Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Update your RSS feeds, everyone! You should go here instead. The person who did have control over the backend stuff is overseas and/or doesn’t reply to messages, so the rather drastic step of moving was taken.

I’m pretty excited, to be honest. It’ll be ace to actually have some control over the features of the blog, and hopefully I won’t have to wrestle too much with WordPress being an arse…

Shame really, because if I did, I’d probably sing this song ALOT (sic). But I’d need to learn to ride without holding handlebars too dammit.

Thank you Bike Snob NYC. Tell me if you hate the vid so I can defriend you on the appropriate social networking sites and such.

After drinking so much of former housemate’s homebrew, it was about bloody time I tried my hand at brewing my own beer. Nothing ridiculously special or fancy at this stage.

First brew was Cascade chocolate mahogany porter kit, which has now been bottled. Apparently in another week it’ll be at its taste peak (other better persons tell me). As far as I’m concerned, if it’s not infected, it’s okay! I’ve tried it and it’s drinkable but there’s no complexity in the flavour.

Second brew, done yesterday was using a Black Rock IPA kit with Brewcraft #76 sugar, Cascade hops and some lager yeast…going for a steam ale *cringes*. The yeast wasn’t all crazy like the previous one, so I’m a bit worried (I know, I know, no one uses kit yeast, but I figure it’s okay for newbies to do it…use the better stuff as you improve and all that).

In any case, it was pretty exciting to actually try one’s hand at it. Even if the bulk of brewing is so much fucking cleaning, ugh.

I’ve been reading this beautiful, poignant novella for quite some time, and actually stalling on it because I didn’t want to finish it – this is very rare. It chronicles the lives of several Americans of French origin who live in the South. The main protagonist is a woman called Edna who is extremely unhappy about her place in society as mother and wife. She longs for something more and actually breaks from societal confines in order to explore what constitutes personal happiness.

I imagine that the subject matter would have been pretty shocking for its time, whereas now it’s just a very painful reminder of how inflexible the woman’s role in society was a hundred or so years ago. As a closet Marxist, I do have to point out that the book has a distinctly realist setting, that is, we’re talking about Western middle-class society. So, realism does not equal ‘realistic’ depictions or settings of life – if you want that, you need to seek out naturalist works (which I generally much prefer).

This work is very popular in university literature courses, specifically modernist ones for good reason. If you enjoy reading Woolf, you will very likely derive much enjoyment from this work.

You might know that at the moment I have a bit of a periodical addiction, as well as a good food one. Naturally when the two combined, I put my pennies towards a copy.

(image taken from Condiment website)

This one I can’t enter into aNobii’s database so I’ll just have to provide you with a link.

Surprise, surprise, this is the second food periodical I’ve read in one sitting due to insomnia, but unlike Remedy Quarterly which is based in the States, Condiment is local. Yep, it’s Melbourne-based. So I can kiss my dreams of making my own version of Remedy goodbye.

I plan to review this properly, and publish it on eat, drink, stagger rather than here.

Context: one of the meds I take is rarely prescribed for my particular ailment. This causes a lot of grief and confusion when I go to dumb GPs (I am sorry, but there are many out there).

Dad’s just come back from three fucking weeks overseas but he’s still got his lecturing rights, natch. I say this because Dad hasn’t seen the progress I’ve made in the last week regarding good sleep patterns.

DAY 1

Dad: you sleep too much
me: yeah, that’s because I ran out of night meds and my body’s readjusting
Dad: you shouldn’t let yourself run out of your meds, you know that
me: (SILENT RAGE)

DAY 2
me: I slept like shit
Dad: oh?
me: I didn’t take med #2 so I could sleep normal person amounts
Dad: you know you’re not supposed to stop taking it suddenly
me: (SILENT RAGE)

I think people kill themselves to get away from the nagging.

Or to avoid the side effects of medication, sigh.

