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Staff Picks: The Best DVDs of 2022

January 30, 2023February 5, 2023 Gus

Here we have the very best DVDs of 2022, as selected by our own WCL librarians. All of these titles are available to loan!

Kath’s picks

Everything everywhere all at once
There is no way to describe this film other than strap yourself in, hold on and just go with it. And maybe, find someone to give you a hug afterwards. On the surface it feels ridiculous, but this film is one of the most thought provoking, spectacular pieces of cinema I have seen in many years. Brilliant acting from the entire cast, fantastic martial arts scenes, and it grapples with feelings that many of us will recognise. Watch this film and you’ll be demanding everyone, everywhere watches it too.

Gloriavale : New Zealand’s secret cult
An honest, raw documentary showcasing the suffering of several former Gloriavale members, and one amazing woman who is still part of the sect. Handled sensitively and compassionately, this documentary speaks to those who have managed to escape (or been excommunicated from) Gloriavale and the team that are supporting them in fighting for the right to see their families and expose the abuse at the hands of the sect leaders. A beautifully made film that every New Zealander should watch.

The lost city
If you want to have a rollicking good time, watch this movie. Sandra Bullock at her comedic best, Channing Tatum being adorable, Daniel Radcliffe chewing the scenery and Brad Pitt… well, I’ll leave that up to you to find out. Think 80’s adventure rom-coms like Romancing the Stone only in a modern setting. Full of laugh out loud moments and one very sparkly purple jump suit.

Shinji’s picks

Petite maman – Celine Sciamma
Memoria – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Drive my car – Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Beginning – Dea Kulumbegashvili
The quiet girl = An Cailín Ciúin – Colm Bairead
I’m your man – Maria Schrader
Limbo – Ben Sharrock
Flee – Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Small axe : a collection of 5 films from Steve McQueen
The White Lotus. The complete first season

Gus’ picks

Everything everywhere all at once
Everything Everywhere All At Once manages to fuse a very heady story about the multiverse to an intimate family drama with charm and aplomb. It’s not just an answer to my long-standing wish to see the Multiverse dramatised on the big screen (in a way that didn’t require a Spider-Man), it’s also the most inventive, hilarious, moving, structurally airtight, genuinely insightful and empathetic movies I’ve ever seen.

Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness
The real thrill of Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness is seeing director Sam Raimi return to directing after a nine-year absence, bringing all the cheeky horror stylings of his Evil Dead trilogy to the MCU while reminding you that with three Spider-Mans under his belt, he knows his way around a superhero scuffle. But what really stuck with me after Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness is realising Strange is basically a librarian’s superhero: a reclusive keeper of obscure knowledge who spends most of his day gesturing with his hands to help people in their adventures.

Benedetta
While most cinephiles know Paul Verhoeven as the director behind such indulgent Hollywood blockbusters as Robocop, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers, his other claim to fame is he’s a world-renowned scholar on the life of the historical Jesus Christ. In Benedetta, his fascination with the contradictions of religion come to the fore, as he retells the true story of a 17th-century lesbian nun who was seemingly possessed by Christ to save her small town from the ravages of the plague. Cheekily profane and brilliantly pointed, only someone with Verhoeven’s particularities could have pulled this off.

Nope
Jordan Peele continues to top himself with NOPE, a fantastic twist on the alien invader movie that is, in essence, Jaws in the sky. To say any more would spoil the fun, but needless to say, I found it to be Peele’s best film yet.

Better call Saul. Season six
It’s especially difficult for a show that’s a prequel to one of the most popular dramas of the 2010s to remain both narratively compelling and maintain the quality of storytelling expected from its predecessor, and Better Call Saul absolutely sticks its landing on both fronts. In Saul/Jimmy/whoever Odenkirk is really playing, I found another answer to Don Draper from Mad Men (my other favourite AMC show), a disreputable charlatan whose life is essentially all a performance, yet he pulls through in the end when he remembers what (and more importantly, who) he’s really doing it all for.

Peacemaker. The complete first season
James Gunn and John Cena take the shallowest of joke characters from The Suicide Squad (a film that already had a talking shark and a Polka-Dot Man), and manage to build a compelling, funny, and occasionally poignant show around him. As a seasoned comic reader, I also appreciated the deep cut references to DC Comics characters that double as genuinely inventive jokes rather than just self-conscious ‘too-hip’ deflations as seen in other comic adaptations (I almost broke a rib laughing at the joke about Matter-Eater Lad eating an entire Wendy’s, and he means the restaurant itself).

