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.