Kangaroos don't have to worry about physical distancing
If you're looking for some engrossing distraction, last weeks Podcast Radio Hour showcased UK independent comedy drama podcasts, acting as a taster for four different ones. It's well worth a listen and you might find a new favourite.
This past week I've been finding that the BBC World Service's Coronavirus Global Update podcast is perfect for telling me everything I need to know about coronavirus each day, condensed into five minutes.
That aside, I haven't really been looking to podcasts for coronavirus information this week, but I have been listening to a couple of podcasts that touch on pandemics.
Firstly, Reasons To Be Cheerful looked at crises of the past and discussed whether pandemics and other large scale crises do really act as moments of fundamental change.
Secondly, Anna Codrea-Rado and Tiffany Philippou over on Is This Working? continued their look at how the coronavirus is impacting work, with a thoughtful and inspiring take on letting go of productivity guilt, with the always excellent Harriet Minter.
And finally, if you'd like a glorious slice of escapism however, you could do a lot worse than listen to Best Pick's deep dive on the 1968 Oscar winning musical, Oliver!
We've reached March 2020 in our guide to great journalism and writing you might have missed.
It might not feel like it but there were people writing great pieces back in March, and not just about coronavirus either. I am including some pieces about corona here, but they're few and far between and, as a reflection of my personal taste and quirks, represent some of the more sideways and quirky looks at the virus.
But we begin with a local story with wider ramifications for life in the UK. Nick Statham, local democracy reporter for the Manchester Evening News, wrote two fantastic pieces for the paper about the impact the withdrawal of the 375 bus route would have on the village of Mellor, which has the dubious distinction of being Greater Manchester's most isolated village. Even if you don't live on the 375 route, or indeed in Greater Manchester, his articles demonstrated perfectly why decent public transport is such a lynchpin of community. This, the second of the two pieces, nails it.
CityMetric ran this perceptive piece by Shain Shapiro about how cities can protect the creative industries from gentrification. It feels like far less of a concern than it might have done when the piece was published but, whenever it is is we get to rebuild our tattered world, it will contain warnings that are worth listening to.
With 2019's In Plain Sight, Stina Tweedale decided to go it alone. There was a sense of coming of age with the album artwork and promo visuals, which reflects the more experimental nature of the songwriting within the album.
'She's A Nightmare' is classic Honeyblood though, a strong album opener that delivers as much as it provide reassurance. It's strong hooks, surging grunge and catchy choruses all the way.
Years as a working musician spent honing her craft, first in Sky Larkin and later as part of the Sleater-Kinney touring band, have led Katie Harkin to this: Her assured, well crafted and confident debut album, released on her own and partner Kate Leah Hewett's label, Hand Mirror. The Leeds girl done good for herself.
As well as the attention grabbing synth tinged surge of recent single 'Nothing the night can't change', with its alluring line 'what we did by the light of the fridge cannot be undone', we have new single 'Dial it in', a sold gold slice of driving guitar rock with an underlying message for our times: You can't just go through life on autopilot, it's there to be lived.
Fans of both Sky Larkin and Sleater-Kinney will find much to enjoy here, but Harkin is Katie Harkin putting her own signature on the world, and the sound is uniquely her. There's a real sense of space here, which might reflect the fact that part of the album was recorded in a cottage in the Peak District, the remainder on the road and in New York. That it is being released on 24th April as visitors are being strongly encouraged to stay away from the Peak District (infamously by police drone), New York is under lockdown and musicians around the world are unable to tour causes... pause for thought.
'Up to speed', another single, soars like a bird and has a kind of breezy indie rock charm that it's easy to love, while there is an eerie edge to 'Bristling' that complicates its angular melodic punk sound. The layered experimental sound of 'Red Virginia Creeper' and 'Sun Stay With Me' suggest new sonic landscapes coming over the horizon, with the jagged muscular guitar sound of 'Sun Stay With Me' being particularly welcome, coming across as it does like the sonic lovechild of Hatchie's 'Without a blush' and St Vincent era St Vincent.
The album closes with the pared down, slightly contemplative and claustrophobic 'Charm and tedium', which is perfect for life under lockdown.
