Brian Turner is a former infantry team leader from the US Army. He toured in Iraq in 2003-4, where he wrote his first published collection, Here, Bullet. That was an extraordinary set of poems, documenting the violence of Iraq’s troubled streets far more intensely than the indifferent reportage of newsrooms. I discovered it through one …
It’s always a pleasure when an artist raises their game. I really enjoyed The Tallest Man on Earth’s first record, Shallow Grave, which came out in 2008. But this year’s two offerings, his album The Wild Hunt and subsequent EP Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird were a cut above. Kristian Mattson (for …
This is probably the best book I’ve read this century. If anyone is still hunting for a definitive Great American Novel, they can find it here. It’s received a great deal of entirely justified acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. I read it a few months ago after a good friend lent me his …
I’ve only just discovered a gem of an exhibition, Japanese Ghosts and Demons, which fills but one small room of Oxford’s giant Ashmolean museum. Nevertheless, its seventeen prints contain such a fantastic mix of the grotesque, the cute and the comic that I’ve decided to squeeze the creatures they depict into my list for 2010. …
Even back in the summer, when it was released, I had a suspicion that Gonjasufi’s A Sufi and a Killer might be my favourite album of 2010. In the following months I became convinced that nothing would beat its mix of spooky sitar-sampling production and wild-eyed-prophet vocals. Then along came The Caliph’s Tea Party, which …
A List for 2010 – Gonjasufi’s A Sufi and a Killer, with The Caliph’s Tea Party Read More »