"Define irony": Reality Bites

People were talking about Janeane Garofalo the other night, and it was that which put me in the mood to revisit Reality Bites, but - I must be honest here - when I last watched this film, somewhere in the latter part of high school (ie, probably about three or four years on from its 1994 release date), it was really all about Winona Ryder, my first movie star crush, and not one that I can find it in myself to feel any shame about at all.

I don't remember exactly where this film fit in with that particular story - after Heathers (which I'm fairly sure is where it all started) and possibly Edward Scissorhands but before Bram Stoker's Dracula, Beetlejuice, the Gillian Armstrong Little Women and How To Make An American Quilt I reckon (as to those last two, I can only plead a genuine cinematic crush) - but it was early on, at any rate. All wrapped up with that, too, and in some ways more significantly, Reality Bites was, for better or for worse, highly influential on me in terms of forming my ideas and hopes as to what grown up life would be like (the only other film to've had a similar influence on me at around that time was Love and Other Catastrophes, which I got to a bit later), at the very time when the then seemingly limitless potential of the world was just starting to open up for me (remember, dear reader, I was probably about 15 or 16 at the time).

...so, despite the eminent fashionability of sneering at this film for what might unkindly be characterised as its shallowness, its naivete, its lack of edge, I fully expected that revisiting it now would induce at least a twinge in me, not so much at its face value (though, let's be honest, some of that too), but for the nostalgia that it was likely to summon, for the 90s and for the time in my life when I first saw it, and that's just what it did; more than that, though, I was struck by how sweetly romantic it is, and if my receptiveness to that kind of tone is always going to fluctuate according to any number of factors (witness, in a different context, the see-sawing re: Garden State), well, I'm not troubled by that...and I think I've both realised and acknowledged that this one, Reality Bites, is an important signpost in my history, and so, so be it. I'm glad I've watched it again, now.

12 Monkeys

Gilliam does sci-fi; I recalled it as being visually spectacular, quixotically grotesque, and rather unsettling, all of which proved to remain true on a rewatch, though knowing in advance how all the pieces fit together takes some of the sting out.

"life changing, mind altering, breathtaking" (books)

...those being the criteria that someone I know (CL) came up with when I asked her for some parameters to her request for book recommendations (this being a person who I don't know well at all, either personality or lit tastes-wise). So this is what I came up with, off the cuff:

Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities

A series of graceful, poetic meditations on 'invisible cities' - imagined cities ostensibly visited by Marco Polo and then described by the great explorer in an extended philosophical conversation with Kublai Khan. I've never read anything else like it; to call it a 'novel' does its uniqueness a disservice.

Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49

A warning: Pynchon is certainly not for everyone! But Lot 49 is his most accessible book and probably his best, an absurdist, crazily unravelling and frequently, blackly hilarious postmodern detective story in which what is at stake is nothing less than the very possibility of communication, meaning and truth itself.

Haruki Murakami - Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

For mine, Murakami is the single writer to have best synthesised the competing urges and joys of 'literary' and 'genre' fiction to produce something wholly original and great. Hard-Boiled Wonderland is probably my favourite - it's clever, cool, lucid, heart-breaking, inspiring. It's about the nature of consciousness and how that relates to what we think of as reality; it's also a gripping adventure story.

Nicole Krauss - The History of Love

A more modest book than the others I've mentioned here, and also more recent, but a substantial one nonetheless. It deals with family, loss, and the nature of human connection, and it builds to an almost unbearably touching ending that literally induced chills down my spine in the final pages.

Andre Gide - The Counterfeiters (Les Faux-Monnayeurs)

Another that isn't for everyone, but The Counterfeiters is a masterpiece. Coolly amoral, ironically intellectual, acerbically witty - a French novel par excellence, but what a novel! Set in the early part of the 20th century, it follows a large cast of characters - schoolboys, intellectuals, artists, and co - as they mislead and misunderstand each other, all the while itself interrogating its own nature as a work of literature through a series of complex, interwoven metafictional gestures.

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita

A riotous, generous satire of life in Stalinist Russia. Its main narrative involves the coming to Moscow of the Devil at his most urbane, with accomplices including a heavy-drinking, chess-playing black cat, and the social havoc that he then wreaks amongst polite society; that's intercut with a parallel retelling of the story of Christ and Pontius Pilate and with an epic love story. All the Big Themes, in other words - religion, art, love, politics, etc - but it's extremely readable and very funny.

The Year of Magical Thinking (MTC)

This one didn't quite take with me - it's ferociously intelligent, and quite impassionedly so at times, but I think possibly too far removed from my own experience to hit home, and also, insofar as it is a play (and doing my best to take it on its own terms, as always), it's not the kind of play that I really like. A 90 minute monologue, leavened only by some movement by the speaker, Robyn Nevin, between the rows of chairs laid out on the stage which comprise the set, and on-off lighting and sound effects from time to time, and on the subject of grief and how we might deal with it (or fail to do so), by way of Joan Didion's coolly anguished account of the sudden death of her husband and the more gradual decline of their daughter, it's well mounted and performed (Nevin is strong) but didn't enthrall or involve me as it might have wished to.

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

Heat

Neither as searing nor as epic as it wants to be (a two and a half hour running time notwithstanding), but has its moments. I'm not sure I've ever seen a cops and robbers film that I thought attained true greatness, and while this had many of the trappings (exciting action sequences, slow-burn build-ups, lavish attention devoted to a large cast, some spectacular framing of shots), for me it never really caught alight.

Lovely Loneliness

Another at the Spanish 'La Mirada' film festival, and a nice one. The description in the program made it sound like Amelie in Buenos Aires, and that turned out to be not far from the mark, though Lovely Loneliness is less whimsical and has more of an air of reality to it; indeed, in its pacing and informally episodic structure, not to mention the generally drab and everyday nature of the settings, the film would veer close to the social realist/documentary school of film-making that I so dislike were it not for its mildly offbeat tone, and particularly the quirkiness of its protagonist, the delightfully-named Soledad. I actually felt that she was quite a realistic female character, if perhaps a touch exaggerated - I saw elements of NV (with whom I was watching it), M and TV in particular in her, which has had some effect on how I would respond to those elements when next they're apparent in women I actually know, I suspect.

It's a bit difficult to essay a plot synopsis...it would go something like: girl breaks up with boy, has blocked toilet. Girl meets another boy, has awkward courtship with boy, boy fixes blocked toilet. Girl is a hypochondriac who goes to hospital at night a lot, gets locked out of her apartment at one point. Boy is in process of moving house. Things seem to go well with girl and new boy. (Also, mother of girl gets breast enhancement surgery, for no apparent reason related to anything else.) But it is pretty charming in a low-key way.

Camino

When Steph emailed Nicolette and I about checking out some films at the Spanish 'La Mirada' film festival and described this one as a tear-jerker, I didn't realise that she meant it quite so literally, but tears proved to be exactly what it produced.

The premise has a worrying potential for mawkishness and manipulativeness - an 11 year old girl (Camino) falls sweetly in love as it becomes increasingly apparent that she's terminally ill - but what gives the film bite, and a lot of its heaviness, is the intensity of her (Catholic) faith and the way that plays out around her family, particularly her unswervingly devout mother. The anti-humanistic and frankly inhumane nature of much of that version of Catholic doctrine espoused by Opus Dei comes through strongly, and the fantasy sequences reflecting her inner landscape while dreaming or under anaesthesia during the gruellingly-depicted surgery are memorable and powerful, highlighting the heightenedness and terror that Camino's belief in Jesus, the Virgin, her guardian angel and the whole pantheon (so to speak) induces in her imaginative life.

Manipulative though it at times seemed, the fact remains that, over its two and a half hours, Camino caused several of the most poised people I know to do some serious crying (at least if the red eyes and flushed, blotchy faces were anything to judge by), and speaking for myself, its impact is undeniable. I'm going to recommend it left, right and centre, without being in any hurry to repeat the experience myself.

(w/ Steph, Nicolette and Michelle; Hugh M and Eleanor M-H also there, and we also saw Kristian I and Gia)

Siri Hustvedt - The Sorrows of an American

Re-reading this (for book club), I was struck by the prominence of the theme of trauma within it, which led to the realisation of how elegantly it - trauma - and possibly the other key thing that The Sorrows of an American is about, absence, are entwined and related in this still remarkable novel, namely the notion that trauma, whether experienced personally or as a reverberation from the past or from society at large, is the foundation - the precondition - of everything that is apparently whole for its characters, not least the narratives through which they make sense of their lives and selves, which of course maps precisely on to the manner in which that which is present is always enabled only by what is absent, lacking, unspoken.

This book is so good that it takes my breath away a little. Comparing it to The Echo Maker, say, with which it has more than a bit in common (it even mention's Capgras syndrome and Libet's readiness potential experiment, the latter of which has been weirdly recurrent in my reading lately, having also been central to the Dennett extract we did for philo reading group a while back), I'm reminded again of how ineffable and how clear is the whatever-it-is that separates the really good stuff from all the rest.

(Last time.)

Lucinda Williams @ Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Thursday 2 April

One of those tremendously satisfying, 'total'-feeling shows. I'd actually been in two minds about going, mainly because, relative to the tremendously high bar set by her earlier records, I'd been thinking that Williams' last three records have been kind of underwhelming (more on that later), but I'm really glad that I did, not least because she drew on nearly the whole of her back catalogue (only her debut, Ramblin', was left unrepresented by at least two or three songs) in putting together her two and a bit hour set - at one point, she said that she was trying to fit as many songs in as possible, and that's how it felt, even though each individual song had plenty of room to breathe...