While Harkin isn't a showy album, it's a well crafted set of songs that has it's immediate charms but which is also a bit of a grower, with each listen revealing previously hidden treasures. This is a record that will stand the test of time, and that you will be able to return to again and again.
Today's #clapforcarers song is very much going for the spirit of togetherness and optimism, both of which we're all sorely in need of at the moment, and both of which there has been some sense of.
It can feel trite sometimes to use words such as 'togetherness' and 'optimism', and while there have been some great examples in recent weeks of communities supporting each other, there are also those who are genuinely struggling and don't know where to turn for help. This was the case before the pandemic, and the need will be there in the aftermath when we can finally stand down from an emergency footing.
As you can imagine, a lot of even loosely current affairs based podcasts are spending a lot of time talking about, or referencing, lockdown and Covid-19 at the moment.
There are podcasts you can listen to that will enable you to avoid it entirely, for example fictional/story podcasts, in much the same way that you can entirely avoid the news each day by just listening to 4Extra (you're welcome).
This week I've found myself seeking the middle ground again in terms of choosing podcasts that are rooted in todays reality, but which aren't hard news podcasts and which are (whisper it) a bit funny.
As such, I've been enjoying the most recent episode of Beware Of The Leopard, the Hitchhikers Guide podcast, which takes the Don't Panic message on the front of the guide and runs with it in terms of what the guide can teach us about life in lockdown.
A similar regular and reliable level of silliness can also be found over on No Such Things As A Fish.
In the spirit of funny podcasts about serious subjects, I've also been saving up the second series of Susan Calman's Mrs Brightside podcast for a massive binge listen. This highly acclaimed podcast has a simple, but effective, premise, namely Susan in a cupboard talking to comedians about depression and mental illness. It's a very thought provoking and inspiring listen, and is a lot funnier than it sounds.
Taken from the Bone Key EP, this is another early Gazel track. We can hear the young songwriter flexing her creative muscles here, and the sound is much more beats and dance orientated than her more recent output. Aside from the title track, none of the tracks on Bone Key made it onto last years debut album, Gazel's Book of Souls, so Bone Key reflects a creative snapshot in time. A sort of mini album in it's own right, providing a hint as to what was to come.
'Light of love' is a song that was recorded during the sessions for 2018's High As Hope album. It was left off the album and was released on Friday by Florence as a fundraiser for The Intensive Care Society, with 100% of her income from the track going to the charity.
While an incredibly harrowing song on one level, detailing as it does alcoholic blackouts, panic and anxiety and near death experiences, it's also really quite a hopeful song. There is a real sense of resolution and a desire to change as the song progresses.
Thematically, 'Light Of Love' seems to sit somewhere between the guilt and recrimination of 'Grace' and the Florence Welch who ruined her sisters birthday with her acid fuelled antics, and the honest tales of misspent youth detailed in 'South London Forever'. It's sadder than 'South London Forever' (ultimately a wry, funny look at her teenage years in Camberwell) and it's at least as sad as 'Grace' (the song from High As Hope that tends to make me cry the most), but there's an echo of 'Grace' in the line about crawling into her sister's bed after a dose of the horrors, saying 'I think I did too much'. It ends with the repeated affirmation that, haven't learnt to face facts, and face the world, "I must not look away".
Musically the song reflects the stripped down nature of the High As Hope sessions as well as it's searingly personal themes, but I feel like I understand why it wasn't included on the album. Much as I would have loved 'As Far As I Could Get' to have been included on How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful in 2015, I recognise that in the case of both songs, they would have disrupted the musical flow of their respective albums. Assembling an album, and getting the running order right, is an artform and part of the art is deciding what to take out as much as what to put in.
A piece that feels particularly relevant at the moment was another piece they ran in their Secret Lives section about how a hard, brutal job led to a wider series of discoveries. This is What I Learned About Life at a Company That Deals In Dead Bodies by Sabra Boyd. You might find it a bit near the knuckle at the moment, but while it's dark, it is a fantastic read.
Today is the UK's fourth #clapforcarers, and while I heartily support the campaign, it is proving logistically difficult for me to join in.
