Labyrinth

Well, it's a classic, innit? Like a lot of others around my age, my first exposure to Labyrinth was in primary school, and it left an indelible mark. I've seen it a few times since; it's still just as good as ever...and all the better that Bowie and Jennifer Connelly are in it, too!

(this time, w/ trang at the Fed Square atrium - 9am, Saturday morning!)

Muse - Black Holes & Revelations

I've liked Muse from the start, but never thought all that much of them. Each of their last couple of (studio) albums has yielded at least a couple of stand-out songs (looking back, I think "Hysteria" is probably my favourite of those), but they've never really registered for me as more than a slightly mad alt-hard rock outfit with a knack for the odd hyper-catchy guitar riff.

With Black Holes & Revelations, though, I'm finally completely sold - Muse are a really good band. After Origin of Symmetry and Absolution, the 'intensity' dial didn't really have another, higher setting, but evidently the 'massive' one did - Black Holes surpasses the band's previous efforts for sheer grandiosity, which takes some doing, but it hits hard and surprisingly focusedly despite the sprawling ambition. There are several highlights dotted throughout its running length (I particularly like "City of Delusion"), but it's best listened to as a whole, to get the full benefit of Bellamy & co's impressive range of ideas and tangents all at one go. And still, they don't seem to have overreached themselves - it all adds up to a very consistent album which takes its place in a remarkably consistent back catalogue...what do you know?

Gregory Maguire - Wicked

It's been a while since I last read this one, and it's held up pretty well (this was at least my third reading). I don't think I'd still say it was one of my very favourite books (see here) but it still affected me - it packs a serious punch, emotionally, intellectually and politically - and this time through I really appreciated the craft that's gone into the novel, particularly the way that Elphaba is reinvented and realigned for us each time she reappears, and the sturdiness of the structure which allows Maguire's ideas to come through as clearly as they do without getting in the way of the story.

(Funny, last time I read the novel, I definitely had a particular friend of mine in mind when imagining Elphaba; the same thing happened this time round, but with a different friend...in both cases, I'm not sure whether the comparison is flattering - or what it says about me and my relationship with those particular people...)

Big Star: Small World

It's striking how faithful nearly all of these covers are, even the two done by girls; indeed, some of them, the Gin Blossoms' "Back of a Car" and Matthew Sweet's "Ballad of El Goodo" in particular, are practically note-for-note, vocals and instruments alike near-indistinguishable from the originals. The best ones diverge a bit more from Big Star's classic versions, though none especially dramatically, those being Wilco's alt-country take on "Thirteen", the Posies' "What's Goin Ahn" and the Afghan Whigs' "Nightime". At ten songs, one of them a relatively recent cut by Big Star themselves (or at least as much of the band as had reformed/remained at the time of this cd), "Hot Thing" (the song's not much chop), it's brief for a compilation of this kind but boasts a decent roll-call of acts (apart from those I've already mentioned, others include Juliana Hatfield and Teenage Fanclub), and while the lack of reinterpretation of the songs doesn't do much for the memorability of the versions on the disc, the other side, of course, is that one can't go far wrong with such great source material.

Radiohead - "Airbag/How Am I Driving?" ep

As big a part of my life as music obviously is, I've never been the trainspotting or completist type; still, there are a couple of bands, Radiohead and the Cocteau Twins, whose every single, ep, etc I do tend to try to collect, not for the sake of owning the objects themselves but rather to hear the music they contain, even if this sometimes means buying a cd or record for only one or two often relatively minor tracks surrounded by a bunch that I already know, and so it is with this one, which was released on the heels of OK Computer in certain markets...what can I say, it's good.

Spoon - Telephono & "Soft Effects" ep

Their first couple of records, I think, and a fair bit faster-paced, more ragged and angrier than anything they laid down later. They ain't bad, but they ain't special either - at this point, they're more interesting as historical documents than in their own right.

Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure

More avant-pop from back in the day. Immediate, but interesting as well. Like it a lot. "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" is head and shoulders above the rest for me, but then I guess I've listened to it way more, too.

"Art Deco: 1910-1939" @ NGV International

Had a look at this because I was in town with a bit of spare time and because it was there. It didn't especially strike a chord with me - I have a fondness for some art deco architecture, and at this particular exhibition, I enjoyed looking at the glamour evening dresses and some of the jewellry, but really, to the extent that the movement appeals to me, it's on the level of the associations it summons (jazz age, etc) rather than for its intrinsic qualities...and there's always something a little bit sad about looking at objects mounted, bare and more or less out of context, in a gallery-type setting (of course, I'm more of an art kid than a design one, too).

Bande à part

The first Godard I've watched - probably, the first out-and-out 'nouvelle vague' film I've watched, actually - and I've been left thinking that while they're probably a bit of an acquired taste, it's likely to be a taste worth acquiring. I don't think it's stretching the point to describe Bande à part as postmodern - the metafictional/intertextual/breaking-of-the-third-wall aspects of the film are integral, as is its wilfully flippant attitude towards narrative - but it also has a distinctive (b&w) melancholy, a wistfulness, which has as much to do with the film's overall tone as its more brazen structural and stylistic affectations; its most whimsical elements perhaps partake of both those streams. Arthur, Franz and Odile somehow avoid graspability just as does the plot and direction of the film as a whole; it all has an effect that can't quite be described.

Vendela Vida - Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

Cryptic in its apparent straightforwardness, economical in its use of language but with tendencies towards abstraction and lyricism, inward-looking while (at least on the surface) dwelling more on the details than on broad psychological sweep, at once teasingly unresolved and, in the end, satisfyingly wrapped up, Let the Northern Lights... is a good example of a movement that increasingly seems to me to be constituting something of a seachange in current (pun unintended) literary fiction, both in the sense of exemplifying the style and in that of providing an example of how it can be done well.

It's hard to put one's finger on just what comprises or defines that 'movement' or seachange or whatever; I've picked out a few authors who seem to fit within it before - Scarlett Thomas, David Mitchell (?), maybe Ali Smith, Steven Hall (on the strength of The Raw Shark Texts, Nicole Krauss - but, apart from being relatively well-to-do 'western' writers probably sharing a broadly similar cultural background, writing novels which are usually in contemporary settings and kinda modernist in sensibility even if they're often laden with postmodern tropes and flourishes (I often feel that Murakami is a bit of a spiritual fore-runner), which in turn involves a certain preoccupation with phenomenology and perspective (and ideas), I'm not sure exactly what I feel they have in common. It's not that they're my favourite contemporary writers, even amongst those who've got their starts in the last 10-15 years or so (in which case Donna Tartt, say, would certainly be amongst their number, though it must be said that her work has a classic, out of time feel to me, and, to take an example from the opposite perspective, I was more frustrated by The Accidental than I actually liked it); nor are they particularly the most acclaimed/popular meeting that 'kicked off in the last 10-15 years' criterion (in which case see Jeffrey Eugenides, Zadie Smith, JSF, Dave Eggers, etc, etc).

Well, anyway, be all that as it may, I liked Let the Northern Lights... a lot, for all of the reasons I've already mentioned. Its rendition of Clarissa's journey of discovery through chilly Scandinavia has a lightness of touch and an elegance which sits pleasingly with the novel's more human aspects (though it errs at times on the side of being too terse, I feel). It's convincing - not necessarily in the sense of being realistic (though, incidentally, it more or less is) but more in the sense of being true.

* * *

'References' (because I wouldn't mind thinking a bit more about this 'movement' thing down the track)

Scarlett Thomas - Going Out, PopCo & The End of Mr Y
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas & Black Swan Green
Ali Smith - The Accidental
Steven Hall - The Raw Shark Texts (some previous thoughts on this subject there)
Nicole Krauss - Man Walks into a Room & The History of Love

The Happening

A reasonably tense but all up fairly mediocre genre piece from Shyamalan. It's got a bit going for it - Wahlberg, Deschanel and John Leguizamo, some well done 'nature as threat' cinematography, a genuine sense of spookiness about a couple of the episodes (the interlude/climax at the American gothic Mrs Jones' home in particular) - but is ultimately disappointing in its failure to amount to anything much.

Sons & Daughters - The Repulsion Box

Basically a scuzzy indie-rock album with bits of punk, rockabilly and sped-up folk thrown in (I think I read somewhere that they're Scottish); even at just a tick over 30 minutes, it's a bit wearying as an 'entire listen' proposition, too many of its songs blurring into one thuddy, scratchy, heavy whole. Still, "Dance Me In"'s still genuinely exciting and pretty much worth the price of admission on its own; "Taste the Last Girl" also stands out a bit, coming across all late-period Smiths with its jangly electric guitar lines.

Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

Is it really so long since I first read this? Things just keep on speeding up.

"Rhythm & soul" (2007 cd)

Extremely belatedly, the "2007 cd" I made back at the end of last year, along with the bulk of the accompanying notes.

