The Flaming Lips @ Festival Hall, Wednesday 29 July

Much fun! It wasn't the life-changing experience that the '04 BDO set apparently was for lots of those who went that time round, but it certainly was a Show - giant balloons, confetti, animal costumes, lights and projections and all...also, some pretty good songs. It would've been hard not to get swept up in the general good vibes - and I had no compunction about going with it - but I must say (at risk of being a spoilsport), I would've liked it more if the music had been more of a focus. The highlight for me would have to've been "She Don't Use Jelly", reminding me what a monster of a song it is - it's also the one, along with "Yoshimi", which carries the biggest nostalgic charge for me.

(Support - Midnight Juggernauts. Pretty good.)

(w/ M; lots of others around too but hooking up proved somewhat impracticable till after show)

Steven Erikson - Reaper's Gale

Another! Events come to a head in Letheras, where the arrival of both Icarium and Karsa Orlong sends reverberations through the city's web of machinations, plot and counter-plot, as financiers, court functionaries, assassins and gods manoeuvre for power and Rhulad clings increasingly desperately to sanity as his supports are cut away from beneath him. At the same time, the Malazan marines of Tavore's renegade army fight a brutal guerrila war through the jungles of Lether, converging on the capital city while ascendants and soletaken ready their own assaults. New forces arise in the Awl'dan and Twilight's disenfranchised Shake; all the while, too, ill-matched and suspicious companions weave across the continent on quests of their own, particularly the group led by Silchas Ruin in search of his ancient betrayer. And through all of this, Erikson keeps a strong, clear thread running - a sense of things moving ineluctably forward to some shattering ending, even as the layers of recurrence and constraint become ever more unavoidable.

Anna & Alphaville

Rang in MIFF this year with these two, Saturday and Sunday nights. They're part of the Anna Karina retrospective (as a matter of fact, she was up on stage saying a few words before and after each), though as it happens, she wasn't the main reason why I saw either; I'm still quite giddily infatuated with Godard and was keen to see Alphaville on a big screen [previously], and I was really drawn to Anna (which isn't one of his) by the program description of it, which suggested that it would be all frothy, colourful, romantic, Gainsbourg-scored Paris-in-the-60s whimsy. Indeed, though she's been a big part of my Godard experience (as, I suppose, she must be for everyone's Godard experience), she's never specifically registered with me before.

Seeing these two back to back has highlighted two things: (1) she really is only a moderate actor; and (2), despite (1), she's a spectacular movie star. In Anna, she's terribly affected (although arguably that's consonant with the mood of the film as a whole); in Alphaville, as elsewhere, she's wonderfully inscrutable and utterly compelling, just as she was in Bande à part, Made in U.S.A. and Vivre sa vie.

It almost goes without saying, I enjoyed both, though Alphaville very much more than Anna.



(Anna w/ Steph and Nicolette; Alphaville w/ Steph, Kai and Ruth)

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

A couple of people independently mentioned this band to me, both in a 'I only kinda like it but you'll probably like it more' kind of way. Anyway, it's the sort of concoction that could've been calculated to appeal to me, equal parts JAMC fuzz and C86 jangle and tunesmithery, with a dash of mid-to-late (ie, Wish-era) Cure-esque guitar sensibility, and I do quite like it, though it wears its influences perhaps a bit too much a bit on its sleeve, while being perhaps a bit too clean-nosed about it, to really make an impact on me.

Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope

Eccentric girl singer-songwriter stuff, heavy on the kook but also on the talent. I liked pitchfork's take on her as being a Kate Bush for the McSweeney's set; shades also of Frida Hyvonen, Nellie McKay, etc, etc. Pretty good.

Buddy & Julie Miller - Written in Chalk

Nice. It hasn't really smacked me between the eyes yet, but I feel it's almost only a matter of time, so easy and yet satisfying is it to listen to.

The Verve - A Northern Soul

One often hears this album spoken of as something of a minor classic, but I'm not entirely sold. I do like the windswept way in which it weaves bits of shoegaze, indie-rock and (proto?) brit pop together (semi-alliterativeness unintended), but for me, the songs don't quite stand up.

