The Culture Collection

Airborne toxins actually quite pleasant

2011-05-08T20:36:00.000+01:00

Musically, May is turning out quite interesting, with new downloads from The Airborne Toxic Event and Jamie Woon (both on recommendation of my new friend the Sunday Times iPad App's culture section), Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky (they just fit together, with thanks this time to eMusic) and Fleet Foxes.

The TATE (as I will abbreviate the first-named band, not being arced to type their full title, which incidentally reminds me of the very odd Mark Wahlberg/M Night Shyamalan movie, the Happening - coincidence?) album 'All at once' is actually really good, even it it does feel like a compilation of stuff by other people, if mainly good ones. The opening title track sounds very Nationalish, with anthematic reach and cool drums (see below), and I really like the following 'Numb', particularly where the rush of the music takes a breath for the line with the title.

'The graveyard near the house' was really nice until my son pointed out how much it sounds like 'Hey there Delilah' by the Plain White Ts. Some songs have a touch of Pogueishness about them, and the singer's voice seems too mutable to get a good grasp on, sounding very different in different songs ('Changing' sounds like a different band entirely, more at home in the UK than the US). 'It doesn't mean a thing' (slightly different version below) ranges from the Pogues to Elvis Costello very cooly within a little over 2 minutes, which is quite an achievement.

It does sound really nice on 'All for a woman' (below), which builds up like a Ryan Adams epic (something like 'Meadowlake street' springs to mind) and 'Half of something else' is really good too.

The album got a very tough review in Uncut for Arcade Fire clonism, but I don't really get that, although I agree that 'The kids are ready to die' is pretty weak. Overall, though, this is one of the best albums I have heard in a while.

Jamie Woon was always a bit of a stretch for me, as the reviews made it sound quite low-key and ambient for me, but a preview on iTunes made me interested, and I quite like his voice, but I am still struggling to really engage in the music, which seems a bit too backgroundy for me, although 'Night air' does stand out.

I didn't get quite as excited as many folks and folkies seemed to about Fleet Foxes' debut, although 'White water hymnal' and 'Mykonos' (first heard on an Uncut CD) were gorgeous, but I did divert some of my eMusic subscription their way based on the reviews of the new album. I really like the simpler more acoustic ones, like 'Helplnessness blues' itself and 'Montezuma', although some of the rest is a bit noodley and dense for me.

I haven't given Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai enough aural attention to review yet, but maybe next time.

Movies-wise, I downloaded 'The girl who played with fire' on Apple TV (first straight download, no PC required!) and made the mistake of picking the English-dubbed version, on which the voices are simply crap, and make taking the whole thing seriously almost impossible. My internet connection dropped around two-thirds of the way through and when it reattached the movie was no longer saved (although I should have had it for 48 hours) but to be honest I don't think I will bother to pay for the rest.

I have also started watching 'Centurion' (I liked Neil Marshall's first two films, 'Dog soldiers' and 'The descent' a lot), and it actually looks pretty good, with some very impressively visceral action, and accents and characters far like the protagonists of Dog Soldiers than what I would have expected for the Roman Empire's finest.

TV-wise, we have been enjoying 'Boardwalk empire' a lot, and I have watched the first episode of 'Game of thrones', which looks very interesting if a bit mad in the head and off the wall (metaphorically speaking).

Books-wise, just finished Joseph Wilsons book on the nasty tactics of the Bush administration (what a shocker) and just started 'Unscientific America' by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, as I loved Mooney's scary book about how the Bush adminsitration also gave scientists a very hard time, and not just ex-ambassadors ('The Republican war on science').

That's all for now, folks!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Easter musical eggs

2011-04-25T11:18:00.000+01:00

This is a test post using the Blogsy app on my iPad. This is taking a little time to get used to as not quite intuitive but I am gradually getting the hang of it. This combined with my Zaggmate keyboard will hopefully mean the iPad becomes my blogging device of choice, and I might even get back to more regular posts than so far this year (although 2011 seems to be turning into quite the year for quality music).

One thing which seems quite useful is the ease of embedding Youtube clips, like this one from TV on the Radio:

I discovered TV on the Radio through their last album 'Dear Science', the title of which was almost enough to ensnare me (occupational hazard), which was a case of the least expected like of the last few years for me, as terms like art rock and funk could readily be used to describe it but I still really liked it. I first listened to 'Nine Types of Light' (another cool title) on a train to Dublin by headphones and was to be honest a little disappointed first run through, as it lacked the dramatic punch of 'Halfway home' or 'Dancing choose' (where they added rap to the list of things I did not expect to like in their sound), but a little patience allowed the songs time to grow and breathe, and now I really like quite a few of them. 'Keep your heart' is an obvious one, but 'Will do' (seen above) and the closer (bonus track?) 'Troubles' are really good, the latter in particular a great pop song.

The National keep slipping out great songs, with the last one 'Think you can wait' coming from a film called 'Win win', and being a gorgeous slow burner like 'Runaway' but somehow even nicer, and would not have been at all out of place on 'High violet':

The next one ('Exile Villify') apparently comes from a video game ('Portal 2', about which all I know is that I am pretty sure the original game came bundled with 'Half-Life 2', which gives it immediate credibility in my book, even before The National became involved). I am not sure whether being associated with a video game is either really cool or slightly odd, but as The National can never be less than cool let's assume the former. Anyway, the song is slightly less of an immediate love than the one above, but perhaps it needs more time....

The next music I want to talk about is Glasvegas' 'Euphoric heartbreak' (I can't bring myself to repeat the bizarre titular solidus-assault), for which advance press and reviews had been, frankly, pretty unenthusiastic. I discovered Glasvegas through their debut in 2008, which I actually only bought in its reissue form, when my curiosity was sparked by the review talking about Jesus and Mary Chain meets Phil Spector doing a bunch of Christmas songs (as bundled in the reissue with the debut). While I found some of their slower songs a bit too lifeless, I loved the energy of "Flowers and football tops', 'Geraldine' and the quite astonishing 'Go square go' (the bit where the singer first intones 'Here we f***ing go' is just heard-stopping), and loved the macho sloppiness of 'A snowflake fell and it felt like a kiss' (who could resist that title?). Anyway, the new album came with more health warnings than a pack of cigarettes (somehow that analogy just seemed apt) but my affection for the debut carried me through to trying the new one.

To be honest, it is not as bad as the reviews led me to expect (talk about damning with faint praise!) but there does seem to have been something of the honesty, modesty and raw passion of the debut lost in the process, perhaps due to the inevitable pressures of fame (stories of the bands drug-induced woes invariably feature in reviews and profiles), and the songs do seem a little lost inside huge production (one review compared the sound, unkindly but not necessarily inaccurately, to Simple Minds) and a bit more formulaic and polished. I think songs like 'Euphoria take my hand' (below) could benefit from a more stripped-back sound to bring that wonderful guitar riff out of the swamp in which it has become submerged, while the stand-out 'Lot's sometimes' (also below) just about survives the production and, more fatally, the appallingly placed apostrophe, to deliver an epic builder which comes closest to the spirit of the first album.

I am also thinking about downloading Jamie Woon and Radiohead based on the reviews, and will probably take a chance on Fleet Foxes when the new album comes out (especially as it will be on eMusic), although much of their debut did not really grab me.

In other culture-related news, I am nearly at the end of the second series of 'The West Wing' and it really is the pinnacle of televisual wonderfulness. This has pretty much dominated my TV-watching, so no other DVDs to report on, but a few box-sets lying in need of attention (although I watched and actually enjoyed 'Hellboy 2' on my iPad between some train journeys).

Books-wise, I read another book on Wikileaks (Greg Mitchell's 'The age of wikileaks' - interesting but a bit short and feeling rather rapidly flung-together) and a fantastically ascerbic book about the emergence of stupidity as a major dominating force in American society and politics in particular ('Idiot America: how stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free' by Charles P. Pierce). The latter was simultaneously funny, wise and enraging, with great analyses of the response to 911, the rush to war in Iraq, the Dover Intelligent Design case, climate change and more, starting with a great piece about a creationist museum which features dinosaurs with saddles. Dear lord, need we say any more.

I am currently reading a really interesting book about how a new generation of biological hackers are trying to beat major labs at their own game ('Biopunk: DIY scientists hack the software of life' by Marcus Wohlsen), and have also downloaded what looked (from a Kindle sample) very interesting, which is Joseph Wilson's account of the Bush Administration's use of dodgy intelligence (besides their own) regarding Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Niger ('The politics of truth'), which was recently dramatised in the film 'Fair game', which I didn't see.

Technology-wise, I am gradually moving away from hard-copy newspapers, being quite happy to read my favourite bits of the Guardian on the iPhone app I paid for (especially Alexis Petridis' wonderfully caustic culture columns and Peter Bradshaw's film reviews) and I have paid for a trial of the Sunday Times on the iPad (the demise of the Sunday Tribune has left my Sunday reading bereft, and the physical copy of the Times is just intimidatingly huge and induces savage guilt for the environment every time I chuck half its weight in paper, unread, straight into recycling). The Times app actually works really well, and I am going to pay my monthly sub to read the best bits on screen on a Sunday, as I finally think both subscription and on-screen news papers could actually be the thing of the future. On the subject of on-screen news, the Irish national station RTE has a news app which is very good (and, at certain times, quite surreal, as in their live blog during this winter's snow storms when the writer inserted many great jokes and off-the-point ruminations into the mundane updates), but the entertainment section is just bizarre; perhaps it reflects how little I dip into a certain fetid corner of celebrity 'news' but recent relevations about how Peter Andre or some other loser fell asleep in the cinema on a date and how some girlyband singer I never heard of had a dream that old-style Irish singer Mary Black released a disco track make me dispair for what passes for entertainment in certain quarters today.

Swerving away to much harsher stuff leads me to a somewhat sombre conclusion to this post, regarding the death of two celebrated war journalists in Libya, including Tim Hetherington, whose 'Restrepo' I watched recently and found very powerful. The trailer is below:

I have always held huge admiration for war reporters, being constantly aware that every time we see a battle or other hostile situation on Sky News or whatever, there is someone unarmed there with a camera, recording it all for us to watch. This to me is another form of real heroism, and the sad events of last week made me think once again what real guts it must take to do what they have done, and how sad it is when they die in the line of action on our behalfs. One of the things I read on the Sunday Times app yesterday was a very moving piece by Margarette Driscoll about Hetherington, the roles of war reporters, and the fact that he was far more interested in the effects of war on those caught up on it than the gruesome details which others favoured, which is well worth checking.

[By the way, I gave up on Blogsy part way through this post, when I couldn't work out how to position the video clips reasily, moved onto the Blogpress App, and finished off the polishing (such as it is) on my PC - still a bit of practice to move completely to iPad for posting, alsas.]

March music madness

2011-03-28T21:20:00.000+01:00

There has been a lot of good new music this month, and I almost don't know where to start. It has been a while since my last confession, I mean post, so better get started.

Most recently, I downloaded from eMusic The Rural Alberta Advantage, which sounded good on preview as it sat at the top of their download charts (a recommendation I have come to trust a lot in recent months, after almost feeling like giving up my subscription). 'Departing' is very good, like Deer Tick but with the rough edges hewn smooth and honey poured over the lot. There is a chilly atmosphere from the whited-out highway of the cover, but the drums and piano are really far more upbeat than they at first seem, and there are several really outstanding tracks, including 'Coldest days', 'North star', 'Stamp' and 'Barnes' Yard'.

I found a version of the latter in a record store here:

And a version of 'under the knife' at:

I have still failed to warm to the new Elbow album, which just seems to fade into obscurity in the background when I play it and has never really engaged my ears fully. I do need to give it more of a chance but it feels a struggle with so much else fighting for aural attention.

REM's 'Collapse into now' has proven mostly worth the listen, and far better on average than the last few have been, but I could probably live without around half the songs. Still, 'Mine smell like honey', 'That someone is you' and 'Uberlin' are as strong as anything they have done for ages. A studio performance of 'Mine smell like honey' is below:

An Uncut Album of the Month recommendation sent me predictably to the dark world of Josh T. Pearson's 'Last of the southern gentlemen', which really is bleak but beautiful, if lacking the warmth to live up its comparisons to The Boatman's Call. The lyrics are really something in their raw frankness, and 'The honeymoon's great, wish you were here' is just stunning in the picture it paints so poetically, and almost makes the heart break. I wonder if Josh has heard the beautifully sad Billy Bragg song 'Wish you were her', which covers much the same ground but considerably less abrasively. I knew 'Woman when I raised hell' (as seen below) from Uncut' March cover CD (of which more later) but opener 'Thou art loosed' is also brilliant.

On the back of this CD, I actually went and dug back through files off music not listened to in recent times to find Lift to Experience's 'The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads' and gave it a listen for the first time in years and it really doesn't sound like the same person at all, but that still is a greatly weird yet epic album (discovered again through Uncut at the time).

Speaking of Uncut, their March CD 'Homeward bound' was simply stunning and a much-needed reminder of why I have bought every issue since its launch. Beside the aforementioned Mr Pearson, it introduced me to Harper Simon (son of Paul), Simone Felice (the version of 'Union street' is breathtaking, and sent me off to get The Duke and the King, the version on which is nowhere as good - drums far too obtrusive), Michael McDermott (downloaded that CD too - bit MOR but there is something there, even if 'The American in me' is clearly the standout), and reminded me of Peter Broderick. Add in The Tallest Man on Earth, Josh Ritter and Villagers and it is a simply brilliant compilation.

Finally, music-wise for now, and in a very different musical style, and indeed parent decade, I have been quite impressed by Mirrors' 'Lights and offerings'. Let's face it, when every review mentioned some or all of OMD, Depeche Mode, Heaven 17, Tears for Fears etc etc I was hardly going to be able to resist, especially when the iTunes download was an incredibly generous package for a CD which wasn't even full priced, including loads of videos and live tracks. Of course it is not that original sounding, and also sounds quite like Editors in place, but it does what it does rather well, and tracks like 'Into the heart' (in particular, as seen below) and 'Something on your mind' are really strong and stick in the mind for days.

In other cultural news, there have been few movies or DVDs to report on, but have been enjoying 'Shameless' on TV. This is the US version, with William H Macy, not the UK one, and was initially quite a shock to the system, with the raw frankness (Frank-ness?), but the humour and Macy's great face made it watchable and eventually addictive. I have bought the UK series 1 and 2 on DVD and only started to watch, and while the extent to which the remake is really a cover version is surprising, I think the US version will still go down easier, and have a fonder place on my TV. In complete contrast, we have started to spoil ourselves by starting to work through The West Wing again, jumping in for some reason at Season 2, and enjoying what seem to be some of the golden days of the show, with great episodes, the cast all there (including Ainsley Hayes, great for a while before they forgot what to do with her and she disappeared) and Sorkin's writing at its sharpest.

Books-wise, really enjoyed 'The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks', which combined great science writing with a touching and frequently shocking family tale uncovered through some really interesting detective work by a very engaging narrator and writer. As speculation about Obama's forthcoming visit to Ireland mounts (including a possible trip to Cork), and as sort of a companion piece to The West Wing, I downloaded 'O' (a presidential novel by an anonymous source), which is a barely-veiled account of the Obama team in the throes of forthcoming reelection campaigning - it is readable but not much more than that. Switching back and forth between that and a book on Pluto's demise as a fully-recognised planet ('The case for pluto' by Alan Boyle) which is a really well written and interesting piece of recent science history.

Other than all of the above, thinking about getting myself an iMac, and using my iPad more and more. Getting the Zaggmate keyboard/case really transformed the functionality of the yoke, and I am now happily typing this on the iWriter app with the greatest of ease. The Angry Birds have gone to Rio, and I am using iDisk more and more as a file storage facility (including movies) and intermediary between PC and iPad, with saving and switching very easy indeed.

So, busy month of March, and more frequent posts in April promised!

New music nirvana

2011-02-05T22:34:00.000Z

I am curently dipping in and out of Richard Lederer's highly entertaining book 'Crazy English' (the case is strongly made on every page of how true the title is) on iPhone/Kindle and have just read about all kinds of phobias I didn't know existed. These include things like 'cheruphobia' (gaiety - see Esben and the Wich below), 'tomophobia' (surgical operations - who doesn't have this?), 'verbaphobia' (fear of words, especially that one), 'tapinophobia' (small things - like what?) and 'erythrophobia' (the colour red - presumably not just the Krysztof Kieslowski film?).

However, I have been thinking of a new one for which there may not (yet) be a name, i.e., the fear that there is music out there which you would absolutely love but you just haven't met it yet. Even with Genius and Amazon recommendations and previews on iTunes there is just too much music for one person to monitor casually, leading to he aforementioned fear, which I propose to name ignotacaramusicaphobia (from a haphazard Latin construction of words for unknown, beloved and music - you would never tell I lacked a classical education, would you?).

Anyway, this was brought home to me again this week when, in a need to finish my eMusic credits before they ran out at the end of the month, I took a hasty chance on two albums that had been near the top of their most downloaded charts for ages but about which I knew precious little. Oh, and they were both by Swedish artists, which did not fill me with extra enthusiasm.

The first was 'The wild hunt' by The Tallest Man on Earth (who, from video evidence, is presumably in hiding from the enforcers of the Trades Descriptions Act), and I bloody love it. Mostly acoustic guitar matched with an unusual voice most frequently compared to Bob Dylan but far less whiny and more generally joyous. I found some clips online, starting with the one below:

I also found this clip of a live version of my favourite on the album, 'Burden of tomorrow':

Also from the chilly northern land which Steig Larsson would have me believe is full of very strange and rather dangerous individuals comes The Radio Dept, who eMusic also taunted me with for some time before I secumbed and downloaded their most recent album ('Clinging to a scheme'). This is quite different, but the songs are lovely in a very 'sensitive end of the 80s' way, although the heavily treated vocals which are frequently distorted place an emotional barrier for me: still, very interesting and worth a listen, and the live clip of 'You stopped making sense' below gives a flavour of what is to be found:

From a very different musical place, in fact Brighton I think, come the marvellously named Esben and the Witch, who I had taken acute note of in the preview-of-2011 articles due to the references to Goth and Banshees and old-style doom and gloom (the black-clad skeletons in my 80s closet rattling), and I bought the album 'Violet Cries' (could two fantastic albums with 'Violet' in the title in consecutive years be possible?) on iTunes. I must admit, I love 'Marching song' below (particularly the drumming in the first section, mad video by the way) but the rest of the album has yet to really grow on me, but I will persevere:

The other major (re)discovery of the month was The Decemberists on the back of great reviews (including album of the month) for 'The king is dead' (he managed to hide for over 20 years after the Smiths killed his missus...), and it is a great album, and far more accessible than I had ever found their stuff before, and I had tried (although 'Sleepless' off the 'Dark was the night' compilation was gorgeous). There is an undoubted feel of 'lets mix REM plus the Waterboys in a blender and record what spews out' (particularly the former in the intro to 'Calamity song' and the latter in the outro to 'Rox in the box', through the [probably traditional originally] air of 'Raggle taggle gypsy'); having Peter Buck on board legalises the REM lifts, and Gillian Welch and Laura Viers add that feminine touch from time to time. Anyway, it is a really easy-listening nice album (and I mean that more positively than it might sound) and my favourite track is probably 'Dear avery' as seen below:

I also found a clip featuring my two other favourites, 'June Hymn' and 'This is why we fight' below:

So, all in all, a very good month for music. I also tried to expand my musical pallette by experimenting with Kanye West ('Fantasy') and Plan B ('Strickland Banks') but, while both had tracks that really grabbed me (particularly 'Lost in the world', 'Power' and 'All of the lights' on the former), I do not think this signals the start of a major musical migration. I also tried some EP stuff by James Blake (bit too minimalist for me, however good the reviews of the debut full album might be), and got a real unexpected pleasure from Cee Lo Green's 'The lady killer' (I do love that voice and something about the energy of the music just overcomes my natural resistance to such material). I also have downloaded but need to listen more to Joan as Policewoman and Anna Calvi (having discovered 'Suzanne and I' thanks to Uncut, this remains the stand out on the album for me, as seen live below, with the great drum and guitar intro preserved):

In matters of non-musical culture, I haven't got to the cinema at all, nor seen any noteworthy DVDs, but have started to watch and am enjoying the sleazy charm of 'Shameless' (the US version - I have never seen the British version); I always loved William H. Macy and his performance, while far in tone from his previous work, still retains enough charm to give an interesting centre to the series, which looks worth future support:

I am also filling my Sky-plus box with the fruits of the new Sky Atlantic channel, and have lots of Boardwalk Empire and Curb your Enthusiasm, and more, waiting to watch. Books-wise, I am in English-language mode, between the aforementioned Lederer plus the heavier but still fascinating and thought-provoking 'The stuff of thought' by Steven Pinker. I also have just opened a Facebook account for the first time, and am just starting to wonder what do do with it.....

That's it for now, more to follow soon.

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Phosphorescent escape from Irish gloom

2011-01-23T21:55:00.000Z

Okay, firstly it has been waaayyy too long since a last update, but better late then never and I have a lot to catch up, to be divided over a few posts I guess. I am also taking the opportunity to test to see how the new Writer app works in terms of allowing me to type more fluently on the iPad. Seems pretty good so far! The last few posts have been concert reviews, and I still plan a roundup of the year's music, movies etc, so I am just going to get stuck in.

Music

I realised I had some live clips I never put up from my amazing December gigs (Arcade Fire and The National), namely those I took of Phosporescent supporting the latter. I had downloaded two albums by them (Here's to taking it easy and the Willie Nelson covers album) and quite a few tracks had favourably caught my ear (as opposed, I guess, to roughly grabbing it and yanking it half off my head), so I was quite interested to see them live, and they were certainly interesting. The front man, Matthew Houck, initially seems hewn from the same kind of backwoods log as Bonnie Prince Billy in appearance and manner, but has a really distinctive voice which was lovely in concert. His band looked kind of hairly and scraggly (with a particularly demented pianist), and sounded a lot louder in the loud bits, and quieter in the quiet bits, but there was generally a leaning in the direction of loud more than seemed apparent on record.

Anyway, the first of two clips is of my favourite of their songs, 'Rainbow parade':

While the second is the lovely if somewhat intruigingly named 'Picture of our torn up praise':

There is no doubt, in reflection, that 2010 was more like the inspiring 2008 than the insipid 2009 for music, with a lot of long-lasting favourites. Number one of course must be 'High violet' by The National, although I must admit that this album perhaps did not entirely survive the forensic analysis I applied before and after its release, to the extent that it feels somewhat like a machine I took apart so drastically that it never quite reassembled into a coherent functioning whole. It is hard to explain my relationship with this album, which is still head and shoulders above almost everything else for a long time, but somehow it remains a little spoiled by my own dumb failure to allow it a chance free from weighty expectation and dissembly.

Most pleasant surprise was 'The suburbs' when Arcade Fire finally bludgeoned me into submission, and plain and simple pop joy (with attendendant goofy grins and addicted humming) of the year was 'American slang' by the Gaslight Anthem. Other highlighted pleasures included the Drums, and Josh Ritter, while reissue of the year was the unexpected motown-flavoured pop masterpiece of Springsteen's 'The promise'. Disappointment of the year was probably 'Contra' by Vampire Weekend, although this did yield the fantastic 'Giving up the gun'. Gig of the year was clearly The National in the Olympia.

