Dear Boy

LA’s Dear Boy are a romantic bunch, their sound beckons warm embraces and keen smiles from young lovers. The outfit led by their enigmatic frontman/songwriter Ben Grey and completed by Austin Hayman, Nils Bue and Keith Cooper deliver anthemic, cinematic pop songs in abundance. The lush production and effortless beauty of their musicality define them as a truly unique band. Even though they proudly wear their influences on their sleeve, the new wave leanings of The Cure and The Smiths, the Britpop decadence of Pulp and traces of their roots growing up in a time when punk and alternative rock were at their height, these elements can be found in Dear Boy’s music but it is uncommon for a band to unify such eclectic influences and create a sound that is so elegant, romantic and melancholy.

Melancholy permeates every song, whether the songs are hopeful or full of heartbreak and anguish, Ben Grey manages to embody his own elegance into his song writing. With such effortless breeze, these songs conjure a mood of longing and willing, songs such as ‘Hesitation Waltz’ and ‘Local Roses’ can suggest the joys of romance and the pain of separation in one sweeping lyric. Some songs feel like a sigh while others feel like rejoice. ‘Oh So Quiet’ and recent Christmas single ‘Cold Spell’ recount the joys of young love and the bittersweet bite of its ambivalence. There is no distinction between the two, this is a band that basks in the spectrum of love and beauty, and offers it all to be felt all at once through sublime poetic lyrics and shimmering popular song.

The beauty of their music paired with the elegance of their simplistic visual aesthetic help place Dear Boy in a timeless space. There is a lot present that suggests the past, such as the stark minimalism of the post punk aesthetic, but there is also a vitality and urgency to Dear Boy’s sound that makes them undeniably contemporary and ahead of their time. Most often they flirt between the two. In times where rock music is being marginalised and diluted by the unavoidable glare and hegemony of modern pop and dance music, it is a truly wonderful thing to find a band that relish in the decadence and opulence of rock and roll’s past, but are not afraid to break the rules of male stereotypes, of boys in a band, and create something of true value, that is genderless, timeless and damn near perfect in its execution.

Dear or die.

dearboyofficial.com 

Celluloid is Immortality

Once I had calmed down from all the excitement and euphoria I experienced while watching the new Star Wars film ‘Rogue One’, I was left to finally reflect on what I had just witnessed and how I actually felt about certain aspects of the film. For all the films triumphs I was left feeling cold, that on some level there was something indistinctly wrong with it.

The most significant and controversial factor of the film is the reconstruction of Peter Cushing’s character Grand Moff Tarkin from the original Star Wars film. The CGI special effects that restore Cushing’s image to such a realistic and authentic likeness are jaw dropping and it demonstrates just how far we have come in the last ten years with regards to special effects and movie making across the board. Once you process what you are seeing, that this is in fact an entirely CG character, which takes a while to recognise as it is that life like, it is then that you can overcome your initial excitement and fanboy giddiness and begin to contemplate if this is in fact in good taste or poor taste, whether it is ethical, legal or even humane.

After some considerable time of mulling this over I must say that there is something about this entire thing which just feels wrong. Because the sequences which include such innovative and dazzling special effects are the most thrilling and exciting moments of ‘Rogue One’, they have come to taint the film for me as it does not feel like cinema anymore. This obsession with nostalgia and digging up the past to the point of literally resurrecting the dead to give posthumous performances (without any consent or blessing) just feels icky and in incredibly poor taste. No matter how much love and affection motivated the filmmakers to reconstruct Peter Cushing in his iconic role, it is unnecessary, inhuman and it isn’t filmmaking. This is no longer cinema. What we are experiencing as we progress further into the post digital age is something that can only be defined as ‘post-cinema’. This is merely digital reconstruction, which no matter how awe inspiring and breath taking, is completely contradictory as to what cinema is in its purest definition. Cinema is to capture something, a moment in time and space with a camera and preserve it for all time. This crosses the line as we play God instead of artist.

As we continually demonstrate our lacking ability to say or create anything new we simply obsess over how good it was ‘back then’ and do anything to recreate those glory days. The most enjoyable parts of ‘Rogue One’ are when it feels most reminiscent and recognisable to the original Star Wars, which defeats the point of telling new stories or making new films. Why not simply watch the original films again and again?  They still exist. They always will. That is what cinema is, immortality. Celluloid is immortality, it preserves the mortal soul forever and captures a time and place which will always exist. The greatest performances of the greatest actors will live on and in doing so, so will they as cinema will never fade, never diminish or alter in its beauty or its clarity. James Dean will live forever. Marlon Brando will live forever. Peter Cushing will live forever. But it is inhuman to reanimate them from beyond the grave without their consent, to play God in this perverse puppet show of necromancy. Let them rest, they have lived and they have died. They have given us so much which we can cherish forever. Our obsession with the past must end or it will destroy our future. It will also destroy our past and reduce all that made it sacred and beautiful, meaningless.

Celluloid is immortality. Treasure it.