I still haven't listened to her first two albums (the abovementioned Ramblin' and Happy Woman Blues - both, I might mention in passing, released before I was born), but here's how I tend to think of the others:

There's Car Wheels, a flat-out classic, and at this point almost dead centre in her recording history - and then there's Essence, which came next and sounds entirely different from its predecessor while also being genuinely great. Before those two, the self-titled record that she referred to as her Rough Trade album throughout the show (presumably to avoid the awkwardness of saying 'this song's from my Lucinda Williams' album) and Sweet Old World, both wonderful and both absolutely critical to my overall sense of 'Lucinda'; and after the pivotal pair of Car Wheels and Essence, three solid but unmemorable albums which haven't made anywhere near the impression on me that the others have, World Without Tears, West and Little Honey. (Also, the live record.)

Laid out like that, it has something of the pattern of a slightly asymmetrical bell curve - the joys of the earlier records followed by the heights of the middle two in turn followed by a tapering off in more recent times. But I kind of suspect that my responses can be at least partially explained on personal grounds, rather than being referable to any intrinsic quality of the albums (except insofar as the time at which they were released can be said to be intrinsic to them); looking back at my initial impressions of West, for example, I'm surprised to see that at the time I was excited enough about it to suggest that it might be close to her best...perhaps, then, it's really with the passage of time that those earlier ones have loomed so increasingly large.

This all came through a fair bit in her live show. The fact that she was doing songs from nearly all of her albums, each of which has quite a different sound from the others due to the vagaries of song-writing style, instrumentation, production, etc, with the same country-edged rock and roll band, and in the style that she has arrived at in this, her graceful oldish age (she's pretty darn spry, and in pretty great voice, for a 56 year old), which had the effect of effacing some of the divisions between the various albums which hold such sway in my mind; in so doing, her set made it clear that the her song-writing has remained very consistent right up to the present day, not only in quality but also in style and motifs. Indeed, some of the highlights - I'm thinking of the epic "Little Rock Star" and the blast of "Come On" - came from those more recent albums...songs which I'd always previously given fairly short shrift.

That said, as I started off by kind of saying, what I really wanted to hear were songs from that five album Lucinda Williams-Essence run, and it was those which really made the show for me; she rocked a lot of them pretty hard, did others in more pensive style, and even pulled out an acoustic "Passionate Kisses" sans band. It was really quite something, a reminder and affirmation of her talent and brilliance.

(w/ M)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

A witty melange of genres, if still kinda disposable. Funnest bit: Val Kilmer's turn as a tough-guy gay private detective.

Kent - Isola

An indie-edged guitar-rock album, but one with particularly nice sonics. What does that even mean? I like it, anyway, though on first blush it doesn't seem made of the kind of stuff that really sings. Has a lighter touch than Hagnesta Hill, incidentally, even though that other came later.

"The opposite is fiction": The Essex Green - Cannibal Sea

Sprightly, elegant, 60s-infused pop that sets its camp up somewhere between the classic revivalist tent and some strong folk- and power-pop streams, though my favourite is the distinctly Stereolab-y "Cardinal Points", complete with minute-and-a-bit-long guitar wig-out ending ("This Isn't Farm Life" and "Snakes in the Grass" are also particularly rad). It's a good record - not a weak song to be seen, plenty of likeable melodies (it reminds me a bit of the Fiery Furnaces at points, too).

The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present edited by Scott Plagenhoef and Ryan Schreiber

I enjoyed reading this, of course - I long ago made my peace with the 'fork and any list of this kind, along with brief accompanying wraps on each of the inclusions, put together by the site was always going to be at least readable. Moreover, breaking the book up into three or four year periods (each introduced by a brief overview of the time) and making some attempt to arrange the songs within each of those periods into an approximate narrative of the musical milieu of the time works well - while also reinforcing the sense, generated in the first instance by the selections themselves, that the 500 here really do reflect a kind of contemporary 'indie' canon consensus (which at the same time forces the realisation of just how influential pitchfork has been, because really their purview extends considerably beyond even the broadest notion of 'indie' or 'alternative') - and the interspersed mini-lists are a nice touch.

That said, something about the format seemed to result in the write-ups being less inspiring than I might have expected; of the songs that I know (extended pause now while I count them: 182...and I've just realised that I like, and in most cases really, really like nearly every one of those), only a very small handful made me want to really go out and listen to them again, loud, and only one of that small handful remains in my mind right now (the one on "Cross Bones Style", for one particularly piquant turn of phrase); moreover, there wasn't a single one on a song that I didn't already know that made me think that I had to hear it.

There doesn't seem much point going into individual selections, though I must say I was pleased that "Lazy Line Painter Jane" cracked the list - and, as I mentioned before, the canonical nature of the list is striking in patches (though there are probably easily a hundred more which would've taken their places just as easily as 'obvious' choices had they in fact been included).

Songs that the list has got me to listen to in the last few minutes (though not particularly, as noted above, due to the way they're described in the book): "Headache" by Frank Black (I still like "Bad Harmony" more), "Heartbeats" by the Knife, "The City" by the Dismemberment Plan, "Ever Fallen in Love" (Buzzcocks of course).

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Reasonably entertaining satirical comedy following the leadup to a teenage beauty pageant in smalltown Minnesota which could've been so much better than it in fact is, especially given those strutting their stuff - Kirsten Dunst and Denise Richards as the leading contenders, Ellen Barkin and Kirstie Alley as their respective mothers, and the likes of Amy Adams and Brittany Murphy as other contestants...not all great actors by any stretch, but all seemingly well to brilliantly suited to playing the sorts of roles they have here. But it just doesn't coalesce properly, feeling lead-footed and prone to pulling its punches despite the seriously over the top moves it makes.

Kelly Clarkson - All I Ever Wanted

Pretty much what you want a Kelly Clarkson album to be - vividly 'now' pop anthems and ballads with just a couple of rockers thrown in...the songs are good and it might be the most consistent of her four records (elsewhere, see here, here and here), and has high points which come close to matching those of Breakaway. Not breaking any new ground, either for KC or generally, but of course that isn't the point.

Let the Right One In

Completely lives up to the hype - Let the Right One In is nothing short of superb. It feels odd to throw a superlative at the film, though, for in its quiet way, it feels a bit beyond words - to watch it is to be wrapped up in a distinctly filmic experience, in which horror, drama and a sweet, painful coming-of-age romance coexist in complete harmony. It's a genuine horror movie - the vampire elements are far from merely symbolic, aesthetic or mechanical - but it functions equally well on those other levels, and as a pure mood piece, too. A couple of born-of-budget-shortcomings moments of sfx hokiness aside, its craftsmanship is beyond reproach, including the spectral, compelling performances put in by the two child leads, and to the extent that it builds to a climax, it's oddly muted and the more effective for it. A real pearl.

(w/ M)

Pete Fidler, Sal Kimber & Fireside Bellows @ East Brunswick Club, Sunday 22 March

Pete Fidler, a dobro player teamed with a guitarist and a double bass, music very dobro-y. Pleasant but not overly memorable, and I thought the band wasn't as tight as a unit as it might've been. Then Sal Kimber, a skinny bundle of energy who reminded me a bit of Jen Cloher and a bit of Justine, and had some very good songs and a great way of selling them, alternating between banjo and guitar and backed by a full band (guitar, bass, drums, keys). Her thing was a kind of blues-folk-rock-pop thing, and a lot of fun. And finally Fireside Bellows, ordinarily a two piece but joined on stage by a couple of others to flesh out their sound, which is a somewhat but not overly contemporised take on the cosmic/high and lonesome thing, the m & f harmonies and way of writing songs evoking Gram and Emmylou - they were very winning and I liked 'em a lot.

(w/ Wei)

Watchmen

Actually very faithful, and very good - just rock solid across the board, and brings the book to life in suitable style. The moral lines and complexities of Moore's text aren't sacrificed, and the different ethoses represented by Rorschach, the Comedian, Ozymandias, Dr Manhattan, etc come through clearly, while the action scenes are exciting and emphatic; the mood is about right too, if not quite as despairingly heavy and grimy as on the page. And the actors do enough to convince; Patrick Wilson as Dreiburg and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach are particularly good. The soundtrack is interesting, too, leaning heavily on music from the 60s (and 70s?) despite the alternate-80s period setting.

(w/ M)

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Bavarian Fruit Bread

Even more dreamy and hushed than her Mazzy Star stuff. It's a bit on the insubstantial side, but the gauze is a matter of taste and certainly has its place, and besides, I could happily listen to Sandoval sing just about anything.

Department of Eagles - In Ear Park

A set of quirky, ornate, piano-y, somewhat experimental, full band singer-songwriter pop. A bit like Destroyer, a bit like the Decemberists, a bit like the Dears. "No One Does It Like You" continues to be rad.

Spoon - "Love Ways" ep

More Spoon! From a few years back, I think - kinda boppy. Yes...

Ali Smith - The First Person and other stories

I still find Ali Smith more frustrating than enjoyable to read (last time, it was The Accidental), but having worked my way through this collection of short stories, I'm increasingly inclined to think that she's worth the effort. Her writing is demanding - formally experimental and dense - and requires wrestling with, but the rewards can be considerable, even if I still feel I've only scraped the surface.

