To Pimp a Butterfly; quick review

Listening fairly obsessively to the new Kendrick Lamar LP at the moment. My last.fm tells me I've racked up 99 song plays in the last day or two - am sure that'll be many many more by the weekend. It's much too early to pass judgement on 'To Pimp A Butterfly' after only five or six listens, especially as I mistakenly underestimated 'Good Kid, Maad City' on release - and only latterly realised that how incredibly rich, complex, moving and clever it is.

Something that's broadly true of his whole back catalogue. At the moment it feels like all three of his albums are classics, which puts him ahead of so many of his peers and predecessors.

By my calculation the list of rap artists who managed three consecutive classics is staggeringly short - 2pac, A Tribe Called Quest, Ice Cube and Public Enemy. That puts him ahead of Biggie, Jay-Z, Nas, Snoop, Dre, Wu Tang (although RZA managed a hell of a run if you count the solo LPs - at one point he racked up 'Only Built 4 Cuban Linx', 'Liquid Swords' & 'Ironman' a mere matter of months apart).

Anyway - Kendrick is so profoundly ahead of everyone else making rap records at the moment. The sonic palette on his new one is a perfect and logical brew given his development as an artist and the growth of his themes. Gone are the colder, harsher tones of 'Good Kid, Maad City' and in comes a warmer, more soulful sound, more in the vein of 'Section.80' (which makes sense given that GKMC speaks of a darker, earlier time than his debut).

Along with the soul comes stunning jazz instrumentation and funk breaks, drawing on the conscious rap of Native Tongues as well as the gorgeous warmth of the g-funk pioneered by Dr Dre and DJ Quik. It's the celebration of the West Coast promised by 'Compton' at the end of Good Kid, but richly developed by a rejection of gang-oriented themes and a broader enunciation of Kendrick's black consciousness. There's a lot of spoken word on this LP, including a bravura 'conversation' with 2pac at the album's close which has left the hair standing up on the back of my neck each time I've heard it.

Lyrically, Kendrick sounds like he's on amazing form, but there's so much to decipher and enjoy, and I have literally only just got started on this one. It feels like a work of genius so far.

The Teleportation Accident, micro review

This entertaining book, by the young British novelist Ned Beauman, struck me as a v bold, energetic bit of writing, & the similes/descriptions are firework-esque. The story itself, which careers from Berlin to Paris to the Los Angeles of the 1930s is winningly free of constraints, which is fun but which makes it a somewhat messy read, a triumph of style over structure. That said, I ended up racing enthusiastically through it & laughing loads, as often as not at the sheer abandon of it. But the 1st half was much stronger for me than the second, where I started to feel that I was losing the central character’s voice – and, essentially, for all that at times it recalls the delightful barminess of Wodehouse or the mischief of early Martin Amis, it’s not quite my type of thing. Clever, witty, self-indulgent, free-wheeling, often a bit tiresome, but often sparking. Definitely worth a read, but insubstantial in the long run.

Back with Betty

Quite pleased to discover that I still think Betty Blue is a pretty great film. I watched it a lot as a teenager, partly because I fancied Beatrice Dalle and partly because I was in a phase of renting art-house films from the library (‘cos I fancied the actresses in them…) and Betty Blue was my favourite. Since then I’ve read a lot of quite scathing reviews of it, writing it off as either pseudo-intellectual soft porn or directionless melodrama. But decided today to give it another try and thought it a lot better than I’ve seen it described. It’s nowhere near as erotic as the easily-pleased teenage me found it – Betty’s actually a lot cuter and sexier when she’s dressed than when she’s not, thank to the cheerful petulance and charm which Beatrice Dalle brings to the role, and Zorg is a lot more appealing than I remember him – muscular, easygoing and devoted.

There are plenty of flaws; both Betty and Zorg are rather idealised, and the final third of the film descends dramatically (the drag scenes? hmmm). But the first 90 minutes are extremely winning – the months they spend drinking and dancing in the Paris hotel with Eddy and Lisa are exactly what I hoped for from my 20s, the pacing is delightful, and there’s a lot to be said for the way Zorg and Betty get (it) on. I liked the way that for all that Zorg is devoted to his unravelling girlfriend, he’s not paternal, macho or aggressive in the way he seeks to protect her – which is what the drag stuff is about, I guess. It’s full of mis-steps and a few shonky attempts at humour, but overall I really enjoyed re-visiting it. It looks, needless to say, absolutely beautiful, too.

Where are we now?

I’m a massive Bowie fan, so, transparently, today has been a ridiculously good day for me.

If you missed it – ten years after his last record and seven years after he last performed in public – this morning, entirely without fanfare or forewarning, David Bowie released a brand new song and announced a forthcoming LP. This is, in the world of pop, massive news, and judging by the fact that I heard about it on the Today programme on Radio 4, it’s presumably big news elsewhere too. The Guardian practically devoted their entire Arts team to covering it today (yielding good pieces from Michael Hann and Alexis Petridis), and my twitter feed was a pretty relentless stream of enthusiasm.

I’ve been in a good mood all day.

And amidst all the excitement, there’s a song, and you should listen to it.

It’s far too early for me to pass any real critical judgement, to declare it better than his 90s work or worse than the stuff on ‘Heathen’, and I’m too biased to be truly objective regardless – but the song matters to me because I find it thrilling to think that Bowie still digs making music (I thought he’d retired) and the song itself, regardless of its place in his canon, makes me happy – by chance it recalls much of Bowie’s music that I like best; the sombre, elegiac Bowie of the late ’70s, whose years in Berlin still seem to speak to him more powerfully than any others. To hear him singing in his own distinct, somewhat tremulous voice is, for all that it is aged, a great privilege.

