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British musician Ben Watt is starting the next phase of his varied career with his first solo record in thirty years, Hendra (Unmade Road, April 29). The cofounder of Everything But the Girl with then-partner, now-wife Tracey Thorn, Watt has also been a DJ, promoter, record label owner (Buzzin’ Fly, Strange Feeling), internet radio host, and author of Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, which detailed his battle with Churg-Strauss syndrome. The new album, recorded with guitarist Bernard Butler, features such tracks as “Forget,” “Spring,” “Golden Ratio,” “Matthew Arnold’s Field,” and “The Heart Is a Mirror.” On his website, Watt describes Hendra, which was made following the death of his sister, as “‘a folk-rock album in an electronic age.’ Ten songs. Unsentimental. Impressionistic. Songs about close family and strangers, resilience and hope. All set in vivid landscapes where the outside comes inside and clings to the stories.” Watt and Butler will be at Joe’s Pub on April 1 and Rough Trade on April 2, highlighting songs from the new record. In addition, Watt’s second memoir, Romany and Tom, which focuses on his mother and father as well as himself, will be released by Bloomsbury in the U.S. on June 10. “We only ever see the second half of our parents’ lives — the downhill part,” Watt writes in the book’s preface. We are now fortunate to see what is essentially the third (or fourth? fifth?) part of Watt’s career, which appears to be far from going downhill.
Loosely based on a Noël Coward play that was recently made into a film starring Colin Firth, Jessica Biel, and Kristin Scott Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock’s Easy Virtue is another of the Master of Suspense’s cleverly told melodramas, a risqué tale of a woman unfairly placed in a lurid situation. Isabel Jeans stars as Larita Filton, a loving wife whose husband, Aubrey (Franklin Dyall), has commissioned her portrait by painter Claude Robson (Eric Bransby Williams). Just as Claude makes a play for Larita, she fights him off and Aubrey walks in. He misinterprets the scene, shots ring out, the artist is dead, and Claude files for a highly publicized divorce case in which Larita is found guilty of misconduct. Trying to put her notorious past behind her, she heads for the Mediterranean, where she meets John Whittaker (Robin Irvine), a wealthy mama’s boy who falls instantly in love with her and brings her back to his parents’ country estate. But once there, Whittaker’s nasty mother (Violet Farebrother) and conniving sisters (Dacia Deane and Dorothy Boyd) do everything they can to ruin the relationship, seeking to uncover Larita’s history while also attempting to put her son back together with longtime family friend Sarah (Enid Stamp Taylor). Easy Virtue, which features yet another Hitchcock blonde, is a gripping film about honesty, reputation, individuality, and character as an innocent woman is forced to face undeserved consequences in the superficial world of high society. Hitchcock, who makes his cameo holding a walking stick, gliding past Larita while she sits by a tennis court, includes several wonderful touches involving circles and ovals, from a close-up of a judge’s wig to a shot through a tennis racket’s strings to a dining room dominated by a group of elongated, haloed saints on one wall. Easy Virtue is also one of Hitchcock’s dourest silent melodramas, lacking any comic relief as a wronged woman desperately tries to right her life. Easy Virtue is screening on March 4 at 6:45 as part of the Film Forum series “The Hitchcock 9,” with live piano music by Steve Sterner. “The Hitchcock 9” continues through May 4 with Blackmail, The Pleasure Garden, Champagne, The Farmer’s Wife, The Ring, Downhill, and The Manxman (all featuring Sterner on piano), in conjunction with “The Complete Hitchcock,” which runs through March 27 and includes all of Sir Alfred’s feature narratives. In addition, the Paley Center will be hosting 
