I found this over here.
Lately I’ve been liking:
- The Horrors – Primary Colours: I’ve not listened to The Horrors’ older stuff, which apparently is a good thing. This, I like. Derivative, yes, but as long as it’s derived from things I like (Joy Division, My Bloody Valentine, some Interpol, maybe even a bit of Suede, and other far cooler bands I know nothing about) I’m fine with that.
- Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why There Are Mountains: Cough, Pavement, cough, Built to Spill, cough, various Canadians, cough. I’ve had worse coughs.
- The Rakes – Klang: Ah, The Rakes. I’ve always liked them -catchy guitar pop, dry humour, brevity, etc. Their new album is a bit like their last two albums, with a little Talking Heads and a bit of Roxy Music, but mostly just Rakes. I saw them in the Button Factory last week, which I’ve been meaning to write about, assign jalapenos to, etc, but. . I’m tired. Morrissey was there too, by the way.
P.S. – Does anyone know why images will never do what I want them to in Wordpress? They either extend past the end of the post, or refuse to accept blank spaces beneath them, or refuse to wrap the text the way I want it. I don’t know if it’s a common thing with Wordpress, or something with this theme, but it grinds my gears.
I first heard of Camera Obscura on Ray D’Arcy’s radio show, maybe five years ago. Now, Ray D’Arcy is a cunt, and has long since stopped playing any interesting music, but I’ll tip my hat to him on this one. (Truth be told, I’ve no idea if he plays good music or not any more, as I haven’t listened to his show in two years – it’s inbred and flat and needs a shakeup.) Anyway, I heard ‘Teenager’ via D’Arcy, and as a result got my hands on ‘Underachievers Please Try Harder’, which I liked. Why it’s taken me until now to see them, I don’t know. I guess they are a band you can like without ever getting too excited about.
I was humming and hawing, as is my wont, and had more or less decided not to bother going last Thursday, but I happened to ‘win’ a pair of tickets from kind lossy-audio-admiring blog mp3hugger (much obliged). I ‘won’ them by sending an email really quickly. If emailing quickly was a sport, I would be reasonably good at it.
Getting to the point, the gig was good. Playing as a seven-piece (including (I think) part-time/ex member Nigel Baillie, and some hyper guy on extra percussion), they sounded full and crisp, and Tracyanne Campbell’s voice (despite a gig-threatening cold) was completely charming. They played quite a long set, with a good mix of ‘My Maudlin Career’ tracks and older material, and seemed to satisfy the packed ALT. It was all very pleasant, which is more or less what I had expected.
It’s worth mentioning that the crowd were chatty bastards, and there were far too many lovey-dovey couples. One girl near me spent most of the gig with her back to the stage, her face about 5mm from her boyfriend’s, staring into the ankle-deep depths of his mind. I considered breaking my glass off the sideboard and taking a swipe at them, in classic Western style, but I didn’t – I’m a pacifist, an angry angry pacifist.
Support act Attic Lights were below par. Which actually makes no sense, because being ‘below par’, a golf term, is a good thing in golf – in fact the aim of the game is to be as far below par as possible. So actually, Attic Lights were way above par. Maybe 35 over par, which isn’t very good at all. I’m pretty sure they won’t make the cut.
This gig was a solid 11 jalapenos, but we all know free gigs sound better, so it gets a 12.
12 jalapenos out of 16
Logging has always appealed – preferably in a rain forest, or some remote place. Cut down trees, make logs, throw logs in river, jump onto logs, float logs carefully downstream whilst balancing. I’d imagined all you would need was saws to cut the trees and a long stick with a double prong on the end for poking the logs, in case they got stuck or turned sideways. I guess one guy would have to stay behind and mind the saws, and the rest of us could float down on the logs. I wouldn’t want to be the guy waiting around! Then when we’d get to the end of the river, there’d be a sawmill to make the logs into boards and sawdust. Sweet. I guess then we’d have a day off, before getting in a van and going back to the guy minding the saws in the forest.
“We need [to] attach lasers to seagulls and release them on the North Koreans. This is the only way they will learn. I dont think that this will happend [sic] becuase [sic] the UN is limp wristed and will forbid the attaching of lasers to seagulls.”
the pelican brief, Perth (via BBC News)
Picture borrowed from the Church Times.
What have Crystal Stilts and Waterford Crystal got in common?
Eh. .
Their products are nice, but you don’t want to see them being made in person. . . ?
One of the few albums that’s actually listening to me in 2009 is Crystal Stilts’ 2008 full length debut, Alight of Night (yes, you read that correctly). I liked it after six seconds of The Sinking (or is that Sin King. . . ?) from their Myspace page, and enthusiastically investigated further. And I liked what I found. I listened to the album on the way to work, on the way home from work, on the way to work, on the way home from work, etc. My daily production rose by 8% and I came home not wanting to have a powerful nap.
