Scotland
Kieron Tyler
Blackpool Cool is the third and last album by Glasgow’s Head. Issued in 1977 on the band’s own Head Records label, it was preceded by 1973’s GTF and 1975’s Red Dwarf. Blackpool Cool is rare – and sought after. A first pressing in OK shape will cost at least £70. One in close-to mint condition – if one can be found, that is – can fetch £220. Head issued no singles. The reissue of this Scottish jazz band’s final release is welcome.This particular Head are not to be confused other bands of the same name, from the proto-trip-hoppers formed by former Pop Group member Gareth Sager to the Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Years have passed since the early days of Gorillaz, when the real musicians behind the cartoon band remained hidden from view onstage. Yet some things never change, and while there was plenty of cheering for the arrival of Damon Albarn onstage, it was dwarfed by the roars for the first appearances of 2-D, Murdock, Russel and Noodle on giant video screens overlooking the stage.Those cheers came from a wildly diverse crowd, from kids with their parents to Britpop stalwarts who have presumably followed Albarn ever since. Perhaps some of the younger fans were drawn by the anime style of the band Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Juanita Stein had a simple request for her bandmates. “Don’t fuck this up”, she joked, before the Australian group played a song from their new album for only the second time ever. You could understand the concern, however lightly it was expressed. These are still early days in the band’s reformation, with this year’s “Strange Days” offering the first material in 11 years.Hence the trio, augmented to a foursome here, were back in what Stein called a home away from home – the cramped surroundings of King Tut’s. It is a familiar haunt for the group, while also indicative of the fact that Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
CMAT knows how to make an entrance. The opening of this show, in common with the rest of her tour, featured her band assembling onstage before a spotlight was suddenly shone on the back of the room – and there was Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, in a vivid green outfit and snazzy spectacles, standing on a raised section usually home to seats.It was a fitting entrance that could have nestled on the silver screen alongside the varied tunes from films played over the PA before the gig started. Thompson is an undoubted star these days, a charismatic and energetic mega watt performer. This gig, part of Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Although the Beaches may hail from Toronto, they evidently have more Scottish connections than many bands that come this way. Drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel announced early on that she got her very first tattoo on a visit to Oban around a decade ago, but this was trumped by guitarist Leandra Earl recalling she lost her virginity in Dundee.The chap in question was not only apparently in the audience for this show, but also the only man Earl ever enjoyed sleeping with. This declaration was made before the group played one of the night’s few slow songs, the keyboard led “Lesbian of the Year”, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There are always a few drawbacks to being a support act. For Allie X, the biggest issue was simply finding space to stand onstage, with so much ground already filled with covered up props for the night’s headliners. Still, she made a good effort with what she had, working the crowd well, and the clattering electro-pop of “Super Duper Party People” and a wickedly noisy “Off With Her Tits” carried enough verve by themselves that no stage craft was needed.Magdalena Bay had plenty of those songs too, but accompanied them with a stage décor that appeared to be aiming for the stars, or the moons. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The typical Jason Statham character is a taciturn loner with a dark and secret past, maybe as a hitman, a safe-cracker or a former member of some special forces unit. Statham knows what he’s good at, and it’s provided him with a modest living (he’s said to be worth $100m, and can command fees of $20m per film).His latest, Shelter, is a chip off the old block. Statham plays Michael Mason, a taciturn loner with a dark and secret past, who lives in frugal isolation in a derelict lighthouse on a barren lump of rock in the Hebrides. He has an Alsatian dog for company, and amuses himself in a Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
A new look and new vibe for Grant-Lee Phillips at this pared-back performance, part of the Celtic Connections festival that takes over Glasgow for a couple of weeks every January and February. The fresh vibe was due to this being Phillips first tour entirely seated, as he put it, sitting down and armed only with an acoustic guitar, while the 62-year-old is now more hirsute, having grown a beard.There was little else beyond simple performance here, for Cottiers' converted church setting does not exactly lend itself to any onstage gimmicks. If the plastic chairs of the auditorium gave it all Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The last GP in Britain tries to heal his Rage virus-ravaged country in this sequel not only to Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later but his Olympics NHS tribute. Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) is civilisation’s softly spoken but ferociously principled keeper, stoking its embers even in the monstrous Infected, while confronting evil people visually and morally modelled on Jimmy Savile. We begin with 28 Years Later's flawed Scottish island redoubt behind us and only its boy Spike (Alfie Williams) going on. He’s now in the clutches of fake Satanist messiah Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell, Read more ...
Pamela Jahn
Actors who play someone with Tourette syndrome have to take a huge step out of their comfort zone. Robert Aramayo accepted that challenge when he was cast as John Davidson in I Swear. On 30 November, Aramayo's portrayal of Davidson was named 2025's Best Lead performance at the British Independent Film Awards.Davidson is a colourful character, to say the least. Warm and caring, he's also unpredictable, outspoken, and prone to swearing wherever he is. It is one of the most marked characteristics of the condition he's been living with for decades. His Tourette's activism led to Queen Elizabeth Read more ...
graham.rickson
Fantômas was the creation of French pulp novelists Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, whose titular criminal genius made his first print appearance in 1911. An amoral sadist with a talent for disguise, Fantômas made his first film appearance two years later in a five-episode crime serial directed by Louis Feuillade. Feuillade’s sober, stripped-back adaptation was hugely influential and the template for subsequent attempts to put Fantômas on screen. Until the mid-1960s, that is, when André Hunebelle helmed three brightly coloured Fantômas romps which so enraged co-creator Allain that he Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Whoever thought of creating an exhibition comparing the brilliance of JMW Turner with that of John Constable deserves a medal – maybe Tate Britain’s senior curator, Amy Concannon? Even if you are familiar with the work, seeing their paintings hung side by side reveals surprising similarities as well as differences.The rivalry between them has not been cooked up as a marketing ploy; it was real. On show is a snippet from Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner. It’s varnishing day for the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition of 1832. Turner saunters in with a brush load of crimson paint and dabs it onto Read more ...