Clouds - Favourites

It's all very confusing. There's these guys, the Sydney outfit who I know through Penny Century and, before that, the appropriately named "Anthem" (thank you cassette tape of "100% Hits volume 4"), and then there's a Scottish mob from the 80s, whose "Get Out Of My Dream" was one of the highlights of the CD86 comp, and apparently there was another before them (also Scottish, for good measure) back in the 60s. Anyway, so this compilation: there's much to like on it, most notably the willingness to experiment with unconventional song forms while retaining a clear pop sensibility and the sound they nailed seemingly from the very beginning (crisp, state-of-the-90s indie girl rock), but the songwriting is probably a bit too indirect for the band's own good, with the result that one is left with an impression of a series of swirls of colour rather than of clearly defined pieces; tellingly, one of the few songs to stand out is their woozy take on "Wichita Lineman".

"Lands End" (Compagnie Philippe Genty)

Oh my god, this was amazing. A sort of surrealist dance theatre show, complete with giant puppets, billowing oversized stage-filling balloons, striking lighting, and sliding panels and screens which continually frame and reframe the stage as they move. Taking cues certainly from Magritte (the men in long coats and bowler hats are only the beginning) and probably in some measure from Lacan (re: that latter, I'm thinking naturally of the 'Seminar on The Purloined Letter', etc), too, it's genuinely dream-like, beautiful, unsettling, whimsical, fantastic; and set to music something like a cross between Four Tet and Victorialand, but exceeding any such attempt at categorisation. From our position near the front, in the centre of the row, it was easy to become immersed in the flow of scenes and images while allowing their 'meaning' (or, perhaps, 'narrative') to take shape at a more abstract level. "Lands End" made a lot of sense to me, both emotionally and imaginatively, and more 'intellectually' (in some respects, precisely inasmuch as it elides the distinctions between those various types of responses); I haven't had such a wonderful experience in a theatre setting maybe ever.

(w/ trang + Arthur)

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts

One for the fans, or at least for those with some existing interest in Glass - it's perfectly watchable, but doesn't shed a huge amount of light on either the man or the music. He comes across as very down to earth and affable, with a healthy lack of ego and rich spiritual life, but there are hints of lacunae, dissonances - in particular, in his relationships with his parents and with the women in his life - which aren't explored; and no attempt at all is made to say anything about the music itself, although there's an implied comparison to the pointillistic paintings of one of Glass's artist friends. Still, watching it reminded me how much I like his stuff, so it has to go down as a success at least to that extent.

(w/ Jaani - a sold-out session (at MIFF), impressively)

"Strengthening Human Rights and the Rule of Law"

Seminar back at MS, a week or so ago - Robert McClelland on the above subject. Earlier that day, he'd announced that Justice Branson (FCA) would be the new head of HREOC; at the seminar, he unveiled a few initiatives (possible national anti-terror law, consideration being given of ratification of first optional protocol to CEDAW, standing invitation to special rapporteurs and investigators) which, given the necessarily woolly nature of human rights talk, are all reasonably substantive, I reckon. He was rather more 'down home' and less polished than I'd expected, but seemed sincere enough and didn't come across as if he was bluffing at any point, including while fielding questions afterwards. President Maxwell (Vic CA) delivered a response, the main themes of which were how different/refreshing it is to have a Cth A-G speaking of human rights in the way that McClelland (and the Rudd government generally) has been and the fact that the idea of human rights is neither the particular province of the 'left' nor particularly radical.

Wicked

This was good! I wasn't at all troubled by the divergences from the novel - a musical's a different kind of creature altogether, after all, and it's been cleverly reworked so as to stand satisfyingly on its own in a way which ties the ends up quite neatly (the only thing that gave me pause was the altered ending, but I suppose it's more in keeping with what has gone before than that of the book - and that it took me somewhat by surprise is probably a testament to how much of the darkness and ambiguity of Maguire's novel is retained amidst the colour and glitz of the stage version). For mine, none of the songs really stood out ("Defying Gravity" is closest) and there was maybe a tad too much reliance on repetition of one or two recurring motifs, but that didn't much matter in the face of the engaging story and characters, spectacular sets and all round energy; the best moments/songs mostly involved Glinda ("What Is This Feeling" and "Popular" jump to mind), who is a treat both as written and as performed by Lucy Durack, but Amanda Harrison's Elphaba isn't at all shaded. I didn't fall in love, but Wicked gave me more or less what I wanted and it was plenty of fun.

(w/ Kai, Steph, Tamara, Kathleen + James L, trang and Vegjie ... which was, as it turned out, pleasing from the Elphaba-association p.o.v.)

Joan As Policewoman - Real Life

Think a more piano-y and smoother-voiced Kristin Hersh, with a bit of PJ Harvey and the more nocturnal, downbeat side of Tori to her too, and then some low-key lounge and jazzy elements, and you're in the ballpark as far as what Joan As Policewoman does. I've only been moderately impressed so far, but there are enough hints in the record that I'm willing to give her a chance to grow.

Revue

A collection of Soviet propaganda videos from the 50s and 60s; much heavier on extended, fairly dour footage of steel workers and farmers going about their labours than on colourfully kitsch song-and-dance celebrations of communism (even allowing that it was all in black and white), but pretty interesting nonetheless. Some great, characterful Russian faces, too.

(w/ Jaani and Ruth)

Pärt / Maxwell Davies / Glass - Trivium (Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, organ)

Eight pieces, all I think composed for organ and performed by Bowers-Broadbent on that instrument, all in a minimalist vein (though I don't think that any are strictly 'minimalist') and all interesting. Pärt's regal "Annum per annum" is magnificent, and likewise the more airy, drifty "Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentäer" which precedes it; interestingly, all four of his retain a noticeably 'Pärt-ian' feel despite the unfamiliarity (to me) of their instrumentation here. The Maxwell Davies pair are quiet and mysterious; the Glass compositions ("Satygraha" and "Dance IV") are swelling and sonorous and, again, couldn't have been composed by anyone other than Glass himself.

Band of Horses @ Billboard The Venue, Sunday 3 August

A good show, if not as searing as I'd hoped and at least half expected. Live, they're an extremely tight outfit, very technically proficient and cohesive as a band, and with enough raggedness about the edges to give the performances more fire than the recorded versions (which is as it should be), but it didn't quite hit the next level despite the potential clearly being there, though there were some clear highlights when they did really nail it ("The Great Salt Lake", "Weed Party", "Wicked Gil" - all, oddly, off the first album, which is admittedly more rockin', but usually bands enjoy playing their newer stuff more, and that generally comes through in the performances). Perhaps, it was just a touch too tight; maybe it needed to be rawer, louder, a bit more unhinged (not that it seemed like a show that was all too 'professional' - just one in which the indefinable spark that pushes a rock show from good to near great was missing). All told, though, I enjoyed it, so no complaints - and it was interesting to hear some new stuff, which tended considerably more towards modern Gram Parsons cosmic americana than electrified southern rock...

(meant to go with Jon, but different arrival times and lack of reception in venue defeated atempts to meet)

Sigur Rós @ Festival Hall, Friday 1 August

Agaetis Byrjun was where it all began for me with Sigur Rós, so when they led off with "Svefn-g-englar" last night, the song's distinctive 'pings' and singer Jon Thor Birgisson's still unlikely (and still rather magical) vocals coming through loud and clear, I couldn't have been happier, and things soon got even better, as it became apparent that, as a live proposition, the band comes close to genuine shoegazer territory, the swathes and layers of guitar and synth from recorded versions either sharing the foreground with Birgisson's keen or washing over the top of it, building ecstatic walls of sound inlaid with all of the baroque flourishes and weaves we know them for, not to mention some real rock and roll drumming.

So Agaetis Byrjun was where it all began for me and it holds a special place in my heart, but truth be told, I haven't followed the band's career all that closely since, keeping up mainly through the various singles and other tracks that people have put on mix cds for me, most notably the cascading rainbow-swoon of "Hoppipolla" - which meant that much of what they played was new to me, but it was easy to be swept up by each new track, and there was barely a lull. The highlight, I think, would have been the skyscraping version of "Glosoli" they did near the beginning, but the whole thing was really good.

(w/ Ruth)

Ashes of Time Redux

This was excellent - just what one might imagine a Wong Kar-wai martial arts film to be like, cryptic, melancholy, blurry, vivid...epic and intimate, focused intensely in the moment but also haunted by the past (and with a gesture towards a hopeful future, too).

(w/ Michelle, Kai, Ruth and David)

Brock Clarke - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

I've been looking forward to reading this one! And so, what a shame, then, that my predominant response to it was one of irritation. The bumbling narrator, Sam Pulsifer, basically annoyed the hell out of me, and despite that, the bad end to which he eventually comes rings dreadfully false. Sure, I get that Clarke is playing more than one type of literary game here, but it's all a bit depthless, both in the sense that it has no solid bottom (ultimately, no substance) and in that (another way of saying the same thing) it's all surface in the end, however multiplicious its layers - we're not meant to take Sam, or his narrative, seriously, but at the same time, what's being said about both is something we're clearly meant to take oh-so-seriously and I'm not down with that. A shame in more than one way, because there are some good ideas in Arsonist's and some decent writing in bursts, as well as an evident ability to hold a story together over the course of a whole novel, but the pieces just don't quite fit. Still, I admire the chutzpah and the willingness to try for something different without any obvious signposting, trusting instead to the writer's own ability and the reader's acuity for the point to be made...

