Music — 52 Film & TV — 54 Comedy — 55 Food & Drink

Music Now

It's as overwhelmingly busy for releases this month as it is for, well, everything, but we'll do our best to highlight some of the best music coming out of Scotland

Words: Tallah Brash

When we spoke to Johnny Lynch during the height of the pandemic he told us he’d been listening to a lot of early records and had in turn been working on some new “quite aggressive”, “quite uptempo” music. It’s been almost a year since that chat and so now exists Island Family (18 Mar, Fire Records/Lost Map), his fifth album as Pictish Trail, and it certainly lives up to Lynch’s promise. There’s so much going on in the titular opening track alone, from Beta Band weirdness to meaty programmed drums and ice cream van twinkles, but somehow it all works. You can practically picture Lynch roaming aimlessly around the Isle of Eigg in search of “the new sound”, and we’re delighted to report we think he might have found it; glitchy beats, unconventional song structures and thick riffs abound. Mining from his love of artists like Fever Ray, The Flaming Lips and Liars, fans of Animal Collective and Deerhoof will also find something to like on Island Family. Pictish Trail’s fifth record has truly allowed Lynch to fully explore the sort of sounds he loves to play around with making for his weirdest, most experimental and most exciting record yet. Following a collaborative appearance alongside Joell. at Wide Days in 2020, Edinburgh artist Billy Got Waves returns this month in his own right with Rocket Boy Act 1, the first in a three-part album release. Featuring the undeniable pipes of Young Fathers’ Alloysius Massaquoi on B.O.A.W., it’s a strong opening gambit from Billy Got Waves which doesn’t let up across its four tracks. Due on 4 March, the level of vulnerability found across Act 1’s lyrics, paired with pristine production from Glasgow’s S-Type and Nottingham-based beatmaker Baygee, we’re already excited for the next two chapters. From one Edinburgh artist to another, Lewis McLaughlin releases his debut album Feel the Ground You Walk Upon on 25 March via Monohands Records. The most striking thing about this record has to be McLaughlin’s voice and the utterly captivating way he enunciates his words, making everything he sings feel like a long-held Image: Lunch Concept Store hug. At times he sounds like a Scottish Nick Drake (especially on Still Looking); you can also just about hear the influence Bon Iver has had on this young artist. This debut record is a great introduction to an exciting talent. Set for initial release on 5 March as a 64-page book with digital download and lathe-cut 7”, the latest release from the Blackford Hill label comes from Scottish-Indian writer, musician and academic Arun Sood. Titled Searching Erskine, it’s a response to the uninhabited island of Vallay, just off the northwest coast of North Uist, where Sood’s grandmother Katie MacNaughton once lived. From Alice Allen’s mesmerising cello on Taigh Mòr and the unsettling Billy Got Waves piano on Above, An Abandoned Piano I and II, to Sood’s rich spoken word entries and the eerie quality of fractured conversations found across the record which offer glimpses of what life was once like on the island, Searching Erskine is a powerful body of work, deftly blurring the boundaries between ambient, folk and classical. Playing out almost like a film, Searching Erskine comes to a beautiful conclusion with Crossing (featuring Rachel Sermanni), which acts as a sort of ‘closing credits’ number, the kind that keeps you in your seat at the cinema long after the lights have come up. Another intriguing release this month comes from Istanbul-born, Glasgow-based Isik Kural, whose latest album in february arrives on 25 March via RVNG Intl. The album’s 12 tracks float by like a lullaby, each of its compositions made up from chance loops and found sounds which include everything from the flapping of pigeon’s wings to the tinkling of bicycles; the addition of Kural’s childlike vocal delivery across some of the tracks only adds to the soothing lullaby-nature of this gorgeous record. Known for his work in The Phantom Band, Duncan Marquiss releases Wires Turned Sideways In Time on 4 March via Basin Rock. On this, his debut solo record, Marquiss places the guitar front and centre, combining powerful manipulations of electronic guitar with acoustic ambience, making for a satisfyingly filmic experience that you’ll want to delve into again and again. Elsewhere, Happy Particles return this month with Every Room In My House Is In Darkness; Lomond Campbell is back with Lost Loops (25 Mar), made up of cuts from LŪP that would’ve otherwise been lost to the cutting room floor; Blanck Mass releases his Ted K OST (18 Mar); Peter Cat releases The Magus EP (18 Mar) and Arab Strap release their Aphelion/ Flutter 7” (4 Mar). The Ninth Wave’s latest – and final – record Heavy Like a Headache arrives on 11 March (read our full review overleaf), and Franz Ferdinand release their greatest hits record (turn to p38 for our chat with Alex Kapranos). Finally, celebrating International Women’s Day on 8 March, Hen Hoose pairing MALKA and AMUNDA release the gloriously bouncy and vibrant On the Up. [Tallah Brash]

