It was Jim’s second year in a row, re-booked by bona fide popular demand. We’d smashed it to bits last time. This year they’ve moved to a new venue but kept the same ‘single stage’ set-up indoors, with a range of food and booze stalls outside.

There’s a cheese on toast stall, which surely can only be disappointing once you’ve shelled out, because we can all make cheese on toast exactly how we most love it, at home for about 50p.

We almost lost our gig before it started: Ben had an emergency, so we needed a late notice stand-in drummer. My kneejerk recommendation was for Jim to just strip it back to a solo acoustic show, but (rightly) he wasn’t up for that. It would’ve been the wrong approach, given all the other acts were rocking out. Also, the rest of us would’ve all lost the adventure and income. Instead, Jim and Marc found Dave Morgan from Creation Records legends The Loft and The Weather Prophets and luckily Dave quickly nailed down our hour-long festival setlist. He did his homework with a rehearsal tape, but still only got a single play-through with the band, ahead of show day. Literally just one tilt at each song in a short rehearsal. Didn’t put a stick wrong. A supremely experienced indie drummer.

After an unchanged lineup for more than half a decade, it’s the second time in six weeks we’ve had a dep, since Charley Stone stood in for Jen on two shows of the UK tour, while Jen slummed it at the Royal Albert Hall with My Bloody Valentine. Lol, my laptop predictive text just amended ‘Valentine’ to ‘Vaseline’. Ew.

Personally I’ll admit I’ve found the lineup shifts discombobulating, though they played great and they’re both proper lovely people, who are easy to get on with. I already knew Charley, though not Dave. But, accidentally, it sort of underlines to me — injects direct into my subconscious — the ‘job’ aspect of gigging, beyond simply playing music with one’s chosen family. The “show must go on” vibe, I guess, at the expense of the fantasy that I’m dicking around in a gang of mates. In onstage moments performing, I find that feeling hard to shake off. Probably why I’m not a session pro.

Luckily, mostly piano is embellishment, not backbone. A bit of unsettled status rear stage-left doesn’t impact anyone else.

•

After infuriating backstage and tech struggles in Skegness not so long ago, Gigantic’s house crew are excellent, totally on the ball. We’re a complex band to get up and running: a six piece with two keyboard setups (and Jon has three different keyboards) plus an effects-heavy lead guitar and four backing vocals. As I’ve banged on about before, no in-ear monitoring, nothing on tape. Things can go awry fast if we aren’t on it. We’re very efficient now ourselves though: we’ll hit a tight changeover target, as long as the crew has looked at the plot and can do a line-check without drama. This Bristol mob were brilliant. Brisk without being brusque is basically perfect. Gigantic had been running about ten minutes behind schedule after previous band Bluetones came off (not their fault, I think it was House Of Love over-ran earlier on) but after Jim’s show we walked off at exactly the moment we’d been originally programmed to finish, i.e. leaving the whole event back on time. I mean, maybe some songs were a touch fast…

•

So basically: lush crowd, Jim on fire, in great voice, perhaps pushing it a little far fantasising out loud about Nigel F*r*ge being hung up on a lamppost like a flag. Huge cheer.

•

I drove the van for this trip, which adds a frisson of personal nerves. Last trip but one, we got hit by a very expensive pheasant. Our usual driver/sound engineer, also a Dave, who knows everyone and has lived everywhere, was booked up, though in the end he was around to do our front-of-house sound. Anyway, that meant I picked up the splitter van the day before, on Saturday morning collected Zinz who lives in Hove, drove us up to Crystal Palace to load out (carrying and rolling our gear through the middle of Palace’s iconic Saturday food market) then piled across Greater London and out west to Bristol for about four.

You may remember in the olden days, when hiring a car required two paper ‘proofs of address’, household bills or letters from the council or NHS or whatever, with your address on, dated within the past 90 days. Well, I learned that some niche vans still need all that shiz to hire them. But none of our household stuff is in my name. My bank and mortgage are the same company, nobody from the government has written to me since at least January. Argh. I could not for the life of me find a second piece of paperwork. Two days before the hire I find myself absolutely panicking, searching around to locate / acquire something viable. Finally, in the end, a workaround: I asked HMRC to remind me of my national insurance number. Their system instantly generated an email reply, in a letter format that conformed to the online system’s hire requirements. Thank fuck.

•

Gigantic’s backstage layout included a long reverse up a drive and then a backwards swing into the loading bay. I had to do it twice, because we couldn’t leave the van there. It wasn’t tricky but doing it in front of loads of wandering punters, with a dramatic line of security staff to hold gates temporarily shut, was a recipe for intense self-awareness.

•

When I drive a hire vehicle, I’ll have bad dreams before and after. They’re never about a horrible crash, or injuries, or anything like that. They’re always about just failing to break in time and slowly crunching into something precious in front of me. It’s always a gentle collision. Rarely people, just other cars or buildings. A couple of weeks ago I described this dream to someone and they immediately said: ‘so they’re all about you getting in trouble.’

•

Anyway, a great thing about this trip. Somewhere near Swindon, Jim struck gold: a Travelodge with an actual hotel bar, and it did a breakfast. I can’t remember the last time we were in a Travelodge with a bar. This one has horrible reviews online that got read out in the van, but it must’ve been renovated, because it was fine. We ditched Gigantic after The Wonderstuff, just as Roger Cook — sorry, Peter Hook — was about to walk onstage, got back to the hotel ahead of last orders. Sunday morning breakfast was almost, almost, as decent as a Premier Inn buffet. Though some hotel staff whose shift only finished around midnight were up doing the breakfasts. Brutal.

Our band has professionalised a great deal in the past few years. While that does make everything easier, and has been natural and necessary, as gigs have gotten bigger, it comes at the cost of something subtle and intangible on the social side, though we’re all still real friends — comrades not colleagues. For Gigantic, Marc and Mr Spoons drove separately to get onsite by 12noon to sell merch. So I only saw them briefly the whole day.

Theoretically, I had the van til Tuesday morning. I was tempted to use it for some shopping, or to visit friends. But parking is pricey and tricky in Brighton. In the end I just took it back on Sunday afternoon, as soon as we arrived home.

•

In the aftermath, a bunch of Jim’s fans are reminiscing online about the years after Carter (and during the reform era) when they saw Jim play solo in very small venues, performing sometimes to just a few dozen people. I was there too. It’s so different now. It’s been twelve years since the final Carter USM reunion show in 2014 (now a significantly longer gap than between their original split and reform). It’s also been a decade since the 2016 solo tour where his audience re-emerged and remarkably quickly those small venues were too small, sold out, and shows upgraded to bigger spaces. Now he can sell out Shepherds Bush Empire and we regularly play to between 400 and a thousand people in cities around the UK. It’s unequivocally a far better experience, especially in the current climate — Jim is resolutely bucking trends in live music. It’s been five albums since Covid, most charted in the proper charts, he’s had a number one hit 10” EP (I’ve got the pink and blue plastic UK Chart #1 award on my bookshelf to show for it).

A new 10” EP is on the way and almost sold out.

But we feel the world changing, all the way there, all the way back.

Next confirmed Jim Bob action is late autumn, in London and also on tour for a few shows supporting the Undertones on their fiftieth anniversary run, then a mad one-off dash to Athens just before Chr**tmas.

Paid to be in Greece in December, what the actual fuck.

God Is In The TV reviewed all the acts at Gigantic.

icymi —

• Olivia Rodrigo debuts ‘Begged’ on SNL.

Nothing’s quite enough when I know that to get it I begged.

• The YouTube algorithm fed me this and it’s stunning, from 2009: PJ Harvey and John Parish play ‘Black Hearted Love’ on Letterman.

• Beautifully written career reflection essay by musician turned manager, turned musician again, Julian Deane of Raygun (and Toploader, and now Woodchester Piano Company). Some rich Luke Sital-Singh content in here.

• I’ve been listening to a bunch of Veronica Swift lately, the astonishing jazz singer journeywoman, Hod O’Brien’s kid prodigy now in her early thirties. Swift did a session at Emmet’s Place a couple of weeks ago and even in those slightly smug surroundings (drowning in piano trills) she brings bloody, fierce majesty. Adding her plaintive, almost harsh tone to flawless pitch and rhythm, with relentless energy, a Gaga vibe, though really this Swift’s singing — and her scatting — is just ludicrously brilliant, on a par with jazz legends. Annoyingly, she’s also formed a (so far) mediocre-to-awful pomp rock outfit called Dame with the bloke from Dresden Dolls, which suggests a taste issue and maybe ambition for the wrong kind of stardom. But basically everything else she’s got is perfect.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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If you’re reading this the morning I posted it, right now I’m already long gone, up and out, bleary, annoyed, standing in a queue outside a record shop in my home town.

Today, Adrianne Lenker is putting out her intensely beautiful (and on the quiet rather innovative) live collection Live At Revolution Hall on triple album and, disgustingly, it’s an RSD exclusive. At least it’s on black vinyl, I suppose. It could’ve been some horrible multi-coloured edition. Small mercies. Previously it was only made available as a download and on cassette format. Brilliant.

Once I realised I was reluctantly getting involved, I went through the entire list of RSD items, to see what other gems I might want, since I’ll be there anyway. Nothing. In fact, this will only be the second new release album that I’ve purchased this year. Perhaps, after only four years, my vinyl obsession is peaking. The other day I was even considering… deep breath… purchasing a CD player.

Meanwhile, I didn’t have any industry insider cheat codes or backdoor access for Record Store Day, so I’m genuinely having to queue up for this beast like the desperate puntering middle-aged beardy obsessive I appear to have become. I’m not RSD literate and don’t really know how it works at the coalface. So I can’t help fretting about what happens. It says the shop opens at 8am. But how much earlier, before that, do idiots start showing up? Surely nobody’s there overnight? Surely I can get there, say, for 7:15am — that’s halfway civil — and hang about for a bored forty-five minutes reading my London Review of Books and I’ll be in time to grab my copy?

Also, if I do clamber inside the shop in time, do I have to scrabble around seeking it out in the shelves, or does everyone just go right up to the desk and ask for what they want? Surely they don’t restack everything for that day, given it’s a ludicrous bunfight with no connection to their regular sales the rest of the year?

That’s enough Shirleys.

In fact, I’ve even been injured in this particular record shop doorway before, while leaving after an in-store that I’d done with Jim, with my very heavy keyboard on my back, I slipped on the low doorstep and clanked down on one knee. Nothing serious but extremely painful. That’s the sort of thing I’m imagining now, even though it’s totally different.

So it goes.

All these things I shall find out, in pursuit of Lenker. Happy Record Store Day if you take part, you poor fool.

icymi —

• I reviewed the debut album by Drass (previously flagged up here) into a review for The Quietus.

• This is huge. As predicted right here: Gwenifer Raymond gets her Tiny Desk.

• Legendary cassette gig bootlegger Aadam Jacobs has digitised his collection — something around 10,000 concerts — and put it online at Live Music Archive. This is an incredible museum of live shows.

• Slowcore queen Ethel Cain covers Drive By Truckers’ ‘Angels And Fuselage’ for Like A Version.

• Couple of new bits of Holly Humberstone — still young UK pop’s great singular lyricist — Holly nails ‘Beauty Pageant’ on Kimmel, her best telly slot I’ve seen, I think. Also she went on John Kennedy’s Tape Notes with long-time producer/collaborator Rob Milton.