Hamlet (Bell Shakespeare company)

This had a lot going for it, but all told I really didn't think it was particularly great. The main problem for me was the figure of Hamlet himself...I didn't at all like the way that he was characterised, very much in the sulky adultescent vein of interpretation which (a) seems quite popular these days and (b) (lapsing briefly into unbecoming dogmatism) is just plain wrong; Brendan Cowell had presence but didn't really work for me; he was at his best in the contemplative soliloquies/monologues ("What a piece of work is a man", etc) and at his worst when lapsing into dire overacting intended to convey the character's anguish.

A lot of this stems from the fact that I'm pretty familiar with the play (and not a little possessive of the thing) and have some strong ideas about it - ideas which run counter to many of those underlying this staging...that said, another of my problems with the production is that it doesn't really seem to have a clear idea of the play itself, nothing cohesive to unify the choices made in respect of the various characters, sets, etc, beyond a generalised sort of contemporisation which isn't near enough on its own. There wasn't a clear vision, and the truth of the play was nowhere to be seen.

Still, I did generally like the way that the characters were interpreted: Claudius was effectively played as quite a physically domineering figure, and Gertrude likewise as the attractive older woman that she so clearly must be; Barry Otto as Polonius brought out the ridiculousness of the character without descending too far into farce; Horatio, Laertes and Ophelia all held their respective lines (that last a bit insipid for my taste, but that's obviously a reading that's open to her character); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seemed to owe something to their Stoppardian counterparts in their gormlessness (their ineffectuality is played up and played for laughs), though with nothing of the anguished existential innocence of those others; all told, I thought that the acting was okay but a bit undistinguished. I did like the sets, though, and the music (courtesy of Sarah Blasko) which lent proceedings a bit of gravitas (thereby tipping my hand as to which reading of Hamlet I lean towards...).

(w/ (deep breath) Cassie, Kai, Wei, Julian F, Jaani, Sunny, Ben K and Bec P + guests of Wei's (Andreas) and Sunny's (Wilfred, Nirm and Louise [?]) - row a, three from the front)

The Cardigans - Super Extra Gravity

A winner - when it hits (which it does more often than it misses), Super Extra Gravity is a marvellous showcase for the frothy, immaculately put together popist gems in which the ever delightful Cardigans specialise. "I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer" is still totally righteous and still has maybe the best title of any pop song ever, but it's "Godspell" that I've been really obsessed by lately, that latter encapsulating everything that's good about the record as a whole - a rush of a melody, hooks both expected and unanticipated, lyrics at once coy and direct, meaningful and obscure, that stick in the mind, delicious guitar jangle, ring and shear, Nina Persson's marvellous voice. Gettin' lots of spins round here lately.

Le cercle rouge

Uneasy but compelling Friday night viewing. Shot in colour but it feels black and white, and highlighted by an extended sequence (the central heist) with no dialogue whatsoever (maybe one or two words) - must've been at least 20 minutes, and might've been as long as 30 or 40. Noir/hard-boiled and 'cool', and thoroughly existential; layers upon layers.

(w/ trang + some of her folks, and Cassie and Kim)

"IMP June 2008"

A tasty mix, this one - one of my two or three favourites out of all those which have come through IMP in the last year and a half or so. The gal who made it obviously knows her way around this kind of music (lo-fi bedsit jangly pop, for want of a better way of describing it), and so there are spiritual forerunners and founding figures (Orange Juice, the Velvet Underground - that latter via "I Found a Reason"), more recent icons (Belle and Sebastian (a song, "Rhoda", that I not only didn't know, but is quality B&S into the bargain), the Magnetic Fields (the delicious "100,000 Fireflies"...I have a mandolin, I play it all night long, it makes me want to kill myself...), the Lucksmiths), assorted other scene figures (the Ladybug Transistor, Camera Obscura), a couple of slightly left-field but fitting selections (Sebastien Tellier's excellent funk soul electro pop ditty "Divine", She & Him's utterly charming "Sentimental Heart"[*]), and some seriously good tracks from acts that I've never even heard of before ("Givers Reply" by Ramona Cordova, "It's Going to Be Soon" by Rocketship).

(from Julie in Honolulu, HI)

* * *

[*] She & Him of course piqued my interest, seeing as Zooey Deschanel is one of the reigning indie goddesses in my books, but somehow I didn't expect their stuff to be anything more than endearing throwaway pop pastiches at best. The album could still turn out to be like that, but "Sentimental Heart" hints at the possibility of something more - Deschanel's got a natural and rather captivating singing voice, and it's a well constructed and arranged song, complete with girl group harmonies in the bridge about two-thirds of the way through...this could be pretty good. What can you do with a sentimental heart, indeed.

"The Power of Ideas" (Melbourne Conversations @ BMW Edge)

Just for note, really. Larissa Behrendt, Richard Dennis, Rodney Hall and Julian Burnside on ideas and society, with an emphasis on why bad ideas so often thrive and good ideas stifled, and how the latter can be fostered and implemented. Best was Hall, making an elegant, lucid, poetic argument for the importance of the arts.

(w/ Emrys and Nicolette)

Paris, je t'aime

Funny. Unlike, say, Chacun son cinema, the several shorts comprising Paris, je t'aime have an overall coherency, its individual segments feeling like aspects of a whole. Not sure just what it is that binds them all together, except perhaps the obvious, Paris itself; it's an impression aided, no doubt, by the relative lack of 'auteur' tendencies in the directors of the various pieces.

A few that stuck in my mind: Gus van Sant's "Le Marais", in which one young man haltingly-eloquently wonders to another, a stranger, if they might be soulmates, all the while unaware that the other understands very little French, is pleasingly wry and ends perfectly; Alfonso Cuaron's "Parc Monceau" (Nick Nolte and Ludivine Sagnier both note perfect) is just very appealing; Olivier Assayas' "Quartier des Enfants Rouge", despite being about nothing in particular (actress Maggie Gyllenhaal scores some drugs. The end.) somehow lingers (maybe it has a sort of infraordinary thing going); liked the Bob Hoskins/Fanny Ardant one, too, for the opportunity to see those two playing off each other; also, the one with Emily Mortimer was pretty good, though mainly because it was the one with Emily Mortimer (mind you, Oscar Wilde's showing up didn't hurt either); and the Elijah Wood vampire one, while OTT, was kind of cool (I didn't much like the other notably quirky one, the mime love story, though).

Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers

On this, her latest, Mann mines a similar seam to that which yielded the riches to be found on The Forgotten Arm (see here, here and here), and to similar effect. Smilers is very much a twilight, autumnal record, guitar replaced almost entirely by piano and vocals consistently at the lower end of her register giving proceedings a muffled, quietly mournful air.

Smilers sees Mann further developing her seemingly increasingly downbeat take on pop classicism, easy listening am radio elements tempered by her unerring control of the form; while not overtly framed as a 'concept' album a la Forgotten Arm, there's a clear thread running through it and a sort of elegant musicality that I elsewise associate more or less exclusively with Summerteeth onwards-Wilco and New Adventures/Up-era R.E.M. when it comes to recentish pop music. "Looking for Nothing" is the song in which I hear that most clearly; it, "Great Beyond" and "Medicine Wheel" (those two coming across somewhat like the hinge pairing of "Little Bombs" and "That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart" which appears at a similar point in Forgotten Arm) and the hushed "Little Tornado" are my favourites. The record's yet to lodge squarely in my chest, but I can feel it working its way there...and, needless to say, it's marvellous just to have new Aimee Mann to listen to.

The Fountain

There's no doubting that Aronofsky had a vision in making this massively ambitious film, and had it come off, The Fountain would have been dizzyingly great (he's certainly got it in him - as discomfiting as it at times is, Requiem for a Dream remains a flat-out masterpiece and Pi, while flawed, isn't all that far behind), which makes it all the more a pity that instead it's a bloated, tedious mess, albeit one in which the glimmerings of a great film are clearly apparent. The failure certainly doesn't rest with the actors - Hugh Jackman is mesmerising, and Rachel Weisz, who has less to work with, pulls her weight too - and nor is it to be found in any particular element of the wider composition of the film...perhaps, the conceit is too large to be effectively rendered in an hour and a half of cinema (though it must be admitted that there's a pleasing ambiguity as to exactly what - and whose - the conceit is, and that some interpretations work much better than others).

Incidentally, I also found The Fountain a bit gruelling for reasons entirely unrelated to those recounted above, and considered stopping midway more than once on account of these other reasons...cryptic, cryptic; after a hiatus of a few months, I think that it may be time for me to begin keeping my (handwritten) diary again.

Kill Bill: Vols. 1 & 2

Man, these films are just so goddamn cool! Even when you know exactly what's coming, the sheer cinematic quality of the individual scenes and shots holds the attention - we take Tarantino's inventiveness and pop culture- and cinema-literacy for granted, but rewatching Kill Bill has reminded me of just how adept he is with his bag of tricks (I've never particularly thought of myself as a Tarantino fan, yet have much enjoyed all of his films that I've seen - Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and, of course, the Kill Bill instalment(s).)

I like the first volume much more than the second, but they do make more sense taken as a whole - and I think that splitting them into two is justifiable on artistic terms, though there's a deal too much padding in the second film in particular. It's all so over the top, and obviously, deliberately so, but also undeniably involving and exciting - the vividness of the images and set pieces and of the archetypes that are so lovingly invoked in them sells it...the two that linger are the interlude on Okinawa, its impact sealed by the use of Salyu's (Lily Chou-Chou's) "Kaifuku Suru Kizu" and, of all things, Zamfir's "The Lonely Shepherd", and the explosive showdown with O-Ren Ishii's underlings and its lyrical finale in the snowy garden outside.

