Lamar Jorden, one of the high-school poets featured in "Louder Than a Bomb."

In this week's issue of the Washington City Paper, film critic Tricia Olszewski found herself charmed by Louder Than a Bomb, a documentary about a high-school poetry slam competition of the same name. Directors Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs spent two years following the contest, which pits teenagers across Chicago in rhyming showdowns. The film tracks four of the competitors and their poetry teams—yes, these things are coached and practiced—from scribbling thoughts in classrooms to the big showdown. In her review of Louder Than a Bomb, which opens today at the West End Cinema, Olszewski wrote that "their devotion to the spoken word is astounding." Siskel will be on hand to take audience questions at screenings tonight and tomorrow. We spoke yesterday at the West End Cinema.

WCP: You really feel these kids’ energy. But when I was watching the film, I kept asking myself what the narrative was beyond kids getting ready for this competition.

JS: We wrestled with the four storylines. It became clear to us that the Steinmetz [Academic Centre] story had the most dramatic arc. It was a year of development finding the kids, a year of filming, and two years of editing. But we really could never get rid of the other characters. We realized with the Steinmetz story, the other kids—Nate, Nova, and Adam—are so important to Steinmetz’s identity and what the slam meant to them, you don’t understand what Lamar is talking about at the end without knowing who those kids are. We felt the arc of the competition was strong enough.

WCP: Aside from the Steinmetz kids we saw glimpses of Nova’s family and her brother, who’s developmentally disabled. But Adam’s life seems pretty charmed. I kind of got the feel that he’s a little too pleased with himself.

JS: Gosh. I think he’s probably one of the most humble, genuine, sweetest kids. We refer to him as the most exotic documentary character you’ll ever see because he is a normal, well-adjusted…

WCP: I don’t mean boisterous or obnoxious. But he is an outlier in that he’s not from one of these South Side schools.

JS: I think he says his sense of privilege is probably a bit inflated. He doesn’t come from an affluent North Side family—it is an average, middle-class working family. But he goes to one of the best schools in the city and no, he’s not a South Side kid, he’s a white Jewish kid.

WCP: I think that’s really obvious. The first time you interview him with his parents he’s covering his face in embarrassment. But you say he’s one of the most exotic. Is it because he’s the white Jewish kid in the poetry slam?

JS: I don’t just think he’s exotic in our world, I think he’s exotic in the world of documentaries. There’s this sense that a lot of stories are about—I don’t want to say the wrong thing—how is this being used?

WCP: I’m transcribing it.

JS: You don’t post the audio?

WCP: God, no. Then people would hear all my mumbling.

JS: What I mean is that he’s a normal, well-adjusted kid.

WCP: One of the other feels I got from building toward the Louder Than a Bomb final is that although it’s a competition it’s very friendly. How competitive do these kids get? Is there that edge?

JS: I think so. Nate says that he wants to win. When Adam goes up on stage—I’m still not sure about what you’re saying about him being cocky—he is transformed and he grabs the audience by the throat. He may not want to score 10’s, but he wants to do his best. And Lamar is a total competitor. By the end, with the loss, he learns these important lessons, but it doesn’t make him any less of competitor. So throughout they’re saying this mantra, “The points are not the point, the point is the poetry.” I think that community really feels it. But when those kids go up on stage they want 10s.

WCP: Should Steinmetz have won?

JS: We thought so.

WCP: So did everyone else you talked to.

JS: Who did you think should have won?

WCP: I thought they were the best in that section. If I were judging them—and I saw they sometimes pick their judges from the crowd.

JS: In the preliminary rounds they do but in the semifinals and finals they are teachers, poets, rappers, journalists. Maybe not the perfect judges.

WCP: Well…

JS: We were devastated when that happened. In making a competition film we thought we were going to have the winner. It wasn’t the most important thing but we wanted to have the best poets possible. But with Steinmetz’s loss we thought, “You’re supposed to have a winner and that was our winner.” In that moment, I remember coming back with Greg and we were both devastated because we were hurting for the kids as much as the film. But I said to him maybe it’s a good thing that we have the loser. Every competition film has the winner, maybe it’ll be interesting to see what happens with that loss. And three days later to have Lamar honestly being able to articulate this stuff that they learned was amazing.

WCP: And Northside came in second. Who won?

JS: The winner was Kuumba Lynx, and it’s not even a school, it’s an organization. Schools compete, but so can others. They compete every year, but the idea of a community group and explaining that just seemed too tough.

WCP: Is it still teenagers in that group?