Photo: Fiona Hunter

Music

Pictish Trail

Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul Topical Dancer Deewee, 4 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: Blenda, It Hit Me, Reappropriate Identity politics weigh heavily on Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s debut studio album, Topical Dancer. Both based in Belgium but with shared heritage from the FrenchCaribbean island of Martinique, the duo were paired together by the Dewaele brothers, aka Soulwax, and have previously released three EPs together on Deewee. But on their first release as an official duo, the explorations of their mutual mixed heritage are both celebratory and complex. On Esperanto, Adigéry challenges ignorant remarks often made to those from mixed backgrounds in a tonguein-cheek fashion: ‘Don’t say ‘But where are you really from?’ / Say ‘I don’t see colour.’’ And she continues exploring this idea on Blenda: ‘Don’t sound like what I look like / Don’t look like what I sound like to them.’ Across Topical Dancer, Adigéry sings in English, Dutch, Creole and French and her mother Christiane Adigéry even features on one of its tracks, Ich Mwen. The album feels as much a personal exploration of Adigéry’s own heritage and life experiences as it does a commentary on social attitudes. But, most importantly, it establishes Adigéry and Pupul as a real force to be reckoned with. [Nadia Younes] Jenny Hval Classic Objects 4AD, 11 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: American Coffee, Year of Love, Jupiter Classic Objects is Jenny Hval’s response to the pandemic. It makes little direct reference, but its simplicity and openness come from a desire to confront what art becomes when the artist is forced to look inward. Many artists choose this as a creative device, but the pandemic made it a necessity. The results are breathtaking. Hval’s voice has never sounded better: the upper range on Year of Sky; the intricate bobbing and weaving through the arrangement on Year of Love. There are moments of lyrical intrigue: nurses reciting philosophy on American Coffee; the fragmentary musing on The Revolution Will Not Be Owned that contrast with diaristic straightforwardness. And the arrangements are thoughtfully constructed, frequently catchy, sometimes stark, but always engaging, with a frequent dose of driving bongos. The softly undulating synths on Year of Sky make a bubbly bed for Hval’s searching voice, turning the mundane into the ethereal. There’s no hint of pretension in these explorations, nor is the embrace of melody a sign of commercial pandering (Cemetery of Splendour still manages to sneak in two minutes of crickets). This is untethered, uncluttered music, made with real heart by an artist at her peak. [Lewis Wade]

The Ninth Wave Heavy Like a Headache Distiller, 11 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: Maybe You Didn’t Know, The Morning Room, Everything Will Be Fine The Ninth Wave have long had the allure of a band who know exactly what they are and what they want to do. On album two, this has never felt more certain. Heavy Like a Headache continues their trend of seamlessly evading specific genrefication, and smacks of a band energised by and confident in their art. They retain that unique, almost Joy Division-like quality of creating tracks that are both darkly gloomy and yet joyously sway-worthy, while instrumentally and sonically, more developed and congruous electronic nuances lace the record together with a shiny silk thread. Lyrically, there’s a fresh air of vulnerability and personability too, as inward reflections indicate a newfound openness to depict difficult, personal perceptions and feelings – be that of anxiety (Maybe You Didn’t Know), shedding a shame that was never yours (What Makes You a Man), or loss (Piece and Pound Coins), piecing together a cathartic puzzle in the hope of achieving self-acceptance.

