I love my mum to bits, and as a belated mother's day gift, I decided to do my damnedest to record her unique take on music, life, and philosophy.
As well as we get on, my mum and I have never had any cross-over in terms of music appreciation (her favourite band, for the record, is Cliff Richard and the Shadows) so I thought it'd be fun to make her listen to the new Lykke Li record, and then record her response to the album.
The end result was even better than I ever could have imagined. Enjoy it here:
Every once in a while, a record comes around that consumes you. It fills your waking hours. You think about it during the day, and you play it on constant repeat at night. You want to watch it; to read it; to swallow it whole. Live this Sound is a regular section of this site that allows you to experience a single album as many ways as you possibly can. This week, we take a look at A Sea of Split Peas, the double EP from rising Aussie star Courtney Barnett.
The Album.
Courtney Barnett's total world domination has ramped up another notch recently, with the slyly witty young songstress making an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. There's no use mistaking the fact that the Melbournian is our Next Big Thing - it's become increasingly hard to turn on the radio without coming across one of her grungy, tongue in cheek ballads. Thank God then that Barnett is a fantastically talented singer/songwriter - otherwise it'd be easy to get pretty sick of her, pretty quick.
Barnett's Double EP A Sea of Split Peas walks a fine line between tragedy and comedy - a song like "Avant Gardener" combines both, without ever becoming melodramatic or self-pitying.
But while rushing to appreciate her lyrics, it's easy for one to overlook the fact that she rocks as well. Her album is one of crashing guitars, pounding piano refrains, and a relentlessly likeable sound that is both replete with musical references (Nirvana being an obvious touch stone) and undeniably unique. Even those who have heard "Avant Gardener" to death should still hunt down A Sea of Split Peas - it's an album with a great deal more to give than just one song.
How to Eat This Album.
Barnett's got a bit of a tomato thing going on - on "Avant Gardener" she tells us she wants to grow them in her backyard, and she has a whole song (sort of) dedicated to the canned variety of the fruit. So, what better way to go than Gazpacho - tomato soup's underlooked cousin. Gazpacho has all of the bite and complexity of A Sea of Split Peas without ever being the kind of meal that makes you feel like a wanker when you eat it. There's a grand recipe for the stuff to be found here:
And for desert? All roads point to a good old fashioned pavlova. It's distinctly Australian; it's sweet without ever being sickly; and a good dose of passionfruit gives it that necessary bitter bite.
How could anyone overlook a mojito? Forget the crap that people serve you in pubs - just make it yourself, following the recipe below. Not only will you be saving a few bob, but the drink itself will taste better, particularly seeing as a lot of dives these days think that a mojito requires the dedication of a cult member - chucking in a dozen different kind of leafy bits and bobs to clog up your perfectly good drink glass.
Like the best things in life, a mojito should be as simple as possible - go easy on all of the ingredients. Not unlike A Sea of Split Peas, a good mojito is a bitterly sweet drink that's both inviting and surprisingly dangerous: it's hard to stop at one.
A lot of the songs on A Sea of Split Peas are love ballads gone slightly wrong. There's a sense of romance to Barnett's music, albeit of an unrequited, doomed kind.
Paul Thomas Anderson's totally demented rom-com Punch Drunk Love is the closest cinematic equivalent to Barnett's darkly tragicomic tone. I've never been an Adam Sandler fan, but the man does very good work here; taking his usual 'angry man' persona and pushing it to genuinely interesting extremes. Of course, he also has a lot of help from Anderson's script, which manages to be utterly bizarre without ever being distracting or distancing. It's a real love story, and although it takes a strange winding road to get there, by the time the conclusion comes crashing down, you feel genuinely affected; love might be blind (and pretty dumb), but it's still the thing that keeps us keeping on.
Another one of Barnett's fantastic cinematic sisters is the Australian movie Praise, directed by John Curran - the only problem is, it's almost impossible to find. I haven't even been able to find a clip on youtube, so you'll have to settle with the film's poster, which admittedly doesn't give you very much. But take my word for it: this is a fantastic film, a warts and all love story that has much to do with eczema, scrabble and asthma attacks as it does with what we usually consider romance. It's one of those films that gets almost everything right - it's deeply funny, bitterly sad, undeniably tense, and remarkably acted. Hunt it down, whatever way you can.
How to Read This Album.
