The List Issue 778

Manipulate

Enter the weird and wonderful world of

+

Hamilton Joelle Taylor Wim Wenders Louise Welsh Salman Rushdie The Kingdom Mexico City Slowdive Andy Warhol Idles

FEBRUARY 2024 | ISSUE 778

LIST.CO.UK FREE

art | books | comedy | dance | drink | eat | film | kids | music | podcasts | shop | theatre | travel | tv

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05/07/2023 11:46

Mouthpiece 404 Ink’s co-founder pores over the perils of publishing

Head 2 Head What’s so great about the Super Bowl half-time show?

FEATURES Spring Books Special Salman Rushdie, Kokumo Rocks and lots of debut novels

Hamilton The biggest show on Earth comes to Scotland

contents

FRONT

6 7

12

20

EAT & DRINK Restaurant reviews

29

Taking a taste test at Montrose and Hazel

Bar Files

9

30

Where jazz singer kitti goes for a beverage

TRAVEL & SHOP Mexico City

32

Sampling the surreal in Frida Kahlo’s backyard

Assai

34

Tracking the country’s fastest growing record shop

GOING OUT Wim Wenders

37

German cineaste on making an ideal film in Japan

My Comedy Hero

41

Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Ian Smith on his icon

Wicked Little Letters

57

British film proves to be in rude health

Jekyll And Hyde

58

Splitting off into a one-man extravaganza

STAYING IN Scottish Island Adventures Sexy Beast

70

Shooting a gangland prequel affair

BACK The Q&A

”

If we get rid of that, we’re just a bunch of fascists

62

The Hebridean Baker whips up a tasty pod

JOELLE TAYLOR ON THE NEED FOR CONSTANT DEBATE

76

Louise Welsh on Prince, Peanuts and parkour COVER PICTURE: BRIAN HARTLEY

February2024 THE LIST 3

welcome

Apparently no one reads books anymore. Attention spans are shot to pieces by everything from constant worrying about the state of the world to being hopelessly addicted to our mobile devices. All of which might well be true, but none of it explains the packed book catalogues which publishing houses produce approximately twice a year, chockful of new releases and old reissues, with fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels and poetry all jostling for space on our shelves.

So, this issue we’re devoting several chunks of space to a spring books special. We have an interview with playwright and prize-winning poet Joelle Taylor whose debut novel is out this month, and we also speak to Kokumo Rocks, an Edinburgh-based performance poet who reflects on how bigoted views have propelled her career forwards rather than dragging her down.

We look at the life and work of Salman Rushdie as he returns to the publishing fold after the appalling attack he suffered at a book event in 2022, while Glasgow-residing author Louise Welsh takes on our Q&A. 404 Ink co-founder Laura Jones-Rivera writes about some of the harsher realities of modern publishing, our Spotify playLIST compilation has a decidedly literary flavour, and horrorotica scribe Garth Marenghi tells us (kind of but not really) about his ideal holiday.

Away from bookish matters, we poke around the tech-heavy aspects of Manipulate, the annual festival of puppetry, animation and visual theatre, and speak to the stars of Hamilton, a musical-theatre sensation which is landing with a wallop in Edinburgh at the end of February for a two-month residency.

There are some big hitters going under our reviewing microscope this month such as Idles with their latest thunderous album; Lars von Trier whose frankly barmy hospital-set horror-comedy The Kingdom comes out in boxset form; Forbes Masson delivers a blistering one-man Jekyll And Hyde while Ralph Fiennes becomes Macbeth in an eye-catching new production; Jonathan Glazer once again films the unfilmable, this time taking on the late Martin Amis’ Holocaust drama, The Zone Of Interest; and we ponder whether Andy Warhol’s textiles will have the same broad appeal as his soup cans and multiple Marilyn Monroes.

DO HO SUH

PUBLISHING CEO Sheri Friers Editor Brian Donaldson Art Director Seonaid Rafferty Sub Editor Paul McLean Eat & Drink Editor Jo Laidlaw Travel & Shop Editor Megan Merino Designer Isabella Dalliston Writers Ailsa Sheldon, Becca Inglis, Brian Donaldson, Carol Main, Claire Sawers, Claire Stuart, Craig McLean, David Kirkwood, Dom Czapski, Eddie Harrison, Emma Simmonds, Fiona Shepherd, Haneen AlEid, Isy Santini, James Mottram, Jay Thundercliffe, Jo Laidlaw, Jodie Hagan, Kelly Apter, Kevin Fullerton, Laura Jones-Rivera, Lucy Ribchester, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Megan Merino, Murray Robertson, Neil Cooper, Paul Dale, Rachel Ashenden, Rachel Cronin, Rebecca Crockett, Suzy Pope Social Media & Content Editor Megan Merino

Brian Donaldson EDITOR

47

CONTRIBUTORS

Senior Business Development Manager Jayne Atkinson

71

YOU’RE BOOKED

Online News Editor Kevin Fullerton Media Sales Executive Ewan Wood Digital Operations & Events Manager Leah Bauer Events Assistant Eve Johnston

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4 THE LIST February2024

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front

mouthpiece Co-founder of 404 Ink, Laura Jones-Rivera is uniquely positioned to assess the pitfalls and perils of book publishing. Here, she exposes the threats facing her industry and insists that public perceptions need to be challenged

‘I

f we didn’t feel so continually threatened, the business wouldn’t get out of bed.’ So said Philip Jones, editor of book industry magazine The Bookseller, just last year. Feeling doomed is part of the job spec, so when you choose to run your own book publishing company, you’re welcoming into your life constant existential threat and stress so powerful that a masseuse will declare your crunchy, knotted back muscles the worst they’ve ever seen.

That’s what my own co-founded publishing company 404 Ink gifts me, and no wonder, considering that in 2023 numerous fellow small publishers closed across the UK, citing issues such as Brexit and the cost-of-living crisis for their collapse. One demise close to home was Sandstone Press, an Inverness-based publisher of Booker-listed titles and popular figures such as Nicola Sturgeon. They appeared successful and buoyant, only to disappear seemingly overnight, to the shock of readers and, crucially, their now unmoored authors.

With publishers unable to get their books posted to customers in EU countries without endless, expensive customs forms (with no guarantee they’ll actually get over borders) and printing distribution costs soaring to an all-time

In this series of articles, we turn the focus back on ourselves by asking folk at The List about cultural artefacts that touch their heart and soul.

This time around, Rebecca Crockett tells us which things . . .

Made me cry: I didn’t expect Anatomy Of A Fall to get me like it did. I got cocky thinking I was simply weighing up each side of the argument. It was only when witnessing Sandra Hüller’s character’s final breakdown that I stopped holding my breath and the tears wouldn’t stop.

Made me angry: What’s more infuriating than reducing the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman to a silly movie about fake boobs and plastic. Jo Koy’s Golden Globes speech is just another example of a man thinking he can hide his lack of talent behind blatant misogyny.

Made me laugh: Anyone But You had me doubled over in my seat. It might not be the most intellectual answer but there is something about an enemies-to-lovers plot that turns me into a giggling, hair-twirling mess. Plus, you know, it’s Sydney Sweeney.

Made me think: The Last Dinner Party dominated up-and-coming music lists all last year, and it looks like 2024 will be no different. Their new single ‘Caesar On A TV Screen’ forces you to dissect its constantly changing melodies and classical references to imagine what it would be like to wake up as a man. It is a joy to unravel.

Made me think twice: The Traitors on BBC One is the type of show that shouldn’t take up as much space in my brain as it does. It has made me question family ties, the nature of lying, and the depths of Claudia Winkleman’s eyeliner.

the insider 6 THE LIST February 2024

high, it’s sadly not such a shock to those inside the industry.

When 404 Ink won Publisher Of The Year at Scotland’s National Book Awards in 2022, I used our acceptance speech to reveal that at the time of winning, we had minus £5000 in the bank and even more anxiety over our sustainability, threatened by Brexit and the Conservative government’s refusal to acknowledge the damage they’ve done to export.

Despite a track record of reliable, popular publishing, we failed to get bank loans, and growth-obsessed investors practically sneered at our profit margins. The struggle between public perception and reality is real, something we are constantly trying to redress through transparent, possibly over-sharing social-media posts and blogs.

At these times, all we can do at 404 Ink is keep our heads down and get on with the work of publishing some of Scotland’s most exciting new writers while relying on precarious public funding via Creative Scotland. The existential threat gets us out of bed, but the support of loyal readers and talented writers keeps us going, no matter how much Conservatives and Brexiteers may seemingly want to hold us back.  404ink.com

Our first mag of 2024 features a spring books special, so naturally we had to create the perfect literary-laced soundtrack. Immerse yourself in David Bowie, The Japanese House, Metallica, Paolo Nutini, CMAT, The Velvet Underground and several others. The titles and lyrics can all be connected to books, writing or well-known authors, so keep those ears peeled . . .

MEGAN

FRONT

We look through The List’s 39-year back catalogue to see what was making headlines this month in decades gone by

This month’s blast from our past takes us to 1989, the year Berlin’s wall fell and Jodie Foster landed on our February cover. In our interview, Foster (currently on small screens in True Detective) defended the dark material covered in her new film The Accused, criticised at the time for its vivid depiction of sexual violence. The film would go on to be critically acclaimed, winning Foster Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Also inside, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra celebrated its 15th birthday while Broxburn-born filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones told us about his new movie, the equally controversial Scandal, starring Joanne Whalley and Ian McKellen.  Head to archive.list.co.uk for our past issues.

Scan and listen as you read:

2

hea d

from the archive

play LIST

hea d PICTURE: MUYUAN MA

What is the Super Bowl if not a vessel for the half-time show? I know I’m not alone in this thought; the NFL has reported consistent viewership drop-offs after half-time shows (5.2% in 2020 when Shakira and J.Lo took the stage). As a lover of pop culture, there is truly nothing more exciting than the immense and immortal spectacle an artist gets to create on a stadium scale. Thanks to huge production budgets and great logistical capabilities only granted to an event of this mass appeal, it’s a performance that can really go anywhere. Of course, it has to be spectacular, encapsulate an entire career in 13 minutes, and carefully cater to both a live crowd of American football fans and millions of critical viewers online. But pulling it off doesn’t just cement a performer’s status as a pop icon; it progresses the capabilities of live performance and allows everyone in on the action. It does beg the question, though, can you separate the art of performance from the intrinsically capitalist nature of pop culture? But I think I’ll kick that conversational Coke can down the road and watch Dr Dre’s half-time show one more time on a billionaire-owned video streamer. Sue me!

We quietly sit Megan Merino and Kevin Fullerton down in front of a contentious bit of current culture and ask them to argue the toss. As the Super Bowl thunders into view, our intrepid pair butt safely helmeted heads over the merits of this mega event’s half-time spectacular

KEVIN

What could be better than a lame stadium gig with a carbon footprint the size of an oil rig?

How about a lame mega-polluting stadium gig bookended by lunkheaded adverts and one of the most bafflingly dull sports ever devised?

Despite its increasingly global reach, the Super Bowl remains a strangely parochial paean to an America in the zombie-like thrall to capitalism.

Artists who participate in its half-time show implicitly shackle themselves to a free-market value system and a sport funded by corporate shysters. The pageantry of the Super Bowl halftime extravaganza isn’t about music and, despite its undeniable star power, it’s barely about putting on a spectacular show. It’s all about the sell, its epic scale a flex to illustrate American football’s rock-hard financial abs. The fireworks and choreographed light displays are big in the manner of an action scene from a Marvel movie and, much like that vigilante-obsessed hypersuperficial example of US culture, the spectacle belies an asinine attitude to music designed to hypnotise casual punters. French philosopher Guy Debord wrote, ‘spectacle is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity’. What would he have made of Usher belting out ‘My Boo’ in between concussion-blighted athletes and ads for Doritos?

February 2024 THE LIST 7

8 THE LIST February 2024

Take a letter

SPRING BOOKS

We kick off our spring books special with acclaimed poet and playwright Joelle Taylor who is set to launch her debut novel, The Night Alphabet. She talks to Becca Inglis about a fascination with tattoos, breaking into guarded cultural worlds, and why we must never deny the right to debate >>

PICTURES: ROMAN MANFREDI

February 2024 THE LIST 9

SPRING BOOKS

PICTURES: ROMAN MANFREDI

T >>

he first tattoo Joelle Taylor ever got was of an angel.

It was 1994 and she had just written her first play (no stranger to theatre, she had already directed Angela Carter’s Vampirella, but Naming was her ‘first professional thing’). Unlike today, getting a tattoo was not the done thing, certainly not for women, and Taylor remembers feeling scared. Yet, with that first inking, she entered her body into a secret language. ‘It was a cultural currency amongst queers and criminals,’ she says, ‘both of which I did very successfully.’

Tattoos have long enabled discrete signals between queer women, helping them identify each other wherever their desires were taboo: nautical stars for butch lesbians, violets for the femmes, or a pink triangle (a subversion of the Nazi demarcation for gay men). Taylor’s Cupid, she explains, was a popular stamp in the 1990s. ‘It’s about carving out not just a safe space, but an erotic space,’ she says. ‘That’s where my fascination with tattoos and stories started: how we own these bits of our bodies and what they symbolise, what stories they tell, but also what stories they cover up.’

In The Night Alphabet, tattoos signify other people’s stories, which the protagonist Jones involuntarily inhabits. Each illustration recalls a life Jones has seen through another’s eyes, giving the novel its immense scope (a post-Brexit wasteland, synthetic wombs, sex trafficking and coal mines all feature). Taylor is similarly expansive when we speak, her mind sparking in all directions. Warm and loquacious, she is in holiday mode, one daiquiri down as she joins our call from Thailand, where she has retreated for a month-long break.

This is Taylor’s first foray into prose, following 2021’s TS Eliot Prizewinning poetry collection C+nto. It’s a satisfying trajectory for a writer who, in another interview, characterised her younger self as a member of the ‘illiterati’, the slam poetry camp once considered inferior to ‘real’ page poets. How different things look today for the SLAMbassadors championship founder and, now, novelist. ‘It absolutely feels terrifying,’ she says. ‘All I’ve wanted my entire life is to write. I got into performance because, for people like myself, there’s no opportunity to break into this heavily guarded cultural castle. It’s hard to get access unless you build the stage yourself.’ Actually, Taylor says, she writes prose just as much, if not more, than poetry; only now, with C+nto’s success, her ‘queer futurist’ novel can take flight.

Fairytale and dystopia saturate the book, which Taylor attributes to her early experiences reading speculative fiction. ‘I learned to write through Stephen King,’ she says. ‘Though where story really comes from, for me, is the English ghost story.’ That ability to weave tales is also a maternal legacy (a prominent theme in The Night Alphabet: Jones learns to embrace her so-called ‘rememberings’ with her mother and grandmother’s help). ‘My mother was a glorious storyteller,’ says Taylor. ‘She could make going to the post office and sending a secondclass letter absolutely epic.’ Her grandmother too, a dockworker’s daughter, broke ranks and travelled to France in the 1980s, inspiring a love of learning in her granddaughter. ‘She self-educated and passed that on to me. She’s probably the reason I am a writer.’

10 THE LIST February 2024

SPRING BOOKS Yet, as a visibly butch woman, mothers provoke complicated feelings for Taylor. ‘There’s quite a bit of pain when I think of mothers, because I know I let them down terribly.’ Taylor left her Lancashire home at 15 and hitchhiked south, where she found new maternal figures in the Greenham Common women’s peace camp and London’s squats. ‘We became mothers to one another,’ she recalls. ‘Obviously, it’s not this utopian world. We aren’t mincing around with flowers in our mouths being beautiful. There were a lot of fist fights too, but we understood that we’d all come from trauma.’

Mothering, in these alternative homes, became a communal act. ‘This very morning, I went to an elephant sanctuary. The guide told me that herds of elephants are all female. There will be one actual mother who is pregnant for two years. When the calf is born, it will stay with the mother for a year. Then she gets bored, so they share the nannying of this calf. That’s like the squats in the 80s.’

Central to The Night Alphabet are the multiple perspectives Jones gains, which give her a unique empathy, even for troubling characters. One harrowing episode enters the embittered world of incels. ‘Researching that is one of the worst experiences I’ve ever gone through,’ says Taylor, who peppered the chapter with snippets of misogynistic speech lifted from real tweets. ‘You never think people really think like that, but they do. I think the responsibility with writing is to go into dark rooms to find something we lost.’

It also reads as an invitation to heal rifts, particularly within the atomised left. ‘The right wing has always known that the best way to defeat the left is to leave us alone as we have this incredible ability to destroy one another,’ says Taylor, citing the divide between Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer supporters that splits the Labour Party.

‘What terrifies me is not the different perspectives; the rage of each perspective, that’s the thing. But what do we do? Surely at the heart of liberal thinking is allowing constant debate. If we get rid of that, we’re just a bunch of fascists.’

Part of the trouble, says Taylor, is the deterioration of physical space.

‘We lost the mining families and all those women who would support one another,’ she says. ‘We replaced them with the youth centres, but then we closed the meeting spaces, the lesbian and gay spaces, the women-only spaces. So what are we left with?’ The Maryhill Bar (which first appeared in C+nto, and gets its own chapter in the novel) represents one such relic; a lesbian bar where queer women could commune, of which only one remains in London today. ‘We see a lot of fights within the bar, but when it comes to it, you stand as one.’

The tonic, Taylor argues, lies in restoring these spaces. ‘It won’t be in a sci-fi way with our heads in a pod. It’s going to be with bricks and mortar. It’s been the same message, whether it’s slam poetry, fiction, playwriting: come together. It’s the biggest antidote to cultural fascism.’

The Night Alphabet is published by Quercus on Thursday 15 February; Joelle Taylor appears at Topping & Company, Edinburgh, Wednesday 8 May.

February 2024 THE LIST 11

SPRING BOOKS

With the publication of Knife, a memoir about surviving an attempt on his life in 2022, Salman Rushdie meditates upon love, loss and art. The Satanic Verses author is well-known for many things but Rebecca Crockett digs around and finds a dozen bits and pieces that may still surprise you

1. His father adopted the last name Rushdie

inspired by the 12th-century Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd. This classical writer was a believer in treating philosophical thinking as a companion to religion rather than an opponent. Very apt for Rushdie who would eventually get in trouble for his own philosophical musings.

