Waters' edge

Tom Waters' Gorse is a very welcome addition to the fine-dining options in Pontcanna, serving up a lunch menu that tastes as good as it looks. Buzz review here.

Keep in touch

While I'm not about to ditch social media and my smartphone (even I do look at it far too often), I definitely understand "the appeal of analogue". Give me a CD or a printed copy of a book over the intangibility of digital media any day.

According to author David Sax, who is quoted in Clea Skopeliti's article, humans have an innate need or desire to experience the world through touch and physical objects. A useful argument to have to hand next time I'm getting berated for buying more second-hand books.

End of an era

Four decades after it began, the Miners' Strike has understandably been the subject of many a feature this year. But of course mining wasn't the only heavy industry that collapsed around that time, the repercussions of which were felt as acutely in South Wales as anywhere else.

Six years earlier, in 1978, the imposing East Moors Steelworks closed, and all that now remain are the rubble and tangled metal on Splott Foreshore and the memories - plus this remarkable set of photos taken by Huw Powell chronicling the site's final day, recently published on Inksplott.

Workers are pictured raising a can to the steelworks, but, as with Mik Critchlow's photos of Woodhorn Colliery winding down, there's also a poignancy to the images, with many employees evidently suffering from shellshock and wounded pride, anxious about the uncertain future lying ahead.

"I hope Mimi can be the light"

Alan Sparhawk's conversation with David Hutcheon for the Guardian is (inevitably) heavy stuff - not least because Hutcheon also knows what it's like to lose a life partner to cancer at a cruelly young age. The pair talk about the process of grieving for women who (in Sparhawk's wonderful expression) "gave us the freedom to be who we were", and about faith and the comfort of friendships.

Sparhawk recently previewed his forthcoming solo album White Roses, My God with the track 'Can U Hear', which signifies another step on from Double Negative and HEY WHAT in its use of electronics and vocal manipulation, and another step further away from the music that Low made for most of their lifetime, characterised brilliantly by Hutcheon as "sadness alchemised into a kind of light". Judging by Sparhawk's fascinating comments about the record, the single doesn't seem to be a red herring, either: "The tools I used before no longer work. I'm trying to use my voice, but I don't want to hear my voice, so I needed to find another voice. It felt like I was stabbing into the unknown, trying to figure things out. I started the machines, messed with them until something resonant happened, and then I started singing. And, sometimes, something would come out that I could not stop and I could not mess with."

It's entirely understandable that Sparhawk would want to put some distance between past and future, and he needs to do whatever feels right. And yet I can't help being slightly disappointed that none of the songs he performed solo last year are on the record, and are (presumably) unlikely to feature in the set when he comes to Cardiff in November. Oh to have been at that Le Guess Who show.

There's nowt so queer as folk pop

Ian Wade's new book 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer is many things - not least an endless source of delightful facts.

Did you know, for instance, that the tiger in the infamous video for Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax' was the same one that featured in the Esso ads?

Or that when Frankie first appeared on Top Of The Pops in January 1984 to promote 'Relax', also on the show was Frank Kelly, later better known as Father Jack in Father Ted, performing a song called 'Christmas Countdown'?

Or that Bobby Orlando, NYC-based high-energy pioneer and producer of the Pet Shop Boys' first songs, wrote a book called Darwin Destroyed trashing the theory of evolution?

Or that in 1987 the Sun claimed that Elton John had "had his pet rottweilers' barks removed"?

Throw in pithy profiles, astute analysis, honest appraisals and a memorable turn of phrase (the members of Bronski Beat, who all moved to London, are described as "three Dick Whittingtons of cock") and you have a romp of a read. Buzz review here.

I can't quite decide whether it's unfortunate or serendipitous for Wade that heavyweight music author Jon Savage has just published The Secret Public, which tackles similar subject matter but effectively concludes where Wade's book concentrates all of its attention. Hopefully, The Secret Public's much broader focus means that both can exist comfortably, each a companion-piece to the other.

Savage's England's Dreaming - on the Sex Pistols and the first wave of punk in the UK - is regularly (and rightly) cited as a titan among music-themed tomes, and he's taken a similar approach to Wade in the past, identifying a single year as a critical point/watershed in pop culture. This latest publication is a reminder that 1966 is still sitting on my shelves waiting to be devoured.

Tables turned

Anyone can play guitar (according to Radiohead, at least) - but can anyone write a song? The Guardian's Jude Rogers went along to a songwriting retreat in the company of musician Brian Briggs and poet Paul Henry to find out. The answer seems to be "Yes", even if there's no guarantee that the song in question will be much cop. Ultimately, she found it a valuable experience, one that has profoundly changed her perspective: "[F]rom now on, I'll ... think about how people don't necessarily write songs to fit into trends, or around reviewers' assessments."

Rogers can boast a measure of musical proficiency, at least - whereas I'm a spectacularly unmusical music writer, and I do sometimes fret about rubbishing others' efforts in case the retort is "Well, I'd love to see you do any better". On the one hand, I'd maintain that a critic shouldn't be expected or required to be musical themselves; after all, you can legitimately pass comment on the quality of a meal even if you can't cook. On the other hand, though, it probably wouldn't do me any harm to gain a greater appreciation of how challenging the process of composition can be, and how much courage it takes to present your creations to a potentially uncomprehending audience, exposing yourself to criticism and ridicule.

Unpalatable

As if the restaurant industry didn't have enough challenges to deal with already, the apparent rise of "dine and dash" is yet another.

The phenomenon is not just a merely irritating habit of diners, of the sort bemoaned here. On the contrary - as Kate Nicholls of UKHospitality argues, it's an act of "betrayal" and a case of criminally fraudulent behaviour.

Some will connect it to the rising cost of living - but that doesn't wash, as we're talking about people shirking bills of hundreds of pounds rather than hard-up parents shoplifting nappies and baby formula out of desperation. It's an extreme manifestation of the entitled attitude that appears to be polluting relations between service industries and the public.

And, of course, as Nicholls notes, dine and dash is "not a victimless crime". It's the businesses - already operating on very tight margins - and their low-paid serving staff who end up paying the price. Not only do they lose out financially, but they also experience an inevitable erosion of trust that one restaurateur understandably describes as "demoralising". Hardly ideal when morale is already fragile.

Not half bad

It came as a pleasant surprise to discover that not only had I actually heard some of the Quietus' Albums Of The Year So Far, but I'd reviewed five of them for Buzz: Bill Ryder-Jones' Iechyd Da, Kim Gordon's The Collective, Julia Holter's Something In The Room She Moves, William Doyle's Springs Eternal and Fat White Family's Forgiveness Is Yours. Add to that Metz's Up On Gravity Hill, Shellac's To All Trains, Alison Cotton's Engelchen and Nadine Shah's Filthy Underneath - all of which I'd happily also endorse - and it seems that maybe I've had my finger more on the pulse than normal over the first six months of 2024.

That said, the list was (inevitably) also a timely boot up the arse with respect to a few records that I really should have listened to. I've since rectified that, enjoying Mdou Moctar's Funeral For Justice, Big Brave's A Chaos Of Flowers and especially Arab Strap's i'm totally fine with it i don't give a fuck anymore, but still have Gnod's Spot Land, Jane Weaver's Love In Constant Spectacle and Beth Gibbons' Lives Outgrown to investigate.