Ask the Dust by John Fante might seem like a bit of an odd choice - after all, it's about as far removed from Barnett's Australiana as one can imagine. That said, there are a lot of similarities to be found between the book and A Sea of Split Peas - both are much funnier than they are given credit for, and both contain a sustained tone of cathartic self-analysis that teeters on the edge of becoming self-pity, without ever falling into that particular trap. Ask the Dust is one of those books you can finish in a single sitting. It's totally enthralling; Fante's ability to pin a character down to a single place and time is unequalled, and Arturo Bandini is one of those fictional figures that you just want to buy a beer and chat to for a time. Just make sure you avoid the god-awful film adaption - it's one of those movies that manages to completely miss the point of its source text, leaving you with nothing but an hour and a half of Colin Farrell gurning for the camera.
If poetry is your thing, then you can't ignore the work of Stevie Smith. Barnett and Smith are equally astute dark comedians - since Smith has been canonized, people seem to have forgotten how funny she really is. Sure, she's incredibly heartfelt and powerful too, but you only need to look as far as "Not Waving But Drowning" to see that she had a black vein of bathetic humour mixed up in her world view too.
Every once in a while, a record comes around that consumes you. It fills your waking hours. You think about it during the day, and you play it on constant repeat at night. You don't want to just listen to it - you want to have it within you, any way you can. You want to watch it; to read it; to swallow it whole. It's a 'classic album', sure, but more than that, it won't leave your head, and, all things considered, you don't want it to. Live this Sound is a regular section of this site that allows you to experience a single album as many ways as you possibly can. This week, we take a look at Salad Days, the latest release from indie rock's straightest talking darling, Mac De Marco.
The Album.
Just as 2 was hands down my favourite record of the year, it's only April and already I find it hard to imagine that any major label release in the next eight months will give me as much joy as Mac Demarco's Salad Days. It's a near perfect album - lyrically complex without ever being pretentious; consistently warm without ever being repetitive; and generous without ever being whorish. Every music critic from here to Boston might feel like calling DeMarco a 'slacker', but the truth is the total opposite: he is one of the hardest working musicians in recent memory, labouring over tracks that come pre-polished with the 23 year old's blood, sweat and tears.
How to Eat this Album.
Nothing green and leafy, as should be evident from DeMarco's croon on the title track: "Missing hippy Jon/Salad days are gone." Ultimately, this is an album of comfort; the kind that never tries to be your best friend, but somehow ends up in your innermost circle before you know it. As a result, you need a recipe that'll keep you cosy on a rainy day - the kind of meal you might eat while recovering from a stomach bug, or the devastating end of a relationship . You need cheer up food, essentially, and in that category there is nothing better than a good ole Croque-Monsieur.
There are those who might call the Croque-Monsieur nothing but a glorified toasted sandwich, but this is the nectar of the Suburban Gods: easy to make, filling, and exactly what you need at least 90% of the time.
But don't be intimidated: a Croque-Monsieur is just as wonderful when it's cooked as quickly, cheaply and effectively as possible. Good old taste.com has a bare bones recipe that will fix what ails ya, guaranteed:
For Salad Days, you need something that you can drink quite a lot of before you start feeling the effects of the booze - although this album is a lean 34 minutes, it's the kind of record you'll want to start from the beginning as soon as its over. Also, this isn't the kind of music that benefits from drunken ears. Don't do the music the disservice of shaking to it with a bellyful of liquor - just get yourself a nice, quiet buzz on and enjoy.
Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer isn't boozy enough to get you even closed to pissed on anything less than four bottles, but as soon as you finish a single glass, you'll get that ever-sought after liquid relaxation you've been waiting for your whole day at work.
How to Watch this Album.
Mac DeMarco isn't as obsessed with the 90's as some of his contemporaries: unlike Beach House or Best Coast, for example, he has a complexity that rises above nostalgia. But, fact of the matter is, you can't go past the balls-to-the walls awesomeness that American animated television had to offer in that decade, and there are a whole range of 90's TV shows that go beautifully with Salad Days.
Let's be honest: when all the Adventure Time hype dies down, Ren and Stimpy will be left standing as the king of animated television madness. It also happens to be Salad Days' perfect visual partner in crime: a little mad; a little bizarre; but totally down to Earth, and totally inviting.
Okay, so maybe Ren and Stimpy isn't always totally inviting, as the clip above can probably attest, but once again, all you have to do is mute Ren and Stimpy's sound, put on Salad Days, kick back, and enjoy all that mischievous perfection.
How To Read this Album.
The work of Daniel Clowes fits perfectly with DeMarco's oeuvre - after all, both share an interest in the outsider, and both manage to be cutting without ever being cruel. Ghost World may be Clowes' best known work, and its tragi-comic tone suits Salad Days's joyful introspection perfectly. But, Pussey, Clowes' heartfelt damnation of the comic books industry itself, is also definitely worth a look.
Every once in a while, a record comes around that consumes you. It fills your waking hours. You think about it during the day, and you play it on constant repeat at night. You don't want to just listen to it - you want to have it within you, any way you can. You want to watch it; to read it; to swallow it whole. It's a 'classic album', sure, but more than that, it won't leave your head, and, all things considered, you don't want it to. Live this Sound is a regular section of this site that allows you to experience a single album as many ways as you possibly can. This week, we take a look at It's Up To Emma, English singer/song writer Scout Niblett's latest offering, and the myriad of ways you can enjoy its sparse beauty.
The Album.
If you haven't dived into the starkly powerful world of Scout Niblett yet, then It's Up to Emma is a great place to start. Not to say that this, her most recent album, is any more 'commercial' than her others - her beautiful voice still teeters on the brink of absolute hysteria, and at times the music seems like it will collapse under the weight of its own great pain - but the sound here is definitely fuller. Whereas her style in the past has been relentlessly minimalist (the best example being her song "Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death" - a track that is little more than a relentless drum beat, and Niblett singing "we're all gonna die" over, and over) It's Up To Emma offers more sonic depth than any of her other records. It's an initially surprising change for any of Niblett's long term fans, but it's never a distancing one. Instead, it is the sign of a singer pushing herself into new territory - never abandoning her true self, but still testing everything that has come before.
It's stark, it's beautiful, it's terrifying and it's powerful - in short, it's an overlooked classic that demands your attention.
How To Eat This Album.
It's Up To Emma is an album that manages to be direct without ever being simple - even if the songs don't fuck around, it would be foolish to underestimate their broad textures and tastes. As a result, you need a recipe that's not too flowery, but not too 'meat and two veg' either. For the fish eaters out there, trout is the way to go, particularly when cooked in accordance with these directions:
For the full blooded meat eaters, veal has all the necessary cruelty and beauty for an album like this, particularly when the fillet is balanced with the subtle bite of lemon.
You'd have to be fairly imaginative to call Niblett's music 'sweet' - although she is capable of great tenderness, her tracks never descend into bubbly warmth. Instead, hers is a complicated kind of kindness: blunt, but encompassing.
As a result, most cocktails are out - on the whole, they're far too sugary for the hard edge of It's Up To Emma. However, it's hard to beat the complicated textures of a good Bloody Mary, a fantastic recipe for which can be found here:
If you want the true It's Up To Emma experience, go heavy on the pepper - it's the best way to replicate the album's crackly power.
All that said, I've always found it hard to comfortably drink Bloody Mary's at night: they've always struck me as a late afternoon "dear god I'm still hungover" drink. So, if you're partaking in It's Up to Emma in the evening (which, you probably should - the whole album takes on a creepy resonance if it's played at about two in the morning) then a good Old Fashioned will help you soak the sound up. It's definitely sweeter than a Bloody Mary, but it's never downright sugary, and it still has that brutal edge that you need.
Lodge Kerrigan's masterpiece Clean, Shaven is almost impossible to find unless you're ready to fork out the hefty fee for the Criterion Collection edition. But, the effort (and price) is worth the wait.
The film is the story of Peter, a schizophrenic on a doomed journey to 'rescue' his daughter from the woman who has adopted her. It is one of the most terrifyingly brilliant depictions of mental illness ever put to the screen: Kerrigan works hard to portray the pain and terror of the affliction, while never making Peter a pathetic or 'damaged' character. Like It's Up to Emma this is a bleak, difficult work, but like It's Up To Emma it has its own beauty and forgiveness too.
Another of It's Up To Emma's cinematic siblings is The Consequences of Love, an Italian film directed by Paolo Sorrentino, the man currently riding the surprise success of his Oscar winning The Great Beauty. The Consequences of Love's trailer can be found below, but it's pretty awful. It basically tries to make the film look like an action packed sex romp, which it most definitely isn't. On the contrary, it is a bleak, stylish take on the thriller genre, with a pace that could fairly be described as 'considered.'
Niblett and Sorrentino share a strong sense of pace: they're not the kind of artists who want to rush anything, and as a result, their offerings are full of hidden rewards.
How To Read this Album.
Short stories are the way to go here. Niblett is a painfully direct artist, a trait she has in common with American writers like Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and Richard Yates. All three are the kind of authors who brutally, beautifully hook you into their world. You only need to read a single one of their stories to get yourself addicted, and before you know what's happening, you're consuming their entire back catalogue; hunting down their life stories down on the internet; and even watching the consistently crap film adaptations of their work.
Of them all, Carver is probably the author who shares Niblett's stark minimalism the closest, and his collection Elephant is arguably the greatest volume of short stories published in recent memory. That said, you can't go wrong with John Cheever's career spanning Collected Stories or Richard Yates' Liars in Love.