Heavy Like a Headache feels like the natural next step and successor to Infancy and Happy Days! Expanding on both to enhance their playfully experimental and yet confident, brooding sound, it strengthens their status as one of Scotland’s most exciting bands. [Dylan Tuck] Alex Cameron Oxy Music Secretly Canadian, 11 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: Oxy Music, K Hole Initially inspired by Nico Walker’s novel Cherry, and its depiction of the opioid crisis in America, Alex Cameron’s Oxy Music details narratives of addiction and struggle in a world obsessed with social media. Using this context of drug abuse, Cameron confronts the toxicity and vacuousness of a life lived online, while maintaining the tongue-in-cheek quips and brightness found on 2019’s sardonically blissful Miami Memory. From the existential balladry of K Hole to the incessant questioning of online-anonymity on Sara Jo, Oxy Music is laden with vividly drawn cultural critiques flippantly delivered in Cameron’s signature style. Highlights include: ‘Mosquito mass hysteria / I’m serving up malaria’ and ‘I’m in the kitchen on a cruise / I’m cooking up a codeine ragu’. While thematically not necessarily upbeat, Cameron’s playful compositions render a paradox of joy-in-struggle. The record ends with an energy that climbs, climaxing at its close with the title track. A lyrically dark, synthdriven pop-punch, Oxy Music exhibits the best of Cameron’s paradoxical compositions; the featured vocals of Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson adding real vigour. Without doubt, Oxy Music honours Cameron’s skill as a storyteller, and his unique ability to embed some of the most outlandish lines into sanguine melodies. [Bethany Davison]

Nilüfer Yanya Painless ATO Records, 4 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: stabilise, midnight sun, the mystic Where Nilüfer Yanya’s 2019 debut album Miss Universe often exudes warmth with its jazzy tones and lush textures, her follow-up, Painless, finds the London-based artist exploring more glacial territory (for the most part). On songs like trouble and try, guitars are plucked like icicles atop arrangements so glassy and spare you can almost see Yanya’s breath cast along the frozen space between bars like mist over a midnight lake. That’s not to suggest the album doesn’t have any clout though, as lead single stabilise proves in an instant with its addictive mix of pounding breakbeats, barbwire guitar and intoxicating chorus, surely hinting at long-term banger status. Then there’s midnight sun, which ruptures into a squall of pulverising shoegazey fuzz – one of the rare moments on the record which feels like every space is filled to the brim. While Painless is not so far removed from its predecessor that it could alienate existing fans, the closing brace of the mystic and anotherlife present some of the more interesting ideas here, exploring the complexities and capabilities of Yanya’s voice, as well as her more ethereal pop chops. If this is hinting at where she’s heading next, it’s very exciting indeed. [Ryan Drever] CMAT If My Wife New I’d Be Dead AWAL, 4 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: I Don’t Really Care For You, No More Virgos, 2 Wrecked 2 Care

Babeheaven Sink Into Me Believe, 18 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: French One, Open Your Eyes, Don’t Wake Me Babeheaven’s 2020 debut Home For Now channelled a distinct bedroom pop aesthetic. However, their followup Sink Into Me breaks down those bedroom walls and charters new territory, exploring much wider, airier and impressive soundscapes than previously heard from the London five-piece. This shift is instantaneous from opening track, and highlight of the album, French One. Dreamy, bossa nova-style rhythms set the tone before the drums pick up alongside lead singer Nancy Andersen’s exceptional vocal melodies. Holding On follows in a similar vein with fluctuating synths and guitars evoking hazy scenes, while Make Me Wanna correlates with the openness of Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes’ collaborative album, What Kinda Music. Andersen’s lyrics may be full of disillusionment throughout. Yet, there’s a sense of calm and hope that permeates throughout Sink Into Me, most noticeably on concluding track Open Your Eyes where glimmers of resolution float to the surface. The vocal melodies exuded on the album are irresistible. Paired with lush instrumentation, Sink Into Me is in a word, gorgeous, and the perfect soundtrack for a meander in the sunshine or a mellow morning in bed. [Jamie Wilde] Aldous Harding Warm Chris 4AD, 25 Mar rrrrr