This old Victorian house is converted into six flats, ie, six different households. We have shared entrances, a staircase, garden and basement. But, because we are six different households, we can't - under social distancing rules - all stand at the front door, facing out onto the main road, and clap. Because that would be the equivalent of holding a party or barbecue: Big no no. I mean, we could go outside and try and stand two feet away from each other while we clapped, but that would be logistically difficult and probably attract the attention of various neighbours who, in turn, might well call the police so, again, no.
I could clap from within my flat but, because I'm at the back of the house and my windows are high up the wall, this would involve standing on a chair, leaning out of the window, clapping in solitude. Which feels a bit weird to be honest.
As such, I haven't got very far with the actual clapping yet. People are doing it around here but I can't actually see them doing it, just hear them vaguely in the distance.
Last week I posted a video of the Florence + The Machine version of 'Take Care' because I felt it fit the spirit of #clapforcarers, and I thought I'd try and continue the video posting tradition this week as well.
Ibibio Sound Machine's 'Color in your cheeks' might seem an odd choice, but I've been struck this week by another hashtag: #YouClapForMeNow, which reflects on both the hostile environment immigrants face in the UK, and the key worker roles many immigrants are filling in the UK. As well as being on the front line, there is some statistical evidence (I think there will more research done on this soon, or already being done on this) that BAME people may have a higher mortality rate than caucasian people when infected with Covid-19. An anonymous doctor wrote about these issues much more eloquently than I am able to this morning over on HuffPost.
There has been talk, much of it surface talk, that perhaps the UK government will re-evaluate what it considers to be a key worker when drawing up immigration laws in a post Brexit, but even if that is the case, a shift in attitude on behalf of the public would also be needed. #YouClapForMeNow taps into that need.
Given the graveness of the pandemic, I've been thinking that what you might need this week is levity and quirkiness in your podcast listening rather than hard news. There are podcasts out there who are explicitly covering coronavirus, including the podcast formerly known as Brexitcast and Newscast, plus the daily update as provided by the World Service. I might look at them in a week or two but, for now, I'm going to focus on factual podcasts that are interesting, informative, a bit quirky, and a bit funny.
Last weeks Podcast Radio Hour, while focusing largely on religious content for Easter weekend, did include a mention of 99% Invisible, a design podcast that Amanda Litherland likes and has mentioned before. The episode she mentioned was 'Wipeout', which discussed the history of toilet paper. Beginning with pandemic panic buying, the episode provided a detailed, funny, informal history of the humble roll.
Taking a similarly sideways look at history and social phenomena is the '[Redacted]' episode of The British Library podcast Anything But Silent, which discussed censorship and libraries alongside weeding, library humour, and the Awful Books website. While this episode was released last summer, it's a great, timeless listen that provides a fascinating insight into library culture. Given that libraries are having to work in completely different ways under lockdown, with a much bigger emphasis on e-resources, online enquiries and social media to connect with readers, this podcast will continue to be a fascinating resource.
For part two of this series of roundup posts signposting great journalism and writing you might have missed, I'm looking at January 2020. It feels a lifetime ago now doesn't it?
The year started strongly with this searing critique of the response to the Australian wildfires over at Heated. Emily Atkin's newsletter is for people who are "pissed off about the climate crisis" and it's her anger that has often led to her best journalism, as was very much the case in this piece, enticingly titled The tragedy of the climate dildos.
The delicately complex, sophisticated and overall poignantly gorgeous '13th January' is taken from Patricia Lalor's new EP, Sleep Talk, which was released yesterday.
Patricia is a fourteen year old singer/songwriter from Dublin who began her career at the age of eleven when she started uploading her cover versions of songs she liked to her YouTube channel, leading to praise from Hozier (whose song 'Cherry Wine' she covered) amongst others.
The PR team newly promoting Lalor's work have described her sound as being "like a cross between Billie Eilish, The Big Moon and SOAK" and it's hard to come up with a better shorthand for her sound to be honest. There is nothing derivative in her music, but there are echoes of the wistfulness expressed by Eilish in her quieter, more stripped down moments, just as there is the pretty melancholy of SOAK and a low key indie pop guitar sound not unlike The Big Moon.