I didn't actually get much for a few weeks around Christmas, but made up for it in the last week by starting 2011 off in determinedly different style by downloading or being given Adele's '19' (I do like her voice), Kanye West's 'Fantasy' (my most radical departure, perhaps ever), Plan B (surprising but perhaps less so after mad Kanye) and Cee Lo Green (something about that voice!). Comments on all will follow.
Albums currently being considered include those by The Decemberists, Iron & Wine and Anna Calvi for a start. Hopefully 2011 will be two good years in a row.

TV

In the weeks before Christmas, I really enjoyed 'The Walking Dead', which came to a halt after far too few (i.e., six) episodes, but had good characters (Egg from the classic This Life as a southern US cop!), good action, and scary zombies. Definitely hope this got good enough ratings to warrant another (longer) series:

I also watched some of the sixth season of the US version of 'The Office', which I have always enjoyed and really see as something which now exists in its own right completely independent of its British parent, of which it is the bastard offspring that has gone off to make its own cocky way in the world. Finally, working through box sets, I watched the again truncated entire life of 'Firefly', which was really a very strange mix of western (with eastern overtones) and Star Wars, like the original Lucas-Kurosowa mythological blend had been fed once more into a mad blender and mixed up to see what would slurp out. Very odd, but very funny in places and probably worth more of a life-span than it got. I must go back and watch 'Serenity' again, which I saw quite a few years ago and own on DVD.....

Books

It has been a busy month or so for books, with several on the go, and an unplanned shift back to the physical object as opposed to the virtual version. First was a book on some particular individuals who have contributed overly notably to the recent tragic and spectacular demise of the Irish country. The title, 'Wasters', says it all, and it chronicles an entirely depressing set of chancers, crooks and incompetents, which only feels progressively sadder these days as the impact of the damage down by these same losers leads us through simply bizarre days of Irish politics, to the point where it simply is not clear who, if anyone, is in charge any more.
In years to come, a new edition of Jon Ronson's 'Them' might include profiles of some of the same feckers, seen correctly through the lens of history as just as mad as the bizarre cast of characters featured in this edition, from conspiracy theorists caught up in actual conspiracies to the recurrent shadowy figures of the supposed secret rulers of the world, i.e., the Bilderberg group. This is a slim but entertaining and sometimes sad and slightly scary book, a few years old at this stage. I also read an entertaining if short book called 'A mathematician reads the newspaper' which collats a series of columns by a US professor of maths of misunderstandings of mathematical principles throughout media and politics; interesting an thought-provoking.

I also took on a major project on Kindle of 500,000 words by David Thomson, 500 each on 1000 movies - that is a lot of small screens of text! What most shocked me about this was how many of the films I had never even heard of (at least 25%), and how man of them were from before 1940 or so. I estimate I have seen around 20% (at a generous estimate) of the books he discusses, which is tough when Thomson's style is unapologetically to assume the reader has seen the film in question, and to often jump straight in to some particular aspect of character or plot; I guess 500 words would suggest the straight-jacket of a brief symposis, which he clearly avoids, but it makes it hard to keep up somehow, although his fluent prose and eccentric turn of phrase make the effort worthwhile. One thing that strikes me quite forcefully is to wonder how anyone could realistically find many of the more obscure ones he mentions, which led me to wonder how many old films even appear on TV any more, even allowing for how many channels that now exist.

I am currently reading Steven Pinker's 'The stuff of thought', a complex treatise on the relationship between language and human thought which covers a lot of ground and veers wildly from the very funny (lots of movie references to keep me happy) to deep and serious considerations of specific details of grammar I didn't even know existed. Learning a lot from this one!

Okay, there are a lot more things to talk about, including the slim few movies I have seen, Apple TV and more, but these will appear in future posts.

A lot of the distraction in recent weeks, particularly the last 2 weeks, has been the slow disintegration of my country's government, and the stripping bare of the sheer vanity, venality and incompetence of those in charge, and the lengths they will go to to remain so. It certainly is a trying time to be Irish right now, as everyone who reads this, wherever you are, knows exactly how f***ed we are and how stupid we look. I am far from understanding most of what is going on, but as far as I see it, a small number of selfish bastards, in government and in banks, have led us into a deep dark hole from which there is no easy escape, and now no-one is prepared to take responsibility, and all semblance of order or sense at the top has simply evaporated. Those who have caused the problems are turning on each other and the result is ghoulishly fascinating, and I have become addicted to political columns, TV and news shows and sites like never before. It would be great sport if it was happening to someone else.

And on that bleak note for a nonpolitical blog (although right now in Ireland everyone is political because everyone is in trouble) I will leave it.

This arcade's on fire!

2010-12-14T21:29:00.001Z

Okay, that was a bad Kings of Leon pun to start with!

Now, I accept that in the past I have been cynical or suspicious of Arcade Fire (like here, here and here), but then 'The suburbs' turned me around more than a little (as admitted here), and when I saw they were to play Dublin in December alongside Vampire Weekend, I decided that it was time to see what all the live fuss was about. I read a review of the gig here, the author of which very much shared my view on the band, and my inability to 'get' them the way others did, but this was their chance to break down my final defences and claim me for their own.

I also decided it would be my 10-year-old's first big concert, as he linked both acts, and we had not managed to get a family ticket to Electric Picnic, even after buying the tent especially (at least I got to finally see the National in Ireland in 2010, the night before the Arcade Fire gig, as ecstatically reviewed here).

It was also acrually my first concert at Dublin's key venue, the O2, which I had been to some gigs in years ago in its previous incarnation as The Point Depot (maybe Pulp, the Waterboys, and a Feile festival, if memory serves me right).

Even with dashing through the Dublin snow, we didn't get there in time for Devendra Banhart (who I had heard recommended through Uncut, and whose 'Smoky rolls down thunder mountain' I gave a good try during the week before the gig, before concluding that the cool name was my favourite thing about it), but I was quite keen to see Vampire Weekend.

Their debt was one of my favourite albums of 2008, but 'Contra' earlier this year left me severely disappointed; although it did contain my favourite song of all of their's ('Giving up the gun'), the rest of the tracks did nothing for me. Live, they came across as technically excellent (particularly the drumming) but somewhat cold and unemotional, as if they had read the textbooks on how to make passionate music and could push the buttons, but did not bring real heart and soul to the deal. All the clinical aloofness from their records was amplified on stage, and I was somewhat disappointed.

Interestingly, leaving the last three songs of your set to your debut suggested to me they might, deep down, share my view on its follow-up (they never played 'gun', alas), and my iPhone captured the three. First up was 'Oxford Comma', on which I wrote one of the first posts for this blog here, and which I still love:

Apologies for the video quality on these, as I didn't get as close as I would otherwise have, due to my small-scale apprentics. 'Oxford comma' was followed by 'Walcott', which I always also loved on album, but much of the ornate instrumentation of which was a little lost by the more basic live set up:

Finally (I think, maybe I have order mixed up) came the wonderfully oddball 'Mansard roof', which was certainly a statement of aristocractic knowing intent at the start of the debut:

Then came the break and build up to the main event, which inevitably involved a fair degree of reconstruction of the stage to fit a significantly more expansive and ambitiously instrumented Arcade Fire. They came on stage with 'Ready to start', loud and proud, and basically hurled themselves at their instruments with a level of energy and gusto which was all the more incredible for the fact that they maintained it for almost 2 hours. The waves of raw energy and passion rolling off the stage were quite astonishing, and I can understand the longstanding hype about their live shows.

The sudden spike in levels of everything, crowd adrenaline included, proved at this point a little too much for my son, so we beat a tactical retreat back a little to a place where there was more space, and so the quality of the subsequent video clips suffered a little as a result, and I didn't film as much as I might otherwise, particularly at the start. When doing a bit of research for this post, I found an incredible web-site called 'Setlist' which includes the set-list (below, thanks to their cool widget) for the gig as well as clips of all songs, albeit not from this actual gig, plus lyrics here).

Edit this setlist | More Arcade Fire setlists

I must admit that, without my audio-visual props to remind me, the first half of the gig was a bit of an overwhelming blur, with snippets of memories of band members beating hell out of drums held by other band members, and routinely swapping instruments, and the 'drive-in'-like giant screen showing a variety of images, some abstract, some less so (including some strange images for one song of what appeared to be female heads bobbing in water like something from an early 20th Century German expressionist movie, if I actually knew what those really looked like). I also remember that 'we used to wait' featured lots of images of stamps and envelopes, like an ode to a pre-emmail era.

I did capture 'The suburbs', which is a great opener to the album of that name:

and 'Intervention', which is my son's favourite:

The main set finished with 'Neighbourhood #3 (Power out)' flowing kinetically and through sheer power of momentum into 'Rebellion (Lies)'. So many of their songs do seems like several songs co-evolving together and fighting to be heard that such flow seems completely natural and organic, and I did capture it:

They came back after the perfunctory absence for 'Keep the car running' and what is apparently their traditional closer 'Wake up':

So overall, a very good gig and undeniably powerful. Their audience interaction is pretty good too, with a few reflections our economic woes and also a plea for support for Haiti before the song of the same name, and several references to Ireland being their favourite place to play (of course).

There is no doubt that their commitment, passion, musicianship and energy in a live setting are about as good as I have ever seen, and really takes the breath away. They must be one of the best live bands in the world without any doubt. My only problem comes back to my own personal relationship with the songs, which has never been that strong, despite my best efforts, and leaves in place a residual barrier to my fully engagin heart and soul with the concert. It is hard to compare this behemoth with the small scale of The National but there is no doubt that the previous night's gig, stately and sedate by comparison, meant far more to me as I knew and loved every song so completely.

However, would I go and see Arcade Fire again? In a shot.

The National anthems in Dublin

2010-12-07T22:24:00.001Z

It just felt unfair, unjust, when I couldn’t, despite many efforts, get tickets for The National’s Dublin gigs in the venerable Olympia Theatre when they were announced back in September. Who were those who had got there ahead of me and what had they done to deserve it more than me? Had they pathetically chronicled their obsessions with ‘High violet’ here or here, for example? Did I not somehow deserve a ticket for such loyal on-line advocacy?

But then fate took pity on me, and a friend in need offered me his ticket for the Saturday night, just five days before the gig, and I seized both ticket and opportunity gratefully, and travelled from Cork to Dublin through an unseasonably wintry landscape that morning.

I arrived eagerly early (I went on my own), both out of predictable excitement for them and interest in the support, Phosphorescent (of whom a review will follow in a later post - but they were really good). The ticket was for standing space, so I got as close as I ould to the stage without having one of the mysterious VIP-style wristbands (who the hell are those lucky folks?), and savoured the difference to the last time I saw them in the same venue, when it felt like I was watching them from a Google Earth satellite (I discussed this gig here). I did get see my favourite drummer (indeed, perhaps, favourite musician) Bryan Devendorf checking his own drums during the set-up (right).

Anyway, the video clip below captures the moments after the houselights dimmed and I love the image of the mike stands on stage against the light, like the cranes that once adorned Dublin's skyline in pre-bust days (alas and alack). Then they appeared and started unexpectedly (for me, last time they started with the far more upbeat 'Brainy') with 'Runaway', but a lovely stately version of it, and I really liked the screen, which showed a range of images mixed with footage of the band playing, and occasionally the audience.

They then moved pretty quickly into 'Anyone's ghost', which has really grown on me as one of their rate moments of 3-minute pop, veering pretty close to New Order territory:

Then, introduced by Aaron as 'a song from Alligator' came the wonderful 'Secret Meeting', the last minute of which (with the shouty chanting I regard as one of my favourite National moments of all):

What a great start! At this point I was almost faint with sheer euphoria, and resolved not to obsessively film every song, but to actually just enjoy most of them in the actual now, as opposed to heated emotion recollected in later tranquility (and then uploaded to this blog!). For this reason, I didn't get clips of 'England', 'Bloodbuzz Ohio', 'Lemonworld' (the elongated intro to which allowed Matt to pop off stage briefly), or several others (as mentioned below).

I did put the iPhone to use a lot, though, and I think the rest of these clips are in approximate order from the gig, starting with 'Slow show', of which I now have another version to add to at least three distinct ones I already have (including the demo from 'Virginia' and the Daytrotter session) in which Aaron ignored the keyboard behind him to do the ending on the guitar instead:

Of course, I had to capture my beloved 'Apartment story', with an acousticish drum-free intro leading into quite a laidback (for The National) version which I really liked:

At some stage later came the below version of 'Sorrow' (in which the way Matt sings the line 'I don't wanna get over you' always packs an emotional punch for me):

To this point, I thought Matt seemed less self-conscious and nervous (and perhaps drunk) than in previous gigs and clips and reviews, and the banter at the start of 'Conversation 16' below is genuinely relaxed and funny:

A little later, the intensity ramped up several dozen notches with an insane version of 'Abel', towards the end of which Matt launched himself into the crowd for the first time (and kept singing well, God bless him!):

I actuallycan't remember what they finished the main set with (blame the emotional overload) but I will never forget the encore, when they came back with an incendiary trio of 'Mr November', 'Mistaken for strangers' and 'Terrible love'. Part way through the latter, Matt took off crowd-surfing once again, and ended up mere feet from me (see evidence left!).

At this point, my iPhone memory was starting to cry for mercy (why didn't I temporarily purge the fecker in advance?), which is why another reason I didn't capture the above trio, but I did have enough for the last track, when Phosphorescent joined them on stage for 'Vanderlyle Cry Baby Geeks' (no singing from the band really needed, the crowd did most of the work!):

At some point, they welcomed Richard Reed Perry of Arcade Fire to the stage, where he joined them on backing vocals and sometimes guitar for several songs. Matt welcomed him with a joke about him owning the distribution rights to their music, and then mumbled about that sounding better in his head. There were also two horn players on stage, and while I have always been ambivalent about the contribution of horns to The National's music, on stage that night it actually really worked, and filled in detail around the songs and little subtle but noticeable embellishments that definitely contributed positively.

Overall, a really really great gig, from a perfect position, with great sound, a crowd that more than earned their right to have got their damned tickets ahead of me with their enthusiasm and evident equal obsession to mine (as amply proven in the singalong to 'Vanderlyle'), and simply some of my favourite music ever to relish.

The next night brought a very different concert with Arcade Fire (review of which, including the Vampire Weekend warm-up slot), and perhaps more spectacle and even more madness, but at the end of the day it will always come back to the songs and how much they mean to you, and for that reason I find it very hard to believe last Saturday night in the Olympia will ever be beaten.

Springsteen promises, and really delivers

2010-11-28T22:12:00.000Z

No more excuses this time about the long silence since my last post; well, actually, lots of excuses, mainly revolving around a lot of travel, including the States and Iowa and Nebraska, which provides a perfectly apt lead-in to my first musical comment of this post, without further ado!

Music

I don't have a large repository of location-appropriate musical anecdotes, so occasionally you just have to sieze the day and manufacture one, as I bemused two colleagues by playing 'Nebraska' by Springsteen at full blast from my iPhone as we crossed the Iowa-Nebraska border (no highway patrolmen to be seen, nor state troopers) on my great midwestern roadtrip (if a 3-hour drive from Ames, Iowa to Lincoln, Nebraska could be called that. I must admit switching to Counting Crows as we passed on the highway by Omaha (and it was indeed somewhere in middle America) but then it was back to Bruce.

This is actually quite appropriate for reasons other than geographical, as I have also been listening to 'The Promise', the reissue of extra tracks recorded (mostly) around the time of 'Darkness on the edge of town' (an album I already really liked in its own right). Having read first in Uncut about the whole box set reissue (see image below right), I was interested to check that out, by a €100+ price tag tested my real love for Bruce, and found it slightly lacking in these economically constrained times, so I downloaded the extra tracks CD from iTunes instead.

Anyway, 'The promise' is just brilliant! 'Darkness' earned its name in mood, but 'The Promise' lives in the light, and is incredibly uplifting and melodic for the most part. My 10-year-old opined that it sounded like Christmas music, and it actually almost does, in tone and spirit and chiminess (?), and shows where songs from recent albums I have loved like 'Your own worst enemy', 'Girls in their summer clothes' and 'Queen of the supermarket' got their DNA, except these newly excavated masterpieces were recorded over 30 years ago, by far younger men, and somehow that adds to the thrill for me. Songs such as 'Gotta get that feeling', 'Outside looking in', 'Someday (we'll be together)' (these three in a wonderful row near the start), 'Save my love', 'Talk to me' and, in particular, 'The little things (my baby does)' are just pop perfection, and reveal a lightness of touch and mood that I just never associated with that era of Springsteen. In fact, the ones I sort of knew are my least favourite ('Fire' and 'Because the night', the legendariness of the latter never having made an impact on me in others' hands). However, 'Come on (let's go out tonight) (boy he was going throug a serious bracketed subtitle phase in the late 70s!) reworks (preworks?) one of my favourites from 'Darkness' ('Factory') very nicely, and I always love finding the musical antecedents of well known songs, where early drafts with different lyrics or twists appear on later compilations (I can think of great examples for the National ('Slow show') and the Jayhawks ('I'm gonna make you love me')). Overall, a brilliant album, and well deserving of the comment I saw in one review that this truly is the great lost Springsteen album.

It was hard to find tracks from 'The promise' on Youtube, besides tracks uploaded to still photo or blank backgrounds, so I will just include a contemporaneous live clip of the great 'Racing in the streets':

In a very different musical direction, I also downloaded 'The best of Suede'; firstly, it has to be said that when a band that have perhaps 5 studio albums to their name release a 35-track compilation, they may just be taking the piss to suggest this is their best, as surely one would have expected modesty to demand a slightly more winnowing choice of crucial cuts?

However, having said all that, I must admit that most of these songs are actually pretty damned great, and this is overall a great survey of the output of a great band. I also must admit that I had almost forgotten how good they and their songs were, and had tended to retrospectively dismiss all bar 'Dog man star', but there are really really good songs scattered through this huge tracklist, and they unquestionably had that strange mix of their air of jaded glamour and epic drama married to great rock sensibilities and very good musicianship down to a tee.

I have wittered on about 'Dog man star' before (here), so I will include here two tracks from their later period, and start with 'Everything must flow' from 'Head music' (which I remember being somewhat bemused to find the now defunct Melody Maker picking as their album of that particular year); it appears second in the below set from 'Jools Holland':

I lso like this acoustic studio version of 'Saturday night' from 'Coming up':

Not moving quite as far as from Springsteen to Suede, but backtracking alphabetically, beings me to The National, who have released an extended version of 'High violet' (about which I almost had a coronary here), which iTunes kindly allowed me to download the extra tracks as an EP (although two of them, 'Sin eaters' and 'Walk off'', had previously somewhat underwhelmed me as bonus tracks on the download first time around). Anyway, I honestly don't see all that much difference in the versions of 'Terrible love' and may soon have a playlist of live versions of 'England' alone, but I do like the MTV-unplugged style acoustic countryish version of 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' and really like 'Wake up your saints'. The latter, to me, recaptures the playful spirit and lush instrumentalisation of 'So far around the bend' from 'Dark was the night' in a way that no track on 'High violet' really did, and I am pretty sure I can remember them playing this live in the Olympia in Dublin back in 2008 (they certainly did a song about saints, and when I heard 'Tall saint' some time later I was sure that was not it). I found a live capture of it here:

There are other things going on musically right now, as the pre-1 December embargo on Christmas music passes (time to joyously hit 'Come on let's boogie to the elf dance' by Sufjan Stevens, surely the greatest unknown Christmas song of all), and I go to see Arcade Fire plus Vampire Weekend in Dublin on 5 December (woo-hoo!). In addition, the first 'best of'' CD list has appeared, as Q magazine becomes I am sure only the first of many to put 'The suburbs', as their number one (Robert Plant as their number two, and 'High violet' around number 10), and such lists will surely become an obsession in coming weeks as in previous years.

In non-musical business, there has been lots of technology as I have waited in foolish anticipation for IOS4.2 to re-energise my iPad (it did!) and for Apple TV to to the same to my TV (it also did - damn you Steve Jobs!), books (on subjects from Ireland's wasters to HIV denial to the Large Hadron Collider), and TV (box sets of The Office and Firefly being worked through, and The Walking Dead being much enjoyed), if not many movies (a guilty enjoyment of 'Daybreakers' the exception).

However, it, like this post, is now late, and I think I will end this post, long enough as it is, here, and come back (honestly) soon to pick up the above threads.

That is, if Ireland hasn't been sold off by the IMF for scrap and spare parts by then.

Strange and worrying times indeed.

A long overdue October post

2010-10-31T10:05:00.000Z

It has been far too long since I updated (life too distracting, I guess) but I certainly have not become a cultural hermit nor lost the power of typing so time for even a quick update, as there has been quite a lot of good culture collected this October.

Music

Lots of CDs (or their virtual counterparts) this month, some of which I have tweeted about. Biggest surprise has been Kings of Leon's Come Around Sundown, which is really growing on me and is far better than anything they have done to date, in my view. Mary, Pyro and especially Back Down South are great songs, in a fairly shallow way, admittedly. This is pretty by-the-numbers rock stuff, but that doesn't mean it isn't catchy and highly listenable, and seems a little less effort-y than their last album, and a bit more laid-back, particularly 'Back down south', as seen below:

'Pyro' is one I first heard on the radio and really can't get out of my head (maybe the rare example of the use of the word 'cornerstone' in a song lyric was what snagged my ear most), and can be seen live below:

On an almost diametrically opposite track, I really like 'Invariable heartache' by Kurt and Cortney (no, not those ones, Wagner and Tillman, a.k.a. KORT), an album of oldish-style country duets (not sure if 'Invariable' is really a word, but it should be if it isn't!). Kurt Wagner is of course the mainstay of cult alt-country ensemble Lambchop, who over last last number of years have released some of the most interesting music within that genre, always musically beautiful and complex and never commercial, and reaching their peak with the utter magnificence of 'Nixon'. The new album takes Kurt's appropriately curt and clipped and typically understated vocals and mixes them with songs which are far more traditional (in tone and theme) than Lambchop's usual fare, but critically with a lovely voice in his new musical partner. The songs are mainly slow in pace ('Incredibly lonely' fits the title perfectly) but occasionally less so ('Wild mountain berries'). There is a great trailer for the project below, and I thoroughly recommend it, perhaps as a quiet spot in the no-man's land between alt- and real country, where afficionados of either can meet in tentative truce.

I also liked the new Belle and Sebastian album 'Write about love', particularly and unexpectedly the absoultely gorgeous duet with Norah Jones (the splendidly named 'Little Lou, Prophet Jack and Ugly John'), which can be heard here. I have always fallen into the trap of dismissing B&S as twee and harmless, but the new album contains a streak of steel and pop grandeur which work really well.

