Room for one more

We're approaching that time of year when newspapers begin compiling their 'best ofs'. I know this because I'm putting together Metro's sports books of the year - currently headed for me by Matthew Syed's brilliant Bounce: How Champions Are Made. While I digress, the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year 2010 is announced next week: Syed has been shortlisted and I've reviewed two of the other nominees for Metro as well; Duncan Hamilton's A Last English Summer and Luke Jennings' Blood Knots. The latter is lovely, as is the man - I interviewed him around his nomination for The Samuel Johnson Prize. But it would be a major surprise if he won - as a memoir about fishing it's not really a sports book.

Anyway, if I do get to write about my favourite fiction of 2010, Room by Emma Donoghue will be right up there. The book "triggered" by the Josef Fritzl case has stayed with me like no other this year, and so it was really nice to get the chance to speak to her about it for The National. Here's the piece, published this week - and if anyone has, ahem, room to read one more novel before the end of December, this is undoubtedly the one.

Apollo: This Is For All Mankind @ RNCM, Manchester

Last year, Brian Eno's 1983 ambient masterpiece, Apollo, was performed live for the first time at The Science Museum, to celebrate 40 years since man first walked on the moon. With one of the Apollo moonlanding craft as a suitable backdrop, the Icebreaker ensemble played live as BJ Cole plucked away on pedal steel. Above was an edited screening of Al Reinert's 1989 lunar documentary For All Mankind - which used the Eno album as its soundtrack.

It was one of those 'I was there' events - and I wasn't. But the set-up was replicated (minus the landing craft) at RNCM last night - and, for me, completely changed any misconception that ambient music is just background noise for art installations. And that's despite the presence of pan pipes.

Clearly, the images helped. The combination of sound and vision was, at points, incredibly moving. We're all familiar with the first steps on the moon and those famous first words. But the gentle power of the music somehow emphasised the bravery of these astronauts. As they strap themselves on top of a rocket for a trip into the unknown, we're not treated to crass, white noise-style representations of burning fuel, but a quiet piece that instead correlated with the idea that this immense human endeavour hung by the slightest of threads.

Once they reach outer space, the globe is circled to the strains of An Ending. Easily the most melodic and beautiful piece here, the images of Earth become poignant, almost sublime. The footage taken on the Moon is captivating beyond words. And trust the Americans to take a car there...

Beforehand, Tim Boon - Chief Curator of the Science Museum - gave a dryly-delivered but instructive talk about Eno's project and the nature of space and time. It transpires that two of the astronauts took country and western music to play on the Moon - which connected with Eno's idea that this was a new frontier for America just as the Wild West (which C&W celebrates) had been. Hence the pedal steel and music that projects across huge, wide open spaces. Quite brilliant.

Anthology Action

Last night I was at the Beirut39 event at Manchester Literature Festival. Beirut39, for those who don't know, is a project set up by the Hay Festival and Bloomsbury to highlight the 39 best young Arab writers. In the summer, Bloomsbury published their work in an anthology. I haven't read the whole thing - just the three entries of the writers who were there last night - but judging by the work of Abdelkader Benali, Yassin Adnan and Ala Hlehel, the quality is good.

What really struck home last night was this sense that politics, religion and tradition are an inescapable theme for these Arab writers. And that was much the same feeling I got from Granta: Pakistan, a wonderful anthology of new writing from that country. I subscribe to Granta anyway, but with work from Mohsin Hamid and Mohammed Hanif, this issue was particularly strong. So I ended up writing about it for The National, as you can see below.

What came out of both Granta: Pakistan and Beirut39 was this idea that to truly understand the issues facing a country or a people, fiction is crucial. In fact, I would argue I learned more about the life of a Palestinian man living in Israel via Ala Hlehel's short story than I ever would in a newspaper.

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Arts & Life
20 Oct 2010

Friday at In The City

Full confession to make: despite being a resident of Manchester for ten years and despite writing about In The City for Metro year after year, I've never actually been to this festival of new music before (incidentally, these were previews, not reviews!). My excuse? A combination of being away the very weekend it was on, and not really being that interested in seeing a bunch of "hotly tipped" bands in Brannigans.

But In The City seemed to get something spectacularly right this year - not least because it has relocated to where it should naturally have been in the first place: The Northern Quarter. There was a real excitement in the streets on Friday as people rushed from venue to venue check out a much-tweeted about band. In short, it felt like a proper festival, and the people I spoke to said it was the best In The City in years.

First up were Rapids! at Umbro's impressive Dale Street space. Sadly their MySpace is undergoing maintenance at the moment so I can't expand upon my initial impression that they sounded a lot like Foals and a little like Bloc Party. All shouty vocals and intricate guitar. Still, they had Steve Lamacq nodding in the shadows, looking very much like the indie godfather he is. And "hello, we're from Bournemouth" has to be the most unintentionally hilarious piece of stage banter to a bunch of early evening Manchester hipsters in quite some time.

On, then to Dry Bar. The last time I was there I was DJing at the much missed Helen Of Troy Does Countertop Dancing night, and it stunk. But I was really impressed with their new, clean, and wide open basement space. And The Bewitched Hands filled it nicely. They look like a bunch of beardy West Coast slackers in love with sunkissed psychedelia (apart from, ahem, the girl in the band. She didn't have a beard). So it was quite nice to find that they're French, and not entirely in love with psychedelia. In fact they revealed a shared love of straightahead singalong pop (Work) and bouncy indie (Sea). But a frontman in glasses? Only Jarvis Cocker can pull that off. I say this as a full time glasses wearer myself.



