TN2 Issue 2 by Trinity News

Two TRINITY NEWS

FILM

MUSIC

BOOKS

FASHION

ART

OF MONTREAL by Karl McDonald

issue 2 19 Oct 2010

FOOD

REVIEWS

WRAPPED IN DISCOURSE WITH THE MAGAZINE READER

YOU THINK YOU

Karl McDonald

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. The country blew up again in some intangible economic sense. The University Times’ ‘Trinity Twenty’ decided our inimitable Fashion Editor was the fifteenth most important person in college and thought fit to call me a “21st century alt” (in quotation marks, though I’m fairly confident nobody’s actually ever said that). The Managing Editor of the Irish Times turned out to be a fan, and the unlucky parents of any student near-sighted enough to leave a copy around the house turned out not to be, thanks to a particularly controversial anonymous sex diary. You can submit one of those if you want, by the way, at bit.ly/tn2sex. Still, all in all, a good start. Keeping the momentum going, this issue has a veritable plethora of stuff you might want to read: interviews with L.A. tinnitus-purveyors No Age, of Montreal’s mad genius Kevin Barnes and the totemic Maria Doyle Kennedy from The Tudors, Dexter and The Commitments, for example There’s also an in-depth piece on the impressive animation industry in this country, a look at the use of disused commercial spaces for art, and a café guide directed by the opinions of the café owners themselves. And, with the usual flippancy we treasure here in the dungeons of House Six, there’s Stuart Winchester reading a Carrie Bradshaw novel in public in New York City and a guide to being an insufferable prick about music too. Plus more. Never forget the more. So, wherever you are - bus, train, Luas, couch, café or Arts Block bathroom - read on, and enjoy.

KEEP SKETCH The highlight of your week, sketched.

Words by Stuart Winchester he Carrie Diaries is probably best book I have ever read, or will ever read. On top of that, reading the precursor to Sex and the City while actually being in New York City was probably the greatest experience I have ever had, or will ever, have. That’s a bold statement I know, but consider the classic ‘big moments’ of life: graduation from Trinity will probably be a bureaucratic scavenger hunt, marriage is just a western colonial patriarchal artifice of the autocratic old-world, and I’ve heard that childbirth is pretty much like being at a very small water-park where only your wife can go on the rides. So, best experience ever, definitely, maybe. The Carrie Diaries deals with the young Carrie Bradshaw, who lives in Castlebury, Connecticut and is none too happy about that. It’s a small town and she can’t wait to get out of it. She dreams of moving to New York to become a writer, but after being rejected from the New School Creative Writing program it seems like her plans were nothing more than the crazy pipe-dream of a suburban kid (my words, not hers). It’s a tough pill to swallow, but there is another wrench loose in the gears of Carrie’s life: Sebastian Kidd is back at Castlebury High! Sebastian was Carrie’s first crush and his return confronts Carrie with a whole bunch of situations that she has never experienced before: sex, heartbreak and betrayal, to name a few. Carrie deals with her troubles and tribulations with typical Bradshaw precociousness and

KNOW, BUT YOU HAVE NO IDEA

charm, plus a healthy injection of teenage insecurity. She seems to always be the smartest one in the room, yet she continuously makes stupid choices. The fact that a well-informed reader (relatively speaking) knows that Carrie ultimately succeeds with her dream of being a writer in New York makes all of the insecurity even more condescending and distracting. Essentially, it becomes pretty obvious that Candace Bushnell is only able to write about being a teenager the same way that she wrote about being an adult in Sex and the City, by lying about it over and over and over. Who am I kidding? The book was totally awesome. I could barely put it down. In fact, only three things could make me stop reading The Carrie Diaries: meals with my family (I told my parents I was writing a J.D. Salinger retrospective), reruns of the second season of Ugly Betty and sleep. I found that there was something deeply intriguing, but fundamentally unsettling, about reading an origin story. It’s like looking through your best friend’s childhood photographs. You know and recognise the person you love, but they seem different. You’re not there with them and you want to be. I wanted to be there with young Carrie. I wanted to help her and tell her that everything was going to be all right. I was reading all of this while in New York, her future home, and I wanted to assure her that someday she would make it to the Big City. And her desire made me appreciate all the sights and sounds of New York so much more. The book made all the little moments in city life, which I had taken for granted for years, so much more special. For instance, on the subway ride home after

“Reading The Carrie Diaries while actually being in New York City was the greatest experience I have ever had, or will ever have.”

FE ATURE

buying The Carrie Diaries, a homeless woman asked me for money. Usually, I would reflexively let my eyes go unfocused and shake my head. However, with my new favourite book in hand, I couldn’t help but wonder, are the most successful single women in New York the homeless ones? Whoa! I was already asking myself inane rhetorical questions, just like Carrie! I giggled to myself and then the homeless woman grabbed my chin and yelled something else. I tried to explain that I hadn’t laughed at her per se, but she was already getting ready to give me what looked like a rather sloppy wet willy, so I got off the train. I was in love with New York all over again and it was all thanks to Carrie. Her young desire had me headover-heels back in love with the filth and congestion of the concrete jungle. I took the book with me everywhere. I read it while I walked my dog and I asked a nurse to help me turn the pages while I was at the dentist. I told all my friends about it and I bought copies for all my flatmates in Dublin (a promiscuous blonde, an uptight brunette and a sassy redhead, no less). It was that good. People of a certain pretentious nature tend to shortchange the work of authors like Candace Bushnell. They make claims like “there is no challenge or introspection” or “it sucks real bad.” Well, sorry your Highness. I didn’t know it was a crime to actually enjoy a book or maybe, just maybe, feel something human. Because, if you’re interested in sharing a deep, potentially embarrassing literary experience with other people then I suggest you pick up a copy of The Carrie Diaries and read it on a crowded bus. It’s amazing. 3

OPENERS

WANDERLIST #2 M USIC

Purple Drank Syrup”, “drank”, “lean”. Popular amongst the Houston hip hop scene and NFL players alike, the cough syrup-based cocktail comprised of Sprite and crushed Jolly Ranchers is responsible for codeineinduced highs, several cardiac arrests and the vast majority of Weezy’s musical canon. First brought to the fore by Texan producer DJ Screw, in a cruel twist of fate it was in fact the “sizzurp” that brought about his untimely death. Fortunately, his legacy can live on through a myriad of odes to the drank. And a Nicki Minaj song. Three 6 Mafia - Sippin’ on Some Syrup Lyrics such as “we eat so many shrimp I got iodine poisoning” and a Marvin Gaye sample makes this an instant classic. Lil Wayne - Me and My Drank According to the Phoenix New Times, Lil’ Wayne’s a lot funnier now he’s in jail and off the syrup. On the flipside, lack of lyrical content will probably mean his musical career’s going to go to shit. Nicki Minaj - Mind on My Money A self-styled “ninja Harajuku Barbie” whose song would be entirely negligible if not for a brief reference to lean and a feat. Busta Rhymes. Who is awesome. Black Lips - I Saw A Ghost (Lean) A curveball! Psychedelic garage punk band from Atlanta sings of the purple. Not rap, but Tesco once refused to stock their CD due to explicit content, so it’s ok. Sophie Elizabeth Smith

TRINITYNEWS.IE

ZEN MINIMALISM IN THE ART I N C OLLEGE

Kite! (1974) by Patrick Scott Luce Hall Patrick Scott’s monumental tapestry “Kite!” is the first thing you notice upon entering the cavernous space that is Luce Hall. Cork-born Scott trained as an architect before committing to art in 1960. His artistic output can be split into two distinct threads: that of the critically acclaimed abstract painter, renowned for his minimalist approach, and the other as a skilled tapestry designer who combined traditional methods of production with a thoroughly modern aesthetic. “Kite!” is an immense yet simple artwork that dominates the far wall of the former sports hall, its calm geometric shapes and neutral colours combining minimalism with a Japanese aesthetic. The central circle is surrounded by a flame-like flickering web of lines, built using a series of whorls and loops creating the overall effect of a fragmented fingerprint. This is a common motif in Scott’s work, a symbol of human identity. “Kite!” was donated to the college by Scott Tallon Walker, the architects behind the design of Luce Hall. It recently underwent extensive restoration, with sensitive cleaning and repair counteracting three decades worth of wear and tear. In a space largely associated with exams, “Kite!” is a calming presence, offering a little Zen to anyone suffering from those pesky jitters. Jennifer Duignam

WHAT’S YR TAKE ON CASSAVETES?

M USIC Online Music Editor Keith Grehan

presents a guide to New Garage in the UK, and an electro mixtape by local upstarts Two Charming Men. Plus there’s a call to let him promote your band, and interviews with the important touring bands too. THE ATRE When Theatre Editor Jamie

Leptien is not documenting Moore St (Issue 1) or the Forty Foot (coming in Issue 3) for us, he’s making sure theatre in the city gets its due critical appraisal. Check out the comprehensive coverage of the Dublin Theatre Festival.

PODCAST The inaugural TN2 podcast of the

year will be around midweek to discuss haters, hip hop and other things along the same extremely topical lines, on your iPod.

T WIT TER Follow us on Twitter. If you

don’t have a Twitter, sign up to Twitter and then follow us. You say you’re against it, but don’t pretend you don’t have 200 opinions a day you wish you could tell someone whose face you couldn’t see looking bored. http://www.twitter.com/tn2magazine 4

FILM

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) Poland Continuing our feature of crazily beautiful foreign film posters is another one from Poland. Anna Prawinowa, the director of the State’s film distributor invited artists to design posters that would aesthetically improve upon the typical and orthodox efforts that the West produced. Noted artist Andrzej Pagowski designed this one for Roman Polanski’s 1986 horror film. Evoking communist propaganda more than popular entertainment, this stark, striking picture of a blinded mother holding her swaddled demon child is certainly more engaging than any of the tat that can be found at cinemas and bus-stops nowadays. While it bears no relation to any scene from the film, it is another classic example of the unstrained artistry and rich symbolism in an inherently commercial piece that characterized this peculiar movement. Alex Towers

OLD SPORTS HALL

MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF: 19 October 2010

2 THAT IS SO SAMANTHA Stuart Winchester’s summer with The Carrie Diaries in NYC.

6 KILLER QUEEN Michael Barry talks to former Tudors and current Dexter star Maria Doyle Kennedy about Trinity, acting and music.

8 MOVE, BITCH, GET OUT THE WAY Andy Kavanagh visits the Playstation Hub to evaluate Sony’s move on motion sensor technology and more.

10 GET COLOUR Mairéad Casey investigates the Oscar-recognised animation scene in Ireland, speaking to some of the major players.

12 MUSIC THESE DAYS IS JUST NOISE Gheorghe Rusu speaks to No Age about ethics, Russia and noise music getting ‘over’.

13 PLAYING THE UNRAVELLER Karl McDonald sits down with of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes to discuss self-mythologising, Catholicism and staying pure.

16 CHANGING ROOMS Catherine Gaffney considers the €50,000 sofa shop that’s now an art gallery, and more regeneration in Dublin and Limerick. Photograph by Fionn McCann

TN2 GAMES ON YOUTUBE GAME S Printed media is all well and good, but who will speak for the se-

lect few whose minds have only the capacity to hold an XBox controller with one hand while shovelling Doritos into their mouth with the other? Worry not, my unfortunate friends, TN2 Games now has a YouTube channel devoted to bringing you the latest gaming events happening in your very own Emerald Isle, all captured in spectacularly average standard definition and hosted by complete amateurs. It is rather modest at the moment, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and the TN2 Games YouTube channel wasn’t built in one fantastic afternoon at the Game On exhibition at the Ambassador Theatre, footage of which is online as you read this. That’s right, I just plugged the medium and its content in one super-efficient mega-plug. Now, let’s do the grown up thing and ignore the sexual connotations associated with the term mega-plug. Check it out at youtube.com/ TN2Games Andy Kavanagh

17 AH, GO ON, GO ON, GO ON, GO ON... Sadhbh O’Brien follows café owners’ recommendations around the city to find the best caffeinated hang-out in Dublin.

