mona lisa musta had the highway blues
One of the many, many things I love about this time of year is that it’s the perfect weather for toffee apple muffins – a Gordon Ramsay recipe, not mine as I’m not that good. Regardless, they went down a storm at work and have perhaps triggered the beginnings of a “bake off” – not really what my waistline wants to hear, but what the hey.
PS Top Gear is back on Sunday, kids – set your VCR equivalents!
[PHOTO: Day 64.]
This is my favourite kind of weather; hats and tights and my new pink fingerless mittens in an age 6-10 from Accessorise. I crunch-crunch-crunch through the fallen leaves that can’t rot for freezing on the path, and smile as my breath leaves vapour trails in the evening air. I’m feeling positive tonight, despite the sleepless-inspired migraine, and I’m even happy enough to pull an earphone out and chat to the guy beside me as we wait to cross the road. “Cold out, but I’m well protected,” he says with a smile as he pats his ample belly. He agrees that he’s perfectly happy as long as the air stays dry, and tells me he feels like a dragon as he watches his breath. “People look at you like you’re crazy, and I don’t care,” he says as I skip across the crossing.
Future posts on this blog occupy the depths of my inbox, mental post-it notes to keep me right while I’m too busy to check in so often and warm on these cold winter nights. But you still get your mix CD, so it could be worse.
Lend Me Your Ears: last month’s mix, October 2008
1. The Pogues: “Body of an American”
2. The Mountain Goats: “This Year”
3. The Gaslight Anthem: “The ’59 Sound”
4. The Felice Brothers: “Saint Stephen’s End”
5. Jesse Malin: “Lady From Baltimore”
6. Elliott Smith: “No Name 4″
7. Ben Nichols: “The Kid”
8. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals: “Crossed Out Name”
9. Clem Snide: “Sweet Mother Russia”
10. Malcolm Middleton: “A Brighter Beat”
11. Ruth Notman: “Still I Love Him”
12. Holly Near & Ronnie Gilbert: “Precious Friend”
13. Songs:Ohia: “Leave The City” [session]
14. Bon Iver: “Flume”
15. Tom Waits: “Never Let Go”
16. Slow Club: “When I Go”
Monthly Most Played after the jump.
Continue reading ‘we are the last of the true: last month’s mix, october 2008;’
So do the clocks go back this weekend? It’s just that I’m disorientated enough getting out of bed in the mornings at the moment, and it’s going to confuse me no end when it’s properly dark. I’m not sure why it’s taking me so long to adjust this year – it’s like I got back from Australia and it was suddenly winter.
I don’t see the point in reviewing High School Musical 3: Senior Year properly – I know this isn’t the right crowd. Suffice it to say, if you secretly loved the two made-for-TV movies you’ll absolutely love this big screen finale as it’s everything that’s great about the originals and more. Of course this world of proms, high school “graduations” and teenage boyfriend/girlfriends who don’t even kiss on the mouth is a pretty alien one to us here in the UK, but the themes of love and friendship and whatever are universal. Plus the songs make me smile.
What I do want to talk about, however, is just what a shitty time of it kids seem to have today. Going to see a movie aimed predominately at the two little girls dancing down the front in tie-in cheerleader outfits and their longsuffering parents, obviously the advertising before the trailers (something else they never had when I was a lass) was a little different in tone than it was before, say, Burn After Reading. But how depressing it was! No saturated fats, no artificial colours, no cuddly cartoon characters – thanks to a raft of EU and Parliamentary legislation, advertisers can no longer market junk food products in any way to children. Worthy claims as to nutritional content are in; Snap, Crackle and Pop are out. And the box of Smarties I got in my Odeon “snack box”, in a cardboard hexagonal tube without the colourful plastic lids with their collectable letters which some bureaucrat in Brussels has probably written off as a choking hazard, tasted like air – I don’t know what they put in those old-style blue Smarties, but its loss is noted.
I am not in any way suggesting that we should be feeding our kids any manner of noxious chemicals… but I can’t say a few blue Smarties or Rice Krispies growing up ever did me any harm.
