Carson McCullers - The Member of the Wedding

Reading this book, I imagined I felt something like a series of detonations in my chest - it brings on a sense of being half-stifled by (and at once yearning towards) something inexpressible. There's something of it in Berenice's attempt to articulate the feeling that the darkening, late-afternoon conversation between her, Frankie and John Henry has been circling around on the day before the wedding:

'I think I have a vague idea what you were driving at,' she said. 'We all of us somehow caught. We born this way or that way and we don't know why. But we caught anyhow. I born Berenice. You born Frankie. John Henry born John Henry. And maybe we wants to widen and bust free. But no matter what we do we still caught. Me is me and you is you and he is he. We each one of us somehow caught all by ourself. Is that what you was trying to say?'

Someone, I can't remember who, once said that the mark of an artist - or a poet, perhaps - is the ability to take feelings and emotions experienced by others and then to intensify them, and that's what McCullers is about, both here and in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which made such an impression on me when I came across it a while back. In The Member of the Wedding, she does so through the confusedly urgent thoughts and sensations of Frankie Addams, almost thirteen years old, as summer fades into autumn in 1940s small town southern America and Frankie's brother's imminent wedding becomes the focus of her inchoate grasping for some clearer sense of herself and her relationship to the world; it's convincing, in all its heightenedness, because it's presented to us through the prism of early adolescence, that time when everything was urgent and important, when the world was a source of limitless potential and unclear hopes and at the same time of constant constraints, when things were continually just beyond expressing and understanding, and all things were always changing...the magic, though, is in the way it reminds us that that state, in fact, persists all through our lives, obscured and muffled though it becomes in the passage into adulthood...a book to take to heart.

(I wonder, incidentally, if this is where Frankie magazine, to which I took out a subscription a few months ago, gets its name from - apt, if so.)

China Miéville - The City & The City

A very different creature from Miéville's uniformly excellent Bas-Lag books (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council), The City & The City imagines a uniquely twinned pair of cities occupying an overlapping physical ('grosstopic') space whose inhabitants and governments are adept at 'unseeing' each other at every turn (all the while maintaining diplomatic relations with each other and the rest of the world, which is pointedly familiar and contemporary, marked by a stream of readily recognisably cultural references); the division is policed by a mysterious organisation called 'Breach', which swoops upon any egregious breachers in a matter of seconds, the unfortunate individuals never to be seen again.

The cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, seethe with revolutionary groups and ethnic tension, plots and counter-plots, political and commercial intrigue and criminal activity; into all this is dropped a mysterious murder which appears to involve breach, investigated in classic (if, in many respects, necessarily thoroughly unconventional) police procedural style by the Beszel inspector Tyador Borlu. It's a vivid read, bulging with ideas and images of transgression, division and uneasy melding, of place, law, society, language - not as entertaining or compelling as the Bas-Lag series, but still impressively, muscularly intelligent and intriguing.

Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day

Like Stevens, its central character and narrator, Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is impeccably controlled; unlike Stevens, it's perfectly aware of the import of what it's doing, and it's in the gap between the character's and the author's understandings of Stevens' situation, and of the parallel historical developments in 1930s through 50s England (most particularly, the decline of the British Empire and aristocracy amidst, and, it seems to be suggested, in no small part because of, the persistence of the old class system), that this very fine novel works.

In its carefully observed, often only obliquely suggested (because presented through the distorting filter of Stevens' own perspective) portrait of Stevens' life and the tragedy of his (non-)relationship with Miss Kenton (staged in a series of hazy recollections which have a nostalgic air despite the formal, distanced way in which the butler recounts them), the novel is genuinely moving and very sad, but what makes it great is the way that this serves as a microcosm for wider social trends in the society where the story is played out. The Remains of the Day is deceptive - easy to read and apparently simple in design though it is, it's a novel of great craft and insight...really good.

Lost season 5

All-right. Caught up to the current and final season - now trying very hard to avoid any hints or spoilers as the show plays out week by week on tv till I can get my hands on the whole lot. Quite a lot of loose ends get tied up in season 5, and the structure of the episodes (and of the season as a whole) increasingly reflects the narratival and thematic preoccupations of the show (most notably, at this point, the time travel thing).

