The Cellar’s Reckoning I. Where the broad, brick picket of chimney noses into the cellar dirt, a hemlock post spans from joist to shale slab and bears its share of the house’s weight, but also the firm, deliberate strokes and scrolls of a hundred-year old hand, tallying bushels of potatoes stored in that false, dank […]
Patience and place are two key components to Kate Mosse‘s approach to writing. For Mosse, the best-selling author of the Languedoc trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre, and Citadel), as well as the novels The Winter Ghost and her most recent The Taxidermist’s Daughter (not to mention the short stories, earlier novels, non-ficiton, and plays!) stories come when […]
You’ve got to be cool When you walk in And your head spins And your tongue wriggles Like a fish out of water And all the faces Are doors to strange Unknown lands You need a cigarette In your hands You’ve got to be cool When the big man Calls out your name You’ve got […]
The giant porpoise of the sky Swims over the village after dark. Moon irradiation renders it invisible But I can feel the down-draft from its tail-fin Even on the stillest night. Every darkness when it is deepest – Which means closest to us – I hear it sing distinctly; Sympathetic; I vibrate – A leaf […]
Arkells, for many people – particularly outside Canada, may be a new band, but they come fully formed off the back of three surprisingly well-crafted albums, Jackson Square, Michigan Left, and their latest High Noon. Their first album Jackson Square, in 2010 won them a presigious Juno award for best new band, and in 2012 […]
“Here, perhaps the frightful expression ‘consumption of music’ really does apply after all. For perhaps this continuous tinkle, regardless of whether anyone wants to hear it or not…will lead to a state where all music has been consumed, worn out. In [Wilhelm] Busch’s time, music was still often (at least, not always!) ‘found disturbing’, but […]
Lake Street Dive, the four piece band formed ten years ago whilst students in the New England Conservatory of Music, take their name from a street of dive bars in Minneapolis. A strange combination – classically trained music and dive bars – but combinations are at the heart of this exceptionally talented band, whose third […]
How do you begin to describe the soul and funk legend that was / is James Brown? Well, if you’re Rolling Stone you choose one of America’s best contemporary novelists, Jonathan Lethem, and send him to spend time around Brown (who dubbed him ‘Mr Rolling Stone’ – going so far as to sing, off the […]
Young Fathers, who won the 2014 Mercury Music Prize, were formed in 2008 in Edinburgh. Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and ‘G’ Hastings met at the Yard MCs’ under-18 hip hop night Lickshot at the old Bongo Club in Edinburgh, and formed a band with one eye on hip-hop, and the other on pop. They originally […]
