What a macabre bag. Imagine the Peter and Jane books of our childhood; now imagine what the Ladybird illustrator would have drawn if he’d been on acid. The bag from The Twilight Sad's merchandise collection reminds me of Martin McDonagh’s play, The Pillowman. In this, the Pillowman is styled as a kindly Father Christmas character that helps children (who will otherwise have deeply traumatic lives) pre-emptively kill themselves. It employs the same absurdist humour as this lovely bag which shows a son with a cloth mask about to smother his sleeping mother, with an inset of a mystery hand pouring a bottle of poison. It's a series of confusing cartoon events that would have Jonathan Creek baffled for at least twenty minutes about who is to blame and who is the real victim in this two-dimensional world. But this is not just a generic piece of merchandise aiming to make money with as little creative effort as possible, in fact it doesn’t directly advertise the band at all. There’s no huge slogan distracting the eye from the unnerving image (taken from the Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters LP artwork). This style of artwork has become a recurring theme for the Glaswegian band, as there are a series of these images available on t-shirts, screen prints, and previous EPs, all of which complement their passionate anthems. You can be sure you won't be mugged with this subversively vicious image hanging from your shoulder.

The Twilight Sad and other Fat-Cat merchandise available here

Not to be confused with Shoreditch Hall, Hoxton Hall is a stunning Victorian venue more commonly used as a community centre, hosting coffee mornings and craft sessions in the forgotten art of basket weaving. For tonight, the ornate iron balcony and draped red curtain were the perfect setting for an intimate gathering of just eighty invited guests to showcase Micah‘s forth coming album.
Micah performed with all his usual vim and vigour, a two hour set of tracks old and new, from the tender, heart-wrenching chords of Beneath The Rose to the crashing tones of The Leading Guy. Insisting that nothing he played from the upcoming album sounded anything like the record, Micah sang quiet songs about wishing wells and loud songs about regret intermission by anecdotal tales of life’s ironies. He also spoke of the happiness he’s found with wife of two weeks and four days, Mrs Ashley Bryn Hinson, a picture of whom now adorns his guitar.
Picture if you will a young man sitting on the front porch of his family home in the secluded town of Abilene, Texas. Convalescing from intensive surgery, the young man is confined by a back brace and the haziness induced by a cocktail of sedatives and weed. He spends his days writing songs for the girl next door whom he longs to see if only for a moment as she cycles past. This was just one of many fables regaled by Micah at the showcase. Such romantic yarns are the stuff of fiction, just another chapter in the life of Micah P Hinson.

A pale, brooding character takes to the stage armed with only a small keyboard, which hangs from his neck, and a laptop. Joe (not so) Dangerous’ lack of musical apparatus and physical presence does not do justice to the richness of sound he creates from so little, filling the spacious Hoxton venue with fragmented tones and hushed, eloquent vocals. To celebrate the release of his debut single, My Allergies And Me, on Mannequin Republic (the label owned and run by Sam Duckworth of Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly), the short set he performed included songs inspired by diverse and weighty topics ranging from religion to Michael Jackson. I’m informed that Joe Dangerous is soon to appear with a full band including backing vocals, drums and violinist which can only add to his intensely atmospheric electronica
There’s plenty in the pipeline to keep this young man busy in the coming months. Joe Dangerous will be performing at the Dot to Dot festival alongside Hercules & Love Affair and the Mystery Jets, he’ll also be appearing at Kendal Calling in Cumbria and the Kentish Town Forum festivals with the likes of Amon Tobin and Chris Clark. All in a days work for this rare, unassuming gent.

Whether it's taking a walk to that street block around the corner you have yet to explore or jet setting across the world to trek the peaks of the Andes, traveling to the unknown, no matter the distance, is an invigorating experience.

The Everson Museum of Art, nestled in the center of New York State in the city of Syracuse, is currently celebrating the art of travel in its recent exhibition, On the Move: Images of Travel from Everson Museum of Art and Syracuse University Collections.

Upon entering the gallery room, the large words of Japanese writer, Ikku Jippensha first caught my attention. “Now this is the time to visit all the celebrated places in the country and fill our heads with what we have seen, so that when we become old and bald we shall have something to talk about over our teacups.” I was immediately inspired to embark on an adventure, and began by viewing the photographs, paintings, sculptures and journals produced by travelers as early as the American Industrial Revolution through present-day.

