The List Issue 784

Tayo Adekunle

LOS BITCHOS getting the party started

Bambie Thug

Majorca

Nala Sinephro

Kaos

Stuart Murdoch

Pam Brunton

PICTURE: TOM MITCHELL

If music be the food of love, then play on, and all that. But what if the most compelling story in modern British rock music has nothing to do with love, but is most likely driven by fear and loathing with a delicious side order of vengeance? Pretty much everyone has an opinion on why Oasis are getting back together despite the Gallagher brothers having spent the best part of 15 years throwing abuse at one another that veered from comically passive to downright aggressive. All the while they were pursuing their own non-Oasis band careers. But they are now definitely burying the hatchet for all the right reasons (maybe) and touring next summer.

This summer, Murrayfield was awash with friendship bracelets as Taylor’s crew got loved up over three nights. There’s more likely to be a necklacing going on when the smell of hops down Western Approach way gets too much for either Noel or Liam next August.

But that’s for then. Right now, we’re celebrating music in all its finest and kindest forms with an autumn special in which we interview the two Stuarts (Murdoch and Staples of Belle & Sebastian and Tindersticks fame, respectively), explore the current state of Scotland’s small music venues, and hang out with our partyloving cover stars Los Bitchos who are (sorry) instrumental in bringing joy to our ears and hearts. Plus, we’re also forgetting how conflicted we should be about another contentious Mancunian, one Stephen Patrick Morrissey, as we speak to those behind a new theatre work inspired by a single Smiths song: ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’. Anyway, Johnny Marr was the real talent in that band, right?

Throughout the mag we’ve bumped up our music coverage with album reviews of modern jazz folks Nala Sinephro and Neil Cowley, we ask about MALKA’s favourite holiday and Dara Dubh’s number-one watering hole, and let Bambie Thug loose on our Back Q&A. Finally, we launch a new alphabetical column about classic albums, review stage shows which pay tribute to Bob Dylan and Carole King, and dip into the Scottish indie archive with Fire Engines. Lend us your ears, our kids.

Brian Donaldson EDITOR

Isabella Dalliston

Brian Donaldson, Carol Main, Claire Sawers, David Kirkwood, Donald Shaw, Eddie Harrison, Emma Simmonds, Eve Connor, Fiona Shepherd, Isy Santini, James Mottram, Jay Richardson, Jay Thundercliffe, Jo Laidlaw, Katherine McLaughlin, Kelly Apter, Kevin Fullerton, Lauren Hunter, Lucy Ribchester, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Megan Merino, Murray Robertson, Neil Cooper, Paul Dale, Rachel Ashenden, Rachel Morrell, Rebecca Crockett, Rob Adams, Suzy Pope

BEAUTIFUL

Paired cocktails & cuisine crafted by renowned chefs of the two Michelin star restaurant, Raby Hunt.

front

Imouthpiece

t will be 40 years ago this month since I bunked off my classes at Oban High School and headed off with my pals (and my accordion) to the well-known Palladium recording studios in Edinburgh to make a record. And so began my own life’s journey with the band Capercaillie.

It was an exciting time, fuelled by the discovery and nuances of everything traditional music offers to those that fall under its spell. A cacophony of notes swirling around my head, from jigs and reels to laments and mouth music, and everything in between. But in those early sessions, there was never any talk of actually going on to make a professional living from playing this music; that seemed pretty outlandish.

There were, of course, a few folk bands who had come out of Scotland and Ireland in the 70s and early 80s who were paving the way through touring and inspirational records (the likes of Silly Wizard, The Boys Of The Lough, Ossian, Planxty, Clannad etc) but there was still a generational divide in audiences for traditional music in Scotland at that time. So for us as teenagers, commercial success was only a pipe dream and, when it came, it took us by surprise.

There is no doubt that the trad, folk and roots music of Scotland has been elevated to mainstream culture over the last few decades, both in terms of media profile and through the public embracing the new generation of trad bands and

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, Jo Laidlaw tells us which things . . .

Made me cry: My to-be-read pile is always enormous so I’m predictably late to this party, but The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn made me weep, particularly the final letter from C to D which I now have copied into my phone. It’s a huge, sweeping between-thewars historical novel that contains so many tiny, razor-sharp, heartbreaking truths about the family we choose. Gorgeous.

Made me angry: Anger is a bus stop on the journey to the dark side. However, I was bloody livid when that sack of dicks with the bad hair (aka former PM Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson) turned up to vote clutching an envelope with his name and address instead of photo ID, after bringing in the voter ID legislation in the first place. It was probably some ‘man of the people’ bimble-stunt; that didn’t make me any less roused.

Made me laugh: Cousin! Season three of The Bear. The cross-talk between characters who have spent their whole lives together tickles me, particularly the Fak brothers. I know it’s gut-wrenching high-octane stuff (yes, with too many flashbacks) but it really made me laugh.

Made me think: The revival of Guys & Dolls at The Bridge Theatre in London is totally joyous and made me think about every other musical we could completely re-imagine if we took the proscenium arch out and added some moving platforms. Spoiler: it’s all of them. We could do them all. Can Mack & Mabel be first though, please?

Made me think twice: For many reasons, I’m still not over The Eras tour. I can’t stop thinking about how much stick Swift gets for bringing so much joy. As always, things that (predominantly) young girls and women like are automatically shite, right? Looking at you Dave Grohl and the rugby ‘fans’ who piss their way through the gardens of Murrayfield yet are tolerated, because boys will be boys and girls will be silly little things. Bolt ya rockets, as Kam would say.

As a founding member of Capercaillie, Donald Shaw is a pioneer of the Scottish trad music scene. Here he celebrates the rise of a new generation of Scottish musicians and asks where traditional music might go from here

singers that are regularly selling out iconic venues like Barrowlands, Usher Hall, green-field festivals and, of course, Celtic Connections in Glasgow.

This has happened in parallel with a real emphasis on empowering young people to embrace Scotland’s music and giving them full licence to experiment and fuse styles and genres, giving real meaning to Hamish Henderson’s words, ‘new voices be borne on the carrying stream’.

Our music is flourishing through respect and confidence and has kudos worldwide. We are at a pivotal cultural moment in Scotland where traditional music and song can potentially be a conduit for connecting communities and a fractured society. And you know what may be the best thing about this new elevated status of folk music today? Where fashion and trends have often inflicted a ‘use-by date’ on the rising popularisation of a music style, this music is timeless. It is woven into the psyche of the land and the people, with songs and melodies and stories older than the hills that will continue being shared from generation to generation as long as we have a voice to sing.

n Capercaillie are celebrating their 40th anniversary, with their latest album ReLoved out now on Vertical; the band play Hoolie In The Hydro, OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Saturday 7 December.

playLIST

This issue’s music focus has filled our monthly playlist to the brim with excellent tunes by artists such as Los Bitchos, Tindersticks, Belle & Sebastian, Carole King, Fire Engines, Melanie Martinez, Bob Dylan and several others . . .

Scan and listen as you read:

head head2

MEGAN

I think we have a right to be sceptical when a multi-billion dollar brand is churning out and slapping its name across countless projects of varying quality. However, in the case of Pharrell Williams’ new documentary Piece By Piece, I’m less interested in this being a Lego™ movie and more in the fact he has opted to tell his musical origin story through animation. As a world-renowned artist and producer, who often talks about his creative synesthesia and out-of-the-box thinking, Williams suits this medium to a tee. Forget real-life talking heads and slow zooms on the same five pictures recovered from a dusty attic: Williams can use the limitless possibilities of the Legoverse to visualise stories from the real and hypothetical past, and present them to us in vivid primary colours. Alongside master documentarian Morgan Neville (Roadrunner, 20 Feet From Stardom), Williams is subverting the musician documentary format and keeping things conceptually fresh and for that I commend him. Plus Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Busta Rhymes and a plethora of other musical greats lending their voices to mini-figures of themselves is surely going to get bums on cinema seats for opening weekend.

from the archive

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

This issue’s archival titbit takes us back to 1989 when a 26-year-old Steven Soderbergh had just won the Palme d’Or for his controversial Sex, Lies And Videotape. Laura San Giacomo (who plays Cynthia) may have been our cover star but it was Soderbergh who revealed all about making such a confessional film on his romantic past. Also inside, Wet Wet Wet were on the verge of releasing Holding Back The River, Iain Banks talked about his latest book, The State Of The Art, and Welsh theatre company Brith Gof brought their epic version of Gododdin to Glasgow’s Tramway. n Head to archive.list.co.uk for our past issues.

In upcoming documentary Piece By Piece, music industry bigshot Pharrell Williams’ life and career is brought to life via the medium of Lego animation. As they debate whether it’s a genius move or a creative blunder, Megan Merino and Kevin Fullerton lock (tiny plastic) horns once more

KEVIN

The tone of Lego adaptations has remained charmingly consistent since the Lego Star Wars games blasted onto PlayStation 2 in the mid-2000s: bolt a blocky aesthetic onto an existing intellectual property, add a few postmodern winks to the camera and, voila, the Lego experience is complete. It’s a formula that’s worked for popcorn flicks like The Lego Batman Movie, but there’s something fishy about using it for a Pharrell Williams music doc, a genre already notorious for skirting around the trickier end of a musician’s output. Will we see a plastic-faced Williams brush his involvement with the predatory superhit ‘Blurred Lines’ under the carpet? Or will the lascivious edge of N.E.R.D. be sanded off to chime with Piece By Piece’s child-friendly toytown look? Williams’ starry-eyed dreamer persona lost its legs a long time ago, and this self-produced exercise in self-aggrandisement doesn’t look like changing that. Anything complicated (read: interesting) about the veteran star can easily be neutered by Lego’s involvement; the expressions on their diazepam-docile figurines could turn a biopic on Fred West into knockabout fun. People don’t watch music bios to see an all-round great guy with an amazing hat collection and a pocketful of family-oriented pop ditties. They want an artist baring their soul, not mucking about with plastic toys.

people Party

With sophomore release Talkie Talkie, multi-national foursome Los Bitchos insist they had no tricky second-album nerves. To kick off our autumn music special, Megan Merino chats to the band about soap-opera aesthetics, synchronising hair styles and partying hard

Musical ensemble, band, quartet, fun-loving gals. Each of these terms could be used to accurately describe Los Bitchos. However, ‘project’ (quite an underrated term in music) feels more fitting for this endeavour by Serra Petale, Agustina Ruiz, Josefine Jonsson and Nic Crawshaw, who combine their international musical tastes and love of partying in every composition. Hip-swaying rhythms and good humour are non-negotiables for a Los Bitchos tune; it’s pan-continental instrumental dance music designed for good times, which makes a lot of sense when I learn how the founding members sparked up their friendship. ‘We actually became close friends at a party,’ Ruiz recalls. ‘Serra fell in a pond, then that was it.’ Petale adds: ‘Yeah, I think Agustina was like, “god, she needs help. I’ll just sit with her.”’

Seven years later, nights out have moved from ‘seven days a week’ down to one or two, ‘but now I want to make them damn good parties,’ insists Petale. What constitutes a good Los Bitchos party, you may ask? ‘It needs to be somewhere hot,’ Jonsson starts off. ‘All of our friends will be there and 80s, 90s and early 2000s music will play. Danceable, cheesy songs,’ adds Ruiz. ‘Yeah, fun music, not cool. With tequila and margaritas,’ Jonsson elaborates. ‘It needs to

be a spontaneous night where you end up somewhere you’re not expecting,’ says Crawshaw. ‘And the food is good. I’m thinking some pizza at like 10pm,’ concludes Petale.

While that sounds like a perfectly fun evening, seeing Los Bitchos play live is a party in and of itself. There’s something about their unique blend of foot-stomping cumbia, Turkish psych and surf disco that makes a crowd go wild. ‘Sometimes people at our shows actually make up their own little dances,’ says Crawshaw. ‘There was a show we did on the King Gizzard [& The Lizard Wizard] tour where the crowd was doing something in unison and it looked amazing. So feel free to do your own dance. We love that.’

The band’s 2022 album was aptly called Let The Festivities Begin!, produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos. Its recently released follow-up, Talkie Talkie (Los Bitchos’ made-up nightclub), is the next chapter in this fictional night out. Songs such as ‘Kiki, You Complete Me’ and ‘1K!’ are just some of the climactic moments, a music video for the latter being an animated videogame car race. But while the essence of their sophomore album remains similar to the first, some exciting new sonic flavours and references seep in, not to mention a new producer in the shape of Oli Barton-Wood who has worked with Wet Leg and Nilüfer Yanya.

‘Any producer is going to bring something different because of their unique recording techniques,’ says Petale. ‘Oli was really creative with what he wanted to bring out in the songs. He’s also a great engineer, so he knew specifically how to place mics and did a lot of dual processing with guitars; he’d record two guitar amps at the same time and blend those, which I thought was really great.’

Recorded over two weeks in November last year, working at a speed of roughly one track per day, Los Bitchos didn’t give themselves time to be bogged down by any difficult-second-album pressures. ‘We try not to go down that road mentally,’ explains Crawshaw. ‘It was really just about making an album that we all felt really proud of and that was a level up from the first record.’ This attitude is evident from the minute the album’s opening track ‘Hi!’ commences and we’re told to ‘suck on that one, bitch’.

‘There was never any question that it was going to be the first song,’ insists Crawshaw. Petale continues: ‘it’s like, here it is, album number two. Suck on that one, bitch!’ On ‘Hi!’, rallying screams and psychedelic guitar reverb bring us into the record’s sonic universe, which is accompanied by a soft-focus aesthetic Los Bitchos borrowed from American soap operas like Days Of Our Lives and The Young And The Restless (‘it’s been running for like 50 years. You must watch it!’ Petale insists).

of a uniform. ‘People are free to change their hairstyle if they want,’ says Jonsson defensively, but Crawshaw disagrees: ‘I think we’re locked in now. We always talk about having a fringe-cutting station at our merch table, or having little extension fringes. I don’t know if there’s a demand.’ Petale thinks so: ‘you could have the Agustina fringe, the Serra fringe; two fringes for one!’

Keep your eyes peeled for those at their upcoming Edinburgh and Glasgow gigs, taking place midway through a world tour this autumn. Summerhall’s Dissection Room and University Of Glasgow’s Queen Margaret Union will become the Talkie Talkie nightclub as more of the new album is brought to life on stage.

‘If you listen to the record, that’s great, but you’re gonna get something a little bit different live. I think we really welcome and embrace that,’ says Petale.

‘We’ve been rehearsing and working out what we really need to keep in and what is less important for the live show,’ adds Crawshaw. ‘It’s an interesting process but I think it’s sounding good.’

the creative direction of every music video. ‘We’ve got no lyrics,

There’s an added air of excitement around playing to their Scottish fans, not least because of the band’s close relationship with Alex Kapranos, but also because Petale is part-Scottish herself. ‘We actually love Scotland,’ insists Ruiz. ‘And we’re not just saying it, like in that episode of The Simpsons.’

Los Bitchos play Summerhall, Edinburgh, Wednesday 23 October, and Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, Thursday 24 October; Talkie Talkie is out

Every member of the band rocks one and it’s come to be something now on City Slang.

This visual language is consistent from the album’s artwork to the creative direction of every music video. ‘We’ve got no lyrics, really, so you’ve got to think of something else that the music kind of embodies,’ explains Petale. Another signature aesthetic choice made by the band, whether intentional or not, is a strong block fringe. Every member of the band rocks one and it’s come to be something

Festival Awards

After a rammed month of cultural binging and a doorstop novel’s worth of copy from our intrepid band of reviewers, our inaugural List Festival Awards capped off August with a celebratory air. We broke news of our shortlists on Monday 19 August, and a gaggle of talent gathered at Johnnie Walker Princes Street four days later for a ceremony to dole out prizes to our deserving winners.

Congratulations to everyone who was nominated and to the victors: Natalie Palamides, Songs Of The Bulbul, Lewis Major, Famehungry, Flannery O’kafka, Weather Girl, K Patrick and Since Yesterday. And a big round of applause to Summerhall’s CEO Sam Gough, who walked away with the Spirit Of The Fringe award for his efforts to preserve the venue. A final thanks to our comperes Zara Janjua and Mark Nelson, who lathered our packed room with cheeky banter and slick segues. If you were at the ceremony, we hope you enjoyed yourself. Catch you next year for another celebration of the best of Edinburgh Festival season.

And, of course, many thanks are due to our brilliant supporters: Lothian Buses, Citizen Ticket, LNER, Edinburgh Marriott Hotel Holyrood, Adelaide Fringe, Ghost Light Global, Fringe Encore Series and Sit-Up Awards for their generous prizes. A special thank you to our event partner, Johnnie Walker Princes Street, for a show-stopping venue and to our production partner, YOURGB. See you next year!

“

We were making a record with our bodies

As Tindersticks roll out their 14th studio album, bandleader Stuart A Staples tells Kevin Fullerton about the privilege of writing music, the desire for a shared purpose, and remaining moored in an ever-changing musical landscape

The whims of the music industry change but Tindersticks remain eternal. The five-piece, fronted by the mercurial Stuart A Staples, have sat on the margins of the music industry since their formation in 1991, managing that rarest of things; a consistent sound that’s developed across decades in slow and satisfying iterations.

There’s a looming quality to their work, anxious without ever descending into nerve-shredding terror, crepuscular while unafraid to let in streams of light and shades of jet-black darkness, and ghostly without ever lacking vitality. Yet perhaps the most distinctive element of their gothic lounge-jazz style (think Tom Waits on laudanum and you’re halfway there) lies with Staples’ plaintive baritone, a growling groan which can move from romantic to detached with the mildest shift of intonations.

Now the veterans of gloom are returning with Soft Tissue, their 14th album in total and first since the pandemic. ‘When you don’t have a definite purpose to make something, great things can happen,’ Staples told us. ‘We didn’t set out to make an album. With everything that’s gone on over the last few years (the pandemic, having tours cancelled), we didn’t really have any time to be together and play music, especially because we all live in different countries now. So, we checked into a rehearsal room to cook and play music and drink some wine, and we came away with some things we were excited about. It created a sweet spot of understanding between the five of us and the way we play music together.’

The political and social turmoil of the past few years may act as a backdrop but, as with almost every Tindersticks project, Staples’ lyrics are allusive meditations on deeply personal situations. Lead single ‘Nancy’ sounds like a rhumba in purgatory while Staples plays the role of a lover spurned (‘your silence is worse than what you might say’). ‘The song is a very universal subject,’ he insists. ‘It’s almost as if anyone could insert their own time and place. I’ve never wanted lyrics printed on album covers. There’s a price to be paid for that.’

Part of the reason the band have stayed fresh lies in the decision they’ve made, both consciously and unconsciously, to never lean on modish production styles. ‘In the early 90s, drum machines had been harnessed and I think that was detrimental to a lot of music. When we made our first album, one of the first things we wanted to do was not pin it down into a moment in time, so that it didn’t sound like an album from 1992. That’s what we tried to do with Soft Tissue; it’s got a sound all of its own, one that’s come out of experimentation and refining that experimentation until we found what we were looking for.’ It’s why the band sound so tangible and lived in. ‘I’d love to add to the physicality of music. It was one of the things I wanted, to lean into the idea that we were making a record with our bodies not staring at computer screens.’

A group of multi-instrumentalists embedded in artistry without visible commercial desire almost feels like an artefact from another era. ‘I’ve had the privilege to spend the last 30 years waking up in the morning, thinking about the ideas that are in my head and spending time exploring them. Everyone knows that it’s a labour of love to make music if you’re young now. Otherwise, how are you going to pay your rent?’ In the ethereal world of Tindersticks, let’s be glad they’re able to shrug off such material concerns in their grand, cinematic music.

Soft Tissue is released by City Slang on Friday 13 September; Tindersticks play Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 14 March.

the gig economy

BECKY SIKASA

With those long summer nights we’ve been relishing now dwindling in our collective memory, the long darker evenings are happily pitch-perfect for heading out to see live music. Here is but a dozen upcoming shows to cover many tastes

The neo-soul artist continues an astonishing rise up the ranks and was described by BBC Introducing as a ‘a future superstar in loading buffer mode’. Not entirely sure what that means but pretty sure it’s a compliment.

n Stereo, Glasgow, Friday 4 October.

CROWDED HOUSE

They’ve been taking the weather (and the tunes) with them everywhere they’ve gone for nigh on 40 years (timeframe includes splits and reunions), and they tour now on the back of their new album, Gravity Stairs.

n OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Wednesday 9 October.

PALE WAVES

They may not have been around as many blocks as the aforementioned Antipodeans, but in 2022 the Manchester four-piece claimed to be ‘the most resilient band we know’. They’re now in the midst of a debut headlining tour.

n SWG3, Glasgow, Sunday 13 October.

BILLY PORTER

Bringing a touch of glamour to the autumn gigging circuit is this style icon, with the Black Mona Lisa tour featuring a full band and a celebration of the star’s 90s R&B roots and subsequent Broadway glories.

n King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Sunday 20 October.

KAMASI WASHINGTON

Quite an eclectic set of stop-offs on the composer/sax-man’s tour (Athens Acropolis, Cardiff Uni, Cork Jazz Festival, Oslo’s Opera & Ballet arena) but will there be a wilder night than this one? Nope, there won’t.

n Barrowlands, Glasgow, Tuesday 22 October.

IRON & WINE

Sam Beam is back and launching sunlight into our lives once again with his seventh album that has been dubbed as (paraphrasing here) a kaleidoscopic elegy which is filtered through with lots of truth and dare.

n Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Friday 25 October.

NIA ARCHIVES

The Yorkshire-born artist also known as Dehaney Nia Lishahn Hunt has given jungle a shot in the arm by injecting it with a drop of punk. This will no doubt be one of many crowded roomz on the tour.

n SWG3, Glasgow, Wednesday 30 October.

NITEWORKS

This show is part of the folk-electronica band’s farewell tour, always a bittersweet moment in a band’s career. Unless they ‘do a Status Quo’ and are still gigging in the 2060s. n Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Thursday 7 November.

