It's Modish Indiefolktronica Time!

Pull on your Converse, dust down your cute monsters t-shirts* and shoulder your record bags, for it is modish indiefolktronica festival time!

Tomorrow the lovely Mr BC and I will be attending this, where we will be enjoying her, and him, and - if the 'secret gig' rumours prove to be true - also him, in these dignified and commodious surroundings.

There are tickets left, apparently. Go to it!


* Which I first saw on Vic's super-stylish blog.


UPDATE: Erm...make that *would have* attended this event - if I hadn't foolishly completely lost the tickets. Doh!

Just Generally Overexcited

Well, other than general overexcitement, I have completely failed to identify a unifying theme to link all of the major elements of the past week's shenanigans, which included:

1. One tip-top super Iron & Wine/Calexico gig at the Kentish Town Forum, at which the mighty nibus and I had to pretend to be from Radio 2 (we weren't very good at this, and kept getting in the wrong queue), and which thanks to our swanky guest list status we were allowed to view from a distant and muggy vantage point somewhere at the back, near the ceiling. I'm still not totally convinced about Calexico's new album, but All Systems Red, which gradually builds up into a mighty wall of guitar noise, is almost Sigur Rós-ishly awesome live. Nice work, Calexico boys!

2. One tip-top super Jenny Lewis gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, which was only slightly marred by her creepy 70s-horror-film-style dress and the fact that I had inadvertently got tickets for a distant and muggy vantage point somewhere at the back, near the ceiling. But the lovely Jenny has a gorgeous voice and some spankingly good songs, *and* she can rhyme 'mirrors' with 'fears', which is a skill sadly denied to us Brits. Nice work, Jenny!

3. One tip-top super lunch that was attended by ACTUAL REAL TELEVISION AND FILM STARS. I got terribly overexcited and started shouting things like "perspicacity!" and "it's grown a hive mind - it's producing its own thoughts!", which didn't work quite as well as conversational gambits as I'd hoped. Luckily my lovely companions (most of whom I think I also offered jobs to, like some kind of diminutive, scruffy-haired, one-woman press gang) made up for this by steering the conversation towards sensible things like football and Shakespeare. Nice work, lovely companions!

4. A meeting with my tutor, who professed my tortuous 5,000-word essay to be "rather excellent", and asked if I'd thought about doing a PhD, at which point I got ridiculously overexcited again and started rattling on about virtual gift economies, the decommercialisation of culture, and similar claptrap. Nice work, future pop-culture academic patroclus!

5. The Modernism exhibition at the V&A, which for anyone considering going, is not only very, very, very well put together, but is also stuffed full of (possibly unintentionally) comical items and captions. The captions are always my favourite thing about any art exhibition, and I often find myself reading them without even looking at the actual artworks on display. Today's favourite (relating to this building) was:

[Bruno] Taut believed that glass could orchestrate human emotions and contribute to the creation of a spiritual Utopia.

Apparently Modernism was all about achieving universal human happiness by getting everyone to live in buildings that look like upside-down daleks, wear felt suits decorated with brightly coloured chevrons, and sit on columns of air. Sadly it largely failed in these ambitions, but you have to admire them for trying. Nice work, ultimately unsuccessful proponents of the modernist aesthetic!

6. Nutso amounts of work, which only served to contribute further to this week's general ridiculous levels of stress and overexcitement. Nice work, work!

Ahem. I think I'll just slink off now, take a couple of valium* and lie down till I regain some semblance of composure. Nice work, prescription barbiturates**!


* Not really - Bach Rescue Remedy is as far as I venture into the world of narcotics these days.

** Or, more accurately, 'Nice work, prescription benzodiazepines!'- thanks to Dr Snackspot, renowned comestibles specialist, for the correction. I knew I should have looked that up.


tags: calexico | jenny lewis | V&A | modernism

Schizophrenic

Apparently you're no one these days if you don't have at least three separate identities. Or at least this appeared to be the theme of the various entertainments I attended last night, starting with Londonist's Blogging Demystified seminar at the Apple Store.

Topics ranged from the practical - "you can't predict how many comments you'll get", "you can't make a lot of money from blogging" etc. (courtesy of Annie Mole of the London Underground Blog), to the ultra-philosophical - "how does my blog identity differ from my real identity or my World of Warcraft identity?", "how can I prove that it's actually me that writes my blog?"* (courtesy of "Tom Reynolds" of Random Acts of Reality).

I don't know what the audience - which consisted almost entirely of spiky-haired young men in black glasses and stripy scarves - made of it all, but I did like the nice science girls from Inky Circus, because they giggled a lot** and have a stalker, which is what blogging is really all about.

Afterwards DG (not his real homepage), Wyndham (not his real name), Robert (who apparently has no alternative online identities) and I (the 'real' me) went to see Calexico play a secretish gig at the 100 Club to promote their new album Garden Ruin.