• Geese insanely brilliant tilt into ‘2122’ at Coachella weekend one, halfway through they collapse into a sublime verse and chorus of Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’. This fucking band.

• Laura Marling interviews the great audio engineer Dom Monks for her own newsletter.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

Subscribe to Border Crossing: twice a month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture

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For some reason, we both got excited at the same moment for some live bands, then remembered Homegrown is on. With friends already going, it’s a no-brainer for an early Spring empty Saturday.

I’m sure a bunch of cities have these multi-venue minifests now. Homegrown is into its third year, programmed and organised by Music Venues Alliance Brighton. It’s spread across nine venues in central Brighton, six of which are within a three minute walk. They sold out the last two (and though there are still a few tickets left right now, they will go) plus, because it’s curated by people fully immersed in the live scene, day-to-day, it has a knack of catching local emerging stuff at the right moment, as well as booking a good blend of locals and incomers.

Anyway, thought I’d do a quick run through my own vaguely planned route: Eva Lunny does her beautiful harp and effects thing at The Hope. Then over at Revenge White Magic For Lovers the gorgeous psych-ish pop project of my prodigiously gifted friend Thomas White, off of Electric Soft Parade and Brakes and others. Then back to The Hope for the singer who probably tipped me into grabbing tickets, Bella Union’s My Precious Bunny, emotionally complex psych-pop from Lily Walter out of Penelope Isles. But I do also dig west country Specialist Subject-signed punkgazer trio Soot Sprite so I’ll try to catch the end of their set at The Albert. Must fit in old label-mates The Xcerts as well, somehow, I didn’t know they were still going. First big dilemma is a 7pm clash between Belfast’s superb post-Idles noise-rock quartet Enola Gay and chilled alt/electropopsters Cowboy Lyf at Alphabet. It’ll depend on mood. Then Irish noir drone-folk from Ceann Capaill kinda like the quieter end of Lankum at The Folklore Rooms. A quick burger break before Revenge again for Genn, and the second dilemma: a 9pm clash between Clt Drp at Alphabet and Attic’o’mattic at Green Door Store. After that, Manchester’s incredible Jasmine.4.t shows up at The Albert (a year ago I was banging on about her here). Late night = Hutch at The Hope and if that doesn’t land, down two hundred yards to Folklore Rooms for Thistle. who may be too loud for that room but we’ll see. I’ll still be out after 1am for indie-with-motorik-tints The Wrong Trousers at The Hope.

In real life, if I even get to see half of these it’ll be a great day. I’ll let you know how we get on.

icymi —

• Gorillaz and Sparks join forces to sing ‘The Happy Dictator’ on Kimmel.

• Fascinating music industry article about long-term reputation by Daniel Holter on his own website, ‘The Only Revenge Worth Having’.

• I’ve been enjoying the reminiscences on Jo Bartlett’s site Indie Through The Looking Glass. Thanks Dave Evans for the tipoff.

• I must write something about the emergence of Sinead O’Connor’s stunning song ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’ as a true protest classic. Not that it was ever obscure but Fontaines DC uploaded their version from the Help(2) compilation and in recent years it’s popped up time and again. Phoebe Bridgers, Sharon Van Etten, many others.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

Subscribe to Border Crossing: twice a month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture

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The wrinkle is time difference: streams start roughly 4pm Pacific Time, which equates to a late evening kickoff, here in the UK. But then, they do loop the feed (or at least, they did in previous years) on each channel. So if you don’t have energy for an allnighter, you can get up Saturday and watch Friday night’s action only a few hours behind.

They stream here on 10th-12th April and 17th-19th April.

And here’s the weekend one stage times (as a YouTube Short) if you fancy diving into the detail.

I get that not everyone enjoys live music onscreen. And I will say, neither camera work nor (especially) sound quality can compete with what we’re familiar with from the BBC’s brilliant tech crews at Glasto, Reading and others they cover. Moreover, set lengths are shorter than European festivals, with even big headliners often doing just an hour, and smaller acts down around thirty minutes, like local festivals in the old days. Despite its long-term party creds, Coachella seems to have a natural conservatism — everyone in bed by 1am, in fact Sunday night is done and dusted before midnight.

On the other hand, many artists throw production at this show, because Coachella is seen as career important.

For 2026, its headliners skew pop: Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber, Karol G, plus second headlines including returns from The XX, Nine Inch Nails’ collab with Boys Noize (who I don’t know at all) as ‘Nine Inch Noize’, The Strokes launching their new era (funny, Julian Casablancas contributes to Brat and suddenly his band’s new music has overdriven autotune all over it) and Young Thug. To me, it’s quite interesting, rather than a great lineup.

Looking at stage splits, I also noticed annoying gaps scheduled onto other stages, when big headliners come on. So, if you’re not into Bieber, instead of having three or four alternative options, there’s just one, with most stages dark for his whole set, and to a lesser extent for Sabrina. Elsewhere, it’s a mild surprise to notice how low Geese are billed. In my myopic bubble they’re already massive but — despite everything — in fact they’re a rising cult thing in the USA, not yet proper breakout.

Top line UK names are Disclosure, FKAtwigs, Central Cee, Labrinth out of retirement, Pinkpantheress and Wet Leg (arguably better billed here than in the UK right now). Dev Hynes’ Blood Orange is there as well.

I like checking current emerging (and veteran) Brits, to assess how they’re doing in California versus back home. I was watching that time Blur headlined but weren’t remembered enough by the kids and Albarn got cross onstage at the lack of reaction.

But for newer UK acts, this one is such a biggie: proof that a USA team is getting somewhere. This year CMAT is in the mix, along with flowerovlove (also doing better in the US than UK, I reckon). Good to see Holly Humberstone onboard too. So, though she’s not yet broken out of her cult status either, at least it’s international. Lambrini Girls were billed but won’t play, since Phoebe apparently fractured her neck (!) in Australia and they’re off the road for at least six weeks. Fucking hell, poor lass. They do throw themselves around but that’s nasty.

ps.

Of course, I’m not remotely interested in defending Ye and his nasty racist gibberish. But I’ll admit I’ve found it quite unsettling that this government gets so loudly and quickly involved, and so casually bans an artist from entering the country for things he said, as opposed to things he did. Of course it should’ve never reached that point anyway: Melvin Benn’s team at Wireless was either badly obtuse, or being deliberately provocative, in booking Ye in the first place.

Wireless being a predominantly Black music festival, held in a richly diverse locale where people generally get along very well, its cancellation can only be seen as a loss, socially and economically. That this was effectively imposed by government, supposedly ‘on behalf of’ Jewish people, does risk propagating a false binary notion (god, how this government loves false binaries) and a wrongheaded oppositional narrative. I do wonder if the ban will end up spreading more prejudice than it prevents.

Yuck. Such is the paradigm we’re in.

In the end, objectively, Keir Starmer and his crew have spent the last few years actively supporting and arming racist mass murder by a colonial power. They’re still allowing them use of our airbases, while handwringing on telly about ceasefires. As far as I’m concerned, the Prime Minister’s own personal hate crimes are far worse than those of the pathetic trump troll he banned from performing. They have an actual body count.

icymi —

• Some nice romantic nostalgia about early 2000s Brighton by Mia Clarke of Electrelane for The Guardian.

• This is fun: Stuart Stubbs writes ‘A Brief History of Music in Space’ for his Loud And Quiet newsletter.

• Robert Plant does ‘Ramble On’ with his band Saving Grace, for Colbert’s long goodbye. Hard to argue with this version and it makes even more sense when you remember Stephen Colbert is obsessed with Tolkein.

• Maggie Rogers sings ‘One For My Baby (One More For The Road)’ for the departing Stephen Colbert.

• Andy Von Pip interviews Holly Humberstone for Under The Radar.

• If you’re unaware of Flea’s lesser-known alternate skillset as a jazz trumpeter, this’ll be a treat: he performs ‘Thinkin Bout You’ from his new solo album on Jimmy Fallon.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

Subscribe to Border Crossing: twice a month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture

Buy 20 year old Chris T-T LPs on vinyl for the first time: 9 Red Songs and London Is Sinking

Buy the new Tom Williams LP Out Of Nowhere produced by me

Listen to Refigure the bitesize arts review podcast I make with Rifa.

Music has been so eradicated from popular television through the past decade that outside of Graham Norton, Later with Jools and occasional (very vanilla) Strictly guests, it’s hard to find any at all. If it thrives, SNL UK will offer an important — rare — fresh place in the bunfight to get artists heard.

Traditionally, the original USA version of SNL books one music act per week, doing two songs. Occasionally when it’s a big name and/or someone who can handle it, the music artist will do what they call ‘double duty’ and host the show as well (doing a funny monologue and taking part in sketches). It’s seen as a big demand for a singer or musician and there have been some epic fails (Kanye!) — but more recently people like Donald Glover, Lizzo, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX have done solid jobs combining both roles. A very hard night’s work though. Over the decades, SNL’s music performances have become so storied that just over a year ago, for the fiftieth anniversary, Questlove made a brilliant doc about them, which I wrote about for Double Chorus here.

Initially I was disappointed with the pre-announced SNL UK music bookings list, not because there aren’t good acts on there, more because it’s so ‘current basic mainstream’ Britrock (Kasabian, Wet Leg, and so on). Meat and potatoes. But to be fair, obviously they need to punt hard for a mainstream crowd at first, to help the show itself bed in and find an audience. It’s too early days to get judgey. On the much-hyped opening show, Wet Leg’s turn doing ‘Mangetout’ and ‘Catch These Fists’ was (I thought) pretty excellent: well shot and with powerful live sound, though the band does feel very familiar now, we’ve seen a lot of Wet Leg pushing this second album. But I particularly liked that — as Tina Fey stated upfront in her monologue — swearing will be fine on this version of the show, so Wet Leg weren’t censored. A big plus point for me, versus the US late night shows, and oftentimes Later and Norton, which still censor lyrics to the point that it grinds my fucking gears.

Those two Wet Leg songs have accrued over 180k and 145k views respectively on Sky’s YouTube channel, in a couple of days. I thought of this as a win for Sky. Compare it to BBC’s Later and you’ll find almost nobody gets that many views. The occasional superstar or blowing up artist may get a few hundred thousand after many months, but mostly it’s far lower. So if SNL views kept rolling in, and if SNL UK could keep up that kind of average, it’d be an optimistic sign that the music industry has a valuable new audience-growing outlet.

However, my reliable TV data expert friend Gary Sausages did caution that I’m being over-optimistic. Gary points out that a lot of these views are likely due to it being the launch episode, which has had a great deal of publicity thrown at it, not to mention Sky has most likely (allegedly) paid for a bunch of those views out of SNL UK’s £750k marketing budget, which would be fairly typical on a marketing spend like this. Gary predicts later episodes will most likely get markedly less than half these views.

Meanwhile, I didn’t watch the week’s other big new thing, The Claudia Winkleman Show. I adore Claudia but was (A) on tour and (B) totally put off by the guest list, which I correctly predicted wouldn’t remotely work. Crucially, this show didn’t have a live music performance at all and by all accounts could’ve desperately used one, just to break the tension. Especially given half her guests were actually musicians, it seems like a mis-step. It even makes me a touch suspicious of the Norton producers working on Claudia’s show, since if they had a musical guest too, it’d remove one of Graham’s USPs. I’d presumed that Claudia — who has bona fide excellent music taste — would’ve taken this great opportunity to book a proper off-kilter unusual musical guest each week, rather than the same major label hype stodge as everyone else. If it transpires there’s no live music at all, ever, that’s going to be a gross, gutting tactical error.