Sasha’s picks

Top Gun : Maverick
The worst person in the world

Charlotte’s picks

Everything everywhere all at once
Petite maman
Spencer
Succession. The complete third season
The humans

Joshua’s picks

Bullet Train is a very fun action movie about a bunch of different assassins all going after the same goal. It has bombastic action and fun comedy, with an all around great story. It has the vibes of an Edgar Wright Action/Comedy, and, best of all, comes from a book!

Uncharted meanwhile is just a fun action movie where we get to watch cool people do cool stuff. It’s not mind blowingly good, but it does its job perfectly, just a fun movie to watch. Plus it has a battle on flying pirate ships, I mean come on.

Eva’s picks

Everything everywhere all at once

Petite maman

Kyan’s picks

Navalny (available on Kanopy)
Navalny follows the opposition leader to Putin Alexei Navalny after he was poisoned by Kremlin assassins and recovered in Germany. The film follows him as he and his team of hackers uncover the identities, method and time of how Putin poisoned him, including one of the best smoking gun accidental confessions on camera I’ve ever seen when he calls his own assassin and gets him to unknowingly detail what happened. Navalny then chose to return to Russia to continue to oppose Putin, where he is now deteriorating in a gulag prison. Given the Ukraine war it’s become even more relevant, and has just been nominated for best documentary at the Oscars.

The worst person in the world

Nominated for best Foreign Language and Best Screenplay at last year’s Oscars. Was in many people’s top lists of last year. Funny and moving. High recommend.

Staff Picks: CDs

January 18, 2023February 7, 2024 Mark

Here are some music titles that library staff have recently been listening to and enjoying.

Martin P’s Picks:

Back home / Big Joanie
‘Back Home’ is the second album by London-based black feminist punk trio, Big Joanie. A giant step forward musically from their debut, Sistahs, this album shows the band developing their sound in all sorts of interesting ways. Their influences go back to the 90s, with both grunge and riot grrrl getting a nod. But their music – melodic, stirring, brash – is all their own.

Penguin eggs / Jones, Nic
‘Penguin Eggs’ first came out in 1980, and is the last album of material recorded by British folk singer/songwriter, Nic Jones, before a tragic road accident brought his playing and performing days to an effective halt. Try the opening track, ‘Canadee-I-O’, for a taste of what he can do with traditional material, and his beautiful guitar technique. Fun fact: Bob Dylan recorded the same song 12 years later, ripping off Jones’ arrangement without credit.

Anaïs Mitchell / Mitchell, Anaïs
Anais Mitchell’s eponymous album, ‘Anais Mitchell’, came out in January 2022. Despite the name, it’s actually her eighth album. She was also responsible for the hit alt-musical, ‘Hadestown’, which played on Broadway and London’s West End a few years ago. Try the lovely ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ – a love song to a city as much as a person.

This is a photograph / Morby, Kevin
Kevin Morby has been around for the last ten years, and he’s been getting better and better. ‘This is a Photograph’ was released in May 2022, and it’s full of his rambling, rambunctious folk-tinged rock songs. Try the title track for a flavour of the album – but they’re all pretty good…

Vaughan’s Picks:
Kisses on the bottom / McCartney, Paul
A genuine affection for olde-timey music has been a consistent theme of Paul McCartney’s, even when he was revolutionising rock with The Beatles. So, the only real surprise about this album is that it took until 2012 for him to do it. Collecting a dozen pre-rock jazz and pop standards, along with two originals in the same vein (My Valentine and Only Our Hearts) Macca is in a thoroughly relaxed mood here. It’s the sort of thing you really could envisage listening to in the living room in the evening with a glass of wine. Time has taken its toll on his vocal range but he clearly loves these songs, this is no cynical move from a musician out of ideas but a deeply felt tribute and one of the most purely enjoyable records of his later career.