If any band knows about having multiple identities it's Calexico; even their name is a nod to the fact that they're half Californian indie-rock and half Mexican mariachi music, and their style swings wildly depending on what combination of instruments they're playing, what language they're singing in, and who's doing the singing.

I was slightly disappointed that they didn't play any of my favourites (apart from their top cover of Love's Alone Again Or), but this was more than made up for by the fact that the tickets were free, courtesy of pro ligger Wyndham (thanks W!), and there was a display of the most awful dancing I have ever seen, ever, by two quite inebriated gentlemen standing in front of me. If only this pair had elected to play air trumpet or air double bass, instead of air guitar, the evening would have been nothing short of monumental.

Ended up drinking in Soho afterwards with a pop star called Terri Walker, whose new album is called I Am Terri Walker. So there's at least one person left who isn't suffering a postmodern identity crisis.


* I'm still not sure why you would want/need to do this, as the Liberal Democrats phoned me up at a crucial juncture in the presentation, but I've got some lovely arcane ideas about how you would go about proving your identity, mainly involving "lexical fingerprinting", which is my new favourite phrase, along with "folksonomy".

** I've been worrying about this all day. Obviously they didn't *just* giggle (as I would have done, had I been in their place), they also made some great points about how to encourage commenters and how to project your own personality through your blog. And as well as having a stalker, they've also received THREE MARRIAGE PROPOSALS and TWO MEGA-MEDIA BUYOUT OFFERS, all of which they admirably turned down.


tags: blogging | calexico | terri walker

Sigur Rós

Ooh my word, if last night's Sigur Rós extravaganza wasn't the most fantastic gig I have ever been to!

By rights I shouldn't like "the" Rós, as I'm a terrible traditionalist and I like songs with nice lyrics that I can understand. Whereas Sigur Rós do quite otherworldly instrumental stuff, whose lyrics, when there are any, are either in Icelandic or a made-up language*.

But I was in no way prepared for the fact that they were going to play some of their set from behind a big white curtain, with fantastic leaping shadows and other similarly eerie effects. Or that the rest of it was going to be accompanied by fabulous swirly lights and huge video projections. Or that at one point, a miniature marching band was going to appear stage left and march to stage right. Or that each of their songs would be illuminated in a different colour, thus helpfully colour-coding them for philistines like me who can't really tell them apart. (If the Sigur Rós boys are reading, I liked the green one near the beginning best). Or that there would be a huge hallucinatory lightshow finale that actually left me quite speechless.

Wonderful stuff. Everyone should go and see them live, even if they don't like them. I had to walk home in the rain afterwards, and I didn't even care.

Many thanks to the legendary PP - whose pre-gig concerns about the quality of the proscenium at the Hammersmith Apollo fortunately turned out to be unfounded - for the ticket. Woohoo!


* Which James once helpfully translated here.


tags: sigur ros

This Place Is Death With Curtains

When you're woken in the early hours by a black cat chewing your hair as the chill wind whips against the Victorian casements of your stately pile*, there's nothing for it but to resign yourself to an entire weekend of full-on Gothickness.

It started last night, when I somehow found myself at a neo-goth club night called Feeling Gloomy. In between cheery Leonard Cohen disco numbers, the lovely S and I were entertained by a band called Black Dog, who should win some sort of anti-lyrical prize for a chorus which intoned "Jesus knows my secret...and I know his" for what seemed like all eternity.

Contrary to what you might expect, we hadn't just wandered in by mistake (ha!), but had gone with a purpose - which was to see the Divine Ms P's band Anarchic Hand in action.

"The" Hand are quite famous these days - well, they've been in the Guardian - and were therefore conducting themselves in true rockstar fashion, cracking rude jokes, looking like Helena Bonham-Carter in Fight Club, and sporadically launching themselves into the audience to snog unsuspecting goth chicklets. During one such altercation I had a newly lit cigarette (ahem) knocked from my fingers, so I should really thank the Hand for prolonging my life by five minutes. Good work.

The only way to go from here was down, down into the dread pit of gloom and despair that is the Tate Britain's Gothic Nightmares exhibition. I walked all the way there, too, which took a mighty THREE HOURS.

As it turned out, the walk was the best bit. The show is meant to explore the theme of the "sublime" - the expression of physical and sexual violence, horror and the supernatural - in 18th century art, but actually it's all quite comical. But then gothdom *is* quite comical, as anyone who's ever heard the Sisters of Mercy's cover of "Jolene" will testify.

I found myself marvelling more at the moody lighting, red velvet curtains, faux-flock wallpaper and tastefully veiled porno section than I did at Henry Fuseli's paintings of phallic horse's heads, struggling Prometheuses and crouching incubi. No, give me Aubrey Beardsley or the French Symbolists over Fuseli any day. Sorry about that, Henry.

It didn't stop me coming home and downloading the Sisters' cover of Jolene, though. Gothtastic!

