Metric - Fantasies

I've always liked the Emily Haines and Metric stuff that I've heard before, but with Fantasies, Metric's latest, they really, really hit it. To me, it sounds like a buzzing, super-charged amalgam of say Lush (circa Split and Lovelife), post-Execution of All Things (ie, poptastic) Rilo Kiley, Garbage, the Killers and Pretty Girls Make Graves and Sleater-Kinney (particularly the more mellow end of the last two's palettes); it's not stretching too much to say that those are a few of my favourite things, and it's not stretching at all to say that Fantasies is totally excellent.

New wave, power-pop, bubblegum (and sometimes slightly harder-edged) punk, modern rock and glossy stadium-pop all feed into the mix, and the result is a record made up of 10 magnificently listenable songs, all immediately catchy and all also more inventive and layered than is at first apparent. Picking favourites is difficult - I like the most direct tilts at anthem glory like "Help, I'm Alive" and "Sick Muse", but the angular pop directionality of cuts like "Gold Gun Girls" also appeals, as does the archetypal penultimate track slow-burn of "Blindness"; and then there's the golden-edged, Stones and Beatles-referencing "Gimme Sympathy" (featuring some particularly Rilo Kiley-esque moves including a rather Jenny Lewis-styled vocal from Haines, who in fact proves herself a much more versatile singer throughout than I'd previously given her credit for), which was the song that prompted me to seek out the album after I heard it on the radio one morning. Also noteworthy is "Satellite Mind", which reminds me of the minor classic "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" - which makes sense given that Haines was, of course, the vocalist on that particular BSS track.

So it's pretty much perfect feel-good summer-time music for the Belle & Sebastian crowd - although to say that is almost certainly to generalise too far from my own experience. But either way, this is a fantastic album.

The New Pornographers - Challengers

Another impeccably good album from the New Pornographers - less immediately barnstorming than Electric Version or Twin Cinema (both of which, incidentally, I think, qualify for 'minor greatness' status in my book), but equally pleasing, and it continues to reveal its details and depths as I keep on listening to it, just like those others.

Jenny Wilson - Love and Youth

Turns out I had totally the wrong idea about Jenny Wilson, misled by the weird cover and the connection to the Knife - her thing is actually a hushed, quirky kind of soul (cool song titles too). Not too bad, if not particularly my thing.

Natalie Imbruglia - Come To Life

As I've recounted before, a new Natalie Imbruglia album is actually cause for considerable excitement in these parts - excitement, I might add, of the totally non-ironic variety. Unfortunately, though, Come To Life doesn't really speak much to me - it's all a bit undistinguished, and lacks any of the glorious moments that have sprinkled the rest of her recent work.

Okkervil River - The Stand Ins

Somehow I've found myself listening to Okkervil River over the whole of this year, first The Stage Names, then Black Sheep Boy, and now The Stand Ins, which is just as good as the others (although The Stage Names stands out slightly from the other two, perhaps because it was the first one that I listened to). My favourite song on the album is also its longest at six and a bit minutes - "Blue Tulip", which goes for broke in the 'fraught indie epic' stakes and completely pulls it off.

"When the Rain Stops Falling" (MTC)

So I thought that "When the Rain Stops Falling" was very good, and up there with Realism and August: Osage County as the best that the MTC has done this year - it took a while to get going, but the pay-off was worth it.

* * *

(From an email to RE dashed off while at work last week:)

I thought the cast by and large were very good, and I thought the neat tying up was important to the structure of the play as a whole - it made sense of the repetition of ideas, etc, provided the structural justification for the jumping back and forth between different time periods and settings, and provided a relatively optimistic (or at least humanistic) ending in that it gave a resolution and a sense of progression from the failures of the past (ie, Gabriel the second being able to reach some kind of understanding with his own son, and in the process achieve a partial redemption of the human misery and loss of previous generations, including the abandonment of the first Gabriel by his father)...

