One glorious bastard

As Nice Guy Eddie so eloquently put it, 'first things f**king last'; I am going to spell it right, I'm afraid. Firstly (the admittedly pretenious reason), this is because as an erswtwhile education professional, I just can't knowingly and deliberately misspell it, having too much love, awe and fear of the English language for that. Secondly (the 'just because I'm odd' reason), 'bastard' is just a lovely word, full of hard angles and taking no nonsense, and putting an 'e' at the end emasculates it unforgiveably, mangling its sound and making it just herd; it may not be right up there with my all-time favourite words (like 'rumble' and 'squirt') but it has its unquestionable charm.

Anyway, we'll get to that film in a while, but first let me say that my all time trinity of unholy movies is 'The untouchables', 'The usual suspects' and 'Reservoir dogs', probably in that order. 'Dogs' blew me away (and most of its cast, which reminds me of a joke: where did the film 'Castaway' gets its name? because they just kept Tom Hanks and threw the rest of the castaway). It was one of those rare movies (basically along with the other two named above) which I saw on my own and then brought a succession of other people to see over the next few weeks, usually just to shut me up. It was so different and utterly cool, and mixed violence, music, great dialogue and humour in a way I had never seen before. The trailer below actually captures its essence nicely, if there is anyone out there who has not seen it yet (shame on you if so):

I really loved that film and it made the kind of impact very few films have. I bought the soundtrack, the screenplay, and almost all DVD versions; I know the dialogue mostly by heart (the critical evidence: 'Let's go to work' featured in both the introduction to my doctoral thesis and my wedding speech). This movie matters to me, seriously.

After that (the film, not the thesis or the wedding), it went progressively downhill for me. 'Pulp fiction' was no doubt good, in fact very very good, but I never rated it higher than 'dogs', except maybe for Jules, who was the best thing in it and possible Quentin's finest creation. I found 'Jackie Brown' a bit drawn out, frankly, and neither 'Kill Bill' (both seen in cinema) did much for me; I lost interest in 'Death proof' around half way through when watching it on Sky, and never went back to it. I believed (as did many) that the self-indulgence and pop-cultural obsessions has gotten the upper hand and that the hard-boiled thrillermaker of 'Dogs' was 'dead as Dillinger' (thanks Joe).

So, reading the early (Cannes-era) mixed reviews of 'Inglorious Bastards' (see, Quinten, I refuse to play your game!) didn't fill me with enthusiasm, but I still went along a few nights ago to see it, not expecting a lot, and I got more than I was expecting, basically. It is obviously no 'Dogs', and 'Pulp Fiction' is a lot better overall, but those are high benchmarks, and it absolutely cuts the ears off the others and sings softly into them before tossing them casually aside.

Now, I did recently read Beevor's 'D-day', so I do know for a fact that it is not completely historically accurate (I don't even know where to start on that one!), but that is not the point, although some subjects are probably a little sacred to be screwing around with too lightly (the true significance, the fundamentally unreducable horror, behind what Nazis like Landa are doing is never really acknowledged). However, if it is possible to reluctantly put this aside, leaving aside the question of whether one can or should, the film just works as great fantasy entertainment.

Nonetheless, it was far less fantastic than I was expecting, stylistically for example, than the 'Kills Bills', and had a certain (theatrical) historical quality which suited the subject era. The thrillery bits were appropriately thrilling (especially the tension of the opening), the linguistic gymnastics were at least different (and I liked the way the subtitles sometimes went wonky, translating 'merci' as 'merci' several times), and the acting ranged from the very good (mostly the Europeans) to the thoroughly enjoyable (I believe this is my favourite Brad Pitt performance ever, and his attempt at Italian in the cinema was a classic). I also must admit that I watched Pitt's final effort at preplastic surgery through my fingers; the difference to Dogs' scene where the camera tracked away from the ear-removal was notable, as Quentin has grown over the years to embrace his inner sadist fully.

Anyway, to lead into the inevitable clips, I offer firstly a glimpse of the aforementioned opening scene, showing the excellent Christoph Waltz as Colonel Landa of the SS (too many critics have praised this great performance to leave me anything useful left to contribute bar my complete agreement):

and, secondly, a trailer with appropriately European subtitles:

Yes, I have read all the reviews, and yes I know and understand what is wrong with it, and I am not sure if I will watch it half as often as 'Dogs' (although I know I do want to see it again), but it entertained, and amused, and thrilled, and was different but in a good way, and I don't need much more from Quentin; that is what he is good at, and we should expect no more than for him to do it as well as he can. For the serious movies, we have different guys who will do it much better than he can.

Its just that, for a while there he seemed to lose his way, and walked the earth like Caine from 'Kung fu', having adventures which were not always succesful (for, as we all know, the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and he tyranny of evil men), and talking increasing amounts of self-absorbed egotistical immature shite in interviews. Now, though, even if briefly, he seems to have found his path anew, just like Jules, and, once again, he is his own glorious bastard. Click Here to Read More..

A hidden nest of Jayhawks

Give or take, I have 10,000 songs on my PC, which I think is a reasonably sized music collection. I can't claim to love or even know all of them, but I have stretched my quest for music quite far, if within admittedly relatively narrow constraints.

However, in the cold dark moments, I know that this is just a pathetic drop in the musical ocean of recorded work; even allowing for the fact that I know I would not love much of the other music out there (most electronica, classical, most rap, most dance, anything that came from a reality programme...I could go on and on) I accept that there is probably music that I would love which I just have not yet found, and this does trouble me. Its not exactly the kind of existential crisis which wakes me screaming in the middle of the night, but it does bother me nonetheless.

I survey the vast gulfs of unexplored musical waters (almost everything before 1985, for example) and draw back from the edge, afraid that, if I started, I would not know how to stop. Nonetheless, there is an eerie feeling, partly exciting, partly scary, that comes from standing in a huge record shop, looking around and knowing that somewhere there on the racks could lie the best album I have ever ever heard, one which could change my life, except that I just don't know it's there.

Of course, the whole dynamic by which I and everyone else encounters and acquires music has changed, and the days of standing in very large record shops and feeling this wierd thrill are almost gone; I still remember being in record shops in London, L.A. or Paris and feeling almost dizzy at the fact that the selection would be different to that I could find at home, even if I would only be looking for stuff I couldn't find by artists I already knew.

