Readers with long-memories will recall that I had been reporting on some horror-themed things I have experienced in the last while, starting with The Exorcist, continuing with some other films, then onto horror audio drama, and most recently to Lies We Tell, Lisa Mulcahy's film adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas. And now in the final episode of the current series we turn to the world of theatre, where the horror happens there in front of you. I should warn you that many of these theatrical horrors are ones I saw some considerable time ago, but there are ways of making them seem relevant to the way we live today.
Now, I don't know about you but I find the Luas Red Line to be pretty terrifying at the best of times, so it was with some trepidation that I found myself boarding it after work to head out to the Civic Theatre in Tallaght. What had me going out there was Robert Lloyd Parry performing two M. R. James short stories, "Lost Hearts" and "A Warning to the Curious", as part of the Red Line Festival. These are both ones I have seen Lloyd Parry perform previously online ("Lost Hearts" in particular he does every year on 24 March, the day of the story's disturbing climax), but it was great to see the performances in the flesh.
The two M. R. James stories might well be familiar to readers in their original form or through other adaptations. "Lost Hearts" is the one where a young orphan is adopted by Mr Abney, an eccentric distant relative, who seems friendly but who has had remarkably bad luck with previous attempts to adopt young children, who always seem to vanish just before their 12th birthday. It was memorably adapted for the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas in the 1970s, with the famous still of ghostly children looking in a window. "A Warning to the Curious" meanwhile is from that M. R. James subgenre of Norfolk-coast-holiday-goes-wrong. They both allowed Lloyd Parry to show off his acting talents, inhabiting all the characters and expertly handling the shifts in tone from light comedy to creeping dread. "A Warning to the Curious" is the objectively better story, as the other one has some problems of internal logic. Nevertheless,"Lost Hearts" is somehow still my favourite, with its horrible villain and suggestions of crimes more terrible than the supernatural ones the story contemplates (I'm thinking in particular when Abney invites his young charge to meet him in his private study late at night for a special and secret treat, and to not tell anyone else that he will be going there).
It is actually so long since that performance in Tallaght that since then Robert Lloyd Parry has been back in Dublin again to read two early folk horror tales at an event to launch an anthology he has edited for Swan River Press. For upcoming events, check out his event schedule: if he isn't performing near you, there are always the livestreamed performances he has coming up of the M. R. James stories "Martin's Close", "Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book", and (on Christmas Eve) "The Mezzotint".
Revenant meanwhile was another one-man play, written and directed by Stuart Roche and performed by Patrick O’Donnell. It was staged in the Smock Alley Theatre as part of last year's Bram Stoker Festival, Dublin's attempt to cash in on the famous author of The Lair of the White Worm and The Lady of the Shroud. Revenant (not a Stoker adaptation) sees O'Donnell playing Carter, the director of a low budget Irish zombie horror film, and also the other members of the film's cast and crew. Carter's lead actor drops out of the production just before shooting is about to start, but he recommends an old actor bud as a replacement. This fellow is named Vardell, and he is suave, charismatic, and a natural in front of the camera, but someone who has somehow never appeared in anything anyone has ever heard of. The cast and crew head off to an island off the west coast of Ireland to shoot their film and, well, you can see where this is going. It's played somewhat for laughs but it does manage to ramp up the unease when the macabre goes into overdrive. Patrick O'Donnell's ability to bring Carter, Vardell, and the others to life before our eyes is incredible and it is small wonder he was nominated for prizes at the Manchester and Buxton Fringes in 2021 and 2023.
Dracula: A Journey into Darkness was another Bram Stoker Festival event, a staged reading in the Abbey Theatre of the first four chapters of Dracula, which are made up of diary entries by solicitor Jonathan Harker describing his journey to a remote part of Transylvania to assist a local nobleman in the purchasing of some properties in England. Andrew Bennett (whom you may have seen as the foster father in An Cailín Ciúin) plays Harker, with noted Dublin stage actor Barry McGovern providing the Count's disembodied voice.
Everyone in the world has read Dracula so you know what happens here, right? Initially it is somewhat comedic, Harker as the Englishman abroad commenting on the quaint customs of the locals and their interesting foods. As he gets closer to his goal he expresses some bafflement at the misgivings people have about his plans to visit Castle Dracula and their tendency to press holy charms on him. But the real transition happens when the coach he is travelling on is met by one sent by the Count; Harker is then conveyed into an increasingly strange realm before finding himself effectively imprisoned in the Count's castle. The odd chortles from the audience that greeted Harker's initial observations completely fade away as his terrible predicament becomes apparent. It was a stunning performance by Bennett (aided by impressive lighting and sound design) that completely held the audience. I generally disapprove of standing ovations in the theatre, seeing them as a bit pro-forma, but I had no hesitation in leaping to me feet at the end of this. It is a shame that something so striking was only being performed for one night only, but it did make the event all the more special for those of us who attended.
Because we were only getting the first four chapters of Dracula the piece did end on something of a cliffhanger. It was only later that it occurred to me that it actually ends on a literal cliffhanger; if you have read the book you will know what I am referring to.
For this year's Bram Stoker Festival the Abbey Theatre is staging Dracula: Lucy's Passion, a sequel of sorts to A Journey into Darkness, again for one night only. See you there.
This is a multiple side project band featuring Radie Peat of Lankum, Katie Kim of Katie Kim, Eleanor Myler of Percolator, and John "Spud" Murphy, a producer of records by Lankum, Katie Kim and Percolator and various other acts. Lankum you may well have heard of. Percolator I am not familiar with but I have some limited prior exposure to Katie Kim, having seen her play in one of the Santa Rita Concert series in the Little Museum of Dublin. Investigation suggests that on this record the vocals are by Peat and Kim (easy to tell apart), drums & percussion are by Myler, production is by Murphy, and other instruments are by everyone. The songs are mostly of a dark folk variety, with the opening version of the "Cruel Mother" setting the scene with its lyrics about a woman giving birth in a wood and then killing her newborns. It's a song I've heard versions of before but this one seemed more centred on the woman's suffering, giving some background into how she came to be pregnant and the sheer misery of feeling like you have no option but to give birth in secret and then kill your babies.
Then we have "The Trees They Do Grow", a beautiful Scottish folk song about a young woman unfortunately married off to a much younger son of some rich guy. And then "Love Henry", a murder ballad (previously recorded by the Furrow Collective and adapted into "Henry Lee" by Nick Cave), the ominous "The Feast" (an original tune), and "The Wife of Michael Cleary". The last is a song by Maija Sofia and it deals with the disturbing 1887 incident in which Mr Cleary became convinced that his wife Bridget had been replaced by a changeling, so he killed her, burned her body and buried it in a shallow grave. Michael Cleary was convicted of manslaughter and spent 15 years in prison.
