Tuesday, October 31, 2006
100 favourite songs: #5: "Just Like Honey" - The Jesus and Mary Chain
It’s all there in the first 20 seconds: “Be My Baby”-quoting drums ring the song in, the fuzzed-out jangle of the guitars soon follows, and then come those broody, reverb-coated vocals — it all promises nothing less than shimmering undiluted dreamy pop glory, and in its 3:00, crashing, cascading waves of guitar noise and echoey vocal layers wrapped around its blissful melodic core, that’s exactly what “Just Like Honey” is. (Then, too, the song’s appearance in Lost in Translation only makes everything even more perfect, of course.)
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
v.g.:
As Mitchell has Robert Frobisher, 1930s itinerant opportunist and composer, write (of the 'Cloud Atlas Sextet' that he is composing):
Each of the six narratives making up the Russian doll structure of Cloud Atlas is convincing and extremely readable - they're stories in their own right, not simply exercises in style or concept - which is no mean feat given the diversity of voices, genres and settings they collectively embody. The plots move along at a cracking pace, all equally interestingly. And the whole is knit together by its depiction with the effects of the Nietzschean will to power as particularly manifested through colonialism, market capitalism and industrialisation/technological development, the imagining taking place both retrospectively (via 'historical' settings) and prospectively (in the sci-fi chapters), as well as by lots of subtle details connecting the various threads. And there's an unobtrusive concern with art and language, too - just as with the placing of the pivotal Crommelynck chapter at the dead centre of Black Swan Green.
As Mitchell has Robert Frobisher, 1930s itinerant opportunist and composer, write (of the 'Cloud Atlas Sextet' that he is composing):
Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet' for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe and violin, each in its own language of key, scale and colour. In the 1st set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the 2nd, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late, but it's the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J. is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds.
Each of the six narratives making up the Russian doll structure of Cloud Atlas is convincing and extremely readable - they're stories in their own right, not simply exercises in style or concept - which is no mean feat given the diversity of voices, genres and settings they collectively embody. The plots move along at a cracking pace, all equally interestingly. And the whole is knit together by its depiction with the effects of the Nietzschean will to power as particularly manifested through colonialism, market capitalism and industrialisation/technological development, the imagining taking place both retrospectively (via 'historical' settings) and prospectively (in the sci-fi chapters), as well as by lots of subtle details connecting the various threads. And there's an unobtrusive concern with art and language, too - just as with the placing of the pivotal Crommelynck chapter at the dead centre of Black Swan Green.
Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea - Dead Wood Falls
I'd heard "Better Off Dancing", which is excellent, but didn't know what to expect of the album; turns out that, in a low-key sort of way, the album is pretty excellent too, not to mention much more country than I'd expected. The title track makes a good, moody scenesetter, but Dead Wood Falls really kicks into high gear with its next song, the almost PJ Harvey-esque "Peaks and Valleys", a smokily rollicking country-blues-rock fusion number with a verve and an edge. From there, Cloher slips into an engaging groove, mostly sticking with the folk-hued, downtempo stuff, but always with a brooding dynamic and an atmosphere which keeps things interesting. There are no gimmicks on this album - it's just all good.
Smoosh - She Like Electric
Two girls, one on keyboards and vocals and the other on drums, banging out cute, quirky indie-pop; 15 songs in 35 minutes...exactly my thing, right? Right - and it's actually completely incidental that the band members (also songwriters) were, if I have this right, 12 and 10 years old respectively when this album was recorded, though their youth may account for the off-the-wall originality of a lot of the record. They're at their best with the relatively straight-up piano pop numbers - "Massive Cure", "It's Cold" and "To Walk Away From" are particularly good - and the main missteps are on overly goofy, childish moments like the rap of "Rad", with its "uh huh, uh huh, yo, yo" refrain.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
100 favourite songs: #6: "Wrecking Ball" - Gillian Welch
… each summer seems to have one particular album which, in retrospect, seems to’ve been everywhere in the air over that time. I’m pretty sure that 2000/01 was Powderfinger’s Odyssey Number Five; from 01/02, it was Natalie Merchant’s Tigerlily; in 02/03 it was Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No 2; in 03/04 it was Wilco’s Summerteeth — and in 04/05, Gillian Welch’s Soul Journey.
Indeed, the most striking thing about Soul Journey is its summeriness. At this stage in her career, Welch has, it seems, largely moved beyond the relatively unadorned bluegrassy and trad-folk flavour of her earlier recordings, now mining a perhaps richer and certainly broader seam of rootsy americana, in terms of both instrumental palette and general ethos — I fancy that Gram’s old term ‘cosmic american music’ ain’t a mile away from what’s going on here.
The sound isn’t as old-timey as on any of Welch’s previous, uniformly great albums, 1996’s Revival, 1998’s Hell Among The Yearlings and 2001’s Time (The Revelator) but it’s equally warm and dusty-feeling — and equally great. There’s an end-of-day languor to it all — a sense of the interstices between sunshine and shadow, of hazy still afternoons flowing into breeze-touched evenings, of drift and ebb and flow, and of the necessary relationship between transience and permanency. Music that exists in the intersections of country, folk and more popular stylings today is, of its nature, in a sense suspended between past and present — informed by and tied to what has come before it (not least the suffering and hardship out of which ‘mountain’ music was born) — and Welch seems to have achieved some kind of contingently perfect synthesis out of this ongoing process of retrieval and renewal…it’s somehow out of time.
What does this mean ‘on the ground’ of Soul Journey, as it were? Well, it means acoustic guitar, dobro, fiddle, unobtrusive drums, and sometimes bass and (I think) even organ, and all melded into something which feels old and new all at once. And then, of course, there’s Welch’s wonderful yawn (in the best possible way) of a voice. A lot of the warmth of this music comes directly from that voice — down to earth and forthright, and yet somehow expressive and delicate, too. A voice which is crystalline, not in a perfect Alison Krauss kind of way (something which I say without meaning any disparagement of Krauss’s lovely and amazing voice!), but instead has echoes of history and life woven in with its clarity…if that latter’s voice is silvery, then perhaps Welch’s is golden.
…
“Wrecking Ball” in particular really is something else; preceded by the wistful prettiness of “One Little Song” and “I Made A Lovers Prayer”, it picks the pace up a bit, and fills out those implied spaces to create a fuller sound than anywhere previously on the album, swinging Soul Journey home on the back of a scything fiddle, prominent guitars, Welch’s voice, and a gorgeous melody…it brings my heart into my throat nearly every time. In a way, it — and the album as a whole — does, as Welch sings, show us colours we’d never seen, but it’s the kind of showing that brings with it the realisation that, after all, those colours were always already there.
- 6/10/05
Indeed, the most striking thing about Soul Journey is its summeriness. At this stage in her career, Welch has, it seems, largely moved beyond the relatively unadorned bluegrassy and trad-folk flavour of her earlier recordings, now mining a perhaps richer and certainly broader seam of rootsy americana, in terms of both instrumental palette and general ethos — I fancy that Gram’s old term ‘cosmic american music’ ain’t a mile away from what’s going on here.
The sound isn’t as old-timey as on any of Welch’s previous, uniformly great albums, 1996’s Revival, 1998’s Hell Among The Yearlings and 2001’s Time (The Revelator) but it’s equally warm and dusty-feeling — and equally great. There’s an end-of-day languor to it all — a sense of the interstices between sunshine and shadow, of hazy still afternoons flowing into breeze-touched evenings, of drift and ebb and flow, and of the necessary relationship between transience and permanency. Music that exists in the intersections of country, folk and more popular stylings today is, of its nature, in a sense suspended between past and present — informed by and tied to what has come before it (not least the suffering and hardship out of which ‘mountain’ music was born) — and Welch seems to have achieved some kind of contingently perfect synthesis out of this ongoing process of retrieval and renewal…it’s somehow out of time.
What does this mean ‘on the ground’ of Soul Journey, as it were? Well, it means acoustic guitar, dobro, fiddle, unobtrusive drums, and sometimes bass and (I think) even organ, and all melded into something which feels old and new all at once. And then, of course, there’s Welch’s wonderful yawn (in the best possible way) of a voice. A lot of the warmth of this music comes directly from that voice — down to earth and forthright, and yet somehow expressive and delicate, too. A voice which is crystalline, not in a perfect Alison Krauss kind of way (something which I say without meaning any disparagement of Krauss’s lovely and amazing voice!), but instead has echoes of history and life woven in with its clarity…if that latter’s voice is silvery, then perhaps Welch’s is golden.
