Issue 587

Good autumn TV to stay in for

4 Oct 2007

Old stories being retold is the thrust of the new season in British drama with Dickens, Kipling, Shelley and the Bible all being dipped into. EastEnders writer Sarah Phelps is let loose on Oliver Twist (BBC1, mid Dec) with Timothy Spall as Fagin and Tom…

Colette: The Secrets of the Flesh

Glasgay!

4 Oct 2007

Glasgay! 2007, Scotland’s annual celebration of queer culture, features four exciting weeks of new contemporary boutique theatre from emerging artists at the new studio space at the Q! Gallery. Opening this mini-season is a new play written and…

Rufus Wainright interview

4 Oct 2007

Late last month, Rufus Wainwright was in Los Angeles, treading the hallowed boards of the Hollywood Bowl, whooping it up as only Rufus can whoop it up. He had brought his acclaimed Judy Garland Live At Carnegie Hall show to town. Just him, an orchestra…

Kate Nash interview

4 Oct 2007

‘It’s a total headfuck.’ Kate Nash is not playing it cool. The 20-year-old pop songstress has had such a sudden rise to fame, she’s still coming to terms with her newfound celebrity status. The paparazzi followed her all summer, while Prince has…

The Decemberists interview

4 Oct 2007

Any band who name themselves after the Russian uprising of 1825 are, you feel, coming from a different place to most other heralded groups for whom the tune’s the thing. The Decemberists’ architect and songwriter Colin Meloy is not so much a tunesmith…

Copying the past

4 Oct 2007

When the Austrian actor Karl Markovics was first sent the screenplay for the Holocaust thriller The Counterfeiters by his friend the director Stefan Ruzowitzky, he spent a week pondering whether or not to accept the central role of Salomon ‘Sally…

Control

4 Oct 2007

Photographer Anton Corbijn took the defining picture of Joy Division a few months before lead singer Ian Curtis took his own life. Since then Corbijn has made a name for himself for his virtuoso music videos for Depeche Mode and U2. A neat circle is…

Black Sheep

4 Oct 2007

It was only a matter of time before an enterprising New Zealand filmmaker made a horror movie about sheep. It’s surprising it’s taken this long for one to reach the big screen, and more surprising still, given the inherent low horror factor of lamb…

Ratatouille

4 Oct 2007

(U) 110min COMEDY/ANIMATION Writer/director Brad Bird’s animated version of The Iron Giant made him the obvious candidate to follow on from John Lasseter’s innovative groundwork at Pixar, where he scored an immediate hit with The Incredibles. So even…

Day Watch

4 Oct 2007

Timur Bekmambetov’s 2004 fantasy Night Watch was grounded in dank layers of impenetrable local mysticism, made palatable by flashes of Matrix-style spectacle. A trilogy was as inevitable with Twilight Watch currently in pre-production and this…

Pop Boutique - vintage and craft community

4 Oct 2007

The latest venture from Glasgow’s hipster craft community brings together alternative therapists, masseurs, stalls punting recycled fashion, vintage clothing and hand-made jewellery from young Scottish designers, and a Vinyl Vault where you can stash…

Why Scotland's writers are talking about Glasgow's sidestreets

4 Oct 2007

Think about the route you take to work every day. Between worrying about the day ahead, checking for your train pass, sorting your hair and laughing at last night’s jokes, how aware are you, actually, of your surroundings? There are spaces like this in…

Kathy Diamond at Trouble Ladies' Night

4 Oct 2007

It’s ladies’ night and the feeling’s right, and those who have been won over by the disco-ball space-funk of Crazy P should brace themselves for celebrated proto-house throwback Kathy Diamond. Debut album Miss Diamond to You is a sparse, intricate and…

Hitlist - the best dancefloor action

4 Oct 2007

All Tore Up Live rockabilly from The Tennessee Hotshots plus killer 50s record hop to celebrate the fourth anniversary of this brilliant monthly rock’n’roll club. Happy Birthday guys. Blackfriars, Glasgow, Sat 6 Oct. Streetrave 18th Birthday Jon…

