In January of last year Abi booked us tickets to see Hamilton at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London. Last Saturday was our date!
We flew to Stansted on Friday evening, and had rooms at the Holiday Inn Express (nice breakfast) on Old Street in Shoreditch. On Saturday morning Alex and I took the tube to Finchley to pick up a copy of Sidereal Confluence from Leisure Games (a late birthday present). In the afternoon we met up with Abi and Fiona who had been raiding art supply shops in Shoreditch and had some lunch. Later on Alex and I took a leisurely walk through the city in the general direction of Victoria, taking the tube the last of the way when we realized we were pushed for time. Meanwhile, Abi and Fiona met up with James for some dog time. Around 17:30 we grabbed some food at McDonalds, and made our way to the theatre.
Portrait mode: Alex near BlackfriarsPortrait mode: Fiona at Victoria Palace Theatre
The show was, as expected, great. We have been listening to the music for literally years now, but finally seeing it in person was something special. The original cast audio recording stands alone brilliantly, and you can follow the story and the characters and enjoy the songs perfectly without the visuals. But the choreography of the stage production is fabulous in its own right, and there are many nuances of the live performance that add more layers of humour and pathos to the experience. Highly recommended!
They don’t like you taking photographs of the performance. They didn’t seem to mind us taking selfies before the show, though.
On Sunday we were all tired, so we took it easy. Abi and Fiona took the tube to Tottenham Court Road while Alex and I walked there. We hung out in a Starbucks for most of the afternoon, sending out various expeditions to nearby shops for books (Foyles), videogames, and more art supplies. Late afternoon we picked up our bags from the hotel, and took the train back out to Stansted. Alex was teetering on the brink of a migraine as we manoeuvred our way through the airport’s nightmare hellscape departure maze. But with the aid of fluids, massive doses of painkiller, and an eye mask, we made it home — late, exhausted — without incident.
In advance of the release of his new album World’s Strongest Man full band tour in May, Gaz Coombes has been doing some small solo gigs around Europe. I caught him at Rotown in Rotterdam, which is the first time I’ve been there. I enjoyed the gig (no support, just Gaz on guitar and keyboard with some minimal backing loops), but I didn’t dig the venue. It’s small (250 capacity), which I like, and the sound was fine, but the sight lines to the stage were awful. It feels like a bar first, and a music venue second.
The longer I let these pile up, the less I have to say about each one. This makes me sad, but I haven’t been in the mood for a lot of extensive blogging lately.
⭐️ = would gladly re-watch/read/listen
💩 = AVOID AVOID AVOID
🤔 = there’s something interesting there, but I have mixed feelings about it
Films:
⭐️ The Last Jedi: I liked this a lot in the cinema, because it took so many Star Wars tropes and subverted them with a contemporary twist. It has some fantastic action and amazing visuals. At the same time, I find it hard to disagree with some of the comments it has attracted regarding plot holes and character motivation. I’m curious to see how it will stand up over time.
Bright: Mediocre buddy cop movie; mediocre urban fantasy story. The plot dictated a certain setting, but as soon as you think about how the world got this way, and how this society actually works, it makes no sense.
The Adjustment Bureau: Has one very nifty chase sequence, but otherwise entirely forgettable.
Kingsman 2: Some cool action sequences, but lacks the freshness of the first movie.
The Hateful 8: Gorgeous cinematography, but too in love with its own dialogue.
⭐️ Good Time: Excellent low-budget, down-to-earth, but high-tension crime drama about a robbery gone wrong. Robert Pattinson is stunningly good as small-time crook Connie Nikas who will do almost anything to help his brother, but whose plans are destined to blow up in his face. Harsh, but thoroughly engrossing.
Punisher: War Zone: I kinda like Ray Stevenson as the Punisher. He captures the look of the comic book character pretty well, and he brings a good deal of pathos to the role. But someone forgot to tell Dominic West that this wasn’t an early nineties Batman movie. His joker-esque portrayal of the villain Jigsaw is embarrassingly out of place.
⭐️ Jumanji (2017): Fun!
