Album of the Month: GHOSTEEN by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

This, they say, is the afterlife. With the bright cover and the woozy sounds of synthetic loops, these are no longer the brutal, deathly textures of Skeleton Tree. Ghosteen is post-death and the sort of record that finds catharsis in the pain and the sorrow of its music. 

Now if that sounds pretentious then you are simply not following. Ghosteen is the last installment of Nick Cave's trilogy, the one that started with the sparse and haunting Push The Sky Away and continued with the devastating Skeleton Tree that was released a few months after the tragic death of Cave's son (Skeleton Tree had actually been recorded before that, and was slightly altered afterwards). Ghosteen is where it ends. Where everything ends, by the sound and by the lyrics of it.

It might not work initially, and God knows I was underwhelmed during my first listen to the album, and was clutching at fucking straws, looking for any vestige of substance in Warren Ellis's loops and Nick Cave's largely spoken vocal delivery. I believe "Hollywood" grabbed me from the start but not much else. It probably took the third listen, that inevitable night hour in headphones, to win me over. 

Suddenly, the heavy and insidious magic of Ghosteen hit my senses. Cave's songwriting was all there, on top of the now familiar stripped-down sound and two or three of those trademark piano lines (songs like "Bright Horses" and "Waiting For You" are not a million light years away from his past ballads).

And at the end of the day, this is just beautiful music. I have no idea what his band are going to do during the live shows next spring (I mean, you will hardly hear any drums or guitar on Ghosteen), but this sound is just so organic and so pure. It is the sound that makes Cave write some of his best songs ever - even if I still, after at least ten full listens to this album, see Ghosteen as one sixty-eight minute piece. But who cares when this music, to quote Michael Gira from later this month, is sacred. 


RECOMMENDED THIS MONTH:

Hello Exile by The Menzingers
Ghosteen by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Active Listening: Night On Earth by Empath
Ode to Joy by Wilco
Fireraisers Forever! by Comet Gain
Leaving Meaning. by Swans
Colorado by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Three Chords And The Truth by Van Morrison

My Cultural Lowlights: RICHARD BACH

I don't mind bad books. I resent bad movies and bad music, but books are different. Bad books serve a purpose. They take the kind of effort and dedication that make me admire and forgive. Besides, bad books are great education. Whereas a bad record is little more than an egregious waste of time, a bad novel will tell you exactly what it takes to write a good one.

Now obviously there is no shortage of writers I respectfully dislike (DH Lawrence and Haruki Murakami, to name a couple). Nevertheless, there is a certain layer of world literature that annoys me to no end. In contrast to my opening premise, these are the kind of writers whose books I almost find genuinely worthless. Whose pocket-sized philosophy offends my senses and makes me long for the comparatively harmless ideology of Ayn Rand. The culprits include, among others, Paulo Coelho, Carlos Castaneda and Richard Bach. 

Back when I was studying at school, Richard Bach in particular was something of a teenage sensation (which is both interesting and sad considering that he was big in the distant 70s). People were exchanging books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions all the time, doing it with the sort of heavy and religious breathing that made you open the first page expecting to be blown away. Which you probably were, provided of course that you had schooled your mind beforehand. 

The experience of reading those books was akin to having your tooth drilled slowly and painlessly (in retrospect, I would have preferred a brief pulling out with no anaesthesia). Back then, I may have talked myself into liking certain pages of Jonathan Livingston Seagull that came off like the bad parts of The Little Prince made even worse. As for Illusions, it seemed over-serious and masturbatory even for the highly impressionable age of fourteen. There was, however, a thoroughly unhealthy feeling that I was missing out on some godlike truth that would reveal itself in years to come (interestingly, this would only come true once, with The Sound and the Fury). 

Looking back, I wonder what it was that we found in those humourless pages that replaced plot with pretentious fudge. I wonder how many seconds it would take me now to detect the pound shop wisdom that seems no better than the one contained in millions of those 'how to become a genius' opuses written by Dale Carnegie wannabes.

I remember how once upon a Christmastime, in England, we were visiting friends on Boxing Day, and I wandered into a spacious kitchen. Oddly, the first item I noticed was a fridge with all sorts of crap hanging on its door. Among other things, there was the time-table of a local book club. The nearest entry spelled 'Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist'. Christ, it was exasperating. Then, however, I checked out the rest of that month, and the remaining entries were all good. John Banville, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ian McEwan... The sheer contrast was breathtaking. Really, Coelho stood no chance. Coelho would make the excellent Saturday feel like Ulysses. 