Finally, for now, I was intrigued by the ads and reviews for 'The fool' by Warpaint (great name, great album cover, seen on the left). The album is growing on me, but I find it a bit dense and slow, mixing 80s-style markers that the reviews have mentioned like the Cocteau Twins and Souxsie and the Banshees with a strange girl-group vocal set-up, but with the vocals often buried relatively low in the mix, so as presumably not to over-emphasise the singing relative to the music. Anyway, best track for me is 'Undertow', which is shown as a nice acoustic session below:

I have just downloaded a huge new Suede compilation, and have a few other downloads I haven't mentioned above (Antony and the Johnsons included) so lots more to talk about, hopefully after less of an interval than since the last update.

Movies

Saw 'The social network' (curiously underwhelming and obvious title for such a great movie) at the cinema and it did live up to the reviews, for once. I have never been a huge David Fincher fan but the writing of Aaron Sorkin (the great god-like Aaron Sorkin) was as classy and sharp as expected, and I also loved the music, and overall it was thoroughly watchable and one of the best I have seen in a while. Also took the kids to see 'Despicable me', which we all enjoyed, and I think the little yellow minions were brilliant and the best thing in it, although Steve Carrell's voicework was as funny as should be expected (great line about the neighbour's dog at the start).

On DVD or TV, got to see quite a few. 'Shutter island' was good but even wierder than I had expected, and I had sort of spoiled it by finding the twist on-line ages ago, so it seemed rather obvious when watching (I have really got to stop doing that). Fell asleep during 'A serious man', as it was making no noticeable impression on me whatsoever, and not particularly interested in watching the rest, and 'Away we go' was sweet and nice and had fantastic performances by Maggie Gyllenhall and Allison Janney as completely mad and scary women. I also thought 'Essence' was very funny and watchable, if not a classic, with some great performances (including the wonderfully deadpan JK Simmons and an almost thankfully unrecognisable Ben Affleck). Have ordered my Apple TV on-line and interested to see how it will work, and will update on the next post (bit of an Apple product binge this autumn, but think my bank balance will bring it to a halt after this one).

I also got a tweet that the new trailer for the Benjamin Sniddlegrass movie is available on-line and it can be seen:

Books

I saw Dom Joly as guest on an RTE (Irish state TV channel) comedy chat show and he was very engaging and likeable and spoke about a new book called 'The dark tourist', which I then downloaded and devoured with great interest. It describes his travels to some less normal tourist destinations (North Korea, Iran, Beiruit, assassination sites in the US, Cambodia). His writing is fluid and very funny, and he comes across as warm and curious, and the chapter on North Korea is absolutely fascinating as a shapshot of a completely bizarre and surreal (and thoroughly miserable) place of which we usually hear nothing, at least not through the lens and words of someone as witty and observant as Joly, while the chapter on Cambodia is mostly heart-breaking. I also found 'Obama's wars' by Bob Woodward quite fascinating (I read all his Bush war books but found them quite boring by the end, so the change of administration being covered welcome, just was it was unbelievable welcome in real life!). As before, I have no idea how Woodward got the access and permission that he has to write what he did, recounting what you would imagine to be top secret discussions and conversations apparently (but presumably with some liberty) verbatim, and at several points I wondered how the hell he had been allowed to write that in a book that was open for anyone (except presumably the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan) to read. Now reading 'The accidental billionaires', on which 'The social network' was (remarkably closely) based.

So, that's it for now, but plan not to leave as long until the next update. Heading to the US soon to visit Nebraska and Iowa for a work trip, and will actually be in Lincoln, Nebraska, but hopefully not with a sawed off .410 on my lap, so will update from there as part of new tour (total stops to date =1) of places mentioned in murder songs......

Sylvian dreams, myPad, and more

2010-10-03T22:04:00.003+01:00

This week I want to catch up on some pop listening, some (relatively) different listening, and the curious tale of Benjamin Sniddlegrass....

Music

I downloaded two poppy albums, mainly for my 10-year-old, but also sparked by curiosity. One was Hurts' 'Happiness', of which I had read several reviews consistently mentioning 1980s synth pop and such-like, which was enough to get me interested. The album's opening actually 30 seconds actually even sounds like it is going to turn Depeche Mode-y, but after that it was all too bland and sub-Westlifey for me, much too nice and inoffensive to make an impact. Disappointing.

On the other hand, Brandon Flowers' 'Flamingo' is far more promising, even if I was positively predisposed as a mild Killers enthusiast. To be honest, I don't think I would have known the difference if I were told it was actually a Killers album, and around half the songs are pretty bland, but 'Magdalena' is just magnificent, especially the 'whoaooaa's at the start (see live clip below), and 'Jilted lovers and broken hearts' is another really good song, as is the duet with Jenny Lewis ('Hard enough'). Interestingly, single 'Crossfire' has yet to make any standout impact yet, but all in all a very good album.

Finally, on a very different set of notes, some random impulse drove me to download a David Sylvain compilation 'Everything and nothing'. I always loved his voice, and 20 yeyars ago was listening to a lot of Japan, his first band, and 'Ghosts' always sends shivers up my spine. Since Japan, I had the impression he went very inaccessible and obscure, dabbling in eastern music and lurking in the lands of the odd, but like I said something (perhaps an uncontrollable reaction againt Hurts) drove me to him, and I have been intrigued and overall very impressed with what I have found. His voice is as good as ever (although I am not sure if his hair is as wonderful as it was in the Japan days), and I will include 'Orpheus' below:

and end with 'Forbidden colours', which I did know from his post-Japan days:

In a way, the line from 'Ghosts' to there is not that long, and I suspect I will be listening to him a lot longer than I, or anyone, will listen to Hurts.

My other favourite recent music-related stories of the last while were:
1. The guy who slowed down some crap by Justin Beiber (whoever the hell he is) 800% and found it sounded like Sigur Ros (hear it here), only to be followed by the guy who speeded up something by Sigur Ros proportionately and found it did not sound like Sigur Ros!
2. The Facebook campaign to have John Cage's 4' 33'' (that length of silence) downloaded enough to make it Christmas number one! What a simply brilliant idea - dead air on radio for Christmas. There is an amazing clip of a passionate performance of that track by an orchestra here.

Books

I read 'The fall' by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro pretty quickly - fast and far pulpier than 'The strain', the first in its triology; it was enjoyable and readable but not as impressive as the first. I have since been working on 'Zeitoun' by Dave Eggars (the incredible true story of a muslim man who rescued several neighbours and others in post-Katrina New Orleans only to be locked up by nervous National Guardsmen as a suspected terrorist), and have just downloaded 'Obama's wars' by Bob Woodward. I got a bit tired of Woodward's Bush war books, but this is the first Obama administration book I have got and I am looking forward to it.

Movies

Actually, not much to report, except that I did enjoy 'Green Zone' on DVD (except the daft coincidence with someone catching up with the chasing protagonists at the precisely right time and place to make a climactic impact at the very end, which annoyed me a bit). The main movie-related thing I enjoyed was the follow-up to Mark Kermode's (legendary and brilliant film critic on Simon Mayo's show on BBC radio 5 Live) review podcast where he invented, in a characteristic rant at 'Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief', a movie called 'Benjamin Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Penguins' (the theme being 'Harry Potter and the X of Y' clones). Following this throw-away comment, several highly creative and perhaps slightly mad people have now done trailers which can be found on Youtube! Three very different versions (again, I stress, for a non-existent movie) appear below, of which my favourite is the one which mixes LOTR, modern-warfare imagery and (of course) 'March of the Penguins' - brilliant!

Technology

Last but not least, biggest story of the last fortnight was the purchase of an iPad (64 gB, wifi+3G), which I have been contemplating for some time but had delayed until iPhone 4.0 fever has subsided a little. Main conclusion so far is that it is much much better than I had expected, and I expect I will make more use and uses of it than I had expected (which I am glad about, of course, for that bloody price). It really is much more than a very larege iPhone, and after using it the iPhone really feels tiny and cramped. It is so easy to web-browse, of course, but many familiar apps have been really beautifully redesigned for the larger screen (my favourite is Calendar, for some reason, and books look as lovely as pixels can make them in Kindle), although the e-mail in portrait annoys me. I have downloaded a few games apps (shooters) and they are really quite playable (NOVA, for example), and while some iPhone apps look crap blown up, Brushes, Scrabble and others make the stretch quite comfortably. Initially, the thing seemed a little too precious to haul around casually, but I have bought the official slip cover and that really works for me and makes it fully portable.

Overall, a very very nice piece of gadget heaven, and more on the subject to follow....

Villagers, and Mick in my Village

2010-09-20T22:14:00.000+01:00

Music

I downloaded 'Becoming a jackal' by Villagers and have been listening to it quite a bit this week. I have heard quite a lot of talk about this band (or rather, this guy, Conor J. O'Brien - see Wikipedia article here) but hadn't heard a specific song I actually identified with them until this week, whern I heard and loved 'That day' on the radio on the way to work. It was really one of those moments where you almost hold your breath after the song ends, begging the DJ to tell you who it was rather than cutting to an ad break or something equivalently cruel, which at least this time he did not (thanks Ian Dempsey of Today FM!). The album is very good, and having read some on-line reviews the label of 'the Irish Bright Eyes' seems very fitting, in a very positive way (but not as whingey as the other Conor, i.e., Oberst, can get). It also reminds me of the melodic theatricality of Duke Special on occasion, and for a one-man act the instrumentation is very good, in particular the drumming/percussion on several tracks. My pick of the tracks so far include 'Home', 'Ship of promises' and 'Twenty-seven strangers', while 'The pact' is peculiarly 60s-feeling, and the pick is the aforementioned 'That day', the video for which can be seen below:

I also got sent a really nice clip of Josh Ritter and his band getting surprised at an American gig during 'Lantern' by a spot of on-target audience participation, and the looks on the band's faces just says all you need to know about how damn nice and sincere these guys, and their fans, are:

Last week, and previously, I have lamented by inability to get to see The National, despite my quite scary obsession with them and ongoing campaign to bribg their wonderfulness to anyone who will listen. I have of course looked for clips of them playing at Electric Picnic, but the quality is generally not great (and occasionally depressing, such as clips which seem to show Matt in a state of advanced drunkenness), but I will include a clip of 'Mistaken for strangers' here:

Lastly, but not leastly, I have prevously reviewed here several gigs by Cork hero Mick Flannery (see here and here), and he has been gradually holding gigs closer and closer to my house, clearly in response, and on Friday night he played upstairs in my local pub, The White Horse, a mere 5 mins walk away (the only closer gig was when Mark Eitzel played a solo gig in a pub across the road from where I lived in 1998 or so). The concert was, as always, far more enjoyable than Mick would have you believe it should be, and I took the opportunity to try the filming capabilities of my new iPhone 4.0, as showcased below for 'California':

Video quality is good, allowing for relatively good indoor light conditions, and I love the ease with which I could upload the clip straight to Youtube from the iPhone. A clip of 'When I've got a dollar' (not quite the same without the accompaniment of his auntie Yvonne) is below:

That's enough music for now. I have downloaded new stuff by Mogwai and Interpol, to band I have singularly failed in the past to really get in to (the former through never actually getting their stuff, to be honest) so am going to work on those and report next time.
Other cultural adventures

As I have quite a few videos above, I will keep the rest of this post short and sweet. I went to see the Cork 'Star Wars invasion' show with my boys (10 and 4) and they thought it was pretty cool; well, to be honest, so did I. Well put together and packed with enough to keep the many nerds visiting (myself included) happy, with lots of models (no, not that sort, large AT-STs, Y-wings and so on), cool light shows and even some of the actors for photos and chat. The main draw was obviously Kenny Baker (R2-D2), and it was nice to see the guy who played Boba Fett, and the techie guy who apparently did the voice of General Grevious and others was funny and interesting in on-stage chat, but the other two ex-imperial officers were not exactly Harrison Ford-level novelty. Anyway, quite well done and worth a look.

On TV, I watched 'The reader', of which it may be faint damnation to say it wasn't as bad as 'The soloist', and I actually found it more watchable and gripping than expected; I think it said something for my level of engagement, however, that I did not actually realise the 'affair' scenes happened after, and not before, the war - I could not work out the chronology, perhaps not surprisingly. On Kindle, I pre-purchased and was sent 'The fall', which I am just starting (have a few books on the go now) as I really enjoyed 'The strain' (see here) - review to follow.

Tech-wise, I have just got an iPad, of which much more to follow, and my (iPhone) app of the week (and favourite in ages) is called My Artist, and when activated brings up a whole of of information about any artist in your collection, such as Wikipedia articles, Youtube clips and more - excellent for browsing while listening!

Typo eradication, National frustration and more

2010-09-12T22:06:00.045+01:00

It has been a while since I have updated things here, and work pressures seem to keep me distracted in the long evenings which were made for blogging, but I am planning and resolute to get back on track from here. Anyway, gives me lots to catch up on.

Music

I am actually remarkably surprised to note that the best album I have got in the last few weeks has been The Drums’ eponymous one. I was interested enough by their iTunes live EP to chance this and it sounds completely different to the live band, with the vocal histrionics considerably toned down and the backing being the closest I have heard to genuinely capturing early 1980s sound, in particular that of very young Depeche Mode. ‘Down by the river’ is my favourite (although it sounds like ‘The trees’-era Pulp), followed by ‘Book of stories’, ‘Forever and ever amen’, ‘It will all end in tears’ and the bonus track ‘When I come home’. They do look remarkably silly, but they sound quite lovely, although the singles ('Best friend' and 'Let's go surfing' are my least favourite on the album). I read somewhere that they are the least American (i.e., most English) American band ever, which I completely agree with. The embrace anglopilia of the most extreme kind, but how bad!

I found a live clip of them doing 'Down by the water' at:

and a clip of 'It will all end in tears' at:

I also found another emphatic argument for why some albums simply cannot be downloaded (as I discussed before here) in ‘Crooked’ by Kristen Hersh, which I got as a book of lyrics and essays which contained a web-link at which you had to enter a password extracted in parts from different sections of said book, whereupon one got to download the tracks. Whatever the quality of the music, and I must admit I haven’t listened to it much yet, the concept is just great and is exactly the way for artists to keep people interested in the physical artefact.

I failed to get tickets for Electric Picnic (turned out the family tickets were actually quite rare and long sold-out) but have got tickets for Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend (which, put together, sounds like the strap-line of a good B-movie horror, like the ‘Dawn of the dead’ remake from 2004) in Dublin in December.

The National released tickets for a trio of Dublin gigs the same weekend (what a weekend!) at 9.00 Friday but they were gone by the time we tried to book an hour later to my incredible frustration, so we will have to see if I have missed the chance to catch them once again, this time under circumstances where I wouldn’t even have had to sleep in a tent for 3 nights for the privilege. I found an interview with Matt and Aaron at Electric Picnic at:

Movies

Not a whole lot to report here, although I did see ‘The last exorcism’. I actually started that evening fully planning to go to ‘The girl who played with fire’ and changed my mind about an hour beforehand when I read very good reviews of the former. Interestingly, that was the same day I very gladly welcomed Mark Kermode back to his podcast after what felt like an unfairly extended summer break, and listened to his podcast on the way to the movie, and the last thing I heard before entering the cinema was him blasting the ending of the film. I can honestly not speculate to what extent my reaction to the movie was shaped by this critical (literally) intervention but I suspect it was fairly formative. Anyway, I thought the film was good, less frightening than I expected from the reviews (I found ‘Paranormal activity’ far creepier) and yes the ending was as far off the wall as a misshapen demonic coathanger, and I can honestly not speculate on what exactly was shown or intended. On a minor point, while a key plot point seemed to revolve around a word the possessed girl used during her second exorcism, I focussed on a whole different word (‘involuntary’) which for some reason I could not see someone of her background using casually. Anyway, it that is what you dwell on afterwards, not really a great sign of the terror factor. I actually found a clip on Youtube called ‘Scary car’ (here) far more unsettling when discovered accidentally.

On DVD, I found ‘Cemetery junction’ really nice and funny (especially the muppetish cafe owner, while the final line as they board the train is just wonderful) and just genuinely sweet (kept reminding me of ‘Gregory’s girl’, which is as high praise as I can give), and would thoroughly recommend it. On the other hand, ‘The soloist’ sank so low it’s unwatchable (sorry), and made me re-evaluate my conviction that any movie with Robert Downey Jr in it couldn’t be all bad.

Books

I finished the Millenium trilogy almost without pause for breath (I think that was one thing which helped deblog my evenings); in fact, the second and third books are effectively contiguous so the pause was clearly more intended by the publishers than the late author. I did enjoy the books and found the epic sweep of characters and investigations more than outweighed the occasional silliness (Salander may have solved Fermat’s Last Theorem! And then forgot when she got shot in the head!). I think I had enough by the end, and while I bought the first movie from iTunes (you know, because you can) I have yet to watch it, principally because the cables I bought off eBay to connect the iPhone to my TV don’t bloody work.

I then changed direction pretty abruptly to read ‘The great typo hunt’ by Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, about one guy and some like-minded co-conspirators on a road trip around the US, fixing typos on public and commercial signage, sometimes by stealth, sometimes in partnership with the custodians of the relevant establishments. As an unabashed grammatical pedant myself, these guys are so much after my own heart that it makes me a little scared they might creep in some night and carve it out with a sharpened marker or other tool from Jeff’s typo-fixing armoury. I just loved this book, and identified with every point and principle and moment of madness, and think it blended real profound discussion of the nature of language and current standards of usage thereof with good humour, great eye for anecdote and the absurd and just a wonderful spirit. I was quite shocked when the later stages of the book took an unexpected twist into darker territory as they are charged with defacement of a national monument due to some unauthorised improvement of a sign at the Grand Canyon; that is honestly suffering for what you believe in.

The blog of the Typo Eradication Advancement League is here and I found a video trailer for the book at:

These guys deserve your support in their fight for all that is right about the English language, so give it to them. My own favourite typo (which I inexplicably and unforgiveably omitted to obtain photographic evidence of) was a large sign at the end of my road proclaiming the source of funding for the Cork to Kerry fibre-optic broadband whatever as follows (presented in very large letters on a very large board exactly as shown below):

Project part sponsored by
by the European Union

Does no-one check these things??? In other favourites of mine, I honestly don't know if the author of the sign in the following picture (from an Irish teachers' conference) was being ironic or not:

and the newspaper headline below still amazes me every time:

Now, I am waiting for Kindle delivery of my pre-ordered copy of ‘The fall’, the sequel to ‘The strain’ by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, which I thoroughly enjoyed earlier this year (see review here), and in the meantime have changed direction once again with ‘Unseen academicals’, the first Terry Pratchett book I have read in ages.

On other fronts, the iPhone is needless to say simply amazing, and every day I discover new things to do with it (a garden family camping experiment was enlivened and facilitated by the discovery of a torch app! Quickoffice has made it really into a useful work mini-computer). I am also experimenting with iDisk to share files and stream movies rather than using memory on the device, but the high cost of subscription annoys me and I am not sure if I will pay when my 60-day free trial is up. Games-wise, I have explored a few new interesting apps like ‘The battle for Hoth’ and ‘Dungeon hunter’ which give me RTS and D&D analogues, respectively, and I have got some minor fun from each. Battery life still a pain in the arse, but have stretched a bit due to changes like controlling automatic e-mail fetches and keeping an eye on open apps in multi-tasking. I have significantly slowed in my feverish phase of appquisition, and only minor other niggles persist (can’t get Toodldoo toodle do what I need in terms of syncing with my Outlook tasks like the websites say I should be able to). Anyway, still a hell of a yoke, and the only question that remains is how it took me so long to get it!

iPhone, I bought, it conquers

2010-08-22T10:23:00.000+01:00

It has been a while since my last post, so a bit to catch up on. As the subject line indicates, there is one main topic for today (and I guess it will be a regular feature for some time until, if ever, the novelty wears off), but I will get there shortly.

Firstly, in a recent post I lamented the lack of cultural reference to the Donegal region of Ireland, which inspired a correspondent to write to me and point out there was quite a push on to promote tourism in that area, a sentiment I can only whole-heartedly support after many years of visiting the last ignored unspoiled place which matches what people might and should picture when they think of 'Ireland-that-is-not-Dublin'. Anyway, there was a Donegal Live Event in Temple Bar in Dublin in May, which showcased Donegal and included performances by numerous artists from the area. A facebook page (www.facebook.com/DonegalLive) was created and now has almost 2,000 fans, and which will continue to be used to inform visitors about events. There has also been a Donegal Direct page set up (facebook.com/DonegalDirect) to provide information about offers, accommodation, attractions, events, and more in the region. So, lots of information available for anyone who wants to find out more about music and more in Donegal, and I can only recommend it to anyone.

Now, on to this week's bits of news....

Music

Okay, I admit that in previous posts I have been less than enthusiastic about Arcade Fire and their apparent effortless campaign for global critical dominance (see here and here for examples) and something about the adulatory tone of the reviews of 'The suburbs' sort of set my teeth on edge, but I did buy it (iTunes) and have to admit it has made me reassess, if not their past, then certainly their future potential. It just seems and feels different to the others, less up-itself, less self-consciously epic yet far more organically epic, less dense and headache-induding, less annoying, and conversely lighter, more 80s, more identifiable and more memorable. It is in my view not a masterpiece, and the album gets better as it goes on (and it does go on quite a bit), with the first few tracks (after the title) being a bit too reminiscent of their old stuff for me ('Rococo' is notably failing to win me over to its charms, and 'Modern man' is a bit basic) but it really gets interesting around 'City with no children', which is almost certainly my favourite Arcade Fire song to date, bar none.

From here, the album goes in much more interesting directions, and the two-parters are very interesting, in both cases the second installment being greater than the first, and 'Sprawl (Mountains beyond mountains)' manages to win me over (as opposed to Win me over) by not sounding like them at all at all:

While 'Half-light II' (for a wondeful moment in the early days I thought they may have written me a song called 'Half life 2' but alas no) is very 1980s (as almost every review points out) and certainly sounds more OMD than anything else to me (not a cricitism, mind you):

I also like the chug of 'Empty room' and the way it takes an abrupt turnaround after the first few seconds, which always make me think the iPod has skipped on to the McAlmont and Nyman orchestral album by mistake. This and a few other songs really remind me of the direction they signalled on 'Lenin' from the great 'Dark was the night' compilation (which I reviewed here).

All in all, I have to admit it is a very promising album, and when my feeling of goodwill towards them was still in its rosy flushes, they announced a gig in Dublin, supported by Vampire Weekend, and I resolved to go, but failed to secure a ticket in the first morning of release. I think they must hold my previous comments against me.....

Anyway, after all that, in other music news I decided to use the iTunes festival release series as a low-cost way to catch up on new bands I knew by name only, and bought mini-albums by Foals, the Drums and Bombay Bicycle Club. I am afraid I haven't given them much time yet (The Suburbs remaining a demanding taskmaster as it pounds me into admitting I may have been wrong about them) but one song ('Forever and ever' by The Drums) has caught my ear (they appear to have been named after their most notable strength, in my view), as seen and heard below:

They do look a bit silly though, let's face it. Other recent acquisitions I need to listen to more before I can comment on include Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell (a true musical Beauty and the Beast) and the Magic Numbers (which had the odd effect of making me listen to their debut, a really good album, again, before I even listened to the new one). I also want to talk about the great concept behind Kristen Hersh's new book/website/CD/whatever. All to be covered more in future!

