Anthems by gaslight

Music

In recent days' I have become pretty obsessed with 'American slang' by The Gaslight Anthem.  I downloaded their previous album, 'The old '58 sound' ages ago and listened a few times, but not much (note to self: go back and check it out again!).  A positive review in Uncut of their new one, however, send me back to eMusic and a new download, and I bloody love it (second favourite of the year so far, after you know who).  It has such energy and melody and is perfect for the summer, and I really don't get the reviews which go on and on about their debt to Springsteen; obviously there are things in common but their songs are tight and short and modest, not always things to be said about old Bruce, and I feel a strange celtic strand in their too, with regular reminders of the Pogues for some reason.

The first video clip below is an acoustic version of the title track, 'American slang', which shows off their singers great voice (and tattoos) wonderfully:

Next up is a live clip of 'Boxer', which would have to be good for me to get past the sacreligious baggage of the title, and does it brilliantly, with a great intro (not as good live as on album):



'The Queen of lower chelsea' is slower but has a really cool beat and their vocals and harmonies which are excellent all over the record are well to the fore here:



The last clip is perhaps my favourite from the album, 'Bring it on', which goes through several very cool gear shifts and turns in the closest they come to an all-out epic:



The only other musical thing I want to mention is finding Irish band Bell X1 doing a rather nice version of Don Henley's classic 'Boys of summer' here. 

Books

This week, I have been reading 'Confessions of an alien hunter' by Seth Shostak, which is a really interesting and nicely written account of our search for life beyond earth, from the very casual/loony land of the UFO-hunters to proper scientific considerations and projects such as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).  It skips a little over the fascinating story of NASA's claims for ultramicroscopic life in an Antarctic-found asteroid in the late 1990s but covers many other interesting angles very well.  The manner of writing is really good too, with very good use of humour and references to movies, such as obvious reference points like 'Contact', the logical gaps in which are gleefully exposed.   I particularly loved lines such as 'In other words, for two dozen years, UFOs were exposed to more scrutiny than Lindsay Lohan's social calendar.  Not finished yet but finding it a really good read, covering a very fertile field for good stories with a level of science which is not at all intimidating.

I also did some shopping this week, and bought 'The passage' by Justin Cronin in good old-fashioned hard copy (a big paperback, with a worn-looking nicely done cover) after a few e-mail ads from Amazon which were enough to spark my interest.  After loving 'The strain' I am clearly a bit more open to big epic vampire books, so decided to give it a try. Cork's Waterstone's were also pushing it pretty hard, with big display stands and freesheets with the first chapter reprinted to be taken away.

Finally, I went back to the kindle to download the new book by perhaps my favourite practitioner of the English language, by which I mean 'At home' by Bill Bryson; I actually did not hear much about this in advance, so know very little about it, except that I trust the author sufficiently to make this a fairly safe investment.

Movies and TV

Watched some of 'Hamlet 2' and pretty confused about what kind of film it is supposed to be, and unimpressed, so not inclined to watch the rest; I do like Steve Coogan but he seems all over the place in this one.  I also heard about and checked out a very cool mix-up on Youtube, which is the visuals from the trailer for Toy Story 3 with the audio for the new Christopher Nolan film 'Inception', which is actually very very strange a mix but very well done, as seen below:



My recent shopping spree also yielded the cut-price DVDs of 'Paranormal activity' (watching the director's commentary in the background as I type) and 'It might get loud', which I am curious about and think my eldest son, who is learning guitar, might like, as long as it does not turn him into a Led Zeppelin fan.
On TV, I have been working my way through recorded episodes of 'The pacific' but finding it a bit bleak and hard to follow, in terms of characters and action scenes (most of which are at night); I think I found 'Band of brothers' more accessible and watchable, but maybe this is just an accurate reflection of the nature of the relevant military campaigns.  Also trying to watch BBC's 'Outnumbered', which comes very well recommended but keeps putting me confortably to sleep. 

Perhaps surprisingly, my TV highlight of the week (and year so far) really has to be the finale of 'Grey's anatomy'.  I have been watching this fairly casually for most of its run, but this week's episode with the shootings really caught me off guard and made my jaw drop.  I am an appalling spoiler, who cannot resist checking out the ending of coming TV series and movies (although I try and resist every time, my will is not strong enough to hold back my curiosity) so real surprises in movies or TV are really rare for me, which made this such a treat and so gripping and unpredictable.  I found a set of clips from the finale set to Snow Patrol's 'Run' here:

So, that is a lot for this week (although I missed a post last week).  Still waiting eagerly for the launch date for MY iPhone 4.0 in Ireland, and starting to think (unbenownst to myself) about the iPad, due to launch here around the same time, so will have to see if I can be tempted when I get my hand son it for real.

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Bearing witness to never forgotten favourites

Music

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

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

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

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

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

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















Movies

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

Gadgets

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



Other stuff

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

The Cure, Stornoway, War and Emo Phillips

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

Music

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

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



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



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



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

Movies

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

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

Books

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

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

Other bits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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My brain mainly on the music of the Cure

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

Music

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

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

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

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

Lots to listen to, reviews to follow.

Books

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

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

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

Movies

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

Other stuff

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

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

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

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Phsophorescent, Drive-by truckers and pirates

Quiet week this week, so just a few updates:


Music

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

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

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

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

TV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies

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

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

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

That's all for now, as already a day later than usual posting! Click Here to Read More..

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

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

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

(Other) music

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


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

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

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

Movies

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

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

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

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

Gadgets

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

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

Books

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

TV

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

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

On that surreal note, enough for today!

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Josh Ritter helps me through high violet withdrawal

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

Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies

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

Magazines

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

Books

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

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

TV and media

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

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

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The extra-terrestrial next door

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

Music

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

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

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

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

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

Movies

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

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

Books

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

TV

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

Gadgets and the web

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

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

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

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High violet (of course, at last)

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

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

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

Link also at:

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

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


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

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

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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

Music (of course)

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

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

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



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



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

Books

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

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



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



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

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

Movies

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

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

TV

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

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

24 days to High Violet!!! Click Here to Read More..

A new-style Culture Collection

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

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

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

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

Actual art

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

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

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


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

Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies

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

TV

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

Games

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

Other media

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

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

Gadgets

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

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

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

31 days to 'High violet', and counting down. Click Here to Read More..