Revvoos

Just a quick coupla links to my latest few reviews, I've been busy!!! And enraged, and frazzled, I'm not sure about my judgement on all of these bad boys but it was great fun reviewing nonetheless....

Communion - The Compilation
The Hush Now - Constellations

Finally, look for the initials NH and I'll be responsible.

I'm posting this up but believe me I will return to it

Why is it often so much more acceptable to express hate than love?
I'm not saying that people will ever appreciate it. But when someone is angry they are often given the room to reveal it. It is almost seen as some kind of right. The idea of "letting off steam" (yes, I know, Arnie) and so on are recognised facets of human action. I admit there is also a huge dichotomy between hatred and anger, and they should not be conflated. However, even at a global level, people are expected to release anger, and often as a healthy reaction not only to them on a personal level, but to almost anything.
As a middle class, buttoned-down kinda human being, I was very rarely subjected to any kind of shouting, arguing or open expressions of rage when I was growing up and certainly I actively avoid it now. But I imagine for many people it is a daily occurence, a cathartic and perhaps harmless one.
Maybe in some ways it is the case that people feel empowered by anger and disempowered by love. Anger provides not only a raw sensation which might allow an expression of brute force, but also a license under which to use it. "I'm hitting the wall because I'm angry", is probably much more recognised than "I'm hitting the wall because I'm in love" (I do the latter.......). There is something more instinctual to anger, or at least something which we are more comfortable with expressing. A shout, a violent motion, an immediate reaction or reprobation seems to come far more swiftly and easily - it is closer to an instinct, and also much more rapidly provoked. Put extremely simply, it could be akin to 'fight or flight'.
However like Nietzsche's ressentiment, anger can also be held and mutated, leading to acts of revenge which are far less forgivable or justified. I mention this for all the people who are thinking "Dude, I don't hit people, I hold a grudge." I can fairly safely say that I don't have the emotional energy to hold grudges, personally, but also don't consider it worth it for anyone else. Love, on the other hand: I can fall in love for a long, long time.
The contrast I would like to make is, I suppose, the difficulties surrounding expressing love. As I grew up in a household without shouting, it was equally devoid of hugs. It took me a long time to discover not only acceptable boundaries, but that people deserve not just to be shown they are loved but that they should bloody well get used to it. I hope the people that I love know this is so. But that is part of the problem.
Let alone when you fall into a romantic love and feel so utterly paralysed by the mixture of emotion and complex hormonal response this person provokes in you simply by walking into a room (does anyone else get a wall of static noise in their ears from the amount of blood that rushes to their head?). Surely this is as potent and physiological the desire to immediately punch someone in the face. But we cannot express it in the same way. Love is just as intrusive as anger, and yet the positive action is somehow a far more dangerous or perverse one. There are laws against certain types of love (and, no I am most definitely not advocating pedophilia, that's a whole other set of issues), or at least powerful social biases on all levels.
I know, obviously, that there are laws against violent actions too, and maybe it is all a matter of degrees. But somehow it is anger that is punished in the afterthought, and love more often held back beforehand.

My male readers may want to skip this

Whilst I have a love-hate relationship with being a woman (as Joey Comeau once said, "If I had breasts I would stand in front of the mirror all day - wishing I were prettier") there are a few formalities which I almost openly appreciate. Recently waking up in the morning has been followed by a feeling of intense and painful despair. Not an easy one to shake off with a bowl of own-brand rice krispies, especially when it means eyeing the washing-up pile growing in our poorly draining sink. To wake up to despair yesterday morning and, upon getting to the bathroom, find I was mentruating, brought on such an intense feeling of relief. That, perhaps, for once, my feelings were actually totally beyond my control. However much the opposite gender hate it, and I would strive to never use my period as a genuine excuse for anything (although I will complain about the hassle), there is genuine and basic biology going on inside every month which results in moods and feelings so intense I have no idea that they are utterly temporary and temporal. But thank fuck they are. And now that bit is over for another month and I am reminded that it was indeed only a matter of time, I feel so much better already. Plus, the sun is shining :)
I'll try and post something more interesting soon. I think all my reviews are up-to-date but I need to rush one through at present!

Feast of the Heart

What do you say about a single that you don't really like that much more than the rest of the album? This, I suppose, although I got a bit bogged down by it. And also having frustratingly managed to, whilst hunting for her relevant website on Google, spot the comment made of her by Tom Waits: "Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night". An image it is impossible to remove oneself from. Still, I thought the flowers-vines analogy went ok.

Jesca Hoop - Feast of the Heart

Other People Who are Funnier than Me

Again, a post all about other things than my own because I'm simply not this inspired...
Here is Jane Thynne's take on John Donne's possible reaction to modern technology:

to her lover, who is too busy to have a meaningful conversation

you never talk,
you never even text
its quite a miracle you manage sex.
we barely email,
not even twitter
is it any wonder i feel bitter
whenever i can bear to contemplate
your utter failure to communicate?
when first we met in realms of cyberspace
like souls in darkness seeking a friendly face
the web we surfed was like a vasty deep
an ethereal paradise where spirits meet
and through our flickering laptops every night
the world contracted to a megabyte.
we then like astronauts
at heaven's borders
believed ourselves new internet explorers
and in those moments
even dared to think
one day we too might make a hyperlink
though first we met on friends reunited
i knew our love would one day be requited
that continents and countries we would roam
and to exotic lands have one day flown.
but all the global roaming you have known
is what you do on business trips by phone
and when i tell you that i feel neglected
i get the feeling you've disconnected
but how can i your true thoughts even guess
if you will never your Outlook Express?
and now my server's down, my link is broken
too many times after the tone i've spoken
and as for all your new technology
your Blackberry will bear no fruit for me
that's why on Facebook, where other souls may mingle
i have now changed my Relationship Status to 'single'

This here, also, is my favourite Flight of the Conchords song at the moment, and a general counter to my current(/perpetual) achey-heart-ness. I can't help laughing at the same line every time - "Who organised all my ex-girlfriends into a choir, and got them to sing?"

