isthisyoursanderling

[isthisyoursanderling]

furlough special: los campesinos! ranked

“not headstone but headboard, that’s where i wanna be mourned”

this band has yet to write a bad song

In medias res

I just sighed. I just sighed, just so you know

Let it spill

Baby I got the death rattle

My year in lists

Miserabilia

Romance is boring

To tundra

This is a flag. There is no wind

Drop it doe eyes

The sea is a good place…

Ways to make it through the wall

Death to Los Campesinos!

She crows

All your kayfabe friends

As lucerne / the low

There are listed buildings

We are all accelerated readers

By your hand

A doe to a deer

Too many flesh suppers

We are beautiful we are doomed

Songs about your girlfriend

And we exhale and roll our eyes in unison

life is a long time

Who fell asleep in

Documented minor emotional breakdown

You me dancing

What death leaves behind

You’ll need those fingers for crossing

This is how you spell…

5 flucoxacillin

The international tweexcore underground

Coda: a burn scar…

Heart swells/ pacific daylight time

Renato dall’ara

Knee deep at atp

Hello sadness

For whom the belly tolls

Straight in at 101

Got stendhals

Selling rope (swan dive to estuary)

Here’s to the fourth time

A portrait of the trequartista

We’ve got your back

The trains don’t run

A heat rash in the shape…

Don’t tell me to do the maths

A slow, slow death

For flotsam

Four seasons

Sad suppers

Dumb luck

I broke up in amarante

Cemetery gaits

I warned you: do not make an enemy of me

No tetris

Glue me

Kindle a flame in her heart

Light leaves dark sees

How I taught myself to scream

The holly and the ivy

The time before the last time

The fall of home

Broken heartbeats sound like breakbeats

2007: the year punk broke my heart

Plan A

It’s never that easy though

The end of the asterisk

We throw parties you throw knives

Every defeat a divorce

Tiptoe through the true bits

When Christmas comes

Allez les blues

Hung empty

Between an erupting earth…

Light leaves, dark sees pt 2

A litany

It started with a mixx

Heart swells/100-1

Avocado, baby

To the boneyard

dreams don’t become you

Hate for the island

The black bird, the dark slope

200-102

Clunk-rewind-clunk-play-clunk

[isthisyoursanderling]

Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2003)

The ambiguities in Gerry bleed out of its language; two men both named Gerry trek into a desert wilderness before becoming lost in its expanse. The names initially obfuscating our our conception of the characters, by the end a third Gerry has emerged further into a language, already filled with pauses and "thing"s. Elsewhere they craft dumb compounds “dirt-box”, “shirt-bucket” and use obsolete vernacular “I thought you’d succumbed”.

At first the camera is a presence moving with and around the pair. As they become more isolated, so the camera becomes more distance and scope of the land around them is emphasised. The landscape constructs its own narrative as they pass through desert, hills and scrublands, at all times feeling like a linear journey rather than a circular one. The clouds become the main source of movement against eternally still landscapes, their speed increasingly manipulated. By the end of the film they’re flying past, away from us, over the plain.

The two men appear to be from a lower middle class background; outside of the filthy car the two arrive in, the only two moments that seem to indicate any kind of lifestyle point towards an unfulfilled, frustrated existence; an anecdote about a game show seen in tv and an extended monologue about Gerry conquering or failing to conquer Thebes. Whether the latter is describing a dream or a videogame is unclear.

The two embody a very traditional, closed off masculinity that does not acknowledge the interior. There’s little physical contact between the two and affection is abstracted in ironic fuck you’s . Affleck soon emerges as the more, openly, sensitive of the pair. He’s scolded by the other when he starts to cry, and it’s only him who seems to indicate a need for water. Even then it is phrased only as a possibility for what could be done next - not a voiced need for it. This self-imposed ignorance of the physical part of their dilemma elevates an existential disorientation to the fore.

If there is a climax to Gerry, it is a glacially paced tracking shot following the two men; at first, only faint outlines stumbling forward against the dark. As dawn slowly emerges their figures become more defined and the salt flats underneath turn blue in the morning light. Against this, a broad soundscape plays out; distant crunches, the noise of water flowing, or breaking free from somewhere, and otherworldly electronic bloops.

