Album of the Month: FALLEN TREES by Lubomyr Melnyk

I only came across Lubomyr Melnyk at some point in 2015, when he released the masterly Rivers and Streams. The music felt fresh, intoxicating. I did not care what piano-playing records he held (something to do with Melnyk's extraordinary pace), but I absolutely loved the gutsy minimalism of such extended pieces as "Parasol" and "The Amazon". 

His playing is not especially subtle (though his melodies often are) but pounding and assertive. With Fallen Trees, his latest album, I expected to be swept away by the seamless torrents of notes I came to love on his earlier records (his back catalogue is well worth exploring). I was not disappointed.

Even if there was some slight surprise during the opening "Requiem for a Fallen Tree" that features atmospheric female singing that wouldn't have been out of place in a Henryk Goretski symphony. Melnyk's piano, though, is unmistakable. The singing would return later on, for the final suite, but mostly it's that piano that achieves otherworldly beauty on "Barcarolle" (I challenge you to name a 2018 melody as perfect as that) and equally otherworldly speed on "Fallen Trees, Pt. II: Existence".

This is charismatic playing, you won't confuse Melnyk's technique with anyone else's. Fallen Trees (I haven't mentioned the concept but that's merely because the music stands so tall on its own) is a great addition to his highly consistent body of work. A top 10 album of the year for me, easily.

The First Noel

One of the most transcendental moments in my life took place in Cambridge three or four years ago. It was Christmas time, and as I was walking through this fairly dark and gloomy city (having downed two great cocktails and being the right side of tipsy), I heard the sounds of a children's choir singing "The First Noel". I followed the sounds and at some point stepped into the open doors of St. Mary's Church. I had never been cynical about Christmas music, but this was beyond mesmerising. In the end, I stayed until the end... Merry Christmas!

Book review: GRANT & I by Robert Forster

'We were making music and living lives that demanded strings'


With time, you discover a certain homogeneity about the figures which have inspired you. Such homogeneity is comforting. It makes sense of the world and helps you be part of it. When Christopher Hitchens writes about his mother in the brilliant Hitch-22, it is this great advice which seems most prescient and hard-hitting: 'The biggest crime is to be boring'. Likewise, the closest that Robert Forster comes in Grant & I to the distillation of life's greatest lessons is when he makes the deceptively simple appeal of 'Don't be bland'. Now if only you would listen.

That Grant & I, Robert Forster's celebrated memoir, is such a great artistic achievement should not come as a surprise. The man is a full-fledged music writer who has written a fair amount of essays and reviews for various Australian publications (lovingly compiled in The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll from 2009). In fact, it would be true to say that Robert Forster writes this book the way he writes his songs. The lines are memorable, intelligent, charismatic. The lines stay with you.

Quite simply, Forster writes with great wit. His style is droll but never dry. There's a lot of emotional substance to Grant & I, and while my eyes carefully dissected those early pages about first books ('literature instilled a creative impulse not an academic one') and first records (John Fogerty was a childhood hero), it's the unassuming appearance of Grant McLennan after a drama class that resonates the most. Forster paints a poignant portrait of a life-long music partner, describing the charming detachment, the unabashed ways and the bohemian habit of lying at home in bed all morning, with cold milk and film magazines (Grant was a cinema connoisseur). The prose manages to be both beautiful and raw, poetic and precise. There is a great story about Grant driving the car for the first time and being genuinely surprised when it stopped at some point. As Robert puts it, 'he probably thought you could drive the car forever'. 

If you go into Grant & I looking for music stories, there are plenty of those. Continuous troubles with labels, recording sessions with Orange Juice, sharing a London apartment with Nick Cave, playing tennis with Dave McComb, etc. Most importantly, though, you will find fascinating tales of creative torment (didn't you always want to find out how on Earth he came up with "Draining the Pool for You"?) and even an odd songwriting master class ('you didn't need much instrumentation if you had interesting lyrics and hooky chord changes'). It's exciting to see that it was all there from the start, these shades of future songs, this desire to be both provocative and successful. All through the book, you can't but sense a certain undeniable consistency that only comes to the best of us. Quite a bit of luck, too, but mostly just wild desire and sheer songwriting talent. 

Forster doesn't try to romanticise anything and he can be brutally honest on occasion (those Geoff Travis pages have a lot less glamour than some of Robert's dresses from the late 80s). But equally, there is little false modesty about the music. 'The Go-Betweens were a rare thing', he writes, quite truthfully, 'a faberge egg, and had to be treated as such'. But there is bitterness, too, and Forster can't suppress that sense of unfulfilled potential that always hovered about the band. Intelligent pop music. 'Striped sunlight sound'. Verlaine plus Byrne. As he asks, quite rhetorically, about a missed chance to break America, 'How do we sell this to Idaho?'

The beautiful lines abound. My favourite comes early in the book, and has to do with Robert's fixation with his looks: 'When I hold a hairdryer, it's the only thing that feels as natural in my hands as a guitar' (actually, there was an early dream of becoming a barber). Also, this: 'The Godots (an aborted idea for the band's name) - a band everyone's been waiting for'. And this: 'The months dragged on a cabin-fever diet of Brussel sprouts - the vegetable, like the work of Dickens, another thing I can never go back to'. Elsewhere, this gorgeous one-liner: 'Never hurry a woman applying makeup'. File alongside such well-recognised classics as 'Never love a man who has no sister'. 

But running through the heart of this book there is a relationship of great love, frustration, intensity. 'We created the most romantic thing two heterosexual men can, a pop group'. It sounds both whimsical and deadly serious, and not any less so than when he compares Grant to a Chagall painting at the end of the book. And his spirit, 'blithe, blind, full of self-possession'. And those heartbreaking final pages, the most horrifying being the one which contains the description of an empty house following Grant's death. Bizarrely, it so happened that I was reading these pages on a bus, going out of town, just as Grant's "Threshold" started playing in my headphones. Could be a miracle. Could be a great work of art. But having finished this book, I think it was both.  

travelling notes (lxxviii)

Money isn't worth anything when you travel. You spend it and you don't look back. Because if you do, those sinister foreign cash machines could easily kidnap you right from the street and demand no ransom for your poor soul. 

