Eyes So Bright

"I think I love you... I FUCKING MIGHT!"

St Vincent only swears the once during her show at Queen Elizabeth Hall but it's enough to tell me that she's having a bloody good time. Marnie Stern, step aside, because this is how it's done. My first seated show in a few years (the last being Eels in this very venue) is welcome because Annie Clark plays for a-a-a-ges and is all the better for it. From the opening swampiness of Surgeon through the twinkling of Save Me From What I Want, this is a perfect blend of old favourites (a few tracks from Marry Me also appear, making this more satisfying than a National show) and new cuts.

It's difficult to distinguish the best performance in an evening full of superlative moments, but Year of the Tiger swallows the atmospheric closer of Strange Mercy and becomes a wall of sound. The occasional suffocating sensation that accompanies a St Vincent listen is absent, replaced by a feeling of wonderment, awe and sheer joy, with only a shotgun of a kick-drum and a blistering head-shrink of a light show that at times seemed to exist only to induce mild trauma.

Live shows of the modern age don't always live up to the experience of the record (what's cooking, Panda Bear?) but Clark and her troupe are on the top of their game. While it never transcends into a religious experience (although, seeing Death Cab for Cutie a week later proves that isn't a bad thing), there is enough, whoa, rock and roll here to satisfy the die-hards and the people who were dragged along by pals who made them watch the video to Cruel once or twice (as if! Who'd need to be dragged?).

Speaking of Cruel, it's the anecdotes and stories between tracks that make this an experience. Clark's deadpan delivery (as is the case with any hardcore Arrested Development fan) makes the off-kilter nature of the video sound almost whimsical, a flight of fancy, something which this show never is.

It's only Chloe In The Afternoon that still seems to jar, with its lyrics that don't sync to the music, but when the encore opens with the most gorgeous version of The Party you'll ever hear, it's hard to pick fault on something so subjective.

"Why can't we go somewhere else?", Clark cries on an aggressive Marrow. Why would we want to.

Invaders Must Die!

Bikes ahoy!

You might know Joe Cornish as part of Adam and Joe. You might not. What's clear when you see Attack the Block is that Cornish is emerging from the shadow of close pal and collaborator Edgar Wright.

Wright acts as one of a cabal of Executive Producers on Block and while there have been comparisons to the films of John Carpenter and Shaun of the Dead this is no cut-and-paste job.

The premise is simple and fantastic. Alien spaceship crashes while kids mug a nurse. Kids kick the crap out of alien. More aliens turn up. Kids and aliens kick the crap out of each other in equal measure. Throw in some astute social commentary, dark humour and a bit of gore and you've got a film, boi!

The trailer made Block look like a laugh-a-minute comedy but the finished work shows an ambitious use of light as the gang of five use their home-turf advantage to take it to the invaders.

The gang, led by a superb John Boyega (who is sure to see his twitter followers multiply), give the film its emotional core. Cornish spent time with a group of teens to make sure he got the slang perfect, to show the boredom that leads to posturing and mugging. The kids love the block, does the block love them? Cornish uses the rare moments when the boys connect outside of their own world to show how they're really disconnected from everything.

There have been a few murmurings about the slang being irritating but while it grates for the first few minutes, it comes to feel right. This is how a lot of teenagers speak today. Seeing as a lot of teens go to the cinema because they can't go to a pub or club, why alienate them from there. You're a bit of a snob if you decide these kids are punks who can't talk properly.

The characters make this film, from Pest with his rudeboi schtick to the smaller kids who want to be part of the gang but can only bring a cap gun and a super-soaker to proceedings - "Water ain't no good against dem tings" - "It ain't water..." Props indeed. Boyega's Moses is the root of the film's appeal as he realises that with great power - or lack of therein - comes great responsibility.

