Introduction

There’s a thing that happens to a number of older people, like me: they realise that the world is moving on and could leave them behind if they don’t make some effort to keep up. In some cases this involves trying to get a handle on youth culture, which leads most of their peers to say: “He’s entering his second childhood; so inappropriate”, or: “So sad, she should act her age”. Well, sod them. But yes, it can feel a bit weird to look into stuff which the young are taking for granted, but without the implicit reassurance of those around you. So with these thoughts in mind I’ll sketch out how I came to be interested in a few anime and manga, and what I’ve made of them.

Actually, I have not the faintest recollection of how I first came across anime. It was ten or more years ago, and I found some snippets – stills they would have been – from an anime called “Golden Boy”. The pictures were intriguing in style, and there were hints that it was a moderately well-regarded example of its type, so I looked around for a copy, only to be defeated in my attempts to find one, as it appeared only to be available on VHS tape, from Japanese sources. Actually, I got an English dubbed DVD of it recently, which I’ll mention later.

I should mention, just by the by, that I have had a passing interest in Japanese culture for a while, as a result of visiting Japan on business in 1980 or so (very successfully, as well – I sold my software through agents there for several years after that), and this may be why things Japanese sometimes make me pause a little longer as my gaze moves over them.

Skip to about four years or so ago. I was studying a piano transcription of Bach’s setting of Komm süßer Tod – written originally for voice and accompaniment and then rearranged as a chorale prelude for organ. While searching for information on the original, I happened upon a YouTube clip of the unrelated song from the movie End of Evangelion. I was immediately intrigued by the song itself, both music and words, and fascinated by the collage of images that accompanied it (I soon found that there were a number of different videos backing the song, though only one is that of the film itself). So being at a loose end shortly afterwards, I read up about the movie, and thus the original anime series.

The first thing I found was that there was a lot of really peculiar stuff written about it. Much was frankly offputting, but some of it interested me enough to keep me reading, and after a while I decided to get the films to watch. This sent me off on another adventure as I discovered the number of versions and packaging of them that were available, and how hard it was to tell on eBay which one was being offered. Still, I ended up with the best versions to have, so that was all right. But then I watched the films. The first, Death, I had taken from what I’d read to be a rather terse summary of the main parts of the anime series – and I don’t mind terse; however, it turned out on first watching to be completely incomprehensible. Still, nothing daunted, I watched the second film, End of Evangelion, hoping that it might clarify what had gone before. It didn’t; but I was once again haunted by Komm süßer Tod, and this time also by the parts of the film surrounding it, and the strange ending. So I applied myself to reading more about it, and decided that I had to get the whole series to watch in order to work out what it was really about. Once again, it took time to work out which of the various packages that seemed to be around on eBay and Amazon was the sensible one to get, and I ended up with a tin box of the Platinum edition (again, the best choice, fortunately). But by the time it arrived, I had other things on my mind, and being daunted by the prospect of thirteen hours of viewing I put it to one side and forgot about it.

Now skip forward again to the time that the buzz was starting to build about the forthcoming Scott Pilgrim film. Again, I can’t recall what specifically drew me in – my memory’s crap (always has been, it’s not just my age) – but I found myself reading the books and waiting for a pre-ordered copy of the last volume to arrive. I was really taken by both the story and the style of drawing, which is realistically expressive, even though stylised. [And, yes, I do know that Scott Pilgrim isn't really manga, not being Japanese - but it still fits in the same category from my perspective.]  Thinking about the relationship of the Scott Pilgrim style of drawing with that of manga, I was reminded about Golden Boy – and this time, I found it was readily available on DVD and got hold of a copy.

Golden Boy

I was really disappointed. Although the art is well-enough done, and the main character (Kintaro Oe) has his appealing side, it is clear that the series really only exists to provide fanservice bordering on hentai – lots of mild titillation, a fetish for toilets that a female has sat on, and little else; only the flimsiest of plots, and nothing that could be called development. I’ve not seen the manga (which was the original form), but understand that it is more sexually explicit.

Scott Pilgrim

Scott Pilgrim, on the other hand, I found a compulsive read. The character of Scott is a convincing depiction of a drifter in his early 20s, quite similar to some I know, in fact. The way he approaches the difficulties in his developing relationship (represented by the evil exes) is also nicely shown – and again realistic in the way that several of them he can only beat with support from his friends or outside help (the Vegan Police!). His, and Ramona’s, problems with deciding whether the effort is worthwhile are also well covered. And as an outside observer of the culture concerned, I found discovering details of the references to music and games most intriguing as well.

The film doesn’t, on the whole, quite measure up to the books, I think. Although I can’t criticise his playing of the part, I simply didn’t find that Michael Cera looked the part somehow; and the ending was weak in comparison with the books (which of course hadn’t been finished when the screenplay was written). But the fantastic energy and pace of the film, and the way it incorporated print and game effects into the live action, were all highly impressive, making it a worthwhile film to see in spite of its flaws; the music wasn’t bad either. So when someone in the PJ forum described Scott Pilgrim as “the shitty FLCL”, obviously I had to find out what they were talking about.

FLCL (Fooly-Cooly)

FLCL (pronounced Fooly-Cooly, representing Japanese Furi-Kuri) is another anime of six episodes; but unlike Golden Boy it has a strong plot, and real character development. It is also at times one of the most frenetically hyper-active things I’ve ever seen, which I guess explains the reference to it in relation to the Scott Pilgrim film. There are parodies of many other popular series, such as South Park, and of contemporary Japanese culture; also lots of explicit breaking of the fourth wall. The underlying plot concerns the adolescent stirrings of sexual awareness in a twelve-year-old boy, Naota Nandaba. This is tied up with a rather surreal science-fiction plot involving a girl of uncertain age who is apparently from space, and a factory with no windows or doors (weird, eh?) in the shape of an iron – oh, and not forgetting robots which appear out of a portal in Naota’s head and guitars that are offensive weapons. And the old cat is an intergalactic boss, or the representative of one such. Anyway, what happens is a large dollop of chaos which is easier to comprehend on second viewing, accompanied by a splendidly appropriate soundtrack (which apparently nearly wrecked the budget) from a band called The Pillows. The anime was made for release on video/DVD rather than TV broadcast in the first instance, which is, I gather, a little unusual – as is the fact that the associated manga came after rather than before the anime.

