In the age of 24hour blog angst and the prevailing wisdom that we have all been ‘fucked up’ by our parents, or society, or something, it seems to have become quite OK to throw out the stiff upper lip, and let everyone about how we’re so miserable, or why on earth we just can’t seem to make a relationship work.

An unfortunate consequence of this has been a rash of indulgent singer-songwriters singing bland dirges that have more in common with 90s boy bands than folk and protest, the traditions that first inspired Woody Guthrie, and eventually Bob Dylan. However, it needn’t be the case that singing about personal experiences should mean sounding like James Morrisson.

Although folk singers had always sung politically motivated songs, it was surely Guthrie’s experience travelling with job-seeking migrants through the Deep South in the 30s that made his vaguely socialist agitations so direct and inspiring to so many.

However, as the folk-protest song exerted a greater influence over young people into the 60s, personal experience seemed to be less important. Often the concerns of these singers were universal – Bob Dylan, as the leader of that movement, has, much to his own disdain, been endlessly referred to as the ‘voice of a generation’ for his articulation of the dissatisfaction of counter-cultural America at that time.

Eventually, as Dylan began to feel constrained by his own revered status, he began to pioneer a far more introspective style. Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith joined him in producing music that would come to be described (often derisively) as ‘confessional’ and ‘sensitive’. This change would coincide with considerable stylistic innovation, which set a new standard for the kind of originality that could occur in the singer-songwriter genre. In particular, Patti Smith’s daringly aggressive fusion of punk rock and accomplished, visceral poetry was influential with artists from Sonic Youth to KT Tunstall citing her album Horses as a significant influence.

These changes, while often motivated by a simple desire for ‘something new’, were not without their personal motivations. While the breakdown of Dylan’s marriage was the well documented starting point for much of Blood on the Tracks lyrical content, Joni Mitchell’s often improvised, free vocal noodling and startlingly optimistic lyrics were informed by a turbulent love life that lurched from divorce (her surname was taken from her husband) to the heart breaking decision to give up her child to adoption. The lines ‘My child’s a stranger/I bore her/But I could not raise her’, from ‘Chinese Café’ are probably her most overt ‘confession’ of this.

In another famous example, Leonard Cohen was recently forced to admit that his song ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’, including the lyric ‘Giving me head on the unmade bed’, refers to his short-lived affair with Janis Joplin.

It would be easy to label that first period of introspection a ‘golden age’ of the singer-songwriter, but with the recent successes of Elliott Smith, and now Bon Iver, it seems that the sensitive singer-songwriter is definitely back in. Smith’s infamous struggles with drug addiction and depression that eventually killed him contrast with his deceptively optimistic, pop-influenced song-writing, while Bon Iver’s experience in a remote cabin in Wisconsin is a well-documented influence on his soulful writing.

It’s hard to pinpoint where the line lies between indulgence and intimacy in singer-songwriters. For many songwriters, a new song is cathartic, a way of coming to terms with something personal. In the wrong hands, this can be awful – no matter how beautiful the subject of James Blunt’s notorious first single, I can’t sympathise with his mass-produced heart-ache. In the right hands however, a well written, personal song can resonate with our own experience, and provide something timeless in a way that more trend-driven pop music cannot.

As Guthrie’s wife once said, speaking to the crowd at one of her husband’s concerts in 1949, ‘It’s nice to think that a voice can be heard today that can communicate to you one thing, and twenty-five years from now will still mean something to somebody else’. She could not have been more right.

Blood Bank’ finds Justin Vernon returning to the recording studio, fresh from his victory lap touring the world on the back of his universally well-received debut album.

After tracks from For Emma, Forever Ago found their way onto ‘House’, and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ among other mainstream US television shows, it is apt that Vernon’s latest EP should be named ‘Blood Bank’, and be so concerned with our biological humanity and mortality. Vernon’s is a refreshingly candid, unpretentious look at human relationships, perhaps the kind of perspective you might expect of the wood-chopping, impressively bearded American.

