The end of the road

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. Click Here to Read More..

Tindersticks: a name so good they kept on using it

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. Click Here to Read More..

2009 on screen

I have blogged recently about how 2009 was not (in my own opinion) a particularly great year for music, but it was probably a much better year for movies and TV than several of the last few have been. In movies, I got to the cinema quite a bit, and enjoyed the following:

'Star Trek' - even as a fervent 'Wars-not-Trek' person I found this huge fun
'Terminator salvation' - I actually enjoyed, with pretty cool se4ttings and action, but not up to those that preceeded (even the third)
'The hurt locker' - hugely powerful, but perhaps not as overwhelmingly great as many critics said
'District 9' - very good but not in a huge rush to see it again (my review is here)
'In the loop' - favourite of the year, and much more below
'Up' - sweet, funny and really well done
'Avatar' - actually really liked it but for the Aliens-nostalgic scenes more than anything
'Public enemies' - very good but not as good as the book from parts of which it was taken
'Inglorious basterds' - liked quite a lot and reviewed it here

I did find 'Paranormal activity' very effective and scary and just different to the usual type of horror movie of recent years, and was a very good value use of the coffee budget on 'Avatar':

As usual, Mark Kermode's podcast guided me fairly well through the morass of movies to that which was worth the money, even if I ignored him sometimes. For example, I did find '2012' to be big bumb fun, because that, in some ways, are what movies are for - jaw-dropping moments where things are shown to you or thrown at you which are so far from everyday life that you cannot help but go 'wow', even as your inner brain knows it is crap; special effects can do stuff, and sometimes that stuff can be simultaneously incredibly stupid but yet gut-clecnchingly escapist, and that's got its place too, surely?

On DVD, the move of the year was 'In bruges', on which I will have a separate blog post soon. Other movie highlights were 'Doubt' (really surprised me as I was expecting worthy but dull and found it really intense and watchable), 'Fifty dead men walking' (a good thriller), 'Frost/Nixon' (liked a lot but not sure how badly I would want to see it again), 'Slumdog millionaire' (yes, yes, I know I should have seen it in the cinema), 'Gran torino' (that man is just class, let's face it) and 'State of play' (both the BBC original and the inferior but still decent remake). I watched 'Man on wire' on a flight to Australia and was just blown away by it, and rewatched on DVD.

Overall, though, the big moments of the year for me were actually made for the small screen, as I tackled several box sets. I did not make much progress on 'Weeds' or 'Jericho', but plan to return one day, and am most of the way through series 1 of 'The wire'; in that case, I can see what is great about it, but do find it occasionally slow and confusing, but will persist regardless. Hell, I had no idea what was going on in most episodes of 'The west wing' and it was still incredible! I also watched a lot of 'Battlestar galactica', which I really like, although I do really feel it got a little too abstract, dark and pretentious for me somewhere around the start of the third series.

However, the big discovery of the year was 'The thick of it' (all episodes, plus the specials, plus 'In the loop', and all several times over) which is quite simply brilliant. The writing and acting are just incredible, and Malcolm Tucker is one of the most intensely immense creations ever. It is amazing how few people know and appreciate it, but maybe that just makes it that little bit more special.

On-screen moment of the year (any screen, any programme) has to be episode 7 of series 2 of 'The thick of it' when Tucker is out-manoeuvered and fired, and suddenly the laughter fades and intensity threatens to burn a hole in the TV screen. The last 5 minutes of that show must be among the most incredible acted scenes I have ever seen, with so many details (Nicola's confusion and indecision at being there at the moment, the Sky news btreaking news ticker tape behind Tucker's back, his secretary's tears, his storming out of Downing Street) - truly astonishing stuff which simply sucked my breath away and left me in a state of shock, albeit without a single computer-generated special effect involved. Now that is class! Click Here to Read More..

Vic Chesnutt, gone but not forgotten

It feels like someone famous always dies around Christmas (although James Brown is the only one who springs to mind right now), and today I was saddened to hear (from an Uncut email newsletter) that Vic Chesnutt had died on Christmas day.

While he was very much of the Uncut 'genre' I have written frequently about in this blog, I first heard of Vic quite a few years before I read about him in Uncut, with 1995's 'Is the actor happy?'. That album featured a memorable duet with Michael Stipe, 'Guilty by association', which celebrated and bemoaned his sponsorship by his far more famous (then as now) fellow denizen of Athens, Georgia, as well as 'Gravity of the situation'. I read a bit about Vic then, and learned how he was rendered paraplegic by a car accident at the age of 18.

