Ari Picker felt exhausted and burned out by Lost In The Trees’ A Church That Fits Our Needs. The 2012 album memorialized Picker’s mother, who committed suicide in 2008. The project was deeply personal and deeply ambitious. It made many critics’ 2012 top-10 lists (including the top spot for the Wall Street Journal), and it led the North Carolina band to appear at New York’s Lincoln Center for the American Songbook Series. But the tour that preceded that show was fraught with challenges: Rock clubs weren’t the ideal venues for the band’s delicate dynamics and string arrangements for cellos and violins. After all that, Picker questioned his desire to make another album. But he has made another. Past Life (Anti-) jettisons many of Church’s identifying markers: It’s abstract and impressionistic rather than overtly personal, and it’s minimalist rather than maximalist. Picker will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Lost In The Trees feature.
Picker: I saw this classic Tom Hanks movie at the Ram Triple Theater in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 1989 when I was eight years old. When Dr. Klopeck shakes Mr. Peterson’s hand with the bloody glove, I pissed myself, jetted from the theater and hid in the lobby. As the years went by, I continued to encounter the movie, mostly when at home alone on sick days when it was constantly shown daytime TV (which is odd because the plot is fucked, with psycho neighbors burning people up in their basement furnace). Watching this movie became a childhood test of bravery for me, especially with a 105 fever (due to over-sized tonsils I kept getting scarlet fever over and over and over again). Now I’m addicted to the movie and its cult appeal. I threw my first ‘Burbs party last year, and we all wore bathrobes, grilled out, smoked cigars and projected to movie on the side of the house. If you want to play a drinking game while watching the movie, drink every time some one says “neighbor.” Jerry Goldsmiths score is absolutely horrifying as it is brilliant. It is a bizarre smattering of orchestral passages, ’80s synths and weird sampled loops of furnace pipes, springs and dogs barking. It sounds as if John Carpenter and Bugs Bunny teamed up with Camille Saint-Saens. There are constantly things happening in the background, little reoccurring jokes that can only be noticed on repeated viewings. The whole movie takes place in three days on one cul-de-sac (same one used in Desperate Housewives), so you get a really nice feel of the space—it’s like looking into a pop-up book. The cast is stellar, and I consider it one of Hanks’ best performances. I also love Bruce Dern and Brother Theodore, and don’t forget Corey Feldman. Once I ran into Corey Feldman and got him to autograph my VHS copy of The ‘Burbs, which I randomly had with me.
Video after the jump.