He’s written so many wonderful wonderful songs, but there’s a category that I hold particularly close to my heart, and that’s the smallish number of songs where it sounds like Bowie is singing from deep within his true self – not channeling Anthony Newley, or Lou, or Iggy, or Dylan, or even James Brown (I love it when he channels James Brown). The best example is, I think, ‘Wild Is The Wind‘, which Bowie himself has described as his finest vocal performance. There are shades of that song here – or shades of the truthfulness it evinces. And something very vulnerable too.

What a joy it is to hear, and to have him back.

If you like it too – or, failing that, like David generally – then we can be friends.

Review, Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012)

When I was a kid I chanced upon 2000AD and, for a short period, I bought it every week. If you’ve not read 2000AD, you might think it’s a nerdy, ultraviolent science fiction comic (and you’d be right) and as such it’s regularly dismissed as an adolescent concern; as a teenager keenly aware of wanting to be cool, I swiftly stopped buying it when I learned this, and began looking for more serious literature to fill the gap (and do a better job of impressing others/girls).

I’ve never been a huge comic reader, but 2000AD was my gateway drug to a world of fine, artistically challenging, serious “graphic novels”, which I read throughout my 20s, in an attempt to marry my affection for comic books with my pretentiously high-brow attitude towards literature. Consequently, a shelf in my flat groans with expensive, sincere comic books, few of which I ever actually finished.

Later, it occurred to me that the comic I wanted to read wasn’t a hip independent quarterly at all – it was 2000AD, and when I went back to it I immediately recalled that actually, despite it being nerdy and ultraviolent, it was always bloody smart and often highly political and satirical. More importantly, it was great fun, and for all the dazzlingly inventive stuff that would feature in it, by far the best was generally the staple, Judge Dredd, which was and is a work of complete genius. Having spent pretending otherwise, It’s probably fashionable to say this, now, which makes this mea culpa somewhat redundant, but there it is.

Anyway, I watched the recent adaptation of this fine comic strip, the Brit-made ‘Dredd’, starring Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby this weekend, and I thought it was completely marvellous. Possibly not quite as darkly comic as the strip, nor quite as gruesomely inventive (hard on a very low budget), but it was an absolutely fantastic, lean, aggressive, compulsive bit of action cinema, propelled by all the things that make the comic strip great – a complete lack of misogyny, a vivid and colourful concept and best of all, a central character who is complete in every sense.

Dredd isn’t, if you trace him through the comic, a lot of things he’s described as being (a fascist, an unlearning automaton), but he is consistent, coherent and always convincing, as cleanly defined an action hero as you could wish for. He’s also devilishly hard to play, so I was completely certain that neither Karl Urban nor any actor could convincingly portray Dredd on screen, but after fifteen minutes I was absolutely sold on his performance.

Similarly, my heart sank when I saw that a young and very beautiful actress had been picked to play Anderson, fearing that meant a descent into predictable roles, but her performance (and more important, her characterisation) is almost note perfect. Never once is she shown to be weaker than any male character nor is her meeting with the (also female) villain contextualised in light of their sex. She’s just a brilliant, character, as is Dredd.

And this is a brilliant film. Not flawless, obviously, and some way from being a masterpiece of cinema – but it is a masterpiece of bringing Dredd to life, which is all we could have asked for. There’s some really exciting slo-mo filming in there, too, enough to suggest that given a bigger budget a sequel could go some way to visualising the extraordinary colour and madness of the comic.

In the meantime, your Saturday night needs Dredd.

Review; Clay by Melissa Harrison

Just finished reading Melissa Harrison’s lovely first novel, ‘Clay’, and wanted to pen a few thoughts while it’s still fresh in my mind. ‘Clay’ is a terrifically beautiful book, a quiet, sensitive portrayal of the lives of a small cast of slightly lonely, slightly constrained protagonists, and their development over the course of a half year in a South London which is by turns familiar and gloriously unfamiliar.

Familiar because Harrison has a good grasp of the plain-sight city – “nail bars, chicken parlours, newsagents, mobile phone unlocking, cheap calls to Africa”, and exotic because she populates the city with a bewildering cast of living things which our eyes are either untrained to see or disposed to miss; dog foxes, bats, sticky goosegrass and evergreen choisya, butterflies, greenflies and stag beetles, swifts, starlings, and plane trees shedding flakes of polluted bark. Harrison’s prose is poetic but hyper-observant, always sensing new movement in the nearby undergrowth, or a pair of eyes watching high in a tree. South London which is by turns familiar and gloriously unfamiliar.

All five of the novel’s main characters see more of this hidden city than I (regrettably) do, and are to a smaller or greater extent drawn towards the area’s liminal places – the parts of London in which pockets of extraordinary life are concealed, yet continue to thrive – and in particular to a small park near Tooting Common, which becomes the space in which they meet and interact. At the centre is TC, whose story of neglect is painfully sad but whose resourcefulness and passion for nature is a rebuke to his coddled, careless peers. Around him Harrison conjures a story quite free of sensationalism or sentimentality, but which is quietly gripping and somewhat inspiring. South London which is by turns familiar and gloriously unfamiliar.

The clay of the title refers to a phrase recalled from childhood – ‘we are the clay that grew tall’, which resonates through the novel; TC is a child ‘on intimate terms with the earth’. Jozef, an exile from Poland, mourns the physical properties of the farm he grew up on. Sophia, growing old on a council estate her family have left, does her best to disrupt the order which the council wish to impose upon the wedge-shaped park she has watched over for decades, her pockets bulging with papery bulbs. South London which is by turns familiar and gloriously unfamiliar.

‘Clay’ is a very satisfying read; a serious book which evokes important topics like innocence, companionship and trust, but which is driven forward by the author’s obvious, intimate connection with nature. South London which is by turns familiar and gloriously unfamiliar.