Now, to find this huge range of options, I don't need to leave Cork; in fact, I don;t even have to leave the house. I can just log on to iTunes or any CD seller on-line, and access that vast vast range, and it is simultaneously even more thrilling and even more scary. TOO MUCH CHOICE. That is why I need guides, like magazine reviews (especially Uncut's), or recommendations on eMusic or whatever, to try and help point me in the right direction, and navigate me safely through the huge expanse of music available to me, like a musical GPS.

Eventually, my point, tortuously reached, is that I have just discovered the Jayhawks (because of positive reviews of 'Music from North Country', their new anthology) and I really really need to know why no-one told me about them before, considering most of the songs are over 10 years old, and I have been around that long. What vast right-wing conspiracy concealed them from me?

Their music is just gorgeous, perhaps a little on the safe and 'nice' side (like an alt-country Prefab Sprout or Martin Stephenson and the Daintees), but just basically a whole lot of loveliness wrapped in great harmonies and great melodies and instrumentation. The band had two songwriters (Mark Olson and Gary Louris), but Olson left in 1997; for more biographical details, the Allmusic guide page is here.

Thus, I will basically end this text with a gratuitous bunch of Jayhawks' videos (there has been more than enough blathering on already), starting with the beautiful 'Angelyne', which is unfortunately missing the start. Just marvel at how the harmonies intertwine at the chorus!

The next one is 'All the right reasons', which in this clip is Louris with Chris Stills, and is from 2008; again, what a beautiful chorus and lyrics.

The third clip is a TV performance, introduced by a spookily young looking Jon Stewart, of 'Blue', yet another in their seemingly endless supply of almost ridiculously lovely (I am seriously running out of adjectives here) songs.....

I will end with two of their slightly faster and louder songs; let's face, it, they are never going to be Pearl Jam (who I am listening too a lot also these days, and will be the basis of their own post soon), but it does show a different side of them:

That one was called 'I'd run away', and the next one is 'Tailspin'; the latter in particularly reminiscent to me of bands like Buffalo Tom:

I have just downloaded their companion comppilation of rarities, live bits, demos and b-sides (also called 'Music from the North Country, but sold separately on iTunes) and am very much looking forward to more catching up on lost time with their music.

This while 'missing out on great music' is certainly a real phenomenon and somewhat worrying; on the bright side, it does make the thrill of discovery all the more exciting, like suddenly unlocking a door into new and unexplored places.

Click Here to Read More..

Public enemies - book versus film?

I had bloody high hopes for 'Public enemies'; I had it built up into a cross between 'The untouchables' (the era, the suits, the guns) and 'Heat' (Michael Mann, bank robberies, guns, the good cop-bad robber duality, the technical excellence of the film-making), and such reference points raised my excitement levels to near dangerous values; I also like, if not exactly love, Depp and Bale. However, three weeks after seeing it, I am shocked to find that I actually remember very little about it, bar a general memory of it being good but not great, some confusion over telling which of the minor characters were which, and complete confusion about how Dillinger got away from the car in the field after the Little Bohemia shootout.

However, recently, the day before going to France on holidays, I was faced with a brief crisis as to whether Anthony Beevor's D-day (no irony intended, except maybe a tiny bit) in hardback was in every sense too heavy for the beach, and I impetuously bought Bryan Burroughs book 'Public enemies', on part of which (the Dillinger bit) the film was based.

Before book and movie, I knew little about Dillinger except some great quotes like the fact that he robbed banks was because that was where the money was. The movie filled in some more, and then the book showed that what it showed was a tiny shapshot of a huge canvas, like looking at the roof of the Sistine Chapel through a periscope; not only that, the bits that made it into the movie generally sloughed off their historical accuracy on being prised free of the page.

In his introduction, the author basically won me over irrevocably by saying he hoped the reader would derive as much pleasure from reading the book as he had from writing it, which I loved, and I certainly have proven him right. It is a hell of a tale, covering a whole cast of low-lives such as Machinegun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker and Dillinger himself. These guys all knew each other, and their reign of crime lasted less than two years (1933-1934) and criss-crossed the US and each other, which the fledgling FBI tried, frequently ineptly, to catch up. While the War on Crime was the making of the modern FBI, the genesis was pretty rough and amateur, and Melvin Purvis in the book is a lot less impressive than his filmic counterpart. With all the ambushes, killings on all sides, double-crosses, snitches, gritty (apparently authentic) dialogue and cast of colourful scumbags, it would be hard not to make an exciting story out of it, and Burroughs is a skilled story-teller who rises to and then far surpasses that bar. He has the ability to turn from lyrical descriptive prose to short hard-boiled declarative sentences as the story turns to suit the mood which adds a cinematic feel to the writing, the changes in style of writing acting as an analogy to changes in tempo of music to add emotional cues to a film.

In fact, the scenes in the book feel a lot grimier and dirtier, even bloodier (the descriptions of the aftermaths of gunfights, and crude plastic surgeries including fingerprint 'removal' are fairly graphic), and a lot more chaotic and less glamorous than the film, perhaps inevitably; one cannot help but wonder if a broader canvas would not have helped the movie, but this perhaps would have needed a much longer movie (or several, or a mini-series like Band of Brothers). In fact, I cannot help but wonder if Mann and his screenwriters picked out perhaps the least exciting threads of the book for their movie. Much has been made by critics (including my guru Mark Kermode) of the use of digital cameras for the film, and perhaps there was indeed something technically impressive but aesthetically sterile resulting from this that just did not suit the subject matter.

The book also includes several poignant and emotional scenes; strangely (I suppose), these to me belong to the characters from the wrong side of the cast of thousands. One involves Bonny (of ..and Clyde) talking to her mother about her impending violent death and asking her saying 'Bring me home when I die It's been so long since I was home I want to lie in the front room with you..sitting beside me. A long, cool, peaceful night together before I leave you. That will be nice and restful'. Goose-bumps for me, not sure about you, even if she was a deluded psycho-killer. Another involves Alvin Karpis, allegedly the brightest of the era's criminals, being released after a long stretch in Alcatraz and going to live in Torremolinos in Spain, where no-one would believe he was once a tough guy who knew Capone, Dillinger and Manson, and who eventually died of an (accidental?) overdose of sleeping pills; I keep picturing Ray Winstone in 'Sexy beast, for some reason, but with long years of (possibly) regret and incarcerated loneliness a far scarier monster than Ben Kingsley.