"The Birthday Party" (MTC)

A difficult play to get one's teeth into, but then again, I think that's at least partly the point - it seems to be a play primarily about effect, and more particularly a distinct effect of unsettledness. At one of its centres, a pair of disturbed clowns, Goldberg and McCann; at another, the curiously blank Stanley; throughout, language is seen distorting and losing its moorings; in another way, it seems to be 'about' power and authority. Well worthwhile, though I was left with the nagging feeling that the production may not quite have done justice to the play. (All of that said, I seemed to like it more than the others with me.)

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

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

There's a reliable sturdiness and craft to all of these movies - they're reliably good. This one's another thoroughly solid entry in the series (and the first I've seen on a big screen), and though it suffers a bit from 'middle film' syndrome - a surfeit of exposition and picking up of existing threads, and not enough action - it's still more than involving enough. Plot developments continue to come as complete surprises to me (those that aren't telegraphed a mile away, that is), which I suspect adds a fair bit to the experience.

(w/ M)

"Alternative Static" (IMP July 2009)

One of the more delightful IMP mixes to've come down the line. Much of it is made up of actual 'alternative' music - that is, music that was called 'alternative' back when the term seemed to have some kind of meaningful denotation - and so classic songs and legendary artists are scattered throughout ("Bizarre Love Triangle", "Just Like Heaven", "She Sells Sanctuary", "It's the End of the World as We Know It", "Girlfriend in a Coma", etc). But that makes the mix sound much less fun than it actually is, for those cuts are mixed in with a cross-section of others which cover a lot of ground, albeit still focusing on the 80s, while retaining a thematic consistency. Indie and alternative-edged disco and dance is a recurring theme ("Personal Jesus", Erasure's "A Little Respect", "West End Girls" and others including a Berlin song that isn't "Take My Breath Away"!), as is jangle/power pop stuff (Voice of the Beehive, the Primitives, Sinead O'Connor's churning, vivid "Mandinka"); all told, it's also a reminder of just how gloriously Pop so much of that kind of music was/is. (Speaking of pop, the shimmering, sinuous "Kiss Them For Me" is a side of Siouxsie and the Banshees that I'd never suspected existed - it's really good, too.)

(from Aimee in Alt. Spqs [?], FL)

"Happy Days" (Malthouse)

This was good! Suitably harrowing and good both on the broad existential sweep and in the little details of language and nuance; Julie Forsyth impressive. Beckett has a really unique idiom, and it comes through clearly here.

(w/ Kim, Ruth & Simon H)

Paul Galloway - Realism

This worked notably better as performed than on the page (I've been thinking a bit lately about the relationship between the written text of a play and its instantiations in performance, though without any solid conclusions yet), but it was worth reading anyway to pick up more of the nuances; also, the ending seemed rather darker on the page (and the 'Meyerholdian' section much less striking and stylised - which isn't particularly surprising).

Steven Erikson - The Bonehunters

On my first read, by this point in the series, I had begun to lose track of a few of the many threads running through it, although the careening momentum of the main strands was more than sufficient to keep pulling me through; I recall being unsure about how some of the bits-and-pieces scenes which are interspersed throughout it had come about, particularly the desperate defence of the shadow and first thrones (strikingly, those images and scenes were nonetheless memorable enough to stick with me). This time, I was better able to track them through, adding to the impact of the whole. Again, there's a spectacular battle about mid-way through (in Y'Ghatan), and then another bravura finale, this time in Malaz City, as Tavore comes closer and closer to tipping her hand as to where she will finally stand, and other powers converge around Rhulad's seat of power.

More on Hidden Hands

Hidden Hands is pretty much the only thing I've listened to over the last week - even picking up the new Wilco and Sarah Blasko records, news of an upcoming Aimee Mann tour, and my ongoing recent Jolie Holland infatuation, haven't shaken that - and the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate how spectacularly good it is.

