I know I’m an ocean and a day removed from the tragedy in Boston, but it has really spooked me, as I’m sure it has many people. I couldn’t really get enthused about writing about New Zealand under the circumstances (though I’ve only reported on the first four days of the trip…). So I’m sharing a few (very disparate) videos that I’ve watched the last few days while I should have been being productive.
You should spend ~10 minutes this week and watch them, too. the first one I got from DesignBoom (via LikeCool.com, which is a rabbit warren fo sho); the second one is THE RETURN OF KATNISS EVERDEEN; and the third I got from Lena Dunham’s Twitter feed. Just when I start to lose faith in celebrity twitter feeds, the world sends me this.
Stornoway is a remote part of Scotland. It is also a hipster band from Oxford who released an upbeat, indie, vaguely Vampire Weekend-ish album called Beachcomber’s Windowsill in 2010. I had kind of forgotten about them, but in early March they released a sophomore album, ‘Tales from Terra Firma.’ At first I was disappointed. It had many of the same things I liked about the first album; the lead singer has a quirky voice and the band still has their string-based pop sound, but it seemed to lack the clarity and brightness of the first album, which had melancholy songs that were still uplifting, like ‘We are the Battery Human.’
The sophomore album is a little more driving and a little muddier, although like the first album, its a record that is worth getting to know. Highlights include ‘You Take Me As I Am,’ which is a little shmaltzy but an absolute delight to listen to. ’The Great Procrastinator’ captures the deceptive simplicity of their first album, and I found myself singing ‘The Bigger Picture’ the other day without knowing what album it came from, which is both a compliment to the second album and an indictment of it. The best stuff is just like the old stuff, and some of it isn’t as good.
On balance, I like ‘Tales from Terra Firma,’ and I remain a pretty devoted Stornoway fan. I’m very disappointed I won’t be able to see them at Wilton’s Music Hall in London this Friday (Wilton’s is on my to-do list) but they are touring some of my favourite venues in the US (Schubas in Chicago, TT the Bear’s in Cambridge, and Horseshoe Tavern (where I think I went once) in Toronto. Plus some other places, of course. You should check them out and report back.
The Sapphires came out ages ago in Australia, and ages ago in the UK, and is just now arriving in the US. I saw it on the plane from Vancouver to Auckland and have been mainlining the soundtrack for a couple weeks, as well as becoming an unironic Jessica Mauboy fan (she won Australian Idol and then starred in The Sapphires, which has led reviewers to call it an Aussie Dreamgirls…and that’s pretty on the nose).
The movie is based on the true story of a girl group made of Aboriginal (Yorta Yorta, to be specific) sisters and cousins who toured Vietnam entertaining soldiers in 1968. It focuses on the self-identity of the members of the group, who find parallels between their lives and that of the African American soldiers they meet in Vietnam. The story is about the triumph of the individual women in the group, who are thrust into a world they could not possibly have been prepared for and who gain, over the course of the movie, a new perspective on their identity. Plus they learn fairly conventional things about love and friendship.
The movie is delightful. While predictable in places, and understandably reminiscent of Dreamgirls, the film is prevented from total saccharine-ness by the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the very real persecution that these women faced well into the 1970s. And the fact that its a true(ish) story makes the whole thing pretty easy to get behind.
And since the movie is set in the 1960s, the whole thing is thread through with Jessica Mauboy singing the lead on 60s classics, like the Jackson 5′s ‘Who’s Loving You’ and ‘What a Man.’ I was sold from the first lines, when three of the sisters sing Merle Haggard’s ‘Today I Started Loving You Again.’ Afterward, the man who subsequently becomes their manager, played by Chris O’Dowd upbraids them for singing country and not soul. O’Dowd is as adorable, and maybe even more so, than in Bridesmaids and would be reason enough to see the movie. But the rest of it is great too.
As I said, I saw it on a plane. But I would happily pay $10 to see it in theatres and I encourage you to do the same. I’m sure the period costumes will look fantastic on the big screen.
On Friday, I went to see Paper Tiger Poetry in Vauxhall, a neighbourhood of London I’d never been to before. It was an open mic night with two anchor poets, Donall Dempsey and Hollie McNish. You may have heard of Hollie; I’ve written about her before on this blog and was even present at the genesis of her most recent hit, a commentary on Flo Rida’s ‘Blow My Whistle.’ I’m taking credit for having inspired the bit about zumba, as well as the last line that I don’t want to spoil.