…
“Wrecking Ball” in particular really is something else; preceded by the wistful prettiness of “One Little Song” and “I Made A Lovers Prayer”, it picks the pace up a bit, and fills out those implied spaces to create a fuller sound than anywhere previously on the album, swinging Soul Journey home on the back of a scything fiddle, prominent guitars, Welch’s voice, and a gorgeous melody…it brings my heart into my throat nearly every time. In a way, it — and the album as a whole — does, as Welch sings, show us colours we’d never seen, but it’s the kind of showing that brings with it the realisation that, after all, those colours were always already there.
- 6/10/05
100 favourite songs: #7: "Losing My Religion" - R.E.M.
The memories and associations evoked by this song are at once specific and general. The specific image is summer-hazy and from long ago besides, but I’m almost certain that it was originally attached to a particular occasion: it was late in the afternoon one day years ago (I would’ve been in primary school, I think), and I was with my family on a holiday somewhere in Victoria, most likely along the coast; the day had been sunny and that was still in the air, but there was a breeze, too. I remember the breeze.
We’d been driving and had stopped at some high point, near a cliff edge or lookout of some kind; everyone else got out, to stretch and take in the view, but I stayed in the car, doors open and windows down, overtaken by that particular kind of end-of-day summer torpor (or call it langour, or maybe lassitude), wide open spaces all around and something ungraspable and inexpressible within me. And “Losing My Religion” came on the radio, and I’d heard the song many times before — enough times to recognise it instantly, although of course the mandolin intro is particularly instantly recognisable — but this time it was the perfect soundtrack to the moment and to the inchoate swirl of half-coalesced feelings slowly swirling inside me, that heady concoction of freedom and yearning and other things both experienced and anticipated.
I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t now. But I think that all of that was in some sense already ‘in’ “Losing My Religion”, just waiting to be revealed: the song itself has the breeziness, the colour and the light and the lightness, the hint of melancholy and shadow, the surface simplicity which conceals unchartable depths, the commingling of all those interstices and intangibles which make it great. It has an easy familiarity and, at the same time, the hue of complete originality. And, most of all, it reminds us of the essential mystery of pop music: the way a few notes and a melody can invoke and create a whole world, carrying us away and enriching and deepening everything we feel and know.
We’d been driving and had stopped at some high point, near a cliff edge or lookout of some kind; everyone else got out, to stretch and take in the view, but I stayed in the car, doors open and windows down, overtaken by that particular kind of end-of-day summer torpor (or call it langour, or maybe lassitude), wide open spaces all around and something ungraspable and inexpressible within me. And “Losing My Religion” came on the radio, and I’d heard the song many times before — enough times to recognise it instantly, although of course the mandolin intro is particularly instantly recognisable — but this time it was the perfect soundtrack to the moment and to the inchoate swirl of half-coalesced feelings slowly swirling inside me, that heady concoction of freedom and yearning and other things both experienced and anticipated.
I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t now. But I think that all of that was in some sense already ‘in’ “Losing My Religion”, just waiting to be revealed: the song itself has the breeziness, the colour and the light and the lightness, the hint of melancholy and shadow, the surface simplicity which conceals unchartable depths, the commingling of all those interstices and intangibles which make it great. It has an easy familiarity and, at the same time, the hue of complete originality. And, most of all, it reminds us of the essential mystery of pop music: the way a few notes and a melody can invoke and create a whole world, carrying us away and enriching and deepening everything we feel and know.
100 favourite songs: #8: "Paranoid Android" - Radiohead
OK Computer was the single album that most captured the spirit of the pre-millennial Zeitgeist — self-aware, cynical, almost resigned, and yet spine-chillingly grandiose and oh-so-faintly hopeful (ifeelmyluckcouldchange); spacey, melodic, progressive, and undeniably great, it struck a chord with depressed, tired_nhappy indie kids everywhere and remains popular guitar music’s closest approach to perfection yet. … It’s not overstating the case to call [“Paranoid Android”] an opus, and in amidst the crazy tempo changes, intensely imagined lyrical (paranoiac) insights, and moments of real pathos and beauty, it’s also a kick-ass, buzz-guitared rock song — what’s not to like? - 2/8/03
Take for granted that, to understate the case fairly dramatically, I like the song a lot. Then, a part of me feels that “Paranoid Android” really should be my Favourite Song Ever: it’s suitably epic, and it’s been a suitably large part of my life — it came at just the right time, both for me specially and in the wider context of society as a whole, and now it stands as a massive landmark in every sense…for me (and probably for most everyone who loves the song), it looms very, very large whenever I look back.
It’s been a while since Radiohead’s music really immediately engaged me, but “Paranoid Android” is still a marvel — painting with the broadest of palettes but remarkably concise at the same time, it’s probably the single best individual argument for Radiohead’s genius and certainly one of the most striking reminders of what a gift to all of us Thom Yorke’s voice is…I feel that I can really only skirt the edges of explaining why the song is so great / why it’s so significant to me / why I love it so much — picking out particular aspects and elements which can never, individually or collectively, account for the whole — but I guess that’s how it goes with these things; songs like this always exceed any attempt to describe or contain them, and they don’t go away.
Take for granted that, to understate the case fairly dramatically, I like the song a lot. Then, a part of me feels that “Paranoid Android” really should be my Favourite Song Ever: it’s suitably epic, and it’s been a suitably large part of my life — it came at just the right time, both for me specially and in the wider context of society as a whole, and now it stands as a massive landmark in every sense…for me (and probably for most everyone who loves the song), it looms very, very large whenever I look back.
It’s been a while since Radiohead’s music really immediately engaged me, but “Paranoid Android” is still a marvel — painting with the broadest of palettes but remarkably concise at the same time, it’s probably the single best individual argument for Radiohead’s genius and certainly one of the most striking reminders of what a gift to all of us Thom Yorke’s voice is…I feel that I can really only skirt the edges of explaining why the song is so great / why it’s so significant to me / why I love it so much — picking out particular aspects and elements which can never, individually or collectively, account for the whole — but I guess that’s how it goes with these things; songs like this always exceed any attempt to describe or contain them, and they don’t go away.
Sara Storer - Chasing Buffalo
Entirely listenable but hasn't made much of an impression. Then again, though I've listened to it several times over a period of months, I'm not sure I've yet done so with my full attention...
Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys
I must be honest - I still haven't really listened to this properly. It's hella cool though, and at some point I really will give it the attention it deserves.
Janet Evanovich - Twelve Sharp
heh, this is a good one, and made even better by my recently having identified a certain girl I know with Stephanie Plum (for no very good reason, but what can you do?).
Talulah Gosh - Backwash
Just as great as I expected. Apparently this cd collects basically the whole of the band's recorded output (and a substantial proportion of it is live at that), and I love every minute of it. (Somewhere down the line, when I'm feeling less suffocated, I'll write something more substantial about Talulah Gosh and why they're such a touchstone for me.) See also here.
Arrested Development (season 3)
Finally got round to watching this - first six or seven episodes expectedly great, second half of the season less so as it goes a bit over the top and a bit all over the place (and also maybe overly self-referential). All up extremely good though, of course.
season 1
season 2
season 1
season 2
The John Collier Reader
Mostly the same stories as those included in Fancies and Goodnights, plus the full text of his novel His Monkey Wife (I bogged down a few chapters in and abandoned it) and a couple of chapters from another novel, Defy the Foul Fiend OR The Misadventures of a Heart (quite good but lacking the sly magic of the short stories). Still a neat, occasionally nasty little trip. Noticed the preoccupations with psychoanalysis and art/writing more this time, and also the directly satirical elements.