Of course, a large part of the joy of lists like this is being turned on to things you wouldn't otherwise have heard of - and such is the calibre of Quietus writers that they do a sterling job of selling each and every album. Consider my interest piqued in the latest releases by all of the following: Arooj Aftab, Chelsea Wolfe, Ex-Easter Island Head, Lord Spikeheart, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Cuntroaches, Rafael Toral, Kavus Torabi, Erika Angell, Persher and Still House Plants.

Some will turn their noses up at the more leftfield, esoteric picks among the selection, but there's still room for both Pet Shop Boys and Judas Priest - something that will no doubt have pleased Ian Wade, given that both acts get a chapter in his most enjoyable forthcoming book 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer.

The audacity of hope

This Guardian article by Zadie Smith encapsulates everything that's been frustrating me around this election campaign.

On the one hand, she duly shoots a few fish in the barrel, playing to the gallery with references to "this particular group of high-rolling chancers, who do not seem to have a thought in their heads besides their own and their donors' enrichment" and "a bizarre subset of people who do not actually believe that government should serve the people".

She also makes the valid point that "historical nostalgia should not be the sole preserve of the right": "The left can also make use of it. We can remind ourselves that a more just society is possible, if only because a few of the necessary conditions have at various moments actually existed upon this Earth, and in the not-so-distant past."

But on the other, in declaring "here comes the sun" in the form of a Labour victory, Smith fails or rather refuses to acknowledge that there is practically no evidence of Starmer's party offering any hope that things will indeed be significantly different under a Labour government. On the contrary, they've bent over backwards to court the centre-right vote - chuntering on about "wealth creation" and immigration, lacking any backbone on Palestine, ramping up the anti-trans rhetoric and abandoning anything approaching principle and tradition. That "more just society" for which she's misty eyed simply doesn't seem to be on Starmer's agenda. It's a case of blind faith.

I won't be alone in feeling that the decimation of the Tories will be a somewhat hollow, bittersweet victory.

Broken Britain

Brexit, COVID-19 clusterfuck, austerity, Grenfell, the Windrush scandal, sewage-filled rivers and seas: just some of the most egregious legacies of 14 years of Tory (mis)rule, captured in this Guardian gallery of images by photographers including Niall McDiarmid, Craig Easton and Dafydd Jones.

For Martin Parr, one of those whose work is featured, using a camera to hold a mirror up to nature is an inherently left-wing pursuit: "Ask any documentary photographer and they'll probably say the same. They have an empathy with people. I've never met a right-wing documentary photographer. I don't think they exist."

Even in the modern era of image manipulation and cynicism, pictures retain the power to cut through the veneer of political spin and bullshit to expose the stark realities in a way that is very often more effective and affecting than words.

Attacks and defences

The timing of the publication of this photo essay by Richard Morgan could have been better, what with Ukraine having become one of the few teams to be eliminated after the group stages of the Euros (a real kick in the teeth after a very creditable draw against a highly rated but sluggish Belgium, and after finishing with the same number of points as the other three teams in the group). But its merits as a portrait of the unifying power of sport even in extreme circumstances, and of bruised but defiant national pride, are unaffected.

As Morgan takes pains to point out, though, it's not the case that the football has provided welcome respite from the grim realities and perennial threats of daily life: "[I]t is impossible to escape the horrors of war in Ukraine, to find relief in the football, because the war is in the very experience of following the football here: it's in the walk to the game past anti-tank defences, sandbags, covered monuments, and boarded-up churches; it's in the pre-match motivational messages from frontline fighters to the footballers; it's in the air-raid warnings of rocket attacks flashing across the TV screen as you watch the game in the pub; it's in the power cuts before kick-off. Euro 24 is not a convenient distraction from war in Ukraine, but yet another way to live it."

Community service

As the Manics famously sang, libraries gave us power - but today they give us a whole lot more than that.

On the one hand, this wonderful Guardian article by Aida Edemariam is celebratory - of the vital role that libraries play in many people's lives, of their function as welcoming havens that bring disparate individuals together and help to combat social isolation, and of the time and energy invested in them by staff who genuinely care about where they work and the community they're catering for.

But, on the other, the bewildering array of roles that libraries and their employees are expected to perform is a damning indictment of "years of cost-cutting [which] mean that the state has effectively reneged on all but the most unavoidable of its responsibilities to the troubled, the poor, the educationally challenged, the lonely, the physically unwell, the lost or the homeless". Nick Poole, CEO of library association Cilip, is quoted as saying "We risk becoming a social care safety net" - but the article suggests that that's already very much the case, with libraries now stretched to breaking point as one-stop shops unwittingly tasked with plugging the myriad gaps in the social welfare and asylum systems.

And the fact that libraries can be "a place to sit still all day and stare at the wall, if that is what you need to do, without anyone expecting you to buy anything" is equally damning, in that it underlines how impoverished we are in terms of freely accessible public spaces untainted by commercial/capitalist imperatives.

"Revitalising, if not revolutionary"

Sometimes you just have to hold up your hands, admit defeat and leave it to the professionals.

Reviewing John Francis Flynn's set at the Globe in support of Fat White Family recently, I tried to explain what makes what he does so special: "These are songs that are not so much covered as carefully handed down, passed from generation to generation, and Flynn is clearly a respectful yet innovative custodian, allowing the past to speak through (and to) the present."

But, writing about Flynn's fellow Dubliners Lankum for the Quietus, Darran Anderson has done an infinitely better job (albeit with the luxury of a more generous word limit). His review of Live In Dublin is eloquent, insightful and relentlessly on the money, weaving history, politics and cultural analysis into his assessment of the record. 

So it is that he talks about Lankum's "reverence for the original innovations and possibilities of the music, while shrugging off kitsch and the cold dead hand of the gatekeepers and priests of trad music" - or, putting it another way, describes them not as "pious memorialists to archaic songs and folklore" but as "reanimators restoring troubled and troubling things to life again". 

Perhaps most perceptive is his observation that "Lankum, like The Pogues, The Dubliners and many others, are a radical band in the truest sense of the word. The etymology of 'radical' is not to overhaul or make it new. It's to dig into the roots. To strip away all the rules and accretions and work out why any of this started or matters in the first place. To remember why it is vital."

All told, it's the sort of article that has you savouring every sentence and itching to listen to the album that inspired it.

Riffs 'n' spliffs

Fu Manchu belong to that small elite group of bands that have forged an instantly recognisable and unique sound: think Black Sabbath with a Californian suntan, driving around in an American muscle car. Their new album The Return Of Tomorrow might have been more aptly titled The Return Of Yesterday, in that it's very much more of the same - not that anyone's complaining.

Buzz review here.

Moving pictures

If you'd asked Franki Raffles to describe herself, I suspect she'd have said "activist" first and "photographer" second. The current exhibition at the Baltic in Gateshead - Photography, Activism, Campaign Works - underlines that, for her, photography was primarily a means to an end rather than an end in itself, and the camera was just one of the tools of the activist's trade.

This isn't to do a disservice to her abilities as an artist, just to recognise that her artistry was directed towards serving more than a merely aesthetic function. This is most obvious in the work for which she's arguably best known, the anti-violence against women campaign Zero Tolerance, but also in the images that expose the appalling housing conditions endured by hundreds of thousands of people in the 1980s - a grim echo of Nick Hedges' work for Shelter less than two decades earlier. Like Graham MacIndoe, she captured the realities of Edinburgh, a world away from the picture-postcard portrayals.

