CAT POWER

 When I first heard Ruin and Cherokee, the digital singles, I wondered if this was Cat Power's reinvention as a commercial artist. But with time, the songs revealed an unusual dichotomy. On the surface, there was a facade of pop thrills. You could hear a certain excitement, Marshall playing about with subtle dance constructions, moving forward into new, busier realms of communication. However, the themes were in unison with her sparse, past work. A mournful self-contemplation, dancing alone on a nightclub floor, swaying, the traveller, never quite satisfied, searching for the ideal state of being but still rooted in sadness and muffled remorse.

Sun, the album, is curious. Her intriguing manifestation of combining real and electronic instrumentation isn't solid, it's rather dislocated in places and primal as her most vital work often is. What threads the pattern, the emotional lucidity, is the way her voice has that roaming passion of the great soul singers, where everything is personal and universal. The heart cries out with a triumphant empathy in Nothing But Time while Iggy Pop gargles in the background. Yes, she has made edgier records before, descending into the core of love and pain and not all of Sun comes together yet I'm sort of thankful it doesn't. The knock and buzz of wild solitaire, modern designs for her, is met with an inevitable experience and ultimate wish for sublime resolution.

LOTUS PLAZA

The five smoked and sat on the beach. Between toes, dry sand. Throwing sticks, for the dogs. On the mountain was a giant bat, his huge wings caressing the air. They squinted at the sea as the sunlight swirled amongst them. Eight black boats trailed into view, slow, ominous, but of what tale did they tell? A blue canoe with frozen passengers nervously swung back on it's hind legs. Submarines, they were, distant ants, military. A private demonstration. One of the entourage switched on a portable radio. Journey into the unknown intentions of a stranger's smile. This contemplative feeling breezed right on by, you couldn't quite catch what the singer meant, ephemeral yet comforting, someone joked that he was armed with soft rocks.

"Alright folks, let's wrap it up and go for a break," the director said. The actors made their way out of the red gaffer lines stage left, some stretched their legs on ballet bars, others took a damaged elevator to the ground floor, a melody was played on a wooden piano. The green room was stocked with refreshments. But their clothes and their hair had become riddled with wet sand. The rehearsal studio was quiet, an invisible cobweb awaiting life. Pulsating, silent props. An unused laptop dribbled sound materiel. No one here now, an after event.

BLACK BANANAS

Slide one. Tall, striking, walking down the street, big hat over fringe, fringe over eyes. Slide two. Jeans with masking tape, shades, girl says to me, she's disgusting, she hates her audience, yeah, I say, you gotta problem with that. Slide three. Worse for wear here, peroxide, knocking back champagne, dancing, not singing, while the band go through their motions. Slide four. Furred up, hitting it, more beers backstage, she says to the organiser. Cops got in the car, put the blue light on the roof. Walkie talkie says she might be in the gold encrusted arcade, near the casino, on the boulevard, know what I'm talking about, you been there.

Those cats are cooking, Miles might say. But they are frying through a muggy mix. And that mix isn't accidental, keeping you removed, distancing the listener to the funked, metal frayed dynamics. Sure, the call-outs, filth melt guitars, elastic bass and aroma of zonked heat recalls George Clinton's endless empire. Though Herrema's couch empress struts in time to her own distinctive, asphalt ideology. Side A is effortless, not songs, blurred mood. Side B is memory, when the guests left the party.

MARGARET

I am very tempted to write a list of records and movies that I liked or loved but I'm gonna be severe on indulging my pleasures. However, Melancholia has some terrific sequences, the metaphor is potent and Margaret features such an incredible performance by Anna Paquin that I'm frightened to remember it. Jeannie Berlin-where has she been since The Heartbreak Kid?- vital. Also, there is an excruciating scene early on in the film which reminds me of the closing moments of Au Revoir Les Enfants. Scorsese's documentary on Harrison was charming, witty and inevitably, deeply moving.

THE HOWLING HEX

He struggled down the cobbled staircase, on crutches, to the basement bar. Him and his friend sat close to the stage, watching the blues band jam with fresh electricity. They shared a beer while the crazed-faced singer belted and ran through a berserk set list, toxic memorabilia, it made your fingers want to tap on the silver table.

When they returned home, after a yellow glow walk, she greeted them with a smile, then a blush. They felt bashful, as they were more acquainted with her familiar disposition to a soft, glimmering seriousness. She resumed work on a fragmented puzzle.

He retreated to his room, opened a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and put on Hagerty's Wilson Semiconductors. Of late NMH had been quiet, taking a vacation after Earth Junk's Marble Giants ride to the States. Found sometime anyhow to update his wonderfully strange Howling Hex blog, with it's confounding, truly unfathomable and always inspired ruminations on everything from basketball games to the latest television serials. So what is this? Cowboy rodeo with swarms of guitar knots and reverberation, Texas by way of New Mexico, not really linked to the past or the future, refusing to be tuned into the current. His voice, tuneful and persistent, hovering over the cheerful, stark spaces.

Next up, maybe, Royal Jen, Rad Times.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

He knocked on the door and there was no answer, so he walked into his friend's slim room with the concluding bathroom. The clothes, they were slumped about, heavy potions were pretending to be aperitifs, a stereo whispered Fleetwood Mac from the empty park. Upon the round table was a journal, he read an entry from a month before. His friend had been writing some sort of review on Lynne Ramsay, he compared her to Alfred Hitchcock, that cold clarity, the outsider's insight into a seemingly steady world, images cackling with a tough, dark humour. He knew that he was right and yet he decided to set fire to the notebook, watch paper disintegrate while a Left Bank brass band smuggled up and cried out from the window. Yes, he heard the call, and then all was silent.

The evidence was gone.

THE TREE OF LIFE

The seal sat on a rock looking at the sea. He was afraid of the waves, he slowly embarked upon the stones. I went up to him, to check there was no blood. Slightly fearful, I asked him what did he think of The Tree of Life? Well, he said, when I was at the cinema, people laughed at the end. They mentioned David Attenborough. Guess they were nervous, I replied. You know, modern folks become nervous when they are brought so close to nature, so close to our existence, the fug of childhood and it's pain and beauty, those half-glimpses of revelation, maybe they want to reject it. They may recoil from dinosaurs, sweet talk and Christianity, but for me there was nothing else like it; immense, perturbing your very soul.

The seal nodded, then he set off swimming, lapping up all that water, never saw him again, never did. But I can still recall his black eyes. Sleepy hopeless but warm, the summer ended with roll-up's and stares at the broken horizon. Today it was the army, tomorrow revolution.