I feel old...

Oh my god, I really can't believe this album is 25 years old!! (This blog is only six years its junior.) 

What a nice birthday gift – an uncommonly excellent covers collection! 

Maybe I will always slightly prefer the rawer Call the Doctor, and in certain moods the wearier One Beat, but this in retrospect is unmistakably the S-K album, most of all for the serendipitous addition of Janet, perfecting their signature aesthetic, and also for the last unequivocal gasp of a boundless, youthful energy that sounds like lightning in a bottle. As Robert Christgau very aptly put it at the time, "One reason you know they're young is that they obviously believe they can rock and roll at this pitch forever." Then three years later, Greil Marcus named them America's best rock band. He was right about that, and I'd go one further to say that, for my money anyway, the Corin-Carrie-Janet S-K were the best US rock group ever, period. Emphasis on group. Words and guitar. And guitar. And drums! (The last record sans Janet just wasn't the same, sadly.) Dig Me Out was where all of that really came together, taking on its electrifying adamantine form, shining and sharpening Call the Doctor's murkier, rougher edges and propelling its upfront duo into a kind of sonic bliss in aporetic tension with the anxious drama of their voices, words, half-articulated doubts and desires. 

Accordingly everyone's on their A-game here to pay proper tribute: all good, most very good, a few great in their own right. Of particular note: Wilco's wonderful cover is a good reminder that "One More Hour" is one of the best love songs ever written. Husband and wife Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires play "Not What You Want" like it's an outlaw anthem. And Black Belt Eagle Scout's simmering, sultry take on "It's Enough" – Dig Me In's overall standout track, despite being only the sixth- or seventh-best song on Dig Me Out – fortunately led me to her two terrific LPs, some of the best new music I'd neglected to hear while relistening ad infinitum to my favourite albums of yesteryear (or covers thereof). You know, like old people do. 

Plus deux 

                                              Two days before the end of 2022, and two weeks or so after posting my top ten/eleven here (as solid as any year's list in recent memory), I just caught two of the three best new movies that I saw all year: Charlotte Wells' Aftersun and Jafar Panahi's No Bears. The former is an astonishing debut feature, the latter the greatest film in nearly two decades by an irrepressible master still courageously fighting the good fight. Both feel deeply haunted by the ambiguous, potentially unsettling power of captured images, sounds, moments. While the current vogue for autofiction/docufiction/metafiction (bolstered by years of Covid tedium) may at this point be yielding diminishing returns, Wells and Panahi have crafted indelible and impactful experiments that thoroughly justify their self-reflexive conceits. 

I don't really miss God / but I sure miss Santa Claus

 2022: Top Ten (or Eleven) Movies

01. Benediction (Davies)

The greatest film to date by one of the world's half-dozen or so greatest living filmmakers; a truly monumental work. 

02. The Northman (Eggers)

The subjective thought-world of earlier medieval northern Europe has never been presented so vividly and so immersively on screen. 

03. R.M.N. (Mungiu) 

A grim and haunting microcosmic snapshot of Europe right now.

04. Tár (Field)

Kubrick by way of P.T. Anderson, Citizen Kane by way of The Social Network, The Great Gatsby by way of The House of Mirth. #MeToo? Cancel culture? Identity politics versus the transcendent value of Great Art? Hey, man – he just plays the piano. 

05. The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh)

I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more, I went home and spent the rest of the evening browsing Irish vacation deals. 

06. The Fabelmans (Spielberg) & 

Armageddon  Time (Gray) [tie] 

Portraits of the artists as young men: the year's most perfect double feature. 

07. Broker (Kore-eda)

No less sentimental, tender, and expertly crafted than the Spielberg, Kore-eda is trying to break our hearts. The odd non-parent might make it out in one piece; those of us with kids we love don't stand a chance. 

08. The Blue Caftan (Touzani) 

The most generous and humane film of the year. 

09. Three Thousand Years of Longing (Miller) 

If romantic escapism, broad laughs, special effects, and wholly unsubtle eye-candy production design are what still sell big-screen theatre tickets, then Miller's marvellous A.S. Byatt filmization should've been the year's top-grossing movie. Pure fun start-to-finish, it's something like the Back to the Future of Orientalist fantasy epics. 

10. Pacifiction (Serra) 

Somehow it gets better  – and stranger – every time I think back to it. Now two months removed, I can't shake it and I can't wait to see it again – in a better and more just world, projected in IMAX! 

This is some sort of thing, girl, I can't explain

Three decades-plus on, with old quarrels about authenticity safely in the rearview mirror, "Girl, You Know It's True" is simply an all-time-level banger. I just heard it playing in Shoppers Drug Mart, and it made my day ten percent better.