Anyway, whatever happens, it’ll be fascinating to see how music bookings on these new entertainment shows develop; if they get more sonically courageous, try to break newer acts; also, if a show gets very successful, we may see its music slots hijacked by global names. For years now, Graham Norton has been seen as the single best booking for helping to break a homegrown music act, though at the same time, as with Later with Jools, its power is gradually but inexorably diminishing season by season. It’ll be ace if SNL UK can offer an alternative to that, with a decent audience and online clips that get widely shared. Especially if they don’t just end up booking all the same people.

icymi —

• Jim Bob just announced a killer London weekender in December, tickets onsale tomorrow, Tuesday 24th —

• Shabaka plays ‘A Future Untold’ from his gorgeous new album Of The Earth.

• Ace composer, synth boffin and electronic music expert Alex Ball re-invents the Cellar 92 session, playing ‘Oligopoly’ (and exploding their viewer numbers without breaking a sweat). I’ve plugged it before but if you like nerding out over synths, Alex’s own YouTube channel is a joy.

• Julia Raeside reviews Lily Allen’s shoes.

• Brighton: if I wasn’t seeing Geese in Hammersmith on Wednesday night, I’d be going to Holly Humberstone at Chalk. I’m stunned there are still tickets.

• Unsettling Shardcore essay on AI prompted song construction with some examples of how mimmicked classic artists sound, when the system generates outright nonsense, masquerading as English.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

Subscribe to Border Crossing: twice a month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture

Buy 20 year old Chris T-T LPs on vinyl for the first time: 9 Red Songs and London Is Sinking

Buy the new Tom Williams LP Out Of Nowhere produced by me

Listen to Refigure the bitesize arts review podcast I make with Rifa.

The audience is more diverse — noticeably more young people, women and people of colour than on previous tours. Heartening. Actually, a little bit thrilling. I wonder if it’s down to the general resurgence of Gen Z / Alpha fandom for older alternative bands. I noticed it at the My Bloody Valentine arena show as well. It’s not like Jim has had a Tik Tok smash or gone mad viral or anything, but there are a ton more teens and twentysomethings, including down the front, scattered amongst the old baldies. They’ve customised their band tees and they know all the words.

Manager Marc and Jim got drummer Ben a caterpillar cake for his birthday. Whatever the Sainsbury’s knockoff of Colin is called. We hid it in the van, on the back shelf. Then all day, people kept mentioning caterpillar cakes. Someone was playing stand-up comedy off their phone and it was a bit about caterpillar cakes. In the dressing room, our rider randomly showed up with M&S Colin The Caterpillar napkins. When we revealed the cake with Ben’s age in candles on it, Ben assumed we’d been inspired by all the mentions. The audience sang a full-throated ‘happy birthday’ and as a special birthday gift, Jim took the piss out of Ben for quite a long while onstage.

This setlist is a belter. I don’t know about anyone else but I’m digging it bigly. Some of the more wayward freakout elements have tightened up, without losing energy. Occasionally, in the past, some bigger, heavier songs lost a measure of their internal seriousness, because they devolved into rocknroll wigouts — and (quite reasonably) we can’t resist leaning into that vibe. It’s still there, but now the intensity stays more in keeping with the song’s content. It’s a subtle thing but this, I adore.

•

No surprise, nicest venue so far (easily) has been Leeds Brudenell, famously one of Britain’s best: they treat you very well (pie and mash for dinner) they know their shizzle — actually like music — and they’ve built into a proper hub for gig-goers in Leeds, which must help sell tickets for the more obscure stuff, because people trust their booking quality. Their list of the month’s shows is wonderfully varied. You know, it just feels like a properly run thing. Of course, I don’t know where the bodies are buried… but it’s bloody ace to show up and perform there. It’s been the fastest sellout on a couple of tours.

•

Actually, I swear we’re playing better than we ever have. Well, I mean, that *ought* to be true, given we’ve been a band for 15 years, some of us have made music together for 30+ years (holy shit) and we’ve been backing Jim in this lineup for eight years now. But Jim doesn’t tour anywhere near as much as full-time road artists, so even with those shared decades behind us, still it feels remarkable we’re in such good sync.

That said, I will mention an unusual, weirdo loss of confidence I suffered on Night #1. As soon as we got on, something off-kilter lodged in my head. So when it comes to playing live, I’ve never had nerves, or needed to deal with performance anxiety, or imposter syndrome. Nothing like that. I make mistakes like everyone but I’m generally beyond confident, calm about performing, to the point of arrogance. But then during last year’s T-T reform, for the first time I had real nerves in warmup gigs and found myself struggling to get through certain songs.

Then, on the first night of this tour, a similar thing emerged: I was losing the thread in a kind of angsty way and having to mentally run to catch up to where I was meant to be. Not the newer songs, nor any difficult parts, literally a couple of the easiest, most long-serving songs, with straightforward piano passages, which have remained roughly the same for years. Through the set, I kept fighting my brain, to climb onboard again. It felt akin to an avalanche, or maybe being out-of-balance on a gymnastics beam — and it arrived with a side-order of punch-in-the-neck powerful self-doubt and loathing. Like, literally, for example, I lost control of the introduction to ‘Touchy Feely’ — and if you’re remotely familiar with Jim’s music, you’ll know we’ve played that song a thousand times and the intro doesn’t vary and is not difficult.

At the same time, the gig was going perfectly well, especially for a first date — overall — most folks were pretty happy as it unfolded into a rocking night. For me, a long dark night of the soul.

Thank the gods, looking back now after I’ve strung together a much, much better show, where I didn’t make significant mistakes and was on top of the little squidgy bits of multi-tasking (like triggering a sample while playing, etc etc.) the ick rapidly faded. So we’ll see. Could be a smasher of a month, if the A game stays around. But I’d love to know wtf was going on, psychologically.

•

Best food so far: an excellent classic big brunch at a brand new looking American-style diner at, ahem, Ram Jam Services, A1 northbound. It’s not an OK Diner like most places, it’s a new mini-chain called Brightside. Also, the most spotlessly clean loos I’ve ever seen at a service station, though I did briefly get trapped inside by a stiff lock and held up the van leaving.

Today in live music, in-ear monitoring is so prevalent, including on the grass-roots circuit, it means conventional monitors (you know, the wedge-shaped speakers lining the front of the stage) aren’t used so constantly. In turn, this means venues sometimes have fewer of them, and/or they’re falling into disrepair. Sometimes (well, just very occasionally to be fair) house crews are irritated by the extra labour of having to set up conventional monitors, though for decades that was the bread and butter. Lots of acts with in-ear monitoring still use one or two traditional wedges — but not for everyone in the band.

I’ve mentioned before but currently the Jim Bob band doesn’t use any in-ear monitoring, so no click tracks, no pads or ‘augmented’ instruments, literally nothing is ‘on tape’ (ironically, given Carter USM’s infamous drum machine). Unless it’s a spoken sample between songs, every note you hear is being played in that moment by a musician onstage. You might be surprised how rare that is nowadays, including with rock, punk and indie outfits. It’s fantastic for us: makes things real and slippery. We flow, and things can go wildly wrong, it’s music without the safety net. You don’t get that separation (isolation) from the real space of the room that wearing earplugs inevitably brings. Yet also, our old-school approach is increasingly anachronistic as tech gets more affordable and ubiquitous. Soon, I imagine it’ll become near impossible to tour without in-ears, as the skillset and equipment in venues gradually dissipate.

•

Each night Jim has debuted a new, explicitly ‘political’ solo acoustic song, and they’re stunning. He’d already been in a long purple patch of songwriting since the pandemic (which obviously I’d say deserves much wider recognition — including from the songcraft snobs who continue to stupidly overlook his work). But ‘Not All Men’ (Jim’s response to reading Virginia Giuffre’s memoir) and ‘Not Your President, Not My King’ are desolation row classics in the making. I’m in awe: it’s like being a beginner again, hearing Carter’s ferocious poetry for the first time.

•

We’ve got enough tequila now to take it off the rider. I’m trying to think of something clever or unusual to add instead, but nothing comes to mind.

Each night, Marc’s merch stall is selling my 12” albums. They didn’t need to do that, it’s very kind, given I’m not actually playing as ‘me’. I’ve been asked to sign a couple and got confused about whether to sign ‘Chris T-T’ or ‘Chris Thorpe-Tracey’ or something else entirely. Just write something stupid. I was meant to make a flier to promote them but didn’t do it in time. Hopefully I’ll get one printed tomorrow.

Interrobang‽ doing an excellent job as support, in a duo format mixing live and backing tapes, heavy on stylish but unflinching political chicanery, super-smart incendiary lyrical work, chanted choruses and quite complex beats and synths underpinning it. They’ve got in-ear monitoring, by the way, which is a first for a Jim tour support. Even with the important (sometimes bleak) messaging, it’s very entertaining. If you’ve not seen Dunstan Bruce’s offbeat 2023 documentary film I Get Knocked Down, reckoning with Chumbawamba’s enormous global smash hit that made a bunch of Yorkshire anarchists briefly world superstars, and then left them to cope with the aftermath, it’s available to stream and comes highly recommended by me. I suspect the Interrobang‽ duo is dividing the crowd a bit, which is spot on in my book.

•

Next: Southampton, Oxford, Nottingham.

icymi —

“It has come to my attention that the White House has used one of my songs on Tik Tok to incite violence and threaten war. Trying to make light of war is disgusting and inhumane. I absolutely do not approve of my music being used to promote violence. Love always trumps hate. This is the opposite of what I stand for. Also don’t let this distract us from the fact that criminal predator Donald Trump appears in the files over a million times.”
— Kesha

• Fugazi have released the long bootlegged alternate versions of In On The Kill Taker they recorded with Steve Albini in late 1992, as a download for charity via Bandcamp. The page also gives a good explanation of the session and addresses why it wasn’t used. You can listen to ‘Facet Squared’ and ‘Smallpox Champion’ and download the whole record for $10.

• You have to read Joel Gouveia’s widely discussed essay ‘The Death Of Spotify’ (on the great Jimmy Iovine’s recent pronouncement about the end of streaming services). Thanks to Mishkin Fitzgerald for reminding me I was going to share this.

• Turnstile cover Stone Roses’ ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ for Like A Version.

• Mitski does the Maria Bamford Questionnaire for Vulture.

• Stewart Lee interviews Sleaford Mods live at Rough Trade. I don’t know, I love them but it still grinds my gears that there’s never a glancing reference to Carter (Jason apparently dislikes it when fans mention them) because they’re so keen to trace the lineage directly to hip hop. Lee does a smart thing here, linking them to Gilbert & George, or even Beckett (he doesn’t name it but obviously Waiting For Godot), though Jason still leans hard into the rap connection.

• MJ Lenderman on the Adam Friedland Show throwing topics and references around until some of it’s like listening to a different language.

• Laufey and the BBC Concert Orchestra turn ‘Both Sides Now’ into what sounds like the tentpole ballad from a fifties Broadway show. Gloriously wholesome, though I appreciate some folks may hate this. Her own new single ‘How I Get’, taped in the same setting, is safer territory.

• Fontaines DC cover Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’ for Help(2).

