Let’s not mince words: Julie Fowlis has the most gorgeous female vocalist to emerge from Scotland since the debut of Capercaillie’s Karen Matheson. Hers is a voice that can be as fragile as Highlands’ summer, but as bold and strong as a wintery gale. Fowlis’s latest, Uam, is both a showcase for a singer’s craft and a fine ensemble album. Fowlis gives a strong lilt to the waulking song “M’fhearann saidhbhir,” then picks up her whistle to crank out foot-stomping tunes with Éamon Doorley (bouzouki), Duncan Chisholm (fiddle), Tom Doorley (flute), Tony Bryne (guitar), Ewen Vernal (bass), and Martin O’Neill (bodrán). This is a pattern followed throughout. Onewould be hard-pressed to pick highlights from this release as each is a treasure, but a few that standout are “Wind and Rain,” a Gaelic/English duet with Eddi Reader; “Rugadh mi ‘n teis meadhan na mara,” a Breton song of a fisherman’s daughter’s quiet sorrow; “Brògan úr agam-a-noch,” a mouth music tune in which Fowlis simulates the bagpipes; “Thig am Báta,” a voice and bodhrán song that will set your feet in motion;” and “Bothan Áirigh am Bràigh Raithneach,” a stunningly lovely song with Phil Cunningham accompanying on keyboards. There are also two superb clapping songs, a duet with Mary Smith, a milking song, and more. Uam dazzles from its opening high-energy set to its finale, an unaccompanied song backed by Smith and Alan MacDonald. Julie Fowlis proves that a pretty voice can also be muscular.
Check out this absolutely stunning (and effortless) song from Fowlis. If it doesn't make you love her, nothing will!
Among the many half-truths being tossed out by Governor Cheesehead, sorry, Scott Walker of Wisconsin is the claim that state workers are overpaid. Lord knows if the number is accurate or not, but the figure of $70,000 is being bandied about as the average state worker’s salary. Because this figure is higher than the average pay in the private sector, Walker and his minions have seized upon it to “prove” that state workers are overpaid. To the average Joe and Jane this sounds right; after all, they’re not making that kind of money.
But Joe and Jane are pointing their fingers in the wrong direction. The problem isn’t that public sector salaries are too high, it’s that those in the private sector are too low, way too low. $70,000 per year translates to 1,334 pretax dollars per week. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wage in the United States is just under $21 per hour, or $840 per week. So state workers are bathing in gravy, right?
Not so fast. The problem is that we’ve become accustomed to the funny math of the Ford-Carter-Reagan-Bush hyperinflation years. Who would want a weekly paycheck of just $297, which is what the average worker made back in 1970? Answer: most of us, if it came with 1970 prices. If we adjust that $297 to 2010 dollars, it comes out to $1,623 per week, or $84,396 per year. All of a sudden our gravy-boating public sector workers are falling behind, not living in the lap of luxury. As for those in the private sector, the only thing between them and Skid Row has been a combination of adding household members to the payroll and deficit spending. Women have flooded the workplace since the late 1960s. If we were to remove them and adjust the average male wage for inflation, American family income sinks to a 1932 level, the cruelest year of the Great Depression. It might even be worse since the average family carries nearly $118,000 of debt and 43% of families actually have a negative yearly income, courtesy of more than $8,000 worth of credit card spending.
How did it get so dire? Smashing labor unions is among the reasons. Union strength in the private sector is now under 12%; it used to be triple that. With no countervailing force, organized capital has looted and plundered the common treasury. Consider: In 1978 there were 450,000 millionaires in the United States; ten years later there were 1.5 million. It gets worse. There are now 7.8 million. America as a land of opportunity? Well… yes, for a very small percentage of a nation of 300 million. If trickle-down boosters were correct in their assertion that a rising tide raises all ships, the average wage in the United States should be more than $17,000 per year for those allegedly overpaid Wisconsin state workers, and more than $40,000 more for Joe and Jane.
I can’t blame the latter for feeling strapped, but they are truly the Cheesehead yokels of state legend if they think public sector unions are their enemy. Want to fix America’s budget woes, folks? How about making the pirates share their booty for a change? Raise taxes on the wealthy, close tax loopholes, end runaway capital subsidies, slap on some protective tariffs, create some real jobs, organize private sector unions, and cut your piece of the American Dream pie from the hogs with the big slices, not those whose sliver is wider than your own.
