'THE WALKING DEAD' – SEASON 3

PLOT SPOILERS AHOY!

Lately, it seems like everybody has been saying how the new box-set-ready, extended-storyline TV shows resemble novels. Those of us who have already been through this, when comics went graphic-novelable are likely to be a little more skeptical. In a way, the problem didn't come before, in the old days of perpetual deferment when you knew Doctor Doom would never defeat the Fantastic Four but neither would he ever repent or go away. Yes, plotlines did often resemble zombies – lurching endlessly forwards. But you just expected things to be like that and then they were. In a way, the problem lies all in the supposed fix. Things can now fall into a kind of uncanny valley, where the transition from serial to novel is not fully made and shows make promises they prove perpetually unable to cash.

As the record shows, I was very much a fan of the first season of 'The Walking Dead'. Now it's completed it's third (at least on terrestrial TV in the UK, you may well be ahead), it may be a good time to take it as a test case. Is it using it's extra elbow room to extend and develop? Or is it just lurching forwards from one season to the next? (Did you see what I did there? I used a zombie metaphor for... oh, okay.)

The previous two seasons had effectively set Dale up as the moral compass of the group, the one who'd argue survival was not worth any price. Killing him off just as they are thrown out of the relative safety of the farm, then having Rick announce they're no longer a democracy, this suggests a group adrift even as they find a new holdout in the prison. (True, Dale's role is effectively taken over by Hershel. But it still has much of the intended effect.)

In a world no longer dominated by humans, how much humanity have they actually held on to? The show's innovation on zombie lore, that you will always come back as a 'walker' no matter how you die, underlines this. They just seem our future, no matter how long we manage to defer it. One apparently incidental scene is key – they drive past a backpacker who screams to them for help, yet they silently decline to pick him up.

Now zombies – they don't really do much, do they? Characterisation does not attach itself naturally to them. A good zombie story knows to use them not as antagonists but as plot enablers, like storms, stampedes or the onset of war. What's more zombies, can coexist. Obliviously rather than out of neighbourliness, but coexist nonetheless. So in every chapter of Romero's classic 'Dead' trilogy, the conflicts and tensions are all between rival groups of humans.

And, despite all the differences to Romero, so it is here. (The season tagline was “fear the dead, fight the living.”) And for the primary antagonism a clever switch is pulled. Rick's team, dysfunctionally grappling with group decision-making, are the ones who lock themselves into some prison cells. While the apparently normal, open streets of Woodbury turn out to be ruled by the ruthless gloved fist of the Governor. (Attaching 'bury' to the town's name is presumably some subliminal hint.) He states that people are attached to it because it reminds them of what was, leaving implicit that the similarity is only skin-deep.

It works something like the Pegasus storyline in the second season of 'Battlestar Galactica'. Despite the dire circumstances, there's no real conflict over territory or resources; formally, the two groups could easily coexist. The battle is more ideological, over retaining some fidelity to the old human world, versus embracing the brutality of the new one. One must submit to the other.

Except of course there's a twist. Hitler once said the best result for the Nazis would not be their defeating their enemies, but their enemies becoming like them in order to fight them. The Governor would doubtless concur, and Rick's group always seem on the point of slipping into this. As their new moral compass, Hershell has to put in the overtime.

More, the conflict becomes so entrenched that everyone in the vicinity cannot help but be drawn into the orbit of one camp or the other. And perhaps the majority of screen time is devoted to this playing out, the central conflict reproducing between or even within individuals. Brother gets pitted against brother, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense. But let's look how it affects the two biggest loners of the show, newcomer Michonne and returning character Merle. (Notably both are represented by blades, Michonne's sword and Merle's strap-on knife replacing his severed hand.)

A survivalist to the bone, Michonne distrusts Woodbury even before she has any real reason to. While, the very inverse of Dale, Merle decides that survival lies in a willingness to undertake any task - no matter how distasteful. He'll swap between camps just as the wind blows. Accused by Michonne that his obeying-orders excuse is “like the Gestapo”, he readily agrees. Inevitably, the finale is based around the conflict between them. And just like the camps – there's a switch. It's the loner Michonne who finds a home, while it's port-in-any-storm Merle who returns to Woodbury to do what damage he can.

