Drugstore - Anatomy

I've always been fond of Drugstore, but never found it easy to explain exactly why. "El President" was my introduction to them, one of those songs that I liked a lot in the late 90s and which has turned out to be genuinely great; its album, 1998's White Magic for Lovers, struck a perfect indie-pop balance between lightness and noise, while their self-titled 1995 debut had been in similar terrain but less fully formed. 2001's Songs for the Jet Set went in a slightly different but equally pleasing direction, focusing more on expansively acoustic, folk-y sounds, and filled with memorable, downbeat/tuneful songs.

And then, a long hiatus, until Anatomy, which actually came out last year but (unsurprisingly) completely slipped below my radar, and it's another good one. The band are, in a (figuratively) minor key kind of way, a bit of a touchstone for me; there are stronger elements of something alt-countryish to the sound this time around, a deliberately heavier, murkier hue to their sound, but the music is unmistakably theirs, particularly in the way they construct their melodies and in Isabel Monteiro's singing of them. Favourites: "Lights Out", "Aquamarine" - but it's one of those records with the feel of depths, promising new, less obvious discoveries on each further listen. A subtly, understatedly lovely album.

Jens Lekman - I Know What Love Isn't

Ways that Jens Lekman has been relevant to me in the past:

1. By recording "Black Cab", a song that I listened to an awful lot over 2006 in particular - ie back when I was younger and more impressionable - and which often seems to be somehow in the air, somewhere.
2. And by generally creating a lot of fairly lovely music, which I followed "Black Cab" to along the way.
3. By doing a gig at the Corner a couple of years later, at what turned out to be a significant (at the time) point for me.
4. By moving to Melbourne for a while, leading to much wishful fantasising by Wei - who I was housemating with at the time - about running into him around the inner north and befriending him.

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have bought this one were it not for the hook that it was recorded while he was sojourning in Melbourne; I'm unabashed in my love for this city, so music (or any art) associated with it draws me. As it turns out, (a) there's only a small handful of Melbourne references on the record, and (b) that really doesn't matter, because it's a wonderful album regardless, full of poignant, literate, and sometimes rather jaunty folk-chamber-pop tunes in the Jens style. My favourite's "The End of the World is Bigger Than Love", which steals a chorus melody from "Can't Help Falling in Love" and is the better for it.

Also - a short list of lyrical Melbourne references in "The World Moves On" and my own associations:

1. I guess the 'social club' he mentions is probably the NSC. Blurry memories of gigs seen there, conversations in the margins, etc, etc.
2. The state of Victoria burning down to the ground must surely be Black Saturday (the timing is right - 2009). That was the Clauscen End period for me, and we were hosting a book club that afternoon, unaware of the horror spreading across the state, spread out across the sofas and that remarkably ugly carpet, eating grapes, spritzing each other with cold water in that air-conditioning-less old house.
3. And the Edinburgh Gardens get a mention. Probably the most quintessentially 'Melbourne' place in the whole city by my personal reckoning, and also the site of so many life events and happenings for me, good, bad, and bittersweet mixtures of the two. When a park appears in one of my dreams, it's usually this one.

Heart - Greatest Hits 1985-1995

Well, I didn't expect this to be subtle. It covers their 80s-90s period (ie no "Magic Man" or "Crazy on You" - both inextricably linked with The Virgin Suicides now - or "Barracuda") and is heavy on the sung-shouted power ballads; a bit strident for me, but I suppose that's an observation more than a criticism given the kind of music we're talking about.

In Time

The main appeal of this one lay in its casting of Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy, two actors who I always like watching; also, I don't mind a bit of sci-fi at the movies when done well. Anyway, the premise is pretty good, the social commentary obvious but biting, the execution unfortunately bland; Seyfried is good (and very fetching), Murphy is effective, J. Timberlake again shows that he can act. One of those two and a half star type films - the pieces are there, but it's not drawn together excitingly or interestingly enough to reach any great heights.

Beach House - Teen Dream

Well, Teen Dream is wonderful. The sound, and overall feel, is dreamy and airy at the same time that it has a kind of rawness and human-ness that feels organic; the songs unspool unexpectedly but with delicate, sturdy structures within them. And it's diverse - my three favourites are a dramatic, intimate epic with an anthemic, pulling chorus ("Walk in the Park"), a gauzey, almost am radio-y lullaby with a hint of a David Lynch tone ("Better Times"), and, basically, an elegant, dreamy, torch song ("Real Love"). It took a few spins before I could begin to listen to it somewhat apart from the retrospective aura of the wonderful, skyscraping Bloom, but Teen Dream has plenty of charms of its own.

Wild Nothing - Nocturne

Perhaps I need to listen to it a bit more, but so far, Nocturne hasn't made much of an impression. It's nice enough, sure, with some catchy bits and an all-round aesthetic that I warm to - but it doesn't seem to have the spark that animated Gemini, a record that has proved to be a real keeper.

Moonrise Kingdom

Vision is a difficult thing to define, but there's no doubt that Wes Anderson has it. His movies are all different but somehow the same; the best way of describing the similarity is maybe to say that it's in their tone. I didn't fully get him at first (my first pass was The Royal Tenenbaums, and while I liked it well enough, I think it kind of puzzled me too), but I've completely taken him to heart by now.

And so it seems to make a kind of sense to say that Moonrise Kingdom might be the most 'Wes Anderson' of Anderson's films; it's also, one suspects, one of the most successful in terms of translating the director's internal, personal vision to screen. Either way, it's a delightful film, nostalgic, arch, knowing and fantastic, yes, but completely believable - in the ways that matter, that is - at the same time. Also, it makes perfect use of Francoise Hardy's lovely "Le temps de l'amour", something joyful in the moment and only later, on reflection, also a little melancholy.

The Watson Twins - Fire Songs

Brighter and more sprightly than Southern Manners, and more in the country-rock vein, albeit still in a quietish kind of way. Not super-memorable, and tends maybe to be just a bit too tasteful for its own good, but, on songs like "How Am I To Be", "Bar Woman Blues", "Only You" and "Waves", very nice.

Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville

This is an album that I probably should've come to a long time ago, considering that it's (a) an indie-rock female singer-songwriter album from the 90s and (b) been the subject of endless acclaim (also (c) I've always liked whitechocolatespaceegg, which I did come across back in the 90s).

Well - and, while it's good, the thing is that I probably would've liked it a lot if I had come across it back in the day. Listening to it now, I get the great songwriting, the way the scuzziness of the sound perfectly sets off the tunes and lyrics ("Fuck and Run" stands out as a genuinely great song), the candour and rawness of those lyrics, the all-round attitude - but I don't identify with it in the way that my teenage self might (probably would) have.

Cat Power - Sun

Not the easiest record to grasp. It's a turn - though not a complete one - from the soul edgings of The Greatest and Jukebox, and while it has something of the genreless air of their immediate predecessor, You Are Free (with the benefit of distance from its original release, a really excellent, enduring record, incidentally, almost up there with Moon Pix), it doesn't have that other's clean, stripped-down, percussive sense of being rock-pop music rendered somehow new. Perhaps it's the first real pop album that she's put out - which is counterintuitive, as any of those others that I've already mentioned have plenty more immediate songs on them. Anyway, for all of that, it's good, even if not immediately lovable. ("Nothing But Time" is pretty magnificent, all 11 minutes of it.)

Bored to Death season 3

More amiable japes from Schwartzman, Danson and Galifianakis - a good kind of escapism. I hear it's been cancelled, which is a pity - it was getting better as it went along.

(season 1, 2)

Angela's Kitchen (Malthouse)

Pleasant, and grounded by an excellent one-man performance by Paul Capsis, but a bit bland for mine, neither immigrant stories nor family tales holding especial appeal for me.

(w/ Jarrod, Farrah, Julian and Meribah)

Pat Brassington - "A Rebours" (ACCA)

I hadn't come across Brassington before; her photo-artistic works have an eerie allure, disquietingly uncanny and infused with a surrealistic flavour. I liked them.

China Mieville - Railsea

One of the most straightforwardly enjoyable novels that Mieville has ever written - a genuine adventure, with a typically Mievillean high concept (a sea of rails, traversed by a panoply of trains, with the ground too dangerous to set foot on, populated by massive, dangerous subterranean fauna - great burrowing moles, owls, antlions). Made me want to read Moby Dick, too.

Suzanne Collins - Mockingjay

Brings it home at as searing a pace as the first two books. Doesn't flinch from the implications of the violence and layers upon layers of manipulation that it depicts, nor from the moral greyness of the choices that are forced on Katniss, and in doing so finds a satisfying resolution not only to the machinations of its plot but also to the Kat-Gale-Peeta triangle that had loomed as the series' weak point throughout.

Pinocchio (Windmill Theatre Co, Malthouse)

V. enjoyable. The music was particularly good; I also liked the way that Pinocchio's story was rendered at least on one level as a coming out metaphor. The whole thing was very well put together though.

(w/ Julian)

The Hunger Games

Proficiently made, but not as vivid as the book (perhaps largely because it's a second pass, and its events already familiar).