19 REVIEWS Carlos, The Walkmen, Bon Appetit, Tinkers, doughnuts in general and more in this issue’s reviews section.

25 HOW TO/GUILTY PLEASURES Be impossible to talk to about music and feel bad about the UFC

26 DAS CAPO Oisín Murphy wants to know what love is.

CONTRIBUTORS Editor: Karl McDonald. Art: Jennifer Duignam, Catherine Gaffney. Books: Stuart Winchester, Kevin Breathnach. Fashion: Ana Kinsella, Aisling Deng. Film: Alex Towers, Mairéad Casey. Food: Sadhbh O’Brien, Rose Ponsonby. Games: Andy Kavanagh. Music: Sophie Elizabeth Smith, Gheorghe Rusu, Keith Grehan. Theatre: Jamie Leptien. TV: James Kelly, Michael Barry. Images: Mark Baldwin, Caoimhe Lavelle, Martin McKenna, Sinéad Mercier. Design: Gearóid O’Rourke, Martin McKenna. General assistance: Aoife Crowley, Fuchsia Macaree. Fuelled by: Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Music Hall, Fiona Hyde, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

THE QUEEN IS DEAD by Michael Barry

he ‘unsung hero’ is one of the favourite identities espoused by the Irish media. It is undoubtedly attractive, given that it offers the illusion of scope and variety where there is often little to be had. It can also be seen as applicable to pretty much anyone who hasn’t reached Glen Hansard levels of contained exposure. Despite this, it is difficult to think of any other way to talk about musician/actress/entrepreneur Maria Doyle Kennedy. With a role in the new season of Dexter, and a new album on the way, Doyle Kennedy easily merits a cautious application of such a label. Even more impressively, she has done all this while carefully sidestepping the media cannibalism and lifestyle spreads that usually fudge the issue of Irish achievement. First of all, Doyle Kennedy joined her first band whilst a student here at Trinity. Did she find that her time in college influenced her later ability to follow several career paths? “I had the time of my life there. I loved having so much time, with no financial responsibilities and the luxury of focusing on learning. The way you have to impose your own process 6

and control your own progress, I suppose it did have an impact.” Dexter itself is currently enjoying a surge in popularity in the United States. Season Five opened in September to the largest audience in the history of its network, Showtime. How did she deal with that level of expectation, and the dynamics of joining a long-established

“FATHER TED IS THE ONLY THING MY CHILDREN ARE PROUD OF ME FOR BEING IN” cast? “They were a very welcoming cast. Joining was quite intimidating, given that the series has been very successful. It had really upped a level, with John Lithgow’s character last season. But they were all open, generous actors and I was able to get on with it.” “I have to admit, I didn’t know Dexter that

well beforehand, but I did know Michael C. Hall. As an actor, you can’t help but notice him in everything he’s in. As it happened, most of my scenes were with him.” She also tactfully refuses to be drawn on her hopes for her character’s survival, quite simply as, “I don’t yet know what happens at the end of the series.” As well as her role in Dexter, Maria has a brief returning cameo in the upcoming final series of The Tudors. How did she deal with the transition from something anachronistic, and in some ways quite straightforward, to working on a show with a less tangible sense of genre like Dexter? “The Tudors was very stylised and not very naturalistic. It was divorced from real life. But I like being able to dress up and play! I do try not to think about the switch too much. Otherwise I would give a very mannered performance. I got to work with so many gifted storytellers, which means you have to match your game to theirs. That’s what I was focused on. You should always act with those better than you.” Both The Tudors and Dexter have come under fire for their graphic content. “With

regards to The Tudors, it was clear from the script that they wanted to be very modern. They wanted Henry as a rockstar. But at the same time, there were characters like Catherine of Aragon in it. She had amazing weight and gravitas, and got real dialogue. I don’t think the series overall was shocking in its content. “I can’t really comment on Dexter as I’m not that familiar with it. It does seem to be seen as a kind of shlock horror thing, and have those types of fans. But then there are all those who love the serial killer with morals element.” Doyle Kennedy also took the step of founding her own record label in 2001, Mermaid Records, and is currently working on her fourth solo album for the label. How does she feel now that self-releasing is not only the most viable, but in many cases, the only option for new Irish bands? “Self-releasing is the only option now. I suppose, I did want the luxury of producing my own records. But it was also a necessity. I mean,

nobody was going to sign me in my thirties! I do realise it is very difficult for bands getting their stuff out these days. The internet has helped, but it’s also mostly just full of absolute crap.” Doyle Kennedy started her music career during a particularly fertile period for Irish music. The late eighties are now seen by some as halycon days for the Irish scene, with bands like My Bloody Valentine and Whipping Boy garnering bucketloads of acclaim and credibility. Are things different? “I think the Irish music scene needs to be supported by Irish radio stations. Only then will they be able to practice their craft. There are lots of blocks to that now. In the eighties, yes, there were great bands around, but that was during a period when people were getting signed. People were coming to

Ireland to find acts, something which allowed Irish bands to get better.” From The Commitments to her cameo in Father Ted, Doyle Kennedy seems to have been involved in many of the enduring Irish film and television classics that still invoke both love and gratitude for their ability to smother any attempt at family conversation during Christmas. Has this always been through shrewd career decisions or has there been an element of luck involved? “There is always an element of luck involved in what you choose and are asked to do. I have said no lots and lots too. I have to say though, I am so proud of being involved in Father Ted. It’s also the only thing my children are proud of me for being in!” And as for missing The Commitments reunion tour with the original cast next March? “It was a film I did twenty years ago this year, and I had a magical time making it. That was then. I did it but then left it behind and moved on. I mean, I was never in that band, The Commitments!” www.mariadoylekennedy.com www.myspace.com/mariadoylekennedy 7

GAMES

I LIKE THE WAY YOU MOVE

outh William Street is noteworthy for several reasons, only some of them wholesome. But currently it is home to the Playstation Hub, a holein-the-wall type venture from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe where, instead of being forced to rely on the opinions of would-be game journos such as myself, anyone can walk in and sample the latest Playstation products for themselves, presumably to coax them into buying them in the not too distant future. It’s an interesting idea and one that will hopefully pay off enough for us to see more. The prospect of spending time with peripherals and games prior to their launch is something usually reserved for the higher echelons of the media circle (such as TN2). Throwing down the silk curtain and allowing everyone and anyone to come inside and have some fun, for free I might add, could be the best ad

by Andy Kavanagh campaign they could have hoped for.And they certainly have a lot to advertise. There’s a lot on show at the Playstation Hub, and new titles come in regularly, but residing over all the new software, which will be discussed later, is the real star of this particular show, Sony’s new PS3 peripheral, the Playstation Move. Having been officially unveiled earlier this year, reports have been trickling in from various media sources about the device’s pros and cons. After spending some time with the Move and several of its launch titles a definitive opinion on its place in the current gaming landscape is still difficult to construct. The device itself is instantly accessible. It’s light, lighter than a Wii remote, but feels durable and is comfortable to hold. It’s design, in

THE MOVE COULD PROVE ITSELF TO BE A FANTASTIC PIECE OF KIT AND THE TITLE THAT JUSTIFIES ITS EXISTENCE COULD BE CLOSER THAN WE THINK 8

terms of where its face buttons are located for transition from pre-Move controllers, is flawless and will ensure current and last generation gamers won’t struggle when making the changeover (provided they bother to do so, more on that later). However, the Move, along side Microsofts Kinect peripheral, is not only aiming to add to the experiences of those well versed in the language of gaming, but also to bring newcomers to the medium into the playstation family and make their stay as enjoyable as possible. In theory there’s no reason why the move can’t achieve both of these goals. In practice, however, the cracks begin to appear. One of the most talked about features of the Playstation Move is its 1:1 accuracy, which surpasses even that delivered by the Wii-Motion Plus add-on to the Wii remote, and anyone who has used the Move knows that this is not just marketing spin. The tracking is astonishingly accurate, picking up every subtle movement in every direction and even taking into account the angle at which it’s being held. A technological feat certainly but one not without its potential pitfalls. If Sony were hoping to poach Wii-converts through the Move, this technological feat could prove to be something of an obstacle. While playing table tennis in Sports Champions, and after a relatively simple calibration process where the camera needed to

FASHION

acknowledge my shoulders, waist and side profile, I couldn’t help but notice how difficult it was to keep track of what way I was supposed to be holding the Move, which was directly effecting my performance. For the record, I’m not discounting the possibility that I am simply very bad at table tennis in Sports Champions, but isn’t the Move supposed to be bringing non-gamers into the picture? I couldn’t quite understand how a con-

For the record, I’m not discounting the possibility that I am simply very bad at table tennis in Sports Champions, but isn’t the Move supposed to be bringing non-gamers into the picture? siderably more complex version of something that millions play, and win, while intoxicated on Wiis all over the world would be helpful in doing that. Which segues us nicely into the main issue facing the Playstation Move at present: the software, or lack thereof. There really isn’t a compelling reason at present to own a Move apart from owning one for the sake of it. Any console or peripheral ultimately rests on the merits of the games that come with it and at the moment Move doesn’t really have a lot of software support. There’s casual fare aplenty with The Show, Kung Fu Rider, Sports Champions and the obligatory party games, but the best that can currently be mustered up for the more serious gamers is a re-release of Heavy Rain with Move functionality and an admittedly fun reboot of Time Crisis, both of which could be (and in the case of Heavy Rain, have been) marketed and sold without any inclusion of the Move whatsoever. But I don’t want to sound schizophrenic here, and my initial praise of the device still rings true, the Move could prove itself to be a genuinely fantastic piece of kit and the title that justifies its existence could be closer than we think, it’s just disappointing to see Sony launch another device without the software support to really sell it, a lesson you’d think they of all people would have learned by now. As I mentioned briefly earlier, it’s not just about the Move down at the Playstation Hub and, truth be told, the other offerings on display may be more enticing to gaming enthusiasts. First up is the playable demo of the consistently delayed Gran Turismo 5, pushed back once more from its scheduled for release in November. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Gran Turismo, but even I found myself staring in wide-eyed wonderment at what could potentially be the best looking game on the PS3 so far. Also playable is a pre-alpha (not even nearly finished) code of Killzone 3, which is set to be the best entry in the Killzone franchise

yet, because it has jetpacks. Of the three playable levels, only one utilizes the jetpack addition to proceedings, but it is an experience exhilarating enough for me to abandon any pretense of journalistic integrity and simply describe it as ‘fucking sweet’. Possibly the biggest surprise of my time at the hub was my time with MotorStorm Apocalypse. Now, I know what you’re thinking, because I was thinking it too. MotorStorm, a perfectly competent but ultimately unimpressive racing franchise, could not possibly compare to playable demos of Gran Turismo 5 or Killzone 3, and under normal circumstances you would probably be correct. However, I can officially credit MotorStorm Apocalypse with doing what I honestly believed was impossible. It has made me a believer in 3D gaming. Yes, the glasses are uncomfortable. Yes, the technology is too expensive and yes, it will be a long time before the 3D gaming experience is something that everyone will have or even really want, but having played MSApocalypse, I’m glad to know it’s something developers are exploring. The wind blows ashes and concrete towards you as you tear through your apocalyptic landscape, buildings crumble sending shattered glass (and pedestrians) hurtling towards the camera, the effect is undeniably impressive and on more than one occasion I found myself flinching from the paraphernalia being flung at me from all angles. The Playstation Hub will be open on South William St. until mid-November, and with MotorStorm Apocalypse, Killzone 3, Gran Turismo 5 and a plethora of Move devoted titles, there’s enough down there to please just about anyone.

