Well, to begin with, what a great kick-off to the show - "To Bring You My Love" / "Send His Love To Me", Polly Jean standing in the middle of the stage on her own, in full voice and tearing out the chords on her extremely plugged-in guitar...hard to imagine how it could've been much better. The show in general was pretty well-balanced, with a bias towards the last couple of albums, neither of which I've listened to (though some of the Uh Huh Her stuff has turned up on mix cds from David before - including "The Desperate Kingdom of Love", which was a bit of a highlight); the ones that she introduced as being from the latest, White Chalk were reminiscent of solo Kristin Hersh and markedly spectral (good, too, though I'm not sure if they'd stand up to repeat at-home listening). All up, I was pretty happy with it - it was a good concert. The highlight was "Horses In My Dreams", which led off the encore - it's always been a bit special, but its dynamics came through more clearly when done live...it was a bit of a Moment.
(Support was Mick Harvey - just him on guitar + cello. Created a very warm sound and was all round good; did some nice covers including one of the Triffids' "Raining Pleasure" which worked a treat.)
(w/ trang, and her friends Ee-Lin and Liah)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
3:10 to Yuma
It's a Western. More nuanced than those of yore, sure, but equally surely not revisionistic in any substantial way - it's a Western. Neat landscapes, middling in the viscerality stakes, good performances by Crowe, Bale and the others, and a gee-whiz finale which is ridiculous but sorta fitting. Not anything remarkable, but what it is, it is to the hilt and it was plenty diverting.
(w/ Swee Leng, late show a couple of Fridays ago...sadly, the Nova seems to be phasing them out, but make hay while the sun shines (or the moon glows, as the case may be, I suppose), &c)
(w/ Swee Leng, late show a couple of Fridays ago...sadly, the Nova seems to be phasing them out, but make hay while the sun shines (or the moon glows, as the case may be, I suppose), &c)
"Chillaxin" (IMP December 2007)
A mix of mostly funk and soul/soul-esque, old school an' new - Earth, Wind & Fire, "Let's Stay Together" by Al Green, Fugees, Blackalicious. Some cool songs: "100 Days, 100 Nights" by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, "Slow Down" by Ghostface Killah & Chrisette Michele, "The Mating Game" by Bitter:Sweet; also "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" by Radiohead, off In Rainbows, which I really oughta listen to properly some time soon...likeable.
(from Marcia in Brookline, MA)
(from Marcia in Brookline, MA)
The Bourne Supremacy
Yeah, yeah, so this was pretty good but you know, whatever. I don't think I was really in the mood, whatever mood that may be.
28 Weeks Later
The opening sequence is one of the tensest you're ever likely to see, but the film doesn't maintain the pace thereafter and is probably a bit short of the first, but it's still a pretty effective zombie flick. I could've done without one of the two most overt nods to the genre's gore roots - the eye-gouging scene - though I have to say that the other, in which a helicopter plows through a crowd of zombies with predictably splattery results, had a certain grotesque magnificence.
J M Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello
With Waiting for the Barbarians, this makes two of two Coetzee books that I've raced through and yet haven't wholeheartedly liked (or, in the case of Barbarians, liked at all). It's engaging, but many of the responses it engages in me are negative, starting from its central gambit of being a book about a writer and progressing from there. That said, I'm certainly glad that I read Elizabeth Costello, and I feel that doing so has made me a better person (which is certainly not true of all books, nor even of all 'literature', that I get through) - it is a very humanistic book, honestly and sparely engaged in interrogating itself and its own ideas (ie, being what a book about a writer should be). Yeah, thinking about it more doesn't shed any more light on what it's actually 'about', but does somehow reveal more of the text ('novel' is strictly accurate, I reckon, but the term doesn't quite feel accurate) anyway. Yeah, I liked it...so maybe the jury remains out on Coetzee after all.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Cat Power - Jukebox
Musically, Jukebox is largely a continuation of the lush sound that characterised The Greatest, but with a more nocturnal twist whereby Marshall puts up her hand for the title of world's best lounge singer (check out her hauntedly echoing "Ramblin' (Wo)Man", which is as Portishead as she's ever been - and also one of the two or three best songs on the album) - it's certainly not a "Covers Record mk 2", except inasmuch as this new, well-selected set of covers also seems a faithful document of where she's at musically at the moment.
