Talk To Her

Talk To Her is a difficult film to pin down - for all of the simplicity of its set-up, the film's many flourishes (the melodramatic twists, the structural sleights of hand, the film and various other performances within the film) and its subtle, allusive quality keep it from easy graspability...whatever else it may be, though, it's a very fine film, quietly powerful in a way that reminds me of The Sweet Hereafter.

Dead Like Me: Life After Death

Disappointing - has nothing of the charm that animated the tv series. Suffers from Rube's absence and from the substitution of a different actress to play Daisy, but more than anything it's a comprehensive failure to find the right tone which cripples this made-for-dvd feature - the characters are unlikeable (even with the significant stock of goodwill built up by the show to draw upon), the plot risible, the deaths perfunctory, the whimsy forced.

Made in U.S.A.

A cleverly ingenuous cinematic pleasure, just on the right side of being too cute. Loses a bit on a second viewing, but not much. (First time)

(w/ Penny)

Tift Merritt - Tambourine

I've listened to the one before (Bramble Rose) and the one after (Another Country), and with the benefit of that context, Tambourine sounds like Merritt's Memphis record; not coincidentally, it's also a notch above her others, both of which are extremely solid modern country albums. Tambourine invokes Dusty Springfield (see esp. "Good Hearted Man") as well as brilliant contemporaries like Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams, and makes clear that, when at the top of her game, Merritt has the songwriting chops and vocal abilities to be far from disgraced by the comparisons. By turns swinging, rocking, and tenderly folky, and shot through with a distinct gospel flavour, Tambourine deservedly sounds celebratory. for it's immensely enjoyable and likeable.

Arcade Fire - "The Suburbs"

The Arcade Fire are kind of a totemic outfit for me. It started with Funeral, which didn't immediately hit me, but over time sank in, deep. That was in '05, as I was falling into country music in a big way, and I remember thinking that it might just be the last rock album that I'd ever love - a thought that probably, on some level, also owed a bit to the record's summatory, (end-)of-an-era sound. Then came Neon Bible, and while I didn't take it quite as much to heart, it had a grandeur and scale, coupled with a sense of intimacy and a distinctly human core, which equalled Funeral - and, if anything, these days I'm more likely to find snatches of that second album running through my mind.

So the appearance of "The Suburbs" in record stores a few weeks ago was a welcome sight - and even more welcome was the discovery that, while their sound has evolved, they've still got whatever it is that set them apart from the beginning. The tides and oceanic surges of their earlier records are still here, but in a more subtle, smoother form, and the album's intricacies sit easily with the melodic thrills it offers up, song after song. The Suburbs is thoroughly of the now, but it also takes many of its cues from the 80s - the Arcade Fire have always had something of the anthemic flavour of early to mid period U2, but they've before never sounded as much like them, and there's a strong New Order flavour to several tracks, and even, a couple of times, synth washes that could have come direct from classic Cure or Joy Division.

There are plenty of highlights, but so far two songs have most demanded the replay button for me: "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", coming on like a lost Tom Tom Club track, all spritely (spelling/meaning intended) anomie, and probably the sweetest pop song they've ever recorded; and the jangly, building-to-high-drama of "Suburban War"...I also especially like the "Ready to Start"-"Modern Man"-"Rococo" run near the start (that last in particular perilously close to ridiculous, yet instead rather brilliant). End to end, it's another great album from them - I know I'll get a lot more out of it, and it has me looking forward to the next.

Robyn - Body Talk Pt. 1

However you dice it, Robyn was a gem...the fizz and snap of tracks like "Konichiwa Bitches" and "Who's That Girl", the chilly post-millennial electro-pop waves of "With Every Heartbeat", the pared-back genius of "Be Mine!" - it all added up to something somewhat out of the ordinary, and an album that stood up to repeat listens remarkably well.

Coming after that, Body Talk Pt. 1 is a confounding record. It plays more like a longish ep than an album, leading off with four cuts of polished commercial dance-touched pop before a second half comprised of three songs in wildly disparate styles (none particularly successful, and one, "Dancehall Queen", actively annoying) and then the 2 minute, lullaby-like "Jag Vet Dejlig Rosa", which does work, though by the time it appears, it feels completely out of context.

The main problem with the record is that the personality of Robyn herself, which came through so clearly on her self-titled lp, is largely buried - while the first half of Body Talk Pt. 1 is perfectly listenable ("Cry When You Get Older" in particular is catchy), there's nothing on it that demands attention or that feels especially fresh, a few tantalising hints of the pop thrills of which she's capable notwithstanding, and the second half is just a hodge-podge. Alas!

Mates of State - Bring It Back

One thing about MoS - for all of their undeniable twee-ness, their melodies, singing and arrangements are a model of clarity...songs like "Fraud in the '80s", "For the Actor" and "Running Out" stand out because they're cleverly written songs with strong melodic backbones and some interesting twists, delivered brightly and winningly, and not because of any particular studio gloss or gimmickry. Bring It Back is an enjoyable set from an always charming outfit - keeping it simple, and doing it well.

Summer Wars (MIFF)

Shy maths whiz boy accompanies popular female classmate to large family gathering at ancestral manse where he discovers that she is passing him off as her fiance and becomes entangled in the machinations of a rogue AI in a virtual world called 'OZ' that is intimately connected with external society - very anime (which it in fact is).

(w/ M)

Symbol (MIFF)

One of the more purely enjoyable films I've seen for a while. Hard to do justice to it by way of a summary, but at its centre is a man who wakes up to find himself in a large, white, apparently featureless room but, on closer inspection, discovers that there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of little protrusions from the walls and floor - turns out they're little cherubs' penises - which, when pressed, produce some more or less repeatable effect (various objects shoot out from concealed hatches in the wall; water starts pouring from above directly onto his head, wherever he moves to; a mysterious, African appearing figure materialises and sprints across the room to disappear through the opposite wall).

It's played for laughs, often of the slapstick, the absurd and the more purely metaphysical all at the same time, and it is frequently laugh out loud funny; intercut are scenes from another story, involving a conspicuously mediocre Mexican wrestler ('Escargot Man'), the connection to which is made apparent near the end. Inventive, deadpan, unashamedly low-brow at points, ultimately gesturing at a vague sense of the profound, it's a peculiar (and perhaps peculiarly Japanese) kind of divine comedy.

(w/ M; Wei and AM also there; likewise Adam P, and a pair of his/M's friends, C & P)

"let it die"

There was a time when mix cds were really important to me - when they felt like a way of expressing things that couldn't otherwise be externalised. For better or for worse, the intensity of that feeling has since much receded, but I've been reminded of it, a little, by listening to "let it die", which was handed to me the other day with the words "it's a break-up mix cd, but still a mix cd" - or something to that effect. It doesn't hurt that the mix begins with Cyann & Ben's glittering merry-go-round lullaby "I can't pretend anymore", an old mix cd favourite of my own, but mostly it's the sense that the mix really does reflect a feeling, a state of mind - not a particularly happy or positive one, of course, but one that has found expression in a form that still, after all, makes sense to me.

Sin City

Still excellent. I'm not surprised they never got around to making another instalment - so vividly and effectively does this one mark out the stylistic terrain that it occupies that it seems the last word on that count...anything further, one feels, would be redundant - an arid exercise in repeating something that has already definitively been done.

Daybreakers

I'd got the impression that this one might be an unusually stylish, intelligent vampire flick, and while that's probably a fair call, it's also undeniable that the film's genre heart is very close to the surface. It goes like this: most of the world's population has been turned into vampires by a mysterious outbreak, but apart from a newfound thirst for blood (preferably human), things go on much as before...until the human blood supply begins to run low, it becomes apparent that a vampire deprived of blood undergoes a degeneration to a rather more atavistic and terrifying state, and a small group of surviving humans stumbles upon a cure for the vampirism. Neat concept, but it doesn't do all that much with it, being content instead to make the predictable moves en route to its bloody climax, with the result that it feels like an opportunity missed.

Enter the Void (MIFF)

Not a film that I would've picked out for myself, but Jon suggested it, and I was willing to take a risk. Anyway, first things first: I can't say I enjoyed Enter the Void at all. Its quasi-mysticism didn't sit well with me (afterwards, Adam W told me that it was a very faithful representation of the ideas of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which features in the film's 'plot'), and the closing stages suffered badly from an overly literal depiction of the abstract/metaphysical/spiritual notions with which it was by then turning out to be principally concerned (from that perspective - and several others - the low point was unquestionably the 'vagina eye' close-up of the penis going in and out, in and out...which was the point at which large parts of the audience started laughing and more or less didn't stop for the rest of the film); at 154 almost relentlessly disorienting, largely non-linear, frequently ugly, sometimes outright hideous, and occasionally jump-in-your-seat shocking minutes long, it was also a pretty gruelling viewing experience.