The FLCL manga is as crazy as the anime, and covers much the same ground, but there are big differences in plot and characterisation, and a distinctively crude style of drawing (deliberately so) that makes it even harder to see what’s going on. They are both huge fun – but even though they are very different, I really would not recommend trying to read the manga before getting familiar with the anime. There is also a novelisation, written by the original script writer, which fills out lots of detail which is glossed over in the anime, and which some people find makes it easier or more rewarding to watch (I haven’t read it yet).

In the anime (and in the manga, but curiously not in its English translation) there is a reference to Naota’s father having written a book on Evangelion. This reminded me that I had a whole lot of DVDs waiting to be watched (it also made me aware that FLCL was from Gainax, the same studio that had produced Neon Genesis Evangelion). So, I fired up Handbrake, and ripped the Evangelion DVDs to carry around on my iPhone for watching in odd moments like lunchbreaks.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

So, on to the big one – 26 episodes and two films, and counting… Like FLCL, Evangelion is pretty hard to get one’s head round first time through, so I recommend deferring judgement (if you feel like judging it) at least until after a second complete watching. Is it worth the effort, you might want to know first? Well – I don’t regret it. I do like to be deliberately broadminded, as I feel that if I don’t like something, I am in danger closing my mind to whatever the artist had in mind through lack of understanding. One complication with Evangelion is that the emphasis of what it is about changes through the series, and this throws some critics who feel cheated when whatever they’d latched on to is left hanging or not fully resolved. At the start, you are watching a pretty straighforward story about a fight between humans with their “Evangelions” or “Evas” and the somewhat mysterious “angels”; there’s also a good dose of adolescent conflict with parent stuff. About halfway through the story changes its focus, and the reason for fighting the angels becomes more murky as the conflict between the commander of Nerv (the group doing the fighting) and Seele (the group financing it) takes centre stage. Then there is a shift to impending mental breakdowns in the chief two of the “pilots” of the Evas (who have to be fourteen years old and motherless, by the way). And finally, we have a window into the depression of the main pilot (Shinji Ikari) – and by all accounts, that of the director, Hideaki Anno. In fact, in the last two episodes of the anime, the ostensible plot concerning Seele and Nerv is essentially abandoned, and the conclusion has to be deduced; which is one reason the films were made – they spell out the end of the story more explicitly. The thread that holds this all together is the character of Shinji, first through his relationship with his father, and then his difficulties relating to anyone at all, leading to serious depression; his father Gendou (commander of Nerv), co-pilot Asuka, and manager Misato are the main foils for examining Shinji’s state of mind. And this summary doesn’t touch on the contentious (and overstated) religious elements, or the examination of Japanese society that some people see in the series.

Evangelion is another anime that was conceived for the screen rather than adapted or developed from a manga. There is also a manga, written by the character designer of the anime, but although its first volume came out before the release of the first anime as a taster, the rest of it took much longer to appear – in fact, even though it started in 1995, it is still not finished. The thirteenth volume is slated to appear in late 2012, and it is not clear whether it will be the last. The manga is not quite a simple retelling of the story of the anime, but neither is it greatly different as was the case with FLCL. In this case, the story is essentially the same, but with changes of emphasis – some angels are left out, which reduces a somewhat repetitive element, and on the other hand interpersonal relationships are made more explicit and developed further. In particular, the character of Kaworu – who is both an Eva pilot and the last angel – is greatly expanded in a worthwhile and interesting manner (developing the relationship role filled solely by Rei in the anime). I recommend the manga if you want more after getting to know the anime, as it provides a further degree of character development – but it is not necessary to understand what’s going on.

The director has also returned, fifteen years on, to remake the entire series as four films. The first is very similar to the first half-dozen episodes of the anime, and the second takes us all the way up to episode 20, with very substantial changes. The third is expected in late 2012, with the last following in 2013, and it will be interesting to see how he builds the rest of the story out to fill two whole films.

Returning to the anime, what is it about Shinji? “Shut Up, Shinji”, said the teeshirt that Jeph Jaques sold briefly on the Questionable Content web site, echoing a common complaint about the series – that Shinji is an annoying wimp. But should he shut up? I rather think not. It is not given to everybody to be the tough guy who just accepts or rejects what’s going on. Some, many, perhaps most, people actually find themselves facing conflicts in their ordinary lives that they cannot so easily resolve, and I think Shinji can stand as their representative, without shame or embarrassment. He wants to do what is right, but he doesn’t want to fight, in particular not to fight other people; he finds that the world has placed him in a position that he can neither by action nor inaction avoid hurting those whom he comes to love (this comes to a head in the section about Touji), so he resigns himself to the thought that he can only avoid this by never loving anyone again; and it is made clear to him again and again that his value to other people – even his father – lies only in what he can do for them when he obeys their orders. No wonder he’s depressed! At the end (both in episode 26 of the series, and somewhat less clearly in the film The End of Evangelion), he realises that he can value himself for himself, and that this understanding can underlie his response to orders, whether he accepts or rejects them (i.e. the decisions he makes for himself); but how he will then rebuild his world with this new understanding is left to the imagination, as the story ends there, and extending the metaphor for the collapse of his personality (the Human Instrumentality Project) into the new reality would be a step too far.

Conclusion

So, is there a common thread to these stories which I have been drawn into reading? All of them have had the phrase “coming-of age story” associated with them; but actually they are all quite different, and are treating very different aspects of coming of age, if they treat it at all. Leaving aside Golden Boy, which isn’t about much at all, we have Scott Pilgrim, who is concerned with forging a relationship which has a chance of lasting and giving meaning to his life, Naota Nandaba, who is discovering the chaotic effects of puberty but decides in the end that in spite of these new feelings he is best off remaining a child for a little longer, and Shinji Ikari, who is discovering after huge internal struggles that only when he can value himself will he be able to place values on what happens in the world around him. Utterly different messages in fact, and all valuable in their way. But above all, these three stories are also entertaining; none of them should be considered a waste of time, and all have the potential to make you think, if you take the trouble.

