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Portland, Oregon duo, Emma Barnett (guitar and vocals) and Nick Makanna (drums) - and I suspect a bassist hovering on the wings, for the live set at the evocatively named venue - Slabtown . As the band's name suggests, a grim, desolate and driving vibe, part Goth, part Joy Division. My kinda people!...

Punk/Grunge four-piece from Olympia Washington, likened to 80s bands like Hüsker Du and Dinosaur Jnr, but somehow finding distinction in their slacker feedback, languid or plaintive vocals. Last year they had an acclaimed album – Cruise Your Illusion - which is not on You Tube, sadly, but there are ...

Was watching this You Tube about the British Museum’s Sutton Hoo display and was struck by the feeble historical opportunism that surrounded the startling finds in 1939. I’ve forgotten the name of the British Museum spokeswoman that recounts how the burial mound of some Anglo Saxon king, beneath his...

Well in truth Jim I probably wouldn’t, but perhaps I ought. At the very least I feel obliged to offer some justification. The thing is, the picture-of-a-sculpture/model/toy bit is fairly familiar now (pace Glenn Brown, Richard Patterson up to Christopher Stevens , Matthew Weir, even Nigel Cooke or J...

Or tUnE-yArDs as the band like to spell it – to the annoyance of web reporters. The band was really hot a few years ago; complete with reactionary backlash against Merrill Garbus, lead singer and mainstay, apparently for her facial hair. A crazy lady in The Guardian went on about it . I don’t know. ...

Tidy beats and hooks that grow on you. I take it they're kind of trendy. Here's a set on Seattle's KEXP with a bit of interview in the middle.

My fave is definitely Made To Stray

A whole cache.

Not actually any girls in the band, of course, but engaging Dublin-based thrashers.

Here's In My Head. Here's Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage.

Useful link JN - I'd not seen these.

I'm reminded a bit of John Walker....

On the top of this James Kalm Report - some break dancing in the subway - including a cute little toddler break dancer!

A compilation based on around 77 curators or ‘nominators’ by the forces at Phaidon publications. The number and range supposedly ensured a balanced or perhaps ‘global’ perspective. Actually at most it panders to a consensus of the privileged and politically correct. Nothing new there then. The resul...

A pretty good group show of seven mostly sculptresses - I couldn’t see who exactly curated it. I’m assuming Jacques. Nice job. :) Anyway it winds down soon (16th Jan – 15th Feb). There’s nothing really outstanding here, but it works well as an ensemble, a sort of cross-section of Post-Minimal abstr...

As I'd supposed, there are Dave Van Ronk songs on You Tube . They seem pretty low key for the most part. The link I've made is to his version of Clouds (a Stephan Sondheim song?) and is mainly for the accompanying photo of Ronk, following or being outpaced by Dylan, somewhere in lower Manhattan (Gre...

Booyakka

Another great article by Claudia La Rocco on the NYC dance/performance scene. Something we never get around to discussing here - but this our failing not performance's. Anyway even better than the article is the comments thread with discussion about subsidising and payments for performers. This kin...

More Coen brothers’ supposed cleverness; slick but empty. I give it six, mainly for the nice black and white cinematography (Bruno Delbonnel), synching with early 60’s period art direction and production design. It looks good, it just doesn’t go anywhere. I’m in the minority of course, according to ...

Now Holland Cotter of the NYT has weighed in on the topic.

Actually he could have mentioned WWR in there, along with Art Fag City and Hyperallergic..... But he didn't

The Gripes of Roth?

Surprisingly sober 'relationships' movie or romance from Spike Jonze, better known for Surreal farces like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation . But they were a long time ago, in his Charlie Kaufman phase (remember Charlie Kaufman?) This time around he is writer and director of a kind of Cyberpunk t...

Well yes but then again since complaints about the gender imbalance in shows is so common, an inverse imbalance is surely just as deplorable, no? We are after equal representation, are we not? Unless we want to play out averages for shows over venues… which may take forever… :lol: But my sarcasm is ...

New York critic Raphael Rubenstein has a site called The Silo, offering many of his artists monographs and tributes to favourite critics. If you like that kind of thing

And four of the five are women? How contemporary and artistic. Check out the penetrating rationale . :shock: The exhibition is curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Curator Contemporary British Art ( centre of picture), Clarrie Wallis , Curator Modern & Contemporary British Art, and Andrew Wilson , Cu...

Neil Tate?

King of the Selfie.

Modest site dealing with obscure shows in NYC from the look of it. Not necessarily perceptive, but flagging shows I would otherwise not hear about.

This is a site that seems to be exclusively a list of art-related links - focussed on New York or East Coast American concerns, although coming from Canada by the look of the URL....


Useful for the compulsive art surfer!

Incidentally, Robert Linsley reviews the Schwabsky article in a slightly more positive light (concerning Wool).

Classic jazz ballad by Thelonious Monk, often covered - most notably by Miles Davis - but here given the string quartet, alto sax, accordian plus whistling treatment. Awesome! :arrow: Alto Saxophone, Accordion – Gilad Atzmon Backing Vocals – Ros Stephen, Tali Atzmon Double Bass – Richard Pryce (2) K...

