Diana Ross & The Supremes - The No. 1's

You only need to bring to mind the songs: "Where Did Our Love Go", "You Can't Hurry Love", "You Keep Me Hanging On", "Baby Love"...the solo Diana Ross work isn't as near to peerless as the Supremes classics and overall I find it a pinch too smooth by comparison to say the Shangri-Las (always my benchmark for any 60s girl group stuff, no matter how removed in sound or in other respects the outfit being compared) but these are really minor quibbles.

Bon Jovi - Cross Road

It's not news that I'm listening to this - many moons ago, I borrowed a copy of this best-of from the library and put it on tape at the time...so far so good, then. Problem is, somewhere along the line I taped over it (if memory serves, with one of those obscure Pink Floyd albums that I've never even listened to all the way through) and since then - this was all years ago - have frequently found myself hankering for the record, sometimes particular songs and sometimes just for the concentrated hit of several of those singles all in a row: "Blaze of Glory", "Bed of Roses", "Livin' on a Prayer", "Always", "Wanted Dead or Alive", "You Give Love a Bad Name", "Keep the Faith"...

Anyway, the yearnings have been particularly frequent lately, and I finished work early one night last week and set off determined to finally buy myself a copy; happily, it was going for $10 at jb (which is about as much as I could've decently spent on a Bon Jovi album after all) and, somewhat to Penelope's chagrin, have been listening to it plenty since (much finding myself with the tunes caught in my head as I walk around).

"Guggenheim Collection: 1940s to Now" @ NGV International

Much excitement in the lead-up to this on my part, going back to last year when I first heard about it, and the exhibition pretty much justifies all of that anticipation. It leads off with overviews of post-war abstraction in each of the US and Europe, and figuration in both Europe and the Americas (first room), then jumps spectacularly to minimalism, post-minimalism and conceptual art (large second room) before sliding into pop art and thereafter into four 'thematic chapters' ("the legacy of pop", "the natural world", "constructed worlds" and "between public and private").

Have actually been twice now - last weekend with Kelly (+ Glenn), Tamara and Vanessa, and the weekend before on my own (by way of a birthday/non-birthday activity) - with more trips to come, too, so these thoughts are by way of synthesised response...


The main event for me was always going to be the abstract expressionist stuff, and the show leads off with pieces by three of its most famous artists - one of Rothko's untitled canvasses of wave-blocks of colour, de Kooning's "...Whose Name Was Writ in Water" and an "Untitled (Green Silver)" by Pollock. All three are characteristic of more or less the most famous periods/styles of their respective painters (I could have wished that one of the two Rothko selections in the show would have been one of his solid swathe/banded ones, rather than the earlier Surrealist-influenced piece and the blotchy, less intensely pulsating transitional work which actually made the cut, but I guess the curators/assemblers might have thought that including one would be slightly otiose given that there's one in the NGV's permanent collection) and collectively make a most pleasing introduction.


In that first room, my other favourites are Pierre Soulages' "Peinture, 195 x 130 cm, mai 1953" (the representational/non-representational black on white with shadows cross), Adolph Gottlieb's amorphous and immensely aesthetically satisfying "Mist", and Jules Olitski's deliciously colour-drenched "Lysander 1". Morris Louis' "Saraband" seems to have been a winner with other folk (I quite liked it too, but more the first time than the second); Jesus Rafael Soto's "Vibration" and Asger Jorn's "A Soul for Sale" also much fun; and definitely experienced the hypnotic quality of Ellsworth Kelly's "Dark Blue Curve" with which Kelly was much taken (and which Tamara thought was altogether too 'insurance company logo').


As to that last, actually, a key part of the whole exhibition is the sheer size and scale of many of its components - it really adds to the experience to be able to immerse in them. That was a big thing (pun unintended) in the next room, too - the most untraditional, installation-oriented part of the show. There, I liked Sol LeWitt's colour-pencilled gridded wall drawing a lot, and also enjoyed walking on (Carl Andre's "5 x 20 Alstadt Rectangle" metal carpet squares on the ground) and into (Bruce Nauman's "Floating Room (Light Outside, Dark Inside)") the art. It's a cool room and if its constituents were generally perhaps a bit too 'Concept' to really speak to me, I like it being there.

