Sufjan Stevens at the State Theatre is an odd mix of old world beauty and a crowd of Hipsters excited to see the Hipster’s Hipster. And since 2005′s release of Come On Feel The Illinoise, many in the crowd have graduated to law firms, explaining why they spent more on their Hipster uniform of T-shirts and jeans than an Opera crowd spends on a gown.

My cynicism towards the audience aside, and despite a Mezzanine level Standing and Dancing Ban (Seriously, Greater Union? No photos OK, but no dancing?) the concert was beyond brilliant. Words fail me, and I likes me some words, but this concert was hands down the most amazing thing I have EVAR experienced. EVAR.

To try put this in perspective, I have listened to Age Of Adz, the album the concert was based on, maybe twice. I just didn’t get it at all, and struggled to understand the hype. I went hoping for an Illinois dominated performance, and instead go The Age Of Adz performed in album order, and it could not have been any better.
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Worst concert EVER.

OK OK, that isn’t fair. I should clarify. Die Antwoord: Brilliant and exceeded expectations. They were funny, energetic, engaging, interesting. Brilliant. The started with Enter The Ninja, always a great sign of a bands confidence, and the show made you smile and feel giddy all at once.

MIA was shite.

It is such a shame that they were in the order they were, because it seemed like MIA was so concerned about outdoing Die Antwoord that she had the sound engineers turn up the sound not to 11, but 33. The result was a wall of sound that made hearing any nuance impossible, and required using your imagination to guess what song was playing. For someone who wasn’t an obsessive fan (e.g. me), that was an impossible challenge and, besides, who the fuck goes to a concert to use their imagination?

I left after MIA’s third “static” (I write “static” because songs would be giving a false impression), only the second time in my life I have ever left a concert (the other was when I was eight and saw Simple Minds with my dad, who hated it), and it was the best decision I think I have ever made.

Die Antwoord: 3.5/5 stars
MIA: -1,000,000/5 stars

Hordern Pavilion
August 2nd, 2008

I don’t believe in God, but after seeing Sigur Ros at the Hordern Pavilion I’m left with a burning conundrum: who am I supposed to thank for the fact that they exist? It seems a wonderful and unlikely miracle that music so uniquely and sublimely beautiful can be created so consistently. Listening to their recordings is a joy – seeing them perform live is close to divine. Read the rest of this entry »

When they’re not lounging vacuously around water features and generally looking buff, our four intrepid heroes are narrowly escaping sinister Bahamanian gangsters through plot holes big enough to sink a pirate ship. Read the rest of this entry »

“Man proposes to sex doll”. You can just see the headline tucked away in the corner of the World section of your local newspaper – the obligatory quirky news item from some rural corner of the USA. Only in America. The amazing thing about Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl is that the love affair it presents between a man and an inanimate object almost starts to make sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Not content to rest on his laurels between the second and third volumes of his Revelation Space series, Alastair Reynolds felt compelled to provide us with a couple of novellas set in the same universe, but outside that story arc. If he’s happy to keep churning this stuff out, we’re more than happy to read it! Read the rest of this entry »

Beautifully shot but brutal. I’m not sure Nick Cave’s screenplay successfully tells the story he wanted it to – many of the characters’ actions and motivations seem unfathomable, and ultimately you wonder what the point is supposed to be. Read the rest of this entry »