DEATH TO VOGUE

by Stephen Moloney

artorially literate or otherwise, it requires one vast chunky knit over one’s head to not be conscious of the dominating presence of Vogue on shelves, coffee tables, office desks, and in handbags and man-bags the world over. For many, Vogue is fashion-authority at it’s most revered, the highest echelon of the fashion world being both a tastemaker and taste- breaker. Numerous editions span countless countries, languages, ages, and both genders it is impossible to chew over all of these in just three hundred words. Instead, let’s talk about the original and most lionised - American Vogue. Helmed by Anna Wintour, the publication has been heralded as a valuable crutch for upcoming designers, stylists, and photographers, in an industry notoriously difficult to make your successful mark. As applause worthy as this is, this writer sees the criticism far outweighing the praise. What springs to mind? The quality of writing has always appeared second-rate compared to it’s British counterpart. The same can be said for it’s editorials when paired with that of French or Italian Vogue (though stylist Grace Coddington has saved many a day). Similarly, advertising per issue has reached endemic proportions, serving only to distract from the rest of the content, a phenomenon seen on a much smaller scale in other editions. Finally, Vogue US revolutionised shifting copies from shelves by adopting celebrities to grace each cover. I buy a fashion magazine for a multitude of reasons, not Halle Berry. I no longer pledge any allegiance to Wintour’s beleaguered magazine which seems disconnected and less than accessible. Print journalism is suffering more than ever, and Vogue is without immunity. Now seems the time for her to call it a day, or at least take off her (rose-tinted?) sunglasses and have a good look at what’s happening. 9

FILM

CARTOON NATION by Mairéad Casey

artoons have a lot to answer for. Personally, I blame them for introducing a three year old me to the swirling world of moving line that forever made the imagination seem alive and open, and that I’ve barely been able to depart from since. I also cite cartoons as the reason I need glasses. I distinctly remember once sitting so close to the screen that the curls on my forehead reached out like antennae to the static membrane of the television and I could make out a honeycomb of pixels. I would wonder why animation was reserved for kids and live-action for adults. Like those who thought photography ‘easy’ compared to painting, I thought animation should be held in higher esteem because everything on-screen was born of the artists’ minds and hands. Although I now know better, that the camera is as much an artistic tool as the pen, there will always be things that animation can do which live-action cannot – and I’m not just talking about soothing anyone’s inner child here. Pragmatically speaking, creative director of internationally recognised animation studio Brown Bag Films Darragh O’Connell 10

explains that “with animation you can create worlds that are prohibitively expensive in live-action. You can create a heightened sense even when dealing with human characters, so you can tell a story which would appear mundane if filmed with a camera. You can control every frame of an actor’s performance which you can’t do in live action, and of course you are not trapped by the Irish weather when it comes to planning your shoot.” There is universality in animation; often non-realist, sometimes expressionistic it morphs and translates allegorically. This is why animation is the medium of choice for the family film. Recent hits Up! and Toy Story 3 famously brought adults to shamefully wipe away tears behind their 3D glasses. They understood the bereavement explored in Up! and the bittersweet farewell to childhood in TS3 while kids simply enjoyed the fantastical adventures of talking toys and floating houses. Similarly, anime ignites obsessions across the globe. Yet, be it the rich originality of Hayao Miyazaki or a gory action-fantasy series, anime maintains its Japanese identity. So what does this mean for Ireland’s thriving animation industry? This has been a

fantastic year for the industry critically and commercially, with Oscar nominations for The Secret of Kells and Granny O Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty. Brown Bag Films won a contract with Disney, after “years of attending markets, shaking hands, meeting people & getting our name out there.” O’Connell sheds light on the standard of Irish animation internationally, “I think it’s world class. A lot of us are working on smaller budgets than some of our overseas counterparts but when people see what we are creating with that money they are being blown away.” From fickle beginnings, the industry has become a dynamo of unlimited potential. The history of Irish animation is a unique one, a sort of foreign fruit that was propagated from the U.S. and flourished where before there grew hardly anything at all. Up until the mid-1980s, Irish animation consisted of a few quixotic individuals working by themselves. By 1990, Dublin was host to three large American studios and several smaller ones. The Sullivan-Bluth Studio was the most influential of these. For a time they were the great rivals to Disney’s monopoly of the children’s film. Readers may remember classics like The

Secret of Nimh, An American Tale, All Dogs Go To Heaven and The Land Before Time as intrinsic to one’s childhood. The latter two were animated in Dublin. To cultivate a skilled workforce, Bluth established the first animation department in Ireland at Ballyfermot College of Further Education. The success of this course led to the opening of a second one in the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. BCFE taught a more classical style, while Dún Laoghaire was in more of a European, experimental tradition. This exposed young animators to diametrically opposed traditions of animation, creating a well-rounded industrial scene well-versed not only in classical, character-based animation, but in the quirky visual poetry of European animation. This melting pot of styles allowed the industry to remain afloat and eventually become self-sufficient, after the era of American studios came to an end. Sullivan-Bluth ran into financial difficulties and finally closed shop in 1995. Emerald City also folded and Fred Wolf Films downsized, causing hundreds of job losses and untold more uncertain futures. But the animators and students remained, welltrained and filled with personal ambition. Some were scattered on the wind but many others stayed to build from the ground up. Darragh O’Connell explains how neces-

very contrary fairy. David O’Reilly is another Irish talent, winning the 2008 Berlinale Golden Bear for Best Short, featuring in a Variety top ten and directing the video for U2’s I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, all at 25. The Berlinbased artist also gained attention for his Lady Gaga portraits that see her face spike into a neon ether. The Golden Bear-snagging Please Say Something was composed entirely in his own room, and details the dysfunctional love between an abusive mouse and a cat who live in a city of howling winds and severe geometry. He transforms the cartoon cat and mouse relationship into one of humane domestic tragedy, more Sirkian melodrama than Tom & Jerry. The characters express little; emotion is derived from the situation as the cat’s saucerlike eyes slip uncannily from brainlessly cute to fathomless void, an abyss that gazes back. Vivaciously original as these shorts may be, if Ireland’s animation industry is to become a force to be reckoned with, they need to excel in feature-length films. The Oscar- nominated The Secret of Kells was the feature-length debut from Kilkenny’s Cartoon Saloon. Rich in Celtic mythology and historical context, it was lauded for being a unique visual experience thanks to its smörgåsbord of influences and styles. With inspiration ranging from Spiegelman’s Maus, Studio Ghibli,

sity and creative integrity motivated him and Cathal Gaffney to found Brown Bag Films “There were no Irish-owned studios doing independent animation at the time and we wanted to make our own films, so the only option was to set up a company ourselves.” However, a lack of a sufficient home market has restrictions. “Unfortunately, as Ireland is such a small country and funding for Irishthemed projects is so low, we’re forced to produce work for an international market” says O’Connell, “and as result creating ‘Irish’ animation is a luxury we can’t afford”. It has been their steady perseverance which has allowed them to maintain a balance between high quality TV series such as Olivia, and their more personal projects. Brown Bag Films were twice nominated for an Oscar for their outstanding shorts: Give Up Yer Aul Sins in 2002 and Granny O Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty, which received the honour just this year. Granny O Grimm’s is a tale spun with the hilarious acrimony of Gothic terror. The short boasts two types of animation, 3D and 2D, with the latter adopting the style of illustrated fairytale anthologies brought magically to life as Sleeping Beauty is invaded by one

German Expressionism, Celtic cross carvings and the minutely detailed filigree of the Book of Kells, it is truly a dazzling symbiosis of influences and a feast for the eyes. Cartoon Saloon has three more features in the pipe-line: Exit the Dragon, Bluebeard by Secret of Kells co-director Nora Twomey, and Song of the Sea , a fantasy adventure of two children’s return to their sea-side home after their mother’s disappearance. Brown Bag Films and Monster plan to move into feature films in the near future, and in a time when some CGI can look like its characters just strolled out of the uncanny valley, Magma Films has been producing high quality CG features for its European clients including Niko & the Way to the Stars. Irish animators have developed a great reputation for talent and commitment to their projects, creating worlds as visionary and vibrant as their counterparts Pixar and Ghibli. These films interweave and transcend cultural context, evoking Irish humour instead of reverting to the miserabalist trend that dogs Irish films. Like the wide-eyed urchins who grew up watching cartoons, these films propel forward without losing their identity.

“I THINK IT’S WORLD CLASS. WHEN PEOPLE SEE WHAT WE ARE CREATING WITH THE MONEY THEY ARE BEING BLOWN AWAY.”

L-R: Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty, Brown Bag Films; The Secret of Kells, Cartoon Saloon; Doc McStuffins. Brown Bag Films; Niko and the Way to the Stars, Magmaland; Old Fang, Cartoon Saloon; Fluffy Gardens, Monster Animation. Below: The Last Elk, Brown Bag Films

MUSIC

I SEE RIVERS IN MY SLEEP THEY’RE FILLED WITH BLOOD

by Gheorghe Rusu

thics-heavy Los Angeles noise pop band No Age came to Dublin for the all-day Foggy Jam on October 10th, having just released their third album, Everything In Between. TN2 talked to them right before they gave the city permanent hearing damage. What significance does the title of your new release, Everything In Between bear? Everything in Between refers to the moments in life when you’re not expecting something important to happen, but it comes along and happens, and changes your life forever. Those in-between moments when you’re planning on going one way, and your life gets sidetracked into something else. Like, a funny thing happens on the way to school, and you never go to school ever again, and you join a band, and tour for the rest of your life. Is that what happened with No Age? No, not exactly, it was a series of events. Everyone flies through these series of events. Like, if you look back on your life, and wonder, how did I get here?�It’s not the stuff that you planned on, it’s the stuff that sort of just happens to you. Did you feel any pressure after the response to your last album? Did it influence your process? Who have you been listening to, lately and while making this album? I think we were aware that people really dug that record, but it wasn’t something we could do something about. We tried to keep our heads down and make a record that we really liked, without paying attention to whether anybody else cared. It’s one of those records 12

I feel made for ourselves. We were looking to just write songs. Just sitting down, and writing these songs that we felt resonated with us in a personal way. I’ve been listening to Exuma, who’s this Caribbean folk freaky rock star, from the 70s, in New York, who’s really good. When we were making the record we were listening to bands like Disco Inferno and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Is the environment different for noise music right now? I don’t know. Do people like noise music more now, because of the internet? Yeah. I mean, when a band like Wolf Eyes can sell 500,000 records, it’s really been put over. But people still like pop music, I don’t know why people put up with the noise we make. Maybe they’re just into the masochistic side of it, like, they enjoy being punished at shows. There’s certainly a pop edge to your own music. Ultimately, what we try to make is a pop song out of elements that wouldn’t be considered pop. To collage sounds together that on their own would be very harsh and discordant, but arrange them in a way that actually makes it chirpy, sweet and poppy. Like it sticks in your ear, but when you really look at it, it’s made up of these frightening, grotesque sounds. You’ve done an EP with Zach Hill [acclaimed Californian drummer, who has worked with, among others, Marnie Stern, Wavves and Kid606]. Have you got any plans for more collaboration? We’re always excited to collaborate with others on different projects, whether it’s music or

design or film, or visual arts. Right now we’ve got a third member joining us on the road to help realise the songs that we recorded in a live setting. It’s nice to be able to stretch out and breathe a little bit more, and not have so much to do. Especially on the last record, we used samplers as arranging tools, to write songs that were solely based on pre-recorded loops and sounds that we had created, but then to alter them in a way that they would link together, to form verses and choruses and bridges. We had layered so much stuff in there that we needed a third pair of hands to really make them come to life on stage. Are your ethics as vegetarians and all-ages advocates important to you as a band? Yes, and no. The way we live is kind of ruled by it. The beliefs are a positive way to go through life, but politically, we’re not a preachy band. The art isn’t in service of these ethics, or the other way around. We just happen to be people with open minds and positive attitudes that are able to art. We don’t make art about the way we live, but we live the way we live in order to make art. What are some the highlights of your recent tour? So many fun moments. We got to play a festival over in the States with Public Enemy, and it was incredible to watch PE from backstage, to see them as a unit, as a force, a cultural influence, still active at this point 30 years down the road. Such an incredible band. Another one was going to Russia, we’ve never been to Russia. It was our first time over there and thanks to the internet, people knew who we were.

