I read somewhere that Calexico's a border town between California and Mexico, which makes this band's name remarkably apt. And there's something of the same liminality to the way that their music has crossed in, then out again, then back into my musical awareness over time; there've been many encounters over the years, but I'm pretty sure this is the first full album of theirs that I've come to, and it's very good, lit with an array of guest vocalists - lead and backing - and with a thread and a warmth running through it that makes it a joy to listen to. Skipping lightly across genres, it all works.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The Falling
Moodily intriguing - inexplicable fainting spells strike rural girls school in late 60s, much intensely sublimated ardour as well as actual sexual activity and even a hint of the mystical (ominous shadowily pastoral folk music and all), with shades of all the usual touchstones in this vein (eg 1, 2 and more recently 3) - but let down by a lack of focus such that its promising components don't come together as they might have. Starring Maisie Williams aka Arya from Game of Thrones.
(w/ Ash and Kai)
(w/ Ash and Kai)
"Death and the Maiden" (Ariel Dorfman - MTC)
Three hander set in unnamed post-fascist South American country in which woman encounters and imprisons man who she believes from his voice to be a doctor who tortured and raped her years earlier, with her human rights lawyer husband/partner (just appointed to a presidential truth and reconciliation-style commission) also caught up. Powerful premise and, I suspect, a very good play as written, but the performances and set didn't bring it to life for me.
* * *
As an aside: "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" - one of those songs that's always been there - came on as I was walking down St Kilda Road afterwards, and unexpectedly pierced in the way music sometimes does ... for a few minutes there I felt somehow more clearly myself than in a long time.
* * *
As an aside: "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" - one of those songs that's always been there - came on as I was walking down St Kilda Road afterwards, and unexpectedly pierced in the way music sometimes does ... for a few minutes there I felt somehow more clearly myself than in a long time.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Gregory Crewdson
A beautiful, hefty monograph produced by Rizzoli New York spanning Crewdson's entire career to date. Enormously pleasurable. Along with the photos themselves, it includes some fairly redundant short narratives by Jonathan Lethem - one for each series - and the usual sorts of essays (usual but in this case interesting), as well as extended interview extracts with Crewdson and key members of his extensive crew which are illuminating in relation to both the mechanics and the artistic impulses behind these fascinating works.
Early Work (1986-88)
Plenty of signs of the direction he'd later take in these photos taken as a student around the town of Lee, Massachusetts - indeed, many seem like rough takes of images that he'd return to years later.
Fireflies (1996; printed in 2006)
In one of the framing essays in this book, Crewdson is quoted describing how disappointed he was when he first saw how these had come out as, shot naturalistically, they had failed to capture the reality of how he had experienced the fireflies; the contrast, of course, is to the elaborately staged works that he would move to producing later in his career and with which he's most associated. These fireflies ones seem minor to me (but then what would I know), but they're charming too.
Natural Wonder (1992-97)
Taking nature as their subject, these operate very deliberately to denaturalise. Elements of the gothic, and that David Lynch influence very clear.
Hover (1996-97)
Twilight (1998-2002)
From the same well as The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
Dream House (2002)
In the context of Crewdson's work, the presence of actual Hollywood actors - Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, William H Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Gwyneth Paltrow - is entirely congruous.
Beneath the Roses (2003-08)
The series in which his vision is most fully realised. Also, the various naked figures that appear throughout are even more disquieting after seeing It Follows (which must surely have drawn at least some inspiration from him).
Sanctuary (2009)
(@ CCP a few years back)
Early Work (1986-88)
Plenty of signs of the direction he'd later take in these photos taken as a student around the town of Lee, Massachusetts - indeed, many seem like rough takes of images that he'd return to years later.
Fireflies (1996; printed in 2006)
In one of the framing essays in this book, Crewdson is quoted describing how disappointed he was when he first saw how these had come out as, shot naturalistically, they had failed to capture the reality of how he had experienced the fireflies; the contrast, of course, is to the elaborately staged works that he would move to producing later in his career and with which he's most associated. These fireflies ones seem minor to me (but then what would I know), but they're charming too.
Natural Wonder (1992-97)
Taking nature as their subject, these operate very deliberately to denaturalise. Elements of the gothic, and that David Lynch influence very clear.
Hover (1996-97)
Twilight (1998-2002)
From the same well as The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
Dream House (2002)
In the context of Crewdson's work, the presence of actual Hollywood actors - Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, William H Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Gwyneth Paltrow - is entirely congruous.
Beneath the Roses (2003-08)
The series in which his vision is most fully realised. Also, the various naked figures that appear throughout are even more disquieting after seeing It Follows (which must surely have drawn at least some inspiration from him).
Sanctuary (2009)
(@ CCP a few years back)
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Jamie xx - In Colour
I woke this morning with "Loud Places" in my head - the most rave-y 'reach for the sky' moment on this swirled together set of dance-ish tracks which does sit somewhere on an xx-ish continuum while overall setting its controls for something more expansively textured. I basically like songs and so I prefer the xx's self-titled and probably Coexist as well to In Colour, but on its own terms it's at least as accomplished as those other two and a plenty enjoyable listen.