The Dark Knight Rises

A satisfying close to the trilogy, pacy and kinetic but at the same time gritty and shadowy, and every bit a Christopher Nolan film. His signature themes of the ways that identities and lives are constructed, and the choices - often distinctively moral choices - that structure those identities and lives, are at the fore, along with plenty of convincing action and entries to the franchise by Inception alumni Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard and an unrecognisable Tom Hardy as Bane, plus Anne Hathaway more than holding her own.

One of the most impressive things about The Dark Knight was the way that it and Batman Begins felt like two parts of a single film; The Dark Knight Rises, however, feels like a second and final instalment, with events coming to a culmination and, at film's start, middle and end, Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon coming to form something like a moral centre to the whole thing, and the character who (contra Harvey Dent and the Joker) is perhaps the true contrast and balance to Batman, as well as the one who enables him in the first place.

On the Misconception of Oedipus (Malthouse)

Interesting and worthwhile, though it's needed a bit of time to sink in. At once a 'prequel' and a retelling (a re-conception, in one of the two punning senses of the title), and presented as a thoroughly modern (contemporary) piece of theatre, it nonetheless stays close to - or at least engages overtly and knowingly with - the core themes of destiny and freedom that underlie Sophocles' play.

The formal structure of the piece ('play' is slightly misleading) is important, as is its location in theatre - it couldn't have been done as a short story, for example, or a tv hour - not least because both enable the use (and, indeed, dramatisation) of a setting that is clearly and deliberately flagged as contemporary while still drawing directly on elements of the classical Greek origins of the myth, more or less overtly bringing those two sources/locations into dialogue with each other without being forced or artificial about it. For mine, it's not wholly successful - it felt just a small bit underdeveloped, a function maybe of the short (just over an hour) length - but my overall response was certainly positive...I felt myself being forced to grapple with the performance/production on its own terms, and I liked where that took me, so yes, definitely worthwhile.

(w/ Alice, Steph N, Julian, Meribah, Cass, Sim, Steph C, Jarrod and Farrah)

The Grey

Hard to go wrong, really: Liam Neeson vs wolves, in a severely cold climate. As done here, it's more about sheer survival than lupine smackdown, and a better film for it, stark and much preoccupied with masculinity and death.

John Carter

Rented this to help see me through yesterday, my second consecutive day stuck at home with this cold or flu or whatever it is. Anyway, it's not terrible by any means, but, you know, a bit on the bland side as far as action-adventures on Mars go.

A short list of songs that you remember fondly but vaguely from the 90s, that when you download them from the itunes store, turn out to (still) be pretty great

(In no particular order)

1. "As I Lay Me Down" - Sophie B Hawkins. I don't think I'd heard this for years - quite possibly literally not since the 90s, though perhaps she never really went away[*] so far as I was concerned - but, airy, dreamy, memorably melodic, it's somehow still quite lovely today.
2. "If It Makes You Happy" - Sheryl Crow. I've always been fond of Crow, particularly those songs of hers with a strong melancholy undercurrent ("Strong Enough" was the big one for me), so really "If It Makes You Happy" probably should've registered properly with me years ago...what a great song. No other decade has done nice-sounding yearning like the 90s.
3. "Never Ever" - All Saints. So smooth it should be boring, and so overplayed back in the day that it should be completely worn out in any event, but in fact neither of those things, and instead beguiling and curiously addictive, probably for much the same mysterious pop music alchemy reasons that it was so massively popular way back when.
4. "Beautiful Stranger" - Madonna. This must have come out at the very end of the 90s, and so right in the middle of a period when mainstream pop had basically no appeal for me, but I liked it even then (it made me see colours); and voila - in 2012 it turns out to still be fabulous.
5. "Turn" - Travis. This song is so simple that I'm almost ashamed to like it, which is saying something for me; it's like some platonic ideal of the mainstream-alternative post-The Bends 'rock' anthem. But whatever to all that - it may make all the obvious moves, but "Turn" nails it.

* * *

[*] Wikipedia now informs me that the mystery was not in fact solved by that linked answer; rather, it seems. "ooh la kah koh" was, after all, just a nonsense phrase dreamed up by Hawkins to fill in some aural space.

The Crimson Petal and the White

I read The Crimson Petal and the White, it must've been some eight or nine years ago, and liked it a lot - I remember saying (writing?) to someone that it was postmodernist literature in the best possible way, meaning that its pronounced metafictional elements, overt and covert intertextuality, and deliberate anachronisms were well employed in service of a compulsive story and a truly memorable central character in its beguiling, independently-minded prostitute cum governess Sugar...a contemporary Victorian novel, liberally laced with bodily fluids and profanity of all kind, it was nonetheless somehow subtle, multi-layered and a bit moving.

Anyhow, Wei gave me this dvd set (part of a birthday gift) of the bbc's take on the novel, a four-part (one hour each) miniseries starring the excellent Romola Garai, and it's good, not flinching from the filth and seediness of the milieu and nicely highlighting the (separate) themes of writing and families; also, giving an aptly gothic flavour to the fragile Agnes, William Rackham's troubled bride. It's lavishly mounted, with a completely but effectively (and, given Faber's postmodernist-Victoriana style, perhaps aptly) non-period mood-setting score, and if the story feels somewhat compressed (we lose much of the inner lives of even the main characters, never mind the secondary figures) and lacking in the abundance of the source material, it's still very enjoyable, and still a great story.

The Suicide Shop (MIFF)

Two things that I didn't know this animated film would be: (1) 3d; (2) a musical. The premise is cute - in a future, mildly dystopic alternate-Paris, the suicide rate is sky-high and one family has made a business out of selling its implements, only for their third child to turn out to be inappropriately happy and determined to force a change. Only so-so, but pleasant enough.


(w/ David)

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84

I came across Murakami at probably exactly the right time for me, and plunged headlong into his world; extemporanea supplies the (approximate) dates but in any case I vividly, blurrily remember that period of reading one after another, as soon as I could get my hands on them, back in that final year of university. Murakami's writing really resonated for me, and still does, but it's been a while since I read anything of his, despite being very much a re-reader of my favourite books - no particular reason, I guess, just the endless fullness of the days and nights nowadays.

Anyway, so, I got a Kindle (a gift from Jade) and 1Q84 seemed the right book to christen it with, and on top of that, since getting back from overseas, I've had the sensation - unfamiliar really for at least a year, and probably a fair bit longer - that there's actually a bit of space in my life, quite literally, in that not every single moment or hour seems spoken-for by some kind of activity or obligation (it won't last - I can already feel the pace of things picking up again), so it's a good time to be reading, and not only that, but to be reading Murakami again.

It has been a while, but not so long that many of his characteristic preoccupations aren't apparent - disappearing women, descents into other worlds, a focus on ears, metaphysically (and existentially) significant sex, characters who spend a lot of time in their own heads, cooking and listening to music, etc. One big change is that, unlike all of his other novels except the unsatisfying After Dark, it's written in the third person, alternating from the points of view of Aomame and Tengo and, in the third book, Ushikawa - it doesn't change the tone as much as might've been expected given that, with a couple of jarring exceptions late in the piece, it still stays very true to the internal, flow of consciousness (phenomenological) style that characterises Murakami's first person writing, and (this is neither a positive nor a negative per se) it somewhat breaks the sense of detachment that tends to suffuse his first-person narrators, allowing greater access into the inner lives and pasts of those central characters (which might initially seem counterintuitive, given that you might expect third-person to be more removed - but much less so once you take into account the special difficulties that come with a rigorous commitment to the perceptual 'immediacy' of the first person voice).

So, I certainly enjoyed 1Q84 - it's the first book I've read in a while that has made me want to hurry home from work for, so that I can continue reading it. And it has a flow to it, both of mood and of story, that carried me through - even though, in some ways, not all that much happens, and a lot is left unresolved (making me wonder if a book 4 could be in the offing at some point).

But the thing is, it's impossible to read 1Q84 without reference to everything else that Murakami has done in the past, and by that measure, it's something of a disappointment; it's not that he's just going through the motions, but it lacks the something else that really animated his best earlier books, whether because the book's moves are already familiar or (more likely, I think) this one just isn't quite as good as those others. It's hard to describe - I raced through 1Q84, and felt it touch me at times, but in the end, it didn't really take me anywhere new in the way I had hoped and almost expected. But having said all that, who knows? Murakami is a huge part of my literary landscape, both indirectly (in my own reading) and indirectly (by the influence he's had on so many others), and things may look different again when I come back to him, and to this one, again.

* * *

A Wild Sheep Chase (~ Feb '05, Feb '06)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (~ Feb-Mar '05, Dec '07)
Dance Dance Dance (~ Mar '05)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (~ Mar '05)
Kafka on the Shore (~ Mar '05)
Norwegian Wood (~ Mar '05)
After the Quake (~ Jun '05, Oct '07)
Sputnik Sweetheart (~ Jun-Jul '05)
South of the Border, West of the Sun (~ Jul '05)

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (~ Aug '06)
After Dark (~ Jul '07)

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (~ Oct '08)
Underground (~ Jan '09)

Blood Wedding (Malthouse)

This was a disappointing experience, not because the play wasn't good, but rather because, from what I could tell, it was very good. It was just unfortunate - for some reason this afternoon I couldn't hear out of my left ear, and on top of that I've been feeling a bit off these last couple of days, so immersing myself was just impossible. Possibly the physical discomfort had something to do with the dream-like feel that the play had for me; then again, so to may have its lyricism, intensity and even the way that it was bilingual (Spanish/English). It really did feel like it might have been great, had I only been in a position to appreciate it properly - a pity.

