Film Posts 31: Bridge of Spies – 30th November 2015

Steven Spielberg tells a good story. And Tom Hanks, as well as being a brilliant actor, is a leading contender for Nicest Man In Showbiz, at least from what we see on interviews and chatshows. And the Coen Brothers were responsible for the script. So that’s a bunch of reasons for being excited about Bridge of Spies.

Mark Rylance as Rudolph Abel

And on top of that Mark Rylance is in it and, for me, steals the show.

I’ll write another time about seeing Mark Rylance on stage, and what an utter genius he is. For now, in Bridge of Spies, he plays the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel who is arrested in the USA but then becomes a bargaining chip in exchange for U2 pilot Gary Powers.

He’s a fascinating presence on screen – very still and calm, with Abel being accepting of the situation he’s in and almost curious about the process. Rylance plays Abel so wonderfully – I don’t usually post clips of films, but I couldn’t resist this:

See how gently he delivers the lines (Abel is a man whose life if on the line), and the little smile when Hanks turns to him – on screen Rylance is master of making small gestures speak volumes. Listen to the inflection on the line “Would it help?” and think how many ways you could say those three words and how none of them would be as perfect as the way Rylance delivers them.

And in the past couple few days Mark Rylance has picked up Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor. Where do I cast my vote?

Mark Rylance as Rudolph Abel

Tom Hanks plays the role of Abel’s lawyer James B Donovan effortlessly – it’s easy to forget what a great movie actor he is – and that may actually be to the film’s detriment: we take Tom Hanks for granted in a role like this.

Overall, the film’s interesting but felt a bit overlong and a bit less “special” than I’d been anticipating. But it’s a good story, with a strong message about doing what’s right (both Abel and Donovan have a commitment to their own code), the importance of having rules that make society work, and how you can’t pick and choose when those rules get applied.

 

How I Got Into….Highasakite

This week’s post is a bit of a flier. Generally these “How I Got Into….” stories go back some years – school, university, early working life.

This one goes back less than a month.

Highasakite were the support band for Of Monsters And Men when we saw them a couple of weeks ago, but they feel like a band I’m going to enjoy, so I’ll record here how I got into them.

(For anyone who’s not been following this series from the start, one of the objectives was that when I’m old(er) and my memory’s going (more than now), I’ll be able to look back on this blog and remember why I liked certain things in the first place).

I’ve seen a lot of support bands over the years, and most feel like an irritation, taking up stage time till the headliners come on. I don’t hang out in the bar while they’re on – I’ve paid my money, I’m getting the full value – but that means I don’t always get entertained. Occasionally a band makes enough of an impression to be worth checking out later, maybe even buy a CD (hello, Blind Pilot). I’ve never been in the situation of having seen the early appearance of one of those bands who go on to make it big.

So I didn’t have high expectations when the support band, who introduced themselves as Highasakite, took to the stage in Birmingham a few weeks ago. But they opened with  a very striking lighting effect, the guitarist was playing with a violin bow (and later switched to flugelhorn), and the singer (Ingrid Helene Håvik) was kind of enigmatic with a strong voice. The video below is the same song and performance they opened with at Birmingham – I hope you can see how this would grab your attention (then listen to it a couple more times, just so it really gets into your head).

For half an hour they played a really good set, that got the crowd bouncing and rocking, and built a good mood before OMAM came on. So I went to check them out when I got home.

Highasakite are from Norway – I seem to be developing a thing for bands from the north with female vocalists….this won’t the last one that features in this series- and their last album Silent Treatment went to number 1 in the Norwegian album charts. They play a kind of indie-rock, not dissimilar to OMAM which is probably why they went down well with that crowd, a very good choice of opening act.

I’ll be interested to see how my liking for this band develops, and whether they’re someone who will grow into more mainstream and international consciousness or remain peripheral, just another of the number of very good bands around at the moment with a dedicated but small following. They’ve already sold out a London gig for February, so that’s a promising sign, and some of the songs have the feel of future festival favourites.

The other thing that will be interesting is the direct connection via social media. I commented on a tweet by Highasakite’s “unofficial fan club” @Highasakitena, which had come up on my timeline through the Of Monsters And Men tag; then my tweet picked up a comment from the band themselves (@highasakiteband). This never happened when I was growing up – the bands I knew were either your mates from school or distant god-like creatures who inhabited a different universe. Now there’s a direct bidirectional link – this band sent me a message. How cool is that?