You know you’re in trouble when the we-know-our-audience tie-in adverts for Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers break up the tedium – that’s all I’m saying. Still, at least I know what the latter look like now, although I refuse to believe “Joe Jonas” is a real name.
Ten days is, as the old wives’ tales have it, adequate time to adjust to crossing ten timezones. If I still feel like shit then, it’s the fault of either myself or those £1.85 bottles of Apple VK in the student union on Saturday night. University of Glasgow, how I have missed you.
This weekend, I have been:
LISTENING:
to Acid Tongue, by Jenny Lewis
Acid Tongue, the sophomore effort from sometime Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis, was a pretty disappointing album on first listen – perhaps because I was such a massive fan of 2006′s Rabbit Fur Coat. But I think there are certain albums that you have to hear live first before they fully win you over, and on Saturday night I fell in love with Jenny Lewis all over again.
Dressed in a hat and cute polka-dotted top, Ms Lewis looked a knockout even from the back of the room and she played to the crowd, blasting through the old favourites as well as standouts from the new album (“Carpetbaggers”, with support Benji Hughes taking Elvis Costello’s lines from the album version, has the hallmarks of a classic). Her band, including longterm boyfriend and collaborator Johnathan Rice (a Glasgow-born Celtic fan, who mischievously informed the crowd that he was “here to inform you that it’ll never be ten in a row”) gathered around to play her “choir” through a beautiful, low-key rendition of the album’s title track. A gorgeous cover of “Love Hurts” made for a stunning encore.
READING:
Downtown Owl, by Chuck Klosterman
Have I mentioned lately how much I love Chuck Klosterman? Well I do, and although it was his regular missives from the front lines of pop culture that hooked me in there is much to love too about this, his first novel. Set in a small North Dakota town in the early 1980s Downtown Owl follows the stories of high-school misfit Mitch; Julia, a new teacher at the local high school whose very newness in town makes her instantly popular among the local, curiously-nicknamed barflies; and widower Horace and his coffee-drinking, gossiping pals – as well as the subtle and invisible threads that connect the lives of all 800 residents of the small town, whether or not they ever meet. “I wanted to write about the last major era when there were no cell phones and no Internet, before the proliferation of cable television,” the author told PopMatters, suggesting also that he chose 1984 as a setting as it was the first year of his own life he can remember in detail.
The 80s references come thick and fast in the novel, juxtaposed with Klosterman’s usual literary quirks (extensive tangents, lists, an entire chapter composed of what he said and what she actually meant) which would come across as gimmicky from an author who couldn’t make them work so well. Although I was born in 1982, nostalgia for the decade that style forgot usually bores me – I have few memories before my grandmother’s funeral in 1987 and I consider myself a child of the 90s in most respects. Still, Klosterman’s references do not leave me cold, perhaps because the soundtrack to teenage alienation doesn’t really change with time (and Mitch as a character doesn’t get it either). Although not quite reaching the highs of Killing Yourself To Live or his essay collections, this is still a good read.
WATCHING:
Burn After Reading
The Coen Brothers’ latest is a triumph, an all-star fast-paced couple of hours of sex, violence and intrigue. Stringer and I loved it, and I would heartily recommend it if you have a sick-bastard sense of humour like we do.
I’m still working on my ongoing tagging project, and have been revisting my Long Blondes obsession of 2006 of late. It made a text from Kate yesterday, informing me that the band have split up due to guitarist Dorian Cox suffering a stroke in June, doubly sad. Best wishes for his full recovery.
[PHOTO: Day 53.]
Damn timezones, she mutters, for I read too late via the lovely Sara that yesterday was apparently Love Your Body Day, courtesy of NOW. I’m hardly one to refrain from jumping on a bandwagon just because it got rolling in the US – I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why we have an internet. Every day should be Love Your Body Day, of course, but the messages we women and men alike are bombarded with from the media on a daily basis suggest otherwise: if we’re not inadvertently absorbing advertising images that tell us attracting a mate is the be all and end all (and it only takes the right car, or the right perfume), we’re smirking at the lumps, bumps and body hair that female – and it’s always female – celebrities dared to let hang out the day Heat! magazine’s paparazzo came to town. We do this even though we’d never pick out such faults on our friends, and even though we’re smart women who have already spotted the hypocritical adverts for cosmetic surgery in the magazines’ back pages. Oh, I’d burn every one of those monosyllabic rags if I could… but I digress.