Movies

I will keep this bit short, but I did see 'Inception' and thought it was really really good. I had for once tried to avoid spoilers in advance, while my normal habit is to proactively seek them out, and really think I want to see it again to digest it properly. I absolutely loved allowing myself, in the days after seeing it, to finally browse the discussions on-line and seeing how many different interpretations of the plot, and especially the ending, there are out there. I think it is just wondderul when a movie can get people talking and thinking that much. Now, two weeks after, my brain has finally unentangled, but the images I can't get out of my head are those in the hotel, and the rotating fights and flight to the lift......At the other extreme, I saw the 'A-team' with my son and nephew, and have to ashamedly admit that I enjoyed it more than I expected, and thought the line about trying to fly a tank was (almost) worth the price of admission alone.

On DVD, I enjoyed 'The men who stare at goats' (having read and enjoyed the book on which it is oh so ephemerally based) but spent quite some time wondering how George Clooney had come to look so much like Denis Farina in 'Midnight run' and 'The crazies' (good zombie movie). The ox-cart chase in 'Year one' was also one of the funniest things I have seen in a while, although the rest was a bit patchy. I also saw 'Brothers' which was fairly gripping although somehow old-stle predictable, and while Tobey Maguire seemed to be over-egging the omlette, Jake Gyllenhall is really a very watchable and believable presence. I must admit that Natalie Portman resides for me with Leonardo Di Caprio as two actors who having once been seen as children I find very hard to accept as grown-ups (even in 'Inception'......).

Books

My big discovery here was 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' which I read on Kindle and absolutely loved; it really caught me by surprise and I found it absolutely compulsive reading and, although I found the resolution of the killer thread a little pat and formulaic, the subsequent relevelation of the fate of Harriet made up for it in spades. I moved swiftly on to 'The girl who played with fire'; this started for me much more slowly and I sorely missed the claustraphobic setting and limited cast of the first book but it has proven just as addictive and is really sucking up far too much of my time and attention now. The aurhor's habit of switching plot strands very quickly keeps you glued as you want to read the next it to see what is happening there, and then another bit, and suddenly the day is quite gone. I just have to decide whether to watch the subtitled or dubvbed version of 'Dragon tattoo' now. One of the really wierd things about reading on Kindle (at least the iPhone version) is the peculiar disorientation of not always being physically aware of how far you are through a book, as you constantly are with a physical book, which is actually quite liberating when you get used to it, although it can mean that the ending sort of sneaks up on you.

Gadgets (or at least one gadget)

Anyway, I got the iPhone 4, one week after release, and waved goodbye with a misty eye to my trusty Nokia N95 (which I traded in). In fact, I have suddenly had my life significantly lightened as I have gone from three constant companions (Touch, Nokia and Blackberry) to one (plus the Blackberry at work - I swear I think it is sulking 'cos it knows I am checking my e-mail far more on the iPhone, and keeps doing wierd things like losing charge or date memory). Such is progress!

Anyway, I am sure posts in future will frequently comment on it, but initial reaction is that I love it an unreasonable and unhealthy amount, and it is almost all I expected, and moreso in some cases. Okay, the iTunes functionality and apps are largely as per the touch (except I have gone mad adding probably more than 20 new apps since purchase) but the introduction folders is fantastic, and has reduced everything to 2 screens. I also get a real kick of the very neat screen-split effect they use when you open and closse a folder.

I also love the way everything is so integrated, like being able to take a picture and send by text or e-mail, or open attachments and read files properly like you never could on the Blackberry (with the held of a few reader apps I downloaded). I haave set up Myspace and Twitter on it, and find them really surprisingly usable on the iPhone, and spend a lot of time marvelling at the satellite finding me on Maps (sad I know). I have even set up an App to allow me to use Blogger on it, but am still too unused to the touch keyboard to picture a decent-length post being composed on it. I have not noticed anything about calls being dropped or my cheek doing a hang-up, and also admit I am not quite sure what the fuss about the screen resolution is.

On the negative side, the camera is far more basic in function than the Nokia's and the video has no zoom, so I fear my illicit concert clips in future posts may be even more distant. I also found the texting a bit counter-intuitive at first, and mistook a few texts I had sent for incoming ones on the display, leading to some modestly amusing confusions. It also took a while for me to work out how to set songs as ringtones, and that needed some internet digging to uncover. The current ringtones I have set up to be used as mood dictates are the intros to 'WMA' by Pearl Jam and 'Love vigilantes' by New Order, and the guitar attack one minute in from 'Leave' by REM. A ringtone has to be simple, loud, distinctive and striking, and these three passages fit that bill perfectly for now.

For me, the really big grumble on the iPhone is the battery life, which is simply crap, needing a new charge every day, and currently having me in a state of constant mild anxiety about the state of the battery, especially since I set up the percentage reading.

All in all, it is no doubt a thing of wonder, and I am extremely excited by it, which I am sure I will continue to share annoyingly in future posts.

The National live, the West Wing and wonderful Bill Bryson

2010-08-05T23:10:00.003+01:00

Lots to update on these weeks, as summer allows a bit more time to catch up on the finer things in life (and some coarseness too).

Music

I mentioned The National's live album exclusive for iTunes last week and finally got around to listening to it a bit more and it is well worth a listen, if admittedly not exactly essential (except for those lucky enough or sad enough to count as Nationalist Competists like me). They certainly brought their horn section with them, and it seems like they worked on the principle that they should earn their air fare to London (where I presume they lived their life in the rain?) by playing all over all the tracks. However, while I am not the greatest horn fan in the world (compared, say, to a Spanish bull-fighter) it works unexpectedly well here; for example, 'England' (which has a nice audience hand-clap-along welcome) has horns apparent from the start, and the little 'parp' before the final chanty it which somehow always annoyed me on record is less blatant as a result. 'Brainy', which I always saw as the dumb one on 'Boxer' (punch-drunk, perhaps) works much better here, and 'Mistaken for strangers' seems somehow a little slower and more majestic than usual, and its incredible drumwork stands out. Despite it being much dismissed in reviews of 'High violet', I must admit 'Anyone's ghost' has really grown on me, especially the final movement, and I think the live version of 'Afraid of everyone' flows better than the album one, where the segue to the final (different) chanty bit always felt a bit awkward to me before. All in all, a good live release, and perhaps a good intro for anyone foolish enough not to have allowed 'High violet' to completely and insanely dominate their listening and waking lives for most of the last few months. It has certainly only further built my enthusiasm for Electric Picnic in September, at which I will demonstrate my love for this band by spending three days waiting for their one hour or so on stage.

I didn't find many of the tracks from the actual album on Youtube, but I did find 'Start a war' from 'Boxer' from the same show, as below:

I also downloaded the Arcade Fire album 'The suburb's and (perhaps surprisingly for me) first impressions are pretty positive, particularly for the later songs on the album, but I will need some more time before a review on that so will finish today's music section with a few more tracks that featured regularly on my holiay playlist.
The first is Ryan Adams (well, Whiskeytown's) gorgeous and achingly melancholic 'Houses on the hill'; both his band and solo stuff has moments set for the sunshine we didn't regularly get but yearned for, sunny yet sad (as country should be):

My kids also love the Flaming lips' 'Yoshimi battles the pink robots' (so much that we came very close to naming our new dog Yoshimi, until someone asked how we would feel calling that loudly in a park, at which point said pet promptly become Juno), and one of my fondest concert memories of recent years was a mass singalong in the Marquee in Cork to this one; I found a live clip below:

The final track is from one of Cork's greatest contributions to rock (short list, admittedly), The Sultans of Ping, with their heartrending ballad about one poor soul's existential angst on losing a favourite cherished garment, 'Where's my jumper?':

Hard to follow that, so time to switch tack.
Magazines

Holidays are also about catching up on magazines and Total Film had a list of cool things from movies, and the one which really caught my eye was the death scene of Rutger Hauer's character in 'Blade runner' which contains some of my favourite lines of movie monologue ever, capturing unseen vistas of attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glistening near the Tannhauser Gate, which always to me sounded like the best science fiction images I have ever heard; I found the clip below:

My second favourite movie scene ever is probably the 'Untouchables' railway station steps shoot-out sequence, which I could not find an embeddable clip of but did find here.

Sticking with magazine, Uncut had a major interview with Nick Cave, including a list of his top songs, and veered very much towards mad Nick as opposed to mellow Nick (I previously posted about him here), with the top 10 (in descending order) being 'Junkyard', 'Do you love me', 'Tupelo', 'We call upon the author', 'Straight to you', 'Release the rats', 'The ship song', 'From her to eternity', 'Into my arms' and 'The mercy seat'. Of these, I would keep only numbers 1, 3 and 5, and add the holy trinity from 'Boatman's call' of 'There is a kingdom', 'People just ain't no good' and 'Are you the one that I've been waiting for', plus 'He wants you', 'Breathless' and possibly 'God is in the house'.

Books

I finished Bill Bryson's wonderful 'At home', which raised the really interesting question of what happens when a travel writer doesn't? In other words, what is the opposite of doing what a travel writer does? Presumably this would be to not go outside their front door, and write a book about their house, particularly if it happens to be an 1850's rectory with lots of rooms and history, which can spin off all kinds of ruminations and anecdotes about every aspect of furniture, clothes, rooms, social ettiquette, medicine, hygiene, gardening and lord knows what else. And that is exactly what Bryson has done, bloody wonderfully. He truly is my favourite among all wielders of words (he would never use a construction as crap as that, for example), but rather sentences like the following, talking about a fork believe it or not, which truly leave me in awe:

'Why four should induce the optimum sense of security isn't easy to say, but it does seem to be a fundamental fact of flatware psychology'.

Wow. Bryson scores highly by combining such writing with a great eye and ear for colourful anecdote, filling the book with uncountable reams of facts and tales and characters, with a particular evident fondness for losers and eccentrics of the 19th Century (introducing me to characters like Addison Mizner), and revealing the odd side of many well-known historical figures, such as the architctural madnesses of Wahington and Jefferson, and the ill-fates exploits of Alfred Wallace.

I will fnish this section witn an on-line trailer for 'At home'. I simply could not recommend this fantastic book (read on Kindle) highly enough; I have since started 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' (very promising so far) and a book on the Climategate scandal (two-handed reading seems an embedded habit by now).

Movies

I read a very good article by Joe Queenan on the idea of 'Random Fandom' in the Guardian here; this involved him going into cinemas and asking the ticket-seller to give him a ticket to whatever film they thought he might like; what a great experiment, and a lovely story.

I saw (with full premeditation, and one dry run, or rather a wet one on arriving at the cinema a few days before but being able to get in as the nest few shows were sold out) 'Toy story 3', which I did enjoy, if I would not rave about it quite as much as I will rave in my next post about 'Inception', which I will write about once I have disentangled my brain after seeing it last night. TS3 was, as expected, well-made, funny (if not as funny as the hybrid trailer where it got mashed with 'Inception's sound track), famliar (although the reuse of some images and lines surprised me), moving (yes, I did blub a little at the end under my cheap 3-D glasses) and scary (although no-one could have expected the incinerator to Gollum them, really?) but I am not in any rush to see it again or anything.

On DVD, I really liked the first half of 'An education', but got a little less enamoured as it went on; there seemed to me no real chemistry between the leads, or at least not as much as between her and his lifestyle and what he could offer her, but she was great, and the script (recognisably bearing Nick Hornby's touch) was very good.

Other stuff

In another holiday indulgence, we watched the second half of the final series of 'The West wing', with the emotional roller-coaster of Josh and Donna's final getting-together, Leo's death, Santos' election and the end of the whole shebang. What an incredible piece of television. I know the last 2 series did not scale the heights of quality ascended by the first few, but the quality of script and story and acting on display was just so far in excess of anything else around as to be quite laughable. I found a clip prepared in very nice tribute after Leo's death (so mush more poignant as having been demanded by actor John Spencer's own untimely suddern death) here which I will put in as tribute to man, character and show:

Finally, after another epic post, I will end as I did last post with a picture of the week, this time the wonderful sight of two cars (the front worth £1.2 million, the second a cheapie at £350,000) owned by the new Quatari owners of Harrods, clamped after being illegally parked outside the store:

Oh, to have seen the faces! That's enough for now, next week to feature Arcade Fire and 'Inception' very highly.

A holiday post from the wild Irish northwest

2010-07-28T22:48:00.000+01:00

I am now on holidays in Donegal, in the wild north-west of Ireland, and the next post or two will be a ramble through some of the listening, watching, reading and other stuff you can catch up with on a holiday!

Music

Holiday listening breaks many rules of normal music-listening habits, as perhaps it should, as hitherto less significant influences such as the presence of children much of the time come to bear, combined with a general feeling that slightly more upbeat material is appropriate for mood modification purposes, and an overall sense of experimentalism and the need to break from all routine, including usual musical tastes.

So, despite my innate urge to rave about the new National live EP (is 8 tracks an EP?) special on iTunes (will save that for next post), I will perservere with some musical selections more suitable to the occasion and location. Donegal is the north-western corner of Ireland, and is wild, beautiful, undertouristed (in all the best ways) and where I always believe can be found the purest essence of the Ireland people come from abroad to see but fail to find in the more commercial and developed cities and regions further south; this is where you will find pubs in which people play Irish traditional music not because the tourists expect it but because that is how they wish to pass their evenings, and miles of beautiful Atlantic beaches deserted in July. Donegal is a secret, which deserves to be tactfully shared, but not to the the extent that it could ever become less so. Unfortunately, it has rained much of the last week, but there has to be some karmic counterbalance for all that beauty and stillness.

People in Donegal believe they are largely ignored by the rest of the country, and perhaps the world, and this may explain a lack of musical references to the area, but I did find two, the first by Irish senior singer-songwriter Paul Brady (although from a much earlier poem) which is most notable and worth sharing for the accompanying images of the area, including in the first shot the very town in which I am staying:

The second of these themed clips is in a somewhat similar (and equally uncharacteristic) vein, and is by the even more senior denizen of the Irish music scene, Christy Moore, and, while it may be called, somewhat unexpectedly in a geographic sense, 'The city of Chicago', features a line much in my head these days which claims that in said American metropolis, 'as the evening shadows fall, there are people dreaming of the hills of Donegal' (a lovely lovely line):

On perhaps slightly more familiar ground, almost all family holidays for the last many years have been uniformly soundtracked by the Waterboys' 'Room to roam'. On, and since, its release in 1990, this has been almost universally panned as the unbearably twee pinnacle of Mike Scott's infatuation with all things Celtic and traditional, falling chronologically in between his epic windswept early stuff (of which the twin peaks, for me, were 'The whole of the moon' and 'Red army blues') and his more spaced and far less memorable later noodlings ('Glastonbury song' etc). However, for me, 'Room to roam' is undoubtedly faily lighweight (and what the hell are they doing in fairground waltzers on the cover?) but is beautifully instrumented and has a gorgeous lightness of touch and overall prettiness which is a perfect soundtrack for any meander around the Irish countryside. It is perhaps not surprisingly under-represented on Youtube; there is no sign of our favourite 'Spring comes to Spiddal' in which the line 'The lights are on in Stanton's' was somewhat spoiled in recent years by the discovery that said establishment is a craft shop and not a noteworthy pub. However, I did find 'A man is in love' (one of the two great love songs on RTR, the other being 'How long will I love you'), which is just both lyrically and musically sweet (that word again - blame the holidays):

The final two Waterboys clips do not come from RTR, but from its predecessor 'Fisherman's blues' but undoubtedly belonging there in spirit, are the title track (first) and secondly 'The stolen child' (lyrics by WB Yeats!):

Although I will probably still be on holidays for the next post, I will resume normal musical coverage, and even get around to that blatantly 'National'ist rant.

Books

I finished 'The passage' and overall verdict is very positive, even if it ends on a very blatant and slightly too open note to allow what are apparently the next two books in a planned trilogy. It is also written with a very clear eye to the obvious movie adaptation, which the Internet Movie Database confirms is in production, but yields no secrets on to those mere mortals who do not pay for an IMDB Pro subscription. Interestingly, there are a whole pile of films with the same name already!

I have also started the book shown on the left, a new history of the battle of the Little Big Horn at which General Custer took on far more Indians than expected and came off the worse for wear. As a young lad, I had quite an unhealthy interest in gory military history and have found it quite interesting to read proper histories of such battles as I heard of then (this one, Waterloo, Rorkes Drift and others) and learn the actual story. This book is highly accessible and well written and avoids heavy military detail (as turned me off John Keegan's recent history of the American Civil War), and so I am enjoying it a lot. However, it is a very tough battle (pun only slightly intended) against my parallel reading of Bill Bryson's 'At home', which I am absolutely loving, and will talk more about in the next post or two.

Movies

Spent quite a bit of time immersed in B-movie science fiction heaven, starting with 'Predators', which I saw in the cinema and did enjoy quite a bit; yes it is very reminiscent of the original, but I found the characters interesting (if as deep as a Donegal puddle, and are they the predeators too?) and the action enough to keep me awake. It did not quite do what 'Aliens' did for 'Alien', proving that just adding an 's' will not a superior sequel make (note, they did not do 'Godfathers', and 'Avatars' is not in development, at least according to IMDB); isn't it lucky there was not a movie called 'Sheep' which needed a sequel, as the creators would surely have been stumpted (and perhaps fleeced)? I remember reading in The Irish Times last year that there was plans for a movie called 'Pride and predators', and the IMDB (again) suggests it is in development (here) - now that will be the next sequel to anticipate eagerly. Also, on TV, saw 'Galaxy quest' again (very funny and well done) and found 'Lesbian vampire killers' about as much fun as the title would suggest and far more fun than the title would lead you to expect.

On a slightly higher plane (no, not an in-flight movie, a DVD), I really really liked '(500 days of) Summer'. Even if Joseph Gordon Leavitt does come across like a spare Heath Ledger grown in a lab to replace that tragically and prematurely large hole in movies. It also gives him a sister who serves pretty much an identical function to the main character's sister in the wonderful wonderful 'Gregory's girl', but I liked many thinga about it which perhaps on a different day (i.e., not on holidays) might have annoyed me. I liked the time jumps, the titling, and even the split screen, brilliantly used in the scene where expectation of a particular event is contrasted with reality; I even coped with the song and dance routine, the blatant use of music like the Smiths to lend 'cool' (as in the clip below) and roared laughing at the scene where she tells him her nickname in College. He seemed identifiably confused and real to me, but really, after it was all over, wasn't she just a bitch?

In a busy movie week or so I also saw 'Young Victoria' which impressed far more than I expected, although a week later I can remember very little bar a general positivity, which can't be a good sign. I also watched 'The damned united' which made me initially think I could become interested in 1970's English football, against a lifetime of evidence, but then I fell asleep after a while so.....

Finally, I also got to see Toy Story 3 at second attempt (sold out on a howlingly wet day first time around) but will review that next post as this one is getting overlong as it is!

Other stuff

While in Donegal, I went along to something called the MacGill summer school, where various Irish politicians, academics, journalists and intellectuals of various levels of credential assemble for a week in a hall in a small town called Glenties to give and listen to a series of talks about various aspects of the state of trhe country (i.e., moan about, analyse and perhaps suggest how to escape our current wretched state). I attended talks by historian Joe Lee and Peter Sutherland (whose career it is not possible to capture in a single descriptor) on education, and felt very aware that I was 20 years younger, significantly scruffier, and far less wealthy than the rest of the audience. However, I still think there is something pretty cool about the fact that anyone can pay a fiver and wander off the street to have access to speakers including many of the current cabinet and ask them questions openly, which is somehow a good sign for a democracy, even one as bust as ours.

Finally, the iPad has been released and I am pretty sure I have talked myself into purchasing one when I get back to Cork; hard to find a clip to fit the moment, but Elvis Costello's wonderful 'Pads, paws and claws' keeps popping into my head when I think about it, so will stick that in instead:

Oh, and I thought this photo millimicronanoseconds from a crash at a Canadian airshow made my jaw drop alarming and rather dangerously (and more can be seen here):

That is more than enough for now, but needless to say lots carrying forward for the next post, including perhaps the final Irish release of the iPhone 4.0 (so many Apple products, so little time)!

Art for pop's sake

2010-07-21T23:14:00.000+01:00

This is going to be an unusual post, to say the least, focussing on a single topic, an exhibition at the lovely Glucksman Gallery in Cork which explores the relationship betwen pop music and art, and hence was of great interest to me beyond that which an average art exhibition tends to stir (although I have previously spoken of some finer forms of art here). Anyway, somehow it didn't seem appropriate to mix such culture with, for example, a review of 'Predators', which will have to wait for the next post, so I will stick to the single topic for now.

I guess I haven't thougtht too much previously about art and music, although certain album sleeves always to me showed an artistic sensibility, for example the classic covers Peter Saville designed for Joy Division's 'Closer' (what a gorgeous sepulchral image) and 'Unknown pleasures' (apparently a graphic representation of a radio-astronomy capture of the sound from a supernova - how bloody cool is that?), as shown below. While in university in Dublin, I had a huge poster on my bedroom wall for their 'Love will tear us apart', very much in the spirit of 'Closer' (as shown on the left), just to keep me cheerful!

Around the same era, I also always had a fondness for the sleeve of 'A broken frame' by Depeche Mode, which I posted about previously here. In more recent years, as albums gave way to CDs and thence to downloads, the art aspect progressively shrunk and had to work harder to grab one's attention, but ones which grabbed my attention included Tindersticks (the first abum) by Tindersticks the band (which I wrote about here) and selected others like 'A rush of blood to the head' by Coldplay (perhaps their finest moment, the graphic art not the music) and 'High violet' by the National (of course I am biased towards this album, as shown here, but it is a very cool and modern image on the cover):

Anyway, this brings me somewhat circuitously to the exhibition which this post is meant to be about the exhibition, called 'Mixtapes' in Cork's Glucksman Gallery (whose website is here).

The Glucksman is a beautifully sited building in the leafy lower grounds of University College Cork, built on the footprint of two old tennis courts which it was apparently designed to fit within, leading to it having a somewhat tree-like appearance (in perfect harmony with its surroundings), with a slender base blossoming above to a curved wooden block housing two floors of gallery.

In November 2009, a catastrophic flood ensued from the release of a huge volume of water from a dam around 10 miles from the Gallery, and the river which flowed through the University grounds, right beside the Gallery, briefly but dramatically turned into a torrent carrying the apparent volume of the Mississippi for a few midnight hours. While the shape of the gallery meant that the current collections were held high out of the waters, the basement, housing the art collection store and restaurant were, like many other university buildings, filled with dank destructive water. It has been a long road back for all affected buildings, but thankfully the gallery is in business and well worth a visit.

The exhibition called 'Mixtapes' (see programme here) runs from June to October, and I visited one quiet Sunday afternoon, and with my son got a personalised curatorial tour from one of the gallery staff.