It’s a departure from the only other music in the film, two Arvo Part pieces, and marks a transitory moment that, more than it's slow cinema inspirations, recalled weir's picnic at hanging rock; a portrayal of nature as oppositional, unknowable and liminal. a force that if pushed too hard against can envelop someone in a place outside of space and time. In weir's film this represented a developing Victorian orientalist perspective. A colonial view that acknowledged an ancient continent but fetishized a heart holding mysteries both dangerous and intriguing.

There's certainly a similar, more contemporary, if less nuanced, colonialist reading to be found in Van Sant's film. Two white American men in their early twenties, with few prospects, find themselves in a desert heading towards an ambiguous goal, only to become more lost in a landscape they are unable to extricate themselves from. At one point Van Sant captures the two in profile, marching forward, rhythmically, step by step.

It’s only after this point of transition across the salt flats in to what feels like a completely alien landscape that the physical boundary between the two breaks. It’s Affleck’s Gerry who reaches out, Damon’s Gerry initially refusing before giving in. Whether the final embrace should be viewed something tender or selfish is a final ambiguity.

[isthisyoursanderling]

best songs of 2019

Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron - Love Without Possession

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell

Girl Friday - Decoration/Currency

oso oso - the view

ShooterGang Kony - Charlie

Caroline Polachek - Hit me where it hurts

Richard Dawson - Black Triangle

Denzel Curry - RICKY

Chief Keef & Zaytoven - Posse

Foals - Exits

Big Thief - Not

Solange - Binz

Danny Brown - Combat

PUP - Kids

Teejayx6 - Swipe Story

Busy Signal - Balloon

Zed Kenzo - Type

Rabbit Trap - Coconut Oil

Shy Glizzy - Demons

Vampire Weekend - Unbearably White

100 gecs - money machine

The Hold Steady - You Did Good Kid

Queen Key - Evil

Default Genders - Christmas Card From a Scammer in Minneapolis

Laura Stevenson - Value Inn

[isthisyoursanderling]

best albums of 2019

don’t bully the nine tailed fox

Kumio Kurachi - Sound of Turning Earth

The Hold Steady - Thrashing Thru The Passion

Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿

Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

Various Artists - Kankyō Ongaku

oso oso - basking in the glow

Charly Bliss - Young Enough

100 Gecs - 1000 Gecs

Liturgy - H.A.Q.Q.

Sadness - Circle of Veins

glass beach - the first glass beach album

Holly Herndon - Proto

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Padang Food Tigers - Wake up, Mr Pancake

Octo Octa - Resonant Body

Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs

Lil Keed - Long Live Mexico

PUP - Morbid Stuff

chief keef & zaytoven - glotoven

Mozzy & Gunplay - Chop Stixx and Banana Clips

Erika de Casier - Essentials

Default Genders — main pop girl 2019

Richard Dawson - 2020

Great Grandpa - Four of Arrows

E-40 - Practice Makes Paper

[isthisyoursanderling]

best films of 2019

Our Time (Reygadas)

High Life (Denis)

Grass (Hong)

Peterloo (Leigh)

La Flor (Llinas)

Vitalina Varela (Costa)

Heimat is Space in Time (Heise)

Uncut Gems (Safdie, Safdie)

The Irishman (Scorsese)

To the Ends of the Earth (Kurosawa)

Jessica Forever (Poggi, Vinel)

No Data Plan (Revereza)

Knife + Heart (Gonzalez)

Diamantino (Abrantes, Schmidt)

Martin Eden (Marcello)

It Has to be Lived Once and Dreamed Twice (Kohlberger)

Atlantics (Diop)

Swatted (Chandoutis)

[isthisyoursanderling]

Best Games 2010-19

In thinking about the moments and experiences that have resonated with me most over the last decade there are two separate strands: the technical interlocking of systems and the way that games immerse us in spaces and make us think about the way we move within them; two games here represent the totality of each of these qualities.

