Joseph Kosuth - "(Waiting for -) Texts for Nothing" Samuel Beckett, in play (ACCA) / The End @ Malthouse / "The End" (Beckett)

So I arrived at the Malthouse/ACCA precinct lateish afternoon, planning to see the Kosuth first; the main event was "(Waiting for -) Texts for Nothing" itself, an installation of neon white Beckettian (including Godot) words running high on the walls on the inside of a large dark room, and immersive, the kind of installation that you think about while experiencing, but whose effect is much more in the way that it sinks in, subtly, at the time and afterwards as it stays with you.

After that, picked up tickets for The End (and also Moth and A Golem Story) and then went outside, planning to maybe start a letter I've been meaning to write and also do some reading for uni - only to come across Kim at one of the outdoor tables, waiting for a photo shoot of some kind (I'm hazy on the details). So we shot the breeze for a while, and after a bit, the photographer and other subject came by, they wandered off, I read for a bit, and then Sunny arrived, and then Trang and a friend of Sunny's, Caroline, then Kai and Neil (we'd had dinner in the meantime).

In due course, the call came and we filed into the Beckett Theatre (incidentally, and curiously/coincidentally, not named after Samuel B). Completely bare stage - plain black backdrop. Performance started unassumingly and unannounced - Robert Menzies entering through an unobtrusive door in the black backdrop, moving to the centre of the stage, and then spending an age peering at his surrounds, before beginning to speak, the beginning of a remarkable performance, a 70 minute-ish monologue, a ruined tramp, recounting the some of the last days of his degraded existence in language everyday, profane and occasionally lyrical and finally ending on a note of something else...

Afterwards, I said that I wanted to read it, and Sunny told me that it wasn't in fact a play at all, but rather a novella - and today I remembered that I actually own a book purporting to compile the complete short prose of Beckett (a gift from a while back), and turns out that that indeed includes "The End". So I did read it, this afternoon, and it's given me a renewed appreciation for the craft of the stage production, as well as for Beckett himself...the word 'genius' gets bandied about, but surely he must qualify.

First Aid Kit - The Big Black & The Blue

If you crossed the Indigo Girls with Joanna Newsom and then made them Swedish, you might end up with something like First Aid Kit. The 'Swedish' element isn't merely a detail - for whatever reason, a lot of pop (or, in this case, folk) singers coming out of the country seem to share a certain timbre and enunciation (and, of course, accent) - but the main musical style from which they draw is squarely American, namely the folk/mountain tradition that still holds such fascination for our (or at least my) modern ears, and they do it well, too.

Robyn - Body Talk lp

Context can make all the difference. This record collects songs from the two 'Body Talk' eps and adds some new ones; when I listened to the first of those eps last year, my main response was disappointment, and yet most of the songs have made their way on to this lp, where they (mostly) sound suddenly fresh and exciting, just like her last full-length. It goes one-two-three - "Fembot" opening and serving as mission statement, "Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do" buzzing and building, and then "Dancing on My Own", whose greatness I somehow completely missed on the first pass. And then a run of five more of equal quality - "Time Machine" is probably my favourite of those - before the rest, which is a bit more hit and miss but still good. My faith is restored!

School of Seven Bells - Disconnect From Desire

A step up from the itself quite charming Alpinisms, Disconnect From Desire moves further in the shimmery-droney anthemic pop direction of the best moments from their debut - it feels more fully formed, as if the band's ideas have coalesced, and it's a better record for it. Listening to it, I feel a bit of a drumming in my chest and a suggestion of lightness in my head - a sign of good pop music.

Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud - A Life on Paper: Stories

A collection of short stories from across this French fabulist's more than thirty year career, A Life on Paper reminds me a bit of Borges, a bit of Calvino, a bit of Kafka, and a bit of John Collier; Chateaureynaud shares with all of them the ability to take the everyday - the ordinary - and introduce an element of the strange to disconcerting effect. The stories are short and have a fable-like air, an effect arising as much from the elegant, epigrammatic style of the prose as from the stories' subjects, which range from a man who one day finds the word 'mortal' ineradicably emblazoned on his chest, to an antiques broker with a supernatural ability to source anything his dealer's clients can conceive of, to a small island community where sirens have survived to modern times, to a man who stumbles across a museum dedicated to entirely to him and his life. And there's a strong metafictional streak running through, too (just like in the work of seemingly every other French writer ever)...there's much to like here.

Martha Wainwright - I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too

There's something very seductive about Martha Wainwright's singing - the rough edges are attractive, alluring, as is the intelligence and emotional openness and even rawness (or at least the appearance of such emotional disclosure). I've kept listening to her first album - it's turned out to be a grower - and this one is also good, though not yet as addictive. It feels like there's more going on on I Know You're Married..., and perhaps the pop song-craft doesn't come through as clearly - but maybe this is another that I need to live with for a while.

