Finally, a few weeks after everyone else, I watched the first episode of the new series of Sherlock last night. At first, I was very impressed – the casting is good and the programme is visually amazing, featuring inventive shots, snappy cutaways and neat directional tricks. Given all this and the fact that the premise of Stephen Moffat’s Sherlock remake is smart (the protagonist as a kind of Aspergers suffering techie), it would be understandable should the programme sometimes seems a bit too pleased with itself – but my god it’s only occasionally that humble.
The whole show – 90 minutes of smug, self-regarding tosh – seemed to me to be entirely comprised of set pieces triggered to deliver a 10 second clip for the accompanying advert; a short burst of violence here, a naked arse there, a never ending series of arch one-liners. And no-one in it remotely likeable.
I’m kind of surprised that so many people have been so very complimentary about it, but to me it seemed like event TV where the atmosphere and the gleaming surface was clearly prioritised over not only the plot but the characters too. Sherlock didn’t feel much in it to me, despite the fact that it supposedly dealt with his first stab of emotional attachment towards a woman. He brooded and snapped, and darted his eyes from left to right, right to left. But I got little from it.
There was still stuff to like – Sherlock and Watson’s relationship, the enigmatic Mycroft, the sour police sergeant torn between respect and disdain for a genius whose help he very much needs. But elsewhere – I thought it was very poor.
If you think differently, do put me straight in the comments – I’d be interested to know what you thought.
Finally got round to watching an absolute gem of a Woody Allen film which I had somehow, ‘til now, neglected – his marvellous, insightful 1985 comedy ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’. A lovely meditation on cinematic escapism, it sees Mia Farrow seduced by an actor who steps out of the Big Screen and into the drudgery of her Depression era life. Like the best Woody Allen films, it is simultaneously slight and vibrating with unforced, illuminating insights. Similar in tone and mood – though much more completely realised – to last year’s excellent ‘Midnight In Paris’, this has rocketed into my top 5 Woody films, easy. Great stuff – really recommend this one.
Posted 08 Jan 2012 — by Jonathan Category Books, Reviews
Having been sufficiently intrigued by way of a couple of very complimentary Guardian reviews, I’ve just finished my first Stephen King since I read his ‘Gerald’s Game’ in 1992 (I read his ‘Needful Things’ the year before – that was the last one I really enjoyed).
Catching up on his activity in the press, it seems that over the course of the last few years, King has broadened his palate slightly with long, somewhat portentous concept-novels which serve to satirise and philosophise rather more than they need to thrill. 2009’s ‘Under The Dome’ was a vast tract primarily concerned with ecological trauma and authoritarian government, and had its origins in a novel which King started and abandoned in the 1970s. His latest, ‘11.22.63’, interestingly, comes from the same place. In 1971, eight years after the assassination of JFK, King visualised a time-travel novel which saw a ordinary American travel back and battle with an obdurate, stubborn past to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from carrying out his dreadful actions. He wrote Carrie, instead (good move).
Now he has finally written this book, a vast exercise in time-travel sci-fi, late 1950s nostalgia and historical fiction, and it’s hard to believe that, had he written it 41 years ago, it would have been as self-indulgent and plodding as his 2011 effort. By the same token it’s possible, on the evidence of the first couple of hundred pages here, that a fresher King might have produced something rather great, because for all that much of ‘11.22.63’ is saggy, schmaltzy, slow and oddly unrevealing, King’s ingenious talent for plotting often shines through.
The problem’s with this novel are largely King’s. His recent interest in state-of-the-nation writing means that early in the process of structuring this novel, he clearly made the decision to give over at least 50% of the plot of his grand concept to irrelevant riffing – sentimental nostalgia, a horribly dull love story which nearly breaks the middle of the book, and, somewhat misleadingly, a very decent, Maine-based sub-plot which, placed near the beginning of the book reads like a completely superior practice run for the main section.
The start of the book, you see, really is terrific. Pacy, taut, urgent and playful, the arrival of Jake Epping, through a ‘rabbit-hole’ in time, in a sun-kissed 1958 and his subsequent investigations into the obstinacy of reality reads brilliantly. Where the novel falls apart, sadly, is at the point where Epping heads to Dallas to stop Oswald and then decides, er, not to. Not for a few years anyway. Instead he (or rather King) luxuriates in some sentimentalised nostalgia in the fictional town of ‘Jodie’ and gets laid a bit by a hot librarian. He works on a school play. He works on a crime novel.
I shit you not. For a couple of hundred pages in the middle of this huge book, nothing happens – but maddeningly King, now so deep into his plotless sub-plot, seems to forget that nostalgia must evoke, whether directly or through insinuation, the feeling of a bygone age. But once his protagonist heads South, King stops describing things, people and places and instead meanders through the inner thoughts of his rather dull narrator. The long passages describing high school life in 50s America could be transposed onto a classroom in the 1990s or 2000s with the minimum of effort. There are precious few allusions to race or civil rights – King spends more time bemoaning how inconvenient it was having to rent a motel in the 50s to get a shag. (Incidentally, King was 11 in 1958 – I like to think this section of the book is autobiographical and he was already taking librarians to motel rooms on school nights).
As you’d expect, the book picks up pace towards the story’s dénouement, and King is skilled enough to write in such a way as to drive the reader inexorably forward. With good thrillers I often race through paragraphs, only half-reading, so desperate am I to find out the ending. Such activity is quite possible with ‘11.22.63’, because there’s nothing in the paragraphs towards the end. When King eventually gets us to the sniper’s nest, it’s described so casually it might be any room in any building in any decade of the twentieth century. It seems extraordinary that a location so central to the American Story does not elicit more poetry.
The problem isn’t that King can’t write. There are plenty of great moments in this book, but it’s overlong, desperately uneven and curiously lacking in original thought, given that it’s a concept that has been cooking in King’s brain for over 40 years. One can only assume it got overcooked, dried out like a mistimed turkey – which is, of course, exactly what it is.
Shame, because I really wanted to like this. Grab it from the library and read the first couple of hundred pages, if the concept interests you, and stop when Jake heads down to Dallas.
When we say that we love a writer’s work, we are always stretching the truth: what we really mean is that we love about half of it. Sometimes rather more than half, sometimes rather less.
He makes some valid points – it’s hard, even for ardent admirers of a particular author, to argue that every work is of equal standing, and there’s something slightly false, I suppose, about insisting that we judge Shakespeare only on the standard of his very greatest plays. But I’m not sure that Amis’s point isn’t somewhat of an oversimplification – granted one cannot love every work equally, but being able to rank them according to their quality does not been cutting the less loved adrift simply because others are more perfect. I think that Amis’s ‘The Rachel Papers’ is a terrific book – the fact that ‘Money’ is much better does not prevent me loving both.