Reviewing David Hurn's most recent show at the Workers' Gallery, I noted his focus on people engaged in activity rather than posing for the camera. Raffles was also interested in depicting doers rather than talkers. Her photos from Russia show women hard at work in factories and fields, cheerfully contributing their labour to the collective cause and attaining a degree of recognition and empowerment as a result - in contrast to women in the West, for whom work is depicted as a relentless, dehumanising grind and something that reaps no personal rewards.

Raffles wasn't simply interested in using her images to speak on behalf of others, though. For her project focusing on Jewish women who had emigrated from Russia to Israel, she not only took portraits but also recorded their own words to display alongside. It's an approach also adopted by the likes of Jim Mortram and Paul Sng, one that affords respect to people who are so often denied it.

Also on view at the Baltic is Joanne Coates' Middle Of Somewhere. Coates' star has been rising for some time, and it's not hard to see why she's won the 2024 Vasseur Baltic Artists' Award, been named as the official Election Artist and been handed a solo exhibition in a gallery with considerable profile regionally and nationally.

Coates' countryside vistas often hold conventional aesthetic appeal, but importantly (perhaps because she also works on a farm) she is not so much a landscape photographer as someone who photographs landscapes while remaining acutely aware that they are almost always at least partially manmade. Like Raffles, her real focus is on people, on personal narratives and struggles. There is a beauty but also a bleakness; rural life is routinely romanticised from the outside, but the reality is often challenging and isolating, requiring considerable resilience of those who continue to (attempt to) make a living off the land.

Middle Of Somewhere picks up the broad themes explored in her other projects such as Daughters Of The Soil, and indeed in Raffles' work: gender, labour, class. With regard to the latter, one image is particularly key, Coates looking down both literally and metaphorically on an enormous country pile that dominates the landscape.

Ultimately, the human subjects of Coates' images are enduring a precarious present characterised by "housing shortages, second home owners, wealthy folk moving to the countryside, lack of jobs, schools closing, post office closing, pubs closing etc" and facing an increasingly uncertain future beneath the shadow of ecological meltdown and climate change. She may not weaponise her camera quite as blatantly as Raffles, but she shares a commitment to spotlighting critical social issues with a view to provoking debate and prompting change.

Escape artist

Gemma June Howell's debut novel The Crazy Truth tells the story of one woman's passage through a difficult and traumatising childhood - and her discovery that writing can provide a means of escaping her circumstances that's far more effective than intoxicants.

Buzz review here.

A new home for Hiraeth

Changes are once again afoot just up the road at Victoria Park. Restaurant closures have been depressingly regular in Cardiff so far this year, but the imminent loss of small plates eatery Nook - as good as it undoubtedly is - on the familiar grounds of "current industry struggles" will at least be offset by the fact that Lewis Dwyer and Andy Aston are waiting in the wings, ready to move in and keep the fine dining flame burning down that end of Cowbridge Road.

The pair will be bringing Hiraeth to the capital after a short stint in Bridgend, and will arrive with considerable pedigree: recognition in the Michelin Guide and a pair of AA Rosettes. Soon-to-be-neighbours Ansh and 591 have proven to be an upgrade, if anything, on their predecessors (Bwydiful and Dough Thrower, respectively), so here's hoping that Hiraeth can hit the ground running and repeat the feat.

"Progress" and protest

Published to mark the 40th anniversary of the so-called Battle of Orgreave, arguably the single most important incident of the Miners' Strike, musician Mark Fell has written this fantastic piece for the Quietus, reflecting on the industrial context of his formative years, the social and political turbulence of the time, expressing resistance through music (especially reggae and dub) and the false promises of technological advancement.

The high life

Reviewing Thurston Moore's memoir Sonic Life for Punktuation last year, I argued that the book is particularly notable for its vivid portrait of late-70s/early-80s New York as "dirty and dangerous, but a mecca for musicians and artists drawn by the prospect of cheap rents and plentiful opportunities, a city crackling with creative energy and experimental zeal". The ready availability of disused industrial buildings, particularly loft spaces, helped to birth and fuel the various exciting scenes that sprang up.

Four decades on, and New York is a very different place indeed. But some artists' lofts still remain, protected by a 1982 law and holding firm against the forces of gentrification. Photographer Joshua Charow's images, gathered together in a book and exhibition, offer a glimpse of these unique working/living spaces.

And there's a connection of sorts back to Moore, with one of Charow's featured loft-dwellers being JG Thirlwell, who in the early 80s moved in the same circles as Sonic Youth, working with Lydia Lunch, Swans, Nick Cave and Richard Kern.

Pan's people

Goat Girl's third LP Below The Waste didn't win me over instantly - but, with a bit of time, its scattershot sonic approach proved to be more hit than miss.

Buzz review here.

All White on the night

FAT WHITE FAMILY / JOHN FRANCIS FLYNN, 10TH JUNE 2024, CARDIFF GLOBE

Covers bands are the Globe's meat and drink, but John Francis Flynn is cut from a different cloth. The Dubliner's renditions of traditional Irish and American songs such as 'Kitty' and 'Mole In The Ground' are less covers and more reinterpretations, constructively reimagined for the current moment, cloaked in darkness. Drawing on drones, tape manipulation and subtle electronic effects, he sings of painful memories and drinking blood like wine. Twee, cosy, fireside folk this is not.

Gripping the mic stand with eyes closed, Flynn has the intimidating stature of Mark Lanegan (who, as a resident of Killarney prior to his untimely death, might well have gone on to make music like this). Instrumental 'Tralee Gaol' is performed on a pair of tin whistles taped together to create an eerie analogue echo, and a sublime bare-bones version of 'Dirty Old Town' closes the set. These are songs that are not so much covered as carefully handed down, passed from generation to generation, and Flynn is clearly a respectful yet innovative custodian, allowing the past to speak through (and to) the present.

Reviewing Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family And The Miracle Of Failure for the Observer, Miranda Sawyer succinctly described co-author Lias Saoudi's band as "always on the brink: of stardom, of madness, of brilliance, of disgrace". From birth, Fat White Family have been synonymous with instability, controversy and acrimony - and earlier this year it seemed that they'd finally reached breaking point. Saoudi revealed that the creative process behind latest album Forgiveness Is Yours was a "nonstop fucking argument", and the Metro went as far as reporting that they'd split in the wake of "a complete breakdown", with Lias' brother Nathan having followed fellow founder member Saul Adamczewski out of the door. And yet here they are, a rag-tag bunch of charity-shop trousers, mullets, waistcoats and berets, launching into 'John Lennon'. As ever, it seems, rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Confession time: I'm here half hoping for a car crash. For all their combustibility and volatility, and for all the rabidly enthusiastic reports of feral Fat White Family performances, previous encounters have only ever left me feeling let down by a band who seemed to be merely going through the motions, as curiously unsatisfying as their albums.

That tonight will be totally different is immediately evident.

