A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait links to a beautiful music video showing highlights of the Moon.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about failure as a learning experience.


• Centauri Dreams writes about sensory associations, of how memories unite films and planets with things here on Earth.


• D-Brief notes that Japan's Hayabusa2 probe is looking for a place to land on asteroid Ryugu.


• Hornet Stories notes the plans of Russell T. Davies to launch a new dramatic series looking at the impact of AIDS in the UK in the 1980s.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper suggesting Adam Smith would be unhappy with modern inequality, for the disincentives it provides the wealthy to be productive and not rentiers.


• The Planetary Society Blog explores what India has to do to meet its goal of launch an astronaut into space by 2022.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that not many worlds--not outer-system moons, not even the Kuiper belt--will survive the sun's red giant phase intact.


• Window on Eurasia reports on a rebellion of ethnic Russians in Grozny in 1958, protesting the return of the Chechens from Stalinist deportation.

Loss, of course, is what powers “Last Christmas.” In itself, that isn’t unusual: pop music is an extended treatise on a topic that’s troubled mankind since we emerged from the swamps, our mouths glued shut with primordial ooze. As a feeling, loss is eminently relatable; it is an indivisible inevitability of life itself, something each and every one of us experiences to varying degrees of seriousness day in, day out.

What makes “Last Christmas” a truly incredible evocation of loss, however, is that it shows rather than tells. By that I mean that anyone can sing about a break up, and a lot of people do, but crafting something that sounds almost analogous to the feeling of weightless vertigo that comes with accepting something is over when, in fact, that’s the very last thing in the world you want, is nigh on impossible. But George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley managed to do it.

It is there in that galloping bassline, a juddering thud that sounds like a lost lover desperately trying to backtrack their way into the good books. It is there in the droopy, weak, drippy synth that plinks and plonks its toytown melody over and over again, sounding brokenly childish in the way that all of us can when romantic fantasy meets adult reality. Even the oddly inert drums manage to evoke a sort of curdled stagnancy reminiscent of a post-breakup hangover where you’re convinced you’re hurtling towards an irreparable regression.

The words that “Last Christmas” uses are fine, perfunctory. They are completely adequate, as most lyrics are. You could, and I have, engender the same emotional response—firing up those same sad synapses that only light up at the sight of a half-crushed minced pie in a drain and the sound of dogs crying with cold on the beach after an ill-advised Boxing Day dip in the sea, all in the name of charity of course—with a German europop version, or a cover from Greece.

But even without the words, without George Michael’s utterly extraordinary vocal performance—and rarely has a singer demonstrated such understated mastery of phrasing, intonation, and delivery—”Last Christmas” drips with feeling. Like Leyland Kirby’s work as The Caretaker, the instrumental version “Last Christmas” manages to summon the ghosts of everyone you’ve ever loved, of everyone who’s ever lived and been loved and been left and been left unloved. The presence of something that once was and will never be again—however many stars we wish upon, however many bones we crack—haunts the song.

Influenced by the French yé-yé singers of the 1960s and finding her own Serge Gainsbourg(s) in the persons of then boyfriend Keigo Oyamada (aka the brilliant Cornelius) and quirky Scottish performer Momus, Karie’s whispery, half-spoken Claudine Longet-esque vocals were the perfect gloss on a pop confection that looked backwards and forwards equally.

Her best-known single “Good Morning World” was commissioned for use in a Japanese cosmetics company’s TV commercial. The song’s playful, nearly nonsensical dada lyrics named-checked a Fall song (“How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’”) and it utilized a particularly effective sample lifted from the Soft Machine’s “Why Am I So Short?” Talk about two insanely cool dog whistles to smuggle into a corporate advertising jingle. Bravo!

There was much to like in the Kahimi Karie package, but for whatever reason, other than the small hipster J-Pop audience, few outside of Japan took notice.

His name was Prince – and Christ, was he funky.

There is no greater filmed evidence for this than his amazing 1987 concert movie Sign O’ The Times, which is pretty hard to find in most of the world. There wasn’t even a DVD release in the US, thanks to a rat’s nest of rights issues; in Canada, Alliance Atlantis put out a decent disc but it’s gone out of print and now fetches a fortune. If you have a Blu-ray player, you can always import the Japanese edition – Japan is in the same region as North America – but it ain’t cheap.

I can feel you getting depressed. Well, don’t! I have great news for you: the Canadian theatrical rights for Sign O’ The Times are still in place, and my friends Matthew Price and Sasha James have secured an honest-to-god 35mm print to screen on Sunday (May 15) at The Royal as this month’s Musicale! feature.

And it is an absolutely fantastic concert movie, organizing performances of his 1987 concert tour into a thrilling, coherent whole. Prince (who also directed the film) captured himself at an absolutely electric point in his career, just after breaking up The Revolution and exploring every possible direction he might take in the years to come. You honestly won’t be able to tell whether that’s sweat dripping off of him, or just excess talent.

Before they recorded their classic 1983 album Power Corruption & Lies, New Order made an extended trip to New York and absorbed some of the city’s more upbeat sounds into their own morose and world-weary music. Latin salsa, 12” remix culture and the electronic beats they heard in nightclubs like Danceteria and the Roxy were obvious inspirations for the music they would soon come to make.

But at the time this was videotaped—live at the Ukrainian National Home in New York’s East Village on November 18, 1981—New Order were still largely Joy Division minus Ian Curtis, a post punk band, not the electronic dance quartet they would soon become. It’s a fascinating document of the group during what is perhaps the least documented era of their long career. As I would personally chose Movement over anything else in their catalog, this was a real treat to watch.

Low lights, the intense musicians saying almost nothing to the audience, a concert held in a hot sweaty dance hall—there’s an extremely underground quality to this show.