Back on the weekend, which is slow, sad and mournful and often punctuated with bursts of electric happiness.

I've two days off - monday, and tuesday, which makes this a long one, which leaves me more time for my music, my reading, and my self-loathing.

In a burst of such self-loathing I bought Persuasion and vowed to finish reading it, come fire, flood, or trench-digging, and this time I pulled through on the herculean feat of bashing through the 250 pages of 18th century language with the equivalent of a literary parang. Of course there's no reviewing Austen : it was as brilliant as it should have been, et cetera - I do appreciate Anne Elliot as a bit ( I think - don't crucify me, Cambridge! ) more of a mature character, a bit more vindictive and a bit more long-suffering than naive Elizabeth. The book WAS published posthumously, so I guess that would indicate it was written later.

I need a new book now. Does anyone have any suggestions?

And Now For Something Completely Different!

Radiohead! Took a re-listen to In Rainbows and despite what Christgau says (Ha! I flaunt my independent thinking) I say it's a pretty damned fine album. They really crammed the electronic effects into OK Computer like a 5-year old who can't stop playing with his christmas toys, until the squeaky noises and the digital auto-wah started spurting out of your ears and drove you quite crazy (although it was good, heady stuff nonetheless). On Rainbows we have some interesting lyrical choices, overall a more controlled use of squeaky noises, and most importantly, without which there would be no review or no album or indeed no music at all, a few bloody good songs. The chords on Jigsaw Falling Into Place bring tears to my eyes, no irony intended and when thom yorke sings in his annoyingly incomparable voice NOT JUST ONCE, NOT JUST TWICE he in fact touches that vibrating core of angst that sits at the centre of rock and roll, just for a moment. There is no shtick here, despite the electronica: just rocking music, beautiful notes, and the fact that even despite their prog-gy leanings they never sacrifice the melody for the effect.


adam