That said, I'd stop short of calling it gratuitous - while it certainly pushes the bounds of good taste very hard, and certain scenes/montages went on for way too long, I did feel that it was a serious artistic project on Noé's part, and not mere provocation - the film seems committed to pushing the viewer for a purpose, namely to experience, in all its intensity, the life of its central protagonist (including the traumatic events that have shaped his identity, to which his consciousness, being the vehicle through which the film is presented, recurs over and over) and the willed journey towards reincarnation that he undertakes following his seedy, untimely death in a Tokyo toilet.

So, all up, I don't regret having seen this film, even though sitting through it was a real endurance test, and even though I don't think there's any particular profundity to it - it was certainly an experience, it did provoke me, and I do respect its artistic integrity, however ultimately flawed the film is.

(in the end, Jon couldn't make it, so went with Adam, David + Justine; also, trang + 1)

Daria seasons 1 & 2

Daria has a special place in my heart. It looms very large in my memories of my adolescent years, and there's no other tv show to which I have anywhere near the same sentimental connection; it doesn't require any great self-understanding to grasp why my teenage self was so drawn to the sarcastic outsider-dom of Daria and her angular, arty friend Jane, nor why it feels as if the show helped considerably in getting me through that turbulent period. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way, and the show would have been a natural candidate for a dvd release, but licensing problems prevented that, and so for years I felt - again, this isn't overstating it - a kind of void, created by its unavailability.

Anyway, a while ago, I mentioned much of the above to Julian F, who nodded sympathetically, and then, the next time I saw him, presented me with a burned dvd containing seasons 1 and 2, which he'd downloaded in the meantime. So I've been watching it in fits and bursts since then, and finding, rather to my surprise, that I've seen all of the episodes before (ie, back in high school) - surprising because I don't remember watching Daria particularly faithfully or systematically back then, as great a significance as it's since assumed. And I still enjoy it very much, though in a different way, of course - overlaid by the intervening years and by the fact that I no longer feel like my life could be saved by a piece of popular culture (nor that I need saving, at least not in that way).

* * *

I read somewhere that, more recently, there's finally been a dvd release, incidentally, but I think the deal was that they could only manage it by excising all of the musical snippets that are such an important part of the show (particularly given the quintessential 90s-ness of the songs and artists represented) and replacing them with other stuff; that being so, it seemed a better bet to stick with the downloaded, original versions, occasional blurriness and pixelation notwithstanding.

Folk Rock and Faithfull / Marianne Faithfull - Easy Come Easy Go

In principle, I like Marianne Faithfull, both in her winsome 60s incarnation and upon her subsequent, gravel-voiced re-emergence. In fact, though, I tend to find her music - from all points in her long, if sporadic, recording career - more or less uninteresting; I suppose that while she's unquestionably an icon, that hasn't come about particularly because of her musical talent. Indeed, the liner notes for Folk Rock and Faithfull, a collection of songs recorded in the vein of her early, wistful, folky girl-pop between '64 and '69, obliquely make a similar point, remarking that "[Faithfull's] influence on mid-sixties Brit Girl pop was rather out of proportion with her tally of hits - just four Top Tenners".

The compilation itself brings out both the strengths and the weaknesses of the style: the mood and sound are evocative - both of their particular era and of a more intangible state of mind, the latter explaining why the style has been so persistent, recurring as a strong influence on a range of genres at intervals since the sixties - but individual songs and performers don't tend to stand out, probably in large part because the form itself doesn't lend itself to innovation.

As to Easy Come Easy Go, this is Faithfull's most recent album and I wanted to like it (particularly given that it was a gift from Kim), but there's just not much to it - Faithfull growls her way through a double cd of covers (including of Neko Case's "Hold On, Hold On"), but doesn't add anything to the originals other than the simple act of doing them over in her own, rather montonous latter-day style.

K J Parker - The Company

The Company is an unusual kind of novel - a hard-edged work of military fantasy in which the battles are all in the past but the ex-combatants are unable to leave the war behind them, and which gradually reveals itself to be something of a parable on the very nature of war.

David Sedaris - Santaland Diaries

Six David Sedaris Christmas pieces; I like the two which are apparently based on real experiences (accounts of working as a Macy's Christmas elf and, as a teenager, meeting a co-worker of his sister's who also happens to be a ho - he doesn't fail to bring out the seasonal pun - respectively) much more than the others, whose satire is biting but, with the exception of the misguidedly critical theatre reviews of elementary and middle school Christmas productions ("Front Row Centre with Thaddeus Bristol"), too mean-spirited for my liking.

Inception

Had Inception been any less good than it was - ie, very good - it would have been a crushing disappointment - writer/director Christopher Nolan has a huge number of runs on the board, and so far as my personal reckoning goes, it must have one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled: in Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt the crucial figures in two of the films that I've most taken to heart in the last few years (Juno and (500) Days of Summer), Page in particular being a favourite (but then who doesn't love Ellen Page?); in Cillian Murphy the most enthrallingly odd, more-or-less mainstream character actor in the business; in Marion Cotillard one of the most talented, not to mention most sheerly hot, Movie Stars going around; and in Leonard DiCaprio, an actor whose considerable abilities are forever at risk of being obscured by his looks and stardom but who nonetheless never seems to put a foot wrong.

Really, Inception is the complete package. Its stars all positively exude charisma (speaking of which, apart from those mentioned above, Michael Caine and Ken Watanabe are no slouches in that department either, nor the other key players), breathing life into their characters and navigating the film's many action sequences with equal aplomb; said action is frenetic and genuinely exciting - the equal of that in Nolan's Batmans - and things move along at a ferocious pace.

And of course there's the plot. Like Memento and The Prestige before it, Inception is ingeniously conceived and intricately plotted, but in a way that always plays fair with the audience - Nolan tells us what he's going to do, and then goes ahead and does it. The mechanics of the extraction and dream architecture processes are clearly laid out for us, as is the design for the central heist, and while the history of Cobb's relationship with Mal is revealed in stages, there's no suggestion that the way it's told to us is inaccurate (until a final scene which adds a layer that was always implicit)...the trick, such as it is, is in the construction. Even though all the pieces are there in plain sight (and Nolan handles his narrative elements with impressive economy - there's no place for MacGuffins here), it isn't until afterwards that it becomes obvious just how neatly everything fits together. Would that all blockbusters were this intelligent, this thrilling, this good.

Justin Cronin - The Passage

I'd seen a few references to The Passage over the last few months, and intriguing ones at that, with the result that its publication in Australia felt like something of an event. I burned through its 766 pages in a few days; basically, it's The Stand with vampires (plus a Watership Down interlude), and as immersive as that description makes it sound. Cronin moves things along quickly, creating mood and atmosphere effectively while also throwing in plenty of action, so that the book is as frequently unnerving as it is exciting, and sometimes genuinely moving; also, for better or for worse, it ends with the suggestion of a sequel. There's not much to fault about it, for what it is - a real good bit of genre fiction.

"Dead Man's Cell Phone" (MTC)

Pleasant but kind of forgettable; Lisa McCune fairly charming though also fairly stagey (to be fair, it could have been intentional - but one of the problems with the play as a whole is that its arch, contemporary-whimsical-quasi-magic-realist stagey-ness doesn't take it anywhere in particular while undermining any real audience investment in its characters).

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co] 

David Mitchell - Ghostwritten

Feels like something of a dry run for Cloud Atlas - less fully developed than that later effort, but sharing elements of its structure and method of developing its thematic concerns and, crucially, its storytelling flair. Mitchell whips from milieu to milieu, inhabiting (the choice of words is deliberate) character upon character, including some very non-traditional subjects (two of them outright non-corporeal). Motifs recur; ideas are recapitulated and spun from an array of different perspectives. An impressive feat, and all the more so for a first novel.

Constantine

It's not that I particularly love this movie, yet this was the third time that I've seen it; still, I enjoyed it on this pass too, for there's a lot to like, most notably a cracking pace, a willingness to be literal in its depiction of hell and its denizens, and vivid performances from its principals (including Keanu wreathed in dark clothes, cigarette smoke and a bad attitude, a young Shia LaBeouf adding a lighter touch, Peter Stormare's memorable cameo as a poncingly menacing Lucifer, and of course turns from Rachel Weisz and Tilda Swinton, two of the most attractive women in Hollywood today).