Denmark doesn’t get a lot of sunshine in the winter. Linden sol translates “little sun,” and this album pays homage to the fragility of the light amidst the ice-locked winter. Blum’s voice has many of the same qualities as Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh’s of Altan in that, upon first listening, it sounds so vulnerable and light we fear it might drift away. Then you listen more carefully and the power behind the quiet exterior hits you. The opening title track sounds almost funereal as Blum’s crystalline tones linger amidst plucked guitar notes and touring partner Haarald Haugaard’s fiddle drone. But Blum doesn’t leave us in despair. There’s the bouncy “Spirven Sidder Stum Bag Kvist,” with its giddy feel, the pop delight “Julevise,” and “Fine,” which comes close to being Danish string band music. Blum mixes old and new tunes, plays some impressive fiddle of her own on two of the tracks, and simply dazzles on slower songs. Her gorgeous vocal on “Decembernat” might be what Kate Rusby would do if she sang in Danish. Wish I could tell you more about the content of the lyrics, folks, but let’s just say that if you want a good laugh, try out the online Danish-to-English dictionaries. But you don’t need to know a word of Danish to appreciate Blum’s talent. Her voice brings a little sun to any season.
BRONGAENE GRIFFIN (with Gerry O’Beirne and Kevin Burke)
Three Colours Ginger
Loftus 005
That Kevin Burke is one of the finest fiddlers to set rosin to bow isn’t exactly a stop-the-presses revelation. What does surprise about Three Colours Ginger is that his enunciation is on display more than his playing. That’s because the featured fiddler is one of his former pupils, Brongaene Griffin. This is the Portland, Oregon native’s debut album and she’s a chip off the old fiddle neck. Or perhaps I should say a claw from the Burke carpet, as Griffin has themed her album on cats--“ginger” being the variety known as “orange tabby” in North America. Burke (literally) plays second fiddle to Griffin on several tracks, but he handles all of the interlude poems and recitations between musical tracks. Anyone who has ever owned a cat understands both why the Egyptians worshiped them, and Westerners linked them to witches and demons. Appropriately, Burke spits out the word “cat” with a mix of humor, appreciation, and annoyance. In like fashion, Griffin’s tunes--culled from O’Carolan, contemporary tunesmiths, and her own pen--evoke changeable moods: regal, furtive, graceful, frantic…. A cynic might say that one or two tunes stretch the theme too thinly, but I’ve seen cat moods that emulate jaunty hornpipes, delicate waltzes, and lively jigs--some times all within a span of a trilled note. This album serves the bill on three levels: it’s great fun, it showcases the potential of an emerging talent, and it allows a master to indulge in whimsy.
Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Jeri (Ruth Sheen) are a lucky couple and they know it. They’re in the autumn of their lives, have a nice home in suburban London, enjoy good food and wine, like to garden, and are successful professionals--he a geologist on engineering projects and she a therapist. They’re well heeled, well read, well traveled, and well loved. About the only thing that troubles them if whether their thirty-year-old son Joe (Oliver Maltman) will find a steady girlfriend.
That and the fact that they keep bumping into people who are desperately unhappy. There’s Mary (Lesley Manville), the secretary at the hospital at which Jeri works--a man-hungry faded floozy who would have been a knockout twenty-five years earlier but hasn’t adjusted her wardrobe, behavior, or alcohol consumption to adjust to being in her fifties. And there’s Tom’s old college mate Ken (Peter Wright), a bitter divorcee whose become a sloppy, sweaty whale who scarfs away junk-food and downs beer like a hog at the trough. There’s also Tom’s older brother Ronnie (David Bradley), a man as inarticulate as Tom is witty; Ronnie’s just lost his wife and he long ago lost civil contact with his angry son Carl (Martin Savage), a confrontational punk and a waste of genetic material.
As we follow Tom and Jeri through a perfectly dreadful social year, only Joe’s new girlfriend, the bubbly, resilient, and funny Katie (Karina Fernandez) offers relief from the boozy, troubled hangers-on who want to live vicariously through them. And even Katie’s presence carries some tension as Mary has become so desperate than she’s allowed herself to think that maybe she could be Joe’s intended! Another Year has been billed as comedy-drama, but it’s hard to find a lot of humor in all of this. There’s a deep sadness at this film’s very core and watching people like Mary, Ken, Ronnie, and Carl is a bit like watching a surgery that’s likely to result in a corpse instead of restored health.
Some critics have accused Mike Leigh--known for his bleak insights into working-class despair--of having gone soft. I would submit that they have woefully misunderstood this film, which is every bit as focused on social class as earlier Leigh films such as High Hopes, Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake. Tom and Jeri are kind, generous, and they try to be helpful, but they are thoroughly bourgeois in one regard: they’ve no idea how to enter the minds of working-class people. Leigh sets this up early when veteran British actress Imelda Staunton turns a cameo as an obviously distressed older woman who comes to a London hospital seeking sleeping pills for her insomnia. Her doctor recognizes immediately that her problem is depression, not insomnia, but all her middle-class platitudes are lost on Staunton, who just wants the damn tablets. You know as sure as the sun comes up she will not be scheduling time to talk with a counselor. Enter Jeri, who is a therapist, but one whose clientele is either middle class or under court order to come to her and whom she finds resistant. Well, yes, seeking therapy is what middle-class people do when they’re troubled, but it’s certainly not the default position for the working class. Neither Tom nor Jeri seem to realize that they are essentially enablers for Mary, who creeps them out as she draws closer inside their family. They just continue to be nice and utter “Oh dear” in private. The make-nice attitude shows up later. Just as Tom is on the verge of calling out Carl for being the arrogant little prick he really is, Jeri stops him. Well, wouldn’t want any unpleasantness, would we? In many ways Another Year is a subtle savaging of the helping profession.
