Pay to play

There are many reasons to love Los Campesinos!, and one of them is their refreshing transparency about the realities of being in a band. Take this blog post, for example, in which Gareth offers a candid insight into the economics of their recent gig in Dublin - their first show outside the UK, the US and Canada since 2014.

For anyone inclined to grumble at the steadily rising cost of gig tickets and bemoan artists' reluctance to tour extensively, it's an eye-opening read. The alarming reality is that a band of their stature can sell out a 520-capacity venue in around two hours, at 25 euros a ticket, and yet still end up making a loss of over £1,700.

Perhaps most staggering is the fact that the venue, the Button Factory, charged £2,500 (up from the standard £1,000) because LC! insisted on the gig being 14+, to compensate for the (presumed) lack of bar takings. It would be interesting to know how many under 18s were in attendance - but massive credit to the band for sticking by their principles, even at considerable personal cost. Ultimately, as Gareth argues, "[i]f we want kids to be excited about live music, why would we want to exclude them at an age where they're developing these interests?" In a climate of declining attendances and closing venues, this is very much an attitude to be commended.

The breakdown of earnings and costs is also revealing in terms of the value of merch sales and the financial and administrative burden of the red tape imposed after Brexit.

Gareth acknowledges that LC! are seven strong, with three crew members, and that there are certain things that they won't scrimp on - but the fact that they have no manager on the payroll and marketing costs were zero and yet they still ended up in the red really underlines quite how tough the current climate is.

Game on

For anyone wondering how Geoff Barrow was going to keep himself busy after quitting Beak>, here's your answer: by following in Warp's footsteps and launching a film division of his record label. (No doubt he's bristling at being described as "Portishead co-founder" - sorry, Geoff...)

Invada Films' debut offering will be Game, which is "set against the backdrop of the 1990s rave culture where two men - one a thief and one a poacher - must use their wits to survive". It sounds like the perfect project for Sleaford Mods' Jason Williamson, who co-stars with Marc Bessant.

"A way of seeing"

Martin Parr is a polarising figure - but love him or loathe him, I don't think you can deny that our highest-profile documentary photographer is a worthy subject for a film. Director Lee Shulman may be an avowed fan, but thankfully he remains savvy enough to prevent I Am Martin Parr from becoming merely a fawning tribute.

Buzz review here.

Shorts and sweet

The righteous force of nature that is Andrew Falkous of Mclusky and Future Of The Left is of the opinion that no band should have more than one member wearing shorts on stage at any one time. A sentiment I'd wholeheartedly endorse - but when it comes to the Norwegian joy bomb that is Pom Poko (three-quarters of whom were be-shorted at their gig at Clwb on Friday night), I think allowances have to be made.

Buzz review here.

In memoriam

Very welcome news from Northumberland: Mik Critchlow's work is to be held at the Woodhorn Museum. Over the course of more than four decades, the photographer documented life in the coalfield community that he and his family called home, chronicling in particular the changes brought about (and devastation wreaked) by pit closures. The long-running project culminated in the wonderful Coal Town exhibition at the Museum in 2021, two years before his death. I can't wait to visit the new permanent exhibition, which opens in May.

On a related note, hats off to Sam Fender for giving the pictures of another North Eastern photographer greater exposure. His latest record People Watching features images taken by Tish Murtha, who he described as an "absolute legend": "It's an honour to be able to use her art to help tell the story of the album." As ever, though, it's bittersweet - Murtha having not lived long enough to witness her work finding its rightful acclaim.

Growing pains

For publishers, explicitly drawing parallels with a runaway bestseller in the blurb for your latest novel is a calculated risk. On the one hand, it can act as a helpful signpost, attracting the attention of a much larger readership than it might otherwise have had; on the other, it can have the whiff of desperate bandwagon jumping, and set the book up for a fall if (as is likely) the comparison proves to be more of an unflattering contrast.

I can’t comment on whether Cold Grace is indeed “for readers of Where The Crawdads Sing”, having not read Delia Owens’ book – but I can appraise Meredith Miller’s fourth novel (and second for Welsh imprint Honno) on its own terms. And indeed I have, for Buzz, here.

Bear: necessity?

There's no doubting - for me, at least - the quality of Panda Bear's new album Sinister Grift. What remains a concern, however, is whether it will translate successfully live, at Green Man - or whether the performance will be an awful echo of the horrible shambles that was Animal Collective at Glastonbury 2009...

Buzz review here.

Dark matter

Crude and uncharitable though it may be to say it, but, as was the case with their previous outings, The Murder Capital's latest album Blindness would sound markedly better if Fontaines DC didn't already exist. Not a record to deliberately avoid, by any means, but one that only really impresses when it offers deviation from the norm.

Buzz review here.

For research purposes

You've heard of Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos (or at least you should have) - but what about "Timothy Leary's psychedelic guinea pigs"?

The fact that the guinea pigs in question were Al Jourgensen of Ministry and Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers explains a lot. Their residence with Leary was short lived - especially for Haynes, following an unfortunate drunken micturation incident...

Selling points

Simon & Schuster's decision to no longer require authors to get blurbs for their books has stimulated quite a bit of debate, and I must admit to being somewhat on the fence.

On the one hand, I appreciate that this takes some of the pressure off authors - especially those being published for the first time, who feel the need to prove their worth - and that the current practice can seem emblematic of (in the words of Simon & Schuster's Sean Manning) "an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent".

On the other, as a reader, I'm much more likely to pick up a book that has been enthusiastically endorsed by a writer whose own work I love than if the only promotional copy has been penned by a member of the publisher's in-house marketing team. I dread to think how much I might have missed out on if I hadn't been tipped off by someone whose opinion I respect. Algorithms be damned; personal recommendations remain the best way of discovering new art, books or otherwise.

