The Ice Cream Floats
Tue 31 Mar 2009
Hannah Takes The Stairs
For a while now I’ve been trying to imagine what the musical equivalent of mumblecore movies would sound like. Now I think I’ve found it! The Ice Cream Floats, containing mumblecore movie director Joe Swanberg as well as Tipper Newton and Kent Osborne, is a cute, lo-fi pop band exhibiting ’60s girl group energy and melodies and simple, fuzzed out rock and roll riffs all encased within a typically mumblecore style aesthetic. Imagine Wellington’s The Sing Songs breeding with the distortion of Times New Viking or The Pink Noise and producing a melodic prowess the likes of The Beach Boys. It’s pretty cool. I stumbled across this as my fascination with Andrew Bujalski‘s films led me to random internet research resulting in a wikipedia entry defining mumblecore and listing its chief movies. Hannah Takes The Stairs stood out, with the pixie cut girl lead in the middle of a love triangle set in a production office. Intimating classic dialogue and development with modern, genuine scripts and feelings, it is heart-warmingly genuine – just like The Ice Cream Floats, who provided the theme song, Sundae. This and their song Gumdrop Tree remain my favourites. Swanberg’s latest film, the Noah Baumbach-produced Alexander The Last, premiered at SXSW on March 14 and will hopefully be included in New Zealand’s International Film Festival programme this year, along with Bujalski’s latest, Beeswax. Join the DIY Generation and celebrate, mumblecore for life!
Posted by Sarah Gooding under U.S.A
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