Listen to: Fever, Passion Babe, Leathery Whip On If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, 25-year-old Irish singer-songwriter, pop star and all-round hook machine CMAT has delivered a nearperfect debut album. A delicious combination of yearning, soaring melodies and hilarious lyrics. A selection box of influences shine through in her look as much as her sound. The result lands somewhere heartfelt, hyper-feminine and distinctly CMAT. Shades of Dolly Parton, Katy Perry and Lana Del Rey are on display here. As she sings on the album’s opener Nashville: ‘I look and feel like Anna-Nicole, and that’s all I ever wanted’. Her electro past (she performed in the duo Bad Sea) can be felt on relatable lovelorn synthgroove No More Virgos. Countryinflected ballad Lonely is equal parts sad and silly, with CMAT asking questions no artist has braved before: ‘Who needs God, when I’ve got Robbie Williams?’ Her voice has rarely sounded purer than it does on album closer I’d Want U. This stripped-back lilting ballad is such a pitch-perfect country classic, it practically feels like showing off. And why not? CMAT is a pop tour de force who knows exactly who she wants to be and has all the talent to deliver it. [Tara Hepburn]

On Warm Chris, Aldous Harding can sound like Nico, Joni, Karen Dalton, Caleb Followill and a cartoon that wants to murder you. Voices, characters, divergent personas – they are all inhabited by Harding in her committed pursuit of throwing you off. What she actually means isn’t as important as how she wants you to feel. The words become untethered from time, often here backed by warm 60s sounding analogues, as she slinks in and out of something new and different. You can’t pin her down. From New Zealand but aptly based in Wales, she works in the same lane as Cate Le Bon, creating Cool Cymru-adjacent post-modern pop songs that defy easy analysis. Her imagery is off-kilter, sung in nursery rhyme-like melodies (like when she subverts the traditional children’s folk song She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain). The concept of life coming at you like a BDSM item on closer Leathery Whip, voices fluctuating in frequency, can be sort of sexy, pretty funny and deeply scary all at once. Ultimately, like the Henry Moore sculptures she mentions near the album’s end, Harding’s songs can be as mundanely lifelike from afar as they are strangely alien up close. [Tony Inglis]

Scotland on Screen: Lizzie Mackenzie

Documentarian Lizzie Mackenzie has already led a few different lives in one. We meet up with the Oban native ahead of the Glasgow Film Festival premiere of her debut feature The Hermit of Treig to find out about her fascination with outsiders and rebels

Interview: Rohan Crickmar

Filmography: The Hermit of Treig (2022)

i: @ofthewiild, t: @of_the_wild www.ofthewild.me Lizzie Mackenzie has brought along some porridge for our breakfast interview. Not the oaty kind but rather a fourlegged bundle of furry canine curls called Brochan – Gaelic for porridge. This restlessly curious filmmaker grew up on Seil, an island just to the southwest of Oban. “Growing up on Seil had a pretty massive influence on me,” she says. “As a result, I have always craved being in wild places.” It is her innate connection to wildernesses and nature that led to The Hermit of Treig. Having headed off to University in Edinburgh at the age of 19 to study environmental sciences, Mackenzie dropped out to pursue an alternative career path in the culinary arts. She opened a successful restaurant in the Highlands, the Corrour Station House, at the remote station on the West Highland Line that famously featured in Trainspotting. It was while running this restaurant that Mackenzie first became aware of Ken Smith, the eponymous hermit of her debut feature. “Local deerstalkers were our regulars at the restaurant,” she says, “and they would often mention this man who lived by himself in the surrounding woods.” The idea of a man who had spent many years living by his own rules in such a remote part of the UK struck a chord with Mackenzie at a crucial time in her own life. “The restaurant was a success,” she exImage: Courtesy Lizzie Mackenzie plains, “and I could see a clear career path ahead of me, but I also felt as if that was hemming me in.” So she sought out Smith. It was still a long journey from her first encounters with Smith to the completion of The Hermit of Treig. Mackenzie had no filmmaking experience whatsoever, but a serendipitous encounter with Edinburghbased doc-maker Léa Luiz de Oliveira (Spit It Out) led to her being offered an internship at the age of 27 with Amy Hardie, director of The Edge of Dreaming and Seven Songs for A Long Life. “Coming from Oban, filmmaking just wasn’t something that I thought I could really do. It just wasn’t an option.” Her mentorship with Hardie gave her a truly immersive crash course in documentary filmmaking. “I’ve always Lizzie Mackenzie and Ken Smith

