I was looking forward to this, not least because it'd be the first out and out rock show that I'd been to in ages - more than a year, I think (the last one that I can remember was Pretty Girls Make Graves/Les Savy Fav in late '04 - or, I suppose, St Jeromes itself in early '05). Also, last year's festival was a nice day out - good music, relaxed atmosphere, and filled with friendly people who were there for the music (lots of familiar faces scattered through the crowd).
There was a similar vibe this year, though the festival's grown larger with the addition of a second stage and the presence of more international acts (more acts full stop) - the crowd was friendly and largely free of attitude, and there was a good buzz happening throughout the day and into the evening (showered in the morning but the rain had stopped by the time we arrived and weather turned out fine). I went with Penny, and we hooked up with Nenad and Pia in the afternoon, but again there were heaps of other people from around the traps and we met plenty of already familiar others, friends of friends, and random strangers (sadly, we didn't get to talk to the guy who looked like Elijah Wood who seemed to be everywhere we were during the day, but - for me at least - this was partially made up for by meeting a pal of Penny's who was a dead ringer for Kirsten Dunst).
We got there fairly early and so were able to catch the first band, Temper Temper. I hadn't heard of them before, but I liked their style - a take on that current kind of New York by way of England in the 80s post-punk/modern rock and done with panache and some good chops.
Next up were Pretty Girls Make Graves, the biggest drawcard for me. The set was split between cuts from The New Romance and the forthcoming Élan Vital, and I think Penny got it right when she said that the band seemed to enjoy playing the new songs more. While I don't think I could ever tire of hearing them belt out stuff from The New Romance (and wouldn't have minded hearing some Good Health or PGMG stuff, though the recentish substitution of keyboardist Leona Marrs for one of the guitarists, Nathan Thelen, might've made that difficult), it was "The Nocturnal House" and "Selling The Wind" which really stood out as highlights, Zollo's repeated calls of "magnetic" on the former and the accordion base of the latter ringing out clarion clear down the lane.
As far as I can remember, the set went something like this (very approximately): "Blue Lights", "Chemical, Chemical", "The Nocturnal House", "The New Romance", "Pyrite Pedestal", "The Grandmother Wolf", "Pictures Of A Night Scene", "Selling The Wind", "This Is Our Emergency", "All Medicated Geniuses"...it was a good show but, as was the case last time they came down, I was surprised by how few people seemed to know their stuff (something also reflected in their early positioning in the festival set list) - I mean, they're only probably the best rock band in the world at the moment! (Well, maybe apart from Radiohead, who are in a bit of a different category - not necessarily higher, but definitely different.)
Then Wolf and Cub, another band which was completely new to me (though I've heard the name a bit recently, especially since they signed to 4ad). Turns out that their thing is a fairly heavy, psychedelic stoner-rock jam type thing (reminded me a bit of Kyuss), and even though that's completely not my thing, I enjoyed the set, though the best moments for me came when they broke into a more garagey rock n roll groove, riffs and a backbeat.
Faker played next - yet another who I didn't know anything about. Apparently they've had quite a lot of airplay, though, and the crowd was getting into them plenty. The singer was a scrawny ball of energy, hurling himself around stage (also hanging off it and scaling a wall beside it), intoning his lyrics in that Echo & the Bunnymen-styled Britpop/post-punk manner so popular nowadays, and the music draws on similar influences. One or two of the songs sounded vaguely familiar, as if I might have heard them on triple j or something, and they do a pretty good line in anthems; they seemed like a pretty solid outfit.
Sometimes it seems as if everyone with even a passing interest in music has seen Augie March except for me, so I was glad to see them play. The music wasn't carrying that well to where we were standing at that point, but it seemed pretty good (I've only ever listened to Sunset Studies, and even that one not all that closely) and I might try to check them out again some time.
In between some of those main stage acts, we'd gone into Lounge to check out Dane Tucquet and Holly Throsby, but the sound wasn't great and you needed to be very close in order to hear properly, so I didn't get much of a vibe on either, but I was keen to see New Buffalo, so we left halfway through Augie March in order to get inside early and grab a spot on the floor down the front (the staggering of the sets on the two stages was way out of synch by that time). Happily, she was able to overcome the crummy acoustics and murmur of conversation from the back of the room to deliver a really good set. She switched between keys and guitar from song to song, with help from a guy on either samples or guitar for a few of the numbers; it was mostly off The Last Beautiful Day (show closer was "I've Got You And You've Got Me", accompanied by rather too loud distorted electric guitar, à la the ep version) but "Four Seasons In One Day" got a big reaction from the crowd and there was at least one new song, which was good (as well as one or two others that I didn't recognise). Last time I saw her live, I was surprised by how strong her voice is, and it struck me again yesterday at the festival; also, how much she was able to rely on it with fairly minimal instrumentation...
The Broken Social Scene set was already well underway by the time we got out into the lane again, but I was pretty impressed by what I caught of it. I didn't get into You Forgot It In People anywhere near as much as other people seemed to, but songs like "Almost Crimes" and "Cause = Time" came through strongly, hitting the indie anthem buttons more strongly than they do on record (one of the newer ones, "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement", was also good); sadly, they started "Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl" but pulled out after just a few lines after realising that the acoustics of the lane were basically destroying the song. Also, props to them for bringing a brass section!
Les Savy Fav are another of those bands that I think I don't really have the ear for - I've never listened to a full record of theirs, but have heard plenty of their songs and never been excited by what they do...the kind of jerky three-piece attack that they ply generally leaves me a bit cold, though once in a while I 'get' one a bit more than the rest. They know how to put on a good show, though, the big, balding, bearded singer getting up to all kinds of things on stage while bawling out the words, and also going on two separate excursions deep into the crowd (the girl standing next to me had a go at tickling his belly but he just put the microphone in her face for her to sing), exhorting people to sing along.
Then, for the second year running, I didn't stay for the Avalanches set (although, this time, I at least stuck around for the start of it) - by the time they got started, a decent sit-down dinner somewhere was looking pretty good (getting soft in my old age), so we headed off.
Anyway, although there wasn't any one band that really blew the top of my head off in the way that the Dears did last year, it was fun and hopefully they'll be able to keep the festival going in years to come (I heard that tickets sold out well in advance, which is a good sign)...
Monday, February 27, 2006
Sin City
I liked Sin City a lot the first time, on the big screen, and it was still good on dvd, but it loses a bit both in the transition and on the second viewing (much of the film's impact comes from not knowing what's coming next). Still good, though.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
Set Yourself On Fire would've needed to house something pretty special for any of its songs to top "Celebration Guns", and indeed there's nothing on it to match that plangent, sighing, gently scudding ode (I've likened it to "Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl" before, and I still think the comparison apt), though "One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead)" goes close; but what there is, is an unassuming and likeable collection of spacey, electro-inflected indie-pop (the others that I already knew - "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead", "Set Yourself On Fire" and "Ageless Beauty" - are still nice, too), mostly down-tempo, touched occasionally and lightly by some unintrusive chamber-pop elements...soft-edged fuzzed-out guitars and pretty singing (both girl and boy) galore - and after all, we like nothing better (ahem) than tuneful indie electro-pop boy/girl duets, right? The record's not especially memorable either in its component parts or as a whole, and the songcraft is a bit lacking in places (ie, a few songs meander without going anywhere), but all up it's pretty good for what it is.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Dusty Springfield - Dusty In Memphis
It's always weird to come to an iconic album after having heard a great deal about it, sometimes for years and years before actually listening to it - it can be damnably hard to get past all the mythology and hagiography, and the sheer aura of the thing, to try to have some kind of direct or true experience of the music, never mind the desire to know where it 'fits' in with everything else and why it's 'important' (and matters're unlikely to be improved be actively trying to achieve such a listening experience). In this case, though, I already knew two of the record's key tracks, "Son Of A Preacher Man" and "Breakfast In Bed", close to inside-out, which made a bit of a difference; then, too, and probably more importantly, there's something about Dusty's singing which seems to render all that stuff irrelevant and just cut directly to the heart of the matter.
"Son Of A Preacher Man" is one of her most famous songs, if not the most famous, especially since its use on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, and deservedly so, for it's glorious and life-affirmatory. But it's "Breakfast In Bed" that's my favourite - it's nigh on perfect, shivering with feeling and drama...in his liner notes, Elvis Costello suggests that "[t]his track may have the greatest vocal entrance of Dusty's career" and then goes on to pick out my favourite moment on the album - the swell of the way she sings the line "She's hurt you again, I can tell".
The other songs on the album are uniformly good - there doesn't even seem any point in picking out individual tracks. Through them all, it seems as if she's singing for all she's worth while also conveying every nuance and detail of the song's voice and what lies beneath it - there's a sensitivity and a grace to her singing which is remarkable and comes down, crystal clear, through the years, and the band and producers do their jobs, wreathing her voice in horns, strings and all the accoutrements and bathing the album in a warm, timeless glow.
Also, incidentally, I think I'm beginning to develop the ability to pick Carole King compositions...
"Son Of A Preacher Man" is one of her most famous songs, if not the most famous, especially since its use on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, and deservedly so, for it's glorious and life-affirmatory. But it's "Breakfast In Bed" that's my favourite - it's nigh on perfect, shivering with feeling and drama...in his liner notes, Elvis Costello suggests that "[t]his track may have the greatest vocal entrance of Dusty's career" and then goes on to pick out my favourite moment on the album - the swell of the way she sings the line "She's hurt you again, I can tell".
The other songs on the album are uniformly good - there doesn't even seem any point in picking out individual tracks. Through them all, it seems as if she's singing for all she's worth while also conveying every nuance and detail of the song's voice and what lies beneath it - there's a sensitivity and a grace to her singing which is remarkable and comes down, crystal clear, through the years, and the band and producers do their jobs, wreathing her voice in horns, strings and all the accoutrements and bathing the album in a warm, timeless glow.
Also, incidentally, I think I'm beginning to develop the ability to pick Carole King compositions...
Eileen Rose - Shine Like It Does
The other Eileen Rose album (her debut) and, like Long Shot Novena, I got it cheap, since apparently either no one's heard of her or no one likes her - which in either case is everyone else's loss, because she's really rather good. I guess that part of the reason for this relative lack of recognition is that the music she makes isn't particularly fashionable - gritty, rootsy singer-songwriter fare with a slight country twang - and she doesn't have any particular gimmicks except the ability to write a good song and sing it well...
So anyway, Shine Like It Does isn't quite as good as Long Shot Novena - it's not as fully-realised and the songs aren't as consistently strong, with a couple dragging a bit ("Silver Ladle" in particular is a major miscalculation) - but it's still a very solid album, with a somewhat lighter feel than that other. Its best songs are "Lincoln Park", which works in a simultaneous lyrical and musical reference to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", and two near the end which I already knew, the epic "Shining" and breezy "Trying To Lose You"; I also like "Lie To Me" and the opening pair of "Rose" and "Still In The Family".
So anyway, Shine Like It Does isn't quite as good as Long Shot Novena - it's not as fully-realised and the songs aren't as consistently strong, with a couple dragging a bit ("Silver Ladle" in particular is a major miscalculation) - but it's still a very solid album, with a somewhat lighter feel than that other. Its best songs are "Lincoln Park", which works in a simultaneous lyrical and musical reference to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", and two near the end which I already knew, the epic "Shining" and breezy "Trying To Lose You"; I also like "Lie To Me" and the opening pair of "Rose" and "Still In The Family".
Janet Evanovich - Visions of Sugar Plums, To The Nines & Ten Big Ones
Sugar Plums is a Stephanie Plum novel, but a bit different from the other books in the series. It's a holiday special - more of a novella than a novel, and with a slightly different feel owing to its Christmas setting and the consequential entry of some fantasy elements - although, that said, it does work in a small amount of plot development, picking up where Eight left off. By happy coincidence, it was sitting on shelf beside Nine when I made a flying visit to the library to pick up that latter, so I got to read it in sequence (not having bothered to find out where it fit before). Anyway, it's not as good as the other books in the series, but not too bad for all that. There's nothing wrong with Nine(s) and Ten, though, except that Ten wraps up a bit abruptly, as if Evanovich hadn't bothered to write a proper ending and instead just threw in Sally to save Stephanie on the basis that someone has to save her, and it's already been Ranger and Morelli in previous books...almost caught up with the series, after which normal transmission with reading and general use of my time will resume - I've developed the bad habit of just putting everything else aside and reading these back to back (they're so pacy, entertaining, and quick to read) - although then again, with the start of work coming up very fast, maybe not...
Open Your Eyes
I was reading an interview between Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan (full review of the book no doubt to follow at some later date, once I've finished it) - it's interesting and they have a lot of thoughtful and thought-provoking stuff to say about writing, literature, and all that stuff. Anyway, there's one point at which which the two agree that cinema is, in McEwan's words, "a very inferior, unsophisticated medium"; Smith agrees, on the grounds that "you get surfaces only"; and those rather absolute statements particularly interested me, not least because while I strongly share that intuition, it also makes me a bit uneasy.
Well, my thoughts were turned back to that question after watching Open Your Eyes. One area in which films may well have it over books is in rendering the blurry distinction between 'internal consciousness' and 'external world' - evidently a bit of an obsession of mine - in a way which is both convincing and phenomenologically accurate (the two obviously being closely related), whether that be along the reality/fantasy line, or waking life/dreams, or present experience/memory, or any of those experiential sets...and this aptness comes because cinema is a visual medium, and doesn't need to grapple with the level of linguistic mediation inherent in the novel form (or in any kind of writing). It'd be possible to argue that cinema ought not to be trusted for that very reason - that the ease with which its images and surfaces can be assimilated into our ordinary experience and average everyday understanding of the world serves to reinforce [insert undesirable things here] and prevent us from breaking clear to [insert desirable higher state of understanding here], etc - but the fact remains that it's a medium more apt to representing at least some aspects of seemingly unfiltered human experience (which is different from representing human consciousness or its workings).