Proteus renders it's mechanics to a pure minimum and tells the two most natural stories: of seasonal progression and of life and death. To do so it relies purely on a visual and sonic palette that respond to each other creating an immersion. you approach the square frogs to watch them bounce away; each hop adding a tinkle to the organics of the electronic score. It is a game made of these moments. Without objective the player is left to decide their movement through nothing more than desire and curiosity to see the image move and change. you pause to watch the spring wind blow pollen through the trees. You reach the beach and watch semi-circles, four short lines sprouting underneath, dart to and from the surf. You marvel at the blue and the green.

Crusader Kings II on the other hand is the most dense maze of systems I have ever encountered; after hundred of hours I felt miles from where I started but no closer to the ocean floor. The depth and density of these systems creates a world, depicted purely through a map, a load of numbers and algorithm driven character portraits, which seems to reflect the unknowable scope and movement of history, while also adding an innate sense of intimacy. Giving decisions an added weight. In playing CKII I found my conscience weighing on me much more than in any previous Paradox games.

The two FPS games on here, Titanfall 2 and DOOM, excel in how interlocking maneuverability and combat systems enable the player to make their traversal around a map or combat area beautiful, while in Hitman and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a unity is created between the players desire and action through an exposition of underlying technical systems and the robustness of the physics systems that allow the player to manipulate and exploit the world around them.

I probably dedicated the most time to playing From Software games, Dark Souls and Bloodborne being the two peaks for me. These games ability to create indelible linear journeys that often overlap allow the player to feel that they are making a great pilgrimage across and through an area of scope. The piecemeal trudge through a landscape as the player learns how to navigate and survive it may be rewarded with nothing more than a view of the horizon and the sight of a familiar tower cresting the trees.

The idea underpinning this revelation is woven into the fabric of The legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A game whose narrative and puzzles exist largely to add a loose structure around the players exploration and discovery. The joy of Breath of the Wild returned me to the same experiential pleasures I got from Proteus but here enveloped within a storybook sense of adventure; to wonder what is over the next hill, to notice the warm glow of a stable on the path ahead of you in a dark storm, to watch the grass sway in the wind, dappled in evening light

Favourite Games 2010-19:

Bloodborne

Crusader Kings II

Dark Souls

DOOM

Hitman

Kentucky Route Zero

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Proteus

Puyo Puyo Tetris

Titanfall 2

[isthisyoursanderling]

favourite films: 2010-19

the scene was the familiar one of grandeur and desolation.                                                             - samuel beckett, the end

Stray Dogs (Tsai)

Happy Hour (Hamaguchi)

No Home Movie (Akerman)

Dead Souls (Wang)

Hill of Freedom (Hong)

Phantom Thread (Anderson)

Twin Peaks: The Return (Lynch)

Our Time (Reygadas)

High Life (Denis)

Things to Come (Hansen-Love)

A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (Iwai)

Mountains May Depart (Jia)

The Wind Rises (Miyazaki)

Good Time (Safdie, Safdie)

Peterloo (Leigh)

La Flor (Llinas)

Certified Copy (Kiarostami)

Phoenix (Petzold)

Arboretum Cycle (Dorsky)

The Day He Arrives (Hong)

Asako I & II (Hamaguchi)

An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu)

A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (Diaz)

Drift (Wittman)

Minding the Gap (Liu)

[isthisyoursanderling]

Peterloo (Mike Leigh, 2018)

Leigh engages here, in a way few narrative filmmakers have, with the way political ideas are transmitted across space and time, through the spoken and written word, and the movement and gathering of human bodies.

What Leigh shows is not the start or end of these ideas – the context of the neighbouring continent and preceding decades is felt – but rather the minute moments that make up the history of an idea; how it is communicated to a friend, relation or colleague. The moment a received idea connects to lived experience. the gradual transition one may make from doubter to banner carrier.

As in Rossellini’s The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, Leigh is not above the use of crude expositionary dialogue to communicate historical context, putting a primacy on education over elegance — an idea reflected both thematically as well as practically in Peterloo: the class tensions inherent in language.

