The CollectionAlanis MorissetteOut 14 November« « « « «Since the glory days of her hugely successful debut, Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette has been splitting opinion. Many only claim to like the fantastically accessible though dictionary defying Ironic, but still her albums sell in the millions. Ten years on from this, Morissette has decided its time to do what all good musicians do, especially in the run-up to Christmas, and release a singles compilation.The Collection boosts Alanis’ “hand picked” selection of songs from the past ten years of her career. Admittedly this has turned out to be an almost complete list of her single releases, but full marks for taking the time to pick out the bad ones.Still, this album will be an essential addition to the CDd collection of any Morissette fan, encompassing a range of classics from the mid and late-90s as well as newer material. Her sassy interpretation of Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love), from the 2004 film De-Lovely about Porter’s life, acts as a nice complement to Morissette’s own rather more hard hitting list songs, as well as her more recent cover of Seal’s Crazy.The Collection begins with the unfailingly familiar opening strains of Thank U, the only note-worthy single success from second album Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. The core of the album, however, comes mainly from Jagged Little Pill and her surprisinglygood 2004 album So Called Chaos. The five singles taken from Jagged Little Pill are immediately recognisable to anyone who listened to music in the late 90s. Still, they represent a mixed bag, from You Oughta Know, the ultimate song for the dumped, through to the flowing and simple You Learn.More surprising to those who haven’t followed Morissette’s more recent releases will be the two tracks taken from So Called Chaos. Eight Easy Steps is a racing blast of pop rock simple splendour. Simple in structure it lyrically satirises self-help, while musically capturing the sweeping momentum of new ideas. Meanwhile, Everything shows that Morissette can carry off the slow, quiet, last-track type of rock – but only just. This is in stark contrast to the edgier Uninvited, which bubbles from solitary piano and vocals to splintering string accompaniedrock fullness.However, for all its fine songs this new Morissette anthology contains a few mistakes. It drifts towards the end into strained instrumentals and downright weirdness. Such an exampleis Mercy, which is a cross between a choral hymn and West African gospel, sung in Hungarian. Also, Morissette’s core fans will probably not appreciate the straight joy and fun of The Porter. In a world where she is now increasingly having to compete with musicians like fellow angry Canadian female rocker Avril Lavigne, Morissette must continue to produce the deeply felt personal and moody lyrics which this compilation celebrates.Still, the album as a whole captures the essence of Morissette over the past ten years and neatly shows the development of her angsty rock songs of the 1990s and an ever more eclecticrange in the early 2000s. With her lyrics, always a mix of the profane and the profound, she has become one of the sounds of the post-grunge style. An entertaining, engaging and all-together great eighty minutes listening.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Singled out
Amarantine,Enya,Out 14 November««««I like Enya. There, I’ve admitted it. I now prepare to be bombarded by invitations to join the Oxford University Celtic Appreciation Society, and maybe even have rocks thrown at me as I walk down Broad Street. However, if you, like myself, have a penchant for New Age Celtic Folk, then I could not recommend Eenya, and her latest single, more enthusiastically.Amarantine embodies her characteristically rich and complex layers of harmonies. It is powerfully haunting, and can only be described as narcotic in its ability to produce an out of body experience. It admittedly suffers from the comparative banalityof singing in Eenglish as opposed to Eelvish, as she did for the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Nevertheless, it’s a gem.Hypnotize,System of a Down,Out 14 November«««Loud, outspoken, and often just a little bit bonkers, System of a are undoubtedly one of the biggest and best metal acts around. Hypnotize is the title track of their forthcoming fifth album, and though overall a good song, it seems a very odd choice for a first single. A quiet, moody beginning gives way to some thumping drums and familiar wailing vocals, but this is surprisinglyrestrained stuff. It never really gets going, though the sporadic eerie guitar janglings are very effective. Intriguing but slightly dull, this lacks the energy that we’ve come to associatewith System of a Ddown over the years. We can only hope that the albumitself will provide an altogether more rewarding proposition when it comes out later this month.I Caught Fire,The Used,Out