Nardwuar is a quirky celebrity interviewer from Vancouver, BC. He has a high, grating voice, and he catches his subjects off guard by asking rapid-fire, esoteric questions about their careers, their lives, or about things that he knows that they’re interested in (specific questions about obscure music, for example). He also asks a lot of questions about Canada. It seems that he often operates without a press pass, and just bum rushes the people that he wants to talk to.
The main attraction is seeing people react as he approaches with a microphone and a barrage of questions. Some think he’s insulting or disrespectful; others seem flattered that he took the time to learn the weird little things that he asks, some try not to crack up, and others humor Nardwuar until they begin to run out of patience.
That last one is how I feel about this double-DVD set. I appreciated his zany energy at first, but, man, did it start to grate after about ten minutes. That doesn’t bode well for a package containing over five hours of material. That’s longer than I sleep some nights!
In snippets, or out of context on a cable access show, this could work, but edited together, it just chafes. The fact that a lot of this was filmed with a shaky handheld camera makes it even harder to take in.
So, if you’re a fan, this is a treasure trove. If it’s not up your alley, then this is torture. –CT Terry (Mint Records, Inc., PO Box 3613, Vancouver, BC, CanadaV6B 3Y6)