"Paris Underground" (Doncaster Playhouse)

Very safe, gentle 'Parisian' cabaret - suitably, given that the average audience age for this Friday night show was probably upwards of 60 - taking in song, tap, magic, burlesque/dance, and Cyr ring. But didn't take itself too seriously, and fun. (*)

(w/ mum and Serena)

Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit

Been listening to this for a few months, on and off; it's terrific for a whole bunch of reasons, and likewise familiar on at least two levels (musically, and in the lyrical references). Very enjoyable.

Veronica Mars season 3

In many ways, that this one takes place in college rather than high school makes surprisingly little difference, with a lot of the elements basically transplanted to the new setting (one important one, which might be by drift as much as setting, is that social class is much less prominent as a theme than in seasons 1 and 2) - though with less of both Wallace and Weevil, both of whom I missed, though that was somewhat offset by the enjoyable greater prominence of Dick Casablancas. Anyhow, pretty great maybe though not quite as perfectly mixed as the first two seasons. Unresolved ending came abruptly; lucky I'm so late to this one so that the kickstarted film's already out there!

"Picnic at Hanging Rock" (Malthouse)

I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, but it was successful; the framing via the five contemporary schoolgirls worked, and the first half or so of the play in particular was effective in rendering the post-colonial hauntedness of the Australian bush, sticking closely to the events of the film and achieving both a sustained mood and some moments that are genuinely unsettling through good use of lighting and other tricks - I don't think I've ever seen even elements of horror attempted on stage before in this way (the only sort-of example I can think of is the schlocky The Rabble take on "Frankenstein" from a couple of years ago). There are a few mis-steps in the later stages - the trampoline is incongruous, the hysterical swarming of Irma didn't hit quite the right tone - but this was still a very sound production that I enjoyed a lot.

Chairlift - Moth

Chirrupingly bouncy, mixing tightly funky moments of finessed indie like "Show U Off" and more straight-ahead whirls like "Romeo"; "Ch-Ching" is kind of both. The third album in a row from Chairlift that I've liked well enough without getting really into.

(Does You Inspire You; Something)

Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

Extracts from correspondence:

"I just got up to the bit where Jude does the horrible imitation of himself in front of the mirror - alone, after cutting himself - and I actually had to put the book down and stop reading for a bit (hence this email). This book is brutal. A few chapters ago I thought fleetingly about not even reading any further at all - at least not just now, maybe coming back in a few months time - because I could feel it upsetting me in the ways that it was calling to mind, even through only faint echoes, people from my own life."


"The book is just not playing around - it means to destroy you. It has some of the most intense passages I've ever read.  Do take care with it."


"I need a bit more processing time - it is definitely a book that has a huge impact ... but I'm still not sure if it's actually any good. (I think the answer is 'yes, with reservations, but maybe the reservations don't matter'.)"

"Turn everything off just to turn it back on" (2015 cd)

Last year's soundtrack (compiled in January but it's taken me this long to get round to noting it here):

1. Really Wanna See You - Lydia Loveless
(Somewhere Else; Bloodshot, 2014)

2. You & I (Forever) - Jessie Ware
(Tough Love; Universal, 2014)

3. My Baby Don't Understand Me - Natalie Prass
(Natalie Prass; Spacebomb, 2015)

4. Learn To Say No - Lydia Loveless
(Indestructible Machine; Bloodshot, 2011)

5. Miles From The Sea - Calexico
(Edge of the Sun; Anti, 2015)

6. All Your Yeahs - Beach House
(Thank Your Lucky Stars; Mistletone, 2015)

7. Leave A Trace - Chvrches
(Every Open Eye; Glassnote, 2015)

8. Shine A Different Way - Patty Griffin
(Servant of Love; PGM, 2015)

9. Vez Primera - Carla Morrison
(Amor Supremo; Cosmica, 2015)

10. Shake Sugaree - Rhiannon Giddens
(Tomorrow Is My Turn; Nonesuch, 2015)

"Hard Edge: Abstract Sculpture 1960s-70s" (NGVA)

Late afternoon Saturday wander. Pleasing: Tony Coleing's "Frondescence" (1968), the little wooden maquette (model) for "Vault" from when its design was first submitted to the City of Melbourne, other angularly colourful pieces.

(w/ Meribah)

"Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei" (NGV)

The staging of these two artists' work and careers in conversation with - and reflection of - each others' is convincing, taking in shared preoccupations and approaches (like the duality between their desire to obscure the stylistic and authorial elements of the individual artist and the centrality of their own personality to the reception of their work) as well as subjects (cultural objects; Mao!), common well-springs (eg Duchamp) and overt dialogue and influence.

I guess both are conceptual artists par excellence, which means that their art is foremost about ideas. One of the things I've always found irritating about Warhol is that it's the same idea monotonously over and over (although admittedly the moments when he captures the genuinely iconic have a real charge, like his Elvis and the "Screen Tests" which here included Dylan, Reed, Edie Sedgwick, Nico and more); Ai Weiwei, by contrast, appeals to me because of his sense of humour and political forcefulness, even though it turns out that, while he has many ideas, it tends to be only one per work.

Asides:
1. This exhibition seems to be in the process of being super popular - this was the third time I'd visited the gallery with the intent of seeing it and the queue for tickets was as long as on the previous occasions when I'd decided against it.
2. Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull were there at the same time as us (this was last weekend), their sighting apt given Warhol's fascination with celebrity.

(w/ Alex)

White Night Melbourne, Saturday 20 February

Seemed much thinner and less exciting than previous years. Always hard to know whether it might've just been my particular route and time, and in this its fourth year some of the novelty might be expected to've worn off anyway, but looking at the program makes me think that might be an objective fact - perhaps due to the uncertainty until relatively close to the event about whether it was going ahead this year? Definitely felt the lack of the really large-scale cbd exterior projections that have characterised previous years, and nor was there any sense of discovery or scattered treasures throughout the landscape. Having said that:

• it was still somewhat great to see the familiar face of the REB all lit up
• "The Dresses", down the very southern end in the gardens, was pretty (Tae Gon Kim)
• the NGV front projection was good ("Still Here" - Josh Muir)
• given how little else seemed to be happening, we spent some time with "Manifesto" in the chilly time just before sunrise
• sunrise was also pretty.

Started around 3.30am, which wasn't actually that difficult given how all over the place my sleeping and other habits have been lately.

(w/ Erandathie)

(2013, 2014, 2015)

Anomalisa

Rightio, I've always been a bit vague about this, but actually it's not that complicated. Charlie Kaufman has written a bunch of films but only directed one before: Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (both dir. Spike Jonze), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry), Synecdoche, New York (the one that he also directed). Anyhow, Anomalisa worked for me and I'm very glad that I didn't know anything about it going in other than Kaufman, puppets and JJL - it felt real (reality <--> perception), Hotel Fregoli metaphorical site/syndrome and all, and I liked the kind-of coda of Lisa's letter (which was in her own voice and not Tom Noonan's, right?).

(w/ Daniel L and David)

Wilco - Star Wars

I do enjoy Wilco's approach to music-making; on Star Wars, that includes deliberately making the most uninviting track ("EKG") the opening one on the record (Cf The Whole Love). The rest of it is sweetly well-worn, modest while still interesting. Not a highlight of their starry (pun unintended but who knows, maybe the image was planted in my head by the title) career, but nice still.