Fatwa and Roald Dahl

You can have your hobbits and your underage wizards all you want. Roald Dahl was the writer of my childhood. Not even Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Not Matilda. Not BFG. Rather, it was "Man from the South". "Pig". "The Great Switcheroo". Come to think of it, My Uncle Oswald was where I got my first sexual education, and "Lamb to the Slaughter" was where I learned about the craft of writing a short story. 

A childhood that was seriously compromised years later, the day that I found out about fatwa against Salman Rushdie. This despicable act should have put an end to human dealings with any form of religion, but in fact it had its vocal supporters not just among Muslims but in the western world, too. And while I never cared for John le Carré (The Little Drummer Girl made little impression on me), Roald Dahl was a different story altogether. Here was someone who shaped my formative years a lot more than I cared to admit.

Yet what was I supposed to make of him, in the post-fatwa world? Dahl endorsed this vile condemnation (which was basically an incitement to murder) of an artist whose guilt consisted in writing a novel. It was a huge blow, and I had no idea how to reconcile this shameful fact with my love for Roald Dahl the writer. Later on, I would learn to separate biography from work (I would enjoy some of Ezra Pound's poems and I would rewatch those early films by Nikita Mikhalkov), but at the time the defence mechanisms just weren't there.

The question of how to treat an artist's work in view of their life remains a key one. And I think I did get to the bottom of it a few years later, in a London bookstore. I found the Salman Rushdie section (being a fan of Midnight's Children as well as his short story collection East, West), and saw one book missing. It was of course The Satanic Verses. By that time, Mohammad Khatami had spoken about the fatwa being 'finished', and yet the novel was nowhere to be seen. I kept looking and in the end I dug out The Satanic Verses from under a few layers of other books. 

I read it soon afterwards, and loved it so much that years later, when I finally had the courage to reread "Galloping Foxley", I did so with ease. The short story did not produce any fresh stirrings inside (none of Dahl's work ever would), although I did admire the twist at the end. It was a good twist, but it only remained relevant within the context of my first encounter with Roald Dahl.

Pete Shelley (1955-2018)

Pete Shelley was a great songwriter. In my world, Buzzcocks were everything that was good about punk, and I could never forget those long months that I obsessed over Singles Going Steady and Another Music in a Different Kitchen. "What Do I Get". "Why Can't I Touch It". "Orgasm Addict" on repeat.

Whatever happened to twin sets?

Whatever happened to hi-fi?

Whatever happened to TV sex?

Whatever happened to you and I?

Effortless, melodic genius - Pete Shelley was responsible for some of the greatest punk songs ever written. It's a sad day, and he will be missed.  

Album of the Month: NEGATIVE CAPABILITY by Marianne Faithfull

We have been getting quite a few of them lately. These last albums. These final cuts. From David Bowie to Leonard Cohen to Spiritualized (although I shouldn't be putting them on this list), great artists have been putting out records which they knew, or believed they knew, would be their final statements. There's a certain kind of defiance about these albums, and an air of resignation that hovers above the guitar chords that seem too well informed. 

Negative Capability by Marianne Faithfull is another such record. I do not want to be cynical, and God knows I would give a lot to have a new Marianne Faithfull LP every year until the end of times, but what is there to say really? When she chooses to rerecord "As Tears Go By". When she does "Witches Song" once again. When it all ends with the kind of all-encompassing sadness that offers fuck-all, hope-wise. 

But what a record this is. There's a great interview with Nick Cave (who contributed a song as well as backing vocals to Negative Capability) where Marianne Faithfull states quite bluntly that she doesn't hear albums like this any more. What sort of albums, you might wonder? Well, classic Faithfull albums, of course: raw, emotional, subdued and savagely intense. 

Speaking of Nick Cave, there really should not be a limit to your love for the great Australian. For he contributed not just the best song of the album but the best song of Marianne Faithfull's career. "The Gypsy Faerie Queen", a song he could have easily kept for himself (in fact, I can very much imagine him singing it), is an absolute timeless classic. The melody is breathtaking, the lyrics are inspirational, and the rough-sensual vocal delivery will reduce you to bits. Currently, I don't know another song from 2018 that would even come close. 

Elsewhere, it's well-chosen covers (both high-profile, like "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", and relatively obscure, like the closing "Loneliest Person" lifted from The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow) and smart originals (my favourite is the brutal, heartbreaking "Don't Go" about the death of a friend). And it's of course beautifully augmented by the irreproachable violin of Warren Ellis who was also this album's producer. 

I know the word 'special' has been greatly devalued by people brandishing it every moment that they are slightly surprised or mildly amused. But Negative Capability is special down to its last drop. It's the epitome of 'special'. Christ, it's what 'special' should aspire to be.

travelling notes (lxxvii)

Florence is the taste of risotto the smell of leather the sound of a group of teenage girls singing Italian pop songs behind your back. 

travelling notes (lxxvi)

Somehow, I will never forget the waiter from a small restaurant in Lucca who typed the name of 'Banfi Rose' on my phone. All the more so because I might never taste it again. 

Esher Demos

As time goes on, it becomes less and less tedious to write about The Beatles. Fifteen years ago, when I wrote my first piece on Revolver, it just felt wrong. Five years ago, when I wrote about The White Album, it felt unnecessary. These days, as I write about the newly released Esher Demos, it feels exhilarating. 