And, for someone my age, that’s a bit odd. When I post this, it will go onto Twitter and Facebook, and may get picked up by the band or their other followers, or be picked up through searches. So in writing I’m assuming that the people I’m writing about will read it. But if I say something critical about Highasakite will they be upset, or offended? I wouldn’t want to do that. But do bands now accept that as part of the deal – you’re promoting yourself through social media, so you take what comes back?

Or more likely, as I’m just one of 4,800 Twitter followers (as of today) and over 37,000 people who have “liked” their Facebook page, they probably wouldn’t notice. But I know that new bands will be starting out with an understanding of social media, and possibly a bunch of analytics to go with it, so maybe they will. I didn’t get that feeling writing about Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell.

So this is going to be a journey in many senses. Please take a listen – you may decide you want to come on the journey too.

And maybe, a few years from now, I’ll be able to say “Highasakite? Yeah, saw them opening for Of Monsters And Men back in ’15. Knew they’d make it big.” Which will be nice.

Here are a few more links:

Since Last Wednesday – this will get into your head too

Hiroshima – with flugelhorn!

Leaving No Traces – starts slowly, but wait till itgets going

How I Got Into….Sad Café

From my very limited experience (and that a long time ago), one of the things that you do at the start of a relationship is get to know the other person’s likes and dislikes. Food, movies, other stuff….and music. The whole concept of the Mix Tape (now the Playlist) comes from this – “I’ve scoured my music collection and here’s some things I think you’ll like, or that have meaning (and I hope you’ll like).” Or possibly “If you don’t like this, it’s probably not going to work out between us.”

Hopefully, both partners bring something to the musical relationship – sometimes you’ll like what the other brings, sometimes you won’t, but you’ll probably at least make the effort to tolerate it.

When my wife and I met, one of the first things we agreed on was that we liked Yes’s album Going For The One (that pretty much sealed the deal for me right there). Beyond that it’s been a mixed story – I never persuaded her of the merits of Emerson, Lake and Palmer or Van Morrison, and it took some time (and a concert) to get her over to Bruce Springsteen; I’ve never got Gorillaz or some of the other things she’s liked.

But one band that she brought to our relationship right from the start was Sad Café. They’d been around the scene for a few years, having been mentored in Manchester by another of her favourite bands, 10CC. They’d had a couple of hits, but that was all I’d heard of them – hits on pop radio and Top Of The Pops on TV.

Of course, we all dressed like this back then.

She said that I should see them live, because they were really good. I wasn’t that keen, but I was young and in love, so I agreed to go with her. And it was one of the best gigs I’d been to up to that date.

Paul Young of Sad Cafe

Sad Café were fronted by Paul Young – not Paul “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home” Young, but the Paul Young who went on to join Mike And The Mechanics before a tragically early death in 2000. And what an excellent live performer he was – moves like Jagger (why does that sound familiar…?), sings with a strong blues-rock voice.

The rest of the band were equally compelling musicians, and we subsequently saw them in concert several more times (including once in Newcastle which was the only time I’ve ever seen the support act – a local band – have more fans at the gig than the headliners) and one in Manchester: there’s always something a bit more special about a home-town gig.

Sad Café never made the breakthrough to the big time that 10CC did, with only Every Day Hurts and a couple of other minor hits registering with the wider public, though they retained a loyal live following. For me, they’re a very under-rated band who produced some very good albums – check out Fanx Ta-Ra, Facades (see what they did there?) or their live album.

Here are some links – hope this gets across some of what seemed so good about them in the early ’80s (and I don’t just mean the hair):

Every Day Hurts – their biggest hit

My Oh My – very Stones-y

Keeping It From The Troops – Bit of a weird video, but my favourite Sad Café song. That first time I saw them live, Ian Wilson (guitar and vocals) told the funniest joke I’d heard from a band on stage. In the early ’80s, it seemed like everyone played covers of Bob Dylan songs, so he introduced this with “We’d like to play a Bob Dylan song now….nah, f**k it, he never plays any of ours.” Which I thought was very funny.

And here’s video of Sad Café playing Strange Little Girl live, which gives you a sense of how dynamic they were and what a hypnotic performer Paul Young was (not sure those trousers were such a great idea, though). Check out the full concert video if you can (assuming it’s accessible from countries other than the UK).

 

How I Got Into….Van Morrison

For years I didn’t like Van Morrison. I saw him as a soul singer and I didn’t like soul music (I didn’t take the time to identify the difference between soul, blues, R&B or whatever). So I didn’t listen to him (though I heard Bright Side Of The Road on the radio a couple of times and thought it was OK).