Pop art has always been a non-event for me (I find it hollow and vacuous, which may be the point but that doesn't make me like it any more) and I don't like the stuff collected here under the "legacy of pop" umbrella any better. The "natural world" pieces, though, are brill in all different ways: Nigel Cooke's "Mummy" is cute and profound (I picked up on the fruit-stuffed-with-dynamite on my first pass, but missed the little head) in that 'illustration from a really cool children's book' style that so often appeals to me; Olafur Eliasson's horizon photographs are delightful; Elger Esser's minimalistic, stark "Ameland Pier X, Netherlands" is the kind of scene I dream of on good nights; Dave Muller's cloud and balloon panels are close to the most simply whimsical things in the whole exhibition.


As to the rest, not much of it was my cup of tea, though it was neat to see a Gregory Crewdson original-sized print (I liked it but prefer the more anonymously forboding dreamscapes of his that I've previously seen in magazines and whatnot to the 'naked dirty mother arriving at the dinner table' one here) and Rachel Whiteread's plaster cast of a basement is simply ace.

So!

"Human Rights Conditionality in International Trade: Revisiting the Debate" - Professor Rob Howse

What I know about international trade law could be written on a postage stamp, so it's lucky that this lecture was plenty accessible (and also that Jarrod was on hand to explain some of the lingo afterwards). Howse first argued that human rights conditionality is legal under international (trade) law, and then made the normative case - it all sounded good to me, but then what would I know? It's an interesting area though - I ought to read up about it a bit...

(@ Melb Law School one night last week, w/ Jarrod - trang and friend (Eng-Lai?) also there by coincidence)

Transformers

This showed flashes of being what I'd hoped it would be, but in falling short at all ended up pretty far from being anything that I could really recommend. I mostly enjoyed it, and there were a few particularly good bits (mostly the lighter moments, though these also went a ways towards detracting from the whizz, bang, explosions! sense of the whole), but it felt the whole time like I was Watching A Movie (everything was way too bright to start with) - which meant that I didn't really get into it.

(w/ Cassie and Tamara - unlikely companions to say the least for an excursion to watch a film like this one!)

Cecilia Quartet @ Assembly Hall, Collins Street, Saturday 14 July

This was a kind of offshoot from the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition that was going on around town last week - a free show by one of the ensembles (hailing from Canada) that had already been eliminated from competition. They did a Mozart string quarter first (F major - K590 I think), and then a contemporary piece called "Another Little Piece Of My Heart" by a Kelly-Marie Murphy which shares its title with a Janis Joplin song and, according to the quartet's leader, was inspired by Joplin, jazz and emotional vs physiological concepts of the 'heart'.

Against expectations, I enjoyed the Mozart more - found it generally hard to get a handle on "Another Little Piece" (though the second movement was ace and bits of the third were quite striking, and I could definitely hear the Joplin influences in the stop-starting and sudden urgent crescendos and declarations), even though I thought it probably better suited the style of the quartet than the Mozart (Laura agreed, commenting on the soloistic nature of all four of the players and the slightly jarring dynamic this created in their collective performance).

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Hey, ho - the new Spoon album is just as excellent as the last three (that being as far back as I've got in the spoonography)...this is good news. I reckon that the best songs on the album are "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" and "Rhythm & Soul"; in a different way, "The Ghost Of You Lingers" is particularly ace too; "Finer Feelings" also fun, stealin' some licks from Dismemberment Plan I fancy. Not sure what I think about the trumpet-laden "The Underdog", which is a bit 'Spoon does latter-day Belle and Sebastian' - not that this is necessarily a bad thing, you understand...I'm just not sure. More than anything else, of course, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is, from its title onwards, just Spoon through and through - hey presto.

Emilie Simon & Nouvelle Vague @ Arts Centre, Friday 6 July

French-themed evening the Friday night before last: MS had French-themed drinks in honour of Bastille Day, and I made a cameo appearance at the beginning, liberating some balloons (bleu, blanc, rouge) on my way out; then met up with Meribah; after risking life and limb to hang the balloons from an overhead signpost thingy on King Street (we'd spent a few minutes before in Officeworks looking for suitable materials for a tricouleur, not wanting the balloons to be mistaken for Bulldogs colours or the red, white and blue of the US flag, before tossing in the towel and trusting to the perceptiveness of passers-by), we went to Bergerac for dinner (French-speaking waiters, yo) and I even remembered to order a French wine. Intention had also been to check out the French activities which were taking place at the Arts Centre before the show, but we arrived too late; anyway, met up with Bec P, Jane T and Jarrod there and took our seats.

Emilie Simon was on first, turning out to have more idiosyncratic oddly piano ditties in strange keys and fewer glammy electro-stomps than I'd anticipated...well, I suppose a whole set full of "Fleur de Saison"s was always going to be too much to hope for! I wasn't entirely sold on her - the eccentricity wasn't really grounded in anything underlying, the pop elements not strong enough, the whole not quiet seeming to gel - but it had its moments, and the show was enjoyable overall.

