Allison Russell - Outside Child

Quite the mixture, roaming across a range of roots and folk streams. It ties together well - there's depth to it.

Zakiya Dalila Harris - The Other Black Girl

This is ferocious and good. It's focused in its rendition of race and racism, in the broad and with specificity, and page-turning in its plot, structure and sentence-level writing. Doubtless it reads differently, and deeper, to Black readers but it scans strongly for me regardless. I could quibble with some aspects - especially the way some of the secondary characters and background plotting feels underdeveloped - but the overall energy of the novel carries it easily over those things.

Art

Some discoveries via last year's and this year's (to date) Metropolitan Museum of Art desk calendars which have been part of my home work space - along with others, including many existing favourites - over the last while.

Janet Fish - "Raspberries and Goldfish", 1981

El Greco - "Christ Healing the Blind", 1570

Utagawa Hiroshige - "In the Kameido Tenjin Shrine Complex", 1856

Leon Bibel - "Brooklyn Bridge", 1938

Camille Pissarro - "Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen (Effect of Sunlight)", 1898

Amedeo Modigliani - "Jeanne Hebuterne", 1919

Winslow Homer - "The Bather", 1899

Walker Evans - "Subway Passengers, New York City: Two Women in Conversation", 1941

Kerry James Marshall - "Untitled (Studio)", 2014

Leonora Carrington - "Self-Portrait" , 1937-38

Ruth Chaney - "The Writer", 1935-43

Martha Marlow - Medicine Man

Ornate, faintly Disney-ish singer-songwriter pop in the vein of Natalie Prass's debut. Has some nice hooks, but not the songs to lift it above the throng.

The Wolf of Wall Street

What struck me on this watch was how well The Wolf of Wall Street conveys the distastefulness of its main characters - both DiCaprio's and Jonah Hill's. Champagne film-making. (last time)

Derry Girls seasons 1 & 2

Part of what makes it so great is how little there is of it - just 2 x 6 episodes of 20 minutes each, so it never runs the risk of outstaying its welcome or repeating itself while also displaying a nice modesty. The brevity also probably contributes to its sense of having captured lightning in a bottle - all its bits coming together just right.

(previously)

Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & John Randall - The Marfa Tapes

Relaxed and dusty session-y sounding record, including a prompt - by way of a more unadorned version - as to how actually great "Tin Man" is, a fact somewhat obscured by its placement amidst a double album, The Weight of These Wings, that's full of actually great songs.

girl in red - if i could make it go quiet

This is kind of fun but I guess I'm too much not the target audience - it has no stickiness at all for me.

Kathleen Edwards - Total Freedom

Turns out it was eight years between Edwards' previous album Voyageur - which has had real staying power - and Total Freedom, which dropped last year. Flashy it isn't, but its high quality is unforced, and it still sounds like her, just eight years or so on.

Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness & Star Trek Beyond

Disposable but well made entertainment, with a light enough touch and sufficiently believable stakes.

Previously: 1, 2, 3.

The Great season 1

The easy formulation would be The Favourite (with which it shares a creator) crossed with Marie Antoinette but The Great develops a more layered human-ness than those - excellent - predecessors over its 10 episodes. For all of the colourful world-building, present-to-past anachronism, zippy dialogue ('huzzahs' and 'indeeds' galore) and outright grotesqueness, it feels almost like the show can't help itself in fleshing out the characters and relationships at its centre as it goes - especially between Elle Fanning's Catherine and Nicholas Hoult's Peter, who are both wonderful creations from actors who evidently know what they're about in performances that are both deliberately mannered and seemingly natural in a way that makes them recognisable.

Julia Stone - Sixty Summers

Jumps around across styles but never quite lands. Best is the somewhat oddity of the French version of "Dance" at the end.

Kishi Bashi - Omoiyari

When you know that an artist is capable of a perfect song, and especially by working basically their standard vein rather than through some kind of out of the box different mode - and Kishi Bashi is, as evidenced by the joyous "Manchester" - it's hard to not hope for a reprise ever after. Omoiyari doesn't have any individual heights to match that earlier peak (from 151a), but it's fairly terrific in general - sweetly melodic, textured, lightly orchestrated pop music which I enjoy most in its most dramatic and violined moments.

serpentwithfeet - Deacon

♫ "Me and my boo wear the same size shoe" ♫  Great song.

Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

Seven songs and a bit over 30 minutes of space-ily jazzy folkish singer-songwriter art pop - without any sense of being fussed over or preciousness. 

"Michelangelo" is noteworthy, riding one of those melodies that seems to be all a single line, with lots of little arrangement bits to keep it interesting, and all round pretty lovely. All the other songs are good too and quietly intriguing.

But can we talk about "Hard Drive", which is something else, spoken and sung, ineffable, and with a spirit that reminds me of some of those other one-off classics that come along only so often, like "Mimi on the Beach", or "Body's in Trouble", and I'm not sure there are any others really. It feels dropped in from a sideways dimension, arriving in waves.

The Social Dilemma

Not really eye-opening at this stage but sobering nonetheless.

Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

Kind of an epic record; my favourites are mostly the faster tempo ones.

Taylor Swift - evermore

More in the general vein of folklore.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Carnage

Eight of Cave's heavy hymns, arriving as if through a storm - just as likely a purely interior one as external. It's not easy listening, but its musical pleasures are real.

Esther Rose - How Many Times

The lilt and delicacy of Rose's singing, and the cleanness of her arrangements, is misleading - the songs themselves are sturdy, muscular even. I would call this country music, albeit with a contemporary pop-inflected sensibility, and it's very charming. It reminds me of Laura Cantrell (high praise) while being enough its own thing too - and has the good trick of being able to throw in little sly hooks and melodic surprises with some regularity.