Logan Lucky: Quirky little Soderbergh heist movie. Not a classic, and the plot is quite contrived. But it’s very entertaining.
Marauders: I couldn’t follow what was going on in this film. But I did like the casting of Dave Bautista as a huge, bulky, physical FBI agent who is also soft-spoken and intellectual. But…that was the only thing I liked about it.
💩 The Cloverfield Paradox: Awful. It can’t make up its mind if it wants to be a hard-ish psychological sci-fi thriller like Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, or a supernatural cross-dimensional “the ship is alive!” horror flick like Event Horizon. In the end it gives up and throws up some giant monsters to hastily link it with the Cloverfield universe for branding purposes.
⭐️ Black Panther: So good that I feel bad about the bits I didn’t like. Some of the CG action sequences felt floaty and unreal (characters landing from a great height lacking enough proper impact), and Killmonger deserved much more screen time than he was given. It is strongly hinted that he’s a rounded character strong convictions and a deep sense of purpose, but it isn’t shown adequately. In the end he feels more like Ronan The Accuser from Guardians of the Galaxy, when I wanted him to be like the Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Apparently director Ryan Coogler’s first cut of the film was four hours long, but it got cut down to 2:14 in the edit. I’m assuming that a lot of Killmonger got cut there. If you liked the music in Black Panther, it’s worth listening to Episode 131 of Song Exploder, in which composer Ludwig Göransson discusses how he produced it.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard: Very meh.
⭐️ Easy A: Smart teen comedy, tight and witty.
Fantastic Mr Fox: Quirky, with Wes Anderson’s characteristic visual style in stop-motion form. But emotionally flat and uninvolving.
⭐️ Get Out: Excellent. A deeply scary film that relies on constantly building tension instead of jump scares.
⭐️ Atomic Blonde: This was much more of a classic East/West spy story than I had anticipated. It’s still primarily an action movie, but it’s subtler and grittier than the trailer promises. Charlize Theron is a super-cool heroine, and David Leitch’s direction is on point. The staircase shootout/fight scene that appears to be a single long take is brutal and breathlessly exciting.
⭐️ American Made: not serious enough to be a drama, not outright funny enough to be a comedy. It shines a light on some of the ridiculous shenanigans that the CIA got up to in Central America in the 1970s and 80s, so it probably qualifies as political satire, too. But with a heavy emotional heart. It’s just a good film, you know? I enjoyed it a lot.
TV:
⭐️ Parks and Recreation: I finally finished it! I was not expecting season 7 to pull a Fringe Season 5, and the first few episodes of that last season gave me pause. It worked out in the end, though. I feel ambivalent about how cruelly the show treats its more hapless and stereotypical characters (Jerry, Andy). It usually inverts the snideness to show how these two are actually the happiest characters in the whole show, but it often feels unnecessary. Still a great, classic piece of TV comedy, though.
💩 Manhunt Unabomber: Was it the writers’ intention to make Theodore Kaszynski the most sympathetic character in the whole show? Paul Bettany’s performance as Kaszynksi was miles better than that of Sam Worthington as maverick FBI profiler Fitz who comes up with the insights to catch him. And Kaszynski’s world view and manifesto do contain warnings for this weird future we’ve ended up in. But was that really what the show was going for? Other than Fitz, the FBI are portrayed as blunt, dim, unpleasant, and short-sighted. Coming hot on the heels of the Netflix series Mindhunter from last year, this felt like a very poor imitation.
Agent Carter S2: Very good. Shame it got cancelled.
🤔 Arrow S3, S4, S5, S6: I have complex feelings about Arrow that probably arise from bingeing the show over a very short space of time. The character reversals come so often and so fast that it’s impossible to know where you’ll stand by the end of an episode. “They’re dead” vs “they’re alive again!”; “I’ll never trust them” vs “we have to trust them, it’s our only chance!”; “I’ll never kill again” vs “killing them is the only way!”; “People can never change their fundamental nature” vs “there is still some good in them, I know it!” The conclusion I’m coming to is that the showrunners are nihilists whose only certainty is that all promises will be broken and all good intentions will be subverted, and they want to explore this theme in exhaustive depth. Also, the show has managed to wear out my suspension of disbelief with regard to comic-book violence (aka mass murder). If you shoot an arrow in someone’s chest and they fall over and stop moving, they’re probably dead, not unconscious.
