"From the sky we look so organised and brave": Jason Isbell - Southeastern

Generally speaking, sensitive singer-songwriter guys aren't really my thing these days, but Jason Isbell's Southeastern has cracked that surface and taken hold of me a bit, its mix of alt-country balladeering, laments and rockier moments nicely hitting the spot.

Isbell sings in a voice that's rich and warm while also carrying a pleasing scratchiness that complements his carefully observed vignettes, and there's a nice sense of 'just-enoughness' to the arrangements; I particularly like the fiddle wherever it appears. I wouldn't say I have a favourite, but I do like "Cover Me Up" and "Travelling Alone" (the fiddle's particularly effective on this one, providing mournful folky accents), the anthemic (and electric-guitars-out) "Flying Over Water" and slow-burn mid-tempo piece "Songs That She Sang In The Shower" (actually maybe that one's my favourite ... and the songs that she sang in the shower all ring in my ear / Like Wish You Were Here / How I wish you were here ... ).

R A W Rhodes and Anne Tiernan - The Gatekeepers: Lessons from Prime Ministers' Chiefs of Staff

An interesting read, drawing and quoting heavily from roundtable discussions held by the authors with eleven chiefs of staff going back to Fraser's administration. Struck me as quite valuable in shedding light on an important position about which probably relatively little is publicly known, primarily in the way that it organises and sets out the various roles and functions of the office; if various media commentary is anything to go by, one suspects that matters of political management, and particularly in relation to the ministry and party, may be more prominent in practice than their fairly brief treatment in this account would suggest (unsurprising if so, as those are the elements that former chiefs of staff are probably least likely to highlight and speak candidly about), and of course the book tends to emphasise the similarities (and certain historical trends) more than the significant differences that would surely exist for each individual PM-CoS relationship.

(also)

Community season 4

Another time round with season 4. Yep, it's moderately good, certainly nowhere near the level of the first three, too beholden to the 'Community formula', and at once too sentimental and not sufficiently fleshed-out. On the upside, though, it has Sophie B Hawkins.

Rebecca Lee - Bobcat and other stories

Two mentions in less than a week - brought up by one of the new book club members, one Ariella, and also Believer's book award for last year - and then happening across it while browsing in a bookstore and opening to this passage -

Truthfully, I was not pleased with his book. I had just finished reading it for the first time, in galleys, and within the first forty pages, the protagonist had slept with three women, none of whom even remotely resembled me ...

-  was enough for me, and I'm glad it was because this is an exceptional collection, destabilising, insightful and human.

The titular story is a particular highlight - all it is, is a dinner party description, and yet I can't remember the last time I read anything so liberally sprinkled with exquisite little lines and images, at once direct and mysterious. And "Fialta", a poetic and deeply satisfying boy meets girl, also stood out. For all of them, though, the meanings of the stories are seemingly all there for the grasping, and yet they defy any easy explication - the apparently pellucid prose and clearly signposted narrative beats in fact cover for deeper structuring lacunae and a logic which has more in common with poetry or perhaps the unconscious than with most literature, and which turn out to be just as much what the stories are 'about' as their surface lines, and as a whole continuing to work on me in the days since I finished them. 

The Both - The Both

Ted Leo I've heard two songs from that I can think of ("Me and Mia" and "Bomb Repeat Bomb") and both are good but Aimee Mann is simply one of the very biggest objects in my musical firmament, and that inevitably shapes how I hear this collab between the two; also, the fact that I have basically a pavlovian response to Mann's voice anywhere it shows up.

So what that means is that, to me, The Both pretty much sounds like a somewhat more crisply rocky Aimee Mann record with some dude doing a fair bit of the singing and the addition of plenty of brightly crunching electric guitars (Bachelor No 2), which turns out to be no bad thing. Upbeat back-and-forth power-pop cuts like "Milwaukee" and "Volunteers of America" grab the attention, broody mid-tempo numbers like "No Sir" are welcome in their familiarity, and in "Hummingbird" there's the quiet, prettily sad tune without which no Mann record is complete - plus there are jauntier moments like "Pay For It" and "Bedtime Stories" which presumably reflect the Leo influence and carry it off well too.

