Two brief live reviews: when I say brief I mean 'I am trying to write them both during one play of 'Marquee Moon' (the song) by Television'.
DOUG STANHOPE + Henry Phillips 6th March 2012 Albert Halls, Bolton
Doug Stanhope has been rightly resistant to playing too much in Britain. Britain treats comedy differently than the US. Britain intellectualises and demands more than mere clownishness and dick jokes. Her critics sting and barb and carp about stagecraft and insight and conceptual rigour, often without irony at their own situation. Comedy takes place as much in theatres and arenas with strict seating, where social rules about getting hammered kick in that bit harder.
Stanhope is fighting against that. He wants you sneak in your own booze: too late for this show, but if we take to Twitter we can aid his passage through the UK by generating some looser audiences. He also resists a narrative framework for his show, firing a shot across the bows of comedians who doggedly stick to a thematic concept, leaving them powerless when the news demands a comedic response and they're glued to their prepared act about being an imaginary ghost dog. Stanhope revels in playing the guttersnipe, bringing along an opening act that neatly fits the anti-concept concept.
Henry Phillips exudes an easy, erudite charm that neatly veneers a couple of decades of road-weariness. He's funny too: a musical comedian keen to the vagaries and ridiculousness of musical performers, finding joy in a hurricane of hubris. It's a craftsman's performance. The obvious 'jokes' hit home and the song structures are convincing as pastiches, but it's the subtler gestures, such as the facial expressions and altered voice to mock the mode of the 'sincere rock performer' that stay in the mind. He playfully mocks Britain to his friend, the headline act, watching in the wings.
Relatively sober and recently off the plane, Stanhope seems less animated than his years of fiery recordings would have him be. Quick to self-criticise though he is, Stanhope works almost as well when forced into roles he capably plays but never sells himself as: the raconteur, the veteran of clownish showmanship, the contrary armchair politician. Some audience members seem ruffled when Stanhope goes to bat for Republican/libertarian weirdo Ron Paul, but it's all part of the shtick: I am not your Bill Hicks, you cannot easily box me.
The show finale seemed to ruffle more (online, I checked, take my word for it) feathers than any specific political endorsement could. Easy to read as 'flag-waving for the USA' if you ignore the bit where he says 'ignore the whole government, bombs, flag-waving, foreign policy, crazy stuff' and focus on where he says 'AMERICA IS GREAT'. And he's right. Britain is still snooty about the USA. It's a great bit of comedic sleight-of-hand; he appeals to everybody's baser desire to be somewhere warmer, freer, easier, sexier in a way that skilfully insults how Britain culturally romanticises ugliness, stale morality, coldness, and visual austerity as some kind of act of ascetic brilliance. It works because in this bit, as he dreams about cocktails on Floridian sand at sun-up, he's mentally there and we've not taken that journey with him. We're in the stuffy British theatre and he's in the dunes and he is the one laughing at us.
XIU XIU + Trumpets of Death 13th March 2012 Ruby Lounge, Manchester
Running into a friend at the bar, he asks what I think of Trumpets of Death. 'A bit passive-aggressive', I say. This was an imperceptive, first-glance read. The Leeds trio variously recall Windy & Carl, The Telescopes, and late-period Talk Talk in their swooping, elegant set. At worst you could accuse them of lacking identity (and indeed shunning it altogether), but at best they're immersive and hypnotic, working up a cerebral lather with mechanical rhythm and trance-inducing saxophone runs.
There are two Xiu Xius. Alike in dignity, one follows in the mope-rock pantheon of The Smiths, Joy Division, and The Cure. The other owes more to a crossroads between Eastern modes and modern composition, and as such can be easily characterised as 'difficult music'. When Xiu Xiu begin with an abrasive number with bowed electric bass, nerve-jangling percussion, and abstract guitar scribbles, an audience braces itself and checks for the exits.
