American trio Low are what you get when a band evolves far from the established music scenes of laidback California and buzzing NYC. Fronted by husband and wife Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, their sound evokes the relative isolation and five-month winters of their native Duluth, Minnesota, with glacial tempos and minimal arrangements, laced with
No description of Eric Gill is ever without the words ‘devout Catholic’, and Eric Gill: Lust for Letter & Line (British Museum Press, £9.99), while short, provides evidence to both confirm and confound that assessment. One can follow the three-year journey of Gill’s celebrated Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral from preparatory drawing to
At more than 700 pages including appendices, Guardian writer Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs (Faber & Faber, £17.99) certainly can’t be accused of skimping on the details. Adherence to the pun of the title has resulted in a thorough if necessarily left-wing history of political dissent since the Thirties,
Andrew Petrie has written the Bookend column in this week’s magazine. Here it is for readers of this blog. At more than 700 pages including appendices, Guardian writer Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs certainly can’t be accused of skimping on the details. Adherence to the pun of the title
‘I’m not writing songs anymore; they’re writing me.’ Plagued by music in her head that arrived unbidden, drowning out conversation, Kristin Hersh was diagnosed with bipolar disorder just as psychologists stopped calling it ‘manic depression’. Always on the lookout for a mentally ill musician to acclaim as a genius, the British music press adopted Hersh
Andrew Petrie has written the Bookend column for this week’s magazine. Here it is an exclusive for readers of this blog. ‘I’m not writing songs anymore; they’re writing me.’ Plagued by music in her head that arrived unbidden, drowning out conversation, Kristin Hersh was diagnosed with bipolar disorder just as psychologists stopped calling it ‘manic
Director Patrick Keiller made his name with London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997), semi-documentaries recounting the peripatetic investigations into ‘the problem of England’ conducted by the unseen narrator and his fellow academic Robinson. The late Paul Scofield’s voiceover, rich in literary reference and understated satire, combined with meticulous shot composition to produce unclassifiable portraits
Jarrow playwright Peter Flannery’s superb television serial Our Friends in the North started life as an RSC production in Stratford in 1982 and has finally been re-released on DVD. The £8 million, ten-hour adaptation that reached the small screen after 14 years used the overlapping lives of four Geordies to explore the country’s changing political
Peter Greenaway’s A Zed & Two Noughts, recently released on Blu-ray disc by the BFI, proves that the high-definition format isn’t just for blockbusters: it could have been invented for the British director’s first collaboration with the legendary cinematographer Sacha Vierny, a partnership which made explicit Greenaway’s debt to French auteur Alain Resnais and introduced
