Songs for music lovers

How had I managed to miss Marianne Faithfull's 2008 album Easy Come Easy Go? I blame the too-tasteful cover and the coy "Songs for Music Lovers" subtitle, which suggests that what you're in for is a collection of freeze-dried standards.

Nothing could be further from the truth. A haunted version of Ellington's "Solitude" is about as close as this gets to polite, Willie Nelson-sings-Stardust territory. Mostly, Faithfull chooses material from the here and now: Neko Case, Morrissey, The Decemberists. The closest comparison that comes to mind is Caetano Veloso's 2004 collection A Foreign Sound, which had a similarly eclectic spirit, its selections ranging from Gershwin to Elvis to DNA to Nirvana. Veloso's work was deeper and richer, but what I hear in both records is a sheer delight in making music with sympathetic collaborators, freed from commercial expectations or artistic vanity. There's something to be said, I guess, for being a sixtysomething artist with enough money to live on, nothing much to prove to anyone, and cool friends like Nick Cave or Antony Hegarty who'll maybe drop by the studio to add some backing vocals.

Oh, and it helps when you've got one of pop's great voices. Not technically-accomplished great, mind you. More sounds-like-nobody-else-and-you'd-recognize-her-even-if-she-was-singing-in-Swahili great. It's a voice that's been to exotic places, ingested hallucinogens in the company of thieves and brigands, awakened in a Marrakesh hotel with no memory of having arrived there, is ashamed of nothing and doesn't much care what you think about that. Which is to say: how many sixtysomething Englishwomen do you know who can sell Merle Haggard's death-row ballad "Sing Me Back Home"?

"This is not America"

I'm late in getting to this, but Nicholas Kristof's recent NYT column is one of the saner things written, to date, about this spasm of Islamophobic hysteria we seem to be enduring.

On New Republic editor Martin Peretz's recent suggestion that Muslims need not be accorded First Amendment rights because they don't respect life the way the rest of us do:

Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?

This is one of those times that test our values, a bit like the shameful interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the disgraceful refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.

The view from here: Sunday, September 12

College and Bathurst Streets, Toronto, 5:14 pm.

The view from here: Saturday, September 11

Ossington & Queen St, Toronto, 3:02 pm

Also, Envy Adams is much hotter in the book. Sorry, but she is.

...and then, Honest Ed's imploded

So OK, I saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. It's ... pretty good. Funny, sweet, generous and remarkably true to the spirit of the original graphic novel.

It would be wrong and misguided and insufferably fanboyish to argue that the book is better. But the book is better. It's a miniature masterpiece that turns the most unpromising of subjects -- a slacker's halting progress toward maturity -- into something heartfelt and human and true. The movie is great fun, but it's very, very slight. Unavoidably so: when you telescope a six-volume novel down to two hours of screen time, stuff gets lost. Characters drop out or get shortchanged, textures get coarsened, the story has less room to breathe.

Most of the movie's compromises come at the expense of its female characters (though, SPOILER ALERT HERE, I also miss Stephen Stills' coming-out). Envy Adams doesn't register as much more than a cartoon. Kim Pine (played by the wonderful Alison Pill) doesn't have enough to do. Knives Chau (Ellen Wong, also terrific) is absent from much of the movie's second half. And Ramona seems weirdly limp and passive in the final act. Why is Scott fighting for her, again? (On the up side, Aubrey Plaza makes an awesomely bitchy Julie Powers.)

As a hometown fan, I guess I also wanted more of Toronto. This post from the Guardian film blog gives the movie due credit for all stuff about Toronto that it gets right. But I miss how specific the book is: about the crappiness of the food at Sneaky Dee's, the shabbiness of the Dufferin Mall, and so forth. And more than anything, I miss Scott and Todd Oldham (evil ex number three) fighting it out amid THE STARK EXISTENTIAL HORROR OF HONEST ED'S. (To be fair, I understand why this scene got left out: it doesn't advance the plot much. Besides which, who'd ever believe that such a place existed anywhere in the real world -- let alone Toronto?)

The view from here: Monday, September 6

Buenos Dias! El Radio Republic!

Great lost singles of the 1980s: David Johansen's "Heard The News," from the album Sweet Revenge. "Have you heard about the government / Do you know just who it represents?"

Just press shuffle (1)

Tom Waits, "All The World Is Green"
The Comsat Angels, "Independence Day"
That Petrol Emotion, "Can't Stop"
The Beach Boys, "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
U2, "City of Blinding Lights"
Luna, "Time to Quit"
Morrissey, "Seasick, Yet Still Docked"
T-Bone Burnett, "After All These Years"
Soul Coughing, "Mr. Bitterness"
Blake Babies, "Lament"
Lou Reed, "I Love You, Suzanne"
Tricky featuring Ambersunshower, "You Dont' Wanna"

(Is it just me, or is Morrissey starting to look a bit like DCI Hunt from Life on Mars?)

Texas Love Triangle

Most excellent-ish thing I've heard in a while: Tommy Boy's Texas Love Triangle Mix. Who knew the great state of Texas has a thriving techno/electro scene? Not me.