Sara suggests taking this opportunity to “write an apology for your body for all the crap you’ve said about it/put it through”. I’ve been tougher on mine than most over the past eighteen months, because I put on a bit of weight that I found difficult to shake off. It wasn’t a huge amount, it didn’t seriously affect my health or anything, but it was noticeable – particularly to me, and I’m my own biggest critic. Through a combination of discipline (eating sensibly and exercising regularly, even when I’m tired) and the motivation of the particularly gorgeous and ridiculously expensive dress in my wardrobe I haven’t been able to wear since its first and only outing, I’m slowly working my way back down to the size I was two summers ago. I try to intellectualise it and tell myself I’m too smart to care about what I look like, but I’m too big a fan of pretty clothes and a pretty frame to wear them on.
So, here my apology: Body, I’m sorry for encouraging you to comfort-eat at the whim of my mind, and then blaming you for my mind’s excesses when I ultimately put on weight. But equally, I am sorry for thinking that two chocolate chip muffins at the end of what I can only describe as a cunt of a day is an excuse for yet more self-loathing. I hope you recognise that I am doing my best to look after you as much as I can, even as your aching knees frustrate me so. I love your eyes and the way your bottom lip pouts ever so slightly, and I’m growing to love the rest of you because you’re the only body I’ve got.
That do?
Ask any of my friends to name a band or artist I have a near-devotional level of love for, and until relatively recently they wouldn’t even have had to think. But these days it seems as if it was a lifetime ago that the prospect of a new album with the name Ryan Adams attached was a reason to cut class, lose a week’s worth of sleep from anticipation or, on one memorable occasion, make my way down to Princes Street for 9am in my pyjamas. I’ve had Cardinology, the new album from Ryan Adams and the Cardinals in my possession for a couple of days now, but it’s only this evening that I’ve finally made the time to sit down and listen to it properly.
This apathy is, I suspect, the product of a natural parting of the ways. Like the high school boyfriend who never went to college, Ryan and I just don’t have much to talk about anymore. I ended up in the big city while he moved back to the ranch to work the land under an orange sun, his big dog at his side. It’s an analogy that doesn’t feel forced in spite of the fact that Ryan Adams calls Manhattan home: when I think of the Cardinals post-Jacksonville City Nights, I think of rolling hills, sunsets, gospel choirs and big drivetime country rock numbers.
Last year’s Easy Tiger was this sort of Cardinals album through and through. It wasn’t a bad album by any manner of means, but neither was it the Ryan I made out with at the back of the cinema with as a kid or shared a milkshake with, two straws. In my mind he’s still the wide-eyed, mischievous miserabilist who recorded some of my all-time desert island albums in Heartbreaker and with Whiskeytown. But Whiskeytown is long gone, as is Ryan’s solo career for now – and Adams himself is keen to stress the distinction.
Like its predecessor Cardinology is, in the main, not a bad album. “Born Into The Light” opens well, with an easy, rootsy feel that segues nicely into the warmth of “Go Easy” with its chorus of I love you still, and I always will, so go easy on yourself. First single “Fix It” is nice enough, a drivetime country rock number than neither grabs or offends me. So far, so MOR.
“Magick” is the album’s first clanger. You’re like a raincloud if it rained mushroom clouds and you know you’re in trouble, even before you get to the cheeseball chorus based around such poetry as let your body move // let your body sway. It’s this year’s “Halloweenhead” without the latter’s sense of irony, complete with zombie references.
But that’s fine, because the album then saves itself with one of its two standout tracks. Sure I could do without the presence of Neal Casal, but if “Cobwebs” was the stripped-down acoustic Ryan I once knew I’d probably love it. If I fall, would you catch me… and I get butterflies enough to take me through another sorta rootsy, unmemorable number.