“I’ve always thought that the best way to learn anything is through doing it”

Lizzie Mackenzie

thought that the best way to learn anything is through doing it and Amy really encouraged this approach.” After working with Hardie, Mackenzie tried and failed to get a short doc about Smith commissioned through SDI’s Bridging the Gap and ScreenSkills’ Rising Director schemes. However, when a serious incident with Smith’s health resulted in him being airlifted from rural isolation and making the national news, ScreenSkills changed their mind on the pitch, which ultimately led to three-minute short The Hermit of Treig. When it screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest as part of the Rising Director showcase, it garnered much interest from broadcasters and production companies, including Lousie Thornton at the BBC. A funding award at the 2020 edition of The Whickers (a documentary prize set up by the late Alan Whicker to help new documentary filmmakers) enabled Mackenzie to move forward with her feature. Mackenzie tells us it’s “good to be in the company of people who are living the lives they should be living” and not a life prescribed for them by society. In Smith, Mackenzie had found a character filled with awe for nature and the wilderness. She wanted to capture a little of the world through his eyes. Gradually she became aware of Smith’s photography and the meticulous diaries he keeps, stretching back to his youthful experiences travelling the Yukon. During her time with Smith, the pair became firm friends. “It became very hard to maintain this idea of an objective distance from Ken,” Mackenzie recalls, “and I was no longer certain that I needed to. It’s impossible to keep an emotional distance in such a relationship.” Mackenzie was still filming the feature as late as July of 2021, so a significant portion of production was affected by the new COVID realities. “When COVID hit, I had this mad idea that I needed to just live with Ken. I stocked up food, even bought a generator, before I realised how mad an idea it was.” Much of The Hermit of Treig is about this close friendship that emerged between the filmmaker and her subject, to the point where Mackenzie suggests “Ken ended up feeling like a grandfather to me.” Mackenzie is already well underway on a new film project. It seems it will continue her interest with rebellious outsider figures provoking and challenging our contemporary societal notions of human domesticity. Reflecting on her time spent with Smith in his wilderness retreat, she returns to this notion of people living the lives they should live. It is clear Smith is very much an example of this for Mackenzie and she even mentions that she hopes she “will be doing just that when she is 80.” Even having only spent 90 minutes in her unique company, we don’t doubt that Lizzie Mackenzie will continue to dance to the wild beat of her own curious drum.

The Hermit of Treig has its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival on 5 & 6 Mar, and screens at BFI Southbank, London on 11 Mar

The Worst Person in the World

Director: Joachim Trier Starring: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum rrrrr

Halfway through The Worst Person in the World, Julie (the mesmerising Renate Reinsve) freezes time, taking the opportunity to run through the streets of Oslo while every other citizen stands motionless around her. It’s a magical scene, and particularly liberating for Julie, who finally manages to exert some control over her life in this brief fantasy, before the film returns to the sticky reality of how the years can slip by while you try to figure out who you are. We see Julie try her hand at multiple career paths in the energetic prologue, and that sense of uncertainty never goes away as she vacillates between relationships in the subsequent 12 chapters. Building the narrative through these snapshots is a perfect template for Joachim Trier and his co-writer Eskil Vogt, who are so adept at creating standout moments. These moments can be wild – as in an eccentric drug trip – or intimate, such as the night-long flirtation between Julie and Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), which never quite crosses over into cheating. While Trier’s film is frequently dynamic and funny, a wistfulness emerges in the second half as the characters contemplate lost time and missed chances, with Anders Danielsen Lie’s prickly performance as Julie’s boyfriend Aksel becoming deeply moving here. Neither Julie, Aksel or Eivind deserve the sobriquet The Worst Person in the World; they’re just people trying to muddle through life as best they can, and this empathetic film allows us to see them in all their flawed humanity. [Philip Concannon]