Its surprising that Michonne doesn't feel like a forced piece in this character-based show. Unlike everybody else, she looks like she could have come from one of Romero's films; she's very much the successor to Ben in 'Night' and Peter in 'Dawn'. All three are based on cultural associations of black people with greater strength and self-reliance. (Notably the other significant black character, T-Dog, is done away with before Michonne first associates with the group.) But with her samurai sword and imposing hoodie she also appears very much an icon or avatar, like a cross between Alice in 'Resident Evil' and the Bride in 'Kill Bill.' (Her first appearance, at the tail-end of the previous season, is a classic WTF moment.)

It works because the show responds to this disjunction by exploiting it. She's presented in a similar way to Elektra from the original Daredevil comics, revealing occasional glimmers of the person under the stark facade. (Though even as the season closes, we've still only had hints as to her personal history.) This essentially allows us to have it both ways. We exult in her badass cool, her strong-and-silent presence, her dexterity with a blade, but then applaud as she learns how to play alongside the other kids.

The above is quite a partial account, skipping over plotlines and bypassing many characters. But perhaps that's inevitable, given the ground to cover. The season lays themes and develops characters slowly and patiently over the episodes. The more time you invest in it, the more you are paid back. It even manages to combine this with an apparent arbitrariness, with the shock of the unexpected always around the corner. (One established but minor character starts to be built up, whereupon he's killed off literally mid-sentence.)

And yet it seems to fail the final hurdle. One positive feature of the earlier Shane plotline was that it built up week by week and was then brought to a conclusion. Yet by failing to give us the final confrontation with the Governor the show lapses back into that zombie state of perpetual deferment. The Governor is not an rogue's gallery figure who can be brought back at regular intervals. Deprived of this season's themes, no longer in charge of Woodbury, he's just going to become a bad guy with an eye patch. To reduce him to some sort of Hooded Claw to Michonnes' Penelope Pitstop, perpetually reappearing to tie her to some railway line or other, that would take nothing forward but only detract from what has gone before.

It doesn't even make any internal sense. It might well be in character for him to slaughter his own troops once they'd questioned his sacrosanct orders. But with no reason to suppose any witnesses survived he'd surely ride back to Woodbury, blame the whole thing on Rick's group and start plotting their downfall all over again. Woodbury, even after his daughter's death, has seemed his world until that point.

Finally, whatever possessed them to take one of the best shows currently on TV and bump it down the schedules to Channel 5*? A channel whose very name looks like a typo. A channel I'd never previously watched, which I'm not sure I even knew existed. And one I'm now likely to forget about again unless 'The Walking Dead' comes back to it.

THE NEWSPAPER THAT HATED THINKING (aka THINGS WHICH RALPH MILIBAND MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE SAID)

(Image from Political Scrapbook)

Let's look at Ralph Miliband's now-infamous diary entry in slightly fuller detail

than when the Daily Mail splashed it for their hatchet piece. Writing shortly after arriving in Britain, as a young refugee from fascism, he wrote:

“The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world ... When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the continent in general and for the French in particular. They didn't like the French before the defeat... Since the defeat, they have the greatest contempt for the French Army ... England first. This slogan is taken for granted by the English people as a whole. To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation."

Perhaps I am the only person alive who is able to spot the word 'almost' in a sentence. Perhaps I could sign up for one of those super teams, using that as my specialist power. “We need to know whether the word 'almost' is written here. Hey Almost Boy, step up!”

Many have mused on the irony of Miliband volunteering... I say again, volunteering to fight at Normandy while the Mail published the headline 'Hurrah For the Blackshirts'. (After their printing of contact addresses for interested parties to enlist with the British Union of Fascists, and competitions for the reader who could come up with the best reason for joining, even the Spectator commented “The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made.”)

But try actually reading that piece. In some absurd self-parody their chief concern about fascism isn't the violence, isn't the authoritarianism. It's that fascism is European. “Because Fascism comes from Italy, short-sighted people in this country think they show sturdy national spirit by deriding it.”