"I've listened back to that and wondered what we were thinking"

End Of The Middle is a special album, no doubt - but it's far from the first time that Rich(ard) Dawson has released a dazzling record. Here he talks to JR Moores for Bandcamp about its predecessors, from 2011 debut-of-sorts The Magic Bridge, to 2022's The Ruby Cord and its 41-minute-long beast of an opener, The Hermit.

The good food guide

Jay Rayner decided to dedicate his final Observer Food Monthly column to the key points of the previous 180 - and it's hard to disagree with any of them, whether that's that the practice of tipping should be abolished, that "[w]aiters should always write down orders" or that "food should always, always be served on plates".

"Gravy stains down your shirt are not a source of embarrassment; they are a badge of honour." Amen!

"The kitchen knives in holiday rentals are always terrible; take your own." My mum's not the only person nodding in agreement.

"Most dishes can be improved with the addition of bacon"? Objection, your honour! I can only assume that by "most" he means "all".

The art of the review

What makes for a good album review?

One that, when you listen to the record in question, has you excitedly and repeatedly exclaiming of the reviewer "Yes, they absolutely nailed it!"?

Undoubtedly, yes.

One that helps you to understand a set of songs that, until that point, seem to have made no sense at all, and enables a newfound appreciation of what you're listening to?

Absolutely (and I'm thankful to this sort of review on a regular basis).

Or one that is so compelling that you feel the urge to listen to the album the moment you've finished reading, or indeed before you've finished, regardless of whether you have any prior knowledge of the artist?

Rarer, perhaps, but no less precious.

Emma Garland's Quietus review of Ethel Cain's new LP Perverts falls into the latter camp. It more than piqued my interest; it made me want to stop what I was doing that instant and experience for myself what she was writing about.

The reality is that, in spite of high hopes, I took an almost immediate and visceral disliking to Perverts as pretentious, directionless nonsense.

But this isn't to bemoan Garland's review - not least because she pre-empts just such a reaction to the record, making no bones about the fact that it's "a boundary-pushing work that, depending on the listener, could be considered either powerfully engrossing or deeply alienating".

On the contrary, it's to say that such pieces make the case for music writing being considered an art form in its own right. Personally, at least, I don't feel cheated at the album having been oversold, just as I wasn't overly upset to discover that some (or indeed many) of the records described so enthusiastically and engagingly in books such as Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up And Start Again and Harry Sword's Monolithic Undertow fail to live up to their billing. Garland's review and Reynolds and Sword's books are all testament to the capacity that music has to stir the intellect and the emotions - and the power that the written word can have, in the right hands.

Much ado about nothing

Admittedly, a Clwb triple bill headlined by noiserock supergroup The None and also featuring locals Obey Cobra and Beauty Parlour didn't make for a conventionally romantic Valentine's Day evening - but love was in the air all the same. 

Buzz review here.

Nouveau Rich

As a reviewer required to digest, rate and file copy on albums weeks and sometimes months in advance, it can be slightly daunting to have to nail your colours to the mast. Will your appraisal turn out to be wildly wide of the mark, or out of step with the consensus? (The Manics' Critical Thinking, for instance, seems to have been rather better received than I'd anticipated - not that that has changed my view on it much.)

With Richard Dawson's latest, there was no such anxiety; on the contrary, I was confident that I'd be just one of a chorus of writers singing its praises - and so it's proved.

While The Ruby Cord began with the remarkable 41-minute-long track 'The Hermit', End Of The Middle does the opposite trick: gradually gathering momentum until the last few tracks leave you breathless. It's further (entirely superfluous) proof that Dawson is a genuine one of a kind.

Buzz review here.

Honesty: the best policy?

Sadly, life being what it is, gone are the days of being able to binge watch major boxsets (I genuinely don't know how we found the time, or how any of my peers still do). So when a series comes along that is both weighty in subject matter, depth and richness but also relatively short and served up in easily consumable chunks, I'm inclined to take note.

The BBC's Mr Loverman - an eight-part adaptation of Bernadine Evaristo's novel of the same name, done and dusted in four hours - certainly fit the bill.

At the heart of the drama is Barrington Walker (Lennie James), a dapper dandy and cad in his 70s, a paterfamilias and pillar of his local community in London who just so happens to have been conducting a secretive gay affair with fellow Antiguan emigre Morris (Ariyon Bakare) for the last 50 years. The blue touchpaper is lit when Barry, having lived a lie for so long but aware he's entering his twilight years, decides it's finally time to come clean to those closest to him.

That means confessing to his long-suffering wife Carmel (Sharon D Clarke), who disapproves of his carousing and boozing and suspects extra-marital dalliances (albeit with women), and his two daughters. And it also means - in Morris' view, at least - taking a step towards being out and proud in public.

It turns out to be an even bigger challenge than Barry could have imagined, and he finds himself hamstrung by inertia and indecision. There are constant reminders of the homophobic prejudice of his cultural milieu that has caused him to conceal his true identity all these years. The illness and then death of Carmel's father back in Antigua puts the confession on ice, while his instinctive revulsion at Morris' suggestion of marriage - at odds with his free-spiritedness, as well as his desire to keep his homosexuality somewhat under wraps - threatens to fatally derail the affair.

What is remarkable is that - while the series cultivates sympathy for Barry as a man caught in an impasse, whose life is unravelling as he sinks into alcoholism - the other key protagonists are also fully rounded characters treated with generosity. Carmel might initially come across as sour and resentful, but she's been ground down by living in a loveless marriage for half a century - a marriage for which, it transpires, she has sacrificed her potential happiness by bringing a short-lived affair of her own to an abrupt halt. Morris knows the meaning of sacrifice too, having lost his wife and children and had to look on as his lover continued to have his cake and eat it.

Mr Loverman is a sensitive, superbly acted portrayal of a complex situation in which everybody is hurting - but a portrayal that is lightened by comic touches and Barry's wit and charm, and that ultimately stands as a celebration of the courage required to be authentically oneself.