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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Eric Drass’ day job is being the remarkable disruptive art world figure and enigmatic tech prankster ‘Shardcore’, working across multi-media. One of his first pieces that I encountered many years ago, was when he painted a portrait of the Home Secretary, except after you looked at it, then walked around the corner of the gallery, you found a portrait of yourself that it had made by secretly taking your photo. We have a few Shardcore works in our home now, including a beautiful portrait (I shit you not) of a deeply stressed looking Jeremy Clarkson, which I’ve written about before — I wanted to use it as an LP cover for a concept album that never got completed. Quite reasonably, Rifa won’t let me hang this one downstairs, so it lives on our top floor hung just outside the attic. He’s even painted me and Rifa a couple of times. I could (I will one day) write a proper profile of Shardcore’s adventures in visual and code art — but that’s for another time and the other newsletter.

Because last week Eric announced his first solo music album under the artist name DRASS. The record is called On The Hill and comes out on April Fool’s Day, via Death & Praxis Records. It’s real though, not a prank...

You can check out lead single ‘The Spectacle’ with its eye-opener of a video, where DRASS digitally forces his words into the mouths of a series of global figures. Apparently inspired by Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’, he’s ripping into the paradigm we’re all trying to survive right now, with images replacing truth and lives lived via screens. His deceptively soft spoken vocal cuts through hazy chords and a slippery, scattergun drum’n’bass backbone. But what I particularly love about ‘The Spectacle’ is that it’s not a dry essay, nor too shrill a diatribe, it balances his steady, philosophically literate call-to-arms, delivering a hue of Burial via Sleaford Mods, though in real life he’s a Gary Numan guy. For me, this is a terrific jam, to ease you into On The Hill’s gumbo of counterculture storytelling, vintage electronica, alien conspiracy and sardonic humour.

Funnily enough, Eric Drass is also an in-demand (though often wildly acerbic) international speaker on AI, deep fake, and machine learning as a tool in art-making. Not so long ago he showed up as a guest expert at the BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures and he’s been on proper telly explaining deep fakes to Ian Hislop. He recently published this essay and ‘Slow AI’ manifesto, exploring his own long-time collaborations with machines, in the light of current debates around AI. He’s been curating and writing on this stuff since the early 2010s. Again, I digress into visual art. Come on, Chris.

Drass worked on the music for On The Hill through 2025 in his secret lair in Sussex, which is genuinely accessed via a hidden doorway in a bookshelf. I’ve seen it myself — it’s like a batcave, or something out of a Hammer Horror film, he could run a secret society from in there, and may well do. Anyway, last summer (as I wrote about before) DRASS road-tested songs from On The Hill in the ScienceFutures Arena at Glastonbury, which I was also booked for. I gigged with him again just before Christmas, at a party in my Brighton neighbourhood. His ferocious, often disturbing, sometimes very funny live show — in which he’s constantly affecting and altering his live vocal in a fascinating way I’ve not heard before — culminates with an onstage alien autopsy that inevitably descends into gory chaos.

Don’t tell him I shared this but here’s a sneaky ahead-of-release album stream, which may disappear this week but while it’s here, grab a listen. My favourite jams I think are currently ‘Tridactyl’ and ‘Nucleation Point’.

DRASS is delivering frazzled glitches, treacle-black state-of-the-world realism, moments of dazzling psychedelia, dick jokes, old school crunch to the beats, truth bombs, and no global leaders escape unscathed. I have a subtext too: it’s great to be able to share new music by an older artist, someone of the same generation as me, who isn’t relying on past glories. Eric Drass inspires me to work on new art.

icymi —

• Rosalía sings ‘La Perla’ at the Concert for Palestine in Barcelona. Takes a couple of minutes to get started.

• CMAT on Harry Hill’s podcast. I probably don’t need to share it, this podcast is probably huge.

• Brighton’s own Simon Raymonde (Bella Union / Cocteau Twins) does What’s In My Bag? for Amoeba. I’ve interviewed Simon, he’s lovely, this vid has some brilliant stories — and the Bella Union store has a magic vibe, captures that mystical thing indie record shops long for, of being a genuine hangout.

• Since I’m glazing Bella Union, here’s a huge recommend for the magnificent debut single by My Precious Bunny, solo outing of Penelope Isles’ Lily Wolter, this is ‘I Go Up, You Go Down’.

• A little miracle: Mavis Staples singing ‘Beautiful Strangers’ from Sad And Beautiful World with Kevin Morby and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats.

• Which sent me back to her doing ‘Human Mind’ (same album) on Colbert two months ago, which I didn’t share at the time.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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Yesterday Springsteen released ‘Streets Of Minneapolis’ and pretty much nailed the job, bringing in a full alt-rock band sound and (odd to say but) channeling his best Steve Earle, lyrically specific to the point of sounding almost like David Rovics, yet maintaining enough anthemic heft and vivid poetry to capture something of the timelessness of great protest songwriting.

And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Meanwhile, Uncle Bill threw up ‘City Of Heroes’ online. He sticks with his plain hard strummed acoustic, fast and simple, an ‘All Along The Watchtower’ or ‘Rockin In The Free World’ nod in the verse chords, and thoughts around Martin Niemöller including a lyrical retooling of Niemöller’s infamous prose piece on his own complacency, ‘First They Came…’.

Bragg does a marvellous pivot in the bridge, repeating “I got in their face”, which, by the way, perfectly suits his delivery —

What excuses would you tell yourself
If this ever happened to you?
Well I live in a city of heroes
I know what I would do

When they came for the immigrants
I got in their face
When they came for the refugees
I got in their face
When they came for the five-year-olds
I got in their face
When they came to my neighbourhood
I just got in their face

Of course, both legends are running to catch up the fiery youth leader of current (American) protest folk-pop, Jesse Welles, whose turnaround is ridiculously quick. He plays satisfyingly fast and loose with his own career, in order to foreground the messaging: Welles released four full-length albums in 2025, got himself a Grammy nom, and before Christmas was on Stephen Colbert’s show singing this sarcasm-drenched minor masterpiece ‘Join ICE’. He’s also got this one, from just two weeks ago, ‘Good vs. ICE’.

David Rovics wrote his own song ‘ICE’ years ago, by the way, during the first Trump administration, focused on their child separations. It’s a gentler affair but no less unflinching.

Admittedly, ICE is an easy target for western folk-protest right now. It’s not a divisive issue by any measure, for anyone in the remotely sane part of the political spectrum. It doesn’t require the nuance of arguing a point that centrists — or further-to-the-leftists — may disagree with. Police chiefs themselves in Minneapolis have spoken out passionately against how catastrophically sketchy ICE is behaving in their city. So a lot easier (in terms of not offending the bulk of your stakeholders) than tackling, say, Iran’s mass murder of protesters, or Israel’s mass murder in Gaza and the West Bank, or any number of more complex issues that are killing people. But that’s not to take away from the visceral value of a name as huge as Springsteen weighing in. There is still a MAGA element to his fanbase, even today. Also, he is still a big enough mainstream name in the USA that this song has made news headlines. He so plainly hates ‘King Trump’, it’s a bit thrilling.

icymi —

• I was tempted to write about the Geese debate after their SNL appearance, with loads of Gen X early nineties alt-rock moaners criticising them in comparison to, for example, Sonic Youth, or Television, or Pavement. But it’s not a conversation that I’ve noticed taking place in the UK, so I can’t be bothered to weight in. You know I love them. Here’s Geese doing ‘Trinidad’ on SNL. They did ‘Au Pays du Cocaine’ as well. For me, both tracks were beautiful but ‘Trinidad’ is an immense, messy tilt.

• Also this week King Princess was in the Radio 1 Live Lounge and covered Geese. Fascinating to hear ‘Au Pays du Cocaine’ tidied up into a more straightforward song.

• Holly Humberstone’s back, huzzah, singing her earworm new single ‘To Love Somebody’ on Jimmy Fallon.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

Subscribe to Border Crossing: twice a month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture

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By his ‘two modes’ I mean: the bit where he cosplays (‘Barry National’) Matt Berninger’s emo nephew, and the other bit where he does a sparkly, yet somehow more diffident — almost (though not quite) to the point of being stilted — version of Harry Styles’ loose-limbed gender chill strutting sexpot liquidity. Perfect for a mainstream stardom narrative, of course. People love a false binary.

But to my shame, I can’t put together his two ‘aspects’ without it becoming really funny, really fast. Basically, I guess that means I’m not quite buying it yet. Though that’s not to say I don’t love the effort.

The machine-tooled artist name gives the game away, right? Digitised anti-grammar vowel removal trope, married to a plain statement of over-riding emotional starting point. I suppose, just like ‘boygenius’, without the tongue-in-cheek intellectual plinth. Or is the tongue-in-cheek right there?

Anyway, if you aren’t onboard already, check out Sombr, it’s interesting stuff and if you come at it as I have, it’ll at least give you a big smile, even unintentionally. I’d love to know your take.

icymi —

• Ben Murray on the inspiring, chaotic power of the great drummer Animal Muppet.

• Language expert Sophia Smith Galer unpacks the stories of saints and the playful use of multiple languages on Rosalía’s masterpiece LUX.

• Hayley Williams goes on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang.

• David Byrne does Tiny Desk.

• Lucy Dacus goes on Las Culturistas.

• Holly Humberstone does Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World’ for Like A Version.

• The great unsung (deep underground) songwriter Matt Eaton, of Actress Hands and Pure Conjecture among others, turned fifty a couple of weeks ago and was celebrated by the sprawling community of (often but not always Brighton-based) artists he’s influenced and supported, who’ve released a compilation album of his songs in tribute. Frustratingly, I didn’t know about this in time to offer to contribute. I was only ever out on the periphery of his scene. But Matt was super-kind to me at a particular moment in my early career, when I first landed in Brighton in the early 2000s. He’s also been lifelong inspiring in his laconic yet unflinching approach to music making (entirely outside the commercial industry) — and some jawdroppingly divine tunes.

• Terrific Jonah Raskin essay from Rock And The Beat Generation on William Blake, Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith. Misses out Smith’s classic anecdote of Mappelthorpe stealing, then in shame destroying (!!) a small original Blake image. Still excellent though.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

Subscribe to Border Crossing: twice a month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture.

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Late July. Author and songwriter Roxanne De Bastion put on her ‘Five Years of Folklore’ tribute night and I begged onto the bill, which as the only man scored me the role of ‘toxic ex’ for the evening: I sang ‘Betty’ and duetted ‘Exile’, taking the Justin Vernon part, while Rox sang Tay. I’ve banged on about Roxanne’s music and prose writing here before, she balances an observational light touch with big emotional heft — plus this beautiful, unusual turn-of-phrase in delivery that makes her stand out from the wholesome singer-songwriter crowd (also she’s the only person I’ve co-written a song with, as far back as I can remember).

Austel (Devonian, London-based singer-songwriter Annie Rew Shaw) has this honeyed voice, languorous pacing, kind of a Courtney Marie Andrews-ish (though more English folkie rooted) heart-bruised atmosphere to her songs. Her music has a consistently coastal flavour. She put an album out in 2024 called Dead Sea but more recently has rebooted and released the terrific single ‘The Beach in December’, shooting the video in Brighton.

I’d already clocked and really loved (Wales born, London-based) Rookes’ own music several years back, but I didn’t know she’d successfully pivoted to production and mixing work. In conversation she’s wild, super-fun and at the same time uncompromising — a solid comrade. She’s also cofounded the 2% Rising network for women and non-binary folks in audio production, which she co-manages with the mastering engineer Katie Tavini.

