"Rhythm & soul" (2007 cd)

Extremely belatedly, the "2007 cd" I made back at the end of last year, along with the bulk of the accompanying notes.

1. Ceremony – New Order
Marie Antoinette OST (2006) [1981]
2. Intervention – The Arcade Fire
Neon Bible (2007)
3. Rhythm & Soul – Spoon
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)
4. Stockton Gala Days – 10,000 Maniacs
Our Time in Eden (1992)
5. So Have I For You – Nikka Costa
Everybody Got Their Something (2001)
6. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen
Born To Run (1975)
7. Back To Black – Amy Winehouse
Back To Black (2006)
8. Breakaway – Kelly Clarkson
Breakaway (2004)
9. Tommib Help Buss – Squarepusher
Marie Antoinette OST (2006) [2003]
10. Out Loud – Mindy Smith
Long Island Shores (2006)

At year’s kick-off, it was all about the Marie Antoinette soundtrack – the film was dizzyingly lovely, and its musical record no less so…“Ceremony” is a classic, but never sounded so good as it did swirling through Coppola’s sherbet dream, and Squarepusher’s mournful reprise of Lost In Translation’s “Tommib” is plangent, raindrop-perfect.

Not long after that was Neon Bible which, coming through in waves, was just as towering and magnificent as Funeral; “Intervention” was the song off it that first sent a shiver down my spine, and it’s still probably my favourite.

Nikka Costa came out of left field, “So Have I For You” grabbing me with its closing-time Joplin-isms; Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, by contrast, was predictably great, all stripped back rock tunes with a dash of soul, dressed in perfect details like the two-finger piano plinks in “Rhythm & Soul”.

At some point, I started listening to 10,000 Maniacs again, and remembered the kinds of pictures their music paints; “Stockton Gala Days” has been the key track. Also somewhere in there was Springsteen – having been rocking out to Born in the USA for years, I finally figured to listen to more of his stuff, and once you’ve listened to Born to Run LOUD, there’s no going back. And there was Amy Winehouse too, who I was all set to ignore till I heard “Back To Black” and realised that it was exactly the sort of thing that I like these days.

“Out Loud”, irresistible in its delicacy and pull, was almost certainly the song that I listened to most throughout the year; and “Breakaway” has been the one for the last couple of months, though I can’t explain that last, except maybe to say that a great pop song is a great pop song, and one way or another we’re all gonna empathise with it somehow.

"Our Leader"

The main event here was, of course, the Scarlett Johansson cut, "I Don't Want To Grow Up", the first off her Tom Waits cover record that I'd heard - and, let's be honest, it's ghastly. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she can't sing, but, well, she can't sing - and the electronic musical accompaniment is pretty dire, too...it drags like nobody's business. Elsewhere, there's yet another classy number from the National ("Tall Saint"), two songs which irritate me a lot (Art Brut's "Formed a Band" and the Ting Tings' "That's Not My Name"), a bewildering left turn into southern white boy funk (My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges", which is fairly horrid though the guitaring near the end saves it a little), an enjoyably gleefully stupid cut from the Rapture ("No Sex For Ben"), a cool as hell throwaway by the Breeders ("Bang On"), and assorted others.

(a mix cd from David)

Happy-Go-Lucky

There's a bit going on in this one. I didn't find it especially uplifting, to be honest - the social realist style in which it was filmed pretty much precludes any such response from me. Also, the preachiness irritated me a bit (ie, the 'be like free-spirited, endlessly cheerful Poppy, and not like her uptight bourgeois sister and wimpy husband or her racist, paranoid, obsessive driving instructor Scott - a pair of straw (wo)men, really)...so, while it has a pleasing whimsy, actually I don't think I really much liked Happy-Go-Lucky.

Just as a by-the-by, if I were writing an essay about this film for uni (and less wary of obvious 'ins' than I actually would be), the starting point would definitely be the scene near the start where Poppy and her friends are dancing in the club to "Common People"...

(w/ Kai and Wei, a pair of old-school film-going buddies)

Portishead - Third

This ain't your high school brooding past self's Portishead. It's heavier, darker, more disconcerting - and, astonishing to say, even better.