(w/ Meribah, and her friend Charlotte and sister Rebecca)

Hot Spring & Hot Spring: Landmannálaugar

A pair of compilations from Iceland, both good and pretty diverse, meaning that they encompass, as well as the expected (and pleasing) range of indie-pop - there are quite a lot of introverted, prettily ethereal anthems, and also a fair bit of folk-touched stuff, but the more upbeat end of the spectrum is well represented too - there is also Icelandic reggae ("Taktu Þessa Trommu" and "Hafið" by Hjalmar), Icelandic blues ("Kletturinn" by Mugison), Icelandic soul ("Lately" by Jón Jónsson), Icelandic country ("Gamli grafreiturinn" by Klassart), and more again.

Favourites: "Out of Place" by Ourlives (one of those delicate soarers); "Góða Tungl" by Samaris (a trip-hop-y kind of thing); "What Are We Waiting For?" by Amiina (they remind me of Sigur Ros, though with a female singer and a bit lighter, with an almost folky feel); "Cold Summer" by Seabear (quietly grand, somewhat in the Sufjan Stevens vein).

The Legend of Kaspar Hauser (MIFF)

In a phrase: black and white existential absurdist techno-soundtracked slightly new wave-y neo-symbolist Italian post-western about everything and nothing (and Kaspar Hauser). Enjoyable.

(w/ Julian)

"Light Works" (NGV)

I find myself in the NGV a lot (usually the international), and particularly when, like at the moment, I'm feeling a bit weightless - it's one of my favourite places, a space where I can go to feel away from everything, surrounded by familiarity and newness, often in the same piece of art. "Light Works" is a small exhibition in the small level 3 gallery space, focusing on the importance of light to photography; highlights are two large, moody twilight/evening cloud Bill Henson landscapes, a pair of "Star Drawing" photos by David Stephenson (which I've seen before, in a 'weather' ex a few years back, but hadn't been as struck by that previous time) that also invoke a sense of the sublime, and "Trace" by Park Hong-Chun, dock, flat, still water, sky - pink, salmon, apricot hues.

Safety Not Guaranteed / Killer Joe

Mainly Safety Not Guaranteed stuck out from the MIFF program because it starred the appealing Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation - though the jury's out re: in real life or whatever 'in character' version of it the internet passes for), but it turned out to be a really sweet and often funny film about regrets, finding yourself, young(ish) love and time travel.

There's a scene in the film's second half where the eccentric, troubled time travel machine inventor plays Aubrey Plaza's character a song (written for his dead girlfriend) on the zither as they sit outside by a fire, which sounds and at first seemed unbearably precious, but which changed my how I felt about it, winning me over, as the song and scene went on; it felt like a turning point in my response to the film.

Anyhow, the algebra of Indie movies: a bit of Donnie Darko (significantly lightened up) with a touch of Garden State etc, a dash of Margot at the Wedding 'realism' and a slight Wes Anderson (time travel machine = jaguar shark in The Life Aquatic?) vibe...perfect for a Friday night.

We'd decided to do two back to back, and next up (supposedly 11.30 but started more like midnight) was Killer Joe. The MIFF volunteer/usher got us nervous beforehand by taking it on himself to warn the queue that the film had some very disturbing scenes, and telling people to vomit into bags (rather than into our laps, presumably); it is a nasty film, Matthew McConaughey doing well with one of those roles that allows him to make overt what has always been latent in his filmic personality (nb: I've always disliked him anyway) as the sadistic, murderous titular character who comes into the orbit of a redneck Texas trailer park family to their cost. Not the kind of film I'd usually watch, but it was hard to look away from.

(w/ Meribah)

Chris Cleave - Gold

It was coincidence that I readGold, a novel whose main characters are Olympic-level cyclists, while the London Games have been on (I hadn't known what the book was about when I borrowed it from the Ath, which in any case was several weeks ago) - and, in fact, it's almost coincidental that it's about cycling, even though it really brings the stresses and rigours of the discipline to life (I never thought I'd be interested in a sport that just involves people going round and round a velodrome), because Cleave takes that premise and pushes hard on it to draw out the costs and trade-offs demanded by Life and the search for success in all its forms, zeroing in on the spaces and tensions that exist in so many close relationships; I'm not sure how psychologically acute it is in its rendition of the driven Zoe in particular, but there's a feel of truthfulness in how it renders her friendship/rivalry with Kate and the involvement of Kate's husband Jack - not to mention Kate and Jack's leukemia-struck daughter Sophie.

Laura Cantrell - "Trains and Boats and Planes" ep

There's something about Laura Cantrell, I've never been able to put my finger on it - her music is so seemingly unassuming, and yet so invariably wonderful. Anyhow, this is a typically lovely one from her, released a few years back (2008). All of its songs are good, including the New Order cover ("Love Vigilantes" - great song title).

From her website:

So what is an urban, country singing mom to do? Turn to the solace of her band of course! On lucky days I took refuge in the company of music friends in NY, wringing every bit of feeling I could out of songs we’d been playing live in places like Mo Pitkins House of Satisfaction (now dearly departed) and 11th Street Bar. “Trains and planes are passing by, they mean a trip to Paris or Rome, for someone else but not for me.” Like an adolescent with a newly broken heart, all these traveling songs began to sound like they were written just for me, “Train, Train don’t leave me, train of Life.” I’m not sure who suggested it, but I decided to record a few of those traveling tunes using “Trains And Boats And Planes” as a theme for a set of music.

Daughn Gibson - All Hell

I've listened to All Hell a few times through now, and haven't fully made up my mind about it yet. On the one hand, it's appealing - Gibson's country-noiry vignettes sliced up by some anachronistically modern electro-pop textures, underpinned by his smooth baritone, which variously calls to mind Johnny Cash, Stephin Merritt and Matt Berninger - but on the other, it can feel a bit much about the concept, and not enough about the songs themselves. Still, at the very least  interesting, and on a few tracks genuinely compelling ("A Young Girl's World" and "In The Beginning" are stand-outs, as is the croony "Rain on a Highway").

Kathleen Edwards - Voyageur

Another incremental development in Edwards' sound, and another step more expansive - Voyageur sometimes sounds a bit like Emmylou Harris' late 90s-onwards airy, widescreen version of americana, in a good way. There's more space in Edwards' songs than ever before, and a lightness in the arrangements and production that works well with the more stretched-out direction that her songwriting takes nowadays; this is very nice. Favourites: "Change the Sheets", "Mint".

(Failer; Back to Me; live; Asking for Flowers)

Emeli Sandé - Our Version of Events

These days, a lot of the new music I listen to comes from having been heard playing somewhere - cd stores, bookshops, cafes, etc - but Emeli Sandé is the first that I've sought out after hearing it at my hairdresser's salon. Our Version of Events is a nice album - opening with the drama of "Heaven" (reminiscent of Massive Attack) and big pop-soul anthem "My Kind of Love", hitting another high point near the middle with "Maybe" and "Suitcase" back to back, and ending with a strong ballad in "Read All About It (Pt III)", and pleasant enough in between. Good voice, good songs, all round very solid.

Parks and Recreation seasons 1-3

So...I've become the kind of person who watches tv series. I went through these pretty much in a single, hazily jetlagged, week and found them pretty delightful - season 1 is kind of bad, but it picks up dramatically after that.

There are a range of things that make it work, but foremost amongst them is the way it matches Amy Poehler's energetic-on-the-verge-of-manic comic persona perfectly with the character of Leslie Knope that the show creates. Over these three seasons, the show has got to a point where it has the balance - between the quirks, foibles and situations that drive all sitcom characters and a kinder, more humane perspective on its characters and their relationships - pretty much right for her (and for the other characters), so that you can't help but find her basically adorable while rooting for her in her somewhat monomaniacal do-gooding. Then there's Ron Swanson, who is basically great - plus a good, and well-used, ensemble cast (again, the balance seems right with the arrival of Adam Scott's Ben as straight man and Rob Lowe's ridiculously positive Chris).

All up, it's funny, smart and likeable (and occasionally deliciously crude) - all round good.

Batman Begins & The Dark Knight

Rewatches in preparation for The Dark Knight Rises. Still very, very good.

(1, 2)

Haim - "Forever" ep

A three-song (plus remix) ep of pop-minded, percussive folk-rocky tunes; the title track in particular is ace.

Patrick deWitt - The Sisters Brothers

1851, the wild west, and notorious killers Eli and Charlie Sisters are going to California with murder on their mind. The story is told by the younger and more troubled by their line of work of the brothers, Eli, in an archaic voice that is at once formal and immediate, and also often droll; the novel's appeal is difficult to pin down, but has a lot to do with that voice. It's bloody, funny and sad (but not depressing); it's easy to imagine the Coen brothers, say, making a movie of it. Potential not fully realised, but still a good read.