Kingdom of Heaven

Ridley Scott, Orlando Bloom, 12th century Crusade setting, modern attitudes towards religious tolerance, etc - not bad, not great.

"Boston Marriage" (MTC)

Mamet's version of a drawing-room comedy, "Boston Marriage" is on the light side but clever, and entertaining enough, buoyed by good performances from Pamela Rabe, Margaret Mills and Sara Gleeson (the last particularly enjoyable as the perky maid Catherine), a sharp edge (though more cutting would have been better) and a pleasing vulgarity in moments. A slyly happy ending, too!

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co] 

The Secret in Their Eyes

A tough-minded crime/thriller/drama/thwarted-romance piece set in Buenos Aires with things to say about passion, responsibility, opportunity and living with the past - pretty watchable, if (deliberately) on the heavy side.

M J Hyland - This Is How

Like Hyland's previous novels, Carry Me Down and How The Light Gets In, This Is How is a quiet, disquieting excursion into a mind that is, if not outright damaged, then at least subtly but devastatingly unsuited to the society of others; again like those other books, the first person present tense voice is increasingly claustrophobic and uncomfortable for the reader.

The first part, in which the sense of unease builds to Patrick's fatal act, is stronger than the second, in the prison, which suffers from a sense of over-familiarity despite Hyland's taut, incisive style; overall, though, another very strong novel.

David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest

I'd been looking forward to reading Infinite Jest for a while, and the recent India trip seemed a perfect opportunity to finally get stuck in. Perhaps the most striking thing about the novel (after the obvious fact of its massive length) is its generosity - in its abundance of ideas and connections (and words), in its willingness to reiterate and return to connections and linkages in case they were missed when first mentioned, in the many brands of humour that are sprinkled throughout, in the breadth of its thematic coverage, and in the way that it treats its characters and respects their essential humanity in a way that DeLillo and Pynchon, two obvious points of reference for DFW, often don't.

Some of the book's funniest passages involve two characters ostensibly having a conversation but in fact barely if at all engaging with each other, so that what instead emerges is effectively two fragmented, almost surreally juxtaposed monologues; as with many, or indeed perhaps all, of the book's comic devices, it also serves a deeper purpose, dramatising the failures of connection and communication that litter Wallace's post-contemporary America. A satire, a serious-minded examination of modern cultures of addiction, entertainment and (over-)achievement, a remarkably disciplined sprawl, paradoxically highly readable while deliberately self-disruptive, itself a consummate entertainment with innumerable stings in the tail, Infinite Jest is really something.

The Book of Eli

Fairly standard post-apocalyptic-action-film-with-Christian-imagery-overtones.

Michael Collins

Plenty watchable; nice to see Alan Rickman in a role involving no hamming whatsoever (and he does it well, too).

Shutter Island

Painted by Scorsese in bold, confident strokes, Shutter Island doesn't quite satisfy despite a bunch of good actors, a suitably shadowy cinematographic palette, and a convincing period setting - the trimmings are all there, but the plot is too familiar, as is the way it unfolds.

McCabe & Mrs Miller

An unusual but quietly pleasing film, wryly deconstructing the western before it was fashionable to do so, and in the end leaving a real feeling of both humanity and sadness as well as telling a story about America and how it was made. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie inhabit their characters, evolving (or perhaps revealing themselbes) organically before our eyes; indeed, the whole film feels very organic, soundtrack (entirely Leonard Cohen), camera-work, dialogue and all. I think that it'll stay with me.

The New Pornographers - Together

Comparisons are generally invidious, but they're oh so tempting, and when a band is following up a four album opening streak in which every record has been at least extremely good and two (Electric Version and Twin Cinema) are candidates for greatness, then expectation alone forces the comparison to what has come before, and so:

Quality-wise, Together is probably about on a par with the relative dip that was Challengers - it certainly doesn't get anywhere near the heights of the Electric Version/Twin Cinema one-two. There's more ornamentation and more jangle, less in the way of surging, full-tilt, sugar-rush highs (which are, after all the best thing about past New Pornographers albums). The best songs here come at the start - namely "Crash Years" and sort-of title track "Your Hands (Together)" (the stomping "A Bite Out Of My Bed", near the end, is also neat), but even they don't have the glorious abandon of past record highlights, and there are just too many indistinct, undistinguished tracks on Together that don't really go anywhere...so, good, but, at least judged against the very high standards they've set for themselves, this is a bit of a disappointment.

Robin Hood

Exciting enough, and well made (as you'd expect with Ridley Scott at the helm), this Robin Hood works pretty well as a 'historical' adventure. But it's a touch disappointing nonetheless, for it lacks a certain depth, grit and sense of significance, all of which it clearly aspires to - something about it feels just a bit by-the-numbers (a bit of Braveheart here, a bit of Gladiator there, a touch of The Lord of the Rings elsewhere...), and though the story arc is clear, there isn't the overwhelming sense of being immersed and swept along that I look for in this kind of film.

"The Ugly One" (MTC)

A barbed little satire, "The Ugly One" reminded me in some slightly ineffable way of Amelie Nothomb's short novel Fear and Trembling, in its brevity and apparent slightness coupled with a cutting edge, piercing focus of vision and intimations of larger concerns, all imbued with an allegorical flavour (it also reminded me of Yasmina Reza's "Art" and "God of Carnage"); also, it embodies a certain kind of postmodernism in which the modernist antecedents of that later -ism are clearly apparent.

Moreover, the Sumner proves an excellent space in service of a crafty staging which makes good use of lighting and a small handful of props (most notably a large supply of green apples, often being significantly peeled in line with the plot, which revolves around the surgical makeover of a remarkably ugly man's face and all that follows), and the talents of Alison Bell, Kim Gyngell, Patrick Brammall and Luke Ryan, form well matched to content in a way that allows the play to emerge naturally.

"The Ugly One" is the work of a young, contemporary German writer, Marius von Mayenburg; the Malthouse's staging of his (quite different) "Eldorado" a few years back left a great impression on me. Definitely one to watch and explore further.

(w/ Steph)

Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances

One and a quarter readings into Rivka Galchen's cerebral, accomplished first novel (it's one of those that demands a reasonably immediate re-read), I'm still unsure about how naturalistically (or perhaps 'realistically' is a better way of putting in - ie, in line with what the book's psychiatrist narrator calls the 'consensus view of reality') it should be read. On balance, despite the hints of outright anti-realism, at least in the representational/mimetic sense (the implausible happenings it apparently chronicles, the deliberate echoes of Borges and The Crying of Lot 49), I think it can more readily be read as a particularly intriguing 'unreliable narrator' text, the unlikely convictions (the book's starting point and central story driver is the narrator's belief that his wife has been replaced by an impostor who looks and acts almost exactly like his wife), perceptions and experiences of the narrator, including his weird emotional responses (or lack thereof) and diminished affect, symptomatic of some psychological disturbance of his own. But it's hard to tell - perhaps not only are both valid readings, but in some slippery (undecidable?) sense need to be engaged in at the same time to really get anywhere near the bottom of Atmospheric Disturbances.

Also occupying me a bit: to what extent is it a story about love, and to what extent a love story? (Answer, I think: to a very large extent, both. Either way, it made me sad - I felt sorry for the characters, but especially Rema.)

Anyway, file on the same shelf as, I reckon, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and it's not a world away from what I was trying to get at a while ago in relation to Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, either.

(Incidentally, while carrying Atmospheric Disturbances around and reading it in a range of more or less public places over the last few weeks, I've noticed an inordinate number of people looking at its cover, sometimes surreptitiously and sometimes quite openly - there must be something about it that catches the eye, though that thought didn't prevent me once or twice slipping into brief daydream reveries about the possibility that the looker was, say, the author's sister or somesuch other concerned party...)

Terry Pratchett - Feet of Clay

A comfort re-read. Not a highlight of Pratchett's considerable oeuvre, but as enjoyable as always.

Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Pretty much since I read White Teeth, Zadie has been a touchstone for me. In January '06, I wrote this (in re: On Beauty):

...while I like her heaps, I also tend to be particularly critical of our Zadie. There are probably a few reasons for this: first, there's a sense in which I feel as if I've grown up with her, and as if I've watched her grow up as a writer (a continuing process on both ends, natch); second, and relatedly, she's a contemporary writer, writing about contemporary times; and third, and relatedly again, the milieus [pl?] about which she writes aren't all that far removed from my own (all things being relative)...