I absolutely loved a polaroid taken in 1974 by an unknown photographer of unidentified people posing in front of the Grand Canyon. It was a brilliant representation of the desire we have as humans to capture and preserve the moment we conquer a famously made territory for the first time.

Another favorite of mine was a vibrant and lively collage created by artist, Howardena Pindell. She used a collection of postcards gathered during her eight-month visit to Japan. The cards were cut into strips and placed in rows to add a sense of abstraction and pattern, yet known landmarks such as Mt. Fugi were kept in tact to give proper representation of Japan.

Overall, I thought the exhibition was successful in portraying a variety of artists’ intrepretations of the unknown environments they’re surrounded by while traveling. After exiting the museum I was completely craving an exploration, parked myself near a fountain and started to devise my next adventure.

It was the hottest Saturday on record; not just warm, but apocalyptically so. After a day sitting inside with the curtains drawn and the fan on, I braved the evening heat and met Team Amelia south of the river for the Muks soiree at the managing director, Jaime Cooke’s flat. We found ourselves outside a converted school, complete with separate boys, girls and infants entrances. Once we found the correct entrance for each of us, we were welcomed into the most beautiful flat ever with sash windows, high ceilings and a very well behaved weimaraner, called Jasper. The sight of Mountain Dew behind the bar snapped me out of my reverie. I swear this had been discontinued, but was glad to see this was a main ingredient in a selection of cocktails – yum. Apart from the drinks and the architecture, we got a lovely preview of the next seasons Muks shoes, learnt the rules of roller derby from some skating aficionados and decided that crimped hair is definitely making a comeback: it was a good start to a well-coiffed, roller derbying summer

The lovely Jaime Cooke and Rebekah Roy

Photographs courtesy of Alistair Guy

My first run in with Valerie Phillips work was during one of my monthly rummaging sessions at Claire de Rouen bookshop. Claire's tiny dog/shop mascot, perhaps sensing a purchase wasn’t imminent, had spent the past 10 minutes starring intently at me with his goggly eyes so, to escape his gaze I grabbed the nearest book and buried my head in it. I’d chosen well, the first to hand being the brilliantly entitled 'I can't believe a girl is playing me Metallica'.

A few days later I found myself at Exposure for the book/exhibition launch in that rather strange no mans land simply known as 'behind Oxford Street'. Presented here as a series of diptychs it follows a rather mysterious young Norwegian woman called Viktoria, who bears more than a passing resemblance to French electro pixie Uffie, the book a kind of visual ‘messing about round the house’ diary capturing her over a period of time as she tries out various hair colours, eyebrow shades and wigs, playing dress up and attempting chameleon like transformations of her own image.

Beyond that it feels like a glimpse into the world of someone determined to live their life like a modern day fairy (see also: elf/imp/sprite). The book acts as a mirror, Viktoria posing as if looking at her own reflection rather than a camera’s lens. Obviously someone who is incredibly self-aware, the fact that the photographer feels almost absent from the process is what makes this collection so special, as if Viktoria had jumped from behind camera just before the self-timer went off. It came as no surprise to hear that she grew up ‘slap bang between fjords and forest,’ the setting in and around her family home had a definite gingerbread house/eccentric tat hoarder feel about it, creepy and ethereal, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect location. Of course it didn’t hurt that the subject had the kind of face that’s hard to look away from, Lolita one minute, American apparel model the next. You couldn’t help feeling that this was a Vice Magazine dream shoot, Richard Kern would kill to photograph this girl. However, rather than ending up as a kind of voyeuristic study of a ‘fresh-faced Scandinavian girl’ the book feels more playful and intimate than that. Tinkerbell, all smeared lipstick and velour playsuits, it’s hard to find fault with that.

Here's a tip London's A-Z is missing. If you're looking for venue 229, you won't find it next to 228 or even 230 on Great Portland Street. Oh no, turn around, cross over the road and you’ll stumble upon it, cunningly disguised amongst some scaffolding and badly designed street signing.

