Metropolitan Mixtape: July 2024
Banquet at the Metropolitan in Celebration of a General Election
In
1. Amsterdam (or, at least, some of it)
: A work trip obliged me to spend one and a half days in Amsterdam (it’s a terrible old life). One day of that was spent in a meeting room, but the other half day was mostly spent racing round the Rijksmuseum like the gang in Bande à part running round the Louvre. Vermeer was quite the pencil squeezer, as Ian Dury put it, and Rembrandt is, well, you know, Rembrandt; but the museum also contains all the ludicrous and peculiar delights you could wish for. M’colleague Adam Frost was very taken with the Banquet at the Crossbowmen’s Guild in Celebration of the Treaty of Münster, in which you can almost hear the arguments about who gets to face forward. I, meanwhile, was very amused by the Battle of Gibraltar in 1607 (Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen) in which the Spanish flagship explodes, flinging lots of tiny sailors into the air like a special effect in a Michael Bay movie. There were also some splendid dioramas, some very nice early twentieth century pieces and lots of very good dogs. (The Spanish, meanwhile, had their revenge that night as I was kept awake by Dutch football fans in the nearby park urging them on to defeat the English in the Euros final.) I also have to recommend the phenomenal Farmer’s Cheese roll at Stach. And also the Rijsttafel at Blauw, which included a Semur Daging beef stew which I have been fondly dreaming about ever since.
2. The Bear, Season 3
: Some people preferred Season 1, some people preferred Season 2 (this is the majority Metropolitan opinion), but pretty much everyone seems to have felt that Season 3 was a bit too rushed, a bit too stuffed with celebrity cameos and a bit too burdened with expectations. There was probably a little too much pontificating about cookery and definitely too many Fak brothers (John Cena? Really?). The focus on how Carmy is still stuck, even after his release from the freezer, was important (no one recovers from trauma, learns how to apologise and reimagines their future over night) but it rather brought the rest of the show to a stop too. However it also had a few high points, most notably Tina’s episode, with the flashback to how she joined The Bear and what it has meant to her, which felt more like those very character-heavy Season 2 episodes.3. Ikiru (1952)
: All the assorted Davieses were out so the dog and I settled down to something nourishing: Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece Ikiru. I fell for Kurosawa’s samurai films as a teenager but I’ve only recently started watching his contemporary movies like Stray Dog (1949) and High and Low (1963). Ikiru is the story of Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a mid-level bureaucrat who discovers he has cancer and only months left to live. Realising he has spent most of his life marking time, he tries to live at last. He tries hedonism and hanging out with young people but finally discovers true fulfilment in actually doing his public service job, spending his last few months forcing the local government to build a playground on a derelict site. Which felt like an appropriate message at the outset of a new Labour government that is stressing the importance of public service.Like Stray Dog and High and Low post-war Tokyo is a core character, a city that has been physically devastated but is not ready to face the moral devastation it has visited on itself. It is trying to reinvent itself but is hobbled by the traditions it finds so hard to relinquish. This makes it an interesting companion watch with Godzilla Minus One, another vision of a city trying to rebuild after the war.
Kurosawa is a master of composition. The frames are either teeming with life — faces watching and listening, a sense of the crowded city and of a community — or they isolate Watanabe in the midst of the the melee; Takashi Shimura’s big, froggy face, so full of emotion, so alone in the crowd. It made me want to rewatch Shimura as the weary but wise leader of the Seven Samurai (1954), Kurosawa’s subsequent film.
Also, the final shot of Watanabe [spoilers] sitting on a child’s swing in the snow, singing to himself as he dies there in the centre of his final, joyous accomplishment, made me realise I can add this to the list of Christmas films.
