Triple J's Like A Version Anthology: Best of Volumes 1-5

Been a long time since triple j was my listening staple (the last vestige fell away a few months ago when I realised that even having it as my morning clock radio wakeup station was a bridge too far - in a further sign that I'm getting old, I started finding the announcers too loud, too braying, and shifted to triple r instead), but it was Sarah Blasko's lovely take on "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", heard post-play in the Malthouse bar as they called last drinks, that got me to buy this.

With a generalist covers compilation like this, there are some that you want to listen to because of the song, others because of the artist, perhaps a handful because of the particular combination. Here, a few of my favourite songs are in line ("Wide Open Road", done well by the Panics; "There She Goes", ploddingly and unfortunately covered by the Wombats; "Joga" given a dull do-over by Hermitude; "Look at Miss Ohio", faithfully but somewhat more somberly, and overall effectively, done by the Kill Devil Hills); the highlights overall, along with Blasko's version of the Elton John classic, are a typically twee yet urgent take by Tegan and Sara on "Dancing in the Dark" (reminding me what a classic that song is), Bob Evans' countrified spin on Lily Allen's "Not Fair", Evermore's melancholy cover of Little Birdy's "Relapse", and Little Birdy themselves with a straight-up but enjoyably sprightly version of "These Boots Were Made For Walking".

Carl Little - Edward Hopper's New England

Lighthouses, boats, Cape Cod scenes, etc. To some degree, light and composition play a different role in these ones, an important part of Hopper's body of work, than they do in his urban pieces; but like those others, they exactly capture one facet of America as I imagine it.

Yes Minister & Yes, Prime Minister

Very amusing, very cynical; complete satire of course but that doesn't stop it from sometimes having resonance.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Now this was a really sweet film. It combines two of my favourite genres - teen movie and that stream of literature that takes in The Great Gatsby, The Secret History and perhaps most pertinently, Brideshead Revisited - and presents the resulting amalgam in a nostalgically rendered early 90s package, complete with glorious indie soundtrack (Smiths, Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses, etc).

There were plenty of moments that had the potential to throw the viewer out of the extended moment that the film invokes, but it's good enough - and, of course, completely enough in my personal zone - that it instead carried me straight through; the best example is probably the first tunnel scene, the suggestion that these kids of such great musical taste could have not heard Bowie's "Heroes" and then Emma Watson's Sam's (she's good, as is the rest of the cast) arms-outstretched pose, wind pulling at her as the car races ahead, both potentially risible in a slightly different context but instead combining to create the kind of ecstatic moment that is inevitably rendered nostalgic when played out by people of an age and in a time that is long behind us, but of course would have been experienced as at least potentially bittersweet, albeit perhaps in a different way, even at the time.

(w/ Kai, David + Justine, and Cass)

"Pompeii, L.A." (Malthouse)

I have to say, I haven't found the Malthouse plays that I've been to this year to (collectively) be up to their usual - high - standard...possibly partly a reflection of the last-minute, second half of the season only subscription bit. Having said that, of those that I saw, Declan Greene's "Pompeii, L.A." yesterday was the stand out (I was similarly impressed by his "Moth"). There's more than a hint of Mulholland Drive - of Lynch generally - to its rendition of the internal apocalypse of the Hollywood dreaming that is its subject; a a highlight was the production's bold, fluid theatrical confidence, including a set design that finds room, between its two acts (the first a vivid fragmentation of scenes and identities, the second a hospital-room crawl towards death), for the towing of a battered red sports car out the back of the Merlyn theatre.

(w/ Steph C, Julian, Jarrod + friend (Larissa?), and Cass)

"Jeff Wall Photographs" & "Thomas Demand"

On at the NGV Aust & International respectively, entry on one ticket to both.

Jeff Wall's large-scale photos - most finalised and exhibited as transparencies in light boxes, to be lit from behind - were a mixed bag for me. A few were quite striking, either for their pictorial flair (the last two in the exhibition, "A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai)", 1993 and "Coastal motifs", 1989, in particular) or for the successful way they metaphorise (or literalise) their subjects' psychological interiority ("A woman and her doctor", 1980-1; "After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue", 1999-2000), but most simply didn't leave much of an impression.

Thomas Demand combines media - he creates paper and cardboard sculpture and then photographs or videos them - in a manner that seems holistic. Scenes like "Copyshop" and "Bathroom" take on an unfamiliar air when constructed, in a way that is oddly undetailed yet wholly familiar, and then preserved via colour print; also notable is his "Rain" video, the raindrops created again using paper.

Sharon Van Etten - Tramp

It starts with the voice - as with Epic, initially a bit of a barrier, mixed high and raspy in a way that seems to push out everything else, but on repeat listens revealing itself as an instrument of considerable power and expressiveness and, on Tramp, subtlety. Tramp is a really good album, interesting to listen to throughout, Van Etten's haunted vocals riding on an shimmeringly atmospheric indie-singer-songwriter-country-rock-ish sound a bit reminiscent of Neko Case, the songs being of the kind that don't obviously conform to conventional structures but instead seem to have distinctive shapes of their own. Tracks 2 and 3, "Give Out" and "Serpents" stand out, but the real show-stopper's "All I Can", unabashedly shooting for grandness and nailing it, cresting on its climactic cry "we all make mistakes".

The Kirishima Thing

A high school movie, done with a very nice touch. The characters come quickly to life, and while their types, relationships and paths are familiar, there is an obliqueness to how the film moves them around, often denying us the expected outcome in a way that seems entirely designed and indeed structural, right down to the unresolvedness of the ending. Being Japanese, it naturally called to mind All About Lily Chou-Chou and Battle Royale for me, but it's far lighter than either of those, albeit still serious-minded in its focus on its (impressively large) roster of characters. There was something very pleasing about it that's hard to define, but I liked it a lot.

(w/ Andreas - part of the Japanese Film Festival)

"Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists" (NGV International)

A nice little exhibition about a movement that I knew very little about before. Beginning in France and Belgium in the 1880s with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, neo-impressionism took impressionism as its starting point and sought to incorporate the then new sciences of optics and colour perception and theory, using careful dabs of bright colours in a 'divisionistic' style - juxtaposing complementary colours, both at the level of detail and overall picture - with the aim of inducing the intended effects through the viewer's perceptual response to the use of colour and line rather than swift brushstrokes aimed at capturing the essence of a moment in the traditional impressionist style.

By and large, I found the paintings in the exhibition pleasant rather than amazing - they have a tendency to perhaps be a little mannered, at least by comparison to the finest of the impressionist (including late impressionist) style...having said that, a couple by Maximilien Luce were very striking - "Views of London (Cannon Street)" (1892-3) and "The Louvre and the Pont du Carrousel, night effect" (1890), the former dusk and the latter night, both making use of violets, lilacs, greens, city lights on water. And my favourite in the exhibition, Theo van Rysselberghe's "Canal in Flanders, gloomy weather" (1894), is wonderful, done with a vivid blurriness, like a photograph of a memory.

Actually, in some ways, the most interesting thing about the exhibition was the way that the use of colour, particularly in later neo-impressionism, very clearly prefigures that of a range of more familiar movements that would follow in the 20th century - bringing to mind Matisse and the fauves - and the turn towards something approaching abstraction, again in that later part of the movement.

(w/ Trang)

The Red Squirrel

A cryptic, somewhat dreamy, very European (Spanish, actually - part of the La Mirada film festival) tale of love, deceit and illusion. So-so.

(w/ Rob and Jade + Duc)

Dum Dum Girls - "He Gets Me High" ep

One from last year - also good. The highlight is the slashing cover of "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out".

Skyfall

This was very enjoyable - it actually had something of the feel of a Nolan Batman film, shadowy, physical and kinetic, and built around a series of fairly spectacular set pieces. (Incidentally, I think the first Bond film I've ever sat down and watched all the way through.)

(w/ Andreas)

The Master

I must admit, I found The Master rather opaque, much like its two central characters. It's wonderfully made, and there are some truly beautiful shots in it, but all up I wondered if it might just have been a little empty - not really about anything. Having said that, more than the much publicised Scientology element, I think that maybe the true subjects of this film are human relationships and human-ness, in light of which (and in light of the focus on character and identity as performed in those of Paul Thomas Anderson's other films that I've seen), the opacity may well be deliberate. I don't know how much I enjoyed The Master; I even felt a bit bored at times. And yet I'm inclined to watch it again.

30 Rock season 6

The balance of the show seems to have shifted in this latest season. You wouldn't say that 30 Rock is a show that particularly relies on character development, but Liz and Jack in particular have moved a bit - particularly their relationship with each other - over all five seasons, which continues in this sixth (most notably, Liz staying with the same boyfriend, James Marsden's Criss, for a whole season and the way their relationship develops), including a surprisingly touching season opener. Also, several of the regular supporting characters are less prominent (the writers, Cerie - not a great loss; Grizz and Dot-Com - which is a pity; Jonathan has gone altogether - neutral), their screen time taken up by a revolving cast of guest stars, including nearly every single guest or recurring character/actor of any significance from the previous five seasons. Kristen Schaal is a welcome addition; her character is a bit all over the place, but Schaal is delightful. Anyhow, it continues to be an excellent show - still smart, consistently funny, pleasingly meta, and showing the right amount of heart and snark.