I found an interesting old newsreel clip on Youtube of the real characters as below:

As another thought, on reading the book and seeing how the FBI's 'War on crime' was marked by initial gross ineptitude and inexperience, with success only coming through increasing suspension of civil liberties, use of snatches of suspects on dodgy grounds, summary executions, and increasing levels of violence and torture, one can only reflect that a much more recent entry in the series of 'Wars on....' was not digging up new tactics after all, the enemy was just closer to home.

Anyway, I am actually interested to see the movie again now, to compare with the book; I know some parts where the real story was changed will annoy me, but knowing the depth of backstory will add a lot to it for me. However, I cannot help but conclude that this was a much better book than film, and urge anyone who found the latter even slightly interesting to immediately seek out and devour the former. Click Here to Read More..

A note on John Hughes

When I heard that John Hughes had died recently I did not take too much notice at first, remembering him mainly for some pretty basic kids' comedies a long time ago. However, a few of the tributes (including the home page on the Internet Movie Database) caught my eye and I realised that Highes did after all play a role, if relatively minor, in my cultural coming-of-age in the 1980s (clearly, as any reader of this blog will know, my formative years).

Some examples follow. Probably the biggest rite of passage for me, as for many others, was going to university, and I remember spending the afternoon before I started as a fresher, being well-aware of a sense of the end of one era and the start of another, at 'Pretty in Pink' in the Adelphi cinema (now long gone) in Dublin's city centre. Now that was not a great movie by any standards, and I do not think it would stand the test of time even if viewed now through a lens heavily blurred by nostalgia, but other Hughes movies would have more lasting value. 'Ferris Bueller's day off' was certainly a very funny if now very dated film, which was probably his high point, and must remain a teenage classic for the 1980s, while Hughes moved to more mature (at least chronologically) characters for 'Planes, trains and automobiles', which included a classic scene of male awkwardness which is very true to life, and which has since been much adapted for different circumstances in my life, as seen below:

Another thing Hughes did very well was selecting soundtracks for his movies, including the best song of Simple Minds' career in 'Don't you forget about me' for 'The breakfast club' (better than 'Pretty in pink' but not as good as the other two mentioned), as seen below:

Finally, as this morphs from a movie post into a music one, the best thing I will ever associate with John Hughes' movies was of course the title track for 'Pretty in pink', by the Psychedelic Furs, certainly one of my favourite 1980s' songs of all, shown in a very contemporary 'Top of the pops' performance below:

Even more finally, bringing the story right up to date, I really like (predictably) the National's cover version of the same song from a Daytrotter session, which can be heard here. So, to sum up, John Hughes was undeniably a part of the 1980s, and as I acted as a sort of cultural sponge during that decade, I soaked up some of his influence, and will take this opportunity to acknowledge that, and mark his passing.

Click Here to Read More..

Mick Flannery concert review

It's official: he is wonderful


First, a digression! Some years ago, I was stunned to see in a local pizzeria a poster for a gig by Mark Eitzel (of American Music Club, who I love) playing in a pub right across the road from where I was living at the time. I remember thinking that it was the exact opposite of the old line about 'well, I wouldn't cross the road to see them....'. I had gone to Dublin to see AMC before, and it seemed he was returning the courtesy by paying me what was almost a personal visit.

This month, I was similarly gratefully surprised and impressed when a pub near where I live now, Treacy's of Ballincollig (Co. Cork), which has established a new folk club, announced it was to host Mick Flannery on 11 August and, while the tickets for that sold out quickly, we got tickets for the extra gig added, due to the demand, on the 10th.

The room used for gigs holds only 100 people, so this was certainly an intimate experience, with no-one more than 50 feet from the band in a sort of L-shaped arrangement. The 'support' was as good as I could hope - the National's 'Alligator' and 'Boxer' being played before Mick and his band came on stage and during the break he gave mid-show!

And, as for the show itself, well I think I have finally surrendered any lingering doubts I may have had about him; he is without doubt an incredible performer, song-writer and musician, and surely one of Ireland's greatest musical treasures, who deserves to be known and loved far beyond these shores.

Live, he has an almost OTT nervousness and self-deprecation (tonight's gig featured several references to the misery he was inflicting on us, including finishing by saying 'now ye can go back to being happy people', and he also admitted that he hadn't much of a stage presence), but when he plays he gets lost in the music, and that voice and playing take over and it is magical.

He started with a lovely 'Safety rope' from 'White lies' before spending most of the first half of his set playing songs from his debut 'Evening train'. For the first time that I have seen, he explained the 'concept' behind the album, about two brothers and the girl who came between them, and the whole thing made so much more sense as a cohesive tale, adding immensely to the power of the songs; there are very few artists doing this sort of thing today, and the idea that he did this for his debut while still in his early 20s may explain why he won an American song-writing prize very early in his career.

Back to the gig, he did a gorgeous guitar-led version of 'California', the lyrics of which I love for their spot-on conjuring of a man lost in a relationship which has gone far beyond his depth ('Lady, come into my room/I pretend I'm sleeping/Half an eye on you./Slow, you take off your clothes,/You knew I was watching,/Said 'How'd ya like the show',/Then I told ya I loved ya and you said/'Yeah I know'/And I thought I could die/Before I'd ever let go'.). And then, shortly after the break, after a mumbled apology for probably f**king it up, he played the most perfect version of Tom Waits' 'Martha', a song I love so much we named our daughter after it, and I finally surrendered to the greatness of the man (Mick that is, Tom's was never much in doubt).

In terms of clips, the room was very dark and my (usually) trusty N95 struggled with both the light and an unexpectedly low battery, which gave up before the break (so no footage of 'Martha', terribly sad to say). However, I did get 'The gutter' below (and, yes, even in poor light, it is on its side, being filmed in portrait, and not being able to work out how to rotate the clip - enjoy the sound anyway!):

He played three new songs on the night, all beautiful, including one called (I think) 'Cut me close' and the one below:

As a final sign of my conversion to true believer, I want to point out that Mick's albums can be downloaded on iTunes, Amazon.com (here and here) or Amazon.co.uk (here). He is on the Allmusic Guide here, his Wikipedia entry is here, his Myspace page is here, and his homepage is here. I can do no more for ye - go and find him now!