THE FAMILY’S GOLDEN MYTH by Karl McDonald

MUSIC

OF MONTREAL Illustration by Sinéad Mercier

“I spent the winter with my nose buried in a book while trying to restructure my character.” A Sentence of Sorts of Kongsvinger (2007) It’s a trope of music writing to say that an artist constantly reinvents himself, but in the case of Kevin Barnes and of Montreal, it’s true. The band started out as a scruffy indie pop project associated with Athens, Georgia’s Elephant 6 collective (alongside Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples In Stereo and others) and, after experimenting with Gershwin Brothers music hall and even surrealist musical comedy, they ended up in their most well known iteration around 2004. The cerebral, bipolar, rainbow-drenched pop of this era made the band’s name. 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? stands up as one of the best albums of the last decade, but it also gave birth, almost as an aside, to Barnes’ Bowie-esque alter ego, a transgendered black person called Georgie Fruit. Skeletal Lamping, in 2008, was almost entirely from this slightly bizarre new perspective. In theory, the new record False Priest is too. But it’s more complicated than that. “It’s a little bit more murky. It’s a combination of real life experiences, fantasy, dreams. It’s not straight fiction. But the major difference is that on Skeletal Lamping I felt like Georgie Fruit was an outside character. On False Priest, it’s been integrated into my 14

psyche in a way that it doesn’t feel like an alien force. It just feels straight from my heart in a way.” I ask whether he does the live show as Georgie Fruit. “No, like, now there’s no distinction. It’s right there. Same person, same entity.”

That’s when the mythology sort of evolves, of its own force in a way.”

Wicked Wisdom (2008)

“When I first met you at that Al-Anon meeting, you made that reference to All Your Goodies Are Gone. You even sang a verse.”

The names of the three of Montreal records that followed Hissing Fauna were all taken from Fabergé Falls For Shuggie on that album, where Barnes repeats the words ‘skeletal lamping, the controller sphere, false priest’ in an ominous mantra. The Controller Sphere is yet to emerge - when it does, Barnes says, it will probably come as a board game - but the concept is intriguing and, as usual, cryptic. “The actual false priest himself symbolises the betrayal of humanity. Or it doesn’t have to mean anything. In a lot of ways I feel like I just write things. It’s so integrated into my daily life that it’s like breathing. I don’t think, ‘what’s the meaning of that sneeze?’” “I’m not one of those artists who spends a lot of time thinking about the concept or creating a whole mythology for everything I do, you know? Whenever I make something, it has to happen spontaneously. I can’t really do things in a premeditated fashion. But once it starts rolling, things take on a life-force of their own and you start to see ‘oh, that makes sense because it connects with this and this.’

Despite his claims, Barnes’ obsessions with postmodern film and literature, and mythologising himself and his wife Nina in various ways, make every new of Montreal album a new, tangled text to unravel. To a certain extent, though, the stylistic changes have lost some of their originally indie rock crowd. There are references to Stevie Wonder and Parliament songs on False Priest, and the undisputed queen of modern soul Erykah Badu is actually name-dropped. This alongside guest appearances by art-R’n’B android Janelle Monae and Beyoncé’s little sister Solange. How does he feel about the fact that he’ll probably always be catalogued alongside the awkward white guys, no matter how far down the rabbit hole of African-American music he goes? “I think it’s great. I mean, indie rock has a different definition in the US than it does over here. In the US, there are a lot more actual indie labels. Here, people describe Blur as an independent band. It’s like, huh? It’s not

“I’m a motherfuckin’ headliner bitch, you don’t even know it.”

Our Riotous Defects (2010)

a sound, necessarily. It’s not a genre, it’s people outside of the mainstream. That’s what it means to me. Music as art and not as a product. I mean, you can be commercially successful as an indie artist. Certain bands are, like Arcade Fire topping the Billboard charts. And then there’s people on the other side, like Ke$ha or what’s her name, the California Gurls... Katy Perry. That’s still fun and entertaining. I’m not a snob about this stuff. I like some Katy Perry stuff and some Lady Gaga stuff, but as far as people who are making music just for the sake of making music, because they love it or are driven to it, it feels like it’s coming from a more pure place. You’re not just trying to get your album sold at Walmart. You’re trying to make something provocative and unconventional and unpredictable. That’s what we’re about.” That’s why, even on the brink of what could have been mainstream success, of Montreal stuck with Polyvinyl, an Illinois-based indie label, despite major labels sniffing around. “A major label meddles too much. They’re more like investors, they’ve invested a couple of hundred thousand dollars in your record, so it’s gotta sell. ‘Don’t fuck around, don’t do anything that’s going to confuse people. Make something that will connect with the lowest common denominator.’ But indie music is not about that. It’s about giving your audience credit for being intelligent, for being able to go there with you.”

“If those in this life are not sacred, then nothing that is a part of it is sacred either.” You Do Mutilate? (2010) Given that the last two of Montreal albums are well over 50% sex-based, it’s an interesting thing to bear in mind that Barnes was raised in a devout Catholic family. “Yeah, I had to go every week until I was like 18, like ‘as long as you live under my roof.’ I just sort of figured it out really, like around 10 or 11, that it’s just ridiculous. You know, the hypocrisy is terrible and the delusion is out of control. I understand that others have their own belief system and I’m not one to dismantle that. But when I heard about the molestation charges, it wasn’t a surprise. That’s what happens when people put themselves into that situation. It sucks for the kids, it sucks for the adults, it’s a terrible situation. But of course terrible things happen when you repress your natural desires.” Is the overt celebration of sexuality in the music now a reaction to repression of Catholicism? “Possibly. You know, there might be a little bit of punk rock rebellion in me. But I don’t really feel blasphemous or anything like that. The problem is, though, people can’t see beyond themselves. Everyone can have their own viewpoint, but I think it should come from a humanistic place.” “Our relationships in this life are more important than some perceived God. Some imaginary relationship with some imaginary figure. A lot of people, like my mother, think that faith has nothing to do with imagination. Her concept of God is as real as her concept of

A brief (and incomplete) discographical history: Cherry Peel (1997) - of Montreal’s debut as an indie pop threepiece affiliated with the Elephant 6 collective. The Early Four Track Recordings (2001) - A compilation of Barnes’ lo-fi home recordings, with track titles telling a surreal tale about Dustin Hoffman, despite his total absence from the lyrics. Coquelicot Asleep In The Poppies (2001) - Subtitled ‘A Variety of Whimsical Verse’, Coquelicot is a loosely bound concept album of bizarre tales about bizarre characters. Satanic Panic In The Attic (2004) - of Montreal’s first album after Barnes’ marriage to Nina Grøttland. With programmed bass and drums prominent, it was recorded almost exclusively by Barnes himself, foreshadowing future releases. Sunlandic Twins (2005) - Features Wraith Pinned To The Mist, the track controversially used on a ‘sell-out’ Outback Steakhouse advertisement in the US. The title and cover art refer, presumably, to Kevin and Nina. Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (2007) - Broadly acknowledged as oM’s best, Hissing Fauna documents a temporary estrangement from Nina, and introduces Barnes’ alter-ego Georgie Fruit. Skeletal Lamping (2008) - Georgie Fruit’s opus, consisting of dozens of song snippets moulded into a coherent whole, with funk and R’n’B influences becoming prominent. Critically divisive, it was released as a series of ‘art objects’ (such as wall decals or paper lanterns) as well in in conventional formats. False Priest (2010) - of Montreal’s tenth full-length, postproduced with film composer and Kanye collaborator Jon Brion and featuring Janelle Monae and Solange Knowles as guests. The most heavily influenced by African-American music yet. me. It gives her something positive. But when that positive thing gets in the way of healthy human interaction, there’s a problem.”

“At least I author my own disaster.”

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal (2007) Of Montreal’s masterpiece, almost any fan would tell you, is the twelve minute leviathan of love, existence and loss of control, The Past Is A Grotesque Animal. In an interview with UK indie site du jour Drowned in Sound, Barnes described playing it live as “a ten minute journey into hell.” It’s hard not to wonder if it becomes rote through repetition. “It’s hard for me. I mean, definitely that was the lowest point for me in my life. It’s not really like, oh man, I just wanna cut myself with broken bottle afterwards, you know? But it’s hard to revisit over and over and over again. I’ll do it just because I have a lot of respect for the song and I feel very privileged to have a song that people connect with and like. I think it’s great when artists go there, when artists put themselves out and make themselves a little vulnerable. That’s better than

always having a front where you can’t penetrate their true selves. There’s a few songs I would just never play. But The Past is so long, and it’s such a journey. By the end, there’s a great relief. It’s really cathartic.”

“Everybody looking at me to succeed him as the family’s golden myth, while all my identity mutations were being dosed by books.” Godly Intersex (2010) The lore of of Montreal states that the ending of The Past Is A Grotesque Animal, epic as it is, right at the middle of the career-defining Hissing Fauna, is the point where Barnes morphed into Georgie Fruit. It seems a thousand miles away now, but even through the cracks of the character, flashes of the same vulnerability show on new material - on Godly Intersex, talking about the pressure on him after his uncle’s suicide, for example. Barnes will probably never get less fascinating, no matter how far down the rabbit hole he goes. 15

ART

MAKING THE CITYSCAPE NEW

t’s a grim picture, representative of much of the nation’s main shopping streets at the moment: a cityscape of glass and concrete shells, designed with perpetual earners and spenders in mind, displaying blank nothingness as you pass by, unable to venture through the shop-fronts even just to shelter from the rain. You wander about bored and then angered by all this spatial injustice, when suddenly you catch a glimpse of something in the window. Hang on. Not mannequins this time, but sculptures. Not logos and prices, but minimalistic trees delineated in black and red tape, sprouting new branches every now and then. And spaces begin to re-open, but instead of dressing rooms you find geometric light projections, instead of high street advertising campaigns there are hand-printed posters, instead of racks of clothing, you encounter galleries, studios and exhibitions. Welcome to the world of ‘slack spaces’, the numerous commercial units – often bright, spacious, and centrally located – that proliferated during the construction boom and which are now playing host, often at reduced rent or for free, to various works of local ‘creatives’. On many levels, this development makes a huge amount of sense: we have hordes of young, extremely motivated, enthusiastic individuals with no serious employment prospects but with strong backgrounds in fine art, performance, and music. And an abundance of newly constructed buildings that are just sitting there, empty Dylan Haskins, one of the founders of collective arts centre Exchange Dublin, points out that “residentially and commercially zoned properties no longer have the same economic power,” and it is therefore wrong to continue to treat them as such because “a city needs to be constantly redefined”. Exchange Dublin’s site was, until recently, a shop named 16

by Catherine Gaffney Object Haus, where customers were buzzed in and where sofa prices reached the fifty thousand euro mark. Unfortunately, these types of overhauls can be a bureaucratic nightmare. According to Haskins, even the most enthusiastic of individuals might find that the licensing, zoning, and planning legislation can make for “too big a hurdle.” Even when a space is up and running, it is still vulnerable to objections based on planning permission grounds: Exchange Dublin is currently prevented from hosting gigs, for example. All this is a great shame. Contemporary art is suited to unadorned shell-like spaces, and so the physical transformation of disused outlets into studio or gallery spaces doesn’t require much, and it is something that should be facilitated rather than complicated by urban authorities – perhaps even made the responsibility of a specific departmental body. In Limerick City, this has actually been happening. The Creative Limerick initiative, spearheaded by architect Lise-Ann Sheahan of Limerick City Council, acts as a sort of intermediary between artist and landlord, taking care of the planning and insurance issues that can hamper efforts elsewhere. Bang in the city centre, artists are using large bright spaces as studios and galleries – all rent-free. The main overheads are utility bills. You wander off the street and end up before rows of limited edition screen-printed t-shirts wrapped in fast food packaging, and get invited by graphic designers to reach into a toilet, take out a sparkly marker, and graffiti the lid. In more flush times, that place was a shoe shop. Then you go up a street and reach a gallery appropriately named Occupy Space, where

multimedia installations are being set up. Painter Ramon Kassam explains that the initiative is encouraging recent art college graduates to stick around. Furthermore, provided with such ideal and central gallery spaces free of charge, artists can be their own curators, leading to greater artistic freedom and experimentation. Around the corner at Faber Studios, sculptors and recent LSAD graduates Chris Boland and Clive Moloney agree that these kind of free spaces are ideal for those just finished up with college – lack of financial pressure allows for more time to focus, and having access to your own studio allows for the build-up of experience and output that might, in the long run, help out with securing funding for further projects. The whole scheme seems to assert that eco-