Like all really good albums, it grows with each listen, and over repeated spins, different songs and streams within it come to prominence. I still can't get enough of the pulsating, slashing "I Am Going But I Am Not Gone" [previously], or of the two similarly mid-to-fast-paced rockers which precede it and kick off the album, "Mother's Desk" and "Fear Is Like A Forest"; yesterday, running a few errands in town in the chill morning sunshine, the epic, ballad-like "It Must Come Through" hit me between the eyes, and that's the one that I've been listening to loud since, including right now. Wicked!

Jen Cloher.

Red Cliff

The most spectacular film I've seen in some time, John Woo's staging of the romance of three kingdoms is pretty much two and a half hours of full tilt action, most of which is comprised of massive, clash-of-thousands battle scenes. The excitement and tension don't let up at any stage, the emphasis on strategic planning and scattering of quieter, more contemplative moments notwithstanding; and with a cast including Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Chang Chen, it has actors who are more than capable of carrying it all off. According to wikipedia, huge cuts were made for the western version which I saw, but even so, it's quite something. Perfect for a Saturday night.

(w/ M)

Jen Cloher & the Endless Sea - Hidden Hands

It's been a few months, I'd say, since I listened to a new album - new to me, that is - that contained a song which made me listen to it over and over, and turned up loud, whenever I got to it, but Hidden Hands' third track "I Am Going But I Am Not Gone" has hooked me in just that way. Is it fair to describe it as 'alt-country'? I've never really thought of Cloher's music in those terms - it's not easy to pigeonhole, being structured principally on rock and pop forms while drawing heavily, and naturally, on folk and country streams. What gets me about that song, and about this album in general, is something that I can't put my finger on, but which comes with all music that strikes a chord, something that goes in around the back of my neck and top of my spine and, I don't know, just makes itself felt.

Dead Wood Falls has proved to be a real stayer - I've listened to it heaps, and consistently, since getting it back in '06 - which makes it all the more impressive that now, with Hidden Hands, Cloher and band seem to have topped it. Crisper in sound but no less atmospheric, and the songs, while perhaps less immediate, are somehow richer and deeper - even more satisfying than those on their first album. The rockier ones are driving and hook-laden and crunchily pleasing; the slower turns are touched by melancholy and often faintly spectral (especially the last song, "Watch Me Disappear"). I'm liking this very much.

"Cosmopolitan Living" (IMP February 2009)

Like one or two other recent IMP mixes, rather in the lounge vein - music for a particular mood. I don't have it with me right now but I recall Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By" being on it, and that gives a pretty good sense of the vibe, though most of the other tracks are less well known.

(from Steve in Alexandria, VA)

Martha Wainwright - Martha Wainwright

Been enjoying this one a lot - it's several notches above the average singer-songwriter record. It has an acerbic edge which manifests itself in the lyrics (as could've been expected from radio hit "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole"), instrumentation and arrangements, and vocals, while Wainwright displays an enviable facility for catchy, unusual melodies...much like her voice, her songs, while not traditionally pretty or smooth, are immediately likeable. Current favourites, apart from aforementioned "BMFA", would probably be "G.P.T." and "When The Day Is Short", but there are plenty of other neat ones too.

God Help The Girl

On paper, this seemed a 'can't miss' proposition - Stuart Murdoch-written songs intended as the soundtrack to an as yet unmade film, sung by girls. As it turns out, though, only a couple of the songs reach any great heights (those being "Musician, Please Take Heed" and "Perfection As A Hipster", the latter including a vocal from Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy); thankfully, the music isn't as slick and brassy as that on the last couple of B&S albums, but it's still all too smooth. It's perfectly listenable and has its moments, but it's nothing special despite its provenance.

Vic Chesnutt & Victoria Williams @ East Brunswick Club, Thursday 9 July

Went along to this one on spec, not really knowing much about either of the acts beyond reputation; somewhat opportunistically, we sat in the front row and so scored a great spot. First, Chesnutt, seated (in wheelchair), strumming his guitar and singing plaintive americana - pretty good. Williams joined him onstage for the final song of his set, and then after a rather awkward transition and then break, they both returned, with Williams singing and playing either guitar or electric piano (and, in snatches, harmonica) and Chesnutt doing occasional backing vocals and muted percussion. Williams' was the loosest set I've seen for as long as I can remember, long pauses between songs as she decided what to do next, often soliciting audience requests; her singing is idiosyncratic, to say the least, but I felt that there was a musicality to her stuff (if not necessarily a great deal of musicianship in the performance)...one certainly had to work to uncover the songs beneath the little girl vocals and stop-start rhythms and lines, but of course it's precisely (and only) in following that path that they disclose themselves. Anyway, I liked them both, though neither had me in raptures.