The famous (at least on these pages) Uncut CD 'Songs of the new west' then featured 'Until the led', a gloriously uptempo romp with Lambchop as his backing band, taken from their full album together 'The salesman and Bernadette', which I still rank as one of my favourites of the alt-country scene (although I do not necessarily think Vic fitted too neatly into even a category as wide-flung as that, and in fact I have no idea what category he ever fitted in to). 'Until the led' can be seen below:

I found some footage on Youtube of Vic with Lambchop, doing the latter's wonderful 'The saturday option' here:

I listened to Vic's later albums faithfully, and while none for me reached the heights of 'Salesman', there were always great songs to be found, such as 'Strange language'

And another uptempo romp in 'Band camp' from 2003's 'Silver lake':

The songs shown here, I think, demonstrate his characteristic and somewhat unmistakeable take on music and lyrics, which just didn't sound like anyone else. I have been listening today to a playlist of my favourite of his songs, which is as follows:

Arthur Murray
Band Camp
Bernadette & Her Crowd
Duty Free
Gravity of the Situation
Guilty By Association
Little Man
Maiden
Mysterious Tunnel
Old Hotel
Parade
Stay Inside
Strange Language
Until The Led
Woodrow Wilson

He also acted in the very good movie 'Sling blade', written and directed by Billy Bob Thornton, from which a clip featuring Vic can be seen here:

It seems clear from what I have read on-line, previously and since his death (e.g., see Guardian piece here) that Vic had a hard and troubled life, and that his early death (from an overdose of muscle relaxants) may well have been suicide. This is certainly a very sad tale, whose end was perhaps foreshadowed since that car accident left him in a wheelchair. All that can be said is that he left a great body of music behind, and made an impression on many, from those famous fans who have come out to praise him in recent days, to far-away fans like me. Click Here to Read More..

Albums of the decade?

As well as albums of the year, the fact that the year itself has a '9' in it has inevitably resulted in a slew of lists of best albums of the decade; this time 10 years ago we were worried about the Y2K bug, and had never heard of an iPod; now we are worried about swine flu, and the CD is fast becoming something we expect to see in a museum in the near future.


Some of the lists I have found are as follows:

Uncut magiaxine (of course)
http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/uncut/special_features/13807

The Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/29/albums-of-the-decade

The Irish Times:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2009/1201/1224259791948.html

E-music:
http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/decade_albums/index.html

NME
http://www.nme.com/list/the-top-100-greatest-albums-of-the-decade/158049/page/10

So, what are the big winners? Common threads (easier to pick out than for the best of 2009, as commented in my last post) are as follows, in an ad hoc assembled meta-analysis top 10 (no particular order, not scientific methods applied).


Arcade Fire - Funeral (my thoughts of this have been clear on this blog before)
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (respected, but not loved)
LCD soundsystem - Sound of silver (stole Uncut's 1997 poll from 'Boxer' but did like some of it)
Radiohead - Kid A (never warmed to it, ever, not inclined to try again)
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (liked but not loved)
The Streets - Any of them (must admit to loving 'Dry your eyes')
The Strokes - Is that it? (everything about it put me off, never tried it)
The White Stripes - Elephant (recently commented on this)


The absence of alt-country music from most charts (with the occasional exception of Lambchop's wonderful 'Nixon') betrays why my tastes for most of the decade diverge from the lists. I know I am just showing my age here but I would tend to moan predicatbly that my favourite decade for music (so far) is the 1980s, but of course that was when all was new and wonderful and I was impressionable and suddenly interested - such formative influences cannot easily be shrugged off.

I will finish with two tracks I do like from common poll-toppers, the first being 'Crown of love' from Arcade Fire's 'Funeral':

and the second is 'You've got her in your pocket' from 'Elephant' by the White Stripes.

The last two posts have been on the theme of how my tastes and those of critical analysis do not seem to align very well. In 2010, I hope to blather on some more about my tastes, and we will just have to see if they ever converge (as they did, albeit briefly, in 2008) again. Click Here to Read More..

Best of 2009 - back away from the mainstream again

It is close to that time of year again where multiple lists of the best albums of the year appear. In fact, I am being bombarded with two sets of lists, with one for the decade appearing also, but I will get back to them in a separate post.