Three songs later, Jamie Stewart (singer, effectively he IS Xiu Xiu) is politely asking permission to perform a New Order cover that ushers in a full hour of the accessible side of Xiu Xiu to everybody's secret relief. New single 'Hi' is among highlights: an impressive 3-minute stab containing the coiled-up energy and pop nouse of younger bands and their initial efforts. Stewart still wants this.
A curious cove of a performer, Stewart calmly sips tea between songs to preserve his hesitant yelp of a voice, largely refuses audience engagement, and there is no encore. What really surprises to this newcomer to the Xiu Xiu live experience is that the band on record, with its array of ethnic instruments and songs led by autoharp, is reducible to the classic four-piece guitar-band line up without trading any of their signature fragility or tonal idiosyncrasy. This allows for a more direct and familiar experience, comparable to many an outsider band that have insisted upon faithful live recreation of their multi-instrumental experience in a way that induces deep tedium (naming no names).
Historically, for me at least, seeing a band live often marks the end of a spurt of a period of time spent listening to their work and sees the band steadily acclimatise into a kind of rota alongside previous likes and loves. The days since Xiu Xiu's performance have been the reverse: a binge across the nooks and crannies of their output, finding previously unheard collaborations and split albums of consistently high merit. A genuine treat.
Skip to around two minutes into the above video and the case for the cultural significance of The Fall is made; that the tastemaker of tastemakers, the spiritual cool uncle of music, should name the group as his favourite ever. Also fans: Frank Skinner, David 'Bumble' Lloyd, the members of any half-decent US group of the last 30 years, etc.
We're not here to question The Fall's position in the critical canon. Let us assume they are as unimpeachable as Shakespeare, Keats, or Philip Schofield. We're also not here to teach you in detail about the tumult and the firings or even use the word 'curmudgeonly': other people have written books on those subjects. And while we're here, don't buy Mark E. Smith's "auto"-biography. It's one of the worst books ever ghosted.
The problem is: what to buy? No band can cough up thirty records (not mention endless compilations, bootlegs, sessions, and live albums) and not have a stinker amongst them and The Fall are no exception. We at AIM are industry leaders in objectivity and championing the consumer and are subsequently not afraid of any challenge. So here it is: every Fall record in 50 words.
LIVE AT THE WITCH TRIALS **** Step Forward, 1979 Angry dock clerk Mark E. Smith adds the syllable '-uh' to every line. His drably-dressed friends make 'punk' music that only shares 20% of its DNA with punk (energy, attitude) but little else: they've heard Beefheart, some German stuff. Cheap keyboards, curious rants: soon to be left behind. Excellent though. Key lyric: “We are The Fall. Northern white crap that talks back.” Killer track:Two Steps Back
DRAGNET **** Step Forward, 1979 Looser. Weirder. At times impenetrable. Blackly humoured, proud to be slack, notes flubbed left and right. The amateurish performances and mix sound fantastic though – a happy accident of anti-technique and confident direction. Dragnet marks the debut of key member Steve Hanley, whose bass often sounds like an industrial accident. Key lyric: “I don't sing. I just shout. All on one note.” Killer track: Before The Moon Falls
GROTESQUE (AFTER THE GRAMME) ****1/2 Rough Trade, 1980 Weirder still. They now throw their own warped take on rockabilly into the mix (which they call 'country and northern'. Get it?). Hard to describe in mortal words, so I'll try something pretentious – like Bosch re-imagined by LS Lowry. Images of terror and anger softened with humour. Best one yet. Key lyric: “You think you've got it bad with thin ties, miserable songs synthesized, or circles with A in the middle. Make joke records, hang out with Gary Bushell.” Killer track: Container Drivers
The Fall, Nijmegen, 1981: (l-r) Steve Hanley, Mark E. Smith, Karl Burns, Marc Riley.