Similarly, I first crossed paths with Herts folk-pop singer Minnie Birch a decade ago (I was co-hosting ‘Folk In A Box’ on a Battersea Arts Centre tour, I think, with Gill Sandell) then much later on, was a fan of Minnie’s album You’re Not Singing Anymore built from acoustic readings of football terrace songs. Weird thing is, I think of that LP as recent, but it’s half a decade old. Turns out Minnie had to take a career break to deal with a rare cancer diagnosis and has gone through major physio to get back in the game. In 2026 she’s touring a folk duo project called Awake Mother, so I’ll be checking that out for sure.

My revelation of the Swift night was (also Wales born, London-based) Meg Ella who I’d not heard of, let alone hung out with. To be fair, we move in very different circles: a fine singer and cellist (multi-instrumentalist, really) Meg thrives in the ‘arrangement, choral, orchestral organisation’ type corners of the music world. She’s had a heavyweight range of experiences and collabs, with senior roles at Citizens Of The World, the refugees and allies choir, as well as London Contemporary Voices. In parallel, she’s developing a sepulchral (very ‘composed’ in both senses of the word) singer-songwriter strand. Here’s The Familiar EP from 2024. I’m floored — daunted actually — by her unadorned, unfussy, yet outrageously gifted artistry.

Mid September, rural Oxfordshire. Katy Rose Bennett. Okay, so twenty-two years ago, I taped a duet version of my song ‘The Tin Man’ (originally off of London Is Sinking) with young folk singer KTB, for a Truck Festival comp CD. Katy is younger sibling of Robin and Joe Bennett, who founded the Truck Records mini-empire and still run Wood Festival and SeptemberSong. Back then, they were the band Goldrush, nowadays The Dreaming Spires. Way back then, Joe Bennett produced our duet at Truck Studios, on the same farm where the festival (now corporate-owned) is still held. Katy was already a terrific songwriter in her own right. We played a few shows together but mostly lost touch, but for occasional chats on socials. Years fly by. Katy works mostly in choirs and choral music now, though she does still release her own material. She’s a member of the Natural Voice Network, for example. Here’s her 2021 album Alone On A Hill and a more experimental commissioned project from 2023, Dissolution. Her show at SeptemberSong was outstanding — one of my highlights of 2025, jostling high up my ‘end of year’ gig list with much more famous artists. A vivid reminder of how great an unsung crafter of classic-style song she is.

I’d genuinely forgotten that version of ‘The Tin Man’. Though the song is on an album I reissued last year, I had zero plans to include it in any live show. The song wasn’t on my radar. But catching up at SeptemberSong, Katy mentioned it. Then backstage, ten minutes before going on, I strummed it through and realised I can play and sing the whole track without problems. Somehow, I’ve still got all the words and chords inside me. Of course I dropped it in Then, completely unplanned and unrehearsed, Katy came on and sang it with me, harmonising beautifully. That was beyond special.

I must link to Robin and Joe’s band The Dreaming Spires too. They’re mainstays of the UK Americana scene, which they have a fair claim to have invented, alongside perhaps The Broken Family Band and Alan from the Rockingbirds’ ‘Come Down And Meet The Folks’ club night in 1990s London*. I didn’t see them perform at SeptemberSong but re-connecting with the brothers sent my attention back into their orbit and in November they released Normal Town, comfortably in my top forty albums of 2025.

•

Late September. The following weekend, I drove to Edinburgh for Frank Turner’s Lost Evenings festival. I scarcely need to rave to you about Frank, or Nina Nesbitt or Beans On Toast, but I’ll prop the great folkie and handsomely bearded virtuoso guitarist John Smith, far outside his comfort zone at a Turner festival, with whom I shared a late night pub stage, hours after both of our ‘main’ sets. We smashed it, of course. I went radical (I’d been polite on the main stage earlier) and gulp, within four songs a chunk of the crowd was chanting “Death to the IDF!” and I found myself in the odd back-pedalling position of trying to calm everything down a bit (though not too much). That’s what you want from a late night pub show. I drove John to the airport (on the way to my own Premier Inn, south of Glasgow) so we got to chat properly, which was lovely. We’ve hung out just once previously, god, fifteen years ago, on The Broken Family Band farewell tour, I think in Liverpool. The same night Steven Adams of BFB walked in on blues legend Gary Moore doing a poo (or in the shower, I forget which).

•

In Brighton, Guy Lloyd hosts Radio Blah Blah, a live music radio show broadcast from upstairs at The Actors. Here I encountered super-cute thoughtful yet endearing chaotic indie outfit The Roebucks, who are looked after by Tony and Dorian at Goo Records. It wasn’t a full band show, just a couple of acoustic songs, but they’re terrific fun.

Late October, three weeks later. I crossed paths with the Goo mafia again, a late booking to fill in coincidentally for The Roebucks at their alldayer ‘LollapaGOOza’ at the Hope & Ruin in central Brighton. That afternoon, I especially enjoyed the hard driving psych-pop of The Mink from Norwich, Anglo-Dutch dreampop duo Zo Lief and the super-cool, sometimes groovy, sometimes agit-punky (loves the Beta Band), London-based radical singer Gemma Rogers.

Quick shout out Goo doing immense work locally, helping ‘emerging talent’ (yuck) take those crucial first couple of steps into the limelight. They deserve a Double Chorus newsletter just about them.

•

And then 15th November. For my 100 Club gig, in the absence of Zinzi (diving in the Philippines) I’d recruited Johny Lamb, my original Hoodrats bassist, before he moved to Cornwall in the 2010s and became an edgelord pop academic. Johny’s nerveless, insouciant, brilliant solo projects include Thirty Pounds Of Bone and J.Lynch. It was lush to have him back, hard-thunking the downstrokes. In the absence of Jen (after her MBV arena tour call-up) Charley Stone came and played lead guitar. Charley is a journeying songwriter sweetheart and ferocious savant guitarist, whose 2024 solo album Here Comes The Actual Band is a plain wonderful treat of the deep London indie alt/rock underground. I’ve mentioned it before but honestly, I thought this album was ‘just’ good, but it grows and grows.

•

Back to the start for a moment. Glastonbury festival, end of June. Edie Blue is an early career electro/art/pop singer who almost nobody has discovered yet. Still at art school, and sometimes hard to locate, she’s just released a fully DIY debut full-length LP Conversations With Myself, diffident yet brimming with promise. With zero interest in going the frantic Tik Tok self-promo route, it’ll be a slow burn til someone spots her — she’s played just a handful of shows so far. But Edie’s material is very strong indeed, plus she has a unique voice and presence to what she’s doing. I hear the more experimental end of early 1980s electro pop (which I think she’s influenced by) with a tint of horror film fairground carny spirit. Dry wit. But then Edie also has this excellent low, crooning-ish vocal, which unexpectedly adds a strong essence of French yé yé, Brel, the Beats, Nico, Scott Walker, Faithfull and the like. I don’t think Edie listens to any of that stuff at all, but it’s in there.

Her live show is laptop and voice, but at Glastonbury I ended up collaborating as de-facto accompanist. We did three gigs there, plus a couple more songs at the ‘Nine Lessons’ variety night. Then in December, right as I was putting the T-T reboot back in the cupboard, we played one last lovely mini Brighton show, in a tiny room upstairs at Presuming Ed’s.

One final act was present at both Glasto in June and that Brighton bash in December. By the time Eric ‘Shardcore’ Drass got up to perform his Glastonbury set (as Drass) he was exhausted and stressed, having spent hours trying to run the sound-desk and help stage manage a chaotic variety evening with unexpected folks getting in the way the whole time. But the thing is, Drass as a performer feeds on exactly that confrontational buzz, so his being on the cusp of proper anger made it a pitch-perfect belter of a show. He’s best found via his YouTube channel, where his coded, generative videos are outstanding and deeply unsettling. A rare artist who can truly frazzle you — even in this modern Age of Befrazzlement — Drass beat-matches warped, generative and coded visuals, so animated real-life characters onscreen match his own (very affected, often pitched down) declamatory vocals. It’s unique. A discombobulating subversive electro bop, in the chewiest, finest way possible.

•

Chris T-T in 2025 —

• ScienceFutures Arena, Glastonbury — 50 minute ‘9 Red Songs’ set
• ScienceFutures Arena, Glastonbury — 50 minute solo set
• ScienceFutures Arena, Glastonbury — 2 songs for ‘Nine Lessons’
• ScienceFutures Arena, Glastonbury — 50 minute A.A. Milne set
• ‘5 Years Of Folklore’, Green Note, London — 2 Taylor Swift songs
• SeptemberSong Festival, Oxfordshire — full solo set
• Lost Evenings Festival, Edinburgh, main stage — half-hour solo set
• Lost Evenings Festival, Edinburgh, pub — late night 20min solo set
• Radio Blah Blah, The Actors, Brighton — 3 songs for Guy Lloyd’s radio show
• LollapaGOOza 3, Hope & Ruin, Brighton — half-hour solo set
• Cellar 92, Brighton — 4 songs for the Cellar 92 YouTube session
• The 100 Club, London — solo headline show with band
• Nine Lessons & Carols for Curious People, Kings Place, London — 2 songs
• Drass Christmas Party, Presuming Ed’s, Brighton — half-hour solo set

* a quick, disconcerted aside: earlier today I wrote this passage, mentioning ‘Come Down And Meet The Folks’ alt-country club night. As I type, I haven’t yet published this newsletter. I didn’t type it anywhere, except inside Substack’s newsletter platform and I didn’t search for any information about it, or its organiser Alan Tyler, or anything connected to it, anywhere else online. An hour later, on my Facebook, I saw this friend suggestion:

To my memory, he’s never once been suggested to me as a friend before. Perhaps that’s just me not noticing, but then this happened too, over on YouTube…

Blimey o’reilly, this stuff is scarily sophisticated.

No icymi, since I already just hit you with a bunch of music links.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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ps. I’m very proud of that phrase from near the end, ‘Age of Befrazzlement’. Even just the word ‘befrazzlement’ is cool as shit…

Still I missed a handful of shows I’d been keen to see (including ones I had tickets for) but that corner is turning, we’re getting back out there. I do have tickets for a few heavy hitters in 2026 (Geese, Big Thief, a night of Icelandic experimental contemporary orchestral music at the Barbican, the usual). On the other hand, next year we’re skipping Primavera Sound for the first time since 2019. It might’ve been a wrench, except when they announced the lineup I was relieved we’d picked 2026 for a break — the bill is still decent and varied but purely for my own taste, it’s artists I’ve already seen, don’t need to see at a festival, or I just think are yuck. Only perhaps sad to miss The Cure, and be there when our Jen headlines with My Bloody Valentine. Maybe we’ll find another festival instead (always tempted by Green Man or something up in the Nordics) but maybe not.

Here are the thirty live music shows I got the most out of in 2025.