All of that is still pretty much true, but the balance is tipping, and more and more she's coming to seem one of the most cogent, engaging voices of her (and my) generation - she actually has about seven years on me, but near enough - and this collection has done a lot to cement that sense for me. Arranged in five sections along roughly thematic lines - 'reading' (books), 'being' (writing/society/identity), 'seeing' (movies), 'feeling' (family, etc) and 'remembering' (an extended appreciation of / testament to David Foster Wallace) - but with her key preoccupations bleeding across those divisions, it highlights what a good writer she has become, capable of writing clearly and insightfully in a vein at once personal and critical/analytical...maybe the next novel, whenever it arrives, really will be the great one of which she's always seemed at least potentially capable.

"Carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees": The National - High Violet

When, on my first couple of listens to High Violet, it felt a bit monochrome, featureless - monotonous even - I was unfazed, because, you see, the thing with National albums is that they're growers. Alligator and Boxer are both remarkable records, both flat-out great, and, it turns out, High Violet deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as those predecessors - it has the same hypnotic quality, the same surging musicality, the same silvery velvet deepness.

The songs on High Violet are basically bulletproof, carefully constructed and lit from within, and decorated with subtle details. Like Boxer, it feels as if it's made up of a series of suites, the scene-setting, exploratory, increasingly definite building blocks of "Terrible Love", "Sorrow" and "Anyone's Ghost" leading into the "Little Faith" - "Afraid of Everyone" - "Bloodbuzz Ohio" run which, for me, forms the solid centre of the album; then the gathering of thoughts (and, to be honest, weakest cut) that is "Lemonworld" before the closing run, "Runaway", "Conversation 16" and "England" repeatedly building and subsiding and building again until finally flowing over on melancholically triumphant finale "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks". There's a natural flow to it - a sustainedly brooding mood, shot through with well-timed crescendos and rushes of energy. I listen to it over and over; it continues to startle me; sometimes I think, all albums should be this good.

"Waiting for Godot" (Theatre Royal Haymarket) @ Comedy Theatre

Not amazing, but predictably good, what with Ian McKellen and Roger Rees (aka Lord John Marbury from The West Wing) as Estragon and Vladimir; the actors playing Pozzo and Lucky also v.g. This production elects for a lighter, more comic slant than I'd imagined while reading the play; setting the action on a ruined stage is a nice touch, and apt.

(w/ Sunny, Kim, Ruth, Hayley and Meribah - front row)

OP8 - Slush

I tend to romanticise origins - well, I tend to romanticise everything - but I'm reasonably sure that the first time I came across OP8, years ago, it was through seeing the music video for "Sand" late one night on rage, dazed and exhausted and generally in the state when everything seems to come through blurry and in waves; I half-suspect romanticisation (or perhaps 'idealisation' would be more accurate) because those would, in retrospect, have been close to the ideal circumstances in which to be introduced to this unusual, rather quixotic collective's music.

Slush isn't all like "Sand", which is to say that it isn't all dusty, evocative campfire duets, but it does, across all of the diverse terrain that it covers, share with that opening track a certain sense of reaching the listener as if crackling with distance, through some old transistor radio, Howe Gelb and Joey Burns' experimental americana sketches and Lisa Germano's warm, fractured almost-pop tunes alike; it's an unusual record, slow-burning and low-key, but scattered with subtle pleasures.

"Richard III" (MTC)

You know you're seeing Shakespeare done well when the play itself really comes through and envelopes you - when the greatness of the source material is most clearly legible - and that's certainly true of this very strong "Richard III". Turns out that I knew the play pretty well, though I can't remember the last time I read it (years ago, at any rate), and this production does it justice, Ewen Leslie's vivid turn as the titular villain and the handsome sets particularly striking. One issue - and frequent stumbling block - with staging Shakespeare is the extent and manner to which the play is contemporised, but here it works well, with a consistent thread running through costumes, sets and the more intangible aspects of style, the play's bloody action located in a non-specific but more or less contemporary setting, dressed in images of militarism and political power and thereby dramatising the murderous impulses that underlie their exercise and expression, which in a sense is what the play itself is all about.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co] 

Near Dark

Why did I like this film? Two words: Vampire Western. Throw in a bit of southern gothic, a melodramatic romance and some serious Mood (equal parts the blue filter cinematography and noctural settings and a synth-heavy Tangerine Dream soundtrack that's by turns brooding and energised), and it's pretty much a perfect Friday night film. (Though I could take or leave the heavy lashings of blood, I suppose they come with the territory.) It was made in 1987, directed by Kathryn Bigelow; films that could plausibly have been influenced by it would include, I reckon, From Dusk Till Dawn and Twilight.

(w/ M)

Regina Spektor @ the Palais, Saturday 1 May

A good show, Spektor v. polished (though still real-seeming); highlight probably "Samson", first song into the encore, performer, stage and the ornate surrounds of the Palais luminous in the scattered lights.

(w/ trang)

Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot

My copy of this book is secondhand (like most of my books); the careful cursive inscription on its half title page indicates that it was formerly owned by Leonie Scudds (Form Six). Apart from those details, there are two handwritten annotations, one on that front page, the other about halfway through, both piquant:

The characters talk for a while + get no where

making us wait + see what he is leading up to. How many conversations are significant? yes. same here.

I've never read Beckett before, though I've seen a couple of excellent productions of his plays in the last couple of years or so (Endgame and Happy Days), and got a lot out of Godot despite the vast amount of cultural detritus that has accumulated around the idea of it. The play is oblique in its meanings, but strikingly direct in other ways; reading it, one is left with an overwhelming sense of entropy, repetition, absence, failures of meaning and understanding, an uncaring universe. It's remarkable in its artistry, in the way that it lays out and revisits its themes over and over (with repetition itself one of those very themes) without ever seeming overdetermined, in its understanding of the specific and the universal and how they necessarily relate to each other, in its sustained worldview and in the balance between the tragic and the comic that it achieves throughout.

The Boat That Rocked

Utterly uninteresting nostalgia trip alas. Top cast, bright set and costumes, decent premise, an underlying message with which I have a fair bit of sympathy (though it's not given anything but the shallowest treatment) - but completely average in the execution, oh well.

Nellie McKay - Normal As Blueberry Pie

Oh, there are few things that make me as happy as Nellie McKay does! Her latest is a set of songs made famous by Doris Day (kicking off with "The Very Thought Of You"), and sees her playing it straighter and more restrained than her previous stuff - her takes on these songs seem sincere rather than ironic, and there's no genre-hopping whatsoever - but it's still delightful.

Kick-Ass

By the sounds of it, there's been a bit of moral panic / general wowser-ish controversy about this film, but for me, the main point is that Kick-Ass is hella entertaining. The action scenes are kinetic and exciting (and completely over the top), the characters kind of thin but vividly drawn, the story economical and pacy, the mood surprisingly deep and at times dark; it plays like a comic book, not least in its knowingness...much fun.

Doves - Some Cities

Say what you like about Doves, they know how to chime. I suspect that for me, they'll forever be an outfit under the shadow of their first, great album, Lost Souls, which happened to come out at the ideal time for me to get right into it; still, Some Cities has its moments...but I haven't taken it to heart.

Tift Merritt - Another Country

Several coatings glossier than Bramble Rose, Another Country is also several steps further down the 'pop' path - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly when, as sometimes happens with this record, this involves echoes of Dusty Springfield along the way...

The Walkmen - A Hundred Miles Off

As usual with the Walkmen, a couple of killer songs (most notably album bookends "Louisiana" and "Another One Goes By") and a handful of other good ones, and the balance fairly indistinct. (Also, I never noticed before how much the singer sounds like Bob Dylan sometimes.) I like their sense of drama, and at their best they can be genuinely exciting, but somehow these guys have never really taken with me.

Laura Veirs - July Flame

July Flame is pretty good - probably the best thing that Veirs has done in a while (it's certainly caught my ear more than Saltbreakers or Year of Meteors). Though I haven't really been into her more recent stuff, I have a soft spot for Veirs that's about a mile wide, and if I've mostly had this one on as background music, I've been enjoying it nonetheless.

Enemy at the Gates

A war movie, and a reasonably involving one. Something's missing, though - as well mounted as the film is, it didn't really make me care.

The Hudsucker Proxy

A film that always pleases me, the Coen brothers drawing on all sorts of cinematic influences to produce an off the wall yet surprisingly cogent (on its own terms) melange, Robbins and Newman and JJL each making the screen their own every time they appear.

