Features

Glasvegas - Glasvegas

1 Oct 2008

Glasvegas like to tell stories. Their self-titled debut CD is a little circular storybook, filled with distinctly Scottish tales of city living and working class heroes. Album opener ‘Flowers and Football Tops’ is a tender tribute to the murder of a…

Bloc Party - Intimacy

1 Oct 2008

Bloc Party’s 2005 debut, Silent Alarm, has been a definitive album of the noughties, laying a sonic template for spiky indie-dance with a thumping beat that’s been well observed by bands ever since. Their latest offering, Intimacy, displays many signs…

Autumn Music Preview 08 - Mogwai

18 Sep 2008

Is it true that you were asked to be in Mogwai because Stuart Braithwaite thought you were ‘a good laugh?’ I hope I’m still a good laugh; I’ve seen them smile at me a few times, even today. I’m quite an annoying person, really; I’m just very…

Helen Hunt

18 Sep 2008

It’s appropriate, given that Then She Found Me is about mothers, daughters and babies, that the film itself is actor Helen Hunt’s baby, and it’s one that has taken over a decade to be born. The film is April Epner’s story, a tale of a woman betrayed by…

Glasgay! - Tennessee Williams

18 Sep 2008

Some years ago, I attended a conference where a debate about the work of Tennessee Williams came very nearly to blows. The bone of contention involved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which the character Brick confesses an attraction to a friend that surpasses…

Autumn Music Preview 08 - Cibelle

18 Sep 2008

‘Basically Tarzan makes love to Shirley Bassey but they’re in a threesome with a hula girl,’ laughs rising electro folk starlet Cibelle from her East London abode. ‘They have been kidnapped by a UFO from the 1950s and are plonked in the jungle. Monkeys…

Autumn Music Preview 08 - Tennent’s Mutual

18 Sep 2008

Don’t worry if you’re still scratching your head at the concept of Tennent’s Mutual – the ‘experimental’ new ‘co-creative’ music initiative, which launched its first line-up earlier this month – you’re in good company, and even Tennent’s’ Senior…

Autumn Music Preview 08 - Rock’n’roll agony aunt

18 Sep 2008

Dear List, I’ve just bought the tightest keks in Europe and a vest so day glow it could send a Geiger counter wild at 50 paces. Flag me up some how now danceable indie gigs at which to flash my hot new garb. Beth, Maryhill. Flaunt your new dapper…

Autumn Music Preview 08 - Sam Sparro

18 Sep 2008

Oh dear. It’s not like the summer hasn’t been one long string of achievements for Sam Sparro, aka 25-year-old singer Sam Falson, whose ‘Black and Gold’ will be remembered as one of the sleekest dancefloor anthems of 2008, but more or less the first…

Autumn Music Preview 08 - Future music

18 Sep 2008

Limbering up well in advance for the run-up to Christmas (yes, it’s only September and we’ve already dropped the C-word), all manner of superstar acts are crawling out the woodwork to release long awaited albums. Oasis pave the way with their seventh…

Hydro Connect Festival - Glasvegas

City limits

21 Aug 2008

It’s hard to think of a band that sums up the Glasgow experience as succinctly as Glasvegas. Primal Scream and The Fratellis may have captured the hedonism, Biffy Clyro the anger and Franz Ferdinand the art, but Glasvegas are the streets of Glasgow writ…

Hydro Connect Festival - Spiritualized

Alivestock

21 Aug 2008

Technically dying twice is, needless to say, not an experience you want to relive too often. But because of its intrinsic link to Spiritualized’s sixth studio album Songs in A&E, Jason Pierce’s two times trip to the Pearly Gates and back (one for each…

Hydro Connect Festival - Eco-friendly

How green is my valley?

21 Aug 2008

Carbon neutral is a precise cocktail. It is a recipe that Geoff Ellis, director of T in the Park and creator of the Hydro Connect Festival, has learned by heart. He committed to making T in the Park carbon neutral in 2006, transforming it into the first…

Hydro Connect Festival - Acts you might not know

Fresh Connections

21 Aug 2008

Friendly Fires Their biggest influences are the Kompakt label, Carl Craig and Prince, and they’re named after a track by Blackpool post-punk confederacy Section 25. St Albans trio Friendly Fires (Ed MacFarlane, Jack Savidge and Edd Gibson) are one of…

Andrew Mueller - I Wouldn’t Start From Here

14 Aug 2008

A few weeks after 9/11, Andrew Mueller – rock journalist, travel writer and self-ascribed hack – browsed the list of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organisations released by the US State Department and wondered what it might be like to be one of those…

Live at Loch Lomond - The Sex Pistols

31 Jul 2008

‘No future, no future, no future for me.’ Those words, penned by John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) back in 1976, expressed not only Lydon’s feelings, not only his band The Sex Pistols’ attitude to life, not only the stance of the fearsome punk movement…

Festivals

5 Jun 2008

Until 8 June Leith Festival Various venues, Leith, Edinburgh, prices vary www.leithfestival.com Leith Festival showcases its trademark brew of home-grown talent and big name headliners with over 100 musical acts, 50 comedians and a dozen visual…