How I Met Your Mother seasons 1-8

31/5/14

I mentioned some of the ways in which HIMYM has acquired personal meaning for me when writing about its seventh season last year:

When I started watching HIMYM ... it resonated - there was, and is, a dual, related appeal in its depiction of this certain time of life, in being able to both identify with it and enjoy what is, given its framing premise (ie the title!), the promise of a happy ending, however inevitably digressively arrived at. ... And in terms of (relevant) autobiographical note, the show actually did play some part in shaping my ideas of modern romance at the time ...

Out in the ether, it's all over now - season 9 is done, and so's the show...in the more real sense, for me, it's still on hold, suspended with the final shot reveal of the mother at the end of season 8. But I thought it would be nice to watch the whole lot through again, in anticipation of that final season and ending.

(Also from the first time through: 1-5, 6.)

So, season 1. A lot of markers for what's to come are laid down here, and those five characters - Ted, Robin, Barney, Lily, Marshall - are satisfyingly recognisable from the get-go, as are (with the benefit of still-incomplete hindsight) the elements in their personalities, relationships and back-stories that will drive a lot of what comes over the next several years.

It starts in 2005; Ted turns 28 during the season, making him I guess about five or six years older than me; at this point, while he's of course already hopelessly romantic, single-ness is his default setting. The long-running saga with Robin kicks off and undergoes plenty of turns even during this first season (I don't have a Robin in my life, but that doesn't mean I don't empathise with the pang of the situation); and then there's sentimental favourite Victoria, who deserves better than to just be collateral damage to that particular mess. And - we get Ted's list of requirements for 'the one'...including that she play bass.

3/6/14

Season 1 ended with Ted and Robin getting together and Lily leaving Marshall for San Francisco; the arc of season 2 is basically the playing out and reversal of those two strands, finishing with Ted and Robin's split, unveiled (ha ha) at Lily and Marshall's wedding. And, in between, we get more colouring in of Barney's history as well as evidence of his redeeming qualities.

10/6/14

And then in season 3 we meet Stella; indeed, the season ends on Ted's proposal. I guess, given the foreshadowing that the show's already thrown in by this point, that the writers already knew at least the outlines of how that was going to end; also during this season, if it wasn't already strongly enough implied previously, it's made explicit that Robin isn't going to be the mother - and there's more on the slow-burn lead-up to her and Barney.

Also striking over the course of season 3 are several elements that I've noticed on previous watches: the (large) extent to which its logic is fundamentally reassuring in the way that it moves inevitably - if peregrinatorily - towards happy endings for all concerned (important not only because we of course come to care for the characters, but also because we - okay, I - identify with them, so that if things end well for them, well, so should they for us! Reinforced not only by the very title of the show and its framing narratorial device but also by the occasional flash-forward showing the characters several years on and still fundamentally themselves); the close attention to, and signposting of, specific dates and times ("in the spring of 2008..." etc); and the playing with narrative, story-telling and perspective (which is, of course, inherent in the structure and conceit of the show as a whole).

16/6/14

The Stella arc that plays out over season 4 highlights many of the show's strengths. There's the wedding episode early in the season - a set piece that gets the balance right between amusing and serious (zanier and more colourful than real life, though only just - and also emotionally poignant, not least through Ted and Robin's exchanges), it also advances the overall story and our understanding of all the main characters and their relationships with each other. There's the nuanced treatment of adult relationships and feelings where the heart is involved, in all of its ambiguity and confusion. There's the unabashed romantic-ness - Stella leaves Ted at the altar because of happenstance, because their rush to marriage had been at least in part from being in love with the idea of each other and happily ever after rather than being entirely about the person themselves ... but also because Tony is 'the one'.

And there's the kindness of its worldview and fundamental optimism - given how much the show positions us to identify with Ted, Stella could easily have ended up an unsympathetic character, and the episode showing how Ted intends to confront her at her home and the choice he actually makes could have exacerbated that. But instead, to round out her story, the show has them later run into each other on the street, leading to their lovely, quiet conversation, side by side in the car - "she's getting here as fast as she can, Ted" ... and the narration reassures us that this, too, is a link in the chain that will finally lead to Ted meeting the one for him.

Meanwhile, Barney and Robin, Marshall and Lily - the different parts of their lives (and of Ted's, beyond his romantic quest - architect career taking more of a centre stage) all continue to be filled in...with a decent quota of laughs scattered throughout too.