(last time)

Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter - Oh, My Girl

Heard a couple of songs by this outfit on last.fm a while back, and the name stuck in my head; the album's about what I'd expected, melancholy contemporary country, reminiscent at various times of Mazzy Star, Beth Orton and Kathleen Edwards. Pretty sweet, but lacking the extra ingredient that distinguishes the best artists in this territory.

Adventureland

In its low-key way, Adventureland feels heartfelt, something reflected in the relatively realistic (for the most part) way its characters are rendered; also in its favour, it plays the nostalgia card effectively on not one or even two but rather three levels (it's set in 1987 (one), but the soundtrack draws on both late 80s alternative and its 60s and 70s forerunners (two), and it's about a time of life which, playing the averages, will be in the past for most of its viewers, me included (three)). In the end, there's not much to this film, but it's pretty okay.

Mulholland Drive

It's been a while since I saw a David Lynch film; I'd forgotten what a beguiling experience it could be. I saw Mulholland Drive when it was first out in cinemas, and that first time, it felt exactly the way it was supposed to - like a shadowy, spirallingly dream-like descent into the unconscious, disorienting and oddly familiar in equal measures (ie, 'Unheimlich'). This time, knowing in advance how the pieces would fit together in terms of the film's structuring conceit, I was most struck by its formal perfection - the craft with which it sets up and then detonates the late-act identity/reality blur and shift while swathing the whole thing in that unmistakeable Lynch/Badalamenti mood.

Sugababes - Overloaded: The Singles Collection

Glossy, enjoyable girl-band pop with replay value that's only surprising if you've never had "Overload" or "Push The Button" stuck in your head.

The Be Good Tanyas - Blue Horse

Nicely put together bluegrass-tinted modern country with the bonus of Jolie Holland's appearance on a few tracks.

School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms

Like many things, I suppose, School of Seven Bells are at their best when at their most ecstatic - most notably, on the strategically-tracklisted (at tracks 2 and 3) "Face to Face on High Places" and "Half Asleep", a pair of gauzey, zoomy, ascendant dream-pop cuts somewhat surprisingly woven through with, respectively, an Eastern-sounding rhythm line (underpinned by thumping, tribal drums) and an IDM-at-its-most-friendly cum Delerium-esque dancefloor haze. There are a lot of ideas on this record, sometimes overwhelming the musical content of the songs, which can seem a bit thin despite (or perhaps because of) how much is going on sonically throughout (the abovementioned threads are various enough, but only scratch the surface); perhaps that's why the most straight-ahead songs on Alpinisms are its best.

Sally Seltmann - Heart That's Pounding

There's a lot to like about Heart That's Pounding - Seltmann's knack for sweet tunes and interesting arrangements, a song ("Dream About Changing") whose main, and totally catchy, hook is the refrain "I'm a little bit shy" (and repeat), an overall coherency which makes the differentiation as between individual songs all the more impressive...I could wish that it had more of the delicately nocturnal, music-box air of her New Buffalo recordings, but this is a very nice record on its own terms, more rousing and outward-looking than anything she's done before.

Goldfrapp - Head First

Heavily 80s-tinged electro-pop with an eye for big choruses - Head First represents a direction that, now they've gone in it, isn't hugely surprising given Goldfrapp's previous output, as full of interesting shifts and wends as that back catalogue has been. Unfortunately, it's the first real interruption to their brilliant run - Felt Mountain, Black Cherry, Supernature, Seventh Tree (with a bit of an asterisk for that last, which isn't as unimpeachable as the other three, but is still really damn good) - for Head First feels oddly lacklustre, as if some essential spark is missing...it's pleasant enough, but nothing special.

Margot at the Wedding

Not everyone likes Nicole Kidman, but I reckon she's a good actor, verging on great on her day (also, I like her hauteur); Jennifer Jason Leigh, of course, is consistently dependable and usually brilliant. Margot at the Wedding is really about the interplay between the sisters those two play, Margot and Pauline (their names an odd, and almost certainly unintentional, echo of the Neko Case song "Margaret vs Pauline") - and, to the extent that the distinction's meaningful, more about their interactions rather than their relationship. I like the kind of spiky, cutting, distancingly cool dialogue (the description could apply equally to the film as a while) with which the characters lacerate each other; I'm not sure why. Anyway, I went along with this film easily, but probably wouldn't watch it again; it was something like Rachel Getting Married crossed with Closer, but more oblique and without the punch of either.

Optical Illusions

A pleasant mix of social drama and social comedy, and of the deadpan and the whimsical; has its moments, though the pacing is perhaps a bit uneven.

(@ La Mirada film festival, w/ Meribah, Ruth and a couple of Meribah's friends)

Ian C Esslemont - Night of Knives

More confined in scope than any of Erikson's Malazan books (or, for that matter, Esslemont's own Return of the Crimson Guard), but still enjoyable.

"Elizabeth" (Malthouse)

Pleasingly profane and frequently grotesque, Dario Fo's "Elizabeth" comes to life in a typically Kantor staging, where what matters is as much the style and theatricality of the play as its reimagining of the private and interior late life of the virgin queen. Though it's never less than diverting, overall I felt the play was a mite shallow, its irreverences, anachronisms and throwaway lines and devices (fourth wall-breaking and otherwise) often coming off as a free-floating postmodernism-lite lacking any genuine artistic purpose; that said, there were moments in its second half which felt like real theatre, which is another way of saying that they felt real, which in the end, and coupled with with a fantastic set and strong performances (Julie Forsyth in the lead role, so that pretty much goes without saying) left me feeling that this was well worthwhile.

(w/ Wei)

The Last of the Mohicans

This really is very good - a stirring historical adventure in which all of the elements work, from the vivid action sequences which punctuate it to the sweeping love story that runs through its middle, set against a spectacular natural backdrop and relayed with just enough historical context to satisfy without slowing the pace of events down. I think it's the combination of the fluency of the story-telling and characterisation, strong performances from the lead actors, and evocative score that gives the film's most dramatic moments (of which there are many) their force; given what it is, it's hard to imagine how the film could have been any better.

(Also, I'm pretty sure that my first watching of the film, way back when (mid-teens), was one of the first times that an actor registered with me as being particularly attractive - namely, Madeleine Stowe's fetching turn as Cora...M scoffed at this, but I was quite pleased by this evidence that my 'type' has remained so consistent after all this time.)

(Last time - which, incidentally, wasn't the aforementioned first watching...)

Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison & At San Quentin

Surprising to realise that I've never listened to these all the way through before - anyway, both are just grand, full of familiar and familiar-sounding songs, completely inimitable...there's just something about Johnny Cash.

The Moffs - The Collection

Two cds of epic, mostly guitar-based progressive/psychedelic rock tunes from this 80s Australian outfit; "Another Day in the Sun" still great, the rest of it less memorable but then I haven't really properly absorbed it.

"Stereogum Presents... OKX: A Tribute to OK Computer"

I downloaded this a while ago, having come across it while trying to find out more about My Brightest Diamond after hearing their "Feeling Good" on the Dark Was the Night record, but only got round to listening to it this evening, inspired by the previous extemporanea entry. It's a freely downloadable compilation put together by Stereogum as a 10th anniversary tribute to OK Computer, made up of the entire tracklist in original running order, each song covered by a different artist, plus (in the zip file I got) a b-side, "Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)", and makes for an interesting listening experience, these very familiar songs in their equally familiar sequence, each easily recognisable but markedly different from their original forms.

I've only listened to it once, but my sense is that none of the covers manage to escape the long shadow of the original tracks (Vampire Weekend's take on "Exit Music (For A Film)" ends up sounding more like the original Radiohead version than like anything done by Vampire Weekend) - they tend to be fairly muted, sombre interpretations built on low-key vocals and a mixture of programmed and more organic instrumentation and tones. That said, there are no abominations here, and a few of the takes are quite interesting: an outfit called Mobius Band (thumbs up to the name) do a perked-up "Subterranean Homesick Alien", the Cold War Kids are a natural fit for "Electioneering", Marissa Nadler (feat. Black Hole Infinity) brings her hauntedly pretty style to "No Surprises", and My Brightest Diamond turn in a suitably dramatic take on "Lucky" which, for the most part, hews closely to the original but is thereby striking in its departures.