Now«««This Utah-based quartet has taken a decisive step towards a pop-punk sound, with new single I Caught Fire. They have skilfully managed to createa song that has a softer edge, but doesn’t sacrifice the passion of their older, more vitriolic tracks. Granted the vocals have a teeny-bop quality to them, but McCracken redeems himself in the climactic third chorus. The penetrating guitar rides with the nuances of the verse, and makes up for what the simple bass lacks in punch. Steineckert’s drumming keeps the song’s momentum, not to mention the mind blowing hi-hat blasts. The song’s delicate ending is refreshingly poignant, keeping them away from dangerous Sum41 territory.With this major step forward, we can expect to hear much more of The Used.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Live
Stephen Hough (piano)The Jacqueline du Pré Music Building4 November« « « «For their tenth anniversary year, the organisers of the Jacqueline du Pré music building have wooed a number of illustrious artiststo perform there, among them Stephen Hough, a world-renowned pianist who has won Gramophone’s Record of the Year twice in the past ten years. His programme consisted of a diverse selection on a theme of Mozart, for the composer’s 250th birthday in 2006.The evening began with Mozart’s dark Fantasia in C minor K475. Hough emphasised the piece’s suddenchanges of mood, highlighting its possible origins as a notated improvisation. After briefly leaving the stage, he returned to further applause and burst straight into Schumann’s Fantasy in C major Op.17. His stentorian delivery of the opening theme, accompanied by the smoothest ripple of left-hand semiquavers, gripped the audience from the outset. The second movement,a march based on an obsessive dotted rhythm, was dispatched with ease (even the notorious leaps in the coda), drawing a smattering of applause before he began the final movement. The undulating arpeggios throughout were beautifully pedalled and his carefully graded dynamics gave the perfect degree of shading to the bass melodies. He calmly ended the first half of the concert to raptuousapplause, returning to the stage three times.The second half began with a return to Mozart, with the Sonata in B flat major K333, of which Hough gave an elegant reading. Resisting the common urge to oversentimentalise Mozart’s music, Hough’s playing was fleet throughout, with notably clean passagework and ornamentation in the graceful rondo. Next, he played a set of his own pieces, entitled Three Mozart Transformations (after Poulenc). The first, a subversively seductive, even bluesy, version of the Minuet K1, was followed by the Klavierstück K33, now a prickly futurist work, replete with punchy dissonances. The final piece, based on Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge K596, was elaborated in a lusciously romantic fashion. Hough’s playing was exceptional, and he communicatedthe humour of the pieces as only the composer himself could.The final piece was Liszt’s Fantasy on Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, as completed by Ferruccio Busoni. This rare paraphrase, played by such greats as Gilels and Horowitz, is seldom heard due to its length and complexity. Stephen Hough possessesample technique to deal with its accumulation of virtuoso devices, not to mention the delicacy required in its central section based on Voi che sapete, sung out amidst whirling accompaniment above and below. In the closing minutes, Hough developedNon più andrai to a devastating climax leading to the final descent of the keyboard in alternating chords, which left the man next to me shaking his head in disbelief at the speed and accuracy of Hough’s playing. The rapturous applause was calmed by two encores, Mompou’s Young Girls in the Garden, delicately played, and Stephen Hough’s own Osmanthus’ Romp, an exhilarating way to conclude one of the most memorable concerts seen in Oxford for some time, by one of the greatest pianists of the current generation.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Film
Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bangdir Shane Blackout nowIt starts with a low saxophone note and ends with a shootout, but Shane Black’s modern homage to film noir tends to subvert the rules rather than follow them. In a plot that initially sounds like a mediocre mid-career Eddie Murphy film, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr) is a thief mistaken for an actor who finds himself in the LA of Eelmore Leonard novels. Taking ‘detective lessons’ with Val Kilmer’s aptly named Gay Perry, Lockhart soon finds himself drawn into a world of corruption and cocktail parties.This is Black’s directorial debut, and it is immediately more stylish and subtle than other action flicks. The dialogue is snappy and often hilarious,illustrating Harry’s initiation into the Hollywood underworld. The influence of Raymond Chandleris clear: the film is split into chapters named after his books, and Ddowney Jr’s commentary takes its cues from Philip Marlowe’s inner monologues. Where Marlowe was cool and poetic, though, Lockhart is as confused now as he was when the events that he recollects happened. He often stops or even rewinds the action in order to explain what he thinks is going on, or to fill in bits that he’s forgotten to tell us. This is used early on in the film but is abandonedtowards the end; probably for the best, as after a while it does start to grate.The principal actors are all very convincing, but Kilmer in particular shines as Perry, a private detective who isn’t ashamed to use other’s negative opinion of his homosexualityto get what he needs. Having said this, there seems to be a lack of remorse on the part of all the characters;Lockhart, for example, gets over the brutality that he encounters in his four days of gangster life curiouslyeasily.It seems that the film tries to be two things at once, action-thriller and realistic comedy. This is particularly evident when a Farrellybrothers-esque sub-plot about Harry’s severed finger emerges, distracting the audience from the otherwise intriguing detective story happening around it. If you can live through these distractions, though, at the heart of this film lies a truly innovative interpretation of the detectivemovie; an interpretation that is well worth seeing before it is copied by countless others.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
What goes on tour…
The English music scene is a bizarre beast. To be sure, the market suffers from its pap bands that have endless sunshine blown up their rear ends and enough tuning done with their hair and imagethat the kids can’t help but give in to their charms. One only has to refer to last week’s feature on “Hurricane Pop!” to find examples of musically frail superstars.But there are, equally, hundreds of bands that can play away admirably, keeping tight and rocking hard without ever making any ground in our fundamentally retentive market. We as a nation seem to struggle with taking a risk. Bristol based Transition are exactly the type of band that could be put into this bracket.Here are a band that have been togetherfor their entire formative years, as frontman Jesse Eedbrooke was keen to emphasise during our conversation.Yet most are still to hear from these home-grown rock gents. “We met when we were all ten, eleven, or twelve, when the Ddunne brothers (Niall, guitar, and Steve, bass) moved from Ireland to Bristol.” He sniggers embarrassedly as he tells me “we actuallymet up playing cricket and doing long jump!” It only took the friends a couple of years to realise their potential.“We’ve had the same line up for eight and a half years now, so we have a good understanding, we can change things musically without having to talk about it too much.”When I asked Jesse to describe their style in his own words, for those intrigued, he said, “We’re energetic, we work hard on our arrangement, but the genre is hard to define, there are lots of harmonies and melodic phrases. It’s original stuff. We want to create something that emotionally engages people.”“So you’re pop?” I guess. No. They’re not. “Hopefully we’re unique. All the music we like is different, the only thing we can agree on is U2. Other than that we hate each other’s music! We try to incorporate everyone’s music tastes.”This man’s laid-back friendly banter thus far had certainly won me over, but it would appear that Jesse and his band members realised at university that single converts wouldn’t propel them to success before their fret-bashingfingers ceased up completely. It was time to go further a field.“We suddenly discovered how many international students there were in Bristol and we became friends with these two Taiwanese students, who said ‘Come and tour Taiwan’ and we took them seriously!” He laughs again as he clearly feels a welling of pride over his boys’ achievements so very far away. His voice perks up audibly out of its chilled drawl as he says, “Our first gig was crazy, the Spring Scream in Taiwan. We only got the invitation two weeks before we went so it was miraculous that we got there…we had to get together five grand.”Spring Scream, it would appear, was no mean feat. “Our friends were really excited. The tour went really well and we had one to two thousand people at our first gig. They gave us a Saturday night on stage one, which was perfect timing.”The foursome had somehow landed themselves a slot at the Taiwanese Glastonbury. It didn’t stop there either. The Far Eeast has proven to be a hot bed of Transition lovers. They were soon being interviewed on MTV Asia and appearing on radio in Japan. So why has opportunity come so much more readily abroad? Why is this link with the Land of the Rising Sun so very strong now?“Josh (drums, also an Eedbrooke) has been learning the language for a long time, and our image appeals. We’re quite interactive on stage and while Eenglish crowds will listen and appreciate, Chinese and Oriental guys really love to join in. They connected instantly with the harmonies and melodies.”There we have it ladies and gentlemen,from the horse’s (or rock star’s) mouth. crowds can be too superior to get excited.So what does one do in this situation?After eight years, do you keep plugging away at the Eenglish market, crack the Americans (notably hard, see also: Oasis) or emigrate? Jesse takes this suggestion with a pinch of salt, chuckling, “We’re aiming until Ddecember to do things in Eengland. We’re the first Bristol band since Massive Attack to play at the Carling Academy. It’s looking like there’s goingto be a lot of opportunities and we’ll take them with both hands.”Transition have proven to us that our demanding musical hierarchy can be incredibly harsh to some, while at the same time blowing others out of all proportion. Once again, it’s a case of who you know, not how you play in this country. Maybe it’s time we all went a little Far-Eeast crazy…for the hard workers of our scene.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Soc. Shots
This week, the infamous fifth week blues have brought out the moaning teenage solipsists in the best of us, and let’s face it, sixth week isn’t much better. So why not stomp your feet and embrace your inner adolescence with this selection from Oxford’s film societies that concur: life just isn’t fair.The Oxford University Film Foundation is showing Eedward Scissorhands(1990), directed by Gothic enthusiast Tim Burton, sprinkled with pre-Christmas fantastical charm to soothe your angst-ridden soul. Cue (played with delicious eccentricity by Jonny Ddepp), the quite literal brainchild of a reclusive veteran scientist who dies before he has time to finish his creation, leavinghis frightened charge with some rather inconvenient scissors where hands should be. Salvation seems to arrive when Eedward finds a new home in a curtain-twitching slice of hypocritically self-righteous suburban America. Suffice to say Eeddie raises a few eyebrows. An enduring and finely wrought fairytale for our time, which exhibits the early aesthetic talent and originality of Burton.From those awkward social mix-ups and accidental self-harming that come with having scissors for hands, we pass the figurative trials of teenhood to the proverbial bridge to adulthood that is the gap year. This finds its ultimate incarnation in Walter Salle’s The Motorcycle Ddiaries (2004), shown by the International Cinema Club. “Been there” you may think, “done that, bought (and thrown away) the (now excruciatingly embarrassing Che Guevara) t-shirt”. But Walter Salles’ delightfully understated biopic, based around the diaries of the young Che, Eernesto Guevara, re-injects a shot of humanity and vitality into a crassly homogenised revolutionary icon. The directorial style is modest enough to allow space for a quietly compelling performance from Gael Garcia Bernal. And the breathtakingcinematography of the vast and exquisite South-American backdrop, along with its complex sociological conundrums, speaks for itself.Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), which the Magdalen Film Society is showing, signals anothertime warp, to the worryingly not-so-futuristic-any-more 2019 and an equally impressive, yet contrastinglybleak, visual landscape. It’s hard to overestimate the influence of Scott’s dystopian film-noir on sci-fi filmmakers and self-styled alt-teens alike (since we’re on the subject). The film follows bounty hunter Harrison Ford’s quest for a group of renegade ‘replicants’, androids designed to serve humans, but whose resemblance to their master race has become a bit too close for comfort. Offering a rather abstract slant on the themes of self-realisationand coming of age common to all this week’s films, Blade Runner also guarantees a swift revelatory slap in the face for the sixth week delusion that life couldn’t get much worse. Hmmm, try living in a perennially dark nightmare vision of Los Angeles in which you’ve been contracted to kill the robot (or is it woman?) you’re falling in love with. There, that feels better, doesn’t it?ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Film
In Her Shoes,dir. Curtis Hanson,out now: When Stupid Girl by Garbage announces the start of the film, alarm bells ring over the pretext of two sisters, polar opposites, supposedly united only by their shoe size. Unwitting boyfriends shuffle uneasily in their seats, the prospect of a soporific task of endurance glazing their eyes. Yet, thanks to the accomplished efforts of insightful director Curtis Hanson and an intelligent and witty screenplay, In Her Shoes will gently confound preconceptions.Cameron Ddiaz sensitively portrays a role that has suited her well in the past and suits her well once more. Ddiaz’s character Maggie has reached a dead end in her life, blessed with stunning looks, but a lack of faith in her intellectual ability that causes her to float from job to job and use her looks