New Albums from Maria Somerville and Beirut

Lus­ter is the sec­ond album from Maria Somerville and her first since sign­ing with the icon­ic 4AD Records

Based in her native Con­nemara, she has at least one albeit vir­tu­al foot in Lon­don, host­ing as she does her twice week­ly radio show on NTS, where she alter­nates deft­ly between the likes of Gia Mar­garet, The Inno­cence Mis­sion and Brock­en Social Scene and the clas­sic sounds of Nick Drake and Bri­an Eno.

Lus­ter takes the ethe­re­al dream­pop of Grouper (a reg­u­lar on her radio show) and Julian­na Bar­wick, and chan­nels it through the prism of the clas­sic 4AD sound of This Mor­tal Coil and Dead Can Dance

At times, she sounds like Nico re-imag­ined for the 21st cen­tu­ry (‘Trip’), while at oth­ers we’re treat­ed to what My Bloody Valen­tine would sound like if the vocals were giv­en promi­nence over, or at least par­i­ty with, the soar­ing indus­tri­al feed­back (‘Gar­den’ and ‘Up’). 

Hap­pi­ly, she’s as impres­sive­ly ethe­re­al and as regal­ly dis­tant live as she is in the record­ing stu­dio, as her recent shows at the But­ton Fac­to­ry in Dublin tes­ti­fy. Com­fort­ably one of the albums of the year.

Watch the video for Gar­den here:

Beirut is essen­tial­ly made up of Zach Con­don and whichev­er assort­ment of musi­cians he’s work­ing with at the time of the album’s record­ing. And A study of Loss­es is his and their 7th album. 

Beirut and Con­don first burst on to the scene with his debut album, Gulag Orkestra, in 2005, which was lit­er­al­ly record­ed in his bed­room, before being pol­ished in the stu­dio under the tute­lage of Neu­tral Milk Hotel’s Jere­my Barnes. 

Heav­i­ly influ­enced by what was then termed ‘world music’, specif­i­cal­ly by music from the Balka­ns, Gulag Orkestra’s meld­ing of flugel­horn, ukulele, man­dolin, trum­pet, accor­dion and organ, all of which are played by Con­don him­self, pro­duce a sound that evokes a very spe­cif­ic and heady atmosphere. 

It seems to serve as the sound­track for a troupe of east Euro­pean cir­cus per­form­ers, lost in thought in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, as the sounds of the cheer­ing crowds that had buoyed them ear­li­er have long since dis­solved into the lone­ly depths of the dark­ened night. 

But none of the five albums that fol­lowed have quite lived up to that daz­zling debut. That are all of them unques­tion­ably good albums, but none of them quite have that same spark. Which isn’t that sur­pris­ing, giv­en that dur­ing those inter­ven­ing years, there was a can­celled tour, and a hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, both from exhaus­tion, and a debil­i­tat­ing divorce. 

So it’s qui­et­ly grat­i­fy­ing to be able to report that A Study of Loss­es is both a return to form and an album that sounds very much like an unof­fi­cial fol­low-up to Gulag Orchestra. 

It is undoubt­ed­ly a lit­tle iron­ic, as the boys from Pitch­fork note in their review of it, that it is the very thing he’d been try­ing to dis­tance him­self from that has allowed him recon­nect with his nat­ur­al sound. Name­ly the circus.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, he was ini­tial­ly unin­ter­est­ed when first he’d been approached by the Swedish cir­cus troupe Kom­pani Giraff to pro­duce the sound­track for the project they were work­ing on. But after he read the nov­el it was based on, by the Ger­man writer Judith Scha­lan­sky, hap­pi­ly, he changed his mind. 

The result is his and their most ful­ly realised album to date. Watch the video for Caspi­an Sea here:

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Sinners’ Delivers and Then Some

Giv­en the uni­ver­sal rev­er­ence Sin­ners has been afford­ed, and the fact that the trail­er promised a bog-stan­dard vam­pire flick direct­ed by some­one whose pre­vi­ous cou­ple of efforts had been at the behest of the Mar­vel brethren, I sat down to watch Sin­ners with min­i­mal expec­ta­tions, con­fi­dent that I’d be get­ting back up to leave after about 30 min­utes or so. How refresh­ing to be proved so thor­ough­ly wrong.