BEABADOOBEE

With Rick Rubin pushing the studio buttons, ‘Gen Z’s favourite bedroom pop star’ recently unleashed her third album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves. Next stop: world domination.

n O2 Academy Glasgow, Monday 11 November.

KING CREOSOTE

On the back of another excellent album (I Des), Kenny Anderson hits the live stage once again with superb songs and witty stories. Especially looking forward to a possible director’s cut of the 36-minute ‘Drone In B#’. n Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Saturday 16 November.

IDLES

For the Bristol punk band’s biggest gig on these shores to date, will they do ‘Jungle’ so that Joe Talbot can get a reaction for this line: ‘I found myself underneath a Scotsman’s boot/they proceed to fill me in’?

n OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Saturday 23 November.

THE 502s

These indie-folk Floridians will be getting as far away from the post-US election fall-out as possible on their Great Road Trip tour. They often describe themselves as the happiest band on earth. We’ll see how they’re shaping up after said vote.

n SWG3, Glasgow, Monday 25 November.

SMALL WONDERS

They may be little but they pack a punch. Kevin Fullerton digs into the world of indie venues across Glasgow and Edinburgh, and discovers spaces we should all cherish, designed by music fans for music fans

You head into the low-lit venue a few minutes after the doors open, grab a drink and chat to the bar staff as a handful of people trickle into the 60-capacity room. The opener starts and there’s a vibrational shift as small siloes of conversation become a mass of head-nodding punters, their attentions focusing and bodies swaying to a song they’ve never heard before. Then the headliner arrives: waves of applause, crowds cramming to the front, spontaneous whoops and cheers as a caterwauling singer attacks and retreats. You leave at the back of 11 chattering to strangers about the electric atmosphere and how this was the best gig you’ve seen in years.

Such a night might seem like a memory of small venues from a preausterity era, but for thousands of people every week it’s an experience of the now and confirmation that the world of gig-going is as fertile as ever. The community-spirited atmosphere of many music spaces across Glasgow and Edinburgh nonetheless remains in a state of precarity, struggling to pay back debts accrued during covid, coping with increased living costs, wrangling with demands from local councils, and adjusting to an era of declining alcohol consumption. Two grassroots music venues

are closing their doors every week, according to the Music Venue Trust (MVT); these hotbeds of cultural vibrancy are hitting crisis point.

In Edinburgh, the sudden closure of The Jazz Bar in April was a ‘stand up and take notice’ moment, confirming the fear that important hangout spots were being stripped away from the capital. For co-owner Justyna Mushlin, many of the bar’s problems arose because it was viewed as part of the furniture. ‘A lot of people took it for granted,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t imagine the bar has been struggling just by looking at it, but it has been for years. We created an environment for musicians to play, but it was always a battle to pay our VAT bill every quarter.’

Soon after the closure, a crowdfunding campaign was started and Mushlin, alongside her partner and long-time Jazz Bar worker Nick, successfully reopened and transformed the venue into a Community Interest Company (CIC) to give them exemption from VAT on ticket sales and business-rate relief for a more sustainable financial model.

It’s a route being taken by many smaller venues that prioritise social enterprise. Inhabiting that spirit in Glasgow’s Southside is The Glad Café, opened in 2012 as a CIC to reinvest any profits to fund music workshops and tuition in the area through The Glad Foundation. Despite its popularity,

running the venue hasn’t been without problems. ‘Prior to covid, we had a lot of leaks in the building and our bill for that was 40 grand, which we obviously didn’t have sitting around,’ says venue manager and programmer Kim Blyth. ‘But it’s worth it; we’ve become a hub for the Southside and I feel really privileged to book for the venue and to see so many artists pack out shows.’

Nick Stewart, managing director of Edinburgh mainstay Sneaky Pete’s echoes Blyth’s sentiment, pointing out that they regularly sell out shows with tickets prices that cost ‘less than the price of a large takeaway pizza’. Business at Sneaky’s is booming, yet Stewart remains conscious of the financial climate for younger music fans.

‘We first opened Sneaky’s in a recession,’ he tells us. ‘It was so bad back then that nowhere would even let me open a bank account. But things are worse for young people now. The difference in the cost of living is rent, especially in Edinburgh; private landlords have taken all the disposable income that should be spent on a night out. People should be able to feel like they have the standard of living where, especially if they’re young, it’s normal and affordable to go out and cut a rug or see some amazing live music.’

Yet even for venues with bustling live shows, an increasingly healthconscious cohort of young people is biting into their profits. ‘Eighteen to 25-year-olds are drinking less,’ Mark Davyd, founder of MVT, explains. ‘We’ve committed to presenting new and original music in a way that’s heavily reliant on the profit that can be made from selling alcohol. That’s a big challenge when it comes to how you fund this kind of activity.’ For many venue owners we spoke to, this held true; ticket prices cover the fees of an act onstage, while alcohol and snacks help keep the lights on for venues themselves.

Leith Depot co-owners Pete Mason, Paddy Kavanagh and Julie Carty believe that embracing a mixed-use approach helps balance the books for the Edinburgh venue; money made from food and drink is just as important as the ticket price on the door, with people usually choosing to have a meal at the venue before watching a gig. The same was true for those other venues: Sneaky Pete’s puts on club nights, The Glad Café has a thriving vegan restaurant, and The Jazz Bar is planning to diversify its space to accommodate children’s programming in the daytime.

Even with a sustainable business model, Leith Depot almost faced closure due to a situation outside of its control; in 2019, plans were lodged to demolish their building and an entire block on Leith Walk

as part of a ‘redevelopment project’. As Carty explains, ‘there was a massive community campaign. And it went through all these loops before the proposal was rejected.’

Be they noise complaints, wrangles with local councils or disputes with building contractors, the work of the MVT was praised highly in our conversations with small venue owners in Glasgow and Edinburgh. As well as helping with what Davyd describes as ‘quite boring legal work’ for venues, the Trust is pressuring the government for a tax levy on larger venues, in which £1 from every ticket sold at a stadium or arena-sized show goes towards maintaining grassroots organisations.

‘I think that when Lewis Capaldi plays Murrayfield, some of the money that’s being made there should be making sure that the next Lewis Capaldi has somewhere to play and can afford to play it,’ Davyd says. ‘We’re going through a time when the ability to be a community is under attack by the desire to make every square foot of every town as valuable as possible for somebody. We need a counter argument.’

What these conversations drive home is that the people managing and programming small venues are mounting a heroic effort to create nights out that punters will remember for years to come. It’s no hyperbole to say that they’re the bedrock of the live music experience.

And for them, the rewards outweigh the struggle. ‘It’s great seeing people play with their pals and have a good night out and in a safe space,’ says Leith Depot’s Carty. The Jazz Bar’s Mushlin adds, ‘everyone loves working here because of the atmosphere, the people they meet, and the environment that they’re in. It’s like our second home.’

‘There are big rewards to navigating the tricky times,’ says The Glad Café’s Blyth. ‘Seeing the impact a gig has on the audience and on the artists: this is why we do this.’ Over at Sneaky’s, Stewart agrees. ‘What’s really special is a band in full flow at their peak in a small music venue. You’re getting an absolute real performance in a totally authentic environment.’

So, buy your tickets in advance, take a punt on a band you’ve never heard of, be generous with your cash at the bar and, if you’re worried about a small venue in your local area, contact your local MP and ask them what they’re doing to support grassroots music venues. Who knows, your next tiny gig might be the best you’ve ever seen.

Find out more about supporting your local independent venues from the Music Venue Trust, musicvenuetrust.com

Get ready for Scotland’s national celebration of design!

Taking over 10,000 sqm of former factory space, the free festival will take over Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc on the outskirts of the city.

Visitors will be welcomed to a world of Scottish contemporary design with opportunities to discover new and existing designs in furniture, interiors, jewellery, homewares, craft, graphic design and fashion.

MATERIALISE: Four of Scotland’s leading design studios were invited to embrace the space and ambition inherent in the festival site at MSIP. The result is a series of large scale installations inviting festival visitors to see Scottish design up close, get hands-on with materials, learn about new approaches to interior design, play with colour and fabric and even enjoy design inspired performance.

Provocative design studio Timorous Beasties will create an immersive maze-like space framed by their iconic wallpaper design as well as hosting screenprinting sessions so that drop-in visitors can make over their own bags, fabrics or clothes.

Alicia Storie of ADesignStorie will lead a programme of workshops on sustainable interior design from a climate conscious tiny house installation that encourages the exploration of healthy materials. Visitors to The House of Wellbeing installation will also have an opportunity to discover the latest sustainable materials available to designers and makers.

Donna Wilson will welcome explorers of all ages to discover the enchanted knitted forest which is home to a host of her beloved woolly creatures. Festival goers will also have the opportunity to make their own beasties with the guidance of Donna’s Dundee based Knit Shop team as waste wool becomes transformed into creatures of wonder.

Finally Gabriella Marcella’s installation Challenging Uniformity merges play and performance with her colourful exploration of uniform design. With input from festival visitors, Challenging Uniformity will demonstrate creative expression, improvisation, activism, and customisation.

FRAMEWORK: Over 70 designs have been selected for this exhibition from an open call capturing a snapshot of Scottish contemporary design today. From Fair Isle to Dumfries and Galloway this exhibition features exhibits as diverse as aircraft seating design to insect inspired jewellery. Ceramics, sculpture, glass, furniture, sustainable fashion, jewellery and graphic design all feature giving visitors an opportunity to see how design interacts with other creative disciplines.

HYPER-LOCAL: 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of Dundee’s status as a UNESCO City of Design recognising the city’s diverse contributions to design in fields including comics, textiles, medical innovation and video games.

One of a global network of 49 cities around the world, the HYPER-LOCAL exhibition celebrates those international connections with a display of over 50 design objects linked to their host cities. The participating cities are; Bilbao (Spain), Dundee (Scotland), Detroit (USA), Graz (Austria), Kortrijk (Belgium), Nagoya (Japan), Queretaro (Mexico), and Wuhan (China). Designs on show include Japanese eyewear from Nagoya, Mexican craft from Queretaro, sustainably pressed vinyl records from Detroit, lighting from Bilbao, Kortrijk, and Graz, traditional masks from Wuhan and patterned furniture, stone and knitwear from Dundee.

BOOKENDS:

Festival Creative

Director Dr Stacey Hunter invited 20 Scotland based designers to respond to the collected writings of Bessie Maxwell and Marie Imandt, two of the first female correspondents to circumnavigate the globe in 1894 and report back to eager readers of The Courier and Weekly News. The selected designers took inspiration for their designs from the landscapes they encountered, the cultural differences the writers discovered, the impact of their writing and more.

TEENAGE

Then and now: Ben Harrison

‘Songs can stir potent memories of a particular time and place. For Grid Iron’s Ben Harrison, that song is The Smiths’ final single. Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me is a defining moment of the 80s as well as the title of his autobiographical show reflecting on that era. Neil Cooper talks to Harrison and musical collaborator David Paul Jones about hope, despair and baring your teenage soul on stage

KICKS

Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ was the final single to be released by The Smiths, the mercurial Manchester band who for a certain breed of sensitive young men helped define life in the 1980s. One of these men was Ben Harrison, who went on to become co-artistic director of Edinburgh-based Grid Iron Theatre Company. For Harrison, growing up in a small English town, The Smiths, and that song in particular, became a soundtrack to his life.

He was a hopelessly romantic middle-class teen who undertook a very quiet rebellion against his background by way of Cold War communist trappings and radical chic. He also fell for The Smiths just as he fell for girls at bus stops and older women at the local am-dram group who offered some kind of salvation in a humdrum town.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Harrison has co-opted the title of The Smiths’ swansong for his autobiographical look back at the decade in which he came of age. Taking a cue from Morrissey’s heart-on-sleeve lyrics and sense of emotional torment in a cruel world The Smiths occupied, Harrison’s Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me thrusts him into the spotlight to perform a series of autobiographical short stories that lay bare some of his teenage years’ key moments.

‘I suppose the theme of the show is escape,’ says Harrison. ‘There’s a theme of falling in love and possibly over-romanticising women, but then also falling very much in love with the music, which did the same thing. It kind of oscillates between hope and despair.’

This very Morrissey-sounding notion for the show came to Harrison while touring Undertow Overflow, a similarly styled compendium of autobiographically inclined songs and stories, presented in 2022 in collaboration with singer-songwriter Amy Duncan. This saw the pair do a proper rock‘n’roll style tour in a van. ‘We were driving around on the tour,’ Harrison remembers, ‘and we started listening to all this 80s music on Spotify.’

This prompted Harrison to recall a Valentine’s Day concert presented several years earlier by composer and long-time Grid Iron collaborator, David Paul Jones. Harrison and Jones had first worked together in 2003 on Those Eyes, That Mouth, a devised work drawn from classic European literature and film, and presented in an Edinburgh townhouse. Jones also worked on Barflies, an adaptation of Charles Bukowski short stories which took place in Edinburgh’s Barony Bar. It was also at the Barony that Jones performed his Valentine’s Day concert.

BEN HARRISON

‘I think it was about a week before the concert,’ Harrison remembers, ‘and I said to DPJ, “oh, could you do a cover of ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’?” I thought it was a stupid idea proposing it and that he’d never do it. On the night, he played this mix of covers and his own songs, and then he started to play it, and it was incredible.’

Once the tour of Undertow Overflow was done, Harrison contacted Jones about his latest idea. Shortly afterwards, he received a seven-hour playlist of 1980s songs. With director Scott Johnston on board, these were gradually whittled down to a selection of songs from the era that left their mark on both Harrison and Jones. Songs which featured alongside original music by Jones include Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’, ‘Like A Prayer’ by Madonna, and ‘The Power Of Love’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

This is no karaoke hour, however. As those well versed in the previous collaborations of what might be regarded as the Morrissey and Marr of the sitespecific theatre scene will already know, Jones’ interpretations of classic songs are likely to be more in keeping with what This Mortal Coil (the 4AD record label’s 1980s rolling ‘supergroup’) did with covers of leftfield classics. Like them, Jones remakes and remodels existing material in his own more nuanced image.

‘With Ben,’ says Jones, ‘from the minute we started working together, he has always given me this kind of freedom of expression. Cover versions play a big part in our history together, and there’s not a single show we have done where a cover version hasn’t been this real seminal moment in a piece. The lovely thing about this show is we’re doing classic 80s songs, but we’re not trying to parody the sound world of the 80s.’

Jones will be accompanied on stage by internationally renowned Edinburghbased cellist, Justyna Jablonska, whose work mixes classical sensibilities with electronics and improvisation. ‘The palette we’re using is a very mixed piano and ambient soundscape one,’ says Jones, ‘so the soundtrack is very cinematic. It’s about interpreting the words. We are faithful, more or less, to the original melodies of the songs, but the feel, the tempo and the orchestration are very different.’

As for the song that gave Harrison the show’s title, he intends paying it the ultimate homage. ‘“Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” is going to be played at my funeral,’ he says. ‘I’ve written it into my will. I’m still having the dream that last night somebody told me they loved me. I’m still looking for that.’

Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Thursday 19–Saturday 21 September; Summerhall, Edinburgh, Monday 23–Wednesday 25 September.

INSIDE TRACK

We bring you some top trivia on The Smiths’ final single

‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ was the third and final single taken from The Smiths’ fourth album, Strangeways, Here We Come.

By the time it was released in December 1987, The Smiths had split up. Billed as ‘The Last Single’, it reached number 30 in the UK singles chart.

The Smiths’ swansong arrived six months after Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government had been elected for a third term in office.

The album and 12” single version of ‘Last Night I Dreamt . . . ’ opens with a one minute 55 second recording from the Miners’ Strike, which became one of the decade’s defining events.

The cover star of ‘Last Night I Dreamt . . . ’ was Billy Fury, the Liverpool-born rock’n’roll singer who died aged 42 in January 1983, just as The Smiths were playing their first gigs.

Morrissey’s theatrical leanings saw the run-off groove of ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me ’s original vinyl release etched with the words, ‘The Return Of The Submissive Society (X) Starring Sheridan Whiteside’. The B-side reads ‘The Bizarre Oriental Vibrating Palm Death (X) Starring Sheridan Whiteside.’

Whiteside was the lead character in George S Kaufman and Moss Hart’s 1939 play, The Man Who Came To Dinner, and was based on drama critic of The New Yorker, Alexander Woollcott.

A film of The Man Who Came To Dinner was made in 1942 starring Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, with Whiteside played by Monty Woolley after his appearance in the original stage production made him a star.

David Paul Jones

It

was like a foreign country to me “

Songwriter, filmmaker and now novelist: Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch has added yet another string to his artistic bow.

Fiona Shepherd sits in on the audio recording of Nobody’s Empire, as Murdoch talks of his struggles with ME and what the future may hold

Stuart Murdoch has history with The List. He would drop off demos of his early songs at the Glasgow office in the hope of coverage (we eventually obliged with the first review of Belle & Sebastian’s debut album Tigermilk). He even once applied to write for the magazine, attempting to woo a bemused editor with a piece on a fictional dead rock star, only to be informed that there were plenty of real ones he could be writing about instead.

Thirty years later, Murdoch has written his debut novel, Nobody’s Empire, named after an autobiographical Belle & Sebastian song about an aspiring young musician navigating illness and exploring spirituality in Glasgow’s leafy West End and beyond. This time he’s written about a real rock star: himself.

The novel’s lead character Stephen Rutherford is a proxy for Murdoch. Other names have been changed to justify a bit of creative license (although The Pastels manage to appear as both themselves and local indie heroes The Chairs) while the narrative corresponds to a couple of years in the early 90s when Murdoch was first struck by ME (aka chronic fatigue syndrome), forged a couple of key lasting friendships with fellow sufferers and made a life-changing odyssey to San Francisco.

‘I wanted to tell the story of ME and the three of us caught in a very small world and what we were going to do about it,’ he says during a break from recording the audio book in Glasgow’s La Chunky Studio where I have been invited to sit in during his spoilertastic rendition of the last few chapters.

Fuelled by chocolate, with a cushion to muffle the sound of a rumbling tummy, Murdoch’s reading of his own writing flows well (although it turns out ‘resignedly’ is a word which is easier to write than to say). Stumbling over the enunciation of ‘Todd Rundgren’, he decides to substitute the more mellifluous ‘Tom Petty’.

Murdoch has been writing short stories for years. Many Belle & Sebastian songs are self-contained vignettes. He has published The Celestial Café, a 2010 compilation of diary entries and musings, and scripted his 2014 film God Help The Girl. But a novel is a different beast. Murdoch says he ‘used to marvel’ at the novels published by original B&S bassist Stuart David. ‘It was like a foreign country to me; how could you keep it going?’

STUART

Murdoch started writing in 2019 during a gap in band activity and found he was able to keep it going through lockdown and beyond, even as his ME flared up and the band were forced to cancel a number of tours.

‘It started to mean an awful lot to me because I was bringing a lot of present feelings into the characters,’ he says. ‘So really the Stephen of the book is the Stephen of now as well as the Stephen of 30 years ago. I always felt I was being true to myself but your truth is always different from everybody else’s truth, and that’s why I’ve changed the names.’

As he records the final pages, emotion wells up and Murdoch has to take a moment. The book ends hopefully and there is clearly potential to follow up with a novelised version of the formative years of Belle & Sebastian.

‘[Band guitarist] Stevie Jackson always said to me right at the start “there are two Belle & Sebastians the one in your head and the seven of us sitting here waiting for you to decide what’s next”. He’s right. It became a real thing, but for the year before and a year and a half afterwards, it was a fictional thing playing out in my head with the world of the songs, so maybe I might write more . . . ’

Nobody’s Empire is published by Faber on Thursday 10 October; Nobody’s Empire: An Evening With Stuart Murdoch is at Summerhall, Edinburgh, Thursday 17 October, and Glasgow University Union, Saturday 19 October.

PICTURE:

eat & drink

EPOCHAL

The ‘Burton Union’ brewing system had its heyday at the end of the 19th century and when brewers Marston’s called time on its last active one earlier this year, Epochal owner Gareth Young seized the opportunity. His friendship with Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver might have helped the cause, with Oliver’s influential voice confirming Epochal’s oak barrel-fermentation brewery and taproom (on the canal just north of the city) was a fitting home. ‘The Burton Union kit was actually patented by a Scottish man called Peter Walker in 1838,’ says Young, so this piece of beautiful brewing history has come full circle. The first beers made on it are due out next month. (David Kirkwood) n 3a Payne Street, Glasgow, epochal-barrel-fermented-ales.myshopify.com; brewery taproom open Friday 5–10pm, Saturday noon–10pm.

Making

Between Two Waters, a new book by Inver chef-proprietor Pam Brunton, is a far-reaching polemic presenting an alternative to a broken food system, finds Jo Laidlaw

waves

Between Two Waters opens with a phone conversation that took place not long after Pam Brunton opened her restaurant Inver, when a potential customer called to check the menu and was bewildered by a lack of ‘normal Scottish food, like lasagne’.

‘This book came from a disjoint between the way people see Scottish landscapes and the way they think of Scottish food,’ explains the chef, voracious reader and former student of philosophy and food policy. She cites Inver’s ‘classic West Coast setting’, which leads to guests asking things like ‘why don’t you serve fish out of the loch?’ She then has to explain that there aren’t that many fish in there and defend her decision to prioritise fishing methods and stock sustainability over proximity. ‘The vast majority of the Scottish fishing fleet is industrial, which means it’s very destructive and most of the profit goes overseas or to extremely rich people.’

The book unpicks huge themes: the influence of big agriculture (‘organic food isn’t expensive, rather non-organic food is artificially cheap’) and commodification of what should be shared resources; colonialism and Scotland’s place within the Atlantic slave trade; modern-day slavery in industries like cocoa. Her clear-eyed, accessible analysis is unflinching around some of our most-loved ‘food traditions’ (for a nation that prides itself on making tablet, sugar doesn’t actually grow here).