1. Ceremony – New Order
Marie Antoinette OST (2006) [1981]
2. Intervention – The Arcade Fire
Neon Bible (2007)
3. Rhythm & Soul – Spoon
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007)
4. Stockton Gala Days – 10,000 Maniacs
Our Time in Eden (1992)
5. So Have I For You – Nikka Costa
Everybody Got Their Something (2001)
6. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen
Born To Run (1975)
7. Back To Black – Amy Winehouse
Back To Black (2006)
8. Breakaway – Kelly Clarkson
Breakaway (2004)
9. Tommib Help Buss – Squarepusher
Marie Antoinette OST (2006) [2003]
10. Out Loud – Mindy Smith
Long Island Shores (2006)

At year’s kick-off, it was all about the Marie Antoinette soundtrack – the film was dizzyingly lovely, and its musical record no less so…“Ceremony” is a classic, but never sounded so good as it did swirling through Coppola’s sherbet dream, and Squarepusher’s mournful reprise of Lost In Translation’s “Tommib” is plangent, raindrop-perfect.

Not long after that was Neon Bible which, coming through in waves, was just as towering and magnificent as Funeral; “Intervention” was the song off it that first sent a shiver down my spine, and it’s still probably my favourite.

Nikka Costa came out of left field, “So Have I For You” grabbing me with its closing-time Joplin-isms; Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, by contrast, was predictably great, all stripped back rock tunes with a dash of soul, dressed in perfect details like the two-finger piano plinks in “Rhythm & Soul”.

At some point, I started listening to 10,000 Maniacs again, and remembered the kinds of pictures their music paints; “Stockton Gala Days” has been the key track. Also somewhere in there was Springsteen – having been rocking out to Born in the USA for years, I finally figured to listen to more of his stuff, and once you’ve listened to Born to Run LOUD, there’s no going back. And there was Amy Winehouse too, who I was all set to ignore till I heard “Back To Black” and realised that it was exactly the sort of thing that I like these days.

“Out Loud”, irresistible in its delicacy and pull, was almost certainly the song that I listened to most throughout the year; and “Breakaway” has been the one for the last couple of months, though I can’t explain that last, except maybe to say that a great pop song is a great pop song, and one way or another we’re all gonna empathise with it somehow.

"Our Leader"

The main event here was, of course, the Scarlett Johansson cut, "I Don't Want To Grow Up", the first off her Tom Waits cover record that I'd heard - and, let's be honest, it's ghastly. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she can't sing, but, well, she can't sing - and the electronic musical accompaniment is pretty dire, too...it drags like nobody's business. Elsewhere, there's yet another classy number from the National ("Tall Saint"), two songs which irritate me a lot (Art Brut's "Formed a Band" and the Ting Tings' "That's Not My Name"), a bewildering left turn into southern white boy funk (My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges", which is fairly horrid though the guitaring near the end saves it a little), an enjoyably gleefully stupid cut from the Rapture ("No Sex For Ben"), a cool as hell throwaway by the Breeders ("Bang On"), and assorted others.

(a mix cd from David)

Happy-Go-Lucky

There's a bit going on in this one. I didn't find it especially uplifting, to be honest - the social realist style in which it was filmed pretty much precludes any such response from me. Also, the preachiness irritated me a bit (ie, the 'be like free-spirited, endlessly cheerful Poppy, and not like her uptight bourgeois sister and wimpy husband or her racist, paranoid, obsessive driving instructor Scott - a pair of straw (wo)men, really)...so, while it has a pleasing whimsy, actually I don't think I really much liked Happy-Go-Lucky.

Just as a by-the-by, if I were writing an essay about this film for uni (and less wary of obvious 'ins' than I actually would be), the starting point would definitely be the scene near the start where Poppy and her friends are dancing in the club to "Common People"...

(w/ Kai and Wei, a pair of old-school film-going buddies)

Portishead - Third

This ain't your high school brooding past self's Portishead. It's heavier, darker, more disconcerting - and, astonishing to say, even better.

Third is a journey down a dark motorway, anxious and foreboding and at times positively menacing, but with a heartbeat and the reassuring sound of breathing, however at times fraught, underneath throughout. The beats and rhythms churn and skitter at times (on pulsating opener "Silence", the menacing mid-record emergency siren dash of "We Carry On", or the IDM-crashing "Machine Gun", say), but they're just as likely to be gently, breathily moog-y (I'm thinking especially of the second half of "The Rip") or even, as on the startling voice-and-banjo "Deep Water" or the Hem-meets-Goldfrapp (both at their most hushed) "Small", altogether non-existent.

Highlights for me at this point are "Silence", "Hunter", "The Rip" and "Magic Doors" (this album's "Teardrop", to draw a parallel to a not altogether dissimilar record of the band's once-contemporaries Massive Attack), but the record works best as a whole - as a single flowing stream in which the listener's immersed. Gibbons' voice is still amazing, and the thread running through it all; the melodies are still seemingly dialled in from the universe next door to ours via some weirdly clean-edged static, wrapped up in ether-soaked cotton wool for good measure.

It's also reminded me of how great those two older lps are - Dummy in particular meant an awful lot to me in high school (it was the first 'slow' album that I ever really took to heart, and I've retained strong impressions of walking around the schoolyard and in the suburbs at night listening to my tape of it, not to mention the first amazed thrill of discovering "Roads" and "Glory Box" through late-night, on-the-verge-of-sleep, radio listening) - but it does seem to me to be even better than those older ones, or if not 'better' as such then at least much more of the now, which in these circumstances perhaps amounts to the same thing.

Nellie McKay - Obligatory Villagers

Shorter and with the music hall and jazz elements of McKay's palette more in the foreground than either Get Away From Me or Pretty Little Head, Obligatory Villagers isn't the match of either of those earlier efforts, but it's a dip rather than a serious falling-away in quality - the things that are great about her music (and her) are still in evidence, and of course we do like those things very, very much.

Coldplay - Viva La Vida

Well, I've always quite liked Coldplay: Parachutes was sweet at the time, and I expect it still would be if I knew where my old tape of it was, and A Rush of Blood to the Head was genuinely good, the sound of a band which might be capable of touching greatness at least for moments at a time; I never got around to listening to X&Y, except once, several times over, in Irene's car on the way home from Blairgowrie in, erm, 2005 it must have been, but got the impression that it'd probably be fairly boring. So I had some hopes of Viva La Vida, and I was more than willing to go with the obvious stretching of their sound that they've attempted on it (I'd had a heads up from having heard the second half of "Yes" in jb hi-fi, which sounds like nothing so much as Coldplay doing that glossy Asobi Seksu-style shoegazer thing and hence nothing like anything of theirs that'd I'd heard before).

It starts promisingly; more or less instrumental opener "Life in Technicolour" leaves one feeling that the record could still go either way, but spacey follow-up "Cemeteries of London", complete with Cocteau Twins-esque jangle-and-shimmer, hits the spot, and next track "Lost!" is just as good, graced by a catchy synth and percussion line running through the song and some memorably epic, chiming guitar figures. After that, though, it's not exactly downhill, but it just doesn't quite fit together, whether they're trying somewhat incongruous song suites, copping licks from the Arcade Fire (both of the above on "Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love"), doing strange things with Spanish-sounding strings and lower-register Chris Martin singing (the first 'movement' of "Yes") or working a kind of Beatles meets the Verve seam ("Violet Hill" - and doing it pretty well at that). I can't put my finger on where it is that the album falls down - maybe, it just doesn't reach the great heights to which it so clearly aspires and, in so doing, spreads itself too thin. And there aren't really any out and out glorious moments or true standout songs...well, there's always next time. They still might have it in them.

The Last Town Chorus - Wire Waltz

A nice little record - the Last Town Chorus seems to basically be Megan Hickey, and the textures of her songs tend to be dominated by her voice (sweet, and one of those which seems always to have a bit of a catch in it) and by the vibrato of her slide guitar, accented by guitars of the acoustic and electric varieties (the latter being a particular feature of her marvellous cover of "Modern Love" and during the epic trail-off of album highlight "It's Not Over"), with only hints of percussion, bass and occasionally piano or organ.

Loosely, I suppose she fits within the sort of folk-country nocturne thing, often tinged with a quietly gothic flavour, that a few acts have had going in recent times - Azure Ray in particular - and the vocals and melodies remind me of the Dearhunters, too.

Greg Egan - Luminous

Neat short story collection - ten stories, most fairly extended, each running with one key idea. The plots tend to be pretty bare (likewise the characterisations), and are often fairly basic detective or search narratives - the structure suits Egan's focus on the science and speculation, which is probably helped by the short story form too. Some were a bit difficult for me to get my mind around without really thinking hard about them, but nearly all pushed me to at least think - consciousness, mathematics and physics (of the space/time variety) are his particular areas.

Aeon Flux

Me: So do you know about this tv series Aeon Flux?
Julian F: Yes.
Me: What's the deal?
Julian F: It's awesome?