(That said, I decidedy don’t love ‘Night Train’, ‘Yellow Dog’ or ‘The Information’, – few do – so perhaps Amis’ conceit is self-serving. It would certainly provide a happy explanation as to why so few people profess to like only 50% of his backlist – rather than admitting to an observable decline in quality only partially remedied by ‘The Pregnant Widow’. I’m being mean – Amis is wonderful).
Good writing is not a race, anyway, and there are no winners or losers, unless you care who wins the Booker prize. Nevertheless, for me Amis does get a couple of things right – not all Don DeLillo’s stuff is as good as ‘White Noise’ or ‘Libra’ (‘Underworld’ certainly isn’t – bravura opening apart what a chore that book was, for all the hype) and ‘Middlemarch’, despite being Eliot’s only great book, is indeed the central Anglophone novel – certainly the one I judge all others against. We part, however, Martin and I, over Jane Austen; not in the sense that we don’t both love her, but in that he attributes flaws to ‘Persuasion’ – which is madness, and that’s the end of it.
Talking of classics, It’s such a long time since I read ‘Wuthering Heights’ that my memories of it are somewhat hazy, and I suspect not entirely to be trusted – I was an ardent admirer as a young teenager of ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’, which gives some indication of my tastes. I remember liking Bronte’s book very much at the time, although I didn’t react as strongly as many of my peers – and like most I felt conflicted about Heathcliff without actually finding it very difficult to hate him.
Andrea Arnold’s new film adaptation of WH, starring Shannon Beer and Solomon Glave, aims to put that right by centring on Heathcliff’s perspective, reframing his behaviour in light of nature vs. nurture, and rendering his actions explicable in that context. It’s beautifully shot in 16mm (and framed in 4:3) and the first half was absolutely bewitching.
For all that Arnold (who previously directed the remarkable Red Road and lovely Fish Tank) is thought of as an art-house director, she has made a very unpretentious Wuthering Heights (far less self conscious than Jane Campion’s Keats flick, Bright Star) which makes full use of the dank, dark Yorkshire moors. It only fails, sadly, when she hands over to adult leads, asking James Howson and Kaya Scodelario to cary the final third having done precious little to establish a sympathetic relationship with the audience (meaning that the empathy which Glave earned as a troubled, far-from-home Heathcliff is largely squandered). It’s a shame that a film so visually arresting and beautifully mapped should fall apart on the back of a very odd decision (to replace two actors in their late teens with two in their early 20s), and instructive to note that even a plot as violently emotional as Wuthering Heights turns mawkish when you don’t have a feel for the characters.
Again, this is strictly a criticism of the last third – the scenes featuring the younger actors were hugely involving, but in Howson and Scodelario’s scenes I was reminded of the interminable yelling-into-the-wind scenes which blighted another recent big screen period drama – Anh Hung Tran’s emo take on Murakami’s Norweigan Wood. A shame – but not one which, ultimately, subtracts too much from the film; by the time the actors hand over you’ve already seen a brilliant production and, seeing as Arnold made the decision to only film 50% of the novel, I see no reason why I can’t draw a veil over a slightly underwhelming ending. If Amis is only taking 50% of Austen, I can take 50% of this.
Arnold is a very special director, and at the very least, she’s made me want to re-read Wuthering Heights, and re-assess Heathcliff, that old and compelling enigma.
Posted 22 Nov 2011 — by Jonathan Category Books, Reviews
Today I finished reading Ian Rankin’s latest, The Impossible Dead, and rattled through it at a pace I rarely manage with other books – a trend I’ve observed in all of his work since I first came across it a few years back.
The thing with Rankin’s great creation, Rebus, was that he was such an extraordinarily strong character that it became easy to assume that Rankin’s triumph was purely in conjuring him up, rather than writing beautiful prose. And conventionally, he’s not a beautiful writer, in terms of poetics, but his new character, Malcolm Fox, is the opposite of Rebus; quiet, sober, a follower of rules – and yet his exploits in the Edinburgh Complaints division have proved equally superb; evidence that it is dense plotting, razor-sharp exposition and, after all, beautiful writing, that seperates Rankin from his peers.
Because his writing is beautiful – not high-falutin or florid, but beautiful to the extent that it is perfectly judged. Rankin knows exactly when to cover back story, how to handle competing storylines, how much of his central characters to show and how much to conceal. On the face of it, Malcolm Fox is not a fascinating man; but he becomes fascinating in his completeness, by virtue of the plausibility of his actions.
If The Impossible Dead has a weakness – and it does – it’s that in the end Rankin can not resist the urge to tie up the story neatly. But that aside, he manages to make a story which weaves together local police drama, high SNP politics, bureaucracy and seperatist terror seem completely plausible. The stories he tells are grand in scope, but minute in execution – and that makes him a terribly good writer. I don’t think The Impossible Dead is Rankin’s best – Exit Music is his finest, I think – but he’s one of the finest plotters in English fiction and a master at executing a story. Great stuff.
Posted 15 Nov 2011 — by Jonathan Category Music, Reviews
On Friday me and Lyndsey headed up to London to see Damon Albarn, Simon Tong, Paul Simonen and Tony Allen play under their The Good, The Bad & The Queen moniker at a show to celebrate 40 years of Greenpeace. A particularly good fit for the show – indeed Paul Simonen was recently arrested while working as a cook on a Greenpeace boat – their debut (and so far only) LP, released five years ago, is a lovely bucolic protest record, melding pastoral folk with Simonen’s first love, dub reggae.
When I last saw the band, back in 2006, they were – despite the gorgeousness of their songs – a pretty uneven prospect, with an uneasy Damon torn between circus-master and player, unsure if he had left pop music behind or not. Subsequent years have seen him resolve that particular conundrum, concluding that he can operate equally comfortable writing operas and top 40 hits, and further projects with the personnel of TGTB&TQ (the triumphant Gorillaz touring band and the afro-medieval orchestra driving Dr Dee) have brought tighter understanding between the four musicians. The challenge of leading an opera piece seems to have driven Damon to develop his voice, too – he sang more beautifully than ever before on Friday, I thought.
The whole show, really, was a phenomenal success. As ever, Tony Allen stole the show with an exhibition of octopus drummingwhich was all the more astonishing for his passive, restrained posture. I really don’t know how he weaves such complex patterns while barely appearing to move. Out front, Paul prowled the stage as only he can, hoisting his bass guitar high like an automatic machine gun, looping his one, beligerant riff over and over and casually flouting the non-smoking laws. Tong, as ever, gave the songs space to breathe while simultaneously tying them, almost invisibly, together.
Listening to the astonishing ‘Herculean’ or the rapturously received ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ – complete wIth a saw accompaniment so spine-chilling the crowd erupted into applause every time it sounded – it was hard not to wonder if this isn’t Damon Albarn’s most moving, coherent collection of songs; sincere, disbelieving notes on the UK in the 2000s which, despite the intervening years, seem every bit as relevant today as they did five years ago.
