October 2011
1 post
"Both are vast, deep and occasionally elegiacally...
Loch Lomond: Little Me Will Start A Storm (Chemikal Underground)
Written for and published in The Herald, 19 October 2011
Like The Manchester Orchestra, Loch Lomond are an American band who looked to the UK for nomenclature; unlike The Manchester Orchestra, they had no idea what their moniker actually referred to. Signing to Scotland’s own Chemikal Underground may have...
July 2011
1 post
"A record I've been trying to will into existence... →
Yeh, I quite liked this album.
Click on the link or the cover for my Sunday Herald review.
June 2011
1 post
4 tags
This is already shaping up to be a few discerning... →
… I wouldn’t go that far, but I can see why others would. Click the picture or the headline for my Sunday Herald review from earlier this month.
May 2011
1 post
Was it worth the 90 seconds it took me to post...
The Computers: This Is The Computers (One Little Indian)
Written for and published in the Sunday Herald, 15 May 2011.
“RECORDED IN STEREO DIRECT TO TAPE” states the cover of the Exeter four-piece’s debut, stencilled in stentorian capitals as if it REALLY MATTERS. Me: I couldn’t care whether it was recorded on a wax cylinder or on an Apple Mac orbiting Mars as long as it...
April 2011
1 post
In which Simon is so unimpressed by the Beardyman... →
One day I’ll start using this Tumblr more efficiently.
February 2011
1 post
3 tags
"His best album since A Grand Don't Come For Free?...
The Streets: Computers And Blues (679/Locked On)
Written for and published in the Sunday Herald, 6 February 2011.
You’ve got to feel a little sorry for Mike Skinner. Not because of the downbeat tales of everyman woe that make up his best work as The Streets, but simply because it’s been downhill all the way since 2004 and that happy summer when his second album went to number one....
January 2011
3 posts
January 10 and a contender for album of the year...
Stone Ghost Collective: Unrequited Lovesongs (Shark Batter)
It was kindly suggested to me by a friend and some-time colleague that I should post more here than merely the reviews I do for the Sunday Herald. Given my previous blogging inertia, I’d say: don’t hold your breath. Still …
ONLY a total chancer would start wittering on about albums of the year before February was...
"Seven minutes and 11 seconds of this is...
Written for the first edition of the new magazine-format Sunday Herald, published on January 9, 2011.
British Sea Power: Valhalla Dancehall (Rough Trade)
As the gulf between genres grows ever greater, and any pretence at a unified theory of pop music topples helplessly into the void, British Sea Power must feel reasonably safe. Like Field Music, they’re one of those bands so beloved of...
"Probably Commodore 64 users"
A review of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, originally written for the Sunday Herald in December 2010. I never know from one week to the next whether these things will be published on the HeraldScotland website or not; I figure I might as well start posting them up here too.
Daft Punk: Tron: Legacy (Disney)
LET’S be honest: Tron was a rubbish film. Pioneering, certainly — a...
August 2010
1 post
Blaze of glory
Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (Sonovox/Merge)
MAJESTIC might seem an odd attribute with which to define any rock band, let alone Arcade Fire. I mean, just look at that picture. No-one wearing braces can be truly majestic, right?
Well: yes, they can. In May 2005 I was lucky enough to see Arcade Fire play Glasgow University, just after their debut album, Funeral, had been released to slow-burning...
“Allowing the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing to be returned to Libya...”
– Private Eye, nailing it once again. Are you listening, Jack McConnell, you ridiculous man?
The late Paul Foot’s Lockerbie investigation — a triumph of investigative journalism — is still available at http://www.private-eye.co.uk, priced £5
June 2009
3 posts
3 tags
I know you think I'm joking with all that "Gedge... →
(For those who don’t have Spotify: 1) Why not?; 2) It’s Flying Saucer.)
This morning I listened to ...
… the Dirty Projectors. (Yes, I know. Late to the party here.)
In this case, I think a picture is worth, ooh, about 50-75 words. (Three of which would have been “absolutely”, “fucking” and “awful”.)
4 tags
*Blows dust off Tumblr account* … right, where...
So, yeh, I’ve shitcanned my old Last.fm account but the one thing I will miss is the occasional debate it occasioned (even if three-quarters of it was “lol Gedge”).
Anyway. Rather than trusting The Man and his increasingly flaky and half-arsed site to track my listening, I thought I’d resurrect this Tumblr as a kind of “What I’m Listening To” blog-type...
February 2009
3 posts
Tumbling over? →
I’ve enjoyed using Tumblr. But, given that most of what I was doing with it was posting links and going: “Hmm, dudes, look at this”, I can’t help feeling Twitter has taken its place.
As I’ve said before: I’ve no idea who reads this. I get the impression the majority of hits are picked up by proxy when it feeds back into Facebook … in which case Twitter...
"You don't have to be a nationalist, or English,... →
George Monbiot argues cogently in The Guardian.
"Shit." →
January 2009
2 posts
Shite = Lazy journalists x Self-promoting... →
Roll up, roll up: debunk that most depressing day of the year nonsense in the most creative way possible. From the estimable Mind Hacks.
December 2008
2 posts
"We can only hope that original news reporting by... →
Nothing we didn’t know already in this bleak little analysis from Dan Farber, but it’s a point that bears repeating. Now go out there and do your bit for democracy: buy a newspaper.
Yes, even the Daily Mail.
Subterraneans →
The Corsham nuclear bunker, courtesy of the BBC. Not cheery, obviously.
November 2008
3 posts
I can't decide whether this is the single... →
Maybe I should start a poll.
“It is noteworthy to watch so many on the right assume that they think those who...”
– Ned Raggett on the president-elect. I think this sums it up beautifully.