The final tune is a cover of Scott Walker's "Farmer in the City", sung by Katie Kim, which I have heard her play live at the above mentioned concert, shortly before Walker's death. The song originally appears on Tilt and I get the impression it is the standout track in Walker's mostly tune-free late oeuvre, as it sounds quite odd but is still recognisably music. It was noticeable when he died that "Farmer in the City" got a lot or airplay on forward thinking radio programmes. The version of the song here is also pretty ominous, with Kim almost intoning rather than singing her vocals to a largely droney accompaniment.
So there you have the Øxn record. It's pretty short but unlike the last Lankum album it is all-killer-no-filler and does not feel like it has been padded out with drone noodling to make it seem weightier. I recommend it to be people interested in this world of music.
v/a Under the Island: a Compilation of Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 - 1994
From Nyahh Records comes this compilation of Irish weirdo music. Various big names appear here, like Roger Doyle (an early work recorded when he still lived with his parents), Desmond Leslie (perhaps most famous for punching Bernard Levin on live television), Olwen Fouéré (big local stage actor who also shows up in films, also sometime Roger Doyle collaborator, with her track here having music written by him), Daniel Figgis (a former Virgin Prune). It's an odd record in that although it collects music from a lot of different people over quite a long period of time, the record ends up sounding almost like something by a single artist, with the tracks flowing into each other in ways that make it hard for casual listeners to tell where one ends and the other begins. Top marks though to Danny McCarthy's 1988 piece "Music For An Electric Hurling Stick", which is illustrated in the sleevenotes by him posing with a hurley to which he has fitted strings and pick-ups (an iconic illustration which seems not to have made it onto the internet, so you'll have to use your imagination).
Another Nyahh Records release, in this case by Mohammed Syfkhan, a Syrian-Kurd who has found himself living in Ireland. He plays bouzouki and occasionally sings, mostly to a programmed accompaniment but occasionally to cello by Eimear Reidy and saxophone by Cathal Roche. See my review of the album launch concert.
My Life With the Thrill Kill KultConfessions of a Knife… (1990)
This is not a completely new to me record, as I have had a copy of it on vinyl since 1990 or 1991, but I decided to download a digital copy for I can listen to it more conveniently. For the sake of readers who have never heard of or forgotten about My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, they were a Wax Trax industrial act whose schtick initially was camp disco Satanism. On this record we get some industrial pop on which their Satanism is combined with samples from trash films of yore. The most striking track is probably the opener, "A Daisy Chain 4 Satan", with its repeated spoken word sample 'I live for drugs' (occasionally interspersed with 'I can't afford, I would never buy drugs'), while other stand-outs are "Kooler than Jesus" (featuring the repeated refrain "I am the Electric Messiah! The AC/DC god!", apparently taken from obscure 1972 film The Ruling Class, which means that the line is probably being spoken by Peter O'Toole) and "Ride the Mindway". But it's all good and I am enjoying binge listening to it again.
Looking back into the past, I think shoegaze and industrial were my big musics of the late 1980s and early 1980s. Very different, obviously, but variety is the spice of life. I may be falling down an industrial nostalgia rabbit hole, so don't be too surprised if you see me reviewing Revolting Cocks' Beers Steers & Queers in the near future. And also don't be too surprised if you hear about me putting on my vintage My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult t-shirt and heading into Dance to the Underground (Dublin's premier queer goth club).
All You Need Is Death is a film about song collectors who learn of a haunted song from the deep past. This is the soundtrack to it, mostly instrumental but with a couple of bursts of vocal from people who appear in the film, including Simone Collins (the film's co-lead), Brendan Gleeson (a tradder in real life as well as an actor), and then a terrifying turn from Olwen Fouéré. Ian Lynch is one of Lankum and this record might appeal to people have been put off that band by an aversion to rough working class Dublin voices.
My beloved picked up a copy of this at a gig launching the album. Barry is an uilleann piper and this sees him playing traditional tunes with an array of other musicians. I have been known to claim that Irish traditional music played in a straight down the line way does not record well (the success of Planxty and the Chieftains provides no counterargument), but Littoral proves me wrong. It is pleasing on the ear and well produced and I recommend it to anyone who needs more piping in their lives.
This is a well-known sea shanty in which the first verse goes like this:
"Oh a drop of Nelson's blood wouldn't do us any harm A drop of Nelson's blood wouldn't do us any harm A drop of Nelson' blood wouldn't do us any harm And we'll all hang on behind"
Later verses substitute various other things for 'A drop of Nelson's blood' (e.g. a night out with the girls, a damn good flogging, a nice fat cook (this may be the bowdlerised version), and so on). The song's origins are from the possibly true story that after Nelson was killed at Trafalgar his body was brought home in a barrel of brandy, with the thirsty sailors being happy to drink some of the brandy even if it might be contaminated by Nelson's blood (yarrr!). Or perhaps Nelson's blood became a nickname for rum, in which Nelson was also reported to have been pickled.
This particular recording is a musical accompaniment to a Regency Cthulhu (think Jane Austen heroines v. eldritch horror) roleplaying game scenario in which the players attend a banquet and are served some special brandy in a nothing-to-worry-about manner. It's actually an impressively solid recording of a tune I have sung myself many times at Unthanks singing weekends.
I'm basically so impressionable that when one of my social media buds said that a former classmate of his had released a record and that it was quite good I went straight to Bandcamp and downloaded a copy. It is plinky electronic music of a relatively downtempo variety, with a retro sound to it. Verdict: appealing.
v/a Fantastic Voyage - New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981 (2024)
This is an Ace Records compilation put together by Bob Stanley & Jason Wood of late 1970s tunes supposedly inspired by David Bowie's Berlin period. It is kind of a sequel to their Cafe Exil record, which is meant to evoke the music Bowie was listening to before recording Station to Station, Low, Heroes, The Lodger, etc. It is a top notch collection and I recommend it to all readers. Most of the tracks are by UK artists imagining what it would be like to be living in somewhere like Berlin, but there is also "Eisbär", sung in German by actual German-speaking Swiss people (I gather the song is quite well-known and deals with a man who would like to be a polar bear).
The album features many great tunes, often of an edgy electronic quality, but top marks go to the compilers dredging up a tune from the strange period when Daryl Hall released a Robert Fripp produced album. The other amusing track on the record is the Walker Brothers "Nite Flights", from the album of the same name. One hears of this record as Scott Walker's first step along the road to weird unlistenability but the track is a surprisingly groovey number, almost cheesy, and one that you could happily play to your most conservative disco loving aunt.