Sadly there were no new songs, and Damon received the calls of ‘do another album’ with a genuinely apologetic shrug. However, their entire back catalogue played, the band did produce one more truly special moment, playing a wonderful, stripped down take on Gorillaz’ ‘On Melancholy Hill’, which always sounded, to be honest, like a song out of place and more suited to this project. Accordingly, it fitted perfectly. And as the room emptied out it was impossible not to notice the many hundreds of shared smiles.
A pure and heartfelt celebration and a wonderful night.
Posted 07 Jun 2011 — by Jonathan Category Music, Reviews
Needless to say, Robyn Hitchcock at the Komedia last week was an utter delight. I have to confess – in the interests of transparency – that the prospect of going straight back out to a gig, once I arrive home from work, increasingly defeats me, so on this occasion I sacrificed the supporting Terry Edwards set for a half-hour snooze on the sofa, which is, I regret, further evidence of a real trend. I’m getting old. Actually, half way through Hitchcock’s set, someone in the audience saw fit to heckle the 58 year old singer – albeit affectionately – about his age. He looked slightly wounded, I thought, as if it was a comment he found, rightly, a bit gratuitous.
Besides, I didn’t think the audience itself was a great deal younger than Hitchcock- this was very much a sit-down show, with rows of middle-aged Guardian readers settled along benches, doubled up with pints of Guinness. I removed my camera gingerly from my bag, looked around me, and put it back again; this felt like the sort of show where I’d feel a gentle hand upon my shoulder. To get in, I’d had to push past a large, silver haired man stood at the door, and only realised as I glanced up at him it was Robyn Hitchcock himself. Five minutes later he was on stage.
And from there he delivered a set of exquisitely dry, off-kilter psychedelic pop, accompanied only by his guitar and a harmonica, through a wandering, rambling potted history of his extraordinary back catalogue; songs about jellyfish palpitating on dishes, Victorian squids, fluttering moths, taxidermists, ovulating girls and three-legged chinchillas. Between songs he digressed, hilariously – long improvised introductions which demonstrated casually the linguistic genius so familiar from his songs. Between these paragraphs are short clips of his on-stage banter. Below is his rendition of ‘Queen Elvis’ from the (wonderful) night.
Posted 06 Jan 2011 — by Jonathan Category Books, Reviews
Whereas I watched and really enjoyed Woody Allen’s latest comedy, Whatever Works, the other day – surprised at myself for enjoying it as much as I did, after sniffy reviews – I read the latest Ian McEwan novel, Solar, at the start of this week with mounting irritation and impatience. Both artists are undoubtedly past their critical peak, and can be relied upon to provide only nostalgic echoes of their early, brilliant work – but I find Allen (the most loudly criticized of the two) and his predictable later films much more lovable than McEwan and his recent novels. Both retain their primary skill – Allen holds on to the ability to riff his way through familiar scenes, and McEwan retains his to paint impressive set-pieces – but only McEwan continues to strive for importance, persisting in state of the nation novels of ever-decreasing relevance.
Whatever Works finds Allen back, figuratively, in the Manhattan of his 70s and 80s pictures. McEwan’s latest recalls his slightest (but not his worst) work, Amsterdam, and works perfectly well when it is an arch comic novel in the mold of Malcolm Bradbury or Kingsley Amis. But his book hinges around the half-way mark and, as McEwan attempts to ramp up the farce, falls apart just as its author is busying himself tying loose ends. The end is as badly written and contrived as any book you’ll find.
What I continue to like about Woody Allen’s films, slight and rushed though they certainly are, is the neatness of scope with which Allen contends himself. Taken as short stories, rather than novels, they are terrific little pieces. A late period Woody Allen (with the exception of the terrible Match Point), if it was presented as an indie by an up and coming director, would be received with delight. Conversely, it’s my sense that a late period McEwan would barely make it out of the sluice pile, were it submitted by a less prestigious author.
Central to Solar‘s failure is McEwan’s decision to frame the narrative through a character who is both fundamentally unlikeable and also lacking any of the redeeming features which made Martin Amis’s John Self – for example – so compelling. Michael Beard, a self-absorbed, philandering scientist who stumbles into a figurehead role in the climate change movement, grows in grotesqueness throughout, until by the end it’s just depressing reading of his plight. McEwan – who we can ordinarily count on not to be sentimental – even allows Beard a shot at belated redemption on his final page, prompting a cry of dismay from this reader.
There aren’t even really any beautiful passages; unforgivable for a writer of McEwan’s power. And for all his manifold talents, displayed so luminously in the early stages of his career, he’s never been funny. At times Solar, a profoundly unfunny comic novel, seems to be begging laughs from its audience. They never come.
Solar does, actually, have it’s virtues. It’s colourful in its first half, and McEwan does a commendable job at integrating climate science into the narrative without losing pace or changing tack. But Beard is never troubled by his moral responsibilities – as adulterer, as plagiarist, as coward. As I approached the end – I salute McEwan’s technical skill – I felt the same frantic urgency to reach the denouement I do with all his books; but also an eagerness to get it finished, put it down, go to the next book. I remember the feeling of finishing McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers, many years ago, in a pub, and feeling like I’d been punched, grief-stricken that the novel was over.
For me and McEwan, I fear, those days have passed.
Posted 10 Dec 2010 — by Dan Category Music, Reviews
[Having recently written a post on his love of unclassifiable, classical-tinged, music, Assistant Blog's favourite guest blogger Dan turns his attention to another purveyer of atmospheric, instrumental soundscapes - Yawning Gulf].
Jack Ryder is a Hove based musician and photographer who has played in a number of bands but has now settled under the name Yawning Gulf. This year, without the backing of a major label or a distribution deal, he released his first, self-titled album – carefully manufacturing just 100 copies, which he walked around the record stores of Brighton. It seems he made a good impression. As James from Resident Records notes “(a) local chap Jack Ryder unassumingly dropped these in, a little home produced album on which he’s played & recorded everything as well as designing all the sleeve art. Turns out, it’s a real treat. “
Jack’s effort is all the more notable, and indeed heart warming, as the finished product really is good enough to be mentioned in the same breath as Peter Broderick, Hauschka and Tape. Yawning Gulf is 15 tracks of wide ranging melodic, experimental and thought provoking instrumental music. Mr Ryder plays everything himself, occasionally using technology to alter sounds and enrich his playing. Tracks such as ‘Redolence’, consisting as it does of gentle guitar and found sounds, brings to mind David Scott of Early Songs, whilst the excellent ‘Last Day’ – with its competing guitar and piano – conjures up a playful collaboration between Max Richter and Tortoise.