Nom­i­nal­ly, we’re in Clarks­dale, Mis­sis­sip­pi, but real­ly we’re in the same ter­rain that gave us Damon Lindelof’s scin­til­lat­ing Watch­men (reviewed by me ear­li­er here) and Scorsese’s deeply irre­spon­si­ble Killers of the Flower Moon (reviewed by me ear­li­er here).

This is a world where hon­est, hard-work­ing black and brown skinned peo­ple are robbed blind by their white neigh­bours, deter­mined as they are to per­sist with their delu­sion of racial supe­ri­or­i­ty. Sin­ners, then, is a revenge movie.

Iden­ti­cal twins come home with the ill-got­ten gain they’ve amassed after work­ing for the Chica­go mafia, bent on open­ing up a juke joint so that their black and brown skinned broth­ers and sis­ters can enjoy them­selves of an evening, in exact­ly the same way that their white neigh­bours can.

But that is not a world that those white neigh­bours are will­ing to allow come into being.

As with any supe­ri­or genre film, it’s what you see going on beneath the sur­face that ele­vates it. Inge­nious­ly, direc­tor Ryan Coogler homes in on music as the means for dis­tin­guish­ing the film’s two antagonists.

Once the film set­tles down, the lines seem to be clear­ly drawn. Inside the juke joint are our heroes, the black and brown skinned men and women per­form­ing and entranced by the devil’s music, the delta blues. And on the out­side, and try­ing to get in, are the blood-suck­ing vam­pires, who are con­gre­gat­ed with­out, lis­ten­ing to their music.

And yet, things are far murki­er than first they seem. The music that the 12th cen­tu­ry Irish vam­pire leads them on is every bit as majes­tic as the music with­in, and is clear­ly viewed that way by the film mak­ers who frame it so lovingly.

The gor­geous, del­i­cate Will You Go Lassie Go is even­tu­al­ly super­seded by the rol­lick­ing on The Rocky Road to Dublin, which is clear­ly intend­ed as the coun­ter­point for those out­side, to the regal I Lied to You, which rep­re­sents the apoth­e­o­sis of the blues for the peo­ple with­in, link­ing as it does the delta blues to hip hop via Hendrix.

The point being, the one is not her­ald­ed at the expense of the oth­er, both are cel­e­brat­ed equally.

And the fact that the vam­pire had orig­i­nal­ly come from 12th cen­tu­ry Ire­land mat­ters. That makes him a man who, before he’d been ‘cap­tured’, had orig­i­nal­ly been rebelling against the only recent­ly arrived Eng­lish, in exact­ly the same way that these 20th cen­tu­ry black Amer­i­cans have been forced to rebel against the all too recent real­i­ty of slavery. 

So there is as much that con­nects them as there is that divides them. In oth­er words, this is a cin­e­mat­ic world that is any­thing but black and white.

The same thing hap­pens with the film’s end­ing – and if you’re wor­ried about spoil­ers, stop read­ing here and come back after you’ve watched it. But we are talk­ing about good ver­sus evil, and the con­ven­tions around that are fair­ly unsurprising.

On the sur­face, good tri­umphs over evil and the bad­dies get their come­up­pance. But that’s not the feel­ing you come away with when you find your­self think­ing about the way the end­ing unfolds.

It’s the good­ies, the blacks with­in, who are over­come by the whites with­out, and who are even­tu­al­ly forced to inte­grate with them, by join­ing them. But how could it have been oth­er­wise, giv­en the intox­i­cat­ing nature of the siren sounds the vam­pires were send­ing forth? And after all, Irish beer real­ly does taste won­der­ful, even if it does dull the sens­es and cloud the mind.

So all they are left with, ulti­mate­ly, is their music, the blues. Every­thing else has been appro­pri­at­ed. Which is where the film ends up, with its post-cred­its end­ing. It’s not so much a revenge film then, as it is a film of failed revenge.

