Doug Johnstone

Norman Blake and Euros Childs take Jonny on tour

Teenage Fanclub and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci members line up UK gigs

Indie fans of a certain vintage might once have daydreamed about what a collaboration between one of Teenage Fanclub and one of their Welsh equivalents Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci might’ve sounded like. Well wonder no more, because Norman Blake and Euros…

Tony Black - Truth Lies Bleeding

Fifth outing for Scottish crime writers’ Scottish crime writer

(Preface) Tony Black has a reputation as the Scottish crime writers’ Scottish crime writer, garnering praise from contemporaries to match impressive sales figures. This fifth outing demonstrates plenty of reasons why that’s the case, with fantastic…

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Post-rock legend's seventh album ventures further into experimental territory

(Rock Action) Now on their seventh album, Mogwai could be forgiven for taking their feet off the pedal. They haven’t. But there is a feeling on Hardcore …, despite the occasional foray into the monolithic riffage of their early days, that the band…

Anne Holt sets new novel 1222 in isolated hotel - interview

The bestselling Norwegian crime writer on her latest book

An isolated hotel is the setting for the new novel by bestselling Norwegian crime writer Anne Holt. Doug Johnstone hears of a place where DNA can’t touch Sometimes it feels as if developments in forensic science have taken all the fun out of crime…

Surrounded - Oppenheimer & Woodstock

(One Little Indian) On their last album, 2008’s The Nautilus Years, Swedish five-piece Surrounded were a virtual facsimile of Mark Linkous’s Sparklehorse. With their musical inspiration sadly no longer with us, the band here have eschewed the…

Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz

(Asthmatic Kitty) An endlessly inventive songwriter and musician, Sufjan Stevens here abandons for the most part the nu-folk banjo-and-piano sound that first got him noticed, replacing it with a mix of offbeat glitchy electronica and wide-eyed studio…

The Walkmen - Lisbon

(Bella Union) This sixth album from New York-based scattershot indie troubadours The Walkmen is something of a consolidation exercise, taking the many disparate sounds that have influenced their back catalogue and combining them into something which…

Weezer - Hurley

(Epitaph) Weezer have been underachieving for most of their career, reaching a nadir with last year’s risible Raditude. A recent switch from Geffen to an indie label has injected a modicum of energy into Hurley, but it’s still a long way from the…

Susan Hill - The Small Hand

(Profile) Susan Hill has been writing precise and chilling books in the rather unfashionable genre of the ghost story for decades, so she more or less has it down to a fine art by now. This short and typically gothic tale demonstrates the refinement…

Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

(One Four Seven Records) It’s been a ridiculously long nine-year hiatus for this seminal Yank punk-pop outfit, the band members concentrating on running the pivotal Merge Records instead (and releasing a who’s who of American indie into the bargain).

Afrirampo - We Are Uchu No Ko

(Rock Action) When even the press release refers to them as a ‘lunatic girl duo’, it’s safe to assume we’re not in 4Music territory, and so it transpires on this double-disc release from the recently disbanded Japanese pair. There is an unhinged…

Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

(Young Gods) ‘Uncompromising’ would be the best way to sum up legendary post-punk experimentalists Swans, a band who once had the reputation for being the loudest in the history of music. Michael Gera is back after a fourteen-year hiatus with a…

Jackie Kay: Finding Family

Red Dust Road is a remarkable account full of passion and humour

The ideas of belonging and identity are at the very core of what it means to be human, but those themes become much more complex when the person in question is adopted. The adopted person’s search for their biological parents is a familiar narrative…

Albanian Ismael Kadare's newest: The Accident

The author obliquely examines his homeland's paradocixal nature

Albania’s foremost literary writer and winner of the Man Booker International Prize has spent his career examining his homeland’s paradoxical nature. This latest offering from Ismael Kadare does the same but more obliquely, with a central premise that’s…

Louise Dean - The Old Romantic

(Fig Tree) There’s plenty of mileage to be had, both in terms of pathos and comedy, from the subject matter of death. Sadly, this tepid novel fails to capitalise on its dark premise, being neither moving nor funny, despite trying for both. Ken is an…

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul

(EMI) The recent suicide of Mark Linkous, aka. Sparklehorse imbues this posthumous release with oppressive waves of melancholy, but this often-inspired record – heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure – rises above such considerations to stand…

Tim Thornton - Death of an Unsigned Band

(Jonathan Cape) The internal wranglings of unsigned indie bands is fertile territory for dramatic tension, as well as self-aware comedy, and so it is with this second novel from Tim Thornton, a veteran of plenty contract-free groups himself…

Harvey Milk - A Small Turn of Human Kindness

(Hydra Head) Welcome to the crawling, heavy, doom-laden and utterly convincing world of Harvey Milk, experimental noisemongers of gargantuan riffage, bowel-loosening bass and primal, apocalyptic howls. It’s elemental, monumental stuff, but if that…

Kid Canaveral - Shouting at Wildlife

Indie guitar pop is out of favour with music industry fashionistas at the moment, but Scottish boy-girl quartet Kid Canaveral could be the band to bring it back with a bang. This debut is packed with singalong melodies, frisky jangles and a real sense…

Ozzy Osbourne - Scream

Rock/ Metal Ozzy Osbourne Scream (Columbia) ‘I’m a rock star,’ growls Ozzy at the start of this, his tenth solo album. Well, not really, Ozzy, you’re primarily a global reality television celebrity, something you’re actually better at these days.

Pernice Brothers - Goodbye, Killer

(One Little Indian) There’s a lot to like about this sixth album from the veteran Massachusetts indie outfit, but somehow it never quite coheres into a standout record. The mood is generally strummy, melancholic and mature, somewhere between the…

Teenage Fanclub - Shadows

(PeMa) The Fannies’ 20-year career has been a gradual progression from joyously stomping Doc boots to comfy, worn-in slippers, and this eighth studio album is a further refinement of their jangly, harmony-laden craft. The fire in their bellies is…

Jackie Kay - Red Dust Road

(Picador) Those familiar with Jackie Kay’s poetry and fiction will know it exudes a uniquely uplifting and rib-tickling form of optimism, and that general ambience also pervades this wonderfully engaging memoir. Kay was born in Edinburgh to a…

Cibelle - Las Venus Resort Palace Hotel

(Crammed Discs) Any album containing a cover of Kermit the Frog’s ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ is probably not taking itself entirely seriously. This nuts concept album from a Brazilian Tropicalia star is packed with bizarre fun, as musical magpie…

Phosphorescent - Here’s To Taking It Easy

(Dead Oceans) Up until now, Phosphorescent has been the solo work of Alabama-born, NYC resident Matthew Houck. But from the opening horn parps of ‘It’s Hard To Be Humble (When You’re From Alabama)’ it’s clear this is a more expansive, full-band blow…