"Negotiating this World: Contemporary Australian Art" (NGV Australia)

Some days one is open to art, other days not so much; last Sunday, when I dropped in for this exhibition, turned out unfortunately to be one of the latter. And so, in lieu of synthesis or exegesis, my notes verbatim (these were the pieces that struck me for one reason or another):

* David Rosetzky - "Self-defence (Sarah)" (2005)
- large digital print of a woman, cut out - tree branches
- tv screen - weather atmospherics
- projected on wall

* Tom Nicholson - "Drawing and correspondence 1" (2008-11)
- large charcoal drawing
-- mysterious
-- cave painting?
-- artist's book of emails/archival photos

* Rosemary Laing - "Welcome to Australia" (2004) - large photo - Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre

* Siri Hayes - "Paper bag lovers" (2008) - photo

* Janet Laurence - "Botanical residues"
- colour transparency on transparent synthetic polymer resin
- six overlapping panes
- green, ghostly images of glasshouses

* Bill Henson - "Untitled 2009/10"
- photo of crowd looking at a Rembrandt at the Hermitage
- ghostly, can't tell at first

- another untitled Henson - 09/10 - foggy, island mound surrounded by water

* Mira Gojak - "Sung out of sight" (2008)
- suspended sculpture - wire, steel, copper, wool - automatism - flowing

* John Spiteri - "Hard rain" (2006)
- enamel on glass

Wild Surmise (Malthouse)

This one was quite good - a two-hander adapted from a Dorothy Porter that initially seemed as if it might be overly obvious in thematising/metaphorising its Large Themes through the preoccupations of its two protagonists, astronomy and poetry, but actually steered clear of those shoals and instead developed into a pretty engaging, nicely Melbourne-grounded piece on love, desire and relationships.

(w/ Julian, Jarrod, Farrah, Cass and Trang)

Bored Nothing instore @ Polyester Records

Jon gave me a head's up about this guy and the timing (6pm at Polyester in the city) fit well with how my Friday night was shaping up, so I went and saw most of it with him. Pretty good - reminded me a bit of Girls, although maybe more 90s-ish. Would listen to more.

Norwegian Wood

What I liked about this film: the general mood; the effective way it conjures sadness; the fact that it's an adaptation of a Murakami book; the way that it has a meaningful narrative and character arc for its central character, if not for the others.

What I wasn't so taken with, causing me to be only lukewarm about it as a whole: it's slow...very, very slow (probably unavoidably so given the source material); the occasional jarring editing and music; and, particularly, it doesn't quite pierce in the way that it could have, and maybe nearly did.

The Antlers - Hospice

The Antlers had been highly recommended by a couple of people, but Hospice hasn't done much for me. It has its moments and I like the drama, but overall it just hasn't really struck me.

Sarah Blasko - I Awake

Looking back over what I wrote at the time about each of Sarah Blasko's previous albums, What the Sea Wants..., The Overture & the Underscore and As Day Follows Night, it seems like there's a bit of a pattern - I liked them all in those initial days/weeks of listening, but hadn't yet realised how much the music on each of them would stick with me, haunt me even, over time...her music is the kind that lingers.

And now I Awake, which makes four from four seriously good lps - maybe it's even the best of the four. Delicacy and a clear, strong vision are in perfect balance, and the songwriting is wonderful, confidently ascending to swoons and swirls like those that highlight "New Country" and "Illusory Light" and often bathed in strings and a cinematically dramatic air (say on "An Arrow"); elsewhere, there's a lovely, light touch on songs like the classicist pop of "Fool"...Blasko is something a bit out of the ordinary.

The xx - Coexist

Two things have been a bit surprising about Coexist for me - first, that it's been a bit of a slow burn, taking a fair few listens for me to get into it (surprising because I loved their first one and had high hopes for the follow-up), and second, that what opened up the album to me was playing it loud one day (surprising because the xx's music is so hushed, and would've seemed likely to neither need nor benefit from the volume).

Even now that it has opened up to me, Coexist remains a mistier, more muted record than that astonishing debut, its standout moments quieter, its turns in different directions (say the steel drum-touched, depressed-Knife dance track "Reunion") more subdued. It's good, though, repaying the repeated listens.

Justin Cronin - The Passage & The Twelve

More post-apocalyptic vampires.

(First read of The Passage.)

The Avett Brothers - Emotionalism

I like things to be perfect, enough so that I honestly think it might be a character flaw; that goes for most things, including art, music, albums. Now, Emotionalism, the first Avett Brothers record I've listened to (I saw their name while trying to find out more about their former labelmates the Everybodyfields), is far from perfect - it's over-long and a bit all over the place, and the kind of record that you feel you can see the seams of (deliberately, I suspect). And yet I like it a lot, for a whole lot of reasons but mostly because it's so joyfully full of music and its possibilities, so that the sprawling feel of the record and its very imperfections work to its favour, registering more as the band's ideas and enthusiasm spilling over into any available space rather than as laziness or a lack of discipline or control.

In some ways, all of this is encapsulated in "Pretty Girl from Chile", an almost six minute long country-ish "Bohemian Rhapsody" in three divergent suites: modern banjo-led country ballad; hard-strummed Calexico-styled Mex-americana breaking in at the two and a half minute mark; (answering machine message bridge); electric guitar rock-out finale. Like a lot of other songs on the album, it works both as a genre-defying, stick-in-the-mind-y piece of songcraft, and as something that often literally makes me smile at its wryly humorous musicality and sheer song-ness. (I didn't want to compare them to anyone, but at times they make me think of a far more country Neutral Milk Hotel.)

The Shadow in the North

Pleasant, unremarkable; a thoroughly modern heroine.

(The Ruby in the Smoke)

Doing it for the Kids

Neat Creation compilation, including a nice MBV song called "Cigarette in Your Bed" that I hadn't heard before. I particularly like the Jasmine Minks song, "Cut Me Dead"; the cd also reminded me that Heidi Berry (a) exists and (b) is good via "North Shore Train".

The Cell

Quite the confection, this. It's genuinely visually spectacular - and stylish - and quite unnerving at points; there's not that much to it, narrative-wise, but the imagery is striking enough, and the pacing tight enough (albeit only just), that I didn't notice until thinking about it afterwards.

Girls - Album

Not that dissimilar from Father, Son, Holy Ghost (which came after this one), and similarly good. "Hellhole Ratrace" and "Summertime" in particular are excellent.

"Time will forget your name": The Everybodyfields - Nothing is Okay

It's good to know what you like, but only up to a point - at a certain point, having too defined an idea of what you like becomes an obstacle to openness and to fresh experience, and sometimes I wonder if my own tastes in music are heading in that direction. But there's nothing to shake off thoughts of that kind like hearing something new and great, squarely in the strike zone of 'what I like' - in this case, modern alt-country-folk - but cutting through in a way that reminds me of why I fell in love with the genre in the first place.

It's really first song "Aeroplane" on this 2007 record from the Everybodyfields, hailing from Johnson City, Tennessee, and showing that they've got a way with this kind of genre-straddling americana. Four bars of strummed guitar, then come the fiddles and steel string, a yearning male vocalist (Sam Quinn) joined soon by plangent female harmonies (you can never help but think of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris in this kind of connexion, but they really are both the archetype and the exemplar), and we're off for three and a half minutes of confident, high and lonesome balladeering that struck me, hard, the first time I was listening to it, and doesn't seem to be wearing off at all - it's the kind of song that lodges in the throat and in the chest, that seems like a single falling swoon from start to finish. It's wonderful.

Next song "Lonely Anywhere" is gorgeous too, Jill Andrews taking centre stage on a slow, sad one that falls halfway between Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch, but more fragile and abandoned than either. And the rest of the album, while it doesn't reach the heights of that opening pair, goes on in a similar vein; I mentioned Gram & Emmylou before, but in fact the most immediate reference point for the Everybodyfields is Whiskeytown, if Caitlin Cary had done more of the singing. All in all, a find, and a reminder, and the ideal soundtrack for this time of year, as the year begins to wind down and we fall towards summer.

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

Two Suns, the first Bat for Lashes album I've listened to, starts very strong, with four memorably spacey, dramatic songs in a row, opener "Glass" the best of them. It doesn't quite maintain that standard thereafter, and its influences (Bjork, Tori Amos, Kate Bush) are writ large, but the music and the artist come through with a strong, distinctive voice - pretty good.

Dum Dum Girls - "End of Daze" ep

Only In Dreams has proved to have a surprising amount of staying power, a measure of the pop sophistication that lay beneath its glossy sheen, and this ep is similarly good, the only mis-step being the dull "Trees and Flowers"; the other four songs are all strong, and interestingly, seemingly heading slightly in a Cults type direction as far as their 21st century 60s girl group quoting pop vibes go.

