Blue Friday: True Love Waits

There are lots of versions of this, band and solo Thom, but this is the one that catches my ear most, from A Moon Shaped Pool.

Nineteen in '19: The Institute

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading nineteen books in 2019. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

12/19: The Institute by Stephen King

The blurb: Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts - telepathy, telekinesis - for concentrated effect.

Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He's just a regular 12-year-old, except he's not just smart, he's super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use...

Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local sheriff. He's basically just walking the beat. But he's about to take on the biggest case of his career.

Back in the Institute's downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise 'just another day in paradise', Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape.

But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments - even the infamous Mrs Sigsby - suspect.

Thrilling, suspenseful, heartbreaking, THE INSTITUTE is a stunning novel of childhood betrayed and hope regained.

The review: long-time readers of this blog will probably know that I am a Stephen King fan, and that I have devoured just about everything he's published. Which, famously, is quite a lot. So naturally I picked up The Institute as soon as it came out, and whistled through it in fairly short order. What can I tell you about it that the blurb doesn't? Well, if you already like King, you'll like, perhaps even love it. For this is almost a King archetype or, maybe more accurately, some kind of greatest hits tribute act, for so many recurrent King themes are revisited. There's the principled but troubled male lead Tim, trying to escape something dark in his past (see also Johnny in The Dead Zone, Danny in Doctor Sleep, Jack in The Shining, Gard in The Tommyknockers, and Thad in The Dark Half for starters, and that's without the short stories). Similarly, there's the preternaturally bright, gifted child hero Luke (see also Jake in the Dark Tower series, Danny in The Shining and Charlie in Firestarter, to name but three). And of course, there's the plucky "band of brothers" grouping that assembles to save the day (see also The Body, The Mist, The Stand, IT, The Dark Tower ... you get the idea). Most importantly, there's the underlying sense of a wrong being righted, an injustice being set straight, a theme that recurs so often in King's body of work that I'm not even going to start listing examples.

And then there's the plot: an unknown agency, presumed governmental, harvests children with telekinetic and/or telepathic powers, enhances those powers through horrible experiments, and uses the kids as a psychic weapon, ostensibly to ensure world peace. Luke is taken... Tim is the white-hat who helps him puts things straight. I can't say much more than that, for fear of spoilers. But this might already be enough for Constant Readers to conceive of The Institute as a spiritual and thematic, if not direct, successor to Firestarter... and they'd be right.

So what if you're not already a fan of Stephen King? Well, this is unlikely to win you over. It's not King by numbers (see the first half of the Nineties for that) but it is very typical King. For me, that's a good, sometimes great thing: the man is a storyteller, almost without equal in contemporary mainstream fiction. And he shifts POV better than almost anyone.

The bottom line: if you're a King fan, or love a good yarn, well told, buckle up - you'll enjoy this. Just don't expect anything too different...

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★☆

Sunday shorts: Highly Evolved

"A lot can happen in 90 seconds..." Just not in the video, obviously. Whatever happened to The Vines?

Removed

Don't get me wrong, I'm as chained to my black mirror as the rest of you, but this is a thought-provoking three minutes...

Sunday shorts: We've Got A File On You

A glorious noise...

Fascinating

HT Jez over at A History of Dubious Taste...

A previously unreleased slice of R.E.M. sees the light of day at last, after being passed over for Reveal and Around The Sun. And okay, it's not Orange Crush or Fall On Me or <<insert your personal REM favourite here>> but it is previously unreleased... and it is for charity. Because whilst you can stream it via the band's Bandcamp page, if you want to download it that'll cost you $2, with all proceeds going to aid the post-Dorian disaster relief effort in the Bahamas.

You should probably pay for the download, is what I'm saying.

Sunday shorts: Dark Globe

In which late-80s REM cover Syd Barrett for an Orange Crush B-side.

Nineteen in '19: The Guardian Review Book of short stories

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading nineteen books in 2019. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

11/19: The Guardian Review Book of short stories edited by Lisa Allardice

The blurb: Alice Munro, mistress of the short form, describes a story as "a world seen in a quick glancing light". From caves in Pakistan to the underground tunnels of London's Piccadilly line, each of the stories collected here takes the reader into a very different world. And just as they roam across the globe, so they travel in time, from postwar London to contemporary Lagos. From a historical vignette about a 19th-century German artist, to a fable in which a book comes to life in a Chicago library, these stories explore the boundaries of imagined realities.

The narrators include dogs and children. Love affairs begin and end, friendships splinter and rekindle, mothers and children learn to let each other go. Whether it is the recent revolutionary uprisings in Egypt and Libya or one woman's lone battle with her electricity company on the south coast of England, they deal with battles big and small. Everyday triumphs and tragedies are briefly illuminated, the secret places of relationships laid bare. Melancholy or mischievous, elegant or experimental – together these tales showcase the variety and vibrancy of the modern short story.

