1. Drake – Take Care
Pretty obvious choice if you know me at all, but damn is this a good album. Drake’s most polished, most mature release to date that’s full of infinitely listenable club hits but also introspective tracks like “Marvin’s Room”. Sort of like last year’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, I could not stop listening to Take Care. And that reworking of “Back That Ass Up” in “Practice”? Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.
2. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
SYNTHS! I love the unbridled enthusiasm on this thing. And that track with the little girl talking about a magical frog? How fucking charming is that? The most charming, is the answer. Releasing a double album is always a risky measure. Usually, there’s a fair amount of filler and what you’re left with is a half of a great album. Not the case here.
3. We Were Promised Jetpacks – In the Pit of the Stomach
Momentum. That’s how I’d describe We Were Promised Jetpacks. Every song, even the slower stuff, has such a great sense of forward motion to it. In a year without a new release from Frightened Rabbit (though that EP was great), I turned to my other favorite Scottish band’s sophomore release and it does not disappoint. I just wish I knew what they were saying about telescopes at the end of “Circles and Squares”.
4. The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar
My friend Mike introduced me to these guys after catching them at Coachella this year, one of those happy discoveries that often happen at music festivals. Lead singer Ritzy Bryan (great name!) has an infectious voice that I find refreshing in an era where every female singer is just doing a bad Feist impression. No offense to Feist, but we already have a Feist, you know?
5. Jay-Z and Kanye West – Watch the Throne
OK, this album is cheesy as hell and pretty tone-deaf to the plight of the average American. That being said, it’s great to see two of hip-hop’s greatest MC’s going head to head across 16 tracks. I have to assume the day this leaked everyone else at the gym (yeah, I work out. #ladies) was bumpin’ “Niggas in Paris” too. That beat is unimpeachable.
-SRD
1. Attack the Block
Absolutely loved this movie. There were a ton of alien invasion movies this year, including Super 8, which I also really liked, but Attack the Block took the cake for me. It’s always interesting to see a disaster scenario in a setting where guns aren’t as ubiquitous as they are here in the States. And I appreciated the moral ambiguity of the protagonists. Great alien design, too.
2. Drive
What more is there to say about Drive? It’s gorgeous, it’s moody, it’s soundtrack is incredible, and the performances are incredible across the board. And let me tell you, riding your bike (YOUR BIKE!) while listening to “Nightcall” is way more epic than it deserves to be.
3. Warrior
I actually just watched this last night and I was completely enthralled with it. Nolte and Hardy both deserve some Oscar love for this little fight film. And the fight scenes, man oh man, beautiful and brutal. It’s a shame it made next to nothing at the box office but hopefully more people will discover it on DVD.
4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Full disclosure: In fifth grade, I wanted to be a primatologist to teach sign language to gorillas. I was also way into the original Planet of the Apes movies, so I fully expected to hate this one. Andy Serkis (and the necessary Weta-magic) really made Rise much better than it had any business being. Why Cookie Rocket, indeed.
5. Tabloid
Errrol Morris is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to documentaries and Tabloid does not disappoint. I love that Morris just lets everyone tell their story and allows the audience to figure out the “truth” of a really bizarre story that takes an even more bizarre twist into the world of dog-cloning. Yup.
-SRD
My buddy Dustin Dwyer has been creating these great little videos with his one-year-old daughter Irene about various ArtPrize entries around the city. Below is one of my favorites so far, but you should check them all out over on his Tumblr. Love these.
-SRD
I’ve been pacing around my apartment all night trying to make sense of today’s tragedy. I’m still not entirely sure it’s sunk in that Matt’s gone. It seems even more terrible considering the way he managed to cheat death after the first car accident back in high school. My heart aches for his wife Stephanie and their two young children who now have to grow up without their dad. And for his parents and his brother and sister and his best friend Sid. Matt was a good man, a good husband, a good father, and a good friend. And he will be missed dearly. This has been one of the saddest days I can remember, compounded by the fact that I spent the afternoon burying another friend.