(I Will Be)

The Prestige

Still good, even when you know exactly where it's going.

(first time [and further]; second time)

"Gregory Crewdson - In A Lonely Place" (Centre for Contemporary Photography)

I've been intrigued by Crewdson since whenever it was that I first came across his work (extemporanea tells me that it was pre-2007, at any rate), and this exhibition, gathering selections from three of his series, was satisfying.

The most striking - and well-known - images were from 'Beneath the Roses' (2003-2008), large scale and full colour, carefully staged and lit vistas of alienation and loneliness from the American unconscious (I think most, if not all, were shot in small town New England, but the location is as much one of collective imagining and association as of specific geography). Some appear to be part of a narrative, while others appear more as single moments in time, but all share a certain frozen quality - an unnatural stillness. The subjects are people, buildings, human-made structures, natural surrounds, but always with an air of the oblique and the unknowable - unmet gazes, unexplained actions, inexplicable configurations (the one of people walking along a long train track, a house on fire in the background, is only the most obvious), submerged histories, impulses and thoughts.

The ones from 'Sanctuary' (2010) have the same air of being like still shots from a dream - abandoned, haunted - though their setting is different, being taken at and around the closed Cinecitta studios in Rome, and being all in black and white. The reference point here is more de Chirico than Hopper, more melancholy than subtly troubling and disturbing, but the mood is ineffably similar.

And, lastly, those from 'Fireflies' (1996) - befitting their subject, they're tiny, all showing little flecks of light against dark, wooded backdrops; it's easy to see why Crewdson was drawn to them given his artistic preoccupations with light and shadow, and captured moments in time.

Laura Cantrell - "Humming Songs: Acoustic Performances from the Flowered Vine"

Pleasant but decidedly inessential; doesn't add anything to the wonderful source record.

Anne Tiernan - Power Without Responsibility

Looks at the role and operation of Ministerial advisers, from a few years back - I came to it after reading something that Tiernan wrote in response to BCA CEO Jennifer Westacott's recent speech about the public service. Its academic origins are apparent in the writing style, but it reads as pretty even-handed, drawing on interviews with a range of frequently anonymous advisers, public servants and others, and ends with some suggestions for filling the 'accountability gap' that she diagnoses.

Aimee Mann - Charmer

Another elegantly great pop record from Mann, continuing the run that she started with Bachelor No 2 and that has since taken in Lost in Space, The Forgotten Arm [*], @#%&*! Smilers and now Charmer.

Musically, it's a turn for the sunnier, although certainly not lyrically; my early favourite, "Labrador", offers perhaps the most vivid contrast, brightly chiming instrumentation (piano and synths especially, those having replaced guitar as Mann's main instrument since Bachelor - though the electric guitar is a highlight when it does show up, as in the second half of other early highlight "Soon Enough"), uppish mid-tempo pop tones, soaring chorus, and an extended metaphor for the singer's inability to change in the face of a hopeless, unhealthy relationship.

Having said that, though, I've spent so much time listening to Mann's music, absorbing the sweet-sourness that's one of its greatest pleasures, that I don't know if I could hear anything recorded by her as uncomplicatedly upbeat, even if, unprecedentedly, it had lyrics to match. And it's also that amount of immersion in her music that makes it impossible for me to tell just how good, actually, Charmer is (though its best moments certainly bear comparison to anything she's done before) - how much of the way that I rate each of her records is driven by my personal receptiveness and associations at the time that I came across them (the more important those elements being, the more likely her earlier albums are to forever remain unsurpassable landmarks in my mind) - of course, the answer is that it doesn't matter, when each new record, and all of the old ones, continues to bring me so much pleasure.

Parlour Games @ Rice Queen

Zoe was in this and it was on Brunswick St on a Sat night, so I went. An enjoyable show that was just what it said it would be: "Think smoky jazz standards, old-school musicals, great crooners, silent films, Parisian nightclubs, Piazzolla tango numbers and more"; apart from the music itself being good, it was impressive how much the show did evoke a sense of the past in its stylings (part of Fringe Festival). [fb]

(w/ Jarrod and Farrah)

Drugstore - Anatomy

I've always been fond of Drugstore, but never found it easy to explain exactly why. "El President" was my introduction to them, one of those songs that I liked a lot in the late 90s and which has turned out to be genuinely great; its album, 1998's White Magic for Lovers, struck a perfect indie-pop balance between lightness and noise, while their self-titled 1995 debut had been in similar terrain but less fully formed. 2001's Songs for the Jet Set went in a slightly different but equally pleasing direction, focusing more on expansively acoustic, folk-y sounds, and filled with memorable, downbeat/tuneful songs.

And then, a long hiatus, until Anatomy, which actually came out last year but (unsurprisingly) completely slipped below my radar, and it's another good one. The band are, in a (figuratively) minor key kind of way, a bit of a touchstone for me; there are stronger elements of something alt-countryish to the sound this time around, a deliberately heavier, murkier hue to their sound, but the music is unmistakably theirs, particularly in the way they construct their melodies and in Isabel Monteiro's singing of them. Favourites: "Lights Out", "Aquamarine" - but it's one of those records with the feel of depths, promising new, less obvious discoveries on each further listen. A subtly, understatedly lovely album.

Jens Lekman - I Know What Love Isn't

Ways that Jens Lekman has been relevant to me in the past:

1. By recording "Black Cab", a song that I listened to an awful lot over 2006 in particular - ie back when I was younger and more impressionable - and which often seems to be somehow in the air, somewhere.
2. And by generally creating a lot of fairly lovely music, which I followed "Black Cab" to along the way.
3. By doing a gig at the Corner a couple of years later, at what turned out to be a significant (at the time) point for me.
4. By moving to Melbourne for a while, leading to much wishful fantasising by Wei - who I was housemating with at the time - about running into him around the inner north and befriending him.

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have bought this one were it not for the hook that it was recorded while he was sojourning in Melbourne; I'm unabashed in my love for this city, so music (or any art) associated with it draws me. As it turns out, (a) there's only a small handful of Melbourne references on the record, and (b) that really doesn't matter, because it's a wonderful album regardless, full of poignant, literate, and sometimes rather jaunty folk-chamber-pop tunes in the Jens style. My favourite's "The End of the World is Bigger Than Love", which steals a chorus melody from "Can't Help Falling in Love" and is the better for it.

Also - a short list of lyrical Melbourne references in "The World Moves On" and my own associations:

1. I guess the 'social club' he mentions is probably the NSC. Blurry memories of gigs seen there, conversations in the margins, etc, etc.
2. The state of Victoria burning down to the ground must surely be Black Saturday (the timing is right - 2009). That was the Clauscen End period for me, and we were hosting a book club that afternoon, unaware of the horror spreading across the state, spread out across the sofas and that remarkably ugly carpet, eating grapes, spritzing each other with cold water in that air-conditioning-less old house.
3. And the Edinburgh Gardens get a mention. Probably the most quintessentially 'Melbourne' place in the whole city by my personal reckoning, and also the site of so many life events and happenings for me, good, bad, and bittersweet mixtures of the two. When a park appears in one of my dreams, it's usually this one.

Heart - Greatest Hits 1985-1995

Well, I didn't expect this to be subtle. It covers their 80s-90s period (ie no "Magic Man" or "Crazy on You" - both inextricably linked with The Virgin Suicides now - or "Barracuda") and is heavy on the sung-shouted power ballads; a bit strident for me, but I suppose that's an observation more than a criticism given the kind of music we're talking about.

In Time

The main appeal of this one lay in its casting of Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy, two actors who I always like watching; also, I don't mind a bit of sci-fi at the movies when done well. Anyway, the premise is pretty good, the social commentary obvious but biting, the execution unfortunately bland; Seyfried is good (and very fetching), Murphy is effective, J. Timberlake again shows that he can act. One of those two and a half star type films - the pieces are there, but it's not drawn together excitingly or interestingly enough to reach any great heights.

Beach House - Teen Dream

Well, Teen Dream is wonderful. The sound, and overall feel, is dreamy and airy at the same time that it has a kind of rawness and human-ness that feels organic; the songs unspool unexpectedly but with delicate, sturdy structures within them. And it's diverse - my three favourites are a dramatic, intimate epic with an anthemic, pulling chorus ("Walk in the Park"), a gauzey, almost am radio-y lullaby with a hint of a David Lynch tone ("Better Times"), and, basically, an elegant, dreamy, torch song ("Real Love"). It took a few spins before I could begin to listen to it somewhat apart from the retrospective aura of the wonderful, skyscraping Bloom, but Teen Dream has plenty of charms of its own.

Wild Nothing - Nocturne

Perhaps I need to listen to it a bit more, but so far, Nocturne hasn't made much of an impression. It's nice enough, sure, with some catchy bits and an all-round aesthetic that I warm to - but it doesn't seem to have the spark that animated Gemini, a record that has proved to be a real keeper.

