It's the Oscars today. I quite like them. To me, they are the award ceremony, across media, with the most genuine prestige, indeed almost the only awards ceremony with any genuine prestige. They've received a bit of damage this year because of the race controversy, but I think, generally, they get quite close to a decent selection of what is best is American/British films in the year. To win one means something. All the arguments about what the Oscars get wrong year on year mean something- arguments about other award ceremonies getting things wrong tend to simply be, say with the Brits, "the Brits are just stupid lame bullshit. Who gives a fuck?", likewise with the Grammys etc. With the Oscars, people argue and disagree because they care.
I've watched a lot of films at the cinema this year, pushing 40, which is pretty good going. I've seen all the major contenders I could have done. 'Still Alice' hasn't come out yet in the UK, slightly unfairly on discerning UK film fans, so we won't have the opportunity to be complain with justification about Julianne Moore's being a "reward" award (it probably isn't - there aren't necessarily outstanding other contenders for Best Actress, apart from Marion Cotillard in '2 Days 1 Night' so good she gets nominated or wins even speaking French - how dare they say the Oscars don't embrace diversity?).
There are three main ones this year, and it's more in doubt than usual - Birdman, Boyhood, Budapest. Though it's my favourite, I can't really see The Grand Budapest Hotel winning Best Picture, but I think it'll win 3 or 4 auxiliary awards.
I've come round to thinking Birdman will be the big winner, maybe getting the big film awards and Best Actor for Keaton - none of which I'd agree with. I can't judge, I can't say what's better or worse. but going on what my heart tells me, triumph for Birdman, though I did enjoy and admire it greatly, would disappoint. Though it's not a safe film, it would feel like the safe choice.
There was a controversy about David Oyelowo missing out on Best Actor and Ava DuVernay for Best Director for Selma - I would agree his performance is really tremendous and i'd have had him above a couple of contenders, but, you know, there are only five slots, it must have been tough. It looks bad, I'm sure the Oscars would have rather avoided the controversy and got him into the list in retrospect, but I genuinely don't think it works like that.
There is a controversy with Selma and with the director though, it seems. She seems to have slagged off the writer and the script, and taken all the credit for formulating the film, mainly to the extent of lifting Luther King as a force above LB Johnson, indeed to the extent of implicating Johnson in racism/being against civil rights movement etc (she was determined it should not be a "kindly white gives black a helping hand up" film ...) having seen the film, which is excellent, I'm not sure on either side of that argument. Most in the know say LBJ is harshly dealt with in the film - I think it's quite clear he's an exasperated but ultimately well-meaning pragmatist.
Anyway, Selma is a strong, powerful film. So, actually, is the maligned American Sniper, a nuanced film about a not particularly nuanced man. Cooper is good.
There are other films that haven't had all the nominations they deserve - Foxcatcher and Wild were both as good as anything else for me, the latter to my great surprise, Pride was lush, Under the Skin was unique, Nightcrawler and A Most Violent Year are tight, gripping and brilliant.
Still, I care. It matters, albeit just a little. The Oscars get vaguely close to highlighting the actual strongest, most lasting English language films of the year. That can't be said for most award shows.
Sunday, 22 February 2015
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
First of the Short Cuts
Since this blog's most loyal follower has suggested more regular journeys into film, I can only oblige. Not that I'll stop writing about music, but I think I'll just return to the practice of writing about works of art that mean something to me, but with no particular pattern - maybe films, maybe songs, maybe albums, maybe even TV shows.
Now's the time of year for judgement of film of all sorts, and I saw a list recently of the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time, which was that predictable film buff's mixture of wide range of nationalities, general low position for anything too successful and general absence of much from the last 25 years. I'm not going to criticize that, as I said before, I don't know enough about film to - I had only seen about a quarter of the films on the list - there are so many films considered great works of art I haven't seen and really should make more of an effort with.
It just got me thinking about films that really took my breath away, surely one of the main things a film should do. The top film on the list, 'Citizen Kane', didn't take my breath away. I liked it, but if I hadn't been told it was the greatest film of all time, I'm not totally sure how I'd have reacted. It's rather like the idea that WG Grace is the Greatest Cricketer of All Time or that Sgt Pepper's The Greatest Album of All Time.
With film, I manage to avoid, in a way I can't avoid when it comes to music and sport, the canonical approach - the films that have blown me away won't necessarily find their place near that many "Greatest of All Time" lists.
I'm not saying I like Norbit, mind ... it's more that I enjoy the "now" of the film, I like the cinema, and I don't always have to see a film twice - if i loved it once, that's usually enough for me.
I will start, though, with a film I've seen three or four times all the way through (and caught up with bits of it a few other times), which is pretty good going, as it's 188 minutes of solid content - Short Cuts.
This is a film that took my breath away, slowly but surely. It came out in 1993, and I probably watched it for the first time in 1995. I know this because it was an 18, and there was a point where the man at the video store asked my sister how old I was and she told him, so I couldn't get 18s any more on my own, goddammit (he was very nice, I just think there'd been some kind of word from head office to crack down on youngsters).
Now, I was the kind of youngster trying to get 18s like 'Short Cuts' rather than 'Gruesome Zombie Aporncalypse Part 3', but it's all the same in the eyes of the law.
So I watched it first before my 18th birthday because my sister got it out, then loved it so much I tried to get it out again (as I recall, it when I was about 17 and 10 months) and was cruelly denied, so had to wait a few months till late 1996 to take it in again.
I don't think it was vastly acclaimed - it's reputation has gradually grown over time but it's not a ... canonical, there's that word ... classic.
But it's definitely one of my favourite films, and one of the greatest, most unique and meaningful, I've seen. I'm not aware of too many like it beforehand. I mean, there's Robert Altman's own Nashville, which I saw years later, which is an acknowledged classic, with its interlocking narratives, gallery of "main" characters, its sense of a particular place and time. Perhaps it was film critics' awareness of Nashville which kept Short Cuts from being fully embraced.
Anyway, there've been quite a few similar films since, all of them inferior in my view - Magnolia, Crash, Traffic, Lantana, Babel, not counting Pulp Fiction, which though it interweaves can hardly be seen to be much influenced by Short Cuts.
Short Cuts is, to me, the masterpiece of this epic form, the one that doesn't feel forced and strive for meaning (oh, the ugly, dumb striving for meaning that ruins the decent films Magnolia and Crash might have been).
It's effortlessly engaging and funny and true and shocking and sad. It doesn't hurry, it just builds story on story - some of the stories build then fizzle, some build then explode. The acting is fabulous, introducing me and familiarising me, a 16/17 year old with fairly limited knowledge but growing interest, to some of the finest of the era - Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, McDormand, Downey Jr, etc. Looking at it now, the film contains an awful lot of actors who were in Brat Packy films grown up and playing adults. And there's Jack fucking Lemmon. And Tom bleeding Waits. And Huey sodding Lewis. Minus the stinking News.
It's based on short stories by Raymond Carver (Carver, of course, is the joke at the heart of this year's Birdman), but it was Altman himself, I believe, who really knocked it into narrative shape.
I'm trying to remember the feeling I had when I first watched it, of how very long it was going to be and the fact I'd probably need two or three sittings to get through it, but just stayed with it, of the point where it was probably about 1 hr 50 through and I kind of realised this was the point most films end but knew this film had a whole extra act, then the quiet, powerful devastation of that last act - the truths of the characters revealed. I pretty much knew what kind of people they all were by the end.
So many disconcerting and memorable characters - Lyle Lovett's baker, Tim Robbins' reprehensible prick of a cop. Many actors put in (as far as I'm aware) career high performances - Andie McDowell and Peter Gallagher, Lori Singer and Chris Penn.
Where Nashville's soundtrack was, naturally, country, Short Cuts is a jazz film (like Birdman again!). It's the most vivid portrait of Los Angeles I've ever seen too. It being LA, of course, the film end with an earthquake. That's the one "meaning".
I watched it again fairly recently - I think I'd forgotten large parts of it, and had forgotten some of the more bizarre behaviours, they are presented in such a low key fashion, they could easily slip by.
So, this film might well have been the first film I recognised as a burgeoning adult as an adult masterpiece - that may be why it means so much to me. I wouldn't say it defined my taste in film - like I've said, I've struggled with a lot of those interweaving films since. I do, funnily enough, love novels with interweaving narratives, so perhaps it set a template for my taste in storytelling.
It's not a film which won any Oscars, that was the year of Schindler's List, but it's certainly my idea of a great film.
Now's the time of year for judgement of film of all sorts, and I saw a list recently of the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time, which was that predictable film buff's mixture of wide range of nationalities, general low position for anything too successful and general absence of much from the last 25 years. I'm not going to criticize that, as I said before, I don't know enough about film to - I had only seen about a quarter of the films on the list - there are so many films considered great works of art I haven't seen and really should make more of an effort with.
It just got me thinking about films that really took my breath away, surely one of the main things a film should do. The top film on the list, 'Citizen Kane', didn't take my breath away. I liked it, but if I hadn't been told it was the greatest film of all time, I'm not totally sure how I'd have reacted. It's rather like the idea that WG Grace is the Greatest Cricketer of All Time or that Sgt Pepper's The Greatest Album of All Time.
With film, I manage to avoid, in a way I can't avoid when it comes to music and sport, the canonical approach - the films that have blown me away won't necessarily find their place near that many "Greatest of All Time" lists.
I'm not saying I like Norbit, mind ... it's more that I enjoy the "now" of the film, I like the cinema, and I don't always have to see a film twice - if i loved it once, that's usually enough for me.
I will start, though, with a film I've seen three or four times all the way through (and caught up with bits of it a few other times), which is pretty good going, as it's 188 minutes of solid content - Short Cuts.
This is a film that took my breath away, slowly but surely. It came out in 1993, and I probably watched it for the first time in 1995. I know this because it was an 18, and there was a point where the man at the video store asked my sister how old I was and she told him, so I couldn't get 18s any more on my own, goddammit (he was very nice, I just think there'd been some kind of word from head office to crack down on youngsters).
Now, I was the kind of youngster trying to get 18s like 'Short Cuts' rather than 'Gruesome Zombie Aporncalypse Part 3', but it's all the same in the eyes of the law.
So I watched it first before my 18th birthday because my sister got it out, then loved it so much I tried to get it out again (as I recall, it when I was about 17 and 10 months) and was cruelly denied, so had to wait a few months till late 1996 to take it in again.
I don't think it was vastly acclaimed - it's reputation has gradually grown over time but it's not a ... canonical, there's that word ... classic.
But it's definitely one of my favourite films, and one of the greatest, most unique and meaningful, I've seen. I'm not aware of too many like it beforehand. I mean, there's Robert Altman's own Nashville, which I saw years later, which is an acknowledged classic, with its interlocking narratives, gallery of "main" characters, its sense of a particular place and time. Perhaps it was film critics' awareness of Nashville which kept Short Cuts from being fully embraced.
Anyway, there've been quite a few similar films since, all of them inferior in my view - Magnolia, Crash, Traffic, Lantana, Babel, not counting Pulp Fiction, which though it interweaves can hardly be seen to be much influenced by Short Cuts.
Short Cuts is, to me, the masterpiece of this epic form, the one that doesn't feel forced and strive for meaning (oh, the ugly, dumb striving for meaning that ruins the decent films Magnolia and Crash might have been).
It's effortlessly engaging and funny and true and shocking and sad. It doesn't hurry, it just builds story on story - some of the stories build then fizzle, some build then explode. The acting is fabulous, introducing me and familiarising me, a 16/17 year old with fairly limited knowledge but growing interest, to some of the finest of the era - Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, McDormand, Downey Jr, etc. Looking at it now, the film contains an awful lot of actors who were in Brat Packy films grown up and playing adults. And there's Jack fucking Lemmon. And Tom bleeding Waits. And Huey sodding Lewis. Minus the stinking News.
It's based on short stories by Raymond Carver (Carver, of course, is the joke at the heart of this year's Birdman), but it was Altman himself, I believe, who really knocked it into narrative shape.
I'm trying to remember the feeling I had when I first watched it, of how very long it was going to be and the fact I'd probably need two or three sittings to get through it, but just stayed with it, of the point where it was probably about 1 hr 50 through and I kind of realised this was the point most films end but knew this film had a whole extra act, then the quiet, powerful devastation of that last act - the truths of the characters revealed. I pretty much knew what kind of people they all were by the end.
So many disconcerting and memorable characters - Lyle Lovett's baker, Tim Robbins' reprehensible prick of a cop. Many actors put in (as far as I'm aware) career high performances - Andie McDowell and Peter Gallagher, Lori Singer and Chris Penn.
Where Nashville's soundtrack was, naturally, country, Short Cuts is a jazz film (like Birdman again!). It's the most vivid portrait of Los Angeles I've ever seen too. It being LA, of course, the film end with an earthquake. That's the one "meaning".
I watched it again fairly recently - I think I'd forgotten large parts of it, and had forgotten some of the more bizarre behaviours, they are presented in such a low key fashion, they could easily slip by.
So, this film might well have been the first film I recognised as a burgeoning adult as an adult masterpiece - that may be why it means so much to me. I wouldn't say it defined my taste in film - like I've said, I've struggled with a lot of those interweaving films since. I do, funnily enough, love novels with interweaving narratives, so perhaps it set a template for my taste in storytelling.
