Well the world continued to come to an end this week. What with ever more economic gloom and doom about, the bold Nicky Sarkozy telling us how to run our country, our elderly having to fork out more for health insurance because our failed Minister for Health cannot read, and, to top it all of, we had some survey telling us that we have the worst quality of life in Europe, it has been nothing short of a miracle that we got out of bed at all.
So, a wee bit of cheer is sorely needed around here and No Ordinary Fool is on hand, as ever, to deliver! Continuing a recent penchant for Seattle bands on this site (they never went away, you know!), this week’s offering is a chirpy little number from a band known as Grand Archives. The song is called Minature Birds and is taken from their eponymous debut album from earlier on this year.
Anyway, take it handy, Mandy, whatever y’all get up to! After all, Monday can always wait a couple of days more to come around!
The Light House Cinema in Smithfield, Dublin will be showing Dambé - The Mali Project on a limited, exclusive basis beginning on Friday, July 25. The film is a documentary that follows well-known Irish musicians Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers) and Paddy Keenan (uilleann pipes) as they travel through Mali in search of musical inspiration. The journey takes them on a 3,000 mile trip that culminates in a live performance at one of the world’s remotest music festivals, Le Festival au Desert.
The reason for mentioning the film at this stage is that there is a special advance viewing at 7pm on Thursday July 24. This screening will include a Q&A session with both the director and the producer of the film, as well as music from Ó Maonlaí, Keenan, and Malian musician Afel Bocoum.
Tickets for this one-off event can be purchased here.
One of the remarks that gets made a lot whenever the debate over immigration comes up is that allowing too many immigrants into Ireland to live will change the “Irish identity”. It is always said with such gravitas that you could easily be mistaken into believing that our identity has remained unchanged for centuries and it is only now with people from other countries coming here in the hope of a better life that we are suddenly in danger of having it altered.
As James Joyce would have it, “shite and onions!”
Here are the seven things that have altered Irish identity the most over the past three decades. They are listed in a loose chronologcal order and do overlap to some degree. However, as you can see, net immigration into this country is not included as one of them. Read more »
There can only be a few people out there who did not feel different, alienated, or inferior at some stage during their adolescence. Imagine, though, what it must be like when this is your life for almost every day that you can remember. This, alas, is the plight of Ben (Greg Timmermans), a Belgian teenager who suffers from Asperger Syndrome.
Ben’s story is told in four interweaving parts. The first shows his life both in school and at home. In the former, he is the target of incessant bullying from the pondlife in his class. The second shows Ben’s childhood memories of either being prodded and probed by doctors or being teased and tormented by his classmates. The third strand presents documentary-style interviews with various family members and school friends and teachers, all of which seem to refer back to some awful event that has just happened. The final part then shows Ben’s online life in a role-playing game in which he excels and where he has built up a relationship with a girl called Scarlite (Laura Verlinden). Read more »
Special No Ordinary Foolreporter and Kaiser Chiefs fanatic Skanger McNally files this exclusive report following the Oxegen festival this weekend:
Im tellin’ yiz. It woz de wurst Oxegen ever! Takin’ da bleedin’ mick dey were.
Shag all drugs goin’ for a start. So zero buzz. Woz wreckin’ me head all weekend long, it woz. Too many o’dem poshos not up for a scrap eider. Feckin’ typical. Thank Jayz for dem culchies doh. Mad for a gud punch-up dey duz be!
Reminds me, de poxy security tuk me nife on de way in, so culdnt slash any tents. Got busted den havin’ a dump aroun’ de back of de chip van. After dat, woz fecked out for flingin’ some of me mates about durin’ the Fratellis (mad dey were!) and den de Chiefs (bleedin’ rapid band!). Musta lost me lighter at sum stage dough, so culdnt even go n burn de tents of doz posho students. Read more »
A $20,000 prize for a full-length Canadian album, judged solely on artistic merit, without regard to genre or album sales.
This is how the independent Polaris Music Prize is described on its own website. Despite only being in its third year, the award has already gained a reputation for unexpected winners. In 2006, the inaugural prize went to the (admittedly) excellent He Poos Clouds by Final Fantasy. In doing so, though, it held off a 600-pound gorilla in Broken Social Scene’s eponymous album, not to mention Wolf Parade with Apologies to Queen Mary and The New Pornographers‘ Twin Cinema. Last year, the judges went one (or three) further with the highly surprising choice of Patrick Watson and their album Close To Paradise.
Patrick who? Exactly.
A quiet year perhaps?
Well… Fellow short-listers included Arcade Fire (Neon Bible), Feist (The Reminder), and Miracle Fortress (Five Roses). Okay, so the first two hardly needed the extra dosh or publicity, but how anyone could rank Five Roses behind Close to Paradise is more than my cranium’s contents can figure out. While there is nothing particularly awful about the latter (think of a less evocative Jeff Buckley with some Pink Floyd vibes), Graham Van Pelt’s debut offering simply puts you inside of Paradise from the get-go.
So to 2008. The short list was announced last week. It is as follows: Read more »
Guy Maddin is trying to escape. Must escape. Escape Winnipeg. Escape his mother. But how? The train! That’s how! However, he needs to stay awake. In a city of sleepwalkers. Must stay awake.
It is not easy. There are mystic forces. Mystic forces that run through the city. Brought them all here. Here to stay. The forces run through the river. Even below the river, some say. The buffalo. The settlers. All brought here. Brought to Winnipeg. Read more »
The Commission for Energy Regulation today approved a 17.5% increase in household electricity bills from 1st August. While some will be incandescent with rage at the news, I think that I am okay with it. Given how wet it has been recently, leaving the air-conditionning on the whole time in the dog’s kennel is probably not entirely necessary anyway.
Fear not, though, folks! The spectacular Christmas lights display at the front of the house stays on regardless!
With the amount of rain that has been falling here in the past week, a song about winter does not seem unseasonal at all. Indeed, there is definitely more of a summer vibe going on with Fleet Foxes’ White Winter Hymnal then there is outside!
For anyone not yet familiar with them, I hope that you enjoyed your annual hibernation! Just playin’! Fleet Foxes are a five-piece band that sing in four-part harmonies! They hail from Seattle and their EP and LP from this year have been getting a lot of people justifiably excited. This song is from their eponymous LP.
By the way, whoever does not say “Ahhhhhhhh” at the line “to keep their little heads from fallin’ in the snow” has a heart of ice!
Feral Children is a five- piece experimental rock band from Seattle. They have just launched their new album Second to the Last Frontier. To help promote it, they have also released a four-song EP as a free download. All four songs are taken straight from the debut album - no remixes, live versions or alternative take nonsense here! No sireee, Bob!
The lead singer is a chap by the name of Jim Cotton. He has clearly learned a thing or two from Avey Tare when it comes to singing. Indeed, there is quite a melting pot of influences to be heard on these quiet yet occassionally frenzied songs. Based on a handful of listens, there are defintiely some good moments on the EP (particulary on Spy/Glass House and Jaundice Giraffe), even if the music still has a distance to go yet in terms of growing on me properly. That said, I am going to pick up the album over the weekend to see what else that they have going on. Read more »
I was at a party the other night. In saying this, you should know that one of the things that most people seem to know about me is my interest in popular music. Indeed, it is a typical ice-breaking question to ask me if I have been to see any good gigs recently. Anyway, the pressing need to change the music on the stereo came up at some stage during this party. I (stupidly) mentioned that I had my iPod with me (ah, vino) and the response was definitely to go get it.
Now, I am no cop as a DJ, unless the invitation says “black tie” on it. Accordingly, this is not a limelight that I care to dance in. However, I was obviously lubricated enough on the night to put myself forward for some pitiless public pillory.
Not that my problems ended there. I have little or no chart music on my iPod. However, a quick scroll down through it offered up Foals. This makes for a good party option, thought I! Is it not tuneful? Is it not easy to get accustomed to? With confidence, I made my selection and pressed play. Two minutes later, I was informed politely but very firmly to “stop playing music that only people who appreciate music like”!
The implication was clear. In their eyes, I was another dreaded music snob simply trying to show off. Read more »
This is a French-made film that pays tribute to those French women who bravely joined in the fight against their country’s invaders in World War II. You would think that it might have something interesting to say, would you not? Alas, this fairly entertaining action romp proves to be more like any of a dozen old wartime movies that help to keep weekend afternoon television schedules filled. In particular, there are many allusions here to the 1967 offering The Dirty Dozen.
The plot sees four French women recruited in London to go on a daring rescue mission in northern France. At stake, potentially, is the success of the upcoming D-Day landings. Whilst the four initially fare well, things rapidly become quite complicated for them and each is ultimately confronted with a difficult moment of truth when she must make a decision that affects not just her own life or those of her comrades, but possibly those of thousands and thousands more besides.
Indeed, the characterisation of the four main women in the film is quite interesting. Louise (Sophie Marceau) is hardly on the job more than a couple of days before she finds out that she is pregnant, Read more »