Click Here to Read More..

Mick Flannery gig review preview

Just got back from a Mick Flannery concert in my local pub, Treacy's in Ballincollig, Co. Cork and it was absolutely brilliant (much more enthusiastic detail to follow). The full review with clips will follow in a few days (probably the weekend) when I get a chance to upload the clips and write the review.

Just to whet the appetite, I found this clip of a concert of his in Cork's Opera House in 2006, playing 'When I've got a dollar':



And, to further whet the pre-whetted, a clip of him and Lisa Hannigan playing 'Christmas past', which he didn't do tonight:



Full review of tonight's gig will follow soon! Click Here to Read More..

High marks on the Gray-scale

I honestly did not have it in mind to do a David Gray post any time in the foreseeable future, as I had never paid all that much attention to him since he became rather famous for a while in the late 1990s; prior to that, I bought his first few albums and had been to see him live in Cork a few times in the early 1990s. My memories of his gigs are vague but I do recall he used to shake his head from side to side quite a lot as he sang, almost so much one would fear it may fall off somewhat disconcertingly mid song.

To be honest, since then, I have had liitle cause to ponder much on him until I read the interview below in the Irish Times Weekend supplement of 8 August.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2009/0808/1224252211919.html

On reading his comment about feeling so much gratitude to the people who went out and bought his CDs, how he knew it was a big deal for them and how he did not want to let them down, my estimation of him rose around 1046576% (and that is a rough estimate). This is exactly how I would imagine I would feel if I were someone who made money from their art (of whatever sort) but have never heard anyone put into words so eloquently, humbly and admirably. This is so far from the kind of rock star arrogance (best exemplified for me by bands like Oasis) that it puts them to shame for once and for all.

I was so impresses I had to log a quick post on the subject to say well done and admit that I have a whole new appreciation of Mr Gray. Imagine my further pleasant surprise when I went looking (as Yousual) on Youtube for a clip to accompany the post (as is my wont) and found the following highly likeable cover version of the Cure's 'Friday I'm in love':

I think the David Gray reassessment exercise will be rather dramatic from here on in. I also found a nice audio (no video) clip of him covering another of my long-ago favourites, in Soft Cell's
'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye' here.

To finish up, my favourite of his own songs comes from his debut, 'A century ends', and is 'Shine', as seen live here:

As a final note for tonight, I have started a new experiment, putting short posts on Twitter (see right-hand column), which I will use for quick thoughts and short reviews or comments on books, movies, CDs or anything else, and hope to update as many days as I remember and get time. So far, I haven't much of a clue of what I am doing but that just adds to the fun of it! Click Here to Read More..

More Joshing around

Josh Ritter has shown great interest in rummaging through his own back catalogue for some time, with several live albums and acoustic special editions of his first studio albums, and t strikes me as strange that he has yet to revisit the obvious starting point of hid eponymous debut.

I first saw him live in the late lamented Lobby bar venue in Cork, where many US musicians crowded onto a tiny stage in a room that held 200 maximum and was defiantly for listening gigs – silence and attention were demanded when an act was on stage; I think the record for maximum number crowded onto the tiny stage was for Willard Grant Conspiracy, at around 190 band members! Anyway, Josh had just released 'Me and Jiggs', which I had heard, and so I went to the gig and it was clear he had a Cork fan club already, with a general air of adoration afoot which was quite unique/ Anyway, the gig was good and I bought his CD after, in a plain brown card sleeve with his image hastily sketched in the centre.

The album then and now sounds like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen got mixed up in some giant blender into which someone threw great piles of distilled enthusiasm and essence of joy, to compensate for those gentlemen's lack of demonstrable quantities of either. He plays and sings like he is rooted in his roots but arching to break for the stars, his singing often seeming like he has so many thoughts and words to get out that they can't fit out his mouth properly, and collapse out in a mad rush of jumbled but consistently charming images and melodies.

Some tracks are as pretty as anything he wrote later ('Beautiful night', 'Potter's wheel') and erudite images and references abound, while his trademark wit is everywhere evident (my favourite line being 'she said she was from Delaware, I said oh it must be gorgeous there'). However, it is the hidden final track which I love most, and which I always called the scientific love song, but is actually (I think) called 'Stuck on you'), which can be seen (and listened carefully to!) here:

I remember hearing that he studied science in university, and it shows in this song's wonderful play on sciency terms and images in something which is so cute it could easily be nauseating, but absolutely isn't. This is probably the only song off his debut which I have heard him play in later gigs, and even then not for a few years. Its spiritual successor is probably 'The temptation of Adam', one of my favourites of his, as below:

However, sticking to his more hard-to-find rarities, particularly those which can be filed under charming, I also love his version of 'Tonight you belong to me' (which I first came across i the Steve Martin film 'The jerk'), which he duets with Erin McKeown (I actually saw her support him once in Cork and they did the duet live) below:

The final clip for now is a new song he played at the Cork Marquee concert recently, called 'the Curse', which seems to continue his occasional fascination with Egypt:

To return to my original point. I have never understood why he seems to have disowned his debut (it is now hard to find and not sold at his gigs); let the campaign to have it reissued start here! Click Here to Read More..

The warring faces of Counting Crows

Has there ever been a band to so delicately tip-toe and pirouette along the line between unforgiveably naff and somewhat cool as Counting Crows? Picture when they first appeared in the early 1990s with 'Mr Jones', a decent pop song but with a video that made them look as cool as a still-warm freshly-dead rat; the horrific evidence can be seen here. I remember being vaguely aware of them when they sauntered onto the so-called scene, but they first made an impression anonymously by hearing their album unbenownst to themselves and myself in a bar, and asking after being impressed who it was, to be told it was Counting Crows. I still remember buying 'August and everything after' in HMV in Grafton Street in Dublin, on cassette, and walking along one of the side streets that led to my favoured assortment of book shops, when 'Round here' almost stopped me in my tracks and left my jaw gaping somewhat comically.