The other subtle thing Leigh does is make the miscommunication a tragedy, not an indictment. Tom and Jeri really are nice people and they’d do anything to help. The problem, simply, is that they don’t speak the same language as Mary or Ken or Ronnie or Carl. No one’s to blame, really; it’s the kind of misunderstanding that happens when a foreign word with no exact English meaning gets translated into an approximate term.
Another Year can be a tough film to watch, but see it you should. The acting is amazing throughout. Jim Broadbent is always a delight, but if anything he’s outshone by Ruth Sheen. It’s wonderful to see an older woman, complete with her double chin, get a lead such as this and she is more than up the task. Clichés speak of the glow of mature women, but Sheen projects it. And best of all is Lesley Manville, who plays Mary as just one bend short of a full train wreck. Manville should have been nominated and won Best Supporting Actress for this role.
Inarittu has never taken the easy route. Amores Perros and 21 Grams testify to this. In Biutiful he navigates the downward slide of Uxbal (Bardem) as he stalks the low-rent back streets of Barcelona - involved in all manner of scams with illegal immigrants and avoiding the police. But there’s a twist – he has prostate cancer and because he’s never had regular check –ups, doctors give him just weeks to live. He’s separated from his wife who suffers from a bipolar disorder – his scenes with her have a bruised quality as he tries to protect his kids from the obvious arguments and upheavals-but Bardem is so effective here. He struggles to maintain a sense of right, even when tragedy strikes (partly his own fault) to a bunch of Chinese immigrants working in a sweatshop. The film’s beating heart is truly Bardem’s and his alone. His tortured face bleeds across almost every frame as the film’s washed-out colours turn the city of Gaudí into a kind of purgatory. The message here though is surely whether the trials and tribulations of the world cause us to withdraw or reach out. Deep in Uxbal’s mind is the sense that reaching out, no matter how slim, is better though his withdrawal is a powerful demon. It’s a reminder that compassion isn’t always a rational decision.
On paper though, it sounds a mess. It’s like another poor wretch on a downhill dance and the role offers Bardem innumerable chances to chew the scenery. Instead, his work is a model of restraint: he invests the role with an affecting, sad-eyed dignity that keeps the story grounded. After the dreadful Babel and (some say, but not I) 21 Grams, Inarritu sticks his head above the parapet and aims high and succeeds. Phoenix will take me to task for loving a film so monumentally depressing but there’s some humour and heart here in a film assembled on instinct rather than reflection.
Here is a debut bagpipe album that’s so good it will change the minds of pipe skeptics. At turns precise and electrifying, MacDougall’s skill and energy more than justify his two-time inclusion in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. Lovers of the Celtic “big set” will thrill to “The Gravel Walk,” a full-bodied Highland pipes tour de force set amidst Duncan Lyall’s bass, James MacKintosh’s drum kit, and Ross Kennedy’s bouzouki. It’s even more impressive when one realizes that the first tune is actually MacDougall’s arrangement of a Gaelic song learnt from Julie Fowlis. He wisely lets us cool down by following with “Waltz of Slurs” on Border and small pipes, and then the slower “Lament for Small Isles Bay,” a melancholic air made all the more poignant by Martin Simpson playing guitar as if channeling Ry Cooder. “Waltz” is one of several pieces in which MacDougall showcases his talent by rapidly repeating the same notes stutter-style and holding others to their breath-defying limits. This is an album of many moods in which MacDougall mixes light and pastoral tunes like “The Manx Minxes” on whistle, with the gale force of the Highland pipes (“Fardach na Pioba”), and the bright pips of the small pipes (“Learning to Fly”).It’s also one of varying musical feels that range from the Spanish spices of “Trip to Aviles” to the stark simplicity of “The Magic Flute” and the formal piobaireachd feel of “MacDougall’s Gathering.” Produced by Brian McNeill, this isn’t just an impressive debut; it’s one of the best albums you’ll hear this calendar year.
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Off-Center Views is for those who want to wade outside the mainstream without getting dashed upon the rocks of academic pretense, post-modernist mumbo jumbo, or high culture snobbery.
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