Released 25 Mar by MUBI; certificate 15

Director: Clio Barnard Starring: Claire Rushbrook, Adeel Akhtar, Ellora Torchia rrrrr

Clio Barnard returns to Bradford with Ali & Ava, an exquisitely calibrated depiction of finding love right on your doorstep. Adeel Akhtar plays Ali, an aspiring DJ who’s keeping his marriage separation secret from his close-knit family. Claire Rushbrook’s Ava, meanwhile, is a classroom assistant preoccupied with nurturing everyone else, tending to her family of four kids – Barnard regulars Shaun Thomas (The Selfish Giant) and Natalie Gavin (The Arbor) are among the brood – and five grandkids. In social realist style, with the city often seen through car windows and under moonlight, observations are gently made about the nature of community. Ali diffuses a confrontation with local kids throwing stones, turning it into a dance party, but there remain lurking tensions, including hostility from Ava’s son. Music underscores Ali & Ava’s developing relationship. In a key scene, they listen to their favourite tracks separately, singing asynchronously yet joyfully, jitterbug Ali jumping on the sofa. As their connection deepens, they increasingly listen to each other’s favourite songs, integrating them into their daily lives. Adding each other to their playlists is a narrative clue, but it also says something of how these notational fragments reflect their avid listeners and resonate in the headphones of someone new. As the fragility of Ali and Ava’s romance unfolds under the waxing moon – a symbol for new beginnings – the film successfully reveals the complexity of someone arriving unexpectedly into your world and deciding whether to face life, and all its struggles, together. [Eleanor Capaldi]

Released 4 Mar by Altitude; certificate 15

The Worst Person in the World Great Freedom Ali & Ava Red Rocket

Great Freedom

Director: Sebastian Meise Starring: Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich rrrrr

Great Freedom makes its metaphorical, almost ironic title clear from the start, diving immediately and brutally into the harsh realities for gay men after World War II. Hans (Rogowski) has been doing short prison sentences ever since his liberation from a Nazi concentration camp, stumbling into charges of obscenity with full knowledge of the consequences in a West Germany still governed by Paragraph 175. While director Sebastian Meise masterfully commands a nonlinear narrative – jumping between places and times for key thematic repetitions – the mundane pattern of his existence and the joyous, if fleeting, connections he forges remain coherent and continuous. Rogowski, who excels in passion and its containment, is astonishing, carrying coiled and compounded traumas under Hans’ almost nonchalant approach to an uncompromised life. As Victor – Hans’ uneasy cellmate turned closeted ally – Georg Friedrich gives an equally compelling performance. The pair meet in 1945, 1957, and 1969 – Hans returning on repeated short terms, Viktor in for the long haul – their relationship wearing new unspoken layers that reframe interactions on a morphing timeline.

Great Freedom eschews easy answers for Hans and his companions, however long they may stay. Instead, unchanging experiences in supposedly changing times are the backdrop on which tiny rebellions play out, finding infinite variety in ever-closing walls. Ultimately, the film proves peace is unsustainable in a world content to criminalise difference, its shattering final moments burning self-congratulatory progress to the ground. [Carmen Paddock] Red Rocket