A friend at college played me Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart one evening, and told me it was great, and I hated that too. I just didn’t get Van Morrison.

He was OK in The Last Waltz,  but set alongside Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and so many other great talents, I wasn’t impressed by a chubby bloke high-kicking his way across the stage.

I eventually came to round to Van Morrison through an album he recorded with Irish folk band The Chieftains. Irish Heartbeat combined some traditional songs with some of Van’s own, and was utterly brilliant. I’ve always had a soft spot for Irish folk music, and was going through one of my occasional folk phases, and although I can’t remember exactly why I picked up this record (maybe I heard something on the radio and legged it down the record library) it grabbed me immediately.

The songs are wonderful – including She Moved Through The Fair, Marie’s Wedding and one of my favourite songs Carrickfergus – combining Van’s growling Belfast accent with The Chieftains’ exceptional musicianship.

Now I needed to see if I’d actually been missing something, so I got hold of Van’s latest album, Enlightenment – and I loved that too! And now I was on a roll – all of that back catalogue to go at, and now I finally “got” Van Morrison. As with Joni Mitchell, it just had to be the right stage in life.

Van Morrison in concert circa 1990, the first time I saw him live – singing, not talking.

My wife and I went to see him in concert and had mixed reactions. I thought the gig was a great evening of blues and soul (I apologise to soul music in general for those years of disdain – I was wrong) with a terrific band: she thought he was grumpy and rude for not speaking to the audience at any point in the evening – my response was that I’d gone to hear him play music, not give a lecture, but she does have a point. Maybe we were both right.

I’ve gone through various periods in the years since when I’ve listened to nothing but Van Morrison. It’s not all great – in fact, I don’t think he’s made a truly great album from start to finish, but some are almost great and most have some completely sublime moments. I’m excluding Astral Weeks – I know it’s supposed to be one of the great albums of all time according to critics’ polls, and I’ve really tried to like it, but it just does nothing for me.

So I got into Van Morrison by the back door – his one album of traditional Irish songs, recorded with a group of Irish musicians, not a note of blues, soul or R&B anywhere. But that was the gateway to a late appreciation of a truly brilliant musician.

And here are a few links:

Carrickfergus: From Irish Heartbeat. I love this so much. Actually, go and listen to the whole album, see how good it is.

Into The Mystic: This is the perfect illustration of what I’d been missing and what I eventually found – lovely gentle groove, horn section break, and a classic Van Morrison vocal.

Dweller On The Threshold: The Van Morrison track I come back to time after time. There are so many riffs running over each other, and the combination of horns and guitar with that groove at the back is close to perfection. And whether or not you’re a spiritual person, the lyrics carry meaning.

“Too late to stop now.”

Happy Thanksgiving

To my friends (actual), Friends (Facebook), Followers and Fellow-Bloggers in the USA – Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

From here, it sounds like a festival of turkey dinner and Football – what’s not to love?

Enjoy the holiday.

Two grumbles about modern life

When I started this blog, I was determined that I wouldn’t get into Grumpy Old Man mode. There are a lot of ways in which we live in a very good world, in spite of all the bad things that happen, and although we all like to look back on some golden age of our childhood, there’s an awful lot that I wouldn’t want to go back to.

But….

There have been a couple of things in recent weeks that have discomfited me. I’m putting them down here to get them out of my system – if I know the people who read my posts, I’m expecting people to agree with me for the most part, but I’m not expecting anything to change from me saying it.

The Lincoln Memorial

The first one was during our holiday trip to Washington DC a couple of months ago. The last time we were there was in 2008, and on both trips we visited the Lincoln Memorial. As we remember it (it wasn’t just me, me wife remembers it this way too) the people visiting that Memorial were quiet and respectful, contemplative even, reading the inspirational carved inscriptions of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. There was a warden (I can’t call him a guard) asking people to respect the sense of the place, to treat it respectfully and, essentially, to be quiet. And a very moving and emotional experience it was.

Not this year.

This year, it was like the proverbial bear garden. The chatter was incessant, there was no sense of place – this was just another stop on the tourist round. It was all about the photos, particularly the selfies – I was surprised that no-one was actually climbing up to have their photo taken sat in Lincoln’s lap.

How did this change so quickly?

And it got worse. We visited a number of the nearby Memorials and although some were well-respected (the Vietnam War Memorial, for example), the one that was shocking was the Korean War Memorial.

The Korean War Memorial, Washington DC

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s a haunting sight. The depiction of 19 US soldiers and Marines wearing waterproof capes trudging through the undergrowth is unlike any of the other other memorials, and in the early evening twilight was particularly moving.