It's not a film which won any Oscars, that was the year of Schindler's List, but it's certainly my idea of a great film.
Friday, 13 February 2015
Live ...
Probably the aspect of music I've neglected the most in this blog is
the live stuff. I did one post a year or two ago about seeing Leonard
Cohen and gave a few thoughts about what makes a great gig, and
certainly mentioned various shows I've been to along the way, but
considering the huge number of words and lists I've devoted to artists,
albums, songs, charts, etc, I don't think I've written that much about
gigs.
Perhaps it's because I don't get to as many as I used to, perhaps because I think it's harder to quantify/review than other things. You experience a show, from one narrow perspective, then it's gone. I've read reviews of shows i've been to which were nothing, absolutely nothing, like the show I experienced. I think I can tell a good gig from a bad gig, but perhaps not if I get too drunk!
Anyway, I've been to loads of gigs and plenty of festivals. My tastes have become more sedate as the years have gone by. Never much of a mosher, but now i'm happiest sitting comfortably!
We're rather lucky in our little commuter town as we appear to have a rather super little music scene - at the local church, in the last few months, we've seen Cate Le Bon, Gruff Rhys, Martha Wainwright and, last week, King Creosote. It's as if I'm sending them a list of my favourite artists and they're putting them on especially for me. Actually, I might try that.
So I still do gigs to an extent, though it's been a few years since I went to one I had to stand up at! You know me, if I do a post, I take it seriously, so i've tried to get to the bottom of every single act I've ever seen, from headliners to support act to afternoon festivals to free shows - I've managed to list about 300 now. There may be a few more not even my memory can access but I think most is covered. Puggy? Slovo? Scatter? Remember them?
Who have I not seen?
Bruce Springsteen
Martha and the Vandellas
Paul Weller (goodness knows how not)
Public Enemy
Stevie Wonder
David Bowie (too late for that probably)
PJ Harvey
Janelle Monae
There aren't that many others I should really make damn sure I see if I want the key to the kingdom of heaven.
There really aren't hard and fast rules for what makes a great gig - sometimes I think bands who've only done a couple of albums have a real advantage as the fans are likely to know and like and hence greet rapturously pretty much song. People complain about Bob Dylan "not playing the hits". What hits exactly? When someone's got 200 songs that might be considered classics, everyone's going to be disappointed some way or another.
The best thing I can say about Wilco at their peak was that, at some of their gigs, they didn't play any of my personal favourite Wilco songs and yet the gigs were still magnificent. The same is true of Gruff Rhys who now has so much solo material which is completely alive and up to scratch that no one minds him discarding the whole back catalogue of one of the great bands of all time.
Some bands are very good live, to the extent that you think they'll be better than they are on record - Embrace are a good example of that, the Polyphonic Spree, the Hold Steady etc Belle and Sebastian are now a better live band than they are on record, whereas they used to be the other way around.
My favourite venue was probably the Brixton Academy back in the day - big enough and small enough, grand enough and shabby enough, boisterous but not unsafe, well laid out but still heaving. My favourite festival ... hmm ... tricky one ... I think in terms of lasting memories, it would be Benicassim, but in terms of one I might go to again, it would be ATP.
See, i'm still finding it hard to write about gigs. Frankly, I'm amazed that I let 1000s of people invade my personal space quite so often!
Perhaps it's because I don't get to as many as I used to, perhaps because I think it's harder to quantify/review than other things. You experience a show, from one narrow perspective, then it's gone. I've read reviews of shows i've been to which were nothing, absolutely nothing, like the show I experienced. I think I can tell a good gig from a bad gig, but perhaps not if I get too drunk!
Anyway, I've been to loads of gigs and plenty of festivals. My tastes have become more sedate as the years have gone by. Never much of a mosher, but now i'm happiest sitting comfortably!
We're rather lucky in our little commuter town as we appear to have a rather super little music scene - at the local church, in the last few months, we've seen Cate Le Bon, Gruff Rhys, Martha Wainwright and, last week, King Creosote. It's as if I'm sending them a list of my favourite artists and they're putting them on especially for me. Actually, I might try that.
So I still do gigs to an extent, though it's been a few years since I went to one I had to stand up at! You know me, if I do a post, I take it seriously, so i've tried to get to the bottom of every single act I've ever seen, from headliners to support act to afternoon festivals to free shows - I've managed to list about 300 now. There may be a few more not even my memory can access but I think most is covered. Puggy? Slovo? Scatter? Remember them?
Who have I not seen?
Bruce Springsteen
Martha and the Vandellas
Paul Weller (goodness knows how not)
Public Enemy
Stevie Wonder
David Bowie (too late for that probably)
PJ Harvey
Janelle Monae
There aren't that many others I should really make damn sure I see if I want the key to the kingdom of heaven.
There really aren't hard and fast rules for what makes a great gig - sometimes I think bands who've only done a couple of albums have a real advantage as the fans are likely to know and like and hence greet rapturously pretty much song. People complain about Bob Dylan "not playing the hits". What hits exactly? When someone's got 200 songs that might be considered classics, everyone's going to be disappointed some way or another.
The best thing I can say about Wilco at their peak was that, at some of their gigs, they didn't play any of my personal favourite Wilco songs and yet the gigs were still magnificent. The same is true of Gruff Rhys who now has so much solo material which is completely alive and up to scratch that no one minds him discarding the whole back catalogue of one of the great bands of all time.
Some bands are very good live, to the extent that you think they'll be better than they are on record - Embrace are a good example of that, the Polyphonic Spree, the Hold Steady etc Belle and Sebastian are now a better live band than they are on record, whereas they used to be the other way around.
My favourite venue was probably the Brixton Academy back in the day - big enough and small enough, grand enough and shabby enough, boisterous but not unsafe, well laid out but still heaving. My favourite festival ... hmm ... tricky one ... I think in terms of lasting memories, it would be Benicassim, but in terms of one I might go to again, it would be ATP.
See, i'm still finding it hard to write about gigs. Frankly, I'm amazed that I let 1000s of people invade my personal space quite so often!
Thursday, 15 January 2015
How do we decide if we like a film?
How do we decide if we like a film? It's both the easiest and the hardest question to answer. As you'll have probably guessed, I'm very interested in judgement/criticism/objectivity/subjectivity, I'm very interested in other people's views on things ... primarily in terms of how and why they differ from mine. I've gone to great (ultimately fruitless, probably) lengths to try to establish criteria for what and who is good/great/meaningful/universal/unique/overrated/underrated in the fields of popular music and sport. I think a great problem I've had in communicating anything worthwhile in both cases is the tension between my attempts to seem like I'm being fair and reasonable and open-minded and secretly - not that secretly - thinking I'm the world's great expert on both topics and that what I decree ought to be written into law.
So, I'm taking a detour and doing something I haven't previously done in the over 350 posts I've rattled out in the last 6 years about Pop Music and Sport (as well as one random post about TV). I'm writing about film. I'm writing about film, perhaps, as a means to understand more about Music and Sport, and about the experience of enjoying in general.
I think I'm on safer ground with film because, even in my own head, I don't really think I'm an expert on it and I think I do have a pretty fair and open-minded approach to it. I have no inside knowledge whatsoever - I've never held a video camera, acted on screen (I've barely ever acted at all), written a screenplay, cut or edited, tried to get a budget together ... everything any one person does which contributes to the making of any film is worthy of respect and wonder in my eyes. That ought to be the case with pop music and sport, sure, but, somehow, with the fact I've studied music a tiny bit, the fact I've written in verse a little, maybe the fact that what constitutes pop music can be comparatively transparent, likewise the fact that I've played a few sports and, hell, the fact I really do know far too much about sport (see, I can't keep that instinct at bay), I can pontificate and judge and look down on the people within those fields to my heart's content.
Films are all about the experience and, in most cases, you only get one shot at that experience. You might not appreciate an album the first time you hear it, maybe the second or third time, but if you've spent money on it or have any emotional investment in it, you might give it a few more shots and pick up all the nuances later. Most films, we only watch once, and film makers know that - the films have to work, at once, for what they are. The primary criterion for any one person judging any one film is simply "Did I enjoy that?". Of course, there are lots of different ways to enjoy a film, and that's the fun of it.
I don't call myself a film buff. I know there are loads and loads of people you've watched way more films than me, who love films more than me, who know the arts and crafts of films inside out. I am only a film watcher. That's it. That's helpful for this post.
There are a few genres I don't really watch, sure. I don't watch animations any more (I can't explain why, and it's not because I don't know they're great) or very rarely children's films in general, I rarely watch horror. Apart from that, most things are fair game. Silly comedies, action flicks, romcoms, musicals, epic sagas, sci-fi, I'll give most of them a go, and if I like them, then I like them and that's that. Sure, I mainly watch well-reviewed films and well-reviewed films are usually dramas/indies, because that's the way the world is but, if I enjoy the film, if it does its job with me, I can recognise that and praise it accordingly.
Just to give you an idea, while most films I've ever seen (like most people who aren't film critics) I've only seen once, the films I've seen many multiple times (sometimes more through accident than design) include ...
-Die Hard
-The Big Lebowski
-Jaws
-Mary Poppins
-The Deer Hunter
-Role Models
-Pretty Woman
-Dirty Dancing
-Dead Poet's Society
-Mean Streets
-Adventureland
-Star Wars
So, I'm, at heart, pretty basic with films. I can be poncey if needs be and it does me good to be poncey, I understand that films can go a long way towards being pure art or a long way towards being pure commerce and I'm happy with various things on that scale at various times.
Lots of my friends are on a similar filmic level to me. Without being world experts, they love films, they've seen lots of films, we talk about films. And we disagree. Really a lot. That's the thing. Likemindedness with films exists a lot less between likeminded people than with other things. A film I love can be panned by one or more friends for reasons I hadn't considered. There's very little reliability in second-guessing people's views on films. That comes, I think, from the fact we only see them once. Outside factors can have a big impact. Some aspect of the film can assume huge prominence where to someone else it's barely noticed.
And, of course, different people like different things. The people that watched Transformers 4 and made it the highest grossing movie of 2014 must have found some aspect of what they were looking for in it. I don't, at least not to start with, want to talk about all the different elements of a film that different individuals might like, I want to think about the universals (which then have innumerable variations).
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the universals are ...
- not being bored
- not finding the acting really bad
- not finding the script really bad
- not finding the film far too short or far too long
- not finding the film a physically unpleasing experience
- finding the film "tight"
- not spotting too many glaring errors
- the film not putting forward a worldview you wildly and violently disagree with ... [I think this is more of a 95% than a universal. Film critics often talk about admiring the artistry in DW Griffiths' racist Birth of a Nation, but generally, I think there's something in finding a film's views (if it has views, really most films don't necessarily have views) disgusting and appalling that will mean we won't like it
So those are, as far as I can see, the fundamentals, it's just that what each one means varies enormously for different people.
So, inevitably, I have to think of my own experiences, and the particular criticisms I hear from friends which turn them off or onto films. A few friends are "insiders", having been on one or both side of the camera, and, inevitably, their issues can be more specific, though often they're just extensions of what us laypeople think and feel. Still, a cinematographer is more likely to have a film ruined for them by shamelessly derivative cinematography than I am. I'm not 100% sure what cinematography is.
These are things I often hear and often think (in a negative way) ... it'll be quite a long list ...
(and in a positive way ... the positives are always less fluently expressed, I find)
Then there are external factors which affect our enjoyment of a film and we'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't recognise them
- whether someone's head is slightly in the way
- whether people are being noisy
- what kind of mood we're in
- whether you're drunk etc.
- whether we spend a lot of the film needing the loo
- whether there is some kind of problem with the projection
- whether the volume is too loud or even too quiet
- whether people in the cinema are clearly hating it or rapt
- whether you hear someone slagging it off as soon as it's finished
- whether the person you went with liked it or not
And context
-what our expectations are
-what the reviews we've read say
-whether we're comparing it to a previous incarnation eg previous film, play or book
-what we think of the actors starring
-what we think of the director
-whether it's in a genre we generally favour
-the very scale of the film (if a film is aiming to be massive and important and gets there 80% (maybe '12 Years a Slave', how does that compare to a tight simple little film (e.g. '71)
I've undoubtedly missed loads (countless) out but I think people are deceiving themselves if they don't think all these things, even the most trivial) might matter to the eventual two-sentence moderately pretentious summation we might well give of the film at some point.
I've been watching a fair few films at the cinema lately and mainly enjoyed them. Some have served as interesting test cases. I saw the last Hobbit film - out of a sense of completion and duty to the franchise - but the 6th film in a blockbuster franchise for children is a long way from what I'd usually go for. I knew I wouldn't think it was great, but I wanted to enjoy it, I just kept on being jarred.
And for me, I think it's the "jarring" which is so important. How many "jars" do we allow? I was jarred a few times in 'The Theory of Everything', by a few scenes of exposition, its obviousness, its occasional playing on the emotions, its pretty obvious playing with facts, but, you know what, I was moved, the performances were so good and the performances were the film, the strange course of the life at its centre made it by definition unusual, I forgave the jarring. There were only about 5 jars, mind, if there'd been 8, who knows?
Likewise, Interstellar, just too many jars, too many moments where I just felt "I'm not having this". Maybe if i'd been in a different mood, i'd have forgiven the jars and admired the artistry...