The band are on furious (and remarkably coherent) form, but Saoudi is the barometer, a bare-torsoed Iggy-esque conductor of ceremonies who's roaming around in the crowd just three songs in ('Tinfoil Deathstar'). Admittedly, appearing onstage in nothing but a Legends Of The Fall T-shirt and a pair of black briefs is relatively tame for a vocalist who once performed while getting showered in a dead man's ashes and who wore flesh-coloured Spanx and smeared himself with butter to support Liam Gallagher at Knebworth. But it does enable him to do his best Cornholio impression, and the ever-present risk of a wardrobe malfunction ensures a frisson of danger. Thankfully, the elastic of his M&S pants (an upgrade from the H&M kecks of yore - "I've written a best-selling book") holds firm and the boys remain safely in the barracks.

Not that matters below the belt are off the agenda. 'Today You Become Man', the stand-out track on Forgiveness Is Yours (complete with Verve pisstake video), is a rapid-fire spoken-word account of his older brother's circumcision, and 'Touch The Leather' oozes sweat and seediness. Two of the latest record's slower songs, 'Visions Of Pain' and 'Religion For One' (the latter about "when I was a Scientologist", allegedly) come into their sickly, creepy own, while sordid disco thumper 'Feet' and greatest hit 'Whitest Boy On The Beach' ensure a frenzied climax. Perhaps most unsettling is the way in which echoes of everything from Billy Idol to ABBA and EMF's 'Unbelievable' are sucked into their vortex.

Sometimes it's preferable to see bands at the tail-end of tours, when the set is slick and finely honed. By contrast, I'm glad to have caught Fat White Family right at the start, burning so brightly and brilliantly before the (surely inevitable) burn-out.

(An edited version of this review appeared on the Buzz website.)

Bold, invigorating and visionary

I made a promise to myself to largely avoid posting about (or indeed thinking too much) about politics in the run-up to the general election - that way madness lies. But I'm compelled to point out that - amid all the cynical point-scoring, power games, spin and poisonous rhetoric - the Green Party's manifesto really is a breath of fresh air, offering hope for a brighter future rather than stale promises and dog-whistle policies.

The proposal of a Rights of Nature Act, "giving rights to nature itself", will probably grab the headlines, but it's a travesty that a party with such a forward-thinking social and economic agenda - and the guts to be transparent about the need to generate tax revenue to pay for the huge proposed investment in public services - is still seen as something of a pressure group.

As George Monbiot rightly argues in his assessment of the manifesto for the Guardian, "[i]t's everything the Labour party should be doing ... but is too frightened to propose. No one expects the Greens to form the new government but we need them to hold Labour to account and press it to raise its level of ambition." When Keir Starmer is proudly putting "wealth creation" rather than wealth redistribution at the heart of the Labour manifesto, then you know they need a good, hard kick up the arse.

Of course, the chances of the Greens making deserved headway hinge to a large extent on their visibility - so it's hardly helpful that major media outlets such as the BBC continue to refuse to allow the party a seat at the debating table while happily platforming representatives of Reform...

There's no business like business

What a pleasure it was to be at the New Theatre on Friday night, in the presence of greatness - the one and only Brian Butterfield. The irrepressible business guru and man of ideas was in town on his tour The Call Of Now, casually dispensing pearls of wisdom, singing songs of experience and talking us through a selection of his latest business ventures (not all of which have led to bankruptcy or court cases yet).

Buzz review here.

Good eggs

Boomerang Lounge - one of the most recent arrivals on Cardiff's Cowbridge Road - is a cafe with a twist, providing sustenance in more ways than one. I went along to the home of the feel-good fry-up to find out more for Buzz.

Beak> practice

In a recent interview with the Quietus' Alastair Shuttleworth, Beak>'s synth player Will Young (not that one) claimed that a stint of playing festivals in the wake of third album >>> resulted in the trio "rock music-ing it up": "We realised 'Keep this up and we're just going to sound like a really bad Foo Fighters.'"

Let's be honest, that was never going to be the case - but latest record >>>> certainly couldn't be described in those terms. Here's me trying to describe it in different terms for Buzz.

Labour pains

When the opposition are such a Tory-lite shitshow, refusing to oppose the Rwanda policy or the Israeli assault on Gaza, and think nothing of parachuting in a candidate with no connection to our constituency, it's not hard to decide not to give them my vote. But just when it seems it might be possible to tick the box for the Greens with a completely clear conscience, they have to go and do something stupid like advocating "natural" childbirth.

The Guardian's Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has explained exactly why the proposed policy would be so offensive and regressive, reawakening the "too posh to push" narrative and denying women control over how they give birth and their own bodies. She warns that it would open up a new front in the culture wars: "This isn't about pitting unmedicated vaginal births against births that have involved medical intervention ... This is about reproductive freedom, and politics muscling in on the issue of female bodily autonomy yet again, something that all women should abhor, no matter how - or if - a woman chooses to have a baby. It detracts from the more important question of how we fix maternity services."

Thankfully, the Greens have taken note of the backlash, seen sense and backtracked - but, personally speaking, the episode is a timely and painful reminder that of the dangers of giving wholehearted, unequivocal support to any party.

Pay to play?

Nadine Shah is renowned for being frank and honest - and, it turns out, won't make an exception even when it comes to the nation's most venerable music festival.

Scotching rumours that she might be playing down Pilton way at the end of the month, she said on Twitter: "I would have liked to but I wasn't offered a televised stage so I declined. It's too expensive a hit for me to take otherwise."

When some people responded critically, accusing her of diva-ish behaviour, she was forthright in her explanation: "To be clear, if I'm offered LESS money than what it costs me to play a show then I WON'T play it. BUT if there's the bonus of it being televised I MAY take the hit for the exposure. Sorry if you find this crude and sorry to break it to you but music is my JOB."

First and foremost, she shouldn't have to justify her decisions to anyone - but this seems perfectly reasonable. If you're an artist, by all means take a gig or embark on a tour that you know will leave you out of pocket (as seems to be increasingly the case) if you weigh up all the factors and decide to do it anyway - but no one should feel obliged to undersell or bankrupt themselves just to be able to perform. On the contrary, you'd hope that a festival of the size and income of Glastonbury would be able to cover the costs of the musicians it puts on, at very least.

"Ugly beauty"

Wales is renowned for its natural beauty, but Treforest-based photographer Jon Pountney finds himself instinctively drawn to the opposite: the distinctly unnatural beauty of crumbling buildings and a landscape radically and irreversibly transformed by heavy industry. His most recent exhibition Allure Of Ruins - featuring work prompted by two previous projects, Beachcombing and God Forgive Me - includes images of nature attempting to heal wounds (the long incision made for the Brecon railway at Fochriw, for instance, now only a scar) but also of landforms that are entirely manmade (most obviously Splott Foreshore, constructed out of the rubble from the demolished East Moors steelworks).

Pountney has previously spoken of his fascination with "horizontal archaeology" - the sort you can find on the surface, without having to dig - and there's a sense in which the conical spoil heaps are South Wales' own pyramids and the overgrown Penallta Colliery silently overlooking new-build houses is a remnant of some ancient civilisation, hidden in plain sight. The exhibition booklet carries Myfanwy Evans' apt comment on painter Paul Nash: "No interest in the past as past, but in the accumulated intenseness of the past as present." That Pountney shares this hauntological perspective is evident in (for instance) the photo depicting the great towering mound of slate that continues to cast a shadow over Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Like David Wilson, Pountney appreciates the rich colour and textural quality of rusting metal (especially against blue sky) and characteristically uses light to best advantage, capturing the warm glow of the setting sun on the red brick of Dowlais Ironworks and finding poetry in an open-air urinal.

