| | Robert Forster: Venus by Television is the most perfect song of all time | by Robert Forster Jan 1, 2023 | The former Go-Betweens frontman recounts how, as a teenager, he fell under the spell of Television’s album Marquee Moon - In this new Guardian Australia series, musicians share their favourite songs, what makes them perfect and how they shaped their lives
How could the perfect song be anything else? I was 19 years old, living in suburban Brisbane, writing my first half-decent songs, when Television released their debut album, Marquee Moon. I had been following the band for two years through the music press, buying their first single, Little Johnny Jewel. Expectations were high, but nothing prepared me for the splendour and clout of the group’s debut album, released in February 1977. Continue reading... | | | River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer review – a mother's quest for her lost children | by Lucy Popescu Jan 1, 2023 | A former enslaved Bajan plantation worker embarks on a courageous journey in this immersive debut The inspiration for Eleanor Shearer’s debut was a footnote in an exhibition about emancipation. It described how the children of enslaved women in the Caribbean were stolen and sold. On liberation, many mothers went in search of their fractured families. River Sing Me Home opens in Barbados in 1834. The British have decreed an end to slavery but in reality little has changed; the enslaved people on the plantation will become “apprentices” for the next six years. “Freedom was just another name for the life they had always lived.” Desperate to find her five surviving children, Rachel flees. Continue reading... | | | Fiction to look out for in 2023 | by Alex Preston Jan 1, 2023 | With new work from Richard Ford, Lorrie Moore and Zadie Smith, plus second novels by Caleb Azumah Nelson and Guy Gunaratne, this is shaping up to be a memorable 12 months During the lockdown years, I kept reading articles by novelists saying how unproductive they were feeling, how virus narratives had colonised their subconscious minds, destroying the creative impulse. 2023’s novels – or at least those of them I’ve read – suggest otherwise. It’s an extraordinary crop, with memorable books from both celebrated and lesser-known authors. As usual, I’ve concentrated on those released in the first half of the year and have left first novels to the New Review’s best debut novelists feature. Let’s start with some big names. There’s inevitable excitement surrounding a new Bret Easton Ellis. The Shards (Swift, January) is a riotous tale of privilege and psychosis at a swanky prep school. After the horrors of last year, it’s splendid that Salman Rushdie has a new novel out – Victory City (Jonathan Cape, February). Better still, it’s a cracker. Purportedly a rediscovered ancient epic, it’s about the transformative power of human creativity, the enduring ability of art to shape the world. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Granta, March) comes 10 years after the Booker-winning The Luminaries and is worth the long wait. Full of wit, big ideas and the most beautiful writing, it’s the story of a group of guerrilla gardeners who clash with a billionaire prepper. I loved it. Continue reading... | | | Feed your soul: the 31-day classical music diet for January | by Fiona Maddocks Jan 1, 2023 | From gentle awakening to explosive fanfare, duelling pianos to one chill lone voice, expand your horizons with a month’s worth of classical ear-openers For Observer readers, January’s cultural diet is now a habit: first literature, in 2020, then last year’s sequel, short films. The best way to engage with those, surely, was sitting down with a box of chocolates and a hot-water bottle. Here’s a diet where you can listen and walk the dog, lift dumbbells, practise hula or, with care, reverse running. Whatever fitness trend you may have signed up to in a fit of optimism can also, in theory, be done with headphones on. You can also do nothing but be an active listener: follow the rhythms, instruments, textures, melodies, patterns as they unfold or repeat or turn themselves upside down. Classical music has a reputation for being dusty and difficult, something you have to know about to “get”. (Do you like it or not? Not such a hard question and the only one that matters.) These 31 pieces might lead you to aural pleasures as well as greater confidence in following your enthusiasms. Continue reading... | | | | |
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