Europe museums wrap

Madrid

V. jet-lagged and tired for trip to the Reina Sofia, so didn't get full value from what looked to be a pretty good collection. Introduced me to Santiago Rusinol via the mysterious "Aranjuez Garden. Arbor II" (1907). And liked the James Coleman installation "Box (ahhareturnabout)" (1977).

The Prado's collection, while huge, is basically all about pre-20th century art and pretty light-on for 19th, and therefore basically exactly outside my own interests. I sort of drifted through it a bit, but we were in there for several hours nonetheless; two that sunk in were Joachim Patinir's "Rest on the flight into Egypt" (1518-20) and Bernard van Orley's "The Virgin of Louvain" (1520).

The Thyssen-Bornemisza was much more to my taste, housing a strong selection of late and post-impressionist stuff. Two of the Monets particularly grabbed me - "The Thaw at Vetheuil" (1881) and "The House Among the Roses" (1925). I looked at that latter for quite a while before making out the house itself amidst the roses; seeing that large, late Monet water-lilies painting hung amidst Rothkos and other recognised examples of abstract expressionism at the Tate Modern last year has really opened up his work to me, giving me a new appreciation for it. Apart from pieces by some of the usual suspects (van Gogh, Kandinsky), was also drawn to a naturalistic landscape that I thought had some symbolist elements, Thomas Cole's "Expulsion, Moon and Firelight" (1828) and Ivan Kliun's abstract "Composicion" (1917).

Fortuitously, also on at the Thyssen-Bornemisza was an Edward Hopper exhibition - small to medium sized, but something of a career survey, and satisfying. It included a range of his earlier works (from the earliest, somewhat expressionist pieces, through the 1920s as many of his signature images emerged - eg women observed in rooms, light coming from outside) and some of his finely detailed sketches and watercolours, as well as many examples of his most famous pieces, including "Cape Cod Evening", "Morning in a City" and "South Carolina Morning". I was struck by "Railroad Sunset", which I think I've actually seen before (maybe at the Whitney in NYC a few years back), and certainly in reproduction, but never fully registered.

With the ones that I already knew well from books and/or previous viewings, their 'painting-ness' was particularly apparent, which somehow added to their depth and appeal, a bit despite the realism of Hopper's style. I guess that what I really like about his work is the way that it's invested with a sense of the extraordinary - perhaps the infraordinary, rather - an effect achieved through his evocation of light and shadow, and use of colour, mood and composition - and in some sense that's augmented by being able to see the paintings themselves.

St Petersburg

We went to a lot of museums and the like in St Petersburg. As far as I can remember:
* The Hermitage lived up to expectations, massive, sprawling, and filled to overflowing with all types of art, including large numbers of the old masters - Rembrandt, da Vinci, etc. My focus was on the extremely comprehensive selection of 19th to early 20th century art, with all of the key figures in the development of representational, figurative and colour-oriented painting represented by multiple pieces - Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky plus the lesser but still important figures of Derain and de Vlaminck.
* The Museum of Political History of Russia had an absurdly complicated floor plan and itinerary to follow through across two buildings and three levels - I half-suspected that the desk people were playing some sort of trick (Russian bureaucracy etc) when they marked it all out for us on a map, but it turned out to be deadly serious. The exhibitions had names like "Death Penalty: Pros and Cons", "Lenin's Study", "The Accursed Civil War", "It Cannot Be Forbidden...To Be Stored" and "What Do We Know About Petr Stolypin?". Sadly, "Collapse of the USSR: Historical Inevitability or Criminal Conspiracy" was one of the ones without English notes, so the answer to that particular question remains a mystery.
* The Vodka Museum was a bit of a non-affair, particularly with all the captions in Russian only. Andreas enjoyed the tasting, though.
* The Nabokov and Dostoevsky Museums were each located in houses that their respective subjects lived in and filled with a range of more or less interesting author-related material. I'm not mad for these kinds of biographical excavations, but didn't mind wandering through.
* Pushinskaya-10, a graffiti-covered and industrial-looking building, houses several more or less unmarked galleries, including a couple comprising 'The Museum of Noncomformists Art'. We only explored a couple.
* Another art centre was 'Loft Project Etagi' - well worth the seeing, particularly given that it also housed (along with a hostel) a nice rooftop bar/restaurant where we had dinner and drank Soviet champagne as the afternoon faded behind us.

Helsinki

There was a neat Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition on at the Helsinki Art Museum - Tennis Palace, meaning that, along with the Hopper in Madrid, I was able to see two of my absolute favourites within the space of just a couple of weeks - a real treat. There's a sense of infinity in her paintings, and an endless interplay between abstraction and representation (flowers, skulls, landscapes) - it's so easy to get lost in the light and colour of her work, in the luminosity of all of the tones and shades (even the browns and greys), which perhaps comes from the New Mexico desert setting in which most were done; "Dark Tree Trunks" (1946), say, is far more compelling than in reproduction in books, partly for that reason...although interestingly, the later "Blue Black and Grey" (1960), which is very close to pure abstraction, has that same luminous character.

The Ateneum Museum was featuring a large exhibition of work by Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946); I hadn't come across her before, but apparently she's a key Finnish painter. I was most drawn to some of her earlier paintings, which had a poignant, somewhat nostalgic (if maybe a tiny bit sentimental) air - "Once Upon A Time (Old Memories)" (1892), "The Broken String (By The Rivers of Babylon)" (1892) - oil paintings, but with a dusty, hazy air and glow. Over her career she moved to a more simplied, reduced style, plainer and flatter, and often wan-looking, physically rubbed and thinned out; more and more distortions were introduced into her work, taking on an expressionist and even cubist flavour.

And the Kiasma contemporary art museum impressed me, both as a building and for the art it held. Two exhibitions, both, as far as I'm concerned, highlighting the best type of thing that contemporary art has to offer, at once serious and playful, conceptually interested but grounded in a rigorous artistic practice: "Eyeballing: The New Forms of Comics" (best were Hannerrina Moisseinen's "Cloth Road", Mari Ahokoivu's "Rumour Birds" and Katja Tukainen's hyper-kitsch "Paradis k (Kidnap)" (something of a guilty pleasure for me, that last); and "Camouflage: Visual Art and Design in Disguise" (best: Jiri Geller's "Sugar" series of brightly coloured plastic sculptures, Kariel's (Muriel Lasser & Karri Kuoppala) 'room' installation "Pier", and Idiot's (Afke Golsteijn & Floris Bakker) series of taxidermied animals melded with precious stones and man-made objects, which manages to surprise and please despite the seemingly obvious idea).

(Despite its being the longest leg of the trip, no museums in Iceland - there was more than enough to see out of doors!)

Back to Back to Black

An uneven track by track tribute to the Winehouse album compiled by Q magazine; the weakest entries come across like novelty versions, but the best are pretty good...those would be Dry the River's folky take on "Me & Mr Jones", the fractured but still grand version of "Back to Black" by the Cribs, "Love is a Losing Game" being turned into something sounding like a lost soft-rock classic from the 70s by the Temper Trap, and the Balearic Folk Orchestra's (great name!) pretty "He Can Only Hold Her".

Metric - Synthetica

Following the extreme good-ness of Fantasies, my hopes for this one were high; unfortunately, while it's perfectly serviceable, it's not as good as its predecessor. There's something less fizzing, less exciting about it, and Haines' voice seems somehow to have less conviction about it, though the good songs - "Youth Without Youth", "Speed the Collapse", "Nothing But Time" and the title track - are very good.

[Edit (4/8): Turns out I was too quick to dismiss Synthetica. I've kept on listening to it, initially because those good songs that jumped out at the start kept on being good, really good actually, and then as more of the album's tracks kept coming forward and getting stuck in my head - the glossy sheen of the record coexists with a bit of bite in just the way that they do in all of Metric's best moments...]

Margin Call

Despite its absence of a real story arc or plot, Margin Call is completely gripping. It's well served by a sterling cast - Jeremy Irons' magisterial entrance in the boardroom scene is particularly magnificent - and brings out the human and moral dimensions of the financial drama that unfolds...you know how it's going to end, but it holds you all the way to that end. A fantastic film.

Little Miss Sunshine

Charming indie road movie with a bit of an emotional impact.

P G Wodehouse - "The Crime Wave at Blandings"

A miniature Penguin. Tickled my fancy, the crime wave consisting of a series of air gun shootings of the deserving.

Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2033

A cracking premise - following a nuclear/biological war, possibly the only remaining human life on earth is isolated in the Moscow underground metro system, which had doubled as a massive bunker, each station operating as a more or less autonomous community, connected by a range of loose confederations (religious and/or political or pragmatic - including communists, trotskyists, a 'fourth reich', and many others), and troubled by a range of monsters, some created by fallout from the war and others seemingly with a more supernatural or spiritual/mystical origin. That concept is strong enough to make the book worth plowing through, despite the awkward prose, overwrought existential digressions, and frequent long-winded soliloquies about the meaning of existence that all of its characters seem to love.