Moonrise Kingdom

Vision is a difficult thing to define, but there's no doubt that Wes Anderson has it. His movies are all different but somehow the same; the best way of describing the similarity is maybe to say that it's in their tone. I didn't fully get him at first (my first pass was The Royal Tenenbaums, and while I liked it well enough, I think it kind of puzzled me too), but I've completely taken him to heart by now.

And so it seems to make a kind of sense to say that Moonrise Kingdom might be the most 'Wes Anderson' of Anderson's films; it's also, one suspects, one of the most successful in terms of translating the director's internal, personal vision to screen. Either way, it's a delightful film, nostalgic, arch, knowing and fantastic, yes, but completely believable - in the ways that matter, that is - at the same time. Also, it makes perfect use of Francoise Hardy's lovely "Le temps de l'amour", something joyful in the moment and only later, on reflection, also a little melancholy.

The Watson Twins - Fire Songs

Brighter and more sprightly than Southern Manners, and more in the country-rock vein, albeit still in a quietish kind of way. Not super-memorable, and tends maybe to be just a bit too tasteful for its own good, but, on songs like "How Am I To Be", "Bar Woman Blues", "Only You" and "Waves", very nice.

Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville

This is an album that I probably should've come to a long time ago, considering that it's (a) an indie-rock female singer-songwriter album from the 90s and (b) been the subject of endless acclaim (also (c) I've always liked whitechocolatespaceegg, which I did come across back in the 90s).

Well - and, while it's good, the thing is that I probably would've liked it a lot if I had come across it back in the day. Listening to it now, I get the great songwriting, the way the scuzziness of the sound perfectly sets off the tunes and lyrics ("Fuck and Run" stands out as a genuinely great song), the candour and rawness of those lyrics, the all-round attitude - but I don't identify with it in the way that my teenage self might (probably would) have.

Cat Power - Sun

Not the easiest record to grasp. It's a turn - though not a complete one - from the soul edgings of The Greatest and Jukebox, and while it has something of the genreless air of their immediate predecessor, You Are Free (with the benefit of distance from its original release, a really excellent, enduring record, incidentally, almost up there with Moon Pix), it doesn't have that other's clean, stripped-down, percussive sense of being rock-pop music rendered somehow new. Perhaps it's the first real pop album that she's put out - which is counterintuitive, as any of those others that I've already mentioned have plenty more immediate songs on them. Anyway, for all of that, it's good, even if not immediately lovable. ("Nothing But Time" is pretty magnificent, all 11 minutes of it.)

Bored to Death season 3

More amiable japes from Schwartzman, Danson and Galifianakis - a good kind of escapism. I hear it's been cancelled, which is a pity - it was getting better as it went along.

(season 1, 2)

Angela's Kitchen (Malthouse)

Pleasant, and grounded by an excellent one-man performance by Paul Capsis, but a bit bland for mine, neither immigrant stories nor family tales holding especial appeal for me.

(w/ Jarrod, Farrah, Julian and Meribah)

Pat Brassington - "A Rebours" (ACCA)

I hadn't come across Brassington before; her photo-artistic works have an eerie allure, disquietingly uncanny and infused with a surrealistic flavour. I liked them.

China Mieville - Railsea

One of the most straightforwardly enjoyable novels that Mieville has ever written - a genuine adventure, with a typically Mievillean high concept (a sea of rails, traversed by a panoply of trains, with the ground too dangerous to set foot on, populated by massive, dangerous subterranean fauna - great burrowing moles, owls, antlions). Made me want to read Moby Dick, too.

Suzanne Collins - Mockingjay

Brings it home at as searing a pace as the first two books. Doesn't flinch from the implications of the violence and layers upon layers of manipulation that it depicts, nor from the moral greyness of the choices that are forced on Katniss, and in doing so finds a satisfying resolution not only to the machinations of its plot but also to the Kat-Gale-Peeta triangle that had loomed as the series' weak point throughout.

Pinocchio (Windmill Theatre Co, Malthouse)

V. enjoyable. The music was particularly good; I also liked the way that Pinocchio's story was rendered at least on one level as a coming out metaphor. The whole thing was very well put together though.

(w/ Julian)

The Hunger Games

Proficiently made, but not as vivid as the book (perhaps largely because it's a second pass, and its events already familiar).

The Dark Knight Rises

A satisfying close to the trilogy, pacy and kinetic but at the same time gritty and shadowy, and every bit a Christopher Nolan film. His signature themes of the ways that identities and lives are constructed, and the choices - often distinctively moral choices - that structure those identities and lives, are at the fore, along with plenty of convincing action and entries to the franchise by Inception alumni Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard and an unrecognisable Tom Hardy as Bane, plus Anne Hathaway more than holding her own.

One of the most impressive things about The Dark Knight was the way that it and Batman Begins felt like two parts of a single film; The Dark Knight Rises, however, feels like a second and final instalment, with events coming to a culmination and, at film's start, middle and end, Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon coming to form something like a moral centre to the whole thing, and the character who (contra Harvey Dent and the Joker) is perhaps the true contrast and balance to Batman, as well as the one who enables him in the first place.

On the Misconception of Oedipus (Malthouse)

Interesting and worthwhile, though it's needed a bit of time to sink in. At once a 'prequel' and a retelling (a re-conception, in one of the two punning senses of the title), and presented as a thoroughly modern (contemporary) piece of theatre, it nonetheless stays close to - or at least engages overtly and knowingly with - the core themes of destiny and freedom that underlie Sophocles' play.

The formal structure of the piece ('play' is slightly misleading) is important, as is its location in theatre - it couldn't have been done as a short story, for example, or a tv hour - not least because both enable the use (and, indeed, dramatisation) of a setting that is clearly and deliberately flagged as contemporary while still drawing directly on elements of the classical Greek origins of the myth, more or less overtly bringing those two sources/locations into dialogue with each other without being forced or artificial about it. For mine, it's not wholly successful - it felt just a small bit underdeveloped, a function maybe of the short (just over an hour) length - but my overall response was certainly positive...I felt myself being forced to grapple with the performance/production on its own terms, and I liked where that took me, so yes, definitely worthwhile.

(w/ Alice, Steph N, Julian, Meribah, Cass, Sim, Steph C, Jarrod and Farrah)

The Grey

Hard to go wrong, really: Liam Neeson vs wolves, in a severely cold climate. As done here, it's more about sheer survival than lupine smackdown, and a better film for it, stark and much preoccupied with masculinity and death.

John Carter

Rented this to help see me through yesterday, my second consecutive day stuck at home with this cold or flu or whatever it is. Anyway, it's not terrible by any means, but, you know, a bit on the bland side as far as action-adventures on Mars go.

A short list of songs that you remember fondly but vaguely from the 90s, that when you download them from the itunes store, turn out to (still) be pretty great

(In no particular order)

1. "As I Lay Me Down" - Sophie B Hawkins. I don't think I'd heard this for years - quite possibly literally not since the 90s, though perhaps she never really went away[*] so far as I was concerned - but, airy, dreamy, memorably melodic, it's somehow still quite lovely today.
2. "If It Makes You Happy" - Sheryl Crow. I've always been fond of Crow, particularly those songs of hers with a strong melancholy undercurrent ("Strong Enough" was the big one for me), so really "If It Makes You Happy" probably should've registered properly with me years ago...what a great song. No other decade has done nice-sounding yearning like the 90s.
3. "Never Ever" - All Saints. So smooth it should be boring, and so overplayed back in the day that it should be completely worn out in any event, but in fact neither of those things, and instead beguiling and curiously addictive, probably for much the same mysterious pop music alchemy reasons that it was so massively popular way back when.
4. "Beautiful Stranger" - Madonna. This must have come out at the very end of the 90s, and so right in the middle of a period when mainstream pop had basically no appeal for me, but I liked it even then (it made me see colours); and voila - in 2012 it turns out to still be fabulous.
5. "Turn" - Travis. This song is so simple that I'm almost ashamed to like it, which is saying something for me; it's like some platonic ideal of the mainstream-alternative post-The Bends 'rock' anthem. But whatever to all that - it may make all the obvious moves, but "Turn" nails it.

* * *

[*] Wikipedia now informs me that the mystery was not in fact solved by that linked answer; rather, it seems. "ooh la kah koh" was, after all, just a nonsense phrase dreamed up by Hawkins to fill in some aural space.

The Crimson Petal and the White

I read The Crimson Petal and the White, it must've been some eight or nine years ago, and liked it a lot - I remember saying (writing?) to someone that it was postmodernist literature in the best possible way, meaning that its pronounced metafictional elements, overt and covert intertextuality, and deliberate anachronisms were well employed in service of a compulsive story and a truly memorable central character in its beguiling, independently-minded prostitute cum governess Sugar...a contemporary Victorian novel, liberally laced with bodily fluids and profanity of all kind, it was nonetheless somehow subtle, multi-layered and a bit moving.

