Serpent Charmer
Posted by: danhartland on: June 23, 2009
Around The Well
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 are but a quite delightful map of a journey taken from bedsit to band by a very subtle artist with a distinctive, and creative, style. Lovely. (The album, not, obviously enough at this point, WordPress).
You can hear ‘Belated Promise Ring’ from the second disc of the collection at the Iron & Wine MySpace. Beg, borrow or steal, too, the version from disc one of ‘Waitin’ for a Superman’.
Leave a Reply
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.
Sounds We Like
Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More
Dan already wrote about this album here, but Anna's been loving it, too! Like a happier and more stirring Noah and the Whale, Mumford & Sons have a great way with arrangement and melody which makes for a great listen from start to finish. There are highpoints which you'll skip for, but the whole record hangs together perfectly. One of our favourites of the year!
Words We Like
Escaping The Delta, by Elijah Wald
We all know the cliches: Delta blues as the music of the downtrodden, a remnant of slave art, a holler-back to West African forms. Wald never pretends that he has not bought into, continues to buy into, the cult of the Delta bluesman, but shows they were in truth informed not by ancestral memory but by radio playlists. Robert Johnson in particular is assessed not as a unique genius but an accomplished magpie, able to assimilate the pop forms of the day - not just blues, but country and vaudeville - and regurgitate them anew. Escaping the Delta refashions the blues not as cultural fetish but as a particular product of its era and its people. Controversial among those who read books about acoustic blues, but a compelling and rewarding thesis.
Flicks We Like
Alice In The Cities (1974)
It helped that we watched this one together quietly on a calm, dark night. Wim Wenders's careful film, shot beautifully in a grainy black and white, follows a journalist with writer's block as he is left stranded in New York with a young girl, whom he must help find her grandparents back home in Germany. Nowhere close to a voyage of self-discovery, their journey instead feels like a walking round in a circle. Neither of the characters have a true sense of place in a globalising world, and with an inventive economy Wenders explores their resultant, reflective, wanderings.
Anna's Latest Flickr Photo
|
Recent Comments