Down By Law

The grab on the back of the dvd copy of Down By Law that we rented quotes its director as describing it as neo-beat noir comedy, or something to that effect, and why not? It's as good a description as any. Its joys are many, but principally twofold - the distinctively and deliberately 'filmic' nature of Jarmusch's black and white direction, and the interactions between Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni (for mine, the scene where they start hooting and trampling around their prison cell to 'I scream-a, you scream-a, we all scream-a for ice-cream-a!' was practically worth the price of admission on its own). That said, its drifting style verged on being too slow in places, particularly for its first half; of the eight of us who started watching it (admittedly none too early in the evening), only M, D and I made it to the end. (The others being W, K, AB, AC and C, being the current members of book club less TV, who'd left for Melbourne earlier in the day, needing to get to a wedding.)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Well, this film was released in the year that I was born, so it's not surprising that it's a bit dated; I hadn't expected it to be so crass (or realistic, perhaps?). Still, it's entertaining enough, if lacking in any particular focus, and has the singular advantage of an impossibly young Jennifer Jason Leigh in a lead role.

"Some Old Favourites" (IMP June 2009)

Ahoy! Many thanks for the delightful June mix - I'm enjoying it v. much. To me it seems haunted by the 60s in parts, though I'm pretty sure only one of its tracks is actually from then (Dusty, of course, is always very welcome). Not sure if I have any special faves - though 'Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her' must be one of the best band names ever - but the Beirut, Gories, Long Blondes and Elbow cuts particularly leap to mind just now. It was grand to hear the Manics, an old fave of mine, too. (The album art's a treat too, btw.)

(from Natalie in Lancashire, England)

Mean Girls

YES.

(And last time.)

"Avenue Q" (Comedy Theatre)

Good but not amazing - the songs were hummable and it was consistently entertaining and funny, but it didn't zing. Definitely a fun night out though, and just as foul-mouthed as you might expect from the reviews, which is a good thing, natch.

(w/ M, Jade having given us tickets)

Dark Was The Night

This complation has begun to feel a bit like a soundtrack - to my own doings, I mean. I've been in a slightly a weird mood these last couple of weeks, and the music on Dark Was The Night has seemed obscurely apt.

Anyway, there's a lot of good stuff on here. With this kind of compilation, particularly one stretching across two discs, there's little point picking out the disappointments, so instead, a short list of highlights:

* The New Pornographers - "Hey, Snow White". A cover of a Destroyer song, I think (how very). Mildly, gloriously anthemic.
* Dave Sitek - "With A Girl Like You". Google tells me that this one's a Troggs cover. But before I knew that, I knew that, fuzzy, gentle, dreamy, warm, it was one to take to heart.
* Yo La Tengo - "Gentle Hours". Mellow and drifty, but strangely arresting.
* Conor Oberst & Gillian Welch - "Lua". Actually, as marvellous as Welch is, and as winsome the prettily bare folkesque melody, it's pretty much David Rawlings' guitar that puts the finishing touch to it.
* Dirty Projectors & David Byrne - "Knotty Pine". Ha! Just very cool.
* Riceboy Sleeps - "Happiness". The guy from Sigur Ros, sans vocals. Sounds just the way you'd expect. Like floating on a bubble-mix bubble-coloured cloud.
* Andrew Bird - "The Giant of Illinois". Even if it does cop some licks from Pachelbel's canon.
* My Brightest Diamond - "Feeling Good". And I never knew that this wasn't a Matt Bellamy original. Shame on me! This is a really ace version, anyway.

Also, new songs by Spoon, the Arcade Fire, the National, Stuart Murdoch and Cat Power.

Je Suis Animal @ Northcote Social Club, Wednesday 17 June

Yesterday, wondering if there were any interesting shows coming up, I was browsing the usual haunts' websites, and the description of Je Suis Animal on the NSC's gig list for that night caught my eye; among other things, it went, "attracting comparisons to C-86, My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab and Nico"...these are a few of my favourite things. (Two girls from Norway, two boys from England - didn't hurt.)

So I thought I'd check them out, and I'm glad I did - they were pretty good. None of those four comparisons are miles off the mark; left to my own devices, I probably would've come up with some kind of Lush + the Concretes description, which I suppose is in much the same ballpark. The C-86 influence isn't negligible, though their sound is a bit fuller, and a bit crashier; the songs are colourful and engaging, if not especially memorable twenty-four hours on.

