March, D.C.: Byrdland / The French Dispatch

Byrdland Records is new. 

It’s one of many new things in a D.C. warehouse district that—until somewhat recently—was industrial, mainly home to food wholesalers and restaurant suppliers. This neighborhood’s new life began with the arrival of Union Market, an upscale food hall where every vendor is the very best in its class. 

It didn’t take long before high-priced condos went up, and hip cafes, bookstores, even a second food hall. Along with this growth came a music venue, SongByrd, and—a block or so away—a record store, ByrdLand. This March, I set out to find something at BrydLand.

ByrdLand is small, as many of these record stores are, featuring a main room and then a backroom. The place is squeaky clean, and, being new, why shouldn’t it be? The main room includes an old fashioned recording booth (I’d seen one of these before at Third Man Records in Nashville).

...and then the backroom has some used records, a couch and some chairs...

...and then—mostly as décor—an old jukebox and several old radios and turntables.

It may have been the mix of shiny and new, dotted with quaint curios that made The French Dispatch soundtrack jump out at me.

I’m aware that (at least among my friends) not everyone who loved Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums stuck around for everything that followed. I’ve stuck around, and I have found something to like in all of his films, even if I didn’t always think that they were great. But I thought The French Dispatch was great. Admittedly, the idea of “The New Yorker magazine, but in France” sounds something generated from a Wes Anderson online plot generator.

I also recall an Onion article teasing that Wes Anderson fans look forward to seeing “things” in his next film: steamer trunks, etc. Fair enough. But let’s consider what objects are being fetishized. It’s never the latest iPhone or smartwatch. Wes Anderson’s world, thus far, seems to be pre-digital. Consider the last moments of Rushmore, when Max Fischer calls out to the DJ to "play something with a little more…"

Or the Tenenbaum siblings putting on a Rolling Stones record…

Or the kids from Moonrise Kingdom playing Francois Hardy….

Anyone who accuses Wes Anderson films of being twee isn't wrong. But anyone with a fondness for vinyl records in a digital age but who just can't get on board with Anderson's aesthetic is, in my opinion, kinda full of it.

But what of this record? As a soundtrack, it feels, well, very much like a soundtrack, or perhaps a “score” would be a better term. It’s a far cry from the semi-obscure British Invasion cuts that appeared in Rushmore, or the melancholy heavy hitters in The Royal Tenenbaums. What we have here are mostly background pieces composed by Alexandre Desplat, ones that, when played at home and disassociated from the movie, lend a bit of atmosphere, perhaps not unlike having an old-fashioned radio on the shelf, or a typewriter on the desk. Call it twee, call it what you want. It’s all a bit silly and superficial. I can live with that. 

All of this has me thinking of a thing I read a while back when The Grand Budapest Hotel was about to come out…how Jude Law had been pestering Wes Anderson for years to put him in one of his films. He apparently had said: “I want to live in one of your films…”

Same, Jude. Same.