I can’t say whether these stories are typical, in their depth, of anime and manga in general. I dare say they are not; but they have certainly made it clear to me that these forms of expression that have grown up entirely within my adult lifetime are not to be ignored or dismissed simply as modern trivia.

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What to get

Golden Boy – don’t bother.

Scott Pilgrim – both film and books are readily available in the obvious places. The US printing of volume 4 has a section in colour which the UK printing just rendered in monochrome. There is also a neat iPhone app for reading it (in the UK, at least). Fully coloured versions of the books are being prepared; the first two volumes are expected this autumn.

FLCL – omnibus editions of the anime and (published just this week) the manga are readily available. The novelisation is long out of print, and pretty expensive secondhand.

Neon Genesis Evangelion – you have to be a little careful. There have been several versions of the anime in the west, but there is no reason to get any other than the “Platinum” collection (not, for instance, the “perfect” collection); this is in print in the US (region 1), but not in the UK (region 2). Get the film End of Evangelion; this is out of print (it was licensed to a different company from the anime series), but not hard to find secondhand – it doesn’t matter if you get the set with the other film, Death, but you don’t really need that. It’s often recommended to watch End of Evangelion after episode 24, returning to the last two episodes afterwards to get more insight into Shinji’s thought processes in the last section of the film.

The new films are readily available.

If you want the manga, search for Sadamoto (the writer) as well as Evangelion, to avoid other unofficial publications. The English edition of the first seven volumes was published in mirror image, to match our direction of reading; then they were republished in the original Japanese orientation, to read from right to left, as “Special Edition”. But best is to try to get the 2004 second edition (and be careful to check the language, as there are French, Spanish and German translations as well as English); there are twelve volumes so far, and volume 9 in English is rare and expensive for some reason.

Not all wizards wear pointy hats.

Welcome, once again, to this week’s Movie Reviews. I thought maybe because of the long weekend we would watch more of the suggestions than usual, but two of the suggestions were actually multiple films, so that ruled that idea out. Instead we took two out of the five down to the south coast while we visited Ben’s parents and figured we could watch them together.

This week’s theme was “Wizard Death-Match”. Marc Fennell chose the films for this theme in terms of strange wizards, rather than particularly impressive or “noble” ones. While this is an interesting take on the theme, he still chose some obvious films to suggest, and I feel like it would have been a more interesting theme if he had made a few different choices.

We started on Friday (after a deliciously sacrilegious dinner of Chinese food) with Big Trouble in Little China. Tough Guy Trucker Jack Burton (Kurt Russel) accidentally gets caught in the middle of a feud in San Francisco’s Chinatown between factions of the Chinese population. Somehow this also involves some powerful (but cursed) wizard-emperor guy who is looking for a specific lady to marry to break his curse. Or something like that.

In regards to the movie, I took notes while watching it because it was so strange and I knew I was going to forget things. It devolved pretty quickly into comments on how terrible Kurt Russel’s hair is. Seriously, every film I have seen him in has him sporting a spectacular mullet. He seems to never learn. Some of the notes I can’t even remember what I was referring to. One of them was “Jack Burton, so manly he defies physics”; I think maybe he jumped to kick someone and flew through the air? There was a lot of that going on, so I guess it could have referred to any number of scenes.

I don’t know if I am being overly sensitive these days from having to deal with racist coworkers, but I felt pretty uncomfortable while watching this. For me it felt kinda racist, in the same way that Monkey Magic does; it was cheesy and the effects were a bit dodgy so it seemed harmless, but something was still a bit off. I understand that Chinese culture and history and religion is pretty confusing to westeners in general and Big Trouble in Little China play on that and refer to that throughout the film, but I just can’t get past the fact that most of the time it felt like I was laughing at the silly Asians and their silly culture. Look at them; so funny with all their elaborate hells and they’re all good at fighting because they all study martial arts, right?

Ben gave me a different perspective on it, which I think helped me to understand it but didn’t really make me feel any less uncomfortable by it. He feels that every character in the film is a cliché, not just the Asian ones. Jack Burton is a stereotypical action hero tough guy thrown in the middle of a strange situation; Gracie Law is a clichéd plucky attorney trying to get more information about ‘evil’ Lo Pan; even the journalist is a clichéd ditzy woman being pointed towards a story and missing it entirely. The Chinese characters may also be stereotypes but they seem to be more self referential, in that they also realise that certain aspects of their culture is batshit crazy.

That being said, even though I was not entirely comfortable with the film, I did enjoy it to some extent. Jack’s reactions to the increasingly insanity was a nice touch, and Lo Pan’s character in general was hilarious. I did enjoy the way it was the opposite to a normal buddy comedy film; the big tough guy was actually pretty useless while his slightly weedy sidekick is actually pretty proficient in beating people up. I think I’ll have to watch this again by myself or just with Ben to catch the bits I’ve missed and see if I feel less uncomfortable the second time around.

The next night we watched Excalibur. The plot’s fairly obvious, it’s just the story of King Arthur and Merlin.

The character of Merlin was actually pretty interesting, though. Nicol Williamson, who played Merlin, had an interesting take on the role. He was still pretty camp like the rest of them, but there were times where he seemed so frustrated with the people around him. He just keeps trying to help men but they keep not listening to him and doing stupid things all the time; then they keep asking for him to help them fix what they screwed up! I can see that being really annoying if I was in that situation. Ben mentioned that at times he seemed to be portrayed as a kind of jester at the court, which makes Arthur asking him for his advice at times take a more mocking feel, and I guess makes the character of Merlin a bit more tragic. He was definitely the most interesting of all the characters in the film. I really think I need to watch this again without Ben’s Dad making a running commentary, but it’s so long and I am lazy, so I probably won’t. What I have really taken away from this film is that I want to watch the miniseries again.

We meant to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail this weekend also, but figured it would be best to leave that until we were back home, and then watched the new episodes of our latest favourite TV shows instead. I’ve seen Holy Grail before, and the wizard in that s not really a hug part of the film so I couldn’t really be bothered watching it all for that one section. The other suggestions were the Harry Potter series and Lord of the Rings series, and we don’t have enough hours in the day to watch all eight Harry Potter films and the three Lord of the Rings ones, so they also got rejected. I can see why they were chosen though, the main wizards in both series are pretty quirky compared to the stereotypical all-knowing sorcerer in a lot of fantasy stories.

That’s it for this week! Next week is going to test me to see if I am claustrophobic or not, so it might not be as successful as some of the previous themes. I guess we’ll have to see how it goes, eh?

B. Hamilton are a three-piece band from Oakland, CA. Initially a project comprising various musicians accompanying singer-songwriter Ryan Christopher Parks, most recently the line up has solidifying to include bassist Andrew Macy and drummer Bill Crowley. Everything I Own Is Broken is their first full length album, excluding a collection of songs released back in 2009. After initially releasing the album online following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the band will release a physical version of the album through fascinating ecologically-minded independent record label Parks & Records.

As soon as I heard this record I was taken aback by the power and energy contained within and I was compelled to write about it as soon as possible. Sometimes you hear an album and just know it will stay with you for a long time. This is one of those occasions. I’m enormously indebted to Conan Neutron of fellow Oakland, CA band Victory & Associates for cluing me into this great band. They deserve exposure and this album needs to be heard. Check out the Bandcamp page for a taster and then head on down to Parks & Records to place your pre-order.

You can read my full review here.

Aeronautical imagery plays a considerable part in the Oakland psychedelic rock trio B. Hamilton, from the dramatic cover art of a house striking a jumbo jet to the soaring, effervescent instrumentation and melody contained on sophomore album Everything I Own Is Broken. Indeed, the creation story of the band involves an aerospace machine shop owned by the father of singer-songwriter Ryan Christopher Parks, in which the young Anaheim native would sit and record ideas which eventually evolved into B. Hamilton songs. The shimmering, reflective soundscapes woven by Parks, bassist Andrew Macy and drummer Bill Crowley bear the hallmarks of echo-heavy hangars and the metallic fuzz of machine parts. The most obvious reference point would be any of the great shoegaze bands of the past twenty years or so, though B. Hamilton’s songs are far more passionate and energetic than any group in the loosely defined subgenre. Instead, it’s something of a homogenous hybrid of raw blues and restlessly creative indie pop, cast against a background of expansive, quasi-orchestral noise rock.

The major strength of B. Hamilton is the trio’s ability to maintain a sense of song in the glorious cacophony they summon throughout the brilliant Everything I Own Is Broken, with the assistance of a generous handful of musician friends accompanying on violin, percussion and Wurlitzer. Parks is a terrific guitar manipulator and a soulful singer, alternately detonating cacophonies of aerated, effects-heavy noise or crooning in his deeply affecting tenor. Intentionally or otherwise, it’s an album which is essentially a post-modern take on old fashioned blues standards. The songs are rife with the trials and tribulations of simple folk trying to make good against the grain of the world. At the root of these evocative character studies is the remarkable Parks, a livewire personality who throws himself headlong into the music in a way which completely transcends ironic distance or feigned dilettantism. In a subgenre littered with agnosticism and apathy, the guitarist is a beacon of commitment to his own relentless muse.

There’s a tangible sense of lingering desperation which haunts the title track, itself a borderline jazzy take on the guitar-heavy soul often associated with the various projects of Greg Dulli. Hopelessness in the face of hardship is a reoccurring theme throughout the record, especially on the country-tinged ‘Now or Eventually’ – a rumination on the frustrations of an artist hindered by disinterest, set against psychedelic slide guitar licks which dissolve into a sickly blur. The versatile rhythm section of Macy and Crowley meet Parks every step of the way, underpinning his guitar histrionics with steady, nuanced playing such as the venomous back-beat which propels the menacing ‘Dolltime’. At the point where the band seems set to explode, the trio launches into a dense polyrhythmic coda which makes the eventual climax all the more satisfying. The dizzying crescendos which characterise show-stopping fuzz-fests like the mind-erasing opener ‘Me and Margaret Counting Countdowns’ would normally take the average space rock band several albums to achieve, whereas B. Hamilton have them unboxed and assembled with minutes to spare.

Keeping in with the blues root which semi-defines much of the album, there are the inevitable tales of liquor, loose women and brushes with the law. ‘Miss Carolina’ is a sleazy, seductive number – part Delta blues, part Blue Velvet. The gentler, more reflective ‘Gold Tooth’ is a surprisingly tender portrait of a former lover, scored with beautifully layered violin tracks. The heart-felt ‘Between the Gutters and The Ballrooms’ vaguely resembles the late Jeff Buckley at his most tolerable. Secreted towards the end of the album, ‘Oakland and Anaheim (Ain’t Divided by the 5 Tonight)’ is a brutally stark acoustic requiem for victims of Police shootings in California. The song cites both the slaying of Oscar Grant in Oakland and the mistaken-identity shooting of Parks’ sometime friend Julian Alexander in Anaheim, both of whom died at the hands of Law Enforcement Officers. Accompanied by only his guitar and with a voice positively brimming with contempt, Parks tells the tale of two men united by the ultimate futility of their deaths. The consciously incorporated background noise is an effective piece of audio vérité, gradually becoming part of the composition as the song draws to a world-weary conclusion. It’s a powerful finale for an album which is an early certainty for inclusion on any best-of lists at the end of the year.

B. Hamilton – Everything I Own Is Broken
2012 – Parks & Records

B. Hamilton Bandcamp
Parks & Records Website

Robbing banks is harder than it looks

This week had the theme of “Smash and Grab: how to plan a movie heist”. I went through a phase of watching movie heists when I was younger, and was excited to see that I hadn’t seen any of the suggestions this week. Hell, I am pretty sure I hadn’t even heard of any of them, let alone thought about watching them.

Friday involved getting entirely too drunk and commiserating over Sydney losing a soccer game, so for a nice quiet Saturday night I sat down and watched Out Of Sight. Jack Foley (George Clooney), a man who makes a career of robbing banks, tries to escape prison and in doing so encounters Attractive Latino Policewoman (Jennifer Lopez), Karen Sisco. Attractions follow, and while he tried to pull off one last big job, she tries to find him and catch him.

One thing that really stood out more than anything else was Jennifer Lopez and her character.  And it didn’t stand out in a good way.  Jennifer Lopez is not a particularly good actor, and her “Attractive Latino [person]” character is pretty boring seeing as that is all she does in any film she’s in. Throughout the film I kept thinking that the criminals were much more interesting characters, and wished there were more scenes of them in jail, or doing heists or generally just interacting with each other instead of the lovey-dovey sexual tension bullshit between Lopez and Clooney. You guys want to bang, we get it, no one cares. I want to see Don Cheadle act like a tough guy and not have an awful cockney accent, dammit. I don’t want to see your stupid Jennifer Lopez Face. Get off my screen. The fact that everyone else in the movie were more interesting and better actors really hammered home how boring and bland Jennifer Lopez was. I think that really let the film down, even a pulpy trashy movie like this.

On Sunday we chucked Bonnie and Clyde on, thinking we should watch it seeing it’s a classic or whatever. We got maybe ten minutes in before turning it off. We didn’t even make it to any sort of real bank robbery type scene. We just got sick of “oh I am attractive. And SO LONELY.” and “I am dangerous, look how dangerous I am. DANGER.” It was full of over acting and was pretty boring on top of that, so we skipped it. Maybe some other time when we’re more accommodating of old movies.

We moved swiftly on to Dog Day Afternoon. Al Pacino is a Vietnam Veteran turned luckless bank robber; his sidekick is a bit of an idiot, the bank has hardly and money in it, his hostages aren’t scared of him, and soon the bank is surrounded by hundreds of policemen. Nothing’s going his way.

But then it got interesting. Al Pacino’s character, Sonny, got intriguing, and his motivations got deeper than “I need some money”. While it still never really fully grabbed me, I did start paying more attention to what was going on and wondering what was going to happen. Al Pacino was also really good in this. You start to feel for his character after a while and when things just keep going wrong for him you get more sympathetic. The whole scenario seemed to drag on and unravel more as it went along that it got a bit frustrating towards the end, but that seemed to add to it all. Apparently it was based on a true story about a botched robbery in New York and the impending hostage situation, and the dragging out of the film feels like it echoes the tension that would have occurred at that time. I can understand why Marc Fennel said it should have won more Oscars than it did.

This was definitely a thinking movie, but we weren’t really in the mood for a thinking movie. I feel a bit bad that I didn’t really appreciate it because I wanted something more like Out of Sight, but I still enjoyed it to a degree. Maybe we’ll watch it again some other time when we’re ready to think.

The other suggestions this week included Heat (Criminal leading lots of heists is feeling bored of it all; Cop chasing him down feeling the same way. ) and Rififi (French dude fresh out of prison for stealing jewellery organises the Biggest French Jewel Heist). I feel like maybe Rififi would have been a better choice than Bonnie and Clyde, but after a week of French cinema last week I didn’t really want to watch mroe films with subtitles. I do think it was our loss though, it sounds really good. Next week we’re visiting Ben’s parents, but will still be sitting down to watch our Wizarding movies for the theme. Who knows, maybe his parents will give their opinions as well?

I’ve been living with the new Dirty Three album for several weeks now.  “Living with” seems the only appropriate way to describe a listener’s relationship with the Dirty Three’s music: rarely has there been a band whose work can so readily comment upon the simple profundity of the most mundane domestic chores and the most life-shaking emotions equally.  “Comment” may seem a facetious word to use when describing the music of a band which famously avoids the human voice; yet music, by avoiding language, is uniquely able to cut to the core of human experience, and the Dirty Three’s music in particular consistently strikes a remarkable balance between tempestuous and tranquil, furious and melancholy, joyous and resigned.  In many ways it’s the most human thing imaginable.

Which can, admittedly, sometimes lead a listener to disregard the Dirty Three’s music as overly familiar.  Familiar not just because their sound has barely changed throughout the course of their career, but also because the emotions the music describes are not melodramatic or hokey but are honest and grounded.  The Dirty Three make music about the real and messy business of being a human being.  It can sometimes be tempting when listening to Dirty Three records en masse to ask: “Yes, but what else is there?”  As if there could be anything else.

In many ways it’s a surprise that we have, now, more music from the band to revel in.  The process of listening to the Dirty Three always seems like a rediscovery – at least for me, as they’re very much one of those bands whose music I’ll disregard for a long time, and then when I start to listen to them again suddenly nothing else will do – and that sense of rediscovery goes doubly now, given that prior to the release of Toward the Low Sun they hadn’t put out an album in seven years.  Warren Ellis, Jim White, and Mick Turner have remained active, pursuing their own separate careers, but to hear them back together – and back in such fine form – is startling and invigorating.

It seems to have invigorated them, too, at least if their appearance a few Fridays ago at Melbourne’s subterranean cavern, the Palace Theatre, is anything to go by.  The last time I saw the Dirty Three play must have been over ten years ago, and though since then much about their stage act has remained the same, within that sameness there are a constellation of subtle changes.  Particularly in Warren Ellis’ stage presence: he still spends much of the time playing with his back to the audience, but what once seemed like shyness now seems like an act of profound and deliberate musical connection with the band’s astonishing drummer, Jim White (Mick Turner, as ever, remains to the side of the stage, coolly laying down the darkly glittering foundations for the band’s great musical edifice).  Watching Jim White play drums is still worth the price of a ticket just on its own, and roadies still have to occasionally run out onto the stage to hastily reassemble parts of his quivering drumkit – but at the Palace Theatre show there was a lightness to his playing that I can’t remember having seen before.  Twice I swear I even saw him flip a drumstick in the air, an act which was so astonishingly casual that it seemed the very opposite of a showboating rock-drummer-dude party trick and instead came to speak volumes about the indescribable joy of playing music.

When he faced the audience Warren Ellis, too, seemed to be having a whale of a time.  His famous pre-song monologues were (thankfully) intact, but whereas in the past they seemed to be shot through with flecks of anger and frustration, now they’re gleefully satirical and cheeky.  Perhaps he’s mellowed with age – “I’m forty-seven” he announced at one point in the evening, answering a question from the audience – but when he described a gloriously absurd scene of Bono from U2 shacking up with the Australian mining magnate Gina Reinhart and opening a chain of pie shops as Mr and Mrs Hewson – “Because he’s dropped that silly name” – it was deliriously funny.

Not that Ellis has lost the viciousness of his wit: set opener ‘Rain Song’ was introduced as “a song about being reincarnated as a pimple on the arse of Gina Reinhart” (throughout the set, Ellis wove an increasingly absurdist narrative of recurring characters, all real people, and fanciful events; late in the set, a song was described as being about taking a stash of now-restricted pseudoephedrine up to Coffs Harbour to make a revolutionary new hallucinogen with the aid of Phil from Grinspoon – before taking over a local franchise of Mr & Mrs Hewson’s Pie Shop).  ’Rain Song’ is from the new album, Toward the Low Sun, and throughout the show most of the album got an airing.  The ecstatic reception of each song suggested an audience already familiar with the album, and the only thing that threatened to dampen a joyous night out was the wildly inappropriate mix from the sound desk – at one point Ellis referred to the band “sounding like Led Zeppelin” – with the thunderous amplification applied to White’s drums riding roughshod over everything else, including the subtlety of his own playing, and Turner’s guitar completely absent at first as both he and a roadie fiddled with his amplifier while Ellis and White extended a song beyond its natural length until the problem could be fixed.  Fortunately any sound issues were smoothed out by around the third song in the set, and the Dirty Three are allowed to sound like the Dirty Three.

Which is exactly how they sound on Toward the Low Sun.  Their previous album, Cinder, came across as a scattered and possibly confused search for something new, after thirteen years of steadily honing a particular style and songcraft.  It sounded like a band that felt worried about becoming stale, and if it never really cohered it was only because it offered so many possible routes into the future.  Yet in many ways it seems that that future never arrived: instead of pursuing any of the possibilities suggested by Cinder, the band went silent, for such a long time that many people assumed they’d broken up.  (The Dirty Three’s members, all Melbournians originally, now famously each live in different continents.)  When they resurfaced a couple of years ago to play a series of performances of their 1998 album Ocean Songs, the retrospective nature of the exercise didn’t encourage hope that the band was still an active proposition – after all, we live in an age when it’s not unusual for “classic” bands to reconvene without offering any prospect of new music.  So when news of fresh material came through it landed with the thrill and jolt of a lightning strike.

That Toward the Low Sun easily sits alongside any of the band’s previous albums seems almost more than we deserve.  Who could have expected the new songs to match such glorious heights of the past as ‘Some Summers They Drop Like Flies’; ‘Everything’s Fucked’; ‘Sue’s Last Ride’?  Yet Towards the Low Sun approaches those peaks without trepidation and with wonderful regularity: songs such as ‘Moon on the Land’, ‘Sometimes I Forget You’ve Gone’, and particularly ‘Ashen Snow’ are as good as nearly anything the band’s done in the past.  This is only reaffirmed by seeing the band play these new songs live: as the setlist for the gig at the Palace Theatre inevitably dug into the band’s back-catalogue, there was no disruption to the music’s flow and the new material sat comfortably and naturally alongside the old – and was greeted, already, with nearly as much enthusiasm.

The enthusiasm of the crowd was, of course, not just for the music, but at least as much for the band; for the fact of the band, their presence there on the stage being playing music that’s deeply beloved by not a large number of people, but a passionate few.  That the Dirty Three were back was a cause of palpable joy for everyone in the sold-out audience.  Before the inevitable (but well-deserved) encore the band finished the set with ‘Ashen Snow’, one of the new songs and an instant classic if anything on Toward the Low Sun is.  On record the delicate and simple piano melody of the song is leavened by Warren Ellis’s plaintive, tentatively hopeful violin; live, Ellis stuck to playing just the piano melody, which after all is the song’s main motif, and for the five minutes that is the song’s length on record ‘Ashen Snow’ seemed the weaker for it: the melody is pretty, but on its own is little more than that; but then the Dirty Three conjured the kind of magic which they seem to be able to pluck so casually and so precisely from the air.  Ellis got up from the keyboard, and picked up his violin, and launched into a soaring, yearning, questing violin solo of the kind whose ambiguous nature – is it improvised or carefully rehearsed? – have become his, and the Dirty Three’s, trademark.  As Jim White and Mick Turner supported him, Ellis raised the song beyond even what it was on the record: his violin playing transcended the melancholy-yet-cautiously-optimistic recorded version of ‘Ashen Snow’ and transformed it into a joyous, half-wild celebration of music and life and of just being there.  As he played he released several yells – not howls, they were not animal sounds but a yell of something profoundly yet indefinably human – at the ceiling.  Throughout the latter half of the show he’d yelled like this repeatedly, as if overwhelmed by astonishment at the music coming out of him – and increasingly the audience, just as astonished and delighted, had yelled back.

Ellis yells; the audience yells; we can hardly believe that this night has come.  We demand that the band returns to the stage and performs two more songs for us – and they duly do, but after that it’s time to say goodnight.  The band has played for two hours and it’s fitting that they should end while we’re all still elated.  Even I, someone who is deeply reluctant at the best of times to raise my voice, has been yelling along with Ellis, and when at the end of the show, at the end of a stirring presentation of the Dirty Three’s new life, Ellis thanks the audience, I can’t help myself.  I raise my voice and shout out: “Thank you!”  Thankyou, Dirty Three.  Thankyou for the show.  Thankyou for the new album.  Thankyou for being the greatest band that Australia has ever produced.

The Dirty Three Homepage.
Drag City Records.

The Dirty Three are one of the most exciting and rewarding bands ever produced by Australia and indeed, the world. Fellow Melbourne resident, author and music fan Harry Saddler took the time to pen this appreciation of both their new album Toward The Low Sun, released earlier this month on Drag City, and also one of the band’s effervescent live shows.

Harry was one of the first people I thought of when we started this site and we’re extremely excited and grateful for his debut contribution to Pocket Jury. Previously we worked together on another music blog and his stirring and incisive guide to The Dirty Three’s considerable discography motivated me to collect their entire recorded output. If you have any feedback, feel free to comment here or on the forum.

You can read Harry’s article here.

The Heavy Bombers – Wait For The Smoke To Clear
2012 – Self-Released

We somehow missed out on this terrific album of gut-busting, boot-stomping, wilfully primitive fuzz rock from Chicago based trio The Heavy Bombers when it was released at the tail end of February. Combining the cathartic sleaze rock of Pussy Galore with the rhythmic punch of innumerable Sabbath worshipping stoner rock bands and the groove-oriented boogie rock of legendary garage rockers The Sonics, Wait For The Smoke To Clear is a ten song statement of intent which is hard to ignore. It’s also a record which bears many of the hallmarks which one has come to expect from albums made at the great Caffeinated Recordings studios – namely pounding drums, roaring guitars, fuzzed out bass and full-throated vocals courtesy of guitarist Drew Richardson, bassist Brent Mix and drummer Jeff Green. What sets The Heavy Bombers aside from most of their Chicago hard rock brethren is a conscious emphasis on song-craft over abrasion. The bass is the anchor for these songs, most of which are unapologetically tuneful by nature.

The fizzing ‘Whiskey’ is a telling indicator of the thematic content of the album, as Richardson details his love-hate relationship with the titular tipple over a bucking, Didjits-esque back-beat. Indeed, many of the songs are sodden with the detritus of the proverbial barstool blues, including the amusing romp ‘You Oughtn’t’ – the lyrics of which are a list of inadvisable acts. ‘Ballad of Jane Doe’ is a classic bar rock tear-jerker somewhere between Hank Williams and Richard Hell, replete with an appropriately dejected guitar solo. The baritone sax skronk on Mix’s terrific ‘1994’ is an obvious highlight, with the band finding common ground between rockabilly and old school swing dancing. Likewise, the brilliantly menacing opener ‘Don’t Leave The Light On’ is a sublime chunk of primordial scuzz rock which had me hitting the repeat button more times than strictly necessary. The energetic punk scurrying of ‘On The Market’ is contrasted perfectly by mid-tempo bruisers like the crunching ‘Minneapolis Dogbite’ – the latter of which encapsulates the potency of The Heavy Bomber’s smouldering low-end clout. A truly great debut album which leaves you conflicted about whether to dance or wander out into the night, flipping cars and bellowing at the top of your lungs.

The Heavy Bombers Bandcamp
Caffeinated Recordings

Blackout Dates – Beverly
2012 – Self-Released

Blackout Dates formed from the ashes of sometime Chicago based rockers Ruth Buzzy and share members with numerous other Midwestern bands including Honest Engines and Team Player. Beverly is the debut album of guitarist Philip Schuldt, bassist Jim Kamp and drummer Matt Molenaar, all of whom at one point played in the nervy, new wave influenced Ruth Buzzy. Blackout Dates’ sound is of a similar vein, albeit with a hard rock slant. For all the crashing drums and tearing riffs, the central focus of their songs is always the ridiculously infectious harmonies contributed by each member of the band. It’s the sort of album which seems instantly familiar even on first listen, largely because the trio pen such immediate songs with soaring melodies at the forefront of the mix. In some ways it could be described as the Chicago take on pop-punk, though the description is only fitting if you’re including bands as disparate as Naked Raygun and eighties Brit-punks XTC.

Beverly is a fascinating set of songs with a few numbers which only vaguely resemble the work of one band. In fact, the common strand seems to be that every song has vicious hooks which continue to reverberate around your head in between listens. The appeal of the bouncing, beatific opener ‘Killing My Mind’ is fairly obvious, with a playful bass motif and insistent vocals from Schuldt and Kamp. Comparatively, the bitter-sweet acoustic rumination ‘Champaign, IL’ employs imagery with a decidedly country bent, as does the rather more blatant country rock pastiche ‘Tramp Stamp’. The incessant chattering of early stand-out ‘Never Amount To Much’ sees Molenaar on especially good form, providing a solid, kinetic back-beat over which his band-mates harmonise. Both Kamp and Schuldts make extensive usage of their terrific ability to pen catchy choruses – occasionally even reaching classic rock heights, which of course ensures that I’ll be humming cuts like ‘Ds Get Degrees’ and ‘Epic Song’ for days.

Blackout Dates
Blackout Dates Bandcamp

Minutes/Whales – Split EP
2012 – Self-Released

For those of us not lucky enough to catch the presumably fantastic mini-tour of Chicago quartet Whales with Kalamazoo-based Dischord rockers Minutes, this is an excellent four song compensation. Both bands released excellent debut albums last year and each contribute two songs to this one-off shared release. Minutes are represented by their very first song ‘Igloo Story’ and their most recently written song ‘Against Your Will’. Either song could have fitted snugly onto their superb eponymously titled album from last year, though the latter is brief, almost mantra-like affair. The combination of classic DC post-hardcore delivery with the heart and soul of great Midwestern emocore bands makes for an exciting, compelling listen. The call and response interplay of guitarists Chafe Hensley and Ryan Nelson is never less than gripping. Not to be outdone, Whales drop what must surely be considered two of their finest songs to date. The bright, new wave influenced power pop of their debut has evolved into beautiful, shimmering mid-tempo rock which trumps the astral splendour of any shoegaze band you care to name. The ebbing ‘Adrift’ is a remarkable piece of sublimely realised dream-pop, like a chance encounter between Broadcast and early Portishead. Maigin Blank’s incredible vocals hover over her band-mates’ perfectly measured instrumentation. The accompanying ‘Seafaring’ positively drips with raw sensuality, eventually reaching a sweltering, borderline orgasmic crescendo. Absolutely incredible work.

Whales Bandcamp
Minutes Bandcamp

Male Bondage – Male Bondage EP
2012 – Self-Released

Essentially comprised of two-halves of Full Rainbow and Step Dads, Male Bondage are a quartet from Indianapolis, IN. Their eponymous debut is a five song EP which showcases a band with road-hardened chops and muscular punk rock tunes to go with it. Brisk, full-throttle bare-bones punk is the order of the day, with a side serving of stoner rock fuzz. The band’s self-described ‘Entrance Music’ is a decent slab of quasi-Sabbath doom, all the better to lure you into the break-neck ‘Violent Cravings’ – a stonking, two guitar romp which evokes innumerable punk rock luminaries from the early eighties. Twin brothers Alex (guitar, vocals) and Adam Jones (bass, vocals) are joined by guitarist Charlie Thomas and drummer James Lyter. The rhythm section is rigid but powerful, suggesting a band who are already absolutely comfortable in the live arena. The interplay between guitarists Jones and Thomas is neat, with each song pulling in a subtly different direction in either channel. ‘Voice of Reason’ is the real winner for me, a fairly tuneful number which builds into a little bit of a groove later on. ‘Bondage Men’ is broadly reminiscent of Black Flag (somewhat appropriately, one of the cover stars has the bars tattooed on his chest) and the more melodic ‘High Road’ could be a long lost Jawbreaker tune. Check their tour schedule and give them a place to sleep if you can. I’ll bet you five bucks they’re a kick-ass live band.