OK so yes I had this before on vinyl but I thought it would be a good idea to pick up a digital copy I can listen to on my iPod. If you haven't living under a stone you will surely be at least aware of this record: Gainsbourg's masterpiece, produced in collaboration with arranger Jean-Claude Vannier and an army of top notch session musicians, very influential on artists as diverse as Air and Beck. And this is the extended version, with a load of extra tracks that are mostly extended versions of the main tunes or else a couple of tracks that were left off the original release for reasons.
Melody Nelson is an odd record. It's very short for one thing, and it begins and ends with what sounds suspiciously like the same very long song. These tracks, "Melody" and "Cargo Culte", both feature Gainsbourg muttering rather than singing over freakouts by the musicians. And the music really is amazing, with what sounds like jazz influenced drums combining with throbbing bass and sensuous guitar licks to create an incredible sonic groove. Gainsbourg does actually sing on the other tracks but it his spoken word pieces that are the most memorable, particularly on "Cargo Culte" where they are offset by the music building, building and building.
And of course if you are a non-francophone like me you only know what the record is about by reading a summary of it on Wikipedia. People who can understand French generally talk about how it greatly improves one's enjoyment of Gainsbourg's music to get what he is saying, but there are times when I have my doubts about this. For Melody Nelson is a concept album, telling the story of a dirty rotter who meets a teenage girl, brings her to a hotel and shags her, after which she dies in a plane crash, leaving the dirty rotter to feel sad. It's not really the sordid story that I like about the record so the full details of the lyrics are perhaps left unknown to me.
Because it is the music that is so striking about the record you would have to wonder whether Gainsbourg is coasting here and it is actually Vannier we should be crediting with everything likeable about it. Vannier is only credited aa a co-writer on some of the tracks, and not on the key ones, but he arranges all of them and arguably that is the key thing here. And yet, I have heard a Jean-Claude Vannier solo record, and while it is enjoyable enough to listen to, it does tend a bit towards tuneless nonsense, which makes me think that maybe the Melody Nelson X-factor is Serge after all.
Extended versions of albums are often terrible but here the addition of extra material works by giving you more of what you want, in particular an extended version of "Melody" and an instrumental version of "Cargo Culte". If you already like Melody Nelson you need this. If you don't already like Melody Nelson then you still need this as you should give it another listen.
Mary & the PigeonsLike Water (2024)
I would love to say that this is a record by a woman who has trained pigeons to play instruments but this is not the case. Instead it is a record by Mary Barnecutt, with the Pigeons being the extra musicians she plays with. I first came across Barnecutt when she played at the first Stoneybatter Festival concert, impressing me with her idiosyncratic music. Like her previous music, this album is fronted by Barnecutt on both voice and cello, with other people coming in on other instruments on different tracks. It sounds completely adrift from anything else going on in music at the moment and doesn't even sound that much like most of the other music I am listening to these days, which I think is a good thing. It's very song-based and maybe nods towards modern composition (that could just be me being seduced by the cello) but there maybe is a slight jazz influence to the drumming.
Actually I did find myself thinking of one thing the record kind of reminds me of: Dresden Dolls. The record has the same kind of slightly bouncey cabaret-esque sound to it at times, and not just because it features piano-keyboards, but it doesn't have the gothic angst of Amanda Palmer's vocals and lyrics, which some might consider a plus point.
This was a launch concert for Mohammad Syfkhan's I Am Kurdish album. It was taking place in the Bello Bar, which is one of Dublin's pokiest venues but also somewhere that hosts a lot of forward thinking music put on by Vinnie Dermody's Enthusiastic Eunuch organisation. The venue's annoying feature is that there are very few good seats giving you a reasonably clear view of the stage, so if attending you need to get down early. My friend "Eoghan" and I were in the queue when doors opened but we still weren't able to nab seats right at the front of the raised bit, but we were at least able to grab stools in front of the stage. From here we had an unobstructed view of E the Artist, who did laptop stuff (and occasional guitar stuff) while also using his voice as an instrument. I am generally a bit wary of laptop musicians but this guy seemed to have something and I hope we see more of him. He has a short record on Bandcamp that might be worth investigating.
Mohammad Syfhkan himself is a smartly dressed Kurdish fellow who used to live in Syria but has left there for a country where he is less likely to be killed. He plays the bouzouki and sometimes sings, while a programmed instrumental track accompanies him. I found the sound of his bouzouki fascinating… it had a quality that made it sound like it might have been electronically treated, but maybe that is just the way bouzoukis sound when played Kurdish-style.
In some ways he is a bit like Omar Souleyman, in that they are both Kurds, the music is also from the world of Dabke and they both played lots of weddings. Nevertheless they are still different: there is a definite groove to Syfkhan's music but it's nothing like as frenetic as Souleyman's. This is maybe music for a wedding of respectable older people who still like a boogie, not for completely mad for it young people who've drank too much sugary tea and are now buzzing their nuts off. Nevertheless, by the end of the set everyone was up and grooving.
And he kept playing and playing. Eventually I felt that I could only take so much music so I slipped away into night, stopping to buy a copy of the album and the Under the Island compilation. "It's past my bedtime," I commented to Vinnie Dermody as I was going. "It's past a lot of people's bedtime," he replied.
The IFI has been showing a season of Bette Davis films and it is indicative of how many great films she made that the programme didn't include loads of her films I think of as total classics. These include Marked Woman (based on real events, with Bette Davis playing a "nightclub hostess" (it's not a pre-Code film so use your imagination) whose evidence takes down a fictionalised Lucky Luciano; Humphrey Bogart also appears as an analogue of district attorney Thomas Dewey (of "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" fame), Juarez (in which Bette Davis plays Princess Carlotta, whose husband somehow becomes Emperor of Mexico), and The Nanny (a disturbing domestic drama made by Hammer before they went big on what we think of as Hammer Horror).
In the season I did see her play the titular lead in Jezebel (1938), which was given to her as a consolation prize for missing out on the lead role in Gone with the Wind as it provided her with an opportunity to play a Southern belle. I'm not sure it is a great film but it was striking how negatively the white Southerners are mostly portrayed (the men are honour-obsessed idiots who spend their time fighting duels and scoffing at anyone suggesting the South would lose in a civil war), while the various enslaved African Americans (all admittedly minor characters) come across as real people and not the "Lawdy massa" stereotypes seen in other films of the era. All About Eve (1950) meanwhile could be seen as Davis's Sunset Boulevard, with Davis playing an ageing actress (all of 40 years old) facing a young rival. All About Eve is something of a camp classic and might also represent the point where Davis herself pivoted to playing full-on older ladies, somehow making a successful career of this in a business that is not normally considered too welcoming of older women.