Very pleased that it’s the first thing I read in 2013; it’s a short, brilliant novel that makes me want to rush out into the woods.

precious, a film by lee daniels

I watched Precious, today, the second feature by Lee Daniels, and was very impressed, if upset, by its grim, unflinching portrayal of domestic abuse in 1980s Harlem. It’s only Daniels second film, although he is an established name in Hollywood, having produced both the excellent ‘The Woodsman’ – a hard, affecting film about a convicted paedophile – and the execrable ‘Monster’s Ball’, a condescending, unpleasant film about ‘black America’. Here, aided by some excellent casting and several terrific performances, he has crafted a film which is alternately painful to watch, surprisingly heart-warming, and very funny.

It’s the severity of the circumstances his young lead must face that resonate most strongly. Precious, an impassive, obese 16 year old who is pregnant for the second time by her own father, is played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe with real depth and significant restraint, and entirely fulfils her role in a film where appalling events are threaded routinely into the plot. The comedian Mo’Nique, who plays her mother, is even more impressive, bringing a nightmarish intensity to her portrayal of one of the most unsympathetic characters I’ve ever seen in celluloid. In addition, there is good work by a (slightly too-good-to-be-true) Paula Patten and Mariah Carey, whose hard, ambiguous social worker is central to the film’s (ultimately hopeful, despite everything) climax.

At times, particularly when Mo’Nique is inflicting shocking abuse on her screen daughter, it’s terribly hard to watch. To leaven the horror, Daniels provides a hopeful subplot which lauds the role of the state in protecting its most put-upon citizens, and it’s for the best that he does, else the film might be unwatchable. At times the contrast between these two strands seems a little unbelievable, but it is a necessary plot device. As in both Monster’s Ball and The Woodsman, however, there are some ambiguous moral lessons. In The Woodsman, vigilantism is presented in a strangely uncritical light, and in Precious it’s hard not to notice that every character who lines up to help Precious (and thankfully there are several) seem to have progressively lighter skin.

Her relationship with Patten – who plays her teacher and mentor – is touching and convincing; but at times it feels that Patten is a little too good to be true; an impeccably groomed, comfortable liberal – she seems remarkably unfrazzled for an inner city teacher. Indeed, her class – supposedly made up of Harlem’s most troubled teenagers – seems at times to resemble the kids from Fame.

This is nitpicking – there are great performances here, and it’s very difficult not to be upset, moved, and exhausted by the film. It’s a great success and Mo’Nique, for one, might feel unfairly cast aside if she doesn’t pick up an Oscar for her role. I hope that the intolerable life young Precious is handed in 80s Harlem is a historical observation, and that things are better for America’s poor today.

wave pictures at the garage, islington

Although my birthday was a month ago, I had a lovely second pass at being spoiled this weekend, when Anne-So and Rich took me not only for a delicious curry in London but also to see the final date on the Wave Pictures current Uk tour, at the Garage in Islington.

Of course, it's as ridiculous to talk of touring schedules with the Wave Pics as it is to talk of album release cycles. Since I first stumbled, delighted, upon them at the End Of The Road three years ago, it's been apparent that - seemingly contrary to the instincts of many of their contemporaries - they do most what they love most; writing and playing. So there have been two conventional albums in quick session plus a bunch of singles and EPs and then a slew of hastily recorded 'unofficial' LPs, often recorded with a cast of like-minded accomplices which includes the Berlin-based Andre Hermann Dune (now known as Stanley Brinks) and Clemence Freschard, both of whom appear with the band tonight in what seems to be a genuine and touching display of open collaboration.

In case you're not quite up to speed, here's a quick précis. The Wave Pictures are like no other band on earth - drawing on a set of influences which includes Sam Cooke, Jonathan Richman and early Dire Straits (and frequently sounding like a neat combination of all three) the band simultaneously straddle a relaxed, unfussy approach which yields thin, scruffy takes, shorn of overdubs, and a quite spectacular level of musicianship - David Tattersall's guitar playing is instinctive, spare and quite dazzling when he lets loose. Aesthetically, they couldn't be more comfortable in their own skin, transparently loving every minute of what they do. Just as notes come easy, Tattersall's yearning, kitchen-sink lyrics sound wonderfully unforced - and are similarly wonderful.

London clearly has a loyal Wave Pics fanbase, and whereas the last time I saw the band - in a sweaty basement in Brighton - they played a short, fast, exposive set, this weekend they played a longer and more varied, more celebratory collection of songs. The results were spellbinding.

The problem with amassing such a comprehensive and assured back catalogue in a very short period of time is that it's impossible to play everything, meaning that once again there is no room for classics like 'Long Island' or the beautiful 'If You Leave It Alone'; but we're amply rewarded with some absolute treats - a star turn on lead vocals (and a drum solo) from Jonny, some wonderful, mellow saxophone playing by Stanley Brinks, and a smattering of new songs, including a gorgeous one from Tattersall's new CD, sung sweetly by the exceedingly European Freschard:

"I saw your hair between the trees, I saw your hair
In the sunlight on the leaves, I saw you there
I saw the curve of your lips, I saw blue skies
I saw chipped toenails in the twigs, and your blue eyes".

Best of all was the song, presented above, which they played the one time I turned my camera on and trained it on the stage - a delicious, communal acapella take on 'Strawberry Cables', which saw Tattersall eke out exquisite melodies from the call and response harmonies of the original version. The crowd clapped and swooned at every turn - a crowd reacting joyfully to a band immersed in love for their craft, and preocuppied, as Tattersall's charming, reflective lyrics attest, with love itself.

Thanks thanks thanks to AS and Rich for a wonderful night. Hope the rest of you enjoy the video.

noah's misery

My impression – I may be wrong - is that the new Noah and The Whale record has underwhelmed quite a few people. It feels like the fans who liked the upbeat arrangements of their debut album are bewildered by the introverted, melancholic seam running through The First Days Of Spring. Equally, the people who understandably took against the contrived, Wes Anderson-influenced trappings of the band’s image and first record have not been convinced by the earnest, mature stylings they’ve followed it up with. Accompanying the new album with a full-length DVD film may be their biggest mistake; a brave, admirable artistic endeavour which nevertheless feels desperately pretentious.