It's an impossible question. Impossible, of course. Endless. As it should be. I don't want to reduce my watching of a film to a checklist. This year I thought both Under the Skin and Edge of Tomorrow were great . Both were about voracious aliens. That's where the similarities end. But they were both just fine with me ...
So, I'm taking a detour and doing something I haven't previously done in the over 350 posts I've rattled out in the last 6 years about Pop Music and Sport (as well as one random post about TV). I'm writing about film. I'm writing about film, perhaps, as a means to understand more about Music and Sport, and about the experience of enjoying in general.
I think I'm on safer ground with film because, even in my own head, I don't really think I'm an expert on it and I think I do have a pretty fair and open-minded approach to it. I have no inside knowledge whatsoever - I've never held a video camera, acted on screen (I've barely ever acted at all), written a screenplay, cut or edited, tried to get a budget together ... everything any one person does which contributes to the making of any film is worthy of respect and wonder in my eyes. That ought to be the case with pop music and sport, sure, but, somehow, with the fact I've studied music a tiny bit, the fact I've written in verse a little, maybe the fact that what constitutes pop music can be comparatively transparent, likewise the fact that I've played a few sports and, hell, the fact I really do know far too much about sport (see, I can't keep that instinct at bay), I can pontificate and judge and look down on the people within those fields to my heart's content.
Films are all about the experience and, in most cases, you only get one shot at that experience. You might not appreciate an album the first time you hear it, maybe the second or third time, but if you've spent money on it or have any emotional investment in it, you might give it a few more shots and pick up all the nuances later. Most films, we only watch once, and film makers know that - the films have to work, at once, for what they are. The primary criterion for any one person judging any one film is simply "Did I enjoy that?". Of course, there are lots of different ways to enjoy a film, and that's the fun of it.
I don't call myself a film buff. I know there are loads and loads of people you've watched way more films than me, who love films more than me, who know the arts and crafts of films inside out. I am only a film watcher. That's it. That's helpful for this post.
There are a few genres I don't really watch, sure. I don't watch animations any more (I can't explain why, and it's not because I don't know they're great) or very rarely children's films in general, I rarely watch horror. Apart from that, most things are fair game. Silly comedies, action flicks, romcoms, musicals, epic sagas, sci-fi, I'll give most of them a go, and if I like them, then I like them and that's that. Sure, I mainly watch well-reviewed films and well-reviewed films are usually dramas/indies, because that's the way the world is but, if I enjoy the film, if it does its job with me, I can recognise that and praise it accordingly.
Just to give you an idea, while most films I've ever seen (like most people who aren't film critics) I've only seen once, the films I've seen many multiple times (sometimes more through accident than design) include ...
-Die Hard
-The Big Lebowski
-Jaws
-Mary Poppins
-The Deer Hunter
-Role Models
-Pretty Woman
-Dirty Dancing
-Dead Poet's Society
-Mean Streets
-Adventureland
-Star Wars
So, I'm, at heart, pretty basic with films. I can be poncey if needs be and it does me good to be poncey, I understand that films can go a long way towards being pure art or a long way towards being pure commerce and I'm happy with various things on that scale at various times.
Lots of my friends are on a similar filmic level to me. Without being world experts, they love films, they've seen lots of films, we talk about films. And we disagree. Really a lot. That's the thing. Likemindedness with films exists a lot less between likeminded people than with other things. A film I love can be panned by one or more friends for reasons I hadn't considered. There's very little reliability in second-guessing people's views on films. That comes, I think, from the fact we only see them once. Outside factors can have a big impact. Some aspect of the film can assume huge prominence where to someone else it's barely noticed.
And, of course, different people like different things. The people that watched Transformers 4 and made it the highest grossing movie of 2014 must have found some aspect of what they were looking for in it. I don't, at least not to start with, want to talk about all the different elements of a film that different individuals might like, I want to think about the universals (which then have innumerable variations).
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the universals are ...
- not being bored
- not finding the acting really bad
- not finding the script really bad
- not finding the film far too short or far too long
- not finding the film a physically unpleasing experience
- finding the film "tight"
- not spotting too many glaring errors
- the film not putting forward a worldview you wildly and violently disagree with ... [I think this is more of a 95% than a universal. Film critics often talk about admiring the artistry in DW Griffiths' racist Birth of a Nation, but generally, I think there's something in finding a film's views (if it has views, really most films don't necessarily have views) disgusting and appalling that will mean we won't like it
So those are, as far as I can see, the fundamentals, it's just that what each one means varies enormously for different people.
So, inevitably, I have to think of my own experiences, and the particular criticisms I hear from friends which turn them off or onto films. A few friends are "insiders", having been on one or both side of the camera, and, inevitably, their issues can be more specific, though often they're just extensions of what us laypeople think and feel. Still, a cinematographer is more likely to have a film ruined for them by shamelessly derivative cinematography than I am. I'm not 100% sure what cinematography is.
These are things I often hear and often think (in a negative way) ... it'll be quite a long list ...
- I don't care
- The lead characters are unsympathetic
- It drags in the middle
- There's no tension
- It was let down by its ending
- It took ages to get going
- It doesn't stand up on its own as a film
- There are glaring factual errors
- It claimed to be to do with the truth but played fast and loose with the truth
- There are glaring errors of continuity
- I don't believe in the motivations
- It wasn't that funny
- It was gratuitous and manipulative
- There was no light and shade
- I could tell what people were going to say in advance
- It was ridden with cliches
- It took itself far too seriously
- I couldn't understand what was going on
- It didn't challenge me
- There was just nothing special about it
- The lead actor's poor attempt at an English/American/Australian/Irish/African accent ruined the whole thing for me
- There was a lot of shameless stunt casting
- It was offensive
- There was far too much exposition
- There were lots of scenes that didn't need to be there
- It was completely obvious what was going to happen
- Like this list, it was let down by its ending
(and in a positive way ... the positives are always less fluently expressed, I find)
- It was well-acted
- It was moving
- It was very funny
- It was exciting
- It was honest
- It was true
- The story was fantastic
- It created a mood and maintained it
- It created a world and made you believe in it
- It was important
- It was profound
- It was like nothing I'd seen before
- I didn't breathe
- I didn't think of the time
- It was a work of art
- It didn't treat me like an idiot
- It surprised me
- It gave me what I wanted
- It made me feel better
Then there are external factors which affect our enjoyment of a film and we'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't recognise them
- whether someone's head is slightly in the way
- whether people are being noisy
- what kind of mood we're in
- whether you're drunk etc.
- whether we spend a lot of the film needing the loo
- whether there is some kind of problem with the projection
- whether the volume is too loud or even too quiet
- whether people in the cinema are clearly hating it or rapt
- whether you hear someone slagging it off as soon as it's finished
- whether the person you went with liked it or not
And context
-what our expectations are
-what the reviews we've read say
-whether we're comparing it to a previous incarnation eg previous film, play or book
-what we think of the actors starring
-what we think of the director
-whether it's in a genre we generally favour
-the very scale of the film (if a film is aiming to be massive and important and gets there 80% (maybe '12 Years a Slave', how does that compare to a tight simple little film (e.g. '71)
I've undoubtedly missed loads (countless) out but I think people are deceiving themselves if they don't think all these things, even the most trivial) might matter to the eventual two-sentence moderately pretentious summation we might well give of the film at some point.
I've been watching a fair few films at the cinema lately and mainly enjoyed them. Some have served as interesting test cases. I saw the last Hobbit film - out of a sense of completion and duty to the franchise - but the 6th film in a blockbuster franchise for children is a long way from what I'd usually go for. I knew I wouldn't think it was great, but I wanted to enjoy it, I just kept on being jarred.
And for me, I think it's the "jarring" which is so important. How many "jars" do we allow? I was jarred a few times in 'The Theory of Everything', by a few scenes of exposition, its obviousness, its occasional playing on the emotions, its pretty obvious playing with facts, but, you know what, I was moved, the performances were so good and the performances were the film, the strange course of the life at its centre made it by definition unusual, I forgave the jarring. There were only about 5 jars, mind, if there'd been 8, who knows?
Likewise, Interstellar, just too many jars, too many moments where I just felt "I'm not having this". Maybe if i'd been in a different mood, i'd have forgiven the jars and admired the artistry...
It's an impossible question. Impossible, of course. Endless. As it should be. I don't want to reduce my watching of a film to a checklist. This year I thought both Under the Skin and Edge of Tomorrow were great . Both were about voracious aliens. That's where the similarities end. But they were both just fine with me ...
Sunday, 21 December 2014
2014: Another year in music
This has been my favourite year for music in a long time, if not ever. Good and very good albums have been released regularly throughout the year, and I've done my best to listen to as many of them as I could. In the last few years, I've sought out music that perhaps didn't fall naturally in my own taste bracket, due, to an extent, to a dearth of natural favourites, but there's been no need to do that this year, as it's really been a fine year for the indie-rock stalwarts, and there's no denying the fact that my natural inclination is towards the indie-rock stalwarts.
Many of the artists I grew up with have released albums this year - it's felt just as much like 1994 or 2004 as 2014 sometimes. Why, there's even been an anniversary album by the Wu-Tang Clan with a splendid opening track called 'Ruckus in B Minor' (Wu-Tang count as indie rock stalwarts, don't they?). It's like 'Bring da Ruckus' but with a dose of cheese and an absence of menace.
Anyway, everywhere I've looked I've seen an old favourite coming out of the woodwork. One such old favourite delivered my Album of the Year. That's Gruff Rhys' 'American Interior'. It's probably sentiment that makes me place it right at the top of the pile. In truth, for me there were three utterly outstanding albums this year, and a few others not far behind. The other two near-faultless works, for me, are 'St.Vincent' by St.Vincent and 'Benji' by Sun Kil Moon.
Both have figured close to the top of critics' lists too, with the three most acclaimed albums probably being 'St Vincent', 'Run the Jewels 2' by Run the Jewels and, above all, 'Lost in the Dream' by The War on Drugs.
The latter's pre-eminence (indeed, all the critics' lists collated place 'Lost in the Dream' at the very top) puzzles me a little. During a slightly ugly mini-spat between Mark Kozelek (who is Sun Kil Moon) and the largely blameless War on Drugs, he described their sound as "beer commercial guitar" and I see the point. Not that I mind beer commercial guitar, in fact this is a genre, this widescreen Americana, which I'm very well acquainted with. That's why I'm so puzzled. Very often, when an album is widely acclaimed and I just don't really get it, I can accept it's because it's not my natural oeuvre - something like Frank Ocean's 'Channel Orange' or anything by, say, Aphex Twin. But 'Lost in the Dream' is right up my street, I just don't think it's that good. It's quite good. I've never disliked it. I've listened to it quite a lot, and it lives up to its name in that, without fail, I lose the thread and start daydreaming. There are a couple of good ones at the beginning, a good one in the middle, a good one at the end. There's a lot of epic noise, a lot of portents of meaning, but no phrases or tunes that particularly stand out. It really bothers me that an album that sounds a bit like Springsteen, The Waterboys, Dylan, The National, all acts I love, has been swooned over by even the hippest publications and I just don't get what they're going on about. It's an album that screams "23rd Best Album of the Year", not critical domination.
Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon) took a little off the shine off his year by being a bit of a nasty bully to The War on Drugs but his album 'Benji' is a masterpiece by comparison. It's just songs, relatively bare songs, autobiographical songs about family and friends and awkwardness and tragedy and death and massacres and memories and middle age and it's utterly compelling from start to finish.
St Vincent's self-titled album is likewise great all the way through. It's so clever and arresting, there are some proper weird ballads, great guitar solos, great lyrics which jump out and make you laugh, there's not much not to like about it. Indeed, the only negative I have about it is I wish it was a couple of songs longer, and that's hardly a negative.
And what of 'American Interior'? Regular readers will know I don't put anyone above Gruff Rhys - not Bob Dylan, not The Beatles, not Shed Seven, not Bad Boys Inc, nobody. So I'm biased. 'American Interior' was fairly acclaimed and has shown up a little in end-of-year lists, but not all that much. So be it, but I do think it's worth re-emphasizing exactly what he's achieved with this release.
- an album, book, film, app, educational concert tour
- opening up a fascinating and unknown footnote to history, becoming an expert in the subject of the album, the Welsh explorer John Evans
- successfully drawing links between Evans' quest and his own, making something timely and timeless about Welsh and American identity
- making a rarely cohesive concept album, where the songs hold together in their own right, nothing feels forced, which stands up as collection of songs even if you don't know what he's going on about
-performing and engaging audiences for 2 hours with nothing but his guitar, a slide show, and pure comic timing
- the old Gruff Rhys trick of using humour and lightness to create something profound
- more things ....
Anyway, for me 'American Interior' in toto is undoubtedly the "thing" of the year. Whether the album on its own is the best is almost a moot point, the album is successfully a part of something bigger. And, anyway, I think it is my favourite album, that's what's important.
So those are my favourite three. What else? A lot. I've clearly relaxed my music tastes because I've actually found myself enjoying a Damien Rice album, not to mention a song sung by the guy from Maroon 5. Unforgivable. I initially thought this was Elbow's first dud album but as the year's progressed, I think it's become my favourite of theirs. Sharon Van Etten's 'Are We There' is making a late run, certainly in terms of emotional heft. I'm very surprised by how much I enjoyed the La Roux album 'Trouble in Paradise'. I had no interest in La Roux, but its really enjoyable all the way through. FKA Twigs' LP1 was likewise pretty compelling and something that broke beyond its supposed genre. I wouldn't say it was all enjoyable, but it's pretty great. Critics are currently going crazy for the new D'Angelo album and saying it's a late contender for Album of the Year. Well, we'll see. i've only listened to it once and I never really got all the fuss with D'Angelo. In my further noble attempts to like music which tries in vain to suggest that I have eclectic taste which goes beyond sludgy guitar music, i've rather enjoyed the soulful, squinky, dance music you can't dance to of Caribou's 'I Can't Do Without You' album.
