Extemporanea

There's a brighter sound to some of these songs, and some of those brighter sounding ones are some of my favourites - like "Mantis...

Too excessively EPIC and generic and lacking in lightness of any kind to take seriously, yet still somewhat absorbing through sheer spectacl...

I wanted a stronger, less muddled message but that might be an unfair ask. Other than that, Hoppers  has heart and zip, and some welcome wei...

Likeable, professional, authentic, relatable.

I wasn't too fussy a watcher of this one - 'from the world of John Wick'. And so it hit the mark - Ana De Armas convincing, the ...

New and enjoyable: "New York, Let's Do Nothing" - King Hannah (Cassandra Jenkins-esque), "Time Waited" - My Morning ...

Even the best can't get it right every time - for me Vigil is a miss, the style and the sentimentality too much to the fore, without the...

I don't know how she does it. We're a long way on from Blacklisted  (2002) where I came in, never mind the ones that came before it....

Just Jason and his guitar, and the tunes are strong. These songwriting paths are well worn - as in, by Isbell himself - but continue to offe...

Just a good read, another reminder of how it feels to read fiction for pleasure. The main storyline is exciting enough if somewhat predictab...

A bit of a goof, but the voice is appealing - though the narrator, deliberately, often isn't - and so is the zip with which it moves thr...

Not seeking to be the type of comprehensive overview that I'd hoped for, the ambitions of this exhibition are hinted at in its framing a...

I'd more or less assumed any likely new music from Alison Krauss & Union Station would fall into an elevated easy listening vein, gi...

Nice to know that a proper rock band can still give me that chill down the spine. Highlights all the way through - "Cobra", "...

Classy, emotive and interesting but for me doesn't have the lightning-strike quality that the best of this type does.

This is the type of novel I'm always seeking out, in more than one way - as readable lit-fic with a distinctive voice, an edge and a wil...

A bit of an oblique one, and without any true stand-outs, but Griffin's voice is as strong and clear as ever - figuratively, though no l...

It's metaphysical, and sideways even when it seems direct; the directness comes in at least three forms, namely direct appearances from ...

A woman killed some family members with poisonous mushrooms in a meal she cooked, somewhere in regional Victoria - to great public fascinati...

It's nice, nothing more. Not really meaning to damn by faint praise - there are some good songs here and the whole album's charismat...

1. Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down - Margo Price Hard Headed Woman   (Lorna Vista, 2025) 2. Hungover in a Deer Stand - Dylan Marlowe...

The soundtrack was already thoroughly embedded and now I've finally actually watched the thing, I have the rest of the pieces to see why...

What a trio this album starts off with - the title track with its curling melodies, whoops and ululations, the almost (or maybe actually) OT...

I don't know why so many acts remind me of Metric, specifically Metric circa Fantasies  and Synthetica  - how much is anything truly dis...

Honestly not all that dissimilar to the one before it - Total Freedom - and if the pleasures here are more in familiarity than in new groun...

For mine, Forever Is A Feeling  doesn't have many of the obvious high points that appeared in her previous albums - show-stopper "A...

Here Price takes a turn back towards hardcore country and the honky-tonk sound that was more prominent in her first couple of records ( Midw...

 I like the vibe here - a torch-y heartland rock sound. But it hasn't really hit home somehow.

Sturdily, reliably excellent - more quality from Carlile. She's hit a vein these last several years and continues to produce songs that ...

There's a nice touch to each of these, and if they're pretty big and glossy, well that feels a natural continuation of the style tha...

I've always thought there's been a bit of a dynamic with this show around just how seriously it actually takes itself, but maybe tha...

Maybe a bit of a dip in quality but the built-up goodwill keeps you watching. ( 1-3 ; 4 )

Even when they're a bit different, as this one is, there's almost always also a sameyness to these movies. Florence Pugh is fun thou...

I found Someone Like Me  illuminating and enjoyable (the latter in the sense of the interesting perspectives and overall quality of writing ...

The history of playgrounds. A topic I've found a bit interesting in the past - even before becoming a parent - especially interventions ...

Nice but too sleekly polished. A handful of more memorable songs.

Across a roving, at times meandering, at times rousingly joyous, and even occasionally frankly dull 14 songs, June's voice is always cle...