Brevity
By way of note: for a variety of reasons (lack of time, lack of inspiration, general difficulty in writing anything at all, etc), I'm not finding maintaining this blog particularly rewarding at the moment - it's just not giving me anything at present, and is starting to feel like a bit of a chore - so entries for the next little while, with the probable exception of the last 8 songs on that 'favourites' list and anything particularly anticipated/inspiring/provoking, are likely to mostly be shorter and more inelegant than has previously been the case.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
100 favourite songs: #9: "Lorelei" - Cocteau Twins
I once faintly, as if in a dream, heard someone describe the Cocteau Twins’ music as a floating cloud of fuchsia mist, and I don’t know if I could do much better than that; the quintessential 4AD band, this outfit practically invented dream-pop, and their muse found perhaps its most perfect expression on Treasure. Ringing percussion, guitars which by turns crash and trill, ethereally shimmering layers of sound, and all topped by Liz Fraser’s outlandish, nonsensical vocals, delivered in the most beautiful voice — this is music in which to lose oneself. ‘Music is feeling, then, not sound,’ or so the poet Wallace Stevens once said, and he was half right, for the truth is that music is essentially and immanently both feeling and sound, and it’s in the interplay between the two that we respond to it. Listening to Treasure, one is haunted by a succession of atmospheres — now funereal, now urgent, now contemplative, now violent, now hymnal, now joyous, always just beyond the limits of ordinary definition — and for a while, at least, what you experience is what you are; feeling and sound, sound and feeling. - 27/2/03
Treasure … houses what is probably the Cocteaus’ finest individual moment, the glacially roiling, incandescent “Lorelei” … “Lorelei” really does see them at their most evocative. Liz Fraser’s voice, always uniquely compelling, soars and swoops and dives and soars again, assuming an aspect that is somehow both reverent and commanding, and everything else — that indescribable dream-fabric of sound that the Cocteaus seemingly so effortlessly wove — just coheres around it. - 2/8/03
Treasure … houses what is probably the Cocteaus’ finest individual moment, the glacially roiling, incandescent “Lorelei” … “Lorelei” really does see them at their most evocative. Liz Fraser’s voice, always uniquely compelling, soars and swoops and dives and soars again, assuming an aspect that is somehow both reverent and commanding, and everything else — that indescribable dream-fabric of sound that the Cocteaus seemingly so effortlessly wove — just coheres around it. - 2/8/03
Romeo + Juliet
Alack, this was nowhere near as good as I remembered - main criticism would be that it's too insubstantial (gosh, I'm turning into an old fogey). Fishtank scene still lovely, though. Other bits quite good, too.
The Abyss
Thoughts prompted by watching this film:
1. If there isn't already, there ought to be such a word as 'abysm' - you know, halfway between 'abyss' and 'chasm', and linked to 'abysmal'.
2. Ed Harris = surprisingly effective leading man, but still kinda too dorky to be really compelling.
3. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (or however you spell that surname) = only moderately effective leading woman, much better in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
4. Weird twitchy SEAL villain = would've been much more convincing without the distractingly naff moustache.
5. Armageddon = total Abyss ripoff, but Armageddon was better.
6. That column of water snaking through the corridors is pretty cool.
7. But the film as a whole is kinda boring.
1. If there isn't already, there ought to be such a word as 'abysm' - you know, halfway between 'abyss' and 'chasm', and linked to 'abysmal'.
2. Ed Harris = surprisingly effective leading man, but still kinda too dorky to be really compelling.
3. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (or however you spell that surname) = only moderately effective leading woman, much better in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
4. Weird twitchy SEAL villain = would've been much more convincing without the distractingly naff moustache.
5. Armageddon = total Abyss ripoff, but Armageddon was better.
6. That column of water snaking through the corridors is pretty cool.
7. But the film as a whole is kinda boring.
Dirty Pretty Things
A good one. Kind of a thriller/drama with a healthy dose of social commentary; both leads very good (you'd think that the whole Amelie thing would be a lot more distracting than it actually is - ie, not at all) and direction likewise.
Leonie Swann - Three Bags Full
I guess you kind of know what you're going to get when you start reading a book about a flock of sheep investigating after their shepherd is found dead in the middle of their field, a spade driven straight through him (with names like Miss Maple, Cordelia and Othello no less - that last being the only black sheep in the flock). That is, tweeness and preciosity red alert! But Swann does it right, and while there is indeed much cuteness to be derived from the basic premise, and she does indeed take full toll (sheep leaping up with all four feet in the air when startled, sheep falling asleep at inopportune moments, sheep constantly eating, sheep totally misinterpreting human behaviour, etc), the overall effect is charming rather than cloying. Three Bags Full is fond, disarming, involving and frequently funny, and has a pleasant air of seriousness worn lightly and, to trot out the ol' cliche, I was sorry to leave this world of plucky, characterful ovine detectives...I find myself hoping for a sequel.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
100 favourite songs: #10: "This Love" - Craig Armstrong (featuring Liz Fraser)
… just lovely — as well one might expect with the amazing voice of Liz Fraser … given such space in which to drift. - 10/04
Some music simply must be listened to in pitch darkness, immersively, and “This Love” just may be the ultimate song of that kind. It’s one of those songs that has something of the miraculous to it (not least because the album on which it appears, The Space Between Us, is elsewise so overblown as to be practically unlistenable) — tentative, probing, but fully-fledged upper register verse-lines, strung together by dramatic, sweeping strings, and then those elliptical soaring heights to which Fraser ascends so gloriously and in such otherworldly fashion, cooing and gasping, tugging one along in her wake, star-dazzled and exalted and heart-struck and transfixed.
Some music simply must be listened to in pitch darkness, immersively, and “This Love” just may be the ultimate song of that kind. It’s one of those songs that has something of the miraculous to it (not least because the album on which it appears, The Space Between Us, is elsewise so overblown as to be practically unlistenable) — tentative, probing, but fully-fledged upper register verse-lines, strung together by dramatic, sweeping strings, and then those elliptical soaring heights to which Fraser ascends so gloriously and in such otherworldly fashion, cooing and gasping, tugging one along in her wake, star-dazzled and exalted and heart-struck and transfixed.
100 favourite songs: #11: "Blue Thunder" - Galaxie 500
Stripped-back, bare, and resonant with echoes in its wilful walking of the line between elevation and despair; everything crashes in Galaxie 500’s music, and droning guitar lines and simple, repetitive chord progressions twist about the plaintive, reverb-drenched voice of singer Dean Wareham’s voice in a manner which is compelling precisely because of its starkness. It’s easy to drift away to this music, to immerse oneself in its glorious, yearning melancholy — but listen to it louder, and the dreams which come will be all the more intense. Anyway, “Blue Thunder” opens with the sound of a guitar being gently strummed, and immediately it feels as if the music has always been there; it’s with a sense of homecoming that one hears Wareham’s ethereal vocal enter the mix. For me, this will always be the Galaxie 500 song — plangently rising verses and glorious falsetto choruses, all underpinned by that same downbeat, rhythmic strumming, and finally culminating in a characteristically off kilter, weeping guitar solo. There’s more than a little of the Velvet Underground to Galaxie 500 (imagine “Pale Blue Eyes” played in the middle of a blizzard, while the cold sun is still visible above you), and truly, it’s not so far wrong to say that the fabric of this song must be something akin to all the different colours, made of tears. - 1/04
This song has always just made sense to me.
This song has always just made sense to me.
100 favourite songs: #12: "Everybody Here Wants You" - Jeff Buckley
It took years for “Everybody Here Wants You” to really hit me — the song made a bit of an impression when it was all over triple j, but it wasn’t until much later that it properly took hold of me, and even then only incrementally, by a gradual series of successive deepenings of feeling.
In a way, though, I suppose it must have never really gone away. The first time I can recall the song taking on an aspect of something special was while I was away with Kim and DWR, a few years ago (2001?); I’d borrowed Kim’s copy and was lying on my bed at night listening to it (I think it had snowed that night) on my discman, maybe scrawling in my journal, too, and I can’t put it better or more precisely than to say that a feeling stole over me, and, while of course everything stayed the same, something changed.
Soulful, thundering, swooning, intense, this is the one. “Everybody Here Wants You” shivers and burns, and when I listen to it, I feel elevated.
In a way, though, I suppose it must have never really gone away. The first time I can recall the song taking on an aspect of something special was while I was away with Kim and DWR, a few years ago (2001?); I’d borrowed Kim’s copy and was lying on my bed at night listening to it (I think it had snowed that night) on my discman, maybe scrawling in my journal, too, and I can’t put it better or more precisely than to say that a feeling stole over me, and, while of course everything stayed the same, something changed.
Soulful, thundering, swooning, intense, this is the one. “Everybody Here Wants You” shivers and burns, and when I listen to it, I feel elevated.
