Sons of Loki

I just saw a poster downstairs advertising the last party of the 00′s, and I realised – the noughties are ending, the Decade Without A Proper Name. It feels like we barely knew you. And yet everything exciting that ever happened to me happened in these ten short years. There’s a blog post in that.

But for now, I thought I’d just go over a few of my favourite songs of 2009. I’m usually two or three years behind modern popular music (have you heard of these Arctic Monkeys?), but this year I made a mild effort to keep up. Here’s what I have enjoyed:

Jamie T – Sticks ‘n’ Stones
I was vaguely away of Jamie T for a while, but it was only this year that my brother introduced me to him. And what a tune, of past dalliances and teenage frivolities.

University of Chicago’s Voices in your Head – Magic
Ben Folds recorded an a cappella album. Not usually my musical style of choice, I’ll admit, but when someone on Twitter (one of the RPS guys?) linked me to it on Spotify I was immediately hooked. This song in particular will always remind me of my time in Korea, and is possibly the most beautiful song on a fantastic album.

Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling
You know what made me feel old this year? I looked at one of those “What UCAS didn’t tell you when you signed up for university” groups, and one of the things was “That people will play “I Gotta Feeling” at full volume 24/7.” And that’s when I realised there’s a whole year of new inductees who are just getting their first taste of university life and their soundtrack is a song that came out in the summer, a song that didn’t even exist when I started uni. (Uh, last year.) But still, a great tune.

Florence + The Machine – Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)
There’s something about this whole song, the simultaneous power and vulnerability in Ms Welch’s voice in lines like “I must become the lion-hearted girl…” Wonderful.

Lazy FLow – Mambo Fever
There’s something about having a keyboard that makes a man go “whoop! whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop!” and “aarg, aag-agg” that appeals to something deep inside me.

Final Fantasy – Lewis Takes Action
I am very excited about Owen Pallett’s upcoming album Heartland. Even with his silly new haircut, he is still spellbinding in a way unlike any other artist. I mean, who else can reference “Be My Baby” and “Ashes to Ashes” (and even Spirited Away?) in the same song?

Good morning, Mr. Ben. It’s about six-thirty, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Ah, just laying here in the bed: half awake, half asleep, thinkin’ aboutcha…

It’s about seven o’clock, Norwich, sitting here listening to Johann Johannsson’s “Part 1: IBM 1401 Processing Unit“, a hauntingly beautiful piece of classical music incorporating recordings of electronic tones generated by an old IBM 1401 mainframe, thinking about Nietzsche’s Wille zur Macht, or Will to Power, or will to pleasure, or at least some slightly different version. It has occurred to me that everyone is in it for themselves. Politicians want power, obviously. Hedge-fund managers want money. Nuns want everyone to respect them as paragons of virtue. Philanthropists want people to see how kind they are, or (if they donate anonymously) are donating to feel the warm fuzzy feeling of being charitable. People who sacrifice their lives for a cause are doing it because they want to achieve something after death and be remembered as heroes. And so forth: no one ever truly does anything for other people without having something in it for themselves. Depressing? Perhaps not. It’s just the way things are.

I’m sorry, that was a bit sixth-form philosophy-y.

Saw Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds last night – actually the first Tarantino film I’ve seen in the cinema, or been old enough to see in the cinema – and was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised. I’d heard mixed reviews, about Tarantino having lost his touch and being far too up his own arse to make a good film any more, but – both those things are true, and yet Tarantino is still a wonderful director, and Basterds is as good as Kill Bill, if nothing more. Some of the post-modern trickery he loves to employ is a little hackneyed (an unseen narrator popping in, drawing notations on the screen) but they’re still entertaining, particularly the twist of a certain character and subplot which you expect to rear up later but which gets literally shot to pieces with absolutely no fanfare halfway through and isn’t referred to again. Such genius! Such talent! Etc. And there’s a particularly gorgeously-shot scene with Mélanie Laurent in a red dress leaning next to of a window, with anachronistic David Bowie playing in the background.
True, I nearly groaned at the final line: “You know, I think this might be my masterpiece” – followed by a cut to “INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS” and the credits. It’s not his masterpiece by any means – that’d still be Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction – but in an age of so much shit cinema, it seems desperately unfair to berate Tarantino for not living up to his previous work.

Kinda want to learn German or French now, still.

Before that, yesterday, we were intending to head to the park but for various reasons we ended up at Shaun’s – that’s Seb and Rob and Steve and me – and I’d brought my mandolin. Shaun got down his sister’s guitar, and Steve and I had a tiny jam. I have very rarely had the opportunity to jam with people, but it’s stupendously good fun, and makes me look forward to the time I start a chart-storming electrobluegrass band. Then we wheeled out Shaun’s keyboard and spent an hour or two playing any old crap – not very well, but having a great time nevertheless.

Yes, it’s 19:11 and I’m listening to Ennio Morricone’s “The Surrender” which Tarantino pilfered for the Inglourious soundtrack, sun setting outside, pink notebook before me, PC at Shaun’s so I got the laptop hooked up to the big monitor, thinking about Japan, where practically everyone from my course now is buying things from vending machines and looking at skyscrapers and hanging about in airports and eating sushi and doing all the awesome things I can’t do and now those 32 days seem longer than ever. But I’ll survive. I don’t even know why I can’t abide the wait. Japan isn’t that great. But it is very, very great. I just think back to a moment in Shinjuku or Shibuya or Ikebukuro, dashing through the rain-drizzled, neon-soaked streets from bar to bar at midnight with people I barely knew, where I just felt incredibly, unbelievably happy. Ah, it’ll come soon enough.