Arctic Monkeys are fresh off the main stage from Electric Picnic having closed out the festival with a stomping set on Sunday night. They are back with their new album AM.
Irish Independent Music Critic John Meagher gives his verdict along with the best gigs and musical tips of the week
Listen to the podcast here:
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Arctic Monkeys' fifth album, AM.
It's their most ambitious to date, sonically, and although it may not match the excellence of their much hyped debut it does mark a return to form after so-so third and fourth albums.
Also, Bob Dylan worshipers will want to get their hands on Another Self-Portrait - which is volume 10 in the highly acclaimed Bootleg Series.
It looks back to an oft-criticised period in Dylan's career - late 1960s/early 1970s - and suggests he was in a much more creative mood than many gave him credit for.
TALKING POINT
It's almost a week since Seamus Heaney's death, and it's remarkable quite how many musicians have come forward to cite his wonderfully economical use of language as an influence.
Bono's tribute was much publicised, but it was Paul Simon's wonderfully heartfelt tribute to the Derry man in The New York Times that really struck a chord. He wrote passionately about the music in Heaney's poems.
This is what Paul said:
"I was in the audience at the Abbey Theater in Dublin on June 9, 1991, when Seamus Heaney read from his new book of poems, “Seeing Things.” I know the exact date because he kindly inscribed his book for me and dated it. But I wouldn’t have forgotten that night, with or without the month and year. Seamus gave a mesmerizing, witty and emotional performance, and it was a rare opportunity for me to hear the sound of his words spoken with their true accent.
Popular culture likes to house songwriters and poets under the same roof, but we are not the close family that some imagine. Poets are distant cousins at most, and labor under a distinctly different set of rules. Songwriters have melody, instrumentation and rhythm to color their work and give it power; poets accomplish it all with words.
Seamus, though, was one of those rare poets whose writing evokes music: the fiddles, pipes and penny-whistles of his Northern Irish culture and upbringing. You can hear it in “Casting and Gathering”:
Years and years ago, these sounds took sides:
On the left bank, a green silk tapered cast
Went whispering through the air, saying hush
And lush, entirely free, no matter whether
It swished above the hayfield or the river.
And later in the poem:
One sound is saying, ‘You are not worth tuppence,
But neither is anybody. Watch it! Be severe.’
The other says, ‘Go with it! Give and swerve.
You are everything you feel beside the river.’
I love this poem and return to it from time to time to hear the “hush” and “lush” of the fishermen casting their rods from opposite banks, like politicians across the Senate aisle. And I like the friendly pep talk Seamus gives himself when self-criticism is about to get the best of him.
It’s frustrating to try to capture even a glimpse of the man, his verbal virtuosity, his wit and Irish charm. Recovering from a stroke in the hospital, he greeted his friend and fellow poet Paul Muldoon with, “Hello, different strokes for different folks.”
I admire the directness and simplicity of his work, a virtue most writers aspire to but rarely achieve. Seamus and I met through our mutual friend Derek Walcott. I visited him in his home outside Dublin, and we continued our conversations at my place in Manhattan. Obviously, I’m a fan even more of the man than the poetry, though there are few poets I would rank as his equal."
GIG OF THE WEEK
It has to be Leonard Cohen. The veteran Canadian play Dublin's O2 on Wednesday and Thursday of next week.
Tickets are readily available this time which might indicate that the old adage of familiarity breeding contempt is probably true: he has, after all, played Ireland a lot since returning to the live scene in 2008. But those who haven't seen him are strongly advised to remedy the situation, because he remains an outstanding live performer who is fortunate to have one of the best bands in the business with him.
TIP OF THE WEEK
HMV's new flagship Irish store opens on Henry Street, Dublin, tomorrow (Friday) and there will be a special on-site show from Cavan's celebrated teenagers, The Strypes.
The boys release their debut album, Snapshot, this week and it succeeds in capturing the fantastic energy they put into their live shows. Those interested in attending need to get down to Henry street well before the boys are on stage at 12.15.