100 favourite albums: # 3-1: Loveless - My Bloody Valentine; OK Computer - Radiohead; Bachelor No 2 - Aimee Mann

A while ago, I started writing about my favourite albums, but that project ran out of steam for a number of reason, not least among them being that, in the time that it took me to get through all the mini-writeups, I changed my mind about two or three of them in ways that made the existing list annoyingly incomplete (case in point: as of right now, what would most likely have been number two on that list isn't even my favourite album by that artist, let alone my second favourite amongst all comers); being a purist, I naturally took that as my cue to stop altogether. In the interests of finishing what I started, though, here, briefly, are what would have been the top 3:

# 3: Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

... an album that for me stands alone as the finest exercise in sheer, bloody-minded brilliance ever committed to record. With its impeccably-produced, layered, hallucinogenic swathes of sound, blissed-out melodies and dreamily mumbled vocals, Loveless not only defined shoegazer and dream-pop, but also established a new standard for all guitar music which came after it. This really is the one, listened to loud or soft (but preferably loud), happy or sad, by day or by night, in company or, of course, alone. It is sheerest genius ... - 5/8/03



# 2: OK Computer - Radiohead

... the single album that most captured the spirit of the pre-millennial Zeitgeist – self-aware, cynical, almost resigned, and yet spine-chillingly grandiose and oh-so-faintly hopeful (ifeelmyluckcouldchange); spacey, melodic, progressive, and undeniably great, it struck a chord with depressed, tired_nhappy indie kids everywhere and remains popular guitar music’s closest approach to perfection yet ... - 5/8/03



# 1: Bachelor No 2, or The Last Remains of the Dodo - Aimee Mann

Wreathed in the forms and moves of classic singer-songwriter pop but with a distinctly modern voice, this album speaks directly to me, engaging my intellect, emotions and imagination all at once. It's simply the sharpest, clearest, truest record I've ever heard.



Anyway, that means that the full list (subject to the above qualifications) would have gone like this:

1. Bachelor No 2, or The Last Remains of the Dodo - Aimee Mann
2. OK Computer - Radiohead
3. Loveless - My Bloody Valentine
4. The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
5. New Adventures In Hi-Fi - R.E.M.
6. Homogenic - Bjork
7. Moon Pix - Cat Power
8. Summerteeth - Wilco
9. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
10. If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian
11. Blacklisted - Neko Case
12. Low - David Bowie
13. Isn't Anything - My Bloody Valentine
14. The Bends - Radiohead
15. Closer - Joy Division
16. Boxer - The National
17. Blue Bell Knoll - Cocteau Twins
18. Treasure - Cocteau Twins
19. On The Beach - Neil Young
20. The Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian
21. Reading, Writing & Arithmetic - The Sundays
22. Kid A - Radiohead
23. Tigermilk - Belle and Sebastian
24. Psychocandy - The Jesus and Mary Chain
25. On Fire - Galaxie 500
26. Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division
27. Doolittle - Pixies
28. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road - Lucinda Williams
29. Post - Bjork
30. Marquee Moon - Television
31. Funeral - Arcade Fire
32. Essence - Lucinda Williams
33. The Execution Of All Things - Rilo Kiley
34. Hail To The Thief - Radiohead
35. So Tonight That I Might See - Mazzy Star
36. Radio City - Big Star
37. Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk - Jeff Buckley
38. The Real Ramona - Throwing Muses
39. Reckoning - R.E.M.
40. GP - Gram Parsons
41. Pearl - Janis Joplin
42. The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
43. Turn On The Bright Lights - Interpol
44. Deserter's Songs - Mercury Rev
45. Time (The Revelator) - Gillian Welch
46. 69 Love Songs - The Magnetic Fields
47. Humming By The Flowered Vine - Laura Cantrell
48. Endtroducing...... - DJ Shadow
49. A Ghost Is Born - Wilco
50. Fox Confessor Brings The Flood - Neko Case
51. The Forgotten Arm - Aimee Mann [*]
52. Born Sandy Devotional - The Triffids
53. So Tough - Saint Etienne
54. f#a#∞ - Godspeed You Black Emperor!
55. Murmur - R.E.M.
56. Not The Tremblin' Kind - Laura Cantrell
57. Children Running Through - Patty Griffin
58. to venus and back - Tori Amos [studio disc only]
59. Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea - PJ Harvey
60. After The Gold Rush - Neil Young
61. Soul Journey - Gillian Welch
62. Five Leaves Left - Nick Drake
63. The Soft Bulletin - The Flaming Lips
64. Troubled By The Fire - Laura Veirs
65. King - Belly
66. Star - Belly
67. The Meadowlands - The Wrens
68. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - Spoon
69. I'm With Stupid - Aimee Mann
70. Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
71. Third - Portishead
72. You Are Free - Cat Power
73. Amnesiac - Radiohead
74. Pretty Little Head - Nellie McKay [*]
75. Automatic For The People - R.E.M.
76. The New Romance - Pretty Girls Make Graves
77. Good Humor - Saint Etienne [*] [**]
78. Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie
79. Heaven Or Las Vegas - Cocteau Twins
80. Kill The Moonlight - Spoon
81. Transformer - Lou Reed
82. Miss America - Mary Margaret O'Hara
83. Central Reservation - Beth Orton
84. She Hangs Brightly - Mazzy Star
85. Dummy - Portishead
86. Being There - Wilco
87. The Holy Bible - Manic Street Preachers
88. Remain In Light - Talking Heads
89. Vespertine - Bjork
90. Our Time In Eden - 10,000 Maniacs
91. #1 Record - Big Star
92. Tiger Bay - Saint Etienne
93. Everything Must Go - Manic Street Preachers
94. Disintegration - The Cure
95. The Last Beautiful Day - New Buffalo
96. In Rainbows - Radiohead
97. Alligator - The National
98. Mezzanine - Massive Attack
99. Pod - The Breeders
100. Make Me Hard - Tujiko Noriko

Clash of the Titans

More or less exactly as I'd expected, but somehow I was still a touch disappointed. I'll think twice next time.

(w/ M)

Micmacs

A pleasant little bagatelle, but probably my least favourite of Jeunet's proper films (ie, those which he both directed and wrote or co-wrote the screenplay for, which excludes Alien: Resurrection); of those others, it's most like Amelie (a touchstone for me, of course) in the way that it pretty much gets by on whimsy alone, but it has neither the true feel-good factor of the other, nor its emotional heft. Still, its cast of eccentrics is enjoyable and the visuals are characteristically Jeunet (if somewhat more muted than the early genius of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, both of which still haunt me) - but I can't help but watch it through the prism of the significance which each of his other films holds for me.

(w/ M)

Love Is All - Nine Times That Same Song

A slightly unexpectedly awesome album, Nine Times That Same Song (actually ten songs long) strikes a delicious balance between shouty, jagged, blaring indie-pop/rock and vivid, pulsating melodic swirl, I don't know, like the (debut lp-era) Concretes meeting Pretty Girls Make Graves or Life Without Buildings and then having a party about it. Exciting, fun, catchy, RAD.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

I must admit that I was a Fleet Foxes sceptic. Everyone told me they were great, the reviews were uniformly good to excellent, and what I heard about them made me think it could be the sort of stuff that I could get into - but I just wasn't excited about listening to them...the way their music was described, it sounded as if I'd heard it all before (the vibe I got was basically of a folkier, more harmonies-focused version of My Morning Jacket or Band of Horses). Anyway, I finally got around to listening to the album, and while it is pretty much exactly what I'd expected, it's also actually very good. I mean, I have heard this stuff before, but on Fleet Foxes, it's all packaged up so nicely and with such skill that I'm very glad to have made the record's acquaintance anyway.

Be Kind Rewind

Diverting, good-natured, extremely minor; Mos Def is oddly subdued, Jack Black is himself.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Whatever else you may say about it, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is a very stylish film. Its palette - both visually and thematically - is highly distinctive; its 'feel' equally so. As a matter of fact, I thought that it was really good, oddly fable-like ('a fairytale with fangs', as a grab on the dvd box puts it), and it makes an impression that lingers. I certainly found watching it to be a more enjoyable experience than was the case with Oldboy, and equally charged in the way that the other was.

The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic

Not as fully formed as their Electric Version-onwards stuff, but Mass Romantic shows plenty of signs of the minor greatness that was to come, most notably on the still great after all these years title track, stomping and clattering its way to shouty power-pop heaven.

She & Him - Volume Two

Another set of charmingly retro tunes from Zooey and M. The songs aren't terribly memorable, but it's a nice record nonetheless.