Boom Monk at the Sub Club

4 Oct 2007

A new weekly venture at The Subby promises a focus on dancefloor action over kicks, threads and haircuts with an already impressive roster of spinners, including the omnipresent Boom Monk Ben who furthers his plans for Glasgow domination alongside Ninja…

Rollerdisco at Sea and Crystal Lounge

4 Oct 2007

Get your skates at the ready folks as Rollerdisco rolls into town. If the shrieks and screams of people passing their colourful street posters is an indication of the overall excitement, then expect to see many grown-ups taking over Glasgow’s skate…

Musique Risquée at Freq

4 Oct 2007

Name Musique Risquée. Occupation Innovative record label run by Akufen and friends. What is so special about the label? That fact that it is run by Akufen is a major part of what makes Musique Risquée so great. The beauty of every Akufen record…

Peer Gynt

4 Oct 2007

For as long as people question their identity, pondering who they are and what role they play in the world, Peer Gynt will occupy a prominent place in the culture. It would, indeed become still more notable were all productions of Ibsen’s classic of…

The Winter's Tale

4 Oct 2007

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until Sat 20 Oct CLASSIC So much of Shakespeare’s work examines the disparity between the rational, ordered world, governed by laws and etiquettes long since agreed and more pre-rational, primal urges and experiences, but…

Hamlet

4 Oct 2007

The widespread belief that society is in deep moral decline is hardly unique to our age – indeed, there have been few times in history when this wasn’t a preoccupation of the public at large. What makes our society a little more unique, and renders Guy…

Nicholas Nickleby

4 Oct 2007

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Tue 9–Sat 13 Oct REVIVAL David Edgar’s celebrated adaptation of Dickens’ novel of class inequality in the early Victorian era must be an intimidating prospect for revival. This vast, sprawling, epic piece of theatre…

Female focused sex shops

4 Oct 2007

This week I’ve been spending time in sex shops. Oh, stop sniggering at the back there. I bet you’re thinking of sticky floors and flickering neon, now, aren’t you? Grubby windows and lone, sweaty-palmed gentlemen who can’t quite meet the cashier’s eye.

Hidden Palms

4 Oct 2007

Hidden Palms certainly starts with a bang with a gruesome fatality kicking proceedings off. But Kevin Williamson’s latest bash at teen drama after previous scripted glories such as Scream and Dawson’s Creek eventually fades to black with a whimper.

Alasdair Gray - art review

4 Oct 2007

To cherry pick from one’s own oeuvre sounds delightfully painful, a self indulgent task requiring sticky fingers and a good eye. It should be someone else’s enviable job, especially when the artist in question is Alasdair Gray, one of Scotland’s most…

Helen Mirren - In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures

Memoir

4 Oct 2007

‘I have a blissfully forgetful brain,’ Helen Mirren informs us in the opening paragraph of her autobiography, which hardly bodes well for a book which demands total recall. But Mirren has dredged the past up from somewhere, or someone, because In the…

Interview with By George author Wesley Stace

4 Oct 2007

Ventriloquism is creepy. From traditional vaudeville acts and their scary wooden schoolboy dummies through to Keith Harris with his hand up Orville’s jacksie, there’s something distinctly unsettling about this mostly defunct form of entertainment. So…

The best new bands to check out

4 Oct 2007

Akron/Family Signed to Michael Gira’s Young God Records in the US – one-time home of such fellow avant-folk weirdos as Devendra Banhart – New York quartet Akron/Family are probably strange enough to even freak out their own stable mates, prone as they…

The best autumn gigs in Scotland

4 Oct 2007

There are literally tons of gigs over the next couple of months but here is just a smattering of the finest examples of live rockingness to savour October The Coral Wirral-based indie sixsome make a return to the live scene. ABC, Glasgow, 20…

Teaching English in Japan

4 Oct 2007

The door slid shut with a bang and all four customers turned and stared. I squeezed my way along the narrow space between walls and stools, perched myself on an empty one and opened my phrase book. ‘Biru...’ Pause to look at book. ‘...