Fiona McFarlane - The Night Guest
Ruth woke at four in the morning and her blurry brain said, 'Tiger.'
That was natural; she was dreaming. But there were noises in the house,
and as she woke she heard them. They came across the hallway from the
lounge room. Something large was rubbing against Ruth's couch and
television and, she suspected, the wheat-coloured recliner disguised as a
wingback chair. Other sounds followed: the panting of a large animal; a
vibrancy of breath that suggested enormity and intent; definite
mammalian noises, definitely feline, as if her cats had grown in size
and were sniffing for food with huge noses. But the sleeping cats were
weighing down the sheets at the end of Ruth's bed, and this was
something else.
Now that's an opening paragraph to catch my attention; since reading it in a bookstore, this one's been on my radar - particularly since the blurb text intimated a family resemblance to Persona.
And so I've now read it - foisting it on book club in the process - and it's a strange, sweet, sad novel haunted by loss (the more devastating for being so unspectacular and so quotidian), the Other and empire. I don't think it quite retains its grasp all the way through, but overall, both in terms of overall design (and effect) and in many of its scenarios, it's high quality fiction weaving together psychological thriller, character piece and post-colonial meditation.
Now that's an opening paragraph to catch my attention; since reading it in a bookstore, this one's been on my radar - particularly since the blurb text intimated a family resemblance to Persona.
And so I've now read it - foisting it on book club in the process - and it's a strange, sweet, sad novel haunted by loss (the more devastating for being so unspectacular and so quotidian), the Other and empire. I don't think it quite retains its grasp all the way through, but overall, both in terms of overall design (and effect) and in many of its scenarios, it's high quality fiction weaving together psychological thriller, character piece and post-colonial meditation.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Jessie Ware - Tough Love
Maybe it's just my imagination, but Tough Love seems a touch warmer - the emotions running through it closer to the surface - than its stellar predecessor Devotion. And whether or not that's true, it's just as glossily, sleekly elegant and just as good - in fact probably a hair's breadth better.
An odd comparison maybe, but I wonder if Jessie Ware maybe occupies a similar place in the crowded pop-soul field to that staked out by the National under today's big tent of indie-rock - both seemingly relatively unpretentious, unassuming acts that on the surface aren't doing things all that differently from a whole lot of their contemporaries but who, through some unpredictable and unexpected combination of song-writing smarts, talent, pop intuition and zeitgeist-channelling have struck a vein which elevates their music well above the common mill.
Highlights: "Tough Love", "You & I (Forever)" (the record's sugariest, most immediately replayable moment), "Want Your Feeling" (yes, I was surprised too to like what's basically a slinky little disco song so much), "Keep on Lying". Special mention for "Kind Of...Sometimes...Maybe", which sounds more like TLC than anything else this side of 1996.
An odd comparison maybe, but I wonder if Jessie Ware maybe occupies a similar place in the crowded pop-soul field to that staked out by the National under today's big tent of indie-rock - both seemingly relatively unpretentious, unassuming acts that on the surface aren't doing things all that differently from a whole lot of their contemporaries but who, through some unpredictable and unexpected combination of song-writing smarts, talent, pop intuition and zeitgeist-channelling have struck a vein which elevates their music well above the common mill.
Highlights: "Tough Love", "You & I (Forever)" (the record's sugariest, most immediately replayable moment), "Want Your Feeling" (yes, I was surprised too to like what's basically a slinky little disco song so much), "Keep on Lying". Special mention for "Kind Of...Sometimes...Maybe", which sounds more like TLC than anything else this side of 1996.
Monday, July 06, 2015
Holly Miranda - Holly Miranda
A delicious confection, in the (metaphorical, musical) senses both of being a sweet delicacy and a very nicely put together mixture. More organic and, at times, even rugged-sounding than the fantastic The Magician's Private Library, it nonetheless shares a dreamy woodsiness with its predecessor, not to mention Miranda's oddly soulful vocals (odd because her voice is frequently on the thin side, balanced out maybe by its alluringly raspy edge).
Anyway, dreamy yes - the pinnacle on that front is mid-album drifter "Pelican Rapids", which evokes Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks score - but it also has its exultant moments, like the brightly surging "Come On" (which incidentally, like a fair bit of the record's back end, recalls none so much as Sarah Blasko) and the way that opener "Mark My Words" builds to its layered climax. Then, of course, there's the fast-strummed, almost punky "All I Want Is to Be Your Girl", gleefully spinning out lines like "we could fuck in the sun and dance till dawn and all I want is to be your girl" which is the album's most surprising moment and its sharpest shot of sheer pop musical joy.
[* edit 11/7 - "Come On" also has a distinctly Washington-esque tinge]
Anyway, dreamy yes - the pinnacle on that front is mid-album drifter "Pelican Rapids", which evokes Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks score - but it also has its exultant moments, like the brightly surging "Come On" (which incidentally, like a fair bit of the record's back end, recalls none so much as Sarah Blasko) and the way that opener "Mark My Words" builds to its layered climax. Then, of course, there's the fast-strummed, almost punky "All I Want Is to Be Your Girl", gleefully spinning out lines like "we could fuck in the sun and dance till dawn and all I want is to be your girl" which is the album's most surprising moment and its sharpest shot of sheer pop musical joy.