Here is the Counting Crows paradox in a nutshell:

On the con side:
1 They look crap
2 Their name is crap
3 They are a hair's breath away from being Hootie and the Blowfish or one of a million other anonymous guitar bands

But, on the pro side
1 An occasionally astonishing way with melody
2 Adam Duritz's voice
3 Repeat 1 and 2 ad infinitum

The pros win; the cons are amateurs. Their debut, the aforementioned 'August etc.', is simply one of my top 20 albums of all time. I have seen Duritz interviewed and he does not always come across particularly endearingly, but on song his voice does it for me every time, the way it just sometimes comes close to cracking like his heart is crumbling in hurricane. I heard something about him having a condition which makes empathy difficult, but his songs to me and in particular his delivery make this almost possible to comprehend. The way he sings lines like 'she has trouble acting normal – I have trouble acting normal' and (in particular) 'she's always on my mind' in 'Round here'. 'Round here' can be heard here, and a live version seen at:

Another truly great song on the debut is 'Anna begins' which again mixes the touching ('every time she sneezes, I believe it's love, and oh lord I'm not ready for this sort of thing', 'cos if it's love, then we're going to have to think about the consequences, and she can't stop shaking, and I can't stop touching her...') with the banal and bizarre ('her kindness bangs a gong, it's moving me along') but mostly stays in the right side of gorgeous as it builds to a great crescendo. It can be seen here:

Finally, 'Raining in Baltimore' with its plaintive vocals and simple piano tune is just forlorn and lovely - a live version with some of 'A long December' is below:

Live, Counting Crows seem to constantly battle between their rock and their unplugged natures (their most recent album 'Saturday night and Sunday morning' was based around the admission of this tension), and this, mixed with an apparent determination never to play the same song the same way twice, makes the versions on the acoustic side of their early live album 'Across a wire' of several of the 'August' songs well worth catching.

I will come back to their later albums later (hence the name) as all bear moments of tender beauty and musical magic and melodrama amidst the rockist noisiness, but for now just want to celebrate their undeniably impressive debut.

Click Here to Read More..

A perfectly framed image (and album)

Depeche Mode - A Broken Frame

Just look at the image above - what an album cover! Initially, of course, it was intended to appear in full twelve-inch square glory on a real album cover, being released in 1982, but successive versions on tape, CD and download have progressively reduced, stretched and digitised its glory. I must admit that I always, without thinking too hard, assumed it was a painting, perhaps by some 16-17th-Century Dutch painter, like Rembrandt or Vermeer; while the colours were too, well, colourful, for most of what I associated with that time, the costume and general epic gloominess of the piece, one peasant hapless in the face of the oncoming thunderstorm, seemed to fit the era and country (does anyone else think that moving from punishing puritanism to pot'n'porn in just a few short centuries seems a lot like cultural overcompensation by the Dutch, as if so embarrassed by their conservative history that they have sprinted to the opposite liberal extreme?). Anyway, it turns out (of course) that it is a photo, and modern, and taken not far off the M11 or somewhere. Doesn't reduce the majesty altogether, but maybe just chews away a tiny bit.

But what about the music it adorns? The album is Depeche Mode's 'A broken frame', which they apparently regard as their worst and tend to generally disown (given their favourite colour scheme over the decades, they may well regard it as the white sheep of their family), but I regard it as my favourite synth-pop album of the early 1980s (and there we lots of them around at the time).

I was 13 when it was released, and didn't but my first LP until around 1985; I think, God help me, that that landmark may have been the Thomson Twins' 'Into the Gap', but I did recover somewhat with my second investment, Alphaville's 'Forever Young', which still sounds very good to my ears (I was relieved recently, after buying it on CD in a fit of nostalgia, to read the Allmusic Guide referring to it as a landmark album of the time, and the title track is surely some sort of sadcore classic).

'A broken frame' wasn't even the first Depeche Mode album I bought, that honour going to 'Some great reward' (which contains the jawdropping 'Somebody', which still sends shivers up and down my spine every time I hear it, particularly the live version on '101'). Conventional wisdom may have put their early phase as their most poppy and light, but I find 'A broken frame' to be as overcast in mood as the sky on its cover, with an overhanging gloom and angst permeating the lyrics and unperpinning the superficially shiny synths, and most songs running over 4 minutes long; in fact, the cover is a very apt metaphor for the album's mood, with a dark pall hanging over a colourful spot, the light retracting in the growing shadow.

The album is a break-up album, and most songs are about missing, losing or leaving someone, with references to 'emotional violence' stabbing though the songs like purified crystalline angst (typical other line: 'Now hear this my friends. I'll never be the same again. Gonna lock myself in a cold black room. Gonna shadow myself in a veil of gloom'). Even 'See you', which sounds at first listen like the happiest poppiest Depeche Mode song, rings with sorrow and pain at missing someone in a way that makes me feel like a crap confused teenager all over again. A really old clip of them doing the song on the legendary music show 'The tube' can be seen below (by God, they look young, and so far from their black and leather era):

The key track is the closing 'The sun and the rainfall ', which is surely, after 'Somebody', their greatest moment; the initial drum machine buildup and climactic vocal interplay are just epic. A (presumably unofficial but interesting) video is at:

It is strange that, despite the fact that my turning 21 coincided with the start of my enduring relationship with music with guitars, I can still go back and listen to a completely synthesised album like this one now and, whether through nostalgia or what, just love the sound. Listening to the album again recently, I have even found myself frequently humming the instrumental 'Nothing to fear', as it worked into my brain and refused to leave.

This is another of those occasional posts where I just rabbit on about albums which have made a significant and lasting impact on me; chronologically speaking, this is a perfect place to start.

Click Here to Read More..

The darkest part of the cave

While rummaging through various bits and pieces rapidly accumulating on my shiny new Sky-plus box, I found and watched a BBC special on Glastonbury (mostly at fast forward, to avoid losing my eyesight through looking directly for too long at Tom Jones), and stopped abruptly at the appearance of Nick Cave; that man and his band could stop traffic, let alone a remote control. The first track shown was ‘Red right hand’, never one of my favourites, but the subsequent performance of ‘Mercy seat’ took my breath away, and needs to be seen here. Not appearing on Youtube (yet?) I scoured the vast plains of the internet more widely and found it on Vimeo (new to me!), from which the embed below comes.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Mercy Seat (Pro Shot, Glastonbury 2009) from maicasajusta on Vimeo.