25/6/14

Season 5: Barney and Robin get together and then break up; Lily and Marshall keep moving forward; Ted continues his romantic and professional journey (feelings for Robin still simmering); the Maggie episode ('The Window') feels like a small gift, giving us a sweetly romantic capsule 'girl and boy next door' that intersects with the main story and serves as a reminder of the many beyond it.

29/6/14

Maybe part of the reason why it feels like things don't move forward that much during season 6 is the way that it's bookended - in its first episode we learn that Ted will meet the mother at a wedding, and in its last we see that the wedding is Barney's.

In between, Zoey and the Captain enter Ted's life and while both Zoey and her storyline veer ever so slightly towards the cartoonish, that tendency is offset by the real feeling and emotion that the show's able to elicit from the episode where she and Ted get together, as well as (to a lesser extent) their later breakup - the former sequenced to arrive very close to Marshall's father's death, which also packs an emotional punch. (One of the less obvious, but important, elements of the show is that it's a solid ensemble cast, all of whom can hold their own when required to deliver important and believable moments.)

There's also Barney and his father, and his first attempt at Nora - both important parts of his growing up. And then, in that same final episode, he runs into her again, ending on a hopeful note...on which two things: first, the show does rely quite a bit on coincidental crossings of paths to bring or re-bring characters together (another example in this season is Cindy's reappearance - her roommate will later prove to be the mother), which I don't have any difficulty in assimilating into the imagined city of NYC that I carry around even independently of HIMYM; and second, it's a real old finale of a closing episode, from Barney and Nora (and Robin's expression in the background), to Lily's pregnancy, the closing of the Zoey arc and the (related) metaphor as the Arcadian comes down so that Ted can create something new.

3/7/14

Music isn't generally particularly a feature of this show - a well placed burst of Regina Spektor's "Better" and another of Radiohead's "(Nice Dream)" in earlier seasons notwithstanding - but there is one standout use in season 7 and, appropriately, it's via foreshadowing, in the episode early in the season where the key riff appears and recurs throughout before the Kinks' "Victoria" finally bursts into full voice late in the ep as the character herself reappears.

What follows is another season continuing the developments of the sixth - including Barney's growing maturity and his and Robin's deeper feelings for each other (both evidenced in the way things end with Nora as well as how Robin supports him in getting together with Quinn) and the birth of Lily and Marshall's child - and as I noticed on first watch through, closing off several of what would otherwise be loose ends in Ted's story.

There's also a bit of playing with the format, most notably Robin talking to her future 'children' - a good example of the pathos that the show is able to extract from its recurring device of showing events before revealing that they're only being imagined by a character...which also aligns with the show's focus on the importance of the perspective from which stories are told.

... and then a flurry at the end, with Barney and Quinn getting engaged, and then Victoria's re-reappearance, and the further reveal that the bride at Barney's wedding, signalled in season 6, is Robin.

9/7/14

It's also worth mentioning how very relatable these characters are. A large part of the show's appeal - and this is obviously implicit in what I've been thinking and saying about the extent to which it's resonated and to which I've identified with its situations and characters - is in how recognisable its characters' personalities and lifestyles are, and how referable to my own and those of people I know, yes idealised of course, but that's part of the effect.

By season 8 (as an aside, music seems to be relatively more prominently and better used throughout this season, starting with "The Funeral" crashing through the closing stages of its opening episode), much growing up has been done by all, and by and large it's seemed organic and through experience as much as reflection - ie much the way it works in real life. There's a definite sense of things being wrapped up - even Jayma Mays' coat check girl, from right back in season 1, is brought back to be taken off the table (along, more substantially, with Victoria) ... and by season's end we know what the mother looks like, and have a fair idea about where things are going to land with the other four main characters. So the question really becomes: will the final season be worth the wait, after eight years' worth of build-up? With the frankly surprising extent to which I've found myself invested in this show, it turns out to be a large question, with lots of layers.

Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow

In Isaiah Berlin's typology, I think I've leant more towards the hedgehog for most of my life, though with  increased fox-like tendencies over the last few years - so, generally, it's been big ideas with the potential to seemingly explain everything that have tended to really capture my attention. First, there was Sartre's take on existentialism, his articulation of the underlying knot of freedom, responsibility, authenticity and angst resonating as both description and design for life. Then at uni came postmodernism and deconstruction, meanings I pursued through a series of texts, seminars etc with a zeal only sharpened by the elusive, riddling nature of the insights in play (some of my enduring memories of university involve puzzling over and over through various passages of Derrida). And finally, overlapping and circling back, the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger and Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, which - individually and collectively - underlaid all of those others.

(I've put the political to one side here, for a couple of reasons. Those views were developing along related, but in some respects fairly separate tracks, from what felt at the time like more personal and specifically moral - as opposed to intellectual - values.)

Anyway, more recently, for a while now I've been increasingly drawn to some contemporary streams that have in common an emphasis on the cognitive biases and other factors limiting human rationality, much of it wrapped up under the behavioural economics rubric. A different kind of 'big idea' from those that preoccupied me through, I guess, my late teens and then most of my twenties - indeed, maybe a set of ideas that go better with a fox-like outlook (whereas I guess that capital-letter Phenomenology, Existentialism and Postmodernism present more as hedgehog systems, subject (ha) to caveats about postmodernism, hedgehog-fox distinction, and the possibility of a metaphysics of absence) - but what behavioural economics has in common with those others is an applicability to both a wider social context and individual choices, actions and experience, an argument about how the two spheres are inherently connected, and (for me) the promise, if realised, of better ways of understanding and being, both for myself and much more widely.

One consequence of all this for my reading of Thinking, Fast and Slow - I've been through it twice now over the last few months or so - is that much of it was already familiar, and more than that, that I'd already accepted many of its premises; part of the field's appeal for me is that its picture of the ways that individuals actually make decisions, systematic and predictable biases and all, is intuitively plausible, and certainly more so than the rational actor of traditional economics (in the language of behavioural economics, its actors are Humans rather than Econs). Plus, much of the empirical basis for the book's analysis has now been in wide circulation for some time now, to the extent that much of it has now assumed the status of common sense, at least in some circles - the notion of confirmation bias comes to mind.

So for me, the real value of the book came from four elements. First, the systematic way that it lays out this familiar terrain of heuristics, biases and other departures from rational decision-making models and assumptions and shows how the framework - story - provided by Kahneman's 'two systems' account of the mind is able to provide a meta-explanation (to a certain extent) of those interesting observations and findings. Second, its treatment of prospect theory, which I hadn't previously grappled with properly, and again in a wider context that helps to make sense of familiar elements like loss aversion, diminishing sensitivity to gains and losses, and endowment and other related effects. Third, the distinction between the experiencing and the remembering selves and hints of what this might mean in seeking to design societies that maximise their members' wellbeing. And fourth, the sheer conceptual richness of the whole, in bringing together all of these ideas and coining some new ones (WYSIATI). A book, I imagine, that I'll return to in future, for particular sections or in full - and with interest to see what else it leads to.

"The Good Person of Szechuan" (Malthouse)

Brecht makes a natural subject for contemporary treatment, and particularly in the Malthouse house style, given his emphasis on stylising and highlighting the artificial nature of his plays (the alienating principle underlying his theatrical philosophy); this production runs with that but doesn't quite land it despite some committed performances, most enjoyably from the three gods who set events in motion with their gift to Shen Te, the so-called 'good person' who offers them a bed to stay (one of whom, Emily Milledge, I saw in Frankenstein a few months back, where she also stood out).

So anyway overall, while I thought it was a bit of a hot mess, I enjoyed the play, and it had both an overall design and moments showing flashes of brilliance - and after all, getting the tonal balance right between evoking the nightmarish imagined Szechuan and human society and characters on the one hand, and deliberately throwing the audience out of its involvement to force us to think about the structural socio-political dimensions being depicted on the other, is a tricky pitch.

(w/ Erandathie and Jon, and also Cass arriving late and stuck up back)

Community season 4

Here's a small but indicative example of how Community, seasons 1 to 3, has made my life better: at an after-work drinks a few months ago, when in passing I used the phrase 'the darkest timeline', a colleague picked up the reference - which made me both feel that small warm glow of a shared connection with her and, later as I was walking home, came back into my mind and reminded me of the odd (and, in the particular case of Community, apt) way that tv show characters can, in some respects, come to feel like friends.