It was Andrew B who lent me the dvd set, arising out of a brainstorming session for Ath library dvds a while back; Michelle has talked it up plenty, too. As for me, I found the show striking from a visual and design perspective, and in a way that dove-tails with the deliberate narrative discontinuities (the backdrops and characters are all sharp edges and planes, liminal meetings and thrusting incursions, mechanical techscapes sheering into the organic, all Escher-seque cut, paste and redouble - but in that very unholy series of collisions, the series has a coherency as a whole). Like the way it plays with oppositions and linearity too, disrupting at every turn, not to mention the Low-esque music. The episode-length ones are more ambitious; the shorts more immediate and seemingly graspable; the meaning of the whole remains entirely elusive.

"Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot" (David Williamson) (MTC)

Well, everyone seemed to like this one a lot more than me - 'lightweight' isn't an epithet that I'd necessarily use to criticise a play (or any other kind of work), but in this case it is a criticism. It passed the time amusingly enough, but in the end there was really nothing to it - a thing needn't be weighty or serious in order to be substantial, but in the case of "Scarlett O'Hara", I just felt that there was a lack of substance and a hint of laziness, of careless invocation of stereotypical figures (using that word in its broadest sense) rather than any attempt at a true rendition...so for those reasons, despite Caroline O'Connor's engaging turn as the central wrapped-up-in-cinema dreamer, the mostly on-target digs at modern Australian society, and the number of laughs to be had, this was probably my least favourite of the MTC plays I've been to for the season so far.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

"The 39 Steps" (Patrick Barlow) (MTC)

Turns out I never noted this one - rather remiss of me. It was excellent, anyway, revelling in the theatricality of theatre and highlighting its own artifice at every turn, but in such a way as to add to the joy that a good performance brings - energetic and inventive, but sincere (or perhaps 'grounded') enough that it doesn't descend into pure farce. To put it another way, the core of what one wants from a play - story, characters, sets - aren't obscured despite the production's foregrounding of the artificial apparatus/mechanisms by which those 'core' elements are always (overtly or otherwise) enabled and brought into being. To put it another another way, "The 39 Steps" was hella fun! The archetypally Brit figure at its centre, hinting at but not falling into caricature, makes a great straight man and protagonist for the thriller/caper events of the plot and it rockets ahead at a mile a minute, running through an impressive number of locations and characters as it goes.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

"IMP April 2008"

A mix cd that really deserves the word 'mix', not because it's especially eclectic so far as genre or mood goes, but rather in terms of the range of apparently disparate styles that it brings together in what feels (sounds) like a cohesive whole. Leading off with Gary Jules' "Mad World", it then proceeds to skip through a range of silky indie-pop type stuff ("Here's Where the Story Ends", "Common People", Big Head Todd's "Bittersweet", etc) interspersed with bits and pieces of bossa nova and Brazilian-sounding flavourings (Gilberto Gil's "Asa branca", "Corcovado" by Astrud Gilberto, Joao Gilberto, Tom Jobim and Stan Getz, some Manu Chao) and several with aspects of both (the Cure's "The 13th", never a favourite of mine but a good fit here, say, and the Sugarcubes' "Hit", and "When You're Falling" by Peter Gabriel & the Afro-Celt Sound System). I like a lot of the songs individually, too. v.g.

(from Laura in Waltham, MA)

"Mighty Mars"

Kind of a mellow mix, despite the presence of TV on the Radio ("I Was a Lover"), the Drones ("I Don't Ever Want to Change") and Muse ("Knights of Cydonia" - which is cool and all but, trumpets notwithstanding, I don't reckon matches the best moments from Absolution and Origin of Symmetry). The first song is the best - "The Old Man's Back Again", by Scott Walker, a lushly cinematic adult pop thing. Also like the Pete Yorn song, "Georgie Boy" (he has a knack for writing songs which never drag), and Dylan and Natalie Merchant welcome as always, too.

(from David)

"IMP mix - Jan 2008: The Best of 2007"

Just wanted to note this...haven't yet managed to listen to it all the way through. Seems like it might be pretty cool, but sometimes and for some things, life's too short.

(from Steven in the UK)

Nelly Furtado - Loose

Hmm, this is pretty okay, but it hasn't grabbed me in the way that the POP I really love does. Surprisingly consistent, though, and has its moments.

The New Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan & Gardner Dozois

Read this over a period of a few months; a few good ones, but none really stuck in my mind. Mainly, I was hoping they'd be in the vein of Stephen Donaldson's Gap series, but, you know, they turned out to be not so much like those. Guess I'm not really that into this kind of stuff is what it comes down to, 'cause they generally seemed well written and put together.

Radiohead - In Rainbows

It started with OK Computer; never thought it would end like this. It's been a gradual process, but Radiohead has moved from front and centre of my musical landscape to a place nearer the periphery (though the topographical metaphors are tricky, because the band played such a large part in shaping said landscape in the first place)...anyway, the upshot is that while I got In Rainbows right near the beginning of the year, or whenever the deluxe box set arrived in the post, I haven't felt moved to listen to it over and over (at least, not until the last couple of days a little bit).

In Rainbows leads off with a Kid A-esque skid-and-clatter and reedy Yorke chant which doesn't take long to develop into a wiry sort of latter-day Radiohead pastoral almost-rocker ("15 Steps"), followed by a more out and out chugging rock song of the kind that they've been putting on the last few lps ("Bodysnatchers" - like "15 Steps", it's good), but it's a misleading opening pair, because as a whole In Rainbows is actually the band's prettiest album (knocking off The Bends, I reckon, though it's a near thing). They've retained the production style and general aesthetic of their more recent work, but the songs themselves feel much more organic - guitars, pianos and vocals are at the forefront, and while one still feels that the band is stretching itself, the music here feels more like a shading in of territory already skipped over or hinted at in previous releases, rather than a break or leap in a new direction in the vein of Kid A (which seems destined to remain the high water mark in that respect, both in terms of the change that it marked from what had gone before it to that date, and on its own intrinsic musical terms - more and more, it seems the critical document in their discography taken as a whole).

A very high proportion of the rest of the record is made up of plaintive, circling, sometimes-verging-on-miraculous Radiohead Ballads ("Nude", "All I Need", "Videotape" - and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" and the version of "Reckoner" on here almost qualify as well), and then there's a pair of quiet, folky meditations, one of which ("Faust Arp") reminds me in equal parts of Pink Floyd at their sparest and Nick Drake, while the other kind of takes its cues more from Robert Wyatt ("House of Cards"), plus only one other fairly rocky track near the end in "Jigsaw Falling Into Place"...and it's all very good - there isn't a weak song amongst them, and the replay value is pretty high. But somehow, I haven't internalised it in the way that I did all of their others up to (but not including) HTTT...

The cuts on the second disc are generally less fully-realised, but the songs are still strong, and largely in line with the style of the album proper.

"IMP March 2008"

A low key mix, with an understated modern-folk stream running through it (Vetiver's "You May Be Blue" is an early standout) and a bit of a funk section near the middle. The best track's "Care", by an artist named Kaada - a lushly circling number brushed with elements of soul and doo-wop circa 1950s through to early 60s along with some contemporary electronic touches. Also features Emmylou's deathless "All My Tears" and a faintly raucous cover of "Don't Let It Bring You Down" by an outfit called Weeping Tile.

(from Richard in Ontario, Canada)

Juno soundtrack

Like the movie, very likeable. The Kimya Dawson stuff is nice, especially with memories of the film still fairly fresh; the rest of it is neat all round, taken as a whole.

Shoot 'Em Up

Rented this entirely for the spectacle and it comes through on that front. So over the top is it, actually, that I half-suspect the film's trying to have it both ways, playing both as a hyper-action flick and as a satire (there's something similar at work in the muddled stance that it hints at taking on gun control). It's all extremely throwaway, but entertaining enough, aided by Clive Owen's presence at its centre.

Sunshine

Pitches its camp halfway between the metaphysical speculations of a Solaris and more straight-up entries in the space/sci-fi genre and does a pretty good job. Lingers a bit, and packs a decent punch.

Lisa Germano - Excerpts from a Love Circus

Excerpts from a Love Circus has a weird glamour to it - it's like some junkyard princess's imaginary diary, set to music and distorted by its passage through the looking glass...everything she touches is lightly dusted in a sort of fractured, broken-apart-and-put-back-together pop sensibility, at once knowing and somehow retaining an air of the naïf.

"Small Heads" is still perfect, delightfully off-balance and impossibly catchy, lyrics at once hinting at the profound and verging on nonsensical tossed off in Germano's husky drawl while all the little musical details accumulate underneath (plinking piano, recorder, unidentifiable percussive bits, a snatch of her too cool for words violin-playin', etc); the song's like a miniature Tom Waits pop ditty as done by a girl or something. It's been one of my favourite songs for years and is just as good in the setting of the album.