Anyhow, Wei gave me this dvd set (part of a birthday gift) of the bbc's take on the novel, a four-part (one hour each) miniseries starring the excellent Romola Garai, and it's good, not flinching from the filth and seediness of the milieu and nicely highlighting the (separate) themes of writing and families; also, giving an aptly gothic flavour to the fragile Agnes, William Rackham's troubled bride. It's lavishly mounted, with a completely but effectively (and, given Faber's postmodernist-Victoriana style, perhaps aptly) non-period mood-setting score, and if the story feels somewhat compressed (we lose much of the inner lives of even the main characters, never mind the secondary figures) and lacking in the abundance of the source material, it's still very enjoyable, and still a great story.

The Suicide Shop (MIFF)

Two things that I didn't know this animated film would be: (1) 3d; (2) a musical. The premise is cute - in a future, mildly dystopic alternate-Paris, the suicide rate is sky-high and one family has made a business out of selling its implements, only for their third child to turn out to be inappropriately happy and determined to force a change. Only so-so, but pleasant enough.


(w/ David)

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84

I came across Murakami at probably exactly the right time for me, and plunged headlong into his world; extemporanea supplies the (approximate) dates but in any case I vividly, blurrily remember that period of reading one after another, as soon as I could get my hands on them, back in that final year of university. Murakami's writing really resonated for me, and still does, but it's been a while since I read anything of his, despite being very much a re-reader of my favourite books - no particular reason, I guess, just the endless fullness of the days and nights nowadays.

Anyway, so, I got a Kindle (a gift from Jade) and 1Q84 seemed the right book to christen it with, and on top of that, since getting back from overseas, I've had the sensation - unfamiliar really for at least a year, and probably a fair bit longer - that there's actually a bit of space in my life, quite literally, in that not every single moment or hour seems spoken-for by some kind of activity or obligation (it won't last - I can already feel the pace of things picking up again), so it's a good time to be reading, and not only that, but to be reading Murakami again.

It has been a while, but not so long that many of his characteristic preoccupations aren't apparent - disappearing women, descents into other worlds, a focus on ears, metaphysically (and existentially) significant sex, characters who spend a lot of time in their own heads, cooking and listening to music, etc. One big change is that, unlike all of his other novels except the unsatisfying After Dark, it's written in the third person, alternating from the points of view of Aomame and Tengo and, in the third book, Ushikawa - it doesn't change the tone as much as might've been expected given that, with a couple of jarring exceptions late in the piece, it still stays very true to the internal, flow of consciousness (phenomenological) style that characterises Murakami's first person writing, and (this is neither a positive nor a negative per se) it somewhat breaks the sense of detachment that tends to suffuse his first-person narrators, allowing greater access into the inner lives and pasts of those central characters (which might initially seem counterintuitive, given that you might expect third-person to be more removed - but much less so once you take into account the special difficulties that come with a rigorous commitment to the perceptual 'immediacy' of the first person voice).

So, I certainly enjoyed 1Q84 - it's the first book I've read in a while that has made me want to hurry home from work for, so that I can continue reading it. And it has a flow to it, both of mood and of story, that carried me through - even though, in some ways, not all that much happens, and a lot is left unresolved (making me wonder if a book 4 could be in the offing at some point).

But the thing is, it's impossible to read 1Q84 without reference to everything else that Murakami has done in the past, and by that measure, it's something of a disappointment; it's not that he's just going through the motions, but it lacks the something else that really animated his best earlier books, whether because the book's moves are already familiar or (more likely, I think) this one just isn't quite as good as those others. It's hard to describe - I raced through 1Q84, and felt it touch me at times, but in the end, it didn't really take me anywhere new in the way I had hoped and almost expected. But having said all that, who knows? Murakami is a huge part of my literary landscape, both indirectly (in my own reading) and indirectly (by the influence he's had on so many others), and things may look different again when I come back to him, and to this one, again.

* * *

A Wild Sheep Chase (~ Feb '05, Feb '06)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (~ Feb-Mar '05, Dec '07)
Dance Dance Dance (~ Mar '05)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (~ Mar '05)
Kafka on the Shore (~ Mar '05)
Norwegian Wood (~ Mar '05)
After the Quake (~ Jun '05, Oct '07)
Sputnik Sweetheart (~ Jun-Jul '05)
South of the Border, West of the Sun (~ Jul '05)

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (~ Aug '06)
After Dark (~ Jul '07)

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (~ Oct '08)
Underground (~ Jan '09)

Blood Wedding (Malthouse)

This was a disappointing experience, not because the play wasn't good, but rather because, from what I could tell, it was very good. It was just unfortunate - for some reason this afternoon I couldn't hear out of my left ear, and on top of that I've been feeling a bit off these last couple of days, so immersing myself was just impossible. Possibly the physical discomfort had something to do with the dream-like feel that the play had for me; then again, so to may have its lyricism, intensity and even the way that it was bilingual (Spanish/English). It really did feel like it might have been great, had I only been in a position to appreciate it properly - a pity.

(w/ Meribah, and her friend Charlotte and sister Rebecca)

Hot Spring & Hot Spring: Landmannálaugar

A pair of compilations from Iceland, both good and pretty diverse, meaning that they encompass, as well as the expected (and pleasing) range of indie-pop - there are quite a lot of introverted, prettily ethereal anthems, and also a fair bit of folk-touched stuff, but the more upbeat end of the spectrum is well represented too - there is also Icelandic reggae ("Taktu Þessa Trommu" and "Hafið" by Hjalmar), Icelandic blues ("Kletturinn" by Mugison), Icelandic soul ("Lately" by Jón Jónsson), Icelandic country ("Gamli grafreiturinn" by Klassart), and more again.

Favourites: "Out of Place" by Ourlives (one of those delicate soarers); "Góða Tungl" by Samaris (a trip-hop-y kind of thing); "What Are We Waiting For?" by Amiina (they remind me of Sigur Ros, though with a female singer and a bit lighter, with an almost folky feel); "Cold Summer" by Seabear (quietly grand, somewhat in the Sufjan Stevens vein).

The Legend of Kaspar Hauser (MIFF)

In a phrase: black and white existential absurdist techno-soundtracked slightly new wave-y neo-symbolist Italian post-western about everything and nothing (and Kaspar Hauser). Enjoyable.

(w/ Julian)

"Light Works" (NGV)

I find myself in the NGV a lot (usually the international), and particularly when, like at the moment, I'm feeling a bit weightless - it's one of my favourite places, a space where I can go to feel away from everything, surrounded by familiarity and newness, often in the same piece of art. "Light Works" is a small exhibition in the small level 3 gallery space, focusing on the importance of light to photography; highlights are two large, moody twilight/evening cloud Bill Henson landscapes, a pair of "Star Drawing" photos by David Stephenson (which I've seen before, in a 'weather' ex a few years back, but hadn't been as struck by that previous time) that also invoke a sense of the sublime, and "Trace" by Park Hong-Chun, dock, flat, still water, sky - pink, salmon, apricot hues.

Safety Not Guaranteed / Killer Joe

Mainly Safety Not Guaranteed stuck out from the MIFF program because it starred the appealing Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation - though the jury's out re: in real life or whatever 'in character' version of it the internet passes for), but it turned out to be a really sweet and often funny film about regrets, finding yourself, young(ish) love and time travel.

There's a scene in the film's second half where the eccentric, troubled time travel machine inventor plays Aubrey Plaza's character a song (written for his dead girlfriend) on the zither as they sit outside by a fire, which sounds and at first seemed unbearably precious, but which changed my how I felt about it, winning me over, as the song and scene went on; it felt like a turning point in my response to the film.

Anyhow, the algebra of Indie movies: a bit of Donnie Darko (significantly lightened up) with a touch of Garden State etc, a dash of Margot at the Wedding 'realism' and a slight Wes Anderson (time travel machine = jaguar shark in The Life Aquatic?) vibe...perfect for a Friday night.

We'd decided to do two back to back, and next up (supposedly 11.30 but started more like midnight) was Killer Joe. The MIFF volunteer/usher got us nervous beforehand by taking it on himself to warn the queue that the film had some very disturbing scenes, and telling people to vomit into bags (rather than into our laps, presumably); it is a nasty film, Matthew McConaughey doing well with one of those roles that allows him to make overt what has always been latent in his filmic personality (nb: I've always disliked him anyway) as the sadistic, murderous titular character who comes into the orbit of a redneck Texas trailer park family to their cost. Not the kind of film I'd usually watch, but it was hard to look away from.

(w/ Meribah)

Chris Cleave - Gold

It was coincidence that I readGold, a novel whose main characters are Olympic-level cyclists, while the London Games have been on (I hadn't known what the book was about when I borrowed it from the Ath, which in any case was several weeks ago) - and, in fact, it's almost coincidental that it's about cycling, even though it really brings the stresses and rigours of the discipline to life (I never thought I'd be interested in a sport that just involves people going round and round a velodrome), because Cleave takes that premise and pushes hard on it to draw out the costs and trade-offs demanded by Life and the search for success in all its forms, zeroing in on the spaces and tensions that exist in so many close relationships; I'm not sure how psychologically acute it is in its rendition of the driven Zoe in particular, but there's a feel of truthfulness in how it renders her friendship/rivalry with Kate and the involvement of Kate's husband Jack - not to mention Kate and Jack's leukemia-struck daughter Sophie.