Third is a journey down a dark motorway, anxious and foreboding and at times positively menacing, but with a heartbeat and the reassuring sound of breathing, however at times fraught, underneath throughout. The beats and rhythms churn and skitter at times (on pulsating opener "Silence", the menacing mid-record emergency siren dash of "We Carry On", or the IDM-crashing "Machine Gun", say), but they're just as likely to be gently, breathily moog-y (I'm thinking especially of the second half of "The Rip") or even, as on the startling voice-and-banjo "Deep Water" or the Hem-meets-Goldfrapp (both at their most hushed) "Small", altogether non-existent.

Highlights for me at this point are "Silence", "Hunter", "The Rip" and "Magic Doors" (this album's "Teardrop", to draw a parallel to a not altogether dissimilar record of the band's once-contemporaries Massive Attack), but the record works best as a whole - as a single flowing stream in which the listener's immersed. Gibbons' voice is still amazing, and the thread running through it all; the melodies are still seemingly dialled in from the universe next door to ours via some weirdly clean-edged static, wrapped up in ether-soaked cotton wool for good measure.

It's also reminded me of how great those two older lps are - Dummy in particular meant an awful lot to me in high school (it was the first 'slow' album that I ever really took to heart, and I've retained strong impressions of walking around the schoolyard and in the suburbs at night listening to my tape of it, not to mention the first amazed thrill of discovering "Roads" and "Glory Box" through late-night, on-the-verge-of-sleep, radio listening) - but it does seem to me to be even better than those older ones, or if not 'better' as such then at least much more of the now, which in these circumstances perhaps amounts to the same thing.

Nellie McKay - Obligatory Villagers

Shorter and with the music hall and jazz elements of McKay's palette more in the foreground than either Get Away From Me or Pretty Little Head, Obligatory Villagers isn't the match of either of those earlier efforts, but it's a dip rather than a serious falling-away in quality - the things that are great about her music (and her) are still in evidence, and of course we do like those things very, very much.

Coldplay - Viva La Vida

Well, I've always quite liked Coldplay: Parachutes was sweet at the time, and I expect it still would be if I knew where my old tape of it was, and A Rush of Blood to the Head was genuinely good, the sound of a band which might be capable of touching greatness at least for moments at a time; I never got around to listening to X&Y, except once, several times over, in Irene's car on the way home from Blairgowrie in, erm, 2005 it must have been, but got the impression that it'd probably be fairly boring. So I had some hopes of Viva La Vida, and I was more than willing to go with the obvious stretching of their sound that they've attempted on it (I'd had a heads up from having heard the second half of "Yes" in jb hi-fi, which sounds like nothing so much as Coldplay doing that glossy Asobi Seksu-style shoegazer thing and hence nothing like anything of theirs that'd I'd heard before).

It starts promisingly; more or less instrumental opener "Life in Technicolour" leaves one feeling that the record could still go either way, but spacey follow-up "Cemeteries of London", complete with Cocteau Twins-esque jangle-and-shimmer, hits the spot, and next track "Lost!" is just as good, graced by a catchy synth and percussion line running through the song and some memorably epic, chiming guitar figures. After that, though, it's not exactly downhill, but it just doesn't quite fit together, whether they're trying somewhat incongruous song suites, copping licks from the Arcade Fire (both of the above on "Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love"), doing strange things with Spanish-sounding strings and lower-register Chris Martin singing (the first 'movement' of "Yes") or working a kind of Beatles meets the Verve seam ("Violet Hill" - and doing it pretty well at that). I can't put my finger on where it is that the album falls down - maybe, it just doesn't reach the great heights to which it so clearly aspires and, in so doing, spreads itself too thin. And there aren't really any out and out glorious moments or true standout songs...well, there's always next time. They still might have it in them.

The Last Town Chorus - Wire Waltz

A nice little record - the Last Town Chorus seems to basically be Megan Hickey, and the textures of her songs tend to be dominated by her voice (sweet, and one of those which seems always to have a bit of a catch in it) and by the vibrato of her slide guitar, accented by guitars of the acoustic and electric varieties (the latter being a particular feature of her marvellous cover of "Modern Love" and during the epic trail-off of album highlight "It's Not Over"), with only hints of percussion, bass and occasionally piano or organ.

Loosely, I suppose she fits within the sort of folk-country nocturne thing, often tinged with a quietly gothic flavour, that a few acts have had going in recent times - Azure Ray in particular - and the vocals and melodies remind me of the Dearhunters, too.

