Issue 646

2010 preview: Fashion

20 Jan 2010

Fashion, with its strictly observed seasons marked by the various equinoxes of London/New York/Paris/Milan Fashion Weeks, is a cyclical beast. It likes to understand a decade as a fixed unit of time with a distinctive identity, defined sharply against…

St Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold

20 Jan 2010

(12A) 100min More naughty girl’s adventures in this revived Ealing comedy franchise starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Lily Cole and various members of Girls Aloud. This time the girl’s go in search of hidden treasure. General release…

Danny and the Champions of the World - Streets Of Our Time

8 Jan 2010

(Loose Music) It’s fitting that Oxford’s Jericho Tavern and the Farmhouse in Canterbury feature in Danny’s upcoming touring schedule. Banjos, harmonicas and pedal-steel inform you that this is goodtime folk and country territory, and you’re welcome…

Pet sounds - Frightened Rabbit interview

7 Jan 2010

With an obscene amount of expectation surrounding the March release of their third album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, Frightened Rabbit look set to be the Scottish sound of 2010. Jonny Ensall visits front man Scott Hutchison in a snowy studio outside…

2010 preview: Great expectations

7 Jan 2010

Favourite things are ending, exciting things are beginning and old things are coming back. 2010 is already shaping up to be a thrilling year and here are the 30 good reasons why we can’t wait

Alasdair Roberts, The Low Anthem and Buffy Sainte-Marie set for Celtic Connections

7 Jan 2010

With Alasdair Roberts, The Low Anthem and Buffy Sainte-Marie all featuring, the Celtic Connections festival just keeps going from strength to strength, says Ninian Dunnett

2010 preview: Courses and activities

7 Jan 2010

There are a few standard rules of healthy eating: low carb intake; five-a-day etc. But instead of advocating these shallow mantras and (supposedly) quick fixes, we’re opting for the ‘eat well’ approach. There are numerous establishments equipped to help…

First word - Natty Brooker interview

7 Jan 2010

First record you ever bought It’ll be some rubbish from the 70s. I had good exposure because I had an older brother to give me music at an early age like Pink Floyd. I was listening to that when I was like ten: Roxy Music, David Bowie and Pink Floyd.

IndigoSilk offers spiritual retreat in East Lothian

New Moon

7 Jan 2010

January is traditionally the month for decluttering. Your cupboards, your insides, your bad habits; the start of the year is a perfect time to fling out the old and welcome in the new. But what about getting rid of bad juju? Detoxing your emotional…

Ryan Crosson interview

Detroit rock city

7 Jan 2010

Among techno devotees of a certain age, it’s a real brand of quality when a DJ tells you they’re from Detroit. In the case of Ryan Crosson, though, there are one or two qualifiers. ‘Well, I actually grew up in a suburb north-east of Detroit,’ he says…

Public Image Limited

7 Jan 2010

‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ Those were John Lydon’s last words as Johnny Rotten at the close of The Sex Pistols’ chaotic 1978 San Francisco swansong. It was a sentiment echoed this September when the first live dates in 17 years by…

New York state of mind

7 Jan 2010

Nestled at the heart of Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City is a duality. Leading with the tagline, ‘Lethem does Manhattan’, the Brooklynite’s latest owes much to a slight, yet significant switch in New York perspective. ‘Manhattan has a quality of being far…

Back to the future - Toby Paterson interview

7 Jan 2010

It’s amazing what you find when you’re clearing up old debris. While rummaging through materials for his forthcoming retrospective alongside new work at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, former Beck’s Futures winner Toby Paterson discovered a Super 8…

Return of the King

7 Jan 2010

When it comes to living legends of the theatre world, they don’t come much more distinguished than Peter Brook. Having helmed his first play in London in 1943, the hugely influential experimental theatre and film director rose to prominence in the 1950s…

Blipfoto, Channel 4, NTS and Scottish Screen launch photography competition

7 Jan 2010

With the New Year’s resolutions now in full swing, daily photo blogging community Blipfoto has teamed up with Channel 4, the National Theatre of Scotland and Scottish Screen to create a unique international photography competition. With followers and…

Music highlights of 2009

7 Jan 2010

Best bit of something for nothing When Spotify let UK users sign up for free this February, the floodgates were open for hours of random music searches. (Beatles, Fugazi, Metallica, no; Battles, Can, Phantom Band, yes) Non-stop, customised radio – and…

The Yummy Fur

7 Jan 2010

‘There’s no rhyme or reason to this,’ says Jackie McKeown of his first notable band’s forthcoming reunion. ‘There’s no tie-in or media event window we’re trying to sneak into. We’re getting back together for a week, it’s purely for our own amusement and…

