el Don /SANTA ANA COLLEGE • MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2014 /eldonnews.org
BIRTH OF NERD
As usual, the songs are
more than just a sum of
the album’s parts.
Weird Al deftly uses
social media, producing
eight parody videos
in eight days, tagging the
releases with #8videos8days across platforms
including YouTube,
Twitter, College Humor,
Funny or Die and
The Nerdist.
Mandatory Fun stays
true to Weird Al’s formula, singing about food
(Royals parody Foils),
saving grammar (Blurred
Lines send up Word
Crimes), and mashing
a polka mix, a goofy
GirlTalk that saps
the cool factor out of
the pop tripe that’s as
catchy as it is vapid.
—LIZ MONROY
HOTLINE
WEIRD WORLDS
GLAM PUNK
BLOODY PLAGUE
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki ...
Haruki Murakami
Get Hurt
Gaslight Anthem
The Strain
FX
Haruki Murakami’s stories are predictable but volatile. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki
and His Years of Pilgrimage is a love story
framed within a hard-boiled mystery
grounded in real human emotions governed by strange events. Tsukuru Tazaki
is kicked out of his boyhood circle, but
before finding out why, his buddies disappear. Convenience leads him to find
his one true love, Sarah. Worlds collide
and fold into each other. The search culminates in Finland. —ALE GONZALEZ
With Get Hurt, Gaslight Anthem
escapes the Springsteenian trap of
2012’s Handwritten, maturing in the limited alt-rock anthem format of its croonheavy punk rock sound. The sounds and
lyrical tropes remain the same — narrated through grand melodies coursed
through vocalist Brian Fallon’s melodic
gravel. Stray Pepper is Def Leppard with
restraint, and Rollin’ and Tumblin’ roughs
up ‘80s big hair glam.
Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro
teamed up with thrill author Chuck
Hogan and penned a trilogy of books
that’s now a bloody good show on FX.
The world comes to grips with a plague )ѡ