Glasgow
Nick Hasted
There are more bizarre, horrific and unnervingly beautiful moments in Jonathan Glazer’s much delayed third film than in the rest of his star Scarlett Johansson’s career. The strap-line - Scarlett as an alien fatally seducing Scottish men - suggests bonkers B-movie elements which Under the Skin has its share of. But by abandoning the hoary s.f. back-story of the Michel Faber novel this adapts, Glazer has made a film which teeters on the edge of pretentious absurdity, and to its detractors falls in headlong; which is broken-backed, losing its way for crucial periods; but which is also memorably Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
When he became Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet in 2002, Ashley Page’s first creation for the company was a witty, pacy, Nutcracker, the kind of box-office friendly production all companies need to win the hearts of the public and stabilise the finances. The present bad blood between the company board and Page (whose contract was not renewed in 2012 despite a very happy and successful decade at the helm) has now led to the icing of his Nutcracker: Christmas 2014 will instead see a revival of the old 1990s Peter Darrell production. But the legacy of the Page years cannot be erased as Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
At first it looked like a joke. But, as each muscle spasm, set off by an electric shock, did appear to produce a pained expression in the performer and a subsequent note, one slowly had to accept that these four string quartet players were indeed being electrocuted into performance. The Wigmore Hall, it wasn’t. Sonica, it certainly was.This was the second year of the four-day festival that, each November, takes over Glasgow's galleries, theatres, warehouses and shop windows and runs amok, stretching the meaning of music to its artistic, intellectual and technological limits. Cross-pollination Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If Glasgow was to find a little corner for the traditional spirit of vaudeville to live on, it would make sense if it was this one: set the basement of a 19th century church with an audience sitting in lines on gold-painted seats; and two highly accomplished songwriters introducing each other with the sense of ceremony you so rarely find at concerts these days. This was one of the first stops on Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo’s epic tour of every corner of the UK - there are over 20 of these shows still to go - and if the band and tour-mate Chris T-T can succeed in making every night feel Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The debates that come with music awards tend to be more interesting than the institutions themselves, which is why it was so novel to see this year’s SAY Award - the Creative Scotland-backed equivalent of the Mercury Prize - go to a work that was not only innovative but genuinely loved. Though it must have been tempting for RM Hubbert to take some time out and blow the prize money on a Porsche, the Glasgow guitarist - a 20-year veteran of the local music scene - announced his next album two weeks later.Breaks & Bone is the final part of what Hubbert has termed “the ampersand trilogy”, a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There have been those who have uncharitably suggested that Crystal World is in fact a sixth Ladytron album rather than the solo debut of the band’s frontwoman, Helen Marnie. It’s an easy, if lazy, conclusion to jump to when said album flirts with many of the same electro-dreampop calling cards and features a bandmate on production credits, but take a trip into Marnie’s world and there is plenty to set it apart.Curiously it’s on the vocals that the differences become most obvious. This is still the same Marnie of the sometimes sultry, sometimes glacial persona she adopts on the best known of Read more ...
Claudia Pritchard
Had the wealthy William Burrell had a son, Glasgow might not have acquired the world-class art collection that the shipping entrepreneur amassed during his long life. But with the birth of a sole daughter came both ambitions and suspicion – he raised Marion to succeed to his art empire, then imagined every suitor to be a gold-digger, breaking off her third engagement with a public announcement in the newspaper that took even her by surprise.Father and child were never reconciled, and upon his death at 95, Burrell, by now the owner of top quality Chinese and Islamic artefacts, as well as Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There are not generally a lot of laughs in dead bodies. So Raymond Chandler saw the funny side of murder, and Carl Hiassen dresses felonies in a bright Hawaiian shirt. But Glasgow, you’d think, would tend to keep corpses and comedy in separate boxes. Not here. Denise Mina’s fiction can keep a straight face when it needs to. Her trilogy of novels set in a hard-boiled Glasgow news room in the early 1980s takes a head-on look at the worst in humanity. But as adapted for BBC One, they’re also a hoot.The Field of Blood made a bit of a splash when it was adapted in 2011. Its sequel has now been Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“It was a bit leary,” Georgie Fame recalls of a 1960 visit to Glasgow. “They had these cast-iron ash-trays at the Empire...” Teddy boys offended by Fame’s starry effect on the local girls led to these being skimmed at the band, bisecting a cymbal, he explains almost fondly, of the night police with dogs were needed to ensure that he at least left the city intact.That stereotypical picture of a Glasgow crowd was of course unlikely to recur now Fame is a respected 70-year-old, headlining the Glasgow International Jazz Festival’s penultimate night. In steep contrast, this festival's fans are Read more ...
Russ Coffey
“The reason we’ve been away so long,” explained Fran Healy halfway through last night’s gig, “is we wanted to take time off to enjoy our kids.” Such non-rock’n’roll sentiments are, of course, the sort of thing you might expect from a band once dubbed the “nicest in the world”. What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was the amount of fire and passion that would surface during the night. Really.Travis have often been described as a sort of late-Britpop predecessor to Coldplay. Faint praise indeed. Chris Martin even calls himself a “poor man’s Fran Healy”, which hardly improves the compliment Read more ...
bruce.dessau
It says something about the commodification of modern music that Scottish poppets Camera Obscura are probably best known for "French Navy" because it is used by wine company Echo Falls on the sponsored intros to Come Dine With Me. It is a brilliantly romantic rush of a song and I tweeted that it was a shame it was linked to selling booze. Comedian/fan Josie Long, not one to condone corporate sell-outs, responded "I just think 'I hope this means you are funded enough to write your beautiful songs!'"Well, maybe the cash-injection has helped, because the Glaswegian band has returned after four Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The spirit of Glasgow has never been better caught on screen than in two movies local director Charlie Gormley made in the Eighties. His Heavenly Pursuits from 1986, starring Tom Conti and Helen Mirren, may be better known, but Living Apart Together, from four years earlier, is a low-key delight that knows how to steal the heart.Singer BA Robertson plays Ritchie Hannah, a Scottish singer-musician whose success has taken him far from home territory (Robertson provides the film's music, except for a closing title track by Carol Kenyon). Touring has Read more ...