The Hothouse has, for the most part, been built. Most lines are learnt, all the moves are known, all the motivations carefully planned. We know the shape of it, its peaks and troughs. We even have a sense that it could be quite entertaining. There have been flashes of brilliance, in amongst the various practical challenges of moving and talking simultaneously. A phrase suddenly cauterizes the air, seems both the most natural and the most extraordinary thing to say: the director purrs, the man playing your secretary looks alarmed. And then you suddenly realise that you’re in the wrong place, that you’re supposed to be pouring imaginary whiskey from a Diet Coke bottle, that you’ve no idea which line comes next. It’s frustrating, because you just have to shove the play down your throat, and it feels clumsy and amateurish. You’re shouting all the time, save for when you forget your lines. You notice this, and deliver the next scene entirely in a hoarse whisper. The rehearsal finishes, and the director reassures you that we’ve made a lot of progress, that it’s still very early in the process. He tells you not to worry, and to be honest, you don’t: you’re too busy working things out, and learning it all.

This bit of the process is necessary but frustrating. The Hothouse is just emerging from it. Act One is fixed, Act Two is nearly there. We approach our first full run of Act One for anticipation that we might get it locked down with more than a week to go. We do it, with the other actors as our audience. And suddenly the play seems leaden. It’s as though, by wrestling the text to the ground, by mastering it, we’ve made it quite dull. No-one laughs, except when someone stumbles over a line. There is a sense that we’re sleep-walking through the scenes. One of the watching actors gives up, and begins to read a textbook.

When it’s finished, the atmosphere is sombre. “A bit limp” mutters one. “Deeply undynamic” says another. The director politely agrees, but reassures us that now the structure is in place, we can play, and knock most of it down. Playing will bring it to life, he says. Agreements are muttered. We all trudge outside, for a cigarette or a shiver. Suddenly we seem to have realised that it is possible that the show won’t be any good. We remember we have an open rehearsal for the student press that evening. We all feel a bit shame-faced.

And then, that afternoon, we play. We’re given secret instructions: “You have to get out of that room”, “You must remain as close to his face as possible”, “She is now your 13-year-old daughter”. The results are frequently farcical, but always liberating and occasionally revelatory. The director then tells us to stick to our original motivations, but up their intensity ten-fold. Suddenly “I want to squash Lush” means that you’ve pushed him to the ground, and are spitting your lines into his ear. Everything expands: you’re obscenely drunk, ecstatic, devastated. The whole scope of the play is expanded. Most of it is dross, but it is always enlightening. You’re reminded of your sheer range of options. The constraints of all the play-building you’ve been doing are transformed into jumping-off points for a whole new set of performances. We do the open rehearsal, and it goes well. I’ve no idea what the journos thought, but it went swimmingly for us, still clowning and capering, pushing intensity and changing tack, dancing through the text.

My old man, Roote, is coming on nicely. He’s been assembled from a variety of corpses: half-faded memories of teachers from primary school, a friend’s grandfather, an author on Desert Island Disks. I’ve stitched them together, and he’s just beginning to twitch into life. On Monday, I will shave my head, and most of my beard off. My nose, running almost at the same angle as my forehead, should look brutish, transformed from shrewish to shark-like. Without sideburns and neck hair, my face will look shorter, and my brow will be more prominent. With a moustache, my chin, already weak, will look quite forlorn. Hopefully, this is what Roote looks like. Hopefully, it will jolt him into animation. If not, at least I’ll be bang on trend.

With the 2012 Oscars coming up at the end of February, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist is the one film I hope, and expect, to take home the biggest awards: Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor and Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score – this film deserves recognition for every brilliant aspect.

The film’s story explores Hollywood’s transition from the age of silent pictures to talkies. Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, looking like a Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, and takes the audience from the height of Valentin’s extraordinary silent-film career into its inevitable and troublesome lull, exploring the personal trauma it wreaks before arriving, re-born, at the other end. Bérénice Bejo plays Peppy Miller, a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Clara Bow, displaying a young talent flourishing during an exciting era of cinematic history, stealing the heart and, momentarily, the career of Valentin.

What is extraordinary about Dujardin and Bejo, aside from their captivating and palpable chemistry, is their complete mastery of dramatic expression. For these two talents, sound is not needed to communicate powerful emotion or enrapture the audience in scenes of great comedy and tragedy. What most filled me with joy and awe is Hazanavicius’ remarkable prowess in playing with both form and subject matter. Valentin is trapped within the very medium that structures the film: one scene has him crying out in anguish, yet emitting no sound, in response to the infiltration of sound into his silent universe (a clever and humorously postmodern shock). Another scene, using the self-conscious absence of sound to create comedy, has Valentin attempting suicide by placing a revolver into his mouth – after a tense, almost chilling, emotional build-up the film jump shots to the written declaration, ‘BANG!’. The next shot shows Miller’s car crashed into a tree.