“Crossed Out Name”, the sucker punch before a weaker second half bogged down with some overwrought imagery and naff you make me feel like I’m not here… but I am-style lines, is for me the album’s highlight. From its stripped-down introduction, strummed on sparse guitar, it feels like something’s building and it turns out to be the spinetingling piano part that kicks in over the bridge. I can see myself having some autumnal emo moment to this, walking down the street in the rain with Ryan’s strained voice wishing he could tell me just how I’m hurt. Closing out the album’s unmemorable second half, “Stop” deserves a mention too – haunting piano intro, Ryan’s tortured vocal and the Catholic imagery that so often works for me.
Cardinology is, ultimately, a lazy autumnal album not without its moments. While unlikely to result in a shotgun wedding between myself and my childhood sweetheart with the bad teeth, I suspect elements of it may grow on me more than anticipated.
You can hear “Fix It” at Myspace and preorder the album at Amazon.co.uk. Cardinology is due out on 27th October in the UK.
[PHOTO: Day 51.]
There was, of course, one small reason why I was looking forward to going home. Email correspondence with my workmates during the small window our waking hours overlapped had revealed that the replacement for my damaged Canon EOS 400D had been delivered to my office, and I was getting excited at the prospect of trying out the “nifty fifty” millimetre lens I’d inherited from James. Trying it out became the focus, if you will, right up until the point I remembered I was supposed to be jetlagged.
Well it was either jetlag, or some combination of the night before’s gin and three hours worth of X Factor repeat (don’t screech your way through Ryan Adams versions, bimbettes – you will incur my wrath, and I will cheer when you meet your deserved fate). They say it takes you a day to acclimatise for every timezone you cross, which gives me a ready-made excuse for crankiness until early next week.
Although I was a little disappointed that my DSLR wasn’t able to accompany me on my Australian trip, mt luggage was pretty full anyway and it was probably for the best. This photographic hobby of mine is now turning into a bit of an investment, but most days I’m still as thrilled picking up one of my cameras as I ever was. Like the homes of many, I’m sure, my flat is littered with the remains of hobbies taken up only to be abandoned – Jay gets more use out of my £20 eBay acoustic guitar these days than I ever did, and the knitting I became so enthused by in January lies abandoned. The plan was to wean myself off my excessive daily internet usage by knitting my way through the evenings while watching episodes of The West Wing, but I did manage one chunky-knit blue scarf and now that The Wire occupies my evenings instead I wouldn’t want to miss a beat huddled over some dropped stitch. I tried baking, too, for a while, but the weight I put on wasn’t worth my dubious attempts at cupcakes and cookies.
No, the joy I take over photography reminds me of the other hobby I kept up long term: the one that saw me playing at making magazines on my toy typewriter, or scribbling in journals long into the night. It’s rare that I get as super-enthusiastic over something as I do about writing, and now I get to do that for a living.
[PHOTO: Day 46.]
In the early days a commercial flight [to Australia] from London involved, in addition to nerves of steel, forty-two refueling stops, up to five changes of aircraft and a train journey through Italy because Mussolini wouldn’t allow flights through Italian air space. It took twelve days. As well as the seasonal monsoons, the flights were subject to dust storms, mechanical failures, navigational confusion and occasional pot-shots from hostile or impish bedouins. Crashes were not infrequent.
Everything I know about Australia, I learned from Bill Bryson. His Down Under accompanied me throughout most of my week in the subcontinent; and I ultimately finished reading at about 2am the morning I was due to leave, supplanting his explorer’s narrative with pages from Wikipedia dialed up slowly on my mobile phone’s web browser. It would be foolish to feign intimacy with such a vast landmass after such a short visit – indeed, I’ve barely scratched the surface of central and southern Victoria and the closest I got to the more deadly inhabitants of the country which Bryson writes about with such gusto was when Lyndsay warned me off wandering around the grounds of her parents’ property “because of the snakes” (and me in my new polka-dotted red mules, too). Still, as my plane climbed into the sky and climbed, in its figurative sense, the onscreen map too as it made its way to Singapore, I followed the place names I’d read about with my finger and strained over the head of the man in the window seat to get a glimpse of the vastness of the outback below.