My history with The White Album has always been complicated. I've never rated it, not least because I've never seen it as a Beatles album. For me, it has always been a collection of songs from three (four, arguably) individuals whose commitment seemed suspect. Come to think of it, I've never even asked myself that all-important question: The White Album, should it not have been a single LP? Frankly, I've never seen ten undisputed classics here, never mind fourteen. 

But then I couldn't let it lie. All these years, I've been going back to it again and again - trying to figure out the simple magic word, like some Gandalf the Grey. This new White Album reissue would just be another opportunity wasted... but it isn't. Not with Esher Demos proving that my unease had been justified all along. 

To get straight to the point, Esher Demos are fantastic (I mean, "What's The New Mary Jane" is horrendous, but come on). Unbaked, half-assed, unfinished, they are nevertheless full of energy and verve and excitement that the finished product never really offered. Suddenly, "Honey Pie" isn't schmaltzy and the chorus of "Bungalow Bill" isn't schlocky. Suddenly, "Rocky Raccoon" is a classic and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" doesn't sound embarrassing. And what's that with "Junk", "Circles" and "Not Guilty" not making the cut? Great melodies all around.

So what is it, anyway? Could it be the fact that they were having fun playing those songs together at Harrison's house or could it just be something as simple as McCartney singing 'awful' instead of 'dreadful' in "Back in the USSR"? I really don't know. What I do know is that the Beatles magic, if you ever believed in such a thing, is all over this record. The White Album? I still don't get it. But the songs - well, I do get them now. And how.  

travelling notes (lxxv)

One bartender in a Paris bar called Blue-something once told me I frightened him when I ordered Old-fashioned. "Why?" I asked. "Because that's what bar critics usually order", he replied. To which I said: "Well, maybe I am".

On Anarchism

I will never forget that American family I once saw in a European bookstore. The bookstore was located inside some grand old railway station and, by the looks and the sound of it, the four Americans were seriously late for their morning train. Which, admittedly, made little sense as they were currently inside this huge bookstore, erratically groping for books. 

It took me seconds to realise that despite Noam Chomsky's slim but heavy-going treatise on anarchism I was currently holding in my hands (I was not going to buy it, but my train was some fifty minutes away), I was, in fact, carefully following the hilarious predicament of the American family. As you would, in a quiet European bookstore.

The predicament was such: the girl, who was about 16 years of age, was not leaving without a book. The train? Fuck the train. Cajolingly, her mother was suggesting various novels while the father was fuming by the entrance and the little brother did not much care for any of it. The girl was rejecting everything that was coming her way, until at some point the clearly desperate mom grabbed George Orwell and shoved him into her daughter's face. 

"1984?!?" the girl exclaimed. "I hated that thing. Animal Farm was so much better". 

At which point I put Chomsky back on the book shelf and moved further down the alphabet, though not as far as to not hear the rest of it. I'd had enough anarchy for one morning... but the best part was that all of a sudden - I was very much enjoying it. 

travelling notes (lxxiv)

Once, in a foreign record store, I saw a young man guiding this tall long-haired Italian girl through endless rows of LPs and trying to explain to her which ones to get. The whole thing seemed ludicrous until at some point it transpired that the girl was looking for a vinyl record to impress her boyfriend that very night. The young man was supposed to give her sage counsel. As we came together to the counter, I noticed she was buying an early Bob Dylan LP. I have no idea whether it worked or not, but to this day I think she should have chosen Leonard Cohen.

Album of the Month: POSSIBLE DUST CLOUDS by Kristin Hersh

This LP is such an unassuming little thing that calling it the best album of the month feels like a stretch. 10 songs, 36 minutes, Kristin Hersh doing her usual manic depressive rock'n'roll. In a way, too slight. In a way, what more can you possibly wish.

It would be true to say that you are unlikely to stumble upon this album by accident and if you do actually have it in your headphones, it means that at some point in your life you fell under the spell of Throwing Muses' eponymous debut or else Kristin's Hips and Makers (may I just stress one more time that "Me and My Charms" is one of the greatest songs ever written). It means you have been here all along, and you know it hasn't been a smooth journey by any stretch of the imagination. All the more recently, because while 2013's Purgatory/Paradise was patchy in the best possible way, I struggled to find a standout tune on the endless Wyatt at the Coyote Place from 2016. 

Thankfully, Possible Dust Clouds is focused songwriting and no real filler. The songs are tasteful, edgy and charismatic. Some are propelled by masterful, intense grooves ("Lethe") and some are relatively subtle and feature Kristin's quieter side that I wish was a little more prominent (I absolutely love the first half of "Fox Point"). The guitarwork is heavy and delicious, the vocals are rough and charming. I wouldn't exactly call these songs hook-filled, but then you never did think "Delicate Cutters" had a catchy melody... 

Kristin Hersh's songwriting is often murky yet it has so much suppressed melodicism bubbling underneath. Possible Dust Clouds is a modest triumph, and nothing but a half-hour outburst from one of rock music's most idiosyncratic artists. There could be a troubled personality there, but it translates beautifully into music. 

travelling notes (lxxiii)

I could spend hours watching this girl writing something on the train, on her way to Milan. There's a huge and rather old-fashioned exercise book on her knees, and she keeps writing this endless piece I can only see as the greatest story ever told. That it could be a diary or a letter to a friend never enters my mind - not when I'm on the train.  

Dekalog

There is no easy way of watching Krzysztof Kieślowski's masterpiece. And there is no way of making that experience less than memorable. 

Oddly, this brings me to Paul Dano. I have once read about his experience of watching Dekalog. Apparently, Paul's idea of impressing his then girlfriend was to watch all ten films with her, over a whole night, one by one. 

Which is like listening to Goldberg Variations on the bus through one flimsy earphone or else reading The Sound and the Fury while talking to someone else who is in the room. 

