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Ben Watt recommended In Roses by Gem Club in Music (curated)

 
In Roses by Gem Club
In Roses by Gem Club
2014 | Alternative
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I do this playlist on Spotify [Ben Watt's Spincycle] and I stumbled across Gem Roses while doing it. My daughter was 15, 16 at the time, and she wandered into the room when I was playing this, and she suddenly stopped short. "Dad! This is Gem Club!" And I was all, "Yes! Yes it is." It was a really touching moment – this obscure band from Boston crossing over from a teenager to her old dad. We've always been hesitant about imposing music on the kids. When the girls were about seven, we showed them a video of us on Top of the Pops. They burst into tears. They couldn't cope with it. It was outside their comprehension. To them, we're just mum and dad. 
This record is very tender, beautiful and diaphanous. The music hovers, almost. It reminds me of Anthony and the Johnsons and The Antlers, and Christopher Barnes' voice is beautiful. There's a song about a doomed gay relationship, and you feel this different worldview being exposed to you in this very beautiful way. Gem Club supported me a few years ago, and I loved hearing them live. There's a quiet defiance to them, this outsider melancholy, that's hard to resist."

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Journey in Satchidananda by Alice Coltrane
Journey in Satchidananda by Alice Coltrane
1971 | Rock
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Again, her whole catalogue is amazing. I love her music back to front. This is her hit record, as it were, not that it was a proper hit unfortunately. It's been with me for a while and I love it so much. We brought a few pieces of music to listen to while my wife was giving birth to our daughter and this was one of them. That gives an indication of how embedded in my life it is. The tone and mood it sets... She was deep into that sense of spiritual connectedness and universal love. I understand how people who aren't necessarily spiritual might see it as a foolish hippy diversion, but for me, this unlocks the potential of what music can do. At the time it was married to a political agenda, same for all these spiritual free jazz records, and I feel that it's a really unfortunate thing that people don't seem to be able to articulate that so well in the contemporary music world. This is an analysis and that's not why I love it, that's because when I put it on it's my favourite thing to be listening to. But it also stands up to analysis - there's so many reasons to love this music."

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The Serial Killer's Wife
The Serial Killer's Wife
Alice Hunter | 2021 | Crime, Thriller
7
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
This isn't your usual 'serial killer' story; there isn't the plethora of bodies or frightening scenes of murder and mayhem but what it is is a surprisingly enthralling story that builds in tension and ends in an extremely, but strangely, satisfying way.

Alice Hunter has created a story that focusses on the wife of the suspected killer and I quickly became engrossed in her inner turmoil as to whether her husband was innocent or guilty, how she coped with the press intrusion, the fingers of suspicion pointing at her (surely she should have known or suspected something?) all whilst trying to look after her young daughter, Poppy, and run a business.

The short chapters helped the story to move quickly along and you soon find yourself passing a few hours before you know it. The setting of a small village added to the claustrophobic feel to Beth's situation. There are twists along the way and although I guessed most of them, I enjoyed watching how it played out and developed.

All in all, a pretty good book and an author I will look out for in the future.

Thank you must go to Avon Books UK and NetGalley for my copy in return for an honest, unbiased and unedited review.
  
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Allison Anders recommended The Red Shoes (1948) in Movies (curated)

 
The Red Shoes (1948)
The Red Shoes (1948)
1948 | Classics, Drama, Musical
8.3 (3 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"It was my daughter Tiffany who made me see the beauty of this film—she loved it so much as a child, and I think in many ways it spoke to her on the difficult choice for women artists between art and love, a calling of career and the calling of the heart. The Technicolor restoration of the film is stunning. This was one of the early titles in the Criterion Collection, and it’s just gorgeous. The DVD production was helped along with the loving hands (certainly one of my favorite pair of hands on earth) of film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Michael Powell’s widow.There’s fantastic commentary with cinematographer Jack Cardiff and Ian Christie, as well as Martin Scorsese, a close, dear friend of Powell’s. And actress Moira Shearer gives such a wonderful account of the feelings of awe and fear of the dancers around working with living ballet legend Leonide Massine . . . and how in spite of this, she and Massine came to get on like a house on fire. He would fill her with the most amazing tales of his life in the last true golden age of ballet with the great dance impresario Sergei Diaghilev—I cannot even imagine what a thrill these hours of conversation must have been!"

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