Anyway – as you’ll know if you’ve spent some serious time with The First Days of Spring, it’s an excellent record; a big improvement on Peaceful The World Lays Me Down and a really rewarding, emotional account of what sounds like a pretty fucking awful year in the life of the band’s songwriter, Charlie Fink – whose break-up with Laura Marling doesn’t just dominate this set of songs, it positively defines them. On ‘Stranger’, my favourite song, he sounds positively wretched, musing on the sense of shame he feels after a night of casual sex with a new acquaintance. It’s a peculiar topic (for a man, particularly) to write about, but it’s oddly moving – once one has reconciled Charlie’s lyrical approach with a natural aversion to cliché.

My first reaction to the set of songs on The First Days of Spring was that Fink had written an extraordinary, brooding, lilting set of instrumentals but been unable to find words to express his heartache without resorting to a set of anodyne, stock-phrases to voice his anguish. That may well be the case – there’s an interminable amount of cliché here. But there’s something more complex going on here too.

A year or so ago I was confronted by a very strange, emotional experience. In a venue in Hove, surrounded by my friends, I watched a couple of musicians perform a song for a shared friend which was informed by a sense of loss and regret and love. It was a completely beautiful, spine-tingling moment. Yet I mused afterwards that if I had heard the same song on the radio, unaware of the context, I would probably have written it off as mush; as mawkish, middle-of-the-road stuff. All of a sudden, an alarm went off in my head. All my life I have written off songs with unimaginative or sentimental lyrics as ‘meaningless’, without really given much thought to the fact that they might, despite their failings, be essentially truthful, heartfelt and honest.

Listening to The First Days of Spring now, it’s impossible to argue that Charlie’s lyrics are not predictable and clichéd – and yet something about the completeness of the narrative, the tone of his voice, and the sheer brilliance of his arrangements, persuades me that they’re entirely real, entirely true. When Charlie sings about "songs for the broken hearted", or needing "your light in my life", I think, why adorn these despairing sentiments with beautiful embellishments if the plain sentiments get to the heart of the matter? In as much as I believe that anyone's heart can be broken, I don’t doubt that Charlie’s truly was.

And of course, 'Stranger' is just particularly pretty – built, like, most of the record, around simple, ringing, circular guitar lines played on a clean-toned electric guitar, and rich with Charlie’s heavy, regretful vocal. “Last night I slept with a stranger for the first time since you’ve gone / Regretfully lying naked, I reflect on what I’ve done”. It even contains what I hope is a gag; the line where, having described his lover’s naked body entwined with his, he croons, “I’m a fox” – before completing the line “...trapped in the headlights”. If it isn’t a gag, it’s still funny.

And then, just past the half way mark, the song changes emphasis and a still, clear, piano line emerges, accompanied by muted acoustic strumming and some gentle vocal harmonies. “You know in a year”, Charlie starts to sing, “it’s gonna be better”. The riff starts to circle. “You know in a year, I’m gonna be happy”. As it shifts pace, it slides magically from tortured to reflective to uplifting; it’s Charlie reassuring himself, calming himself down, the sound of the early signs of healing. As the next song reflects, “blue skies are coming / but I know that it’s hard”.

If The First Days of Spring is written off as self-indulgent and pretentious – or just plain depressing – it’ll be a real shame. There’s a hugely satisfying single-mindedness of purpose about it; a clear-headed, direct portrayal of misery (and the emergence from misery into a more hopeful state of mind) that, yes, employs a host of well-worn, too-familiar phrases. But I think they are true.

fish tank, by andrea arnold; review

It's a trite but accurate observation that good art is not just about how it makes you feel while you're experiencing it, but also about how it stays with you. In the spirit of that, I keep returning to Fish Tank, the second film by Andrea Arnold, which I saw a month or so ago, and admiring the depth of its feeling, the power of the central characters' performances, and the striking visuals of the cinematography. This makes me think I should have written about it here earlier – as much as anything so I could compare my thoughts then with my thoughts now, which feel like they have blossomed and deepened, but may merely be overpowering my memory as the details of the film recede. This is definitely a film I'll return to when it comes out on DVD.

I remember the visuals more than anything; the way that Arnold has captured a landscape which, although it's familiar to me from encountering it myself, feels alien and extraordinary in a cinematic context, consisting as it does of a sequence of extraordinary, vivid sunsets over the Essex countryside, intercut with scenes of industrial blight – pylons towering overhead and motorways ploughing through the fields. The film is set on the edge of London and at the start of the Essex countryside, so a strange urban/rural duality is presented. Mia, the central character, a bolshy and bright 15 year old, lives a bleak life in a tower block (although this itself in Arnold's film is refreshingly free of cliché – there are no guns in this movie), and understandably dreams of escape. She is a dancer, although perhaps not one, like Billy Elliot, with a life-changing talent. As the title indicates, Mia is caged, looking for an escape. The fact that she can walk out of the city into the green fields, however, offers no respite until Michael Fassbender arrives in her life. He is Connor, her mother's new boyfriend, and a surrogate father figure.

Mia – played with extraordinary believability by the newcomer Katie Jarvis – is in every frame, prowling through the landscape, her movements repetitive, purposeless and frustrated. Each day she sneaks out, argues with peers, circles the estate, and passes a patch of wasteland where travellers keep a horse tied up. Her movements echo that of a caged animal, listlessly circling, sniffing at the possibility of escape. Her outrage at the horse's imprisonment is palpable – her own yearning for freedom just as obvious.

Her home life is thankless; her young mother is largely unconcerned with the duty of raising her two daughters, and Connor – who displays a sudden, unexpected interest in her life – offers something to which Mia is quite unused; encouragement, positive reinforcement, love. Mia has been excluded from school, and her mother echoes their analysis of her, that she is a nuisance, trouble, out of control. And there is another problem brewing; for all that Connor tries to nurture the girls, it is quickly apparent that Mia's role as troubled daughter is complicated by her emergence as a sexual rival for a mother who, apart from when Fassbander is around, is stuck in the memory of her own teenage years.

