The Red Wings season is now over, having fallen to the Anaheim Ducks in six games. Yes, they were the top seed in the west, but most experts picked the Wings to lose to the Flames, then the Sharks, and then the Ducks, so perhaps the conference finals exit is more of an achievement than most prognosticators will admit. The Ducks certainly had the best goaltender remaining in the playoffs in pending free agent (more on that in a bit) Jean-Sebastien Giguere and a fearsome tandem on defense, but their lack of offensive depth gave the Wings a definite opening, one that they couldn’t quite grasp. When the Wings stuck to their 2007 game plan by causing havoc in front of the net, cycling the puck, and rotating their positions in the offensive zone, they put the puck in the back of the net. When they retreated to the perimeter offense that caused many of their early exits, they couldn’t buy a break. I was amazed by how many times Wings players had the puck on their sticks with a glorious opportunity, only to have it bounce over the blade or glance off the heel. I can hardly blame the players for the quality of the ice or the bounce of the puck, but tantalizing moments like those kept coming up.

As I look toward the 2007 off-season, here’s my evaluation of the Wings’ positions:

Forwards: The team’s forward lines had a bit of an overhaul late in the season with the addition of Todd Bertuzzi and Kyle Calder, but those players were frustrating at best. Bertuzzi is a shell of his former self, occasionally mustering the spirit which drove his finest moments as a Canuck, but more often dumping the puck back to the defense when he had a chance to drive hard to the net. He showed a few flashes of life, but not enough to merit as much ice time as he received late in the Ducks series. Kyle Calder was a waste of space as a healthy scratch. Maybe he’ll revive his career in another city, but he did absolutely nothing in Detroit. Both of these players are unrestricted free agents, so I look forward to waving a cheery goodbye to their respective five and three million dollar salaries. Another UFA, Robert Lang, had some better moments during the playoffs, but not enough to merit four million against the cap. He had an up-and-down season (I’m well aware of this, since he was on my fantasy team for part of it), but disappeared for months at a time.

The Wings’ top line of Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, and Tomas Holmstrom was split up in game three of the Ducks series, but all three played well throughout the playoffs. Datsyuk answered questions about his spotty playoff record, Zetterberg often dominated the puck, and Holmstrom was a warrior. While they authored the game six comeback, I thought there were moments, especially in road games, when the trio could have done more to dominate the flow of the game like Anaheim’s Getzlaf / Perry line would. Mikael Samuelsson typically played with Zetterberg and Holmstrom after Datsyuk left the line and held his own with his excellent shot and passing abilities.

Dan Cleary was the Wings’ best forward throughout the playoffs and set the tone for their re-emergence as a physical team. He’s not even getting a million a year, but he’s precisely what the Wings need on their third line to fill in for the hitting of Darren McCarty and Martin Lapointe. Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby are the remaining members of the Grind Line, and while they didn’t quite hold their own in the scoring department, Draper’s plastering hit in game five was a highlight of the series. Maltby just resigned, so these guys will be around for a while.

While I’d hoped that the Wings would make the finals, the biggest bright spot from this season was the emergence of a variety of young guys in key roles, much like the Ducks’ rookies last season. While Johan Franzen, Tomas Kopecky, Jiri Hudler, and Valtteri Filppula may not have the upside of Getzlaf, they each showed the potential to fill key roster spots in the future. Franzen, “the Mule,” is a big body who could learn a few things from Holmstrom about scoring touch in front of the net, but managed to score some clutch goals at critical times, like the marker that finished off Calgary. Kopecky replaced Calder in the Anaheim series and traded big hits and speed with a frustrating propensity to take minor penalties, but should be better once he’s accustomed to the team. Hudler showed a good amount of speed in his typically brief appearances, but may need scoring line time to emerge as a regular threat. Filppula is the biggest bright spot from this group, as his fantastic speed and hockey sense just needs a bit more a finishing touch in order to cement his place alongside Datsyuk in the future.

If Lang, Bertuzzi, and Calder all leave, the Wings will need a physical winger, a playmaking center for the second line, and another “project” like Cleary, Draper, or Maltby for the fourth line. Let’s hope these things happen.