And yet, within that deepest of sorrows, is a hope that I’ve felt before with Matt. In a lot of ways, he is the reason we are all such incredibly close friends to this day. Spending all those hours in the hospital waiting room when he was in a coma some ten years ago I think solidified the single-greatest group of people I will ever have the pleasure of meeting. The core of this group formed over the weeks spent playing cards and cracking jokes waiting for our friend to wake up and get better. And even though we’re far-flung to the many corners of the country (and even the globe), today more than ever, I feel the weight and value of those friendships. And we have Matt to thank for that.
I love each and every one of you. I hope you know that.
-SRD
UPDATE: Visitation will be at Pederson Funeral Home on Tuesday evening and the funeral will be at Our Lady of Consolation on Wednesday. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the “Hales Children College Fund” at any Huntington Bank branch.
www.soundcloud.com/tybeat
-SRD
This is just cool. Kudos to Fred Quillin for putting this together.
Rapid Yes: Spread the word and Vote YES on May 3.
-SRD
The kind folks over at ITP Watch love to throw out the following claim about the proposed Silver Line, AKA the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line running from 60th street to the Medical Mile: “The Rapid Silver Line would run slower than the bus that currently runs nearly the same route.” (emphasis theirs). This is incorrect.
Their site claims that the BRT merely duplicates the (1) Division route and at a slower pace. This is patently false. The (1) route runs from 54th street to Central station in 33 minutes. The BRT will run from 60th street to the Medical Mile, an expanded route over the (1), in 27 minutes. How that equates to the BRT running slower than the (1) is another example of ITP Watch’s blatant misrepresentation of the data available. Hell, right now, you’d need to transfer from the (1) to the (13) at Central Station to get to the Medical Mile, taking 44 minutes. That’s 17 minutes slower than the proposed BRT. More importantly, the BRT will run every 10 minutes during peak and every 15 during off and will connect three cross-town routes. You can read more about the BRT and how it works here.
27 minutes from the Medical Mile to 60th Street seems pretty damn fast to me. Something tells me that those opposing the BRT don’t spend a lot time actually IN Grand Rapids. If they did, they’d understand how beneficial and revolutionary a system this would be to the city. I’ll even propose this much: if you can drive from Michigan and Barclay down Division to 60th street without once going over the speed limit in less than 27 minutes, during normal traffic conditions, you’re probably a time lord.
Rapid Yes: Spread the word and Vote YES on May 3.
-SRD
ITPWatch and Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility claim that the Rapid runs “90% empty.” Here are some basic calculations that prove what a ridiculous claim that is.
The Rapid saw 9,307,111 fixed-route riders last year, which comes out to about 25,500 rides a day. 25,500 is ten percent of 255,000. So you’re telling me the daily capacity of the Rapid is 255,000? That would mean the Rapid would have to run (with 32 seat buses) roughly 8000 trips a day. That’s 8000 trips divided by 52 routes (both ways on 26 routes) which means 153 trips per bus per day, or 6.375 trips per bus per direction per hour.
That’s on a 24-hour schedule. On a more realistic 18-hour schedule (like the one the Rapid currently operates), that means that each and every bus would have to be running 8.54 trips PER hour from 6 AM to Midnight, seven days a week, for the Rapid to be currently running “90% empty.” That’s a bus in each direction of each route every 7 minutes. In what universe is that happening?
Rapid Yes: Spread the word and Vote YES on May 3.
-SRD
UPDATE: The Rapid’s Twitter account just gave me February’s average weekday ridership numbers: 42,820. That means for a weekday in February to average “90% Empty,” the Rapid would have to run a bus every 4 minutes in each direction of each route from 6 AM to Midnight, M-F.
Man, wouldn’t that be awesome though?
Here’s some more Ty Beat goodness, shot at Ty’s place last week. This is also my first try at legit slow motion (60 fps to 24 fps), which meant making Ty play 2.5 times faster than normal.
-SRD