After a short intermission, then, Nouvelle Vague. As a touring concern, they're a five piece, with vocals shared between two girls, a vaguely gamine one with a pleasant voice, and a throatier, messier rock 'n roll Karen O type, and plenty of fun. Highlights for mine were the synchronised and syncopated "Ever Fallen In Love" (complete with shambolically synchronised dance moves) and of course the untouchable "Love Will Tear Us Apart", though I for one could've done without the extended fade-out and encore-ing that happened at the end (not to mention the handful of members of the obnoxious hipster set sprinkled throughout the Arts Centre crowd). Like Mlle Simon's, not a show to shake my world, but pretty entertaining.

Toby Creswell - 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time

Seriously, how bad could a book with a title and premise like this one be? In fact, it's really only medium-good - the writing is workmanlike and doesn't particularly capture the ineffable effect of great pop music, and the selections are by and large as one would expect (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Neil Young, etc) - but I was still perfectly happy to go through it cover to cover, reading the entries about songs I know (probably about half of them) and skimming or skipping the rest.

Check it out, I'm famous (again)

Here - photo 7, for the impatient. (From the '07 Laneway Festival.)

Mindy Smith - Long Island Shores

The first two songs on this album, "Out Loud" and "Little Devil" are by far its best. "Out Loud" does the trick as an album opener: it builds pleasantly for a couple of minutes to the unexpected hook on "Ain't it time we need to change -" and then swirls home on the rush provided by that giddy upsurging wave of sweetness; leading in turn to "Little Devil", which is, along with Camille's "Paris" (see immediately previous entry), the only new song I've heard in the last few months that I've wanted to listen to over and over, back to back...I'm at a loss to explain why I like it so much - but it's definitely mostly in the chorus, something in the melody and the way she sings it, sort of yearning and hopeful and matter-of fact at the same time...there's real character and nuance to Smith's vocals on both verses and chorus, without any sense of overstatement, but also a winsome simplicity running throughout...it's really a wonderful song.

There's nothing else on Long Island Shores to match that initial hit...the rest is perfectly nice, but unmemorable - Smith is a convincing singer and a decent arranger, and her sound is a nice spin on contemporary country, but the songwriting is generally perhaps too subtle for its own good. Still, I reckon that the opening salvo is worth the price of admission on its own.

Camille - Le Sac Des Filles

Engaging and, in places, surprisingly (and nicely) bare contempo-French pop tunes. Best is the skip 'n' pirouette of "Paris"; also particularly nice is the last song, "La Ou Je Suis Né".

The Golden Palominos - This Is How It Feels

I heard this in Sister Ray's quite a while ago and liked it enough to find out what it was, but I must've been feeling poor that day, because instead of buying the cd I made do with committing the band name to memory - which name promptly got filed somewhere right at the back of my mind (still somewhere in my working archive of cultural references, I suppose, but in one of its deeper recesses) and slipped from my awareness. But then a couple of weeks ago I saw the cd in a store (may've been Sister Ray's itself) and remembered the name and the cd cover and brought it home.

Having had the benefit of quite a few listens now, I find it a bit surprising that this caught my attention in the first place. I like it, but it's...not challenging so much, but it does require attention and a bit of work. This Is How It Feels is definitely pop music, but it's fairly abstruse, tangential pop music in which the hooks neither sound particularly familiar nor fall in the expected places - rewarding, but possibly not, I suspect, in proportion to the effort that it requires to absorb.

Lori Carson sings, by the way, which is cool (I know her from the Stealing Beauty soundtrack and one solo album, the latter of which had a similar difficult-to-put-the-finger-on quality, come to think of it).

Unkle Ho - Circus Maximus

Broadly speaking I suppose this is a kind of sample-based hip-hop, but more in the vein of the Avalanches, say, than even DJ Shadow, never mind more traditionally or obviously 'hip-hop' outfits. It has a bowerbird electicism which often seems to go with the sampling aesthetic (maybe especially in Australia - or, at least, a lot of this kind of stuff that I've been exposed to has come from here), resulting in a record that's all over the shop stylistically (quite deliberately, I suspect).

