May. 31, 2013
Lilacs & Champagne Danish & Blue You might remember that last year I reviewed the first Lilacs & Champagne album and I liked it a lot. This album sees them back with more of the same: taking the approach that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There are very few changes to the formula apart from the fact that the spoken word samples are not quite as good this time and there’s a bit more Grails-like guitar solo action.
Tags: Album Digest, May, Music, Lilacs and Champagne, The Phoenix Foundation, The National, Vampire Weekend, Thirteen
May. 29, 2013
Today I went to see “George Bellows 1882-1925 Modern American Life” at the Royal Academy of Arts. It’s the first time I’ve been to the RA but I was emboldened by my art pass and the fact that Bellows was a contemporary of Edward Hopper, a painter whom I admire greatly. This is the first major retrospective of Bellows’ work in the UK and taking in his wonderful paintings this afternoon, I felt a little embarrassed that I hadn’t seen anything of his before.
Tags: Royal Academy, George Bellows, Art, Thirteen
May. 25, 2013
Yesterday I went to see the Saloua Raouda Choucair show at the Tate Modern. As it was quite small, I went to see the Lichtenstein show again as well.
Choucair is an underrated Lebanese artist and many of the paintings and sculptures shown were created in the fifties and sixties. Her sculptures in particular are amazing.
The first room is lined with paintings that were nearly all gouache on paper, about 40cm by 30cm.
Tags: Art, Tate Modern, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Thirteen
May. 23, 2013
It was quite hard to choose an 808 State album for the understated classics series for two reasons. The first is that I was introduced to 808 State quite late through a friend’s sister’s cassette copy of The Shamen’s En-Tact (the original version recorded from vinyl that had a thirteen minute version of “Evil Is Eden”) that also had – to fill out the C90 – the full length sweary version of “What Time Is Love?
Tags: Music, 808 State, Understated Classics, Thirteen, Electronic
May. 21, 2013
This was a show that I had put off going to see for quite a while now. Looking online at the pictures featured in the show did not really excite me enough to get out and see it. I’d seen Whaam! before in isolation (it’s part of the Tate collection and will no doubt return once the retrospective show is over) and it didn’t really grab me, arresting as it is.
Tags: Art, Roy Lichtenstein, Tate Modern, Thirteen
May. 20, 2013
“The Marriage Plot” by Jeffrey Eugenides is a novel about love and growing up set in the privileged world of US academia in the early eighties. The main plot concerns a love triangle involving two guys and a girl. Madeline Hanna, the girl at the apex of the love triangle, is the main focus of the novel and the majority of the novel is told from her standpoint. I think her sections are incredibly well written but I’d love the thoughts of a female reader, in case it is actually all a horribly male way of seeing through a young woman’s eyes.
Tags: Jeffrey Eugenides, Books, Novel, Thirteen
May. 17, 2013
I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness last night in 3D at the IMAX in Waterloo. I am going to have to separate this into a review into two parts, a review of the film and a review of the viewing experience. I am not completely happy with how the film experience is changed by the 3D and the super big screen and I will try to explain what I mean.
Tags: Films, Science Fiction, Thirteen
Apr. 30, 2013
Some great albums this month!
The Flaming Lips The Terror Wire Change Becomes Us James Blake Overgrown The Knife Shaking The Habitual The Flaming Lips The Terror How you view The Terror pretty much depends on how much you have kept up with The Flips output since their last official album, the clanking double behemoth in Merkin packaging that was Embryonic. The irony being that I used Embryonic to deal with a break-up and The Terror is pretty much about… a break-up.
Tags: Album Digest, April, Music, The Flaming Lips, Wire, James Blake, The Knife, Thirteen
Apr. 11, 2013
I was fifteen when I first read “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac and recently, after twice as much lifetime lived, I was able to watch the film version directed by Walter Salles.
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
Tags: Books, Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, Thirteen, Fiction, Films
Mar. 31, 2013
Just the David Bowie album this month as it’s pretty much the only new music that I’ve listened to.
I must admit that I had no idea what to expect of “The Next Day”. It comes almost exactly ten years after “Reality”, an album that I have never really got into despite it having some pretty decent fun tracks like “New Killer Star” and a nice cover of “Pablo Picasso” that has never sent me in search of Jonathan Richman’s original.
Tags: Album Digest, March, Music, David Bowie, Thirteen
Mar. 18, 2013
A while back, I decided I was going to write about the Iain M. Banks sci-fi-novels (mainly as a respite from having to read and write about J. G. Ballard novels, but I only got as fas as writing about the excellent “Against A Dark Barkground” and re-reading the first of the Culture novels “Consider Phlebas”. WARNING: Some plot spoilers follow (but not too many).
I’m not sure why it has taken almost two years to write about this novel.
Tags: Books, Iain M. Banks, Science Fiction, Thirteen
Mar. 13, 2013
“Walking With Thee” is the second album by Liverpool band Clinic. It was released in 2002, which seems like an age ago now. Even longer ago they released the single “The Return of Evil Bill”, which was got me interested in them in the first place.
I recently got back into “Walking With Thee” when I picked “Vulture” in my A-Z of Animals playlist last month. I’d forgotten just how great a song it is, both musically and lyrically.
Tags: Understated Classics, Music, Clinic, Thirteen, Rock