The album broadens with piano led tracks such as ‘Soma’ and ‘Atma’ (both reminiscent of Portland’s Goldmund) whereas ‘In the Skies’ is Hauschka-esque with its haunting, strained piano strings. I’ve had the amazing ‘The Walk’ stuck in my head since the summer and so I exorcised it by putting it on the soundtrack to a film of friends (including Jonathan) relaxing in Paris – I hope Mr Ryder doesn’t mind.
All the comparisons made above are not, however, intended to detract from the originality of this album. For a self released debut of very limited numbers, this is an astonishing achievement and – as one of the lucky 100 – I feel very privileged to own a copy. Although I can’t deny that membership of this exclusive club is in some way a thrill, allowing me access to great music which others might struggle to hear, I wonder how ambitious Jack Ryder is for his release? Is he looking for it to be made more widely available? It is gaining attention online and it would be a grave injustice if Ryder isn’t already on the radar of labels like Erased Tapes or Type. I do hope so, for as corny as the expression is; this music really does deserve to be heard by a wider audience.
Richard Ayoade’s debut feature, Submarine, doesn’t get a general release ’til March 18th, but it premiered in the UK at Brighton’s Cinecity film festival last week, and you will doubtless hear much of it in the months leading up to its launch. This is partly, unavoidably, due to the high profile of its writer and director – the likeable Ayoade’s turns in The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh might not have turned him into a household name, but he is well known and highly thought of. His work behind the camera is less trumpeted, but he’s shot a number of fine music videos and his career highlight, in fact, might be his work as director of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
Submarine will surely be a big success. Everything is surely in place for it to be a hit. It has a star director, a series of great performances, is genuinely funny and is, technically, light years ahead of most UK attempts to crack the box-office. It’s wonderfully shot and crisply edited, well-cast and tightly scripted. And the theme is likely to resonate too; a young, bright, self-aware – but awkward, emotionally clumsy – teenage boy comes of age in a faintly timeless Welsh town. As a first feature, it’s sure-footed and well-judged.
What will also happen, however, is the reviews will tilt under the weight of references and comparisons. For better or for worse, deliberately or by accident, Ayoade has made a film which fits neatly into the genre of comedy mastered in recent years by a succession of independent film auteurs in movies like Rushmore, Juno, Napoloeon Dynamite and Son of Rambow. This is both a strength – they’re all fine films – and a weakness – like them, Submarine is literate, sardonic, nostalgic and – at times – a bit self-indulgent.
The Wes Anderson comparisons will flow freely. At times, Ayoade’s style, which is heavy on cinematic grammar, does indeed recall Anderson, although happily it’s Rushmore that Submarine reminds me of, not Anderson’s later, weaker work, and one could very easily argue that Ayoade is thematically and stylistically harking back further, to Mike Nichols’ The Graduate and Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude. It wasn’t Anderson, after all, who first hit on the idea of quirky, stylised comedy with folk-music soundtracks (Alex Turner, incidentally, drops the ball with his clumsy sounding musical accompaniement.)
Nevertheless, there are times when you wonder why, when Ayoade watched the rushes back, he didn’t think to himself, “if I took out all the bits that are going to really remind people of Wes Anderson, I’d still have a pretty great film”. He left them in, no doubt, because there is a confluence of style and theme which is a happy and genuine co-incidence. But the whimsy is cosmetic – in other words it spices up the visuals but adds nothing to the story – and I for one have had enough of this celluloid twee-ness. It bit into my enjoyment of an otherwise super film.
But let’s give it some deserved praise. First, the cinematography is gorgeous. Ayoade repeatedly returns to the huge expanses of sky around Cardiff, and the lingering landscapes are intensely memorable. He’s also found a couple of great leads – the youngsters, Yasmin Paige and Craig Roberts perform with confidence and style, while the adult cast perform with such evident pleasure that one almost feels short-changed that they only have supporting roles. It’s hard to think of a couple of better performances in a comedy film than Noah Taylor’s Lloyd Tate and Sally Hawkin’s wonderful portrayal of his wife, Jill. Meanwhile, overacting gleefully, Paddy Considine has tremendous fun, as he always seems to.
And most importantly, despite the irritating and sometimes arch narration, Ayoade makes a serious attempt to inject emotion into proceedings, something that Wes Anderson never seems to bother with. It’s only sporadically successful (there’s still a layer of irony that impedes empathy) but the attempt alone sets the film apart from many of the titles it will be compared to. This that bodes most well for its youthful director. There’s absolutely enough to suggest, here, that Ayoade could go on to be a really super film-maker. It does sometimes become necessary, however, to carve out one’s own approach, and just now you feel there’s too many nods at other movies and not quite enough pushing ahead alone.
After the premiere, Noah Taylor – exquisite as Oliver’s dad – stayed behind to talk about the film (which he had just seen for the first time), his career to date and cinema in general. It was absorbing stuff – and luckily I taped it. So if you’re interested in hearing a bit more about the film, you can catch up below. The talk is, I think, spoiler free.
Posted 26 Oct 2010 — by Jonathan Category General, Reviews
Today saw the launch of the Independent’s new spin-off, the promising but hard to refer to in casual conversation i, which I’m going to call The i Paper here, just for readability’s sake.
The i Paper is a bold move in a newspaper industry which isn’t exactly in the rudest of health, something particularly true of the Indy itself. At a first glance one would expect a paper to launch a radical new product in a position of strength, rather than weakness, but the boldness of the launch is all the more admirable for that. Whether this is a long-term project, a trial for a new direction for the main paper or a first step towards establishing a freesheet, The i Paper has targeted a nice niche; it’s a concise, cheap (20p) paper targeted at ‘the time-poor’. If The Metro (a diabolically bad freesheet) is the paper for people who don’t like newspapers, then this is the paper for people who like them, but don’t buy them. And there’s a lot of those people and, at 20p a copy, this might just work.
Let’s start with the positives I took from today’s launch issue. First, the presence of long form articles – the Johann Hari piece about Obama and James Lawton’s take on Rooney – are very welcome in a paper of this kind. It’s the kind of thing that neither the freesheets nor the middle market papers do. This is real value; intelligent, ambitious stuff, a world away from the AP stuff in The Metro.
And the design is generally nice: bright, colourful, and attractive, with a good mixture of the frivolous and the serious. There are probably a few too many call out boxes, but some of the shorter features are really nice. I particularly liked the ‘Five Clue Cryptic Crossword’ (a nice, concise spin on a feature that normally demands high time investment) and the ‘Postcard From…’ box. I felt like a couple of other gimmicks (the ‘Opinion Matrix’ and the ‘Panorama’ feature) were potentially nice but they do need expanding. Aiming for concise coverage is a lovely idea, but having article lengths so short that imparting serious information properly is impossible simply defeats the object. When this kind of brevity is employed, it’s hard not to wonder whether we really need a full page of weather forecasts? I honestly don’t think I’ve used newspapers to source weather forecasts in my life. Perhaps others do, though.