UPDATE: I should confess that since writing this post I have been indulging in a full-on personal Sisters of Mercy revival. I thus speak from a position of considerable authority in advising you that they never bettered their 1982 single "Body Electric", the b-side of which, "Adrenochrome", is, and always has been, awesome. Seriously. Terrible production though.


* For which read "compact second-floor flat".

Misery And Woe

Went out last night to see critic-friendly, Portland, Oregon-based alt-country band Richmond Fontaine play at my top favourite London venue, Bush Hall (which, apart from being a lovely, intimate place with intricate plasterwork and chandeliers, is also just 10 minutes' walk from my flat - bargain).

I wasn't sure what to expect from this band, but on the strength of the one album of theirs that I own, I had a sneaking suspicion that the entire audience would be composed of lonely, geeky, single men. It turned out that I wasn't far wrong. In fact, swap the cowboy boots ("an indicator of lacklustre sexual performance," according to my companion - no wonder there's so much wife-beating in the American Midwest) for sandals and we could just as easily have been at an Open Source convention.

Not being an Uncut-reading muso type myself, I felt a bit out of place, but that didn't matter. The band were really, really great. Completely unpretentious, engagingly self-deprecating proper musicians, with beautifully written but almost exhaustingly sad songs. In fact, during one crushingly miserable number - The Janitor (theme: wife-beating) - I drifted off into a reverie of such intense sadness that when I came round I found I was having some sort of terrible panic attack and had to go outside to calm down*.

At this point I also forked out a tenner for their latest album, The Fitzgerald, which the record-company chappie described to me - somewhat oddly, I thought - as "completely non-metaphorical". He wasn't kidding. These songs are all bleak, straightforward tales of misery, alcoholism, death, poverty, gambling, domestic violence and all the other depressing things that would appear to go on in small-town and trailer-park America. Not joyful stuff, by any means. In fact, just reading the lyrics this morning made me weep. I can't imagine that singer Willy Vlautin's début novel is going to be an uplifting read, either.

Still, if there's too much happiness in your life and you want to inject some exquisite misery into your otherwise euphoric existence, this is the band for you. If you're already of a depressive turn of mind, though, they might just tip you over the edge.


* Just realised that this makes it sound like I am - or have been - a battered wife. I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

A Microscopic Cog In His Catastrophic Plan

When I was very small I attended a tiny primary school in a tiny (yet quite famous, thanks to W. Shakespeare) village in the Scottish Highlands. For writing practice we had to write a daily diary entry, documenting our innocent childhood pursuits and ambitions.

I was clearly always an optimistic - if somewhat naive - child, because every diary entry of mine ended with the same sentence: "It will be fun." No matter whether the event in question was Sarah-Jane's birthday party, the Sunday School picnic or a trip to the dentist, I was always firmly convinced that it was going to be a great laugh.

Whether any of these juvenile shenanigans actually *were* fun or not, I have no way of telling. Once they'd happened, I never mentioned them again. Reading back, you're left with the impression that something unspeakably awful - possibly in a sinister Twilight Zone-type way - happened at every single party, picnic and dentistry session I ever went to.

Twenty-eight years may have passed, but some things don't change. I've been banging on since May about how much fun last night's Nick Cave gig was going to be. Do I follow it up with a glowing review about how fantastic it all was? No. Since I was stuck at the back and couldn't see anything at all, except for 5,000 middle-aged ex-goths and the boy Cave's shadow cavorting on the wall, I felt mightily let down. So I'll refer you instead to this review from the Independent, and just add "what he said."

Still, looking on the bright side, I'm off to see Husky Rescue on the 8th at Bush Hall and, as coincidence would have it, also on the 10th on the Isle of Wight. It will be fun.

The Wisdom Of Epictetus

Struggling to write this from a condition of indescribable weakness and sickness - well OK, I have got a cold. But my legs are shaking a bit, and I nearly fell asleep in the car on the way home. DVT nothing, the real danger of long-haul flights is catching your fellow passengers' bugs. Thought I'd better write something though, if only to appease the EHA "crowd" (there's at least three of them) who have temporarily appeared - hello chaps and welcome. Make yourselves at home, feel free to toast a nice muffin or something before settling down to browse through the fascinating treasure trove of original thought and pithy observations that is my archive.

Anyway, update: home from San Diego, nothing much to report. Next stop: St Lucia, departing 8th Feb. Weekend highlights: watching the incomparable El Sid play a relatively well-attended gig in the world-famous Chat's Palace in Homerton, followed by a trip to Chichester (the San Diego of the English Riviera) to show the engagement ring to H's grandmother. Next project: trying to fill in the gaps in H's family tree, with particular reference to a mid-19th century Fellow of a London college who once owned a book of philosophy entitled The Wisdom of Epictetus. If that's not a strong lead, I don't know what is.