If you’ve been reading this blog at all, you probably think I’ve stopped my 75 books for 2010 challenge.

Nothing could be further from the truth. At the moment, I’m trying to catch up on my back issues of The New Yorker. I was given a subscription, and given how frequently they arrive, I am dreadfully behind. I was hoping to at least only be a month behind before resuming non-periodical reading.

I thought it might be fun to go back through the issues I have actually read, and point out some highlights. I’ll link them to the online New Yorker, but some will only be available in abstract form sadly.

Nov 9, 2009

Thomas Mallon on Ayn Rand. Coincides with two recent biographies about Rand being published.

Stephen King’s ‘Premium Harmony’ Wow. I totally thought King was a hack, but this piece is brilliant, and disturbing. The dude’s still got it!

Jonathan Safran Foer writes a non-fiction book, which is reviewed by Elizabeth Kolbert. I’m sure it’ll upset me, but I’m really keen to read it.

Nov 16, 2009

Arthur Krystal on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s time at MGM as a scriptwriter. He had a stint as a scriptwriter, and wasn’t all that successful. Kind of amazing to think that such a loved American novelist can suck at something writerly.

Margaret Talbot on the debilitating nature of bad dreams. As someone who periodically has bad dreams and nightmares, this was pretty insightful.

Ian Parker on the glamorising face of Egyptology. Who knew it had one?

Nov 23, 2009 (the food issue!)

John Colapinto details the the genuinely hard life of a Michelin restaurant guide reviewer. It does genuinely sound terrible, and would take out the passion for eating.

One of my favourite articles ever is by Calvin Trillin on poutine. It also inspired me to try my hand at making it!

Raffi Khatchadourian reports on the science of taste, and the flavour industry. Pretty scary that flavour has its own industry, if you ask me. Eric Schlosser’s excellent book Fast Food Nation also discusses this at great length.

Nov 30, 2009

The award for most boring article thus far goes to Roger Angell for a piece on baseball. I read this when I had insomnia and was praying for it to knock me out. It was insufferably long, too.

Ariel Levy discusses intersex and Olympic runner Caster Semenya. Discusses the issue of what constitutes gender, biologically and on a personal level.

I’ll probably churn out a few more of these posts as I keep reading The New Yorker, but hoping to return to some books too.

I’m not big on cooking. It isn’t that I don’t like to, but I rarely get the kitchen to myself (read: mother is always at home).

An initial scrounging in the fridge and pantry revealed the following available ingredients that we chose to use:

• two salmon fillets
• mushroom soy sauce (seriously, what Asian household doesn’t have regular soy sauce? FAIL)
• baby spinach, mushrooms & spring onions
• lime chutney (stay with me)
• white wine
• minced garlic
• butter

We had no lemons and I wanted to marinate the salmon in soy and lemon juice. So at a pinch, I thought watered-down mushroom soy sauce and Indian lime pickle would suffice. Put in a small amount of mushroom soy and add three to four times the amount of water. Spoon generous teaspoons of pickle and mix well till blended. Put salmon in bowl and pour marinade on top and don’t be shy to massage marinade into the fillets and let it sit.

Chop 4-5 mushrooms and finely chopped spring onions and sauté in a tablespoon of butter. After it’s cooked, add a clove’s worth of minced garlic and mix well.

Place the salmon in a very hot wok and add a cup of white wine. Put a lid on the wok and let it cook till well done. Put the salmon on a bed of baby spinach.

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The beer in photo is most likely Mountain Goat Steam Ale, which I’m enjoying immensely at the moment.

I love poverty. Okay, I don’t really, but I’m glad it’s forcing me to be…resourceful.

Two consecutive days of me scrounging in the kitchen. I thought I’d try to honour Dad by making cheese and bacon omelette. No, Dad’s not dead (thankfully), but he’s out of the country and it feels like he’s been gone a while.

I found other stuff in the fridge, and so kitchen sink omelette it was instead.

