SOUNDTRACK: NEIL HANNON-“A Lady of a Certain Age” (From the Basement) (2008).
[DISCLAIMER: This post was published on September 6th, see that post for details].
This video comes from the From the Basement series. As I mentioned, the Radiohead live show comes from this series, but initially, rather than recording a whole album, more often that not they recorded a few songs. The bad news is that many of the videos are no longer available on the site (there’s a DVD, but I’m unclear exactly what it includes). But for each artist, there seems to be one streaming video.
This is a mellow song from The Divine Comedy’s Victory for the Comic Muse album. It’s probably my favorite track on the album. It’s a literate and clever song about an older woman. This version is simply Neil and his acoustic guitar. I tend to think of The Divine Comedy as being a heavily orchestrated band (their music is wonderfully symphonic) so it’s surprising for me to hear a DC song in this simple acoustic format.
And yet, Neil’s voice is stellar and it easily holds up i this intimate setting. Visually it’s not that exciting (it’s just Neil sitting, playing and singing), but musically it is wonderful.
[READ: August 31, 2011] One Book Review
Unlike previous columns, Zadie only reviews one book in this one. And she sets up her reading by talking about summer books. I recently posted about Summer Books, and this would have been a nice addendum. Zadie talks a bit about the fun and joy of Summer books. Her assessment is that a summer book should really engross you:
If every few minutes you find yourself laying it flat upon your chest and wondering about lunch then it is probably not a summer novel.
Zadie’s summer book is a continuation of a series. The author is Edward St. Aubyn and this third book is called At Last (the culmination of the confusing “Patrick Melrose Trilogy” Some Hope, Mother’s Milk and At Last–confusing because the first book of the trilogy (Some Hope) was actually released in England as three separate books–Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope, making this the fifth book in the series). He has also written other books, but I’m not sure of any of them deal with the same family or not.
At last (and the series in general) is a semi-autobiographical story of a good family in name only. There is an alcoholic mother, a pedophiliac father, and a main character, Patrick, who has shot heroin and chugged whisky and yet still manages to recite poetry.
Despite the darkness (and the fact that At Last focuses on Patrick’s mother’s funeral), the story sounds like a wonderful mix of dark humor and scathing wit. Indeed, the previous book, Mother’s Milk was short listed for the Booker Prize in 2006 (he has written two novels in between).
Zadie quotes extensively from the book and the quotes are really good: long sentences that are well constructed and contain a bit of humor in almost every piece. But it’s a subtle humor, and it seems like it takes a careful reading to make sure you get it all. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 