Supports Zebra and the Crayon Fields, both nice but, again, neither memorable. (The Crayon Fields were much better the last time I saw them, though admittedly that was under quite different circumstances.)

(w/ M and Ruth)

Tropic Thunder

Funny in patches, and a great turn from Tom Cruise, plus the usual pleasures of watching Steve Coogan and Robert Downey Jr (with Ben Stiller and Jack Black along too), but Tropic Thunder wasn't really all that. Still, perfect for Friday night dvd watching in (with W, D and M).

"Disco Villians & Christmas Songs" (IMP December 2008)

What the title says; the 'disco villians' bit speaks for itself, though there seems to be a bit of sly genre-clashing going on in the selections on the disc which fall into that category, while the Christmas songs run the full gamut (no carols here!)...as a bonus, nearly every single artist was previously unfamiliar to me.

(from Paul in Ventura, CA)

100 favourite albums: # 5: New Adventures In Hi-Fi - R.E.M.

Like, I suppose, many people, I don't have an entirely easy relationship with popular taste and received opinion, particularly when it comes to fields in which I have any kind of significant investment, one of which is certainly that of popular music. Of course, there are endless, endlessly narrowing niches each with their own standards of taste and opinion; the niche within which the Beatles are regarded as great is not necessarily the same as that in which the Arcade Fire are saving indie music, for example. But the point is that, within each such 'niche' (an inaccurate word, but it'll do), fluid and permeable and impossible to define though their various ostensible boundaries may be, there will generally be certain orthodoxies; whether founded on intrinsic qualities or culturally ingrained values and responses or more likely some combination of the two, there are widely accepted beliefs about the relative quality of whatever texts/streams/etc may fall within and outside that niche, and having found oneself inhabiting a particular niche in a particular context, one generally accepts many of the foundational assumptions of that niche (for example, thinking about sandstone alternative music and fully believing, because feeling and living and breathing, the greatness of the Velvets, the Smiths, the Pixies - and, very possibly, R.E.M. too)...it's kind of chicken and egg in that respect, I suppose.

(Wordy much?)

Anyway, so: New Adventures in Hi-Fi is definitely my favourite R.E.M. album, and has been for some years; I'm not sure about this, but I wouldn't imagine that it'd be a particular pick for that title by others, either amongst particular fans of the band or when it comes to the wider listening public (again, just a guess, but I imagine that Automatic for the People, Murmur and Out of Time are the big ones in that respect). Likewise, while obviously heaps of these albums that I've been listing in my top 100, and particularly at the very upper end, are frequent entrants in similar lists, I don't think that's true of New Adventures at all.

...all of which, of course, makes me particularly wonder what it is about the album that has made it into one of my favourites, but to be honest, there's really not particularly far that I can take it. I certainly don't have any particularly strong personal associations with it; I had a copy of it for years before it began creeping up on me, and even then only very incrementally and at long intervals, and when I listen to it, it doesn't seem as if there's anything outside of the music itself that causes it to strike such a chord with me.

Well, there are at least two ways of pushing that last thought, both important here. First, the music itself is plenty compelling; well, that speaks for itself. And second (and relatedly), it can only be that it only seems that the way I feel when I listen to New Adventures is referable entirely to 'the music itself', because of course music always does refer to other things, at the very least on the abstract (but nonetheless meaningful) level on which everything always refers to everything else, but (as a matter of lived experience / personal impression), more so than much else that makes up that 'everything'. To put it another way, 'music itself' is always 'music and then some'.

For me, the title and cover of the album go a long way to summing up my impression of the album of itself (again, chicken and egg questions come into play, of course). New Adventures is a sprawling, abstract, downtempo modern rock record, and all of that is legible on its face (so to speak). There's something very elegant about it, something that conveys a sense of clean lines and uncluttered spaces, but there's also a sense of volume and of texture to its songs; it's an album dominated by guitars and, to a lesser extent, by Stipe's by now pleasingly worn-in voice, and it sounds very much all of a piece, but as we all know, there's not a lot that guitars can't do, even when, as here, used relatively traditionally, and the little bits of organ, piano, and various types of other keyboard and synthesiser instruments (to name just a few) weave in very aptly, often lending a sense of mystery to the songs they touch.