2.

Rushdie wanted to be a writer since he was five years old. As a young boy, his father would read to him from One Thousand And One Nights and The Mahabharata. Both texts would become major influences for him with their grand settings and mystical narratives.

3. Rushdie originally had more dramatic ambitions,

PICTURE: RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS

12 THE LIST February 2024

12 Things You Might Not Know About Salman Rushdie

having performed in fringe theatre during his time at Cambridge. He has appeared as himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm offering Larry David advice for dating under a fatwa, and in Bridget Jones’ Diary directing Renée Zellweger to the bathroom.

4.

He missed an opportunity to star in Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby in 2006. The film was pitched as an ‘Untitled Will Ferrell Nascar Movie’ and was set to include a scene with Lou Reed, Julian Schnabel and Rushdie as unlikely racing drivers. Unfortunately, this setpiece was scrapped due to scheduling conflicts, much to our loss.

5. Rushdie worked as an advertising copywriter

for ten years. During this time, he came up with Aero Chocolate’s ‘Irresistibubble’ campaign after a colleague starting panicking about a deadline.

Rushdie said the man kept stuttering ‘it’s impossib-ibib-ible’, after which he began writing down as many words he could think of ending in ‘ible’ and ‘able’.

6.

After the publication of his 2012 memoir, Joseph Anton, Rushdie’s undercover identity was revealed to the world. Created using the first names of favourite authors, Conrad and Chekhov, other suggestions included Marcel Beckett, Vladimir Joyce, and Franz Sterne. Joseph Anton won the day when his bodyguards began affectionately calling him Joe.

SPRING BOOKS

on the Rocks 7. During his time in hiding, Rushdie spent some

time in north Wales. He lay low in his former literary agent’s rural farm in the remote area of Powys, and frequented a bed and breakfast in the area, owned by a former police officer.

8. At one point during his spell undercover, someone suggested he wear a disguise while out in public. Rushdie said in an interview that he tried it on in London once, but he kept getting asked whether he was ‘Salman Rushdie in a wig’. After that he stuck with the simple but classic dark shades and hat.

9. Rushdie’s sophomore novel Midnight’s Children

has been voted the best ever winner of the Booker Prize, not once but twice. The first time in 1993 to coincide with the award’s 25th anniversary, and again in 2008 for the 40th anniversary.

10.TheGroundBeneathHerFeet is a mythological

retelling wrapped in a rock star’s clothing. In 2000, real-life rocker Bono called Rushdie, asking him if he could write music to accompany some lyrics written in the novel. The song made it to number two on the US Alternative music chart with Rushdie appearing in the video.

11.

PEN Canada once secretly arranged for Rushdie to travel to Toronto and appear at their 1992 Gala. The organisation, which fights for freedom of expression, found themselves coordinating with intelligence agencies through payphones to make it happen. For a while, a group of Canadian literary agents only knew Rushdie and his wife as ‘Harry’ and ‘Sally’.

12.

When living with a death threat over your head, love may be the last thing on your list of worries. However, when once asked whether he managed to date and have relationships with a fatwa against him, Rushdie candidly said ‘let’s put it like this: people should not feel sorry for me.’

Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder is published by Jonathan Cape on Tuesday 16 April.

K

Kokumo Rocks’ experience of racism while growing up in Fife has been an anchor of her performance-poetry work.

Before heading to Pitlochry’s Winter Words Festival, she tells Haneen AlEid about turning childhood events into a positive and making the ordinary extraordinary

okumo Rocks realised her dream of becoming a performance poet following a near-death experience during a holiday in Greece. But when she started on this new path, she had humble ambitions, simply wanting to perform on busy street corners and surprise unsuspecting passersby. ‘I don’t particularly want to make my audience feel good or anything,’ explains Rocks, ‘I’ll just write what I think and feel is important, and then it’s out there.’

During her childhood in the Fife mining town of Cowdenbeath, Rocks experienced covert racism as a member of the only black family in the area. These difficulties inspired much of her early work and the issues she liked to write about. ‘The racial voice came because that was what I knew about and also because I’ve seen other black performers and I thought “wow, they are giving me a voice”. I then thought I should give other people a voice.’

Rocks’ relationship with the late writer Benjamin Zephaniah inspired her deeply during the early days of her career, even before she wrote her first piece. ‘I said to him “I would like to be a poet” and he wrote on a scrap of paper “to one black poet, from another black poet”. I was blown away because that was his encouragement and it meant a lot.’ She recalls Zephaniah’s subtle boldness and his ability to remain true to himself and the topics he wrote about.

Of her own approach to writing and performance, Rocks says ‘I like to make the ordinary extraordinary.’

She has written about many topics including race, LGBTQ+ stories, and domestic violence; living in a multicultural city such as Edinburgh has allowed her the privilege of remaining informed about contemporary issues. Rocks will often encounter a simple idea or a story that she studies and expands through her words. ‘I look for a point of starting, a name, and take people on a journey. I might hit them with something at first and then go lower. You don’t have to be a noisy artist to make it, but you should make everybody stop.’

Kokumo Rocks appears at Winter Words Festival, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Thursday 8 February.

February 2024 THE LIST 13

SPRING BOOKS

Words up Another busy publishing season is upon us and picking nine fiction highlights from the myriad of choices is almost impossible. But we’ll give it a go

ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

MONA OF THE MANOR Maupin’s iconic San Francisco saga continues with Tales Of The City’s tenth instalment in which its titular fortysomething is now, somehow, the owner of Britain’s most romantic country pile. As the manor’s legendary midsummer ceremony approaches, Mona has to work hard to keep everything on track.  Transworld, Tuesday 5 March.

DANNY RAMADAN

THE FOGHORN ECHOES Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author who advocates for LGBTQ+ refugees, and some of his concerns merge in this paperback version of his debut novel. Hussam and Wassim are teenage boys living in Syria during America’s 2003 Iraq invasion, and when a shock revelation leads to tragedy, the pair are forced to deal with a shared trauma and devastating separation.  Canongate, Thursday 7 March.

KAVEH AKBAR

MARTYR! In poet turned novelist Akbar’s debut fiction, a 30-year-old Iranian-American is on a perilous journey towards sobriety while pondering the very meaning of existence.

Why was his mother killed in a passenger flight that was shot down in error by the US Navy? And why did his father over-work himself to a heart attack on a poultry farm in Indiana?  Picador, Thursday 7 March.

JONNY SWEET

THE KELLERBY CODE Flush from the success of scripting British comedy film Wicked Little Letters, Sweet (the 2009 Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Newcomer) chucks his first novel at us. This homage to the country-house crime story features a toxic love triangle that threatens to turn into nasty violence. And that threat is, of course, delivered.  Faber, Thursday 21 March.

LEIGH BARDUGO

THE FAMILIAR Bardugo, author of the bestselling Ninth House, is back with the Madrid-set tale of an amateur magician whose talents are moulded by others for less than honourable reasons. Stephen King is a fan which means you probably should be, too.  Viking, Thursday 11 April.

SINÉAD GLEESON

HAGSTONE A heavily anticipated debut novel, Gleeson’s tale already has admirers ranging from Maggie O’Farrell to Roddy Doyle. Isolated on a rugged island, artist Nell receives a curious commission that leads to finding out difficult truths about both the community and herself.  4th Estate, Thursday 11 April.

NICOLAS PADAMSEE

ENGLAND IS MINE Set in contemporary London, Padamsee taps into his own experiences as a secondgeneration immigrant and someone who has run the Art Against Extremism project which aims to counter radicalism with culture. This all feeds into his main protagonists, two teenage boys on a difficult path.  Serpent’s Tail, Thursday 11 April.

GENEVIEVE JAGGER

FRAGILE ANIMALS Isle Of Bute may not be especially renowned for playing host to vampires, but hotel cleaner Noelle develops a sexual relationship with one there, which ultimately forces her to confront memories of her Catholic past. Jagger aims to bridge the literary gap between gothic fiction, magical realism and queer writing.  404 Ink, Thursday 25 April.

ALAN MURRIN

THE COAST ROAD A short-story award winner, Irish author Murrin thrusts himself into longform fiction.

His tale features women in 1990s Ireland who are faced with archaic attitudes when trying to move on with their lives after escaping unhappy marriages.  Bloomsbury, Thursday 9 May. 14 THE LIST February 2024

8-11th February 2024

Scotland’s Festival of Light

5.30pm to 10pm last entry 9.30pm

Aberdeen City Centre A Free Event

Spectra is grateful to receive funding & sponsorship from

February 2024 THE LIST 15

ok, computers?

MANIPULATE PICTURE: BRIAN HARTLEY

16 THE LIST February 2024

MANIPULATE

T

If you listen to the doomsayers, AI’s march is unstoppable. As this year’s Manipulate festival of animation, puppetry and visual theatre kicks off, Neil Cooper explores the programme’s tech-influenced strain and asks if such advances really do pose a threat to human performance

>>

Machine ready: Ruins (opposite, then from top): Junk Head, HOVER, L’Amour Du Risque

PICTURE: GREG BOUCHET

he robots are coming in this year’s Manipulate festival.

As AI technology increasingly takes over the world in a way that goes beyond sci-fi paranoia, Manipulate’s constituency of international performance-makers are already playing with the possibilities of hi-tech.

Puppetry, animation and object-based theatre are arguably halfway there already in terms of incorporating non-human players into the mix.

Out of this comes an ongoing series of pas de deux between man (and woman) and machine; and so it goes with several shows in the festival’s 2024 programme.

Ruins sees the Megahertz company in association with Feral Arts fuse choreography and digital technology inside a video cube to explore the potential for new ways of living beyond an ecological disaster. On film, Junk Head is a stop-motion sci-fi action thriller set in a distant futurescape in which mankind has forgotten how to procreate, while a human-created species has rebelled and developed its own society underground. Like Megahertz, Junk Head director Takahide Hori utilises technology in his vision, which here took seven obsessive years to reach fruition.

HOVER, meanwhile, is a duet between American performance artist Althea Young and remote-operated drone DJI Mini Pro 3. Young uses the drone as a puppet to explore increasingly prevalent surveillance culture and Silicon Valley capitalism, while performer and machine skirt around each other. HOVER forms part of a work-in-progress double bill (alongside I, Honeypot) developed by Surge Bursary Programme.

Flesh-and-blood/tech interface is most explicit in works by Belgian theatre company Kwaad Bloed and France’s Compagnie Bakélite, who both tackle potential robot wars head on. In L’Amour Du Risque (which translates as ‘Love Of Risk’), Compagnie Bakélite’s Olivier Rannou sets up a ballet for robot vacuum cleaners that serve a romantic candlelit dinner with increasingly erratic returns. Kwaad Bloed’s Simple Machines, meanwhile, sees choreographer Ugo Dehaes demonstrating how he grows organic-looking robots in his basement, raising and training them as dancers, only for them to make him redundant.

‘Simple Machines is a show that grew organically,’ says Dehaes of his production’s roots. ‘For 20 years I worked with human dancers, then I started to imagine it would be fun to make dance with objects. I started playing in my basement with moving boxes and putting motors into plants. Then I learned about robotics and programming, and had this idea of the simple machines.’

For L’Amour Du Risque, Rannou’s initial intention was to do something about love. The robot vacuum cleaners as waiters came next, with the imprecision of their movements creating a comedy of errors that are absorbed into the work. ‘Each show I do,’ Rannou says, ‘I play with some technical things, and if I have some problem with it, or if something breaks, I like to play with it.’

February 2024 THE LIST 17

MANIPULATE

>> Dehaes first presented early versions of his robots as an installation, and in Simple Machines the audience is invited to take part in a presentation of robots after the main show where they can attempt to teach them new movements.

Often, audiences see beyond the emotion-free gizmos and put a human face on things in a way that recalls the title of sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury’s 1964 short story collection, The Machineries Of Joy. ‘I noticed that whenever I show my little robots, everybody has this tendency of projecting emotions on to them,’ Dehaes observes. ‘Everybody wants to see something alive, something human or animal. I think it’s a tendency we have as human beings to project ourselves onto everything we see. Some people watching are scared for them, like they might be hurting when they fall over.

But I say “don’t worry, it’s just a simple machine. If it breaks, I will fix it. I will make a new one.” We have this tendency for projecting humanity onto nonliving things.’

But maybe even focusing on how AI is absorbed into performance is missing the point. As with every other development that promises to revolutionise our lives, its benefits are quickly absorbed into the process and cease to be seen as a threat as we await the next new innovation. It isn’t that long ago, after all, when the use of video projections in anything other than avant-garde multimedia affairs was sniffed at. Today, it is hard to envisage a mainstream commercial touring show without such attributes embedded into the work.

With this in mind, how likely are Dehaes, Rannou and the rest of us humans really likely to be made redundant by robots? ‘Not very,’ says Dehaes. ‘There is a website called willrobotstakemyjob.com which said that a choreographer has 1% chance of being replaced by a robot or a computer. A dancer has up to 2 or 3%, because there is some CGI going on in cinema that can reproduce their movements. I think we’re still a very, very long way off, because when robots dance they are very stiff, and it doesn’t look like dancing. I think we’re still light-years away from there being any problem that I might lose my job.’

As for AI in the long term, ‘maybe if you have a dictator they will do terrible things with it,’ Rannou muses, ‘but we can do something funny and cool with it as well, so artificial intelligence is a good thing.’ The future starts here.

Manipulate, various venues, Edinburgh, Thursday 1–Sunday 11 February; L’Amour Du Risque, Fruitmarket, Saturday 3 February; Simple Machines, Fruitmarket, Sunday 4 February; HOVER/I, Honeypot, The Studio, Tuesday 6 February; Junk Head, Summerhall, Saturday 10 February; Ruins, The Studio, Sunday 11 February.

5 More To See THE HOUSE

at manipulate

Denmark’s Sofie Krog Theater tell the tale of an undertaker who decides to alter her will at a very late stage, triggering a series of events that changes everything.  Traverse Theatre, Friday 2 & Saturday 3 February.

LAST RITES

TESS Circus stars Ockham’s Razor present a very different take on Thomas Hardy’s classic tale of privilege, consent, desire and sisterhood.  Traverse Theatre, Wednesday 7 & Thursday 8 February.

LA CONQUÊTE Colonialism’s legacy is explored via France’s Compagnie à, with the body used as a stage while new frontiers are breached and populations split asunder.  The Studio, Friday 9 & Saturday 10 February.

18 THE LIST February 2024

PICTURE: KIE CUMMINGS

PICKLED REPUBLIC Ruxy Cantir brings us a theatrical cabaret featuring puppetry and poetry, and a whole heap of decaying vegetables.  Traverse Theatre, Friday 9 February.

PICTURE: TONY PEDINI

In Ad Infinitum’s non-verbal solo show, a man has just one day to produce the perfect funeral ceremony for his late father.  The Studio, Saturday 3 & Sunday 4 February.

In control (from top): Simple Machines, The House, Tess

February 2024 THE LIST 19

HAMILTON

When Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton burst onto the scene in 2015, it shook up musical theatre. With tickets for its Edinburgh run flying out the door at record pace, Kelly Apter explores this hit show’s success and why feeling represented on stage is so important to its cast 20 THE LIST February 2024

I

n the opening line of Hamilton, the character of Aaron Burr asks ‘how does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?’ It’s a good question, and one the show goes on to answer in great detail. But an equally pertinent question is ‘how does the tale of a long-dead, hothead politician with a mission, consigned to the history books and unheard of by many, make Broadway’s biggest penny?’

Because by rights, it shouldn’t work. Before the uber-talented Lin-Manuel Miranda packed Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton in his suitcase for a bit of holiday reading and was inspired to write a musical, few people outside the US (and probably in it) knew the name of this Founding Father from the 1700s. Even if we had, the subject matters of revolution and constitutional reform seem more at home in a dusty lecture hall than a plush theatre. Yet Hamilton, like the man who inspired it, has achieved more than anyone thought possible. A show so successful, it broke box office records on Broadway, scooped eleven Tony and seven Olivier Awards, and is the hottest ticket in every city it plays (including being the fastest-selling show in the history of Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre).

HAMILTON

Alexander the great

Gabriela Benedetti and Shaq Taylor will be in the room where it happens

If you’ve seen Hamilton live or on Disney+, you’ll know why. Musical theatre is all about alchemy, the coming together of story, music, song, choreography and vocals which, when combined, produce something more affecting than its parts. Like many musicals before it, Hamilton does all that, but then adds a layer of theatrical brilliance and a not-so-secret ingredient that broadens its appeal beyond the usual musical-theatre fanbase. As Miranda says, Hamilton’s diverse casting means it’s ‘about America then, as told by America now’. A cracking soundtrack which fuses hip hop, R&B and jazz also means the diversity on stage is reflected in the audience, with Hamilton attracting a wide demographic most musicals could only dream of.

In the original production, the eponymous role was played by Miranda himself. Since then, a plethora of talented actors have taken on this iconic part, the latest of which is Shaq Taylor, who will play Alexander Hamilton throughout the UK tour. ‘I’ve wanted to be a part of Hamilton since I first saw it in 2017,’ says Taylor, ‘because I felt represented in it. It was one of the first musicals I’d seen where I could see myself, and the abilities I have, up on stage. I knew I could replicate what I was watching but also put my own mark on it.’ The impact on audience members of seeing people of colour not only perform on stage but play key figures in American history, cannot be overstated. And for Taylor,

>> February 2024 THE LIST 21

HAMILTON

>> that’s just one aspect of Hamilton’s mass appeal. ‘It’s so outrageously unique, there’s nothing else like it,’ he says. ‘How many shows can you name that have rap, R&B, hip hop, dance and contemporary all mixed in a big melting pot? And it looks at themes of freedom and love, which are things that people can get on board with and empathise with. It really is a story for anyone to enjoy.’

The show’s double casting also makes for interesting viewing. For example, Hamilton’s good friend the Marquis de Lafayette and his sworn enemy Thomas Jefferson are both played by the same actor in different halves of the show.

Similarly, the youngest Schuyler sister, Peggy (a picture of innocence) is played by the same actress as Maria Reynolds (a temptress who leads Hamilton astray).