I’ve never made an omelette in my life. Necessity is an excellent teacher and motivator.

Serving three people, I beat seven eggs in a bowl. Chop up half a medium-sized onion and eight rashers of bacon and then fry onions in a bit of olive oil till green-translucent. Toss bacon cubes in and fry till onions are brown-translucent. Add finely chopped spring onion sprigs (we had about three hanging around).

Right at the end, add three mushrooms roughly chopped and set aside when cooked.

In a lightly buttered wok or non-stick pan, pour half of the beaten egg mixture and fry till it starts to look cooked. Gently heap fillings on top, and pour the rest of the egg mixture to cover. Heap on loads of grated cheese. This won’t set as much as you’d like, so in a heated oven or grill, get the wok and place it under till your omelette looks like it’s crispy and firm.

I guess you could flavour with salt and/or pepper, but I didn’t even think of it, oops! Very, very slowly, I’m getting my cooking mojo back: am notoriously appalling at making things with what’s already available in pantry and/or fridge.

Feel much better now that I’ve used up pre-existing things!

Scarf it down after you’ve divided it fairly. Thankfully, it was well-received, phew!

Here’s half the bastard. Not a great picture, but just so you know what it looks like.

This morning, I read food writer Phil Lees’ blog post on the nature of food blogging and I have to say, it’s really inspired me to consider the question seriously.

I should actually get around to explaining this on eat, drink, stagger sometime, but for the time being, my ruminations will be housed here.

I really like to write, and as of a year ago, I didn’t think I was writing enough. I read heaps (yea insomnia!) but for health reasons (I later found out), writing wasn’t coming easily.

I feel like shit when I don’t write.

I started a dream blog which helped with writing and output immensely.

Then, a few months ago, I decided to start a food blog. I love dining out, and wanted a record of my experiences. It seemed a natural progression to start blogging about it as another way to practise writing. To take away from the stress that is writing poetry, I wanted my food blogging to be casual, but to still try and write well.

I don’t know if I am successful in that regard, but I’m really enjoying it. Am no food expert by any means, so it was liberating to just write and not pain over every single word (like I do in poetry. Don’t get me wrong – I adore that about the poetic creative process, but it does get draining).

Embarrassingly, before reading Lees’ post, I now come to realise that food blogging became a slightly competitive, obsessive pursuit. Instead of just documenting my dining experiences, I now started to care about where I wrote about, if it meant I might have more readers. If you will permit me the confession, I wanted to start blogging about the same places all the ‘cool kids’ were blogging about. Go to the same events. Wonder why Tom, Dick and Harriet were going to the inaugural Australian Eat Drink Blog conference and I wasn’t. Pretty lame, eh? I purposely didn’t register my interest in the conference because I thought that more experienced bloggers should go, but then got annoyed. There’s always next year, Gem, sheesh.

So, for me, I pretty much nearly jumped the shark. Got ridiculous.

I need to be honest with myself. I have a chronic illness so I can’t afford to dine out as often as I like (because I work part-time), or at the more top end places that some of my (fantastic, I might add) food blogging colleagues do. I need to accept that. So, in the next two or so months, I’m going to focus on eating out less, and cooking more. Get back to my roots and remind myself, this is not a competition. I intend to review more places local to me (living in the north of Melbourne, I am nowhere near the city). More oh-fucking-god-will-this-work kitchen experimentation. I’m so scared of failure in the kitchen. Why? As long as it’s edible, who cares? Better to try and make and fail.

I’m really grateful for Lees’ blog post. It’s been an excellent reminder that this fun hobby/chronicle was starting to exist for different reasons to why I began.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop caring about readership. So many people have given me fantastic, inspiring feedback about eat, drink, stagger. I will always do my best to put out content I am happy with, and happy to have read and critiqued. I will continue to review places I have eaten at at my own expense. I will continue to learn. I will continue to read food blogs and let them inspire me.