"A direct assault on the historical record"

It's too blunt to claim that the camera never lies - perspective can be deceptive, after all - but Nate Gowdy's eyewitness images of the January 6 storming of the Capitol tell an infinitely more reliable truth than the narratives "recasting insurrection as resurrection" that have since emerged. Those narratives have been validated by Trump's pardons and the subsequent release of "J6 Patriots".

Little wonder that Gowdy is bewildered by what has transpired - and the fact that MAGA meatheads are now legitimately back in the building. As he wrote in a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, photojournalism may be a beleaguered profession but retains a vital role as a bulwark against revisionism and propaganda: "My photographs document a moment when democracy teetered, the nation's timeline itself an active crime scene. As newsrooms contract and misinformation swells, independent journalists stand at the breach - not just to preserve truths that others reject, but to ensure the past isn't rewritten to fit the present. The pardons don't just forgive, they endorse, transforming accountability into proof of persecution. Without our work, this chapter, too, will be lacquered in sepia and sold as heritage."

Star quality

Jay Rayner, once critical of Cardiff's food scene, has in recent years understandably updated his opinion - and his verdict isn't the only marker that things have changed. Last night it was revealed that Gorse has been awarded a Michelin Star - the first of any establishment in the capital.

Having paid Tom Waters' Pontcanna restaurant a lunchtime visit back in the summer, soon after it opened, I can vouch for the validity of the Michelin Guide inspector's comments - especially the reference to restraint and how "every composition [is] expertly balanced in a way that underscore[s] Waters' brilliant understanding of flavours".

I suspect a Michelin Star may attract more attention than a glowing Buzz review; whatever draws more people into sampling his cooking is to be welcomed.

A day in the lives

In many ways, I wish I'd read If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor's debut novel, before Reservoir 13, the book that first introduced me to McGregor's writing. If I had, then it would no doubt have blown me away, as it did many an astonished reviewer.

For McGregor, "remarkable things" are to be found everywhere; as in Reservoir 13, his focus is very much on the ostensibly mundane minutiae of life. Painting a portrait of a city street in masterful, sleek prose, he builds up a bigger picture of innumerable separate personal dramas - both joyous and painful - unfolding behind every front door.

In this instance, however, the narrator's bird's-eye view seems less sinister, obtrusive and voyeuristic, and the tragic events that animate the story come not at the beginning, gradually fading from view, but loom ever larger as the book moves towards its conclusion.

Nothing in this novel is more remarkable than the opening section, transcribing "the song of the city" at night in deceptively simple yet rapturous terms as it temporarily falls silent - though that's certainly not to say that what follows is a letdown. Far from it.

"A nouveau dish altogether"

Did everything really go to shit as soon as Fugazi went on indefinite hiatus in 2003? As my wife - a scientist - is fond of saying, it seems like a case of correlation rather than causation. But JR Moores is not one to shy away from a grand thesis (even a tongue-in-cheek one) - and who's to say he's not got a point?

Not that any excuse should be needed, but the documentary WE ARE FUGAZI FROM WASHINGTON D.C. has prompted him to pick one song from each Fugazi release for praise for a Quietus article - from the lyrically controversial 'Suggestion' to the wonderful 'Epic Problem' from swansong LP The Argument, via (among others) End Hits' 'Pink Frosty', which is "as if Fugazi were trying to deconstruct themselves back down into virtual silence".

I'm one of those for whom 1993's In On The Kill Taker is the "triumphant apex" - as good as what came after is - so I don't buy Moores' narrative that each album was an improvement on the last. But what's undeniable is that, unlike so many other artists, they never settled into comfortable complacency. Quite the opposite - they sought to escape the hardcore straitjacket and grew admirably more uncompromisingly ambitious with every release.

Which is part of why he's right to be fearful of a reformation. Commiserations/apologies to anyone who didn't see them first time around, but I hope they're never tempted to step back into the limelight.

A sentimental journey

A Real Pain is one of those films where not a great deal happens, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it's about, but it stays with you for days (indeed now a couple of weeks) after you've left the auditorium.

In a nutshell, two Jewish American cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) team up to travel to Poland, join a guided tour and visit the place where their late grandmother grew up, but end up finding out more about themselves and each other. Once bosom buddies, they've drifted apart - life inevitably driving a wedge between them - but are trying to reconnect as best they can.

It's an incongruous duo road movie of sorts, albeit with much greater depth, nuance and heart than staples of the genre might imply. Neither is it played purely for laughs - though it's frequently very funny (the statue posing scene in particular).

Eisenberg - also the writer and director - is excellent as the uptight, mildly neurotic David, but Culkin undoubtedly steals the show as the whirlwind/dynamo Benji. On first impressions charming, carefree and the life and soul of the party, he's unable to keep the mask on forever, inner troubles gnawing away at him to an extent that his cousin cannot comprehend, despite best efforts. Sometimes a shoulder to lean/cry on is all you can offer, but also all that is needed.

Chart failure

On Friday, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite delightedly posted on Bluesky that his band's new album The Bad Fire had reached "#5 UK, #1 Scotland": "It's absolutely unreal seeing such support after all these years. It means the world. Thank you all so much."

Even allowing for the fact that its predecessor As The Love Continues hit the UK top spot in 2021, Braithwaite's words ring true; it's remarkable that a band as supposedly obtuse as Mogwai can find themselves chart toppers, especially for someone like myself who's been with them for nearly every step of the whole journey. His bewilderment and pride are quite understandable.

But, without wishing to trash the achievement entirely, there is a big caveat, and one that the BBC's Mark Savage hinted at in his recent interview feature with Braithwaite: As The Love Continues triumphed over Dua Lipa and Harry Styles for "one glorious week" four years ago (and The Bad Fire achieved similar success this January) because Mogwai were "aided by chart rules that place higher value on physical record sales over streams when calculating rankings" and so - as "a cult band with a fanbase that prizes vinyl - found the scales tipped in their favour".