The Village Bike (Red Stitch)

The (possibly deliberate) messy intermingling of satire, farce and character/social drama within The Village Bike didn't fully take hold of me, but I enjoyed the performances, and even though it didn't feel like a cohesive whole, the Situation made it engaging enough. Also, given that - insofar as it's primarily about any one thing - it's maybe mainly about the interplay between our basic drives and our attitudes towards sex, which is a subject about which it'd be hard to be clear or take any particular 'position' without being reductive, maybe the lack of formal or thematic resolution is apt.

(w/ Jen G and Anna F + mother)

Bells ring

Last Sunday, afternoon. I stopped by the Malthouse to while away an hour between things, on my own - the site of so many memories and associations, going back to the days when it hosted the writers festival. Drifting through the air outside in the sunshine, Mazzy Star on shuffle; perfect. Sometimes when listening to music, for moments, and moments on end, the feeling can be so strong that you might almost burst.

Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours

When you're covering a song from Rumours, you're going to face at least - and possibly more than - one of four challenges: you're tackling one of the super-famous songs, you're doing a song that's super-great, you've got one that while maybe not super-famous has still attained a kind of minor iconic status over time (I'm thinking especially of "Gold Dust Woman" and maybe "The Chain" in that category), or else you're doing one of the other, less notable tracks from the record.In fact, though, it matters less which of those challenge(s) you've got than might at first seem the case, because every song on Rumours is very good and the whole album is so extremely part of the pop air that we all breathe, and so, in other words, it's really only a matter of degree any which way.

Anyhow, there are some bright moments here (a track by track set of covers) and actually they do tend to be the more particularly famous and recognisable songs, including Tonic's peppy "Second Hand News" and the Corrs' sweet version of "Dreams" (already well-known to me from radio play many years back) at the top and Jewel's simmering "You Make Loving Fun". Also, at once faithful to the original and decently in the voice of the coverers are both Elton John's "Don't Stop" and the Cranberries' "Go Your Own Way". Overall, this is a pleasant listen rather than particularly illuminating or exciting, but still, pleasant is not such a bad thing. Also, release date was 1998, which explains some of the artist picks, including several that I've already mentioned and also Matchbox Twenty.

(notes on a different Fleetwood Mac covers album here, including repentance for not initially understanding the greatness of the band and this album in particular)

Amy Espeseth - Sufficient Grace

Covered-over traumas from the past and present-day corruption of the soul come to the surface in the dead of winter in an isolated, rural and deeply religious Wisconsin community, seen through the eyes of a child, Ruth, who is at the centre of it. It has the ring of authenticity to it, in voice, setting and psychology.

(a gift from Susan a good 12 months ago)

Veronica Mars season 2

A scattering of thoughts on season 2:

• Smart move to set up another season long central mystery with large personal implications for Veronica. Not really a propos, the crashed bus full of school children (actually only half a dozen, but that's more than enough and the motif is the same) can't help but bring to mind The Sweet Hereafter.
• I guess the name 'Veronica' is a call back to the Archie comics, but it makes me think of Heathers instead (which of course draws on that same source). I like how Veronica Mars is so unintrusively but clearly embedded in pop culture, both through meta-references like that one (*) and the role that pop culture quite naturally plays in its characters' lives (**).
• (*) Another example might be the guest appearances of both Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat in the same episode, which can't have been a coincidence. Also possibly not coincidental: the way that both this show and Arrested Development are obsessed with family as a theme.
• (**) Also nice is how Veronica goes to the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides for her breakup music.
• Lots of plot and at times a bit soap opera-ish, but I don't mind that here in context.
• Does a decent job moving its main characters around and giving them things to do and room for development, including giving some more supporting figures from season 1 more prominence and introducing some new ones. It is fun never quite knowing which way anyone - well, most of them - is going to turn or what their true colours will be.
• Krysten Ritter shows up as a classmate. If I'm honest, it's hard to tell whether it's just because she's attractive or because she also has talent/charisma but she's eye-catching wherever she appears (Don't Trust the B... was fun while it lasted).
• Obviously, easy to watch, just like the first season.

Carol

Cinematic, romantic, blurrily subjective (from the perspective of both Cate's Carol and Rooney Mara's Therese) and quite beautiful. Also, I wonder whether the name of the film/character and the Christmas-time setting is a coincidence?

(w/ Kevin)

Lorrie Moore - Self-Help

Acerbic, witty and moving, these stories do what short stories are supposed to. Includes "How to Become a Writer" and another that I've read somewhere in an anthology before, "How to Be an Other Woman". Several of them got to me, but "Go Like This" is the one that made me feel the saddest, that made my breath catch in my chest, that most made me feel.

Natalie Merchant - Paradise Is There

When Natalie Merchant released her lovely, resonant solo debut Tigerlily, in 1995, she was more or less the age that I am now; last year, two decades on and now past 50, came Paradise Is There, made up of the same songs but re-recorded (and reordered) with the benefit of experience and the different perspective that comes with time. So of course I had to listen to it.

I came to Tigerlily during university - via the local library, over summer 2001-02 (so, tipping from second year into third - in retrospect the start of a period that shaped me a great deal) - and it's one of those albums that, even if I don't think of it that often, has become deeply woven into my life, songs like "San Andreas Fault", "Wonder", "Beloved Wife", "Carnival", "I May Know The Word" and more which have become more familiar than words and which I really hold dear. There's a sweetness to it and a sadness coexisting with hope in its gentle melodies and Merchant's somehow both hesitant and fluid vocals that was irresistible then and still is.

In that context, the versions on Paradise Is There were never going to replace the originals in my affections. These are not radical reinterpretations; rather, overall, these new versions tend to be more orchestrated (more strings), a bit fuller in sound (including a certain deepening of the timbre of Merchant's voice) and longer, but remain clearly recognisable. Do they cast new light on these familiar songs, and do they have something to say about the journey that their writer and singer has been on in the 20 years since she first laid them down? Do they also make me reflect on the time that's passed and what has changed in my own life over the (more like 15 year) period since I first discovered them myself? Yes to all of those questions, in small ways but not negligible ones - and so, something to be grateful for, as quiet as all of this may be.

Sarah Blasko - Eternal Return

Very and nicely smooth from Blasko - she's so, so good. (Also, as a somewhat random aside, the only album I can think of that I've ever listened to where the first two tracks are my two least favourite.)

Veronica Mars season 1

"We Used To Be Friends" was always my least favourite of the Dandy Warhols' radio singles, but thanks to its use as the show's theme song, by the time Kristen Bell's Veronica Mars utters those lines about midway through this engrossing first season, "we used to be friends, a long time ago" - in the same rhythm as the song, no less - it carries a charge.

I knew that the show had a sizeable cult following and the concept of high school noir was intriguing (Brick being the only obvious predecessor in that sub-genre), plus Bell was appealingly waspy as Leslie Knope's Eagleton rival in Parks and Rec, so this seemed a likely prospect - and yes, it is very good!