Others that are especially good: "Baby on the Plane", "Bruises", "I Love a Snot", "We Suck" (a ballad!).

"Frost/Nixon" (Peter Morgan) (MTC)

The word that comes to mind in describing this one is 'solid'. The opposition (albeit and unsurprisingly not, in the end, a true opposition) between Nixon, fallen from grace but not yet resigned to the fact nor necessarily beyond redemption in the public eye, and flamboyant British interviewer/talk show host David Frost is sturdily built up and eventually played out in the series of interviews between them, culminating in a (surely imaginary) late night telephone conversation between the pair and then the final interview segment. It's nothing spectacular, but enjoyable and well-made enough (and distinguished by quite a sympathetic portrayal of Nixon, too).

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

Uncollected Galaxie 500

More! Not generally as searing as their lp or live recordings, but still well worth the listen, and I'd only heard a few before.

They really were a great band.

Gotan Project - Lunatico

Very listenable set of modern tango infused with downbeat electro and lounge elements - I like the more upbeat, swirling numbers more but it all works pretty well.

"Dear Art, Please Touch Me"

Pleasant way to spend an hour or so on a Sunday morning. Part of the Next Wave festival, this is an 'audio tour' of selected works in the permanent collection of the NGV Australia by way of two or three minute ipod-ed audio tracks of ordinary punters' responses to the works in question. Some are funny, some are sad, one or two are quite insightful (particularly the one on the Albert Tucker beach/sunbather painting), and a handful are really off the wall. It's striking that the respondents tend to respond to the art very much in terms of their own lives and experiences rather than seeming to engage with it at all on the pieces' own terms or opening themselves up genuinely to what the works might have to say.

(More info)

(w/ Andrew B and Julian F)

The Concretes - Hey Trouble

The problem with Hey Trouble is that it lacks that most essential prerequisite of pop music - excitement. One might ascribe that to Victoria Bergsman's departure, but truth be told, while In Colour did indeed have its rainbow moments, even that latter didn't come near the frost-edged joy of the band's debut lp - as much as I want to continue to like the Concretes, it looks as if that first album might have been one out of the box that the band will never be able to top, or even replicate.

On Hey Trouble, a couple of songs in the middle, "Oh Boy" and "Keep Yours" take off a little bit, and there are aspects of others which save the rest of the album from being a dead loss ("A Whales Heart" doesn't really hold together as a song, but has some nice hooks and textures; "Firewatch" is a bit catchy in an In Colour sort of way), but in general too many of the songs just meander along, seeming to echo or quote melodies rather than being really melodic in their own right and never properly catching alight. A disappointment, and maybe a reminder of how ephemeral genuine pop inspiration almost always seems to be.

Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings

Moderately arty song titles accompanying moderately arty indie-pop songs, with occasional trumpets. Understated and likeable, and Lewis' charismatic character is as a vocalist already well apparent, as well as the band's handiness with a tune.

Lori Carson - The Finest Thing

I have a feeling this might actually be quite good, but it's far too indistinct and muted for me in the present state of my musical preferences...

"A Gesture in Reciprocation"

A mix from Kim of a while ago, made up entirely of covers (a perennial favourite mix cd theme, of course). An intro (Bobby McFerrin's "From Me To You") and four parts which could be broken down as 'women', 'men' and 'legends' (Waits, Cash, Joni Mitchell) and then a one-track closer in a lovely version of "When I Fall In Love" as done by the Keith Jarrett Trio.

Favourites: Eva Cassidy's "Time After Time" (of course), Vonda Shepherd's take on "Don't Think Twice it's Alright" (much less predictably, and only after a few listens), Jeff Buckley's searing "Je n'en Connais pas la Fin" (live), Fanfare Ciocarlia's "Born to Be Wild" and the Keith Jarrett piece.

The Orphanage

A haunted house movie, basically - and one which deliberately invokes all of the tropes of the genre to good effect, often putting a spin on those familiar elements that pushes them in just a slightly different direction. In particular, the film's knowing in its use of The Turn of the Screw-esque trappings in playing out that old real/imagined ghosts ambiguity, the rendition of which, I've thought before (in a slightly different context), the medium of cinema particularly lends itself to; and, then, the way that that ambiguity is eventually resolved/left unresolved is both unsurprising and deeply consonant with the most interesting aspects of the film, not to mention rather satisfying.

It is quite scary - unsettling, with a few huge 'jump' and, separately, 'chills' moments in its second half - and I think that's part of the film's primary purpose: it's supposed to have that kind of effect, just for its own sake. But then, too, the unsettling elements of The Orphanage are wrapped up with, and feed into, its wider narrative concerns, particularly the 'Peter Pan' thread and the questioning of perception/reality; there are creepiness-induced chills throughout, but then the last couple, which we experience (physiologically) identically to those earlier ones, are actually brought on by something rather different (if bound up with the earlier creepiness inasmuch as they follow from them), a genuine emotional experience.

(w/ Michelle, Tamara and Andrew B - all enjoyed the film, I think, though MF and TV seemed seriously creeped out by it)

Mates of State - Re-Arrange Me

I never noticed before that Mates of State sound a bit like the New Pornographers; then again, it's probably on this, their latest, that the resemblance is most obvious. I imagine that it's still just the two of them (husband + wife, infamously), but the sound is fuller, facilitated by an instrument change-up, meaning that the whole record has more of a richness to it and its best songs ("The Re-Arranger" and "Blue and Gold Print" in particular) pack more of an immediate punch than before. They're not a band to set my world on fire, especially given that I haven't especially been feeling things 'twee' of late, but in a small, unassuming way, they do make it a slightly better place.

Dixie Chicks - Home

Another extremely solid album from the gals (tho I'm more or less working my way backwards from most recent to earliest) - they just know how to do what they do. It's the weepies and the ballads that stand out on Home - their "Travelin' Soldier" and "Top of the World", say - but, as ever, whatever they tackle here, they do well.

Blonde Redhead - 23

23 is a rush of an album, kaleidoscopic and star-like, spinning from one bright, sparkling point to another. It reminds me a bit of Asobi Seksu's last, Citrus, in its 21st century outer space-y take on dream-pop/shoegaze swirl, but whereas that other tends to crash through in swathes of sound and colour, 23 has more of a downbeat, twilight zone fm radio air and a hint of a prog feel at the edges (somewhat a la Air); it also retains much of the fraught, fragmented elegance of Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons (a while ago, Michelle set me up with a whole stack of the band's back catalogue - all of the albums actually, I think - so they're there for me in due course, too).

I've mentioned the title track before, and listened to it an awful lot since then; the others that I especially like are "Dr Strangeluv" and "Silently".

The Ruby in the Smoke

Passable-to-good adaptation of the book. Some popstar named Billie Piper played Sally (okay, that was a bit disingenuous - I'd heard of her before, but don't know her stuff) and carried it off pretty well; the production has 'bbc' written all over it, but that's no bad thing in this case.

Laura Cantrell - The Hello Recordings

I adore Laura Cantrell - I just find her music so very winsome and she's one of my very favourites these days. Anyway, this was her first record, I think - an ep - and, while a bit rough and ready, it shows definite signs of what was to come.

lps
Not The Tremblin' Kind
When The Roses Bloom Again
Humming By The Flowered Vine

Emilie Simon - The Flower Book

An appealing record, this, covering a wide range of electro-pop styles - the shimmering stomp of "Fleur de Saison" proves to be both representative and extremely misleading when it comes to forming expectations of the whole. It's hard to pick favourites, but I do like the rainy-day tendresses of "To The Dancers In The Rain", the feyly jaunty "Flowers" ("I want to buy you flowers,/ It's such a shame you're a boy,/ But when you are not a girl/ Nobody buys you flowers"), and the slightly tougher, cut-and-paste "Song Of The Storm"...sure, it verges on the precious at times, but forgivably so for mine, particularly given how goshdarned romantic it so frequently is.

Previously: live.

Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers

It's taken a little while, but Asking for Flowers has grown on me. More folksy and perhaps a tad more wide-ranging than her previous records, it's also, I think, more sophisticated - the songs are less immediate, but somehow more deeply musical and faceted. Downbeat "Alicia Ross" is a case in point - delicate and wistful, but lit with a strong emotional burn, it's miles ahead of the slower songs on Failer and Back To Me; and the rockers, too, are more nuanced than previous efforts without sacrificing the catchiness that's such a strength of Edwards' - witness "The Cheapest Key", "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" and "Oil Man's War"...and in a different category again is the title track, a mid-tempo tune which just hits the spot. All of that said, I don't think that Flowers will replace Back To Me in my affections - that other is too closely wrapped up with a particular time and mood for me to be impeachable, and its high points are higher...but it's really damn solid anyway.

