ON THE FAR western edge of what could reasonably be called Park Slope, where neatly maintained brownstones give way to tire repair shops and faceless apartment blocs, I recently met up with Fang Island, a Northeast-spanning indie arena rock band. The band, or at least the four members that live in New York, share a converted loft in one of those post-industrial brick buildings. It used to be just two of them, with the rest of the members scattered between Philadelphia and Providence. “We used to say we were from ‘PhillyYorkIdence,” says Jason Bartell, one of the band’s three guitar players. “Then I decided that was kind of cheesy.”

This configuration made playing out really hard. So, the band recruited their New York roommate, a professional chef who force-feeds them “food” like duck pepperoni and chocolate spaghetti, to be their bassist. And then Nick Sadler (also of Daughters), who had been living in Providence, started crashing on the floor. Rounding out the roll call are guitarist Chris Georges, drummer Marc St. Sauveur, the aforementioned chefcum-bassist Michael Jacober, and resident visual artist Sam Mugila (who made an exact replica of the pink castle on the band’s album cover for its live shows).

The apartment is sparsely decorated, with mismatching couches and not much else. One of the only decorations is a giant Sharpie-on-wood drawing of Bartell’s, where dozens and dozens of interlocking lines make up the outline of a person.The drawing, like the band’s location and sound, is all the more interesting for its seemingly endless complications.

That sound. It’s hard to talk about how Fang Island sounds without degeneratinginto a mass of wild hyperbole and exclamation points. Not just every song, but every second of every song is a crazy mix of crashing cymbals, choir-y rounds of shouting and an impossible, continually escalating wall of guitars with countless time-signature changes. It’s that last element that frequently gets Fang Island tagged with the dreaded P word: Proggy.

“No, no, no, no,” says Bartell emphatically when I put it to him that some consider them a prog band. “It’s actually the opposite.”The guys go on to detail how much they love Rush,Yes and King Crimson.Worried they may be contradicting themselves, Bartell sums up: “It’s not something we think about. Initially we were more proggy, if you analyze the earlier stuff or earlier ideas of what went into the music. I was just doing riff after riff after riff, and it seemed natural. But it’s the opposite now.”

Indeed, there’s not much of the bloodless technical proficiency you associate with prog rock in Fang Island’s music. Closer to Ponytail, who the guys at one point call their “sister band,” Fang Island is joyful, positive and anarchic. It’s like Eddie Van Halen and Jimmie Page playing simultaneous, over-thetop riffs while the world explodes behind them. It’s like Brian May fighting a railroad train with his guitar. It’s like… well, I’ll let the band explain?

“There’s a nostalgic quality to Fang Island,” says Sadler, “that’s about remembering some of the coolest, funnest moments of your childhood.”Which explains why the band’s MySpace page and debut album are both covered in pictures of children, and why one of its only videos to date is of a show played for a kindergarten class. “The kids on the front of the album, and the kids on the MySpace page are all wearing Halloween costumes. For me, that was like my favorite time of year. It has to do with stuff like that… and not anything creepy,” says Sadler.

I’m sure Andrew W.K.’s mom will be happy to hear that, as Mr. Party Hard himself is one of those kids in costume on the MySpace page. He was one of the band’s early supporters, agreeing via email to appear on a since-abandoned EP that would have featured guest vocalists over the bands mostly-instrumental indie-rock mayhem. As it happens, AWK ended up being the only one of the half dozen people who agreed to participate who actually recorded and emailed back a vocal part. That track, “Patterns On The Wall,” which features AWK’s “very epic” contribution, will be available only on the Amazon version of Fang Island’s new album.

But AWK’s contributions didn’t stop there. In addition to hosting the band’s CD release party at his venue, Santos Party House, back in February, YouTube vids show he jumped up on stage during a set. He led the crowd in a bizarre call-andresponse mix of Butterball Turkey jingles and recitations of “Fang Island” which led up to a room-shaking version of his 2001 hit “I Get Wet.” Like everything about Fang Island, it was complicated, strange and it fucking ruled.

> Fang Island

April 5, The Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave. (at Havemeyer St.), Brooklyn, 347-529- 6696; 7, $8.

Meryl and Alec sitting in a tree...

No film school teaches about the Phantom Hollywood genre: mainstream movies that sneakily validate the personal foibles of film industry professionals. These movies—usually about divorce, infidelity, broken homes, power-and-sex addictions—are contrived to look like they’re about average folk. Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated is the latest. Its story of a middle-aged divorced couple—Jane and Jake—who get back together despite other new attachments, bears little connection to actual human behavior or recognizable lifestyles. Each “adorable” yet unreal scene is more offensive than the last.

Art is supposed to be personal expression, but Phantom Hollywood movies deliberately avoid self-examination. They’re about self-pity and their plots navigate self-absolution for mistakes made through permissiveness, privilege and sheer vanity. It’s Complicated is textbook Phantom Hollywood, starting with its establishing shot of sun-baked gabled roofs and manicured lawns—the middle-class world that once was the setting for boulevard comedies written for the theater to entertain the bourgeoisie. Recently this Los Angeles luxe has become the default milieu for fantasies about Hollywood’s nouveau riche (see any Judd Apatow-directed film).

Successful professionals Jane and Jake (Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin) never really got over their divorce. Public occasions with their adult kids draw them together despite Jane’s flirtation with an architect (Steve Martin) and Jake’s remarriage to a younger woman. Typical of Phantom Hollywood, Meyers writes and directs screwball-comedy situations that feel inspired by her class’s guilt more than the classical unities of a marital farce like Leo McCarey’s 1937 The Awful Truth. The title It’s Complicated is a convenient, 21st-century way of repeating McCarey’s brand name without admitting that Meyers lazily avoids the awful truth about the embarrassments of poor romantic choices and a perpetually infantilized affluent culture. Jane’s plastic surgery options, like Jake’s fertility clinic visits, become comic routines making light of their private desperation and casual extravagance. When Jake calls himself a cliché, he should stipulate “Hollywood cliché.”