Seeing Through Ocean Eyes....

Here's me latest review, in which I caused some debate with my rating:
Owl City - Ocean Eyes
I am that far out of the bubble that I hadn't heard of this guy til I listened to the album and then clocked the MySpace (good lord, HOW many fans?! Who are you?!?) Hence wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of bile most people have towards him.
I simply chose it because I have a weird 'thing' about owls. They're just lovely :)

That aside, ratings are, for me, the nightmare part of the review. I have my struggles with writer's block like anyone else, but then categorising whatever strange metaphors or analogies or whatever I have said to try and sum up others' music into a number out of ten seems almost impossible to me. The editor of the FourOhFive kept telling me off for never putting ratings at the bottom of my reviews. The thing is, I'm okay with writing about something. People can take away what they want from that, and why else would we write it? For instance, the guy who comments that I didn't mention the Postal Service was the one who really got to me because they're the band someone made me a CD of way back when young gentlemen used to make me CDs *Miss Havisham Moment*, and the CD was actually a mix of Death Cab, who I subsequently adore and whose albums got me through a large part of my dissertation, and The Postal Service, who I have since never listened to. They're now on the listen list!!!! I imagine they'd work well as a light side salad to my current many-many-coursed banquet that is getting in to Bob Dylan.
Anyway, yes, I never really got in to Postal Service, so on that comparison fell short. It was akin to getting an essay back and being told about the book I hadn't read which I definitely should have done to write the essay. Possibly demonstrative of my approach to life... but temporality is one of those things I am sadly subservient to. (Yes of course the reviews are trying to replace the hole in my life left by no longer flinging myself into essay writing as an endless attempt to receive recognition and approval....)
I'M DIGRESSING.
I like reviewing music a lot but if all people can do is argue about the ratings I'm sorely disappointed. Owl City is pretty middle-of-the-road pop, but for that week proved an incredible tonic to the dour mood I was in. The singles are constantly on the majority of radio stations and are holding up well in the face of it: I'm not defending mass opine but the playability of the record, which for me is generally what counts. So I gave it a six out of ten because the majority of the album, once you had passed the three listens which I usually allow myself to get a handle on the music, makes your ears feel like they are bleeding syrup as your mind turns to candyfloss. Except that some tracks make me feel really, really good instead. Perhaps that was my main mis-step: I wrote the review in a fairly objective tone, knowing the audience of that website, but when it came to that bloody '... out of ten', my own emotional involvement stepped in and said 'This guy is terrible, but he actually really cheered you up.' Presumbly because he does sound like Death Cab and other bands whose twee-ness is something I quietly appreciate at the right moments.
Equally, I am gratified that those that have commented seem to have listened to the music before dismissing it, but would have wanted more of a response to my actual writing. I suppose the lack of argument with the review itself speaks of a general consensus, and the strong response to the rating thus proves that... I'm really bad at equating numbers with reality? It's been a learning curve at least, I don't think any of my reviews have provoked comment before. I might just start fucking with people to engender more debate.
And Owl Eyes was a strangely welcome counter to the huge amount of 'coolness' I am constantly swimming in living here in Brighton. I would not replace a single one of my friends for all of the Nazi gold in Switzerland, but sometimes I think I'll never be able to keep up with whether I'm hearing the Decemberists' version or the Joanna Newsom version, whether it's noise music as a statement or just plain bad, how many of Tom Waits' albums I know, how many Radiohead album covers I recognise, how many Leonard Cohen lyrics I remember........
Fuck it all, let's put the Dum Dums on really, really loudly.

Bill Plympton

Haven't been overly creative lately so I'm re-discovering the things that amuse me in the hopes they amuse you too.

For instance, the glorious cartoonist Bill Plympton, whose work is frustratingly sparse due to his labour-intensive creative process, and also relatively unknown in the UK. The examples available on YouTube sadly mainly involve a few short adverts he created, but marketing spiel aside, there's something truly fascinating, and definitely hilarious, about his animation techniques. Long disappeared is the amazing 'Your Face' which served to launch his career, a haunting music video showing a man's head and shoulders distorting constantly as he sang the song, and 'Push Comes to Shove', another exercise in facial squishiness, as the comment next to this particular video describes:

And here's a more recent example of a short toon, from a set of works known as the 'Dog Series':

He did make quite a few full-length films which I intend to find out about......
All is far from lost really. There's a plethora of stuff on his website, including an actual biography (hence me not bothering here - I would only cut-and-paste the damn thing). Finally, and holy cow how I love the internet, one can watch gorgeous timelapse images of him drawing his most recent project, the 2008 release Idiots and Angels:
Woah that's awesome.
Yes, that's right, he does it all himself, as he did for previous feature length, Hair High. Darker, weirder, and far less pretentious than Tim Burton... yay Bill.