The final film I saw was Another Man's Poison (1951), a British made film in which Davis plays a successful crime writer who finds things getting a bit awkward when the criminal accomplice of her estranged husband shows up at her house looking for him. I felt that it maybe suffers from a moralistic ending (the same might be true of All About Eve) and if it weren't for that the film would be almost like Bette Davis appearing in a Patricia Highsmith adaptation. It also features Emlyn Williams in a supporting role, a man whose other claim to fame is writing the book that formed the basis of The Smiths' "Suffer Little Children". There were other appealing films in the season (notably Now, Voyager and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), but I skipped those as I had seen them relatively recently.
Being the age I am, the first I ever heard of Bette Davis was when Kim Carnes had a monster hit with the song "Bette Davis Eyes". Watching all these films had the tune going through my head all the time, so I've downloaded it and have been listening to it obsessively ever since. It's a great track, with Carnes' expressively raspy vocals combining with a very 80s backing to create an endearingly proto-goth sound. Carnes was herself a singer songwriter, but she did not write the tune. It first appeared as an album track on its co-author Jackie DeShannon's New Arrangement. It is worth giving the original a quick listen as it is so different from Carnes' version, sounding almost like something from a vaudeville show. It is a far less effective recording.
I became curious then about Kim Carnes. It is her performance and the production that makes her "Bette Davis Eyes" great, so could she perhaps have other hidden classics from that era lurking unheard by modern audiences? Sadly this does not appear to be the case, with the couple of other tracks I listened to from the album "Bette Davis Eyes" appears on not being that great: neither the songwriting, the production, nor Carnes' own performance is up to much on any of them. The one thing that did kind of impress me was a live rendition of the Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb" I stumbled onto. As you know, that is a deeply problematic song with its lyrics about the kind of coercive control that is now recognised as a crime in many jurisdictions. On the live performance I saw, however, Carnes really gave it socks and there is definitely something interesting about a woman singing a song normally read as being about a man dominating a woman. It's not as good as "Bette Davis Eyes", but it's still worth a listen.
I found myself wondering if people who actually attend the Glastonbury festival ever try to recreate the real Glastonbury arse-sitting experience of watching it at home on TV by bringing a sofa with them and also bringing their dad and putting him on a nearby armchair so that he can say "Crap" every time an act he doesn't like takes the stage before moaning that he is missing the football.
I also found myself overcome with curiosity about Dua Lipa's set after reading a few accounts praising it. I am not familiar with Ms Lipa's music but I am aware that she holds important views of a progressive nature that predispose me to liking her. I checked out some of her set on YouTube, and guess what, she is a pretty strong performer with lots of catchy tunes, many of which have a "good beat". I am a bit ambivalent about the pop music takeover of Glastonbury, not because I hate pop music but because it is symptomatic of the festival losing whatever countercultural edge it once had. That shift to the mainstream is I think driven by the festival's relentless growth and by the need for familiar headliners that will appeal to the television audience. Yet watching Dua Lipa on YouTube had me thinking that her set was amazing and that if I was there I would have completely loved it. However, were I to have been at Glastonbury this year I suspect that I would probably have missed Dua Lipa in favour of Bongo Bill up in whatever is left of the Green Fields.
I also suspect that if I ever go to Glastonbury again I will be confused by the emergence of new stages and of things I remember not being where they were or having new names. And it all being so much bigger than it used to be.
image:
Pyramid Stage (Louder Than War: "Glastonbury 2024 – Festival Review")
Since the early 1990s I have been part of Frank's APA, the amateur press association for people who like music. Amateur press associations are a niche form of writing endeavour where the contributors write self-contained zines which are then compiled together into one package and distributed to all the APA's members. They're a great format for long form and slow conversations, making them a strange relic of the past in our accelerated world.
Frank's APA has just celebrated its 200th issue. To mark this momentous occasion one of the APA's members ran a poll to identify once and for all the greatest albums of all time. Former and current contributors were invited to submit a list of their 30 favourite albums, ranked or unranked, and then an arcane process was used to compile an aggregated list. Compilations (both single- and multi-artist) were explicitly in scope, as were e.p.s. and even home-made compilations that had previously been put together for the delight of Frank's APA members.
And here are the 30 records I submitted in my ballot. I picked the albums first, applying a self-imposed rule limiting myself to one record per artist, and then I ranked them. Feel free to scoff at my pedestrian tastes while sneering at me for presenting a list that excludes or under-represents certain important categories of music or creator.
While reading through the list, you can also listen to a YouTube playlist of key tunes from the albums I picked:
30. Pink FloydWish You Were Here (1975)
What is it? It's the album Pink Floyd released after the colossal and terrifying success of Dark Side of the Moon.
What is it like? Most of it is taken up with the long track that starts and ends the album. Lyrics have a general air of looking back at a past before things went wrong. The short title track is meant to evoke Syd Barrett, the band's lost founder. Other lyrics complain about the music biz. The music is austere.
What do I like about it? It's melancholic, atmospheric, and beautiful. I still remember listening to it for the first time, when I still lived with my parents, its brooding opening in my ears as I ate the macaroni cheese my mother had left for me.
Key track: "Wish You Were Here"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 17th (with one other)
29. The WhoWho's Next (1971)
What is it? It's the fifth album by The Who, which was originally meant to be a concept album about something or other but ended up being a more traditional album of songs (mostly by Pete Townshend) that they had ready for release.
What is it like? Rock! Or power pop! Or whatever they call this kind of thing. Lots of up tempo songs with storming guitar solos but then buried in among all that nuggets of sensitivity.
What do I like about it? There's an unapolegetic "woaahhh!" rockness to it that is very appealing, with it being very hard not to stop writing this and air guitar along to it, but there's also a sense of artistic ambition to it that ticks the brainy music box for me. But you can't knock the rock and the awesome power of Roger Daltrey's scream on "Won't Get Fooled Again", which closes the album.
Key track: "Behind Blue Eyes"
Frank's APA poll placing: 182nd
28. Cate Le BonMe Oh My (2009)
What is it? It's the debut album from Welsh sensation Cate Le Bon.
What is it like? Melancholic tunes, lyrics about pet death and depression, Le Bon's mannered and sometimes soaring vocals.
What do I like about it? Look at this stage you should know that I love sad music. The real question is why do I am so fond of this when I find much of Cate Le Bon's other music disappointing. One thing with this is that the record is largely devoid of the mid-tempo chuggers and pointless guitar soloing that bedevils her subsequent albums. Le Bon is not playing on her own here but it feels like a very intimate experience. And her voice is so beautiful on this record. She never plays these songs live and she never really sings like this either; she must really like the mid-tempo chuggers. Or maybe My Oh My comes from a dark place she does not want to revisit.