100 favourite songs: #13: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Joy Division
This is the sound of everything falling apart — glass shattering, hopes atrophying, hearts failing. Here’s something I wrote a while back — about Closer, actually, but it’s just as apt to describe “Love Will Tear Us Apart”:
… unremittingly dark soundscapes of jagged guitars and resounding percussion … and working with themes of depression and tragedy — echoed in the life of iconic singer Ian Curtis — Joy Division yet wrested a measure of beauty from their divine sadness … [The record is] moving in every sense of the word — shot through with synths which are both ominous and danceable, and trembling as if it might fall apart at any moment … touched by a mysterious sense of grace … Human, all too human … (1/04)
The heaviest song I know, and the most despairing — and also one of the most immediately, enduringly memorable. Somewhere, a brooding 17 year old boy with my name is still listening to this in his bedroom, over and over.
… unremittingly dark soundscapes of jagged guitars and resounding percussion … and working with themes of depression and tragedy — echoed in the life of iconic singer Ian Curtis — Joy Division yet wrested a measure of beauty from their divine sadness … [The record is] moving in every sense of the word — shot through with synths which are both ominous and danceable, and trembling as if it might fall apart at any moment … touched by a mysterious sense of grace … Human, all too human … (1/04)
The heaviest song I know, and the most despairing — and also one of the most immediately, enduringly memorable. Somewhere, a brooding 17 year old boy with my name is still listening to this in his bedroom, over and over.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
100 favourite songs: #14: "You're In A Bad Way" - Saint Etienne
Sometimes a song is just right. Daintily tripping, deliciously (dis)affected, delightfully pealing silvery pop — for me, “You’re In A Bad Way” is an anthem, a touchstone and an unending joy.
100 favourite songs: #15: "Talk Show Host" - Radiohead
There’s something a bit unearthly about “Talk Show Host” — something about the song that’s not quite of this world, as if it’s been dialled in from some other place and arrived shot through with static and wind and interference, spectral dreams and thoughts all around, but at its centre an irregularly beating human heart and a pure lonely voice.
(Another way of putting it: while it’s the swirling, spacious instrumental/tone-bed which gives “Talk Show Host” its unique atmosphere, it’s Thom Yorke’s voice which truly compels one’s attention and drives the music directly into the listener’s spine.)
I’m pretty sure that this was the first Radiohead song I ever heard (another which came courtesy of the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack) and the desolately pretty, fragmentarily poetic jitter and shimmer of both music and words has haunted me ever since; even after all this time, I don’t feel at all as if I’ve grasped or understood the song — it’s always glimmering just out of reach like some horizon-dwelling sprite, hazy and ghostly and ever yearning.
(Another way of putting it: while it’s the swirling, spacious instrumental/tone-bed which gives “Talk Show Host” its unique atmosphere, it’s Thom Yorke’s voice which truly compels one’s attention and drives the music directly into the listener’s spine.)
I’m pretty sure that this was the first Radiohead song I ever heard (another which came courtesy of the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack) and the desolately pretty, fragmentarily poetic jitter and shimmer of both music and words has haunted me ever since; even after all this time, I don’t feel at all as if I’ve grasped or understood the song — it’s always glimmering just out of reach like some horizon-dwelling sprite, hazy and ghostly and ever yearning.
Fight Club
First saw this when it was on the big screen, between high school and uni for me, and so probably the perfect time to've seen the film. I saw it with Nenad at the George in St Kilda, late (it may even have been a midnight screening) and I remember walking back to his place afterwards, both of us totally psyched by what we'd just seen - as I said, it was the right time in my life. I hadn't watched it since (at least not in full), and returning to it now, all these years on, I still admire the film and think it's pretty great, but the initial impact has all long dissipated and ironically its outlines are still too clear in my mind for it to really grab me anew, and so many of its concepts and catchphrases have become so much a part of my working ideas-vocabulary (though I'd forgotten how funny it was - especially Tyler's antics).
David Mitchell - Black Swan Green
I sailed through this and found at its end that it had left me all feeling all stirred-up inside. In many ways, it's an unassuming novel (or, at least, so it appears on the surface) - 13 chapters charting a year and one month in the life of Jason Taylor, a boy growing up in Thatcher-era Worcestershire, wrapped up in the unforgiving politics and power shifts of his peers and held suspended with his family all about his, preoccupied with the mysteries of his time of life. Things happen, some of them quite interesting and others not so much (looked at from an outside perspective, as opposed to that of Jason himself), but it all retained my attention, balancing subtlety and eventfulness tremendously well.
It's written in vernacular - the argot of a 13 year old English boy - and sustainedly so, so that neither the voice itself nor any slipping from it ever intrudes. Works the trick of allowing glimpses of what's going on at the edges of the narration and the narrator's awareness without ever slipping into annoying over-naivety or preciosity, and likewise with the way that Mitchell develops story, character and theme, elegantly and unobstrusively but with a sure, definite hand. Whatever it is that real literature has, Black Swan Green has it - I think that this one's a stayer.
It's written in vernacular - the argot of a 13 year old English boy - and sustainedly so, so that neither the voice itself nor any slipping from it ever intrudes. Works the trick of allowing glimpses of what's going on at the edges of the narration and the narrator's awareness without ever slipping into annoying over-naivety or preciosity, and likewise with the way that Mitchell develops story, character and theme, elegantly and unobstrusively but with a sure, definite hand. Whatever it is that real literature has, Black Swan Green has it - I think that this one's a stayer.
Black Hawk Down
Not entirely satisfied by the library visit, and being in a bit of a bad mood besides, the next day I extended the search for escapism to the video store. So this film (after I'd watched it) struck me as a gritty, convincing portrayal of the horrors of war, strong on the heroism etc but not on the glorification of battle at all, but it's not the kind of thing to send me into raptures. Damn, I need to go into raptures more often these days. But then again, probably not over war movies...
John Birmingham - Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1
Read a very positive review of this a while ago - in a 'good clean escapist fun' type of way - and, looking for something escapist in the library over the weekend, remembered the review and borrowed the book. (I've been quite off my game for the last fortnight or so, and wanted something in which to lose myself, at least temporarily.) So the premise is this: in the near future, a multi-state military force is sailing into Indonesian waters to restore order, the country's government having been overthrown by a radical Islamic force, when a scientific experiment being conducted by the inhabitants of a ship which has been caught up in their wake tears a hole in the fabric of space and time and sends nearly the whole lot of them slap-bang into the middle of the US fleet sailing to war in 1942. Alarums ensue, and after the frenetic initial engagement, things continue at a cracking pace - the book's obviously been written with page-turnin' in mind - with much focus on the cultural clash which results when the people constituting the two forces meet face to face and are forced to work together against the common threat of the Axis, and more on the ACTION (also has fun with writing the future - Hillary as President, for one - and peopling its pages with famous historical figures). Lots of loose ends notwithstanding (I think there's a sequel, too, which may explain it), succeeded admirably in keeping me reading.
Friday, October 13, 2006
100 favourite songs: #16: "Shivers" - Boys Next Door
I’ve been contemplating suicide
But it really doesn’t suit my style
So I think I’ll just act bored instead
To contain the blood I would’ve shed —
This song has always been there — at first, admittedly, through the Screaming Jets’ cover of it, but I worked my way back to the Boys Next Door version pretty early in the piece and was instantly converted. “Shivers” was actually written by Rowland S Howard, but the combination of mordancy and feeling, touched with the merest hint of wryness, with which the young Nick Cave sings the words could not imaginably be bettered.
She makes me feel so weary
My heart is really on its knees
But I keep the poker face so well
That even mother couldn’t tell —
Somewhere along the line came Love and Other Catastrophes, about which I’ve really already said everything I need to say — the scene in which “Shivers” appears just one perfect vignette amongst many, lingering still, having taken on its own particular lighting and hue in the endless sequences being played out in the theatre of my imagination, memory, call it what you will.
But my baby’s so vain
She is almost a mirror
And the sound of her name
Sends a permanent shiver —
Down my spine…
All of which wouldn’t count for half as much, of course, were the song not such sheer greatness in and of itself. From the unutterable (yet uttered) weariness of the first eight lines, breaking through into the long moan of the next four and then the bizarrely affecting drawing out of the word ‘spine’ on which everything really hinges, and then once more through, enveloping itself ever more deeply in a sadness that’s beyond expression in the lines themselves but makes itself felt everywhere else, it’s a masterpiece of sustained, allusively-conveyed mood and sentiment.
I keep her photograph against my heart
For in my life she plays a starring part
Our love could hold on cigarettes
There is no room for cheap regrets —
With all of the songs on this list, and the ones right near the upper end especially, there’s something more about the song that makes me think of it as one of my favourite songs — something that sets it apart from all the other songs that I really, really like, and I don’t think that this ‘something’ is simply quantitative. Rather, it’s something else — something of an altogether different quality — and, whatever it is, for me, “Shivers” has it in spades.
100 favourite songs: #17: "Like A Rolling Stone" - Bob Dylan
I’m convinced that he knew the truth (and perhaps still does), whatever that may mean, and “Like A Rolling Stone” represents probably his finest distillation of aforementioned truth. … I don’t think I’ve ever heard another record that so perfectly balanced eloquence and rage. - 2/8/03
What could I possibly say about Bob Dylan that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before? He is, of course, one of the truly great singer-songwriters to have graced popular music, and I’ve had so many meaningful Dylan moments — many of them involving this song — that I’ve long since lost track of specific instances. What remains is the sense that this song engenders anew every time I listen to it — the sense of desolation, and rage, and long, lonely, windswept roads down which we all must walk. It’s the end of the day melancholy, driving home into the distant sunset. It’s the wind in your hair as you stand on the edge and wonder, ‘what next’? It’s the glorious poetic widescreen sadness of just trying to get by. If you need to have it explained to you, you’ll never understand. - 1/04
What could I possibly say about Bob Dylan that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before? He is, of course, one of the truly great singer-songwriters to have graced popular music, and I’ve had so many meaningful Dylan moments — many of them involving this song — that I’ve long since lost track of specific instances. What remains is the sense that this song engenders anew every time I listen to it — the sense of desolation, and rage, and long, lonely, windswept roads down which we all must walk. It’s the end of the day melancholy, driving home into the distant sunset. It’s the wind in your hair as you stand on the edge and wonder, ‘what next’? It’s the glorious poetic widescreen sadness of just trying to get by. If you need to have it explained to you, you’ll never understand. - 1/04
100 favourite songs: #18: "Wise Up" - Aimee Mann
If ever there was a voice with which I could fall in love, this is it. Add the fact that Aimee Mann is one of the great, classic songwriters of our time, and the way that her lyrics sparkle with a sensitivity and an understanding of the quiet hurt/hope of modern life, and you have something approaching perfection. - 9/4/04
An artfully artless combination of simplicity and depth, “Wise Up” has a poignancy and a tenderness almost crystalline in their clarity — the kind that brings a lump to one’s throat even on the umpteenth listening. Feels like a distillation of the sadness that we all know into an achingly expressive form — and no, it’s not going to stop…
An artfully artless combination of simplicity and depth, “Wise Up” has a poignancy and a tenderness almost crystalline in their clarity — the kind that brings a lump to one’s throat even on the umpteenth listening. Feels like a distillation of the sadness that we all know into an achingly expressive form — and no, it’s not going to stop…
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
100 favourite songs: #19: "Can't Be Sure" - The Sundays
… the Sundays really are one of my favourite bands, as unlikely as that may be, and I get swept up by their sweet melancholy anew every spring, remaining more or less intoxicated all through summer. - 9/04
Unlikely, yes, but the Sundays are a real touchstone band for me, and these days I seem to like them all year round. It goes like this:
(1) I constantly refer to them in thinking about and describing music made by other artists (probably only MBV, the Velvets and the Smiths come up comparably often); and
(2) Although I can’t pin it down to a single specific association, their music occupies a special place all its own in my mental/emotional/associative landscape — a place to which only the particular jangle and lilt and invocation of late afternoon sun and shadows of the Sundays can take me.
“Can’t Be Sure” is filled with an unmistakeable joy, edged barely perceptibly but all around with melancholy — it’s a quiet joy (and likewise the melancholy), finding voice throughout in Wheeler’s breathy expressive exhalations and climbing clear-throated refrains, but it so fills the song that it seems as if her heart must burst with it at any moment, and indeed, when things finally all overflow with the climactic call — “it’s my life, and it’s my life, and though I can’t be sure if I want any more, it will come to me later” — and last wordless emphatic exultations, they do so with an air almost of inevitability and a sense that that ending is also simultaneously a homecoming of sorts and a new beginning.
Unlikely, yes, but the Sundays are a real touchstone band for me, and these days I seem to like them all year round. It goes like this:
(1) I constantly refer to them in thinking about and describing music made by other artists (probably only MBV, the Velvets and the Smiths come up comparably often); and
(2) Although I can’t pin it down to a single specific association, their music occupies a special place all its own in my mental/emotional/associative landscape — a place to which only the particular jangle and lilt and invocation of late afternoon sun and shadows of the Sundays can take me.
… and did you know desire’s a terrible thing, the worst that I can find?/ And did you know desire’s a terrible thing, but I rely on mine …
“Can’t Be Sure” is filled with an unmistakeable joy, edged barely perceptibly but all around with melancholy — it’s a quiet joy (and likewise the melancholy), finding voice throughout in Wheeler’s breathy expressive exhalations and climbing clear-throated refrains, but it so fills the song that it seems as if her heart must burst with it at any moment, and indeed, when things finally all overflow with the climactic call — “it’s my life, and it’s my life, and though I can’t be sure if I want any more, it will come to me later” — and last wordless emphatic exultations, they do so with an air almost of inevitability and a sense that that ending is also simultaneously a homecoming of sorts and a new beginning.
100 favourite songs: #20: "Sometimes" - My Bloody Valentine
Loveless may just have been the best album of the last decade, and this, its most brooding and its prettiest cut, haunting, blissed-out vocals buried deep beneath the layers of sound, is the stuff of which dreams are made. - 18/4/04
100 favourite songs: #21: "Spark" - Tori Amos
“Spark” was the song that first convinced me that she [Tori] really is something special, and I don’t think I’ll ever be over the lush, swooning sturm und drang of this one…those backing vocals in the second verse are, for all their understatedness, sheer magic, and the chorus is rousing and tragic all at once. Even after all these years I still get a chill down the spine when listening to this song, and feel as if I’m drowning just a little. - 1/04
This is a big call, but I reckon that of all the songs on this list, “Spark” is probably the one to which I’ve listened the most number of times, ever — it swept me up at around the time that from the choirgirl hotel came out and has been flat out my Favourite Song Ever at various times since that initial rush, and I’ve never really stopped feeling it. “Spark” is a ballad, I guess, but it’s a lusciously stormy, deep-water ballad, layer upon layer, twist upon turn, at once undeniably epic and heart-wrenchingly intimate, and it still makes me shiver.
6.58 are you sure where my spark is
here .
here . here
This is a big call, but I reckon that of all the songs on this list, “Spark” is probably the one to which I’ve listened the most number of times, ever — it swept me up at around the time that from the choirgirl hotel came out and has been flat out my Favourite Song Ever at various times since that initial rush, and I’ve never really stopped feeling it. “Spark” is a ballad, I guess, but it’s a lusciously stormy, deep-water ballad, layer upon layer, twist upon turn, at once undeniably epic and heart-wrenchingly intimate, and it still makes me shiver.
6.58 are you sure where my spark is
here .
here . here
100 favourite songs: #22: "Gorecki" - Lamb
I fell in love with “Gorecki” through hearing it on the radio, a forlorn and compelling presence on the airwaves, but it makes even more sense on Lamb — the album — an initially hushed voice emerging in the aftermath of the punishing pummel and ricochet of the beats that have preceded it, drifting untethered and delicately, unhesitatingly weaving a crystalline bridge across an empty space, ascending cathartically to a culmination of its own.
(It’s a love song, of course — what else?)
Those first words and the tones in which they’re sung, “If I should die this very moment —” are hardwired into me, coupled with a melody that, yearningly pretty and shimmering like some dark gem, felt deeply familiar from the very beginning, as if a part of me had always known it; in its simplicity lies the song’s particular mystery and allure.
One uses this word charily in relation to pop music, but really, there’s no other way to put it — “Gorecki” is beautiful.
(It’s a love song, of course — what else?)
Those first words and the tones in which they’re sung, “If I should die this very moment —” are hardwired into me, coupled with a melody that, yearningly pretty and shimmering like some dark gem, felt deeply familiar from the very beginning, as if a part of me had always known it; in its simplicity lies the song’s particular mystery and allure.
One uses this word charily in relation to pop music, but really, there’s no other way to put it — “Gorecki” is beautiful.
Madeleine Peyroux - Half The Perfect World
Peyroux's latest - another languid record très charmant, subtly different from, but as good as, the previous two. Enjoy the cover of Joni's "River" (ringing in k.d. lang), of course, tho' "Blue Alert" (a Leonard Cohen number) may be my favourite on the album, and the album as a whole has a nice fluidity. And guess what? I think I'm developing a taste for vocal jazz.
Kiran Desai - Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
I'd presumed, in my usual presumptuous fashion, that because Desai is an Indian writer, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard would be: (a) magic realist; and (b) post-colonial. Now, leaving aside obvious dealbreakers like bigotry, gratuitous violence, dire prose, etc, I doubt that there are two tropes/practices/whatever more guaranteed to make me run a mile from a contemporary novel than magic realism and post-colonialism (I was horrified to read some misguided assimilationist attempt to classify Murakami as a magic realist in one of the major papers a couple of weeks ago), and especially the latter, so I've been putting off reading the novel, an unsolicited loan from Yee Fui of some months ago. Anyway, thought I should get on to it a couple of days ago, and it turns out that only (a) actually applies, and even that not particularly offensively (though the frenetic final few pages seem very 100 Years of Solitude-inspired), so more fool me.
It's quite a charming read, actually - its tale of Sampath Chawla, the congenital layabout/dreamer who one day, on a whim, begins living in an old guava tree and, thanks to his habit of idly reading the townspeople's mail in his previous employment at the post office and capacity for spouting more or less nonsensically trite folk aphorisms, gains a reputation as a wise man, and his peculiar family and fellow townsfolk, is an engaging one. It's easy to read and funny and has some substance, too. Even so, I haven't taken it to heart - I'm not wired in such a way as to find the kinds of characters or narratives which appear in Hullabaloo especially appealing, and the whimsy oft-times - well, not exactly rubbed me the wrong way, but just didn't catch me in the way that I imagine it would a lot of people (and likewise the descriptive flights, which struck me more as faintly tedious than lyrical).
The truth is that I liked Hullabaloo a lot more than I disliked it. What I think is going on is that, while the novel's really rather well done as a whole and I enjoyed it, it also pushes a couple of my 'negative reaction' buttons - I'm getting set in my ways, I guess. But Desai's got something - there's no denying it.
* * *
(And, in the time between my writing the above and getting around to posting it, Desai has won this year's Booker for her latest, no?)
It's quite a charming read, actually - its tale of Sampath Chawla, the congenital layabout/dreamer who one day, on a whim, begins living in an old guava tree and, thanks to his habit of idly reading the townspeople's mail in his previous employment at the post office and capacity for spouting more or less nonsensically trite folk aphorisms, gains a reputation as a wise man, and his peculiar family and fellow townsfolk, is an engaging one. It's easy to read and funny and has some substance, too. Even so, I haven't taken it to heart - I'm not wired in such a way as to find the kinds of characters or narratives which appear in Hullabaloo especially appealing, and the whimsy oft-times - well, not exactly rubbed me the wrong way, but just didn't catch me in the way that I imagine it would a lot of people (and likewise the descriptive flights, which struck me more as faintly tedious than lyrical).
The truth is that I liked Hullabaloo a lot more than I disliked it. What I think is going on is that, while the novel's really rather well done as a whole and I enjoyed it, it also pushes a couple of my 'negative reaction' buttons - I'm getting set in my ways, I guess. But Desai's got something - there's no denying it.
* * *
(And, in the time between my writing the above and getting around to posting it, Desai has won this year's Booker for her latest, no?)
"Love's Labour's Lost" @ Guild Theatre, Union House, University of Melbourne
The second Melb Uni Shakespeare Co production (I think), and has many of the virtues of the first - irreverence, energy, humour and insight all in spades, to name four. The reimagining of the noblemen of Navarre as a foursome of black tee and tight jeans-clad emo boys (complete with fussy fringes, eyeliner, black nail polish and pouts) is cute and works well, though every scene in which he appeared was stolen by the guy who plays the affected Spaniard Armado (equal parts Inigo Montoya, Jose Feliciano's character in Moulin Rouge, and a criminally misused thesaurus - his line about the "posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon" is priceless) and, to a lesser extent, his page. Ending took me by surprise - I don't know the play - and capped it off nicely, to the strains of "You Can't Always Get What You Want", no less. Didn't think that the acting was of as consistently high a quality as in their Taming of the Shrew (mostly different ensembles) but possibly that was due to my expectations having been raised for this second time round or just my not being quite in the mood on Sat night. (Went, as has become usual with the Shakespeare lately, with Swee Leng.)
Mountains in the Sky - Accipio
A few weekends ago, browsing in Dixon's in Fitzroy, I heard something excellent and unfamiliar on the in-store system, and asked about it when I took my purchase(s) to the counter. It went something like this:
Me: So I was wondering what that track that you were playing just before was.
Scruffy Record Store Type: [affably] Oh, it was Architecture in Helsinki.
Me: ["Oh really? But I would've known if it was AiH" look]
SRST: It's a remix actually, by Mountains in the Sky.
Me: ["Oh really? But I've never heard of Mountains in the Sky" look]
SRST: Which is me...
So I'd really been liking the track itself and was all ready to buy whatever it was, but it turned out to be a work in progress; anyway, after I'd praised it, SRST (whose name I assume was John Lee, based on the Accipio cd) mentioned a single/ep thing that he had out at the moment, showed me a button with the cover design on it, and suggested I check it out at Polyester (he was keen to suggest that I listen to it before buying)...and, in part because I was a little charmed by the way that SRST had initially been prepared to pass the episode off without taking credit for the track (not reckoning on my Extremely Expressive Expressions) but mostly because I'd been impressed by the track itself, I went across the road and picked up a copy of the cd.
As to the music on Accipio - five tracks, but intended to be taken as a whole (akin to movements) - well, it's not half bad. The most obvious reference point for me is the Avalanches - it's broadly the same kind of sample-based type collage soundscape thing and works with similar kinds of beats and rhythms (the overall aesthetic is pretty similar, I reckon) - though it swerves near Pink Floyd territory at a couple of points (it's the synths, obviously) and also invokes Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow in places (especially on the fourth track, "Rupture"). Not really my thing, to be frank, but I don't mind it, either.
Me: So I was wondering what that track that you were playing just before was.
Scruffy Record Store Type: [affably] Oh, it was Architecture in Helsinki.
Me: ["Oh really? But I would've known if it was AiH" look]
SRST: It's a remix actually, by Mountains in the Sky.
Me: ["Oh really? But I've never heard of Mountains in the Sky" look]
SRST: Which is me...
So I'd really been liking the track itself and was all ready to buy whatever it was, but it turned out to be a work in progress; anyway, after I'd praised it, SRST (whose name I assume was John Lee, based on the Accipio cd) mentioned a single/ep thing that he had out at the moment, showed me a button with the cover design on it, and suggested I check it out at Polyester (he was keen to suggest that I listen to it before buying)...and, in part because I was a little charmed by the way that SRST had initially been prepared to pass the episode off without taking credit for the track (not reckoning on my Extremely Expressive Expressions) but mostly because I'd been impressed by the track itself, I went across the road and picked up a copy of the cd.
As to the music on Accipio - five tracks, but intended to be taken as a whole (akin to movements) - well, it's not half bad. The most obvious reference point for me is the Avalanches - it's broadly the same kind of sample-based type collage soundscape thing and works with similar kinds of beats and rhythms (the overall aesthetic is pretty similar, I reckon) - though it swerves near Pink Floyd territory at a couple of points (it's the synths, obviously) and also invokes Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow in places (especially on the fourth track, "Rupture"). Not really my thing, to be frank, but I don't mind it, either.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
100 favourite songs: #23: "September Gurls" - Big Star
The sheer brightness with which those opening guitar lines ring out must be one of pop music’s purest joys, and the two chiming, sunnily yearning solos that later adorn the song aren’t far behind; altogether, “September Gurls” is nothing less than an unadulterated pleasure from start to finish.
100 favourite songs: #24: "Ceremony" - Galaxie 500
It takes guts to cover Joy Division, even when the great band itself never got around to officially recording the track in question. And you’d better hope that you’ve really got your mojo rising when the song in question has since been seemingly definitively laid down by the almost equally great outfit to have arisen from the ashes of Curtis’ death, New Order. But that’s exactly what Galaxie 500, iconoclasts to the core, set out to do with “Ceremony”, and they rise magnificently to the challenge, producing a version which manages to be completely true to both the original and to their own, distinctive sound. Ethereal, sad, beautiful and somehow foreboding, it is as if the late eighties daze-rockers were somehow channeling Joy Division while speaking in a voice which was unmistakeably their own. - 30/9/02
Feels the whole time as if it’s on the verge of shaking itself apart, trembling and shuddering, while simultaneously building ineluctably from its first chords to the unending crescendo in which Wareham stretches and intones and cries, gasping for breath through the suffocation and distance of it all, “forever…forever…” as the guitars crash on and on and on and on…
Feels the whole time as if it’s on the verge of shaking itself apart, trembling and shuddering, while simultaneously building ineluctably from its first chords to the unending crescendo in which Wareham stretches and intones and cries, gasping for breath through the suffocation and distance of it all, “forever…forever…” as the guitars crash on and on and on and on…
100 favourite songs: #25: "Seal My Fate" - Belly
“Seal My Fate” is one of those ‘irresistible chorus’-type numbers that make me feel happy and light-headed and a little bit inspired. Tanya Donelly has a knack for writing the most golden melodies, interwoven with unselfconsciously poetic lyrics, and the vibrant, layered fabric laid down by the band is perfect. - 10/04
Takes off on the upsurge of the first “and when you breathe, you breathe for two” and never looks back — the hooks come at a mile a minute, Donelly sings with an abandon and an edge, and yeah, there’s an amazing chorus, too. It’s all there.
Takes off on the upsurge of the first “and when you breathe, you breathe for two” and never looks back — the hooks come at a mile a minute, Donelly sings with an abandon and an edge, and yeah, there’s an amazing chorus, too. It’s all there.
100 favourite songs: #26: "Hold On, Hold On" - Neko Case
Desert guitar chimes it in, Case starts breathlessly and undeniably with a killer couplet — “The most tender place in my heart is for strangers,/I know it’s unkind but my own blood is much too dangerous” — and then the song’s off, recalling Calexico’s “Ballad Of Cable Hogue” in its channeling of spag-Western drama and widescreen dynamics, driving irresistibly forward on the back of a restless, tumbling melody and Case’s glorious singing (the magic moment is her soaring delivery of the line “I leave the party at 3am, alone thank god”, in which everything gathers itself together, briefly pauses, and then launches forwards again), cresting and subsiding and cresting again, shimmering like something in the hazy, sun-distorted distance… - 5/2/06
100 favourite songs: #27: "Cowgirl In The Sand" - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
… fiery and plangent, urgent and tender, rockin’ and introspective … - 16/1/06
If I were making a soundtrack for the end of the world, this is one of the first songs that I’d put on it. With its sprawling, intense guitar jams and characteristic slowed-down, raggedly heartfelt vocals, “Cowgirl In The Sand” has a focus and stature that belies its apparent looseness. I’m always struck by the way it slows down at precisely the moment when you expect it to speed up (several times) and the sense of journeying — in which the journey itself rather than the destination is really where it’s all at — which the song offers and engenders. So when I listen to the song, I think of endings, of freeway driving with the windows down and the wind rushing all around, of summers and the long falls into and out of them, and of something beyond all of those — something which is, I suppose, the prerogative of music to invoke without ever naming, but we know it’s there still.
If I were making a soundtrack for the end of the world, this is one of the first songs that I’d put on it. With its sprawling, intense guitar jams and characteristic slowed-down, raggedly heartfelt vocals, “Cowgirl In The Sand” has a focus and stature that belies its apparent looseness. I’m always struck by the way it slows down at precisely the moment when you expect it to speed up (several times) and the sense of journeying — in which the journey itself rather than the destination is really where it’s all at — which the song offers and engenders. So when I listen to the song, I think of endings, of freeway driving with the windows down and the wind rushing all around, of summers and the long falls into and out of them, and of something beyond all of those — something which is, I suppose, the prerogative of music to invoke without ever naming, but we know it’s there still.
"Human Rights Challenges in the South Pacific" (Dr Shaista Shameem - Castan Centre for Human Rights Law annual lecture)
And another one - this was yesterday lunchtime, necessitating a fairly long lunch since it was at the Town Hall and in any case ran for over an hour, I think (not that I was complaining what with the sunshine and the Friday afternoon-ness of it all).
I think that Shameem's background was originally in sociology but she obviously has a strong background in law, too, and most relevantly is Director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission and has previously been appointed to various substantial roles within the UN. Her lecture had a strong focus on the relationship between Australia and (other) South Pacific nations, drawing on recent goings-on involving the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste, and I liked the way that she wasn't afraid to make suggestions about some useful ways forward on Australia's - and Australians' - end.
It was interesting to hear about the strong negative response to the notion of 'human rights' which apparently prevails throughout the South Pacific - the concept being associated with the usual raft of western liberal democratic individualist ideology. I've read and even written about this stuff in the past, but somehow it feels more 'real' when said by someone who actually has a background in the area and has seen it first hand. Shameem's solution - or, at any rate, suggestion for the beginning of a solution - seems primarily to involve attempting to move to a genuine conversation (rather than the current talking at cross-purposes that characterises cross-cultural 'engagement'), which is pretty much what everyone who's ever thought seriously about this issue seems to arrive at, but I don't think it should be dismissed for that reason.
She spoke a bit about a sociological (I think) framework called 'symbolic interactionism' or something similar which she thought could productively be applied to the problem of generating a 'human rights culture' in areas like the South Pacific, the idea seemingly being that certain concepts - symbols - could form a common ground between states with greatly divergent underlying social and governmental structures and traditions (eg, Australia and other states in the region), allowing the development of a space within which ideas traditionally associated with concepts such as 'human rights' can be negotiated and shared.
She was particularly keen on 'justice' in this connexion, 'human rights' having evidently been tarred by a certain brush already in the region - to which the obvious retort is that ideas of justice are themselves culturally specific. Perhaps she would have in turn replied that what is important is that the shared symbol initially exist as a matter of form, which at least leaves open the possibility of a genuine conversation - which would then bring us back to the 'well, how do we achieve that in practice?' question, of course, but maybe at this stage it's all about just trying to move in the right direction, and naturally I intuitively share her belief in the importance and power of symbols...
I think that Shameem's background was originally in sociology but she obviously has a strong background in law, too, and most relevantly is Director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission and has previously been appointed to various substantial roles within the UN. Her lecture had a strong focus on the relationship between Australia and (other) South Pacific nations, drawing on recent goings-on involving the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste, and I liked the way that she wasn't afraid to make suggestions about some useful ways forward on Australia's - and Australians' - end.
It was interesting to hear about the strong negative response to the notion of 'human rights' which apparently prevails throughout the South Pacific - the concept being associated with the usual raft of western liberal democratic individualist ideology. I've read and even written about this stuff in the past, but somehow it feels more 'real' when said by someone who actually has a background in the area and has seen it first hand. Shameem's solution - or, at any rate, suggestion for the beginning of a solution - seems primarily to involve attempting to move to a genuine conversation (rather than the current talking at cross-purposes that characterises cross-cultural 'engagement'), which is pretty much what everyone who's ever thought seriously about this issue seems to arrive at, but I don't think it should be dismissed for that reason.
She spoke a bit about a sociological (I think) framework called 'symbolic interactionism' or something similar which she thought could productively be applied to the problem of generating a 'human rights culture' in areas like the South Pacific, the idea seemingly being that certain concepts - symbols - could form a common ground between states with greatly divergent underlying social and governmental structures and traditions (eg, Australia and other states in the region), allowing the development of a space within which ideas traditionally associated with concepts such as 'human rights' can be negotiated and shared.
She was particularly keen on 'justice' in this connexion, 'human rights' having evidently been tarred by a certain brush already in the region - to which the obvious retort is that ideas of justice are themselves culturally specific. Perhaps she would have in turn replied that what is important is that the shared symbol initially exist as a matter of form, which at least leaves open the possibility of a genuine conversation - which would then bring us back to the 'well, how do we achieve that in practice?' question, of course, but maybe at this stage it's all about just trying to move in the right direction, and naturally I intuitively share her belief in the importance and power of symbols...
