Archive for June 2009
Genius Next Door?
Posted by: danhartland on: June 30, 2009
I’ve some sympathy with Paste Magazine’s review of Regina Spektor’s new album, Far. Her previous records have beguiled the listener with a directness of delivery, even on 2006′s poppier Begin To Hope. Pitchfork blame the failings of the current record on Spektor herself, but this has more to do with what Caroline Sullivan in The [...]
Westward from the High-hilled Plain
Posted by: thestoryandthetruth on: June 29, 2009
- In: life
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A sunny weekend in the Severn Valley has left us both feeling the need for a rest, but very pleased that we have such good friends. We had lunch on Saturday with friends in Bewdley, and we spent Sunday on the Severn Valley Railway (stopping off at Bewdley again, natch) with another pair of chums. [...]
Terminal Loop?
Posted by: danhartland on: June 27, 2009
Reform might have been the political watchword last week, but it’s hard not to see it all as business as usual: John Bercow elected Speaker as a result of a thumbed nose of a vote from Labour, and to silent, stony faces on the Tory benches; Gordon Brown issuing a raft of proposals without much [...]
The World Turned Upside-Down: Another Festival Summer…
Posted by: annafrench on: June 25, 2009
Well, everyone’s going on about Glastonbury Festival again. I only have to look at my facebook account to see that every man/woman/dog is heading to Worthy Farm in Somerset to wallow in the mud for a few days. And I am surprised to find part of myself wishing that I too am Glastonbury bound. I’m [...]
“Powers That Are Hardly Human”
Posted by: danhartland on: June 24, 2009
We have had some dramatic entrances andc exists upon our small stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc. The Priory School recalls Silver Blaze, with Holmes ranging over large expanses of countryside and finding his solution in the lay [...]
Serpent Charmer
Posted by: danhartland on: June 23, 2009
- In: albums | music
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WordPress has decided to eat my post about Iron & Wine‘s collection of b-sides and rarities, All Around The Well. You are now left, then, with a mere precis of what I said: this is a wonderful collection, which you should all listen to, since it is not a label cash-in as these things often [...]
Conversations, Personal and Published
Posted by: thestoryandthetruth on: June 22, 2009
- In: life
- 2 Comments
We had a great weekend, meeting up with old friends (one of whom was graduating with a degree in maths – congrats again, Bettina!) and celebrating another family birthday, as well as Fathers’ Day (which naturally involved country walks). A very fine recharge for the old batteries – thanks everyone. The eye was caught, of [...]
Talk About Me, Babe, If You Must
Posted by: danhartland on: June 19, 2009
- In: albums | bob dylan | music
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Michael Gray has come out and said it: Together Through Life is rubbish. The sage who brought us Song and Dance Man III tells us plain: The writing is so careless that it’s astonishing it took two people to come up with it and that neither said “Hang on a minute, we can do a [...]
In Defense of ‘Arcadia’
Posted by: danhartland on: June 18, 2009
Last week I wrote about the use of the work of John Adamson in Adam Nicolson’s Arcadia, and suggested he went too far – or didn’t qualify his terms properly – in applying Adamson’s view of the Long Parliament to the civil wars as a whole. In Nicolson’s defense, he later in the book offers [...]
“Full Of The Most Interesting Associations”
Posted by: danhartland on: June 17, 2009
- In: Books | sherlock holmes
- 2 Comments
From the years 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man. The Solitary Cyclist is happy home to one of the most memorable images in the canon: Miss Violet Smith, statuesque governess of Farnham, Surrey, cycling along a deserted mile of road pursued at a distance by a unrecognised, black-clad stalker. [...]
71 is the number of an apartment we return to regularly in Whinfell Forest, Cumbria. We like it there.
‘We’ are Anna French and Dan Hartland. The Story and the Truth is a sort of inadequate catch-all term for what goes on here: we tend to talk about novels, history, food and fashion, politics and music, but there may also be photographs of soft toys and musicians. Stick around and see.
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Words We Like
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
An astounding work of collecting-as-art, this compendium of 800,000 weird words is easily one of the most consistent genre anthologies I have read. Heterodox yet focused, it is fated to be the canonical text of weird fiction studies for some time to come - and deservedly so. The first-rank stories here - and there are many, not a few - are not excellent weird fiction. They are simply some of the best 20th century writing available in any mode. Not without its faults - but that is, ahem, the nature of the beast. Essential.
Sounds We Like
Sonik Kicks, by Paul Weller
I haven't paid much attention to Weller - an artist who hangs heavy in my musical tutelage - since 2000's Heliocentric, an album of diverse interests which felt like a shot of crisp elegance in that year of Steps and 'N Sync. The records that followed it - particularly Illumination - were enough, however, to make those achievements a distant memory. There have been rumblings of a renaissance - 22 Dreams got great reviews - but only the sounds of Sonik Kicks have brought me back. Energetic, fierce and, best of all, creative, this sounds like a record from a much younger man. Weller has a lesson or two in him yet.
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