The first two hours of Peterloo show little apart from political conversation. Between individuals and groups. In the home. at meetings. Among family and strangers. The way language can betray and exacerbate class tensions within broader social movements. How it can radicalise individuals and splinter groups. Its susceptibility to changes of tone and context. The ease with which an establishment will redefine any progressive language to defend itself.

Meetings take place in pubs, factory rooms and print-houses. In all there are speakers and listeners. Opinions differ, arguments happen. These portrayals are a far cry from liberal romanticism for the competition of debate but instead demonstrate the dialectics of community and confront the standardised depictions of working class people in period dramas. A family discussion of the corn laws is followed by an old woman’s frenzied plea to a magistrate about a ghost. A shift that seems to question our implicit expectations of how such characters are to be depicted.

In homes, flat images of still life and portrait reoccur. a consistent tone of incredible green is the backdrop for marches and meetings. A high angled shot of a mill floor is reminiscent of Tsai’s depiction of alienated bodies in space. A lingering shot of the printer at the Manchester Observer savours the sight and sound of the ink balls rubbed together. Repeated panoramas of the massacre itself, reframe, more truthfully, a traditional image of British military might and return us to the Waterloo opening.

When the massacre happens there is no rising or building of tension beyond the audience’s own foreknowledge. The frenzy of the magistrates responsible for the orders is an alien occurrence to us and the crowd – anything else would disguise the callousness of the event, and suggest that it was an inevitability created mutually. In the crowd, bread is broken, small talk is made, people moan about not being able to hear. as in the rest of the film, Leigh captures the feeling and nuances of political gathering.

The question of violence is tied throughout Peterloo to the inability of a middle class to understand the formal establishment’s contempt for the working class and the lengths it will go to crush any perceived threat to the existing order. In the massacre there is no tragedy of miscommunication. The orders are given, and carried out in the nature of the army: an understanding of the world with no extension of solidarity outside the division of us and the enemy. A veteran’s redcoat is acknowledged by the yeoman who quickly dispatches him.

The liberal position of Hunt — that if violence will occur it will happen on the onus of the people, an implicit belief that an establishment is at the mercy of the strictures of law— Is ultimately refuted.

[isthisyoursanderling]

best songs, 2000-2009

ballot from an ilm poll, based on tracks that were nominated. forgot to vote for it but half man half biscuit’s national shite day should be in the top 10.

Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken

Xiu Xiu - Ian Curtis Wishlist

Grouper - Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping

Joanna Newsom - Emily

UGK Featuring Outkast - Int'l Players Anthem

Los Campesinos! – You! Me! Dancing!

Camera Obscura - French Navy

Z-ro - Happy Feelingz

Hefner - The Day that Thatcher Dies

lil wayne - hustler musik

Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened

Jay-Z - Big Pimpin'

Scarface - On My Block

The Microphones - I Felt Your Shape

The Microphones – The Moon

Jens Lekman - A Postcard to Nina

E-40 - Tell Me When To Go

Cam'ron - Hey Ma

Ghostface Killah - Big Girl

Girls Aloud - Call the Shots

Electrelane - Birds

Final Fantasy - This Lamb Sells Condos

Life Without Buildings - The Leanover

Clipse - Grindin'

Sufjan Stevens - The Transfiguration

The Mountain Goats - No Children

D'Angelo - Untitled (How Does It Feel)

Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism

OutKast - B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)

The Go-Betweens - Finding You

Madvillain - All Caps

Mclusky - Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues

Outkast - Ms. Jackson

Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Come Saturday

Phoenix - Lisztomania

T.I. - What You Know

taylor swift - love story

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Where Have all the Rude Boys Gone?

The Hold Steady - Cattle and the Creeping Things

The Wrens - Hopeless

Gucci Mane - Wasted

Kelis - Trick Me

My Chemical Romance - I'm Not Okay (I Promise)

Of Montreal - The Past is a Grotesque Animal

Pissed Jeans - False Jesii Part 2

Rihanna - Umbrella

Silver Jews - Punks in the Beerlight

Sleater-Kinney - Youth Decay

Vampire Weekend - Walcott

[isthisyoursanderling]

Procrastination Special:  Songs Under Two Minutes

For an alternative list, listen to Double Nickels on the Dime.

