Sharon Van Etten - We've Been Going About This All Wrong

I don't know, has Sharon Van Etten ever been more lush and more epic than she is here? 

She's written stunning album openers before, but "Darkness Fades" is right up there, reminiscent of the Cranberries - and rounded off in similar spacious dream-pop style at the end by "Far Away". Also on We've Been Going About This All Wrong are two of her hookiest earworms so far - if not the two hookiest - in "Headspace" ('baby don't turn your back on me') and "Mistakes" ('even when I make a mistake ... it's much better than that') and a bunch of deeper cuts that more than hold their own. 

There's texture and clarity throughout, all confirming that SVE is possibly the best, and definitely my favourite, of the current crop of excellent singer-songwriters drawing from what used to be called 'indie' and before that 'alternative'.

Miranda Lambert - Palomino

Palomino feels like a throwback to an earlier phase of Lambert's career - a more straight-up country-rock-pop record than either Wildcard or The Weight of These Wings, but benefiting from the refinement of her songwriting that's happened over the years. It's not one of my favourite of hers, and not many songs stand out - the brightest is probably the produced-up version of "Waxahachee" from last year's Marfa Tapes - but still good.

Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve & Ocean's Thirteen / The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum & Jason Bourne

A pair of 2000s series, both of which I'd mostly if not entirely watched before, both featuring Matt Damon prominently and also Vincent Cassel as a murderous bad guy. Best watched with critical brain disengaged.

The Beths - Auckland, New Zealand, 2020

Sounds the way you'd expect a live Beths album to sound.

Laura Stevenson - Laura Stevenson

From 2021, so-so.

Kate

I guess it's progress of sorts that a film featuring a woman as an action hero, without making a big thing of her gender, can be as predictable as Kate turns out to be.

Under the Silver Lake

I was primed to like Under the Silver Lake and willing to work at it if needed, thanks to how great It Follows was, and the way that earlier film so completely nailed style, mood and (sly) thematic substance. In the event, there were bits of it I liked - the sinisterly glossy atmosphere, the twinned depiction of Andrew Garfield's character's anomie and shagginess of the story, the bursts of humour, the way it was all coiled around a thesis about the experience of emptiness of the current generation of youngish people amidst the ahistorical detritus of contemporary culture. But I'm not yet convinced, relatively fresh from watching it, that what it had to offer was worth the absence of most of the more conventional pleasures of movies.

Jane Smiley - A Thousand Acres

Just a great read.

Last time - over a decade ago - I think I was more caught up in the grand human drama and emotions of it, and while that still tugged at me, on this read it was Ginny's and Rose's childhood trauma and the way it's both paradigm and operating cause for the broader setting and events of the novel that I found most striking.

Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

A cracking record, all 80 minutes of it. Covers heaps of ground - many of my favourite moments are the most 'yee-haw' songs which are in the territory of Wussy - and is interesting, accessible and good the whole way through.

Cat Power - Covers

Not the most memorable.

Two recent NGV trips

First one, with R, was to see QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection, and we only got halfway through the exhibition, which covers the entire 3rd floor. The breadth of the theme - particularly given the approach of exploring the collection through a queer perspective rather than attempting a survey of queer art - made for all kinds of pieces.

Second one, with Hayley, was mainly to see Bark Ladies: Eleven Artists from Yirrkala - which was pretty wonderful to spend some time in while marvelling at the work done directly on to bark, and the formal innovations made by these contemporary women artists in the context of culture. Also a visit to the NGVA permanent collection where I had my first somewhat meaningful art encounter in quite a while, being struck by the paint-ness of this one:

Julie Irving - "Shifting" (1989), including detail

Barbara Trapido - The Travelling Hornplayer

Fluently criss-crossing characters and plots with a great sense of life-ness, joy and sadness mingled in a way that reminds me of those early - and some of the latter day - Kate Atkinson novels.

1917

I was engaged while I was watching it, but I doubt it will stay with me.

Julia Galef - The Scout Mindset

Scout mindset = aiming to see things as they are, not as you wish they were. I've admired Julia Galef's way of engaging online for a long time so I was interested to read her entry in the genre. It has plenty of good reminders and some neat practical tips. A couple that come to mind - hold your identity lightly, and try the ideological Turing test (describing opposing arguments in a way that its adherents or maybe neutral observers can't tell that you disagree with them). 

Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

Stark and beautiful. The sense of setting is strong - geographic (bitter northern Iceland), period (19th century) and character-wise (in line with the associated struggle to survive) - and doesn't get in the way of the story being told. It's involving at the level of character and plot - although we know going in that it will end with Agnes's death - and the reinterpretation of the events surrounding Iceland's last execution is gracefully done.

Mitski - Laurel Hell

Despite significantly upping the synth-pop vibes compared to the outstanding Puberty 2 and even more outstanding Be the Cowboy, Laurel Hell comes across as low-key. It's good though, sustaining a sulking mood and sharp perspective across both its quieter songs and the brighter ones like "Working for the Knife" and "The Only Heartbreaker".

Bleachers - Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night

There are only two pretty good songs here - "Chinatown" and "Stop Making This Hurt". "Chinatown" features Bruce Springsteen, but the whole record basically unsuccessfully attempts to channel him - starting from the album cover. 

Daniel Abraham - The Dagger and the Coin series

Neatly put together high fantasy series which appears as if its author knew where he was going with it from the beginning. The main characters - Cithrin, Geder, Marcus, and first Dawson then Clara Kalliam - are given plenty of time and, apart from Marcus, mostly avoid fantasy stereotype. And the big picture is put together nicely - the world-building of course, but also the way finance is used to wield power. It's not quite as vivid as the very best of its kind - which, in this category, probably means A Song of Ice and Fire before it lost its way - but that's mostly a reminder of how rare that 'very best' is.

The Dragon's Path, The King's Blood, The Tyrant's Law, The Widow's House, The Spider's War

NGV International (permanent collection)

What I think of as the pictorial part of the NGV's 19th century European collection isn't one that I'd usually spend much time in, but it does hold many of the paintings that have been there the longest for me, going back to whenever it was that I first began visiting the NGV. And the other day, visiting, I found my attention caught in the large room that's been set up in a 'salon' arrangement for a while now, with dozens of paintings covering the four walls.

The one that gave me pause - for the first time - was Jules Bastien-Lange's "October" (1878). It's closer to my usual tastes than most else of what was in the room, particularly the way the fields and horizon in the background are done.

The ones that are most quintessentially part of the NGV for me - and I know for many others - are all large format and all, to me, suspiciously allegorical, sentimental or both. But they have a directness and a force that makes them memorable.

August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck - "Anguish" (c. 1878)

Lucy Kemp-Welch - "Horses bathing in the sea" (1900)

Briton Riviere - "A Roman holiday" (1881)

St George Hare - "The victory of faith" (c1890-1891)

Jules Lefebvre - "The grasshopper" (1872)

And three other discoveries from this latest visit - probably I've seen them all before but they've never registered:

William Quiller Orchardson - "The first cloud" (1887) - not sure what's going on here but I like the expression the man's face and the staging of the scene in general

Walter Sickert - "The Rise of Lazarus" (1928-29)

Keeley Halswelle - "Green-robed senators" (c. 1880)

Flag Day: Original Soundtrack

When eminently good and tasteful musicians come together, the results can sometimes be eminently tasteful and underwhelming. In this case, where the musicians are Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard and Cat Power what emerges is instead a pretty charmful folk-rock-pop record with each of those three distinctive voices coming through clearly. 

Chan Marshall does what she does well, and in more organic vein than the glossily orchestrated albums she's been releasing more or less since The Greatest - particular grace notes are the patented simplicity of "I Think of Angels" and the "fuck y'all" refrain of "I Am A Map". 

Eddie Vedder's wordless "Rather Be Home" is fairly lovely in its own right, and all the more so for summoning some of Ten's most atmospheric moments all those years past. Indeed, Vedder's gentle folk-inflected contributions are a consistent highlight, bringing to the fore impulses that have been there all along, across Ten, Vs, Vitalogy and so on; "I'll Be Waiting" reminds me of those latter day Robert Plant records. Also there's a faithful cover of R.E.M.'s "Drive". 

Best of all is Hansard and Vedder's stately duet "Tender Mercies", though - surprisingly, maybe - the two on which Vedder's daughter Olivia sings, "My Father's Daughter" and "There's A Girl" are up there too.