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

The third impeccable album in a row from Neko Case (fourth if one includes the live Tigers), and her most abstract and impressionistic yet. She's never particularly been one for conventional song structures, particularly since the watershed of Blacklisted, but Middle Cyclone is a step further than anything Case has recorded before, and it's increasingly exciting to see the direction that she's going in - the result is something edging ever closer to 'pure' music, and already it sounds very far from anything else that's happening out there...there are traces of all the ground she's staked out before, the haunted, shadowy country-noir terrain which picked up such intriguing resonances in Fox Confessor in particular, but now writ anew.

It seems besides the point to discuss individual tracks, for this is a record about texture, sound and melody rather than discrete parts...the shorter mood pieces work as well as the fuller songs; the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

* * *

Previously (in order of release/happening rather than order of listening by me): The Virginian, Furnace Room Lullaby, Canadian Amp, Blacklisted, The Tigers Have Spoken, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, and live.

"IMP October 2008"

Got a bit of a backlog of IMPs to listen to. This one's a moodily atmospheric set, Boards of Canada and Dust Brothers and Four Tet etc (subliminal/abstract electronic type stuff); I had it on last night while doing something else, so wasn't paying fullest attention, but I think the only track with lyrics was the Billie Holliday number pretty much dead in the middle.

(from John in Boulder, CO)

The National - Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers

An older one, but doesn't lose much by comparison to Alligator and Boxer - more velvety, rough-edged modern chamber-rock, replete with subtle hooks and huge crescendos.

David Bowie - Hunky Dory

Strange that I've never listened to this before, but still. For mine, Hunky Dory isn't a patch on Low or even Ziggy, but it's still a rather darling pop singer-songwriter Bowie record, and in "Changes", "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Life on Mars" it has three of his most recognisable and, probably, greatest songs up its sleeve, so...

More on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Ruth's book club recently did The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, in part because she told them that it was the only one that everyone in my book club (the NV one) had liked, and after that meeting said that everyone in that club had been curious about why we liked it so much, and requested an email distillation. It's taken me a while to get round to it, but I eventually expanded my previous thoughts, as follows:

* * *

[...] the short version would go something like this: I like "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" because it's haunted, poetic and human, and because it makes me feel all sad and stirred-up inside...

To begin with, an idea: in literature as in all art, only the particular and specific can be truly universal. To create something which somehow expresses or otherwise touches upon the universal (which is not to say that this is or should be the goal of all literature, natch), it's necessary to focus on a specific setting and milieu rather than dealing in windy abstractions and generalities; the most well-known of Shakespeare's plays, for example - "Romeo and Juliet", say, or "Hamlet" or "Lear" or "The Tempest" - derive their universality and archetypal flavour precisely from the playwright's close, nuanced scrutiny and 'pushing' of the particular characters and events which inhabit and constitute those works.

Whether or not you agree with all of that (I happen to, by the way), I think it's just such a dialectic (not quite the word I'm after but you know what I mean) that's at work in "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" - McCullers' is an intense scrutiny of a small group of characters in a particular place and time (namely 1930s small-town southern America), and in particular of the loneliness, incipient anomie and sense of yearning for something they're unable to clearly identify that afflicts all of them, but it also comes to serve as microcosm, illustration and exemplar of what might be called, were it not so pretentious, the 'human condition' as perceived and experienced by McCullers herself.

Of course, the trick is in how McCullers achieves this. The inside front page of my secondhand Penguin edition quotes Graham Greene as saying that "Miss McCullers and perhaps Mr Faulkner are the only writers since the death of D. H. Lawrence with an original poetic sensibility" and I reckon that phrase - 'an original poetic sensibility' - gets it just right...there's just something about it. The novel has a clarity of vision that's at once troubling and affecting -

The poignancy of its characters' plight (a plight which is referable to the sort of existential malaise which lies over all of them rather than to any particular events or happenings in their lives) is highlighted by the tenuous, unarticulated ways in which they relate to Singer. In many ways, the deaf-mute stands at the centre of the book, but it's the characters over whom he exerts his strange fascination - Biff Brannon, Jake Blount, Dr Copeland, and most of all Mick Kelly - who most touch and linger, which may be precisely the point. After all, Singer himself is a strangely absent central figure, not only in the literal sense of his muteness, but also in that his motives are almost completely opaque to the characters, including, perhaps, himself (Biff seems to get closest, but even he doesn't understand the half of it); it's telling that Greene, in that line above, speaks of McCullers in the same breath as William Faulkner, for both are inextricably tied up with the idea of the southern gothic, which itself is characterised by the use of (among other devices) grotesque elements to highlight and throw into relief the setting and milieu being explored. Singer is not who everyone thinks he is; he is a blank canvas on which they can project their longings for human connection and understanding.

It seems clear that, for McCullers, if we can't live alone, then we also haven't yet fathomed how to live with each other. One thing that the novel is about is the gaps between people, and how impossibly difficult those gaps may be to bridge - the loneliness that is experienced by everyone in "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" is a deeply social loneliness...people are all around us, if we could only connect.

...which leads naturally to the political elements of the novel, such as they are. For mine, these aspects of the book are its weakest - McCullers is better on the personal, human dimensions of her canvas, whether in isolation (Mick's inchoate development, Biff's half-articulated feelings for the girl) or shading into the political (Dr Copeland's difficult relationship with his people and his family, Jake's alcoholism and fiery idealism), than with the overtly political stuff (which is not so surprising given that she was only 23 when the book was published and presumably younger while writing it). Still, they have their place - set pieces like the conversations between Blount and Copeland, playing out the classic lefty strategy of (as I once saw it memorably put in a different context) drawing their wagons into a circle and firing inwards, add to the sense of sorrow that is imbued in every line of the book...and of course she can't be faulted for giving fascism a good kicking, nor for wrapping the progressive political movements of the time (and their failures) up with the wider malaise which then afflicted (and continues to afflict) society at large, and those aspects of the novel left me not merely sad, but actually angry, too, in a way that few others have (Toni Morrison's "Beloved" leaps to mind as one other with such an impact).

But for all of that, for all of the sense of sadness and shadowy, heavy melancholy, of failures of connection and understanding, of loss and absence in it, there's something miraculous about "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" - it remains humane and somehow pure of vision...it has a kind of crystalline quality. Whatever it is that makes literature great, this novel has it.

Phew! I could go on, but I'm kind of running out of steam and this is already pretty long, and messy too. [...]

Kim Richey - Rise

Anyone who can sound, vocally, like Sarah McLachlan on one song (say "Without You") and Lucinda Williams on another (say "Cowards in a Brave New World") deserves points for versatility at least; I suspect Richey's natural singing voice is closer to the sweetly scratchy purr that's at its most heightened on melancholy album opener "Girl in a Car". In fact, while Richey does reveal herself to be pretty musically versatile across the 13 country/adult-alternative tracks making up Rise, there's a lot more than that to like here - the songs are strong, and arranged and delivered in a way that's fresh and appealing while also possessing depth.

"Degas: Master of French Art" @ NGA, Canberra

Though this exhibition was one of the main reasons for our excursion to Canberra over the last few days (indeed, it was the original stimulus), Degas isn't particularly a touchstone for me, and nor do I know particularly much about him; still, I was interested and a bit excited to see what he was all about.

The exhibition provides a wide cross-section of his work, including a large proportion of prints (etching, lithography, etc) and sketches, including chalk and pastel type work, as well as a fair number of sculptures and even some photography, but relatively few (though still a significant number) of the oil paintings with which I primarily associate him. The ones of dancers tended to most catch my eye and appeal - the subject/motif seems best suited to his ideas about colour, shade and composition, whether in clearer, relatively formally posed and arranged pieces like 'The dance class' (1873-6), or in more ethereal works like the forest scene of 'Dancers, pink and green' (c 1890) in which the dancers resemble fairies, or those somewhere in between such as 'The ballet of "Robert le diable" ' (1871), in which ghostly dancers blur into each other on stage in the background, while the foreground of audience members watching the stage (including one man looking off to the side with a pair of binoculars) is rendered in more distinct outlines. That said, the racecourse ones have an interesting combination of the earthy and crude on the one hand, and the suggestive and abstract on the other, and have their own appeal.

Having looked at this exhibition, I can understand why parallels are drawn between Degas' work and the main stream of the French impressionists, but my sense was that something different is going on in his work, even beyond his rejection of the 'en plein air' technique and the typical impressionist variegated light-and-colour method, something tending more towards abstraction (in the senses of both non-representationality and speaking to something beyond themselves). I haven't been inspired, but I do feel like his art may have more to say to me than I'd previously imagined.

"You may ask yourself: How did I get here?": Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

I haven't quite made up my mind about this one - an appropriate turn of phrase given its subject matter, namely the nature of consciousness and identity. I expected to get a lot out of it, was put offside by its first few chapters, gradually began to trust it a bit more as it progressed, and ended up feeling something more akin to a distanced admiration than any real liking for it by its end. It's a very clever book, and its themes of course interest me, but it lacks a certain lightness of touch or something, I'm not sure. It's a bit too cerebral (hah), perhaps, and not human enough, something which I suspect is one part a Powers thing and one part down to what The Echo Maker is about.

Astor Piazzolla - Libertango & Piazzolla & Amelita Baltar

Two neat Piazzolla records. The first is a real bandoneon workout (all instrumental), lively, swirling, slyly humorous, dramatic; and Baltar's soupily soulful voice suits the style of song (melancholy, fluidly stop-start, almost spoken word at points, also dramatic) that appears on the second very well.

(More about Baltar here.)

