Honeyblood - Babes Never Die

Fizzier and more imbued with energetic girl group touches than their previous album, but less distinctive than that other one and sounding more like a bunch of others going around presently (notably Metric, to whom I seem to compare other bands an awful lot). Still quite good though.

The Beatles - Let It Be

It's been a slow, slow burn with me and the Beatles. Of course their music has always been there - it's always been everywhere - and over time I've noticed my feelings about their music shifting from vague liking-well-enough of what was basically music history tapestry to more active enjoyment, but for the most part I never really focused on them that much, nor got any further into their record discography than Sgt Pepper's and Rubber Soul (not even the red and blue albums). Anyhow - now I've listened to Let It Be as well, and as the years go on I like them more and more.

Hell or High Water

Contemporary West Texas western that's suprisingly low key - and boasts a surprising streak of humour - while actually having quite a lot of action and building a set of characters and relationships with enough zip to interest us in their fates (not to mention a health dose of social context). Jeff Bridges is in top form as the Texas ranger on the trail of the bank-robbing brothers. Good.

(w/ Julian)

La La Land

Just as charming as everyone says it is, Gosling, Stone, musical numbers and movie-set nostalgic backdrops and all.

Also, basically a perfect film for the Nova on Christmas day, early evening and still 30-whatever degrees outside.

(w/ Erandathie and Aruni)

The Fencer

The way the threads come together is involving: the initial threat to the main character's safety should he be discovered by the powers-that-be in Leningrad, the way that his connection grows to the children - many fatherless and generally lacking a sense of self-worth - who join his fencing club, the children's own improving skills, and the collision course that sets him on with his past. And there's also an effective indictment of the spirit-crushing nature of Stalinist ideology - it's set in the early 1950s, variously in occupied Estonia and Russia - in its denial of not only specific activities and forms of expression but more generally aspects of individuality. Plus there's a 'sporting underdogs take on much better resourced and arrogant champions' plot that develops towards the end. All in all, a pretty lovely film.

(w/ Sara - a callback to our own fencing days a few years back)

Tracy McNeil & The GoodLife - Thieves

On the one hand, it's hard to escape the feeling that I've heard this kind of thing before. On the other, it's done well here (as their Basement Discs set suggested it would be), and in the end, it's the second of those that's far more important, with one song after another hitting the mark, the overall country flavour meshing easily with the tuneful rock touches, and proving just as effective on slower moments like the title track as more up tempo melodic bits like "Paradise" and (until its atmospherically slowed-down outro) "White Rose".

The Magnificent Seven

Merely okay. Just feels a bit by the numbers. (This is the 2016 remake.) Also made me feel old to realise that Ethan Hawke can now plausibly play the grizzled old-timer.

Wilco - Schmilco

Mostly analog, with not a huge amount in the way of electronics nor even electric guitar, and moving for most of its time with a low key kind of lope, this isn't a marquee Wilco album but it feels simply and unfussedly like one of theirs, and as if it's just what they felt like doing this time out.

Tift Merritt - Traveling Alone

Well this is good news - a Tift Merritt album came out a few years ago that I didn't know about. It ain't that memorable, but the nice bits are nice.

(Bramble Rose, Tambourine, Another Country, See You On The Moon)

Norah Jones - Day Breaks

Nicely done but I don't find this kind of gentle jazzy stuff super engaging, even though here it's of a high quality. There is, however, a Neil Young cover ("Don't Be Denied") near the middle which swings with emotion and is very good, and the moody title track that follows it is also memorable.

Bic Runga - Close Your Eyes

Maybe it'll reveal more layers over time, but so far Close Your Eyes strikes me as nice but inessential - not up to the same high standards of Belle and Birds, though part of that might be the way that my expectations have been raised by Runga's progression from record to record to date.

Of the 12 songs on the album, 10 are covers, including some that are very familiar to me; it's nice to discover, for example, that Runga's a fan of Neil Young ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart"), Love ("Andmoreagain"), Francoise Hardy ("Viens") and Nick Drake ("Things Behind The Sun" - this one sparks a bit). She covers a bit of stylistic ground in her renditions, including a bit surprisingly successfully with a tightly, urgently funky piece called "Tinsel Town in the Rain" (originally by the Blue Nile), and on a dream pop-hued "The Lonely Sea" (Beach Boys). But the best is maybe the simplest: a mid-tempo but otherwise quite faithfully throbbing, spaciously pretty take on Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face".

Mitski - Puberty 2

There are only maybe three particularly showy moments on Puberty 2: thrumming but deliberately unresolved opener "Happy" (stronger-the-second-time chorus, strutting saxophones and all), the starrily soft-loud anthemic crash of "Your Best American Girl" and soulful trip-hop throwback "Crack Baby". And those are three seriously good songs.

But what makes the album actually quite spectacular is what's going on all around them, on a set of discontents during which Mitski sometimes comes across like a more rock-minded Lisa Germano and with the same sense of off-kilter, bruised-sounding melody and musicality ("I Bet On Losing Dogs" being the best example), with each song - most somewhere in that sweet spot of less than three minutes - bringing something a bit different and working as a miniature epic of one kind or another in its own right.