At this point in 2009, I must admit that I feel a little let down, because I just don't think it was anywhere near the year that 2008 was. Where are my Glasvegas, my TV on the Radio, my Vampire Weekend? This time last year I wrote a post talking about how my tastes were suddenly in line with what every end-of-year poll listed, and wondered if I had been swept away into the mainstream (can be read here).

This year, I feel like I am on a different planet to the mainstream once again, gazing at it through a telescoope and straining to hear what sounds like music wafting towards me. I actually struggle to remember great albums this year beyond 'Wilco' by Wilco, from which the gorgeous 'you and I' (below) came:

In fact, my favourites have been compilations, specifically:

1. Dark was the night
2. Ciao my shining star
3. Music from the North Country (the Jayhawks)

The critics' lists have been quite diverse too, reflecting the lack of stand-out classics of the year. For example, Q magazine's top 10 were as follows:

10. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
09. U2 - No Line on the Horizon
08. Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
07. Muse - The Resistance
06. Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
05. Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers
04. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
03. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
02. Florence and the Machine - Lungs
01. Kasabian - West Rider Pauper Lunatic Asylum


While Uncut's are at:

http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/index.php?blog=6&title=the_best_of_2009&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I looked at the NME list and actually have not even heard of several albums in the top 10, and am astonished that I seem to only have 3 of their top 50. A few albums do pop up somewhat consistently, including the XX's debut, which I did download and quite liked, but certainly would not rave about. My favourite off it is probably 'Heart skipped a beat', as seen below:

The Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear all got a lot of mentions too (in most lists), and I have all three albums, but nothing really grabbing me there either! These are in theory the kind of US indie music I have been in love with for several years, but none of those albums have excited me.

I also usually buy an album this time of year just because it appears in the lists and I think I should give it a go; I am also struggling to pick this, but at present the most likely contender is the Wild Beasts one, as it featured pretty strongly (including being no 1 in the Irish music magazine, Hot Press).

Hopefully this is just a slump (whether for me or the music industry remains to be seen) and next year will be better! Click Here to Read More..

One Christmas song that slipped past

In my last post about Christmas music, somehow I forgot Mick Flannery's 'Christmas pas', re-released recently (after being on his first EP originally) with Kate Walsh guesting. Can't believe I forgot it but here it is belatedly in all its melancholic melodic majesty.

Better late then never!

Click Here to Read More..

In cautious praise of Christmas songs, for the season that's in it

I guess it is that time of year where I am allowed to think of Christmas music, after my December 1 moratorium deadline on the matter has passed. In fact, I quite like Christmas music, for exactly 5 weeks per year, when I let my soft sentimental side shine through like fairy lights in a snowy mist (see what I mean?). Yes I know it is naff as hell, and it may be psychologically impossible to like Joy Division and Christmas music and retain any musical integrity or sanity (perhaps that is the sanity clause?), but for this season I soften the edges of my musical field of vision to allow some stuff that wouldn't be representative of my playlists the rest of the year creep through.

Anyway, the original Christmas music of my childhood was the Carpenters' Christmas album, which I actually went and bought again in a fit of tenstively-induced nostalgia on Christmas day from iTunes around 2 years ago. I must admit that, Christmas or not, crap songs and cardigans or not, Karen Carpenter has one of the most pure and beautiful voices of all time, so I will start with some unashamedly unabashedly naff 1970s Christmas music (like I said, I have a seasonal dispensation for this stuff, just for one post):

Moving (swiftly) along, I remember a charity CD in 1986 for the Special Olympics which included some good acts doing Christmas songs, and the stand-out by a mile was a tongue-in-cheek version of 'Baby please come home' by U2, which I rediscovered below:

Of course, that Christmas was the time of the Pogues' 'Fairytale of New York' and I know it is pretty bloody obvious to love that one but it sure does have something, and the line 'we kissed on the corner and danced through the night' gets me every time:

Moving ahead by over a decade brings me to Sufjan Stevens' massive Christmas set of a few years ago; as with all his work, it takes a bit of effort and not all of it hits the target, but there are always a few gems, in this case 'Sister winter' and 'Come on, let's boogie to the elf dance', neatly anchoring the opposite ends of the hedonic scale of Christmas from solemn to silly magnificently:

Moving ahead once again (this is like a selection of Dickens' Christmas ghosts!) brings us to the Killers' 'Great big sled' a few years ago, which is a very likeable and fun attempt at getting into the festive spirit (as was their 'don't shoot me Santa'):

The final song for this post brings me right up to this year and Bob Dylan's completely unexpected 'Christmas in the heart' CD, which I like against all expectations. It is perhaps typical that I do not like his critically acclaimed stuff and, when critics hate something (like this), I actually really like it, not in a 'judging by normal standards way' but in a 'judging by Chritmas standdards (when taste is allowed to go out the window) way'. My current favourite is the very Poguesian 'Must be Santa':

Normal service and standards will be resumed next post!