Key track: "Eyes So Bright"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
27. The Velvet UndergoundWhite Light / White Heat (1968)
What is it? It's the Velvet Underground's second album.
What is it like? There's no Nico on vocals and the Lou Reed Brill Building stylings that occasionally sneaked onto the first album have been completely excised. Instead it's a collection of mostly abrasive tunes with lyrics about drug use, gender reassignment surgery, people sending themselves through the post, and the kind of party you wouldn't actually want to find yourself at.
What do I like about it? It's uncompromising and relentless, the kind of record the cool kids love and the squares hate.
Key track: "Sister Ray"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
26. WeenThom's Ween TOAD (2011)
What is it? It's a compilation of tunes by Ween put together by "Thom", a member of Frank's APA.
What is it like? It is like everything. Ween encompass all music and all music is here.
What do I like about it? It's a window into a strange world. The opening track rocks out but then you have a thrash rock tune that's over before it starts, and then you have a track that sounds like it could be from Spinal Tap's hippy phase, and then you have a song with a child singing about how he is dying of meningitis, then what seems to be a recording of stoned people ordering food from a taqueria server except it's the same guy doing all the voices, and so on. Some of it is funny, some of it is pastiche, but it's not always funny and there is more to it than just pastiche. But what? But what? This is the mystery of Ween.
Key track: "Your Party"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
25. Belle & SebastianTigermilk (1996)
What is it? It's the debut album from Glaswegian sensations Belle & Sebastian, but it originally received a release so limited that most people didn't hear it until B&S had released three subsequent albums.
What is it like? Lots of Stuart Murdoch written songs with poetic lyrics about sensitive subjects set to lush arrangements.
What do I like about it? It's the one all-killer-no-filler B&S album, with every track not just being great in and of itself but a key exemplar of the B&S aesthetic.
Key track: "My Wandering Days Are Over"
Frank's APA poll placing: 49th
24. David BowieThe Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)
What is it? It's David Bowie's fifth album, in some sense a concept album about the eponymous oddly named character.
What is it like? You know what it is like. A collection of songs, some up tempo, some less so, all hanging on Bowie's strange otherwordly persona.
What do I like about it? It is the most Bowie of Bowie albums. I could have played it cool and picked Low or Station to Station but we would all have known I was lying. Plus the other albums do not have Mick Ronson (well some of them do, but they are not contenders).
Key track: "Ziggy Stardust"
Frank's APA poll placing: 45th
23. KraftwerkThe Man Machine (1978)
What is it? It's Kraftwerk's seventh album, the one where they wear the red shirts on the cover, and the one with "The Model" on it.
What is it like? It continues the mechanistic sound of previous Kraftwerk albums (despite probably being played on analogue instruments) and further moves the band towards the dancefloor.
What do I like about it? It's a retro-futurist classic that unapologetically celebrates technological progress.
Key track: "The Robots"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 147th (with two others)
22. Syd BarrettThe Madcap Laughs (1970)
What is it? It's the debut solo album from the former Pink Floyd frontman, recorded when his mental deterioration was becoming more extreme while still being within limits that allowed him to record music.
What is it like? Barrett sings and plays acoustic guitar while the other musicians struggle to keep up. There's an oddness to the sound that might derive from Barrett's mental state.
What do I like about it? I think it's the voice, the sound of someone's sanity draining away. Why would I want to listen to that? And yet at time it is so beautiful, with songs like the opener "Terrapin" a fauvist love song like no other. The record is let down a bit by a couple of out-takes that sound like they have only been included to burnish Barrett's "Mr Mad" credentials but the best tracks sound like someone struggling and failing to stop themselves from spiralling over the edge.
Key track: "Late Night"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
21. NicoThe End… (1974)
What is it? It's Nico's fourth solo album, produced by John Cale.
What is it like? Nico sings in her subterranean voice of doom, accompanying herself on harmonium and with a fairly minimal accompaniment from other musicians (mostly Cale but also at times Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera).
What do I like about it? It is music from an underworld of despair and hopelessness.
Key track: "The Valley of the Kings"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
20. Kate BushThe Dreaming (1982)
What is it? Kate Bush's fourth album, her first without another producer, which underperformed commercially when originally released.
What is it like? It's odd.
What do I like about it? There is no compromise to this record. The track most akin to a conventional single is the opener, "Sat in Your Lap", but even that is a relentless percussion led tune that you can't imagine overly troubling the singles charts (though it still made no. 11). Bush has no qualms about using her entire vocal range here (sometimes on single lines of songs) and goes for it with the Fairlight sampler. Also Rolf Harris appears on the title track.
Key track: "Suspended in Gaffa"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
19. New OrderSubstance (1987)
What is it? It's a compilation of singles by New Order, although one or two of them were re-recorded for this collection.
What is it like? The first songs evoke the more electronic end of Joy Division's music but as the listener moves through the songs the dancefloor influence becomes stronger. Tracks also feature the most distinctive element of the New Order sound: the Peter Hook bassline.
What do I like about it? Cool tunes that often manage to sound angsty while still being tracks that call you to the dancefloor. It is a DJ truism that "Blue Monday" will fill any flagging dancefloor despite its mopey lyrics.
Key track: "Temptation"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
18. v/a Das Beste aus der DDR - Teil 3: Kult (1995)
What is it? It is a compilation of music from the German Democratic Republic, a country that no longer exists. Volume 1 and 2 in this series dealt with rock and pop music and were a bit dull, while this third volume collects music that is a bit more leftfield.
What is it like? Stylistically it is all over the place: children's choirs, dissident rock, pro-regime folk music, novelty hits about how people from Saxony have funny accents, TV themes, DDR space rock, schlager, and much much more.
What do I like about it? I think its place at the overlap of my interest in music and German history is what draws me in here. Some of this music is genuinely great, some of it is "interesting", but I love it all as a picture of a country that no longer exists and whose span was so short there are people still living who were born before its formation.
Key track: Sandow "Born in the G. D. R."
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
17. Godspeed You! Black EmperorSlow Riot For New Zero Kanada (1999)
What is it? It's an e.p. the length of a short album from popular Canadian funsters Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
What is it like? GYBE's sound sees them combining more traditional rock instruments with cello and violin, creating textured music that embraces quiet-loud dynamic shifts. The first half is entirely instrumental while the second features field recordings of a street poet who helpfully shares his freeman philosophy and recycled Iron Maiden lyrics masquerading as original poetry.