Talking of refurbed venues, The Castle now has a really very good gig space out the back. Intimate, though, isn't the word. It was absolutely rammed for Working For A Nuclear Free City - and unsurprisingly so. I wrote about their interesting mix of Krautrock, electronica and straight blissed out rock back in 2006, and their set four years on merited a fresh look at their back catalogue. In the past year I've seen Battles and Caribou pack out Academy 2 and Deaf Institute, and WFANFC are on their propulsively epic level. Check out Autoblue - it's the kind of tune Karl Hyde would have ranted over in Underworld's Dubnobasswithmyheadman days.

Knocking me out of such reverie was Youthless. Quite simply, they were the best, most impactful and exciting new band I saw all night - a two piece very loosely from Portugal who absolutely rocked Umbro. Nominally just a drummer and a bass guitarist, armed with an array of effects pedals they mutate into a garage dance/rock monster. Sometimes this trips over into straight metal, but seeing as all continental Europeans must at once stage have an Iron Maiden obsessions, this is understandable. Maybe two's all you need for a band these days.



In fact, I'd been expecting one for Windmill back at The Castle - Matthew Dillon. For he is Windmill, and has been for two albums of delightful piano-led alternative rock. But here he had a full band and it really made sense, widening his sonic pallette and suggesting there's more to come when Dillon sits down next year to write his theird record. He still sounds like he's from New Orleans rather than Newport Pagnell, though.



Dutch Uncles are very much an English band, and as such a fitting way to finish the evening. Their jumpy, frenetic indie-pop and post-punk has been so hotly-tipped for so long one wonders whether the buzz is actually becoming a millstone. While their peers - Delphic and Everything Everything - have signed deals and released albums, Dutch Uncles are still on the fringes. Some of that might be down to an ill-judged release on an enthusiastic German label, which means they're not labelled as being "new" anymore. Some is certainly down to a sound which is perhaps just a little too clever to fully engage. Tonight, they play their best song - Face In - first, when the sound isn't quite right.

Dutch Uncles 'Face In' from Love & Disaster on Vimeo.

Not the In The City "moment" I was expecting then. That came with Youthless. But the star of the evening was undoubtedly Manchester's Northern Quarter. The range of venues was impressive, and the city came alive. More of the same next year please. I might even make it two years in a row.

With thanks to Holly and Will at In House Press for arranging the wristband

The Man-chester Booker Prize? Not really

Quite exciting that Manchester now has incumbent Nobel Prize and Man Booker Prize winners. Well, kind of. The Nobel Prize winners are Dutch and Russian, and saying Howard Jacobson is a Manchester author is a bit like saying Oasis were a Manchester band: they may have been born and educated here but as soon as London called, they were off.

But anyway, I'm pleased a comic novel has finally won the Booker, even if I think Paul Murray's longlisted Skippy Dies - which I really loved - definitely suffered by Jacobson's presence. Two comic novels on the shortlist would probably have been too much. Spending the last two weeks on holiday has allowed me to catch up with some of the other books on the list though, and I have to say In A Strange Room by Damon Galgut is just fantastic.

If you're holidaying anywhere in the next few months, this is the book to pack - a meditation on not just why we travel but what we remember years later. It was never going to win the Booker because a) it's really three short stories and b) it's not really clear whether it's actually fiction at all. But I'm glad it was shortlisted as that was the final shove I needed to buy it. I'm in Greece, and the first exchanges are in Greece. It all came together in a really affecting read and I will be busy spending autumn recommending it to whoever will listen. But maybe it's just because I love South African authors, too...

Arcadia @ The Library Theatre @ The Lowry

And so to The Lowry, for Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. It was great to see The Library Theatre's first production since its temporary relocation: putting it politely, the basement space in the Central Library was getting so tired and unfit for purpose, it was beginning to make the company look a bit amateurish. Last time I saw something there (Tom's Midnight Garden, I think), the set looked so flimsy, my heart was in my mouth every time a door slammed shut.

I'm writing a story for The Stage about the move, so you'll excuse me if I don't go into too much detail as yet. I'll link when they publish. But the idea is thus: three productions a year at The Lowry until 2014, when hopefully LTC will move into the Theatre Royal on Peter Street, which has been operating as an amusingly cheesy nightclub for years (I went there when it was Discotheque Royale, and just about survived). I hope the move comes off, although I can't help but think a completely new space - like The Lowry - might end up being cheaper and better. Refurbishing and running Victorian buildings is never easy.

Anyway, the relocation to The Lowry throws up one other issue - greater expectations. Next week, after all, Arcadia is in the same building as The National Theatre On Tour's version of Alan Bennett's The Habit Of Art. Not everyone in Chris Honer's production was up to the task, but those that were - particularly Charlie Anson as Septimus Hodge - suggest that The Library's focus should be on unearthing exciting new acting talent in the next four years.

Here's the review.

The Stage / Reviews / Arcadia

Hamlet @ The Crucible

Reviewing Hamlet for The Stage last night, I was struck by how theatre has succumbed to the cult of celebrity as much as any other creative medium. It's great that John Simm is playing Hamlet, and he plays one of Shakespeare's finest characters well enough to suggest that he may well have a long career as a classical actor ahead of him. But how many people were at The Crucible specifically because it was John Simm in the lead role? Aye, there's the rub.

An up and coming star from RSC would have been, probably, just as impressive. Indeed, when David Tennant was forced to pull out of the first weeks of Hamlet in London last year, his understudy received fantastic notices. But still people wanted their money back. They wanted to see Dr Who.

Which is a shame. After all, the play's the thing. And we lose something of its power if its famous face becomes the attraction rather than the power of the words. Anyway, enjoy the review, below.

The Stage / Reviews / Hamlet

Not another Booker Prize Shortlist piece

It's a strange fact of publishing that the books shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize receive far more column inches than those which sell millions more copies. It's something I mused upon here. Odd that there should be such a disconnect between the books widely read and the books which are critically acclaimed.

