March music madness

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

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

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

And a version of 'under the knife' at:



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

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



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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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New music nirvana

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

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

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

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



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



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



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



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



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



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




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



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

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


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Phosphorescent escape from Irish gloom

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

Music

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

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



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



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

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

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


TV

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



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

Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This arcade's on fire!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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



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

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

Edit this setlist | More Arcade Fire setlists

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

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



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



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



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



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

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

However, would I go and see Arcade Fire again?  In a shot. Click Here to Read More..

The National anthems in Dublin

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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



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



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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

Springsteen promises, and really delivers

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

Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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



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

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

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

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

Strange and worrying times indeed. Click Here to Read More..

A long overdue October post

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

Music

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

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



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

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

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

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

Movies

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

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

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

 Books

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

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

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Sylvian dreams, myPad, and more

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

Music

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

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



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



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



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

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

Books

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

Movies

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

Technology

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

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

Villagers, and Mick in my Village

Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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