In the Wake of DeterminationStory of the Yearout now« « «Extremo. Metalcore. Post-hardcore. As the boundaries between punk, metal and emo gradually blur, music journalists become ever more inventive in the terms they use to classify the emerging sounds. In the past couple of years, bands such as Thrice and Funeral For A Friend have combined the aggression of hardcore with metallicriffs and the melody of emo, to both critical acclaim and commercial success.In the US, Story Of The Year are one of the leading exponents of this new genre. Ddespite having formed nearly a decade ago, it is only recently that they have made their mark on the record industry. Their debut, 2003’s Page Avenue, sold nearly a million copies, and the band have spent the past two years touring extensively, with this album attemptingto capture the intensity of those live performances. Tracks such as the driving Our Time Is Now, or the pure hardcore punk of Meathead, are truly ferocious, combining heavy, grindingguitars with singer Ddan Marsala’s impressive guttural howls.Ddespite their new found aggression,the production is still slick, and ultimately it is melody that remains Story Of The Year’s undeniable forte. Particular highlights include superblyinfectious album opener and first single We Don’t Care Anymore, the hook-laden Taste The Poison, and the punk rush of Take Me Back. It is this gift for melody that sets Story Of The Year apart from their contemporaries and is clearly key to their immense success on the other side of the Atlantic.However, towards the end of the album the listener’s attention begins to wander. Although In The Wake Of Determination is a relatively consistentalbum, its fundamental weakness is its lack of variation. Later tracks on the album, although not inherently bad, feel repetitive and formulaic, with identical song structures and predictable chord changes. Only a hidden track at the end of the album, a subtle acoustic number, indicates that Story Of The Year have the potential to be more than a one trick pony. Whereas other post-hardcore bands, such as Thrice, have pushed themselves artistically as their career progresses, Story Of The Year are already beginning to sound stagnant. For an album that started so promisingly,it is frustrating that the band’s creativity seems to run out half way through. The band are also occasionallylet down lyrically. In particular, the earnest and autobiographical Five Against The World, despite being one of the strongest melodies on the album, is the sound of a band that is taking themselves too seriously.Overall, this is an impressive sophomore effort, and there is no doubting the musicianship or songwriting capabilities of the band. It remains to be seen whether over time Story Of The Year can develop further, and produce something truly worthy of the hype.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005

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

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

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

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

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