The Big Lebowski / Blades of Glory

The Saturday night before last's viewing with Wei and Julian F. Blades of Glory I'd seen before and it was still pretty funny, but somehow I'd always missed The Big Lebowski previously despite the universal rave reviews. For my part, I liked it well enough but didn't get hugely into the film - it's funny and I like what it does, but I don't think I'm wired to really respond to its mix of subtle humour/wryness and brazen splashes of colour...I'm just left feeling as if I've bitten wholeheartedly into something that was sweet enough but evaporated in my mouth almost straight away (erm, unnecessarily picturesque attempt to convey my response, obviously).

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

This film probably would've been charming anyway, but what particularly makes it is the turns put in by its leads - Amy Adams is delicious and Frances McDormand just right, and their interplay hits all the right notes. As the somewhat grave older love interest, Ciaran Hinds (previously known to me as Julius Caesar in Rome) is good, too, and another of my Brit female actor crushes stakes, Shirley Henderson, also cut a swathe, her character pleasingly sharp-edged and aloof, always black and incessantly smoking, of course. (Such wonderful names, by the way, too! Guinevere Pettigrew, Delysia Lafosse, Edyth Dubarry, and so on...)

It's frothy, but has a serious side as well; without particularly being a 'message' film, it's not blind to the social realities of the milieu it depicts (that of the well-to-do and the rather less so at the very tail end of the jazz age), and when the happy ending we knew all along was coming does, indeed come, it's unsurprising but doesn't rankle in the slightest. The film - it is what it is, and entertaining at it.

(w/ Kai)

30 Days of Night

Totally thought this was gonna be rad, or at least that it had a serious shot at it, based on cool premise - vampires in Alaska, where once a year the sun doesn't rise for 30 days (ie, = vampire buffet). Actually, though, it's only okay...watchable but sorta not all that satisfying. Oh well.

Lars and the Real Girl

Really sweet. It doesn't poke fun or take the low road at any point despite a premise in which the risk of all of the above, whether advertent or otherwise, is ever-present - who'd have thought that a film about a sex doll could be so gentle, kind and hopeful?

A lot of that comes from Ryan Gosling's performance - above all else, it was critical that he be (a) believable and (b) sympathetic, and he comes through on both counts, sweet, bemused, seemingly torn between hopefulness and resignation - and a fair bit's owed to the warm turns put in by Emily Mortimer (surely one of the most sheerly delightful actors going around at the moment - and definitely a good candidate for 'British female actor' crush-dom) and Paul Schneider (whose character was a kind of 'me' surrogate in more than one way at various points), but the main thing about it is really the air of the whole, which kinda reminded me of Me and You and Everyone We Know. I'm not sure how to describe it - kind of removed but close at the same time, like hot breath on the other side of a pane of glass, or something.

For some reason, the 'sensitive outsider boy is saved by quirky beautiful girl dropping from the sky' (see Garden State, etc, etc) thing didn't irritate me at all in this one - maybe because one can't help but feel that he really earns his happy ending, and maybe because that particular narrative isn't the primary focus of the film (though it's strongly implied throughout). Plus, it has a cool soundtrack including good use of "Naive Melody".

(w/ SL)

Philip Pullman - Once Upon a Time in the North

Kind of a cowboy tale, as the title suggests - and we already knew from the trilogy that Lee Scoresby was in that mold. The general appeal of this novelette (novella?) is obvious - it takes us back to the His Dark Materials universe (I use that word advisedly in this context)...the particular (subsidiary) appeal is equally apparent - it recounts the first meeting between Lee and Iorek.

Anyway, it's got a bit of energy to it - yeah, it's pretty good. But ultimately more a deepening of the original pleasure of the main trilogy than a particular delight in its own right, I think (although of course the whole point is that it's impossible to tell).

"Garage2V"

I forgot to mention that, when I saw Stars a while back, the support act was a neat little act called Plastic Palace Alice, who were sorta one part Arcade Fire and one part Stars (though a bit more modest than either) and good at it. Anyway, a bit further down the track, picked up this eight track sampler-type cd at the local 7-11 (free, obviously) - all local acts aiming to make it. Nothing much particularly grabbed me - the shadow of the AF lies heavily over several of the cuts (including PPA's "Empire Falls"), and there's a bit of Rapture vibe coming through on a couple as well...

Three novels in first person present tense

Greg Egan - Quarantine

This was a loan from Andrew B, in response to a mass-emailed request for recommendations of first person present tense writing; it hasn't turned out to be particularly useful or illuminating from a 'learning the craft of first person present tense writing' perspective, but where it did prove effective was in blowing my mind a bit with its play on ideas surrounding wave function collapse and quantum mechanics generally, and 'working through' of some imagined implications (cosmological genocide, anyone?).


Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife

Dear reader,

Let me tell you what I did a few Saturdays ago, viz: woke up, felt a bit under the weather, saw that Wei was reading The Time Traveler's Wife, decided to read it, read it (yeah, that's right - all in one rather long session and with a certain amount of skimming to find out what happened next and rather in a haze but still).

And? And it's good - it made me want to keep reading, and it got to me. I still think that it's basically a marginally more clever take on the chick-lit thing (not particularly more emotionally clever, but certainly cleverer from a craft point of view), but I understand what all the fuss was about, and thanks to my direct response rather than in any particularly distanced way. Nice.

Also, by way of a historical document, an extract from an email, NV to me, 19/6/06:

I think I need to have a talk with you though Mr Choo regarding your bold pronouncements regarding the written word. Actually just so you know, the following tirade by me is given to you with love rather than anger and is prompted not by Kite Runner buy by the Time Traveller's Wife.

I understand that you are a student of literature and therefore are very worthy of making the bold pronouncements, but I worry that by branding a book (as you sometimes do) before you read it, you go to it with a preconceived notion of what it will be like and this skews your later interpretation. Why not come at it with a cloudless mind, take the journey, and see how you feel as a result. Any pronouncements you make after the fact I am sure will be more accurate of your own experience.

[...] literature is art and one purpose of art is to make you feel, and if you come to art with a notion of how other people felt, you deny yourself your own true feeling.


M J Hyland - How the Light Gets In

Carry Me Down was unexpectedly excellent - it gripped me and got a bit under my skin when I read it last year. Re-reading my impressions of that other, I'm fortified in my response to How the Light Gets In, Hyland's debut novel: it's not quite as skillfully crafted as Carry Me Down, nor (commensurately) quite as good, but it's much like it, particularly in the impression that it leaves - faintly unsettling, maybe, but also more something else on which one can't easily put one's finger...

Charade

Watched this on the last night of book club weekend away at Trentham, a while back now. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant - much fun.

So, yesterday...

Re-read South of the Border, West of the Sun.
[Edit 6/9/17: most of this one deleted on the grounds of being autobiography]

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson @ Corner Hotel, Wednesday 9 April

Album launch - pretty okay. Sounded more country/bluegrassy and less glossy than Carnival [and see also here], which might or might not bode well for the album itself...

(w/ Kevin and Shaun)

V Festival @ Melbourne Showgrounds, Saturday 5 April

Morning dramas, disorganisation, etc led to SL and I getting there too late for Robyn, which was a bit of a disappointment - but so it goes. Actually playing when we arrived were Hot Hot Heat, who were underwhelming - didn't seem especially into it (not especially not, either - they just didn't particularly have it going on)...though neither were they well served by the perplexingly low volume at which the music was mixed (a problem which afflicted all of the acts on the "this stage", at least, with the possible exception of the Pumpkins at day's end).

Then we saw a bit of Cut/Copy - they didn't leave much of an impression. And after that, Modest Mouse, who were wicked excellent. I've never really listened to their stuff, though I've kinda heard quite a lot of it along the way, but live I could dig it - very Indie Rock but very good with it. SL and Nenad both afficionados and clearly feeling the love. Oh yeah, and Johnny Marr was part of the band! Too bloody marvellous to hear that straightaway recognisable guitar sound...things were looking up. (Hooked up with Michelle and others somewhere around this point...throughout it was very much a day for meeting and then re-meeting.)

Then we went and saw Roisin Murphy who, colourful and energetic and charismatic as hell, could really potentially have been the highlight of the day had we been able to stay for more than about a song and a half before the tyranny of the irritating overlapping times dragged us back to the main stage to ensure a good position for the Jesus & Mary Chain - the main reason why I decided to hit the festival in the first place.

About the JAMC, well, a part of me thought that it was pretty great to hear all those familiar songs (especially the Psychocandy ones) and a fair few that I didn't know, too, being played live right in front of me (we worked our way pretty close to the front for this one)...that was quite a large part of me, natch. But at the same time it wasn't quite all that - the band was too tight, its sound too clean, too lacking in feedback, squalls, roughness...the sound of a bunch of 40-somethings covering familiar ground rather than of kids in their 20s searching something out. It gave me something, still, but wasn't a patch on last year's reformed icon the Pixies.