It's certainly not a great Cat Power album (for mine, the only two deserving of that appellation are probably Moon Pix and You Are Free), but it's a good one, and in her re-take on "Metal Heart" it has one great song up its sleeve, so I ain't displeased. Her takes on two faves of mine, "Woman Left Lonely" and Joni's "Blue", don't give me much (the first is too by the numbers, and the second, while interestingly atmospheric, ultimately doesn't go anywhere special); other songs worth mentioning are the delightful stroll of "Aretha, Sing One For Me", her chugging rock n roll take on Dylan's "I Believe In You" and "Song To Bobby" (this album's simple, sad one).
It's certainly not a great Cat Power album (for mine, the only two deserving of that appellation are probably Moon Pix and You Are Free), but it's a good one, and in her re-take on "Metal Heart" it has one great song up its sleeve, so I ain't displeased. Her takes on two faves of mine, "Woman Left Lonely" and Joni's "Blue", don't give me much (the first is too by the numbers, and the second, while interestingly atmospheric, ultimately doesn't go anywhere special); other songs worth mentioning are the delightful stroll of "Aretha, Sing One For Me", her chugging rock n roll take on Dylan's "I Believe In You" and "Song To Bobby" (this album's simple, sad one).
Miranda Lambert - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
It took a few listens, and I was pretty sceptical after the first spin, but I've been won over by this one. The rockers may sometimes veer a bit close to Bon Jovi territory and the ballads on occasion tend rather too much towards the glossy and the schmaltzy, but for all of that, Lambert can sing and the songs are strong, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a more than solid contemporary country album.
CocoRosie - The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn
Consistently interesting and very good in patches, but I haven't taken this one to heart - it just feels a bit all over the place, for all of the high points scattered through the album. I like it, but I think I would've liked it more two or three years ago...it's like Mum + Tujiko Noriko + Cibo Matto! Then, too, it's one of those with which one always feels that one is just about to get it, while that moment is always being deferred again and again...
Sweeney Todd
All the elements were there, and so Burton's Sweeney Todd is what it is, and very good that is too - lush, dark, bloody and memorable (not to mention more than a bit stressful once the (rather graphic) throat-cutting starts...though one becomes a bit inured to it after the second or third). All commit themselves nobly with the singing; technical perfection's not what's required for a production of this kind, after all. And the sets look every inch the part (as do the actors, it does without saying). I'm not really in a hurry to watch it again (I rarely am with Burton films) but it sure was grand to be immersed in its streams for those couple of hours.
(w/ Michelle - I almost said 'of course', but actually there are any number of people with whom it would've made just as much sense for me to be watching this...Tim Burton is great, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter likewise, and who wouldn't want to see them take on Sweeney Todd? We all know it.)
(w/ Michelle - I almost said 'of course', but actually there are any number of people with whom it would've made just as much sense for me to be watching this...Tim Burton is great, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter likewise, and who wouldn't want to see them take on Sweeney Todd? We all know it.)
Rufus Wainwright @ Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre, Friday 1 February
A really good show - as Tamara said, something like what one imagines an Elton John show 30 years ago would've been. I don't think I knew any of the songs (maybe one or two) - went along because Bec P suggested it a while back and I have fond memories of "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" - but the songs themselves, and his delivery of them, were such that that didn't make any difference at all. The Judy Garland ones were ace; likewise the Rufus W originals...and the boy can sing (to say nothing of the outfits he ran through - particularly the Liza Minelli one - and his endearing sense of humour) - I'm sold.
(In a nice little resonance, the Cure was playing before the show - just as had been the case at the Corner before Spoon the night before...)
