Songs that make you cry...

Following the recent revelation by Nick Clegg in The Guardian that there are songs that make him cry, various contributors then went on to list the songs that bring a tear to their eyes. The list included songs by people as diverse as Spiritualized, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Will Young.

This week the public chose the songs that make them cry. Again, the list is quite eclectic, but there are a number of artists that feature more than once. Artists such as Radiohead, The Cure, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, The National, Elbow, Bon Iver and LCD Soundsystem. This is a subject quite close to my heart as I regularly have a good cry over a song. In the article it says, “music needs an extra emotional connection to have a lasting effect. A sad song only becomes poignant when it reminds you of something or someone, else.” I agree with that statement to a greater extent, but sometimes a song doesn’t need to remind me of someone or something. Sometimes just the song alone is enough to set me off.

Songs that remind me of a time, a place or a person are poignant, certainly. Ride On by Christy Moore would fall into that category. It reminds me of a time, a place and a handsome Irish boy, and it gets me every time. There was a Christy Moore session on BBC4 recently that I watched through misty eyes. Maybe it’s the masochist in me, but I fast-forwarded to Ride On, just so I could remember.

Sometimes, though it’s the lyrics that get you. The lyrics to Somebody by Depeche Mode are simple and beautiful. It’s about loving someone and wanting to be loved in return. It reminds me of a summer I spent in America and playing the song quietly on a late-night bus trip home so as not to wake the others. Coles Corner by Richard Hawley is a similarly poignant song about loneliness and wanting to find a connection with someone. It breaks my heart.

Then there are the songs that don’t hold a particularly strong emotional connection for me but nevertheless still have the ability to hit me with a punch. It might be the chord structure, it might be the minor key change, it might be the lyric. Codex by Radiohead is one such song. It floors me. The feeling starts almost from the opening bars of the piano, but it’s the horn section that just sets me off bawling. Most recently on a crowded train.

Another song that packs a punch is Sacrifice by Lisa Gerrard from the album Duality. The song is best listened to on headphones with your eyes closed and with your mind cleared of all distractions. Each time I emerge at the end of the song, I feel drained, purged and oddly euphoric.

I remember shedding quite a few tears at Ray Davies’ Glastonbury set last year as Ray and the choir sang Waterloo Sunset, followed by a spine-tingling rendition of Thank You For The Days, sung as a tribute to a friend who had recently died.

Of all the artists in my record collection though, the ones that have induced most tears is Elbow. At their recent concerts I found myself crying on a number of occasions. Firstly to Lippy Kids, then to Great Expectations. But the song that never fails to hit me with a punch is Friend of Ours from The Seldom Seen Kid album. I played it when someone close to me died and it reminds me of them. The sweeping strings, the horns, the “love ya mate” lyric leading into Craig’s beautiful piano riff just kills me.

There are probably many, many more songs I could mention. A good cry every now and then is something I can recommend. Why not dig into your own record collection and do the same…

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Part One

Now, I’m no Barry Norman but I do love a good film and spend a great deal of my spare time in darkened rooms watching images flickering on a screen. Often, when I leave a cinema, I leave with a range of emotions. Sadness, exhilaration, anger, hope, inspiration, confusion. I love every trip I make to the cinema, not least because I enjoy the anticipation of what I’m about to see and the emotion I’m going to leave with two hours later.

So far, between January and the end of March I’ve seen 22 films. That doesn’t include the 10 short films I saw at the Dublin Film Festival. Below is a snapshot of what I’m calling The Good, The Bad and The Ugly* of 2011. *For Ugly read Disappointing.

The Good
To be fair there have been quite a few gems so far this year, but then there usually are in the first few months of the year as studios try to cram in films for consideration in the race for the Oscars. The Kings Speech was the first film I saw of 2011, which set the bar very high. Such a good film, it was inspiring, funny and actually rather interesting, so long as you include the poetic licence that was no doubt sprinkled on for good measure. Who knew a film about a speech therapist and a future king could be so compelling or downright entertaining? Colin Firth has deserved all the awards he’s been given, but I’m actually more delighted that Helena Bonham-Carter won a BAFTA and is finally getting the recognition she deserves. She’s a criminally under-rated actor who deserves more attention for her talent, rather than for the outfit she is wearing or who she happens to live with.

