I’m not exactly a Downton Abbey worshipper (I feel it’s been sliding since season 1), but I really liked the trailer for its fourth season, which came out about half a year ago – not for the teasers but for the music. Happily, some nice YouTube commenters* posted the song’s name and the artist; and this is how I found out about The Joy Formidable and ‘Wolf’s Law’. So I downloaded the track from iTunes, back when I still had iTunes credit, and was all the happier for it.
It’s an awesome piece of music. ‘Wolf’s Law’ is the title (and final) track from The Joy Formidable’s second album, and it puts lead singer Ritzy Bryan’s very elegant soft-then-loud vocals to great use. The track drastically changes mood partway through and is all the richer for it, handling the transition much better than Catching Fire ever did. In places it’s delicate; in places it’s raucous. The lyrics get a little meh towards the end (‘Don’t wait, let’s go, go, go!’), but it hardly matters; Bryan’s voice merges with the piano line and the electronica in a glorious crescendo. It sounds like lost love and desperation and joyous abandon, which, given the name of the band, is certainly appropriate.
The rest of the album is good, too, but it’s a very different listening experience to its title track, which is why only that track makes it into my Long Tail Eight. Maybe I should have twigged when Pitchfork reviewed Wolf’s Law and mentioned The Joy Formidable and Muse in the same sentence, numerous times. The album’s other tracks feature far more guitar work and distortion, which seem to flop as often as it succeeds (take a look at how Pitchfork describes the guitar solo in ‘Maw Maw Song’ and you’ll get the idea).
But ‘Wolf’s Law’ still reigns supreme. There’s a reason it made the Downton Abbey trailer so good; the music parallels the video’s swift suite of emotions and desires excellently. So watch the trailer and hear what hooked me in the first place. Then listen to the track, in its entirety. And love it.
*Not, as it turns out, a contradiction in terms.
(A heads-up for the clip: you may find it a little icky in places – lots of insects, a few brief shots of sperm cells, some scenes of childbirth starting at (I think) 2:30. But it’s a nice video overall.)
Way back in my very first post, Reflektor was already listed among my favourite albums; a few days later, I posted a link to the superb ‘Afterlife’ clip. In the universe outside the direct glare of my ego, the album reached number one in a decent chunk of the Northern Hemisphere and appeared in numerous ‘Best of 2013’ lists. And of course, both ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Reflektor’ made it into the Triple J Hottest 100 this year, at positions 54 and 16 respectively. (It should not surprise you to learn that I voted for both of them.)
I’m not going to give you a long, joyous spiel about my appreciation of Reflektor. There’s no need to. Instead, I’d just like to point out – briefly, if I can manage it – two of the things that particularly endear this album to me.
One: it’s a double album that behaves exactly as a double album should. The whole thing is lyrically and thematically unified in a way that’s just delightful. On ‘Reflektor’, the protagonist and his beloved ‘fall in love/alone on a stage/in the Reflective Age’; later, on ‘Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)’, Win Butler reminds us that ‘there’s a price to pay/for love in a Reflective Age’. This kind of cross-linking appears everywhere in Reflektor, and it reinforces its grand themes – love, oppression, mortality, rebellion – while keeping the music focused on the personal. But equally, the two sides of the album present two different takes on these themes, which is important. Disc 1 roars; Disc 2 whispers. Both are extremely effective, especially together.
And two: the sheer number of awesome moments on Reflektor is almost overwhelming. If you’ve waited for David Bowie’s cameo on ‘Reflektor’, and heard how seductively his voice partners with the song’s sax line, you’ll know what I mean. But the delicacy and layered instrumentation on the album’s closer, ‘Supersymmetry’, is just as wonderful, as Butler and his fellow vocalist (and spouse) Régine Chassagne match each other word-for-word. ‘Here Comes The Night Time’ dances between tempos and emotions with aplomb. ‘Afterlife’, as I’ve already mentioned, is haunting. And then there’s ‘It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)’, for which I have no words, except to say that it’s the most moving piece of music I’ve heard in years. (Alas, I can’t find you a link that doesn’t look like copyright infringement. But find it, somewhere. Please.)
Anyway. Reflektor is a magnificent work, and my paeans only add to a very large body of praise. Take a look at the clip for the title track, just below.
One other curious observation. A number of tracks on Reflektor have a certain synergy with the storyline of Catching Fire – look up the lyrics of ‘Reflektor’ if you’re not sure (or, even better, ‘Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)’, which could be coming straight from the mouth of Peeta). This could just be a coincidence – imperilled love, repressive elites, and the shallowness of our ‘Reflective Age’ aren’t exactly new ideas – but it’s worth noting that Arcade Fire contributed to the soundtrack for the first Hunger Games film. In fact, they wrote Panem’s national anthem.
(Seriously. There’s a song on Reflektor called ‘Joan Of Arc’, about a girl on fire who gets turned into a figurehead. It has lyrics like ‘If you shoot you’d better hit your mark’. Seriously.)
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
Media type: Book (non-fiction)
Author: Shulamith Firestone
Year: 1970
Viewed nearly half a century after its publication, Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex – a classic of second-wave feminism – seems oddly anachronistic, in two distinct ways. For one, a number of its premises are rooted in ideologies whose influences appear to have peaked: classical Marxism, for example, or Freudian psychology. Firestone takes a largely unsympathetic view of gay and lesbian rights, and does get bogged down in gender essentialism a lot of the time (I don’t remember her discussing trans issues in the book. Probably just as well; I get the feeling her perspective there wouldn’t have been very enlightened). And yet her vision of the future, a future free of the power imbalances that come with traditional gender roles, seems just as far away now as it did in the 1970s.
What, then, is the value of The Dialectic of Sex? For one thing, it’s the urgency of Firestone’s prose. Reading the book is a powerful and effective reminder that, despite all the advances made across the last few decades, there are still systemic inequalities permeating our society, and they can be killers. On the status of women, for example, Firestone is uncompromising, and rightly so. After she points out so many of the ways in which women tend to be treated as lesser people (subjection to insistent ideals of beauty, less agency in romantic and sexual relationships, artistic contributions often ignored, disproportionate child-rearing duties…), it’s hard for the reader to conclude anything except that patriarchy is a problem in grave need of a solution.
Firestone’s idea of the future, too, is a fascinating one. Leaping outwards from her thesis that oppression of women is based in the (current) biological necessity of pregnancy, she posits a world where technological advances allow perfectly equal distribution of labour (including child-rearing). The resulting proposal is simultaneously fascinating (large ‘family’ groups formed by voluntary association, full rights for children) and confusing (“… the irrelevancy of the school system practically guarantees its breakdown in the near future” – this written in 1970). Some might deride this vision as science fiction, but that’s precisely why Firestone’s ideas interest me: like much of the best science fiction (or, indeed, any other kind of literature), it shows how humans might be able to live, and live more happily, if freed from some of our pettier constraints.
I have just one real criticism of the book: Firestone is prone to making points on the basis of dubious evidence. This is not by any means a flaw unique to Firestone as a writer, but it is a flaw. In one paragraph, for example, Firestone makes the claim that “there is no room for feelings in the scientist’s work”, and then (as far as I can tell) goes on to psychoanalyse all scientists – “out of touch with his [sic] direct emotions”, “surprisingly conventional”, “emotionally divided” – on the basis of this assertion. This makes for some uncomfortable reading, especially since Firestone was writing around the time of Feynman. Another troublesome conclusion is the blanket statement that “men can’t love” (Firestone’s italics), based largely on a quote from Simone de Beauvoir, the psychoanalytical sessions of Theodor Reik (admittedly containing unpleasantly sexist quotes from some male patients) and Firestone’s personal observations.
By contrast, I found some of the more dated elements of The Dialectic of Sex to be simply old-fashioned rather than obsolete. Firestone’s predictions of the near future (from a 70s perspective) are broadly correct: rapidly increasing importance of automation and computing, greater control over reproduction leading to changing sex roles. That she does not foresee the impact of IVF, say, or the Internet, is certainly not a failure on her part.
In short, The Dialectic of Sex is a book that needs to be appreciated in context: in the context of Firestone’s life and experiences, the feminism of her time, and the feminism of the present day. But read with these things in mind, Firestone’s conclusions are at once imaginative and engrossing, radical and enticing. A thought-provoking text for all the right reasons.
Directors: Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski
Major actors: Bae Doona, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, James D’Arcy, Keith David, Hugh Grant, David Gyasi, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Zhou Xun
Year: 2012
It’s rare for me to think a film is better than the book it’s based on. All too often, when a book is adapted for the big screen, it loses some of the details (at worst, all of the details) that made it such a delight to read. That’s my gripe with the first Harry Potter film – it kept just about everything from the book (much of the dialogue is copied word-for-word), but it left out the logic puzzle that Hermione solves just before Harry makes it to the Philosopher’s Stone, which was my favourite part.
Cloud Atlas wasn’t like that.
To be fair, I didn’t love the book in the first place; I found a number of its characters unengaging, and some of its matryoshka-nested sections were more than a little tedious to read (I’m talking to you, Sloosha’s Crossin’). Nevertheless, it’s a novel stuffed full of clever interlinkages and the throwaway-brilliant ideas that fill the best speculative fiction. (For example, in An Orison of Sonmi~451, set in the 22nd century, the phrase ‘These are the tears of things’ is used as a password; later in the novel Robert Frobisher, in the mid-20th, signs his final letter SUNT LACRIMAE RERUM. Seen that phrase anywhere else recently?)
And then Tom Tykwer and the bombastic Wachowski siblings got hold of Cloud Atlas, and somehow they managed to refashion a complex novel into an equally complex film (and not many of those complexities are shared) without destroying the book’s themes or its charm. Arguably, the key to Cloud–Atlas-the-novel is reincarnation – it’s a novel in six narratives, nested inside each other (see the novel’s Wikipedia page for a better explanation), and five of the six protagonists are incarnations of the same soul, continuing the same struggle to do good across eras and lifetimes. Cloud–Atlas-the-film achieves the same end by having its actors play multiple roles across the six settings. So Ben Whishaw appears as a post-apocalyptic tribesman and a middle-aged British woman as well as portraying Robert Frobisher, the protagonist of the 1930s storyline; Hugh Grant is variously a hotel porter, a retired investment banker and a cannibalistic warrior; and the Korean actress Bae Doona, who is masterful as the clone-slave Sonmi~451, also turns up as the (white) American wife of the protagonist of the 1840s tale and a Mexican immigrant to the US in a brief role opposite Halle Berry. In the context of the film, this works: some of the transformations effected are amazing. But I should stress, this only works in the context of the film; the creators have been rightly criticised for lacking in cultural sensitivity (and indulging in one of the worst kinds of ‘race-blindness’ – using ‘common humanity’ as an excuse to erase people of colour).
The film is held together by a strong ensemble cast (all the major players are listed above) and a delightful soundtrack, but one not-to-be-overlooked joy of Cloud Atlas are its visuals. It’s a beautiful work. The confident direction from Tykwer and the Wachowskis makes the most of gorgeous sets and stunning special effects. A clipper sails across the Pacific, fingers dance across piano keys, an enormous satellite dish emits a brief and elegant pulse of light… nothing in Cloud Atlas is dull, at least to look at.
Most crucially, in the transition from book to film, the most important parts of David Mitchell’s novel – the ramifications of choices, good or bad – aren’t lost. Tom Hanks is the poster boy for this theme; his characters are the six versions of the ‘soul shaped from a killer into a hero’ mentioned in the film’s promotional material. But there are other, subtler touches too, like the fact that stories set in later epochs make references – often small or oblique, but effective nonetheless – to the stories set in earlier times. It reinforces the unity of the narrative, places events in context and makes some characters’ efforts (such as Sonmi’s) seem even more poignant. Cloud Atlas uses reincarnation as a motif, to be sure, but not in a dippy, New-Age way; instead, it reinforces the fact that, of all the things that make up our lifetimes, the things that tend to endure are our actions. For better or for worse.
So perhaps the film doesn’t keep all the little details that I liked about the novel. But it did better; it left behind the beautiful parts of the book that weren’t suited for the big-screen format and replaced them with beautiful things that were. It’s an artistic decision that respects the source text and the adaptation, and I applaud the filmmakers for it. (Of course, all adaptations do this in one way or another; but I feel this is a particularly good example.)
Cloud Atlas: an undeniable visual delight, and the best film I saw in 2013.
I like M83. I like Coldplay. So when I read a Pitchfork review earlier this year that suggested that ‘Rafstraumur’, track seven from Sigur Rós’s most recent album Kveikur, went ‘goosebump-for-goosebump’ with some of M83 and Coldplay’s most moving offerings, I was intrigued. I downloaded ‘Rafstraumur’. And I never looked back.
It’s not just the deftly handled transitions between melancholic strings and thrumming electric guitars. It’s not just Jónsi’s always-ethereal vocals. It’s the fact that ‘Rafstraumur’ is atmospheric, thematically and musically unified, and complete within itself. Of course, Jónsi and strings and guitars can all be delightful individually, but together, in a slightly-less-than-five-minute package like this, they are transcendent.
The lyrics, incidentally, are gorgeous. I suspect that Jónsi could make anything Icelandic sound preternatural, but – according to Google Translate, at least – his words here are obscure and poetic and certainly grounded in the human. In particular, the chorus is touching (both to hear and to read – click the link for the translation).
Alas, I’m unable to give you a Soundcloud link to the original track (a Pitchfork link for the Cyril Hahn remix is below), but you might want to invest the effort in seeking it out. (And please, pay for it – for something like this, Sigur Rós deserve a little of your money.) My favourite moment is around 4:18, where the tumultuous final chorus resolves into drums that patter like heartbeats. With lyrics that refer to the heart and the flow of blood, it’s a touch that’s both appropriate and haunting.
‘Rafstraumur’, Icelandic for ‘electric current’ (raf, ‘amber’; straumur, ‘stream’*): beautiful music to dream to, and easily making it into my Long Tail Eight for 2013.
*It doesn’t make much sense until you remember that amber picks up electrostatic charges very easily; hence the word anbaric used by Philip Pullman in the His Dark Materials trilogy in place of ‘electric’.
I’ll be honest: I haven’t read as much this year as I might have liked. (It’s a combination of study load and apathy that’s prevented me from doing so.) On the other hand, I’ve absorbed more film and music than ever, and on balance I think this is a good thing. The patterns of cross-fertilisation and idea borrowing (or naked theft) extend across a whole bunch of different media, and it’s both fascinating and enlightening to watch the transference. Even more exciting, of course, is when an artist creates a work that explores old ideas (there are very few ‘new’ ideas left!) in novel and unusual ways.
I should clarify – this isn’t a list composed solely of things released in 2013, nor is it a list of my ‘favourite’ works. (It’s pretty close to the latter, but if I were doing it on preference alone Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would be on there.) Rather, this is a list of the creative works I’ve encountered this year that have had the most profound impact on me. It’s a list of things that are going to shape my thoughts and dreams for years to come; hence the name of the list, the ‘Long Tail Eight’. The works I’ve selected are (at least for me) like comets: noticed for their bright and brilliant hearts, but with a stream of influence that stretches out far beyond. Alternatively, if you found some way to graph their effects on me, you might get something like this.
So I’ve selected the eight most profound works that I read, or watched, or heard, this year, and lined up eight posts to explain each one to you in loving detail. They’re not in any particular order, except for the last one, which is the one I’ve found most significant (like I explained back in post #1). They’re not limited to any particular size; some are songs, others whole albums. And I’m certainly not expecting you to agree with my choices. This is, after all, the Internet – the site of a large chunk of the world’s egotism. (I’ve also selected three ‘Missed Opportunities’. The name should be pretty self-explanatory. Definitely not expecting you to agree with these either.)
Anyway, here they come. You might find that these creations do nothing for you – the notion of ‘significance’ in an artistic work is naturally highly subjective. But they might. These are recommendations; the decision is still ultimately yours.
Electric Blue Flower 