Predators

Predators opens with a man in free fall, his parachute opening just in time to save him from a messy landing, and continues in a similarly frenetic vein thereafter. The man is Adrien Brody, convincing (against the odds) as an amoral mercenary - and he quickly links up with the sorts of variations on the 'human predator' type you might expect in a movie like this (a Chechnyan soldier, a member of the yakuza, an Sierra Leone death squad-er, Danny Trejo, etc) as they band together in an effort to survive the game preserve into which they've been dropped, hunted by Predators. I have a big soft spot for the original Predator, and this one's not a million miles from it - not exactly high art, but it delivers.

Date Night

It's not that Date Night is disappointing, exactly - it's perfectly watchable, and even has a few laugh out loud moments - but it could have been so much better...Steve Carell I don't have any strong feelings about, but with Tina Fey alongside him, Mark Wahlberg and William Fichtner to play with, an extended cameo from James Franco and Mila Kunis (both of whom have caught my eye lately), and an early appearance by Mark Ruffalo to boot, the film has comedic talent to burn. But it never quite gels, caught perhaps between its zanier impulses and the desire to remain grounded in an emotionally real context involving its two central 'boring marrieds'.

Blonde Redhead - Penny Sparkle

When I first listened to this last year, it seemed a bit indistinct, a bit too pretty and insubstantial. But having returned to it over the last few weeks, I've realised that for all of its smoothness (a process that's been on at least since 23, and probably earlier) and airiness, the fraughtness and jagged edges that, in combination with the band's more dazzling pop impulses, have always been crucial to their genius, are still there, just a bit more subterranean - and that Penny Sparkle is in fact very good, insistent, sensuous, lingering.

Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks

"She Said" caught my ear on the radio. I though it was a duet - one guy singing soul, and another rapping the alternate stanzas, but it turns out they're one and the same person, recording as 'Plan B', and on repeat listens the song stands up very well, coming on like a new "Billie Jean".

Strickland Banks is essentially a modern soul/r&b record with hip-hop/rap elements, but it's inspired by a range of musical streams from the 50s and 60s, even classic rock & roll at times - it makes for engaging listening.

Easy A

Knowing, a bit snarky, fun.

Amaya Laucirica - Early Summer

There's something of the woozy, late night country of bands like Mazzy Star and the Cowboy Junkies to Early Summer, including hints of the Velvet Underground at their gentlest, along with pronounced but integrated folk and psychedelic threads; there's a lot to like on it, but the clear highlight is the airily widescreen "This World Can Make You Happy", on which Laucirica sounds rather like Isabel Monteiro (frontwoman for the sadly missed Drugstore - wikipedia tells me they're still alive, but it's been a long time between drinks...but I digress). Also very sweet - "Most Times I Feel Alright", "When I Think Of All The Places", "Sun On My Face".

Au revoir les enfants

I wasn't sure I'd find anything in this to draw me, but I did, the film's naturalism working well with its more subtle tones of elegy and regret. Also - and this is very much a personal dimension - it invoked two novels that I always strongly associate with French literature and art generally, The Counterfeiters with its schoolboys behaving badly, and The Red and the Black via the central character's name, Julien.

Jenny and Johnny @ East Brunswick Club, Thursday 10 February

Similar set to the one they played at Laneway (understandable given that they only have one record to draw on, plus Lewis' solo back catalogue), with a few added - including a rousing version of "Carpetbaggers" and a very stripped back and slowed down "Silver Lining" (it's obvious that Lewis has thoroughly left her old band behind - it was the only Rilo Kiley song they played, and as it was she forgot the words). Rilo Kiley are actually quite a big band for me, and I've followed Jenny Lewis since because she really is a star; there was nothing here to set my world alight, but it was a relaxed, enjoyable gig, played in hot, sticky conditions at the East Brunswick, with the added novelty of there seemingly being some kind of back stage issues, leading to the band taking and leaving the stage through the crowd, along the near wall.

(w/ Hayley and Meribah)

Laneway Festival, Saturday 5 February

Hadn't been to a Laneway for a few years, but was lured back by the solid line up and positive buzz about last year's, at the new venue at Footscray. Heavy rain was forecast, and we arrived beneath grey skies, expecting at any minute to be drenched, just in time for Stornoway, a bunch of Oxonians purveying bouncing, folksy, rather twee guitar-pop who'd been highly recommended by Penny, and they were good - both music and band charming and charismatic in a slightly dorky way.

Following them were Jenny and Johnny, who were nice, taking the stage in matching sunglasses (and rounded out to a four piece by a drummer and another guitarist - Jenny played bass) and selling the songs from I'm Having Fun Now in style. Unsurprisingly, the catchier, rockier numbers tended to come to the fore ("Committed", "My Pet Snakes", "Big Wave"), but they brought the other cuts out well too - and absolutely killed with the epic version of Acid Tongue's "The Last Messiah" that closed the set.

Next up (all of this was on the same stage) was Beach House, whose woodsy, sometimes clangorous dream-pop actually sounded really good in a live setting - I haven't really listened to them before, but this set made me think I should check them out more. (And the crowd was super into them.)