But she’s also completely clear on where blame lies. We talk just after a general election campaign where few, if any, words were uttered about food. ‘Government food policy defaults to “leave it to the supermarket”, because supermarkets have found a way to present us with adequate and cheap food,’ she says. ‘But they do it by externalising the cost; by nailing farmers, drenching fields with pesticides, perpetuating unequal relationships across the globe, extracting as much as they can from communities and fields and animals, so that prices are completely skewed and we all end up paying the clean-up costs elsewhere in our taxes. That is not being discussed.’

Yet Brunton remains optimistic. ‘You have to be, everything else just plays into the status quo.’ She firmly believes in our collective power to make change. ‘Food is my story, it’s how I’ve chosen to interact with the world. I’m acutely aware of issues of accessibility, but we can all teach ourselves where food comes from. Find different places to shop: most cities have communities from different cultures with great grocery stores. Teach yourself to cook something, anything. Put a seed in a pot, it doesn’t need a garden.’ Returning to the election, she adds that shopping, cooking and eating is like ‘voting every single day, multiple times . . . and when you learn to read the story in your own shopping basket, you get to choose your own result.’

Pam Brunton: Between Two Waters is published by Canongate on Thursday 12 September; Inver Restaurant, Strathlachlan, Strachur, inverrestaurant.co.uk

PICTURE:

PICTURE:

tipLIST

Our tipLIST suggests the places worth knowing about around Edinburgh and Glasgow in different themes, categories and locations. This month, we’re stepping up to the plate to answer one of the team’s most hotly debated topics: where’s the best pizza in town?

The best pizza

Quirky venues

EDINBURGH

GLASGOW

EDINBURGH GLASGOW

HOMIES PIZZA

FINGAL

313 DETROIT PIZZA

If you’re rounding up the gang for pizza, you’ll be after an aperitivo (or two). Here’s our top picks for Italian-focused drinks in Edinburgh and Glasgow

Sarah Berardi, Hendrick’s Gin Ambassador, shows us around three of her

BAR VINI

80 Victoria Road, Glasgow, barvini.com

Alexandra Dock, fingal.co.uk

Edinburgh Street Food, Leith Street, homiespizza.co.uk

All aboard Fingal for dinner on a ship, without having to leave shore. This award-winning hotel is open to non-residents for cocktails, afternoon tea or dinner. It’s a gorgeous space for a celebration, with views of the islands in the Forth.

For pillowy, thick Detroit-style pizza, Homies is the place, with deep pies cooked in tall steel pans to create the crisp ‘frico’ cheese crust. The Detroit classic wins every time, covered in pepperoni, jalapeños and hot honey, with plenty of cheese.

MATTO PIZZA

KIM’S MINI MEALS

5 Buccleuch Street, facebook.com/mrkimsfamily

12 Cadzow Place, 370–372 Morningside Road & 29–33 Newington Road, mattopizza.co.uk

You’d think early last orders (8.30pm, no exceptions) and a firm policy on reservations and takeaway (neither allowed) would put folks off, but Kim’s is an enduring institution. Show up, queue up and eat up some of the best bibimbap in town.

Long an Abbeyhill takeaway favourite, Matto have restaurants in Morningside and Newington too. Among the Neapolitan-style classics you’ll find a few off-beat options, like courgette pesto with mortadella, confit tomatoes and wasabi peas.

PABLO EGGS-GO-BAO

PIZZA GEEKS

62 Inverleith Row, eggsgobao.com

Quirky name, quirky food, and the bao bun/ breakfast fusion you didn’t know you needed. Refined? Nope. Delicious? Oh yeah. Try the breakfast bao: crispy hash browns, square sausage, omelette and melted cheese with sriracha. Takeaway or delivery only.

7 Commercial Street, 126 Easter Road & 19 Dalry Road, pizzageeks.co.uk

Pizza Geeks’ three venues have an individual retro gaming, film or TV-inspired theme. For example, at Easter Road a pizza from ‘The Shire’ is forged in an R2D2 oven and house classics include ‘The Mario’. They also donate thousands of pizzas to community groups and charities every year.

PARADISE PALMS

41 Lothian Street, theparadisepalms.com

RAZZO PIZZA

59 Great Junction Street, razzopizza.co.uk

Bright and bold Paradise Palms is the antidote to a grey weather day. It’s a bar, a restaurant, a record shop and a venue, decked in neon lights and kitsch ephemera. Cocktails are a specialty, plus a menu of American-style veggie/vegan soul food.

SINGAPORE COFFEE HOUSE

This small restaurant is dominated by a huge copper pizza oven and the sourdough pizzas are among the best in Scotland. The napoletana is hard to beat: just crushed San Marzano tomatoes with anchovies, capers, basil and oregano.

SAN CIRO’S

148 Leith Walk, sanciros.com

This new spot has quickly moved up the top ranks in Leith, with delicious Neapolitan style pizzas with classic toppings, and a few more out-there specials (like smoked mozzarella, bacon, pineapple and chilli jam). (Ailsa Sheldon)

5 Canonmills, singaporecoffeehouse.co.uk Singaporean food is a fusion of flavour and colour, condensed here into a cheery eight-seat restaurant. Roti canai is deliciously buttery and flaky, served with a rich curried sauce. A cup of kopi with condensed milk completes the authentic experience, powering you with sugar and caffeine for your day.

51 Cochrane Street, instagram.com/313gla

BATTLEFIELD REST

Serious Detroit pizza by the slice: a good 2mm crunch at the base gives way to fluffy focaccia bubbles above, the sauce is deep and sweet and the caramelisation of the cheese round the edges is masterful. BYOB, for now.

55 Battlefield Road, battlefieldrest.co.uk

This restored tram shelter has a history going back to 1914. Since 1993, its petite confines have housed a quaint Italian with bistro-ish plates (smoked haddock crêpe, black pudding salad) alongside pizzas and pastas. Lunchtime offers particularly good value.

Equal parts casual pasta bar and early evening drinks hangout, these guys know a thing or two about Italian cocktail culture. Seasonally inspired small plates and comforting pastas tick the food boxes, but it’s their creative Negronis that keep the crowds coming back for more. There’s plenty of wine by the glass too.

DIVINO WINE BAR & RESTAURANT

ERROL’S HOT PIZZA

HANOI BIKE SHOP

8 Ruthven Lane, hanoibikeshop.co.uk

379 Victoria Road, instagram.com/errolshotpizzashop ‘Thin’ and ‘crispy’ are taken to supreme levels here. It’s a small venue with massive pizzas and sharing is the vibe. Try the white, with gorgonzola, mushrooms, chives and cream. BYOB and get on board with the hard rock soundtrack.

5 Merchant Street, Edinburgh, divinoedinburgh.com

Places hidden down lanes always excite. A garland of plants and Vietnamese flags herald your entrance into this canteen-style space of wooden benches and hanging bikes, with vibrant renderings of street foods and hearty dishes. Try the pho, and anything with the homemade tofu.

PAESANO PIZZA

Divino is no slouch when it comes to food, but their wine list is a thing of Italian glory. Thanks to their Enomatic system, they serve some absolute stunners (including rare vintages) by the glass. It’s a fantastic way to explore Italian winemaking in a vibrant bar tucked into a historic Old Town basement.

NONNA SAID . . .

94 Miller Street & 471 Great Western Road, paesanopizza.co.uk

26 Candleriggs, nonnasaid.com

There’s been no drop-off in quality since the DiMaggio’s group bought this Neapolitan-style Glasgow institution. Scorched blisters of chewy sourdough crust and immensely thin, foldable centres are topped by San Marzano tomatoes and simple, fresh ingredients.

This place picks up on our ongoing love affair with all things Neapolitan, throws in some eyebrowraising toppings, and indulges an equally potent crush with old-school hip hop. Munch on fried carbonara bites or a lamb doner pizza, while Biggie blasts out of the speakers.

THUNDERCAT PUB + DINER

HEY PALU

49 Bread Street, Edinburgh, heypalu.com

86 Miller Street, thundercatpubdiner.co.uk

THE TIKI BAR & KITSCH INN

214 Bath Street, tikibarglasgow.com

This basement venue goes an impressive way towards recreating the Chicago deep dish ‘pizza pie’ style where one slice is so filling it might be enough. Crumbles of fennel sausage top a spacious, biscuity crust and intense tomato base that almost become one.

Quirky is kind of the point of tiki bars. Foosball, shuffleboard and popcorn machine downstairs, Thai eatery above and doing some fantastic work on sticky and aromatic curries. You can also order food amid the 50s Americana of the bar while supping on a Zombie from a Polynesian tankard.

WEST SIDE TAVERN

Edinburgh’s aperitivo specialists have quietly built up a cult following over the last couple of years, and it’s well deserved. There’s always a Negroni special on the go (think white strawberry for summer) and their flights are fun, but for the purists, their classic Neg is probably the best in the city. There’s a huge amaro selection too.

THE WEE CURRY SHOP

162 Dumbarton Road, westsidetavern.co.uk

7 Buccleuch Street, weecurryshop.co.uk

They didn’t invent hot honey, but the ‘Spice Boi’ at West Side Tavern is the best exponent of it in town. Tavern-style pizzas: thin, crispy, almost crustless, cut into squares for sharing, are defined by robust cheese and a tight balance of flavours.

(David Kirkwood)

Twenty-odd seats, an open kitchen and the steady stewardship of the Mother India group make for a delightfully quaint ‘front room’ experience where dishes are classically composed but light and modern.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

313 Detroit Pizza Geeks

Hey Palu

Divino

Honestly, turn your back on the bar and restaurant scene for five minutes (ok, a month) and suddenly you’re playing whack-a-mole with a wheen of new openings. Jo Laidlaw picks up the mallet

Edinburgh’s Stockbridge was already top of the pops for food and drink, but there’s also a ton of newness to explore on its cobbled streets. Punk pizza purveyors Civerinos have a shiny new spot on Raeburn Place and it’s likely your phone has also been filled with influencers chowing down on giant sandwiches from Mootz General Store, a few doors down. Well-beloved restaurateur Iggy Campos is back behind the wheel with Cata (small plates and wine) and the builders are in at the old Ping On: Sotto promises to be an Italian-themed enoteca.

That’s not to say things are quiet elsewhere. Old Pal Bar & Kitchen looks a promising addition to the fairly uninspiring parade at West Maitland Street, and we’re loving the vibe at Downstairs At Betty’s, a new Charlotte Lane piano bar with credible cocktails, gorgeous staff and banging acoustic singalong tunes. Meanwhile in Musselburgh, Company Bakery’s café is now fully open.

Glasgow’s on the go too. The French Horn opens soon on Great Western Road and looks fun (excellent name too). It’s inspired by those rustic Gallic bistros we all dream about owning, with plenty of wine by the glass plus French beer on tap. Baby Scottish-Italian chain Assaggini has arrived in George Square, taking over the beautiful venue that was previously home to Doppio Malto. And there’s a new bird in town at Haylynn Canteen Rotisserie Chicken Shop, where you can take away a perfectly grilled whole chook for your Sunday night tea. Sit-in’s coming soon too. Clucking lovely, that is.

side dishes

good in the hood

We wander through a neighbourhood and tell you where to drop in for food, drink and groceries. This month, David Kirkwood takes a stroll along Garscube Road towards the edge of Cowcaddens in Glasgow

TDownstairs At Betty’s

he area just north of Cowcaddens is equal parts residential, industrial and urban regeneration as the city centre fades into flyovers and walkways. Plenty of people live here, particularly students (Glasgow School Of Art, Royal Conservatoire Of Scotland and two universities are within striking distance) and a large Chinese and East Asian community.

Starting at the kink of Garscube Road there’s a decent culinary spread. Head to Rockvilla Pizza for hand-stretched sourdough vibes in a bright, modern space. A quick diversion takes you to the Scottish Opera building, where indie coffee house Willow Grove Coffee has an outpost in the foyer for caffeine, big toasties and Portuguese tarts. Back onto the main road presents two Chinese options: China Court Bakery is a quiet legend for those in-the-know, with glossy, buttery breadstuffs including a pork and pineapple variety that usually sells out. Next door, the glorious whiff of grilled meat and five-spice emanates from Yummy Roast’s Hong Kong-style roast duck and pork in a spartan café setting. Just further up, Parveen’s plant-based Indian food has a residency at Civic House; coconut and lime leaf joyfully ping their way through sweet potato, green beans and rice. By now you’ll see Cowcaddens. And roadworks. Stay calm, follow the signs and aim for the traditional Chinese gateway and the Chinatown Restaurant, which does a serious number in dim sum. Out and up the stairs is The Wee Curry Shop for hearty, delicate Indian dishes from an open kitchen, and The Philippine Store, the city’s only Filipino grocery specialist. There are also several Chinese equivalents ranging from the sizeable (Matthew’s Foods) to the petite (Lim’s Chinese Supermarket) along the way.

Willow Grove Coffee

INDIAN THAMEL

A self-styled cosmopolitan Nepalese restaurant, Thamel brings the everpopular Gautam’s brand to the corner of East London and Broughton Street with plenty of eye-popping aesthetics. Perhaps in a nod to Nepal’s vast and varied national parks, there’s a veritable jungle of lush green plants clashing pleasingly with the deep orange décor. It all feels vibrant, dynamic and very much in keeping with the Instagrammable, photogenic backdrops we’ve come to expect in the 2020s.

A selection of starters can also act as small plates to accompany an extensive cocktail list, with diners opting for crowd-pleasing pakoras, tikkas or tandooris, or delving into Himalayan tradition with a plate of steamed, squishy momos (dumplings). Alongside classic curries like creamy korma or hot rogan josh, there are dishes inspired by the mountain villages of Nepal. The Himalayan hot pot is a fabulously tangy curry that refreshes the taste buds rather than weighing them down with heavy coconut cream. Spice lovers can opt for a lamb or chicken naga, which has a fiery kick after every delicious bite. Garlic naan comes dripping with butter and tastes freshly baked. And, while the menu naturally heavily features the spices and flavours of Nepal, dishes like the indulgent scallops moilee and janti bakhro lamb make the most of Scottish produce.

Rather than dessert, there’s the option to descend to Thamel’s secret speakeasy bar for a cocktail or two. This atmospheric subterranean space is hidden behind a bookshelf and serves a selection of mixology-forward drinks with a hit of spice. Margaritas come with a rim of Himalayan salt and the Cloud Temple (like a Piña Colada) contains a hint of mountain herb liqueur. Down here, you can also order small plates and snacks from the restaurant if you want to make a more drinks-focused night of it. (Suzy Pope)

n 7–11 East London Street, Edinburgh, thamel.co.uk; average price for main course curry and rice £23.

FRENCH

MAISON BY GLASCHU

The folks behind upmarket Scottish-focused Glaschu on Royal Exchange Square have defied Brexit for this celebration of France (with a nod to Italy). The upper-floor restaurant’s smart brasserie vibe, with earthy leather banquettes, bistro furniture and 1920s touches, suits a shopping centre that still feels special. Dining ‘outdoors’ on the terrace gives a god complex: heavens open above through giant roof windows, small humans milling about below.

Food is casual continental dining, ticking expectations with onion soup, bourguignon, salad Niçoise, fish à la meunière, pasta and crème brûlée. Truffle is sprinkled across the menu, including in a cute baked camembert, enhanced with truffle purée, outnumbered by generous ciabatta slices (generosity is a theme, re-occurring in gigantic tuna schnitzel and two-scoop affogato). Somewhat off-piste tempura features chunky, succulent prawns in nicely light batter.

Roast poussin, with crispy skin-on ‘Pierre Koffman’ fries, is a pernickety and fiddly pleasure, prising out succulent morsels redolent with garlic and herbs. Beef bourguignon is packed with shin that melts into rich red wine sauce and mixed vegetables that hold their own, while a moreish garlic mash mops up.

Drinks are a focus here, highlighted by a large bar with loungey stool and booth area and bar snacks menu. French producers dominate enticing wine offerings, while international cocktails include an emphasis on aperitif Lillet, such as a satisfyingly potent lemon-twisted Dry Martini. Casual pop-ins for coffee and cake are welcome too, with croissants, éclairs and more pastry temptations available. (Jay Thundercliffe)

n Second Floor, Princes Square, 42 Buchanan Street, Glasgow, maisonglasgow.co.uk; average price for two courses £33.

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Drinking Games

He’s either having fun or having a breakdown. Either way, Kevin Fullerton is back to howl another drinking game into the void and onto these pages. This month’s challenge . . . find the perfect ‘Starmer bar’ in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge

Eminent scholars note that Drinking Games is more than a man-child making middling-to-poor jokes in bars; it is, in fact, a vociferous response to Conservative rule. ‘A skewering of austerity era politics,’ claims Margaret Tallywhacker of Shittington University, whose book Drinking Games And Modern Britain became a bestseller in Papua New Guinea (they love me there). ‘Hermeneutically speaking, Kevin Fullerton holds up a mirror to the two-child benefit cap whenever he chugs a beer,’ claims Gwyneth Sootyflupper, who writes academic papers from a small cupboard in Chichester in the hope Oxford University will lift the restraining order it’s had against her since 2017. Those credible (and incredibly real) academics are correct. So, as this country’s leading political commentator, it’s time to visit ‘Starmer Bars’, ushering in a brave new world of watering holes that are a safe pair of hands and solid choice for the middle classes.

Where better to go than Stockbridge, a Labour seat rammed with more middle-class constituents than the tapioca starch aisle of your local Waitrose. I start by wooing The Stockbridge Tap, an easy-going bar worthy of an entire afternoon’s relaxation. I loudly joke about Conservative fiscal policies (or LACK OF POLICIES, yeah?) to a punter. He doesn’t laugh, or even respond, but I’m sure he enjoys our interaction.

Then I press the flesh in The Raeburn, a hotel bar reeling in customers with living roomcosiness and suntrap beer garden. In Drinking Games of old, I would have torn my shirt off, wrapped my Labour tie around my head and made this article a Rambo special. Now, safe in the knowledge that Starmer will not deliver ‘austerity’ but ‘sensible budgetary restraint involving cuts’, I was able to stare around this Georgian lounge with a resolute glare.

I finish the campaign trail at Hamilton’s, a laid-back spot with bar staff so gregarious I felt like I’d popped round a fellow politico’s flat. Bathing in the light of their enthusiastic recommendations, I almost forget about politics altogether and, instead, sip my drink in silence. ‘Erm, Starmer or something,’ I mumble before leaving, cementing my status as the country’s king of satire.

BAR FILES

Creative folks reveal their top watering hole HARPIST

My favourite bar in Edinburgh has to be The Royal Oak. I never fail to have a good night there. They have created a special space for musicians from all backgrounds and levels to be appreciated. I wake up after a night in The Royal Oak and I feel at peace (despite the hangover). Sharing music is always an absolute joy and I’m very grateful for the encouragement and welcome that it always provides. A close second would be Uno Mas, which always provides a belter of a jam night every Wednesday. The staff always keep you well looked after and provide a bit of craic.

n Dara Dubh plays Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Friday 27 September.

DARA DUBH

INTERVAL

Riding the wave of people ditching dating apps in favour of run clubs, this newly opened running retailer can’t guarantee love at first sight, although it’s not impossible based on the goods inside. Interval sells all the essentials, including a variety of shoes, technical clothing, nutrition and accessories. Taking over a charming corner tenement building on Easter Road (replacing Plant Bae), the space is bright, modern and doubles as a community hub for runners to discuss training plans, favourite routes and general chit-chat. The shop organises weekly track sessions down the road at Meadowbank and running clubs can often be seen gathering outside.

In the words of founder Aidan Thomson, ‘Interval is like a pub . . . but instead of tap lines, we have shoes. Maybe some gels too. Yum.’ (Megan Merino)

n 220 Easter Road, Edinburgh; intervalrunning. co.uk; instagram.com/interval_running

travel & shop

wanderLIST: Majorca

Away from its well-trodden beach bars and yachts, Lucy Ribchester explains why she is more enchanted by Majorca’s lesser-known central plain villages

It was a bit like that line in Withnail And I: ‘We’ve gone on holiday by mistake.’ We never intended to end up in a village in the mountains of Majorca (or Mallorca to the locals), when my partner and I decided to take a two-month working holiday. Our hearts were set on the smaller island of Formentera, spurred on by our Catalan friend who rhapsodised about its unspoiled beaches. But we had a nine-year-old greyhound in tow, and the only dog-friendly Airbnb in the whole of the Balearics was in a place called Costitx; a warren of ancient houses and farms perched on the elevated Majorcan plain known as Es Pla, and clustered around a single town square with a church, a bakery and a bar.

Costitx lies almost bang in the centre of Majorca. Here you won’t find stag parties or playboys with superyachts, although hoards of cyclists pass through regularly on their way to higher, more challenging terrain. It’s surrounded by vast fincas (ranches), orange orchards, donkeys and sheep. From second-floor windows and roof terraces you can see for miles across the plains, where lightning storms fork dramatically at the foot of the mountains, and the town of Inca sprawls, twinkling at night.

In winter, the whole village smells day and night of the sweet almond wood everyone burns to heat their houses. The bakery sells ensaimada de sobrasada, the strange local bread sprinkled with sugar and filled with meat paste, and in the bar, carajillos (spiked espresso) are dosed liberally with rum. It’s not unusual to find the cavernous houses have a well inside them; ours was in the corner of the living room. A couple of times a week a man we nicknamed ‘The Cowboy’ would ride his horse up to the village square, tie it to the church and down a coffee.

