Recently I've been getting into No Wave bands like DNA, Mars, Teenage Jesus, and obviously early Sonic Youth and Swans (2 ofmy favourite bands for awhile now.) When I heard abut this documentary on the New York No Wave scene of the late 70's/ early 80's I was excited to see it. The first half is really good, but the
film got derailroaded aroun the middle portion. Instead of continuing with a pretty good documentary about No Wave it jumps ahead to 2002 and begins interviewing bands of the current New York hipster sene (Yeah Yeah Yeah's. Black Dice, Gogol Bordello, Liars etc.) ll good bands for what they do, I just don't think that they had any business being in this movie. Maaaybe if they were actually talking about the subject of the film I could have gotten over it, but nstead, as hipsters usually do, they talked about themselves. When asked about No Wave, the only band most of them seemed to be aware of was Sonic Youth. Anyways then the movie cut's back to the No Wave peoples and you get their perspective on the current scene. Basically I wanted a documentary about No Wave, and this film started out as that, but in the end couldn't really decide what the topic of the film was. So it doesn't get to in depth about any of the topics it covers. That being said the movie get's a pass from me as there is some really good performance footage from the old No Wave bands, some entertaining and enlightening interviewsfrom Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore, Michael Gira, The Singer from DNA, Martin Rev, Lee Ranaldo etc. Perhaps I am being a little harsh but in the end I felt this movie was a failed attempt at covering a scene that still deserves a more thorough examination. Ah well, worth seeing for the things it did right as mentioned above.
April 3, 2011
Top Critic