SLATES ***** Rough Trade, 1981 Six-track mini-album/EP that has a reasonably solid claim to being the greatest achievement of all mankind. That is not an exaggeration. 'Slates, Slags, Etc.' takes The Stooges' template and improves upon it by not giving into rock & roll cliché. The three Rs in full, mesmerising effect: repetition, repetition, repetition. Key lyric: “Academic male slags ream off names of books and bands. Kill cultural interest in our land.” Killer track:Leave The Capitol
HEX ENDUCTION HOUR ****1/2 Kamera, 1982 Two drummers! Nerve-jangler 'Hip Priest' would find its way into the denouement of Silence of the Lambs at writer Thomas Harris' request. Loose. Some spaces dense with conventional chord changes and others stark and open and minimal. Generally considered their best by the beard-stroking contingent. On some days I agree. Key lyric: “Made with the highest British attention to the wrong detail.” Killer track:Fortress/Deer Park
ROOM TO LIVE ***1/2 Kamera, 1982 Unpolished and spontaneous, this record sounds like the run-time is all the time it took to commit this to its finished entity. That results in some brilliantly unforeseeable moments where instruments clash unexpectedly, creating new sounds. It also results in some slightly indulgent moments where 'spartan' and 'boring' are interchangeable terms. Key lyric: “The sweetest sound she had ever heard was the whinging and crying due to the recession.” Killer track:Solicitor In Studio
PERVERTED BY LANGUAGE **** Rough Trade, 1983 The last of the two drummer records, sadly. Some definitive rants and some crucial stuff that almost grooves conventionally ('I Feel Voxish') are interspersed with slow, percussive tracks that routinely shatter the eight minute mark. A disciplined effort with no languers. Who is that female singer on 'Hotel Bloedel' though...? Key lyric: “The best firms advertise the least.” Killer track:Smile
THE WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD OF... **** Beggars Banquet, 1984 So, Mark married an American (Brix) who plays a jangly Rickenbacker like Peter Buck. She must be in the band, decides Mark. A drummer goes missing and sunshine breaks the clouds over Salford. The first brushes with pop, whilst Steve Hanley keeps it dour at the low end. A palate cleanser. Key lyric: “Used table leg to club son-in-law.” Killer track:No Bulbs
THIS NATION'S SAVING GRACE ***** Beggars Banquet, 1985 THE starting point. Every idea works. Every track hurts. In a way, their least coherent record – the sum of thousands of influences. The pop of Brix, the grinding of the band, the playful experimentation of Mark...this should be every high school year seven set listening for one whole year. Key lyric: “Was over accountant's and on business, then I woke up and I decided to recommence my diary. Then I read Paula Yates On Vision Mopeds. Then I found out we were not going to Italy. Later Mam said “Those continentals are little monkeys”.” Killer track:My New House
BEND SINISTER ***1/2 Beggars Banquet, 1986 The first record without any real difficulties for the listener: this is a band that thrives on chaos! Instead: same line-up, same producer, same label. None of these songs would make the record before – no surprise - but age shows it to be no mere facsimile of a successful effort. Underrated. Key lyric: “I really think this computer thing is getting out of hand.” Killer track: Riddler!