It’s difficult to write about Justin Vernon without mentioning his three month stay in the Wisconsin wilderness where he recorded most of his debut album, but in this case it’s justified – these tracks were written in the same creative burst. Their flavour is similar, and certainly the title track would nestle very comfortably anywhere in For Emma…

The rest of the EP however seems more like a collection of outtakes from that album, although their quality is still of an impressive standard. ‘Babys’, for instance, runs for five minutes around one, bright piano chord while Vernon chants about the ‘Carnival of Peace’ and the ‘summer coming to multiply’. It’s a bizarre image, but Vernon’s beguiling falsetto lends it a kind of optimistic substance – from his throat, the words sound impossibly heartfelt, and its easy to feel like you somehow know where he’s coming from.

We find Vernon in a quirky mood on the final track, ‘Woods’. While finding a new direction for Bon Iver’s sound was always going to be difficult, robbing Vernon’s voice of its organic, soulful quality seems a shame. The effect leads to some beautiful moments as Vernon harmonises with his band mates a cappella, and I’d be happy for Vernon to prove me wrong, but I imagine this sound will remain an enjoyable curiosity, the sort of thing that belongs on this kind of EP.

You won’t feel short-changed buying it, as the sound of Vernon’s quirkier side is refreshing, but equally don’t expect the epiphany that, for many, For Emma… represented.

In a similar way to Deerhunter’s Fluorescent Grey EP, which hinted at the stylistic shift away from Cryptograms’ psychedelic noise that they would eventually produce with their excellent Microcastle, Blood Bank hints at a number of possible directions – some more promising than others – that Vernon may be considering for the follow-up proper to For Emma, Forever Ago.
The EP is an ideas sandpit, a peek over Vernon’s shoulder. It ends too quickly to provide a full picture, but it should at least reassure any doubters that Justin Vernon, whether in his Bon Iver guise or not, will again be a talent to watch in the coming year.

Four Stars

In 2005, Antony and the Johnsons released their second album, I Am A Bird Now, to widespread critical acclaim, winning the Mercury Music Prize and infiltrating the mainstream. The sound of Antony Hegarty’s third release, The Crying Light, will be familiar to those who heard the second, but this is no criticism; the album is a triumph.
In terms of progression, the quality of Hegarty’s songcraft is a notable improvement here. At times on I Am A Bird Now, there was a lack of subtlety in the melodrama of the songs, which could exhaust the listener with the sheer weight of their emotion. While this work is still one of high melodrama, the execution is more mature, and the songs are more balanced. Carefully arranged orchestration features throughout, and is generally deployed tastefully for accent and emphasis. There is a patience in tracks like ‘Kiss My Name’ that was sometimes lacking from the album’s predecessor. The result is that the overall emotional effect is ultimately more substantial.
Hegarty is clearly a special talent; the best songs on this album would surely stir emotion in even the most dispassionate of listeners. The ethereal quality of the last album’s most effective track returns, and is supported by improved instrumental backing. ‘Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground’ is full of beautiful, understated instrumental work, and the cello which closes the track is powerfully sombre.
Hegarty’s voice is familiar, but appears more well-rounded than before. ‘Aeon’ is a real departure from his melancholic style, seeing him in celebratory mode, at one point shouting, ‘Hold that man I love so much!’ in an unexpected highlight of the album.
The Crying Light is not a perfect album, there are times when the vocals and the music seems ill-balanced and the effect falls short of its intentions; where Hegarty aims to overwhelm he can sometimes alienate. I found myself irritated by the slurred vocals of ‘Dust and Water’; the intention there is a mystery, but the result is an unhappy confusion of sounds. Hegarty rarely misfires here, however, and ultimately the album has a great deal to recommend it.
The unexpected success of I Am A Bird Now was sure to bring with it a backlash to coincide with the release of Hegarty’s second album. For many, his acceptance as a mainstream artist was a difficult pill to swallow. From his affected vocal style to his unusual appearance, there was much to mock for the superficial observer. The album was, however, a stunning collection of powerful and distinctive works. This follow-up effort has been eagerly awaited by an enthusiastic fan-base. The success of the last album naturally meant that this one would likely be subjected to close scrutiny and unfair criticism.
Already reviews of the album appear to have taken a superficial attitude to The Crying Light, ignoring much of what is new to focus on the fact that much of what was strikingly novel last time remains a feature of the music now.
That the unusual nature of Hegarty’s sound is a familiar feature of his work by now should not in itself be the object of criticism. It is a lazy sort of journalism which fails to recognise that if Antony did not have such a distinctive style he would not be accused of sonic stagnancy. There is substance enough beyond Hegarty’s vocals to merit the more balanced criticism that will be afforded countless artists whose vocal styles vary little from record to record.
The unique sound Hegarty produces is a gift and its return is welcome. The power of the human emotion with which his voice drips is devastating when it combines most effectively with the music, and although at times it can simply be too much, the high-points of the album should justify suffering its excesses.

