The BBC drama follows a couple in their 30s trying for a baby and navigating the complexities of pregnancy loss.
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Gorillaz’ first ever Cardiff gig was a vivid, beautiful and alive musical experience. Off the back of their latest album The Mountain, anticipation was high for what proved to be a performance equally rooted in experimentation and crowdpleasing nostalgia.
The night started off with a high-energy set from Argentinian rapper Trueno, who captured the crowd’s attention from the outset, and whose stage presence got the audience amped up before Gorillaz opened with a segment of the animated short film released to accompany The Mountain. It set the adventurous tone of the evening.
Selections from the new album kick off the set itself, with The Moon Cave and The Happy Dictator further showcasing their ability to mix global influences with electronic and alternative sounds. The transition between different albums (The Mountain is their ninth) was met with a shift in the colour tone of the set, creating a performance that feels like a journey rather than a sequence of individual tracks.
Some of the most iconic Gorillaz songs – Tranz, Tomorrow Comes Today, 19-2000 – added a burst of familiarity that had the entire arena moving. With barely any space in the room to stand still, the crowd never stopped dancing, matching the band’s relentless energy from start to finish.
A succession of guest vocalists enlivened proceedings further still, with the arrival of Gruff Rhys adding some local warmth: his appearance for Superfast Jellyfish became one of the most energetic moments of the night. Yasiin Bey brought a sharp intensity to Stylo and Damascus, and Bootie Brown’s performance of Dirty Harry with the band was a bass-heavy standout.
Damon Albarn’s stage presence struck the perfect balance between playful and sincere. At several points, he stepped down into the crowd itself, singing with the audience and creating moments that felt intimate despite the scale of the venue.
The encore saw Trueno warmly welcomed back onstage to perform The Manifesto with the band; Feel Good Inc., featuring De La Soul’s Posdnuos, made the arena feel like a communal party; and Sweetie Irie made sure the night ended on an undeniable high with Clint Eastwood.
Gorillaz, Utilita Arena Cardiff, Fri 27 Mar
words MARTHA HUMPHREYS photos WILL BAILEY
DÄLEK
Brilliance Of A Falling Moon (Ipecac)
Twenty-eight years after debut Negro Necro Nekros, New Jersey’s Dälek are still defining new boundaries of underground hip-hop, with political soliloquies atop zombie nightmare soundscapes which are equal parts Endtroducing, Mezzanine and Blue Jam. Life under quasi-fascism in America fuels Will Brooks aka MC Dälek’s incendiary raps: as Knowledge | Understanding | Wisdom has it, “Algorithms attempt to dictate how we behave / Fear tactics and theatrics culminate in ICE raids,” and there are mentions of “snitching on your neighbours” and “rich man-babies throwing tantrums” in the scathing By The Time We Arrive In El Salvador.
The tone is set by opener Better Than, where to a Bernard Hermann-by-way-of-MBV squall, Brooks questions why more people in rap aren’t speaking out: “Keep testing me / See if I act sensibly / A few spit that real, but they lack the complexity.” Billy Woods and Elucid are kindred spirits with their abstract collages of sound and polemics, yet Dälek were here first and urge you to “have hope, because we’re still fighting, building and pushing”.
words CHRIS SEAL
SNAIL MAIL
Ricochet (Matador)
Snail Mail’s 2018 full-length debut Lush marked Lindsey Jordan out as more than merely the precocious creator of the earlier Habit EP; it cemented her status as a torch bearer for that much maligned and deeply unfashionable genre, indie rock. While successor Valentine expanded her horizons, Ricochet truly delivers on its promise, largely leaving behind intimate melodramas and bittersweet heartache, stepping outside the bedroom and taking in the bigger picture.
Just as the sound is fuller and richer (Light On Our Feet perhaps the prime example), so too is there an unmistakeable boldness, openness and confidence to Jordan’s voice. Her lyrics are less intensely personal and private diary entries now, the record’s overriding theme being the inexorable and unforgiving passage of time. She’s always been a wise old soul, so finding her fretting about frittering her life away and musing on mortality (“Another year gone by / What if nothing matters? / Waiting around to die / See what happens after”) feels like an entirely natural progression. Ricochet isn’t glumly resigned or defeatist, though; on the contrary, it’s a triumph.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
Unsure precisely what this might betray regarding my meticulousness as a reader, but it was roughly halfway through Half-Bads In White Regalia before I realised that Cody Caetano had written a memoir, as opposed to a novel. Granted, the book’s narrator is also named Cody; it’s a recognised literary device! That, and its original Canadian publication four years ago saw Caetano showered with praise for recounting an Ontario childhood steeped in poverty, abuse and dysfunction with linguistic inventiveness and immersive dialogue – but one shouldn’t read other reviews before gathering one’s own thoughts, of course.