Connor is as complex and fascinating a character as the young lead. Notably a bit better educated, a bit more gainfully employed, a bit more comfortable in his own skin than the men Mia's mother normally sees, he nevertheless has his own troubles, and his complex relationship with Mia is just one of them. Their connection is apparent very early on. In one scene, Mia pretends to be asleep so that she can enjoy the feeling of his carrying her back to her room, and in another extraordinary set-piece, Connor takes the family out to the country, where he leads Mia into a fast flowing stream, leans over, and simply lifts a fish smoothly out of the water with his bare hands. It is an incredibly sensual scene, where electricity fizzes silently between the two characters, while Mia's mother and sister look on, oblivious.

Mia can hardly be blamed for her feelings for Connor; living a life so shorn of encouragement and love, she is completely unprepared for her reaction when such things are offered. Connor represents freedom, adulthood, and escape. Her already profound spirit of rebellion is spurred, as is a heart-warming, uncynical appreciation of the more poetic side of life. There are some absolutely thrilling scenes when she dances.

For all that Mia blossoms with Connor's encouragement, he is not the strong, centred man that he appears, and things swiftly get out of hand. Yet Arnold handles the development of the story beautifully, drawing wonderful things out of her young lead, and keeping such a tight hold of the reins that the final third of the film, again shot beautifully on the shores of the Thames Estuary, is completely surprising.

Fish Tank has been the best film I've seen this year, even better than Moon, which I praised very highly on this blog just a month or two ago. It's a magnificent study of youthful disaffection, love and anger, beautifully controlled, shot in bewitching colours. And as I indicated, I've thought about it almost every day since I saw it –so I don't think I could possibly recommend another film so heartily.

moon, by duncan jones; review

I saw Moon tonight, the debut feature by Duncan Jones. Set in a familiar, dystopian future, it is what all the best science fiction films are; a slow, thoughtful examination of isolation. What could be more lonely than being sent to space, so far from the people who begat us? (Except perhaps to be living in a city - where far more science fiction films ought to be set).

Moon gives away it's plotline early, so I have no compunction about revealing details, although I'll try to hold something back, in case you've not seen it. Following in a great tradition of stories about identity and the self, it's about doubles; Sam Rockwell - the beautifully calibrated lead - encounters no-one on his solitary posting on the moon - except himself. He's there on the last leg of a solitary posting to oversee a mining operation which supplies Earth with 70% of it's energy, alone but for a nostalgic portrait of a robot companion, voiced by Kevin Spacey (with more than a nod to HAL). And then an exact clone of himself arrives, ready to assume his post. Immediately he starts to disintegrate. And the process is painful and frightening to watch.

It must be hard being a first-time director. Everyone looks not only for evidence of genius but obsessively for immature flaws. So Moon has encountered its own doubling, its own dichotomy, in its reception. On the one hand, reviewers note, it's an emphatic triumph - a mature, thoughtful science fiction film, a loving homage to a lost era of film-making and a triumph of art over budget. On the other hand, we read, Jones gives too much away, references too many forebears, doesn't quite pull it off. Well - nonsense. I thought Moon was a perfectly weighted film, and a complex, haunting pleasure to watch.

Rockwell must take some of the credit. It's unusual to see a film where one actor alone carries 99% of the screentime, and more unusual still to see him make such a success of carrying not one, but two, distinct characters. For although Rockwell plays two clones of the same character, he imbues each with their own identifiable strengths and weaknesses.

And this is what the film is really about. The first Sam, the dying ember, slowly approaching the end of his shift, is self-aware, rounded, complete. Three years in space have allowed him the time to resolve his conflicts, make peace with his demons. By the same token, the dynamism apparent in his younger clone is altogether gone - his lifeblood drained by his isolation. As the drama unfolds, we begin to wonder - is he resolved, or is he beaten? And is his younger, more aggressive, more impetuous self, his only hope of escape?

Few dystopias, of course, have happy endings. The question, here, is what hope has man in the face of corporations? Sam is only a commodity to be exploited. And only humanity can save us. When GERTY, Sam's robot companion, first begins to exert his malign influence on his final days, we can see only the negative connotations of a computerised future. But soon GERTY, who is treated as a friend by Sam, begins to display not just emoticons - his screen displays them to denote texture to his monotone pronouncements - but real emotions, humanity is given a metaphorical shot in the arm. He helps propel Sam's clone to the film's semi-positive denouement. But we must be cautious; his sentience is sympathetic but not empathetic. Despite helping Sam, he declares himself happy to be re-booted, his memory wiped, the program to begin once again. Essentially, his 'humanity' is nothing more than a glitch in the program; albeit one that Sam is lucky to find, and exploit.

So perhaps this is the future - a future where we're forced to look for holes in the system, glitches to exploit. Corporations, governments, mean only to exploit mankind. But humanity is ingenious, humanity is persistent. Jones never quite gives resolution, and the film is ultimately upsetting and bleak. But Rockwell's Sam is so powerful, Jones's direction so focused, that Moon can only inspire. A sad, loving, hopeful, defeated - and defiant film. Best thing I've seen in ages.

peggy sue, 'lover gone' review

I'm a bit (alright, totally) obsessed with the new Peggy Sue single, 'Lover Gone'. It's just the most beautiful, wistful, two-minute pop song. When I first saw Rosa and Katy a year or two ago I really had no idea of how good they’d become, nor how coherently they’d form a signature sound, a set of sounds, images and ideas so evocative and true. Every new song they do is their best yet – which makes you wonder just how good they'll get.

'Lover Gone' – which is out on March 18th; you can pre-order it from their myspace - opens with a delicate, quiet combination of plucked strings, piano, and unspecified, distant percussion. Like lots of Peggy Sue's songs, the low key, muffled sound belies the soaring melody to follow. At first, the vocals, too, are gentle; the first lines sad, confident.