Another good one, curses and all, and filled with strong images and an overall sense of imagination.

It could be (probably is?) an illusion but I quit  feels like it breathes 'we're doing what we want to', roaming in mellow, tune...

In which Van Etten leans into the gothy, post-punk strands that have been there at least since Remind Me Tomorrow  and goes vibier and more ...

Some bright moments of slightly off kilter pop - "Like I Say (I runaway)" and "Call It Love" are both keepers - but the ...

The cast helps a fair bit and Soderbergh does seem to have a bit of a touch. The spy vs spy + domestic affairs stuff holds the attention and...

The atmosphere is strong - just spooky enough, science and its margins, convincingly Victorian and with a terrific, spiky, sympathetic but n...

Tenet ... the story mechanics are hard to follow, the emotional core's difficult to find (indeed it's split, between Kat and her chi...

If anything, even better than the first two seasons . The Great  has a mode all of its own and it's fizzingly irreverent, profane and sh...

In its accretion of everyday detail, this intriguing first volume works with the idea of the infraordinary, which I've been drawn to sin...

Works by six artists, exhibition themed around liminal spaces in the world, particularly through portals to the spirit world. Most impactful...

I remember some of these from my visit a few years back and, more particularly, from the NGV's own exhibition of French impressionism ...

The first section is focused on the systemic drivers of the over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and the seco...

It wasn't long ago that I refreshed on the whole series , and - as it's increasingly foreshadowed as it's gone on - that's j...

The title song's a killer, first up on the album, fizzily euphoric with just an undercurrent of melancholy. There are some other good mo...

Personal Score  feels all of a piece, unified by the way van Neerven writes the connections between Country, their own story and the other t...

The first one was good, this one isn't. Leans too much on the first and its desire to set up for a third. I like how strongly it centre...

Sickbed re-reading. ( previously )

Basically, there's the ones that anthem it up with emo-lite electric guitars and they're mostly my favourites (especially "Heav...

I don't know, should it have been a surprise that the soundtrack and the songs were such a large part of why this was so engaging? James...

A slept-on classic it isn't, but it's winning enough even on a rewatch. ( previously )

Yes it's a bit messy but the core of what Jennifer's Body  has to say about gender and power is clear enough, and the black comedy /...

Remains as tense and gritty as ever, for all its obviously problematic elements.

The funnest part of this is the different historical settings, and it being animated worked well enough. The way it brought them all togethe...

Thoughts while reading this: Hill is strong on not focusing only on 'gendered drivers' (in the language of the National Plan) vs oth...

I liked the more off-the-wall visuals, the little horror elements, and Benedict Cumberbatch but as a movie this is a bit of a mess, and noti...

Want  is a sweetheart of an album, carrying a good part of the charm that made How Many Times  in particular such a winner (especially on ea...

Andor lived up to the reviews - staying focused the whole way through on the perils and costs of resistance in the face of tyranny, spies a...

The John Norman Mann Bequest A bequest directed to contemporary art, with a particular focus on First Nations practices and works by non-Ind...

This really is an unusual, and unusually good, novel. Everyone in it feels like a character in a book - Ludo and Sibylla most of all - but T...

Three installations each by Australia-based artists with Asian cultural heritages who identify as queer.  From "Fairy Tales from the Ce...

This is great! It comes in a package that maybe lends itself to being dismissed - another guy wielding an electric guitar, indie folk rock s...

Mostly breezily indie-sounding pop and crunchy guitars, plus quirks. My favourites - "Rip Off" (Momma), "Cheapskate" (Du...

I suppose by definition any memoir by Rebecca Solnit would be Solnit-esque. What that means in Recollections of My Non-Existence  - which I ...

High quality, with a lot of that due to the songs - music and lyrics - which add depth.

Impressive how much this series is infused with the same mood as the book , while genuinely adapting (not just transposing) it for the tv fo...

 Tight modern Western.

On was the 11th annual Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art; I was pretty piecemeal in how I took it in given this was a bit of a snat...

The concept is fun, the execution solid enough without rising to any great heights.

In a way Yayoi Kusama has crept up on me over the years. I've liked her quite a lot for a long time now, including some memorable encoun...