First up were Red Light Company. Super skinny with lustrous tresses and a Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall lookalike for a drummer, this band was a visual masterpiece. To be honest, I was so caught up staring at the tightly packaged bulges that were hidden behind their guitars; I phased out their grinding, indie rock tedium. Then came an incredibly disturbing foursome who donned masks before hitting the stage. But these weren’t comedy representations of superheroes, or ex-presidents of the USA. Oh no, these were masks featuring their own faces, duplicated in two-dimensional form. The effect was a bit eerie and made me quite nervous of their pseudo Hot Chip sounds. The band that followed was overshadowed by a cocky, Kelly Jones wannabe of a front man who kept climbing into the audience and was too fat for his skinny jeans.

Finally, Frightened Rabbit graced the stage. Every bit the Scottish stereotype, these hairy, boisterous, tequila swigging lads (I still think it might have been apple juice) awoke a weary crowd with thundering songs about fucking and other delicate matters of the heart. Lyrically beautiful, yet delivered with a masculine insouciance, songs such as Modern Leper, and Old Fashioned proved that these lads are going to win their audiences hearts without wanting to make them sick on their laps. The night came to a halt after the venue reached its curfew, and Frightened Rabbit's powerful sounds rolled away back up north.

La Viande: damn cool gallery, even better shop. Directional fashion website ninaandlola.com is celebrating its first birthday with a three dimensional shop with real clothes you can try on and everything. And my goodness, what clothes they are. The rails veritably groan with Peter Jensen’s Crayola coloured knits and Emilio de la Morena’s ethereal shirtdresses. Also on offer are pointy, sparkly disco-dancing shoes from footwear lady du jour Georgina Goodman and Spijkers en Spijkers’ expertly cut tunics in a host of unexpected colour combinations: peridot, garnet and tourmaline. And there’s a savvy selection of lesser-known labels as well, like Kind, who do a smashing trompe-l’oeil tuxedo cardigan, and Richard Sorger, who makes the kind of sequin encrusted, acid bright kaftan which would suit an aging filmstar on a Malibu poolside, but in a totally hip, ironic, clubkid kind of way. Like Chloe Sevigny in a Frank Usher jumpsuit, only even cooler.

Yep, whatever your taste, there’s a dress with your name on it. Literally, in my case: Spijkers en Spijkers’ excellent Alexa dress in black shantung silk. There’s 10% off all stock with a flyer, and if any impecunious art school types out there are still complaining that they can’t afford the prices, I’d like to point out that it was only Student Loan day on Monday, so if you’ve spent it all already, then you’ve only got yourself to blame. And while it might be wishful thinking to suppose that the store’s gallery setting elevates a shopping trip into a cultural exercise, guest designer Hannah Marshall’s any-colour-so-long-as-it’s-black sculptural dresses certainly owe a lot to architectural forms. After all, you need something to wear to private views…

Photographer is James Lyndsay, and Lola is wearing Hannah Marshall a/w 08 and a Fiona Paxton necklace

This is not the stereotypical magazine you may have expected in modern times. I was a bit puzzled when I initially saw this magazine, but this didn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. Someone's Garden Magazine is not bound as a normal book, and all the pages are produced as folded A2 size sheets of paper that require to be opened up into individual posters to actually read the article. Maybe not that easy to read on the packed tube, but it can be folded into a neat little package, which instantly becomes very portable. You just pick the article that you want to read on the day and you can carry it around everywhere. I am personally annoyed with the fact that magazines nowadays are so thick, making them impossible to fit into my bag, not to mention rather heavy. The magazine features fashion, music to art, and features are not all based on Japan; it covers news all over the world. The articles are poetic, as well as sensitive I thought, and I like the fact that they are very underground. The goods keep coming as the back of each article transforms into a poster so you can put the page on your wall after you read the article. It’s reusable and collectable. I visited their website as well, and I must say it was rather fun. Note to self though, you need to have a good and fast Internet connection to see and play with the website proficiently. Unfortunately I don’t have fast connection so it was a bit irritating, but I could see that the website could be really fun, and very clever! The magazine is available from R.D Frank and Magma in London.

Saunas and beautiful people with angular ice white hair are a couple of the great things Sweden has given to the world. Alongside these national treasures should be Jose Gonzalez.

He should be neatly bottled and labeled so that he can remain purely Scando-tastic and uncorrupted by the outside world. Born in Sweden to Argentinean parents, Jose Gonzalez is clearly a superior being (and a guitar picking genius).

When Jose first walked on stage and humbly took his seat I was struck by his awkwardness and unease at performing to such a large, buzzing audience. I almost felt guilty for being part of the expectant crowd. If only the rest of the Shepherd's Bush Empire would disappear and Jose could play to my friend Holly and I in his flat in Haga, Gothenburg.