(In a nice little resonance, the Cure was playing before the show - just as had been the case at the Corner before Spoon the night before...)
Spoon @ the Corner Hotel, Thursday 31 January
Got there early, and so saw most of the support sets by Little Red (x 2) and the Smallgoods - both jangly sixties revivalists, the former bringing some solid rock n roll voices, sweet harmonies and a sense of humour, the latter adding some proggy soundscapes (and a great cover of Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes") to their mix.
Then, Spoon, taking the stage to loud acclamation, and kickin' off with "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case" and then a spectacular "Small Stakes", after which basically an hour and a half of nearly every Spoon song that I could've hoped to hear - it was very buzzy and a good vibe all round (Britt Daniel said at one point "this is our crowd!") and the sound was great. They brought their A-game and their brass band, mixing up the songs so that each was sort of 'the same but different' when compared to the recorded version. Also liked the way that the appropriate sound for all of Daniel's different facial expressions is an expostulated 'yeah' (exclamation mark optional).
As it had been at the Big Day Out, "Finer Feelings" was a bit of a highlight; likewise "Don't Make Me A Target" and "Cherry Bomb" and spectral "The Ghost of You Lingers", and of course all those brill songs from Gimme Fiction ("the Beast and Dragon, Adored", "Monsieur Valentine", "I Turn My Camera On", etc). They also did "The Way We Get By" (though it wasn't a live standout, I still got a kick out of hearing it), and all up it was very, very fine - along with Bjork's BDO set, the best show I've been to at least since Neko Case about a year ago, and another brick in the 'Spoon are really damn great' wall that's been built in my parts over recentish (scale of years) times.
The two recent Spoon shows, by the way, have fortified me in reckoning that Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is their best yet...
(w/ David + Justine)
Then, Spoon, taking the stage to loud acclamation, and kickin' off with "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case" and then a spectacular "Small Stakes", after which basically an hour and a half of nearly every Spoon song that I could've hoped to hear - it was very buzzy and a good vibe all round (Britt Daniel said at one point "this is our crowd!") and the sound was great. They brought their A-game and their brass band, mixing up the songs so that each was sort of 'the same but different' when compared to the recorded version. Also liked the way that the appropriate sound for all of Daniel's different facial expressions is an expostulated 'yeah' (exclamation mark optional).
As it had been at the Big Day Out, "Finer Feelings" was a bit of a highlight; likewise "Don't Make Me A Target" and "Cherry Bomb" and spectral "The Ghost of You Lingers", and of course all those brill songs from Gimme Fiction ("the Beast and Dragon, Adored", "Monsieur Valentine", "I Turn My Camera On", etc). They also did "The Way We Get By" (though it wasn't a live standout, I still got a kick out of hearing it), and all up it was very, very fine - along with Bjork's BDO set, the best show I've been to at least since Neko Case about a year ago, and another brick in the 'Spoon are really damn great' wall that's been built in my parts over recentish (scale of years) times.
The two recent Spoon shows, by the way, have fortified me in reckoning that Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is their best yet...
(w/ David + Justine)
Big Day Out @ Flemington Racecourse, Monday 28 January
My first in years - since the 2000 festival, actually (Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beth Orton, those were the days!) - and a good day out, dust, heat, crowds and all. Started off seeing bits of Eddy Current Suppresion Ring and then of Cut Off Your Hands with David; neither made much of an impression but both seemed pretty okay. Next was Kate Nash, who had a Lily Allen kind of vibe going and was quite good - had a bit of spark and warmth, and her songs had lots of catchy little hooks and instrumental/sampled breaks, though the best bits of her songs were often their opening bars.
Then Spoon, the first of the acts who'd really drawn me to the BDO this year in the first place, and they didn't disappoint. There wasn't a huge amount of energy in the crowd, but the band sounded great in running through a selection of songs from their last four albums, with a bit of a bias towards Gimme Fiction and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga ("Fitted Shirt" getting a run from Girls Can Tell, "Jonathon Fisk" and "Stay Don't Go" (I think) from Kill The Moonlight). They sounded tight and focused, and the 'Spoon sound' translated well from record to live, with the little uneven-nesses and stutters still present, even if in a way that flattened them out a bit - and of course the joy of knowing every song carried the set a long way for me. Very happy with it.