The Softies - It’s Love (1:29)

Bikini Kill - In Accordance to Natural Law (0:28)

Los Campesinos! - My Year in Lists (1:49)

Minutemen - Viet Nam (1:30)

Tori Amos - Agent Orange (1:26)

Danny Brown - Adderall Admiral (1:43)

Joyce Manor - Catalina Fight Song (1:05)

Ghostface Killah - Saturday Nite (1:43)

The Microphones - I Felt Your Shape (1:55)

Kenickie - Come Out 2Nite (1:58)

Talulah Gosh - Steaming Train (1:44)

Grouper - Holifernes (1:33)

Neil Young - Cripple Creek Ferry (1:33)

Ice Cube - What They Hittin' Foe? (1:23)

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - We Have Mice (1:57)

Solange - Binz (1:52)

Yellow Magic Orchestra - Jingle “Y.M.O.” (0:21)

Modern Baseball - Mass (1:45)

Big Star - I'm In Love With A Girl (1:48)

Mitski - A Loving Feeling (1:33)

OutKast - Wailin' (1:59)

Mclusky - Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues (1:51)

Diddy Dirty Money - Intro (Last Train to Paris) (1:34)

Guided by Voices - Gold Star for Robot Boy (1:39)

Earl Sweatshirt - Luper (1:59)

JPEGMAFIA - I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies (1:27)

Half Man Half Biscuit - Mathematically Safe (1:57)

Chief Keef - Gotta Glo Up One Day (1:57)

Scott Walker - On Your Own Again (1:48)

Noname - Casket Pretty (1:51)

Black Tambourine - We Can’t Be Friends (1:48)

Starlito - My Love Lost (1:44)

Gunplay - Stay Schemin’ Freestyle (1:45)

Xiu Xiu - Cumberland Gap (1:35)

Tiger Trap - Tore a Hole (1:58)

Killer Mike - Go! (1:54)

Ballboy - I Lost You, But I Found Country Music (1:26)

KMD - Plumskinzz (1:43)

Young Jeezy - Pussy Ass Niggaz (1:41)

The Mountain Goats - See America Right (1:52)

Madvillain - Accordian (1:59)

Black Flag - Police Story (1:32)

Perfume Genius - You Won't B Here (1:38)

My Bloody Valentine - Touched (0:56)

Vince Staples - Dopeman (1:53)

Sleater-Kinney - A Real Man (1:04)

Times New Viking - DROP-OUT (1:04)

Deerhoof - Top Tim Rubies (1:56)

Max B - Reign (1:45)

Crass - Do They Owe Us A Living? (1:24)

[isthisyoursanderling]

The Best Albums of 2018

I hope to have worked out how to describe the beauty of Raw Silk Uncut Wood by 2020.

Laurel Halo - Raw Silk Uncut Wood

Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs

Hop Along - Bark Your Head Off, Dog

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Swearin' - Fall into the Sun

Kero Kero Bonito - TOTEP

Rico Nasty - Nasty

E-40 - Gift of the Gab

JPEGMAFIA - Veteran

Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

Vince Staples – FM!

Foxing - Nearer My God

Flasher - Constant Image

Saba - Care for Me

Mount Eerie - Now Only

SOB X RBE - Gangin

Sheck Wes - Mudboy

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Sparkle Hard

Joyce Manor - Million Dollars to Kill Me

Faith/Void - Embrace Nothingness

Superchunk - What a Time To Be Alive

Mitski - Be the Cowboy

The Armed - Only Love

No Age - Snares Like a Haircut

Julia Holter - Aviary

[isthisyoursanderling]

The Best Films of 2018

I mainly watched Hong Sang-soo films in 2018. 