These aren’t one off problems. The Johann Hari article is demonstrably the most valuable piece, so it’s a bit of a blow when I later discover that it’s actually an edited down version of his real Independent column – meaning I have to look up the latter online to read the real thing. This is just daft; if The i Paper is going to plump for long articles, it shouldn’t water them down. It just seems like a counter-intuitive decision. And actually, I’d like to see a bold move in the other direction. The long-form article is a woefully underused tool in modern journalism. I think it would be revolutionary if every issue of The i Paper contained a really unique two or three page article – something really serious and meaty. I’d buy it every day in addition to my usual paper, for that feature alone.
Another thing I noticed is that there’s no Leader. That’s really odd, and one respect in which this paper is much more like the Metro than, say, The Evening Standard. I’m not wedded to a leader article, but the absence of one is strange. And some of the editorial focus is, to be honest, way off. A tiny two column feature on cholera in Haiti on page 24, and a big half page feature on the death of the walkman on page 27? Nothing wrong with glib pieces like the latter, but not if the balance is wrong. (Don’t get me started on ‘Is Bert Gay?’…)
‘The News Matrix’, which takes up the whole of pages 2 and 3, is, alas, a complete waste of space. Two pages right up front that add nothing at all to the package; it’s simply a set of over-edited summaries of the paper’s content – information expressed better elsewhere. They could, by editing more carefully, improve this feature over time, but frankly it would be far better to simply use this space for extra content.
So I think there’s work to be done. But, overall, I have to say that I’m really impressed. I think, crucially, that they’ve got their pitch right – a serious paper for busy people and for those who want to consume information quickly. But I feel like there’s much they can do to improve. For my part, the dealbreaker is this: I really can’t imagine buying a newspaper with so little news analysis and opinion in. Similarly, the paper is front-loaded – important news squeezed in too tight at the front, and too much superfluous crap at the back end. A slightly heavier bias towards news, and just a touch more detail, would make a massive impact.
Lastly – and this is something that isn’t a failing on their part – I’m a commuter. Unfortunately for the Independent Group, I’m not one of those 15 min tube users, but someone who travels further and really needs a paper that takes 50 minutes to read. I was finished with the paper a lot earlier than I normally am. That probably means that I’ll keep buying The Guardian most days.
But this is really promising stuff. I’ll certainly pick up another copy tomorrow.
Posted 18 Sep 2010 — by Jonathan Category Music, Reviews
Caitlin Rose is a young, hugely talented singer and songwriter from Nashville, and her gorgeous debut, Own Side Now has been pretty much the only record I’ve listened to over the last month or so. It’s a simple, beautiful country record, which by virtue of its loveliness has done a great deal to win me over towards a genre towards which I’m normally skeptical – the sainted Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt and Evan Dando aside. Country music is one of the types of music which comes with so much baggage, and there’s an in-built cultural (and sometimes political) conservatism present, particularly in the Nashville scene, which I’ve always worried about.
Caitlin’s songs, steeped in the sounds of her youth as they are, do have a nostalgic charm and a clear reverence for tradition, but that doesn’t prevent them from being individualistic, spiky and modern, and her performance at the Latest Music Bar in Kemp Town the other night just confirmed what a terrific star she could end up being. I wonder how she goes down in her home town – by rights they should be crowing at the fact that Nashville continues to produce gems like her. In reality, they may well be too caught up in the past to notice.
Either way, she arrived in Brighton on Tuesday with a small, energetic band (steel guitar, tele and bass) and absolutely rocketed through 14 beautiful songs, the majority her own, with a couple of lovely covers thrown in. On the one hand, she was clearly nervous, particularly when her bandmates left her on her own to play a beautiful, soft cover of Randy Newman’s lovely ‘Marie’. On the other, she is a complete natural, and dominates the stage from the get-go, leaning back to open up her wonderful vocals, or leaning conspiratorially into the mic to tell us about the clothes she bought that day. She has, in common with artists like Emma Lee Moss and Rosa and Katy from Peggy Sue, a winning sense of good humour and an ability to make a crowd feel part of the show, rather than just spectators. Encouraging a small audience to try a call and response lyric can fall flat at the best of times, so when Caitlin effortlessly persuaded the room to yell along with ‘Bottles’, it was just another in a sequence of small triumphs.
In a beautifully calibrated set, there are a number of spine-tingling moments. When she, in ‘Own Side’, assumes a sorrowful croon, lamenting a failed relationship, and declares “I’m going out / on the town / said I’m tired of chasing you down”, it’s simultaneously the voice of someone wiser than her years, and completely convincing, despite her youth (Rose is, sadly, like Laura Marling, doomed to endless references to her precocity in the press she accrues). Before ‘Spare Me’ she introduces her bandmates but tells us that she is Abraham Lincoln, and instructs us, should we address her, to use “Abraham, or Old Abe, or Honest Abe. Anything with Abe in it will do”. “You are America’s greatest President”, someone assures her.
‘For The Rabbits’ is incredibly moving. Two thirds through, her guitarist, Jeremy Felzer, unleashes a short, stunning, teardrop-strewn solo, and when Caitlin notes “Looking back at myself / It’s wrong how much I’ve changed for you”, you can feel hairs stand on end throughout the room. Her two subjects seem to be – fittingly, given the country tradition – songs about getting drunk, and songs about regret. The latter is evident in ‘Shanghai Cigarettes’, with its beautiful, tossed off line, “Remember the day the whole thing started? / and the little gold box in the glove compartment”.
Of the remaining tracks, there’s no one more worthy of praise than another – ‘Dockets’ is impossibly charming, ‘Marie’ delightfully pretty, ‘Sinful Wishing Well’ absolutely sad, and ‘Bottles’ gloriously uplifting. “Drink a one”, she sings, “Drink a two – I’m drinking just for you, the only answer I have found is to drink more”. When she cries, “Take it darling!”, teeing up a terrific Steel Guitar solo, she’s Nashville to the core. She’s repeatedly pulled back on stage at the end and her final bow, ‘Things Change’ is the clincher – written, she notes, by her ex-boyfriend (“What a dick”) – it’s the perfect finale – sad, regretful, drink-sodden and somehow, sweetly, surprisingly uplifting. Once again, her beautiful, clear voice, adds resonance and weight to the words – when I hear “And I feel like crying, but I don’t know why / because I know, love never dies”, I’m completely transported. “No, I never wore your wedding ring”, she sings, “I regret I never could”.
Sadly, this was the last date on Caitlin’s UK tour, but her new single, ‘Shanghai Cigarettes’ is out presently – and you can see a video I made of her playing it below – and I’m sure she’ll be back. When she is, make sure you see her; heart heavy, drink in hand, and be ready to grin your face off.