Odd because it's not quite the same in other creative disciplines. Poker Face by Lady Gaga (last year's biggest selling single in the UK) is generally recognised as a brilliant, inventive song. This summer's must-see, most popular film - Inception - was also garlanded with praise by the critics.

Perhaps it's because literary fiction is quite literally a different genre to the multimillion selling epics Ken Follett writes - like comparing classical with rock'n'roll. And only rarely (on the Mercury Prize shortlist) do classical and rock'n'roll end up competing with one another. Last time they did, the late composer Nicholas Maw was up against Badly Drawn Boy. No, um, prizes for guessing who won that one.

Having said all that... linked below are my thoughts on that Booker shortlist. Andrea Levy is the only author on this shortlist who can say she's truly a popular author as well - and for that reason she is a rarity, and I hope she doesn't win. Because surely the Booker Prize's true function is to shine a light on excellence that might otherwise go widely un-noticed. Tom McCarthy's C is by no means a rollicking story. Piecing the narrative together is hard work. But like a record which suddenly reveals its glories ten or 20 listens in, it's worth it because he aims for something completely original. OK, so that also makes it maddening. But it's the ambition which is so important if we're not to stumble into an age of bland, repetitive art.

Although admittedly, last week McCarthy said "all art is repetition". True. But then, he also said "if the novel is a car, then the engine is poetry". I rather like that.

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Arts & Life
13 Sep 2010

Is anybody out there...

Where do you go to get your critical arts comment in 'the regions' these days? It's obviously something us ex Metro types discuss at regular intervals nine months on. The answer is sketchy, a mish-mash of favoured blogs and the odd well considered review in The Guardian. The honest truth is that I'd do more critical arts commenting on Manchester's scene myself if I genuinely felt that the voice of one person posting on Blogger was going to be important stuff. No-one really cares what Ben East thinks, but when Ben East is writing for Metro, or the FT, they might.

But it's an interesting time of flux for regional arts journalism - reflected by two recent pieces that attempt to get to the heart of the issue. Kate Feld's excellent article on Creative Times (full disclosure: I've done some work for them too) suggests that the local blogger does have merit in that they are fresh, immediate and accessible. Lyn Gardner in The Guardian thinks that the web offers space for theatre criticism in every city and region, alongside professional reviewers. Although this is at the bottom of a piece which tries to argue that their reviews aren't London-centric.

The key is the phrase 'professional reviewers'. Did I count myself as one at Metro? When I was reviewing four shows a day at Edinburgh, absolutely. And Kate's admission, that blogs are often 'unpolished to readers weaned on national arts criticism', is my major problem. We all have our favourite writers on newspapers - and some we hate - but they are filtered through the reputation of the publication. Odd really: A.blogger and Lyn Gardner might write exactly the same thing, but you read Gardner and parrot Gardner's views at dinner parties because she's paid money to have them. A.Blogger is just A.Blogger. He says, blogging.

Still, Lyn Gardner is not going to write about everything in Manchester and you have to wonder, what with cut backs aplenty, who is? It's got to the point where the galleries are essentially producing their own arts website to publicise, and critically appraise, their own shows - because they can't just hope someone out there might write about them. Creative Tourist (who I also have written for) is this interesting solution - and the quality is high, because they've employed quality journalists (and me) to write for them, without telling them what to write.

Kate's solution is a Manchester aggregator, where blogs from across the city are published on a single curated site which could, in the end, form a print version. I like this idea (and this isn't a plea to be included - I'm the flakiest of bloggers) simply because it promotes the idea of writing for a purpose, for an audience, rather than for yourself. That makes it sound awful: "I write because I must be heard!" But it would encourage better, critical comment on the city's arts scene if people knew their work was being read and enjoyed - and also, you'd hope, encourage people to go and see the gig/show/art in question.

All of which has encouraged me to write about Dutch Uncles and FUC51. So watch out for that, in a bit...

Studio time

Last week, I spent an intriguing day at the rehearsals for the 2010 JD Set. This year, the idea from the musical strand of the Jack Daniel's brand is to take three classic albums, get bands in the studio for a week to rework them, and then play the results live at a special gig a month later.

Each city has a different album, and different guests. So London had the likes of Shortwave Set reinterpreting tracks from The Human League's Dare, and Glasgow will have Malcolm Middleton taking on Madonna's greatest hits (let's hope they haven't been intimidated by Glee). But Manchester is where it really all made sense, simply because the assembled musicians rehearsed music from a great Manchester band: the Buzzcocks.

On the day I was at the studio, the gauche frontman of the excellent Dutch Uncles, Duncan Wallis, joined forces with The Whip for Nothing Left, from Buzzcocks' breakthrough 1978 album Love Bites. It was a pretty straight retelling, the propulsive drumming from Mike Joyce given an added resonance by the knowledge that post-Smiths, he was actually in the Buzzcocks line-up for a short period.

In fact, Joyce was like the father figure here, making sure everyone was in the right place and knew what they were doing. And that was the striking thing: everyone really did seem to know exactly what they were doing.

This was unexpected. When Tim Burgess from The Charlatans came by to lend his distinctive vocals to The Answering Machine version of Just Lust - also on Love Bites - he did so with lyrics printed out on a sheet of A4. The young Manchester indie band, bless them, were children when Some Friendly was released (incidentally, Burgess's floppy hair seems to be referencing those glory days, just in time for the record's 20th anniversary on May 17) and looked slightly nervy. So to see both parties nailing Just Lust on the first take was really impressive. In fact, the only reason they did it again was so it could be filmed.