Claire’s Camera (Hong)

Asako I & II (Hamaguchi)

Dead Souls (Wang)

An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu)

First Reformed (Schrader)

Ash is Purest White (Jia)

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi)

Western (Grisebach)

Shoplifters (Kore-eda)

The Other Side of the Wind (Welles)

Zama (Martel)

Cocote (de Los Santos Arios)

Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher)

Hale County, This Morning This Evening (Ross)

Sennan Asbestos Disaster (Hara)

Shirkers (Tan)

Hotel by the River (Hong)

Burning (Lee)

Last Child (Shin)

Non-Fiction (Assayas)

Let the Sunshine In (Denis)

Faces Places (Varda, JR)

The Day After (Hong)

The 15:17 to Paris (Eastwood)

The Green Fog (Maddin, Johnson, Johnson)

[isthisyoursanderling]

Claire’s Camera (Hong Sang-soo, 2017)

Words seldom come easy for the characters of Hong Sang-Soo. Once beyond small talk they stare in to middle distance or down to the drink in their hands, searching for a way to bridge the gulf between themselves and others; they almost always fail. The South Korean master has fashioned a career examining the inadequacy of language to communicate or resolve the complexities of human feelings and the way in which the arrogance of intelligence can draw us further towards dishonesty and away from each other; all the while engaging in a textual dialogue about whether the forms of conventional cinema can truly articulate these seemingly irreconcilable problems.

In the director's 20th feature since 1996 (four more have since been completed), film sales assistant Man-hee (Kim Min-hee) is abruptly fired in Cannes by her boss Yang-hye (Jang Mi-hee) in the weeks following a drunken one night stand with drunkard director, Wan-soo (Jung Jin-young). Unaware that the real reason for her dismissal is Yang-hye and Wan-soo’s ongoing relationship, Man-hee is given a devastatingly ambiguous lecture on “honesty” and summarily cast adrift on the riviera; her life and career tossed into uncertainty.

Bisecting this triangle is Claire (Isabelle Huppert), a music teacher with a passion for poetry and photography, her arrival offers the unhappy trifecta an opportunity for self reflection; an effect Claire attributes to her camera, “if I take a photo of you, you are not the same person anymore” she explains to an unconvinced Wan-soo, but perhaps it is something more deeply rooted in her.

As Man-hee translates her knotty feelings into English, one of the film's keenest observations is the way in which to speak a second tongue is often to be stripped of our usual embellishments and force us towards a blunt honesty closer to the dialogue of the interior; serving to clarify our own feelings and make them digestible for the ears of others (the film's brevity at 70 minutes makes a further argument for the relationship between succinctness and emotional honesty). 

Which is not to say that the wit which fills Hong’s script is anything less than knife sharp, particularly when coming from Huppert’s smirk, but it is a testament to Hong’s writing that he is able to address these issues while constructing dialogue that is always enjoyable and frequently indelible. Filmed in the cafes and bars around Cannes during the 2016 festival, the breezy, improvisational air should not be mistaken for a lack of depth or purpose and the film's tone, at the more comedic end of Hong's oeuvre, belies the weight with which the final developments (interactions may be a more suitable word) arrive. 

Although more formally unified than recent highlights Right Now, Wrong Then and Hill of Freedom, Claire's polaroids occasionally point towards a timeline intentionally muddled and at one point we seem to glimpse an alternate present or future for Man-hee. Rather than disorientate these work as characteristic undercuttings of the premise of a single or absolute reality, and further, to deepen the personal dynamics of Man-hee and and Wan-soo outside of the structural narrative.

Claire’s openness and honesty towards her artistic creation, and the glee in her freedom to create art so suddenly, mirrors Hong’s own improvised, ‘pop up’ approach to filmmaking; for a director whose work often seems to lean towards cruelty and is largely filled with depressive directors dealing with the drudgery of alcoholism and audience Q and A’s, such a joyous ode to creation results in a work that is both deeply personal and unquestionably major.

[isthisyoursanderling]

The Best of Belle & Sebastian

The future's looking colourful It's the colour of blood, chaos and corruption of a happy soul

A city of imagined lives seen from the misted bus window by an author whose hang ups with the sacred and the profane can colour songs with an elusive perversity. It’s hard to find a Belle & Sebastian song without something to take your breath away, be it a turn of phrase, a Chris Geddes piano line or a Sarah Martin harmony.