Okay, so I really hated Inception. I tried to write a serious, high minded review, explaining why I found it so terribly disappointing despite not expecting – or wanting – a serious, high minded film. But the truth is, I’ve hardly anything to say, except that the film is a big waste of time. The concept – not a bad one – is that Leonardo DiCaprio and his colleagues engage in surreptitious espionage by digging for secrets in the subconscious of their dreaming victims. This makes for some dizzying, Escher inspired sequences exploring the architecture of dreams.
But the plot, rather than the concept, is the problem. They’re not governmental spies, working on eliminating terrorism, or ethical bandits, fighting corruption. They’re hackers taking payment from multinational corporations trying to secure competitive advantage. They’re totally corrupt and untroubled by conscience, in other words. Their job – and the entire plot of the film – is to help one energy company get dominance over another. And the characters are portrayed utterly without characterisation and, for every character except DiCaprio’s, without the slightest thought for articulating their motivation. What this means, in practical terms, is that there’s absolutely no reason to root for them or their success except out of a vague curiosity in seeing how they do it.
And that’s all there is. This drastically overlong, visually stunning but hypnotically shallow movie watches like a sequence of expensive car commercials glued together with interminable, tedious action scenes. The imaginative quality of the dreamscapes is initially intriguing but is all but abandoned in the second half, with a long, unforgivably boring section in a winter landscape having no relationship whatsoever with the notion that poor Ellen Page’s character supposed to be an architect of complex maps, not of airy destinations for the Winter Olympics. It’s staggeringly badly thought out, like Nolan just cut a big section from an early 80s Bond film and plonked it in the middle of his edit.
Worst of all, Inception fails to deliver on two of it’s central promises. It isn’t complex at all, or at least, not in the sense intended (the unintentionally funny script does introduce a few moments of confusion, at least) and it isn’t in the least bit exciting. I enjoyed the first hour but was yawning compulsively from that point on, unable to focus on the endless shoot out scenes or the hilariously drippy sub-plot. The visuals are, admittedly, pretty great, but the glossy look is utterly without texture, like an American Express commercial. Meanwhile, long after I stopped caring about the characters or the (absence of) plot I was unable to enjoy it as a spectacle because of the endless, booming score, which underpins not only every chase scene but every scrap of dialogue. For a film sold on it’s conceptual innovation, there’s not a single moment of space for reflection or thought. And yet it’s so long.
So, I know the reviews have been good, but this big, glossy piece of shit was the most boring, shallow, pretentious, badly executed and inane film I’ve seen in ages. Avoid it.
Posted 03 May 2010 — by Jonathan Category General, Reviews
We’d all appreciate our home-towns a lot more if we had guests to visit more often. I almost always have my most pleasurable weekends in Brighton when people from elsewhere come to visit. It makes me wonder at all the weekends I spend listlessly – having no-one to impress – instead of taking advantage of the fact that I live in this lovely place
Of course, at this time of year – the Brighton Festival has just started – I’m normally starting to get a little busier (and there are a bunch of local things happening over the next month or so which I’ll hopefully be blogging about), but my nice weekend over this Bank Holiday was less a consequence of that and more prompted by the arrival in town of friends. So I spent Saturday having a lovely lunch in the Dorset in the North Laine and relaxing down by the beach, and most of Sunday mooching around Town buying records, doing Festival stuff and sitting in the pub, pretending I’d been stabbed through the neck with a plastic straw (long story).
The highlight – well, the cultural highlight – was a trip to Brighton’s lovely Fabrica gallery, which for the duration of the Festival is hosting an exhibition by the season’s curator, Brian Eno. Rather misleadingly titled ’77 Million Paintings’, the show actually focuses on one piece – a large, evolving graphic up on a large screen at the far end of the dark church.
The same aesthetic which drives much of Eno’s music is apparent in the work; it is neither instantly rewarding nor demanding, but instead a kind of slow, transformative experience for which the term ‘ambient’ (traditionally used to characterise much of Eno’s music) remains the best descriptive term I can conjure up.
It’s essentially a series of locked geometric shapes which move through a range of patterns and colours in a sequence determined by ‘generative software’ which is capable – as the title of the piece suggests – of 77 million possible permutations (which would take, apparently, over a thousand years to unfold). The transformations are slow but remarkably evocative.
Sat concentrating for ten minutes I was only dimly aware of perceptible changes, but when a conversation with Deb and Will distracted me from the screen for no more than sixty seconds and I returned my gaze to the ‘painting’, I found it had changed hugely. Such is the effect of the slow process of gradual change – I thought of the face of someone you love and see every day, which seems unchanging, and the shock of encountering friends with whom you’ve lost touch, and who you find much altered (as altered, presumably, as you are).
It’s hard to describe a work of art without showing it, and pointless to show a still of a work of art without being able to demonstrate the very movement which gives it purpose. So here’s a proposal, instead.
Imagine yourself sat in a church, half-dozing, glancing down at the cobbled floor. As the sun progresses slowly across the sky outside, light catches panes of the stained glass windows high above, and casts a reflection down on the floor in front of you. The light shimmers and shines, ducks behind a cloud, comes up for air. The quality of light changes, and different parts of the window are alternately obscured and revealed. What plays out on the floor in front of you is the combination of chance, nature and design, and it is playing only for you.
If you can imagine that, you might be able to picture Eno’s work. If you like the sound of it, the exhibition is running until the 23rd May.
Co-incidentally, I spent much of the time in the Church sharing a seat with Toby, a mischievous toddler who ultimately ordered me onto the floor so he’d have more space. He told me – and I trust his opinion – that the exhibition was ‘lovely’. He also made me take his socks off and at one point handed his Dad an empty food wrapper and yelled ‘rubbish, rubbish’.
I hope Mr. Eno wasn’t around, mistaking him for a high-voiced critic.
Family Bookstore is a terrific little arts bookshop based in Los Angeles, and this month the owners are running and curating a little pop up shop in NY’s Chinatown; it’s ostensibly mid-way between a shop, a gallery, and an impromptu arts space, and I went down there last night to go through the books, admire the pictures and – most importantly – to enjoy a live performance by Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, who treated the small hipster audience to a 40 minute wall of feedback and guitar noise.
Playing in the corner of a high ceilinged, white-walled warehouse, they started quietly, sat over their guitars, sawing and scraping at the strings with nail files and drumstricks, occasionally picking out shards of fractious counter-melodies with their fingers. Gordon was the most demonstrative, occupying centre stage, sometimes sat, rocking her guitar back and forth, colliding it into her amplifier, sometimes standing, arched over the mic whispering phrases into the ether. Her tired, expressive croon is a marvellous instrument in itself – at times I thought I heard it, but it was just the sound of Thurston wringing a squeal of feedback from his guitar. Sometimes Gordon would yelp ‘let’s dance’ – a counter intuitive invitation if ever I heard one, for the music was as experimental and formless as any you’ll be likely to hear.