Meyers’ filmmaking is not improving; her movies are drawn out, repetitive and lack precision and complexity. It’s Complicated imitates James L. Brooks’ social specifics yet it’s facile like Nora Ephron. Meyers couldn’t be more false if she was trying to overlook complexity, difficulty and toil. Her slick, easily managed complications are no more credible than the myth of domestic happiness, which promiscuous Hollywood refuses to endorse. It’s Complicated endorses analysis. Jane’s therapist session basically asks for permission (“It can’t hurt”)—the Hollywood alternative to prayer or religious counsel. No spiritual quest occurs in Phantom Hollywood movies, that’s why its characters are vapid.

Call these leads Actressy (Streep), Creepy (Martin) and Gross (Baldwin). Streep’s best moment is when Jane smokes weed and looks at herself in the mirror, but the horrendous scene where she explicates her liaison to her grown-up children as if they were children is pure Phantom Hollywood hokum. Martin’s scarily effete suitor poorly represents self-reliance, while Baldwin’s co-dependence is overly sentimental. Jake, who wants to be fed and mothered, is the closest Meyers comes to originality. Aging into a Charles Durning bear, Baldwin gives his most fully dimensional performance. But Jake’s soft masculinity repeats Jack Nicholson’s wonderful characterization in Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give, while Streep can’t match Diane Keaton’s great performance in that film. Streep’s mature womanliness has distinguished the best streak of her career (Manchurian Candidate, Prairie Home Companion, Lions for Lambs, Dark Matter), but Phantom Hollywood movies don’t respect subtlety or realism. So instead of showing how Hollywood sees itself, Streep exposes how Hollywood shamelessly over-emotes.

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It’s Complicated
Directed by Nancy Meyers
Runtime: 118 min.

It’s Complicated
Directed by Nancy Meyers
Runtime: 118 min.

No film school teaches about the Phantom Hollywood genre: mainstream movies that sneakily validate the personal foibles of film industry professionals. These movies—usually about divorce, infidelity, broken homes, power-and-sex addictions—are contrived to look like they’re about average folk. Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated is the latest. Its story of a middle-aged divorced couple—Jane and Jake—who get back together despite other new attachments, bears little connection to actual human behavior or recognizable lifestyles. Each “adorable” yet unreal scene is more offensive than the last.

Art is supposed to be personal expression, but Phantom Hollywood movies deliberately avoid self-examination. They’re about self-pity and their plots navigate self-absolution for mistakes made through permissiveness, privilege and sheer vanity. It’s Complicated is textbook Phantom Hollywood, starting with its establishing shot of sun-baked gabled roofs and manicured lawns—the middle-class world that once was the setting for boulevard comedies written for the theater to entertain the bourgeoisie. Recently this Los Angeles luxe has become the default milieu for fantasies about Hollywood’s nouveau riche (see any Judd Apatow-directed film).

Successful professionals Jane and Jake (Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin) never really got over their divorce. Public occasions with their adult kids draw them together despite Jane’s flirtation with an architect (Steve Martin) and Jake’s remarriage to a younger woman. Typical of Phantom Hollywood, Meyers writes and directs screwball-comedy situations that feel inspired by her class’s guilt more than the classical unities of a marital farce like Leo McCarey’s 1937 The Awful Truth . The title It’s Complicated is a convenient, 21st-century way of repeating McCarey’s brand name without admitting that Meyers lazily avoids the awful truth about the embarrassments of poor romantic choices and a perpetually infantilized affluent culture. Jane’s plastic surgery options, like Jake’s fertility clinic visits, become comic routines making light of their private desperation and casual extravagance. When Jake calls himself a cliché, he should stipulate “Hollywood cliché.”

Meyers’ filmmaking is not improving; her movies are drawn out, repetitive and lack precision and complexity. It’s Complicated imitates James L. Brooks’ social specifics yet it’s facile like Nora Ephron. Meyers couldn’t be more false if she was trying to overlook complexity, difficulty and toil. Her slick, easily managed complications are no more credible than the myth of domestic happiness, which promiscuous Hollywood refuses to endorse. It’s Complicated endorses analysis. Jane’s therapist session basically asks for permission (“It can’t hurt”)—the Hollywood alternative to prayer or religious counsel. No spiritual quest occurs in Phantom Hollywood movies, that’s why its characters are vapid.

Call these leads Actressy (Streep), Creepy (Martin) and Gross (Baldwin). Streep’s best moment is when Jane smokes weed and looks at herself in the mirror, but the horrendous scene where she explicates her liaison to her grown-up children as if they were children is pure Phantom Hollywood hokum. Martin’s scarily effete suitor poorly represents self-reliance, while Baldwin’s co-dependence is overly sentimental. Jake, who wants to be fed and mothered, is the closest Meyers comes to originality. Aging into a Charles Durning bear, Baldwin gives his most fully dimensional performance. But Jake’s soft masculinity repeats Jack Nicholson’s great characterization in Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give , while Streep can’t match Diane Keaton’s great performance in that film. Streep’s mature womanliness has distinguished the best streak of her career (Manchurian Candidate , Prairie Home Companion , Lions for Lambs , Dark Matter ), but Phantom Hollywood movies don’t respect subtlety or realism. So instead of showing how Hollywood sees itself, Streep exposes how Hollywood shamelessly over-emotes.