“A CITY NEEDS TO BE CONSTANTLY REDEFINED” nomic decline does not have to be manifested by dilapidated premises and cultural stagnation. Here, what might be a fairly dismal environment of vacated buildings instead appears to be undergoing urban redefinition. The large art college community is now far more visible than it was even a few of years ago, and the ever-changing installations and exhibitions bear evidence of a creative pulse that could never before have been detected at a superficial level. City councils across the country would do well to follow suit and seize these windows of opportunity with both hands. Photo by Simon McGarr

4 1

TV DIARY #2

by James Kelly

THE FOOD CHAIN

ublin is awash with cafés of all shapes and sizes - so how do we know which ones are worth the visit? Ask the experts. follow their answers and discover the experts’ favourites and their favourites’ favourites with some happy results. Chez Max Beside Dublin Castle, 1 Palace Street, Dublin 2 The accordion notes and French murmurs floating within the walls of Chez Max quickly sweep you a world away from its busy environs; perhaps not Paris, but as close to it as you’ll get in these parts. Chez Max oozes charm without crossing the line to indulgent Francophilia. The French staff can be heard singing in the kitchen and dash all stereotypes with a warm, friendly service that draws a regular clientele. The coffee is good and the prices the best we encountered. Chez Max pointed us towards “that cosy place on the South Circular” and we continued our tour on to Nelly’s. Nelly’s 12 South Circular Road, Portobello, Dublin 8 Nelly’s miraculously jams a café into the smallest of small spaces. The food and drinks are definitely up to scratch but what sets it apart is the dizzying selection of produce and a wall of select groceries and all sorts itching to be explored. Nelly’s is carving a niche for itself with this lifestyle approach which encompasses an evening embroidery workshop with the Textile Workshop Dublin. The tea is served in vast quantities in an assortment of mismatched crockery and kitschy pots. Nelly’s keeps things homely and comforting, emanating the personality of owner Caroline who suggested we try The Food Gallery next.

The Food Gallery 84 Thomas Street, Dublin 8 We stumbled into The Food Gallery and instantly fell in love. The exterior disguises a large space with high ceilings, ornate doors and walls lined with contemporary art. The coffee is fractionally more expensive than its peers but worth that little bit extra. It’s the best we tasted and a little cube of cake decorates each saucer. Dee from The Food Gallery says she’s fussy so she rarely pays for coffee but makes an exception for the Curved Street Café so we turned back towards Trinity sceptical that anything could top this. Tiesan Café @ Filmbase Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 We were right; The Food Gallery couldn’t be beaten. That said Tiesan Café on Curved Street is a lot closer to home and the coffee was a close second. Its relaxed, minimalist interior and enormous glass wall lends an unlikely calm to the bustle of Temple Bar. A good place to while away hours otherwise fated for the library. Milk & Honey 68 Aungier Street, Dublin 2 Tiesan directed us towards Milk & Honey where we finished on a slightly flat note. In theory it ticks all the boxes: the herbal teas are sourced from Teapigs and really are better than average, the muffin selection veers away from the standard with great flavours like pear and cinnamon, and there’s even a shelf of books and board games to keep you occupied while you laze. In practice however, it’s not quite nice enough to keep me coming back. Sadhbh O’Brien

This week it’s a British affair, examining the cream of the digital offerings. I forgot how unbelievably busy college life can be and sometimes you just need to come home and disengage the brain for a couple of hours while you watch some telly. I logged onto Facebook the other night and my homepage was inudated with notifications of people liking The Inbetweeners-related jokes and statuses (status? statii?). Friends on Erasmus bemoan their inability to find episodes online, while we sit smugly in the knowledge of what happened in the last episode (have that Paris, one nil). In a way unlike any other show, The Inbetweeners ( has captured the imaginations of the average university student just killing time on Facebook. In its three seasons, The Inbetweeners (Mon 10pm, E4) has progressed from a little-known E4 comedy to must-watch TV. The third season opens in typically hilarious style as the boys become involved in the school fashion show and honestly. you are made of steel if you don’t cringe at least three times during that episode. I think that’s really what The Inbetweeners has mastered: the art of cringe-inducing telly. The following episodes have been to just as high a standard. The highlight, for me at least, was the one where the boys had the run of the house for a weekend. Hilarious stuff altogether. Everyone has a favourite character and to be fair, the core cast have great chemistry and really bounce off each other. An altogether different beast is travel show An Idiot Abroad (Thu 10pm, Sky One). Executive produced by Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pinkerton , the show follows Karl as the namesake ‘idiot’. Gervais sets Karl tasks in each country he visits, as he makes the circuit of the new Seven Wonders of the World, in equal parts to try educate him about each country and for our entertainment. The two episodes I watched centred around China and India, and both were fascinating. The show is refreshing in many ways as we see these radically different cultures through ‘common’ eyes, and Karl’s reaction to the strange customs are hilarious – sometimes I really wonder what is going through that man’s head. At times Karl’s somewhat intolerant attitude can become tiresome, but this is a trifling worry. There are only a few episodes left, but it’s certainly an interesting concept and provides a solid hour of light entertainment. 17

SEX

RECIPE

SEI COSI SEDUCENTE

OCCASIONAL SUNSHINE, BUT MOSTLY CHILLI Rose Ponsonby & Sadhbh O’Brien

The girl with an Italian problem

TH U RSDAY Wake up feeling blue. Ring some friends

and decide to go out to a metal bar. We get stoned out back and I score a good-looking Italian, who tells me he’s “20-21”. He takes my number and I leave, passing the bouncer who I also scored two weeks previously. I go home and KO alone on my bed. FRIDAY The Italian wants to go on a date. I don’t want

to because I find dates stressful, but agree. My friend is worried that he is a rapist, and suggests inviting him along to something we’re all going to. He texts back, “I was hoping for something more intimate.” I don’t reply, and he texts again: “.....I don’t mean sex...but like, I don’t mind if we have sex...I just mean that for our first date I’d rather it was just us.xx.” I feel sick in my stomach and wonder why I agreed to meet this person.

“I tell him I’m 18. He’s 29. “Age... it is just a number?” I remind him that it’s actually a signifier of years.”

There are few sights to beat that of a big vat of chill just waiting to be devoured, surrounded by mounds of cheddar cheese, sour cream, guacamole and tortilla chips. Chilli con carne is a student classic, cheap as chips to make, yet undeniably delicious and not half bad nutrition-wise either. It freezes well, and is even better the day after, as all the flavours meld together overnight. It is also easy to bulk out with kidney beans, just chuck in an extra can to make it go even further. Make a big pot at the weekend, and either treat your friends to their first decent meal since college started, or save money on lunch by bringing in a chilli wrap from home.

Sadhbh & Rose’s

CHILLI CON CARNE

SATU RDAY We meet where we first met. It’s empty. He

buys me a drink, and repeatedly asks if I want to “go back to his for a movie,” universal code for a quick fuck. I refuse. I ask his age as “20-21” sounds like a lie. He tells me he has already told me his age, and asks mine. I tell him I’m 18. He looks uncomfortable. I ask him his again. He’s 29. “Age... it is just a number?” I remind him that it’s actually a signifier of years. Decide to leave at first opportunity. Italian goes to the bar and some Lad comes up to him. Lad mentions to Italian that Italian’s girlfriend’s phone is still in his house. Italian gives him a meaningful stare, Lad looks blank, then catches on. Lad says, “Oh I mean... *wink* Shane’s girlfriend’s phone is there if you wanna pick it up.” Decide to leave immediately. Italian catches me on the way out and offers to walk me to my bus as it’s a dodgy area. Says he’s had a wonderful time, hopes to see me again soon, do I like him? I make non-committal noises, but he is insistent. Eventually I tell him he is too old for me and that I know he has a girlfriend. He says “Fine, fuck this,” and leaves me in the dark alone. I am furious, mainly at myself. SU NDAY Texts (I don’t reply):

Italian, 12:00am: It’s a shame, I really like you......xxxx Italian, 12:30am: Hey, by the way why don’t you like me? Italian, 12:40am: I thought we had a connection..... Italian, 2:00am: Obviously no connection, just another little bitch with a hitch. [I don’t know what he meant either] Fuck you. Italian, 4:30am: *blank message* Italian, 4:31am: missed call Italian, 5:00am: missed call Italian, 11:30am: Ok I was drunk last night because I was angry. But you shouldn’t mess with people you bitch. 18

2 tablespoons olive oil, 250 ml water 2 onions, finely diced, 4 cloves of garlic, chopped 2 x 400g cans of chopped tomatoes 1 tsp coriander, chilli flakes, brown sugar 4 tbsp ketchup, 4tbsp tomato purée, 2 tsps cumin, 3 peppers, red or orange, sliced or diced 2 small red chillis, finely chopped, seeds and all 800g minced beef, 400g can of kidney beans 1. Heat the oil in a large pan over a low to moderate heat. Add the diced onion and garlic, season with a little salt and pepper, and cover. Sweat for 10-15 mins until soft but not coloured. 2. Add the cumin, coriander and chilli flakes and cook, stir for 2 mins, then add the small hot red chillis in with the spicy onion mixture and cook for a few minutes. 3. Turn the heat up slightly, add the mince and cook, moving it around until browned. 4. Throw in the tinned tomatoes, water, ketchup, tomato purée, drained kidney beans and brown sugar and stir until thoroughly mixed to a rich red sauce. 5. Bring up to the boil, and then reduce the heat and simmer gently for at least 1 hour. Extra cooking time will reward you with the tastiest chilli you’ve ever had!

REVIEWS Films

Books

Restaurants

Music

Guilty pleasures

II.1

CARLOS Director: Oliver Assayas

should preface this review by pleading my ignorance of world history. I’d no idea who Carlos the Jackal was before seeing this film and I suppose that’s my fault for being an insular child, too caught up in playing “roller blade police” on my cul-de-sac to inquire who that big-jawed guy on the news was. But I have turned that weakness into strength, because I got to approach this film with no prejudices or expectations. Carlos begins with a title card informing us that the film should be taken as a work of fiction, as there are many grey and unknown areas of Carlos’ life. Which is fair enough, at least they’re admitting it, though it also could be the lawyers at work since apparently Carlos himself is trying to sue the film. And judging from this film, he’s someone you don’t want as an enemy. There have been two releases of Carlos. In France it was three feature length movies running at 330 minutes (and is showing separately in the IFI from October 23rd to 25th). The standard theatrical version is edited down to 165 minutes. This is my major complaint. The cinematography is stunning, the story absorbing and the performances excellent but they are things that the brain appreciates - the bladder not so much. Ilich ‘Carlos’ Ramírez Sánchez, played by Édgar Ramírez, is a Venezuelan-born radical freedom fighter/political terrorist. He’s 20

a burly yet charismatic juggernaut of a man with a striking similarity to the singer from Kings of Leon if he was hiding large slices of watermelon in his cheeks. He is referred to by the Sudanese as The Phantom, which is fitting, as he just appears in the film, a force ready for action with seemingly no history or connections. He’s resolutely involved with his people’s struggle. It’s his full time job and he’s risen up the ranks where he is now basically a high-flying, high class business man. The world is his workplace. He wears slick suits, smokes Cuban cigars, drinks fine whiskeys, travels the world, is multi-lingual, has contact throughout the globe and has meetings with high-powered men. The world is a small place to him and he believes that he himself can end conflicts and disputes. And in 1975 he led a six-man team in to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Headquarters where they took the Ministers hostage, separating them into those who were enemies of their cause, those who were friendly and those who were neutral, and then got a jet and flew it around the world intending to make statements in each country. It all comes across as classroom politics. The Ministers are ushered around like little schoolboys in groups of who was nice to him and who wasn’t. It gets very complicated and really seems futile. I’d have trouble considering Carlos as a hero or revolutionary. He never

wavers in his stance of violence and activism and is arrogant and brash enough to think he can control the will of the world. But I didn’t see him as someone who should be lauded. More as a ruthless soldier, who is being manipulated by others. World Cinema, or the karaoke read-along Cinema as it is now, is still quite a new venture for me. I’ve really enjoyed taking the steps in to the strange waters, though it is riddled with its own clichés/ hallmarks that always come very close to being a self parody. There’ll always be smoking, subtitles, casual nudity and sexual scenes, references to nations and historic events and struggles that make me embarrassed for how ill-informed I am of the world, and an immense worthiness and awareness of itself as Art. Carlos had all these “hallmarks” and at times I will admit to feeling Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome. Was there really something deep and meaningful being portrayed on screen or is it just a prolonged shot of a naked man tenderly slapping at his balls? Have I just exposed myself as the uncultured oaf I am by admitting that? Probably, but am I trying to impress you? No. I’m only trying to influence your opinion of a film that I have seen. I won’t pretend that I know what the whole Israel-Palestine squabble is about. What I know is that it’s been a bit of a quagmire for the last hundred years. And its seems naive to think that flying a party jet of scared ministers around the world making communiqués is going to end it. What is going to change it? I don’t know and I suppose I shouldn’t poo-poo other people’s ideas when I have no alternative to suggest. Of course I want world peace but haven’t all nations have had some type of struggle at some point? More and more it seems like struggle is irrevocably part of human nature. I really hope someday that’ll change and that that’ll truly deserve an epic three hour film (maybe do it in two parts). Carlos got me reflecting on my stance on the world and broadening the mind is what films should do. And for that, and despite its world cinema clichés and bladder rupturing runtime, I have to recommend it. Mark Baldwin

