The Raconteurs

Well I know I've got a bit of catching-up to do here, including my trips to Russia and Croatia, but for now I just wanted to tell the world (well, all 3 of you that ever look at this) how great The Raconteurs were the other night. The new stuff sounds like a great step forward, although it seems to be less of an equal balance between Jack White's and Brendon Benson than the previous album. They had a very atmospheric, simple backdrop of tree branch silhouettes coupled with some slightly over-theatrical curtains, which I thought represented them pretty well.

There are much better written reviews here and here.

Elbow

Elbow's show last night was fantastic. The new songs sounded great live, particularly enormous, and a sprinkling of older ones went down really well. Guy Garvey's stage presence adds to a great experience too, dedicating songs like Newborn; "two of our band have recently become dads again, so to celebrate, here's a lovely song about a romantic death". It was a treat to see Richard Hawley come on to do The Fixer; a great song, really dark, and he sounded brilliant. I think Guy Garvey felt a bit inadequate with his maraca next to Richard's outfit and big red guitar though... You can see their shapeless blobs right here! The NME has it's usual incisive report; "Hawley walked on stage and played guitar and sang with the band." It's like you're actually there experiencing it with them isn't it.

You haven't missed much...

Yes! I am back! No more bloggy neglect. (Promises promises...)

Anyway, quick run-down from New Year to Milk;
- bought a decent camera finally. Hooray!
- went to a very nice wedding. Ceremony at the beautiful Bhaktivedanta Manor, and afterwards a little tent in the garden.
- read Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table by Nigel Slater, which was nice, if a little repetetive in places, and made me very hungry for teacakes and scones, amongst other things...
- found some exciting milk (see post below)

Well I'm sure there's more but the list would definitely get less and less interesting so I'll leave it at that.

Circle Line (ish)

We braved the infamous Circle Line Pub Crawl (warning; offensive design) in celebration of Richard's 30th on Saturday, which was lots of fun until we flaked quite rubbishly. Richard seemed to like our t-shirts, which I was quite relieved about, but of course I was scrutinising the printing. I think I should've made the superman bit purely block colour and it would've printed a bit thicker.

It just so happened to coincide with The Lord Mayor's Show which was interesting, although I'm not sure I'd bother making a special trip to see it without the distraction of a pub crawl. But then I'm not hugely into marching bands or unidentifiable fancy dress (despite what some of you may have seen on facebook). We had a nice leisurely start in Westminster's The Red Lion (?) and on to Embankment's cute Ship & Shovel and Temple's cavernous Walkabout, in between taking some photos of the bands and floats preparing to start.

Then on to The Blackfriar at, erm, Blackfriars, lunch at Wetherspoons at Tower Hill, a slightly scary place in Aldgate, a gin bar at Liverpool Street, a 60's concrete box at The Barbican, The Castle at Farringdon, O'Neills at Kings Cross, and our final was a really nice place around the corner from Euston Square, but fairly inevitably I can't remember what it was called. It had nice beer though.

Feist

Feist's gig at the Shepherds Bush Empire the other night was really fantastic. Not the best venue for a 'standing still' kind of gig (if you're in the stalls, anyway) as it means you only really get a view of the ceiling unless you're 7ft tall. Which I am not. But the sound is great in there.

She played a little bit of Broken Social Scene but pretty much stuck to her solo work. 1234 predictably brought down the house - and I suspect that quite a number of the audience were only there to hear that one song - and at times you could have heard a pin drop between lyrics. The balance was much the same as on the album - mostly fairly simple, honest, somewhat downbeat songs punctuated with a few more upbeat songs, so it didn't get monotonous. My Moon My Man is still definately my favourite song though, it has a great video too (albeit owing a little in inspiration to OK GO);


The point where she invited a random audience member on stage to play the piano did seem a little odd, although it all became clear when he went on to read out a really sweet poem ending in the line, "Lauren, will you marry me?" at which point I think the audince made the most noise it did all night. She said yes... a suitably romantic highlight to a captivating gig.