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The many guises of Joe Pernice

Return to the new west (part 5)

For various reasons I have been quiet of late (mainly busy at work) but want to get back to blog business, so thought I would start with something else I have been slow working on - my series of posts on the Uncut 'Sounds of the new west CD', after a longer than intended gap. Got distracted. Anyway......

The Pernice Brothers were another act discovered through this CD which led to a significant musical relationship, first through the purchase of the CD from which 'Crestfallen' came ('Overcome by happiness'), which I really did and still like, particularly the title track. I then worked backwards through their previous incarnation as the Scud Mountain Boys, who made a few albums of low-fi beautiful acoustic country which sounded like it was recorded simultaneously outdoors while in a large barn. While they recorded some lovely cover versions (including 'Wichita lineman' and 'Gypsies, tramps and thieves'), their finest moment for me was the song about breaking up whose central lovely plaintively sung line 'I would give anything to make it with you, just one more time' was ever so slightly undermined by the song's title ('Grudge f**k').

The core of both groups, Joe Pernice, went through several incarnations in several years, in fact (like others on this CD), including solo albums and one under the name 'Big Tobacco' , and I was very happy to see him at least twice live in Cork's much-missed intimate venue The Lobby. On one occasion, he signed my copy of this 'Chappaquiddick skyline' (what a name!), which featured a cover version of New Order's 'Leave me alone' (evidence of the English indie-US Alt Country axis which sort of defines my musical taste); if you don't believe me about the signing, by the way, see the evidence above.

The Pernice Brothers went on to record 'The world won't end' (packed with great pop tunes including 'Working girls (sunlight shines)', which can be seen below, and 'Our time has passed') , 'Yours, mine and ours' and several others which I must admit I failed to follow up on.

I will end with a longer clip of them in concert, ending up with 'Overcome with happiness'.

I will now try and return to this series of posts on a more frequent basis; the Pernice Brothers was as good a place to restart as any!

Click Here to Read More..

Enabeling the Editors

My last post below was about Editors and the way in which thay have gradually won me over from initial enthusiasm to slight suspicion to general adminration over the course of three albums.

I ended the post with reference to some interesting and telling cover versions, of great songs by REM and Prefab Sprout. Since then I somehow came across another cover version, which I would not find a video clip of, but which is of The National's 'Abel', which can be downloaded below.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2d3wwmzcdzm

'Abel' comes from 'Alligator' and is probably one of The National's angriest hours, a loud and pounding growling headache of a song in the chorus of which Matt Berninger does some seldom-heard shouting. I find the song very powerful and have spent quite a few busy days at work with the words 'my mind's come loose inside its shell' echoing round and round my head (yes, I do know how wierd that seems!). Two versions of it can be seen below:

In many ways, I feel it a somewhat inevitable squaring of the circle to find Editors covering the National, different ends of my musical taste turning out to the closely connected other than in my headshell. And how do they do? Of course no-one mortal could get the sound of Bryan Davendorf's drums exactly right, and Tom Smith is perhaps too cool to let rip the way Matt does, but it is certainly a very good version, and well worth a listen.

Click Here to Read More..

Editorial Control

The Editors have been on my mind and in my ears a lot recently. I bought 'The back room' when first released based on very positive reviews, and my usual attention-grabbing keywords (Joy Division, dark, 1980sish) and, not knowing much about them, I loved it. I still remember the soundtrack to Christmas 2005 being 'Munich' playing semi-continuously in my car (it is, after all, a seasonal classic in waiting). This is still the stand-out track from their debut for me, as seen below on Jools Holland:

Obviously, the album really appealed to me, and while Tom Smith's voice certainly had echoes of Ian Curtis, the overall feel to me was individual enough to carve their own niche. Much of the rest of the album was very good, including 'Bullets', seen below:

I guess my enthusiasm (shallowly, I admit) faded slightly when I saw them on TV (never live), as they did seem that little bit too young and clean-cut to match the music; the term Boy Division did resonate with me. I did like a good bit of their next album 'An end has a start', but not as much as 'The back room', and my favourite track from it was 'When anger shows', which has a wonderful epic sweep to it, and sounds much less like JD:

I honestly would admit it was a decision to make as to whether to go for their new album 'In this light and on this evening' (great poetic title, and very Factory-meets-landspace art cover), but I paid my money to Steve Jobs through iTunes and gave it a chance, and it has certainly been a wise investment (the year is getting progressively better for music, after a slow start). I love the new synthesiser direction, and the new debts, obviously to Depeche Mode but also to OMD, especially the start of 'Bricks and mortars' below, which has a great synth build-up worthy of the best of the 1980s:

Of the other tracks, 'The big exit' keeps lodging in my head, especially the intertwining vocal lines at the end of the album version.

This is certainly their best album to date in my humble opinion. I will finish this piece with a comment on their particular gift for interesting cover versions, including REM's 'Orange crush' (below) which I think I first encountered on a Q magazine CD of cover versions of 1980s tracks some years ago:

However, the key discovery for me in doping research for this piece was a jaw-dropping cover version of the amazing Prefab Sprout song 'Bonny', which is off 'Steve McQueen', one of my top 5 albums ever, and which can be seen in a very unusual visual-audio presentation below:

The person who matched the song to a scene from the wonderful 'Control' (suitable for many many reasons) deserves some kind of reward, and Editors overall win even more respect from me for this wonderful version of an already classic song.

Click Here to Read More..

Forecast: hurricane

As mentioned at length in my last post, I have been listening to David Berkeley a lot, and one of the tracks I really like from his album 'Strange light' is 'Hurricane', which can be seen here:

For some reason, listening to this made me think of the Bob Dylan song of the same name. I have never (despite trying, if not all that hard, on several occasions) every really warmed to Bob (although I am inclined to give his forthcoming Christmas album a go, on the basis that I give almost every new Christmas album a go, sentimental sap that I am). However, this song is one my favourites of his:

Strangely, I could repeat the above paragraph (except the bit about the Christmas album) about Neil Young, including the spooky fact that my favourite song by him is 'Like a hurricane':

So, to conclude this short post, it seems I have a particular fondness for songs about hurricanes. I did test the theory a little further when I found the Black Kids' song 'Hurricane Jane' in my iTunes library. I downloaded the album on the strength of 'I'm not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance' (reminded me a lot of OMD) and never listened mush - this song is not bad, but somehow would like a little pale in the giant craggy shadows of Bob and Neil, glowering over it like rock's Mount Rushmore, so I will just stop here.

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Discovering David Berkeley

As I have said before, no matter how many albums you get, there is still an essentially infinite ocean of music out there; sometimes, this can fill you with the kind of existential dispair that you can get sometimes when you think about how really really really big the universe actually is, and how bloody small we and our small ball of rapidly rotating wet dirt are. There are undoubetdly all these bands out there you would love, and how you find them can often be part of life's great game of chance.

As a means of helping to introduce you to music you may like but have not randomly tripped over already, one of the great things about compilation albums like 'Ciao my shining star' (the collection of Mark Mulcahy cover versions released last week and which I reviewed in a previous post here) is getting introduced to new artists you have not heard of before.

In the post above, I commented about the cover of 'Love's the only thing that shuts me up' by David Berkeley, and got a very nice e-mail later from his management (one of the unexpected and really cool outcomes of my joining the world of blogging) inviting me to check out more of his stuff, which I did, and I really like tracks like 'Miss maybe' shown below: I like his voice and his style and my initial impressions from the Mark Mulcahy cover were only reinforced by finding tracks like this on Youtube.

I was then kindly sent a link to download his almub 'Strange light' and I have been listening to it all week and I really really like it. It may well in fact become one of my favourites of the year so far. His voice is the best thing; despite annoying me in terms of who it keeps reminding me of (I will get it eventually) it is still very unusual and uuniques and warm and expressive, and the songs he has are somehow familiar yet different. This is not the most different or unusual album I have ever heard, but yet it has a certain lovely feel and warmth. I guess my closest comparison is Bright Eyes (particularly of 'Wide awake it's morning' or 'When the brakeman turns my way' from 'Cassadaga').