There's your token moron hipster who hangs around in places that would shock his trust-fund parents who eventually proves he's more than a haircut. Jodie Whittaker is quite sweary as the mugging victim who has to help her attackers - "You got a potty mouth love." You understand her attitude to the kids at the beginning and her interpretation of the culture - "So it would have been alright to mug me if I didn't live here?!" - and we soften as she does. If you want a social barometer, you got it.

The use of darkness (or the lack of light) is the key to Block's success, in fact, the monsters resemble something from Abe's Oddysee or Heart of Darkness on the PSone eons ago. The constant on-off of Wyndham Court's lights gives off that Carpenter impression. Hopeless against a superior enemy, the survivors use their knowledge of the territory to their advantage.

Whether police (or feds, even) getting mauled by gorilla-dog-aliens is more shocking than the initial violence in Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 is a moot point. These kids don't have guns or a bike gang swarming around to get them. They are the bike gang. They've got fireworks, kitchen knives and baseball bats against fluorescent blue fangs. They don't stand a chance. But that's what makes Block half the fun it is.

The film even has a more satisfying conclusion than Shaun of the Dead or Precinct, although quite how you expect Shaun and friends to defeat the zombie apocalypse without the army's help is a debate for the pub. The gang solve their own problems because, in this world, who else will do it for them?

The stand-out sequence involves a smoke-filled corridor, light dimmed by the swirling suffocation and the loss of comrades in front. Absolutely bloody terrifying. Cornish shows you don't need naff, jumpy music to cause a scare - the score is superb - it's all achieved through clever cinematography, atmosphere and great acting.

It sounds straight-forward but there are enough schlock-horror films these days it's a wonder films like Block get made at all. Another triumph for the now-departed UK Film Council following The King's Speech and several others - it's abolition is nothing short of a national disgrace - sees Cornish enter the new Brit school of film-makers with Wright and Matthew Vaughn.

So can you finally make Ant-Man now, Joe?

When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade by The Boy Least Likely To

Starman

And we're back.

You might have noticed the new series of Doctor Who started this weekend and The Impossible Astronaut compelled me to have a word splurge.

To start a series off with a two-parter is more like the old days of the series and it marked the new direction under Stephen Moffat by starting with creatures that were disturbing and, whoa, scary.

Remember the adipose? They were amusing, sure, but at the ultimate end it was just another episode with an alien disguised as a human and a blinky spaceship and David Tennant making lots of 'ohhhhhhs' and funny faces.

It was almost inevitable that every series of Doctor Who should start with some mild peril gambit of the world being in danger via some silly source that you couldn't quite take seriously (autons, aformentioned adipose, a weird translucent floating snake and some cops made of eyeballs).

Of course, these episodes would hint at what was to come, some bigger whodunit to be solved after a 42 minute yarn of mild peril and toasted teacakes.

There's more danger in this year's opener, it's sinister, creepy and confusing, thanks to all the bizarre time-travel whatishappeningidontunderstand in the first 10 minutes.

There's nothing wrong with having an over-riding story arc throughout a series, the feature working in brilliant fashion in the last series with reappearing cracks in time, but there are still things left over from last year to explore. EXCITING.

Who did the crackly voice on the Tardis belong to? Is it these aliens in Burton menswear that are trying to take over America? Or is it someone else?

Suave and scary as

That River Song came back (again) and this time there was someone in a spacesuit shooting death-rays caused a backward glance to her debut with Tennant and the library/computer/simulation/godonlyknows gizmo. Is there a link to that? Did she say anything about spooky dead things in spacesuits?

I can't remember and I won't be going back to check but the very fact the thought occurred makes the show feel a bit more American in tone, which can only be a good thing.

Revisiting old stories within the Eccleston/Tennant/Smith age makes the canon stronger and more believable (and accessible to the chiddlers who haven't seen Tom Baker. Their loss, of course...) and, again, more like an American show.

Self-contained series can be a little bit boring after a while, it certainly got to that stage when Russell T Davies was running the show.

