Song for Sunday

The National – New Song

Apparently new album is on the way ...

Song for Sunday

Malcolm Middleton – Waxing Gibbous

Not really a song this week, more a little docu-video-thingy about Malkie's new album. But it is great. And so is the album. I would recommend that you go and buy it.

Tour de France 09

In theory Alberto Contador has to be the favourite for this year's race – climber's course, strongest team, blistering form and almost perfect preparation.

Will it all go according to plan though? I have my doubts. The team is riven into two clear camps by the presence of Armstrong, Bruyneel seems unsure of what he is doing and where his loyalties lie, the financial problems, the intriguing political maneuvering and the reappearance of our old friend Vinokourov all point to a team more likely to implode in shower of overheated egos than put riders on to the podium. One thing's for sure though: it should be fun to watch.

Could all this play into the hands of our local hero Cadel? I would like to hope so, but I suspect there is too much climbing, not enough time trialling and that his team won't be strong enough to either support him in the mountains or not lose time in the team time trial.

Astana's problems are more likely to benefit the other strong teams like Saxo Bank, Columbia and possibly even Garmin, playing into the hands of a canny operator like Bjarne Riis.

Sastre doesn't have the team to back him up this year and I suspect the best we will see from him are a couple of solo mountain wins in the Alps when he is already out of overall contention. He'll probably pick up the maillot à pois rouges for his efforts though.

And what about Menchov? He could well end up on the podium, but I have a feeling that he won't have totally recovered from his Giro efforts and will end up losing time somewhere on one of the big mountain stages.

Mark Cavendish should make it to Paris this year and I would be surprised if he doesn't have the green jersey on when he takes his first win on the Champs-Élysées. The last minute reinstatement of Tom Boonen should make things more interesting, but I can't see anyone challenging Cavendish in a straight-up sprint. His team is too well organised and he is just too fast. The margins won't be as big this year, but they will still be more than enough.

So here they are, my predictions for all three jerseys. Feel free to add your own in the comments or just tell me where I've got it wrong. And if anyone fancies a shot at picking their own team try the SBS Fantasy Tour and see if you can beat CDMC Racing ...

Yellow

1 Alberto Contador
2 Andy Schleck
3 Cadel Evans
4 Lance Armstrong
5 Carlos Sastre

Green
1 Mark Cavendish
2 Tom Boonen
3 Thor Hushovd


Mountains
1 Carlos Sastre
2 Andy Schleck
3 Alberto Contador

Song for Sunday

Broken Records – Until the Earth Begins to Part (Live at the Bedlam Theatre)

Kind-of like a Scottish Sigur Rós. And that can only be a good thing. Hope the album is as good.

The Slap

Melbourne needs more writers like Christos Tsiolkas.

It has taken me a few weeks to work out what I really think about The Slap. While I was reading it I felt mainly disgust and exasperation, but this had nothing to do with the writing.

I found the novel discomfiting and relentless in its depiction of people leading unhappy, trapped lives and for me the characters are without exception unattractive and awful. There are small episodes of joy and a few examples of people being nice to each other, but for the most part the tone is irredeemably depressing.

Much of my reaction may be due to the way he raises uncomfortable truths about Australian society in the context of a compelling and hugely readable narrative. Maybe I just recognise too much of what he is talking about. Maybe I should remember it is just a story ...

What is clear to me is that Tsiolkas is a great writer. The way he gets inside eight disparate characters, from teenage schoolgirl to immigrant Greek pensioner, creating wonderfully vivid and complete inner lives for them is brilliant. The other aspect of the narrative I loved is the way that Melbourne and it's sprawling suburbs are present as a vital and key element in the story, the perfectly observed details of location and inhabitants. He is also spot on with the cultural references and minutiae that suffuse most peoples lives, but which are usually bizarrely absent from novels.

The Slap is bound to provoke strong reactions (many stronger than mine), and it is only a matter of time before the self-appointed guardians of our morals are up in arms about all the shagging, but the more writers of this ability who are willing to raise and deal with difficult questions of race, identity and society the better. It might be an uncomfortable read, but it is great to have some intelligence and depth brought to the debate for once.

For more about The Slap, there is an interesting interview in Meanjin, discussion on Lateline and a great review by Literary Minded.