Each actor, and every scene, is furnished with a component that stands out on its own merits too – the score. It is exceedingly difficult to strain against the emotional trajectory that The Artist wants to take you through when every stride and flourish is blessed with such poignant and delightful melodies. The score compliments and reinforces every part of this wonderful story, spilling out and begging to be a background to our own reality.

The Artist is simple storytelling at its very best, infused with modern spices, and has something for everyone – it should be compulsory viewing for any lover of modern and classic cinema and will definitely give you something to talk about.

FIVE STARS

Gonjasufi’s 2010 LP A Sufi and a Killer set itself apart from any other self-styled ‘electronic’ record from that year, mostly because of his amazing voice. Pitched somewhere between the anguished ghost of a long-dead Delta bluesman and the sound of an injured dog, when paired with masterful, smoky production from The Gaslamp Killer it led to a sprawling patchwork quilt of an album, encompassing a huge stylistic range, from Grateful Dead-style guitar noodling to freeform instrumental hip-hop of the Flying Lotus school.

On MU.ZZ.LE, a 25 minute ‘mini-LP’, Gonjasufi narrows his focus and tones down some of the more aggressive elements of A Sufi, without losing anything in intensity. The layers of scuzz and distortion are still present over his skewed instrumental samples, carpet-bombed beats and gravel-wouldn’t-melt vocals, but the tempo and atmosphere have been taken down to a slower, more seductive pace. Opener ‘White Picket Fence’ immediately throws us into an echoey sludge of decomposed guitar and languid drums reminiscent of early Portishead if they were lost in the Sahara desert, rather than in a port town just outside Bristol. Even on more beat-heavy tracks such as ‘Nickels and Dimes’ and ‘Skin’, the commitment to injecting these tracks with a queasy, claustrophobic unease beyond a standard B-boy aesthetic is admirable. ‘I’ve done some things in my time / Even I’m ashamed of me,’ he croons softly on ‘The Blame’, and rather than an empty platitude, his pained, worn near-whisper sounds like he means it.

MU.ZZ.LE isn’t perfect, however – taken by itself, closing track ‘Sniffin’ is an underwhelming end, sounding more like a doodle to test out distortion effects used sparingly and evocatively elsewhere. However, MU.ZZ.LE is best taken in as a whole. As its compacted and tightly structured length weaves seamlessly from one track to the next, you could almost be listening to an ancient mystic, rather than one of the most idiosyncratic modern musicians going.

The Maccabees first album, Colour It In, saw the band put in to the ‘art rock’ box, with its hand-drawn cover, guitar-based melodies and lyrics about wave machines and enticing girls with leopard print duvets. Five years later their third album Given To The Wild has already been hailed as one of the best albums of 2012. But are the superlatives premature?

Given that the band wrote individually, each song slides into the next with a remarkable cohesion which gives the album a subtly crafted flow. Most of the songs stick to the same structure, building from restrained verses to swirling, syncopated climaxes, yet, some filler aside, many still remain distinctive. The floating shimmer of ‘Glimmer’ sharply contrasts with the insistent propulsion of ‘Unknown’. Meanwhile, the first single ‘Pelican’ combines rollicking, spiky guitar lines with lyrics about mortality and the ephemeral nature of life, its upbeat feel ironically revealing an underlying darkness.

Given To The Wild shows lyricist Orlando Weeks’ increased emotional maturity, as his fragile and world-weary vocals  hark back to simpler days without the bitterness of unfulfilled dreams, dissatisfaction and the trickling away of time. On ‘Forever I’ve Known’ he repeatedly implores, ‘Can we still try? / Can you just lie?’, his voice almost quivering, reminiscent of Jeff Buckley at  his most fraught.

The band spent three years making the album, and the time and effort is evident in its numerous layers, tight structures and cyclic melodies. But in this is the problem. While Given To The Wild is undoubtedly a mature, skilful and beautiful album, it just feels a little too manicured. Its ambition sometimes reaches soaring heights akin to Arcade Fire, but at other moments its feels like trite stadium rock of the Coldplay variety. In aiming for soundscapes that will gain critical accolades the band lose some of the raw energy and quirkiness of their earlier work. Ultimately, the album leaves you with more excitement about where The Maccabees will go next than about Given To The Wild itself.

Age? Allegedly ongoing – at any rate, borne from the end of the 1970s. Let’s say
1978 to 1987.

So, what wave? Not to be confused with the Third Wave (late 90’s radical feminism), Human
Wave Attack (offensive infantry tactic) or The Waves (Virginia Woolf novel), the
New Wave is a musical subgenre.