TV Round-up

4 Oct 2007

The state of TV comedy has been a subject of much negativity among critics, audiences and telly executives for a long, long time. Where’s the great sitcom? What happened to the solid tradition of sketch shows? Will we ever see a programme which treats…

Mind your language

4 Oct 2007

It might seem remarkable that a Booker Prize-winning novelist should be available to write for the stage in Scotland, yet hasn’t been asked to do so for well over a decade. Yet this is the situation James Kelman has found himself in, despite a general…

Skream plays Volume! at the Bongo Club

4 Oct 2007

The word ‘dubstep’ might spell out all you need to know about Skream. Much like dub reggae, the genre is borne of a heavy, trembling bassline and a slow rhythm which borders on the sinister. The ‘step’ part refers to the fact that you can still dance to…

Lethal Bizzle interview

4 Oct 2007

It’s sometimes said you know you’ve hit the big time when your song gets banned. London MC Lethal Bizzle might not have reached the notoriety of the Sex Pistols when his infamous track ‘Pow! (Forward Riddim)’ was banished from clubs across the country…

Fifi and Ally - deli and wine bar review

4 Oct 2007

The List’s restaurant reviews appear in a section of the magazine entitled ‘Life & Style’. If you’ve never fully grasped the connection then you’re advised to book a table at Fifi and Ally’s new restaurant, deli and wine bar, located in what’s vaguely…

DVD Roundup

4 Oct 2007

Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation movie homage Death Proof proved to be a damp squib, and Robert Rodriguez’s forthcoming companion flick Planet Terror isn’t much better. In America, the films were released – and flopped – as the double bill Grindhouse…

Singles & Downloads

4 Oct 2007

That’s it. I’m officially breaking up with Kate Nash. I defended ‘Foundations’ long after everyone else had gone right off it, but the bathroom sink drama of ‘Mouthwash’ (Fiction - 2 stars) with its cringily self-aware opener ‘This... is my face’, is…

Glittering Shadows

Glasgay!

4 Oct 2007

Dani Marti studied fine art in Sydney before gaining an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2006. His exhibition, Glittering Shadows, which is being presented as part of Glasgay!, is essentially a series of portraits brought to life through the media of…

Film City Glasgow takes Ibsen play to big screen

4 Oct 2007

One of the Edinburgh International Festival’s most successful productions is set to make its silver screen debut, with the help of a Glasgow film company. DollHouse, based on Henrik Ibsen’s classic text, was showcased at this year’s EIF by leading…

Rupture

4 Oct 2007

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 6 Oct NEW WORK I suppose that in a society obsessed with surveillance and security there’s bound to be a certain level of paranoia among our citizenry, and this itself can turn into neurosis. This certainly…

Feral Kingdom: Group Show

4 Oct 2007

Things are rarely as great as we remember them. But there is a nostalgic ‘vibe’ to the ‘sensory overload of international work’ currently on show at the CCA that eschews the rose tinted perspective, bringing together artists with an interest in the…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Cl@six

4 Oct 2007

Something different is on offer from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra this season as they embark upon a new series that makes concert-going incredibly easy. With a venue that could hardly be more central, a start time to coincide with the end of the…

Tord Gustavsen Trio

4 Oct 2007

The Norwegian piano trio have emerged as major contributors to the European jazz scene in the last half dozen years. Only the Esbjörn Svensson Trio have made a greater impact, and both groups share not only a strong and distinctive musical identity, but…

Lazytown Live!