for soulless gratification. Rose, played admirably by Toni Collette, is a high-flying and diligent lawyer, yet struggles with her self-image, her self-esteem represented by her shoe collection – a lavish accumulation of beauty, kept locked away and never expressed. After relations hit rock bottom one traumatic evening, their paths diverge, and thus begins a journeyof reconciliation and personal growth.With this sibling dichotomy the story does well to avoid a predictableconvergence of the characters into bland, happily inane creatures. Maggie decamps to a retirement community in Florida after she discoversthe correspondence from their distanced grandmother Eella (Shirley MacLaine), hidden by their father. MacLaine is wonderfully regretful yet wryly compassionate, the dynamic between her character and Maggie having a profound effect on them both. A sentimental turning point is marked as Maggie reads Eelizabeth Bishop’s One Art, overcoming her dyslexia and articulating a valuable lesson. Rose’s self-discovery is no less revelatory; as she slowly finds the love of her life in Simon, who demonstrates great patience with her reticence, until she can finally embrace him without insecurity.Curtis Hanson’s measured and sensitiveapproach, obvious in previous works 8 Mile (2002) and LA Confidential(1997), has delivered a film far from mediocre, but which only subtly departs from the large body of works before it. The end result? Eeasily forgettable.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Books
Put What Where?John Naish,Harper Element: Never fool around sexually with a hoover. Such thrusting advicehas never before reached my bookshelf. Put What Where? is a book for all ages, apart from children, older generations, and in fact anyone who doesn’t have a sexually macabre humour. Not itself a sex manual, it gives itself up to a dutiful history of sex advice manuals; the practical adviceitself is given generously, though. By trawling through the original texts of many sex manuals, Naish has compileda book of advice from pretty much everyone: “Medieval women-haters, Victorian adventurers, astral travellers, gay sandal-makers…” The list continues. All of the advice given is as hilarious as it is useless. One Victorian text warns you sternly “not to exceed, in the frequency of your indulgences, the number of months in the year” and a twelfth century Indian poet suggests “Ddon’t kill me!” as a mid-coital exclamation.One of the highlights of the book is the potted history of Sir Richard Burton,the explorer who translated the Karma Sutra into Eenglish, and then sold it back to the Indian population. I don’t know whether that says more about the Indian or the British.The book covers over 2000 years, creating a canon of sex literature from scratch. Ddon’t be fooled by the tongue-in-cheek style: a quick glance at the bibliography confirms that it’s an astoundingly well-researched text, and it genuinely is informative. It gives a chapter-by-chapter account, from “Mankind’s first manuals” to “Saucy Sixties” and beyond, stopping off at key points in mankind’s rather drawn out sexual awakening. As well as the clearly ridiculous sexual advice that is given to each new generation of prospective lovers, you realise that there are some truths which were universally acknowledged many centuriesago. For instance, one medieval writer stated that “women are so full of venom at their time of menstruationthat they poison animals at a glance”.The attention span asked of the reader is minimal – short chapters are broken up with a few pages of facts and points taken straight from the original sex books. Thanks to Put What Where? I now know not to have sex in front of a priest.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Culture Vulture
Antiquity of SuburbiaHeadley Theatre, The Ashmolean5 November 2005The clean modern lines of the Headley Theatre were broken on Friday by two Nigerian poets: Chuma Nwokolo, the Ashmolean’s Writer-In-Residence, and Afam Akeh. It was an amazing experience, attended by people of all ages and backgrounds. Once again the Ashmoleanhas succeeded in uniting people from all walks of life, sex and race.Before the reading started, I spoke to Nwokolo and Akeh, both courteousand friendly. Nwokolo told me about his fascination with comparingpast and present events – a subject explored both in his poetry and his online magazine Ddéjà Vu.The room filled slowly, but people were enthusiastic. Akeh, whose poetry has won many prizes, is interested in the “praise singers” of his country’s past (employed by the monarch to write poems and songs to praise achievements). Nervous at first, he came into his element when reading in Eedo, the language “praise singers” wrote in.The words washed over us like music, absolutely beautiful. He spoke of difficulties in his nation’s history in uncomplicated verse, but what struck me was that both poets were concerned with their own sense of mortality: death crept into every poem, yet