Anyway. I invited My Friend Kamilla to Hollie’s gig. The two anchor poets were great, and there were some notable successes who gave open mike presentations, and the whole night finished with a group singalong in honour of St. Patrick that I thought was absolutely fantastic. Also, the venue was the Tea House Theatre, which was a delightful spot.
However, there were some notable failures – enough that, when we adjourned to The Black Dog hipster pub down the road, Kamilla and Hollie and I kicked off a round of ‘which open mic poet would be your secret boyfriend?’ (it was almost all dudes) that lasted more or less until the bar closed.
I love live music. I wear earplugs because I’m an old lady and I prefer not to get home too late, but I still love live shows. So I was thrilled when my friend Erin invited me to the Lumineers show in Brixton last week, and I was even more thrilled when the opening band was Langhorne Slim and the Law, a band I had a passing fancy for in 2008.
I didn’t have high hopes for the Lumineers live, to be honest. Until last week, I liked their music well enough to have listened a few times on Spotify. I’m also following their career because they have the same sound engineer as my sister’s band (the strumbellas, now nominated for a Juno Award HOLLER). But their songs are simple, and not musically or vocally challenging, so I wasn’t sure that a live show would really be that great.
You’ve probably figured out after this lead-in that I was very pleasantly surprised. The songs are simple, but that prevented the music from sounding muddy, and the quality of the musicianship was way higher than I expected; everyone in the band had more than one job and played multiple instruments over the course of the show – there was a mandolin involved, too, which I didn’t realise from listening to the CD.
There were a fewthings I really appreciated: first, the lead singer on two occasions said ‘we’d appreciate it if you’d put your recording devices and cameras away and hang out with us,’ which could have sounded horribly pretentious but he pulled it off. The other thing they did that I really appreciated was to play a totally unplugged song – as in, addressed the crowd and said ‘this is an old venue designed for no microphones, so everyone be really quiet and we’ll try to sing a song the way this place was designed’ – and I ripped my earplugs out and listened to a folky and sweetly melancholic rendition of ‘Charlie Boy’ (I think). That said, the absolute highlight of the show for me was a duet between cellist Neyla Pekarek and the lead singer, which I have been looping on YouTube ever since. I loved their finale, ‘American Music’ by the Violent Femmes (turns out the Femmes’ drummers’ son is in Langhorne Slim & the Law, so you know where the inspiration came from).
Since the show, I’ve realised the male members of the band wear the same stupid hats at every show, and one of them has a signature tee-shirt-and-braces/suspenders look that is a lot contrived for my taste, so while I think their shtick is, um, dumb, I really enjoyed the show and would totally pay to see them again.
Josh Ritter is amazing. I have thought so for years, so you can probably tell from that what sort of album review I’m about to write.
‘the beast in its tracks’ is a beautiful album, full of Ritter’s signature elegance and clever lyrics, though his amazing allegorical ballads are conspicuously absent from this release. He married fellow singer/songwriter Dawn Landes in 2009 and split with her….just before he started writing this album.
Instead of the storytelling songs like ‘the curse’ and ‘the temptation of adam’ (my personal favourite Ritter song, about a couple who live in a bunker safeguarding a nuclear weapon), these songs are straightforward. This is A Breakup Album and Ritter is telling it pretty straight, including the pathetic and sad bits. Furthermore, the album is more or less chronological (or could be), starting sad, becoming in turn vindictive and pathetic, and finally finishing on a note of acceptance with ‘Joy to You Baby,’ an absolutely lovely song that people took far too long to post guitar chords for.
The raw honesty of the album is most clearly revealed on ‘New Lover,’ with the lyrics:
I hope you’ve got a lover now, hope you’ve got somebody who Can give you what you need like I couldn’t seem to do. But if you’re sad and you are lonesome and you’ve got nobody true, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me happy too.
In typical Josh Ritter fashion, these lyrics are delivered alongside a driving beat and a catchy melody, such that I didn’t notice until the third or fourth time just how…brutal…the lyrics were, and when I did, it was enough for me to say, out loud, ‘holy crap!’
Fortunately I was working from home so my coworkers didn’t have to share in this little revelation. In the videoclip below, the giant smile on his face obscures the punch of the lyrics, too;
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnJfnaQAjXs]
The album has been out in the US, UK and Canada for about ten days, so I’m a little slow on the uptake; if you want more info, I recommend checking out NPR’s concert link from World Cafe; if you’re on the fence about the album – just go buy it. It’s wonderful.