As it turns out, high school is a good setting for a show about a (teen) private investigator - after all, to those living through it, the stakes are high and everything feels meaningful, and there's a ready cast of contrasting types and motivations, not to mention plenty of rules (there to be broken) and mystery. And Veronica Mars (people use her full name a lot) is a terrific character to have at the centre of events - smart, tough and hard-edged while also vulnerable and prone to kindness towards others, an outsider who used to be an insider, and convincingly all of those thing as a function of both personality and (traumatic) events - and while the figures in her orbit vary in interestingness, all are memorable even if only because of their archetypal nature. (I do like Logan; also likeable in a smaller role is Tina Majorino of Napoleon Dynamite fame as Veronica's IT specialist; Alyson Hannigan also flits through two or three episodes as Logan's flighty sister.)

Also notable: issues of class are foregrounded throughout, from the very first line; and it gets right the number of twists, and the balances between lightness and the darker elements, and the overall mystery (who killed Lilly Kane? ... which reminds me that Amanda Seyfried is also good in her many appearances in flashback) and the episode-by-episode investigations into which she's drawn by various schoomates).

Aziz Ansari - Modern Romance

A bit fluffy but pretty much on the money, on a subject about which we are all such great theoreticians. It helped that that I could imagine Tom Haverford while reading it, even though Ansari's own voice and personality obviously differ plenty from the character he plays.

Heather Christle - The Trees The Trees

I've been reading this slim collection for, I think, three or so years now, on and off, and grappled with most of the 58 poems comprising it several times along the way - it's struck a chord, meaning and objects and images and phrases slipping one into each other.

                              THEN WE ARE IN AGREEMENT

                 pick a hand      it has nothing in it      you can keep
                 my hand as long as you need it      you never know
                 what a long day this has turned into     you can say
                 it's only time       but what isn't      maybe if I asked
                 nicely      you would represent me      in court      in
                 the future       in many ways       we are alike      we
                 both have one of my hands     and at least one of us
                 likes it      I won't speak for you      but am honestly
                 waiting         in  hopes that you might  speak for me
                 make statements       deny statements       the vital
                 thing's to make a little noise

(context)

Laura Stevenson - Cocksure

Terrific! Every bit as enjoyable as 2013's Wheel; sweetly, sharply piquant, and nearly every song a miniature - or, in the case of the first and last tracks, not so miniature - epic.

The Hateful Eight

Years of watching Tarantino have trained us all to pay close attention to dialogue, character and set-up (including shifts in apparent power relations) in his films but - unsurprisingly - there was no way of telling how this one would turn out or who (if anyone) would be left standing at the end; that uncertainty, plus the presence and impact of all of the usual technical things that he does so well (including characters and set pieces that, even if sometimes on the thin side in this one, enable their inhabiting actors' charisma to come through[*]), adds up to three hours that never drags. Yet, easy as it was to watch on a Sunday afternoon in a crowded movie theatre, I don't know how much there was to this one, or whether I'd watch it again - I have a suspicion that it might ultimately be hollow, insubstantial.

(w/ Julian - at the Astor and on the 70mm film at the 2.76:1 aspect in which it was shot, complete with program, overture and intermission)

[*] I don't think it was one of her great performances, but it was committed - and it was a treat to see my old favourite Leigh in such fine touch.

"Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto" (ACMI)

Four video works, dominated by the multi-screen one that gives the exhibition its name - Cate Blanchett in multiple (about a dozen?) characters including teacher, rock star, ballet impresario, dock worker, housewife, news reporter and more, declaiming a range of art movements' manifestos.

Two musical things

1. "Summer Rain", Belinda Carlisle. This evening, out running as it lightly rained. There seem to've been more of these music/life moments over the past six or nine months, which must be a good thing.

2. David Bowie. Generally I'm quite unaffected by the passing of people who I don't know in real life but this one is different - I don't know why. I feel a real sense of loss.

Garbage - Garbage (20th anniversary edition / remastered)

This album was pretty epochal for me and so of course it's good listening to it again, the songs travelling along paths seared into my awareness long ago. The b-sides haven't aged well, though, apart from strong residual affection for "#1 Crush".

"The Biography of Things" (ACCA)

This one pretty much passed me by, sad to say. Nothing here that I could sink my teeth into.

The Lobster

Very good. Still not sure how to read the ending - razor sharp endpoint of critique of idea of relationships as founded on shared qualities, actually romantic (the internet seems to have plumped for this one), or both? Of the big names, Farrell and Seydoux most enjoyable.

(w/ David)

Marissa Nadler - Songs from the Big Wheel

Elegant, clear modern folk.

Grimes - Art Angels

Sinuous, beguiling, brilliant - astonishingly, even better than Visions (which turned out to be seriously excellent as time went on). Every song is good but there's a particularly murderously good run through the record's mid-section from tracks 6 through to 10 - "Kill v Maim", "Artangels", "Easily", "Pin", "REALiTi" - throughout which it feel like she's reached some kind of almost transcendent state of flow, spinning out one glorious piece after another; also particularly blissful is the earlier "Flesh Without Blood".

Artists

... but the real piece of procrastination recently involved exporting my itunes data and then mucking around with excel to get it to tell me which artists I've spent the most time listening to since itunes became a part of my life in around 2007 or 2008.

1. Patty Griffin
2. The National 
3. Aimee Mann
4. Taylor Swift (sure I like her a lot, and listened to Red in particular heaps, but this is still kind of startling)
5. Beach House
6. Buddy Miller (not including his collabs with Julie Miller)
7. The Arcade Fire 
8. Jolie Holland
9. The New Pornographers
10. Laura Cantrell 
11. Robert Plant (another that's a bit of a surprise, but then I have really enjoyed his latter-day run since - and including - Raising Sand)
12. First Aid Kit 
13. Belle and Sebastian 
14. Jen Cloher & the Endless Sea 
15. Lydia Loveless 
16. Spoon 
17. Neko Case 
18. The War on Drugs (this is entirely the one album)
19. Sharon Van Etten  
20. Radiohead 

Anyway, give or take, seems pretty much right, though it was surprising to see what a big gap there was between Patty Griffin and everyone else; turns out I've spent some 158 hours listening to her music, or almost a full week all up - whereas the next on the list, the National, clocks in at 'only' 88 hours, with the rest stepping down in much smaller increments after that. Also, once again, I wish that a 'lifetime' version of this was possible, and not just the last few years!

"74-93 (as culled from Christchurch secondhand cd shop bargain bin, October 2015)"

Much fun on this one - the title of this mix cd from JF self-explanatory (except that they're all Japanese artists). Most enjoyable (some of those titles possibly the results of google translate efforts): "Sky Drew Ball" by Masato Tomobe, melodic singer-songwriter on piano (1993); "Sukiyaki Etoufee" by Makigami Koichi, which is kind of like a lower-fi "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1992); "Eve of Destruction" by RC Succession, which sounds like heartland roots rock with a punk dash, in a good way (1988); "If Purple" by Haruomi Hosono, which is hazily lovely and feels like a precursor to that Squarepusher pair "Tommib" and "Tommib Help Buss" (1987).

