In the spring I won the Higher Education Academy Student Essay Competition, which paid for my Kindle. Hurrah! Anyway, below, my winning essay on “What do English or Creative Writing have to say to an age of austerity?” When the recession first bared its teeth a literary friend of mine was blasé. Writers are used… [Read more…]
December 5, 2011
Here’s a profile I wrote for Clash in 2006 about two-man band Zero dB. Trace a line from The Police to Sun Ra via a menswear shop, Newcastle and the Big Chill and you’ll emerge through the looking glass into the bent, sun-blitzed world of Zero dB. Where, for the last six years, Neil Combstock… [Read more…]
November 23, 2011
The Lost Brothers started as a “joke” according to Oisin Leech but he and musical partner Mark McCausland soon found people taking their dusty, gentle folk harmonies to heart. Their deubt album Trails of the Lonely is one of my favourites: a Simon & Garfunkle drinking whisky-laced coffee in the rain with Burt Jansch affair… [Read more…]
February 23, 2011
Another gradually unfolding revelation, courtesy of Craft & Experimentation. This from Fugitive Pieces. Look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful. - Anne Michaels
December 13, 2011
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