Yann Tiersen @ the Corner Hotel, Monday 27 November

I hadn't (knowingly) heard any of Tiersen's stuff - only the soundtrack to Amelie, and that only in the course of the film itself - so I didn't know what to expect when I rolled up to the Corner last night [Mon night]. I had vague ideas of Dominique Ané type chansons, and there was a bit of that, but in general it was much more on the rock side than I'd imagined, with much of it being jagged, thuddy post-punk edged guitar-bass-drums stuff but taking as much from 60s garage as from 80s alternative (and when the guitars got to chiming it was positively Interpol) and all very French in sensibility, especially the melodies. Some of the highlights provided by Tiersen's intense violinin' when he wasn't hunched angularly into his guitar, and a cello was onstage for nearly the whole time. Great show.

(w/ trang)

An Inconvenient Truth

Worthy, and I've been reading a bit about climate change lately so it was timely, but it just wasn't all that interesting, you know?

(w/ Sid)

Hem - Rabbit Songs

Simply gorgeous.

(Also: Eveningland.)

"What Difference is Australian Writing Making?" @ BMW Edge, Federation Square

This happened last week, one evening. All four speakers - Alex Miller, Hannie Rayson, Dorothy Porter and Barry Jones - good in their different ways, covering the sort of ground that you'd expect them to but doing so convincingly and engagingly, and each staking out different ground: Miller in a very literary way, his words falling like lines from a poem; Rayson more casual, with a sparkle and a patter; Porter putting the politics a bit more upfront; and Jones showing his politician's grounding in his amusing discursive polemic. None of them spared the literary references, of course ("The Second Coming" - my favourite poem in high school - getting a guernsey, and Gide, and Proust (but of course), and so on) and all did a good job of addressing the question from their chosen perspective. No summaries, exegeses or criticisms from yours truly, 'cause I'm still struggling with this enervation thing I've got going.

(w/ Nicolette)

Kasey Chambers @ Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Wednesday 22 November

I got my ticket so long ago that the gig kind of crept up on me, but this was a darn good show - Chambers just stood up there and belted out song after song, tuneful and strong and clear, and it was great. (Songs interspersed with very warm, genuine-feeling banter with band and crowd.) Listening to them all, one after another, made me wonder if perhaps I've undervalued her, both as a songwriter and an artist - I tend to think of The Captain and Barricades & Brickwalls as her only really good albums, but seeing her play live made me realise what a strong back catalogue she has, at least as measured by its highlights. If I have undervalued her, it may be on a similar basis to my slightly ambivalent but strong liking of our Zadie - p'raps I take her for granted because she's always seemed so close to home.

The concert also brought me to realise how familiar I am with Chambers's songs, and how much a part of my life they've been. I don't think there's ever been a period when I was especially into her music, but I've liked her for a long time (well before the current wholehearted plunge into country music) and, well, it means more to me than I'd realised.

(Also, the way she presented, both during and between songs, reminded me of Reese Witherspoon's June Carter Cash in Walk The Line.)

Highlights (but these are mainly just the ones which most stick in my mind): "If I Were You", one of my faves on record and well-placed in this set, third song up; "I Still Pray" (another favourite, and done live a cappella in a bit of a bluegrass style with spectral male harmonies); "The Captain", which obviously means so much to her; "A Little Bit Lonesome" (obviously she enjoyed the rollickin' numbers); and a couple of the more upbeat anthems from the last couple of albums were really good too.

So yeah, heaps of fun and very impressive - a good 'un.

* * *

Support act, Angus & Julia Stone, I thought were very raw but rather endearing, and they had some pretty good songs up their sleeve and a bit of talent to make up for the relative lack of polish. I liked them - thought they were good and wouldn't mind hearing more of them.

The Prestige

The reasons I went to see The Prestige, more or less in order:
1. It's set in turn of the century (19th to 20th) London - and it's about stage magicians. Glitz and grime, costumes and conjurations!
2. The promise of cinematic sleight of hand, and the name of Christopher (Memento) Nolan.
3. Scarlett.

(Though of course they can't be taken in isolation - 1 and 2 both carry a lot more weight than 3, but it's that last which tipped me over the line into going and seeing it.)

So: it's pretty good, I got what I expected, and I've no complaints. It looks great, and it's neatly constructed too. Also, it's gripping (bonus!). And it has an unrecognisable (well, I didn't recognise him[*]) Bowie playing Nikola Tesla. But it didn't amaze me...