Song for Sunday

Arcade Fire – Wake Up

In anticipation of Glastonbury next weekend, a treat from 2007. Also take a look at the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are complete with a new version of the same song. Looks promising ...

Broooooce

My friend Norman gets married next month and this weekend he is having his stag-do at the British Grand Prix. Naturally I am sad that I can't make it (hope you all have a great time!), but if I did have unlimited resources and could fly to the UK twice in two months it would have been a tough call between whether I was more excited by that event or the opportunity to see Bruce Springsteen play the following Saturday night at Glastonbury.

Last Sunday The Observer had a story about the lengths Michael Eavis went to persuading Springsteen to play the festival, accompanied by the following fax from Joe Strummer.


The fax actually has nothing to do with the eight-page document Eavis put together, although apparently some key quotes from Strummer about the festival swung the deal, but I love Strummer's endorsement of Springsteen's talents. Especially the bit about him crawling under the chords and whacking the starter motor with a spanner ...

And while we are on the subject, The Guardian had an interview last Friday with Gaslight Anthem which goes into their Springsteen influences, but reveals that their true hero was Joe Strummer.

Song for Sunday

Múm - Weeping Rock, Rock

Talking about running

According to Haruki Murakami there are two types of people – runners and non-runners. As a runner (albeit at this point in time a lapsed one) I tend to agree.

He isn't talking about people who go jogging either. Murakami runs one marathon a year and supplements this by doing ultra-marathons and triathlons in-between.

It is a short book and he interweaves biography, travelogue and notes about his writing with the stuff about running, creating a work that is delightfully personal and surprisingly affecting in places.

'Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional', he is told early on in his running career and this aphorism will be familiar to any devotee of endurance sport. The book is full of little gems and insights like this and at the end you feel like you've been listening to a particularly entertaining old friend talk about their view of life.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter where he recounts running a 62 mile ultra-marathon at Lake Saroma.

I don't know what sort of general significance running sixty-two miles by yourself has, but as an action that deviates from the ordinary but doesn't violate basic values, you'd expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view of your life, its colors and shape should be transformed. More or less, for better or for worse, this happened to me, and I was transformed.

He then goes on to describe what happens after he passes through the 47 mile mark:

I'm me, and at the same time not me. That's what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling. The mind wasn't so important.
...
Usually when I approach the end of a marathon, all I want to do is get it over with, and finish the race as soon as possible. That's all I can think of. But as I drew near the end of this ultramarathon, I wasn't really thinking about this. The end of the race is just a temporary marker without much significance. It's the same with our lives. Just because there's an end doesn't mean existence has a meaning. An end point is simply set up as a temporary marker, or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence.

Song for Sunday

Wild Light – Red House

And thanks to the wonders of the interhoobly if you enjoy the clip you can actually download an mp3 of the whole song for free here! Marvelous.

New Day Rising

Depending on what mood I am in when you ask me what my favourite band is, it is quite possible that I'll say Hüsker Dü. This photo from 1985 just reminds me of some of the many reasons why. Click here to see what I mean.

Giro d'Italia final reckoning

Zero jerseys out of three, but two of my predicted top five did make it into the top five and if you extend it to the top 6 then I managed to predict 50%. Even so, not a very impressive result – I promise to do better in July.

It was a fascinating race – with lots of very close racing – and both Menchov and di Luca have gone up in my estimation. Interesting to see if Menchov can carry the form over to the Tour. I doubt it, but we'll see ...

Great to see Cavendish take three stages and looking good for the green jersey in the Tour. Nice anecdote in The Observer recently about his win in Milan–San Remo:

Before the race he promised himself that if he won he would buy an Audi R8. After the race he started shopping around, but ultimately lost interest and decided to buy gifts for his team mates instead. 'I said to myself: "There's an 80 per cent chance that I will stay the same person, I will just have a nice car" but there was a small chance that it would change me,' he told the BBC's Inside Sport. 'I'm not willing to take that chance, so I don't have the car.'