Greg Egan - Luminous

Neat short story collection - ten stories, most fairly extended, each running with one key idea. The plots tend to be pretty bare (likewise the characterisations), and are often fairly basic detective or search narratives - the structure suits Egan's focus on the science and speculation, which is probably helped by the short story form too. Some were a bit difficult for me to get my mind around without really thinking hard about them, but nearly all pushed me to at least think - consciousness, mathematics and physics (of the space/time variety) are his particular areas.

Aeon Flux

Me: So do you know about this tv series Aeon Flux?
Julian F: Yes.
Me: What's the deal?
Julian F: It's awesome?

It was Andrew B who lent me the dvd set, arising out of a brainstorming session for Ath library dvds a while back; Michelle has talked it up plenty, too. As for me, I found the show striking from a visual and design perspective, and in a way that dove-tails with the deliberate narrative discontinuities (the backdrops and characters are all sharp edges and planes, liminal meetings and thrusting incursions, mechanical techscapes sheering into the organic, all Escher-seque cut, paste and redouble - but in that very unholy series of collisions, the series has a coherency as a whole). Like the way it plays with oppositions and linearity too, disrupting at every turn, not to mention the Low-esque music. The episode-length ones are more ambitious; the shorts more immediate and seemingly graspable; the meaning of the whole remains entirely elusive.

"Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot" (David Williamson) (MTC)

Well, everyone seemed to like this one a lot more than me - 'lightweight' isn't an epithet that I'd necessarily use to criticise a play (or any other kind of work), but in this case it is a criticism. It passed the time amusingly enough, but in the end there was really nothing to it - a thing needn't be weighty or serious in order to be substantial, but in the case of "Scarlett O'Hara", I just felt that there was a lack of substance and a hint of laziness, of careless invocation of stereotypical figures (using that word in its broadest sense) rather than any attempt at a true rendition...so for those reasons, despite Caroline O'Connor's engaging turn as the central wrapped-up-in-cinema dreamer, the mostly on-target digs at modern Australian society, and the number of laughs to be had, this was probably my least favourite of the MTC plays I've been to for the season so far.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

"The 39 Steps" (Patrick Barlow) (MTC)

Turns out I never noted this one - rather remiss of me. It was excellent, anyway, revelling in the theatricality of theatre and highlighting its own artifice at every turn, but in such a way as to add to the joy that a good performance brings - energetic and inventive, but sincere (or perhaps 'grounded') enough that it doesn't descend into pure farce. To put it another way, the core of what one wants from a play - story, characters, sets - aren't obscured despite the production's foregrounding of the artificial apparatus/mechanisms by which those 'core' elements are always (overtly or otherwise) enabled and brought into being. To put it another another way, "The 39 Steps" was hella fun! The archetypally Brit figure at its centre, hinting at but not falling into caricature, makes a great straight man and protagonist for the thriller/caper events of the plot and it rockets ahead at a mile a minute, running through an impressive number of locations and characters as it goes.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

"IMP April 2008"

A mix cd that really deserves the word 'mix', not because it's especially eclectic so far as genre or mood goes, but rather in terms of the range of apparently disparate styles that it brings together in what feels (sounds) like a cohesive whole. Leading off with Gary Jules' "Mad World", it then proceeds to skip through a range of silky indie-pop type stuff ("Here's Where the Story Ends", "Common People", Big Head Todd's "Bittersweet", etc) interspersed with bits and pieces of bossa nova and Brazilian-sounding flavourings (Gilberto Gil's "Asa branca", "Corcovado" by Astrud Gilberto, Joao Gilberto, Tom Jobim and Stan Getz, some Manu Chao) and several with aspects of both (the Cure's "The 13th", never a favourite of mine but a good fit here, say, and the Sugarcubes' "Hit", and "When You're Falling" by Peter Gabriel & the Afro-Celt Sound System). I like a lot of the songs individually, too. v.g.

(from Laura in Waltham, MA)

"Mighty Mars"

Kind of a mellow mix, despite the presence of TV on the Radio ("I Was a Lover"), the Drones ("I Don't Ever Want to Change") and Muse ("Knights of Cydonia" - which is cool and all but, trumpets notwithstanding, I don't reckon matches the best moments from Absolution and Origin of Symmetry). The first song is the best - "The Old Man's Back Again", by Scott Walker, a lushly cinematic adult pop thing. Also like the Pete Yorn song, "Georgie Boy" (he has a knack for writing songs which never drag), and Dylan and Natalie Merchant welcome as always, too.

