I’ve just finished another Telltale series: their Game of Thrones tie-in adventure. And while I still have a special fondness for the first two series of The Walking Dead I have to say that I felt this game really nailed the source material. It feels canonical, which I suppose is understandable given the involvement of key cast members in its creation, as well as the dedication to the look of the show that’s apparent throughout. It also helps that George R. R. Martin’s personal assistant, Ty Corey Franck, was a consultant on the thing. Continue reading “Fiddling about with Forresters”
Month: June 2016
Book review: Preacher, Vol. 1: Gone to Texas
Preacher, Vol. 1: Gone to Texas by Garth Ennis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In the lead-up to the AMC Preacher series I decided it was about time to reread the Ennis/Dillon comic series before I saw how it was transformed to fit television (and the updated time period). This will be a shorter review than normal as I’m keen to not reveal many spoilers, if possible.
This book collects issues 1-7 and their covers. We’re introduced to the main trio of characters, and given a bit of Big Apple adventure, but there’s the sense that the best is yet to come. This is a beginning, after all.
If you’ve not come across Preacher before, it’s pretty simple to categorise: it’s a dudes’ book. It’s all Texas and face-punching and murder and weird sex and uncomfortable gay jokes. It’s enjoyable, but it’s also kind of cringeworthy in some places, because it hasn’t necessarily aged particularly well. Continue reading “Book review: Preacher, Vol. 1: Gone to Texas”
’90s musical memories: 7/7
Well, this is day seven of seven. And I’ve gone with perhaps the most predictable choice for last: You Am I. Anyone who knows me from my university days knows that this was my band, and this song my jam. At that time of my life they were massively important. I don’t listen to them as much these days, but that’s OK: once you’ve heard as much as I have, it’s always sort of there.
This song is a classic of nerdy outsider anthems, and I’m not the only arts dick who thought it was kinda written for them.
I’m aware this is a bit of a cop-out, but I’ve written about this song before. I looked over my old blog post and it all rang true. Head over here to check it out. It expresses why I love this band in general, and this song in particular.
(There’s also some entries about my first own-bought guitar, a shitty car and more about night driving, which seems to be a theme in these posts.)
’90s musical memories: 6/7
We’re entering the home stretch now: just today and tomorrow to go. (Well, maybe an additional day for non-Australian stuff, but hell.) So today I’d like to lay some more instrumental stuff on you: the band that sounds like Australia, to me, really. The band whose line in a) stage banter and b) grim weepers is pretty much without peer. The band who I’m always happy to see, despite knowing a serious bumming-out will occur at some point during their gigs. The band I have pushed upon people relentlessly, zealot-eyed because I know that they’re pretty much the best thing ever.
It is, of course, The Dirty Three. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 6/7”
’90s musical memories: 5/7
For day five of the ’90s Musical Memories challenge, I figured I’d go with something without words. It’s by a band who I discovered thanks to a tween magazine, and who generally make their work on the fly. The song I’ve chosen is fairly unique in the band’s catalogue as it comes from an album that’s both a soundtrack and a collection of short pieces. (They’re normally keen on disc-long tracks, so anything less than about 30 minutes is punk as fuck, as far as they’re concerned.)
So listen, won’t you, to ‘The Boys II’ by Australia’s leading ambient jazz improvisational trio, The Necks. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 5/7”
’90s musical memories: 4/7
For day four of my ’90s Musical Memories challenge I have gone with a band which was one of the first I saw live, and one I hated for a really long time. They’re a band who negotiate their own twisted furrow, and one almost universally critically adored, yet criminally undersold. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Crow, one of the few bands to have seen the word ‘angular’ appear in almost every write-up they’ve received. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 4/7”
Peter Fenton: In The Lovers Arms (2004)
This is an older interview of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.
Originally published September 2004.
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There’s a line in Peter Fenton’s debut solo album, In The Lovers Arms that accurately encapsulates its author’s thoughts on songwriting. On opener ‘The Song People’, appears the refrain
Song… Song… Song…
It’s where you’ve been
It’s also pretty apt for where the artist is at in his life. Song is, in some ways, a transcript, a record of where you’ve been. And for Fenton, it’s been quite a journey. In The Lovers Arms is the end result of recent ruminations on life, love and solitude, and it’s a welcome release.
The album is the singer’s first solo release since Crow – the best fucked-off-with-life band of dark-eyed troubadours since Nick Cave stopped writing Latin on his chest and decided to keep his suit-jackets on – imploded after the release of Play With Love in 1998. Since that time, he’s begun a career as an actor, and this album marks his return to the world of recording, after a period of disenchantment with the industry at large.
There’s two things to note about this return, too. Firstly, it’s a concept album. Secondly, it’s a product that makes the waiting worthwhile. Continue reading “Peter Fenton: In The Lovers Arms (2004)”
Peter Fenton Opens His Lovers Arms
This is an older interview of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.
Originally published September 2004.
I’m walking into a small, backstreet hotel bar in Sydney on a Friday afternoon. Office-workers are beginning to fill the streets. A mirror-ball hangs from the roof of the front bar, while the best in Rat Pack tunes float through the cigarette smoke. It seems a fitting place to speak to singer and actor Peter Fenton, about his debut solo disc In The Lovers Arms (Inertia), given that it takes place in a mythical hotel – and given the fact that he’s previously starred in a TV series set in such a locale (the ABC’s Love Is A Four Letter Word.). There’s something slightly seedy – yet charming – about the setting that just seems right.
Fenton is sitting at a table in the back as I arrive. Over drinks, we begin to discuss his career, weighted towards his latest release. The first question is simple: though he’s been playing occasional gigs for years since the demise of Crow, how come it’s taken until now for him to release something under his own moniker? What’s he been up to? Continue reading “Peter Fenton Opens His Lovers Arms”
’90s musical memories: 3/7
Day three, and I figure it’s time to put a bit of sleaze into the mix. So I’ve chosen one of the best: Kim Salmon & the Surrealists’ ‘Gravity’, from the Sin Factory album. It’s true, it’s not the reason I picked it up – that would be the solid-gold riff of ‘I Fell’ and its accompanying filmclip – but in terms of a statement of what that band’s about, I think you can’t go past the opening seconds, where an opening drum snap kicks off a world of full throated fuck-off wailing,
The song demands you listen to it. The Tony Cohen production is great – the drums are like woodchopping, the guitar a fuzzy knife, the bass slinking about somewhere. And the burr in Kim’s vocal is fantastic, as he basically sings about the inescapable notion that you’re gonna fuckin’ die and there’s nothing you can do but (hello, chorus) scream. It’s pretty great.
(I mean fuck, just listen to that rhythm section in the no-guitar part before the first verse repeats: it’s all slinky, pant-sniffin’ Brian Hooper greatness with some super-Cramps style Tony Pola tom work. It’s like flick-knife greasers dancing.) Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 3/7”
’90s musical memories: 2/7
Today’s choice of music is from a band I’ve liked for a long time, who moved to London and fell apart before regrouping years later to produce further compelling work. They were a band that I dragged most of my friends along to see at various places, and they were the first musicians I ever interviewed (for Honi Soit, the Sydney uni newspaper) after helping them load in to the now defunct Northpoint Tavern in North Sydney. They are the only band I’ve dressed up for – in a three-piece suit, no less, as some kind of impoverished student imitation of their dapper numbers – and yet also are one of the few bands for whom my enthusiasm does not, in hindsight, appear to have been misplaced. It’s time for The Paradise Motel, folks. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 2/7”
Yeah nah. 