I do like the album's style - it has a pleasing fluidity and something which, while to my ears is short of the natural musicality which infuses the very best musical mixing exercises (eg, the collaborations extracted and collected on the Heartland: An Appalachian Anthology cd and the source records for that disc), holds the sometimes disparate elements both within and across songs together. Worthy of note is a fantastic three song run from tracks three through five - "Bar Chutzpah" (high energy big beat clarinet workout), "Bally Broad" (trip-hop type thing with a bit of a laid-back soul-jazz thing happening honey-sleepy female vocals tripping through long vocal lines over laid-back beats and instrumentation) and "Hiroshi Waltz" (a sinuous little creature in waltz tempo, instrumental lines and sampled retro-kitsch-emotive vocals entwining around each other).

Aimee Mann - One More Drifter in the Snow

Of course I had to buy this cd, entirely comprised of Christmas songs or not - it's the latest Aimee Mann, which is plenty enough on its own. It's a bit of a strange beast, really - generally Mann seems much looser and more playful on this record than on any of her 'albums proper' (see especially her duet with Grant Lee Phillips on "You're A Mean One Mr Grinch"), but there are also plenty of straight, sombre Aimee Mann readings on offer, albeit generally with a particularly stately, old-fashioned air (her take on "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", which embodies much of these, is the high point of the record - and pretty high at that...it's very good).

Jasper Fforde - The Big Over Easy

Most enjoyable - twists and turns like a detective novel should, and has the added charm of Fforde's literary bentness (ie, distinctively skewed tendency towards the literary)...it certainly adds another layer to the mounting revelations about the murdered individual when he is, in fact, Humpty Dumpty, a shady character much beloved-of the ladies with an unexpected philanthropic streak who, it seems, was shot and then fell to his death from a wall, on which he was accustomed to sit (including, as on the fatal night, in order to sleep off an excess of alchol consumption).

(Footcare product manufacturing empires feature heavily in the plot, by the way, as do nursery rhyme characters a-plenty.)

Jack Spratt (down at heel detective and family man; inadvertent recidivist giant killer) is a fun main character - almost a stock character but somehow not quite, and very easy to root for (Fforde shows his knack for writing despicable yet not overdone villains is intact in the transition from the Thursday Next series, too), and he's surrounded by an amusing supporting cast, not all of whom come fully to life but that's forgiveable with so much going on around them, and no doubt they'll be more fully sketched in the subsequent books in this sequence that I've not yet read. More please!

Bridge To Terabithia

Quite a nice little thing - reasonably true to the spirit of the book though somewhat more sympathetic in its depiction of Jesse's parents and with less emphasis on the unkindness of his older sisters, and the new elements are well-integrated and effective. On its own terms it would've been good too, I think - a well-made, quietly involving children's film which ought to touch 'grown-ups' too.

(One criticism I had is that the actor who played Leslie was too cute, and not enough the tomboy - although, it must be admitted, that fact may well assist in drawing audiences into the story. Anyhow, she reminded me a bit of the secretary I had during one of my rotations - but I couldn't work out whether she was especially old-looking, or the secretary especially young of face...neither really seems right. Huh, people - it's all very confusing.)

(w/ Kevin and Serena)

Lily Allen - Alright, Still...

It seems somehow appropriate that I first heard this while sitting in Grill'd (the place which advertises itself as purveying "healthy burgers" - which turn out to be pretty good, by the way) about a week ago...perhaps it's because Lily Allen's music, too, while coming across like junk food, is in fact something much leaner, tastier and at once subtler and more exciting. I love the energy, the attitude and, most of all, the hooks - delicious!

The Encyclopedia of Music: Best of 1990's

Rather than attempting to say anything in particular about this 3x cd set, let me just list some of the highlights (and, for me at least, these really are highlights and not 'highlights'):
* "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover" - Sophie B Hawkins
* "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" - Spin Doctors (though "II Princes" would have been far more appreciated)
* "Mmmbop" - Hanson
* "Crush" - Jennifer Paige
* "Break My Stride" - Unique II
* "Rush" - Big Audio Dynamite

Also (some of these are very much more in the way of being 'highlights' I'll admit) Aqua, NKOTB, Bad English ("When I See You Smile"!), Rick Price, Peter Andre, Ginuwine ("Pony" of course), Taylor Dayne, Sister2Sister, Screaming Jets, Ce Ce Peniston, the list goes on - and you get the picture.

The Shadows - Another 20 Golden Greats

I thought I'd check out the Shadows after someone described the guitars on "Hold On, Hold On" as Shadows-esque, which turned out to be accurate but there isn't much else about the band to hold my attention. Their signature device seems to be these guitarly covers of songs both familiar and obscure, with a small handful of originals, and while the sound is initially ear-catching, it soon ceases to be particularly interesting.