The review: this collection of eleven short stories was a freebie with Saturday's Guardian some eight odd years ago, and has been on my "to read eventually" list ever since. I've lost count of the number of time I've slipped it into a rucksack for an overnight trip, train journey or long weekend away, thinking I'll get round to opening it at last... because at a slender 128 pages, this is a perfect book to travel with. But it's taken me until now to actually get stuck in and get it read... which probably tells you more about my life than it does about my love of a good short story or the quality of writing on offer here. For make no mistake, when the list of featured authors includes Margaret Atwood, Helen Simpson, Rose Tremain, Mohsin Hamed and Margaret Drabble, there is unquestionable quality to be had, free book or not.

That's not to say this book isn't without its problems. Firstly, I didn't buy it, it was a newspaper freebie, so right from the off I felt less invested in it - I had less motivation to read it, to like it. Secondly, there is no obvious theme to the stories contained herein, other than that they are contemporaneous - so it isn't ever going to be a go-to book for people who like short stories about X. And third, there is no stylistic commonality between the included authors, so it isn't going to appeal to readers who like stories in the manner of Blah Blah either... But on the flip-side, this variety, this true sampler approach is the book's strength. Because no two stories are alike, there is something for everyone.

Some stories stand out: An Idyll in Winter by William Trevor is one such, a delicate, honest tale of love, unrequited and otherwise. Cockfosters by Helen Simpson is another, with a simple plot device (following lost property to the end of a Tube line) and two very plausible protagonists. Equally, Rose Tremain's The Closing Door is, for so simple a tale, tremendously effective and emotional. For me, best of all is Trespassing by Margaret Drabble, which might have seemed timely in 2011 but seems positively prescient now. Oh, and Moths of the New World by the best-selling but oft-maligned Audrey Niffenegger should get a mention, simply for the idea of spirits living inside books. So when these stories are good, they're very good. And even when they're not good, they're still not bad.

As an aspiring writer, I must also mention the shortest story here, Terminator: Attack of the Drone by Mohsin Hamed; it's terrific, an object lesson in how to deliver a big story, and swallow the reader whole, in four short pages.

The bottom line: an uneven collection that has a little of something for everyone, perfectly bag-sized for a long train journey or an overnight hotel stay.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★☆☆

Clandestine Classic LIX - I Believe

The fifty-ninth post in an occasional series that is intended to highlight songs that you might not have heard that I think are excellent - clandestine classics, if you will. Maybe they'll be by bands you've never heard of. Maybe they'll be by more familiar artists, but tracks that were squirelled away on b-sides, unpopular albums, radio sessions or music magazine cover-mounted CDs. Time will, undoubtedly, tell.

I had to resurrect this series, just because I couldn't believe I hadn't already featured this song! Back in the early to mid 90s, James frontman Tim Booth courted, and eventually landed, a collaboration with esteemed film composer Angelo Badalamenti. Their album from which today's classic is drawn, Booth and the Bad Angel, was the result. Bolstered by guitar work from Bernard Butler, not long free from Suede and fresh from working with David McAlmont, the album was critically well received and, thanks to this track being released as a single, sold quite well too.

I Believe is the most James-like track on the album, I think, and certainly the most accessible in terms of what would make a good single. It marries an uplifting, major-key tune with quasi-orchestral backing to a typical soaring Booth vocal and equally characteristic Butler guitar riffs. The result, musically, is magic. And then there are the positive lyrics, to wit:

They turned your story all around,
They had you free when you were bound,
They raised you up when you were down,
They raised you high...

I believe someone's watching over me.
I believe in the dreams that set you free...

And what more 90s, confident, aspirational, Cool Britannia lyric is there than Why be a song when you can be a symphony? Frankly I'm amazed that no political party tried to use this as a campaign tune, then or since. Got to be better than D-REAM, right?

I'm also amazed that this only got to number 25 in the charts. Go on, name 24 songs in the whole of 1996 that were much better than this? Anyway... there was a follow-up single eighteen months later but, other than that, this was a short-lived collaboration. Tim Booth went back to his James-based day job. Bernard Butler released a number of solo albums before hooking up with Ben Watt. And Angelo Badalamenti went back to scoring film and TV.

My CD single of this is scratched and won't play any more. Luckily, I also have it on the best of the Shine compilation series, Shine 5. By contrast, you lucky buggers need only turn to YouTube, look:

Bonus Butler-less live performance from Later..., in which James deputise as the backing band...

Sunday shorts: Rollin' Over

The very obvious miming not helped by the equally obvious 21st Century remastered overdub, but still... brilliant!