"Lover gone - this song is a good one,
In four years I'll be anyone
But for four years I was there
where you are".

Rosa and Katy's singing style is, technically, amazing, but the key is the intuitiveness of their approach – they sound instinctive rather than practised; the way that their vocals overlap and rise and fall together. And when Olly starts hitting the snare and they open up their voices they seem to occupy so much space that the sparse arrangement sounds suddenly huge.

The lyrics, meanwhile, are simultaneously a lament and a celebration – an elegy for a dead relationship, where the protagonist "gave to you four years out of my twenty four"; reflecting not on where things went wrong but what remains; the tan on skin from a summer on the beach, the confidence nourished through four years of support. And yet things change. It's just immensely moving…

When the song ends, suddenly, prematurely, a mere two minutes in – it closes in a moment of perfect, satisfied completion, acknowledging its brevity – like a sad, soft parting breath.

"This song is not a long one.
But for four years we played safe
In a place that was warm".

stewart lee on bbc2

Just watched the first episode of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, which aired on BBC2 last night. It’s a sign of how poor a lot of television comedy is that, although I knew already that Lee was my favourite stand-up, I was genuinely taken aback by the gulf of glass between him and pretty much everyone else I’ve seen telling jokes on TV in the last five or six years. One thirty minute episode devoted to books, which took in wonderful linguistic jokes, high-brow cultural references, a sustained, pitiless attack on Chris Moyles and an energy and curiosity absent in most of his peers. Best of all was a long, rambling skit on "rap singers" which was, I think, the most satisfyingly slow-paced and uncompromising joke I've seen on the BBC; not because it was awfully funny (it wasn't), but because Lee insisted on telling it his way and not dumbing down for television. The whole show was a masterclass in intelligence.

So happy there are five more episodes to come. Bringing Stewart Lee back to terrestrial television is probably the best decision that the comedy folk at the BBC have made in recent history. Make sure you catch up with it on iPlayer.

review: waltz with bashir

Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman’s excellent animated film, is a cool, deliberate and moving evocation of memory, conscience and war which moves from muted tones of yellow and black through luminous multicolour and back again as the director recounts the nightmarish reality of 1982s Israeli-Lebanon War, and his own efforts to reconstruct his recollection of it. Like thousands of men his age, his formative years were defined by his involvement in war, though both his own country and much of the Middle East which surround it – particularly Lebanon – have found themselves the staging ground for much of the world’s conflict since. At 19, be that as it may, he was sent to fight, and to kill. Yet he remembers little. What took place all those years ago?

Part autobiography, part fantasy, and part documentary, Waltz With Bashir is constructed from a series of flashbacks, hallucinations and interviews, all lovingly illustrated. Unable to piece together the details himself, Folman begins a long, painful search for the truth, finding people he served with, drawing out his own suppressed memories and interweaving them with those of his peers. The results are always beautifully drawn, but invariably upsetting; an officer forced to swim out to sea to escape capture by Palestinian forces; a troop trying in desperation to cross a junction while being fired on from all angles; the memory of six men having to gun down a child armed with a rocket launcher.

Worst is the darkest memory of all; Folman’s involvement in the massacres at Sabra and Chatila, where Phalangist Christians led Israeli forces into refugee camps and enacted a devastating genocide on the Palestinians within – murdering young and old, entire families lined up and shot under the yellow sky. As the film’s most devastating line attests, Folman, whose own parents survived Auschwitz, is made unwittingly to play the role of Nazi, firing flares into the sky so that the light persisted enough for the massacre to continue. At the apex of this savage injustice, the film switches not just from monochrome to full colour, but from animation to live video. The final, dreadful moments of the movie consist solely of archive footage of the terrible aftermath - wailing survivors surveying the destruction, the bodies of children poking horrifically from the rubble.

Despite the painful reality of these closing shots, the movie conjures up several arresting images of its own - an early sequence, which describes a memory experiment at a funfair, is echoed, in a moment of playfulness, through a window; a pack of dogs charge vengefully through the streets; a terrified soldier, cowering on a military boat, is provided with a moment’s respite by an erotic hallucination. The most powerful image is that of the auteur’s face, frozen in the streets of Beirut as he witnesses the carnage around him. It’s repeated several times; a slow pan around a youthful face, and gains in intensity with every viewing, until at last you learn something, something, of the atrocity of war. Waltz With Bashir is both chillingly upsetting and notably beautiful – a superb, troubling, and yet strangely cleansing film. Go see it.

the whole shebang

Shebang is a fanzine put together by Liv Willars and Lynsey Woods, and it is one of the most beautifully designed and carefully constructed fanzines I’ve seen. Much effort has clearly been put in on Lynsey’s part putting together an attractive, cohesive page design and the team have commissioned an attractive selection of line-drawings, collages and paintings to illustrate their articles, which themselves demonstrate a satisfying breadth of content.

Although a majority of the features relate to pop music – with decent interviews with the excellent Peggy Sue and the young, eager Poppy & The Jezebels – Liv has been careful to commission articles on photography, art and travel, and it’s in these respects that the fanzine really excels. I’d much, much rather read an article about Berlin or Ghent than I would another indie band, and Tilly Stasiuk’s description of her Geisha makeover is fascinating stuff. When the fanzine dips into popular culture territory to talk about the Mighty Boosh, it takes an unexpected and welcome approach, talking to the prop master who worked on the first series of Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding’s show. It provides for energetic anecdotes and a view of the duo we’re not familiar with.

Some of the features are possibly under-written, and would benefit from more detail, but the overall feel is impressive. It’s a cleverly curated and beautifully executed effort, and hopefully the first of many. Feeling a bit inspired, I dropped them an email a month or two ago asking if they wanted any contributions. I’ve had no reply, which is probably for the best – it points to the fact that they’ve got plenty of stuff lined up for future editions. This is a fanzine definitely worth keeping your eye out for.