Laura Cantrell - "Trains and Boats and Planes" ep

There's something about Laura Cantrell, I've never been able to put my finger on it - her music is so seemingly unassuming, and yet so invariably wonderful. Anyhow, this is a typically lovely one from her, released a few years back (2008). All of its songs are good, including the New Order cover ("Love Vigilantes" - great song title).

From her website:

So what is an urban, country singing mom to do? Turn to the solace of her band of course! On lucky days I took refuge in the company of music friends in NY, wringing every bit of feeling I could out of songs we’d been playing live in places like Mo Pitkins House of Satisfaction (now dearly departed) and 11th Street Bar. “Trains and planes are passing by, they mean a trip to Paris or Rome, for someone else but not for me.” Like an adolescent with a newly broken heart, all these traveling songs began to sound like they were written just for me, “Train, Train don’t leave me, train of Life.” I’m not sure who suggested it, but I decided to record a few of those traveling tunes using “Trains And Boats And Planes” as a theme for a set of music.

Daughn Gibson - All Hell

I've listened to All Hell a few times through now, and haven't fully made up my mind about it yet. On the one hand, it's appealing - Gibson's country-noiry vignettes sliced up by some anachronistically modern electro-pop textures, underpinned by his smooth baritone, which variously calls to mind Johnny Cash, Stephin Merritt and Matt Berninger - but on the other, it can feel a bit much about the concept, and not enough about the songs themselves. Still, at the very least  interesting, and on a few tracks genuinely compelling ("A Young Girl's World" and "In The Beginning" are stand-outs, as is the croony "Rain on a Highway").

Kathleen Edwards - Voyageur

Another incremental development in Edwards' sound, and another step more expansive - Voyageur sometimes sounds a bit like Emmylou Harris' late 90s-onwards airy, widescreen version of americana, in a good way. There's more space in Edwards' songs than ever before, and a lightness in the arrangements and production that works well with the more stretched-out direction that her songwriting takes nowadays; this is very nice. Favourites: "Change the Sheets", "Mint".

(Failer; Back to Me; live; Asking for Flowers)

Emeli Sandé - Our Version of Events

These days, a lot of the new music I listen to comes from having been heard playing somewhere - cd stores, bookshops, cafes, etc - but Emeli Sandé is the first that I've sought out after hearing it at my hairdresser's salon. Our Version of Events is a nice album - opening with the drama of "Heaven" (reminiscent of Massive Attack) and big pop-soul anthem "My Kind of Love", hitting another high point near the middle with "Maybe" and "Suitcase" back to back, and ending with a strong ballad in "Read All About It (Pt III)", and pleasant enough in between. Good voice, good songs, all round very solid.

Parks and Recreation seasons 1-3

So...I've become the kind of person who watches tv series. I went through these pretty much in a single, hazily jetlagged, week and found them pretty delightful - season 1 is kind of bad, but it picks up dramatically after that.

There are a range of things that make it work, but foremost amongst them is the way it matches Amy Poehler's energetic-on-the-verge-of-manic comic persona perfectly with the character of Leslie Knope that the show creates. Over these three seasons, the show has got to a point where it has the balance - between the quirks, foibles and situations that drive all sitcom characters and a kinder, more humane perspective on its characters and their relationships - pretty much right for her (and for the other characters), so that you can't help but find her basically adorable while rooting for her in her somewhat monomaniacal do-gooding. Then there's Ron Swanson, who is basically great - plus a good, and well-used, ensemble cast (again, the balance seems right with the arrival of Adam Scott's Ben as straight man and Rob Lowe's ridiculously positive Chris).

All up, it's funny, smart and likeable (and occasionally deliciously crude) - all round good.

Batman Begins & The Dark Knight

Rewatches in preparation for The Dark Knight Rises. Still very, very good.

(1, 2)

Haim - "Forever" ep

A three-song (plus remix) ep of pop-minded, percussive folk-rocky tunes; the title track in particular is ace.

Patrick deWitt - The Sisters Brothers

1851, the wild west, and notorious killers Eli and Charlie Sisters are going to California with murder on their mind. The story is told by the younger and more troubled by their line of work of the brothers, Eli, in an archaic voice that is at once formal and immediate, and also often droll; the novel's appeal is difficult to pin down, but has a lot to do with that voice. It's bloody, funny and sad (but not depressing); it's easy to imagine the Coen brothers, say, making a movie of it. Potential not fully realised, but still a good read.

Europe museums wrap

Madrid

V. jet-lagged and tired for trip to the Reina Sofia, so didn't get full value from what looked to be a pretty good collection. Introduced me to Santiago Rusinol via the mysterious "Aranjuez Garden. Arbor II" (1907). And liked the James Coleman installation "Box (ahhareturnabout)" (1977).

The Prado's collection, while huge, is basically all about pre-20th century art and pretty light-on for 19th, and therefore basically exactly outside my own interests. I sort of drifted through it a bit, but we were in there for several hours nonetheless; two that sunk in were Joachim Patinir's "Rest on the flight into Egypt" (1518-20) and Bernard van Orley's "The Virgin of Louvain" (1520).

The Thyssen-Bornemisza was much more to my taste, housing a strong selection of late and post-impressionist stuff. Two of the Monets particularly grabbed me - "The Thaw at Vetheuil" (1881) and "The House Among the Roses" (1925). I looked at that latter for quite a while before making out the house itself amidst the roses; seeing that large, late Monet water-lilies painting hung amidst Rothkos and other recognised examples of abstract expressionism at the Tate Modern last year has really opened up his work to me, giving me a new appreciation for it. Apart from pieces by some of the usual suspects (van Gogh, Kandinsky), was also drawn to a naturalistic landscape that I thought had some symbolist elements, Thomas Cole's "Expulsion, Moon and Firelight" (1828) and Ivan Kliun's abstract "Composicion" (1917).

Fortuitously, also on at the Thyssen-Bornemisza was an Edward Hopper exhibition - small to medium sized, but something of a career survey, and satisfying. It included a range of his earlier works (from the earliest, somewhat expressionist pieces, through the 1920s as many of his signature images emerged - eg women observed in rooms, light coming from outside) and some of his finely detailed sketches and watercolours, as well as many examples of his most famous pieces, including "Cape Cod Evening", "Morning in a City" and "South Carolina Morning". I was struck by "Railroad Sunset", which I think I've actually seen before (maybe at the Whitney in NYC a few years back), and certainly in reproduction, but never fully registered.

With the ones that I already knew well from books and/or previous viewings, their 'painting-ness' was particularly apparent, which somehow added to their depth and appeal, a bit despite the realism of Hopper's style. I guess that what I really like about his work is the way that it's invested with a sense of the extraordinary - perhaps the infraordinary, rather - an effect achieved through his evocation of light and shadow, and use of colour, mood and composition - and in some sense that's augmented by being able to see the paintings themselves.

St Petersburg

We went to a lot of museums and the like in St Petersburg. As far as I can remember:
* The Hermitage lived up to expectations, massive, sprawling, and filled to overflowing with all types of art, including large numbers of the old masters - Rembrandt, da Vinci, etc. My focus was on the extremely comprehensive selection of 19th to early 20th century art, with all of the key figures in the development of representational, figurative and colour-oriented painting represented by multiple pieces - Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky plus the lesser but still important figures of Derain and de Vlaminck.
* The Museum of Political History of Russia had an absurdly complicated floor plan and itinerary to follow through across two buildings and three levels - I half-suspected that the desk people were playing some sort of trick (Russian bureaucracy etc) when they marked it all out for us on a map, but it turned out to be deadly serious. The exhibitions had names like "Death Penalty: Pros and Cons", "Lenin's Study", "The Accursed Civil War", "It Cannot Be Forbidden...To Be Stored" and "What Do We Know About Petr Stolypin?". Sadly, "Collapse of the USSR: Historical Inevitability or Criminal Conspiracy" was one of the ones without English notes, so the answer to that particular question remains a mystery.
* The Vodka Museum was a bit of a non-affair, particularly with all the captions in Russian only. Andreas enjoyed the tasting, though.
* The Nabokov and Dostoevsky Museums were each located in houses that their respective subjects lived in and filled with a range of more or less interesting author-related material. I'm not mad for these kinds of biographical excavations, but didn't mind wandering through.
* Pushinskaya-10, a graffiti-covered and industrial-looking building, houses several more or less unmarked galleries, including a couple comprising 'The Museum of Noncomformists Art'. We only explored a couple.
* Another art centre was 'Loft Project Etagi' - well worth the seeing, particularly given that it also housed (along with a hostel) a nice rooftop bar/restaurant where we had dinner and drank Soviet champagne as the afternoon faded behind us.