Out
1. Better Call Saul (2015)
: We need to add a question mark to the ‘Out’ verdict for this one because we’re radically unsure. A number of people, most notably a younger Davies, have recommended this to us but we’ve been struggling with it. It seems incredibly slow and aimless so far and it's not yet clear, five episodes in, why any of this is interesting or why we should remotely care about these annoying twerps. It feels like it's caught somewhere between being a Coen brothers caper (but without the comedy and carefully crafted pacing) and a Glen A. Larson series from the ‘80s in which a scoundrel lawyer with a heart of gold solves cases of the week while wisecracking with his will-they-won’t-they love interest. I see Dirk Benedict as Jimmy McGill, or maybe John Ritter.It’s tempting to read this as an early example of binge watch TV, in which the makers are thinking of their show as a very long movie or a Dickensian telenovela rather than a serial, and are taking a distinctly proggy approach to jamming around some themes to see if anything coalesces. (Compare this to The Bear, which followed the rock music pattern of a scorching first album, a more studio-bound second and a wayward third.) But, of course, the first season of Better Call Saul is not the first season of anything, really: the whole show is a prequel to Breaking Bad (2008), which we have tried to watch and – again – got quite bored and irritated with, quite quickly. As a result we have none of the context for any of these characters. We keep being assured that this doesn’t matter and that we just have to stick with it, but is it really worth watching two seasons of something you’re not enjoying just in case it gets good eventually? We have our Aaron Sorkin watchalong to think of, you know.
So we decided to seek some guidance from you, the Metropolitan readership.
2. Election night TVÂ
: All the major channels this year completely screwed up the balance between studio punditry and actually showing the election. These are supposed to be news shows, and declarations are the news on election night. Indeed, on any other day a change of MP would get blanket coverage. But this time around, instead of showing us the actually-occurring avalanche of news, all the major channels served up a carousel of pundits just… talking. Perversity of this magnitude usually leads to your name being added to an official register. And as for the endless incantation of ‘Well, if the exit poll is correct…’ Guys, look out the window. I think it might be raining. Politics podcasts have become very big business in the UK. Distressingly, TV news editors took this as a mandate to force election night coverage into the shape of a giant podcast. This was an example of a wider media trend that I’m beginning to think of as ‘Podcastification’, and it broke election night TV in several ways. Most obviously, podcasts — being pre-recorded — are not shaped to cover breaking news. What they are good at is post-match analysis. I love post-match analysis. But I want to watch the match first. I don’t want to not watch the match at all.Â
Second, BBC News in particular has been driven quite out of its wits by the roaring success of its Brexitcast podcast, in which a roster of friendly presenters slowly explained the ‘Malthouse Compromise’ (still a great name) and ‘Indicative Votes’ and ‘the Norway Option’. This was an excellent expression of the BBC’s mission to educate and explain. There was a bit too much tedious gabbling about cakes (ha ha! Cakes! Lawks-a-mercy! Cakes! Oh Adam did you ever hear the like! Cakes! Stop it Chris I’m going to soil myself!) for my taste. But whatever; good job, BBC!Â
However, ‘Brexitcast was a huge hit’ does not mean ‘everything should be Brexitcast’. It was a huge hit because people who were already interested in political news suddenly required remedial-level information about international trade and EU structures. This doesn’t mean that Laura Kuenssberg has to explain absolutely everything to us like we are five! I am watching BBC News at 4am on election night; admittedly I am demented, but you can assume that I am familiar with the concept of electoral swing! PLEASE SHOW ME THE BLOODY NEWS!
Unfortunately, one aspect of Podcastification is that podcast presenters think they are the news. To take an example from another context: in the run-up to a crucial Euros match a couple of weeks ago, Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker’s lively shit-talking on their podcast The Rest is Football upset the England football team and their saintly manager, Gareth ‘sad-eyed lady of the lowlands’ Southgate. Shearer and Lineker’s hard-edged criticism was normal for podcasts but very much not normal for for politely supportive environs of BBC Sport, where two guys called, um, Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer front up the football coverage. The whole imbroglio — in which the BBC’s Gary Lineker had to explain what The Rest is Football’s Gary Lineker had said to make Harry Kane cry — pulled focus away from the actual football for a clear two days while providing Gary Lineker with material for 15 further podcasts.