As usual, it’s super subjective with gigs, not necessarily about how pure great the artist is. Context and mood play such a major part in enjoyment of live music. Also, this year it’s only once you get towards the Top 20-ish you’re getting to shows I scored 8/10 or higher — and then there are loads of those. Only the Top 7 or 8 scored 9/10 or higher…

30/ The Young’Uns at the Komedia Theatre, Brighton
29/ Los Campesinos! at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
28/ Rachel Chinouriri at Glastonbury Festival
27/ The Jesus Lizard at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
26/ Caribou at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
25/ Wet Leg at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
24/ Horsegirl at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
23/ Non Canon at Folklore Rooms, Brighton
22/ George Houston at The Albert, Brighton
21/ The Frank & Walters at Shiiine On, Butlins, Skegness

20/ John Wilks at Brunswick Tavern, Hove
19/ Drass at Glastonbury Festival
18/ Moulettes at Glastonbury Festival
17/ Bob Vylan at Glastonbury Festival
16/ Jopy at Green Door Store, Brighton
15/ This Is Lorelei at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
14/ O Sees at Glastonbury Festival
13/ Million Dead at Chalk, Brighton
12/ Kate Nash at Glastonbury Festival
11/ My Bloody Valentine at Wembley Arena

10/ Jasmine.4.t at Glastonbury Festival

09/ TV On The Radio at Primavera Sound, Barcelona

08/ Katy Rose Bennett at SeptemberSong Festival

07/ Doechii at Glastonbury Festival

06/ Waxahatchee at Primavera Sound, Barcelona

05/ Floating Points at Primavera Sound, Barcelona

04/ MJ Lenderman & The Wind at Chalk, Brighton

03/ Anohni & The Johnsons at Glastonbury Festival

02/ CMAT at Primavera Sound, Barcelona

01/ Chappell Roan at Primavera Sound, Barcelona

Notes

Frank Turner’s terrific duo set at Lost Evenings, with Matt Nasir accompanying, would’ve made it onto this list (technically giving him two entries) except I was briefly a guest onstage, singing backing vocals for ‘Rivers’, which rendered it ineligible. Obviously, again, I can’t include any Jim Bob, MJ Hibbett or Edie Blue shows for the same reason. I’ve also left off performances from Roxanne De Bastion’s ‘Five Years Of Folklore’ Taylor Swift tribute, which were too brief and ‘one-off’ to think of as live sets and — again — I was a contributor. I did love that evening though.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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On the other hand, I admit (with mild consternation) my list looks very mainstream this year. The smaller, more experimental, genre, and ‘early career’ TV performances have got swamped by the year’s big hitters and big budgets. Even very good live bands can struggle to bring it in a TV studio or the video session environment, partly because the energy is wholly different.

I’ve never forgotten, one time we did this show in a reasonably small London venue (the old Camden Barfly I think) that was broadcast live on what used to be XFM. We all came away saying the first half of the show was a bit too loose, but then we locked in and the second half was brilliant. In the room, that was the consensus. But then listening back to the radio broadcast, the opposite was true: our first half sounded incredible on air, just flew, energy in the compacted sound burst from the speakers. Then at the point we believed we’d got ‘better’ and locked in, in fact the tighter, more controlled, energy didn’t quite translate and the second half lost something. It wasn’t suddenly bad per se, just not magical in the same way.

Looking at this list, I have no clue why just one ‘Tiny Desk’ performance (and zero KEXP sessions for example) made it on. There were a bunch of them squashed together lower down, scoring solidly in the 7.5/10 area, but not making lasting impact. Last year there were loads.

Anyway, so here are my twenty favourite onscreen performances…

20/ Lola Young at Radio 1 Big Weekend

19/ Olivia Rodrigo at Glastonbury Festival

18/ MJ Lenderman on Tiny Desk

17/ Sprints at Glastonbury Festival

16/ Haim in the rain at Radio 1 Big Weekend

15/ Self Esteem at Radio 1 Big Weekend

14/ Lady Gaga at Coachella

13/ Lorde at Glastonbury Festival

12/ Kae Tempest at Glastonbury Festival

11/ CMAT at Glastonbury Festival

10/ Lucy Dacus — ‘Ankles’ on The Tonight Show

09/ Geese From The Basement

08/ Cynthia Erivo & Ariane Grande at the Academy Awards

07/ James Yorkston & Nina Persson — ‘Love That Tree’ on Later with Jools

06/ Bjork — Cornucopia (at the cinema, thank-you Camilla and Will)

05/ Geese — ‘Taxes’ on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

04/ Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl half time show

03/ Samara Joy’s BBC Prom

02/ Charli XCX at Coachella (w/Lorde for ‘Girl So Confusing’ and Billie Eilish for ‘Guess’)

01/ Cameron Winter — ‘Drinking Age’ on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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Up at the top end, no question the greatest music of the twenty-first century is being made right now.

In 2024, my favourite LP was my favourite LP of the decade so far.

Now in 2025, my favourite LP is my favourite LP of the decade so far.

I think 2025 has been a year about purity. Artists pinpointed and communicated their own singular vision, in a more sharp focused way than before. That can be anything from Lily Allen’s vicious truth bombs, layered over what might otherwise have been a fairly bog standard Lily Allen pop record, to Geese and Big Thief leaning into those loose, percussive grooves, despite their other rock’n’roll gifts, to virtuoso soloist innovators such as Clarice Jensen, Gwenifer Raymond, starting to gain long-deserved global traction with instrumental work.

Even Rosalía’s towering achievement Lux could be called minimalist and maximalist, both at once. I’ve learned these aren’t necessarily opposites.

Meanwhile, the guitar/alt/rock re-emergence that’s been quietly threatening since the aftermath of the pandemic is fully present — despite a still desperately crumbling business infrastructure for ‘live based’ music in British late capitalism. Gen A forming and glazing your actual live bands. Kids going in actual rooms with each-other to play music together. It’s cross-generational too: Turnstile, Horsegirl, Geese, Wednesday, Silk Cuts, Prolapse — my chart hasn’t heard this much guitar rock since the early 2010s. Youngsters showing up to gigs — even gigs by the oldies.

So in a small way, it’s hopeful.

More artists understand better that being their whole badass selves is The Solution, rather than a search for performative something-elseness.

Anyhoo. So, in 2025 I rated more than 100 albums a 7/10 or better (minimum three full listens) and I feel okay expanding my usual Top 30 to a Top 40. And for the first time, I’m typing them all out upside down for you, working down from #40 to #1 like Bruno Brookes, no, like the proper magazines do. Just for fun, innit. Nothing on here scored less than 8.2/10…

40/ Lorde — Virgin
39/ Lucy Dacus — Forever Is A Feeling
38/ Lady Gaga — Mayhem (The Quietus review)
37/ Band of Holy Joy — Scorched Jerusalem
36/ CMAT — Euro-Country
35/ Ethel Cain — Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
34/ Lambrini Girls — Who Let The Dogs Out
33/ The Dreaming Spires — Normal Town
32/ Madi Diaz — Fatal Optimist / Enema Of The Garden State
31/ Hayley Williams — Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party

30/ YHWH Nailgun — 45 Pounds
29/ Jon Wilks — Needless Alley
28/ KPop Demon Hunters original soundtrack
27/ Lily Allen — West End Girl
26/ Stephen Evens — Weekend At Bernie’s Two (Double Chorus)
25/ Dave — The Boy Who Played The Harp
24/ Non Canon — Certain Stories
23/ Nourished By Time — The Passionate Ones
22/ Kae Tempest — Self Titled
21/ Mavis Staples — Sad and Beautiful World

20/ Turnstile — Never Enough

19/ We Contain Multitudes — Minako (Double Chorus)

18/ Immersion — WTF

17/ Silk Cuts — Tell Me It’s Not True!

16/ Horsegirl — Phonetics On And On

15/ Prolapse — I Wonder When They’re Going To Destroy Your Face

14/ Oklou — Choke Enough

13/ Alex White — Colour Of Evening

12/ Rich(ard) Dawson — End Of The Middle

11/ Gwenifer Raymond — Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark

10/ Wednesday — Bleeds

09/ The Beths — Straight Line Was A Lie

08/ Clarice Jensen — In Holiday Clothing, Out Of The Great Darkness

07/ Cub Zoa — Unfold In The Sky (Double Chorus)

06/ White Magic For Lovers — The Book Of Lies

05/ Big Thief — Double Infinity

04/ Snocaps — Snocaps (Double Chorus)

03/ Jasmine.4.t — You Are The Morning

02/ Geese — Getting Killed

01/ Rosalía — Lux (Double Chorus)

Notes

Four albums I’d worked on came out in 2025 and would’ve (easily) made this top forty if they’d been eligible: both Jim Bob albums, Automatic and Stick, Tom Williams’ Out Of Nowhere, and Cousin Ben’s self-titled debut, I reckon all would’ve been comfortably sat in this chart, if I was just a punter. That said, none of them scored particularly wide critical notice (though Jim’s LPs have popped up on indie scene end-of-year lists, here and there). I think Tom’s missed a lot of lists by coming out DIY-style so late in the year, while Ben’s was not a physical release, with zero gigs or promotion, it basically snuck out.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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Come on now, it’s not a race!

We’re literally gifted the perfect time-slot to think, argue, write about that end-of-year reflection: in the perineum. The lovely (hopefully replete and bored) gap between Chrimbo and New Year’s Eve. It’s as if nature and culture conspired to curate us a few days precisely to think about what came before.

For me, as you probably know, ‘arts and culture of the year’ feels like a big element of festive fun, especially after Christmas, in the quiet time, to be mulling over the year’s music (and other art-forms). It’s the perfect slot for it, let’s use that, rather than having done with it by the first week of December.

From Telegraph scum to the New Yorker, from Quietus to Line Of Best Fit, from Time Out (a very annoying list this year that wrongly scores, for example, Addison Rae, Sudan Archives and Twiggs above Rosalía — and shit I’m already getting involved, and — raises voice — I don’t have the bandwidth!) to Harper’s Bazaar…

I honestly think publishing now whiffs of a kind of lack of trust in their own journalists and critics having valuable, unique takes, when they rush to get the list published ‘first’ ahead of other magazines. They also misunderstand the basic (already tenuous) point of compiling daft lists like this: it’s all meant to indulge the reflection of something complete, rather than something ongoing, where you’ll inevitably miss stuff.

I guess the exception is music retailers. I totally appreciate that record shops have an urgent need to get their ‘end of year’ fanfare up and running early, to squeeze as many festive sales as possible out of all the puff.

As autumn ended, I felt a bit sorry for Resident in Brighton, because they’d already published and hyped — hosted a snazzy launch party for — their ‘Best of 2025’ brochure, and it had gone to the printers, before Rosalía’s album showed up — which honestly wasn’t even late November, more like early-to-mid November. The delightful Crutchfield sisters (Waxahatchee) / MJ Lenderman collaboration Snocaps also missed the cut. It’s not the first time either. Resident’s zine even takes into account this kind of disparity, including 2024 albums by Cameron Winter (too late for last year’s zine) and Cindy Lee (they didn’t get physical stock to sell until 2025). Given how ludicrously hard it is to get hold of Rosalía’s vinyl, which flies out the moment new stock shows up, presumably their 2026 brochure will include her.

Fiscal needs must, so fair play to that.

Just, for me it’s an unromantic compromise.

By the way, Resident’s freebie glossy annual zine is very useful, not because I remotely agree with their Top 10 (I never do) but because the depths of the zine — gorgeous lesser-known records listed lower down the chart, the genres and books and reissue sections, alongside loads of record label adverts plugging their own 2025 releases — is brilliant for discovering what I missed. There’s so much music now, it’s ridiculous. Overwhelming. Often, my end-of-year top ten list is significantly amended by albums I only give ears to, after finding out about them in Resident’s zine. I most dig the separate pullout of bona fide staff picks, which is more idiosyncratic and authentic than the main chart. Over time, you gravitate towards certain staff members (not knowing them personally at all) for reliable or intriguing taste.

Anyway, where retailers have a decent excuse, magazines and websites don’t. We could all chill out another couple of weeks and it’d hurt nobody.

icymi —

• Are you Christmas gift buying for a T-T fan? Grab a copy of London Is Sinking on vinyl, 9 Red Songs on vinyl and/or my Xtra Mile albums newly available on CD via Bandcamp?

• London: there’s a Totally Acoustic night at the King & Queen on Thursday 4th December, I’ll be accompanying MJ Hibbett on the piano, previewing the collaborative LP we’re working on.

• Patti Smith on Colbert.

• London: Stephen EvEns + Hurtling (ha, Jen Macro again) at the Cavendish, Thur 12th December. Essential gig.

• I wrote this on FB: my lovely pal Barry from Bristol has his third album out as Non Canon, available on all formats. It’s a terrific, unusual songwriter record, Barry writes from unique perspectives and has a gentle yet spiky, offbeat melodic sense. He’s got something genuinely unique going on in his iteration of ‘singer-songwriter’, which is a rare feat these days. He’s also an artist trapped in the wrong scene — does the rounds of the punk/folk world, when IRL Non Canon is clearly a proggier, more textured, culturally scattergun, occasoinally post-rockist sort of project. Well worth a listen.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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It doesn’t matter how many times and places, on what speakers or headphones, in what file formats, you’ve listened over and over to reference tracks and mixes and even masters, during the process of making a record. When you finally let it go — “we’re finished!” — leave that gap, go away, do something else, then a few weeks later sit down with your finished vinyl or CD or whatever, and stick it on your home stereo…

…it lands totally differently. Every time.

I guess broadly this is more a point about the ritual act of ‘listening properly’ than any physical formats or big hifi speakers. But having the setting for the ritual: the playing of the record, the artwork and sleeve notes and sometimes lyrics gathered with you, perhaps the deep familiarity of your room, ideally the absence of laptop or phone screens and other distractions… all this setup simply secures the possibility of ‘listening properly’.

This week, the new Tom Williams album Out Of Nowhere is released. Go find it, via Tom’s Bandcamp. I’m very invested in this album, which I’m incredibly proud to have helped make: I sat in the producer’s chair and played a chunk of the piano (including some of my favourite piano moments I’ve ever taped). I was immersed in these songs, these recordings, for a long time. From Tom’s earliest demos (eventually forty-odd complete songs, of which at least twenty were very good) to navigating the final, final running order of the final, final twelve, I must’ve listen to each song hundreds of times.

Then last week, after a chunk of time away (largely focused on the temporary T-T comeback stuff and some non-music work) I got the record through the post, found a clear hour and sat down with it.

We’ve talked about it being a record about family and maturity and how generations connect, and a record about grief.

Yet, it was only with that proper listen a few days ago, I suddenly clocked that from end to end, Out Of Nowhere is an album about healing. Not an idealised, romantic healing, but the real hardscrabble stuff. The actual labour of healing. And (I hope you’ll forgive me saying) it’s one of the finest records about healing I’ve encountered (my own contribution notwithstanding — the job is done by Tom’s songs, before all else).

Because: the traumas alluded to, gently described, in the fine songs here, already happened in the past. It’s the healing that is the ‘now’ of this album. It soaks through every domestic intricacy and intimacy. It’s the pink hairband and gold wedding band sharing Tom’s finger as he drives along in ‘Christ The King’.

Out Of Nowhere is a songwriter record with a quiet band on, rather than a band record. It’s less dense than Tom’s previous work, especially the series of albums he made through the 2010s as Tom Williams & The Boat. Now, into the close foreground comes Tom’s voice, spotlighting the narrative and poetry of the songs themselves. Mantra for the journey: serve the songs. We tracked at Tim Rice-Oxley’s beautiful Sea Fog studio, in rolling Sussex countryside not far from Polegate, with engineer and mixer Tom Hough. Rice-Oxley is the great pianist and songwriter from Keane, who has custom-built a gorgeous music-making space out of that success. For longer sessions we stayed in the apartment above the studio and cooked and ate together.

Tom has written and spoken himself enough in the promo material for Out Of Nowhere about that experience, about Fin and Gillie the young married couple rhythm section, about storming farmer-guitarist Ant Vicary from Tom’s old Boat band, and about the brass and strings. ‘Producer’ is a nebulous, intangible, carefully navigated role at the best of times. I was at first daunted, then liberated, by the level of expertise brought to the table by everyone else. Of course I can ‘hear’ my own contributions (apart from my piano bits) in the form of suggestions I made, or decisions I contributed to. But that scarcely matters compared to the much more slippery, translucent notion of . I’ve been such a cynic of that in the past, there are ‘vibemaster’ fakers everywhere. It’s quite nice to believe (at least for now) that I’m not one of those.

Indeed, I went through a brief but profound personal trauma just after we started tracking, at the end of last year. For me, all creative thinking I contributed to Out Of Nowhere in 2025 came from a perspective of my own ongoing healing, right through that making.

Still, all that time, I didn’t think of it in connection to the music itself. Not until all these months later. Now, it’s bloody obvious. A quiet storm of a record, I hope you’ll check it out and enjoy it. But also, it helped heal me and that will continue, whenever I listen back, so I’m less bothered what anyone else thinks.

•

Convo on FB about My Bloody Valentine at Wembley —

I don’t have photos and won’t bang on but last night was my favourite My Bloody Valentine show. I went with quite a cynical head on, exhausted. If I could’ve found an excuse to stay home, I would’ve. In the unlikely soulless box of Wembley Arena the sound was brilliant and the band was a juggernaut, accessing sonic spaces unlike any other band. Turned out to be exactly what I needed: large chunks felt like the exact meditation you want out of that kind of band, even kind of like a Quaker meeting but with noise instead of silence. Beyond proud of Jen Macro too, who has now served as MBV’s live ‘fifth member’ for over a decade.

I was watching with Rifa, Charley and Lainey. I love Charley’s reply to my FB post —

I def spent a lot of time just gazing at the ceiling or out at the crowd feeling the kind of dreamy wonder I used to feel in churches as a child. That pink light! I felt totally tuned into it, like that was the primary thing unlocking that space in my brain, with the sound from the stage amplifying and enhancing my response to the colour. I often find I love loud gigs because I’m experiencing the sound more in my chest and belly than in my ears, but this was the first time I felt it flood my nervous system via my eyes. This prob sounds more wanky than it actually was. I just mean I felt a sort of calm, meditative delight throughout. (And the fact that I could actually hear a lot of the details of the tunes for once was a bonus!)
— Charley Stone

icymi —

• London: Stephen EvEns + Hurtling (ha, Jen Macro again) at the Cavendish, Thur 12th December. Essential gig.

• The always disconcerting Drass plays a rare online music set from his secret lair (it’s literally accessed via a fake bookcase) on Fri 28th November, 8pm, for Gravitons Festival 2025. Eric’s previewing his forthcoming LP On The Hill, which is bloody brilliant. This whole Gravitons festival looks intriguing, if you’re into edgeland electronics.

• Brighton: tomorrow night (Thursday 27th) Non Canon and B Sydes are at Folklore Rooms.

• Snocaps have already hit late night TV — singing ‘Coast’ on Fallon. Lovely to see Lenderman on the drums. But most of all, magic to witness Allison Crutchfield fronting a project with such a solid push.

• I’m a broken record: an utterly fucking bewitching half-hour of controlled intensity from Geese doing ‘from the Basement’ (produced and mixed by Nigel Godrich). Honestly, this set is a miracle.

• Rosalía sings La Perla on Fallon’s show.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Email me: chris@christt.com

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Here’s my setlist from Saturday night at the 100 Club:

First set (solo acoustic) —

‘The Elephant In The Room’
‘Market Square’
‘Love Me I’m A Liberal’
‘A Beaten Drum’
‘The Tin Man’ (+ Jon Clayton on cello, Charley Stone singing)
‘Tunguska’ (at the piano)
+ three in a row from 9 Red Songs —
‘M1 Song’ (a-cappella)
‘A Plague On Both Your Houses’
‘Preaching To The Converted’

Second set (full band) —

‘Tomorrow Morning’
‘4am’
‘A Box To Hide In’
‘Lines And Squares’ (AA Milne poem, solo a-cappella)
‘The Bear’
‘Bury Me With A Scarab’
‘The English Earth’
+ three in a row from London Is Sinking —
‘Cull’
‘Giraffes #1’
‘7 Hearts’
‘(We Are) The King Of England’
‘Where Were You?’

encore —

‘The Huntsman Comes A-Marchin’ (solo electric guitar)
‘Dreaming Of Injured Popstars’ (full band)

Band props: I was ludicrously blessed to have these musicians collaborate with me for this one-off adventure.

Keys wizard Jon Clayton (Insta: jonfuse) runs One Cat Studio at Antenna in Crystal Palace. He’s produced all the recent Jim Bob LPs and most of my records stretching back twenty-five years. He’s also one-third of Hurtling. Drummer, author and Proustian Ben Murray is in Jim’s band and we’ve toured together since 2008. Last year, Ben made this beautiful solo album which I produced. He publishes two newsletters: Recording Britain (a fascinating art/social history project) and Bite My Truant Pen. On the latter you’ll find Ben’s transporting episodic semi-autobiographical Proust-themed novel. Drummers, eh. Johny Lamb (Insta: J.Lynch) was the original bassist in Hoodrats, and he now researches and teaches popular music at Falmouth University. Johny records under multiple plumage, including as psych-folk outfit Thirty Pounds of Bone and synth-based solo act J.Lynch. Finally, the great guitarist and songwriter Charley Stone (Insta: Charleston51) who originally broke through in Gay Dad and has played for generations of vital underground groups, touring not so long ago in the reformed Sleeper, for example. Charley’s own indie project Charley Stone and the Actual Band is so worth checking out, wonderful stuff.

Thank yous —

Thank-you so much Jim Willis for looking after all our tech and lugging gear, including loading back into Antenna super-late after the show.

It was immensely kind of our hero Jim Bob to come and superstar DJ for us, it’s not always fun DJing before a live band but of course Jim’s set was spectacular.

Huge thanks to Grant and Jayne at Mute Elephant who promoted and ran the 100 Club show, sold out that beast fast. Marcus Galley designed the poster. On the night, Dan at the 100 Club did sound and my lovely old friend Neil ‘Mr Spoons’ Witherow ran the lights.

I’m immeasurably grateful to Marc and Emma Ollington at ethical merch company The Pop Group (Indie Tees) for making my vinyl reissues possible, which was the whole point of these shenanigans. They ran this reissue project from end-to-end, got them made, Emma is doing mail order fulfilment and Marc ran the merch stall on the night too, smashed sales, truthfully none of this could’ve happened without them.

I was (and remain) absolutely blown away — the audience was off the chain. Overwhelming. If that was you, know that you carried me, thank you, I love you. Schmaltzy doofus.

One final note: I said I won’t add more shows and that’s still the plan. Unfortunately I may have to add a low-key solo gig in the Winchester area in the new year, because my Mum and Dad weren’t able to make it to London after all. If that happens, I’ll sheepishly let you know about it — it’ll be very small though, and just quiet songs. Or maybe I won’t, we’ll see.

•

James Walsh reviewed the gig for The Morning Star. Thank-you James.

icymi —

• “So Charli, where are you gonna go next after Brat?” “Uh, I guess probably somewhere between Nine Inch Nails and a horror film soundtrack and it’ll be a duet with John Cale.”