"They made a statue of us" (2009 cd)

As usual, I put this cd together over late December '09, but this year I never got round to writing about the songs that were on it, so voila:

1. Mexico City – Jolie Holland
from The Living and the Dead (Anti; 2008) [also, here]

2. This Tornado Loves You – Neko Case
from Middle Cyclone (Anti; 2009)

3. Unless It’s Kicks – Okkervil River
from The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar; 2007)

4. French Navy – Camera Obscura
from My Maudlin Career (4AD; 2009)

5. Knotty Pine – Dirty Projectors & David Byrne
from Dark Was The Night (4AD; 2009)

6. With A Girl Like You – Dave Sitek
from Dark Was The Night (4AD; 2009)

7. Hey, Snow White – The New Pornographers
from Dark Was The Night (4AD; 2009)

8. It Must Come Through – Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea
from Hidden Hands (Sandcastle Music; 2009) [also, here and here]

9. The Bleeding Heart Show – The New Pornographers
from Twin Cinema (Matador; 2005)

10. Us – Regina Spektor
from (500) Days of Summer OST (Sire; 2009) / Soviet Kitsch (Sire; 2004)

11. Gimme Sympathy – Metric
from Fantasies (Metric Music International; 2009)

The first part of the year was all about Jolie Holland - I really fell hard for her over '08 and '09, the drowsily narcotic Springtime Can Kill You and brighter, more rock-tinted The Living and the Dead providing contrasting but complementary pleasures, tied together by Holland's delightful yawn of a voice - and I kept listening to her all the way through...it's sunk in, deep. "The Living and the Dead" kicks off the album of that name, and there's something at once golden and shadowy about it that makes me think of long summer days.

Okkervil River was the other artist that seemed to be with me from start to finish of '09, although more at intervals than in a constant flow; it was The Stage Names that I came to first, and as so often happens in these circumstances, it's remained my favourite. There are any number of brilliant, confounding songs on that record, but "Unless It's Kicks" is probably the most immediate and quite possibly the best, fervidly urgent and excitingly, propulsively direct.

Middle Cyclone came out near the start of the year, and I listened to it a fair bit for a couple of weeks and realised at the time that it was as good as anything that Case had done before (which is really saying something) and then kind of neglected it; coming back to the album later in the year, I realised how thoroughly it had infiltrated my musical landscape despite the relatively few spins I'd given it the first time round, and was reminded of how great it is; "This Tornado Loves You" is probably the closest thing to a representative song from the lp, and in any event it's probably my favourite.

And then there's Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career didn't quite match 2006's minor classic (and, for me, sentimental favourite) Let's Get Out Of This Country, but it was still really damn sweet, and seemed to be constantly playing in the car as M and I drove wherever we were going, all over Melbourne.

I noticed even at the time that the Dark Was The Night compilation felt like a soundtrack to a certain part of the year, somewhere around the middle; for that period, it seemed like it was playing everywhere I went - in bookstores and cafes, before gigs, at home of course...there are too many brilliant songs on it to need recounting, but "With A Girl Like You" and "Hey, Snow White" were the ones that I most found myself playing over and over, and "Knotty Pine" the one that I most strongly associated with the compilation itself.

A bit after that came Hidden Hands, and once that one took root, it was pretty much all I listened to for a period of several weeks. Simply put, it's a spectacularly good modern roots-rock album, Cloher selling surging, epic rockers, more mid-tempo folk and classic pop-influenced numbers and show-stopping emotional highs with equal conviction. I got totally stuck on "It Must Come Through" - it still kills me.

The tail end of the year was pretty much about the New Pornographers and Regina Spektor. I finally picked up Challengers and Twin Cinema, and discovered they're both marvellous; "The Bleeding Heart Show" is one of the most sheerly irresistible songs I've ever heard, especially its ending. And as to Regina, well, that was sparked off by (500) Days of Summer, and so it's not surprising that "Us" is the one that really resonated.

And then, at the very end, I stumbled across Metric's latest, and found that it was simply exactly the kind of thing I like - the shimmering "Gimme Sympathy" was the clear highlight, but the whole thing, vividly melodic and excitingly now, was like a rushing wave to carry me into the new year - it gave me a rush.