Season 4 isn't as good - it doesn't have the freewheeling inventiveness of the three that came before it, feeling more like it's re-treading familiar ground (in terms of situation, characters and devices) or its deftness in at once subverting and using our expectations of the form, which may have something to do with the inevitable difficulties of sustaining such a flow and perhaps more to do with show creator Dan Harmon's absence from the season. Still, even as an approximation of the magic of the first three seasons, it ain't too bad either.

Gladiator

Gladiator and Braveheart have long been the two against which I've benchmarked all other epic films (plus, nowadays, the three Lord of the Rings films) - the experience that they provided on first and subsequent viewings being exactly the kind that I look for in the genre. (I don't know whether it's coincidence or dramatic necessity that both end with the deaths of the main protagonist - no doubt along with plenty of other common story beats and structural elements.) I don't know how many times I've watched it; it remains good.

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City

Tail end of 2013, I noticed this album topping both popmatters' and pitchfork's lists of the best albums of the year - intriguing, after a pair of nice but not, for mine, outstanding predecessors in Vampire Weekend and Contra. But this is one that I'm out of step with the critics on - to my ears, Modern Vampires is perfectly pleasant listening (the stand out is "Steps") but not a lot more.

First Aid Kit - Stay Gold

These days I'm pretty bad about listening to albums all the way through - it's all too tempting to skip through after a first couple of listens, just listening to the songs that've caught my ear rather than absorbing records as a whole. So what that means, though, is that I have to particularly like a new album for it to induce me to repeatedly listen to it in toto - which is just what Stay Gold has done.

It's not really a surprise, I guess, seeing as The Big Black & The Blue and The Lion's Roar were both excellent; if it lacks any individual moments as immediately utterly swoon-worthy as "Emmylou" or "To A Poet", it's maybe a touch overall more consistent. Thoughts and things I especially like:

• Three strong songs straight out of the blocks: "My Silver Lining", "Master Pretender", "Stay Gold", all of which you like straight away and only realise on repeated listens how actually interesting they are.
• "Cedar Lane" is as good as any country ballad recorded this side of the year 2000.
• The way the "we" is drawn out on "Shattered & Hollow" makes me think of Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", and once that got in my head, the whole thing reminded me, in a vague, shadowy way of that other.
• I've drawn comparisons between First Aid Kit and Neko Case before; the surging "The Bell" again evokes the Canadian redhead.
• There's got to be a reason why the figure (trope) of the small town waitress - generally with some combination of a Past, a rich inner life or both - is such a popular one...I guess it's an archetype, or metaphor, that people can identify with. Anyhow, rarely can it have been set to such a triumphant musical backdrop as here ("Waitress Song").
• And just generally, the way that the underlying 'folk-ness' of their sound so clearly comes through, even if all embroidered and prettied up with electric instruments, country urges, little twinkling details and everything else.

* * *

As an aside, albums that I've listened to all the way through at least 10 times since I got itunes, according to itunes (number of times in brackets):

The xx - xx (23)
The National - Boxer (20)
The National - High Violet (20)
Amaya Laucirica - Early Summer (16)
Jen Cloher & the Endless Sea - Hidden Hands (15)
Laura Cantrell - No Way There From Here (15)
Beach House - Bloom (14) 
Sally Seltmann - Heart That's Pounding (14)
Wild Nothing - Gemini (14)
Holly Miranda - The Magician's Private Library (13)
First Aid Kit - Stay Gold (12)
Robert Plant - Band of Joy (12)
Girls - Album (11)
Patty Griffin - American Kid (11)
The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream (11)
Aimee Mann - Bachelor No 2 (10)
First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar (10)
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (10)
Grimes - Visions (10)
Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes (10)
Patty Griffin - Impossible Dream (10)
The xx - Coexist (10)

The Fifth Element

Haven't watched this one for a while!

Things it reminded me of:
1. Luc Besson sure knows his way around a visual.
2. Bruce Willis' pleasingly surly charisma.
3. How enjoyable Gary Oldman was during that spate of hammily evil villains that he was playing during through the 90s (see also: Air Force One ... by contrast Besson's The Professional, which had the villainy without the hamminess).

Things it made me wonder:
1. Was Milla Jovovich's Leeloo my first MPDG? Does she even count?