On that note, it’s time to consider dinner options. I have an Entertainment voucher for Crust Pizza and by golly, I’m not afraid to use it.

I hate films that make me cringe. That might seem odd, but don’t worry, I know that therein lies an artistic work’s merit – if it moves you, it’s doing something right. In the Loop makes me cringe in a similar manner to watching Ricky Gervais in The Office or Extras.

Basically, America wants to start a war. So they latch onto a comment made by an insignificant British MP (Simon Foster, played by Tom Hollander) and whilst various governmental departments go into public relations damage control, a few UK politicians are sent to Washington to apparently fix the mess. Foster, as is proven by Toby (Chris Addison) and by Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) and his sailor’s mouth is more than incompetent. There are folks in the US who seek to capitalise on this. Naturally, the personal lives of the various characters is haplessly intertwined in their professional lives, but not in an obstructive way.

It’s so hard to single out who makes this film. So many of the actors just get their roles right. Toby (Addison), the newly employed British aide is so delightfully awkward that you can’t but help and grimace whenever he interacts with someone who isn’t his partner. Foster is such a boob that you want to hit him. James Gandolfini and Steve Coogan are just brilliant and I craved more of them on screen.

What’s really worrying about this film is how much of it is actually true? Are the people running our countries dunderheads (my cynicism says yes)? If you want a fast-paced thinking person’s comedy, I suggest you see this film.

I confess when initially I was told that I was bought a ticket to see some musicians from a film I’d never seen, I was not exactly brimming with enthusiasm.

It’s good to be proven wrong about such things – what I assumed would be some love story with boring folky songs, was actually really touching: the film is Once which tells the story of two strangers who connect through their love of music, and inspire each others’ personal lives.

I felt a bit guilty about missing the support act, a Sydney busker that the Swell Season folks loved and just plucked from the street. Was pretty chuffed that Glen and Marketa came out and sat on the edge of the stage and started with the song ‘Fallen From the Sky’ which has a cute little synth keyboard drum beat.

Because of my overconsumption of tea, I apparently missed Glen’s best song – the man can sing, even without a mike he has amazing projection. He also plays his guitar hard and snapped a string during the night. They covered most of the repertoire from the film, and admirably so. The crowd loved it.

As an encore, Glen and Marketa covered a Tim Buckley song (that I am sorry to admit I wasn’t previously familiar with), and Glen cheekily worked a few lines of a Jeff Buckley song into it. In a previous song, he’d also done the same, quasi-randomly breaking into Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’. Just these casual nods to some awesome songs.

Two of my personal highlights: the haunting solo violin traditional Irish song dedicated to some mates who’d just got married – the violinist recorded loops and played with himself. Got me all excited in the way Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy) does.

Second highlight which really cracked up the audience was the cover of Empire of the Sun’s ‘Walking On A Dream’. As soon as I picked it, I couldn’t help but laugh. They introduced it as a song they’d liked the sound of in a shop in the States, so perhaps understandably, the audience felt pleasantly pranked. Best thing about live gigs is these such surprises.

It was lovely to actually go to a gig and sit down, too, with people of all ages (I attended with people significantly older and younger than myself). The sound was very clear. Or perhaps that’s just because I’m used to grungy old venues with speakers that sound like they’re about to die. Despite the size of this venue, it still gave off an air of intimacy with the performers. It might be one of the few times I admit to enjoying such sappy music, giggle.

Met up with friends and gig-buddies beforehand and ate like kings. As usual, things didn’t get packed till it was time for Spinnerette to perform. Initial observations indicated that there were plenty of Brody wannabes, and people looking for a reason to get ‘loose’, by which I mean thrash themselves around and try to knock people out. I’m not kidding – I got hit in the head by one such idiot, and my mate Ollie rescued this girl from getting seriously trampled.

This made things a little less enjoyable and reminded me a lot of my experience at this very venue when I went to see the Horrors.