His tall figure hunched over the guitar seemed to be pressed down by the weight of the audience's gaze. It reminded me of tales of the late Nick Drake who was rumored to have played from behind a curtain or with his back to the audience to escape the feeling that everyone was looking at him. But when the first few bars rippled out across the theater, he seemed to hide behind the music; introverted yet strangely sparkling at the same time. After the third song, strangely sweet animations began to appear on the screen above his head and as the gaze of the audience lifted form him, so did his unease. He relaxed, I stopped worrying about him and we all settled down to enjoy the show.

Jose Gonzalese first entered the wider popular consciousness with the hauntingly beautiful track 'Heartbeats', a cover of fellow scando-band The Knife, that was featured on that commercial (the one with all the colorful balls bouncing down the street, for anyone who doesn't know). Since then he has been widely praised and enjoyed by the population at large. And really, there is little not to like about the minimal, melodic songs which include covers of Kylie's Hand on Your Heart and Massive Attack's Teardrops.

Live, his voice was incredible, perfect record quality...and then some. This vein of music can often be less exciting live than a high-energy band, but there was a certain magic in hearing the squeak of his fingers across the steel strings. There were subtle differences in each track from album. He kept each song tantalizingly pop-song short in length as I suspected that otherwise, live, songs might stray into fifteen minute territory. The crowd were very appreciative and the now famous shhh-ing at people chatting created a community atmosphere in the auditorium.

Jose was accompanied at various points throughout the show by two friends adding percussion and helping to create a big warm sound. Visually, the show was quite minimal. Simple Scandinavian-style animations by Elias Araya were sporadically projected on the screen behind the musicians showing gently rocking white trees with arms or my personal favorite, a little twitching white horse whose squishy head changed size throughout the song! The atmosphere was warm and friendly and I was happy to sit back and daydream...of cooking meatballs with Jose in a little wooden house in the woods??

Usually I vehemently detest encores especially second encores but as my friend holly commented, Jose's return to the stage felt very genuine. We were both warm and cosy from our pre-show Italian dinner and beer and were happy to sit a be lulled by the Jose's strumming. His second encore was almost like a gift to the audience. He took his seat and began to play the song that everyone had been waiting to hear. Heartbeats had been noticeably absent from the set and I had assumed the over-playing and advert association had put him off the song. As he bashfully came back on stage, he played the song with an air of ..."Okay, seeing as you all have been very nice, here it is.." Aw, Jose.

After he finished, he stood up, shyly smiling and gave an awkward little bow, and then another and waved and self-conscious little wave before carefully steeping off stage. You could almost hear him saying to himself, "Don't trip, don't trip....."

I wanted to put him in my pocket and take him home so he could serenade me cooking dinner. Well done Sweden, you've produced another winner!

Despite sharing their name with a cold-war era attack submarine,

LA band Sea Wolf are as far from hard and aggressive as you could get. Their polished blend of gentle acoustics, rolling rhythm and soft melodic vocals follow in the footsteps of Ryan Adams and Bright Eyes. Reminiscent of Damien RIce, only less plaintive, Sea Wolf state their influences to be purely wolf-related. If X-man Wolverine had covered Leadbelly, I think it would maybe be their myspace favorite. Although similarities can be drawn to other artists, Sea Wolf are interesting and worth listening to. If you are a fan of the fore mentioned bands then you will definitely like this. Sea Wolf provide a new approach to tender acoustic indie-pop and revel in their sparkly type of musical melancholy.

Light percussion, atmospheric instrumentals and bitter-sweet lyrics create a subtle and intimate atmosphere. Even amidst the bustle of the magazine office, with music ed Christel's big head phones on, I feel as though Alex Brown Church is singing just to me. Long cello notes and picking guitar sets the base for Church's lamenting vocals. Sung with heartfelt longing and yet with resignation. Despite claiming to never write another sad song, this is what Sea Wolf do best. In fact, they are masters of the genre. The songs are by no means 'happy' but they are strangely uplifting.