Talking of filming, here's a clip of The Whip doing Ever Fallen In Love with Mike Joyce on the Tuesday - the obvious track to cover maybe, but I quite like the way they've tweaked it into a kind of dreamy ska anthem.

Mike Joyce and The Whip: Falling in Love from Jack Daniel on Vimeo.

Anyway, it all bodes well for the Band On The Wall date on May 27 - you can apply for tickets from the JD Set website, and from what I saw, it should be a great night.

Caribou at Deaf Institute

Once upon a time, Caribou was Manitoba, a stage name for the chilled out, slightly incidental electronica of Dan Snaith. That was before, quite ridiculously, punk singer Richard "Handsome Dick" Manitoba objected - Snaith memorably suggesting it was "like The Smiths suing John Smith".

But the name change seemed to fire up Snaith, his records as Caribou more song-focussed than ever. There were Krautrock and psychedelic influences. In fact, I was so impressed at the tuneful 1960s guitar pop of the lead single for 1997's Andorra, I interviewed him about it for Metro.

His new record, Swim, also reveals that he's honed his sound even further - it's much more dancefloor focussed. The stylish European electronica of opening track and lead-out single Odessa is reminiscent of a really good Kings Of Convenience remix - there's a fragility to the voice hugely reminiscent of Erlend Oye.

In the main, it works live, too. What really impresses at a completely rammed Deaf Institute is the percussion: propulsive loops are layered under the work of a live drummer who rightly shares the front of the stage with Snaith. It's not all about the beats; Snaith employs nostalgic sounds from acid house, techno and even disco. Indeed, Caribou are far better when they don't try and be a rock band (there are two guitarists lurking in the shadows) and slather the slower tracks in feedback.

The only problem, really, is Snaith's voice. Even on record it feels weak - although the vocals themselves are crucial to giving Caribou humanity. Live, it's even thinner. Suggestions that Snaith gets some training are unlikely to meet appreciative ears, but he's proved that he enjoyed tweaking his sound throughout those ten years. Now for the most critical tweak of all: himself.

1984

Hate to waste good words... I went to see 1984 for the FT but unfortunately they ran out of space for the review. So here's the review anyway, definitely recommend catching it before it closes on Saturday.

1984, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Three Stars

Big Brother; Room 101; 2 + 2 = 5: the famous motifs within George Orwell’s Newspeaking 1949 novel run the risk of becoming more important than the story itself. Certainly, Matthew Dunster (who also directs his new adaptation in the round at Manchester’s Royal Exchange) is intent on reclaiming Orwell’s original vision of a nightmarish, totalitarian and dystopian Britain from the clutches of reality television shows.

The last stage performance of 1984 - at London’s BAC just before Christmas - involved puppets and was essentially played for laughs, but adaptations are, on the whole, rare. Dunster opts for a traditional retelling, but though he expertly sets up the Orwellian world of never-ending war and total surveillance by Big Brother, to begin with his overall-clad Outer Party members seem as stilted as the society in which they’re subjugated. It isn’t Winston Smith’s (a nicely bemused Jonathan McGuinness) realisation that his job revising history is ridiculous which sets the play alight, but a proper love story.

Winston’s illicit relationship with Julia is perfectly judged: Caroline Bartleet plays this mechanic working on the Ministry’s novel writing machine with jolly hockey sticks charm, which soon gives way to the sexy but pragmatic young woman who is famously “a rebel from the waist down”. It lends this particular 1984 the interesting sense of having two star-crossed lovers at its heart, and their sheer sexuality becomes a form of rebellion in itself.

Their hearts are not just broken, they’re virtually ripped out as Winston and Julia are completely betrayed by the system and each other. It makes for a gruelling second half. Apart from a virtuoso monologue from Paul Moriarty as the rebel Goldstein - so impressive the action is actually interrupted by applause - the rest of 1984 is essentially one long torture scene at the Ministry of Love, to the strains of discordant techno. This is where the perfect casting of a virtually emaciated McGuinness comes to the fore, but the pace slackens through repetition.

But then, perhaps Dunster is right to ram home the point that supposed civilized nations are still using such methods to assert power in the 21st century. It’s the only time this adaptation is as crude as Orwell’s famous idea of a “boot stamping on a human face forever”: for the most part, there’s a lightness of touch and, crucially, humour, here. ‘Doubleplusgood’, as the Newspeak dictionary would probably put it.

The Art Of Coldness

Last week I went to artist Nasser Azam's studio in London for The National. It was near Ottolenghi's shop, but that is a (delicious) aside. Anyway, Nasser is the artist who has painted in zero gravity, and now Antarctica. It was fascinating spending time with him, and it made me realise I really want to buy some art that isn't from Ikea but doesn't cost thousands of pounds. But where to begin?

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Arts & Life
23 Mar 2010

East Goes West

Yesterday, I went to West Didsbury and bought this beautiful ceramic bowl from the very calming Moth, a watering can from GT Blagg, a pair of jeans in the Steranko sale and ate a lunch of delicious French onion soup to a soundtrack of Rolling Stones in Silver Apples. Brilliant. It made me wish I still lived there, instead of Didsbury Village/East Didsbury, whatever I must call it.

It's my firm belief that Burton Road is more interesting in times of recession. As rates go down, interesting independent businesses crop up. And right now, the street is probably as eclectic and vibrant as it's ever been. Even the posh take-away, Sous Chef (which I reviewed for Metro a year or so ago and feared for in a credit crunch way) is still happily preparing good food so you don't have to.

Meanwhile, East Didsbury's newest additions are a bookies, chain restaurant Zizzi and a Wetherspoon. Bit depressing really, although there is a sign in an empty shop window proclaiming the imminent arrival of fashion indie Bond. And there is of course an independent bookshop, a butchers, fishmongers and the brilliant Cheese Hamlet. The excellent Art Of Tea still drags me in for their carrot cake on a regular basis.