The La's - The La's

Has a raggedness and a hint of fire along with its sparkly jangle and crunch that pushes the record to a level above most of this kind; there's much more to it than is suggested by "There She Goes", as deathless and great a song as that one is. That said, I don't think it's a great album but merely a rather good one, its finest moments (apart from aforementioned classic, "I Can't Sleep" and "Timeless Melody" stick out) frontloaded.

Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds

Takes its cues from Michael Jackson and Prince and mixes them up with a 21st century fuzzed-up gloss but without a real spark - an interesting misfire but a misfire nonetheless...or is it just that I don't really dig this kind of music?

"if you were a kiss ... then i'd be a hug" (IMP May 2008)

The first actual mixtape (as opposed to mix cd) that's come through the IMP, complete with mild distortion generated by the taping process. Two 90-minute sides, filled with lots of good music of a certain type - Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Jens Lekman, Grandaddy, Magnetic Fields, Nada Surf, Billy Bragg, etc, etc.

(from Danielle in Tallahassee, FL)

David Eddings - The Belgariad

Read this over a period of a few weeks, a few weeks ago. (Don't think I've read it before, though pretty sure I did the Malloreon some, ooh, 15 or so years ago.) I'd call it workmanlike rather than inspired, although I like some of the subtle reworking of classic high fantasy archetypes that Eddings engages in over its course...still, there was enough in it that I read all the way through to the end, of course.

Labyrinth

Well, it's a classic, innit? Like a lot of others around my age, my first exposure to Labyrinth was in primary school, and it left an indelible mark. I've seen it a few times since; it's still just as good as ever...and all the better that Bowie and Jennifer Connelly are in it, too!

(this time, w/ trang at the Fed Square atrium - 9am, Saturday morning!)

Muse - Black Holes & Revelations

I've liked Muse from the start, but never thought all that much of them. Each of their last couple of (studio) albums has yielded at least a couple of stand-out songs (looking back, I think "Hysteria" is probably my favourite of those), but they've never really registered for me as more than a slightly mad alt-hard rock outfit with a knack for the odd hyper-catchy guitar riff.

With Black Holes & Revelations, though, I'm finally completely sold - Muse are a really good band. After Origin of Symmetry and Absolution, the 'intensity' dial didn't really have another, higher setting, but evidently the 'massive' one did - Black Holes surpasses the band's previous efforts for sheer grandiosity, which takes some doing, but it hits hard and surprisingly focusedly despite the sprawling ambition. There are several highlights dotted throughout its running length (I particularly like "City of Delusion"), but it's best listened to as a whole, to get the full benefit of Bellamy & co's impressive range of ideas and tangents all at one go. And still, they don't seem to have overreached themselves - it all adds up to a very consistent album which takes its place in a remarkably consistent back catalogue...what do you know?

Gregory Maguire - Wicked

It's been a while since I last read this one, and it's held up pretty well (this was at least my third reading). I don't think I'd still say it was one of my very favourite books (see here) but it still affected me - it packs a serious punch, emotionally, intellectually and politically - and this time through I really appreciated the craft that's gone into the novel, particularly the way that Elphaba is reinvented and realigned for us each time she reappears, and the sturdiness of the structure which allows Maguire's ideas to come through as clearly as they do without getting in the way of the story.

(Funny, last time I read the novel, I definitely had a particular friend of mine in mind when imagining Elphaba; the same thing happened this time round, but with a different friend...in both cases, I'm not sure whether the comparison is flattering - or what it says about me and my relationship with those particular people...)

Big Star: Small World

It's striking how faithful nearly all of these covers are, even the two done by girls; indeed, some of them, the Gin Blossoms' "Back of a Car" and Matthew Sweet's "Ballad of El Goodo" in particular, are practically note-for-note, vocals and instruments alike near-indistinguishable from the originals. The best ones diverge a bit more from Big Star's classic versions, though none especially dramatically, those being Wilco's alt-country take on "Thirteen", the Posies' "What's Goin Ahn" and the Afghan Whigs' "Nightime". At ten songs, one of them a relatively recent cut by Big Star themselves (or at least as much of the band as had reformed/remained at the time of this cd), "Hot Thing" (the song's not much chop), it's brief for a compilation of this kind but boasts a decent roll-call of acts (apart from those I've already mentioned, others include Juliana Hatfield and Teenage Fanclub), and while the lack of reinterpretation of the songs doesn't do much for the memorability of the versions on the disc, the other side, of course, is that one can't go far wrong with such great source material.

Radiohead - "Airbag/How Am I Driving?" ep

As big a part of my life as music obviously is, I've never been the trainspotting or completist type; still, there are a couple of bands, Radiohead and the Cocteau Twins, whose every single, ep, etc I do tend to try to collect, not for the sake of owning the objects themselves but rather to hear the music they contain, even if this sometimes means buying a cd or record for only one or two often relatively minor tracks surrounded by a bunch that I already know, and so it is with this one, which was released on the heels of OK Computer in certain markets...what can I say, it's good.

Spoon - Telephono & "Soft Effects" ep

Their first couple of records, I think, and a fair bit faster-paced, more ragged and angrier than anything they laid down later. They ain't bad, but they ain't special either - at this point, they're more interesting as historical documents than in their own right.

Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure

More avant-pop from back in the day. Immediate, but interesting as well. Like it a lot. "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" is head and shoulders above the rest for me, but then I guess I've listened to it way more, too.

"Art Deco: 1910-1939" @ NGV International

Had a look at this because I was in town with a bit of spare time and because it was there. It didn't especially strike a chord with me - I have a fondness for some art deco architecture, and at this particular exhibition, I enjoyed looking at the glamour evening dresses and some of the jewellry, but really, to the extent that the movement appeals to me, it's on the level of the associations it summons (jazz age, etc) rather than for its intrinsic qualities...and there's always something a little bit sad about looking at objects mounted, bare and more or less out of context, in a gallery-type setting (of course, I'm more of an art kid than a design one, too).

Bande à part

The first Godard I've watched - probably, the first out-and-out 'nouvelle vague' film I've watched, actually - and I've been left thinking that while they're probably a bit of an acquired taste, it's likely to be a taste worth acquiring. I don't think it's stretching the point to describe Bande à part as postmodern - the metafictional/intertextual/breaking-of-the-third-wall aspects of the film are integral, as is its wilfully flippant attitude towards narrative - but it also has a distinctive (b&w) melancholy, a wistfulness, which has as much to do with the film's overall tone as its more brazen structural and stylistic affectations; its most whimsical elements perhaps partake of both those streams. Arthur, Franz and Odile somehow avoid graspability just as does the plot and direction of the film as a whole; it all has an effect that can't quite be described.

Vendela Vida - Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

Cryptic in its apparent straightforwardness, economical in its use of language but with tendencies towards abstraction and lyricism, inward-looking while (at least on the surface) dwelling more on the details than on broad psychological sweep, at once teasingly unresolved and, in the end, satisfyingly wrapped up, Let the Northern Lights... is a good example of a movement that increasingly seems to me to be constituting something of a seachange in current (pun unintended) literary fiction, both in the sense of exemplifying the style and in that of providing an example of how it can be done well.

It's hard to put one's finger on just what comprises or defines that 'movement' or seachange or whatever; I've picked out a few authors who seem to fit within it before - Scarlett Thomas, David Mitchell (?), maybe Ali Smith, Steven Hall (on the strength of The Raw Shark Texts, Nicole Krauss - but, apart from being relatively well-to-do 'western' writers probably sharing a broadly similar cultural background, writing novels which are usually in contemporary settings and kinda modernist in sensibility even if they're often laden with postmodern tropes and flourishes (I often feel that Murakami is a bit of a spiritual fore-runner), which in turn involves a certain preoccupation with phenomenology and perspective (and ideas), I'm not sure exactly what I feel they have in common. It's not that they're my favourite contemporary writers, even amongst those who've got their starts in the last 10-15 years or so (in which case Donna Tartt, say, would certainly be amongst their number, though it must be said that her work has a classic, out of time feel to me, and, to take an example from the opposite perspective, I was more frustrated by The Accidental than I actually liked it); nor are they particularly the most acclaimed/popular meeting that 'kicked off in the last 10-15 years' criterion (in which case see Jeffrey Eugenides, Zadie Smith, JSF, Dave Eggers, etc, etc).

Well, anyway, be all that as it may, I liked Let the Northern Lights... a lot, for all of the reasons I've already mentioned. Its rendition of Clarissa's journey of discovery through chilly Scandinavia has a lightness of touch and an elegance which sits pleasingly with the novel's more human aspects (though it errs at times on the side of being too terse, I feel). It's convincing - not necessarily in the sense of being realistic (though, incidentally, it more or less is) but more in the sense of being true.

* * *

'References' (because I wouldn't mind thinking a bit more about this 'movement' thing down the track)

Scarlett Thomas - Going Out, PopCo & The End of Mr Y
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas & Black Swan Green
Ali Smith - The Accidental
Steven Hall - The Raw Shark Texts (some previous thoughts on this subject there)
Nicole Krauss - Man Walks into a Room & The History of Love

The Happening

A reasonably tense but all up fairly mediocre genre piece from Shyamalan. It's got a bit going for it - Wahlberg, Deschanel and John Leguizamo, some well done 'nature as threat' cinematography, a genuine sense of spookiness about a couple of the episodes (the interlude/climax at the American gothic Mrs Jones' home in particular) - but is ultimately disappointing in its failure to amount to anything much.