[* edit 11/7 - "Come On" also has a distinctly Washington-esque tinge]
Sunday, July 05, 2015
Mew - No More Stories Are Told Today ...
An interesting listen, coming across like a more abstractly, alternately airily and wirily pop Arcade Fire if Ben Gibbard was their lead vocalist (with the indie-epic feel of both of the above in their starrier moments), but also more individual and creative in approach than that description makes them sound.
Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium
One of those places I've been meaning to go for a while, for reasons that are equal parts inherent draw of underwater mystery and dreaminess (blue is my favourite colour etc) and miscellaneous impressionistic movie snapshots (especially Romeo + Juliet and Closer). Pretty satisfying.
(w/ Nicolette and Tamara)
(w/ Nicolette and Tamara)
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Rivka Galchen - American Innovations
I don't think it's a coincidence that American Innovations, like Atmospheric Disturbances before it, required an immediate re-read, feeling as it did like it had slipped through my grasp on first pass while at the same time intriguing me enough to make me want to tackle it again straight away.
Slipperily metaphysical, these ten stories of contemporary discontents, disquiet and discombobulation (...disturbances...) constantly evade easy understanding at every structural level - sentence often follows sentence seemingly as non sequitur, and while it's possible to say, on one level (indeed, on multiple levels), what the stories they comprise are 'about', there's a sense of endless interwoven layers of about-ness that's difficult to pin down with any precision. It's probably telling that it's as a whole - that is, as a collection of loosely thematically related stories - that these come closest to graspability.
My favourites - I think - are the two at the centre of the collection: "Wild Berry Blue", 'about' a nine year old girl's infatuation with a recovering heroin addict working at her local McDonald's, told in recollection and filled with terrific, vivid, slantways phrases and images (I had no idea what that meant, to OD, but it sounded spooky. "They slip out from under their own control," I heard the manager say, and the phrase stuck with me. I pictured the right side of a person lifting up a velvet rope and leaving the left side behind.) and "The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire", which is really barely 'about' anything. Both of them have killer closing paragraphs too, in which Galchen is unusually overt (and which have much more of an impact in context):
He was my first love, my first love in the way that first loves are usually second or third or fourth loves. I still think about a stranger in a green jacket across from me in the waiting room at the DMV. About a blue-eyed man with a singed earlobe that I saw at a Baskin-Robbins with his daughter. My first that kind of love. I never got over him. I never get over anyone.
And -
Did I then take that movie meeting, all unprepared, after dressing in a way to accentuate my pregnancy, then to downplay it, then changing outfits again to accentuate it? Did I have no ideas? Did I start talking about the Kantian sublime, and about meteors and about love? A transgenerational love story with an old shepherd in Siberia, and a latter-day woman who knits, and a transfigurative event, and the sense that life is an enormous mystery but with secret connections that, you know, knit us all together? I did. All those things I so studiously knew nothing about. Meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere every day. I was betraying so many, I felt so clean.
Slipperily metaphysical, these ten stories of contemporary discontents, disquiet and discombobulation (...disturbances...) constantly evade easy understanding at every structural level - sentence often follows sentence seemingly as non sequitur, and while it's possible to say, on one level (indeed, on multiple levels), what the stories they comprise are 'about', there's a sense of endless interwoven layers of about-ness that's difficult to pin down with any precision. It's probably telling that it's as a whole - that is, as a collection of loosely thematically related stories - that these come closest to graspability.
My favourites - I think - are the two at the centre of the collection: "Wild Berry Blue", 'about' a nine year old girl's infatuation with a recovering heroin addict working at her local McDonald's, told in recollection and filled with terrific, vivid, slantways phrases and images (I had no idea what that meant, to OD, but it sounded spooky. "They slip out from under their own control," I heard the manager say, and the phrase stuck with me. I pictured the right side of a person lifting up a velvet rope and leaving the left side behind.) and "The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire", which is really barely 'about' anything. Both of them have killer closing paragraphs too, in which Galchen is unusually overt (and which have much more of an impact in context):
He was my first love, my first love in the way that first loves are usually second or third or fourth loves. I still think about a stranger in a green jacket across from me in the waiting room at the DMV. About a blue-eyed man with a singed earlobe that I saw at a Baskin-Robbins with his daughter. My first that kind of love. I never got over him. I never get over anyone.
And -
Did I then take that movie meeting, all unprepared, after dressing in a way to accentuate my pregnancy, then to downplay it, then changing outfits again to accentuate it? Did I have no ideas? Did I start talking about the Kantian sublime, and about meteors and about love? A transgenerational love story with an old shepherd in Siberia, and a latter-day woman who knits, and a transfigurative event, and the sense that life is an enormous mystery but with secret connections that, you know, knit us all together? I did. All those things I so studiously knew nothing about. Meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere every day. I was betraying so many, I felt so clean.
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