Carson McCullers - The Member of the Wedding

Reading this book, I imagined I felt something like a series of detonations in my chest - it brings on a sense of being half-stifled by (and at once yearning towards) something inexpressible. There's something of it in Berenice's attempt to articulate the feeling that the darkening, late-afternoon conversation between her, Frankie and John Henry has been circling around on the day before the wedding:

'I think I have a vague idea what you were driving at,' she said. 'We all of us somehow caught. We born this way or that way and we don't know why. But we caught anyhow. I born Berenice. You born Frankie. John Henry born John Henry. And maybe we wants to widen and bust free. But no matter what we do we still caught. Me is me and you is you and he is he. We each one of us somehow caught all by ourself. Is that what you was trying to say?'

Someone, I can't remember who, once said that the mark of an artist - or a poet, perhaps - is the ability to take feelings and emotions experienced by others and then to intensify them, and that's what McCullers is about, both here and in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which made such an impression on me when I came across it a while back. In The Member of the Wedding, she does so through the confusedly urgent thoughts and sensations of Frankie Addams, almost thirteen years old, as summer fades into autumn in 1940s small town southern America and Frankie's brother's imminent wedding becomes the focus of her inchoate grasping for some clearer sense of herself and her relationship to the world; it's convincing, in all its heightenedness, because it's presented to us through the prism of early adolescence, that time when everything was urgent and important, when the world was a source of limitless potential and unclear hopes and at the same time of constant constraints, when things were continually just beyond expressing and understanding, and all things were always changing...the magic, though, is in the way it reminds us that that state, in fact, persists all through our lives, obscured and muffled though it becomes in the passage into adulthood...a book to take to heart.

(I wonder, incidentally, if this is where Frankie magazine, to which I took out a subscription a few months ago, gets its name from - apt, if so.)

China Miéville - The City & The City

A very different creature from Miéville's uniformly excellent Bas-Lag books (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council), The City & The City imagines a uniquely twinned pair of cities occupying an overlapping physical ('grosstopic') space whose inhabitants and governments are adept at 'unseeing' each other at every turn (all the while maintaining diplomatic relations with each other and the rest of the world, which is pointedly familiar and contemporary, marked by a stream of readily recognisably cultural references); the division is policed by a mysterious organisation called 'Breach', which swoops upon any egregious breachers in a matter of seconds, the unfortunate individuals never to be seen again.

The cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, seethe with revolutionary groups and ethnic tension, plots and counter-plots, political and commercial intrigue and criminal activity; into all this is dropped a mysterious murder which appears to involve breach, investigated in classic (if, in many respects, necessarily thoroughly unconventional) police procedural style by the Beszel inspector Tyador Borlu. It's a vivid read, bulging with ideas and images of transgression, division and uneasy melding, of place, law, society, language - not as entertaining or compelling as the Bas-Lag series, but still impressively, muscularly intelligent and intriguing.

Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day

Like Stevens, its central character and narrator, Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is impeccably controlled; unlike Stevens, it's perfectly aware of the import of what it's doing, and it's in the gap between the character's and the author's understandings of Stevens' situation, and of the parallel historical developments in 1930s through 50s England (most particularly, the decline of the British Empire and aristocracy amidst, and, it seems to be suggested, in no small part because of, the persistence of the old class system), that this very fine novel works.

In its carefully observed, often only obliquely suggested (because presented through the distorting filter of Stevens' own perspective) portrait of Stevens' life and the tragedy of his (non-)relationship with Miss Kenton (staged in a series of hazy recollections which have a nostalgic air despite the formal, distanced way in which the butler recounts them), the novel is genuinely moving and very sad, but what makes it great is the way that this serves as a microcosm for wider social trends in the society where the story is played out. The Remains of the Day is deceptive - easy to read and apparently simple in design though it is, it's a novel of great craft and insight...really good.

Lost season 5

All-right. Caught up to the current and final season - now trying very hard to avoid any hints or spoilers as the show plays out week by week on tv till I can get my hands on the whole lot. Quite a lot of loose ends get tied up in season 5, and the structure of the episodes (and of the season as a whole) increasingly reflects the narratival and thematic preoccupations of the show (most notably, at this point, the time travel thing).

"They made a statue of us" (2009 cd)

As usual, I put this cd together over late December '09, but this year I never got round to writing about the songs that were on it, so voila:

1. Mexico City – Jolie Holland
from The Living and the Dead (Anti; 2008) [also, here]

2. This Tornado Loves You – Neko Case
from Middle Cyclone (Anti; 2009)

3. Unless It’s Kicks – Okkervil River
from The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar; 2007)

4. French Navy – Camera Obscura
from My Maudlin Career (4AD; 2009)

5. Knotty Pine – Dirty Projectors & David Byrne
from Dark Was The Night (4AD; 2009)

6. With A Girl Like You – Dave Sitek
from Dark Was The Night (4AD; 2009)

7. Hey, Snow White – The New Pornographers
from Dark Was The Night (4AD; 2009)

8. It Must Come Through – Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea
from Hidden Hands (Sandcastle Music; 2009) [also, here and here]

9. The Bleeding Heart Show – The New Pornographers
from Twin Cinema (Matador; 2005)

10. Us – Regina Spektor
from (500) Days of Summer OST (Sire; 2009) / Soviet Kitsch (Sire; 2004)

11. Gimme Sympathy – Metric
from Fantasies (Metric Music International; 2009)

The first part of the year was all about Jolie Holland - I really fell hard for her over '08 and '09, the drowsily narcotic Springtime Can Kill You and brighter, more rock-tinted The Living and the Dead providing contrasting but complementary pleasures, tied together by Holland's delightful yawn of a voice - and I kept listening to her all the way through...it's sunk in, deep. "The Living and the Dead" kicks off the album of that name, and there's something at once golden and shadowy about it that makes me think of long summer days.

Okkervil River was the other artist that seemed to be with me from start to finish of '09, although more at intervals than in a constant flow; it was The Stage Names that I came to first, and as so often happens in these circumstances, it's remained my favourite. There are any number of brilliant, confounding songs on that record, but "Unless It's Kicks" is probably the most immediate and quite possibly the best, fervidly urgent and excitingly, propulsively direct.

Middle Cyclone came out near the start of the year, and I listened to it a fair bit for a couple of weeks and realised at the time that it was as good as anything that Case had done before (which is really saying something) and then kind of neglected it; coming back to the album later in the year, I realised how thoroughly it had infiltrated my musical landscape despite the relatively few spins I'd given it the first time round, and was reminded of how great it is; "This Tornado Loves You" is probably the closest thing to a representative song from the lp, and in any event it's probably my favourite.

And then there's Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career didn't quite match 2006's minor classic (and, for me, sentimental favourite) Let's Get Out Of This Country, but it was still really damn sweet, and seemed to be constantly playing in the car as M and I drove wherever we were going, all over Melbourne.

I noticed even at the time that the Dark Was The Night compilation felt like a soundtrack to a certain part of the year, somewhere around the middle; for that period, it seemed like it was playing everywhere I went - in bookstores and cafes, before gigs, at home of course...there are too many brilliant songs on it to need recounting, but "With A Girl Like You" and "Hey, Snow White" were the ones that I most found myself playing over and over, and "Knotty Pine" the one that I most strongly associated with the compilation itself.

A bit after that came Hidden Hands, and once that one took root, it was pretty much all I listened to for a period of several weeks. Simply put, it's a spectacularly good modern roots-rock album, Cloher selling surging, epic rockers, more mid-tempo folk and classic pop-influenced numbers and show-stopping emotional highs with equal conviction. I got totally stuck on "It Must Come Through" - it still kills me.

The tail end of the year was pretty much about the New Pornographers and Regina Spektor. I finally picked up Challengers and Twin Cinema, and discovered they're both marvellous; "The Bleeding Heart Show" is one of the most sheerly irresistible songs I've ever heard, especially its ending. And as to Regina, well, that was sparked off by (500) Days of Summer, and so it's not surprising that "Us" is the one that really resonated.

And then, at the very end, I stumbled across Metric's latest, and found that it was simply exactly the kind of thing I like - the shimmering "Gimme Sympathy" was the clear highlight, but the whole thing, vividly melodic and excitingly now, was like a rushing wave to carry me into the new year - it gave me a rush.

