James Blake – “Overgrown”

The second album of the 24 years old London producer starts like this: “I don't want you to know / I took it with me / But when things are thrown away like they are daily / Time passes in the constant state / So if that is how it is/ I don't wanna be a star / But a stone on the shore / Long door, frame the wall / When everything's overgrown”, from its song album-title Overgrown, which is much better than his debut “ James Blake” that offered only one single heard outside of England “there’s a limit to your love” - it's not even good.

Criticism like this one is arrogance. “Retrogade” is a new approach of Blake to dub step sound and minimal electronic, the powerful explosion of the chorus, the ups and downs beats with his whispering voice, resulted in a perfect single.  In “Take a Fall for Me”, Blake invited rapper RZA from Wu-Tang Clan and it turned out to be a cool rap track. “Dlm” and “Our Love Comes Back” are both depressing but “Digital Lion”, in turn, makes you step into your dancing shoes, also “Voyeur”.

Blake is something special. Great show in Coachella 2013, in the stage there were drums in the middle, James Blake himself on the right side (piano, PC, sampler and vocals) and on the left side a synthesizer, drum machine, music sequencer and sometimes a guitar.  Nevertheless, the tracks don’t sound the same live as they do recorded. I’d love to see Blake in a different stage. I saw him once in Optimus Alive 2011, but again the stage was unfamiliar, and the afternoon time wasn’t helping, only hundreds watching - a pity. 

He isn't a rock start but he does a good job exploring new electronic beats, so here's a  4/5.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - “Push the Sky Away”

“Push the Sky Away” is one of the best albums of 2013. What a record! Nick Cave expresses better than ever his writing skills: the whole album is a poem. Amazing piece of work with Warren Ellis (violin, viola), who co-produces seven of the nine album’s songs.

“Jubilee Street”, a dark song, “push the sky away” full of hope, acceptance ( push the limits away), “Higgs Bosom Blues”, a trip to Geneva that ends with Miley Cyrus flooding in a swimming pool in Taluca Lake, “Mermaids” and “Wide Lovely Eyes”. The album is a fairy tale (mermaids, water, skies), humans versus mermaids, not from this earth. 5/5

Upcoming show in Oporto, Optimus Primavera Sound 2013 May 30th

Movie of the week – “Band of Outsiders”

Without a doubt Godard had found the formula for what I call a true cinema with his nouvelle vague histories. In Godard’s “Band of Outsiders” two friends (Arthur and Franz) try to robber a parisien madame and her money they think come from unpaid taxes. Odile (Anna Karina) is helping them, a young girl they met at English class. The part where they actually met her is genius, their teacher is reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in French for a translation assignment. The three speak poor English. Odile doesn’t love the cinema nor the theater – funny and ironic the way Godard plays with the emotions between people and the cinema – she prefers “la nature”. She is in love with Arthur but he is unreadable and Franz is in love with her.

Best scene – Dance in the café; Worst scene – Arthur assaults Olive, putting the blame of their failed plan on her.

My first incursion into Godard’s movies was“Vivre sa Vie” (1962), then “À Boute de Suffle” (1960), “Le Mépris” (1963), “Pierrot Le Fou” (1965) and at last “Band of Outsiders” (1964), wholly random choices and what impresses me the most is that he directed nearly a movie per year and all of them quality, wary, superior master-pieces. I just couldn't stop watching, I was emotionally engaged. As a woman, I look different to his approach, especially the scripts. Even before I read Godard used Anna Karina as an object of creation for his films, he had been aggressive to her, though I really didn’t mind to check if it is only gossip or an accurate fact, even then I had the opinion about his conception of women characters: naïve, curious, emotional, beautiful, and free, for it bothers me seeing this kind of violence in his movies. 4/5

Movie of the week – “The Iron Lady”

In the month where the citizens of the world woke up by the sound of Margaret Thatcher’s death it’s mandatory to watch / re-watch her autobiographic movie "The Iron Lady", directed by Phyllida Lloyd, praised for her work in opera and the movies Mamma Mia! and Abba. There’re those who might know her career enough: her politics ideology and the way she had run England over 11 years ( 1979 – 1990), but this movie is a great opportunity to see first an amazing actress Meryl Streep, who won the oscar in 2012 for the role, second London’s street frames and the parliament in the 80’s marked by the end of Cold War.

Also, the script is fairly-good: Maggie the grocer’s daughter who became Secretary of State for Education, Leader of the Conservative Party and the first and only woman Prime Minister in the country’s history.

Though not all measures were popular, quite normal as far as politics concerns - she was harshly criticized during Falklands War - the movie articulates her foremost politics and sociological memoirs. Maggie’s weaknesses and strengths are revealed in a strong movie as the character itself, with roundtrips from youth to mental illness. 4/5.

DEVENDRA BANHART - MALA, 2013

Devendra Banhart,Venezuelan American singer-songwriter and visual artist who had played in Portugal a couple of times -  Optimus Alive and Festival Para Gente Sentada -, is back with a new album "Mala". The single (video below) is a delightfull folk-rock song, an easy-going melodie that could enter in Silver Linning Playbook's soundtrack. In "Mala" Devendra breaks up with its freak-folk past and achieves, after 8 albums, musical maturity. 3.5/5

Shows:

Casa da Música - 2 de Agosto 

CCB - 3 de Agosto

Weekend

In its seventh edition, Dias da Música em Belém, in CCB (Centro Cultural de Belém) addresses the Romantic Impulse in two aspects: the historical and popular music. From Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Chopin to John Lennon, Berlioz to the French chanson d'amour, the festival proposes a musical journey into the roots of Romanticism and detects the persistence of romantic feeling, erudite or ordinary, until today. It aims to deliver answers  to what is romanticism today, for us and if we can still be romantic in the XXI century. 

More informations:

http://www.ccb.pt/

INDIE LISBOA 2013

Independent Film Festival Indie Lisboa is back, under the slogan "Hollywood is running out of ideas",  from April 18th to 28th you can see a wide range of  non commercialised movies, well at least it's the main ideology but we all know that it's hard to make a medium and profitable film festival for niches, that's probably why there's a premiere of Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, next thursday 25th, and I intent to be there. Unfortunately today I will miss the opening ceremony with No by Pablo Larraín, for the plot the movie promises a good approach on Chile's history and culture. "An ad executive comes up with a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum.", says IMDB.

Festivals 2013: the shows you can't miss

Coachella, South by Southwest (US) Primavera Sound (Spain), Glastonbury (England) are, beyond question, the greatest music festivals in the world. One week after Coachella, which reminds me a bit of Woodstock fever, here’s a list of the best 2013 music festivals we've got in Portugal and the live shows you really can’t miss. 

• Optimus Primavera Sound May 30th - June 01st - Porto

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
James Blake
Blur
My Bloody Valentine
Savages

• Optimus Alive July 12,13,14 - Oeiras

Tame Impala
Alt-J
Django Django
Dead Combo
Twin Shadow

•  Super Bock Super Rock July 18,19,20 - Meco

Toy
Arctic Monkeys
Johnny Marr
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Gary Clark Jr

• Festival Paredes de Coura August 13,14,15,16,17 - Paredes de Coura

Toy
The Kills
Palma Violets
Alabama Shakes

Playlist

Casa das Histórias - Paula Rego

Casa das Histórias is a museum in Cascais which is an homage to the works of Portuguese painter Paula Rego (Lisbon 1935 -) and her husband future artist Victor Willing. Designed by Eduardo Souto de Moura it opened in 2009 and includes a collection of painting, drawings and engraving.

 

“The collection has been put together thanks to the generous donation made by Paula Rego of all of her etchings, amounting to 257 in total, along with a set of 278 drawings, most of which have never been seen before.”    

Paula Rego (today an English citizen as well) was influenced by aesthetic surrealism in the 1960 (Juan Miró) but in 1990 her career took a boost with the change of style following Rego's appointment to be the first 'Associate Artist' of the National Gallery, London, which ended up in a series of works which came to characterise the popular perception of Rego's style, comprising strong clear drawing, with depictions of equally strong women in sometimes disturbing situations.

 

This antithesis of what is considered feminine behaviour, and many other works in which there appears to be either the threat of female violence or its actual manifestation, has associated Rego with feminism, and she has acknowledged reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex at a young age and this making a deep impression on her.

Let's say you’re visiting Lisbon is definitely worth seeing. Bonus: free entrance, beautiful café with balcony inside the garden that surrounds the artistic building. Below some paintings you might see there.

 http://www.casadashistoriaspaularego.com/

 

 

Serge Gainsbourg and B.B (1967)

Walden conclusion

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the licence of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, you work need not to be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Henry D. Thoreau, in Walden, p 288.

While I'm finishing read Walden I've found online some nature pictures that are true inspirations.

 

Edition by rollip

Syria

My fav picture in a long time. Thanks to Stringer from Reuters