Costitx is part of a network of central Majorcan villages, all built with tawny, raw-edged stones and Romanesque arched doorways. The most famous of them is Sineu, home to Europe’s oldest continually running market, trading since 1306. There, every Wednesday you can still buy livestock and honey, songbirds in cages, olives, home-baking and Moroccan leather. Sineu’s library is set inside a 17th-century monastery, and the oldest houses there date back to the 1200s. It’s a portal to the past, a feast for history junkies. There are more glamorous mountain towns in Majorca. Deià became famous as the home of Robert Graves and later Sting. Valldemossa was Chopin’s hangout and now caters to the Gucci and cashmere crowd. But there is something less polished, more dusty, about the villages in the Es Pla region. They feel like places where you can step back through time, places you could stumble on by mistake but remember forever.

seemallorca.com

my favourite holiday

Tamara Schlesinger, aka music artist MALKA and CEO of songwriting collective Hen Hoose, tells us about a memorable road trip through Sardinia that both spooked and stunned

When I was five, I lived in Florence with my family. Italy has always felt like a second home to me so it’s no surprise that one of my strongest holiday memories comes from there. Before having children, my husband Martin and I went on holiday to Sardinia. We hired a Fiat 500 and drove around the island without any accommodation booked, travelling from place to place along the picturesque seafront roads. It was a dream.

Before our trip, we had watched horror film The Orphanage (directed by JA Bayona). Despite my dislike for horror films, I was persuaded to watch it. For the next week, we would make low whistling noises, trying to scare each other by pretending to be Tomás. One late night in Sardinia, we were searching for a place to sleep and spotted a sign for accommodation. It was the only place for miles. We pulled up to an old school that was renting rooms for the summer.

Normally, it would have been a charming place to stay, but after watching that film, every kids’ painting, classroom chair, old Victorian staircase and school peg filled me with absolute terror. We were the only people staying there that night, and the place was massive. I heard creaks, whistles and every noise imaginable, hiding under the covers until morning.

Of course, I still remember the pasta, pizza, sun and sights, but my main memory of that holiday is the utter fear of that school: and the carpaccio of swordfish, which was delicious.

‘Islands’ by MALKA and Kathryn Williams is released as part of Hen Hoose EP2 on Thursday 5 September.

on your doorstep

After a hectic summer, visiting a serene gallery is just what we all need. Rachel Ashenden shares three of her favourite contemporary art spaces in Glasgow and Edinburgh

TRAMWAY

The leading arts venue in Glasgow’s Southside, Tramway is distinctive not only for its bold visual art programme but also for its architecture. The former tram depot hosts festivals and free exhibitions, and teams up with both local and international artists. Notable festival collaborators include the radical Buzzcut, Glasgow International and Sonica Glasgow. Tramway prides itself on responding to urgent cultural, social and political issues through the art it programmes.

n 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow; tramway.org

FRUITMARKET

In its 50th year, Fruitmarket continues to present contemporary visual art through exhibitions, commissions, publications and events for free. It also hosts the annual Artists’ Bookmarket, Edinburgh’s annual celebration of artist-led publishing. Next door to Edinburgh’s Waverley station, it boasts a beautifully curated shop, its tempting window display luring in tourists and commuters alike.

n 45 Market Street, Edinburgh; fruitmarket.co.uk

CCA

Located on Sauchiehall Street, CCA is an arts hub which hosts a dynamic programme of exhibitions, events, films, music, workshops, festivals and performances. The CCA (Centre For Contemporary Arts) was established in 1992, and its history is intertwined with the Third Eye Centre, where the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Marina Abramović performed. Nowadays, CCA’s open-source programming policy has attracted Rachel Maclean, Rosalind Nashashibi and Rae-Yen Song to present their work.

n 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow; cca-glasgow.com

Tramway

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hot Spot

Megan Merino speaks to Glasgow-based business owner Anna Hepburn about finding a gap in the market and bringing her art background to bear on her plans

Operating somewhere between a permanent shop and temporary market and events space, Spot Design Market is the brainchild of artist Anna Hepburn. Founded in 2019 after starting her own textile business, Hepburn realised she couldn’t find her target audience at existing makers’ markets. ‘It was really frustrating,’ she recalls. ‘I knew the work I was creating was good, I just couldn’t find my people.’

The decision to make her own market came ‘pretty naturally’, she says. ‘I’ve always had an interest in design and fashion. My parents are both makers as well so we spent a lot of time going to markets and looking at people’s handmade things.’ Alongside this childhood love, Hepburn has brought her study of art and immersive theatre projects to this latest business venture.

‘We’ve also got the gallery here. I think the way that I run Spot comes from my art degree. I talk about curating a lot; the way that I navigate that is by making sure there are no overlaps between works and between makers. I think that comes through in all that we do.’

Design markets taking place three to four times a year, featuring stock mainly made in Scotland, are interspersed with weekly pop-ups and workshops where a designer or maker is invited in-store to sell their work to customers directly.

‘We had flower arranging and ceramics at the first workshop. It probably links into the immersive world that I like exploring, but it’s exciting to be able to bring people in and leave them with something beautiful they’ve made that’s attached to the maker.’ Looking to expand this offering, Hepburn is excited to launch a new website and online shop this month plus hopes to open a new events space under the shop next year. In the meantime, she asks us to ‘watch this space’.

Spot Design Market, 1139 Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow; thespotdesignmarket.co.uk; instagram.com/spotdesignmarket

shop talk

GROW URBAN

Across its two Edinburgh locations, Grow Urban offers a range of greenery to decorate and enliven urban homes. Grab a coffee from their café and peruse a range of ever-popular succulents, hanging plants, terrariums and colourful outdoor plants for those with a bit of garden space.

n 92 Grove Street & 8b St Vincent Street, Edinburgh; growurban.uk; instagram.com/ growurban

GALLUS ALICE

Artsy prints, sustainable fashion and trendy trinkets await shoppers inside Glasgow’s Gallus Alice. With a variety of children’s toys, Scottish-themed mugs and cards, and funky

Isy Santini is back with another trio of independent Scottish retailers she reckons are well worth a visit

accessories, it’s the perfect place to find a present for a friend or a little treat for yourself.

n 1017 Argyle Street, Glasgow; pinkpoodleboutique.co.uk; instagram.com/ gallusaliceglasgow

CAOBA

This Mexican shop stocks textiles, recycled glassware, Central American pantry staples, and a huge array of gorgeous handmade ornaments. Unique painted tiles can be bought as-is or turned into coasters for just £1, and for anyone interested in witchcraft and the occult, Caoba maintains a small tarot and crystal section.

n 56 Raeburn Place, Edinburgh; caoba.co.uk; instagram.com/caobamexicanshop

MELANIE MARTINEZ

Melanie Martinez’s current image is the stuff of fever dreams. Especially if you experience negative reactions to enormous shelled gastropods with four eyes, or pink-skinned elfin-fairy dragonflies (also with double the peepers of most humans), both of which she has portrayed in promo videos. Chances are her prosthetics team work at least twice as hard as regular touring make-up technicians but all in the service of alleviating Martinez’s stage fright and anxiety. In her pre multi-eyed era, one video had her being stalked by a blade-wielding wolf driving an ice-cream van who spikes her cone before bundling the comatose lass into his vehicle. And then the song ends. ‘Dark fairytale’ probably doesn’t quite cover it. (Brian Donaldson)

OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Monday 23 September.

going out

FIT FOR A QUEEN

It’s a refrain familiar to anyone learning the history of Henry VIII and his six wives: divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. Katherine Parr was that survivor and she’s the focus of Karim Aïnouz’s new film, Firebrand. The Brazilian director talks to James Mottram about Parr’s feminist values, retelling history from an outsider’s perspective and the perils of bringing live birds on set

When Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (famed for 2019’s Cannes prize-winner The Invisible Life Of Eurídice Gusmão) decided to make his first Englishlanguage movie, he settled on the era of Tudor England. Specifically on Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII, who outlived the notorious monarch by over a year and a half. ‘I found the story of this woman and said “why hasn’t anything been made about this woman?” It’s a classic choice of only doing the dead ones! Why can’t we do the one who survived?’

Adapted from Elizabeth Fremantle’s 2013 novel Queen’s Gambit, Firebrand stars Swedish Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander as Parr. Opposite her, Jude Law plays King Henry VIII, relishing the role as an increasingly paranoid and ailing leader. Aïnouz admits he wanted to put his own stamp on an indelible slice of British history. ‘The English have been so incredibly brilliant in creating their own mythology,’ he says. ‘You know, when you talk about Diana . . . the whole world knows about Diana. When you talk about Henry VIII, everybody knows about Henry VIII.’

Aïnouz was particularly struck by Parr’s feminist principles, despite living alongside a king who infamously executed two of his former

wives. ‘When I read the story of Katherine Parr . . . it was not only great how she survived this guy, and how she lived after him, but I think it was incredibly beautiful the way that she educated his kids, the way she educated [future Queen of England] Elizabeth. I think there was something about how women exercised power that I thought was really fascinating there.’

The director was born in the north-east of Brazil and says there was something about Parr that felt familiar. ‘She had something that really reminded me of the way I was raised. At some point in my life, my mother was a professor; she didn’t make much money. We had a rented house, and she said “we’re not poor, but we’re not rich”. And I remember she said “Karim, I’m always gonna have this job, and when I pass away, the only thing I can leave you will not be money. It will be knowledge. I want you to be educated.”’

Aïnouz spent hours and hours researching the Tudor era to ensure he got every detail right, but his perspective as an outsider was also vital to making the film. ‘I do think that when you really look at history, it’s really interesting how people lived. It’s a chronicle of another time: the ladies-in-waiting that are jumping around in beautiful frocks are actually sleeping in the room next door on straw mats. So for me, it

was like looking at that history, saying “I also have the right to tell you because there are so many times that the English and the French and the Dutch and the Americans told our history.”’

For the Brazilian, it was also the chance to collaborate with some of the finest actors Europe has to offer. The sublime support cast includes Eddie Marsan and Sam Riley, as well as Simon Russell Beale, ‘a genius of Shakespeare in theatre in England’, who plays the scheming Bishop Stephen Gardiner. ‘For me, it’s learning,’ the director adds. ‘I think there’s something that I learned with Simon, that I learned with Jude, that I learned with Alicia . . . these are people that have been on a million movie sets.’

After completing Firebrand, Aïnouz headed back to Brazil to work on his highly explicit erotic thriller Motel Destino, which just played in competition in Cannes. He enjoyed the spontaneity of making it, something he says was harder to achieve in a more rigid film like Firebrand. ‘I mean, I did try to get birds into the castle in Firebrand, but I couldn’t, because when they shit, it’s like acid,’ he laughs. ‘It will damage the fucking furniture!’

Firebrand is in cinemas from Friday 6 September.

The whole country runs on not upsetting the Daily Mail or The Sun “

Nish Kumar is taking his stand-up show, Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe, on tour around the UK. Former host of satirical television show The Mash Report, he now presents political podcast Pod Save The UK with journalist Coco Khan. Kumar talks to Jay Richardson about the current state of political comedy, being enraged by fellow comedians and refusing to bow to bullies

How has developing this show at the Edinburgh Fringe prepared you for your tour? The thing about the Fringe is that it reduces the variables. Seminal for me was splitting an hour in 2010 with Daniel Simonsen, now the toast of New York comedy. Day three or something, I was doing a joke that didn’t work and he asked why. I realised that because you’re in the same room, same time every day, the only thing to think about is the material. Improve it or discard it: you can’t blame anything else.

What would you say to people actively avoiding the news right now? I wouldn’t say they are incorrect. I don’t even know how to engage with the enormity of Gaza, race riots on the streets and the breaking of all kinds of global average temperatures. The problem is that vested interests thrive in an atmosphere of apathy. Disengagement facilitates the worst, most toxic elements in politics. So I’m urging people to try. At the same time, as someone with a politics podcast, there’s an obligation on the media. We can’t just despair at low voter turnouts or shout at people about their great-grandparents fighting and dying for their rights. We have to make the case for participatory democracy now. If you look across Europe, that case is currently not being made strongly enough. The Bolsonaro years in Brazil, Trumpism in America; a groundswell of autocracy is building up around the world and we really need to push back against it. Because apathy, historically, leads to a very dark place.

Are you disappointed then that more comedians don't talk about politics? I get that you can’t just tear up a year’s worth of work to engage with the news. It’s also been quite a weird half decade to do political comedy; I’ve certainly, at points, borne the brunt of that strangeness. I can perfectly understand why someone might look at the grief we got for The Mash Report and say, ‘you know, I don’t want any part of that shit’. Why would you do comedy about politics when the blowback is so severe? The whole country runs on not upsetting the Daily Mail or The Sun

Speaking of blowback, there’s some blue-on-blue fire in Nish, Don't Kill My Vibe, directed at the likes of Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais . . . I just think it’s strange when some very highprofile comedians are starting to align themselves with quite culturally regressive forces. With Jimmy, I’m less concerned about the things he says on stage. I don’t think he should be doing Jordan Peterson’s podcast. With Gervais, The Office remains a masterpiece but in terms of his current act, it feels like he’s reheating Bernard Manning. There’s a joke he made about illegal immigrants in his last special that would play pretty well at a Trump rally. Maybe Jimmy, Ricky and I are two different sides of a philosophical dispute about the function of comedy, for which there isn’t a right answer. I have the self-awareness to know I’m not necessarily right. But it boils my blood. I really don’t know what Gervais’ problem is with the transgender community but I’m now sort of past caring.

The one that really gets me is Dave Chappelle. He keeps saying these are just jokes and the comedian has no responsibility. But Dave, the reason that people like me loved you is that you told us it does matter. The reason he walked away from that insane [reportedly $50m] Comedy Central deal was because he didn’t like the way that white people laughed at his jokes about race. I was a teenager then. And he’s the reason that I think what’s said on stage does matter.

You’re also shit-talking James Acaster and Ed Gamble . . . I hope people can see there’s a substantial difference between how I talk about the two Jameses, Acaster and Carr. There’s a lot of affection there. I find it very funny that I’m now watching James in Hollywood.

You’ve experienced a monstering in some quarters of the press and incessant attacks on social media. And yet you’re still making provocative jokes about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. You don’t feel inhibited at all? No, I don’t. But I’ve had a lot of support. I see a therapist. I had a panic attack recently, a sort of after-effect of PTSD [from the incident where he was pelted with a bread roll at a charity gig] that I talked about in my last show, which was triggered by footage of the race riots. But I’m supported very well by my partner [comedian Amy Annette], my friends and the people I work with. After the riots, every person of colour checked in with every person of colour they know, about making space for the emotions you need to feel. I’m in a privileged position to be able to afford therapy when NHS waiting lists are horrendous; that’s an important caveat. But I don’t like bullies. I don’t care whether the bully is Donald Trump or Ricky Gervais. I refuse to let myself be bullied by them.

Nish Kumar: Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe, King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Thursday 12 September; Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Saturday 14 September.

GAELIC CULTURE GAELIC LITERATURE AWARDS

The Gaelic Books Council’s Màiri MacCuish is looking forward to returning to Cottiers Theatre in Glasgow for this year’s Gaelic Literature Awards. ‘It’s a beautiful venue which provides the perfect backdrop for a jam-packed evening of awards and entertainment.’

The awards, which began in 2020, succeeded the Donald Meek Award which had existed as a separate competition for a decade (and is now the prize given for best non-fiction book). Attendees will also find out who wins the recently introduced Derick Thomson Prize for poetry, as well as the coveted prize for fiction. The awards are unique on the Scottish literary landscape, ‘providing writers and publishers with a platform to showcase their achievements, which might otherwise not be available to them,’ says MacCuish.

They give key recognition to a minoritised literature, often disregarded by comparable awards at Scottish and UK level. This year’s shortlist includes Jason Bond, Ceitidh Campbell, Sheelagh Campbell, Rody Gorman and Christopher Whyte. For 2023 winner Duncan Gillies, last year’s ceremony was an important step on the road to further success: Crann-fìge / Fig Tree was shortlisted for Scottish Fiction Book Of The Year at Scotland’s National Book Awards and also won the Highland Book Prize.

The awards ceremony is open to the public and has become a highlight of the Gaelic arts calendar, with this year’s event hosted by Angela MacEachen. MacCuish says attendees can also look forward to a selection of new music from South Uist’s Màiri MacMillan.

(Marcas Mac an Tuairneir)

n Cottiers Theatre, Glasgow, Tuesday 17 September.

Rody Gorman

Simon Faithfull, Biotope 2: Fungi Bed, 2023. 3D-printed head as habitat for mycelium. Photo: Tian Khee Siong.

future sound

Our column celebrating new music to watch continues with ‘soupy’ rockers, The Wife Guys Of Reddit. The band chat to Fiona Shepherd about mysterious beginnings, leaning into experimentation and taking a quieter direction on their debut album

Arion Xenos, founder member of Glasgow-based quartet The Wife Guys Of Reddit, is trying to explain their self-made genre of ‘soupy rock’. ‘Have you ever listened to music and thought it sounds salty and chunky and viscous?’ he asks (rhetorically, I presume). ‘That’s what people think of when they hear our songs, cos sometimes when you make a soup, you’ll throw spices and veg in and hope that it works.’

‘Or anything that’s going a bit out of date,’ quips fellow founder Niamh MacPhail.

Interviewing The Wife Guys Of Reddit is a bit like an encounter with their music: fun, chaotic, wide-ranging, spontaneous and unexpected. Speaking via Zoom from Wife Guys HQ somewhere in the heart of . . . somewhere, all four members are masked up. ‘We’re all waiting to get our teeth done,’ notes MacPhail. Their roots are equally mysterious. Singer/guitarist Xenos recalls ‘nothing of note before The Wife Guys’ but soon revises this assessment when reminded that he appeared in the same school production of Grease as keyboard player Angus Fernie.

‘Angus was a fantastic Eugene and I thought “that’s the man I’m going to be in a band with in ten years’ time”,’ says Xenos. ‘We started busking together with a repertoire of about three songs we managed to stretch out for three hours on a Saturday afternoon; a precursor to the jamming nature of The Wife Guys, you could say.’ Singer/bassist MacPhail and drummer Elise Atkinson have a background in folk and jazz respectively. MacPhail started playing bass during lockdown and reckons now that ‘maybe there wasn’t a whole lot of thought to it. Learning a new instrument almost always comes out of a place of experimentation. I was just playing around with some daft time signatures.’

The chance to submit a Sufjan Stevens cover for a charity compilation spiralled into a debut Christmas covers EP and, with lockdown lifting, MacPhail and Xenos scouted for bandmates. ‘I’d never heard someone play the hi-hat so quickly,’ says Xenos of Atkinson. ‘And then I met them all at a swimming pool for our first photo shoot,’ says Atkinson of her new bandmates. Since early 2021, there has been a flurry of singles and EPs, including ‘Wet And Tired’, ‘Pig Fat’ and ‘The Wife Guys Walk Into Oncoming Traffic’, all of which are easily as good as their gonzo titles. Psych, punk, jangle pop, rangy rock: they’ve got the lot.

‘We’re much more fans of seeing how things can be built up and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t,’ says MacPhail. However, the band have been forced to slow their pace somewhat since MacPhail contracted long covid in 2023. ‘One positive that we’ve taken from that is that we’ve had more time to think about what our sound actually is,’ she says. Right on time for the writing of their debut album, soon to be recorded for a 2025 release. ‘I think we’ve moved in a slightly quieter direction, more song-focused. We’ve been forced to sit with what we’re doing a bit more which has benefited the album.’

The Wife Guys Of Reddit play Edinburgh Psych Fest, various venues, Edinburgh, Sunday 1 September, and headline Hayburn Park Music Festival, Glasgow, Saturday 7 September.

DANCE GATHERED TOGETHER

From its humble roots as a single dance class for disabled adults in 1996 to the organiser of Scotland’s only international inclusive dance festival, Indepen-dance has come a long way in the last 28 years. Though the organisation has expanded its reach to include working with children and young people in schools and offering classes for key workers and carers, founder and artistic director Karen Anderson maintains that its aim has always been to ‘provide an inclusive environment where disabled people can enjoy, express themselves and fulfil their potential through dance.’

Dance offers an incomparable opportunity for connection; it surpasses the boundaries of language and champions teamwork and physicality. ‘Dance can provide a way to communicate without the use of the spoken word,' adds Anderson. ’ Thus, it enables participants, many of whom are non-verbal, ‘to communicate in a different way, expressing their feelings and thoughts through the medium of dance.’ Gathered Together, the festival organised by Indepen-dance, is now in its fifth year and demonstrates the universal, boundless power of dance, showcasing inclusive companies from across the world. Alongside performers from South Korea, New Zealand, Colombia and Spain (including Encuentros, an award-winning fusion of contemporary dance and flamenco by Denis Santacana and Victor Fernández), Scottish dance is well represented. Barrowland Ballet, Clifftop Intergenerational Dance Company and Indepen-dance themselves will all perform.

The four-day event will conclude with a ceilidh, inviting the international dancers and interested members of the public to come together in celebration of traditional Scottish dance. Through the performances and workshops at the festival, Anderson hopes Gathered Together will ‘inspire, educate and inform the festival audience and the wider community that disability is no barrier to being part of dance.’ (Eve Connor)

n Tramway, Glasgow, Wednesday 4–Saturday 7 September.

ARTS SONICA 2024

As its name implies, Sonica is about rocking worlds. Over 11 days in September, the Glasgow-based Cryptic company’s eighth edition of its festival ‘for curious minds and restless spirits’ mixes up a smorgasbord of international audio-visual artworks from Egypt, Ukraine, Quebec and more. These are seen and heard alongside a plethora of homegrown fare from the likes of Scottish Ensemble, the RSNO, composer Michael Begg, infiltrating the city across multiple venues, both great and small.

Sonica sets out its store from the start with Nati Infiniti, the Scottish premiere of a new work at Tramway by Alessandro Cortini of Nine Inch Nails. Other highlights include Songs For A Passerby, Celine Daeman’s Venice Film Festival Award-winning VR opera for a sole headset wearer; and Angel Death Traps, a cyborg pop concert of the future from Danish ensemble NEKO3 and German multimedia composer Alexander Schubert.