For Gabriela Benedetti, this particular challenge, coming early in her career, has proved nothing but fun. ‘It’s really exciting,’ she says. ‘Every night, I play Peggy and find ways to be silly, then change my wig, put on red lipstick and have that complete contrast when I play Maria. As an artist it makes me feel like I’m really stretching myself.’

Like Taylor, the show’s representation means a great deal to Benedetti. ‘When I was growing up, to see anyone who even remotely resembled me or my siblings on stage was incredible. So to be even a small part of that now is amazing.’

Meanwhile, Taylor has to climb inside the mind of a man who dragged himself up by his bootstraps to fight for independence alongside George Washington and help shape the American Constitution. Then convey that journey via rapid-fire

PICTURES: DANNY KAAN

22 THE LIST February 2024

rap lyrics. ‘For me, it was about getting my head around how driven and ahead of his time Hamilton was,’ says Taylor. ‘He came from an island full of prisoners and thieves, with death all around him, and knew he didn’t want that for himself; he wanted a better life. So he was constantly racing, trying to achieve things, to please people and rise above his station in order to fulfil something which, ultimately, I don’t think he ever could because he created a vortex for himself that was never-ending. He had this alarm bell of death, so everything was fast-paced, and I’ve tried to get into the mindset of that.’

The pace Taylor speaks of is reflected in Miranda’s music and lyrics, which fly off the page at breakneck speed, capturing Hamilton’s ambition and drive.

Not a single note or word is wasted, and all 21 cast members are put to good use, regardless of whether they’re a major character or part of the ensemble.

‘The show was created with such attention to detail,’ says Benedetti. ‘Even to the point of where our hips or shoulders face, so all our energy is always being brought to the same place. People come to see Hamilton for different things: the choreography, lighting design, costumes; every aspect of the show is so detailed that you can be watching it and not even be aware of which aspect is pulling you in because there’s so much. I’m still blown away by it and I see it every night.’

Hamilton, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 28 February–Saturday 27 April.

8 - 10 March 2024 St Andrews & Online stanzapoetry.org | @stanzapoetry

Warp and Wee: a tapestry of poetry

The first exhibition in Scotland exclusively dedicated to the unknown and unrecorded textile designs of pop artist and icon Andy Warhol.

Dovecot Studios 10 Infirmary Street Edinburgh EH1 1LT

Book tickets at dovecotstudios.com Exhibition organised by The Fashion and Textile Museum, London

February 2024 THE LIST 23

eat & drink GLENEAGLES TOWNHOUSE AFTERNOON TEA What’s better on a dark winter’s day than a (mostly) cakebased meal? Gleneagles Townhouse’s twist on the afternoon tea is a sensory delight, beginning with a glass of Veuve Clicquot (or skip straight to the Darjeeling). They pass on the traditional tiny sandwiches in favour of crisp croissants with smoked salmon and caviar, delicate crab-topped crumpets, and flaky warm sausage rolls. Cakes demonstrate head pastry chef Renato Blinder’s patisserie flair, with Baileys choux buns, and blackberry and vanilla macarons. The scones are great too, especially with lashings of clotted cream and homemade jam. (Ailsa Sheldon) n 39 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, gleneagles.com/townhouse 24 THE LIST February 2024

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EAT

Play time Whether it’s darts, ten-pin bowling or crazy golf, activity-based nights are this winter’s top going-out trend.

David Kirkwood dusts himself down and steps up to the oche

t’s striking just how many nights out recently have gone above and beyond the classic ‘drinks then dinner’ formula to something more structured, more activity based, more, may we say, fun? As you’d expect, The List’s Eat & Drink team are never going to accept that fine food and good company aren’t a sufficient source of pleasure in their own right. But there’s undoubtedly been a shift in expectation, especially around group nights out. Crazy golf, ten-pin bowling and darts have all been rediscovered and updated in slick city-centre operations across the country. What’s brought all this about?

‘Drinking culture has changed,’ suggests Paul Stopper, manager of Glasgow’s Flight Club, which opened in August. ‘The focus used to be on drinking, but for a lot of people now the experience is more important.

One of my favourite things to do is watch first-time customers’ faces as they walk in and see the place.’ Flight Club is a well-oiled, UK-wide operation (there’s a branch in Edinburgh too) which aims to drag darts out of the smoke-stained corners and into the 2020s. Their Glasgow spot has quirky nooks and crannies behind big, beautiful spaces with carnivalesque décor. ‘Dartsometers’ keep tabs on how many arrows have been thrown in total, as well as within individual venues (Glasgow hit 3 million in mid-January). A fully fledged and handsome cocktail bar sits right in the middle: it manages to be both a focal point, yet appear incidental.

It’s not just the arrows that have had a makeover. When you think of bowling alleys from the (recent) past, the bar often felt like a sorry add-on. Now there are places like Bowlarama (immensely popular, especially with the city’s late-night hospitality workers) or Vega (with panoramic views on Yotel’s seventh floor), which thoughtfully combine bar and lane. ‘If people come to us as a bar, the bowling gives them something extra,’ states Vega’s manager Neil Taylor. ‘If they come to us for bowling, our bar and restaurant give them something extra.’

Taylor also alludes to the city-centre experience. ‘We’re right on the edge of the financial district and a lot of offices near us still sit empty or half empty. Footfall isn’t what it was, so you’ve got to give people more of a reason to actually come into these areas.’

To give that a more positive post c-word spin: have recent events increased our desire to connect and go out in larger numbers, and has this fed into an upsurge in activity-based venues? ‘I think it’s exactly that,’ says Stopper. ‘People want activities that bring them together, where you can really focus on the competition, or just dip in and out.

Either way it’s just about big groups having fun.’

‘Folk also have less money to spend on going out these days,’ adds Taylor. ‘This is a more surefire way of a successful night out, with more bang for your buck.’ It looks like the games are definitely afoot, at least for the foreseeable future.

Flight Club (top pics) Vega (bottom pics)

February 2024 THE LIST 25

tipLIST

Researched and compiled by The List’s Eat & Drink team, our tipLISTs suggest the places worth knowing about around Edinburgh and Glasgow in different themes, categories and locations. For our first selection of 2024, we declare Valentine’s love for the long-term relationship: those places that deliver the goods, but maybe get overlooked when we’re on the hunt for that hot new thing. What’s long-term, you ask? Made it past the seven-year itch . . .

Long-term loves Crabshakk

L’Escargot Bleu

Grab a bite near . . .

EDINBURGH

GLASGOW

BRAMBLE

CRABSHAKK

16a Queen Street, bramblebar.co.uk When Bramble first appeared on Edinburgh’s dimly lit late-night drinks scene, it delivered a shot of sophistication. Craft cocktails are mixed with the finesse of an alchemist and the rarely changing menu is tried and tested. The signature Bramble cocktail is a must-have.

1114 Argyle Street, crabshakk.co.uk One of the first places to put Finnieston on the radar still has a pretty much unrivaled combination of stylish seafood in a vibey space. A fair few of their dishes (scallops in anchovy butter, lemon sole in brown shrimp butter, or even the clam linguine) are nailed-on hall-of-famers.

DAVID BANN

MOTHER INDIA’S CAFÉ

56–58 St Mary’s Street, davidbann.co.uk Long before smashed avo and aquafaba meringues ruled the world (or at least, the web), David Bann was concocting vegetarian fine dining in Edinburgh’s Old Town. They’ve been delivering the quality for decades and still work wonders.

1355 Argyle Street, motherindia.co.uk It introduced Indian tapas to Glasgow and gave us tandoori salmon. It also looks onto Kelvingrove Art Gallery and, in a city where the curry standard is pretty damned high, their execution of the classics like karahi, bhoona and chasni is higher still, reminding us how good these dishes can be.

HARAJUKU KITCHEN 10 Gillespie Place, harajukukitchen.co.uk Harajuku Kitchen opened just over ten years ago with sea-fresh sushi rolls along with a range of Japanese comfort foods and izakaya dishes.

Add a funky mural and stripped-back interior and it’s easy to see why this trendy spot has not just survived but thrived.

NIPPON KITCHEN 91 West George Street, nipponkitchen.co.uk This quiet and classy all-rounder is one of the city’s more formal Japanese restaurants. All the favourites are very well-rendered: precise sushi, ultra-crisp tempura as well as teppan-grilled dishes, elegant ramen and punchy sauces.

L’ESCARGOT BLEU

OX AND FINCH

56 Broughton Street, lescargotbleu.co.uk The pot au feu changes daily, but the menu here has remained pretty much the same for 15 years.

If it ain’t broke and all that. This is undoubtedly the best spot in the city for steak tartare. Their rustic French fare, made with love and top-notch Scottish ingredients truly hits the spot.

920 Sauchiehall Street, oxandfinch.com The kitchen’s swaggering ability to jump around the Mediterranean and Middle East with its flavours and combinations, while also bringing an informal precision to fine-dining service, has influenced many ‘small plates’ venues in town.

But no one has ever bettered the original.

WEDGWOOD THE RESTAURANT

RANJIT’S KITCHEN

267 Canongate, wedgwoodtherestaurant.co.uk Paul Wedgwood created this eponymous, benchmark for casual fine-dining in Edinburgh back in 2007. They also run occasional foraging experiences, including a five-course tasting lunch created with your East Lothian spoils.

607 Pollokshaws Road, ranjitskitchen.com This Punjabi eatery is a masterclass in meatless cookery. Chef-owner Ranjit Kaur creates magic in the kitchen, where dhals are comfortingly rich, breads and pakoras strikingly fluffy, and everything exactly as vibrant as it needs to be.

IN WITH 26 PARTNERSHIP THE LIST February 2024

PICTURE: EOIN CAREY

EAT AND DRINK

National Galleries Of Scotland: National, Edinburgh

THE MILKMAN 7 & 52 Cockburn Street, themilkman.coffee It’s an Instagram favourite, but worth dodging the photo shoots for a good strong coffee and a sweet bite. The second location up the street is just as nice but more of a squeeze.

PAZ TAQUERIA 64 Thistle Street, paztacos.com Edinburgh’s newest taco joint is a great place for a quick bite or a spicy margarita. Try homemade tacos with confit octopus, aioli, pineapple and salsa. Walk-ins only, so have a back-up.

ROSA’S THAI 43 Frederick Street, rosasthai.com Colourful interiors, colourful food: Rosa’s Thai is a relaxed and welcoming new outpost of the popular London chain. There’s plenty of space so it’s great for groups.

THE SCOTTISH RESTAURANT National Galleries Of Scotland: National, The Mound, contini.com/ scottish-cafe-and-restaurant A cut above your usual gallery caff.

Sourcing is impeccable, with fruit and veg from the Contini kitchen garden. Afternoon tea comes highly recommended.

VICTOR HUGO DELI 104 George Street, victorhugodeli.com An institution on the Meadows since 1955, this newer branch offers the same menu in a convenient city-centre location. Pastrami on rye is the house special (have it toasted). For a picnic in the gardens, get your sandwiches here.

A flurry of recent openings means there’s a veritable pile of new places to pop into, finds Jo Laidlaw

D

We choose a street and tell you where to eat. This month, Jay Thundercliffe tackles the city-centre leg of Sauchiehall Street, from Charing Cross to the Royal Concert Hall

EAT

id no one tell the enterprising hospo folks of Glasgow and Edinburgh that the winter months are supposed to be quiet? ICYMI (dry January’s got a lot to answer for) we’ve rounded up the newbies. Starting in Glasgow, Turtle Bay brings a taste of the Caribbean to Hope Street: if reggae, rum and jerk doesn’t brighten your February blues then nothing we can say is going to help you right now. St Vincent Street’s Il Pastaio is a perfect example of the new wave of stripped-back Italians; that simplicity is echoed in their unfussy plates of homemade pasta. And it’s all change at the Six

By Nico empire: they’ve opened a new Six in the Merchant City, while Sole Club (a chippie takeaway with speakeasy-style fish restaurant) is slated for their former Argyle Street branch, with a new cocktail concept called Somewhere By Nico also promised soon.

In Edinburgh, French-accented bar Encore has hit the West End, all sexy velvet seats and glitterball cocktail sharers. That’ll put the ‘oo’ in your ‘la la’. The Bearded Baker is branching out but fans won’t have to travel far. Seventy One Steps, their new casual brunch café, is called that because it’s exactly 71 paces away from the Rodney Street original. There are also changes afoot at Edinburgh Street Food’s Omni Centre base as Harajuku Kitchen moves from across the street to join the gang of permanent traders. Their vacated spot just outside St James Quarter has been nabbed by bao specialists Ozen Street Food, making their triumphant return: ooh, them buns.

street food

LOON FUNG Since the 1970s, Loon Fung has been a focal point for Glasgow’s Chinese community.

A recent makeover has the place looking resplendent in classic reds and golds. It serves a traditional Cantonese offering, including cracking dim sum and excellent seafood dishes.

side dishes

MACKINTOSH AT THE WILLOW Turtle Bay

Thanks to a meticulous restoration project, The Willow (pictured) is much as it was when first opened by Miss Cranston in 1903.

Much more than just a tearoom, thanks to designers Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald, diners can take the classic afternoon tea over three floors, including the exquisite Salon de Luxe.

NANAKUSA A grandaddy of Glasgow’s Japanese scene and the first spot in town to capture that trendy downtown Tokyo atmosphere. The contemporary, clean décor, communal vibe and menu of Japanese favourites (sushi, gyoza, noodles, bento boxes and grills) was so spot on in 2007 that it hasn’t changed much.

NON VIET One of the first Vietnamese diners in town, this original Charing Cross spot has spawned outlets at Hillhead and Partick, giving Glaswegians across the city a chance to enjoy their fresh, vibrant dishes, including spring rolls, pho and Hue soups, curries and noodles.

SPRIGG Sprigg’s admirable mission is to change the way Glaswegians eat on the hop, from packaging (reusable bowl scheme available) to tasty mouthfuls of goodness. Healthy doesn’t need to be boring when faced with the uber-fresh produce and flavour-packed options in their customisable bowls.

February 2024 THE LIST 27

BOOK NOW 10 ANTIGUA STREET, EDINBURGH, 0131 558 1947 50 UPPER CRAIG’S, STIRLING, 01786 241 388 W W W . K A H A N I R E S TA U R A N T. C O . U K

G L A S G OW

“TREAT ME LIKE I’M FAMOUS”

28 THE LIST February 2024

SCOTTISH

MONTROSE

EAT

This new venture from the family behind Timberyard is a stripped-back, bohemian affair with all the understated class of a New Nordic restaurant. Think light-wood floors and worn wooden seats that might have lined your school’s assembly hall. The décor’s reclaimed feel fits the zeitgeist: staff burn sage before the lunch service and the scent of greens hangs deliciously in the air.

The main attraction is a low-lit restaurant upstairs where folk music crackles on vinyl, accompanied by a set six-course tasting menu. But the wine bar that welcomes visitors on the ground floor is well worth a look-in for a glass or two and a smattering of delectable small plates. Lunch here is a choice between small sharing plates or a two or three-course set menu, where veggie and plant-based options are just as mouthwatering as meat dishes.

Broccoli is singed to tenderness, singing with fennel, while chunky charred peppers hide a rich sunflower-seed paste underneath, adding a lip-smacking, satiating richness best mopped up with one of their cute little homemade bread rolls.

Fried potatoes dusted with salt and seaweed come with a creamy aioli dip and are dangerously moreish (they also travel well if you’re too stuffed to finish). For mains, umami-rich and clearly homemade game sausage on a bed of lentils ensures even the hungriest diner leaves full, while a pudding of simple cream sorbet satisfies sweet tooths.

The set-course lunch feels like a bargain at just £25, so the price of the small plates may lead to a double-take. But they’re surprisingly big portions: two would do one person for a slap-up meal and three would be positively sinful. The triumph, though, is that each one is rich in flavour and delivers enough punch to rival the tasting menu upstairs. (Suzy Pope) n 1–7 Montrose Terrace, Edinburgh, montroserestaurant.co

BISTRO

HAZEL Part of the new-build side of Marriott’s AC Hotel Glasgow, Hazel’s name nods to the St Mungo legend that inspired Glasgow’s coat of arms, immortalised in the line ‘here is the tree that never grew’.

The plastic tree dominating the front dining area isn’t going to grow either, though it is eye-catching, soothing even, amid Scandi tones of light wood and sea green. Leaf motifs pepper the large windows that afford a lesser-known view of the impressive City Chambers.

The food blends crowd-pleasers and bistro favourites with plenty of modern Scottish leanings. Good-looking small plates/ starters offer up predictable haggis croquettes, given some oomph from merguez. Light, crispy tempura cauliflower gets pleasantly punchy in a sweet-chilli glaze, while small so-so scallops are saved by Iberico black pudding.

Larger plates include a nicely done roast venison haunch; thick, tender slices blush pink and sit on a veritable woodland scene of blackberries, broccoli, carrots and crispy kale, with Puy lentils adding earthy depth. Steaks and burgers get grilled; nothing fancy on the equipment front, but the kitchen’s use of smoked salts give the beef burger a huge hit of chargrilled potency.

Continental desserts dominate, with panna cotta, crème brûlée and densely rich chocolate and orange tart, lightened with coffee liqueur sauce. Drinks come from behind a huge bar, offering a couple of tie-ins with local producers. It’s a hotel restaurant that wears its hotel-ness very lightly, which is only ever a good thing.

(Jay Thundercliffe) n 65 John Street, Glasgow, hazelglasgow.co.uk

February 2024 THE LIST 29

Drinking Games

DRINK

He’s a stumblebum car crash of a man but at least he can work to a deadline. So in this most romantic of months, Kevin Fullerton steps up to the challenge of finding the best Glasgow city-centre bar for breaking someone’s heart

I

PICTURES: REBECCA JONES

’ve been dumped for many reasons: showing up drunk to my girlfriend’s charity camping trip in support of Calais refugees; accidentally killing my partner’s hamster then burying it in her back garden using a trowel and a small shoe box (a dog dug up its corpse only days later); not responding enthusiastically enough to my date’s expansive plushie collection. The usual. And, as this is the month of love, what better time is there to share my heartbroken wisdom? Like Luca Brasi pointing to his favourite corpse-disposal locations, join me on a tour of the best bars in Glasgow to rip Cupid’s arrow from your partner’s bleeding heart.