⭐️ The Good Place S2: A bit more caper-y and less subtle than S1, but I still loved this.
Altered carbon: I found a lot to like here, but I don’t think it left a permanent mark on me as something I’d re-watch.
Star Trek Discovery S1: Variable. I mostly liked it.
⭐️ Ugly Delicious: Starts as a conventional food show with a celebrity chef inviting people to visit interesting places and eat interesting food — with the twist that the food is not going to be fancy: it’s things like pizza, tacos, fried chicken. But as the series goes on, it turns into a much more interesting discussion of race, immigration, cultural appropriation and acceptance told through the medium of cooking. Quite worthwhile.
⭐️ Jessica Jones S2: Excellent. Rich, complex characters dealing with a host of personal demons. The fact that it’s a “superhero” show is secondary most of the time, which is how I like it. Also, refreshingly few fight scenes.
Books:
⭐️ Sue Grafton – Y is for Yesterday: Another excellent addition to the series. Sad that with Sue Grafton’s death last year it will end here.
Erica Henderson & Ryan North – The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vol 6: Who Run the World? Squirrels: Nice ongoing Squirrel Girl fun.
⭐️ Jeff Lemire & Dustin Nguyen – Descender vol 1: Tin Stars Very good. Excellent art, intriguing world building. Will be buying more of this series.
Robin Sloan – Sourdough: A sweet, quirky, yet easygoing read that hits some of the same notes as Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore without feeling like a retread.
Jay Faerber, Scott Godlewski, Ron Riley, Thomas Mauer – Copperhead vol 1: A New Sheriff in Town: Space western. Quite good.
Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, Jordie Bellaire – Injection vol 3: Lovely art again, but the mystery feels recycled an unoriginal. It doesn’t bring more depth to the world like vols 1 and 2 did.
⭐️ Fiona Staples & Brain K. Vaughan – Saga vol 8: Heartache and humour. And Ghüs!
⭐️ Harry Connolly – The Twisted Path: A novella rather than a full book, but I was excited to get another episode in the Twenty Palaces series regardless. This one takes Ray and Annalise to the headquarters of the Twenty Palaces society in Portugal, where all is not what it seems. Tense and fast-paced urban fantasy.
Self-contained podcasts:
⭐️ Containers: 8-part series by Alexis Madrigal about trade, transport, culture, and how the shipping container heralded a sea change in how our civilization deals with the distribution of goods.
⭐️ Slow Burn: A Slate podcast covering the less famous stories and background from the Watergate scandal that brought down Nixon. Aside from the obvious parallels with Donald Trump’s dealings, what struck me most was just how much time passed between the Watergate break-in and Nixon resigning.
⭐️ A Very Fatal Murder: Very funny and pointed parody of podcasts in general, and true crime podcasts in particular.
Music:
I’ve got a ticket to see Garbage at the Barrowlands in Glasgow in September, but I’m actually more excited about seeing Honeyblood, who are sharing the bill with them. Alan pointed me in their direction a couple of years ago, and I love their stripped-down guitar + drums + vocals sound.
Spotify surfaced Frost* to me a few weeks ago. They’re described as “neo-prog”, which is fair. I dig it.
Over the last few months I’ve also been listening to a lot of Rival Consoles (the album Kid Velo in particular), Wye Oak (new album out soon; I’ll be seeing them live in a few weeks), and the dark vibes of Origin Pattern by Pixelife.
Games:
Over Christmas and January I played a lot of Elite: Dangerous, especially the community goals missions, but I haven’t put any time in since the new expansion came out in February. I bought the Frozen Wastes expansion pack for Horizon Zero Dawn, but immediately after installing it I felt compelled to go back and finish off all the side quests and missions that I hadn’t finished off in the original game before I started on the new content. Then I got a few missions into the new content and kinda drifted away.