* * *

[*] Particularly unforgiveable given that just the night before, someone had told me that he was in it; actually, she told me that he was in it and that she completely didn't realise till the end credits, whereupon I plunged right in with a "how could you possibly not recognise David Bowie?" type line...more fool me.

Objet du désir: Symbol coat rack

Now, normally I'm not at all an acquisitive person except when it comes to books and music (and occasionally much loved films and nice clothes), but, well, plans to move out are vaguely afoot and I suppose I'll have to do some decorating and all in all that's ample justification already for yearning after this gorgeous thing:




(Desu design)

Mary Gentles - 1610: A Sundial in a Grave

Gentles' novel Ash is one of the most extraordinary genre pieces I've ever read, but Sundial, the second of hers that I've done, isn't as good - a response on my part which no doubt owes something to raised expectation and something again to it not having the same figurative dagger up its sleeve as that concealed in the turns and peregrinations of the earlier. That said, it's still a rather good bit of fantasised history ('historical fantasy'?), if not quite on the sharp edge of greatness.

What I did on the weekend: Saturday (Rush - Hemispheres) / Sunday (Children of Men)

Well, extemporanea is supposed to eschew the personal, but lately I've been lazy with the journal-keepin' (well, with the hand-writing in general) and so, in violation of that rule (more of a guideline, really, as I may've mentioned before) this'll serve in partial lieu of said journaling [so, as is customary: currently listening to Laura Cantrell - When The Roses Bloom Again]:

Had a couple of errands to run in the city on Saturday, but had disposed of them by about 2, so I took lunch, books, and pen and paper to the grass outside the state library and abandoned myself to the charms of sunshine and a velvet afternoon. After a time, lying on my back, I noticed an irregular flotilla of tiny red balloons unhurriedly drifting high above me, strings trailing, never more than about half a dozen visible across the wide blue panorama at any given time; a few minutes of this and then - and this will sound too artful for words, but it's what I saw - unexpectedly but fittingly, a single blue one in their midst, eddying sunwards like the rest. It was really rather beautiful. (Learning afterwards that their source was the Myer Christmas parade didn't take even an iota of the gloss off it.)

Anyway, a while after that charmful procession, my phone rang. It was David, asking if I was up for an impromptu road trip to and dinner at Daylesford (Adrian H being stationed there for a few days by his work) - and, while unreliability and unavailability are practically my watchwords when it comes to planned activities, I rarely say no to spontaneous ones, so by about 4.15, post-haircut, we were en route.

The trip took less time than we'd anticipated - something less than an hour and a half from the city, I think - leaving us with a bit of time to fill. I remembered a good secondhand bookstore from my previous trip, a few years ago, with Kim - although I'd forgotten that it was called the Avant Garden, to which my response can be summarised in a single word and an exclamation mark: "yes!" - so we went there and rummaged through the dusty cassette tapes looking for suitable return trip music, eventually settling on Rush, for reasons best known to David.

So we had dinner with Adrian (fish and chips sitting on a small pier we found jutting out on to the local lake, swans and other aquatic birds all around, drizzle falling occasionally) and then listened to Rush (Hemispheres - 1976 [?]) on the way home. It reminded me a bit of Muse, and also of the Heart songs I've hard, and somewhat of mid-period Pink Floyd, with shades of Pavlov's Dog, too - all a bit much for me, in that mostly boring but occasionally groovy prog/70s heavy rock sort of way. Best song by far was the last one, a complicated 10 minute instrumental with guitar epics a-plenty and more weird time signature changes than you could shake a stick at.

Sunday turned out fine again, and I was enticed out in the afternoon for secondhand book-browsing and general contemplation (enticed by the weather and my own driftiness, not by anyone else, natch). Both of these having been a success, I walked back up from that grassy stretch between Swanston St and the law building to Lygon St at around 5 and decided to watch a film; of those which seemed possibilities, Children of Men was on first, so I got my ticket and settled in.

So it turned out to be one of those films that, by just a small twist, could have been one that I really liked, but instead more or less passed me by, leaving me with a vague 'that was Quite Good' feeling at its end...all the pieces seemed to be there, but something was just slightly off. Reminded me of V for Vendetta in a lot of ways, though it doesn't have the explosiveness of that other. I did think that the depictions of the refugee camps were well-aimed (obviously) and well done - the camp scenes were of a sort to remind us, if we needed reminding, of the barbarity of treating people as if they were less than human simply because they have entered a country otherwise than through officially-sanctioned channels. (Unflinching depiction of the perils of extremist responses to authority, too.)