Open Your Eyes is quite possibly the best illustration of this facility that I've yet come across (I've thought more highly of other films which do similar things - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example, and maybe Broken Flowers - but I can't think of any that so adeptly and deliberately efface the lines between consciousness and world). The plot is much cleverness, and the execution is spot-on - visually spectacular (the opening scene's a stunner), creepy, unsettling, and genuinely dream-like. I thought that it was very good.
Okay, spoiler time - anyone reading this should stop if they haven't seen the film and might want to some day.
...
Lots to think about - the ending is open, but it's not a cheat, for there's plenty of evidence to point in any number of directions. The obvious way of reading it would be to take things at face value - to accept the sci-fi twist as genuine, and to see César's final jump as a true leap back into the external world of 150 years in the future, so that the voice telling him to open his eyes at the end would be that of an L.E. nurse in that future (particularly given that that voice is different from the one which murmurs the film in at its beginning)...I say 'obvious', but even that would be plenty head-spinning, and all the more impressive for the fact that there don't seem to be any obvious plot holes or contradictions ruining it. Another possibility, I guess, is that the whole thing is a dream - not in a 'and then he woke up' sort of way but rather in a nightmarish 'the L.E. stuff is true, but somehow it's gone wrong and he's being forced to repeat the sequence over and over' way (or 'the L.E. stuff isn't true, but he's been stuck in this kind of internal experiential loop by some other means - possibly psychosis'). Or there's the possibility that César is in Hell, where he's (also) forced to relive this distorted sequence over and over because of his sins while alive (notice the references to religion and God throughout) - which of course isn't mutually exclusive to any of those other possibilities except the first.
Well, my thoughts were turned back to that question after watching Open Your Eyes. One area in which films may well have it over books is in rendering the blurry distinction between 'internal consciousness' and 'external world' - evidently a bit of an obsession of mine - in a way which is both convincing and phenomenologically accurate (the two obviously being closely related), whether that be along the reality/fantasy line, or waking life/dreams, or present experience/memory, or any of those experiential sets...and this aptness comes because cinema is a visual medium, and doesn't need to grapple with the level of linguistic mediation inherent in the novel form (or in any kind of writing). It'd be possible to argue that cinema ought not to be trusted for that very reason - that the ease with which its images and surfaces can be assimilated into our ordinary experience and average everyday understanding of the world serves to reinforce [insert undesirable things here] and prevent us from breaking clear to [insert desirable higher state of understanding here], etc - but the fact remains that it's a medium more apt to representing at least some aspects of seemingly unfiltered human experience (which is different from representing human consciousness or its workings).
Open Your Eyes is quite possibly the best illustration of this facility that I've yet come across (I've thought more highly of other films which do similar things - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example, and maybe Broken Flowers - but I can't think of any that so adeptly and deliberately efface the lines between consciousness and world). The plot is much cleverness, and the execution is spot-on - visually spectacular (the opening scene's a stunner), creepy, unsettling, and genuinely dream-like. I thought that it was very good.
Okay, spoiler time - anyone reading this should stop if they haven't seen the film and might want to some day.
...
Lots to think about - the ending is open, but it's not a cheat, for there's plenty of evidence to point in any number of directions. The obvious way of reading it would be to take things at face value - to accept the sci-fi twist as genuine, and to see César's final jump as a true leap back into the external world of 150 years in the future, so that the voice telling him to open his eyes at the end would be that of an L.E. nurse in that future (particularly given that that voice is different from the one which murmurs the film in at its beginning)...I say 'obvious', but even that would be plenty head-spinning, and all the more impressive for the fact that there don't seem to be any obvious plot holes or contradictions ruining it. Another possibility, I guess, is that the whole thing is a dream - not in a 'and then he woke up' sort of way but rather in a nightmarish 'the L.E. stuff is true, but somehow it's gone wrong and he's being forced to repeat the sequence over and over' way (or 'the L.E. stuff isn't true, but he's been stuck in this kind of internal experiential loop by some other means - possibly psychosis'). Or there's the possibility that César is in Hell, where he's (also) forced to relive this distorted sequence over and over because of his sins while alive (notice the references to religion and God throughout) - which of course isn't mutually exclusive to any of those other possibilities except the first.
Nellie McKay - Get Away From Me
If there's a better single word than 'joyful' to describe how Nellie McKay's music makes me feel, I haven't thought of it yet - I love the quirky melodies, the independent mindedness, the weirdly undulating lyrical streams, the attitude and anger wrapped up in her wildly ricocheting, frequently foul-mouthed, off the wall singer-songwriter/vocal jazz/old-style pop/hip-hop/street poetry fusion.
Get Away From Me was the red-haired chanteuse's debut, released by Sony/Columbia in 2004, and as far as I'm aware it's still her only official long-playing record (I haven't been following the Pretty Little Head story, but I don't imagine that it's hit the stores in either version yet). It's a double album, although with a total running length of just over an hour, it would've easily fit on to a single disc; somehow, this seems in keeping with what McKay's doing rather than being an annoying affectation. Maybe it's because her music is, for all of its peculiar detours and modernisms, often recognisably rooted in the classic Tin Pan Alley style of songwriting, not least in the way that piano is the dominant (non-vocal) instrument.
So anyway, I think that the advance version of Pretty Little Head that's been floating around is the better album - it's probably marginally brighter and more sprightly than Get Away From Me as well as less diffuse, and its high points are higher. But Get Away From Me is damn good too, if not as striking or as focused as what was to come - it's just a joy to listen to, gleefully idiosyncratic, cheeky, colourful and fresh.
Get Away From Me was the red-haired chanteuse's debut, released by Sony/Columbia in 2004, and as far as I'm aware it's still her only official long-playing record (I haven't been following the Pretty Little Head story, but I don't imagine that it's hit the stores in either version yet). It's a double album, although with a total running length of just over an hour, it would've easily fit on to a single disc; somehow, this seems in keeping with what McKay's doing rather than being an annoying affectation. Maybe it's because her music is, for all of its peculiar detours and modernisms, often recognisably rooted in the classic Tin Pan Alley style of songwriting, not least in the way that piano is the dominant (non-vocal) instrument.
So anyway, I think that the advance version of Pretty Little Head that's been floating around is the better album - it's probably marginally brighter and more sprightly than Get Away From Me as well as less diffuse, and its high points are higher. But Get Away From Me is damn good too, if not as striking or as focused as what was to come - it's just a joy to listen to, gleefully idiosyncratic, cheeky, colourful and fresh.
Grand Theft Parsons: Music from & inspired by the motion picture
There was no real reason to buy this cd except that I needed to hear Gillian Welch sing "Hickory Wind", but as far as reasons go, that's a pretty good one; to be honest, it's not as great as I'd anticipated, but she puts her usual understatedly gorgeous vocal in, and the echoey, windy humming in the background gives it a different complexion from both the original and Welch's usual metier, and all told I quite like it. The rest of the cd's made up of a couple of classics as done by Gram himself (including the Flying Burrito Brothers' version of "Wild Horses"), a bunch of covers of his songs by contemporary artists (most notably Wilco's "One Hundred Years From Now"), some soundtrack/score stuff composed by Richard G Mitchell in the americana style (with hints of a Morricone influence), and an odd assortment of other cuts (Primal Scream's "Movin' On Up" is a weird one - the only connection to Parsons that I can figure out is that it's a drug song - but presumably it makes more sense in the context of the film). All up, nice but not cosmically so.
Beach Boys - Smiley Smile / Wild Honey
Like, I imagine, a lot of people my age, my exposure to the Beach Boys has basically been limited to Pet Sounds and a handful of other radio singles, and I've never been super-enthused about them. While they have at least a handful of great songs up their sleeve - "You Still Believe In Me", "God Only Knows" and "Caroline No" spring to mind - and Pet Sounds is a rather lovely record, they just don't excite me as an overall proposition.
Listening to these two post-Pet Sounds albums hasn't done anything to change my mind - to my ears, they basically sound like inferior versions of that earlier classic, messy and comparatively unfocused (though scattered with a couple of genuine gems). One thing, though - hearing more Beach Boys has given me a clearer insight into how enormously influential they were on the subsequent development of pop music, both vocally and production-wise. The thing is, though, that unlike, say, the Velvet Underground, their stuff doesn't stand up for me in its own right today.
Listening to these two post-Pet Sounds albums hasn't done anything to change my mind - to my ears, they basically sound like inferior versions of that earlier classic, messy and comparatively unfocused (though scattered with a couple of genuine gems). One thing, though - hearing more Beach Boys has given me a clearer insight into how enormously influential they were on the subsequent development of pop music, both vocally and production-wise. The thing is, though, that unlike, say, the Velvet Underground, their stuff doesn't stand up for me in its own right today.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken
A live album and Case's most recent record (excluding Fox Confessor, which hasn't hit the stores yet). On the short side at just over half an hour in length, but good value nonetheless in that most of the songs on it can't be found elsewhere in her recorded output. It comprises 10 songs taken from two shows that she (with live backing band the Sadies) played in early 2004, plus a version of "Wayfaring Stranger" separately recorded 'semi-live', and, unsurprisingly, it's all excellent. Case is in fine voice, and the sound quality is top-notch - crystal clear and, to be frank, better than that on her early studio recordings...we knew this already, but it's nice to have it confirmed that the girl can really sing - her vocals sound just as good on The Tigers Have Spoken as they do on Blacklisted and Fox Confessor.
Opener "If You Knew", a Case original, is an early highlight, swaggering in and swinging forwards in much the same way that "Hold On, Hold On" does; also particularly excellent are her rollicking take on "The Train From Kansas City" (as in Berry/Greenwich --> Shangri-Las), a cover of a song called "Soulful Shade Of Blue" (written by Buffy Sainte-Marie; name rings a bell but I don't know why), and a resonating, haunted rendition of her own "Blacklisted", which made me think that Blacklisted is one of the few albums that I'd be interested to hear done live in its entirety. And, of course, it's neat to hear Case sing "Wayfaring Stranger" - one of those 'can't go wrong' propositions (although, thinking about other versions I know well, I reckon it's probably shaded by Emmylou's take on the traditional number...I'm also fond of 16 Horsepower's cut, but that's a slightly different kind of beast) - stretching out vocally across the familiar melody and employing a backing choir to ramp up the dynamics and really punch out the words "I'm going there to see my mother,/She says she'll meet me when I come,/I'm just a-going over Jordan,/I'm just a-going over home".
Opener "If You Knew", a Case original, is an early highlight, swaggering in and swinging forwards in much the same way that "Hold On, Hold On" does; also particularly excellent are her rollicking take on "The Train From Kansas City" (as in Berry/Greenwich --> Shangri-Las), a cover of a song called "Soulful Shade Of Blue" (written by Buffy Sainte-Marie; name rings a bell but I don't know why), and a resonating, haunted rendition of her own "Blacklisted", which made me think that Blacklisted is one of the few albums that I'd be interested to hear done live in its entirety. And, of course, it's neat to hear Case sing "Wayfaring Stranger" - one of those 'can't go wrong' propositions (although, thinking about other versions I know well, I reckon it's probably shaded by Emmylou's take on the traditional number...I'm also fond of 16 Horsepower's cut, but that's a slightly different kind of beast) - stretching out vocally across the familiar melody and employing a backing choir to ramp up the dynamics and really punch out the words "I'm going there to see my mother,/She says she'll meet me when I come,/I'm just a-going over Jordan,/I'm just a-going over home".
Janet Evanovich - Hot Six, Seven Up & Hard Eight
More proof that these books are addictive: the other night, I went out and bought Six (secondhand, admittedly, but the principle is the same) rather than simply waiting for it to come on shelf at any one of the numerous public libraries to which I have access. Self control bad, instant gratification oh so good.
Also, evidence that these books are a bad influence on me: today, strolling down Hoddle St around 1ish with the intention of getting lunch on Bridge Rd, not thinking about anything in particular but vaguely musing about the use of the first person voice in literature (in particular re: Murakami and The Great Gatsby) - ie, normal appropriate good thoughts for me to be having - when I went past Hungry Jacks and suddenly thought that maybe I should just eat there instead (justifying it by reflecting that it'd be an appropriate place to be reading the further adventures of Stephanie Plum), and so I did. Hella incongruous with most everything else about me and my lifestyle, but what can you do? Never let it be said that popular fiction can't be a powerful force.
So evidently I'm still enjoying these, and I still get at least a few laugh-out-louds per book. Things continue to move forward between Stephanie and both Morelli and Ranger, and the new characters are all good in their own ways (Habib and Mitchell are two of Evanovich's funniest bit part creations); running jokes, rather than getting old, often amuse more as Evanovich finds new inventive ways to, for example, get Stephanie handcuffed to various objects or have cars blown up in the bounty hunter's vicinity (usually though not always her own).
Also, evidence that these books are a bad influence on me: today, strolling down Hoddle St around 1ish with the intention of getting lunch on Bridge Rd, not thinking about anything in particular but vaguely musing about the use of the first person voice in literature (in particular re: Murakami and The Great Gatsby) - ie, normal appropriate good thoughts for me to be having - when I went past Hungry Jacks and suddenly thought that maybe I should just eat there instead (justifying it by reflecting that it'd be an appropriate place to be reading the further adventures of Stephanie Plum), and so I did. Hella incongruous with most everything else about me and my lifestyle, but what can you do? Never let it be said that popular fiction can't be a powerful force.
So evidently I'm still enjoying these, and I still get at least a few laugh-out-louds per book. Things continue to move forward between Stephanie and both Morelli and Ranger, and the new characters are all good in their own ways (Habib and Mitchell are two of Evanovich's funniest bit part creations); running jokes, rather than getting old, often amuse more as Evanovich finds new inventive ways to, for example, get Stephanie handcuffed to various objects or have cars blown up in the bounty hunter's vicinity (usually though not always her own).
Josie and the Pussycats
Cute satire targeting the music industry and consumer culture in general; funny in places, but some of the jokes and self-referentiality get tired pretty quickly (or else weren't funny to begin with), and while I didn't resent or regret having given 100 minutes of my life to the film - it has its moments, and I do enjoy this bubblegum, cartoony, hyper-colourful type of thing - all up Josie and the Pussycats is rather too minor (I like my satire sharper and/or subtler).