Song for Sunday

Patti Smith – Because the Night

1 Get a copy of Easter (look it's only £4.37!)
2 Get some good headphones
3 Turn the volume to just-about-too-loud-to-be-bearable
4 Hit play on track 3 (why are all the best songs on an album always track 3?)
5 Sit back and wait for the drums to kick in
6 Go to number 4 and repeat until the kids start complaining of starvation

Song for Sunday

Gala – Faraway

Not enough Europop. As complaints about a country go it isn't really up there with military rule, corruption or bad coffee, but it is still a flaw. More or less serious depending on your point of view admittedly, but occasionally it does get to me. So, in a personal attempt to redress this lack in Australia's cultural landscape here is one of the finest exponents of the genre with a great example of what we are all missing. Just don't watch the video at work, unless you have a very understanding boss ...

Strangers

Japanese ghost stories. Not a genre that I have much knowledge of.

The quote by Brett Easton Ellis on the cover almost made me put it back on the shelf, but the review on the back cover promising a cross between 'Paul Auster at his best' and 'a very Japanese ghost story' swung it.

Yamada's fictional Tokyo has many similarities with Paul Auster's New York – the eery surreality of the setting and the self-contained absorption and focus of the central character could have come straight out of one of his early novels.

The ghostly elements of the story aren't particularly scary or shocking or surprising, but the grief and longing of the characters is beautifully rendered and there is a psychological depth to them that is surprisingly moving.

The American translation can be a bit annoying in places, but for the most part it is unobtrusive and the spooky detachment of the writing is allowed to take hold. I found myself swept along by the story, enjoying the weirdness and content to follow wherever it took me.

It reminded me of The Sixth Sense in some ways, and anyone looking for a bit of left-field fiction that keeps challenging you all the way through should find plenty to enjoy here.

My Revolutions

Born in the early fifties Chris Carver escapes his Ruislip roots to a place at the LSE where he progresses from student politics to full-blown radical.

Weaving back and forth between London in the late sixties/seventies and small town southern-England early in the twenty-first century we gradually discover why Chris has taken on the identity of Mike Frame (using the classic method outlined in Frederick Forysth's Day of the Jackal) and settled into a comfortable but tenuous middle-class existence.

The further back in time events and characters are, the more vivid and engrossing they are. The present day proceedings seem very flat and less engaging. This may be deliberate – the narrative is presented as the recollections of a man whose 50th birthday has arrived, and often sections begin in the present and travel backwards as memories are sparked.

These recollections are brilliantly constructed and the writing is wonderful, but there are too many holes in the plot and the core incident, on which so much of the action rests, turns out to be a complete anti-climax. Also the central character Miles doesn't ring true and the sub-plot about smearing a New Labour MP with ambitions for the position of Home Secretary seems plausible, but the details don't add up.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed this a lot, in fact an awful lot, but it is a pretty flawed novel. And just look at the cover. The mass-market paperback is very different – always a sure sign that the original design didn't hit the mark.

Song for Sunday

Client – Can You Feel

Song for Sunday

Bob Mould – See a Little Light

Bob Mould has a new album out, but this isn't on it. This song is from his first solo album Workbook. If you want a song from the new album here's one performed on acoustic.

It is always interesting watching your heroes grow older. Bob seems to have done a pretty good job. And if you think it looks like he's mellowed now that he's approaching 50 try having a look at any of the videos from his 2009 Coachella appearance ...

Mobius Dick

Andrew Crumey's Sputnik Caledonia was one of my favourite books from 2008, so I was looking forward to this one. Billed as 'the only novel about quantum mechanics you could imagine reading while lying on the beach' and a 'blend of techno-thriller, historical fantasy, philosophy and farce' it seemed to have potential.

It was an interesting read and much of the narrative (the techno-thriller parts) is great, but the parallel universes and the tricksy connections across time and space put me off. Its not that the quantum mechanics gets in the way of the story, but it also doesn't actually add much. In the end you find yourself yearning for a bit of clarity and a character who keeps their own name and sticks around in his own universe for more than five minutes. I also found all the mental derangement and 'am I mad or is it everyone else?' schtick a bit hard to take.

The most interesting aspect for me was how some of this novel is like a precursor to Sputnik Caledonia and how Crumey's ideas and writing have developed from this book to the latest one. Not sure I need to go back any further into his backlist, but Mr Mee does look like it might be worth a go ...

Giro d'Italia 2009

First Grand Tour of the year and the build-up to July starts in earnest. As we did last year here are some semi-informed predictions about who might be on the podium in Rome ...

Maglia Rosa
1 Levi Leipheimer
2 Ivan Basso
3 Mauricio Soler
With Franco Pellizotti and Tom Danielson just behind.