But every time I go in there for a brew, I think 'this is just like the kind of place you'd find in West Didsbury'. Which just about says it all.

Walking A Fine Line

The Viva Spanish & Latin American Film Festival is, like In The City and more recently, Manchester International Festival, part of the fabric of Manchester's cultural life. Part of the fabric of my cultural life too - I've covered nine of the 16 festivals for Metro.

It kicked off last night with Solo Quiero Caminar. There was something massively reminiscent about this Spanish/Mexican revenge thriller and it was only after a little Google searching afterwards that I worked out why - it's a loose follow-up to the very similar Nadie Hablara Con Nosotras Cuando Hayamos Muerto, which I saw at the 2003 festival.

The neat twist in Solo Quiero Caminar is that it's the women who are the bad guys. Well, the bad guys are bad guys too - drug dealers in fact - but when one of the four women marries head honcho Felix (for no apparent reason beyond plot development) and immediately works out that he's a wife-beating good-for-nothing, her three accomplices work out a way of fighting her corner. And that's by robbing Felix of nearly all his money via increasingly audacious schemes.

Solo Quiero Caminar is, with qualification, good fun. It has a Reservoir Dogs meets The A Team feel, never takes itself too seriously (which is probably for the best seeing as one of the women has her hand graphically hammered into a pulp) and in Gabriel, the second in command, it does at least have a character searching for some sort of redemption. It's his face on the poster, above.

But it's seriously undone by some really baggy plotting. You never get the sense of why these women robbers turned to crime in the first place, but more grievously, barely anyone is believable. One has a son she clearly loves, but nonsensically drops his essay off to his teacher rather than get the medical help that would probably prevent him from being an orphan. Another gets the angle grinder out to construct a lock-breaking gun that doubles as a bike which she somehow transports to Mexico without anyone blinking an eyelid. I was half expecting BA Baracus himself to pull up in his black van and take her to the gangsters' lair.

Essentially it's ridiculous - but there aren't enough laughs for this to be a satisfying send up of the genre. Instead, it kind of falls between the cracks - not really nasty enough to be really arresting, not gritty enough to feel realistic, and not pacey enough to mask its obvious flaws.

Oddly, almost exactly the same criticisms were made of Nadie Hablara... a film made in 1996 which clearly referenced Pulp Fiction's in the way it sent up gangsters rather than lionised them. So it's slightly depressing that director Agustin Diaz Yanez appears to have learnt little in the 14 years since.

The words on Gabriel's face in the poster above translate as 'love is more dangerous than revenge'. That subtext does exist in Solo Quiero Caminar but only as an afterthought - and actually, more of that storyline may have made this uneven film work a whole lot better.

The Night I Lost My Head

Now, this took me back. Back, in fact, to Jabez Clegg, 2005, where I saw Maximo Park play for the first time. They were about to release their first album, and there was a palpable sense that they were on the cusp of something rather big.

This was despite the venue - which has to be the worst place to watch gigs in Manchester. The sound is terrible, it gets no passing trade and it smells. Fast forward to 2007, and all three of these things came together in a perfect storm. Yeasayer played in the bar room, they had to battle against a metal band practising next door, and there were literally six people there. Including me. They actually had the conversation (we could hear everything) about whether it was worth playing at all. So it was quite satisfying, in a perverse way, to see sold out signs when they returned to Manchester last week to play their rather good new album - which meant I couldn't get in.

But play they did, and it reminded me that for a lot of bands, touring to Manchester is still a big deal. They're often nervous, they sometimes naively mention Manchester United, they always mention The Smiths. Does this happen when bands tour to Norwich? Don't judge me for this, but the only time I can remember any kind of reference to the fine city is when, ahem, Ned's Atomic Dustbin moaned about Norwich beating Aston Villa 3-2 in 1992, hours before the gig.

While I digress, that was one of Norwich's best away performances of the 1990s. Daryl Sutch got the winner, it was great, and I wish it was on YouTube.

Anyway, back to some sort of point. She won't be nervous because she's from Manchester, but I'm looking forward to seeing Lonelady tomorrow. Like Maximo Park, her debut is on Warp. Unlike Maximo Park, there's not much buzz around her. Yet. But Nerve Up is really arresting - there are satisfying shades of early REM in its jangle, and there's a minimalism in the clattering drum machine which makes Lonelady really stand out.

Let's hope there are more than six people there.

East Angles Music Prize: The final prizegiving

Listening to Kermode and Mayo laugh at 'format' (essentially, they've had a lame ongoing weekly feature imposed on them by BBC bosses, theirs being to ask interviewees 'what was the first film you saw') reminded me of salutary lessons learnt at my first editor role on PlayStation Power. That being, don't run ongoing features if they haven't got the legs to go beyond two editions.

Or, two blogs.

The East Angles Music Prize was a decent idea but, ahem, it's going the way of a millstone round my neck. And I'm repeating myself with the nominations. So you'll excuse me if I curtail it somewhat and just tell you the rest of category winners. Now. And then we can all move on... After all, it's February, and 2009 is so last year.

Best British Group

(Brits: Doves, Friendly Fires, JLS, Kasabian, Muse)

Arctic Monkeys were a surprise omission from the Brits, although generally the darker Humbug didn't go down that well. But Cornerstone and Crying Lightning were great singles, lyrically if nothing else, and the album was really only let down by a couple of weak tracks. Still, they're not the Best British Group. Neither are The XX. It's Wild Beasts. I've banged on about them enough on this blog, but Two Dancers is a wonderful album and they're everything a great British band should be: mysterious, intelligent, anthemic without being crass, and bound up in a very distinct Britishness. Somehow they make 'girls from Shipley, girls from Hounslow, girls from Whitby' sound as mythic as any American band referencing classic backwoods USA.