The story stuck with me because really, you do not need any props. These ten films, each shot on a measly budget of ten thousand dollars, are some of art's most impeccable creations. File alongside Pnin and Seize the Day. 

I know when I finished watching Dekalog: Eight, and saw the face of an old tailor peering through the window, I felt this was the most devastating ending I would ever see. And it is, to this day. 

There is nothing you can say after the screen goes black and you hear that snippy piano. There is nothing you can say - never mind experience.

Скетчи про Минск. Свободный джаз.

Орнетт Коулман. Однажды я слышу его в Минске, под землей, когда ухожу в город. Chappaqua Suite. Это совершенно удивительно, и на секунду я задерживаюсь в холодном переходе, который ненавижу. Мужчина в рваном пальто (наверное, мне стоит подойти и сказать, что сейчас конец июля) играет рваные звуки на альт-саксофоне. Я слышу свободный джаз Коулмана, а недовольные люди нервно стреляют глазами. Саксофонист пьян, думают они. Минск не терпит безумных людей. И все же этот уличный музыкант - лучшее из того, что я слышал за последний год, и я стою около минуты, прежде чем убежать наверх.

Захожу в любимый книжный, и вижу даму средних лет с растрепанной челкой. Она что-то объясняет милой девушке, которая здесь работает. Девушка вежливо кивает, но больше всего на свете ей хочется остаться одной и никогда уже не слышать ни одного слова про Федора Шаляпина и картины Кустодиева. Я успеваю обойти магазин дважды, прежде чем дама решает уйти. Но все же она оборачивается у двери, чтобы сказать: 

"Пастернак в гробу перевернулся, вы не слышали?"

Девушка бледнеет, затем растерянно качает головой.

"Но это не точно", добавляет дама. 

"Ах, не точно?" спрашивает девушка, чтобы не молчать.

И дама наконец выходит из книжного. До следующего раза или, возможно, навсегда.

Я еще раз обхожу магазин и даже успеваю прочесть несколько страниц литературного журнала (воспоминания Эльке Хайденрайх - это прекрасно), но теперь тут все как всегда. Без дамы с растрепанной челкой все книги встали на свои места, а для книг нет ничего опаснее этого. 

Старик останавливает меня на улице и просит позвонить. Он говорит неуверенно; так говорят, когда ожидают отказа. Я никогда не говорю да, но в этот раз отчего-то протягиваю ему телефон. Старик начинает судорожно набирать номера. Один, второй, третий. Дрожащей рукой он вытягивает номера из головы, из памяти, из воображения. Подносит трубку, но никто не отвечает. Снова и снова. Да и кто может ответить на все эти номера, в которых разное количество цифр и которых не существует вовсе? 

Когда через минуту или две он возвращает телефон и медленно уходит за угол дома, я пытаюсь понять, что произошло. Я не знаю. Но что бы это ни было, это безумно грустно. 

Уже темнеет, когда я прохожу мимо горящих окон парикмахерской. Я знаком с владельцем - слишком добрым и слишком неуклюжим, чтобы спасти это место от скорого закрытия. Он заглядывает в глаза и говорит заикаясь, и всегда рассказывает, как идут дела. Дела идут плохо, и бело-красно-синяя вывеска перестала вращаться еще месяц назад (он как-то рассказывал мне, что красный цвет - это кровь, белый цвет - полотенце, а синий - безжизненное дополнение для американского флага). Мне очень жаль, но я буду ходить сюда до самого закрытия.

Но только теперь я не собираюсь стричься. Я заглядываю в окно и вижу, как он танцует перед телевизором. Клиентов нет, парикмахеры ушли домой, и он один в закрытом зале. Танцует под неслышную музыку, не то веселую, не то бесконечно грустную.

Когда я вновь оказываюсь в холодном подземном переходе, альт-саксофон еще играет. Людей почти нет, но теперь хочется уйти и мне. К наступлению ночи саксофонист в рваном пальто разыгрался, и я больше не узнаю Орнетта Коулмана. Не узнаю свободный джаз. Я узнаю обычную мелодию, сыгранную правильно, скучную до слез, и он больше не интересует меня. 

Я выхожу наверх. Город засыпает. Город так боится показаться безумным.

travelling notes (lxxii)

Italians don't mind being pushed. The trouble is, I very much mind pushing.

Manhattan Short 2018

Sometimes the blank ballots slip down my knee and the temptation to leave is almost overwhelming. But I know I will not leave. I will stay, because of that rare moment of magic that will come - possibly, inevitably, at some point. 2018 or otherwise, Manhattan festival remains deeply flawed, at times exasperating, but still there's no excuse to miss it. 


BAGHEAD

Manhattan Short has a long history of trying to unsettle you from the off, and while Baghead is a well-executed little piece of witch whimsy, there is a sense that it's an opportunity wasted. Honestly, the idea was too good to let it die such a trivial, if amusing, death. But a decent start. 7/10

FIRE IN CARDBOARD CITY

Cardboard animation from New Zealand; funny, touching and smart. It may not amount to much, but this is adventurous art that is like a breath of fresh air in the face of all the self-important, humourless bullshit we are about to get into. 8/10

HOME SHOPPER

Marc Bolan said it best: "If you know how to rock, you don't have to shock". Home Shopper was shallow and dull. I have no idea how it made it to this stage. 1/10

HER

They keep showing the bottles of milk at the back of the car, and I can see why. These bottles of milk are the only claim this film has to being called art. Don't confuse political and social importance with an artistic statement. 4/10

TWO STRANGERS WHO MEET FIVE TIMES

Truly we are living in the most humourless of times if something as one-dimensional as this wins the first prize. This short film pulls tears out of your eye sockets with a pair of huge metal tweezers. The art of understatement is well and truly dead. 4/10

SOMEONE

Again, the piece is important and historically significant, but there's an ugly sense of the whole thing being staged and somewhat fake. I appreciate the story but it begs for respect and not love and I can't take this sort of art too seriously. I guess I've always wanted Anne Frank's diary to remain Anne Frank's diary. 5/10
  
CHUCHOTAGE

The joke was seen from a mile off so the fact that this got the second prize probably means that I'm badly out of loop. Remember the French entry No Comment from a few years back? That was good. This Hungarian film was not. 5/10

FAUVE

Objectively, this was the best film of Manhattan Short 2018, and the boy stole my heart. The final shot is devastating, and there is nothing cheap about the symbolism. Fauve stays with you. 9/10

LACRIMOSA

Like a moving painting by Salvador Dali, filtered through black and white. Lacrimosa was unique and almost self-consciously gorgeous, and I was afraid they would sell it cheap at the end. They did not. 8/10        

      
I gave my vote to New Zealand.