(w/ Meribah and Wei)

Steven Erikson - House of Chains & Midnight Tides

It's a mark, I suppose, of Erikson's confidence and ability that, with the fourth book in his Malazan series, House of Chains, he's willing to take up the narrative of a relatively (although not completely) minor character from the first three and devote the first couple of hundred (?) or so pages exclusively to him - the first time in the series that such sustained attention has been given to any single character or strand of the plot...I suppose it doesn't hurt that it's pretty much full-tilt action, but even that demands real skill to write successfully. Thereafter, it turns to the campaign in Seven Cities, as the new Adjunct, Tavore, seeks to end Sha'ik's rebellion; typically, we spend as much time in the latter's camp as in the former's. The theme of chaining and imprisonment which has run through the entire series assumes even greater prominence throughout, and the cyclical, recurrent nature of events becomes increasingly clear.

Then, in Midnight Tides, he goes one further, introducing an entirely new empire in the Letherii, and dramatically fleshing out another, that of the Edur, which had previously only been present very much in the margins, as well as filling in more of the history and mythos of the elder races and beings that make up the series' pantheon, with virtually no mention of the significant nations, races and individuals who populate the four preceding books. It's a brave gambit, but it works perfectly - we're immersed in this new struggle and in the host of significant and more minor characters woven into it. (Along with Erikson's usual roster of more or less morally compromised protagonists, Trull Sengar, Seren Pedac, Hull Beddict and Udinaas foremost amongst them, and the delightful Tehol Beddict and Bugg, are a host of characters with smaller roles who move across its pages with great vividity, most particularly Shurq Elalle and Ublala Pung.)

"The Man From Mukinupin" (MTC)

I thought this one was a bit of a mess. Assuming that the production is faithful to the written play, the fault must rest principally with the latter, I think - it's wildly uneven and never coalesces into anything more (the first half, in particular, simply crawls). I was unconvinced by the magic realist elements, and equally so by the apparent attempts at weaving in strands of something Shakespearean or comparably lofty (even, of course, leaving aside the deliberately dreadful performance-within-the-play of Desdemona's death in "Othello"), and likewise by the unexplained fluctuations in tone and style.

[17.3.13 note - part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co (though I have a feeling that I might've seen this one by myself, having had to change my date)]

Eagle Eye

Extremely average - it's got a moderately good premise, decent special effects, and Billy Bob Thornton going for it, and that's about it. Endless action, endlessly boring.

Magnetic Fields - Holiday

Relatively early Magnetic Fields, and good! Ends with the ever-young "Take Ecstasy With Me".

Jolie Holland - Escondida

Jolie's become one of my favourites over the last six to nine months or so, and this, her debut proper (there was one before it that I haven't listened to, Catalpa, a subsequent release of a demo recording) has the same soft-edged, sharp-centred charm as Springtime Can Kill You and The Living and the Dead. It's quieter, drawing more on the sparser jazz and folk elements of her music and, particularly, singing, but lovely in much the same vein.

Neil Young - Comes a Time

This one's kind of a softish country-rock type record, a bit in the vein of Harvest but without that other's memorability. It's not too bad, but there's nothing on it to match the lilting charm of its title track.

Luluc @ Northcote Social Club, Thursday 2 July

A duo, their style old-timey sounding folk-esque music. The songs were pretty good but their not so secret weapon is singer Zoe Randell's wonderful voice, smooth and low and used to great effect. I think it was a relatively short set, but it was long enough for their sound to become clear, and for them to demonstrate a good amount of melodic and textural range. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for!