JS: Yeah. They’re in a couple of scenes but we never even show their name because their not in any of the bouts that we featured.

WCP: I recently saw another documentary that takes place among young people in Chicago, The Interrupters. And it’s about a much different type of youth outreach than this. Off the screen, how much of an impact has the tournament made?

JS: I think it’s made a huge impact in the high schools, not just in the city but the suburbs as well. When we started filming there were 40 teams. I think the film has helped. It was going to grow on its own, but the film has kind of boosted that. Now there are 70 teams and that will probably grow by another 10. But the really exciting thing is that at every film festival we’ve been in has programmed us in the educational part so we play to high school students all over the country and the first question the kids ask is, “How can I do this in my school?” So we are partnering with [Louder Than a Bomb founder] Kevin Coval on an educational DVD that we’re putting out in a few weeks so that teachers can really make the most of using it in the classroom.

WCP: Who’s getting into Louder Than a Bomb? Is it kids into music?

JS: The Steinmetz kids came in as rappers. Adam is probably very much an arty kid. Nate is a rapper. But Nova, I think it was her English lit teacher who said she had a talent for writing and should check this out. For her it opened this door for her to express this stuff that she kept bottled up.

WCP: Was she new to performing? Adam is very theatrical. Lamar seemed kind of shy at first, too.

JS: He was. Nate is definitely out there, and Lamar is a performer too, but I think what you’re picking up on is a reticence in the interviews. Nova was a natural though.

WCP: Going back to the narrative, are there any moments of tension you left out? Doesn’t it ever get heated between these kids?

JS: Yeah. The big conflict with Steinmetz, the reason we have that apology scene—Greg filmed the whole thing, but the problem was that we’re not the A cameramen. He was in the classroom and all the kids were spread out. It was a very nuanced kind of fight but one I think you could feel building over the year. Sloan was getting more and more frustrated with the kids not writing and maybe being disrespectful and that’s what happened. The kids really disrespected him and Coach Hood and said to them, “You’re nothing more than chaperones.” But Greg in tried to cover it all was missing pieces of it so we couldn’t use it. I think because you see enough of that frustration building the apology scene works fine.

Pitchfork, which this year runs from July 15 to 17 in its familiar Union Park venue in the West Loop, will offer D-Plan an audience of close to 20,000 when they play on the festival's second day. (Presumably they'll play second-to-last; Fleet Foxes is listed as the Saturday headliner.) But Pitchfork isn't the no-name alternative festival it was when it debuted in 2006. It's still nowhere near the gluttonous cacophony that Lollapalooza is, but it is a major stop in its own right with a growing corporate organ. Last year's installment featured Heineken replacing Goose Island as the beer supplier, along with an air-conditioned tent sponsored by American Express.

It's still a coup for D-Plan, but at this stage the Pitchfork Music Festival has its plusses and drawbacks:

The Good:

• Big audience. Union Park can hold close to 20,000 people when configured for Pitchfork.
• Killer line-up. Other acts announced today by Pitchfork include Animal Collective, James Blake, TV on the Radio, OFWGKTA, and Destroyer. The full line-up will feature about 40 acts, most of whom appear to have performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon at some point in the last six months.
• Concessions are historically reasonable. I've never paid more than $2 for a bottle of water or $5 for a cup of beer at Pitchfork, and on hotter days they've halved the price for the water. Food vendors are local businesses, and the all-important portable toilets are generally plentiful.
• A sunny summer day in Chicago has two settings. One is warm, breezy, and altogether lovely.

The Bad:

• You can't rush the stage at a festival. It took a matter of seconds to ascend from the floor of the 9:30 Club to Joe Easley's drum kit in January. At Pitchfork D-Plan enthusiasts will find metal barricades, a photographers' pit, and a garrison of security guards (some of whom will be off-duty cops) between themselves and the band. And the stage is at least 8 feet off the ground. The upshot is that the guys will seem awfully lonely during "The Ice of Boston."
• Pitchfork ain't cheap like it used to be. Back in the day (2006), the Pitchfork Music Festival was a two-day affair that cost $30 for the entire weekend. This year the three-day affair will set you back $110, still less than half the price of a Lollapalooza pass, but not exactly a small purchase.
• Indie rock has outgrown its thrift-store-bought britches. Twilight Saga soundtracks? Caribbean cruises? Corporate-sponsored festivals? As one jaded indie-rock chronicler just said to me, "I'm going to only hardcore shows from now on."
• A sunny summer day in Chicago has two settings. The other is oppressively humid and hot as balls.

