Day 585

Aka Friday 7^th September

The new Spiritualized album, ‘And Nothing Hurt’, was released today and it’s a great album and feels a bit more personal. My first thought about the album as a whole, was that it is a comparison piece to ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’, like it’s the same person, but now they are older, more tired and world weary (as has been noted elsewhere, the first track, ‘A Perfect Miracle’ sounds similar to the first track on ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’). 

 

From the first couple of listens the stand tracks for me are ‘I’m Your Man’, ‘On The Sunshine’, ‘The Morning After’, ‘The Prize’ and ‘Sail On Through’. The rock ‘n’ roll, blues, gospel, lullaby and woozy/droney influences are all present and correct, but there’s less far out freaky free jazz noise, like ‘Cop Shoot Cop’, but more warmth and intimacy (but that’s not to say that there aren’t bombastic moments) and even discoy touches. ‘And Nothing Hurts’ does sound like traditional Spiritualized, but more mature, more comfortable in its skin. And there’s a nice interview with Jason Pierce at Consequence Of Sound and in ‘Louder Than War’:

I also listened to more ‘The Thing Minute’ podcast episodes and read:

‘Black Widow: No More Secrets’, which concludes the story started in ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Most Wanted’ with the Black Widow defeating her enemies, protecting S.H.I.E.L.D. and free the current generation of Black Widows. There’s also reveals of double crosses, shadowy pasts and a trip to the moon. Good, solid, Marvel fun, excelsior! 8/10.

‘Evolution’ #9 is a horror comic, but it seems to be losing its scares and getting less horrific, but that might be because it’s in its exposition phase and that there are three separate storylines, so they only progress at a third of the speed? Not much seems to happen in this issue and looking back I’m not sure how much the story has progressed over the nine issues, I’ll have to read them altogether and decide if it’s worth continuing to buy this series. 6/10. 

‘Snotgirl’ #11 is also a horror comic, except it’s about the human horrors of social media, anxiety about fitting in/not fitting in and loads of other societal pressures. It's also a humourous comic and in this issue the Lottie and friends are dealing with the aftermath of their trip to the dessert and Lottie’s relationship with Caroline/Coolgirl.

…and half of ‘Perdy’, which so far has been a cross between ‘Blueberry’ and ‘Lucky Luke’, i.e. a series Western story, but with humour and presented in a cartoony style.

…and I did the G2 crossword, which went okish - I had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (six of the 23 clues). I think it would have gone a tad better if I hadn’t rushed the crossword, but I did learn that a ‘ship’s crew’s living quarters’ is the ‘mess deck’ and that ‘wattle’ is a ‘material for making fences, roofing, etc.’ and that ‘Australian acacia’ is a type of ‘wattle’.