Which was how I came to realise that even the worst books are, in fact, a gift. A Christmas gift to all of us.

My Cultural Highlights: МАРК ЗАХАРОВ

Наверное, в человеке нет ничего сложного. Детская драка. Первая сигарета. Проигранный футбольный матч. Рассказ, который захотелось перечитать. Все до безумия просто, и я уверен, что не был бы тем человеком, каким являюсь теперь, если бы однажды, лет в четырнадцать или пятнадцать, не посмотрел фильм Марка Захарова. Все бы остановилось. Все пошло бы не так.

Я давно перестал о нем думать, еще до крымских писем и другого мракобесия. Я больше не пересматриваю его фильмы. Я перестал ощущать его влияние на мои слова и даже мысли. Кажется, в последний раз я вспоминал о нем несколько лет назад, когда смотрел его постановку "Вишневого сада" в московском Ленкоме... Но его смерть в конце сентября - это вспышка боли, какой-то неуемной эмоции, а еще напоминание о том, что Марк Захаров - главный режиссер в моей жизни.

Все просто: мне не нужно пересматривать его фильмы. Я видел их слишком много раз, я до сих пор помню каждое слово из первого монолога Мюнхгаузена. Я по-прежнему могу часами говорить цитатами из двух любимых фильмов Захарова ("Дом, который построил Свифт" и "Тот самый Мюнхгаузен"). Могу проигрывать в голове каждую сцену и понимать, что все это уже давно часть меня. Этот юмор определил мой юмор. Эти сцены, от приезда пастора до похорон Свифта, определили меня больше, чем мне хотелось бы думать. 

Что касается политики, то она всегда оставалась в стороне. Есть два способа общения с художником, и один из них позволяет видеть только его работу. И хоть в течение этих лет я замечал редкие интервью, ненужные фразы, вырванные цитаты, для меня все закончилось 1988 годом и его последним фильмом "Убить дракона". Это было такое правдивое высказывание, такая жуткая сторона "Мюнхгаузена", такое точное предсказание будущих лет (которые все никак не пройдут), что все остальное казалось необязательным послесловием... Все остальное делалось вне того времени, в котором жил я. 

В случае Марка Захарова, я видел только его фильмы, от которых исходило безумное ощущение свободы. Но только не той, советской и стесненной, а другой: ироничной и глубоко абсурдной. Это было такое идеальное бегство из запертого мира, от себя к самому себе. И я знаю, что не был бы и частью самого себя, если бы не проделывал все это всю свою жизнь. 

travelling notes (cxi)

You don't really miss home when you are on a different continent. 

Скетчи про Минск. Трамвай.

Трамвай - это самый художественный вид общественного транспорта. О нем хочется писать. Метро - обычно. Автобус - скучно. Троллейбус - пошло. Трамвай другой. В нем есть загадка. А иначе как объяснить то, что именно в трамвае снимались лучшие сцены советских фильмов?..  

Все детство мне казалось, что в трамвае ездят особые люди. Я был уверен, что если родители отправят меня в незнакомую часть города, ту, где ходят лишь трамваи, я окажусь внутри другого Минска. Зайдя в трамвай, я увижу людей в странной одежде и с безумными лицами. Людей, говорящих на непонятном языке. Они не будут лучше меня и не будут хуже. Просто они будут другими. И в те редкие моменты, когда это происходило, и я действительно ехал куда-нибудь на трамвае, я чувствовал себя иностранцем в собственном городе. Я до сих пор ощущаю благоговение, смешанное с легкой паникой, когда оказываюсь в трамвае. 

Этот удивительный механизм, с грохотом разрезающий улицу на две равные половины. Он как будто существует поверх города или вне его. И даже в тот момент, когда культовый красный трамвай был заменен на постсоветский бирюзовый, Минск в его окне по-прежнему казался таким же удивительным, каким кажется Москва Костику из "Покровских ворот". 

Однако трамвай - это не только кино. Это настоящая литература, с рифмой или без нее. И потому искры электричества вырывались в ночное небо в те томительные секунды, когда минский трамвай поворачивал с улицы Даумана на проспект Машерова. А мы ждали и надеялись, что искры будут гореть дольше и ярче обычного. И потом "Любовь во время холеры" в невыносимо жаркий июльский день. И эта пара, что поздним вечером пыталась играть Дэвида Боуи на расстроенной гитаре в конце пустого трамвая. 

