Monocle de Moloko

Eyewear is sad to hear the eye of Roisin Murphy (pictured) has been injured in Russia. Murphy should recover, though her Eastern European tour has been shelved due to her near-optical concussion. There is an irony in this, perhaps, since her new album is Overpowered.

The idea of Irish electronica-dance music is slightly far-fetched, but Murphy's latest is actually wonderful, within the groove of its genre. I've long felt that music is a derangement of the senses no worse than opiates or wines - or carnal knowledge - and so should also be allowed its wild, silly moments, as well as its austere, or heightened ones. One rarely makes love to Wagner, or would want to boogie all night to Bach.

Madonna and The Doors, for instance, are both mood stimulants, and purveyors of bottled lust, released like pheromones via stylus or wireless. Sounds carry - and they transport us. Overpowered is merely trashy dancefloor pop but is also, within its tawdry, midnight realm, sublime. Mirrorball sublime yes, but disco's sublunar (and gilt, guiltless) pleasures are also worth pursuing. Murphy's impressive vocals veer appropriately between 80s strip-club Tina Turner, and early Annie Lennox - at once Motown and robotic (cars built by machines, then). The album's production emphasises this circa 81 Depeche Mode tone, and swirls and bleeps in lovely retro fashion. Meanwhile, "science struggles to explain ... a chemical needing is there in the brain" - as she plays with po-faced lexicons of science and love. A cheeky, often ironic work, then, that also delivers bravura song after bravura song that makes one want to dance. Four out of Five specs.

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IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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