Half-Bads is a hell of a story in large part because Caetano writes like a novelist who writes like a poet (he is also known to be that latter thing). Cody speaks to us with this strange off-kilter flow that’s sort of Beats-adjacent, probably rap-influenced, and occasionally utilises First Nations terminology. The author is Anishinaabe on his mother’s side, Portugese on his father’s, and sometimes this is of no specific relevance to the family’s tribulations until something happens which underlines why it is in fact very relevant to modern Canadian life.
The tribulations are extensive, and the times of financial and emotional respite are only ever a calm before a storm. O Touro, father of Cody and Cody’s older brother and sister, is a deadbeat with violent tendencies, an appetite for every passing vice and a pre-marriage origin story which he gets a cutaway chapter to tell (instantly sounding the unreliable narrator alarm). Mother Mindymooye has more than enough demons and wayward tendencies of her own, and leaves the kids to their own devices for long stretches.
Considering their circumstances, they all seem to keep their footing in the straight world – the half-bads of the title – and in real life, Caetano now works as a literary agent. (Half-Bads’ epilogue is an exhortation to the reader to find the means of telling their own story.) The teenage Cody, and thus his adult self’s memoir, is fuelled, maybe even saved, by mundanities – takeaway pizza, burned DVDs and video game systems whose upwards-ticking level of sophistication helps to track how close these scenes are to the present day.
The singer defied her team and fled to LA to record a new album. It was the best move she’s ever made.
THE TWILIGHT SAD
It’s The Long Goodbye (Rock Action)
Rather like Alan Sparhawk’s White Roses, My God, The Twilight Sad’s first LP for seven years feels not so much like an album that James Graham wanted to make as one that he simply had to: an essential part of the grieving process following his mother’s devastating dementia diagnosis and subsequent death.
His band have long been on a mission to magnify fellow Scots Idlewild’s tunefulness to the epic scale of their current label bosses Mogwai, and It’s The Long Goodbye is just as heavy sonically as it is emotionally. Massed guitars seethe and lash out, representing a form of release, however temporary. Graham refuses to hide behind the barrage, his strikingly direct lyrics a litany of desperate pleas (“Don’t leave me this way”, “Don’t take her away from me”) and anguished questions (“Why’re you leaving me?”, “Why do I feel nothing is real?”, “Is it OK to feel this way?”).
There are, as yet, no answers. The opening track might be titled Get Away From It All, but It’s The Long Goodbye is no cathartic journey out of the darkness into the light. Wracked with pain, it’s a howl of impotence and incomprehension that will leave you floored.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
The former ER star is back playing a physician with PTSD in a new US medical drama.
COURTNEY BARNETT
Creature Of Habit (Mom + Pop Music)
Evolved from her charmingly unpolished, angstier albums like Sometimes I Sit and Think…, the songs on Courtney Barnett’s fourth album feel tidier, more grown-up, and an inevitable effect of aging. Which isn’t to say the Australian loses herself on Creature Of Habit.
The album opens with the bass-heavy Stay In Your Lane, reminiscent in all aspects of her earlier work. And there are still remnants of spunkiness in songs like Mantis, Sugar Plum, Same and Great Advice, though these all fall victim to a softer, more polished sound. From the first track, what is most unfortunate is the loss of Barnett’s characteristically ambitious rhyming and the esoteric appeal of her earlier lyricism, though her Antipodean twang continues to make even simplified songwriting charismatic and fun.
Another Beautiful Day is a fitting end to the album: plucky, slightly grumpy yet hopeful, acknowledging the progression of time – even if a little resentfully. Though musically Barnett has settled down over time, her moody optimism remains unchanged.
words MENNA WILSON
Ex-international Nia Jones faces abuse after co-commentating on Wales’ World Cup play-off semi-final.