THE FRENZ EXPERIMENT *** Beggars Banquet, 1987 All over the place. The opening trio sound transplanted from 1981, before giving way to a diabetes-inducing version of The Kinks' 'Victoria'. Side two (vinyl fans) drags due to their first real stinkers, some clock the ten-minute mark. Nobody signed up for happiness: The Frenz Experiment reeks of it. Key lyric: “Diluted Jesuits pour out of mutual walkmans - from Elland Road to Venice Pensions and down the Autobahns.” Killer track:Frenz
Brix Smith, 1988
I AM KURIOUS ORANJ **** Beggars Banquet, 1988 A huge curveball: a ballet score! Admittedly for maverick choreographer Michael Clark, this record besmirches ballet more than it does the band. There's a perverse sense of 'let's the see the bastard dance to THIS' running throughout, challenging the band to experiment for the first time in three years. Great! Key lyric:“I was very let down with the budget. I was expecting a one million quid handout. I was very disappointed. It was the government's fault.” Killer track:Bad News Girl
EXTRICATE ***1/2 Cog Sinister, 1990 Lead single 'Telephone Thing' isn't really The Fall: it's Mark singing over a Coldcut song. One song tenderly laments the divorce of wife Brix, the rest actively celebrates the divorce of wife Brix. Angular and tightly-wound, with two covers of pioneering garage-rockers The Monks. Another underrated effort; no real lows. Key lyric:“Does the Home Secretary have barest faintest inkling of what's going down?” Killer track:Bill Is Dead
SHIFT-WORK ** Phonogram, 1991 Arguably the most nondescript Fall LP: forgotten by all but die-hard fans. Transition from guitars to synths, a sense of the band trying to compete rather than just be. Moving Steve Hanley onto acoustic bass is like telling Mozart to try his hand at funk drumming. Effort? Yes! Reward? Little. Key lyric:“California has Disneyland. And Blackpool has a Funland. And Flanders had No Man's Land. This place idiot show bands.” Killer track: High Tension Line
CODE: SELFISH **1/2 Phonogram, 1992 I'm an ass for criticising Smith for bringing techno into the band's sound: they were always concerned with amphetamine-influence music, being a bit speedy themselves. 'Free Range'/'Everything Hurtz' was an essential double A-side single: the rest is a decent grab of garage and pop recorded in a watery '90s style. Key lyric: “Your brain is software. Your brain is Game Boy. It's filled with excrement.” Killer track: Everything Hurtz
THE INFOTAINMENT SCAN *** Permanent, 1993 Popular! They've finally cracked the top ten on the crest of the Madchester house revival by throwing in some bouncy Korg-M1 piano sounds amongst the choppy guitars, grunting bass, and bizarre covers of songs by novelty artists and reggae stars. Personal theory: Animal Collective's 'Fireworks' develops this album's 'Light/Fireworks'. Key lyric: “At my feet, one who laughs at anything. And at my head, one that laughs at nothing. And I'm just in-between.” Killer track: Service
MIDDLE CLASS REVOLT *** Permanent, 1994 The house direction made them popular. Being The Fall, they bring back the guitars and turn the synths way down. Mark sounds fairly restrained throughout an album full of angry content: class discomfit, anti-student resentment, and a cover of Cambridge alumni Henry Cow's 'War'. At times on autopilot, often inspired. Key lyric: “Heinz is guilty on the borders of your imagination.” Killer track: M5 #1
CEREBRAL CAUSTIC *** Permanent, 1995 Earns three stars for sheer gumption: turning their back on the dance zeitgesit and sticking two fingers back up at the prevalent Britpop taking over their city and country by playing repetitive garage rock. Oh yeah – his ex-wife is back on guitar, slightly ruining some songs with her 'singing'. Key lyric: “We have Richard and Judy's bastard offspring - baseball cap reversed.” Killer track: One Day
Craig Scanlon played guitar in The Fall from 1979 to 1995.
