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2 Oct 2008
With its military overstretched, natural resources running dry and markets fluctuating wildly, America faces the biggest presidential election in generations this November. You might scoff that a country which gave George ‘Dubya’ Bush two terms in…
Nothing draws a groan of predictably quite like finding a new Oasis shortplayer on top of the singles pile, so we’ll keep this brief. ‘Shock of the Lightning’ (Big Brother) •• is another bit of drony fluff Noel Gallagher probably found down the back of…
LIVE INDIE ROCK WEBCAST This live webcast with The Dykeenies is a promo for the Red Bull Bedroom Jam website, which invites up and coming bands to post footage of gigs in their own bedrooms online. Except, erm, we’re not in a bedroom, but rather…
18 Sep 2008
Don’t worry if you’re still scratching your head at the concept of Tennent’s Mutual – the ‘experimental’ new ‘co-creative’ music initiative, which launched its first line-up earlier this month – you’re in good company, and even Tennent’s’ Senior…
FAMILY DRAMA With its groaningly slow pace and scriptural debate-heavy prose, labouring through Marilynne Robinson’s thick-set third novel – a companion piece of sorts to 2005’s Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead – is an experience recommended only to the…
21 Aug 2008
Technically dying twice is, needless to say, not an experience you want to relive too often. But because of its intrinsic link to Spiritualized’s sixth studio album Songs in A&E, Jason Pierce’s two times trip to the Pearly Gates and back (one for each…
‘Not a bad start,’ comes Londoner Sadie Jones’ modest response when she’s reminded of the remarkable success of her debut novel The Outcast – a nominee for the Orange Prize for Fiction and one of 2008’s best sellers to date. ‘I’m just in a constant…
14 Aug 2008
Edinburgh-based GP-turned-adventurer and travel writer Gavin Francis’ next book – charting an epic motorcycle schlep from Orkney to Sydney – will finish on an ironic endnote. Having survived the mean streets of Beirut and New Delhi on its journey, his…
7 Aug 2008
If Helen Walsh’s Betty Trask Award-winning debut Brass came from the guts, its follow-up Once Upon a Time in England comes from the heart. Set in the author’s native Warrington, the book charts two decades of English/Malaysian family the Fitzgeralds…
22 Jul 2008
Hurricane Katrina not only devastated a whole city, it nearly destroyed a legendary jazz culture. Malcolm Jack hears how Edinburgh has opened its arms to the top New Orleans players.
In times of both war and peace, Haris Pasovic has created crucial theatre. Malcolm Jack speaks to him about taking a story set in 1970s Brixton and plunging it into contemporary Sarajevo.
Ex-Eurythmics leader raises the often neglected issue of HIV and AIDS. With a comfortable haul of 80 million album sales to her name so far, Annie Lennox has recently turned her voice from pop music to hollering in support of a far nobler cause: that of…
17 Jul 2008
Aside from almost daily radio outings for ‘Love Shack’ and ‘Rock Lobster’, new wave pioneers turned camp party pop stars The B-52s have been all but unheard of since their last album Good Stuff came out in 1992. The Athens Georgia quartet have been…
Camera Obscura guitarist Kenny McKeeve gives Malcolm Jack some top tips for taking on a summer festival and winning. Usually we must bring salt and vinegar crisps – there never seems to be enough of them around. And a couple of extra bottles of wine…
SHORT STORIES (Harvill Secker) Knockemstiff, Ohio, is so deprived it doesn’t register on maps anymore. This debut set of interconnected shorts about its people by former resident Donald Ray Pollock is unlikely to make anyone want to find the town…
Connect offers no end of culinary goodness, as Malcolm Jack discovers when he peruses the festival's extensive larder and speaks to the producers of every food delight you could possibly imagine, from oysters to sticky toffee pudding. Judging by…
As if all that music and gorgeous food wasn’t enough, they go and put on a whole wealth of other delectable nuggets for your delectation, as Malcolm Jack discovers As that posh woman off the Ferrero Rocher ad might say: at this Hydro Connect…