What do I like about it? The music is beautiful and enveloping, a balm in our troubled times. The field recordings are fascinating and superbly combined with the music, which seems to shift sinuously around the poet's words. That the poet is a self-important nutjob who seems to think having to pay a speeding ticket is some mark of America's descent into totalitarianism is not an issue here: his endlessly parodyable speech patterns remain oddly memorisable.
Key track: "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
16. Baader MeinhofBaader Meinhof (1996)
What is it? Luke Haines, frontman of The Auteurs, takes a break from his band to record a collection of songs about popular West German terrorist group the Red Army Faction.
What is it like? Sonically it moves away from the kind of indie music Haines had been associated with. His guitar playing is all over the record but it also features slow handclaps and string flourishes that evoke Arab classical music. The title track in particular owes a debt to "Space Blues" by Felt, one of the few acts that Haines speaks favourably of in his Britpop memoir Bad Vibes. But at times it heads off in a direction that I might describe as mutant funk. Lyrically it's a tour through the crazy world of West Germany's violent underground of the 1970s, with various stars of the era making an appearance.
What do I like about it? I think that like me Haines must have read the "Televisionaries" issue of Vague so with this it's like he is making a concept album designed to appeal to me personally. And the tunes are great, with Haines' rasping vocals perfectly suited to the strung out sounds he is conjuring up.
Key track: "There's Gonna Be an Accident"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
15. Magnetic Fields69 Love Songs (1999)
What is it? It's a triple album of love songs from Magnetic Fields, the vehicle of songwriting powerhouse Stephin Merritt. He sings most of the songs but vocals are also provided by bandmate and manager Claudia Gonson as well as various other collaborators.
What is it like? It is song-based music, highlighting melody and lyrics. Merritt plays lots of instruments while his bandmates and guest musicians play others, with rehabilitated banjo surprisingly prominent.
What do I like about it? The songs! They're great songs. OK they are not all great songs - with a collection of this many tunes there will be peaks and troughs, but even the filler tunes have their charms, particularly in context. Lyrically the tunes run through every kind of love: happy, sad, doomed, failed, gay, straight, disturbed, carnie, etc. Some tunes are funny, others touching, others still deeply moving.
Key track: "Yeah! Oh Yeah!"
Frank's APA poll placing: 5th
14. Orbital[The Brown Album] (1993)
What is it? It is the second album from Orbital. It has no obvious name but the cover is brown so while some people call it Orbital II, others refer to it as The Brown Album.
What is it like? It starts off with a looped vocal sample of Worf from Star Trek talking about time becoming a loop, but that gives way an album of electronic dance music.
What do I like about it? Time and place, happy memories, but also these are great tunes with a definite euphoric energy.
Key track: "Halcyon + On + On"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
13. RideNowhere (1990)
What is it? It is the debut album from Ride, the Oxford shoegaze band.
What is it like? Ride have listened to My Bloody Valentine but they take that sonic template or shimmery guitars and effects pedal rock and marry it to a more muscular sound with vocals whose words can actually be made out.
Why do I like about it? So there was a period in the early 1990s when it seemed like indie music and dance music were in dialogue with each other, with indie musicians feeling like they had to up their game in competition with the strange new sounds luring the kids out to orbital raves. This is in no way an indie-dance crossover record but it gestures towards the same euphoric quality that dance music suggests. Also for a record by a bunch of well spoken soft lads from the Thames Valley it rocks like motherfucker, with a lot of this down to the savage drumming of Loz Colbert.
Key track: "Seagull"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 150th (with one other)
12. The Shangri-LasMyrmidons of Melodrama (1995)
What is it? It is a collection of songs from the brief mid-1960s heyday of the Shangri-Las.
What is it like? The Shangri-Las were a girl group. Mary Weiss sings lead most of the time, with the others providing harmony vocals or assisting in call-response tunes. The lyrics typically involve doomed teenage love in which the singer finds herself mixed up with some disreputable youth from the bad part of town.
What do I like about it? A big part of the appeal here is Mary Weiss's big voice and ability to inhabit these songs about teenage misery. Before picking this up, the only Shangri-Las tune I knew was "Leader of the Pack", but there is a rake of songs here of similar calibre, written for them by a range of collaborators. It's easy for jaded cynics to dismiss this music, but they're missing out on recordings that manage to present both intense misery and hilarity, often in the same song.
Key track: "I Can Never Go Home Anymore"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
11. AirMoon Safari (1998)
What is it? It is the debut album from French duo Air.
What is it like? It owes a debt to Jean-Claude Vannier's arrangements for Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson, especially the basslines on "Cargo Culte". Overall it combines some electronics with delicate rock instrumentation and orchestral touches. Some tracks are instrumental, others feature vocals by guest star Beth Hirsch, while others again feature the Air boys on vocoder.
What do I like about it? Partly again it is time and place. This is not a dance music record but it was for people who like dance music. But also it is a collection of beautiful and enveloping music that encourage listeners to sit back, relax, and let the tunes take them away.
Key track: "La Femme d'Argent"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 64th (with four others)
10. Massive AttackMezzanine (1998)
What is it? It's the third album from the Bristol trip hop sensations, except on this one they go all goth hop.
What is it like? With its samples and drum loops, it remains true to the band's trip hop origins but the overall sound is claustrophobic and oppressive. Various guest stars provide vocals, as do members of the band themselves.
What do I like about it? Well I love things that are claustrophobic and oppressive, as anyone who has ever visited me will note.
Key track: "Inertia Creeps"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 17th (with one other)
9. TrickyMaxinquaye (1995)
What is it? It's the debut album from erstwhile Massive Attack collaborator Tricky.
What is it like? More trip hop, but again of the somewhat claustrophobic variety. Tricky provides odd ball rapping on some tracks, but the main vocalist is Martina Topley-Bird whose mannered voice is a key part of the record's sound; there are also other guest vocalists. As well as original tracks there is also the well known cover of Public Enemy's 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos'.
What do I like about it? The claustrophobia, the oddball vocals, the weird samples.
Key track: "Ponderosa"
Frank's APA poll placing: 134th
[it was at this point in proceedings that I realised I had forgotten to vote for Portishead's Dummy.]
8. Bob DylanLive 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (1966)
What is it? It is a recording of a concert from Bob Dylan's first electric tour of the United Kingdom. Despite the title, it was recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, but it does feature an irate audience member shouting "Judas!".
What is it like? The first disc has Dylan playing with his acoustic guitar the sole musical accompaniment; the attendees like this. Then the second half has him playing an electric set backed by The Hawks; crowd reaction is more mixed, with applause mixed in with slow handclaps and boos.
