Richard and Linda Thompson I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

Even among followers of independent music and listeners of “alternative” radio, Richard Thompson is but a footnote in musical history – perhaps remembered as the guy who played electric guitar on Nick Drake’s first two albums. Yet apart from his session-work, he has had an illustrious career as a recording artist in his own right. As a teenager, he was a founding member of English folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention. After six albums recorded together with his ex-wife Linda, he resumed a solo career and is delivering the goods to this day. While many of his contemporaries have ceased to be relevant (*cough*Eric Clapton*cough*), Thompson continues to release quality albums, the most recent example being last year’s acoustic gem Front Parlour Ballads.

That “Thompson is god” graffiti wasn’t scrawled across the walls of 1960s London isn’t much of a mystery. Rather than wow audiences with pyrotechnics (though he is capable of a ripping solo), his craft is more intricate and less ostentatious. Apart from being an extraordinary guitarist on both acoustic and electric, he is also an extraordinarily gifted songwriter, noted for his grim, and often grimly humorous, story songs and character sketches and bittersweet, eloquent odes to love lost. There is a thorough Englishness in his songs in terms of phrasing and imagery and he also has a talent for writing ballads that can pass for age-old standards – even if the subject is a car or motorbike. His skills as a guitarist and songwriter are in full evidence here on I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, his first album with Linda.

The general tone of the album is folk, but with a greater emphasis on electric guitar than many other British folk albums. The idea of a Fender Stratocaster duelling with a Krummhorn or an Anglo Concertina may sound odd, but it works a treat. The lyrics cover beggar girls, witches, knights and phone-calls without a hint of incongruity. Although all the songs are Richard’s, the star of the show is undoubtedly Linda, who handles both beautiful ballads (Withered and Died, Has He Got A Friend For Me) and joyful, more upbeat numbers (the title track, The Little Beggar Girl) effortlessly.
The rougher-voiced Richard sings lead on four of the ten tracks, including the rousing opener When I Get to the Border, the haunting, gospel-flavoured The Calvary Cross and The End of the Rainbow which is as sombre and discomforting a lullaby as you’re going to find (the lyric begins, rather unusually, with “I feel for you, you little horror” and continues on to “There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow”). The set ends with The Great Valerio: stark and chilling, this mini-tour de force uses the metaphor of a tightrope walker to evoke the precarious nature of human relationships.

It may not sell 15 million copies, but for pure, passionate songwriting, you really can’t do much better than I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight. You need this album.

This review was published in Craccum, Issue 1, 2006

Big Day Out 2006 Review

At the risk of sounding uncool, this was my first Big Day Out. There – I’ve said it.

As the White Stripes were playing, I decided to fork out the hundred-and-something bucks for a ticket. They’ve become favourites of mine and I managed to miss their previous fifty New Zealand shows, so they were my main incentive for going – the other bands being a bonus. I ended up enjoying myself, for the most part, with a few of the acts happily exceeding their bonus status.

The fateful day arrived and I caught a bus to Ericsson Stadium from outside Real Groovy. The service was surprisingly good. Once there, I and a few thousand others waited in line, and after a while started inching towards the gates. The atmosphere was quite laid-back at first, so beating a path to Gramsci wasn’t too difficult. But Gramsci was boring, so it wasn’t too difficult getting away either. Having a few hours to spare before the next act on my agenda, I decided to buy some food and a White Stripes T-shirt, visit the loo, and check out the scene near the rides.

As the Big Day Out is about more than music, I found a little bit else to do. I spent a while at the Fruju waterslide, where I watched attention-mongers hurtle down and spray those close enough, witnessed a cheeky chappie remove his trunks and catch his balls between his legs, and enjoyed the occasional commentary from the bloke behind me (“ooooh, here comes a big boy”). I also enjoyed the “sprinkly-showery-tunnel-thingee” – it was perfect after a bit of sunburn. And ladies in bikini tops are a tasty accompaniment to any event.

Around midday, a crowd of us waited forever for the rapper on the stage next door to end his spiel before the Greenhornes appeared. This was the Cincinnati trio’s first visit to New Zealand, and their brief set was one of the day’s unexpected treats, even if bassist Jack Lawrence did look like a cross between Garth from Wayne’s World and Lewis Skolnick. Despite their lax appearance, the Greenhornes gave an energetic performance, capped by the superb In the Shelter of Your Arms – a song recently covered by their mates the White Stripes.