What I don’t know, unfortunately, is how to stress the title. Is it shebang or shebang? I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s an ambiguity that Liv and Lynsey are happy with; both emphases seem equally appropriate.

You can buy the fanzine at http://www.shebang-mag.co.uk, or find it for sale in the following Falmouth shops: Jam, Here&Now and Babahogs, as well as in Brighton's Resident Records and Stand Out Records in Salisbury! There's even, wonder of wonders, a Facebook group, here.

florence and the voice

It was partly a hatred of the vocal histrionics of commercial chart music that drove me into the arms of indie rock. My conversion to the less polished music of The Charlatans, Happy Mondays and The House of Love coincided, not accidentally, with a period when vocal divas dominated the charts, and the likes of Ian Brown, David Gedge and Mark E Smith sounded thrillingly, insouciantly unpolished and unpractised. I used to obsess over my VHS of the Stone Roses at Blackpool, marvelling over the way Ian Brown’s voice slowly, song by song, began to settle until after a while he sat neatly, and only slightly tunelessly, over the slight, sly music his bandmates conjured up. For the first six songs, to my delight, he was an utter mess.

Fashions have come and gone in indie music and a series of truly gifted singers have drifted in and out of the limelight, but it’s striking how few have been emboldened or inclined enough to open their lungs and belt it out. The full-blooded, top-volume vocal is even less fashionable in indie circles than the guitar solo, and still the preserve of commercial dance music and arena-rock.

So it's hard to know what to make of Florence & The Machine. Her peers are clearly from the folkier end of the indie spectrum – Emmy The Great and Lightspeed Champion; the guitars on her debut, 'Kiss With A Fist' sound like The White Stripes; and the words ("a kiss with a fist is better than none") are pretty uncompromising, indeed controversial. Yet she belts out her lyrics with a note-perfect perfectionism and power more reminiscent of Leona Lewis than her indie contemporaries. I find listening to the two songs on the 7" quite unsettling, if ultimately rewarding.

"Kiss With A Fist" is nothing special, in fact, trading more on Florence’s vivid lyrical imagery and delivery than the quality of the song. It’s beautifully paced and propulsive, and probably sounds brilliant on the dancefloor, but it doesn’t do anything for me – and Florence's vocal, so over-the-top, is hindering, rather than helping, me get with it.

But the b-side, an extraordinary take on the Cold War Kids' "Hospital Beds", makes me think again completely. It starts with Florence belting out the verse acapella; her full-pelt, bluesy, delivery subsequently accompanied by a spare acoustic guitar and a kick drum. I still hate the exhibitionism of her vocal pyrotechnics, but somehow the song creates a spectacular, heartfelt intimacy and it's impossible to deny that it's the vocal that whips things along. In folk music, of course, mannered and controlled vocals are nothing new, but it still seems somewhat dazzling to hear the power Florence commands placed in this context. I'm glad when it finishes, yet I put it on repeat.

Like all new artists, what matters are the songs, and it’s too early to say whether Florence & The Machine has them. The Cold War Kids cover is, however, one of the most exciting cover versions I’ve heard in many a month, and I’m briefly lifted, suspiciously optimistic; my hope leavened by a dread that if she keeps singing like that, so bloody wonderfully, I’ll end up hating her guts.

mr harvey lights a candle

I just watched a rather charming BBC telly movie in my hotel room, entitled 'Mr Harvey Lights A Candle' - anyone seen it? I think it was produced for Easter a few years ago, and features a wonderful controlled Timothy Spall as a pent-up teacher, for whom a school trip to Salisbury Cathedral proves a catalyst to a reawakening of sorts. Also on outstanding form was the brilliant Natalie Press, whose troubled teenager indirectly leads him to his revelation. A really nice film, which touches on closed secrets, reserve, religion and release; all ever so gently evoked, and nothing Oscar-worthy, but nevertheless moving. The sheer quality of the BBC's back-catalogue is exactly the kind of thing the BBC should be opening up on their iPlayer, and I hope this gets a deserved repeat one forthcoming Easter.

stalin's ghost, by martin cruz smith

In the years since Martin Cruz Smith's 1981 classic, 'Gorky Park', the Californian novelist has penned no less than five follow-ups starring Arkady Renko, the put-upon Russian investigator perpetually pitted against Moscow's underworld parade of crooks and gangsters, government-sponsored or otherwise. The fifth is 'Stalin's Ghost', an exemplary thriller set in a much-changed Russia led by Vladimir Putin.

Perhaps the changes are illusory, however? Both Renko and Cruz Smith's prose-Moscow are instantly recognisable, the former soulful and intense and the latter dark and ominous, thick with a layer of "knee deep snow ... that softened the city". It's Spring and the snow is gradually melting, and the prologue reminds us what we know already, that "when the snow melted, bodies would be discovered". Twenty seven years on, that extraordinary opening, those three corpses found in Gorky Park, seem as cold and fresh as ever.

As the book's title implies, "Stalin's Ghost" is a book much occupied with memory, eloquent on the vital stand-off between the dark secrets of the past and nostalgia. Renko, charged with investigating the return of Stalin, who has been reported stalking the depths of Moscow's Metro system, discovers a network of corruption, murder and propaganda which has its tangled roots in post-Soviet politics, atrocities in Chechnya, and the events of the Second World War.

Cruz Smith has is an innate ability to spin complex yet accessible plot-lines around vital contemporary events; in this case, the transformation of the Russian underworld into the Establishment. But Renko himself is the author's finest achievement, and his centrality provokes the book's finest passages, particularly a dazzling sixteen page-long twist which had me exclaiming and thrumming my fingers against the spine in excitement.