Singapore! Another new destination (I’d expected to return as I had arrived, via Hong Kong) was just what I needed to stop myself from feeling so bummed out about my leaving, and I was planning a casually nonchalant Facebook status update as we drew closer to the lights and the boats and the glow of pre-dawn in the harbour. I felt as if I was slipping into character in Pirates of the Caribbean only, you know, not. Due to our delayed takeoff the stopover was a short one, but it was long enough to pose for a cheesy photo and to track down a tacky souvenir fridge magnet for my mother. As well as fulfilling much-needed refueling and crew changeover functions, you’d go stir crazy without the stopovers: as it was, by the time I took my shoes off in Heathrow’s Terminal 5 both of my ankles were the size of small grapefruits. Qantas might have made the headlines for all the wrong reasons recently but I can’t speak highly enough of the staff, who supplied me with a Duty Free bag packed full of ice and called on me at the back of the plane every twenty minutes or so to make sure I wasn’t still panicking about falling victim to DVT.
This time last week was the beginning of Australian Summer Time, and as I realised I was about to lose an hour that wouldn’t be reckoned for at some nebulous point on the flight back home I made a point of getting my money’s worth by ranting about it to anyone who’d listen. I’d probably only have spent it sleeping however, and the chance to be a part of James and Lyndsay’s beautiful day would have been worth at least three. The sun came out, and the happy couple exchanged their vows in front of the lake. The setting was perfect, and tears I subtly shed were a precursor to what followed during the speeches!
On Sunday we had a barbecued breakfast outside, after which the couple opened their presents and I eventually succumbed to dozing off in front of the television. The odd mention of financial crisis aside the Australian news programmes are mostly insulated from the concerns of the rest of the world (as, Bill Bryson reminds me, the rest of the world’s seem to be from theirs) so I started awake when the sports report segued from “Aussie rules” to meanwhile, in Scotland, Socceroo Scott McDonald scored against Hamilton at Celtic Park…
We were to return to the countryside once again for a fantastic roast dinner and a chance to enjoy the second-ever episode of Top Gear Australia, but that evening I had to say an emotional goodbye to my Antipodean family as I’d be spending my last couple of days in Melbourne with James and Lyndsay. I’m a city girl at heart, so I was looking forward to shedding my “tourist” label while immersing myself in the hustle and bustle and getting lost on another transport system. It would have worked too, had I not been carrying around a plastic bag with a “KANGAROOS CROSSING” sign on it containing the presents I’d purchased in a tacky souvenir shop not a million miles away (in attitude if not location) from the ones on Princes Street stocked with boxes of shortbread and Kilt Towels.
In a dark, dirty bar with downstairs venue in St Kilda I met Steph, my first-ever internet friend I’d gotten talking to on an X-Files mailing list back when I was seventeen. James took a photo of us on the beach as the sun went down over palm trees, and I thought about how small the world is and how glad I am for that.
[PHOTO: Day 43.]
Ladies and gentlemen, I am back. And there are blogs to be written, photos to be uploaded, a promo copy of the forthcoming Jesse Malin live album to be listened to and digested, a shiny new Canon EOS 400D to scuff up a bit, a boyfriend who probably hasn’t eaten a home-cooked meal since I was last in this neighbourhood and Bru to be drunk in copious quantities. None of this should really be my problem, as I went into work this morning and by all rights should be slumped in a corner with jetlag about now, but hey – I’m in denial.
I’m really just posting to say hey, and let you know that the Mountain Goats’ Satanic Messiah EP is now available via pay-what-you-want download. I do this as a public service, based on the fact that the usual sources have been quiet on this information so far. It might be a timezone thing. Don’t ask me, I don’t even know what day it is right now.
Incidentally, 24 hours spent on a Boeing 747 is nothing compared to waiting 45 minutes on the 747 into town via the Southern General in the pissing rain. It’s good to be home.
Lis. Writer/Photographer/Muso/Traveller/Waffler. Famous on the internet since 1999. Got something you think I should hear? Get in touch!
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