Sons & Daughters - The Repulsion Box

Basically a scuzzy indie-rock album with bits of punk, rockabilly and sped-up folk thrown in (I think I read somewhere that they're Scottish); even at just a tick over 30 minutes, it's a bit wearying as an 'entire listen' proposition, too many of its songs blurring into one thuddy, scratchy, heavy whole. Still, "Dance Me In"'s still genuinely exciting and pretty much worth the price of admission on its own; "Taste the Last Girl" also stands out a bit, coming across all late-period Smiths with its jangly electric guitar lines.

Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

Is it really so long since I first read this? Things just keep on speeding up.

"Rhythm & soul" (2007 cd)

Extremely belatedly, the "2007 cd" I made back at the end of last year, along with the bulk of the accompanying notes.

1. Ceremony – New Order
Marie Antoinette OST (2006) [1981]
2. Intervention – The Arcade Fire
Neon Bible (2007)
3. Rhythm & Soul – Spoon
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)
4. Stockton Gala Days – 10,000 Maniacs
Our Time in Eden (1992)
5. So Have I For You – Nikka Costa
Everybody Got Their Something (2001)
6. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen
Born To Run (1975)
7. Back To Black – Amy Winehouse
Back To Black (2006)
8. Breakaway – Kelly Clarkson
Breakaway (2004)
9. Tommib Help Buss – Squarepusher
Marie Antoinette OST (2006) [2003]
10. Out Loud – Mindy Smith
Long Island Shores (2006)

At year’s kick-off, it was all about the Marie Antoinette soundtrack – the film was dizzyingly lovely, and its musical record no less so…“Ceremony” is a classic, but never sounded so good as it did swirling through Coppola’s sherbet dream, and Squarepusher’s mournful reprise of Lost In Translation’s “Tommib” is plangent, raindrop-perfect.

Not long after that was Neon Bible which, coming through in waves, was just as towering and magnificent as Funeral; “Intervention” was the song off it that first sent a shiver down my spine, and it’s still probably my favourite.

Nikka Costa came out of left field, “So Have I For You” grabbing me with its closing-time Joplin-isms; Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, by contrast, was predictably great, all stripped back rock tunes with a dash of soul, dressed in perfect details like the two-finger piano plinks in “Rhythm & Soul”.

At some point, I started listening to 10,000 Maniacs again, and remembered the kinds of pictures their music paints; “Stockton Gala Days” has been the key track. Also somewhere in there was Springsteen – having been rocking out to Born in the USA for years, I finally figured to listen to more of his stuff, and once you’ve listened to Born to Run LOUD, there’s no going back. And there was Amy Winehouse too, who I was all set to ignore till I heard “Back To Black” and realised that it was exactly the sort of thing that I like these days.

“Out Loud”, irresistible in its delicacy and pull, was almost certainly the song that I listened to most throughout the year; and “Breakaway” has been the one for the last couple of months, though I can’t explain that last, except maybe to say that a great pop song is a great pop song, and one way or another we’re all gonna empathise with it somehow.

"Our Leader"

The main event here was, of course, the Scarlett Johansson cut, "I Don't Want To Grow Up", the first off her Tom Waits cover record that I'd heard - and, let's be honest, it's ghastly. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she can't sing, but, well, she can't sing - and the electronic musical accompaniment is pretty dire, too...it drags like nobody's business. Elsewhere, there's yet another classy number from the National ("Tall Saint"), two songs which irritate me a lot (Art Brut's "Formed a Band" and the Ting Tings' "That's Not My Name"), a bewildering left turn into southern white boy funk (My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges", which is fairly horrid though the guitaring near the end saves it a little), an enjoyably gleefully stupid cut from the Rapture ("No Sex For Ben"), a cool as hell throwaway by the Breeders ("Bang On"), and assorted others.

(a mix cd from David)

Happy-Go-Lucky

There's a bit going on in this one. I didn't find it especially uplifting, to be honest - the social realist style in which it was filmed pretty much precludes any such response from me. Also, the preachiness irritated me a bit (ie, the 'be like free-spirited, endlessly cheerful Poppy, and not like her uptight bourgeois sister and wimpy husband or her racist, paranoid, obsessive driving instructor Scott - a pair of straw (wo)men, really)...so, while it has a pleasing whimsy, actually I don't think I really much liked Happy-Go-Lucky.

Just as a by-the-by, if I were writing an essay about this film for uni (and less wary of obvious 'ins' than I actually would be), the starting point would definitely be the scene near the start where Poppy and her friends are dancing in the club to "Common People"...

(w/ Kai and Wei, a pair of old-school film-going buddies)

Portishead - Third

This ain't your high school brooding past self's Portishead. It's heavier, darker, more disconcerting - and, astonishing to say, even better.

Third is a journey down a dark motorway, anxious and foreboding and at times positively menacing, but with a heartbeat and the reassuring sound of breathing, however at times fraught, underneath throughout. The beats and rhythms churn and skitter at times (on pulsating opener "Silence", the menacing mid-record emergency siren dash of "We Carry On", or the IDM-crashing "Machine Gun", say), but they're just as likely to be gently, breathily moog-y (I'm thinking especially of the second half of "The Rip") or even, as on the startling voice-and-banjo "Deep Water" or the Hem-meets-Goldfrapp (both at their most hushed) "Small", altogether non-existent.

Highlights for me at this point are "Silence", "Hunter", "The Rip" and "Magic Doors" (this album's "Teardrop", to draw a parallel to a not altogether dissimilar record of the band's once-contemporaries Massive Attack), but the record works best as a whole - as a single flowing stream in which the listener's immersed. Gibbons' voice is still amazing, and the thread running through it all; the melodies are still seemingly dialled in from the universe next door to ours via some weirdly clean-edged static, wrapped up in ether-soaked cotton wool for good measure.

It's also reminded me of how great those two older lps are - Dummy in particular meant an awful lot to me in high school (it was the first 'slow' album that I ever really took to heart, and I've retained strong impressions of walking around the schoolyard and in the suburbs at night listening to my tape of it, not to mention the first amazed thrill of discovering "Roads" and "Glory Box" through late-night, on-the-verge-of-sleep, radio listening) - but it does seem to me to be even better than those older ones, or if not 'better' as such then at least much more of the now, which in these circumstances perhaps amounts to the same thing.

Nellie McKay - Obligatory Villagers

Shorter and with the music hall and jazz elements of McKay's palette more in the foreground than either Get Away From Me or Pretty Little Head, Obligatory Villagers isn't the match of either of those earlier efforts, but it's a dip rather than a serious falling-away in quality - the things that are great about her music (and her) are still in evidence, and of course we do like those things very, very much.

Coldplay - Viva La Vida

Well, I've always quite liked Coldplay: Parachutes was sweet at the time, and I expect it still would be if I knew where my old tape of it was, and A Rush of Blood to the Head was genuinely good, the sound of a band which might be capable of touching greatness at least for moments at a time; I never got around to listening to X&Y, except once, several times over, in Irene's car on the way home from Blairgowrie in, erm, 2005 it must have been, but got the impression that it'd probably be fairly boring. So I had some hopes of Viva La Vida, and I was more than willing to go with the obvious stretching of their sound that they've attempted on it (I'd had a heads up from having heard the second half of "Yes" in jb hi-fi, which sounds like nothing so much as Coldplay doing that glossy Asobi Seksu-style shoegazer thing and hence nothing like anything of theirs that'd I'd heard before).

It starts promisingly; more or less instrumental opener "Life in Technicolour" leaves one feeling that the record could still go either way, but spacey follow-up "Cemeteries of London", complete with Cocteau Twins-esque jangle-and-shimmer, hits the spot, and next track "Lost!" is just as good, graced by a catchy synth and percussion line running through the song and some memorably epic, chiming guitar figures. After that, though, it's not exactly downhill, but it just doesn't quite fit together, whether they're trying somewhat incongruous song suites, copping licks from the Arcade Fire (both of the above on "Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love"), doing strange things with Spanish-sounding strings and lower-register Chris Martin singing (the first 'movement' of "Yes") or working a kind of Beatles meets the Verve seam ("Violet Hill" - and doing it pretty well at that). I can't put my finger on where it is that the album falls down - maybe, it just doesn't reach the great heights to which it so clearly aspires and, in so doing, spreads itself too thin. And there aren't really any out and out glorious moments or true standout songs...well, there's always next time. They still might have it in them.

The Last Town Chorus - Wire Waltz

A nice little record - the Last Town Chorus seems to basically be Megan Hickey, and the textures of her songs tend to be dominated by her voice (sweet, and one of those which seems always to have a bit of a catch in it) and by the vibrato of her slide guitar, accented by guitars of the acoustic and electric varieties (the latter being a particular feature of her marvellous cover of "Modern Love" and during the epic trail-off of album highlight "It's Not Over"), with only hints of percussion, bass and occasionally piano or organ.

Loosely, I suppose she fits within the sort of folk-country nocturne thing, often tinged with a quietly gothic flavour, that a few acts have had going in recent times - Azure Ray in particular - and the vocals and melodies remind me of the Dearhunters, too.

Greg Egan - Luminous

Neat short story collection - ten stories, most fairly extended, each running with one key idea. The plots tend to be pretty bare (likewise the characterisations), and are often fairly basic detective or search narratives - the structure suits Egan's focus on the science and speculation, which is probably helped by the short story form too. Some were a bit difficult for me to get my mind around without really thinking hard about them, but nearly all pushed me to at least think - consciousness, mathematics and physics (of the space/time variety) are his particular areas.