Which makes Almost Boy wonder if the young Miliband didn't almost have a point.

But really, it's all a distraction isn't it? Who cares whether Miliband “hated Britain”? They'd probably say I “hated Britain” too and, given the skewed way they tend to define it, I probably do.

I'm more concerned that they say he's a Stalinist.

Notably in his claims today Mail editor Paul Dacre has hedged this bet, calling him “a man who gave unqualified support to Russian totalitarianism until the mid-50s”.

Which means he must know more about Miliband than his own biographer, Michael Newman, who described the man as “politically homeless in post-war Britain. He regarded himself as a Marxist, but was increasingly critical of the Soviet Union and Communist Party allegiance to it.”

But then again perhaps this sympathetic biography of Miliband isn't to be trusted. Perhaps it's yet another case of these sinister Lefties covering up for one another. So it's a good job, isn't it, that we have the Mail to counterbalance things. Such as this diary quote they pulled up to set the record straight. The one they got from Newman's book.

But let's say, just for the sake of argument, Dacre isn't lying. It's a tough call, I know, but let's see if we can manage it. Even if what he says is true – so what? Even an ignoramus such as himself must be aware the Soviet Union did not fully lose it's credibility among the European left until 1956. (When Soviet tanks rolled in to Hungary to bloodily crush a worker's uprising, rather giving the game away.) After Kronstadt, after Stalin's purges and show trials, this may seem to us to have happened late. But hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20.

More to the point, Miliband's first book was published in 1961. I am going to argue that 1961 came after the mid-50s. I am going to argue that Miliband could have believed in the tooth fairy in the early 50s and it would not have made a scrap of difference to his writing career.

And Ralph Miliband the writer, the Ralph Miliband most of us mean when we say “Ralph Miliband”, was saying things such as:

“The invasion of Czechoslovakia show very well that this oppressive and authoritarian Russian socialism has nothing in common with the socialism that we demand, and we must state this very loudly, even at the risk of seeming to be anti-soviet and to echo bourgeois propaganda...”

(An interesting contrast to the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia, after which Mail owner Viscount Rothermere wrote to Hitler to congratulate him. Oh wait, you were ahead of me there, weren't you?)

But of course the crux of their argument is that Ed knew Ralph as a father. So perhaps sinister Stalinist Ralph was influencing his son at an undue age, whispering comments about Five Year Plans instead of lullabies as the lad lay in his cot. Except Ed was not born until December 1969. Another date commonly thought to have come after the early 50s.

Paul Dacre is normally wrong about everything he says. But this time, he has outdone himself. This time, even if he is right, he is still wrong.

Dacre's game is of course to counterpose “Russian totalitarianism” with “the market economy”, turning up the heat until there's no other show in town. That's how he came to be chief of the newspaper that hated thinking. Despite the fact that guys like Ralph Miliband spent their lives considering that other choice, what it might look like and how we could get there.

Four years ago it was revealed the global economy was essentially running on thin air and the banking system almost collapsed overnight. Even with the massive cuts to people's living standards that ensued, that we are all now supposed to obligingly suffer, there is not a single lesson to be learnt from that. We should rebuild the “market economy” exactly as it was at the point just before it broke.

But back in 1917 the Russian revolution ended in...yes... totalitarianism. First they installed a command economy. (With, inevitably enough, themselves in command.) They didn't even stick to that very well themselves. But that is the single point in world history that we must keep coming back to. Everything we need to know about everything is here. Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.

There could however be an upside to this sorry story. If as a result of it a few more people were to pick up one of Ralph's books, they might find that what he advocated bears no relation to Ed's sorry business-as-usual policies and is actually something quite sensible. They might find that other show in town.

Post-script: Are you hated by the Daily Mail? Try this simple test.

MAINLINER (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

Green Door Store, Brighton, Sat 28th Sept,

Just one day after the Guardian published a feature on 'The New Generation of Psychedelic Adventurers', suggesting not so much a revival as psychedelia becoming a touchstone for contemporary music which aims at a systematic derangement of the senses - and who should stroll into a local venue?