Scottish and Scotland-based artists in the programme include the world premiere of Ela Orleans’ La Nuit Dorée, a suite of deconstructed and reimagined 1960s and 1970s French pop music. Other artists include Alex Smoke and SHHE, while Michael Begg reflects on his time as musician in residence aboard the Royal Navy’s Antarctic ice patrol ship.

With a programme of installations, soundscapes, interventions and otherwise uncategorisable offerings, around half of the work is delivered free of charge. On every level, then, Sonica truly is a gift of sound and vision. (Neil Cooper) n Various venues, Glasgow, Thursday 19–Sunday 29 September.

Barrowland Ballet

Pilgrim’s progress

Award-winning choir Tenebrae are bringing a crowdfavourite back to East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival and it has proved to be a hot ticket. Carol Main talks to Tenebrae founder Nigel Short about Path Of Miracles and why Joby Talbot’s work has such a profound effect on audiences

Even though an extra performance of Joby Talbot’s extraordinary Path Of Miracles has now been added, getting tickets to hear this Lammermuir Festival event at the National Museum Of Flight’s Concorde Hangar may be harder than getting that supersonic icon back in the air again. Heard at the festival in 2017, this highly unusual commission for vocal ensemble Tenebrae returns, with a reputation for moving East Lothian audiences to wild cheers and standing ovations.

‘The piece is based on the historical pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, and was composed for us in 2005,’ explains Nigel Short, founder and artistic director of Tenebrae. ‘It’s in four movements and hugely complex, with 17 different vocal parts. Each movement tells a different story.’ An ancient route of pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago runs from the French Pyrenees along the north of Spain, taking in Burgos and Leon with their magnificent cathedrals, all the way to Galicia’s most sacred site, the shrine to St James, the disciple whose remains were brought from Jerusalem.

‘The first movement is about St James and how his body ended up in Europe. I asked Joby Talbot to give us an opening like nothing else. You hear the pilgrims getting lost in the Pyrenees. The clouds come down quickly and, as soon as this happens, the monks ring bells which resonate over great distances.’ Entitled ‘Roncesvalles’, the name of the place where the walk starts, the music is akin to the chanting of the growling Taiwanese farmers who, says Short, ‘take a deep breath, then go higher, then another breath and higher again, keeping going until they faint. If all the farmers faint, it means it’s going to be a good harvest.’ Crotales, the percussive brass mini-cymbals, represent the bells, with the female voices joining to sing hail to St James. ‘It’s a wacky opening,’ admits Short.

For anyone taking on the pilgrimage, there is no underestimating the tough demands it places on even the most fit. The second movement, ‘Burgos’, represents the physical hardship of the pilgrims. ‘It has harmonic dissonances, like an ache or a blister, but you have to keep going. It’s very intense, especially after the euphoria of the opening.’ The stained glass of Leon Cathedral is breathtakingly beautiful and inspires the third movement, ‘Leon’. ‘When Joby visited there, he saw the sunlight pouring through the windows. We hear cascading sopranos, shifting from one side of the building to the other,’ says Short. The final movement, ‘Santiago’, is even more complex than the first. Syncopated rhythms, different pitches, multiple parts, dance-like motifs, all building and fracturing until the final arrival in the city, with a jubilation that brings the pilgrimage to its close.

Path Of Miracles, Concorde Hangar, National Museum Of Flight, East Fortune, Sunday 8 September.

FILM THE GOLDMAN CASE

A gripping courtroom drama, The Goldman Case follows the real-life 1976 trial of French activist and left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman. Played by Arieh Worthalter, the film shows what happened when selfconfessed armed robber Goldman stood trial for two murders he didn’t commit. Defending him is attorney Georges Kiejman (Arthur Harari, the Oscar-winning co-writer of another great recent French judicial saga, Anatomy Of A Fall).

The film’s director Cédric Kahn (2014’s Wild Life) discovered Goldman through reading his autobiography Dim Memories Of A Polish Jew In France. ‘It was interesting to have his take on the way he defended. He told his story and defended the case, but also he told the story of his parents; his family,’ says Kahn. ‘And I was fascinated by the character and by his speech, by his mastery of speech. That’s why I decided I would make a film about him and it would be on this aspect.’

The film is almost entirely set in the confines of the courtroom, leading to intense dialogue-driven exchanges, but Kahn and his cowriter Nathalie Hertberg didn’t rely on Goldman’s book. ‘It was more the articles of the time. The book was just a few sentences. It was the covering of the trial at the time by newspapers . . . so we really used all this archive as a basis for our script.’

ART DEBJANI BANERJEE

Much of the film hinges on false testimony, with Goldman under the belief that various witnesses called against him were antisemitic. ‘He was one of the first who actually stood for his Jewishness, claiming the fact that he was Jewish and what he was going through had to do with his Jewish identity,’ says Kahn. Clearly enlivened by the experience, the director calls The Goldman Case a ‘unique adventure’ to work on. ‘I think it’s the first time that I felt sad on a shoot when it was over.’ (James Mottram) n In cinemas from Friday 20 September.

A timely offering exploring cultural identity, Jalsaghar (translated as ‘music room’) explores Debjani Banerjee’s experience as a British Bengali raised in England. The exhibition weaves together heritage and community, quite literally, as she collaborates with artists such as Bernie Reid, Marta Aspe, Susmita Pujara, Kavi Pujara and family members to create an enriched display of skill and an abundance of perspectives.

Debjani herself describes the work as a ‘deeply personal and reflective project that explores the intersection of culture, identity and belonging . . . a multifaceted narrative that resonates with the complexities of hybrid cultural identities.’

Bringing together traditional Indian textile techniques, Hindu iconography and the modern everyday, Banerjee combines the past and present beautifully. Stark 1980s hues mix with sculptures full of inquisitive emotion. Faces and bodies move within realms of contrasting fabric silhouettes and under clay crowns, exploring moments of joy and peace. Quirky, cartoony and extremely engrossing, Banerjee’s work is a bright meditation on personality which reflects her own unique point of view.

‘In this exhibition, I am navigating the delicate balance of honouring my parents’ immigrant experiences while asserting my identity as a woman of colour in modern Britain,’ she says. ‘It opens a doorway to engage with and challenge the notions of identity in a globalised world.’ Travelling through themes of belonging and diversity (with a fragile balance of novelty, sorrow and a conscious outlook), this collection is ultimately bound to raise questions, alongside emotion, in every observer who comes to visit. (Rachel Morrell) n CCA, Glasgow, Saturday 28 September–Saturday 21 December.

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 are a pole-dancing comic and an exhibition inspired by two pioneering journalists

ABERDEEN

CULTIVATE

The North East of Scotland’s biggest electronic music festival boasts a Big Top main stage, art installations, food trucks, a vintage market, and fairground rides with around 3000 music lovers attending each day.

n Beach Links, Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 September.

HUMANS 2.0

Created by Yaron Lifschitz and the Circa Ensemble, this is a symphony of acrobatics, sound and light which is constantly in pursuit of the perfect balance. n His Majesty’s Theatre, Thursday 5–Saturday 7 September.

DUNDEE

SNAKE IN THE GRASS

Alan Ayckbourn’s early 21st-century play follows two sisters returning to the family home after their father’s death. Only then do some dark secrets start tumbling out.

n Dundee Rep, Friday 13 September–Saturday 5 October.

BOOKENDS

Part of the wide-ranging Dundee Design Festival, this exhibition features 20 designers from across Scotland responding to the inspirational story of the city’s pioneering journalists Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell.

n Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc, Dundee, Monday 23–Sunday 29 September.

INVERNESS

WILL YOUNG

The inaugural winner of Pop Idol, way back in the mists of 2002, has gone on to add actor and author to his CV. Here he delivers an intimate show of acoustic tunes and fine conversation to help support new album, Light It Up n Eden Court Theatre, Sunday 29 September.

KIRKCALDY

JAY LAFFERTY

Stand-up meets the pole as the celebrated comic and broadcaster tackles everything from the perils of misogyny to the power of movement as she searches for joy.

n Adam Smith Theatre, Friday 13 September.

PERTH

JOHN BISHOP

The cheeky lad returns with Back At It, in which he regales his adoring fanbase with tales of his midlife crisis, marriage of many years, and the recent death of his mother.

n Perth Concert Hall, Thursday 19 & Friday 20 September.

LOVE BEYOND

Written by Ramesh Meyyappan and produced by Vanishing Point, this is a tender and visually creative piece about a man with dementia who moves into a new home where he can’t shake off the ghosts of his past.

n Perth Theatre, Friday 20 & Saturday 21 September.

STIRLING

SMALL TOWN BOYS

Shaper/Caper presents this immersive show set in and around the 80s AIDS crisis in which a young man escapes his small hometown to try and find his true self in the big city.

n Fubar, Thursday 26–Sunday 29 September.

Bookends (and bottom from left), Jay Lafferty, Love Beyond, Humans 2.0

Exasperating double-standards and old-fashioned attitudes thwart a young female trailblazer in this radiant and engaging Indo-French drama, the winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Coming-of-agers can feel ten-a-penny, but first-time director Shuchi Talati gives us a lesser-seen location and a rebel with a righteous cause, setting her story in the Himalayan foothills of the 1990s and getting plenty of mileage out of the lush and open, yet culturally oppressive environs.

First-time actor Preeti Panigrahi is magnificent as the teenaged Mira, a star student and the first girl to be selected as head prefect at her stubbornly patriarchal and super-strict boarding school, an institution that reflects wider societal attitudes towards men and women. Uncomfortably for Mira, the role involves enforcing a number of archaic school rules, as well as reporting on the behaviour of her fellow students, something which understandably makes her unpopular, including with her good friend Priya (Kajol Chugh).

Mira is distracted from this growing animosity by a sweetly tentative and necessarily clandestine romance with Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), a worldly and marginally older astronomy enthusiast who

film of the month

With a powerful lead turn from first-time actor Preeti Panigrahi, director Shuchi Talati’s debut feature Girls Will Be Girls offers a deeply affecting and uncomfortable portrait of breaking down societal boundaries in India, says Emma Simmonds

has recently moved from Hong Kong and has the freedom that comes with wealthy, neglectful parents. Mira has the opposite parental problem: she’s saddled with a free-spirited young mother with way too much time on her hands. Anila (Kani Kusruti) embarrasses her disciplined and disapproving daughter with her dancing, public displays of affection and non-traditional dress. Anila’s more liberal ideals come in handy though when Mira wants to spend time alone with Sri, away from the prying eyes of teachers and fellow students; it’s a situation which, if Mira isn’t extremely careful, has the potential to morph into a scandal.

The complexities of this mother-daughter relationship are convincingly conveyed by director and screenwriter Talati, who has produced something incredibly accomplished here in her feature debut. We learn how Anila was a teen rebel herself, who ran away for love, and see how she is torn between understanding and wanting to assist her daughter, and trying to abide by the expectations that govern her own rather limited life, acutely aware of the stigma that will come from her daughter fraternising with a boy. Even more problematically for our protagonist, the presence of the handsome and mature Sri starts to stir up trouble in this bored, sexually

frustrated housewife, and Mira’s mum begins lavishing Sri with attention; what starts out as maternal fussing and feeding, quickly becomes more flirtatious and competitive.

Told in English and Hindi, Girls Will Be Girls is a deeply affecting, authentic and discomforting portrait of breaking out of your societal box. It’s drawn from Talati’s own experiences of growing up in smalltown India, her desire to challenge the dominant narrative around South Asian representation, to show a sexual awakening without shame, and to put less commonly explored depictions of female transgression on screen.

She movingly captures the conflict between generations and the struggle to reconcile conflicting impulses, illustrating how Mira’s long-term ambitions and current social standing are jeopardised by perfectly normal desires, though of course they needn’t be. The film is astute on the tumultuousness of those teenage years, being both relatable and fascinatingly specific to its cultural backdrop

and characters. For example, Mira adopts a hilariously studious, note-taking approach to her sexual preparations, getting Sri to join her in her internet café research, naively assuming that they are as inexperienced as each other. Lead actress Panigrahi is completely credible and unaffected here. She was a real find for Talati, bringing an aliveness and strength to the role that the filmmaker felt some more experienced actresses lacked.

It’s all strung together in marvellously nuanced and sensitive style, with cinematographer Jih-E Peng’s intimate lensing presenting a loving, empathetic view of a difficult and confusing time. Although thoughtful and unsensational for the most part, things can get nailbitingly tense too, with an incident featuring a group of male bullies tipping over into terrifying territory, as the film starkly illustrates the threat that can lurk behind an obsession with propriety.

Girls Will Be Girls is in cinemas from Friday 20 September.

THEATRE

MORAG, YOU’RE A LONG TIME DEID

(Directed by Peter Lorenz) lllll

Many families harbour secrets, only for them to be unearthed when people have passed away. Such is the case here, with granddaughter Sam slowly uncovering a deep secret about her late grandmother Morag when her piano is left to her. Finding an intimate letter from an unknown (female) sender, written to Morag many years ago, Sam starts to wonder if the reason for her grandmother’s unhappiness was linked to a hidden sexuality. Meanwhile, Sam is starting to enjoy her own sexual awakening with a woman she meets in a bar.

The tale itself is reasonably straightforward and as the pieces fall into place, the narrative gains clarity. But early on, the combination of storytelling, a loop pedal that records and repeats fragments of dialogue, and sung snatches of old Scottish ballads build into a quagmire of content that’s hard to unpick. But performers Claire Love Wilson and Peter Lorenz keep the energy up throughout, and a section where audience members join them on stage for a ceilidh dance fills the room with warmth and fun. If they can unclog the delivery and build in some space around the central story, this show’s inherent message will deservedly fly. (Kelly Apter) n Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, Wednesday 4 September; Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Friday 6 September; reviewed at Zoo Southside as part of Edinburgh Fringe.

MUSIC

CAT POWER SINGS DYLAN ’66 lllll

Applause ensued before Cat Power emerged onstage, but perhaps not in the way she intended. At more than 20 minutes late, and with a few impatient jeers from the crowd, she hobbled into view in heels and revealed that she had broken a toe on her right foot. Yet once she launched into an acoustic rendition of ‘She Belongs To Me’, all was forgiven, her voice smokier than a fire in a Marlboro factory and her unique imprint on Bob Dylan’s back catalogue adding a soulful verve some worlds apart from his wellknown nasal wheeze.

Cover versions have always been a major part of Power’s work, but this marks one of her most ambitious efforts yet: a track-bytrack recreation of Dylan’s famous 1966 gig at the Royal Albert Hall, tracing his progression from acoustic folk to a fuller, rockier sound. It’s an act of impressive cultural archivism, recapturing the vitality of that era in his songwriting and resuscitating a time that Dylan himself has little interest in revisiting.

Power teases out the poetic dexterity of Dylan’s lyrics, from the bleak majesty of ‘Desolation Row’ to the syrupy megahit ‘Just Like A Woman’, with an intricate knowledge of the impact his words can create. A shame, then, that she wasn’t match-fit for this performance, her voice failing her when she attempted to attack these songs to their fullest, the drama of Dylan’s music occasionally overshadowed by the fear that Power was pushing herself beyond her physical limit. She fought through the pain in her foot and the strain in her throat, never recreating the aloof defiance of Dylan’s imperial phase but still reminding audiences of an important moment in the annals of rock. (Kevin Fullerton) n Reviewed at Edinburgh Playhouse as part of Edinburgh International Festival.

DANCE GUESTHOUSE PROJECTS

The Show For Young Men lllll

This warm and tender children’s dance-theatre piece about masculinity sees 44-year-old Robbie Synge paired with ten-year-old Alfie. Synge is trying to arrange his building site with industrial materials and DIY equipment, but cheeky young Alfie keeps getting in his way. When Synge hefts a trio of galvanised steel walls into place, Alfie tosses plumbing tubes over the top of them. When Synge tidies the tubes neatly away, Alfie scatters more mess.

Their relationship starts out very much as one of parent and child. But, as Wordsworth once said, the child is the father of the man, and very soon Synge is learning from Alfie; not only to loosen up but how to cherish the mischievous, unbroken spirit inside himself the way Alfie does. They fool around, play with the equipment, roll in the giant tubes.

When Synge dances with Alfie he seems to come alive. But when left alone the darkness creeps in. In a haunting, beautiful moment, Alfie sings behind a screen while Synge constructs a spotlight. Leaning against the screen to topple it, Synge’s face gives way to Alfie, lit by a soft glow. This is a quiet piece, where horseplay segues into a more complex, layered bond at the very end. It packs an understated punch.

(Lucy Ribchester)

n Platform, Glasgow, Tuesday 3 September; reviewed at Dance Base as part of Edinburgh Fringe.

FILM

STARVE ACRE

(Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo) lllll

The British folk horror film experienced a mini-revival with Alex Garland’s Men and Ben Wheatley’s In Earth these past years, something that now continues with Starve Acre. Based on the novel by Andrew Michael Hurley, this marks the second film by director Daniel Kokotajlo, who made such a distinct debut with 2017’s Apostasy, a drama set in the Jehovah’s Witness community. Taking place in rural England in the 1970s, Starve Acre has a similar grip on its milieu, although perhaps the same can’t be said for its narrative.

Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark (who is making a habit of leading British chillers after her turn in 2019’s Saint Maud) co-star as married couple Richard and Juliette. There’s tragedy lurking in the background, involving their young son, and an unnerving atmosphere builds, with the family living in an isolated house on the Yorkshire Moors belonging to Richard’s late father. Richard works as an archaeologist and has been digging up the land close to the house where an oak tree once resided and myths around a folk devil still linger.

Things becomes increasingly strange when the bones of a dead hare are discovered, and the creature slowly rebirths, but Kokotajlo deliberately holds back on ramping up the tension, letting the film simmer instead. For some, this will be a frustrating experience, with Starve Acre an opaque work that leaves much open to interpretation.

Largely, it’s an atmosphere piece, relying on the intrusive score and the oppressively brown-tinged world of the 1970s that’s been impressively conjured by the film’s art department. Smith and Clark are both credible in the leads as parents increasingly driven to distraction. And while the film ends with a startlingly memorable final shot, one you will not shake however much you want to, in truth the scariest thing about Starve Acre is Smith’s foppish haircut. (James Mottram)

n In cinemas from Friday 6 September.

Through portraiture and self-portraiture, artist Tayo Adekunle investigates the fetishisation of black women’s bodies and confronts colonial oppression with gripping results, says Rachel Ashenden

Upstairs in Edinburgh Printmakers, a small display of striking prints by Tayo Adekunle both disarms and confronts the viewer. Broadly, Stories Of The Unseen interrogates the legacies of racial and colonial history. On closer inspection, each portrait poignantly reveals a new facet of injustice, or contrarily, joyfully asserts Adekunle’s heritage as a beacon of hope.

Through thorough research into the fetishisation of black women’s bodies, Adekunle’s subversion of the colonial gaze makes for an alluring self-portraiture series. It’s hard to believe that the series ‘Reclamation Of The Exposition’ was created by Adekunle as a photography undergraduate at Edinburgh College Of Art. The two huge prints evolved from research conducted during her dissertation about ethnographic expositions of the 19th-century which dehumanised colonised people through the means of classification. During her research, Adekunle identified that black people were stripped of their identity, often photographed naked and isolated from their environment. In the first of the series,

Adekunle collages her body from three different angles. In the centre, she holds the viewer with a distrustful stare, wearing fabric from Nigeria as a vibrant indicator of her cultural heritage. Behind, her naked counterparts are measured and made into a spectacle with the brutal stamp of a ruler.

To the side of ‘Reclamation Of The Exposition’ is a series of four photo collages called ‘Artefacts’. Despite their small scale, this series is perhaps the most captivating of the entire exhibition. Adekunle has manipulated some of the exposition photographs she found while researching for her dissertation. Taken by Roland Bonaparte in the botanical gardens in Paris, the photographs depict naked African women in front of exotic foliage, falsely labeled as captured in Africa. In the outstanding audio guide to the exhibition, Adekunle discusses how these photographs were staged to show ‘the perceived absurdity’ of these people’s bodies. By inserting her own (clothed) image into these sepia photographs, Adekunle powerfully disrupts the original intention behind the photograph; that is, to entertain the

oppressor as well as exoticise the subject. By mimicking their poses, it’s as if Adekunle has joined these 19thcentury women in communion and conversation, jointly overcoming the brutality of the original photographer.

On the opposite wall, Adekunle presents ‘New Works’ which focuses on the preservation of storytelling in cultural traditions. A stand-out element of this portraiture series is the printed fabric that clothes the model and also hangs in the exhibition space, bridging that divide between upstairs and downstairs. The markings of the burgundy fabric are indicative of map-making, and in Adekunle’s words, the evidence of ‘the lasting effect . . . that European intervention had on the continent of Africa’.

In total, Stories Of The Unseen shows how Adekunle uses the tools of portraiture and self-portraiture to investigate what it means to be a subject and/or an object. The investigation is a gripping one that emerges from her curiosity and steadfast dedication to research and heritage.

Adekunle: Stories Of The Unseen, Edinburgh

until Sunday 10 November.

art of the month

Tayo

Printmakers,

Tayo Adekunle

THEATRE

BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL

(Directed by Sam Hardie) lllll

Jukebox musicals don’t always make room for sparkling dialogue (why spend time writing witty lines when everyone came for the songs?), but Beautiful is one of the genre’s true greats. With a book by Oscar-winning writer Douglas McGrath (who cut his teeth at Saturday Night Live) and numbers by the queen of songwriting herself, Carole King, the alchemy here is almost too good to mess up. And while there are a few moments when Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s repertory ensemble doesn’t quite do the material justice vocally, they most definitely capture the spirit of the era.

The show takes us back to late 1950s/early 1960s New York, where a 16-yearold King is trying, with equal tenacity, to sell her songs and snag the school heartthrob. Within a year, she’s achieved both, marrying Gerry Goffin and signing a deal with music publisher Donnie Kirshner. Professional success and personal heartbreak follow, but Beautiful also turns the spotlight on King and Goffin’s best friends, fellow songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, giving the story (and songlist) an extra dimension.