21 Jump Street

Inoffensive, and funny (also, inoffensively meta).

Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire

Vivid and fast-paced - good stuff.

(The Hunger Games)

Jeffrey Eugenides - The Marriage Plot

I always find Eugenides very readable, but I've never seen the greatness in him that so many others seem to find, and The Marriage Plot hasn't changed my mind. I liked reading it, enjoyed the paths that it led its characters down and the ideas that it played with, and even empathised at points, thinking that it snapped with something real-feeling, but still, in the end I thought the novel was merely very good rather than anything more.

When the Raven Flies

Supposedly this 1984 film, following an Irish warrior as he avenges himself on the Viking raiders who killed his parents and abducted his sister when he was a boy, is something of a classic of Icelandic cinema, being highly regarded for depicting a grittier, more realistic image of Viking life than generally prevailed at the time. Andreas enjoyed it more than me; the brochure cites Leone and Kurosawa, but the director it made me most of think of was Verhoeven, in its gritty, nasty violence and flat style.

Roberto Bolano - The Skating Rink

By happenstance, his first novel - a fluent, engaging read, narrated by three chancers of various kinds who became caught up with a beautiful ice skater, the private rink built for her by an admirer, and a murder. It's a bit minor, but the voice and the writing are strong enough to make me want to read more of his.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Our wanderings through Helsinki took us past a cinema, so Andreas and I decided to watch a movie. Snow White was enjoyable, dramatic to the nth degree, and filled with visual spectacle along with a dark element that worked well (also, Charlize Theron makes a great bad guy) - though it's one of those that I doubt I'll watch again... (I wonder if Kristen Stewart was worried about being typecast when she agreed to do this one.)

Nevil Shute - On The Beach

Despite the possibilities of its wonderful premise - the inherent melancholy of the end of the world amplified by the way that the characters, in Melbourne, can only wait for the fallout that has taken the rest of the world to finally drift far enough southwards to take them with it - this is a pretty bland novel, mostly lacking in literary merit (flat writing is the main killer), though still, I suppose, interesting from a cultural perspective.

Don Thompson - The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

"This is business, it ain't art history". That line, from a deputy chairman at Christie's, sums up a lot of what this entertaining book is about. No one expects the prices paid for contemporary art to reflect any kind of 'intrinsic' or purely 'artistic' (much less aesthetic) value, and Thompson's systematic traversing of the processes of branding that lead to artists' and their works' valuations, through the interactions of dealers, auction houses (especially the two big ones, Christie's and Sotheby's), collectors, museums and critics - via auctions, private sales, galleries and art fairs - is illuminating. Saatchi and the Gagosian loom large, also Damien Hirst, with some attention also given to Koons and Tracey Emin (none of whom I particularly like).

Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong

Birdsong fits comfortably into a certain literary genre - it's about Love, War and the Human Spirit - but it's also subtle and intelligent in how it deals with those themes and with loss and suffering, and powerful and affecting. Liked it.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Watched this on the plane going over to Europe. More of the same, really, but enjoyably so.

"Different Worlds"

Of the performances that I saw on The Voice, a handful particularly stood out: a couple each from Karise Eden and Darren Percival (deserved winner and runner-up - for mine, two of the three best singers in the competition), basically every time that Diana Rouvas was on stage (the third, and technically the most accomplished and spectacular singer on the show, if less distinctive than those other two) - and one of Brittany Cairns', a stunning song I didn't know called "Different Worlds".

So couple of nights ago, I downloaded it from iTunes - both Cairns' version and the original, as recorded by a singer named Jes Hudak - and I've been really stuck on the song since...it's wonderfully effective and affecting, built around a simple yearning, building melody and put together in a way that pulls the listener all the way through to its end. I've even listened to it enough - and been grabbed by it enough - that I've worked out how the structure of the song contributes to its achieving its effect: it starts with a building four line verse, follows that with another four lines that sound more like an extended bridge more than a second verse, seems to return to the verse again for two lines before unexpectedly, gloriously taking off on the line "You'll be like in a movie", then repeats the trick at the third line of the next stanza, soaring upwards on the repeated line "I'll leave the ocean behind", another bridge, and then just one surging final verse, ending leaving the listener wanting more (a lot of these kinds of songs lose some of their effect by spending too long tailing off at the end, but "Different Worlds" is a miniature epic, all over in 3 minutes).

Having worked that out hasn't taken any of the magic out of the song at all; iTunes tells me that in the few days since downloading them, I've listened to Cairns' version a somewhat ridiculous 65 times and Hudak's 19. I do like Cairns' version more; while she kind of belts it out a bit more than Hudak, I prefer the arrangement on her version, the instrumentation both simpler and fuller (also, it must be admitted, glossier and more radio-friendly), and I also like the different choices she makes with it (in particular, choosing to really open her throat on the earlier 'movie' line, while Hudak holds a bit more back until the climactic crest of the 'ocean' lines).

Anyway, I've always been susceptible to this kind of song, so in some ways it's not surprising that I've so latched on to it, but be that as it may, it's a wonderful song; it could have come along at any time, but it's also (as always with these things) the right song at the right time...it feels good to have found it.

Laura Tingle - "Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation" (QE46)

A lot of people have been talking about this one, and for good reason, I think - in this Quarterly Essay, Tingle has hit upon something. Like all the best diagnoses, it seems somehow obvious once laid out, but that's a function of it having highlighted something that underlies a lot else rather than of any triteness. Having said that, to the extent that Australia is nowadays an 'angry nation' - a not insignificant extent, for sure - I think that it's at least as much due to disillusionment and disgust with the current state of federal politics and political discourse as to the now-unmet sense of entitlement to government provision of the good life, historically developed and more recently fed by successive governments of both political stripe, so neatly analysed in the essay.

Robin Hood

What I said last time (I remember being in a terrible mood the night I saw it on the big screen, and wondered if that might have coloured my impressions - but seems not).

Care to Make Love in That Gross Little Space Between Cars? A Believer Book of Advice

The advice columns in Believer are often a highlight - snarky, witty, and frequently wildly off the wall...so it's surprising that this (second) collection of Sedaratives - somewhat misleadingly named, given that they're now shared among a wide roster of writer-comic types, rather than all flowing from the deliciously sharp pen of Amy Sedaris - is only intermittently amusing. Oh well.

In search of an unwritten life: The Brothers Bloom

This really is a delightful film. It would be easy for a film that is centrally concerned with the search for a 'natural' life, free of narratives and contruction, self-imposed and otherwise, to get in way too deep (il n'y a pas de hors-texte etc), but while The Brothers Bloom is clearly aware of the deconstructionist ideas that it invokes, at its heart is a tightly plotted, distinctly human story focused on the brothers Bloom themselves, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo perfect as the con men brothers who are hopelessly entangled in their own story-telling; Rachel Weisz is equally good as the disarmingly open eccentric shut-in who gets caught up in their tale, and Rinko Kikuchi a delightful ornament as the taciturn Bang Bang (I'm pretty sure that her only words in the whole film are "campari" and "fuck me!").

I said after the first time I saw it that it could have been calculated to appeal to me - one of my personal preoccupations as its central theme, a style that seamlessly melds the artificial and the natural (a formal fixation of mine there), three of my favourite actors as the principals - and on a second viewing it still hits all of its marks...along with all of the above, it's clever, witty and self-aware, and it has both pizzazz (a surprisingly hard word to spell, incidentally) and heart.

As an aside, the way that they're all dressed doesn't hurt, either - something to aspire to.

Prometheus

Impressively, Prometheus feels of a piece with the Alien universe, while also working as pretty much a standalone piece of science fiction. There's real wonder in some of the shots, and also a taut horror as the party on the Prometheus begin to realise what they're dealing with. Satisfying.

(w/ Kim)

Daria seasons 3-5 + "Is It Fall Yet?" & "Is It College Yet?"

Been watching these at intervals over the last six months or so, maybe longer. In retrospect, when I was watching the show during high school, it must have been its first run on Australian tv, which probably explains why most of seasons 1-3 were familiar, but not the later 4 and 5. It was appealing back then, and still is, albeit now at far more of a remove. Daria and Jane are at the show's centre, but I think Quinn (for the airheadedness and flashes of insight) and Sandi (for the sheer unremitting malice) are my favourite characters apart from them.

(seasons 1-2 ; previously)

The Secret History of Fantasy edited by Peter S Beagle

I read fantasy mainly for pleasure, and that mainly escapism, but there's another layer to it, too - both to the genre and to my appreciation of it - and in her short essay 'The critics, the monsters, and the fantasists', which appears at the end of this anthology, Ursula K Le Guin nails the connection between those two facets as well as anyone ever has, elegantly and lucidly highlighting both what is unique about the genre and the absurdity of its frequent literary ghettoisation.

One of Le Guin's points is that true fantasy is not allegorical; in a typically nuanced elaboration, she also points out that fantasy and allegory can overlap, and that socially conscious readings of fantasy are not only possible but often desirable. And those notions seem to run through the stories in this excellent collection - all of them fantasies, nearly all with at least something of an allegorical flavour, and the large majority of them genuine literature on any terms. Their careful selection is evident not only in the consistent quality of the stories, but also in the way that none of them goes anywhere near the classic Tolkein-esque style or motifs, instead carving out a whole range of magics and mysteries in their own veins.