Exhibit A (aka Mainliner) are but one of the many side-projects of Acid Mothers Temple, featuring (in this incarnation) guitarist Kawabata Makoto, drummer Shimura Koji from the mothership, augmented by Bo Ningen bassist Kawabe Taigen. Their name, deriving from taking drugs in an undiluted form, couldn't be more appropriate. For the trio are channelling quite a specific moment in music history – 1969. After psychedelia had hit on heavy riffs, but before it got corralled into hard rock.

Typically, tracks start off with a squall of noise before plunging into a pummelling riff, often accompanied by space-chant scat vocals. Just when your eyes become spirals and your brain gets convinced it's all been going on forever so will presumably carry on in the same vein, it abruptly turns a corner into something else.

They can wring a surprising variety of sound from this formula. It's heavy... it's quite possibly heavier than heavy, but without ever sounding fixed or confining. It's deranged as a vision-addled shaman chewing dodgy roots face-down in a ditch, it's as disciplined as a marching army. It's music to, in Jim Morrison's immortal phrase, break on through to the other side. Possibly through the use of explosives.

My only complaint would be the occasional but persistent outbreaks of guitar heroics. Okay, this has all been put together by a guitarist and such stuff was an occupational hazard in the heyday of this music. But we're not after a note-for-note re-enactment, and we should be over all that all now. We want the psychedelia that passed safely through the filter of punk.

Though a short set, it seemed less a gig than a happening – and I can't think of finer praise than that, really. It really is hard to recount without lapsing into the vernacular of the era, and calling it “spacey,” “far out” or something similar. But then maybe, like that era, you simply had to be there.

Will a YouTube clip serve as a replacement? Probably not, but here's one anyway. From Birmingham, slightly earlier in the tour...

From an earlier incarnation of the band. But worth linking to anyway. You'll see why...

FUCK BUTTONS/ UNIKO (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

FUCK BUTTONS

Concorde 2, Brighton, Mon 16th Sept

Reader, be reassured that I don't just post things late here, but in fact manage to be habitually late for everything except work and planes. For example, I am forever finding out about bands just as they split up, or hearing of gigs or exhibitions after they're over. And when I'm not too late? Then I'm too early.

When I first saw Fuck Buttons, in the small Audio venue almost exactly four years before, I liked them without loving them. At that time, their sound still felt formative. If they warranted writing home about, it was by postcard more than letter.

But a duo comprising an Aphex Twin and a Mogwai fan – that was only ever going to turn out well, wasn't it? And so our story turns out happily, and I do get to go to the ball. They're never as audaciously Dadaistic as Aphex Twin nor as rocky as Mogwai, which results in a fine blend.

If you were going to try to take them apart, many of their tracks do share the common denominators of electronic dance. There's the two lanes; the fast lane where the beats flurry by, and the other lane. Often slower in tempo it's probably better named the weird lane, when the unexpected turns on and off from hidden slip roads. All too often in this type of music the lanes feel adjacent rather than related. The 'art' stuff is just decoration, sprinkled over a somewhat stodgy cake baked from a standard four/four recipe. But in Fuck Buttons' case they really do result in a creative juxtaposition, like the proverbial encounter between the sewing machine and the umbrella.

Responding to their Glasgow gig in the Guardian, Graeme Virtue noted on how their tracks “sound as if [they] could go on forever, but the repetition is hypnotic rather than numbing, with subtle variations and manipulations in each loop that border on the subliminal.”

While reviewing their most recent release in the same august organ, Alexis Petridis commented their “default emotional setting was somewhere between the kind of breakdown that causes clubbers to throw their hands in the air and the kind of breakdown that ends with you being strapped to a gurney.... [They] evoke a weird apocalyptic euphoria.” And aquote on their Wikipedia page pointed out "rarely have two men sounded so much like the end of the world."

Not bad descriptions, but I wonder if they don't set the duo's scope too small. The effect is more one of busting out of human scale, not hand-waving at the end times so much as taking a taste of timelessness. They sound reminiscent of those fast-forward sections in time travel movies, where the centuries fly by faster than your eyes can cope. Shouldn't the place of music be to epitomise its times? The accelerating pace of change, the headlong rush into the future, the feeling that you cannot help but be swept along, that you won't so much be left behind as left bewildered... whether intended or not, it's all here.

And yet the joyous paradox is that at the same time it couldn't be more immediate. Those who insist music only works live when it comes with 'proper' instruments... all I can say is, come check out these guys. Screens match abstract patterns with silhouettes of the guys as they perform, hunched over their keyboards, sometimes screaming into mikes. For a band who can go some way out there and fear no abrasion of the ears, it's intriguing how they can also set a crowd a-dancing.

...which I would guess is where their name comes from. A collision term between one of our most emotive words and one of our most automated and mechanical. Two lanes in strange accord, somehow working as it happens.

Right tour, but not Brighton...

UNIKO

(Featuring Kimmo Pohjonen, Samuli Kosminen and the Kronos Quartet)

Barbican Centre, London, Wed 18th Sept

If the prospect of a Finnish avant-garde accordianist doesn't set your heart aflutter, perhaps you should check it works at all. Previously I'd only seen Kimmo Pohjonen once, in a solo show more than a decade ago. Afterwards, the audience were enthusiastically discussing it not with reference to other composers or musicians but animal sounds. “Elephants,” I remember someone insisting, “there were definitely elephants in there.”

This time he's fronting a single composition co-authored by sampler and electronics artist Samuli Kosminen, commissioned and here performed by the Kronos Quartet. “The idea,” he recounts in the programme, “was to 'electrify' the sound of the string quartet and explore the possibilities of manipulating it electronically, expanding the scope.”

Kosminen's contribution is sometimes to loop back the string players to themselves, sometimes to treat them and at others provide electronic beats. But with the wide range supplied by the 'live' players, you soon gave up on guessing who was producing what and just went with it.

Rather than springing up outside the history of music, it's appeal lay in the way it worked almost as its summation. Awarding it a full row of stars in the Guardian, Robin Denslow described it as “a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of avant-garde electronica, global folk styles and classical influences.” All of which it managed without ever sounding like pastiche or post-modernism. Melodies could sound achingly beautiful, more out-there sections audacious yet somehow natural. The effect was utterly mesmerising.

And after all, that Modernist insistence on a total break with the past – how well did those bold claims really come off? This was more like an accumulation of music history, stretching back through the eras and across through the genres, like fresh new branches sprouting and fruiting from the crest of a tree.

“The aim was to try and reach a new level of emotional content,” Pochjonen continued, “to take the listener, as well as ourselves, on an adventure.”

It certainly did.

Nothing YouTubed from the Barbican, but you can see the whole thing on-line, starting below. (Though, somewhat frustratingly, the clip parts don't match the section breaks.)

'BADE THE ANGELS DISAPPEAR' (ANOTHER SPOTIFY PLAYLIST)

Click here for yet another Spotify playlist.

There's themes of politics and religion, and how the area where those venn diagrams bisect is normally where the money's kept. That's when the theme isn't death ...any idea of a theme is probably just in my head, to be honest with you.

Portishead: Half Day Closing
Patti Smith Group: Spell (live)
Lou Reed: Dime Store Mystery
Woody Guthrie: Tom Joad (Part 2)
The Tiger Lillies: The Story of Cruel Frederick
The Flaming Lips: Free Radicals
James White & The Blacks: Contort Yourself
Gang Of Four: Capital (It Fails Us Now)
Mark Stewart & Mafia: Beneath The City Streets
Hybrid Kids (aka Morgan Fisher): Coventry
Camper Van Beethoven: When I Win The Lottery
Rydell: My Life in Motion
Gorillaz: New Genius (Brother)
Blyth Power: Under The Sea Wind
Kyuss: Apothecaries' Weight
Mission Of Burma: Weatherbox
Rites of Spring: Deeper Than Inside
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band: Clear Spot

“That all our sins may rest concealed,

And all our stomachs duly filled”

THE LENS OF LUCID FRENZY VISITS VULCANO

Continuing our set of pictures from the Aeolian islands, off the south coast of Italy. As ever, full set on Flickr.

Proper posting will be resumed... um... sometime.

BLOG HOLS

We're all going on a blogging holiday,
No more posting for a week or two.

THE LENS OF LUCID FRENZY FINALLY LEAVES SICILY BEHIND...

...and moves instead to the Aeolian Islands. (A few miles to their North.) Full set to be found on Flickr here.

Flickr's new look is frankly pretty rubbish, and seems designed to look as much like Google Image Search as is possible. Which is daft, not only for the reason that Google Image Search is already doing that. Google Image Search never looks very tidy, it's jumble of images look like you've tipped a load of old photos out of an envelope. And that's fine for what it is, you sift through it looking for some image to take your eye.

Perhaps the individual pictures should have been displayed larger in Flickr, but it looked like that it was – the on-line version of a personal photo album. Now it looks like you've just dumped your photos somewhere. For your best viewing pleasure, click on the first image to get the black background, then use the nav-chevrons.

I would seem to be not the only critic of these changes. The change seems so desperate I suspect Yahoo will either drop it or go down themselves. But I may as well keep uploading to it for now. So in other words...

Coming soon! More pictures of Sicily and the Aeolian Islands.

PATTI SMITH + TONY SHANAHAN (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

St. George's Church, Brighton, Fri 9th Aug

This marks, by my reckoning, the fifth time I've managed to see Patti Smith and every time just seems to enrich the overall experience. Returns multiply rather than diminish.

The time before last, I confidently stated that her music was at root about transformation. Though perhaps 'generalised' would be a better term. Inevitably, for someone so keen on such a suubject, she was never going to stick to just that.

Transformation is a description which best fits her first two albums, 'Horses' and 'Radio Ethiopia'. They're made up less of songs or compositions than tracks; hallucongenic poetry cross-bred with the convulsive storm of electric instruments, until the desired systematic derangement of the senses arrives. You know instinctively, even on first hearing, they're tapping into something incohate. What you have isn't a finished work so much as just one mainifestation from a potentially infinite variety. The two albums finish the only way they could, in the primordial chaos of 'Abyssinia', Smith less delivering lines than outpouring shards of imagery.

This night however, was much more focused on what Patti did next – become a classic, if unorothodox, songwriter. Perfectly suited to it's Church venue, grand yet initimite, it was an acoustic affair. The drummer didn't even show up on stage until several songs in, and sat on a stiff-backed chair behind his one drum. There were only two tracks from those early albums, the more song-based 'Redondo Beach' (with lyrics rewritten on the fly to reflect Brighton beach) and the classic 'Pissing In a River'. (The latter, which has always been something of a gospel number, working particularly well.)

This threw an emphasis on Smith's singing and words, often drowned in the multi-tracked cacophony of the early albums. Billed 'an evening of music and words', it also featured readings from her autobiography 'Just Kids'. (Which I have to confess to being yet to read.)

It was probably most similar to the Bexhill gig. (Ironically the performance which led to my ruminations on transformation) It had the same impromptu feel, with Smith claiming breezily she'd bumped into one band member on the beach. At the start of the encore, she stopped to ask if anyone in the audience could play guitar, then promptly handed the volunteer hers. He stayed onstage for the rest of the night, and took his bow with them. But overall it was better than Bexhill; smoother, more relaxed, it's chances more talking flight, it's road less bumpy.

Smith has a penchent for throwing in unexpected cover versions, and as ever these arrived like curveballs. 'Summertime Blues' was infectious fun, but for example a cover of Lennon's 'Beautiful Boy' (apparantly first performed at Meltdown) didn't add much to one of his weaker numbers. While you should expect the unexpected with Smith, at such times I couldn't help but reflect on all the numbers we weren't getting. (For example no 'Paths That Cross', a personal favourite which would have suited the line-up.)

Notably, however, the whole audience kept a keen ear. While everything was well-received, it was the highlights which won the most rapt applause. Perhaps they were just hard to miss. If you didn't get goose-bumps during 'Pissing In a River' or 'Beneath The Southern Cross', you probably don't have a pulse.