Because of a time-table stuff-up, I missed much of Sleater Kinney. I didn’t want to miss Breaks Co-op, however, seeing as The Sound Inside was one of my favourite albums of 2005, and their performance promised to be a great detox after standing through a set of syrupy pop a la the Magic Numbers. Helping out Zane (fresh off the plane from London), Andy and Hamish, were bassist Rio Hemopo, a drummer Tom Atkinson and Goodshirt’s Rodney Fisher on guitar, mandolin and percussion. The guys tackled with sound problems during the show, but managed to make the most of their set, which included a selection of tracks from the new album and a sprinkling from their first, Roofers.

After more food, a walk through the “sprinkly-showery-tunnel-thingee”, a lovely Danish ice cream and another trip to the loo (I felt silly having to contend with girls for the guys’ cubicles, but never mind), I saw a bit of Kings of Leon, though I made for the stands after a lacklustre performance of their best song Milk. Having spent the whole day up to now standing in the sun, I sat back and caught a quick nap, before being pleasantly awaked by Shihad. I raced down and managed to catch a killer My Mind Sedate before they packed up.

Now came the meatiest part of the day – Scots rockers Franz Ferdinand, punk elder statesmen Iggy and the Stooges and Detroit’s finest, the White Stripes, in succession.
Franz Ferdinand didn’t disappoint with crowd-pleasing boogies like The Dark of the Matinee, 40’ and Take Me Out. They were helluva good fun to watch: frontman Alex Kapranos did a silly dance in which he introduced his bandmates, and getting three guys to attack the drum-kit at once was a novel method of reproducing the layered beats of Outsiders. And they linked arms did a bow out at the end. Like classic rock stars.

I’m not at all familiar with the Stooges, so I was disappointed Iggy didn’t perform any of his better known solo material, but what a performance it was! Pop was clearly high on something when he arrived on stage, and he didn’t let up his bare-chested acrobatics for a minute, showing he’s still very much a “Wild One” in his old age. He even let members of the audiences join in his monkeying on stage, saluting them afterwards as “the Kiwi dancers”. It was showmanship at its finest. Needless to say I ended up giving the Mars Volta a miss, curses be on those who devised the day’s programme!

The White Stripes’ was the most elaborately decorated set of the day – with black, red and white being an obvious theme. Unfortunately, their performance was a bit hit and miss. The Stripes have too many good songs to squeeze into an hour-long slot, so they had to leave a lot out of their set, and much of what they did cover, they seemed to rush through. Ball and Biscuit, the lumbering centrepiece of the Elephant album was squealed through by Jack, who seemed to be undergoing some strain in vocal department (rumours went flying before the show that the Stripes wouldn’t be coming at all). I was tad upset with their recent album, Get Behind Me Satan, so those tracks – Little Ghost, My Door Bell (that baby grand was awfully underused), the Nurse – didn’t do much for me. Meg took to the timpani for Passive Manipulation - the only bit of lead singing from her that evening (I was looking forward to Cold, Cold Night but it never came). The audience was also treated to intervals of feedback which kind of linked the songs in a medley-like fashion, though I could’ve done with a little less sloppiness.
But when Jack and Meg were good, they were very good. They kicked off with the crunching Dead Leaves in the Dirty Ground, and couldn’t have opened better. Hotel Yorba and Fell in Love with a Girl will always get me bopping like an idiot, and covers of Dolly Parton (“Jolene, Joleeeeeeeeeene”) and Son House were tasteful additions to the set. After a fair period of fuzz-buzz, the Stripes returned to the stage for a four-song encore, including the fantastic singles The Hardest Button to Button and Seven Nation Army. At his best, Jack White is a Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in one, and tracks like these are testament.

I walked away satisfied, with numb ears and sore feet.

This review was published in Craccum, Issue 1, 2006

They took their time...

More Ozu is on the way from that best DVD distribution company in the free world, Criterion! The title is the 1949 masterpiece Late Spring, and it's coming in May, packaged with an an audio commentary, essays (one by Ozu scholar Donald Richie), and Wim Wender's film Tokyo-Ga on a second disc. I'm a happy chappie indeed.

The cover art aint too shabby. In fact, I'm inclined to think it one of Criterion's best:

UPDATE (16 February 2006): The kooks at Criterion have removed Late Spring from their "Coming Soon" page. I guess this means it'll be delayed another month. Unless they're adding some more extras and are therefore updating the specs (we all live in hope). I'm on tenterhooks at the moment...

