PATTI SMITH

Bought a copy of Just Kids yesterday. Finished it this morning. Vividly evocative and profoundly emotive, a less guarded Chronicles. Illuminations for aspiring artists, explorations for those on a quest to break down the barriers all over again.

BEACH HOUSE

A couple of years ago I was at a concert where Beach House quietly upstaged the perpetually wayward Cat Power. Chan Marshall is always unpredictable live. I've seen her hypnotize a crowd alone in near darkness. I've witnessed her walking over an audience with a glass of JD and ice singing Otis Redding. This time she seemed merely tired and erratic. Possibly she was bored of her covers band. I don't blame her. Now she's recording an album solo, like in the good old days. Could be sick. The willful southerner in her, that vast displacement, leaves you constantly unsure of her next move. Lonesome introspection or an out of joint jam with Wu-Tang? Don't you doubt it.

Where was I? Beach House. Poet Tom Paulin once memorably described Madonna's Ray Of Light as 'Jacuzzi music'. Well, Teen Dream's an island of claustrophobic warmth surrounded by the cold, cold ocean. Facing an odyssey of sugared reassurance, radicalism shrugged and gave up the ghost. They stick to a template; gauzy reverb guitar, attentive drum machines and caressing organ chords. Victoria Legrand's vocals and lyrics are again a curious paradox of spaced out ethereality and grainy depressiveness. If Chan Marshall's songs can feel uncomfortably exposed, Legrand's remain outwardly elusive. Soft-focus mush aside, their muggy unknowability does beguile and allure, Zebra's languid ruminations almost eclipsing the intoxicating Gila, from Devotion. Following on, Silver Soul shines with equal magnificence in it's subtle glory. Despite resistance, I have been seduced.

KATE MCGARRIGLE 1946-2010

I cherish the self-titled debut and The Dancer With Bruised knees, she was an underrated miracle of wit and wry compassion.

OWEN PALLETT

  Linda sat on the bus as it crawled thru the city. Under her left arm was a grocery bag full of fresh citrus fruit. In her hands lay a notebook, ready and hungry for smoked revelations. A tramp threw up on the street, a kid took a picture on his phone. Weirdly compelling, the paranoid shuffler moved in a figure of eight. Over there, a girl put on some magenta mascara while ignoring the attentions of an eager admirer. Closing her eyes, she transcended the noise, the violent uncensored information by conjuring a scene from the 12th century; the supernatural visions of Merlin, and natural disbelief of King Arthur. Inhabiting another reality, she almost missed her stop.

Edward had been taking self-portraits on an ancient polaroid, nicknamed 'Void'. The results were pasted onto a faded mirror that shifted perspective according to different views. He was awaiting her return. The warm keys turned the locks. 'Linda, you gotta hear this! There's still ferocious coffee in the pot'.

A symphony filled the four corners of their room. Propulsive, hunter beats anchored sonic overflow. 'Who is this?' she proclaimed. 'Owen Pallett, got it today'. 'He sounds half asleep' she remarked, tuning into his sneaking voice. 'Just wait, he's casual but sincere'. Plucked violins crept like cheerful field mice, lavas opened, Mount Alpentine rushed on discordance and atonalism. 'What's the libretto, his words are too buried in the mix'. 'A conceptual riff on an angry farmer. Who cares, let the music take hold of you' he answered. She chewed her nails and noticed a mood of rarified and well mannered exuberance that stood in stark contrast to the exhilaration of her favorite rock idols. She admired the stately arrangements, even if she couldn't totally share Edward's enthusiasm. 'Shimmies for Van Dyke Parks to shake Pina Coladas to' he grinned.

'I need a pee' she sighed. 'Wait, the best one is coming next' he replied with glee. 'Darn, what are we, an existential Beavis and Butthead?'. Holy mother of God. E Is For Estranged was unbelievably beautiful, tilting strings, eternally mysterious scripture, the way he weaved melody was a sad, sensual pleasure. An elegy to lost love. She held his bony frame in her arms. 'Okay, you have sold it to me'. As they danced slowly, a tender dawn awoke beneath the smoggy sky.

ERIC ROHMER 1920-2010

Enchanting films of modest magic and delicate observation; Claire's Knee, Love in the Afternoon, The Green Ray and The Romance of Astrea and Celadon.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

Bram S JR was traveling back from NYC to London across the sweeping atlantic. On a packed airplane he wondered how to waste some time. No way was he gonna suffer through Mamma Mia again. Searching the selection on High Mile radio he stumbled upon Vampire Weekend's debut. Wow those dudes must be like international now or something. Weren't they that group he'd turned his nose up at before? The champagne clouds drifted by his window. Last night Obama had emerged victorious and America seemed to burst with regained optimism.

Putting in the lame ear plugs he found musical elevation. He'd been so wrong about them. I mean white guys doing African in an ironic fashion? Pretty contrived. At least those middle aged rockers in the 80's wanted to save the world. Why not buy a Fela Kuti record and be done with it. But this was nothing like that, nothing so cynical. Oxford Comma sat up and snapped at you with it's bright, fervent passion, M79 shared a joke with Mozart and The Kids Don't Stand A Chance announced itself as a modern anthem, one you could shout along to without shame.

Anticipating jet lag with a smile he purchased a copy at the airport upon arrival.

That was then. Skating round Central Park's ice rink-only a distant memory. Contra, Vampire Weekend's second album was already out. Was he stoked? Kinda, he couldn't say. The first two songs immediately felt like reuniting with old friends from those heady times. Horchata celebrated an obscure drink over thumb pianos and the lightest of tribal rhythms. White Sky featured Ezra Koenig's happy continuation of Paul Simon's conversational intricacies, and his sublime gift with a melody. Richard Serra replaced Jackson Pollock as a lyrical reference. After that? Well, it all started to turn pleasant enough. The high pitched guitars still rang out. There were dalliances with auto-tune, Arthur Russell cello shapes, the cheapest of synth beats, but where was the urgency or excitement? Hard to fault, harder to relate, so he cranked up Sunn O instead on the stereo. Yet later in the sleepy night the gentle sway of I Think Ur A Contra bewitched him, had he been too hasty in his opinion after all? Maybe they deserved a second chance.

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG

To be the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin comes with great expectations. Like her mother, Charlotte Gainsbourg is primarily known as an actress. Quite a fascinating series of films she's appeared in too. From the gloomy, incest melodrama The Cement Garden, directed by her uncle, Andrew Birkin, to Michel Gondry's surrealist The Science Of Sleep (in a role originally intended for Bjork) to most recently Lars von Trier's highly disturbing Antichrist. In the latter she received the best actress prize at Cannes for the latest addition to von Trier's ever increasing gallery of suffering heroines. Typically awkward and unpolished, she broke away from his prototype and unleashed a 'She' who was not a forsaken saint but an angry spirit on the psycho-sexual warpath.

It was a brave, animalistic performance, much edgier than anything Jane Birkin would have attempted. Birkin's charm comes from her sweet whimsicality, her girlish skittishness and touching capacity for wonder. Gainsbourg may have inherited more of her father's melancholic sophistication if perhaps not his rapid shots of provocative humour. Her first album as an adult, 5 55, released in 2006, was composed by Air and carried all the traces of their coffee-table loungecore. Admittedly it was rather gorgeous at times, with Gainsbourg intoning Jarvis Cocker's lyrics in her quiet, Chelsea influenced voice as if she'd only read them for the first time. The songs were glass objects one guesses her father would have smashed to suit his own identity, but his daughter was sticking steadfast to the rule book, as if she wasn't completely sure this was her domain.

When no one is looking (or searching) context can be everything. For IRM, Gainsbourg has teamed up with Beck, that arch wizard of juxtaposition. A collaboration seemed inevitable, since the lushly despairing Sea Change was opaquely a fond tribute to Serge Gainsbourg's droll masterpiece of sleazy, string drenched funk Histoire de Melody Nelson. Luckily IRM avoids retro gloss by focusing on the singer herself, who sounds liberated and chasing her own dreams in the process.

What different costumes can an actress wear? How many styles can she collect to express herself? Let me count the ways. On the title track she blankly surveys the brain hemorrhage she suffered while surrounding metallic noises jabber and threaten mortality. Heaven Can Wait takes an oblique walk into the uncharted waters of Bob Marley Jamming at a baroque ball. Distorting her fragile voice in nursery rhyme post punk, Greenwich Mean Time offers a brief respite to the forbidding rapture. Two souls circle each other round the dressing up box, trying to figure out what is illusion, what is truth. A delightful set of sketches never offering a full picture, perhaps only a glimpse of directions to take. Beck's father David Campbell often contributes superb scores here, who can resist a pop album that closes to a cascading waltz of Steve Reich-like Piano Phases.