Helsinki

There was a neat Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition on at the Helsinki Art Museum - Tennis Palace, meaning that, along with the Hopper in Madrid, I was able to see two of my absolute favourites within the space of just a couple of weeks - a real treat. There's a sense of infinity in her paintings, and an endless interplay between abstraction and representation (flowers, skulls, landscapes) - it's so easy to get lost in the light and colour of her work, in the luminosity of all of the tones and shades (even the browns and greys), which perhaps comes from the New Mexico desert setting in which most were done; "Dark Tree Trunks" (1946), say, is far more compelling than in reproduction in books, partly for that reason...although interestingly, the later "Blue Black and Grey" (1960), which is very close to pure abstraction, has that same luminous character.

The Ateneum Museum was featuring a large exhibition of work by Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946); I hadn't come across her before, but apparently she's a key Finnish painter. I was most drawn to some of her earlier paintings, which had a poignant, somewhat nostalgic (if maybe a tiny bit sentimental) air - "Once Upon A Time (Old Memories)" (1892), "The Broken String (By The Rivers of Babylon)" (1892) - oil paintings, but with a dusty, hazy air and glow. Over her career she moved to a more simplied, reduced style, plainer and flatter, and often wan-looking, physically rubbed and thinned out; more and more distortions were introduced into her work, taking on an expressionist and even cubist flavour.

And the Kiasma contemporary art museum impressed me, both as a building and for the art it held. Two exhibitions, both, as far as I'm concerned, highlighting the best type of thing that contemporary art has to offer, at once serious and playful, conceptually interested but grounded in a rigorous artistic practice: "Eyeballing: The New Forms of Comics" (best were Hannerrina Moisseinen's "Cloth Road", Mari Ahokoivu's "Rumour Birds" and Katja Tukainen's hyper-kitsch "Paradis k (Kidnap)" (something of a guilty pleasure for me, that last); and "Camouflage: Visual Art and Design in Disguise" (best: Jiri Geller's "Sugar" series of brightly coloured plastic sculptures, Kariel's (Muriel Lasser & Karri Kuoppala) 'room' installation "Pier", and Idiot's (Afke Golsteijn & Floris Bakker) series of taxidermied animals melded with precious stones and man-made objects, which manages to surprise and please despite the seemingly obvious idea).

(Despite its being the longest leg of the trip, no museums in Iceland - there was more than enough to see out of doors!)

Back to Back to Black

An uneven track by track tribute to the Winehouse album compiled by Q magazine; the weakest entries come across like novelty versions, but the best are pretty good...those would be Dry the River's folky take on "Me & Mr Jones", the fractured but still grand version of "Back to Black" by the Cribs, "Love is a Losing Game" being turned into something sounding like a lost soft-rock classic from the 70s by the Temper Trap, and the Balearic Folk Orchestra's (great name!) pretty "He Can Only Hold Her".

Metric - Synthetica

Following the extreme good-ness of Fantasies, my hopes for this one were high; unfortunately, while it's perfectly serviceable, it's not as good as its predecessor. There's something less fizzing, less exciting about it, and Haines' voice seems somehow to have less conviction about it, though the good songs - "Youth Without Youth", "Speed the Collapse", "Nothing But Time" and the title track - are very good.

[Edit (4/8): Turns out I was too quick to dismiss Synthetica. I've kept on listening to it, initially because those good songs that jumped out at the start kept on being good, really good actually, and then as more of the album's tracks kept coming forward and getting stuck in my head - the glossy sheen of the record coexists with a bit of bite in just the way that they do in all of Metric's best moments...]

Margin Call

Despite its absence of a real story arc or plot, Margin Call is completely gripping. It's well served by a sterling cast - Jeremy Irons' magisterial entrance in the boardroom scene is particularly magnificent - and brings out the human and moral dimensions of the financial drama that unfolds...you know how it's going to end, but it holds you all the way to that end. A fantastic film.

Little Miss Sunshine

Charming indie road movie with a bit of an emotional impact.

P G Wodehouse - "The Crime Wave at Blandings"

A miniature Penguin. Tickled my fancy, the crime wave consisting of a series of air gun shootings of the deserving.

Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2033

A cracking premise - following a nuclear/biological war, possibly the only remaining human life on earth is isolated in the Moscow underground metro system, which had doubled as a massive bunker, each station operating as a more or less autonomous community, connected by a range of loose confederations (religious and/or political or pragmatic - including communists, trotskyists, a 'fourth reich', and many others), and troubled by a range of monsters, some created by fallout from the war and others seemingly with a more supernatural or spiritual/mystical origin. That concept is strong enough to make the book worth plowing through, despite the awkward prose, overwrought existential digressions, and frequent long-winded soliloquies about the meaning of existence that all of its characters seem to love.

21 Jump Street

Inoffensive, and funny (also, inoffensively meta).

Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire

Vivid and fast-paced - good stuff.

(The Hunger Games)

Jeffrey Eugenides - The Marriage Plot

I always find Eugenides very readable, but I've never seen the greatness in him that so many others seem to find, and The Marriage Plot hasn't changed my mind. I liked reading it, enjoyed the paths that it led its characters down and the ideas that it played with, and even empathised at points, thinking that it snapped with something real-feeling, but still, in the end I thought the novel was merely very good rather than anything more.

When the Raven Flies

Supposedly this 1984 film, following an Irish warrior as he avenges himself on the Viking raiders who killed his parents and abducted his sister when he was a boy, is something of a classic of Icelandic cinema, being highly regarded for depicting a grittier, more realistic image of Viking life than generally prevailed at the time. Andreas enjoyed it more than me; the brochure cites Leone and Kurosawa, but the director it made me most of think of was Verhoeven, in its gritty, nasty violence and flat style.

Roberto Bolano - The Skating Rink

By happenstance, his first novel - a fluent, engaging read, narrated by three chancers of various kinds who became caught up with a beautiful ice skater, the private rink built for her by an admirer, and a murder. It's a bit minor, but the voice and the writing are strong enough to make me want to read more of his.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Our wanderings through Helsinki took us past a cinema, so Andreas and I decided to watch a movie. Snow White was enjoyable, dramatic to the nth degree, and filled with visual spectacle along with a dark element that worked well (also, Charlize Theron makes a great bad guy) - though it's one of those that I doubt I'll watch again... (I wonder if Kristen Stewart was worried about being typecast when she agreed to do this one.)

Nevil Shute - On The Beach

Despite the possibilities of its wonderful premise - the inherent melancholy of the end of the world amplified by the way that the characters, in Melbourne, can only wait for the fallout that has taken the rest of the world to finally drift far enough southwards to take them with it - this is a pretty bland novel, mostly lacking in literary merit (flat writing is the main killer), though still, I suppose, interesting from a cultural perspective.

Don Thompson - The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

"This is business, it ain't art history". That line, from a deputy chairman at Christie's, sums up a lot of what this entertaining book is about. No one expects the prices paid for contemporary art to reflect any kind of 'intrinsic' or purely 'artistic' (much less aesthetic) value, and Thompson's systematic traversing of the processes of branding that lead to artists' and their works' valuations, through the interactions of dealers, auction houses (especially the two big ones, Christie's and Sotheby's), collectors, museums and critics - via auctions, private sales, galleries and art fairs - is illuminating. Saatchi and the Gagosian loom large, also Damien Hirst, with some attention also given to Koons and Tracey Emin (none of whom I particularly like).

Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong

Birdsong fits comfortably into a certain literary genre - it's about Love, War and the Human Spirit - but it's also subtle and intelligent in how it deals with those themes and with loss and suffering, and powerful and affecting. Liked it.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Watched this on the plane going over to Europe. More of the same, really, but enjoyably so.

"Different Worlds"

Of the performances that I saw on The Voice, a handful particularly stood out: a couple each from Karise Eden and Darren Percival (deserved winner and runner-up - for mine, two of the three best singers in the competition), basically every time that Diana Rouvas was on stage (the third, and technically the most accomplished and spectacular singer on the show, if less distinctive than those other two) - and one of Brittany Cairns', a stunning song I didn't know called "Different Worlds".

So couple of nights ago, I downloaded it from iTunes - both Cairns' version and the original, as recorded by a singer named Jes Hudak - and I've been really stuck on the song since...it's wonderfully effective and affecting, built around a simple yearning, building melody and put together in a way that pulls the listener all the way through to its end. I've even listened to it enough - and been grabbed by it enough - that I've worked out how the structure of the song contributes to its achieving its effect: it starts with a building four line verse, follows that with another four lines that sound more like an extended bridge more than a second verse, seems to return to the verse again for two lines before unexpectedly, gloriously taking off on the line "You'll be like in a movie", then repeats the trick at the third line of the next stanza, soaring upwards on the repeated line "I'll leave the ocean behind", another bridge, and then just one surging final verse, ending leaving the listener wanting more (a lot of these kinds of songs lose some of their effect by spending too long tailing off at the end, but "Different Worlds" is a miniature epic, all over in 3 minutes).

