culture consumption: november/december 2019;
It’s been, what, two months since my last self-deprecating reference to Elizabeth Wurtzel on this blog, which seems about right for how much I feel her life, and her work, tangled up in the threads of...
View Article“you owe it to yourself to still be there”: the catriona mcnicoll interview;
CONTENT NOTE: The play that is the subject of this interview deals with mental health and suicide, which are referenced in the piece. “When my teenage years hit I went through this stage of being like,...
View Articleculture consumption: january 2020;
The glib advice, if you’re not happy with something in your life, is to change it – but what if there’s nothing in your life that you’re unhappy with but you’re still, you know, unhappy? I haven’t been...
View Articleculture consumption: lockdown watching;
In theory, lockdown should be the perfect opportunity to catch up on what – if you’re anything like me – is an extensive Netflix queue. In practice, it hasn’t been much of the sort, as my concentration...
View Articleculture consumption: lockdown music videos;
After eight months at home, and with a long winter looming, I realise how much of my life was based around a) going to work; and b) going to gigs. Work was the thing that got me out of the house every...
View Articlemy favourite books of 2020;
I cried at the Bells. I didn’t think I was going to, but as Susan Calman counted down to midnight – huge numbers flashing on screen as shots of Scottish landmarks whizzed by – I felt something rising...
View Articleit almost killed me and i will always be thankful for it: my 2020 in music;
Back in October, Fiona Apple – whose Fetch the Bolt Cutters, released in April, captured a particular early pandemic mood – was interviewed by Emily Nussbaum for The New Yorker Festival. “I think we...
View Articleswear to be overdramatic and true: my 2019 in music;
Appearing on NPR Music’s legendary Tiny Desk Concert series back in autumn, Taylor Swift talked about how, in interviews over the years, she’d been asked a thousand variations on “what would you write...
View Article
