Cultural notes from all over

Had a nice slacker weekend…three movies, a trip to the Borders to read the music magazines and listen to big hipster records and my last significant run before my marathon (which is next Sunday). Here are some random observations…

Okkervil River’s The Stand-Ins…just not as exciting as Stage Names, on the basis of one partial play in the car.

Black Kids…oh my god, how dreadful, what the hell is wrong with the world? First Vampire Weekend now this, blech, ptui, I spit it out.

Baby Mama…would have been funnier if they’d let Tina Fey write it, instead of just acting in it. Not bad, but nothing on the movie was as entertaining as the 30 Rock trailer at the beginning.

Tropic Thunder…do you have a teenaged boy around the house? You should really take him to see this movie. Tee-hee…yuck…tee-hee.

Burn After Reading…Who knew that Brad Pitt was funny? The scene with him in the car trying to blackmail the Malkovich character is worth the whole ticket price.

Also, on Friday, I set a new record…four Dusted reviews in a week. I have, obviously, nothing in the pipeline there now, so better get back to work. But first Kath Bloom, she’s sort of amazing, in a fragile, folky-warm kind of way…

Kath Bloom
Sing the Children Over & Sand In My Shoe / Terror
(Chapter Music)

As an artist, Kath Bloom is best known for her early 1980s work with experimental guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors. It was a collaboration that worked because of differences as much as common ground. Their timbres – Bloom’s high fragile soprano, Connors’ eerie altered blues licks – seemed to exist in a shared parallel universe, wavering, indefinite and haunting.

Still, there’s no denying that Bloom’s approach to singing was far more conventional than Connors’ approach to guitar. This year’s reissues of the pair’s Sing the Children Over from 1982 and Sand in My Shoe a year later, testify to the power of their odd blend – Bloom warm, humane and deeply attached to folk and blues tradition, Connors breaking loose from field blues licks for otherworldly overtones and dissonances.


Read more here.

A kinda strange origami video of “It’s So Hard to Come Home” (with Loren Connors)


Live on public access TV


“Come Here” in Before Sunrise