. . . having a first listen to
...watching
Barry Murphy's sketches on The Eleventh Hour (RTÉ 2), especially his exceptional parody of the Terminal 2 ad.
The first part of BBC2's Faulks on Fiction, which eatured the Songbird author's intelligent scamper through "love" in fiction. This week: toffs.
...reading
WG Sebalds The Rings of Saturn. Patience (After Sebald), a documentary based on the East Anglia coastal walk that inspired the book, has been made.
Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test– out in April – which fully marries his conspiracy chasing reportage with his neurotic columns.
. . . listening to
Mogwai's latest album Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will – practically a pop effort by their standards, if pop albums closed with a 23-minute wind-down. Their Olympia gig on Tuesday was fitfully brilliant.
. . . enjoying
Safarikent.com, an eclectic audio blog by Regan Hutchins, former manager in the Winding Stair Bookshop, and featuring scratched Buddy Holly records, Christchurch’s bells and a veteran stage manager.
... looking forward to
The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. Here are six to watch this weekend:
1 Outrage
Cineworld, Saturday, 11am
The latest film from Beat Takeshi, master of Asian violence, was slammed at Cannes. They were all wrong. A story of gangland mayhem, Outrage is a small classic of its bloody genre.
2 Essential Killing
Screen Cinema, Saturday, 8.40pm
Co-financed by the Irish Film Board, the latest film from the great Jerzy Skolimowski, director of Deep End and The Shout, stars Vincent Gallo as an imprisoned terrorist of uncertain origins. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
3 Archipelago
Light House, Saturday, 8.30pm
Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated was one of the most highly praised British debuts of recent years. Her follow-up is another story of Pinteresque goings on between the middle-classes. This time we’re in the isles of Scilly.
4 The Bridge on the River Kwai
Cineworld, Sunday, 5pm
Welcome big-screen unspooling of one of David Lean’s most admired epics. Boffins will be interested to see how the digital clean-up has polished the aging print.
5 LIfe, Above All
Cineworld, Sunday, 8.30pm
Moving South African drama about a young girl who must keep the family together despite the ravages of Aids and alcoholism. The lead performance by Keaobaka Makanyane is staggering.
6 Snap
Cineworld, Sunday, 8.30pm
Impressive feature by Carmel Winters, a talented playwright, following a distressed woman as she recalls a tragic incident involving her son. Creepy and powerful throughout, featuring a standout performance by Eileen Walsh. Donald Clarke
. . . having a first listen to
Radiohead's new album The King of Limbs. The Oxford art-rockers returned yesterday, jumping out of listener's inboxes with a surprise early release of The King of Limbs – brought forward a day, after they'd only this week announced its release date. Containing eight songs, and clocking in at 37 minutes, it begins with the chopped beats and fluid brass of Bloom, over which Thom Yorke drags his vocals with that familiar affected-exhaustion. On Morning Mr Magpie, his quick breaths add percussive energy to a funk bassline while the lyrics, as is common, are there primarily to add layers to the sound. This one ends with "Good morning Mr Magpie/ How are you today/ Now you've stolen all my magic/ Took my melody." That reads far more naff than it sounds.
Melody, though, hasn’t been taken. Even if The King of Limbs makes fewer concessions than previous album In Rainbows, it is not as deliberately challenging as the extraordinary but polarising Kid A or Hail to the Thief.
Still, the next tracks, Little By Little and Feral, are absorbed in the kinetic, looping pulses that became dominant several albums ago; on early listening, however, these two tracks bring a certain flabbiness to the centre of the album. But then it unfolds into the ethereal Lotus Flower, before the rich piano and more conventional vocal on Codex (echoing earlier Radiohead tracks Pyramid Song and Videotape) brings the album’s high point. The comparatively flat Give Up the Ghost seems an interruption rather than a progression, so it is up to the closing Separator to epitomise a tenderness and optimism that infuses the album.
There is darkness, but The King of Limbs is one for the dawn. Shane Hegarty