Album of the Month: AND NOTHING HURT by Spiritualized

And Nothing Hurt is not just the best album of the month. It's the best album of the year - because you'd have to record some fucking Abbey Road to beat this. 

The album was not released last year, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Ladies and Gentlemen, We are Floating in Space, but one cursory listen to And Nothing Hurt should give you an idea why. To paraphrase the great T.S. Eliot, Jason Pierce wanted to go out with a bang, not a whimper. And so if this is to be Spiritualized's final record, and I hope to God it isn't, then this is the kind of bang the Spaceman deserved. He put that much care, and talent, and time, and health, into the proceedings. 

"A Perfect Miracle" brings back the precious memories of the famed title song from 1997, and Pachelbel, and all those striking melodies that Jason Pierce has written over the years. "I'm Your Man" is a timeless anthem of awkward manhood. "Here It Comes (The Road) Let's Go" is one of those simple tunes you'd think anyone can compose yet only the Spaceman is capable of. "Let's Dance" is a heroin waltz, all charming and vulnerable. "On The Sunshine" is the first noisy rocker of the LP, and it closes the first side with a groovy horn-filled wall of sound, Spiritualized-style.

Side B opens with a sweet sweet thing called "Damaged" with its intense instrumental passages gorgeous to a fault. "The Morning After" is almost as good as "Hey Jane" off the previous album. Its lengthy coda is total madness that would be ugly if it were not so goddamn tasteful. "The Prize" is another mellow ballad, the kind you place at the end of your final statement. Having said that, it's not the last song on the record as we also have "Sail On Through". A bombastic closer, you could think, something to rival "So Long You Pretty Things"? In fact, more like "Goodnight Goodnight" - only better. A sleeper, and a beaut.

I know I keep mentioning these other songs from Spiritualized's career, but that's because And Nothing Hurt is so mindful of its past. And I know I keep harping on about this being Jason Pierce's last album, but then those were his words. It's been a long fight, from "Cop Shoot Cop" to "Medication", and it has left its bruises. That there is so much great music coming from these bruises I can only see as a miracle. I will of course be waiting for another one, patiently, but for now this will be played until the vinyl wears thin. The album is a masterpiece. 

travelling notes (lxxi)

Somehow, Lithuanian art manages to be both overly serious and badly immature. It's some feat, but there's no escaping the boredom.

All About Eve

"All playwrights should be dead for 300 years." If you can come up with a line like that, the script you are writing is probably one of the greatest scripts of the 20th century. And it is.   

There's a lot to be said for movies about theatre (from The Producers to Bullets Over Broadway to Venus In Fur, there's that carefree playfulness about them - besides the fact that they are all monstrously well-acted), but All About Eve is one of the absolute best. However tired you are and however much red wine you have consumed over the evening, it has so much to keep you wondering, and probably guessing. Bette Davis's irresistible stare and devil-may-care genius; George Sanders's stylish cynicism; Marilyn Monroe's unassuming appearance in three short scenes. 

Unlike the slightly overrated Sunset Boulevard from the same year, there is nothing contrived about All About Eve. It's too cynical to be contrived. I wonder what took me so long. 

The last shot is of course iconic, and properly chilling, but Joseph L. Mankiewicz's screenplay (adapted from Mary Orr's short story) is what did it for me. The complexity is staggering, and clearly there is nothing dated about this 1950 take on critics and celebrities. '1950' is irrelevant. A truly ageless film. 

travelling notes (lxx)

It may well be that the most memorable part of any trip is that first taxi ride to the airport, at 4 o'clock in the morning, when something as soporific as Mark Knopfler's "Silvertown Blues" will seem like an adrenaline shot. 

Favourite Bookstores, p.6

The part of Munich I love best is between Königsplatz and Universität. In the heat of summer as well as in the knee-deep snow of late January, walking here has always been pure bliss. 

Getting lost inside Neue Pinakothek early in the morning and then, two hours later, dropping into a tiny bakery at the intersection of Theresienstrasse and Turkenstrasse. A cup of coffee, a slice of ginger cake, a few chapters from a book. Then you walk into Pinakothek der Moderne, completely by accident, and the huge white walls are devastating. The bizarre installations - not so much, but you have seen enough galleries of modern art not to be disappointed. And then, after a brief visit to the Victorian tea room whose opulent interior would have pleased Oscar Wilde, you might as well find yourself stepping into Schellingstrasse. And here, just by the subway station and the University library, you will find a bookstore named Words' Worth.  

Words' Worth. The pun is obvious but it has always been lost on me. Oddly, they only bothered to write the name of the shop on the window and what you see on the signboard above is a fairly desperate 'Anglia English Bookshop'. But who cares.

Because the place is delightful. Two floors of books, books, and more books. Granted, there is all the usual paraphernalia you may expect to find in an English bookshop outside England - china cups, Sherlock Holmes calendars, tote bags with Shakespeare, tea towels with the tedious 'Keep Calm' bullshit. But you feel it's only a clever smokescreen to get rid of tourists with no imagination, so you are willing to forgive. Because upstairs - they have all the classics, and to the left - they have the kind of books you came here for. 