The afternoon light streams in through the window and results in my conclusion that this would be perfect music for walking along to, headphones on, feeling good about the world. Or maybe listened to late night when you're by yourself, volume turned down low. Maybe fix yourself a dry'n'rye, close your eyes and imagine you just stepped off the greyhound bus heading down some empty highway. I'm getting sentimental but these songs are sentimental to the core. Sweetly mellow but not saccharine. And coming from Los Angeles, a city famed for the superficial, Sea Wolf write songs that are emotive yet honest.

I might've heard something like this before, but for this category of music, Sea Wolf really does the do.

And anyway, can you ever really have enough sad songs?

Swarovski's new product brand 'Crystallized - Swarovski Elements' unveiled an astounding collection of wedding-related designs, under the name Unbridaled, in an exhibition on Tuesday night. The range of one-off pieces created uniquely for Swarovski by around forty 'mostly British' designers - including Julien Macdonald, Vivienne Westwood, Viktor & Rolf and Erdem to name but a few gems of the fashion world - encrusted unsparingly with clusters of glistening jewels, were displayed in the luxurious, pure white setting of the Crystallized Cosmos and Lounge in central London. Strung white feathers hung from ceiling to floor, and pristine white sculptures of books, pears, miniature dogs and an oversized sea snail bedecked the crystal-scattered display cabinets. Betwixt this stunning array of rainbow-twinkling crystals, delicious canopes were served and glasses of Moet continuously replenished by the affable waiting staff. The incredible attention to detail throughout the exhibition was encapsulated by the cocktail sticks on which the scallops were served; a tiny seashell had been glued onto the top of each and every one.
But the feast for the eyes was even more satisfying; wedding dresses, veils, headpieces, shoes and tableware were all embellished with various manifestations of the world-famous rocks. Among the most ravishing of items on display was a Vivienne Westwood dress, a crystal-studded, cream and silver baptismal gown by Dries Van Noten, wine bottle corks surmounted with shards of translucent purple and clear crystal by Irina Volkonskii and an intricate golden headpiece by Erickson Beamon (modelled mischievously by our very own Lauren).
The Czech-born Daniel Swarovski founded Swarovski crystals in Wattens, Austria in 1895 and the company has remained in the family ever since, retaining its classic sophistication yet moving subtly along with the changing zeitgeists, and this exhibition was a sumptuous example of the company's ability to marry the traditional with the excitingly avant garde.

A coffee-table book featuring these designs, entitled 'Unbridaled' is available from the Crystallized Cosmos and Lounge at the address above.

Possibly due to its close proximity to the grand edifices of the University of London, the private view of Erica Eyres' show at the Bloomsbury-based Rokeby Gallery had a distinctly scholarly air. Take my exchange with one clever-looking chap in square spectacles...

Chap: What do you do?
Me: I'm a writer (mostly of essays, so technically true).
Chap: I'm a lecturer of French and Russian.
Me: Gosh.
Chap: (Something incomprehensible in French)
Me: (long pause, tumbleweed passes, etc) Oui.

And all this intellectual stuff is kind of ironic because Eyres’ show is one of the strangely visceral you'll see all year.

There are certain media that are probably only ever used by adolescent girls, and ballpoint pen and coloured pencil rank high among them. Lucian Freud won't ever display a new series of works in Caran D'ache. Likewise, it's improbable that Frank Auerbach will abandon oils for biros. They do not scream 'This is Art'. Eyres, however, embraces the associations of these almost apologetically workaday media to produce some uncomfortably familiar representations of female identity.

At first sight the Canadian-born Eyres’ drawings of ethereal waifs are the stuff of much contemporary fashion illustration. You know the thing: wispy fringes, big eyes, coyly downturned chins; a bit sixties, a bit Sara Moon, a bit nothing. You can practically see the Topshop labels on these girls' smock dresses. But on closer inspection (and it really is closer inspection, Eyres is so clever that nothing jumps out at first), you see their features have been gently, lovingly, devastatingly manipulated. The blotches and craters of their skin have been unsparingly detailed, their incardinate lips are grotesquely downturned as if grimacing children; their low-slung jeans creep beneath the pubic bone. And the worst of it is: these pitiful girl-children don't realize how absurd they appear. They pose for the viewer in the attitudes of provocation, intensifying the pathos to levels that are both heartbreaking and comedic.

As I edged towards the well-stocked bar following my woeful attempt to impress my Francophone friend (whom I spotted later that evening similarly intimidating the gallery director) it struck me: what's Eyres’ work is about is our universal terror, despite all our pretences, and all our fancy clothes, of looking a little bit stupid.

