Issue 570

Malcolm Middleton - album review

Malcolm Middleton

27 Feb 2007

INDIE (Full Time Hobby) Ex-Arab Strapper Malcolm Middleton posted his intent with the glorious 2005 album Into the Woods, and this remarkable follow-up cements his place as one of the best songwriters in the country. There is an anthemic pop…

North Cregg - album review

North Cregg

27 Feb 2007

FOLK (Greentrax) The Irish band’s second release on Greentrax offers a characteristic mix of lively, infectious tunes and wistful songs, the latter courtesy of another new young singer and fiddle player off the Irish production line, Claire-Anne…

Air - album review

Air

27 Feb 2007

POP (Virgin) It is easy to forget that Air started off as a truly saucy electropop band; ‘Sexy Boy’ and ‘Kelly Watch the Stars’ making hearts flutter and feet twitch in a beautiful geek love kind of way. After spending several albums trying really…

End, The - album review

The End

27 Feb 2007

METAL (Relapse) 2006 wasn’t the most exciting for metal. So it’s a relief that The End have come out of nowhere (well, Canada) to restore the faith and push the genre into new forms. Gone are the tonsil-tearing screams and mathcore chaos of…

Sly & Robbie - album review

Sly & Robbie

27 Feb 2007

REGGAE (Trojan) Needless to say this is one loose and laid back journey across the Jamaican rhythm section’s catalytic influence, from crafting winners for the Channel One label through the rise of the rockers and rub-a-dub sounds. This chapter…

Grinderman - album review

Grinderman

27 Feb 2007

ROCK (Mute) Grinderman sounds like Nick Cave and three of his fellow Bad Seeds locked themselves in a dank basement for a week and beat into shape 11 songs in a series of dirty blues jam sessions. Actually, that’s pretty much what happened when…

Sub-Opt - record review

Sub-Opt

27 Feb 2007

FUNK-ROCK (www.sub-opt.com) With an overt sense of fun and adventure these ascending Edinburgers possess all the attitude and contrary sweetness of the likes of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and come out sounding not unlike Californicators. Musically…

Luvely

27 Feb 2007

We all love Luvely and now the bangin’ house night reaches the grand age of 11 years young, which is the best excuse for a party we’ve heard in years. As famed for their theme nights as their dirty, funky house, it’s time to dig deep in the dressing up…

Salon Boris

27 Feb 2007

Hailing from Russia by way of Glasgow, icy electro types Salon Boris are resident at this night of electronica Expect cutting edge sounds, new wave electro with a raw punk heart and throbbing dancefloor beats (check out their album I am the Drug for…

Ghost Rider

As the new movie roars onto the big screen,

26 Feb 2007

COMICS IIt’s 1972. Evel Knievel was the most famous man in America; films like Blacula, Deep Throat and Deliverance were topping the box-office; events like Watergate and Vietnam meant there was a darker edge in the air. Marvel were running stories…

ACME Workers Club

THE SOCIAL ALTERNATIVE

26 Feb 2007

When ‘social directors’ Auntie Joan and Uncle David decided to create a regular event that put fun to the fore and would be easy on the pocket they eventually settled on an after work happening that reflected the humble appeal of the long forgotten…

Iain Banks

Family Affairs

26 Feb 2007

Is it possible, I wonder, to detect a softening of attitude as the years advance for Iain Banks, the one-time enfant terrible of the Scottish literary establishment? Perhaps, but only in the ways which don’t quite seem to matter so much as you get…

Coco’s Chocolate School

School of choc

26 Feb 2007

Members of the public aren’t usually allowed inside Rebecca Knights-Kerswell’s chocolate kitchen, although they occasionally press their noses up against the windows to watch her at work. Everyone is interested in the process of making chocolate, which…

Edinburgh Moonwalk

26 Feb 2007

Anyone out for a quiet stroll across the Meadows in Edinburgh might be in for a surprise, as 8000 women (and a few men) from all over Scotland descend on them, wearing decorated bras and pink baseball caps. This is the Edinburgh MoonWalk - not a genteel…

Goldie

Classic Grand, Glasgow, Fri 2 Mar; Studio 24, Edin

26 Feb 2007

DRUM & BASS Just maybe, if Goldie keeps his head down for long enough, we’ll come to forget that he was binned early on from a series of Celebrity Big Brother and no doubt coined it in as ‘gangster of the moment’ in EastEnders for a while. Perhaps…

Laura & June Hird

Dear Laura (Canongate)

26 Feb 2007

COLLECTED LETTERS Not a writer who has been known for her schmaltz, Laura Hird might have shaken up a few of her fans for a second when they heard that a book of letters penned by June, her late mum, was the next publication after last year’s raw…

*Hitlist

Hitlist

26 Feb 2007

Christopher Brookmyre & Denise Mina Two of our finest crime scribes go head to head at the latest Bridge Readings with the author of A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Pencil and All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye chewing the felonious fat with…

*Hitlist

Hitlist

26 Feb 2007

Acid Prolapse Monox and Numbers team up for a full-on acid assault.

Andy Martin

Stealing The Wave (Bloomsbury)

26 Feb 2007

SPORT HISTORY For a surfer, life’s major battle is mainly between board and wave, body and gravity. But often it’s one surfer against another. In the 1980s the biggest surfing battle was between two men: Mark Foo and Ken Bradshaw. Foo was young…

Hitlist - The best events, talk and sport

26 Feb 2007

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation Hugely detailed exhibition of over 300 artworks and life-size moving installations, charting the way the Toy Story makers revolutionised modern animation. Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, until Mon 28 May. See feature

Stewart/Wiseman/Brigg

Cathy’s Book (Bloomsbury)

26 Feb 2007

TEEN DRAMA It’s not enough to just write a book these days, it would seem. With this quirky little multimedia project, a melange of peripheral paraphernalia is wielded to keep our involvement levels unusually high in this identity saga/crime mystery…

Michael Muhammad Knight

The Taqwacores (Telegram)

26 Feb 2007

RELIGIOUS DRAMA Originally printed on a photocopier and distributed from the back of Michael Muhammad Knight’s car in mosque parking lots, The Taqwacores charts the attempts by Yusef, a punk and convert to Islam at 16, to live entirely by Muslim…

Mohsin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Hamish Hamilton)

26 Feb 2007

SOCIAL DRAMA Mohsin Hamid’s spare, haunting second novel takes the form of a one-sided conversation struck up between a bearded Pakistani man and an American tourist in a restaurant in Lahore. Changez was once top of his graduating class at Princeton…