The entrance to the gallery leads directly onto a concrete and metal stairway which is in perhaps deliberate stark architectural contrast to the bright light and pale wood of the upper floors, and the first sight at the top of the stairs is a Marc Bijl piece called 'Teenage kicks', about which there is an article here. This is a very visually arresting opening, with a black-painted drum kit adorned with roses and a fake human skull and the backdrop painted with the fairly cliched rock'n'roll slogan seen below (leaving unsaid the code about leaving a good looking corpse). It is a nice piece, the drum kit (from which the sticks had to be hidden, apparently, to avoid life beating art too loudly), dramatic, and an interesting approach to rock sculpture, like the 'tomb of the unknown Spinal Tap drummer' (bizarre gardening accident suggested by the roses? spontaneous combustion suggested by the coating of carbonised ash? did that skull look like it choked on someone else's vomit?). Anyway, art is supposed to be for the viewer to interpret, and I may have got a tad carried away that time, but I liked the drama and unsubtelty of it, just as rock should be.

I was less entusiastic about the glittery turntables next to the drum kit. The first floor is also dominated by a very odd assemblage of wood and mirrors into which one can wander, with speakers and video clips capturing the sounds of the start of a gig or soundcheck, which is, uhm, interesting and certainly different, and apparently designed especially for the exhibition. There are also a very cool set of stylsed shots of Robbie Williams fans before a gig, in which the photos have been digitally dissembled until they look like pointillistic or charcoal shots, and lose their identity, which is apparently the idea (loss of identity compounded by their own wearing football tops) and I think works pretty well.

On the stairs to the upper level one encounters Alejandro Cesarco's 'Ramones: an autobiography' (artists homepage here), which is a set list of Ramones songs all beginning with the word 'I', building a sort of life story like a list of things teenagers might say, and which is pretty cool.

The image below presents a panorama of the upper floor, including in the middle distance on the left a large black ball hanging in a grotesque parody of a disco ball (looking more like Spinal Tap - again - meets the Death Star), and which I also thought was an interesting piece. In the middle against the wall is one of two pieces which are Husker Du singles presented in display cases like artefacts in a museum - music to be preserved and studied. Considering the acres of paper which have been written about modern music (even that of Husker Du) much music is very much a subject of scholarly attention, and thus this makes sense. Maybe in 500 years a future museum on Phobos will feature actual Husker Du records and accompanying interprative babble about what they might represent.....

The Metal Ball is by Baldvin Ringsted and there is an article about it here. On the right of the photo is a second set of photos of fans pretending to be rock stars, the first appearing on the first floor and being from the 70s, while the ones upstairs feature the same subjects 30 years later, older but certainly no wiser.

The final two pieces I really liked were by the same artist, Anne Collier, and were (from the top) 'Crying' (apparently an image of Ingrid Bergman) and 'Anything you want' (the darker one with the single eye). Both take a pile of record sleeves as their central motif, in the upper one against a simple backdrop of black and white, and in the second an eye on the front cover stares from encroaching blatant blackness, as if through a keyhole from another dimension. I think these are really simple yet dramatic pictures, and the classic pride and power of the stack of albums deserves monuments such as these to remind those who now now only the iTunes library where these stacks would once have leaned against their walls. Its a bit of an old recherche of times perdu, as it were.

One last mention must go to the admirably daft piece by Merdeyth Sparks 'History' (see article on her here and here), which I left the gallery with a piece of. No, I did not steal it, but it consisted of two piles of paper album sleeves with the words 'You can't erase history' on one side and 'You can erase history' on the other, and they were meant to be taken away. Apparently they have lots in stock in case they run out. I guess it says something about the disposable mass-produced nature of modern music, the classical A-side/B-side duality of the single, and possibly illegal file-sharing, which are of course points worth making.

I enjoyed my trip to Mixtapes, and it made me think about music (and maybe even art) in a different way, and the building is always worth a visit and our support given its rough recent history, so I can only recommend it highly for all these reasons.

I guess the overall theme of the exhibition was, for me, somewhat nostalgic for a different era of music fandom, not that long ago but yet might years before iPods evolved to rule the world, and when the predecessor of the playlist in the fan's life was the mixtape, carefully assembled on C60/C90 cassettes far more laboriously its moden usurper; the spirit of this arcane art was best captured in Nick Hornby's wonderful 'High fidelity' (I previously talked about my love of that book here). I loved mixtapes, and made many in my day, which lends the name of the exhibition a particular resonance for me. My favourite was cheerfully entitled 'The darkest night' from around 1990 (well, what would you expect from the kind of melodramatist who had a huge gothic Joy Division poster on their wall at the time?) - I am still waiting for the royalty cheques after the releases of both 'Dark was the night' (my review here) and 'Dark night of the soul' (my article on which is here) in the last while on the grounds of that one!

Anyway, back to the point. 'Mixtapes' celebrates and ruminates on things which remain important to anyone who ever made their own mixtape. Go, see, think, be the fan.

What makes deer tick anyway?

2010-07-12T21:36:00.002+01:00

Music

This week I have been listening to 'The black dirt sessions' by Deer Tick a lot, mainly following a very good review in Uncut here. It is really good, and a blast of classic alt-country but yet shot through with something rougher than many of that ilk (as opposed to elk, as opposed to deer), perhaps largely due to the singer's rasping croak which yet captures a softer side quite wonderfully on songs like the quite brilliant piano eulogy 'Goodbye dear friend', the lovely 'The sad sun' and 'Hand in my hand' which opens on a disarming falsetto after the growls that prowl through the rest of the songs. Opener 'Choir of angels' sets the scene well, with a fuller sound and a lovely melody, as seen below:

While the following track '20 miles' has not surprisingly drawn comparisons with very early REM, not a bad or shameful reference point:

All in all, a very good album, even if some of the later tracks are a little more noisy and less to my immediate liking.

I also just downloaded 'Dark night of the soul' by Dangermouse and Sparklehorse, and 'The place we ran from' by Tired Pony, Gary Lightbody's side project. I have written before of my ambiguous feelings about Snow Patrol, but another positive review in Uncut drew me to this, and it sounds quite good so far. I think the tinge of American in Snow Patrol has been what has drawn me to some of their stff in the past, so hoped this would be more distilled essence of that. Among the more notable tracks are 'Point me at lost islands' and 'Get on the road' (with Zooey Daschanel, although it is so reminiscent of 'Set the fire to the third bar' as to be a handy back-up in case that one ever gets lost), while Tom Smith from Editors (another band I have occasionally ruminated ambiguously on, for example here, but there is no denying the man has a class voice) gives 'The good book' a chilling and classy vocal. I am also interested in Iain Archer who has not appeared much in the press about the album but contributes a low-key Mike Scott vocal to 'I am a landslide'. 'Held in the arms of the world' doesn't wander off the snowy patrolled path, but has a nice chorus and building harmonies, but 'Northwestern skies' with its 'ooh, I'm in a big echoey americana barn' vocal seems a bit too efforty for me. I found a video clip sort of trailering the album below.

Next I need to listen some more to 'Dark night' and see if my impressions have evolved since I listened to it in its previous online incarnation last year here.

Books

I am continuing to read 'The passage' and am actually really enjoying its second section where it leaps forward 100 years to a Mad Max meets New England pilgrim colony settlement (but surrounded by vampires) vibe, although the 100 year timeslip seems a little stretched, given the amount of relics of the older time which still seem to be workable alongside the crossbows and blades. As usual, I am parallel processing another (on kindle), this week 'Cyber war' by former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, which scares the crap out of me by explaining patiently how our increasing daily dependence on the web for just about everything could all come crashing down if any of a number of scenarios he outlines in highly readable fashion come to pass.

I found an interview with him on the subject here:

TV and movies

Not much on TV bar the World Cup, but lets' face it, drama like that at the end of the Ghana/Uruguay match (below) is far better, even for a sports footballiterate like me, than most of what screen-writers can come up with.

What I did watch of the World Cup was on Irish RTE television, and their post-match sketch slot, 'Apres match', really outdid themselves last night with their dubbing over several well known and unexpected faces from Irish sports commentary and politics:

In terms of movies, I did watch some taped movies: 'Last chance Harvey' (melodramatic and not particularly believable yet watchable as Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thomson are, for me, both huge watchable in just about anything) and 'Swing Vote' (almost the same comments, substituting in Kevin Costner, another actor I have always had a soft spot for ever since first encountering him in 'The Untouchables', after-shocks of the magnificence of which will always lend him a favourable air in my eyes). I also saw bits on TV of Jaws and Raider of the Lost Ark on TV, and was struck again by the incredible 'Indianapolis' scene in the former and for the first time by the amazing sky-scapes in the latter, which I never noticed before.

Games

I have spent a few scattered hours playing 'Half-life 2: episode 1' and did not remember from before the wierd opening level (a bit tedious really) but the ensuing scenes in the dark remain very cool and scary. I actually found a trailer for it on-line below:

So, that's it for this week - hope to get to 'Predators' this week, and still waiting to hear the release date for the iPhone and iPad in Ireland, which now look like they may not be July after all. Steve Jobs, why do you tease me so!

More anthems by gaslight and others

2010-07-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

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!

Anthems by gaslight

2010-06-26T23:05:00.000+01:00

Music

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.

Bearing witness to never forgotten favourites

2010-06-14T23:46:00.000+01:00

Music

For some reason, perhaps the fine weather, perhaps the fact the my wife's iPod found it on random recently, I have been listening a lot to an English band called Witness, who I discovered through Uncut magazine and who released two albums, 'Before the calm' (in 1999) and 'Under a sun' (in 2002) and split a few years later. Witness are, for me, one of the best bands I ever heard of that hardly anyone else has ever heard of, with all the nerdy pleasure that statement entails. For background, you can read about Witness on Wikipedia here, see the band website here,read their NME page here and find singer Gerard Starkie on Myspace here.

Their albums are absolutely great, and blend the cloudy English indie depressed claustrophobia of Radiohead and many more besides with the American widescreen epic sensibilities of Counting Crows and many others more (although the singer's voice always most reminded me of Adam Duritz). This combination of my soft spots seems an obvious strategy for grabbing my attention, and that of others besides, but relatively few have tried it (although arguably the National have exploited the same conceit to wonderful effect). The albums have several fantastic songs each, and the first tends towards the English end of the spectrum above, while the latter hoves close to the far side of the Atlantic.

To give a sense of their wonderfulness, I will include below a clip of 'Hijacker' from both Jools Holland and their debut:

I also found a video of 'Scars' from the same album:

Clips from the less claustrophobic and more widescreen 'Under a sun' are harder to find on-line, but I did find my overall favourite of theirs, 'Closing up' (basically audio only) below:

Now that hopefully ye are so taken as to want to immediately buy their music, the requisite links from Amazon are below (note the gorgous still life cover of 'Before the calm'):

Movies

About the only movie development of the week is that I watched 'Lakeview terrace' on TV, which was actually a pretty effective thriller. Let's face it, it is not exactly perceptive to point out that no-one does scary-ass better than Samuel L. Jackson, but at the same time Patrick Wilson is somehow unlikeable enough to make the conflict less than one-sided and simple, and the ratcheting confrontation was very nicely built up, even if the final driveway confrontation mid-inferno was somewhat melodramatic. The clip below shows Sam in typically unfriendly mode:

Gadgets

Needless to say, I am currently obsessing about the iPhone 4.0. Last Monday, I watched Steve Jobs' keynote here live on my laptop, and I have definetely made the decision to dump my N95 (taking the refund the Carphone Warehouse are kindly offering) for this piece of really cool hardware. I was impressed by all the specs, particularly things like the video editing, but was actually pretty disappointed that the max memory seems to be 32 gB, which is the same as my iPod touch, which is bursting at the seams and which I have to make weekly calls on what to uncheck to make room for new stuff. I think overall the time has come for me to join the iPhone world still, though, and I will just haave to learn a whole new sort of memory discipline (if I don' forget how). A video on the iPhone, for anyone living in a box for the last week, is below:

Other stuff

The book 'Storm of war' which I am reading on Kindle is absolutely captivating, with a great mix of opinion, anecdote and historical and epic sweep, mixing the personal with the strategic in a very unusual way. Best book I have read in ages! Otherwise, not much else to report, but sure more will follow next week.

The Cure, Stornoway, War and Emo Phillips

2010-06-06T20:39:00.001+01:00

Quite a few updates this week, so straight into it:

Music

Have been listening to the Cure's 'Disintegration' special edition quite a bit, in another very nice package as shown below (trying the new Blogger Amazon functionality). The album is really great, just epic and grand and great guitars and keyboards, and some of Robert Smith's finest lyrical performances, and I just don't remember it being so good at the time. Several songs are really making a new impression all over again, but in particular 'Plainsong' just has an epic quality which is like the entire oeuvre (!?) of Sigur Ros foreshadowed:

Of the albums I mentioned downloading last week, I am quite liking Stornoway, more than I expected; although it is a little folkie twee, there is a nice quality running through it. I will show a good version of 'Zorbing' here:

I am also enjoying the unusual sound of the McAlmont and Nyman album, and the combination of that voice and those classical-sounding strings is really cool. My favourite by a long shot is 'City of Turin' but I could only find a clip of 'Underneath the hessian bags':

The last video I will show this week is for Josh Ritter's 'The curse' and was made by his drummer, showing an unexpected flair for puppetry:

Finally, I read a really interesting and mysterious article in the Irish Times by Brian Boyd here about an incredible new album the identity of which cannot be revealed. Had a poke around on-line and no clues but wondering based on it being someone really big of maybe David Bowie?

Movies

My only movie news this week is that I was very disappointed to hear that Guillermo Del Toro has pulled out of directing 'The hobbit'; I found an interview with him below and think he would have brought a very interesting vision to the project:

Other than that, I have started watching 'Drag me to hell', which I recorded a while ago from Sky Movies - interestingly yuck so far and lots of cringing and squirming going on.....

Books

I finished 'My brain on music' and really liked and would recommend it, a great mix of music theory for the uninitiated and great anecdote, reference and scientific background. It certainly has made me think about music and my reaction to it in a very different way.

I have since started reading 'The storm of war', shown below, which seems a fresh and highly readable new history of WWII. It is very readable and has sprung quite a few unknown facts on me, like realising how much inconvenience Ireland's bloody-mindedness regarding its neutrality and allowing Britain to use its ports caused for the allied navies.

Other bits

There was a really interesting New scientist article on language here, with some great examples of bizarre phrases from other languages. My favourite of these is 'Rawa-Dawa' from the Indian dialect Mundari, which apparently means:

the sensation of suddenly realising you can do something reprehensible, and no one is there to witness it

This is clearly a massive gap in the English language - why do we not have a word for this, if for no other reason than to encourage people to think like this??

I also heard that the iPhone 4 will be announced on Monday, which I am excited about, and definetely plan to retire my trusty N95 for assuming (a) memory at least 64 gB and (b) better camera than on previous iPhones; I quite like the idea of replacing two gadgets (and possibly three if I count my Blackberry) for one most of the time.

I also listened to some more Emo Phillips and my favourite sketch by far is the following:

Once, when I was in New York City, I went to the library. I said, "I'd like a book on the Heimlich anti-choking maneuver," and the guy said, "Look at the card catalog. I'm busy." So I go to the card catalog. I look under Heimlich and choking and maneuver. It's not any of those places. And I see this first aid book with the section and I take it and that guy said, "It's a reference book. You can't take it out; you have to Xerox it." I said, "Do you have change for a dollar?" He said, "It's not a bank, it's a library." So I go to this souvenir stand and I said, "Do you have change for a dollar?" They said, "It's not a bank, it's a souvenir stand." So I go to this bank, and they said, "Yes, this is a bank." And they give me the change and I go back to the libary. By this time there's a line of students Xeroxing their books and whatever and I -- finally get to Xerox the Heimlich. As I go back the guy says, "Put it back, now that you've used it." So I put it back. And as I leave, he says, "Thank you." I said, "Well, thank you! I'm never coming to this barn again." And I went back to my car. Now by this time, my sister's almost purple from the chicken bone...

Finally, after getting uncomfortably hooked on the damn show for the last few weeks, was delighted that Spelbound won Britain's got talent.

My brain mainly on the music of the Cure

2010-05-29T18:39:00.031+01:00

More to report on this week than in recent weeks, including multiple video clips, so will just get into it!

Music

This week I have been on a bit of a Cure binge, having bought the Disintegration special edition on CD (looked like too nice a package to yield to download), although I haven't got to listen to the extras yet. I do love much of the album, particularly 'Lovesong', seen live below:

This tempts me of course to rant a little about the Cure, as I did in my very first post on this blog here. For now, I will just confine myself to commenting that not only does 'Inbetween days' remain my favourite song ever, but it actually has 2 of my other favourite Cure songs, making it quite possibly my single favourite cultural artefact: 3 songs, around 9 minutes of pop perfection in one perfect package. The first b-side is 'The exploding boy', quite the cousin to its A-side in feel and percussion, but with some cool sax at the start and a great tumbling rolling pace:

The second b-side is 'A few hours after this', which features quite possibly my favourite use of strings in the pursuit of lightness in pop ever:

In other musical acquisitions, I just tonight downloaded from eMusic the new albums by Tracy Thorn and Stornaway (curious from reviews of the latter, and having a soft spot for the former since one my my favourite lines ever appeared in 'Come home' - 'every day's like Christmas day without you, it's cold and there's nothing to do'). I was also surprised to find David McAlmont and Michael Nyman's collaboration on eMusic, which had perked my interest when it came out (I liked the McAlmont/Bernard Butler album, particularly 'Yes' and 'You'll lose a good thing', seen below), so I downloaded that too.

Lots to listen to, reviews to follow.

Books

As well as continuing to work my way through the weighty biography of Francis Crick, I have been reading on Kindle a really interesting book called 'Evolution versus creationism' by Eugenie Scott, which is a highly readable and comprehensive overview of a debate which, to me as a scientist, is almost incredibly straightforward in its lopsidedness, but the book helps lay out clearly the sheer absurdity of the creationist arguments and literature.

I had a birthday during the week, and among my presents was a very unusual book called 'My brain on music' (see below) which I immediately added to my parallel book processing activities and from which I have already got more of a feel for concepts like pitch, tone, chords and timbre than I honeestly ever had. I have always been a complete illiterate in the actual science of music, and found it completely impenetrable, but this enjoyable and accessible book gives me new hope that I may actually come to some sort of passing terms with this stuff:

I also bought a compilation of interviews, transcripts of shows and articles about Bill Hicks, of whom more below (for €3.50 in HMV) and downloaded 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' onto Kindle for around the same price.

Movies

Purchased 'Sherlock Holmes' from iTunes, copied the movie file to my laptop, and watched in part-screeen while working on a train to Dublin. It really is a very good and clever movie, and I just love Downey Jrs voice and script, and interplay with Jude Law. On the completely trashy front, I as interested to see the trailer for 'Predators' (below), and was sad to hear last night that Dennis Hopper died, although I would not have been a huge fan, barring his role in 'Speed', for which I always had a huge soft spot:

Other stuff

During a busy cultural week, I managed to listen to three great American alternative comedians, Bill Hicks (on a DVD I bought cheap ages ago), Emo Philips and Steven Wright (both of which albums I downloaded from eMusic); I must admit none of them blew my socks off as I expected they would, but I will talk more about them next week. I also got the second series of 'Terminator chronicles' for my birthday (enjoyed the first) and bought myself 'The road' on DVD.

Also, Uncut had a cover CD which looks kind of interesting....

All in all, lots of acquisitions to work through over the coming weeks!

Phsophorescent, Drive-by truckers and pirates

2010-05-23T21:54:00.015+01:00

Quiet week this week, so just a few updates:

Music

Listened to a mix of Phosphorescent's album of Willie Nelson covers and their new one ('Heres to taking it easy) and actually finding it really nice, if a bit on the country side of alt. I particularly love their cover of 'Can I sleep in your arms', which can be seen here, and this 'Last thing I needed (first thing in the morning), which can be seen here:

I also went back and listened to 'The big to-do' by Drive-by truckers a bit, of which my favourite is the admirably brief 'It's gonna be (I told you so)', below:

The National's gig from Brooklyn is still not being shown to irish viewers on Vevo, dammit. Am, however, starting to think about going to Electric Picnic to see them (and lots more besides).....

Otherwise, listening to some more Ryan Adams in the sunshine for some reason, and a Tindersticks playlist helped while away a train trip today, along with a playlist I made of the best of 2008, which really was a great year for music (Vampire Weekend, Glasvegas, TV on the Radio, Tindersticks, American Music Club and much more besides).

TV

Switching around the other night I found a great routine by Chris Addison from 'The thick of it' on pirates, which I found on youtube as below:

I also welcomed Michael Madsen to 24, as we just don't get to see enough of him these days. Looking even more like Elvis after many years in biker prison, and just as cool as in Reservoir Dogs. Poor old Jack has gone completely apeshit by now, though, and the fact that this is apparently the last season to be made leads to interesting speculations as to just how phycho he might get before this day is out. I wonder would the 25th and 26th episode of each season show him doing nothing but peeing, eating, sitting down and perhaps even snoozing? What exactly is he on and how does everyone else manage to work 24 hours without a yawn? Finally, does he or anyone else get paid over-time in CTU?

So, that's nearly enough for today and this week. Suffered through 'The proposal' which I don't think I will even comment on except to say that Ryan Reynolds must be the most expressionless actor I know. I am also struggling in denial about the fact that I may be getting hooked on Britain's got Talent for some inexplicable reason.

To end on a more positive note, I bought the DVD of 'The road' (which I reviewed on release here) and interested in the commentary and making of to see how relates to the book. Just joins the pile to catch up on though!

'The Dial Waltz' by Boa Morte and more...

2010-05-15T11:19:00.028+01:00

Spent quite a bit of last week travelling to and from the UK for work, so not much to report in many categories. I finished 'Cheney' and overall found it a quite balanced and actually rather fascinating portrait of a very strange and quite scary man. Next on Kindle is probably to finish 'Who really runs Ireland' by Matt Cooper, which I abandoned a few weeks ago with too many new downloads to try out. I also enjoyed on TV the sight of Sky News' Adam Boulton losing his cool in rather spectacular fashion to Alistair Campbell in a very 'Thick of it' scene here. Obviously, it is often surmised that the legendary Malcolm Tucker was based on Campbell, and it is very very easy to picture him standing there with that scary half-grin on.....

Anyway, main stories thus about music and movies for this week:

Music

Listening to ‘High violet’ a lot, unsurprisingly, and reading every review I can get my eyes on; these are generally very positive, and Q gave it album of the month. It is pretty firmly established in my head by now, and has matured to a much more coherent album than I may have first feared. As I have wittered on about before, I have never approached an album with such a mix of fastidious research and anxious anticipation before, and I am still not sure I have sufficient perspective for an objective review as yet. My favourite switches from day to day (‘Lemonworld’ usually tops, in fairness), and ‘Anyone’s ghost’ is steadily growing on me (it is close to their first 3-minute pop song, in my view), while ‘Runaway’ is clearly far superior to ‘Racing like a pro’, but I do not yet have my ‘Apartment story’. I also find myself singing lines like ‘I don’t have the drugs to sort it out’ or ‘I was afraid I’d eat your brains’ at inappropriate moments!