Best British Album

(Brits: Dizzee Rascal, Florence & The Machine, Kasabian, Lily Allen, Paolo Nutini)

Wild Beasts, for the reasons stated above. And one more: it was recorded in Norfolk. Although all the press about them decamping to the wild isolation of my home county made me laugh: the studio is about two minutes from the A11...

Best British Single

I'm not a huge fan of Kasabian and their apparent desire to be the next Oasis. But stadium rock that fuses indie, disco and glam, and does it live with gospel singers deserves all the plaudits it can get. Thank God Tom Meighan has cut his hair since this...

And that's all chaps. Lesson learnt. Single topic blogs from now on!

He says it best, when he says nothing at all

So, Alan McGee has shot his mouth off again: this time saying the Brits should be scrapped. The very same man, who in 1996 was 'amused and proud' - according to the brilliant history of Creation Records, My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize - when Oasis won three Brits. But then, McGee has made a career of being contrary and shoots his mouth off so regularly you sense he has to be more and more outlandish just so someone will listen. Take That should be shot. Paul McCartney should retire.

Actually, so should McGee. Although I suppose the East Angles Music Prize does in a way agree with McGee in that by doing this, I'm also implying that there's better music out there which is not being recognised. And that's no more evident than in the next category...

Best British Breakthrough Act

(Brits: Florence And The Machine, Friendly Fires, JLS, La Roux, Pixie Lott)

I'm presuming that the breakthrough act has to have released a record last year. Which, of course, Friendly Fires didn't. They re-released their fine debut album in 2009, but really should have been in last year's awards. Florence And The Machine and La Roux I can also understand, and JLS and Pixie Lott make more sense in this category too. But there are better...

The XX

It can only be sales which stopped The XX (pictured above) being nominated as Best British Breakthrough Act at the Brits. Most end of year polls had this London quartet - who recently became a trio - near the top, and rightly so. Their debut was genuinely unique - a minimal, brooding nocturnal soundtrack which fused rock songwriting with a glitchy, electronic, chill-out atmosphere. I interviewed them for their debut single, and they were painfully shy and untrained in the ways of the media. They're on the front of the NME this week, but the very fact they weren't pop stars throughout last year when you sense they could have been, made The XX all the more alluring.

Micachu And The Shapes

My second nomination for Micachu, read what I said about her here

Mumford & Sons

Every year seems to have an indie-folk crossover these days, and Mumford And Sons were 2009's. But there was substance beyond the fashionable sound: despite being alarmingly young Mumford And Sons sounded wise and grizzled beyond their years on Sigh No More. And there's banjo. Gotta love the banjo.

The Phantom Band

Usually, bands don't like to describe themselves, and when The Phantom Band said by way of introduction that they were a "proto-robofolk sextet based in Glasgow' there were probably tongues in cheeks. But it did make a kind of sense. Imagine Mumford And Sons and Phantom Band at a folk crossroads, Mumford taking the winding single-carriageway to more traditional sounds, Phantom heading down the Autobahn in search of more electronic, groove-based thrills. Here's a nice download link to Burial Sounds, the second track on their great album Checkmate Savage.

Little Boots

The second nomination for Little Boots as well. Similarly, you can read what I said about her here.

Next time: Best British Group.

Where are the British Males (in a field, it seems)

So, time for the Best Male Solo Artist in the East Angles Music Prize. First though, a male solo artist who I feel sure will be on the list this time next year: Fyfe Dangerfield.

I must admit to being a bit wary of a solo album from the Guillemots frontman, not least because as much as I often love his band, they can be a bit too exuberant and kitchen-sink ambitious. A bit (whisper it) jazz. But if you ever walked down a Parisian street and saw this happening, you'd forgive them.

Anyway, solo albums written in a week by frontmen with a predilection for such things are usually to be avoided, but Fly Yellow Moon is great - a lovely, and probably more conventional set of love songs than anyone would have expected. One listen was all it took to convince me to see him the next day at The Deaf Institute in Manchester, and the songs were even more stripped down than the Bernard Butler-produced album: just him, an acoustic guitar or piano, and sometimes a couple of violinists.

What's interesting is that he wrote these all these songs in the first flush of a new love, and now they've split up. It makes for a less exuberant Dangerfield than usual ('she needs me,' he sings. Er, no she doesn't) but it suits him. And he played Made Up Love Song on a ukelele at the end. Magic.

What the album and gig also underlined is that there is a real deficit of British male solo artists. American ones, sure, but choosing five for EAMP was really hard. But hey. I've started this thing so I will finish.

Best Male Solo Artist

(Brits: Calvin Harris, Dizzee Rascal, Mika, Paolo Nutini, Robbie Williams)

First, the ones I would have chosen. Probably Dizzee Rascal for making me laugh more than any other pop star this year. Bonkers. And Paolo Nutini saved himself from James Blunt territory with a pretty happy-go-lucky record, even though he sounded like a weird amalgam of Bob Marley and a hyperactive Louis Armstrong. Anyway, on with the nominations.

Jack Penate

It was a real surprise that not only did Jack Penate 'get' dance music this year - Tonight's Today was often dubbed the soundtrack to sunrise at Ibiza - but somehow he was overlooked when the end-of-year lists were compiled. Everything Is New was aptly named: gone was the rollicking indie of Penate's first record and in was reflective, happy pop. So why didn't it happen? I suspect he didn't work hard enough: not enough tours, festivals, visibility. Hope Penate doesn't jack the new direction in just when he was getting interesting. You can listen to it all here, actually...

