“I’ve been thinking a lot about dying recently,” says Philip Seymour Hoffman’s neurotic theatre director Caden Cotard early on. And, certainly, you could be forgiven for thinking that the odds were stacked against him. Within the first half hour of Synecdoche, New York, there are enough portents of doom lurking around you’d think you were watching a tragedy, were it all not so funny.
One bright Sunday morning, MC Taylor is driving through his patch of North Carolina, past New Hope Creek and the Eno River, over the Chatham County Line and the James Taylor Bridge in Chapel Hill, near the Haw River and the valley that he has meditated upon in song these past few years. Through apparently endless forests, Taylor's destination is Saralyn, a kind of hippy settlement just outside of Pittsboro.
Lots to get stuck into this week, though I think it’s worth drawing special attention to the superb William Tyler EP and, in the week the Pixies announce a newish album, a pointedly excellent Kim Deal track with Morgan Nagler.