Director: Sean Baker Starring: Simon Rex, Suzanna Son, Bree Elrod rrrrr

With the iPhone-shot Tangerine and the pastel poverty drama The Florida Project, Sean Baker has proven a knack for getting dynamic performances out of non-professional and inexperienced actors. Red Rocket centres on porn star Mikey (real-life former adult entertainer and Scary Movie franchise actor Simon Rex), who’s returning to his impoverished Texan small town to try to rebuild his life, and the feverish drama cements Baker’s talent for spinning madnessfuelled stories that make you laugh while leaving a sick aftertaste. Baker and Simon’s collaboration gives us the strongest lead performance in the director’s filmography. Mikey is manipulative, pathetic and completely indefensible. His constant lying and sickly charisma make you anxious to let him ever leave your sight. The performance alone isn’t what makes Red Rocket engaging; the snappy editing has perfect comic rhythm and timing, making transitions punchlines as it effortlessly bounces to the next scene. As Mikey explores an alarming relationship with a 17-year-old, Strawberry (Suzanna Son), Baker tests the audience’s stomach for his protagonist’s vile behaviour. Mikey’s exploitation of an underage girl is extremely uncomfortable, but as we descend into his psychology, Baker makes his salient point: having a career in porn has broken Mikey’s brain, irrevocably damaging the way he sees people and ruining his ability to build relationships where he doesn’t benefit. Red Rocket, while feeling messy at points, is a chaotically-spun yarn about people on the fringes of society, one that’s regularly unpleasant, but always compelling. [Rory Doherty]

ICYMI

Glasgow-based multimedia comic David Callaghan takes a peek at the meta cult hit The Larry Sanders Show

Illustration: Miranda Stuart

Ihave never watched The Larry Sanders Show. It’s not that I didn’t know what it was, and indeed I’ve spent enough time with other comedians discussing it to be able to know that when they were holding their pint to their mouth I should say something along the lines of “It’s a metatextual masterpiece.” It’s among a few phrases you learn on the circuit that get you by. Honourable mentions also go to, “I don’t reckon that’s what actually happened,” and, “I saw him starting to do bits about how much of a feminist he was, so it was only a matter of time before something came out.” For those as uneducated as I was two days ago, let me smugly sprinkle you with some of my newfound knowledge. The Larry Sanders Show is a late-night television show about the making of a late-night television show. Garry Shandling plays Larry Sanders, a traditional American talk show host who deals with the pressures of the entertainment industry while also going on television every night. That’s right, you’re reading an article about a show about a show, which is likely a level of abstraction never intended from the original media. Admittedly, I am sorely tempted to see how far down this rabbit hole we could go. Maybe someone could write a poem about this article, and then somebody else do a TikTok dance based on that? In 200 years’ time, there could be entire discourses dedicated to one of the many films inspired by the genre created from this piece you’re reading, all part of the sprawling DCLSAU (David Callaghan Larry Sanders Article Universe). Hard right commentators from Reddit 4.0 will voice their disgust that the character Paragraph Three is played by a woman of colour. For the avoidance of doubt, I wish every paragraph to be played by a version of the hologram of Kim Kardashian’s father that Kanye West commissioned for her 40th birthday. They can be made distinct from each other with the use of comical beards and hats. The author has spoken, that’s now canon. Your move, Marvel. The issue with many sitcoms about other media is that the writers and performers of them are suited to making sitcoms. Whether it’s stand-up or dramatic theatre, the show within a show often feels forced and disingenuous. This is where Shandling shines. Touted by many to be the replacement for Johnny Carson before he handed The Tonight Show over to Jay Leno in 1992, Shandling brings a wealth of experience in latenight television to The Larry Sanders Show. The talk show monologues and wry guest interactions are entirely on point, which makes the contrast with the inner workings of late-night TV production stark and refreshing. The meetings with heads of the network in the very first episode, in which Larry is asked to perform his own commercials, are so delightfully irreverent of corporate America that they wouldn’t look out of place in a Talking Heads or Randy Newman video. They’re almost Lynchian in parts. That’s what makes this television show great. It’s about a group of people who are ‘playing the game’, while pointing out how absurd it all is. It respects that the audience has insight into the world they are satirising, gifting comedic moments like Larry’s producer Artie, played by Rip Torn, saying “I didn’t know Harrison Ford did impressions, his Carol Channing was terrific.”