Life Beyond Mars: Bowie Covered

A collection of Bowie covers by contemporary electronic artists - there's a natural sympathy between the genre (widely defined - a lot of ground is covered here, so to speak, under that label) and the (often hallowed) originals that are reworked here. My favourites are, by and large, the more pop-edged melodic ones, Au Revoir Simone's "Oh! You Pretty Things" in particular, though a couple of the downbeat techno-inflected ones are nice too; Leo Minor's "Ashes to Ashes", coming off like a failed attempt to do what the Futureheads did with "Hounds of Love", however, only served to remind me how great the original it is.

"Moonlight & Magnolias" (MTC)

Takes place entirely in a single room, that being the office of producer David O Selznick in 1939, needing a rewrite of the screenplay of Gone With the Wind from scratch as a matter of urgency; Selznick, so the story goes, locked new screenwriter Ben Hecht and director Victor Fleming (fresh recruited from The Wizard of Oz) into a room for five days, feeding them only bananas and peanuts - and, as the screenwriter hadn't read the book, acted out its scenes with Fleming to show Hecht how they should play. The scenes in which those enactments take place (done by two men in suits, natch) are the funniest - like tears rolling down cheeks funny - in a play which is frequently very funny indeed, though less screwball than I'd expected. Peppy and bright, this was a good one.

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

"Till there are no strangers any more" (2008 cd)

I've been slow about distributing this one (still nowhere near done) but here's the tracklist to the soundtrack of my '08 plus most of the accompanying comments:

1. Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us – Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
from Raising Sand (Rounder; 2007) – “Sister Rosetta” is just one gem amongst many on this record, but there’s something about it that lingers...and Krauss’ voice is still to die for, of course.

2. Late Nite – Slumber Party
from Musik (Kill Rock Stars; 2006) – in another universe, this song went top 40 and we all dream and watch black and white movies and hold hands and go for walks at night a lot more than we do in this one.

3. No Bad News – Patty Griffin
from Children Running Through (ATO; 2007) – delightfully upbeat and damn near irresistible, this, and she sure can sing.

4. Pumpkin Soup – Kate Nash
from Made of Bricks (Fiction; 2007) – what can I say? This song is hella cool, is all. [also, here]

5. 23 – Blonde Redhead
from 23 (4AD; 2007) – probably the song that I listened to most in 2008. Mysterious, urgent, and dizzying, it gives me a rush. [also, here and here]

6. Ode to LRC – Band of Horses
from Cease to Begin (Sub Pop; 2007) – a perfect song for being blinded by the sun to. [also, here]

7. Godspell – The Cardigans
from Super Extra Gravity (Universal; 2005) – another anthem! I think it’s about religion.

8. Fake Empire – The National
from Boxer (Beggars Banquet; 2007) – this one’s about America. It’s moody. And awesome.

9. Modern Love – The Last Town Chorus
from Wire Waltz (Hack Tone; 2006) – because sometimes, mournful Bowie covers is where it’s totally at. [also, here]

10. Crush in the Ghetto – Jolie Holland
from Springtime Can Kill You (Anti; 2006) – one for the warmer months, as the days grow longer...shadows and sunshine and all that. I must confess, I’m a little bit in love with Holland. [also, here, albeit from '09]

Hell of a year, really, and music has been even more tightly woven into its fabric than usual; these ten songs, and the albums from which they came, could well have been the soundtrack to it...they’re the ones which carry the strongest associations from the twelve months just gone – associations which are largely impressionistic rather than particularly clear and distinct, but none the less vivid for that.

Rachel Getting Married

I've seen this sort of film before - this sort of ensemble drama taking place at some significant social gathering, often, as here, a wedding - but rarely done as well as here. Rachel Getting Married, it's called, but it's really about Rachel's unstable, unthinkingly self-absorbed, just-out-of-rehab sister Kim, rendered by Anne Hathaway (who I don't think I've seen in anything before, though of course I know 'who she is' in the media sense) in a striking performance which seems to synthesise an intense naturalism with a marked level of craft, and the film's focus remains principally on her, though it's large enough (in canvas and spirit) to also take in the web of relations connecting the various members of her immediate family, and others associated with the wedding, with each other.

Watching it was a bit of a gruelling experience for reasons both internal and external to the film - as to the former, Kim's speech at the celebratory dinner, for example, is up there amongst the most excruciatingly embarrassing, cringeworthy scenes I can recall in a movie (and perfectly set up by what has come before), while as to the latter, I started the film with a headache which only worsened with the hand-held camera-captured progress of events - but Rachel is an impressive bit of film-making.

The Darjeeling Limited

This one left an impression on me when I first saw it, and has grown better and better in my mind since then, so it was somewhat to my surprise and regret that, on revisiting Darjeeling, it seemed thinner and less satisfying than the idea of it that I've been carrying around - more disconnected, less rich with hints of the profound...which is not to say that I'd disavow my previous responses to the film, but rather that those responses have now acquired another layer, another filter of sorts, I guess. I still think that it's v.g., but it seems (and is) no longer as resonant as before.

Serenity

Punchy, swiftly plotted and brightly engaging, Serenity is still, on second viewing, a neat riff on the space opera thing, if, unsurprisingly, not as much of a thrill as the first time around.

Ran

Kurosawa's retelling of King Lear (with some significant changes, particularly the flipping of the children's genders, the emphasis on the aging ruler's past acts of violent conquest, and the harder-edged reading given to the Cordelia figure's character, Saburo) makes for an intense and rewarding experience. It struck me as grittier and more grimly existential than Shakespeare's play, using 'existential' in a sense informed by that specific 20th century stream of continental thought, though it lacks that other's almost Romantic sense of existential (in a wider and possibly deeper sense) anguish and outrage and something of its sense of grandeur and scope; still, it's much more faithful than not to its source, and in a way which is obviously carefully thought through and strikingly consistent and effective in its divergences, and in how it deals with the themes of the play in its own fashion (the way that it grounds Hidetora's - ie, Lear's - tragedy in his past actions, giving it an air of inevitability, is particularly striking, as is the way it deals with the notion of loyalty). It creates its own world and fully inhabits it for the whole of its two and a half (nearly three) hour running time - it's monumental.

Mystery Men

I think Michelle got it right when she said that Mystery Men was disappointing even though she hadn't had any particular expectations of it. Both the premise (ragtag group of superhero wannabes with wimpy at best superpowers are forced to step up with the city's leading superhero goes missing) and the cast (Janeane Garofalo, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Waits, William H Macy and others) raise expectations that it could be a genuinely sharp, edgy, funny satire, but instead it's simply a good-natured and somewhat overlong action-comedy, pleasant enought but ultimately forgettable - a pity.

Dixie Chicks - Wide Open Spaces & Top of the World Tour - Live

I've been listening to these guys a lot in the last few months, and this live record brings things together nicely. The band's approach of doing their songs fairly faithfully in concert results in a collection of tracks which differ only slightly from their recorded version; to the extent that they do differ, it's generally in having a greater sense of immediacy, which is all to the good. They're like slightly fuller, more well-lit versions of songs which were always plenty full and well-lit, but none the less welcome for it.

I also picked up Wide Open Spaces not too long ago and like it plenty. Literally every one of their albums is a really good listen from start to finish, packed with sturdy songs and a mix of styles and tempos within the particular pop-tinged country groove they work. I haven't generally taken their music particularly to heart, but I do like listening to it a lot.

"Woyzeck" @ Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse

For all of its crackling, at times high camp energy and furious spectacle, there's something very visceral about this staging of of this staging of Georg Buchner's play, written in the first half of the 19th century and apparently never completed - by play's end, it feels like a solid punch in the stomach after 90-odd minutes of being alternately blinded by bright lights and dragged along by one's hair as a series of almost recognisable images flies by one. In fact, it's neither as abstract and weird, nor quite as intense, as that description makes it sound, but that's the flavour of it nonetheless.

Set to the strains of moody string-led music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, with frequent musical numbers by the members of the cast (including Tim Rogers in a genuinely menacing turn as a Puckish figure who functions as part chorus commenting on the events of the play, part spectre haunting the protagonists and on one occasion taking an active hand, and part embodied avatar of some of the play's themes), its depiction of the titular figure's war and being-the-subject-of-insane-science-experiment-fuelled descent makes for uneasily gripping watching. It aims for the gut - and the imagination - more than for the mind, but that's not a criticism, and here it works; the physicality of the performers serves the production well (the doctor, the drum major, the girl (Bojana Novakovic)), complemented the striking set and set-pieces. Quality.

(w/ Michelle, Trang, Steph, Ruth (+ friend Bronwyn), Bec P and Emrys (+ Kemi); Kim also there, and likewise, coincidentally, Krystyna)

Architecture In Helsinki - In Case We Die

It feels like this album has been part of my life for ages, for AiH have been omnipresent in the Melbourne music air in the last few years, but the truth is that till recently I'd never listened to it all the way through. Still, my impressions are accurate - it's bright, whimsical, colourful, peppy, charming. v.g.

Give Listen Help

A benefit cd (double cd actually), and one with an impressive roster of acts contributing remixes or previously unreleased cuts; attempting to list the most famous in descending order, one might end up with a list something like this, depending on the sphere within which the fame was being measured: Oasis, Garbage, Jack Johnson, Radiohead, Bloc Party, Rilo Kiley, CSS, the Decemberists, Ladytron, the Faint, Bat for Lashes, the Dears, Of Montreal - and that's not the half of it (there are also several acts whose names I hadn't heard before). Covers about the sort of ground that one would expect it to given that kind of rollcall (with a fair number of folk-tinged offerings from those that I didn't previously know), and does it well despite the 'odds and sorts' nature of the contributions.

Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You

F-U-N! Not so much a step forward from Alright, Still as one sideways and in a slightly different direction, but plays to her strengths despite some cosmetic changes, and plenty likeable.

Catherine O'Flynn - What Was Lost

I think that maybe I've just read too much of this kind of novel; of course, making that statement is a lot easier than fleshing it out by identifying exactly what 'this kind' of novel is. Behind the Scenes at the Museum is one, and probably Human Croquet as well; so too The Sorrows of an American (soon to be reread for one of my book clubs, incidentally - looking forward to it!), and perhaps The Blind Assassin, in a slightly different way, and many others that I can't call to mind right now. What they all have in common is that, apart from being written in the last ten or fifteen years - which is certainly relevant - they're about loss (also, it only now strikes me, they're all by women, which may also be relevant), and they all deal with that subject in a certain way, characterised by attention to relationships, memory, and, especially, history --

-- and so it is with What Was Lost. O'Flynn's writing is clear, and has an understated quality which suits the story she tells - that of the disappearance of Kate Meaney, junior detective (age about nine, I think), and the effects of that disappearance on the later lives of several others from her town, much of it taking place in and around the shopping mall where her image is seen some nineteen years later by a security guard on the security camera screen at night, after the mall has closed.

There's a quiet sadness to it, balanced by intimations of hope, particularly in the way some of the characters relate to each other, but somehow it didn't catch alight for me, though I appreciated its craft and what it was doing. I can't entirely put my finger on what it is that didn't quite work (although something of it probably comes from a failure to adequately reconcile the generally low-key nature of the events and tone of the novel with the gaping absence which gives What Was Lost its key narrative and structural figure, leading to (a) the introduction of a culprit about halfway through who I picked in about two pages and (b) a rather forced reappearance of a relatively minor character near the end to knit things together. For all that, though, this is a good novel, particularly for a first novel (as it is), and I oughtn't fault it too much for being just the kind of thing that I know.

L.A. Confidential

Really excellent. Star turns from Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe - the kind that really make one realise just how good they are - and perfectly tuned performances from all the other key figures, too, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell and Kim Basinger most notable amongst them, set within a ceaselessly exciting story with mood, unobtrusive but all-surrounding, to burn. I've seen it before, probably close to a decade ago now, and it's aged very well. Not particularly flashy, but does what it does - being a period L.A.-set hard-boiled crime flick - impeccably.

I Am Not An Animal

Somehow I didn't quite get into this one, a show about a group of animals who, having been genetically modified to take on human traits (and ended up with the worst of those), are broken out of the research facility in which they're comfortably ensconced by a group of animal liberationists, and are then forced to attempt to survive in the wilds of British suburbia. The satirical element is obvious, and downright cutting at times, but the protagonists were just too unappealing and the tone too flippant for me to really enjoy the show.

China Miéville - Looking for Jake: Stories

Still very good, ideologically consistent (and coherent) and often genuinely unsettling.

(last time)

Taylor Swift - Fearless

I heard "Love Story", the lead single from this album, in a car in Elmira, NY on the way to a local shopping mall; Craig and Shellie ID-ed it for me, and I decided to pick up the album when we arrived at the mall, which turned out to be a straightforward affair, as it was prominently displayed as the number one selling record in the store. Having now listened to Fearless, I can understand why it and Swift are so popular in the States - the 'pop' part of the equation is more prominent than the 'country' (I'm reminded of Kelly Clarkson at points, not least in the way that practically every song has an anthemic quality to it), and it's produced with a kind of golden gloss which smooths any rough edges while Swift sells the songs, lyrics included, with conviction, investing them with a personal feeling. Like many pop records, it's heavily frontloaded, the first three songs, "Fearless", "Fifteen" and "Love Story" a clear notch above the rest for mine, but it doesn't fall away too badly, and all up it's pretty impressive even if not one that is really likely to grow with me too much.

Jolie Holland @ the Corner Hotel, Friday 13 February

For sure, the most distinctive - and best - thing about Jolie Holland's music is her singing, and over the course of this show, the idiosyncratic phrasing and voice that I've come to know so well through repeated spins of Springtime Can Kill You, The Living and the Dead and (to a lesser extent, so far) Escondida was in full evidence, translating clearly and expressively in the live setting, as did the subtleties and underlying arcs of her songs, which all added up to a very good show indeed.

Jolie has been the closest thing to a soundtrack that the last two or three months have had, and the timing for her concert was perfect for me - still on the crest of enthusiasm, but having had enough time to live with her music for a bit - and it was wonderful. She did all of the songs that I wanted to hear and then some, refashioning them in small ways but retaining whatever it is that makes them so great in their recorded versions. The band was tight; the show was loose; and it was all very warm while hinting at the starkness that's always at least implicit in her music. It made me happy.

(w/ Michelle)

X-Men

Pretty watchable, if nothing special. Fun enough that I'd quite like to see the others.

Guy Gavriel Kay - The Darkest Road

The series really hits its straps with this one, the final in the trilogy. By this point, Kay has done the work needed to set up the characters and the mythology with which he's working, and the result is easily the strongest book of the three - the climaxes hit hard, one after another, and it picks up pace and scope as it goes forward. That still, it's still only good rather than getting anywhere near greatness as far as this kind of thing goes.

(previously)

Poor Boy (MTC)

For me, the contrast to Grace is striking. Whereas that other was neatly, smoothly constructed literally to a fault, and sorely lacking in anything that might have made it real, Poor Boy is uneven - 'lumpy' was the first description that came to mind - and flawed in many ways, but nonetheless I enjoyed it far more, for it has a spirit, a dash, a vision maybe (I don't think it's unfair to compare the two in terms of vision despite the comparatively cerebral nature of Grace, for if you don't have that, whatever form it may take or focus it may have, you ain't got much) which the other lacks. For all of its failings, Poor Boy touches upon something, both in moments and as a whole.

Much of the lumpiness comes from the lack of connection between the music and the action of the play; the songs were written by Tim Finn - some, at least, were old ones (possibly all of them were) - and they're well sung by the cast, Guy Pearce far from the least amongst them, but not meaningfully integrated with the story in any real way. That said, the story would have been quite thin without the musical interludes to break it up, which is another (and of course related) weakness.

But for all of that, as I said before, I responded very favourably to this one. The staging has a shadowy, nocturnal feel which goes well with the play's underlying conceit - the mysterious supernatural return - and there's a kind of creative energy to it for which I'll forgive a lot. Well worthwhile.

Thumbs up to the new venue, by the way - from the inside, at any rate (I'm not entirely sold on the exterior, but it may grow on me).

(The MTC group for this year, incidentally, comprises, including both full and part subscriptions, Steph, Sunny, Ben, Wilfred, Dakshinee, Christine L, Bec P and Gia - and there've been a couple of MS types, D and R, also present at these first couple.)

Sukiyaki Western Django

A delirious hyper-real spaghetti eastern swirl, colourful, violent and not shy with the Shakespeare references. Two Japanese clans, one in white, one in red, fight it out in a town called Nevada, into which comes a gunman in black, setting off a chain of events that eventually culminates in all-out pitched battle and a series of pistol/machine gun/samurai sword showdowns (did I mention that all the dialogue sounds as if it's being rendered phonetically) - it's a homage to the western but done over in style and given a thousand tiny and several large idiosyncratic twists, totally bonkers, and lots of fun.

iTunes snapshot

Current top 25 most played:

1. "23" - Blonde Redhead (70)
2. "Godspell" - The Cardigans (61)
3. "Ode to LRC" - Band of Horses (57)
4. "Modern Love" - The Last Town Chorus (47)
5. "Out Loud" - Mindy Smith (47)
6. "Slow Show" - The National (43)
7. "Breakaway" - Kelly Clarkson (39)
8. "Fake Empire" - The National (39)
9. "No Bad News" - Patty Griffin (39)
10. "Is There A Ghost" - Band of Horses (36)
11. "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough" - Manic Street Preachers feat. Nina Persson (36)
12. "Blue and Gold Print" - Mates of State (34)
13. "Crush in the Ghetto" - Jolie Holland (32)
14. "Ride the Wind to Me" - Julie Miller (32)
15. "Dr. Strangeluv" - Blonde Redhead (30)
16. "What You Said" - Laura Cantrell (30)
17. "California Dreamin'" - The Mamas & The Papas (29)
18. "Guest Room" - The National (28)
19. "Kaifuku Suru Kizu" - Lily Chou-Chou (28)
20. "Late Nite" - Slumber Party (27)
21. "Back to Black" - Amy Winehouse (26)
22. "Pumpkin Soup" - Kate Nash (26)
23. "I'm a Lady" - Santogold (26)
24. "Communication" - The Cardigans (25)
25. "Green Gloves" - The National (25)

(I've had it since mid 2007-ish.)

Cocteau Twins - "Peppermint Pig" & "The Spangle Maker" eps, "Snow" cd single & "Dials / "Crushed" / "The High Monkey-Monk" / "Oomingmak" cd

A bunch of stuff I picked up secondhand in a store called Amoeba in San Francisco, most of which I've heard before but still.

