Tag Archives: John Oliver

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 Nov. 22)

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Only 20 reviews, this time. A slow week. To be fair, I’ve got a brand new digital piano and that seems to be taking up a lot of my time. Also, down below the podcasts you’ll find a review of thing that required more words than usual. So, look forward to that.

Movies

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 — This oscillated wildly. At its best, I thought it was pretty brilliant and lived up to the rest of the franchise, which I generally like. At its worst, it was slow, laboured, and a considerable waste of Julianne Moore. But the fantastic cast sees this through. Seriously, it’s like the casting director for these movies just raided my brain for the kind of actors I like: Donald Sutherland, Natalie Dormer, Jeffrey Wright (also underutilized, but twas ever thus), Stanley Tucci, Philip Seymour Hoffman (nice to see him, one last time), Elizabeth Banks… I could go on. Even Gwendoline Christie shows up for a scene. (Somebody needs to make a movie starring Gwendoline Christie and Jeffrey Wright.) Jennifer Lawrence continues to be wonderful. And, honestly, even Moore is so amazing that she manages to elevate her somewhat bungled character into the realm of watchability. With a cast like this, it’s easier to forgive weaknesses.

Star Wars — I watched a fan edit of Episode IV that aims to reconstruct as much of the original movie as possible — without special editionification — in high def. It was great. Star Wars remains a movie that I don’t especially admire, but I sure love putting it on when there are other people around, and talking through it. And I also learned that my childhood role model, C-3PO, remains my favourite character in the Star Wars universe.

The Empire Strikes Back — I also watched this in the despecialized edition, and it really is something. These edits are really worth checking out. And this movie is wonderful, in a way that the first one sort of isn’t. From Hoth to Cloud City, it’s enthralling. But this time through, it was especially clear that the best part of the movie (and the franchise) by a mile is the sequence of Luke training with Yoda on Dagobah. That senile little weirdo is the best thing in Star Wars (aside from C-3PO, obviously). Frank Oz is a wonder, and the Yoda puppet is more expressive than any of his Muppet characters. But more than that, Yoda is a plausible representation of what it might be like if the sharpest mind in the galaxy were forced into isolation for decades. He might be the most believable character in the series.

Television

Last Week Tonight: November 22 — If the first half of this episode were all that John Oliver had ever done in his career, he’d still be awesome. Not only is this segment — on the needlessly thorny topic of Syrian refugees — amusing somehow, it is also beautifully argued. It is a thing you can send to people who think differently to you and say “This! Look! Reasoning!” The other segment, on pennies, is fantastic because we Canadians have been through this. Pick of the week.

BoJack Horseman: Christmas Special + Season 2, episodes 1-6 — “Hoo-ray! Begrudging acquiescence!” Okay, I’m properly loving this now. It’s sad, and dark, and the humour is incredibly writerly — full of wordplay and incredibly structured exchanges of dialogue. And the voice acting is universally wonderful. This must be one of the best things Netflix has produced.

Doctor Who: “Heaven Sent” — The best episode of the season, and possibly of Capaldi’s tenure as the Doctor. It’s really fantastic to see the Doctor get to be the main character in his own story, which surprisingly isn’t the default for this show, considering that it’s named after him. It takes considerable guts to do an hour of TV with basically only one character, but Capaldi carries it easily. The reveal towards the end (re: where all of the skulls came from) is something that only Steven Moffat could have come up with, and it’s why I love his version of Doctor Who in a nutshell. All that said, I’m going to try to avoid making the same show pick of the week twice in a row. So, it goes to another televisual Brit, this time around.

Literature, etc.

I dove back into No God But God this week. There will be remarks to be written on that very soon.

China Miéville: “Säcken” — Certainly the most frightening story in Three Moments so far. Apparently there are people who think that Miéville’s characterization is weak? No. The entire reason this story is terrifying is because we’re able to see through the protagonist’s eyes so easily. And because Miéville is very good at grotesque descriptions. The story doubles as an acute examination of the impact of loss.

China Miéville: “Syllabus” — Not so much a story as a whimsical joke. But it’s a whimsical joke that makes my brain hurt. Typical Miéville.

Music

The Smiths: Strangeways, Here We Come — This is about on par with the debut, to me. So, a magnificent album, better than Meat is Murder, but not quite as good as The Queen is Dead. Morrissey’s voice is remarkable on this. In fact, all four members of the band give their best performances on record here. It’s nice to hear Johnny Marr take a proper guitar solo on “Paint a Vulgar Picture.” Lately, I’ve been thinking about how one of my old favourite bands (but no longer), Marillion, are basically what the Smiths would sound like if they’d been huge Genesis fans. In addition to that, the Smiths’ four studio albums map neatly onto the first four Marillion albums, prior to their first breakup: there’s the promising debut, the problematic sophomore effort, the masterpiece third album, and the ever-so-slightly compromised final album. Strangeways is very much the Smiths’ Clutching at Straws, insofar as it’s remotely useful to compare one of the most esteemed bands of the ‘80s to a niche interest neo-prog band who weren’t even very good.

The Smiths: Hatful of Hollow — There’s a reason this singles/odds-and-sods collection is considered as essential as the studio albums. This is incredible. That guitar on “How Soon Is Now!”

Comedy

Chelsea Peretti: One of the Greats — Just as funny the second time. The bit about how to eat a banana in public is one of my favourite bits of stand-up. The gimmicky audience cutaways, on the other hand, are less effective. Would have been better if this were a straight-ahead film of her show.

Podcasts

The Heart: “Desiree+Aaron” — This is a story about a woman who is deeply invested in Aaron Carter fandom. As you might expect, it’s an awkward listen. It lacks the humour and the slight remove of Mystery Show’s Britney episode, and you kind of don’t know whether to be sad or not. I do like the premise of this season of The Heart, though: following unusual relationships through their make or break moments. I intend to keep listening.

Reply All: “Yik Yak Returns” — One of Reply All’s best episodes gets an update. Alex Goldman’s story about how campus racism went especially bonkers on one particular mobile app, on one particular campus was fantastic journalism when it came out months ago. This expanded version covers a spate of similar violence on campuses across the USA. Pretty much essential. Pick of the week.

Fresh Air: “ Music Writer Peter Guralnick on ‘The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll’” — This and Good Night And Good Riddance are apparently part of my recent obsession with the people behind the success of iconic musicians. Sam Phillips — the founder of Sun Records, and discoverer of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Howlin’ Wolf, and countless others — was fascinating. I’m sure Guralnick’s book is also fascinating, and I’d love to read it. But I’ll have to space it out from Good Night and Good Riddance, because that might be a bit too much rock and roll reading material in too little time. But you can count on Terry Gross to curate a fascinating conversation, so this podcast will hold me over until I’ve actually got an appetite to read this book.

StartUp: “Words About Words From Our Sponsors” — As an episode of StartUp this is as good as usual. As a status update on Gimlet Media, it’s perplexing. Apparently, the plan is to introduce a new revenue stream by making branded podcasts in collaboration with companies. It seems clear that Gimlet will handle that without treading into any ethical murky areas, but I just don’t understand the idea of branded podcasts. I mean, you can listen to anything you want. So who’s going to listen to half-hour ads? I fully expect to be proven wrong in short order, but I don’t think I could ever enjoy a branded podcast. It’s not a matter of principle — I just think that when there are so many great podcasts out there, I’m always going to choose the ones that are passion projects, not ads.

Radiolab: “Birthstory” — Radiolab is always at its best when covering really complex stories. When stories are simple, they always end up trying too hard to imbue them with universal themes. This story is massively complex and has hundreds of moving parts. It starts off dealing with the circumstances that convene to prevent gay couples in Israel from having children via surrogacy, and it ends up detailing the circumstances that lead women in Nepal to become surrogates for pay. This episode, produced by Molly Webster, is extraordinary not just for its fascinating and important story, but also for its clarity and organization. Most shows would make a total hash of this. I was all set to make this pick of the week, until the end music faded down and Jad Abumrad came roaring back in with one of his superfluous thinky closing monologues. “In a way, this story is about dreams.” Oh, give me a break. If you stop listening to this when the actual produced story ends, it is 100% awesome.

99% Invisible: “Fixing the Hobo Suit” — Once again, Roman Mars introduces me to another podcast that I feel compelled to add to my rotation. Eric Molinsky’s Imaginary Worlds seems right up my street. This story about how and why superhero costumes have gotten so much less cringeworthy is fantastic, and apparently he does similarly nerdy things on a bi-weekly basis. We’ll see if I can fit it in.

On The Media: “The Language of Terror” — After international tragedies, the media people I most want to hear from are Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield. You can trust them and their producers to keep their heads and present clear lines of reasoning while TV gets totally histrionic and people start shouting tirades of bigotry at each other on Facebook. This show is really, really not just for news junkies and media types. It’s useful to anybody who wants to be able to parse news coverage in a way that keeps them more informed.

Fugitive Waves: “Way to Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake” — This is a decent way to passively spend 20 minutes. There’s nothing here that provides more insight into Nick Drake than even the most casual fan would already have. But there are some nice remembrances of him, and a few (scrappily recorded) extracts from a live covers project that sounds like it might have been good. Anyway, this vapourized upon impact.

Live events

King Crimson: Live at the Vogue — *breathes deeply*

I nearly didn’t go to this concert. It was a matter of principle. The whole idea of a version of King Crimson that exists specifically to play the back catalogue is anathema to the basic concept of King Crimson, to me. I’m all for playing the old favourites, but every version of King Crimson should focus on developing its own music, and until now all of them have. Still, when it came down to crunch time, I just couldn’t not buy a ticket. It’s King Crimson.

Here’s how that went down.

When I entered the Vogue, I was told very sternly by the bouncer not to take any photos whatsoever — before, during or after the show. Which is a shame, because the setup — with three drum kits across the front of the stage and a Long & McQuade’s worth of guitars, basses, pedals, reed instruments and miscellany on a riser across the back — was the most #prog thing I’ve seen in my life.

On either side of the stage were giant white signs again entreating the audience to take absolutely no photographs at all from this point forward. I sat in the hall for nearly an hour before the show, because I’m like that. A soundtrack of placid Frippertronics burbled along as dudes in Magma t-shirts name-dropped Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt. This is a room full of older versions of me.

Just as the show was about to start, Fripp’s familiar voice rang out over the PA, with just one more reminder: no photography. Ah, Fripp, you curmudgeonly so-and-so. Never change.

Never change. What an odd thing to say to the most volatile and restless rock musician this side of David Bowie. But is he still? What shall we make of this new, seven-person King Crimson repertory company?

The most compelling new feature of this lineup is not actually the three drummers (though that’s certainly novel), it’s the absence of Adrian Belew. I adore Belew, lest anybody misunderstand. I saw his trio play in Edmonton a few years back and it’s still one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to (much better than this one, as it turns out). But Belew had been a major creative force in King Crimson for longer than anybody who isn’t Robert Fripp deserves to be, and it was threatening to force the band into stagnation.

Still, even with Belew gone, the only members of this lineup who haven’t been in at least one previous lineup of King Crimson are Bill Rieflin and Jakko Jakszyk — the latter of whom has been involved in Crimson side-projects (and projeKcts) for so long that he may as well have been. There is no way around it: for the first time ever, King Crimson is touring as a nostalgia act.

This isn’t in itself a bad thing. I’ve seen legacy tours that have knocked me flat. But this version of King Crimson has some issues. Firstly, you can’t hear anything through the drums. Fripp’s playing in particular was so obscured that there were times when I caught myself wondering “is he playing a solo right now?” Same goes for Tony Levin.

But the larger problem is that this band plays like consummate professionals who don’t give a shit. (Except for Pat Mastelotto. He gives all the shits, and was by far the most interesting musician onstage to listen to.) There’s no commitment to the big moments in songs like “Epitaph,” and “Level Five.” This King Crimson sounds bored, a lot of the time. I’m tempted to blame the mix, but there were moments that came off gorgeously: I’m thinking mainly of “Starless” and “21st Century Schizoid Man.” So, it seems like the problem is just that they were on autopilot for most of the show.

A lot of the time, I found myself missing Belew in spite of myself. His real value to the band was his ability to play the wild card. He’s a disciplined musician, but he also knew how to keep the band on their toes: keep them from becoming complacent.

Complacent. What an unfortunate word to resort to when describing the most volatile and restless rock band this side of Radiohead. But there you go.

On the other hand, Mel Collins was actually wearing crimson suspenders. Well played, Mel Collins.

Omnireviewer (week of Nov. 15)

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Only 23 reviews, this week. Dear me, what could I have been up to? No, I’m seriously asking. I don’t remember anything I did in the past seven days that I didn’t write down.

Games

It’ll surely be a rare week that I write about four games. But hey, I had a free Sunday.

Stasis — Finished, at long last. This was not at all worth the time or money. It’s laden down with bad writing, bad acting, one-dimensional characters, a hackneyed “science gone wrong” plot, needless brutality, an uninteresting atmosphere, and the most predictable last-minute twist imaginable. The bulk of the story is told through diaries lying scattered haphazardly around the ship, each of them containing secrets that these characters would never have dared to write down, let alone just leave out in the open for anybody to find. I would have been willing to suspend my disbelief in this, if only the story told by the diaries were compelling, the characters were believable, or — at the very least — the prose were written competently. Maybe it’s petty to pick on an indie title that was apparently made by, like fifteen people. But that’s exactly the kind of game out of which I would expect something unique. Instead, this is a stew of familiar genre tropes out of which nothing new or interesting emerges. The fact that this is accruing significant acclaim demonstrates the extent to which I don’t understand video games. Fine. I’m happy to remain a dilettante in this particular field.

Sunless Sea — Oh, but then there’s this. I’ve been playing Sunless Sea on and off for the better part of a year. It’s the sort of game where you can do that, because it’s not linear; it’s a giant web of stories that you can explore as you like. And it is so vast and fascinating and nuanced and beautifully written that I never tire of it and it makes me thankful to live in a time when things like this can exist. If you somehow don’t know about this, read up on it, play its free cousin Fallen London, and then if you’re still not convinced, just buy it anyway because it’s that good. A lovely palate cleanser after a sub-par gaming experience.

SPL-T — This is the sort of thing I normally wouldn’t even bother reviewing. It’s not a game like the above-listed entries here are games. It’s a game like Angry Birds is a game. Or, more relevantly, Tetris. It’s not a discrete unit of cultural experience. It’s a pastime. Which is just fine, but that makes it the sort of thing I’m not usually into. But, the reason I’m interested is that it was made by the Swedish game developers Simogo. And, since we’re in a games-heavy week, I may as well take this opportunity to nail my colours to the mast — Simogo are the best game developers in the world. They do interesting, outside-the-box things with mobile devices, such that three of my favourite mobile games ever (favourite games, period, really) are made by Simogo: Year Walk, The Sailor’s Dream, and especially Device 6. SPL-T has nothing to do with any of those narrative-rich, immersive experiences. It has more in common with their early, casual games like Bumpy Road, except that it’s far more minimalistic. Like, Space Invaders minimalistic. It’s fun. But I’m not sure what they’re driving at here. I used to think that Device 6 was Simogo’s Sgt. Pepper, and The Sailor’s Dream was their White Album. But maybe this is their White Album. Maybe this is the inscrutable piece of concept art that will keep people talking about Simogo for decades to come. Or maybe I’m overthinking this, as ever, and it’s just a fun, retro little puzzle game. Either way, lovely.

Papa Sangre — What with me being a radio geek who sometimes plays games, I was inevitably going to play Papa Sangre at some point. This is a game with no graphics — only sound. Given what I like sound to do, I would certainly prefer there to be more story in this. But I must say, that game where you try to find something while blindfolded as somebody says “warmer… colder” is a lot more tense when there’s a carnivorous hog sleeping fitfully in the room. And that is unlikely to happen in real life.

Television

Last Week Tonight: November 8 and 15 — The thing that stands out most to me in either of these episodes (aside from John Oliver’s bizarrely cathartic profanity-laden response to the Paris attacks) is Mike Birbiglia playing a guy who’s strangely proud of having lost all his money playing fantasy football.

Doctor Who: “Face the Raven” — Oh, god, I just. Okay. Let’s just make a simple comment, because if I talk about my feelings I’ll make an ass of myself. Over the course of the past two seasons, Steven Moffat has brought in two writers that I wouldn’t mind seeing as showrunner when he departs: Peter Harness (still my frontrunner) and now Sarah Dollard. This is outstanding. Pick of the week.

Music

Musically, it was a week of work-related classical listening. So, I’m either not reviewing those or will subsequently be writing them up elsewhere. Here is what remains:

Kid Koala: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Kid Koala is astonishing. Listening to this, I can hardly quite understand how it was made. He’s a virtuoso turntablist, no doubt. But I still feel an echo of an old complaint: this feels like “a very attractive coat that nobody’s wearing.”

NoMeansNo: Wrong — Another revisitation of a Two Matts assignment. This is one of those albums where my favourite songs keep changing. That’s a good sign. At first, I liked “The End of All Things” and “It’s Catching Up” best. These days, I seem to prefer “Rags and Bones” and “All Lies.” It occurred to me listening to this recently that the verse in “All Lies” is nearly an Indian classical pastiche — minus the obligatory sitar and tablas. There’s a clever juxtaposition: a key trope of Flower Power music — which even today is conceived as a plausible moment zero for “pop as art” — keeps getting interrupted by Rob Wright shouting “all lies!”

The Smiths: The Smiths — I love The Queen is Dead so much that I can’t believe I’ve never heard any other Smiths albums. It was time that changed. This isn’t as good as that that album, but it’s only a hair’s breadth behind it. I do wish Morrissey would just never ever sing in falsetto, though. Not a good look on him.

The Smiths: The Queen is Dead — This was bound to happen. When I hear a new thing by an artist I like, I always end up going back to the old favourites. There are very few albums I’ve discovered in the years since, oh, let’s say my 22nd birthday, that really matter to me. This is one.

The Smiths: Meat is Murder — Okay, if we’re going to do this, let’s do this. Can’t say this one quite works for me as well as the debut or The Queen is Dead, but the Smiths are a band that I can listen to almost regardless of what songs they’re playing because I just love the noise they make. Though I do prefer Morrissey once he’s learned to sing more-or-less in tune. He’s getting there on this, but there’s a ways to go. We will continue our survey of the discography (including relevant ephemera) in the coming week.

Comedy

John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid — It’s amazing that anybody could still have funny things to say about marriage. Or kids. Or pets. Or minivans. Or Bill Clinton. But this made me laugh out loud about all of those topics. I never laugh out loud watching stand-up. This is really, really funny.

Literature, etc.

Jonas Tarestad/Simon Flesser: Year Walk: Bedtime Stories for Awful Children — The other thing I love about Simogo is that they have versatile enough talents at their disposal to just take a break from video games and put out an illustrated e-book instead. Or a podcast the caliber of professional radio drama. Or whatever The Sensational December Machine is. And it all turns out good. I’m sure this was basically intended as an ad for the new(ish) Wii version of Year Walk. But, a collection of horrifying Swedish folktales told similarly to the Grimm fairy tales constitutes a pretty fantastic ad. The last one in particular is spectacularly, arbitrarily brutal.

David Cavanagh: Good Night and Good Riddance — Apparently the Smiths owe their early success to Peel and his producer John Walters. Imagine. Also, there’s so much music covered in this book that sounds interesting, and I don’t have remotely enough time to investigate all of it. One day, I’ll just skim through the chapters covering the years after 1977 and listen to as much of what Peel played as I can.

Kelly Sue DeConnick/Valentine De Landro: Bitch Planet, Volume 1 “Extraordinary Machine” — This is mighty powerful stuff that I would force everybody in my life to read if I could. It’s a rare and wonderful thing when fiction has the power to incite righteous anger even in people who aren’t specifically afflicted by the injustices it illustrates. This might have been pick of the week, but it was last week’s, so Doctor Who takes it.

Podcasts

I rolled my ankle a while back and haven’t been running much, lately. That’s put me behind on my podcasts, of which there are only eight this week. Shocking, I know. How will I ever catch up?

Love and Radio: “Points Unknown” — The approach of this podcast makes each episode essential almost by default. Love and Radio finds people with stories and perspectives that fall outside most people’s experience and then says, “we’re just going to listen to this person for a while.” The interviewers are present, but off-mic, which gives the impression that every time out, the show belongs to a different person — a monthly guest host. It totally changes the power dynamic of the radio interview. Sometimes, people say horrifying things on this podcast, which can be troubling given that atypical power dynamic, where the interviewer’s voice is secondary. But the underlying philosophy is that it’s better to listen to people than not to, and I agree. There’s nothing objectionable in this episode, but there’s plenty that’s shocking. It isn’t a standout episode of Love and Radio, but it’s still outstanding.

The Moth: “Wedding Dress, Prison Choir, and a Hotdog” — The first story is by a producer on Amy Schumer’s show and is predictably hilarious. It dives from there. The second story in particular is rough listening, and not in the good way that The Moth sometimes is. It’s trite. There are clichés o’plenty. And maybe I just wasn’t in the mood, but I didn’t find the show ever recovered after that.

99% Invisible: “The Landlord’s Game” — The board game Monopoly originated as an interactive parable on the ills of capitalism. I will be bringing this up in conversation at my own earliest convenience.

The Truth: “Where Have You Been?” — I love the sound of this podcast, every time. But there’s often something in the writing that doesn’t click for me. Sometimes it’s jokes that fall flat. But usually, it’s a sort of furrowed brow seriousness that’s just totally unrelenting. It can get a bit like that scene in Life’s Too Short where Liam Neeson is just too serious to function. Except not played for laughs. This story is clever and well acted, but there’s a bit of brow-furrowiness in there. The Song Exploder episode tacked onto this is great, though. It breaks apart the Radiotopia station ID, which was made by the producer of The Truth. It’s amazing how much can go into a couple seconds of audio.

The Allusionist: “Toki Pona” — Okay, this justified all of the cross promotion. Nate DiMeo and Helen Zaltzman learn the smallest language in the world. It’s wonderful, and at some point Zaltzman expresses perfectly what I fear and despise about learning new languages: “I’m just going to be a nothing in other languages. Everything that I consider to be myself will just be nullified by my inability to speak properly.”

All Songs Considered: “Music for Healing” — An elegiac instalment of All Songs, with the Paris attacks in mind. Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton’s choices of “comfort music” are heavy on spare, drifting post-Eno instrumental music, with a bit of pensive indie rock thrown in as colour. Actually, it’s a spectacular playlist for any day — not just the day after an international tragedy. I’ll be checking out more music from Nils Frahm and Goldmund, for sure. Pick of the week.

The Memory Palace: “Shore Leave” — An average episode of The Memory Palace, which still makes it one of the best podcasts of the week. It uses music more playfully than usual, which is nice. I’m almost glad that this show is on hiatus until January, because it’ll give me time to listen through the entire list of back episodes. There must be about 60 that I haven’t heard.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Master of None and Neal Shusterman’s Challenger Deep” — If this podcast has a weakness, it’s that there’s seldom very much dissent among the ranks. This time around, Glen Weldon disagrees with the rest of the panel on Master of None, which is refreshing. Having not seen the show, it doesn’t seem like his critique is especially worthwhile — it seems like just another instance of Weldon being allergic to anything that vaguely flirts with earnestness. But it’s nice to hear the others debate him.

Omnireviewer (week of Nov. 1, 2015)

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If for some reason you make a habit of reading these, you’ll quickly realize that I like everything. You’re unlikely to see any real hatchet jobs here. I just like to enthuse about things, mostly. Here are your 32 reviews for the week:

Music

Vulfpeck: Thrill of the Arts — It’s funk produced with the minimalist precision of Krautrock. The arrangements are one unconventional decision after another. The choice to minimize the role of the drum kit at times is a weirdly good one. And the lyrics are brilliantly nonsensical. One of those unexpected pleasures.

David Bowie: Young Americans — In his book on John Peel, David Cavanagh refers to this as “the sound of [Bowie] cruising through black America in a limousine, occasionally slowing down to shed a few more parts of himself by the roadside.” I can’t do any better than that.

David Bowie: Station to Station — Young Americans was an only-half-successful experiment, but if it led to the insight that produced Station to Station, it was entirely worthwhile. This is my favourite Bowie album save for Low, and some days Hunky Dory. On the other hand, after listening to this and Young Americans in direct succession, my headphones are now coughing out thick clouds of cocaine. So, that’s inconvenient.

The Beatles: Rubber Soul — I just realized that my listening today has included soul of both plastic and rubber persuasions. Aside from that, what’s there to say about this? For years, it was the earliest Beatles album I cared to listen to. I’ve since developed a taste for the early stuff. But I still think this marks the point where they went from being a good little band to being the Best Band Ever. Not my favourite band, mind. But if you want to say to me that the Beatles are objectively the greatest band in history, I’ll tend not to argue with you.

Ted Hearne: The Source — First off, the track “We called for illumination at 1630” is one of the most staggering things I’ve heard recently. It’s an instant classic that everybody should hear. Most of the rest of this deeply unorthodox oratorio is less excellent than that. I sure respect Hearne’s political engagement (the oratorio’s text is drawn from the Manning leaks, among other primary sources). But it all feels a bit earnest to me: a bit austere and serious, as if to say, “This is important! DO NOT SMILE.” Still, it feels wrong to dismiss this on one listen. Accusing a work that deals with Chelsea Manning and the war in Afghanistan of being overly serious is admittedly somewhat perverse. I do wish more composers would try stuff like this. And that one track. Holy smokes. Listen to it now.

Eve Egoyan/Linda Catlin Smith: Thought and Desire — This is the first I’ve heard of Linda Catlin Smith’s music. It’s quite static, and at times there isn’t much to latch onto as a listener. Each of the nocturnes, chorales and miscellaneous compositions on this disc of piano music is essentially a sequence of slow moving but very rich chords without melodies stringing them together. Shades of Satie and Brian Eno. I listened while I worked, and eventually found myself really getting into it. I find the last twenty minutes boring, but the first forty are lovely. Egoyan’s releases are always worth hearing, because she plays music that nobody else does, and plays it well. Even if this isn’t quite as enthralling as some of her previous discs, these are still world premiere recordings and I value that inherently.

Mr. McFall’s Chamber: Solitudes — Who knew there was such a thing as Finnish tango? In any case, this is an album that takes that style as its jumping off point, and proceeds to do my favourite thing for contemporary classical albums to do: be completely enthralling while containing music written almost entirely by people I’ve never heard of. There’s nearly an hour of music by composers I don’t know, compared with less than ten minutes of music by composers I do. That seems about the right ratio. Olli Mustonen’s Toccata and Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Dedication are particular highlights. And the playing!

The Chemical Brothers: Further — I’ve already written at length about how happy this album makes me on Two Matts, the blog I co-write with Matt Meuse. It was one he assigned me, knowing full well I’d be into it. But he might not have guessed that I’d still be listening to it semi-obsessively several weeks later.

Live events

Hey Rosetta! Live at the Vogue — I’ve only done this a couple of times: that thing where you go to a concert by an artist you’ve barely heard of. But the friend I went with has seen them eight or nine times, so he was well-prepared to give me the lowdown on these folks beforehand. Plus, the concert turned out to be a good way in. Hey Rosetta! is a great live band for a couple of reasons. First, they play and sing brilliantly. Not a given, as we know. It’s the bands whose execution is solid that you want to see live. Secondly, their songs can get a bit anthemic. You want to be in a crowd of people, listening to some of those songs. I’m especially glad to have been at this specific show because Yukon Blonde was the opening act, and the two bands did their 2015 election anthem “Land You Love” for the first time live as an encore. Lovely moment, there. Plus, the lighting design was clever: twenty-or-so incandescent bulbs were distributed across the stage on stands. At times, the stage lights would go off completely, leaving the band lit solely by those bulbs. Wonderful. Time to listen to some Hey Rosetta! albums.

Movies

The Zero Theorem — You know you’re truly in love with an artist when you even enjoy the works of theirs that you can objectively identify as bad. This is how I am with Terry Gilliam. I’m on record stating that my favourite movie is Brazil, and that remains true on all the days when it is not Mulholland Drive or Velvet Goldmine. Then there are the Gilliam movies that are basically accepted as good, which I believe are masterpieces: 12 Monkeys, The Fisher King, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. There are the misunderstood gems, Tideland and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, both brilliant. And so it goes, on down to Brothers Grimm and Jabberwocky, neither of them any good at all, both of which I like in spite of myself. The question with The Zero Theorem was never “will I like it,” but rather “which of those categories will it fit into?” Turns out, it’s the one with Tideland and Parnassus. Nobody likes this, but it’s great. Gilliam’s satire continues to be a hilariously blunt instrument, and his gender politics are extremely suspect, but this is an enthralling movie. It probably helps that it’s the most similar thing he’s done to Brazil. It’s full of signs and boxes and advertisements you should read but can’t, because everything goes by too fast. It’s got David Thewlis as a cut-rate Michael Palin and Christoph Waltz as a big-budget Jonathan Pryce. It’s got women wearing outlandish things on their heads. I was never not going to like this.

Television

Doctor Who: “The Zygon Invasion/Inversion” — Well, the season got off to a slow start, but we’re sure as hell into the thick of it now. This two-parter was completely magnificent. Still not quite as good as last season’s high points (which were, incidentally, also written by the two writers credited here), but damn good. Between his Doctor Who work and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, Peter Harness is quickly becoming my second-favourite writer associated with Doctor Who. And if “space ISIS” isn’t quite as good a premise as “the moon’s an egg,” at least we got Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman both giving their best-ever performances on the show.

Last Week Tonight: November 1, 2015 — Nothing here that will set the world ablaze. No dingo babysitters. But it’s always nice to hear somebody say “hey, maybe we should focus on actual present-day news instead of talking about an election that’s a year away” and then doing that thing.

Literature, etc.

David Cavanagh: Good Night and Good Riddance — This continues to be fantastic, and really lent some clarity to the rise of punk rock. While I’ve become considerably more amenable to punk in recent years, I still have some lingering skepticism. But, when you see on a show-for-show basis how boring music was in 1975-76 (LOTS of Eagles and other Eaglesy bands on the radio), you begin to understand. Also, Cavanagh cleverly notes how many of the artists on certain Peel shows from this period were living in tax exile. Sort of puts a nice fine point on things, doesn’t it?

China Miéville: “The Buzzard’s Egg” — This is one of the best stories I’ve gotten to in this collection so far. Miéville’s stories live and die on the novelty of their premises, and this premise is really something: an army of ruthless imperialists conquer peoples and take their land by stealing their idols, thus rendering their prayers useless. Piquant, no? And Miéville’s chosen just the right narrator to offer a window into that world.

Alex Bilmes: Noel Gallagher interview for Esquire — I don’t really like Oasis. I’ve never listened to a full Oasis album. But I love interviews with Noel Gallagher. And this one is gigantic. Bilmes has the restraint to say his piece at the beginning, and then just give the people what they want, which is 6,500 words of Noel being garrulous and abrasive. Sample: “Hard work and a fucking filthy tongue, that’s what I inherited from my mum. She taught the Nineties how to swear. And what’s the word, stoicism? Yeah, she was hardcore. She didn’t give a fuck.”

Ben Grossblatt/Alex Fine: How to Speak Klingon — A few friends and I have been going to pub trivia around Vancouver for a year or so. There’s a nerd bar here called the Storm Crow that’s becoming a favourite for its fairly challenging questions and its Cthulhu altar. This was a first place prize, and it is frankly ridiculous that I’m even reviewing it. It is a children’s board book with buttons that make sounds. It is not a serious thing. That said, it is better than it needs to be. Wookiepedia tells me that in addition to this most minor of Star Trek credits, Grossblatt has also written peripheral fiction pertaining to Star Wars. And the illustrator, Alex Fine, did covers for Newsweek when Newsweek still had covers. So, they’re not hacks. This provides useful phrases for various contexts in Klingon society. Like, on public transportation, it teaches you the phrase for “I don’t have exact change and await my just and devastating punishment.” Or, at the office: “There are no bad ideas, only ideas meriting death.” Or, at karaoke: “Hold me closer, tiny dancer.”

Games

Stasis: Howlongtobeat.com tells me it should take me about five hours to beat this game. Reviewers imply that they played it in an afternoon. I’ve played for nine hours over the course of two weeks, and I don’t feel like I’m nearly done. I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?

Podcasts

The Allusionist: “Criminallusionist” — Radiotopia cross-promotion continues. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a straightforwardly good thing or not. The bulk of this is just a full episode of Criminal, and while that’s nothing to complain about, I did actually tune in for The Allusionist. Maybe this is how Marvel Comics fans feel when they complain about big crossover events?

This American Life: “The Heart Wants What It Wants” — The major highlight of this is Shankar Vedantum’s story about men who were conned into paying for love letters from fictional women. The key takeaway is that I should probably start listening to Vedantum’s Hidden Brain, although do I really have time for another podcast? (Evidently yes, as we shall see.)

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “A Conversation with Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)” — I will likely not read Career of Evil, but the structural gimmick sounds fun (much of the novel is narrated by the murderer, but you don’t actually know which of the suspects is doing the narrating). This is one of my favourite things about listening to tons of podcasts: it helps me keep track of what’s going on in the cultural world without my having to actually take in ALL of it. (Though you can see I’m trying.)

Surprisingly Awesome: “Mold” — I’ve expressed ambivalence towards “wonder surrogacy” before, in other media. That’s where there’s a person in the text itself whose role it is to express wonder, interest or enthusiasm in the hopes that the audience will join in. This new podcast has wonder surrogacy baked into its premise. Provided that the topics covered continue to have the same hidden depths as they find in mold, there will always be one host whose job boils down to saying “isn’t that interesting?” At the worst of times, this approach strikes me as desperate. Surely it’s better to just say interesting things and get on with it than to be constantly trumpeting your own appeal. In this premiere episode, it’s fine. But I will remain vigilant.

In Our Time: “Utilitarianism” — This is BBC Radio 4. This is a very austere production with no music, no tape, seemingly no editing, and no obvious enthusiasm. This is a man mumbling disinterestedly into a microphone, trying to coax the history of a major branch of philosophy from a panel of sleepy professors. This condescends not a whit to its audience, and makes no compromises. In fact, it seems to be ignoring its audience altogether. I will probably listen to more of this.

Reply All: “Shine On You Crazy Goldman” — P.J. Vogt drops acid at work. P.J. Vogt is quickly becoming the most interesting podcast host. Matt Lieber is a Pink Floyd reference.

The Memory Palace: “no. 116,842” — The Memory Palace always makes me get all watery at inopportune moments. DiMeo has this uncanny ability to wrest meaning out of a phrase by repeating it: in this case, “let her mind wander.” See also, “Mary Walker would wear what she wanted.”

The Memory Palace: “Craning” — Every time I hear a really good episode of The Memory Palace, it makes me want to go back and listen to this one again. I must have heard it ten or twelve times, now. It is my favourite nine minutes of audio I’ve heard this year. It’s a landscape of Cape Canaveral on the morning Apollo 11 launched, wrought with incredibly fine brushstrokes — right down to the spectators camping out in station wagons, overnight, with the tailgates open for the feet of tall children in sleeping bags. There are more perfect turns of phrase here than I’ve ever heard in a radio piece. Throw in some meditative music, and this is a total sucker punch. I can’t account for why this has such an effect on me. That’s probably why I love it so much.

99% Invisible: “Butterfly Effects” — An original, Sam Greenspan-produced story about how bad design might have decided a federal election. This is what this podcast is for. 99pi is a continuous act of validation for Roman’s “beautiful nerds.” Because, when everything in the world is so inherently interesting, how can you not want to learn everything about it? How can you not be a nerd? In a sense, the premise of 99pi is the opposite of the premise for the new Gimlet podcast, Surprisingly Awesome. Where the latter takes for granted that some things are boring, 99pi is interested in everything, and trusts that you are too. No wonder surrogacy, here.

The Moth: “Hand Transplant, DNA, and a Backwards Heart” — And, we’re back. Janna Levin’s story of love and astrophysics is structurally a thing of beauty. I’m a sucker for recurring motifs that develop thematically through the course of a narrative. (See: The Memory Palace, and also most everything by Beethoven.) The other two stories are less interesting, but not by much.

The Heart: “Kaitlyn+Mitra” — This two-parter about the intimate business partnership of The Heart’s two founders could have been a little inside baseball, but they invited their audience in by literally inviting the audience to a big event — a wedding, of sorts. The Heart is so good. For one thing, it’s one of the best-sounding podcasts on Radiotopia, along with The Truth and 99pi. For another, it cares not a whit about taboos. And was that Brian Eno’s slowed-down Pachelbel I heard in there? Clever.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ and Things We Meant to Do” — And now, a proper episode of PCHH. Pop culture panel shows are a dime a dozen, but this is far and away the best of the major ones. Every episode sounds like what it hopefully actually is, which is four people who really like talking to each other talking about stuff they like. I generally find this panel more insightful than Slate’s, and it’s actually funnier than the less structured and less censored Pop Rocket from Maximum Fun. This episode is a pretty standard instalment. And that is just fine. This is a podcast I almost always listen to the day it comes out, because I can rely on it to be good company on a commute or a run, even when the topics at hand aren’t that interesting to me.

Radiolab: “Staph Retreat” — You know you listen to too many podcasts when you hear two separate accounts of Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in the same week, entirely by coincidence. This is the better one, by the way. As you’d expect. Honestly, Radiolab lost me for a while. Between the reduced presence of Robert Krulwich, the less ambitious sound design and the increased focus on the sort of current affairs stories that other shows like This American Life already do, I felt like this show had somewhat lost its distinctiveness. But between this and “The Rhino Hunter” from September, it looks like they’re back on top.

Surprisingly Awesome: “Free Throws” — More wonder surrogacy, but this time, Adam Davidson is essentially a perfect surrogate for me, because this is a sports story, and neither he nor I could care less about sports. But, even given this optimal situation, in which both Davidson and I come around to the interest of free throws in the end, they cap it off with an ending in which Davidson’s wonder far exceeds my own, and the perfect surrogacy is broken. This is the key risk of this kind of storytelling: if the audience isn’t completely analogous to the surrogate, they need to engage their empathy in order to feel the intended effect. And people are (or at least, I am) bad at engaging their empathy when the stakes are zero. I’ll keep tuning in to this, because it really is entertaining on a moment-for-moment basis. But I distrust this structure.

Welcome to Night Vale: “The September Monologues” — I do like it when Night Vale plays with the format. I suppose some of what I said last week might make it sound like I don’t. But the real problem is when there’s too much focus on long-term storytelling and worldbuilding, and not enough on just making the episode at hand work. This is one of the best episodes I’ve heard, if only for the brilliant monologue by Steve Carlsburg. I always figured Cecil was just being a jerk about him. And that weather gag is genius.