The Larry Sanders Show is stuffed with character-driven anxiety, the best example being Larry’s onscreen sidekick Hank. Played by Jeffrey Tambor, Hank’s whole motivation is to grasp at a showbiz ladder that he is consistently worried will be kicked from under him. This is exemplified by his gratitude when Larry allows him to have two tarantulas placed on him during a show, despite his fear of getting bitten. To him, like everyone else in the show, potential death is a price worth paying for the immortality of showbiz fame. It’s wonderful and horrifying in equal measure; a grotesque caricature of an entire industry that viewers comfort themselves as too ludicrous to take seriously. The irony, of course, being that I am only truly appreciating Shandling’s work six years after his untimely death in 2016 – proving it entirely correct.

David Callaghan presents, Progranimate A multimedia comedy night as part of the Glasgow Comedy Festival

9 Mar, Old Hairdressers, 8pm, £4/£3

SANDO @ THE HIGH DIVE, EDINBURGH

Sando’s residency at The High Dive brings Japanese-inspired sandwiches, incredible cauliflower, and plenty of orbs to ponder Words: Peter Simpson

81-85 St. Leonard’s St, Edinburgh, EH8 9QY

Kitchen open Thu & Fri 4-10pm, Sat 11am-10pm, Sun 11am-4pm

sandoedinburgh.co.uk ‘Time is a flat circle’. ‘History repeats itself’. ‘There are no new ideas’. They’re interesting tropes, but it’s a bit weird to watch them unfold in front of you. You pick up a new beer, think it sounds interesting, look back and the entire fridge has restocked itself with that same style of beer. You hear vague mutterings about the 2000s making a comeback, and all of a sudden you can’t move for orange-flavoured editions of your favourite foods. Or maybe you look on social media and learn of the reopening of a bar that you remember from its first reopening. The High Dive in Newington, once an adjunct to Civerinos’ various pizza places, is now being run by the folk behind atmospheric cocktail-friendly bars Nightcap and the St. Vincent. There’s a new DJ booth, the drinks list has been refreshed, and the enormous colour-changing ball lights remain in

Photo: Gerald Warrack place so you can get your ‘pondering my orb’ photos in time for that meme making a comeback. A cool bar with good drinks which feels like it could turn into a massive party at any moment; truly, it’s our kind of place. But we’re here for the food, as Sando – the Japanese-inspired sandwich pop-up that’s been doing the rounds across the city over the past year – have taken over the kitchen. A much-vaunted sandwich pop-up settling down in a neighbourhood pub sounds like a familiar set-up, and we did write about basically this exact situation at the other end of town a few months ago, but to be fair, King of Feasts and Sando present two very different ideas. The King is a wildcard, a Joker, and every other card in the deck; a brilliant and mercurial chef who’ll try anything at least once. Sando feels much more measured and deliberate – the Japanese influence on the short menu of sandwiches and sides comes through in both the specificity of the dishes and the meticulous approach to their preparation. The bread is homemade Shokupan milk bread, the sauces are all made in-house, and the construction is impressively restrained. The O.G. Tonkatsu (£10) is a hefty, juicy slab of breaded and fried pork, sandwiched in some of that light and fluffy bread. There’s a smearing of tonkatsu barbecue sauce, some pickles and a bit of cabbage slaw, but this is all about keeping things simple and doing them well. The result is pretty delicious – it’s nicely balanced, pleasingly mellow but incredibly umami. The Kinoku Katsu (£8) is a similar set up, but with mushrooms replacing the pork, and it’s also impressive. Without an extremely rich piece of meat in the way, the subtleties in the slaw and sauce get a bit more room to shine. The best thing on the menu is the Karaage Cauli (£5). Again, we’ve had our share of Japanese-style fried vegetables on these pages recently, but this cauliflower blows all other cauliflowers out of the water. Beyond a crunchy exterior is a melt-in-themouth texture that will make you question exactly what is going on, as the chunks somehow end up fresh, crispy, chewy and creamy all at the same time. Throw on some Japanese mayonnaise and a bit more of that excellent tonkatsu sauce and it’s an absolute winner. Sando are making great sandwiches, and their laser focus and excellent choices make The High Dive well worth checking out. It’s weird to watch trends play out in real time, but if this particular wave results in pubs all across the city serving up delicious and exciting sandwiches, we’re on board.

Photo: Gerald Warrack