That said, Lalor has clearly taken the time over the past three years to hone her own sound and the result is delicate, complex, pared down songwriting that showcases her growing talents. She is definitely one to watch.
Lorde's debut album, Pure Heroine, is still an absolute pop classic. I remember hearing 'Team' in the supermarket last year, and being annoyed by teenage boys going 'oooooh!' to take the piss out of the high notes, which spoiled things a bit. Heaven forbid their shopping should be tainted by a girl singer with a good song. 'Team' feels like a good song to revisit right now as it conveys a real sense of camaraderie and solidarity, which I think we could do with at the moment.
Yesterday the early morning radio goddess that is Lauren Laverne was asking for nominations for this weeks People's Playlist, the collaboratively compiled soundtrack that celebrates something in the news each week. Today's people's playlist, which went out on Lauren's 6Music show this morning, was themed around #clapforcarers, and Lauren wanted appropriate songs that also featured clapping. I'm not sure 'Take Care' would be the most obvious choice, but it kind of fits lyrically, and there is clapping on the track, what with it being a live recording.
Ever since I compiled last months playlist for Sticks'N'Strings, I've found myself returning to the Florence + The Machine version of Drake and Rihanna's 'Take Care', which the band recorded as part of a live session for Radio 1 back in late 2011, not long after Ceremonials had been released. This live take on 'Take Care' would later turn up on the deluxe version of the album.
At least one other artist has covered 'Take Care', and it does seem to be a song that lends itself to multiple artistic interpretations. Here, it's given the full F+TM treatment while retaining its dance pop roots, with Welch's vocal starting quiet and subdued before building up to a powerful sustained vocal finish.
You have to actually wait a moment for the applause to kick in. It's like the audience were just standing there, stunned.
In lockdown, I'm experimenting with doing the occasional blog post recommending podcasts. Again, this is something I tend to do more on an annual basis but, given a lot of you currently have more time on your hands than you would usually, I've again decided to write more frequently about this.
That said, the queen of podcast recommends would be Amanda Litherland, who presents Podcast Radio Hour over on BBC Radio 4Extra, and who has introduced me to a lot of the podcasts I currently listen to. Podcast Radio Hour is itself available as a podcast, via BBC Sounds, and is definitely well worth a listen.
Two episodes of ongoing podcasts have caught my attention in the past couple of weeks, namely Best Pick's episode on The Apartment and We Are History's episode on Nuclear fall-out shelters. What both have in common is a fantastic combination of expert knowledge and enthusiasm. In the case of Best Pick, the three presenters were talking about one of their favourite films, and their enthusiasm was palpable. In the case of We Are History, Angela Barnes is known to be a massive Cold War geek with a strong affection for nuclear bunkers, so it was always going to be a great episode. Both podcast episodes are all absorbing and fascinating in equal measure, and guaranteed to take your mind off current affairs.
It you really want to disappear into another world entirely though, may I also recommend binge listening to the entirety of Victoriocity?
Back in January, as the world was just starting to go a bit mad, musician, artist, writer and lecturer Helen McCookerybook wrote on her blog about her decision to create a mini album of short songs on 7".
It's an interesting read, expounding as it does on ideas of 'smallness' and 'bigness' as well as 'loudness' and 'quietness'.
Her decision to do a 7" album intrigued me in another way: The timing of it. Helen began her career back in 1976 as the bass player in Brighton punk band Joby and the Hooligans, before moving onto bass duties in post punk band The Chefs and (later) guitar in Helen and The Horns. She had a long sabbatical from music before returning in the 2000's as a solo performer. Previously, when I've heard 7" albums, they've tended to be by very new bands just starting out. Bands who tend to have a lot to say, but who also have very little in the way of resources. Songs tend to be shorter when you first start out, and back in the mid 1990s, pre download, 7" EP's (as they tended to be called at that time) were the DIY format of choice if you were a punk band. I have two in my collection, both from 1995: Kenickie's debut, Catsuit City (8 songs), and the Yummy Fur's second or third release, Kodak Nancy Europe (10 songs). Both bands were still teenagers at the time, and the songs on each record are raw, very under produced, and - by and large - very, very short. 'Male Slut', a classic from Kodak Nancy Europe, is probably under a minute long, and the lyrics consist in their entirety of: A male slut can Get a drink in the Victoria pub Unless he Serves the customers with X Ray Spex Male slut Male slut Male slut Male slut Male slut Male slut Similarly, Kenickie's high speed punk take on the soundtrack to Grease ('Rammalammalamma') also only takes about thirty seconds.