But if you must, you can get your tickets here. It's $45 for a single day—D-Plan plays Saturday, July 16—and $110 for the whole thing.

After TBD's Ryan Kearney heard from Convention Center management that the building was not in the ad contrary to the early assessment, I watched the spot again and decided to look at Google Maps for some amateur location scouting in hopes of solve this riddle.

The scene at the 11-second mark shows a robot battle in front of a white concrete and glass structure that could very well be a convention center. But upon one glance at the Walter E. Washington—

—it becomes obvious that these buildings are not one and the same. While the color schemes and façades are alike, the windows on the two structures are not. Our convention center's windows are more vertical, but those of the building in the Transformers trailer are horizontal. Where then, can we find the building featured in that split-second orgy of metal and explosions?

Nowhere around here. The complex show in the ad is most likely McCormick Place in Chicago. Michael Bay completed much of his principal photography in the Windy City last summer, and indeed multiple frames in the Super Bowl teaser feature burning Ludwig Mies van der Rohe skyscrapers and destruction on Michigan Avenue. McCormick Place, Chicago's sprawling convention center just south of Soldier Field on Lake Shore Drive, was, like Walter E. Washington designed by the firm tvsdesign, hence the geometric similarities.

Calls to both Chicago's Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and the Chicago Film Office confirmed that Transformers: Dark of the Moon filmed scenes outside McCormick Place, though neither spokesperson I spoke to had seen the teaser on Sunday night. But compare this photo of McCormick Place to the scene from the commercial:

Photo of Walter E. Washington Convention Center by APK using a Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. Photo of McCormick Place by Zol87 using a Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Emo, as a term, becomes more convoluted with every passing year, now barely containing anything of the dynamic, cathartic post-hardcore sound that erupted out of D.C. in the mid-'80s. Dig deeper, though, and you'll see that punks across the country—including D.C.'s Monument—are quietly re-imagining emo as we once knew it. It's an emo steeped in the genre's history, but one that feels altogether fresh.

2010 has been fantastic for the new old emo: Plenty of bands released strong albums, EPs, singles, and demos—some of which might even rival the best in the genre's history. Here's the cream of the crop:

Castevet: The Echo & The Light

A rush of post-hardcore aggression mixed with articulate, twinkly instrumentation and waves of slowcore ambience, The Echo & The Light is a balancing act. Castavet knows how to balance epic punk anthems with detours into lush composition, and the new album serves those sides well. (The band is in the process of changing its name to CSTVT. Blame the other Castavet.)

Coping: Lawndale

Coping's six-track debut cassette is an avalanche of catchy catharsis reminiscent of Cap'n Jazz. Unlike CnJ's music, the songs that make up Lawndale are tightly composed, not rough-and-tumble. The intricate little tunes still evoke inner cataclysm, and they burst and bubble with great force throughout the tape's short length. They're tight, sure, but they peer into a void of disarray.

Everyone Everywhere – Everyone Everywhere

Sharp and sweet, Philadelphia's Everyone Everywhere's debut is one of the year's best albums in any genre. The young band is remarkably self-assured, its power-pop reminiscent of The Promise Ring's sincere, pop-focused spin on post-hardcore.

It's a King Thing – Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

This band of South Jersey dudes doles out emo tunes that skew heavily toward the tag's indie-rock side, with touches of power-pop and twee. Perhaps most refreshing about this breezy record is that IAKT isn't afraid to bring a little humor. On "Vegetarian," frontman Brian Mietz declares, "I could never date a vegetarian/because my last name's Mietz." You kind of have to listen to it...

Into It. Over It. – IIOI/KOJI and the "Twelve Towns" series

Emo troubadour Evan Thomas Weiss has been on a roll this year with Into It. Over It. Weiss started his solo project with the ambitious idea of writing and recording a song a week for a solid year, and in 2010 he kept rolling out the projects. He put out five split 7-inches with his emo peers for a project he's dubbed the "Twelve Towns" series, and he put out a split LP with his friend and frequent touring partner, Koji, called IIOI/KOJI. What's more, IIOI's songs on these releases are absolute gold.

Joie De Vivre – The North End

A sextet with a penchant for Mineral, Joie De Vivre makes sweeping, epic songs fit for an emo orchestra. The Rockford, Ill., act specializes in making songs that romanticize romanticizing about the Midwest, and Joie De Vivre's tight execution and the album's sharp production make for a marvelous listen.