One of my favourite tracks from the album is 'Oh lord, please come down', which is the kind of name that instinctively puts me off, but the song is just gorgeous and uplifting. There is a live in-store performance of it below:

My other favourite is 'Wilwaukee road', which has a driving pulse and roll to it which makes it stand out from many of the other tracks, but which I can't find a clip of to show here. One I did find is the first track, 'Hurricane', which can be seen here:

Another track from the same album and show as above is 'High heels and all':

I started this blog in part to try and maybe spout on about my favourite artists to others who may be interested in following up. I love the idea that that can sometimes work in reverse, with artists like David being brought to my attenion instead. I hope this happens more!

His myspace page is here, a Wikipedia article here and all Allmusic Guide section here.

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Uncut and me: reflections of a disciple

I have written on several occasions on this blog about how there has been no single greater influence on my musical taste in the last decade than 'Uncut' magazine, and how this magazine has completely changed my listening habits, particularly in terms of introducing me to the alt-country scene (as introduced here).

One of my original ideas for this blog was a project where I would explore each track on the seminal 'Sounds of the new west' CD from 1998, and I did the first few tracks in posts here, here, here and here. I have fallen a little behind on this project (4 tracks down, 16 to go!) but fully intend to get back to it, as these tracks and bands still mean a lot to me.

The key legacy of Uncut, actually (as well as all 150 issues which I have), has almost certainly been CDs like this and others, which have fallen into two categories:

1.Taster compilations of mostly new stuff out that month (e.g., unconditionally guaranteed);
2. Thematic compilations

CDs in category 1 have introduced me to more bands than I could even start to list, but a few that spring to mind (defined as bands whose albums I bought as a direct result of hearing them on one of these CDs) are Lift to Experience, Mark Mulcahy, Jim White, Marah, Songdog, The Mendoza Line, Clem Snide, Tom McRae, Slobberbone, Sufjan Stevens and, of course, The National (of which more to follow), and basically every band on 'Sounds of the new west'. These CDs became a trusted and reliable pointer for my musical antennae, accompanied by the high quality reviews in the magazine itself, and were collectively responsible for many hundreds of euros spent on music and many many happy hours of listening. Of course, I did not chase every song on every CD, but few months went by without at least 2 good leads to follow up.

The second category of CD was much more variable overall. There are quite a few Uncut CDs which never came out of the wrapper (usually collections of very old songs which inspired someone like the Rolling Stones); I know if I trust them on the new stuff, I should trust them on the old, but Uncut has always struggled on a fine line between homage to old stuff I know does nothing for me and the urge to reach into the future with bands which seem to me removed from the older stuff by a vast gulf. Other CDs featured sets of cover versions (e.g., Dylan, Springsteen), many recorded specifically for the occasion, and these usually brought a few gems to light. And then there were the stone-cold classic compilations, of which 'Sounds of the new west' stands as not only the best Uncut compilation ever, but also probably the best compilation of any kind I have ever heard for consistency of quality and theme; other good ones included follow-up alt country compilations, and one I remember very fondly called 'Only love can break your heart'.

My main problem (or disappointment) with Uncut in recent years is that the taster CDs have effectively vanished, and thematic CDs adorn the cover most months; I approach the newsagent every first friday of the month in hope of a good compilation, but too often my hopes are cruelly dashed.

However, this month's 'Uncut' (November 2009) is issue (take) 150 and they have taken the occasion to list the top 150 albums of this decade (whatever the f**k it is supposed to be called), and have marked the occasion with a CD containing songs by many of the artists on that list (Ryan Adams, Richmond Fontaine, Lambchop, Bright Eyes, Calexico, Willard Grant Conspiracy, Wilco, and others); that is a pretty impressive list and it is a very very good CD.

Regarding their top 150 list, they state by way of introduction that it was unashamedly a specialist's list, with no concessions to eclecticism or commerce; this has always been the great thing about Uncut, when they could put an album no-one heard of then or since (Sunhouse's wonderful 'Crazy on the weekend', for example) as album of the month.

Thus, delving into the list, I of course was comparing it to my own collection, and found that I owned 6 of the top 10 (Fleet Foxes, Ryan Adams, Arcade Fire, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Wilco and the White Stripes), 14 of the top 20 and overall 66 of the top 150. I had expected more correspondance with my tastes, given the massive influence, but I still know that there would not be anything like that level of agreement with an equivalent list in any other music magazine.

In the editorial of the magazine, the editor, Allan Jones, admits that everyone will have at least one album they are amazed was omitted, and for me there is really only one jaw-dropping shock:

Where the hell is 'Boxer' by the National?