4 Oct 2007

From Jamie’s School Dinners to Honey, We’re Killing The Kids, there’s no shortage of advice on how to feed our children. But perhaps the most successful TV programme to combat rising levels of childhood obesity, is aimed at the kids themselves. Created…

Manu Chao

4 Oct 2007

Manu Chao might just about be a household name in the UK, thanks in the main to 2001’s ubiquitous Próxima Estación: Esperanza, but he has not conquered the hearts and minds of Brits to the same degree as listeners in Europe and Latin America. This…

Gary Fabian Miller & Edmund de Wall

4 Oct 2007

Repetition, when performed by the human hand, will always be peppered with tiny differences. This is evidence of man’s failing against the machine, yet there is, of course, unexpected pleasure to be found in human error. It is a subject of fascination…

Hitlist - The best exhibitions

4 Oct 2007

Duncan Marquiss: The Clay Wall Marquiss has quickly become a respected and influential artist working in Scotland, and has recently received a Scottish Arts Council/Scottish Screen Artists Film and Video Award to continue working in the medium of film.

Susan and Darren

4 Oct 2007

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 17–Sat 20 Oct DANCE THEATRE Reality television may dominate the small screen, but seldom has it found its way into the theatre. And although the creators of Susan and Darren find the term ‘Reality Theatre’ too…

Nick Doody

4 Oct 2007

There’s something oddly familiar about Nick Doody’s sense of outrage with the world around him. Something marginally haunting about the way he attacks the areas of life that really do need a good kicking, whether it’s religious fundamentalism or social…

The Kingdom

4 Oct 2007

The Kingdom of the title is a reference to Saudi Arabia. A potted history in the opening credits boils down everything that’s ever happened to the country to oil or the United States. America, we are reminded, is the number one oil consumer in the world…

The Rezillos

4 Oct 2007

1 They’re a joke OK, maybe not now, 30-odd years on, but when the proto-punk-glam-new wave gang from Edinburgh formed as The Rezillos in 1976, it was meant as a bit of a lark. So much so that when their debut single, ‘Can’t Stand My Baby’ started…

Duncan Marquiss: The Clay Wall

4 Oct 2007

To see our insides on the outside disrupts our idea of self. Blood and vomit repulse us because they muddy our notions of the self/other split, and expose the fragile nature of our subjectivity. It is this state of troubled subjecthood, and most…

Hitlist - the best LGBT events

4 Oct 2007

The Bubble A beautiful love story set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Noam lives and works in a secular, prosperous Tel Aviv suburb. On military service he meets attractive Palestinian, Ashraf. The political divide is the least…

Hitlist - the best gigs

4 Oct 2007

Acoustic Ladyland Pete Wareham’s genius punk jazz quartet return with a breathtaking live album in tow. Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Mon 8 Oct. (Rock & Pop, Jazz) Oxjam A whole month of fine music in aid of Oxfam including local heroes We Were…

PJ Harvey - album review

Indie

4 Oct 2007

Over the years we have come to expect the unexpected from this Yeovil-born indie legend. However, no one could have prepared us for the radical departure of White Chalk; eleven stark, stripped down ballads inspired by Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Arvo Part…

Waiting for Groucho

4 Oct 2007

Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 17–Sat 20 Oct NEW WORK It may be hard to believe now, but the Marx brothers shocked audiences in the 1930s. As American critic Roger Ebert commented, ‘How much more anarchic the Marx brothers must have seemed in their time…

Also Released

4 Oct 2007

A Few Days in September (15) 117min ••• Intriguing, if occasionally incoherent political thriller set around 9/11 in Paris and Venice with Juliette Binoche’s French Secret Service agent helping to reunite her former American colleague Nick Nolte with…

Hitlist - the best comedy

4 Oct 2007

Raymond Mearns You may have seen the big man in Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World recently, but don’t hold that against him. Here he’s back to what he does best; shooting the breeze in front of his adoring public. Jongleurs, Edinburgh, Thu 4–Sat 6 Oct; the…

Hitlist - the best Festival book events

4 Oct 2007

Michael Palin To hook into his BBC show New Europe, the ex-Python guy will be calling in to sign copies of the book of the same name. Waterstone’s, Edinburgh, Mon 15 Oct. Alasdair Gray With Old Men in Love having just dropped onto the nation’s…

Mr Brooks

4 Oct 2007

Mr Brooks (Kevin Costner) works in a cardboard box factory, but also murders women, photographs their corpses, then feeds the pictures into a furnace in his family home’s basement while prancing around naked. Demi Moore is Tracy Atwood, the detective…

And When Did You Last See Your Father?