This is a recommendation surprisingly I could get into. Amazingly, it was recorded in 1977 - although it sounds at least ten years younger. I remember him from those times - things like Big Muff getting played by John Peel, and JM's wild guitar sounds but I never bought in. I supposed it seemed too...

South African band, basically John Withers (the band name a sort of play on mis-hearing his surname I presume) that have got a certain amount of press for political correctness I suspect, but here's some of their African garage digital grooves - the video animations are perfect accompaniments actual...

I did sort of promise to post on 'The Ships' as I expect they're known - actually I'm not sure this Seattle-based band is still a going concern - but here's a representative single > We Ask You To Ride < the Gothic Doorsie vibe basic but infectious. This one's from a live session they did for Seattl...

Over Christmas you get a lot of recommendations for things you’ve never heard (of). Mostly they’re disappointing either because you expected too much or they’re so wide of the mark it’s embarrassing to realize you’re not on the same page at all with the person recommending. :oops: But in the followi...

How A Science Fiction Book Cover Became a $5.7 Million Dollar Painting and continued here . Charlie Jane Anders (a woman) grumbles along the old appropriation/plagiarism fault line - which keeps coming up in court cases . Koons and Prince have had to contend with it - apparently Brown has had his d...

More hand-wringing lately about the influence of the market on critical – even historical – evaluation; Christian Viveros-Fauné’s article in Village Voice – Art’s Dirty Big Secret and Barry Schwabsky’s piece for The Nation, Surviving The Moment add to the momentum. Viveros-Fauné fingers aggressive c...

And neither of the cast playing William Masters and Virginia Johnson look anything like the actual people.

Small point in these things I know, but actually N O T H I N G like either!

I don't see them judged more than men, just differently, perhaps less flexibly. Discussing this article with a lady friend, she said I was splitting hairs - that I felt sorry or sad for women resorting to nudity for their portraits, but that I didn't want to count this as vulnerability. Vulnerabilit...

Everyone is judged by their appearances. But where women choose to present themselves nude, they do so in full knowledge of standards (male and female) - I can't see this as any more vulnerable than self-presentation in general.

Sie. Selbst. Nackt (You Self Naked): nude female self-portraits @ Museen Böttcherstraße, Bremen This is a strange little show , around the theme of feminine courage and pride in nudity throughout the twentieth century, consisting of a dozen or so paintings and photographs. There are a few surprises...

A dud TV series about a biker gang in Northern California, some distance behind the genre-busting moves of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad etc. You know the kind of thing, on the one hand brutal criminals, on the other, fighting for custody of their children, a quiet life with the wife off the meth - tho...

I'm adding this to my West Coast Psychedelic folio. Although I think they're actually from somewhere like Colorado, but I think with a Frisco producer or studio or something... A Wiki page describes them as a side project of Ripley Johnson, guitarist with Wooden Ships (I think he's the dude with the...

If you don't subscribe to The Jackdaw (my subscription has lapsed I confess) the bones of the article are cloned across Fleet Street. Here's The Independent's pickings . The Times' is behind a paywall - predictably. :( The figures were revealed by leading arts commentator David Lee, prompting him to...

Has got a lot of votes in some quarters for the year's bestofs. I loved all the OTT colour settings that digital video allows, the deliberate framings and occasional weird camera movement (there is one where the camera slowley ascends to the sky as some MI5 lady agent is explaining important shit). ...

Worth mentioning for just a couple of small pictures (22.2 x 24.8 cm), Canapé 1 (2013) and Gloria Mundi (2013), in which the artist gets down and dirty for a change. The little white borders are meh and he’s still into the gloomy, glazed down setting but the looser treatment put me in mind of Sabine...

What a mess. I give it two. I’m still thinking what for… maybe the disco scene with the Donna Summer soundtrack? Basically, this is a sting movie. Like The Sting , but with Christian Bale and Amy Adams instead of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. It’s about a couple of swindlers, their own personaliti...

Know almost nothing about this unit - duo? Canadian? I'm groping here - they have a website but I found it unhelpful.

Stuff I liked on You Tube includes Castles and Hills.

London-based - as far as I can tell - band built around two blokes from Melbourne, Australia; Aaron and Ben. At first I thought they sounded a bit too sub-Sonic Youth, but hearing other stuff has convinced me they're a top act. I'm only about 4 years behind on this one, but I LIKE their Paris gig , ...

Trio from Baltimore fronted by Jana Hunter, who used to be a solo act (pre 2010) and reminds me a bit of Siouxsie and The Banshees, although they're more commonly compared with the likes of P. J. Harvey, which is also praise indeed. Slower more moody than P. J. might suggest, here's three You Tubes,...

Riding backwards down a mountain!

These are not necessarily my most popular or informative posts for the year – just those I had the most fun writing.
1) Rust and Bone
2) Nigel Cooke @ Modern Art
3) Aisthesis by Jacques Ranciere
4) Justin Mortimer
5) My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic

Okayish, although I suspect they may only have the one song or at least sentiment in minor variations.

Well I didn't mind the odd tune on the radio but when I finally got around to a few of their You Tubes, their girliness put me off. Try to close your eyes is the best I can suggest...