Richard Hawley

After seeing Richard Hawley twice around the time of Coles Corner, I felt a little like he'd taken his gentle 1950s revivalism as far as he could. And it's fair to say Truelove's Gutter doesn't see Hawley 'go drum'n'bass'. But every so often, Hawley hits the mark: it's a mood thing, I think, and no-one does the battered romantic Northerner better than him. He even looks like Roy Orbison on the front cover.

Zomby

Ok, so there's a possibility this was out in November 2008, such is the murky world of dance music releases. And I admit, it was the title that got me first: Where Were You In 92? Well, in The Waterfront in Norwich or a rave in Great Yarmouth listening to exactly this kind of music. Well, maybe it's moved on and slowed down a little (our American friends filed this under dubstep). It was a guilty pleasure and probably what the kids listen to now thinking they're cutting edge. Either way, I rather liked it.

Jarvis Cocker

Another record only really appreciated from a distance. At the time, when Bonkers was No.1, it struggled for attention. But listening to Further Complications in preparation to speak to him (which I didn't in the end, but never mind), it did stand up to repeated scrutiny - not on a Pulp level, but it was quite nice to have Jarvis angry and (generally) rocking thanks to producer Steve Albini rather than ironic and poppy. And it has the best opening line of 2009: "I met her in the museum of palaeontology/and I make no bones about it."

Bibio

Ambivalence Avenue is Stephen Wilkinson's fourth album, but the first on a record label that told people he existed: Warp. And they were right to pick him up: it's a real jumble of Boards Of Canada-style chill-out, odd cut-up sounds you might expect to hear on a Warp release, and then pretty straightforward folky pop. One I returned to rather often.

Next time: Best British Breakthrough Act. Are there better new bands than Florence & The Machine, Friendly Fires, JLS, La Roux or Pixie Lott?

The East Angles Music Prize

The Kermodes are the excellent film critic Mark Kermode's alternative to The Oscars. The twist is they're awarded to films and actors that haven't been shortlisted. And to be honest, they're usually a better indication of that year's cinema than the Academy's picks.

So having been slightly bemused by the Brits nominations yesterday (er, Pixie Lott for Best Female Solo Artist?), I've stolen the Kermode template to use for music. I'll be taking on a Brit category per blog and announcing the winners of the inaugural and pretentiously named East Angles Music Prize on the day of the Brits, on February 16. There might even be a winner-of-winners award, Costa Book Prize style...

You can even vote if you like, by leaving comments! Anyway, on with category No.1:

Best Female Solo Artist

(Brits: Bat For Lashes, Florence & The Machine, Leona Lewis, Lily Allen, Pixie Lott)

This is where the concept falls apart slightly, as I might have gone for Florence & The Machine too, if only for the brilliant Hurricane Drunk. I can see why Lily Allen and Leona Lewis made the five, even though, really, they only made competent albums that sold well. But Bat For Lashes second album was hugely over-rated, and Pixie Lott is just baffling.

So, here's the East Angles nominations...

Little Boots

I had a love-hate relationship with Victoria Hesketh - the artist we were all told to like this time last year. Of course, she could never live up to the hype and lost out, in the end, to La Roux and Florence in the Great Electro-Influenced Pop Poppets Race Of 2009. Hands does have some great sounds on it - particularly the the gurgling electronics on Click - and Symmetry has Hesketh doing her best Kylie impression. But that was just the point: it was a bit too poppy and eager to please. Still, if you could actually see Hesketh live (she's tiny) then it was all good fun.

La Roux

Anyone growing up in the 1980s had to check there wasn't a DeLorean parked outside every time Elly Jackson's throwback electronic-pop came on the radio - which was a lot. But despite making you feel trapped in an episode of Back To The Future, once the irritation factor of the ubiquitous In For The Kill and Bulletproof had subsided, her debut was a soulful and surprisingly reflective (if rather shrill) album. Last 1980s reference for now (and for my uncle if no-one else), Elly Jackson (pictured above) would have been on the cover of The Face every month, no?

Micachu And The Shapes

At the time, Micachu's Jewellery passed me by. I must admit I was baffled by The Guardian's insistence that the debut album by Mica Levy should have been on the Mercury list last year, and having really enjoyed it since realising that a million end of year polls probably weren't wrong, I've realised why. I was listening to it at work, on headphones, trying to write at the same time. It was absolutely maddening in that context, in the way that one song could be a fuzzily riotous pop song and the next a cut-up, bleepy, beat-heavy experiment in music. Oh, and then there's the vacuum cleaner song. But listen to it properly and it's incredible - adventurous and grimy yet somehow rather pretty and melodic.

Speech Debelle

Poor Speech Debelle, destined forever to be characterised as the victim of the Mercury curse that has afflicted Gomez, Roni Size and Talvin Singh. It's true that winning the prize last year was such a surprise it flummoxed even her record label, who weren't able to capitalise on the exposure in time. She ended up ditching them, and good for her. But enough about the industry. The reason she won was presumably because Speech Therapy was a great, innovative and individual debut - a jazz-inspired hip hop record imbued with proper emotion. It just didn't have any hit singles on it: no bad thing really.

Susan Boyle

Joke. Kind of. I really did like her version of Wild Horses, and while I don't think I'd want to listen to an entire record of SuBo warbling through the classics, as the artist behind the best selling album of 2009 she certainly deserved a nomination far more than Pixie Lott.

Next up: Male Solo Artist. Can I find five better than Calvin Harris, Dizzee Rascal, Mika, Paolo Nutini and Robbie FLIPPING Williams?

Tall Stories

The Wire boxset is mothballed for now, as this is my slightly intimidating current reading list. I'm looking forward to all of them in different ways, but at this rate I won't have time to read Grow Your Own Veg, let alone grow any.