4 Oct 2007

(12A) 92min MEMOIR Just as he did in life – and then again later in his son’s writing – the father of poet/author Blake Morrison hogs the limelight in this adaptation of Morrison’s bestselling memoir about his relationship with his dad who died of…

Hitlist - the best theatre

4 Oct 2007

Recommended Peer Gynt Dominic Hill’s spectacular swan song at Dundee Rep retells Ibsen’s classic through Colin Teevan’s joyous, sad, and, at times, foul-mouthed adaptation. Splendidly acted and physically very impressive, this is a spellbinding…

It's a Free World . . .

4 Oct 2007

(15) 96min (Channel 4) SOCIAL REALIST DRAMA Grandfather of British social realist cinema Ken Loach and Glasgow-born screenwriter Paul Laverty’s follow up to their Cannes Palme d’Or-winning rise of the IRA thriller The Wind that Shakes the Barley is…

Michelle Monaghan

4 Oct 2007

Background Monaghan studied journalism for three years at Columbia College in Chicago. To earn pocket money she worked as a model and ditched the typewriter to work as a fashion model when she quit her studies. What’s she up to now? Having…

Classical hitlist - the best classical music

4 Oct 2007

The Scottish Ensemble: Passionate Romantics Starting their winter season with the fire of passion and romance, the SE play the luscious, but infrequently aired Chausson Concert for violin, piano and strings. A great success when first performed, its…

Targets

4 Oct 2007

One of the great qualities of Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint seasons is that they have brought in a great variety of writers to the theatre who might not otherwise have found a stage. A good example of this is the appearance of Alma Cullen’s work…

Tracer Trails First Birthday Party

4 Oct 2007

A tracer trail is the streak of light left behind by a speeding bullet. It’s also the name of the micro cottage industry who’ve promoted some of the most charming live shows in Edinburgh over the last year. To celebrate, a very special anniversary do…

Zoey Van Goey

4 Oct 2007

Tomorrow’s music today. This Issue: Zoey Van Goey I was just walking up University Avenue one day and ran into Michael John (McCarthy). He said, ‘I need a drummer.’ I said, ‘Hey, I’m a drummer.’ So we started jamming. He knew Kim (Moore), who had…

Born and Bred

4 Oct 2007

One of the key figures in the New Argentine Cinema, writer-director Pablo Trapero follows up his freewheeling road movie Familia Rodante with this poignant study of a middle-class man consumed by guilt and grief. Following a tragic accident involving…

The Royal We

4 Oct 2007

Optimo@Sub Club, Glasgow, Sun 23 Killer glam-pop songs, a look that could stop a blind charging rhino in its tracks and the backing of Glasgow indie movers and shakers from Stephen Pastel to Franz Ferdinand: The Royal We seem to have the lot.

Beneath You Spider Girls Are Everywhere

4 Oct 2007

A report from the National Consumer Council warned that by the age of ten, many children have become brand aware shoppers and labels can become a dangerous obsession. Birds of Paradise’s latest production examines this phenomenon basing their latest…

Reprise

4 Oct 2007

A relative of Lars von Trier, Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier makes his feature debut with this breezily ambitious contemporary melodrama, which chronicles the highs and lows experienced by a pair of 20something middle-class best friends, Erik…

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip

4 Oct 2007

King Tut’s, Glasgow, Wed 12 Sep Looking a bit like a geography teacher exiting a half-pipe, Scroobius Pip arrives on stage in Glasgow soon after the final whistle in Paris. ‘Four words,’ he calmly offers, ‘Scotland 1 – France 0,’ before adding…

Annie Christian and :Cryoverbillionaires

4 Oct 2007

Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 13 Oct Every face in the crowd waits expectantly for the one song from the back catalogue of Annie Christian that means the most to them, whether from their electro-infused, gloomy and melodic indie origins in the…

The Ex

4 Oct 2007

(15) 90min (Icon/Rental) COMEDY Meet the Parents meets There’s Something About Mary with a bit of Garden State thrown in for good measure just about sums up the hardly original but often amusing latest Zach Braff vehicle. Playing a husband who’s…

Isoscles

4 Oct 2007

Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 19 Sep Witnessing the self-proclaimed ‘media darlings of the Glasgow scene’, it feels impolite to burst Isosceles’ bubble when watching them is such a happy experience. Obviously paying close attention in trigonometry class…

Of Mice and Men

4 Oct 2007

(PG) 106min (Arrow/ DVD Retail) DRAMA Made only a couple of years after the John Steinbeck novel was published, this respectful 1939 adaptation by Lewis Milestone tells the now famous story of the wily and slight George (Burgess Meredith) and his…

Don Paterson - The Blind Eye

Comic aphorisms

4 Oct 2007

The Blind Eye is another delightful rendering of Dundee Don Paterson’s graceful ability to shift between the high brow and the pop cult with Game Boys and The Simpsons rubbing shoulders up against Orpheus and Auden. Never dull, often flighty, Paterson…

Hitist - the best events, talks and sport

4 Oct 2007

Illuminating Links A day of community activity commemorating the rebirth of Glasgow’s historic canal quarter. As well as kayaking, local bands and boat rides, the day culminates in a parade of spectacular floating lanterns by Scottish artist Graeme…

Michael Harvey - The Chicago Way

Crime drama

4 Oct 2007

Purported by his own press material to do ‘what Elmore Leonard did for Detroit and Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles’, Michael Harvey is unlikely to join that esteemed noir canon any time soon. Yet, with this brisk and engaging debut thriller, he’s…

Nicolas de Crecy - Glacial Period

Graphic novel

4 Oct 2007

Being branded an enfant terrible is too often faint praise for some artists but it poses no problems for Nicolas De Crécy who goes to great pains not to conform to stereotypical comic boy clichés and in doing so has produced a distinct body of work that…

Stan Tracey Orchestra

Jazz

4 Oct 2007

Stan Tracey turned 80 this year, and is still going strong. Everyone does it now, but the pianist was a pioneer in setting up his own record label, Steam, in the 1970s. ReSteamed is dedicated to re-releasing classic but long unavailable recordings…

Heath Robinson - Heath Robinson’s Helpful Solutions

Humour

4 Oct 2007

Given the relative dearth of books about the brilliant English humour cartoonist Heath Robinson, it’s heartening to see London’s Cartoon Museum publishing a heavily illustrated catalogue (with an informative essay by Simon Heneage, founder of the…

5 books about sport

4 Oct 2007

Ray Stubbs (ed) The Sports Book: The Sports, the Rules, the Tactics, the Techniques The ‘ultimate armchair companion’ to more than 250 leisure pursuits (just didn’t want to use the word ‘sport’ again there) including bobsleigh and synchronised swimming.

Daimh - album review

4 Oct 2007

The addition of Lewis-born Gaelic singer Calum Alex MacMillan to their well-established instrumental line-up has added a new dimension to the music of Dàimh, a band with roots in the West Highlands, but a personnel that includes an American (fiddler…

Alice Sebold - The Almost Moon

Suburban tale

4 Oct 2007

‘When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.’ With that opening sentence, Alice Sebold tells you all you need to know about her long-anticipated follow-up to The Lovely Bones. The subject matter – matricide and mental illness – is just as…

Document 5

4 Oct 2007

The International Human Rights Film Festival is now, amazingly, in its fifth year. This year’s programme looks set to keep up the very high standards of previous outings. Opening film The Mother’s House details, in sometimes raw and over powering detail…