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Fraggle 7

On BOATS! Yes, boats. Very romantic idea, not quite so in reality - bunk beds, cold piddley shower, days of breathing nothing but diesel. Ah, the open canal. But at least I didn't have to do my hair. It was nice to spend lazy days sailing through countryside, although a bit odd that we all kind of split up for most of the weekend - I'm used to Fraggle being 1 giant free-for-all. There were so many of us (27) that we had to heve 3 boats - 2 10-berth boats (namely the 'party boat' and the 'sleepy boat') and one super-luxurious 6/8-berth one that was brand new. As this was the only one to have a decent shower I absconded on Sunday morning to steal it, only to get my comeuppance when that boat made me feel very seasick.

Saturday was pirate day, which was hilarious for a little while, and then we kinda forgot what we were wearing and wondered why people on passing boats were looking at us funny. I was quite pleased with my glamorous sequined eye-patch. Kinda 'Vegas-pirate'. Yarrrrr!

All that fresh air and beer meant we were all pretty rubbish at up-keeping the party-boat's reputation and sloped off to bed not too long after midnight. We did try though. Katy and I even had plans to stay up and watch the sun come up - genius idea! Until we realised that was about 7 hours away and, well, we were kinda tired... We did have lots of fun photographing rude symbols drawn with my torch first though.

Rachel and I were the only girls on our boat (of 11) so we did have a bit of 'boy-smell' to contend with - funny how if you get 9 blokes together in a confined space, even if none of them smell individually the space will still smell of SMELLY BOYS. And I think Rachel found herself with a slightly dis-proportionate amount of cooking duty (sorry Rachel - I did have to clean the whole boat Monday morning if that makes up for it) but that was no bad thing for the rest of us with a feast of Penne Ala Sausage. We were all very glad we hadn't gone to the pub.

Sunday lunch at a nearby pub - obviously Hungry Horse pubs cater more for the 'quantity' and less for the 'quality' (although the Sticky Toffee Pudding was great stodge) and I did feel myself turning into a bit of a snob when the table next to us was filled with 3 teenage mums; one of them had a little boy with her that must've been about 7, and was really good actually, although that was a small miracle after being around those 3 all his life. After a long-winded conversation about their respective beat-up/make-up relationships, the conversation turned to who each of them was planning to beat up next and why ("she was well givin' me evils") and then finally their choice of vibrator and how long they lasted until they 'burned out' (??!!). All in front of the little 7 year old boy. Who then desperately throws some food on the floor in a bid to get some attention. Which he doesn't. Scary and sad.

Small But Perfectly Formed

Yesterday I went to see Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan at the British Museum.
It was a small exibition but fantastically beautiful. It was a really nice group of pieces actually, enough for a 'wow' factor but restrained enough not to be over-doing it, as if saying "we're really proud of these pieces, but of course there's a lot more where that came from". Which I've no doubt there is. A place where creative and craft skills and pure hard work are rewarded as much as concept and delivery, Japan seems to be really good at nurturing its artist community, designating the most accomplished Living National Treasures.

I found the Kimono/textile artists particularly inspiring. In a short interview one of them explained that he had considered what he could do with a kimono to make it different, more special. He realised that he shouldn't change the simple shape because that is part of why it's special - if you change the shape once then you will change it again and again striving to make it better, and it becomes like any other clothing. The simple shape of the kimono lets the textile speak for itself. Texile designs are produced by various laborious methods, including woodblock printing with a 2" square block, dyeing individual strands of hand-spun silk and then weaving together to create complicated (and perfect) geometrical patterns, and stencil dyeing, all done completely by hand.


Tokuda Yasokichi III - Bowl, 'Genesis' (Sosei), porcelain with vivid coloured glazes (yôsai), 1991. On loan from the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
This was beautiful - a coloured glaze bowl that apparently went wrong, so the artist then re-fired it at higher temperature and the stripey effect appeared - "a gift from the gods. Or an accident." Luminescent, and perfect. Perfection seemed to be a theme that runs through each and every piece actually. It's the only word for it.