Latest reviews & features

There is a place for good food in a pub setting - just don't call it a gastropub

Tom Kitchin among those involved in new Edinburgh pub openings The Scran & Scallie and The Vintage

We all love a good pub. Not only are they familiar social spaces but in Scotland we venerate them as stimulating, democratic venues of inexpensive conviviality. When you eat in a pub you eat grub. It’s seen to be elitist – undemocratic, even – to wish…

Five highlights from Arika: Episode 5 - Hidden in Plain Sight

(M)IMOSA/Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church. Inspired by the era-defining 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, which shone a spotlight on New York’s underground drag queen culture, this dance performance by experimental choreographer…

Et Tu Brute??? - Henry's Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Wed 20 Mar 2013

Avant-garage hardcore supergroup peddling intense and wilfully no-fi sound

Edinburgh scene super-groups don't come along every day, yet the arrival of Et tu Brute??? opening a four-band House of Crust bill headlined by Californian punks, Fracas, is a tantalising prospect. Initiated by Edinburgh School For the Deaf/St Judes…

Steve Mason - King Tut’s, Glasgow, Tue 9 Apr 2013

Heady atmosphere evidence of deep personal and musical connection

The beered-up battalion swarming the venue are celebrating like a home game victory. Why wouldn’t they be on this Tuesday? (Insert obvious Thatcher comment here.) But it’s Mason’s danceable, wry mid-tempo indie that's the primary source of the crowd’s…

Picture gallery - Animation Sketchbooks by Laura Heit

The art book showcases the in-progress ideas from some of the world's most inventive animators

Creating any piece of animation requires a huge amount of work, most of which never finds its way before an audience. Academic and artist Laura Heit aims to change this by presenting the sketches of over 50 contemporary animation luminaries in her new…

Fuaim is Solas - Douglas Robertson Photography, Edinburgh, Thu 4 Apr 2013

Film and live music combine at event from Screen Bandita collective

With the location shrouded in mystery until the last minute, those who sought out film collective Screen Bandita’s intriguing Fuaim is Solas joined a winsome crowd on stools and scatter cushions. Hypnotic mastery from singer/songwriter Gareth Dickson…

Billy Liar

John Schlesinger’s classic British New Wave comedy has a warm and light touch

Not many classic films have also enjoyed success as a book, play, sitcom and musical. It’s testament to the timelessness of Keith Waterhouse’s source novel, about a 19-year-old lad who ‘can’t say two words to anybody without telling a lie’, that the…

Top 5 ex-wrestlers

The Rock, Hulk Hogan and Chris Jericho are among those who have attempted non-wrestling careers

With the dust from Wrestlemania XXIX still settling, and wrestler-turned-writer Mick Foley coming to Edinburgh on April 24 to try out his new persona as a stand-up story teller, The List looks at the top 5 wrestlers who tired of being beaten up for a…

Still Corners - Strange Pleasures

A record of great pop and immense beauty destined to possess your summer

(Sub Pop) A pleasure for certain, but not an unexpected one. As much as it owed to the much-missed Broadcast, Still Corners’ 2011 debut Creatures of an Hour was such an auspiciously pretty arrival that it’s little wonder to find the London-based…

Phoenix - Bankrupt!

Post-breakthrough return is brash, unapologetic, full of pomp and self-assured tunes

(Atlantic) Bankrupt! begins with the brilliant bravura of ‘Entertainment’, a blitzkrieg of uptempo synths and guitars. It’s the kind of epic, contemporary new wave swagger that goes down just swell when performed in front of huge summer festival crowds.

William Tyler - Impossible Truth

A shimmering, uplifting psych-folk album influenced by 70s singer-songwriters

(Merge) With gilded stints as backing guitarist to Bonnie Prince Billy, Silver Jews, Candi Staton and Lambchop under his low-slung belt, you might be inclined to wonder if prodigious fingerpicker William Tyler had the motivation, energy or indeed time…

Thirty Pounds of Bone - I Cannot Sing You Here, But for Songs of Where

Album exploring location and identity via travelling odes and upbeat celtic folk knees-ups

(Armellodie) As you might suspect of an itinerant folk hoarder who takes his grisly nom de plume from the average weight of a dead man’s bones, Johnny Lamb appreciates the gravity of his songs. His third album, I Cannot Sing You Here... frames his…

Eagleowl - This Silent Year

Languorous chamber-pop full of silence, distortion and exquisite humour

(Fence) Here are a few clues that this is a rare and unhurried debut album: it starts with a beat, and then the beat slows down; the instruments come in one by one; the opening words are ‘some other time’. The album’s centrepiece is in fact its…

Neon Neon - Praxis Makes Perfect

Gruff Rhys concept album based on rogue leftist Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

(LEX) Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys has long loved turning strange biography into pop music that’s stranger still. With the Furries, he referenced Howard Marks, Che Guevara and Einstein’s parents, and on the 2008 Mercury-nominated Stainless…

Bong / Pyramidion - Untitled

Beautifully executed split from the yin and yang of contemporary psychedelic rock

(At War With False Noise) Set controls for the heart of the Tyrant Sun, courtesy of Newcastle’s high lords of psychedelic sludge Bong and Glasgow/Edinburgh’s spry, mesmerising space-rock ensemble Pyramidion. Distinctly different in approach and…

Magic Eye / Le Thug / Zed Penguin / Plastic Animals - Split 12”

Four-band snapshot of Scotland’s more gloriously, and at times wilfully off-piste musical treats

(Song, by Toad) Eclectica abounds on this four-band snapshot compendium of dispatches from some of the country’s more gloriously, and at times wilfully off-piste musical treats. Each provide two songs for this limited edition vinyl, alongside more of…

Scottish National Jazz Orchestra - In the Spirit of Duke

Live recording an impeccably performed, if conservative, affair

(Spartacus) Compared to William Parker’s Essence of Ellington, an inspired avant-garde reinvention of Sir Duke, this live recording by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra is a rather conservative affair. Led by Tommy Smith, the SNJO’s arrangements are…

Death Shanties - Nunatak

Free jazz outfit featuring Alex Neilson, Sybren Renema and Lucy Stein

(Self-released CD-R) When Alex Neilson launched his folk-rock project Trembling Bells, he spoke of having fallen out of love with improvisation, preferring to focus on songwriting. Five years on, the drummer fervently reconnects with free music…

Bombino - Nomad

Young guitar hero from Niger soups up his sound with classic rock flourishes

(Nonesuch) Bombino, the young guitar hero from Niger, has become a breakthrough star of Tuareg desert blues. Here, he’s hooked up with producer Dan Auerbach of garage blues duo The Black Keys, who soups up his sound with classic rock flourishes and a…

Jerusalem In My Heart - Mo7it Al-Mo7it

Gauzy enigma of echo-drenched Arabic vocals, twanging buzuk, and grainy, over-saturated electronics

(Constellation) Best known as the home of apocalyptic post-rockers Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Montreal’s Constellation label also presents an intriguing strand of contemporary Arabic-influenced music, including Sam Shalabi’s Land of Kush project and…

Record Store Day 2013 - But if the world has moved on, why should we care?

Recorded music is about more than objects, but we should still value the culture that surrounds it

Record Store Day 2013 is approaching, but the world has changed - and what if your local record store isn’t worth supporting? Hamish Brown argues that music is more than objects, so let’s celebrate recorded music in all its forms and the culture that…

I’m So Excited

Pedro Almodóvar returns to the brassy style of his earlier films

The new comedy from beloved Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar begins with a message assuring us that the film ‘is fiction and fantasy, and has no connection to reality’; a provocation to assume the opposite is true if ever there was one. But while there…

Interview: Robert Newman on latest novel The Trade Secret

Writer also known for stand-up comedy publishes new novel set in 17th Century

Writer Robert Newman – who is perhaps better known for his stand-up comedy - will see his latest novel The Trade Secret hit bookstores this week. Published in hardback by Cargo, and also available in ebook format by Cargo Crate, Newman’s eagerly awaited…

First and last: AL Kennedy interview

Author and comedian on Leo Sayer, chestnut soup and funeral conga lines

First record you ever bought. I can’t recall. Maybe something by Queen. Probably something embarrassing like Showaddywaddy, or Slade. Last extravagant purchase you made. A new suit. They lend confidence. And prevent troubling choices. First film you…

Interview: Terre Thaemlitz to perform at Arika Episode 4/5

Politically-engaged DJ and producer set for gender-themed Arika event in Glasgow

There’s a story Terre Thaemlitz, aka DJ Sprinkles, tells in a footnote to a recent address she gave at Tate Modern. Now published on Thaemlitz’ website, it recalls her DJ-ing a deep house set at the closing party of a queer and transgender cultural…