In a recent article for the Guardian, Eamonn Forde was pointedly critical of these rules, turning his nose up at the "increasingly fusty scent of anachronism". He explained: "Streaming comprised around 85% of the total recorded music market last year, while physical sales made up 13%, and downloads the remainder. For all the hoopla about 'the vinyl revival' and the industry pointing to a CD renaissance around the corner, streaming effectively is the market - yet the album is the unit the industry persists on using to calculate success."

His point is crystal clear: "In 2025, trying to explain success in 'album' terms is archaic at best and desperately unfit for purpose at worst. It is taking the biggest part of the market and trying to explain it through the language of the smallest part."

Now, I'm no streaming evangelist; on the contrary, I'm as ardent a fan of the physical artefact as anyone (albeit CDs rather than vinyl), and retain a firm faith in the significance of the album as an artform, refusing to believe that it might be an endangered species, threatened by shortening attention spans and playlist culture.

But even I have to concede that when it comes to assessing success/sales, the status quo seems strangely and indeed unjustifiably skewed, and that Forde's conclusion is very hard to dispute: "[I]f the record business is to truly speak from the 21st century, it at least needs to establish a new and appropriate system of tabulation and stop reaching for the buckled abacus of yesterday."

Critical critique

I'm still a Manics fan and want to like their albums, I really do. So it doesn't give me any pleasure to report that their latest, Critical Thinking, is - if you do indeed think critically, seeing through sentiment, PR hokum and Wire's own track-by-track guide supplied to reviewers, which seems to relate to a record that exists only in his imagination - a real dud. Buzz review here.

Interestingly, the Guardian's Phil Mongredien has given a very similar characterisation of the album, though considerably more generous/charitable in his evaluation. "Growing older ... gracefully" is one way of putting it; "growing older boringly" is another.

Like the very fine 'The Secret He Had Missed' on predecessor The Ultra Vivid Lament, there's a track inspired by Welsh-born painter Gwen John - and more specifically by Sue Hubbard's poetic biography God's Little Artist, which Wire's wife bought at the recent exhibition of John's work held at Bath's Holborne Museum. Any opportunity to plug what is a marvellous little volume.

Going underground

When, towards the end of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad, one of the characters refers to "the secret beneath us", he's talking about the titular railroad - in actuality, a metaphorical term for the network of sympathisers and safe houses that enabled people to escape slavery in America's Deep South, but in Whitehead's fiction, in a brilliant magic realist conceit that caught me totally by surprise, a literal railroad facilitating escape and evasion.

By this late point in the book, however, it's clear that "the secret beneath us" has a double meaning; it also refers to the dark, brutal history on which supposedly civilised modern America is built. As has been noted earlier, "[t]his nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft and cruelty".

Drawing on the testimonies of real-life slaves, Whitehead pulls no punches in detailing the savagery of life on plantations. He captures in visceral terms the sadistic horrors of punishment, perhaps most shockingly in an instance of sexual torture and immolation performed before a largely indifferent well-to-do white audience apparently more interested in enjoying their host's hospitality.

Slaves are utterly dehumanised: "Every name an asset, breathing capital, profit made flesh." As a medical student and gravedigger's accomplice reflects, "when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist. In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man's equal."

Whitehead is, however, careful to underline that the violence is not only perpetrated by white slaveowners and their minions against Black slaves. "Men start off good and then the world makes them mean" - and sure enough, some of the Black characters are complicit, aping the attitudes of their masters and seizing the opportunity to become oppressors rather than merely oppressed.

Whitehead's wonderful heroine Cora may be repeatedly victimised, but she steadfastly refuses to play the role of victim. Parentless, she grows up fierce and feisty, not afraid to take on injustice. Like her mother, Cora plucks up the courage and resolve to flee her plantation in Georgia, and the novel develops into a game of cat and mouse, her nemesis the dogged slavecatcher Ridgeway in hot pursuit across the country.

Along the way she finds herself, courtesy of supposedly enlightened folk in South Carolina, on display as a living exhibit at the Museum of Natural Wonders - a grimly ironic echo of the dehumanising objectification she has fled. Cora, characteristically, fights back: "She picked the weak links out from the crowd, the ones who broke under her gaze. The weak link - she liked the ring of it. To seek the imperfection in the chain that keeps you in bondage. Taken individually, the link was not much. But in concert with its fellows, a mighty iron that subjugated millions despite its weakness."

The Underground Railroad is a phenomenally powerful, deeply unsettling novel, but it's Cora's unbreakable spirit and defiant rejection of her lot that drives the reader to devour the pages. Even then, though, she cannot entirely escape her fate: "Cora thanked the Lord that her skin had never been burned in such a way. But we have all been branded even if you can't see it, inside if not without."

Fire brigade

It feels like an absolute age since my first exposure to the new Mogwai album, such are the requirements of reviewing deadlines and winter breaks. While I wouldn't say that The Bad Fire pushes the band in a bold new direction or is likely to win over hordes of sceptics and new fans, there's certainly enough novelty to capture and hold the interest of anyone who's been with them from the start.

Buzz review here.

Studio wizardry

I first came across David Wrench in his role as one half of the wonderfully weird pop duo Audiobooks, but it turns out that the man who looks like a wizard is actually more renowned as a producer/mixer with the magic touch.

Back in October, the Guardian's Daniel Dylan Wray spoke to him about a trajectory that's wound up with him working with Blur and Frank Ocean and along the way included cutting his teeth recording metal bands, immersion in the Welsh-language music scene, "a Nick Cave-esque solo album" and taking career advice from Julian Cope.

Bad Moon rising?