Also, the whole time I was watching it, I was thinking that Josie (Rachel Leigh Cook) reminded me of someone I know (appearance-wise rather than personality-wise), but: (a) I couldn't work out who it was; and (b) I had a feeling that either (b-i) I don't like the real-life person very much, or (b-ii) I don't find the real-life person very attractive, or (b-iii) both. Strange...I wonder who I was being reminded of.
Also, the whole time I was watching it, I was thinking that Josie (Rachel Leigh Cook) reminded me of someone I know (appearance-wise rather than personality-wise), but: (a) I couldn't work out who it was; and (b) I had a feeling that either (b-i) I don't like the real-life person very much, or (b-ii) I don't find the real-life person very attractive, or (b-iii) both. Strange...I wonder who I was being reminded of.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Walk The Line
Watching this film made me happy. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon both very good (singing good, acting very good) - the first film I've really liked the former in, and I think the first I've really seen the latter in - and the relationship between Cash and June Carter makes a compelling thread holding the story together (I was a bit surprised that more wasn't made of "Ring Of Fire", though the song and its writing is fairly prominent). There isn't all that much to say about Walk The Line, really - there's nothing too unexpected in it, but one never feels that it's just going through the motions in hitting the high points of that storied career and life (at least up to the point of his marriage to June), and within its chosen parameters, it basically does everything right...y'know, it just felt real. Also, I got those little chills down the back of the neck during several of the musical numbers, which has to be a good sign. Plus, the music's great, natch (Cash's own stuff, as done by Phoenix + Witherspoon belting out several numbers + period soundtrack (Dylan et al) + extra stuff composed by T Bone Burnett).
Cynthia Ozick - The Puttermesser Papers
Plot-wise, it's an account of the extraordinary career, life, death and afterlife of Ruth Puttermesser, a lawyer/public servant.city mayor/anonymous retiree dedicated to the idea of a life of the mind Jew in New York City; it also has a golem, life imitating art, fantasy indistinguishable from reality; it's a parable concerning art, society, desire, the imagination and paradise; and it's formally quite experimental, being related in the form of five, chronologically-ordered but only loosely connected, extended chapters detailing key episodes in Puttermesser's life. Put like that, it sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Here's the thing, though: I felt the whole time I was reading the novel that I wasn't giving it the attention and concentration that it deserved - but the reason for that neglect on my part was that the novel itself doesn't do enough to demand or earn such care on the reader's part.
Ozick can certainly write, but her crisp, wry, liberally-dotted-with-excursions-into-the-fantastic style is weighed down by a recurring preciousness and the suffocating blanket of over-intellectualism. Obviously, I don't mind a bit of preciousness or intellectualism, least of all in literature, but it really goes too far in The Puttermesser Papers - it requires a level of erudition to comprehend which is, quite frankly, ridiculous. So these comments need to be qualified by the recognition that, very possibly, I'm just not learned enough to 'get' the novel...even so, though if it were more compelling, I would've been more willing to dig into its complexities and make a real effort to unravel them - but, while Puttermesser is a memorable creation, The Puttermesser Papers is too disjointed and all over the place, and basically too unsatisfying, for it to seem worth that effort (I noticed that every single chapter/novella in it has been previously published, suggesting that maybe a certain unity of vision is lacking from the 'novel' I've read and possibly explaining why its constituent parts don't seem particularly well-integrated with one another). As it is, while the novel isn't without its virtues, I was disappointed by this one (I'd read the first few pages in a book store and thought them promising enough to remember the title and track it down in a library later).
Ozick can certainly write, but her crisp, wry, liberally-dotted-with-excursions-into-the-fantastic style is weighed down by a recurring preciousness and the suffocating blanket of over-intellectualism. Obviously, I don't mind a bit of preciousness or intellectualism, least of all in literature, but it really goes too far in The Puttermesser Papers - it requires a level of erudition to comprehend which is, quite frankly, ridiculous. So these comments need to be qualified by the recognition that, very possibly, I'm just not learned enough to 'get' the novel...even so, though if it were more compelling, I would've been more willing to dig into its complexities and make a real effort to unravel them - but, while Puttermesser is a memorable creation, The Puttermesser Papers is too disjointed and all over the place, and basically too unsatisfying, for it to seem worth that effort (I noticed that every single chapter/novella in it has been previously published, suggesting that maybe a certain unity of vision is lacking from the 'novel' I've read and possibly explaining why its constituent parts don't seem particularly well-integrated with one another). As it is, while the novel isn't without its virtues, I was disappointed by this one (I'd read the first few pages in a book store and thought them promising enough to remember the title and track it down in a library later).
The Best of the Lemonheads: The Atlantic Years
The Lemonheads are one of those bands whose actual albums I'll probably never need to own - a best of is basically perfect for me. I associate their music inescapably with high school - "It's A Shame About Ray", "The Outdoor Type", "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You", and, of course, the ubiquitous "Mrs Robinson" (which I remember taping off the radio and listening to plenty...I wonder what happened to all those old tapes?). Fuzzy guitared power-pop in the classic 90s style - makes me all nostalgic!
Walk On By: Songs That Inspired Generations volume 1
Two cd set of songs from the documentary. Billed as "a listener's guide to the 20th Century's most influential songs", it's a pretty good selection of famous tunes from stage, screen and plain old recording studio. Mostly in their classic recordings (Ella Fitzgerald's "Night and Day", Bing Crosby's "White Christmas", the Platters' "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit", Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By", etc, etc) but also includes a few less well-known versions of famous songs (Simply Red's surprisingly good rendition of "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye", Eva Cassidy's "Over The Rainbow", which is probably better than Judy Garland's, Tori Amos' take on "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Lucinda Williams' version of "Cold, Cold Heart", Gipsy Kings' "Hotel California").
Monday, February 20, 2006
Love and Other Catastrophes
[Para edited out 6/9/17]
I first watched Love and Other Catastrophes in the summer between high school and uni - a time which, if it was half as golden as I remember it as being, must have been golden indeed - and really liked it; it went a long way towards shaping my impressions of university life (which at that point were very vague indeed), and incidentally gave me something to look forward to. The film stayed with me, too - over the last six years, I've often found myself thinking of Frances O'Connor's character, running around campus from department to department, stuck amidst layers of red tape and university bureaucracy, or remembered her lying outside on a bench, singing along to "Shivers", or recalled Ari's habit of recording his thoughts on the tape recorder he carries with him, when finding myself playing out similar scenes in my own life.
So, with uni over for me at least for the time being (and more than likely forever), and the real world rushing up all too soon (coming up to two weeks away), it seemed a good time to watch the film again and see how it looks with the benefit of the passing of these last six years. First thing I noticed is that it was actually filmed at Melbourne Uni (I hadn't been sure that it was) - although it was made in '96, and campus looks a bit different now than it did then, there are still plenty of recognisable buildings and spots (South Lawn!) - which gives it an added piquancy...[a light edit here 6/9/17]...there were enough similarities for me to recognise plenty of consonances beyond those I'd retained from my first viewing (enjoyed the Kundera conversation at the party!) - and that's where the nostalgia began to creep in.
[Para edited out 6/9/17]
So evidently, in some important respects at least, the film itself is almost incidental [the idea of the film / the film 'itself']. But I guess there are reasons why it caught my attention in the first place and why I liked it again tonight, even personal associations aside, and you know, those reasons aren't so very hard to find...it's funny and sweet and smart, and it's about the search for love. Sometimes, at least, that's more than enough.
I first watched Love and Other Catastrophes in the summer between high school and uni - a time which, if it was half as golden as I remember it as being, must have been golden indeed - and really liked it; it went a long way towards shaping my impressions of university life (which at that point were very vague indeed), and incidentally gave me something to look forward to. The film stayed with me, too - over the last six years, I've often found myself thinking of Frances O'Connor's character, running around campus from department to department, stuck amidst layers of red tape and university bureaucracy, or remembered her lying outside on a bench, singing along to "Shivers", or recalled Ari's habit of recording his thoughts on the tape recorder he carries with him, when finding myself playing out similar scenes in my own life.
So, with uni over for me at least for the time being (and more than likely forever), and the real world rushing up all too soon (coming up to two weeks away), it seemed a good time to watch the film again and see how it looks with the benefit of the passing of these last six years. First thing I noticed is that it was actually filmed at Melbourne Uni (I hadn't been sure that it was) - although it was made in '96, and campus looks a bit different now than it did then, there are still plenty of recognisable buildings and spots (South Lawn!) - which gives it an added piquancy...[a light edit here 6/9/17]...there were enough similarities for me to recognise plenty of consonances beyond those I'd retained from my first viewing (enjoyed the Kundera conversation at the party!) - and that's where the nostalgia began to creep in.
[Para edited out 6/9/17]
So evidently, in some important respects at least, the film itself is almost incidental [the idea of the film / the film 'itself']. But I guess there are reasons why it caught my attention in the first place and why I liked it again tonight, even personal associations aside, and you know, those reasons aren't so very hard to find...it's funny and sweet and smart, and it's about the search for love. Sometimes, at least, that's more than enough.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Kitchen Stories
The idea's interesting in a quirky kind of way - Swedish study into kitchen use habits of single men involves the installation of observers (sitting on high chairs in the corners of kitchens) recording all of the movements of said single men (in Norway) and living in a caravan just outside the subjects' houses (one observer per subject, natch). Study motivated by ideals of scientific purity, meaning that there's not supposed to be any interaction between observer and subject. Film focuses on one particular pairing and the relationship that develops between the two. I found it a bit of a slog, though. It's sweet-natured and has a little bit to say about seeing the world from the perspective of others, etc (and I wondered if there were some national stereotypes involving Sweden and Norway being activated as well), but the film was too lacking in 'hooks' for me to get into it at any point.
D.E.B.S.
Enjoyed this witty and rather offbeat girl-spy film spoof by way of the Hollywood teen movie (I thought that latter was also being sent up, but David reckoned that the dialogue was pretty much exactly what you'd get in a standard example of the genre); the lesbianism was a good gimmick and in keeping with the spirit of the whole (it wouldn't have been half as fun had Lucy Diamond been replaced with a male). All done with a light touch which kept the silliness enjoyable (important since the whole thing is so self-consciously silly); much sparkle in the minor details, like the casting of Michael Clarke Duncan, the random French accent sported by Devon Aoki, the endless exaggeratedly cliché sequences and dialogue ("I thought you were different!"), and the brill 80s soundtrack (Only Ones, Cure, New Order, etc). High eye candy value, too.
Here.
Here.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
House of Sand and Fog
I was trying to work out what it is that this film does, and basically it's quite simple: it establishes a couple of (sets of) characters, creates a conflict (each has a strong moral claim on the one house, and stands to lose a lot if unable to hold on to that property), and then traces what follows. The film has a kind of rhythm that makes its progression and ending seem inevitable in light of the circumstances and the characters involved, and yet no twist or shift was predictable except retrospectively. It's also quite strongly literary in the way it sets up parallels between the characters, develops themes (most notably to do with ownership and the nature of home, but also taking in the cultural conflict elements inherent in the clash between Ben Kingsley's dignified and stern Iranian ex-military immigrant and his family and Jennifer Connelly's American born, straggly recovering alcoholic, and nicely developing the idea of familial absence and loss in the closing phrases of the film), and figures motifs (the moment when Kathy steps on the nail works perfectly, because not only does it literalise the way in which ownership of the house has shifted and the house itself turned against her, and the way that the house brings them together and functions as a node or meeting point, but it also serves a dramatic purpose in advancing the plot - and it's this latter which hits the viewer first (after the immediate visceral shock of the puncture)). The way it tackles these themes and ideas, in fact, is marked by a subtlety of touch whereby they seem to emerge naturally from the events of the film, rather than merely being 'hung' on the plot (or, conversely, the plot seeming merely a contrivance in order to get at the themes/ideas).
Despite the occasional violence - both physical and emotional - the film never sinks into mere melodrama. It's dramatic, and a lot of its power and tension resides in the question of whether Kathy or Behrani will succeed in their triumph (and whether any such victory will prove pyrrhic), but it's not really a genre piece - it's too thoughtful and multi-faceted to easily fit into a convenient category. The performances are very good - it's as much the acting as the writing which keeps our sympathies in a state of flux as the film goes on (I can imagine people taking one or the other side very strongly, but I felt that it was evenly balanced and the fact that it could be either side is itself suggestive). I don't know if I've seen Kingsley in anything (oh wait - Species, which hardly seems to count) but I think that his performance is what people mean when they say 'powerhouse'. Given the gap between dominant western values and those which he embodies in the film, it would've been easy for Behrani to become an inadvertently demonised figure, but that's never even close to happening - instead, we're forced to respect him and the choices he makes and is compelled to make. As to Connelly, well, like everyone else I adored her in Labyrinth; after a long gap, became aware of her again with Dark City, in which she was also good, and after the life-changingly good the first time, somewhat dull the second time Requiem For A Dream, I was ready to hold her up as one of the most beautiful and one of the best actors going around. Here, she's exactly right, smouldering with a grungy, bruised defiance which allows us to make sense of her character and her interactions with and effects upon all the others.
Not exactly a fun film, then, but darn good.
Despite the occasional violence - both physical and emotional - the film never sinks into mere melodrama. It's dramatic, and a lot of its power and tension resides in the question of whether Kathy or Behrani will succeed in their triumph (and whether any such victory will prove pyrrhic), but it's not really a genre piece - it's too thoughtful and multi-faceted to easily fit into a convenient category. The performances are very good - it's as much the acting as the writing which keeps our sympathies in a state of flux as the film goes on (I can imagine people taking one or the other side very strongly, but I felt that it was evenly balanced and the fact that it could be either side is itself suggestive). I don't know if I've seen Kingsley in anything (oh wait - Species, which hardly seems to count) but I think that his performance is what people mean when they say 'powerhouse'. Given the gap between dominant western values and those which he embodies in the film, it would've been easy for Behrani to become an inadvertently demonised figure, but that's never even close to happening - instead, we're forced to respect him and the choices he makes and is compelled to make. As to Connelly, well, like everyone else I adored her in Labyrinth; after a long gap, became aware of her again with Dark City, in which she was also good, and after the life-changingly good the first time, somewhat dull the second time Requiem For A Dream, I was ready to hold her up as one of the most beautiful and one of the best actors going around. Here, she's exactly right, smouldering with a grungy, bruised defiance which allows us to make sense of her character and her interactions with and effects upon all the others.
