Each week, the staff here at The Anchor give their recommendations on an album, book and movie to enjoy. Here are our recommendations for the week of 12/9-12/15.
Album: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not by The Arctic Monkeys (2006)
One of my favorite debut albums of all time, four young boys for Sheffield took the UK by storm back in 2006 with a continuation of the “meat’n’potatoes guitar rock” cemented by The Strokes and Oasis before them. With the advent of the internet to assist their popularity, The Arctic Monkeys quickly found themselves playing throughout much of the younger teenage rock scene in the early aughts with an album both lyrically and musically provocative.
The album, at its core, represents the always needed insight of the young, from casual friends to romances. What struck me, personally, was the depth of the lyrics painted over seemingly basic rhythms; with themes relatable to the masses — a late train, trying and failing with girls, and the desire for a meaningful and sociable connection — I had no trouble seeing why the album was quickly embraced by the masses. With the most popular tracks likely “Mardy Bum” and “I Bet You Lion Good on the Dancefloor,” — both of which are perfectly good in their own right — the album’s closer, “A Certain Romance,” was my favorite of the collection. The song, to me, was perfect, and got better with every additional listen. It focuses on the banal nature of teenage life, and presents the struggle in a way not in angst, but in resignation to the status quo. The Monkeys, like most teenagers before and after them, have submitted to their situation, and instead of trying to change the present, look to the future and the hope of something better one day. The humble message strikes a chord with the audience (quite literally… the song is full of e-major and e-minor chords that stick with the listener) and closes an artful album by what was an up-and-coming band turned worldwide phenomenon over the next decade.
Book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (1988)
Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist took me by surprise. A glance at the cover and title, and I was actually skeptical the novel could live up to the praise I was hearing. The story, following Santiago, a young shepherd, on a journey across the desert to find a hidden treasure, seemed repetitive and unoriginal upon first glance. I couldn’t have been more wrong: there was something about Coelho’s writing, in its simple yet profound manner, that left me reading the book for much longer than I expected because I had to keep stopping to record all the insanely insightful quotes I was coming across. By the time I was finished, the number of quotes I’d copied down far surpassed any others in my online reading log. The novel is steeped in mysticism, and however repetitive you may think the messages may be, I was not so intrigued by the message as I was the style of writing and the delivery of the lessons. This is what sets the book apart, and by the end, one will actually realize that this profound delivery has ingrained the message one thought they knew so well even deeper than any other novel has.
Movie: Tick, Tick…Boom! directed by Lin Manuel Miranda (2021)
The famous playwright of the hit Broadway musicals “In The Heights” and “Hamilton” took to the silver screen in his directorial debut with the musical drama Tick, Tick…Boom, and didn’t stray far from his previous work; the story is the adaption of Jonathan Larson’s musical of the same name. The story follows Larson’s journey to write the piece, and his life surrounding it until the writer’s untimely death just days before the opening of his biggest musical, “Rent.” The music, obviously, is brilliant from Larson, and Miranda was able to keep the same spirit of the songs in the visuals and camera direction. The same goes for the choreography, which was barely cringe worthy and felt surprisingly natural. The real showstopper of the film, however, was the performance of Andrew Garfield as Larson; singing and dancing to everything, Garfield embodied the jittery, creative spirit of Larson in a tribute that was both honorary and mournful, a difficult line to balance on. Though there was award-buzz around the movie in 2022 when it released, I believe we all moved past the film too quick, whether due to other releases that year or an unwillingness to watch a musical adaption. Nevertheless, the songs, the intimacy of Larson’s and his friends’ lives on the screen, and the representation of the success of an artist that Larson unfortunately never got to witness sets Tick, Tick…Boom as a great example of how a musical adaption should be done.