Two months since it suddenly shut down, Cardiff venue the Moon is back - well, sort of.

It's been rebranded as the New Moon, complete with a naff logo and even naffer slogan ("Making the DIFFerence"), and is promising to deliver "Motown, Soul, Old School Bangers and the best talent around!" That awful descriptor "urban" has been bandied about too.

Part of the charm of the Moon was that its doors were open to anything and everything. The glorious Cosmic Carnage all-dayers - and, for that matter, the folk nights - are clearly very much a thing of the past.

Such is the state of the live music scene in Cardiff that I'm loath to shit on anywhere new opening up - but this latest venture looks decidedly dubious.

Fatal attraction

First and foremost, it's worth stating that I'm not really a member of Nosferatu's core demographic, so the fact I found it very silly probably shouldn't count for that much - not least because when it comes to vampire movies, that pretty much goes with the territory.

For me, Robert Eggers' remake of the 1922 original is visually stunning (albeit CGI-enhanced, no doubt) but somewhat vacant. While the gore and soundtrack were effective, I found it hard to take seriously the voice that Bill Skarsgard gives to the titular wrong 'un. It's always good to see Ralph Ineson in action, though, and Simon McBurney puts in a sterling performance as Herr Knock.

Was the EastEnders-esque finale, with one chap walking in to find another man in bed with his wife, supposed to be so funny? Doubtful - and, as happy endings go, it's rather more unusual than most.

By the book

Last month I heard David Hurn talk about his then fresh-off-the-press photobook On Reading, a tribute to his hero Andre Kertesz. The Guardian have now published a selection of the images, taken around the world over the course of his long career, so you can get a flavour of its contents.

Heart on sleeve

If there's one thing that turned me off checking out Romance, the latest album by Fontaines DC - a band whose previous output I've enjoyed with steadily increasing enthusiasm - it was lead single 'Starburster'. If there was a second, it was the bizarre Korn-inspired makeover. If there was a third, it was the cover featuring the work of Taiwanese artist Lulu Lin. So it was bemusing and baffling to discover that Romance was named runner-up for the Best Art Vinyl award for 2024. What were the judges on?!

By contrast, the inclusion of Arab Strap, Sex Swing and Julia Holter in the list of nominees seemed rather more reasonable.

At the heart of things

Little wonder that Sam Dabb of Le Pub was so bullish in her comments to NME recently, claiming that Newport was "heading into another golden era". She knew that the venue she's been involved with for three decades was on the verge of being announced as the latest acquisition by Music Venue Properties (MVP), thus staving off acute financial pressures and safeguarding its future.

That Le Pub has joined the Bunkhouse in Swansea in MVP's portfolio shouldn't come as any real surprise. After all, as Mark Davyd of the Music Venue Trust has said, "Le Pub was one of the very first venues to join the Music Venues Alliance, and has been, for the last ten years, one of the most vocal and active campaigning voices about the importance of grassroots music venues to our communities, towns and cities". The security that ownership by MVP will bring seems like just desserts.

National treasure

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Michael Sheen has once again confirmed his status - in general, but especially in these parts - as an all-round good egg by announcing that he's spearheading the establishment of a new national theatre for Wales.

The Welsh National Theatre will step into the void left by the National Theatre Wales, which effectively went out of existence late last year after its Arts Council of Wales funding was slashed. While talk suggests that the NTW wasn't a particularly well-run organisation, and so the defunding wasn't entirely surprising, Sheen is undoubtedly right that there remains a pressing need for Welsh stories to be told on the stage in English.

Of course, funding will be key for Sheen's new enterprise too, but he has the profile, personality, drive and dynamism to attract financial backing. Initially, though, it's on him. He has previous form for dipping into his own pockets where necessary, covering much of the considerable cost of staging the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff in 2019 - and his passion and generosity are set to benefit Wales once again.

Shooting gallery

If you were a press photographer working in Palermo in the 1970s and 1980s, then it was an inevitability that you'd end up covering a lot of Mafia assassinations. It's fair to say that Letizia Battaglia's subject found her rather than vice versa. It's also fair to say that Life, Love And Death In Sicily, the retrospective of her work currently on display at the Photographers' Gallery, features more death than life or love.

On the one hand, Battaglia's pictures capture humanity's ugliness. She certainly couldn't be accused of glamorising the Mafia lifestyle, showing none of the prestige that can come with power and authority.

But on the other, the images are frequently beautiful, even in their depictions of blood pooling behind heads and the anguished faces of relatives and mourners. In one, a victim lies behind a parked car, looking like he's sleeping peacefully; in another, artfully displayed nearby, a group of women cluster around and watch over a dead Christ.

Children are a recurrent presence, perhaps most notably in 'The Little Girl And The Darkness', in which the titular girl is bathed in light while adults skulk barely visible in the shadows - innocence amid the murk.

There are kids in the streets playing at being killers, and the heavy gaze of a boy sitting beside his father's deathbed, the realisation of the weight of the world dawning on him. These are not the smiling carefree kids of Tish Murtha's work, but children whose youth is snuffed out prematurely by their circumstances, who have learned that resilience is required just to survive.

There's a film noir quality to the pictures, thanks to Battaglia's evidently instinctive understanding of light and dark. She may have been a photojournalist, but she was an artist too. Yet the aesthetic appeal of her images troubled her deeply, as it has many other photographers before and since. "I dreamed of burning my negatives", she says in a short video screened in the gallery, expressing disgust at her own work. "I want to take away the beauty that others see in them. I want to destroy them."

Battaglia saw photography as "a tool of denunciation and empowerment as well as documentation", and as a result she herself became a target; the exhibition also features a death threat sent as a dire warning. Ultimately, though, she took a grimly pessimistic view of the possibility of bringing about change: "Photography changes nothing. Violence continues, poverty continues."