Allure Of Ruins illuminates the ways in which we continually make and remake the landscape around us, and the significant human toil required to do so. It also asks us to reflect on what we consider worth conserving and what we let fall into disrepair.

(This review was originally written for inclusion in the Offline monthly newsletter.)

Mary: quite contrary

Talk about blowing your punk credentials. Mary Timony may have been childhood friends with the MacKaye brothers in Washington DC and raised on the city's famous hardcore scene, but that didn't stop her from selecting records by the likes of Rainbow, Yes and Fairport Convention, as well as a clutch of lute albums, when invited to do some shopping at Amoeba in LA. She does pick the punkiest Iron Maiden album (Killers), though.

That Timony is a fan of Fairport Convention won't have come as a surprise to anyone who read her We've Got A File On You interview for Stereogum back in February. It was conducted to coincide with the release of her solo LP Untame The Tiger, on which the Convention's Dave Mattacks plays drums after she plucked up the courage to cold-call him.

Other subjects of conversation included former bands Autoclave and Helium; her reflections on the music scenes in DC and Olympia; collaborating with Carrie Brownstein, Chino Moreno, the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt and William Shatner; and giving guitar lessons to Lindsey Jordan aka Snail Mail and Brendan Canty's daughter Mabel. Well, there are certainly worse people to be taught by.

Neighbourhood watch

A missing teenage girl, a rural northern setting, a close-knit community. So far, so cliched. But Reservoir 13 is no run-of-the-mill murder mystery; on the contrary, it's much more subtly affecting than that. Author Jon McGregor seems to take delight in confounding our expectations by toying with the tropes of the genre. We're sucked into searching for clues and speculating about suspicious behaviour because we think that's how it works - and it usually does. But we're blindsided to discover that McGregor isn't so much serving up red herrings as playing a different game altogether.

Reservoir 13 is about what happens when tragedy strikes, its shadow hanging over a place - but also about what happens as that shadow gradually recedes and the incident fades from memory. The novel is primarily a portrait of a community, and of the dramas that unfold both daily and over time: people growing up and growing apart, relationships repaired and disintegrating, separations and reunions, infidelities and incompatibilities, joy and pain.

Each chapter recounts the events of another year, the steady and even pace dictated by the passage of time and the turning of the seasons (in this, there are similarities with Benjamin Myers, though McGregor's descriptions of the natural world are less wide-eyed and lyrical).

But what is most remarkable is the way in which it is told: from the perspective of an omniscient narrator who observes from afar/above but misses nothing, making regular gossipy insinuations and routinely reporting that the characters are "seen" to be doing things. This style gives Reservoir 13 a sinister feel, the reader rendered uncomfortably complicit in the narrator's merciless surveillance of the community and drawn into the role of a voyeur. As unsettling a book as I've read for some time.

Hip hop

DIIV aren't necessarily a stopped clock - new album Frog In Boiling Water shows some signs of growth and development - but they're certainly telling the right time, with the shoegaze revival in full swing. Some might find it galling that Yanks like DIIV have stolen a very British musical style and are now passing it off as their own, but when they're doing it better than Ride and Slowdive, who cares?

Buzz review here.

The other side of the city

Glasgow and Edinburgh are often perceived as two very different cities - the former gritty, grimy, resolutely working class; the latter a genteel, well-heeled honeypot for visitors. But perhaps that's just because of how they're regularly portrayed in images and on screen.

Certainly, that would be the view of photographer Graham MacIndoe, who in the 1980s deliberately set out "to document the real Edinburgh - the ordinary people in the working-class parts of the city, away from the tourist attractions ... My photographs were a bit of a backlash against Colin Baxter who did all the picture postcard stuff - that wasn't an Edinburgh that I associated with."

MacIndoe's Edinburgh, by contrast, was one of concrete tower blocks, Alsatians patrolling the flat roofs of pubs, kids making their own entertainment in the streets and stoical Scots trying to get a tan on the beach at Portobello - as illustrated by this gallery on the British Culture Archive site.

All-round good Eggs

I've always had husband-and-wife lo-fi screwball punk duo the Lovely Eggs down as being irrepressibly cheery. So it was a surprise to hear them sounding tired and ground down in conversation with Daniel Dylan Wray for the Guardian, and to learn that new album Eggsistentialism is - in the words of guitarist/vocalist Holly Ross - "a snapshot of when we were at our lowest".

What's behind the uncharacteristic malaise, you might wonder? Primarily, it's the pair's struggle to save the Lancaster Music Co-op, a non-profit organisation in their home town that makes instruments and rehearsal and studio space available to local musicians on the cheap. It gave them a leg up, and now they're very decently doing all they can to ensure that it survives to give a leg up to others in future.

Ross rails against how engaging in bureaucratic battle and "doing that pen-pushing shit" has made her feel, but ultimately they're too heavily invested emotionally to quit: "We couldn't give in. Because of what this place means - giving working-class people access to space and music, just like we had. If the Co-op dies, independent culture and subculture in Lancaster dies, and we can't let that happen. It's a space for freaks like us." Fair fucks to them for flying the freak flag in the face of the odds.

Stage (mis)management

Outdoor festival season is upon us again, with Bearded Theory taking place as I write. Typically, the organisers have assembled the best bill yet, but the elements have conspired in the build-up to render the site something of a mudbath. Hopefully the bad weather will hold off and things won't get as bad as they did at Bluedot last year.

Major contemporary festivals are (by and large) slick, well-coordinated affairs - safe and somewhat sanitised. A far cry from their counterparts of the past, in other words, Just take a look at David Hurn's pictures of the Isle of Wight Festivals of 1969 and 1970 for proof.

Or consider the example of the Bickershaw Pop Festival, which took place in Lancashire in 1972. The brainchild of an eccentric and ambitious local entrepreneur, the event featured appearances from Captain Beefheart, the Kinks, Hawkwind and the Grateful Dead, among others - but, by virtue of a perfect storm of weather conditions, inadequate infrastructure, poor planning, local opposition and gross naivety on the part of the organisers, it descended into complete chaos. And - as this fantastic BBC archive footage illustrates - at the centre of it all was a young Jeremy Beadle, a bedraggled and beleaguered optimist trying in vain to hold everything together and looking for all the world like he'd been, well, framed.

"This triumphant bellowing is curdling into a corrosive bluster"

Read the latest Music In The Air report from Goldman Sachs - "a TED Talk from Gordon Gekko in a biker jacket", in the words of Eamonn Forde, writing for the Quietus - and you'd get the impression that all is rosy for the music industry.

Not only does it smack of arrogance and hubris, suggesting that lessons from the early years of the millennium have been swiftly forgotten. Unsurprising, perhaps. But it's also horribly head in the sand and tone deaf, ignoring the contemporary, widely reported realities for so many in the industry - whether that's the record company staff and writers who've found themselves as collateral damage in corporate restructuring; the grassroots music venue operators trying to keep their spaces open on a shoestring; or the artists themselves, earning a pittance from streaming and essentially paying to play thanks to the horrific costs of touring. 