McGrath’s words zing with humour and pathos, and director Sam Hardie squeezes the juice out of every line. With each cast member acting, singing and, more often than not, playing two instruments, there’s a lot of talent on stage. Kirsty Findlay is remarkable as King, embodying her fervent self-belief and Brooklyn wit with ease, as well as her emotional vulnerability. Findlay can also knock out a tune with power and poignancy, and sitting at the piano with her long curly hair, she doesn’t attempt to mimic King but certainly conveys her essence.

Also making the most of McGrath’s light-hearted lines are Theo Diedrick and Lola Aluko as Barry and Cynthia, plus Robin Simpson who plays publishing kingpin Kirshner, between them providing more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. But, of course, it’s the songs (no less than 30 of them) that take top billing, with tracks such as ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’, ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ and ‘It’s Too Late’ hitting all the right soft spots, and beat-driven numbers like ‘I Feel The Earth Move’ getting the crowd suitably clappy. (Kelly Apter) n Pitlochry Festival Theatre, until Saturday 28 September.

atre

FILM STRANGE DARLING

(Directed by JT Mollner) lllll

Stephen King has hailed JT Mollner’s throwback grindhouse thriller as ‘a clever masterpiece’. It’s one of those films that knowing as little as possible about will elevate the viewing experience as it deconstructs and subverts horror tropes in unexpected ways. All the audience is told is that the events that are shown follow the most prolific and unique serial killer of the 21st century. A nonlinear narrative plays out in six violently confronting chapters with exhilaratingly directed car chases, intimate kinky role-play and tense face-offs, all feeding into provocative takes on gender dynamics, sex and hook-up culture.

The casting of the lead roles, with Willa Fitzgerald as The Lady and Kyle Gallner as The Demon, is what really makes the film sing. Both actors switch between cool, calculated and unhinged with ease and their committed physical performances are a bloody riot to behold. Shot on 35mm with Giovanni Ribisi stepping up as DOP on his first feature, it’s also a handsome looking film that glows mysteriously under multiple colour filters of red and blue.

The natural daylight scenes are given a grimy, sinister edge and there are nods to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in how the story unfolds.

The deconstruction element is canny to a point and the film has a strong hold on its atmosphere of unease and dread in a similar way to No Country For Old Men. However, there’s also retrograde nonsense in how the rules are rewritten and a silly script fumble towards the end is somewhat distracting. (Katherine McLaughlin) n In cinemas from Friday 20 September.

OTHER THINGS WORTH GOING OUT FOR

If you fancy getting out and about this month, there’s plenty culture to sample such as a new show from Scotland’s comedy queen, a night of mind-blowing harp music, and a (very) long-awaited horror comedy sequel

ART FACE/OFF

After answering an open call, a series of photographers were paired up to capture each other’s portraits in digital or analogue form. The results are displayed in this exhibition.

n Leith Makers, Edinburgh, Wednesday 18–Sunday 22 September.

COMEDY

FERN BRADY

The undisputed queen of Scottish comedy embarks on a largely sold-out tour entitled I Gave You Milk To Drink. And jokes and stories to laugh most heartily at, we’re certain.

n King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 20 & Saturday 21 September.

MAISIE ADAM

Five years into her stand-up career, and the 2017 So Think You’re Funny? winner reckons she’s due for an appraisal. So, her new show is called Appraisal Reckon she’ll pass with flying colours.

n Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sunday 22 September.

FILM

HIS THREE DAUGHTERS

Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen star in this drama from Azazel Jacobs (French Exit) about a trio of estranged siblings who meet back up in order to care for their ailing father.

n In cinemas from Friday 6 September.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

Here comes a sequel that few people wanted, but Michael Keaton will no doubt do a grand job again as the eponymous(ish) bio-exorcist. Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara return while Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe join this wonky universe.

n In cinemas from Friday 6 September.

KIDS

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Panto season starts early as this CBeebies production (to be seen on telly at Christmas) features a snow raven, mischievous wolves and a sneaky Thorn Fairy.

n Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 September.

MUSIC

DILJIT DOSANJH

This Punjabi music mogul and actor, who comes to Glasgow with his Dil-Luminati tour, is an act with a vast social-media presence who became the first India-born artist to perform at Coachella. n OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Thursday 26 September.

MARY LATTIMORE

If you think that a full show of harp music is not for you, think again. This LA-based musician and composer creates vivid soundscapes that will melt your soul and blow your mind.

n Mono, Glasgow, Wednesday 4 September.

THEATRE

COMMON TONGUE

‘A play aboot imperfect Scots’, this fast-paced one-person show revolves around Paisley woman Bonnie as she tries to get to grips with the implications of her language, dialect and accent. n Cumbernauld Theatre, Thursday 26 & Friday 27 September; Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, Saturday 28 September.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (and bottom from left), Mary Lattimore, Common Tongue, Maisie Adam

William Souter

Jennie

Rosemary Goring

Allan

IN MY OWN WORDS: BILLY CONNOLLY

The BBC’s In My Own Words strand features the likes of Hanif Kureishi and Jilly Cooper, but it’s fair to say that almost the whole of Scotland will be tuning in or streaming this one later. ‘Living legend’ is not adequate to describe the Big Yin’s status, with the localised humour that was forged in the Clyde shipyards proving to have a remarkable global reach. Here he muses on the health issues that have slowed him down but not beaten his spirit, two marriages, and a kinship with Robin Williams, all told with that visceral honesty and vibrant wit that is his calling card. (Brian Donaldson) n BBC One, Monday 2 September.

staying in

ROUGH JUSTICE

Investigative journalist and broadcaster Jane MacSorley has form when it comes to shining a light on miscarriages of justice. She speaks to Lucy Ribchester about turning her attention to a harrowing unresolved case of mistaken identity and kidnapping

If anyone has cause to believe in the power of investigative journalism, it’s surely Jane MacSorley. The broadcaster, podcaster and producer has spent three decades probing unsolved crimes and miscarriages of justice. Her investigations into the deaths of army recruits at Deepcut barracks resulted in a conviction, as well as the unearthing of a fifth victim. Meanwhile more recently she brought to light the story of fraudster Nicholas Rossi in Audible Original, I Am Not Nicholas.

But it was while working in Australia for the BBC that she received a call about a truly extraordinary case. ‘I’m ashamed to admit this,’ MacSorley says over Zoom, ‘but I’d never heard of it before. I can’t believe I’m actually saying that.’

That case was the kidnapping of Muriel McKay in 1969 (when MacSorley was only a year old). It made headlines at the time for a number of reasons: the public ransom demand and the real-time unfolding of a cat-and-mouse chase between police and kidnappers. But perhaps most chillingly, the case was notable because it wasn’t McKay whom the kidnappers had in their sights. They had been aiming to take Rupert Murdoch’s wife, but had instead stumbled upon the wife of Alick McKay, an executive of Murdoch’s News Limited.

‘The podcast is a complete A to Z of the case,’ MacSorley says. ‘We go right back to when it happened, we feature a lot of the calls [from the kidnappers] which are just spine-chilling, there is no other word for them.’ Over weekly episodes, Intrigue: Worse Than Murder walks the listener through the trauma and horror, from the point of view of those affected. Recently, old wounds have been re-opened, as this year police renewed their efforts to locate McKay’s body, which has never been found.

For MacSorley, it was important to have the blessing and collaboration of McKay’s three surviving children, and she formed a particular bond with her son Ian, who lives in Australia. ‘I just thought there is no way on earth you can do this properly on Zoom,’ MacSorley says. ‘He was on his own where he lives, with nobody there. You just needed to be there, not quite holding his hand, but to be there for him.’

Empathy for the survivors, says MacSorley, is the driving force behind the work she does. ‘I feel so privileged meeting with unbelievable people that I have so much respect and admiration for, that have just lived torture,’ she says. ‘In the McKay case, their lives have been a living hell a lot of the time.’ n New episodes of Intrigue: Worse Than Murder are available weekly on BBC Sounds.

a smubl • a lbums •

LISTEN BACK

It’s time to embark on an aural odyssey as we trawl through our record collection for an A to Z of album recommendations picking something old and something new-ish. We start with (where else?) A

Many have overstated the extinction-level event facing the album. It’s true that teens are embracing playlists and algorithmic pop, but there’s something about a 40 minuteor-so collection from a songwriter that adds scope to music in a way that a single simply can’t. That’s the feeling you get from rapper Unknown T’s second album Adolescence (2021), a diaristic drill epic which hit at a time when the subgenre was a lightning rod for the right-wing press. Its lurching, murky production and insinuations about gang culture are best captured in ‘WW2’, a paranoid chronicle of trivial beefs showcasing the East Londoner’s lived-in rhymes.

From the loping threat of Homerton to the globe-trotting noise of M.I.A., whose debut Arular (2005) smashed into the charts with a mind-expanding mash-up of electronica, rap, punk and glitchy beats that were entirely her own. The mid-2000s may be best known as the dawn of indie sleaze (and its bargain basement counterpart, landfill indie), but this British-Sri Lankan’s excitable bricolage is proof that there was vibrancy in the UK’s alternative scene away from guitar-battering lads in drainpipe jeans. (Kevin Fullerton)

n Other Listen Back picks: Anika by Anika (2010), American Dream by LCD Soundsystem (2017), Abbey Road by The Beatles (1969).

Jane MacSorley (centre) with Muriel McKay’s children, Dianne and Ian

tv times

In this returning column, we ask telly fans to share their viewing habits and favourite small-screen memories. First up with his televisual recollections is author and presenter, Damian Barr

What is your first memory of watching TV? I think it has to be Play School with Floella Benjamin. She always made me feel safe and I’ve wanted a house with a round window in it ever since. I met her years later and thanked her for offering calm and stories when home wasn’t always calm or safe. She was as nice as you’d want her to be.

Which programme that’s no longer on screen would you love to see return, and why? The Late Review because I miss being outraged/soothed by other people’s erudition and vanity about culture and the arts when I should be trying to get to sleep. That or Prisoner: Cell Block H (the original series but somehow magically extended with the same cast).

You’re a prime-time chat-show host: what’s your ideal line-up of three guests? That’s an exciting thought! Truman Capote. Maya Angelou. Mary Queen Of Scots.

Which sitcom have you laughed at the most? I have always loved Two Doors Down. I’m desperate for series three of Hacks

When was the last time you felt scared while watching TV? Apart from on election night? I was genuinely scared watching Midnight Mass, a vampire series on Netflix. It is set on an island in New England; a monster arrives and nobody can get off . . . the music is eerie too. I slept with the lights on after.

What’s the best TV theme tune ever? Obviously Murder, She Wrote. But if non-instrumental it’s the original She-Ra. I listen to both to get my dander up for writing.

What was the last show you binge-watched? I finally watched The West Wing during lockdown and felt a fool for having missed out. So thinking ‘what’s next?’ I binged Grey’s Anatomy and it’s still going. I can now perform an emergency tracheotomy with a straw, should you need me to.

Who is your all-time favourite fictional TV character, and why? I have so many! Jessica Fletcher gave me a very idealised version of what the writing life would be like (murder aside). I like her ability to see the best in people despite knowing the worst. Also, her panache with knitwear is unmatched.

The Big Scottish Book Club, hosted by Damian Barr, is on BBC Scotland every Wednesday with episodes also available on BBC iPlayer.

GAMES GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK

Two years after its release on PlayStation, God Of War Ragnarök finally brings the series’ epic Norse saga to a close on PC. Continuing the journey of Kratos and his teenage son, Atreus, the sequel deepens their familial dynamic as the pair confront the prophecy of Ragnarök: effectively, the end of the world. With the Nine Realms on the brink of collapse, players must battle more legendary enemies, including classic Norse gods Thor and Odin, all the while navigating the complex relationship dilemmas and moral choices that have defined the series so far.

On more powerful hardware, the PC version will deliver improved visuals, with high-resolution textures and support for ultra-wide displays elevating the already breathtaking environments, from the icy landscapes of Midgard to the fiery depths of Muspelheim. The game features the same deep combat system as its predecessor, blending brutal melees with strategic use of weapons and abilities, together with new roguelite elements. As long as there are no unexpected issues such as those that plagued The Last Of Us Part One when it was ported to PC in 2023, God Of War Ragnarök promises to be one of the most exciting launches of the year, offering an unforgettable final adventure in one of gaming’s most revered franchises. (Murray Robertson) n Released on PC on Thursday 19 September; out on PS4 and PS5 now.

BLAZING A TRAIL

Fire Engines shone briefly but brightly on Edinburgh’s music scene in the early 80s. Neil Cooper has written an extensive essay and interviewed the band for the CD booklet of Chrome Dawns, a just-released compilation that gathers their recorded history together in one place for the first time. Here, he takes a look back over their fleeting time in the limelight

As one of Edinburgh’s original punkinspired bands, Fire Engines may not have been around for long, but the band’s urgent angular howl left its mark. Over their breathless 18-month lifespan between 1980 and 1981, the mercurial teenage quartet of Davy Henderson (vocals/guitar), Murray Slade (guitar), Graham Main (bass) and Russell Burn (drums) released a mere three singles and a mini album before imploding.

These can be heard on Chrome Dawns, a doublevinyl/2CD compilation that brings together all of Fire Engines’ studio releases. It opens with the band’s frenetic debut single, ‘Get Up And Use Me’/‘Everything’s Roses’, released on manager Angus Groovy’s Codex Communications label. This is followed by high-concept mini opus, ‘Lubricate Your Living Room’, and subsequent singles, ‘Candyskin’/‘Meat Whiplash’, and the band’s swansong, ‘Big Gold Dream’. All of these appeared on Bob Last and Hilary Morrison’s post-Fast Product imprint, Pop: Aural.

Fire Engines’ small and imperfectly formed studio back catalogue is supplemented on the vinyl edition of Chrome Dawns by the group’s two John Peel sessions, plus the band’s cover of Franz Ferdinand’s song, ‘Jacqueline’. The latter is taken from a split single with the younger band, who performed a version of ‘Get Up And Use Me’ on the flipside. This was released in 2004 after Fire Engines regrouped for a selection of shows with fellow travellers The Magic Band and Sun Ra’s Arkestra, before going on to open for Franz Ferdinand at Glasgow’s SECC.

The CD set of Chrome Dawns also features rare live material, including a recording of the first ever Fire Engines show at Leith Community Centre in 1980, as well as a 1981 gig at the capital’s Valentino’s club. There is also a live soundtrack to an Edinburgh Fringe play, Why Does The Pope Not Come To Glasgow?

Chrome Dawns is the latest contribution to an everexpanding historicisation of Scotland’s below-radar grassroots music scene. On record, this has included Cherry Red Records’ Big Gold Dreams box set, and various archival releases by Fire Engines’ fellow Auld Reekie travellers Scars, Boots For Dancing, Josef K, and post-Fire Engines pop fabulists, Win.

While much of the material on Chrome Dawns has appeared on earlier compilations, this will be the first time everything is available in the same place, and might be regarded as definitive. If this really is the last word on Fire Engines, their currency knows no bounds. Just check out their frenetic Peel session cover of Heaven 17’s ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, recorded before the Sheffield electronic popsters released their debut single. As grand gestures go, Fire Engines and Chrome Dawns remain an incendiary proposition.

Chrome Dawns is out now on Cherry Red Records.

BOOKS THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER

From writer Fernando Trueba and illustrator Javier Mariscal, who collaborated on Oscar-nominated animated feature Chico And Rita (2010), They Shot The Piano Player is a vibrant new graphic novel published to tie in with the film version currently streaming on Netflix. The opening panels of this detective story lovingly recreate New York City circa 2009, and the Strand bookstore in Manhattan where music journalist and author Jeff Harris is giving a talk about his passion: the Latino musical samba-jazz movement from the 1950s, bossa nova. His enthusiasm for the samba beat leads him to the music of pianist Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior, and then to investigate the mystery of his disappearance; Tenório Jr vanished in March 1976 and Harris discovers a secret story behind the melodies. When Harris arrives in Rio De Janeiro to investigate, his first port of call is a favourite record shop; the warm colour palette of Mariscal’s illustration reflects Trueba’s obvious affection for his subject. A visit to The Instituto Cultural Cravo Albin provokes luscious tones with musical notes which seem to hang from the ceiling while the floorshow plays.

Clearly a labour of love for a musical style and a cultural phenomenon, They Shot The Piano Player offers an added political edge by looking to a more liberated time in Latin American history, but also reflecting threats to that freedom, and as such it’s likely to appeal to fans of animation, politics, jazz and detective novels alike. (Eddie Harrison) n They Shot The Piano Player: A Graphic Novel is published by SelfMadeHero on Thursday 26 September; They Shot The Piano Player is streaming now on Netflix.

In this column, we ask a pod person about the ’casts that mean a lot to them. This month, it’s Christian Brighty, who co-writes and stars alongside Jessica Knappett in new radio comedy, The Many Wrongs Of Lord Christian Brighty, as a fast-living Regency-era aristocrat tries to right his past wrongs

my perfect podcast

Which podcast educates you? I like badly produced podcasts that are clearly DIY passion projects. Give me that poor audio quality, unedited low-fi goodness! Those three-month gaps between episodes? Mmmm. Delicious. With that in mind, I love What’s This Tao All About? an in-depth podcast teaching about Taoism. Highly recommended. So that, or Contrapoints It’s not a podcast, it’s YouTube video essays, but it still counts. The four-hour one on Twilight? Oh boy. It’s golden.

Which podcast makes you laugh? Time Of The Week. It’s not a podcast, it’s a Radio 4 show, but it still counts. Absolutely hysterical satire of Woman’s Hour by geniuses Lorna Rose Treen, Jon Oldfield and a team of brilliant writers. It’s so dense with gags you have to relisten to get it all. And I implore you to do so.

Which podcast makes you sad or angry? Subway. It’s not a podcast, it’s a fast-food sandwich shop, but they’ve just got rid of their meat-free steak option and it feels like a massive step back for society and sandwiches.

Which podcast is your guilty pleasure? The Green Dragon Podcast. Absolutely unrecommendable. Five hour-long episodes by three Australians going into enormous depth about one very specific nerdy game: The Lord Of The Rings Strategy Battle Game. Completely impenetrable to anyone else. I’m not even recommending it to you. But I love it, I love them, and you can prise both my love and shame about it from my cold dead ears.

Tell us someone who currently doesn’t have a podcast but totally should. And why do you think their one would be amazing? @Trashling: the best TikTokker there is. She is so knowledgeable on literature, politics, pop culture, but also hysterical and industrious. It’s so annoying when someone is just effortlessly funny and they don’t even want to be a comedian. Ugh. Go follow her.

Pitch us a new podcast idea in exactly 17 words Wiretapped Confession Booth. Every week parishioners confess their innocuous sins, while a disappointed priest hopes for murder

New episodes of The Many Wrongs Of Lord Christian Brighty are available every Saturday on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

album of the month

Nala Sinephro is on a clear path to musical glory, ploughing an ambient jazz furrow that threatens to reshape the genre. Brian Donaldson listens to her second full album and wonders where this ultra talented but reluctant harpist will go from here

Still only in her 20s, it’s not hyperbole to say that Nala Sinephro is taking modern jazz by the lapels and giving it a right old shake. She has been described before, in an interview with Pitchfork, as a ‘soft-spoken sage . . . and a fiery disruptor’. Both personae are present and correct on her glorious second album, Endlessness This Caribbean-Belgian harpist (an instrument, it seems, she wishes to be no longer associated with) arrived with a cosmic splash in 2021 as she launched Space 1.8 into the covid void, a largely ambient affair with swirling pockets of drama and danger. That collection was not so much nu-jazz as un-jazz, making labels almost redundant in a firestorm of beauty.

Almost inevitably, this album (like that lauded debut) features contributions from people residing in all the highly regarded alt-jazz bands du jour, from Ezra Collective to Sons Of Kemet and black midi to Kokoroko, plus floating solo acts such as Nubya Garcia and Lyle Barton. It’s not quite painfully cool but it’s not far off. Mesmerising, meditative, transcendent, delicate. Words that are thrown at her work not simply because they sound good, but because she sounds good.

For the first half of Endlessness, comprising tracks called ‘Continuum 1’ through to ‘Continuum 5’, the pace is glacial and the mood lush. But then the pace steps up, with the synth getting ever more frantic as though someone has cruelly turned up the speed on your running machine; horns become more insistent, percussion less controlled, both a threat to your sense of balance.

And eventually, ever so suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, in the last 45 seconds of this record the cacophony fades out and a Max Richter-esque piano sequence enters the fray, only to dip and exit itself as quickly as it arrived. There has to be a reason for this last-minute twist. Could it be that Sinephro is hinting at what’s to come next in the latest stage of an ever-evolving musical career? She could very easily be doing this for at least another half century, so ebbs, flows and tangents will surely play a significant part in that gameplan. Whatever she has in mind, it will be fascinating to see where it takes her and us.

Endlessness is released by Warp Records on Friday 6 September.

PODCASTS WEIRD STUDIES (weirdstudies.com/Patreon) lllll

Take two polymaths, add a microphone, hand out some free passes for philosophical pretention, academic allusion, an interest in the occult and spirituality (and where they meet art), and you have the delightful indulgence that is the long-running art and philosophy podcast Weird Studies.

Dissecting and reframing the culturally obtuse and bizarre since January 2018, music professor Phil Ford and author, screenwriter and director JF Martel’s heavyweight long-form series is something akin to spending a boozy night with the smartest (most loquacious) guy-critic conversationalists in town. Their chat grows and blows the mind in that way which only mildly perverse cultural theorists can. For almost seven years, Martel and Ford have been turning out these 90-minute wonders on everything from expressionism in cinema; Alan Moore’s From Hell and graphic novel representations of serial killers; the post-war Greenwich Village scene and the cinema of John Cassavetes; and of course Aleister Crowley and the idea of ‘magick’.