Saw a bit of Billy Bragg, although we possibly could've picked a better 10 minutes or so to be passing through, only catching the tail end of a political diatribe on the importance of faith and believing that Rudd is really different from and better than J Howard (a sine qua non, of course), and a Shangri-Las cover in duet with Kate Nash, before heading for the Arcade Fire - who were, of course the main event for me.[*]
Alas, getting into the D-barrier for them proved completely impossible, so we settled for a spot a bit further back. So, you know, they kicked off with "Wake Up" and they sounded really good, and after the who knows how many times I've listened to all of their songs (at least those on Funeral and Neon Bible) it was cool to have them blasting out right there, but really it wasn't a particularly satisfying experience...so it goes.
Next, saw a bit of Battles from a distance, and then, after meeting up with Michelle and her friend Eunice again (we'd bumped into them at Spoon earlier), went off to Bjork, who was definitely the highlight of the day. She basically played a greatest hits set, getting through nearly all of my favourites ("Unravel", "Pagan Poetry", "All Is Full Of Love", "Bachelorette", a disintegrating "Hyper-ballad" - those could well actually be my five faves of her solo stuff), and it was a reminder that, as mediocre as I've found her last couple of records to be, she really is something special - amazing songs and blessed with talent which is off the scale to boot. The one act for the day, too, whose live reworkings of songs I already knew really significantly invoked my existing associations with those songs and added something to my store of 'moments' wrapped up with that music.
And finally, festival wound up for me on a chilled note with Sarah Blasko - it was pretty intimate, presumably because most were camped out for RATM or else at the next stage over for Paul Kelly at that point. What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have has proved to be a stayer and a vivid part of my mental musical landscape, and Blasko was a beguiling presence on stage, investing both the songs I knew and those I didn't with an air of fragility and of the ethereal, held together by a distinct clarity of vision - ending with her was definitely the right choice for me.
* * *
[*] The chronology went like this: didn't get my act together to buy tix for BDO initially ('cause these days it's apparently one of those be online at midnight, or 6am, or whatever type deals and I wasn't near excited enough for that, and figured I'd get tix to sideshows instead anyway); got it into my head that Arcade Fire weren't doing a sideshow and so went into BDO ballot; found out at 5pm on day that AF tix had gone on sale that (a) they had gone on sale and (b) they had all sold out; cursed all hipsters with renewed fervour for a day or two; got the good news that the ballot had come through for me (QED).
Then Spoon, the first of the acts who'd really drawn me to the BDO this year in the first place, and they didn't disappoint. There wasn't a huge amount of energy in the crowd, but the band sounded great in running through a selection of songs from their last four albums, with a bit of a bias towards Gimme Fiction and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga ("Fitted Shirt" getting a run from Girls Can Tell, "Jonathon Fisk" and "Stay Don't Go" (I think) from Kill The Moonlight). They sounded tight and focused, and the 'Spoon sound' translated well from record to live, with the little uneven-nesses and stutters still present, even if in a way that flattened them out a bit - and of course the joy of knowing every song carried the set a long way for me. Very happy with it.
Saw a bit of Billy Bragg, although we possibly could've picked a better 10 minutes or so to be passing through, only catching the tail end of a political diatribe on the importance of faith and believing that Rudd is really different from and better than J Howard (a sine qua non, of course), and a Shangri-Las cover in duet with Kate Nash, before heading for the Arcade Fire - who were, of course the main event for me.[*]
Alas, getting into the D-barrier for them proved completely impossible, so we settled for a spot a bit further back. So, you know, they kicked off with "Wake Up" and they sounded really good, and after the who knows how many times I've listened to all of their songs (at least those on Funeral and Neon Bible) it was cool to have them blasting out right there, but really it wasn't a particularly satisfying experience...so it goes.