The Mamas and the Papas - Gold

Really, my reasons for buying this best-of can be pretty much expressed in two words: "Chungking Express". It's not hard to listen to the other songs (though some of the ones on the second disc lose their way a bit), but mostly I just wanna be able to play "California Dreamin' " loud whenever I feel like it - and now, I can and do.

Saint Etienne - Finisterre

Often the way it's gone with Saint Etienne records in the past is that, after an initial diffuse "oh this is quite nice" response, I lose interest before one day being hit hard by something about it while it's playing in the background and therefrom taking it completely to heart...so my initial diffuse "oh this is quite nice" response to Finisterre may well just be a waystation to some deeper response/relationship. But somehow I don't think so - I've never previously, after all, been listening to a Saint Etienne record for the first time while already being completely and knowingly in love with the band, and so I think the truth about this one might be that it just is pleasant and a bit ho-hum...but time will tell, of course.

"But where there's a monster there's a miracle": Neil Gaiman - Smoke and Mirrors

While the Sandman books are basically perfect, none of Gaiman's prose novels which I've read have especially satisfied me - they embody a real commitment to, and facility for, storytelling, but always seem somehow just a touch heavy-handed, as readable and at times subtle as they are.

Short stories, though, on the evidence of this collection (which, I realised almost as soon as I started the introduction, which itself contains one of the better stories in the book, "The Wedding Present", I've read before), may be Gaiman's most natural province outside of graphic novels - nearly every one of these is excellent, narrative-driven and haunting and often very dark, and only occasionally slipping into being overly obvious. Fairytales, parables and fables, with a handful of out-and-out chillers - very nice after-midnight reading.

Katherine Paterson - Bridge To Terabithia

Read this in anticipation of seeing the film and thought it was pretty good - surprisingly gritty, and affecting enough. But, while it's well done, I'm probably about 15 years too old for the tale to really speak to me.

Me and You and Everyone We Know OST

An integral part of the film, and very nice and moody on its own, too. Kind of like Jon Brion without most of the carnivalesque/music-box flourishes; the sound of drifty occasionally sparkly suburban anomie (my favourite kind, of course).

William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair

This tied me up for several weeks, on and off, but it was pretty much worth it, I reckon. I didn't know of the novel's reputation as a classic that no one reads - I expected it to be all witty, cutting social satire, deflating the pretensions of society with one incisive bon mot after another (the cattier the better), etc, and so exactly one of the kinds of novels that I most enjoy reading.

As it turns out, there is a fair bit of the latter, but it's not as constant or sustained as I'd anticipated, and more or less to the extent that it isn't, the novel drags in places, making it occasionally a bit of a slog. Overall, though, I enjoyed it - there's enough Story there to keep the pages ticking by even when the sharp edge of Thackeray's really being particularly scathing is temporarily missing, and the characters hang together as constructs (individually and relationally) and properly come alive in their ups and downs, which helps a great deal too.

"Othello" (Bell Shakespeare Company)

Quite good, but I wasn't really sold on the actor playing Othello himself - he had a certain presence but tended towards being overly mannered in his delivery, resulting in some weird diction and a bit of an odd effect overall, and moreover he was near completely overshadowed by the physicality and energy of Iago. And as a result, the play seemed to lack a centre - it didn't feel touched by greatness, even in the minor way that one might expect of most decent Shakespeare productions (though this was, in fact, perfectly decent).

(w/ Cassie and Tamara)

Tales From Earthsea

A few thoughts:
* I can understand why they combined elements of all four books into this one film, but it doesn't really work (Sparrowhawk, for example, is just really boring - a stock character - without the back story).
* For the most part, doesn't really capture the sense of scope (either internal or external) which is so important to epic fantasy - which is mostly down to the script but also has something to do with the visual realisation (the anime conventions are sometimes distracting).
* (Conversely, lacks the whimsy and light touch that characterises Hayao M's films.)
* Still, invokes enough of the conventions of that brand of fantasy to evoke a bit of a response in me (fleetingly, at intervals over the couple of days after I saw it).
* Overall, though, rather a disappointment.

(w/ Kevin)

Haruki Murakami - After Dark

Bought this, as it happens, while up in Brisbane the other weekend (from the bookshop attached to the State Library of Queensland, no less), and read a large part of it on the night flight home - an appropriate setting for reading any Murakami, and perhaps particularly this latest.

After Dark marks a bit of a different direction for Murakami - it's quite brief and has a pronounced (David) Lynch feel to it...it's also, for the most part, in the third person, a style which doesn't serve him especially well (nowhere near as well as the first person, at any rate). To be honest, I didn't find the novel (more of a novella, really) especially satisfying - it's at once too schematic and too unresolved...oh well.