UPDATE (17 February 2006): It's back on, and it's being released in May afterall. I can rest easy at last.

Of Cartoons and Firestorms

Last year, a series of cartoons depicting Mohammed, the central prophet of Islam, were published in a newspaper in Denmark. Some Danish Muslims took umbrage to the representations and hopped over to the Middle East with the offending drawings, including some (considerably more offensive) pieces of their own concoction. A world-wide Muslim boycott of Danish products was decided on, but what has transpired has gone beyond a mere rejection of imported herring and pastries. Violent protests have erupted in Middle East and Europe. Newspaper editors who decided to print the cartoons have received death threats, while many more are being dissuaded from printing them lest they anger their Muslim readership. Danish flags and embassies alike are being torched and vandalised.

One recalls the Salman Rushdie incident of the late 1980s. Rushdie’s apparent lampooning of Mohammed and Islam in his novel The Satanic Verses was enough to ignite a firestorm of indignation across the Muslim world, and the Ayatollah Khomeini called for his death. The conflagration spread to the West. Canada banned the book for a period, out of fear of offending local Muslims. Some American publishing companies momentarily dropped The Satanic Verse from their catalogues and bookstores in California were firebombed. People – protestors, prominent Muslims against the fatwa, translators – were killed, all because of a single book. As for the cartoons issue, we have not yet witnessed such disorder in the wider world, though a protest outside the Danish embassy in London gave air to some worrying sentiments:

Some of the cartoons were bound to incite people, while others are of a distinctly milder tone. Many in the media have puzzled at the idea that “any” depiction of Mohammed would be considered blasphemous when they have been done for centuries. As well as having reproduced the offending cartoons (those printed in the Danish paper as well as the bogus images) on his site, Zombie has also documented the history of images of the Prophet, and many have been made.

Still, the issues of blasphemy and freedom of speech hang over this affair.

Artists may well overstep the boundaries of cultural etiquette. Many whose works have caused offence have received censure (whether justified or not is a matter of personal opinion) but such people should not have to fear for their lives if they fall out of step. One of my favourite commentators, Mark Steyn points out that artists have been taking shots at Christianity for years and have often been championed for snubbing their noses at what are seen as stuffy conventions. In “'Sensitivity' can have brutal consequences”, he juxtaposes the differing responses of Western liberals to two cases of blasphemy:

“The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.
Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith. Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

He also illustrates how the British public and politicians in particular have bent over backwards to not offend their Muslim compatriots – even going so far as to compromise their national, or indeed democratic, values. They seem cowed under pressure from radical sectors of the Muslim community who threaten drastic measures unless society accommodates their ideological demands. Steyn continues:

"Jyllands-Posten wasn't being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of "self-censorship" -- i.e., a climate in which there's no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it's better not to.
That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.”

Once upon a time, Europe was not the tolerant, multicultural place it is today. In the Middle Ages, blasphemy was a crime punishable by death. The difference is, that while Christianity has undergone a reformation and even the once-mighty Catholic Church has conceded that burning at the stake is hardly the right way to deal with heretics in this day and age, there are many Muslims who believe no punishment short of execution will suffice for those who blaspheme Islam. We Kiwis remember the “Virgin in a Condom” exhibit, and while it sparked off sufficient controversy to keep Talkback radio hosts busy for an age, none of us recall the artist being assassinated in broad daylight by a Christian fundamentalist. Similarly, in 2003 Malcolm Evans published some lurid anti-Israel cartoons in the New Zealand Herald and lost his job, but the offence to Jews and Israelis wasn’t so great as to have the Mossad dispatch a hit-squad to finish him off.

Several have already paid the price for openly criticising Islam, the most famous recent example being the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, whose short film about the treatment of women under Islam and inflammatory public statements eventually cost him his life. (Steyn makes mention of another director in Holland who has elected not to begin work on a “multicultural comedy” because he does not want to suffer a dagger through the chest). Though van Gogh was infamous as a churlish provocateur, nothing he did warranted the fate that he met at the hand of a crazed assassin, who over a year later remains unrepentant. As others incidences, such as the London Bombings of 7 July 2005, make clear, there are a growing number of radicalised Muslims in Europe, whose anger cannot simply be attributed to their outcast status within their adopted countries. What we are witnessing is ideologically-motivated hatred and violence, based on a fundamentalist reading of Islam and antithetical to Western values.