They appeared on BBC's Later with Jools Holland on Friday night and played very good and slightly different versions of 'Bloodbuzz ohio', 'Anyone's ghost' and 'Terrible love'. I have only found a clip of the first on-line so far, which is below:

Last Saturday night, they also played a concert in Brooklyn which was streamed on Youtube/Vevo, which I did not stay up for as it would have started at 3 in the morning Irish time! I am counting on it becoming available afterwards but so far the footage is not available to Irish viewers for copyright reasons, which is pretty bloody frustrating. Hopefully this might change (lots of complaints on the site), or at worst maybe a DVD will ultimately appear. The fact that is directed by the legendary DA Pennebaker should hopefully make it enough of a big deal to warrant wider distribution, if no reason other than the band and record company (and Vevo) would surely make money from a European distribution (certainly a healthy profit from me alone).

In a more local (to Cork) development, I know through work a member of a band called Boa Morte, who have just released their second album 'The dial waltz'. Boa Morte are very Americana in spirit, even if from Cork, and their music has a hushed gradneur and stately grace particularly reminiscent of Lambchop in their more mellow phases, or perhaps Smog. I have seen them live quite a few times and so many of the songs are familiar, but they are lovely and tracks like 'Darkened doorway', 'Priceless prize' and the beautifully-titled and sung 'All this we must consider' really grow on you with their slow and sombre atmosphere. The harmonies when used are unusual and quite ghostly at times, and I like the subtle drumming. I found one video, for 'Wooden floor', below:

Their homepage is here, their Myspace page is here, and they are very much worth checking out for anyone who likes the sort of music discussed on this blog.

Otherwise, I have listened some more to AA Bondy, which is really quite lovely, and I really like his voice. Songs like 'On the moon', 'I can see the pines are dancing' and 'Mightiest of guns' are perfect examples of the kind of alt-country which I have previously raved about so extensively, and which I find fewer great examples like this of each year.

Movies

The Guardian on Friday had a very interesting article on fan-made movie parodies and homages on Youtube, which can be read here. I checked out a few of these and really enjoyed 'Award-winning movie trailer' below:

There was also a very funny DVD commentary one here, and some of them showed how much work people are prepared to put in, including the mini-epic 'Hunt for Gollum' below:

Otherwise, I did get to watch 'Zombieland', which I downloaded onto my iPod last week, and watched it on a trip to the UK, between a long train trip and my hotel bed. I actually thoroughly enjoyed it, and found it quite watchable on the small screen (will certainly try soon to hook up to my TV and watch that way too). Classic moments included the whole opening credits, the point at which out two heros meet (the thumb!), the 'puppy love' clip, and of course the celebrity cameo which I am sure everyone knows about by now. Well worth my first experiment in iTunes movies, and the viewing experience made up in convenience what it may have lost in scale (as for books as per recent discussions on this blog). Of course I could not see myself watching 'Avatar' on it, but for some things I think it will do just fine.

That's all for now, as already a day later than usual posting!

The joys of real CDs, some new CDs, and more High Violet

2010-04-30T21:29:00.027+01:00

On Friday night, at around 10.30 in the evening, I checked High Violet on iTunes and discovered that the song names which had been greyed (non-purchasable) last time I looked were not solid and I downloaded on the spot, 4 days ahead of the official May 11 release. No idea how that worked, but maybsomeone just took pity on me. Of course, I will probably buy the CD (to actually have the damn thing for real), and could have downloaded as part of my eMusic subscription, but immediacy counts and now I have it. Obviously, I have ranted somewhat about it in recent weeks (see reviews and previews here and here) but for now I just want to live with it around me (in my car, my office and on a trip to the UK mid-week) for a while and then give my final review after it has settled down for good.

So, I won't dwell any more on it here, but have some other updates to talk about.

(Other) music

As a birthday present, I bought my wife some Natalie Merchant CDs and both came with quite beautiful packaging, as seen below for 'Leave your sleep'. I previously mused about the difference between the physical CD and the download here, in terms of how record companies need to offer something far more complete and differentiated in the package than the music itself to tempt me back to the record shop, and the Natalie Merchant CD is a gorgeous example of how to do it right, with care in the design and a collectors-item-quality total package. Haven't listened to the music yet, but that is not quite the point here!

Other downloads this week were by AA Bondy (I loved 'Mightiest of guns' on this month's Uncut CD but haven't listened to the album much yet), The Hold Steady (whose hold on me grows steadier each album, 'Sequestered in Memphis' now being on my all-time classic songs list), and Clogs (well, the National connection is pretty strong, although there is quite a contrast between sound of name and sound of songs so far, thankfully). I have also been listening a bit in the car to a Ryan Adams playlist I made a while back, for some reason. I will include the aforementioned AA Bondy song in a lovely version here:

Another recent download is by John Grant, who was with the Czars, and this is him solo with Midlake as backing. The Czars released a number of albums which occasionally veered towards the MOR but always contained a few gems of literate orchestral pop, such as the gorgous 'Paint the moon', in an acoustic setting below:

This is another CD I need to listen to more (first try sounded lovely) but I predict they will have to form an orderly queue behind 'High violet'!

Movies

Went to see 'Date night': I actually really enjoyed it, in a very throw-away way, and I do love Steve Carrell (big fan of the US office). I know the reviews were not great, but it was light and it made me laugh, and what else do you need!

Other main movie-related story of course is the introduction of movies to rent or download through iTunes. I noticed this earlier in the week, and then got an e-mail from Apple about it and saw an article in the Irish Times about it here. While I have certainly been thinking since I have started increasingly downloading games and books (e.g., through Steam and Kindle), the last bastion of hard copy (as I have never illegally downloaded a movie - honest!) is the DVD, but here it goes under threat.

First thoughts on the matter are as follows - the range is not great, the price is (in my view) too high, and what about the DVD extras (I know there are some [PC-bound] extras for some movies but can commentaries work this way?)? I do not see the small screen size too much of an obstacle, if you think more of using the iPod or iPhone as a player you can carry movies around on and hook to your TV set using the right leads, but another issue is that the memory will get pretty full with big movies (roll on the 64-GB iPhone I plan to queue all night to buy if necessary if it comes out during the summer).

All in all, not sure how much of a success this will be (remember UMD movies for the PSP and how big a hit they were?), but finally decided today to keep an open mind and download one movie ('Zombieland'), which took 3 hours through my PC. Will report later on my experiences when I watch it.

Gadgets

Had a fairly technologically frustrating week. iTunes asked me to load a new version (can't remember which) and then seemed to lose the plot of my collections completely. All music and playlists recovered fine, but lost all my podcasts (was able to recover from other PC and import, and would have been pissed off to lose ones like Ricky Gervais' which I had paid for), apps (but back-transferred from iPod, thankfully) and picked up every tiny video scrap from my PC into the movie library. Took quite a while to fix!

Then I realised just how dependent I was for games on Steam when the dam thing stopped working with an error message about something fatal and did not seem to recognise my username and password when I tried to log-in to the site. Got there eventually and had to delete most of my files in my Seam folder and reinstall, following instructions on the site, but the new version (presumably the changeover caused my problem) seems to have picked up my old games. More techo-aggo though, grrrrr!

Books

Still working through the lives of Crick and Cheney alternately. Interestingly, the biographer of the latter, who seemed very favourably disposed towards his subject at the start of the book, seems to be gradually distancing himself as his role in the Bush II administration develops.

Started to watch 'The pacific' at last, and looks good although I rapidly lost track of who was who in the mud. Also thought it very very strange to include in the first episode what can only be seen as a reference played for laughs to the opening Omaha beach sequence from 'Saving private Ryan', where the approach by landing craft, the faces of the soldiers, the fear and vomiting, were all the same, but their actual arrival on a quiet beach with only US soldiers around seemed almost a punch-line compared to the earlier scene of carnage that ensued. Is it just me or is this in very strange taste?

Otherwise, the most amazing thing I saw on TV the last few weeks (or in many weeks) was this act on (abashedly as I say it) Britain's got talent. I surprised myself a few weeks ago by including paintings in this blog, but I genuinely never saw me including clips of mad gymnastics, but this is quite simply incredible and jaw-dropping stuff (see it here).

On that surreal note, enough for today!

Josh Ritter helps me through high violet withdrawal

2010-04-30T20:04:00.085+01:00

Okay, last week I was high on violet, and now am down to earth because, just as the NYT gave, it has taken back. We were teased, tantalised, and excited, and now it is snatched back, held firmly in the grip of 4AD until May 11. Just enough to overwhet the appetite, and now back to waiting. Resorting to sad things like 'previewing all' in iTunes to get 30 second fixes of the songs. My Tweets this week have, I think, said it all. Anyway, back to the present, for now at least.

Music

The main non-National story for me has been Josh Ritter's 'So runs the world away'. I have previously posted at length about Josh and his music (see here and here), and I guess expressed a favourable but slightly ambiguous feeling towards him. The issue for me is a struggle between art and popularity, seriousness and goofy grins, throwaway pop and classic literate, almost poetic americana.

The good news is that, on this new one, he seems to have reached a new and happy equilibrium, and the pop bubbles of 'The historical conquests of Josh Ritter' (his last album) have given way to more grown-up and serious musical accompaniments, even if his lyrics are sometimes as funny and playful as ever. he has flirted with heavy serious in the past and done it rather well, as in 'Bone of song' or 'Thin blue flame', and the arrangements this time are mature and epic, yet melodic and accessible.

The old touchstones of Cohen an Dylan are still there, but joined, erhaps surprisingly, with a serious hint of Paul Simon on 'The lark'. Great tracks are 'Lantern', 'Southern Pacifica', and 'Folk bloodbath', which takes Nick Cave's entire 'Murder ballads' album and fits it into one gorgeous song. On a less favourable note (or set of dischordant notes) he has discovered his inner Tom Waits (the noisy kind, not the 'Martha' kind) on 'Rattling the chains' and 'The remnant', which I could do without.

A week after the album came out, we went to see him in Cork's Pavillion. It was, as ever, a ighly enjoyable good-natured gig by very talented musicians having so much fun it spilled over the audience. The last two times I have seen Josh he had the orchestra with him, which certainly seems to dampen his live spontaneity somewhat, it being understandably hard to go off on a tangent or experiment mid-song with 40 professionals trying to catch up, so he was looser with his regular touring band. His story-telling was maybe a little less evident than on occasion, and he seemed a little overly solicitous with the regular goofy declerations that 'this is great, right?' etc.

A full track-list for the gig was as follows:

Southern Pacifica/Change of time/Rumors/Rattling locks/The Curse/Right moves/Good man/Folk bloodbath/The lark/Long shadows/Monster Ballads/Mexican home (which I learned with a bit of digging is a John Prine cover)/In the dark/Me and Jiggs/Orbital/Harrisburg (featuring 'Wicked game' by Chris Isaaks instead of the usual 'Papa was a rolling stone')/Another new world/Lantern/To the dogs or whoever and then an encore of Moon River/Snow is gone/Wait for love.

That makes a long set (23 or so songs) with almost all the new album being aired, and I was impressed at how they recreated the complex sound of songs like 'Another new world' live. here was also a heavy emphasis on 'Historical conquests', but not regulars like 'Kathleen', 'Empty hearts' or 'Girl in the war'. The sound was good but the lighting, especially at the start, a bit mad. Besides Josh, Zak Hickman supplied most of the evening's personality, although the drumming by (is he Irish?) Liam Hurley deserves special mention, as does Sam Kassirer's keyboards. With their outfits and name (The Royal City Band) the band look as if they would be right at home as floating houseband on the riverboat on the cover of 'So runs the world away'.

As usual, I have a few clips from my trusty N95 and a good seat on the balcony (had trouble uploading to Blogger, so worked out how to upload to Youtube and then embed - a new experiment), and will start with 'Right moves', one of my favourites of the poppy ones on 'Conquests', as I always liked his vocal ups and downs on this, which give the song a lot of personality.

'Folk bloodbath' was also very good live, as seen below, and was followed by 'The lark', which was even more Paul Simon-y live than on record, as the evidence may show:

Starting with 'Monster ballads' he went solo for a few songs, and he started 'Me and Jiggs' thusly, in a very nice unusual version, before being rejoined by his accomplices mid-song, as seen below:

'Lantern' is definitely my favourite at this stage from the new album, and great live:

'Moon river' was an unusual start to the encores and during 'Snow is gone' he managed the not-to-be-underestimated feat of downing an entire pint of Murphys stout in one gulp and returning to song without an apparent breath (not to be tried at home), but the final 'Wait for love', a pretty inconsequential song on album, became a lovely closer mainly for the way the band (plus support Joe Pug) came together to sing at front of stage, their mutual affection and chemistry evident and rather touching:

All in all, a very good gig, as ever. Finally, under the music heading, I also went to eMusic for the first time in a while, and downloaded Joe Pug (supported Josh but didn't listen to much), Kissaway Trail (liked the sound of the first, although didn't listen too much, and the reviews of the new one were positive) and John Grant. Also, Cork band Boa Morte released their new CD, and I missed the launch (clashed with Mr Ritter), but will review the CD here soon.

Movies

Not much to report. Watched most of 'The time traveller's wife' until confusion gave way to sleep, blissfully. Nothing too exciting in the cinema either, but Screenclick has just posted me 'The taking of Pelham 123' (new version), so more about that next week.

Magazines

Uncut time, and a good-looking new American music CD, which I have yet to listen too, and High Violet happily made album of the month. Nothing else too interesting in reviews this month, although probably will check out LCD Soundsystem (I loved around half of 'Sound of silver', in particular 'Someone great'). Uncut also had a special stand-alone Springsteen magazine with old interviews and in-depth reviews of each album which I bought and am working my way happily through. I quite like these ultra-magnified specials on artists, depending on the artist of course!

Books

Finished 'The fight for English' by David Crystal; I am very interested in words and language, and was recommended this as a riposte to Lynne Truss' 'Eats, shoots and leaves', which I was always very fond of, and encapsulated much of what I feel about the modern abuse of everyday language. Must admit I still prefer Truss, but found Crystal clear (groan) and interesting.

Also currently reading 'Cheney' by Stephen Hayes on the iKindle (or whatever I should call it) and finding it absoultely fascinating, having a long-time fascination for the inner workings of the West Wing (particularly the series of that name); he has yet to turn into the prince of darkness (well, I have only got to the early 1980s - presumably he fights with Obi-Wan and falls into the volcano soon) and very interesting and well written so far. Finally, as I can never just have one book on the go, have also started 'Hunter of life's secrets', a biography of the great biologist Francic Crick by Robert Olby - dense and huge but I find this stuff fascinating, and am somewhat of an obsessive on Watson and Crick and DNA, having read almost every book written on the topic to date.

TV and media

Poor Jack is having a hard time on 24 (what's new?) but not much else to report this week. Found an interesting web-site on graphics and visualisations through the Sunday Tribune newspaper here. There is a beautiful graphic of timelines in science fiction movies and TV shows here, looking for all the world like particle tracks from the Large Hadron Collider.

On a final sad note, the Irish radio legend Gerry Ryan died this week suddenly, which is quite a shock. I remember seeing him in my university around 1989 and he gave a fantastic talk and was smart, honest, funny and likeable and I have some fond memories of his show when I should have been studying. A sad loss for Irish broadcasting, where he was a larger-than-life figure, smart, funny and brash.

The extra-terrestrial next door

2010-04-27T18:43:00.003+01:00

A shorter omnibus post today (and a few days late), as I have already put in a long one on the wonderful 'High Violet', but as ever a few things I want to share!

Music

Of course, the story of the week/month/year is 'high violet', and I have just posted my full track-by-track review of the stream from the New York Times Website. Wonderful, fantastic, epic, gorgeous. Nuff said!

One a non-National note, I have been trying to track down info on a French project I heard of called the Fitzcarraldo Collective (or Sessions) which seems to include several very interesting folks, such as Stuart Staples from Tindersticks, members of Calexico, Craig Walker from Power of Dreams, and others. I found some teasing little clips here and here. Need to find out more!

The other musical story of the week is that I bought Josh Ritter's new album, So runs the world away, on iTunes, and have been listening to it when not on-line listening to 'High violet'; it does feel a little like cheating on The National, but I can't be tied to an internet connection all the time (tragically). Anyway, as with all Josh's albums there are quite a few nice songs which just have this classic American feel of historical weight and folk authenticity, but yet also invoke the vocals and poetry of Leonard Cohen. Best tracks so far are the really brilliant 'Lantern':

And 'The curse', which I remember from recent gigs of his (a previous review is here). It is gorgeous, and hugely reminiscent of one of my favourites of his, 'The temptation of Adam', a typical boy-meets-girl, boy-loves-girl, boy-thinks-about-triggering-Armageddon-to-avoid-losing-girl song):

I am going to see John in Cork on 1st May, and review will follow, along I'm sure with more on the album.

Movies

A birthday party brought me to 'The spy next door', on which I have only one point to make; what was he logic behind all the wierd ET references, from the look of the house and the street to the Holloween scene and, in particular and least subtly, the mother's Catwoman costume? Could the ultimate message be that China is another planet, and Jackie Chan is an extra-terrestrial?

I also saw 'Kick ass' at last, and found it really enjoyable, as someone who is not a fan of superhero movies, and who found the Kill Bill movies left me completely unimpressed. It was much better than I expected, despite the reviews, and I liked the strange mix of believability (in the characters) and utter disbelief (at their actions). I know all that is wrong with applauding the actions of Hit Girl, but the actress is just amazing, and she has the best sweet scowl I ever saw.

Books

Okay, I finished Ian McEwan's 'Solar', with something approaching relief. The plot was certainly quite full (although most of the lines pulled up short at the end), I liked the time-jumps in the narrative, and the was subject interesting, but the central character, Michael Beard was just unlikeable, as were almost all other characters; perhaps I am shallow to say this, but that makes the book hard to like for me. Beard was to me so odious that I could just not believe how the only sympathetic character, Melissa, could be so in love with him. Also, while I am NOT a Nobel-winning physicist, I am (in part) a professional scientist, a keen observer of scientists in action, and a voracious reader of scientific biographies and studies of scientists, and to me, for reasons I cannot quite define, Beard did not feel like a real scientist to me. He felt more like a scienist character in a book than a real one, and that bothered me.

TV

The only thing to comment on this week is a wonderully funny clip someone pointed me to with a Welsh comedian called Rhod Gilbert on Michael McIntyre's show. It is just brilliantly funny, as seen below:

Gadgets and the web

Technology-related thought of the week; if PDF stands for Portable Document Format, what exactly is a non-portable document? Most of my Word files, even the big ones, fir on a USB stick. The only counter-example I could think of is perhaps the Book of Kells, because that is kept in a glass case. Strange.

I also loved the story of the Apple employee who left a prototype iPhone 4.0 in a coffee shop, from where it found its way to a very happy technology website, which leefully took it apart and reverse-engineered it as best they could (see article here). Apparently the rest of us will see the real thing in late June.

Finally, there is a new Irish website called http://www.joe.ie/ which looks like it will include some interesting stuff on comedy, music, movies etc., and seems to be a good one to keep an eye on.

High violet (of course, at last)

2010-04-23T17:46:00.040+01:00

A break from my new compendium-review posts for a very special single-topic post.

The New York Times, according to Wikipedia, has been published since 1851, and has established an internation reputation for the quality of its journalism, being associated with both scoops and scandals over its many years of existence. However, today must forever stand as a particularly proud day in its history, as it begins to stream 'High Violet' by The National, the band apparently having been spurred to do so by the leak of a poor-audio-quality copy of the album on-line.

So, after weeks of waiting, blogging and tweeting, I am now on a train and, while I do not have it in my hands, I very much have it in my ears, my head, and my soul. The link I am listening at is here. Perhaps it is the train, perhaps it is global server demand, but some tracks were much easier and faster to load than others, but it works, thank the lord!

Link also at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/magazine/25national-t.html?pagewanted=2

There is also a very nice extensive article on the band at that site, and another in today's Guardian here. Before I talk about the tracks, I want to comment on how often articles such as these refer to the loyalty of fans of The National, and that is one thing I have noticed very strongly in recent weeks, particularly through monitoring traffic on Twitter in recent days. I have said already that I have never been as keenly anticipating and prospecting (on-line) an album (e.g., through Youtube clips) but I have likewise never been as attuned to the global chatter of those as eagerly awaiting the album as I am. This has all made me realise how these on-line developments can add immensely to the richness and sense of community involved in loving music, which has to be experienced to be believed.

Okay, onto the album quick first reactions, from 1-2 listens each. I am sure emotion will be recollected in tranquility later to allow a more expanded commentary. At times like this I am quite acutely conscious of the limitations to my musical education, not knowing a chord change if it hit me, so what you read are the words of a fan, not an expert.

Overall: actually a bit less loud than I expected (no screaming noted yet!), but similar to me in mood to Boxer, and what a good thing that is. However, 'Runaways' almost stands out as being the quiet one, compared to more like that on 'Boxer', so I guess the album mainly hangs out in the mid-range, but does it really really well. No 'Apartment story' (now my all-time favourite of theirs) yet, but that one didn't register at first either. These albums are always growers, so I could, and quite like will, completely change my mind on the songs below, but it is good to capture the raw data, as it were, the fresh flush of the first listen.

Terrible Love: definetely quieter than I was expecting, but the reference point still most clearly 'Mistaken for strangers'. Vocals distant and, as commented by many, decidedly wierd ('it's a terrible love and I'm walking with spiders') but the pick-up in the drums around 2 mins 45 secs is, if not quite as dramatic as in 'Fake empire', pretty cool nonetheless, and the squall of raw guitars towards the end, battling with the punding drums, leads to a very dramatic start to the album (very different to 'Fake empire' or 'Secret meeting', for example).

Sorrow: I bloody love the way Matt sings 'I don't want to get over you'! This does not feel like a National track, but I have yet to decide who it reminds me of. Piano is lovely peeking in here and there through the track (as on many tracks here). Lyrics more conventional than usual, and perfectly fitting the title.

Anyone's ghost: Quite low key, but I like the drumming patterns (predictably enough) and it develops as it goes on in very interesting ways, with nice vocal harmony interplays in my ears as I type this. Not the stongest track, but, as mentioned above, my views may well change is all these songs take hold and build their nests in my head in days and weeks to come.

Little faith: The odd fake intro in the live clips translates into something very strange on album, reminding me for some reason of 'Violator'-period Depeche Mode. Then piano comes in and takes the song off somewhere else completely. References New York, as several of the songs do (it may apparently be 'Lemonworld') and makes several references to playing nuns versus priests until somebody wins, at which the mind can but boggle. The noisy bit comes in for the outro.

Afraid of everyone: Very strange and ghostly atmospherics, with Matt sounding at first like he is singing from a distance in a haunted house. Repetition of the title works very effectively, and one of my favourite vocal performances of the album. Play their classic 'hide the drums for a while and then bleed them in with increasing fury' trick very very well. I also really like the chanting at the end - chanting is a secret weapon they do not use enough, although it can take tracks like this and 'secret meeting' to incredible places.

Bloodbuzz Ohio: Already a firm favourite, which I have previously described as the epic widescreen cousin of 'Guest room', from 'Boxer'. Still reminds me more than anything else on the album of my old favourites like New Order, the Cure and Joy Division, with a very controllled fury of sound gradually building up.

Lemonworld: ah yes, the elusive 'Lemonworld', so hard to track down on Youtube, and from the articles and interviews so hard for the band to agree how to record. Thus the only song on the album so without any pre-conception baggage, and despite thinking how much nicer the apparent previous title 'You and your sister' would have been than 'Lemonworld', it sounds good. Another case of low-key yet insistent and persistent, with nice harmonies, but one of the shorter tracks on the album and the ending kind of snuck up on me unexpectedly. Lyrics more directly intelligible than usual (in common with several other tracks).