Monument – Goes Canoeing

Monument revels in messy dynamics, angular bursts of sound, and passionate, oft-scrappy catharsis. Which isn't to say the D.C. quartet lacks chops or a knack for a solid indie-rock tune. In fact, its debut full-length, Goes Canoeing, is filled with nothing but strong, passionate and irresistible emo songs that recall the messier days of emo and indie yore.

Sirs – Vas Deferens

The six pogoing songs that fill Vas Deferens, the debut EP from Sirs, pop and explode. Unlike most of the other acts on this list, Sirs simply crank their amps to 11 and make nearly every second a high-velocity affair. Even during the moments when things seem quiet, it's just the eye of the storm, and their bouncy, angular aural onslaught fits their voice just fine.

Snowing – I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted

Like the aforementioned Sirs, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, band Snowing dabbles in the fast-paced, high-octane vein of emo: Twinkly guitar-work married to pulverizing drumming. Yet for all its unabashed bashing, I Could Do Whatever I Wanted if I Wanted is remarkably composed, a product of a sharp band that knows how to craft big hooks that pull at the heartstrings as they hit the upper tiers of the decibel levels.

Tigers Jaw – Two Worlds

Two Worlds is a a slow-moving beast. And while the tunes on Two Worlds seem to pass by at a glacial speed, they're no less passionate and engaging than the speedier songs in the new old emo canon. And with a sound reminiscent of the best of Weezer's Pinkerton, Tigers Jaw may not have the loudest or fastest aesthetic in town, but it's sure to please anyone on the fence about emo.

Honorable Mentions:

Annabel – Here We Are Tomorrow

Grown Ups – More Songs

Lion Cub – Seneca

Look Mexico – To Bed To Battle

The Please & Thank Yous – Mind Yr P's & Q's

The Saddest Landscape – You Will Not Survive

Various Artists – Cake Life, Vol. 2

If I heard the whole album, it probably would've made the list:

1994! – FCKYRHED

Hey, buying music adds up. I can't hear everything, but I did enjoy the few songs from FCKYRHED I heard this year.

*Thanks for the reminder that you were never fit to write a book on emo, Andy Greenwald.

Far be it from Washington City Paper to spend a whole interview talking about some other town. But drummer Mike Reed is not only a Chicago musician: He's devoted an entire band project to exploring the Windy City's jazz legacy. Specifically, Reed's People, Places and Things quintet gives a free-jazz spin to the rarely trodden ground of Chicago's scene during the hard bop era—approximately 1954-60. In advance of PP&T's performance tomorrow night at the Black Cat, Reed spoke to Arts Desk about his city's music, past and present, and how he spreads its gospel to farflung towns.

Washington City Paper: People, Places and Things was formed specifically to explore the music of Chicago in the mid-to-late '50s. What is important about that era?

MR: It’s the missing piece of the puzzle. People think about Chicago jazz in terms of the AACM and the Chicago Underground of the '90s, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Austin High Gang, or maybe Louis Armstrong when he first came here from New Orleans. This is the link between them.

There was so much going on in Chicago at that time, from folks like Sun Ra, Frank Strozier, Booker Little, and the jam-session culture that existed there at the time. I heard a whole hourlong interview not long ago with Sonny Rollins, about when he was in Chicago and living at the Y, and one of his memories was that there were just so many more places to work, even more than in New York. And that kind of fell apart because of that myopic view that New York is the place to be, and when great Chicago musicians like Clifford Jordan and Wilbur Ware decided they had to move to New York, it killed that culture not just in Chicago but in Detroit and Philadelphia.

Chicago rebuilt its culture of jazz and improvised music in the mid-‘60s with the AACM, of course. But this music, from the hard bop era, is the precursor to that progressive nature. Roscoe Mitchell recorded an album, Old/Quartet, really early on—it was recorded in 1967, but it wasn’t released until much later—and you can really hear that he was influenced by the hard bop language of the early ‘60s. And that’s interesting to think about, because here’s this guy who’s so known for essentially modern art through music. Everything has its roots in something, and this isn’t talked about enough.

WCP: But you make it a point to filter this older material through the prism of that “progressive nature” of Chicago.

MR: Here’s the thing about it: when that music was originally made, it was fresh, it was in the moment. If you do it that way now, trying to make it sound just like it did then, it doesn’t have the same spirit and that’s obvious to everyone who’s hearing it, the musicians most of all. It has to be as fresh and in the moment as it was when it was originally made.

People, Places and Things is not meant to be a repertory band. We have to do it in a way that says “This is our tune.” It’s like wearing someone else’s suit, but letting it in or out so it fits you. And then, of course, when we do original material as well, it still sounds the same. It still sounds like us.

