Claire Sawers

More for less: Clothes swapping

Swapping, swishing, switching and bitching, wardrobe editing; call it whatever you like. Gathering up a bin bag full of leftovers from your clothes rail (the too-small jeans, the dress bought in a sale that never quite ended up being ‘customised’ as…

More for less: Car boot sales

At the sound of the klaxon, hundreds of boots pop open. We’ve been in position for a good hour already, sipping coffee from a thermos and recovering from the shock of leaving bed at a very ungodly 6.30am on a Sunday. ‘Booters’, like Sunday joggers – and…

Arches Off-Site

Forget being entertained from the comfort of a velvety chair in an auditorium. Recent theatre performances in underground vaults, toilet cubicles or lifts have opened Scottish audiences’ eyes to the added value that site specific and promenade…

IndigoSilk offers spiritual retreat in East Lothian

New Moon

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…

Music highlights of 2009

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…

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

(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…

Various Artists - Alternative Christmas

(Avalanche Records) Anticipating the annual landslide of pap music that descends round about Jesus’ birthday, and inspired by the Saddle Creek Christmas album, Avalanche Records commissioned a non-rubbish collection of Christmas songs, with no child…

Fall Be Kind - Animal Collective

(Domino) This year’s Merriweather Post Pavilion left a lot of Animal Collective fans thirsty for more. All those summery, melted hooks, the warped beats and echoey vocals, not forgetting the shimmery awesomeness of ‘My Girls’ – it was no wonder it…

Oliver Postgate - Seeing Things: A Memoir

(Canongate) When Charlie Brooker delivered a heartfelt five-minute tribute to Oliver Postgate in his Screenwipe show last year, his trademark acid-tongued sarcasm went right out the window. Instead, Mr Cynical looked like he might tear up as he…

Best of a decade: Franz Ferdinand release their debut album

Setting the template for art-rock, and showcasing their ineffable cool in the process, Franz Ferdinand’s self-titled debut was a turning point for Scottish music. Claire Sawers asks Malcolm Ross of highly influential bands including Josef K and Orange…

Arctic Monkeys

Preview

On the title of a 2006 EP, these Sheffield boys asked the question Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys? They were being a bit ironic, we can only presume, considering you’d need to have been hiding in a subterranean bunker, wearing earmuffs and a thick…

Pieter Waterdrinker - The German Wedding

(Atlantic) Pieter Waterdrinker’s clever wedding farce isn’t the average boy meets girl story. Here, rich girl meets conniving boy; girl fakes pregnancy to trap boy, boy lies through teeth to get hands on her colossal inheritance – and breathtaking…

James Ellroy interview

The final part in James Ellroy’s Underworld USA trilogy comes as a hefty, rewarding brick of a book and is already being hailed as his masterpiece. Following up American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, Blood’s a Rover is a blazing, epic 650-page…

Ryan David Jahn - Acts of Violence

(Macmillan) Ryan David Jahn’s first novel takes a rusty knife and taps into the same vein that gore fans like Quentin Tarantino or Frank Miller love aiming for. Set on the mean streets of 1960s Queens – which literally run with blood after the…

Grizzly Bear

Modern American indie heroes show off their brilliant new record, Veckatimest

If the latest album from Grizzly Bear was a photo album, it would be full of those bleached-out, soft focus pictures of sunny beach holidays in the 70s, with good-looking hippies lounging around, grinning into the camera. Named after an uninhabited…

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

What really went on in the household of Frida Kahlo and her painter husband, Diego Rivera? Their stormy relationship, full of extra-marital flings and break-ups, is probably as famous as their art, and the curiosity factor grows when they sheltered Leon…

My Shit Life So Far by Frankie Boyle

Apparently, Glasgow’s cherished cheeky-man Francis Boyle showed a talent for ‘the offensive non-sequitur’ from a young age. At school, he was the nerdy, fantasy-novel reading smartarse making people laugh so hard they spat their drinks out. His…

Giant steps - Little Boots interview

Little Boots is mid-fib when her phone signal cuts out. She’s on the motorway, heading towards the Reading Festival, and she is livening up her early morning interview by colouring in a few of her answers. She was just explaining where she got her…

Music highlights in Glasgow and Edinburgh

Long before SuBo hit the scene, Scotland had ample reason to be very proud of its musical exports – and with good reason too. From the mighty Mogwai to The Jesus and Mary Chain and Cocteau Twins, via the Vaselines, Teenage Fanclub, Franz Ferdinand and…

Theatre and comedy in Edinburgh and Glasgow

The Edinburgh Festival has just packed up its bags and rolled out of town again, taking with it some of the best stand-up comedians, forward thinking theatre groups and crazy drag-jazz-mime acts that the world has to offer. But that doesn’t mean…

Film highlights 2009–2010

Goodbye summer shoes, hello autumn jumper. As the nights lengthen and the temperatures drop, you can almost smell that popcorn luring you in out of the cold to take up a comfy seat in a warm, dark cinema. As luck would have it, Edinburgh and Glasgow are…

Jimmy McGhie

Crowd-repelling tartan, bagpipe and clansmen stereotypes

Opening with his weakest material - crowd-repelling tartan, bagpipe and clansmen stereotypes, and watery anecdotes about teen drinking disasters - this English stand-up is on shaky, confusing ground until he settles into more successful, far funnier…

Tom Basden

Damn fine, damn funny show

A damn fine, damn funny show combining quirky songs on guitar and banjo (plus a couple of invented instruments) with strange slide shows, photo stories and suggestions for a new dance craze. Learn about the former if.comedy Best Newcomer's suspiciously…

Who’s Afraid of the Brothers Grimm

Modern-day take on fairytale characters

The Brothers Grimm liked to show the dark side of life in their twisted fairy tales, and have scared generations of small children silly with their stories of girl-eating wolves and cannibal women living in gingerbread houses. This family show from…

Alex and Helen's Radio Nowhere

Silly, surreal and sarcastic fun

Like a sort of sarcastic, deadpan orphan Annie, Helen Cripps and her comedy partner Alex Nash show real potential in this mini-comedy drama about a village radio show. Utterly crap phone-ins and jingles, not to mention visual gags and ‘I Saw You…