Rhiannon Giddens - Tomorrow Is My Turn

Richly, warmly satisfying, bits of soul, blues, old-time country, Celtic-Appalachian folk, French chanson and more woven across this set of (all but one) interpretations of songs made famous by female artists both iconic and otherwise - in the first category, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Nina Simone, to name three - with several traditional numbers, and Giddens a strong, expressive voice all through.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire & Mockingjay pts 1 & 2

So three things:
1. Jennifer Lawrence is a very good actor. It's particularly impressive the way she so completely is Katniss Everdeen in these movies without that - surely on the way to being iconic, if not already? - character overshadowing, or even being apparently present (except by always unavoidable trace) in her other performances.
2. Mockingjay Part 2 is a perfectly fine ending. I could wish that there was more texture and screen time for several of the characters and their arcs, but I guess that would've made it even longer, and that's probably really the complaint of someone who's enjoyed these films a lot and basically just wants more. And all told it's just as engaging as the ones before it, and it follows through on the harder-edged themes of the series.
3. I do think that the whole series is impressive in the way that it sustains the serious-mindedness of its treatment of its themes of power, oppression and control, spectacle and propaganda, social inequality, compromise, individual choice and agency, and sacrifice.

(last time: Catching Fire, Mockingjay Part 1)

"Ayre" (Golijov) / "Folk Songs" (Berio) - Dawn Upshaw & the Andalusian Dogs

Two song cycles (or at least sets); Golijov's melds Spanish, Arabic and Jewish elements while Berio's are arrangements of traditional songs from around the world (USA, France, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), with Dawn Upshaw displaying a malleable voice which veers very far in places from her basic operatic style. The Golijov pieces have struck me more, suffused with feeling and, frequently, melancholy. This was a gift from Kim (of course).

Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars

Well this is a treat - a second Beach House record released within a few months of the last. Thank Your Lucky Stars is painted in lighter, airier hues than Depression Cherry, and while it's nice all the way through, only a few of the songs particularly stand out - three in particular, "All Your Yeahs" (especially the keyboard line that dances brightly through its close), "One Thing" (guitars winding it up instead - v Galaxie 500-ish), the drone-y "Elegy to the Void".

Carla Morrison - Amor Supremo

A satisfyingly enveloping, richly emotive record, its gusts, swirls and swoops rendered in both Morrison's evocative (Spanish-language) vocals and the lush - yet generally understated - mix of electronic haze and more organic instrumentation that flows through. With this kind of album, there's almost always that 'one song' and here it's track 3 - "Vez Primera". (Some other artists and records that this has called to mind at various points over the last few weeks: Lykke Li, The Magician's Private Library, Amaya Laucirica, Rome (and Little Broken Hearts), Lana Del Rey (kind of).)

Laura Tingle - "Political Amnesia: How We Forgot How to Govern" (quarterly essay 60)

Entirely plausible premise - that a not insignificant factor in the recent troubled experience of government in Australia, at least federally, has been the erosion or loss of political and institutional memory. I do think it's too simplistic to (as people often seem to do nowadays) blame everything on the 24 hour media cycle and its supposed result of a focus on the personalities and practice (at the most superficial level) of politics rather than the substance of ideas, policy and government - at most, that's a symptom of deeper societal change and a compounding factor, rather than an underlying cause in its own right - and Tingle's diagnosis is pretty persuasive. Nor do I think her argument is necessarily conservative - there could no doubt be entirely forward-looking ways of valuing, retaining and activating collective or networked memory, experience, insight and wisdom (I use that last word deliberately) without relying slavishly on traditional institutions and ways of thinking.

"Middletown" (Red Stitch)

A small-scale play with an interest in the universal - its dramatic scenarios verging on the infraordinary, its departures from straight naturalism taking on a tinge almost of hyper-reality (not least because of its totemically small town America - 'middletown' - setting). Not earth-shattering, but nice. And it felt truthful.

(w/ Jon and Erandathie)