In any bookstore I go to, there is a selection of authors and titles I check. It is not that I need those books, not necessarily, it is just that I have to know they are here. I love it when they are around: a collection of poems by Philip Larkin, Herzog by Saul Bellow, Nabokov's Pale Fire, a few of the latest novels by Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. Words' Worth had them all. It's not a huge place, but it had most of my favourite books. They even had a recent and very much impenetrable jungle of words from Will Self. This made me feel at home, a sense intensified by the huge bookcase in the middle of the shop that looked straight from your favourite library.

And then, on top of that, they have a great selection of recently published books you thought were too obscure to sell outside London. But here they were, and I remember being especially impressed by the unexpected appearance of The Clocks In This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks. Xan Brooks has always been one of my favourite Guardian journalists, and to know that he had his debut novel out, and with a name like that, and to see it on a bookshelf in Munich, etc. I was intrigued, and so it was with this book that I found myself on the floor, half-stretched and utterly engrossed. There is a million books in any given bookstore - but for you, there's just one. And I found it.  

There's lots of that German warmth about Words' Worth, and you don't really want to leave. Outside, the August sun has faded, the January snow has gone grotesque, and it feels like you've spent a few weeks inside the bookstore. Outside, Schellingstrasse will either lead you to the Universität subway station or to the recently opened NS-Dokumentationszentrum that will no doubt exhaust you both physically and mentally. It could well be the single greatest museum I've ever been to, but I'd suggest leaving it for another day. Because this one is almost done, and you've grown a world inside of you. 

Me & Orson Welles

I have been in quite a few awkward situations in my life because I generally have the effrontery to say that Citizen Kane is not the greatest film ever made. More than that - I believe that Citizen Kane is vastly overrated. So what if it's cinematically gorgeous? It also happens to be as empty as the world it decries. 

My one salvation, however, is that I view the 1962 adaptation of The Trial as Orson Welles's absolute masterpiece. I watched it as a schoolboy, before classes, late at night, and was mesmerised by the endless rows of identical working desks as well as the impassive features of Anthony Perkins. The love scenes with Romy Schneider were something else, and for two hours at least Franz Kafka was well and truly alive. It was extremely gratifying to learn that Orson Welles considered The Trial his greatest triumph. 

Which is to say, I believe that my relationship with Orson Welles has always been personal and, as such, has spawned two memorable encounters. 

First, there was a rainy day in London four or five years back. As I reached the Elephant & Castle tube station (on foot and with a broken umbrella), I was soaked to such an extent that I was concerned they might not let me into Southwark Playhouse. Because that was one of the two reasons why I was here - to see Orson's Shadow, a somewhat absurdist play depicting Welles's attempts to talk Laurence Olivier into playing the main part in the future production of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros. A mouthwatering plot, especially for someone who had by that time spent a good five or six years of his life writing about Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd. 

And my God it was magical. I was sitting in the second row of this intimate semi-circle, with a small bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and with my feet going numb from all the rainwater they had consumed that day. There was an old lady in front me, dressed like a Woodstock survivor, and she was quite animated throughout the whole performance. Clearly there was a lot to be animated about - after all, at some point I stopped shivering (New Zealand wine might have played a part here) to be blown away by the lordly ways of Orson Welles. It takes guts to inhabit a world that makes no sense, and to do so with such inimitable authority.  

I walked back to my hotel a different man, if only for that one evening spent in the company of Orson Welles.

And then, years later, I saw this title, Me and Orson Welles, on some list of the best obscure films ever made. Something drew me to it (could be the name of Richard Linklater, could be the idea of Zac Efron being in a good film, but most likely it was a rare chance to see Orson Welles inhabit the world of his own), and another evening was spent in the company of white wine and the great man. 

It's a travesty that not too many people have seen Me and Orson Welles because it is such an unlikely triumph. Playful, stylish, unpretentious, with Christian McKay doing this absolutely magical impersonation of the famed director who is trying to adapt Caesar for the theatre stage. Welles is a loveable dictator, by turns charming and ruthless, and you can't resist fading away in his great shadow... Ultimately, it's a bruising experience for everyone involved, not least for an impressionable teenager burned inside by the subtle black and white eroticism of Romy Schneider. 

travelling notes (lxix)

There is a black woman in a book cafe and she is reading the faces of those who sit here, pensively, with their flat whites and their espressos. As soon as I notice her, I try to hide my face by looking straight at her. Swiftly, the black woman turns away, having either read me already or else deeming the book unworthy of her attention.

Album of the Month: GIANT SAND RETURNS TO VALLEY OF RAIN by Giant Sand

Howe Gelb is a daunting man, and I'm not even talking about his formidable physical appearance. It is just that whenever I look at his discography (which includes around seven hundred albums by Giant Sand, some band with an unlikely name or him on his own), I feel overwhelmed. And I tell myself - not just now. 
  
Still, he does make an occasional appearance in my life - like he did that first time, in 2003, when I bought an issue of Uncut with a free CD of Byrds covers and Byrds inspired tunes. Among quite a few classics (not least "The Little Black Egg" by The Nightcrawlers), the CD contained Giant Sand's beautifully sloppy rendition of "Change Is Now". And while I was not exactly hooked, the name of the band stuck - so that years later, when I saw a review of The Coincidentalist by Howe Gelb (of 'Giant Sand'), I knew this should be good. 

It was, too. The Coincidentalist remains an absolute classic, and "Picacho Peak" is still the best song of all time. 

And now I get to meet Howe Gelb for the third time. Technically, Giant Sand Returns to Valley of Rain is not even a new LP - it's a rerecording of the band's debut Valley of Rain from 1985. But it's not like I've heard a better album in August 2018. 