Well, that clears it up a bit. The name of the genre is borrowed from French film movement the Nouvelle Vague (not the atmospheric cover band), with early examples being similarly
experimental and fiercely anti-corporate.

Like punk, then. Think of it as punk’s subtler, huffier older sister: the genetics are the same,
and they might look a bit similar, but the distance between them is certainly no
accident.

Okay, so not like punk. What does it sound like? Oh, a bit synthy; angrier than pop, quirkier than electronic music. Sometimes it’s a bit like ska, sometimes it’s a bit more rocky – sorry, this isn’t helpful, is it?

I seem to remember one of my parents’ friends referring to one of my teenage asymmetrical autocoiffure disasters as ‘a bit New Romantic.’ Yes. Well. We all make mistakes. That does come into it a bit, but New Wave is more reactionary than the flamboyant aesthetics of Adam Ant et al – it started out as a vigorous response to the overproduced, underinspired pop of the 1970s. All the rage of punk, with a lot more glitter, in one easy-to-digest, easy-to-market package.

Right. So it’s not New Romanticism, or post-punk, or synthpop, but sometimes it could be. Yes! Precisely!

And then what happened?
Video killed the radio star. Though initially working to their advantage, the rise of MTV and a host of other music video channels meant that less photogenic groups (sorry, Spandau Ballet) were waltzed right out of town.

Back up your new-found factoids with five bona fide bangers, with a complete Spotify playlist for your perusal available here at A Bluffers’ Guide to: New Wave:

She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby (1982)
This is The Day – The The (1983)
Dear Prudence – Siouxsie & the Banshees (1983)
Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You) – A Flock of Seagulls (1983)
Temptation – Heaven 17 (1983)

Nicola Roberts has done rather a lot in the last year: got veneers, released an album (Cinderella Eyes), and (best of all) worn the coolest jumper I’ve ever seen in my life in ‘Beat of My Drum’. Apparently the aesthetic appeal is no accident, with ‘the whole of the artwork made to compliment [her] electro music.’ The video is something to phone home about: the fact that she appears to have rented out her local town hall, for example; the dancers forced to contend with a dance floor that has clearly recently been electrocuted; and, of course, that lovely piece of knitwear.

Roberts has taken a rather edgier track than what might be expected from someone whose previous credentials include paler-than-thou make-up line Dainty Doll and a long stint as a Girl Aloud. Listing dream collaborators as ‘M.I.A, Kate Bush and Missy Elliot,’ the sound, apparently, is ‘up.’ ‘I see it as being ‘up’, and so colour is a reference to that. Around the last album, something just clicked. I had had the most amazing summer holiday with all of my friends from Liverpool; I started to go to all the fashion shows, and change my mentality about beauty and comercialism, everything. My whole aspect and everything I looked at just changed. Then, as soon as I did, I just felt looser. I think it’s important to feel loose, I really do.’

Nicola has inadvertently risen as a bit of an indie fashion icon, with a keen eye for aesthetics. ‘I was really interested in all of the prints (in ‘Beat of My Drum’); the tribal prints and all of the colour patterns. To me, it was all cheerleader and Super Mario sounds, whereas for ‘Yoyo’ now everything is a bit darker. The song is about the needy side of love, where you don’t know if you’re coming or going… it’s proper, it’s a bit of a head fuck. It draws you to wear darker things, that are a little more serious; older and darker.’

A collaboration with Atlanta Weller to create the shoes worn on the album cover suggest a future in fashion design. ‘I would love the opportunity to have a collection. As long as I’m being able to be creative, be it in the studio or working on Dainty Doll, it’s where I’m most happy and the most confident. Fashion is very much a personal thing to me. I won’t leave the house unless I feel like what I’m wearing fits my mood or creates the mood that I feel like I should be in that particular day. It’s very much more a personal thing than just wearing a nice coat.’

Roberts has taken on this album with her feet firmly planted in the stirrups. It is unsurprisingly strikingly personal with songs springing largely ‘from your emotions, or the way you think about certain situations, because everything is how you see it or what you feel.’ Nicola seems to have tumbled out of school at barely seventeen, ‘walking out of the classroom and onto the stage.’ At the slightly riper age of twenty-six, she’s glad to have moved on from ‘working together as a team,’ even while it was ‘amazing.’ ‘It’s kind of nice now to have that eighteen months of solid work on the little square CD, and to see my own journey on it. It was important to me that everyone that we worked with on the record felt like they wanted to be on the team. I didn’t want to feel like just another one on the conveyer belt. It felt like everyone wanted to be a part of the project – and that’s why I think it worked.’

with Jenny Entwistle