Not exactly a fun film, then, but darn good.
Iris DeMent - Infamous Angel
I know "Let The Mystery Be" through 10,000 Maniacs' cover of it, and I've always quite liked that version, but DeMent's original, which kicks this album off, is really a cut above. DeMent sings with a quaver and a quirk but also straight-up and clear, and sets her songs within simple, spacious arrangements, with the result that the singing and the songs themselves come through very strongly and take on an air of purity and timelessness, as if they've just drifted down from the mountain. The instrumentation includes guitar (acoustic), Dobro, mandolin, fiddle and bass, but it's sparingly used and always seems to frame the vocals rather than ever threatening to take the spotlight. It's a kind of modern folk as much as it is country, and strikingly good.
Buddy & Julie Miller - Buddy & Julie Miller
I love "Ride The Wind To Me" and it was one of the key songs of my last year, but before this record, it was the only Julie Miller cut that I'd heard. Buddy and Julie are husband and wife, and seem to have recorded a fair bit together; I don't know how it goes on the rest of their records, but on this one, while the vocals are split about 50-50, all of the original songwriting credits go to Julie, making it the next best thing to a solo album (I'm pretty sure that that's Buddy providing the guitars on "Ride The Wind To Me" anyway - the guitar work and parts sound very similar).
So it's grittier and bluesier than I would've expected of a Julie Miller record - the melodies are upfront and memorable, but so too are the grinding electric guitars and the swampy basslines (these elements reach their apotheosis in the near seven-minute workout "Dirty Water", possibly not coincidentally the only song which is co-credited to Julie and Buddy). Vocals-wise, about half of the songs are honest to goodness duets between the two, usually involving lots of unison singing and close harmonies, while lead vocals are taken on equal numbers of the remaining cuts by each (though it's not always especially helpful to draw lines between these 'types' of songs). Buddy's soulful voice is a good foil for Julie's gorgeous keen, and vice versa, and together they come up with a kind of melodic country-blues-rock thing which is pretty fine. There's nothing on here which I like as much as "Ride The Wind To Me", but after all it's a different kind of record, and there are moments of the same heart-stopping prettiness mingled with expansively sketched drive and dynamic, so I'm not at all disappointed with it. These guys should be better known than they are.
So it's grittier and bluesier than I would've expected of a Julie Miller record - the melodies are upfront and memorable, but so too are the grinding electric guitars and the swampy basslines (these elements reach their apotheosis in the near seven-minute workout "Dirty Water", possibly not coincidentally the only song which is co-credited to Julie and Buddy). Vocals-wise, about half of the songs are honest to goodness duets between the two, usually involving lots of unison singing and close harmonies, while lead vocals are taken on equal numbers of the remaining cuts by each (though it's not always especially helpful to draw lines between these 'types' of songs). Buddy's soulful voice is a good foil for Julie's gorgeous keen, and vice versa, and together they come up with a kind of melodic country-blues-rock thing which is pretty fine. There's nothing on here which I like as much as "Ride The Wind To Me", but after all it's a different kind of record, and there are moments of the same heart-stopping prettiness mingled with expansively sketched drive and dynamic, so I'm not at all disappointed with it. These guys should be better known than they are.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Garden State
So, I've finally watched it. What do I do now?
(I'm listening to Gram Parsons and sorting through my impressions of the film.)
-- Before: I wanted to like Garden State, and hopefully a lot, even if I suspected that I could no longer come to it with enough innocence for that to be possible. I don't know how I thought I'd respond to it. Truth be told, large as it's loomed on the cultural landscape of late, I didn't know much about the film itself (which has been pretty deliberate on my part).
-- During: My feelings see-sawed. While I liked that the film was honest enough to wear its ideas on its sleeve, it has a tendency to be a bit obvious, and I could've done without the excessive talkiness. That said, I was at least partly won over by the sweetness of it all, and the warmth of the film's heart, and how it evokes and goes some way towards making sense of modern alienation and twenty-something driftiness. But, for whatever reason, I can't allow myself to accept the ending - which falls into the 'tendency to be a bit obvious' box - unreservedly. Isn't that the fantasy of every sensitive boy out there - that they'll be saved by some cute, quirky girl dropping into their life and making everything make sense? I don't know - maybe it's that idea that troubles me. (Dear reader, let's not excavate this thought any further...) Plus, the partial resolution of the subplot involving the father is unconvincing.
-- After (now): Well, Garden State is a good film. And I know that many, many people have had it speak to them, and have been moved by it. But I'm not one of them, at least not just now - part of me is just resistant to it. And anyway, I don't think it's that good even irrespective of my own personal quirks...these things are complicated.
(I'm listening to Gram Parsons and sorting through my impressions of the film.)
-- Before: I wanted to like Garden State, and hopefully a lot, even if I suspected that I could no longer come to it with enough innocence for that to be possible. I don't know how I thought I'd respond to it. Truth be told, large as it's loomed on the cultural landscape of late, I didn't know much about the film itself (which has been pretty deliberate on my part).
-- During: My feelings see-sawed. While I liked that the film was honest enough to wear its ideas on its sleeve, it has a tendency to be a bit obvious, and I could've done without the excessive talkiness. That said, I was at least partly won over by the sweetness of it all, and the warmth of the film's heart, and how it evokes and goes some way towards making sense of modern alienation and twenty-something driftiness. But, for whatever reason, I can't allow myself to accept the ending - which falls into the 'tendency to be a bit obvious' box - unreservedly. Isn't that the fantasy of every sensitive boy out there - that they'll be saved by some cute, quirky girl dropping into their life and making everything make sense? I don't know - maybe it's that idea that troubles me. (Dear reader, let's not excavate this thought any further...) Plus, the partial resolution of the subplot involving the father is unconvincing.
-- After (now): Well, Garden State is a good film. And I know that many, many people have had it speak to them, and have been moved by it. But I'm not one of them, at least not just now - part of me is just resistant to it. And anyway, I don't think it's that good even irrespective of my own personal quirks...these things are complicated.
On Translation (Meanjin volume 64, issue 4, 2005)
Every six months, a 'privileged reader' voucher arrives in the mail from Reader's Feast, and I always try to use it on a treat - something that I want to read and/or own but wouldn't ordinarily buy. This time, I put most of it towards the latest Meanjin, the theme being translation, which I'd seen written up a while back and had thought looked interesting. Basically, I started by reading most of the essays, skipping over the ones which dealt very specifically with subjects with which I was unfamiliar (there were only a couple of these), then worked through the short fiction (in translation and otherwise) and some of the poetry, before going back and reading the essays and some of the poetry that I'd skipped on the first couple of passes. (There's still a bit in there that I haven't got around to reading.)
Several of the essays picked up on the question of how translation should be done, and in particular with how the knotty issues involving staying 'true' to original language and context, even at the risk of then being disorienting and inaccessible for readers of the translation ('source oriented' translation) vs substantially transferring the piece being translated into the new language and context, which in turn brings the risk of straying far afield from the original ('target oriented' translation). Unsurprisingly, this seems a vexed issue and very much a live one amongst translators; I've thought about this before, and never been able to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. The other recurring theme is a belief in the capacity of art to transcend its situatedness and reach a kind of universal truth, and to speak on matters which extend beyond its specific time - and the corresponding belief that art can and should be judged according to whether it still has the ring of truth to it for future generations, whether or not it was 'understood' at the time.
Some specific ones which interested me for various reasons:
- Brian Castro ('Making Oneself Foreign') leads off with a compelling defence of the view that translation is critical to the health of literary culture and society at large.
- James Grieve ('Working With The Demented') gives an account of some fairly dramatic conflicts between translators' approaches to doing Proust (À la recherche du temps perdu and the unsatisfactory results that were thereby reached...and once again I find myself unable to avoid Proust.
- Russell Grigg ('Englishing Lacan') provides a workmanlike (but interesting since it wasn't that long ago that I was wrestling with Lacan, sometimes consulting the French where I couldn't make sense of the English) rundown on some of the difficulties involved with translating Lacan into English.
- Rita Wilson ('Eco Effects'), in the course of a lucid review of Umberto Eco's views on translation, gives what seems to be a pretty good summary account of the state of the field.
- Kevin Hart ('Tracking The Trace') writes a neat essay - but more on that below.
- J M Coetzee ('Roads To Translation'), whose picture also graces the front cover (unsurprising, I guess, since he's the big 'name' of the issue), gives an interesting account of how the relationship between author and translator can work.
- Adrian Martin ('Empathy Connection') presents a brief meditation on the nature of translation (actual and potential) in western cinema and art, pausing to express reservations about Lost In Translation (reminding me that the reason I so often rail against him is that he so often complains about films I like a lot) but doing so in a way which I'm forced to admit is fair enough, even if it strikes me as so much accurate missing of the point.
As to the stories and poems, these were, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag. Easily my favourite of the bunch is Hélèna Villovitch's "La Plaine-Voyageurs", translated from the French by Chris Andrews. It sort of meanders along, not really seeming to be about anything in particular but always glimmering with the suggestion that something is about to happen, and then, in some mysterious way that I can't pinpoint, the final 'stanza' - the last three paragraphs - cap it off perfectly, making you feel as if you've just read something clear-sighted and true, but that the clarity and truth somehow glitters between the lines and sunk in without your realising it or, even now that it has happened, being able to articulate it. Hunh...anyway, these are those magic-working final paragraphs, though they really need the whole of what comes before them for their full impact:
In their contemporary disenchantedness and dislocation, not to mention the mild whimsy, that series of reflections reminds me of some of the better things that people used to come up with on open diary, back when I both maintained one of the things and read other people's. (I'm thinking of one in particular, which struck me as sufficiently zeitgeisty at the time for me to copy out an extract on to an obscure section of my wall, along with details of authorship: "i'm cold in class. i raise my hand, say stupid things, and try not to run over pedestrians on the way home." - haven, "i swear", 18/9/02.) Which is probably apt, given that, as the note at the end of the story explains, Villovitch is concerned to explore what Georges Perec called the 'infraordinary' - "what is going on when nothing is happening. Or when nothing seems to be happening, since attending to the infraordinary can shift our ideas of what counts as an event and what is worthy of attention". May sound a bit boring, but if you're reading in the right kind of way (as I suppose I was), it's anything but. Don't know what my chances of finding other of her stuff in translation are, but will have to try to remember to look around.
The only other of the 'creative' works which particularly struck a chord was Kevin Hart's rendition of a poem by eighth century Chinese poet Li Bo, "The Trader's Wife". In his essay, which precedes the poem, Hart writes interestingly about why poets are attracted to translating other poets, working in his own 'poetic development', questions of voice and 'trace' (via Derrida), and the mysterious 'effect' of poetry which seems somehow to, just sometimes, itself be translatable. The essay ends with the following comments: "Who speaks in 'The Trader's Wife'? I hear my voice, but behind it I can hear another's. I hope it is Li Bo's." And, well, whatever is happening with Hart's translation of the poem, I must admit to getting a bit of a chill as I sat outside at Retro that afternoon, reading its plaintive, understated narrative of love and separation.
If it seems as if I've had a lot to say about this issue, there are probably three reasons: first, I've been carrying it around for quite a while now, reading it in the gaps between other things, which has given it a chance to settle in; second, the subject matter is, as I started off by saying, immensely interesting; and third, well, there's some really good content in it.
Several of the essays picked up on the question of how translation should be done, and in particular with how the knotty issues involving staying 'true' to original language and context, even at the risk of then being disorienting and inaccessible for readers of the translation ('source oriented' translation) vs substantially transferring the piece being translated into the new language and context, which in turn brings the risk of straying far afield from the original ('target oriented' translation). Unsurprisingly, this seems a vexed issue and very much a live one amongst translators; I've thought about this before, and never been able to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. The other recurring theme is a belief in the capacity of art to transcend its situatedness and reach a kind of universal truth, and to speak on matters which extend beyond its specific time - and the corresponding belief that art can and should be judged according to whether it still has the ring of truth to it for future generations, whether or not it was 'understood' at the time.
Some specific ones which interested me for various reasons:
- Brian Castro ('Making Oneself Foreign') leads off with a compelling defence of the view that translation is critical to the health of literary culture and society at large.
- James Grieve ('Working With The Demented') gives an account of some fairly dramatic conflicts between translators' approaches to doing Proust (À la recherche du temps perdu and the unsatisfactory results that were thereby reached...and once again I find myself unable to avoid Proust.
- Russell Grigg ('Englishing Lacan') provides a workmanlike (but interesting since it wasn't that long ago that I was wrestling with Lacan, sometimes consulting the French where I couldn't make sense of the English) rundown on some of the difficulties involved with translating Lacan into English.
- Rita Wilson ('Eco Effects'), in the course of a lucid review of Umberto Eco's views on translation, gives what seems to be a pretty good summary account of the state of the field.
- Kevin Hart ('Tracking The Trace') writes a neat essay - but more on that below.
- J M Coetzee ('Roads To Translation'), whose picture also graces the front cover (unsurprising, I guess, since he's the big 'name' of the issue), gives an interesting account of how the relationship between author and translator can work.
- Adrian Martin ('Empathy Connection') presents a brief meditation on the nature of translation (actual and potential) in western cinema and art, pausing to express reservations about Lost In Translation (reminding me that the reason I so often rail against him is that he so often complains about films I like a lot) but doing so in a way which I'm forced to admit is fair enough, even if it strikes me as so much accurate missing of the point.