Cruz Smith's touch is immaculate, allowing the novel's first half time to breathe and be dictated by personal concerns. Atmosphere is incubated, then a furious, breathless denouement is unleashed. The author has the reach to bequeath his characters real emotional complexity, combined with a ruthless touch which is equally befitting a serious novelist and a Russian gangster. Renko takes some blows for his unstinting morality, and the reader is the winner. 'Stalin's Ghost' is a bruising, superb read.

dajit nagra, look we have coming to dover review

I don't read very much poetry. When I do, I tend to either grind my teeth in concentration or whoop with pleasure; either is fine with me. Difficult poetry burns at my temple but gives me little head-spins of delight, semi-translated insights. When it's good, that is. Daljit Nagra's much praised collection Look We Have Coming to Dover! is certainly that – a rich and heady concoction of complex constructions and tangy, noun-heavy vocabulary.

I don't understand all of it, by any means, but I think I know what it's about and find it fascinating and funny; the drama of being Indian in England, good and bad, the contradictions, the triumphs and the shaming defeats, big or small. The language is plain exquisite (there's a contradiction), swelling with Nagra's "Punglish", which darts from evocation of sugary pomegranate to evocation of sugar-puff. There's lots of food. In 'Karela!' (lots of exclamation marks, too, this is not poetry for whispering), the narrator tries to cook a dish from his past and fails. "My body craves / taste of home but is scolded / by shame of blood-desertion".

In 'Parade's End' the narrator's Dad parks his newly-sprayed "Granada, champagne gold / by our superstore on Blackstock Road", and heads inside to find "council mums at our meat-display" decrying "darkies from down south" and their "flash caahs!". It's believable stuff. When the day is done they return to encounter the sight of "the car-skin pucker, bubbling smarts / of acid". Nagra writes:

In the unstoppable pub-roar
from the John O'Gaunt across the forecourt,
we returned to the shop, lifted a shutter,
queued at the sink, walked down again.
Three of us, each carrying pans of cold-water.
Then we swept away the bonnet-leaves
from gold to the brown of our former colour.

Nagra's writing is full of small humiliations suffered at the hands of the Daily Mail mentality. But his characters come out fighting, too, and then some. "Vy giv my boy dis freebie of a silky blue GCSE antology", one voice demands, with it's Part Two which consists of;

us as a bunch of Gunga Dins ju group, 'Poems
from Udder Cultures
and Traditions'. 'Udder' is all
vee are to yoo, to dis country –
'Udder?’ To my son's kabbadi posseee, alll
yor poets are 'Udder'!

Before one thinks of pigeonholing Nagra's extraordinary voice, he takes the time to pull off a series of varied literary tricks. 'Sajid Naqvi' is a sober, clear-eyed description of a funeral which fails to sum up the man, and 'On the Birth of a Daughter' a beautiful description of just that. The haunting, Pinter-esque 'X', meanwhile, is just a series of furious, semi-articulate punches:

u hook my arms
u hood my head
u lose my legs

& still u say
I say u harm

There are several poems in Look We Have Coming to Dover which I can't decipher, and plenty more which I need to re-read. Despite the unfamiliar language, however, it's really vibrant, addictive stuff, and makes me swear I'll follow contemporary poetry a bit more closely, if this is the kind of thing I'll find. The closing 'Singh Song!' - which is romantic, lustful, hilarious - might just be the greatest thing I've read all year, a bawdy tale set "in di worst Indian shop / On di whole Indian road", where the narrator keeps locking the door and nipping upstairs:

cos up di stairs is my newly bride
vee share in chapatti
vee share in di chutney
after vee hav made luv
like vee rowing through Putney.

Look We Have Coming to Dover is bursting with life – a magnificent celebration of language, multiculturism, sex and humanity. Here are the final lines of that poem.

Late in di midnight hour
ven yoo shoppers are wrap up quiet
ven di precinct is concrete-cool
vee cum down whispering stairs
and sit on my silver stool,
from behind di chocolate bars
vee stare past di half price window signs
at di beaches ov di UK in di brightey moon –

from di stool each night she say,
How much do yoo charge for dat moon baby?

from di stool each night I say,
Is half di cost ov yoo baby,

from di stool each night she say,
How much does dat come to baby?

from di stool each night I say,
Is priceless baby –

Here's the whole poem.

les amazones de guinee, wamato review

A lot of the press for the outstanding new album by Les Amazones de Guinée has centred, perhaps understandably, on two facts; that the record, Wamato, is only the group's second in 46 years, and that the band are entirely made up of female members of the Guinean army. Those are rather extraordinary facts and too exciting to leave out of any review, but far more important is the exhilarating quality of Wamato.

The album, recorded in Mali 25 years after the band's last release, is a mesmerising demonstration of all the things that make West African dance music so pleasurable to listen to. The two guitars, first off, are wonderful, sounding as if they are perpertually engaged in a teasing dance, dipping in and out, spinning complimentary riffs and occasionally locking into a delightful, hypnotic groove. When one or the other breaks from the simple licks to revel in an impeccably-played flourish, my heart duly leaps.

The percussion is equally wonderful; crisp, driving Mande rhythms, awash with twinkling cymbals. The vocals, handled by at least three different singers, seem to touch all bases, sometimes light and mellifluous, sometimes deep, twinged with regret. But the overall mood is overpoweringly positive, and both the harmonies and the call and response lines resonate with the band's self-evident joy in music.

Perhaps most impressively, the music is punctuated by gloriously powerful brass arrangements, the two saxophones delivering jazzy runs and powerful soul riffs by turn. Their gleaming presence lifts an already wonderful music several notches closer to perfection. The record only falters when the band switch to the French language on the disappointing 'Meilleurs Voeux'. Even there, however, they only get through two minutes of a faintly grisly, mournful ballad before the horns arrive and switch the song's emphasis so successfully that one immediately forgets what came before.

This slip-up aside, the whole concoction is deeply hypnotic and extraordinarily warm; an engaging pop record with a thudding, affirming heart-beat. What a fantastic album.