In 'My Blakean Year', she sings of the road paved with gold and the road that's “just a road.” There are not many butter adverts to contend with when it comes to Patti Smith. She's walked the long road for decades now, with no sign of stumbling. If she's not an inspiration, I can't imagine what is.

In the unlikely event of anyone being interested, here's what I said last time.

There seems a dearth of footage of this gig, perhaps because of her open antagonism to being photographed onstage. This version of 'Beneath the Southern Cross', from Palermo earlier in the month, looks to be a semi- acoustic break in an electric gig but may convey some of the feeling...

 

LANDFALL (LAURIE ANDERSON + THE KRONOS QUARTET)

Barbican Centre, London, Fri 28th June

'Landfall: Scenes From My New Novel', to give it's full title, is a new compositon by Laurie Anderson in its European premiere. The programme itself pointed out what an unusual combination this was. For Anderson isn't a composer or even really much of a musician. She's more an artist and performer following her own muse, which at times takes on the form of music. It's even described as a novel in it's own title!

While, for all their commisioning of scores and ceaseless boundary-pushing, the Kronos Quartet are at root a string quartet whose business is to perform recitals from scores. (I previously saw them in this very room, hammering at scraps at metalwhile still diligently referring to those scores.)

Given which, what's perhaps strangest of all is that the majority of this piece is so conventionally harmonic. However, while strident modernists might hear those words and head for the exit door, it was for the most part exquisite and enthralling, the sort of score where you find yourself clinging to every note.

Anderson sometimes joined in with the quartet on her patented violin. At other, often overlapping, points she'd contribute electronic beats, washes and textures. The fuzzy thumps contrasted satisfyingly against the crystal-clear sound of the strings.

Perhaps the only serious musical criticism was that there wasn't enough of it! Themes and sections could pass by on speed dial, too quickly to properly absorb. One chanting piece, with something of the widescreen grandeur of Arabic pop, seemed to suggest at a whole new direction. But this path was abandoned after what felt like a few strides. Nor, at seventy-nine minutes, did the overall length seem too great, especially by Anderson's previous endurance-pushing standards.

Anderson also contributed some of her spoken word pieces. When I'd previously seen her at an old Brighton Festival, the words had worked as the bones of the piece, with the ambient music acting more as interludes. Here things were reversed, which perhaps did not work as well. Anderson's style is not poetic but conversational; her serene voices seduces you into believing you're being told something quite everyday, and everything lives in the lag as your brain catches up with your ear. The New York Times commented her work “suggested logic while defying sense.”

However anti-poetic words do not necessarily lend themselves to music, and I found my brain effectively having to switch gears between the vocal and the instrumental sections. In truth, at times those gears ground. I couldn't help but be reminded of reading a review of Bowie's live re-enactment of 'Low,' commenting how he'd intercut the songs and instrumentals, despite their being separate on record. Though the reviewer thought this an improvement, to me it seemed like cutting chalk with cheese. Ultimately, I found myself wishing 'Landfall' had emulated the recorded version, and kept the spoken word sections together.

The back projections, where software converted the notes of the quartet into words, made for an enjoyable and intriguing extra dimension. Though they also felt a little like an attempt to Polyfilla this separation.

Admittedly, it was clear why Anderson chose to pair the two up in terms of their content. The title 'Landfall' is (at least in part) a refrerence to her studio being flooded when Hurricane Sandy struck New York. At one point she recounts watching her belongings swirling in the water, and you cannot held but keep hold of that image as the strings roll through the final movement.

Though the storm, however mighty, is here no more than the pathetic fallacy. There's no attempt to convey its power through musical drama, or document events as 9/11 pieces have often done. In the genre of 'modernist disaster response composition', it works more metaphorically, more like Bryars' 'Sinking of the Titanic.'

Anderson's world is internal, contemplative, and the flooded studio evokes the anti-linearity of memory. Memories will break the waterline to swirl in your mind, appearing at times to coalesce into clumps, but only ever temporarily. Perhaps the music was supposed to itself represent the swelling water, subsuming the landmass of the words.

But despite caveats this work was highly effective overall. The Guardian review of the premiere in Adelade suggests it divided the audience. From where I sat in the Barbican it won an effusive round of applause from us.