* * *

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

Regina Spektor - Soviet Kitsch & Far

The albums on either side of Begin to Hope, and together, the main soundtrack to my last few weeks.

Soviet Kitsch is quirkier, more idiosyncratic, and generally less polished, but the risks it sees Spektor taking pay off in spades. "Carbon Monoxide" is arguably the most spectacular success in that respect, but it's the sky-scrapingly dramatic, deeply personal-sounding "Us" that I love (helped by its importance within the (500) Days of Summer soundtrack).

Far, by contrast, is a much glossier record, but it preserves many of the conceits (and I mean that, if not in the best possible way, then at least neutrally-shading-to-positively) that mark Soviet Kitsch - the odd phrasings, abrupt left-turns, flights of whimsy and soaring mini-epics prominent among them. I'm pretty addicted to the devastatingly pretty "Blue Lips", which is good in many of the same ways that songs like Radiohead's "Lucky" are; "Two Birds" and "Dance Anthem of the 80s" also particularly appeal.

Moon

An effective little sci-fi number, directed and co-written by Duncan Jones (aka David Bowie's son) with a strong vision and a good grasp of his craft. The look and feel are recognisably retro, and the two films that it most obviously recalls are 2001 and Solaris (though I only know the latter through Soderbergh's marvellous remake; that said, having experienced other Tarkovsky, it's easy to imagine, at least in general terms, how the original would have looked), but it's more modest than those antecedents, and the tension and suspense it generates, which is significant, is less metaphysical or existential than that which accompanies those others.

(w/ M)

Steven Erikson - Dust of Dreams

Erikson conceived of this as the first half of a two-volume novel that will conclude his epic Malazan Book of the Fallen series, and it shows. The (as ever) many strands making up its complex plot pretty much all run through the whole of the book, and all are left pretty much unresolved by the time the book comes to an end. There's a lot of scene-setting in Dust of Dreams, and relatively little significant character development or reconfiguration, with some of the treatments seeming rather superficial; of most interest are the coming to prominence of the K'Chain Che'Malle and the progression of Yan Tovis, Yedan Derryg and their Shake, although my favourite parts continue to tend to be those focusing on the Malazans, and the horrific trek of the Snake also sticks in the mind. Happily, Erikson turns these out very quickly; all the evidence is that the final book in the series, when it comes out, will bring events to an immensely satisfying close.

Robin Hood

The Disney version, with the animals - Michelle wanted to watch it. Charming!

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

I didn't really think that Parnassus would be any good - Tideland was one Gilliam film filled with spectacular images and suffering a severe lack of anything else too many, so far as my expectations went. Actually, though, it was a pleasant surprise - as visually spectacular as could be expected, and married to a decent story and some characters into whom one could actually get one's teeth (even if one of the characters is, of course, played by four different actors - Heath, Johnny, Jude and Colin). It doesn't hurt, of course, that it features Tom Waits as the Devil - as a matter of fact, it may be the least charismatic film performance I've ever seen from Waits, but given how high the man has set the bar in the past (see the Coppola Dracula and the Jarmusch pair Coffee and Cigarettes and Down By Law for evidence), that's hardly a fail.

(w/ M)

"The Dwelling" (ACCA)

Every time I visit ACCA, I'm struck anew by what a great space it is, and especially by how well it lends itself to rearrangement to suit individual exhibitions. This one, "The Dwelling", brings together a range of mostly video artists exploring ideas encapsulated in these comments in the exhibition guide:

The more common modern understanding of dwell is that of a safe place to remain; a pause, or a thought. It is a word that conjures up the idea of comfort, protection and rest. However, in ninth century old-English, the word dwell had a twistier meaning: it meant to lead astray, hinder and delay.

The works making up the exhibition are characterised by an interest in the symbolic meanings and resonances latent in 'dwellings' - houses and other buildings. Some engage the psychoanalytic dimensions of these issues quite overtly - "The likening" (David Noonan and Simon Trevaks), for example, in which a woman moves through an ominously gothic suburban home to encounter a seated figure at a kitchen table who turns out to be none other than herself - whereas others, like Eija-Liisa Ahtila's three-screened "Talo (The house)", in which inner and outer realms slip unavoidably into each other, dwell more in the border realm between 'psychology' and lived experience and phenomenology.