Runaway: Clearly the closest to the final trio from 'Boxer', particularly 'Racing like a pro' (perhaps this runaway ran away like a pro?), slow, stately, lovely, but perhaps never going to engage me without Bryan's drumming to keep me racing. The horns are not quite The National either, and I have never been a fan of horns (although they do work when not so noticeable in 'Terrible love'), so not sure about this one yet.

Conversation 16: Starts urgent and edgy, and a cool first line that sounds like 'I think the kid's in trouble'. Nice progression of movements and paces, and good vocal line. Vocals in general clearer and more decipherable on the album than before. Nice fake-out ending after which the song comes back with nice waves of choral background vocals (particularly prominent in the fade-out), and lovely drumming in the later stages.

England: In 'Mr November', Matt sang about how the English are waiting, and now they have got their song. Starts off very piano-led and kind of meanders around for the first while, wth circular motifs and vocals, before taking a dramatic turn towards the end (heralded by some strange horns). The National's song structures have tended to be quite idiosynchractic in the past, with things like choruses and verses not always following any classic logic, but their is a feel on 'High violet' of greater discipline in structure, more logical (if not always traditional or predictable) progression.

Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks: This one has Justin Vernon from Bon Iver on backing vocals, but not very overtly. Another odd-yet-cool opening line - 'Leave your home, change your name' - and an usually hummable and even singable chorus (whatever the hell it may actually be about), with an innate swell and weight which actually makes up for once for the lack of drums.

No doubt whatsoever, a great album (okay, call me biased). That's it for now (train nearly at destination Dublin). Wanted to get this out there, and more will follow.

Jonsi, Vampires, Kevin Spacey and more....

2010-04-17T21:08:00.015+01:00

Okay, time for the second of my new kind of experimental posts. Not as much cultural to report on this week as last, as pretty busy at work, but a few updates under the categories (no gaming time this week, alas) where something to report.

Music (of course)

Still in pre-High Violet frenzy, but it is dragging out a bit at this stage, and not sure if will make it all the way to 11 May with enthusiasm still at the early peak. Need more drip-feeds of clips and tracks to keep it going.

Also to be released in the meantime, but at a completely different level of enthusiasm (reasonable by any standards, just low compared to the National) is Josh Ritter's new album 'So runs the world away', due late April, and from which eMusic have made 'Change of time' available for download; it is a very nice song, with good martial drumming and lovely backing vocals towards the end, and I am confident the album, like all the others, will have a good few tracks to recommend.

I have also been listening, as mentioned last week, to the new albums by Oliver Cole and Jonsi. For the former, my favourite track from 'We albatri', by a mile, is 'Oh my girl', which may be a new example of the very rare species of classic Irish pop song I talked about a few weeks ago. The rest of the album has not measured up to that standard from the few listens I have given so far, but it may yet grow bigger and fonder. The original performance of 'Oh my girl' from TV which made me get the album is below:

I like the Jonsi album more, with much more pop accessibility than the glacial cool of Sigur Ros, and some very interesting rhythms, cool drums and eccentric instrumentation. The language remains both a differentiating factor and a barrier, as ever, but I do like it, and the stand-out track so far is 'Boy lilikoi', an unofficial video for which I found below:

Otherwise, the sun has come out in Ireland, and it always takes me a little while to readjust my listening habits to find something to listen to in the car which matches the sunshine after both internal and external darkness, but this week there has been quite a bit of Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown, which fitted the bill for now.

Books

I finished 'The strain', which I really enjoyed, despite never having much enthusiasm for vampire fiction, particularly the teen-angsty strain that has infected every book shop these day. I have not seen 'Twilight' but rather imagine those type would stand little choice against the animalistic monsters created when the foul virus infects humans in Del Toro's book. It ends rather abruptly, with many threads incomplete, but then I discovered that it was meant to be the first in a trilogy. This is both annoying on one level, and exciting in terms of future reading, but I was a bit frustrated when I first realised the game that was on.

I found a clip of Del Toro and his co-author discussing the book below:

And I found a trailer for the book below. I did not know you could have trailers for a book and I love the idea! There also also what seem to be lots of home-made clips and trailers for the movie on Youtube, which must be unofficial as the Internet Movie Database has no record of a film being produced of the book (yet). Just shows there are a lot of fans of the book out there with time and technology on their hands (how I wish I had more of both)!

I am now trying to finish 'Solar' (still not likeable in the least), but getting increasingly engrossed in Simon Singh's 'Trick or treatment', as he demolishes alternative medicine in a very well-written and convincing way.

Otherwise, mainly trying to exercise willpower to stop buying tons more books on Kindle (damn it for the astonishing facilitation it has brought to my buying books, and the temptations thus daily proferred), and restricting myself to downloading a few samples (a new biography of Dick Cheney, a figure of warped fascination for me, a book I saw ages ago about the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and some stuff a student recommended me by David Crystal on the English language - all on a list for the future).

Movies

Lots out I want to see (Green Zone, The Ghost, maybe Kick Ass) but no chance yet, alas. Hope to get to at least one before they disappear. Did watch a reasonably good movie with a good cast (Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt) tackling a fascinating subject: 'Recount', about the Gore:Bush Florida election scandal of 2000. It seemed a lot like a product of liberal Hollywood having a go at the evil Republicans (who featured some of the strangest haircuts seen for a long time), and the story would be hard to make uninteresting, but the movie did a good job, and there were some nicely managed jumpcuts between the opposing camps which were well scripted and edited to make the contrasts as clear as could be. Laura Linney put in a brave and fairly mad performance as Katharine Harris, who was apparently just as daft in real life as she appeared in the movie. Kevin Spacey is always watchable, but this was one of his slightly smarmy, very smart, not very likeable roles, and Keyser Soze was a long way away (best place to have the psychotic murdering Hungarian devil!).

When in London last week I caught some of 'Four weddings and a funeral' on TV, which is still a very very funny film, and is still completely undermined (not ruined, but a close run thing) by Andie McDowell; one of my favourite movie critic lines ever (the source I unfortunately can't recall) described her as 'wood dressed as porcelain', which is just perfect. I also was interested to see the guy who played the wonderully evil Steve Fleming at the end of the third season of 'The thick of it' looking almost exactly the same as a groom in the wedding - no wonder he looked a little familiar.

TV

No time for 'The pacific' yet but it is still there waiting, and I am looking forward to it. 24 still keeping me interested, and I have managed not yet to go looking on the Fox TV website to read guides for the next few episodes to spoil the surprises (which I must admit to having done the last few times), so the totally ridiculous twists (how could Dana have possibly got a job at CTU with 2 different sets of secret history behind her?) do come as more of a shock/surprise this time around. Have watched the start of 'Battlestar Galactica: the plan', but it seems to be clearly more in the style of later/heavier BSG (season 3 on) than the earlier style I much preferred, but enough promise there that I need to get back to it.

Not much else to report. I bought a radio remote adaptor for my iPod today which was reduced in price by 75%; there had to be a catch and there was - it doesn't work with the Touch. Ho and indeed hum. Have been discovering (a bit late) some great Downfall parodies on Youtube, my favourite (for professional reasons) being the one here.

24 days to High Violet!!!

A new-style Culture Collection

2010-04-06T22:13:00.041+01:00

This week, I was in London and Cambridge for a family holiday and was pleasantly astonished to learn of The National Gallery. Imagine a whole gallery full of images of my favourite band! Imagine my surprise to learn it was not that kind of National!

Okay, I am not that dumb (most of the time) but I did visit said Gallery to pay homage to a very different kind of culture to that usually featured in these posts, which made me then think that this blog was not quite what I had intended when I started it. It had evolved (well, it definetely was not intelligently designed) into something far more narrowly focussed than I had planned, sticking pretty much to music, with very few posts on movies and one on a book. So, I have decided to try an experiment, where each post, to appear weekly if I can manage it, will be a compendium of shorter reviews and thoughts on all sorts of culture I have encountered since the last post, roughly arranged into categories, which may not all feature each week.

Firstly, howewer, I want to digress (or, as I haven't started, perhaps it should be pregress?) about one of the best columns I have read in a while (which can be seen here) was by Donald Clarke, the Irish Times' excellent film reviewer, and concerned a theme which I will pick up in my post below. This concerns the fact that the internet has unquestionably increased access to eveything (music, movies, etc.) to an extent that would have seemed umimaginable only a few years ago, which has huge benefits, but does remove the thrill and excitement of tracking down a rare CD or hard-to-find anything. This is a point I completely agree with, and have blogged about before, but I guess it comes down to balancing the losses with the gains, which I will come back to below.

So, anyway, I am going to give the new approach a lash and start with a header which definetely will not appear every week.

Actual art

In a single wonderful room in the beautiful National Gallery lie, within an incredible 20 feet of each other (surely my ultimate happy place), my two favourite paintings ever, both discovered as a child (through a sibling's art magazines, I think), pursued through a study of art in school, and both attempted (poorly) when I tried to develop my own (very meagre but extant) artistic skills. I am very conventional in my taste in art, and modern art does nothing for me whatsoever, so these two paintings are 'The hay wain' by Constable and 'The fighting Temeraire' by Turner, and I have pasted them below (sure makes a change from Youtube clips, but I will get back to those shortly).

First is 'The hay wain'; I am far too philistine to explain why I love this, but it is just so rich in detail and evocative of place and time, and you can just almost smell the countryside. I am a city boy through and through but this for me is some perfect essence of the other side of life:

The 'Temeraire' is obviously very different, and this for me is a mood thing, so sad and ghostly, with the famous contrast of old ethereal past with dark demonic future; also, I love the moon and the ghostly shapes in the background.

So, there you go, probably not many posts even in my expanded repertoire of cultural coverage are going to focus on such matters, but when in London seemed a good place (real and virtual) tostart my new approach to this blog.

Music

Now this is me back on more familiar ground. In the last while, as my recent posts and tweets have made clear, I have been pretty dominated by The National and finding tracks from 'High violet'; I did find a clip of the missing 'Lemonworld' on Youtube, but the audio quality was too poor to put up here. I have found two early reviews of the album, one on thefly.co.uk here and the other on thevine.com.au here. The former review is track-by-track, albeit not very detailed, but the latter is very exciting to this reader (who barely needed more excitement on this one) with references to strings, harmonies and odd instrumentation leading me to hope there will be more of the wonderfulness of 'So far around the bend' than the live clips suggested.

Otherwise, I have downloaded Oliver Cole's eccentrically-titled 'We albatri' and 'Go' by Jonsi (from Sigur Ros); with travelling I haven't had much time to listen to them, so will comment in the next post.

Being in London, I thought I would include three London-related classics from my youth, though. The first is 'Up the junction' by Squeeze, which has a just wonderfully unique intro and a great story line:

Having spent a lot of time on London's famous public transport system, the second could easily have been 'Going underground' by The Jam, but I am going to go with 'Down in the tube station at midnight', which I always loved the menace of:

When I first moved to Cork, the anthem of my reorientation was 'strange town' by the Jam. I will finish this London triple-track with 'The queen is dead' by the Smiths, having managed to fit in a visit to the Palace during the week. 'She said I know you and you cannot sing/I said that's nothing, you should hear me play piano' is still one of my favourite Morrissey lyrics ever:

Finally, under the general heading of music, I was intrigued by a reference in a Guardian article to a new Twitter-like service for music files called mFlow, which doesn't seem to be up and running yet, and may ultimately be only available (at least at first) in the UK, but which I will keep an eye on.

Books

I have a habit of having several books on the go at any one time, and have been working through 'Physics for future presidents' by Robert Mueller (bit preachy but very interesting, particularly the very balanced sections on climate change) and 'Solar' by Ian McEwan (not a great reader of fiction, I have always found his books heavy going [although unquestionably technically incredibly well-written] and not very likeable, but the science setting of the new one interested me, and it is actually, perhaps for this reason, much more engaging to me, if still not necessarily enjoyable).

However, something has just happened which has completely and perhaps irrevocably changed my relationship with books for ever, just as (and for the same reasons that) the iPod changed my relationshop with music: the Kindle app for my iPod Touch. I did download eReader some months ago, but never quite worked out how to get books on to it and my iPod, and did download one book (about the CIA and the Bush II administration) only to discover I already owned it in hard copy, so effectively abandoned that effort.

Then, a few weeks ago, I came across a reference to the Kindle app somewhere, and downloaded it, followed by two science books I had seen in Waterstone's and found on the Amazon.com Kindle store. Then, I looked at Matt Cooper's book (Who really runs Ireland?) in a local book shop for €22, found it on Kindle for half that price and downloaded it. This one I actually read (not finished yet, as reading in parallel with the two 'real books' mentioned above and the one to come below) and discovered to my great surprise that I had no problem whatsoever reading the book on the small screen, no problem whatsoever. I started to weigh up the pros and cos of real versus electronic books; the pros are the convenience of not having to carry around a book, the ability to carry many many books around at once, the ability to read in low light anywhere, and many more. The cons of course are the loss of the actual physical artefact of the book itself, and the threat to bookshops, my favourite shops. The latter factor is actually a major guilt issue for me, but I am afraid the pros have gradually stifled and stuffed the cons, and I have rapidly become a zealous convert, and have gone mad on it this week.

For example, I saw a posted in a tube station for a book by Guillermo Del Toro (interesting director indeed, soon to be hero if 'The hobbit' works) called 'The strain', which I was able to get within hours through wi-fi onto my iPod (the downloading is so simple it makes using eReader look like defusing a nuclear bomb), and rapidly became hooked on. It is a fantastic blend of CSI-style procedural, science fiction and ancient horror, and completely captivating. This has proven the workability of the pod-Kindle, as I have read it almost everywhere in the last few days.

There is no doubt that my reading/consuming habits have undergone a paradigm shift. A few days ago I was in one of my favourite book shops of all (Heffers in Cambridge) and instead of leaving with a bag of books (Ryanair's baggage weight restrictions being one factor of course) I felt with a scribbled list, some of which I downloaded from Amazon (science books and one new history of world war 2) and two others (not available on Amazon electronically, but also the kind of hard-bound books that just need to be held) ordered on Amazon.co.uk (no postage for Ireland anymore!).

This is a profound revolution for me, just like the effect of the iPod on my music habits. My iPod had assumed a new role, as my pocket-bound library. Incredible.

Movies

Before leaving, I did get to see 'How to train your dragon' with the kids, and thought it one of the best kids' movies I have seen in a long time (if not in 'Up' class), with good visuals, good gags, great action (certain scenes even reminded me of LOTR) and a strangely moving final realistic note. When away, I saw 'Sherlock Holmes' on a hotel room movie channel, and it was absoultely great, and I really need to see it again (and probably soon). Robert Downey Jr is without question one of my favourite actors, and in this he is just great, and I particularly loved the final scene where he explains all the clues he picked up during the case with suitable flashbacks which suddenly made enormous sense, although they almost passed by unnoticed at the time; Jude Law, who I am generally ambivalent about, was also great, and the atmospherics and action were very well handled. Overall, much better than I expected and one of my favourites for quite a while.

TV

Having been away this week, I have not seen much, but my Sky-plus box is heaving with content for me to watch during the coming week and maybe comment on later; this includes episodes of '24' (liking season 7 more than the last one - more gritty and semi-believeable - by 24 standards - compared to African mercenaries breaking into the Whie House by an inderground river), the first two episodes of 'The pacific' (such a huge and terrifying campaign, both militarily and promotionally), Battlestar Galactica's 'The Plan' and a movie which looked interesting about the 2000 US election. Will have to come back on all of those!

Games

Not much time this week for games, barring Peggle and Scrabble on the iPod (the simplest can be the best). In another example of the change in access which Donald Clarke wrote so well about, I recently downloaded the full set of original Half-Life games onto my PC (including Blue Shift and Opposing Force) recently, once again acquiring the content without the packaging, without the physical excursion, but with reduced cost and infinite convenience. It is all a trade-off, and while I do recognise the implications of this for retailers, I am afraid I am clearly adopting a very new kind of accessing my culture, for better or for worse. With a few very busy weeks at work, all I have had time for is an occasional snatch of nostalgically working through this in recent weeks (graphics remarkably not as ropey as I expected for a 10-year-old game).

Other media

This bit of the column will consider podcasts (my favourite of which by a mile is Mark Kermode's BBC film review session uploaded every Friday evening, which I am listening to as I type this) and bits from magazines (I always read New Scientist and Uncut, get Empire every other month or so, and catch others irregularly, but still hold onto a decades-old habit of - guiltily but persistently - skimming all music and movie mag reviews in the newsagent every weekend) and newspapers (e.g., Irish Times and Guardian reviews on a Friday).

This week I will mention just one thing that caught my eye (besides the Donald Clarke column cited above). This month's Uncut (not a great cover CD, unfortunately) included a piece on 50 great lost albums, which referred to one by Paul Quinn and the Independent Group, and this in turn reminded me of my great lost song of all time, which I think I discovered through pirate radio in the early 1980s, and still absolutely love, while recognising that I may be the only person on earth to hold a flame for it. This is 'One day' by the aforementioned Paul Quinn but with Vince Clarke (probably at the time between Depeche Mode and Erasure, not sure where Yazoo fits into the chronology); it is simply wonderful, showing that synths can do epic when matched with a great voice like Quinn's:

Gadgets

I read a preview (perhaps completely speculative) about the iPhone 4.0 (5.0 MP camera, completely tactile casing?) with a probable release date of July. I decided some time ago that when the iPhone memory exceeded 32 gB (the size of my Touch) I would make the move, and recently read that they have worked out how to fit 2 32 gB chips into an iPhone and still leave room for the innards, so looks like I have only around 4 months to wait! Other tech news is that a Corsair 32 gB USB key died on me after 18 months of continuous heavy service - I had some warnings and most was backed up but it was a sharp reminder that these things are not immortal.

Finally, another stop on the London trip was the incredible Science Museum, where I saw a brilliant clip called 'On the move', which shows what a lot of inventive minds with time on their hands can achieve when let loose with the oddest objective and collection of bits and pieces ever assembled:

Okay, that's enough blathering for now (and I doubt may future posts will be this long - blame the novelty factor!). I think I like the new approach - hope some folks out there agree!

31 days to 'High violet', and counting down.

Two more new National songs

2010-03-31T22:31:00.005+01:00

Since my long post a few weeks ago with most of the tracks off 'High violet' by The National (still over 6 damn weeks from release), I have found two more tracks live on Youtube.

The first is 'Conversation 16', which I really like, and somehow reminds me of the sound (pastoral rock is the phrase that keeps springing oddly to mind) they introduced last year on the wonderful 'So far around the bend'; the horns and melody, vocals and flow are just lovely, and the drums are there as always to keep it different and stop it retreating into excessive prettiness. I also love the way, in this live version, the crowd gets fooled into thinking it has stopped, when it has yet some more to run, the kind of moment you will only get on a pre-release live version from a much loved band.

The second is 'Afraid of everyone' and this one also has me really excited, with the two featured here being among my favourites off the album so far. I love the slow but dramatic start, the way he keeps repeating the title line, such a vulnerable line, and the way the song gradually builds up and up, forcing the use of the word 'epic'. I also welcome joyously the return of the chanty end of a National song, so much missed since its peak in 'Secret meeting' from 'Alligator':

So, excitement still building in a manner no medical professional would recommend as safe. The released MP3 version of 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' must be in the top 10 all-time played on my iPod already, and I love it, having eventually come to regard it as 'Guest room's epic big brother, having that same majestic (slightly New Order/Cure) propulsion and restrained fury. In the past many National songs have sounded (in a good way) intense, closed-off and claustrophobic ('my mind's come loose inside it's shell') but this time I believe the album will feel widescreen and epic to a degree not previously associated with them.

31 days left, and counting.

Some 'old' Irish Music for St Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T19:10:00.009Z

Just a quick post tonight, but it is Saint Patrick's Day, and I thought I should mark the occasion with a few Irish music videos, as I did this day last year. This year, I thought I would delve a bit backwards, to the 1980s and 1990s, and some perhaps less well known (at least outside Ireland) songs.

The first is 'Friends in time', by the Golden Horde, which was from the mid-1980s, although the TV clip (perhaps deliberately?) looks like it came from the 1950s. I don't remember much of the Golden Horde bar this one magnificent, wonderful song (quite popular at weddings, apparently!), but it is enough that they should never be forgotten:

I do remember seeing 'the Horde' one or twice at outside concerts in Dublin's parks (called Larks in the Park), but the star of those shows, in my memory, was always the Hothouse Flowers, famously known in Dublin for being labelled by Rolling Stone magazine, no less, as the best unsigned band in the world. Their gigs, which i saw a lot of, were sort of mad free-wheeling things full of passion, energy and skill, which they somehow lost on record, although their debut single 'Love don't work this way' (with Maria Doyle Kennedy on duet vocals, not the version that appeared on their debut album 'People') remains one of my favourite Irish songs ever. I could not find that one on Youtube, but did find their summer classic 'Don't go', with a video I fondly remember from (ahem) the Eurovision, which I watched that year only because it was in Dublin, and this video (or perhaps a longer version) was shown at the interval:

That is one song which will always be evocative for me of an Irish summer of my youth ('the smell of fresh-cut grass, filling up my senses') and the other is this one, even older, called 'Summer in Dublin', by Bagatelle:

Hopping forward a few years brings me to 'Arclight', by the Fat Lady Sings, with a lovely unusual melody which lingers affectionately many years on. I saw them live a few times too, and they were great, and Nick Kelly (who I have also seen solo a few times, and whose e-mailing list I am still on) always seemed one of the nicest guys in Irish music:

I will finish off a few years later with 'Eve the apple of my eye' by Bell X1, an absolutely almost perfect song:

So, it may be raining, the country may be in tatters, the economy may be bust beyond repair, but on this national holiday, it is nice to remember we will always have our music, and maybe soon that is all we will have!

In frenzied anticipation of High Violet

2010-03-14T21:07:00.027Z

I do not know of any other band today besides the National for which I would get really really excited by the prospect of a new album, but the word on 'High Violet', due on May 11, really has me counting days and weeks. This is the kind of excitement I guess I had a long time ago for lots of bands. I can remember friends of mine being incredibly excited about 'The Joshua Tree' in 1987, and sitting in a living room listening to a sneak preview of four of the tracks on a radio show in a state of second-hand euphoria.

Now I can pretty much know how they felt. Obviously, I became aware of the fact that The National had a new album coming through their e-mailing list months back, and heard about the title and release date a few weeks ago. Then, a few days ago the track list was released on the album website:

http://highviolet.com/

That track listing is as follows:

Terrible Love
Sorrow
Anyone's Ghost
Little Faith
Afraid of Everyone
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Lemonworld
Runaway
Conversation 16
England
Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks

Over the last 2 weeks, I have come to realise (even before the track list came out) that there were loads of the tracks on-line, and I spent many hours at work, doing computer stuff while youtube clips played repeatedly in the background. Having the traclist made the searching far more systematic and easy, and now I have 8 out of 11 tracks found, which I have put in below, in order, if for no other reason than to make it easier for me (and maybe others) to have them all in the same place.