Labyrinth of Passion

4 Oct 2007

(18) 94min (Tartan/DVD Retail) SCREWBALL MELODRAMA It was with this, Pedro Almodovar’s second film, made in 1982, that the brand of melodrama which has become known as ‘Almodorama’ – essentially a combination of melodrama and screwball comedy…

Fuyomi Kuono - Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

Historical manga

4 Oct 2007

Set ten years after the US dropped the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb on Hiroshima, decimating the city, these two stories follow the lives of the Hibakusha (‘explosion-affected people’). ‘The first story, ‘Town of Evening Calm’, details the descent into…

Jonathan Trigell - Cham

Mystery Thriller

4 Oct 2007

Snowsports are gnarly and the Romantic poets were rad so why not have them meet on common ground (the ski resort of Chamonix; Shelley’s Mont-Blanc) and add in a serial rapist for good measure? After winning the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2004 with Boy…

Manji

4 Oct 2007

(Yume Pictures) 90min DRAMA As strange as it is sensual, Yasuzo Masumura’s 1964 melodramatic sizzler Manji succeeds in being various things to different people. At its best, it casts a visceral eye upon the codes of a sexual culture which would…

Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson - The Boys

Superhero

4 Oct 2007

Garth Ennis, the bad boy British writer responsible for the controversial series’ Preacher and Transmetropolitan, puts the boot into the iconoclastic superhero strip sub-genre. The first six issues, collected here, introduce the titular CIA-backed…

Max Roach - album review

4 Oct 2007

The recent death of master drummer Max Roach has prompted the re-release of one of his most famous recordings, the epic Freedom Now Suite from 1960. Roach wrote the music in the midst of the civil rights campaign, and if his searing demand for justice…

Win Cowboy Junkies tickets

4 Oct 2007

Rather than contenting themselves with revisiting past glories, Cowboy Junkies, 20 years into their career, decided to return to the church in Toronto, where they recorded their groundbreaking album The Trinity Sessions in 1988, and push things forward.

Karen Dunbar

4 Oct 2007

1 She was a Girl Guide in Glasgow, and remains an Ambassador for the organisation. Other Scottish Ambassadors are Susan Hampshire, Charles Kennedy and David Steel. Can’t quite get my head round that one. 2 ABBA’s ‘Fernando’ is her favourite karaoke…

Future of the Left - album review

Rock

4 Oct 2007

When people refer to bands as ‘underrated’ it mostly means they were often too weird, too unfashionable or too good for the general populace to care about. For Mclusky, who tragically imploded in 2005, it was a case of all three and subsequent output…

Andrew Weatherall - album review

Rockabilly

4 Oct 2007

Stemming from the more natural dancefloor territory of Soma’s Sci-Fi Hi-Fi series, this new brand allows name DJs the opportunity to delve into the more eclectic areas of their collection. First up, then, is Andrew Weatherall’s rockabilly set, and it’s…

Stereophonics - album review

Indie rock

4 Oct 2007

Although rock’s snootiest critics might have it that The Stereophonics are one of the most blasphemous and superannuated crimes ever inflicted on music, it’s hard to underestimate the value of giving a fanbase what they want. Certainly, the band’s…

Jack Peñate - album review

Indie

4 Oct 2007

Despite lazy comparisons to fellow Londoners Lily Allen, Kate Nash and Jamie T, Jack Peñate sounds like nothing like his peers. This Blackheath-born boy has got soul – you can hear it in his heartfelt delivery – and when combined with incredibly…

Edwyn Collins - album review

Soul blues folk

4 Oct 2007

Although recorded prior to his near fatal double cerebral haemorrhage in 2005, Edwyn Collins’ sixth solo long player can’t help but resonate more poignantly in light of everything the ex-Orange Juice frontman has been through. At one stage he looked…

Scots film talent among Venice award-winners

4 Oct 2007

A film which made its premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival has been awarded one of the Venice Film Festival’s most prestigious awards. Dog Altogether, starring Peter Mullan and co-produced by Glasgow’s Sigma films, was awarded…