Book: The Crystal Bucket
Before the interwebs there was The Internet, and before that there was VHS, and before that there was plain old analog television. Remember TV? Remember wasting your life aimlessly rotating through those five measly channels? My housemate is still rotating, and it drives me nuts. For Christ’s sake, commit to a channel and mute the commercials...
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DVD: A Serious Man
How can the Coen brothers follow up No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading with this yawn-fest? Apparently it’s a black comedy, but it really isn’t that dark, and I don’t recall laughing even once. The best scene in the film occurs when the protagonist Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), stands on his roof and perves at h...
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CD | Vampire Weekend | CONTRA
Two years since their self-titled debut album went, well, ape shit, those indie prepsters Vampire Weekend are back with Contra. Whereas their self titled release was all about college life and the inevitable pooing in the pants that comes from entering the real world, Contra is a much more relaxed affair with the band suggesting “these songs ...
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CD | Flight of the Concords | I TOLD YOU I WAS FREAKY
This is easily one of the most stylistically weird albums I’ve ever heard; comedic parodies of rock, folk, rap, polka and disco and doing them in a way that sounds like they could be a song in the said genre. Flight of the Conchords are definitely the sort of band some people will not quite “get” though. As an avid fan of the TV s...
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CD | Julian Casablancas | PHRAZES FOR THE YOUNG
Oh, that tragic New York scene which dazzled us ever so briefly in a time that feels like ages ago now. And even though people stopped listening as abruptly as the movement began, no one bothered to tell the Strokes. They’ve been banging out similar sounding music for nearly a decade, and they believe in it so much that the lead singer decide...
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CD | Spoon | TRANSFERENCE
I have listened to so much of Spoon’s music in the past nine years; all of their albums are starting to sound the same to me. Which kind of sucks because they are one of the only American bands that I actually like. So when Transference came out this year, I got confused, cried a bit, and then sat on the floor clutching my knees to my chest w...
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CD | Massive Attack | HELIGOLAND
Bluelines, Protection, Mezzanine; such amazing albums to play whilst you and your partner are gettin’ jiggy wit it. Good news, you now have a fourth album to add to your Massive Attack fornication-rotation.The bad news? Babies born in September end up with rainy birthdays, so maybe buy this one in a few months. Heligoland is hot as f-bomb. I&...
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FILM | Daybreakers
At the risk of losing Merge’s thirteen to fourteen year old female demographic, vampires are not real. If they were, they’d be evil looking, heartless, subhuman murderous arseholes. You could argue that their immortality permits them centuries of experience to gain maturity and knowledge beyond anything our human vessels ever could, alo...
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CD | Mumford and Sons | SIGH NO MORE
Mumford and Sons are a difficult band to define. Floating somewhere between English folk-rock and British blue-grass, the band’s debut album Sigh No More has a unique flavour that has kept it at the top of my media player’s ‘most played’ list for months. You’ll no doubt have heard the album’s first single ‘...
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BOOK | The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
One of my all time favourite quotes is Winston Churchill’s famous “Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down”. Although this can be seen as a justification for decadent laziness, for me it’s also a mantra for simplicity. Simplicity in writing is a wonderful, if often neglected, skill. Unf...
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