As to the stories and poems, these were, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag. Easily my favourite of the bunch is Hélèna Villovitch's "La Plaine-Voyageurs", translated from the French by Chris Andrews. It sort of meanders along, not really seeming to be about anything in particular but always glimmering with the suggestion that something is about to happen, and then, in some mysterious way that I can't pinpoint, the final 'stanza' - the last three paragraphs - cap it off perfectly, making you feel as if you've just read something clear-sighted and true, but that the clarity and truth somehow glitters between the lines and sunk in without your realising it or, even now that it has happened, being able to articulate it. Hunh...anyway, these are those magic-working final paragraphs, though they really need the whole of what comes before them for their full impact:
I still work in La Plaine-Voyageurs. In the metro, I feel short of breath. Nothing too serious, but since a woman is staring at me, she might as well get her money's worth. I pretend to have a twitching fit, discreet enough not to alarm anyone except my audience of one, who can't take her eyes off me. That'll teach her to stare. A guy asks me for money. I don't give him any, because I've got just enough on me to buy MY cigarettes. I hate everyone. I clasp my bag tightly all the way, as if I were scared someone would snatch it. At the Gare du Nord, I pretend to be absent-minded, so I can jump off at the last moment and bump into the people who have started to get on.
On the platform, I listen to the message broadcast over the transit authority's loudspeakers. It explains that if someone tries to help you buy a ticket from a vending machine, they're probably trying to rob you. Nice atmosphere, I think. Don't accept help from anyone. That makes me feel better.
In the train, I don't know how to look natural. So I do the opposite. I pretend to be interested, astonished, fascinated by the view. The factories! The high-rise flats! The derelict community gardens! But no-one is looking at me. So I let my mind go blank.
In their contemporary disenchantedness and dislocation, not to mention the mild whimsy, that series of reflections reminds me of some of the better things that people used to come up with on open diary, back when I both maintained one of the things and read other people's. (I'm thinking of one in particular, which struck me as sufficiently zeitgeisty at the time for me to copy out an extract on to an obscure section of my wall, along with details of authorship: "i'm cold in class. i raise my hand, say stupid things, and try not to run over pedestrians on the way home." - haven, "i swear", 18/9/02.) Which is probably apt, given that, as the note at the end of the story explains, Villovitch is concerned to explore what Georges Perec called the 'infraordinary' - "what is going on when nothing is happening. Or when nothing seems to be happening, since attending to the infraordinary can shift our ideas of what counts as an event and what is worthy of attention". May sound a bit boring, but if you're reading in the right kind of way (as I suppose I was), it's anything but. Don't know what my chances of finding other of her stuff in translation are, but will have to try to remember to look around.
The only other of the 'creative' works which particularly struck a chord was Kevin Hart's rendition of a poem by eighth century Chinese poet Li Bo, "The Trader's Wife". In his essay, which precedes the poem, Hart writes interestingly about why poets are attracted to translating other poets, working in his own 'poetic development', questions of voice and 'trace' (via Derrida), and the mysterious 'effect' of poetry which seems somehow to, just sometimes, itself be translatable. The essay ends with the following comments: "Who speaks in 'The Trader's Wife'? I hear my voice, but behind it I can hear another's. I hope it is Li Bo's." And, well, whatever is happening with Hart's translation of the poem, I must admit to getting a bit of a chill as I sat outside at Retro that afternoon, reading its plaintive, understated narrative of love and separation.
If it seems as if I've had a lot to say about this issue, there are probably three reasons: first, I've been carrying it around for quite a while now, reading it in the gaps between other things, which has given it a chance to settle in; second, the subject matter is, as I started off by saying, immensely interesting; and third, well, there's some really good content in it.
Janet Evanovich - Four To Score & High Five
Usually I'm pretty good with the self-control, but one area in which I definitely fail is the reading of genre stuff that I like (and especially late at night). Scored both of these from the city library in the course of my errand-running yesterday; the rest of my day (post-other errands and pleasant drink at Deep Dish) basically spent reading first Four, then Five (it's very possible, I fear, that I'd have got all the way through both last night had not my light bulb blown at about 4.30 in the morning, midway through the latter).
Four To Score introduces, amongst others, Sally Sweet, a giant drag queen with a facility for code-breaking which comes in useful, while High Five brings in, again amongst others, three foot tall Randy Briggs, who spends much of the novel's running time living in Stephanie's apartment, and also brings a bit of the (UR)ST with Ranger. Four is relatively weak, I think, but Five doesn't lose much by comparison to the first three - the formula is starting to show, and Evanovich repeats herself a bit, but she's also moving all of her characters into plenty of interesting configurations while not hesitating to introduce new ones or reintroduce old 'friends', and I suspect that there's still plenty of room for this series to move, especially given the number of unresolved subplots flapping around.
Four To Score introduces, amongst others, Sally Sweet, a giant drag queen with a facility for code-breaking which comes in useful, while High Five brings in, again amongst others, three foot tall Randy Briggs, who spends much of the novel's running time living in Stephanie's apartment, and also brings a bit of the (UR)ST with Ranger. Four is relatively weak, I think, but Five doesn't lose much by comparison to the first three - the formula is starting to show, and Evanovich repeats herself a bit, but she's also moving all of her characters into plenty of interesting configurations while not hesitating to introduce new ones or reintroduce old 'friends', and I suspect that there's still plenty of room for this series to move, especially given the number of unresolved subplots flapping around.
The Decemberists - Picaresque
You'd think that this would be just exactly the sort of record that I'd like - literate, sensitive, folksy, melodic, left-of-centre indie-pop - and I do like it, up to a point. The tunes are good, the lyrics are nice, and it's both coherent and diverse, and yet --
And yet it doesn't really do anything for me, even though I feel some gentle tugs on my heartstrings when listening to songs like "Eli, The Barrow Boy", even though I don't feel at all manipulated by the artist, the album, or the press coverage surrounding it, even though the songwriting is consistent throughout its running time, even though I like the whole package, both idea and execution...it's just not interesting or engaging enough, and I haven't yet managed to get through all 11 songs on the album in a single sitting.
Maybe this'll be one of those like Illinois, to which I initially reacted with a similarly muted 'this is good, but is this it?' kind of response but which, gleaming and pretty, grew on me over the months which followed. But then again, I liked Illinois more to start with, so probably not.
And yet it doesn't really do anything for me, even though I feel some gentle tugs on my heartstrings when listening to songs like "Eli, The Barrow Boy", even though I don't feel at all manipulated by the artist, the album, or the press coverage surrounding it, even though the songwriting is consistent throughout its running time, even though I like the whole package, both idea and execution...it's just not interesting or engaging enough, and I haven't yet managed to get through all 11 songs on the album in a single sitting.
Maybe this'll be one of those like Illinois, to which I initially reacted with a similarly muted 'this is good, but is this it?' kind of response but which, gleaming and pretty, grew on me over the months which followed. But then again, I liked Illinois more to start with, so probably not.
Emmylou Harris - Red Dirt Girl
So, not only is she a great selector and interpreter of others' compositions, but Emmylou's also a pretty fine songwriter herself. Red Dirt Girl's another of her latter-day efforts (post-Wrecking Ball); mostly made up of her own songs, it's expansive and modern but still real-feeling, and good (it sounds au courant and relevant while also being clearly grounded in the rootsier traditions that she came out of...I seem to recall hearing or reading somewhere that Harris wasn't really a country chick before she met Gram, so maybe that original background, plus the GP genre-mixing, is showing through in this recent work of hers). It's also interesting how similar the songs are to those which she's chosen to cover in the past (especially on Wrecking Ball) - chicken and egg, but I guess she has an ear for what she likes and what works for her.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
What I've been listening to lately
- Isobel Campbell's Amorino, rediscovered one grey evening about a week ago, lying face-down on my bed and waiting for inspiration to strike (it didn't), its wistful prettiness suiting my mood (which could probably best be described as 'moody') and falling just right in the background, especially the mournful instrumental pieces.
- Hem's Eveningland, too sweet for words.
- Fox Confessor, still, and especially "Hold On, Hold On".
- That song from the opening and closing credits of Broken Flowers, the Greenhornes' "There Is An End" (with Holly Golightly on vocals). Has that 60s garage rock simplicity and a gentle, languorous sway. Plus, the more I think about the film, the better I realise it is, and the more in key with my own current imaginative, emotional and creative whereabouts (...words disappear, words once so clear...thoughts rearrange, familiar now strange...).
- Sia's "Breathe Me", which I sneered at after my first listen, only to realise after replaying that I was being a bit of a hipster twit by reacting against the song because of how it sounded; have now taken it a bit to heart. Apparently the deal is that it played over the final scene of Six Feet Under and so immediately acquired touchstone status for the show's fans; that means nothing to me, but the song itself is kinda like Dido crossed with Tori in slow-burn ballad mode, and it really is pretty good, though I don't imagine I'll still be listening to it in a month's time.
- Taxi, Taxi's "Old Big Trees". Haven't been able to find out much about this outfit, but they're a duo, and they're from Sweden, and they've made at least this one delightful sprightly quirky indie-pop song, and on the evidence of the picture on their myspace page, they're cute as buttons, so what more could you want?
- Speaking of Swedish pop bands, the Concretes are back with a new song, "On The Radio", which is every bit as good as anything on The Concretes or boyoubetterunow - probably lighter and more delicately tripping.
(None of those last four should be too hard to track down with google, this, this, and a bit of perseverance.)
- Hem's Eveningland, too sweet for words.
- Fox Confessor, still, and especially "Hold On, Hold On".
- That song from the opening and closing credits of Broken Flowers, the Greenhornes' "There Is An End" (with Holly Golightly on vocals). Has that 60s garage rock simplicity and a gentle, languorous sway. Plus, the more I think about the film, the better I realise it is, and the more in key with my own current imaginative, emotional and creative whereabouts (...words disappear, words once so clear...thoughts rearrange, familiar now strange...).
- Sia's "Breathe Me", which I sneered at after my first listen, only to realise after replaying that I was being a bit of a hipster twit by reacting against the song because of how it sounded; have now taken it a bit to heart. Apparently the deal is that it played over the final scene of Six Feet Under and so immediately acquired touchstone status for the show's fans; that means nothing to me, but the song itself is kinda like Dido crossed with Tori in slow-burn ballad mode, and it really is pretty good, though I don't imagine I'll still be listening to it in a month's time.
- Taxi, Taxi's "Old Big Trees". Haven't been able to find out much about this outfit, but they're a duo, and they're from Sweden, and they've made at least this one delightful sprightly quirky indie-pop song, and on the evidence of the picture on their myspace page, they're cute as buttons, so what more could you want?
- Speaking of Swedish pop bands, the Concretes are back with a new song, "On The Radio", which is every bit as good as anything on The Concretes or boyoubetterunow - probably lighter and more delicately tripping.
(None of those last four should be too hard to track down with google, this, this, and a bit of perseverance.)
Thoughts on the ending of The Counterfeiters
So I wrote to Sarah a while back thanking her for The Counterfeiters (I'm determined to at least try to hold to this old-fashioned idea of thank-you notes for a while longer, before the real world finally overwhelms me), and she mentioned that I hadn't said anything about the novel's ending (either on extemporanea or in the letter) and enjoined me to tell her what I'd thought, prompting the following (which I include here because I just loved the novel that much):
* * *
About the ending of "The Counterfeiters"...well, to be honest, I've been a bit lazy in thinking about it, mainly because I didn't really know what to make of it (and nor had I seen it coming while reading the novel). Even now, several weeks on, I'm not entirely sure what I think of it.
What happens to Boris ~is~ quite horrible, and initially struck me as gratuitous - much as I'd enjoyed the book as a whole, I didn't like Gide very much for the way in which he chose to end it (although the very last line, in which Edouard coolly reflects that he'd be very much interested to meet Caloub, is a nice one). Later, though, I began to think about it more on the level of craft - the way it takes place in front of La Perouse (Boris' grandfather, of course) and involving a 'talisman' of La Perouse's (the pistol) which maybe parallels Boris' own talisman, and how this intersects with some of the broader concerns of "The Counterfeiters"...
And later still, I recalled Edouard saying, in the final chapter (I think it's the final chapter, anyway...the details aren't very fresh in my mind, as I lent the book to a friend a while ago (with a stern injunction to guard it with her life on account of its sentimental value!)) that he wouldn't make use of Boris' 'suicide' in his "Counterfeiters" because he couldn't understand it. And that turned my mind back to the section in the middle of the novel where he's describing his theory of the novel, and he says something about how he doesn't want to 'cut' his novel in time, but rather wants to represent both a slice of reality and the attempt to stylise that reality into art (and also says that his novel doesn't have a subject). And if one were to apply that kind of frame to the ending of Gide's "Counterfeiters", it makes more sense and is more defensible, I think - ie, the ending seems less gratuitous and more 'artistically' justified (even if it can't be justified in structural/narratival/character-related terms) - though I'm still not entirely convinced.
* * *
About the ending of "The Counterfeiters"...well, to be honest, I've been a bit lazy in thinking about it, mainly because I didn't really know what to make of it (and nor had I seen it coming while reading the novel). Even now, several weeks on, I'm not entirely sure what I think of it.
What happens to Boris ~is~ quite horrible, and initially struck me as gratuitous - much as I'd enjoyed the book as a whole, I didn't like Gide very much for the way in which he chose to end it (although the very last line, in which Edouard coolly reflects that he'd be very much interested to meet Caloub, is a nice one). Later, though, I began to think about it more on the level of craft - the way it takes place in front of La Perouse (Boris' grandfather, of course) and involving a 'talisman' of La Perouse's (the pistol) which maybe parallels Boris' own talisman, and how this intersects with some of the broader concerns of "The Counterfeiters"...