October 2008
5 posts
Fitbin! →
John Preston in The Telegraph gets arsey about swearing but misses the most interesting point: can we imagine a society where no taboo expletives remain?
"What I'm trying to say is that knowing Nick was... →
A heart-warmingly personal tribute to the late, lamented Nick Sanderson of Earl Brutus, linked in turn from this rather enjoyable piece by Roy Sanderson for the Quietus. Features public-school japes, backwards haircuts, lust for a lighthouse, and Peter Gabriel’s living room. As so many great tales should.
Stop press: someone, somewhere still cares about... →
This, from the Media Guardian website yesterday, has made my day. Good work, un-named Sunday Express executive.
Psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioural therapy,...
A very interesting argument, this: Darian Leader in the Guardian has a pop at CBT for being a “quick fix”; Vaughan Bell replies: wouldn’t it help to know what you’re talking about?
Before I started studying any of this, I drew a naive distinction between what I saw as “counselling” — targeted treatment, for want of a better word, of a specific trouble...
September 2008
13 posts
"Likelihood that a student with an iPhone/iTouch... →
The estimable Clive Thompson looks at the “IT index” for new students at Amherst College, MA. I’m not sure about all the “oh no! No landlines!” stuff — nobody I knew in halls had a landline either, and that was 1993. But the rest of it is interesting, especially the Mac/PC comment. (Although figures would be nice, obviously. Hmph.)
"The very people for whom it was a sacred othodoxy... →
I thought I was going to hate this — What do the opponents of capitalism make of the global financial crisis?, in today’s Guardian — and there’s a lot of it that’s sub-student-union posturing pointlessness (step forward Green MEP Caroline Lucas, SWP hack Chris Harman and Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition, to name the three most jejune thinkers quoted).
...
"Imagine that the noisy skin-bags suddenly moved... →
Autistic Dad quoting Simon Baron-Cohen. I’m going to keep linking to this blog because, regardless of the fact Gordon’s a good friend, I genuinely think it’s got the potential to open many more eyes to a much-misunderstood condition.
A text exchange, 10 September 2008. (In case...
"So the super-collider didn't destroy the earth then"
"did you actually think it would?"
"I was half hoping"
"Two days after I specifically asked Charles... →
A couple of bits of (maybe unintentional) chutzpah aside, this rumination on Scotland’s newspapers from Arthur MacMillan, which I knew was in the pipeline, is disappointing: high on sermonising, low on ideas.
If Brian Wilson is right, and a merged Scotsman/Herald is the only way forward, surely — by the logic of this article — that makes Tom Devine’s “democratic...
"What is it like to never lose touch with anyone?"... →
A precis from Mind Hacks of an awesome, awesome piece from the New York Times — direct link here — about how social networking is changing everything about the way we interact, and therefore — by extension — the way we live our lives.
As some of you know, this is something I’m very interested in from a psychological point of view: I can honestly say this is the best...
Good cause. Very good blog, too. Go click. →
I’ve been meaning to link to Autistic Dad for a while now. Those of you [1] who know Gordon might want to sponsor his 10k japery; those of you who don’t might well find the blog as fascinating, incisive and moving as I do.
[1] Of course, I’ve no idea who’s reading this stuff, but I suppose the fact it feeds back into Facebook means there’s potentially a reasonable...
"It is staggeringly self-indulgent, like sitting... →
Laura Barton on opera in today’s Guardian. I wanted to hate this — middle-class Londoner in inverse snobbery and iconoclasm shockah — but it’s actually rather charming.
Cash-in-buttocks man in M25 ban →
A story that doesn’t come close to doing such a masterful headline justice.
(Yes, I know that’s a skewed way of looking at news. But I’m a sub, remember?)
Jonathan Jones being a bit smug about Rothko, but... →
This is one of the Seagram murals on display in the Rothko Room at Tate Modern. There’s no way this crappy little compressed image is doing it justice, of course. To see these things is to be subsumed by them.
August 2008
21 posts
"If even five in a hundred readers are baffled by... →
Or “why subeditors matter”, part the ninety-fourth. (For what it’s worth: I’ve used a similar line many times, although I set the bar at a rather less conservative “one”.)
Except, except … I read this and know I no longer feel the same fire in my belly. That saddens me — but, like he says: “Normal people, I have found, deeply do not...
“Lads today … going to the doctor’s every five minutes telling them...”
– Mark E Smith, Renegade (Viking, 2008)
“When anything would get too good or big or too... →
I’ve just started reading this :
and as soon as I finish I guess I should follow it up with the Dave Simpson book reviewed here.
I remember Simpson doing a piece for G2 last year about searching for the lost members of The Fall; I didn’t realise it was going to be a book.
Fuck fiction: tales of Mark E Smith and his crew will see me through the rest of summer.
"Not every love story has a happy ending" →
Or “the law is an arse, #286”.
Daft c***s →
beforeitistoolate:
“… you’d get your c*** kicked in”
"It was like England launching a war against... →
Iain Macwhirter on the chaos in the Caucasus. This is basically the informed, considered and less sweary version of what I’ve been saying all week (angrily, to myself, under my breath).
There are no “good guys” in this ugly little conflict, and I’m delighted to see Mr Macwhirter deliver a swift side-kick to the arse-cheeks of that opportunistic imbecile Cameron.
The law is an arse, #243
Tesco. (Yes, I know.) Shopping. 11am. Working at 2pm; time is slightly tight.
For a smoked-salmon risotto, we need one half-bottle, small can or otherwise tiny amount of cheap white wine.
Only we can’t buy it until 12.30pm, because obviously allowing off-sales before that time on a Sunday would tear asunder the very fabric of society as we know it. Just think of the horror that would be...