100 favourite songs: #4: "Venus In Furs" - The Velvet Underground

I love “Venus In Furs” for its crazedly hypnotic effect, sounds and textures diffracting in all directions; it’s like some weird ever-unspooling dream or vision, reflected and scattered by sharp-edged shards of broken glass, its vivid opalescent glamour shimmering with all the different colours of the spectrum. The song’s cacophonous clatter and jangle — that sound — is shot through with the clarity which underlies all of the Velvets’ music, but there’s something else about “Venus In Furs”, something singular — some further aspect which gives the song a murky but distinct air of poetic disclosedness and, I don’t know, some non-representational and still mostly inaccessible (ie, musical) but very real truth, maybe.

Truman Capote - Breakfast At Tiffany's

So I was thinking about why I like reading Capote, and I reckon that a large part of it is this: he writes great sentences, one after another. I've read Breakfast At Tiffany's before, years ago, and it didn't make much of an impression then, but in the time since I'd sort of retrospectively reassessed it and decided that I'd probably like Tiffany's rather a lot if I were to reread it.

And, as a matter of fact, I did like it rather a lot on this reread - the pathos and the delicacy held me, and it's a work which says what it means without descending into the merely obvious. Funny, though - I wasn't really colouring in the character of Holly Golightly in my mind in the way that I'd expected to, which made me wonder if perhaps I no longer romanticise that certain sort of girl (or, at least, not as much as I once did). But she rang true, she really did - the description (and depiction) of her as a 'real phony' made absolute sense, for I reckon I've known a few girls like that (and liked each one of them a great deal), and there's probably a bit of that in my own character, too, though obviously it works itself through in a different way from how it does with the dazzling Holly G.

The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes

This is great!

Obviously I was going to like the concept of the Pipettes when I heard about them - three gals in polka-dot dresses doing classic girl group-styled pop, given a modern twist - but it took several songs before one really hit me between the eyes and inspired me to go looking for the album.[*] That one was "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me" (a blast from start to finish, and every individual bit is great, but of course the best bit is the soaring-swooning "and you might cry..." part and the clatter of the drums underneath), and I'm still totally into it, but there's also so much else on We Are The Pipettes to savour - they dig deeply into the 60s girl group bag of tricks, but it's done so inventively and selectively, and, miraculously, without a hint of repetition or misplaced pastiche, and each of the album's 14 tracks is a gem. (Apart from "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me", "Pull Shapes" and "Because It's Not Love (But It's Still A Feeling)" are especially fab.)

So anyway, We Are The Pipettes is possibly my favourite Pop record that I've ever heard.

* * *

[*] Which I've only managed to get my hands on by the expedient of buying it on vinyl, the cd being elusive in Melbourne stores.

The Bristols - Introducing... & Tune In With...

Two of the source records for the best of - good stuff.

"Six Good Reasons to Stay at Home: Hiraki Sawa Video Works" @ NGV International

Have been feeling quite abstracted lately, and also fairly antisocial (like, even more so than usual), which has translated into plenty of gallery time, mostly in the NGV's permanent collections, gazing at favourites. But I also thought that this video exhibition might be interesting - six works, 4 to 9ish minutes in length, mostly shot in Sawa's apartment, magical goings-on taking place when no one is present (tiny animals and naked human figures migrating in self-absorbed, unconcerned columns, model aeroplanes criss-crossing in unhurried flight paths) all very deadpan and whimsical and mysterious, like a Chris van Allsburg book come to life (especially the large, colour, three-screen one - "Going places sitting down"). Repetitive and lulling, and rather nice.

Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle

By way of background: [1], [2], [3].

Whereupon your faithful chronicler can't help but sigh (again).

Rewatching this film was just one extended emotional-associative-imaginative-intellectual plunge for me - lots of memories and realisations...these things are at once both complex and simple, I guess.

"Light Sensitive: Contemporary Australian Photography from the Loti Smorgon Fund" @ NGV Australia

Largely unthemed apart from the 'contemporary Australian photography' thing and as such covers a fair bit of ground. My favourites:
• Anne Ferran's ghostly photogram images of individual items of clothing, suspended in the dark
• Deborah Paauwe's "Double tresses", a cryptic image of two girls locked in an embrace, their long hair obscuring their faces (she says: "I aim for an enduring air of the unresolved")
• Annie Hogan's "Comfort", two images of the same empty room, sea-blue walls, light and shadows
• Jane Burton's "Number 1" and "Number 2", two Lynchian shots of a murky underground carpark, one with a plainly dressed woman (white blouse, black dress, I think) and one without

Black Cab @ Spanish Club, Saturday 4 November

Didn't know anything about these guys, but wasn't doing anything tonight[*] so went along with Nenad and crew. They were pretty good - a rock band with an electronic edge, groove-heavy and jagged with the guitars, and a singer who, vocally, had more than a hint of the Ian Curtis to him. Reminded me of the sound of a lot of the tracks on the Tales from the Australian Underground 2 x cd from the 70s and 80s. Quality songs, too - the type that grab on first listen.

