American

Thursday

Mitchell Reiss

An American’s love letter to Britain

My wife and I relocated to the UK a few months ago after spending the past 37 years in the United States, and I cannot stop comparing the two countries. I oscillate wildly between my irrational exuberance at America’s superior market efficiencies and my sheer amazement at how orderly and polite you all are. These reactions surprise me, as I am hardly new to these shores. I attended graduate school at Oxford, worked for a while in London, married a beautiful and talented Essex girl (TOWIE indeed), and have consulted for the UK government in Northern Ireland for the past eight years. But now I actually live here, there are

Wednesday

Graeme Thomson

Compellingly personal arena experience: Bon Iver, at Ovo Hydro, reviewed

A reliable metric for measuring pop success is hard to find these days, as Michael Hann noted in these pages recently. Massaged figures for sales and streams are so opaque as to be almost meaningless. The charts are old news; social media reach wildly distorting. Bon Iver have won Grammys and released platinum-selling albums, but that was a decade ago. Such accolades feel oddly old–fashioned now. Perhaps the most assured barometer is the traditional one of bums on seats – by which gauge Bon Iver appear to be doing just fine. Yes, they are a band lacking any semblance of a song your postman could whistle. And yes, they are