Song list

Ok - so it seems like this is now an annual thing too. Procrastinating from writing a couple of other things that I really should, update on my most frequently played songs according to itunes (it would be nice if there was some way of working out the stats over, say, a 12 month period rather than just for the whole of my itunes-using time).

1. (12 months ago: #1) Different Worlds - Brittany Cairns (215 plays)
2. (2) This World Can Make You Happy - Amaya Laucirica (140)
3. (3) 100 Million Little Bombs - Buddy Miller (138)
4. (4) State of Grace - Taylor Swift (133)
5. (5) New Year - Beach House (126)
6. (7) 23 - Blonde Redhead (122)
7. (8) Useless Desires - Patty Griffin (117)
8. (6) It Must Come Through - Jen Cloher and the Endless Sea (116)
9. (9) The Mother We Share - Chvrches (112)
10. (=15) Slow Show - The National (110)
11. (10) Starry Skies - Laura Cantrell (104)
12. (11) Out Loud - Mindy Smith (102)
13. (12) Aeroplane - The Everybodyfields (100)
=14. (new) Learn To Say No - Lydia Loveless (99)
=14. (=15) No Bad News - Patty Griffin (99)
16. (new) Vez Primera - Carla Morrison (94)
17. (14) Sweet Talk - Jessie Ware (93)
=18. (=15) Don't Tell Me - Buddy Miller (92)
=18. (=15) Godspell - The Cardigans (92)
=18. (13) Coming Home To Me - Patty Griffin feat Julie Miller (92)
21. (19) Red - Taylor Swift (91)
22. (=20) You Keep Me Hangin' On - Janelle Arthur (88)
23. (=25) From This Moment On - Shania Twain (86)
=24. (=25) Afraid of Nothing - Sharon Van Etten (83)
=24. (=20) Even Though I'm A Woman - Seeker Lover Keeper (83)
=26. (=28) Wild Old Dog - Patty Griffin (82)
=26. (=23) Manchester - Kishi Bashi (82)
=26. (=37) Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National (82)
=29. (=28) Circumambient - Grimes (81)
=29. (=28) Hey, Snow White - The New Pornographers (81)
=29. (=28) I Couldn't Be Your Friend - Tegan and Sara (81)
=32. (=28) I Don't Ever Give Up - Patty Griffin (80)
=32. (=25) The Bleeding Heart Show - The New Pornographers (80)
=34. (=23) Ode to LRC - Band of Horses (79)
=34. (=20) Blue Lips - Regina Spektor (79)
=36. (=45) Let's Get Out Of This Country - Camera Obscura (78)
=36. (=35) I Got Nothing - Dum Dum Girls (78)
=36. (=28) All I Can - Sharon Van Etten (78)
=39. (=42) Strong Enough - Haim (77)
=39. (=45) Abducted - Cults (77)
=41. (=50) Fake Empire - The National (76)
=41. (=35) I Think I Broke Something - Dan Rohmer and Benh Zeitlin (76)
=41. (34) Don't Let Me Die in Florida - Patty Griffin (76)
=44. (new...though actually a re-entry) Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson (75)
=44. (=37) Mexico City - Jolie Holland (75)
46. (=42) Red Eyes - The War on Drugs (73)
47. (=39) Burgundy Shoes - Patty Griffin (72)
=48. (=39) Lie in the Sound - Trespassers William (71)
=48. (=39) Modern Love - The Last Town Chorus (71)
=48. (=42) With God On Our Side - Buddy Miller (71)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star Wars has never been a big part of my life, which probably goes a fair way to explaining why, while I found this one entertaining, somehow it wasn't particularly exciting.

(w/ Andreas)

Bits and pieces from Singapore

Quick wrap from impromptu dash to Singapore between Christmas and new year's:

At the Art Science Museum, "Collider: The World's Greatest Experiment" & "The Nobel Prize: Ideas Changing the World". Both a bit heavy on the 'facts' side for me, though both made noble (ha ha) attempts to present their content interestingly and interactively. The highlight for me was really an add-on to the 'Collider' exhibition (which is about the Large Hadron Collider underground at the Swiss-French border, with a history of particle physics thrown in), a piece called "The Gift of Mass", described thus: "This immersive audio-visual installation invites the visitors to live the impossible experience of acquiring their own mass. The visitors go virtually from a Universe in which particules having no mass move without distinguishing themselves, to a Universe where mass is formed through an invisible sea, the Higgs Field" - as you walk towards the screen, your body acquires mass and form via coloured projection.

At a small gallery called Deck, "To Measure the Depth of the Ocean", showcasing the work of five important modern Singapore photographers. My favourite was Foo Tee Jun.

Across the several exhibitions at the Singapore Art Museum, a contemporary art gallery (works from across south-east Asia but a focus on Singapore), a few that stood out were Ho Tzu Nyen's "No Man", an video installation with projections of fantastically costumed figures on both of a pair of mirrored walls facing each other in a darkened room, Matthew Ngui's "Every Point of View", a forest of pipes exploring ideas of democracy, Heman Chong's "Calendars (2020-2096)", Sarah Choo Jing's "The Hidden Dimension II" (detail still below and video here) and Loo Zihan's installation "Of Public Interest: The Singapore Art Museum Resource Room", particularly for the reasons given by previous visitors for withdrawing particular books from circulation.

Also, in a slightly different vein, the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides completely hitting the spot as I sat outside by myself in the heat one evening after a dusk-ish ride on the Singapore Flyer (I'm drawn to ferris wheels, I don't know why).

China Mieville - Three Moments of an Explosion

Excellent collection of cerebral Mieville weirdness, with each story (some of them are very short) built around something substantial and often fascinating - an idea, an image, a question. Shot through with concerns of class and politics both structural and personal. Icebergs over London, lost oil rigs breeding and returning to shore to feed, slantwise reinterpretations of existing paintings revealing uncanny new objects, people are infected by a condition that manifests in trenches appearing around them if they remain still for too long, several hauntings, and much, much more.

Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games series

Still leanly pacy and sharply satirical; coming back to these after the movies makes me realise actually what a good job they did in translating the book's spirit, plot and characters to the big screen - how faithful the adaptation was.

(previous time: 1, 2, 3)

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

Nirvana and Cobain were never any more big a deal for me than they were for everyone else of more or less my age and sensibilities - ie still quite a big deal but, in my case, in more of a diffused and generalised way than imbued with a huge amount of personal meaning. So I didn't expect this documentary to particularly affect me, and it didn't (although it uses its home videos and other personal sources well), but what it did do was remind me of the whole grunge thing, how messy it actually was before it became completely packaged and mainstreamed and all that.

John Higgs - Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the 20th Century

Chewed through this during recent trip. Enjoyable skate through some of the biggest ideas - of various kinds - to have shaped the century and does a good job of both organising them into sensible chapters and highlighting both expected and less obvious connections: relativity, modernism, war, individualism, id, uncertainty, science fiction, nihilism, space, sex, teenagers, chaos, growth, postmodernism, network.

Terry Pratchett - The Shepherd's Crown

The last Discworld novel. Truth be told, I thought it was fine without being that great, but that seems almost beside the point in any number of ways.