The introductory song of Jesse Malin's On Your Sleeve set the scene of the album well: the scene of an episode of Baywatch. Thereafter, a procession of power ballads marched on with 'vim, vigour' and all the originality of a victoria sponge. The influences that he claims to have were difficult to detect - despite my strain to do so. Tom Waits! The Ramones! Where? Where? The entire album seems to merge into one mediocre commingling of many an eighties epic, deep-and-meaningful pop rock effort. It did give my colleague hot flushes upon hearing it - although I'm not sure whether or not that is necessarily a good thing. There are many songs on this album, fourteen in fact, and many of them are rather catchy, but none of them - not even Rodeo Town or his rendition of Walk On The Wild Side filled me with optimism for the singer's future in music. I understand that he is not trying to be edgy, and is singing truly from the heart, but I still can't imagine anyone wanting to listen to it who doesn't already have the greatest hits of Lou Reed. In fact it left me wondering, does he wear beads? Is it ironic? Is it a pastiche? It could be a quiche for all I care.

Pop Idle is illustrator Jon Burgerman’s current UK exhibition and is set to promise redemption, salvation and salivation. Appropriately held at London’s Concrete Hermit Gallery, the exhibition includes new work produced for the show, consisting of sculptural pieces and original artwork. The exhibition also launches his monograph book entitled Gribba Grub.

The small gallery is dominated by three large sculptures; a primarily pink and orange triangular form, a rather rotund blue creation with rabbit-like ears and also a yellow sculpture with a spiky head. These sculptures, almost acting like three-dimensional figures of the characters within Burgerman’s doodles, have been adorned with his iconic graffiti style illustration.

Original artwork mirroring the sculptures hangs on the gallery’s walls. Quirky orange faces are painted on scraps of cardboard and are purposely presented in a skew-whiff composition. This set of artwork is juxtaposed with cleaner, more detailed and considered framed art. However, I did notice one of the cardboard canvases had randomly been honoured with a swish glass frame- nice touch.

And Burgerman’s book Gribba Grub is also a creative joy to the eye. A monograph apparently bought about by a year of intensive drawing, travelling, idle thoughts and snacking. This book is a beautiful piece of art with a pleasant mishmash of photography, thoughts, doodles and Burgerman’s distinctive style of fine illustrations. Fine illustrations that according to that fact-pack encyclopaedia Wikipedia are influence by Saturday morning TV, sweet wrappers and root vegetables.

See Burgerman’s website for lots more photos from preview night, *free magazine for who can spot the four members of Amelia’s Magazine.

The exhibition runs until 30th April. Open 10am – 6pm Tuesday-Sunday.

I'm a huge sucker for electro. I mean real breakdancing-on-lino-in-the-middle-of-Wood-Green-shopping-centre-in-1983-to-the-sounds-of-Hashim’s-Al-Naafiysh-style electro. So I was highly excited when the new album from Bumblebeez began with more horn stabs, computerised blasts and turntable scratches than all 10 volumes of the Streetsounds Electro compilations.

Bumblebeez are a brother-sister duo from Australia, Pia Colonna performing vocal duties, with brother Chris Colonna handling both vocals and spearheading production.

Confounding my immediate expectations the first proper track Black Dirt is a combination of lolloping indie hiphop beats with brother Colonna shouting through a distortion pedal about the dirt in his mind. In all honesty it’s pretty annoying. Big phat 808 sub-bass pulses layered under heavy kick drums is what I was expecting, and Clubb Clubb dutifully obliges on that front, Miami Bass beats and rousing synths storming along accompanied by perfectly able raps from Pia, The Sister of Ill. It is somewhat contrived, but certain to fill a drunken dancefloor.

I will say the album does work by being brightly multicoloured and altering music style track by track, however Colonna proves himself to be a slightly uninspired musical thief. There’s no interesting, off the wall styles being plundered, it’s all a bit safe, and while there’s nothing wrong with switching styles wildly throughout the album (the Beasties’ Ill Communication being a perfect comparison point), there is when it serves to destroy any sense of cohesion.