Indeed they do, sadly - but a world without these stunning images would be a worse place.

The beat goes on

When Alex Deller interviewed David Yow and Duane Denison of The Jesus Lizard about last year's comeback album Rack, one of the details that caught my attention was Yow's admission that he'd been working with a personal trainer to ensure he could still deliver the goods on stage. Despite the fact that more bands than ever seem to be reuniting, and others soldier on into decades-long careers, there's very little discussion of the toll that touring and performing takes on the body, and of whether and how ageing members manage to meet the challenge.

It was interesting, then, to read this article by Michael Hann detailing the thoughts of Paul Cook (Sex Pistols), Rat Scabies (The Damned), Ian Paice (Deep Purple) and David Kendrick (Sparks/Devo/Xiu Xiu) on continuing to play that most physically demanding of instruments, the drums, into their later years.

On the one hand, there's a measure of frustration that while the mind is still willing, the flesh is increasingly weak - and a grudging acceptance that, even if you look after yourself, you need to adapt your playing style accordingly.

But on the other, the enforced change in approach may actually be productive, with Cook adopting a critical perspective on his contribution to Never Mind The Bollocks, and Scabies and Paice both discovering that restraint can sometimes add value.

Of course, for some drummers, it all becomes too much, or they acknowledge the need to relinquish the stool because they feel they can no longer do the songs justice. Credit to Iron Maiden's Nicko McBrain for bowing out with dignity. A few other veteran musicians could arguably take his lead.

"We're heading into another golden era"

Let's start the new year (belatedly) with a bit of positivity: this NME article about "Newport's resurgent music scene", written by my fellow Buzz contributor Tom Morgan.

Cynics might point to the way in which Sophie Williams' NME article of last year about Cardiff glibly overstated the health of that city's scene, drunk on Music City PR and failing to fully acknowledge the reality on the ground.

But the important difference along the M4 in Newport is that there venues are appearing rather than disappearing. Or, at least, the opening of the new 500-capacity Corn Exchange and the growing reputation of rough 'n' ready punk venue the Cab have bucked the general trend both in South Wales and elsewhere in the UK. I haven't yet been to either, but they are evidently welcome additions to Le Pub, which boasts a better beer selection than any of the principal venues in Cardiff (and is actually quicker and easier for me to get to than some, too).

Perhaps most importantly, the reported resurgence seems to have the firm backing of the city council, whose offer of financial support rather than merely fine words - in the form of cash from the Shared Prosperity Fund and rates relief - was vital in enabling the Corn Exchange to open. Other local authorities should take note.

In the vein of the proposed Sweaty Ceilings project in London, let's celebrate what we have now rather than only bemoaning what we've lost.

Critical critique

End-of-year-list season always brings welcome nudges/reminders to check out albums that have, for one reason or another, passed me by. And so it was that I finally got around to listening to Thurston Moore's latest.

I take no pleasure in what I'm about to say - the exact opposite, in fact, as a long-time Moore fanboy who has lapped up his post-Sonic Youth solo work almost as eagerly as his former band's output. But Flow Critical Lucidity is lame: pallid, unadventurous, unexciting. Harsh, perhaps, but it sounds like the work of someone who may - finally - be creatively spent. And I think we also have to grasp the nettle and acknowledge that he seems to have become the kind of drippy hippie his former self would have despised.

It's probably unfair on both parties, but I can't help but compare the album to Kim Gordon's The Collective, also released this year. The latter is not exactly an easy record to love, for SY fans like myself taken way out of our comfort zone - or at least not instantly. But there's no doubting it's bold and cutting edge - both attributes that could hardly be ascribed to the dreary, zero-thrills Flow Critical Lucidity.

Here's hoping, of course, that this is merely a temporary blip and that Moore soon rediscovers his mojo. In the meantime, I guess it just goes to show that even your heroes can let you down sometimes.

Boyz will be boyz

As previously mentioned, Ansh have very sadly now closed their doors. The (potentially) good news for burger fans in our corner of Cardiff is that the premises won't be vacant for long, as Burger Boyz are moving in, expanding from their current bases in Newport and Port Talbot.

I say "potentially" as I'm more than a little sceptical. Suspicions aroused by that name (and particularly the "z") are confirmed by the fact that - despite the claim that their burgers are "made to be savoured and enjoyed" - they set eating challenges, rewarding those who are successful with a place on their wall of fame, and there are Instagram images of inedibly tall burger stacks. Personally speaking, at least, all this Man v. Food macho cockwaving is a complete appetite suppressant.

Keeping the flame alive

It seems like a great idea: celebrating a diverse plethora of grassroots music venues, to counterbalance all of the doom-and-gloom reporting on challenges and closures. But sadly Sweaty Ceilings - a book project paying tribute to London's independent venues that will hopefully feature the Quietus' John Doran among its contributors and help to raise funds for the wonderful work of the Music Venue Trust - has failed to hit its crowdfunding target.

All is not lost, though. The organisers have said that they "are exploring alternative funding options, including applying for Arts Council funding", which would require them "to secure 10% of the total from other sources". Fingers crossed it comes off - a bit of positivity is desperately needed in these dark times.

"Decaying kingdom"

It is - as advertised - a long read, but Mark Blacklock's Guardian piece on the Samuel Smith Old Brewery pub empire really is as good as everyone has said online. That it was evidently carefully worded and meticulously researched is entirely understandable, given chairman Humphrey Smith's penchant for litigation.

Blacklock's article is a jaw-dropping tale of bizarre business practices, puritanical rules (no swearing, no digital devices), heavy-handed interventions in local planning issues and an extensive portfolio of properties that are perversely being allowed to fall into ruin.