Like most great albums, it has more than one great song on it; indeed, by my count, there are three. There's "E-Bow the Letter", which is to "The One I Love" or "Losing My Religion", say, as this album is to Document or Out of Time, that is, the single which sounds different from anything else on the album and yet encapsulates so much of what makes the album itself what it is; then, buried in the album's mid-section, the epic love song "Be Mine", and finally (in fact, the last song on the album), the endlessly graceful, endlessly cryptic "Electrolite". But while those three stand out, there's not a weak song on New Adventures; really, it's all good, but of the others, the ones most likely to leave me wide-eyed and short of breath are the driving, surging rockers, amongst which "Leave" stands out not only for its 7-minute length but also for its sheer urgency and unerring combination of toughness and tenderness.

Anyway, I didn't mean to write a manifesto, nor to ramble as much as I have, and there's no real particular reason why this album ought to've triggered all of the above, but whichever way you cut it (and there are many, which is hardly surprising given the complicated mix of apparently immediate impressions and more critical responses which make up each individual experience of any music), I think that New Adventures in Hi-Fi is nothing short of a masterpiece. As we're so often reduced to saying, there's just something about it.

Madeleine Peyroux - Bare Bones

Another very nice set of late-night jazz, sung smokily and sweetly. I think that many if not all of these are original compositions of Peyroux, rather than being covers/standards such as those which have dominated her previous stuff, but frankly it makes very little difference...

Muriel Barbery - The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I saw this in a book store a while ago, and was taken with its premise (two inhabitants of an expensive French apartment block, an apparently culturally and intellectually indigent concierge who in fact goes to great length to conceal her deep appreciation of the finer things in order to avoid attention and a startlingly intelligent 12 year old girl who decides to commit suicide and burn down her family's apartment in order to avoid the inauthentically, shallowly bourgeois future that she believes is inevitably laid out for her, find that things begin to change when one of the complex's moneyed tenants passes away) and with its first chapter (chapterlet[te?], really - like many of the others in the book, it's only a couple of pages long), in which the concierge, Renée Michel, nearly gives herself away by, in spite of herself, making a passing reference to Marx and Engels in front of one of the building's obnoxious children of privilege.

Once I'd actually picked it up a few days ago, the reading went very quickly - it's charming and for the most part very well written - and I finished it earlier this morning, waiting for someone at a chilly outdoor table on Brunnie St...I should mention that it's in translation, but to the extent that I'm inclined to criticise that aspect of it, I suspect that the flaws, such as they are, were equally present in the French language source text.

Now, as to that 'for the most part'...the novel unfolds in a series of the aforementioned short pieces, related either by Mme. Michel or in the journal entries of the precocious Paloma Josse. Both are pleasing narrators with clear (if somewhat similar) voices, and well believable (within the frame of a novel such as this); as to that similarity between them, both are prone to making pleasingly snarky and extremely funny comments about their coinhabitants in the building, reflecting on their own sense of being outsiders, and going on for paragraphs at a time about their philosophical or at any rate abstract thoughts about Life, Art &c. And it's those abstract passages - it wouldn't be fair to call them digressions, for they're central to the schema (or do I mean 'scheme'?) of the book - which sometimes became a bit clunky, particularly those of Michel. (That said, I did enjoy the part near the beginning where she grapples with Husserl and phenomenology before rejecting it as a furphy, while obviously not agreeing with the path of reasoning/conclusion she describes.)

To be fair, the trajectories followed by the two narrators' philosophical journeys are clear and clearly distinguishable from each other's, as well as being naturally referable to their respective situations and personalities, and if what's said isn't precisely profound, well, it's still at least coherent, reasonably sophisticated, and for the most part and in broad outlines (in my humble opinion, ahem) right in the design for life that it ultimately suggests.

Insofar as it's a novel, Hedgehog suffers from certain flaws, not the least of which was that, about a third of the way out from the end, I was pretty sure I had worked out broadly what the ending was going to be for each of the main characters, and how each of those endings would relate to the other's - and was vindicated when all of it, indeed, came to pass in the final 10 or 15 pages. (It was the 'summer rain' chapter that clued me in.) Relatedly, it perhaps wears its art (by which I principally but not exclusively mean 'artifice') perhaps a little too much on its surface.