this was not a morbid reading. They obviously love what they do, taking great pleasure from our applause.Nwokolo himself then took over. He explained the title Antiquity In Suburbia, inviting us to look forward to when new suburbs would be as old as the Museum now. His poetry aims to bring together the past and present, combining Nigerian with Western culture. His deep rich voice filled the room; a voice which wraps you up and warms you before droppingyou back to earth and making you think. I particularly liked the eponymous poem, with its images of “car mountains” and “refrigerator ridges”, our age seen through the eyes of a post-apocalyptic community.Cloud Watching and Brother’s Dday were also excellent – the latter affected some members of the audienceso much, Nwokolo was asked to read it again.Finally it was question time, and Akeh was asked to translate his Eedo poem. It was interesting, but somewhat of a shame to hear the magical phrases transforming themselvesinto ordinary words. Perhaps it removed some of the mystery and enchantment actually knowing what was said, and this was slightly disappointing. However, the enjoymentof the evening far surpassed any brief moment of disappointment.Melancholy, haunting, and beautiful, this African poetry was a new encounter for me, but very much enjoyed.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Oxford’s secret garden
Rebecca BuckTurrill GardenSummertownIt is a long bicycle ride from the town centre up to the Turrill Garden, behind the SummertownLibrary, but once you arrive, you do find yourself in a surprisingly pleasant and tranquil spot. The Turrill Garden is a well-designedgreen space for the public to use and enjoy, and is regularly used for exhibitions. Presently, the work of Rebecca Buck is being displayed, a sculptress born in the USA but educated in both Eengland and across the Atlantic. She has an impressive CV, with a long list of accomplishmentsin southern Italy and Malaysia aside from her work in and America, and now works out of her Osprey Studio in Wales.Her work is abstract and guided by music, using weatherproof clay to design a range of sculptures, many of which reflect her background in portrait and figure studies. Indeed, the work on display at the Turrill Garden seems to perfectly encapsulatethe broad range of themes she covers.Her sculptures of metaphorical objects, under the title of Life’s a Beach, are shaped with smooth contours that simultaneously mimic the rise and fall of waves, the curve of a sunbather’s hip, the crest of sand dunes. Similarly, the sculptures named Wind, Water, Fire, although solid and upright, skilfully capture an image of licking flames or cascadingwater with a look of fluidity that makes Buck’s sculpting seem effortless.Similar artistic skill is evident in her two depictions of Icarus who, accordingto the Greek myth, flew too close to the sun, and consequently melted his waxed wings, causing him to plummet to his death. The mythologicalcharacter is depicted in a pose of bold confidence with his arms flung back and his chest flaunted to the viewer, like a cocky bird pluminghis feathers. His danger-defying demeanour is powerfully expressed in the artist’s violent, vigorous style: slashes in the ceramic depict the wings’ feathers, sharp grooves give the bodies a slightly contorted shape, and the faces are moulded into an amorphous clump. The striking refusal to give the sculptures a face combined with her rough method gives us ancient mythological heroes but without the serenity that typicallygoes with a Classical style.The most striking works on displayare those called Figures From Yesterday’s News. They are images of despair: a pregnant woman protectivelyhugging her swollen belly; a desperate man, his knees drawn up with his face held in his hands. The lines of these sculptures are aggressive: they seem to have been created as a catharsis, jabbed as well as moulded, pained as well as calm. Ddepicting the human in varying states of aggression and retreat with such a natural, energetic style, the best work is fervent, violent and instilledwith the artist’s own passion.The diversity of Buck’s sculpture is extremely apparent, and perhaps some would say that this is evidence of her ability to look at the beauty and horror of this world. However this creates conflict within the exhibition as a whole: there are two distinct sets of art on display that represent completely different themes. Separately, they work well in the garden environment, but together, the themes seem to clash. More importantly, it is a small display that exists not to attract visitors but to provide a pleasant environment for users of the Summertown library to read in. If you do find yourself in Summertown and can afford the time, do call in to the gardens and sit and admire the diversity of the exhibition, but the bike ride up there specifically with sculpture in mind is not recommended.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005