Except it isn’t. That’s how the film’s sto­ry ends. But the very exis­tence of a film like this is that revenge deliv­ered. Crewed and cast and from the per­spec­tive of black peo­ple, with black sig­ni­fy­ing good, strong, and hero­ic, and white evil, threat­en­ing, destruc­tive and preda­to­ry, the film visu­al­ly recal­i­brates the dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tions of black and white we were pre­sent­ed with in Spike Lee’s Mal­colm X.

With­out force feed­ing us clum­sy sym­bol­ism, and with­out ever for­get­ting to enter­tain us along the way, the very exis­tence of Sin­ners rep­re­sents a small but mon­u­men­tal step in that nec­es­sary path to revenge.

Change has come, at last.

Watch the trail­er for Sin­ners here:

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3 Films For Grown-ups: Paul Schrader’s ‘Redemption’ Trilogy

Paul Schrad­er began as a film crit­ic before mov­ing into script writ­ing. The first script he man­aged to sell was for The Yakuza, which he wrote with his broth­er Leonard in 1974, which sparked a bid­ding war and end­ed up sell­ing for an eye-water­ing $325,000. 

He then went on to write Taxi Dri­ver, in 1976, and Rag­ing Bull, in 1980, both for Scors­ese, before mov­ing into direct­ing himself. 

For a while dur­ing the 1980s, it looked like he might have been the great white hope of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, as films like Amer­i­can Gigo­lo (’80) and Mishi­ma: A Life in Four Chap­ters (’85) man­aged to inves­ti­gate moral decay and soci­etal dis­in­te­gra­tion in a form that saw him explore the lan­guage and gram­mar of the medi­um he was work­ing in, to daz­zling effect.

But things tailed off some­what in the 1990s and 2000s, as cocaine and bills got the bet­ter of him, and more and more of his ener­gies were spent in just putting bread on the table. So in the 2010s, he embarked on a reboot, as he sought to remould him­self in response to the changes brought about by the onslaught of the dig­i­tal revolution.

And in 2017, as he moved into his 70s, that process, some­what improb­a­bly, sud­den­ly burst forth into flower. And over the fol­low­ing 6 years, he pro­duced what came to be viewed as an unof­fi­cial tril­o­gy around the theme of redemption. 

The first of his ‘man in a room’ movies, as he calls them, was First Reformed from 2017. Ethan Hawke plays a Protes­tant min­is­ter whose life falls apart after the death of his son on active ser­vice in Iraq. His response is to retreat from the real world and into the sanc­tu­ary of his ministry. 

There, he waits for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to atone for his sins, as it had been he who had pushed his son to enlist. And a sense of impend­ing tragedy builds inex­orably, as he con­cludes that only an act of self-sac­ri­fice can mit­i­gate the cor­rup­tion and moral decay of the world he sees around him. Into all of which arrives the preg­nant wife of a trou­bled parishioner.

The Card Counter, from 2021, sees Oscar Isaac in retreat from the world, dogged­ly avoid­ing the ghosts of his past by bury­ing him­self per­ma­nent­ly in the moment. So he’s laz­er focused on the day to day busi­ness of win­ning just enough at the casi­nos to get by, with­out ever win­ning so much to draw attention. 

But he is befriend­ed by a young man, and then a woman, who seem to offer alter­na­tive pos­si­ble futures. Does he fol­low the path that the young man is intent on, and purge him­self of his suf­fo­cat­ing past with the ulti­mate act of self-sac­ri­fice? Or depart with her, to leave that past behind for good?

Mas­ter Gar­den­er, from 2023, sees Joel Edger­ton work­ing obses­sive­ly as the gar­den­er on the grounds of a for­mer plan­ta­tion. He seems to have suc­cess­ful­ly buried his past and now divides his time between the needs of the gar­den, and of his host, the impe­ri­ous Sigour­ney Weaver. 

But when Weaver tasks him with men­tor­ing her viva­cious if trou­bled grand­niece, it nev­er occurs to either of them that the old­er man and the much younger, bi-racial girl could con­ceiv­ably come togeth­er, espe­cial­ly giv­en his past. 

But fall in love they do, and the hav­oc that this results in will either see him leave that past behind for good, or see him ulti­mate­ly buried by it. 

