Me and MOWGLI DJing @ Star of Bethnal Green

The Life of the World to Come - The Mountain Goats; a positive review by Erol Sabadosh

Three tracks into The Life of the World to Come, the new album from The Mountain Goats, and you may be wondering where exactly it is that songwriter John Darnielle is taking us. Over the course of fifteen full length LPs (The Life of the World to Come being the sixteenth overall and the sixth since signing to label 4AD and moving away from the ultra lo-fi aesthetic of early releases to a more polished studio sound) Darnielle has explored issues ranging from drug addiction to domestic abuse, occasionally from an autobiographical perspective, and has proven to be consistently engaging and prolific in his efforts. While previous album Heretic Pride lacked a strong overarching theme, but was still a great album, Darnielle has opted to place focus on faith this time, or more specifically Christianity (although it is certainly not an album written about the Bible).

Heretic Pride opened with the immediately likeable and rousing “Sax Rohmer #1,” whereas here the listener is treated with the brooding and sparse “1 Samuel 15:23” where Darnielle embodies the character of a crystal healer who believes he is helping people with his supposed healing powers while selling self-help tapes and sewing cloaks. Each song on the album is named after a Bible verse which somehow relates to it and in this instance the chosen passage reflects judgement on the character within the song for rejecting the word of God. Rather than preaching the Bible Darnielle juxtaposes the fictional and autobiographical narratives within his songs with Biblical references in a variety of ways that add extra depth to his characters and narratives; he is not trying to convert people to Christianity, nor is he entirely challenging the Christian faith, he is simply writing songs the way that he always has but with an emphasis on religion or faith as an overarching theme or reference.

The second track is a raucous one compared to the muted opener, recalling the wild strumming and wailing evident in Darnielle’s earlier work, and it’s oddly followed by the most radio-friendly pop song on the album, “Philippians 3:20-21,” which could have just as easily appeared on Heretic Pride. The extreme variation in style of these first three songs proves to be rather jarring, but thereafter the album settles into a predominantly down-tempo and introspective balladry that tends to favour piano and the violin arrangements of Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire/Final Fantasy) over Darnielle’s distinctly rough guitar playing. This places the album in a similar category to his low-key and greatly underrated 2002 effort Tallahassee and the more recent Get Lonely, which may indicate that it won’t be quite as instantly well-received as its predecessor.

Darnielle has made a surprising album, choosing not to pursue the more commercial and accessible pop-potential that marked his last LP while focusing on a theme that may split fan opinions, but regardless of expectations the fact is that there are songs here that will sit comfortably alongside some of his most beautiful and subtle work ("Genesis 30:3" is an instant classic, and "1 John 4:16" is similarly gorgeous). On “Matthew 25:21” Darnielle describes the day he left his tour to visit his dying mother-in-law in hospital, and it is surely one of the most raw and affecting songs he has written, reminding of his ability to convey complicated human emotions through bold and vivid imagery. The album also ends with one of the darkest Mountain Goats songs ever, “Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace,” which features a particularly haunting piano arrangement that glides over ominous bass drones with lyrics that depict the journey of a murdering drug addict who is driving to Mexico through a seemingly apocalyptic storm. The Life of the World to Come is a mature and complex album by an incredibly talented songwriter who doesn’t seem to be running out of steam any time soon. God bless you John Darnielle.

Listen to The Mountain Goats on Myspace

Deformed - Transformed

D E F O R M E D - T R A N S F O R M E D

JOHN PICKERING / REBECCA IVATTS

SW1 GALLERY, Victoria Street, London
SEPT 16 – OCT 3 (Private view on Tuesday, September 15, 6.30-8.30pm)

Hands deformed by rheumatoid arthritis depicted on vast canvases; mathematical equations transformed into spatial sculptures waiting to be inhabited by our imaginations: yet these impossibly gnarled hands belong to the sculptor himself. This is the astonishing truth behind the unique collaboration between emerging painter, Rebecca Ivatts, and veteran sculptor, John Pickering.

Tiny Vipers - Life On Earth, A Glowing Review by Erol Sabadosh

Jesy Fortino’s sophomore album, created under her stage moniker Tiny Vipers, is an aesthetically minimalist yet potentially exhausting record in terms of length, pacing and subject matter. Opener Eyes Like Ours sets the tone for the majority of the album’s nine proceeding tracks; Fortino’s quivering voice reverberating atop finger-picked guitar lines that wander back and forth without a rhythm section to tie them down. It’s a long and sprawling record, eschewing any current trend or fashion for a bold and uncompromising vision, that demands an attentive and willing listener. Fortino offers a portal into a dark and mysterious world of existential angst with little in the way of consolation for anyone who may dare to venture into it. There is a pervading atmosphere of meloncholy throughout, one that at times becomes overtly meditative but with an emotional sensitivity that is never too dour, characterized by a controlled usage of negative space complimenting the lyrical focus on loss. The album’s characters search for meaning, grappling with faith and love, but end no closer to any kind of truth. On the final track Fortino sings that “the problem with life is you can’t do it twice and you don’t know why you came.” The protagonist of the song spends their time following a thought-to-be long lost ex-lover, afraid to be spotted, only to be confronted by the haunting realization that “it was somebody else.” Life On Earth is an astute and poetic exploration of human loneliness and yearning, and while it has a tendancy to alienate the listener it is nonetheless a fascinating and affecting work.

Inglourious Basterds: a Scathing Review by Erol Sabadosh

Tarantino’s latest film, Inglourious Basterds, begins promisingly, with a skilfully directed scene introducing the character of Col. Hans Landa, played by Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz, as he leads an S.S. patrol to the house of a French farmer who is suspected of harbouring Jews in order to interrogate him. The tension in the scene is well handled and the climax, while suitably terrifying, is tastefully restrained, a potential indicator that perhaps the director, well known for his pop-culture influenced pulp style, has created an atmospheric and mature piece of cinema that will bear some resonance. What follows, unfortunately, is two-and-a-half hours of vulgarity, glorified violence and derivative cliché.

The film’s segmented narrative, split into five chapters, meanders with overlong scenes exasperated by trite dialogue; Tarantino’s smug philosophizing is embarrassingly hollow, and there is an inane amount of movie-reference fodder littered throughout the script. A scene involving a game of trivia between a German soldier and a group of undercover Allies is contrived in order that Tarantino may highlight, though for whose benefit exactly remains unclear, the colonization metaphor implicit in King Kong for the purpose of a tasteless and uncomfortable joke. The film is callously racist, indiscriminately so, stemming from the caricatured and underdeveloped characterization and Tarantino’s blatant ignorance and disregard. Even the Inglourious Basterds of the title, a group of Jewish-American Nazi-killing soldiers lead by Brad Pitt’s Aldo The Apache, are barely explored.

That Tarantino fails, or deliberately chooses not to, add dimension to his characters in a film that runs 153 minutes long and consists mostly of dialogue, until the final act, is frustrating and makes it difficult to invest in their thin stories. He does manage to elicit some sympathy for his woman scorned, Shoshanna Dreyfus, played by Mélanie Laurent, but any potential moments of emotional drama are undermined with boorish attempts at humour. Tarantino’s facile utilization of pastiche has reached such an extent that it becomes mere cliché in nearly every instance. The only subversion of expectation comes with the fantastical re-writing of WWII history, which again serves no purpose other than to satisfy the revenge plot. Tarantino’s fetishistic glorification of violence has reached an apex of juvenility and arbitrariness.

The film fails as disposable entertainment simply because it is not particularly entertaining; there are brief moments of tension, excitement and genuine humour but they are too few and far-between to justify the film’s length. There are also hints of farce, but without any intellectual satire the historical context becomes the butt of crass and juvenile jokes. The acting is mostly good nonetheless; Waltz is terrific as Landa, Laurent does well with what she is given and Pitt is as goofy and likeable as he was in Burn After Reading. Most of the film’s problems lie with the script and direction, and therefore the criticisms are levelled primarily at Tarantino. Inglourious Basterds may have been conceived as an homage to exploitation cinema but with its distinct lack of originality or flair, not to mention fun, it is difficult to recommend to anyone. After carving a swastika into the scalp of a Nazi in order that he remain conspicuous even without his uniform, Aldo proclaims “I think this could be my masterpiece,” and one can imagine Tarantino grinning as the credits roll. Think again.

Laura and Marcus

Examples of some recent photos I've taken:

Laura Greenwood (35mm)

Marcus Dye (Digital)

Tomorrow at Dalston Superstore