Patty Griffin - Downtown Church

On repeated listening, Children Running Through has proved nothing short of revelatory - it's an astonishing album, fiery, delicate and soulful, at once deeply rooted in americana traditions and unmistakeably modern, packed with great songs delivered unerringly by Griffin herself. Downtown Church, Griffin's follow up, has a much stronger gospel flavour to it than anything I've heard from her before, and while I don't (yet?) love it as much as its predecessor, there's much on it to take to heart; so far, it's a pair of collaborations with other favourites of mine ("Little Fire" w/ Emmylou Harris and "Coming Home To Me" w/ Julie Miller), and a lovely, quiet take on "All Creatures of Our God and King" that have most struck me.

Annie - Don't Stop & "All Night" ep

I was a bit of a fan of Anniemal, and in many ways Don't Stop is more of the same, though perhaps a bit more hyper and not as good; I haven't really gotten into it, though it has its moments (the highlights are generally slick dancefloor numbers like "Bad Times" and "Loco").

The accompanying "All Night" ep is noticeably stronger, filled with pop thrills and moments of genuine inventiveness and razor-sharp, indelible hooks, most particularly on the buzzing joy that is "I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me" and the Italo disco-touched "Anthonio".

The Apples in Stereo - #1 Hits Explosion

You'd think that I'd really like the Apples in Stereo, what with their melody-fixated, somewhat naive and significantly 60s-inspired in-search-of-the-perfect-pop-song approach and all that, but apparently not. This best-of is a pleasant enough listen, but it doesn't really inspire repeat listens, and nor do any of the songs particularly stand out for me.

Josh Rouse - The Best of the Rykodisc Years

Hasn't made much of an impression - vaguely coffee-coloured (also, cafe-ish) singer-songwriter stuff.

"Madagascar" (MTC)

Undistinguished monologue-driven set of interlinked character reflections structured around themes of absence and middle-class emptiness. Strong performances (Noni Hazlehurst, Asher Keddie and Nicholas Bell) and really actually a pretty good production all round, but the failure is in the writing of the play itself - it just felt so much like a play. At one point, I found myself remembering the Abbey Theatre's rather spectacular "Terminus" from last year (because of that other's similar 'three rotating monologues' structure), and the contrast couldn't be more marked - whereas "Terminus" was urgent, human, full of art and life, "Madagascar" is, while competent enough, essentially flat, uninspired, all of its style somehow empty. To me, it didn't feel as if the play had anything real to say.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co]

Alice in Wonderland

Disconnected thoughts on Alice in Wonderland:

1. Alice and Looking Glass are iconic books for me, deeply embedded in my imagination; Tim Burton is, of course, Tim Burton. The most immediately striking thing about this film is that it's just what one might expect a latter-day Burton Alice to be like.

2. Visually spectacular, of course, and I was totally fine with the reframing device. To me, though, the film suffered from its structuring around Alice's progression towards a climactic confrontation with the fearsome Jabberwocky - the books have an essentially a-narratival (that word is ugly no matter how I punctuate it) character which is integral to their effect, and something vital is lost in the film's focus on what is, let's face it, a fairly conventional story arc.

3. For some reason I found Anne Hathaway's White Queen very appealing. I suspect that this doesn't reflect well on me, though I can't quite say why.

4. That said, Alan Rickman pretty much steals the show as the voice of the Caterpillar. (Stephen Fry is also pretty great as the Cheshire Cat.)

5. Crispin Glover, by contrast, makes little impression. Goddamnit, he's almost normal in this movie! And Johnny Depp, while as watchable as always, seems in some measure to be reprising his role as Willy Wonka. Alice herself (Mia Wasikowska) holds her own, though.

6. A S Byatt's piece about the books in the Guardian is too long but quite charming in the way that it shows her totally geeking out about a pair of books that she obviously loves, and scattered with a fair number of genuine insights into what it is that makes Carroll's books so unique and great.

Azure Ray - Burn and Shiver

Wispily almost-not-there, Burn and Shiver isn't as gorgeous as their other two (the self-titled debut, and then more recently Hold on Love), but has more than enough hints of the Azure Ray magic to make it a keeper.

Julie Miller - Blue Pony

The woman in the record store where I bought this (somewhere on the main drag in Newtown, Sydney) told me that it was a beautiful album, and I can see where she was coming from, though other words spring more readily to mind - 'brilliant', for one. Well, maybe 'brilliant' is overstating it slightly, but Blue Pony really is a very good album, mixing country rockers like sparkling opener "A Kiss On The Lips" and the rousing "Dancing Girl" with slower-paced numbers like late album highlight "Face of Appalachia" and out and out country tunes, harmonies and all, like "Take Me Back". Through it all, Miller's extremely strong songwriting voice comes through, as does the distinctive sound she and artistical and marital partner Buddy Miller have hewed out for her, built around her girlish singing voice and the ringing guitars that run through the record.

Stephen Donaldson - "The Gap" series

Densely plotted, hectically fast-paced space opera inspired by Wagner's Ring cycle - this is about the third time I've been through it (the last time was a while back), and I'm still struck by Donaldson's ability to subject his characters and situations to such uncompromising stress and to work his way through their labyrinthine plotting against each other. This is really good story-telling, in a mode that seems distinctly Donaldson's own.

(An insightful and impressively detailed commentary is here.)

Lost season 4

Raced through this one, helped by its being a relatively short season. I realised that I haven't written much about my thoughts on the show, though the pace at which I'm chewing through it is testament to how much I'm enjoying it; it's not that I'm not finding it stimulating and thought-provoking, but rather that the number of possibilities and connections it throws up and suggests doesn't lend itself to neat summations. I do believe, though, that the show's writers will be able to tie it all up in some more or less meaningful way by the end of the current, sixth season, unlikely though that may seem given the number of apparent implausibilities that would need to be explained.

Spoon - Transference

Spoon's most recent four album run, culminating in probable career-to-date highlight Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (before it, Girls Can Tell, Kill The Moonlight and Gimme Fiction), is pretty much unimpeachable - four brilliant albums, all liberally studded with killer immediate standouts and slower-burning sleeper tracks.

Transference, though, I'm not yet so sure about. Every bar marks it as a Spoon album, from Britt Daniel's characteristic vocal tics to the taut, instantly identifiable grooves that form the heart of songs like "Is Love Forever?" and "I Saw The Light" to the piano/percussion lines that crop up throughout, especially on start-to-finish belter (and clearest moment of genius on the album) "Written in Reverse" - and it's good - but somehow it's not as sheerly exciting as their other recent work, not as utterly irresistible ... or at least not yet, cos I reckon that this one just may prove a grower with a vengeance, partly because it now seems much less disorienting and more loaded with pop thrills than it did on the first few spins, and partly because, well, it's a Spoon album, and it sounds like one, and that's a pretty clear indication of quality in itself.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Highly touted, but not my thing (I like it most when it starts sounding like some hyper-modern version of the Beach Boys). "My Girls" is a good song, and there are a few interesting ideas scattered throughout, but basically, meh.

True Blood: Music from and inspired by the HBO original series

The reason why I bought it: "The Golden State", a surging, driving-down-the-highway roots-rocker by a guy called 'John Doe', featuring Kathleen Edwards' always conviction-filled vocals on duet.

The pleasing curiosity: the Watson Twins doing a slowed-down (how else?) "Just Like Heaven".

The classics: "Lake Charles" (Lucinda), "Christine's Tune" (Flying Burrito Brothers).

The rest: an assortment of southern-flavoured rock, sometimes drawing more from the swamp and sometimes from the desert.

Overall, pretty listenable but not one that's really made for repeat spins as a whole. (I'm kind of saving the tv show itself for a future time when I really want to dive headlong into the kind of escapist, mood-drenched, hyper-melodramatic fantasy that I imagine it to be.)

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

Callahan's one of those figures who's always been there in the margins for me, first as Smog ("Cold Blooded Old Times"!) and more recently under his own name, but Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is the first of his albums that I've listened to properly - it was a gift from Wei some considerable time back. I like it - the songs are imbued with a gentle weariness that comes with the territory with this kind of male folk-influenced troubadour, but amidst the consistency of that mood, there are some genuine peaks. Possibly this is an odd comparison - certainly, it's a bit of a personal one - but at its best, this album reminds me of Pearl Jam's take on "Crazy Mary", which I've always loved.

Lost season 3

Further down the rabbit hole (or, as the finale title would have it, through the looking glass), as things get even weirder and take on an increasing David Lynch feel.

The Last Samurai

A rewatch - there's nothing groundbreaking about this film, but it's pretty good at what it does.

Sunshine Cleaning

An indie-hued comedy with heart. Sunshine Cleaning is the kind of film I like, and I do like it well enough, but it doesn't entirely work - the pieces don't quite knit.