If Gary Jules' debut album was a superb collection of songs (a few of them dating back to his late teenage years), Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets is a stunning, focused follow-up. Reflective and melancholy, dusk-colored and dreamlike, it finds supreme repose through songs of somber experience. Composed in the concentrated two-year span after being unceremoniously dropped from A&M and recorded essentially on his own, the album is a wellspring of songcraft that charts a course through tangled emotions. Jules' voice betrays many things -- hurt, disappointment, and uncertainty, but also, importantly, recognition -- and the songs find a range of moods, from the joyous, late-night-with-loose-change-in-my-pockets ode "DTLA" to the breathtaking resignation of "No Poetry" and "Something Else." On the surface, little seems to have changed about the music. It is still a fragile but lush wish: the cymbals whisper, and acoustic guitars pick out the delicate melodies while waiting for the occasional, flirtatious reply of soft electric runs. But in every way, Jules has grown as an artist. Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets plays out like a song cycle. It documents Jules' convoluted relationship with Los Angeles, an adopted home that retains an unrelenting hold over the songwriter, and the music is imbued with the city's spirit. You could even say that Hollywood acts as a character of sorts on the album, both a protagonist and antagonist, sometimes standing at the center of songs, sometimes fading into soft focus behind Jules' stories, but always, in some way, casting a shadow. The album moves through vaguely cynical expressions of dejection, toward acceptance, before finally inhabiting a humble, restive place, a personal journey that culminates in "Umbilical Town," on which Jules lingers in the past for a few brief moments before letting go of it all. And in the stark ghostliness of Tears for Fears' "Mad World," hauntingly rearranged as a piano allad, he comes up with a performance that more than matches the work of Cat Stevens in terms of solemn, profound beauty, isolation, and depth of searching. Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets takes on a shimmering glow. Gracious and redemptive, it is a rapt, quiescent masterwork.
A few weeks ago Xbox released a commercial for its new game Gears of War. It was a prerendered video set to the song Mad World by Gary Jules, from Donnie Darko. The video has become such a hit that Xbox fanboys have remixed other new game videos with this song, and some of them have turned out amazing. The brand new Halo 3 trailer that aired on Monday the 4th has gone through this adaptation...
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A few weeks ago Xbox released a commercial for its new game Gears of War. It was a prerendered video set to the song Mad World by Gary Jules, from Donnie Darko. The video has become such a hit that Xbox fanboys have remixed other new game videos with this song, and some of them have turned out amazing. The brand new Halo 3 trailer that aired on Monday the 4th has gone through this adaptation...
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This isn't my song!! I just covered it. Please nobody sue me.
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I was going to say how much I like the new Norah Jones album, even though I'm a metal/rap kid, but I saw the "what moggers like me are listening to" and saw Mad world.I love Donnie Darko and knew the song, but (I'm not gonna lie) I d/led the song because of the Gears Of War ad. And although its pretty obvious, this song is so sad and ominous. When it came on I couldn't help but sit and stare....
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When I was younger (and I am not even that old) I was so mesmerized by popular music I didn't know anything else could sound good. I grew up when rap was starting, when heavy metal found it groove, and grunge ruled the world. I loved it all. Concerts, tapes (then CDs), t-shirts.... those were the things I needed. Who cares that I play it so loud my speakers get distorted. Who cares that I, gr
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 "Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets")