I’m sure I’ll go back to HZD some time, but Alto’s Adventure is my life now. I can’t do anything else (including buying the sequel, Alto’s Odyssey) until I’ve finished it.
The Cool Quest were one of my favourite gigs of 2016 (and I went to a lot that year). They released a new track “Runnin'” in the autumn of 2017, and then followed up with two more singles in the lead-up to the release of their second album VIVID last week. As soon as they announced they were playing a special album launch gig in their home town of Zwolle I bought a ticket.
Zwolle is about an hour and twenty minutes away by car, depending on traffic, but I figured it would be worth it! I left the house a little later than anticipated, but I still made it to the venue by 19:45. This was, of course, far too early. I had seen the venue’s timetable of “Doors 19:30, show 20:15” but missed the bit about the support act. When I got there, a DJ was playing music in the foyer with around 20-30 people milling around — all of them reluctant to be first into the completely empty auditorium.
I don’t know if this is commonplace at Hedon, but it was new for me: around 20:15 an actual human promoter/MC came on stage and introduced the bill for the evening, including opening act De Alliantie. They’re a local (to Zwolle) hip-hop trio with a decent following in the Netherlands, and a second album (Mooi Toch) under their belts as of February. They played a 9-song set of their fun-time rap with a lot of gusto. Not quite my thing, but they’ve got good stage presence, and their enthusiasm was infectious.
I don’t think the venue was completely sold out, but by the time the MC brought them on stage, it felt nicely packed. (Aside: if I ever get arrested at a gig, it’ll be because I finally boiled over with rage at getting there nice and early to secure myself a good spot close to the stage, and then having loud and tall latecomers elbow their way right in front of me, congratulating themselves on managing to get to the front.) The MC made a big deal of how they fit into the small space at Hedon when they launched their first album, and now they’ve moved up to the next level. The main stage at Hedon is much bigger than that of the Oude Zaal at Melkweg where I saw them last time. This gave them a big light display behind them to play with, and it gave frontman Vincent a lot of space to move around in, but it also made the band members seem more spread out and more isolated.
Don’t get me wrong — the band is tight, and that’s one of the things I love about them. They’re not just playing beats for Vincent to sing and rap over. They are seriously musical, and to my ears the vocals are “just” the fifth instrument in the group. (I would happily watch Vadim Neef on guitar and Sander Moorlag on the keyboard play off each other all night.) Maybe I’m just nostalgic (already) for the time when they were still playing smaller venues.
Sander Moorlag on keyboard, Vadim Neef on guitar, Ilse de Vries on bass
They started with last year’s lead single “Runnin'”, and played through most of the new album, with a few old favourites thrown in. Some of the new songs (“Spacious”, “Level Ya Head”) they were playing live back in 2016 already. And every song they play is different and more elaborate than the recorded version. I really get the impression that they build their music first and foremost to be played as part of a show in front of an audience. The recordings are fantastic, and will get them streams and downloads, but the full live Cool Quest experience bursts with ten times the energy.
Because this was a special occasion, after the main set the band took a short break and came back on stage with four backing singers and four horns to fill out the lineup as The Cool Quest XXL. The backing vocals and horns feature prominently on their current single “Storm”, and they sounded great live. The encore is where the band go wild and really extend every song, giving every musician a turn in the spotlight and a chance at a solo (or two, or three).
Highlighting the backing singersThe band taking a bow
The downside of going to see a gig so far away is the drive back afterwards, and not being able to have a wee drink during the show. Worth it, though. If you get the chance to see the Cool Quest near you, take it.
I’ve raved about the band Thumpers before, and I love both of their albums. But last week they sent out a sad email saying that they were going to call it a day, and that they would be playing one final gig at The Lexington in London. They sent the email on Tuesday 20th, but I didn’t read it until the following morning. And as soon as I did, a plan started to form…
My travel schedule had me flying over to Edinburgh that evening (Wednesday 21 Feb), and coming back home on Friday evening — the date of the gig. Fortunately (?) I have racked up enough travel with Easyjet that I am in part of their “Flight Club” programme that allows me to change flights easily and without paying an administration fee. This is great for me because it allows me to book my travel more speculatively and further ahead, so that I can take advantage of lower advance prices, knowing that I can change the flights if my plans change…like now.