Stewart Francis hits the Stand

7 Jan 2010

Stewart Francis used to open his set with, ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t heard of you either.’ Between hosting schlocky gameshow You Bet Your Ass in his native Canada, then moving to Spain, his memorable one-liners were an itinerant treat on the UK circuit to…

Tracy Beaker Returns

7 Jan 2010

Anyone who tunes in to CBBC from time to time might not know it, but it’s five years since the last new episode of the show featuring the abandoned and shouty Tracy Beaker. But that constant loop of archive 20-minute snapshots of life within the…

Barbera Ehrenreich - Smile or Die

7 Jan 2010

(Granta) What’s wrong with positive thinking? Anyone who’s been forced on a team bonding day or made to sit through the platitudinous drivel of a ‘motivational guru’ by their employers will tell you exactly what’s wrong with it. And that culture of…

Mark Thomas set for gig at The Stand

7 Jan 2010

1 Mark Thomas was born in South London, to a midwife mother and a self-employed builder dad who was at one point a lay preacher at Clapham Junction’s Nazarene Church. Thomas declared himself to be an atheist at the age of 12. 2 While he was trying…

Restaurant review - pickledgreen

7 Jan 2010

Rose Street is a right hotch-potch when it comes to its eating and drinking scene: from bland chain restaurants to venerable old boozers, unadorned Japanese noodle-bars to buzzy seafood bistros. Into this unlikely setting, and fired with the optimism…

Curtain up

7 Jan 2010

The National Theatre of Scotland has launched its programme for 2010, with highlights including a new piece of work by the team behind worldwide hit Black Watch. In line with the company’s ethos of working with a variety of art forms, in February and…

Food culture: What to expect in 2010

7 Jan 2010

The new vegetarianism Nigel Slater Tender and Simon Hopkinson The Vegetarian Option made the Christmas bestseller lists with books giving much more respect to vegetables. It’s not about going completely veggie, but eating less meat, of better…

Five health books

7 Jan 2010

Susan Hepburn Hypnodiet Subtitled ‘Lose Weight, Feel Fabulous the Stress-Free Way’ this claims to help reprogramme your mind into making the right choices about grub. Should you care, Lily Allen is an advocate. Piatkus. Paul McKenna I Can…

Five Christmas books

7 Jan 2010

Augusten Burroughs You Better Not Cry: True Stories for Christmas A twisted collection of Yuletide tales in which the face of a stuffed Santa is eaten off and a tenement is constructed entirely from gingerbread. Atlantic. Loek Koopmans The…

William Styron - The Suicide Run

7 Jan 2010

(Jonathan Cape) On first glance at the cover image depicting a uniformed soldier speeding across a field, The Suicide Run looks like your average war story. But this is no ordinary tale; we should have guessed really, as William Styron is no…

Alex Horne - Wordwatching

7 Jan 2010

(Virgin Books) Alex Horne is a true logophile. He’s a lover of words, especially rare words, like ‘logophile’, that seldom make it into dictionaries. Or ‘bollo’, ‘pratdigger’ and ‘mental safari’, his own recent coinages that the comedian has been…

David Hughes - Walking the Dog

7 Jan 2010

(Jonathan Cape) David Hughes is an illustrator, graphic designer and artist whose work is pitched somewhere in the hinterland between the poignantly funny line scribbles of artist David Shrigley and the acerbic splashes of Pink Floyd collaborator…

Tiffany Murray - Diamond Star Halo

7 Jan 2010

(Portobello) Inspired by her own upbringing at Monmouthshire’s Rockfield Studios – the world’s first residential recording studio whose alumni include Queen, Iggy Pop and Oasis – Tiffany Murray’s second novel is part dysfunctional family drama, part…

Shut Up And Dance

7 Jan 2010

It may seem like a strange booking for Fortified at first glance but duo Philip ‘PJ’ Johnson and Carl ‘Smiley’ Hyman, aka Shut Up And Dance, were one fo the first acts to fuse Jamican dancehall with UK rave beats – they even hit the charts with ‘Raving…

Alex Smoke

7 Jan 2010

City Vibes launches in Edinburgh with this one-off Boxing Day special of minimal house and techno as the Lithuanian DJ collective are joined by special guest Alex Smoke. Signed to Soma and his own Hum+Haw record label, Smoke is the master of complex…

Ajamu X: Familiar Strangers

7 Jan 2010

Artist Ajamu X has been working with Black and Minority Ethnic communities as well as members of the LGBTI community for over 20 years, exploring the ways that these marginalised communities operate outside the formal mechanisms of support. His new…

Jason Cook

7 Jan 2010

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as Geordie stand-up delivers the kind of honest-to-goodness material that makes you laugh out loud one minute then get all emotional and gooey the next. The discovery of the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe…

It’s A Wonderful Life

7 Jan 2010

Christmas would not be Christmas without Frank Capra’s sentimental classic in which James Stewart’s small-town banker (yes, a good hearted one) learns the hard way that his life has worth. All those crooks who ruined the economy ought to be locked in a…

Vivian Girls

7 Jan 2010

The second abum from this trio, ironically named Everything Goes Wrong was described by one music mag as ‘sickeningly good’ when it came out in the autumn. The VGs bring indie pop at its raw and edgy best, but with a moodier feel that cites Nirvana and…

10 for 2010: Divorce

7 Jan 2010

Noise, beautiful noise is the speciality of Glasgow’s Divorce. Smarter than you’re average metal band, there’s hints of the brilliance of Lightning Bolt or Liars in the fivesome’s 10” EP, released last year on Optimo Music. Plus they deliver an awesome…

You Me At Six - Hold Me Down

7 Jan 2010

(Virgin) Chances are, if you liked YMA6’s first effort Take Off Your Colours, you’ll find plenty to like here. Spiky pop-punk riffs, catchy choruses and guest vocalists from The Blackout and Kids in Glass Houses ensure there’s nothing to disappoint…

The Road - John Hillcoat interview

6 Jan 2010

John Hillcoat says his favourite road traverses the Simpson Desert in the outback in Australia. Not such a surprise given that he was born in Queensland in 1961 and that both his previous directing efforts – prison drama Ghosts... of the Civil Dead…

Comanechi - Akiko Matsuura interview

6 Jan 2010

Dalston boy/girl duo Comanechi have been slogging away at the national indie circuit for four years, with only obscurity to reward them. That is, until vocalist and drummer Akiko Matsuura’s other group The Big Pink (she’s their drummer) took off in…

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

6 Jan 2010

(18) 113 min Michael Winterbottom protégé Mat Whitecross (The Road to Guantanamo, The Shock Doctrine) shows a previously unseen penchant for the spectacular in this amusing biopic of Ian Drury. Whitecross sets up the story as a vaudeville act fronted…

Anguish With Posie

6 Jan 2010

Fans of spoken word night DiScomBoBuLate will be no stranger to Ian Macpherson’s ability to wax lyrical. A creative powerhouse for writers, actors, comics and directors, the night helped provide the inspiration for Macpherson’s upcoming play, Anguish…

What You See is Where You’re At

6 Jan 2010

‘Everything is going to be alright,’ announces the neon installation by former Turner Prize winner Martin Creed as you approach the grand entrance to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It’s a fitting curtain raiser to the re-hang of the…

Profile: Wire

6 Jan 2010

Occupation Multi-genre club night that welcomes a different Scottish band to DJ each month all under the watchful gaze of Craig Jamieson (Modern Lovers). So what’s the music policy? ‘It doesn’t really have a music policy, it is after all…

Labels of love: Song, By Toad Records

6 Jan 2010

When and why did you launch the label? Basically, we got plastered with Broken Records and promised them that if they didn’t get signed by March 2008 then we’d release their album. They did get signed [to indie institute 4AD], but by then the idea had…

Teenage Lust

6 Jan 2010

‘The way I see it,’ says Teenage Lust promoter Richard Scott, ‘if you’re going out clubbing, you’re generally stuck with three options. You either go to an indie night, where you’re going to hear that Smiths song four times and meet a lot of assholes.

Rod Jones and The Birthday Suit

6 Jan 2010

When Idlewild guitarist Rod Jones was piecing together his debut solo album A Sentimental Education, there was one simple test to decide which songs to use himself and which ones to pass on to Roddy Woomble and co: did they feel so personal that only…

We Are . . . Electric

6 Jan 2010

In terms of clubbing, We Are … Electric has ruled the midweek party scene in the capital for the last few years. ‘It’s a punk-funk electro-disco,’ says WAE mastermind and resident DJ Gary Mac. ‘Essentially it’s an electronic-body-music club that crosses…

The Sound of Music

6 Jan 2010

For decades, the swansong of legendary musical writing partnership Rodgers and Hammerstein was associated with the 1965 Academy Award-winning film adaptation, in particular the iconic image of Julie Andrews spinning around on a Salzburg…

Thao With The Get Down Stay Down - Know Better, Learn Faster

6 Jan 2010

(Kill Rock Stars) Someone once described Thao Nguyen as ‘like Sufjan Steven’s cute little sister’. She could also probably pass for a bouncier, chirpier cousin of Cat Power, or a more playful, joke-cracking relative of Natasha ‘Bat For Lashes…