If I were being overly cynical, I’d say that some of the mini-tracks were included specifically to gain PRS revenue from television. In fact the lack of cohesion between tracks as a whole lends to this idea even more. Rather than evoking a childlike eclecticism, the changes in style make the album seem more like a catalogue of background music designed for advertising agencies marketing to Generation-Y. A bit of faux New-Wave here, a bit of P-Funk there, but overall there’s no genius production style to keep it all defined, to give it the identity for which it sorely begs.

There’s no doubt that it’s fun, and the more dancefloor based tracks such as the aforementioned Clubb Clubb, and the mid-tempo electronic groove of Rio (which successfully echoes Homework-era Daft Punk) really do work very well. Hopefully they’ll be released as singles and get even more effective remix treatments, as there’s plenty of energy here to be exploited by furtive producers.

There seems very little to engage, tracks sometimes seeming to have been specifically designed to accompany a visual medium. There are a few standout tracks that work very well, but they are lost in a morass of filler and sound effects. It’s not that it’s boring, but surely the idea of an album is to grab you by the ears and force you to listen from beginning to end. It does work on occasion, just not enough. There’s no reason why an album like this should attempt to be timeless, or even to represent the latest fashions in music; what it should do is provide enough interesting musical ideas to hook you to keep you involved for forty minutes or more – unfortunately I fear this lacks the qualities to allow it any kind of longevity.

John Currin's paintings are the art worlds equivalent of the strip club in Flash Dance. Sexually charged, possibly debauched, visually seductive but pretty harmless. This new collection of paintings can be found at Sadie Coles and is a striking in both style and content.

Firstly, I have to admit to being a John Currin fan and had been eagerly anticipating the exhibition. I had arranged to meet a friend/ fellow painting graduate (also a Currin fan) and we were both pretty excited about seeing the show. Rupert and I ran up the escalators at Bond Street with enthusiasm usually contributed to the promise of free wine, threw our a-z to the wind in and promptly got lost amidst the splendor of Mayfair. Some time later we eventually found ourselves squeezing into the packed new Sadie Coles gallery. The smartly dressed crowd was intermixed with familiar faces from the Glasgow School of Art and familiar faces of a different kind…but more of that later.

The exhibition of new works by Americas leading figurative painter is a departure from his usual soft core, eye candy imagery to an ultimately explicit exploration of eroticism. Where as past works hinted at sex or were lightly sexual in tone, this new collection leaves no question, yip , she’s being doubled teamed.
The erotic embraces leave nothing to the imagination however the sex depicted is not hard, challenging or threatening as is often found in contemporary art but highly attractive and seductive, like a French porn film from the 70s. The characters were round and fleshy, with strange wispy fair hair that reminded me of Otto Dix’s “Madchen auf Fell” lush and intensely labored, as if every hair had been individually painted. Amidst the cocks and vulvas were some amazing details, intricately painted gold necklaces, hyper-realistic soft furnishings and luxurious interiors all draped in a soft, honeyed light.
A reworking of Ophelia with a curious Currin-character as the reclining nude, delicately intertwining a long string of pearls in her unearthly pale hands revealed Currin's skill as a painter. The pearls were handled such precision that I had to look closely to be sure that they had not been stuck on!

The basement floor offered a slightly more sedate but equally wonderful collection of etchings. His signature style of contemporary caricatured directly referenced famous classical paintings, but with currin-esque females implanted to play the leading roles. Christ as a strange doe-eyed blonde was witty and striking. A smallish canvas of roses in reds, pinks and soft sky blues, similar to something you might find in a middle-class suburban home contradicted the paintings on the first floor but neatly tied in with the exhibition as a whole. The brushy, fleshy painting of roses led smoothly on to the large-scale paintings of intimate sex scenes, the soft pinks and peaches used in the petals and the clitorises. This humorous link added to the overall atmosphere of domesticity versus sexual splendor.

Attending the opening alongside the artists and suited gallery-goers was a splattering of famous faces. Having only recently left glasgow where celebrity is non-existent, this was almost as exciting as seeing the new collection. Okay, well honestly, a lot more exciting! I froze, realising that I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the king of British foppishness and stuttering twittishnes, Hugh Grant. Alongside Hugh, were the pet shop boys, Lucien Freud and the aging high priest of rock and roll, Mr Mick Jagger. Inspired by the free beer I had consumed I was about to ask their opinions on the paintings for the blog…. So Hugh, what is your opinion of this vulva? Luckily, Rupert suggested this was not the best idea, I guess thats what friends are for!