As Forde argues, the smug assumption that it'll be "jam today, jam tomorrow, jam forever" is at risk of looking extremely foolish. If there's not a rapid recognition that ensuring the health of the whole ecosystem is essential, then the magic money tap enjoyed by the industry's top brass may run dry.

(Not yet) a class act

ENGLISH TEACHER / GLADBOY, 11TH MAY 2024, CARDIFF CLWB IFOR BACH

Gladboy are every inch a conundrum, corroborating the notion that their birthplace Norwich is something of an outpost, an outlier, a city with its own distinct culture where odd is the norm.

On the one hand, the quintet seem a little scrappy and out of sync (and not entirely artfully so), and the sound levels do them few favours - the bongo drum, for instance, is rendered merely a visual rather than a sonic component. But on the other, there are some unusual three-part harmonies, 'Johnny Come Lately' is a great name for a song and they have an intriguing knack of twisting the familiar into the novel - for example, angrily turning the rhythmic groove of Modern Lovers' 'Roadrunner' on its head ("TURN THE RADIO OFF!") and exhuming the goth dub corpse of Bauhaus' 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' for a track called 'Karloff'.

Headliners English Teacher, meanwhile, go big and bold early, opening up with 'The World's Biggest Paving Slab' - a taut post-punk toe-tapper that unexpectedly blooms into something more expansive at the chorus. It's one of a slew of smart, savvy singles - also including 'Nearly Daffodils' and 'R&B' - that put the band firmly on the indie curriculum.

The dilemma then is how to follow it up - and (if you'll pardon another blindingly obvious pun) this is where English Teacher still have a bit to learn. All five cuts from 2022 EP Polyawkward seem to have been discarded, which means that the main set is simply the entirety of freshly minted debut album This Could Be Texas on shuffle.

The title track signals serious (and very welcome) intent to move into more ambitious Black Country, New Road territory, and 'Broken Biscuits' is a neatly personal state-of-the-nation survey. But with the muted introspection of songs like 'Mastermind Specialism' - affecting though they are - the momentum sags and interest wanes. The set only really jolts back to life with the urgency and bite of 'R&B', Lily Fontaine's bitter and withering comment on racism within the music industry - "Despite appearances, I haven't got the voice for R&B" - and relies on a fine cover of LCD Soundsystem's 'New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down' to reach a heady climax.

English Teacher are still finding their feet sonically, but the problem tonight, perhaps, isn't so much the material as their manipulation of it, and the fact that they're as yet unable to completely command a room. Allowances need to be made, though, and touring will help with confidence (if not with finances). They're far from the first band to be propelled to attention prematurely, forced to develop faster and on bigger stages than most and inevitably subjected to greater scrutiny. Here's hoping that they don't take lukewarm reviews like this one to heart and are given the time and space to fulfil their considerable potential.

A final word on the crowd. Perhaps it's inevitable given 6 Music's listenership, but the fact that a young band touring their debut album can only seem to attract old farts twice their age (guilty as charged) fuels concerns about gig demographics post-COVID and amid the cost-of-living crisis, and about the health of the live music scene and indeed the music industry more generally.

(An edited version of this review appeared on the Buzz website.)

"I remember he was explaining the history of the pencil to our bass player once"

Paying tribute to the late, great Steve Albini, I argued that he'll be best remembered as a producer (well, engineer). That much is borne out by the first-hand accounts of his expertise (and humour) in and around the recording studio gathered by Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Stevie Chick and Annie Zaleski for this Guardian article. 

PJ Harvey, Will Oldham, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite and Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley are among those who talk in glowing terms about their time spent working with Albini. Jon Spencer is not alone in noting how it was very much a learning experience, and neither is David Gedge of the Wedding Present in lauding Albini's general approach and attitude - offering advice but refusing to egotistically leave a thumbprint on records, instead striving to help bands to realise their own visions and create the conditions in which they could be the best versions of themselves. For Andrew Falkous of Mclusky, it was a matter of personality as much as of technical nous - not only did he understand "the scientific principles of where to place a microphone", he also "had empathy, he knew how to listen to a band".

Huw Baines has surveyed the fruits of those many hundreds of recording sessions and selected ten of the best, rightly including Nirvana's In Utero and PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me.

Meanwhile, for Crack, Daniel Dylan Wray has singled out some of the quieter records on Albini's CV: Low's Things We Lost In The Fire, Dirty Three's Ocean Songs, Joanna Newsom's Ys. "It was arguably Albini's love of noise music, and his inherent understanding of its principles and dynamics, that resulted in him being able to produce such genuinely stirring, beautiful and often tender music", he writes. "Albini specialised in capturing a sound that, for the most part, understood the essence of holding back. Of knowing when to strike. A lot of the music he wrote, or produced, explored space and breadth as often as it unleashed kicks to the temple."

Sonic youth

Not only does the new, improved Quietus site looks lovely, but it's been relaunched in fine fashion. First came John Higgs' interview with Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson - quite probably the only musician to pilot his band's tour jet - and then author Benjamin Myers' recollections of what some might consider a misspent youth (but he certainly wouldn't) as a member of teenage punk band Sour Face.

Myers' piece is an absolute delight - from the description of Sour Face exhibiting "an inability that was disrespectful to the entire concept of music", to the tales of drug experimentation, dealing with a crowd comprised exclusively of fascist skinheads and discovering a frozen shit in the backstage fridge of much-missed Newcastle venue the Riverside. If he ever decides to write a memoir, then this will surely be all he needs to persuade a publisher to put it out.

While I'm no musician and never have been, I can still relate, as a hanger-on who took vicarious pleasure in my friends' teenage musical endeavours. Myers' article brought back fond memories: of drunken "stage" diving from a table at the back of a venue; of the overenthusiastic use of a smoke machine during a gig in Morpeth Leisure Centre bar, and the complete chaos that ensued; of the night at the Cumberland Arms in Newcastle (unwittingly following in Sour Face's footsteps) where I first saw someone assault a guitar with a screwdriver and where the headliners were the delightfully named Delicate Vomit; and of the friend who, performing under the name of Brian Damage, was busy smashing an acoustic guitar against the Town Hall's brand new stage at the exact moment that the Mayor walked in, leading to an immediate ban on all bands playing the venue. Happy days.

And now three of those mates are actually getting to live the dream (albeit a little more sensibly than they might have done in their youth), back where it all started, metaphorically speaking: playing Nirvana covers.

Bright future or false dawn?

With devolution turning 25, writer and academic Emma Schofield invited contributors from an array of different backgrounds and fields to evaluate its impact on the lives of women in Wales. Here's my review of the resulting publication for Buzz.

Non-stop post-punk cabaret

NIGHTINGALES / TED CHIPPINGTON, 9TH MAY 2024, NEWPORT LE PUB

Just in case you were in any doubt as to what sort of crowd a double bill of Nightingales and Ted Chippington might attract, within ten minutes of entering Le Pub I've overheard two men of a certain age observe to their pals "There are a lot of men of a certain age here", and there's a bit of a kerfuffle soon after when someone takes a tumble.

Comedian Chippington is used to falling flat on his face, metaphorically speaking; indeed, he's made a virtue and a kind of career out of it - albeit one with a lengthy hiatus when he deliberately ducked for cover, worried about the prospect of becoming too popular (not that that was ever really likely).