Randall Griffin - Georgia O'Keeffe (Phaidon)

I spend a lot of time leafing through and reading bits of books about art and artists, but don't tend to get through many from start to finish; this one was an exception, aided by the straightforwardness and brevity of the text (which I found a bit unsatisfying for those same reasons, but catch 22 I guess) and how much I love O'Keeffe (since to a very large extent, I respond to her paintings in themselves and without needing any particular context for them).

Community season 5

Sharp!

Rhiannon Giddens - Tomorrow Is My Turn

Richly, warmly satisfying, bits of soul, blues, old-time country, Celtic-Appalachian folk, French chanson and more woven across this set of (all but one) interpretations of songs made famous by female artists both iconic and otherwise - in the first category, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Nina Simone, to name three - with several traditional numbers, and Giddens a strong, expressive voice all through.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire & Mockingjay pts 1 & 2

So three things:
1. Jennifer Lawrence is a very good actor. It's particularly impressive the way she so completely is Katniss Everdeen in these movies without that - surely on the way to being iconic, if not already? - character overshadowing, or even being apparently present (except by always unavoidable trace) in her other performances.
2. Mockingjay Part 2 is a perfectly fine ending. I could wish that there was more texture and screen time for several of the characters and their arcs, but I guess that would've made it even longer, and that's probably really the complaint of someone who's enjoyed these films a lot and basically just wants more. And all told it's just as engaging as the ones before it, and it follows through on the harder-edged themes of the series.
3. I do think that the whole series is impressive in the way that it sustains the serious-mindedness of its treatment of its themes of power, oppression and control, spectacle and propaganda, social inequality, compromise, individual choice and agency, and sacrifice.

(last time: Catching Fire, Mockingjay Part 1)

"Ayre" (Golijov) / "Folk Songs" (Berio) - Dawn Upshaw & the Andalusian Dogs

Two song cycles (or at least sets); Golijov's melds Spanish, Arabic and Jewish elements while Berio's are arrangements of traditional songs from around the world (USA, France, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), with Dawn Upshaw displaying a malleable voice which veers very far in places from her basic operatic style. The Golijov pieces have struck me more, suffused with feeling and, frequently, melancholy. This was a gift from Kim (of course).

Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars

Well this is a treat - a second Beach House record released within a few months of the last. Thank Your Lucky Stars is painted in lighter, airier hues than Depression Cherry, and while it's nice all the way through, only a few of the songs particularly stand out - three in particular, "All Your Yeahs" (especially the keyboard line that dances brightly through its close), "One Thing" (guitars winding it up instead - v Galaxie 500-ish), the drone-y "Elegy to the Void".

Carla Morrison - Amor Supremo

A satisfyingly enveloping, richly emotive record, its gusts, swirls and swoops rendered in both Morrison's evocative (Spanish-language) vocals and the lush - yet generally understated - mix of electronic haze and more organic instrumentation that flows through. With this kind of album, there's almost always that 'one song' and here it's track 3 - "Vez Primera". (Some other artists and records that this has called to mind at various points over the last few weeks: Lykke Li, The Magician's Private Library, Amaya Laucirica, Rome (and Little Broken Hearts), Lana Del Rey (kind of).)

Laura Tingle - "Political Amnesia: How We Forgot How to Govern" (quarterly essay 60)

Entirely plausible premise - that a not insignificant factor in the recent troubled experience of government in Australia, at least federally, has been the erosion or loss of political and institutional memory. I do think it's too simplistic to (as people often seem to do nowadays) blame everything on the 24 hour media cycle and its supposed result of a focus on the personalities and practice (at the most superficial level) of politics rather than the substance of ideas, policy and government - at most, that's a symptom of deeper societal change and a compounding factor, rather than an underlying cause in its own right - and Tingle's diagnosis is pretty persuasive. Nor do I think her argument is necessarily conservative - there could no doubt be entirely forward-looking ways of valuing, retaining and activating collective or networked memory, experience, insight and wisdom (I use that last word deliberately) without relying slavishly on traditional institutions and ways of thinking.

"Middletown" (Red Stitch)

A small-scale play with an interest in the universal - its dramatic scenarios verging on the infraordinary, its departures from straight naturalism taking on a tinge almost of hyper-reality (not least because of its totemically small town America - 'middletown' - setting). Not earth-shattering, but nice. And it felt truthful.

(w/ Jon and Erandathie)

An aside

I read an article yesterday which pointed out that 'It Follows' means 'therefore' - a nice point, and what a terrific film it is.

The Assassin

Has an unusual pace and approach to narrative to it - not just in its slowness and ellipses, but also in how the interiority of its central character's motivations is thereby framed. There's something almost abstract about it - all the essential elements of a martial arts film present, but distilled and filtered to emerge as something unusual and elusive. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed The Assassin, but it left an impression.

(w/ Rob)

Richard Mosse - "The Enclave" & Celeste Boursier-Mougenot - "Clinamen" (NGV)

Richard Mosse's multi-screen installation - war-rent Congo rendered on film capturing parts of the colour spectrum not ordinarily visible:

"Clinamen", like a blue version of Kapoor's "My Red Homeland". And, because blue, liquid and musical (porcelain bowls chiming as they meet, moved around the circular pool by subtle currents) rather than waxily earthy and monumental. Liked it very much.
 

Spectre

Entertaining enough, mostly, from moment to moment yet overall kind of uninteresting. Skyfall was much better.

(w/ Erandathie)

Eighties music

A couple of Friday nights ago, dinner with Ruth at Chin Chin and the music seemed to be spot on - Fleetwood Mac when we walked in ("Go Your Own Way" I think), "I Want to Know What Love Is" (actually a really good song - who knew?), it might have been a Cure song next (can't remember which - maybe one of the singles off Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me) - and anyway it took quite a while before I realised that the common element amidst the run of songs that was generating such positive vibes on my part was that they were all from the 80s, which was a touch surprising seeing as the decade most likely to send me (so to speak) must surely rather be the one that followed (ie the 90s, during which I grew up). Anyway, others included "With or Without You", "Billie Jean", "Take My Breath Away", "The Killing Moon", more Cure, etc, etc and plenty more that have since slipped my mind. Altogether very good.

(somewhat a propos)

"Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes" (NGV)

A fine exhibition, taking a broad perspective on its subject, from an enjoyable selection across the 30s and 40s (James Gleeson,[*] Eric Thake, Peter Purves Smith, Russell Drysdale, Roy de Maistre, Robert Klippel) through to some thoroughly contemporary pieces - in many cases much more in the vein of 'echoes' of surrealism than being 'actually' surrealist through and through.

[*] As an aside, Gleeson is one of the first artists whose work I can remember striking me - I don't remember which painting it was, but it was probably in the NGV's permanent collection and years ago, long before I'd come across surrealism as an idea or movement or indeed discovered any particular interest in art within myself.

Game of Thrones season 5

Was this season particularly absorbing or was I just paying more attention than to previous ones? It seemed like all of the many narrative threads running through it were equally interesting, with many of them feeling like they got a pretty decent amount of time through individual episodes and across the season (especially Jon, Daenerys, Arya) - the show pretty much nailed its formula from the get go back in season 1, but it's finely honed by now, delivering its dramatic punches with verve (nearly every episode ends with something really bad happening to someone important).