Even for the greatest fans of slasher and horror films there comes a point where one must stand back and quietly wonder what happened to the story behind this continuous brutality. Here, in Trailer Park of Terror, surely the moment is when lonely overweight teenagers worldwide must put down their Doritos, throw their chilli dip on to the floor and cry, ‘enough is enough’.
Trailer Park of Terror should be preserved as one of the moments that film making went horribly wrong. Guided by one of the clumsiest scripts in cinema and an emotionless cast it is a genuinely embarrassing experience. For the bloodthirsty however, it more than fulfils its quota. There are skinned, armless, and headless teenagers and even a polygamous Priest served some female rape by a busty zombie.
The film follows the particularly grisly deaths of a group of teenage delinquents and their mentor at the hands of a set of trailer park folk, who satisfy every redneck cliché imaginable. Ranging from sexual perversion to an unsatisfying hunger that will only (and this is still in pre-Zombie state) be sated by eating prodigious quantities of ‘meat’, the one word afforded to ‘Larlene’ by the writer besides the ever-versatile ‘bitch’. This is a film so shoddily written, directed and acted that even the programmers at ITV4 will be hard pressed fitting it into their late night schedule, although the combination of extraneous sex scenes paired with simultaneous gore may allow it to wriggle its way onto Five.
This is a film, however, that has inspired me. I believe that life must have a sense of purpose, and through the debris of a trailer park littered with assorted human body parts swimming in a pool of fake blood, I have found mine. This is a film that is so shockingly poor that I pleadingly ask you never to watch it, or even think of watching it. It will take from you a precious ninety-eight minutes that will never be returned.
But it doesn’t matter, because before you read this I will have obliterated each remaining DVD of this tragedy and every shard will have been randomly distributed into a packet of Doritos. Overweight children across the world will never be forced from their sofa-bound magnificence by the sight of this travesty, instead unbeknownst to all but you and I they will chew away their downfall, well coated in the chilli dip of success.

There comes a point when a reviewer finds herself having to stifle her prejudices and just get on with the job, and Brian Singer’s latest blockbuster Valkyrie is one such example.

A Hollywood film with English-speaking Nazis starring the couch-jumping nutjob that is Tom Cruise? Oh, the digs that one can aim at this. Scientology and Nazism with a good dose of German campness: comedy gold. However, Valkyrie is not the sham it could have so easily become.

Valkyrie is a movie about the ‘July 20 plot’ of 1944, where Colonel von Stauffenberg and other officers attempt to overthrow Hitler’s regime. Von Stauffenberg cleverly uses Hitler’s own emergency plan to stabilise the government (known as Operation Valkyrie after Wagner’s opera Die Walküre). Operation Valkyrie is readjusted to remove those in power and cripple Hitler’s regime once Hitler has been assassinated by their planned bomb plot.