Defense: I’d argue that the Wings would have won the Anaheim series if not for the injuries to Mathieu Schneider and Niklas Kronwall, since having to play Andreas Lilja and Kyle Quincey on a regular shift allowed the Ducks to dominate the offensive zone. Lilja single-handedly gave away game five—yes, with a bouncing puck, but one that should have been dumped off to the far boards, not through Andy McDonald. He’s still under contract for 2007–2008 if TSN is correct, so hopefully he’ll be pushed to the seventh defenseman. Quincey showed his youth a bit too much, but played quite well in game six, making some nice plays in the offensive zone. He’ll make a solid bottom-pair defenseman after another year of seasoning. Schneider’s loss was enormous. Not only is he a key component of the power play, he makes the smart play almost every time is excellent at the first pass out of the zone. He may not be getting younger, but re-signing him is crucial. I would have liked to see Kronwall play more this season, since he reminds me of a baby Lidstrom, but his injury problems have prevented that from happening. Five years and fifteen million may seem like a bit much for a guy with such a propensity for breaking bones, but if he can stay on the ice for a full season he should emerge as a solid top-four blueliner.

The other four defensemen—Niklas Lidstrom, Chris Chelios, Brett Lebda and Denny Markov—all played well. Lidstrom is a model of consistency who shows no signs of aging, even at 37. Chelios may be a grizzled old man at forty-five years of age, but there’s no justifiable reason to call for his retirement. He still outsmarts opponents, plays with a physical edge, and makes the right pass. Lebda has emerged as a solid offensive defenseman for the second or third pair and the power play unit. Markov is a UFA, which means he may not be back given the growing logjam on the blueline, but he played well throughout the playoffs and added a physical edge that the team typically lacks. Unless he wants a ton of money, it would be wise to keep him and dump Lilja.

Goalies: Dominik Hasek may be rightly maligned for being borderline insane, but I’ll be damned if I expected him to play much better than he did in this year’s playoffs. Yes, he allowed some poor goals along the way, but also made some critical saves that Manny Legace and Chris Osgood might not have. Signing him to a cheap one-year deal was a calculated risk that paid off. Osgood thankfully did not have to fill in for a Hasek meltdown, so I don’t have anything to say about his postseason performance as that guy on the bench who was wearing a jersey without a helmet.

As for the future, I’d love nothing more than the salary cap to increase enough that the Wings could sign Giguere to solidify their future net needs, but I just don’t think that’ll happen. Minnesota’s Niklas Backstrom is the only other viable starter on the market (sorry Crazy Ed Belfour), so teams are likely to overpay for Giguere and Backstrom, leaving the Wings in the lurch. I’d like to see Hasek come back and split time with Jimmy Howard so the Wings can find out if Howard’ll make it as a starter in 2008, but I don’t think Hasek will play for his low base salary from this year. It’ll be a tricky off-season for Ken Holland in the goaltending department, but I didn’t think that the Hasek/Osgood pairing would get the Wings to the conference finals, so who knows.

I pulled a recent post because it caused a bit of an uproar with a band's label. I have no interest in seeing bands, however misguided they may be in how they promote themselves or respond to criticism, lose opportunities to publish their music. Since a good amount of time was put into the response, I'll try to edit the post and so that it raises my issues outside of the context of the band (who, to their credit, were far more gracious in an e-mail).

Is this caving to the whims of my subject matter? Perhaps. But I've never made an attempt to damage the livelihood of musicians and now doesn't seem like a good time to start.

I approached Marnie Stern's In Advance of the Broken Arm cautiously. It's not the talk of her Steve Vai-meets-Don Caballero shredding that demands such trepidation, but rather the other side of her influences: Sleater Kinney, Deerhoof, and Hella are bands I can listen to in small doses, if at all. "Vibrational Match," the first track on her debut CD, didn't help this wary approach. Stern couples her frenzied fretboard calisthenics with similar high-octave vocal line, swarming like a Van Halen-informed riot grrl. Interesting, but a whole album of it? Pass me the Tylenol.

Just when I thought I'd put Stern on the needlessly over-hyped list, "Every Single Line Means Something" came on. Perhaps its status as the record's lead single should have informed me of its crossover potential, but "Every Single Line" addresses all of my qualms over "Vibrational Match." Stern's voice is less shrill, relaxing into a multi-tracked coo during the breakdown, and doesn't have to fight for high-octave space with the guitars, which follow less frantic lower-octave figures. The chorus trades the cheerleader chant of "Vibrational" for genuine hooks. The complexity of the instrumentation doesn't overwhelm, but instead allows you to pick up on the tricky stuff going on underneath the more rhythmic guitar line. Zach Hill's drumming doesn't fight the momentum of the song, either. "Every Single Line" pulls a great song out of an intriguing, sometimes infuriating aesthetic.

Elsewhere, the titular shenanigans of "Put All Your Eggs in One Basket and Then Watch That Basket!" proves that the Don Caballero influence isn't limited to finger-tapped leads, but the song certainly has those in spades, as well. What that song and a scant few others ("Patterns of a Diamond Ceiling") benefit from is a tempting calm, however fleeting, amid Stern's signature flurry of activity.

My initial hesitation about Marnie Stern was largely accurate, since In Advance of the Broken Arm spazzes out a bit too much for my liking, but finding a solid EP's worth of material that either pulls off the hyperactive shredding with style or calms down enough to provide space and tension is a pleasant surprise. I doubt she'll calm down too much, since she has to justify playing this guitar, but I'm optimistic about her live performances and her next album.

I’m actually somewhat surprised that Tuesday’s show was the first time I’d seen Do Make Say Think, considering how loaded the upper echelon of my top 40 of the 2000s is with their recent work. I can only remember missing one particular show at the Empty Bottle in Chicago because of the timing, so maybe their touring schedule just isn’t up to snuff. I blame them, really.

I’d heard good things about the Berg Sans Nipple, the lone opener for the tour, so getting to the Middle East almost two hours after doors opened only to find that they hadn’t even started yet was a bit of a relief. Two guys with a ton of equipment played a hodge-podge of dream pop, post-rock, and IDM. Certain aspects of their sound reminded me of the headliners, but for the most part the layered keyboards, looped vocals, and primarily live drums struck an interesting path outside of strict genre boundary lines. I picked up the 2LP of their 2007 release Along the Quai (which contains two bonus songs not included on the CD), which seems more appropriate for background listening given the band’s overall emphasis on aesthetics over songwriting (barring “Mystic Song”), but hey, that’s why I bought it.

Do Make Say Think took the stage, starting with “Outer, Inner & Secret” from Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn, and the band’s numerous members slowly filtered into the mix. It’s hard to nail most members down to a particular instrument, but for most songs they had two drummers, a bassist, two guitarist, a violinist, and two horn players, the violinist being the only major surprise. Picking out the specific parts became more difficult as the first song swirled into a nearly cacophonous crescendo. I’ve never really considered DMST as a crescendo-oriented post-rock band, but live the swells of sound became more apparent.

The Middle East downstairs was packed for the show, which unfortunately involved people going absolutely bananas and screaming during every false ending or quiet part. It’s baffling to me that the Isis crowd suffered from far less of this over-exuberance, but the DMST crowd never let up. Quiet break in “Reitschule”? Let’s scream! The show upstairs is enough of a distraction, don’t add to it.

They played material from the last four records, including the vocal track “A With Living” from You, You’re a History in Rust. I’ve been on the fence about the new record, enjoying this song and a few others but never really getting into the record as a whole, and I don’t know if this concert changed anything. Part of me hopes that “A With Living” is the band’s only song with full vocals, since it’s effective enough without being overbearing, but I have a feeling that it may mark a sea change in their approach. The main fear I have about the vocals is that they’ll end up being a progressive version of Broken Social Scene. The highlights, if memory serves, were “Reitschule,” “Fredericia,” “When the Day Chokes the Night,” “The Landlord Is Dead,” and “Horns of a Rabbit.” One of the nice things about seeing such a remarkably consistent band is that I wasn’t worried about the specifics of the set list outside of a few personal favorites. Closing the show with “Horns of a Rabbit” and “The Universe,” their two most direct rockers, was a nice move.

It may be appropriate that I was pleased, rather than blown away with Do Make Say Think’s performance. There was some time between hearing “If I Only…” from their self-titled debut and finally getting their second album, Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead, and even more time before that record hit me fully.

I really hadn't taken many photographs since moving to Boston, but the death of my Nikon Coolpix 995 on my flight to Seattle in December punctuated that death. After weighing my options in the digital SLR field, I settled on a Pentax K100D, since it felt better in my hands than the competing models from Nikon and Canon and I could get $150 back from Pentax for buying the camera along with a 50-200mm telephoto lens. After some extensive backorder issues* (which have unfortunately not yet been resolved for the telephoto lens), I received my camera on Friday, a day late for the Life and Times show but in time for the Isis show.

Here's a small sampling of Isis pictures, which I had to take from a limited vantage point. I don't own a speedlight for the camera yet, so I ended up piggybacking off of other photographers' flashes for most of these pictures. I would have taken more, but a female photographer decided to stand directly in my line of sight for the second half of the show, and since I didn't have a photo pass and she appeared to be dating one of the security guards at the Middle East, I accepted my fate. I'm hoping to get closer for next week's Do Make Say Think show at the Middle East and the upcoming Battles show at Great Scott. Outside photos will have to wait for somewhat nicer weather.

