capital – and so she thinks

The Drink – The Coming Rain

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 13:37:00 +0000

Angular punk, glitchy electronic pulsing and airy vocals all combine on The Drink‘s new single The Coming Rain. The genre splicing track is the first off new album Capital and it’s as electic and spinning as anything from their debut. Indie pop hurls along under spiky riffs and is peppered with intense beats as the track zig zags oddly all over the place but remains refreshing rather than confused; strange controlled chaos. Dearbhla Minogue has said that her aim is to make perfect guitar pop, and Capital suggests that her and her band are getting close to achieving that aim.

Capital is due for release on Melodic on 13th November 2015

Cultural Guide to Wellington: The Coolest Little Capital

admin — Fri, 23 May 2014 10:21:27 +0000

The New Zealand capital of Wellington is a centre of creative activity, inspiring architecture and refreshing natural beauty. I wandered the Wellington streets to discover the most intriguing things to see and do in this highly underrated city.

The Lonely Planet has a habit of saying things that have longevity. A few years ago it dubbed Wellington the ‘coolest little capital’, and, along with the official tagline ‘Positively Wellington’, it is a label which has seems to have stuck.

New Zealand’s capital is indeed a vibrant, thrilling and creative hub. In a country of only 4.5 million people in total, it is never going to be big and bustling, but unlike say the South Island’s Queenstown or Christchurch, or Australia’s Cairns, it is a ‘city city,’ a network of people, places, motivations and lives all weaving their way around this harbour and the myriad streets that unravel from it. The word cool is not easily defined, or at least definitions vary. On this quest it is about finding a place of apparently effortless style, a laid back atmosphere, acceptance combined with innovation, and a place at ease yet evolving — all in the cultural and artistic space. This is a city that is creative by nature rather than trying hard to be and a place packed with passion.

London Story Slam

admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:17:19 +0000

Written for the London Story Slam
The guy to my right takes a sip of his coffee, the thud of its stained base being placed on the table just masking the name of the person on the other end of the phone.
‘Yeah, I’m living in London unfortunately.’
Mid gulp, the hot syrupy liquid in my mouth swells, as difficult to swallow as the overheard comment. Over the rum of my mug I scan the room. No one else flinches. There is not a flutter. Heads buried in laptops, bottoms planted in seats, they don’t seem to have registered that last word. ‘I’m living in London…unfortunately.’
I push back my chair from the table, the chair legs scraping the tiled floor in the same way that his comment grazed my ears. A middle aged women in the corner twitches her disapproving head towards me, with a glare that surely made her soya milk curdle. Moving with ferocity is not on the menu here.
‘Unfortunately?’ I splutter. ‘Oh yes, one is so unfortunate.’
The poor guys looks up at me with a degree of bewilderment in his eyes.
‘You don’t deserve to be here’
‘8 million people call it home. All afflicted souls are they? I’d hazard a guess that the 26m who visit every year don’t share your views.’
He looks away from this madwoman, sips his drink.
‘London is still paved with gold in the dreams and hearts of many, the place for destiny to become reality. As a child I used o press my nose against the dirty window pane of the South Eastern service, my heart leaping with knots of excitement, the mantra of ‘I’m going to live here, I’m going to live here’ nestling in perfect unison with the soundless spaces left by the clackety clack of the wheels of the track. I wouldn’t say I am unfortunate to be here.
‘Where else, in one saunter, can you be Elizabeth Bennett, Oliver Twist and Septimus Smith, all by simply crossing the street or turning a corner?’
By now a few other members of the clientele have been jolted into, not motion as such, but a certain level of curiosity as to what the hell this frantic female is yelling about.
A paused for breath enabled me to to just catch the old man in the purple leather chair grunt a derisory ‘Hormones’ into his grey beard, then settle back into The Times.
‘Have you never stood on Parliament Hill and seen London stretched out before you, icon after icon, all in one neat row, a scenic snapshot of beauty over a myriad of activity.
He gathers his papers, eyes firmly fixed to the floor.
‘Or gazed on the moonlight on flickering on the Thames, a thousand million different mirrors, glistening at variegated angles, ricocheting lights of the city, sometimes right into your eye, so bright that your brain is dazzles and you tumble in love again.
‘Do you want to go for dinner? ‘ I venture enthusiastically, as though the last few minutes have been a witty interchange of banter between the two of us, rather than a tirade of abuse at his choice of vocabulary.
A vehement ‘No’ turned my offer down.
‘Yeah, let’s go out – I’ll prove to how lucky you are to be here. Lebanes on Edgware Road, or some Greek up in Green Lanes. Or maybe you’d prefer a snack – we can get a bagel from Daniels in Golder’s Green.
‘Think about it, what can possibly be lamentable where you can be anyone you like, changing identity through a desire for exploration or escape, faster than any superhero can by putting his pants on the outside. London is the ultimate date – looks and a personality.
He goes to take another sip, and stalls. The cup runneth empty. I now have his full, if not voluntarily devoted, attention.
‘I mean, yeah sometimes the tubes are delayed, light pollution is a problem, and it rains, but where else do you pass through places on your way to work that as a child you thought only existed in board games?
Needing support, I rack my brain for opinions of those more authoritative than myself. Plato said that what makes a city is the people. Do you think that everyone here is doomed, hapless souls wandering their cursed streets? Or John Berger, he reckons that London is perpetually a teenager. A heady cocktail of hope, desire and potential – sometimes tough to be sure, but exhilarating, and with all of life ahead, certainly not unfortunate. Or Blake, he believed there to be no finer sights that the view from Westminster Bridge, and he didn’t dish out praise lightly. I stop short of asking ‘when the sun is in the sky, why oh why, would you wanna be anywhere else?’
Except of course, I don’t say any of this. I push my chair out, pick up my bag, and walk out of the American coffee chain, into the soulless shopping centre, and vow that rather than think about how much I like London, I need to live like I love it.

Various Artists – London: Songs To Define The City

admin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:49:49 +0000

Out on November 28th, on UMC, in conjunction with Time Out

Reviewed by Francesca Baker

For me this is pure scribal porn. Writing about my two favourite things in the same review – London and music. Only if I was sat at a desk with a ink well, glass of the finer stuff, windswept hills in front of me and my muse awaiting behind me could my writing fantasies be fulfilled any further. Before the writing is that crucial bit, the bit that is even better. The listening. I already know that despite themed compilations being usually a bit, well, sucky, London: Songs To Define The City is going to rate pretty highly, due to the fact Pulp’s Bar Italia features. A song makes me smile, and can lift a mood better than Calpol can.
As an album of songs that reference, pay homage to, are inspired by or criticise the capital city, this is a collection that aims to mirrorsthe thousands of Londons that there are. A question I often ask myself is what is the real London?
Is it the view from Embankment Bridge, the spires of St Paul’s and the London Stock Exchange stretched out ahead after a stroll with Roxy Music’s Do The Strand or watching a Waterloo Sunset serenaded by The Kinks. The myriad shops selling foods unidentifiable to my born and bred British eyes, down in Brixton’s Electric Avenue (Eddy Grant) and the hubbub of languages I don’t understand, not too far from where you might find one of Simple Minds’ Chelsea Girl. The place of hopes and destinies fulfilled, streets paved with gold where anything can happen, so long as you’re with The London Boys (David Bowie). Or dreams shattered, realisation dawning as you come to in the late night lighting of Bar Italia. A place to live or just exist, rolling along purposeless, as in the Streets of London Ralph McTell informs us of.
It’s all these, and London: Songs To Define The City does a good job of being its soundtrack.

Sohos Bar Italia, where all the broken people go