Just like the Horrors, however, Brody has her audience completely captivated. The girls want to be her, the boys want her babies, and they made it known vocally. There’s always one, isn’t there?

I missed the first support act, but caught Mini Mansions who did a pretty cool yet uncharacteristic cover of Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ (but seriously, aren’t all the best covers uncharacteristic? To me they are). I did feel sorry for them because the masses were rabid with the promise of Brody by the time they got into being on stage.

I really love the edge to Brody’s sound, and we were pretty lucky she performed at all, given she was recovering from laryngitis. I’m glad that other gig-buddy Tara said she felt she was getting too old for that shit – is it a bit too uncool to desire a music space where you can just listen and not have to worry about whether or not you’ll accidentally get the stuffing bashed out of you?

Needless to say, I didn’t get to take any remotely decent photos. I left that to the taller kids.

Last week, I had the privilege of going to see Professor Richard Dawkins discuss his latest book The Greatest Show On Earth at the Melbourne Town Hall.

The event is part of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, which is officially not for a few more months. Dawkins’ visit was primarily for an atheist convention that is taking place in Melbourne and I believe it’s taking place right now.

Dawkins appeared on the panel for the ABC programme Q & A which aired after his Melbourne Town Hall stint. Expectedly, he managed to make Steve Fielding, Family First Senator, look ridiculously inarticulate. Admittedly, it isn’t hard.

I was made to attend both a Catholic primary and secondary school, and at secondary school, we were taught that the Old Testament wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but to be considered metaphoric – the world wasn’t made in seven days (surprise, surprise) but rather, did ascribe to the Big Bang Theory (I assumed we were to believe that God was responsible for this) and Darwinian evolution.

I’m curious – what is the Christian faith teaching now? I don’t believe that science and religious faith have to be mutually exclusive. Am I being an idealist in feeling this way? Am I just ridiculously lucky to have gone to a secondary school that was fairly progressive and accepted that its students’ faith was apt to change as they got older? Do views on science and evolutionary biology differ from one Christian denomination to the next?

I confess I have little tolerance for fundamental religious types, but probably because of such persons I’ve met, they are not exactly the most open-minded, and can be downright offensive. Among such insults I’ve copped from such persons – promiscuity leads to mental illness, and also I am a child of Satan. One of my close friends still bears psychological damage from being forced to grow up in his father’s faith.

Another excellent point that Dawkins raised is that it is ideology that is responsible for some of the greatest world conflicts – yes, some religious, some not so (Marxist ideology as interpreted by Mao, or Stalin that which I would like to point out, is vastly different from what Marx envisioned).

My apologies if these thoughts seem to lack cohesion, they’re really just random musings on the nature of religion, and from having Dawkins in this part of the world. I guess if anyone were to draw any one conclusion from this it would be that despite being an atheist myself, I do not think that scientific knowledge and one’s personal religious beliefs have to mutually exclusive. Perhaps that is part of the conundrum – science is knowledge or truth, and religion is ideology and ideology is never neutral. At my most cynical, I would argue that is it rarely, in this day and age, altruistic.

Of course I was sceptical when I learnt that Tom Ford was the director for this film which is based upon a novel by British author Christopher Isherwood. I don’t think you should hold that against me: Ford belongs to a very glitzy, polished world, and the artform we associate him with is different enough to filmmaking.

I knew nothing about the film but good friend @coliwilso had mentioned that he loved it, and he watches a lot of film. I figured it would have stood out for him for very good reasons.

An English expat literature professor living in LA is coping with the sudden death of his partner Jim. We learn about Jim through flashbacks that George (Colin Firth’s character) has – his tragic death, their meeting, their love.

George is an isolated man. He has one close friend Charley (Julianne Moore), who is a link to his past in London. Naturally, the loss of his life partner has taken a toll on his mental and physical health. The surroundings filmed appear very monochromatic or contain little colour variation to reflect this.