Aeon Flux

Me: So do you know about this tv series Aeon Flux?
Julian F: Yes.
Me: What's the deal?
Julian F: It's awesome?

It was Andrew B who lent me the dvd set, arising out of a brainstorming session for Ath library dvds a while back; Michelle has talked it up plenty, too. As for me, I found the show striking from a visual and design perspective, and in a way that dove-tails with the deliberate narrative discontinuities (the backdrops and characters are all sharp edges and planes, liminal meetings and thrusting incursions, mechanical techscapes sheering into the organic, all Escher-seque cut, paste and redouble - but in that very unholy series of collisions, the series has a coherency as a whole). Like the way it plays with oppositions and linearity too, disrupting at every turn, not to mention the Low-esque music. The episode-length ones are more ambitious; the shorts more immediate and seemingly graspable; the meaning of the whole remains entirely elusive.

"Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot" (David Williamson) (MTC)

Well, everyone seemed to like this one a lot more than me - 'lightweight' isn't an epithet that I'd necessarily use to criticise a play (or any other kind of work), but in this case it is a criticism. It passed the time amusingly enough, but in the end there was really nothing to it - a thing needn't be weighty or serious in order to be substantial, but in the case of "Scarlett O'Hara", I just felt that there was a lack of substance and a hint of laziness, of careless invocation of stereotypical figures (using that word in its broadest sense) rather than any attempt at a true rendition...so for those reasons, despite Caroline O'Connor's engaging turn as the central wrapped-up-in-cinema dreamer, the mostly on-target digs at modern Australian society, and the number of laughs to be had, this was probably my least favourite of the MTC plays I've been to for the season so far.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

"The 39 Steps" (Patrick Barlow) (MTC)

Turns out I never noted this one - rather remiss of me. It was excellent, anyway, revelling in the theatricality of theatre and highlighting its own artifice at every turn, but in such a way as to add to the joy that a good performance brings - energetic and inventive, but sincere (or perhaps 'grounded') enough that it doesn't descend into pure farce. To put it another way, the core of what one wants from a play - story, characters, sets - aren't obscured despite the production's foregrounding of the artificial apparatus/mechanisms by which those 'core' elements are always (overtly or otherwise) enabled and brought into being. To put it another another way, "The 39 Steps" was hella fun! The archetypally Brit figure at its centre, hinting at but not falling into caricature, makes a great straight man and protagonist for the thriller/caper events of the plot and it rockets ahead at a mile a minute, running through an impressive number of locations and characters as it goes.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

"IMP April 2008"

A mix cd that really deserves the word 'mix', not because it's especially eclectic so far as genre or mood goes, but rather in terms of the range of apparently disparate styles that it brings together in what feels (sounds) like a cohesive whole. Leading off with Gary Jules' "Mad World", it then proceeds to skip through a range of silky indie-pop type stuff ("Here's Where the Story Ends", "Common People", Big Head Todd's "Bittersweet", etc) interspersed with bits and pieces of bossa nova and Brazilian-sounding flavourings (Gilberto Gil's "Asa branca", "Corcovado" by Astrud Gilberto, Joao Gilberto, Tom Jobim and Stan Getz, some Manu Chao) and several with aspects of both (the Cure's "The 13th", never a favourite of mine but a good fit here, say, and the Sugarcubes' "Hit", and "When You're Falling" by Peter Gabriel & the Afro-Celt Sound System). I like a lot of the songs individually, too. v.g.

(from Laura in Waltham, MA)

"Mighty Mars"

Kind of a mellow mix, despite the presence of TV on the Radio ("I Was a Lover"), the Drones ("I Don't Ever Want to Change") and Muse ("Knights of Cydonia" - which is cool and all but, trumpets notwithstanding, I don't reckon matches the best moments from Absolution and Origin of Symmetry). The first song is the best - "The Old Man's Back Again", by Scott Walker, a lushly cinematic adult pop thing. Also like the Pete Yorn song, "Georgie Boy" (he has a knack for writing songs which never drag), and Dylan and Natalie Merchant welcome as always, too.

(from David)

"IMP mix - Jan 2008: The Best of 2007"

Just wanted to note this...haven't yet managed to listen to it all the way through. Seems like it might be pretty cool, but sometimes and for some things, life's too short.

(from Steven in the UK)

Nelly Furtado - Loose

Hmm, this is pretty okay, but it hasn't grabbed me in the way that the POP I really love does. Surprisingly consistent, though, and has its moments.

The New Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan & Gardner Dozois

Read this over a period of a few months; a few good ones, but none really stuck in my mind. Mainly, I was hoping they'd be in the vein of Stephen Donaldson's Gap series, but, you know, they turned out to be not so much like those. Guess I'm not really that into this kind of stuff is what it comes down to, 'cause they generally seemed well written and put together.

Radiohead - In Rainbows

It started with OK Computer; never thought it would end like this. It's been a gradual process, but Radiohead has moved from front and centre of my musical landscape to a place nearer the periphery (though the topographical metaphors are tricky, because the band played such a large part in shaping said landscape in the first place)...anyway, the upshot is that while I got In Rainbows right near the beginning of the year, or whenever the deluxe box set arrived in the post, I haven't felt moved to listen to it over and over (at least, not until the last couple of days a little bit).

In Rainbows leads off with a Kid A-esque skid-and-clatter and reedy Yorke chant which doesn't take long to develop into a wiry sort of latter-day Radiohead pastoral almost-rocker ("15 Steps"), followed by a more out and out chugging rock song of the kind that they've been putting on the last few lps ("Bodysnatchers" - like "15 Steps", it's good), but it's a misleading opening pair, because as a whole In Rainbows is actually the band's prettiest album (knocking off The Bends, I reckon, though it's a near thing). They've retained the production style and general aesthetic of their more recent work, but the songs themselves feel much more organic - guitars, pianos and vocals are at the forefront, and while one still feels that the band is stretching itself, the music here feels more like a shading in of territory already skipped over or hinted at in previous releases, rather than a break or leap in a new direction in the vein of Kid A (which seems destined to remain the high water mark in that respect, both in terms of the change that it marked from what had gone before it to that date, and on its own intrinsic musical terms - more and more, it seems the critical document in their discography taken as a whole).

A very high proportion of the rest of the record is made up of plaintive, circling, sometimes-verging-on-miraculous Radiohead Ballads ("Nude", "All I Need", "Videotape" - and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" and the version of "Reckoner" on here almost qualify as well), and then there's a pair of quiet, folky meditations, one of which ("Faust Arp") reminds me in equal parts of Pink Floyd at their sparest and Nick Drake, while the other kind of takes its cues more from Robert Wyatt ("House of Cards"), plus only one other fairly rocky track near the end in "Jigsaw Falling Into Place"...and it's all very good - there isn't a weak song amongst them, and the replay value is pretty high. But somehow, I haven't internalised it in the way that I did all of their others up to (but not including) HTTT...

The cuts on the second disc are generally less fully-realised, but the songs are still strong, and largely in line with the style of the album proper.

"IMP March 2008"

A low key mix, with an understated modern-folk stream running through it (Vetiver's "You May Be Blue" is an early standout) and a bit of a funk section near the middle. The best track's "Care", by an artist named Kaada - a lushly circling number brushed with elements of soul and doo-wop circa 1950s through to early 60s along with some contemporary electronic touches. Also features Emmylou's deathless "All My Tears" and a faintly raucous cover of "Don't Let It Bring You Down" by an outfit called Weeping Tile.

(from Richard in Ontario, Canada)

Juno soundtrack

Like the movie, very likeable. The Kimya Dawson stuff is nice, especially with memories of the film still fairly fresh; the rest of it is neat all round, taken as a whole.

Shoot 'Em Up

Rented this entirely for the spectacle and it comes through on that front. So over the top is it, actually, that I half-suspect the film's trying to have it both ways, playing both as a hyper-action flick and as a satire (there's something similar at work in the muddled stance that it hints at taking on gun control). It's all extremely throwaway, but entertaining enough, aided by Clive Owen's presence at its centre.

Sunshine

Pitches its camp halfway between the metaphysical speculations of a Solaris and more straight-up entries in the space/sci-fi genre and does a pretty good job. Lingers a bit, and packs a decent punch.

Lisa Germano - Excerpts from a Love Circus

Excerpts from a Love Circus has a weird glamour to it - it's like some junkyard princess's imaginary diary, set to music and distorted by its passage through the looking glass...everything she touches is lightly dusted in a sort of fractured, broken-apart-and-put-back-together pop sensibility, at once knowing and somehow retaining an air of the naïf.

"Small Heads" is still perfect, delightfully off-balance and impossibly catchy, lyrics at once hinting at the profound and verging on nonsensical tossed off in Germano's husky drawl while all the little musical details accumulate underneath (plinking piano, recorder, unidentifiable percussive bits, a snatch of her too cool for words violin-playin', etc); the song's like a miniature Tom Waits pop ditty as done by a girl or something. It's been one of my favourite songs for years and is just as good in the setting of the album.

Others that are especially good: "Baby on the Plane", "Bruises", "I Love a Snot", "We Suck" (a ballad!).