First up is The Old Hairdresser’s, a perennial hipsters’ favourite with a vibrant atmosphere that may trick your soon-to-be-ex into thinking you’re on a romantic outing.

That poor fool. Its low lighting will hide any dumpee’s tear-stained face as you deliver the killer blow, while its hurry-scurry ambience will drown out any potential arguments. For additional scumbag points, you can ditch your current partner on the upstairs mezzanine then have a first date downstairs straightaway. Win-win.

Sometimes there’s no good reason for a break-up, so why not push your partner to the limit by being an over-competitive arsehole in Game Over (the new arcade bar attached to Drury Street) until they decide to chuck you instead? There’s a grand selection of games at this jilt-worthy sanctum (although a few were out of order when I visited) so you can try your hand at breaking hearts while also breaking the high score on Daytona USA 2.

An underground bar is loaded with symbolic potency. It says ‘I am going underground to bury my shame. And you, the current beholder of my mediocre sexual performance and overly needy post-coital conversation, are that shame.’ Hence The Howlin’ Wolf rounds off this tour of sadness. This long-standing blues bar in a basement will allow you to unload the lovelorn carcass you once cared for to the swelling roar of a live band, as their desolate tears mimic the heartbreak of the blues itself. Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody.

BAR FILES Creative folks reveal their top watering hole

SINGER-SONGWRITER KITTI

My favourite place for a drink at the moment is the 1820 Rooftop Bar at Johnnie Walker Princes Street. I’ve been spending a lot more time through in Edinburgh at JWPS as I’ll be starting a weekly residency with them in February.

The view from the bar is incredible. It’s so important for me to be able to find a place that has a great selection of nonalcoholic beers and mocktails, and Johnnie Walker are great at catering to these needs. I’ve been off the booze for nearly two and half years now, and it makes you feel special when bars have a wide variety of drinks to choose from that aren’t the boring old soft drinks. Back home in Glasgow, my usual hang out is The Allison Arms where there’s a fridge full of non-alco goodies. n Kitti features in a double bill with Rachel Lightbody at St Bride’s Centre, Edinburgh, Saturday 17 February, as part of Sing, Sing, Sing.

This heavenly outdoor nook at the Barras Market in Glasgow is the brainchild of Linda McIntosh. Selling a range of collectable magazines and photo books covering fashion, photography, arts and culture, Ripe is the most aesthetically pleasing newsagent you’ll ever come across. Pick up copies of The Gentlewoman, Interview, Notebook, The Face, Luncheon and numerous other titles, as well as carefully selected books of essays and non-fiction. For regular magazine readers, Ripe offers a subscription service that delivers straight to your door. (Megan Merino) n Barras Market, Moncur Street, Glasgow, Saturdays & Sundays, 11am–4pm; @ripe_mags on Instagram.

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wanderLIST: Mexico City

With over 22 million inhabitants and soaring tourist numbers, Mexico City’s rich culture, cuisine and history are being increasingly admired.

Rachel Ashenden hones in on its vibrant arts scene with this guide to the Mexican capital‘s surrealist side

s a result of World War II, many surrealist artists from across Europe sought refuge in the Americas. Mexico City became an epicentre of surrealist collaboration for artists like Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna. The eccentric trio, who adopted the name ‘las tres brujas’ (the three witches), made lasting impressions on the city.

Carrington’s ‘How Doth The Little Crocodile’, an imposing yet playful sculpture, stands proud in one of the city’s main commercial strips; Varo’s grave can be located in Panteón Jardín, but her legacy is most alive in the Museum Of Modern Art’s permanent collection; and Horna’s photographic records of Mexico capture the frenzied period of creativity the surrealists unlocked when they reached this ‘dream land’ in the late 1930s.

Conversely, Mexico City native Frida Kahlo once declared ‘they thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.’ Given her social and political affiliation with members of the surrealism movement, her painterly style is often described as surrealist in Europe. But this is not the case in Mexico, where her great masterpieces hang.

Inside Casa Azul, the kaleidoscopic home of Kahlo and Diego Rivera, you’ll gain access to ephemera which paint a picture of Kahlo’s creative process and its integration with a vivacious personal and political life. Her famous plaster corset, decorated with the hammer and sickle, should be enough to educate visitors of her active involvement in the

Mexican Communist Party; Kahlo would surely despise the increasing mass commodification of her own image.

In the same historic district (Coyoacán), you’ll also find Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky, a comparatively sombre abode where the Russian revolutionary lived before his assassination in 1940.

While Casa Azul buzzes with endless streams of visitors, Museo Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo offers a contrastingly tranquil viewing experience for the equivalent price of just over £1. Designed by architect Juan O’Gorman, this museum is the first functionalist building in Latin America.

Striking in crimson and cobalt, Rivera and Kahlo’s respective studios are charmingly connected by a bridge and guarded by lines of cacti. Eccentrically filled with larger-than-life cartonería (papier mâché sculptures), from a skeletal bride and groom to horned devils, this peek inside their studios will whet your appetite for a trip to Mercado de Artesanías La Ciudadela. The vibrant market boasts a maze of stalls brimming with homemade handicrafts and folk art.

But be warned: you’ll require your best haggling skills and plenty of extra luggage space.

Mexico City exemplifies the surrealist approach: it’s a city which revels in spontaneity, political resistance and chance.

Through the artists’ homes which have been transformed into museums, art lovers will find an intimate route to follow in the footsteps of radical creatives and activists. visit-mexico.mx

on your doorstep In the spirit of this book-centred issue, Lucy Ribchester waxes lyrical about three must-visit Scottish libraries GLASGOW WOMEN’S LIBRARY In a beautiful twist of irony, Glasgow Women’s Library is housed in the former Bridgeton Library, where women were not permitted in its general reading room. Happily, all genders are now welcome at this wonderful repository of feminist culture and women’s histories. As well as a collection featuring suffragette, queer and protest artefacts, the library hosts regular conversation cafés and women’s heritage walks. n 23 Landressy Street, Glasgow.

EDINBURGH CENTRAL LIBRARY

my favourite holiday

DUNFERMLINE CARNEGIE LIBRARY The original space in Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropic library-building programme is in his hometown of Dunfermline. This baronial establishment started out life as a modest town library, but in recent years has undergone a £12m refurbishment programme and now houses a gallery, museum of local artefacts, café, and a gorgeous knot garden to chill out with a book in, overlooking Dunfermline’s majestic medieval abbey. n 1 Abbot Street, Dunfermline.

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Glasgow Women’s Library

Despite agreeing to pen this column, horror writing icon Garth Marenghi explains why he doesn’t actually believe in holidays

PICTURE: KEITH HUNTER

he Sex Pistols sang ‘I don’t want a holiday in the sun’ and they were right.

I don’t. As a bestselling horror writer tasked with preparing humankind for the forthcoming apocalypse, I don’t have time for holidays. My chosen vocation (not vacation, keep up) as a 25-hour-a-day visionary horror author (plus Horrotica for the unbound among you*) simply won’t allow it. I even take my typewriter into the toilet with me.

Bill Butler Yeats said it well (not best) when he sang ‘the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.’ For that reason alone, I won’t consider any package holiday trip to the continent and would entreat any wayward souls embarking on their own personal Club 18-30, 48-hour whirlwind Ibiza Maelstrom Descent to cast an immediate protective spell if they have any friends of the Wicca persuasion and, more crucially, wear one.

Billy Yeats continues ‘what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’ Well, if you want the answer to that one, friend, stop wasting my time enquiring about personal holiday preferences and call Joe Swash instead, who will happily fill your cold-February anecdote quota and then some. The hour, as Yeats so aptly sang, is indeed coming (round at last).

Mine, Garth Marenghi, Frightnerman, Doomsage, author of Garth Marenghi’s Incarcerat, sequel to the Sunday Times-bestselling Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome, plus visionary. *By which, ironically, I do mean bound. As in trussed.

Garth Marenghi’s Incarcerat, Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Friday 23 February.

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Across the road from the austere but eminently practical National Library Of Scotland lies Edinburgh’s flagship community library. Its palatial Victorian building sprawls from George IV Bridge down to Cowgate, but the jewel in its crown is its reference room, where you can live out your Belle from Beauty And The Beast fantasies among its creamy arches and miles of leather-bound tomes. It’s also home to three of the famous mystery book sculptures that appeared around Edinburgh in 2011. n 7–9 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh.

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With a third branch of Assai now up and running, owner Keith Ingram tells Megan Merino how he founded Scotland’s fastest growing record shop

fter a decade working at HMV, Dundee-based music-lover Keith Ingram was determined to start his very own record shop. When a first attempt in Stirling didn’t quite go to plan, Assai got its start online. ‘We were a top-ten Amazon seller but completely under the radar. Nobody really knew much about us,’ recalls Ingram when we speak in the recently opened Glasgow shop, Assai’s third branch since the flagship Dundee store opened in 2015.

Now having built a large community of record enthusiasts, Assai caters to a wide variety of genres, placing a strong emphasis on Scottish acts. ‘We curate what’s in the shop so there is something for everybody,’ explains Ingram. ‘People walk in off the street who see our racks, but also people all over the world order from us so it’s a good way to reach that customer base and make people aware of Scottish acts like Mark Sharp or Brownbear.’

When emerging local acts didn’t have the means to physically press their music, Ingram decided to start his own label so Assai could stock them exclusively. ‘We’re trying to do the things that record shops should do, which is supporting the local music community and giving people a reason to come to the shop.’

Getting even more people through the door are Assai’s in-store events with acts such as Lewis Capaldi, Olivia Dean and Joesef performing acoustic sets. But perhaps the highlight of last year’s events calendar arrived in the form of Young Fathers’ Heavy Heavy album launch show at Edinburgh’s La Belle Angele. ‘It sold out in two hours,’ Ingram laughs. ‘It was great to have them back. People who were there are going to remember that gig forever.’

233 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, assai.co.uk, @assai_glasgow on Instagram.

shop talk ÒIR Using only natural oils, Òir (Gaelic for ‘golden’) offer sustainable little luxuries with their collection of soaps. Every household goes through an average of one bottle of shower gel every two weeks, so Òir offers a more environmentally friendly alternative for your bathing rituals. n oirsoap.co.uk, @oirsoap on Instagram.

CLAIRE HENRY CERAMICS Claire Henry has created somewhat of a cult following across the central belt with her numerous successful small-batch pottery drops.

Alongside classic glazes, she experiments with 34 THE LIST February 2024

The season of gifting might be well past, but Claire Stuart reckons you’ll want to treat yourself with this trio of Scottish independent retailers collage pieces featuring cats with laser eyes and dinosaurs layered over vases. n clairehenryceramics.com, @clairehenryceramics on Instagram.

STARRY STARRY NIGHT One of the leading lights in Scotland’s vintage scene, this green cabin is tucked off Byres Road and is a treasure trove of Victorian knits and quality tartans. They’ve been bringing some of the best vintage to savvy shoppers for nearly 40 years, and here’s hoping for the same again. n 19 Dowanside Lane, Glasgow; starrystarrynightvintage.co.uk

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The Hebridean Baker kicks off new podcast touring Scottish islands The podcast, made in collaboration with ferry operator CalMac, will feature an array of special guests

The Hebridean Baker has kicked off a new podcast series in a move that looks set to give tourism in the Scottish Highlands and Islands a boost. Titled Scottish Island Adventures, the travel podcast will join the Baker, real name Coinneach MacLeod, as he uncovers ‘Scotland in miniature’ with special guests including BBC host Janice Forsyth, River City star Tony Kearney, Gaelic-language television presenter Cathy MacDonald, critically acclaimed Scottish singer Kathleen MacInnes, veteran host Kirsty Wark and more.

The series was made by Scottish ferry company CalMac and produced by audio production company The Big Light Network, whose mission is to connect an international community of listeners with Scottish history and culture. Across ten episodes, the series will visit the islands of South Uist, Skye, Mull, Lewis, Islay, Jura, Harris, Bute, Barra, Vatersay, Eriskay and Arran, as well as Stornoway, the capital city of Lewis and Harris. Each episode highlights the many pull factors of the islands for tourists and locals alike, from Islay and Jura’s world-famous distilleries to Skye’s natural wonders and everything in between, and explores the rich history and traditions of each idyllic spot.

MacLeod said of the podcast, ‘Having been born and raised on the Isle of Lewis, the most northerly of the Outer Hebrides, I am thrilled to set sail on this exciting podcast journey, exploring the rich tapestry of stories that weave through Scotland’s west coast islands.

‘Scottish Island Adventures is more than a podcast; it’s an invitation to join me on a captivating voyage, where we’ll uncover the island’s unique stories, their charm, their people and savour the flavours of our dishes. Join me as we set sail on a virtual voyage that will inspire visitors, both old and new, to travel over the seas to explore the heart and soul of each island, one captivating episode at a time.’

Scottish Island Adventures is available in full on all major podcast platforms now.

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going out CARLOS ACOSTA Since retiring from the Royal Ballet in 2016, Carlos Acosta hasn’t slowed down. The ballet star not only continues to choreograph and perform but has also acted in his own biopic, run a dance company in Cuba, launched a dance centre in Woolwich, and taken the helm of Birmingham Royal Ballet. In his prime, Acosta brought unworldly power and grace to his craft. Now in his 50s, that poise and technique still undiminished, the Cuban dancer returns to the stage in On Before, a full-length production honouring his late mother. A rare chance to see one of ballet’s greats in action. (Dom Czapski)  Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 16 & Saturday 17 February.

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They all looked at me as if I was a prophet

Wim Wenders, the iconic German filmmaker behind Paris, Texas and Wings Of Desire, is back with his best film in years. Perfect Days stars Japanese actor Koji Yakusho as Hirayama, a diligent, music-loving toilet cleaner working in Tokyo. James Mottram chats to Wenders about casting the lead role, his passion for The Velvet Underground, and what it’s like to win a Palme d’Or

Perfect Days was originally suggested to you as a tribute to an architectural project in Tokyo’s Shibuya district that redesigned public toilets to look beautiful. How did it evolve into a feature? I realised I wasn’t going to make photographs with

these toilets. And I also wasn’t going to make a documentary. If I wanted to make a film, it was a film about Tokyo at that moment. And the toilets would be great to have as background. It was gonna be a fictional story, and it had to be somebody who symbolised that idea of the common good. And I suggested it was a cleaning man, a caretaker for these toilets.

How did you choose Koji Yakusho for the lead? Takuma [Takasaki,

Koji won Best Actor in Cannes. Did you talk to him afterwards?

Yeah! Well, afterwards we had a party. And I was so happy. If you are invited to come back, you will win a prize, but you don’t know which one. And the Japanese were all excited. I said ‘I know which prize.

There’s only one prize we can win. And that’s Best Actor. And if that happens, I’m a happy camper. Then I think we have accomplished our film because he is the soul of the film.’ And he got it. And they all looked at me as if I was a prophet!

How do you relate to Hirayama, a man who seems very content with his simple life? Hirayama is the man I have inside

me who has enough of everything and doesn’t need more. He never has the feeling he misses anything.

The film features the Lou Reed song ‘Perfect Day’. What does Reed’s music mean to you? The Velvet Underground have saved

my life. In a book about their songs, I wrote about why ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ really saved my life. Anyway, it’s in the film. And ‘Perfect Day’ is also there and Lou Reed is a mighty voice in the film.

PICTURE: GERHARD KASSNER

It’s also a real nod to analogue music, with Hirayama playing his beloved classic rock on cassettes. Are they making a comeback? A lot of young people give everything for a Walkman and

pay incredible prices for vintage cassettes. And there are whole shops where you can buy cassette equipment, cassette recorders and blank tapes. The hottest thing now is compilation tapes: what I did for 20 years,

>> February 2024 THE LIST 37

PREVIEWS

co-writer] brought up Koji Yakusho. And I took a deep breath because I had seen him at first in Shall We Dance; I’d seen the film three times in a row. I’d also seen Babel and loved his performance. I knew who that man was. And I said ‘are you serious? Do you think I can make a film with him?’ And he said ‘yes. We already called him and he said “if Wim wants to make a film and accepts me, then I’ll be there.”’

>> because it was like letter writing . . . it was music and it had a shape because there was a beginning and an end. It was like an LP; they were made with an order. Now music comes out and you don’t know what the order is because the playlist doesn’t have an order, you can play it any way you want. So people have rediscovered the idea of the compilation.

And in youth culture the hottest shit right now is audio cassettes.

Talking of music, how big is your vinyl collection? About

20,000.

You’ve made several documentaries about artists, including the recent Anselm. What if someone wanted to make one about you? Oh no, I don’t want a film about myself! Actually, I’m

fine without it. Somebody made a film about me a few years ago; it was more about my American years and was called Desperado.

Actually, it’s not a bad film. And it made me feel a lot about what an actor has to do. Because they took me to the very place where Paris, Texas started; the camera finds this lonely man in the desert . . . that’s where Desperado starts, and I’m standing in the place where Harry Dean [Stanton was]. It took us days to find it. It’s called the Devil’s Playground.

You won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Paris, Texas. What do you remember? I remember that when I got the Golden Palm

from Dirk Bogarde, he gave me a big hug and he had tears in his eyes.

And he said ‘we loved the film’. He said not ‘I’ but ‘we’ . . . ‘And we decided unanimously’. I thought that was beautiful.

Perfect Days is in cinemas from Friday 23 February.

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38 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

GAELIC ARTS Gaelic short-film competition FilmG is back this month, with its highest number of entries ever. The uptick in engagement is the result of workshops held by Astar Media across Scotland and beyond since the 2023 award ceremony at Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket. Voters can support as many entries as they like in under-18 and 18-plus categories on the event’s website, filmg.co.uk.

Workshops have also extended across the Atlantic since last year, yielding several fascinating shorts from Nova Scotia.

Bringing another added layer of diversity to the Gaelic filmmaking landscape, Diùid MacDòmhnaill celebrates young LGBTQ people and Gaels of colour, while Coileat NicDhòmhnaill looks back at Scotland’s colonial history, uncovering the story of AfroGaels in Na Gàidheil Dhubha.

Of the home-grown entries, film-poetry features with Victoria NicÌomhair’s Pàiste Gàidhealach which explores the joys of raising a bilingual family. Evie Waddell also presents two filmpoems created in conjunction with the Scottish Poetry Library, incorporating BSL performances.