One interesting aspect is the way that, as the show has departed in various ways for the books and, by the end of season 5, in some respects actually gone beyond what the books are up to, the two have increasingly intermingled into a whole that's intriguingly indeterminate - increasingly they seem like aspects of a single story or source, yet the clear inconsistencies between tv series and books make the melding imperfect, so that the 'actual story' has become a particularly fluid notion or entity.

Also, I think that this was the first time that the show has introduced a major-seeming character and killed them off in the same episode - played, it happens, by Birgitte Hjort Sørensen aka Katrine from Borgen.

Rick and Morty season 2

hehe

(season 1)

Beach House - Depression Cherry

A record made not for parsing or analysis, but rather for experiencing in a single continuous stream. Sweetly humming, like aural fairy floss, in the best way.

Black Mass

A gangster movie, aiming for prestige status and well made but ultimately with no point to it - nothing new in the story it was telling, no particular psychological or societal insight, no real connection to wider world.

(w/ Laura M and Andreas)

Patty Griffin - Servant of Love

Another glorious set from Patty Griffin. What an extraordinary artist she is! If I've counted right, this makes nine studio lps plus live record A Kiss in Time, and the run remains unbroken - every one has been excellent. Many of the words that come to mind in describing Servant of Love are elemental - airy, earthy, (quietly) fiery, pelagic - and its songs have Griffin's usual mixture of delicacy and sturdiness and strength in both construction and execution, including a pleasingly jazzy streak that has woven its way through her discography for years (piano and muted trumpet appearing here and there). While a handful of more upbeat numbers are sprinkled throughout, there's a whole lot of wistful here - which, done with such a lightness of touch and sense of liveliness and spirit, is hitting the mark just fine.

George R R Martin - A Feast for Crows & A Dance with Dragons

Enough detail, texture and plotting to still get well lost amidst.

(last time)

Metric - Pagans in Vegas

On the bland side, a couple of good choruses notwithstanding (eg "For Kicks" - which also has Cure-esque guitars at the start to recommend it). Disappointing.

"Swan Lake" (Imperial Russian Ballet Company, Palais)

Quite beautiful, but I couldn't shake the awareness of how much gruesomely hard work and pain goes into the art form (not entirely due to Black Swan).

(with my family!)

"Julie Rrap: Remaking the World" (Potter, Melb Uni)

Two rooms, both dark but in a contrast with each other which actually reflects the conversation between the two.

"Remaking the World: Artists Dreaming":

Whereas "Remaking the World: In Her Image":

Chvrches - Every Open Eye

Another extremely winning record from Chvrches, with probably 10% less joyously unexpected left turn-ness and unpredictability but maybe a touch more overall consistency than the delightful The Bones of What You Believe from a couple of years back. Plenty of emotional melodrama, with melodies carried urgently along by the synths, beats and Mayberry's beguiling delivery and hooks hitting from all directions. It's good to listen to and feels of the moment, but what does that even mean; to take an example, "Make Them Gold" (one of the weaker cuts) could've come straight off 1989, but then it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to imagine that latter as having been influenced, directly or otherwise, by The Bones of What You Believe in Swift's omnivorous reflection-back-to-itself of the pop zeitgeist - who can really say?

Macbeth

Everything about this adaptation is intense - Fassbender, Cotillard, the Scottish landscapes, the sense of stripped-backness, the general foggy glowering atmosphere, dominated by hues of blue and black until the fire-blood red of the final scenes. For some reason that I couldn't quite put my finger on, my response to it was that it was serviceable - good even - but not out of the ordinary, despite not obviously doing anything wrong and indeed getting plenty right (most notably, an interpretive and artistic vision that's coherent both internally and with the source text, as well as reckoning well with the translation from stage to cinema) - maybe, the lack was in the delivery of Shakespeare's language (not glaringly deficient, but not outstanding either) and the way that language is relatively less prominent in this version than in many.

(w/ Andreas)

"Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great" (NGV)

The Hermitage impressed me when I visited a few years ago, in the way that it was stuffed full of art and other objects, seeming to be almost overflowing, but in a way that conveyed not excess but abundance, not ostentation but luxury. This exhibition is specifically about the parts of the collection - and the palace complex itself - associated with Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, meaning that the art is a mix of Old Masters and at-the-time contemporary which either way falls well outside the compass of my own tastes in art.

Still, as ever, a few pieces seemed invested with something of the numinous (perhaps particularly likely given the striking facility with light that characterises many of those really old oil paintings) or stood out for some other reason, and whether that was adventitious to whatever specific state of mind and perceptual frame that I brought to it today doesn't much matter.

Bellotto - "View of the Zwinger in Dresden" (1752)

Capriolo - "Portrait of a young man" (1512)

 Titian - "Portrait of a young woman" (c 1536) - oddly contemporary seeming

Murillo - "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt" (c 1655-70)

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl depends for its success on the extent to which it's able to find a convincing integration of, on the one hand, its hyper-foregrounded knowingness about the conventions of narrative, genre and cinema that start with its title and play out in the narration, structuring and cinematography of the film itself, and on the other, its desire to present something heartfelt and emotionally resonant - which plays out amidst a specific kind of overtly indie tone and quirk in terms of characterisation and presentation of story.

I think its intentions are good, and it's probably aware of the hazards created by the plot choices it makes (and the misdirections in which it indulges) - but in the end it doesn't manage to resolve that tension in a coherent and authentically emotional (as opposed to sentimental) way, and, in missing that mark, dooms itself to being ultimately unsatisfying. I wonder if, in a different time, I might have responded differently to it - but we can only take these things as we find ourselves when we do so.

(w/ Alex)

Raymond Carver - A New Path to the Waterfall

Unexpectedly, this one's had an effect on me; parts of it have stuck with me at the level of both individual images and, more generally, how these poems made me feel as I was reading them.

As explained in the graceful introduction by Tess Gallagher - Carver's second wife and his intimate collaborator in the book's conception and compilation - A New Path is a late collection, most written by Carver following his diagnosis with lung cancer and in the knowledge that his (untimely) death was near. They tend towards simplicity, with feeling and meaning readily accessible and lit by a spare, tight-joined lyricism and sometimes a verging - traversing - along the boundary between prose and verse, and many take as their subject mortality and death, in a way that highlights how death and life are connected, and only make sense in relation to the other. The overall mood is, while sombre, consistently celebratory and affirmatory, and I found it rather moving - these poems throw out an empathetic bridge to the reader by drawing on both Carver's own very personal situation and its universality.

Interspersed throughout are very short extracts from Chekhov - contextualised in this way, the latent poetry that Gallagher and Carver saw in the Russian's prose is brought out - as well as from others, adding to the overall effect.

(a gift from Anna F)

"The Material Turn" (Margaret Lawrence Gallery) / "TV Moore: With Love & Squalor" (ACCA)

"The Material Turn"

A mixed bag, although it has prompted me to discover what New Materialism is. The two that I particularly liked were the "Chair in Co-operation with Orange (Extended)" installation in three parts (Katie Lee with Andrew Sainsbury) - and Sophie Takach's "Granular Gradation (After Wentworth)", which I initially (wrongly) took to be rather conceptually superficial but became much richer and more satisfying after I spent more time with it and from a range of different vantage points (closer and further away).