On the one hand, I've always enjoyed Samuel Smith beers (especially the Organic Lager). Back in the day, one of their pubs near Old Street in London became a regular haunt on visits to London by virtue of permitting city-centre meet-ups that didn't break the bank, and I like the Waterguard in Cardiff, though haven't been in for a few years. It's also worth saying that there's sometimes something to be said for pubs without music, and the other rules - ridiculously draconian though they are - are not rigidly or uniformly enforced. (If they were, my phone-obsessed friend wouldn't have lasted more than two minutes in Ye Olde Murenger House in Newport last year.)

Yet the facts set out by Blacklock - especially the treatment of landlords and the apparent willingness to let historical building become derelict - are more than enough to make a boycott of the company's pubs seem like the only reasonable reaction.

Art and accessibility

To mark the tenth anniversary of the opening of the fantastic and feisty Workers in Ynyshir, Shaun Thomas of Bylines Cymru spoke to Gayle Rogers and Chris Williams about the gallery's past, present and future.

As he reports, the Workers was "born out of protest" and owes its survival to commitment and hard work. That pugnacious tenacity has been essential in the face of perennial funding challenges and an enormously frustrating lack of support from Arts Council Wales. In that respect, its spirit of fierce independence is partly enforced.

But the Workers is also posing challenges of its own. What is particularly inspiring about the work that Gayle and Chris do is that the focus is always on accessibility and on creating energising connections with the local community: "We're challenging the 'is art for me' narrative. People may think art doesn't happen here, but we're here, actively bringing art to people's doorsteps." (On that note, it's good to hear that more Art Box Tours are planned, following the blueprint established by the mobile exhibition of David Hurn's work in 2020.)

Gayle adds: "I guess that's quite a political thing to say - art is for everyone and this space is for everyone." Of course, it shouldn't be political - yet it is, in a cost-of-living crisis, when artists are painted as mere hobbyists and the creative industries are a closed shop to an increasing number of people. Depressing, certainly - but all the more reason to celebrate individuals, organisations and institutions that are doing their utmost to buck the trend. As Thomas observes, spaces such as the Workers "give people hope and build community in innovative ways, despite the challenges they face".

Talking pictures

I love a good photobook, so the opportunity to hear the stories behind two of them - David Hurn's brand new On Reading and Robert Greetham's Rites And Traces - was too good to pass up. Fingers crossed that Offline Journal's Signatures does indeed become a regular event.

Buzz report here.

Cabin fever

These days, the festival season starts as soon as the festive season has ended, with Rockaway Beach the first bash in the calendar before the Christmas tree has even come down. 2025's tenth anniversary event, headlined by Ride, Leftfield and Spiritualized, is sold out - no mean feat in the current climate.

When God Is In The TV's Carmel Walsh spoke to the festival's founder Ian Crowther last year, much of the talk was of diversity, but - I'll be honest - I have sometimes wondered exactly who the line-ups are pitched at. Likewise, you have to assume that the timing - immediately after New Year - is potentially problematic, given that many prospective punters might be skint and/or on a health kick.

Yet, the bills always pique my interest and ticket sales suggest there is indeed a market, while most of us would be glad of something to look forward to as a means of banishing the January blues. As an ATP veteran, I'm glad to see another festival adopt a similar holiday-camp model and make it work. Maybe I'll make it along to Bognor Regis one year.

Singing the praises of unsung heroes

We're deep in end-of-year-list season, and many of them look quite similar - so here's an alternative, courtesy of contributors to Buzz: a selection of albums that (unjustly, we think) went under the radar and deserve to be heard more widely.

My own piece is on Bloody Head's brilliantly beastly Perpetual Eden, while Mermaid Chunky get a mention, Will Steen piques my interest with his write-up on Water Damage's In E, and Buzz Listings Editor Noel Gardner recommends Hiddo Dhawr by Somali artist Sahra Halgan.

Insiders' perspectives and outsiders' art

Photography features heavily - pleasingly if not entirely surprisingly so - in the National Museum Cardiff's superb current exhibition The Valleys.

At a stimulating recent panel discussion, representatives from Ffotogallery and photographers Paul Cabuts and David Barnes, whose work features on the walls, talked about the past, present and indeed future of photography in and of the area, while curator Bronwen Colquhoun gave some insights into the decision-making processes behind the staging.

Buzz report here.

"The images now, 40 years later, are a historical document"

To mark the opening of Tate Britain's exhibition The 80s: Photographing Britain, Zoe Whitfield of Dazed spoke to seven of the featured photographers about their work. As suggested by one of their number, Tom Wood, it's a telling portrait of the decade.

Deindustrialisation continued apace, with the Miners' Strike symbolising the death of heavy industry, so Anna Fox's focus on the office in her series Work Stations was apposite - a classic case of an artist bristling at the suggestion that "it wasn't considered a valid subject" and asking viewers to look more closely at the apparently banal spaces that many of us inhabit every day of our working lives.

Similarly, Paul Reas was astute in recognising that in an increasingly consumerist society, "shopping malls were the new cathedrals of consumption and retail parks with supermarkets and furniture stores the parish churches". You don't need to read his accompanying comments to know that his bold colour images were influenced by Martin Parr's New Brighton photos in particular. (The sense that Parr played a significant role in shaping the way the 80s were captured is underscored by the fact that he was also one of Fox's formal teachers.)

Clearly, though, the exhibition isn't solely focused on the macro level of shifting social, political and economic patterns; it also covers individuals' negotiation of identity. For Joy Gregory, "working in various community situations" meant that she "became much more aware of the fact that people didn't have control of their image"; self-portraiture was therefore both a form of personal expression and a political/politicised tool.

"The most revolutionary, radical and rebellious of all groups"

Like many music fans of my generation, I was turned on to the MC5 by At The Drive-In, or at least journalists writing about At The Drive-In - a classic gateway drug situation, and one for which I'm very glad. Debut album Kick Out The Jams is as thrillingly raucous an aural stimulant as you'll hear.