I'd read a few of these before - Patricia McKillip's "The Lady of the Skulls", which does take a familiar motif but makes something new of it, Neil Gaiman's dark, effectively revisionistic version of Snow White "Snow, Glass, Apples", T C Boyle's hilarious yet strangely affecting "We Are Norsemen" and Stephen King's "Mrs Todd's Shortcut" - and each of them is good. Steven Millhauser's "The Barnum Museum" is probably the most memorable story in the anthology; its catalogue of a museum of the fantastic brings Borges to mind, along with the idea of the wunderkammer, and also made me think of MONA (which reflects well on the museum itself). Also particularly good, all in different ways: Maureen McHugh's "Ancestor Money", Jeffrey Ford's "The Empire of Ice Cream", Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss".

Berlinde De Bruyckere - "We Are All Flesh" (ACCA)

The first, large, extremely white room contains only two pieces. Suspended above the ground from one wall, a horse (headless and partly opened up), and in the middle of the room, two horses, splayed, again suspended from a kind of simple, brutal hanging frame - stitched/grafted to each other, belly to belly and facing in opposite directions (necks only - again headless). They're monumental, visceral and striking; I'm pretty sure that the horse hide, at least, is actual horse.

In the other rooms are wax sculptures in a range of settings - some, twisted trunks, in a wooden cabinet, doors disconcertingly open towards the viewer, others, resembling exposed human viscera, mounted to the wall or suspended in a kind of bridge/cradle of wood and string, and one abject human figure, head buried, naked. Sinuous, solid, memorable (and aptly titled).

Simon Reynolds - Retromania

A wide-ranging look at contemporary pop's retro fixation - its obsession with its own past. The focus is on pop music but Reynolds takes in a range of other strands of popular culture, often in impressive depth. I skimmed large parts of it - as much as I love listening to music, I don't at all have the obsessive interest in analysing it and tracing its history or cultural significance that Reynolds himself clearly does - but it was worth the read.

In a possibly dangerous move

...I have just signed up to the iTunes store. Hopefully I can use this for good.

Good = downloading internet-only releases
Also okay = acquiring individual songs that I want to be able to listen to whenever I want but don't think I need the album of (a lot of these may well be because of some kind of sentimental connection from the past) ... obviously this is how they get you, but $2.19 is a small price to pay
Probably okay = albums that I want to listen to instead of buying them from shops (this one remains to be seen)
Not okay = accumulating masses of music that I never get around to listening to (as if I don't have enough of that already)

So far (in order):

* Laura Cantrell - Trains and Boats and Planes (this one is internet-only)
* Bonnie Tyler - "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (you might think that this was somehow ironic, but then you'd be dead wrong)
* Jewel - "Hands", "You Were Meant For Me", "Foolish Games", "Who Will Save Your Soul" (there was a period where all of these songs got played a lot in these parts)
* Don Henley - "The Boys of Summer" (I remember David seeing my winamp playlist, years ago, full of sad girl singers (including some by Jewel, probably) - plus this song...cue mock-masculine "Don Hen-leeeyyy" shaking of the fist)
* Hunters & Collectors - "Holy Grail" & "Throw Your Arms Around Me" (two great songs that I remember fondly from school and probably haven't heard since...I think I actually taped "Holy Grail" off the radio and listened to it on one of those old-fashioned self-made mix tapes!)
* Kendall Payne - "Wonderland" (I think Jade put me onto this melancholy little song and I listened to it quite a bit at the time, I think - it had completely slipped my mind till just now)
* Goo Goo Dolls - "Iris"; Collective Soul - "The World I Know" & "Shine"; Matchbox 20 - "3AM" & "Push"; The Wallflowers - "One Headlight" (a whole lot of 90s rock - I was into all of this stuff at the time, even though my tastes were already heading towards 'alternative' by then)
* Seal - "Kiss From A Rose" (one of those songs that just sinks in deep. When I heard it on the radio - google tells me this must've been around 1995 (year 7/8), and that sounds right - it was lush, mysterious, romantic, different from anything I'd heard before. Good moment around the lunch table at work the other day when it came up on songlines...several people 'ahh'-ing in pleasant recollection)

Anyway, enough for tonight...that became a trip down musical memory lane.

"I was in love and I knew that he loved me because he made me a tape": Saint Etienne - Words and Music

A tight, more or less extroverted pop record with the expected nostalgic threads running through it, and gaining an extra (hypothetical) half-star for its sheer unabashed love of pop music and insistence on its transformative effect on people's lives. Saint Etienne are a totemic band for me, and while it's unlikely that anything new that they release will get me as much as the older, classic stuff that I was listening to while most susceptible, years ago, this is still solid.

Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane

Alison Krauss & Union Station's not so secret weapon has, of course, always been Krauss herself - even when, as is often the case on Paper Airplane (and several of the records that came immediately before it) the music that she's creating is more comfortingly familiar than particularly interesting, it sounds wonderful. On this record, most songs are led by guitar and bass, with dobro, lap steel, banjo and even fiddle much less prominent; it's symptomatic. Of course, Dan Tyminski - he of constant sorrow - can be relied upon to liven things up, and in fact, the three songs where he takes lead responsibilities are amongst the best on this tasteful but just somehow too subdued set.

Regina Spektor - What We Saw From The Cheap Seats

As good as she can be, Regina Spektor hasn't ever put out a great album - all the ones I've listened to before this one have had at least one or two truly great songs ("Carbon Monoxide" and "Us" from Soviet Kitsch, "Better" from Begin to Hope, "Blue Lips" from Far) and a smattering of other very good ones, but none have really pulled together as a completely satisfying whole. And, unfortunately, ...Cheap Seats isn't the one to break that pattern; if anything, it's a step backwards - while listenable, there's nothing really exciting, either because of interest or straightforward emotional impact (closest in that latter respect is "How"), on it, with honourable mentions to "Patron Saint" and "Ballad of a Politician".

Chairlift - Something

(A fair bit of extemporanea activity this (long) weekend - procrastination from the last minute sprint to tomorrow's uni exam.)

Chairlift were good at this year's laneway, and I'd seen some good reviews of this one on the web, but I think maybe they're best as a live proposition. While Something is more even than Does You Inspire You, and a better album for it, there's still not that much to it - it's fun while it lasts, even giddily so in spots, but doesn't linger.

Norah Jones - Little Broken Hearts

I guess I've been aware of Norah Jones for a while - her first album, what seems ages ago, was ubiquitous (though I never actually listened to it), and while the general reception made it sound pleasant enough, it didn't seem likely to be something I'd particularly enjoy (ie coffee house-suitable jazzy vocal pop). I knew that she was still going around, and the (to that stage non-existent) interest factor went up a bit when she showed up in My Blueberry Nights, but still, she remained peripheral for me until those fantastic drop-ins on Rome - which were enough to get me to buy this new one of hers.

Actually, the thing that really tipped it was that Little Broken Hearts is billed as a collaboration with Danger Mouse, the driving force behind Rome, and this album isn't a million miles from the Jones-contributed vocals on that other record. On many of the songs, there's the same sense of slightly chilly drama, jazzy elements largely subsumed by a rootsier, spaghetti-western vibe itself lightly cloaked with a twinkling airiness; a couple of the songs in the middle in particular, "Take It Back" and "After The Fall", really nail it. All of that said, there's something just a bit insubstantial about the album - I'm not sure where it comes from - but it's the high points that linger in the mind.

Marianne Dissard - L'Abandon

Sometimes nice things happen when you buy on the internet. I ordered L'Abandon on amazon but hadn't realised I was buying directly from the artist - until I got the cd and found that it had been signed with a message to me, complete with a note written on the outside of the shipping bag (sorry for delay! i hope you like it. M) and a DISSARD return address in Paris. The music itself is good, too - atmospheric, heavy-feeling and concerned more with dynamic and mood than melody, but still completely listenable.

Ryan Adams - Ashes & Fire

I've always kind of vaguely assumed that one day I would probably listen to Ryan Adams, and probably quite like his music (but probably not love it) - based mainly on the excellence of Faithless Street and Pneumonia and the likelihood of diminishing returns amidst his more recent, disconcertingly prolific solo output. Anyway, Ashes & Fire is a recent one (2011), and it's a pretty nice wistful alt-country singer-songwriterish record, a handful of good songs and the rest not unpleasant, but without the spark of near-greatness that animates the best moments from those two Whiskeytown records.

Terry Pratchett - Snuff

As enjoyable as Discworld novels always are - amazingly, this is number 39, including the ones aimed primarily at younger readers. Much as I like reading them, it's been a while since a new Pratchett really impressed me, and this one doesn't break the run - it has its moments, but doesn't break any new ground (quite a few of the recent ones have been quite self-consciously concerned with the importance of tolerance of difference - with goblins the downtrodden here).

