Issue 639

Down under - Glasgow's South Side

10 Sep 2009

The West End might shout louder and jangle its designer bracelets more ostentatiously, but for its many residents, the gigantic, sprawling mass of the South Side is the true heart of Glasgow. As many local historians and geographers have observed…

Part Chimp - Thriller

3 Sep 2009

Imagine a supernova collapsing into a super-gravitational black hole, sucking in whole star systems, then eating pies and doughnuts for all eternity, and that still wouldn’t be as heavy as Part Chimp. This third album from the London…

John McCracken

Exhibition from the contemporary sculptor

3 Sep 2009

The comments in the visitor’s book are a mixed bunch, and if you don’t know John McCracken’s work already then they might help you gauge in advance whether you’ll enjoy this exhibition: ‘The emperor has no clothes’. ‘I agree’. ‘Dull’. ‘A very lazy…

Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth

3 Sep 2009

Right, pay attention at the back. You boy, straighten your tie. Now, you all know why you’ve been called back for detention with Professor Dawkins and, frankly, you’ve only got yourselves to blame. He explained it all very carefully in The Selfish Gene…

Steve Kuhn Trio with Joe Lovano - Mostly Coltrane

3 Sep 2009

American pianist Steve Kuhn’s established trio with bassist David Finck and drummer Joey Baron is expanded to a quartet with the addition of saxophonist Joe Lovano for this excellent project. Kuhn was briefly part of John Coltrane’s quartet in 1961, but…

Twin Atlantic - Vivarium

3 Sep 2009

Not since the sacred Biffy Clyro has The List been this excited about a bunch of young Scottish rockers. Twin Atlantic conjure up images of early Idlewild and Foo Fighters with a post-rock twist, and one listen to mini debut offering Vivarium proves why…

Northern light - Dornoch Castle Hotel

11 Sep 2009

‘One thing we’ve noticed this year,’ says Colin Thompson, owner and manager of the Dornoch Castle Hotel in the Highland tourist haven of Dornoch, ‘is that there have been many more young couples and families staying with us.’ It seems the ‘staycation…

DVD box sets roundup - Vera Lynn, Audrey Hepburn, Monty Python

11 Sep 2009

Let’s hear it for the girls. The East Ham-born ‘Forces Sweetheart’ Vera Lynn was not really known for her work in cinema, but such is the power of nostalgia capitalism that here comes The Vera Lynn Collection (Sony) ●● featuring three patriotic wartime…

Miss March: Generation Penetration

11 Sep 2009

Crude American teen sex comedy (is there any other kind?) about a kid played by burgeoning talent Zach Cregger who awakens from a four-year coma to hear his once virginal high school sweetheart (Raquel Alessi) is now a centerfold in Playboy. So he and…

The Avengers - Series 1 & 2

11 Sep 2009

(PG) 1520min (Optimum DVD retail) What joy! Every surviving episode from all six series of the marvelous cult British television show The Avengers, originally broadcast between 1961 and 1969, are to be released on DVD over the course of the next…

Easy Ryders - Kasabian interview

10 Sep 2009

It’s taken a while, but Kasabian are finally as big as they always thought they deserved to be. Jonny Ensall chats to singer Tom Meighan and finds out that fame and critical validation have calmed one of the biggest egos in rock

Ocean Size - Twin Atlantic interview

10 Sep 2009

The popular Glasgow rockers Twin Atlantic pack an onstage punch, and have more than enough ambition to follow it up, finds Camilla Pia

Sweden's No Mind Festival - Three Miles North of Molkom

10 Sep 2009

It’s 5pm on a Monday afternoon and I’m crying. I’m sat on the grass mat floor of a big tent and I’m weeping on the shoulder of Carine, a beautiful Swedish lady I have known for only a few days. She’s crying too and our waterborne grief and guilt is…

Glass half full - 42Below cocktail world cup

10 Sep 2009

It was a battle of the ages. A dozen warriors armed with silver shakers, crushed ice and angostura bitters striving to become the finest cocktail creator in the world. The Glasgow and Edinburgh heats of the 42Below Vodka cocktail World Cup took place at…

Indiana Jones All-nighter

10 Sep 2009

Insomniac fans of the iconic adventure hero played by Harrison Ford will be happy to learn that Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade will be showing back to back in this good old fashioned…

Profile: Katie Jarvis of Fish Tank

3 Sep 2009

Name Katie Jarvis Born 22 June 1991, Dagenham, Essex Background You won’t recognise the star of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, but you won’t soon forget her. Cast with no acting experience after being spotted arguing with her boyfriend at…

Exposure: Northern Xposure

3 Sep 2009

Feted by The Culture Show, name-checked by the urban music press, respected by an army of sometime tour-mates and artists they’ve played alongside (including Dizzee Rascal, Naughty By Nature, Estelle, The Roots and Amy Winehouse) and still based in the…

Blue Moon 21st Anniversary

The UK's oldest gay café celebrates a milestone birthday

3 Sep 2009

Today Edinburgh boasts a thriving gay scene that includes bars and clubs, cafés and shops, with the area between Broughton Street and Picardy Place now popularly known as the ‘Pink Triangle’. It wasn’t always thus, however. Until the mid-80s there was a…

Versus - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 10 Sep

15 Sep 2009

Take three bands, throw ‘em on a stage before a like-minded audience, mix, match, mess and stir things up occasionally with a mid-set special guest or two, then bask in the cut n’paste none-stop, occasionally erotic cabaret that ensues. This, then, is…

Nick Hornby - Juliet, Naked

11 Sep 2009

(Viking) Never meet your heroes, we are told, they’re bound to be a disappointment. But what happens when you’re going for a run in a dead-end English seaside town and you bump into an ex-girlfriend who introduces you to your all-time, number one icon?

Dorian Gray

11 Sep 2009

Oscar Wilde’s only published novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is tricky to adapt cinematically, requiring a deft balance between its sparkling wit and the Faustian darkness at its core. As the author himself wrote, ‘man sees his own sins in Dorian, what…

Away we go

11 Sep 2009

After Revolutionary Road, director Sam Mendes takes a turn for the worse with this naff impersonation of an independent American comedy road movie written by publisher and memoirist Dave Eggers and his Mrs (Vendela Vida). Expectant parents Burt (John…

The Agent

11 Sep 2009

Four months after submitting the manuscript of his second novel Black, author Stephen Parker (Stephen Kennedy) decides to pay a visit to his literary agent Alexander Joyce (William Beck). It transpires that the latter is not a fan of the new work, which…

Amsterdamned

11 Sep 2009

(18) 105 min, Dick Maas’ 1988 Dutch thriller with elements of gory horror has the great merit of not taking itself too seriously as it bops along, and adds to that an admirable visual inventiveness about its striking locales. In it, a wetsuited…

Yellowbeard

11 Sep 2009

(12) 96min (Optimum DVD retail) On paper, Mel Damski’s 1983 comedy has everything going for it. With a cast that includes four of the Monty Python crew, as well as Marty Feldman, Spike Milligan, Peter Cook, Peter Boyle and a host of other comedy…