In their continuing quest to have their ratings eclipsed by OLN, the programming geniuses at CBS have hastily scheduled the public unveiling of the Survivor: Guatemala cast for tomorrow morning on the Early Show. True, the number of people interested in such an event is probably marginally smaller than the readership of this blog (perhaps even the number of people writing this blog). And true, that time might have been better spent telling CBS’s early-morning audience for the five hundred sixty-first time that it’s a good idea to save, rather than run up credit card debt. Or perhaps they ought to have given more camera time to Bobby Flay, because Lord knows he doesn’t have nearly enough already.
But it does seem a bit odd that the first volley in the publicity campaign for the show leading off CBS’s fall schedule has yet, less than 24 hours in advance, to be mentioned in text on the Early Show’s own web site. The closest is a video clip, the text for which misleadingly promises “The inside scoop from ‘Survivor’ castoffs.” Yeah. Consider, for purposes of comparison, that for more than two weeks, TitanTV has listed next Tuesday’s Early Show as the site of the debut of the Amazing Race 8 (Family Edition) contestants.
But whatever. The few people left trying to spoil Survivor will dutifully tune in, vidcap and dissect tomorrow’s Early Show, just as we always do. They could have replaced the cast with a semi-tame troop of howler monkeys, and we’d still debate whether that older one with the shock of white fur on top had longer beard growth in the camp shots than in the pre-game pictures.
There is, however, a serious and burning mystery that may be answered tomorrow: CBS has waffled on the title of the show. Is it, as originally announced, Survivor Guatemala: The Maya Empire? Or is it, as the logo on CBS’s fall preview picture claims, the Survivor Guatemala: The Mayan Empire? The former (Maya) is the preferred form seen in archaeological literature. So will CBS side with the scientists, or with their ignorant web monkeys? We can… gasp… hardly wait… to find out.
To continue our series of musical reports that nobody expressed a particular interest in reading, we look at two hot-off-the-iTunes indie pop/rock singles: Editors‘ “Munich” and Death Cab for Cutie’s (gasp) major label debut, “Soul Meets Body.” We should probably say “listen to” rather than “look at,” but for reasons you’ll soon discover, we’d rather not.
For Editors, the first question that arises is: Why? What possessed them to make a song that sounds exactly like (and yet largely missing the point of) Interpol? The second verse features chiming, staccato guitars, lifted directly from “PDA,” while throughout the vocals seem a bit, well, xeroxed. Perhaps that’s because Editors’ Tom Smith is trying desperately to be Paul Banks (who himself was trying to be David Bowie, but whatever). Oh well, since Interpol stole a Birmingham band’s sound on “Say Hello to Angels,” we suppose it’s appropriate that some Brummies should try to steal it back (although the sound they ended up with is, regrettably, not the Smiths’). Still, a semi-decent song, so long as you can ignore its illicit provenance.
We’re a little less sure whether reports of Death Cab’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. There’s at least some truth to suspicions that DCFC’s transformation into Major Label Rock Product will be less than auspicious. Our initial reaction was a lot like Pitchfork’s (link above). While PF’s Jason Crock heard the mandolins as “Losing My Religion”-era REM (which - thanks a lot! - is a chilling audio image we can not soon erase, much as we’d like to), we focused on the machine-like drums, falsely lively beat, lifeless vocals and general over-orchestration, and heard the limp product of mid-’90s New Order. Either way, not pretty, especially since we were previously of the belief that Ben Gibbard could do no wrong, musically speaking.
But on about the fifth listen we were able to overlook the tepid opening minute-plus, and hear traces of the old Death Cab (while not the Barsuk version, at least the Matador one). On the bridges, when the mandolins and bass drop out, and you’re left with Gibbard’s falsetto and Chris Walla’s guitar arpeggios (and those robotic drums), you can still hear the chemistry that made this band what it was. But if this is the Big Single, we have to worry what the rest of the album will bring.
We hate to bring this parallel up, since we’ve struggled mightily to ignore it, since we first noticed that “For What Reason” stole the chorus melody from “In Too Deep.” We’d even convinced ourselves that Postal Service’s “Against All Odds” was partially listenable (of course, the subtraction of Phil Collins from the equation goes a long way towards that). But now we to face up to it: Death Cab for Cutie is in danger of becoming (shudder) Genesis. And we’re not talking the prog-era, Peter Gabriel band, we’re talking the 1986, “Phil Collins Superstar” edition. Like Death Cab, that band had also evolved from critically-lauded lads with a cult following to Mainstream Rock Stars, while also juggling a similarly successful Front Man’s Side Project. For Invisible Touch, Genesis dialed it in, slathered on the cheese, and made a ton of money. What will Gibbard, Walla and company do, with Atlantic money to spend? We’re a bit afraid to find out.