Still, while I've seemingly devoted most of this space to picking it apart, I liked Hedgehog very much more than I have reservations about it; it veers a bit towards the precious, but that's rarely a criticism coming from me, and I'm fully in sympathy with what seem to me to be its central concerns. (I ought also to've mentioned the nice critique of class snobbery that's built into it.) Bottom line: I think it's very good, and reading it brought me considerable pleasure. So there it is.

"August: Osage County" (MTC)

Well, this was very good, and it's exactly the type of thing that the MTC does very well - a lavish piece of Theatre in the classic (meaning that stream of the canon that flows through the twentieth century) mode. I didn't know a great deal about it beforehand; what I did know was that it was new, that it had been a massive critical and popular hit elsewhere, that it was a kitchen-sink American family (melo)drama, and that it was very long...and having regard to all of those, it was pretty much exactly as it had been billed.

I was struck by how naturalistic it was, and cinematic - two apparently contradictory effects which perhaps go hand in hand more often than they contradict or undermine each other on stage, at least, if nowhere else - and also by how blackly comic it was. Crucially, too, it has outstanding performances from the two critical figures, Robyn Nevin as bereaved matriarch Violet and Jane Menelaus as her daughter (one of three) Barbara, who each live and breathe in all their characters' complexity; there's more than a hint of the grotesque to both, and indeed to many of the play's other characters, but they (and the others in the ensemble) never come anywhere near falling into any of the traps that that may imply. Also, the set is magnificent and adds much to that naturalistic (though definitely not 'realistic' if I can put it in those terms) flavour.

All up, there's no doubting that it's a well-written and mounted play, and there's something memorable about it, too. (It certainly has ambitions.) For all of that, for mine, it doesn't have the air of greatness to it (a couple of jarring elements: there were perhaps just slightly too many characters, in some cases with just slightly not enough development; and the 'American Indian' girl really has very little to do except serve as a vague symbol and occasional thematic reinforcer, and I always feel slightly uncomfortable about works which use a member of an ethnic minority, particularly one weighed down by the cultural freight of the 'native American', in a 'pure, natural, spirit of good' type role such as hers...both relatively minor quibbles in the context of the whole, really); still, it really was very good.

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

Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy

To my ears, Black Sheep Boy is kind of a more ragged, less concise version of The Stage Names, less 'chamber' and more 'barroom' (though that other is, it must be said, much more than latter than the former in any event), and with its folk influences perhaps a bit closer to the surface. I like them most when they're closest to out and out rip-roaring rock, such as on the Wrens-esque "For Real"; elsewhere on this record, they sometimes become a bit unfocused, the 'line' running through the individual songs less clear. All up, though, still very good.

"IMP November 2008"

This arrived sans tracklist, which is a pity because there are some tracks on it that I'd like to follow up, including a couple that don't have lyrics, thereby removing the main avenue for pursuing details...those that I recognised (Elliott Smith, the Cure, Cat Power, Imogen Heap, Tori Amos doing "Paranoid Android", possibly one or two others) naturally aren't representative inasmuch as they are the ones that I recognised; those that I didn't recognise range from scratchy singer-songwriter stuff to a few songs which seemed touched as much by disco as by techno, sometimes in a bit of a Knife-y way. A pretty good mix, actually - I like nearly every song on it.

(from unknown in Medford, OR)

Annabel Crabb - "Stop at Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull" (Quarterly Essay issue 34)

This made for a fast-paced and interesting read (Crabb's background as a journalist serves her well) - it reads as a pretty balanced account, and everything in it was entirely plausible and consistent with my existing image of Turnbull. (Got through it in a couple of hours, spread over a few sittings - it makes for perfect public transport reading.)

"Ah Spring! When A Young Man's Fancy Turns To Love!" (IMP April 2009)

A collection of sophisticated-sounds songs on the theme of love - a range of low-key, chilled cuts which take in lounge, electro, old-timey pop, jazz and the various intersections between them (from Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye to Getz & Gilberto to Yo La Tengo to De La Soul).

(from Michael in Boston, MA)

"KesselsKramer Exports" @ Guildford Lane Gallery

An exhibition of advertising posters, short films and commercials, and other products created by the Dutch agency KesselsKramer. There's a highly irreverent flavour to their work, much of which has been for pretty significant corporate clients (Diesel and Absolut come to mind), and one gets the sense that boundaries are genuinely being pushed in their work (the flags in dog excrement used to promote their flagship client, the Brinker budget hotel, must surely qualify - no examples of those in the rather excellent multi-storied space of this gallery, of course). Enjoyed it!