And later still, I recalled Edouard saying, in the final chapter (I think it's the final chapter, anyway...the details aren't very fresh in my mind, as I lent the book to a friend a while ago (with a stern injunction to guard it with her life on account of its sentimental value!)) that he wouldn't make use of Boris' 'suicide' in his "Counterfeiters" because he couldn't understand it. And that turned my mind back to the section in the middle of the novel where he's describing his theory of the novel, and he says something about how he doesn't want to 'cut' his novel in time, but rather wants to represent both a slice of reality and the attempt to stylise that reality into art (and also says that his novel doesn't have a subject). And if one were to apply that kind of frame to the ending of Gide's "Counterfeiters", it makes more sense and is more defensible, I think - ie, the ending seems less gratuitous and more 'artistically' justified (even if it can't be justified in structural/narratival/character-related terms) - though I'm still not entirely convinced.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Kathleen Edwards @ Northcote Social Club, Tuesday 14 February
My first time at the NSC, and probably a suitable gig for it. Opening act Horse Stories, comprised of a guy on guitar (and occasionally harmonica) and a girl on keys, but really mostly the guy, peddled a folksy, slightly post-rock (in a Dirty Three kinda way) tinged brand of acoustic guitar pop - it was okay but, for mine, nothing special. Then Kathleen Edwards, who we were all there to see ('we' in this case being the least hip non-classical music crowd that I can remember having been a part of, as well as, relatedly, the oldest - which is pretty much what I'd expected for a rootsy, not especially 'indie' but not especially well-known either artist like Edwards, and another sign that my slide into graceful age continues apace). I was a bit disappointed that she hadn't brought a full band - one of the best things about her records is the warm, chiming electric guitar work and full-bodied alt-country/rock-pop hybrid that she creates - and instead played with just her (on acoustic guitar) and guitarist (and husband) Colin Cripps, but I shouldn't complain because the stripped down sound, while not what I was hoping for, worked well in its own way.
Live, Edwards is a very natural singer and performer, concerned more with feeling and meaning than with technical perfection. Her voice comes through well - it's strong and characterful, and maybe somewhat dustier than on record - and the understanding between her and Cripps was evident in the interplay of their guitars, particularly with the rockier numbers. Set opened with "Pink Emerson Radio" and closed with "Back To Me"; last number in three-song encore was a mellow "Copied Keys" (a crowd request but possibly they'd have played it anyway). In between was a setlist split reasonably evenly between Failer and Back To Me, with a slight slant towards that latter record (which I prefer at any rate), and also taking in a new song (v.g.), an old one that's never made it on to record (on which she cheerfully played up to Canadian stereotypes, ending with a resounding 'eh', leading to some post-song crowd interaction), a Gram cover (didn't recognise the song, but it worked really well, the inversion of vocals with Edwards taking the lead Gram part and Cripps doing what would presumably have been Emmylou's harmonies working a treat and the wistful twang coming through nicely), and a take on AC/DC's "Money Talks".
It really was a rather different experience listening to these songs performed by just Edwards and Cripps, and primarily driven by acoustic guitar. Most transferred pretty well, but I found myself missing the electric when it would ordinarily have come in; setlist favourites (of mine) were probably the Gram song, "Hockey Skates" and "Six O'Clock News" (maybe my favourites on record - "In State", "Old Time Sake", "Summerlong", "Copied Keys" (all of which she played) - are more reliant on the additional instrumentation for their goodness...though I still enjoyed seeing them done live, of course!).
On stage, Edwards came across as unassuming, unaffected and personable, telling a few stories, making some jokes about it being Valentine's Day (a quirk of scheduling which had led Wei and I to delay buying our tickets until close to the last minute, on the principle that it'd be severely bad mojo on the romantic front to commit ourselves to the gig too soon in advance), engaging in some banter with the crowd, and seeming to be genuinely pleased to be there in front of as many people as had come out for the show.
So all in all, while not quite what I'd expected or hoped for, a good show.
Live, Edwards is a very natural singer and performer, concerned more with feeling and meaning than with technical perfection. Her voice comes through well - it's strong and characterful, and maybe somewhat dustier than on record - and the understanding between her and Cripps was evident in the interplay of their guitars, particularly with the rockier numbers. Set opened with "Pink Emerson Radio" and closed with "Back To Me"; last number in three-song encore was a mellow "Copied Keys" (a crowd request but possibly they'd have played it anyway). In between was a setlist split reasonably evenly between Failer and Back To Me, with a slight slant towards that latter record (which I prefer at any rate), and also taking in a new song (v.g.), an old one that's never made it on to record (on which she cheerfully played up to Canadian stereotypes, ending with a resounding 'eh', leading to some post-song crowd interaction), a Gram cover (didn't recognise the song, but it worked really well, the inversion of vocals with Edwards taking the lead Gram part and Cripps doing what would presumably have been Emmylou's harmonies working a treat and the wistful twang coming through nicely), and a take on AC/DC's "Money Talks".
It really was a rather different experience listening to these songs performed by just Edwards and Cripps, and primarily driven by acoustic guitar. Most transferred pretty well, but I found myself missing the electric when it would ordinarily have come in; setlist favourites (of mine) were probably the Gram song, "Hockey Skates" and "Six O'Clock News" (maybe my favourites on record - "In State", "Old Time Sake", "Summerlong", "Copied Keys" (all of which she played) - are more reliant on the additional instrumentation for their goodness...though I still enjoyed seeing them done live, of course!).
On stage, Edwards came across as unassuming, unaffected and personable, telling a few stories, making some jokes about it being Valentine's Day (a quirk of scheduling which had led Wei and I to delay buying our tickets until close to the last minute, on the principle that it'd be severely bad mojo on the romantic front to commit ourselves to the gig too soon in advance), engaging in some banter with the crowd, and seeming to be genuinely pleased to be there in front of as many people as had come out for the show.
So all in all, while not quite what I'd expected or hoped for, a good show.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Closer
A while ago, someone told me that they thought I'd like Closer a lot and also that I'd identify with it. I can't remember who that was, but I'd like to know. I'd also like to know what I'd done to them, and/or what stories I'd told them about myself.
Anyway, I did quite like the film, and kind of identified with it, whatever that may mean - but really only kind of (I mean seriously, my lifestyle isn't much like theirs). I liked the glittery, clean sharpness of it all - the straight lines and chilly stylishness - which is in keeping with the way the characters interact with each other. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen. Doesn't overplay its hand and in its subtlety comes off as a touch reserved and 'through a glass wall' (again, in keeping with the material); but actors good enough that when they need to burn and show something, they do, and we believe in it. Still, made sense to learn, as the credits rolled, that it had been adapted from a play.
Calling Closer an adult drama is spot on. Circles around several sets of questions but particularly to do with love and truth in these modern times, and addresses them cuttingly and unsparingly. (Oh yes, and Alice - or Jane - is right: there's always a moment when you can decide...) All told, it's very accomplished, very well-made, and rather thought-provoking, and yes, there were occasional fleeting flashes of recognition for me as it unspooled (if that's what you want to call them), but even so this is not a film that I could love.
Incidentally, I also rented Garden State, and am thinking that it may've been a tactical error to watch this one before it (given that Natalie Portman is in both and that these will basically be the first two films I've seen her in since The Professional and what I imagine are the differences between the characters she plays in each).
Anyway, I did quite like the film, and kind of identified with it, whatever that may mean - but really only kind of (I mean seriously, my lifestyle isn't much like theirs). I liked the glittery, clean sharpness of it all - the straight lines and chilly stylishness - which is in keeping with the way the characters interact with each other. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen. Doesn't overplay its hand and in its subtlety comes off as a touch reserved and 'through a glass wall' (again, in keeping with the material); but actors good enough that when they need to burn and show something, they do, and we believe in it. Still, made sense to learn, as the credits rolled, that it had been adapted from a play.
Calling Closer an adult drama is spot on. Circles around several sets of questions but particularly to do with love and truth in these modern times, and addresses them cuttingly and unsparingly. (Oh yes, and Alice - or Jane - is right: there's always a moment when you can decide...) All told, it's very accomplished, very well-made, and rather thought-provoking, and yes, there were occasional fleeting flashes of recognition for me as it unspooled (if that's what you want to call them), but even so this is not a film that I could love.
Incidentally, I also rented Garden State, and am thinking that it may've been a tactical error to watch this one before it (given that Natalie Portman is in both and that these will basically be the first two films I've seen her in since The Professional and what I imagine are the differences between the characters she plays in each).
Kate Spade - Manners
I enjoy these little etiquette and lifestyle books - not sure why...I guess I just like to know that I know how to conduct myself! (And I like the element of codification of social norms and the slightly archaic nature of the exercise, too.) Spade, a "self-styled midwesterner", offers a light, unadorned series of observations on and advice pertaining to manners, with an eye to our modern times but basically sticking to fairly familiar territory for this kind of book. Lots of white space on each page, text in bite-sized chunks, pretty watercolour illustrations - it's no The Unfair Sex, but for what it is, it's just fine. Also, in its fairly lengthy section on communication and correspondence, includes a fuller version of one of my favourite quotations (from John Donne):
Sir, more than kisses,
Letters mingle souls;
For, thus absent friends speak.
Although, I must say, I'm still in two minds as to the aphorism's truth...
* * *
When it comes to etiquette, by the way, I'm yet to see a more delightful source of advice and edification than that provided by the Etiquette Grrls, who are, as they aver, Not To Be Trifled With.
Sir, more than kisses,
Letters mingle souls;
For, thus absent friends speak.
Although, I must say, I'm still in two minds as to the aphorism's truth...
* * *
When it comes to etiquette, by the way, I'm yet to see a more delightful source of advice and edification than that provided by the Etiquette Grrls, who are, as they aver, Not To Be Trifled With.
Arrested Development (season two)
Have been watching this at intervals over the past few weeks at David's place; finished today. Still likin' it heaps. It's not really the sort of show that particularly lends itself to parsing into individual episodes, but one near the end of this season, involving the throwing of a wedding anniversary party for Lucille and George Snr, the meeting of Ann's parents, and George-Michael and Ann's pre-engagement plans, stood out, in part because it was so full, with all of the characters being brought into play, but also of course because it was particularly funny. The way in which the series develops encourages identification with the characters - in the episode where Michael and Maeby, probably the two most obviously likeable characters in the show, were bonding, I found myself feeling happy about the pairing - and the initially extremely unlikeable ones (especially Lucille and Gob) become far more sympathetic as things unfurl, while still remaining just as obnoxious as they ever were (at this stage, Gob is probably my favourite character). The pace of events definitely picks up over the last few episodes of the season, too. Bring on the final season...
Season one thoughts here.
Season one thoughts here.
Shaun of the Dead
The idea of a romantic comedy with zombies appealed to me. Other things that I liked about this film: sly sense of humour; Bill Nighy; clever use of soundtrack (especially the brief blasts of "Ghost Town" at the start and, later, "Panic" on the tv screen); the way that Shaun reminded me, at least physically, of a cross between Thom Yorke and the Shaun who I know in real life (I hope he never reads this). But was it worth the watching in the end? Probably not.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
An Inspector Calls @ Her Majesty's Theatre
Except for its being written by J B Priestley, I didn't know anything about this play beforehand, but as Jade T had tickets, bought on a whim a little while ago for no other reason than that she vaguely recalled having read it in a fill-in class one day in high school and thought it looked interesting, and I didn't already have plans for my Saturday night when she flagged it, I went along with her.
It's set a couple of years before the first world war, and focuses on what is revealed when a mysterious inspector calls on a well-to-do family one night with news of the suicide of an unfortunate young woman of the working class. The class element is foregrounded from the very beginning, with a vignette depicting street kids running around and squabbling over clothing and position, and kept in the audience's mind throughout by the set design, with the house's elevation above street level. As the inspector's questioning proceeds, each member of the family is brought to face their guilt, and the themes of individual and collective responsibility are worked through thoroughly and effectively; there's the industrialist patriarch of the family, Arthur Birling, and his wife Sybil, their grown children Sheila and Eric, and Sheila's fiancee, Gerald Croft, another pillar of capitalist-industrial upper-class society, and it soon becomes apparent that each of them, and the mindset they stand for, is in some measure responsible for the woman's death.
It's a cleverly-written play and one with both heart and head, and coming to it fresh allowed me to be taken by surprise by some of the twists it had in its tail, especially at the end when questions were being raised about the true nature of the inspector and the deceased young woman, both of which instabilities were effective in highlighting and generalising the underlying metaphor/symbolic conceit of the piece - the 'murder' of the working class and all unfortunate members of society by the relentless drive towards wealth, individualistic values and plain hypocrisy of those better off than them (including a not so veiled reference to the war that was to come). Also enjoyed the moment when the 'fourth wall' was broken, the inspector crying out 'stop' and the lights being turned on the audience as he addressed it (us) directly.
As to this specific production: directed by Stephen Daldry (name rung a bell; he's also the director of The Hours) and put on by the British company. Set design and special effects impressive (we were in the stalls, second row, and I must admit to having felt a bit nervous at the point when the house came symbolically and literally crashing down towards us) and gave the production a murky, noirish feel while also evoking Dickensian associations (both appropriate given the subject matter). All very dramatic, strident music and theatrical (but effective) acting; being as close as we were meant that we could see every detail, which was cool. And it gets its message across.
Here.
It's set a couple of years before the first world war, and focuses on what is revealed when a mysterious inspector calls on a well-to-do family one night with news of the suicide of an unfortunate young woman of the working class. The class element is foregrounded from the very beginning, with a vignette depicting street kids running around and squabbling over clothing and position, and kept in the audience's mind throughout by the set design, with the house's elevation above street level. As the inspector's questioning proceeds, each member of the family is brought to face their guilt, and the themes of individual and collective responsibility are worked through thoroughly and effectively; there's the industrialist patriarch of the family, Arthur Birling, and his wife Sybil, their grown children Sheila and Eric, and Sheila's fiancee, Gerald Croft, another pillar of capitalist-industrial upper-class society, and it soon becomes apparent that each of them, and the mindset they stand for, is in some measure responsible for the woman's death.
It's a cleverly-written play and one with both heart and head, and coming to it fresh allowed me to be taken by surprise by some of the twists it had in its tail, especially at the end when questions were being raised about the true nature of the inspector and the deceased young woman, both of which instabilities were effective in highlighting and generalising the underlying metaphor/symbolic conceit of the piece - the 'murder' of the working class and all unfortunate members of society by the relentless drive towards wealth, individualistic values and plain hypocrisy of those better off than them (including a not so veiled reference to the war that was to come). Also enjoyed the moment when the 'fourth wall' was broken, the inspector crying out 'stop' and the lights being turned on the audience as he addressed it (us) directly.
