More anthems by gaslight and others

Music

My main musical accompaniment this week has been the Gaslight Anthem, and I have as planned gone back to the '59 sound' album, and found it rather good indeed.  I really like 'Miles Davis and the cool', as seen below, which has a great drum intro:

Obviously, much has been written about their patronage by Bruce Springsteen, and there is some well-seen footage of them playing the title track with the man himself, from London I think, here:

I have also been hearing good things about the new Arcade Fire album, but of course good things were said about their previous two and I have blogged before about my failure to 'get them' or see what the fuss is all about (for example, see here).  I do like the sound of lead track 'Suburbs' below, particularly the piano line rolling through it:



I was also happy to hear that the album made by the late lamented Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse and Dangermouse, 'Dark night of the soul', will finally see the light of day; I wrote about it last year here.  The Irish Times website is currently streaming it live here.

Uncut magazine for this month features what appears to be an old style new release compilation for the first time in ages, which I am going to listen to with interest (it features bands I am interested to check out like Deer Tick, The Acorn and Blitzen Trapper), aand their reviews include a few few leads to follow up, in particular Tired Pony, a band which features Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol, REM's Peter Buck and M Ward among others, a very promising mix. I found a track from it ('Dead American writers' - good title) here:



While doing some driving recently, I have been listening to a playlist of some recent downloads, including of course the National and Gaslight Anthem, but also McAlmont and Nyman, AA Bondy, Josh Ritter, Stornaway, Tracy Thorn and John Grant.  However, the one set of songs which keeps catching my ears and make me check who it is in excitement is Phosphorescent, which must be a good sign if it passes the audio equivalent of a blind taste test.  I will finish this extensive music post section with a live clip of them playing 'Tell me baby (have you had enough)':



Books

From dead American writers to live ones, I have read the first 150 pages or so of 'The passage' and am enjoying it, and also the relative novelty of feeling the authentic heft of a large book in my hands rather than my iPod for a change.  I like his writing and the plot is good (although not quite matching the set-up on the back cover, strangely), with a strange eerieness and casual brutality running through the set-up of incipient vampires, viruses, mysterious little girls, rogue FBI agents and (of course) nasty government agents up to nefarious plans.  I found the author talking about the book here:



I also finished 'Confessions of an alien hunter', discussed in my last post, which was hugely enjoyable and thoroughy recommended in anyone interested in alien life from with a science fiction or a science non-fiction perspective.

Movies

Watched and loved French thriller 'Anything for her': short, snappy, tense, unusual and very cool, highly recommended overall, and trailered as below:



Not much else to report.  The World Cup is effectively keeping me away from DVDs and movies, although I did watch Battlestar Galactica movie 'Razor' last week (a good refresher on the series, and pretty taut and brutal).  The football is certainly keeping quality films from the cinema, but I am certainly going to see 'Predators', probably irrespective of what the critics may well opine, and I guess the next one will be 'Toy Story 3'. 

In movie news, I was quite pleased to hear the (perhaps not terribly shocking) news that Peter Jackson looks like he may be going back to direct 'The hobbit' after Guillermo Del Toro pulled out; old hands may be most reliable on this one.

I also note that iTunes has started selling movies for €3.99 (currently a small range of old blockbusters including 'Independence day' and 'Terminator 2', and if they consistently keep some older interesting movies at that price I will certainly start a collection of same.


That's about enough for now, with not much else to report.  No release date for the iPad or iPhone 4.0 in Ireland yet, and definetely getting the latter and thinking more seriously about the former.  Will just have to wait for news!