II.2

BON APPETIT 9 James Terrace, Malahide, Co. Dublin

FOOD Following on from the economic down-

turn, there has been a need for more than just an aperitif but a digestif tonic too. The depression has pinched, pricked and prodded at the once rubenesque Celtic Tiger, leaving the formally credit-buoyant, now loan-pregnant giant, deflated. This has hit the gastronomic élite in particular, who are left with more modest than modernist means and ways of surviving but not, it seems, of serving. Mint of Ranelagh, one of a handful of hard won Michelin star restaurants in Ireland has now sadly disintegrated into memory. In its wake however, we see the transference of chief chef extraordinaire Oliver Dunne’s talent to Bon Appetit in Malahide. Boasting a Michelin star of its own on its dapper dinner jacket lapel, the honour has been bestowed not without a bout of controversy and doubting skepticism. Having been granted the task of booking a table for my brother’s engagement dinner (equally controversial), as I ring up the usual suspects (Patrick Guilbaud, L’Ecrivain etc.) I am surprised and a little taken aback at the shortage of availability given the present climate, but manage to wrangle the last table at Bon Appetit with a sigh of relief. The layout of the restaurant is similar to that of the Odessa and has that curious air of a private club, refined comfort simulating intimacy. It boasts of a two-tiered layout with the brasserie downstairs and restaurant upstairs. In my estimation approximately 30% of the experience itself is the service. Three waiters per table working in perfect tandem with the precision of a well-oiled machine is impressive in itself. Upon arrival you are offered two manners of ordering; one from the set menu, the other off the tasting menu. We opted for the latter, which consisted of ‘seven’ courses. Admittedly the several courses consist mainly of palate cleansers such as the goats cheese foam with beetroot puree, parmesan and almond shavings (light and refreshing), and bread selections (beautifully malted with buttery, nutty overtones). These act as bolstering intermissions, fortifying the minimal portions of the dishes themselves. As a starter I opted for the seared foie gras with caramelised pineapple, pickled artichoke, feta cheese sorbet. The foie gras was served a tad bit cold but its delicateness complemented the sharper textures of the

accompanying pineapple and artichoke well, whilst the sorbet was a pleasant mediator. For the main course I had the fillet of Aberdeen Angus. Served with a bed of girolles ragout and summer truffle pomme purée. I found that, while the beef was cooked to perfection, it lacked in flavour due to underseasoning, and the ragout and purée were standard fare. The truffles, however, were simply a triumph, adding a much needed depth and warmth to the dish. The meal was nicely rounded off by frangipane, which I ordered for desert. This was beautifully made and presented, a crisp sugary top note with a moist bite. The date purée and vanilla ice cream worked well with it but not together as a whole, the textures jarred too strongly. Like the desert, I found the overall experience hot and cold. The bill (¤400) was like extreme tooth ache, the sugar soaring then turning in a souring and eroding trajectory. Asked if I would go again, honestly no. It was a fun ride but no rollercoaster. Aisling Deng

TINKERS Paul Harding

BOOKS Paul Hard-

ing’s first published work is a small novel that has made a dramatic impression on the contemporary literary landscape. Despite Tinkers’ recent success, the novel’s early life was subdued, and what small success it had initially was built on a grassroots campaign of online praise and committed independent bookstores. Eventually though, Harding’s widespread, albeit thinly spread, fan-base pushed Tinkers into the public eye. It eventually won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. These are the circumstances that surrounded Tinkers: a quiet beginning, committed support, and eventual explosion into something greater. These same elements describe the experience of reading it. Harding is precise and calculated with his language, yet generous in his descriptions. He occupies himself with the minor in order to reveal the major, and through a relentless commitment to this system, he explores intimidating questions about memory, time and life itself. The story is built from the memories of George Crosby on his deathbed. His memories are bound to those of his father, Howard, who was a travelling salesman at the turn of the century. In developing Howard’s character, Harding draws American literature back to the dark, enchanting woods of Northeastern America. Here, his language flourishes. He moves the reader through space with such clarity that it is unsettling to lift one’s head from the book and find oneself not padding quietly through New England’s woods. More impressive than Harding’s description of space, however, is his exploration of time. Early in the novel, clocks are developed as a reoccurring motif, signaling an interest in the passage of time. Here, time is both personal and universal. It binds characters together with overlaying stories and experiences, before calmly and dramatically separating them as it moves forward. The expansive descriptions of clocks and clockwork have rhythmic qualities that push the reader to truly feel the passage of time for himself. In a small, unassuming work of fiction, he has accessed some very large topics. In the quiet spaces of his New England, Harding explores what it really means to lead a good life. Stuart Winchester 21

LISBON II.2 The Walkmen

EASY A Director: Will Gluck

FILM With the release of Easy A this month

Irish cinemas must once again play host to an excruciating foray into the over-used genre of American teen sex comedy. All the usual hallmarks are present here- an attractive, up-andcoming starlet in the main role, able support by actors slumming it for the paycheck and most crucial of all, a plot revolving almost exclusively around teenagers having sex. We’ve been here before. While American Pie initiated a wave of imitators in 1999, the only real highlights the genre produced in the last decade were Mean Girls and Superbad. Then along comes Easy A, another teen sex movie from a man whose previous efforts include the woeful cheerleader flick Fired Up! and a cancelled TV series about Luis Guzmán. Also, the film has the nerve to label itself as “inspired” by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 romance The Scarlet Letter. Surprisingly, Easy A manages to bring a breezy charm and droll amiability to the proceedings, thanks almost entirely to a standout central performance. The film tells the story of Olive Penderghast as she recounts to her webcam a mistake that came to devour her social life. Despite looking like Emma Stone, Olive went through her high school as an unmemorable blur of indifference. While her friends went out, she was content to stay at home, with her dog singing along to terrible pop songs. But after her bullied gay friend convinces her to pretend to have sex with him to end his persecution, she gains a reputation as easy. And when similarly persecuted boys beg her to repeat the favour, Olive begins to embrace her newfound status as secretly chaste village bicycle. Easy A is saved from becoming another bland teen comedy thanks to an outstanding cast, led by an excellent Emma Stone, who flawlessly delivers Olive’s catty asides while anchoring the film with just the right amount of believability. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are amusing as Olive’s snarky parents, as are Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow as her teachers. Easy A is probably a bit too reliant on previous teen comedies, but thanks to a bright lead performance, it shouldn’t be written off. Alex Towers 22

M USIC At the dawn of the millennium, form-

ing from the ashes of infamous mid ‘90s indie rock band Jonathan Fire*Eater (whose guitarist, drummer and organist were joined by members of The Recoys) were The Walkmen. For the past decade, this Harlem-based group have been producing the kind of melodramatic pop and rock that paved the way for myriad New York rock n’ roll acts in the first decade of the century. . Lisbon, the band’s fifth studio effort, demonstrates an essential return to basics, reminiscent of their debut LP, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Has Gone. The result is a much grittier tone, as the album does away with the tired synth pop noises that consistently plague the airwaves. Opener Juveniles is a high tempo track that rattles, shakes and gives an insight into Lisbon’s stylistic intentions. Hamilton Leithauser’s voice is constantly on the fence between screaming and crying, and the powerful guitar, straightforward yet unrelenting drum beat and universal subject matter recalls their biggest single The Rat, from Bows + Arrows. The forceful early tracks such as Blue as your Blood and Stranded, two subtly bombastic tales of loss and loneliness ,demonstrate an angry, outspoken section that is eventually

abandoned as the record delves into a more sombre, introspective discovery of life, love and misery. Closing title track Lisbon is a marvellously intricate song that really highlights Leithauser’s lyrical mastery, one of the standout aspects of the record. The Walkmen’s words avoid the cocaine melancholia and paranoia of The National’s latest effort, instead favouring a deeper, poetic lyricism that seems to have gone overlooked on past albums. New Country from the 2008 release You & Me foreshadowed many of the slower paced tracks on Lisbon, with its intimate guitar and vocals a soundtrack to Leithauser’s analysis of the awkward parting between ex-lovers. Here is a band that continually reinvents its sound, taking leaps of faith with each new outing. Though probably most known and loved for their frenetic, angry rants, it’s the more subdued tracks that resonate and have the greatest longevity, making the latter half of Lisbon a force to be reckoned with. Lisbon is a haunting summation of dark relationships and individuals, with a tasteful depiction of loneliness as a cause for despair, but also an exploration of what it is to overcome a tormented life. It will hopefully be recognized as one of the highlights of the year. Toby Evans

N.S.

DOUGHNUTS IN DUBLIN Is there any point even looking?

III FOOD Finding a decent doughnut in Ireland

WALKING TO HOLLYWOOD Will Self

BOOKS In 1871, Arthur Rimbaud proposed

that the poet become a seer through a long and systematic derangement of the senses. Whether by accident or design, there can be few writers who have followed Rimbaud’s advice as closely as Will Self. His long history of heroin addiction conferred upon his early prose a hallucinatory aspect which earned him the professional respect and collaboration of gonzo artist Ralph Steadman. But what has been of arguably greater importance to Self’s writing is his even longer history with mental illness. Misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic, Self spent much of his youth under psychiatric care of one kind or another. He returns to the theme of mental pathology in his new book, Walking to Hollywood, a triptych of stories that each have as their narrator somebody called Will Self. The narrator of ‘Very Little’, a story about a dwarf named Sherman Oaks, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, forever consumed by thoughts of distorted scale. In ‘Walking to Hollywood’, he suffers from psychosis, believing everyone in Hollywood to be played by a vaguely similar-looking celebrity. In the final story, ‘Spurn Head’, the eroding coast of East Yorkshire stands in as a metaphor for the narrator’s quickening descent into Alzheimer’s. Walking to Hollywood is autobiography, travelogue, polemic and fiction in equal measures. In this marriage of genres, we see Self taking formal direction from the late W.G. Sebald, whose influence on contemporary letters looks set for the foreseeable future. Like

Sebald’s narratives, Walking to Hollywood is strewn with seemingly inconsequential photographs of the journey in question. Yet the images are out-of-sync with the text. Sometimes they appears as flits of the foreknown; sometimes mere echoes. “Tell a dream, lose a reader.” Self misattributes this Henry James quote to Vladimir Nabokov before going on to contest it. He would do well to revise this opinion. There are passages in this book which are so fantastical as to be almost unreadable. In Hollywood, for instance, the psychotic narrator discovers he has superpowers, transforms into the Hulk and starts fucking traffic. “I hurl the crumpled-tissue cars away, then lifting the off-road vehicle – perhaps for the first time in its life off the road – I tear a gash in its rear end the approximate size necessary.” Granted, the point is that these occurrences aren’t in the least bit fantastical for the narrator. But in the same way that having to listen to other peoples’ stories of acid trips is unspeakably dull, so too the imagined events of the psychotic – lasting no fewer than 430 pages in this instance. Nevertheless, Self deserves credit for continued eschewal of the tried, tested and now tired tropes of contemporary British fiction, and this experimental work is saved in part by Self’s forever-caustic turn of phrase – he describes a ringtone as the “fo-fiddle-i-o of contemporaneity,” and later gives us the truly revolting “salted slug of a used condom.” A noble failure, this book. Casual Will Self fans would do well to wait for the upcoming release of his selected stories.