Paprika

Colourful and vivid - a 'what if' type anime in which dreams begin to bleed into reality and the expected mayhem ensues. I was kind of distracted while watching this, and it's certainly not as intense as Perfect Blue (by the same director), but I still liked it a lot. It has a light touch and an energy which neatly offsets its heavier impulses, and the spurts of imagination which characterise it are delightful.

China Miéville - Iron Council

Definitely weaker than Perdido Street Station or The Scar though it is (the characters don't compel even though plenty of time is devoted to them, the scenes are less vivid, the pace of events is wrong, the politics doesn't come to life), Iron Council is nonetheless still ferociously readable even on a second pass. I hear the next one's going to be set in a different world, which I reckon is a good move on Miéville's part.

(last time)

Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans

It must be said, this one loses something in the absence of Kate Beckinsale (by contrast, Scott Speedman is no loss at all); still and all, it's not too bad.

[1], [2]

"Grace" (MTC)

The first in the 2009 MTC season, and not a bad one, though not one that overly impressed me either; it stages the playing out of the response of Grace, a committed atheist (though she disavows the label on the basis that it still presupposes the validity of theism, preferring 'naturalist'), to the news that her son intends to become a priest.

I'm not sure quite why I didn't like it as much as everyone else seemed to (no one seemed to love it, but the general response was pretty positive); at first, it struck me as overly programmatic, but some of the turns it took in the second half pretty much shook that off (though not completely so), and I didn't feel that the characters were too much mouthpieces for particular points of view (though they kind of were at points), nor that any particular agenda was being pushed upon me.

The main thing, I think, is that I found it a bit trite and kind of uninteresting - at a purely intellectual/abstract level, it didn't have anything especially profound to say (the early stages in particular, as some very familiar examples are laid out - the indeterminacy of legal concepts of truth, proof and doubt; the old 'blind watchmaker' argument and response; 'why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast'; made me wince), and at the level of investing abstract ideas with a specific/personal dimension and thereby illuminating them, which is really the province of the play (as opposed to other forms like the philosophical essay), there simply wasn't a strong enough thread to hold it all together (though to be fair, "Grace" does take the form, I think, of a conversation in openness, rather than seeking to run any particular line)...as to that latter, I mean that the play itself wasn't lacking a certain something that would have really brought it to life, or made it genuinely about life (though the actors were all solid - I don't think any blame could accrue to them for the failure).

A couple of personal resonances - Philip Larkin, my favourite poet in high school, and Ani Difranco's song "Untouchable Face", also a favourite during my school years, both feature prominently (indeed, the copy of Larkin's Collected Works that was used is the same edition as mine, green with the yellow and white text on the cover). Also, the juxtaposition of Grace's hardline rationalism with religious faith made me wonder for the first time about possible similarities between continental philosophy and religious belief - the one obviously far more rigorous and, for mine, more, plausible than the other, of course, but both founded on a rejection of any narrow (I would say, 'artificially narrow') understanding of concepts like 'knowledge', 'proof' and 'truth'.

* * *

[Edit: As usual, Alison Croggon is spot on about this one (her blog is rather excellent).]

* * *

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

Neil Young @ Myer Music Bowl, Wednesday 28 January

Well, whatever 'it' is, Neil still has it. It was a stinking hot day (43 degrees) which hadn't cooled much by the time he was on in the Bowl - it had been even worse during My Morning Jacket's rather good but necessarily short opening set, which I arrived partway through - and I was a bit tired, having just arrived back in Melbourne fairly late the previous night (the timing of the end of the o/s trip actually having been dictated by my desire to catch this show), but none of that mattered once he started playing. He and his band sounded great, and my wish for plenty of real guitar action was answered from the outset; both the songs I knew and those that I didn't were great, and there wasn't a single flat spot. The clear highlight was the pulling out of the sprawling "Cortez the Killer", which is saying something given that he also did "The Needle and the Damage Done", as well as killer versions of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and "Words", among others (plus a respectful but reimagined "A Day In The Life" for an encore). Really great.

(w/ David + Justine)

Leona Naess - Comatised

"Charm Attack" is still a treat, a jangly, attitude-filled alt-pop jewel that can be listened to over and over, but the rest of the album is unmemorable - not generic exactly, but just not distinguished in particular.

China Miéville - The Scar

Airplane reading (along with starting Cyptonomicon) on the Vancouver-SF-HK-Melbourne return series of flights. It doesn't lose anything in the re-reading; there's a lot going on in Miéville's novels which is easy to miss on first (and even second) pass amidst the dizzying fecundity of his imagination. I do wonder what the next New Crobuzon (or related) book will take as its focus - it strikes me that all of the first three (this is the second, after Perdido Street Station and before Iron Council) have one particular endlessly moving built environment at their centre (here, the astonishing floating city, Armada), which I suppose stands in for (capitalist) society as a whole in his works' schemas [pl?].

(last time)

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

I've watched this before, though not particularly attentively - a tale of adventure on the high seas (add capitalisations as appropriate) during the Napoleonic wars. It's pretty good, and seems to make a genuine effort at veracity in its depiction of ship-board life, often diverting itself from the central pursuit of the Acheron to dwell on its characters, which somewhat disrupts the flow of the action but probably makes for a richer experience overall.

Appaloosa

Two gunslingers (Ed Harris, who also directs, and Viggo Mortensen), a girl (Renee Zellweger), a villain (Jeremy Irons) - the gunslingers are lanky, hard-bitten, taciturn; they're partners, and they travel from town to town upholding the law for pay; the girl (neither a whore nor a squaw, as one of the characters comments, though not exactly the faithful wife type either) makes her entry in a carriage and dressed in finery, and comes between the lawmen, though not in quite the way that one would expect; the villain is suitably villainous, smooth talking, quick on the draw and murderous...it's a western, alright. But it has some nice touches, particularly the subtle interactions between Harris and Mortensen and the occasional flashes of wry humour, often involving Harris's character's inability to recall the precise word that he wishes to use, and it's economically written and directed enough that it holds the attention the whole way through.

The Best of No Depression: Writing About American Music edited by Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock

No Depression is a magazine that I sometimes browse through, usually while listening to something at a listening station in Basement Discs in the city, but I've never read it enough to have gotten a feel for its style (as opposed to its subject matter, which is reasonably well-defined in a loose sort of way); this book is a collection of feature articles about particular artists which have previously appeared in the magazine's pages.

So I've read all the ones about those I know, and most of the ones about those I don't, and while they're well put together, for the most part they don't really make me want to go off and listen to the music in question - not that they have the opposite effect either, but it's just that they don't inspire. I think that maybe part of the problem for me is that the articles tend to focus more on the artists than on their music; of course the two can never be taken in isolation from each other, but the balance is skewed so far as my tastes go. That said, of course it's still fun to read about so many of my favourites - Lucinda, Gillian, Kasey, Buddy & Julie, Wilco and others.

Steven Erikson - Malazan Book of the Fallen books 1 to 8

[actually finished and wrote up these books in December, but didn't get around to posting]

--> Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, House of Chains, Midnight Tides, The Bonehunters, Reaper's Gale & Toll the Hounds

This is remarkable epic fantasy - right up there with the Covenant and Song of Ice and Fire series as the best of its kind (probably just slightly shaded by both of those, but not by much, and only because of an occasional tendency to drag in its most 'big picture' moments). Indeed, it has much in common with that latter in its grittiness, sprawling multiple storylines combining action, politics and character drama, and penchant for spectacular and gruesome set piece battle scenes, not to mention a tendency to subject its major characters (of whom there are many) to dramatic reversals in fortune and a willingness to kill some of them off from time to time (not always, admittedly, permanently); that said, magic plays a big role in the Malazan series, as do gods and the various other supernally powerful figures who move through its pages, though the sections in which they figure, while integral to the plot and underlying structure of the series and its individual books, tend to be weaker and less gripping than the more grounded, military/campaign focused parts.

Gardens of the Moon is an auspicious beginning, but the series really gripped me from its second book, Deadhouse Gates, its backbone provided by the Chain of Dogs and Coltaine's doomed march, woven through with dozens of dark fates and struggles and drenched in blood. From there, it has an impressively wide canvass, ranging across continents (and worlds) and back and forth through time, often introducing characters in one book, only to backtrack much later to fill their stories in in considerable detail (the Toblakai/Karsa Orlong is the most obvious of those), now one character (or set of characters), now another assuming a central role, and others recurring over and over at longer intervals.

Each of the individual books is massive, and sees an awful lot happen; taken as a whole, they're quite staggering. They're hugely readable, too, despite Erikson's habit of frequently introducing a whole bunch of new characters in an entirely new setting, with no (initial/apparent) overlap with those who are already known - most notably in Midnight Tides, when the Tiste Edur take centre stage (also, if memory serves, the one where humour enters the series for the first time, mainly by way of Tehol Beddict and Bugg). Seriously, seriously good.

Haruki Murakami - Underground

This is the book which compiles a series of interviews that Murakami conducted with those affected by the Tokyo subway sarin release by the Aum cult in 1995, along with some reflections of his own about the event and what it suggests about the Japanese psyche.

The first part is made up of the testimonies of victims of the attack, along with those of two of the doctors who were involved, with the part divided into sections according to the different train lines on which sarin was released, each section introduced by a brief description of the two Aum members who released the sarin on that line - for these, Murakami keeps very much in the background, leaving the interviewees to speak for themselves and recording very few, if any, of the questions that he posed during the interviews. It's striking how similar many of the accounts are, from the daily routines revealed in them to the responses to the attack; although their recollections of the details vary, the broad outlines are very consistently recounted, including the relative ineffectuality of the emergency response system (at least at an overall coordinated level), and an interesting snapshot of Japanese life emerges. That part ends with a short essay by Murakami entitled 'Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?', reflecting on the experience of conducting the interviews and on the attack and aftermath themselves.