There’s animation too, with the likes of Choirstaidh NicArtair’s Mair and Sophie Nic a’ Ghobhainn (a Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Gaelic TV student) with An Glaoine nan Draoidh, a retelling of the Brahan Seer legend featuring 450 hand-drawn frames inspired by Celtic manuscripts. Nic a’ Ghobhainn’s entry in the under-18 category demonstrates how FilmG’s continued presence within the Gaelic school curriculum can lead to further study and a burgeoning career in the media. (Marcas Mac an Tuairneir)  SEC, Glasgow, Friday 23 February; highlights from the ceremony are on BBC Alba, Sunday 25 February.

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A powerful, raw film, Memory stars Peter Sarsgaard as Saul, a man with early onset dementia. Opposite him, Jessica Chastain plays Sylvia, a recovering alcoholic with her own past traumas deeply buried. They’re two actors at the top of their game; as far as Sarsgaard’s turn goes, it’s one of the most compelling and nuanced takes on dementia you’ll ever see. ‘Peter was good at playing not a dementia character, but a character called Saul that also has dementia,’ says the film’s writerdirector Michel Franco.

In the past, Franco hasn’t shied away from controversy: witness his 2020 drama New Order, which showed political insurrection in his native Mexico. ‘Mostly it’s where I was in life when I wrote each movie,’ he explains. ‘When I wrote Memory, I was in a more peaceful place. I think that’s where this movie comes from. That’s why I try to make a film every year. So the movie still reflects where I am in life at that point, and it’s not just a project that I’ve been dragging for five years.’

Striving for realism wherever possible, Franco filmed Chastain in a real AA meeting surrounded by those in recovery. In a story that de-glamourises his actors, he even encouraged her to shop for her character’s clothes (at discount store Target). ‘Jessica is very active making those decisions. I never impose,’ he says, although you suspect he’s gently steering his actors towards a film that swerves cliché wherever possible.

When Memory premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, Sarsgaard won Best Actor. ‘For me, the best thing would have been that they got Best Actor and Actress,’ Franco adds. ‘And to me that would have made sense and would have been beautiful.

But we’re so happy for Peter. And at the end, it’s a recognition and celebration of the film and the work. So we’re very happy.’

(James Mottram)  In cinemas from Friday 23 February.

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PICTURE: MATT STRONGE

Johnny Vegas is one of the few stand-up heroes of mine I haven’t met yet, so he maintains a mythical status to me. I loved watching him on Shooting Stars and can immediately recall him managing to not spill any Guinness despite going on a children’s roundabout and getting very dizzy. I then discovered his chaotic, ranting stand-up which showed his natural funny bones and an under-appreciated tenderness.

When I first started comedy, I was trying hard to recreate some of what I loved about him, and delivered routines while standing on tables and at one point punched through three watermelons while hosting Late ‘n' Live at the Fringe.

I’m not blaming him for those decisions, but they came from my desire to be like him.

I love his creativity and uniqueness, with a standout being his DVD Who’s Ready For Ice Cream?, which mixed standup and an improvised narrative. Using a pottery wheel on stage is something that, alongside Tim Key’s shows which have included a double bed and a bath, has inspired me to incorporate theatrical elements into my shows (replacing myself with another actor or stopping halfway through for a cliffhanger and ‘previously on’ section, for example).

I think all comedians are an amalgamation of their various inspirations, mixed with their own personality, which over time forms a unique voice. I like to think I’ve found that unique voice now, but it will always include some of my desire to be like Johnny Vegas.  Ian Smith: Crushing, Blackfriars, Glasgow, Thursday 22 February; Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Saturday 24 February.

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Our column celebrating new music to watch continues with Edinburghbased singer-songwriter Eve Simpson.

She talks to Fiona Shepherd about the importance of her Geordie heritage and being an original Swifty

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ve Simpson plays with a soft, subtle touch which belies the rigorous, even tough environments she passed through to find her feet as a musician.

Hailing from a family of Tyneside social-club singers, she was encouraged to join school choirs, musical theatre and youth-group projects, and express herself on piano and guitar.

‘I was an original Swifty,’ she says. ‘I learned all the guitar parts of the Speak Now album and that’s how I got into songwriting, which I used as a means to cope with teenage brain. Being 13, 14 is so hard. I work with young people a lot now, and part of the reason I do is I remember feeling everything for the first time when you are that age. I still find communicating my feelings really difficult, but give us a piano and half an hour and it’s no problem at all.’

Simpson cut her teeth as a performer in the pubs of her native South Shields where, wildly underage, she would be chaperoned by her dad. ‘I was allowed to slip in the back doors and go to the open mics even though I wasn’t old enough,’ she recalls.

‘These were rowdy pubs but that instilled within us the ability to work a crowd and not take any bullshit. That built up my confidence and gave us a bit of grit.’

The turning point came when she attended a workshop with the great Texan songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman and was recommended for mentoring by Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell. ‘I’d never played trad music before,’ says Simpson. ‘It made me fall in love with where I was from: folklore and traditional storytelling.’

By the age of 17, Simpson was gaining traction and radio play from BBC Introducing but when she moved to Edinburgh and study politics, she struggled to settle away from home. ‘I had a bit of an identity crisis and lost my confidence about what to write about because I didn’t have my foundations and didn’t really know how to present myself onstage.’

Simpson took a break from gigging, went home for a spell during covid and poured her heart out in song, eventually releasing a comeback EP, All Her Strange,, in 2023. ‘The title track is all about trying to be comfortable with who I was in a new place and that it was OK to feel guilty about it.’

Now she’s back, with plans for new writing partnerships and four singles released across the year. Since graduating, Simpson has worked in youth music projects around Edinburgh and conducted mental-health research for The Ivors Academy. ‘I think I just found my people,’ she says. ‘That community music scene goes back to the DIY grassroots side of things that started off for me in South Shields. It’s so nice to find it here. There is just a commonality between Geordies and Scots, especially on the east coast. It feels so homely.’

Eve Simpson plays The Glad Café, Glasgow, Friday 2 February, as part of Celtic Connections.

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mark, has this newfound success in a marketplace predisposed to short-form content changed how they write music?

‘The label were pushing us to frontload the record because people will play it on Spotify and only get three songs through even if they like it, as attention spans have become so short,’ says Chaplin. ‘We compromised a little bit, although not as much as they would have liked. But if you start getting involved in the ten-second chunk thing, you're not really producing anything of art that's worthwhile. That's not what we go into the studio to do.’

Disinterested in cheap thrills or cashing in on the the current wave of 90s nostalgia, Slowdive’s commitment to remaining a relevant artistic force has so far kept them at arm’s length from the urge to revisit past glories that’s so prevalent among their peers.

‘We've always tried to avoid the current trend of legacy bills and position ourselves as a band putting new stuff out. And yes, the back catalogue is important, obviously, but I don't see us hooking up with other bands from the 90s to play shows. It's fun for the audience, I guess, but it's just not something we want to do.’

It’s unlikely we’ll be promoting any full-album shows from Slowdive quite yet, then. But with new material that sounds as creatively vital as any track from previous glories such as Souvlaki or Just For A Day, fans won’t be hankering for the past anytime soon. Although more than a few might be disappointed if they don’t hear ‘When The Sun Hits’ at the encore.

Slowdive play Barrowland, Glasgow, Friday 23 February; Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Saturday 24 February.

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here’s a swirling majesty to Slowdive’s latest album Everything Is Alive that almost demands serious listening, a preoccupation with grief colouring its forceful minor-chord arrangements and melodically whispered vocals. Recorded during the pandemic as band lead Rachel Goswell’s mother and drummer Simon Scott’s father passed away, it conveys both the unmovable anchor of bereavement while also offering a yearning plea that one day things will get better, rising tides of guitars providing ecstatic relief against the crushing blows of day-to-day life.

It’s tempting to imagine the recording session itself was loaded with the same heavy air as Everything Is Alive’s lyrics, but camaraderie within the band provided respite from the emotionally wrenching material they were creating. ‘The mood of our records is always fairly melancholic,’ bassist Nick Chaplin says, ‘but we’re not method actors that have to get into the studio and adopt a downbeat personality. We’re still really a bunch of idiots and so we still behave like teenagers. The grief obviously affected the record and it’s a bit difficult to square the circle sometimes, but it wasn’t a major challenge to record.’

Despite its slower pace and themes of parental loss, Everything Is Alive appears to have been embraced by the younger generation of fans who have flocked to the band’s earlier, more wistful material.

During the gestation period between their comeback album Slowdive in 2015 and last year’s Everything Is Alive, this group of fiftysomethings have become an unlikely TikTok phenomenon, with songs like ‘When The Sun Hits’ going viral on the site. For a band prone to compositions that regularly break the six-minute

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PICTURE: INGRID POP

Ahead of hitting the live stage with their superlative indie sounds, Slowdive’s Nick Chaplin chats to Kevin Fullerton about combatting melancholy in the studio and soundtracking a new generation of teenagers on TikTok

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26-30 MARCH 2024

paviliontheatre.co.uk 0141 332 1846

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Do Ho Suh’s earliest memory of art is a Chinese-style scroll his father read to him during his upbringing in Seoul. When unfurled, the scroll contained ancient mythological tales through drawing and text. ‘I’ve always been very interested in the idea of transportable art and different modes of storytelling, so the scroll has really stayed with me,’ says Do Ho. This vibrant notion of a transportable home and memorable forms of storytelling recur in Do Ho’s art which comes to Edinburgh with his Tracing Time exhibition. Throughout his career, he has become an expert in sculpture, installations and drawing, especially using fabrics. ‘I see my practice as very much a single holistic pursuit, expressed through different materials,’ he adds. ‘I’m always thinking about porosity, transference and memory. Fabric and paper are well suited to these themes because of their relative permeability. I also work everything out through drawing in little sketchbooks, some of which I’m showing at Modern One.’ Do Ho takes a contextual and conceptual approach to materials. For instance, his decision to use rice paper was once tied to his memory of the material being used in traditional Korean windows and door frames. ‘So it perfectly expresses a very different idea about the relationship between the body, architecture and the environment,’ he clarifies. His previous use of dog tags is related to military conscription in South Korea, allowing him to explore collective identity. More recently, an interest in technology has compelled him to incorporate robotics into his art.

‘It’s largely about personal space, by which I mean the space that we carry with us,’ says Do Ho of the themes he enjoys inspecting. His journey from Korea to America in the 90s prompted this fascination further. ‘I’m interested in the idea that “home” is something that has the potential to be transported, which feels important for displaced people.’ (Haneen AlEid) n National Galleries Of Scotland: Modern One, Edinburgh, Saturday 17 February–Sunday 1 September.

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THE GREAT GRUMPY GABOON

It’s huge, hairy, and very, very grumpy. But the mythical ‘gaboon’ of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s latest piece for children isn’t found in the hills or lurking in a cave. Instead, its ‘discovery’ came about when a child in one of the orchestra’s previous workshops mispronounced the word ‘bassoon’.

‘We got to thinking about what a gaboon might be if it was based on that instrument,’ says composer Jay Capperauld, who has written an original score for the piece. ‘From there, The Great Grumpy Gaboon was born.’

The story has been created in collaboration with children’s author and illustrator Corrina Campbell and is aimed at children aged four to eight (and their grown-ups).

For Capperauld, trying to capture the mood of grumpiness through music was one of the key challenges. ‘It’s a bit like playing up to stereotypes in music,’ he says, ‘but pushing it beyond the basics of “major keys equal happiness” and “minor keys equal sadness.”’ Capperauld also drew on his love of classic children’s soundtracks, such as Looney Tunes and Wallace And Gromit. ‘Those soundtracks are brilliant at teaching children all sorts of complex emotions in music.’

Despite the grumpy gaboon’s origins in the bassoon, however, it was important for Capperauld not to label any one particular instrument as ‘grumpy’. ‘I think of instruments as people with their own thoughts, interests and emotions,’ he says. ‘For me, they all have the capacity to sound grumpy, but they also have the ability to work through their musical problems and resolve their difficult emotions . . . just like people.’

(Lucy Ribchester) n Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Saturday 10 February; City Halls, Glasgow, Sunday 11 February.

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hile it’s generally known that he can lay claim to The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital (and had a big, bushy beard), what’s not so familiar about Karl Marx is that he spent much of his career flitting about Europe, living in Paris, Brussels, Cologne and, finally, London.

In an opera about his time there, the exclamation mark of its title gives a clue to the reality of life for Marx in England. Many hours were notched up in the Reading Room of the British Museum, but there were countless others spent in the company of police, lawyers and spies, with assignations in pubs and appointments in medical waiting rooms.

Presenting just one day of the great German philosopher’s life in London, composer Jonathan Dove takes a comedic look at a more human side of the deep thinker. ‘I’m approaching him as a normal man,’ explains baritone Roland Wood, who takes on the titular role. ‘The piece doesn’t focus on his political writings and philosophies.

It’s more about him as a husband and father, demystifying Marx so that he is shown as a human being.’

Over the course of a summer’s day in 1871, Dove brings us moments of pathos and poignancy, profundity and personal chaos. The opera was originally written for a performance at Germany’s Theatre Bonn in 2018 to mark the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, but covid halted the premiere plans for Jürgen Weber’s production in their tracks. It is only now that Scottish Opera is able to present its take on Marx In London! in a fresh production by Stephen Barlow.

The libretto, in English, is by Charles Hart (lyricist for Phantom Of The Opera), and, says Wood, ‘it’s very funny and very clever, with much of it played for laughs. It’s not serious political propaganda but much more in the vein of something like Nixon In China, where the politics are undertones as opposed to overtones.’

By all accounts, Marx’s lifestyle in London was not a healthy one. He smoked and drank endlessly, The Red Lion in Soho being a favourite haunt. He was always short of cash and, says Wood, ‘he suffered all sorts of ailments, largely self-inflicted. He was a martyr to the carbuncles on his backside.’ Musically, there’s a full, Puccinisized orchestra playing intricate rhythms which drive the score forward, showcasing Dove’s genius at setting music in a way that directly engages the audience.

His opera Flight, which has universal popularity, is one that also impresses Wood.

‘He’s the best British composer since Benjamin Britten in how he treats the text. He allows it to breath, with no unrealistic vocal demands on the singers while keeping dramatic purpose.’ Farcical, funny but very definitely opera.

Marx in London!, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tuesday 13, Thursday 15, Saturday 17 February; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday 22, Saturday 24 February.

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Philosopher, economist, revolutionary: Karl Marx was a man of many masks. A new Scottish Opera production dives into the less familiar territory of his colourful personal life in London. Taking on the title role, baritone Roland Wood tells Carol Main how this opera aims to demystify Marx with a good dose of humour

TO P 1 0 B E S T V I S I TO R AT T R A C T I O N I N T H E U K *

LANTERN LED TOURS 9TH - 25TH OF FE BRUARY (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)

Dare to step down into Edinburgh’s hidden history 50 THE LIST February 2024

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Spectra (and bottom from left), Connor Burns, Cinders!, Plinth

GOING OUT FURTHER AFIELD Get yourself away from the central belt and out into various parts of Scotland where the cultural landscape is just as rich and varied. Among the highlights this month are a fresh take on a traditional ballet, a comic reflecting on his new homeland and a Greek myth revisited DUNFERMLINE

KIERAN HODGSON

The city’s crime writing festival returns with topnotch events and scribes all bound together by nefarious matters. Among those in town are Denise Mina, Lisa Jewell, David Suchet and Agnes Ravatn.  Various venues, Tuesday 20–Sunday 25 February.

With Big In Scotland, the character comic turns in another tour de force as he reflects on his own permanent move to this side of the border and what that means for both his former home and adopted land.  Carnegie Hall, Thursday 29 February.

SPECTRA Aberdeen’s light festival marks its tenth anniversary with works by ten local artists. These digital pieces will illuminate the city centre as audiences interact with everything from talking trees to a rainbow bridge.  City Centre, Thursday 8–Sunday 11 February.

DUNDEE

RAGNAROK Tortoise In A Nutshell creates a multi-sensory theatrical universe with clay figures and an atmospheric soundtrack blending puppetry and live animation.  Dundee Rep, Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 February.

INVERNESS

SCOTTISH BALLET: CINDERS! Featuring a genuine twist in the tale (the gender of Cinderella will be hidden for each performance until the curtain goes up), Scottish Ballet take their latest triumph across the land.  Eden Court, until Saturday 3 February.

PERTH

CONNOR BURNS This rising Scottish stand-up will have us all giddy with his new show Vertigo, revolving around relationships, family drama and submarines.  Perth Theatre, Friday 2 & Saturday 3 February.

BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Tackling Dvorák ˇ and Tchaikovsky, conductor Tabita Berglund and cellist Truls Mørk conjure up raw power and haunting emotion for Perth audiences.  Perth Concert Hall, Friday 23 February.

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Al Seed delivers an on-point slice of physical theatre as he takes on the guise of the heroic Theseus for a compelling work that has plenty to say about back then as well as now.  Byre Theatre, Thursday 8 February.

STIRLING

JAMES GRANT A renowned musician who has gained love and money plus respect from his peers while keeping the worst parts of public acclaim and fame at a solid arm’s length. Wit, style and dexterity are to the fore with this gig.  Tolbooth, Friday 2 February.

PICTURE: TOMMY GA-KEN WAN

PICTURE: ANDY ROSS

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Textiles and fabrics may not be people’s immediate associations when they hear the name Andy Warhol. But as Rachel Ashenden discovers in a new exhibition, there’s much more to the pop artist’s portfolio than headline-grabbing ephemera

oup cans, Brillo soap pads and Coca-Cola: these are the everyday items with which Andy Warhol achieved triumphant commercial success. But before the pop-art pioneer broke through into the mainstream, he experimented with textiles, many of which went undocumented in the historical record due to the way they were produced and sold. Now, almost 40 of Warhol’s kaleidoscopic textile patterns have been unearthed by curators at the Fashion And Textile Museum in London and can be seen on tour at Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios. Andy Warhol: The Textiles is a chocolate-box exhibition of vintage garments and fabric samples created during the 1950s and 60s, all of which collectively demonstrate the long-term development of this artist’s iconography.