We were meant to be seeing Blonde Redhead next, but an on the day reschedule led to us catching Local Natives instead. They were pretty good, though I suspect that the festival setting flattened out some aspects of their sound that might have distinguished them more on record, most notably the harmonising - but they were tight, loud and anthemic, so not too bad at all.

After that, we intended to check out Yeasayer but went to the wrong stage and found ourselves at Les Savy Fav, which was just as much crazy as the last couple of times I incidentally saw them (once at an earlier laneway festival, and the other time as part of a double header with Pretty Girls Make Graves), complete with fence climb, river swim, river-water-drink-from-shoe, wriggle-into-unsuspecting-audience-member's-tee-shirt (said tee still occupied by audience member), marauding runs through centre of crowd, etc.

...and then, finally, Blonde Redhead, having picked them over Deerhunter, and unfortunately they were only so-so - solid enough, but there wasn't much engagement from the crowd, and when it was over, I had a definite 'was that it?' feeling...well, it happens sometimes.

Anyway, by that point, we weren't super excited about any of the closers (Cut Copy, Gotye, !!!), so we left and headed out in search of a cold drink, which brought us to the Footscray Hotel, quiet and patronised only by a handful of locals when we arrived, but soon (and amusingly) completely overrun by other festival-goers who'd had the same idea as us.

(w/ Meribah)

> 2005
> 2006
> 2007

Stephen R Donaldson - Against All Things Ending

Against All Things Ending takes a long time to get going - it's something like 70 pages in before anything even happens, the intervening time having all been taken up by the characters talking to each other and thinking about things...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, for the genius of these books has always been the way that they've dramatised both the interior and the external journeys and quests of their central protagonists, Thomas Covenant and, as the series have gone on, Linden Avery. I think that the first and second chronicles are a notch above these 'last chronicles', but the quality has only slipped a bit, and this is still fantasy well worth reading.

Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics

A collection of pieces which are really more imaginative excursions than short stories, for all that they do have identifiable protagonists and at least the outlines of narratives, and as such the obvious comparison is Invisible Cities. And indeed, the two books turn out to have a lot more in common than their superficially different subject-matters initially suggest (a series of descriptions of fabulous cities visited by Marco Polo, framed by longer philosophical conversations between the Venetian explorer and the emperor Kublai Khan, versus Qfwq's by turns breathless and oddly matter of fact accounts of crucial moments in cosmic 'history').

Ultimately, I think, Cosmicomics is principally concerned with the creative and productive forces that, for Calvino, drive Everything; the literary device of representing these both literally and anthropomorphically functions on at least two levels, one purely metaphorical (and playful), the other suggesting more profoundly that we can only make sense of such cosmic happenings (or circumstances) by way of metaphor (something like, 'if no one can imagine the big bang, did it really happen - and what does it mean to say that we can imagine it?')...and as such, it's fundamentally concerned with the theatre of the imagination, and the implications of what transpires there. For example, this, which closes "The Spiral", the final piece in the collection:

And at the bottom of each of those eyes I lived, or rather another me lived, one of the images of me, and it encountered the image of her, the most faithful image of her, in that beyond which opens up, past the sem-liquid sphere of the irises, in the darkness of the pupils, the mirrored hall of the retinas, in our true element which extends without shores, without boundaries.

If that is what Calvino's about here (and it's not clear that it is), then no wonder that he only partly succeeds. I found Cosmicomics interesting to read, but it doesn't approach the limpid perfection of Invisible Cities - it may be missing the point to insist on the book having a point, but nonetheless I felt it lacked a clarity of focus, something to raise it above the level of a diverting, even often entertaining, play of ideas to being something more.

(Incidentally, book club rode again with this one after a long hiatus - a hot day upstairs in AB's current North Carlton apartment, WL joining us by skype from the UK.)

True Grit

So the Coen brothers do a western, Jeff Bridges at its centre, and turns out it's darn good. In many respects, it's quite a straight western, really, but there's certainly something of a Coen bros flavour to it, most notably in the dialogue but also a bit in how it's shot, and in the sly humour and mingling of tones/registers (funny how those ideas - phrases - both have a musical connotation (origin?), though I use them here in an emotional or 'genre-y' sense). V. enjoyable.

(w/ Andreas)

"Oh How They Come and Go"

A bit of a David 'best of' in some ways - it's a mix cd from him, from several months back - with tracks from Spoon, the Flaming Lips, Thom Yorke, Julian Casablancas, "River Man", "I See A Darkness" (the Johnny Cash version) and others. I hadn't heard either the Spoon or Yorke songs ("Tear Me Down", which is kind of Television-y and very Spoon, and "Hearing Damage", respectively). Best, for mine, is "Hideaway" by Karen O and the Kids (off the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack), saved for last, which, slow and end-of-the-worldly, sounds like it was recorded by some lost Velvet Underground-associated chanteuse some time in the 60s, equal parts Nico and Nancy Sinatra.