Glasgow’s finest are receiving the ILM poll treatment and so these are my favourites from a discography that, in Stuart Murdoch’s evolution from sickly church caretaker to dancefloor prowler, shows a religious dedication to the craft of pop; it’s a testament to depth that even in it’s length this list is far from exhaustive.

Two to savour, the noir Don’t Leave the Light on Baby, in which Murdoch wanders the night after a strained relationship is put out of it’s misery, and Cat with the Cream's swooning class war lament.

Spotify Playlist

If You’re Feeling Sinister

Slow Graffiti

The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner

The State I am In

Your Cover’s Blown

The Fox in the Snow

Step into My Office Baby

Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying

If You Find Yourself Caught in Love

I Fought in a War

String Bean Jean

Dog On Wheels

Like Dylan in the Movies

Funny Little Frog

To Be Myself Completely

The Stars of Track and Field

There’s Too Much Love

Me and the Major

Dress Up in You

Don’t Leave the Light on Baby

Expectations

Seeing Other People

I Know Where the Summer Goes

The Boy with the Arab Strap

Women’s Realm

Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie

This is Just a Modern Rock Song

Cat With the Cream

Belle & Sebastian

Allie

Judy and the Dream of Horses

If She Wants Me

Sukie in the Graveyard

It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career

Beautiful

I’m a Cuckoo

Mornington Crescent

She’s Losing It

Jonathan David

For the Price of a Cup of Tea

The Party Line

Family Tree

Piazza, New York Catcher

Another Sunny Day

Seymour Stein

A Century of Fakers

The Boy Done Wrong Again

The Blues are Still Blue

Photo Jenny

I Want the World to Stop

[isthisyoursanderling]

Love’s Crucible & the Tyranny of the Author

Love’s Crucible (Vem Dömer?), Victor Sjöström 1922

The Catholic Church’s fascination with the reproduction of female suffering is a running theme of Victor Sjöström's haunting renaissance period piece and its opening scenes present three versions of its hero, Ursula (Jenny Hasselqvist), supplicant in prayer. In the first, alone in front of the crucifix, she implores god to save her from an unwanted marriage to a noted Florentine sculptor (Ivan Hedqvist); she loves another and, in an allusion to the Roman martyrs who went to their deaths before betraying their holy marriage, the use of reverse shot associates this lover with Christ.

The second and third figures appear simultaneously, following her marriage, we see the sculpture of the Holy Mary, serene, poised and cast in Ursula's likeness. Then behind her we see the model, breaking down, struggling to keep her hands raised, in near catatonic depression. But along with subject and object the other crucial part of this scene is the author, so carried away with the creation of his work, that he is unable to see his muse in any kind of real sense;  to define someone as muse is surely to deny them true person-hood beyond their relationship to you. This tension underpins Ursula’s martyr like tale as it becomes a paradigm with which to examine the relationship between artist, subject and audience and explore how this plays in to both interpersonal and societal systems of control.

Saddened with her lot, Ursula is heartened by her lover Bertram (Gosta Ekman) until caught by the Mayor, a friend of the sculptor. After being rebuked by her husband, who goes off to drink at the tavern, she attempts to buy poison from a travelling monk. The monk, however, overhears the young lovers pledge to reunite in the next life and secretly swaps out the poison. 

Later, on giving this account to the tavern, the monk is interrupted by the sculptors rage. Believing himself to be the intended victim, he sets off, mob in tow, to confront his wife. Entering her rooms alone, he castigates her, his hand round her neck, before he relents. Asking her to prepare a drink, Ursula’s actions are, unbeknownst to her, intently observed in the mirror and shaking with panic she is driven to poison the drink; the shock of realisation triggers the sculptor to have a heart attack and in dying, he spreads his arms wide across the wall behind him, in Christ like pose.

To cast something is to define a form of truth, but it is always the truth as seen by the author not the subject; in an echo of the way in which, through patronage, artists have taken an active role in aiding the powerful to define and assert narrative, as Ursula is confronted with what becomes the defined truth - her guilt - the frame composition of the mob’s arrival into the room directly replicates scene paintings of the era. 