I mean… Christ on a bike. None of this is news. It’s ear-fungus. It’s enjoyable — I listen to so many podcasts that I ought to be subject to some sort of restraint — but we really mustn’t confuse it with things that actually matter. Not least because election night made it evident that these people are beginning to seriously misjudge the value of their contributions. If you were trying to escape the supply-teacher vibe of Brexitcast alumni Kuenssberg, Mason and Adam Fleming on the BBC’s election coverage, you had the choice of Ed Balls and George Osborne (who co-present the podcast Political Currency) extemporising gassily on ITV, Beth Rigby and Ruth Davidson (who co-present the podcast Electoral Dysfunction) on Sky, and Emily Maitlis (The News Agents) plus Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart (The Rest is Politics) aggressively centristing on Channel 4. These people weren’t lacking in ego before they had podcasts. Now they are unhinged. They are capable of talking for literally ever, and you simply cannot let them lose on live telly if you don’t have an editor who is prepared to say ‘Shut it Alan, I want you to stop’. Instead we got editors giving foot massages and whispering ‘you are so beautiful to me’ into Chris Mason’s earpiece while government ministers lost their safe seats off-camera.
Podcastification’s fundamental problem is that it privileges ‘analysis’ over the delivery of hard information about our collective present — the things that are affecting us right now. ‘Today’ rarely offers a clear narrative; there’s always something spoiling the symmetry, something that refuses to fit, something that only a really boring expert can explain. ‘Today’ is murky and frustrating. But ‘tomorrow’? Now you’re talking! ‘Tomorrow’ offers infinite exciting possibilities, gorgeous colourful stories with pleasingly clear lines.
Podcastification means brushing past the gnarly, complex details — ironically, the stuff that Brexitcast did admirably well — and skipping straight to a grand narrative of branching possible futures. What might happen at PMQs? What might happen if James Cleverly becomes Conservative leader? What might if Labour includes a highly specific imaginary measure in its first budget? What might happen if Westminster turns into a giant cake? (Oh don’t start, Chris! This is turning into a cake podcast! Ha ha!)
To riff off Kamala Harris (thoughts and prayers with our US readers, by the way) Podcastification focuses on what could be, and wishes to be unburdened by what is. Harris is a politician; it’s her job to paint pictures of the future. But if you’re a journalist on a live TV channel, I’d be awfully grateful if you could just tell me what’s bloody happening. And if you’re a podcast presenter on election night: shut it, Alan. I want you to stop.
Shake it all about
Tobias: Here’s this month’s playlist. It's basically what I’ve been listening to for the last few weeks. The usual Top Ten, featuring at least one very exciting Metropolitan-friendly new release. The playlists will all be on Spotify.
‘Two Magpies’ by The Fireman, an outfit featuring a young up and coming Liverpool artist called Sir Paul ‘Thumbs Aloft’ McCartney. How had I never bread this before? It’s brilliant, which is a fact that’s slightly more surprising than it should be.
‘Guaracha U.F.O (No estamos solos...)’ by Meridian Brothers. Outer space salsa from a Colombian group who sound like The Residents, but dance-able.
‘Saku Saku’ by Yama Warashi has a taste of alien dance music about it, as well. According to the notes of YouTube, this is about ‘a crispy moon’, so it fits this month’s musings on outer space splendidly.
‘I Am The River’ by Lael Neale has the propulsive dreaminess of Kraftwerk, the relentless gentle force of a river.
‘Me Voy Pa'l Pueblo’ by Mapache. As far as I can make out, this is a cover of a 1949 song by the famous Latin American trio, Los Panchos. It’s a beautiful song and bonus points for whistling.
‘Summer Storm’ by Fox + Sui. This seems like an appropriate song title for this year’s summer in the UK.
‘Brazil’ by Cornelius. For a good part of my twenties most of my charity shop raids were searching for different covers of ‘Brazil’. This is a good one.
‘Beautiful Moon’ by Kim Deal. More lunar pondering with a beautiful song about a beautiful moon by the beautiful and awesome Kim Deal
‘Lo on the Hi-Way’ by Jordana. A recommendation from the older of the younger Davieses and an excellent recommendation it is too. Possibly song of the summer, this one.
‘Death Valley High’, Orville Peck & Beck. But then there’s this, a new single from two Metropolitan favourites Beck and Orville Peck, a splendidly rousing piece of western sunshine.
There’s been a lot of mooning about in The Metropolitan this month, so the podcast is a reading of another piece about 1969 and its conjunction with another anniversary for this year: 100 years since the start of World War 1:
