Patty Griffin - Servant of Love

Another glorious set from Patty Griffin. What an extraordinary artist she is! If I've counted right, this makes nine studio lps plus live record A Kiss in Time, and the run remains unbroken - every one has been excellent. Many of the words that come to mind in describing Servant of Love are elemental - airy, earthy, (quietly) fiery, pelagic - and its songs have Griffin's usual mixture of delicacy and sturdiness and strength in both construction and execution, including a pleasingly jazzy streak that has woven its way through her discography for years (piano and muted trumpet appearing here and there). While a handful of more upbeat numbers are sprinkled throughout, there's a whole lot of wistful here - which, done with such a lightness of touch and sense of liveliness and spirit, is hitting the mark just fine.

George R R Martin - A Feast for Crows & A Dance with Dragons

Enough detail, texture and plotting to still get well lost amidst.

(last time)

Metric - Pagans in Vegas

On the bland side, a couple of good choruses notwithstanding (eg "For Kicks" - which also has Cure-esque guitars at the start to recommend it). Disappointing.

"Swan Lake" (Imperial Russian Ballet Company, Palais)

Quite beautiful, but I couldn't shake the awareness of how much gruesomely hard work and pain goes into the art form (not entirely due to Black Swan).

(with my family!)

"Julie Rrap: Remaking the World" (Potter, Melb Uni)

Two rooms, both dark but in a contrast with each other which actually reflects the conversation between the two.

"Remaking the World: Artists Dreaming":

Whereas "Remaking the World: In Her Image":

Chvrches - Every Open Eye

Another extremely winning record from Chvrches, with probably 10% less joyously unexpected left turn-ness and unpredictability but maybe a touch more overall consistency than the delightful The Bones of What You Believe from a couple of years back. Plenty of emotional melodrama, with melodies carried urgently along by the synths, beats and Mayberry's beguiling delivery and hooks hitting from all directions. It's good to listen to and feels of the moment, but what does that even mean; to take an example, "Make Them Gold" (one of the weaker cuts) could've come straight off 1989, but then it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to imagine that latter as having been influenced, directly or otherwise, by The Bones of What You Believe in Swift's omnivorous reflection-back-to-itself of the pop zeitgeist - who can really say?

Macbeth

Everything about this adaptation is intense - Fassbender, Cotillard, the Scottish landscapes, the sense of stripped-backness, the general foggy glowering atmosphere, dominated by hues of blue and black until the fire-blood red of the final scenes. For some reason that I couldn't quite put my finger on, my response to it was that it was serviceable - good even - but not out of the ordinary, despite not obviously doing anything wrong and indeed getting plenty right (most notably, an interpretive and artistic vision that's coherent both internally and with the source text, as well as reckoning well with the translation from stage to cinema) - maybe, the lack was in the delivery of Shakespeare's language (not glaringly deficient, but not outstanding either) and the way that language is relatively less prominent in this version than in many.

(w/ Andreas)

"Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great" (NGV)

The Hermitage impressed me when I visited a few years ago, in the way that it was stuffed full of art and other objects, seeming to be almost overflowing, but in a way that conveyed not excess but abundance, not ostentation but luxury. This exhibition is specifically about the parts of the collection - and the palace complex itself - associated with Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, meaning that the art is a mix of Old Masters and at-the-time contemporary which either way falls well outside the compass of my own tastes in art.

Still, as ever, a few pieces seemed invested with something of the numinous (perhaps particularly likely given the striking facility with light that characterises many of those really old oil paintings) or stood out for some other reason, and whether that was adventitious to whatever specific state of mind and perceptual frame that I brought to it today doesn't much matter.

Bellotto - "View of the Zwinger in Dresden" (1752)

Capriolo - "Portrait of a young man" (1512)

 Titian - "Portrait of a young woman" (c 1536) - oddly contemporary seeming

Murillo - "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt" (c 1655-70)