For anyone with a grasp of historical events, the ending will be familiar: Hitler survives, being saved by a badly-positioned table leg, and the revolutionaries are assassinated. What the movie does is place us in the position of knowing more than the characters: the revolutionaries only find out about Hitler’s survival hours afterwards, by which point Operation Valkyrie is clearly underway. The movie relies on surface thrills rather than intense suspense; we know what’s going to happen, yet the high drama created by Singer’s skillful directing keeps the audience on their toes, even in potentially low-action moments.

There is much to be said in this film’s favour, and the decision that the cast retain their own voices is one of them. The thought of Eddie Izzard and Tom Cruise putting on German accents in the style of The Producers could have turned this already tricky movie into a camp farce. The $75 million dollar budget is apparent in the spectacular visuals: the panoramic views of the Nazi canteen filled with fleeing Nazis is in my mind a great piece of cinematography. However, where Valkyrie benefits fro

m high-budget screen shots, it loses out on challenging film-making.
The main characters are cosy household names – Kenneth Brannagh, Bill Nighy and Eddie Izzard must be the cuddliest collection of violent German officers ever. One cannot help but wonder what the Germans would have done with the film. Mark Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl: The Last Days and Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, are conversely both challenging and dynamic takes on resistance to Nazis. Valkyrie is a brave film concept which has finally chickened out when it comes to challenging film-making.

It is very easy for one to lapse into metaphysical bullying when the victim seems to have all the wrong characteristics – casting Tom Cruise as Colonel von Staffenberg has been compared by some journalists to ‘casting Judas as Jesus’.

Yet Cruise, for all his eccentricities and obvious flaws, is the Everyman, and there is an audience appeal in his imperfections. This actually works because the main question Valkyrie is asking of the audience is how they would react if in a position of power under a totalitarian regime. However, a vague sense of moral inadequacy is not much of a takeaway from a film. Valkyrie falls short because it scratches the surface, but fails to leave a mark.

Two stars
Release: 23rd January
Director: Bryan Singer
STARRING: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard

Around once a year, we, the cinema-going public, are presented with a Hollywood offering that is truly brilliant- a film that renews one’s faith in American cinema.
Last year we were given two, in the form of There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men and this year, we have already been given one. Out just in time for Oscar season is the new Harvey Milk biopic, directed by Gus Van Sant. A director of varying pedigree, ranging from the brilliant Affleck and Damon collaboration, Good Will Hunting to the frankly abysmal Psycho remake just a year later, Van Sant may here have placed himself amongst the very best.
Milk follows the life and political career of Harvey Milk, the first openly homosexual man to achieve public office in the United States. This film is wonderfully written, it has a moving intelligence and it is paced to perfection. A supporting cast of James Franco and Josh Brolin ensures the acting in Milk is of a consistently high standard, whilst Sean Penn offers a performance he is unlikely ever to surpass.
Penn is truly sublime. This is a performance far from the gruff, powerful masculinity of his earlier turns in Mystic River and Dead Man Walking. He seems to truly envelop the character of Harvey Milk as few actors can, at the end of the film images of Milk and Penn are paired together, and between them there is little if any difference. This is a tribute to an incredible portrayal of an incredible man. Milk is a rarity; it is a truly inspired and inspirational picture, a challenging story that is interwoven with just the right blend of elegance and humour.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I got incrediblly emotional involved with this film – but this is not just a weepy. It is a serious statement about the need for a movement for change, and, coming at a time when Proposition 8 has just been passed in California, and states across the U.S. are banning gay marriages like they’re made from Nazi gold, Milk makes an important statement about the desperate need for equality across the gay, black, and immigrant communities of America.
Having stumbled at the first hurdles of the Golden Globes, Milk might seize the recognition it deserves at the Academy Awards come February, particularly with Sean Penn pitting his wits against Hollywood’s comeback kid, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. The fight is on. And if Penn loses, we will just have to blame the Academy’s conservatism. Because this film deserves every Oscar going. Milk is not only one of the best films of the year, it is one of the best of the decade. And January isn’t even over!

Five Stars

Release: 23rd January
Director: Gus Van Sant
STARRING: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco