OK, I know this is two days in a row with my '30 Days...' post being a bit on the brief side. But if you'll excuse the glibness...
If I were to take today's entry entirely seriously, I'd probably choose Dylan's 'Visions of Johanna', simply because there's a brief moment in that song which captures my insecurities with such devastating precision that I'm still a little uncomfortable repeating it*. But that's just a few lines, rather than a whole song, so I've gone for the cheap gag instead. 'Cos I tend to talk too much, right? You see what I did there?
Yeah, of course you do. Sorry.
To be honest, apart from the title, 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' isn't especially me (I'm not sure its especially anybody, outside of Morrissey's head). It's still a bloody good song, though, and perfectly encapsulates what I love about The Smiths that is almost entirely-absent from Morrissey's solo career (a subject on which I could elaborate for hours on end, but which boils down, essentially, to "Johnny Marr"). The lyric is a good one, and Morrissey delivers his vocals brilliantly (including the backing vocals on the chorus, sung by Moz but sped up to give the illusion of a female voice, and credited in the sleeve as "Ann Coats" in a joke which probably doesn't make a lot of sense to anyone who's never been to Manchester). But the true beauty is in the way the band play the song.
It's not got an especially-complex chord sequence - not by Smiths standards, anyway, although it's still a fair bit more sophisticated than it sounds at first - and there are no polyrhythms, lead guitar breaks, eccentric arrangements or any of the other flashy tricks generally employed by a band trying to show off their musical chops. Instead, there's simply an impeccably-tight group of musicians wrapping themselves around a melody, with no egos and whip-sharp timing - the guitar break at around 2:10-2:16, in particular, is among the finest displays of right-hand precision which you'll ever hear from anyone this side of Keith Richards. Marr might lack the more overt virtuosity which is the usual hallmark of an iconic guitar hero, but he can still chime out a rhythm with a unique musical voice, which remains almost impossible to imitate - check this out for an example of Morrissey's current live band entirely failing to do this song justice, for instance. How many genuinely great Smiths covers have you ever heard, anyway?
Of course, like all truly great songwriting/performing partnerships, they're both vastly lessened without each other. Morrissey still has a winning way with a turn of phrase or melody, and he's still a terrifically-charismatic performer, both live and on record. Marr remains a wonderful guitarist. But without Marr's instrumental sensitivity, Morrissey's more tedious pub-rock inclinations become dishearteningly-evident, while Marr's incendiary brilliance has been largely wasted on faceless session work, or bands packed out by charisma-free non-entities. He recently described the latest album by The Cribs as being "as good as anything I've done", a statement so mind-bogglingly, self-evidently untrue that one is forced to wonder what on Earth possessed him to say it. Meanwhile, Morrissey's solo career continues along a well-worn path of complete and total adequacy, with a handful of brilliant songs which would, without fail, be vastly improved were they performed by more interesting musicians, and an awful lot of must-try-harder self-indulgence which cries out for the stimulation and challenge which only a true collaborator can provide.
But for those few brief years that Morrissey and Marr were able to set egos aside and collaborate, they created magic. There's probably a lesson to be learned there, somewhere.
*"Little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously / He brags of his misery, likes to live dangerously". If you knew me in my teens/early twenties, you've probably got a fair idea of why that stings me quite so harshly as it does. If not, I doubt I could ever adequately explain it, and I'm not sure I'd want to.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Day 14: A song people wouldn't expect you to like
I've already written the best end of 2,000 words for this blog tonight, so this is going to be a short one. I've not got a lot to say about it, anyway.
I like musicals. Les Miserables is, quite clearly, one of the most rousingly-entertaining pieces of pure theatre to be found anywhere - I was tempted to choose the 'One More Day' mass medley from that for today's post, but it's so self-evidently magnifient that I can't believe anyone would be surprised to learn that I like it. Even the writers of South Park are clearly fans, as the spot-on homage/pastiche of it in the South Park movie demonstrates. 'West Side Story' features some of the best American songwriting of the 20th century, and even the likes of 'Chicago' can be great fun (the movie was terrible, mind). I don't generally listen to musical soundtracks much at home, but I've seen plenty of them on stage, and I'm always happy to take the chance to do so.
I'd imagine that might surprise a few people, so it seems like a reasonable subject for today's post.
I even like some Andrew Lloyd-Webber musicals, although he's not a favourite - generally his shows have one, maybe two memorable songs, padded out with plenty of filler, and he's obviously a profoundly-dislikeable human being. But when he's good, he can rip off Puccini as well as anyone in the business.
Cats is, frankly, a fairly terrible show. But this song, saccharine and melodramatic as it may be, has a genuinely beautiful melody, and when sung well - as it is here - it can soar. That's worth something.
I like musicals. Les Miserables is, quite clearly, one of the most rousingly-entertaining pieces of pure theatre to be found anywhere - I was tempted to choose the 'One More Day' mass medley from that for today's post, but it's so self-evidently magnifient that I can't believe anyone would be surprised to learn that I like it. Even the writers of South Park are clearly fans, as the spot-on homage/pastiche of it in the South Park movie demonstrates. 'West Side Story' features some of the best American songwriting of the 20th century, and even the likes of 'Chicago' can be great fun (the movie was terrible, mind). I don't generally listen to musical soundtracks much at home, but I've seen plenty of them on stage, and I'm always happy to take the chance to do so.
I'd imagine that might surprise a few people, so it seems like a reasonable subject for today's post.
I even like some Andrew Lloyd-Webber musicals, although he's not a favourite - generally his shows have one, maybe two memorable songs, padded out with plenty of filler, and he's obviously a profoundly-dislikeable human being. But when he's good, he can rip off Puccini as well as anyone in the business.
Cats is, frankly, a fairly terrible show. But this song, saccharine and melodramatic as it may be, has a genuinely beautiful melody, and when sung well - as it is here - it can soar. That's worth something.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Small Beautiful Events
"For some people, small beautiful events is what life is all about!"
-The Fifth Doctor, 'Earthshock' (1982)
I tend to view Doctor Who in terms of the small, beautiful moments. I think it might be a hangover from my earliest days, because I've been aware of Doctor Who since long before my young brain was capable of processing actual narrative. Moments after my younger sister was born, my parents were so struck by her greyish, wrinkled/squashed appearance that they gave her the nickname "Davros" - as you might imagine, this rather stuck with me (and, I suspect, with her, although possibly in a slightly less happy way). My friends and I used to eagerly dissect the latest episodes on the way to and from primary school, but it was never the plots which got us truly excited - I seem to recall Ralph Bisset doing a pretty good approximation of Sylvester McCoy's histrionic "If we fight like animals, we die like animals!" the day after Part 3 of 'Survival' aired. The imagery and iconography of the show is imprinted on my brain at such a deep, all-encompassing level that my response to the revived series has frequently erred towards the Pavlovian – if it looks, sounds, and quacks like Doctor Who, then the odds are that I’ll be tickled pink by it, whether it’s actually any good or not. That the show has, for the overwhelming majority of the past five years, been both very Doctor Who and very good indeed, is somewhat remarkable.
I generally avoid clip shows - they tend to bore me, and rarely capture the essence of whatever it is they’re trying to represent. But I could, and occasionally do, watch compilations of moments from Doctor Who for hours on end. This montage, from a 2007 episode of Doctor Who Confidential, genuinely brought a tear of joy to my eye the first time I saw it, and still fills me with a palpable sense of delight:
It's not that I can't appreciate some of the stronger plots with which Who has occasionally deigned to provide us - 'The Caves Of Androzani' is a masterpiece of tight, economical writing, and it's probably my favourite serial from the entire classic era. Steven Moffat's 'Empty Child' two-parter remains, I think, his finest work for the show, and it's still one of his most cleverly-plotted scripts. Even my favourite Russell T. Davies stories - and rightly or wrongly, he's not a writer known for his intricate, rigorously-constructed plots - tend to be the more tightly-plotted ones, like 'Smith & Jones', 'Gridlock', 'Midnight', or even 'The Christmas Invasion' (although I do retain a definite fondness for some of his less consciously-structured flights of pure, wild magic imagination). But if I had to settle on what really makes the show sing, for me, it all comes down to the moments.
So, it shouldn't really come as a surprise that I loved last night's 'The Beast Below' more-or-less unreservedly. Mild spoilers to follow, scroll down past the gerbil if you don't want to see them.
The plot, to be honest, was middling-at-best, and the societal structure and history of the Starship UK don't make a whole lot of sense if you really try to piece them together. Significant amounts of vital information were left completely un-filled-in (why was Britain the last country to leave? Why, since the other countries presumably managed just fine, were the Brits unable to put together a starship with an actual engine? What, exactly, were the Smilers for, and why were some of them half-human?). The escape-from-the-whale's mouth sequence, combined with the physiognomy of the creature itself as seen in the final shot, does rather beg the question of why the Doctor and Amy weren't just vomited directly into the void of space, and I'd love to know how they were able to dry their clothes so quickly for the subsequent scenes. But none of that matters at all, because so many of the moments we were given along the way were so wonderful, so note-perfect, and so essentially Doctor Who that I don't care for a second if the details of the backstory add up or not. Besides, the story of the episode wasn't really about the day-to-day details of the setting - that was just background colour, and it served the purpose admirably. The real meat was in the cataclysmic impact the Doctor's arrival has on that society, and that was delivered with delightful, and uncharacteristically-unrestrained, aplomb by new show-runner Steven Moffat.
This was, as a lot of people are pointing out, probably the least Moffat-esque script that the man himself has written for the show since 2005. None of his usual timey-wimey paradoxes, relatively-little overtly-comic banter (which isn't to say that it wasn't funny), not a hint of romance, and at no point did an almost-but-not-quite human figure repeat anything even vaguely reminiscent of a catchphrase. In fact, the lurching-monster quotient was surprisingly-low, with the Smilers failing to make as much of an impact as their appearance in earlier trailers might have suggested. It did, however, really hammer home what I think is going to shape up to be the fundamental difference between Russell T. Davies' Who and Steven Moffats – for all the scares in ‘The Empty Child’, ‘Blink’ or ‘Silence In The Library’, his vision of the show is ultimately lighter, more optimistic, and without the nihilism which was often lurking just below the superficial frothiness of Davies' vision for the show.
Just think of the Toclafane, from 'The Sound Of Drums’/’Last Of The Time Lords' - the inevitable future of mankind, to degenerate into a callously-homogenised army of hideously-mutated Steel Balls of Death, who kill, slaughter and maim their own ancestors for the sheer glee of it. And for all the sometimes-justified criticism of Davies’ reset-button endings, that one’s never fixed – that’s now the official Whoniverse End Of Humanity. Never mind shadow-piranhas or creepy statues which jump out and say "Boo" - that's how you do "dark" in a Doctor Who story. In the finest spirit of post-apocalyptic horror being served up to a post-football Saturday evening audience, it's one of the most shockingly-bleak ideas in the show's entire history. Nothing Moffat has ever done is that genuinely dark, and I seriously doubt that it ever will be. His mind simply doesn't work that way. His stories tend to be a lot more complicated than Russell’s, but at the same time, they’re arguably less complex, at least emotionally.
They're also, generally, a lot less freewheeling, more tightly-controlled and elaborately-structured. Which is why ‘The Beast Below’ came as such a delightful surprise (it’s also, I suspect, why it seems to have been a bit of a ‘Marmite’ story within Who fandom at large). Instead of exhaustively wrapping every idea, every loose plot strand up into a neat, intricate package, this was a sprawling mess of a script, packed with more ideas than it really had space to properly explore, and it was all the better for it. Watching the accompanying episode of Doctor Who Confidential, I was delighted to see that Moffat’s explanation for the half-human/half-Smiler creatures amounted, essentially, to “I just thought it was a cool idea”. It didn’t turn out to be intrinsic to the episode’s plot, as has been the case for most of the apparently-incongruous elements of his previous stories. He wanted a cool monster, so he stuck it in there, and trusted his audience to simply accept it because it felt right. That’s pure Doctor Who, and now that Moffat’s shown that he’s willing and able to let his imagination run unfettered when it seems appropriate, I think I’m finally ready to relax, and just enjoy his era on its own merits.
Speaking of merits…Matt Smith IS the Doctor. Brilliantly-so. If I had any reservations after ‘The Eleventh Hour’, it was that a lot of his dialogue, and a few mannerisms, were heavily-reminiscent of David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor – this episode absolutely blew those concerns away. While the character retains that innate essence of Doctor-ness which has been in place for well over forty years, Smith is bringing a lot to the part which is fresh and new. Simultaneously, though, he's cherry-picking elements of older Doctors, particularly Patrick Troughton, which weren’t really present with either Eccleston or Tennant. His freewheeling, unforced eccentricity is infectious, but there’s a lot more to him than just wackiness or mania – there’s an analytical, professorial air which is in sharp contrast to his immediate predecessor.
Very astutely, given Smith’s relative youth, both this episode and ‘The Eleventh Hour’ have included prominent scenes where he gets to interact with children – not only does he have a charming, easy-going chemistry with the young actors, but by placing him in that context, we get to see him from their perspective – not quite an authority figure, perhaps, but still as someone Old, who radiates wisdom and kindness in equal measure. That instinctively colours our impression of the character - it’s a very clever touch on Moffat’s part, and it’s worked magnificently.
Karen Gillan, as new companion Amy Pond, is similarly-excellent – she was split up from the Doctor for quite a bit of this story, which gave Gillan a welcome opportunity to show how the character fares alone. Happily, she more than holds her own. I’m trying hard to steer clear of the adjective “feisty” – not only does it seem to come as standard for all red-headed actresses, but it’s also been applied to every female Doctor Who companion since the ‘60s, and has become terribly-stale as a result. She blatantly is, though, which makes it rather hard to avoid. Independent, intelligent but clearly troubled – partly as a direct consequence of the Doctor’s appearances throughout her life, which gives an interesting twist to their relationship – it’s clear that there are still depths to her character which we’ve barely seen hinted at, and much of the meta-narrative of this season is presumably going to be devoted to the Doctor’s attempts to draw them out. Shades of the Seventh Doctor and Ace, perhaps, but hopefully rather better-written. That should fit well with the Troughton-isms in Smith’s performance.
The story was, like ‘The Eleventh Hour’, distinctly-reminiscent of a number of previous episodes – but where that one drew heavily from Moffat’s own back catalogue, this was a far more haphazard blend of elements from what I like to think of as RTD’s “mad future” stories – ‘The End Of The World’, ‘Gridlock’, and even ‘The Long Game’ were brought to mind, although it remained still very much its own entity. It reached further back, too – most notably to Tom Baker’s ‘The Ark In Space’, whose 29th Century exodus from Earth was directly referenced. There was also a sizeable chunk of Sylvester McCoy in there, with the Doctor effortlessly bringing down a whole corrupt society in a few short hours, just as he did in ‘Paradise Towers’, ‘The Happiness Patrol’, and so many of the Virgin New Adventures novels.
This Doctor may be good with kids and quick to crack a joke (the “escaped fish” gag was inspired), but there’s a steeliness, an unwillingness to compromise, behind that youthful façade, and it’s intriguingly-different from his predecessor’s “no second chances” persona. Quieter, less bombastic, but more intense and possibly more frightening – the moment in the torture chamber/pilot room, where he coldly dismissed Amy without a second thought, was genuinely chilling. We haven’t seen that side of the Doctor since Eccleston unceremoniously dumped hapless would-be companion Adam back on Earth, and that cold brusqueness was even more un-nerving here, directed at a character who we actually like. It’s good that the new Doctor is likeable, but it’s even better that we can’t always be entirely comfortable with him, either.
OK, here’s the gerbil.
I’m trying hard not to get too carried away, but if the show maintains this sort of standard, then not only are we in for a very strong season, but Matt Smith may just shape up into one of my favourite Doctors ever. So far, so very good indeed.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Day 13.5: BONUS CONTENT!
OK, I was totally lying in the previous post. There are totally some songs from which I derive a sick, morbid pleasure, and about which I feel almost (but not quite) as guilty as I probably should. I tend to collect such treasures and play them to my wife when she's least-prepared for it, as a form of aural torment.
Here are a few of the best/worst examples. If you can make it to the end of any of them, you will emerge as a Changed Person, able to see the world in new and surprising ways. And nothing will ever be able to hurt you again.
Shockingly-poor Death Metal band Six Feet Under have an ongoing side-project, which I like to call Making Good Songs Suck. They've been at it since...ooh, ages ago. Seriously, they're awful. Hilariously, wonderfully awful.
Next, the music of Alan Partridge's dreams. This kid is clearly far, far too into his sister. Apparently she's sixteen, too, which I suspect makes me some sort of Pervert In The Mind. Also, having looked around online, I'm 99% sure that this is not a piss-take. Real people actually made this music, and they thought it Good. Think on that for a while.
And finally, the greatest Bad MIDI File ever produced. Ignore the waffle at the beginning of the video - in fact, ignore the video entirely, just close your eyes and bask in the horror - wait until the swannee-whistle noises begin. Seriously, stick with this. If you're not in tears of pain and/or laughter by the end, then there is something seriously fucking wrong with you.
Here are a few of the best/worst examples. If you can make it to the end of any of them, you will emerge as a Changed Person, able to see the world in new and surprising ways. And nothing will ever be able to hurt you again.
Shockingly-poor Death Metal band Six Feet Under have an ongoing side-project, which I like to call Making Good Songs Suck. They've been at it since...ooh, ages ago. Seriously, they're awful. Hilariously, wonderfully awful.
Next, the music of Alan Partridge's dreams. This kid is clearly far, far too into his sister. Apparently she's sixteen, too, which I suspect makes me some sort of Pervert In The Mind. Also, having looked around online, I'm 99% sure that this is not a piss-take. Real people actually made this music, and they thought it Good. Think on that for a while.
And finally, the greatest Bad MIDI File ever produced. Ignore the waffle at the beginning of the video - in fact, ignore the video entirely, just close your eyes and bask in the horror - wait until the swannee-whistle noises begin. Seriously, stick with this. If you're not in tears of pain and/or laughter by the end, then there is something seriously fucking wrong with you.
Day 13: A song that is a guilty pleasure
I'm not fond of the idea of "guilty pleasure" music. For starters, there's the cognitive dissonance in the very phrase - if I squint, I can see it applying to, say, a particularly distasteful sexual kink/fantasy, but music? Fuck off. If you like something, that's because there's something about it which you find enjoyable, in which case why feel guilty?
That's rather borne out by the sort of examples which tend to crop up in "guilty pleasure" lists - they're invariably dominated by commercial pop acts. The very notion exists primarily so that oh-so-serious fans of so-called "REAL" music (ie., music produced by white men with guitars, bass and drums, none of this synthy crap) can admit to enjoying pop music without having to acknowledge that some of it might be, you know...good. Which, since I think a lot of pop music is very good indeed, offends me at a fairly base level.
All of which said (and here's where I contradict myself horribly), I can come up with a few fairly-good examples if I twist my mind around the term a little. It goes back to my comments last week about how the only songs I really hate tend to be by bands/artists I otherwise love, because that means that I care so much more when they produce something crap. I can work with that. So, resisting the obvious urge to go with something from Sandinista...
Grind/Death Metal pioneers Carcass are one of my favourite bands, no question. Their earliest work is a little raw for my tastes, mind - I can appreciate grindcore in limited doses, but find it a little too hard to listen to for whole albums at a time, and Carcass' first few records are good examples of grindcore at its most inaccessibly brutal. Once they mellowed slightly, though? Magnificent band. To be fair, I used to have a similar prejudice against just about all extreme metal - I could appreciate the musical sophistication, but those cookie-monster vocals? The often-sludgy production? That intense, domineering drum sound? No, thanks...it took a while for me to come round - and even then, it wasn't until I discovered Swedish prog-metal behemoths Opeth, the first band I'd heard who successfully combined 'clean' and 'growled' vocals as complementary elements of their overall sound, that I really started to appreciate the coarse, harsh sound of growled metal vocals as anything but a hindrance to the enjoyment of the music itself. Give it a chance, is probably what I'm trying to say here. It took me a while, but I'm glad I did.
Carcass developed, though, as they moved further away from the gore/grind obsessions of their early work, pushing their sound towards slightly-more melodic, conventionally-structured songs. In doing so, they inadvertently ended up at the cutting-edge of a developing genre - the melodic, highly-technical guitar work and song structures, combined with the still-brutal riffing, drumming and vocals would prove hugely-influential on melodic death metal, throughout the '90s and beyond. In fact, I'd rate Carcass right up there with Death (seminal Florida death metal group, probably set to feature in a blog entry of their own later on in this project) among the most significant figures in the development of DM into a musical form which I enjoy. Their third and fourth albums - 1991's Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious and 1993's Heartwork are, for my money, among the finest heavy metal records ever produced, and somewhere between the two records' contrasting styles - Necroticism is noticeably rawer, less polished and more aggressive, while there's a cleaner, more melodic side to Heartwork - lies my Platonic Ideal for Death Metal. I wouldn't want to have to choose between the two albums, and fortunately, I don't have to.
Unfortunately, as so often happens when a band's career progression develops along such a linear path, they took it too far. Their final album, Swansong (1996) essentially completes the transition into a polished, radio-friendly sound...and it doesn't work. It's certainly not a "sell-out", or anything equally-trite - it would have been far more dishonest for the band to continue forcing themselves to adhere to the extremity of their earlier music when that clearly wasn't what they were interested in doing, anyway - but still, it's a failure. The ugliness which had given texture to the more commercially-inclined material on Heartwork is almost completely absent here, and without it, there's an emptiness to the music. There are still some good riffs, Jeff Walker remains a strong vocalist, and the band are still impeccably tight. But it lacks 'oomph', for want of a better term - if I had to sum the sound of Swansong up in a slightly-clumsy soundbite, I'd probably say something along the lines of "It's like Megadeth meets post-Bon Scott AC/DC, but with heavier vocals". Which it isn't, really, but if you listen to the record, you might just see what I'm getting at anyway.
'Rotting In The Free World', today's song (and yes, that's a terrible pun), is the first song on the album. It encapsulates so much of what I don't like about the whole enterprise...and yet, I can't help but sort of like it. It gets my foot tapping, even as I'm thinking about how much less effective it is than any of the band's earlier work. Like the latterday Rolling Stones, there's a certain charm in hearing them go through the motions - yes, Keith Richards could construct those open-tuned, hammer-on-hammer-off riffs in his sleep by now, and very probably does, but he can still play the fuckers better than anyone else in the world. Same goes for Carcass, for the duration of this song, at least - never mind the manifestly-inferior songwriting, just listen to the band.
I still don't feel especially guilty about enjoying it, though. Sorry.
That's rather borne out by the sort of examples which tend to crop up in "guilty pleasure" lists - they're invariably dominated by commercial pop acts. The very notion exists primarily so that oh-so-serious fans of so-called "REAL" music (ie., music produced by white men with guitars, bass and drums, none of this synthy crap) can admit to enjoying pop music without having to acknowledge that some of it might be, you know...good. Which, since I think a lot of pop music is very good indeed, offends me at a fairly base level.
All of which said (and here's where I contradict myself horribly), I can come up with a few fairly-good examples if I twist my mind around the term a little. It goes back to my comments last week about how the only songs I really hate tend to be by bands/artists I otherwise love, because that means that I care so much more when they produce something crap. I can work with that. So, resisting the obvious urge to go with something from Sandinista...
Grind/Death Metal pioneers Carcass are one of my favourite bands, no question. Their earliest work is a little raw for my tastes, mind - I can appreciate grindcore in limited doses, but find it a little too hard to listen to for whole albums at a time, and Carcass' first few records are good examples of grindcore at its most inaccessibly brutal. Once they mellowed slightly, though? Magnificent band. To be fair, I used to have a similar prejudice against just about all extreme metal - I could appreciate the musical sophistication, but those cookie-monster vocals? The often-sludgy production? That intense, domineering drum sound? No, thanks...it took a while for me to come round - and even then, it wasn't until I discovered Swedish prog-metal behemoths Opeth, the first band I'd heard who successfully combined 'clean' and 'growled' vocals as complementary elements of their overall sound, that I really started to appreciate the coarse, harsh sound of growled metal vocals as anything but a hindrance to the enjoyment of the music itself. Give it a chance, is probably what I'm trying to say here. It took me a while, but I'm glad I did.
Carcass developed, though, as they moved further away from the gore/grind obsessions of their early work, pushing their sound towards slightly-more melodic, conventionally-structured songs. In doing so, they inadvertently ended up at the cutting-edge of a developing genre - the melodic, highly-technical guitar work and song structures, combined with the still-brutal riffing, drumming and vocals would prove hugely-influential on melodic death metal, throughout the '90s and beyond. In fact, I'd rate Carcass right up there with Death (seminal Florida death metal group, probably set to feature in a blog entry of their own later on in this project) among the most significant figures in the development of DM into a musical form which I enjoy. Their third and fourth albums - 1991's Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious and 1993's Heartwork are, for my money, among the finest heavy metal records ever produced, and somewhere between the two records' contrasting styles - Necroticism is noticeably rawer, less polished and more aggressive, while there's a cleaner, more melodic side to Heartwork - lies my Platonic Ideal for Death Metal. I wouldn't want to have to choose between the two albums, and fortunately, I don't have to.
Unfortunately, as so often happens when a band's career progression develops along such a linear path, they took it too far. Their final album, Swansong (1996) essentially completes the transition into a polished, radio-friendly sound...and it doesn't work. It's certainly not a "sell-out", or anything equally-trite - it would have been far more dishonest for the band to continue forcing themselves to adhere to the extremity of their earlier music when that clearly wasn't what they were interested in doing, anyway - but still, it's a failure. The ugliness which had given texture to the more commercially-inclined material on Heartwork is almost completely absent here, and without it, there's an emptiness to the music. There are still some good riffs, Jeff Walker remains a strong vocalist, and the band are still impeccably tight. But it lacks 'oomph', for want of a better term - if I had to sum the sound of Swansong up in a slightly-clumsy soundbite, I'd probably say something along the lines of "It's like Megadeth meets post-Bon Scott AC/DC, but with heavier vocals". Which it isn't, really, but if you listen to the record, you might just see what I'm getting at anyway.
'Rotting In The Free World', today's song (and yes, that's a terrible pun), is the first song on the album. It encapsulates so much of what I don't like about the whole enterprise...and yet, I can't help but sort of like it. It gets my foot tapping, even as I'm thinking about how much less effective it is than any of the band's earlier work. Like the latterday Rolling Stones, there's a certain charm in hearing them go through the motions - yes, Keith Richards could construct those open-tuned, hammer-on-hammer-off riffs in his sleep by now, and very probably does, but he can still play the fuckers better than anyone else in the world. Same goes for Carcass, for the duration of this song, at least - never mind the manifestly-inferior songwriting, just listen to the band.
I still don't feel especially guilty about enjoying it, though. Sorry.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Day 12: A song from a band I hate
There aren't really many bands or artists who I'd genuinely claim to hate - plenty that aren't to my tastes, and plenty that I don't think are any good, but hate? That's a strong word, and I try to reserve my hatred for those people and entities who truly deserve it. Liars, hypocrites, child-abusers, the Amish...you know, real arseholes. Simply making bad music isn't usually enough to warrant that sort of ire, and life's too short to waste valuable hatred on the merely-distasteful.
There's Sting, of course. There's always Sting. But he's not technically a "band", and besides, as the Artist Formerly Known As The Police he'll always be able to fall back on the fact that his early stuff was, much as it pains me to admit it...pretty good.
But however hard I try to pretend I'm above that sort of petty shit, there are always going to be a few exceptions. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any currently-active groups which I truly loathe, but if I look back a few years, to the turn of the millennium, and cringe as I recall this bunch of knuckle-dragging, cretinous dickheads who were once among the biggest bands in the world...
You see that face? Take a good look at that face. Violence may not be the answer, but I'm small and petty enough to admit that Fred Durst has a face I'd really, really love to stamp on. Hard.
I'm not prone to hyperbole*. But if Hitler and the Devil got together one night and fucked themselves up a little hatebaby, and the mutant hellspawn grew up mean and ugly....if that happened, then Limp Bizkit would be the Bad Kid who leads little Damien astray as he hit his teens. Bad, ugly people making bad, ugly music for an audience of bad, ugly morons. The quintessential soundtrack to the mindless violence-and-rape-fest of Woodstock '99, the point where rap-rock finally, irrevocably lost its way, the forerunners of all that would truly stink about mainstream rock music for most of the decade to come...I really, really hate this band. This is the first song by them which I recall being fully aware of, so while it's far from their worst, it's still probably the one which best sums up quite why they still set my teeth on edge.
*lie
Yeah, I suspect that the point of this entry was probably supposed to be to find a song I like by a band I hate. But there really aren't any - plenty of decent songs from bands I otherwise dislike (if it makes you feel any better, pretend I chose 'Light My Fire' by The Doors, and mentally fill in the blanks), but I honestly can't think of any produced by a band I genuinely hate. So this monstrous carbuncle on the arse of popular music will have to suffice.
Don't worry, no-one's going to force you to actually listen to it.
There's Sting, of course. There's always Sting. But he's not technically a "band", and besides, as the Artist Formerly Known As The Police he'll always be able to fall back on the fact that his early stuff was, much as it pains me to admit it...pretty good.
But however hard I try to pretend I'm above that sort of petty shit, there are always going to be a few exceptions. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any currently-active groups which I truly loathe, but if I look back a few years, to the turn of the millennium, and cringe as I recall this bunch of knuckle-dragging, cretinous dickheads who were once among the biggest bands in the world...
You see that face? Take a good look at that face. Violence may not be the answer, but I'm small and petty enough to admit that Fred Durst has a face I'd really, really love to stamp on. Hard.
I'm not prone to hyperbole*. But if Hitler and the Devil got together one night and fucked themselves up a little hatebaby, and the mutant hellspawn grew up mean and ugly....if that happened, then Limp Bizkit would be the Bad Kid who leads little Damien astray as he hit his teens. Bad, ugly people making bad, ugly music for an audience of bad, ugly morons. The quintessential soundtrack to the mindless violence-and-rape-fest of Woodstock '99, the point where rap-rock finally, irrevocably lost its way, the forerunners of all that would truly stink about mainstream rock music for most of the decade to come...I really, really hate this band. This is the first song by them which I recall being fully aware of, so while it's far from their worst, it's still probably the one which best sums up quite why they still set my teeth on edge.
*lie
Yeah, I suspect that the point of this entry was probably supposed to be to find a song I like by a band I hate. But there really aren't any - plenty of decent songs from bands I otherwise dislike (if it makes you feel any better, pretend I chose 'Light My Fire' by The Doors, and mentally fill in the blanks), but I honestly can't think of any produced by a band I genuinely hate. So this monstrous carbuncle on the arse of popular music will have to suffice.
Don't worry, no-one's going to force you to actually listen to it.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Day 11: A song by my favourite band
My favourite band, eh? I was girding myself up for at least a paragraph's worth of self-righteous, self-important bollocks about how hard it would be to narrow down all the myriad bands I love to just a single favourite. But then I mentioned this to my wife, who laughed at me, and told me that I was just going to end up choosing the Rolling Stones anyway, so why waste my time fussing about it? And of course, she was completely right. She often is.
So, given the entire back catalogue of The Word's Greatest Rock'n'Roll Band* to choose from, which song should I go for? The obvious choice would clearly be 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' - one of the finest rock singles ever recorded, and a solid runner-up when I was trying to settle on my favourite song for the first post, almost a fortnight ago - but the problem with obvious is that it's also boring. While I'm writing this blog primarily for my own sake at this point, I can't imagine that anyone reading it could possibly not have heard JJF dozens of times before, and it'd be nice to at least occasionally point someone towards a song with which they weren't already intimately-familiar. So, steering away from the band's (justly) much-lauded peak era, today's song is an overlooked gem from 1994 instead.
*Offer valid 24/05/1968 - 26/07/1972. No refunds, terms & conditions may apply.
Admittedly, this song isn't quite as overlooked as it used to be, since it was deployed to powerful effect over the montage which closed the final episode of the second season of The Sopranos. It was the perfect choice - moody, contemplative and uncharacteristically mature, it's as brilliant as it is atypical for the Stones, and I'd suggest that it's also the best song they've recorded in nearly forty years.
It's sung by Keith Richards, too, which is a good sign - his one or two songs-per-album since the '80s have consistently been highlights of otherwise-mediocre records, and this is no exception. He can't sing worth a damn, of course, but that doesn't mean there isn't pleasure to be derived from his ruined, smoke-and-age-raddled creak of a voice. The lack of melodic charm is more than compensated for with his voice's rich texture and obvious sincerity, and it's the vocal which dominates the first half of the song. In a magnificently-uncharacteristic display of musical restraint, it begins with an intimate, stripped-down vocal-and-guitar arrangement...and then continues in the same vein, waiting for well over three minutes before the rest of the band kick in. The slow-burning tension of the intro is never quite lost, though, the band providing a sombre, groovy backing as a confident, controlled Richards simply repeats the melody and lyrics from the first half, but with more intensity. It may lack the more obvious genius of a 'Gimme Shelter' or even a 'Brown Sugar', but it's still a superlative recording, and a rare example of the latter-day Stones breaking away from by-the-numbers self-parody and recording something which sounds fresh, even new - the first time one could say that sincerely since at least 1982's 'Undercover of the Night', and even that was a one-off.
The live version posted above loses some of the intricacy of the studio recording, but the underlying tension is still very much on display, and the band play with a tightness and relative lack of bombast rwhich perfectly offsets Richards' more ragged, endearing sloppiness. I could do without the backing singers, but that's the nature of the beast with the modern Stones, and to be fair, the rest of the backing musicians perform admirably. The two-song mini-set which Keef has performed at just about every Stones show for the past few decades is typically used by more casual fans as the perfect visiting-the-toilet opportunity, indicating beyond doubt that these unfortunate souls don't have a clue what they're missing. It's easy to mock the band as wrinkled has-beens - fun, too - but a group of musicians can't play together for nearly half a century without learning a few tricks, and there's an effortless assurance to their performance, particularly the impeccably-timed interplay between Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, which is hard to resist. The old bastards still have some life in them after all.
So, given the entire back catalogue of The Word's Greatest Rock'n'Roll Band* to choose from, which song should I go for? The obvious choice would clearly be 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' - one of the finest rock singles ever recorded, and a solid runner-up when I was trying to settle on my favourite song for the first post, almost a fortnight ago - but the problem with obvious is that it's also boring. While I'm writing this blog primarily for my own sake at this point, I can't imagine that anyone reading it could possibly not have heard JJF dozens of times before, and it'd be nice to at least occasionally point someone towards a song with which they weren't already intimately-familiar. So, steering away from the band's (justly) much-lauded peak era, today's song is an overlooked gem from 1994 instead.
*Offer valid 24/05/1968 - 26/07/1972. No refunds, terms & conditions may apply.
Admittedly, this song isn't quite as overlooked as it used to be, since it was deployed to powerful effect over the montage which closed the final episode of the second season of The Sopranos. It was the perfect choice - moody, contemplative and uncharacteristically mature, it's as brilliant as it is atypical for the Stones, and I'd suggest that it's also the best song they've recorded in nearly forty years.
It's sung by Keith Richards, too, which is a good sign - his one or two songs-per-album since the '80s have consistently been highlights of otherwise-mediocre records, and this is no exception. He can't sing worth a damn, of course, but that doesn't mean there isn't pleasure to be derived from his ruined, smoke-and-age-raddled creak of a voice. The lack of melodic charm is more than compensated for with his voice's rich texture and obvious sincerity, and it's the vocal which dominates the first half of the song. In a magnificently-uncharacteristic display of musical restraint, it begins with an intimate, stripped-down vocal-and-guitar arrangement...and then continues in the same vein, waiting for well over three minutes before the rest of the band kick in. The slow-burning tension of the intro is never quite lost, though, the band providing a sombre, groovy backing as a confident, controlled Richards simply repeats the melody and lyrics from the first half, but with more intensity. It may lack the more obvious genius of a 'Gimme Shelter' or even a 'Brown Sugar', but it's still a superlative recording, and a rare example of the latter-day Stones breaking away from by-the-numbers self-parody and recording something which sounds fresh, even new - the first time one could say that sincerely since at least 1982's 'Undercover of the Night', and even that was a one-off.
The live version posted above loses some of the intricacy of the studio recording, but the underlying tension is still very much on display, and the band play with a tightness and relative lack of bombast rwhich perfectly offsets Richards' more ragged, endearing sloppiness. I could do without the backing singers, but that's the nature of the beast with the modern Stones, and to be fair, the rest of the backing musicians perform admirably. The two-song mini-set which Keef has performed at just about every Stones show for the past few decades is typically used by more casual fans as the perfect visiting-the-toilet opportunity, indicating beyond doubt that these unfortunate souls don't have a clue what they're missing. It's easy to mock the band as wrinkled has-beens - fun, too - but a group of musicians can't play together for nearly half a century without learning a few tricks, and there's an effortless assurance to their performance, particularly the impeccably-timed interplay between Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, which is hard to resist. The old bastards still have some life in them after all.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Day 10: A song that makes me fall asleep
Honestly, except in the somewhat hyperbolic sense of "a song so boring it sends me to sleep" (in which case, Paul McCartney's 'Mull of Kintyre'), I can't think of any song which actively sends me to sleep. However, I do tend to listen to music in bed, so there's plenty of music to which I can fall asleep comfortably, which I suppose is close enough. Perhaps the album I listen to most often at night is William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, and today's video contains an extract from one of them.
I've just spent the best part of an hour trying to write a halfway-decent short essay about these eery, other-worldly recordings, and why they're among my favourite pieces of recorded music. Hell, I'd go further - I think they're among the most unique works of art I've ever encountered, in any medium. But I'm still feeling like crap, and the words just aren't coming together at all. It keeps coming out as either pretentious or banal, neither of which really does justice to the music, and while that's never really bothered me before, it's bothering me today. I didn't want to put this post off for another day, though, so I'm afraid this is all you're getting.
For the full story behind the creation of these loops, I'd recommend reading this review, which is actually the piece which persuaded me to listen to them in the first place. Basinski's own liner notes in the CD set are also enormously worth reading (yes, I just wormed my way out of actually having to write about something simply by linking to someone else who's done my work for me already. Sue me, I'm ill). If I'm feeling better tomorrow, I may come back and edit this to add a few more thoughts of my own ( EDIT : I didn't ) - in the meantime, sorry to anyone who turned up today expecting actual content.
But the history of how the music came to exist, while fascinating in itself, wouldn't mean much if the loops themselves weren't so powerful on their own. Repetitive without true repetition, violent without dissonance or ugliness, hypnotic without tedium - they're simply wonderful as music, entirely disconnected from their history. With that history, of course, they become something a little more profound - music which wasn't so much composed as carved into being by the passage of time itself, an audible demonstration of the power of entropy.
But on a rather less pretentious level, they're also a great soundtrack to fall asleep to. Hence my writing about them today.
I've just spent the best part of an hour trying to write a halfway-decent short essay about these eery, other-worldly recordings, and why they're among my favourite pieces of recorded music. Hell, I'd go further - I think they're among the most unique works of art I've ever encountered, in any medium. But I'm still feeling like crap, and the words just aren't coming together at all. It keeps coming out as either pretentious or banal, neither of which really does justice to the music, and while that's never really bothered me before, it's bothering me today. I didn't want to put this post off for another day, though, so I'm afraid this is all you're getting.
For the full story behind the creation of these loops, I'd recommend reading this review, which is actually the piece which persuaded me to listen to them in the first place. Basinski's own liner notes in the CD set are also enormously worth reading (yes, I just wormed my way out of actually having to write about something simply by linking to someone else who's done my work for me already. Sue me, I'm ill). If I'm feeling better tomorrow, I may come back and edit this to add a few more thoughts of my own ( EDIT : I didn't ) - in the meantime, sorry to anyone who turned up today expecting actual content.
But the history of how the music came to exist, while fascinating in itself, wouldn't mean much if the loops themselves weren't so powerful on their own. Repetitive without true repetition, violent without dissonance or ugliness, hypnotic without tedium - they're simply wonderful as music, entirely disconnected from their history. With that history, of course, they become something a little more profound - music which wasn't so much composed as carved into being by the passage of time itself, an audible demonstration of the power of entropy.
But on a rather less pretentious level, they're also a great soundtrack to fall asleep to. Hence my writing about them today.
Monday, April 5, 2010
BLOG POST DELAYED DUE TO ILLNESS: AUDIENCE SHOCKED, BEWILDERED
I was due to post a new 30 Days Of Music piece this evening, but I'm ill, so I'll be going to bed instead. So the Doctor Who review below is your lot for today, I'm afraid. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.
In lieu of "a song which sends me to sleep", have a rather nice montage from Who's 40th Anniversary, back in 2003, set to an abbreviated remix of Orbital's version of the theme tune, as mentioned in my previous post. If Doctor Who had been on the air during the '90s (we do not speak about the McGann Incident, OK?), I'd like to think that this is what the music would have sounded like.
In lieu of "a song which sends me to sleep", have a rather nice montage from Who's 40th Anniversary, back in 2003, set to an abbreviated remix of Orbital's version of the theme tune, as mentioned in my previous post. If Doctor Who had been on the air during the '90s (we do not speak about the McGann Incident, OK?), I'd like to think that this is what the music would have sounded like.
Leadworth Cutaway
So, my favourite TV show in the world returned on Saturday, for its thirty-first season, the fifth since the 2005 revival, and the first under new producer/showrunner Steven Moffat. Review follows.
WARNING: Spoilers will, obviously, abound, and footnotes for the uninitiated will not. So don't bother reading this unless you (a) watch Doctor Who, and (b) have already seen 'The Eleventh Hour'.
I haven't figured out how to code a proper "read further behind the cut" blog post, so for the time being, a good old-fashioned stretch of Spoiler Space will have to do. Scroll down to the picture of a gerbil if you don't want to be spoiled, everything after that should be safe.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
There, that should be just about enough.
I'll start with the negatives, just to get them out of the way. First and foremost - quite literally, since aside from a brief TARDIS-crashing-to-Earth opening sequence, it's the first thing we actually see - the new title sequence is seriously weak. Not the visuals - while not quite as dramatic and fast-moving as the previous, slightly nausea-inducing version, they're pretty straightforward - but the new arrangement of the theme tune. To be fair, I'd cheerfully concede that I'm nearly impossible to please on this particular score (no pun intended), since I'd rate the original, 1963 arrangement of the theme produced by Radiophonic legend Delia Derbyshire as one of my favourite pieces of music ever, and all subsequent reworkings as manifestly-inferior demonstrations of the law of diminishing returns. Short of restoring the Derbyshire original in its full glory, or switching to the splendid version produced by UK dance titans Orbital back in the '90s, there's virtually nothing the production team could do to wholly satisfy me with the theme music, so any criticisms I have to offer should be taken with a fairly hefty pinch of salt. But compared with the dynamic, orchestral take on the theme which we've been given for the past few years, this new one seemed mushy and lacking impact - the opening beat going on for just a few seconds too long, and the first howl of the melody - "ooooEEEEEEEOOOOOHHHH..." oddly-buried behind an inappropriately-straightforward, martial drum beat. It's the same mistake made in the marching-band arrangement used for the 1996 TV movie, and consequently, it fails to move me in much the same way. Ho, and indeed, hum.
To be honest, that's about it so far as unequivocal criticism goes. The spitting-out-food sequence near the beginning went on a lot longer than I'd have liked - the joke wore thin fairly quickly, although Matt Smith delivered it well enough - and at 65 minutes, the episode felt oddly-paced. It wasn't exactly padded or slow, but compared with previous season-openers, there didn't seem to be enough plot to really warrant the extra twenty minutes, particularly as the time wasn't spent giving extra depth or breathing-room to the main narrative, which felt slightly-rushed as it approached the conclusion. The slightly more relaxed pace of the opening sequence was welcome, though, and to Moffat's credit, "The Eleventh Hour" is a perfectly-good, if obvious, pun.
Indeed, the plot itself was surprisingly-thin, although not in a particularly dissatisfying way. There were at least a few contrivances, hand-waves and plot holes (why were the coma patients calling for the Doctor, anyway?) which would have been fiercely pounced-upon by many of the people raving about this episode had they cropped up in a Davies script, but that's hardly the end of the world. Given a new Doctor and a new companion to introduce, Moffat sensibly stuck to a comfortably-familiar scenario, which was probably the best way of easing younger viewers into the new era.
The B-plot was heavily-reminiscent of 2007's 'Smith & Jones', still for my money the best season-opener the revived show has produced (alien convict hides out in a hospital disguised in human form, clodhopping Space Police show up to catch him/her with little regard for collateral damage, leaving the Doctor to both capture the prisoner and protect the human bystanders from inadvertent destruction), with several key bits of structural trickery and plot elements lifted directly from Moffat's earlier episodes. After 2008's slightly-disappointing 'Silence In The Library' two-parter, in which Moffat also recycled several of his earlier plot ideas to slightly-diminished effect, this could be a slight cause for concern, but I won't be worrying about it unless the same tropes are brought out again later in the season. Something to keep an eye out for, perhaps, but certainly not a problem - besides, the 'Girl In The Fireplace' set-up is an effective one, so there's no real reason not to use it again, given a slight spin, from time to time. Repetition certainly never did the old "base under siege" formula any serious harm.
I do, however, think that some of the praise the plotting has received is more than a little over-the-top - it really wasn't significantly tighter than most of Davies taut, economical season openers. It was, I felt, unequivocally-superior to 2006's 'New Earth', and more effective as a story than 'Rose', but then again, it had rather less to do than that one did. The tone was different, but the plotting here was certainly no more sophisticated, complex or coherent than that of 'Smith & Jones' or 'Partners in Crime', even with an extra twenty minutes to play with. Given Moffat's knack for a well-turned narrative structure, though, I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with this year's season-long arc and doubtless epic finale - there were plenty of hints dropped here, but it's still far too early to have any clear idea of the plan.
But the B-plot, as in Davies' opening episodes, was almost irrelevant compared with the far more important story, which was the introduction of a new Doctor and a new companion. Matt Smith's introduction was, perhaps, the least troubled regeneration since the concept was first introduced - there was still a slight sense of a new personality bedding itself in (I enjoyed the subtle ways in which his performance became less and less Tennant-esque as the episode progressed), but it wasn't central to the story in the way it typically has been in the past. It's still too early to really make any firm judgements on the Eleventh Doctor's character, but Smith absolutely owned the role from his first moments onscreen, with an unforced eccentricity and easy-going authoritativeness when required. I look forward to seeing how his performance will develop over the next thirteen weeks. I was less fond of the occasional hints of preening braggadocio - the "I'm the Doctor, google me" approach to threat resolution grated on me in 'Forest Of The Dead', and I didn't like it any more here. That seems to be part and parcel of the modern show, though, and provided it doesn't get drawn out too often - and provided it's balanced, as it was here, with plenty of Doctorly smartness, resourcefulness and wit - it's something I'm happy to live with. It seems to have gone down well with the show's core audience of young and casual viewers, too, which is far more important than my more fannish nitpicks.
Amy Pond was, perhaps, a little less clearly-developed - we got a strong impression of her character type, but the finer details of her personality were rather more thinly-sketched. We'll doubtless be getting to know her better over the course of the next however-many weeks, though, and there was plenty of potential in Gillan's performance. The lengthy preamble with Young Amelia (exceptionally well-played by Karen Gillan's cousin) set up the basics of her character nicely, and we'll get to see how those early experiences have really shaped her adult personality as the series progresses. Could have done without the kissogram thing, but that's Steven Moffat for you, and Amy was generally a strong enough character that it didn't initially strike me as too problematic.
Speaking of Moffat, while his plotting may not have been quite as elaborate as usual, he still excels at snappy, quotable dialogue - far too many great lines to mention, although I was particularly taken with "I'm the Doctor - I'm worse than everybody's aunt!" The handful of lines and images reprised from earlier episodes, like easter eggs for the attentive viewer, were also appreciated, and reinforced my impression that the familiar structure was a conscious choice, rather than laziness or self-plagiarism.
Right, gerbil time:
I could have gone on for a lot longer, but this post is already over-long, and I'm beginning to ramble. Overall, then, an extremely promising start to a new era. Nothing too revolutionary - and wisely-so - but an assured, confident debut for the new producer and star. Most importantly, it made me eager for the next episode, which is all you could reasonably ask for in a season-opener.
Again, again.
WARNING: Spoilers will, obviously, abound, and footnotes for the uninitiated will not. So don't bother reading this unless you (a) watch Doctor Who, and (b) have already seen 'The Eleventh Hour'.
I haven't figured out how to code a proper "read further behind the cut" blog post, so for the time being, a good old-fashioned stretch of Spoiler Space will have to do. Scroll down to the picture of a gerbil if you don't want to be spoiled, everything after that should be safe.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
There, that should be just about enough.
I'll start with the negatives, just to get them out of the way. First and foremost - quite literally, since aside from a brief TARDIS-crashing-to-Earth opening sequence, it's the first thing we actually see - the new title sequence is seriously weak. Not the visuals - while not quite as dramatic and fast-moving as the previous, slightly nausea-inducing version, they're pretty straightforward - but the new arrangement of the theme tune. To be fair, I'd cheerfully concede that I'm nearly impossible to please on this particular score (no pun intended), since I'd rate the original, 1963 arrangement of the theme produced by Radiophonic legend Delia Derbyshire as one of my favourite pieces of music ever, and all subsequent reworkings as manifestly-inferior demonstrations of the law of diminishing returns. Short of restoring the Derbyshire original in its full glory, or switching to the splendid version produced by UK dance titans Orbital back in the '90s, there's virtually nothing the production team could do to wholly satisfy me with the theme music, so any criticisms I have to offer should be taken with a fairly hefty pinch of salt. But compared with the dynamic, orchestral take on the theme which we've been given for the past few years, this new one seemed mushy and lacking impact - the opening beat going on for just a few seconds too long, and the first howl of the melody - "ooooEEEEEEEOOOOOHHHH..." oddly-buried behind an inappropriately-straightforward, martial drum beat. It's the same mistake made in the marching-band arrangement used for the 1996 TV movie, and consequently, it fails to move me in much the same way. Ho, and indeed, hum.
To be honest, that's about it so far as unequivocal criticism goes. The spitting-out-food sequence near the beginning went on a lot longer than I'd have liked - the joke wore thin fairly quickly, although Matt Smith delivered it well enough - and at 65 minutes, the episode felt oddly-paced. It wasn't exactly padded or slow, but compared with previous season-openers, there didn't seem to be enough plot to really warrant the extra twenty minutes, particularly as the time wasn't spent giving extra depth or breathing-room to the main narrative, which felt slightly-rushed as it approached the conclusion. The slightly more relaxed pace of the opening sequence was welcome, though, and to Moffat's credit, "The Eleventh Hour" is a perfectly-good, if obvious, pun.
Indeed, the plot itself was surprisingly-thin, although not in a particularly dissatisfying way. There were at least a few contrivances, hand-waves and plot holes (why were the coma patients calling for the Doctor, anyway?) which would have been fiercely pounced-upon by many of the people raving about this episode had they cropped up in a Davies script, but that's hardly the end of the world. Given a new Doctor and a new companion to introduce, Moffat sensibly stuck to a comfortably-familiar scenario, which was probably the best way of easing younger viewers into the new era.
The B-plot was heavily-reminiscent of 2007's 'Smith & Jones', still for my money the best season-opener the revived show has produced (alien convict hides out in a hospital disguised in human form, clodhopping Space Police show up to catch him/her with little regard for collateral damage, leaving the Doctor to both capture the prisoner and protect the human bystanders from inadvertent destruction), with several key bits of structural trickery and plot elements lifted directly from Moffat's earlier episodes. After 2008's slightly-disappointing 'Silence In The Library' two-parter, in which Moffat also recycled several of his earlier plot ideas to slightly-diminished effect, this could be a slight cause for concern, but I won't be worrying about it unless the same tropes are brought out again later in the season. Something to keep an eye out for, perhaps, but certainly not a problem - besides, the 'Girl In The Fireplace' set-up is an effective one, so there's no real reason not to use it again, given a slight spin, from time to time. Repetition certainly never did the old "base under siege" formula any serious harm.
I do, however, think that some of the praise the plotting has received is more than a little over-the-top - it really wasn't significantly tighter than most of Davies taut, economical season openers. It was, I felt, unequivocally-superior to 2006's 'New Earth', and more effective as a story than 'Rose', but then again, it had rather less to do than that one did. The tone was different, but the plotting here was certainly no more sophisticated, complex or coherent than that of 'Smith & Jones' or 'Partners in Crime', even with an extra twenty minutes to play with. Given Moffat's knack for a well-turned narrative structure, though, I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with this year's season-long arc and doubtless epic finale - there were plenty of hints dropped here, but it's still far too early to have any clear idea of the plan.
But the B-plot, as in Davies' opening episodes, was almost irrelevant compared with the far more important story, which was the introduction of a new Doctor and a new companion. Matt Smith's introduction was, perhaps, the least troubled regeneration since the concept was first introduced - there was still a slight sense of a new personality bedding itself in (I enjoyed the subtle ways in which his performance became less and less Tennant-esque as the episode progressed), but it wasn't central to the story in the way it typically has been in the past. It's still too early to really make any firm judgements on the Eleventh Doctor's character, but Smith absolutely owned the role from his first moments onscreen, with an unforced eccentricity and easy-going authoritativeness when required. I look forward to seeing how his performance will develop over the next thirteen weeks. I was less fond of the occasional hints of preening braggadocio - the "I'm the Doctor, google me" approach to threat resolution grated on me in 'Forest Of The Dead', and I didn't like it any more here. That seems to be part and parcel of the modern show, though, and provided it doesn't get drawn out too often - and provided it's balanced, as it was here, with plenty of Doctorly smartness, resourcefulness and wit - it's something I'm happy to live with. It seems to have gone down well with the show's core audience of young and casual viewers, too, which is far more important than my more fannish nitpicks.
Amy Pond was, perhaps, a little less clearly-developed - we got a strong impression of her character type, but the finer details of her personality were rather more thinly-sketched. We'll doubtless be getting to know her better over the course of the next however-many weeks, though, and there was plenty of potential in Gillan's performance. The lengthy preamble with Young Amelia (exceptionally well-played by Karen Gillan's cousin) set up the basics of her character nicely, and we'll get to see how those early experiences have really shaped her adult personality as the series progresses. Could have done without the kissogram thing, but that's Steven Moffat for you, and Amy was generally a strong enough character that it didn't initially strike me as too problematic.
Speaking of Moffat, while his plotting may not have been quite as elaborate as usual, he still excels at snappy, quotable dialogue - far too many great lines to mention, although I was particularly taken with "I'm the Doctor - I'm worse than everybody's aunt!" The handful of lines and images reprised from earlier episodes, like easter eggs for the attentive viewer, were also appreciated, and reinforced my impression that the familiar structure was a conscious choice, rather than laziness or self-plagiarism.
Right, gerbil time:
I could have gone on for a lot longer, but this post is already over-long, and I'm beginning to ramble. Overall, then, an extremely promising start to a new era. Nothing too revolutionary - and wisely-so - but an assured, confident debut for the new producer and star. Most importantly, it made me eager for the next episode, which is all you could reasonably ask for in a season-opener.
Again, again.
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