Alice Plaza

Product Reviews - Thanks to Nikki Friedli and Murray Neck Leading Edge Music - Alice Plaza

Album Review: Nikki Friedli

Album: Sound Awake

Artist: Karnivool

Genre: Rock

Another album from Perth-born outfit, Karnivool; but is it any good?

Sound Awake is a fascinating album in the way that I've never simultaneously enjoyed and been so completely and utterly bored by an album before. Now, with this album being so heavily thematic, I'm making the assumption that the songs are designed to flow from one to the other and as such creating one massive, epic, sweeping-guitar-chord laden, waning-vocals littered song. For a conceptual "song" there was really limited variation in , well, just about everything. Yes, lots of heavy bass guitar and yes, we've established that you can hold that vocal note for what seems like longer that some God forsaken episode of Home and Away. The track Deadman runs for an impressive 12 minutes, but like the larger concept this is the album, it's borderline pretentiously long. Slagging done and dusted, the tracks on this album individually are pretty enjoyable really, especially when they get upbeat and break the monotony. Karnivool even throw in some didgeridoo and catch you off-balance which was a highlight of the album for me. There's nothing wrong with a thematic album (Led Zepplin, Allan Parsons Project and David Bowie had a few), I'm just not sure the sound of Karnivool's latest was intriguing enough for me to want to have my ears bludgeoned with it. I liked this album so much more when i listened to it at random i found myself developing more of an appreciation for Sound Awake.

Film Review: Nikki Friedli

Film: Gran Torino

Director: Clint Eastwood

Genre: Drama

He may be 78, but Clint Eastwood is no geriatric yet playing the role of bitter, bigoted, Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski. This poor old bloke has found himself surrounded by every ethnicity and young gangs and hoons and spend the majority of his time in his porch waving a gun, of course. It is Clint Eastwood after all. He's the aged tribute to Eastwood's plethora of hard-arse, idolised-by-men-everywhere characters; you will "Get. Off. My. Lawn" when Kowalski rasps it at you like Satan with a chest infection. Despite the fact that Hollywood is drowning in cliched stories of friendship in unlikely places, Gran Torino executes this dangerous genre exceptionally well. This lies mostly with the fact that Kowalski softens in character, but still remains the same stone-faced crotchety old man with a bad racial slurs up his sleeve. Instead, they're almost more like a pet name rather than an insult. Kowalski's character doesn't undergo a complete facelift. Much like the featured classic car the film is named after, Kowalski is not restored to a newer updated version in brighter colours; instead, he's simply a more polished up and less damaged character. The ending to this film also works massively towards the films credit. Massively. Gran Torino is funny in places and ways you never expected and it's no-frills, upfront honesty kicks home the emotion.