I can actually see why Howe Gelb would do this record 33 years later. This time, there is no rush (Valley of Rain took a day and a half to cut) and there is a chance to make the songs more complete... and fledged-out (I think it's a concept many bands would find interesting). Which is what you get here: something more than Frank Black-esque vocals and rudimentary, though charming, production; a rearranged song list and a song that was not part of the original LP. 

The songs are good. Loose, driving, intense, with a sloppy edge of country punk. They are more than capable of an elegant ballad (the title song is still the standout), but mostly it's "Tumble and Tear" all the way through. Speaking of which, I'm especially fond of "Barrio", "Death Dying and Channel 5" and the closing "Black Venetian Blind". Occasionally, the melodies tend to get lost in the barrage of Crazy Horse-styled guitars, but overall Valley of Rain II is a fascinating listen. Not any less so - I strongly suspect - than it was in 1985.

Howe Gelb. Daunting as hell - but I know we shall meet again.

travelling notes (lxviii)

The best part of travelling is waking up in the morning, on foreign bedsheets, and realising that you have not worked a day in your life and perhaps never will. 

Truman Capote by Henri Cartier-Bresson

My working desk is often a kitchen table, sometimes a cafe table and rarely an actual desk. But what stays, what absolutely has to be next to me when I write, is this picture of Truman Capote as taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson:

It's an iconic image, one that I first saw a month ago at the Lucca Centre of Contemporary Art. It was a lovingly compiled retrospective devoted to Cartier-Bresson's American work that, quite frankly, blew me away like no other exhibition in recent memory. From Igor Stravinsky fondling a dog to the two nuns contemplating Matisse to a small black girl in a white dress, this was black and white photography with an edge. And while I was dizzy halfway through, the image of young Truman Capote provided the final punch. 

There are many things for which I love this image, but really it's all about the way Capote stares at you. It's a look of apprehension, defiance, slight unease. There is a hint of that Kubrick stare about the whole thing but it's too elusive to grasp. 

And this image moves. Every day, it puts me into my writing mood regardless of a desk or a table I may be writing on. 

travelling notes (lxvii)

Usually, when someone tries to please you, there is a sense of gratitude, and only Pakistani vendors who sell you leather bags at a Florence market manage to annoy the hell out of you with their clumsy and inept attempts at making you happy.

The Classical

When you fall in love with an Impressionist painting, you do not have to respect it. You see the primitive olive trees of Matisse or else the straw chairs of Van Gogh, and respect is only an afterthought. Because first - there is love. You do not really have to think about the time and the sheer effort that Ingres put into his meticulous gowns of pure silk. And then, later, you delve deeper and in some dusty gallery you see the early drawings of Van Gogh and Matisse, and realise they could paint your classical still life as well as any Flem from the 16th century.

Now, suddenly, there is respect, and you may try to find some use for it.

Speaking of music, free jazz is very similar to an Impressionist painting. Albums like Coltrane's Ascension or Coleman's Science Fiction attack your senses the way Gauguin did (the latter was once called a 'virgin with savage instincts'). But then again, you will never forget that Ascension was released just one year after A Love Supreme, and Coltrane's free jazz was an experiment, a discovery. 

Ornette Coleman's story, however, is quite different, and a fascinating interview with Charles Mingus from some old issue of the New Yorker magazine featured this intriguing story. Once, during some jazz festival in the 60s, Mingus and friends pushed Coleman into the corner, gave him the saxophone and instructed him to play "Willow Weep For Me" and to play it straight. Classically. The punch line of the story was that Coleman couldn't. Not without a free interpretation, not without putting a spin on it. 

Having first read that story, I was forced to ask myself if it in any way diminished my love for the man who recorded The Shape Of Jazz To Come. And the truth is, it did not, because in art as well as every day of the week - love trumps respect.

Book review: NO GOOD DEED by John Niven

If Twitter were to die tomorrow, I wouldn't mind. In fact, I would only have one regret, and that is not being able to open John Niven's account once in a while and see his eloquent (I'm using the word loosely) commentary during Wimbledon as well as his gallant (again, loosely) tweets about Trump. Get bent, too. Interestingly, he did actually disappear from Twitter a short while ago (something to do with the Scottish language, I presume) to then rise again, very much unlike Phoenix, from the abusive ashes of social network.

Having said that, this side of his personality would not nearly be able to account for my love for John Niven the writer. Ever since the dizzying riot that was Kill Your Friends (the film was not good - sorry, John), which is one of those books you are bound to finish sooner rather than later, I've always checked letter 'N' in whatever bookstore I have visited. Admittedly, it has not been a perfect record for me. The Amateurs, for instance, never quite clicked, but I'm willing to blame it on golf. However, The Sunshine Cruise Company was gripping to the point where you could spend the whole day on the beautiful beach without ever stepping into the water. Two years prior to that, Straight White Male was a masterpiece that made me laugh and cry in equal measure. For me, still, his greatest achievement. 

John Niven is masterful at designing the sort of plot you have always (secretly or not) wished to explore. His dialogues are visual and fast-paced. His language is no-nonsense but a certain turn of the phrase will send you into fits. Speaking of which - not this time.

Somehow (and that's a big 'somehow' in this particular case), humour does not seem to be John Niven's primary concern here. Of course, there are pages that will test your limits (that diet description, for example), but overall No Good Deed is only deceptively a light read. The book it reminded me of (which is not accidental - there are obvious allusions) is Martin Amis's infamous The Information, a novel I'm very much fond of, not least because it features some of the best opening lines in postmodern literature. Both books deal with competitive friendships, and make you think of those famous words from a Morrissey song title. "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful".