Utilising the monetisation platform Patreon with a rigour and energy that is unusual in this rarefied cluster of the podcast sky, Martel and Ford also offer digital courses within their Weirdosphere-learning community, plus links to all manner of extras including a bookshop of anything mentioned in the episodes. They also use much of their airtime to wrestle with some of the premier voices in alternative cultural theory in the US right now, among them spiritual and cultural theorist Erik Davis, writer, critic and memoirist Victoria Nelson, and anthropologist-folklorist Amy Hale. Weird Studies is a brave attempt to promote independent scholarship, occult and spiritual cultural theories, and/or to simply abide the strangeness of it all. (Paul Dale) n New episodes available fortnightly on Wednesdays.

TV SVEN

(Prime Video) lllll

Inevitably framed with sadness following his recent passing, Prime’s latest sporting documentary traces the charmed but troubled life of SvenGöran Eriksson, the first foreign manager of England’s football team. From European glory with semi-professional Gothenburg to major club success across the continent, the Swede seldom ducked a challenge. And when the England role came calling in 2001, he accepted with alacrity, unprepared for the levels of tabloid scrutiny his private life would receive.

With the likes of Roberto Mancini, a perceptive Wayne Rooney and David Beckham paying tribute to Eriksson’s talents as a coach (the latter particularly effusive in his love for a mentor figure), the film also covers in great detail those scandals of the Scandinavian’s affairs. His long-time partner, Italian socialite Nancy Dell’Olio, whom he twice cheated on (with Ulrika Jonsson and Football Association PA Faria Alam) appears, still evidently hurting, while Alam is bewildered but philosophical about the way she was thrown to the Fleet Street wolves.

Throughout this documentary, the disarmingly humble and placid Eriksson appears to sail serenely on through the tawdriness of gossip storms and a subsequent News Of The World sting. He’s unwilling to be preached to by the rough and rabid British press but arguably displays a staggering lack of personal responsibility. He will, though, admit to neglecting his children in their youth to be with his most enduring mistress: football. And the scenes with his family in their beautiful Nordic home, awaiting the end with fulfilled dignity in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, have acquired only greater poignancy with his death. (Jay Richardson) n Available now.

TV OF THE MONTH

Starring a brilliant international cast, Kaos conjures up a modern, irreverent take on Greek mythology whose clever scripts work on multiple levels, says Claire Sawers

If the Roy family in Succession seemed dysfunctional, just wait until you meet this lot. High on his throne on Mount Olympus, Zeus, king of the gods, glides around a vast palace interiordesigned with what looks like acres of Versace Home fabrics and Florida pastels. Wearing a natty collection of velour leisure suits and gold jewellery, he sends thunderbolts and natural disasters down to the mortals.

Jeff Goldblum is deliciously cast in the role, a stylish neurotic in tennis shorts, simmering with insecurity and murderous lust for power. Zeus’ wife (and sister) Hera (Janet McTeer) is giving him cause for concern, his son Dionysus is a disappointment and now the poorly dressed humans are daring to blaspheme against him. Over eight episodes, Zeus’ unravelling becomes tangled up with the fate of three humans and the complexities of The Underworld.

The mythology of the Ancient Greeks is a rich treasure trove that writer Charlie Covell delights in rifling through here, springboarding off original tales and modernising them with many trippy, grotesque twists. So Poseidon, god of the sea, is a pescatarian lothario on a superyacht, played by Cliff Curtis in one of many bits of impeccable international casting. Hades is reimagined as a Northern English bureaucrat (David Thewlis), Medusa becomes an acerbic New Yorker (Debi Mazar) and Lachesis (Suzy Eddie Izzard), is one of the three gender-nonconforming Fates, taking a nonchalant approach to the plight of anguished souls that they meet.

Alongside the wonderfully absurd and comic tone, the plotlines manage to draw up those classic profundities from the original texts too: the purpose of life, the promise of an afterlife, the danger in organised religion. Love triangles appear, jealousies rage, families are ravaged; it’s an ambitious yet glossy gallop through all the age-old conflicts. It’s moving too; subplots about Caeneus, ostracised for being born a girl but identifying as a boy, or Eurydice, falling out of love with her besotted husband Orpheus, add gravity to the more preposterously fun segments.

Trans-identity issues, polyamory, matriarchal societies, fear of ageing; there’s almost nothing we can’t learn from the Ancient Greek writers and Covell’s clever script functions on multiple levels. We can enjoy the Baz Luhrmann-style update on ancient sagas like an entertaining music video-meets-family soap opera, or deep dive into the endless Easter eggs left for Greek mythology fans (I enjoyed getting lost in many Google labyrinths along the way).

These stories of three-headed dogs, six-headed sea monsters and man-exclusionary societies of woman-only warriors are absolute ambrosia for viewers. Soundtracked by Anohni, Elastica, Dire Straits and Everything But The Girl, this slick update is anything but chaotic, showing us how the ultra-privileged flex their power over the masses, often with brutal consequences.

Kaos is available now on Netflix.

GAMES THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE HERE! (Coal Supper) lllll

Yorkshire-based game developers Coal Supper have followed up their ultra-brief 2019 oddity, The Good Time Garden, with this astonishingly assured, exquisitely animated tale of a travelling salesman who gets roped into assisting the assorted residents of a fictional northern English town called Barnsworth. Thank Goodness You’re Here! goes deep into its historical Yorkshire roots right from its dialect-heavy title screen (‘English’ is also an option) and its opening montage of 50s/60s cine film depicting ginnels, factories and coalmines. The game itself contrasts with that scene-setting nicely: its bold, colourful clear-line animation bringing the ridiculous story to vivid life.

Players must navigate Barnsworth (sometimes tricky without a map or quest log) while helping its scattered citizens with various whimsical tasks. These folk are beautifully animated and voiced with utter charm by comedy performers including Matt Berry, Em Humble and Chris Cantrill. Each is imbued with an exacerbated cadence so they sound like adult versions of the supporting players from Wallace And Gromit Stand-out characters include a pair of bickering young supermarket workers, a handyman trying to avoid the advances of a randy fish and chip-shop owner, and a conspiracy theorist demanding ‘bring back asbestos’. A particular highlight is the convoluted backstory of Roger the greengrocer and his oddly shaped head. Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a sublime piece of entertainment, as much cartoon as game, with a hilarious script performed by an absolutely top-drawer cast. Developers James Carbutt and Will Todd (who also contribute to the performances) have a style that’s unlike anything else around. (Murray Robertson)

n Out now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5.

ALBUMS

NEIL COWLEY TRIO Entity (Hide Inside Records) lllll

Seven years on from their previous album, pianist Neil Cowley’s trio returns, sounding strong and unified. The piano is the main voice, of course, but this is a group effort, with Cowley and double bassist Rex Horan threading figures and lines together over drummer Evan Jenkins’ variously insistent or relaxed (but always steady) presence.

Cowley has never pursued the conventional jazz-piano-trio melody-solosmelody format and there are times when his music, with its repetitive motifs, feels unresolved, even episodic as a result. The title (and final) track here is a mite anticlimactic. That apart, though, Cowley is a master of mood, and on cuts such as the determinedly slow-paced, aptly named ‘Brood’ and the more swashbuckling, carefree ‘Shoop’, Cowley incorporates a songwriter’s style of development. On the latter piece, with its joyous build-up, it’s almost as if the trio is playing in anticipation of Adele showing up to record a vocal (Cowley provided keyboards on her mega-hit ‘Rolling In The Deep’).

Elsewhere, there is a sense of longing on ‘Photo Box’, where the simple, elegant melody depicts a nostalgic look through the box’s contents, and on ‘V&A’, Cowley’s arpeggiated progression suggests an art gallery visitor’s varying responses to the exhibits: now amused, now moved, now grandly impressed. As well as the acoustic instruments, subtly introduced electronic effects add to the atmosphere and personality of the music, with voices from a radio skipping through the stations accompanying the confiding ‘Those Claws’ and mysterious colourings fading in and out of ‘Father Daughter’. Overall, Entity exudes control and restraint. Cowley has a lovely touch and, free of the bombast that can feature in the trio’s live performance, this album reveals a composer creating music that’s understated but still varied in colour and character. (Rob Adams) n Released on Friday 20 September.

PODCASTS

DO GOODERS (BBC Sounds) lllll

Anyone familiar with Garrett Millerick’s world-weary, acerbic stand-up will find plenty to enjoy in Do Gooders, his new Radio 4 workplace sitcom. Set in the office of a mid-level charity, The Alzheimer’s Alliance, with resentments frequently expressed towards more successful fundraising causes, the show boasts an enviable cast of comic talent. Spanning class and generational tensions, the characters of Frank Skinner, Ahir Shah, Ania Magliano, Fay Ripley and Lisa McGrillis variously butt heads with each other and Millerick’s supremely blithe, privately educated Clive.

With the team scrabbling for donations via a series of ill-fated initiatives such as public sponsored walks, the episodes nevertheless focus on those personality clashes, with Skinner’s demotivated old stager Ken resisting the woke-ier initiatives of Magliano’s ardent feminist and Instagram addict, Lauren. Meanwhile, Clive is constantly trying to scam a jolly to an exotic location and upsetting just about everyone along the way. He also attracts the irritation and censure of his boss Harriet, the straight-ish one in an environment supposedly for facilitating philanthropy but which is full of grasping self-interest.

New boy Achi (Shah) is no different in this respect, but his more innocent tendencies afford the rest of the characters opportunity for relatively subtle exposition in an otherwise loud, clamouring bonfire of egos that relies on (and delivers) a regular count of cracking lines. There’s nothing desperately radical to the ensemble formula but that’s a huge part of Do Gooders’ timeless appeal, instigating petty conflicts for the servicing of as many snappy jokes as possible. (Jay Richardson) n Out now.

TV WE MIGHT REGRET THIS (BBC iPlayer) lllll

We Might Regret This is billed as a comedy-drama, and though it might be light on laughs, writer and star Kyla Harris proves she is a deft hand at handling its emotional beats. Harris plays Freya, who’s recently moved to London to be with her long-distance partner, Abe (Darren Boyd). As a wheelchair user, Freya requires a round-the-clock carer, and after sacking her previous one for being intrusive and generally annoying, she asks flighty best friend Jo (Elena Saurel) to take on the role, much to the chagrin of Abe.

As Jo grows closer to Freya, and Abe spends more time with his son Levi (Edward Bluemel) and his ex-wife Jane (Sally Phillips on phenomenal form), it becomes clear that We Might Regret This is more than a run-of-the-mill romcom. The series tackles inter-abled relationships, the difficulties of being both a friend and a carer, and the long-lasting wounds left by grief, all of which are compelling subjects but far too weighty to be adequately explored within the space of six 30-minute episodes. The result is an unfortunate lack of focus: is the friendship between Freya and Jo the crux of the story, or is it Abe’s dynamic with his ex-wife and son? It’s unclear: both vie for the spotlight while the romance between Freya and Abe, initially presented as the core, is underdeveloped.

That is not to say that We Might Regret This is unenjoyable. Quite the opposite. Though the final product may be slightly less than the sum of its parts, each episode is eminently watchable. The chemistry between actors animates every scene and there isn’t a weak link in the cast. And when it does dig into the topic of grief, it’s a shining example of sensitive writing and believable character work. (Eve Connor) n Available now.

OTHER THINGS WORTH STAYING IN FOR

A packed month of things to do indoors or consume on your travels include an 80s/90s British music icon releasing his first new material in quarter of a century, a pod about a major US drugs crisis, and the latest true-crime series from Ryan Murphy

ALBUMS

HAMISH HAWK

Selling like the proverbial hotcakes, A Firmer Hand is breaking all previous Hamish Hawk records, featuring songs about guilt, shame, repression and embarrassment.

n So Recordings, out now.

THE THE

Having largely removed himself from the music industry to potter about on soundtracks and his own pet projects, Ensoulment marks Matt Johnson’s first full album of new material in a mere 25 years, promising songs about all his familiar concerns: love, sex, war, politics, life and death.

n Self-released, Friday 6 September.

BRAND NEW HEAVIES

Music for more people with extremely long memories, this is the 30th anniversary edition of the band’s Brother Sister album which spawned singles such as ‘Midnight At The Oasis’, ‘Dream On Dreamer, and ‘Spend Some Time’.

n London Records, Friday 27 September.

BOOKS SALLY ROONEY

Intermezzo marks the Irish author’s return to the fray with another tale of intimacy, connection and desire, this time featuring two brothers, ten years apart, whose father has just died from cancer.

n Faber, Tuesday 24 September.

GAMES

ASTRO BOT

The follow-up to the PlayStation 5 game Astro’s Playroom, Team Asobi’s Astro Bot is a fully fleshed-out 3D platformer with 80 stages.

n Sony, Friday 6 September.

PODCASTS

SCRIPTS

A new three-part series about ‘the pills we take for our brains and the stories we tell ourselves about them’. Reporter Ethan Brooks tracks some terrifying true stories from a country (the US) which has 4% of the world’s population but consumes 80% of the globe’s opioids.

n Radio Atlantic, all episodes available now.

TV BAD MONKEY

Based on Carl Hiaasen’s bestselling novel, this tells the story of a man (Vince Vaughn) who has been bounced from the Miami Police Department and is now a health inspector. But then he discovers a severed human arm . . .

n Apple+, new episodes on Wednesdays.

THE ZELENSKY STORY

An actor who once played the president of Ukraine and then in real-life became the president of Ukraine. It was all terribly funny until it wasn’t. This is the largely definitive story of a man who was thrust reluctantly onto the world stage.

n BBC iPlayer, Wednesday 4 September.

MONSTERS: THE LYLE AND ERIK MENENDEZ STORY

Ryan Murphy’s latest true-crime tale zeroes in on the siblings who murdered their parents in a furious attack. Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny play the ill-fated pair.

n Netflix, Thursday 19 September.

Brand New Heavies (and bottom from left), Hamish Hawk, Bad Monkey, The Zelensky Story

back

THE Q& A WITH BAMBIE THUG

The Irish singer-songwriter and purveyor of ‘ouija pop’ found a global audience this year at the Eurovision Song Contest, where they became the first non-binary artist to represent Ireland and achieved the country’s highest finish in the competition since 2000. As they embark on their Crown The Witch tour, they take on our hard-hitting Q&A and talk crows, cosplay and curious crushes

Who would you like to see playing you in the movie about your life? I think either Jodie Comer or Anya Taylor-Joy. I reckon if you dressed them goth and took away their eyebrows, either could pass as Bambie Thug.

What’s the punchline to your favourite joke? ‘Is it me, Lord?’

If you were to return in a future life as an animal, what would it be? I think I would come back as a crow: goth, able to fly, desired pet for witchy types and all-round G.

If you were playing in an escape room name two other people (well-known or otherwise) you’d recruit to help you get out? I’d recruit the li’l bicycle guy from Saw because he’s obviously already a master of games, and my mate Cassyette because I’d still wanna have a laugh while trying to escape. If it were to turn into a horror movieesque situation, since Saw was with us, we’d be a great duo.

When was the last time you were mistaken for someone else and what were the circumstances? I’ve never been mistaken for anyone really. I’ve been asked a few times if I was the real Bambie Thug or if I was just someone cosplaying as Bambie Thug, though.

What’s the best cover version ever? ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash.

Whose speaking voice soothes your ears? Billie Holiday.

What’s the most hi-tech item in your home? Probably my rig for live shows.

What’s a skill you’d love to learn but never got round to? Harp, but I will get around to it one day!

Tell us something you wish you had discovered sooner in life? How to manage negative self-talk. It took me a long time to figure out.

Describe your perfect Saturday evening? A really gorgeous home-cooked meal, a bath and a horror movie.

If you were a ghost, who would you haunt? Fascists, racists and transphobes.

If you could relive any day of your life, which one would it be? Gosh, I don’t know. I barely remember yesterday, haha.

What’s your earliest recollection of winning something? Trophies for dance when I was young.

Did you have a nickname at school that you were ok with? And can you tell us a nickname you hated? I didn’t really have a nickname in school but my sister used to (and sometimes still does) call me Randal.

When were you most recently astonished by something? This year’s strawberry moon. I stayed up all night til sunrise watching its path across the sky. It was a particularly bright and magical one for me.

What tune do you find it impossible not to get up and dance to, whether in public or private? Iselin Michelsen ‘Santa’s Summer’.

Which famous person would be your ideal holiday companion? Duncan Trussell! One of my favourite brains and personalities in the world. I think we’d have a laugh and really interesting conversations.

When did you last cry? On the strawberry moon in June this year.

As an adult, what has a child said to you that made a powerful impact? Generally, meeting my fans that are very young kids has had a massive impact on me. I couldn’t actually point to one specific thing as there have been so many. Getting messages from young queer kids’ parents about how much of a difference my art has made to their lives is crazy too. It has solidified my sense of knowing that I’m on the right path and that it’s connecting with all the right people.

Tell us one thing about yourself that would surprise people? My first crush was Phoebus from The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

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 don’t have a place of my own yet so I wouldn’t be destroying any room; I’d be asking them to build me one.

If you were to start a tribute act to a band or singer, who would it be in tribute to and what would it be called? Stevie Nicks. Spooky Nicks.

If you were selected as the next 007, where would you pick as your first luxury destination for espionage? Well that’d be sick because I would make my own jazzy theme tune and I’d play a sick 007. I think somewhere snowy so I can wear a cute gothic ski suit and my chase scene with the villains would be on skis down a giant mountain and my ski sticks would shoot lasers.

Bambie Thug play SWG3, Glasgow, on Monday 2 September during their Crown The Witch tour, supported by The Darklings and Hazey Haze.

hot shots (music special)

1 2 3

No doubt John Lyndon will have his views on this latest Sex Pistols line-up but it’s Frank Carter who is on frontman duties when the band hit the country doing Never Mind The Bollocks (O2 Academy Glasgow, Sunday 22 September). After initial London gigs in August, Steve Jones promises they will now be ‘tighter than a rat’s arse’.

We’ve been covering Arab Strap ever since meeting them in Falkirk bus station in 1996 for a quiet coffee that turned into a boozy Saturday afternoon, and we see no reason to stop talking about them now. Messrs Moffat and Middleton are touring around Scotland this month in the wake of their latest album I’m Totally Fine With It Don’t Give A Fuck Anymore

Donning the magnificent number seven, Nelly Furtado is about to release 7, her seventh album and first since 2017, which is seven years ago (a pattern is emerging here). The Canadian Portuguese artist wrote 400 songs in the past few years but has managed to distil that into 14 tunes for the record (that’s two times seven).

Win a pair of tickets to a gig of your choice at SWG3 with Heverlee Premium Pilsner

Fancy winning SWG3 gig tickets for you and a pal? Enter now for your chance to win a pair of tickets to an upcoming event of your choice at Glasgow’s iconic SWG3, plus some Heverlee beers to enjoy at home too. For a chance to win, tell us: What Glasgow venue are the gig tickets for? T&Cs apply. To enter, just log onto list.co.uk/competitions

Glasgow p90 | Edinburgh p95 | Stirling p100

STUDENT GUIDE EDITORS: Rachel Cronin, Isy Santini and Rebecca Crockett DESIGN: Bradley Southam

Freshers’ hacks

Eva Curran, Strathclyde University’s Union President, shares her top tips to ensure you make the most of your first year in Glasgow

Be a tourist

Whether you’re coming from overseas or just outside of Glasgow, immerse yourself in the city. Being a tourist is the quickest way to appreciate all the incredible things Glasgow has to offer. Plan a weekend like you would if you were on a city break and take advantage of all the amazing free museums, parks and more. You’ll gain a new appreciation for the city you now call home!

Be curious

Take every opportunity that comes your way: get involved! Join a society, become a class rep, pick up a new sport or go to that random social on a Tuesday night. You never know where these experiences might lead you.

Give back

Get involved in your local community by volunteering. Ask your Union what opportunities are available and go make some new friends. It’s the quietest way to feel connected to your university community and city.

Culture on e cheap

Glasgow is a culture and creativity capital of the UK. But museum and gallery visits, live music performances and cinema trips can be a serious strain on your wallet. To save you sitting bored in your grotty halls, we’ve rounded up a few culture hotspots that understand the student struggle and will slide you a cheeky discount

For film buffs, Glasgow Film Theatre’s free 15–25 card gets you £6 tickets and one free youth screening a month. Student tickets are £8.50 with no membership. For West Enders, the Grosvenor Picture Theatre offers £10 student tickets; pricier than GFT, but worth it if you’re in a position to splash out for the Grosvenor’s fancy leather seats. Gallerygoers will appreciate the Centre For Contemporary Arts (CCA), whose exhibitions are always free; perfect for the end of the month. Of course, Kelvingrove Art Gallery And Museum is also free to enter, as is the Gallery Of Modern Art, although donations are welcome. Would you rather make the art instead of stare at it in a gallery? The Craft Pottery

paint studio offers a 20% student and NHS discount on selected dates. If you’re too skint to splash out on a day out but could scrape up the change for a pint, plenty of Glasgow pubs offer free cultural events, and you can’t walk four feet in the city at night without stumbling across some live music. Poetry Night At Inn Deep is a Glasgow Uni favourite, and offers an open mic night as well as guest speakers every Tuesday at 7pm. But if you’re more of a bookworm than a poetry geek, Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street offers free book club events ranging from queer lit to crime fiction. The book shop also offers a student card with a money-back points system.

a message from our sponsor

Discover your next adventure with The List’s 2024 Student Guide From food and drink, to music, art and culture, this guide contains all the inspiration you need to experience something new, whether you’re just arriving in the city or know it like the back of your hand.

experiences and this guide will help you to do just that.

At Heverlee, we’re all about the joy of curiosity and sharing your new finds with friends, creating unforgettable memories and experiences and this guide will help you to do just that.

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Discover it for yourself at the bar and cheers to the start of a great new term.

