House music

I must be getting old because the new Crowded House album, Time on Earth, sounds about the freshest, most contemporary, abundant album I've heard since Kings of Leon's epic earlier in the year. The video for new single Don't Stop Now is astonishing. It oozes the sort of art school cool you associate with a band that has nothing left to prove.

Self and the City

I don't usually do personal posts. Not my thing. Not the purpose of the blog either. But just recently I've been feeling strange. London has got bigger, and I feel smaller. In the movie theatre, in a gallery, in a bar...I've been noticing that there are literally hundreds of people on their own. It's a city of isolated individuals. And the means to interact, or more precisely the forums within which interaction used to take place - church, community, marriage even -are at their weakest in a generation. It's not my imagination. People are wandering around, wanting to meet people, but they don't know how to. Where do you go to meet intelligent, thoughtful, hopeful individuals? Nihilism, alcoholism and obsession are the bi-products of individuals losing the balance enforced by cooperation and companionship. Londoners are notoriously hard to get to know. And so they know nobody, retreating into a life of cultural feasting as a means of giving meaning to it all. It makes it an interesting place to live. But I'm not sure it makes it a good place to live.

Book of the year (so far)

A word on an absolutely astonishing new novel by Don DeLillo, Falling Man. American fiction has struggled to come to terms with the psychological and emotional dislocation caused by the trauma of 9/11. Exploring the tragedy through fiction seemed superfluous, self-indulgent and also largely impossible given how raw the terror continues to feel to this day. Yet DeLillo has written perhaps the first 9/11 novel that has been able to find the words to describe the violence and horror and make some sense of it all. The prose is breathtakingly beautiful in parts as the novel begins in the dust-filled moonscape of Ground Zero and charts the impact of the fall of the towers on the lives of a group of New Yorkers. Is it possible for literature to be cathartic? I don't know. But Falling Man suggests that while buildings fell and lives were shattered, there is something that endures in the human spirit. And American literature is beginning to play its part in exploring the pain and by so doing reducing it.

Grown up cinema

With cinemas nation wide about to be overwhelmed by pirates and gurning Keith Richards impressions, someone somewhere has been smart enough to release Jindabyne in an effort to provide alternative cinema-going for the majority of sentient homo sapiens. The plot is murky: a dead aboriginal girls turns up in the river during a fishing trip and rather than raising the alarm immediately the boys tie her up in the river and continue fishing for another day. Cue revulsion by the indigenous population, small-town outrage and a whole host of unanswered questions about why they would do such a thing. All this is set against a backdrop of a marriage between Gabriel Byrne and an impressive Laura Linney that is slowly falling apart. The film is not without its flaws -- it tries to tackle far too many issues at once -- but director Ray 'Lantana' Lawrence nonetheless reminds us that there remains space for serious, thought-provoking, adult cinema today.

Blair. Best.

So today was the day. The End. Or at least the beginning of it. Blair announces his intention to resign on 27 June 2007. PM for ten years, Labour leader for thirteen. Diana, Kosovo, Iraq, Olympics to the everyman. BoE independence, a minimum wage, SureStart, and record economic growth to the politico. In a world where political careers rarely end in success, the best you can hope for is an acquiescence on the part of the population. And a poll in today's Times shows that 44% of the population think he did a good job. 44%. After ten years. That's higher than Labour's share of the vote in 1997. Unashamedly centrist, with political instincts second to none, Blair was an original, unique. He had a political in tray more complex than any leader has ever faced. And he coped. He coped very well indeed in the circumstances. In fact, he made rather a good fist of it. And he did it with a certain style don't you think? The best leader we've ever had? Better than Thatcher? Better even than Churchill? You know it. And it was in our time.

Loney, Dear

Album of the week is Loney, Dear's Loney, Noir. If you're thinking that last sentence had too many commas in it, then bare with me. Loney, Dear is a quirky Scandinavian called Emil Svanangen who produces folksy, upbeat melodies that remind me a bit of Sufjan Stevens (how often do i say that? Rather a lot I fear) mixed with a bit of Gomez. Tracks are multi-layered and often wander off in completely unexpected directions. Catch him at the ICA on May 24.

Chocaholic

Headed down to The Menier Chocolate Factory this weekend to see Chris Hampton's Total Eclipse, his 1968 play about the intense, doomed relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine. I have to admit, before the performance I knew little about Rimbaud other than Bob Dylan liked his stuff. But Paul Miller's revival succeeds in showing the opposing directions from which Rimbaud and Verlaine approached writing. Rimbaud is all teenage angst and rebellion, Verlaine a sort of wife-beating masochist. It was interesting stuff. But it was the venue that lingered in the memory. A utilitarian performance space has real atmosphere, and the bar and adjoining cafe are both excellent. Well worth checking out.