Schrad­er has carved out a niche for him­self as the last man stand­ing in a van­ished world. He’s the one film mak­er still mak­ing grown-up films that unapolo­get­i­cal­ly explore adult themes and com­plex ideas.

None of these three films is a sin­gu­lar mas­ter­piece, there’s no Mishi­ma here in oth­er words, but all three are riv­et­ing dra­mas, tight­ly script­ed, and impec­ca­bly made, by a film mak­er who assumes that his audi­ence is as intel­li­gent as he is. 

And one who sees no oppo­si­tion in enter­tain­ing his audi­ence, and in simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ask­ing them to explore the world we live in, in a deep and gen­uine­ly thought-pro­vok­ing, philo­soph­i­cal way. 

Start with Mas­ter Gar­den­er and work your way back to First Reformed, which is the strongest of the three. 

Watch the trail­er to First Reformed here:

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The Bureau’, France’s Superior Answer to Slow Horses

The Bureau (Le Bureau des Légen­des) in ques­tion is France’s DGSE, a mix­ture of the British MI6 and America’s CIA. They’re the agency in charge of field­ing for­eign agents in areas of strate­gic inter­est to France, prin­ci­pal­ly through­out the Mid­dle East and across North Africa. 

Ignore the expen­sive and whol­ly un-nec­es­sary Hol­ly­wood remake, The Agency, notwith­stand­ing the pres­ence of the always watch­able Michael Fass­binder, and go direct­ly to the orig­i­nal, of which there are 5 sea­sons, first shown between 2015–2020.

What’s so impres­sive about the series is that it rings so clear­ly and tri­umphant­ly true. Obvi­ous­ly, that’s due in part to the fact that’s it’s based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of whis­tle blow­ers who’d pre­vi­ous­ly worked there. 

But it’s impos­si­ble not to sus­pect that if any indi­vid­ual is respon­si­ble for its pal­pa­ble sense of ver­ité, it’s the show’s star, Math­ieu Kasso­vitz.

Kasso­vitz had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten and direct­ed the impos­si­bly grip­ping La Haine, which some­how man­aged to cap­ture the bristling ten­sions sim­mer­ing in the ban­lieues, and the racism that that was fuelled by, in a way that out­siders rarely suc­ceed in doing.

The Bureau is a lot more sedate than that, but it has that same sense of hav­ing been made by peo­ple who real­ly under­stand the ter­rain they’re surveying. 

As the Econ­o­mist not­ed, it fea­tures no spe­cial effects and few stunts, but what it gives you instead is a win­dow into the world of inter­na­tion­al espi­onage, where life is as mun­dane and pet­ty as it is in all offices. But where the con­se­quences of actions that are fuelled by base desires are gen­uine­ly unimag­in­ably high. 

The shows believ­abil­i­ty is fur­ther enhanced by the sub­plots, which are set in Syr­ia, Alge­ria and Iran. Where most shows would begin with an estab­lish­ing shot of a minaret, framed by the moun­tains above Tehran, with a title that reads ‘Iran’, before return­ing to a set some­where in the south of France, the Bureau is as focused on life in Syr­ia and Iran as it is on France.

And they’re as metic­u­lous in their research into life lived there, in the field, as they are about what the pen push­ers get up to back at head­quar­ters in Paris.

It’s won­der­ful­ly refresh­ing to watch some­thing that pre­sumes that you’re as intel­li­gent, and as curi­ous, as every­body involved in the show itself is. And sim­ply assumes that you can appre­ci­ate the rel­e­vance of what’s said and done, in the con­text of where it all happens. 

For all of which, it couldn’t pos­si­bly be more French. If Call My Agent was a very specif­i­cal­ly French response to Friends, this is their reac­tion to hav­ing seen the Wire.

Wide­ly described as not mere­ly one of the best French TV series ever, but more prop­er­ly as sim­ply one of the best TV series of the last few decades, if all of this is news to you, as it was for me a few months ago, you’re in for a treat. Enjoy.

Watch the trail­er below:

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Becoming Led Zeppelin: Came Saw Conquered

To their detrac­tors, Led Zep­pelin were far too com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as artists, and all too quick­ly suc­cumbed to what then become a clichéd descent into a hedo­nis­tic hell of their own mak­ing, with the inevitably trag­ic result.