WCP: An interesting point, since your new album features original material written specifically for veterans of that Chicago era [trombonist Julian Priester, trumpeter Art Hoyle, tenor saxophonist Ira Sullivan]. Do you write those with an eye toward pastiche, or to best capture their sounds?

MR: Not particularly for their sound. That record, Stories and Negotiations, is a live concert and the original tunes were written with a program of live music in mind. But I was also considering variables of working with people of that era. Age, for one thing. The horns are very punishing on the mouth muscles, especially brass players like Julian and Art. You don’t want to give them big burners for their features. But also, bear in mind that those three weren’t there just for themselves, but to represent a lot of other people who’ve come and gone.

WCP: Is there a distinctive flavor to Chicago’s jazz?

MR: Well, I can’t say either way, in the overarching sense. There’s so much more jazz here than even I know. But I think that from what I’ve been able to see and hear and examine, that it’s really about doing things on your own. The one thing that everybody says when they come through is how the community makes it possible to do it yourself. There’s no industry here, no publicists, no producers, no A&R, one or two small record labels like Delmark—no machine to support you, but also none to put you in a box.

WCP: One of the city’s greats, Bunky Green, told NPR this week that Chicago has less pressure to conform. It sounds like you’re taking that one step further, and saying that it directly encourages you not to conform.

MR: Maybe. Maybe. But on the other hand, it’s kinda like walking into a place and discovering there’s a bunch of people just like you. What you have in common is that you all want to do your own thing in your own way, granted, but they’re still people just like you. So in a sense I think you are conforming.

WCP: Conforming to the non-conformists?

MR: Yeah. Exactly. But still, there’s a good ability in Chicago to grow, and a lot of it is because, as I said, there’s no industry there, and as such there’s no big gig. In New York there’s a hope, an ideal even, that one of these days you might get a call to be in Dave Douglas’s band. Or to work on a large-ensemble Cecil Taylor project. In Chicago—who’s gonna call you up? Everybody’s too busy trying to get their own gigs. So there’s not that pressure and competition.

WCP: You’re working with and talking about the history, culture, and aesthetic specific to Chicago’s jazz scene. Does that stuff lose resonance when you take it on the road, as you are now?

MR: Well, the cultural part doesn’t matter in that context. Musically—I’m definitely not one to be self-aggrandizing, but this band kicks a lot of ass. It is very good at what it does. Audiences don’t have to know anything about what the tunes are. It’s cool if people want to know more about it, and in fact I hope they do and I’m very happy when people want to know more about it, but as long as they like it that’s what matters.

The word minimalism is used a lot to describe Disappears, the mezmerizing Chicago quartet that dropped its new album, Lux (Kranky), in April.

Yes, Disappears' music carries a sense of simplicity. Its sound is reminiscent of both '60s garage rock and '70s krautrock. And yes, Disappears' songs rarely stretch beyond the 3:30-minute mark.

But Disappears does not conform to the tropes of minimalism. The 10 tunes on Lux are drenched in reverb yet tuneful all the same. Songs like "Little Ghost" and "Lux" bathe in apocalyptic aural aesthetics that are unusually calming, while tunes like "Pearly Gates" and "Old Friend" steam ahead with the kind of chug-a-chug-a energy reminiscent of the best pop-punk tunes.

Yes, Disappears is a band that dabbles in minimalism. But, Disappears is also a band that doesn't minimally employ sound when making music.

Disappears performs with Woven Bones tonight at 9 p.m. at the Black Cat. $10.

Daniel Burnham numerous iconic structures, including the Flatiron building in New York.

Architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham was instrumental in the design of the National Mall as we know it today. It's fitting, then, that the Mall is the site of the D.C. premiere of the Burnham documentary Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City.

The Archimedia Workshop film originally debuted last fall with an outdoor screening at Millennium Park in Chicago as part of the centennial anniversary of Burnham’s 1909 Chicago Plan, which reshaped much of that city and influenced urban planners throughout the world.

In Washington, Burnham was a key player in the reworking of L'Enfant's city plan, known as the McMillan Plan of 1901-02 and named for Senator James McMillan. Burnham's contributions to Washington include Union Station and Columbus Plaza, as well as changing the Mall's landscape. The Pennsylvania Railroad had tracks running across the Mall until Burnham persuaded railroad president Alexander Cassatt (brother of impressionist artist Mary) to move his station in the name of national interest.

The event will take place at the Mall’s Screen on the Green location near 4th St. NW. The screening opens at 8:30 p.m. Free.

Ted Leo

Sally Timms

Andrew Bird