At the entrance, an enticing display of well-known prints ushers visitors towards the main exhibition. Inside, the curatorial story begins chronologically, with what is thought to be Warhol’s earliest known textile designs. It was around this point in his career that he stopped using his birth name

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(Warhola), dropping the ‘a’ to indicate a serious commitment to the life of a successful artist as well as a distance from his working-class roots. Featuring fluttering birds, bees, butterflies and somersaulting clowns, these whimsical patterns could be torn from the pages of a child’s storybook.

When the garments are paired with their print counterpart, a greater depth can be gleaned from Warhol’s creative process of translating his designs from paper and onto fabric; even better when the exhibition labels pinpoint the exact tools and techniques he used.

Away from the allure of the advertising world, Warhol revelled in minute details. Nonetheless, these textile designs were still a commercial endeavour, made for a pipeline of several manufacturers. While we gain insight into how the fabrics were sold across major American commercial stores, less is known about the anonymous workers or small boutiques who transformed these into garments. This knowledge gap could have been somewhat circumvented with an enriching exploration of the cultural impact of these designs: who wore

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these garments and how did they make them feel? What about the people behind the clothes, whose parties and what workplaces did they frequent, and how did they curate their wardrobe accordingly?

All the while, there is an urge to compare this exhibition to the great Mary Quant retrospective which recently toured Scotland and taught us of the miniskirt’s socio-political prowess. But it must be remembered that Warhol was not responsible for starting a fashion revolution. Instead, these textile patterns represent the evolution of a repetitive style before his Silver Factory days.

Among the vibrant blouses, pleated skirts and cocktail dresses are ginormous photographic portraits of Warhol, backlit as if to illuminate the aura surrounding this influential cultural figure. There is an assumption made that visitors do not need to be told the basics of Warhol’s story, that perhaps the textile patterns speak for themselves. And in the second room, they do. A display of outlandish food-themed items capture the 1960s. Overlapping pretzels in clashing colours make for

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a fashion statement that only the likes of Grayson Perry or Zandra Rhodes could pull off today. Then there are four utterly gorgeous dresses made from a textile with ice-cream cones, all in different colourways. The red halter neck number would cause a catfight in any modern-day vintage shop.

In total, this show does not reveal anything especially surprising about the celebrity artist, but the curators’ steadfast dedication to a mysterious area of Warhol’s pre-pop career is exemplary. This is the culmination of ten years’ worth of thorough study, now ready to be inserted into art-history books. For an injection of colour and light-hearted relief during this dreich February, Andy Warhol: The Textiles is a pleasing Sunday afternoon activity. If only the exhibits were enhanced by cultural touchstones (or even intriguing ephemera from Warhol’s archive) to synchronise this household name with two iconic decades of fashion, music and film.

Andy Warhol: The Textiles, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, until Saturday 18 May.

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MICHELLE WILLIAMS GAMAKER

Our Mountains Are Painted On Glass 

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The queen of ‘fictional activism’, Michelle Williams Gamaker’s first Scottish show is a gift of revisionist cinephilia. A Sri Lankan-Brit from the Derek Jarman school of cinematic mischief, Gamaker revisits the not-so-glorious age of casting discrimination in Hollywood and beyond, through two of its most famous victims, Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) and Sabu (The Jungle Book).

Gamaker’s 2021 short ‘The Bang Straws’ reimagines the racism around the pre-production of 1937 film The Good Earth which resulted in American-German actress Luise Rainer winning the lead role of Chinese farmer’s wife O-Lan and going ‘yellowface’. Wong lobbied hard for the role but was passed over. ‘The Bang Straws’ offers an alternative outcome to this sorry tale. In the room with this film are some intriguing collaborations with other artists that pertain to the geographies, geologies and socio-eccentricities of The Good Earth.

Deeper in, things open up with more exquisite collages, installations, papier mâché thrones, vitrines and plywood time machines. This room is the segue to start a reflection on the curious 1940 colour remake of The Thief Of Baghdad, a byword for a very peculiar form of cultural and racist dysphoria. Gamaker’s most recent film, ‘Thieves’ (the first in her ‘fictional revenge’ series), has a room to itself and is quite simply a masterwork of impish glee that puts Sabu, Wong and their mirrored need for agency front, centre and victorious.

The final room features the saddest moment. ‘The Eternal Return’ is Gamaker’s 2019 retelling of Sabu’s depressing winter of 1952, when he tried to support his family by appearing with elephants again in cross-dressing impresario Tom Arnold’s Christmas circus at Harringay Arena. Just over a decade later, Sabu was dead at 40, his potential appropriated. Co-commissioned with South London Gallery, Our Mountains Are Painted On Glass is a remarkable exhibition. (Paul Dale)  Dundee Contemporary Arts, until Sunday 24 March.

Sandwiched between the deaths of Irish icons Sinéad O’Connor and Shane MacGowan, the earthy and ethereal Dublin outfit Lankum lit up an atmospheric Edinburgh venue with bewitching, beguiling folk soundscapes. Their songs (revolving around death and despair in often claustrophobic and utterly miserable settings both on land and at sea) have no right to be uplifting. Yet the sheer effervescence and captivating joy found in this band’s playing and singing belie the calamitous happenings they make music about.

Gothic but not goth, rollicking without feeling rocky, the band are in a chipper mood having put their days of being passed over long behind them; cult status has been assured and acclaim from critics (The Guardian awarded them the number one album slot for 2023’s False Lankum) and judges (a welcome Mercury nomination arrived for the same record) is now commonplace.

Most of the in-between song chatter comes from the Lynch brothers, Ian and Daragh, as they joust with one another in a manner becoming of close siblings, while chief vocalist Radie Peat smiles sagely and shakes her head, having no doubt heard all this cheery banter a thousand times before. Against the odds, the whole thing climaxes with a lengthy and (in comparison to much of the doomgloomery that has come before it) upbeat closer in the form of ‘Bear Creek’ from their 2019 album, The Livelong Day. Some dancing even breaks out just to the side of the aisles for a carouseling tune and raucous beat that fittingly lives long in all our memories. (Brian Donaldson)  Barrowland, Glasgow, Saturday 3 February; reviewed at Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh.

Shot on location in Auschwitz, director Jonathan Glazer’s remarkable new film lays bare humanity’s capacity to disassociate from atrocities. Emma Simmonds finds monstrous people can come in worryingly normal guises REVIEWS

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turn a blind eye and receive the spoils of war, in the form of stolen clothes and jewellery.

The film’s attention to detail is astounding. Shot on location at Auschwitz, the sound design from Johnnie Burn and co is perhaps its greatest strength. The team strived for authenticity and what they have achieved in relation to the camp’s soundscape, with its industrial churning and clanking, and sporadic screams and shots, feels sickeningly plausible. With ominous noises seeping perpetually into the Höss home and smoke billowing grimly in the background, every bit of chitchat, laughter or affection becomes sinister, crass or breathtakingly banal.

Glazer is from a Jewish background himself and the angle at which he comes at this most sensitive of subjects is undoubtedly risky, but he has achieved something truly remarkable here.

As easy as it is to loathe the family at its core, this provocative film also forces us to identify with them. Shot in a detached manner, often with hidden cameras, The Zone Of Interest speaks volumes about humanity’s capacity to disassociate from horror and hardship, even when it’s right on our doorstep. It’s a warning against dismissing those who do harm as mere monsters, and a reminder that apparently respectable people can be a lot more dangerous than you’d think.

The Zone Of Interest is in cinemas from Friday 2 February.

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ar stories have tended to be told from the perspective of the just and the wronged, but this courageous, meticulous and horribly fascinating film doesn’t just square up to evil and look it in the eye. The Zone Of Interest spends almost its entire duration in the company of those who perpetrate and profit from genocide. And it’s worrying to witness just how normal they seem.

Loosely based on Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, this is the latest work from Under The Skin director Jonathan Glazer, who releases films sparingly (just four since 2000) and really makes them count. This film focuses on the day-to-day lives of the commandant of one Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), and his family, including his houseproud and aspirational wife Hedwig (fine work from the ever-excellent Sandra Hüller), whose home and spectacular garden sit right next to the camp and its audible atrocities.

One of the most despicable figures of WWII, who oversaw the murder of 430,000 Hungarian Jews, killed in just 56 days, Höss is a slippery, enigmatic and unsurprisingly chilly figure here; and yet, in his domestic interactions, he’s unnervingly ordinary.

Hedwig, meanwhile, goes about her business as if she is any other housewife. She may not be an active participant in slaughter, but is gobsmacking in her callousness; we see how she’s happy to

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WICKED LITTLE LETTERS

(Directed by Thea Sharrock) lllll The British period drama is shaken out of its slumber with an avalanche of f-bombs in this exhilaratingly sweary comedy that reunites Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, following The Lost Daughter. Made with an eye for the commercial crowd but featuring enough rebellious spirit to set it apart, Wicked Little Letters is based on a real 1920s scandal, with the opening text informing us that the events we’re about to see are ‘more true than you’d think’.

Colman and Buckley are unimprovably cast as Edith Swan and Rose Gooding, two warring neighbours and former friends living in the seaside town of Littlehampton. Edith is a meek, devoutly Christian spinster, who is under the control of her ferociously critical father (a superb Timothy Spall, playing it straight). Rose, on the other hand, is a free-spirited, hard-drinking Irish immigrant, living with her daughter (Matilda The Musical’s Alisha Weir) and lover (Malachi Kirby).

After Edith begins receiving letters stuffed with obscene, wildly imaginative insults, the potty-mouthed Rose is suspected, though it hardly seems her style. Smelling a rat, upstanding female police officer Gladys Moss (an excellent Anjana Vasan) defies her sexist boss to conduct her own covert investigation, gathering a gang of sympathetic local women for assistance.

Taking toxic smalltown attitudes to task with a light touch, Wicked Little Letters highlights anti-Irish prejudice in a way that’s seldom seen on screen. It’s also alive to the hypocrisy of so-called morally upstanding Daily Mail-devouring types, whose vitriol is revealing. The result is a mischievously entertaining, neatly structured story of female frustration, liberation and solidarity, featuring two full-throttle lead turns and fine support from comic stalwarts such as Joanna Scanlan and Lolly Adefope. Thea Sharrock’s solid if uninspired direction is lifted by the spectacular cast, while the script from Jonny Sweet is just really fucking funny.

(Emma Simmonds) n In cinemas from Friday 23 February.

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‘Blood will have blood’, comes the chilling line in act three of the Scottish play. Murderous vengeance is a major theme of Macbeth, set against its backdrop of huge conflicts, both national and personal. Emily Burns’ modern adaptation dials up the focus on war, starting with a rubble-strewn walk to seats for the audience. As choppers and jets roar overhead, we file past a burning car in a barren landscape of skeletal trees.

Besides the draw of A-list acting talent in the shape of Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, this Macbeth also boasts a specially built warehouse venue out beside Edinburgh Airport (and tickets costing up to £175 a pop). Beyond the smoking warzone, we find a corporate-sleek set with sliding doors above a grand set of stairs. Varma’s Lady Macbeth is a superbly elegant blend of brittle and calculating, while watching her poise and menace crumble into vulnerability then eventually complete destruction is compelling.

But Burns’ rewrite builds scant romantic foundation between her and Macbeth (beyond a quick squeeze of the bum by the weary husband returning from battle) and we see little of the twisted co-dependent bond upon which the central murder plot must pivot. The usually mighty, magnetic Fiennes plays his Macbeth with a distracting posture, hunched uncomfortably for most of the performance, perhaps embodying the protagonist’s enormous burden of guilt, or possibly suffering from an injury, and Macbeth’s famous descent into torment and mania, albeit disturbing, feels underplayed.

As the body count rises, the violent strategising and merciless tit-for-tat of civil war peak with a couple of loud pyrotechnic explosions and flashes of strobe lighting. But those bright bursts of action-movie staging feel like a pale substitute for the real claustrophobia and dark intimacy that Shakespeare’s original story contains. (Claire Sawers) n Reviewed at Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh.

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JEKYLL AND HYDE

(Directed by Michael Fentiman) 

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Much like the man himself, Jekyll And Hyde is a story that has many faces, often being adapted very loosely over the years. This new play from Gary McNair takes the story back to its roots by making Dr Jekyll’s lawyer, Mr Utterson, its sole narrator. There is a true feeling of Gothic horror in his recounting that is often missing in other adaptations. The vivid language and sparseness of the set force an audience’s imagination to fill in the blanks, no doubt to far scarier effect than anything that might actually be shown onstage.

The palpable terror of Jekyll And Hyde can also be ascribed to Forbes Masson’s excellent performance. Carrying a one-man show is always difficult and especially so in this case because of the characters’ similarities. How do you differentiate between a bunch of wealthy Victorian gentlemen? Masson does it with ease, conveying the action with minute changes to his voice and mannerisms. He moves smoothly between fear and wit, his rapport with the audience making those moments of horror all the more effective.

Every element of Jekyll And Hyde combines to make the imagination run wild, especially its lighting and sound design, which work perfectly in tandem. The grotesque glowing door behind which Mr Hyde lurks is accompanied by a faint thrum whenever it appears, subtly hinting at terrible things on the other side, while the sound of an old-fashioned flashbulb ushers in a sudden bright light. Lighting and sound are very minimal, and both evoke an eerie sense of unease that complements the stage’s unsettling emptiness. The play’s greatest strength is how little it shows. With its skilful storytelling, sparse set and ghostly lighting, Jekyll And Hyde allows the indescribable to remain just that. (Isy Santini)  Perth Theatre, until Saturday 3 February; Dundee Rep, Wednesday 7–Saturday 10 February; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, Thursday 15– Saturday 17 February; reviewed at Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

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(Directed by Cord Jefferson)  ‘I don’t really believe in race,’ says Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), literary professor and frustrated LA writer. His problem is that everybody else does; while Monk reflects the diversity of his own personal life in prose, publishers find his work ‘not black enough’.

Writer-director Cord Jefferson’s debut, American Fiction, is a spry satire of the media culture wars of today, seen through one man’s agonised attempts to find success on his own terms.

Inundated with unhelpful black representations in the media, Monk creates a pseudonym (ex-con Stagg) and writes a spoof novel called My Pafology, revelling in the family issues, druggie stereotypes and negative depictions that Monk hates. Stagg’s book becomes a sensation, notably with patronising white readers: ‘white people think they want the truth but they don’t; they just want to be absolved,’ Monk concludes. But disguising himself as the gruff Stagg while on a prestigious literary panel, Monk finds himself open to a damaging unmasking.

American Fiction punctures the self-seriousness around black cultural stereotypes; avoiding attacks on real-world properties like Sapphire’s Push (which was subsequently made into the 2009 film Precious), fictional writer Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) is the nemesis Monk initially despises but comes to understand. There’s precise satire of today’s Hollywood via a crudely exploitative horror film called Plantation Annihilation and Sterling K Brown contributes riotous support as Monk’s flippant gay brother. Attitudes surrounding black culture are ripe for lampooning, but the joke has to be accurate; American Fiction hits a difficult target in a way that even the troubled Thelonious ‘Monk’ would approve of. (Eddie Harrison)  In cinemas from Friday 2 February.

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The Trembling Museum (and bottom from left), Rachel Lightbody as part of Sing Sing Sing, Fiona Allen, The Promised Land

OTHER THINGS WORTH GOING OUT FOR If you fancy getting out and about this month, there’s plenty culture to sample such as an ex-sketch group member doing stand-up, a movie about an astronaut encountering a mysterious being, and a jazz-singing extravaganza FILM

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Filmmaker/scholar Manthia Diawara and art historian/curator Terri Geis collaborate on an exhibition reinterpreting The Hunterian’s collection of African art. Works have been moved from the ‘ethnography’ section and displayed alongside contemporary artworks to raise many questions.  The Hunterian, Glasgow, until Sunday 19 May.

This epic historical drama from Denmark stars Mads Mikkelsen and Amanda Collin in a story of one man’s attempt to build a property on barren Jutland moorland and their struggles with nasty authority types.  In cinemas from Friday 16 February.

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LUCY DEBUSSY’S EROTIC CABARET

Landing in selected film emporiums before reaching its final destination of Netflix in March, this sci-fi drama features Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano in the tale of an astronaut’s game-changing close encounter.  In cinemas from Friday 23 February.

Laid on by Edinburgh bookshop Lighthouse, this enticing feminist Valentine’s cabaret-literature evening features ‘unspeakable shaking pleasures’ with the likes of Lynsey May, Markee de Saw and the mysterious eponymous host herself.  Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, Wednesday 14 February.

FIONA ALLEN This former Smack The Pony member goes On The Run as her Edinburgh Fringe debut stand-up show makes tracks across Britain, railing against dreary domesticity.  Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Tuesday 27 February.

DANCE

GO DANCE Launched some 16 years ago, this showcase returns with another celebration of community dance, as schools, colleges and groups across Scotland converge onto one of the nation’s most prestigious dance stages.  Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tuesday 27 February– Saturday 2 March.

MUSIC

ALISON GOLDFRAPP The Love Invention Tour cascades on with Goldfrapp’s first venture as a bona fide solo artist continuing to pay dividends.  Barrowland, Glasgow, Saturday 24 February.

Dipping its toes outside of the July programme, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival presents a weekend celebrating vocal mastery featuring the likes of Aki Remally, Phoenix Choir and Rachel Lightbody.  St Bride’s Centre, Edinburgh, Friday 16–Sunday 18 February.

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TWO SISTERS In this play by Lyceum boss David Greig, Jess Hardwick and Shauna Macdonald play a pair of siblings reflecting on how far they’ve come from their younger selves.  Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Saturday 10 February–Saturday 2 March.

PICTURE: NATASHA PSZENICKI

PICTURE: ELLY LUCAS

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How Ithra is shaping the cultural scene in Saudi Arabia

Learn about the cultural initiatives at the heart of Dhahran’s King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture In recent years, Saudi Arabia has undergone a profound cultural transformation, developing into a vibrant and diverse destination.

Spearheading this revolution is the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia which has established itself as the Kingdom’s leading creative destination for talent development and cross-cultural experiences.

Established in 2018 as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative by Saudi Aramco, and boasting state-of-the-art facilities, Ithra has emerged as a driving force nurturing talent and facilitating transformative cultural encounters. A shining example was the recent standout performance by global superstar pianist Lang Lang who wowed a sold-out audience at Ithra Theatre in December of last year.