Next, saw a bit of Battles from a distance, and then, after meeting up with Michelle and her friend Eunice again (we'd bumped into them at Spoon earlier), went off to Bjork, who was definitely the highlight of the day. She basically played a greatest hits set, getting through nearly all of my favourites ("Unravel", "Pagan Poetry", "All Is Full Of Love", "Bachelorette", a disintegrating "Hyper-ballad" - those could well actually be my five faves of her solo stuff), and it was a reminder that, as mediocre as I've found her last couple of records to be, she really is something special - amazing songs and blessed with talent which is off the scale to boot. The one act for the day, too, whose live reworkings of songs I already knew really significantly invoked my existing associations with those songs and added something to my store of 'moments' wrapped up with that music.
And finally, festival wound up for me on a chilled note with Sarah Blasko - it was pretty intimate, presumably because most were camped out for RATM or else at the next stage over for Paul Kelly at that point. What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have has proved to be a stayer and a vivid part of my mental musical landscape, and Blasko was a beguiling presence on stage, investing both the songs I knew and those I didn't with an air of fragility and of the ethereal, held together by a distinct clarity of vision - ending with her was definitely the right choice for me.
* * *
[*] The chronology went like this: didn't get my act together to buy tix for BDO initially ('cause these days it's apparently one of those be online at midnight, or 6am, or whatever type deals and I wasn't near excited enough for that, and figured I'd get tix to sideshows instead anyway); got it into my head that Arcade Fire weren't doing a sideshow and so went into BDO ballot; found out at 5pm on day that AF tix had gone on sale that (a) they had gone on sale and (b) they had all sold out; cursed all hipsters with renewed fervour for a day or two; got the good news that the ballot had come through for me (QED).
Friday, February 08, 2008
Slumber Party - Musik
This is a seriously neat album. Slumber Party've still got that 3rd/4th album Velvet Underground vibe going (vocals sometimes kind of a cross between Lou Reed and Nico, though it's really the instrumental parts and the riffing-and-strumming which evoke the comparison...some of the soloing comes near Galaxie 500 territory, too, say on "Becuz") - see previously - and the addition of more electronics, mostly by way of keys, adds a level of interest and lushness which is thoroughly complementary...I listen to it all the way through, and then want to go all over again.
The Empire Strikes Back
Like the first one, a bit underwhelming all these years (and layers of 'familiarity') on; still, it's got something, I guess.
Kate Atkinson - One Good Turn
I don't know how she does it, but Kate Atkinson always pulls me in. There's nothing about the story of One Good Turn that ought to draw me, but she's just such a great storyteller that I'm carried along regardless; the characters aren't the kind to particularly attract me (though Jackson Brodie is, in his rumpled way, pretty compelling), yet almost immediately I feel as if I'm inhabiting their world, that I understand them, and (usually) I'm rooting for them; it doesn't seem that the mood she creates is anything remarkable, but her books always leave me with a lingering sense of strongly felt but curiously indefinable feelings. For mine, this one and Case Histories don't quite match those giddy first couple she wrote (Behind the Scenes... and Human Croquet) in terms of their effect on me, but they're a step up in 'quality' - give me more!
Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now
I can't decide whether it's an obvious comparison or not, but the record that I Am A Bird Now most reminds me of is Grace - it's there in the soulful (fiery) upper register tentative-now-certain vocals, in the elegant stutter and flow of the songs, and in the way that chamber/baroque trimmings adorn and inhabit what's essentially a brooding pop album, but more, it's in the record's effect, you know, the kind that you can't put in words but always know. The "What Can I Do?" (Rufus W's mournful croonings sounding the part) / "Fistful of Love" pairing is the part that I most listen to over and over, but all in all it's a record that's exactly right for what it is.
Batman
Somehow not as good as I'd expected it would be on a revisit - not as intense, dark or conflicted as I'd built it up to be in my mind. But yeah, still pretty alright.
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