For all that, however, the musical and personal bond betweem Kim and Thurston is so profound, so developed, that the music never seemed pointless or pretentious. It was explorative, enthusiastic, rather than high-minded. And it actually sounded extremely beautiful sometimes – an other-worldy, cacophonous orchestra of cicadas one minute, a soundscape of echo the next. Once or twice Kim played a formal riff for a minute or two, and the whole thing began to churn with the rhythmic intensity of Neu!, only for a deliberate or accidental hum to lead the pair snaking in another direction.
I watched Precious, today, the second feature by Lee Daniels, and was very impressed, if upset, by its grim, unflinching portrayal of domestic abuse in 1980s Harlem. It’s only Daniels second film, although he is an established name in Hollywood, having produced both the excellent ‘The Woodsman’ – a hard, affecting film about a convicted paedophile – and the execrable ‘Monster’s Ball’, a condescending, unpleasant film about ‘black America’. Here, aided by some excellent casting and several terrific performances, he has crafted a film which is alternately painful to watch, surprisingly heart-warming, and very funny.
It’s the severity of the circumstances his young lead must face that resonate most strongly. Precious, an impassive, obese 16 year old who is pregnant for the second time by her own father, is played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe with real depth and significant restraint, and entirely fulfils her role in a film where appalling events are threaded routinely into the plot. The comedian Mo’Nique, who plays her mother, is even more impressive, bringing a nightmarish intensity to her portrayal of one of the most unsympathetic characters I’ve ever seen in celluloid. In addition, there is good work by a (slightly too-good-to-be-true) Paula Patten and Mariah Carey, whose hard, ambiguous social worker is central to the film’s (ultimately hopeful, despite everything) climax.
At times, particularly when Mo’Nique is inflicting shocking abuse on her screen daughter, it’s terribly hard to watch. To leaven the horror, Daniels provides a hopeful subplot which lauds the role of the state in protecting its most put-upon citizens, and it’s for the best that he does, else the film might be unwatchable. At times the contrast between these two strands seems a little unbelievable, but it is a necessary plot device. As in both Monster’s Ball and The Woodsman, however, there are some ambiguous moral lessons. In The Woodsman, vigilantism is presented in a strangely uncritical light, and in Precious it’s hard not to notice that every character who lines up to help Precious (and thankfully there are several) seem to have progressively lighter skin.
Her relationship with Patten – who plays her teacher and mentor – is touching and convincing; but at times it feels that Patten is a little too good to be true; an impeccably groomed, comfortable liberal – she seems remarkably unfrazzled for an inner city teacher. Indeed, her class – supposedly made up of Harlem’s most troubled teenagers – seems at times to resemble the kids from Fame.
This is nitpicking – there are great performances here, and it’s very difficult not to be upset, moved, and exhausted by the film. It’s a great success and Mo’Nique, for one, might feel unfairly cast aside if she doesn’t pick up an Oscar for her role. I hope that the intolerable life young Precious is handed in 80s Harlem is a historical observation, and that things are better for America’s poor today.
Posted 20 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan Category Music, Reviews
If you’ve not heard it yet, ‘Stylo’, the new single by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s subversive, always-interesting pop project, Gorillaz, is all over the internet today, and you owe it to yourself to track it down forthwith. Whisperings about the forthcoming LP, ‘Plastic Beach’, imply it will be a typically dynamic, eclectic affair, boasting guest spots from Snoop Dogg, Mark E Smith, Lou Reed and many many more.
Albarn has dropped some interesting clues about where Gorillaz is headed over recent months, hinting that his new songs have roots in his abandoned stage project ‘Carousel’, and that the Blur gigs in the summer persuaded him to revisit his vocals for the LP and abandon his recent usage of guide vocals, preferring instead to sing more directly. The title of the LP suggests that, lyrically, a recurring theme will be the environment, one of Albarn’s current passions (he recently told Paul Morley that the two things he is most passionate about are “the effects of our waste and the healing properties of Africa”).
But for all that this is interesting, the most intriguing thing about the band – apart from Hewlett’s wonderful drawings and Albarn’s staggering musicality – remains the dichotomy between Damon’s critique of manufactured chart music and his self-evident, not at all contradictory, love of pop.
‘Stylo’ expresses this perfectly – built on a platform of thudding beats and a persistent, electro bass line, it may feature a stunning, deeply pretty melodic line from Damon, but it also completely lacks a conventional chorus, providing instead a terrific, unhinged hook vocal from Bobby Womack. It sounds stranger, more challenging than previous Gorillaz records.
But it is also easily the most catchy thing Damon has done in years. The bass line alone is stunningly memorable, and the jewel may be Mos Def’s short, rhythmically perfect verse in the closing stages. The whole thing swaggers and shines.
It’s too early, of course, to say whether it’ll engage daytime radio and the general populace in the same way as previous Gorillaz singles, but for me it’s superior to every single from the last two LPs with the exception of ‘Dare’. And if it IS successful, Damon’s genius will have been to have crafted a perfect, vibrant pop single which harks back to the bassy, vibrant electro of early Compass Point (think Grace Jones or Tom Tom Club) and the euphoria of late 80s house music, but which is in no way nostalgic, formulaic or predictable.
In short, I think it’s one of the best things he’s ever done. And elsewhere? There’s really no one, creatively, anywhere near him.
Posted 06 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan Category Books, Reviews
A couple of weeks ago myself, Vic, Dan, Ant and Alec went down to the Sallis Benney Theatre to see the screening, as part of the Cinecity Brighton Film Festival, of John Rogers’ new film, London Perambulator, a wonderfully affectionate portrait of Nick Papadimitriou, a writer who lives in North London – in my old haunting ground of Barnet, no less – who dedicates his life to the pursuit of what he calls ‘deep topography’; what you and I might have heard described as ‘pyscho-geography’ – urban exploration through the medium of walking, enacted not through pre-researched routes but by chance and happenstance, working on the assumption that the mysteries of the landscape will be revealed through being ‘found’.
As that muddled definition implies, the practice of deep topography is an inexact thing, occupying a vague, semi-mystical space between geography, anthropology, philosophy, art and science. What Nick Papadimitriou does, essentially, is walk through the overlooked corners of cities, and writes about his experience. His preoccupation is not with finding conventional beauty, whether ancient or modern, but rather in examining the functional areas where mankind, nature, and necessity overlap. In the process of this obsession, which sees him undertaking long ruminative walks, creating a kind of philosophical mind-map of the city, he has carried out research – and acted as somewhat of a poetic muse – for the likes of Will Self and Iain Sinclair (whose own book, ‘London Orbital’, sparked my interest in this area).
Papadimitriou is self-evidently an idiosyncratic individual, pursuing with admirable single-mindedness a line of enquiry which many would dismiss as eccentric. Rogers’ film cannot help but play on this, observing its protagonist in reveries of post-industrial romanticism, waxing lyrical over water treatment plants and manhole covers, standing rapt on brownfield sites transfixed by concrete posts. As one might expect of a close confidante of Will Self, Papadimitriou is not only incredibly literate but also extremely funny. So it’s easy for the film to poke affectionate fun at him, not least because a contributor like Russell Brand – who is insightful throughout – can’t resist sending him up.