(from David)

"IMP mix - Jan 2008: The Best of 2007"

Just wanted to note this...haven't yet managed to listen to it all the way through. Seems like it might be pretty cool, but sometimes and for some things, life's too short.

(from Steven in the UK)

Nelly Furtado - Loose

Hmm, this is pretty okay, but it hasn't grabbed me in the way that the POP I really love does. Surprisingly consistent, though, and has its moments.

The New Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan & Gardner Dozois

Read this over a period of a few months; a few good ones, but none really stuck in my mind. Mainly, I was hoping they'd be in the vein of Stephen Donaldson's Gap series, but, you know, they turned out to be not so much like those. Guess I'm not really that into this kind of stuff is what it comes down to, 'cause they generally seemed well written and put together.

Radiohead - In Rainbows

It started with OK Computer; never thought it would end like this. It's been a gradual process, but Radiohead has moved from front and centre of my musical landscape to a place nearer the periphery (though the topographical metaphors are tricky, because the band played such a large part in shaping said landscape in the first place)...anyway, the upshot is that while I got In Rainbows right near the beginning of the year, or whenever the deluxe box set arrived in the post, I haven't felt moved to listen to it over and over (at least, not until the last couple of days a little bit).

In Rainbows leads off with a Kid A-esque skid-and-clatter and reedy Yorke chant which doesn't take long to develop into a wiry sort of latter-day Radiohead pastoral almost-rocker ("15 Steps"), followed by a more out and out chugging rock song of the kind that they've been putting on the last few lps ("Bodysnatchers" - like "15 Steps", it's good), but it's a misleading opening pair, because as a whole In Rainbows is actually the band's prettiest album (knocking off The Bends, I reckon, though it's a near thing). They've retained the production style and general aesthetic of their more recent work, but the songs themselves feel much more organic - guitars, pianos and vocals are at the forefront, and while one still feels that the band is stretching itself, the music here feels more like a shading in of territory already skipped over or hinted at in previous releases, rather than a break or leap in a new direction in the vein of Kid A (which seems destined to remain the high water mark in that respect, both in terms of the change that it marked from what had gone before it to that date, and on its own intrinsic musical terms - more and more, it seems the critical document in their discography taken as a whole).

A very high proportion of the rest of the record is made up of plaintive, circling, sometimes-verging-on-miraculous Radiohead Ballads ("Nude", "All I Need", "Videotape" - and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" and the version of "Reckoner" on here almost qualify as well), and then there's a pair of quiet, folky meditations, one of which ("Faust Arp") reminds me in equal parts of Pink Floyd at their sparest and Nick Drake, while the other kind of takes its cues more from Robert Wyatt ("House of Cards"), plus only one other fairly rocky track near the end in "Jigsaw Falling Into Place"...and it's all very good - there isn't a weak song amongst them, and the replay value is pretty high. But somehow, I haven't internalised it in the way that I did all of their others up to (but not including) HTTT...

The cuts on the second disc are generally less fully-realised, but the songs are still strong, and largely in line with the style of the album proper.

"IMP March 2008"

A low key mix, with an understated modern-folk stream running through it (Vetiver's "You May Be Blue" is an early standout) and a bit of a funk section near the middle. The best track's "Care", by an artist named Kaada - a lushly circling number brushed with elements of soul and doo-wop circa 1950s through to early 60s along with some contemporary electronic touches. Also features Emmylou's deathless "All My Tears" and a faintly raucous cover of "Don't Let It Bring You Down" by an outfit called Weeping Tile.

(from Richard in Ontario, Canada)

Juno soundtrack

Like the movie, very likeable. The Kimya Dawson stuff is nice, especially with memories of the film still fairly fresh; the rest of it is neat all round, taken as a whole.

Shoot 'Em Up

Rented this entirely for the spectacle and it comes through on that front. So over the top is it, actually, that I half-suspect the film's trying to have it both ways, playing both as a hyper-action flick and as a satire (there's something similar at work in the muddled stance that it hints at taking on gun control). It's all extremely throwaway, but entertaining enough, aided by Clive Owen's presence at its centre.

Sunshine

Pitches its camp halfway between the metaphysical speculations of a Solaris and more straight-up entries in the space/sci-fi genre and does a pretty good job. Lingers a bit, and packs a decent punch.

Lisa Germano - Excerpts from a Love Circus

Excerpts from a Love Circus has a weird glamour to it - it's like some junkyard princess's imaginary diary, set to music and distorted by its passage through the looking glass...everything she touches is lightly dusted in a sort of fractured, broken-apart-and-put-back-together pop sensibility, at once knowing and somehow retaining an air of the naïf.