"Frost/Nixon" (Peter Morgan) (MTC)

The word that comes to mind in describing this one is 'solid'. The opposition (albeit and unsurprisingly not, in the end, a true opposition) between Nixon, fallen from grace but not yet resigned to the fact nor necessarily beyond redemption in the public eye, and flamboyant British interviewer/talk show host David Frost is sturdily built up and eventually played out in the series of interviews between them, culminating in a (surely imaginary) late night telephone conversation between the pair and then the final interview segment. It's nothing spectacular, but enjoyable and well-made enough (and distinguished by quite a sympathetic portrayal of Nixon, too).

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

Uncollected Galaxie 500

More! Not generally as searing as their lp or live recordings, but still well worth the listen, and I'd only heard a few before.

They really were a great band.

Gotan Project - Lunatico

Very listenable set of modern tango infused with downbeat electro and lounge elements - I like the more upbeat, swirling numbers more but it all works pretty well.

"Dear Art, Please Touch Me"

Pleasant way to spend an hour or so on a Sunday morning. Part of the Next Wave festival, this is an 'audio tour' of selected works in the permanent collection of the NGV Australia by way of two or three minute ipod-ed audio tracks of ordinary punters' responses to the works in question. Some are funny, some are sad, one or two are quite insightful (particularly the one on the Albert Tucker beach/sunbather painting), and a handful are really off the wall. It's striking that the respondents tend to respond to the art very much in terms of their own lives and experiences rather than seeming to engage with it at all on the pieces' own terms or opening themselves up genuinely to what the works might have to say.

(More info)

(w/ Andrew B and Julian F)

The Concretes - Hey Trouble

The problem with Hey Trouble is that it lacks that most essential prerequisite of pop music - excitement. One might ascribe that to Victoria Bergsman's departure, but truth be told, while In Colour did indeed have its rainbow moments, even that latter didn't come near the frost-edged joy of the band's debut lp - as much as I want to continue to like the Concretes, it looks as if that first album might have been one out of the box that the band will never be able to top, or even replicate.

On Hey Trouble, a couple of songs in the middle, "Oh Boy" and "Keep Yours" take off a little bit, and there are aspects of others which save the rest of the album from being a dead loss ("A Whales Heart" doesn't really hold together as a song, but has some nice hooks and textures; "Firewatch" is a bit catchy in an In Colour sort of way), but in general too many of the songs just meander along, seeming to echo or quote melodies rather than being really melodic in their own right and never properly catching alight. A disappointment, and maybe a reminder of how ephemeral genuine pop inspiration almost always seems to be.

Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings

Moderately arty song titles accompanying moderately arty indie-pop songs, with occasional trumpets. Understated and likeable, and Lewis' charismatic character is as a vocalist already well apparent, as well as the band's handiness with a tune.

Lori Carson - The Finest Thing

I have a feeling this might actually be quite good, but it's far too indistinct and muted for me in the present state of my musical preferences...

"A Gesture in Reciprocation"

A mix from Kim of a while ago, made up entirely of covers (a perennial favourite mix cd theme, of course). An intro (Bobby McFerrin's "From Me To You") and four parts which could be broken down as 'women', 'men' and 'legends' (Waits, Cash, Joni Mitchell) and then a one-track closer in a lovely version of "When I Fall In Love" as done by the Keith Jarrett Trio.

Favourites: Eva Cassidy's "Time After Time" (of course), Vonda Shepherd's take on "Don't Think Twice it's Alright" (much less predictably, and only after a few listens), Jeff Buckley's searing "Je n'en Connais pas la Fin" (live), Fanfare Ciocarlia's "Born to Be Wild" and the Keith Jarrett piece.

The Orphanage

A haunted house movie, basically - and one which deliberately invokes all of the tropes of the genre to good effect, often putting a spin on those familiar elements that pushes them in just a slightly different direction. In particular, the film's knowing in its use of The Turn of the Screw-esque trappings in playing out that old real/imagined ghosts ambiguity, the rendition of which, I've thought before (in a slightly different context), the medium of cinema particularly lends itself to; and, then, the way that that ambiguity is eventually resolved/left unresolved is both unsurprising and deeply consonant with the most interesting aspects of the film, not to mention rather satisfying.

It is quite scary - unsettling, with a few huge 'jump' and, separately, 'chills' moments in its second half - and I think that's part of the film's primary purpose: it's supposed to have that kind of effect, just for its own sake. But then, too, the unsettling elements of The Orphanage are wrapped up with, and feed into, its wider narrative concerns, particularly the 'Peter Pan' thread and the questioning of perception/reality; there are creepiness-induced chills throughout, but then the last couple, which we experience (physiologically) identically to those earlier ones, are actually brought on by something rather different (if bound up with the earlier creepiness inasmuch as they follow from them), a genuine emotional experience.

(w/ Michelle, Tamara and Andrew B - all enjoyed the film, I think, though MF and TV seemed seriously creeped out by it)

Mates of State - Re-Arrange Me

I never noticed before that Mates of State sound a bit like the New Pornographers; then again, it's probably on this, their latest, that the resemblance is most obvious. I imagine that it's still just the two of them (husband + wife, infamously), but the sound is fuller, facilitated by an instrument change-up, meaning that the whole record has more of a richness to it and its best songs ("The Re-Arranger" and "Blue and Gold Print" in particular) pack more of an immediate punch than before. They're not a band to set my world on fire, especially given that I haven't especially been feeling things 'twee' of late, but in a small, unassuming way, they do make it a slightly better place.

Dixie Chicks - Home

Another extremely solid album from the gals (tho I'm more or less working my way backwards from most recent to earliest) - they just know how to do what they do. It's the weepies and the ballads that stand out on Home - their "Travelin' Soldier" and "Top of the World", say - but, as ever, whatever they tackle here, they do well.

Blonde Redhead - 23

23 is a rush of an album, kaleidoscopic and star-like, spinning from one bright, sparkling point to another. It reminds me a bit of Asobi Seksu's last, Citrus, in its 21st century outer space-y take on dream-pop/shoegaze swirl, but whereas that other tends to crash through in swathes of sound and colour, 23 has more of a downbeat, twilight zone fm radio air and a hint of a prog feel at the edges (somewhat a la Air); it also retains much of the fraught, fragmented elegance of Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons (a while ago, Michelle set me up with a whole stack of the band's back catalogue - all of the albums actually, I think - so they're there for me in due course, too).

I've mentioned the title track before, and listened to it an awful lot since then; the others that I especially like are "Dr Strangeluv" and "Silently".

The Ruby in the Smoke

Passable-to-good adaptation of the book. Some popstar named Billie Piper played Sally (okay, that was a bit disingenuous - I'd heard of her before, but don't know her stuff) and carried it off pretty well; the production has 'bbc' written all over it, but that's no bad thing in this case.

Laura Cantrell - The Hello Recordings

I adore Laura Cantrell - I just find her music so very winsome and she's one of my very favourites these days. Anyway, this was her first record, I think - an ep - and, while a bit rough and ready, it shows definite signs of what was to come.

lps
Not The Tremblin' Kind
When The Roses Bloom Again
Humming By The Flowered Vine

Emilie Simon - The Flower Book

An appealing record, this, covering a wide range of electro-pop styles - the shimmering stomp of "Fleur de Saison" proves to be both representative and extremely misleading when it comes to forming expectations of the whole. It's hard to pick favourites, but I do like the rainy-day tendresses of "To The Dancers In The Rain", the feyly jaunty "Flowers" ("I want to buy you flowers,/ It's such a shame you're a boy,/ But when you are not a girl/ Nobody buys you flowers"), and the slightly tougher, cut-and-paste "Song Of The Storm"...sure, it verges on the precious at times, but forgivably so for mine, particularly given how goshdarned romantic it so frequently is.

Previously: live.

Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers

It's taken a little while, but Asking for Flowers has grown on me. More folksy and perhaps a tad more wide-ranging than her previous records, it's also, I think, more sophisticated - the songs are less immediate, but somehow more deeply musical and faceted. Downbeat "Alicia Ross" is a case in point - delicate and wistful, but lit with a strong emotional burn, it's miles ahead of the slower songs on Failer and Back To Me; and the rockers, too, are more nuanced than previous efforts without sacrificing the catchiness that's such a strength of Edwards' - witness "The Cheapest Key", "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" and "Oil Man's War"...and in a different category again is the title track, a mid-tempo tune which just hits the spot. All of that said, I don't think that Flowers will replace Back To Me in my affections - that other is too closely wrapped up with a particular time and mood for me to be impeachable, and its high points are higher...but it's really damn solid anyway.

The Big Lebowski / Blades of Glory

The Saturday night before last's viewing with Wei and Julian F. Blades of Glory I'd seen before and it was still pretty funny, but somehow I'd always missed The Big Lebowski previously despite the universal rave reviews. For my part, I liked it well enough but didn't get hugely into the film - it's funny and I like what it does, but I don't think I'm wired to really respond to its mix of subtle humour/wryness and brazen splashes of colour...I'm just left feeling as if I've bitten wholeheartedly into something that was sweet enough but evaporated in my mouth almost straight away (erm, unnecessarily picturesque attempt to convey my response, obviously).

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

This film probably would've been charming anyway, but what particularly makes it is the turns put in by its leads - Amy Adams is delicious and Frances McDormand just right, and their interplay hits all the right notes. As the somewhat grave older love interest, Ciaran Hinds (previously known to me as Julius Caesar in Rome) is good, too, and another of my Brit female actor crushes stakes, Shirley Henderson, also cut a swathe, her character pleasingly sharp-edged and aloof, always black and incessantly smoking, of course. (Such wonderful names, by the way, too! Guinevere Pettigrew, Delysia Lafosse, Edyth Dubarry, and so on...)