So why are people taking selfies of themselves there?

As someone who dislikes having his photograph taken at the best of times, I can’t understand the need to place oneself in every photo. What’s the purpose? Are you worried that people won’t believe you were actually there unless they can see you in the picture?

And people are smiling for the camera for a photo they are taking of themselves. Why? I can semi-understand people smiling if someone else is taking their photo – it’s what you do, it’s how we are all brought up – but smiling at yourself while you’re taking a picture of yourself standing in front of a War Memorial???

Is it just me that has a problem with this?

The second incident was at the Of Monsters And Men concert last week. We were there a little late (that’s another story) so had to settle for the unreserved seating to the side of the auditorium. As a result, we were viewing the stage from an angle and, being on the second row, through the gaps between the heads of the people in front.

Which would have been fine if one girl in front hadn’t been filming most of the concert on her iPhone. Which, of course, she had to hold to one side so that she could still see the stage which, in turn meant that the iPhone was filling one of those gaps through which we were trying to see the stage.

Why? As my wife said, if she went on YouTube when she got home she could probably find better concert footage of the band than she’d just taken on her phone. I don’t mind people taking the odd photo, but filming whole songs?

So there’s my Grumpy Old Man grumbles. Sorry for going on. Calm again now.

And to cheer me up, and to show better live footage than the girl in fron got, here’s Of Monsters And Men performing King and Lionheart.

 

 

 

Film Posts 30: The Lady In The Van, 15th November 2015

Alan Bennett is a British Institution and a National Treasure. So is Maggie Smith. The Lady In The Van reunites Bennett the writer and Smith the actor in a glorious film adaptation of Bennett’s memoir and stage play about Miss Shepherd, who lived in a van on the drive of his house for fifteen years.

It’s a film with some wonderful acting talent – Jim Broadbent, Roger Allam, Frances de la Tour – but it’s the two leads who shine. Alex Jennings plays two versions of Alan Bennett – the writer who sits at the typewriter and observes and writes, and the person who lives the life. The two Alans bicker and debate motivation – is Bennett’s tolerance of Miss Shepherd making up for his helplessness as his mother deteriorates many miles away? Or is Miss Shepherd a source of material to write about? Jennings’s impersonation of Bennett is excellent – we’re so familiar with Alan Bennett’s appearance and voice, it must be a little daunting to have to play him on film, but it’s a great performance.

Dame Maggie as Miss Shepherd

And Maggie Smith will almost certainly get award nominations as Miss Shepherd. It’s a really juicy role for her, and she plays the eccentricity, irascibility and tragedy of the character so well.

This is, as much as anything, a film about writing. A couple of times “Life Alan” launches into a tirade about something, only to cut to “Writing Alan” saying “of course, you didn’t really say that, did you?” – the playwright having the chance to always say what he wants to say in retrospect.

Alan Bennett (left) and Alex Jennings (as Alan Bennett)

And the film occasionally reminds us that we are in the hands of a truly Unreliable Narrator – a playwright, whose stock in trade is creating incidents and exaggerating others for comic or tragic effect. Miss Shepherd’s past is gradually revealed, but we can never be sure how much of anything is true – every event, every sentence, every thought is presented through the typewriter of the playwright. How much of it can we actually trust or believe? Is that how it happened, or has later evidence informed earlier events? And does it matter anyway: don’t we expect a playwright to exaggerate, or to use a real-life incident as the jumping-off point for a wider “truth”?

The Lady In The Van is a really lovely film, full of laughs in that typical Alan Bennett style:

Alan (asking for help for Miss Shepherd from a nun in the local convent): You could do some shopping for her.

Sister: We don’t have “Shopping Nuns”.

Alan: But I saw one last week, in Marks & Spencer. She was buying meringues.

Sister: Perhaps the Bishop was visiting.

Alan: The Bishop likes meringues, does he?

(apologies if I’ve slightly misremembered the quote)

I’d be interested to see how The Lady In The Van travels – it feels so very British, so much in the Alan Bennett style that we’ve come to know particularly through Talking Heads (where both Bennett and Smith performed brilliant monologues).

How I Got Into….Jasper Fforde

This was entirely down to an eye-catching cover and a display in a bookshop.

Waiting for the Eurostar train to France a few years ago, I nipped into the branch of Foyle’s at St Pancras International Station. As I wouldn’t go on holiday without a book, I must have already had something with me, but it’s hard to resist a bookshop, especially Foyle’s (their old store on Charing Cross Road was one of my favourite places to hang out if I had time to kill on a visit to London, and the new one is beautiful and light and welcoming).

