Features

A lot of people peak in high school. Eric Love is not one of them. While many other teenagers are in the thick of their glory days, Eric is being starred up – that is, making the transition from a juvenile facility to a maximum security penitentiary, where he is billeted alongside some of the country’s very worst criminals. What follows over the next 100 minutes is as harrowing as you’d perhaps expect for a film that, in the first 10 minutes, sees Eric fashioning a shiv from a toothbrush and Bic razor. No good will come of this.

Being a bit of a broken record here: a proliferation of Hurray For The Riff Raff albums this week, since I’m writing a review of the fantastic “Small Town Heroes” at the moment. Plenty of new stuff as well, though, at least some of it recommended, with strong reference to Toumani Diabaté and his son Sidiki’s kora duets, and to the tantalising extract from a Fennesz album that’s being explicitly pitched as the follow-up to “Endless Summer”…

One of the things I wrote in the new issue of Uncut (full details here) is a longish review of the new Real Estate album, which is out today, I think.

To Los Angeles, then, and last night's Academy Awards. Surprises? Not many, truth be told.

I had the good fortune to interview Jim Jarmusch recently for our An Audience With… feature. As you’d imagine, it was interesting, wide-ranging chat, and inevitably not everything we talked about made it into the magazine. There’s a couple of things in particular that seemed pretty interesting – not least the ‘full’ answer he gave to a question regarding the current status of The Sons Of Lee Marvin, a shadowy cabal whose members – allegedly – include Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Iggy Pop.

Pete Shelley R.I.P

Another song this week from what’s rapidly shaping up to be one of my favourite 2014 albums, Hurray For The Riff-Raff’s “Small Town Heroes”. Have a look, too, at the trailer for Lance Bangs’ Slint documentary, “Breadcrumb Trail”, which is the music film I’ve enjoyed most since the Source Family doc.

There’s a Youtube clip of Ryuichi Sakamoto, dressed in black hunched over a piano playing the piece of music he is most famous for – “Forbidden Colours”, from the film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. It is, I guess, the idea of Sakamoto we’re most familiar with – the artist, his instrument of choice, the music he is playing both delicate and fluid.

The announcement by The Damned that they'll be playing the London Forum in April to celebrate Captain Sensible's 60th birthday and tickets for it will cost what they would have in 1977 has caused a lot of excitement among the band's venerabe fans and reminded me of the following mad escapade from that lively year.

St Vincent releases her self-titled fourth album on Monday (February 24) – here, from the Uncut archives (October 2012, Take 185), is a reminder of Annie Clark’s last project – Love This Giant, created with David Byrne. Gather round, then, as Byrne and Clark reveal the secrets of a successful art-rock team-up, swish parties at the French Ambassador’s residence, and being “allergic to cymbals”... Words: Peter Shapiro ___________________