Having worked that out hasn't taken any of the magic out of the song at all; iTunes tells me that in the few days since downloading them, I've listened to Cairns' version a somewhat ridiculous 65 times and Hudak's 19. I do like Cairns' version more; while she kind of belts it out a bit more than Hudak, I prefer the arrangement on her version, the instrumentation both simpler and fuller (also, it must be admitted, glossier and more radio-friendly), and I also like the different choices she makes with it (in particular, choosing to really open her throat on the earlier 'movie' line, while Hudak holds a bit more back until the climactic crest of the 'ocean' lines).

Anyway, I've always been susceptible to this kind of song, so in some ways it's not surprising that I've so latched on to it, but be that as it may, it's a wonderful song; it could have come along at any time, but it's also (as always with these things) the right song at the right time...it feels good to have found it.

Laura Tingle - "Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation" (QE46)

A lot of people have been talking about this one, and for good reason, I think - in this Quarterly Essay, Tingle has hit upon something. Like all the best diagnoses, it seems somehow obvious once laid out, but that's a function of it having highlighted something that underlies a lot else rather than of any triteness. Having said that, to the extent that Australia is nowadays an 'angry nation' - a not insignificant extent, for sure - I think that it's at least as much due to disillusionment and disgust with the current state of federal politics and political discourse as to the now-unmet sense of entitlement to government provision of the good life, historically developed and more recently fed by successive governments of both political stripe, so neatly analysed in the essay.

Robin Hood

What I said last time (I remember being in a terrible mood the night I saw it on the big screen, and wondered if that might have coloured my impressions - but seems not).

Care to Make Love in That Gross Little Space Between Cars? A Believer Book of Advice

The advice columns in Believer are often a highlight - snarky, witty, and frequently wildly off the wall...so it's surprising that this (second) collection of Sedaratives - somewhat misleadingly named, given that they're now shared among a wide roster of writer-comic types, rather than all flowing from the deliciously sharp pen of Amy Sedaris - is only intermittently amusing. Oh well.

In search of an unwritten life: The Brothers Bloom

This really is a delightful film. It would be easy for a film that is centrally concerned with the search for a 'natural' life, free of narratives and contruction, self-imposed and otherwise, to get in way too deep (il n'y a pas de hors-texte etc), but while The Brothers Bloom is clearly aware of the deconstructionist ideas that it invokes, at its heart is a tightly plotted, distinctly human story focused on the brothers Bloom themselves, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo perfect as the con men brothers who are hopelessly entangled in their own story-telling; Rachel Weisz is equally good as the disarmingly open eccentric shut-in who gets caught up in their tale, and Rinko Kikuchi a delightful ornament as the taciturn Bang Bang (I'm pretty sure that her only words in the whole film are "campari" and "fuck me!").

I said after the first time I saw it that it could have been calculated to appeal to me - one of my personal preoccupations as its central theme, a style that seamlessly melds the artificial and the natural (a formal fixation of mine there), three of my favourite actors as the principals - and on a second viewing it still hits all of its marks...along with all of the above, it's clever, witty and self-aware, and it has both pizzazz (a surprisingly hard word to spell, incidentally) and heart.

As an aside, the way that they're all dressed doesn't hurt, either - something to aspire to.

Prometheus

Impressively, Prometheus feels of a piece with the Alien universe, while also working as pretty much a standalone piece of science fiction. There's real wonder in some of the shots, and also a taut horror as the party on the Prometheus begin to realise what they're dealing with. Satisfying.

(w/ Kim)

Daria seasons 3-5 + "Is It Fall Yet?" & "Is It College Yet?"

Been watching these at intervals over the last six months or so, maybe longer. In retrospect, when I was watching the show during high school, it must have been its first run on Australian tv, which probably explains why most of seasons 1-3 were familiar, but not the later 4 and 5. It was appealing back then, and still is, albeit now at far more of a remove. Daria and Jane are at the show's centre, but I think Quinn (for the airheadedness and flashes of insight) and Sandi (for the sheer unremitting malice) are my favourite characters apart from them.

(seasons 1-2 ; previously)

The Secret History of Fantasy edited by Peter S Beagle

I read fantasy mainly for pleasure, and that mainly escapism, but there's another layer to it, too - both to the genre and to my appreciation of it - and in her short essay 'The critics, the monsters, and the fantasists', which appears at the end of this anthology, Ursula K Le Guin nails the connection between those two facets as well as anyone ever has, elegantly and lucidly highlighting both what is unique about the genre and the absurdity of its frequent literary ghettoisation.

One of Le Guin's points is that true fantasy is not allegorical; in a typically nuanced elaboration, she also points out that fantasy and allegory can overlap, and that socially conscious readings of fantasy are not only possible but often desirable. And those notions seem to run through the stories in this excellent collection - all of them fantasies, nearly all with at least something of an allegorical flavour, and the large majority of them genuine literature on any terms. Their careful selection is evident not only in the consistent quality of the stories, but also in the way that none of them goes anywhere near the classic Tolkein-esque style or motifs, instead carving out a whole range of magics and mysteries in their own veins.

I'd read a few of these before - Patricia McKillip's "The Lady of the Skulls", which does take a familiar motif but makes something new of it, Neil Gaiman's dark, effectively revisionistic version of Snow White "Snow, Glass, Apples", T C Boyle's hilarious yet strangely affecting "We Are Norsemen" and Stephen King's "Mrs Todd's Shortcut" - and each of them is good. Steven Millhauser's "The Barnum Museum" is probably the most memorable story in the anthology; its catalogue of a museum of the fantastic brings Borges to mind, along with the idea of the wunderkammer, and also made me think of MONA (which reflects well on the museum itself). Also particularly good, all in different ways: Maureen McHugh's "Ancestor Money", Jeffrey Ford's "The Empire of Ice Cream", Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss".

Berlinde De Bruyckere - "We Are All Flesh" (ACCA)

The first, large, extremely white room contains only two pieces. Suspended above the ground from one wall, a horse (headless and partly opened up), and in the middle of the room, two horses, splayed, again suspended from a kind of simple, brutal hanging frame - stitched/grafted to each other, belly to belly and facing in opposite directions (necks only - again headless). They're monumental, visceral and striking; I'm pretty sure that the horse hide, at least, is actual horse.

In the other rooms are wax sculptures in a range of settings - some, twisted trunks, in a wooden cabinet, doors disconcertingly open towards the viewer, others, resembling exposed human viscera, mounted to the wall or suspended in a kind of bridge/cradle of wood and string, and one abject human figure, head buried, naked. Sinuous, solid, memorable (and aptly titled).

Simon Reynolds - Retromania

A wide-ranging look at contemporary pop's retro fixation - its obsession with its own past. The focus is on pop music but Reynolds takes in a range of other strands of popular culture, often in impressive depth. I skimmed large parts of it - as much as I love listening to music, I don't at all have the obsessive interest in analysing it and tracing its history or cultural significance that Reynolds himself clearly does - but it was worth the read.

In a possibly dangerous move

...I have just signed up to the iTunes store. Hopefully I can use this for good.

Good = downloading internet-only releases
Also okay = acquiring individual songs that I want to be able to listen to whenever I want but don't think I need the album of (a lot of these may well be because of some kind of sentimental connection from the past) ... obviously this is how they get you, but $2.19 is a small price to pay
Probably okay = albums that I want to listen to instead of buying them from shops (this one remains to be seen)
Not okay = accumulating masses of music that I never get around to listening to (as if I don't have enough of that already)

So far (in order):

* Laura Cantrell - Trains and Boats and Planes (this one is internet-only)
* Bonnie Tyler - "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (you might think that this was somehow ironic, but then you'd be dead wrong)
* Jewel - "Hands", "You Were Meant For Me", "Foolish Games", "Who Will Save Your Soul" (there was a period where all of these songs got played a lot in these parts)
* Don Henley - "The Boys of Summer" (I remember David seeing my winamp playlist, years ago, full of sad girl singers (including some by Jewel, probably) - plus this song...cue mock-masculine "Don Hen-leeeyyy" shaking of the fist)
* Hunters & Collectors - "Holy Grail" & "Throw Your Arms Around Me" (two great songs that I remember fondly from school and probably haven't heard since...I think I actually taped "Holy Grail" off the radio and listened to it on one of those old-fashioned self-made mix tapes!)
* Kendall Payne - "Wonderland" (I think Jade put me onto this melancholy little song and I listened to it quite a bit at the time, I think - it had completely slipped my mind till just now)
* Goo Goo Dolls - "Iris"; Collective Soul - "The World I Know" & "Shine"; Matchbox 20 - "3AM" & "Push"; The Wallflowers - "One Headlight" (a whole lot of 90s rock - I was into all of this stuff at the time, even though my tastes were already heading towards 'alternative' by then)
* Seal - "Kiss From A Rose" (one of those songs that just sinks in deep. When I heard it on the radio - google tells me this must've been around 1995 (year 7/8), and that sounds right - it was lush, mysterious, romantic, different from anything I'd heard before. Good moment around the lunch table at work the other day when it came up on songlines...several people 'ahh'-ing in pleasant recollection)

Anyway, enough for tonight...that became a trip down musical memory lane.