My favourites, I think, were the Ahtila video work, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's "Opera for a Small Room", which installs a small but life-size wooden hut in a darkened room with music, a thunderstorm and other incidental and not-so-incidental sound, and the 13 minute video of "House II: The Great Artesian Basin Pennsylvania" (David Haines and Joyce Hinterding), in which a great flow of water gushes ceaselessly from the openings of a gothic house, oddly compelling, both because and I think in spite of the incongruity, and putting me in mind of a Chris van Allsburg image brought to life.



(w/ M)

Whiskeytown - Pneumonia

Pneumonia has been around for a long time, but somehow I never got to it until quite recently. It's actually a really wonderful record in the alt-country vein, evidently driven by Ryan Adams, though his voice is sweetly counterpointed by bandmate Caitlin Cary's on several songs. Country, rock and pop run through it, blending into a sound that's now familiar but no less welcome for it - sometimes melancholy, sometimes more breezy, sometimes even rootsily rocking. My favourites are back to back about a third of the way in - the chiming "Don't Be Sad" followed by "Sit and Listen to the Rain" which, in its low-key way, makes me think of the sound that a stream makes, burbling quietly to itself as it runs.

The Box

A significant step up from the mess that was Southland Tales without being a patch on Donnie Darko, The Box confirms Richard Kelly as a genuinely visionary director, but unfortunately also suggests that Donnie Darko may have been a once-off in terms of quality. I don't have a problem with the design of The Box (so to speak), including its wilder twists and turns, but it ultimately doesn't satisfy because the pieces don't feel held together by any deeper thread; it reminded me of Shyamalan's lesser works, both in that respect and in the mood that it created (that latter being a strong point).

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

It was probably in my head because of the new book by the Artemis Fowl guy, but mainly I thought I'd rewatch it in order to see (in order) Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy and John Malkovich. As with most films, I suppose, not as fun the second time around - and, thinking back, I think I was pretty primed for it that previous time.

Ponyo & Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

An Astor double feature. Ponyo was undeniably cute, but there wasn't much to it; Nausicaa, however, was really good, filled with striking images and strong, clearly realised ideas (the emphasis on the sky throughout is a particular feature). I have some difficulty with certain anime conventions, particularly the tendency to insert humour in a way that can undermine the sweep of the whole, but those quibbles notwithstanding, Nausicaa worked for me - as a story, as a fantasy, and as an imaginative journey (all three being slightly different, in this context, at least).

(w/ M, and Kevin was also there with Serena and another of his younger relatives)

Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals

Another Ankh-Morpork novel, and one that's much in the vein of Pratchett's latter-day work - it's thoughtful, clever and amusing, but rarely laugh out loud funny (although it has its moments). I think that the wizards are increasingly my favourite characters; in the past, it's generally been (in no particular order) Vimes, Vetinari, Death and Susan.

"Apocalypse Bear Trilogy"

I saw this play described as suburban surrealism somewhere, and that's not a bad description, although it's possibly more programmatic than that description would suggest. Its deadpan weirdness is perhaps slightly overdone, and likewise its signposting of the (admittedly vague) Significance of the woods. At its heart are two imperfect, somewhat damaged figures and the apocalypse bear itself, and a set of symbolic encounters (real, imagine, external, internal) playing out themes of (among others - it was a couple of weeks ago now that I saw it) choice, loss, repetition and the mundane. The first Lally Katz that I've caught, and I saw hints of why she's so widely spoken about (and, in many circles, highly regarded), but I think that I'll reserve judgement for the time being...

(w/ Julian F)

Whip It

The kind of movie for which I am a sucker - smart, sassy, colourful and fun (and starring Ellen Page). Not a world-beater of a film, but one that I enjoyed watching heaps.

(w/ M)