As to this specific production: directed by Stephen Daldry (name rung a bell; he's also the director of The Hours) and put on by the British company. Set design and special effects impressive (we were in the stalls, second row, and I must admit to having felt a bit nervous at the point when the house came symbolically and literally crashing down towards us) and gave the production a murky, noirish feel while also evoking Dickensian associations (both appropriate given the subject matter). All very dramatic, strident music and theatrical (but effective) acting; being as close as we were meant that we could see every detail, which was cool. And it gets its message across.
Here.
Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase (and assorted autobiographical comments on novel-writing)
Re-read this because I was growing nervous that some of the ideas and directions of my own project might be very close to the moves made herein and I wanted to refresh my memory of the novel to make sure that there wasn't some unconscious plagiarism or derivativeness going on. A'course, this was also a good excuse to go back and read the first thing that I came across - and still one of my favourites - by an author who I really took to heart over the course of last year (original impressions here). Anyway, it all came back to me once I began reading and I was quickly able to convince myself that those fears were unfounded, allowing me to settle in and enjoy the ride while also picking up some pointers about the craft involved in writing a reasonably literary first-person narrative. (The book's still great, though I had to hurry through the last 40 pages or so after realising how overdue it was.)
* * *
Also, some things that I've learned or realised about the process of writing a novel:
- It's a slow, tortuous process, involving lots of self-doubt and walls hit (mostly though not exclusively figurative ones).
- Perspective is one of the first things to go.
- It's important to aim high (but if there's a way of tempering lofty aspirations with more realistic goals, I haven't yet found it).
- It quickly becomes annoying to be asked what your novel is about.
- On the other hand, talking about the thing with other people can be very helpful (and, well, it's usually the people you'd expect to be helpful who are, in fact, helpful).
- Writing in the first person is a real pain.
Anyway, said writing has basically been completely stalled over the last couple of weeks or so...
* * *
Also, some things that I've learned or realised about the process of writing a novel:
- It's a slow, tortuous process, involving lots of self-doubt and walls hit (mostly though not exclusively figurative ones).
- Perspective is one of the first things to go.
- It's important to aim high (but if there's a way of tempering lofty aspirations with more realistic goals, I haven't yet found it).
- It quickly becomes annoying to be asked what your novel is about.
- On the other hand, talking about the thing with other people can be very helpful (and, well, it's usually the people you'd expect to be helpful who are, in fact, helpful).
- Writing in the first person is a real pain.
Anyway, said writing has basically been completely stalled over the last couple of weeks or so...
Friday, February 10, 2006
Janet Evanovich - Three To Get Deadly
Just everything about these books of Evanovich's is great, and Three To Get Deadly maintains the high standard of the first two, but Stephanie's interactions with Ranger and her hamster Rex are a particular joy, as is the way in which Lula's character is developing. This one's plot revolves around the disappearance of 'Uncle Mo', a universally-loved icecream and candy store owner (and also, as it transpires once Stephanie's investigations get underway, known as 'Old Penis Nose' by the local hookers and seemingly mixed up in murkier pursuits), and the concurrent murder of a series of local drug dealers, and it's hilarious, both in a 'one-liner upon one-liner' and an 'absurd setup/situation upon absurd setup/situation' way. The bounty hunter's a marvellously, sympathetically drawn character surrounded by a growing cast which is never less than fascinating, and her misadventures are a joy to read (Evanovich continues to gets plenty of mileage out of subplots involving Stephanie's family, her simmering relationship with Joe Morelli, and the motley series of FTAs she goes after in and around the burg) - page-turning and v. funny.
Another song: Saint Etienne - "Sylvie"
This morning, grey skies, rain falling, a bit soul-weary due to early awakening (ie, 10.30am) and fun but tiring night before, wondering whether to go out or not. Song playing: "Sylvie"...
...over and over and over and over again...
...I like Saint Etienne, I really really do, but it's as much about the moods and states of mind that their music evokes (and, to a lesser extent, the times and people that I associate with that music) as the music itself. So I already hearted the song plenty but somehow "Sylvie" was exactly right this morning; I don't know why...upbeat and danceable and tuneful and delicate and pretty, and touched by that graceful wistful Saint Etienne melancholy which makes their music so lovely at its best, lyrically, it's their "Jolene" (which, for anyone who's keeping score, doesn't have any particular autobiographical resonance for me just now) - while not their best (which title still must go to "You're In A Bad Way"), it's perhaps the quintessential Saint Etienne song and, you know, sometimes a song just hits the spot...one note can lead to another.
...over and over and over and over again...
...I like Saint Etienne, I really really do, but it's as much about the moods and states of mind that their music evokes (and, to a lesser extent, the times and people that I associate with that music) as the music itself. So I already hearted the song plenty but somehow "Sylvie" was exactly right this morning; I don't know why...upbeat and danceable and tuneful and delicate and pretty, and touched by that graceful wistful Saint Etienne melancholy which makes their music so lovely at its best, lyrically, it's their "Jolene" (which, for anyone who's keeping score, doesn't have any particular autobiographical resonance for me just now) - while not their best (which title still must go to "You're In A Bad Way"), it's perhaps the quintessential Saint Etienne song and, you know, sometimes a song just hits the spot...one note can lead to another.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Sugababes - One Touch
If you believe the tastemakers, the Sugababes are one of the (increasingly many) out and out pop bands that it's okay to like, and as a matter of fact I've had a vague soft spot for them since "Overload" - although the actual intensity of this soft spot can probably be gauged by the consideration that, until relatively recently, I had a tendency to confuse them with Atomic Kitten (it was "Push The Button" that properly cured me of this...well, that and the fact that the Sugababes are still around whereas that other has seemingly dropped off the radar). Anyway, One Touch was their debut, I think - it's the one with "Overload" - and while it's okay and all, it's not the kind of thing that can sustain my attention over a whole album. (Might be better listened to v. loud, but have been reluctant to do too much of that lately due to seemingly deteriorating hearing.)
The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
So I've been waiting for this fey little record to really charm me over the last few weeks, but it doesn't seem as if it's going to happen in any major way, at least not any time soon. You can get a pretty good idea of the band's 'thing' by the album cover - cute, whimsical songs which are sung in a childish kinda voice (figuratively speaking, though the (male) singer does get a bit of falsetto happening), dealing with monsters, spiders, warm panda cola, and also - and I'm not kidding - the unbearable lightness of being (though not in quite those words).
There's lots of bounce and sunniness, but also plenty of quiet sadness; some of the lyrics are pretty barbed in that confused and bewildered sort of way ("Monsters" deserves especial mention in that respect)...all with a palette of banjo, glockenspiel, synth squiqqles, recorder, etc. It's kinda like early Belle & Sebastian crossed with Architecture In Helsinki, maybe with a bit of Apples In Stereo and perhaps a touch of Bis thrown into the mix; somehow the whole confection doesn't melt my heart, but it's still quite good if you're into this sort of thing. Best songs: "Be Gentle With Me", "Paper Cuts", "The Battle Of The Boy Least Likely To" (and, if you can bear the disgusting cheeriness of it all, "I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star").
Bande originale du film "Diva"
Sometimes an artwork will assume a significance out of all proportion to one's substantial recollections of it; the film Diva is one such for me. I saw Diva during a high school French excursion, probably in year 11, though it could've been a year on either side of that, and although my overall sense of the film is blurry and indistinct, a lot of individual fragments have stuck, and quite vividly so - a Vietnamese girl on roller skates wearing a transparent plastic raincoat, an artily converted warehouse (possibly my first exposure to that idea), motor scooters, mysterious pursuers, guns, surreptitious recordings of music, and the singing of the eponymous diva herself - along with an overriding impression that it was all too cool for words. I don't know why it's stuck with me, but somehow it has.
Somewhere along the line, I managed to procure a cd copy of the soundtrack, but it's never made much of an impression; yesterday, though, I happened across a cheap secondhand vinyl copy of the 'bande originale' and, motivated more by the curious sense of significance with which I've imbued the film and a vague memory-trace of records being significant within it than by any particular need to own it in this other form, bought the thing (also, I'd received news of an unexpected windfall earlier that day). And, for whatever reason, it's sunk in a bit more now, its mix of the opera diva Wilhelmina Wiggins Fernandez's singing of "La Wally", the melancholically pretty piano piece "Promenade Sentimentale" (performed by soundtrack composer Vladimir Cosma) and assorted atmospheric instrumental/electronic pieces (for which the term 'soundtrack music' could practically have been invented) grabbing me a little, particularly in conjunction with those scattered recollections of the film it scores.
Somewhere along the line, I managed to procure a cd copy of the soundtrack, but it's never made much of an impression; yesterday, though, I happened across a cheap secondhand vinyl copy of the 'bande originale' and, motivated more by the curious sense of significance with which I've imbued the film and a vague memory-trace of records being significant within it than by any particular need to own it in this other form, bought the thing (also, I'd received news of an unexpected windfall earlier that day). And, for whatever reason, it's sunk in a bit more now, its mix of the opera diva Wilhelmina Wiggins Fernandez's singing of "La Wally", the melancholically pretty piano piece "Promenade Sentimentale" (performed by soundtrack composer Vladimir Cosma) and assorted atmospheric instrumental/electronic pieces (for which the term 'soundtrack music' could practically have been invented) grabbing me a little, particularly in conjunction with those scattered recollections of the film it scores.
Cocteau Twins - "Iceblink Luck" cd single
Although it often seems to top critics' and fans' lists of Cocteaus albums, I'd rate Heaven Or Las Vegas as the third-best of the band's lps, after Treasure and Blue Bell Knoll (and, if the companion Tiny Dynamine/Echoes In A Shallow Bay eps counted as a single album - they were released on a single cd at some point - behind them, too); a'course, while it's only the third-best Cocteau Twins lp, it's still one of my favourite albums of all time and I'm easily enough of a fan to need to hear "Mizake The Mizan" (obviously I'm already well familiar with "Iceblink Luck", and also already knew the other b-side, "Watchlar", from the Stars And Topsoil record)...and, well, of course it's good (I'm beyond the point of attempting to come up with words to give a sense of the Cocteaus' music). Actually, taken together, the three songs on this single rather represent a rarely-glimpsed funkier side to the outfit (particularly "Iceblink Luck" and "Watchlar") which, while not the reason we love them, is pretty effective and surprisingly easy to locate on a continuum with the rest of their work.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Song of the moment: Neko Case - "Hold On, Hold On"
Over the last few days, listening to the wonderful newie from Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (now available here but I'll also be buying it the day that it hits the stores), has, in a small way, been reminding me why I like music - it's early days yet, but I reckon that it just might be as good as Blacklisted, which means that it's pretty damn good indeed. Pretty often, though, I start to listen to the album but stall at track three, "Hold On, Hold On", finding myself hitting the replay button on it over and over.
Desert guitar chimes it in, Case starts breathlessly and undeniably with a killer couplet - "The most tender place in my heart is for strangers,/I know it's unkind but my own blood is much too dangerous" - and then the song's off, recalling Calexico's "Ballad Of Cable Hogue" in its channeling of spag-Western drama and widescreen dynamics, driving irresistibly forward on the back of a restless, tumbling melody and Case's glorious singing (the magic moment is her soaring delivery of the line "I leave the party at 3am, alone thank god", in which everything gathers itself together, briefly pauses, and then launches forwards again), cresting and subsiding and cresting again, shimmering like something in the hazy, sun-distorted distance...
Here and here.
Desert guitar chimes it in, Case starts breathlessly and undeniably with a killer couplet - "The most tender place in my heart is for strangers,/I know it's unkind but my own blood is much too dangerous" - and then the song's off, recalling Calexico's "Ballad Of Cable Hogue" in its channeling of spag-Western drama and widescreen dynamics, driving irresistibly forward on the back of a restless, tumbling melody and Case's glorious singing (the magic moment is her soaring delivery of the line "I leave the party at 3am, alone thank god", in which everything gathers itself together, briefly pauses, and then launches forwards again), cresting and subsiding and cresting again, shimmering like something in the hazy, sun-distorted distance...
Here and here.
My Bloody Valentine - Glider EP
This is one of the eps that came out between Isn't Anything and Loveless, and it shows the band well on the road towards that latter masterpiece. Kicks off with "Soon" - still amazing and a bit astonishing after all this time. Then the title track, vocal-less, cacophonous and dissonant, guitars smearing and howling in swathes. Next, "Don't Ask Why", a slow-burn, psychedelic-tinged lament which drifts along, gently buzzing and cotton wool-swaddled, for most of its running time before the loud buzzsaw guitars kick in near the end. And finally "Off Your Face", which is towards the upbeat, driving, more 'pop' end of the band's range, although in the absence of the heaviness or full-on guitar attack of its equivalents on Isn't Anything or the fully-realised lushness of the ones on Loveless, it comes off quite indie jangle (in a good way), a scene/sound which has certain consonances with the whole shoegazer thing, come to think of it. The latter two are noticeably less polished than anything which made it on to Loveless, and all three of the non-"Soon" cuts aren't as well-constructed as the Loveless stuff, but they're still good to listen to, and would be so, I think, even were it not for the enormous shadow cast by those epochal lps dropped by the band on either side of this ep.
I've been thinking lately that many of my old 'favourite' bands and artists are really only nominally so nowadays, in that I rarely listen to their records any more and aren't very sure that they'd speak to me if I did - the Smiths, the Cure, maybe even Joy Division and R.E.M. (though I definitely still rate New Adventures as a classic) - but I don't think that My Bloody Valentine will be consigned to that pile just yet...
I've been thinking lately that many of my old 'favourite' bands and artists are really only nominally so nowadays, in that I rarely listen to their records any more and aren't very sure that they'd speak to me if I did - the Smiths, the Cure, maybe even Joy Division and R.E.M. (though I definitely still rate New Adventures as a classic) - but I don't think that My Bloody Valentine will be consigned to that pile just yet...
Alison Krauss and Union Station - Lonely Runs Both Ways
The one after New Favorite and, like that other, pretty, fluent, and for the most part too smooth-sounding to be particularly memorable. Overall, the album is weaker than its predecessor, which had a handful of genuine standout cuts - "The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn", "The Lucky One", "New Favorite" - but it's still perfectly listenable.