THE LIGHT USER SYNDROME **** Jet, 1996 The keyboards and samples are back, but this time they're being used less forcefully. Lots of space in the mix: tracks like 'Hostile' and 'Oxymoron' are monolithic creatures, approaching remorselessly. A word can be used that is not often used in the presence of Smith and his pirate band: subtle. Key lyric: “Don't ever follow the path of being hard and tough when your heart is soft.” Killer track: Hostile
LEVITATE *** Artful, 1997 The closest the band got to an out-and-out dance album (not counting Smith's Von Sudenfed project). Slightly maddening production (by Smith himself) means some tracks have real bite, where others have a slightly watercolour feel to them. The songwriting is mostly encouraging, considering their impending implosion. Currently out of print. Key lyric: “I thought about my debts. He was talking about his house in the Lake District.” Killer track: The Quartet of Doc Shanley
THE MARSHALL SUITE *** Artful, 1999 Big fight in New York in 1998: Smith gets jailed and the the band leaves – including Steve Hanley. Features 'Touch Sensitive' (remember the VW advert with the 'hey hey hey' song? That.). Surprisingly manages to be decent in spite of losing THE GREATEST BASSIST EVER. MES = a fool. Key lyric: “And in dreams I stumble towards you. Knees knocked, as you evaporate. Though I am teed up, I am in the next room with you always.” Killer track: Birthday Song
THE UNUTTERABLE ***1/2 Eagle, 2000 In a word: frontloaded. The first nine tracks represents their strongest start to an album since 1985! The final six never do much, including a turgid pub-rocker that Smith doesn't even bother to sing. Smith's newest girlfriend is in the band: her keyboard sounds are all six years too late. Key lyric: “I was in the realm of the essence of Tong.” Killer track: Two Librans
ARE YOU ARE MISSING WINNER *1/2 Cog Sinister / Voiceprint, 2001 American fight #2 and now Smith's girlfriend is out of his life: so are the rest of the band. The new guys sound like they've had two days with no electricity to learn a sixties garage album. It shows, but without the charming amateurism. Hyper-indulgent, mostly nonsense. Best track: a cover. Key lyric: “The editor bedraggled, stumbled, some hurt, some days with film crew.” Killer track: Gotta See Jane
THE REAL NEW FALL LP (FORMERLY COUNTRY ON THE CLICK) ****1/2 Action, 2003 All killer, no filler. Where they pulled this one from after years of diminishing returns is beyond comprehension. Another new girlfriend (later to be wife) is on keyboards and she's really good! Feels like a sequel to This Nation's Saving Grace: accessible, but obviously made by a complete original. Exquisite. Key lyric: “So I went fishing. A note from a fish said: 'Dear dope, if you wanna catch us you need a rod and a line. Signed the fish.'” Killer track: Janet, Johnny + James.
Eleni Smith (née Poulou): keys since 2002
FALL HEADS ROLL **1/2 Slogan, 2005 Perhaps that low mark is related to the fact that I paid £16 to buy it and hated it. Subsequent re-appraisal: too many two- and three- chord 'rockers'. Mark seems to think the band were once a conventional garage band: they were always too weird for that. Beauty found within. Key lyric: “People in Great Britain, please don't get me wrong.” Killer track: Midnight In Aspen
REFORMATION POST TLC ** Slogan, 2007 ANOTHER fight in America: band leaves. Seriously Mark, just don't go! You always mess up! His support act learned the songs and then he flew them to sunny Stockport to record this. A genuinely unremarkable effort, if anything: still not convinced about the Fall = garage-pop thing. Strangely lauded elsewhere. Key lyric: “I've seen POWs less hysterical than you.” Killer track: Fall Sound
IMPERIAL WAX SOLVENT *** Castle, 2008 STILL going with the garage-pop thing, though at least there are some firsts: the opening track flirts with jazz. The new Mrs. Smith continues her strong showing behind the keys, displaying at worst an up-to-date knowledge and at best, pushing some sloppier tracks into the thumbs-up zone! A good find. Key lyric: “The spawn of J. "Loaded" Brown and L. Laverne: with the dept. of no name.” Killer track: Alton Towers
YOUR FUTURE OUR CLUTTER ***1/2 Domino, 2010 Their dullest rhythm section to date. They sound like two blokes at jam night. Fortunately, Mark, Eleni, and the new guitarist are all in sparkling form. New guy plays like Duane Denison, all bent notes and menace. Though he drops back to please the boss, he secretly steals the show. Key lyric: “She has lips like Fedde Le Grand.” Killer track: Chino
Not together. That would be weird, right? First update for a while, this coincides with the first gigs I've been to in a while and the first tumblr posts I made in a while and the first time I stepped outside to breathe oxygen that did curl back to my face and say "do your fucking dissertation you fuck". So I did. I make no apologies. Sorry.