I found the second part even more interesting. It contains Murakami's interviews with a number of current and former cult members, and the stories of how they came to join Aum are a fascinating window into the problems faced by the disaffected and misfits in Japanese society, including some who outwardly appear to be completely contented and successful; Murakami himself reflects on this in the preface and afterword to the part. It comes through very clearly that, while those interviewed disavowed or condemned the attacks, nearly all still hold to the underlying tenets of the cult (and its Buddhist underpinnings) and regard them as valuable; one thread running through the entire book, which Murakami makes quite explicit, pertains to the absence or lack in contemporary Japanese society which can give rise to such a space or need in people, and the possibility of any number of recurrences in the future.

Guy Gavriel Kay - The Summer Tree & The Wandering Fire

I suppose it's inherent in the nature of fantasy literature that it requires a certain suspension of disbelief, a suspension which, while it must always be willing in some sense, is positively demanded by the best examples of the genre. Still, the suspension will hold only for so long as the work itself doesn't break the spell, and the major failing of the otherwise excellent first two books in Kay's 'Fionavar' trilogy us that it's difficult to believe that the five figures from 'our' world who are drawn into the events in Fionavar can so quickly assume the heroic capabilities and roles that they do (particularly Dave, a basketball-playing law student who somehow becomes a great battleaxe-wielding warrior in the space of pages); the reasons for their willingness to just drop everything and go along with Loren and Matt in the first place are also not particularly well fleshed out. That said, those are more in the way of teething problems than anything else, and once the books get going, they're really rather good, if just a bit less detailed/panoramic than I tend to prefer.

Woven Hand @ Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, Tuesday 20 January

This was a good show, and the heaviest that I've been to for as long as I can remember. To begin with, David Eugene Edwards is one intense dude - on stage, when he's not glaring out at the audience with eyes narrowed, his eyes tend to be rolled back in his head and/or his face contorted like a man possessed. He sings like one possessed, too - there are shades of both Jim Morrison and Ian Curtis in his deep, resounding voice. Live, Woven Hand are a three piece - Edwards, a cracking drummer, and a guitarist who loses nothing by comparison in either volume or urgency - and they create an unholy racket (though 'unholy' is, of course, a misnomer, given the strong spiritual/old testament current running through their music). It was very loud, and many of the songs were just two-minute blasts - there wasn't a lot of discernible melody, though there was a surprising amount of riffage - but it was powerful stuff...

Support act-wise, I arrived halfway through the first, Holy Ghost, who did a kind of punky blues thing, their lead singer (skinny as) I think copping some moves from Nick Cave (in his younger, more piss-and-blood days) both musically and physically - they were okay. The second, a Brooklyn band called Silver Summit, impressed me - they were kind of like a swampier, more textured (even a bit psychedelic in places), and more eastern-influenced Mira (nb: not Mirah), and not a world away from a certain end of the 4ad roster.

Vivre sa vie

Yet another Godard, and Anna Karina again (his wife at the time, I think). This one was at a theatre called the 'Red Vic' - a 'worked owned and operated movie house' here in San Francisco - and features AK as a penurious young woman in Paris who slides into prostitution. It's told in twelve scenes, each introduced by a scene card which summarises (and in some cases illuminates) what is to come, and involves periods of silence, unexpected outbreaks of music (one of which is accompanied by dancing), and one explicitly philosophical conversation (in which a stranger, 'l'inconnu', expounds on Liebniz and on how German philosophers showed that it is necessary to take life as it is, with all of its imperfections and lumps, rather than seeking an impossible perfection). Fittingly, given its subject matter, it offers relatively few flights of whimsy 'within' the film, and stylistically it's somewhat more restrained than some of the other JLGs that I've seen in the last few months, but it's still recognisably one of his, and it has a kind of, I don't know, aesthetic and anti-sentimental (anti-kitsch?) toughness that makes one think, 'Yes. Yes, this is a real movie.'

L D Beghtol - 69 Love Songs

One of the 33 1/3 series on landmark pop albums; possibly the only one written by a member of the band that recorded the album in question, and certainly the first in the series that I've read. (As attractive as the books are in many ways - and deal though they do with many of my favourites - I've always preferred not to know too much about the circumstances in which the music that I like was recorded, and generally don't find it rewarding to read others' exegeses or blow-by-blow accounts of the songs themselves.)

The first part is comprised of an indiosyncratic glossary of terms used in 69 Love Songs; the second is a track by track, including various technical information and comments by band members and interested others. All up, it has much of the tone and feel of the album(s) - arch, erudite, amused, engaging - and sheds considerable light on the music without, happily, giving anything essential away.

Lucinda Williams - Little Honey

It oughtn't be surprising that Little Honey is a very solid, consistent album, rich in expressive musicality - this is Lucinda Williams we're talking about, after all. And yet, it has come as something of a surprise, and it's taken me months to really listen to the album, and I think that both are because, for all of its worthiness, it, like West before it, lacks the fluency and lightness that characterised the albums in her great mid-career run, Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World and, especially, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and which still touched Essence even if to a lesser extent. She's older now, of course, and doing something different - something closer to blues, and to real, earthy rock and roll - but it doesn't speak to me as much as her older stuff did (and still does).

Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds

It's impressive that an album as quirky and experimental as this can at the same time provide plenty of genuine pop thrills, both on early and repeated listens, but that's just what it does. The violin gives it an unusual sound and texture, but it's just as much the songs' unconventional structures and melodies which set He Poos Clouds aside. I find it very pleasing - delicate, gentle, challenging, memorable.

(the show)

Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

I've intended to read this for a while now, having been unsure about whether I'd read it before (turns out that I hadn't), and it was worth the anticipation. The cliche about feeling oneself in safe hands from the beginning rings true here - Carey's prose has a casually elegant storyteller's rhythm and tone from the first page; the tone is sustained throughout and it, along with the shortish chapterlets in which Oscar and Lucinda is written, does much to send one flying through what is a very readable novel...really, though, much more of its success stems from the story it tells, and its two memorable central characters.

I didn't particularly identify with either Oscar or Lucinda, but I was definitely rooting for both of them. They're sympathetic - intensely, poignantly so - by virtue of the access to their inner lives which we have (a similar trick is worked with several of the other characters) but at the same time they're painted in a way that makes it clear how each becomes and is so thoroughly unsuited to the society in which they find themselves. As a character study, it's rich; as a historical fiction, immersive; as a love story, unorthodox and believable; as a novel, at times earthy but filled with unaffectedly lyrical writing and glittering images for the mind's eye, it's wonderful.

Rolf G Renner - Edward Hopper: Transformation of the Real

One of the Taschen series of black-spined short to medium length artist monographs, this book's underlying theme is summed up near its end: 'Realistic though they may seem, Edward Hopper's paintings are not mere representations of supposed reality.' Renner does a good job of showing how those layers are encoded in Hopper's work, accounting for the painter's characteristic use of colour, shade, framing and perspective in those terms - and, more importantly, tying them into the peculiar effect and mood generated by Hopper's best paintings.

Renner is particularly strong on highlighting the connections and continuities between the different phases and subjects of Hopper's work, tying his often luminous and apparently more simple rural scenes satisfyingly to his more famous city tableaux ("Nighthawks", "Chop Suey", etc). I visited the Whitney Museum while partway through, too, and it was great to be able to see many of the actual paintings discussed and reproduced in the book, giving me a far richer appreciation of what they were about.

"The Sweet Hereafter" OST

This is a really nice soundtrack, and very apt to the film, which which it's closely entwined. The songs on which Sarah Polley sings (I'm not sure if she also wrote any of them; it turns out that there's no Jane Siberry, but one of the songs was written by her) convey the same mood and are in the same vein as the instrumental pieces - pretty, plaintive, simple, gently swelling. Polley's not an especially vivid singer, but the music lingers nonetheless, as does the haunting main theme, frequently reiterated, of the instrumental score.

"Hedda Gabler" @ American Airlines Theatre, NYC, Tuesday 13 January 2009

To a large extent, "Hedda Gabler" stands or falls by the performance of its lead actress, and by that measure, this was a spectacular success - Mary-Louise Parker is predictably brilliant, convincing us that someone as manipulative, sharp-tongued, stand-offish and at times even shrewish as Ibsen's anti-heroine does indeed have the power to captivate the men around her, and the intellectual and emotional depths and restlessness, that the play demands she possess, and also bringing us to care about what end she will meet by play's end despite her many unsympathetic traits...so, for that alone, I enjoyed this one a lot, even though the pacing seemed just slightly off, so that the dramatic arc of the play seemed to stutter at points instead of building, as I think it was intended to, to a shattering close. (A couple of bonuses: Peter Stormare as the curiously mannered but strangely menacing Judge Brack, and the evocative music written by PJ Harvey.)

Comparing this and "All My Sons" to what I've seen of Australian theatre, and particularly the MTC (a closer equivalent than most of what goes on at the Malthouse or elsewhere in Melbourne), what sets the Broadway productions apart is, I think, the calibre of the casts - those that I've seen have included big names, but they've shown serious acting chops, too, and the 'personality' of the actors hasn't seemed to get in the way at all of the characters they've been playing.

Made in U.S.A.