Ghost World
I first watched Ghost World last year, and knew straight after I'd finished it that I had stumbled across a new touchstone: voila. Later, I put the pieces together with the connection to the Aimee Mann song; I also read and liked the graphic novel. So anyway, I feel that I've kind of become becalmed over the last few weeks, and somehow got the idea into my head that rewatching it might be the thing to get me moving again; as to that, well, we'll see, but the film's still speaking to me (that is, I still love it just as much), even though some of its flaws were more apparent on this second viewing.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Lisa Miller @ CERES Park, Friday 3 February
Seeing Lisa Miller play live has been a long-standing desire of mine - a several-year-long saga of good intentions and near misses and being almost excited/solvent enough to make it happen - so it was good to finally catch her last night at CERES park. I'd heard that she was puts on a really good show, and she didn't disappoint - her voice is just as wonderful in the live setting as on record, and the performance as a whole stood in pretty much the ideal relation to an artist's recorded material, in that the music and songs transferred seamlessly into the different medium while also taking on a more intimate, characterful nature. It's always good to get to a gig in which the artist's voice is so key and one is already very familiar with that voice from the albums, because every little idioyncrasy becomes somehow both familiar and new, especially when the singer is obviously a very natural, talented one (as is Miller).
It was quite a long set - getting towards an hour and a half, I think - and a nice setting in which to take it in, outdoors at the cafe with night falling and a gentle breeze after a mildly warm day. Miller seemed pretty relaxed, but she and her band (which included Shane O'Mara on guitar) were absolutely tight, and it was one of those cases where the music itself often sounded better in concert than on record (as opposed to merely the atmosphere being better and a slightly different perspective being brought on the songs - though both of those were going on, too), richer and warmer as well as more immediate. Setlist heavily weighted toward the last couple of albums - Car Tape and Version Originale - which meant that I didn't get to hear "Hang My Head", "Wipe The Floor", her takes on "You're A Big Girl Now" or "A Woman Left Lonely", or any of those other earlier faves. But she did play "Little Stars" (basically very similar to the VO recording, with maybe a bit more of a swing to it), which is the key one for me; also glad to hear "The Boy That Radiates That Charm" (probably my favourite Car Tape track), and her contribution to She Will Have Her Way, "I Hope I Never", was definitely one those 'better live than recorded' songs. All up, low-key though it was, this was probably one of my favourite shows in recent memory (say, one of the best four or five - including festival sets...obviously I've taken the time to think about this - of the last couple of years).
On stage before Miller was a local singer-songwriter named Emily Ulman, solo with guitar. She was in a similar vein to Miller - pretty voice with a catch and a fullness to it, rootsy pop-rock tunes in the classic style - and good.
It was quite a long set - getting towards an hour and a half, I think - and a nice setting in which to take it in, outdoors at the cafe with night falling and a gentle breeze after a mildly warm day. Miller seemed pretty relaxed, but she and her band (which included Shane O'Mara on guitar) were absolutely tight, and it was one of those cases where the music itself often sounded better in concert than on record (as opposed to merely the atmosphere being better and a slightly different perspective being brought on the songs - though both of those were going on, too), richer and warmer as well as more immediate. Setlist heavily weighted toward the last couple of albums - Car Tape and Version Originale - which meant that I didn't get to hear "Hang My Head", "Wipe The Floor", her takes on "You're A Big Girl Now" or "A Woman Left Lonely", or any of those other earlier faves. But she did play "Little Stars" (basically very similar to the VO recording, with maybe a bit more of a swing to it), which is the key one for me; also glad to hear "The Boy That Radiates That Charm" (probably my favourite Car Tape track), and her contribution to She Will Have Her Way, "I Hope I Never", was definitely one those 'better live than recorded' songs. All up, low-key though it was, this was probably one of my favourite shows in recent memory (say, one of the best four or five - including festival sets...obviously I've taken the time to think about this - of the last couple of years).
On stage before Miller was a local singer-songwriter named Emily Ulman, solo with guitar. She was in a similar vein to Miller - pretty voice with a catch and a fullness to it, rootsy pop-rock tunes in the classic style - and good.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
Okay, I've listened to this album a couple of times through now, and I'm still surprised that the usual suspects in the 'indie' music press have been talking up Wolf Parade so much. The best explanation I can come up with is that the band so perfectly - and generically - encapsulates what indie rock is all about at the moment; it's not that they're bad, but just that what they're doing doesn't seem especially interesting or exciting. Maybe I just don't get it, but I reckon that Apologies to the Queen Mary is basically a small handful of fairly good songs ("Shine A Light", "I'll Believe In Anything" and "This Heart's On Fire" in particular) surrounded by several more unmemorable ones, done in a style which is, to be frank, on the drab side. Perhaps I'll eat my words at some point down the line, and it must be admitted that I've never been into this kind of stuff, and I do think that it's the sort of record that will grow on me a bit over time, but even so --
Azure Ray - Azure Ray
For me, Hold On Love was one of those albums that, bought on spec, turned out to be a real gem, growing on me more and more over time. This, their self-titled debut lp of 2002, is touched by the same delicate magic, twinkling mysteriously with its hushed vocals and quiet instrumental sussurations; it drifts along so dreamily and gently melancholically that it's over before you know it, and it's only then that you realise that you've been taken on a bit of a journey. The vocals are lower in the mix than on Hold On Love, and perhaps as a consequence there are fewer spine-chills (though "Displaced" is as good as anything on that later album), but there's not much to complain about with this record.
Joan Didion - Democracy
The first selection for book club (so other members of said club should probably avoid reading this entry until they've read the book, on pain of spoilers...).
Didn't know anything about Didion before coming to this book, so was more open to whatever it might prove to be than usual (ie, had fewer preconceptions or expectations). So in essence - well, in one of its essences - Democracy is an account of the 25-year relationship between Inez Christian and Jack Lovett, also taking in Inez's husband Harry Victor and her well-to-do family in Honolulu (and a murder which takes place within that family). But it's also an attempt at an elliptical portrait of the US of A (it was published in '84). And on top of this, it stages a fairly sustained interrogation of narrative, fictionality, representation, memory and historical truth. I think that its treatment of these different themes is successful to varying extents, but they really need to be considered all together.
The aphorism that Didion has Dwight Christian spout early on is, I think a telling one; it's from Kierkegaard, and goes 'Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards', which provides an interesting gloss on one of the most striking formal elements of the novel - its non-linearity and use of repetition and metafictional intrusion throughout. Didion's concerned with the question of what it is to tell a story, and with the possibility of accuracy in writerly re-presentation, and she addresses this by figuring herself qua Joan Didion, reporter as a character in the novel, muddying the waters by presenting the other characters as real people and Democracy as ostensibly a novel about real people (a neat double-coding gesture which sets her technique somewhat apart from the bog standard postmodern metafictionality that seems to have crept into every second literary novel of the last 30 years or so), and then engaging in extended 'digressions' about the writing of the novel itself and 'Joan Didion's' attempts to ascertain what actually happened and so arrive at a true account of events.
For the most part, I think that all of that works well (and I'm a pretty stern critic when it comes to this kind of pomo-narrative stuff!), but where the novel falls down a bit is in its putative plot. It would be unfair and beside the point to judge Democracy on its success in developing believable characters, generating conflict and then resolution, and so on - although, incidentally, she does a good job of these despite, and to some extent because of, her wilful fragmentation of the narrative means by which they're presented - but I think that the novel can and should be criticised for failing to pull all of its threads together. In particular, there's no especially compelling reason that I could see for including a lot of the subplots and detail, except inasmuch as this is intended to create the sense that Democracy is concerned with sketching out a portrait of (certain aspects of) America as a whole (in which respect note particularly the contrasting figures of Harry and Jack, the examination of politics, the deep shadow cast by Vietnam, the way in which the media and the capitalist market are shown to be operating, etc) - and I wasn't convinced that Didion succeeded in making the connections between the micro and the macro levels particularly elegantly, although she did it well enough that I could see the shape of what she was trying for. (I also thought the prose not particularly elegant, to the extent that it got in the way and irritated me at times.)
So overall, I think that Democracy is quite good, but that it falls short of what it's striving for. The reader has to do a lot of work to put the pieces together and (re)construct what it's all 'about', and I don't reckon that the payoff is sufficient to make the effort worthwhile. Looking forward to hearing what everyone else has to say.
Didn't know anything about Didion before coming to this book, so was more open to whatever it might prove to be than usual (ie, had fewer preconceptions or expectations). So in essence - well, in one of its essences - Democracy is an account of the 25-year relationship between Inez Christian and Jack Lovett, also taking in Inez's husband Harry Victor and her well-to-do family in Honolulu (and a murder which takes place within that family). But it's also an attempt at an elliptical portrait of the US of A (it was published in '84). And on top of this, it stages a fairly sustained interrogation of narrative, fictionality, representation, memory and historical truth. I think that its treatment of these different themes is successful to varying extents, but they really need to be considered all together.
The aphorism that Didion has Dwight Christian spout early on is, I think a telling one; it's from Kierkegaard, and goes 'Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards', which provides an interesting gloss on one of the most striking formal elements of the novel - its non-linearity and use of repetition and metafictional intrusion throughout. Didion's concerned with the question of what it is to tell a story, and with the possibility of accuracy in writerly re-presentation, and she addresses this by figuring herself qua Joan Didion, reporter as a character in the novel, muddying the waters by presenting the other characters as real people and Democracy as ostensibly a novel about real people (a neat double-coding gesture which sets her technique somewhat apart from the bog standard postmodern metafictionality that seems to have crept into every second literary novel of the last 30 years or so), and then engaging in extended 'digressions' about the writing of the novel itself and 'Joan Didion's' attempts to ascertain what actually happened and so arrive at a true account of events.
For the most part, I think that all of that works well (and I'm a pretty stern critic when it comes to this kind of pomo-narrative stuff!), but where the novel falls down a bit is in its putative plot. It would be unfair and beside the point to judge Democracy on its success in developing believable characters, generating conflict and then resolution, and so on - although, incidentally, she does a good job of these despite, and to some extent because of, her wilful fragmentation of the narrative means by which they're presented - but I think that the novel can and should be criticised for failing to pull all of its threads together. In particular, there's no especially compelling reason that I could see for including a lot of the subplots and detail, except inasmuch as this is intended to create the sense that Democracy is concerned with sketching out a portrait of (certain aspects of) America as a whole (in which respect note particularly the contrasting figures of Harry and Jack, the examination of politics, the deep shadow cast by Vietnam, the way in which the media and the capitalist market are shown to be operating, etc) - and I wasn't convinced that Didion succeeded in making the connections between the micro and the macro levels particularly elegantly, although she did it well enough that I could see the shape of what she was trying for. (I also thought the prose not particularly elegant, to the extent that it got in the way and irritated me at times.)
So overall, I think that Democracy is quite good, but that it falls short of what it's striving for. The reader has to do a lot of work to put the pieces together and (re)construct what it's all 'about', and I don't reckon that the payoff is sufficient to make the effort worthwhile. Looking forward to hearing what everyone else has to say.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
M.I.A. @ Prince Band Room, Wednesday 1 February
Arular was one of those albums that I bought and listened to nonstop for about three weeks, then basically forgot about. Still, I liked it enough for those three weeks to want to catch her live, and as it turns out it's just as well that we got our act together and bought tickets reasonably early, as I heard that the gig sold out a few days ago (not a bad effort given that the Prince is pretty large for a pub venue).
So, on stage were Maya herself, another female vocalist, and a dj type manning the turntables and a laptop. For the set she did all of the songs on Arular (sans skits), saving "U.R.A.Q.T." and "Bingo" for the encore and coda-ing with the hidden track (just titled "M.I.A.", I think). "Galang" was the highlight - which was unsurprising in the live setting - and generally I thought it was a very good show without being a great one...the energy level and charisma was there but not to the extent that would've been needed to really push things to the next level; the singing/rapping wasn't as urgent or as strident as I'd imagined it would be (though still plenty so) and a bit off-key at times; the beats didn't seem as heavy or as hard as on record (oddly), or at any rate there wasn't the percentage increase that I'd expected; and the whole seemed to be amplified to a lower volume than I'm used to (unless my hearing really is giving up the ghost).
Those are all quibbles, but overall it was still ace to see M.I.A. doing her thing in person - lots of whooping, call-outs to Melbourne (in the accent, of course), general working the crowd, scrambling around on the stage, and all that good stuff. Also, the people I was with - Swee Leng and a friend of hers, Meribah - were way enthused afterwards, making me wonder if the 'problem' for me, such as it is, arose from over-inflated expectations (and, secondarily, taking too much for granted the immediate brilliance of her genreclashing/attitude/music generally). Also-also, this was the first step in my 'more live music' resolution, woot!
So, on stage were Maya herself, another female vocalist, and a dj type manning the turntables and a laptop. For the set she did all of the songs on Arular (sans skits), saving "U.R.A.Q.T." and "Bingo" for the encore and coda-ing with the hidden track (just titled "M.I.A.", I think). "Galang" was the highlight - which was unsurprising in the live setting - and generally I thought it was a very good show without being a great one...the energy level and charisma was there but not to the extent that would've been needed to really push things to the next level; the singing/rapping wasn't as urgent or as strident as I'd imagined it would be (though still plenty so) and a bit off-key at times; the beats didn't seem as heavy or as hard as on record (oddly), or at any rate there wasn't the percentage increase that I'd expected; and the whole seemed to be amplified to a lower volume than I'm used to (unless my hearing really is giving up the ghost).
Those are all quibbles, but overall it was still ace to see M.I.A. doing her thing in person - lots of whooping, call-outs to Melbourne (in the accent, of course), general working the crowd, scrambling around on the stage, and all that good stuff. Also, the people I was with - Swee Leng and a friend of hers, Meribah - were way enthused afterwards, making me wonder if the 'problem' for me, such as it is, arose from over-inflated expectations (and, secondarily, taking too much for granted the immediate brilliance of her genreclashing/attitude/music generally). Also-also, this was the first step in my 'more live music' resolution, woot!
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