Look at that! Look at those terrifying and grizzled men, and try and work out how they can in theory belong to the same employment and planet as people who appear in the charts today or on X-factor. Look at Warren Ellis’ biblical beard and those two mad drummers (this song has always been driven and its dark mood dominated by drums), and Cave himself (definitely better without the moustache) like a mad and deadly spider, attacking the keyboard beside him reluctantly but dramatically at key moments. And, of course, just listen to that song, and the apocalyptic confluence of music and lyrics, and the chant of doom into which the song builds, with the cycles of chorus going round and round like a doomed madman circling his cell while the hour of execution approaches. This is clearly not a song designed for daylight, which ill-fits the performance – the darker live version below works in some ways more explicitly; it is like the difference between watching ‘The exorcist’ in the afternoon or at night with the lights off.



Of course, as I have mentioned several times before on this blog, one of the most fascinating things about Cave is the difference between this kind of loud demonic scariness (albeit always melodic and lyrical and with an undeniable dark black beauty) and the Cave that can create things of soft and gentle beauty like the first six tracks of ‘The boatman’s call’, much of ‘No more shall we part’ and some of ‘Nocturama’ (especially ‘He wants you’). No artist, as I have said before, swings between such extremes of light and shade, and below is a version of this song which is delivered solo at the piano (by an unusually neat looking Nick, definetely the good cop to his own bad cop in the clips above), and crosses the lines between dark Cave and bright Cave, like a concert at the line on the moon which divides the light and dark sides.



There is also a lovely acoustic version of this on Cave’s B-sides and rarities compilation from a few years ago. To finish, I will offer a fourth version of the song, but give Nick a break, by showing Johnny Cash’s famous interpretation, which places the song in a while different, ancient and biblical, context, still scary but in a calmer, more deliberate, and infinitely more weary way, like the difference between Robert De Niro (Cave) and Joe Pesci (Cave) in ‘Goodfellas’.



As a final thought, I would almost seem more fitting if the song was originally Cash’s, with Cave the cover version, so entirely at home does it seem within the older outlaw country tradition within which Cash came to his tremendous power. How would this song have rung through the halls of San Quentin prison, I wonder? Click Here to Read More..

A review: Josh Ritter Live in Cork

Last night, I was at the Josh Ritter gig in the Marquee in Cork and want to post a quick review. The Marquee is a large tent, and tonight was full of many people intent on having the usual euphoric experience that is one of this guy's gigs. Now, having got that dreadful pun out of my system, I will get to the review. I think the Marquee is a good venue for gigs because (a) it is around 10 times bigger than anywhere else Cork has to offer and (b) the sound is actually good for a large bloody circus tent. Over the years, I have seen great gigs by Nick Cave, the Flaming Lips and Antony and the Johnsons there. Tonight, it was Josh's turn.

First, we had Lisa Hannigan in support, whose album 'Sea sew' had never honestly done much for me, bar the wonderful 'Ocean and a rock'; the rest seemed somewhat theatrical and artificial to me, but live she was a much more intriguing prospect, with a great voice and an interestingly awkward and hence sympathetic demeanour (her Ian-Curtis-like marching on the spot dancing was quite unexpected); I am certainly inclined to give the album more listens now, and perhaps go and see her indoors in a much smaller venue, where she is said to thrive.

Then Josh himself came on and played from 8.55 to 10.40 or so, accompanied by the Corkestra (?!), a 24-piece orchestra plus his own normal touring band, with everyone very natty in suits and ties. This was maybe my sixth or seventh time to see him live, mostly in Cork, and he has always professed great fondness for Cork, which he nicely brought in by a short pre-first-song list of dates (plus who he supported, or who supported him, which was a very nice touch) of each gig he has done in Cork since first coming here with the Frames in 2001 or so.

This sort of leads to the main Josh conundrum; if he was not quite so utterly nice, would he be bigger in critical terms? I can never quite place him into a neat category, which I think is one of the problems. He is a very talented musician and song-writer who can write deep heavy songs ('Bone of song', 'Thin blue flame'), and whose music, despite his Irish links, remains as pure a case of Americana in its influences and references (his songs are scattered with American historical nods) as anything more traditionally classed as Americana, if not quite classifiable as alt-country. On the other hand, he smiles a lot and can seem to effortlessly throw off great pop songs in a way that most of his more serious contemporaries could or would not deign to do, and which seems to rule him out of the 'folk' crowd entirely. The question, so, is whether he would be taken more seriously if he had a more tortured air about him (like Lisa Hannigan's former partner in song), or whether he should ditch the serious side and crowd-surf into the arms ot teen pop acclaim. By refusing to choose either path, but to walk instead the fine line between, he remains an equally admirable and likable phenomenon, no mean feat.

In the Marquee gig, he brought a 24-piece orchestra with him. I saw him in Vicar Street in Dublin in December 2008 with (the same?) orchestral backing, and somehow the orchestration was more in-your-face on that occasion than last night (they seemed to sit out more songs at the Cork gig), perhaps because of physical distance from the stage; we were seated in the stands, as can be seen by the fairly crap video quality my N95 could manage on zoom, although the audio quality was as good as ever and the main reason for my uploading the clips here (think of the video clips perhaps as an impressionistic portrait of the gig, with blotchy pointillistic bursts of colour triggered by the impressive light show, a modern gig as it would perhaps be depicted by Monet, if he were making videos today). The set was fairly familiar from gigs of the last few years, although he did not start with 'Idaho' as he seems to often do. Highlights for me included a particularly wonderful version of 'The temptation of Adam', which is one of my favourite of his songs, mainly for the lyrics and the story they tell, which I absolutely love; a video clip follows:

'Kathleen' was predictably a crowd-pleasing sing-along and involved the conductor 'conducting' the audience (see below), as in Vicar Street (I actually put a clip of that song from that gig on a post a while ago here), while he did 'Bone of song' with a solo violinist, which was very cool.

Having an orchestra who can't easily get up and walk away kind of removes any slight air of mystery about whether there will be encores or not, and for the closing 'Empty hearts' he brought back on Lisa Hannigan and her band for a sort of mass sing-along celebratory ending, again contrasting with the sole intensity of some of his quieter stuff in a way which neatly encapsulated the enigmatic duality of Mr Ritter.