Step one was, of course, checking with Abi to see if it was okay for me to stay away for longer than expected:
With that approval in place, step 2 was getting a ticket for the gig. The Lexington is a small venue (200 capacity), and the booking site said there were still 33 tickets left, so I snapped one up quickly. After that it was just a matter of calling Easyjet to put me on a flight down to London instead of Amsterdam on Friday evening, and use some of my accumulated hotels.com reward tokens to bag a room for the night! I’d figure out transport back home again later…
So I left work a little earlier than expected on Friday afternoon, took the bus out to Edinburgh airport, plane down to Stansted, train from Stansted to London Liverpool, and then walked the rest of the way to my hotel near Kings Cross. I had enough time to grab a bite to eat before checking in, and have a quick shower before setting out. My hotel was just ten minutes walk away from the Lexington. It’s a pub downstairs with a well-regarded music venue upstairs. This was the first time I’d been to an actual gig in London, and I was super excited!
Para Alta from Hartlepool came on shortly before 21:00, and played a five song opening set. They were good, but they were amped up really loud. I don’t normally wear earplugs at gigs, but my hotel was on a noisy street, and there was a pair of foam earplugs on the bedside table when I arrived, and I had brought them with me just in case. This was a good thing.
Para Alta at the Lexington
The venue filled up nicely while John and Marcus (Thumpers) were setting up their gear and tuning up. I had a spot right up close to the stage, and was able to watch them work, concentration writ large across their faces. At about 21:55 they kicked off with a pounding rendition of “Boundary Loves” from their second album (Whipped and Glazed), and it sounded fantastic. I had been worried that I’d need to use the earplugs again, but they had dialled in the volume to be absolutely perfect for the space. The drums were rich and muscular, but without a ton of booming sustain. The guitar was crisp, and their voices were mixed in at just the right level. The first two times I had seen them they were accompanied by two backing vocalists/keyboard players and another woman just on vocals, but this evening it was just the duo themselves. They triggered other instruments and loops electronically, and they sounded amazing.
Thumpers at the Lexington
They just put all of their hearts into the performance that night. They didn’t talk much between numbers, but when they did it was clear they were full of emotion. I was particularly delighted when they played “Bray”. It is one of my favourite tracks from Whipped and Glazed, and apparently it is one of John’s as well. They dedicated it to their manager (Jen?). It’s not a happy, four-to-the-floor sing-a-long pop track. It’s brooding, with synthesized vocals used as rhythmic counterpoints to the drums, and an unusual (6/8?) time signature.
Marcus Pepperell – BrayJohn Hamson Jr. – Bray
While they were setting up before the gig, I noticed that they carefully positioned three stand microphones at stage left. They didn’t touch them during the main part of the gig, and when they left the stage after “Life All In” I wondered if they would. And yes! When they came on for an encore, they brought out the same three members that had played with them on their first tour! They played four more songs with full backing vocals. “Devotee” was beautiful, and “Unkinder” is almost unimaginable without those overlapping voices. The last song they played was “Together Now”, which was nothing but bittersweet and poignant. I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat.
Set list:
Boundary Loves
Dancing’s Done
99
World Removed
Caramel
Bray
Tame
That Waterfall
Gargantua
Sound of Screams
Life All In
Encore:
Devotee
Velveteen
Unkinder (A Tougher Love)
Together Now
Set list
I stayed around for a little while after the gig to catch John and Marcus at the merch stand and try to tell them how much I enjoyed the gig, but…you just can’t put that kind of thing into words. Earlier in the week I had been talking to a colleague about regrets, and how I associate regret more with things I didn’t do than with things I did. Making the effort to get down to London to catch Thumpers one last time was a good decision. No regrets. Just great memories of a fantastic gig.