In what seems to me a very Death In Venice-type theme (both Thomas Mann’s novella of the same name and Visconti’s glorious film), George is partially restored to life and vigour by a young, somewhat inquisitive student of his, Kenny. This youth looks like he’s stepped out of a Tom Ford fashion shoot, and this is exploited in the film. But rather than just looking like a model, Kenny is a pensive young man, and he seems genuinely concerned for his teacher’s well-being.

There is so much in this film that normally I would dismiss as indulgent, and clichéd: the colour saturation when the camera closes up on beautiful young faces. The dullness of the environs to help us better perceive George’s despair. So much care has gone into the composition of this film – in what the characters wear, lighting – in fact, I find myself wanting to use the term mise-en-scène. Just when the film starts to feel or look excessive, the excessiveness stops, as if to trick you into thinking that it couldn’t possibly be perceived as corny.

I’ve personally never seen Colin Firth in anything appalling (no, not even Bridget Jones’ Diary or St Trinian’s) and this film is a fantastic reminder that he is a consummate actor. My only real complaint was that ageing him for his role was a tad unconvincing. I need more than a dab of grey in his mop! But still, I might even be compelled to get the film on DVD…virtually unheard of for me.

I was lucky enough to see it in the Sun Theatre in Yarraville. It’s ages away from where I live, but so worth the trip. The cinemas are so sumptuous. We were in the Davis room, which has a beautiful leadlight above.

Sadly, I do not think Disney and Tim Burton are two entertainment institutions meant to coexist. I didn’t actually realise that this new venture of Burton’s was a Disney flick.

As an Alice lover, the film disappointed on a few fronts. Yes, it was utterly gorgeous, surreal and visually sumptuous, but I went in thinking it would be a fairly straight-but-awesome adaptation of Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Not so. The ideas are, however, unmistakably original – a girl named Alice Kingsley is plunged back into a world that she thinks is part of her dreams after trying to escape societal pressures placed upon her.

When she falls down the rabbit-hole, she seems to spend a lot of her time proving that she is indeed an Alice, not necessarily the Alice, in a very confused mish-mash of Carroll’s oeuvre – both the Alice books, and the delicious poem ‘Jabberwocky’. I’m trying to determine whether or not Burton has any references to ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ but I think I’d need to rewatch the film.

It’s definitely worth a watch if you enjoy the Alice mythos as of course there are some brilliant bits. Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter is spot-on, though I really adored Alice. Helena Bonham-Carter’s Red Queen seems to have shades of Miranda Richardson’s Queenie (from Blackadder II).

I like that it raises a few interesting issues or concepts for consideration, though perhaps to a very specific (read: wanky) audience. For instance, what is in a name? By extension, what is in the name of an author? Alice constantly has to prove herself, and acknowledges that she is not the Alice this Wonderland wants, or needs. A scroll telling of the ‘Frabjous Day’ has already ‘written’ Wonderland’s history and fate. As a former lit student, I was naturally reminded of Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ and Michel Foucault’s ‘What is an author’ essays – both of which are shoved down every first-year lit student’s throat.

We also get a dose of watered-down Freudian psychoanalysis with the Red Queen’s obsession with decapitation (which one supposes translates to Freudian castration). Yawn, yes, I know, this has been pointed out ad nauseum in relation to Carroll’s text. It is extended to include the rather surreal and grotesque practice of pricking in this particular film, and the taking out of various characters’ eyes – this to me reeks of Burton proper, none of this candy Disney stuff. Poking out eyes is disturbing, and its use in the film is deliberate.

The Red Queen makes an interesting point to her knave (who accuses the object of his desire, ‘Um’ of making an unwanted sexual advance towards him), about how one must decapitate or kill those whom she fears, so that she cannot be let down by them. Both of these characters have very unusual and unconventional modes of acknowledging their sexualities. A straight Freudian reading would intimate that they fetishise, and therefore are deviant in their sexuality.