The plot is irreproachable. One day, a prominent restaurant critic, happily married with three beautiful children, walks through the streets of London thinking of his forthcoming review when he encounters a homeless man who happens to be his old college friend he used to envy. Willing to help, he invites him to his place, and it pretty much flies from there... Like I say, the plot is blistering, with just the kind of juxtaposition to keep you up during the night. And John Niven does not disappoint, not with that usual blend of heartbreak and violence. 

Having read this book a while ago now, over a couple of days in Italy, I can't stop thinking about the ending and how Niven chose to go for the inevitable rather than wilfully beautiful. But then he found beauty in the inevitable, which, come to think of it, could be the whole point of art. 

travelling notes (lxvi)

Slowly but surely I'm falling in love with long white walls in the galleries of modern art.

Album of the Month: BACK ROADS AND ABANDONED MOTELS by The Jayhawks

I could be going soft with age, but I'm not. I have always rated Gary Louris as a songwriter, ever since I came across Weird Tales by the now defunct Golden Smog. A record of many highs (not least "Please Tell My Brother", which could well be Jeff Tweedy's best song), it featured Gary Louris's magnificent "Until You Came Along". One of those songs you physically cannot resist. But then again... "Waiting For The Sun". "The Man Who Loved Life". "Listen Joe". The man is a great American songwriter, and I still remember that gushing review of Mockingbird Time I once wrote for some Oxford music magazine urging the world to pay attention.  

These days, I pretty much stand by what I said back then. Mockingbird Time is an underrated late-period classic that revealed the full range of The Jayhawks' music. Later, the absence of Mark Olson was felt rather acutely on the middling Paging Mr. Proust (having said that, I do not believe that The Jayhawks' world revolves around Olson, and Sound of Lies is one of their finest albums), and so I approached this latest LP with no particular expectations. 

Especially since Back Roads and Abandoned Motels is mostly made up of songs Louris had previously composed with other artists (Jakob Dylan, Carrie Rodriguez) and that had previously appeared in films and on records by Dixie Chicks. But Louris has a point when he says it was easy to record these songs since they felt like they belonged to The Jayhawks anyway. And now, whether you hear them sung by drummer Tim O'Reagan or keyboard player Karen Grotberg, they sound fresh. 

Me, I still prefer them to be sung by Gary Louris even if I know what he meant in a recent interview where he said Tim is technically a better singer. But I never cared for technicality, and Louris's voice with that subtle vibration at its core, tugs at my heartstrings with such effortless style. Biggest highlights on this LP include the well-known classic "Everybody Knows", the cold, beautiful "Gonna Be A Darkness" (the imagery is as simple as it is hard-hitting) and, most importantly, the two new songs by Louris that round off this album. Both "Carry You To Safety" and "Leaving Detroit" are well-honed ballads that belong on your imaginary Jayhawks compilation.

And all around, it's gorgeous melodies and everything that made 'alt country' such a worthwhile genre in the first place. At this point, Back Roads and Abandoned Motels is also a timely reminder that be it the slightly tighter The Jayhawks or the slightly looser Golden Smog - Gary Louris is a classic songwriter. Even if this album will go very quietly, too quietly, into the night... And speaking of Golden Smog, I've just listened to "Please Tell My Brother" for the first time in years, and all too predictably - it made me cry. Which means that maybe I am going soft with age. 

Nick Cave in Lucca, 2018

In a way, it's somewhat disheartening to go to a Nick Cave concert. The moment the dramatic, black suited figure appears on stage, stylish and spindly, you know that nothing will come close to that experience. I have seen Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space played live and I have seen The North Sea Scrolls in the beautiful setting of an Anglican church and I have seen Michael Gira going off in a cowboy hat. None of it blows you away quite like an unholy, 10-minute version of "Stagger Lee". 

The Bad Seeds' recent performance in Lucca was not my first experience of seeing Cave live. There was one concert in Moscow a few years back and it was a much more stripped down affair with four musicians, little guitar and Push The Sky Away played in its entirety. There was Warren Ellis having a fit during "From Her To Eternity". There was a rare performance of "West Country Girl". There was a huge Russian crowd begging Cave for "Foi Na Cruz" (which he refused to do) and then totally losing it during "Higgs Boson Blues". It was wonderful, and I knew I would be back for more. 

Nick Cave gives you everything you could possibly need from a live concert, and then he builds something on top of that. Something like a rare b-side with Ellis playing the flute or the world's most intense performance of "Tupelo". 

And it was no different in Lucca. With Skeleton Tree spread all over the generous setlist (19 songs over two and a half hours), he did "Loverman" and he did "Shoot Me Down" and he even was kind enough to do "Deanna" at the request of someone in the front row. And then there was all that crowd-bullying that climaxed during "The Weeping Song" when he actually got physically involved. Cave knows he is playing Jesus with the audience, and the brilliant reference to the Bible (him throwing water into the crowd and then promising fish) was very well-judged. 

The whole of the band (seven people, no less) was having a great time, and that is something you can hardly misread. When Cave says he loves his audience, you know he does. When he sings 'I'm transforming, I'm vibrating...', you know he is. He knows, too, what it means to play "Do You Love Me?" at the beginning and "Rings Of Saturn" at the end. He knows exactly what he is good at. And that is many things, not least saying at one point how handsome he thinks he is. Really, what a man.

Why go anywhere else if you can go to Italy? Why go to any other live show if you can see Nick Cave? In Lucca, on the 17th of July, at around midnight, you almost believed these questions as, grateful and exhausted, you leapt to your feet during the encore. 'Because this is the moment. This is what we do. And this is what we are'.

travelling notes (lxv)

I love the trams and I love the Last Supper. Still, for all its expansive designs, Milan has got to be the least inspired destination of your Italian holiday. 

travelling notes (lxiv)

Florence is the world's first city where I saw a conductor in shorts, and yet in no way was he at odds with the breathtaking setting of the Uffizi Gallery.