Listening: To Lost & Found,a compilation of vintage r'n'b and soul as curated by the deep-funk guru Keb Darge and Paul Weller
Watching
Al Reinert’s utterly absorbing 1989 documentary,
For All Mankind
, with music by Brian Eno. It features all the home movies of the Apollo astronauts, interspersed with snatches of their dialogue as they travel between Earth and the moon.
RecoveringFrom Comic-Con in San Diego, where everything, from Ridley Scott's Prometheusto Francis Ford Coppola's part-3D Twixt, is made to look utterly unmissable.
Not buying Untitledby Anonymous. The publishers, Little, Brown, promise it will be the story of one of the most controversial figures of our age. Bernie Madoff is everyone's guess. Wait and see.
AskingIf the Marlay Park gigs were several too far. See Jim Carroll's blog, On The Record, at irishtimes.com for the argument.
ImpressedWith the Dublin Theatre Festival programme. Loughlin Deegan's final year promises much.
GoingTo the Kilkenny Arts Festival, with Gare St Lazare Players' Title & Deeda target.
PoppingInto the Tieranniesaur album launch at Crawdaddy, Dublin. The achievements of the Popical Island collective are modest enough to date, but its principal success has been in cultivating a sense of communal endeavour among a bunch of musicians. This launch gig for Tieranniesaur's strong debut had support from fellow Popical Islanders Big Monster Love and No Monster Club (there are a lot of monsters roaming on Popical Island), showcasing the off-kilter folk and jaunty, power-pop aspects of the collective's aesthetic.
Nominally a vehicle for frontwoman Annie Tierney, Tieranniesaur has swollen to a stage-busting seven-piece; they can appear deceptively unpolished, but the effect is infectious. Sketchand I Tink Ur Strangewere power-pop highlights, while the show-stopper was Here Be Monsters.
The dawning of any “scene” can be a misleading period, when promise, good ideas and enthusiasm are yet to be tested. But these acts are so refreshingly determined to have fun, and spread it, that pondering their future progress seems pointless. They exist in the now of bouncing melodies and giddy choruses, and it’s up to us to enjoy it.