GARAGE ROCK Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Thu 10 Jul Sweaty, shoebox-sized spaces like the Captain’s Rest are just the sort of venues Glasgow needs more of, and rough’n’ready, in yer face, garage rock trios like Austin’s White Denim are just the sort…
3 Jul 2008
The last many people will remember hearing of Steve Mason was when, in April 2006, he prompted much head scratching amongst the press by cancelling a nationwide tour with his post-Beta Band project King Biscuit Time, before leaving a curiously oblique…
19 Jun 2008
Beer. It might as well be the first word here, since there’s no getting away from it in Munich, even outwith the world-renowned annual piss-up of Oktoberfest. Löwenbräu, Hofbräu, Augustiner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Spaten, Fraziskaner – you name them…
ACID POP Sick Note @ Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 26 Jun Sunlight, oxygen, small blue pens from Argos . . . it’s true that all the very best things in life are gratis. Add to that list the selection of no cost delights that is Duty Free, Cabaret…
COP NOIR (Bantam) Charlie Newton makes no effort to dodge cop noir’s inherent clichés in his debut, but rather uses them to lure the reader into something grimmer than they could have anticipated. There’s naturally a hard-as-nails Chicago detective at…
‘You know how you learn from bad experiences?’ muses Paul Ranter in relation to Hey You Get Off My Pavement!, café/bar/record store Mono’s sun-drenched inaugural festival of 2006. ‘Well everything went perfectly that year, so we didn’t learn anything.
5 Jun 2008
INDIE POP Oran Mor, Glasgow, Thu 15 May Modern pop is rarely as smart, affecting or plain funny as when it’s in the hands of Jens Lekman. Nor as succinct. ‘No encore, 11 songs, all hits,’ proclaimed the Swede at the start of his set, tongue lodged…
22 May 2008
‘I’m trying to fix pop,’ proclaims Santi White (aka Santogold) with an impish laugh. ‘It’s broken.’ If anyone is qualified to take their toolkit to the genre, it probably is White. A music industry veteran of over ten years, she’s seen the business…
INDIE Nice’n’Sleazy, Glasgow, Fri 2 May Frightened Rabbit, Fleet Foxes, Sam Sparro – there’s a veritable woodland of new bands and artists out there at the moment, so what sets New Yorkers White Rabbits apart? The fact that they subscribe to the…
8 May 2008
ROCK Is This Music? @ 13th Note, Glasgow, Thu 17 Apr Back in early 2005, few people were shouting about Mother and the Addicts, ditto De Rosa in early 2006, yet both of these bands went on to promptly release cracking debut albums through Chemikal…
24 Apr 2008
It might be set in a curtain-twitching west coast suburban American town rife with neighbourly intrigue and extra marital affairs, but Janelle Brown’s debut novel is no Desperate Housewives. In All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, far darker things go on…
10 Apr 2008
A rag tag band of five Reading songwriters press-ganged into service as a functioning indie pop group after a gig down their local, Pete and the Pirates are presently leading a stealthy campaign to become your new favourite band. Melodic, upbeat…
COUNTRY/ROCK (Rounder) Like all the best Americans, Kathleen Edwards is actually Canadian, although you’d be hard pressed to tell on the basis of her third studio album. Her punchy-yet-tender, world-weary-yet-impassioned take on country and rock could…
13 Mar 2008
Helen Walsh has lived a little. At 13, while her classmates in Warrington were flicking through Smash Hits, she was swept up in the early 90s euphoria of acid house and ecstasy. At 16, as most girls her age sat their GCSEs, she was hooked on cocaine and…
COUNTRY ROCK Barrowland, Glasgow, Thu 28 Feb It’s fairly rare to see a support act who will easily outlast a headliner, and even if the main attraction on this occasion was Newton Faulkner – an artist with all the staying power (and strangely the…
ELECTRO PUNK (Half Machine) If you thought Krautrock had moved to New York and taken up permanent residence in James Murphy’s basement, you’re (almost) entirely mistaken. Defending German incumbency over lengthy electronic tripouts, ritual synth abuse…
SURF POST-PUNK POP (EMI) ‘I look at you and I’m ready to pump,’ declares the very first lyric of Funplex. Smutty, puerile, silly or all of the above, it makes at least one thing instantly clear: The B-52s are back. It’s 16 years since Athens…