In reverse chronological order, Crystal Antlers. Saw these dudes at Retro Bar about a year and a half ago early in their hype cycle. Lot of thin kids, pouters, fake glasses, the weird child-like dress sense. Blog readers, basically, hypists. Second time they played I couldn't afford it - £14! OK, you get Ariel Pink and Ponytail thrown in...still, doesn't mean I had the dollar. Heard that place was rammed.
It's pretty clear the hype and memory-purge has done for CA's momentum a bit. There were about as many people there as there were as the first time, and my friend and I were the only repeat offenders. Still, can't keep a good band down. Before the review, a picture that makes them look like just another bunch of dudes spanking their planks.
Shirtless drummer! Singing bass player! Incongruously hot keyboardist! Even a Bez figure! Lesser bands would embody these terrible clichés, even revel in them. Fortunately for Crystal Antlers, their talent is so high that they completely transcend these semiotic nightmares.
So, young rock fan, pick a decade and Crystal Antlers will pay homage. '50s? They have the blue-eyed pop nouse. '60s? Chaotic garage mayhem. '70s? A double-helping of California slack and Grand Funk bass. These guys obviously have heard the Dischord roster from the '80s, and throw the whole fat lot in with the healthy post-modernism of the '90s to now.
The sum of these influences is a brave band, willing to put three-minute reverb-crazy ballads like 'Andrew' next to the depraved psych trawl of 'Parting Song for the Torn Sky'. They largely ignore their own debut LP Tentacles, which was entirely brilliant, but got insulted on blogs owned by people with no taste anyway. Assholes.
It doesn't matter, because Crystal Antlers are survivors. The new stuff pops, the old stuff rocks, and even if Sound Control this evening is doomier and whiter than Edward Scissorhands' hiding place, you can't stop a band from doing it, not when they're this good.
Mt. Eerie then. This was a few weeks ago, I am afraid I cannot recall the date. Last time I saw Phil, he was cross-legged playing fey acoustic stuff, at a time when I didn't really want that kind of stuff. His fans aren't really my kind of people either; there's always this ultra-reverential atmosphere that I can barely resist farting throughout.
His last couple of releases have certainly been interesting, and I think I recognise in him what he's trying to do: get in touch with that 'wood spirit' that lies at the heart of 'black metal', rather than the corpse-paint and spikes and the blasphemy. There are certain chords that are deep and true and quite primal and it would be interesting to see if Mr. Elvrum, famed maker of melancholic acoustic albums, could successfully find his inner metal without resorting to hideous riffola and elven lore.
Not enough rock shows are funny. They're all ultra-serious, this-is-my-art kind of events, which is wholly appropriate for some, but some dudes could just do with treading on a rake once in a while.
Mt. Eerie are funny. Not in a way that makes them novelty, or silly, or make their music less pure, maaaaaan - but funny in a way that makes lead Eerie Phil Elvrum seem like more of a human and less of a phallus-toting rock bloke.
Before we discuss Mt. Eerie's humour, let us discuss No Kids, the support band AND backing band for Mt. Eerie. Sassy blue-eyed pop nuggets played by Games Workshop nerds, a twinkle in their eyes, they create the irresistible urge to dance. They're fun and sexy, but safe for pre-teens.
In their guise as axe-wielders for Mt. Eerie, they are transformed. Phil corpses. "We're going to play 10 to 11 rock songs. Have fun." Then the first chord hits. BAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM. It's like being sideswiped by a Ford Cortina. The half-dozen or so cute, vegan, PETA-friendly, expensively dishevelled humans on stage launch into a skewed version of metal culled from the darkest forest in Norway. I laugh. My friend laughs. Many people look disheartened. Kaufman is alive! They keep this shtick up. It's brilliant. I want to mosh but there are people typing VERY HARD into their Blackberries.
They ease off the MetalZone pedals to play some gorgeous stuff, some from the Microphones days and some just as effortlessly good as he's always been, whatever the band name. This pleases all until one last ride to Valhalla, guitar raised uncynically aloft, crashing through the enchanted night. Hilarious, man. Brilliant.