Discover it for yourself at the bar and cheers to the start of a

NRecent graduate Lauren Hunter takes us through some of her favourite Glasgow student haunts which are accessible for wheelchair users

avigating student nightlife as a wheelchair user can be challenging, but definitely not impossible.

Whether you’re a fan of pubs, dance floors, classy cocktails or something in between, here are some of my favourite spots in Glasgow that guarantee a brilliant night. First up on the pub front is Box on Sauchiehall Street. If you’re looking for a cheap night, fun cocktails and some decent live tunes, then this is the place for you. It’s a small venue but its compact (yet usable) accessible bathroom fits the bill.

For Southsiders, Church On The Hill is a chilled, spacious pub with top-tier drinks and vibes. Heading back into town, we hit the staple that is Wunderbar. The place is always packed, but if you fancy a dance and a singalong, then it’s ideal. The main bar has an accessible bathroom and staff can help you through tight crowds. If you’re out for a classier night, August House is where it’s at for cocktails and an Insta photoshoot. Expect disco balls and dance music, with plenty of space and seating options to suit your needs. Finally, although the West End has more limited wheelchair accessible options, Hillhead Bookclub is a fun crossover between pub vibes and more sophisticated tastes; its lower floor has enough space to move around, chat and dance (with a good quality accessible bathroom by the entrance). Being a disabled student no doubt involves its difficulties, but it doesn’t mean that we should be robbed of joy, class nights out and amazing memories along the way. Nightlife accessibility is very much a work in progress, but Glasgow is the perfect place to get the drinks flowing.

Star student Access a areas

I started Strathclyde Uni in 2017 (studying International Business), and was in and out of different bands, but I’d always wanted to be in a band with non-males. In 2020, when I was in fourth year, Uninvited formed via an Instagram group chat, met up (socially distanced) and started practicing. I’d never have imagined we would’ve taken off as quickly as we did, but I’m so grateful I went to that first practice. When I first started university, my main passion was always music, but I didn’t think it was achievable or realistic. It’s really cool to be able to pursue music full-time now and follow my dreams.

Alex Young (pictured second left), lead guitarist of Glasgow pop-punk band Uninvited

Wunderbar

Hillhead Bookclub

COFFEE, WINE & BEER, LIGHT BITES & COCKTAILS.

PERSONALITY & INCLUSIVITY ARE AT THE HEART OF MAYVN, IN THE CENTRE OF EDINBURGH.

WE HAVE BOTH A COWORKING FRIENDLY BENCH, AND LAPTOP-FREE TABLES.

@mayvncafe

OPENING HOURS:

MIDWEEK: 0730-2100/2200 WEEKEND: 0800-2100/2200

NO RESERVATIONS

Plant paradise

If you’re a Fresher in the UK’s 4th best vegan city (according to Student Beans website), you’d better familiarise yourself with tofu, tempeh and seitan. To give you a head start, Rachel Cronin brings you the lowdown on G-town’s vegan hotspots

Ask any Glasgow vegan about Suissi Vegan Kitchen and you’ll visibly see their pupils dilate. Mama Lim of the Suissi family (originally from Malaysia) has been feeding souls and bellies from Partick since 2019. HappyCow even named the independent Asian fusion restaurant the 9th best vegan restaurant in the world this year: it’s the real MVP of Glasgow vegan eateries. Another unmissable food spot for vegans is Mono in Merchant City. It’s a cool and quirky millennial hipster-type bar/restaurant (that has a record shop inside it, obviously) and serves some insane souvlaki loaded fries (with vegan tzatziki) and hosts gigs from local musicians. Stereo has a similar vibe, with a few different plant-based burgers (swap half of yours with a friend to optimise tastiness). They boast a killer menu but will NEVER be forgiven for axing their vegan fish and chips or their tempeh bourguignon (customers asked for the recipes when these dishes were discontinued).

For a quick weekday lunch instead of a big blow-out dinner, there’s no beating Glasvegan at St Enoch. While the local lunch spot recently changed hands after a brief closure in 2022, its sandwiches, milkshakes and sweet treats (special mention to the Biscoff layer cake) are consistently delicious. Not far from Glasvegan is Rose & Grants, a cutesy cafe with a cabinet stacked full (but not for long) of vegan macaroni pies and sausage rolls. You may struggle to get a seat on a weekend, but their breakfast and brunch deals are worth the ten-minute wait (they also do student discounts). For exclusively sweet treats, Partick’s Plant Blonde serves the best vegan cinnamon buns and empire biscuits out there, again with student discount. Glasgow’s plant-based pastry community has been irreversibly shaken up by TheDorkyFrench, which opened last year in Trongate. Classy, tasty, traditional French pastries that melt in your mouth, the only drawback being its limited opening hours: very French of them.

Advice shop

Your journey of self discovery will begin with your uni days (and probably end with a gap year in Australia after graduation). But the road to finding yourself isn’t all partying with new friends and sleeping in for lectures. Dealing with devious landlords, deadlines, budgeting and looking after your mental health can be difficult. We’ve rounded up a few tips so you know where to find support when you need it. Each university in Glasgow has their own student wellbeing helpline, as well as services within uni to access support and counselling. Every university should also provide you with their campus security phone number and financial advice resources Sandyford Sexual Health Services (sandyford.scot/sexualhealth-services) also offer several helplines covering emergency contraception, exposure to HIV and abortion services in and around the city.

Glasgow And Clyde Rape Crisis (glasgowclyderapecrisis. org.uk) offer support surrounding sexual assault, and have both a Glasgow-based and national helpline on their website. To make sure you’re clued up for renting your first flat, check if your uni has a tenants’ union (not to be confused with a Tennent’s union). You can also join Living Rent (livingrent.org), Scotland’s national tenants and community union, to make sure your landlord doesn’t take the piss.

Play your cards ght

Whether you’re alarmingly competitive (there’s always one) or just quizzing for the vibe, one of Glasgow’s 120-something pub quizzes is bound to make its way into your weeknight routine. In our Pub Quiz Top Trumps, Rachel Cronin rounds up a few of the city’s most popular nights to help you find the perfect match for your level of expertise and student budget

The Amsterdam

Location: Merchant City Day: Wednesday Time: 8pm

Quiz difficulty: Medium

(Hard if you’re bad at anagrams)

1st prize: £50 bar tab

2nd prize: £25 bar tab

3rd prize: bottle of wine

Cheapest Pint: Tennent’s | £4.40

The Ark

Location: City Centre Day: Monday | Time: 8pm

Quiz difficulty: Progressively Hard

1st prize: Cash jackpot (total of all players’ £1 entry fee)

2nd prize: £30 bar tab

3rd prize: 2 pitchers (beer or cocktail)

Cheapest Pint: Tennent's | £4.95 (plus double points on their rewards app on quiz night)

Hot shot

Glasgow Pride March 2024

Glasgow is renowned for three things: statues with cone hats, kind strangers and queer culture. Its LGBT+ scene is one of the liveliest in the UK (even Jedward made an appearance at Pride this year). Bubble guns, rainbow kilts and a packed-out dance floor at 5pm: Pride is Glasgow at its Glasgow-est.

The Parlour

Location: West End Day: Monday Time: 8pm

Quiz difficulty: Medium

1st prize: £100 cash

2nd prize: bottle of Cazcabel 3rd prize: bottle of wine

Cheapest Pint: Coors | £3 (plus £5 cocktails and free pizza on quiz night)

The Locale

Location: Charing Cross Day: Monday Time: 8pm

Quiz difficulty: Easy Prize: bottle of Panther Milk

Cheapest Pint: House Lager | £5.20

The Old Toll Bar

Location: Kinning Park Day: Wednesday | Time: 8pm

Quiz difficulty: Medium/Hard

1st prize: A LOT of cash (varies but usually £100 or over)

2nd prize: bar tab (around £20) 3rd prize: bottle of Buckfast

Cheapest Pint: Guinness | £4 (plus student deals on Monday/Tuesday)

Freshers’ hacks

In her four years at Heriot Watt, Student Union VP Holly McAdams has learned a lot. Her she boils down that experience to give Freshers in Edinburgh her key tips

Dressed to impress

Want to look good but that student loan account is threadbare? Check out Isy Santini’s tips for Edinburgh’s best pre-loved and vintage fashion destinations

Armstrong & Sons is perhaps Edinburgh’s most famous vintage emporium. Spread over four locations across Old Town, each store specialises in a certain style: head to Cockburn Street for psychedelic 60s looks or, if you’re an 80s material girl, Grassmarket might be more your speed.

Nicolson Street’s Save The Children is a wonderfully laid-out charity shop with a green-room area filled with plants and cute minimalist decorations. Beyond the wide selection of pre-loved clothing, Save The Children also boasts a small array of locally sourced eco soaps and shampoo bars.

Tucked away on Candlemaker Row is Little Blue Door, a haven for fans of 1980s and 90s fashion. Their curated collection is all about making a statement with bold, colourful prints. With its snug surroundings, it’s perfect for a solo browse when you’re in the mood to treat yourself.

Vintage Outfitters is on the trendier end of the vintage fashion spectrum with heaps of 1990s athleticwear and slogan t-shirts. They always have a good selection of sheepskin coats, which can certainly come in handy during Edinburgh’s cold winters.

Fifth Season Vintage is the place to go for timeless style with a great mix of statement pieces and understated classics. It’s worth visiting just for the groovy décor (if you’ve ever wanted to see an iconic 60s egg chair in person, this is your chance), but they also excel in giving wardrobe staples a new lease of life.

Upon entering Samaritans on Nicolson Street, you’ll be greeted by friendly staff and invited to check out their excellent selection of pre-loved fashion. There are no duds in this charity shop, just quality clothing, homeware, DVDs and books. Plus, you may even find a few vintage rarities.

Be open to opportunity

During Freshers, there will be loads of opportunities to try out sport tasters (usually free), societies will be running various events and so will your institution. So, take advantage of this unique time and immerse yourself in meeting new people while trying some awesome stuff.

Explore the city

Edinburgh is one of the most historic cities in the world and is right on your doorstep. Take advantage of the local buses and explore the rich history of the city. Have a go (if possible) at climbing Arthur’s Seat and take in the beautiful view over Edinburgh.

Create a sustainable study-and-life balance

Know the importance of assignments and revision, but remember: taking a break and relaxing is equally as important. It’s all about striking the right balance.

Little Blue Door

Fifth Season Vintage

Caffeine calculations Star student

Where to go for a coffee can often depend on why you’re going to a café in the first place: to catch up with pals or to finish that overdue assignment, for example. So here we offer up a handy Venn diagram for those work v pleasure caffeine dilemmas

Work Pleasure

For those times when you’re tired of studying all day in a stuffy Edinburgh library, you can’t beat Levels. Spread out over three, well, levels and with student-friendly prices and deals, it’s a great place to bang out that last-minute essay over a coffee or three. If you’re searching for a less studenty atmosphere, Burr & Co is the place to go. Their quick wifi, numerous charging outlets and quiet corners are perfect for getting work done.

One of Edinburgh’s most beloved coffee chains, Söderberg manages to expertly straddle the line between study spot and casual hangout. Grab coffee with a friend or fuel your lecture reading with one of their iconic cinnamon buns. Similarly, Edinburgh Coffee Lounge’s floral aesthetic makes it perfect for a brunch with the girls, but its quiet wooden booths (complete with blankets) are perfect for hunkering down and revising.

There’s no shortage of great cafés in Edinburgh to socialise in, but one of the best sits on the corner at Canonmills. Head to the cosy Singapore Coffee House for flavoursome sweet and spicy breakfast options, or just a traditional Singaporean coffee. Or if the queue outside is too large, why not opt for Urban Angel’s Instagram-worthy cakes and pastries instead?

Marli Siu, actress

Edinburgh Napier is where I met my best mates. It provided me with the opportunity to be around like-minded people and encouraged me to explore and develop my own creative practice and independence. Edinburgh is also a beautiful city and it has the Fringe every year! Every summer I got involved with it in some way, whether it was working in a box office or taking part in a show. The lead-up to the final deadline for our Fringe show proposal ended in several all-nighters at my friend’s house where we tried to write a play together and spent a lot of time messing about instead.

MON 7 - SAT 12 OCT

£20 student offer available Mon – Weds performances. Book by scanning QR code or visiting www.atgtix.co/HairsprayEdStu *Applicable on band D tickets. A limit of 4 tickets can be purchased at one-time. Valid ID must be presented with tickets upon entering the theatre.

Culture on e cheap

Yes it’s got more arts festivals than you can shake a stick at. But as Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh also has a long and storied history that has never been easier to explore, thanks to a multitude of cultural attractions which won’t cost you a penny

The National Museum Of Scotland is located just a stone’s throw from Bristo Square and entry is completely free. See the iconic Lewis Chessmen in person or admire centuries of cutting-edge fashion all in one building. For a more local history, the free Museum Of Edinburgh on the Royal Mile charts Edinburgh’s journey from medieval Auld Reekie to Athens Of The North. Those with an interest in medicine or the macabre can head to Surgeons’ Hall, which offers a substantial student discount. Visitors will find preserved anatomical specimens and learn about the advancement of surgical technology right up to the modern day.

Edinburgh also boasts four free National Galleries, all of which house works from some of the most iconic artists of all time. Particularly impressive are the two modern art galleries, handily named Modern One and Modern Two. Their permanent collection is grouped into rooms exploring various themes and both galleries also regularly host special exhibitions. Alternatively, the University Of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery (also free) aims to consider political and social issues with its contemporary group exhibitions. Wander through the gallery or have a go at some artwork of your own during their regular creative mornings and after-hours sessions. Students who are more interested in the filmic arts can look forward to discounted tickets at the Cameo, a century-old arthouse cinema. A further student discount is also provided to anyone who signs up for a free Picturehouse membership. The Cameo also has a cosy café bar with books, board games and even vintage film magazines.

Advice shop

The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier and HeriotWatt all offer counselling services for their students. In addition, students at Edinburgh Uni can access The Advice Place (eusa.ed.ac.uk/adviceplace) for help with wellbeing, accommodation and finances, while Napier students can contact the Keep On Track team (napier.ac.uk/wellbeing-support-andinclusion) for support if they are struggling with their studies. Heriot-Watt encourages students to download the SafeZone app (safezoneapp.com), which will connect them with on-campus safeguarding services in a crisis.

Universities aren’t the only port of call for help; there are plenty of city-wide and national resources as well. Edinburgh Crisis Centre (edinburghcrisiscentre.org.uk) provides a 24-hour helpline and face-to-face support via same-day appointments. If you’re dealing with more material problems like landlord harassment, unfair rent hikes or repairs not getting done, the tenants’ union Living Rent (livingrent.org) has your back. For financial worries, Edinburgh Council’s Advice Shop (edinburgh.gov.uk/benefits-grants/advice-shop) has an advice line as well as walk-in appointments to help with benefits, rent and council tax, and general money advice.

Surgeons’ Hall

Cameo

Making a difference

Student activism has a long and honourable history around the world, often at the forefront of societal change. Isy Santini caught up with Edinburgh University’s Justice For Palestine Society to find out what they hope to achieve through their campaigning

Universities have always been centres of activism. In the past year, the issue that has galvanised students worldwide has been the ongoing genocide in Gaza, with student encampments springing up on dozens of campuses. On 7 October last year, Hamas gunmen crossed the border into Israel, killing around 1200 people and taking more than 250 others as hostages. Since then, it is estimated around 40,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.

The Edinburgh University Justice For Palestine Society has been at the forefront of much of the activism in Edinburgh since October and before. ‘We’ve escalated the intensity of our actions as we transformed from an organisation into a movement,’ says a society spokesperson. Where previously EUJPS largely focused on teach-outs and educational screenings, this last year they have organised marches, library sit-ins and graduation walk-outs. It was their occupation of Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre and 40 George Square, however, as well as the Old College Encampment and accompanying student hunger strike, that captured the most attention. These actions were in the service of more than just education and raising awareness; EUJPS are also calling on the university to divest from companies complicit in genocide and apartheid, and to drop the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which conflates antisemitism and Zionism. ‘This is in itself an antisemitic conflation and we elevate the calls of our Jewish allies at Edinburgh University Kehillah for the university to adopt an alternative

Hot shot

Greyfriars Bobby

Greyfriars Bobby is Edinburgh’s resident good boy. According to local legend, Bobby loyally stayed by the graveside of his owner for 14 years after his death. Commemorated by a statue on the corner of Candlemaker Row and George IV Bridge, his nose shines gold because of all the rubs it has received over the years.

definition which distinguishes genuine antisemitism from criticism of Zionism and Israel, a 19th-century nationalist ideology and a political entity respectively.’ Lastly, they want the university to acknowledge and condemn the legacy of ex-Chancellor, Lord Balfour, whose 1917 declaration, they argue, affirmed British support for the establishment of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine. ‘Until a public acknowledgement and renouncement is done, this university continues to accept its role as an institution that upholds colonial frameworks in academia.’

With the new academic year approaching, EUJPS hopes to increase its pressure on the university. ‘Our plan is to make Palestine the number one topic of this campus and to make being part of this movement embody what it means to be an Edinburgh student,’ they say. ‘Rest assured, we will not be silent and we will continue to confront hypocrisy, double standards, suppression and silence wherever we see it.’ So with the genocide still occurring and with the university ignoring their demands, how can students get involved and help out? ‘Join us! EUJPS is always looking for new people, but more importantly, we are looking to build a culture of activism and resilience on our campus. Helping out starts with recognising your own power and lending that to others as they discover theirs. Eventually, that will culminate in something unstoppable.’

n For more info on student societies at Edinburgh Uni, including activist groups, check out eusa.ed.ac.uk/activities/list

Freshers’ hacks

Journalism graduate

Freya Deyell looks back over her time at Stirling University to offer three top pieces of advice to this year’s Freshers

On the town

So you want to go out?

Go Home and Study

Fubar

Stirling’s best (and only) nightclub. Red Card Wednesdays are about to become the most important night of your week. Get ahead of the game and don’t schedule any classes for Thursday morning

Join a club (no, seriously)

Sorry if you’ve heard this a million times before. Whether it be the big sports teams like football and netball or more niche societies dedicated to beer and AI, there’s bound to be something for you. Having a mutual interest is a solid basis for making friends and I met some of my best ones through joining my student newspaper.

Find yourself and your style

Living away from home and in a new place is the perfect opportunity to develop your sense of style. Get that haircut, buy that jacket, completely reinvent yourself if you want to: nobody really cares in the city and that can be really freeing.

Learn to cook

Fending for yourself can be a daunting task if you’re not overly confident in the kitchen and the student stereotype of living off noodles and takeaways exists for a reason. But if you can teach yourself to make a few decent meals, your guts (and wallet) will thank you.

In many aspects of life, it’s often a case of different strokes for different folks. So whatever your personality or tastes, we’ve pulled together this handy flow chart of bars and venues across Stirling to make sure you have the best night out

Introvert or Extrovert?

Dancing or Relaxing with a Drink?

Secret Party Animal or Film Buff?

Latest Releases or Old Favourites?

Nicky-Tams

The pub you’ve always dreamed of. Live music every night, the best pub quiz in town, amazing food served daily, and a cheeky 15% student discount. What more would you want from your local?

Meraki

Unwind in a cosy corner and enjoy a cocktail from Meraki’s extensive drinks list. With movie nights every month and constantly changing food options, it will take a few visits before making a dent in the menu Macrobert Arts Centre

With central Scotland’s leading cultural centre on campus, Stirling students get £2 off cinema tickets and £2.50 tickets for live performances, so there are no excuses to not support local

Star student

Ross Sayers, author

I studied English at Stirling University from 2010–2014, and then did a Masters in Creative Writing in 2015. It was during that time I began to write and realised I wanted to be a novelist: I handed in the first five chapters of my debut novel, Mary’s The Name, as my post-grad dissertation. In terms of non-academic stuff, I had a brief stint writing about films in Brig [Stirling’s student newspaper], where I argued about how good Jackass 3D was. I enjoyed a year in SUDS (Stirling University Drama Society) developing my craft as a ‘character actor’. And of course, I spent many a joyous day under those asbestos-filled tiles in the atrium. They don’t build ’em like that any more: for health and safety reasons.

Studying at a small university can be difficult when you’re wedged between two heavyweights like Glasgow and Edinburgh. I mean, come on: one is famed for its historic contribution to medical knowledge and the other has perfected its very own accent (much to the locals’ disdain).

However, what Stirling lacks in 1000 years of combined history, it makes up for in close neighbourly relationships. Despite gaining city status in 2002, Stirling has clung on to its small-town charm with a dating pool more like a pond: this does, in fact, have its usefulness.

Have you ever needed a little bit of background info on a crush? Forget Insta-stalking with the threat of liking old posts. Legend has it if you say someone’s name three times in a Stirling pub, their ex-girlfriend, last known employer and former primary school teacher will appear. You’ll be dating within the week.

As a bonus, the connections you make at Stirling really are for life. In bigger

Hot shot Size isn't everything

King Street

Our skies have been ablaze this summer with super moons, meteor showers and unmissable Northern Lights displays. But as students arrive in Stirling and the dark evenings draw in, here’s hoping we get a few more amazing sunsets like this one.

Rebecca Crockett sings the praises of Stirling and the unseen benefits of going to a smaller university

cities, when locking eyes with a stranger during a particularly brutal walk of shame, you can be safe in the knowledge that you’ll probably never see them again. But in Stirling, rest assured it’ll be the topic of some awkward small talk the next morning while you both wait for a bus that’s never going to come.

It’s true, many things make it hard to compete against larger cities. Glasgow’s nightlife makes ours look like Friday night bingo. Edinburgh has no rivals in terms of cultural hubs.

But Stirling? The one thing we have is community. If you go anywhere enough, whether it be the park or a café, someone will eventually recognise your face and will start looking for you in the crowd. A random pub in town could become a weekly ritual simply because they remember your drink order. The fact is, you can never be lonely at Stirling because there is always someone you know around the corner.