What this exhil­a­rat­ing doc­u­men­tary fea­ture shows is that they’re far bet­ter under­stood as the spir­i­tu­al fore­bears of Radio­head. A band of, in this case, four incred­i­bly dri­ven musi­cal mavens hell bent on pur­su­ing a very par­tic­u­lar musi­cal direc­tion, who, inex­plic­a­bly, wake up one morn­ing to dis­cov­er they’ve con­quered the world, notwith­stand­ing the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of that musi­cal vision.

One of the rea­sons the doc­u­men­tary works so well is that, hav­ing shunned all and any pub­lic­i­ty for their entire careers, espe­cial­ly doc­u­men­taries like these, now that they’ve all agreed to final­ly par­tic­i­pate in one, they are each uncom­mon­ly can­did and open.

And they are ‘all’ here, as the three sur­viv­ing mem­bers are accom­pa­nied by the voice of drum­mer John Bon­ham, thanks to a recent­ly unearthed inter­view that Bon­ham gave before his death in 1980.

The rea­son these hith­er­to reclus­es have sud­den­ly opened up so casu­al­ly is the mutu­al respect that they and the film mak­ers enjoy. And the rea­son for that is Amer­i­can Epic, which was the project that film mak­ers Bernard MacMa­hon and Alli­son McGour­ty made before this one.

Amer­i­can Epic, which I reviewed ear­li­er here, is a 3 part doc­u­men­tary that charts the birth of record­ed music in Amer­i­ca in the 1920s, and the musi­cal gen­res that that gave birth to; the blues, coun­try, blue­grass, RnB, rock ‘n’ roll, rap, hip hop and all man­ner of pop.

The argu­ment this film makes, entire­ly con­vinc­ing­ly, is the Led Zep­pelin are the miss­ing link that con­nects every­thing that came before 1969, and every­thing that fol­lowed, after 1970. 

As much as any­thing else, this is cul­tur­al his­to­ry rather than mere music his­to­ry, in much the same way that Peter Gar­al­nick’s tow­er­ing Sweet Soul Music is as much about race and the Amer­i­ca of the 1950s and ‘60s, as it is about Sam Cooke and James Brown

So what we get for most of the first hour is a his­to­ry of 1960s Lon­don, and the dif­fer­ent paths that the four men take before final­ly form­ing the band. 

There’s Jim­my Page, becom­ing one of the most in-demand ses­sion gui­tarists, and then pro­duc­ers in town, work­ing with every­one from The Kinks and The Who to The Rolling Stones and Van Mor­ri­son

While Bassist, and then arranger, John Paul Jones was sim­i­lar­ly record­ing with all of the above, which is how they meet. While also arrang­ing for the likes of Françoise Hardy, Shirley Bassey, Dusty Spring­field and the Walk­er Brothers.

Even­tu­al­ly, in 1968, Page teams up with Jones to form a band, and, some­how, they enlist the tal­ents of the force of nature that is Robert Plant, and his close friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor, drum­mer John Bonham. 

In those days, the genial Plant was repelled from con­ven­tion­al soci­ety and main­stream cul­ture in much the same way that elec­trons are in per­pet­u­al flight from the pro­tons they orbit. Remark­ably, the sec­ond he and the oth­er three start play­ing togeth­er, every­thing fits into place, and sparks explode spec­tac­u­lar­ly into the ether.

When the film final­ly gives us a taste of the actu­al music, its sound is sig­nif­i­cant­ly rich­er from hav­ing been posit­ed in the midst of the cul­tur­al and musi­cal land­scape that it sprang from. 

Dif­fer­ent in size and scope to Amer­i­can Epic, Becom­ing Led Zep­pelin is every bit as impres­sive, and makes for absolute­ly manda­to­ry view­ing. And should, if pos­si­ble, be seen in a cinema. 

And I defy you to resist imme­di­ate­ly going in search of, at the very least, those first two albums the sec­ond you exit the cinema.

Watch the trail­er for Becom­ing Led Zep­pelin here:

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