Animal Kingdom was another cracker for the start of 2011. A taut, visceral thriller about a family of career criminals living in Melbourne, it fairly crackled on screen. Ben Mendelson gave a mesmerising performance as the elder brother, Pope, who will go to any lengths to stay out jail, including intimidating his own family and committing murder. And to think, he used to be the nice one in Neighbours. The ubiquitous Guy Pearce was also brilliant as the police officer trying to turn the young nephew into becoming an informer and testifying against his family. The ending was violent, shocking and, depending on your viewpoint, entirely justified. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you check it out when it’s released on DVD. Bring a strong constitution, though…

Another gem was The Secret In Their Eyes, an Argentinean thriller and winner of the foreign language Oscar in 2010, about a retired justice officer, Ricardo Darin, whose writing leads him to revisit the case of a young woman who was brutally raped and murdered two decades before. As he deals with the ghosts from that case he’s also forced to deal with the ghosts of unrequited love that he felt for his boss many years before. Ricardo Darin has previously starred in the critically acclaimed Nine Queens that was remade as the somewhat disappointing Criminal. The fact that he bears a striking resemblance to a swarthier Noel Gallagher should not put you off. He’s a fantastic actor. The story has several twists and turns as what happened twenty-five years before is slowly unpicked and exposed, until two decades’ worth of secrets is finally revealed. Devastating but brilliant.

Finally, we come to Submarine. I’d be lying if I said my main motivation for wanting to see this wasn’t because it features Paddy Considine, one of my favourite British actors, in leather trousers and a mullet. That said, he teeters close to the brink of parody in Submarine, playing a new-age spiritual guru called Graham, and only just gets away with it. If you’ve read the reviews, all the plaudits are richly deserved for Richard Ayoade in his first directorial feature. It’s the story of a 15 year old boy trying to lose his virginity, whilst trying to keep his parents’ marriage intact. Visually it fairly sparkles. I like all the visual tricks it serves up, such as the homage to the Nouvelle Vague coolness of films such as Jules et Jim in the grainy, Super 8 montage. The acting is great too. Newcomers Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige are brilliant as teenage lovers Oliver and Jordana, while Noah Taylor and the marvellous Sally Hawkins brilliantly play Oliver’s parents in all their toe-curling awkwardness. The soundtrack by Alex Turner compliments the film beautifully. And I don’t think I’ve seen a more magnificent mullet this side of 1985.

Honourable mentions: 

The Fighter – Great performances from everyone, but particularly Christian Bale, and some awesome fight sequences.

NEDs – A blistering story about Glasgow street gangs of the 1970s, directed by Peter Mullan. The performances from the young lead, Conor McCarron and Peter Mullan as the Da were outstanding. Biutiful – Javier Bardem is, in my opinion, one of the greatest actors in the world today. The film isn’t the most cheerful, dealing as it does with the tragedy of illegal immigration and terminal illness, but Bardem is as breathtaking as ever.

The Bad
I have a fairly good nose when it comes to sniffing out the celluloid wheat from the chaff so it’s rare that I go to see a film that is genuinely awful. I honestly can’t remember the last film I went to see that I wanted to walk out of because it was so bad. There are films that disappoint me, and they’re listed below, but I generally stay till the end then work out how I feel about them during the drive home. The only exception to this is Knocked Up which I watched on DVD based on some reviews that said it was good. Note to self, just because Radio 1’s James King says it’s a “laugh-out-loud comedy classic” doesn’t mean it is. Knocked Up is the story of a beautiful, successful television producer Alison (Katherine Heigl) who falls pregnant after a frankly, unlikely, one-night stand with habitual slacker Ben (Seth Rogen). This leads to a “hysterically funny, anxious and heart warming story” as they decide whether to have the baby and raise it together. I’m sorry, but was I watching the same film? It was offensive, un-funny, far-fetched and frankly a waste of two hours of my life. I’m clearly not this film’s target audience. And I'm very thankful for that...

The other film that I’m going to mention in this category, though I do feel a little unfair doing so is Le Quattro Volte, a docu-drama I saw at the Dublin Film Festival about a goatherd living in a remote Italian village. There was no dialogue to speak of, very little if any plot but there was an over-abundance of goats. It was sparse, bleak and confusing. It wasn’t offensive or hateful, but it wasn’t great either. A shame.