With many high street retailers currently stocking just about every item of attire an aspiring indie hipster could dream of – from neon-splattered hoodies to trousers crotch-wrenchingly tight enough to do more for family planning than an entire social…
14 Feb 2008
REVIEW CELTIC CONNECTIONS Classic Grand, Glasgow, Thu 24 Jan The title of this show was a bold one, but proved Scottish music is nothing if not diverse. Trio Zoey Van Goey traded instruments more frequently than a Govan pawnshop while spinning their…
31 Jan 2008
The Outcast (Chatto & Windus) Sadie Jones’ postwar tale of one boy’s cruel alienation from family and community might be able to beat a handful of Valium as a downer, yet there’s still something achingly compelling about it that keeps the pages…
17 Jan 2008
INDIE Strathclyde University Students’ Union, Glasgow, Thu 24 Jan The Futureheads could quite easily have ended up on the rock’n’roll scrap heap when the angular impulse in British guitar music faded circa 2006. In the two years prior, the…
HISTORY (Atlantic) Conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, creationism and the like are all notions consigned largely to the outer reaches of societal thinking, right? Wrong, according to Damian Thompson. Having spread – largely care of the…
ELECTRO-POP/PUNK/ROCK Stereo, Glasgow, Fri 21 Dec ‘Twas a few nights before Christmas, and all sorts were stirring. How to Swim firstly – an eight-piece who have been bigged up by this publication plenty of times for their wailing…
FOLK Concrete Campfire@the Observatory, Glasgow, Sat 5 Jan Less a band than an ‘entity’, as they put it, Potential Strangers is essentially a fluid, five musicians-strong vehicle for the tunes of Harris-born singer-songwriter Dòl Eoin, an affable…
ECLECTIC (End of the Road) It’s a rare thing to have to turn the term ‘genre defying’ against a band, but in the case of Boston octet The Young Republic there’s little alternative. Although rich in melody, texture and skilled playing (all eight…
4 Jan 2008
PSYCHEDELIC POP Out to Play @ Brel, Glasgow, Thu 29 Nov Naming your band after the San Franciscan centre of all things hippie hardly leaves a lot to the imagination as a reference point, so the fact that Haight Ashbury resemble the sort of folks…
SHOW TUNES (Polydor) There can have been few camper shows in living memory: 21st century gay icon Rufus Wainwright, performing a carbon recreation of ultimate 20th century gay icon Judy Garland’s legendary 1961 Carnegie Hall concert. Staged six times…
13 Dec 2007
Scottish culture has shone in 2007, and so have Scottish stars. Throughout the year we have been working tirelessly to spot the hottest talent out there. We also invited you to nominate the people, places and events you think have made the greatest…
Except for booze, baked beans and the occasional book, can you remember what you spent your student loan on? Probably not. Ed Pybus is hardly likely to forget however: his spirited indie label SL Records was launched using funds from a student loan…
29 Nov 2007
Stereo, Glasgow, Tue 13 Nov Shiny new things galore at this gig: two (very different) Glasgow bands, both fresh out of the can, play in a venue so virginal it still resembles a building site in places. Post-punk noise-mongers The Gummy Stumps…
Tomorrow’s music today. This Issue: Isosceles Band names don’t come much more angular than Isosceles, but math rockers this Glasgow quartet certainly aren’t. You’ll much sooner find them slaving over a hot cowbell or a full blooded Hammond organ than…
Choirs are not cool, right? Wrong. Glasgow 50-strong vocal ensemble The Parsonage have played at festivals including Indian Summer and Connect, contributed to Echo and the Bunnymen’s forthcoming new album and recorded an EP for release on Optimo’s…
15 Nov 2007
Over the last couple of years, it has sometimes seemed like the end of an era for Scottish indie music. Starting with the amicable split of the seminal Delgados, and, more recently, the demise of Falkirk’s Arab Strap and underrated noiseniks…
1 Nov 2007
ECLECTICA FOUND This Mess We Keep Reshaping (Fence) While far from being an actual mess, there’s certainly not a huge amount of form to Edinburgh hip hop/folk experimentalists Found’s second album. Ever the slaves to the right side of their brains…