Patty Griffin - Downtown Church

On repeated listening, Children Running Through has proved nothing short of revelatory - it's an astonishing album, fiery, delicate and soulful, at once deeply rooted in americana traditions and unmistakeably modern, packed with great songs delivered unerringly by Griffin herself. Downtown Church, Griffin's follow up, has a much stronger gospel flavour to it than anything I've heard from her before, and while I don't (yet?) love it as much as its predecessor, there's much on it to take to heart; so far, it's a pair of collaborations with other favourites of mine ("Little Fire" w/ Emmylou Harris and "Coming Home To Me" w/ Julie Miller), and a lovely, quiet take on "All Creatures of Our God and King" that have most struck me.

Annie - Don't Stop & "All Night" ep

I was a bit of a fan of Anniemal, and in many ways Don't Stop is more of the same, though perhaps a bit more hyper and not as good; I haven't really gotten into it, though it has its moments (the highlights are generally slick dancefloor numbers like "Bad Times" and "Loco").

The accompanying "All Night" ep is noticeably stronger, filled with pop thrills and moments of genuine inventiveness and razor-sharp, indelible hooks, most particularly on the buzzing joy that is "I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me" and the Italo disco-touched "Anthonio".

The Apples in Stereo - #1 Hits Explosion

You'd think that I'd really like the Apples in Stereo, what with their melody-fixated, somewhat naive and significantly 60s-inspired in-search-of-the-perfect-pop-song approach and all that, but apparently not. This best-of is a pleasant enough listen, but it doesn't really inspire repeat listens, and nor do any of the songs particularly stand out for me.

Josh Rouse - The Best of the Rykodisc Years

Hasn't made much of an impression - vaguely coffee-coloured (also, cafe-ish) singer-songwriter stuff.

"Madagascar" (MTC)

Undistinguished monologue-driven set of interlinked character reflections structured around themes of absence and middle-class emptiness. Strong performances (Noni Hazlehurst, Asher Keddie and Nicholas Bell) and really actually a pretty good production all round, but the failure is in the writing of the play itself - it just felt so much like a play. At one point, I found myself remembering the Abbey Theatre's rather spectacular "Terminus" from last year (because of that other's similar 'three rotating monologues' structure), and the contrast couldn't be more marked - whereas "Terminus" was urgent, human, full of art and life, "Madagascar" is, while competent enough, essentially flat, uninspired, all of its style somehow empty. To me, it didn't feel as if the play had anything real to say.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co]

Alice in Wonderland

Disconnected thoughts on Alice in Wonderland:

1. Alice and Looking Glass are iconic books for me, deeply embedded in my imagination; Tim Burton is, of course, Tim Burton. The most immediately striking thing about this film is that it's just what one might expect a latter-day Burton Alice to be like.

2. Visually spectacular, of course, and I was totally fine with the reframing device. To me, though, the film suffered from its structuring around Alice's progression towards a climactic confrontation with the fearsome Jabberwocky - the books have an essentially a-narratival (that word is ugly no matter how I punctuate it) character which is integral to their effect, and something vital is lost in the film's focus on what is, let's face it, a fairly conventional story arc.

3. For some reason I found Anne Hathaway's White Queen very appealing. I suspect that this doesn't reflect well on me, though I can't quite say why.

4. That said, Alan Rickman pretty much steals the show as the voice of the Caterpillar. (Stephen Fry is also pretty great as the Cheshire Cat.)

5. Crispin Glover, by contrast, makes little impression. Goddamnit, he's almost normal in this movie! And Johnny Depp, while as watchable as always, seems in some measure to be reprising his role as Willy Wonka. Alice herself (Mia Wasikowska) holds her own, though.

6. A S Byatt's piece about the books in the Guardian is too long but quite charming in the way that it shows her totally geeking out about a pair of books that she obviously loves, and scattered with a fair number of genuine insights into what it is that makes Carroll's books so unique and great.

Azure Ray - Burn and Shiver

Wispily almost-not-there, Burn and Shiver isn't as gorgeous as their other two (the self-titled debut, and then more recently Hold on Love), but has more than enough hints of the Azure Ray magic to make it a keeper.

Julie Miller - Blue Pony

The woman in the record store where I bought this (somewhere on the main drag in Newtown, Sydney) told me that it was a beautiful album, and I can see where she was coming from, though other words spring more readily to mind - 'brilliant', for one. Well, maybe 'brilliant' is overstating it slightly, but Blue Pony really is a very good album, mixing country rockers like sparkling opener "A Kiss On The Lips" and the rousing "Dancing Girl" with slower-paced numbers like late album highlight "Face of Appalachia" and out and out country tunes, harmonies and all, like "Take Me Back". Through it all, Miller's extremely strong songwriting voice comes through, as does the distinctive sound she and artistical and marital partner Buddy Miller have hewed out for her, built around her girlish singing voice and the ringing guitars that run through the record.