Part of the reason why watching Love's Crucible feels like such an invasive experience, is this dive into the inherent perversity of the artistic relationship; one of the most arresting frames captures an audience of monks aghast at the blood tears streaming from the statue of Christ, filmed from a raised position so that we are almost watching the scene from the POV of the figure. The image that we see are the subjects, frozen in horror and fear at the sheer terror of the authorial entity in front of them. After having previously acquiesced to the travelling monk's insistence of Ursula’s innocence, this miracle forms a transformative break which is then reflected as a collective ideological shift among the community to a belief in her guilt.

While the townsfolk confront the authorial tyranny of the camera, Ursula herself is forced to grapple with the still lingering presence of the sculptor. Caught in the narrative defined by her husband, she is forced to repeatedly reenact her husbands death - itself a reenactment - while the preparation for Ursula’s trial by fire, which she must undergo to prove her innocence, forms a wider reproduction of the crucifixion; the march to Calvary recreated in the cross shaped branch leading the silhouetted prisoners gathering wood.

In depicting the church’s control of the female suffering it has both engendered and promoted, Sjöström seems intent on both commenting on the historical reproduction and use of these stories, alongside a more textual dialogue about the nature of artistic creation, itself a part of how these narratives have been communicated. But the marvel of Love’s Crucible is not just its sensitivity and thought in constructing these arguments but the richness of the experience, from the insert shots of Christ that take on ghostly significance, to the passionate depiction of Ursula’s walk through the flames, it is a work totally unified yet hard to categorise; one that leaves the viewer unnerved in its strange vision despite it’s restorative ending.

It is in this final trial where Ursula again sees the image of Christ substituted by the sculptor. Having realised her role in causing the sculptors heart attack, and subsequently understood and accepted her moral innocence, she is now able to take subjective control and define the narrative to one of forgiveness. Through the burning gauntlet she envisions the sculptor and is transported to a garden where she is now led through the flames by this gracious forgiving phantom towards the figure of Christ.

[isthisyoursanderling]

The Best Films of 2017

For the hungry boy...

Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)

Good Time (Safdie, Safdie, 2017)

A Quiet Passion (Davies, 2016)

On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong, 2017)

Twin Peaks: The Return (Lynch, 2017)

Mountains May Depart (Jia, 2015)

Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017)

After The Storm (Kore-eda, 2016)

Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017)

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (Wiseman, 2017)

By The Time it Gets Dark (Suwichakornpong, 2016)

Silence (Scorsese, 2016)

Personal Shopper (Assayas, 2016)

The Other Side of Hope (Kaurismaki, 2017)

Get Out (Peele, 2017)

The Lost City of Z (Gray, 2017)

On Body and Soul (Enyedi, 2017)

A Ghost Story (Lowery, 2017)

Lucky (Lynch, 2017)

[isthisyoursanderling]

The Best Albums of 2017

As we approach list season, my favourite albums of last year, posted for posterity. I haven’t gone back to Peasant too much recently, but would be surprised if Dawson’s, by turns, sensitive, funny and harrowing exploration of England’s, still extant, early medieval darkness is any less potent.

Richard Dawson - Peasant

Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me

Charly Bliss - Guppy

Wiley - The Godfather

Chino Amobi - Paradiso

Kelela - Take Me Apart

Oneohtrix Point Never - Good Time OST

Foxy Dads - Pity Party

Los Campesinos! - Sick Scenes

Tee Grizzley - My Moment

Aimee Mann - Mental Illness

Paramore - After Laughter

Xiu Xiu - Forget

Kendrick Lamar - Damn

Yaeji - EP 2

Kehlani - SweetSexySavage

2 Chainz - Pretty Girls like Trap Music

Jlin - Black Origami

Sacred Paws - Strike a Match

Playboi Carti - Playboi Carti

Sorority Noise - You’re not As ___ As You Think

Migos - Culture

Manchester Orchestra - A Black Mile to the Surface

Kelly Lee Owens - Kelly Lee Owens

Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory

Lil B - Black Ken

Ted Leo - The Hanged Man

Alvvays - Antisocialites

Downtown Boys - Cost of Living

Destroyer - Ken