There's something slightly small-canvas about it, not least in the way that it's nearly entirely told in the same narrative stream (though Vimes is admittedly probably one of the best major characters to do that with), so that there isn't the sense of slightly chaotic plotting and general teeming panoply that normally prevails in these books. Also - Death doesn't appear in it! Which made me wonder if he stopped showing up in every single book a while back and this is just the first time I've noticed. Still, all in all, nothing to complain about here.

China Miéville - Embassytown

The epigraph is from Benjamin - "The word must communicate something (other than itself)" - and the possibilities of that assertion are central to this typically brainy, intricately plotted and disorienting novel from Mieville, surprisingly his first out and out work of science fiction, and with a cracker of an idea at its centre - an alien race whose language operates in such a way that their words, rather than signifying anything outside of themselves, are instead pure referents, with no gap between language and meaning, and no concept of symbolic language...until, that is, an odd human infection takes hold.

Of his previous novels, it's probably closest to The City & The City, mostly in the careful, sinuous way that he works through the implications of his central premise, wrapping it up in equal measures of unexplained mystery and, crucially, story, with machinations, conspiracy and unexpected turns around every corner. The exotic is rendered almost graspable while still fundamentally opaque, the familiar strange; while it has a sort of detachment and weightlessness that prevents it from packing the same kind of punch as the Bas-Lag books with which he really came into his own, Embassytown is another piece of wonder from Mieville.

Best Coast - The Only Place

The problem with The Only Place is that it drags. All the songs are mid-tempo, clean-sounding and uninspired; the record has none of the energy and flashes of vividity of Crazy For You. Sadly, it's dull.

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Upside Down: The Best of the Jesus and Mary Chain

Psychocandy is a great album, "Just Like Honey" an even greater song, and there's something about the band's sound and their style of songwriting that hits a sweet spot for me, so that whenever I hear another song of theirs, I like it. Listening to this 2xcd best-of, though, chronologically mixed up, it has to be said that there's a certain sameness to their output, with the result that listening through it makes for nice aural wallpaper but no new revelations.

Sam Phillips - Martinis & Bikinis

I haven't seen Stealing Beauty, but I ended up with its soundtrack at some point, and I've listened to it a lot over the years (e.g.). One that's always stood out is Sam Phillips' "I Need Love", a brightly yearnful, jangly, slightly country modern pop tune; somewhere during that distracted period a couple of months ago, I had a High Fidelity moment and came up with a current '200 favourite songs of all time' list - "I Need Love" lodged at #186.

I didn't know before seeing the liner notes for the 1994 album from which it came, Martinis & Bikinis, that it was produced by the estimable T Bone Burnett, and somehow neither had I made the connection between the lyric "I need fire to melt the frozen sea inside me" and that line of Kafka's. Anyhow, the whole album is pretty nice, elegant and just a little bit earthy, highlighted by excellent songwriting. Reference points: Liz Phair (90s model), Aimee Mann, etc.

Paul Maar - Lippels Traum (Lippel's Dream) [trans Kevin Lee & Andrew Martin]

Sometimes people do the damndest - and most impressive - things. After seeing a film adaptation of this apparently classic German children's novel, Kevin went looking for a copy of the book, learned that it had never been translated into English, and decided to do it himself despite not speaking any German at all; rather remarkably, with the help of free online translators and a friend who was fortuitously learning German at the time, he succeeded.

The story itself is quite charming, alternating between waking reality and the night-time dreams of the ten year old Lippel which are inspired by his reading of The Tales of a Thousand and One Nights and reflect his daytime experiences and encounters with people. In essence, it's about dreams and the power of the imagination - themes, of course, suitable for literature of all kinds and in all languages.

The Laramie Project - 10 Years Later (Red Stitch @ Arts Centre)

In 1998, a young gay man named Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left hung on a fence to die in Laramie, Wyoming. The media descended, the crime and the public reaction came to be seen as a turning point for gay rights in some circles, and it seems to have played at least some part in the tortuous progress of hate crime legislation eventually passed under Obama a couple of years ago. Not all that long after, members of a theatre company travelled to Laramie, conducted interviews, and put together The Laramie Project, a piece of documentary theatre - its dialogue taken verbatim from those interviews - about the effect of the crime and resultant media circus on the town.

Ten years later, the play's creators returned to Laramie to explore the ramifications of those events ten years on, interviewing many of the same people and, this time, the two convicted murderers in jail; the result was The Laramie Project - 10 Years Later, presented in the same form (apparently comprised of verbatim dialogue from the interviews and extracts from the play-makers' journals), with the actors going through a range of subtle but effective costume, accent and mannerism changes to play not only the interviewers/creators but also the many members of the community who they interview.

The play explores the way that the town has tried to make sense of the events and the way they've been received and portrayed, illustrating the slippery nature of 'truth' about these kinds of things, even in a context where guilt seems to have been conclusively and uncontentiously proved in a criminal trial; it also has something to say about people generally, and the way we all come to terms with traumatic and, more generally, crucial or impactful events. The way it foregrounds its own status as a piece of theatre is effective - the constructedness is thematic and highlighted in the way the sets are used and characters donned and put aside in the ensemble round - and generally it's well conceived, put together and acted. For me, it wasn't a piece of theatre that reached any great heights - but it was worth the seeing.

(w/ Erandathie, who suggested we go having been moved by the original Project)

Marianne Dissard - L'Entredeux

For me, this seemed like something of a 'can't miss' proposition - a mix of two of my favourite things in French chanson and dusty Americana - and it is good. "Merci De Rien Du Tout" is the one that introduced me to Dissard, and it's a highlight; the languorous "Cayenne" is another. It's all done with a contemporary - and contemporarily nostalgic - sensibility, and inevitably (given its sources), with a cinematic flavour.

Iron Sky

A very silly movie, but enjoyable....as much could be guessed from the premise - in 2018, Nazis from the dark side of the moon invade Earth in flying saucers, to be confronted by US President Sarah Palin. Good for a Friday night movie.

(w/ Cass)

Grimes - Visions

A few things combined to cause me to buy Visions:

1. I was in Polyester looking for some road trip music for that day.
2. The store was playing the record at what turned out to be two of its poppiest (and best) tracks, "Circumambient" (a punchy, vivid, electro-pop anthem) and "Vowels = Space And Time" (Robyn + School of Seven Bells + a hint of U2 = excellent), while I was in there.
3. It sounded great loud.

So I was expecting its pleasures to be immediate, and some of them are, but mostly it was a bit underwhelming at first, and actually it's taken quite a few listens for the record to begin to really reveal itself to me, becoming better and better the more I listen to it.

It's kind of electro-pop, I guess; it reminds me a bit of Janelle Monae's excellent The ArchAndroid, not so much musically (Claire Boucher, the artist behind Grimes, has a versatile voice but not Monae's high-wire virtuosity, often preferring to chop up and mix her vocals into a song so that they're more akin to another layer of instrumentation/tone than to a true lead line) as in terms of its approach and overall vibe, particularly the very constructed/'produced' feel that it has.

Anyway, like I was saying, it's definitely a grower; its little hooks (just as often an earworm of a beat or unexpected synth line as a quirky vocal run or blissful-sounding concoction of reverb-y upper register trills) have a tendency to gradually become more distinct and then lodge firmly in the head. The brightest moments are high-energy, heading towards dance music; the quieter moments (the 6-minute Four Tet-y "Skin" is a particular highlight) are just as good...with the benefit of a couple of weeks of living with Visions, and working my way inside its world, I'm starting to really like it. This one might turn out to be a keeper.

On The Voice

1. First, I'm watching it, and a little bit hooked. Apart from Q&A (which I mostly don't watch these days, because of how infuriating it can be) and Insiders (which I'm often just not in the mood for first thing on a Sunday morning), it's the only show currently on tv whose time and day I know.

2. The judges are a fair part of it, especially Seal, but really all of them collectively. (Also, Megan Washington is kind of scary. And - unexpectedly, and not totally comfitingly - Delta Goodrem is kind of hot.)

3. There's a bit of humanity there too. Especially in those bits when the camera holds on the singer post-performance while the compere guy tells everyone how they can vote for them...judging by the discomfort on display there, some of these contestants are real introverts (and/or maybe it's just a basically awkward setting).

4. It helps that there are some actually really talented singers on the show. My favourites so far: Emma Louise Birdsall, Brittany Cairns, Darren Percival. Of course, one of the nice things about actually following the show is that your feelings about the singers have a chance to develop over the show - three in particular, Karise Eden, Sarah De Bono and Diana Rouvas, were much more impressive in their first round 'live' performances than I'd registered in seeing them in previous weeks.

5. And it turns out that, going by the results of the first week of the live rounds, I'm pretty much entirely in sync with the voting public - I thought that the two who went through based on votes from each of 'Team Seal' and 'Team Delta' were definitely the two strongest from their teams (and the judges then got it right in the other two each who they put through, each whittling the two weakest of their crews).

Beach House - Bloom

On the evidence of a first day or so of listening, one of a very few (fingers of one hand) dream-pop records that even get close to the magic of the Cocteau Twins, Bloom starts promisingly with the building, enveloping, arpeggio-cascading "Myth", and gets even better as it goes on. Beach House have largely passed me by before - I've heard a couple of their songs on mix cds and liked them well enough, and thought their festival set a while back was pretty good - but Bloom is fantastic. It's true that I'm wired to like this kind of thing - sweeping, spacey, swathey dream-pop, full of swoons and upwards surges - but the flipside is that I listen to a lot of it, and mark hard, and this is the real thing, at once ethereal and vivid, distinctly of a piece but filled with textural variation and colour, and without a weak song (the opening pair of "Myth"-"Wild", second act "New Year"-"Wishes" and show-stopping closer (pre-hidden track) "Irene" are particularly great).

Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque

In terms of the music that I tend to listen to, nearly all roads lead back to the Beatles, the Velvet Underground, Gram Parsons or Big Star, but rarely as directly as the path between that last and Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque - apart from the hints of 90s-ish fuzziness and moments of punkier aggression that sometimes underscore the ring and chime of the guitars that drive the album forward (you could trace all of the above back to the Velvets, if so inclined), it could practically have been a Big Star record.

The album kicks off with its best moment, the soaring, melancholy-sounding "The Concept", which I'm pretty sure I heard for the first time a few months ago in Young Adult, but which, like all of the best songs in this genre, nonetheless sounded instantly familiar. All told, for mine, Bandwagonesque isn't near greatness, - most of it just sounds too familiar - but it's good nonetheless (also, close hewing to the Big Star template notwithstanding, I wouldn't be surprised if it was itself part of the playbook on which Girls drew for their excellent Father, Son, Holy Ghost).

Dark Shadows

The tone of Dark Shadows is uneven, taking in extreme melodrama, a range of often naff (but funny) comedy, some campy gothic/horror elements, a fair dose of absurdity and a dash of gravitas and solemnity too - but actually the strange mish-mash has a consistency of its own, and what it consistently feels like is a Burton film, and more particularly a Burton/Depp outing.

It's very good, too. It's hard to explain what makes it good; so many of the preoccupations are there, but (unlike Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland - all, incidentally, like Dark Shadows, adaptations of one kind or another) it doesn't feel too much like Burton-by-the-numbers, but instead does manage to summon and maintain a shadowy, slightly pastiche-y but also sincere mood, set at the very beginning of the post-prologue 'current' (70s) action by the overhead shot as "Nights in White Satin" plays mournfully and melodiously over the top. Perhaps the simple point is just that it's very entertaining.

Good performances from all of the principals - Depp, of course, as the displaced vampire Barnabas Collins, Michelle Pfeiffer fantastic as the surviving Collins family matriarch, Eva Green suitably seductive and melodramatic, and nice turns from Chloe Grace Moretz (a star in the making, helped by her knack for picking good roles - most notably so far in (500) Days of Summer, Kick Ass, Hugo and a memorable couple of cameos in 30 Rock), Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley and Bella Heathcote.

(w/ Meribah - at imax)

Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew

Just lately - the last two or three months, maybe - I've been feeling more enthused about music than I can remember feeling for ages; I've been listening more attentively, staying up late doing so, seeking out new stuff, and, most importantly, it's been having an effect on me, making me feel in a particular, difficult to describe way that only art (and, for a lot of my art-consuming life, particularly music) does.

That feeling is kind of ineffable; it arises in the moment, but it's always connected to a host of other feelings, associations, impressions, longings, acute and diffuse. Somewhat unexpectedly, Bic Runga's latest has been the big one in the last few weeks, which probably has something to do with the music itself and more still to do with my receptiveness; and even more lately, I've gotten completely stuck on the first track (and the one that got me to order the cd after hearing it on a compilation) on Lisa Hannigan's Sea Sew, "Ocean and a Rock", in the same way.

Like the rest of the album, "Ocean and a Rock" is basically a folk song with some pop trimmings, Irish-inflected, adorned with a few instrumental elements, but the song is set apart by its stately, oceanic (ha) melody and the perfect way that the steady drum beat, the punctuating strings and brass parts, and Hannigan's quietly expressive voice mesh together. It has a bit of a Holly Throsby mood, though not quite as hushed; each time it ends, it leaves me wanting more.

The rest of Sea Sew isn't quite as wonderful, but there's a bit to like on it. On repeated listens, it reveals more, and there are a few surprising - even somewhat dissonant - arrangements and variations built in throughout.

(Lisa Hannigan has been vaguely on my radar before, first as the backing singer on "The Blower's Daughter", which lodged in my head because of Closer, then as one of the standout vocalists in "Way to Blue".)

Slow Club - Yeah, So

Charming indie-folk-countryesque boy-girl record, faintly reminiscent of Camera Obscura and, at times, She & Him (is it bad that I just used a Zooey Deschanel musical project as a reference point?). The best moments are the liveliest and most peppy - "It Doesn't Have To Be Beautiful", "Because We're Dead", "Our Most Brilliant Friends".

Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) - "Rage", "The Long Walk" & "The Running Man"

I've read all of these before, and "The Long Walk" in particularly probably four or five times previously - there's something about the high-concept storytelling that grips.

Sundowner (Kage - Arts Centre)

Sundowner's syndrome is a syndrome involving particular disorientation, erratic behaviour, mood variation, etc during the evening hours from sundown in people suffering from dementia - eg when suffering from Alzheimer's - and while I hadn't heard of it before, it's something that interests me, as I do tend to be drawn to snippets about dementia and loss of mental faculties...it's not something that particularly preoccupies me, but at least since early university, and probably earlier, the prospect has haunted me just a little bit, at intervals, a kind of premature darkening and death.

This production, a piece of dance theatre, I suppose, is an allusive, sometimes slightly mawkish, occasionally poignant evocation of the experience of Sundowner's, and dementia more generally, bound up with some subtle human drama. It's poetic in moments, the interpretive dance functioning well in its figuration of the theatre of the central figure's mind (the use of the back of stage area for some of the dance, behind a thin curtain, worked well), and while I didn't personally feel that it went anywhere particularly profound or unusual, nor was it unengaging or uninteresting.

(w/ Wei, Ash, Meribah)

I Am Legend

I like a good post-apocalypse, and I Am Legend isn't bad - tense, a bit reflective, and well paced and structured. Nothing amazing - but watching it on tv, with ad breaks, wouldn't have helped. Also, Will Smith is good.

An untitled soul mix cd

A mix cd from DS (from work) from a while back, designed as an introduction to soul for me. A lot of famous artists and famous songs, some familiar to me but most not - or at least not specifically, as nearly all sound at least vaguely familiar, either in their own right or as echoes in stuff that I do know very well (including, surprisingly frequently, Patty Griffin). Otis Redding, Etta James, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin and then some.

Emilie Simon - Franky Knight

A smoother, more consistent listen than The Big Machine - like.

Soley - We Sink

A discovery of Wei's from Iceland. Tidal-sounding, slightly fractured indie-pop; "Pretty Face" stands out for the way it combines her programmed tones and more organic elements (piano, voice, percussion)  into something distinctly catchy and tuneful.

Bic Runga - Belle

It'd be overstating it to say that Bic Runga is a totemic artist for me, but her music has run through a lot of my life, even soundtracked much of it in the background, despite never having really become laden with any specific strong associations (which might be just as well, in some ways). "Sway" and Drive pierced me in high school, and I kept on listening to them at intervals; near the end of uni, I belatedly picked up Beautiful Collision at around the time that my tastes were coalescing around a lot of that kind of pretty, melancholy-edged female singer-songwriter stuff; and then came the lovely Birds (*), easily her most mature and best to that point. And it seemed that, infrequently but somehow consistently, her songs would appear on mix cds, float out from the radio, come up on an ipod shuffle - always there, each time winding just a bit more of a personal thread around her music for me.

Anyhow, there's a new one out, Belle, and it's another good one. It's another album of elegant, finely crafted and performed adult alternative pop, perhaps a bit more experimental and a bit more sophisticated than the previous three; it starts sprightly, and then explores a range of other musical moods, from the classicism of "If You Really Do", through the Morricone-esque opening and mysterious swirl of "This Girl's Prepared For War" and the shimmery "Darkness All Around Us", on which Runga takes a back seat to collaborator/producer Kody Nielson (to pick out my favourites)...also, the dream-like two minute title track is honestly just a little bit magical, a gossamer, ethereal moment that sticks in the mind, as much for the otherworldly mood it invokes as for its wistful melody.

Emmylou Harris - Luxury Liner

What is it that makes Emmylou so consistently wonderful? This is one of the early ones, from the 70s, and it's as great as all the others; a particular highlight is her version of "She". It's partly the voice and partly the sensitivity of her interpretations - and the ability to pick songs that will work for her - but altogether she really is something.

"Still Smiling: A Tribute to the Genius of Brian Wilson"

Came with some music magazine or other. Seems like a good roster of currentish Brian Wilson / Beach Boys-inspired acts (there've probably always been many, but they seem especially prominent at the moment), but hasn't really taken me, for the most part; while I'm all for this kind of hazy sunshiney melancholy, I prefer that kind of vibe when it comes with more melody than is generally on offer here.