I cannot say any more of the amazement and disappointment I felt on this score, and it makes me know that Uncut and I have perhaps just grown too far apart, and that our once close relationship will never be the same again.

Anyway, moving to what they did put high up, I will end this post with a few clips from a selection of their top 10 (+1) CDs of the decade so far:

11 Flaming Lips 'Yoshimi battles the pink robots'
As with all Flaming Lips CDs, I did like around half of this a lot, particularly the title track shown below, which I have very fond memories of live in concert in Cork in 2007 (wth a sing-song just like that captured below);

10 Fleet Foxes; again, I liked quite a bit of this album, but can't say I loved it, but 'White winter hymnal' (below) is far and away my favourite (followed by 'Mykonos', which appears not on the album but, appropriately enough, on an Uncut CD):

9 Ryan Adams 'Heartbreaker': Whiskeytown were my first major discovery from an Uncut Album of the Month recommendation, and 'Stranger's Almanac' remains one of my favourite albums. His solo stuff was of course far more variable in quality, but 'Gold' had mostly great songs. I was less impressed by 'Heartbreaker', but 'Oh my sweet Carolina' (below) is gorgeous:

3 Wilco 'A ghost is born'; this is probably my least favourite Wilco album (see my review of their latest eponymous one here) but 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)' is undeniably powerful and quite cool:

Their top album of the decade was The White Stripes' 'White blood cells'. Now, clearly this should have been 'Boxer' but, leaving aside this obvious fact for a moment (and it is a struggle), I have this and several other White Stripes CDs, and none have done that much for me. My favourite is probably 'Elephant', and mostly for the quiet ones ('You've got her in your pocket' is just beautiful). However, I accept that this lack of enthusiasm relates to my aforementioned problem with 'old' music (particularly the blues). In fact, the White Stripes are probably the band that best straddle the two faces of Uncut which point in such seemingly opposite directions. Anyway, I do enjoy the roll and energy of 'Hotel Yorba', so will finish with that:

I imagine I will keep buying Uncut every month because there is always something there for me, and the writing is excellent, but I need more of the direct contributions to my musical education provided by the taster CDs - I am sure I am not the only reader who pines for them!

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Alienation in South Africa: District 9

I got to see 'District 9' this week and thought it was very good, after being as usual partly expecting a disappointment after the hype. It was a good gritty thriller, and moved very interestingly through several moods - the start somehow reminded me an episode of 'the office', but very little of the rest of it did! I liked the lack of pretension in the special effects, which seemed to get away with a lot by not dwelling very closely or clearly on things most of the time. I found the protagonist very watchable and liked the way your conceptions and level of sympathy for him kept switching, and the baddies outdid even those they dragged out for Lethal Weopan 2 (perhaps it is neither fair nor surprising we associate a certain type of accent with cruelty from the movies alone); the chief MNU mercenary had a wonderfully craggy and evil demeanour, and could easily step into the title role of immortal 1980s actioner 'One tough bastard' when they inevitably decide to remake it.

I liked the casual and unshowy nature of what was being shown, and the way the presence of the aliens was taken almost for granted, not only by those in the movie, but by the audience, as they were introduced without the typical fanfare which one would expect a big sci-fi movie to show off their goods with. I also liked the way that I genuinely could not work out as I watched how it was going to end (a game I usually start playing even before I enter the cinema) which is very rare indeed. I did detect the watchful influence of Peter Jackson, particularly in the gorey bits and some of the action sequences, and the obvious nods to 'the fly'. There was also clearly 9and perfectly understandable) an alien influence, particularly 'Alien resurrection' with the labs and experiments and obsessions about controlling the military implications of the visitors abilities and hardware.

My only quibble really is that I simply can't work out why the aliens, who, while initially arriving in a very weakened state, ad certainly rediscovered some aggressive behaviour, did not use those massive bloody weopans and exo-suits themselves either for defence or offence.

To end, I will include the short movie by the director of 'District 9', Neil Blomkamp, 'Alive in Joburg', which starts to tell the story which the full film brings to life:

Quite similar in some ways but very different in most (multiple alien ships, not just one, and totally different looking aliens clearly due to the complete lack of CGI capability). Overall, a very good science fiction movie, and well worth a look.

(p.s. went to Toy Story 3D with my kids today - why did they bother? No discernable improvement due to the 3D to note, no new dimensions to classic shots, but still nice to see it on a big screen, I guess).

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