What do I like about it? It feels like the record hasn't just caught a concert but a moment, with Dylan shocking his fans by going electric and turning his back on folk purism. The first half lulls them into a false sense of security with its sensitive acoustic performance, but then in the second half the sound of the Hawks blasts out and you can just hear all the conservative folkies going "What is this shit?", like if someone booked Scooter to play at the Bowlie Weekender. The contradictory audience responses to the electric set (some digging it and applauding, some booing and clearly wishing for a power cut) makes this all feel very immediate.
Key track: "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 168th (with ten others)
7. Philip GlassKoyaanisqatsi OST (1983)
What is it? It is Philip Glass's soundtrack for Godfrey Reggio's film.
What is it like? It sounds like music by Philip Glass: slow bits, fast bits, slow bits.
What do I like about it? It was my introduction to minimalism. And it brings to mind the film, with its mix of speeded up and slowed down footage that makes-you-think about the problems of the world. I suppose also it was like nothing else I was listening to when I heard it first, and it does still sound pretty strange (I have lead a sheltered life).
Key track: "Vessels"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 152nd (with eight others)
6. Spacemen 3Playing with Fire (1989)
What is it? It's the third album from Spacemen 3, who were kind of a proto-shoegaze spacerock outfit.
What is it like? Most of the songs have a gentle, enveloping narcotic quality, but there are two notably more uptempo tracks: "Revolution" and "Suicide". I remember hearing it said that while it appears to casual listeners that some Spacemen 3 songs are about drugs while others are love songs, on closer listening it turns out that they are all about drugs. This album does not contradict that.
What do I like about it? It might also be a set and setting thing as this album first came into my orbit one summer when I was in a manky squat in London and going out to see cool bands playing gigs (cool bands in this context being Primal Scream (in their not-actually-that-cool phase), the Telescopes, Eat (now largely forgotten), and Spacemen 3 themselves (twice)). The record lends itself to sitting around and getting in a relaxed frame of mind, with "Revolution" perking up listeners and encouraging them to stick it to the man.
Key track: "How Does It Feel?"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 137th (with eight others)
5. Brian EnoHere Come the Warm Jets (1974)
What is it? It is the first solo album by Brian Eno, erstwhile oddball keyboard player with Roxy Music, who had been expelled from that band on the basis that it only had room for one frontman.
What is it like? Oddball pop. Eno sings in a non-standard manner while various of his musical friends and former bandmates play various other instruments.
What do I like about it? It's weird but it's goovey. Art music you can tap your toes to. Music with a good beat that makes you feel brainy for liking it.
Key track: "Baby's on Fire"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 120th (with ten others)
4. The SmithsStrangeways, Here We Come (1987)
What is it? It is the last album by The Smiths, recorded when they knew they were about to split and then released after the split had become public.
What is it like? It is an album by The Smiths. Surely everyone knows what The Smiths sound like? They pretty much define the mid-1980s indie sound. This arguably has a slightly more elegiac sound but that might be projection based on it being their last album.
What do I like about it? I like that it is by The Smiths, a band for whom I used to make the claim that all their albums are better than all albums by other artists and something I might still believe at least some of the time but not while putting together this list. The Smiths were all about Morrissey's lyrics and Johnny Marr's guitar playing and composition, and both are in fine form on this record. Very few people would count any of the songs here as their favourite by The Smiths, but there is something about the way the set hangs together that makes it a fitting final record for the band.
Key track: "Paint a Vulgar Picture" (which is my official favourite song by The Smiths)
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 29th (with one other)
3. Serge GainsbourgHistoire de Melody Nelson (1971)
What is it? It is a concept album by the popular French singer, telling the story of a dirty rotter who meets a teenage English girl, shags her, and then is sad when she dies in a plane crash on her way back to Sunderland.
What is it like? Gainsbourg largely speaks his vocals over arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier based around virtuosic drumming, bass and guitar, with occasional orchestral flourishes. It's also very short (under 30 minutes), and with the first and last tracks being variants of each other it feels almost like one long song with a break in the middle. And the words are all in French, which means that most anglophone listeners cannot understand them.
What do I like about it? It is beautiful and atmospheric. As previously noted, I wonder if understanding the lyrics would make me like it more or less. Either way I love how it builds to the closing track, which starts off echoing the one that opens the record but then becomes increasingly epic.
Key track: "Cargo Culte"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 69th (with ten others; it's what Serge would have wanted)
2. The BeatlesSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
What is it? It is the eighth Beatles album and arguably their last as a functioning band who didn't all hate each other.
What is it like? By this point in their career the Beatles were musically ambitious and keen to utilise the tools of the recording studio. They were also at the peak of their songwriting game. So we have tunes that evoke musical traditions from outside the world of rock and roll but also superbly crafted songs.
What do I like about it? OK first of all I am aware that picking this as a favourite album is a massive cliche and I am also aware that it has become common to pick other Beatles albums as one's favourite by that band. But I don't think anyone listening with an objective ear can really pick any other of their records over this one. It has some great tunes (arguably "A Day in the Life" is their very greatest tune) but the background tracks are really solid too. But it's also a sad record, capturing the band when they were still buds and when Lennon and McCartney were still writing songs together at least some of the time, something that would change.
Key track: "A Day in the Life"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 15th (with one other)
1. My Bloody ValentineIsn't Anything (1988)
What is it? It is the debut album by the popular Irish-English band, released on Creation after a couple of e.p.s had suggested a radical change of direction from the jangly indiepop of their earlier singles.
What is it like? Strange shimmering and distorted sounds that might once have been guitars, buried male and female vocals, drums that may or may not be programmed, tunes that approximate to songs but might be something else entirely, etc.
What do I like about it? Bought on a whim with a record token having previously heard one track by them, the album felt revolutionary, even compared to what I was listening to back then. And a lot of other people felt the same way on hearing this, with the album inspiring a whole wave of music, some of which was not terrible. But going back to the album itself, it full of really beautiful music, which is hard to imagine when given the basic description of it being based on distorted guitar sounds.
Key track: "Several Girls Galore"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 33rd (with nine others)
They also served: Portishead, Hawkwind, Cornershop, Laibach, the Rolling Stones (Beggar's Banquet), many jazz musicians, The KLF (for Chill Out), The Pixies, The Breeders (Pod only), Underworld, Elastica, Leftfield, Fever Ray, U2, Teenage Fanclub, P. J. Harvey, Sonic Youth, Morrissey, Talking Heads, The Sugarcubes (Life's Too Good only), The Sisters of Mercy, Broadcast, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Transient Ambient Noise Bursts (With Announcements), Songs for Swinging Celibates, etc. etc. etc.
