August 25 round-up
August used to be a month for slowing down and simplifying, of lifting your head up and looking around with renewed curiosity. When I was working it was the time when meetings and deadlines evaporated, the calendar looked abashed at its nakedness. I used to create a summer plan to investigate topics that I had put off, to play around with tools, read books, explore ideas and generally switch things up from the regular working pattern. But what to do in August when your whole year is like that now? I’m new to this post-work game but I feel its important vary the rhythm and type of activity across the year.
We took a staycation (a proper one where we stayed at home, nit just had a holiday in the UK), and attempted to see Cardiff through tourist’s eyes. It’s always interesting to do this, like when you have overseas visitors come to stay, and you see your home from their viewpoint. Cardiff bears up well under this altered perspective I will say, with beaches, forests, historical sites and good food. We went to see the fabulous Micheal Sheen in Nye, a play about Nye Bevan the founder of the NHS. Sheen spends the whole play in his pyjamas and is still utterly magnetic. While we were on a Welsh culture trip we also went to a re-issue screening of the 90s rave culture set in Cardiff, Human Traffic, which was very of its time but also stood up well.
Books
I read a couple of books this month which lead me to the conclusion (if I weren’t there already), that we’re doomed. The first was Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. To start, that is an excellent title. He argues that the West’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza is a point where many, the young in particular, turn against the liberal parties. Their inability to condemn and act against the slaughter of Palestinians reveals the essential hollowness at the heart of the Democrats, or the Labour party in the UK. When we see pensioners being arrested for protesting against genocide, but no condemnation of hospitals being bombed, it’s hard to disagree with him. The left or centrist parties have to have more to offer than “we’re better than that other lot”. While that’s true, it probably won’t be enough to lure lots of people to vote for them. Which means the utterly contemptible Reform might well win in the UK in the next election.
The other book was Goliath’s Curse, by Luke Kemp. He draws on the study of a lot of societal collapses and proposes that the seeds of their downfall are always present. As inequality increases they become increasingly fragile and less able to deal with any disruptive factor such as climate catastrophe. The US empire, and by extension, Western democracy as we think of it now, is pretty much in its final phase now. Empires don’t always die quickly and it may take time, but it is largely inevitable now. Trump is both a cause and a symptom of this. Mind you, Kemp makes the case that “civilisations” (he doesn’t like that term and uses Goliaths instead), aren’t actually that great for most of the people in them and after their collapse a more egalitarian society often flourishes, with improved life spans and other measures such as average height. So, maybe it won’t be so bad? But there’ll be some shit to traverse first so that might not be much of a consolation.
Vinyl
August saw UK rock favourites Wolf Alice release their new album, The Clearing. It’s a shift away from the harder rock sound to a more glam-influenced one. It’s decent enough but in its bid for global dominance, falls somewhat short.
Ethel Cain (a pseudonym for Hayden Silas Anhedönia) released her follow up, which is narratively a prequel to, Preacher’s Daughter, with Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. It continues the Lynchian themes of small town darkness, secrets and desire. She certainly doesn’t go the route of Wolf Alice in seeking popular appeal with long meandering noisescapes. There has been some stuff surfacing around Cain which may see her getting cancelled, so let’s enjoy those 7 minute drone tracks while we can.
Album of the month though is Case Oats Last Missouri Exit. A solid alt-country album full of vignettes and low-life tales shot through with wit and bouncy verve. Casey Gomez Walker, the band’s singer has a plaintive drawl that is both intimate and coolly detached. She plays with her partner, Spencer Tweedy, who is the son of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, and while there is some influence of that sound in the album, it draws on a wider palette also. Here she is singing the poppy Bitter Root Lake which is about erm, a couple fleeing in a plane and crashing in a lake leading to the death of one and the other on the run.