With the band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a new album, Heavy Lifting, released a mere 53 years after the last (take note, My Bloody Valentine, you lightweights), Daniel Dylan Wray has written an excellent beginners' guide to the only band that can possibly rival fellow Detroiters the Stooges in the proto-punk stakes.

Musically, the MC5 y were "a fiery mix of hard rock, free jazz, touches of psychedelia, and a blisteringly unique tone"; politically, they fearlessly flew the anti-Vietnam and anti-racism flags and took pot-shots at conservative and corporate America, inevitably putting a few noses out of joint.

With the aid of a few interviewees (including Tom Morello and Alice In Chains' William DuVall, both of whom guest on Heavy Lifting), Wray does a sterling job of conveying just how exciting they were. Sadly, the past tense is apposite - the deaths of Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson this year means that there are now no founding members left, so Heavy Lifting serves as an epitaph.

Access denied

South Walian fans of crushingly dull music rejoice: Kings Of Leon are coming to Cardiff next summer. But what's got me and many others more vexed is not so much the band as the venue: a site on Blackweir Fields next to the River Taff.

It's baffling that a new temporary greenfield site is going to be used when the organisers - DEPOT Live and promoters Cuffe and Taylor - have been successfully putting on major shows at Cardiff Castle, and the Principality Stadium is also an option for the largest shows. Taking up an area of the park over the course of several weekends for a series of expensively ticketed events (Kings Of Leon will be only one of several visitors) is an unacceptable infringement on the right and ability of the public to enjoy the space, and will presumably have an impact on amateur cricket fixtures in particular.

If this comes across as sour, then so be it. I make no apologies for that, just over a week since the closure of the Moon. For those of us who are sore at its loss, these much-trumpeted mega-gigs - which Cardiff Council seem only too willing to bend over backwards to accommodate - are just another slap in the face.

Windows pain

Another Friday, another closure of a beloved music institution, and one close to my own heart. Last week, it was the Moon here in Cardiff; this week, it's J G Windows in Newcastle.

Situated in Central Arcade (proof that Cardiff doesn't have a complete monopoly on gorgeous arcades), Windows had been serving the city since 1908. A properly charming old-school shop, it sold instruments and sheet music as well as records.

When I started venturing beyond the confines of my local Woolworths and into record shops in Newcastle, it was inevitably my first port of call. As a scruffy teen, there was great pleasure to be had in calling in to pick up the latest hot new grunge album while attracting the glare of the classical music snobs. One particular Windows purchase stands out: the My Iron Lung EP, which hinted to this (very disappointed) owner of Pablo Honey that Radiohead might actually be able to deliver on the promise of 'Creep' after all.

One former Windows employee was Richard Dawson, who recounted the experience in his Baker's Dozen feature for the Quietus, in the course of describing how he discovered the minimalist drone music of Eliane Radigue. It was, he suggests, "a hilarious place, all dark wood" and "where everyone wore shirts and ties" - but also "a hub for all the oddballs of Newcastle" (including, of course, himself). Working there meant that he "used to listen to everything in the shop" - so we've got Windows to thank for the breadth of his tastes and how they've filtered into his music. It was fitting, then, that the record I bought on my last visit to Windows was Henki, Dawson's bizarrely effective collaboration with Finnish metallers Circle.

Newcastle can still boast the likes of RPM and Beatdown, but it just won't be the same without Windows.

"High-energy punk rock, before the fact"

I can't remember how I first came across Aussie punks the Saints, but I'm so glad I did. Debut album (I'm) Stranded is an absolute blast - right up my street in its tough, loose, raucous, devil-may-care attitude, similar in feel to the Stooges, and deserving of being much more widely known rather than overshadowed by lesser albums from higher-profile first-wave British bands.

Now it's been re-released as a deluxe box set, founding members Ed Kuepper and Ivor Hay have formed a band to rip through its songs live once again, and the Guardian's Michael Hann has spoken to them about the Saints' short and fractious but trailblazing history.

Fingers crossed this new incarnation of the band does indeed make it to Europe - not least because it features not only Mudhoney's Mark Arm, filling in for late vocalist Chris Bailey, but also former Bad Seed Mick Harvey.

It's a neat twist of events, given that Harvey followed in the Saints' footsteps back in the early 1980s by making the move to Europe in search of more accepting audiences. Harvey arrived in Blighty with the Birthday Party, whose frontman Nick Cave has said of the Saints before they left Australia: "They were kind of god-like to me and my colleagues. They were just always so much better than everybody else. It was extraordinary to go and see a band that was so anarchic and violent." And then, when the Birthday Party imploded, bassist Tracy Pew briefly became a member of the Saints. All in all, Harvey's current participation in the project seems very fitting.

Slow news day

It's infuriating enough that the widespread imposition of a 20mph limit in urban areas in Wales has been twisted into becoming "the latest culture war battlefield" - but all the more so when you consider its numerous significant and tangible gains, not least in terms of lives and money saved. Will Hayward recently set out the facts in an article for the Guardian, his bafflement at the level of vitriol the move has generated both evident and understandable.

However, rather than responding in the most obvious way - simply calling out the anti-woke wankers whingeing about the infringement of their right to mow down pedestrians and bleating on about a police/nanny state - he suggested that the Welsh government is in part to blame: "Evidence-based policy does work, but you have to own it, explain it and stay the course. It costs political capital, and politicians need to be brave. In a world where facts and evidence matter less and less, it is all the more vital that we stand by that evidence to take our nation forward."

In other words, if those behind the decision had had the courage of their convictions and actually taken the trouble to spell out in words of one syllable why the reduced speed limit was coming into force, and what benefits it would bring, it might not have become such an absurdly contentious and politically charged issue.

I'd like to think Hayward's got a point, but the reality is that the populist right can find a reason to be triggered by absolutely anything. Ironic, really.