Art Craft and Leisure news

Michael Smith is a creative from northern England who since the 2000s has made his bones in southern England, and drilled into its geography in the process. Until Strangers On The Shore, this meant London, with a previous book (The Giro Playboy) and his part of a music-and-spoken-word album with Andrew Weatherall hovering round a notion of a pre-gentrified Shoreditch, and what was lost when they scrubbed the grot.

Strangers… is a jagged account of moving to St Leonards-On-Sea, a small coastal Sussex town, with his partner and young son, and opening a bar for discerning drinkers – natural wines and the like. Is Smith doing much the same as his old bêtes noires did in/to Shoreditch? He doesn’t seem to dwell on this possibility. The bar holds its own against the various demons which face every hospitality venue in 2020s Britain, until one proves the last financial straw; this is the ending of the book, more or less, but it’s a perversely happy one.

Amidst this struggle to fulfil a modest fantasy, Smith finds time to think, read heavy literature (Greek philosophy, Gurdjieff, Crowley) and parlay it all into this state-of-the-nation-but-mainly-myself address. “I know no-one reads novels any more, if a novel is even what this is,” he says of Strangers…, which really isn’t a novel. Its structure of short chapters add up to something more like a collection of fancy-free lifestyle columns reminiscent of the halcyon days of editorial freedom, large budgets and no culture of being intentionally aggravating for clicks.

Smith is less convincing as a political commentator, which is a relatively minor element of Strangers… but manifests as sort of sub-Marina Hyde summaries of long-settled events whose necessity eludes me. In the main, though, his ellipsis-heavy fulminations sparkle, and induced in me empathy for a life largely unlike my own.

And as the friends travel up and down the road, and in and out of its bars and restaurants, they also move through a minefield of pressures and politics – of race, class, sex, age, economy – and attempt to navigate the precarious, prickly state of the modern world.

ED O’BRIEN

Blue Morpho (Transgressive)

Radiohead may be renowned for their inscrutability, but the symbolism of the title of guitarist Ed O’Brien’s new solo album is blindingly obvious. Named after a dazzlingly brightly coloured butterfly, the record is the result of a lengthy and complex gestation process, signifies personal metamorphosis and rebirth, and marks an emergence from the shadow of bandmates Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood.

The opening pair of songs in particular betray O’Brien’s day job: Incantations’ narrative of desired escape and emotional numbness circling and building steadily from humble acoustic beginnings to high drama and wordless wails, and the elegantly immersive title track infused with birdsong and elevated by Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits’ majestic string arrangements.

Elsewhere, outlier Teachers cuts loose with funk and guitar solo, and Solfeggio and Thin Places deliver suffocating atmospherics, before Obrigado’s sunshiny Latin vibe clouds over as it coagulates to reflective prog pace.

words BEN WOOLHEAD

The BBC, like Channel 4, is a public service broadcaster – and it too is no stranger to controversy. In the past 12 months, barely a month has gone by when TV crews haven’t been huddled outside Broadcasting House because of various crises, from Scott Mills’ sacking to the Panorama Trump edit. It’s also faced criticism about the handling of its own controversies.

BLEACHERS

Everyone For Ten Minutes (Dirty Hit)

When Jack Antonoff won the Grammy for producer of the year three years running, from 2022 to 2024, few were surprised. He’s been a crucial player in defining the pop and alternative sound of the last decade, having worked with artists including Lorde, Lana Del Rey and a particular ‘eras’-defining popstar conglomerate.

Antonoff has seen many an artist pivot in sound and style as a producer, yet his solo project Bleachers has remained somewhat sonically consistent since its debut. Hitting the mid-2010s with a fresh pop-rock take, stadium-warranted anthems, and a hinting of Springsteen influence, Bleachers were certainly singular in sound. Everyone For Ten Minutes, the fifth instalment of Antonoff’s not-quite one-man band, remains true to this, if not complacently.

Upon first listen, it’s a dynamic record with earnest songwriting and huge brass band moments. There’s a visceral element to the recording of these songs that make the record, at times, feel like a live concert album rather than a studio. Ultimately, this is down to Antonoff‘s live capabilities and showmanship. His commitment to his performance, onstage and off, brings a beating heart to every track.

A common theme of a Bleachers’ record is nostalgia, and this may be their biggest downfall. The issue is that Everyone For Ten Minutes is interchangeable with the rest of Bleachers’ discography, making what was once exciting now quite predictable. This lack of evolution seems to run divergent to the work Antonoff produces with his female peers. While the standard for them is to be in a constant state of change – to never be seen doing the same thing twice – Antonoff, much like other men in music, are afforded stagnation without consequence.

It’s fascinating that given Jack Antonoff’s expansive production portfolio across pop and alternative music that Bleachers fails to showcase as an artist the range that he quite clearly possesses as a producer. Everyone For Ten Minutes is, unfortunately, not an exception to this rule. On Take You Out Tonight, he sings about only making the records he wants to make – the truest sentiment behind Bleachers’ manifesto, no doubt. But considering Antonoff’s pop-excellent contributions of the last decade, perhaps we can let him off easy for such self-indulgence.

words RHYS JAMES