Battersea High Street is a train, tube and bus ride away from my home. But its a place I’d been wanting to go for a while – not because the street is that great, but because if you turn off it, and walk down some nondescript residential streets for about five minutes, you will find yourself at Le QueCumBar, one of the most famous gypsy jazz venues in the world, decorated with portraits of Django Reinhardt, with tasseled lamps and surly-cute waiters with piano braces/suspenders (the poor bastards, I’d be surly too).
My friends Mary and Kamilla and I went to Le QueCumBar on a Tuesday in February, on a jam night (I have since learned that its called a Djam). the night we went, there were about ten people who rotated in and out all night – all ages and many instruments, but only one woman, who kicked off the night. After the first few songs, Mary said ‘how do they just do that?’ And Kamilla, who is a professional musician, looked at Mary like she was nuts and said ‘practice.’
In addition to a night of amazing music in a very idiosyncratic venue, it was a night where everyone was nerdy in their own way: Kamilla talked about music; Mary talked about literature; I talked about birds (Kamilla got psyched about birds with me, which I appreciated more than she could have known. We had a whole talk about the wingspan of albatrosses. Seriously, these people are friends to hold onto.)
I just sent in my absentee ballot. Since you only get to do it once every four years, its easy to forget what a thrill it can be. I ran to the post office during work and then bounced my way back to work.
I cast my vote in a swing state, but I don’t actually think its going to make a huge difference. Still, I think the symbolic action of voting is important; participating in the political process is a right for which women went on hunger strikes; went to prison; endured physical attacks; and even died – to say nothing of minorities and immigrants, many of whom can’t vote or who face ongoing difficulties registering. Slate.com ran an article recently about whether an ignorant vote was better than no vote at all, which made me pause to wonder if I was sufficiently well-educated. In the end, I decided I was:
I voted as a woman, for the party that I think represents women better (and does not threaten women’s access to health care or family planning), but I also voted for the party that does not seek to disallow my friends from marrying each other (regardless of their gender or sexual orientation); that is more likely to pass the Dream Act (which would allow illegal immigrants to gain citizenship if they served in the military or graduated from college) and has sought to make it easier for American-educated foreigners to stay in the country; that took the troops out of Iraq; and has promised to increase funding to science research and education.
I’m not voting for the party that wants to cut the Pell grant programme (and who’s presidential nominee lied about it during the debate) or the party that has sought to open up coastal drilling and natural gas reserves without regard for the ecological consequences. I’m also not interested in voting for a party that denies that climate change is a thing.
The rest of you still have a week to wait (or more, if speculations about Sandy derailing the electoral process are correct). But please, please, please vote. And vote for the good guys. I’ve included a video in favour of each candidate below if you’re still on the fence.
I have just returned to the UK after ten days in North America, where I went to a lovely wedding on Martha’s Vineyard and met up with my parents and sister for an absolutely overdue reunion. But at the moment I’m reeling from the in-flight movie offerings, which included an incredible selection of indie movies that I’ve actually been really keen to see. There and back I watched:
- Your Sister’s Sister
- Take This Waltz
- Safety Not Guaranteed
I also watched Brave, The Big Year and The Artist, but I was more interested in the independent films. As it happens, all three are just about to be released on DVD, or have been released recently, and so if you’ve been thinking about adding them to your LoveFilm or Netflix queue keep reading:
Your Sister’s Sister
I’ve decided that I’m a huge Mark Duplass fan. I saw “The Puffy Chair,” one of his earliest projects, in 2006, loved it, and then forgot about it until he resurfaced in Your Sister’s Sister and I saw the trailer last year. The movie revolves around Jack, played by Duplass, whose brother died a year ago and who is still struggling with the loss. After he makes a scene at a party, his friend Iris offers her family’s cabin as a place where he can find solace and, as he puts it, “take a sabbatical.”
(this summary from Rotten Tomatoes.com:) Tom’s best friend Iris (Emily Blunt) offers up her family cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest so Jack can seek catharsis in solitude. Once there, however, he runs into Iris’ sister Hannah (Rosemarie Dewitt) who is reeling from the abrupt end of a seven-year relationship and finds solace in Tom’s unexpected presence. A blurry evening of drinking concludes with an awkward sexual incident, made worse by Iris’ sudden presence at the cabin the next morning.
