In recent days' I have become pretty obsessed with 'American slang' by The Gaslight Anthem. I downloaded their previous album, 'The old '58 sound' ages ago and listened a few times, but not much (note to self: go back and check it out again!). A positive review in Uncut of their new one, however, send me back to eMusic and a new download, and I bloody love it (second favourite of the year so far, after you know who). It has such energy and melody and is perfect for the summer, and I really don't get the reviews which go on and on about their debt to Springsteen; obviously there are things in common but their songs are tight and short and modest, not always things to be said about old Bruce, and I feel a strange celtic strand in their too, with regular reminders of the Pogues for some reason.
The first video clip below is an acoustic version of the title track, 'American slang', which shows off their singers great voice (and tattoos) wonderfully:
Next up is a live clip of 'Boxer', which would have to be good for me to get past the sacreligious baggage of the title, and does it brilliantly, with a great intro (not as good live as on album):
'The Queen of lower chelsea' is slower but has a really cool beat and their vocals and harmonies which are excellent all over the record are well to the fore here:
The last clip is perhaps my favourite from the album, 'Bring it on', which goes through several very cool gear shifts and turns in the closest they come to an all-out epic:
The only other musical thing I want to mention is finding Irish band Bell X1 doing a rather nice version of Don Henley's classic 'Boys of summer' here.
Books
This week, I have been reading 'Confessions of an alien hunter' by Seth Shostak, which is a really interesting and nicely written account of our search for life beyond earth, from the very casual/loony land of the UFO-hunters to proper scientific considerations and projects such as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). It skips a little over the fascinating story of NASA's claims for ultramicroscopic life in an Antarctic-found asteroid in the late 1990s but covers many other interesting angles very well. The manner of writing is really good too, with very good use of humour and references to movies, such as obvious reference points like 'Contact', the logical gaps in which are gleefully exposed. I particularly loved lines such as 'In other words, for two dozen years, UFOs were exposed to more scrutiny than Lindsay Lohan's social calendar. Not finished yet but finding it a really good read, covering a very fertile field for good stories with a level of science which is not at all intimidating.
I also did some shopping this week, and bought 'The passage' by Justin Cronin in good old-fashioned hard copy (a big paperback, with a worn-looking nicely done cover) after a few e-mail ads from Amazon which were enough to spark my interest. After loving 'The strain' I am clearly a bit more open to big epic vampire books, so decided to give it a try. Cork's Waterstone's were also pushing it pretty hard, with big display stands and freesheets with the first chapter reprinted to be taken away.
Finally, I went back to the kindle to download the new book by perhaps my favourite practitioner of the English language, by which I mean 'At home' by Bill Bryson; I actually did not hear much about this in advance, so know very little about it, except that I trust the author sufficiently to make this a fairly safe investment.
Movies and TV
Watched some of 'Hamlet 2' and pretty confused about what kind of film it is supposed to be, and unimpressed, so not inclined to watch the rest; I do like Steve Coogan but he seems all over the place in this one. I also heard about and checked out a very cool mix-up on Youtube, which is the visuals from the trailer for Toy Story 3 with the audio for the new Christopher Nolan film 'Inception', which is actually very very strange a mix but very well done, as seen below:
My recent shopping spree also yielded the cut-price DVDs of 'Paranormal activity' (watching the director's commentary in the background as I type) and 'It might get loud', which I am curious about and think my eldest son, who is learning guitar, might like, as long as it does not turn him into a Led Zeppelin fan.
On TV, I have been working my way through recorded episodes of 'The pacific' but finding it a bit bleak and hard to follow, in terms of characters and action scenes (most of which are at night); I think I found 'Band of brothers' more accessible and watchable, but maybe this is just an accurate reflection of the nature of the relevant military campaigns. Also trying to watch BBC's 'Outnumbered', which comes very well recommended but keeps putting me confortably to sleep.
Perhaps surprisingly, my TV highlight of the week (and year so far) really has to be the finale of 'Grey's anatomy'. I have been watching this fairly casually for most of its run, but this week's episode with the shootings really caught me off guard and made my jaw drop. I am an appalling spoiler, who cannot resist checking out the ending of coming TV series and movies (although I try and resist every time, my will is not strong enough to hold back my curiosity) so real surprises in movies or TV are really rare for me, which made this such a treat and so gripping and unpredictable. I found a set of clips from the finale set to Snow Patrol's 'Run' here:
So, that is a lot for this week (although I missed a post last week). Still waiting eagerly for the launch date for MY iPhone 4.0 in Ireland, and starting to think (unbenownst to myself) about the iPad, due to launch here around the same time, so will have to see if I can be tempted when I get my hand son it for real.
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