When Doctor Who returned all those moons ago the effects were still very much of the old show, in a way. You sort of laughed. The BBC might have thought a big, shiny monster stuck to a ceiling and bullying Simon Pegg was impressive, but when kids have been spoiled with Hollywood special effects then Doctor Who just wasn't going to cut it.

The Moffat run has started to change that. The (over) ambitious special effects have been reined in (bar that whale thing) to allow the ambition of the stories themselves to show through.

Nobody wants the Doctor to become Schumacher's Batman, impotent and standing in the wings while you look at the OTT villains, but there is a lot to be said for taking a bit of plastic, putting it in a mould and making something bloody scary, rather than seeing what The Mill can produce.

Matt Smith is still the coolest thing about Moffat's Doctor Who

The biggest compliment you can give the new series so far is that it is classic Moffat with scares, disembodied children's voices (a staple) and, best of all, it's the episode 5 and 6 two parter right at the bloody beginning!

It can only get better, too, right?

What More Can I Say

The clue's in the title; there isn't a lot more anyone can say about Vampire Weekend that you haven't already read or seen elsewhere. Where the first album was a bit of a mess, the band don't sound like they're competing with Mark Mothersbaugh to score a Wes Anderson film on Contra.

If it ended with the final strains of Giving Up the Gun, then Contra would be an early contender for album of the year (not that this will actually stop it...) but Diplomat's Son is just too long and I Think Ur A Contra sounds like the start of Chores by Animal Collective without becoming anything like the madcap bounce of anything by the Baltimore four-piece.

The rest of Contra is solid, with lead single Cousins providing a spark akin to A-Punk and the debatable 'afrobeat' stuff that always accompanies any review of any Vampire Weekend album is really good this time instead of a distraction, as the opening salvo from Horchata through to Holiday is a freewheeling ode to the ghost of summer future. The autotune makes sporadic appearances and isn't as bad as it sounds. They still sound like they're fumbling with the keys to open the front door, but once Vampire Weekend get in to the house, they'll throw a good party.

***


They should use a pic like this for the front of Marina and the Diamonds' album instead of those weird popart things, they just make her look a bit plastic. There's a lot of girls in the 'pop' market today, they've managed to keep it just on the right side of over-saturation but things always get overplayed in music these days so rather than mill through them all, I'll settle with Marina. She reminds me of Ladyhawke but with more than one good song and there's a cattiness that isn't quite as grating as Lily Allen. GLOVES OFF!

Lady Divine

Ordered!

The Ego's Last Stand

Kevin can't hide his disgust.














Those clever-dicks at the Premier League have decided that Wolves can have a suspended fine of £25,000 dished out because they thought they'd have more chance of beating Burnley than Manyoo, so kept their first-team spare, put the reserves out and got smashed 3-0. Fair enough, you might think, after all, they should try to win every game, but what's the difference in losing 1-0 with your first team and 3-0 with the reserves? Especially if the first-team lose the subsequent (winnable) match as they're knackered from chasing shadows at the theatre of ritual humiliation/disembowelment? The loss to Wolves' goal difference was fixed by beating Burnley 2-0, so who really loses? Not even Burnley, because they don't win away games.

The big issue (and the controversy. Hi!) stems from the fact that some teams (Liverpool) rotate all the time but just seem to avoid this punishment... Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Rafa Benitez rotate his team at Craven Cottage in a match towards the end of the 07/08 season to save his key players for a Champions League game? Fulham won. Without those three points, they wouldn't have stayed up, and Reading would have. Perhaps Reading should write to the Premier League; kicking up a fuss worked for Sheffield United. Sort of.

People harp on about the fans getting little return for their money on a trip but maybe they should take their beef up with the Premier League too. Such a sour taste would be considerably lessened if the ticket prices weren't obscene. As a Newcastle fan, this sort of piss-taking is par for the course, which the Premier League seem to delight in.

Best league in the world? I take it you don't watch La Liga.