Originally started as an ‘art college project’ (ie ‘skive’) in late 2006, Futuristic Retro Champions have sprouted arms, legs, wonky keyboards and a barrowload of bona fide electro-indie-pop crackers over the last year. The Edinburgh six-piece have also…
18 Oct 2007
LO-FI The Hand of God (Fence) Named after Maradona’s infamous goal against England in the ‘86 World Cup, East Lothian lo-fi shamblers Northern Alliance’s fourth LP might seem like a jingoistic poke southwards, but in substance it’s an inward looking…
SOCIAL HANDBOOK Cooler, Faster, More Expensive: The Return of the Sloane Ranger (Atlantic) Conspicuous for their vast, inherited wealth, public school education and cushy jobs in the City, Sloanes (aka ‘rahs’, ‘yahs’ or ‘upper class twats’…
INDIE POP The Royal We (Geographic) Brevity characterises Glasgow indie darlings The Royal We’s first (and final) album to the letter: it lasts just 15 minutes, contains only eight tracks, and roughly marks the band’s end, the sextet having already…
4 Oct 2007
Although recorded prior to his near fatal double cerebral haemorrhage in 2005, Edwyn Collins’ sixth solo long player can’t help but resonate more poignantly in light of everything the ex-Orange Juice frontman has been through. At one stage he looked…
Optimo@Sub Club, Glasgow, Sun 23 Killer glam-pop songs, a look that could stop a blind charging rhino in its tracks and the backing of Glasgow indie movers and shakers from Stephen Pastel to Franz Ferdinand: The Royal We seem to have the lot.
20 Sep 2007
INDIE PUNK Between the broad north-east English accents, quirky vocal harmonies and tunes possessing more angles than a job lot of geometry sets, Chester-Le-Street quintet Catweasels will be constantly dogged by comparisons with The Futureheads. The…
INDIE POP The Winchester Club@The Flying Duck, Glasgow, Sat 8 Sep The performance space (calling it a stage would be a stretch of the imagination) at Glasgow’s newest nightspot The Flying Duck is obviously far from ideal – not least because of…
6 Sep 2007
LIFESTYLE TALE Your response to this book by London lifestyle journalist and publisher Neil Boorman is likely to correspond directly with your attachment to the very thing it challenges: brands, and the emotionally loaded consumerist machinery that…
23 Aug 2007
Fire Engines ‘I’m a big Fire Engines Fan. They were a big influence on us: fifteen minute sets, very intense. ‘Get Up and Use Me’ – their single. ‘Candy Skin’, ‘Meat Whiplash’, ‘Sympathetic Anaesthetic’, you know? Big fan of the Fire Engines…
In light of the lucrative offers put his way over the years to pen a full sequel to his 1987 classic The Commitments, it’s so very Roddy Doyle that he instead gave one of the book’s major characters – manager Jimmy Rabbite – a rebirth in the pages of a…
Without the right tunes, a buff set of pipes are about as much use as a pair of boxfresh Nikes to a landmine victim. For proof, check out London’s latest supposedly hot-prospect Bobby Kray ’s ‘Silly Games’ (V2) ** – four minutes of rangy vocal…
16 Aug 2007
A pair of lovely lady sounds open this issue’s whip through the short players, which has a strange males vs females dynamic incidentally. ‘Mr Blue’ (Tallgrass) *** by Catherine Feeny ambles along in a loved-up winsome haze, its head lost in a cloud of…
9 Aug 2007
ART PUNK Mother and the Addicts’ debut album burst, in a flurry of white funk and eyeliner, from out of nowhere in 2005 – and subsequently left more people scratching their heads than dipping into their pockets. Successfully bedded in now, the…
Nose plugs and a pair of Marigolds were required to sift through this week’s singles bag, such was its predominantly stinky content. The main offender being Shop Boyz’ gang banging rotter ‘Party Like a Rockstar’ (Universal) lllll, the fastest selling…
FUTURISTIC DRAMA Considering the recent spate of unseasonable weather and car bombs, Sarah Hall’s third novel can’t help but have a certain resonance. Set in a not too distant future, where the combination of rising tides and an ongoing fight against…
1 Aug 2007
Australian six-piece AiH have consistently shown themselves to be a cheery bunch, their heady blend of twee indie, effervescent arrangements and handclaps by the dozen producing fantastically jubilant results across two albums to date.
Plaudits from Bono are to credibility what salt is to a slug, although his favourite Dublin ‘sleazy-funk’ outfit Republic of Loose’s windin’n’grindin’ stinker ‘Break!’ (Loaded Dice) is actually rubbish enough without the old Il Papa-bothering one’s kiss…
Drawn fully from the diverse and brilliant stable at Domino records, the soundtrack to David Mackenzie’s forthcoming Scot flick Hallam Foe could hardly go far wrong.
19 Jul 2007
To the casual observer, burning £20,000 worth of expensive designer gear to cinders in a central London park might not seem like the wisest of actions. For lifestyle journalist Neil Boorman, this ritualistic, highly public destruction of his worldly…
16 Jul 2007
EXPERIMENTAL DIRTY PROJECTORS King Tut’s, Glasgow, Sat 30 Jun Brooklyn-based Yale dropout Dave Longstreth is an odd fellow. The fact that he once wrote an entire concept album based around the life of Eagles singer/drummer Don Henley…
INDIE NORTHERN ALLIANCE 13th Note, Glasgow, Thu 19 Jul; Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Sun 22 Jul They’ve released just three albums in five years (two of them mini ones), and as yet never played a full band live show. What’s been the hold…
3 Jul 2007
INDIE FOLK Glasgow-based Icelandic singer/songwriter Bela’s debut album Ticket for a Train didn’t enjoy anything like the response its fantastically warm, woozy folk pop merited upon release a year ago. Watching him pick away contently at an acoustic…
18 Jun 2007
ELECTRONIC Music has previously always struggled to keep pace with Paul Haig. His 80s angular Edinburgh post-punk outfit Josef K were way ahead of their time, influencing numerous contemporary bands (most notably Franz Ferdinand). His last few solo…
INDIE FOLK As a collaborator with everyone from Arab Strap to Idlewild and Malcolm Middleton, Jenny Reeve’s myriad musical talents have graced many a record to fine effect over the last few years. Now at last stepping into the limelight herself with…
POST ROCK It’s near impossible for Scottish bands to do instrumental post-rock without being labelled Mogwai copyists in some shape or form. Perhaps realising that when they first started experimenting with discordant, swelling guitar noise, and…
FAMILY DRAMA Evidently written with one eye on the literary prizes, Edward Docx’s second novel is an ambitious, cultured affair, but one dragged down by the weight of its own ideas. Set in St Petersburg, London, New York and Paris, it rings with…
21 May 2007
INDIE (Picture: Au Revoir Simone) There’s no denying that all-female New York trio Anna, Erika and Heather aka Au Revoir Simone have a thing or two going for them. They’re all tall, thin and exceptionally pretty for one thing. More importantly…
The fact that Isle of Skye Music Festival scooped the ‘Most Fan Friendly’ gong at the 2006 UK Festival Awards is testimony alone to its quality. Consider that the event took such a prize in spite of being one of the most soggy, windswept outdoor…
7 May 2007
Having almost been driven to throw himself out of a moving vehicle by all girl London trio the Duloks prior to this gig (long story), it’s your List correspondent’s duty to inform you that the band do come with a health warning. They’re crude. They’re…
INDIE
LEGAL CASE
23 Apr 2007
Given that they’ve released just one album in the last decade, a movie soundtrack at that, The Pastels could justifiably be accused of resting on their laurels. Perhaps doing things differently is precisely what’s kept Glasgow’s original enigmatic indie…
9 Apr 2007
HORROR (Photo: © Shami Gee) You have to wonder, upon reading Jonny Glynn’s debut novel, whether his friends can still look at him in quite the same way. After all, within just 45 pages we’re already treated to a detailed description of two…
27 Mar 2007