After a handful of trademark deader-than-deadpan covers in the company of his backing band the Rockin' Rebels (including 'D.I.S.C.O.' and 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree', but sadly not his working men's club lounge version of the Beatles' 'She Loves You'), he presents a masterclass in how to subvert the art of stand-up and yet ironically elicit laughs in doing so.

Like a man rambling to himself over a pint of mild in a Midlands pub, Chippington recounts anecdotes about irritating neighbours and pest control that stumble comically to their anti-climactic conclusion; tells anti-jokes that are all the funnier for not being funny; and delivers punchlines like "I once saw them supporting Throbbing Gristle". Pulling a setlist of sorts out of his pocket, he grumbles about not liking the look of anything on it, and, when a punter interrupts a segment about atlases to talk about the manufacture of model globes, he senses an opportunity to gather more material: "Keep going - I'll need this for tomorrow night."

It's clear that Stewart Lee has been a keen student, but whereas his routines are meticulously crafted, Chippington comes across as a natural spontaneous performer - or perhaps he's just particularly skilled in concealing the artifice.

That Lee is a fan of Robert Lloyd is even more apparent, the Nightingales frontman having been the subject of Lee and Michael Cumming's 2020 anti-rockumentary King Rocker. The affinity between Lloyd and regular touring companion Chippington is also obvious, with Lloyd also most at home holed up in the boozer, holding court with the driest of humour.

Parallels are perennially drawn between Nightingales and the Fall, somewhat to Lloyd's consternation. "I never understood that comparison", he told the Guardian's Daniel Dylan Wray in 2021. "Only inasmuch as we're both bands that you can't compare to other bands - and us both being a couple of curmudgeonly old cunts who don't know when to give up." Lloyd did give up, for a period - the band, formed in 1979, split in 1986 - but since being resurrected in 2004 their gigging and recording has been prolific. Formerly a member of the short-lived punk outfit the Prefects, Lloyd has been the one constant, the turnover of accompanying personnel astonishingly high. Another parallel with the Fall, then - as is the fact that in later years the line-up has finally solidified, with guitarist James Smith, bassist Andreas Schmid and badass drummer Fliss Kitson becoming Lloyd's regular accomplices for the last decade.

And understandably so - the quartet's chemistry is evident as, over the course of an hour, they bear witness to the truth of Lloyd's claim that Nightingales are unique and uncategorisable. In very broad terms, we're talking post-punk, but the set also encompasses everything from rockabilly, Dr Feelgood-esque pub rock and Glitter Band glam stomp to warped near-Beefheartisms and hints of motorik.

The suited and booted Lloyd is a belligerent crooner, the Sinatra of 'Spoons, an embittered middle manager letting it all out at a work karaoke night. His voice wobbling with sustain, he sings about fire and brimstone and namechecks both Jesus and Elton John, before supplementing Kitson's percussion by bashing on a metal beer tray. However, even this seasoned veteran of the stage is momentarily discombobulated by the loon up front who continues to throw Pan's People shapes during an acappella section. "You can't dance to this, mate", he says with a chuckle.

No breaks between songs, no tedious tuning up, no encore - just a tight, focused demonstration of why this band deserve their cult status.

(An edited version of this review appeared on the Buzz website.)

Yes men

There's simply no substitute for witnessing Les Savy Fav in person. That they're one of the greatest live bands around was confirmed at Green Man last year.*

But that's not to say that their records don't deserve attention too. Oui, LSF, their first since 2010's Root For Ruin, has much to recommend it - from the siren guitar of opener 'Guzzle Blood', to the nimble commentary on instant gratification 'What We Don't Don't Want', to 'Dawn Patrol', a beatific hymn to all-nighters in good company.

Buzz review here.

*I've now realised that Tim Harrington wasn't singing "We were there when the world got grey / We helped to make it that way", but "We were there when the world got great / We helped to make it that way". So, the exact opposite. Still, it works - they did indeed help make it that way that afternoon.

Scone with the wind

Nothing if not versatile, I can write about punk gigs, metal albums, screwball bands and legendary producers (sorry Steve - engineers) - but also an al fresco lunch at a tearoom at a National Trust property in Pembrokeshire.

Incredible dude

Few strangers' deaths have hit me as hard as that of Steve Albini, who has passed away at the criminally young age of just 61.

When the dust settles, I doubt Albini will be best remembered as a musician - whether fronting nihilistic sonic terrorists Big Black or the caustic minimalist noise-rock of Shellac, brilliant though both were. Nor will he be primarily celebrated as a world-class poker player or an accomplished amateur chef.

No, it will be for his skills in the studio.

In a now-legendary letter written to Nirvana pitching for the job of recording In Utero, Albini effectively set out his philosophy, arguing that the band and their needs/desires should always be central. He saw his own role modestly, as merely as that of an engineer rather than a producer - someone working humbly in service of the artists and the songs - to the extent that he retrospectively claimed that his part in the creation of In Utero and Manic Street Preachers' Journal Of Plague Lovers "is kind of a footnote".

Self-effacing and refreshingly ego-free, for sure - but simply not true. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Albini was a critical contributor to these and countless other landmark records (PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me and The Wedding Present's Seamonsters, to name just two), to such an extent that he could arguably be hailed as the single most influential man in the realm of "alternative" rock - much as he'd have hated it.

There's no mistaking an Albini album - just listen for the distinctive aggressive thump of the drums, especially in tandem with the bass and scraping, searing guitar. That signature sound is most prominent on In Utero (see 'Scentless Apprentice', for example) but also ensures that the likes of The Jesus Lizard's Goat, Strange Peace by Metz and Mclusky Do Dallas carry serious heft.

But Albini was versatile, refusing to restrict himself to working only on punk and noise records. Over the years, he collaborated with artists as wildly different as Jimmy Page & Robert Plant, Joanna Newsom, The Dirty Three and Slint. It's remarkable that he worked with drone metal overlords Sunn O))) at one end of the sonic spectrum, and had a hand in bringing the impossibly fragile beauty of 'Laser Beam' (from Low's Things We Lost In The Fire) into the world at the other.

The sheer number of albums for which Albini has production/engineering credits is a reflection of his ethos. Despite being fiercely opinionated on music, he would work with anyone prepared to pay, seeing himself as a gun for hire - hence the record he made with Bush, and the fact that he was receptive to fiftysomething Scots emailing him out of the blue and offering to spend a chunk of their pension flying him to Leith for five days.

Albini's punk rock principles prevented him from agreeing to a share of royalties. As he told Nirvana, "I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth". Taking points rather than a flat fee for In Utero alone would have netted him a small fortune, but the practice was, in his view, "ethically indefensible". Ultimately, it came down to a disdain for the profit motive, a belief in fairness and a respect for the artists as the real creative forces - all of which he touched on in a 2015 interview on his business philosophy with Michael Friedman for Psychology Today.

At the same time, Albini could be notoriously prickly and cantankerous, particularly in his youth. He was eternally forthright in his opinions, whether savaging the corporate music industry, dismissing "club culture" or ranting about "tomato paste as a base for pasta sauce".

Of course, some of the sentiments Albini expressed over the years were rather more unsavoury, especially within the left-leaning punk community. It's not like these need to be dredged up - they're there for all to see, not least the fact that the agent provocateur par excellence saw fit to form a post-Big Black band called Rapeman. But it's to Albini's huge credit that unlike some of his peers, in his later years he not only refused to double down but actually held his hands up in unequivocal apology - first on Twitter and in an interview with Mel's Zaron Burnett III, and then in an illuminating and frank conversation with Jeremy Gordon for the Guardian. This was an old dog willing to denounce his old tricks and learn to be a better person.

Like so many of my generation, I first came across Albini the producer via In Utero, which he felt was defanged somewhat in post-production but to my ears still sounded like a red-raw howl of an album. But it was at the inaugural ATP in 2000 that I first encountered Albini the musician, onstage with Shellac telling jokes ("What's orange and looks good on hippies? Fire") and leaving Kim Gordon speechless with his band's force. (Curators Mogwai would later enlist his services for 'My Father, My King' - and, like so many others, be taken aback at his refusal to accept royalties.)

Shellac were on the bill again when I (very belatedly) made it to my second ATP, in 2009, curated by The Breeders, one of the hundreds of bands with an album listed on his CV. Nothing had changed, thankfully: "For their first set of the weekend, as always, they set up their own equipment and insist on nothing but harsh bright white light on stage before clobbering us full in the face with their precise, abrasive, minimalist bludgeon - a fusion of Steve Albini's fingernails-down-blackboard guitar (attached with his trademark waist strap), Bob Weston's subterranean bass rumble and whipcrack drumming provided by Todd Trainer, who, stick-thin and dressed all in black, looks like a character from a Tim Burton film."

I saw Shellac at ATP several more times. They practically became the festival's house band, but I never took those regular appearances for granted, savouring each one (though I also never plucked up the courage to take up the mass invitation to his chalet to play poker, regrettably). It was fitting, then, that - after a welcome encounter on foreign shores, at Primavera in Porto, in the summer of 2012 - they curated the last ATP I ever went to, at the end of that year. The line-up featured everyone from Neurosis, Zeni Geva and Mono to Kim Deal, The Ex, The Membranes and Nina Nastasia, all of whom had benefitted at some time from Albini's expertise - testimony to the mark he made on the landscape.

Now, Shellac's forthcoming new album To All Trains - their first for a decade - will be their last, and the cover feature on the band in the June issue of The Wire will be an epitaph.

As Albini himself would have said, requiescat.

(Thanks to Abbie for the photo.)

Relative ways

It's often galling to see what other writers can do with the same album and a more generous word count - but it would be petty not to salute JR Moores' superb review of Fat White Family's new album Forgiveness Is Yours just because I've written my own.

Moores nails certain songs. 'Religion For One', for instance, is aptly described as "the Fat Whites' version of a lounge ballad" and "not a million miles away from what Arctic Monkeys have been doing of late, albeit with greater emphasis on failure, pain, humiliation and resentment". Even better is the characterisation of creepy closer (and standout song) 'You Can't Force It' as an "elegant final number [that] feels like peeling the skin from Noel Coward's face to find yourself confronted by the rotten-toothed grin of Papa Lazarou". More League of Gentlemen references in music reviews, I say!

The album also proves to be a prompt for a more general discussion of the phenomenon of musicians claiming or at least implying, somewhat arrogantly, that they're the last passengers aboard the good ship Rock 'N' Roll as it crashes and sinks. That doesn't wash with Moores, quite rightly: "At the risk of sounding like the once-urgent lyricist turned mainstream festival bore, Alex Turner, rock & roll will never die. It mutates. It is cyclical. It shrinks and then swells like a leathery pufferfish. It repeats itself. Young musicians make similar mistakes and commit to the same cliches as countless others did prior." It seems strange to suggest that a band as willfully perverse as Fat White Family - or a frontman as unique as Lias Saoudi, at least - might be at all cliched, but it's a fair point well made.

Respiration and perspiration

In April 2023, Heavy Lungs made a big impression at Clwb in support of DITZ. Almost exactly a year to the day, they were back to show what they could do as headliners. Let's just say that no one who was there left disappointed - and most of them left with some merch.

Buzz review here.

"This is a time of crisis"

When it comes to the state of the music industry, and live music in particular, I continue to try to look for the positives (see here, for example) - but it's extremely difficult when confronted with an unrelenting torrent of grimness on a daily basis.

Take Daniel Dylan Wray's recent Guardian article on the cost of touring from the perspective of artists, for example - an alarming eye-opener that has drawn universal acclaim for exposing the extent of the crisis. 

Once upon a time, gigging was seen as a lucrative business. Then, when revenues from sales of recorded music collapsed with the advent of streaming, it became a crutch (or was perceived as such, at least), helping to subsidise the costs of creating, recording, producing and releasing albums. But now touring often seems to end in debt - not only for smaller acts but even for those filling decent-sized venues who you would automatically assume must be turning a profit.

The situation, essentially, is simple: costs are increasing but the size of fees and audiences are not. Indeed, there's some concern that attendances are actually declining for sub-arena gigs. Perhaps, in the post-pandemic era and with the cost of living biting hard, the general public are preferring to save their money for stadium acts (not that you'd have caught many Swifties down at the Moon before COVID-19 hit, mind).

In revealing the realities for artists and examining the various factors at work, Wray touches on three themes that also recur in analyses of the predicament of other sectors of the arts: the impact of Brexit (which in this case has made touring Europe an expensive, bureaucratic ballache and led to a saturation of the gigging market in the UK); the fact that making and performing music is becoming more a hobby rather than a vocation (which makes the industry increasingly inaccessible and hostile to working-class artists); and the collapse of the whole vital ecosystem.

Perhaps understandably, Wray focuses on diagnosing the problems, devoting little space to the consideration of solutions. On a micro-level, merch sales are now more crucial than ever, helping by putting money directly into the pockets of artists - but some venues demand a cut, and I can't be the only gig-goer who has to choose between picking up a CD or T-shirt (to support the band) and buying a pint or three (to support the venue). This can't be the long-term answer.

Tom Excell of Nubiyan Twist argues that what is required is "more state funding and support from the top down", to follow the model found on the continent. David Martin of the Featured Artists Coalition agrees: "The government needs to start looking at spending money on the music industry as an investment rather than as a cost."

But, given that the Tories appear intent on waging war on the creative industries and have no interest in bringing about much-needed change within the world of music (see the dismissive refusal to act on the recommendations of the Misogyny In Music report), the chances of this happening seem very slim indeed. And even if they are turfed out in the general election, as looks likely, it seems pointless pinning hopes on their prospective Tory-lite successors being any better.

Canteen closure

Paying a visit to Tukka Tuk Canteen last month, I was alarmed to find it "undeservedly unloved on a Friday lunchtime", with ours the only occupied table in what is a reasonably large restaurant. My review ended with the plea "Let's not lose this one, please" - but now, sadly, we have.

Their statement on Instagram revealed: "For the past year we have tried our hardest to fight the hospitality battle that we know everyone is fighting, but there is a time when surrender seems the only route possible."

Looking back, I guess the writing was already on the wall by the time I visited - a terrible shame. One of our March party returned with another group and left - like many others - raving about the bone marrow varuval in particular. The fact that closure was the only option for a restaurant serving up food as good as that, with Anand George's pedigree and nous behind it, and located on a street with decent footfall, underlines just how serious the current crisis is.