Two final thoughts:

1. I find really interesting the fact that he is currently deconstructing his songs in two completely different and diametrically opposing directions from their original band format. Zooming up the scale is the use of the orchestra live, but zooming down strips them back to solo acoustic versions of his first two albums (so far) which have been released in the last few months. These special editions, in very nicely packaged sets ('Hello starling' has just been released and the copy I bought last night was pre-autographed by the man himself - see opposite for the proof) feature the original album plus the solo version, and it is interesting to hear big big songs like 'Snow is gone' sounding as if recorded by the Scud Mountain Boys in a big echoey barn. Again, not something many of his contemporaries would do, and the experiment is all the more welcome for it.

2. He has made clear at several gigs in the last few years his issues with the Bush adminsitration, and took the opportunity last night (4th of July!) to indicate that he was far more content now, and marked the occasion with his own violin version of the 'Star Spangled Banner' (which he said was his first time playing violin on stage), ending in a very dramatic appearance by the star of the song itself. He did pretty good if I am any judge, but you can judge for yourself below.

p.s. my last post was about the new Wilco album; since that post, and until yesterday and my attempt to reacquaint myself with Lisa Hannigan, I have listened to nothing else. It gets better every time, and is definitely their best and my album of the year so far, by an incredibly long shot.

Click Here to Read More..

A ghost is exorcised

For a long time, I have managed to suppress memoried of a band called Living in a Box who promoted their album 'Living in a box' with the single 'Living in a box' (in 1987), but, strangely to report, Wilco, almost the antithesis of those 1980s' one-hit-wonders-thank-God' have made me think of them, with the first song of their new album 'Wilco', off their new album 'Wilco'; I have managed to forget completely and quite contentedly what the eponymous song by the earlier exponents of the triple-decker-name sounded like, but I am pretty sure it did not start off sounding like the Velvet Undergound's 'Waiting for the man', like the new example does.

Wilco came from the ashes of the very alt-country Uncle Tupelo, and didn't move too far for their debut, 'A.M.' (1995), although 'Being there' (1996) and, in particular, 'Summerteeth' (1999, to my mind, their masterpiece) were near-perfect collections of pop gems and lovely ballads (of which much more to follow), but then they went a bit experimental (2002's 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot') and then very bloody experimental (2005's decidedly odd and a bit scary 'A ghost is born') and then retreated from the future to the 1970s (in 2007, if you can follow) with 'Sky blue sky'. In between they did two mixed but generally lovely albums of versions of unreleased Woodie Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg ('Mermaid Avenue volumes 1 and 2') and a good live album ('Kicking television').

They have really covered a lot of ground in their music, from country to Radiohead and, while they have gone through quite a few line-up changes, their mainstay, Jeff Tweedy, always struck me as a basically decent and very talented guy (as evidenced by the pretty brutally honest documentary 'I am trying to break your heart' and some recordings of live solo shows I have seen and heard).

My main concern today, or rather source or some excitement, is that Tweedy seems to have found what I regard as his true voice again. Missing from the last several albums has been that vulnerable hoarse quiet voice that was just made for quiet love-struck songs, not mad computer-driven hard drives of noise with lashings of angry guitar bolted on top. I mean the voice that starts 'Via chicago' with the wonderful line 'I dreamed about killing you last night and it felt alright to me', as seen below:

I mean the voice that sings the wonderful tribute to Paul Westerberg of the Replacements that is
'The lonely one' :

And I definetely mean the one that sings 'We're just friends'

I downloaded the new album Friday and listened to it in the car yesterday, and might as well have just spotted a space-ship in terms of my reaction when I heard 'You and I' and knew that wonderful voice was back again, long-lost but never forgotten. And then there was 'You never know' ('pure 'Summerteeth' pop excellence, existential clouds banished by piercing sunshine), and more downbeat familiarity in 'Country disappeared' and 'Everlasting Everything'.

Put in such familiar territory, the experimental flashes of songs like 'Bull black nova' are far less intimidating and much more likely to gain my sympathy. I had started to worry a little that no album of 2009 so far had really excited me, but this may just be the one.

Welcome back Jeff. You have been missed.

Click Here to Read More..

The arcade fires back

In this blog, I have meandered previously about the Genius function of iTunes and its apparent obsession with Arcade Fire. After months of watching it dutifully and predictably insert their songs into the playlist for just about any song I could think of, I decided today to do an experiment; this is sort of part of one of my day jobs (how obscure can I get?) and so it seemed a natural idea which, as with many ideas, mainly made me wonder why I hadn't thought of it earlier.

I would do what product development people refer to as reverse engineering; I would feed it an Arcade Fire song and see what happened. Perhaps I would confuse it; perhaps my PC would catch fire; perhaps Steve Jobs would knock on my door and ask me to stop. The excitement was almost unbearable as I started by selecting the sacrificial track to be fed to the gaping maw of the great dispersed cloud of electronic musical matchmaking that is Genius. As I have said before, what really gets to me about its incessant shoving of their songs under my nose and into my ears (I have really odd-shaped headphones) is that I am just not that big a fan; I can see the point, and sort of see what the fuss is about, but they just don't really touch or excite me on anything beyond a technical level. They are like modern art or classical music; I know I should appreciate them, and can see why others get excited, but the passion is just not there.

Anyway, I picked 'Ocean of noise', which I am slightly less unenthusiastic about than many of the others (talk about damning with faint praise...). The next earth-shatteringly important decision was whether to run Genius on my select iPod library (if 4760 songs can count as select) or on my PC library (closer to 10,000); the greater range and randomness of the latter, plus the fact that I could get 75 songs in the list (as opposed to 25 on the iPod - sample size really counts in proper research!) led me to run it on the PC, and I clicked on the icon with trembling fingers as sweat gently beaded my brow. Okay, not really. But I did regard the results with some mild interest, and looked again, and then arranged by artist for a clearer look, and got a surprise.

Genius did not sift through my collection in a very widespread way, but picked several tracks each off a very very small sample of the 1003 albums in my library, and showed a clear preference for those with DNL marked on their charts, as it were.

Let me explain the DNL concept. I have had a subscription for the eMusic site for around 2 years, which gives me 65 downloads a month, and some months I have got plenty of good stuff (new or old). In other months, though, I have (usually just before the roll-over date when I would lose my allowance) found nothing new or old which grabs me and, in mild panic, experimented with something I have heard of, but not heard. Inevitably, many of these, due to the overall pressure of new material being thrown at me, have ended up temporarily or permanently in the DNL (Downloaded, Never Listened) file. Of course, some DNL albums were loans from others or occasionally more mainstream purchases, but I reckon most came from eMusic.

