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February 28, 2018 by Simon Sweetman

Art Garfunkel: What Is It All But Luminous

What Is It All But Luminous: Notes From An Underground Man Art Garfunkel Knopf; First Edition edition Something like starting from the beginning feels like the right thing to do… Do you remember that clip of Art Garfunkel talking absolute-fucking-balderdash between takes in the studio? For his memoir he’s essentially done the same thing. Why […]

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October 12, 2016 by Simon Sweetman

Bill Direen: Enclosures 2

Enclosures 2 Bill Direen Percutio Bill Direen’s latest “novel” is another excursion through cross-genre literary wanderings. Here in fact is not one novel but separate instances of poetry, stories, journal entries and narrative fiction combined under the pages of a single volume. It’s a website-approach to print and publishing, the banner being the theme – […]

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August 1, 2016 by Simon Sweetman

Digests: The Best of 2016’s Album Reviews – July

Big month, July. I was away for a good portion of it – family holiday. But kept a bit of work going – including a wee Tour Diary. There were some reviews from abroad too but I climbed back into album reviews in earnest in July after a couple of quite months, still catching up […]

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March 7, 2016 by Simon Sweetman

Nick Cave: The Sick Bag Song

The Sick Bag Song Nick Cave Canongate Books; Main edition Nobody walks the line between hi-brow and gutter-punk, between deeply moving and utterly pretentious quite like Nick Cave. You get the feeling – here – and elsewhere across his canon of songs, movie-scripts, soundtracks, plays and lectures that he knows that too. Knew it first, […]