The rest of the movie revolves around the three characters and the painful, real-life stuff they have to go through. The initial meeting between Jack and Hannah feels authentic and plausible, and their awkwardness and panic when Iris shows up the next day is eminently believable. A movie with only three characters allows for a nuanced and intimate character study of each. Your Sister’s Sister lives up to the challenge. I am certainly a member of the movie’s target demographic – one of the things I liked most about the movie is that the people in it felt like my friends, or people I’d want to hang out with – but I think that it paints a portrayal of losing and finding that will appeal to many (I recommended it to my parents, for example).
I also loved the sweet relationship between Hannah and Iris – the movie highlights the best and worst parts of being and having a sister. While the end was a bit of a cheap shot, I finished the film feeling satisfied with the broad strokes if not with the particulars.
Safety Not Guaranteed
This is another Duplass joint. Jason Segall has been my favourite actor for a while, but with this one-two indie movie combo, Duplass is definitely in contention for the #1 spot. This movie originates from a (true) classified ad that someone placed in 1996, looking for a partner in time travel but warning: safety not guaranteed.
The ad is picked up by a bored writer, who recruits two interns to do a story on the person who thinks he can time-travel – Kenneth (played by Duplass), a paranoid check-out clerk at the local grocery. One of the interns, Darius (Aubrey Plaza), is sent in as the prospective partner.
The movie is quirky, to say the least, but it portrays its characters (a narcissistic slacker boss; a depressed, sulky intern; and a probably-insane would-be time traveler) with sympathy and grace, allowing them each room to breathe. In the end, you’re rooting for all three of them, somewhat in spite of yourself. The best part of the movie is the relationship between Kenneth and Darius; the scene where Darius first approaches Kenneth, and their awkward yet magical repartee, sets up the entire rest of the movie, allowing the viewer to be taken in by the ridiculous twists and turns along the way.
The side-plot with Darius’ boss and intern #2 is a little clunky; Intern #2 is the only character who never becomes three-dimensional. The production values are not Hollywood standard (although that didn’t really bother me). And there were a few things that were not satisfactorily explained, even by the standards of an open-ended movie. But all in all, I loved this movie. And as a bonus, I’ve been listening to the theme song, “Big Machines,” pretty much on repeat since I saw it.
**note: video doesn’t work in Canada, but I would still recommend you find another version. It’s lovely.
Take this Waltz
This is another movie I’ve been keen to see for a while. It came recommended by a friend, had an incredibly alluring trailer, and starred Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman – a seriously good cast. The film has a hazy, late-summer feel, with lots of sunlight, and is set in Little Portugal, a picturesque neighbourhood of Toronto, with a beautiful, lazy soundtrack to match both the bohemian setting and the time of year.
And yet – I hated it. This movie actually made me angry. It centres on Margot, played by Michelle Williams, a writer who falls for Daniel (Luke Kirby), the artist across the street. Her dopey husband (Rogen) is too absorbed in his cookbook project to notice. There are several problems with the premise, but the most noticeable one is that Margot is annoying and cloying, and her extramarital dalliance is as unlikely as the idea that Rogen would have married her in the first place. What is meant to feel like sexual tension just feels like navel gazing, and the scene in which Daniel makes his intentions toward Margot clear was creepy and pornographic rather than sweet or sexy or… remotely appealing. Margot is ponderous and unlikable almost from the very beginning, when she meets Daniel on an airplane and tells him that she’s scared of “connections….in airports.” I actually thought, as I watched it, “who would go for this girl?” – she speaks in babytalk throughout the movie, with both men, and harasses Rogen for sapping her confidence moments before she dumps him.
While I don’t want to give too much away, the conclusion of the movie was deeply unsatisfying. It brought to mind Lost in Translation, if that movie had sucked. The movie received mostly positive reviews, so I’m clearly in the minority, but I found the “sexual tension” to be tedious and the main characters to be mostly unlikable.
Here are some important things I’ve learned in the last few days:
1. The book The Giver was the first of FOUR BOOKS. Do you remember that book? The ending wasn’t very satisfying but I took it as stand-alone text. This is very exciting news.
4. Lena Dunham is writing a book. This news is a few days old, but will fill a feminist-book-shaped-hole in my heart. I’m thinking of buying the hardcover.
5. The band Farewell Milwaukee is my new obsession, and not just because MKE is my hometown. Check out my favourite song of theirs:
