Suzanne Black

Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

18 Sep 2008

GOTHIC TALE With so many books on all our to-read lists, brevity is a virtue. The Gargoyle flouts this with great success. Framed by the sceptical voice of a severely burned car crash victim, events swing from medieval times to the present, from…

Glasvegas - Glasvegas

4 Sep 2008

‘The Best New Band in Britain’ says the NME. And for once they have thrown their fickle arrow of instant fame at a worthy target. In 2006, former footballer James Allan assembled a motley crew to give form to his ‘poems’ – disjointed conglomerations of…

Glasgow Pride

Out and proud

21 Aug 2008

It’s that time of year again. Dig out the cowboy hats, the feather boas and anything whatsoever with a rainbow on it. Oh, and dig out your conviction about your sexuality because this is one of the best days of the year to make a statement, celebrate…

Janey Godley

Family tale from straight-talking Glaswegian

21 Aug 2008

The title of this show, Domestic Godley, doesn’t refer to the cooking, cleaning, dinner parties ‘domestic goddess’ stereotype. Janey Godley’s candid stand-up is specific to her east end of Glasgow upbringing and subsequently eventful life. With a…

Miniprofile: Jay Brannan

Sound sugar-coated acoustica with crystal clear swooping vocals and an edge of stark sexuality.

21 Aug 2008

Was it terrifying releasing your first album Goddamned yourself? It seems like the natural order of things to me because I’m such a weird person with very specific ideas and opinions and beliefs. It’s a lot of work, for sure. I’m like, ‘do I get to…

And the Devil May Drag You Under

21 Aug 2008

Diabolical cabaret in which the audience must vote each act into Heaven or Hell based on the purity of said act's soul. Host and hostess the Devil and Miss Mephisto are satanically delightful with their songs and skits, but some of the acts (which range…

Junk Band Story: Uh?!

21 Aug 2008

'Uh?!' is right. Billed as music, comedy and martial arts, in reality it's a bewildering musical comedy played on instruments assembled from junk (think Stomp with a glue gun). The show is cobbled together from comedic skits, tantalisingly brief…

Kei Miller

Jamaican voice aching to be heard

21 Aug 2008

In a famous sketch by Bill Hicks, the great comedian is stumped by the question, ‘What are you reading for?’ The enquiry – and its correlative, ‘What are you writing for?’ – are deceptively simple. For Kei Miller, the Jamaican-born poet, novelist and…

Raymond Mearns

21 Aug 2008

Mearns is a formidable character, an apoplectic hurricane of bluster as he details his exploits on the cruise ship comedy circuit, family life and other unrelated topics. The gathering rage whips up momentum but the punchlines often fail to land. He's…

Saving Tania's Privates

21 Aug 2008

This show should come with a warning. Not because of the references to lesbian sex and liberal attitudes to everything else - being open to that should go without saying. But because one woman (Tania Katan) exposes her survival of breast cancer (twice)…

Secret Agents

21 Aug 2008

This tale of a terrorist incident posits, refutes and amends aspects along the way in a risky attempt at meta-drama. When it works, the structure builds like a house of cards in a comment on the construction of truth, but plot holes and an obvious…

Umbrage Swain

New Romantic heroes stand and deliver

21 Aug 2008

The New Romantic Gentleman Thief (looking uncannily like Eddie Izzard dressed as Adam Ant), his Cure-loving sidekick and Tina Fray (an excellently faux innocent Millie Reeves) swash and buckle in battle with evil baddie The Darkness (no, not Justin…

Gavin & Gavin

14 Aug 2008

The two bickering Gavin sisters pillage their Irish heritage to offer up domestic skits and 'aren't the Oirish funny' jokes while lamely trying to undercut their nice-girl personas with misjudged vulgarity bombs. When they reach an anecdote about…

Greg Fleet

14 Aug 2008

He's Aussie, ex-Neighbours stock and a reformed drug abuser but none of these facts are important. Eschewing high concepts, he moulds observations about Edinburgh, confessional soul-baring and deconstructions of controversial humour into anecdotes that…

Ismo Leikola

14 Aug 2008

The Finnish stand-up has the stage persona of a deceptively cuddly, long-haired faux-naïf, which makes his irreverent and slightly risqué material seem even more shocking. Despite starting well with some observational belters, his nonchalant style…

Motherland

Narratives of soldiers’ mothers who bear the burden of war

14 Aug 2008

Motherland is a piece of verbatim theatre, which gives voice to the testaments of women from the north east of England who had children serving in the armed forces in war zones. With the least amount of staging, the individual voices, which are studied…

Pig Island - Simply Fancy

14 Aug 2008

These Australian players call themselves Pig Island, but they may as well hail from Mars. Their absurd adventure pits witless non-hero Brian, his spunky daughter and possibly robotic son against stock fantasy characters and a manta ray. Each line…

Sideshow: The Weirdest Show on Earth

Electric cabaret with a dark side

14 Aug 2008

This isn’t any cabaret show. This is a circus on acid (or perhaps the poppers that the beautiful freak crowds are into nowadays). This is a late-night step into the realm of nightmares for a dastardly conglomeration of comedic, titillating…

Desert storm

7 Aug 2008

‘The disease in question had, as its main deleterious effect, the fact that it renders its victims perfectly unable to write anything but 500-page books about the civil war in Sudan.’ The ‘victim’ in this case is US author Dave Eggers, but the…

Brendon Burns

Award winner is back and still pretty angry

7 Aug 2008

What do you get when you take an aggressive Aussie comic with a history of psychosis, substance abuse and vitriolic rants about every sector of humanity and award him the if.comeddie main award? Gladiator costumes, Schwarzenegger impressions and a…

Alex Horne

7 Aug 2008

The classically educated birdwatcher is on about neologistic invention (that's new words) this year. Imagine a self-deprecating hybrid of Stephen Fry and Dave Gorman holding court on his favourite subjects with some clever (if sometimes distracting…

Apes Like Me

7 Aug 2008

It's tough playing to a tiny crowd but most stand-ups are capable of going it alone without audience participation to lean on. Kate Smurthwaite excavates the seams of evolution, creationism and the close human/chimp relationship to create another…

Circus Oz: 30th Birthday Bash

Acrobatics with an Aussie accent

7 Aug 2008

Characters in colourful costumes exchange banter with the audience, the live band plays a constant stream of Gogol Bordello-like polka and one act involves a dramatic take on Frankenstein's monster. This isn't your average circus. Far more theatrical…

Jonny Woo: International Woman of Mr ‘E’

Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show

7 Aug 2008

Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show. Jonny Woo, drag queen darling of the London alt.queer scene appears onstage beneath sequined butterfly make-up and various costumes. He knows that the act of wearing a mask is designed to reveal rather than…

Lucky You

Carl Hiaasen novel translated into slick madcap romp

7 Aug 2008

If redneck losers Chub and Bode are going to fund their confederate militia they need JoLayne's winning Lotto ticket. But nature-loving JoLayne (who happens to be black) needs it to save local woodland. The church needs her help to legitimise their…

Matt Green

7 Aug 2008

Observational notes and familial anecdotes on the theme of childishness are all bound up in a neat structure that ties the strands together and tucks the ends in. Genial and self-aware, Green's manner and material is wholly inoffensive, which means…

Teddy Bares

Making the leap with cheek and charm

7 Aug 2008

Stand-up comedy is an act of onanism. The trick is to make the audience feel like their satisfaction is the aim and Teddy observes this rule well in his rambling discourse on his travails in love. The Dunfermline-born 28-year-old with pinchable cheeks…

The Gadabouts

7 Aug 2008

There was a young sketch troupe called Gadabouts / With three handsome gents, or thereabouts / When scene-ending got hairy / They used an anthropomorphised cherry / They'll go far with this comedy, I've no doubts. Knockabout, laugh-a-minute sketches…

The Judgment of Paris

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

Brigitte Bardot, Marlene Dietrich, Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe: icons each and every one of them, all famed for their beauty. For the Fringe debut of Brooklyn dance team Company XIV, artistic director Austin McCormick plans to lay on a paean to the…

Profile - Gus Van Sant

24 Apr 2008

PROFILE Suzanne Black considers the work of one of Queer cinema’s great auteurs as two of his key films are released on DVD Gus Van Sant is one of a handful of directors to have crossed from arthouse credibility to mainstream pennies and back again.

The Xcerts

24 Apr 2008

INDIE Barfly, Glasgow, Tue 6 May Indie rock is the musical opiate of the masses. Recapture that first hit ecstasy with The Xcerts, a fresh-faced three-piece from Aberdeen and Exeter. Get Cape Wear Cape Fly liked their fully-formed, captivatingly…

IAMX

24 Apr 2008

ELECTRO-GOTHIC POP King Tut’s, Glasgow, Mon 31 Mar ‘Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!’ The Deutsch kitsch musical number from Cabaret is the perfect aural backdrop for IAMX (the demonic brainchild of ex-Sneaker Pimp Chris Corner) to take to the stage.

Singles & Downloads

13 Mar 2008

Hurrying past James Blunt and Bryan’s Adams’ new singles, let’s start at the only logical place, the ‘Start Beginning’ (FDM Records) ••• with Nizlopi (of ‘JCB Song’ notoriety) and their relentlessly optimistic, acoustic pop rainbow of a song that could…

Kei Miller - The Same Earth

28 Feb 2008

RURAL DRAMA (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Kei Miller, a recent addition to the teaching staff on Glasgow University’s Creative Writing course, is under 30 and of the male persuasion. So the ease with which he tells this homely collection of life stories…

Plain White T's

17 Jan 2008

ALT.ROCK Barrowland, Glasgow, Fri 25 Jan Dave Tirio is asleep. Fifteen minutes after the interview is scheduled to start he’s probably dreaming about number ones and sell-out tours. But these things are fast becoming more than dreams for the…

Various - Now That’s what We Call Music Vol 1

13 Dec 2007

INDIE (Fantastic Plastic) To celebrate their 100th release the music bods at Fantastic Plastic have cast a nostalgic ear over their back catalogue and corralled a bunch of past rarities and new offerings. It’s a sampler of accessibly alternative…

Bryan Lee O’Malley - Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together

29 Nov 2007

MANGA ROM-COM Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together (Oni Press) Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old slacker with no money, no job and no hope of getting either. Luckily, in the tradition of classic gen X wastrels he is totally irresistible, which is why the…

Mary Gaitskill

15 Nov 2007

SOCIAL DRAMA Veronica (Serpent’s Tail) Mary Gaitskill rarely shies away from the violence of inner life. S&M, self-harm and bad sex torment characters as they struggle to define themselves and the world and new novel Veronica is no different. Alison…

Annie Christian and :Cryoverbillionaires

4 Oct 2007

Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 13 Oct Every face in the crowd waits expectantly for the one song from the back catalogue of Annie Christian that means the most to them, whether from their electro-infused, gloomy and melodic indie origins in the…

Fuyomi Kuono - Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

Historical manga

4 Oct 2007

Set ten years after the US dropped the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb on Hiroshima, decimating the city, these two stories follow the lives of the Hibakusha (‘explosion-affected people’). ‘The first story, ‘Town of Evening Calm’, details the descent into…

Jonathan Trigell - Cham

Mystery Thriller

4 Oct 2007

Snowsports are gnarly and the Romantic poets were rad so why not have them meet on common ground (the ski resort of Chamonix; Shelley’s Mont-Blanc) and add in a serial rapist for good measure? After winning the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2004 with Boy…

Slam

Nick Hornby

20 Sep 2007

Sam is 15. He skates, chases girls and narrates his own coming-of-age novel. Things are going well until he gets one of those girls pregnant and is introduced to the world of adult responsibility. Plus, his father figure is a poster of pro-skater Tony…

Ronan Bennett

6 Sep 2007

POLITICAL THRILLER After being serialised in The Observer in 2006, Irish author Ronan Bennett’s thriller of politics, psychoanalysis and chess gets a fully bound release. It’s 1914. Russia is under the thrall of singularly powerful men, the…

The Dykeenies

6 Sep 2007

INDIE ROCK After a year of sell-out gigs and internet hype the Cumbernauld brotherly trio plus two mates release their debut album. The opener (‘The Panic’, about STD fear) is prophetic: a great, stompy, bang of the fists and wail of the klaxons with…

Greg Fleet with Mick Moriarty

23 Aug 2007

Fleet has survived drug addiction and a guest part in Neighbours. Now, with the aid of a double bass and guitar-playing sidekick, he successfully battles tree frogs, a tiny but disproportionately vocal audience and being a punning private dick straight…

Simon Amstell

23 Aug 2007

Amstell is a good date. He makes you feel clever with his philosophical musings, draws you in with candid tales of heartache and social ineptitude and proves that his pulling power is still mighty away from the telly with tightly written, machine-gun…

Robyn

Robyn

16 Aug 2007

POP Robyn leaps out of the gate looking like your typical kooky Scandinavian popstar with her first track, ‘Curriculum Vitae’, hyping and bigging her up in time honoured boxer/rap fashion. The lyrics boast of her triumphs – curing AIDS, scoring ‘two…

AL Kennedy

9 Aug 2007

Delightfully warm and engaging, despite all those dreary press pictures, ALK gives the impression she really enjoys trying to endear an audience to her. It would be easy to dismiss this well-crafted material as the inevitable product of her writing…

Gamarjobat

9 Aug 2007

The Japanese mime and magic duo take their street performance act inside for an hour of slapstick, spoof magic, acrobatics and guitar riffs with Rock’n’Roll Penguin. The pair waddle about like a hybrid of Pingu and Tommy Cooper and their non-verbal…

Karen Bayley

9 Aug 2007

They say that the most important thing is having the confidence to give it a go. But decent material and delivery also help. A self-confessed depressive turned optimist after a near-death experience, Bayley’s self-assured demeanour surpasses her…

Tony Law

Time-travelling surrealism

9 Aug 2007

As well as starring in theatre show Killer Joe , a trailer trash thriller with a cast of actors and comedians, Tony Law has what appears to be a stand-up show. It’s called Revenge of the Dog of Time and the Fringe brochure promises ‘random good fun’.

Debut writers

Edinburgh International Book Festival

19 Jul 2007

This year’s batch of debut authors is rich and varied. Suzanne Black finds that while some of them may be escaping from a successful parent’s shadow or scripting identity dramas, they ultimately have one thing in common

Lucy Hawking

19 Jul 2007

What do you do when your father is one of the world’s most respected theoretical physicists, author of the bestseller A Brief History of Time and you want to be a writer? The answer was obvious to Lucy Hawking, daughter of Stephen: write a book…

Round-up

DVD

16 Jul 2007

DVD ROUND-UP Two very different DVD releases for you this issue. First up is Tan Lines (Peccadillo Pictures, 2 STARS). Have you ever watched the vacuous beach bum blondes of Home and Away and wished the storylines were slower, more full of…

Records - Torche

3 Jul 2007

ROCK Imagine a being rising from the primordial quagmire, shaking its thunderous fists in a display of brute strength, conjuring a whirlwind of frothy guitars and emitting an uncomprehending, enraged bellow. This is what Miami sludge rockers Torche…

Eternals

Comics

2 Jul 2007

SUPERHERO Neil Gaiman, the world’s most populist cult writer, flexes his comic muscles to update the story of Marvel’s Eternals. Originally outed in 1976 by Jack Kirby, the race of superhumans are immortal-ish, god-like creatures with human…

Six Feet Over

2 Jul 2007

POPULAR SCIENCE Did you know that sea urchins were the key to understanding the process of sperm/egg fertilisation? Before microscopes came along, the theories of reproduction that reigned now seem ludicrous. In this entertaining history of science…

Pride Scotia

18 Jun 2007

Pride is back in Edinburgh on Sat 23 June after last year’s Glasgow outing, with a whole host of official and off-the-parade-route events. This year, many of the Sisters and Brothers of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence (ie men and women dressed as…

Comics - NEVERWHERE (DVD)

18 Jun 2007

FANTASY Elephant and Castle, Knightsbridge and The Angel, Islington: to non-Londoners and small children alike the names of the city’s landmarks conjure a sense of the bizarre which Neil Gaiman, much-loved writer of novels, comics, films and…

London Gay Men’s Chorus

21 May 2007

CHORAL EXTRAVAGANZA One of the best moments from the now defunct TV show Will & Grace was when Jack and guest star Matt Damon tried to ‘out-camp’ each other to prove their gayness and thus win a spot in the Manhattan Gay Men’s Chorus. There is no…

Singles & Downloads

Singles & Downloads

7 May 2007

(Picture: Asobi Seksu) Yob poseurs the Kaiser Chiefs turn soothsayer this fortnight with ‘Everything is Average Nowadays’ (B-Unique, 3 Stars) forecasting a slew of unoriginality in singledom. They have, however, stepped it up from the workaday…

International Day Against Homophobia

7 May 2007

News

You Don’t Love Me Yet

7 May 2007

POSTMODERN ROMANCE

Injuns

Records

26 Apr 2007

POP Skye boys Leighton Jones (keyboard and vocals) and Hector MacInnes (drums) and the four other Injuns lads know their stuff and aren’t afraid to prove it. This debut is a densely influenced, multi-genre-encapsulating smorgasbord swerving from the…

Dirty Wee Middens

Dirty Wee Middens, Lycanthrope and Billy Liar

23 Apr 2007

HORROR PUNK Dundee is spewing forth all kinds of interesting bands lately and Dirty Wee Middens are no exception. Despite slatherings of ghoulish make-up (as far away from The View as you can imagine), the Middens definitely have a pulse and it is…

Priscilla, Queen Of Glasgow

Profile

23 Apr 2007

What’s this all about? In the very best Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert tradition, Glasgow’s bonniest lassies (well ten of them and don’t check their birth certificates) will go breast-to-fake-breast to duke it out for the title of…

Injuns

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Skye, Sat 31 Mar

9 Apr 2007

POP It’s tough when even the music critics can’t categorise your band. Having been called everything from country, jazz, folk, rock, punk, funk, disco, bluegrass to reggae the Injuns myspace coyly asserts pop/indie/ other, where the ‘other’ can only…

Trashed

Cruz, Edinburgh, Sat 21 Apr

9 Apr 2007

CLUB NIGHT (From left: Morgan, Jon Pleased Wimmin, Slim Boy Fat and Lick It) It is handy that Edinburgh’s gay and gay-friendly clubs, bars and general venues of debauchery are clustered around the Leith Walk area. This means that starting the…

When We Were Bad

Charlotte Mendelson

9 Apr 2007

FAMILY DRAMA Charlotte Mendelson returns with a sweeping familial drama charting the decline and fall of a well-to-do, very Jewish London family funnelled through the revolving narrative ciphers of three characters in crisis. Rabbi Claudia, son Leo…

Records - Unkle Bob

Unkle Bob

13 Mar 2007

INDIE Like the newest member of an inbred family, Unkle Bob’s debut album has numerous musical baby daddies. Like Snow Patrol they formed in Scotland; like Keane they are prone to stirring emotional anthems and singer Rick Webster’s voice performs…

Records - Unkle Bob

Unkle Bob

13 Mar 2007

INDIE Like the newest member of an inbred family, Unkle Bob’s debut album has numerous musical baby daddies. Like Snow Patrol they formed in Scotland; like Keane they are prone to stirring emotional anthems and singer Rick Webster’s voice performs…

View, The - live review

The View

28 Feb 2007

INDIE A mere year ago The View were playing pub gigs to 50 people in their home town of Dundee. A few months later and a T-Mobile Street Gig in Edinburgh Castle for 100 lucky winners from their newly expanded fanbase is deemed incredibly…

Jennifer McCartney - in love with literary Glasgow

Staying afloat

12 Feb 2007

The photograph on the cover of Jennifer McCartney’s first novel, Afloat, has the author sitting on a bench holding two small oranges. ‘I needed a picture and only had six to choose from,’ she says. ‘It was taken in Rome in the Vatican Orange Garden. We…

Life drawing meets burlesque erotica

Gothic horror picture show

12 Feb 2007

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m loitering outside the entrance to Edinburgh’s newest art class trying not to look too much like a pervert. Some passing tourists catch sight of the Dr Sketchy’s poster advertising ‘Drawing & Drinks & Dames & Dudes’ and I…

Benjamin Markovits

Imposture (Faber)

19 Dec 2006

LITERARY DRAMA John Polidori (Byron’s travelling companion and doctor) and governess Eliza Esmond embark upon a secretive love affair, under the guises of Byron himself and Eliza’s more glamorous sister. In language stretched and manipulated to…

Pick of 2006 - Hot 100

Top 50

12 Dec 2006

The List’s Hot 100 celebrates the people who have made the biggest impact on cultural life in Scotland over the past 12 months.

Pick of 2006 - Hot 100

100 to 51

12 Dec 2006

I can admit it now: I was a fool to set up the Hot 100. When you think of the broad spectrum of cultural activities that we cover in The List, from film and music through to eating out, shopping and occasionally sport, it’s clear that the number of…

Photo blogging

24 hour photo

31 Oct 2006

YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Flickr . . . you can’t take a stroll around the interweb without bumping into one of the giant, sprawling sites for user-created content. It’s the true essence of the net; you can put music, pictures, videos, writing or…

Fat Tongue

21 Aug 2006

Here, Cher is played as a Northern bloke and French footballers camp it up in The Italian Job and while this is hardly comedy genius, it certainly gets the populist vote. Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, until 28 Aug, 6.15pm, £7.50-£8.50 (£6-£7).