is a difficult business. Actually, let me rephrase that: it is sadly impossible. Ever since the Dunkin’ Donuts on Grafton Street closed down ten years ago, I have been disappointed again and again by the quality of sweet toroidal buns on offer. The cross-section I sampled for this article is no exception. Childhood memories of biting into a delicious, sweet, light and fluffy ring taunt me mercilessly. It seems my idea of what constitutes a good doughnut doesn’t exist, in Ireland at least. Full of hope, I began with a McDonalds toffee crisp doughnut from McCafé, which cost a hefty €1.60. To be fair, they’ve clearly put a lot of effort into R&D. This donut contains within it a tube full of creamy toffee gloop, which I’ll admit was a nice surprise. The problem, however, was that I failed to notice this addition because the entire thing was just too moist. While moist in general is good, the toffee, combined with the soft icing, made it seem like I was eating a really sweet and doughy mocha, covered in superfluous tiny balls. Toppings, it seems, are in general a superfluous addition. The €1.20 Tim Hortons doughnut I tried next featured hundreds, if not thousands, of sprinkles, yet it tasted dull, a flavour at odds with its playful exterior. While just right in terms of moistness, I couldn’t help but feel that essentially I was simply eating a bundle of bread held together by a smorgasbord of preservatives. Surely it would be infinitely better if I ate a doughnut baked that day? How wrong I was. M&S, how could you? As originators of the best cookies I have ever tasted, I expected so much more from you. The fact that your doughy offering cost only €0.95 is no excuse for producing a doughnut as dry and barren as the one I tasted. Consisting of a layer of extra thick and extra strong icing upon dough so dry it may as well have been a Jacobs cream cracker, this travesty of a donut was by far the worst of the pathetic lot. With that, my sampling ended. Wistfully do I dream of Dunkin’ Donuts, and Krispy Kremes too. American doughnuts, doughnut perfection. As if there wasn’t reason enough to emigrate already. Andrew Linn 23

II.2

THE AGE OF ADZ Sufjan Stevens

M USIC One thing Sufjan Stevens isn’t known

for is glitchy electronic drums. That, and twenty-five minute songs featuring autotuned vocals. The Age of Adz, his first full length since the critically acclaimed Illinois, features both. It begins with the quite deceptive Futile Devices, a beautifully simple and intimate song which gives no indication whatsoever of what is to come. Stevens’ new direction isn’t made clear until track two, Too Much, which features hissing programmed beats and synths, while retaining the dramatic, fluttering orchestral sound which permeates his other work. I Walked, an album highlight, features more electronic arrangements, this time backed by wonderful choral vocals. However, Stevens’ beats soon grow samey and often irritating. Many songs tend to become tedious, making listening to the album from start to finish quite an effort. There are lots of positives though, and songs such as All For Myself and I Walked suggest that it won’t be long before Stevens can fuse his own polarising sounds, the orchestral and the electronic, to create something really special. Unfortunately, The Age of Adz isn’t quite it. Joseph Kielthy

our world’s New Yorker Magazine fiction section—no return transmission possible— eventually making their way to Lethem’s Manhattan, and only recently into paperback. Steeped in her absence, jilted Chase Insteadman broods among the Island’s languid aristocracy while the population continues to be serially terrorized by a gigantic escaped tiger. But just what is The Tiger? No one seems to know, or has even seen the thing first hand, and theories—from the allegedly sound to the utterly paranoid—ricochet between the Mayor’s flippant propaganda and idle talk of the city’s doped-out citizenry. Hoping to absolve his guilty role in the Upper East Side’s melodrama and survive in the wake of The Tiger’s anomalous tour through the sinking city, the Insteadman, along with Perkus Tooth, an intellectually manic hipster, and a sordid Mayor’s aid, set sout on a Socratic quest to determine what exactly’s going on. Jeffrey Becklund

Lil Wayne

M USIC It wouldn’t be hyperbole to call Lil

the New York Times, Janice Trumbull, New Yorker turned ‘lonestronaut’ remains marooned in lovelorn orbit. She has been kept from her E84th Street-bound fiancé by a wave of Chinese mines which has prevented her biospheric shuttlecraft’s return. In 2008, her emails first reached Earth as 24

RESTREPO Directors: Hetherington & Junger

I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING

CHRONIC CITY BOOKS According to the ‘War Free Edition’ of

II.2

Director: Jonathan Lethern

crassness. The shoutout to 2girls1cup on opener Gonorrhoea speaks for itself. Ironically, the best material is the odd attempt at romanticism, on With You, with its tasteful soul sample and help from the otherwise mediocre Drake. I Am Not A Human Being, despite its weak opening verse, is blessed with some A-grade Wayne wit and a hard-rock-laden marching drum machine beat. These highpoints are not high enough to save this decent-beat, lame-rhyme record from mediocrity. Weezy associate DJ Scoob Doo has said that Human Being comprises mere throwaways from the allegedly much better, upcoming Tha Carter IV. Let’s hope so. Gheorghe Rusu

Wayne a pop culture staple, if not a punchline. Perpetually prolific, he hasn’t put out a consistent record since late 2005’s Tha Carter II: everything since has been, at best, wildly variable. The slew of mixtapes that followed TCII and its 2008 sequel contained both flashes of genius and laughably bad efforts side by side on the tracklist. The abhorrent foray into rock music on Rebirth was even worse. Weezy’s still-likeable drawl and laid-back flow are here as always, but they’re more than brought down by his affinity for overbearing

FILM Fresh from winning the Grand Jury

Prize for best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo hits Irish screens for the first time this month. Co-produced by National Geographic, the film centres on the exploits of an American platoon based in the Korangal region of Afghanistan. The film sets out to convey the horror and confusion of real-life war through intercuting between post-deployment interviews with soldiers and shaky hand-held accounts of the troops day to day life in Afghanistan. The title refers to Juan “Doc” Restrepo, a popular platoon member who is killed in an ambush, the other soldiers naming a new outpost they build after their dead comrade. Despite containing moments of heart-felt poignancy and eye-dropping cinematography, Restrepo feels slightly hollow at its core. This is mainly because the directors refuse to question America’s role in the Middle East in any way, giving the film a slight stain of propaganda. Although it certainly holds your attention and is never uninteresting, the movie raises more questions than it answers, leaving the viewer frustrated and wondering what might have been. While certainly worth a rental, Restrepo is not really one to see in the cinema. Robert O’Reilly

How to…

GUILT Y PLE ASURES

LIKE A BAND WITH A VIEW TO BEING A DICK ABOUT IT Seán Mc Tiernan

WHO The path you take depends on the kind of superi-

ority you want to attain. You can become a True Fan of an established act. This is cool as a lot people will have heard of this band and able to be appropriately mad shook when you roll up and Get Them harder than they ever could. Like if you spoke to people about the difference between liking Devo and Understanding Devo. Alternatively, pick a relatively obscure act and champion them. When it comes to being superior, this choice pretty much constitutes bush league shit but I guess you have to start somewhere. Loving Life Without Buildings will help you belittle Wilco fans, but if you want to hit hell mode with this shit though, you’re going to want to pick a one-hit wonder. This shows you’re able to transcend the consensus. For instance, thinking Kick Out The Jams is “one of MC5’s weaker tunes actually” means you’ve won. SHIRTS At gigs, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t wear the t-shirt of the band, no matter how cold you are or how damp your Daniel Johnston t-shirt is (always a safe gig shirt, awards mid-level cred and is impossible to be interrogated over as no one actually fucking listens to Daniel Johnston). Wearing a side project shirt is acceptable. The level of acceptability grows the more divorced the project is musically from the main band. So wearing a Foxboro Hot Tubs shirt at Green Day is okay (though you’re at Green Day and should be stabbing yourself in the neck with your own shinbone). But wearing a Relaxed Muscle shirt at a Jarvis Cocker gig is better (people at Jarvis Cocker gigs should only be smothering themselves to death with a pillow made of shit). GIGS If people start shouting the names of popular songs, shout the most obscure one you can think of. Then go “aw” sadly when the musician pulls their fake-surprise-at-deep-cut-request face. If the musician makes a joke, laugh at it out loud. This might be difficult as all musicians fall in line with the “Musician Humor Paradox”. This states that while Dave Grohl is the funniest musician, Dave Grohl is also not funny. FANS If you meet another fan, imply that the closer their opinion is to the general consensus, the less they have really thought about the band. Complain about people who came to the band after they released their good album that made their name. The other fan is likely to be one of these people. Revel in their attempts to pretend otherwise. Sadly, the internet has made it easier for everyone to hear a band’s whole discography. Don’t worry however, you will have a secret weapon. Talk about the band as if they’re an annoying friend of yours. For instance, be irritated “Noah’s” new album cover is ‘heavy pedo’. Talking about a musicians as if you’re friends is shows you’re a true fan. And a dick. Same thing really.

“Daniel Johnston is a safe gig shirt, awards midlevel cred and is impossible to be interrogated over as no one actually fucking listens to Daniel Johnston”

UFC by Cathal Wogan

I struggle with the idea of revealing and discussing a “guilty pleasure.” To cry about the thorns may be a little contradictory, but nonetheless, it is pertinent. The common notion of a guilty pleasure baffles me, as there is rarely any guilt involved. With only the token involvement of shame in the equation, the outing of a guilty pleasure becomes an exercise in a rather hollow selfsubversive irony. Only tinted in false self-deprecation, the guilty pleasure is then justified and championed, as opposed to being humbly explained as guilt-inspiring. “Even though it’s naff, I totally heart [sic] California Gurls by Katy Perry but, let’s face it, that beat IS intoxicating!” Rather than succumbing to everything that I have so far denounced in the name of ironic self-subversion (no matter how inspiring that would be), I will puritanically revert to a more literal interpretation of a guilty pleasure. I guiltily take pleasure in men beating the crap out of each other on television. I like watching the Ultimate Fighting Championship. And so we have reached the point where I should begin to defend my choice with a carefree wit that matches the humorous, quirky, straight out of left field nature of the guilty pleasure in question. Unfortunately, since the larger Chuckle Brother knocked seven shades out of his smaller sibling at UFC 15, the octagon has been devoid of laughter. So, instead of lodging my tongue in my cheek and justifying my love of fist-on-face porn, I will endeavour to try some of this shame stuff. It used to be really big, before irony was made a rag doll. UFC is not sidesplitting. One man beats a disfigured face into canvas, blood gushing from his soul and his eyes as if he were a pathetic jam doughnut. One man raises his hand in triumph, his victory signaling that the other lies down where the willow wands weep. This is guilty pleasure. It makes me sick with a mix of remorse and testosterone. All the guttural feelings rush back. Feeling the crunch of another’s foot under my studs. Forcing a face through the fire exit. The adrenaline. They are professional athletes. They chose their poison. They decide how they are going to chase the crimson yankee dollar. No, that is the sport. One can defend the sport itself but to defend my complicity in the killer punch? Well, shame may strike me down. Guilty pleasure. Guilty. You too? Funny. Ha ha. Lol. 25