Randy Newman’s Faust / Newman, Randy
Given his lucrative side hustle composing film scores, and his knack for writing from the POV of all manner of interesting characters, it’s surprising that this is the closest Newman has come to writing a full-fledged musical. Taking Goethe’s classic work and rounding up a cast of famous faces (James Taylor, Don Henley, Elton John, Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt all make appearances) Newman puts a modern spin on the material. The resulting story is a bit overlong and not always easy to follow, especially if you’re not familiar with the poem. The song writing, however, demonstrates Newman’s mastery, ranging from the rousing gospel flavoured opener Glory Train to the hard rock pastiche The Man. Newman takes on the role of (who else?) the Devil, and is clearly having tremendous fun on songs like Can’t Keep a Good Man Down, done in his trademark bluesy shuffle style. The high point though, comes in the form of one of Newman’s most enduring songs, the moving ballad Feels Like Home. Sung beautifully by Bonnie Raitt here and widely covered since, its well on its way to becoming a modern pop standard and all by itself justifies giving this a listen.

Alison’s Pick:
Riderless horse / Nastasia, Nina
When I heard that Nina Nastasia was releasing another album after so long I was extremely excited, but had no idea of the hardships she had endured that caused the 12 year delay between this album and her last. Listening to the album felt bittersweet as I absorbed what had happened to her with the songs she had written about her experiences. She is a rare songwriter, and Steve Albini always brings her vision to life so beautifully and simply. This might be my favourite album of hers to date.

Mark’s Pick:
True north / a-ha
Every established artist eventually plays the ‘Orchestral’ card at some point in their career, and a-ha are the latest to do so. Supposedly inspired by Springsteen’s ‘Western Stars’ the band set out to record their 11th album live over three weeks in a studio 55 miles above the Arctic Circle in Bodø, backed by the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, and with an accompanying visual documentary highlighting the striking beauty of Norway’s nature and environment. Like most ‘concept’ type albums in probably only half succeeds in fusing their synth-pop side with their more organic sound, but nevertheless certain tracks shine, as they embrace a different chamber-folk/Jazz fusion sound that is different than anything else in their catalogue. A bit sedate on first listen, it’s an album that slowly grows on you.

Belinda’s Pick:
Kingmaker / Neilson, Tami
The latest album from powerhouse singer, writer, producer and instrumentalist Tami Neilson. Utter brilliance, but have your tissues ready for the poignant Beyond the Stars, feat Willie Nelson. An absolute must listen, this lady is a gun!

Shinji’s Picks:

Where's the one, by Congotronics International

Healing power : the music of Carla Bley, by Steve Cardenas

Waiting for Columbus : live deluxe, by Little Feat

Staff Picks: DVDs and Blu-Rays at the Library

December 23, 2022February 20, 2024 Gus

Here are some new, and older, DVDS and Blu-Rays that our Library staff have enjoyed watching recently, including a few Christmas movie picks for your holiday viewing!

Brigid’s Picks:

Christmas unwrapped ; The Christmas setup ; Christmas at Maple Creek ; No time like Christmas ; Christmas lost & found
This DVD is a 5 disc collection of gentle Christmas movies.
They are all very different stories made by a Canadian production company but are set in USA. The 5 DVD’s are all from 2018-2020 so still fairly new. The stories have very diverse characters. The rating is PGR. They are all gentle stories good for binge watching leading up to Christmas.

Inside are the following titles:

Christmas Unwrapped: This is a gentle story of a young journalist Charity, desperately trying to get her big break in Journalism. It comes in the form of having to write the story about a young man in the city who every year becomes the city’s Father Christmas by giving. Covering this story changes Charity’s life. Also stars Cheryl Ladd as the hard-bitten news Editor. This is a lovely gentle story great to watch whilst wrapping presents and decorating trees.

The Christmas Setup: This is a gentle Christmas romance. This is about a corporate lawyer Hugo who goes home for 2 weeks for Christmas to help his mum (Fran Drescher – The Nanny fame) celebrate Christmas and raise funds for the town.

Christmas at Maple Creek: A romance author Diana, goes back to the place of her childhood to help her get over writer’s block and enjoy Christmas there again. Diana finds more there than she bargains for Maple Creek needs her help.

No Time like Christmas: Emma finds her university boyfriend’s watch that she had given him, in a vintage shop just before she heads home to Vermont to celebrate Christmas. Things are not all as she expects.