Stephen Donaldson - "The Gap" series

Densely plotted, hectically fast-paced space opera inspired by Wagner's Ring cycle - this is about the third time I've been through it (the last time was a while back), and I'm still struck by Donaldson's ability to subject his characters and situations to such uncompromising stress and to work his way through their labyrinthine plotting against each other. This is really good story-telling, in a mode that seems distinctly Donaldson's own.

(An insightful and impressively detailed commentary is here.)

Lost season 4

Raced through this one, helped by its being a relatively short season. I realised that I haven't written much about my thoughts on the show, though the pace at which I'm chewing through it is testament to how much I'm enjoying it; it's not that I'm not finding it stimulating and thought-provoking, but rather that the number of possibilities and connections it throws up and suggests doesn't lend itself to neat summations. I do believe, though, that the show's writers will be able to tie it all up in some more or less meaningful way by the end of the current, sixth season, unlikely though that may seem given the number of apparent implausibilities that would need to be explained.

Spoon - Transference

Spoon's most recent four album run, culminating in probable career-to-date highlight Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (before it, Girls Can Tell, Kill The Moonlight and Gimme Fiction), is pretty much unimpeachable - four brilliant albums, all liberally studded with killer immediate standouts and slower-burning sleeper tracks.

Transference, though, I'm not yet so sure about. Every bar marks it as a Spoon album, from Britt Daniel's characteristic vocal tics to the taut, instantly identifiable grooves that form the heart of songs like "Is Love Forever?" and "I Saw The Light" to the piano/percussion lines that crop up throughout, especially on start-to-finish belter (and clearest moment of genius on the album) "Written in Reverse" - and it's good - but somehow it's not as sheerly exciting as their other recent work, not as utterly irresistible ... or at least not yet, cos I reckon that this one just may prove a grower with a vengeance, partly because it now seems much less disorienting and more loaded with pop thrills than it did on the first few spins, and partly because, well, it's a Spoon album, and it sounds like one, and that's a pretty clear indication of quality in itself.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Highly touted, but not my thing (I like it most when it starts sounding like some hyper-modern version of the Beach Boys). "My Girls" is a good song, and there are a few interesting ideas scattered throughout, but basically, meh.

True Blood: Music from and inspired by the HBO original series

The reason why I bought it: "The Golden State", a surging, driving-down-the-highway roots-rocker by a guy called 'John Doe', featuring Kathleen Edwards' always conviction-filled vocals on duet.

The pleasing curiosity: the Watson Twins doing a slowed-down (how else?) "Just Like Heaven".

The classics: "Lake Charles" (Lucinda), "Christine's Tune" (Flying Burrito Brothers).

The rest: an assortment of southern-flavoured rock, sometimes drawing more from the swamp and sometimes from the desert.

Overall, pretty listenable but not one that's really made for repeat spins as a whole. (I'm kind of saving the tv show itself for a future time when I really want to dive headlong into the kind of escapist, mood-drenched, hyper-melodramatic fantasy that I imagine it to be.)

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

Callahan's one of those figures who's always been there in the margins for me, first as Smog ("Cold Blooded Old Times"!) and more recently under his own name, but Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is the first of his albums that I've listened to properly - it was a gift from Wei some considerable time back. I like it - the songs are imbued with a gentle weariness that comes with the territory with this kind of male folk-influenced troubadour, but amidst the consistency of that mood, there are some genuine peaks. Possibly this is an odd comparison - certainly, it's a bit of a personal one - but at its best, this album reminds me of Pearl Jam's take on "Crazy Mary", which I've always loved.

Lost season 3

Further down the rabbit hole (or, as the finale title would have it, through the looking glass), as things get even weirder and take on an increasing David Lynch feel.

The Last Samurai

A rewatch - there's nothing groundbreaking about this film, but it's pretty good at what it does.

Sunshine Cleaning

An indie-hued comedy with heart. Sunshine Cleaning is the kind of film I like, and I do like it well enough, but it doesn't entirely work - the pieces don't quite knit.