* I ended up ordering the camera from Adorama, since they had my items listed in stock, good prices, and a nice selection of accessories. After immediately telling me that the camera body was out of stock and on back order, I decided to check the page on Adorama's site and found that it now listed the camera as backordered. Once it came back into stock about four days later, I figured the camera would ship, but nothing happened. I called customer service and they said that everything was in stock and would ship that day or the next. A few more days pass with no notification of a shipment, so I call them up again and find that the lens is now backordered. Oh. If not for the rebate situation ($50 for the camera alone, $50 for the lens alone, $150 for the camera and the lens on the same receipt), I would be less concerned, but a big part of the decision to purchase the lens was this rebate. I'm not sure if Pentax will honor the full rebate, since Adorama didn't charge the lens with the other items, but if the lens doesn't ship by March 27 it won't matter since that's the cut-off date for the rebate. Needless to say I will not order anything from them in the future.

loudQUIETloud: A Film about the Pixies documents the band’s reunion, starting slightly before the first shows and following the band until the end of the first round of touring. On the surface it seems like it should be a compelling, dramatic documentary, since Charles Thompson is getting a divorced and having a child with his new lady, Joey Santiago is having another kid that he can’t quite support with the Martinis and soundtrack work, Kim Deal is fresh out of rehab and brings Kelley Deal on tour with her, and David Lovering is a struggling magician with an ailing father. Yet these elements just underscore the reason for the reunion—$$$—with the life stories often intruding awkwardly on the film. Here’s a shot of Charles with his girlfriend’s son at the aquarium. Isn’t he a real human being? They’re all “real human beings” (a frequent term from the unilaterally gushing Amazon reviews), but their near steadfast lack of interpersonal conflict on the tour stifles most genuine conversations and conflicts. Kim’s in another bus. Joey will tell the camera about David’s growing valium problem, but won’t tell David. Charles only confronts David when it seems like his problems might derail the tour. Yes, they come off like real human beings to some extent, demystifying whatever enigmatic rock personas might have developed since the group first disbanded, but their actions are always tempered by the ultimate motive: keep the tour going, keep the shows selling out, keep making money.

The live footage is well-shot, but ultimately lacks something in comparison to the 1988 concert included on the self-titled DVD released in 2004. It’s certainly easy to get excited about seeing a band perform songs that you love and didn’t expect to see live—I enjoyed the reunion show I went to at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago—but Charles’ scream doesn’t have the same edge as before, Kim doesn’t seem quite as joyous, Joey relies more on pedals than ingenuity. If you’ve never seen any footage of them, it’ll probably be exciting, but check out the Pixies DVD first. That particular DVD also includes the documentary Gouge, which is essentially a big wet kiss from the bands they influenced, but does not include any shots of Charles Thompson with his shirt off. Choose accordingly.

Since All That to the Wall, the upcoming full-length album from the Narrator, leaked last week, I’ve found it difficult to listen to any of the other big name albums that also found their way into advance digital formats (namely Pelican, Modest Mouse, Caspian, Bill Callahan, Shannon Wright, and The Sea and Cake). Whereas its predecessor, 2005’s Such Triumph, forced its songs to emerge out of a messy, snotty aesthetic, All That to the Wall unsurprisingly cuts most of this fat. Sorry “Crapdragon” and “Roughhousing” devotees; this album steadfastly avoids feedback fests in favor of chiming guitar hooks and sturdier song structures. Such Triumph benefited from its riotous energy and vaguely threatening cacophonies, but All That to the Wall makes far more sense veering toward maturity (a mid-tempo break in the middle covers both “Panic at Puppy Beach” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s nearly forgotten “All the Tired Horses) than holding on to raging youth too long.

“Son of the Son of the Kiss of Death” opens the record with a canned drumbeat and a newfound precision, leaving the messy lines for the throat-searing vocals. Along with the clear single “SurfJew” and the surging “Breaking the Turtle” (“And this is a song for / All the Nascar generation / The more they sit there / They’re just gaining momentum”), “Son of the…” seems noticeably better than many of its neighbors on the first listen (much like how “This Party’s Over” and “Ergot Blues” initially stood above Such Triumph), but after further inspection, the gap between these songs and the “album tracks,” if that term is still viable, decreases noticeably. “Chocolate Windchimes” wears its closing introspection far better than the down-tempo moments on the last album. “All the Tired Horses” makes perfect sense for a melancholic end to the first side of the album, provided that it’s pressed to vinyl. “Papal Airways” dusts off the enthusiastic background vocals and handclaps of “This Party’s Over.” Considering how All That to the Wall is the product of two fill-in drummers (from Russian Circles and the Oxford Collapse), it’s astonishingly coherent.