Christmas Lost and Found: New York city event planner Whitney goes back to Chicago to spend her Christmas with her grandma. Whitney is gifted all the special Christmas ornaments that she collected with her grandma as a child but accidently lost them. Over the next week she must find them.

Dolly Parton’s Christmas of many colors : circle of love
This is a lovely DVD taken from the life of Dolly Parton. Dolly puts in a guest appearance and narrates it. Set in the Tennessee mountains Dolly is growing up with her family in the 1950’s. Dolly has 7 siblings and there is not a lot of money to spare. It is a story about how the children try and find money to help their dad give their mum the one present he has always wanted to – a Wedding ring. Everything goes well until disaster happens. How they cope is part of the lovely movie. Jennifer Nettles plays her mum, Rick Schroder plays her dad and Gerald McRaney plays the Preacher Grandfather. You do not need to like Dolly Parton’s music to enjoy this movie. Great time to enjoy it before the new Dolly movie comes out.

Neil J.s Pick:

Star Trek. IV, The voyage home
So, in the midst of a plethora of new Star Trek series and continued rumours about a Quentin Tarantino directed Star Trek movie, I decided to go back to the eighties in a big way and rewatch Star Trek Four The Voyage Home. The one with the whales where the crew travel back in time to 1986 (which was at that point the present day). It remains fabulous fun, the comic timing gags both visual and, in the script, still land perfectly. The strange thing is it has now become (mostly in a good way) as much about the period in time that it was made, as any future. Eighties styles, attitudes and preoccupations dominate. In a similar fashion to the way the fifties science fiction film Forbidden Planet reflects American society at that point in time.

Shinji’s Picks:

Memoria
Petite maman
Forgotten we’ll be
The White Lotus. The complete first season
Walk on the wild side
Outrage

Mark’s Picks:

C.B. Strike. Lethal white
The latestseason of the J.K Rowling’s Strike series (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) has just debuted in the UK, with an adaption of the 5^th novel, Troubled Blood. This DVD, an adaption of the 3^rd novel Lethal White, is so far the only season released in NZ. In case you are unfamiliar with the book series, Cormoran Strike (played by Tom Burke) is a permanently dishevelled London based Private Investigator, who seems to exist entirely on pub crisps, Indian takeaways and beer, and is almost perpetually grumpy due to the complexities of his exacting business, his prosthetic leg, and his complicated personal history as the illegitimate son of a famous rock star. Robin Ellacott (played by Holliday Grainger) is a Temp agency receptionist, with a traumatic past and a keen investigative talent who, by the time of this series, has become his business partner. This instalment in the series begins when Billy Knight, a young man with a history of mental illness claims to have witnessed a child’s murder and the burial of the body in the woods some years before and asks Strike to investigate. Despite being set in contemporary London, and being occasionally quite gritty, ‘Strike’ is in a lot of ways an old fashioned show with little digital flash. The long cases essentially involve lots of plodding work, reinterviewing people, research, and conversations, and so are somewhat difficult to condense into the TV format. It’s all carried, really, by the two leads who are both excellent, and one of the most accurate transfers from page to screen of any adaptation. They both seem to perfectly embody the characters in the books, and the series is just as much about their complicated lives and growing personal & professional bonds, as it is about the cases they solve.

Gus’ Picks:

Succession. The complete first season
Succession. The complete second season
Succession. The complete third season

Logan Roy, the aging CEO of the massive media conglomerate Waystar-RoyCo, has a health scare following his announcement that he will delay his abdication from the company. This leads to a succession panic among his children: the troubled golden child Kendall, the manipulative only-daughter Shiv, and pathologically immature Roman. Combining the cinema vérité of The Thick of It with the prestige TV character psychology of The Sopranos, Succession will leaving you reeling for the first couple episodes, as your mind adjusts both to the exorbitant opulence in which the characters live and its deft tonal balancing act of drama and comedy. But after settling into its groove (and experiencing it’s absolute sledgehammer of a first season finale), I’m fully willing to declare that it’s the worthy (ahem) successor to its prestige TV forebears like The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Michael Clayton
Set during a massive class action lawsuit of an agricultural giant, unscrupulous ‘bagman’ lawyer Michael Clayton (George Clooney) finds himself embroiled in a corporate conspiracy after his legal wunderkind colleague has a crisis of conscience about his company’s ethics and goes into hiding. The directorial debut of writer Tony Gilroy (Andor), this is top-to-bottom a superbly crafted, dark-but-never-morose legal thriller with a sincere humanity at its core; no wonder it was nominated for almost every major Academy Award (it only won Best Supporting Actress for Tilda Swinton).