Drifting round the Fantasy Section, one garish cover grabbed my attention – The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I picked it up, read the blurb, though it sounded interesting, bought it. And read the whole thing in a few days, then went looking for the next in the series (when we got home, obviously – no point buying a French edition).

Usually at this point in these “How I Got Into….” posts, having described the initial trigger I’ll say something about whatever it was that I Got Into. And although I’ve had Jasper Fforde on the list of provisional topics for a while (what, you thought I just sat down on a Friday evening and pulled it out of thin air?), it’s this bit that’s been putting me off – how to describe in a couple of short paragraphs the astonishing and bamboozling world(s) he creates.

So I’m going to cheat. Here’s an extract from the Penguin Readers Guide to The Eyre Affair:

Masterpiece Theatre meets James Bond in The Eyre Affair, the first novel in Jasper Fforde’s cheeky sleuth series featuring a book-loving, gun-toting, wit-slinging heroine named Thursday Next. In Thursday’s world, an alternate version of 1985 London, literature rules popular culture—audiences enact and participate in Richard III for Friday-night fun, thousands of visitors make literary pilgrimages to gawk at original manuscripts, and missionaries travel door-to-door heralding Francis Bacon as the true Bard.

And here’s the backcover blurb that first caught my attention:

There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where Thursday Next is a literary detective without equal, fear, or boyfriend. Thursday is on the trail of the villainous Acheron Hades who has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre herself has been plucked from the novel of the same name, and Thursday must find a way into the book to repair the damage.

She also has to find time to halt the Crimean conflict, persuade the man she loves to marry her, rescue her aunt from inside a Wordsworth poem and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Aided and abetted by a cast of characters that includes her time-travelling father, Jack Schitt of the all-powerful Goliath Corporation, a pet dodo named Pickwick and Edward Rochester himself, Thursday embarks on an adventure that will take your breath away.

The world of Thursday Next generates many opportunities for fans to be creative

So what have we got? An alternate universe that’s recognisably Britain, characters kidnapped from inside novels, Richard III played in a Rocky Horror-style audience participation performance, a literary detective (i.e. a detective specialising in crimes involving literature), un-extincted cloned dodos….what’s not to like?

From The Eyre Affair I quickly moved through the other Thursday Next books (another plug for Wollaton Public Library, my main source), which become increasingly bizarre and, for want of a better word, meta. Having started with Thursday Next (who already lives in an alternate universe, remember) entering novels and meeting Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester (for a novel that exists in our world as well as Thursday’s), the later books reveal the world beyond this, where the characters from the novels actually live (Miss Havisham from Great Expectations becomes Thursday’s mentor in this other world). Here the creation of books themselves is managed, and then Thursday goes even further into the fictional worlds within that world. By the end of the series I confess I was completely lost (oh, and there’s time travel thrown in occasionally too), but I stuck with it through a fascination  with the writing and the labyrinthine stories.

There is also the semi-related Nursery Crime series (investigating crimes within the world of nursery rhymes and fairy stories –  who pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall?), and an intriguing science fiction story Shades of Grey (nothing to do with 50 Shades of Grey) for which we’re still impatiently waiting the sequel. And the children’s Dragonslayer series which I haven’t read yet.

 

I know not everyone likes Jasper Fforde’s writing – he gets accused of being too “clever clever” and some are even unaccountably irritated by his humorous punning character names (such as Millon Da Floss and Braxton Hicks to name two). But it’s a style I like – he loves his subject and his world(s) and enjoys a good pun.

And he has a great website, and posts lovely pictures of Wales and interesting ceilings on Instagram.

I’ve checked the Amazon sites in the UK and the USA, and on both you can read at least the first few pages of The Eyre Affair using the “Look Inside” feature, which will give you a taste of what I found in the railway station on the way to France. I hope you enjoy.

 

 

Film Posts 29 – Spectre, 31st October, 2015

The much anticipated new James Bond movie, Spectre, had a hard act to follow after Skyfall, which set the bar so high the next in the franchise would almost inevitably fall short. Spectre is good, and compared with some of the later Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan outings it’s a masterpiece. But Director Sam Mendes went for a less oppressive tone this time, and the films ends up missing the brooding menace of Skyfall but doesn’t make up for it with sufficient dynamism or spectacle.