It's frothy, but has a serious side as well; without particularly being a 'message' film, it's not blind to the social realities of the milieu it depicts (that of the well-to-do and the rather less so at the very tail end of the jazz age), and when the happy ending we knew all along was coming does, indeed come, it's unsurprising but doesn't rankle in the slightest. The film - it is what it is, and entertaining at it.

(w/ Kai)

30 Days of Night

Totally thought this was gonna be rad, or at least that it had a serious shot at it, based on cool premise - vampires in Alaska, where once a year the sun doesn't rise for 30 days (ie, = vampire buffet). Actually, though, it's only okay...watchable but sorta not all that satisfying. Oh well.

Lars and the Real Girl

Really sweet. It doesn't poke fun or take the low road at any point despite a premise in which the risk of all of the above, whether advertent or otherwise, is ever-present - who'd have thought that a film about a sex doll could be so gentle, kind and hopeful?

A lot of that comes from Ryan Gosling's performance - above all else, it was critical that he be (a) believable and (b) sympathetic, and he comes through on both counts, sweet, bemused, seemingly torn between hopefulness and resignation - and a fair bit's owed to the warm turns put in by Emily Mortimer (surely one of the most sheerly delightful actors going around at the moment - and definitely a good candidate for 'British female actor' crush-dom) and Paul Schneider (whose character was a kind of 'me' surrogate in more than one way at various points), but the main thing about it is really the air of the whole, which kinda reminded me of Me and You and Everyone We Know. I'm not sure how to describe it - kind of removed but close at the same time, like hot breath on the other side of a pane of glass, or something.

For some reason, the 'sensitive outsider boy is saved by quirky beautiful girl dropping from the sky' (see Garden State, etc, etc) thing didn't irritate me at all in this one - maybe because one can't help but feel that he really earns his happy ending, and maybe because that particular narrative isn't the primary focus of the film (though it's strongly implied throughout). Plus, it has a cool soundtrack including good use of "Naive Melody".

(w/ SL)

Philip Pullman - Once Upon a Time in the North

Kind of a cowboy tale, as the title suggests - and we already knew from the trilogy that Lee Scoresby was in that mold. The general appeal of this novelette (novella?) is obvious - it takes us back to the His Dark Materials universe (I use that word advisedly in this context)...the particular (subsidiary) appeal is equally apparent - it recounts the first meeting between Lee and Iorek.

Anyway, it's got a bit of energy to it - yeah, it's pretty good. But ultimately more a deepening of the original pleasure of the main trilogy than a particular delight in its own right, I think (although of course the whole point is that it's impossible to tell).

"Garage2V"

I forgot to mention that, when I saw Stars a while back, the support act was a neat little act called Plastic Palace Alice, who were sorta one part Arcade Fire and one part Stars (though a bit more modest than either) and good at it. Anyway, a bit further down the track, picked up this eight track sampler-type cd at the local 7-11 (free, obviously) - all local acts aiming to make it. Nothing much particularly grabbed me - the shadow of the AF lies heavily over several of the cuts (including PPA's "Empire Falls"), and there's a bit of Rapture vibe coming through on a couple as well...

Three novels in first person present tense

Greg Egan - Quarantine

This was a loan from Andrew B, in response to a mass-emailed request for recommendations of first person present tense writing; it hasn't turned out to be particularly useful or illuminating from a 'learning the craft of first person present tense writing' perspective, but where it did prove effective was in blowing my mind a bit with its play on ideas surrounding wave function collapse and quantum mechanics generally, and 'working through' of some imagined implications (cosmological genocide, anyone?).


Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife

Dear reader,

Let me tell you what I did a few Saturdays ago, viz: woke up, felt a bit under the weather, saw that Wei was reading The Time Traveler's Wife, decided to read it, read it (yeah, that's right - all in one rather long session and with a certain amount of skimming to find out what happened next and rather in a haze but still).

And? And it's good - it made me want to keep reading, and it got to me. I still think that it's basically a marginally more clever take on the chick-lit thing (not particularly more emotionally clever, but certainly cleverer from a craft point of view), but I understand what all the fuss was about, and thanks to my direct response rather than in any particularly distanced way. Nice.

Also, by way of a historical document, an extract from an email, NV to me, 19/6/06:

I think I need to have a talk with you though Mr Choo regarding your bold pronouncements regarding the written word. Actually just so you know, the following tirade by me is given to you with love rather than anger and is prompted not by Kite Runner buy by the Time Traveller's Wife.

I understand that you are a student of literature and therefore are very worthy of making the bold pronouncements, but I worry that by branding a book (as you sometimes do) before you read it, you go to it with a preconceived notion of what it will be like and this skews your later interpretation. Why not come at it with a cloudless mind, take the journey, and see how you feel as a result. Any pronouncements you make after the fact I am sure will be more accurate of your own experience.

[...] literature is art and one purpose of art is to make you feel, and if you come to art with a notion of how other people felt, you deny yourself your own true feeling.


M J Hyland - How the Light Gets In

Carry Me Down was unexpectedly excellent - it gripped me and got a bit under my skin when I read it last year. Re-reading my impressions of that other, I'm fortified in my response to How the Light Gets In, Hyland's debut novel: it's not quite as skillfully crafted as Carry Me Down, nor (commensurately) quite as good, but it's much like it, particularly in the impression that it leaves - faintly unsettling, maybe, but also more something else on which one can't easily put one's finger...

Charade

Watched this on the last night of book club weekend away at Trentham, a while back now. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant - much fun.

So, yesterday...

Re-read South of the Border, West of the Sun.
[Edit 6/9/17: most of this one deleted on the grounds of being autobiography]

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson @ Corner Hotel, Wednesday 9 April

Album launch - pretty okay. Sounded more country/bluegrassy and less glossy than Carnival [and see also here], which might or might not bode well for the album itself...

(w/ Kevin and Shaun)

V Festival @ Melbourne Showgrounds, Saturday 5 April

Morning dramas, disorganisation, etc led to SL and I getting there too late for Robyn, which was a bit of a disappointment - but so it goes. Actually playing when we arrived were Hot Hot Heat, who were underwhelming - didn't seem especially into it (not especially not, either - they just didn't particularly have it going on)...though neither were they well served by the perplexingly low volume at which the music was mixed (a problem which afflicted all of the acts on the "this stage", at least, with the possible exception of the Pumpkins at day's end).

Then we saw a bit of Cut/Copy - they didn't leave much of an impression. And after that, Modest Mouse, who were wicked excellent. I've never really listened to their stuff, though I've kinda heard quite a lot of it along the way, but live I could dig it - very Indie Rock but very good with it. SL and Nenad both afficionados and clearly feeling the love. Oh yeah, and Johnny Marr was part of the band! Too bloody marvellous to hear that straightaway recognisable guitar sound...things were looking up. (Hooked up with Michelle and others somewhere around this point...throughout it was very much a day for meeting and then re-meeting.)

Then we went and saw Roisin Murphy who, colourful and energetic and charismatic as hell, could really potentially have been the highlight of the day had we been able to stay for more than about a song and a half before the tyranny of the irritating overlapping times dragged us back to the main stage to ensure a good position for the Jesus & Mary Chain - the main reason why I decided to hit the festival in the first place.

About the JAMC, well, a part of me thought that it was pretty great to hear all those familiar songs (especially the Psychocandy ones) and a fair few that I didn't know, too, being played live right in front of me (we worked our way pretty close to the front for this one)...that was quite a large part of me, natch. But at the same time it wasn't quite all that - the band was too tight, its sound too clean, too lacking in feedback, squalls, roughness...the sound of a bunch of 40-somethings covering familiar ground rather than of kids in their 20s searching something out. It gave me something, still, but wasn't a patch on last year's reformed icon the Pixies.

Then went off to other stage and caught a bit of Air, who were fairly rock star and really pretty good, a bit to my surprise. I've never taken the duo to heart, but somehow they seem to keep bobbing up - "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch The Stars" (both of which we saw them do at V) are lodged firmly in my consciousness, Talkie Walkie picked up a few associations when it came out, and then of course there's the S Coppola connection - and this was pleasant and even a bit more...

We were in two minds about whether QOTSA or CSS was a better option next - but we swung by the first of those and they were playing all songs that we knew, so we stuck around and were rewarded with a solid set of rock tunes, intensely played. Dudes know how to play their instruments - and, in Homme's case, to sing.

And finally the Pumpkins, fronted of course by Corgan, loving every moment of the rock star adulation that was offered up by the crowd. Kicked off with "Today" and ran through plenty enough of the old hits to satisfy ("Bullet", "1979", "Zero"...) as well as a bunch of other stuff (not least a jagged cover of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun") - it was spectacular and messy and not really incredibly satisfying, but still, it was, you know, the Pumpkins (or at least two of four plus others) and they've been there for me in some sense since high school and all, so yeah.

All up, the festival was okay - some good moments but a total lack of great ones. Suffered from a lack of atmosphere (see above re: volume, and also the general vibe of too many people just standing around and not really into the music) and an absence of any one act (at least of those that I saw) that really threatened to tear the figurative rafters off...too glossy, too safe. Maybe this is what comes of stacking the lineup with tasteful acts with plenty of cred who are now past their peak of popularity (and having the festival prominently sponsored by a corporate)...

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

More good stuff. I've been listening to this album a lot in the last few days, including on the ol' late night work patrol. Especially into the way it starts, airy-then-crashing "Is there A Ghost" and then the rocky-then-delicately oceanic "Ode to LRC" (is it actually a song about a dog? or about a dog and a town, maybe? oh yeah, and "the world's such a wonderful place"...but it works, it really does); also like the way that it's short! Really, really good in patches - and not always the same patches from listen to listen. One to try to see live when they come down for sure.