Track 1, 'Terrible love', was the first one I found on-line, probably the lowest hanging fruit through Google, and the clip is from the Jimmy Fallon show. First impressions of the song are that it is consistent with all the signals about the album being harder than Boxer, and I like it. It is quite a statement of intent to to move from the piano start to 'Fake empire' starting 'Boxer' in gentle mode, to the loud guitars here

The next track is 'Sorrow', which has not quite grabbed me yet the way some of the others have (although the guitar line is lovely), but I will give it time:

Likewise 'Anyone's ghost' is one of the newer ones I have found and has not had a huge impact yet, but I have do doubt my expectations of every song on this album may be a bit high!

I do, however, love already 'Little faith', the start of which switches from more loud guitars to a lovely piano riff and predictably great drumming, and I really like the way the guitar comes to the fore again at the end:

'Afraid of everyone' is not available out there yet (but i will paste it here when I get it!).

'Blood buzz Ohio' is so far my favourite track, perhaps predictably given the great drumming at the start; nothing I have heard so far has other than added to my conviction that Bryan Davendorf may be my favourite musician in the world today. This one really got into my head this week, particularly the line 'I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees', for some reason.

'Lemonworld' is not available yet either, and hopfully my immediate word-association wth U2 will not be too closely borne out!

There are, on the other hand, a number of versions of 'Runaway' out there, of which the below seems to be the best, being in a radio studio as opposed to recorded live; this is a lovely one, very reminiscent of 'Racing like a pro' from 'Boxer':

'Conversation 16' is not available yet either either, but 'England' is and again I really like this one. It does display the band's habit of building songs around quite repetitive lyrical constructs, and he song does go on maybe a little long before it changes gear towards the end and some really cool growling starts. This album is not going out on set of gentler ones like 'Boxer' did, as this breaks up the slowdown which 'Runaway' started:

The final track is 'Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks', which has also really worked its way into my mind (has an unusually - for the National - sing-along chorus I can imagine working really well in concert), and reminds me a lot of the mid-paced ones on Alligator, such as 'Karen' and 'Daughters of the Soho riots'.

I found a review of a show with much of the new material, including several of the clips above, at:

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/2010-3-12-the-national-preview-new-high-violet-material-at-tiny-bell-house-show

and some interviews about it at:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/03/the-nationals-high-violet-get-release-date.html

and with Matt himself at:

http://pitchfork.com/news/37727-nationals-matt-berninger-talks-new-lp/

I will keep this post updated as it would be nice to get the full album in advance. It is really wierd to get to know the songs this way, and I cannot think of any other album I have got to know live first before the album came out - basically, I do not think this could have happened before the Internet and the efforts of so many people at concerts with video cameras and access to Youtube. I am sure the real versions may well sound quite different, particularly when studio effects and flourishes that will not come across live are present; also most of the live versions tend to have the vocals a bit buried in the mix, making Matt's lyrics even harder to decipher than usual. I have been a little disappointed to see that the songs to date do not, in my view, follow the really interesting direction hinted at on 'So far around the bend' from 'Dark was the night', which was somehow non-rock and almost unique-sounding, whereas these songs are generally more direct.

Anyway, I am sure I will love the album versions, and it will be nice to get to know the real things after this strange on-line courtship.

Powerful dreams indeed

2010-03-14T10:26:00.022Z

In 1990, a college classmate gave me a tape of an album by a new Dublin band which he had bought but did not think much of; I gave it a listen and it blew me away. It was 'Immigrants, emigrants and me' (a title just as appropriate in Ireland now as then at the end of the bleak 1980s) by Power of Dreams, who were only an average of 18 when they recorded it. On the surface it was conventional guitar pop with a fondness for the loud-quiet-loud cycle, but somehow it worked its way into my head and my heart, with a clear maturity belying its creators' youth and a recurrin lyrical sadness, and tunes that burrowed into your consciousness and made themselves at home.

I went to see Power of Dreams at least once then, when I moved to Cork in late 1990, in the gone-but-not-forgotten club called Sir Henry's, when I thought they were great but way louder than on record. I also bought 'Positivity' and '2 Hell with Common Sense', their next albums, which both had good songs but did not match the majesty of the debut.

Years passed then, as they do, and I thought frequently and fondly of Power of Dreams, and on several occasions made efforts to find their classic debut on CD, scouring shops and websites to no avail. I even tried to use one of those yokes for transferring cassettes to MP3 to recover my overworn tape, but the sound was crap. Then, around a year ago, I checked (as I had many times before) iTunes to find 'Immigrants' and 'Common sense' there, and bought both in an instant before it turned out to be a mirage or hallucination. They were back in my life in proper sound quality and I listened quite a bit to the former over the months since.

Then, last December, I found them on Myspace, as I started to dabble there myself, and through their page discovered they were playing the Pavillion in Cork on the date I now call 'last night', and of course I went, bringing a friend new to their charms.

Support was provided by Tallulah does the hula, hu I knew my name only, but actually really liked, despite them being of a sort that does not feature much on my iPod: spiky, (almost) all-girl, old-fashioned (sixties meets eighties?). They swapped instruments, vocal duties and perhaps clothes (or maybe I was just confused) throughout, with 2 synths front and centre giving the sound a richness and their drummer was excellent. They were not favoured by a sound mix which buried the vocals too low (a problem also encountered by the headliners) but I was definetely impressed and want to find out more. A clip of them (no idea of the song name but it was one of their best of the evening) follows (apologies for faily poor video quality, as I had a great view from a seat on the balcony, but the N95's video zoom was somewhat stretched):

Then, after a reasonably long support set, Power of Dreams came on. It is not too many bands who can be doing a 20-year anniversary tour and still be younger then me (let's face it, they're not exactly the Rolling Stones!) so they did not look particularly elderly or anything, but my distinct memories of lots of hair and possibly red dreadlocks from Sir Henry's were left in the past as far more sensible haircuts prevailed, although a very 1980s studded belt may have been in evidence.

They started with a blistering 'The joke's on me' and the years fell away; assorted other cliches could be inserted here to make the point that they sounded just like they did back then. By the third song it had dawned on the that they were playing 'immigrants' IN ORDER, which seemed quite wonderful to me (although this rule became far more flexible as the gig went on and other songs were inserted, one was moved earlier, and the best was kept for last). Anyway, the first POD clip I have is 'Does it matter?':

They then came to one of my favourites, which is 'Never told you', which began this time with a savage drum assault (their drummer was superb throughout), and which I always love for starting very heavy (I think singer Craig Walker may have introduced it with some line about Megadeath), rising to a soaring chorus, and the slowing to a really cool vocal interplay towards the end. It cruises with uttter confidence through several songs in 3 minutes, and I always loved it:

Around that point in both album and gig came 'Stay', which in many ways encapsulates their sound, with guitars roaring but always in perfect fealty to the melody and vocals:

Later came the slowest and loveliest moment of both gig and CD, 'Maire I don't love you', which always struck me as having lyrics far more convincing and lifeworn than their years suggested possible:

The later stages of the gig included far more non-Immigrants material (only one of which was not familiar to me), including the great 'Untitled' from '2 Hell with Common Sense', and a song which definetely included a lyrical snatch of the Cure's 'Just like heaven' ('show me how you do it, and I promise you, I promise you, I'll run away with you') and, on the same theme, a rather unexpected cover version of the wonderful 'There is a light that never goes out' by the Smiths.

They did two encores, one of three songs and one of two, and, as I have hinted before, kept the finest wine of all for last, launching into a version of '100 ways to kill a love' which lifted the roof off:

It seemed clear to me that the audience were mainly men like me who, of an age like me, who got the albums at the same time as me, and may even been in Sir Henry's with me those years ago. This was an audience of long-time fans reconnecting with their youth and, much as I would have loved more young fans to be there and discover how this sort of music can sound when it is really really done right, there was a lovely sense of pride and nostalgia there last night which I found quite touching. Many songs had full audience participation vocally, from folks who knew every word, and I suspect some of those jumping up and down near the stage had not done that for quite a while. The clip of '100 ways' above captures some of this, which really reached its climax as the gig did.

Afterwards, I went mooching for merchandise and met Craig (I missed a CD of the anniversary version of 'Immigrants', with demos, B-sides etc, which I must now hunt for, but did get his solo album and their long-lost final CD from 1994). He was very nice as I unloaded some Murphys-stoked nostalgia on him, and told him that if they had only played 'She's gone' (from 'Common sense') it would have been perfect, but it really was close to perfect. He also said they would release some new material next year, so maybe it is not too late for the new generation to find out what they never knew they were missing.

Well done lads, welcome back, and thanks for bridging the gap from now to then.

Michael Stipe duets

2010-02-28T20:44:00.000Z

There was a time (the late 1980s) where Michael Stipe of REM popped up on all sorts of albums, usually to give an up-and-coming or unknown band some help or publicity. This was of course at the time when his main band were making probably some of the best music of their career (leading up to Green) and were poised at the tipping point between indie heroes and global superstars.

Some his protegees poked fun at this help, like the late great Vic Chesnutt did on his Stipe-duet 'Guilty by association' (which unfortunately I could not find any clip of on Youtube) but there remains no doubt that Stipe could add a tingle to any spine when he appeared in their songs. A classic example of this is 'Kid fears' by the Indigo Girls, which I did find a live clip of below:

I love the way he sidles onto the stage in the shadows and wonder how many of those in the audience at that gig knew he would show up. He starts his bit a lot higher than the spooky way he does it on the album version, which is well worth checking out.

Another band he supported around that time was 10,000 maniacs, and their album 'In my tribe' features Stipe on the jaunty 'Campfire song', which again I could not find on Youtube, but I did find another duet below:

I have recently written about the third in my trinity of lovely Stipe-vs-female vocals of that time, with Kirsten Hersh on 'Your ghost', but he also did duets with male performers, and I like the duet below on Patti Smith's 'Because the night' (which I love) with Bruce Springsteen:

And I will finish on a song which presented a rare case of Stipe including a duet on an REM album, which was 'E-bow the letter' on 'New adventures in hi-fi', seen here with Thom Yorke not being even slightly mistaken for Patti live:

I have written before on this blog about the best duets Stipe ever did, in my mind, which were again with Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs, in a guitar shop called McCabes, and which I have on very poor quality cassette bootleg. To hear them singing 'Leaving on a jet plane' and 'Sunday morning', together and simultaneously, and having the sort of fun one would not traditionally associate either of them with, is absolutely lovely and special, and I hope someday someone will clean up that audio and make that great show available again!

Hint, hint, hint.

A brontosaurus and four yorkshiremen

2010-02-21T10:47:00.001Z

You sometimes forget what riches are to be found on Youtube (scant roses scattered among the many turds, with a good nose or a trusty map needed to steer you right), and it was only recently that I thought to check what Monty Python material may be found there; the answer, apparently, is a lot.

Monty Python started on BBC the year I was born and ran for five years, until 1974, and was an effectively unique and never equalled mix of surreal imagery and humour. I did not discover Python in real time, being far more concerned at the time with learning to walk and talk (although I am sure my early efforts at both were silly enough to be consistent), and I actually first discovered it actually through the films ('Life of Brian', of course) and cassettes of the live shows.

There is so much to discuss on Python I think I will come back to it on several posts in the future, but I will kick off now with two sketches which are not perhaps as famous as the Dead Parrot or the Cheese Shop, but which I discovered on those early tapes and still love.

The first is the theory of Miss Anne Elk on brontosauruses, featuring a simply wonderful performance by John Cleese:

I particularly love the spin-off idea of 'Elk theories' scientific observations that are not theories but merely minimal accounts, of which I have come across a few in my ofter life in research.

The second sketch is of Four Yorkshiremen looking back from a position of comfort on their early lives and trying to outdo each other in painting the bleakest of pictures:

This sketch, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, actually predated Flying Circus, being first performed in 1967, but by a group include Cleese and Chapman, and never appeared on the show itself, although it was in their live shows (including the famour one at the Hollywood bowl).

I cannot say that all Monty Python shows were classics, or that every sketch worked for me, but there is a hell of a lot of gold there, and I will use Youtube to mine some more of it in the future.

Revised forecast for Snow (Patrol)

2010-02-07T20:20:00.000Z

A few nights ago, I was channel-surfing when I came across a show on Irish TV called 'Other voices', in which musical acts, national and international, play in a church in a (lovely) small town in the south west of Ireland called Dingle. On this occasion, I tuned in midway through an incredible souding song where several guys were making a very unusual choral wordless melody surrounded by strings, and my jaw dropped. The overall melody was only vaguely familiar, and then got more familiar, and then the main singer started back into a verse and I realised with quite a start that it was Snow Patrol playing 'Chasing cars'.

The performance can be seen below; 'Chasing cars' actually starts around the 5 minute mark (after another song and an interview clip) and I estimate I tuned in around the 7 min 52 seconds mark.

That is just simply incredible. I have always had a moderately favourable disposition towards Snow Patrol, and feel they are talented lads who know how to write a good song (much of 'Eyes open' is actually very good) and are almost relutant pop stars despite themselves. However, on the basis of the above, my estimation of them has increased hugely.

The other version of 'Chasing cars' I always liked was the mash-up by 'Partyben' where it was crossed intimately with the Police's 'Every breath you take' to quite interesting effect.

I also loved 'Set the fire to the third bar' with Martha Wainright, as seen on some European TV show below:

The final track I will leave this post with is what I think was the first song of theirs I heard, off an Uncut CD (of course), called 'On/off', a live version of which (unfoartnately not brilliant quality) I found below:

The original of that, without visuals, but worth including for the immaculate sound quality and lovely delicate acoustic sound, is below:

All in all, having listened to these songs as I constructed this post, I think it is time I gave Snow Patrol a lot more attention and credit in future. This last month in Ireland has seen levels of snow and ice almost unprecedented in the country, so maybe it is just appropriate, or nature was giving me a big hint.....

Florence and the Machine

2010-02-06T20:17:00.012Z

Finally downloaded Florence and the Machine from iTunes; there have been a lot of female acts in the last year or so which have sort of blended in my head into something which did not fill me with enthusiasm, but for some reason I took a chance on this one. It was actually partly her version of 'You've got the love' which I got on a recent compilation (of which more separately), and an accumulation of awareness of positive buzz building in my head.

Overall, I actually really like the album, although I definetely would not go as far as love (on this Valentine's Day). I have a wariness of mad artists, and female ones in particular, and have always been slightly scared of Kate Bush, Bjork and Joanne Newsome and such like. In this regard, Florence certainly qualifies as pretty mad, with the roars and musical eccentricities and wierd instrumentation, but there remains something charming about the album and it sort of swept me up in its rush of OTT energy.

Favourites include 'Dog days are over' (love in particular the opening of the handclaps):

I also really like 'Drumming song' (the name is enough for me) and 'Howl', which strangely reminds me of Josh Ritter's 'Wolves' (something about the lupine must bring out similar rhythms in diverse artists):

Continuing the theme of her songs reminding me of unexpected folks, the guitar at the start of 'Girl with one eye' reminds me of Billy Bragg's wonderful 'Levi Stubb's tears', which made it a bizarre coincidence when a search on Youtube found a duet below between the two, on 'Fairytale of New York', in which Florence's love of the harp lends thic classic a very unusual angle:

Having wandered from the album proper into cover versions, I will end with another totally unexpected find, of her singing Wham's 'Last Christmas':

I know Christmas is long gone, and I did a piece on these songs a few weeks back, and (crucially) it is not exactly a classic to begin with it, but it is still a good cover. Maybe 2009 wasn't as bad as I recently opined for new music, and there are more Florences out there I need to go back and seek out. Maybe.

Finding Greg Laswell via Grey's Anatomy

2010-02-04T20:09:00.006Z

Just a quick post to show what I love about the internet and how it has really revolutionised the way we can access music. I was watching Grey's Anatomy (or at least it was on while I was reading) when my ears tweaked up at the sound of a cover version of 'your ghost' by Kirsten Hersh (with Michael Stipe), a beautiful duet. Two minutes on later my iPod touch I typed 'your ghost cover version grey's anatomy' into Google and found Greg Laswell's name, which I then went to my PC and typed into eMusic, for which I have a subscription. I had 7 downloads left in this month's allowance, and lo and behold there was his 5-track 'Covers' EP featuring 'Your ghost', along with a nice version of the Bunnymen masterpiece 'The killing moon', and what follows below:

This, 'A woman's work' is apparently a Kate Bush song but his version is just incredible. That is the power of the worldwide interweb, from never hearing of someone to loving their songs in less than an hour. How did we ever do without it? Almost justifies the existence and budget of 'Grey's anatomy' by itself. Greg's homepage is at http://greglaswell.com/.

I will finish with 'Your ghost', but the original Hersh/Stipe version; I found ones with her singing live but this one, although not an actual video, does give the full effect of the duet:

Magic! Now I have just downloaded Florence and the Machine (finally) so need to work on that for a few days and get back with comments.

The end of the road

2010-01-22T21:09:00.000Z

Last Saturday night I went to a very very late show of 'The road', in a state of some anticipation. I read the book last summer in practically a single sitting, in fact sitting on a train when I should have been doing work, but somehow mesmerised by the spare stripped-back prose, economical and minimalist, but with occasional flashes of poetry, and occasional pretension.

When I heard about the film, all signs were good:

- Viggo Mortensen, a hell of an actor who redfined sensitive toughness you could absolutely believe in as Aragorn, enough to forget crap performances like 'Daylight' (well clearly not completely forgotten)

- director John Hillcoat, whose 'The proposition' was so raw and gritty you needed a shower after watching it, just like 'The road' should be

- music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, enough said

Bringing such baggage into the cinema, motly empty so with plenty of space to spread it around, it did not disappoint, and almost completely lived up to expectations and the book, to the extent that I could not imagine a more convincing bringing of McCarthy's blasted world to failing life. The actors were almost perfect, and some thoughts and slight issues are as follows:

1. The trailer is bizarre, or at least the first few seconds, which make it look like a Roland Emmerich film. The official trailer on Youtube is blocked, but I found a version with crap intro below. The first scenes are not even in the film, and come perilously close to explaining what must must muct not be explained. I heard an interview with Hillcoat on Mark Kermode's podcast where he said the studio did this and can only think - is that not illegal, immoral or just plain ill? Luckily I only saw the trailer after the film, but it could lure the unsuspecting into a false sense of what the movie is about.

2. The ending remains as problematic for me in the film as it was in the book. Obviously, the tale cannot have a conventional happy ending, and to end with a double death would be nihilistic in the extreme, as arguably would be the sight of the boy abandoned and alone. So, this is perhaps the only logical twist that could leave any residual hope (even if 5 - and a dog - are not all that much safer from the bands seen marauding than 2, and it is not like they had a map to Disneyland with them). However, it is still a little 'convenient', particularly in the film where time and geography are slightly compressed compared to the book. In another minor but significant change, the dog is not mentioned in the book, and a new referce to having followed them has been added, which lead to the question (due to the clarity of the incredible soundscape carrying barking sounds on several occasions) of how long they had been following, what they had seen and missed, and why they waited so long.

3. I have a niggling doubt about the boy, both in film and book. Somehow, I feel that he does not seem like he has not known anything else, and was born after 'the mysterious yet cataclysmic event'; I cannot help but think he too much of a sense of longing and missing which suggest knowledge of things being different, and that he would be somehow tougher and colder if all he had experienced was this awful world.

4. What does Viggo know about apocalyptic dental hygiene that Guy Pearce does not?

On a final note, I read where they found the boy in Australia and he is perfect, notwithstanding my comment above. The most amazing thing to me is how much he resembles the distinctive features of Chrlize Theron, emphasised when they wear the same hat - it cannot be accidental in the casting, and makes sure the father is carrying his family right through that long long road.

Anyway, enough nit-picking - a great book demanded a great movie which could not flinch from the source's grim and appalling vista, and on all fronts this was a success.

Tindersticks: a name so good they kept on using it

2010-01-16T18:35:00.000Z

What an album cover! I raved some months ago about the cover of Depeche Mode's 'A broken frame', and this is another stand-out, despite appearing incongrously as a picture in a character's house in Coronation Street some years ago. I haven't tracked down the original source. As well as the image, the word that appears is just wonderful.

What a name, and so beautiful it was not just used for the band, but also the album, and then their second album too. I must admit, if I had come up with a word so musical, so lyrical, so gentle, I would use it 'til it gagged too. I do have a theory that the name may have come from a Sude B-side, whose name escapes me but was on 'Sci-fi lullabies' some years ago (hilariously mislabelled by a Cork radio station at the time as 'Hi-fi melodies', which could not possibly be further from a likely Suede album title).

Anyway, this post is partly inspired by waiting for the new Tindersticks album, 'Falling down a mountain', but also by the fact that this must rank as one of my favourite debut albums ever. I have mentioned previously that I have a habit of buying each Christmas an album that appears on many critics' end-of-year best-of lists, and in this year (1992?) I bought Tindersticks on the basis of it's topping the now-gone Melody Maker's list. There are some albums which I can clearly remember my first hearing of, and this was one, as I bought it on casette in an underground (literally) record shop in Dublin called Freebird Records, and can recall slipping the tape into my walkman (it really was the dark ages) and letting 'Nectar' wash over me, sounding like nothing else I had heard to date, with the velvety hushed vocals and complex arrangements and warm dark atmosphere.

This is just an incredible album, sounding like no-one else (not even, to me, the Bad Seeds, to which it was most frequently compared), with huge ambition, long songs, and fragments and snippets, with it even being hard to match song names on the tape sleeve to actual tracks. It had (relatively) loud and angry bits (as discussed below) but its magic resides in the calm and still of songs like the astonishing 'Blood' (it has often hard to hear exactly what Stuart Staples is singing, but it may just contain the wonderful chorus line 'Where does the blood go, that runs away from broken hearts...'), 'Piano song' and 'Raindrops'.

The album's most high-profile (again, in relative terms) song (not sure if it was actually a single) is the great 'City Sickness', which encapsulates much of the albums faded grandeur, inherent sadness of purpose, and orchestral ambition (fully realised in later years by the band, as will be explored in later posts). I think I remember hearing in an interview at the time that they had a small number of strings which they recorded over and over (or something far more technical) to achieve the sound of massed violins, but however they did, it sounds great:

The nastier, dirtier side of the album (which I don't love as much at extremes like 'Paco de Renaldo's dream' and 'Her') does come across very effectively in the film noir menace of 'Jism':

I will finish with the quite breathtaking sound of 'The not knowing', which must be simply the most unexpected song to appear on an album by any band who could be even loosely said to be related to the genre known as rock music. This sounds like the clash between my music and classical music to me.

Obviously, debut albums by any band have the huge significance of capturing what it is that made them want to be in a band, and capture their life experience and ambition to that point, a far greater span than between any subsequent albums which also bear the baggage of their earlier work's reception and any fan's expectations. The debut, on the other hand, is like fresh snow and unspoiled, and sets out their stall. What a stall Tindersticks set out here, which they rarely topped in subsequent years, although their next albums (all 7?) all contain moments of beauty and wonder (they had not even discovered how incredibly they could duets, for example, in their first album), as I will come back to.