The Ugly/Disappointing
Over the years there have been more films that have found their way into this category than any other. Film reviews have tended to become more hysterical and over the top in recent years, which has probably added to my disappointment levels. Hype is the biggest killer for any film-lover. A couple of films that have fallen into this category for me so far this year are The Adjustment Bureau and Norwegian Wood. On the face of it, and from the trailer, The Adjustment Bureau was setting up to be a great film. Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, John Slattery and Terence Stamp in a kind of alternate universe, fate versus free-will stand-off. The trailer looked action packed, the guys in hats looked menacing and the chemistry between Damon and Blunt looked tantalising. The comparisons to Bourne and Inception were misleading, frankly. It started out as a taut, exciting thriller and became a sappy love story about two people who couldn’t bear to be apart and who would fight the forces of fate to be together. Pass me a bucket. The saving grace of the film was the chemistry between Damon and Blunt who were great foils for each other, but the plot had more holes in than a piece of Swiss cheese. Such a missed opportunity.

The other film in this category is Norwegian Wood, a Japanese film set in the 1960s about a young man’s love for his mentally unstable girlfriend and the twists and turns in their relationship. Cinematically it was stunning. I don’t think I’ve seen a more aesthetically pleasing film. It was beautifully filmed, giving it a soft, iridescence glow. The way it captured Tokyo in the late 60s and the way the sets were framed was also, quite gorgeous. The huge disappointment was the story. At over two hours, the story was long and drawn-out, with too much of very little happening as the guy waited to hear from his girlfriend who was receiving treatment in a secluded, mental health institution in the country. I know it’s based on a book that is loved by a great many people, so I feel unqualified to really comment on it, but based purely on my reaction to it, my body, but my arse in particular, has never been more grateful to see the end of a film.

So there you have it, my review of the films I've seen so far this year....feel free to comment if you don't agree or if there are any films you think I might like.

A Glasgow Reunion

The last time I was in Glasgow was 1992. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to make a return visit, but this weekend I popped back for a couple of days. It’s a great city and reminds me a little of Dublin. My weekend consisted mainly of art and movies, a delightful combination at any time. This weekend I enjoyed: meringues at The Willow Tea Room; paintings by the Glasgow Boys and discovering one of my favourite painters, Sir John Lavery is a Glasgow Boy; sensory overload at Kelvingrove; veggie haggis for lunch; Submarine and Paddy Considine in leather and a mullet; beautifully shot but dull Japanese film named after a Beatles song; more emperor’s new clothes in GoMA; bedroom pods with walls that change colour; breakdancers on Buchanan street; an animated lizard in a Hawaiian shirt and cowboy hat; seafood pasta at The Mussel Inn; the Glasgow Film Theatre; gin and tonics; DVD buying in Fopp.

Paddy's Day Blarney

As a nation, the Irish are renowned for their blarney. Ireland has a rich cultural heritage of the written word, going back centuries: From the Book of Kells, to stories from Irish mythology: Brian Boru and the High Kings, stories of the Children of Lir, Cu Chullian and Finn MacCumhain; Samuel Becket, James Joyce and Patrick Pearse; modern writers like Colm Toibin, Joseph O’Connor or poets like Patrick Kavanagh or Thomas Kinsella; and the chick-lit heavyweights of today like Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes.

In celebration of St Patrick’s Day, I’ve been scanning my shelves for books that celebrate Ireland’s rich cultural heritage, from the ridiculous to the sublime. First up, ‘The book of feckin’ Irish Slang that’s great craic for cute hoors and bowsies’ is an education in the finer points of Dublin street slang. Here’s a selection:

Make a hames of / I will in me hole / Having a hooley / Howaya / How’s the craic? / Janey Mack / Jaysus, Mary and Joseph / It’s banjaxed / Yer wan / Wagon / Shenanigans / Ride / Jaysus I was scarlet! / Have a puss on / Nixer / Culchie / Langered / Bollixed / Gobshite / What guff / Go and shite! / Giz a gander / Fierce bad head / Go wan yer good thing / fooster / feck / deadly / I’m only coddin’ yer / that’s brutal / Acting the maggot / Ask me arse.