Then went off to other stage and caught a bit of Air, who were fairly rock star and really pretty good, a bit to my surprise. I've never taken the duo to heart, but somehow they seem to keep bobbing up - "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch The Stars" (both of which we saw them do at V) are lodged firmly in my consciousness, Talkie Walkie picked up a few associations when it came out, and then of course there's the S Coppola connection - and this was pleasant and even a bit more...

We were in two minds about whether QOTSA or CSS was a better option next - but we swung by the first of those and they were playing all songs that we knew, so we stuck around and were rewarded with a solid set of rock tunes, intensely played. Dudes know how to play their instruments - and, in Homme's case, to sing.

And finally the Pumpkins, fronted of course by Corgan, loving every moment of the rock star adulation that was offered up by the crowd. Kicked off with "Today" and ran through plenty enough of the old hits to satisfy ("Bullet", "1979", "Zero"...) as well as a bunch of other stuff (not least a jagged cover of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun") - it was spectacular and messy and not really incredibly satisfying, but still, it was, you know, the Pumpkins (or at least two of four plus others) and they've been there for me in some sense since high school and all, so yeah.

All up, the festival was okay - some good moments but a total lack of great ones. Suffered from a lack of atmosphere (see above re: volume, and also the general vibe of too many people just standing around and not really into the music) and an absence of any one act (at least of those that I saw) that really threatened to tear the figurative rafters off...too glossy, too safe. Maybe this is what comes of stacking the lineup with tasteful acts with plenty of cred who are now past their peak of popularity (and having the festival prominently sponsored by a corporate)...

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

More good stuff. I've been listening to this album a lot in the last few days, including on the ol' late night work patrol. Especially into the way it starts, airy-then-crashing "Is there A Ghost" and then the rocky-then-delicately oceanic "Ode to LRC" (is it actually a song about a dog? or about a dog and a town, maybe? oh yeah, and "the world's such a wonderful place"...but it works, it really does); also like the way that it's short! Really, really good in patches - and not always the same patches from listen to listen. One to try to see live when they come down for sure.

Also: Everything All The Time

The Kinks - The Singles Collection

Well, it sure is great to be able to walk around just listening to the Kinks and feeling, you know, the way one feels when listening to the Kinks.

(My faves tend to be the ones I already knew - "You Really Got Me", "Lola", "A Well Respected Man", "Waterloo Sunset" of course...though that last has never struck quite the same chord with me that it seems to with many others.)

Sarah Blasko - The Overture & the Underscore

More wistful, ghostly, strangely familiar sounding Sarah Blasko song-weaves (actually, her first lp I think).

Also: What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have

"John Dies At The End"

Low-brow, scatological, consistently in bad taste, and frickin hilarious and impossible to stop reading. Schlock horror comedy - all available online. Check it and don't look back.

(here - and the first half of the sequel here)

The Anniversary Party

I can tell you the whole reason why SL and I rented this in three words: Jennifer Jason Leigh. (Obviously my doing, not hers.) Not only does Leigh star in this one, but she also co-wrote/directed it, too...anyway, it's clearly her baby and that of the other central creative figure in/behind the film, one Alan Cumming. All of that said, I thought it was only so-so - an ensemble drama-comedy full of Hollywood types (Parker Posey, Kevin Kline, John C Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, and others familiar by face if not always by name), about Hollywood types, that never properly gets beyond its obvious 'write about what you know' origins.

Patty Griffin - Children Running Through & live @ the Palais, Friday 28 March

Bought the cd - my first of hers - in anticipation of the show, having been carried along by Kevin's momentum. It's a much more diverse affair than I'd anticipated, but all of the ground she covers, she covers well, from airy, Eva Cassidy-styled folk wisps through blues 'n soul infused jams to classic stripped back country ballads and rollicking bar-room rockers - and that's just the first four songs! It all works, partly because the girl knows how to write a song, and partly because - damn - the girl can sing.

It comes through on the album, but just how great a singer she is wasn't fully apparent until the show...live, her voice was simply magnificent. Were it not for the sheer unlikelihood of this happening, I would have been convinced that she was miming to a pre-recorded track - it seemed unfathomable that one person could be producing so rich, pure and expressive a sound...yeah, it was somethin', and a very solid show through and through.

Listening to Children Running Through, I initially got stuck on the sun-dazed "Burgundy Shoes" before the upbeatness of "No Bad News" replaced it in my affections - pleasingly, that latter drew the biggest response from the crowd at the Palais...it's definitely one of my personal anthems so far for this year; also, and somewhat oddly, it's pretty similar to the AF's "Keep the Car Running" - which is no bad thing, of course.

Dead Like Me season 2

As much as I liked its first season, Dead Like Me gets even better in season 2. I'm not sure about this, but I have a feeling that the focus shifts somewhat from the various deaths that punctuate each of the eps to the main characters; it's definitely increasingly involving as it goes on, no doubt in part because of the amount we have invested by then...I felt that it really hit its stride in the episodes dealing with George's dalliance with Trip; another memorable story arc involves Daisy - especially the ep where we see her with the 'other woman' who meets her end in the hotel room.

I don't know, the show just has a way - it's gentle, kinda wry, and full of life. It's not overtly moody, but it casts a spell. There's just something about it.

(season 1)

Perfect pop songs

Got into a pub conversation with Shaun and Kevin about perfect pop songs the other evening - before Kasey Chambers, actually, which I'll get round to writing about at some point in the course of working through the increasingly massive blog backlog that I've developed - and was then inspired to come up with a list. Twenty-five, because that's where Shaun drew his line (ie, 'the 25 most perfect pop songs'); I think that there are a few different notions of 'perfect pop song' working their way through here, but it's an honest to goodness attempt at it in which I stuck to my guns and valiantly resisted all thoughts of the 'but surely there must be at least one Beatles/Beach Boys/Kinks/Supremes/Elton John/Talking Heads/etc song' variety...the flip side being that some of my preoccupations come through fairly clearly (jangly songs, and anthems-masquerading-as-ballads and vice versa, in particular). Anyway, in more or less chronological order:

I Fall To Pieces - Patsy Cline
Be My Baby – The Ronettes
Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
Mr Tambourine Man – The Byrds
California Dreamin’ – The Mamas and the Papas
A Whiter Shade Of Pale – Procol Harum
Breakfast In Bed – Dusty Springfield
Perfect Day – Lou Reed
Killing Me Softly With His Song – Roberta Flack
September Gurls – Big Star
Life On Mars? – David Bowie
Alison – Elvis Costello
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
Billie Jean – Michael Jackson
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out – The Smiths
Close To Me – The Cure
When Doves Cry – Prince
Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House
Just Like Heaven – The Cure
Debaser – Pixies
Losing My Religion – R.E.M.
You’re In A Bad Way – Saint Etienne
The State I Am In – Belle and Sebastian
Save Me – Aimee Mann
The Way We Get By – Spoon

Wilco & the Drones @ the Palace, Wednesday 26 March

So yeah, liked I'd expected, the Drones are pretty kick-ass live - bluesier than on record, and equally rockin'...I got pretty into it.

But the main event, natch, was Wilco. Last time round was sit down and faraway - this time, we were in the thick of it and close...far, far better. As shows goes, after a tenuous, country-heavy beginning, it was pretty total - two and a half hours of selections from their whole discography, even including several from A.M., and all good. So many of the songs just made me so happy and light and a little bit giddy ("California Stars", "She's A Jar", "A Shot In The Arm", etc, etc...)...I figured out a while ago that Wilco're one of my favourite bands, and this gig was a reminder about why even though I'd put it in the 'good' rather than 'great' show category.

It also, incidentally, reminded me of how many of the songs on the last couple of albums, and Sky Blue Sky in particular, are really all about the awesome guitar bit which kicks in somewhere near the middle to end. I've thought before that one of the great things about Wilco is the way they make me feel both happy and sad at the same time; to that duality add 'drifty' and 'energised', too, I reckon. Oh, yeah.

(w/ Jon)

Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers

It's not exactly that I'd given up on the Manics, but more that a creeping kind of apathy had overtaken me when it came to the band - I still liked their early to mid period stuff, especially The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go, though more in the abstract than in the actuality of ever really spinning them nowadays, and even Know Your Enemy had its share of moments, but I never got round to Lifeblood and, I guess, disinterest reigned.

But a while back I read an review of Send Away The Tigers, their latest, somewhere on the internets which was all like oh my god the Manic Street Preachers are back in form, so I thought I should listen to it, and guess what - while it's not a patch on those older classics, there's a lot to like here. The album comes across like a glossier Everything Must Go, with a dash of the more riffy hard rock Generation Terrorists, and in "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough" (smashing duet with Nina Persson from the Cardigans - I got totally stuck on this one last Saturday while hanging around at home vefore V festival), "Autumnsong" ("Sweet Child O Mine"-esque guitars!) and "Underdogs" has some quality to it, too.