In the case of Helen McCookerybook's Pea Soup, the songs are short, well polished, well produced little masterpieces of songwriting skill and experience. A lot of love has gone into these ten songs, one of which is only five seconds long. There's something about the understated nature of McCookerybook's songwriting that lends itself to this format, and I think that's also why it's a format that works so well for punk bands: Simplicity. When Kenickie recorded Catsuit City, they could just about play three chords and, arguably, their skills set musically was behind what they were trying to do as songwriters. Listening to that struggle in songs that last between 30 seconds and two minutes is fascinating, even now. The Yummy Fur, having formed their band slightly earlier, were ahead of Kenickie in terms of musical prowess, but not by much: There is a jerky, handmade quality to their songs too, but they feel slightly less frustrated with their capabilities. The 7" album is a forgiving format then. In the mid 1990's it was a good way for young bands to flex their songwriting muscles and get a relatively large number of their songs down for posterity without them feeling overawed by the recording process. Nowadays, young musicians are messing around with GarageBand on their laptops long before they play live so, in some ways, the process is slightly reversed. Whether this leads to a greater confidence for young female singer/songwriters when faced with a formal recording situation in a studio remains to be seen. For McCookerybook, the process has been cathartic, a labour of love. A seemingly 'small' DIY project over which she has maintained control of every part of the process (even the sleeves are hand crafted and numbered.) Given the highly DIY nature of both Catsuit City and Kodak Nancy Europe, this feels very appropriate.
One thing I've been hearing from people under lockdown is that they're struggling to concentrate, which is making reading something long like a novel difficult. Coupled with insomnia (which I know many of us are also struggling with at the moment) it's a classic symptom of anxiety.
I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't be anxious, but there are online resources out there that will help you to manage it, including CBT and Mindfulness, so if it's really bad it might be worth giving them a go.
In the meantime, I'm bringing forward something I would normally do at the end of the year, which is to signpost you to great journalism and long reads in the hope that you'll find them interesting and informative, if not always escapist.
I started compiling entries for this years list back in December 2019, and now I've got four months worth of stories bookmarked, I've decided to provide you with a month by month list of what's caught my eye so far.
As the singer in Savages, Jehnny Beth always came across to me like the very intense lovechild of Siouxsie Sioux and Ian Curtis. While she's carried a great deal of that intensity across into her solo career, 'Flower' suggests she's decided not only to experiment with her sound, but also to have a little fun while she's at it. In addition to releasing a solo album in April, she's also releasing a book of "graphic sex writing" (according to The Guardian) later this year, and the video to 'Flower' seems to be seeking to bridge both music, text and imagery. It's incredibly sexual, but it's not titillating. It feels powerful rather than voyeuristic and it reflects the level of confidence Jehnny Beth has as a performer. A salute is in order.
Released on the Bone Key EP, three years prior to the excellent Gazel's Book of Souls album of 2019, 'Come Alive' sees Gazel experimenting with form and storytelling in equal measure. The sound of an artist experimenting and discovering her voice, it was a fantastic indicator of what was to come later in the year.
Like the cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, Mentrix was born in Iran and spent her early childhood there before living in Europe and returning to her home country as an adolescent. She is based in Berlin these days, which seems apt given the slightly industrial edge to her music, which has been compared to Zola Jesus amongst others.
Her forthcoming album, My Enemy, My Love, has been two years in the making and everything, including the videos accompanying her songs, has been thought through incredibly carefully. Mentrix is a full multi media package and her singles have excited a certain amount of critical buzz and attention, which should bode well for the album when it arrives.
Norwegian alt pop star Aurora gets a euphoric house re-work courtesy of Georgia, and it is glorious. Georgia's remix gives an assertive framework to the utopian lyrical imaginings of Aurora, while ensuring that 'Apple Tree' remains a blissed out slice of pop. Great work all round.
