to Mattachine, PJ Deboy and John Cameron Mitchell's party at the wonderful bar, Julius. As I dressed for the outing I put on 'All the Lovers (Fear of Tigers Remix)' - perfection - and disocvered that the entirety of Kylie's new opus Aphrodite had lept out from its clamshell, onto the interweb.

'Get Outta My Way' made my soundtrack as I weaved the streets to the party. I 'Put [My] Hands Up' as I crossed 14th. Since there wasn't enough time to listen in full on my walk to the bar, I was understandably preoccupied; I excused myself to Adam from Butt by explaining that I had written a book about her, afterall. So, after a dance to Divine's 'Walk Like a Man' record, d and I raced home and engaged in a listening party, eating taco truck tacos in bed and writhing with euphoria (Okay, perhaps I was the only participant in the latter activity). d irked me a tad when he questioned Aphrodite's albumness. Calling it "12 stabs at a hit." While there's some very good stuff on there, when I woke up this morning, I lamented that there wasn't anything that felt like X's shining moment (for me, Kevin Killian disagrees, finding no charm in) 'The One': contender for lead single but released in a half-assed 4th position. I love 'The One' with its surging Italo beats. There's nothing quite as heavy on this album (strikingly minimal is perhaps a better way as describing it, since I think few would go so far as to call a moment on any Kylie album but Impossible Princess heavy).

Pop albums of this sort expand as they soundtrack your personal moments, collecting them like flystrips. And then you're hooked. Aphrodite is open enough for this. It's VERY consistant, perhaps too. (There's a perfect irony in my exposure to both Min's new opus and New Moon in the same evening, as these pop products are colored with a kind of austere gloss that crystalizes them.) After a couple run throughs already, I'm feeling 'Illusion' which sounds very much like a Fever album track (and I could bestow no greater compliment than this). d made me turn off the album, for its Hi NRG sound well into its second rotation (during the aptly named surger, 'Too Much'). Time for bed. It remains to be determined how well this album will hold up. Hype is such a beast to see through. But, just like the Richard X tune that closes the album, at present, I 'Cant' Beat the Feeling.'