Author Archives: Matthew

Omnireviewer (week of Mar. 13, 2016)

19 reviews. Back in normal person territory.

Television

Cucumber/Banana/Tofu: episodes 6-8 of all three, plus “The Screwdriver” — One thing I didn’t bring up in my pick of the week entry for this last time is that while Cucumber is a showcase for Russell T Davies: idiosyncratic stylist, Banana is a showcase for a number of different writers as well. Sue Perkins and especially Charlie Covell do magnificent work as guest writers on this show. So, even when Davies stops writing Cucumber, I really hope that he keeps doing Banana. I touched on this last week, but it bears expanding on: every time there’s a movie about LGBTQ people that manages to capture the attention of a mainstream audience (i.e. one that includes ignorant straight dudes such as myself) it is almost without fail a joyless slog. So, an LGBTQ anthology show with a sense of fun, that tells a different story every week and highlights the work of LGBTQ writers, is just something that needs to exist. I don’t think there’s anybody better to oversee it that Russell T Davies, but Banana could easily have a continued life once he moves on from it. I really love these shows, and I think it’s a dreadful shame that they’ve been so overlooked. I can’t urge you enough to watch them. (Although, since I am ostensibly reviewing things on this blog, I will say that I felt that the much-hyped sixth episode of Cucumber was the weakest of the lot, and the one time when the show crossed the line into self-indulgence and soapy plot contrivance. It’s a minor quibble. Nothing’s perfect.)

Last Week Tonight: March 13, 2016 — Nothing much to say except “yes.” And “ha!” And “yes.” And if you stay until the end of the credits, you get to see Rich Sommer try to eat a computer.

Better Call Saul “Rebecca” — Easily the season’s best episode yet. Jimmy and Mike’s plots are more amusing than substantial, but sidelining those characters gives us a chance to get to know both Chuck and Kim a bit better. Both are wonderful characters played by brilliant actors. What’s really interesting is seeing them explicitly linked in the way that they treat Jimmy. Given that Chuck has so much more experience in this regard and that they’re apparently comparing notes now, I’m fairly certain that Chuck will end up being a key factor in Jimmy and Kim’s inevitable breakup. Come to think of it, that could be an intentional play on Chuck’s part. The opening seems to suggest that Jimmy somehow drove a wedge between Chuck and his former wife. Revenge?

Horace and Pete: Episode 1 — Oh, I’m going to like this. Louis C.K. is explicitly going in for a critique of American values, and that is a ride I want to go on. But he’s not leaping feet-first into Kevin Smith polemical territory — there’s a division of labour here. Supporting characters are allowed to talk politics explicitly, but the main contest of old values vs. new values takes place in the A plot, with no explicit references to parties or primaries or Donald Drumpf. The first episode is structured around mirroring the supporting characters’ political arguments with the main characters’ family struggle. There aren’t any neat A to B comparisons to be made, because Louis C.K. has more subtlety than that. But this is essentially political theatre, and C.K. is setting himself up to be for the centre-left what the Coen brothers are for the centre-right. And I guess he can just work with whoever he wants now? Seriously, Steve Buscemi, Alan Alda, Edie Falco, Jessica Lange and Rebecca Hall in the same show? With a theme song by Paul Simon? On the internet? It’s possibly that C.K.’s imperial phase has only just started. Very excited to catch up on this and see where this goes.

Movies

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot — What the hell was this? Okay, look. Normally, I’m all about that thing where you don’t worry about whether you’re making a comedy or a drama. None of the best TV seems to care, after all. (See three out of four shows listed above.) But I feel like when you’re telling a true story about a recent war, you need to make a decision. There were some good lines in this, and some good performances. Tina Fey is great in this. But holy hell does the script go every which way. Really not very good.

Music

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Teodor Currentzis, MusicAeterna, et al.: Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto & Stravinsky Les Noces — I don’t give a shit about the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Really, I can’t even tell you how little I’d normally care to hear another recording of this mouldy, overdone repertory warhorse. And it frustrates me to no end that people keep recording it when there are actual living composers writing music (and needing money). And it frustrates me to no end that I basically can’t tell the difference between any of those recordings. So, if you’re going to record this piece, I will almost certainly not care. This recording made me care. It is a totally insane interpretation, with a seat-of-your-pants spontaneity to it such that Currentzis’ orchestra sometimes struggles charmingly to keep up with Kopatchinskaja. I’m sure that there will be many classical fans and critics who will meet it with tut-tuts of disapproval. But to me, this is the standard to which we should hold classical musicians. The question shouldn’t be “how well do these musicians offer us the standard reading of this piece,” but “how do these musicians make this piece new?” Classical musicians should be expected to go back to the score and interpret it afresh every time — like Glenn Gould did, and the late Christopher Hogwood. Every other approach is lazy. This came across my desk a while ago. I wouldn’t have taken it out of the shrink wrap if not for Stravinsky’s Les Noces. But, as fantastic as Currentzis’ Stravinsky is, it’s the Tchaikovsky that sells this. That is something I thought I’d never say. Maybe this whole classical music thing has a future after all. Pick of the week.

Run the Jewels: Run the Jewels — Their second album has been one of my favourites for ages, but I was yet to hear the first. This needed to be rectified. I like this a lot, but there’s nothing on this that hit me quite like “Close Your Eyes,” “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry” or “Crown.” But El-P is a hell of a producer, and both he and Killer Mike take some fantastic verses.

Literature, etc.

A week of reading excellent writing on the internet. Also David Day’s Alice annotations, but you know about that already.

Hasit Shah: “Poor Lonely Computer: Prince’s Misunderstood Relationship With The Internet” — A glorious longread from NPR Music, this doubles as a rare inside look into Prince’s exclusive Paisley Park concerts and an exploration of digital copyright law. It’s totally ingenious, and Shah knows exactly who to talk to to make the points he wants to make.

Nitsuh Abebe et al.: “25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music is Going” — This New York Times Magazine feature is a completely over-the-top surfeit of awesome. Instead of limiting their impressive stable of staff and guest writers to the 200ish word blurbs that are standard in these kinds of lists, the NYT lets fly with a collection of op-ed style pieces and full-on reported features. (I realize now that the entire issue of the print edition is devoted to this one feature. Nice.) Of particular note are the long pieces about hip-hop group The Internet and session drummer Matt Chamberlain. And Marlon James’ long analysis of Kendrick’s “The Blacker the Berry” takes the final prize. Plus, my perpetual favourite Caroline Shaw made the list! This is no mere, vapid listicle. This is a proper thing.

Kieron Gillen: “The New Games Journalism” — If these Omnireviewer posts have taught me anything about myself, it’s that I’ll never be a “gamer.” I just don’t have the damn time. But I do love games as a medium, and I’m fascinated (and frequently disgusted and appalled) by gaming culture. And if there’s anybody associated with that culture who I trust to be interesting about it, it’s Kieron Gillen. This is an essay he wrote three years before launching Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which is essentially a manifesto arguing that a writer’s personal experience with a game is more important in writing than the mechanics of the game itself. That makes it basically transferrable to every discipline, and I’d encourage anybody who writes about the arts to check this out. In terms of its specificity to games journalism, though, Gillen manages to coin the wonderful phrase “travel journalism to imaginary places.” (Also, Gillen uses the line “just saying it could even make it happen” from Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” to justify his enterprise, as if his essay is a sort of incantation. That seems to me like a precursor to the idea that music is magic — the premise of Gillen’s Phonogram.)

Games

SOMA — It’s been ages since I played this, because it got too scary. I can handle jumpscares and things chasing me down dark corridors. But when unknown consciousnesses start trying to talk to me through monitors, the willies come on something fierce. I think I’m close to the end of the game now, but I wanted to check in here a bit in advance to gripe about a truly godawful bug that forced me to do one of the game’s scariest chapters twice. There’s a moment where you need to use an item to unlock a door and it’s supposed to be automatic, but it just… doesn’t happen. After some Googling, I found that others had this same problem, and when they reloaded their save files from the previous chapter, it works. But that entails having to traverse the darkness of the ocean floor, teeming with anglerfish, for a second time. And my nerves have their limits.

Podcasts

I’m suspending Radiotopia reviews in case I decide to enter Podquest.

You Must Remember This: “Charles Manson’s Hollywood” parts 5-12 — This series tells an enormous story with such finesse. I haven’t got much to add to what I said last week, except that it continues as brilliantly as it starts. Longworth makes late 60s Hollywood seem extremely rotten. She emphasizes that Manson was part of a larger counterculture that was becoming poisonous by 1969, but that studios were still falling over themselves to monetize. And her detour into the post-Manson life of Roman Polanski is just as disturbing as the murder narrative. Seriously, what a wretched creep. I have quibbles, as you do. I wish Longworth wouldn’t do silly voices when she reads quotes. She should either get an actor, like she often does, or read the quotes straight. I wish she wouldn’t use the phrase “and/or” so much — and in her tagline, no less. But altogether, this is a unique and wonderful use of the podcast medium to tell really dense, resonant stories. I can’t recommend it enough. Pick of the week.

Radiolab: “Debatable” — Okay, now we’re back in the territory that I like Radiolab to occupy. The question here is basically “How do you engage in debate when the very structure of debate is designed to exclude you?” The answer that this episode’s protagonist Ryan Wash comes up with is “Always debate the structure of debate.” I loved this. As a sidebar, if you want to get really mad, go read the comments on this and “The Cathedral” on the Radiolab site. I agree with some of them that Radiolab isn’t what it used to be, but those aren’t the episodes to gripe about. How typical of the internet that the episodes that prompt so much bullshit are one that engages with systemic racism and another that features an indie game. If there are two things that internet fuckwits hate, it’s challenging racism and indie games.

On the Media: “Print is Back, Back Again” — This episode gives us the actual, not that pessimistic state of the publishing industry, an inside look at Amazon’s super weird bricks-and-mortar location, and the knowledge that used books are sometimes sold by the foot as decorative objects in particular colours. Really good.

Imaginary Worlds: “Why They Fight” — I probably will not watch Batman v. Superman. But it’s cool to hear Molinsky parse the relationship between those two characters in terms of D&D character alignments. God, but I’m a nerd.

All Songs Considered: SXSW coverage — This encompasses All Songs’ hour-long preview of little-known artists they’re excited to see in Austin and their nightly debriefs after full days of, presumably, sensory overload. It’s fun to hear Bob Boilen and co. in this environment, which is presumably where they would all like to spend their entire lives. They do a great job of capturing the vibe of the place. One of these years, I’ll go.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Hamilton” — At last. I’ve been looking forward to the PCHH panel seeing Hamilton about as much as they were probably looking forward to seeing Hamilton. If you’re in any way remotely skeptical about this universally and justly beloved high-water mark of human creativity this ought to allay any doubts. As Lin-Manuel Miranda himself put it on Twitter, these guys really went in. Linda Holmes reveals how Hamilton calls back to every great Broadway musical ever (though she skips the Jesus Christ Superstar homage, maybe intentionally), and Gene Demby does the same with its references to much of the history of rap. I am so glad that all four of them loved it so much, because this is one of those cases where I’m totally okay with the hive mind. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who doesn’t like Hamilton stands revealed as a charlatan. This episode is also the perfect example of why I like PCHH so much better than Slate’s Culture Gabfest. This is both more analytically incisive than their episode on Hamilton, and also much funnier.

Reply All: “Earth Pony” — This is both named after and most notable for its magisterial “Yes Yes No” segment. The main segment is a fairly unremarkable but basically fun bit about a fictional, but nonetheless successful political prognosticator. But it’s that “Yes Yes No” featuring Jason Mantzoukas in the role of Alex Blumberg that really sells this. It might be the best that segment has ever been.

Serial: “Thorny Politics” — Oh no, now Trump’s involved. Two things I’ve loved in this season have been the actual narrative of Bergdahl’s life, capture and imprisonment; and the political ramifications of his release. This, therefore, is one of the best episodes of the season, focussing as it does on the latter of the two.

Omnireviewer (week of Mar. 6, 2016)

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It was the kind of week where I took in large amounts of a small number of things. So, a mere 20 reviews, this time. Having finally caught up on my podcast subscriptions, I can at last binge on some other podcasts that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while. I started listening to two new ones this week that are both blowing my mind. But first, everything else.

Music

Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Tarkus — When I was a kid, I wanted to be Keith Emerson when I grew up. I listened to this album for the first time in ages when the news broke that he’d died. I’m eternally frustrated that the second side is so patchy when the first is so good. So, let’s just focus on what everybody comes to this album for: the 20-minute title track, which is simply a classic. And it’s almost entirely Emerson that makes it so good. Every one of his solos is a perfectly thought out little architectural marvel. This track, as much as anything, is the reason why I’ve never understood people who gripe about long solos. Actually, if “Tarkus” has a flaw, it’s that the organ solos are so good that you kind of find yourself waiting for the next one when Greg Lake starts singing or, bless him, playing guitar. And it all ends with the most gloriously silly synth riff ever written. This record is both a definitive period piece and a (half) masterpiece. RIP, Keith.

Glenn Gould & Toronto Symphony Orchestra: Beethoven PIano Concertos 1 & 2 — This is a scratchy, barely listenable old thing taken from a 1951 CBC broadcast. Gould was only 18, and had already been a regularly-featured soloist with the TSO for four years. CBC had caught on that this kid’s performances needed a national audience. It would be four more years before Columbia Records caught on, signed him and lifted him to international prominence with his debut recording of the Goldberg Variations. So, as a document, this is super cool. As an actual recording, the early 50s radio broadcastiness of it makes things difficult, but Gould is great here. People tend to be split on his Beethoven. It’s like, the Bach is beyond reproach, the Mozart is best forgotten, and the Beethoven is somewhere in between. I like Gould’s Beethoven. (And some of his Mozart, if we’re being honest.) And by age 18, he already had that unique tone that I love him for.

Kate Bush: The Sensual World — This is Kate Bush’s version of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. Both were renowned for work that they did at very young ages, and both were increasingly ignored as their music approached increasingly adult subject matter. The Sensual World isn’t as consistent as Hounds of Love or as experimental as The Dreaming, but it has some of Bush’s most thoughtful songwriting. The title track, “The Fog,” “Heads We’re Dancing,” and obviously “This Woman’s Work” are all among the best music she ever made, and she couldn’t have made it as a less mature artist. Of course, many years later, she’d pull the same trick again on Aerial to even greater effect.

Movies

Where to Invade Next — Michael Moore’s gotten soft. Considering that he’s Michael Moore, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I enjoyed this very much, because I think that the United States needs as many reminders as it can get that the American experience is not the default human experience. But at the same time, I wanted to cry for most of its duration, because there are so many places that get such obvious things so right, and so many people who would doubtless call them wrong. Giving kids healthy, good meals in schools like they do in France shouldn’t sound revolutionary. Neither should Italy’s eight weeks of annual paid vacation, or Iceland’s policies on gender equality. It’s enough to make even us smug Canadians hang our heads in shame.

Television

Cucumber/Banana/Tofu: Episodes 1-5 (of all three) — This is Russell T Davies’ antidote for every austere, staid, Oscar-nominated movie about gay people you’ve ever suffered through. I didn’t see this on any year-end lists, and that is a travesty. Cucumber, Davies’s middle-aged spiritual sequel to Queer as Folk, is unbelievable television. It has more kinetic energy than anything I’ve seen in ages. If you’re not pulled in by the first episode, which, holy hell does that ever start in one place and end up in another, then you’re watching television wrong. And in case eight hours of drama about middle-aged gay dudes doesn’t appeal, there’s Banana, the nearly-as-brilliant companion piece which focuses on members of the younger supporting cast. Tofu, the series of 11-minute documentary shorts that rounds out the trilogy, is not very good. But that in no goddamn way should prevent you from watching the other two shows. Now I feel bad about some of the crap I’ve said to people about Davies’ Doctor Who scripts. He is a genius, and I hope he quits smoking so we get maximum years of prosperous creativity from him. Pick of the week.

Last Week Tonight: March 6, 2016 — “What sound does Ann Coulter make as she falls down the stairs?” is my new favourite line on this show. Well, second favourite. My new actual favourite is “Tonight we are talking about special taxing districts. So, hello people watching for the first time because of our Trump piece! And also, I presume, goodbye.”

Better Call Saul: “Gloves Off” — So far in this show, it’s been obvious that Jimmy McGill has a long way to go before he properly becomes Saul Goodman. But it hasn’t been that obvious that Mike Ehrmantraut is on a similarly lengthy journey. Jonathan Banks’s wonderful performance is outwardly the same in its mannerisms, regardless of whether he’s the ruthless “cleaner” of Breaking Bad or the regretful ex-cop in Better Call Saul. But this episode demonstrates that there’s a chasm between those two versions of the character.

QI: “Misconceptions” — The episode I watched last week was apparently Stephen Fry’s last episode filmed, but this is his last transmitted. Dear me. How will they get by without him.

Podcasts

Welcome to Night Vale: “Homecoming” + Bonus Episodes 1 & 2 — I like Night Vale best when the comedic horrors give way to a bit of humanity. I don’t necessarily mean that the show is best when it has long character arcs. I’m inclined to think the opposite. “Homecoming” does it right. It tells a typical Night Vale supernatural story, but one that has specific resonance for Cecil. And it’s basically self-contained, without depending too heavily on your knowledge of continuity for emotional investment. The bonus episodes are not written by Fink and Cranor, and both are excellent (the first is exceptional), indicating that a bit of new blood could really punch up the show. Come to think of it, I wonder what Night Vale would be like if it had a writers’ room the size of a sitcom? Would it lose what makes it singular? Or would it have the variety it sometimes lacks?

You Must Remember This: “Charles Manson’s Hollywood” Parts 1-4 — I confess that my first impression of this was “why is this a podcast and not a book?” It is essentially just Karina Longworth reading a script, with no tape save for a few quick movie clips, and the unexpected presence of Nate DiMeo in the role of Charles Manson. But then I just got lost in how good it is. This is the sort of cultural history that I am a complete sucker for. The first episode is Longworth’s summary of everything that was set to go rotten in American counterculture in the late 60s, and it’s enthralling. Manson is a lens by which Longworth examines the dark side of the hippie movement — and not just the extreme dark side that culminated in a cult and several murders, but the more mundane dark side that resulted in the mainstreaming of outlaw culture. There was a segment of Flower Power that never meant to stop at mere resistance: there would be open rebellion. And, as Ian Anderson once observed, there was something more than vaguely fascist about that segment of counterculture. That’s all baked into Longworth’s narrative, but seen through the lens of Los Angeles as opposed to the more familiar (to me) London narrative, and through the lens of psychedelic film as opposed to the more familiar (to probably most people) psychedelic music narrative. Which is not to say that Longworth ignores the musical connections in the story. The third episode, which I understand is widely regarded as the crown jewel of the 12-part series, is the heartbreaking story of how Charles Manson broke Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. If you only feel like committing to one episode of Manson brutality, make it that one. I’m sure there will be others that equal it for me, but that’s really good radio.

Limetown: Season 1 — Yeah, I binged the whole season. It’s short. Many thoughts. First off, choosing the title of the final episode of Serial season one as the title of the first episode of your fictional Serial riff is ballsy. But Limetown lives up to the affectation. This is as convincing an impression of actual radio as Night Vale isn’t. And, I know they don’t bear comparison. And, I know they probably get compared more than they should, simply by virtue of being two of the three most buzzy fictional podcasts out there. (I will never listen to The Message, by the way. I’m sure it’s fine, but I don’t want to live in a world where all of the successful podcasts are fucking branded.) But truthfully, if Night Vale had this level of aesthetic verisimilitude, it would be a better podcast. Anyway, this had me emotionally invested and in suspense from the first minute. And from the second episode on, it is terrifying. I’ve talked before about how horror games are scarier to me than horror movies because they implicate you in the story. I think the same goes for audio, which forces you to paint the picture in your head, while maintaining the pace and the sense of inevitability of a movie. Plus, there’s even a bit of subtle metafiction in here: listen through earbuds, and you’ll know what it’s like to have people talking directly into your head. I’m eagerly awaiting the second season. Orson Welles would be proud. Pick of the week.

The Heart: “Ghost: Emily” — The best episode of the season so far. Several people discuss their animosity towards their partners’ exes. Of course, this being The Heart, it’s not played for laughs. It’s thoughtful and has plenty of that thing they do where half of the story is in the mix — things spoken aloud are separate in space from things left unsaid. Really good.

All Songs Considered: “New Mix: Sturgill Simpson, Beth Orton, Julianna Barwick, Damien Jurado, More” — Wasn’t feeling this quite as much as the last few, but hoo boy does that Heron Oblivion track ever hit that perfect 1967 sweet spot.

Theory of Everything: “Paris” — Benjamen Walker is really good at talking about the stuff that insufferable lefty arts people talk about without actually coming off as insufferable. Using that gift, he has become one of the great storytellers of the decline of modern cities — first by demolishing the sharing economy in “Instaserfs,” then by railing against the commodification of all space in “New York After Rent,” and now by exploring the chasm between the Paris of memory and the Paris of today.

99% Invisible: “The Giftschrank” — There are actual rooms in German libraries where they keep the dangerous literature. This is basically an account of what kinds of literature were considered dangerous at various points in time — courtesy of Sam Greenspan, who it is always good to hear from.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Small Batch: American Crime” — Linda Holmes is in New York, talking to culture people! Danielle Henderson is great, and I would love to hear her on this show again. But I will not be watching American Crime.

The Memory Palace: “Homesteading” — DiMeo reigns it in, this week. A tight six minutes, and a tiny, charming story. It really is a bit too slight to be memorable, but I prefer this to the occasional bloat of recent episodes.

Reply All: “Milk Wanted” — Breast milk is apparently really expensive. Trust a Reply All producer (Phia Bennin, who is wonderful) to find out the internet repercussions of that.

All Songs Considered: “Iggy Pop & Josh Homme Talk ‘Post Pop Depression’” — Iggy Pop is one of the wittiest people in rock, and he and Josh Homme make a good double act. I intend to listen to the album, but I can’t have it be the first Iggy Pop album I listen to. Hell, I haven’t even heard Fun House.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Hamilton’s Leslie Odom Jr., Kanye, and Gilmore Girls” — Daoud Tyler-Ameen is a very clever interviewer and I would love to hear him do his own podcast. His interview with Leslie Odom Jr. really demonstrates that Lin-Manuel Miranda is not the only super smart person involved in Hamilton. I agree with Sean Rameswaram that all of the people who gave overwhelmingly positive reviews to The Life of Pablo the day after its release should be fired. And I’ve been told to watch Gilmore Girls by enough people, now including Daisy Rosario and Linda Holmes, that I probably will.

Omnireviewer (week of Feb. 27, 2016)

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I’ve been writing about Pink Floyd, and thus listening to and reading about Pink Floyd a hell of a lot. Hopefully the fruits of these labours will be visible soon. But you can’t rush these things. Speaking of Pink Floyd and Rush, let’s begin with Genesis, and continue with 29 other things, for a total of 30! That’s the most in ages. Well done, Parsons. Thank you, Parsons.

Music

Genesis: A Trick of the Tail — You know when a song you haven’t thought about for years comes to mind unbidden and you have to listen to it? That happened to me with “Squonk,” just now. I never expected that to happen with “Squonk.” But it did prompt me to listen through this entire album, which I haven’t heard for ages. This is like homemade macaroni and cheese straight out of the oven to me. People consider it a miracle that Genesis managed to make an album this good immediately after Peter Gabriel’s departure. But those people might not have a firm grasp on the power dynamic in Genesis: it was never Peter Gabriel’s band. Tony Banks and Michael Rutherford were at least as influential. Without Gabriel, they did lose a certain amount of the darkness that made The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway so delicious. But that’s not objectively a bad thing. I think it’s telling that fans of Genesis’ prog output tend to love this album and dislike, say, Duke. Because both of those albums are basically pop albums. The difference is that Trick is a pop album wearing a prog aesthetic: Hans Christian Andersonesque fables in the lyrics and semi-acoustic pastoralism in the music. Whereas Duke is a modern-sounding pop album mostly made up of love songs. But they’re both full of pop hooks. Really, Genesis was always more of a pop band than their prog contemporaries, even when their frontman was a guy who wore flower costumes. Maybe that’s why their music has such comfort food potential.

Pink Floyd: assorted early singles and unreleased tracks — I listened to all of the most notable tracks from the Barrett era that aren’t on Saucerful or the Piper special edition. Namely: “It Would Be So Nice,” “Julia Dream,” “Point Me At The Sky,” “Careful With That Axe Eugene” (the less-familiar studio version), “Vegetable Man,” “Scream Thy Last Scream,” “One in a Million,” “Reaction in G” and “Sunshine.” Together, they make a nice, if disjointed, early Floyd mini-album. Seldom has there been a band whose castoffs and curios are quite so interesting. I think it’s undeniable that Pink Floyd got better towards the mid-70s, but they were never again so radical as they were when Barrett was around. (An aside: the “Point Me At The Sky” single is apparently the rarest of all Pink Floyd releases. It is also the first track with a Gilmour/Waters songwriting credit. It also features the line “If you survive ‘til 2005…” What I’m saying here is that they really should have played it at their 2005 reunion show. That’s a huge missed opportunity. Sure, nobody would have known it. But, considering that it was the first time in decades that Gilmour and Waters shared a stage, it would have had such sentimental value.)

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon — It turned 43 on Tuesday, so I figured may as well. I always feel like a hipster when I say stuff like this, but I really don’t think that Dark Side is one of the best Pink Floyd albums. Wish You Were Here and Animals are both more up my street where the mid-70s stuff is concerned, and The Wall is stronger thematically, if not musically. But I sure do see the appeal: it’s got a directness to it that other Pink Floyd albums don’t have. I played a couple of songs from this album with the band I was in back in high school, Sundog One. Every time I listen to it, there’s a parallel version running in my head of how it would sound if the band were still together, playing these songs. I imagine that sounds terribly sentimental, and I suppose it is, but it’s also just a fun exercise. I like to imagine that Sundog would have gotten more playful with time. We’d do “Us and Them” as a twangy campfire song with a harmonica solo in lieu of the saxophone, and “Any Colour You Like” would be flat-out disco. *Sigh.* Maybe someday.

Syd Barrett: Opel — Everything that improved in Barrett’s songwriting after he left Pink Floyd (or, was forced out by necessity) is counterbalanced by the way his solo albums are seemingly produced to highlight his “madness” rather than his genius wherever possible. This is more of a problem on The Madcap Laughs than on Barrett and it’s hard to discern why, considering that both were produced by Barrett’s friends (Roger Waters, David Gilmour and others on the first, Gilmour alone on the second). You’d think they’d want Syd to get a sympathetic hearing, and not seem like a freak show exhibit. In any case, Opel is an odds-and-sods collection from an artist whose music is chaotic even in a more polished state. It isn’t an easy listen, and you get the sense that some of it should have been kept in the vault for the sake of Barrett’s reputation. But like everything he ever did, it’s got some intensely haunting moments, and others of intense joy. The alternate take of “Golden Hair” is among the former (and also as good a setting of a literary poem as any composer ever made), and the version of “Octopus” (here called “Clowns and Jugglers”) featuring Soft Machine is very much the latter. Worth hearing at least once.

Literature, etc.

Mark Blake: Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd — I continue to be distracted from David Day’s annotated Alice, but I promise it is very good. This is something I picked up from the library for research, which I likely won’t be finishing this time around, but it’s a really great book. Like all rock music from the pre-punk era, Pink Floyd has inspired some truly dodgy writing. But Blake is a class act, with a real sense for storytelling. He starts at the end, nearly, with the band’s reunion at Live 8 in 2005. And he uses the absence of one member at that reunion, Syd Barrett, to transition to the band’s origins — and to set the scene for oncoming tragedy. Blake gets great recollections from band members and associates in original interviews. This makes a great pairing with Nick Mason’s Inside Out, which, being a memoir, can’t lay claim to accuracy. Both are entertaining reads.

Movies

World of Tomorrow — Here’s one of the two animated shorts that everybody said got egregiously snubbed at the Oscars. I haven’t seen Bear Story, so I can’t say. But this was adorable! And really dark. And adorable! The story and writing are only okay, really. It’s not top-shelf science fiction. But the really clever thing is how it uses audio that’s clearly just random babbling of an actual child as a key part of its dialogue. It’s only 17 minutes long, and it’s on American Netflix, so if you have access to that, just go watch it.

Television

Deadwood: Season 2, episodes 7-12 — The back half of this season is, no question, some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. A few highlights: at pretty much exactly halfway through the series, Al Swearengen and Alma Garrett finally have their first scene together. It’s insane that those two characters have gone so long without actually meeting, but it’s a canny decision because it makes that scene feel really momentous — so much so that when Al emerges from Alma’s room, E.B. asks him, “Have we a new pope?” What a line. Then there’s the ending of the episode “Amalgamation and Capital,” which, without spoiling anything, brings several ongoing storylines to their separate conclusions so that they all combine to have one specific consequence. It’s the kind of showy storytelling that I don’t think TV saw again until Breaking Bad. And frankly, Deadwood has better dialogue. There’s Timothy Olyphant’s performance in the following episode. He’s a scary dude when he’s angry, but he’s heartbreaking when faced with tragedy. And, of course, there’s the arrival of George Hearst, a character who’s been talked about so often that you feel like it should be a momentous event when he actually gets to Deadwood. But the show undercuts it by sending E.B. Farnum to meet him in a state of gastrointestinal distress. This is now my favourite poop joke: “Allow me a moment’s silence, Mr. Hearst, sir. I am having a digestive crisis, and must focus on suppressing its expression.” Deadwood is a show that everybody should watch. I am dreading the third season, because I’ve heard about how badly cancellation threw the ending into disarray. But the two seasons I’ve watched so far are essential. Pick of the week.

Last Week Tonight: February 28 — The main reason this isn’t pick of the week is that you’ve almost certainly watched it anyway. (And also Deadwood.) I never wanted John Oliver to cover Donald Trump. I admired him for saying that he wasn’t interested in Trump on Colbert. Basically, the thing I love most about Last Week Tonight is that it focusses on topics that aren’t necessarily part of the news cycle at any given time and manages to find the relevance and humour in them. And covering Trump is the opposite of that. But Oliver’s right: ignoring him won’t help. As I write this, Trump is trouncing Ted Cruz on Super Tuesday. And the key insight that Oliver brought to the conversation is that Trump’s greatest asset is his name. Not necessarily the actual word “Trump,” although that helps. But, the Trump brand has massively positive connotations for many people, in spite of Trump’s actually pretty dodgy leadership. So, the best mode of attack is to strip him of his damn name. Make Donald Drumpf again, indeed.

Better Call Saul: “Amarillo” — Okay. I’m just going to take a moment to rain on the parade. I still love this show, and this was a good episode. Things are picking up. But I started thinking about where the points of tension are in this story. And they’re basically, “Will Jimmy screw up his hard-won new career, and ruin his promising new relationship?” And, putting aside the fact that we know from Breaking Bad that the answer is yes, I feel like I’ve seen this story before. That’s not a knock, though. Actually, it’s nice to see such skilled TV craftspeople making something so simple. Not everything has to be Deadwood.

QI: “Messy” — Stephen Fry’s leaving QI? My god, I hadn’t heard! I’m disconsolate.

Podcasts

Criminal: “Hastings” — This is a story about a day when an eighth-grader brought a gun to school and tried to fire it. It’s told by three people who were there: the principal and two former students, now grown. It’s refreshing to hear a story like this told with so much attention paid to the experience of the survivors and so little paid to the sensational details of the (potential) shooter’s life, mental health, etc. Criminal tends to be a show that I appreciate more than I love, but it could be that I just haven’t heard a bunch of the best episodes.

Fugitive Waves: “A Secret Civil Rights Kitchen” — A lovely, slight little story about a woman who used her phenomenal cooking abilities for social good. Like all Kitchen Sisters stories, it’s beautifully produced. Listen to this to find out if Fugitive Waves will be for you. And then, even if it’s not, go listen to “Waiting for Joe DiMaggio.”

Radiolab: “K-poparazzi” — Really great. This is presented as a counterpart to the story about Gary Hart: both ask the question, “how much do we want to know about our public figures?” But instead of focussing on American politics, this one focusses on K-pop. I kind of wish they’d tightened both stories up and added a third, so it could be a classic Radiolab themed triptych. But then, my attitude towards Radiolab is always mediated by misty nostalgia.

99% Invisible: “The Green Book” — A new producer! Nice. I love how 99pi can find a way to present just about any story as being about a design solution. The Green Book was a travel guide designed to help black people travel through the United States in relative safety during the years of Jim Crow. The last edition was published shortly after the Civil Rights Act was passed, but it’s still enormously informative of that time.

On the Media: “Spotlight on ‘Spotlight,’ the Movie” — This made me even more glad that Spotlight won Best Picture. Robby Robinson and Sacha Pfeiffer’s devotion to truth in storytelling obviously extends even to their own story. Brooke Gladstone doesn’t push Robinson too hard on why he and the Globe didn’t break the Catholic Church child abuse story earlier, because she doesn’t need to. The movie explores that side of the story just as deeply as it explores the journalistic process. I loved this interview, but mostly I just love Spotlight.

The Heart: “Ghost: Alex” — This didn’t work for me. The Heart’s previous forays into fiction/semi-fiction have worked because they relied principally on a third-person narrator, which is a familiar format for a podcast. This is just a straight-ahead radio drama, and while I adore that format, the writing and acting feels forced. I would have preferred if Kaitlin Prest had remained present throughout. Maybe that’s just me.

The Memory Palace: “Overland” — Hey, there’s humour in this! I love The Memory Palace, but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually heard humour in it before. I’ve also never heard Led Zeppelin in The Memory Palace before. Nice.

Reply All: “Zardulu” — This might be the best episode Reply All has ever made. It’s best not to know too much about this going in. I’ll just tell you that it involves a conspiracy, a number of enigmas, some head scratchers, and Justin Trudeau getting threatened by the Sasquatch. I’ll also tell you that I am now halfway convinced that nothing is real. Pick of the week.

Love and Radio: “Deep Stealth Mode” — This is actually an episode of Here Be Monsters that’s making a guest appearance in Love and Radio’s feed. I’ve never listened to Here Be Monsters, but it sounds like it’s basically just Love and Radio made by different people. This is a story of a mother raising a transgender daughter whose consciousness of her gender became obvious when she was three years old. In classic Love and Radio style, the narrative stays in the tape the whole time: it’s just the mother and the daughter. No host or interviewer. It’s a lovely little story, and probably more relevant than the one I’ve chosen as pick of the week, but relevance isn’t everything. Let’s call it “recommended.”

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “The Oscars Omnibus 2016” — It’s possibly more fun listening to this with the benefit of hindsight. The lack of outright dismissiveness towards The Revenant is appreciated. I get it, awards momentum makes things tiresome. But it’s a skillfully made movie, and this panel recognizes that. On the other hand, Bob Mondello’s dislike of Spotlight is totally beyond me. Doesn’t matter now, though, does it?

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Small Batch: The 2016 Oscars” — Basically a continuation of the above. Nice to have Gene Demby on here to offer some insight into the problems with the Chris Rock monologue.

99% Invisible: “Norman Doors” — This is actually a video, but the audio from it showed up in my feed anyway. It does really work better with the visual element. Mostly it’s just cool to see Roman Mars show up as a Vox reporter’s audio spirit guide. But I’m also a fan of any instance where he gets to gripe about bad design. (I.e. his TED talk.)

All Songs Considered: “New Mix: Breakthroughs by Car Seat Headrest, The Coathangers, Big Thief, More” — Oh my god that Car Seat Headrest song is incredible. The full version is nearly twice as long as the video edit and that’s what you need to hear. Stream it here. Do it. A show that starts there and ends with Tim Hecker has got to be good. Actually, it’s probably the best All Songs I’ve ever heard.

All Songs Considered: “New Mix: Music From M. Ward, Nothing, Marissa Nadler, a Chat with Mitski & More” — There hasn’t been a song on these last two episodes of All Songs that hasn’t been awesome. I’ve already gone back and listened to huge chunks of these shows. Now I have to try and remember to actually check out the records when they come out. My highlights here are “Pentecost” by Kyle Craft, “Girl From Conejo Valley” by M. Ward, and “Your Best American Girl” by Mitski.

On The Media: “FiveThirtyEight Explains Super Tuesday” — Listening to statisticians talk about Super Tuesday was almost as depressing as Super Tuesday itself.

Imaginary Worlds: “Imagining Wonder Woman” — Wonder Woman has the most interesting real-world origin story of any superhero, bar none. Can Superman claim to be created by a renegade polyamorous psychologist with a whips and chains fetish, as a vision of a feminist utopia? No he cannot. This is fascinating.

99% Invisible: “Mojave Phone Booth” — Actually a Snap Judgement story, this is the tale of the man who discovered a phone booth in the middle of the desert and how it became a precursor to social media. Really good.

Serial: “Trade Secrets” — Again, we venture into the weeds, and again I can’t keep myself apprised. Presumably, the reason Serial was the breakout podcast is that it was exciting. Not that this is a virtue in itself, but I do think that’s a reasonable statement of causation. So, in a sense, it’s sad to see it descend into something so eye-glazingly boring. On the other hand, maybe it reflects admirably on the team’s principles: don’t just be fun, be important. Can you tell I’m conflicted about this season? Every time I sit down to write one of these blurbs, I tie myself in knots. This is the sort of thing I’m quick to say should exist in the world, yet I’m basically listening to it out of inertia at this point.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Downton Abbey and Nostalgia as a Genre” — I came so close to starting Downton Abbey. I even made it about five minutes into the premiere. But now that I know how swiftly it went south, I think I may sit this one out. As for the podcast, I love when Barrie Hardymon and Audie Cornish come around. But for some reason, this episode doesn’t seem as interested in speaking to people who haven’t seen the thing they’re talking about. Still fine. But that’s usually one of the reasons that I prefer this show to the likes of Pop Rocket, which is more insidey. Just saying.

All Songs Considered: “The 2016 Tiny Desk Contest Winner” — Gaelynn Lea is awesome. I love that NPR chose somebody with such an idiosyncratic sound as their winner. Frankly, finding talent like this is the entire reason why public broadcasters should still be in the music business. I could not love All Songs Considered more than I do this week. In fact, let’s give the three episodes I reviewed here a collective, honourary pick of the week. But Reply All is still the best podcast episode I listened to this week, no question.

And with that, I got my listen later playlist on Stitcher down to zero for the first time in months. Thank you, dishes. Thank you, running.

Omnireviewer (week of Feb. 21, 2016)

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29, this week! Back on track! It’s been one of those weeks where there’s a lot of cleaning and cooking, and even a bit of running, so there are inevitably also lots of podcasts. Also, many other interesting and unexpected things.

Literature, etc.

Umberto Eco: “Ur-Fascism” — Read it. I had never read anything by Eco, but when he died, this came highly recommended by two bloggers I enjoy. It contains some interesting personal nuggets and, most interestingly, a list of features that tend to be present in various forms of fascism. So, it’s a very useful essay if you’re looking to call somebody an evil fascist on grounds that aren’t totally specious.

Peter Hince: “Being Queen’s Roadie was One Intense, Rewarding Job” — This is an excerpt from a book that’s probably insufferable by a quarter of the way through. But, a free excerpt won’t hurt anybody. It doesn’t contain a lot of revelations; these things never do. Basically, Freddie Mercury was a handful. Hince’s reveries can get a bit self-indulgent — like your uncle who was in a band, once. He’s a bit of a prick, really. It’s still kind of fun, and Hince saw and heard Queen’s shows from angles that nobody else did. It’s worth a read if you’re a Queen fan, which you probably are. You couldn’t pay me to read the whole book, though. On the other hand…

Will Romano: Mountains Come Out Of The Sky — This is a fairly straightforward history of progressive rock. I’m reading it for a project I’m hoping to start sometime in the not too distant future. I’ve been reading it for ages. It’s the same every time: I borrow it from the library, read one measly chapter, renew it three times thinking I’ll get further, then I have to return it. The reason for this is simple: this book is dismal. Romano doesn’t know how to write sentences. He has nothing interesting to say about the music or the culture that it came out of. And he rehashes tired truisms from prog fandom about how vacuous everything else was. I’m committed to finishing it for one reason: Romano interviewed everybody, and gets some interesting quotes here and there which may prove useful to me. But seriously, this is dire. Every time I pick it up it lights a fire under me to write something like this, except good. I’m working on it.

John Cavanagh: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn — An early entry in the 33⅓ series, and not the strongest I’ve read, but still a really good insight into the making of Pink Floyd’s debut album. Cavanagh (what is it with Cavanaghs?) made me realize the influence of Roger Waters, even at this early point in the band’s history. I was always sort of stupefied that a guy who started off as just some bassist eventually wrote The Wall. My impression was that Waters only stepped up his contribution because Syd Barrett’s absence from the third album onwards made it necessary. That’s clearly not true. He always had designs on rock stardom.

Music

Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn — Specifically, after finishing the book, I listened straight through the three-disc 40th anniversary edition that has the album in both mono and stereo forms (maybe it’s because I grew up with it, but I don’t hate the stereo mix as much as most Floyd fans, though the mono is certainly better overall) plus all of the associated singles and B-sides. It’s a top-notch set, and absolutely worthwhile for anybody that likes the album. Which I do, clearly. But I will say that parts of it have aged better than others. “See Emily Play” remains a 10/10 pop single, “Astronomy Domine” is as good a four-minute distillation of psychedelic rock as you’ll find, and perhaps surprisingly, the ten-minute, mostly atonal jam track “Interstellar Overdrive” still works, in spite of being more firmly of its time than anything else on the record. I’m more hesitant about “Flaming” and “The Gnome.” There is only so much tweeness I am willing to accept in my psychedelia. And, as far as songwriting goes, I’m inclined to believe that Syd Barrett was better once he’d abandoned that aesthetic on his comparatively dark solo albums.

Pink Floyd: Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London — I can’t believe I’d never heard this. This is the half-hour recording Pink Floyd made as the score to the bizarre-looking movie of the same name, which I will likely watch, maybe sometime. But the version of “Interstellar Overdrive” on this is far better than the version that made it onto Piper, though it lacks the state-of-the-art EMI mixing and mastering. And “Nick’s Boogie” is dank af.

Jethro Tull: War Child — Just as Jethro Tull is one of the most underestimated bands ever to skirt the borders of the classic rock canon, War Child is the most overlooked of their many masterpieces of the 70s. This was the first Tull album not to be made up of just one gigantic song since Aqualung three years prior. But the “bigness” of Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play continue here. That may alienate some listeners, but I think it’s very artfully done. Dee Palmer’s rock orchestral arrangements are maybe second only to George Martin’s, and the glockenspiels, accordions and tablas that the band employs on “Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day” make it one of the best recordings of Jethro Tull’s career — and not just one of Ian Anderson’s best songs. This album is full of moments that I find sort of chilling, like the soprano sax melody that opens the title track, or the line in “Skating Away” about being the only one in the audience. My only complaint is that “Two Fingers” is a bit of a weak ending, and not nearly as good as the simpler version recorded as “Lick Your Fingers Clean” during the Aqualung sessions. It’s the only song on the album that’s let down by its arrangement, and it’s right at the end. But up to there, War Child is a classic and one of my favourite albums.

Movies

Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London — Okay, it didn’t take me as long to get around to this as I thought it would. This is an absolute pleasure. It’s an arty sort of documentary about Swinging London that has a sense of humour about itself and never disappears up its own ass. This, in spite of the fact that it was actually made during the period of Swinging London, and not in retrospect. Usually, I find there’s a certain inevitable self-seriousness to nonfiction that speaks on behalf of a contemporary counterculture. (That’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t get into On The Road.) This isn’t like that at all. It’s mostly verité footage over relevant music, with relatively little speech. What speech there is is mostly stoned people talking out their asses, but you get the sense that the film neither endorses what they’re saying, nor does it hold them in disdain. (Okay, maybe it holds Andrew Loog Oldham in disdain, but the wanker deserves it.) There’s a moment near the beginning where the camera’s shooting a guy playing trombone in a sequence making fun of the pomp and ceremony of the changing of the guard, and the camera keeps zooming in and out as the trombonist moves his slide. It’s surprisingly funny, and establishes the camera as a really engaging, likeable narrator. The last third of the movie revolves more around interview footage and is far less interesting than what came before, but there are worthwhile tidbits. Julie Christie is remarkably indulgent of Peter Whitehead, the obviously eccentric man making the film. A young Michael Caine reveals himself to be very sexist. And Mick Jagger’s actually fairly thoughtful at times. If you’re going to watch a movie about psychedelic culture in the 60s, this is not as good a choice as Performance, but more worthwhile than Easy Rider.

A Serious Man — The best part of this movie is a scene where the main character, a physics professor, is arguing with his student’s father in his driveway. The father is threatening to sue the professor for defaming his son — the professor claims that his student tried to bribe him in exchange for a passing grade, which is almost certainly true but we can’t know for sure. So, the professor says, okay I’ll pretend like this never happened, but your son still fails. And the father says that unless his son passes, he’ll sue the professor — not for defamation, now, but for taking money. Aha, says the professor, so he did leave the money! “This is defamation,” says the father. The professor reasonably points out that this doesn’t make any sense: either he left the money or he didn’t. “Please,” says the father. “Accept the mystery.” This is, of course, a Schroedinger’s cat scenario. The cat can’t actually be simultaneously dead and alive, but we accept the mystery because the math checks out. And, Schroedinger’s cat and the associated math is the very topic of the failed exam that all of this is about. The Coens structure the movie so that this is an obvious and easy connection to make, and their main character sees it too — which is part of what spurs on his crisis of faith. Yes, this movie is thematically based around a three-way allegory comparing faith, physics and bribery. Like Burn After Reading and O Brother, Where Art Thou, it deserves to be much more highly regarded. Pick of the week.

Television

Deadwood: Season 2, episodes 3-6 — The abysmally-titled but excellent episode “Requiem for a Gleet” features not just one, but two moments that must rank high on my list of great TV scenes: the shot of five people at Al’s bedside after his medical ordeal (the nature of which is only marginally spoiled by the episode’s title), and the scene where E.B. fails miserably to trick Alma out of her gold claim. The latter is borderline Shakespearean in its wit. E.B. is an idiot, but a wonderfully loquacious one in the vein of Polonius. And, the way that Alma turns the tables and manages to unsettle him rather than the other way around recalls Shakespeare’s cleverest heroines: Beatrice and Rosalind. Also, the character of Francis Walcott, who shows up this season to stir the pot, feels like a prototype of Vee from Orange is the New Black: another ill-intentioned interloper in a show’s second season. We’ll see which of them turns out to be more dangerous, but as of episode six, I’m leaning heavily towards Walcott. He basically just turned into Hannibal.

Last Week Tonight: February 22, 2016 — Sometimes satire doesn’t make me laugh, but instead makes me say “yes, that is correct; good job liberal America.” I don’t think that’s good satire. That’s what the Hollywood whitewashing segment did — not that it isn’t something worth talking about. It’s just that everybody’s talking about it already, and this segment didn’t frame the issue in a new way, or make me laugh. (Except for the bit about Idris Elba dressing like French Waldo. That was gold.) The rest of the episode is wonderful. I have a limitless tolerance for John Oliver fact-checking Republican talking points when actual journalists won’t, and the segment on abortion laws works by sheer accumulation of examples.

Better Call Saul: “Cobbler” — “You think I’d be caught dead driving that thing? It looks like a school bus for six-year-old pimps.” Michael Mando as Nacho is becoming one of my favourite performances in this show. The story is becoming as frustrating-in-a-good-way as Breaking Bad was. You see what Jimmy’s capable of at every turn, but you can also predict his every backslide into criminality. He’s undone by his own self-image.

Lost: “The Moth” — Not to be confused with the podcast discussed below. Charlie is one of the most appealing characters in Lost because of Dominic Monaghan’s performance, but his story is appallingly written. This episode, with its hamfisted symbolism and its rock and roll clichés, is the show’s first proper stinker. It’s one of the obvious points to go to illustrate the failings of this supposedly “best” season of Lost. Also, this is the first I’ve noticed it, but Naveen Andrews’ accent is really bad, isn’t it?

Podcasts

Sampler: “Magic and Tonic” — This is a perfectly entertaining show, but I honestly don’t see who’s going to tune in (I have decided that this is still an appropriate expression to use about podcasts) regularly to hear a show that’s about other shows. Brittany Luse is great, though. I’ll check out her other show when I catch up with my damn subscriptions.

On the Media: “Bernie Sanders is Running for President” — That title was supposed to be a joke, because the episode aired in January, months after Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy. But since I’m listening to it a full month after that, I guess it’s… funnier? Not much to say, except that once I catch up with my damn subscriptions, I might add OTM to my list of shows that I listen to every episode of, because it’s the most consistently intelligent show available that relates to news.

The Moth: “Moth GrandSLAMs: Life and Death” — I tuned in for Neil Gaiman, and ended up consistently bored throughout all four stories. Oh well. One episode closer to having caught up with my damn subscriptions.

Radiolab: “I Don’t Have To Answer That” — Politics stories on Radiolab are almost sure to be good, and completely certain not to be extraordinary. There’s no good reason that Radiolab, with its capacity for bold aesthetic choices and esoteric storytelling, should be the show to do this story. Hell, Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield work just down the hall. This is fine. It’s good. But I miss the version of Radiolab that would take on the questions nobody else could.

Serial: “5 O’Clock Shadow” — Okay, now this is starting to pick up. This episode has a detailed outline of a military mission and great tape from people who were there. It’s also the first episode that has really sold the confusion over Bergdahl’s motives to me. Having heard his complaints about his platoon, I have no idea why he thought such dramatic measures were necessary.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Grease: Live, and Musicals on TV” — Even as a person with a relatively high tolerance for musicals, all of the stuff they talk about on this episode sounds dire to me.

All Songs Considered: “Shearwater, Lily & Madeleine, Eskimeaux, More” — Nothing on this really stuck out, but I love when Lars Gotrich comes around, because he has some magical way of finding the sort of strange and marginal music that I want in my life.

Fresh Air: “Original ‘Cabaret’ Emcee Joel Grey” — Grey’s a complicated guy. There’s a lot of drama in his life story, which he’s been keeping under wraps for a long time, considering that he only came out publicly as a gay man last year. This is a good interview. It’s hard not to think that Grey was a bit of a jerk to his ex-wife, but there were compromising circumstances.

Theory of Everything: “After Work” — Benjamen Walker checks back in with the unpaid intern he “hired” to try and make a living in the sharing economy back in the three-part “Instaserfs” series. This is great; I love how the two of them use their relationship as a metaphor for the actual sharing economy, and this episode turns that on its head, a bit. As ever, Walker’s intense skepticism about “progress” in the world of labour is much appreciated.

99% Invisible: “The Yin and Yang of Basketball” — This is a story about design solutions to seeming injustices built into the game of basketball. It’s real genius lies in the fact that it’s not important to understand what a three-point shot is, for example. I have no idea what that is, and if they’d tried to explain it, I guarantee I would have tuned out.

Imaginary Worlds: “Noble Effort” — This is actually an episode of 99pi from back when Molinsky was a freelancer without his own podcast. It’s a very, very good episode of 99pi, about the work of the man who drew the backgrounds and landscapes for the Looney Toons, and was thus at least halfway responsible for their brilliance.

Radiolab: “Hard Knock Life” — Robert Krulwich got Lin-Manuel Miranda, of Hamilton fame, to write music about the mating rituals of beetles. This is essentially why we need Robert Krulwich in the world.

99% Invisible: “Miss Manhattan” — The best episode of 99pi since “Structural Integrity.” Before there were supermodels, one woman posed for nearly every sculptor in America. It’s a great story, and Avery Trufelman is an incredible storyteller. Just go listen to it. Pick of the week.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Small Batch: The 2016 Grammy Awards” — I saved so much time by just listening to this and not watching the Grammys. I hate the Grammys. But everything Kendrick Lamar touches turns to gold, so at least there’s that.

Serial: “Hindsight” Parts 1 & 2 — The more that this season of Serial stays focussed on Bergdahl himself, rather than going madly off in every contextual direction, the more I like it — which is to say that this two-parter is one of the highlights of season two. I realize that this is an argument against the very thing that I’ve previously claimed makes Serial such a positive cultural force in the past, but I just can’t deny that personal narratives mean more to me than the granular details that Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis are so good at parsing.

Reply All: “The Line” — This is a story about doubt in the Mormon church, as expressed online, that neither condescends to Mormons, nor does it gloss over the fact that their doctrine doesn’t make sense. It is very deft and very moving, and once again does that thing that I love so much about Reply All where it switches effortlessly back and forth between being “important public radio” and being people with microphones shooting the shit.

Omnireviewer (week of Feb. 14, 2016)

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21 reviews — not all of which are from this week, I confess. I forgot some stuff a while back. But! The live things are both from this week! Look at me, doing things! Leaving my apartment!

Live events

Robert Lepage: 887 — There’s no way to properly unpack this performance in a few words immediately after the fact. So I’ll just kind of describe what it is. It’s Robert Lepage onstage, talking about memory: the neurological phenomenon of memory, his childhood memories, the process of memorization. Along the way, he explores the origins of theatre (for him personally and in general), he remembers his father, and he reflects on Quebec nationalism and the FLQ. Onstage with him is a set so ingenious in its design that I’m not even going to try to describe it. But this isn’t really a show about spectacle. Mostly, it’s just Lepage talking to you, telling you a story, being a companionable guide through history and memory. It’s like an episode of The Moth combined with a TED talk inside a magical realist diorama. Some of the themes Lepage plays with in this don’t seem like they should necessarily connect, but they do, and never in ways that seem forced. And there are about a thousand different plot threads hanging at any one time, but it’s never hard to follow. He just strings you along. It is deft and haunting and you should take any opportunity that arises to see it. Pick of the week.

Nick Thune: Live at the Biltmore — I’m going to try to get out to more live comedy. I always love it, when it’s somebody I know won’t bomb. Thune is great. I’d say about three quarters of his jokes landed with the crowd. There’s some chaff in his set right now, but the good bits are really good. Generally, the darker he goes, the better he gets. It says something about the way this guy’s head works that his best line came in a bit about watching a man contemplate suicide on the edge of a bridge. Apparently, that bit did not go over in Antwerp. Live comedy, hey?

Literature, etc.

Susan Fast: Dangerous — I actually read this a few weeks ago and never wrote it up for some reason. This is the 100th volume in the 33⅓ series. Fast’s thesis is that Michael Jackson’s Dangerous is his most mature work: this version of Jackson is not an artist past his prime, but an artist embracing adulthood in a way that the media never gave him credit for, and embracing his blackness in spite of the media’s accusations that he was abandoning it. It’s an outstanding and entertaining little book, and I highly recommend reading it and listening to the album simultaneously. You’ll appreciate the music more for having read this.

Music

Michael Jackson: Dangerous — I suppose I also neglected to write this up. Basically, I’m with Susan Fast on this. It’s a dreadfully underrated album. “Jam” might well be my new favourite MJ song, and tracks like “Remember the Time” and “Who Is It” are delightfully complex. I confess, I can’t deal with the ballads — especially not “Heal the World,” and I suspect this is my liability rather than the song’s — but the impact of the album as a whole is staggering. It isn’t the one-disc hit parade that Thriller was, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s challenging and ambitious, and that makes it maybe even more awesome.

Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks — If I’m being honest, it’s probably my favourite Dylan album. His band sounds blandly professional compared to the kickass Nashville session players on Blonde on Blonde, but the lyrics are the best of his career and so are the vocal performances. The songs on Blood on the Tracks are direct enough to be comprehensible, but they still maintain a tantalizing bit of mystery. The perfect example of this is my absolute favourite Dylan song, “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” It tells a straightforward story with four fully fleshed-out characters (the title trio with the addition of Big Jim, the ill-fated rich dude) but it leaves out crucial information at the last minute, forcing the listener to dig through the lyric for clues as to what exactly took place. In a particularly wonderful touch, the most important clue is in the second line of the song. I love Blood on the Tracks. It’s one of the rock ‘n’ roll warhorses of the boomer generation that most deserves its reputation.

Julia Wolfe: Anthracite Fields — I’ve listened to this in bits and pieces at work a bunch of times. This was my second listen straight through. I dunno. I love the first movement, but this thing that new music people are doing now where they compose to librettos constructed from scraps of found writing (see also Ted Hearne’s The Source, and a while back, John Adams’ Doctor Atomic) is starting to wear thin for me. We get it: it’s a postmodern age. I’m tired. I just want to hear songs. Musically, there are parts of this that I love. But this is nowhere near as compelling as its two immediate predecessors in the list of Pulitzer winners.

Kate Bush: The Whole Story — I don’t generally love compilations, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put this on to hear the alternate version of “Wuthering Heights” at the beginning and just let it play. No songs here are less than excellent.

Elvis Costello/Brodsky Quartet: The Juliet Letters — This is likely not the best Elvis Costello album to start with. But I happened to have a copy lying around that I got for free, so may as well. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. A string quartet has the same homogeneity as a punk band, so this format makes perfect sense, and should be explored further, by people who share Costello and the Brodsky’s aversion to “crossover” music. The songs with music written by members of the quartet really emphasize what a nimble vocalist Costello is. His own material doesn’t always make the same demands on him. It remains to be seen whether I’ll listen to this a second time, but I’m glad I heard it once.

Kanye West: The Life of Pablo — I stole this album and so should you. Tidal exclusives cannot become a thing. Shitty distribution methods aside: when Yeezus came out, I thought of it as Kanye’s White Album, given that Fantasy is clearly his Sgt. Pepper. I’m going to revise that. Yeezus is now Kanye’s Magical Mystery Tour — a good, but somewhat slight and incidental work between two more substantial ones. The Life of Pablo is a perfect analogue for the White Album: troubled production, bloat, songs in various stages of incompletion upon release, lack of focus. But where the actual White Album manages to use all of those things to its advantage in the end, making a unified aesthetic out of its heterogeneity, The Life of Pablo just kind of feels like a slog to me, on first listen. There are moments I loved, and I clearly need to listen to it more than once to process it. (As did all of the reviewers who wrote it up the day after its surprise release. WHY must everything happen NOW?) Still, I loved both of Kanye’s last two albums immediately. At the moment, I think this is his worst album since 808s and Heartbreak. That may change.

Television

Last Week Tonight: February 14, 2016 — Oh, thank god he’s back. He managed to cover Scalia’s death in a way that was funny but not tasteless and also not needlessly deferential to a person who materially harmed many lives. He brought out the comedy in the horrible irony that voter ID proponents routinely commit voter impersonation in state legislatures. And, he curated an extravaganza devoted to a New Zealand MP getting hit in the face with a dildo. I love this show so much.

The Art of the Deal: The Movie — I’m going to call this television for arbitrary reasons. This is one of those internet things where the fact of its existence is more relevant than the thing itself. It’s pretty funny, though. Watch it before it has no more caché.

Better Call Saul: “Switch” — It’s the switch that makes the whole thing. That moment with the switch. I don’t even know what to think. Also, I love how adept this show is becoming at creating idiotic, white, suburban petty criminals whose downfall is their entitlement. I don’t know what this show is planning on doing to that guy with the Hummer, but it’s going to be so satisfying.

Deadwood: “A Lie Agreed Upon” (Parts 1 & 2) — The two-part premiere of the second season provides the Swearengen/Bullock showdown we’ve all been waiting for, Al’s greatest closing benediction thus far, and Anna Gunn. This is clearly going to be a good season.

Podcasts

The Memory Palace: “The Wheel” — Longer isn’t necessarily better for The Memory Palace. And, as much as I love this show, I’ve also begun to become aware of some of DiMeo’s ticks as a writer. He likes to hone in on particular evocative phrases and adopt them as recurring motifs. Sometimes, it works brilliantly, like “she let her mind wander” in the episode about Margaret Knight. But “they could take the boat” doesn’t have quite the same poetic resonance in this story. It is a heck of a story, though — the tale of Robert Smalls’ incredible escape from slavery during the Civil War. And the anecdote that DiMeo tacks on the end is perfect. DiMeo doesn’t hit it out of the park every time, but there are wonderful moments in every episode of The Memory Palace.

Reply All: “In The Desert” — This is both an excellent mystery story and a very amusing example of P.J. Vogt knowing exactly how to piss off Alex Goldman. This podcast is amazing.

Reply All: “Apologies to Dr. Rosalind Franklin” — How like Reply All to turn an oversight into a fun story. I have to say, though: it seems a bit pedantic to me that somebody listened to Goldman’s story about diversity in tech workplaces and honed in on the fact that he neglected to mention Dr. Franklin alongside Watson and Crick in an aside that really didn’t have much to do with the story at hand. But she does deserve more credit, so whatever.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Small Batch: Super Bowl Snacks” — Two takeaways from this. One: I could have Superbowled more committedly. Two: I need to start listening to The Sporkful, which I’ve known for some time.

99% Invisible: “The Ice King” — People used to ship American lake ice all the way to India. That is completely amazing, and this is a great story. Plus, the sources for it are sufficiently obscure that this feels like a genuine public service from 99pi. I would never have heard about this otherwise.

On The Media: “Common Sense” — A nearly two-month old episode of OTM, but one that I knew I still had to listen to. It’s so nice to hear that there are people willing to casually call bullshit on the arguments in opposition of gun control.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Small Batch: Harper Lee and To Kill A Mockingbird” — I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only person who gets a lump in their throat at the mere mention of Boo Radley.

On The Media: “Brooke on the Longform Podcast” — Brooke Gladstone is the greatest. She’s one of the few people that journalism can’t do without. This is the first I’ve heard her talk about her own work rather than other people’s, and is absolutely essential listening for anybody interested in the media. It’s great to hear her talk about the differences between her sensibility as an OTM host and Bob Garfield’s. She’s more interested in how people process information, whereas Garfield mostly likes to take umbrage with specific instances of journalistic misconduct. That’s why it’s important to have both of them: Garfield delivers what a lot of people presumably go to a media criticism show for — confrontation and reckoning. But Gladstone’s the one who’ll teach you how to read the news intelligently. This is a lovely bit of insight into how she thinks. I guess I also need to start listening to Longform. Pick of the week.

Omnireviewer (week of Feb. 7, 2016)

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19 reviews, many good things:

Movies

Hail, Caesar! — I think this is the least good Coen brothers movie I’ve seen. I haven’t seen any outright bad ones, but Hail, Caesar! is hugely inconsistent. There are scenes that are totally brilliant — one near the beginning where Josh Brolin’s gregarious Hollywood producer talks theology with leaders from four religions is primo Coen. But for every scene like that, there’s an unfunny joke that goes on for ages. One of the problems here is that the Coens commit so wholeheartedly to every single one of the fragmented bits and plotlines they threw in. So, if one of them isn’t doing it for you, tough. You’re stuck in it for seven minutes, probably. I will say this: the Coens are the most politically inscrutable filmmakers working. This film’s attitude towards Communism is almost impossible to make out. To take that line of thought further would head into spoiler territory, so would somebody I know please go see this movie and have that conversation with me? Thanks.

The Big Short — This is possibly the saddest movie I’ve ever seen. Civilization is broken and we’re all hopelessly fucked. (To be less emotional about it, this is a big swing of a movie with an aesthetic all its own and lots of unlikely choices. Most of those choices are the right ones, but some of the jokes early on don’t land because of problems with the delivery or editing or something. I have problems with the infamous “Margot Robbie in a bubble bath” scene — how much irony does it take to offset decades of cinematic sexism? But on the other hand, I love that this movie begins as a big broad comedy that revels in its own excess like The Wolf Of Wall Street — to which Robbie is an obvious and intentional connection — only to do what The Wolf failed to do in the end: namely, to condemn the entire financial system in a miasma of sudden bleakness. The Big Short is messy and ambitious and mostly really good and everybody should go see it.)

Television

Doctor Who: “Paradise Towers,” episodes 2-4 — One of the biggest problems with the classic series is that every episode save for the last in a serial needs a cliffhanger. And, while the cliffhangers themselves are often delightful, their resolutions tend to be trite. The Doctor just kind of clevers his way out of a situation so that he can get on with the rest of the story. But when it’s Sylvester McCoy doing the clevering, it makes it easy to ignore the seams in the storytelling. Seriously, this guy is the most underrated of the Doctors by a mile. And everything else about this story is delightful as well. The cannibalistic grandmas are obviously the best part, but the main villain’s wonderful overacting comes in a close second. This is the period in the show’s history where they realized that the budgets aren’t going to increase, and neither is the audience, so they may as well do what they like. It’s all approached with a heavy dollop of irony, which manages not to overpower the actual brilliance of the story. There are actually worse places to start with classic Doctor Who than this, I’d expect.

Lost: “House of the Rising Sun” — There are problems with Sun and Jin’s storyline in early Lost, but they’re papered over by a pair of totally wonderful performances by Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim. Also, one of the real pleasures of these early episodes is seeing various cast members share scenes for the first time. This episode, it’s Charlie and Locke’s scenes that really pop.

Music

Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — This is the album that got me into hip hop, and it’s still probably my favourite album of the past decade. (Run the Jewels 2 might be its only competition.) It’s basically psychedelic rap: a giant Dionysian pastiche of colours and lights and hazes and paranoia and regrets. (According to my taxonomy of psychedelia, Fantasy qualifies as a “Pepper.”) It’s a bit bloated, maybe. I’d lose “So Appalled,” cut a bit off “Devil in a New Dress,” and excise Chris Rock from “Blame Game.” But, better to have too much. And if Kanye’s ego makes him insufferable at times, it also gives him intense self-knowledge, which he calls up in every verse on this. It’s amazing to hear such a complex psychology reflecting on itself.

Literature, etc.

Alejandro Jodorowsky/Moebius: The Incal — I enjoyed this a lot, but I don’t know if I’d actually recommend it. I’m fascinated by Jodorowsky’s esotericism as it pertains to the Kabbalah and Tarot. But here, his belief system seems to mostly revolve around the idea that “there’s light and there’s darkness and you can’t have one without the other,” which is such a drug cliché of an observation that I can only roll my eyes. Much of the dialogue is terrible, and a lot of the sex in this seems to have been shoehorned in, just to ensure that we all know this is an “adult” comic, and only ends up making it seem adolescent. Also, in terms of sequential art technique, there are a lot of moments where it kind of seems like there are key story beats or transitions missing between panels — in a way that doesn’t seem intentional. Plus, there are instances on nearly every page where it’s unclear in what order to read the speech balloons. This all stems from bad decisions and inexperience on Jodorowsky’s part. Fortunately, he’s only half of the team. Moebius is a nearly peerless illustrator, and it’s almost worth picking up The Incal just to bask in the colours and details of the world he draws. Almost. If you have a relatively high threshold for sci-fi bullshit and new-agey nonsense, this is something you should probably check out.

Jorge Luis Borges: “Blindness” — I have a wonderful book called The Art of the Personal Essay that I’ve read just over half of. It is much better than its bland title would suggest: it is a selection of wonderful personal writing by some of the greatest authors in history — people like George Orwell and Virginia Woolf — edited by Phillip Lopate. I go back to it very occasionally and read a few of the essays I haven’t read before. This one is a wonderfully companionable account by Borges of being appointed director of a national library, ironically just as he’d gone blind. I had never read any Borges, having been slightly scared of him, but I think I may have been missing out and will add Ficciones to my already unmanageable reading list.

Hubert Butler: “Beside the Nore” — Another personal essay, this one by an Irish writer that more people should probably know. This is a short, simple account of several elements of old, rural life in a riverside town in Kilkenny. It is presented unpretentiously, without a framing device or thesis statement. It’s just some lovely writing about a charismatic place. At the very end, Butler appends a few extra sentences, to say that he believes local history to be far more important than national history, which has no impact on the vast majority of people — thereby justifying his entire enterprise. Really nice.

E.M. Cioran: “Some Blind Alleys: A Letter” — This is an essay about how insufferable writers are and how meaningless the international community of people of letters is. It’s about how only an incredibly egocentric person would dare take on a career as a writer, and about how narcissistic it is to assume that other people want to read about what you think. Hi there. You reading this? Good, then we’re fine.

Kieron Gillen/Jamie McKelvie: The Wicked and the Divine, vol. 3 — Now for some actual smart comics. I was wary of the idea that this entire trade volume would diverge from the main WicDiv story, but these issues featuring the supporting cast of the main story add such depth to the world of this comic. Each one is probably among the best stand-alone stories that Gillen and McKelvie have ever done. The issue featuring Woden (the jerk-ass Daft Punk god) is particularly impressive, being a sort of remix issue, made up of scenes from prior issues of WicDiv. Also, there is a cat goddess in this who looks like Rihanna but acts exactly like an actual housecat: getting distracted by laser pointers and such. A comic that does complex formal experiments and also has Rihanna getting distracted by laser pointers can only be a straightforwardly good thing. Pick of the week.

David Day: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Decoded — I read the introduction to this a while ago and got sidetracked. I’m still kind of sidetracked, honestly. But this is what I’m reading, now. The tiny bit of this I just read was fascinating — the politics of Christ Church College at Oxford is more compelling than you’d think.

Podcasts

Fresh Air: “‘Mad Max’ Director George Miller’” — Listening to this guy talk makes a bunch of connections become immediately clear. If it seemed incongruous that Mad Max and Babe were made by the same guy, consider the extent to which Babe is a conventionally Campbellian hero’s journey. If it seemed like The Road Warrior and Fury Road have no precedents in action movies, look beyond that to Buster Keaton’s The General. I’m disappointed that Terry Gross wasn’t around to do the actual interview. I’m sure she would have probed into his feminism more deeply. Still, Dave Davies acquits himself admirably. Anybody who likes Miller should check this out.

Serial: “Adnan Syed’s Hearing,” days 1-3 — I’m glad Sarah Koenig was there to report on Syed’s hearing, because she’s probably the most knowledgeable person about his case. But what this is actually going to do is remind everybody how much more invested they were in season one of Serial than season two. In any case, these three mini-episodes are great, and feature Koenig and Dana Chivvis speaking extemporaneously for longer than I think they ever have on the show — which is great, considering that they both know the case inside out. I’m still unconvinced of Syed’s innocence, but convincing people one way or the other has never been the goal of Serial, in spite of what certain critics might say.

All Songs Considered: “Andrew Bird Gets Personal” — This sounds like a great record, but wow, this is an awkward conversation. Bird does NOT want to talk about these songs. I’m excited to hear more of this considering Blake Mills is on guitar, and his guest spot with Vulfpeck last year was one of my favourite performances I’ve heard on a record in a while.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Small Batch Super Bowl 50” — All due respect to Beyoncé, but was I the only person who thought Bruno Mars stole the halftime show?

The Heart: “Ghost: Bobby” — A totally mundane breakup story that’s told well enough to be worthwhile. The sort of thing that only The Heart can do.

WTF With Marc Maron: “Danny Boyle” — Still catching up on episodes from December, apparently. But this is great. I like Maron with filmmakers. He’s such an insightful film geek that it’s easy for people like Boyle and Todd Haynes to talk to him.

Fresh Air: “Filmmakers Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson on ‘Anomalisa’” — “I have a tendency to read about syndromes,” says Charlie Kaufman near the beginning of this interview, to nobody’s surprise. I need to see Anomalisa.

WTF With Marc Maron: “Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson” — It’s interesting to hear Terry Gross and Marc Maron interview the same people about the same things. Since hearing that wonderful episode where Maron interviewed Gross, I’ve looked at them as two sides of the same coin. On one side, you get the bare-bones story of a thing from Gross, and on the other side you get self-psychoanalysis by proxy from Maron. It shouldn’t be about picking a winner, but in this case Maron wins. Apparently Kaufman was scared to go on this show because he was uncomfortable with how deep Maron probes. But Maron keeps this one relatively light, and just gives Kaufman the opportunity to be funny. It was also a really good decision to do a segment with Kaufman alone before bringing in Duke Johnson to talk about Anomalisa, which I really need to see. (Also, how weird to hear an ad for Blackstar that was clearly recorded before Bowie’s death but released after.) Pick of the week.

Omnireviewer (week of Jan. 31, 2016)

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First off, I forgot something crucial last week:

Live events

Roomful of Teeth: live at the Fox Cabaret — There aren’t a lot of opportunities to hear operatic vocals, jazz singing, tuvan throat singing, yodelling and oktavism on the same program. This was one of the most incredible displays of virtuosity I’ve seen in concert. I knew it would be impressive, having heard their CDs, but what I hadn’t anticipated was how loose and comfortable it would feel. A lot of times, when ensembles perform music that’s this hard, it comes off sounding metronomic, like they’re struggling with all their might to keep together. But Roomful of Teeth owns this music completely. Caroline Shaw’s Partita was the obvious highlight, and totally lived up to the recording I’ve come to know so well. My only complaint is that, at 90 minutes and no encore, the performance was too short. Honourary pick of last week.

Now, on to this week’s reviews proper — just eight of them:

Movies

Spotlight — I don’t have much to say about this that I didn’t already say in my best of 2015 post. Suffice it to say that I’m still preoccupied with it a week later.

Room — This would have probably made the list if I’d seen it earlier. Very few movies have induced such anxiety in me, and not just in the sequences where you might think. There’s a scene near the start of the movie where Brie Larson’s character has to tell her son, who has lived for five years in a garden shed that he’s never been outside, that there is such a thing as outside. Watching her struggle to explain the concept of an entire world outside the realm of her son’s experience made me want to tear my beard out. The really great thing about this is how well it grapples with the way a child might respond to that revelation. It works similarly to some hard SF: it asks “what if…” and the story is the answer to that question. Unlike most hard SF, though, it’s got gut-wrenching amounts of emotional honesty. Pick of the week.

Literature, etc.

Alejandro Jodorowsky/Moebius: The Incal — This is proving to be more entertaining than it is good. Considering the extent to which Brian Michael Bendis says this changed his life in the intro, the writing here is soooper dodgy. The characters speak as if somebody’s summarizing what they said after the fact: “I don’t want to suffer! I don’t want to die!” Or, “Wait. There’s a thought coming to my mind… ‘The Black Incal!’” Also, there are these “tell, don’t show” moments where a caption explains what’s happening in the art, which is odd. There are elements of this that are a bit boneheaded. The climax is clichéd, hippy-dippy “union of opposites” nonsense. But Moebius’s art is stunning, and the universe where this takes place is convincing and fun. I’m enjoying this. Also, since I’ve seen Jodorowsky’s Dune, I can’t help but hear all of the dialogue in Jodorowsky’s voice.

Games

Journey — It’s nice to have friends with gaming consoles. Journey is a really successful example of non-verbal storytelling. Not a word is seen or spoken, yet it makes sense in an open-ended sort of way. But the real pleasure of this game is similar to the pleasures of a game like Super Mario 64, a longtime favourite of mine: moving your character around just feels good. Jumping, sliding, and running just works. I’d like to play it again, now that I know the controls a bit better.

Podcasts

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Making a Murderer, True Crime, and Remembering Alan Rickman” — Look, I love Alan Rickman, but why in god’s name does everybody love Die Hard?

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Fred Armisen and Welcome to Night Vale” — Armisen’s a bit of a bore, but Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor are, predictably, great fun in conversation. Linda Holmes is, as ever, a person I would like to hear do more interviews.

Love and Radio: “The Fix” — An older episode, with the characteristically overbearing audio production of Love and Radio’s earlier episodes. That’s not a dig. This era of this show is one of the most aesthetically distinctive bodies of work in radio. And the story uses Nick van der Kolk’s cleverest device, where it starts in one place, then zooms back to another, and the suspense comes from the fact that it seems totally implausible for the two points to ever meet. So clever. I love this show. Pick of the week.

Serial: “Meanwhile, in Tampa” — There’s some really good writing in this, but this story is getting to the point where it requires more attention than I can offer a lot of the time. I have no idea what I’ll feel like when this season of Serial ends.

Things I loved in 2015: The rest of them

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Well that’s that, then.

Except, I have a whole bunch of genre-specific lists of things I loved sitting in a Google doc, and I can’t resist posting them here, so the honourable mentions get their honourable mention. These are “top x” lists: just however many entries I could think of that I liked, ranked. The ones that made the top 25 are in bold.

Movies

Mad Max: Fury Road
Carol
Inside Out
The Hateful Eight
Spotlight
The Revenant
It Follows
What Happened, Miss Simone?
The Lobster (saw it at VIFF; look out for the upcoming wide release)
The Martian
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Amy
A Most Violent Year

Television

Mad Men
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Better Call Saul
BoJack Horseman
Doctor Who
Last Week Tonight
Hannibal
The Jinx
Parks and Recreation
Louie

Music

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hamilton: An American Musical
Vulfpeck: Thrill of the Arts
Björk: Vulnicura
Africa Express: In C Mali
CHVRCHES: Every Open Eye
Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly
Roomful of Teeth: Render
Afiara Quartet and Skratch Bastid: Spin Cycle
Max Richter: From Sleep
Bryce Dessner: Music for Wood and Strings

Podcasts

The Memory Palace
Reply All
Mystery Show
Love and Radio
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything
StartUp
Radiolab

Books/Comics

David Cavanagh: Good Night and Good Riddance: How Thirty-Five Years of John Peel Helped Shape Modern Life
China Miéville: Three Moments of an Explosion
Kieron Gillen/Jamie McKelvie: The Wicked and the Divine, vol. 2
Kelly Sue DeConnick/Valentine De Landro: Bitch Planet, vol. 1
Matt Fraction/Chip Zdarsky: Sex Criminals, vol. 2

Games

Sunless Sea
Undertale

(I played a couple of others but did not enjoy them.)

There you go. 48 wonderful things. A good year, by any standard.

Things I loved in 2015: Nos. 5-1

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After much suspense, here are my top five things of 2015, including what I recognize is a hopelessly idiosyncratic number one that nobody who reads this will ever check out. But I’ve tried to be honest with myself about what I got the most enjoyment out of this year, and there’s really nothing that compares. Here are five incredible things:

No. 5 — Mad Max: Fury Road

Here is how fight scenes in movies generally work: there are two sides, the two sides fight, and one of them wins.

In Mad Max: Fury Road, there’s a scene where Max and Furiosa fight over a truck. They don’t know each other, and neither one necessarily wants to kill the other, but they both need the truck and they’ll do what they have to do.

There are a few complications. Firstly, Max is chained to Nux: an unconscious man who wants both combatants dead. There are five women standing by, who have nothing against Max, and who Max is not attempting to harm. Nonetheless, they need Furiosa to win. They aren’t trained fighters, so if they’re going to contribute they need to work together and be crafty. Also, Furiosa has one arm, though it’s doubtful whether this is actually an encumbrance for her.

Midway through the fight, the hostile unconscious man wakes up.

There are so many moving parts, here. Eight people, two gradations of combat expertise (Max, Furiosa and Nux as opposed to the other five), three separate allegiances (Max to himself, Furiosa and the five women to their own cause, and Nux against them all), and a chain holding two key combatants together.

The entire movie’s like that. Plots and motivations occur in miniature over the course of the extended chase scene that the whole movie basically is. I’ve never seen anything like it.

When I started writing this, I told myself I wouldn’t use this movie as a stick to beat other action movies with, but screw it. The reason Mad Max: Fury Road is the first proper action movie to get nominated for Best Picture in my lifetime is that it’s the only one that’s remotely deserved it. The entire genre seems lazy and vapid by comparison.

Self-evidently the best movie of the year.

No. 4 — Sunless Sea

Since this is the only game on the list, indulge me in a few extra words.

If 2014 was the year when I rediscovered video games, 2015 was the year when I realized the limits of my own tastes. Of 2015’s most notable games, there were many that I either had no interest in, didn’t love, or couldn’t run. Fortunately, the one game that I really adored this year is so vast that you can (and I did) spend a tremendous amount of time with it and be consistently enthralled. Sunless Sea, for the unfamiliar, is a game that’s approximately equal parts text adventure and roguelike. (I am now the kind of person who knows what that sentence means.)

In the game, you’re the captain of a vessel on a vast underground ocean. You’re living in a version of the 19th century where London was sold to a consortium of devils, fell far beneath Earth’s surface, and became a hilarious Lovecraftian parody of itself. As a captain hailing from this Fallen London, you spend the game making journeys of various lengths from home to a huge number of other creepy, surreal ports, and back. Your journeys from place to place allow you to freely explore the “Unterzee” in your craft, in a beautifully designed top-down view. But when you make port, the story is told entirely through text, aside from a few very expressive illustrations.

This ingenious design choice means that the game’s many stories can take some incredible turns. In Sunless Sea, it’s possible for the writers to include an island where time collapses: they just need to write all of their sentences in different tenses.

Sunless Sea has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention for its inclusiveness: there are characters of all races, genders and sexualities, and the game makes no impositions on your own character’s particular traits or background, or with whom you seek out relationships. (I play as a genderfluid poet, though I am neither of those things.)

It’s also gotten well-deserved attention for the superlative quality of its writing. Oftentimes, when we say that a game’s well-written, we’re grading on a very steep curve. Not here. Sunless Sea boasts top-flight comedic prose, and when the story turns dark or frightening, the writing shifts to adapt. The game speaks in a consistent, stylized voice, right down to the format of the names of characters: the Alarming Scholar; the Irrepressible Cannoneer; the Tireless Mechanic. It’s that attention to detail that makes Sunless Sea so convincing.

But, its real genius is that, rather than allowing itself to be governed by a single narrative throughline, Sunless Sea sets up hundreds of intertwined story threads for you to pull on depending on what interests you at any given time. I can see myself returning to this game for years to come. In a year where there was almost nothing in this medium of interest to me, Sunless Sea made me glad to live in a time when people can make a thing like this.

(If you’re considering shelling out for this, try the browser-based game Fallen London first. It’s not as immersive, but it’s free and features the same style of storytelling.)

No. 3 — Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hamilton: An American Musical

I once made the mistake of trying to sell a friend on Hamilton by calling it “a hip hop musical about America’s first treasury secretary.”

To be fair, that is how Hamilton tends to be sold. They hook you with the novelty of “history through rap.” But that one-liner does Hamilton a tremendous disservice. This isn’t a novelty; it’s the greatest work of musical theatre since Sondheim was at his peak.

There’s a point to telling the story of Alexander Hamilton by way of hip hop — I mean, as opposed to choosing some other story. First off, Lin-Manuel Miranda (the MacArthur genius who built this thing from the ground up) saw a classic hip hop narrative in the story of Hamilton: an immigrant who made it to George Washington’s inner circle through sheer grit and ingenuity.

But also, by telling this story by these means — and, crucially, with a multi-racial cast — Miranda is able to drive home one of the most important ideas in modern America: that the content of history depends entirely on who gets to tell the story.

Hamilton isn’t just a great musical. It’s also a more insightful historical narrative than the film and television industries have been able to muster for some time.

No. 2 — The Memory Palace

memory-palace

My favourite song of the year isn’t even a song; it’s an episode of The Memory Palace.

I can listen to “Craning” over and over, and it never loses its impact. It has specific turns of phrase that get lodged in my head for days. I take notice of a new detail every time. I can’t listen to it when there are people around because I can’t be sure I won’t cry.

“Craning” is about the launch of Apollo 11, but that doesn’t begin to cover what it does. No summary of any episode of this show can actually reflect the experience of listening to it. Nate DiMeo, the guy who made this podcast with no assistance until a couple of weeks ago, is the best writer in podcasting. Nobody can match his ear for an effective phrase, or his ability to imagine details in tiny moments in history. At the launch of Apollo 11, L.B.J. isn’t just there; he’s there in a blue suit and no sunglasses, “just that Hill Country squint.”

I’m going on about this one episode, but that’s just the one that hit me specifically. Nearly all of them are brilliant. You might enjoy the story about the first American woman to file a patent. Or, the one about the turbulent relationship between an ornithologist and his aristocratic wife. Or, the one about men who went mad from inhaling toxic gasses in the factories where they worked.

Something from The Memory Palace will hit you, and it won’t stop spinning around in your head for a while.

No. 1 — David Cavanagh: Good Night and Good Riddance: How Thirty-Five Years of John Peel Helped to Shape Modern Life

good night good riddance

My favourite kind of non-fiction tells a huge story through a narrow lens. David Cavanagh’s second book is the best example of that I’ve ever seen.

The story he’s telling is the story of counterculture in England between the late ’60s and the early ’00s. Hippies, punks, indie kids, goths, rappers. It’s a story of political radicalism and incremental social change. It’s the story of how modern Britain came to be a place whose margins are strangely intertwined with its mainstream.

The lens that he tells it through is the BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel.

It is impossible to communicate what a masterstroke this approach is without throwing up your hands and saying “just read it.” The various incarnations of Peel’s radio show were all kaleidoscopic showrooms for the deepest, strangest music from out of England and elsewhere. So, Cavanagh just picked 265 of Peel’s shows from across more than three decades, and used them as a map to trace the path of British culture.

Cavanagh is as compelling a tour guide as you could hope for, tying each show in with the day’s news, the politics of the BBC, Peel’s personal life, and the state of the music industry.

I’m not selling this. I couldn’t possibly. Go to Amazon and read the free excerpt right now. They give you the whole introduction. No music geek — no person interested in culture in any capacity — will not love this.

Nothing else I consumed this year inspired, informed and entertained me like Good Night and Good Riddance. I feel like I need to find something else like this immediately, but I also know that it doesn’t exist.

Things I loved in 2015: Nos. 10-6

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After four days winding our way through the thick jungles of culture with nothing but the dull pocketknife of my wit to cut through the overgrown foliage, we have at last cracked the top ten. Suffice it to say that everything from this point forth completely blew my mind.

No. 10 — Carol

The key line in Carol is spoken by Rooney Mara’s character, Therese: “I have a friend who says I should take more of an interest in humans.”

Critics have been saying that Todd Haynes should take more of an interest in humans since the beginning of his career. Even the simplest of his films are so meticulous and skillful that he’s open to accusations of “inauthenticity.” If you’re not paying close enough attention, you could easily mistake him for an artist who’s solely concerned with abstract matters like beauty, style and form, at the expense of the characters in his stories.

But like Therese (a photographer, notice), Haynes is not just a chilly aesthete. He has that tendency, but when presented with the fully-alive characters of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt (and Phyllis Nagy’s wonderful screenplay), Haynes becomes deeply interested in humans.

Carol is beautiful, and not just from a distance.

No. 9 — China Miéville: Three Moments of an Explosion

china mieville

Bob Dylan once said that every line of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is the first line of a different song that he was never going to have time to write. China Miéville is primarily known as a novelist, and when you’re reading this collection of short stories, you get the sense that each one is the first chapter of a novel he’ll never have time to finish.

The stories in Three Moments of an Explosion differ wildly in theme and length, but they all share the tendency to state their premise in however many words are necessary, and then stop. Miéville can spin a yarn as well as anybody. But, in most of these stories he’s more interested in taking an unlikely notion he’s had, turning it around a few times to see it from different angles, and putting it away.

Most writers couldn’t pull that off for a whole book. But Miéville has a gift for coming up with incredibly specific and uncanny premises that you want to read about the implications of. One of these stories is about a disease that causes circular trenches to form around people when they stand still for too long. Lots of writers would be able to take that and turn it into a parable on the compulsion to keep moving, or whatever. Miéville thinks: “What happens if they’re in a car?”

Three Moments of an Explosion is a flagrant display of profound virtuosity. Nothing else this year gave me so many separate reasons to be in awe.

No. 8 — Vulfpeck: Thrill of the Arts

When I first heard this album, I described it as “one of those unexpected pleasures.” Since then I have realized that doesn’t begin to cover it. Vulfpeck is not just a band. Vulfpeck is a self-contained world of madness with a Wes Andersonian level of internal consistency. There are no half-measures in Vulfpeck. Their commitment to maintaining a uniform aesthetic doesn’t just extend to their music, but also to their videos and every bit of peripheral material they issue. Vulfpeck is as much about fake film grain and pictures of dogs as they are about sexy basslines and Rhodes piano. This is the band that raised $20,000 dollars in Spotify royalties by issuing a silent album and asking people to put it on repeat overnight. It’s not just about the music. Vulfpeck is a zaniness factory.

Their first full-length is their most controlled release yet. It’s funk, like all of their music, and they still sound like talented slacker dudes from a commercial music program at some community college. But more than on any of their EPs, the music on Thrill of the Arts sounds like it was recorded in an airless room. They are truly earning their German affectation here: this is Parliament by way of Kraftwerk.

And it has some of the most technically astonishing performances I’ve heard this year. Antwaun Stanley’s amazing vocal on “Funky Duck” is probably in my top ten favourite committed performances of stupid lyrics. (The other nine are all Rush.) And Blake Mills’ guitar on “Rango II” (a sequel to a previous song, because that’s a thing they do) is one of those moments where you don’t actually know how he’s even doing that.

Vulfpeck is the kind of band I would hope to be in if I were in a band. What higher praise can any music geek offer?

No. 7 — Mad Men

TV’s not made for endings. I’m not the first to observe this. The whole idea of a TV show is to have an central concept that can sustain years-worth of stories. It’s not about having a complete narrative worked out from day one. That’s why people who say “the ending ruined the whole thing” or, “they didn’t have a plan” are missing the entire point of the medium.

But I don’t think it’s even possible to say those things about the ending of Mad Men, which was perfect in every way. Like everything else about the show, it’s impossible to know quite where it sits on the spectrum of sincere to cynical, and there was no ham-handed attempt to try and tie off every storyline in a neat bow. Mad Men ended in a way that it can continue to be a thing rich with multiple meanings, many of which even Matt Weiner probably never thought of.

If you tell me it’s the best show ever, I won’t argue.

No. 6 — Reply All

There are two kinds of podcasts: the kind that could (or do) air on public radio and the kind that couldn’t. There is no value judgement implicit in that taxonomy. Before public radio caught on that it was a possible future, an aesthetic had developed around podcasting. And, that aesthetic was basically two or more people talking, without a huge amount of craft or artifice.

Reply All, the brightest jewel in Gimlet Media’s increasingly dazzling crown, is the first public radio-ready podcast where the hosts seem aware of that legacy. P.J. Vogt and Alex Goldman’s personalities can carry the show a long way. Consider their recurring segment “Yes Yes No,” where they explain various convoluted internet things to their boss. That’s some good podcasting, right there. And that dynamic informs every episode of the show.

But this is still a Gimlet show, and they are On The Media alumni. So, these episodes are still finely-crafted, thoughtful, borderline fussy radio. Plus, they’ve got a premise (“a show about the internet”) that allows them to do anything. If you don’t know this show, listen to the episode above, then start from the first one and listen to all of them. They’re remarkably consistent in their brilliance.

Be sure to come back for the thrilling conclusion, wherein several eternal questions shall be answered: What’s the number one album going to be? Did Matthew play any games this year? And, will anybody have actually heard of the thing that tops the list???

The great and shameful archive

of Matthew J.R. Parsons, retired blogger

Author Archives: Matthew

Omnireviewer (week of Mar. 13, 2016)

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Omnireviewer (week of Feb. 27, 2016)

Omnireviewer (week of Feb. 21, 2016)

Omnireviewer (week of Feb. 14, 2016)

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Omnireviewer (week of Jan. 31, 2016)

Things I loved in 2015: The rest of them

Things I loved in 2015: Nos. 5-1

Things I loved in 2015: Nos. 10-6