A very sad way to live one’s life, killing those we fear, but not dissimilar to America’s modus operandi in regards to world politics. Yes, yes, us arts grads are an annoying lot when it comes to reading metaphor in any text.

Edit: @coliwilso has kindly pointed out to me that the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ is in fact in Through the Looking Glass, or, What Alice Found There. Cheers, old man!

What awesome luck it was to not only get a half-decent parking spot near the place, but as I walked to the Corner, I saw two musicians sitting on a park bench, playing softly to one another. The man had a guitar, and the girl had a keyboard with a mouthpiece.

It was just perfect, and I very much wanted to take a photo, but felt this would intrude upon their intimacy. Later on, as I surmised, they were on stage as the support act Tenniscoats, for Deerhoof.

I struggled very much with the first support act Minimum Chips who are from Australia. They had given a copy of their CD to the drummer of Deerhoof and all band members fell in love with unanimously, they claim. Nothing was wrong with Minimum Chips as such but something was missing…they didn’t enthrall.

Unlike Tenniscoats. As soon as this duo walked onto the stage and began to play, the crowd hushed and seemed enraptured by their playfulness and child-like innocence. I loved them, more so than Deerhoof, actually.

Deerhoof were very cool and ridiculous fun to watch on stage, but I felt like each band member played for themselves, rather than as a tight band. The drummer chatting to the audience was nice, but disrupted the energy of the gig – the band is frenetic on stage, and the drummer was a stammering, rambling mess. Maybe the fans loved him, but I was kind of glad when Satomi, the lead singer told him to get on with it. Don’t get me wrong, the drummer is freaking ace – pretty sure he made some sort of mad pact with Mephistopheles.

I am ashamed to report that when Satomi held out the microphone to the dirty hipsters around me, I was the only one uncool enough to shoot ‘woo!’ into the microphone. There’s my five seconds of fame.

It’s quite hard to believe that The Forum didn’t want Amanda to play at this venue because they didn’t believe in her ability to gather the required numbers to fill the space. Incidentally, her gig last year was at The Corner Hotel in Richmond – a much more intimate space (yes, way smaller). Thanks to my chum @maxcelcat, I was able to get tickets to go to her gig tonight. She even did a secret gig at the Butterfly Club a few days beforehand!

Amanda personally introduced all her support acts, which was quite sweet. We were greeted in by a song by a local band called The Jane Austen Argument. The male vocalist apparently picks up Amanda from the airport every time she’s in Melbourne town.

The main support act, however, was Mikelangelo, a fellow she’d met at the Spiegeltent. That was where I first saw him, a few years ago with back-ups the Black Sea Gentlemen. Mikelangelo is old world sex and sings with gusto such songs about cannibalism and attraction. This time around he had the One and a Half Night Stand to back him up. Mikelangelo also plays the clarinet for a dose of schmaltz (quite well too!).

When Amanda came on stage, it was just her and a keyboard. Very early on, the keyboard accidentally slipped into harpsichord mode and Mikelangelo gallantly hopped back on stage to fix for her. As a performer, she is very generous – not just in performance, but to her audience. One gets the impression that she really is glad you came out to see her. She signed a copy of her book when asked (she wanted to see a copy and a fan got it passed up to stage. She was asked to sign it and she happily obliged).

She played songs from her solo album, as well as a couple of Dresden Dolls ones, and a new song slipped in. At one stage we were all treated to Paul Kelly and Mick Harvey (of Bad Seeds fame) as special guests. Ace.

Just when you thought the concert was finished, Amanda appeared in the upper level, spotlighted, and played a cover of ‘Creep’ (ya, Radiohead!) on the ukelele. The audience was thrilled. Corny, but we all sang along.

Amanda even managed to march along in the SLAM rally a few days earlier. Perhaps all performers feel obliged to say it, but she professed to love Melbourne, and is coming here next year for a few months.