Robot & Frank
Set in a near-ish future, the titular Frank is a retired jewel thief who lives alone, until his son buys him a helper robot to assist him with his daily tasks. Frank initially dislikes the robot’s presence, until he realises that the robot can be taught to steal. The robot happily obliges, glad that he has given Frank a task to keep him active, and an unlikely friendship (and crime wave) ensues. A quiet adult drama about ageing and losing touch with family that just happens to be a heist caper with a robot in it, Robot & Frank is an absolute charmer and a criminally slept-on movie overall.

‘Do the Right Thing’ from 3 Spike Lee joints
Set in Bed-Stuy and told across one of the hottest days of the year, Do the Right Thing follows the residents of a Brooklyn community as a political firestorm begins to kindle around the local pizza joint. Do the Right Thing is considered Spike Lee’s magnum opus, and I’m inclined to agree; every member of its large ensemble cast has incredible depth and range, the radiant orange lighting really sells the setting of the heat wave, and the themes of racial tension, restorative justice, and economic precarity still haven’t lost their relevance in 2022. A masterpiece all around.

Superman I, Superman II, Superman III, and Superman VI: The Quest for Peace from The Superman motion picture anthology : 1978-2006 Despite being a fan of Superman, I’d never actually gone back and watched the original Christopher Reeve movies. While they are definitely mired in 70s/80s cheesiness, the films work on the innate sincerity of the character, and I was delighted throughout the whole quadrilogy. The acting is all top-notch across the board as well, especially Reeve as Superman and Clark Kent (two very distinctive performances that he pivots between expertly), Margot Kidder as cynical reporter Lois Lane, who makes easy work of being won over by Superman’s inherent charm and goodness, and Gene Hackman gives appropriate maniacal bravado to Superman’s criminal nemesis Lex Luthor.

Emerson’s Picks:

Hotere
A documentary where Ralph Hotere (an NZ artist) quietly works, and his friends talk. Merata makes Hotere’s art feel mysterious while keeping the tone relaxing and convivial. The intense jazzy editing and quotes are cool.

Sione’s wedding
Immensely comforting movie. Funny scenes, great soundtrack, and the 2000s Auckland setting is beautiful.

Kikujiro
A gruff old man takes a young boy to see his mother. Deadpan and slow but also had me laughing a whole lot. Summer is the best season and I like when people in movies get along for no reason.

WCL podcast: The best albums of 2022

December 3, 2022December 12, 2022 Mark

via GIPHY

Statler: Well, it was good.
Waldorf: Ah, it was very bad.
Statler: Well, it was average.
Waldorf: Ah, it was in the middle there.
Statler: Ah, it wasn’t that great.
Waldorf: I kind of liked it.”
-‘The Muppet Show’.

I’m Mark, the Music & Film Specialist at Wellington City Libraries. Every month this year my colleague Neil and I reviewed some new material that we purchased for the Music collection at our CBD Te Awe library. This podcast is an roundup of some the albums we enjoyed listening to the most over the course of the year. Some of these titles will no doubt feature on various Best of 2022 lists, but others are just albums that struck us as being unique and interesting.

Below are the lists of our Top 10 picks for 2022 that we discuss on the podcast. Along with a some titles from each of us that didn’t quite make the cut, but came close! You can click on the image links from our ‘Top Ten’ to reserve any of these items from the catalogue.

Mark’s Picks:

Neil’s Picks:

Some titles that came close to our ‘Top Ten’:

Space 1.8. / Sinephro, Nala
Mark: Space is the place on this debut album from Caribbean-Belgian, London-based, Jazz composer/harpist Nala Sinephro. Gathering some of the new stars of the UK Jazz scene (including Nubya Garcia), she has created an ambient Jazz classic. Pedal harp, modular synths, and saxophones combine in a swirl of liquid soundscapes to form warm meditative pieces. Like the soundtrack to a journey through the cosmos, or through’s one’s own mind. Deeply relaxing.
Neil: Nala Sinephro uses and blurs the use of acoustic and electronic elements in this ambient cosmic Jazz piece. It is an intimate, mellow, and very relaxing work; yet never dull, more a transfixing lure of sound. It feels like a new movement has begun with albums like this and Promises, the album by Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders in its fold.

Sun’s Signature / Sun’s Signature
Mark: ‘Sun’s Signature’ are Elizabeth Fraser & Damon Reece, and while Fraser has provided guest vocals to numerous tracks over the years, this EP represents the first real release from the ex-Cocteau Twins singer since a 2009 single. More accessible than even late period Cocteau Twins her vocals, once buried in a sonic swirl, cascade down like the warmth of the sun itself. Drawing inspiration from nature, these 5 sensual tracks are as beguiling and uplifting as you would expect from someone who was once described as ‘…the voice of God’. As close as music comes to a religious experience…
Neil: It’s been a long time since the Cocteau Twins split over quarter of a century ago. If you are unfamiliar with their work, they almost single-handedly created the genre of dream pop, and are commonly regarded as one of the UK’s most important bands of all time. Since then their singer, the incomparable Elizabeth Fraser’s, irregular one of guest appearances on albums have often been spectacular, take for example Teardrop on Massive attack’s 1998 album Mezzanine. However, it could be said that her solo work has been rare much more patchy and largely unfocused, however ‘Sun’s Signature’ is a 30 minute EP that is a spectacular return. Elizabeth’s always sublime voice is there and showcased to perfection, and as it has matured it has gained a warmth and humanity. The lyrics show this marked difference too. For a start you can understand and relate to them in a way the ethereal and celestial wordless words of most Cocteau Twins lyrics don’t – one critic once described them as ‘lost in beauty’. It’s also a dense and rich musical production, reportedly ten years in the making and enhanced by the distinctive fingerprint production of Damon Reece. Welcome back.

Strange mornings in the garden / Loyal Seas
Mark: ‘Strange Mornings in the Garden’ is the debut album from The Loyal Seas, which is a collaboration between Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses, The Breeders, Belly) and Brian Sullivan (Dylan in the Movies). They both get a chance to shine on individual tracks, but the best moments are when they combine their vocals, as their vocal tones and sparkling harmonies meld perfectly together (his a low register growl, hers the sound of sweet honey). Shimmering, lush, indie folk-pop that mixes a big heartland rock, orchestral elements, washed of synths and reverb laden guitars. A refreshingly original album that moves from sweeping ballads to tightly-knit, kinetic pop-rock.
Neil: Tanya Donelly and Brian Sullivan have been friends and worked together for nearly thirty years, and these decades of friendship show in the easy and relaxed nature of this album. ‘Strange mornings in the garden’ is a glittering, shimmering, gorgeous melodic indie pop work very much its own thing, but it reminded me in places of the more mellow works of bands like The Beach Boys or The Byrd’s. There is definitely an uplifting summery vibe to the poetic lyrics and radiant supporting music. I liked this release a lot.

Targala, la maison qui n’en est pas une. / Parrenin, Emmanuelle
Mark: 73 year old Emmanuelle Parrenin is a cult French musician whose debut solo album came out in 1977. A singer, harpist & hurdy-gurdy player she began in the traditional folk genre, but her strange life & musical journey has taken her through punk, techno and the avant-garde. Parrenin spent her first period of lockdown on the edge of the desert in Morocco, having been invited there to play a festival, and this album is a kind of psych-folk meander of ambient harp, dulcimer, synths, guitars, percussion & saxophones, creating an atmosphere that has the feel of a shimmering desert dream. The most unique & original music is being made on the fringes like this, and you won’t find a more interesting or haunting ambient album than this.

Patina / Tallies (Musical group)
Mark: More dream pop with this Canadian Quartet, fronted by singer Sarah Cogan, whose ambition seems to be a note perfect recreation of that early 90s 4AD alternative-pop sound. Their 2019 debut was supposedly such a perfect amalgamation of that Lush/Sundays/Cocteau Twins sound, that it came to the attention of ex-Cocteau Simon Raymonde’s Bella Union label – who snapped them up for this, their follow up release. Shimmery, jangly guitars, shoegaze, sweet ethereal vocals drenched in reverb, it’s all there on this album, but with enough variation on each track to keep things interesting. Dream pop has become one of the most watered down genres of recent times, and while Tallies just seem like another band mining those same influences, they are just so good at it, that it’s like hearing it for the first time all over again. Recommended.

I love you Jennifer B / Jockstrap
Mark: Jockstrap are a London experimental pop duo, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye, both graduates of the prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and ‘I love you Jennifer B’ is their debut full-length following 2 EPs in 2018 & 2020. This really is something completely different, a bonkers deconstructionist melange of elements of chamber pop, electronic beats, introverted cabaret, Jazz, Punk-pop, and Baroque chamber folk based around an 18-piece orchestra & Ellery’s remarkable vocal facility. Full of tonal shifts, chaotic song structures, and eccentric character sketches, all immaculately produced. One the most original albums of 2022.

KiCk i. / Arca
Neil: Hyperpop is perhaps the most uniquely 21st century of musical forms, its origins can be traced to around 2010, and the work of artists such as Sophie and A.G. Cook. ‘Kick I’ is very much a maximalist hyperpop album in that genres mould, and features a glittering array of guest artists such as Shygirl, Björk and Sophie (recorded before their tragic death). If you are unfamiliar with the genre, it’s comprised of high energy, heavily layered, genre jumping, experimental sounds, mashed together into dancefloor tracks. Arca really embraces the joy in this and who they as a person. The album revels in the in-between spaces present in genres, languages, and genders, and is a bold experimental and radical dancefloor album that is genuinely exciting to listen to.

Found light / Veirs, Laura
Neil: ‘Found light’ is a mysterious haunting album, like a collection of ancient and modern folklore song tales and poems set to beautiful music. There is sparse instrumentation here, but the core of the work is Laura’s expressive voice and crystal bright shimmering guitar. It sounds like an artist exploring a vibrant dream, an exploration of passing seasons and weather, fleeting colours and senses, tastes slowly dissolving on the tongue, moments of time that gradually move on and fade. In its own very gentle way, I found the album riveting.

Drive my car : original soundtrack. / Ishabashi, Eiko
Neil: A cool smooth and nuanced film soundtrack. The film which it accompanies explores acceptance betrayal and grief and is an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story. In many circles the movie has been heralded as a masterpiece, and the music soundtrack perfectly mirrors the highly reflective nature of the film.

Staff Picks: CDs & Vinyl

August 30, 2022August 30, 2022 Mark

Here are some new, and older, CDs & Vinyl that our Library staff have enjoyed listening to recently.

Gus’ Picks:

Most of my musical discoveries this year can be put under the banner of “female-fronted 80s/90s genre-revival art-pop”. Wet Leg’s debut self-titled album (favourite track: Chaise Longue) more than lived up to the hype, with their varied Britpop-esque guitar-heavy tunes about small-town woes and young love. Australian singer Hatchie’s recent album Giving the World Away (favourite track: The Rhythm) and Mitski’s Laurel Hell (favourite track: The Only Heartbreaker) was a nice throwback to the kind of college rock and heavily-produced bubblegum pop of the 90s that I was cutting my teeth on as a burgeoning Top 40 listener. My advice to future artists: if you can somehow blend The Cranberries with Sugababes, I’ll be your fan forever.

Martin’s Pick:
The tipping point / Tears For Fears
If you liked Tears for Fears in the 80s/90s, the big sound, the big voice of Roland Orzabal and the anthemic large scale songs, then 2022 is a good year for you. It’s easy to wallow in the familiar comfort of a well-loved sound but often the ‘new stuff’ of perennial groups, seems like a lesser pastiche of the original that you loved long ago. Those ‘old’ groups that are now old but still churning it out. So you will definitely get that from ‘The Tipping Point’. It’s familiar, there’s the same beats, the same build-up of songs and the same signature sound, but it is very well done. I thought The Seeds of Love was a good album (that’s 1989!!) but with a little too Beatlesy. The Tipping Point has the same feel as Songs from the Big Chair, often quite bombastic, but it’s the tiny details of sounds and the lush flow that takes you along. Orzabal’s voice is still powerful and subtle when needed and there is a good mix of the loud and soft. ‘Stay Don’t Stay’ shows Orzabal’s tone and rhythm, while ‘River’s of Mercy’ is so Tears For Fears and a beautiful song. ‘End of Night’ is punchy and ‘Break the Man’ sounds like a sure fire single. So at the moment I’m loving a return to form.

