Seen & heard: April

Seen...

Not a film-watching month, April. I've not had the TV on very much as I've been in a reading mood: lots of early nights under the duvet with a good book, and fewer evenings spent on the sofa. But the two films I did see I really liked, and they have the lovely Jason Segel in common...

1. Jeff, Who Lives At Home was sweetly funny and diverting.  Jeff - played by Segel - leaves the house he shares with his mother to run an errand, and ends up on an often ill-fated quest to discover his destiny. 

2. When I was a very small child I loved The Muppet Show but was apparently terrified by the big muppet who lumbered on stage during the opening credits: I used to hide behind the sofa until he had gone.  I therefore adored the brilliant scene aping those credits in this modern reboot of The Muppets.  I'm a sucker for "Let's put on a show!"-type films at the best of times, and this is really a superlative example of the genre with a wonderful cast and some brilliant cameos (Feist!  Jack Black!  Dave Grohl!  Jim Parsons!).  The Oscar-winning music for the film was written by Flight Of The Conchords Bret McKenzie; I'm still humming Life's A Happy Song weeks later.

Heard...



1. I finally bought a copy of last May's Beach House album, Bloom, and promptly became utterly obsessed with it.  A bit early 90s-Cocteau Twins, Bloom is a lushly beautiful album.

2. I heard Bleached's single, Next Stop, on Steve Lamacq's 6 Music show, and liked the Riot Grrrl-crossed with Californian pop sound.  The album, Ride Your Heart, is 38 minutes of lovely guitar music; it's what you'd get if you threw Belly, Haim and some 60s girl group records into a pot and stirred.

3. The final female-fronted group this month.  I've liked Dressy Bessy since hearing their  song If You Should Try To Kiss Her on the soundtrack to long-forgotten film But I'm A Cheerleader but their albums are near-impossible to buy in the UK.  I found their third, Electrified, in a record store in San Francisco almost two years ago but hadn't listened to it much until this month, when I became a bit obsessed with it.  Again (do you see a theme emerging here?) they wouldn't sound out of place in a mid-90s playlist; Electrified and Side 2 would both be very at home on an early Veruca Salt album.