"Sidney Nolan" @ NGV Australia

It's easy to slip into accustomed ways of experiencing things - definitely something to which I'm prone - and in the spirit of avoiding that kind of laziness of the imagination, I went into the Nolan exhibition determined to open myself to whatever it might hold.

One thing that was striking about the exhibition is the extent to which it highlights the relationship between Nolan's travels and the art he produced, with dramatics shifts in not only subject matter but also style seemingly closely correlated to the particular places through which he was passing or had recently passed at the times of their creation; my favourites, as far as I can remember (it was a couple of weeks ago now), were the deep, craggy central Australia rockscapes and the second series of Ned Kellys (the later, messianic ones as opposed to the more famous earlier ones) which if I remember correctly were inspired by his exposure to sacred art in Italy. Also striking were the colours he used, particularly the vivid azures (which always strike a chord) - those, and some other aspects, put me a bit in mind of James Gleeson's stuff. And some cool tricks with perspective, too, including a recurring trope of things appearing too large or 'foregrounded' in a scene relative to everything else.

Overall, though, it wasn't especially my thing. I liked bits, but nothing really spoke to me - some engaged me viscerally but fleetingly, others tugged at more critical/analytical/experience-of-experiential parts of me but similarly didn't really lodge...well, we like what we like, and increasingly so, I suppose.

(w/ Jade T)

Three things to anticipate

Very exciting...new Philip Pullman, newish but I hadn't heard about it before Nellie McKay (oh Nellie McKay, how I do love her), new Kathleen Edwards...

"Love Gone Bad" (IMP February 2008)

Any mix cd that throws in "Reno Dakota" (as in the Magnetic Fields) and "Torn" (as in Natalie Imbruglia) back to back gets major points in my books. Extra props for a pair of very nice jangly alt-country weepies in the Drive-By Truckers' "Goddamn Lonely Love" (the title says it all) and Steve Earle's "I Thought You Should Know" (which, oddly - and I'm pretty sure I'm not just making this up - cops some girl group licks). And bonus points for ending with a "Pink Triangle"/"Hate It Here" split.

A couple of other familiar songs - Ben Folds Five's still grin-inducing "Song for the Dumped" and Elvis C's rather saccharine (if not all bad) "A Good Year For The Roses" - and a few other fun/good ones (Jay-Z's "Song Cry" and Ween's "Piss Up A Rope" particularly fitting both parts of that compound phrase)...all up pretty good.

(from Bruce in Chapel Hill, NC)

Kate Nash - Made of Bricks

Fun! Probably not a stayer (unlike, a bit to my surprise, Alright, Still, which I still get out pretty often, especially when out and about) but with enough good bits to make listening to it as a whole a viable option, an' I like the attitude. Standout's "Pumpkin Soup" (previously known to me, with equal if not greater justification, as the "I just want your kiss boy" song).

J'attends quelqu'un

Unexpectedly, my favourite of the three I've caught at the french film festival over the last fortnight or so. It's carefully equivocal in its layering and interweaving of its various narratives, such that resonances &c are always implied rather than actually rendered, but also eventually succeeds in bringing everything to a satisfying and affecting resolution while at every point avoiding the obvious move (see, eg, the 'making a pass while moving furniture' and the 'I'm having a baby' bits).

(w/ Ruth and Meribah)

Philip Pullman - The Scarecrow and His Servant

I didn't see anything special about this one, to be honest. It's not a patch on the His Dark Materials series, nor on the Victoriana ones - although nor does it set out to cover that kind of territory, being aimed at a younger audience and accordingly simpler.

Le voyage du ballon rouge

My first Hou Hsiao Hsien, and not precisely what I'd expected - much more in the social realist vein than I'd expected, to begin with! But 'social realism' isn't precisely what was going on here - more a kind of cinematic naturalism, interleaved with moments of pure cinema (the latter mostly involving the course of the red balloon itself). The film's pleasures are subtle but real, and it has an affect which has lingered even though 'the film itself' didn't leave much of an impression at the time.

(w/ Ruth, Jarrod, Steph and Roslyn)

"Love Song" (John Kolvenbach) (MTC)

Near the end of the rather excellent "Love Song", one of the characters declares "death to literalism!"; I wondered whether that line mightn't have been the genesis for the whole play. "Love Song" is about love and imagination, and how the two can (perhaps always must) meet, and it's pretty much perfect on its own terms.

Four main characters: Beane, one of society's misfits, living in his apartment under the barest of conditions, has his life illuminated one day by a spunky burglar with whom he falls in love; his career-minded sister and her husband find their lives also affected by this unexpected turn of events. All of the actors were pitch-perfect (Julia Zemiro particularly stole all of her scenes as the sister), the sets were unobtrusively integrated into the play text, and all told it was just one of those in which all of the elements came together - the play itself perfectly balanced between sweetness and edge, the production bringing out that delicate interaction and the interesting contrasts it entails to a treat. It's a minor thing, but the emotional palette from which it paints is nuanced and pleasing, and I liked the play a lot.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

Chacun son cinéma

Cool concept - a whole bunch of basically most of the most famous mainstream arthouse contemporary directors going around today (Wenders, Polanski, Egoyan, Campion, Kiarostami, the Dardenne brothers, Davids Lynch and Cronenberg, Lars von Trier, Wong Kar-Wai, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, to name just a few), each doing a very short (~ 3 minutes) piece on the subject of the cinema. As one would expect, it's pretty hit and miss, the narrative-oriented ones just as likely to be successful as the more impressionistic pieces, and a few reasonably predictable themes emerge, most notably the transformative, immersive, participatory and (of course) magical nature of the cinematic experience, but the good ones are strikingly good, and there are plenty of minor pleasures in amidst the real highlights, too.

My fave was the Inarittu piece, "Anna", which is simply one of the most lushly Romantic things that one will ever see in a cinema. It's beautiful - three minutes of holding your breath and feeling opened up to something that's at once completely familiar and utterly foreign. The David Lynch one was extremely David Lynch, and a nice snippet of his unique brand of craziness (ware the giant scissors!); the Atom Egoyan contribution also marvellous - a miniature existential meditation, inscrutable and poetic. Jane Campion's odd lady bug piece also stood out...

(w/ Ruth and Bec P)

Jens Lekman @ Corner Hotel, Monday 10 March

For various reasons, my mind wasn't on the music as much as it might've been, but nonetheless I enjoyed this show; he played "Black Cab" second song up, which was basically the whole reason I went along, so I was happy, and the rest of it was nice too.

(w/ SL, Ruth and Keith)

Do You Believe in Love? A Creation Compilation

Break it down: this came out in 1990, and it's a Creation comp, so there are three main threads running through it - acid/ravey Screamadelica type stuff, post-80s guitar indie, and shoegaze of varying textures. The cd's frontloaded with three of its best tracks - "You're Just A Skin To Me" (Primal Scream), "Girl Go" (Jazz Butcher) and "Chelsea Girl" (Ride) - but keeps up the quality throughout (it doesn't hurt that there's a MBV classic, "No More Sorry", in the middle there somewhere). Nice.

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree

Got a message from Michelle the other day; words to the effect of "have you listened to the new Goldfrapp yet? It's exquisite"; wouldn't go that far myself, but I can see where she was coming from. Seventh Tree is the band's most pastoral and soupily dreamy to date, from airily disconnected opener "Clowns" through the succession of downbeat electro-ballads and wispy sketches which follow (I especially like "Cologne Cerrone Houdini" / "Caravan Girl" near the end), and there's much to relish about it.

Felt Mountain, Black Cherry and Supernature collectively set an impossibly high bar, and I think that Seventh Tree falls slightly short of those other three - but it's still a worthy addition to the discography and another jewelled link in the increasingly glittering Goldfrapp chain.

Now, bring on the new Portishead!

Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon - Preacher: Alamo

The last in the series, and suitably explosive and bloody. Reflecting on how I came to work my way through the lot despite not having any particular taste for ultra-violence nor for the grit that characterises the series, and particularly while having some serious reservations about the politics / ideological standpoints of the books, I think there are (lemme count) three main reasons.

First, they're written and drawn with a helluva sense of pace - each one flies by (I read this last in a single sitting in the Fitzroy library a couple of weekends ago). Second, while Preacher isn't long on character development as such, Ennis excels in deepening our understanding of the characters as he goes along. And third, there's the mythos invoked by the books, and ultimately that's what gets me (even if, on closer inspection, it possibly turns out to be bound up rather closely with the essentially conservative viewpoint espoused by the books that troubles me).

[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6 & 7], [8].

"2007 cd"

David's mix of his key tracks from last year (which reminds me that I should put up the tracklist from my own, made a while back). It was the soundtrack to my very gauzey, distracted last Sunday, particularly "McFearless" (Kings of Leon) and "23" (Blonde Redhead); of the ones that were new to me, the other that I particularly like is the National's "Fake Empire". A lot of very 'David' stuff on here, natch, much of which falls in the overlap between his and my tastes (Radiohead, Spoon and the Arcade Fire all get multiple slots), and some which are definitely in his camp (QOTSA, White Stripes, Ian Ball, Pete Yorn) - lots of replay value for me and, in those first three I mentioned, a trio of genuine song 'discoveries'.

"Astor Piazzolla" (10-cd set)

10 cds of recordings which tend more towards the 'song' end of Piazzolla's spectrum - an impression added to by the high proportion of them which have vocals - and which are just as pleasing as the more polished "rough guide". Yes!

"Rock 'n' Roll" (Tom Stoppard) (MTC)

My first MTC outing this year, having subscribed for '08 as part of Steph and Sunny's troupe, and quite possibly the one about which I've been most enthused, it being a Stoppard and all, and not only that, but also being about (a) revolution; (b) communism and (c) (but of course) rock 'n roll.

Well, I liked it well enough, but in the end the play didn't do that much for me. I found it a bit stagey - a fault which resided partly with the actors (it didn't help that Matthew Newton's Jan reminded me entirely incongruously of Manny from Black Books (manner of talking, hair, and, as Ben K pointed out, wardrobe)) but lay primarily in the play itself, I think. The first half was rather overly schematic, particularly in terms of the laying out of the various perspectives on (a), (b) and to a lesser extent (c) by way of their exemplifying characters; the second half moved a bit more, the characters and ideas better coming to life; the ending really didn't satisfy me at the time, but with a bit of distance, it's better than I'd initially thought...

Kelly Clarkson @ Rod Laver Arena, Tuesday 4 March

I'd been anticipating this more than I do most shows - I don't see much out and out Pop live, and I really expected Kelly to be an experience, particularly given how much I listened to Breakaway over the second half of last year. Lest there be any doubt, there's not a smidgeon of ironic or postmodern expectation of kitsch, etc - this is all grounded in genuine love of pop music done well.

So anyway, it was pretty much what I wanted it to be without quite being the bee's knees. I got to hear the songs I really wanted to hear, and she's definitely got a powerful voice...but the sound wasn't as full as one might hope (a bit of a problem with the venue as much as anything else, I suspect) and for the most part she seemed to more be belting the songs out rather than imbuing them with any particular expressiveness - so while it was good, it wasn't the, y'know, spectacular spectacular that I'd thought it might be.

* * *

Supports Mandy Moore and Sean Kingston - both worth the seein', in this context, anyway.

(w/ Steph)

The Cardigans - Best Of

Well, of course this is great. "I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer" is still a brilliant pop streak and "Lovefool" somehow never gets old, but it's actually the band's first single "Rise & Shine" (which I hadn't heard before) and old radio favourite "My Favorite Game" which have most had me hitting the repeat button. It's all, barring a small handful of tracks that drag a little, very, very delicious.

The liner notes are a feature, too, the band having put together some thoughts about each of the songs on the cd, and showing themselves to be very knowing (both about themselves as pop stars, and as musicians) and cutely witty (eg, of "My Favorite Game": "Nina recorded her vocals in the attic of our studio, with the corpse of a bat as her only company. Potential hit makers, take note!").

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

David came round last Monday, which happened to coincide with a low emotional and physical ebb for me - too much going out, too much doing things, and not enough recharging - which maybe made it kind of a happy or at least apt coincidence that we settled on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to watch, for while it was a bit of a gruelling experience in the state that I was then in, the insane whirligig it plays out wasn't a world removed from my own exhaustion-hued (albeit entirely un-drug affected) take on things. The result, anyway, is that I wasn't left with any coherent sense of the film - just a bewildering series of impressions - which maybe is the way that it would always have taken me anyway. Certainly, the sense of inhabiting the film's world was strong, even overwhelming.

Francoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse

Reminded me a fair bit of Gatsby, although not as perfect, of course. This was Nicolette's prospective take on it, which, in retrospect, paints a fair picture of what Bonjour Tristesse is like:

As an interesting aside, this book was published when our author was just 18. Apparently she was nicknamed "the charming little monster" which makes me grin no-end. Anyway, she had a varied life, writing several books and plays, getting married a couple of times, hanging out with Truman Capote for a bit, being convicted of using cocaine, and being left in a coma after a car accident in her Aston Martin. Ooh, she was also done for tax fraud in 2002 which resulted in the French government taking the royalties from all her works and leaving her essentially penniless and relying on the kindness of her friends. How fun!

Basically it's one of those glittering literary baubles, fleeting but somehow perfectly crystallised, both in itself and in terms of what it depicts - here, a kind of summer-dream end of innocence narrative of the sort that we all always hold so dear when done well, recognisably universal precisely inasmuch as it's writ in the details of Cécile's rueful recollection of the fateful events surrounding her and her supporting cast (Anne, Cyril, Elsa and, of course, her playboy father Raymond).

Lisa Miller @ CERES, Friday 29 February

Saw her here around this time a couple of years ago (I really thought it was just last year, but a check of the archives tells me otherwise!), and this was a similar experience. Not transcendent, but nice.

(w/ Swee Leng and her friend Sara, and Wei and Julian F)

King Arthur

This - or at least the director's cut version, which I saw - was surprisingly satisfying in patches. Clive Owen always brings a certain something, and his turn as Arthur, reimagined as a Roman centurion commanding a group of Salmatian [?] 'knights' south of Hadrian's wall in partly-conquered Britain, is no exception - he has a suitable controlled ferocity, as well as the gravitas that almost allows one to take seriously all the speechifying about free will and destiny...but parts of the film just don't ring true, and that's where it falls down - there are too many false notes (the real classics of the genre - the Bravehearts and the Gladiators - don't have any), abovementioned explicitly fixation on freedom and individual liberty being one particularly intrusive example (it's a perfectly fine theme, but the problem arises when the characters continually talk directly about it, particularly when said talk's in platitudes). Still, a fun enough film (in that oh-so-serious kind of way).

Stars @ East Brunswick Club, Thursday 28 February

This is how I put it when suggesting to David that we check out Stars: "I think they will be sweet live, and they might be just under the radar enough that the rest of the punters will actually be starry-eyed (pun unintended) indie romantics rather than idiot hipsters." And you know what, I think that that was actually pretty close to the mark in the end (and with a sell-out crowd no less). What I can say for certain is that it was a very nice show despite Stars turning out to be only really an average-to-good live act, not as crashy as I'd expected and a bit wavery in places, but still from opener "The Night Starts Here" and minor classic "Elevator Love Letter" through most of Set Yourself On Fire and In Our Bedroom After The War (the obvious ones, "Take Me To The Riot" and "Bitches In Tokyo" really taking off from the latter, and the cast-iron high points from the other, particularly "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" and "One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead" hitting hard from the earlier) it was a nice way to spend an evening.

(w/ David + Justine)

Napoleon Dynamite

I've been deliberately steering clear of Napoleon Dynamite - I'm not much of a one for what I (unkindly) dub quirky indie loser films and this seemed likely to be the epitome of the type. But everyone kept telling me how good it is, and eventually I caved in, and what do you know, it lives up to the hype in its low-key, off-kilter way. It's a film that genuinely goes its own way - it doesn't seem to be ticking boxes or anything of that kind. Instead, it just does its thing, and a good thing that is. I value films like these, because they remind me - oh yeah, I am an outsider...and possibly that part of me isn't nourished near enough these days, I suspect. (It also, not entirely unrelatedly, left me in a terrible mood the night I watched it but that's the flip side I suppose.)

The Village

Unfortunately I knew the twist, and (independently) the film tends towards being overly schematic and obvious, particularly near the end, but The Village is still a pretty effective bit of film-making. It definitely benefits from a top notch cast - Joaquin Phoenix, now that I've gotten over my instinctive dislike of him, is consistently convincing, Bryce Dallas Howard, who I've not seen before, was very good in coming to be the centre of the film (her air of luminous innocence is critical), Adrien Brody also held the gaze, playing against type as the village idiot - and it has that M Night Shyamalan feel...

Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon and John McCrea - Preacher: All Hell's A-Coming

This is where I stalled when I was reading these a couple of years back, entirely because it was missing from Rowden White. Yeesh, they're violent - but gripping, yeah.

Terry Pratchett - Making Money

Enjoyable - there's just something so comforting about Pratchett books. I liked being able to read another Moist von Lipwig one so soon after the last, too - and the series has developed in a way that allows recurring characters to just drop in (in this one, mostly members of the watch) without any explanation but very pleasingly for long-time readers. Most of the way through my second reading at the moment...

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Well, I pretty much knew in advance what I was going to get with this one (in a word: PIRATES), and it satisfied. Also, this was the first film in which Keira, latterly the subject of so many strongly-held opinions of both the 'love her' and 'hate her' (ie, 'think she's hot' / 'can't stand her') variety, has made any particular impression on me - the realisation that she is, after all, very attractive coming more or less simultaneously with a strong feeling of irritation at the way she just pouts all the time...catch 22.