Das Capo

ON THE BACK OF A WINGED HORSE... Oisín Murphy

ow the fuck do you write about love, man?” I turn and ask my housemate, side-by-side on the couch and sipping tea, each of us tapping away at our laptops, writing things and feeling important. “From the heart,” he says, with a small grin. He’s taking the piss out of me. Even still, he’s probably right, even though what he said is a truism that doesn’t really offer any concrete meaning beyond what you might want it to, as the truism-receiver. The linguistics of love are mystifying, even for those whom it has supposedly touched, more so perhaps for those of us uninitiated. It’s not something you understand, it’s something you feel, isn’t it? Yes, these truisms abound in the vast fields of writings on love, perhaps predicated around something which was never there at all in the first place. I know Zooey Deschanel seemed to think so in (500) Days of Summer, like a rubbish Žižek, denying the existence of the kernel in the first instance. We all come to college, probably, hoping to find love. It may not be the top of our list of things to do, given that the popular perception would be that it’s not exactly something you do rather than something that happens to you. It’s not something which tends to be written about in the university press either, with anonymous sex confessionals taking the front seat and making us feel all the more mature and cosmopolitan for reading them, not vulnerable or alone (I now notice how close the word “fuck” is to “love” in the question I asked my housemate at the beginning of this piece). This anonymity finds itself a counterpoint in the nonanonymous writings of others in the college media, presenting semi-fictionalised accounts of their lives behind veils of punchlines and auto-ironic self-deprecation, the battered walls of presumed honesty creaking against the weight of their placatory sarcasm and feigned humility. And so the general tendency towards a calculated obfuscation of these matters of the heart is propagated and reproduced. How else could you write about your love life? You can’t truly let people in, bare your soul to the student body (or the portion thereof who’ll read what you’ve written). In addition to that, you run the risk of offending those with whom you’ve shared such print-worthy experiences. There must be some purpose, some enlightenment potentially at hand for those reading, to justify such introspection, carried out in the name of something beyond the basic, self-mythologising imperiousness we’re used to seeing in its company. And ultimately, it seems that none of us know any more about love than the next person. Its basic, assumed terms of existence work against one knowing a great deal about it from the off but, by and large, we make a good stab at codifying its essential being within an idiomatic discourse of our own. “So, do you think love exists?” I ask 26

“And where does this leave us? Uniformly petrified of loneliness and apprehensive about our ability to forge a sincere connection with another human being.”

my housemate, two days having passed since I last tried to draw from his bowl of knowledge. “Only for the individual,” he responds, more sincerely this time. Following a pause, he continues: “I can love someone, and I can feel loved, but it can’t exist between us in a tangible way. It’s a personal experience.” He’s upped his game considerably. Though what he said is difficult to process, from a romantic perspective (at least he didn’t flatly deny its existence), there is a great deal of truth in it, I think. The existentialist predicament of being “trapped” within one’s individual self, to be restricted to a singular plane of continuation, might go some way to explaining the seemingly universal trauma and anxiety we experience in relation to love: a collaborative entity which we can only experience on discrete strata. And where does this leave us? Uniformly petrified of loneliness and apprehensive about our ability to forge a sincere connection with another human being, in all likelihood. I’m scared, certainly. I don’t mean to say that in some gesture of radical sincerity that dissolves itself by the innate artifice of the medium, an unsolicited admission of vulnerability which, by its nature, achieves nothing on a candid or direct level. I am fearful of loneliness, of making mistakes, of repeating mistakes, of failing, of being hurt and of hurting someone else, amongst other things. And yet, like some strange obsession, romantic issues are central to the living of my life, on a mental level at least. I can’t imagine this is unusual either. So why is it that, in our college press, we don’t have an outlet for this? Surely it only contributes to the disquiet. Maybe nobody wants to write about it. It seems that, regardless of whether we, as a culture (and its attendant media) attempt to engage with “Love” in a direct and unequivocal way, we do not endeavour towards sincerity of any kind. In our proud print media, selfdeprecation has tenuously been assimilated into the linguistics of (subtle) self-promotion in such a way that to undercut one’s emotional candour with “but then again, I once pissed my pants in school!” is seen dichotomously as “refreshingly self-effacing” and “brutally honest”, without acknowledging the basic contrivance at the heart of such a servile formal trope. And so, returning to love, I might well proffer the notion that it is the process of discussing the subject, of analysing and exploring it, that creates truth, rather than attempting to discern the perhaps illusory essence at its centre. There may be some basic truth in the banalities and clichés we skirt around, just as there must be value of some kind in everything, but we must demand of ourselves a more sincere process of investigation and, thusly, of being. In a last-ditch effort to save face, I’d like to assure everyone reading that I absolutely couldn’t care less about any of this shit. The only reason I got this gig is cos I’m mates with the editor. I pissed myself once as well.

AND IN CONCLUSION... STUDENT OF SLUDGE ave you ever seen a river of shit? I’m not describing the torrential turd-like typing of this website, but rather the peerless spectacle of a genuine shit-river? No? Well let me tell ye all about it. It was like a honeymoon in Bangladesh. Following a night of monsoon rain in Killarney last weekend, the influent to the chocolate factory (sewage works), already augmented by the seasonal influx of tourist poo, increased to an overwhelming volume, to such a volume that even the backup overflow catchment of the overflow system overflowed. I was sitting at my desk typing, oblivious, forgetting the delay between rain in the mountains and subsequent effects downstream. About midday I realised I’d left my ciggies in the canteen and made to move across the yard for them. I opened the door on an awesome sight. Manhole covers were bursting upwards all over the place, borne aloft frothy brown geysers. A platoon of squeaking rats fled past my Portakabin office, a bad sign in any circumstance, and it later turned out that these were the lucky ones which weren’t drowned in the pipes. A low rumbling spooked the ground. Something was stirring. Ho boy. Behold! The shit-river had burst forth in the week of the Assumption! Just as it was prophesised in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci (they prophesise most things, get in the know, Da DaVinci Code, $20 Amazon, wink wink) and more importantly, just as it was ominously foretold in the following stanza, which I penned the day after the events in question, and despite its post-dated nature it’s still admissible as evidence insofar as the prophecy maintains that “the future becomes the past”. When Lunasa’s moon is full and the donkey mounts the bull, When the Muckross beast awakes and Torc

mountain gets the shakes, When the entrails of the man become the entrails of the land, When the condom and the tampon are swimming hand in hand, Then first becomes last, The future, the past. It goes on you know, something about the Knights Templar and Elijah blah blah blah, but that’s all peripheral my friends, because what I am really trying to convey is what is like to sit in your office and forlornly watch a river of shit divide the no-man’s land between you and your cigarettes and coffee. Could I run across the logs to get to the other side? Maybe, but what if I got a jellyfish sting off one of those evil looking latex-schiphozoans? Yep, there were all sorts in it, little white-tailed red-nosed submarines, false teeth, cocaine, carrots, doll’s heads, sticklebricks, a hairless dead rat walkin’ like lazarus with maggots. Basically all the clichéd bric a brac that gets flushed down the loo. Flush it. You’ll never see it again. But I will. The magenta tide receded as quickly as it had formed, leaving a greasy flotsam studded with various objects stratified by density all the way to my office door. Sickly white bubbles spat weakly in the froth as the sun came out to egg on nature’s putrefiers, the bacteria. Digestion continues long after faeces leaves d’bowel. “Oh woe is me! What black pestilence is this that moves yonder?” The bluebottles. Word had spread like Chinese whispers along the chain gangs of bluebottles which normally cloak the jarvey-droppings in hideous squirming gloves. “Hey Buzzo, have ye heard?” “Heard what, Johnnny Sixleg III?” “There’s an egglaying orgy goin’ on at the chocolate factory, the prophecy has been

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fulfilled, some hot broads are flootin’ eggs out a million a minute, some A1 eatin’ and infectin’ potential too.” “I’m there Buzz, tell the boys, I’m sick ‘o eatin’ this horse shite. Ye see, the human, on account of his omnivorous eating habits and taste for exotic pharmaceuticals makes for some freaky-deeky shit bro.” Shiny-assed fuckoff bluebottles gorged themselves on it for hours. Feeding fat on our expulsions, then mating, laying eggs, and dy-

“A LOW RUMBLING SPOOKED THE GROUND. SOMETHING WAS STIRRING. HO BOY.” ing. The circle of life or something. I hiked my trousers up and legged it across to the canteen for my lunch. I’ve a friend working as a garbageman and he reckons that after a while you don’t notice the smell, and it’s true. I happily ate a chicken roll that day, surrounded by divebombing bluebottles, breathing in a noxious concoction of fruity faeces vapour and ammonial piss. You know, all the treated poo goes back on the land anyway. And that lovely Kerry beef and butter? Born and bred on fertile plains stimulated by shit. Like I said it’s the circle of life or something. Honest work is sludge, tell a lot about a people from what they excrete, yesiree. Bollocks, it’s just a smelly brown mess. Ciarán Mc Causland From Asleep On The Compost Heap http://onavery.blogspot.com

IN CONCLUSION

WE WANT WAR n an age that’s been musically saturated to the point of making near-impossible the notion of creating a wholly new sound, few acts manage to overcome this discouragement en route to discovering uncharted territory. Warpaint, an all-girl four piece from Los Angeles, are getting there. The group seems to have been glued together by the hands of various Red Hot Chili Peppers members. Josh Klinghoffer, their current guitarist, used to drum for Warpaint, and his predecessor in RHCP, John Frusciante, produced their debut EP, Exquisite Corpse, a venture into understated bliss, soaked in lulling melodies and echo chambers. Their most recently appointed drummer, Stella Mozgawa, came to her position by a series of happy coincidences: “[RHCP bassist Flea and I] met at a fundraising show in LA and we ended up on stage together. He’s probably the greatest human being alive, and I’m not being a sycophant or anything. Everybody who meets him knows that that’s the case, and he’s been really generous, and he asked me to play a show with him and Josh and John.” “Warpaint, in their penultimate incarnation, were there that night. So, we were playing that one show at the Troubadour, and that was the first time I met [bassist] Jen [Lindberg] and properly saw the band and I was totally blown away. They suggested that maybe we play with one another, then they called me and asked me to do the album with them in October.” So what do they sound like? Nothing like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for starters. It’s hard to muster up a comparative description

by Gheorghe Rusu

without including some questionable qualifiers: the haunting pop melancholy of Galaxie 500, but with female harmonies; the raw vocal talent of heyday Motown, but exercised subtly and never showboating; the wall of noise as perfected by the Jesus and Mary Chain, but used for environment and not for overpowering effect. “We’re not ‘influenced’ by many bands,” says Stella. “The girls have always quoted bands as ‘inspirations’, not ‘influences’. There’s no bands we attempt to sound like, but there’s definitely bands we all meet on, that we collectively enjoy, like Talking Heads and Blonde Redhead and Unwound. There’s a lot of similarities between the four of us, musically.” The band are due to release their muchanticipated LP at the end of October, entitled The Fool. The meaning behind it? It’s the first image in the Tarot deck, and it’s basically this ego-less state of mind, very unaware of one’s own appearance and towards the world. Sounds very pretentious, but that’s the answer. Undertow, the new record’s lead single, has been released as a free download, having been renamed from Polly, to avoid confusion with Nirvana’s Nevermind highlight, with which it shares a hook. It’s typical Warpaint: driving yet unobtrusive tribal drums, soaring vocals, an explosive bridge and finale, and beautifully simple imagery in its lyrics. Does the rest of The Fool follow suit?

“I wouldn’t say it’s like an overriding aesthetic, but that’s a good representation of a few different elements of what’s on the album. There’s a lot of other sounds that we explore. As for the comparisons to the debut it will inevitably draw, The Fool is a different beast altogether, because this is four people playing together, whereas the EP had a few different drummers and various friends playing different instruments and a different producer. This is more consistent. I don’t know if the songs, compositionally, are more together, but there’s a prevalent thread there.” Famous friends may be how they’ve come to the public eye, but it’s their flair and stringent work ethic that’s keeping them there. Exquisite Corpse topped Amoeba Records’ local artists charts following a modest digital self-release, hyped only by their constant live appearances. Currently, they’re on a nationwide US tour with The XX, and their work has yet to wear them down. “It’s actually the best tour I’ve ever been on and I’m going to be really sad when it’s over. I’ve been literally, consciously having so much fun. Everything is spot on. [The XX] are a really inspiring band and they’re wonderful people. There is nothing wrong with this tour. It makes me feel uncomfortable how good it is.” After that, a one-off opening slot for Sonic Youth (or, as Stella puts it, “the most phenomenal band on the planet,” a European tour, and more labour awaits them. “We’ve got some new songs, so we’re gonna get ready to keep recording and keep putting things out. We’re not taking a break, for sure.” Warpaint are playing Crawdaddy on Thursday 21st October