Male Bondage
Male Bondage Bandcamp

She Ripped – Ultra Social Happy Man
2012 – Self-Released

Recently reunited, predominantly Welsh quartet She Ripped are having a second stab at being a band after an impromptu two year hiatus. Initially formed in the late noughties, the band released a handful of politely received records on a small local label before splintering around 2010. However, in response to the on-going trauma of the ConDem coalition government and a desire to reconnect with one another musically, they recorded this three song release in Cardiff last year. It’s probably a frustrating experience for any Welsh punk band to be compared to McLusky but the driving, busy basslines are more than a little reminiscent of Cardiff’s most renowned punk trio. It’s almost certainly a coincidence of mutual influences – in particular the ramshackle rattling of The Fall circa 1979 and lo-fi garage punks Swell Maps. The leading title track is a very Mark E. Smith-esque ode to the fashionable youth of today, complete with a rhythmic punch nicely evocative of the classic Hanley-Burns pairing. Guitarist and vocalist Jake Healy occasionally brings to mind the sadly deceased Finbarr Donnelly of great lost Irish punk rockers Nun Attax. The noisy flip-side is the better one though, with the autonomous hammering of ‘Mind The Gap’ and the grinding ‘And We Know’. Album please, boyos.

She Ripped
She Ripped Bandcamp

Header Image by Kristin Østerberg.

The third in our monthly feature encompassing some releases from March 2012. We’ve been absolutely blessed again over the past few weeks. Each month has seen progressively more exciting and challenging records and March was no exception. There have been some frankly brilliant records, many self-released online via Bandcamp, all of which deserve much wider exposure and at the very least, your attention. If you enjoy reading Pocket Jury, have a listen to the records featured this time around. I absolutely guarantee you’ll be surprised by the quality of independent underground music in 2012.

This month saw debut albums by two Chicago based rock trios – The Heavy Bombers and Blackout Dates, each with their own subtle take on minimalist punk rock. Two bands who virtually made our year in 2011 combine on the Minutes/Whales split EP, in particular the Whales tracks are extraordinary. There is also a debut EP by promising Indianapolis based road-dogs Male Bondage and a three song release by recently reformed Welsh rockers She Ripped. As per usual, you can find links to all of the above on the next page. Help to support these fantastic bands!

You can read Tommy’s reviews here.

French Cinema: Now with more women reading in bed.

This week’s theme was “The Delicate Delicacies in the Delicatessen of Jean-Pierre Jeunet”. I really enjoyed The last French Cinema theme with Luc Besson, so I was hoping this week would generate a lot of things I wanted to talk about but couldn’t quite work out how to get them straight in my head. I think I liked Luc Besson’s stuff better, but I still have a fair amount of thoughts from what I watched this weekend anyway.

We started off on Saturday Night (Friday was full of birthday party shenanigans) with Amelie. A lot of people have raved about how great this film was and I’ve been meaning to watch it for ages as well, so we figured it was a good choice to start off with. An eccentric, loner girl (Audrey Tatou) decides to help people be happier through acts of whimsical kindness. In the process she encounters a similarly eccentric loner guy, falls in love and proceeds to woo him through acts of whimsical wooing-ness.   I’m not really sure how to feel about Amelie. I liked it, but I’m not sure how to feel about it. It was a very oversaturated film; the colours were really bright and vibrant, the characters all a bit wacky and over-the-top, and the plot is suitably ridiculous. I can see why, out of the five films suggested this week, this has been the most popular. People connect with the awkward characters and have hope that they too can find their special anti-social weirdo to fall in love and ride off into the sunset with.

On Sunday I was home alone, so I put on Delicatessen. It’s a dystopian future where there is little to no meat left available. A butcher who is also the landlord of an apartment building gets creative when supplying his meat. Enter the new maintenance man (an ex circus performer) who is supposed to be their next meal but instead things go awry.

This was definitely not what I was expecting after Amelie. Delicatessen is just as over-the-top as Amelie, but instead of oversaturaing everything, it’s undersaturaed. The setting’s drab and depressing, the colours are all muddied, the characters are dreary, but they’re all still ridiculous. Delicatessen seemed a little more forcefully wacky than Amelie, so maybe Jean-Pierre Jeunet was still working on that balance when he made this. There is definitely a similar tone between Delicatessen and Amelie; it’s easy to see they have the same director. The characters were pretty strong, in that they were interesting and seemed to leave more of an impression than Amelie’s characters. The Troglodite characters were probably the weakest of them all, but I also think if we’d seen more of them they might have been quite interesting.

While the premise of Delicatessen was sound, it seemed to drag on a little and get a bit confused in the second half of the film. I think it was then that I started to get a bit bored with it. It’s almost as if he didn’t really know where he was going with the story, so the film starts off strong, then starts meandering in the middle, and then they realise that they need to start wrapping things up so it rushes through to ultimately get to the happy ending. That, really, is probably the biggest weakness of the film; the pacing lets it down.

The other film suggestions this week were A Very Long Engagement, Micmacs, and The City of Lost Children. I was going to watch A Very Long Engagement on Sunday after Delicatessen, but I felt more in the mood for something a bit more light-hearted than a WWI romance/detective story, so I skipped it. The City of Lost Children sounded interesting in a really really weird way, but it also sounds like the kind of film I need to watch in the middle of the day so that I don’t psyche myself out. Marc Fennell says it needs to be watched late at night to enjoy it properly, but I think this is one of those times where I ignore his advice. Either way it will probably wait a while until I have time to get around to it. Next week we’re learning about movie heists, and none of the Ocean’s series are in there, so it might be enlightening!