So I was hapay when they came to town to play upstairs in Whelan.
I attended. I was disappointed.
I somewhat excitedly (and prematurely) bought a 7″ of Departure / Prismatic Room for €6 before the gig, and waited through the largely amusing New Amusement (more on them later, perhaps). I say prematurely, as if I had waited until after the gig, I wouldn’t have purchased the single. Not because I didn’t want it, just because I felt jipped.
The four-pack of Brooklyn exports were beset by crippling technical difficulties (apparently), but they seemed to be doing fuck-all to fix it. They just shrugged and tutted for half an hour, while the bassist (the MVP of the band) doodled away on his own. When eventually the singer, Brad, I think, deemed it acceptable to sing, they rattled through a strange set list, a quick encore and promptly retired to the smoking area. Their underwhelm-ment seemed to match the crowd’s.
I wouldn’t normally complain about a set list, or clamour for pleasers, but in fairness – why would a ‘new’ band, playing their first Irish show ever decide to play only two songs off their debut album? WHY? Unless I am mistaken (and I could be, as some of the songs were so muddy it was hard to differentiate them), the only tunes from the Alight of Night played were The Dazzled, and Departure, which closed the show.
A word for drummers who stand up – REDUNDANT. The limp-wristed Miss Frankie Rose was totally eclipsed by the heart of New Amusement’s Alan Power – who put on a superb Matt Tong-esque display (call me).
And singers who don’t play instruments? – must try harder Bradley, at least in a live environment. For me, it works well on the record – the washed out, low in the mix, mostly indecipherable mumblings seem just right under all that reverb – but live – it’s just unimpressive. Not in an ‘I can’t hear you Kevin Shields but I don’t care because this is amazing’ kind of way, just an ‘I can’t hear you Brad, we’re over here Brad, give me back my €20 Brad’ kind of way.
Oh dear. I’m trying to forget this gig. If they play a festival I happen to be at, I’ll go see them again, to give them a chance to atone, because I love the album, but they’d better fucking try next time or I’ll start un-liking the album immediately.
2 jalapenos out of 16
[Genre - Faux-sport Splatter-Drama]
Big Mickey Rourke makes eighteenth comeback in wrestling micro-epic with much soft-gore and telegraphed plotting.
Robin ‘Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson’ Ramzinsky, a mish mash of classic 1980’s wrestling heros (think Macho Hulk Randy Man Hogan-Savage), is followed by a shakey cameraman throughout this wrestling I’m-getting-old-and-I-can-no-longer-do-the-only-thing-I-know drama. And it’s quite entertaining, though not as great as some reviews would have you believe. Rourke is very good as a likeable has-been. Marissa Tomei is under-used and under-clothed, and Evan Rachel Wood is filler as a paint-by-numbers sub-plot daughter.
This strange mix of depressing themes, squeam, boobs, pantomime and gentle comedy works well enough, but you’ll leave most of it in the cinema.
9 jalapenos out of 16
____________________________________________________________
[Genre - Airborne Tension Drama]
Don’t bother watching the first hour of this film, just watch the 2nd half – that’s what I did, and boy, was it fun. Charlton Heston is a man working at an airport, with his pal George Kennedy. In the air, near Salt Lake City, a big plane crashes into a little plane, but only slightly, and the little one crashes into the ground as a result. The big plane is okay, slightly holed, but flyable, but unfortunately the pilots are killed or incapacitated. Therefore, airhostess Karen Black has to take the controls. What follows is an hour of high tension, with Heston and Georgie sweating in the control tower, and the hostess displaying a strange blend of stony-faced, sleepy fear, unlikely competence and dangerous clumsiness.
When radio problems ensue, a daring mid-air transfer of a pilot from a helicopter to the stricken plane is attempted, AND MUCH TENSION ENSUES. Altogether very exciting. Heston is mature cheese, excelling with lines such as ‘Climb baby’, and ‘I love you.’
12 jalapenos out of 16
Back!
A belated continuation of the Panadola Diction Podcast – striving slowly to put little mp3 files of formerly vinyl-based material online. Again, the quality of the recording varies, due to the state of the records and my poor pro-toolsmanship. Meh.
Now in stereo!
The playlist for Podcast #2 is as follows:
- Tape Song – The Kills
- Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie And The Banshees
- The Headmaster’s Ritual – The Smiths
- Bad Kids – Black Lips
- Everything Counts – Depeche Mode
- XTC – Pulsing Pulsing
Introduced by Father Michael Cleary!
You can play it using the play button below, or download it, or, even better – subscribe to the podcast feed in Itunes or whatever software you use – then this, and any subsequent podcasts will appear on your mp3 player, as if by magic.