"Remedying Human Rights Violations" (Ivan Shearer and others)
I'm always a bit in two minds about whether to note public lectures, especially when they're not directly related to art, culture, or however you'd characterise the usual subject of these entries - but if they reflect where I'm currently at, well I guess why not? Work continues to eat into my spare time, and it's becoming more and more necessary to seek stimulation wherever I can find it...
So this was a public seminar held at the Clutz offices last Wednesday (I'd anticipated that it'd be an early end to the day for me, but instead ended up having to go back to MS after the seminar, ugh). Main attraction was Ivan Shearer, who was promised to be speaking of his experiences as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee; responding to his presentation were Di Otto and Peter H of MS. I'd expected Shearer's speech/presentation to be a lot more analytical (and perhaps anecdotal) than it in fact was - though there were flashes of opinion coming through (eg, in certain comments about the quality of the members of the various human rights treaty committees, particularly the HRC) - but both of the respondents raised a few interesting points, and the questions were generally quite good, as were the responses they provoked from the speakers.
So this was a public seminar held at the Clutz offices last Wednesday (I'd anticipated that it'd be an early end to the day for me, but instead ended up having to go back to MS after the seminar, ugh). Main attraction was Ivan Shearer, who was promised to be speaking of his experiences as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee; responding to his presentation were Di Otto and Peter H of MS. I'd expected Shearer's speech/presentation to be a lot more analytical (and perhaps anecdotal) than it in fact was - though there were flashes of opinion coming through (eg, in certain comments about the quality of the members of the various human rights treaty committees, particularly the HRC) - but both of the respondents raised a few interesting points, and the questions were generally quite good, as were the responses they provoked from the speakers.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
100 favourite songs: #28: "El President" - Drugstore (featuring Thom Yorke)
That evocative first line, “It came from the skies”, tremulous and upsoaring, is a perfect opening, invoking and capturing the widescreen, impressionistic mood of this all-too-brief spaghetti opera; Isabel Monteiro and Thom Yorke trade stanzas and lines with blue-eyed conviction over furiously strummed guitars and long, moody cello lines, and it’s all too wonderful for words.
100 favourite songs: #29: "She's A Jar" - Wilco
It’s something to do with the way in which Jeff Tweedy sings his words (tender, weary, sad) and the accents provided by the sung-spoken harmonies, and something to do with the transistor radio strings as they sweep and shiver in their nostalgic waves, and something to do with the interplay of the various keyboard parts, bass, drums and swooping harmonica throughout, and something more to do with how all of that makes me feel (sorta sad and happy all at once, but it’s something beyond that, too), but mainly it’s that “She’s A Jar” gets me and I don’t know how or why — it just does.
100 favourite songs: #30: "Just Like Heaven" - The Cure
Oh, the Cure. They’ve left such a massive mark on me — what to say? When I listen to a song like “Just Like Heaven”, it sometimes seems as if I can hear traces of every other Cure song I ever heard, all wrapped up with it.
At the time when I was really into the Cure, it was “Pictures Of You”, and maybe “A Strange Day” for a while, and after that “Charlotte Sometimes” for ages, which were my absolute favourites — “Just Like Heaven” was up there as well, but I think that probably it wasn’t ponderous or gloomy enough for me to really think of it as an absolute fave back then. Well, our tastes change and we move on (even if some of us still have Robert Smith posters on our bedroom walls), and the ways in which we hear these old songs develop layers upon layers — I guess this is part of what they call growing up — and the upshot, in re the Cure at any rate, is that it is “Just Like Heaven” that’s wound up being my favourite of theirs, and, in a lot of ways, as such it’s come to stand for their back catalogue as a whole, both on this list and more broadly in the way I think about song and band.
There are so many reasons to love the song, but if I had to fix on just one, it’d be the way it starts — drums, guitars, more guitars, synths, still more guitars, and then Smith’s entry: “Show me show me show me how you do that trick!” and everything we love about the Cure is right there and perfect. Then again, the sparkling, dainty little electric piano solo about two-thirds of the way through is utterly fab, as well. Plus, the lyrics are, unexpectedly, still great. And did I mention that it’s my favourite Cure song?
At the time when I was really into the Cure, it was “Pictures Of You”, and maybe “A Strange Day” for a while, and after that “Charlotte Sometimes” for ages, which were my absolute favourites — “Just Like Heaven” was up there as well, but I think that probably it wasn’t ponderous or gloomy enough for me to really think of it as an absolute fave back then. Well, our tastes change and we move on (even if some of us still have Robert Smith posters on our bedroom walls), and the ways in which we hear these old songs develop layers upon layers — I guess this is part of what they call growing up — and the upshot, in re the Cure at any rate, is that it is “Just Like Heaven” that’s wound up being my favourite of theirs, and, in a lot of ways, as such it’s come to stand for their back catalogue as a whole, both on this list and more broadly in the way I think about song and band.
There are so many reasons to love the song, but if I had to fix on just one, it’d be the way it starts — drums, guitars, more guitars, synths, still more guitars, and then Smith’s entry: “Show me show me show me how you do that trick!” and everything we love about the Cure is right there and perfect. Then again, the sparkling, dainty little electric piano solo about two-thirds of the way through is utterly fab, as well. Plus, the lyrics are, unexpectedly, still great. And did I mention that it’s my favourite Cure song?
100 favourite songs: #31: "Teardrop" - Massive Attack
Though I didn’t realise it at the time, my introduction to the glory that is Liz Fraser’s voice, and what an introduction — the song is heavy and dramatic and glistening and ecstatic, beats falling like raindrops on textures of deepest velvet, all wreathed in the flutters and swoops of Fraser’s unearthly coos. Really beautiful.
100 favourite songs: #32: "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" - The Smiths
… the Smiths were all about chiming, resonant, timeless guitar-pop, adorned by swooning, over the top lyrical conceits, and “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” sees them at their grandest and most impressionistic, while as morbid and lovelorn as ever — sing along, sing along on your lonely bed and sneer at the world through the tears. This just may be the most perfectly-crafted love song ever written — it meant so much to me back during my sulky teenage years, but even now I can feel its lonely pull… - 1/04
100 favourite songs: #33: "Pink Orange Red" - Cocteau Twins
Another broody, dreamy, star-spangled Cocteau Twins thing — vivid and undeniable and great.
100 favourite songs: #34: "American Flag" - Cat Power
Adorned in sirens, guitars which chime like bells, and Marshall’s heart-in-mouth singing, “American Flag” is another of those songs for which I just can’t find the words — cryptic and poetic, it’s just so untouchably good. One thing I do know, though — it’s the unexpected and out of left-field yet absolutely fitting “she goes shoop, shoo-pe-doop” fashion in which it ends which really makes the song.
100 favourite songs: #35: "Lucky" - Radiohead
Something inside me takes wing every time I hear it:
the head of state
has called for me
by name
but i dont have time for him.
its gonnabe
a glori us day!
i
feel my
luck
could
change.
the head of state
has called for me
by name
but i dont have time for him.
its gonnabe
a glori us day!
i
feel my
luck
could
change.
Ghost World original motion picture soundtrack
The key songs here being the skewed Indian soundtrack music playing over the opening credits of the film ("Jaan Pehechaan Ho" - Mohammed Rafi), to the strains of which we're introduced to Enid, dancing frenetically in her lit-up bedroom, and "Devil Got My Woman" (Skip James), the rare blues recording upon which she becomes fixated (and which connects her to Seymour). And, too, the moody score, which adds so much to the feel of the film. The rest of it is mostly divided between old-time blues and jazz numbers, the two deliberately bad modern tracks sticking out like sore thumbs - the feeling is there.
Menomena - I Am The Fun Blame Monster!
Sometimes it's hard to get past the first 30 seconds of an album and that was the case with this one - tinny, arrhythmic, processed-sounding percussion does not a promising opening make (well, not in my books at least). Turns out to be better than that beginning had led me to believe, filled with ideas, and it certainly provokes me, which is never a bad thing, but all up I find the album too schizophrenic and, I don't know, too depthless or something, to be a satisfying listen.
Wanda Jackson - Wanda Jackson
Her debut album, from '58 - a mix (sometimes jarringly so, as far as the sequencing goes) of upbeat honkytonk-rockabilly numbers and weepy country tunes. Easy for me to get into once I listened to it at all, it struck me as a record that Neko Case, for one, may well have taken some inspiration from.
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