TV Moore

I hadn't actually expected to much like this one, having anticipated that it'd be too lurid for my tastes. But it turned out to be enjoyable - satirical, sure, but also inviting and imbued with a welcome sense of fun, starting from the first video "Frat Self SUN SPACE" (animation of frat boy type obliviously taking succession of selfies against increasingly more spectacular and ultimately cosmic backdrops).

(w/ trang)

Natalie Imbruglia - Male

A covers album - songs by men. There are some moments that are nice in their own right (like opener "Instant Crush", originally by Daft Punk featuring Julian Casablancas, and wistfully countryish "Goodbye in His Eyes", with a regendered title for a song originally by a group called the Zac Brown Band), others that are also nice but drawing at least some of that from the good associations with the original versions ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "I Melt With You"), and one that is a surprisingly bluegrassy and surprisingly enjoyable version of "Friday I'm In Love" - but as a whole it's on the bland side, alas.

Inside Out

So Inside Out is very good - completely charming, imaginatively interesting and sophisticated in its metaphorically literal rendition of the inside of a mind, and affecting. Amy Poehler is the perfect Joy (because she is a joy), while Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust all also come to life amidst Riley's wonderfully realised psychological landscape. And it kind of got to me, in a way that was unexpected because the poignancy was so well integrated with the colour and fancy; after all, it is about emotions.

Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational

Been intending to read this for a while - one of the classics of popular behavioural economics. Breezily illuminating.

"Betrayal" (MTC)

The backwards narrative (1977 to the start of the affair in 1968) held me - I wanted to find out what would happen, despite the dramatic irony generated by the first scene's revelation of how it would end. The betrayals unfold not only on the level of actions (with the central infidelity being only the most obvious example) but also through words and communication (and their failure and lack). I suspect that perhaps the play maybe wasn't best served by this production - there were a few aspects of the performances, and perhaps directorial choices, that detracted from the power of the whole - but it was good anyway.

(w/ Erandathie and Jon)

Lianne La Havas - Blood

Great voice, colourful production, two or three songs which hit a sweet spot of mature, soul-touched pop ("Green & Gold", "What You Don't Do", "Midnight") - although La Havas herself is young. As a whole, though, not super interesting.

"Antigone" (Malthouse)

I tend to be pretty strongly inclined towards 20th century and contemporary art (in the broad sense of 'art')[*] and Greek theatre has never particularly been an exception to that, but this play really struck me when I came across it via Cranlana a couple of years ago. It's difficult to say what it was about "Antigone" that resonated, but resonate it did - something about the interplay between the clarity and simplicity of the way it renders its central conflict between the dictates of the state and of personal conscience and the way in which it, literally, stages that conflict without sacrificing nuance[**] or descending to the merely didactic or pedagogic (much less moralising). Somehow, it felt timeless - in some important sense universal.

... all of which goes some way to explaining why, while there were aspects of this production that I responded to and thought were strong, overall I found it frustrating. While I don't have any objection to contemporary stagings of classic works seeking contemporary resonance (including at the political level - and especially in the deeper sense of what is at stake in politics being the kind of society that we want to live in, as opposed to the shallow sound and fury that so frequently characterises party politics), the drawing of parallels to current debates and particularly the critique (however merited) of the nationalist and even incipiently fascist trends apparent in recent years in various governments globally was unnecessarily overt and repetitive, throwing me out of the inherent drama of what was transpiring between the characters amidst the ever-present (even in absence) 'ship of state' (the state here presented much more as oppressive leviathan than as plausible source of moral unity in the way that I recall it as being) - the play itself is strong enough not to need such window dressing or an obvious slant in perspective.

Having said all of that, while I thought it was ultimately a failure, it was at least an interesting one, in which the outlines of the powerful source material could be clearly seen, and with elements of an arresting production: good set and sound design (not least the river of blood); some interesting - although inconsistent - choices in diction and tone of delivery of dialogue (I would have liked it if the whole had been more consistently either anti-naturalistic, or fluently based in the Sophoclean text - or indeed both); a strong performance from Jane Montgomery Griffiths (who also adapted the script) as Creon; and a turn from Emily Milledge (who I've liked previously - eg) in the central role that left me in two minds but was certainly vivid and well defined).

(w/ Laura F)

* * *

[*] When it comes to theatre, Shakespeare being an obvious exception.
[**] Having recently read this article at Sara's suggestion, I use the word advisedly.

Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free

Looser and a touch less serious than the wonderful Southeastern, this new one offers more tuneful, unaffectedly wistful slices of americana that don't mind soaring a little bit once in a while - a nice listen.

Paul Dolan - Happiness by Design

One of the levels - and there are many - on which behavioural insights and its associated streams of thought appeal to me is the possibility that its insights could meaningfully improve my own life and perhaps even make me a better person via differently constructed choice architectures, greater awareness of my own biases, etc. And so I'd been thinking for a while that it would be great if, in addition to the many about its application to policy-making or more generally about its many interesting general emanations, there was a book about how to apply BI &c to making one's own life (and oneself) better. So it was pleasing when I came across just this one, endorsed by Daniel Kahneman on the front cover no less!

I've now read it a couple of times through over several months, discovered to my amusement that MH had written a letter to its author criticising parts of the book, given a copy of it to someone else and all that, and found it well worthwhile. I wouldn't call it a self-help book, and if it is then it's the first I've ever read - but nonetheless there's a lot in here that I think has been helping me to think about, and act on, things differently.

It turns out that the most interesting bits for me are in its first half, which is about what happiness is, what causes it, and why we aren't happier - the definition of happiness as involving both pleasure and purpose is one of those very simple formulations that, once articulated, seems both obviously true and the source of a large amount of new insight, while the metaphor of the allocation of (the scarce resource of) attention as a production process leading to happiness, where what we pay attention to and how we do so is a vital determinant of happiness is also, for me, an intuitive one - shades, even, of my old friend phenomenology and subjective world-constituting consciousness.

The matrix of types of spillover between different behaviours is also useful - one positive behaviour leading to another ('promoting') or instead to a negative ('permitting' - ie moral licensing), and similarly a negative behaviour leading to another ('promoting' again) or instead to a positive ('purging').

The second section, about 'delivering' happiness by deciding, designing and doing, is also quite good, though there's not a large amount there that feels new - priming, defaults, commitments, social norms - although the emphasis on the attentional dimension is a bit different. But, still, it was worth reading (twice!) and especially for the earlier bits stepping through a pretty concrete and satisfying consideration of happiness itself.

"David Bowie is" (ACMI)

Very enjoyable, and a reminder of what an intriguing, bordering-on-genius figure Bowie indeed is, and more particularly of how many great, truly iconic songs are scattered across his back catalogue. (Low is still my favourite album of his, "Ashes to Ashes" or "Heroes" my favourite individual song.)

(w/ Ash)

Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love

Pleasant if unremarkable; well, Belle and Sebastian are never that far off the mark. Carey Mulligan acquits herself decently, helped by the sweetness of the (title) song that she guests on.