At the core of Ithra’s ethos lies a profound commitment to making a tangible and positive impact on human development. Its yearround, purpose-driven programming enriches, educates, and inspires, encompassing the pillars of art, knowledge, creativity, community, and culture.

Aside from its impressive theatre, Ithra is home to a four-storey museum, arranged thematically into a quartet of galleries; contemporary art, Saudi heritage, Islamic civilisation, natural history, and human ecology. The prestigious Ithra Art Prize, now in its sixth edition, continues to celebrate contemporary artists from 22 Arab countries with a substantial $100,000 grant awarded each year.

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Ithra is also very active in the film industry, supporting Saudi talent both in front of and behind the camera. Since the launch of Ithra Film Productions, Ithra has participated in more than 72 film festivals and its films have won 24 awards.

The ‘Beyond Learning’ initiative highlights Ithra’s dedication to educational innovation empowering learners through innovative platforms and practices. Complementing the educational offering is Ithra Library which is one of the largest and most modern in the region featuring more than 500,000 texts and a variety of digital resources.

Ithra also propels the growth of digital immersive technologies, fostering innovation and self-development among aspiring creatives with its Creative Solutions Residency Programme.

Another cutting-edge programme is Tanween, the largest creative platform in the Kingdom. The 2023 edition of the conference introduced its first-ever Mega Challenge, inviting 64 global innovators to design sustainable solutions improving the lives of refugees targeting education, food security, and power generation.

Ithra is supporting the development of the creative and cultural economy in Saudi Arabia serving as both a gateway to the Kingdom and a connection to the world.

staying in HELEN OYEYEMI Born in Nigeria and raised in London, it was almost inevitable that Helen Oyeyemi would eventually write about her adopted home of Prague. A decade after moving to the Czech capital and stag-do hotspot, the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author gives us Parasol Against The Axe, a novel set over a weekend in that ornate city, and dubbed by its publisher as ‘a holiday, an adventure, a marvel and a guide’ which features wheelbarrow rides, high emotions and raw onions. (Brian Donaldson) n Parasol Against The Axe is published by Faber on Thursday 1 February.

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As The Hebridean Baker, Coinneach MacLeod is best known for his skills in the kitchen. Rachel Cronin caught up with him as he embarks on a new adventure: a podcast taking us on a cultural and culinary tour of Scotland’s islands

he Hebridean Baker is a difficult man to pin down. When he’s not baking clootie dumplings on his home island of Lewis, he’s hiking Portugal’s Douro Valley, touring the US signing his award-winning cookbooks or making an exclusive appearance on This Morning. But while Coinneach MacLeod’s work takes him all over the globe, his latest escapades have been closer to home.

Scottish Island Adventures is a new podcast from Caledonian MacBrayne that shines a warm, cosy light on island culture, cuisine and community. The listener follows MacLeod on an array of audio adventures, from kayaking in Arran to tasting Tobermory Fish Company’s famous smoked trout (allegedly so good it’s often mistaken for salmon). The crisp sounds of rushing waters and cool island breezes combined with MacLeod’s soothing storyteller’s voice (which his American fans adore) make for an ideal listen to lull us mainlanders to sleep. Joined by special guests including Kirsty Wark and Janice Forsyth, The Hebridean Baker celebrates Scottish islands from a true local perspective.

‘It was so interesting doing the podcast because it was your own islands, and you were trying to get the right perspective of where you’re from,’ MacLeod explains. ‘It was sort of easy on the Outer Hebrides because I know them so well. But then, of course we do the Inner Hebrides like Bute and Mull and Islay, so that’s when I needed people to say “oh you’ve got to go and visit this person or go and see this”. I’d never been to Arran before because for us, Arran is really far south,’ he laughs.

Hosting a podcast series is a new venture for MacLeod, who’s famous for short snippets and social-media videos. The leeway of creating lengthier audio episodes was a welcome change. ‘It’s always been my thing, be it for a minute or an hour, to make people feel that they can join me in a story. Meeting these fascinating people who are so passionate about what they do on the islands was just amazing.’

Our Hebridean Baker hopes that more than anything, his new podcast will drive visitors to Scotland’s islands who will take on his recommendations and meet the communities which make them so special. ‘I know what I love telling people when I come back from holiday,’ notes MacLeod. ‘It’s the people I met, the food I ate, the adventures I had. So I hope people can take the podcast and go “OK, I’m going to make that my wee island adventure”. That would be really nice.’  Episodes are available at thebiglight.com

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Our alphabetical column on viewing marathons reaches U Urban Myths (NOW) is an unquestionably brilliant idea: short films about encounters between famous people, often played by A-list stars, which range from maybe true (Les Dawson meeting Jean-Paul Sartre in 1950s Paris) to definitely happened (Sex Pistols causing chaos on Bill Grundy’s 1970s magazine programme). Even if you don’t especially like the celebrity subjects, chances are you’ll still revel in the fun. So, we have Salvador Dalí (David Suchet) trying to out-weird Alice Cooper (Noel Fielding), all kinds of shenanigans ‘Backstage At Live Aid’, and Public Enemy (featuring Paterson Joseph as Chuck D) finding themselves lost on the outskirts of Sheffield just before a gig, while the very last episode had Robbie Coltrane playing Orson Welles during that time the larger-than-life cineaste moved to Norwich in the early 70s.

Uncle (BBC iPlayer) is also a treat for those who admired Nick Helm’s boisterous ‘character’ stand-up but welcomed the dial being turned down a notch or 12. Helm played Andy, a suicidal musician who finds meaning to his life when he’s put in charge of his quirky 12-year-old nephew Errol (Elliot Speller-Gillott). For hardcore Helmites it may have been a little too wholesome and sweet, but for most this was a delightful vessel in which to enjoy the hairy, hot and heavy comic’s more sensitive side. (Brian Donaldson)  Other U binges: Upright (NOW), Upstart Crow (BBC iPlayer), The Umbrella Academy (Netflix).

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first writes In this Q&A, we throw some questions about ‘firsts’ at debut authors.

This month we feature Soraya Palmer, author of The Human Origins Of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts, which blends Caribbean folklore with a contemporary multi-generational migrant tale

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What’s the first book you remember reading as a child? A book of

fairytales by Hans Christian Andersen.

What was the book you read that made you decide to be a writer?

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Also, Hans Christian Andersen! I used to make up stories to go along with the pictures before I learned to read or write.

What’s your favourite first line in a book? ‘Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941,’ Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. It is such a mysterious opening, with a mythical quality and musical language.

Which debut publication had the most profound effect on you?

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat comes to mind. The way she illustrates the passing down of trauma through women was a huge inspiration for my book. The line on the last page, ‘are you free, my daughter?’ haunts me to this day.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up on a writing day?

Snuggle my cat and make coffee.

What’s the first thing you do when you’ve stopped writing for the day? Snuggle my cat and drink wine.

In a parallel universe where you’re the tyrant leader of a dystopian civilisation, what’s the first book you’d burn? I cannot imagine ever

wanting to burn a book! But if I had to choose, maybe Mein Kampf?

What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to an aspiring novelist?

Try to go back to the the moment you first wanted to write. Was it before you knew what it meant to publish a novel? Even better. Sometimes our fear of failure takes over the innate part inside us that wants to create for the pure joy of it. Without that, it’s almost impossible to finish something as daunting as a novel.

The Human Origins Of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts is published by Serpent’s Tail on Thursday 8 February.

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SKULL AND BONES Already something of a meme due its extraordinarily protracted development, we’re assured that Ubisoft’s Skull And Bones will finally set sail this month.

Originally planned as a quick follow-up to 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (a fan favourite thanks to its novel piratical action), Skull And Bones has changed course countless times over its troubled decade-long development. Its initial launch of 2018 was missed (and how), giving rival Microsoft the space to release its hugely successful pirate game Sea Of Thieves which has now reached more than 30 million players. Ubisoft has some serious catching up to do.

Set during the Golden Age Of Piracy at the end of the 17th century, players must found a pirate empire in the Indian Ocean by looting treasure and establishing a fearsome reputation through sea battles and land grabs. Although it’s playable solo, there’s a focus on co-op and PVP, with players able to team up in trios as they seek to dominate the waves; however, unlike Sea Of Thieves, players control their own ships rather than operate as part of a crew.

Ubisoft has been unusually shy about the core gameplay of Skull And Bones, perhaps because its development has been in constant flux. It now awkwardly describes it as a solo and co-op ‘RPG experience’ which suggests that the single-player campaign has been dropped in favour of a live-service game. All will be revealed soon, unless it runs aground yet again. (Murray Robertson) n Released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on Friday 16 February.

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Shine on With her new project, Louise Quinn had to overcome both geographic and emotional barriers. The Glasgow singer-songwriter tells Fiona Shepherd how lockdown, bringing up young twins, and the breakdown of her marriage couldn’t stop Gates Of Light from transporting people through music

Gates Of Light II (Paris Edition) is released by Last Night From Glasgow, Friday 2 February; Gates Of Light play St Luke’s, Glasgow, Thursday 8 February and Websters Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 1 March.

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ouise Quinn has noticed that ‘Better Now’, a track recorded for her current Gates Of Light project, is streaming well in Ukraine, making the reasonable assumption that its sentiment is resonating from Glasgow with love. ‘When you are feeling isolated, music is an amazing way of communicating and bringing people together,’ she says. ‘I feel so lucky that people are listening and connecting with it.’

She admits that this song is personal therapy too, its mantra refrain sung over a tune which came to her as a loop on a broken toy. Quinn is a single parent to four-year-old twins, fitting in her songwriting when they’re at nursery and winging vocal demos remotely to her Gates Of Light collaborators, Parisian producer Kid Loco, London-based DJ Scott Fraser, former Teenage Fanclub/BMX Bandits member Finlay MacDonald, and New York-based art director Tim Saccenti.

Their latest album, Gates Of Light II II, is being released in three parts, reflecting its international production: the Glasgow edition is already out, with Paris on the February horizon and London to follow later. Quinn wrote the songs coming out of lockdown, while others were enjoying their first postpandemic trips. ‘But I felt I was still in lockdown because of my circumstances,’ she says. ‘The only way I could get away anywhere was through the music.’

For 27 years, Quinn and her former husband Bal Cooke were creative partners in the groups Hardbody and A Band Called Quinn, touring, releasing albums and latterly working on gig-theatre projects. Cooke was part of the original Gates Of Light line-up, playing on their self-titled debut album before the couple split. ‘I was quite traumatised after the breakdown of my marriage,’ says Quinn. ‘It was devastating, and still is, coming to terms with the grief. I didn’t know what I was going to do because I was so reliant on Bal to record. I was very naïve as well. Every day was a school day. I don’t think I’d taken my own bins out for four years.’

Just after the couple separated, Quinn recalls an instructive discussion with Kramer, the cult New York musician, producer and label boss of Shimmy-Disc who released the Gates Of Light debut. ‘At the same time as feeling really sorry for us, he said “get everything down, don’t let anything escape”. It was pretty intense because the twins were really wee and I had such a short space to write, but in a way it was good because it made me super-focused. I think he might also have suggested that I take magic mushrooms, but I didn’t take that advice!’

Quinn credits BMX Bandits frontman Duglas T Stewart with musically matchmaking her and MacDonald. Despite living close to each other on the southside of Glasgow, the collaborators will only meet for the first time when they rehearse for their upcoming St Luke’s gig supporting Hifi Sean and David McAlmont. Quinn also feels blessed by the spirit of Andy Weatherall, the late producer who remixed Quinn and Fraser’s first collaboration, describing it as ‘sublime magik’ before his death. Quinn says she tapped into ‘his philosophy of how music could be transporting and have this magical property of overcoming barriers of time and space. We thought that’s what we want to do with Gates Of Light; we can’t physically go to Paris and London and New York, but we can do it through music. I guess I’ll always find a way.’

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Which podcast educates you? The Bob Lefsetz Podcast. I make no effort to hide the fact

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that my podcast was and is directly inspired by Bob’s. He divides opinion a bit in the industry but to me he’s just an unbelievably sharp analyst, and to be doing what he’s doing at the age of 70 is quite amazing. The episodes with Paul Anka, Shep Gordon and Lyor Cohen are amazing, but there are so many more great ones.

Which podcast makes you laugh? This Past Weekend with Theo Von. I just think Von is a comedy genius. He’s a rare example, in the current social-media comedy boom, of someone who lives up to the promise of the TikTok clips in his podcasts and stand-up specials. He’s also a great interviewer.

Which podcast makes you sad or angry? Bundyville. There’s another show made by Oregon Public Broadcasting called Timber Wars which I could have picked for this section too.

Bundyville isn’t about Ted Bundy, it’s about Cliven Bundy and his family’s involvement in land disputes in the western US, the militia movement and far-right politics. Listening to it gives a mixture of sadness, anger and complete fascination.

Which podcast is your guilty pleasure? Hardcore History. This is only a guilty pleasure because I’ve been re-listening to the episodes constantly for well over ten years. The six-hour episode on nuclear weapons would be my pick for best podcast episode ever.

Tell us someone who currently doesn’t have a podcast but totally should.

And why do you think their one would be amazing? Goldie should definitely have

a podcast. I don’t think that really needs explaining, does it? Him and Higgsy.

Pitch us a new podcast idea in exactly 25 words Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn

are locked in a room and not allowed out until they have written the manifesto for a new political party.

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In this column, we ask a pod person about the ‘casts that mean a lot to them. This month, it’s DJ, producer and label boss Scuba, host of Not A Diving Podcast which explores the psychology of electronic musicians and discusses what motivates them to make music

David Nicholls’ 2009 novel One Day is a lot like two busy people having a close friendship. Despite your best efforts, you only manage to meet once a year to catch up, rinse and repeat. Much the same happens here, only our date with characters Emma and Dexter takes place annually on the same day (15 July). As two decades unfold in just 20 days, from 1989 to 2009, we see these new graduates attempt to build careers and forge love affairs, never losing sight of their platonic friendship (and its ever-present frisson of sexual tension).

Unlike the 2011 film, this new Netflix drama feels more rooted in reality. Not least because the programme-makers had 394 minutes to play with (across 14 episodes), rather than 108, allowing our connection with Emma and Dexter to build at a more meaningful pace. The attention to detail is laudable, with cars parked on Edinburgh streets, tiles on London Underground walls, and seat upholstery on buses all looking just as it did back then.

But most importantly of all, this TV version captures the beating heart of Nicholls’ novel. Ambika Mod (who brings a welcome diversity to the story) as Emma and Leo Woodall as Dexter are utterly human and believable as our protagonists. She wants to make the world a better place, he wants to make a name for himself, both struggle to know their own worth. This well-paced drama lets us join them on every step of their emotional journey. (Kelly Apter)  All episodes available on Netflix, Thursday 8 February.

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a dancer: with the first offering from their fifth album, Idles served notice. The opening orchestral flourish and heavy-metal disco of ‘Dancer’, released as a single in October, is where the Bristol mob’s head and heart and feet are at right now, seven years on from their debut and with the band riding high as Britain’s biggest crossover, most passionately beloved hardcore rockers.

With backing vocals from LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Nancy Whang, the song has more than a little of the punchy rhythm’n’roll of that New York band.

And with singer Joe Talbot declaiming like a pumped-up spin-class trainer (‘shoulders back chest out / I’m poised like a goddamn ape so to speak / I can taste the mood in my mouth / like particles of punch drunk love / and the sweat’), the message is clear: Idles are back and they’re bringing the passionate party.

Or, as Talbot has said by way of a cryptic album manifesto, ‘I needed love.

So I made it. I gave love out to the world and it feels like magic. This is our album of gratitude and power. All love songs. All is love.’ And so, Tangk: an album named after, in their words, ‘an onomatopoeic reference to the lashing way the band imagined the guitars sounding that has since grown into a sigil for living in love.’ The co-producers are, brilliantly, Nigel Godrich (aka the sixth member of Radiohead), Kenny Beats (leftfield American hip hop a speciality) and band guitarist Mark Bowen: a dream team of experience, experimentalism and exceptional understanding of intra-band dynamics. The result is a pure thrill ride of a record, boasting sonic smarts, songwriterly nuance and melodic brawn.

Tangk begins with ‘IDEA 01’, a rippling, piano-led overture, Talbot giving it his best croon on a track that could have been beamed from the Kid A/ Amnesiac sessions. Then we gallop straight into ‘Gift Horse’, as ferocious as it’s thrilling, and on into ‘POP POP POP’, a techno throb bleeding in from a dark-web nightclub. On ‘Grace’, Talbot dials it back, singing with choirboy lilt over furniture-shifting bass and a jittery hi-hat beat, hymning the message at this album’s heart: ‘no crown, no ring, I said love is the thing.’

We’re back into more familiar, but no less bracing Idles territory with the moshpit ramalam of ‘Hall & Oates’. Their sonic debt to the titular blue-eyed soul boys is not immediately obvious, until, at least, towards the vibrant finale where everything drops away bar thunderous drums and Talbot, again, going for mellifluous croon over guttural roar.

Best moment on an album precision-tooled to combine edgy electronics with chunky riffs and sharp songwriting? Right now, it’s the line on the turbulent, Bo Diddley-on-snakebite anthem that is ‘Jungle’: ‘I found myself underneath a Scotsman’s boot / they proceed to fill me in.’ When this year’s biggest ever tour

by Idles (a band dancing and swaggering their way towards festival headline status) finally rolls up to Glasgow’s Hydro come November, you just know that line will bring the dome down.

Tangk is released by Partisan Records on Friday 16 February.

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Idles are back with a new album that roars out its message of love. Craig McLean feels the power and is only too willing to hop aboard the Bristol band’s latest thrill ride

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With Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen getting a streaming spin-off for Netflix, Paramount+ play their own geezer-gangster card with this prequel to Jonathan Glazer’s memorably profane 2000 thriller. Set a full decade before Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley turned the air blue as Gal Dove and Don Logan, two aging gangsters on the Costa del Crime, James McArdle and Emun Elliott play younger ‘foot-soldier’ versions of the tealeafs in this stylish, violent eight-part series.