Mark’s Pick:
Hi / Texas (Musical group)
Someone stole the first copy we bought of this before it even went out, so I guess there is at least one other fan of this band still out there. Texas originated in the 80s, and basically dabbled in multiple genres (the Americana of their 1989 debut ‘Southside’, the electro-pop of 1997’s ‘White on Blonde’, the soul stylings of 1999’s Hush, collaborations with rappers like Wu-Tang Clan) before all those things became hardened into the retro classicism of today’s music. Similarly to fellow 80s band Sade, they don’t tour much, and seem to have no interest in reissuing their back-catalogue albums as Deluxe or Anniversary issues, so you tend to forget they are actually still around until they put out a new album. Originally this started as a rare archival project, featuring an albums worth of unreleased tracks from their ‘comeback’ album ‘White on Blonde’. In the course of this they found 3 songs which were only half-finished, decided to complete them, and then inspired by the older material wrote a bunch of new songs. The tracks range from disco influences, to folk, country, & synthy 80s sounds, and are mostly upbeat, with the addition of a few heavier ballads that were added post lockdown and following the sudden passing of singer Sharleen Spiteri’s mother. There’s a co-write with Richard Hawley, Clare Grogan from Altered Images duets on “Look What You’ve Done”, and the Wu-Tang Clan and Ghostface Killah feature on “Hi”. There’s a timeless quality to their intelligent and well-crafted pop music, as well as the maturing emotional resonance of Spiteri’s lovely voice, that make this the kind of soothing pop music that always puts you in a better mood.

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Staff Picks: Movies at the Library

August 28, 2022December 2, 2022 Mark

Here are some new, and older movies, that our library cinephiles have enjoyed watching recently.

Gus’ Picks:

The worst person in the world
Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest film which follows four years in the life of Julie, a woman on the verge of her thirties trying to figure out herself, her career, her passions, and her love life. Told episodically in acts, the film is one of the best attempts I’ve seen at articulating that particular Millennial desire to be remarkable in your time, how being anything less makes you feel like the titular ‘worst person in the world’, and the malaise that soon sets in from both the disappointment on never succeeding and the relief of never committing. Heartwarming, hilarious, and not a little profound.

The Matrix Resurrections
I always thought ‘The Matrix’ was the one series that actually deserved a modern reboot; like the ‘red pill’, it’s easier to swallow a concept like the Matrix in a world that has been moulded even more by computers and algorithms than ever before. The question is, what do you say with that idea today? What, for better or worse, has the Matrix, both the film and the concept, done to our culture? Does it still have a place in the era of Twitter and virtual reality? Fortunately, Lana Wachowski (now directing solo without her sister, Lily) has been stewing on those questions, and delivers a sequel that both expertly updates the concept and puts it in context of its own legacy. Don’t go in expecting it to reinvent cinema like the first one, just remember to keep your mind open to the possibilities. Some ideas are just too good to stay dead.

Dune
Denis Villeneuve takes a crack at the ‘unadaptable’ space epic that defined science fiction for decades, and he proves more than up to the task. While definitely feeling like a ‘Part 1’, Dune’s scope, worldbuilding, creature design, and cinematography are second-to-none, and the epic, mesmerising score by Hans Zimmer is the perfect compliment. On a personal note, I think this is the best realisation of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide line “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t”.

The courier
Based on the true story of Greville Wynne, a British businessman who gets roped into smuggling secrets out of Russia on behalf of the CIA and MI:6. A solid Cold War thriller, and a reminder that Benedict Cumberbatch is actually a really great actor when he’s not being stunt-cast (see also: Patrick Melrose).

First cow
In 1820s Oregon, a humble cook from Maryland and a worldly immigrant from China meet through happenstance and become fast friends, eventually setting up a business selling ‘oily cakes’ to the hungry trappers and settlers in their neck of the woods. However, the only way they can get the milk for their cakes is to steal it from the only cow around, which happens to be owned by the richest man in the territory. The first half is about two guys in 1820s start-up culture, while the second half is the sweetest, gentlest heist movie you’ll ever see. Perfect for a rainy weekend or a quiet night in.

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Tag: staff picks

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Staff Picks: CDs & Vinyl

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