Incidentally, looking at their website a minute ago, I noticed that they were booked to support Lucinda Williams at her show earlier this year, which means I must have seen them then. (All I remember from their set there, assuming it was them, is that they were good, but I was very tired and basically half asleep for its duration...no reflection on the music itself.)

(Support for this show was 'Jessica Says', who I'm quite sure I met around the traps a few years back.)

(w/ Ruth and Wei)

100 favourite albums: # 4: The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico

Well, four albums left to write about, and having gone through this whole exercise, there isn't any doubt in my mind that, for now at least, they are my four favourites (even though I still don't have a clear idea of just what, precisely, that might mean), but deciding the order in which these last four should go has given me a lot of trouble - in large part, I think, because the ways in which each of them is one of my 'favourites' is so different from all of the others.

In trying to think about why this, the Velvet Underground's first album, pushes my buttons in the way that it does, it's difficult to get past the way it sounds. "Venus in Furs" is still my favourite, and in many ways it embodies the template - resounding and resonant, jangling lines circling and repeating, wrapped up in an atmosphere of cloud mystery, Reed intoning sinister nothings over a musical bed that's as crystalline as it is chaotic - but the record really unfurls all the way from start to finish; in other words, from gently twinkling "Sunday Morning" to the clamorous closing descent of "The Black Angel's Death Song" and "European Son", and in between Nico's two melodically wrought dirges, "Femme Fatale" and "I'll Be Your Mirror", two relatively concise rock turns on "Run Run Run" and "There She Goes Again", the epic centre comprised by "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Heroin", and of course "Venus in Furs" and, almost at the very beginning, the other song on the record which in many ways best seems to sum up what it's all about, "I'm Waiting For The Man".

The Velvet Underground are a reference point for me in more ways than one, and more often than not it boils down to this record. If it makes any difference, I can easily credit that the Velvets have been just as influential as everyone says they are, including, directly or indirectly (but probably fairly directly) on many of my particular faves (say Galaxie 500, the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Mazzy Star to name just four). I don't think it's too fanciful to think of this album as continuing to reverberate down the decades through everything that's come since - indeed, to go further and, with the benefit of hindsight, say that it was, indeed, the crucial break with whatever had come before, announcing the possibility and arrival of something new. And yet to listen to it now is still to be caught up in something which withholds as much as it reveals, something that sounds only like itself, something inexplicably, undeniably great.

Eilen Jewell - Sea of Tears

This is the first time I've come across Jewell; she makes me think of latter-day Jolie Holland, mid-period Lucinda Williams, Soul Journey-era Gillian Welch, and rock music from the 60s, and does so while putting her own stamp on the dusty, swaying music she makes. She has a way with a tune, and the ability to create a mood with her singing and arrangements...this is good stuff.

Steven Erikson - Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates & Memories of Ice

On a second, more leisurely pass, and with the benefit of having since read as far as the series has so far progressed, it becomes apparent just how clear a sense of his world Erikson had from the outset - an enormous number of threads are laid out in the series' opener, Gardens of the Moon, often occupying only a page or two, only to be taken up in later books...of course, they're much easier to follow when one knows how everything will eventually play out (recalling, natch, that the series is still two no doubt lengthy books away from completion). And an extra dimension is added by knowing where things are headed - the ways that I read the early appearances of Ganoes Paran, or the whole of Itkovian's trajectory (or, for that matter, the gradually revealed history of the T'lan Imass), to give just a couple of examples, were strongly coloured by that knowledge.

What hasn't changed is that while Gardens is a very strong opener, it's with Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice that the series becomes truly awe-inspiring. Perhaps oddly, the military elements are, by and large, the most gripping - perhaps this will change as I work through the rest of the books this time round, but at present I reckon that Coltaine's march in Deadhouse Gates and the battle for Capustan in Memories of Ice (the one in the second half of Memories at Coral isn't bad either) are the series' absolute high points. But the complexity of the plotting, and the intricate way in which all the strands tie together, ensure that all of the parts feel necessary and integral, and the massive sweep and scale of the books wouldn't be possible without its many intersecting stories and sub-plots. As I thought on my first go, these books are magnificent.