Pencil this one in for my top ten of 2007.

In related news, I saw Chin Up Chin Up at Great Scott on Sunday night. (Flameshovel Records guy and the Narrator singer/guitarist Jesse Woghin moonlights as CUCU’s bassist.) The crowd looked like a Charlie Brown Indie Rock Special, bouncing around like popcorn kernels to the more energetic moments of the band’s two full-lengths. It struck me how much clearer the chorus hooks came out live, particularly on the title track to We Should Have Never Lived… and “Virginia Don’t Drown.” After their set I talked to Jesse for a while, finding out that the Narrator should tour later in the spring (April or May), may press All That to the Wall on vinyl (I “pre-ordered” a hypothetical copy), and have a new drummer. You, too, should go see CUCU on their tour and put your name down for a vinyl copy of All That to the Wall.

Errors' How Clean Is Your Acid House? EP hit the top ten of my Best of 2006 and I'm thrilled to report that their new single, "Salut! France," may very well surpass that release. Here's the video for the single, which sadly (like its predecessors) lacks a US release date. While you're at it, watch the videos for "Hans Herman," "Terror Tricks," and "Mr. Milk." You may want to just listen to "Mr. Milk" if you want your eyes to work properly in the future. "Salut! France" is the only thing keeping me awake right now, so I hope YouTube doesn't break in the next two hours.

I watched two recent films on Wednesday: Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s cultural satire, and Crank, a possible target of that satire. I’d heard widely different opinions about Idiocracy, ranging from those heralding its potential status as a mishandled masterpiece to cries over a monumental lack of laughs. I approached it with moderate expectations and felt rewarded, if not quite floored at this point. The nature of the film—that America in 2505 is populated by imbeciles—necessitates the repetition of many of the film’s gags. Whether it’ll age as well as Office Space or gain the same following is unclear, but it’s worth seeing. Related trivia I did not know until today: Maya Rudolph had P. T. Anderson’s baby.

When I first saw a commercial for Crank, I came up with the only conceivable pitch to studio executives: “Alright, check this one out. Let’s remake Speed, but have Jason Statham play the bus.” If nothing else, I had to see the film in order to test the accuracy of this claim. I’d hesitate to call it dead-on, since I think I had more fondness for the bus than for Statham’s character. Crank is effectively Grand Theft Auto the movie, minus the missions and set against a ticking clock. It’s absolutely bizarre when Statham’s character stumbles into ill-conceived character development midway through the film—he’s a jerk of a contract killer but awfully patient with his pothead girlfriend. It hardly compares to Domino in terms of horribly edited recent train wrecks, but I don’t think that the makers of Crank had any pretensions of greatness. It’s Speed III: The Dude. Don’t see it.

I received my copy of Isis's In the Absence of Truth 2LP from Robotic Empire yesterday. I managed to get one of only 299 copies of the violet vinyl, which is both attractive and sought-after on eBay, selling for forty to eighty dollars. Does anyone think I should hold onto this particular copy rather than put it on eBay and buy the (likely) black vinyl copy from Newbury Comics?

I felt lucky to receive that package, since mailing packages to my apartment is a game of chance against thieves. I've had a few packages stolen, so I typically try to mail things to my parents' house, but I had forgotten to do this with the Isis LP. The best story that I have about stolen mail is from this Christmas. I was anticipating a package from Amazon from my sister-in-law, so when I got back to the apartment and saw an Amazon box in the garbage can, I pulled it out. To my surprise, someone had unwrapped the Sealab 2021 DVD, put it back in box, ignored the other present, and threw the box away. It's one thing to open up a package, steal its contents, and sell them, but whatever thought process must've occured, perhaps "I already own this season" or "I really wanted Love Actually," is just baffling. The story gets better, though. Later that day I went downstairs and saw that someone had stolen the garbage can from our entranceway, throwing its contents onto the floor. Who does this sort of thing?

I had even put up a sign saying not to leave packages for me the day that the Isis LP arrived, but it was still sitting there when I got back from class.