I have been writing about some horror things I have experienced over the last while, starting with The Exorcist, then some other films, and in my last post some horror audio dramas, including a BBC adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Now we reach Lies We Tell, which is like The Woman in White in that it is a gothic shocker but not one featuring supernatural terror. In fact, it is an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's novel Uncle Silas, another heiress-in-peril novel.
When Le Fanu originally pitched the book, he wanted to set it in his native Ireland. His publisher said that no one wanted to read Irish books, so Le Fanu moved the locale to Derbyshire. For this film, director Lisa Mulcahy and screenwriter Elisabeth Gooch have brought the story back to the Emerald Isle. Agnes O'Casey plays Maud Ruthyn, a recently orphaned heiress who is yet to come of age. The film begins with the executors of her father's will suggesting that she might want to contest being left in the care of her Uncle Silas, a man of bad reputation who is suspected of murder. Despite not knowing her uncle, Maud insists on following her father's wishes and points out that although her uncle was suspected of causing a man's death, the coroner reached a verdict of suicide.
Uncle Silas arrives in Maud's mansion with his rakish son, idiot daughter and a French governess, and takes Maud into his care. While initially amiable, it becomes apparent that he has designs on Maud's wealth and is not entirely interested in her welfare. The film becomes increasingly claustrophobic as Maud finds herself trapped in her home, unable to seek help outside it and forced to rely entirely on her own resources. This sense of the domestic environment as a trap is of course a recurring gothic trope.
I think the title change from the book is partly designed to draw the focus away from Silas to Maud. In conversation after the film, Mulcahy talked about how she and screenwriter Elisabeth Gooch to some extent wanted to subvert the novel and give Maud more agency. I found this somewhat curious; while I have not read the novel myself yet, my understanding is that Sheridan Le Fanu's Maud is more active and determined than some gothic heroines and that the book is a first person narrative that foregrounds Maud's thoughts, experiences, and actions, for all that it is named after her antagonist. Either way the film remains very focussed on Agnes O'Casey's Maud, who appears in pretty much every scene. David Wilmot's Silas nevertheless remains a formidable presence, affable, charming, and sinister, sometimes all at once. He is very much a villain in the Count Fosco mode.
One thing I was struck by was how unsympathetically Maud is presented, at least initially. This is despite the fact that we see everything from her point of view and never stop rooting for her to escape her peril. Yet at the start of her film we see her imperiously bossing around her servants and then curtly dismissing the concerns of her executors. She is also short with Silas's daughter Emily, someone who could otherwise have been recruited as an ally given the nastiness Silas displays towards her. I did find myself wondering if the servants' later lack of helpfulness is a reaction to their earlier treatment.
And I suppose another thing to mention is that while this is based on a gothic sensation novel, it is not even slightly camp. Once we gain a sense of the danger in which Maud finds herself we never lose sight that it is very real and potentially visceral. There is one particularly intense scene that in another film would have played very differently but here remains a horrible presentation of Maud's vulnerability. That scene in particular is not an easy watch and I could imagine it being particularly upsetting to some viewers. Lies We Tell is nevertheless a film I recommend highly, and I hope that we see more from both Agnes O'Casey and Lisa Mulcahy.
Now, I don't know about you but I find the Luas Red Line to be pretty terrifying at the best of times, so it was with some trepidation that I found myself boarding it after work to head out to the Civic Theatre in Tallaght. What had me going out there was Robert Lloyd Parry performing two M. R. James short stories, "Lost Hearts" and "A Warning to the Curious", as part of the Red Line Festival. These are both ones I have seen Lloyd Parry perform previously online ("Lost Hearts" in particular he does every year on 24 March, the day of the story's disturbing climax), but it was great to see the performances in the flesh.
The two M. R. James stories might well be familiar to readers in their original form or through other adaptations. "Lost Hearts" is the one where a young orphan is adopted by Mr Abney, an eccentric distant relative, who seems friendly but who has had remarkably bad luck with previous attempts to adopt young children, who always seem to vanish just before their 12th birthday. It was memorably adapted for the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas in the 1970s, with the famous still of ghostly children looking in a window. "A Warning to the Curious" meanwhile is from that M. R. James subgenre of Norfolk-coast-holiday-goes-wrong. They both allowed Lloyd Parry to show off his acting talents, inhabiting all the characters and expertly handling the shifts in tone from light comedy to creeping dread. "A Warning to the Curious" is the objectively better story, as the other one has some problems of internal logic. Nevertheless,"Lost Hearts" is somehow still my favourite, with its horrible villain and suggestions of crimes more terrible than the supernatural ones the story contemplates (I'm thinking in particular when Abney invites his young charge to meet him in his private study late at night for a special and secret treat, and to not tell anyone else that he will be going there).
Revenant meanwhile was another one-man play, written and directed by Stuart Roche and performed by Patrick O’Donnell. It was staged in the Smock Alley Theatre as part of last year's Bram Stoker Festival, Dublin's attempt to cash in on the famous author of The Lair of the White Worm and The Lady of the Shroud. Revenant (not a Stoker adaptation) sees O'Donnell playing Carter, the director of a low budget Irish zombie horror film, and also the other members of the film's cast and crew. Carter's lead actor drops out of the production just before shooting is about to start, but he recommends an old actor bud as a replacement. This fellow is named Vardell, and he is suave, charismatic, and a natural in front of the camera, but someone who has somehow never appeared in anything anyone has ever heard of. The cast and crew head off to an island off the west coast of Ireland to shoot their film and, well, you can see where this is going. It's played somewhat for laughs but it does manage to ramp up the unease when the macabre goes into overdrive. Patrick O'Donnell's ability to bring Carter, Vardell, and the others to life before our eyes is incredible and it is small wonder he was nominated for prizes at the Manchester and Buxton Fringes in 2021 and 2023.
Everyone in the world has read Dracula so you know what happens here, right? Initially it is somewhat comedic, Harker as the Englishman abroad commenting on the quaint customs of the locals and their interesting foods. As he gets closer to his goal he expresses some bafflement at the misgivings people have about his plans to visit Castle Dracula and their tendency to press holy charms on him. But the real transition happens when the coach he is travelling on is met by one sent by the Count; Harker is then conveyed into an increasingly strange realm before finding himself effectively imprisoned in the Count's castle. The odd chortles from the audience that greeted Harker's initial observations completely fade away as his terrible predicament becomes apparent. It was a stunning performance by Bennett (aided by impressive lighting and sound design) that completely held the audience. I generally disapprove of standing ovations in the theatre, seeing them as a bit pro-forma, but I had no hesitation in leaping to me feet at the end of this. It is a shame that something so striking was only being performed for one night only, but it did make the event all the more special for those of us who attended.