At the other extreme, the more sublime use of the written word is Irish poetry, two of its finest exponents being W B Yeats and Seamus Heaney. Here are two poems, the first by Yeats, probably one of his most famous.


'He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven' by W B Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with gold and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths,
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


'Digging' by Seamus Heaney

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it                    

                      from Death of a Naturalist (1966)

Childhood Nostalgia

On Tuesday I rang in sick from work and spent most of the day in bed. Being ill when you’re an adult is nowhere near as much fun as when you’re a child. My abiding memory of being ill as a child is a bottle of Lucozade with the crinkly, orange wrapper and a damp, slightly grey flannel being applied to my feverish brow. An image that could have come straight out of an episode of Life On Mars. The modern adult equivalent of the Lucozade bottle, for me anyway, is the duvet, a pile of magazines and my iPhone.

In between struggling with a throbbing head and a compulsion to vomit, I spent the day snoozing, reading magazine articles and wallowing in nostalgia. One article, describing people’s food memories of home-made chutney and hand-written cookbooks, reminded me of my own childhood food memories, my Grandma’s cooking in particular. Like her mince and Yorkshire puddings, such legendary puddings that rose to perfection and stood towering in proud peaks, something I’ve never been able to replicate. Or the dried peas steeping overnight, ready to be made into mushy peas. The fish and chips we’d have every Friday without fail from the chip shop that is now a Chinese takeaway. Or the bacon sandwiches, such incredible bacon sandwiches. I can still taste them now, which is ironic considering I'm now vegetarian. The bacon sizzling under a hot grill and the sandwiches dripping with butter, that she kept in a dish by the fire. And the cherished monthly visits from the insurance man when the ‘best cups’ would come out with the Mellow Birds coffee and the Abbey Crunch biscuits, laid out on a plate. Or her freshly baked scones, hot and fluffy from the oven, oozing with melted butter.

By comparison, my mother has always been a somewhat reluctant cook. Despite her fascination for programmes on the Good Food channel - The Barefoot Contessa being a particular favourite – my mother is a functional rather than an inspired cook. My childhood memories are of baked cheese pudding on a Saturday night in front of the telly, waiting for The Generation Game to start. Or the shop-bought battenburg cake that I wasn’t that keen on, preferring to peel away at the marzipan coating to get at the pink and yellow sponge squares underneath. Frozen, re-constituted, re-heated, freeze-dried, processed food that defined everybody’s memories of food for anyone who grew up in the seventies. Findus Crispy Pancakes, Arctic Roll, Angel Delight, Dream Topping, Heinz Sandwich Spread, tinned chopped ham and pork with pickle or salad cream on white bread, Smash with baked beans and sausages, Heinz vegetable or oxtail soup. That's what I ate as a child. I tried Angel Delight a while ago, to see if it was how I remembered. It tasted just like 1976.

Usually, the first thing I look at in the magazines I buy is the recipe section. On this occasion, I flicked through the recipe pages looking, without much enthusiasm, at the recipes for ‘lazy lunches’ and ‘simple suppers’.  Forgive me if I sound too much like ‘a Northerner’ but I’ve always been a little bemused by the use of the word ‘supper’. When I was a child, supper meant cream crackers and a piece of cheese or a couple of Digestives on a plate before you went to bed. Not a bunch of rocket on a crab salad with a mango salsa dressing. Let’s keep it simple, people. It’s breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. You know where you are then…

Bhaji Trousers

This week I’ve been working in Edinburgh. The team Christmas dinner finally took place, delayed from December due to the bad weather. We also exchanged our Secret Santa gifts. My Secret Santa bought me slasher DVD’s: Switchblade Romance, The Baader-Meinhof Complex and Audition. My Secret Santa is also my DVD-pusher – we’re both film nuts and our conversation frequently veers off the subject of budgets and strategy documents into films and TV. I blame him for my addiction to Mad Men and Dexter. 

The Secret Santa and I went for a curry while we were in Edinburgh. Curiously, the next day I was reading Craig Potter’s Twitter page, when I saw he’d been tweeting #currysongs, which gave me quite a chuckle. Girlfriend In A Korma anyone? Or how about Tikka To Ride? Poppadum Preach, Korma Police, Bhaji Trousers, Raita Here Raita Now, Brothers In Naans, It’s Bhuna Hard Day’s Night, Tears On My Pilau. I love it!