"Small Heads" is still perfect, delightfully off-balance and impossibly catchy, lyrics at once hinting at the profound and verging on nonsensical tossed off in Germano's husky drawl while all the little musical details accumulate underneath (plinking piano, recorder, unidentifiable percussive bits, a snatch of her too cool for words violin-playin', etc); the song's like a miniature Tom Waits pop ditty as done by a girl or something. It's been one of my favourite songs for years and is just as good in the setting of the album.

Others that are especially good: "Baby on the Plane", "Bruises", "I Love a Snot", "We Suck" (a ballad!).

"Frost/Nixon" (Peter Morgan) (MTC)

The word that comes to mind in describing this one is 'solid'. The opposition (albeit and unsurprisingly not, in the end, a true opposition) between Nixon, fallen from grace but not yet resigned to the fact nor necessarily beyond redemption in the public eye, and flamboyant British interviewer/talk show host David Frost is sturdily built up and eventually played out in the series of interviews between them, culminating in a (surely imaginary) late night telephone conversation between the pair and then the final interview segment. It's nothing spectacular, but enjoyable and well-made enough (and distinguished by quite a sympathetic portrayal of Nixon, too).

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

Uncollected Galaxie 500

More! Not generally as searing as their lp or live recordings, but still well worth the listen, and I'd only heard a few before.

They really were a great band.

Gotan Project - Lunatico

Very listenable set of modern tango infused with downbeat electro and lounge elements - I like the more upbeat, swirling numbers more but it all works pretty well.

"Dear Art, Please Touch Me"

Pleasant way to spend an hour or so on a Sunday morning. Part of the Next Wave festival, this is an 'audio tour' of selected works in the permanent collection of the NGV Australia by way of two or three minute ipod-ed audio tracks of ordinary punters' responses to the works in question. Some are funny, some are sad, one or two are quite insightful (particularly the one on the Albert Tucker beach/sunbather painting), and a handful are really off the wall. It's striking that the respondents tend to respond to the art very much in terms of their own lives and experiences rather than seeming to engage with it at all on the pieces' own terms or opening themselves up genuinely to what the works might have to say.

(More info)

(w/ Andrew B and Julian F)

The Concretes - Hey Trouble

The problem with Hey Trouble is that it lacks that most essential prerequisite of pop music - excitement. One might ascribe that to Victoria Bergsman's departure, but truth be told, while In Colour did indeed have its rainbow moments, even that latter didn't come near the frost-edged joy of the band's debut lp - as much as I want to continue to like the Concretes, it looks as if that first album might have been one out of the box that the band will never be able to top, or even replicate.

On Hey Trouble, a couple of songs in the middle, "Oh Boy" and "Keep Yours" take off a little bit, and there are aspects of others which save the rest of the album from being a dead loss ("A Whales Heart" doesn't really hold together as a song, but has some nice hooks and textures; "Firewatch" is a bit catchy in an In Colour sort of way), but in general too many of the songs just meander along, seeming to echo or quote melodies rather than being really melodic in their own right and never properly catching alight. A disappointment, and maybe a reminder of how ephemeral genuine pop inspiration almost always seems to be.

Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings

Moderately arty song titles accompanying moderately arty indie-pop songs, with occasional trumpets. Understated and likeable, and Lewis' charismatic character is as a vocalist already well apparent, as well as the band's handiness with a tune.

Lori Carson - The Finest Thing

I have a feeling this might actually be quite good, but it's far too indistinct and muted for me in the present state of my musical preferences...

"A Gesture in Reciprocation"

A mix from Kim of a while ago, made up entirely of covers (a perennial favourite mix cd theme, of course). An intro (Bobby McFerrin's "From Me To You") and four parts which could be broken down as 'women', 'men' and 'legends' (Waits, Cash, Joni Mitchell) and then a one-track closer in a lovely version of "When I Fall In Love" as done by the Keith Jarrett Trio.

Favourites: Eva Cassidy's "Time After Time" (of course), Vonda Shepherd's take on "Don't Think Twice it's Alright" (much less predictably, and only after a few listens), Jeff Buckley's searing "Je n'en Connais pas la Fin" (live), Fanfare Ciocarlia's "Born to Be Wild" and the Keith Jarrett piece.