Plus, Black Cab are obviously true believers in rock 'n' roll while also seemingly aware of its darker side - video footage from Woodstock (I think) was projected onto a screen behind the band for the whole set (apparently their first album was based on the concept of the Stones' Altamont show - the one with the Hells Angels stabbing). Plus [#2], they were introduced and their set interspersed with ramblings by a worn old fella - Sam Cutler - who, in his day, road managed the Rolling Stones, the Band, the Grateful Dead and others, and is now serving the same function for Black Cab. I must admit, seeing him on stage telling stories about Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia, with that concert footage rolling on behind him and the slow jam of the band in the background, made an impression - reminded me of the promise and the dream of rock 'n' roll - it's so easy to become cynical about the whole thing (and I am), but there is another side, too, even if it really seems as if that was another time as well.

* * *

[*] Sat night.

Omissions

Things I meant, but in my haste and distractedness forgot, to note:

I. Watching season 3 of Arrested Development reignited my desire to lay in the ingredients for martinis and splash out on a flask from which to pour and drink said cocktails.

II. Once in a while, a book contains a perfect descriptive image, and Cloud Atlas has one: "After ten pages I felt Nietzsche was reading me, not I him ..." - not only does it precisely capture the slightly unsettling, doubled experience that reading Nietzsche can be, but it also invokes that famous line about gazing into the abyss.

Cosmopolis: On Cities & All Yesterday's Parties: On Rock 'n' Roll (Meanjin volume 65 issues 2 & 3)

Have been reading both of these in a fairly disconnected way, at intervals, over recent weeks. Cosmopolis is all over the place - appropriate, one might say, given its theme - and I didn't find it very satisfying. I was hoping for an interesting kaleidoscopic set of perspectives on ideas of 'city' and place, but the pieces tended to be either: (a) quite specific and concrete; (b) unconvincing in the lines they draw between the specific and the general; (c) only tangentially connected to the notional theme of 'cities'; or (d) more than one of the above.

All Yesterday's Parties is focused on Australian rock 'n' roll, and a lot of the pieces are penned by music industry types, giving it a rather different flavour from the usual Meanjin style. As far as the canon-identification goes, Johnny O'Keefe, the Saints, the Go-Betweens and the Triffids are the major figures to emerge from these pieces taken as a whole; more generally, though, the pages of the issue are peopled by lots of familiar figures, making it fun to read. Not particularly deep, but you know, whatever. Liked the way that Brian McFarlane, apparently a seasoned film critic, obviously completely lost his head over Walk The Line, too.

The Arcade Fire - The Arcade Fire ep

Not as fully-formed and world-bestriding as Funeral, but pretty darn good nonetheless. Best songs: "Old Flame" and "Headlights Look Like Diamonds". Best title: "Vampire / Forest Fire".

Camille - Le Fil

A grab-bag of nouveau-chanteusey musical styles, with the accent (so to speak) on popist experimentation - nice.

Les Cowboys Fringants - La Grand-Messe

Jarrod lent this to me after hearing that I was into country music - Quebecois country music with socialist lyrics, he promised - and while there is a fair dash of country to this record, there's pretty much an equal part of something rather more folksy, not to mention dashes of ska and goofy college-style power-pop. (Can't tell about the lyrics since my schoolboy French has long degraded past the point at which I could've had a go at deciphering 'em.) As the above precis suggests, runs a fairly large gamut of moods and sounds, but it hangs together pleasingly - I like it.

The Lisa Marr Experiment - American Jitters

Sturdy and traditionally-grounded but distinctly modern twang. The modernity is most apparent in the lyrics - through which expletives and words like 'paradigm' are nonchalantly scattered - but also comes through in the casual integration of rock elements in a mid-period Lucinda/early Wilco kind of way, maybe leaning a bit more to the rootsier end of things. A bit of a schizophrenic record, but pretty listenable thanks to the upfront and high quality songwriting though it lacks a real hook.