I think part of the problem is Christoph Waltz as the chief villain. I liked Christoph Waltz and his sardonic delivery in Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, and he’s back doing that here, but he doesn’t have the weight to feel like a genuine threat. It’s just difficult to see him as a worldwide criminal mastermind.

No, honestly, this isn’t me on my holidays

Daniel Craig is as good as ever as Bond – he’s the Bond for our times and, if this really is his last outing in the role, whoever replaces him has got a job on his hands. And if this is also Sam Mendes’ last Bond movie, the next director had better be planning already a shot of the next actor as impressive as that first sight of Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.

Bond in Mexico City

The opening sequence is a stunning continuous tracking shot through a teeming Mexico City on the Day of the Dead, one of those “how does he do that?” moments by the director (actually, here’s how, but don’t read before seeing the film). But the subsequent punch-up in a helicopter went on too long, and had some dodgy green-screen work (maybe it was the IMAX presentation that showed it up).

There are great action moments throughout, Lêa Seydoux is a Bond Girl” of the modern style – clever, intriguing, complex – so unlike the ones from the Connery or Moore eras, and there’s a lot of fun to be had throughout the film.

All in all, it was good but not great. We’ll miss Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig if this is their final Bond movie – Skyfall was one of the greats. But it may be time for another reboot.

How I Got Into….Of Monsters And Men

You never know where good tips are going to come from. For several years, I was a daily devotee of the Baseball Today podcast from ESPN, which once a week featured baseball writer Keith Law. I liked his sardonic nature, and his pithy comments, and found that his occasional pop culture references were to things that I liked. I checked his blog – he’s a big boardgame player, he’s a fan of Berke Breathed’s brilliant comic strip Bloom County (his blog is at meadowparty.com, which is a Bloom County reference), and he likes one of my favourite bands, Arcade Fire.

So when, on the baseball podcast, he made reference to a band he’d seen who reminded him of Arcade Fire, I took notice. The band was Of Monsters And Men, an Icelandic group playing a kind of indie-folk music. I checked Spotify and there was just one song by OMAM, Dirty Paws. I though it was OK, but it kind of went in at one ear and out at the other

12 Tónar record shop, Reykjavik

A year or so later we were in Reykjavik on holiday. Reykjavik’s very nice, kind of old-fashioned in its lack of corporate takeover. And in Reykjavik is a wonderful record shop, 12 Tónar – it’s got a room down a spiral staircase with CD walkmen and sofas where you can sit and listen to albums before you buy them, like in the old days. And on the counter, as I went to pay for a 5 CD collection by Mugison that my son had found, was a CD with an arresting cover by Of Monsters And Men, My Head Is An Animal. “Oh, that’s that band Keith Law mentioned” I thought.

When we’re on holiday I like to buy a CD from a place we’re visiting that has some connection – Opera in Milan, Crosby, Stills and Nash in Los Angeles, Greig in Norway. So why not take a flyer on Of Monsters And Men in Reykjavik?

My Head Is An Animal (Iceland edition)

The album opened with that track I’d already heard, Dirty Paws, and the next couple of tracks were OK. Then we got to Sloom, which is quite an arresting tune. And then it came to Little Talks, and that was the one that got me. I played it over and over, watched the video (below) – what a great track it is, with a nice upbeat tune and chorus but a dark subject matter.

And I started telling everyone about this brilliant new band and this excellent track. And that’s when I found out how out of touch I had become with modern music – they already knew. While I’d been on holiday, and for quite a while beforehand, Little Talks  had already been a big hit…..but I hadn’t noticed.

Of Monsters And Men

I went to see OMAM live when they visited Birmingham (with the aforementioned Mugison supporting, as it happened), and they were very, very good. Singer Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir is a really dynamic stage presence (and with a very distinctive delivery), Ragnar Þórhallsson is an interesting contrast to her – they blend together well – and the rest of the band are solid musicians.

And this Thursday I’m going to see them again, back in Birmingham touring their new album.

From baseball to boardgames to Icelandic indie-folk….it’s all connected, you just have to be ready to join the dots.

Here are some tracks to enjoy:

Mountain Sound: you may well have heard this backing programmes on TV

Sloom: Lovely. Just simple and lovely.

Crystals: from the new album, Beneath The Skin

Dirty Paws: which was that first track I heard, but which made no impact on me but now I love it (though I’ve no idea what it’s about – something Icelandic, I’m guessing)

And, looping all the way back to where I came in, with Keith Law and Meadowparty, here’s a classic cartoon from Bloom County featuring Opus the Penguin (newly arrived and learning to speak English):