But I Know This City (of Literature)!

This is the first of two very busy weekends of literature. When we launched Nottingham’s UNESCO City of Literature  bid, a year ago this month, it was impossible to imagine the amount of literary activity that the bid would help generate. Indeed, when we submitted the bid, in July, none of the things I’m going to this week were even mentioned in the vast array of activities we featured: this afternoon’s Asian Poetry Festival, with Kavya Rang, the first Nottingham Poetry Festival, Book Off at Rough Trade and yesterday’s fantastic event, organised by Andy Barrett’s Excavate company for the Being Human 15 festival, But I Know This City. All were organised after the bid went in. I have a big article about BS Johnson in…

Bone and Cane: the playlist

A belated thanks to everybody who came to my book launch at Rough Trade last week. Great to see so many old (and new) friends, but it was a very sad night for me, as my oldest, dearest friend, Mike Russell, had died earlier in the day, after a long illness. We shared a passion – some would say obsession – with popular music and went to many, many gigs together. We were meant to be at two in the week before he died: this one and this one. Two days before the onset of his final decline, he stood throughout a raucous Libertines show at Rock City, which he enjoyed enormously. That was our last show together. The Saturday before last, at the Northern…

The Great Deception

Just listened to a wonderful Desert Island Discs with Lemn Sissay, who, at one point, talks about people deciding to ‘knit me a novel’. It got me thinking. Today, I want to tell you about the new Bone & Cane novel, published this year. I don’t want to dwell on why it’s a year or two late, largely due to the collapse of my old publisher and the need to find the right new one. Glasgow’s Freight Books have done an excellent job with it. Look at the great cover above. Instead, let me tell you about the different threads I knitted together to create this story, my most ambitious to date. It has three main time periods (and three smaller ones): the late ‘60s,…

Richard Thompson, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham 12.9.15

For RT geeks, here’s an extended version of my review in the Nottingham Post, whose Kevin Cooper took the photo above. He’s our greatest living guitarist and one of our very finest songwriters, yet it’s easy to take Richard Thompson for granted. He tours most years, puts out strong albums as frequently and never charges a fortune for tickets. Last year I travelled to Buxton, where he did a terrific solo show in support of Acoustic Classics at the intimate Opera House – it’s a long while since Nottingham got an acoustic show. Strong new album, Still, has a title that mocks this consistency. The audience arrives never knowing quite what to expect. The first three snappy songs, All Buttoned Up, Sally B and Broken Doll…

ALVVAYS – Rescue Rooms, September 3, 2015

‘Was that the sound of an exploding amp?’ Perky lead singer Molly Rankin asks, two numbers into the show. Thankfully, it isn’t, and the band launch into their breakthrough song, Next of Kin, with its jingle-jangle intro and incredibly catchy chorus. This young Toronto five piece have a name that sounds Scandinavian, but Alvvays is pronounced ‘always’. Their songs sound a little Scandinavian too, a slight accent suggesting that English isn’t their first language. Not necessarily a bad thing. Their sound is hard to pin down. Some songs are droney, a little tuneless, but full of energy. Others sound like pop classics. There are elements of bands who peaked before they were born: Belly, 10,000 Maniacs, The Sundays. Most of all, they remind me of…