Maglia Verde
Maricio Soler. Definitely this year.

Maglia Ciclamino
If Mark Cavendish gets to Rome he has a good chance, but I am going to go for a revitalised Alessandro Petacchi for the final sprinter's prize.

So, an American for the maglia rosa? The tifosi may not like it, but I think that Leipheimer is in amazing form and Astana certainly have the strength and the knowledge to take the top place. The time trial on the final Sunday in Rome will also play to his strengths. Basso is going to be disappointed I think, but he has prepared well and there are plenty of mountain top finishes so he may still delight the home crowd. I tipped him last year, and he crashed out, but hopefully Maricio Soler will have a bit more luck this year and pick up third and the climber's jersey.

And the other American? I think Lance might make the top ten, but probably not much higher than ninth or tenth ...

Song for Sunday

Gemma Hayes – Home

JG Ballard

Great sadness in the GoH household this week, with the news that JG Ballard died last Sunday. Although not entirely unexpected – last year's autobiography Miracles of Life was quite matter of fact about the prognosis for his prostate cancer – it is difficult to imagine the world without his singular, visionary talent.

The tributes have been many and mostly fulsome about the impact of his work and his influence across the arts. To me the talk about Ballard's influence in music, television, film, architecture and visual art misses the point of his unique genius. Sure, you can read the short stories and novels and see elements of contemporary society reflected and dilated, but it is not that the world somehow took those images and became Ballardian – his true brilliance was the way that he foresaw and understood the implications of technology and what the developing consumer society meant for those implicated in its demented ecosystem. What he did above all else was look at our world and see clearly the effects and repercussions of our warped ideologies, principles and faiths on the human species.

Some of my favourite excerpts from the tributes are below, but in addition there is also a new short story, an interview with his partner Claire Walsh and of course the obituary.

Martin Amis – Ballard will be remembered as the most original English writer of the last century. He used to like saying that writers were "one-man teams" and needed the encouragement of the crowd (ie, their readers). But he will also be remembered as a one-man genre; no one else is remotely like him.

Neil Gaiman – As the years continued, I remained fascinated with Ballard, and with the strange way that Ballard's most outre work from the late 60s and early 70s, odd un-stories with titles like Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan, or books like Crash, on the sexual fetishism of car crashes and beautiful women who die in them, seemed to have somehow predicted the future that we were in, the world of postReagan image control and the psychofallout of a dead Diana, better than any of the SF writers who thought they really were predicting the future.

Alex Clark in Granta – Ballard was a true subversive: he took our ideas of how societies are supposed to work and threw a new shape on them.

Chris Petit in Granta – Conventionally described as a dystopian, he always struck me as more interesting than that, a combination of amoral diagnostician, terminal patient and an optimist in love with the modern world. No one has written with more loving care about twentieth century technology and design, or the anatomy of celebrity.

Michael Moorcock on Ballardian – Jimmy remained a private, modest and rather shy man, a loyal friend who, in spite of being admired by some of our best known literary writers, avoided what he called ‘the literary crowd’ even more than sf conventions, living quietly at home in Shepperton which famously remained unchanged since the mid-60s, with his typewriter in one corner of the room and commissioned copies of lost Delvaux masterpieces in another, while a unicycle stood in his hallway.

And finally my favourite JG Ballard quote: "Sex times technology equals the future."

Song for Sunday

Billy Bragg – Between the Wars

Probably still my favourite Billy Bragg song after all these years. I can still vividly remember watching this as a sensitive and impressionable fifteen-year-old struggling through teenage angst and the dark years of early Thatcherism. Not your standard Top of the Pops fare, although it is nice to see that Billy had combed his hair very neatly and found his smartest shirt for the occasion.

Song for Sunday

Doves – Kingdom of Rust

Song for Sunday

British Sea Power – Man of Aran

Something a little bit different this week. It is actually a track called The Great Skua from the album Do You Like Rock Music?, accompanying an excerpt from Robert Flaherty's 1934 film Man of Aran. British Sea Power have done a soundtrack to the whole film, which I believe they performed live at a screening of the film at the BFI. You can find more clips from the film on YouTube, but if this piques your curiosity I would recommend Tim Robinson's magnificent two-volume Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and Stones of Aran: Labyrinth.