I'm currently (well, obviously not currently) knee-deep in Richard Powers' Generosity. It's proving light relief after the dark melancholy of reading two parts of David Peace's Tokyo crime trilogy back-to-back, which I very much enjoyed but made me feel the need for a bath every time I finished a chapter. I was reading them in prep for an interview with Peace, which I admit to being slightly intimidated by (as you would speaking to anyone who has revelled in so much murder). But Peace was such an engaging, interesting man - and just as appalled by his subject matter as me, it seemed.

Anyway, back to Powers. He's much more of a straight thriller writer than Peace, but with a twist in that he's interested in science and technology. So interested in fact, that he dictates his novels to speech recognition software rather than writes them. Generosity is by no means a literary thriller but it does revel in ideas - it's about finding a gene for happiness and what that might mean for the world.

Talking of happiness, I was really pleased to see my interview with Colm Toibin in The National today. Brooklyn was my favourite novel of last year and it was great to see it win the Costa Novel award. You can read the piece as it was printed, below.

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The Review
15 Jan 2010

Short is sweet

I had a problem with some of the critics' albums of 2009, in particular Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest, even Fever Ray's debut album. All three had brilliant moments - Animal Collective's My Girls, Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks and Fever Ray's When I Grow Up are standout tracks of last year. But the records they came from also needed a good edit. Perhaps these bands were more about creating mood and atmosphere than hit after hit, but as Merriweather Post Pavilion crept up to the hour mark, it did trip over into self-indulgence from time to time.

All of which was brought into sharp relief by my first album purchase of the year, Contra by Vampire Weekend. It's a bit early to call it great, just a week in, but just like these arty New Yorkers' debut (34 minutes) its sheer brevity is a real virtue. From Horchata to I Think Ur A Contra, their follow-up is just 36minutes long, and an endearing rattle through the styles that people love to hate a white indie band for appropriating: reggae, calypso and most obviously, Afro-pop. Listen for yourself, here:

Of course, Vampire Weekend are essentially a chart-focused pop band more disposed to making short, sharp three-minute singles than Animal Collective or Grizzly Bear. It's in their DNA, and therefore it's no wonder that a ten track album will clock in at 30-odd minutes. But having said that, my favourite records of last year were The XX's debut album (38mins) and Wild Beasts' Two Dancers (37minutes). The former was a brooding hymn to the nocturnal hours and was inspired by dubstep as much as guitar music. And the latter was intricate, quirky indie rock sung in falsetto. Both, then, exactly the kind of records you'd expect to be taking up an hour of your time - uninterested as these bands seem in hit singles (although in my world, Hooting And Howling is a No.1).

But no, they're tight, focused albums, and all the better for it. Once, all records were this long (or, perhaps, short), confined by the limitations of the vinyl format they were produced on. CDs, with their 78-minute capacity changed all that, and I suppose the digital age means an album can be as long as the band want it to be.

Perhaps the digital age has also changed my listening habits and I'm more fidgety with an album, less used to listening to it all the way through as iPod's shuffle function becomes the norm. But I do know I've been enjoying Vampire Weekend and Wild Beasts as they were intended to be heard: in one sitting.

So don't get me started on double albums...

Happy new year to you all from a distinctly snowy North-West. So snowy and beautiful in fact, that the above picture is not a stock shot, but one I took on Sunday. East Angles was hibernating in December - but we're back with a cultural catch-up and some nice new links (on the right) to interviews with the likes of Sarah Waters, Nowhere Boy and Control writer Matt Greenhalgh, and Barbara Kingsolver.

The interview with Waters was for her new(ish) book The Little Stranger, and it seemed particularly timely as we endure the coldest, snowiest winter I can remember since childhood. There's one scene where a key is thrown into a snowdrift at the eerie post-war Hundreds Hall: of course, the 1950s were when they had proper snow every year. Anyway, it's a really enjoyable ghost story, not least because it might not be a ghost story at all.

So that was pre-Christmas reading: post Christmas it was all about David Peace. And instead of the snow, the oppressive heat of Tokyo. The international edition of Occupied City is out this week and I'm speaking to him about the trilogy soon, so it's a treat to wallow in another one of Peace's murky, claustrophobic worlds. I read The Damned United at the same time as then-Norwich manager Nigel Worthington was teetering towards the sack - while Worthy was no Brian Clough, you did really get a feel for the loneliness of the under pressure football manager.

Music-wise I had great fun doing an alternative Christmas playlist for The National, prompted by seeing Thea Gilmore play her beautiful 'seasonal' record Strange Communion at the new Band On The Wall. By dint of not having a quirky alt.folk version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas anywhere near it, it works rather well as a record to play in January too: particularly, right now, Cold Coming (which you can hear on her MySpace) and her version of Yoko Ono's Listen The Snow Is Falling.

And when the festivities were over, two albums have clamoured for my attention ever since. Lawrence Arabia's first international release, Chant Darling, is out this week and is really fantastic, a mix of Beach Boys, Lennon and quirky indie pop. A blast of New Zealand sunshine should you need reminding that it can get above freezing in this country. Apple Pie Bed won James Milne (for he is Lawrence Arabia) the top Kiwi songwriting prize, and you can see why. In fact, you can literally see why, here (video slightly NSFW - only slightly).

He's touring with Beach House in the UK next month - a great double bill because their third album Teen Dream is the other record that saw me into 2010. It's utterly gorgeous: slow, reflective but never indulgent music to lose yourself completely to. Norway is particularly brilliant in the way it unsettlingly detunes itself but still makes sense.

I began this post by mentioning hibernating. Well, Beach House make music to hibernate to, in the very best sense. I'm off to build a snowman.