Anyway, this is where Genius seemed to do much of its rummaging. DNL albums it proferred for my contemplation, like an eager dog holding up a dead fish, included:


Writer's Block - Peter, Bjorn and John (5 tracks)
Armchair apocrypha - Andrew Bird (4 tracks)
Ga Ga Ga Ga - Spoon (4 tracks)
Favourite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeys (4 tracks, maybe picking up a clue here - two words, first begins with 'Arc'?)
Jukebox - Cat Power (3 tracks)
Robbers and Cowards - Cold War Kids (2 tracks)
The Gulag Aorcestar - Beiruit (2 tracks)
Evil Urges - My Morning Jacket (2 tracks)
Icky Thump - the White Stripes (2 tracks)

On a more positive note which suggests either that it is getting to know me, or that Arcade Fire fans who run Genius have good taste, it included six tracks from the National's 'Boxer' (plus 'Secret meeting', 'All the wine' and 'Mr November' from 'Alligator'), as well as picking out Editor's 'An end has a start' (4 tracks), Wilco's 'Blue Sky Blue' (my least favourite of their albums, but represented by 4 tracks), TV on the Radio's 'Dear Science' (3 tracks), Kings of Leon's 'Because of the Times' (2 tracks), Mildlake's 'Trials of Van Occupanther' (3 tracks) and Fleet Foxes (2 tracks).

Random individual songs to fill out the list (surprisingly few) came from British Sea Power ('Do you like rock music?' - are they the British Arcade Fire or is it vice versa?), Calexico ('Cruel'), The Dodos ('Fools'), Franz Ferdinand ('Eleanor put your boots on'), Overkill River ('Lost coastlines'), the Shins ('Black wave' - maybe for the ocean link?), and Vampire Weekend ('I stand corrected' - perhaps a knowing wink from Genius or am I getting paranoid?).

And, of course, with a certain crushing inevitability, like death or taxes, the list included 7 songs by a certain Canadian band whose initials might just be A.F. (Arty F**kers?), and three tracks of an E.P. of theirs with a certain gentleman whose initials are D.B.

Before I finish this post, I have realised it could end up being completely vanilla, with nothing but text and, as I am trying to avoid this, I better include one video, and of course there is only one option here:

So, to conclude, what have I learned about Genius from my experiment? It is infinintely more loyal to albums more than to either tracks or artists, it is relatively conservative in that it does not cast its net too wide, and it is obsessed with getting me to listen to more than the 20% of my collection I almost exclusively take out for a spin; it is in turns a nerd trying to change my tastes by whining at me, a stalker rummaging through my wheelie bin, and a friend trying to drop hints and gently steer me to safer waters of musical taste. I'm just not sure its all that clever, that's all. Then again, it probably thinks I am pretty dumb too for paying for all those unheard albums!

Click Here to Read More..

My first non-music post!

When I started this blog, around 6 months ago, I fully intended it to be a mix of posts about all the aspects of popular culture I enjoy, including games, books, movies, and music, although I sort of knew it would tend to be biased towards music. However, 20 or so posts later I have not got off the subject of music yet, although I have read quite a few books I enjoyed (particularly Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science'), and have really enjoyed FEAR2 on my PC over the last while, and even seen a few movies, mostly on DVD, and caught up on some TV box sets (special honourable mention for 'The thick of it'); according to the plan, all of the above should warrant their own posts at some stage, when I have got my outpouring of musical musings into some kind of temporary equilibrium (maybe next year....).

Anyway, time to break into the obsessive stuff about alternative country, the Cure, the National, alt-country and the 1980s with my official first movie-related post; it is about Star Trek, which I have recently seen and really enjoyed.



Now, let's be clear, while I fit many of the formal medical criteria for full-blown nerdiness, I was never a Trekkie, and never even that pushed about the series or movies, even to such an extent that I, for example, actually watched any of them. I was clearly a (star) 'War'rior rather than a Trekker (think I just added another tick to the nerd chart there), which leads me neatly to a short diversion in the direction of a pretty cool parody I found (of course) on Youtube (and I really honestly have only the vaguest idea who the Trek characters are, and couldn't name any bar Picard).

So, when I heard they were making a new movie, I was not particularly excited (to say the least) although the involvement of J.J. Abrams did draw more notice than I would otherwise have given the enterprise (deliberately no capital used), as he does bring something quite cool to that which he touches (the Nerdas Touch?); I thought Cloverfield, for example, was overall a very interesting phenomenon from hype through campaign to the final really really cool inclusion in the background of the final shot of something hitting the ocean almost off-shot (putting in something like that which very few eagle-eyed viewers would notice without forewarning or a DVD pause button appeals to my inner fruitcake quite a bit).

Then, the reviews were positive (including my great advisor, Mark Kermode on the BBC) and I decided to give it a shot, bringing my 9-year-old son along for his first big loud movie that featured real people. And we both really really enjoyed it!

This post is beginning to go on too long so I will just fire out some of the things I liked most:

• The casting, which seemed overall very apt, and everyone seemed to sort of fit with my vague notions of what the Star Trek cast made young and cool should look like; Eric Bana kept reminding me of someone, which I eventually surprised myself by concluding was Tom Cruise!


• The fact that everyone basically seemed to be having fun on screen, and in a highly infection way which seeped off the screen


• The scene where Kirk is sort of smuggled on board the Enterprise and MyCoy keeps trying to alternately cause and cure various ailments (numbtongue!) to build a cover story


• The fact that the Enterprise got a real 'Millenium Falcon at the Death Star' moment at the final battle, swooping in to save the day


• The way the movie was stuffed with nods and references for the true fans but not in such an overt way as to (green) alienate the causual viewer (like me)


• The many great lines (I particularly liked Spock's comment on Kirk's surprising comment to offer aid to the villain before his grusome end), 'Who was that pointy-eared bastard?' (Kirk)/ 'I don't know, but I liked him' (McCoy) and the undeniably heroic challenge 'Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including your mothers and yours. I dare you to do better'.
  

I guess one fitting way to end posts about movies is the trailer (still working out how not to write a post about music), so let's give that a shot:

And there endeth my first movie-related post, although more will follow (eventually).

Click Here to Read More..