Also: Everything All The Time

The Kinks - The Singles Collection

Well, it sure is great to be able to walk around just listening to the Kinks and feeling, you know, the way one feels when listening to the Kinks.

(My faves tend to be the ones I already knew - "You Really Got Me", "Lola", "A Well Respected Man", "Waterloo Sunset" of course...though that last has never struck quite the same chord with me that it seems to with many others.)

Sarah Blasko - The Overture & the Underscore

More wistful, ghostly, strangely familiar sounding Sarah Blasko song-weaves (actually, her first lp I think).

Also: What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have

"John Dies At The End"

Low-brow, scatological, consistently in bad taste, and frickin hilarious and impossible to stop reading. Schlock horror comedy - all available online. Check it and don't look back.

(here - and the first half of the sequel here)

The Anniversary Party

I can tell you the whole reason why SL and I rented this in three words: Jennifer Jason Leigh. (Obviously my doing, not hers.) Not only does Leigh star in this one, but she also co-wrote/directed it, too...anyway, it's clearly her baby and that of the other central creative figure in/behind the film, one Alan Cumming. All of that said, I thought it was only so-so - an ensemble drama-comedy full of Hollywood types (Parker Posey, Kevin Kline, John C Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, and others familiar by face if not always by name), about Hollywood types, that never properly gets beyond its obvious 'write about what you know' origins.

Patty Griffin - Children Running Through & live @ the Palais, Friday 28 March

Bought the cd - my first of hers - in anticipation of the show, having been carried along by Kevin's momentum. It's a much more diverse affair than I'd anticipated, but all of the ground she covers, she covers well, from airy, Eva Cassidy-styled folk wisps through blues 'n soul infused jams to classic stripped back country ballads and rollicking bar-room rockers - and that's just the first four songs! It all works, partly because the girl knows how to write a song, and partly because - damn - the girl can sing.

It comes through on the album, but just how great a singer she is wasn't fully apparent until the show...live, her voice was simply magnificent. Were it not for the sheer unlikelihood of this happening, I would have been convinced that she was miming to a pre-recorded track - it seemed unfathomable that one person could be producing so rich, pure and expressive a sound...yeah, it was somethin', and a very solid show through and through.

Listening to Children Running Through, I initially got stuck on the sun-dazed "Burgundy Shoes" before the upbeatness of "No Bad News" replaced it in my affections - pleasingly, that latter drew the biggest response from the crowd at the Palais...it's definitely one of my personal anthems so far for this year; also, and somewhat oddly, it's pretty similar to the AF's "Keep the Car Running" - which is no bad thing, of course.

Dead Like Me season 2

As much as I liked its first season, Dead Like Me gets even better in season 2. I'm not sure about this, but I have a feeling that the focus shifts somewhat from the various deaths that punctuate each of the eps to the main characters; it's definitely increasingly involving as it goes on, no doubt in part because of the amount we have invested by then...I felt that it really hit its stride in the episodes dealing with George's dalliance with Trip; another memorable story arc involves Daisy - especially the ep where we see her with the 'other woman' who meets her end in the hotel room.

I don't know, the show just has a way - it's gentle, kinda wry, and full of life. It's not overtly moody, but it casts a spell. There's just something about it.

(season 1)

Perfect pop songs

Got into a pub conversation with Shaun and Kevin about perfect pop songs the other evening - before Kasey Chambers, actually, which I'll get round to writing about at some point in the course of working through the increasingly massive blog backlog that I've developed - and was then inspired to come up with a list. Twenty-five, because that's where Shaun drew his line (ie, 'the 25 most perfect pop songs'); I think that there are a few different notions of 'perfect pop song' working their way through here, but it's an honest to goodness attempt at it in which I stuck to my guns and valiantly resisted all thoughts of the 'but surely there must be at least one Beatles/Beach Boys/Kinks/Supremes/Elton John/Talking Heads/etc song' variety...the flip side being that some of my preoccupations come through fairly clearly (jangly songs, and anthems-masquerading-as-ballads and vice versa, in particular). Anyway, in more or less chronological order:

I Fall To Pieces - Patsy Cline
Be My Baby – The Ronettes
Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
Mr Tambourine Man – The Byrds
California Dreamin’ – The Mamas and the Papas
A Whiter Shade Of Pale – Procol Harum
Breakfast In Bed – Dusty Springfield
Perfect Day – Lou Reed
Killing Me Softly With His Song – Roberta Flack
September Gurls – Big Star
Life On Mars? – David Bowie
Alison – Elvis Costello
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
Billie Jean – Michael Jackson
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out – The Smiths
Close To Me – The Cure
When Doves Cry – Prince
Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House
Just Like Heaven – The Cure
Debaser – Pixies
Losing My Religion – R.E.M.
You’re In A Bad Way – Saint Etienne
The State I Am In – Belle and Sebastian
Save Me – Aimee Mann
The Way We Get By – Spoon

Wilco & the Drones @ the Palace, Wednesday 26 March

So yeah, liked I'd expected, the Drones are pretty kick-ass live - bluesier than on record, and equally rockin'...I got pretty into it.

But the main event, natch, was Wilco. Last time round was sit down and faraway - this time, we were in the thick of it and close...far, far better. As shows goes, after a tenuous, country-heavy beginning, it was pretty total - two and a half hours of selections from their whole discography, even including several from A.M., and all good. So many of the songs just made me so happy and light and a little bit giddy ("California Stars", "She's A Jar", "A Shot In The Arm", etc, etc...)...I figured out a while ago that Wilco're one of my favourite bands, and this gig was a reminder about why even though I'd put it in the 'good' rather than 'great' show category.

It also, incidentally, reminded me of how many of the songs on the last couple of albums, and Sky Blue Sky in particular, are really all about the awesome guitar bit which kicks in somewhere near the middle to end. I've thought before that one of the great things about Wilco is the way they make me feel both happy and sad at the same time; to that duality add 'drifty' and 'energised', too, I reckon. Oh, yeah.

(w/ Jon)

Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers

It's not exactly that I'd given up on the Manics, but more that a creeping kind of apathy had overtaken me when it came to the band - I still liked their early to mid period stuff, especially The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go, though more in the abstract than in the actuality of ever really spinning them nowadays, and even Know Your Enemy had its share of moments, but I never got round to Lifeblood and, I guess, disinterest reigned.

But a while back I read an review of Send Away The Tigers, their latest, somewhere on the internets which was all like oh my god the Manic Street Preachers are back in form, so I thought I should listen to it, and guess what - while it's not a patch on those older classics, there's a lot to like here. The album comes across like a glossier Everything Must Go, with a dash of the more riffy hard rock Generation Terrorists, and in "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough" (smashing duet with Nina Persson from the Cardigans - I got totally stuck on this one last Saturday while hanging around at home vefore V festival), "Autumnsong" ("Sweet Child O Mine"-esque guitars!) and "Underdogs" has some quality to it, too.

"Sidney Nolan" @ NGV Australia

It's easy to slip into accustomed ways of experiencing things - definitely something to which I'm prone - and in the spirit of avoiding that kind of laziness of the imagination, I went into the Nolan exhibition determined to open myself to whatever it might hold.

One thing that was striking about the exhibition is the extent to which it highlights the relationship between Nolan's travels and the art he produced, with dramatics shifts in not only subject matter but also style seemingly closely correlated to the particular places through which he was passing or had recently passed at the times of their creation; my favourites, as far as I can remember (it was a couple of weeks ago now), were the deep, craggy central Australia rockscapes and the second series of Ned Kellys (the later, messianic ones as opposed to the more famous earlier ones) which if I remember correctly were inspired by his exposure to sacred art in Italy. Also striking were the colours he used, particularly the vivid azures (which always strike a chord) - those, and some other aspects, put me a bit in mind of James Gleeson's stuff. And some cool tricks with perspective, too, including a recurring trope of things appearing too large or 'foregrounded' in a scene relative to everything else.

Overall, though, it wasn't especially my thing. I liked bits, but nothing really spoke to me - some engaged me viscerally but fleetingly, others tugged at more critical/analytical/experience-of-experiential parts of me but similarly didn't really lodge...well, we like what we like, and increasingly so, I suppose.

(w/ Jade T)

Three things to anticipate

Very exciting...new Philip Pullman, newish but I hadn't heard about it before Nellie McKay (oh Nellie McKay, how I do love her), new Kathleen Edwards...

"Love Gone Bad" (IMP February 2008)

Any mix cd that throws in "Reno Dakota" (as in the Magnetic Fields) and "Torn" (as in Natalie Imbruglia) back to back gets major points in my books. Extra props for a pair of very nice jangly alt-country weepies in the Drive-By Truckers' "Goddamn Lonely Love" (the title says it all) and Steve Earle's "I Thought You Should Know" (which, oddly - and I'm pretty sure I'm not just making this up - cops some girl group licks). And bonus points for ending with a "Pink Triangle"/"Hate It Here" split.

A couple of other familiar songs - Ben Folds Five's still grin-inducing "Song for the Dumped" and Elvis C's rather saccharine (if not all bad) "A Good Year For The Roses" - and a few other fun/good ones (Jay-Z's "Song Cry" and Ween's "Piss Up A Rope" particularly fitting both parts of that compound phrase)...all up pretty good.

(from Bruce in Chapel Hill, NC)