Other voices have weighed in on the meshugas. In addition to Steyn and Melanie Phillips, our own Mr Political Incorrectness Lindsay Perigo has left a message on his website concerning the cartoons issue. Not afraid of making himself some more enemies, Linz nevertheless has a few smart things to say. He also cites the editor of Wellington’s Dominion Post, who thus defends the newspaper's decision to publish the cartoons:

“Modern society rests on the contest of ideas, the ability to question perceived wisdom and to challenge authority. Without that contest, and without the right to free speech that makes it possible, societies stultify and become entrenched in their beliefs. That freedom to question and to challenge must include the right to be offensive, to affront people’s most heartfelt beliefs, even to disparage that which they hold sacred. Otherwise it is an empty freedom. … There have been earlier cultural confrontations between the West and a resurgent Islam, beginning with the death sentence pronounced in 1989 on author Salmon Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, and including the murder in 2004 of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh after he made a film dealing with violence against Islamic women. They are confrontations the West cannot afford to lose. The right to freedom of speech is a precious one that must be defended.”

At the risk of sounding cliché, freedom of speech is a foundation stone of Democracy, and with freedom comes responsibility. One should not offend for the sake of being needlessly provocative – and I know a few artists in particular who should take heed.

However, criticism of religions, ideologies, public figures and establishments, though offensive to some is indicative of free expression, which is in turn indicative of a functioning democracy, and should not be ruled out. Nor should “dissenting” voices be silenced. In Auckland yesterday, hundreds of Muslims gathered to voice their opposition to the Danish cartoons, and good for them: they are merely acting on their right to speak up and exercise their passions against something they find distasteful. Such things are just not possible in totalitarian regimes, including those in the Muslim world. In fact the state-controlled media in many Islamic countries do not themselves have spotless records, as this cartoon makes clear...

[From Filibuster Cartoons]

Beach Boys Pet Sounds

What is there to say about Pet Sounds that hasn’t already been said? That it was the original orchestral pop album – the one which showed musicians and music-lovers alike what popular music could achieve? That it is Sir Paul McCartney’s favourite piece of vinyl? Or that it was the record which marked the Beach Boys’ transition from Californian surf-popsters to artists capable of a more sophisticated sound? There’s nothing much that rock snobs don’t already know about Pet Sounds, but for the uninitiated, here’s a taste of things to expect.

From the start the album was the brainchild of vocalist/bassist/songwriter Brian Wilson. While his bandmates were on the road, Wilson elected to stay at home and focus his energies on a new project. With lyricist Tony Asher and a huge cast of session musicians involved, all that was really required of the four remaining Beach Boys was to lay down the vocals, which Wilson arranged as scrupulously as the actual music. The band’s trademark multi-part vocals add to the texture of Pet Sounds as much as the instruments themselves, which include, aside from the standard guitars, bass and drums, cellos, baroque harpsichords, saxophones, accordions, sleigh-bells and glockenspiels.

Mad genius Wilson conceived of Pet Sounds as a single artistic statement, his aim to express emotion as intimately as possible through unique aural soundscapes, to create “sounds that would make the listener feel loved”. This is not the place to go for catchy ditties about cars and surfer girls. Instead, expect music that is evocative, luxuriant and almost spiritual; at times joyful and upbeat, at others dreamy and introspective. Expect lyrics about the youthful lust for independence and the bittersweetness of love. The radio songs – Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Sloop John B and G-d Only Knows – gain fresh appreciation from being listened to in the context of the album, and the lesser know tracks – the hymnal You Still Believe in Me, the gentle Don’t Talk and the full orchestral blast of I Know There’s An Answer – are sure to enchant the new listener.

As Pet Sounds was quite a departure from the standard Beach Boys formula, it was not embraced as eagerly by the public as by the critics on its release in 1966. However, its sales have since exceeded the million-unit mark, and it has remained an all-time favourite of rock snobs, James Hetfield and Cameron Crowe - to name a few. Indeed one could argue that the classic symphonic rock albums – The Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin, Queen’s A Night at the Opera, Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell and especially The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper – trace their origins to this lovely piece of work.

The Capitol Records CD reissue includes both the mono and studio mixes of Pet Sounds, albeit somewhat clumsily on a single disc. But that’s as good an excuse as any to listen to it twice in a row; as well as one of the great albums, it is also a great summer album – it sounds great in the car on a quiet drive to the beach or, indeed, on headphones during that bus trip to uni on a warm weekday morning. [5/5]

This review was published, with minor alterations, in the Summer School 2006 issue of Craccum.