(w/ Jon + Sam)

TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

This hasn't really taken with me yet, despite several listens. But I'll keep persevering with it, 'cause the two great left-field indie-soul/rock-electro/whatever cuts that drew me to it in the first place, "Staring at the Sun" and "Dreams" are still buzzily, texturedly, cryptically magnificent, and the rest of it is at very least interesting.

Portishead - Roseland NYC Live

I never got to this back in the day; it stands up well, and there's something spooky about the way that Gibbons hits those high notes with impeccable force and expression every time (not that there isn't plenty spooky about her singing in general, natch). With the benefit of the context provided by the passing of time and last year's triumph Third, I think we can well and truly say that Portishead were and are a great band.

Ladytron @ Hi-Fi Bar, 5 June 2009

Having seen them live last night, I can understand how Ladytron have gathered as many fans as they seem to've in the last few years - they've come a long way since the days of "Playgirl" and "Seventeen" (both ace, by the way, but my point is that they came out in like 2001 and are both basically straightforward, if unusually simpatico and catchy, synth-poppers), which was my last real exposure to them. If the show last night was anything to go by, they're considerably more crashy and noisy these days, with the electroclash-y/robot-pop elements at the fore (though there are significant new wave and even rock strands in the mix too), while retaining their facility for hooks and melodies wrought into anthems, if with a bit of a tendency towards repetitiveness and lacking the spark that would push their music to a higher plane. Anyway, this felt like kind of a long night, to be honest, and I wasn't totally in the mood for live music by the time we got there and they got on stage, around 11pm; also, the sound was pretty muddy, which was a bit of a downer, plus there was a bit of an idiot element in the crowd, so all told it was only a so-so concert experience.

(w/ M)

Glen Cook - Chronicles of the Black Company

An omnibus, collecting what are, it seems, the first three books in a ten-book series (The Black Company, Shadows Linger and The White Rose). I staggered into the Brunswick Street Bookstore on my way home the other night wanting to grab a copy of Gardens of the Moon for a re-read; they didn't have it, so I bought this instead, remembering that Cook is often cited as an antecedent and inspiration of Erikson. Having now read them, I can certainly see the similarities, with the focus on a central, legendary mercenary company, with hard-hitting ng renditions of the military campaigns they wage and an emphasis on the moral ambiguities and uncertainties that result from their nature as swords for hire and the results when they become subject to forces greater than themselves. The Black Company books are more straight-ahead, and nowhere near as intricately or well-written as Erikson's series, but they're still very good and genuinely dark in places.

The Albertina Exhibition of Hundertwasser's Complete Graphic Work 1951-1976

Wei handed this over to me a while back, and I've been reading/looking at it at intervals. Apparently he's better known for his architecture, but the paintings and other graphic work collected here appealed to me, all bright colours and spirals, and bearing a strong environmental message.

100 favourite albums: # 6: Homogenic - Bjork

It may have been released back in '97, but Homogenic still sounds like the future - in its integration and synthesis of electronic textures, samples and beats, poetically fragmentary lyrics and gloriously original melodies, it remains dazzling, astonishing. The first four songs in particular - "Hunter", "Joga", "Unravel", "Bachelorette" - are unimpeachable: they're lush, sweeping, dramatic, as Romantic as they are romantic. But the intensity of her vision, and the extent of her success in realising it, only become apparent over the course of the whole of Homogenic, as each successive song does something entirely surprising and new yet entirely consonant with what has come before, building to the techno-organic meltdown of "Pluto" and then oceanic recapitulation of "All Is Full Of Love" that closes affairs.

There's a glamour to Homogenic, in the old sense of the word, I mean, but also a warmth - there's never any doubt of the blood that runs through its veins. There's something very compelling about the album, and it makes real demands of the listener, but the rewards it offers are great. Loving it is the easiest thing.

Steven Amsterdam - Things We Didn't See Coming

A set of linked short episodes dealing with an apocalypse, following the same protagonist at different points in his life (and in the various disintegrations and partial re-establishments which follow the initial, more or less unspecified, disaster), though it reads best as a whole and I'm sure that's how it is intended - pretty good. Also, interesting to see how Amsterdam solves some of the problems of writing in first person present tense (a voice that I increasingly fear is becoming somewhat trendy).