There were so many releases by people I like, people who've soundtracked my life for 20 years, from Leonard Cohen (the best of the over 75s) to Damon Albarn, Tim Wheeler, Ryan Adams, Jenny Lewis, Hamilton Leithaiser, Jeff Tweedy, James Yorkston and King Creosote, the Manics, Bright Eyes, Ed Harcourt, First Aid Kit and Belle and Sebastian. I mean, who has any time for exploring new and interesting things ...
... and what of the mainstream. I haven't looked all that closely, unlike in previous years, but it seems fine. The big success stories, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Paolo Nutini, they've kind of mastered "inoffensive" in that they genuinely don't offend, as opposed to being "offensively inoffensive". They're pretty good, so their success doesn't make anyone angry. The songs are good. If they weren't successful, people like me would like them ...
Hopefully next year I can really let go of the idea of providing some kind of objective assessment on music and just like what I like and not pretend I have a clue beyond that. Who am I kidding?
Anyway, if you take anything from this, if you're someone who's interest in music has gradually waned as you don't have the time and as more important things come up, trust me, there's still loads to love, more than ever. I'm going to give a long list of songs and of albums, and, honestly, I'm not making up the numbers, I've derived pleasure from every single thing I'm listing here, and more.
FAVOURITE ALBUMS
1. American Interior - Gruff Rhys
2. Benji - Sun Kil Moon
3. St Vincent - St Vincent
4. Are We There - Sharon Van Etten
5. The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society - James Yorkston
6. LP1 - FKA Twigs
7. Carry on the Grudge - Jamie T
8. The Take Off and Landing of Everything - Elbow
9. Problems - Leonard Cohen
10.My Favourite Faded Fantasy - Damien Rice
11.Trouble in Paradise - La Roux
12.From Scotland with Love - King Creosote
13.Futurology - Manic Street Preachers
14.I Never Learn - Lykke Li
15.Everyday Robots - Damon Albarn
16.Lateness of Dancers - Hiss Golden Messenger
17.I Can't Do Without You - Caribou
18.Stay Gold - First Aid Kit
19.Salad Days - Mac DeMarco
20.The Voyager - Jenny Lewis
21.Rips - Ex Hex
22.Run the Jewels 2 - Run the Jewels
23.Lost in the Dream - The War on Drugs
24.Lazaretto - Jack White
25.Sukierae - Tweedy
26.DEAD - Young Fathers
27.Small Town Heroes - Hurray for the Riff Raff
28.At Best Cuckold - Avi Buffalo
29.Lost Domain - Tim Wheeler
30.Ryan Adams - Ryan Adams
31.First Mind - Nick Mulvey
32.Black Hours - Hamilton Leithauser
33.Everybody Down - Kate Tempest
34.Post Tropical - James Vincent McMorrow
35. Black Messiah - D'Angelo
FAVOURITE SONGS
I'm going for the title track from 'American Interior' as my Song of the Year. It's a conventional rock groove, the kind that might have given the Super Furry Animals their biggest hit if they'd released it back when indie bands still had hit singles. Other songs may have taken me on more involving journeys, but it's 'American Interior' that's undoubtedly been the soundtrack to my year above all.
Favourite 50
And 50 more ... (not in order)
Many of the artists I grew up with have released albums this year - it's felt just as much like 1994 or 2004 as 2014 sometimes. Why, there's even been an anniversary album by the Wu-Tang Clan with a splendid opening track called 'Ruckus in B Minor' (Wu-Tang count as indie rock stalwarts, don't they?). It's like 'Bring da Ruckus' but with a dose of cheese and an absence of menace.
Anyway, everywhere I've looked I've seen an old favourite coming out of the woodwork. One such old favourite delivered my Album of the Year. That's Gruff Rhys' 'American Interior'. It's probably sentiment that makes me place it right at the top of the pile. In truth, for me there were three utterly outstanding albums this year, and a few others not far behind. The other two near-faultless works, for me, are 'St.Vincent' by St.Vincent and 'Benji' by Sun Kil Moon.
Both have figured close to the top of critics' lists too, with the three most acclaimed albums probably being 'St Vincent', 'Run the Jewels 2' by Run the Jewels and, above all, 'Lost in the Dream' by The War on Drugs.
The latter's pre-eminence (indeed, all the critics' lists collated place 'Lost in the Dream' at the very top) puzzles me a little. During a slightly ugly mini-spat between Mark Kozelek (who is Sun Kil Moon) and the largely blameless War on Drugs, he described their sound as "beer commercial guitar" and I see the point. Not that I mind beer commercial guitar, in fact this is a genre, this widescreen Americana, which I'm very well acquainted with. That's why I'm so puzzled. Very often, when an album is widely acclaimed and I just don't really get it, I can accept it's because it's not my natural oeuvre - something like Frank Ocean's 'Channel Orange' or anything by, say, Aphex Twin. But 'Lost in the Dream' is right up my street, I just don't think it's that good. It's quite good. I've never disliked it. I've listened to it quite a lot, and it lives up to its name in that, without fail, I lose the thread and start daydreaming. There are a couple of good ones at the beginning, a good one in the middle, a good one at the end. There's a lot of epic noise, a lot of portents of meaning, but no phrases or tunes that particularly stand out. It really bothers me that an album that sounds a bit like Springsteen, The Waterboys, Dylan, The National, all acts I love, has been swooned over by even the hippest publications and I just don't get what they're going on about. It's an album that screams "23rd Best Album of the Year", not critical domination.
Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon) took a little off the shine off his year by being a bit of a nasty bully to The War on Drugs but his album 'Benji' is a masterpiece by comparison. It's just songs, relatively bare songs, autobiographical songs about family and friends and awkwardness and tragedy and death and massacres and memories and middle age and it's utterly compelling from start to finish.
St Vincent's self-titled album is likewise great all the way through. It's so clever and arresting, there are some proper weird ballads, great guitar solos, great lyrics which jump out and make you laugh, there's not much not to like about it. Indeed, the only negative I have about it is I wish it was a couple of songs longer, and that's hardly a negative.
And what of 'American Interior'? Regular readers will know I don't put anyone above Gruff Rhys - not Bob Dylan, not The Beatles, not Shed Seven, not Bad Boys Inc, nobody. So I'm biased. 'American Interior' was fairly acclaimed and has shown up a little in end-of-year lists, but not all that much. So be it, but I do think it's worth re-emphasizing exactly what he's achieved with this release.
- an album, book, film, app, educational concert tour
- opening up a fascinating and unknown footnote to history, becoming an expert in the subject of the album, the Welsh explorer John Evans
- successfully drawing links between Evans' quest and his own, making something timely and timeless about Welsh and American identity
- making a rarely cohesive concept album, where the songs hold together in their own right, nothing feels forced, which stands up as collection of songs even if you don't know what he's going on about
-performing and engaging audiences for 2 hours with nothing but his guitar, a slide show, and pure comic timing
- the old Gruff Rhys trick of using humour and lightness to create something profound
- more things ....
Anyway, for me 'American Interior' in toto is undoubtedly the "thing" of the year. Whether the album on its own is the best is almost a moot point, the album is successfully a part of something bigger. And, anyway, I think it is my favourite album, that's what's important.
So those are my favourite three. What else? A lot. I've clearly relaxed my music tastes because I've actually found myself enjoying a Damien Rice album, not to mention a song sung by the guy from Maroon 5. Unforgivable. I initially thought this was Elbow's first dud album but as the year's progressed, I think it's become my favourite of theirs. Sharon Van Etten's 'Are We There' is making a late run, certainly in terms of emotional heft. I'm very surprised by how much I enjoyed the La Roux album 'Trouble in Paradise'. I had no interest in La Roux, but its really enjoyable all the way through. FKA Twigs' LP1 was likewise pretty compelling and something that broke beyond its supposed genre. I wouldn't say it was all enjoyable, but it's pretty great. Critics are currently going crazy for the new D'Angelo album and saying it's a late contender for Album of the Year. Well, we'll see. i've only listened to it once and I never really got all the fuss with D'Angelo. In my further noble attempts to like music which tries in vain to suggest that I have eclectic taste which goes beyond sludgy guitar music, i've rather enjoyed the soulful, squinky, dance music you can't dance to of Caribou's 'I Can't Do Without You' album.
There were so many releases by people I like, people who've soundtracked my life for 20 years, from Leonard Cohen (the best of the over 75s) to Damon Albarn, Tim Wheeler, Ryan Adams, Jenny Lewis, Hamilton Leithaiser, Jeff Tweedy, James Yorkston and King Creosote, the Manics, Bright Eyes, Ed Harcourt, First Aid Kit and Belle and Sebastian. I mean, who has any time for exploring new and interesting things ...
... and what of the mainstream. I haven't looked all that closely, unlike in previous years, but it seems fine. The big success stories, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Paolo Nutini, they've kind of mastered "inoffensive" in that they genuinely don't offend, as opposed to being "offensively inoffensive". They're pretty good, so their success doesn't make anyone angry. The songs are good. If they weren't successful, people like me would like them ...
Hopefully next year I can really let go of the idea of providing some kind of objective assessment on music and just like what I like and not pretend I have a clue beyond that. Who am I kidding?
Anyway, if you take anything from this, if you're someone who's interest in music has gradually waned as you don't have the time and as more important things come up, trust me, there's still loads to love, more than ever. I'm going to give a long list of songs and of albums, and, honestly, I'm not making up the numbers, I've derived pleasure from every single thing I'm listing here, and more.
FAVOURITE ALBUMS
1. American Interior - Gruff Rhys
2. Benji - Sun Kil Moon
3. St Vincent - St Vincent
4. Are We There - Sharon Van Etten
5. The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society - James Yorkston
6. LP1 - FKA Twigs
7. Carry on the Grudge - Jamie T
8. The Take Off and Landing of Everything - Elbow
9. Problems - Leonard Cohen
10.My Favourite Faded Fantasy - Damien Rice
11.Trouble in Paradise - La Roux
12.From Scotland with Love - King Creosote
13.Futurology - Manic Street Preachers
14.I Never Learn - Lykke Li
15.Everyday Robots - Damon Albarn
16.Lateness of Dancers - Hiss Golden Messenger
17.I Can't Do Without You - Caribou
18.Stay Gold - First Aid Kit
19.Salad Days - Mac DeMarco
20.The Voyager - Jenny Lewis
21.Rips - Ex Hex
22.Run the Jewels 2 - Run the Jewels
23.Lost in the Dream - The War on Drugs
24.Lazaretto - Jack White
25.Sukierae - Tweedy
26.DEAD - Young Fathers
27.Small Town Heroes - Hurray for the Riff Raff
28.At Best Cuckold - Avi Buffalo
29.Lost Domain - Tim Wheeler
30.Ryan Adams - Ryan Adams
31.First Mind - Nick Mulvey
32.Black Hours - Hamilton Leithauser
33.Everybody Down - Kate Tempest
34.Post Tropical - James Vincent McMorrow
35. Black Messiah - D'Angelo
FAVOURITE SONGS
I'm going for the title track from 'American Interior' as my Song of the Year. It's a conventional rock groove, the kind that might have given the Super Furry Animals their biggest hit if they'd released it back when indie bands still had hit singles. Other songs may have taken me on more involving journeys, but it's 'American Interior' that's undoubtedly been the soundtrack to my year above all.
Favourite 50
| 1 | American Interior - Gruff Rhys | |
| 2 | I Knew Your Mother - Loudon Wainwright III | |
| 3 | Nobody's Empire - Belle and Sebastian | |
| 4 | Severed Crossed Fingers - St Vincent | |
| 5 | Broken Wave - James Yorkston | |
| 6 | Forty Days of Rain - Roddy Frame | |
| 7 | Just One of the Guys - Jenny Lewis | |
| 8 | Two Weeks - FKA Twigs | |
| 9 | Pauper's Dough - King Creosote | |
| 10 | Gold - James Vincent McMorrow | |
| 11 | Overwhelmed with Pride - Avi Buffalo | |
| 12 | Love Me Like I'm Not Made of Stone - Lykke Li | |
| 13 | Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes - Sun Kil Moon | |
| 14 | Your Love is Killing Me - Sharon Van Etten | |
| 15 | Zombie - Jamie T | |
| 16 | Seasons (Waiting on You) - Future Islands | |
| 17 | Carissa - Sun Kil Moon | |
| 18 | Archie Marry Me - Alvvays | |
| 19 | Walk into the Wilderness - Gruff Rhys | |
| 20 | Almost Like the Blues - Leonard Cohen | |
| 21 | Short Movie - Laura Marling | |
| 22 | The Way That I Live - Ed Harcourt | |
| 23 | I Can't Do Without You - Caribou | |
| 24 | Nothing Will Change - Sharon Van Etten | |
| 25 | Ben's My Friend - Sun Kil Moon | |
| 26 | Saturday's Song - Hiss Golden Messenger | |
| 27 | Uptown Funk - Mark Ronson | |
| 28 | Uptight Downtown - La Roux | |
| 29 | Young Blood - Sophie Ellis-Bextor | |
| 30 | The Smallest Splinter - Hamilton Leithauser | |
| 31 | My Sad Captains - Elbow | |
| 32 | Get Up - Young Fathers | |
| 33 | 11 O'Clock Friday Night - Hamilton Leithauser | |
| 34 | Everytime the Sun Comes Up - Sharon Van Etten | |
| 35 | Cedar Lane - First Aid Kit | |
| 35 | Trusty and True - Damien Rice | |
| 36 | Holding On For Life - Broken Bells | |
| 37 | Prince Jonny - St. Vincent | |
| 38 | Lost Stars - Adam Levine | |
| 39 | If I Had Wings - Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford | |
| 40 | Liberty (is where we'll be) - Gruff Rhys | |
| 41 | Let's Go To War - Manic Street Preachers | |
| 41 | You Got Me Singing - Leonard Cohen | |
| 43 | Sweet Malaise - Ed Harcourt and Ren Harvieu | |
| 44 | The Moon Song - Karen O | |
| 46 | Feels Like Fire - Ryan Adams | |
| 47 | The Very Very Best - James Yorkston | |
| 48 | Guy Fawkes' Signature - James Yorkston | |
| 49 | Boys - Sky Ferreira | |
| 50 | Ruckus in B Minor - Wu-Tang Clan |
| Adding the Blue - Chrissie Hynde |
| Burning - The War on Drugs |
| Cargill - King Creosote |
| Close Your Eyes (and Count to Fuck) - Run The Jewels |
| Coming Home - Kaiser Chiefs |
| Cucurucu - Nick Mulvey |
| Diamond Lights Pt 1 - Tweedy |
| Do It Again - Royskopp and Robyn |
| Fancy - Iggy Azalea |
| Fly Boy Blue/Lunette - Elbow |
| Ghost - Ella Henderson |
| Goodbye Weekend - Mac DeMarco |
| Hideaway - Kiesza |
| I Don't Want to See You Anymore - Brendan Benson |
| Iron Sky - Paolo Nutini |
| Largs (Long) - King Creosote |
| Late Bloomer - Jenny Lewis |
| Love is Just a Heartbeat Away - Jamie T |
| Low Key - Tweedy |
| Mahogany Dread - Hiss Golden Messenger |
| Mecca - Wild Beasts |
| Medicine - Tim Wheeler |
| My Silver Lining - First Aid Kit |
| My Wrecking Ball - Ryan Adams |
| New Moon - Tweedy |
| Passing Out Pieces - Mac DeMarco |
| Photographs (You Are Taking Now) - Damon Albarn |
| Pressure - My Brightest Diamond |
| Put Your Number in My Phone - Ariel Pink |
| Radio On -Ex Hex |
| Refugees - Embrace |
| Say Goodbye - Beck |
| September Fields - Frazey Ford |
| Set Fire to the Stars - Gruff Rhys |
| Sing - Ed Sheeran |
| So Now What - The Shins |
| Super Rat - Honeyblood |
| Swimming Pool - Emmy the Great |
| Teenage Exorcists - Mogwai |
| Temporary Ground - Jack White |
| The Blues You Sang - James Yorkston |
| The Body Electric - Hurray for the Riff Raff |
| The History of a Cheating Heart - Damon Albarn |
| The Last Conquistador - Gruff Rhys |
| The Man - Aloe Blacc |
| The Next Jet to Leave Moscow - Manic Street Preachers |
| The Prophet - Jamie T |
| The Voyager - Jenny Lewis |
| Would You Fight For My Love? - Jack White |
| You Are Your Mother's Child - Bright Eyes |
Friday, 7 November 2014
Where you grew up is probably awesome. Is it as awesome as Ealing?
I grew up in a nondescript terraced house in a nondescript little road in a nondescript part of a relatively nondescript borough. That's how I saw it when I was growing up, it's by and large how it would be seen now. Between Northfields and South Ealing on the Piccadilly line. When people look at Northfields and South Ealing on the blue piccadilly, they don't think to themselves "there is the glamorous centre of the universe!" and they're right not to.
I think fondly of it, but it's hardly a golden wonderland. When growing up, I imagined many more exciting, meaningful places.
Except ... I was wrong. It's turns out Ealing actually is the most significant and amazing place in the world. Who knew?
If you grew up in what you thought was a fairly nondescript place, you might well find out on a little investigation that it's full of secrets and sites of wonder.
Though I've always been a chap interested in acquiring knowledge, I was surprisingly uncurious and unimpressed about the wonders all about me growing up.
If you're a film fan anywhere in the world, you hear the word Ealing, you surely follow it with "Comedies" or "Studios". I knew about Ealing Studios growing up, I knew because they were 10 minutes walk away but I didn't fully appreciate how enormously excellent a place those studios have a place in the history of world cinema, how "Ealing" carries as much cache and inherent meaning as, say, "spaghetti western", "screwball", "Disney" (well maybe not quite Disney ...) or "film noir".
So I had little excuse for not realising Ealing was a bit marvellous. Even more so as, at my first Ealing home (where we left when I was 5) our nextdoor neighbour, Tony, had collaborated on an actual Top 3 single in the early 80s, which we found terribly exciting. As a child, that was his most exciting feat. When I heard about him also being in bands with oldies with names like Jack Bruce and Jeff Beck, that seemed comparatively small fry. Just the most renowned instrumentalists in the history of rock'n'roll.
Aah, the history of rock'n'roll, that's what little Ealing was really about. When I say little Ealing, I also mean Little Ealing, the specific area where I lived. Who was a former student of the former convent school across the road? Mary O'Brien... who became Dusty Springfield.
And just a bit of a walk away, over towards Ealing Common, around the same time Dusty was growing up, so was Peter Townshend. And just by Ealing Broadway was the Ealing Club, where Jagger and Richards met Jones and the Stones played many of their first gigs, where The Who and Cream and Manfred Mann and Fleetwood Mac were all part of Alexis Korner's scene.
Townshend and Ronnie Wood also went to Ealing Art College. As would Freddie Mercury. I remember going into a pub near me when I was about 19, no longer a Queen fan, and seeing a little bit on the wall about Mercury hanging out there, and thinking how insanely excited that would have made me a few years earlier.
Oh, and look, that's not all. The park just over the road from mine was called Blondin Park, and that's because Charles Blondin, the great daredevil of the 19th century who was the first man to tightrope walk across Niagara Falls, when he decided he needed to chill out a bit, retired and died in Northfields.
And the Brentham club, the scene of many teen cricket matches, was where none other than Fred Perry, master of the polo shirt, learnt his tennis.
There's more, plenty more. That acid jazz thing of the early 90s, Jamiroquai and the Brand New Heavies and what have you, that's Ealing. Hell, there's Sid James and Peter Crouch and Neil Kinnock who I stuck my tongue out at. There's Ho Chi Minh, too ...
Ealing may be a little bit remarkable, i mean, there can't be too many suburbs that can really claim to be the birthplace of British rock'n'roll and not be laughed at, but I bet if you looked into it, you'd find some pretty amazing things about where you're from, things someone told you when you were a kid but you didn't care about, but now are just mindblowing.
All those blue plaques for slightly boring historical figures in the centre of London, but by the 20th century, it was all going on in the suburbs, wasn't it? That's where the early history was made.
I think fondly of it, but it's hardly a golden wonderland. When growing up, I imagined many more exciting, meaningful places.
Except ... I was wrong. It's turns out Ealing actually is the most significant and amazing place in the world. Who knew?
If you grew up in what you thought was a fairly nondescript place, you might well find out on a little investigation that it's full of secrets and sites of wonder.
Though I've always been a chap interested in acquiring knowledge, I was surprisingly uncurious and unimpressed about the wonders all about me growing up.
If you're a film fan anywhere in the world, you hear the word Ealing, you surely follow it with "Comedies" or "Studios". I knew about Ealing Studios growing up, I knew because they were 10 minutes walk away but I didn't fully appreciate how enormously excellent a place those studios have a place in the history of world cinema, how "Ealing" carries as much cache and inherent meaning as, say, "spaghetti western", "screwball", "Disney" (well maybe not quite Disney ...) or "film noir".
So I had little excuse for not realising Ealing was a bit marvellous. Even more so as, at my first Ealing home (where we left when I was 5) our nextdoor neighbour, Tony, had collaborated on an actual Top 3 single in the early 80s, which we found terribly exciting. As a child, that was his most exciting feat. When I heard about him also being in bands with oldies with names like Jack Bruce and Jeff Beck, that seemed comparatively small fry. Just the most renowned instrumentalists in the history of rock'n'roll.
Aah, the history of rock'n'roll, that's what little Ealing was really about. When I say little Ealing, I also mean Little Ealing, the specific area where I lived. Who was a former student of the former convent school across the road? Mary O'Brien... who became Dusty Springfield.
And just a bit of a walk away, over towards Ealing Common, around the same time Dusty was growing up, so was Peter Townshend. And just by Ealing Broadway was the Ealing Club, where Jagger and Richards met Jones and the Stones played many of their first gigs, where The Who and Cream and Manfred Mann and Fleetwood Mac were all part of Alexis Korner's scene.
Townshend and Ronnie Wood also went to Ealing Art College. As would Freddie Mercury. I remember going into a pub near me when I was about 19, no longer a Queen fan, and seeing a little bit on the wall about Mercury hanging out there, and thinking how insanely excited that would have made me a few years earlier.
Oh, and look, that's not all. The park just over the road from mine was called Blondin Park, and that's because Charles Blondin, the great daredevil of the 19th century who was the first man to tightrope walk across Niagara Falls, when he decided he needed to chill out a bit, retired and died in Northfields.
And the Brentham club, the scene of many teen cricket matches, was where none other than Fred Perry, master of the polo shirt, learnt his tennis.
There's more, plenty more. That acid jazz thing of the early 90s, Jamiroquai and the Brand New Heavies and what have you, that's Ealing. Hell, there's Sid James and Peter Crouch and Neil Kinnock who I stuck my tongue out at. There's Ho Chi Minh, too ...
Ealing may be a little bit remarkable, i mean, there can't be too many suburbs that can really claim to be the birthplace of British rock'n'roll and not be laughed at, but I bet if you looked into it, you'd find some pretty amazing things about where you're from, things someone told you when you were a kid but you didn't care about, but now are just mindblowing.
All those blue plaques for slightly boring historical figures in the centre of London, but by the 20th century, it was all going on in the suburbs, wasn't it? That's where the early history was made.
Tuesday, 4 November 2014
Boardwalk Empire - (a non-musical post)
"In the final end, he won the war, after losing every battle ..."
That certainly does not apply to Boardwalk Empire's main character, Nucky Thompson, who dies in the closing scene, but I rather think it applies to the show itself. In the final end, in the final assessment, for all its flaws, Boardwalk's final season, final episode, final scene have earnt it a place as a truly great TV show, rather than just a very good one.
I'm surprised. It begun to great fanfare, not to mention vast budget, with Terence Winter in charge and Scorsese on board, but the first season disappointed just a little. Not only did it take a fair while for the characters to bed in (including the fact that, for me, Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Kelly Mcdonald all took a while to convince as leads), but, in truth, not all that much seismic and thrilling happened and there were a few accusations of misogyny, or at least over-masculinity, flying around.
Still, if one looked on the bright side and believed in the show, one could take confidence from the relatively gentle pace of the first series. It's just possible they've got this all figured out ...
And now it's over, of course i'll never know if they had it all figured out or if they made it up as they went along, if the best of it came about by accident, but what's important is that as I watched that closing scene, I felt rewarded, I felt impressed, I felt like I'd been told the full story, I felt like the show had given me everything important it possibly could have done. Boardwalk Empire wasn't just a flashy quasi-historical tale of gangsters and guns, it was the immaculately paced tragedy of Nucky Thompson.
When it was announced, shortly after the end of Season 4, that Season 5 would be the last, I was surprised. Though I've tried, I haven't been able to find out if closure was prematurely forced on the showrunners. I'd felt at that stage that Boardwalk could run and run. Why, we'd only got from 1921 to 1924 after 4 seasons. Prohibition didn't end till 1933. Nucky Johnson (on whom Thompson was, it turns out very loosely, based) didn't die till 1968. How are they going to tie this up?
Then, when Season 5 began with the jump 7 years forward to 1931, it seemed obvious. Building to the end of Prohibition, the downfall of Capone and, most crucially, when the big boys made their play and took over, the guys that dominated American crime for a long, long time - Luciano and Lansky. Real people, real events. Whatever happened in Boardwalk Empire, these guys had to emerge the winners.
The show's treatment of its most famous characters - besides the likes of Warren Harding, Eddie Cantor, Jack Dempsey and Joe Fitzgerald making occasional appearances - Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Ben "Bugsy" Siegel and indeed Al Capone, cemented its mastery for me.
Particularly the first two - from the start, Luciano, as played by Vincent Piazza, was a little unconvincing. Really, this guy? He seemed like a little bit of a dumb small-time hood. His authority and poise grew, but slowly. So, when he made his devastating play in Season 5, Nucky was as surprised as the viewer. "I underestimated you, Charlie ..." as we all had, and suddenly, finally, Luciano looked like a dark overlord, an embodiment of evil.
Lansky had been even more innocuous and inconspicuous, (superbly played by Anatol Yusef) small, composed, watchful, articulate, in just one small scene had he kicked the crap out of someone who slighted him, just to show what must have been there. Apart from that, he was background boy, businessman. Again, the show got it just right. Nucky referred to Luciano as "his boss". Mistake. Lansky's full power is a bit shrouded in mystery - was he really one of the most powerful men in America, or was he more of an accountant, a sideman? We'll probably never know. But we know he lived till the 1980s, so he must have been pretty smart to manage that.
In both cases, Nucky got them wrong, underestimated them. He was a smart guy, but he made some terrible decisions when trying to thwart the tide of history and they contributed to his downfall.
But, as that final season so expertly unravelled, his real downfall lay in one moment, 30 years earlier, one sin which he never recovered from, one decision where ambition turned to evil and crushed decency. He gave up the teenage Gillian Darmody to the horrific Commodore and got what he deserved for it, killed by her teenage grandson, to whom he hadn't been able to show enough kindness to redeem himself.
So, in the end, Nucky's downfall was wrapped up with three generations of Darmody (fictional characters) more so than Arnold Rothstein, Johnny Torrio, Esther Randolph, Joe Masseria, Nelson Van Alden, Valentin Narcisse, Gyp Rossetti, Al Capone, Harry Daugherty, J Edgar Hoover, George Remus, Waxey Gordon, even than Luciano, Lansky and Siegel, he'd managed to escape from all those enemies with his life still intact and a couple of million in the bank. It was his terrible betrayal of a girl who trusted him as a young man who might still have been good and the course that took him down that destroyed him.
But, still, what a list of enemies! After its steady start, what an extraordinary gallery of memorable characters and memorable performances there were in Boardwalk Empire. What an incredible thing that the one character of unimpeachable moral goodness, the one that everyone was rooting for, whose trials tore at the heartstrings more than any other, was a man who'd killed over 200 people in cold blood. Richard Harrow was just one of many brilliant characters whose impact grew and grew. Van Alden, of course, Chalky White, Gillian, Rothstein, Narcisse, Sally Wheet, Eddie Kessler, Mickey Doyle, the list goes on. And then there was Gyp Rossetti.
Perhaps he was a bit too much, perhaps the show loved him so much that he rather dominated Season 3. But has there ever been a more frightening, nightmarish, memorable villain? I dreaded every time he appeared on screen. Narcisse, a more calculated, chilling evil had almost the same effect on Season 4. His comeuppance in the very last episode seemed well deserved!
Because, of course, the fictional characters, well, most of them, had to die to clear the way for the cold hard history of organised crime in America. From Jimmy Darmody and the despicable Kaestner to Owen Sleater to Eddie Kessler to Richard Harrow, then on to Season 5, in quick order, Sally, Van Alden, Chalky and finally Nucky himself. Somehow or other Eli's still alive, Gillian (but what kind of life?) and Margaret, shrewd and independent, in the best shape of all of them.
Boardwalk Empire managed to tie up all its loose ends, to give the impression that every scene, every moment had been meticulously planned all along, however untrue that may be.
Finally, a word on Steve Buscemi, who took a while to convince me as a ruthless gangster, but grew, showed more layers to the character, every episode of every season. Perhaps the best thing about the show was how, throughout the early seasons, he allowed other characters to dominate scenes around him, but then, in the end, was able to seize his moment and make Boardwalk Empire his story all along.
That certainly does not apply to Boardwalk Empire's main character, Nucky Thompson, who dies in the closing scene, but I rather think it applies to the show itself. In the final end, in the final assessment, for all its flaws, Boardwalk's final season, final episode, final scene have earnt it a place as a truly great TV show, rather than just a very good one.
I'm surprised. It begun to great fanfare, not to mention vast budget, with Terence Winter in charge and Scorsese on board, but the first season disappointed just a little. Not only did it take a fair while for the characters to bed in (including the fact that, for me, Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Kelly Mcdonald all took a while to convince as leads), but, in truth, not all that much seismic and thrilling happened and there were a few accusations of misogyny, or at least over-masculinity, flying around.
Still, if one looked on the bright side and believed in the show, one could take confidence from the relatively gentle pace of the first series. It's just possible they've got this all figured out ...
And now it's over, of course i'll never know if they had it all figured out or if they made it up as they went along, if the best of it came about by accident, but what's important is that as I watched that closing scene, I felt rewarded, I felt impressed, I felt like I'd been told the full story, I felt like the show had given me everything important it possibly could have done. Boardwalk Empire wasn't just a flashy quasi-historical tale of gangsters and guns, it was the immaculately paced tragedy of Nucky Thompson.
When it was announced, shortly after the end of Season 4, that Season 5 would be the last, I was surprised. Though I've tried, I haven't been able to find out if closure was prematurely forced on the showrunners. I'd felt at that stage that Boardwalk could run and run. Why, we'd only got from 1921 to 1924 after 4 seasons. Prohibition didn't end till 1933. Nucky Johnson (on whom Thompson was, it turns out very loosely, based) didn't die till 1968. How are they going to tie this up?
Then, when Season 5 began with the jump 7 years forward to 1931, it seemed obvious. Building to the end of Prohibition, the downfall of Capone and, most crucially, when the big boys made their play and took over, the guys that dominated American crime for a long, long time - Luciano and Lansky. Real people, real events. Whatever happened in Boardwalk Empire, these guys had to emerge the winners.
The show's treatment of its most famous characters - besides the likes of Warren Harding, Eddie Cantor, Jack Dempsey and Joe Fitzgerald making occasional appearances - Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Ben "Bugsy" Siegel and indeed Al Capone, cemented its mastery for me.
Particularly the first two - from the start, Luciano, as played by Vincent Piazza, was a little unconvincing. Really, this guy? He seemed like a little bit of a dumb small-time hood. His authority and poise grew, but slowly. So, when he made his devastating play in Season 5, Nucky was as surprised as the viewer. "I underestimated you, Charlie ..." as we all had, and suddenly, finally, Luciano looked like a dark overlord, an embodiment of evil.
Lansky had been even more innocuous and inconspicuous, (superbly played by Anatol Yusef) small, composed, watchful, articulate, in just one small scene had he kicked the crap out of someone who slighted him, just to show what must have been there. Apart from that, he was background boy, businessman. Again, the show got it just right. Nucky referred to Luciano as "his boss". Mistake. Lansky's full power is a bit shrouded in mystery - was he really one of the most powerful men in America, or was he more of an accountant, a sideman? We'll probably never know. But we know he lived till the 1980s, so he must have been pretty smart to manage that.
In both cases, Nucky got them wrong, underestimated them. He was a smart guy, but he made some terrible decisions when trying to thwart the tide of history and they contributed to his downfall.
But, as that final season so expertly unravelled, his real downfall lay in one moment, 30 years earlier, one sin which he never recovered from, one decision where ambition turned to evil and crushed decency. He gave up the teenage Gillian Darmody to the horrific Commodore and got what he deserved for it, killed by her teenage grandson, to whom he hadn't been able to show enough kindness to redeem himself.
So, in the end, Nucky's downfall was wrapped up with three generations of Darmody (fictional characters) more so than Arnold Rothstein, Johnny Torrio, Esther Randolph, Joe Masseria, Nelson Van Alden, Valentin Narcisse, Gyp Rossetti, Al Capone, Harry Daugherty, J Edgar Hoover, George Remus, Waxey Gordon, even than Luciano, Lansky and Siegel, he'd managed to escape from all those enemies with his life still intact and a couple of million in the bank. It was his terrible betrayal of a girl who trusted him as a young man who might still have been good and the course that took him down that destroyed him.
But, still, what a list of enemies! After its steady start, what an extraordinary gallery of memorable characters and memorable performances there were in Boardwalk Empire. What an incredible thing that the one character of unimpeachable moral goodness, the one that everyone was rooting for, whose trials tore at the heartstrings more than any other, was a man who'd killed over 200 people in cold blood. Richard Harrow was just one of many brilliant characters whose impact grew and grew. Van Alden, of course, Chalky White, Gillian, Rothstein, Narcisse, Sally Wheet, Eddie Kessler, Mickey Doyle, the list goes on. And then there was Gyp Rossetti.
Perhaps he was a bit too much, perhaps the show loved him so much that he rather dominated Season 3. But has there ever been a more frightening, nightmarish, memorable villain? I dreaded every time he appeared on screen. Narcisse, a more calculated, chilling evil had almost the same effect on Season 4. His comeuppance in the very last episode seemed well deserved!
Because, of course, the fictional characters, well, most of them, had to die to clear the way for the cold hard history of organised crime in America. From Jimmy Darmody and the despicable Kaestner to Owen Sleater to Eddie Kessler to Richard Harrow, then on to Season 5, in quick order, Sally, Van Alden, Chalky and finally Nucky himself. Somehow or other Eli's still alive, Gillian (but what kind of life?) and Margaret, shrewd and independent, in the best shape of all of them.
Boardwalk Empire managed to tie up all its loose ends, to give the impression that every scene, every moment had been meticulously planned all along, however untrue that may be.
Finally, a word on Steve Buscemi, who took a while to convince me as a ruthless gangster, but grew, showed more layers to the character, every episode of every season. Perhaps the best thing about the show was how, throughout the early seasons, he allowed other characters to dominate scenes around him, but then, in the end, was able to seize his moment and make Boardwalk Empire his story all along.
Sunday, 2 November 2014
So, you ask, what should have won the Mercury Prize each year?
Strangely, it's a slightly different question from What was the Best British Album of each year since 1992, and it's certainly a bit different from What was my Favourite British Album of each year since 1992.
It's difficult in some years because there are too many great contenders, it's difficult in other years because there's a desert of good British albums (I kind of understand now how Speech Debelle won), it's difficult for me to do this because, who am I kidding, if it was me there'd be about 5 Furries albums, 3 Blur albums, 2 James Yorkston albums, 3 Belle and Sebastian albums and probably a Bob Dylan album for good measure.
Still, I think I've come up with an OK alternative (where alternative is actually required) list, and a few others for some years which would be worthy winners.
But this is a bit unsatisfactory and I acknowledge I'm narrowing the range rather than expanding it. There are a few years where you can safely say they chose an album that didn't go on to great acclaim and success, which looks strange in hindsight, and I can reasonably suggest what would have been a more fitting winner, but there are other years where my alternative choice is a little weak,
I've tried to get it right in terms of the fact that entries are usually July to July or so each year
It's difficult in some years because there are too many great contenders, it's difficult in other years because there's a desert of good British albums (I kind of understand now how Speech Debelle won), it's difficult for me to do this because, who am I kidding, if it was me there'd be about 5 Furries albums, 3 Blur albums, 2 James Yorkston albums, 3 Belle and Sebastian albums and probably a Bob Dylan album for good measure.
Still, I think I've come up with an OK alternative (where alternative is actually required) list, and a few others for some years which would be worthy winners.
But this is a bit unsatisfactory and I acknowledge I'm narrowing the range rather than expanding it. There are a few years where you can safely say they chose an album that didn't go on to great acclaim and success, which looks strange in hindsight, and I can reasonably suggest what would have been a more fitting winner, but there are other years where my alternative choice is a little weak,
I've tried to get it right in terms of the fact that entries are usually July to July or so each year
| Year | Actual Winner | My Winner | Alternatives |
| 1992 | Screamadelica
-Primal Scream |
Screamadelica |
|
| 1993 | Suede - Suede | Suede | Tindersticks
- Tindersticks, Giant Steps - Boo Radleys, Modern Life is Rubbish - Blur |
| 1994 | Elegant
Slumming - M People |
Parklife - Blur | Dog
Man Star - Suede |
| 1995 | Dummy - Portishead | Dummy | The
Bends - Radiohead, Definitely Maybe -
Oasis, Maxinquaye - Tricky, Grand Prix - Teenage Fanclub |
| 1996 | Different Class - Pulp | Tigermilk - Belle and Sebastian | Help
- War Child, Fuzzy Logic - Super Furry Animals, Different Class - Pulp, Everything Must Go - Manic
Street Preachers, What's the Story … - Oasis |
| 1997 | New Forms - Roni Size/Reprazent | OK Computer - Radiohead | If
You're Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are
Floating in Space - Spiritualized, Blur - Blur, Radiator - Super Furry
Animals |
| 1998 | Bring it On - Gomez | When
I was Born for the 7th Time - Cornershop |
Mezzanine - Massive Attack |
| 1999 | OK - Talvin Singh | Guerrilla - Super Furry Animals (A TRICKY YEAR!) | Surrender
- The Chemical Brothers, Come On Die Young - Mogwai |
| 2000 | Hour of the Bewilderbeast - Badly Drawn Boy | Hour of the Bewilderbeast | Doves
- Lost Souls, Little Black Numbers - Kathryn Williams |
| 2001 | Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea - PJ Harvey | Asleep in the Back - Elbow | Free
All Angels - Ash, Rooty - Basement Jaxx, Kid A - Radiohead, Gorillaz -
Gorillaz, Here Be Monsters - Ed Harcourt |
| 2002 | A Little Deeper - Miss Dynamite | Run Come Save Me - Roots Manuva | Original
Pirate Material - Streets, Moving Up Country - James Yorkston and the
Athletes |
| 2003 | Boy
in Da Corner - Dizzee Rascal |
Boy in Da Corner | Hate - The Delgados |
| 2004 | Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand | Franz Ferdinand | A
Grand Don't Come For Free - The Streets,
Dear Catastrophe Waitress - Belle and Sebastian |
| 2005 | Hope
There's Someone - Antony and the Johnsons |
Arular - MIA | Silent Alarm - Bloc Party |
| 2006 | Whatever
People Say I Am … - Arctic Monkeys |
Whatever People Say … | |
| 2007 | Myths of the Near Future - Klaxons | Back
to Black - Amy Winehouse |
|
| 2008 | The Seldom Seen Kid - Elbow | Midnight Organ Fight - Frightened Rabbit | In
Rainbows - Radiohead, 22 Dreams - Paul Weller |
| 2009 | Speech Therapy - Speech Debelle | When the Haar Rolls In - James Yorkston | Lungs
- Florence and the Machine |
| 2010 | xx - The xx | The xx | Total
Life Forever - Foals, I Speak Because I Can - Laura Marling, The Defamation
of Strickland Banks - Plan B |
| 2011 | Let
England Shake - PJ Harvey |
Let England Shake | |
| 2012 | An Awesome Wave - Alt-J | An
Awesome Wave (PRETTY TERRIBLE YEAR) |
Mid Air - Paul Buchanan, Django
Django - Django Django, iLL Manors - Plan B |
| 2013 |
Overgrown
- James Blake |
AM
- Arctic Monkeys |
Settle
- Disclosure |
| 2014 | DEAD - Young Fathers | American Interior - Gruff Rhys | DEAD - Young Fathers, The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society, LP1 - FKA Twigs |
Friday, 31 October 2014
The Mercury 2014
I don't know what compels me to keep writing about the Mercury Prize each year, as if it actually matters anymore than any other list of the best albums of the year, whether it NME's, Uncut's or Fearne Cotton's. I suppose it's a triumph of brand management that it seems like it's the prize that ought to matter to "serious music fans", 20-odd years on. It got it right in its first couple of years, with Screamadelica and Suede, such that it felt like something actually worth following, then actually got it right the next year too, in a way, by getting it so wrong in going for Elegant Slumming by M People rather than Parklife. Look, we're a bit rogue, we're not indie as such. Very clever.
This year, I've had more interest than most because I think it's been the best year for British music in a long time. I already got my humphing out of the way when the shortlist was announced as, in my slavish devotion to middle-aged Celtic white men, I am quite convinced that the best British albums of the year by a mile are American Interior by Gruff Rhys and The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society by James Yorkston (with an honourable mention for From Scotland With Love by King Creosote and Futurology by the Manics). None of them got a sniff and the only middle-aged representative was Damon Albarn's first solo album Everyday Robots. Now, if this had been the album for which Albarn finally won the Mercury, that would have been some travesty. It's a nice album, interesting to consider, a bit boring to actually listen to, about the 8th or 9th best album he's ever been involved with.
In the end, I think this may be one of the years where they got it just about right. My complaint with the shortlist was that it was a very urban, hip, Anglocentric thing with little regard for the outposts (no wonder all the Scottish musicians want independence!) but then, they've given the prize to a Scottish-Nigerian-Liberian hip-hop trio, so, you know, fair enough.
And it's really good. DEAD by Young Fathers. Really enjoyable and varied and compelling and it's a new sound and really does seem to fulfil the remit of exposing an obscure album which actually does have commercial potential to a wider audience. I've listened to it a couple of times and I'll listen to it plenty more. A tick for Mercury. I wouldn't have liked it if Albarn had won, nor the bookies' initial favourite, Everybody Down by Kate Tempest which is a story-based concept album by a poet-rapper which I don't think quite works as it only stands as an entity all the way through, none of the songs are great in their own right, and though the wordsmithery is neat, it's hardly a riot of the imagination and of beautiful and stylish wordplay, it's led by story, and ultimately it's just a bit like A Grand Don't Come for Free by The Streets, which means that it becomes annoying and unlistenable after about the 5th listen. I've been a bit negative, a major talent, but I just don't think it quite works as an album. More varied music, more proper songs, that's all that's needed.
And the other favourite was LP1 by FKA Twigs, which is really good and would probably have been a worthy winner. Will be interesting to see if she remains a hipster's favourite or actually gains commercial success. It's austere, slightly frightening R and B, the album holds the interest all the way through and has some standout songs.
OK, that's this year. Let's look at the Mercury in general. Does it get it right or wrong more often? Is there any point to it? What's wrong with it? People sometimes criticize it on genre, say there's never any metal, too much jazz which doesn't win, not enough commercially successful stuff. I don't really care about that - I expect the motivation is true and it genuinely does try to just select the best albums it hears. And as the chairman of the panel said, it's tricky with metal because if you don't love it, you kind of hate it and think it's completely fucking lame, that seems to be the unfortunate truth. There's not much of an in-between in a way that isn't true of other musical forms. For those superhip, oh-so-open-minded folk, hip-hop, indie, r'n'b and jazz we don't actually listen to are surprisingly comfortable bedfellows.
Yes, I think it suffers for being judged by music journalists only in that, having read music journalists obsessively for a couple of decades, they really are constantly trying to be cool, so the list and winner does really always try to be cool. I mean, honestly, let's talk about Gruff Rhys for a second. Two Gruff Rhys albums ever have been nominated and one of them is Neon Neon? Serifuckiously? Cos it's electro and ironic? One King Creosote album? Diamond mine? Cos it's a bit electro? Total ballbags, obviously.
I look at the list of winners and, funnily enough, there's only one of all 23 of them that I unambiguously love, and that's the somewhat inconsequential Hour of the Bewilderbeast by Badly Drawn Boy, which probably folk might in general might see as a judging mis-step, but just happens to be a glorious, beautiful, career-defining album.
There are indie-rock winners which I ought to love, but funnily enough I don't. I wonder if it's chicken or egg? Did I slightly look askance at them because they won the Mercury? I don't think so. Screadamelica, Suede, Different Class, Franz Ferdinand, Whatever People Say I Am, Seldom Seen Kid ... big indie albums, most of them influential, all pretty good, but not personal favourites. I wouldn't say any of them were bad choices though.
There's a real absence of "singer-songwriter" winners - lots of nominees but not winners. I suppose you've got BDB and then two wins for PJ Harvey - I'm surprised 'Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea' won in 2001, it's got some great tunes but it's a little lopsided. 'Let England Shake' in 2011 is really great. Can't really argue with that.
Which takes me to the general lack of winners for the big players of British music, both commercially and artistically. The "breakout/crossover" album has hardly ever won, whether it's What's the Story, 21, Back to Black or something by Coldplay. And the real supergeniuses of British music have hardly ever won, whether it's Radiohead, Damon Albarn, Gruff Rhys. PJ Harvey is the only winner who belongs on that exalted company. I mean, Radiohead never having won is a little daft, isn't it, even if (like me) you're not in complete thrall to them.
So, let's go through it, right or wrong?
1992 - Screamedelica - Primal Scream - RIGHT - still seen as a classic, very influential, very crossover
1993 - Suede - Suede - RIGHT - a hugely influential indie album, which presaged the rock revival of the mid 90s.
1994 - Elegant Slumming - M People - WRONG - joking aside, no one thinks this is a classic album. I can see that they didn't want to get stuck in a guitarpop rut, but no, they got this well wrong
1995 - Dummy - Portishead - RIGHT - almost a definitive Mercury winner, so achingly cool. Can't really argue though.
1996 - Different Class - Pulp - Hmm, equivocally right - I suppose it defines the time, never a big Pulp fan myself, but fair enough.
1997 - Reprazent - Roni Size - WRONG - anyone still listening to this? A nonsense, of course
1998 - Bring it On - Gomez - WRONG - as above. Not a great year, to be fair. Just to be clear, a RIGHT winner might, I think, either be an album which holds up to history, an album which defines the time, an album which is the start of a major career, something like that. Gomez went nowhere.
1999 - OK - Talvin Singh - WRONG - again, all due respect, but this went nowhere
2000 - Hour of the Bewilderbeast - Badly Drawn Boy - another equivocal RIGHT. I love it, but i recognise that BDB hasn't gone from strength to strength since.Still, history unfairly overlooks this fine, fine work
2001 - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea - PJ Harvey - an equivocal WRONG, just because there are other albums I prefer on that year's list. Hardly a massive mis-step though.
2002 - A Little Deeper - Miss Dynamite - hmm RIONG - career has gone nowhere since, but it was thought a reasonable call at the time. This would have been a good year for Run Come Save Me by Roots Manuva to win.
2003 - Boy in Da Corner - Dizzee Rascal - RIGHT - a striking album, which kicked off a major career.
2004 - Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand - RIGHT - a very indie year, this one, but this was the favourite and probably a fair winner.
2005 - I am a Bird Now - Antony and the Johnsons - WRONG - obviously, because it's not a British album. Nonsense.
2006 - Whatever People Say I am, that's What I'm Not - RIGHT - not a massive fan of this, but can't complain
2007 - Myths of the Near Future - Klaxons - WRONG - thought this band were a complete nonsense at the time, history has agreed. Terrible choice. Back to Black could have won.
2008 - The Seldom Seen Kid - Elbow - I'm going with WRONG - I like this album, but this is an odd choice which unfairly lifted just another album by a very good band. Why bother doing the this year and not other years?
2009 - Speech Therapy - Speech Debelle - WRONG - probably the most notoriously wrong choice.
2010 - xx - The xx - RIGHT - I've tried with this band but they're still like watching paint dry for me. Still, they really seem to define where cool UK music is at these days, for better or worse.
2011 - Let England Shake - PJ Harvey - RIGHT - it's a great album
2012 - An Awesome Wave - Alt-J - WROIT - can't stand this lot, can't stand this album, but I will say their second album has been successful, and, again, the kids seem to dig it.
2013 - Overgrown - James Blake - WRONG - they went tasteful again, and everyone shrugged. If an album's got a singer, and it's got beeps, those music journos they're all over it.
2014 - DEAD - Young Fathers - RIGHT - yes, seems fair enough.
So I think that's 8 right, 5 equivocally right and 9 wrong. It's an outrage! Sack the board! But yes, I think it's time a songwriter album won without beeps. Something simple and beautiful. I predict the winner in 2015 will be Laura Marling with a 5th album which finally brings all her qualities together for a masterpiece.
This year, I've had more interest than most because I think it's been the best year for British music in a long time. I already got my humphing out of the way when the shortlist was announced as, in my slavish devotion to middle-aged Celtic white men, I am quite convinced that the best British albums of the year by a mile are American Interior by Gruff Rhys and The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society by James Yorkston (with an honourable mention for From Scotland With Love by King Creosote and Futurology by the Manics). None of them got a sniff and the only middle-aged representative was Damon Albarn's first solo album Everyday Robots. Now, if this had been the album for which Albarn finally won the Mercury, that would have been some travesty. It's a nice album, interesting to consider, a bit boring to actually listen to, about the 8th or 9th best album he's ever been involved with.
In the end, I think this may be one of the years where they got it just about right. My complaint with the shortlist was that it was a very urban, hip, Anglocentric thing with little regard for the outposts (no wonder all the Scottish musicians want independence!) but then, they've given the prize to a Scottish-Nigerian-Liberian hip-hop trio, so, you know, fair enough.
And it's really good. DEAD by Young Fathers. Really enjoyable and varied and compelling and it's a new sound and really does seem to fulfil the remit of exposing an obscure album which actually does have commercial potential to a wider audience. I've listened to it a couple of times and I'll listen to it plenty more. A tick for Mercury. I wouldn't have liked it if Albarn had won, nor the bookies' initial favourite, Everybody Down by Kate Tempest which is a story-based concept album by a poet-rapper which I don't think quite works as it only stands as an entity all the way through, none of the songs are great in their own right, and though the wordsmithery is neat, it's hardly a riot of the imagination and of beautiful and stylish wordplay, it's led by story, and ultimately it's just a bit like A Grand Don't Come for Free by The Streets, which means that it becomes annoying and unlistenable after about the 5th listen. I've been a bit negative, a major talent, but I just don't think it quite works as an album. More varied music, more proper songs, that's all that's needed.
And the other favourite was LP1 by FKA Twigs, which is really good and would probably have been a worthy winner. Will be interesting to see if she remains a hipster's favourite or actually gains commercial success. It's austere, slightly frightening R and B, the album holds the interest all the way through and has some standout songs.
OK, that's this year. Let's look at the Mercury in general. Does it get it right or wrong more often? Is there any point to it? What's wrong with it? People sometimes criticize it on genre, say there's never any metal, too much jazz which doesn't win, not enough commercially successful stuff. I don't really care about that - I expect the motivation is true and it genuinely does try to just select the best albums it hears. And as the chairman of the panel said, it's tricky with metal because if you don't love it, you kind of hate it and think it's completely fucking lame, that seems to be the unfortunate truth. There's not much of an in-between in a way that isn't true of other musical forms. For those superhip, oh-so-open-minded folk, hip-hop, indie, r'n'b and jazz we don't actually listen to are surprisingly comfortable bedfellows.
Yes, I think it suffers for being judged by music journalists only in that, having read music journalists obsessively for a couple of decades, they really are constantly trying to be cool, so the list and winner does really always try to be cool. I mean, honestly, let's talk about Gruff Rhys for a second. Two Gruff Rhys albums ever have been nominated and one of them is Neon Neon? Serifuckiously? Cos it's electro and ironic? One King Creosote album? Diamond mine? Cos it's a bit electro? Total ballbags, obviously.
I look at the list of winners and, funnily enough, there's only one of all 23 of them that I unambiguously love, and that's the somewhat inconsequential Hour of the Bewilderbeast by Badly Drawn Boy, which probably folk might in general might see as a judging mis-step, but just happens to be a glorious, beautiful, career-defining album.
There are indie-rock winners which I ought to love, but funnily enough I don't. I wonder if it's chicken or egg? Did I slightly look askance at them because they won the Mercury? I don't think so. Screadamelica, Suede, Different Class, Franz Ferdinand, Whatever People Say I Am, Seldom Seen Kid ... big indie albums, most of them influential, all pretty good, but not personal favourites. I wouldn't say any of them were bad choices though.
There's a real absence of "singer-songwriter" winners - lots of nominees but not winners. I suppose you've got BDB and then two wins for PJ Harvey - I'm surprised 'Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea' won in 2001, it's got some great tunes but it's a little lopsided. 'Let England Shake' in 2011 is really great. Can't really argue with that.
Which takes me to the general lack of winners for the big players of British music, both commercially and artistically. The "breakout/crossover" album has hardly ever won, whether it's What's the Story, 21, Back to Black or something by Coldplay. And the real supergeniuses of British music have hardly ever won, whether it's Radiohead, Damon Albarn, Gruff Rhys. PJ Harvey is the only winner who belongs on that exalted company. I mean, Radiohead never having won is a little daft, isn't it, even if (like me) you're not in complete thrall to them.
So, let's go through it, right or wrong?
1992 - Screamedelica - Primal Scream - RIGHT - still seen as a classic, very influential, very crossover
1993 - Suede - Suede - RIGHT - a hugely influential indie album, which presaged the rock revival of the mid 90s.
1994 - Elegant Slumming - M People - WRONG - joking aside, no one thinks this is a classic album. I can see that they didn't want to get stuck in a guitarpop rut, but no, they got this well wrong
1995 - Dummy - Portishead - RIGHT - almost a definitive Mercury winner, so achingly cool. Can't really argue though.
1996 - Different Class - Pulp - Hmm, equivocally right - I suppose it defines the time, never a big Pulp fan myself, but fair enough.
1997 - Reprazent - Roni Size - WRONG - anyone still listening to this? A nonsense, of course
1998 - Bring it On - Gomez - WRONG - as above. Not a great year, to be fair. Just to be clear, a RIGHT winner might, I think, either be an album which holds up to history, an album which defines the time, an album which is the start of a major career, something like that. Gomez went nowhere.
1999 - OK - Talvin Singh - WRONG - again, all due respect, but this went nowhere
2000 - Hour of the Bewilderbeast - Badly Drawn Boy - another equivocal RIGHT. I love it, but i recognise that BDB hasn't gone from strength to strength since.Still, history unfairly overlooks this fine, fine work
2001 - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea - PJ Harvey - an equivocal WRONG, just because there are other albums I prefer on that year's list. Hardly a massive mis-step though.
2002 - A Little Deeper - Miss Dynamite - hmm RIONG - career has gone nowhere since, but it was thought a reasonable call at the time. This would have been a good year for Run Come Save Me by Roots Manuva to win.
2003 - Boy in Da Corner - Dizzee Rascal - RIGHT - a striking album, which kicked off a major career.
2004 - Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand - RIGHT - a very indie year, this one, but this was the favourite and probably a fair winner.
2005 - I am a Bird Now - Antony and the Johnsons - WRONG - obviously, because it's not a British album. Nonsense.
2006 - Whatever People Say I am, that's What I'm Not - RIGHT - not a massive fan of this, but can't complain
2007 - Myths of the Near Future - Klaxons - WRONG - thought this band were a complete nonsense at the time, history has agreed. Terrible choice. Back to Black could have won.
2008 - The Seldom Seen Kid - Elbow - I'm going with WRONG - I like this album, but this is an odd choice which unfairly lifted just another album by a very good band. Why bother doing the this year and not other years?
2009 - Speech Therapy - Speech Debelle - WRONG - probably the most notoriously wrong choice.
2010 - xx - The xx - RIGHT - I've tried with this band but they're still like watching paint dry for me. Still, they really seem to define where cool UK music is at these days, for better or worse.
2011 - Let England Shake - PJ Harvey - RIGHT - it's a great album
2012 - An Awesome Wave - Alt-J - WROIT - can't stand this lot, can't stand this album, but I will say their second album has been successful, and, again, the kids seem to dig it.
2013 - Overgrown - James Blake - WRONG - they went tasteful again, and everyone shrugged. If an album's got a singer, and it's got beeps, those music journos they're all over it.
2014 - DEAD - Young Fathers - RIGHT - yes, seems fair enough.
So I think that's 8 right, 5 equivocally right and 9 wrong. It's an outrage! Sack the board! But yes, I think it's time a songwriter album won without beeps. Something simple and beautiful. I predict the winner in 2015 will be Laura Marling with a 5th album which finally brings all her qualities together for a masterpiece.
Saturday, 11 October 2014
What is that makes the all-star version of 'God Only Knows' quite so awful?
So that's the question and that's the tone for what I'm going to write. I'll try to keep anger and blame out of it, I'm not going to presume bad intentions or hurl too much abuse at the participants, though I expect that, this being a piece of polemic, there will unavoidably be a little.
It's a bad record. These things happen. I'm quite sure everyone involved was doing their best to make it good and I expect loads of people rather like it, but no, not I. Firstly, it's not the mass celebrity singalong per se I have a problem with. There's always been a bit of fun in them - (this is how it's done!), even when they've sounded a bit daft, and every now and then, they're actually rather joyful (not to mention the fact that most of them are for charity, which requires even the gravest cynic to dial it down just a little and cut some slack). I have a huge soft spot for this song's predecessor, from 17 years ago, 'Perfect Day'
The formula and style is similar, very similar, visually and musically - the short vocal phrases shared round, the unlikely juxtaposition of different styles, the instrumental breaks. But while both have the avowed intention of saying "Here at the Beeb we really do cater for every taste in music", you truly believe it from 'Perfect Day' but 'God Only Knows' just leaves you feeling your musical future is a Radio 2-sponsored homogenised gloop.
Who's to blame? No one... well, maybe the person who chose the song ... it's the wrong song, dudes. There are loads and loads of other classic songs you could have worked with which have scope for a bit of messing. 'God Only Knows' by The Beach Boys is perfect. Acknowledged perfect, as a recorded moment by a close-knit but tortured collective from a strange moment in time almost 50 years. But break it apart, like has been done here, and it's not perfect anymore. Dare one say it, it becomes a little bland.
There are only two interesting, intriguing lines of lyric in the song - the first, "I may not always love you" which gets thrown away to the smugness of Pharrell Williams (a smugness which, don't get me wrong, works wonderfully well in the right context, but will Pharrell ever perform vocals on a great pop song which do not require him to be smug? No, of course not ...) and the last of the second verse - "so what good would living do me..." which could have given the song a little bit of edge halfway through, but Stevie Wonder does it, and this is not Stevie's finest 5 seconds. There are moments in his recording career of glorious poignancy, but this is not one of them. A disappointment to hear one of the greatest vocalists of all time make a line hinting at potential suicide and the bottomless despair of heartbreak sound so unutterably glib and jolly. You remember that Stevie Wonder hasn't released a great record for almost 40 years, and you feel sad.
Apart from that, there's not much grit - in the song's words and in the melody lines pulled apart from their whole - for the vocalists to work with; it's all sing-song lovey-dovey stuff. Hard for anyone to make their mark on the song. What a contrast that is with 'Perfect Day', which has so many odd, notable lines, which the well-assigned vocalists really go to town on (I'll come to this in more depth later).
So, who's to blame? The producer, the beardy chap at the start of the video? I doubt it - Ethan Johns is a man who has produced some really fine, fine records, including several favourites of mine, and is known for his no-frills, clear, rootsy approach. I just think he had a thankless task. But, also, Ethan Johns is not a Beach Boys-type producer - he's much more a Dylan/Band/Johnny Cash-type producer, if you get what I mean. Perhaps they should have got someone like Dave Fridmann, who brought sweet, acid-fried Americana magic to the likes of Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips and Tame Impala.
Who's to blame? The song's creator? Ha, hardly. There he is, blessing the enterprise, Brian Wilson. Aah, that's nice. But why does that make me feel so sad? Because Brian Wilson, despite the way the music press would have it, was not The Beach Boys. And Brian Wilson, though the song's composer and arranger, is not 'God Only Knows'. It's a Carl Wilson lead vocal, one of the most perfect lead vocals ever from the very best singer in the Beach Boys. I've heard Brian do 'God Only Knows' in his amazing 'Pet Sounds' concerts of a few years ago - no one would say he could, now, then or 50 years ago, do 'God Only Knows' as well as his brother (he knew it himself, that's why he gave the song to Carl to sing). Arguably, Brian Wilson was the 3rd or 4th best Beach Boy as lead vocalist (this isn't a terrible list to be 3rd or 4th in). But there's no Carl and Dennis on this record, they're long gone and that's super sad, there's no Mike Love either (well, he's not even on the record actually!) or Bruce Johnston. So be it, it can't be helped, but it's just a bee in my bonnet I have about the industry of Brian Wilson's deification above all the other Beach Boys, which this only serves.
Anyway, the point is, there are people called great singers/vocalists like Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Joe Strummer, Mick Jagger, who even their most ardent fans would admit are hardly Caruso, man. Which means that they're coverable. Not necessarily for the better, but there's endless scope in their work for reinterpretation. A soul, jazz, country, pop singer, hell, even a rapper, can hear a Bob Dylan song and think "I can do something with that". But you don't improve on the Beach Boys. How many famous covers of Beach Boys songs are there? Up to now, precisely none, because the Beach Boys, on all their greatest songs, nailed it, nailed it beyond improvement, that's the point*. That's what makes them great.
* OK, I know this isn't true of Smiley Smile/Smile, but no one has ever looked to "re-interpret" it, Brian Wilson himself has merely aimed, throughout his life, to find it, to pin it down, to do justice to it..
This record, then, was on a hiding to nothing. It could only ever be, in every second, every note, every frame, worse than the original. But here's the thing. It desecrates it, it spoils it. It makes you think less of the original, it takes its less interesting aspects apart and makes you think "hmm, maybe 'God Only Knows' isn't one of the greatest moments in the history of mankind after all, maybe it's just a rather bland collection of platitudes" and that's the bit that's quite hard to keep an even temper about.
So, who's to blame? The casting director, maybe? Who are this lot? Oh, I expect you recognise them, most of them... but what have they got to do with The Beach Boys? Like the producer, Ethan Johns, none of them are from that lineage. There are so many bands and acts who could be said to be, in some way, influenced by the Beach Boys, so how come none of them are on this record? There's a total disconnect. The only vague connections are Stevie Wonder, who, in some ways, was Brian Wilson's successor in creating impossibly beautiful, kaleidoscopic music in a music studio, and, bizarrely, One Direction, who are, at the very least, a five-piece male vocal harmony group. Except, Jesus .... they're not quite the Beach Boys are they? I never thought I'd feel nostalgic for Boyzone but their bit on the '98 'Perfect Day' looks like Crosby, Stills and Nash by comparison. 1D are completely exposed, not daring to do anything interesting with their line because they can't. There have been loads of girl and boy bands which have at least created nice/interesting sounds with their different voices, but you could replace One Direction with five different identikit vocalists, give them a couple of hours rehearsal and no one would notice the difference.
Who else, then? Who are this lot? Well, they really seem to have followed the Bono credo of "Biggest is best" (perhaps the only relief of the record is that Bono isn't on it, though to be fair, he does one of his least annoying vocals of all time on 'Perfect Day'.) They've really brought the big guns out, the most obvious, best selling, archetypal, dull picks they could have gone for. Who "represents" indie? Oh, Jake Bugg, good god, little boy lost, not even trusted with a full line. Wow, I'm really, as a fan of indie rock'n'roll, in safe hands with the BBC if they're foisting Jake Bugg on me ... Everyone is exactly who you think it's going to be, so all the way through, you're thinking "there's going to be a Jamie Cullum, I know there is ..." and just when you think you might get away without a Jamie Cullum, there he is, bafflingly omnipresent as ever, despite the fact that no one you've ever met has ever bought any of his music and quite possibly, none of it actually exists and he's just an elaborate wheeze by Dom Joly.
Look again at who's on 'Perfect Day'. It really wasn't the biggest stars in music, it was a ragtag assortment of whoever might be on a slightly unusual episode of Jools Holland. And, to kick it off, not just Lou but the song's original producer, Bowie, singing his lines absolutely beautifully, and then all these other oddball folk who clearly love the song and have thought about how to do it justice - shit, there's Shane McGowan, Dr John, Emmylou Harris, proper individual voices from the leftfield. And it's a song with a darkness and with different segments and textures. Even the notorious belting of Heather Small "you're going to REAP just WHA-AAT ya sow-yeah" kind of works. The song allows that. 'God Only Knows' doesn't.
It's a bad, bad record, this, a spoiling of the unspoilable, a poor ad for a great broadcaster, and in as much as it's entirely intended to celebrate the manifold joys of music, it could not fail more dismally.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)