ACOUSTIC POP For all its wild weather and curious inhabitants, you probably couldn’t help but make resplendently weird music if you grew up strumming a guitar on Orkney. Half Cousin’s 2004 album The Function Room provided some proof of that; main man…
DISCO PUNK Art School inebriates Shitdisco have been the life, soul and soundtrack of parties everywhere from Glasgow to Bangok in the last year. How well their turbo-charged disco punk would transfer to record was always in question, though, and…
WEIRDNESS Run by two-time travelling futuristic Japanese robot space blokes, it’ll come as little surprise to hear that Club Crazi Afro Sushi Fry Up is a very silly place. Patrons are greeted with free Space Raiders. A man plays sitar in the…
13 Mar 2007
AVANT PUNK !!! don’t like to make things easy for themselves. Choosing a name that’s not just unpronounceable (‘Chk Chk Chk’ is the most popular method) but also un-Googleable (try it), was always likely to cause complications for one thing. Then…
INDIE Already inundated most nights of the week, cynics might say that Glasgow needs a new band night like it does another rainy day. Peepshow, refreshingly, is a showcase with a difference, however. On the last Wednesday of every month at The…
INDIE Never underestimate beery lads in big jackets. While it’s easy to believe that they’re all still swaggering to the sound of the Happy Mondays, Stone Roses et al, many are (if this sell out crowd was anything to go by at least) entirely…
12 Mar 2007
SOCIAL DRAMA Acclaimed Australian author Emily Maguire’s latest book is nothing if not topical. It centres on Luke, a young Pastor of the Christian Revolution in Sydney, full of God and staunchly opposed to the sexual health clinic across the street.
28 Feb 2007
INDIE You can be sure that music’s changing when a frontman manages to raise a euphoric howl with such classic rock’n’roll banter as ‘right, does everyone here have a computer?’ - a phrase that sums up how the likes of this pair of bands manage to…
13 Feb 2007
POST ROCK (Bella Union) Girls’n’stuff bothereth not Texas post-rock rangers Explosions in the Sky. On their fourth long player, they have infinitely more important thematic fish to fry. Take opener, ‘The Birth and Death of the Day’ for instance…
An almighty Single of the Fortnight has this reviewer’s eager digits already itching to rattle off their glowing textual praise. But first credit where it’s due to some of the largely stiff short-playing competition coming your way in the next 14 days…
12 Feb 2007
ROCK Instead of nipping over to the UK to establish a reputation that can be built on back home, as so many American bands do, you sense California-based quartet Cold War Kids won’t need any such fix to win over their country folk. Having skimmed…
INDIE Edinburgh four-piece My Tiny Robots have been knocking about the live scene in the capital for some years now, and it’s been time well spent. They’ve built up a formidable clutch of songs that could well see them finally get the break they…
ADVENTURE TALE There are not many authors who can say their first novel had such an effect on Nicole Kidman she begged to be allowed to star in a movie adaptation. That’s the impact Steven Hall’s debut is having. Already hailed as an ‘instant…
29 Jan 2007
PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA The title of this book alone should have you assuming the brace position, particularly in light of award-winning Japanese author Natsuo Kirino’s reputation for driving right to the slippery limits of the human psyche. Long and…
EXPOSURE Guardians of all things loud, strange and just plain unique in modern music, Glasgow independent record label Rock Action - set up and maintained by post-rock demigods Mogwai - have launched their own Singles Club. Label manager Craig…
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