This is currently screening on limited engagement (one cinema - two weeks only) in NY, and I didn't want to miss the chance to see a Godard on the big screen - and in colour, too! As usual with the director, everything's up for grabs, but particularly the 'cinematic' nature of the film itself - this is the most overtly metacinematic of his films that I've seen. It's based on a Donald Westlake novel, so the genre is 'thriller', with Anna Karina trying to get to the bottom of a possible politicial conspiracy that has seen her former lover Richard killed in Atlantic City, but its stop-start rhythms, repetitions, and excisions of critical parts (as well as irrelevant details - Richard's surname is drowned out by a ringing telephone, an overhead plane, or something else, every time it's spoken...presumably it was in homage to this that Tarantino did something similar in Kill Bill), it's calculated to frustrate any ordinary narrative drive or expectation. It's a delight; the dialogue in this one is particularly good.

The Magnetic Fields - Distortion

What is it? It's a Magnetic Fields record with distortion, and that's exactly what it sounds like - and, happily, one for which Stephin Merritt obviously had his mojo while he was writing the songs to go on it. Despite the (relatively light) distortion which is variously wrapped around the guitar, percussion or vocal lines of its songs, Distortion is a very concise album, and the outlines of each song come through clearly (interestingly, there seems to be a higher proportion of female vocals than usual). All of the Fields' hallmarks are there, particularly the literate pop-ness and that characteristic mix of the sprightly, the grandiose and the lugubrious (another way of telling that one is listening to a Magnetic Fields album: one of its catchiest songs is called "Zombie Boy" - and that's that song's chorus, too).

"All My Sons" @ Schoenfeld Theatre, NYC, Wednesday 7 January

Very impressive, this. Miller's play is a study in tautness - there isn't a wasted line, and it feels far shorter than it is - and it's well served by this staging. It's the oldies who really dazzled - Dianne Wiest was completely compelling, and John Lithgow not much shaded by her. They inhabit their characters while bringing them to life through gestures small and large, and the sense of forgetting that I was watching a play came most frequently when one or both of them held central focus on the stage. But Katie Holmes was extremely good too (also, much taller than you probably imagine), including on the dramatic high points required of her, and Patrick Wilson's (who I recently saw in Hard Candy) performance, while a touch uneven I thought, was also very good. (Needless to say, it gave me a kick to be sitting just a few metres away from all of them - I had a pretty sweet seat, just a few rows from the stage.)

All four are excellent when it comes to modulating their characters, rendering them at once sympathetic and flawed in ways which feel real rather than staged, so that the unfolding of events and unveiling of layers of personality feel both natural and inevitable (though that also owes much to Miller's craft in having seeded the hints of what's to come from early on). "All My Sons" strikes me as a very moral play - I don't think it's unfair to say that the play is, above all else, 'about' responsibility for one's actions and beliefs - and here, that aspect of it was fully brought ought and allowed to play out...it really was good stuff.

The Spirit

A disappointment, particularly given Frank Miller's involvement. Endearingly offbeat in some ways (Scarlett's turn is the best thing about the film), but with no real sense of tension or darkness despite the atmospheric visual palette from which it's painted.

Blue Man Group @ Astor Place Theatre, NYC, Saturday 3 January

I hadn't particularly planned on catching this, but when I washed up across the road from their theatre one evening, I didn't feel I had any choice but to buy a ticket for the next night's show. From Arrested Development, I knew that it'd be three bald guys covered in blue paint playing drum, but the show also takes in a wide range of performance theatre, visual projections, music and audience participation (including rolls and rolls of toilet paper dropping from the ceiling) - a kind of postmodern dada experience, though its absurdist tendencies veer more towards the simply humoroous than the genuinely thought-provoking. Enjoyed it.

Blonde Redhead @ Terminal 5, NYC, 31 December 2008

It's not stretching the point to say that "23" was the one track that most sounds like 2008 to me - there's no song that I listened to more, nor any which took on as much significance, over the 12 months just gone - and I can't imagine a better way for the year to have been rung out and the new one welcomed than with Blonde Redhead playing it at midnight last night (it's 1.45pm on 1 January, local time, as I write this), vivid and loud and clangorous, like the whole of the show that had come before it, with confetti from above still glittering on the crowd's heads and clothing. It was an obvious one for them to pick - from their entire, lengthy back catalogue, it's almost certain the most swooningly straight-ahead surge - but that didn't make it any less right.

This was how I chose to spend my new year's eve - alone in a crowd in NYC, at this concert - and it felt like the right thing to have done, for all of the minor inconveniences that it entailed (getting lost on the way in an unfamiliar city, navigating massive crowds and police lines, freezing half to death, trying to keep my footing on the roads made slippery by the sludgy snowfalls of earlier in the day). They were dazzling, kicking off with "Dr Strangeluv" and, after an initial run of several 23 cuts, also digging into Misery is a Butterfly and Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons which produced a couple of the show's highlights (most notably the ever epic "In Particular"). Everything was loud and wonderful. That said, it was odd - the whole of the concert was somehow less than the sum of its parts...while nearly every song was amazing, the overall experience was merely great; I couldn't put my finger on why. Still, all in all, pretty great.

Twilight

Yes! Thanks to KB, I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for with Twilight, and it delivered - it's hyper-dramatic, impossibly teen-romantic, drenched in atmosphere - and it doesn't falter at any point...it held me in its world the whole time (this even when, at points, I couldn't help smiling at how very it was), and it's not a world that I at all mind visiting. Bring it.

Baby Mama

Arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday and haven´t entirely found my feet yet after the longish flight; possibly, entries here will be infrequent as I hop around the americas for the next few weeks, but that remains to be seen!

Anyway, saw this film on the plane - Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in a clash-of-opposites comedy, with the former a career-focused 37 year old who is paired with the latter (nice, as a genuinely sweet character, unlike the type she normally plays) who agrees to be a surrogate mother for Fey´s character´s child. It´s rather fluffy, but sweet-natured...a good in-flight film. Maura Tierney (a blast from the past!) and Steve Martin (as a long-haired hippie business tycoon) also pleasing.

Okkervil River - The Stage Names

A somewhat unexpected treat - Okkervil River are really good these days! Here, their thing is basically a sort of ragged indie rock, often with a bit of a rough-edged country/contemporary folk flavour, and they're just as convincing selling out and out rockers like opening pair "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe" and "Unless It's Kicks" (my current favourite) as mellower dreaming-in-the-sunlight cuts like "A Girl In Port" and "Title Track", not to mention the Spoon-esque rave-up that is "A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene" or "You Can't Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man", crunching like a late Smiths song, or enigmatically anthemic closer "John Allyn Smith Sails". It's rather delightful how it plays with the pop music canon, too, most notably on that last, which segues seamlessly into a slowed down "Sloop John B" melody and makes it work as the natural close to the record as a whole, and "Plus Ones", which plays wryly with numbers in famous pop songs (eight Chinese brothers, etc). Excellent.

Band of Horses - "Tour ep"

I'm not sure where this came from or when it was recorded - it was in amongst a bunch of stuff that Jon gave me a while back - but it's pretty nice, demo and live versions of mostly familiar tracks, albeit some under unfamiliar names. Brought back fond memories of the Band of Horses live experience.

Jesse Zuba - Bloom's Literary Guide to New York

Kinda boring, unfortunately. A potted history of NYC, as focused on headline political happenings and developments as on the writers and movements who chronicled them, but the analysis never rises above the superficial, nor the prose above the workmanlike. There's no real verve to it, no sense of excitement.

Shoot The Piano Player

A part of me thinks that more or less the whole point of this film is the style, but on reflection that's probably unfair (even were it true, that wouldn't be a criticism in this case) - while its attitude to the gangster/noir flicks on which it's a take is at least partly ironic (or perhaps self-reflexive), Shoot The Piano Player also works for many of the same reasons that its generic (in the sense of genre-y) inspirations do, not least in the treatment given to its central character and his of-course-shadowy past. It's so easy to get swept up by these films...

Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

It took me a lot of listens to get Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, but this afternoon, it's finally taken...lush, luscious, full of longing, and at once dramatic and intimate, it's the album of which, in retrospect, Surfacing and Afterglow were more concise, more contemporary, and less good versions. It has a kind of glow, an energy and a languor, which owes much to its understated electronic elements, which are on the verge of being dated but not quite tipping over...I don't know how much or how regularly I'll listen to it going forward, but it was worth persevering at least to this point.

Whistler - Whistler

This is a sweet little folk-pop album, poised between chipper and melancholy, as it usually goes in this genre; as much could've been expected, of course, from "If I Give You A Smile". They remind me a bit of Drugstore (at their least noisy), a bit of the Sundays, sometimes (as on the drowsy-druggy "The End") of Mazzy Star...

Also, as a historical note: here.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Peppy, likeable pop music with many details to savour, from the bop and attitude of early highlight "Oxford Comma" to the electric piano (?) / violin hook in "M79" to the one-two of "I Stand Corrected" and "Walcott", the latter painting in sparkling light what the earlier had set out in muffled tones so that each enhances the other. Heard bits and pieces before; repeat listening to the record as a whole shows the 'afro' elements still prominent, but less so than on initial impression...it's really just neat 21st C indie-pop music, with all that that entails.

Rushmore

Nice! Less stylised than Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic or Darjeeling (being the other Andersons that I've seen), but equally deadpan and pleasing. I think we're supposed to root for Max Fischer; somehow, despite his many obnoxities, I did. It's genuinely funny, and it's kinda got soul, too.