Dialogue like ‘I’m gonna beat your granny later’, sets a scabrous tone; the opening scene, with loose-cannon Don approaching a sunbathing Gal, mimics the original precisely. We see how Gal meets his porn-star wife Deedee (Sarah Greene) and teams-up with Don to cut a swathe through the Lan-daan gangster underworld under the tutelage of Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer stepping in for Ian McShane). Added local colour comes via new if disposable characters such as Gal’s druggie sister and Deedee’s protective boyfriend, although the stand-out is Tamsin Greig sporting a shock mullet with highlights as Don’s mentalist sister.

‘Everyone’s replaceable’ Don muses, but Greig aside, every element here is a substantial downgrade on the 2000 version. The milieu is similar (orgies, boxing rings, armoured car jobs) while needle-drops include Depeche Mode, Ian Dury, The Clash and, erm, Londonbeat’s ‘I’ve Been Thinking About You’. What’s missing is the arty sense of abstraction that elevated Glazer’s film; with increased levels of sexual and domestic violence as unwanted garnish, Michael Caleo’s try-hard series just isn’t sexy or beastly enough. (Eddie Harrison)  New episodes available on Thursdays.

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The Rejects (Constable)  Jamie Collinson’s study of those forced out of the bands they sometimes founded makes for a refreshingly insightful, entertaining and, at times, poignant read. Boldly subtitled ‘An Alternative History Of Popular Music’, Collinson’s book mixes research, interviews, personal interludes and a series of wonderful footnotes that join the dots between more than 30 subjects. At one point he writes a gonzo-style first-person short story charting Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten’s final days before and after being sacked by Neil Young.

Ousted Beatles drummer Pete Best, doomed Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, and dumped-on Velvet Underground auteur John Cale are all in the mix, as are ‘All The Musicians Kicked Out Of Fleetwood Mac’, but Collinson focuses on perhaps lesser-known stories that are by turns tragic, absurd and occasionally redemptive. While the book moves beyond boys with guitars and bad habits by way of original Supreme Florence Ballard, two former members of Destiny’s Child, and prodigal Sugababe Siobhán Donaghy, at the centre of this are what he calls its lodestones: Steven Adler, late of Guns N’ Roses, and an early Nirvana guitarist, Jason Everman. The latter’s story is particularly jaw dropping as he moves from awkward band outsider to become a crack soldier in America’s Special Forces.

As someone who has worked in the music business over several decades, Collinson uses an insider status to his advantage, as the book moves beyond pithy journalistic overview to something increasingly personal.

This culminates in the two chapters on grime artist Wiley, who the author managed. In this way, Collinson’s book lives up to its subtitle in a series of pop and roll Greek tragedies writ large. (Neil Cooper)  Published on Thursday 22 February.

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MOLLY MCGHEE

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind (4th Estate)  ‘For the forgotten who have been worked to death,’ reads the dedication in Molly McGhee’s debut novel, a late-capitalist workplace story and warning cry. McGhee is all too familiar with the burden of work. In 2022, she shared her resignation letter as an assistant editor at Tor and called out prejudice against junior workers in the publishing world. The year before, in an article for The Paris Review, she attributed her mother’s death to chronic unemployment and an overwhelming debt which McGhee then inherited.

Her frustration and understandable bitterness toward the world of work manifests itself in Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind. Abernathy is a lonely young man drowning in debt. He is failing at life and has one desire: ‘to be told what to do in exchange for money’. When a mysterious government agency offers him a job, he wastes no time reading the T&Cs. His task: enter the dreams of white-collar workers and remove any elements of unease, grief or fear that could lead to a lack of productivity in their waking working hours.

Humour is paired perfectly with moments of heart-wrenching bleakness, and although Abernathy is comedically hopeless, his desperation to succeed is so relatable that we forgive him for naively planting his head in the sand while he becomes complicit in a sinister scheme. McGhee considers the catastrophic loss of humanity when work is prioritised over all else. What happens when there is no longer space for love, family, friends or happiness?

The novel is cleverly dream-like with time fluctuating suddenly, where both the narrative and trippy imaginary arena overlap with the real world. After putting the book down, you feel as though you’ve awakened from a trance.

Scarily, the world outside bears an all-too deep resemblance to the workobsessed dystopian one on these pages. (Jodie Hagan)  Published on Thursday 1 February.

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The podcast format may well be the 2020s answer to 90s chat shows, questing into the lives and work of the famous by inviting them for a chinwag. And yet there is something more intimate about hearing an interviewee’s voice softly inside your ears than there ever was seeing them glad-ragged up in front of a studio audience with Parky.

Authors (not generally known for being extroverts) seem particularly to lend themselves to this calm, considered medium, and novelist Daisy Buchanan’s podcast You’re Booked takes full advantage of the format’s relaxed nature to gently grill guests on their working methods and formative books in their lives.

Buchanan is interested in a huge range of writing, with guests varying from cult writers to literary megastars. The episode with Jilly Cooper is a treat as the pair geek out over EM Delafield, with Cooper rhapsodising about Proust and telling Buchanan how beautiful she is. Our host is similarly at ease with Ian Rankin, asking thoughtful, probing questions about his work, which leads to fascinating discussions about Muriel Spark, the Edinburgh gothic, crime writing in translation, and the role Rankin’s wife Miranda plays in editing his manuscripts.

Buchanan is warm, charming and effervescent; the only time this sits oddly is when she comes up against literary cool kids, such as married couple Ottessa Moshfegh and Luke Goebel, and sounds a little nervous.

But the back catalogue is sprawling and there is surely something in here for anyone with more than a passing interest in the world of books.

(Lucy Ribchester)  All episodes available at play.acast.com/s/booked

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With its supernatural terror and loopy comedy, Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom is thrust together as a boxset trilogy.

Brian Donaldson takes the temperature of a show that manages to be hilarious and horrific in equal measure

inema walk-outs, accusations from actors of psychological and physical abuse, seemingly offering support to fascists both old (wartime Nazis) and new (Putin’s Russia). On and away from the screen, Lars von Trier has attracted scorn, derision and contempt, all rising at the same rate as his reputation soared and his work became more contentious. Back in the mid-90s, von Trier’s persona was a few beats shy of the poisonous enfant terrible he was to become; more of a small-screen scamp, he appears at the end of The Kingdom episodes attired in dinner suit and bowtie, offering largely impenetrable philosophical musings about his hospital-set horror-comedy.

The Kingdom’s first two seasons arrived in 1994 and 1997, revolving around the odd (fictional) goings-on in Copenhagen’s largest medical facility, Rigshospitalet, which appears to be haunted from top to bottom while its doctors and nurses engage in behaviour that veers from gently slapstick to infuriatingly daft. At its more extreme ends, the body horror is ramped up, especially when one medic gives birth to . . . well, it’s just too awful to describe in print.

Von Trier returned to complete his trilogy in 2022 with The Kingdom: Exodus and revelled in meta narratives. The opening scene features an elderly woman watching season two’s finale and proclaiming its creator an ‘idiot’ while the Rigshospitalet receptionist expresses disdain for the show having ruined that establishment’s fine reputation and making fools of its staff.

Dubbed as ‘Denmark’s answer to Twin Peaks’, such a comparison will tease Lynch devotees into seeking those parallels. There’s a wide array of characters doing off-kilter things such as a pathology professor agreeing to a (cancerous) liver transplant; a student submitting himself to sleep therapy during which he comes under attack from zombie cannibals; and a Dane-hating Swedish surgeon heading to Haiti for an episode to check out the voodoo scene there. There are also ghost ambulances, severed heads and all manner of ancient apparitions.

Even von Trier’s on-screen chatter recalls the Log Lady appearing in those resyndicated Twin Peaks episodes to utter similarly obtuse remarks. One spot where we have light and day is in the opening credits sequence: while Twin Peaks is cool and ominous, The Kingdom’s terrible intro is surely a deliberately bad pastiche of soapy medical dramas. Emboldened by a cast of Scandi stalwarts (including two Skarsgårds and a Mikkelsen) you’ll have seen in Borgen, The Bridge, The Killing et al, The Kingdom is a series that infuriates and exhilarates in similar doses.

The Kingdom Trilogy is available as a Blu-Ray boxset and on MUBI, Monday 5 February.

72 THE LIST February 2024

STAYING IN

ALBUMS

NADINE SHAH

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Tyneside chanteuse Nadine Shah is a down-to-earth diva, leavening the melodrama of her music with dark humour. Working again with regular collaborator Ben Hillier, she draws on a period of personal upheaval with fifth album, Filthy Underneath, the first release on new Leeds-based label EMI North. Her playful candour is our listening pleasure.

Following the deceptively straight start of ‘Even Light’, she has way more fun with lead single ‘Topless Mother’, a Bo Diddley shuffle with a strident declamatory chorus of rhyming three-syllable names (‘Sinatra, Viagra, iguana’ for starters) which offers her twist on various misadventures in therapy, not least making a counsellor cry with her intransigent attitude. Elsewhere, Shah celebrates the characters she met while in recovery (‘he wrote a song for Elvis Presley / but Elvis never heard it’) on ‘Twenty Things’, and toys wickedly with counselling jargon on ‘You Drive, I Shoot’, featuring a poised, clipped and imperious vocal delivery against a tough, flinty backing.

She reserves much of her derision for ‘Sad Lads Anonymous’. This spoken-word odyssey drips with disdain for the seaside town they forgot to shut down which, for all its scornful authority, sounds like the product of waking up on a wrong side of the bed. The cacophony continues on ‘Food For Fuel’, though the verses are smooth and sultry. Throughout, Shah modulates the tone without compromising on character, from the prowling, percussive ‘Greatest Dancer’ to the poised electro of ‘Keeping Score’.

‘See My Girl’ contrasts plaintive vocals with voyeuristic lyrics, and slinky elegant 80s electronica with baroque synths, while she makes space for greater vulnerability on ‘Hyperrealism’, a lush torch song with softer contours, before reverting to the steely edges of ‘French Exit’. As always, somehow, Shah makes this intense trawl an enjoyable ride. (Fiona Shepherd) n Released on Friday 23 February.

GAMES

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE LOST CROWN

(PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S) lllll

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REVIEWS

The Prince Of Persia series dates back to 1989 and the tail end of 8-bit’s era. Its original game was a spectacularly well-animated, rock-hard platformer and was followed by a plethora of sequels, spin-offs and remakes (not to mention a so-so 2010 Mike Newell film starring Jake Gyllenhaal). The Lost Crown is a Metroidvania, a nonlinear platform adventure requiring much dashing back and forth.

The opening few hours are underwhelming thanks to some jumbled storytelling (albeit from a good cast) and a simplistic skill set. However, it nails the essentials: movement is fluid and precise, with combat both tactile and responsive. It’s not until sometime in, when the player’s skills are expanded, that things get really interesting, particularly with the ability to subtly manipulate time and space; successfully combining various moves in order to reach new parts of this expansive world is profoundly satisfying.

It certainly looks the part: lush, dynamic backgrounds are detailed with cascading waterfalls, impossibly huge machines and enormous mythical beasts. And this is just as well given that players will become very acquainted with the map. When new abilities are unlocked, it’s necessary to return to previous locations that can then be explored further. And in order to keep track of awkward sections, it’s possible to pin screenshots to the map, a neat feature we’ll hopefully see taken up by other games. The Lost Crown is a bold new entry for this series and a great entry point for players new to the genre. (Murray Robertson) n Out now.

STAYING IN

Tomb Raider I–III Remastered (and bottom from left), John Cooper Clarke, Shygirl, Constellation

OTHER THINGS WORTH STAYING IN FOR A packed month of things to do indoors or consume on your travels include a sci-fi spectacular about a troubled astronaut, a book of acerbically amusing poems, and a new record from Whitburn’s young indie bucks ALBUMS

BOOKS

DANIEL FREEMAN

HOLLYWOOD EXILES

The Hyperdub staple moves to a different label for Dreamfear/Boy Sent From Above, a two-track package that will merely add to the reclusive producer’s mystique as he continues his strain of giving us shorter-form releases. n XL Recordings, Friday 9 February.

Subtitled ‘A Journey Into Extreme Mistrust And Anxiety’, Paranoia delves into a feeling most of us have as the world crumbles in front of our very eyes. Freeman has been working in this area for several decades and here is the result of his latest research. n William Collins, Thursday 1 February.

Oona Chaplin presents this ‘cast on her grandad Charlie. With his movies about the triumphant tramp and anti-tyranny, he was Tinseltown’s darling, but ultimately they exiled him. What lay behind this folly? n BBC Sounds.

JOHN COOPER CLARKE

South Korea continues to export its cultural wares with this series about an ordinary taxi driver (Lee Sung-min) who accepts a desperate passenger’s fare. Realising he has a serial killer in the back of his cab, our hero has to think fast. n Paramount+, Thursday 1 February.

SHYGIRL Club Shy is the new EP by an east London star whose energy is, according to the folks at Rolling Stone, ‘raunchy and infectious’. After a Mercury nomination in 2023, this coming year looks to be the one where Shygirl truly takes flight. n Because Music, Friday 9 February.

THE SNUTS HIGHLIGHTS

PODCASTS

BURIAL

Here comes Millennials, the third album from those indie scamps who are straight outta West Lothian, as they once more rail against societal injustice. n Happy Artist Records, Friday 23 February.

PICTURE: PAUL WOLFGANG WEBSTER

74 THE LIST February 2024

Dr John unleashes What, a series of acerbic poetical musings on everyone from James Brown to Jesus Christ. Now aged 75, the undisputed godfather of punk poetry nails every one of his targets. n Picador, Thursday 8 February.

GAMES

TOMB RAIDER I–III REMASTERED The legend that is Lara Croft returns in definitive fashion with the first three games bundled together in this remastered package. n Aspyr, Wednesday 14 February.

TV

A BLOODY LUCKY DAY

CONSTELLATION Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks star in this psychological thriller about an astronaut who has returned to Earth only to discover that parts of her life have inexplicably disappeared. n Apple TV+, Wednesday 21 February.

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PICTURE: JULIA BROADFOOT

THE

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WITH LOUISE WELSH The Glasgow author has been thrilling readers since The Cutting Room, her superb 2002 debut, and she has just published a new darkly comic novel, To The Dogs. In our Q&A, Welsh shares some thoughts on gentle haunting, telling the council where to go and unfulfilled parkour ambitions

Who would you like to see playing you in the movie about your life? Who do you think the casting people would choose? I would choose Lucy from Peanuts or Little My from the Moomins. Casting directors might be tempted by Brian Cox, which would also be fine.

What’s the punchline to your favourite joke? ‘Don’t worry, there’s a fresh body every day.’

If you were playing in an escape room name two other people (well-known or otherwise) you’d recruit to help you get out? Tempted to say Matt Hancock as he can wriggle out of any shit, but being stuck in the same room as him would be nauseating.

Christopher Brookmyre and Val McDermid are smart quizzers and good fun to be around.

When was the last time you were mistaken for someone else and what were the circumstances? People often think they went to school with me. My memory of those years are hazy, so maybe they did.

If you were a ghost, who would you haunt? I’d be a second-hand bookshop or library ghost, floating around the stacks, listening to conversations, giving readers mild frights.

What’s the best cover version ever?

Hard to beat Prince but Sinéad O’Connor’s version of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ knocks his out the park.

Whose speaking voice soothes your ears? David Sedaris. Also there’s a random guy Andy on YouTube whose equal-breathing workshop helps me fall asleep.

Tell us something you wish you had discovered sooner in life? Most people suffer from imposter syndrome.

Describe your perfect Saturday evening? A couple of margaritas then dancing at Andrew Symington’s occasional Glasgow soul night, Divine.

When were you most recently astonished by something? Keir Starmer praising Margeret Thatcher.

What tune do you find it impossible not to get up and dance to, whether in public or private? ‘Get On The Good Foot’

by James Brown.

When did you last cry? Yesterday.

What’s the most hi-tech item in your home? Does a milk frother count?

Which famous person would be your ideal holiday companion? I’d like to tag along with Alan Cumming and Miriam Margolyes.

Tell us one thing about yourself that would surprise people? I’m a neat freak around the house but my inbox is a mess.

What’s a skill you’d love to learn but never got round to? Parkour.

By decree of your local council, you’ve been ordered to destroy one room in your house and all of its contents.

Which room do you choose? I would tell the council to get to fuck.

If you were selected as the next 007, where would you pick as your first luxury destination for espionage?

I’m involved in a project, Who Owns The Clyde?, with The Empire Café collective.

My James Bond might embed themselves in Peel Holdings, pinning down how much land, water and airspace Peel own, how much public money they receive and what taxes they pay. Bond’s mission would be to uncover how land that used to be in public ownership has been lost to private businesses based in the Cayman Islands.

Louise Welsh appears at Topping & Company, Edinburgh, Thursday 1 February; Music Hall, Aberdeen, Friday 23 February, as part of Granite Noir; To The Dogs is out now published by Canongate.

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If you were to return in a future life as an animal, what would it be? A domestic cat. I’m drawn towards an indolent, eavesdropping life. I’d also enjoy scratching the furniture.

If you were to start a tribute act to a band or singer, who would it be in tribute to? Wish I had the voice and moves to be a James Brown tribute act. I’d call myself the Odd Father Of Soul.

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© TRUSTEES OF THE PAOLOZZI FOUNDATION

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hot shots

One of last Edinburgh Fringe’s more intriguing scenarios was whether a heavily pregnant Janine Harouni would give birth before the end of August. She left Scotland with another Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination and later successfully produced a child. Now she’s on the road with Man’oushe (including a stop this month at Glasgow Stand) where the only sounds of heavy breathing will be courtesy of an audience’s uncontrollable laughter.

In this landmark year for Glasgow Film Festival (which celebrates its 20th edition while GFT turns 50 years old), there’s an array of cinematic treats to honour this moment.

The opening gala is Love Lies Bleeding, a queer romance thriller starring Kristen Stewart, while there’s also a Czech season, fun retrospectives, and the never-less-thanspooky FrightFest.

Rammed with many of his most popular works, Paolozzi At 100 is currently taking over two rooms at National Galleries Of Scotland: Modern Two until late April.

Among the delights culled from this Leith-born art legend’s back catalogue are a Mickey Mouse tapestry, gold ceramic plates designed with Wedgwood, and kinetic screenprints such as ‘Moonstrip Empire News’ (pictured) from 1967.

78 THE LIST February 2024

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February 2024 THE LIST 79