Очень много лет назад я придумал рассказ, в котором человек живет в центре города, недалеко от трамвайных путей. Время от времени он слышит грохот и ощущает вибрацию, когда трамвай проносится рядом с его домом. Это происходит не каждый день, а лишь изредка, и вдруг этот человек начинает понимать, что его жизнь меняется в те моменты, когда происходят такие вибрации и грохот. Он начинает вспоминать, что это случилось, когда, например, он влюбился, или началась война. И вот однажды он просыпается ночью от страшного грохота трамвая...

Я боюсь, что однажды мне придет в голову концовка этого рассказа. Боюсь, что в этот момент какая-то важная загадка будет разгадана, и мой роман с минским трамваем закончится навсегда.

Album of the Month: THE TALKIES by Girl Band

It delights me to no end that this is the second Irish band who get into my 'best album of the month' feature in 2019. All the more so because the abrasive brand of noise-rock played by Girl Band would not really be high on the list of 'my kind of music'. The Talkies, however, is so fucking good (cathartic, as people in the know would have you believe) that I'm willing to take its adventurous and raucous pleasures over albums like In the Morse Code of Brake Lights or Beneath the Eyrie.

The name of the band is better than it sounds: four lads from Dublin with not a girl between them. The Talkies is their second LP, and it is telling that it took them four years to release the follow-up to their 2015 debut Holding Hands With Jamie. Telling in the sense that the noise of The Talkies does not come out of nowhere. And nor do the vocals which sound like Mark E. Smith let completely, disconcertingly loose.

All through these punishing forty-six minutes, Girl Band create noise that is smart, diverse and perversely melodic. After the unsettling breathing of "Prolix", an introduction both fitting and bizarre, you get the intense pummeling of "Going Norway" that does not sound unlike The Fall at their least inviting. The melodies are there, however, and you might find it hard to get the brilliant and repetitive "Couch Combover" out of your head. Also, while the brief "Akineton" is little more than colourful noise, the six-minute "Laggard" extends intriguingly into the lo-fi fade-out. Better still is the epic "Prefab Castle" that builds and screeches and honks into this album's undisputed centrepiece. 

I love the aesthetics. I love the title and I love the cover that beautifully complement this wonderful experience which manages to turn sonic irreverence into sheer joy. The Talkies is a true artistic statement, subversive and utterly exciting. I would love to see how they evolve on the next album, and I do not care whether it will take them another four years to get there...

My Cultural Lowlights: LANA DEL REY

The problem with Lana del Rey is not her music. The music is all right. In fact, Norman Fucking Rockwell, her latest, is her most consistent album to date. And while the main vocal hook in "Fuck It I Love You" is the most annoying thing I have heard all year, much of the LP is full of beautiful meandering melodies that spell a talent bigger than a fraud. So no - the problem with Lana del Rey is not her music. The problem with Lana del Rey is that she does not mean a word she sings. 

Which is crucial, because in a world where everyone and everything is overrated, there is one thing whose value will never go down. I am talking about sincerity, a notion to which Lana del Rey, by the looks and by the sounds of it, is a total stranger. 

Note please that the concept of art for art's sake does not apply here. If it did, the whole thing would sound a lot more intriguing and, yes, seductive. Lana del Rey's case is different in the sense that she wants to come across as someone genuine, someone sad-eyed and tragically beautiful, someone possessing real emotions and not just sorrowful red dresses that she wears lying on a West Coast beach drinking cocktails and watching boys in immaculate slow-motion. This desire is commendable, of course, but she cannot really execute her intention beyond song titles and staged photoshoots. Because the image is manufactured, and the fakery is so overblown it becomes genuinely grating. 

From the Spanish name to that impeccable pout, you would have to try really fucking hard not to smile. It probably speaks volumes about the superficial nature of these times when so many people (who really should know better) fall for that crap. In fact, many of these people get their knickers in a twist when you question the integrity and the incessant name-dropping (Norman Rockwell being the latest casualty). They should not bother: outside the Spanish name and the impeccable pout, there is nothing to Lana's personality. Zilch. Cocktails and boys in slow-motion are as far as it goes.

With Lana del Rey, you are not supposed to disentangle the song from the image. When you do that, however, you are left with tons of empty posturing and a few good songs. Thus, I would still profess my admiration for the cold-blooded charms of "Video Games" and "Ride" and "Venice Bitch" as well as a vocal hook here and a vocal hook there, but there is so much artistic forgery that you can take. And, inevitably, each time that I stop trying to get into another one of her albums (and the bastards keep coming), I just end up playing something else instead. And God it sounds wonderful:  

P.S. Honest question: how big a chance is there that The Replacements will be name-dropped on Lana's new album?..