"Capital: Valuing What Matters" (MWF)

Dennis Glover and feminist economist Andie Fox in panel conversation about the importance of society, and economics, valuing things other than productivity, growth and traditional economic metrics and measures including their limitation to conventional paid labour, including discussion of r > g etc. Started slow with somewhat polemical and probably unavoidably relatively simplistic introductory comments but warmed up engagingly as the discussion went on, drawing in many topics near to my heart.

(w/ Daniel L)

"A Social Service" (Malthouse)

Short and sweet.

The Beckett was set up in traverse, and combined with the brightness of the lights, the effect was to make the audience - well, me at least ... in the front row for the second time this season - feel thoroughly complicit in the lack of understanding or awareness displayed by the artist (Nicola Gunn) as she talks blithely about her project-in-residency in a public housing complex without any regard for the needs or existing community of its residents, an effect exacerbated by the knowledge that at least one member of the cast themselves lives in public housing in Victoria (performed on a rotating basis, and playing a resident - reading from a script - who is engaged on a considerably less high-brow community art project of their own in the form of a tiled mosaic bench).

And the complicity extends to the realisation that she - the artist - is in fact a stalking horse for a corporate plan to redevelop the estate to the detriment of its residents, her art intended to serve as an advertisement for the redevelopment to attract private investors and occupants. The play generates plenty of laughs, but also an underlying, niggling discomfort which is entirely intended and apt.

Eilen Jewell - Sundown Over Ghost Town

A laidback offering from Jewell, drifting languidly by somewhat in a haze, but a consistently excellent one - like all of her previous records (Sea of Tears, Queen of the Minor Key, Live at the Narrows).

Kacey Musgraves - Pageant Material

There's a very pleasing modesty to this one, with no attempts at individual show-stoppers - just 13 pieces of unpretentious modern country, none more than four minutes long, and all executed with a warmth and relaxedness that could almost obscure the crispness and strong lines of the songs beneath.

Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues

Once in a while a song sneaks through and stabs you in the heart.

If you don't pay attention to the lyrics, the first (and kind of title-) track on this record, "Talking Transgender Dysphoria Blues", sounds like a typical enough melodic punk tune - albeit a particularly rousing and catchy one. But then you actually listen to the words - possibly cued by the way the singer spits out some of the most telling of those words - and, in my case at least, the sick feeling of at least the illusion of empathy (illusion because, luckily for me, I can't actually understand how this kind of experience is to live) is throat-clenchingly piercing.

You want them to notice the ragged ends of your summer dress
You want them to see you like they see every other girl
They just see a faggot
They hold their breath not to catch the sick

... which is only added to after learning that the singer/songwriter, Laura Jean Grace, is herself transgender and transitioning to living as a woman (the voice is entirely male-sounding) and this is the band's first album since she came out as such.

The rest of the album covers similar themes, and at a pacy two to three minutes each, never lags over the listen. As a whole, musically, it's listenable rather than distinguished - but even still.

"40-0" (mix cd)

As is quite often the case with mix cds from Julian, many of the songs feel somewhat out of time - they can't be easily placed as having been recorded in a particular time, instead floating as if they could have emerged at any time in the last 40 or even 50 years (a reflection of not only the track selection but also the recombinatory and omnivorous nature of (contemporary) pop music no doubt).

I like a lot of these: Tom Petty's breezily rocky synth-epic "Don't Come Around Here No More", a Golden Palominos cut called "I've Been The One" (a wistfully country-toned cover, vocals provided by Syd Straw, from that ever intriguing outfit), the skeletal indie-pop of "Fiya" by Tune-Yards which follows in the noble lineage of "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl", a cruisy miniature rock ode with a Korean name which apparently is super famous in Korea (by Shing Jung Hyun), punk rock anthem "Talking Transgender Dysphoria Blues" by Against Me! (sad lyrics, having just looked them up).

The Daughter

Simon Stone adapting his previous - and exceptional - stage adaptation of Ibsen's "The Wild Duck"; the title change perhaps a concession to the more literal sensibilities of filmgoers, perhaps a deliberate artistic choice to enhance the sense of the linked chain of interpretations that the film continues, perhaps both. And it's really good, the sense of dramatic tragedy, with past actions rippling through time to disrupt present and future happiness (hence, 'the daughter'). More emotionally tense or less for knowing how it was going to end (or so I thought), I wasn't sure. Plenty emotionally tense either way.

Ewen Leslie is a stand out amidst the uniformly strong performances, and terrifically Australian (in a completely unaffected way), reprising his role from the stage version albeit renamed from Hjalmar to Oliver - I think possibly all of the names have been anglicised for the film, with the telling exception of Hedvig (Odessa Young, very good). Sam Neill also perfect, with excellent turns all around them (Geoffrey Rush and Miranda Otto the two most well known, with Paul Schneider - Christian cum Gregers (or is it the other way around?) - appropriately the only major role cast with a non-Australian). Landscape and how it's shot also very appropriate, invoking both the Australian setting and foggy - in multiple senses - associations of Scandinavian isolation chill and quotidian existential unhappiness.

(w/ David and Erandathie - MIFF)

Sharon Van Etten - "I Don't Want to Let You Down" ep

Gets stronger over repeat listens and glistens with something of the same depth as Are We There although overall nowhere near as strong as that last (which makes sense if, as I think I read somewhere, these are songs that didn't make the cut of that last lp).

Joel Deane - Catch and Kill: The Politics of Power

I had this in my office - as of yesterday, no longer my office! - for a day or two this week and of course everyone has been talking about / reading it. Bracks, Brumby, Thwaites, Hulls - with Terry Moran and DPC prominent too. Particularly salient given current Victorian government (ie Labor).

Much the interesting read, and I didn't feel as much that it was intellectual junk food (enjoyable while you're consuming it but ultimately not only not nourishing but actually unhealthy) as I usually do with books about and around politics. Ah politics, always the frustrating, unanswerable question.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Exciting and spectacular and fun (and on imax).

(w/ Rob and Sid)

Michael Barber - How to Run a Government: So that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don't Go Crazy

Highly pertinent. It does read as a playbook for effective government - at the level of implementation and, to a degree, administration, rather than in the more glamorous domains of policy and strategy - and if its ideas seem familiar, that's probably because they've been influential at least in these circles that the last few years have taken me into. (It also touches only very lightly on the vexed questions of direct public sector reform and, particularly, public sector productivity, which has the effect of grounding it even more thoroughly in the practical.) And it's a playbook that I can imagine referring back to myself - which makes it one of a very small number in this kind of field.

* * *

Putting together the pieces, Barber set up and ran Blair's Delivery Unit during his second term as PM (2001 to 2005) and Geoff Mulgan, now of the so-interesting Nesta, was variously head of policy and of the Strategy Unit at Number 10 over an overlapping period.

Eilen Jewell - Live at the Narrows

Two discs recorded over two nights: "raw, biting cold. February, dead of winter, in Fall River, Massachusetts. ... In the din of noise, miscellaneous high-volume assertions, the phony cacophony of chaos that is the world gone wrong these days, it is a blessing to be heard." Laid-back, professional (in the good way), engaged, warm - a reminder of why I like her so much.

(Melb '12)