Speaking after the film – which is only 45 minutes long – Papadimitriou expressed a little wry frustration at the fact. And that is understandable; there is something innately comic about the intensity of his passion for, say, Mogdon Water Treatment Plant – but the film plays up his eccentricity without sacrificing the opportunity to include many thought provoking and poetic displays of language and thought. And the more involved with his subject matter he gets the more profoundly interesting he becomes. It’s in Middlesex, that absent county at the top of London that was folded into Hertfordshire, Surrey and Greater London but which retains a geographical presence of its own, that his most fervent interest resides, and for a period in the film I found myself transported back to the vocabulary of my youth – Barnet, Southgate, Potters Bar, Finchley, Hendon. Papadimitriou is not myopic in his interests – he has a long term plan to walk across the Ukraine – but it’s obvious where his heart resides. He tells us:
“My ambition is to hold my region in my mind… so that I am the region. So that when I die I literally do become Middlesex in some way. For me that is my highest spiritual aspiration, I will be the tarmac that you race along on the A41-T, I’ll be absorbed into the mildewed lintels hidden in overgrown knotweed by the side of the Hendon way…”
My own youth was spent mapping out this part of the world; rambling through Hadley Wood, waiting for tubes into the city at Oakwood station, tracing cycle paths through Totteridge, scrabbling over high fences to let off firecrackers behind the Sainsbury’s car-park in New Barnet. I’m not especially nostalgic for those years, but Papadimitriou’s enthusiasm is infectious. I understood him best, I think, when he stopped suddenly between two semi-detached houses in a glum suburb, and pointed out the contour of the ageless landscape through the gap; where a river once flowed. These buildings, he pointed out, could be destroyed in moments, but it would take something immense to change the shape of land which has held its form for thousands of years.
I’m not sure I fully understand to what end his infectious, limitless enthusiasm can be taken, but in his current role, mid way between philosopher and naturalist, urban historian and dreamer, it strikes me that Nick Papadimitriou is doing something terribly important – chronicling parts of the city which are all around but rarely seen; liminal, overgrown, ambiguous places where mankind has made marks on nature which we would do well not to forget. Their unsystematic, unresolved, chaotic distribution seems to have some significance when counterbalanced against our own unsystematic, unresolved, chaotic lives.
You can watch a short clip of John Rogers’ incredibly enjoyable film below, visit his website here, or download the regular podcasts (“Ventures and Adventures in Topography”) which he and Nick make for Resonance FM here. Nick’s own website, misleadingly named Middlesex County Council, and as chaotic a site as you might expect, is essential reading. Here’s the link.
Although I’d never heard of him before, Tristram Bawtree, who plays his beautiful, tender folk songs as Tristram, has a Brighton connection; he studied Painting here a few years back (and his paintings, which you can find if you google him, are rather nice – abstract but detailed, mural-like), so it’s appropriate that I should discover him by chance here, rather than in his native London. His songs – although the videos below are in black and white – are similarly colourful – tender, imaginative meditations fleshed out with sumptuous orchestration. The six songs he played in support of Peggy Sue at the Freebutt last month were uniformly fantastic.
On the night, he arrives on stage looking thoughtful, slightly nervous. From the first note, though, I am hooked – both by his beautiful voice and wonderful way with words. His songs are funny, critical and very intelligent. He is sardonic for someone so young (“When I hear the word culture I pull out my wallet / and peel off a banknote or two”), playful (in Zombie Holocaust he muses that “I’d only waste my life, so better I use it well / to stop the monsters, from taking my loved one”) and he is ambitious, too – Isolde, the closing track, is inspired by a Wagner opera that he has not yet seen.
Musically, there is incredible richness in his soft, delicate folk. And where he seemed a touch uncertain arriving on stage, a natural ease and confidence is quickly evident. He’s able to demonstrate nimble touches that endear him to the audience (such as the arch Abba reference in Place In The Sea), and writes intelligently – only occasionally slipping up (the same song’s “well, we’re all going to die someday” reveals him to be a man with too many Jeff Lewis records in his collection). I’m pretty sure, however, by the end of the first song, that I’m watching the best live performance from a new band or songwriter I’ve encountered in 2009 – or longer.
It’s clearly early days for Tristram – his debut single isn’t out ’til February – but on the evidence of this short, artful set, he is absolutely brimming with promise. I await that single with baited breath.
In the meantime, here is a complete recording of the set – good enough, I think, to demonstrate just how brilliant he is – and a couple of videos made by Dan (who came away just as convinced as me that we’ll be hearing lots more from him soon).
Tristram live at The Freebutt, Brighton Weds 4th November, 2009
Here’s where you go to track down Tristram on Facebook and myspace. He’s also playing a bunch of gigs over the next month or so. Not to go to at least one of them (assuming you live in, or can get to London) would be to really miss out.
Dates
17 Nov 2009 Love & Milk @ Jamboree w/Jack Cheshire, London
26 Nov 2009 @ Soapbox with Derek Meins, London
1 Dec 2009 The Allotment @ Betsy Trotwood w/Caitlin Rose, London
6 Dec 2009 Moonshine Jamboree Xmas Party @ The Slaughtered Lamb w/ Left With Pictures, Jake Bellows and more, London
15 Dec 2009 The Tamesis Dock w/Peggy Sue & Curly Hair, London
The single is out on February 15th on Oh! Inverted World records, and will feature Someone Told me a Poem, Ballad of a Stolen Bicycle, Me and James Dean and Zombie Holocaust. As soon as a link to pre-order it is available, I’ll be posting it here.
Lastly, many thanks to Tristram and his lovely manager Anthony for giving me permission to post these tracks. Much appreciated. Thanks also to Brad over at Bradley’s Almanac, who’s been posting this sort of stuff for years and inspired me to start chronicling and posting live recordings of shows I go to. Following his lead, I recorded these songs with a (borrowed) MD player (thanks Dan) and a Sony ECM-719 mic. Hope you like them – any comments much appreciated.
For those who don’t yet know them, Crowns On The Rats Orchestra – an odd, enormous, complex and tuneful many-headed beast from Brighton – are one of the most interesting bands I’ve seen for ages. Their songs are restless, imaginative and very beautiful; kind of fidgety, eloquent and celebratory. Their live shows are crowded and chaotic – but their musicianly instincts mean that everything stays magically focused. I like them a lot – and not just because my friend Eleanor is in the band. This is one of those situations where you think you’ll have to lie and say how good a show was, and then discover THAT IT REALLY WAS. Ace.
Here’s a video of the band that me and Dan made. I’ve got some mp3s which should, I hope, follow shortly, as might another video or two. Stay tuned.
"Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right."
David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