Enough of the pseudo-Marxism for the time being, I was never one to develop a shtick.
A TRIP TO THE CINEMA RESULTS IN CRITICAL ROUNDTABLE AT THE BUS STOP post cryptically indicates future direction
The last time I saw Gavin was in 2004. He was carrying a mattress across the grey, run-down site of the poor kid halls in Moss Side, his hair loosely tied in a ponytail and a casual Irish brogue to his voice.
Manchester's second best voyeurism spot
I'm sitting in my second favourite spot in Manchester, on the stone front at the Cornerhouse cinema. All of life passes by this spot on a warm late-summer evening such as this. Mature folks in bespoke office wear, young art kids, entry-level freshers dressed in OR scrubs, nervous cinema buffs who never quite got over the fashion statements made in My Dinner With Andre. They clutch copies of Cahiers du Cinema and tut irritatedly when we talk through the pre-trailer advertisements.
All of life indeed, and of past life too, as Gavin from 2004 arrives dressed and sounding and looking exactly as memory had left him. Apropos of afternoon boredom we'd stuck a pin in the newspaper listings and come up with Jar City. With the upswing in the quality of police procedural on television, it finds itself increasingly pressed for cinematic real estate unless it can find itself combined with a shlocky, sepulchral or perhaps metaphysical element. The whodunnit is secondary to the whydunnit.
Jar City is a traditional whodunnit. The kind that Columbo, or even with the medical element of this picture a more serious Quincy, might encounter. There's a nice three-act structure, a denouement, a subplot and a man eating a sheep's head with his fists. Iceland itself plays a stunning role as the backdrop, at turns spellbindly mundane and jawdroppingly fantastic. I used to stare at these webcams at an old call-centre job as a way to elevate myself above the monotony.
The characters are realistic and satisfying and there's never a real jarring or overtly oblique moment to debate questions of technical competance. It is not the world's most original work, nor would it claim to be. The film never tries for your affection and never pushes you firmly away; it offers reasons for its austerity and apparent coldness. MVP award goes to the soundguys by a short head.
A still from Jar City
We leave the cinema in that familiar unusual silence, which Gavin immediately punctures. "Well, I thought the whole premise fell apart after ten minutes." He explains his reasons (this blog is a no-spoiler zone) and whilst reasonable, they did speak of an inate scientific approach to cinema that doesn't entirely sit with my cinema as art viewpoint. "You could at least suspend your disbelief", I say.
Liam, the third member of our party, seeks the role of diplomat. "Well, I kind of see what you're saying Gavin but it didn't ruin the film." We offer marks out of ten. I give it eight. Liam gives it seven. Gavin says it gets a five. Metacritic has it as a seven, as does IMDB.
A fair assumption of popular approach to mainstream cinema is that we seek a tale told efficiently with its artifice concealed - perhaps displaying an epistemelogical level of 'truth'. But what of cinema conscious of its nature as 'art cinema'? Certainly I could see the hole in the plot but dismissed it as inconsquential to the entirety of meaning to be felt through the whole film coming together at the end. For Gavin, he sought a tale told as if watching with detective's eyes; to give a thumbs up would have meant all the pieces in consonance and harmony. He admitted 'he'd quite like to go to Iceland' after seeing it, so certainly the cinematography was compelling as well as murmuring praise for the soundtrack. But the central focus was still on the plot, the story, rather than anything above it. I'm not saying he's even wrong, but just different to the way I experience film.
So, what I'm slowly getting at is this; there will be no individual reviews where I can avoid it. There will be some kind of critical roundtable of different kinds of people. I could attempt to jam my opinions down your throat but I think that 'one man with a blog and I'm gonna tell it like I see it' is so incredibly old (but hey, that's just my opinion) as to be put in a time capsule and studied in future days.
Craig Scanlon played guitar in The Fall from 1979 to 1995.