• This is how to do a eulogy: Jimmy Kimmel remembers his best friend, the great saxophonist and bandleader Cleto Escobedo III. Very moving.

• Brighton, Barry and Ben are coming: Non Canon, Jacob Glew and B-Sydes at the Folklore Rooms, Thurs 27th November. Don’t miss.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Hit me up: chris@christt.com

Limited edition ‘first time on vinyl’ reissues of classic Chris T-T albums: 9 Red Songs (2005) and London Is Sinking (2003). Order now (£20 each) to avoid disappointment

Listen to Refigure the bitesize arts review podcast I make with Rifa

Subscribe to Border Crossing: 1st and 3rd week each month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture.

I was done, happy with my favourites this year. I didn’t need to get punched in the face. In the last Double Chorus a few days ago I waxed lyrical about a beautiful new pop record by a still basically unknown artist, based in my city and who I slightly know personally, Cubzoa. It’s a great record and will sit comfortably well inside my top twenty of 2025.

Funnily enough though, that kind of article ought to be an exception: this space Double Chorus isn’t meant for just praising random pieces of work that I love. An aspect of myself that I find deeply un-charming is my propensity to fall hard for a new piece of art/culture and proselytise loudly about it like a foghorn. So naive. Especially when it’s ‘big name’ artists who don’t remotely need my voice anyway. Stuff that the commentariat is already talking about. Indeed, people can react quite badly, even if they’re polite about it, because they don’t actually want to be told how great a piece of work is. Even just being told it exists is enough. They can come to their own conclusions. I think I’ve absolutely put people off checking out music or arts that I adore, in the past, by banging on about it. At worst, my writing sacrifices valuable descriptive explanation of what is good about a piece of art, instead reducing myself to just boffing on about how amazing it is. All of that, I prefer to avoid here.

So if Rosalía’s fourth album Lux is my outstanding, peerless record of this year, out of the blue, and you must — must! — go and listen to it properly, concentrating, pushing through, can I remotely share that? Address its sheer audacity to show up in November after all the incredible music we’ve already had in 2025?

I already admired Rosalía’s talent, without actually liking her music very much. Yes, moments. She’s a phenomenal singer, who skirts around and leans into genres I enjoy. But overall, since expanding away from her flamenco fusion roots, she’s sat closest to a reggaeton style, which I simply don’t dig. She is terrific live: back in 2019 we caught the tail end of a set in front of a home crowd on the El Mal Querer tour and it was unquestionably excellent. To my shame, I suspect we walked past her a few years later doing a Motomami tour festival show and didn’t even stop to listen.

Now, Lux is a wholly different prospect to Rosalía’s earlier albums. Divided into four movements, it’s an orchestral work of such breathtaking scale, collecting dramatic, sprawling, maximalist pieces, opera-like — yet still comfortable with the fierce impact of production techniques out of bleeding edge modern electronic pop — that this genuinely, honestly sounds like a fucking revolution.

Applying the tricks, dancing fluid reverb, multiple audio effects, in and out, razor-sharp digital editing, to the London Symphony Orchestra in their pomp, is startling and majestic in equal measure.

Charlotte Gainsburg is onboard as one of the composers. Pharrell and Noah Goldstein carry some of the production work, with arrangements by visionary greats from different worlds, Angélica Negrón and Caroline Shaw. The LSO is conducted by the Icelandic master Daníel Bjarnason, with Venetian Snares programming beats. There’s also a bunch of incredible singers — and that’s even before Björk shows up like manna on the single ‘Berghain’, sung partly in German. Rosalía’s own singing and songwriting across this long album is simply extraordinary. She’s not fucking around, spent a year learning opera technique, there are thirteen languages on here, often utilised (weaponised) as acts of solidarity — Catalan, Ukrainian and Arabic all make potent appearances. She does opera properly and still (seconds later) nails the intimacy, melisma, intricate rhythm of today’s pop.

And here I am, settled comfortably into praise mode.

I knew I had to do an album like this, but I wasn’t ready.
— Rosalía, speaking to Zane Lowe

With most LP releases — dig them or not — I know how the music is made. What the buttons do. Or, even if I don’t know how something has been constructed, I can get granular: deeply familiar over decades with how and why a bass guitar, a bit of drum machine, a sax solo, sounds how it does, what was tweaked with that lead vocal. I claim a level of expertise to my opinion, despite the low budget scattergun simplicity of my own music career. As I’ve got older, that claimed expertise has drawn me to different arts disciplines precisely because I don’t know — even at a basic level — what’s going on. Sculpture and painting. I can’t draw for toffee, even basics. No way I could shade an image to create the illusion of depth. So that stuff stuns me.

Anyway, point is, I cannot begin to fathom how Rosalía and her team have achieved this masterpiece. Every single aspect of Lux is close to being beyond imagining. Which is ace, because it enables me to just get profoundly moved across the entirety of it, which has been an overwhelmingly wonderful experience.

Here, Rosalía talks to Popcast (a bit bro-ish) and perhaps more profoundly, with Zane Lowe for Apple Music.

icymi —

• It’s Chris T-T week! This Saturday night is my one-off London headline at the 100 Club. I’m ridiculously excited. The two album reissues are released Friday, so if you’ve ordered (thank you!) they’ll show up later this week. If you’re coming out for the show, get there early doors for special guest the mighty Jim Bob doing a super-rare DJ set. I’ve got a fab band: drummer Ben Murray and keys whizz Jon Clayton, who play with me in Jim Bob’s band, plus fearsome original Hoodrats bassist Johny Lamb and brilliant guitarist Charley Stone off of loads of great groups (here’s Charley’s new single from last month). There’ll be some solo songs too. We’re splitting the set into two halves, though I don’t yet know which songs go where. Also, if you’re in London for the day and fancy more music, three terrific folk/punk singers are joining forces for an afternoon matinee gig, billing it loosely as a pre-party for the 100 Club show. George Gadd (Nottingham), Mexican Dave (Bristol) and Heartwork (Wales) are doing the Cavendish Arms, just across the Thames in Stockwell, from 2:30pm. It’s about half an hour between the two venues. Thus ends a delightful few months dipping my toes back into my old T-T career. I’ve had a total blast, some unforgettable experiences. I’m vividly aware how lucky I am to have this adventure without engaging with the actual music industry, or wishing for anything more, and then walk away afterwards.

I’m stupendously grateful.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Hit me up: chris@christt.com

Out this week! Limited edition ‘first time on vinyl’ reissues of my Chris T-T albums: 9 Red Songs (2005) and London Is Sinking (2003).

Listen to Refigure the bitesize arts review podcast I make with Rifa

Subscribe to Border Crossing: 1st and 3rd week each month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture.

Jack Wolter may already be familiar to you, even if his name is not. Alongside sister Lily he founded the terrific band Penelope Isles, who made it to Brighton from the Isle Of Man, via Falmouth, signed to Bella Union and toured the world supporting various indie greats. I’ve seen them smash both little Brighton label nights and Hammersmith Apollo, opening for Bright Eyes, for example. Though also, they’re a band whose ascendence was badly disrupted by Covid.

More recently, Jack has cut an imposing alt/glam figure on big stages around the world and on proper telly — all glitter and fairy wings — as guitarist in CMAT’s Very Sexy CMAT Band. Oh yeah, that guy.

Cubzoa is Jack’s solo project. An emotional, yet chill and carefully paced outfit, with a fluid vibe and instrumentation that shifts around him. I’ve mentioned Jack in his Cubzoa context before, when he collaborated with Colin Newman (of Wire) and Malka Spigel (of Minimal Compact) on a release for their band Immersion’s fascinating, often brilliant ‘Nanoclusters’ series.

Cubzoa also performed at one of the ‘Slack City Social’ live radio chat shows I hosted around Brighton Festival, a year or two ago. That afternoon, he added two wind instruments to his acoustic guitar, with arrangements more nuanced and sublime than I would’ve expected. This home-based YouTube session of slow builder ‘I Dreamed A Beach’ has that instrumentation.

Often delicate and detail-heavy, the album Unfold in The Sky came out just a couple of weeks ago, filled with gorgeously produced, languorous then soaring psych-pop of the kind that can absolutely make you fall in love with an artist you never heard of before.

Here’s the video for ‘Barcelona’ (YouTube).

Here’s the video for ‘Choke’ (YouTube).

People mention Tame Impala and there is something of that commercial indie progginess in there, but as a Kevin wotsit non-fan, I much prefer this atmosphere and these songs. The melodies are chewy, always. It’s never diffident, despite being laid back. Jack’s vocal mainly weaves a natural falsetto. Sometimes this comes off a little Thom Yorke-ish, both effects-wise and melodically, though it’s less overblown.

I’m convinced this is a composer, arranger, producer, performer who can operate at the very highest level: potentially a generational talent. Whether on his own stuff or over a career elevating others’ work, or hopefully both.

Also worth noting that Jack’s younger sibling (and compelling songwriter, tattoo artist, quirky presence in her own right) Lily Wolter has a solo project gestating, My Precious Bunny (here’s a couple of demos on Soundcloud) which could easily be a major goer as well. This autumn she’s touring Europe supporting Billy Nomates and will open Cubzoa’s short run of UK headline shows at the end of the year, so I assume/hope we’ll get a debut album in the new year.

icymi —

• UK professional musicians: if you’re a PPL member please vote for my friend Roxanne De Bastion for re-election to the Performer Board. Too many members are retired orchestra folks, rather than current songwriters or ‘featured artists’. You’ve got until the 17th Nov.

• If you’re in London on Sat 15th for my 100 Club show, three UK singers, George Gadd (Notts), Mexican Dave (Bristol) and Heartwork (Wales) are doing a matinee triple header at the Cavendish Arms in Stockwell, from 2:30pm, to operate loosely as a pre-party for my gig.

• Princess Nokia on Later with Jools. A decade and eight albums/mixtapes into her career, shockingly this is her first UK TV appearance. I like that arc.

• Florence & The Machine outstanding Later with Jools opener, ‘Sympathy Magic’ complete with a glass harmonica.

• Geese show up in BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge, do ‘100 Horses’, ‘Cobra’ and cover New Radicals’ ‘You Get What You Give’. I’m so, so into this record, I was near ecstatic when they upped the London Forum show to the Apollo and I managed to get tickets.

• Die Spitz smashing ‘Riding With The Girls’ on KEXP.

• The recent ‘reform’ of great early 1980s post-punk quartet Au Pairs turns out to be an ugly bust: frontwoman Lesley Woods is acting alone, hijacking the band’s egalitarian punk history without the other three original members. Kate Knowles’ terrific investigation for Birmingham’s The Dispatch unpacks the power grab.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

Hit me up: chris@christt.com

Limited edition ‘first time on vinyl’ reissues of classic Chris T-T albums: 9 Red Songs (2005) and London Is Sinking (2003). Order now (£20 each) to avoid disappointment

Listen to Refigure the bitesize arts review podcast I make with Rifa

Subscribe to Border Crossing: 1st and 3rd week each month, an email zine from the frayed edges of culture.

Their new thing is Snocaps, a supergroup quartet where the sisters are joined by MJ Lenderman and producer Brad Cook. Not a lineup to sniff at, especially when it’s the Crutchfields’ first full-on collaborative work since P.S. Eliot days.

Snocaps have signed to Anti (Allison’s dayjob is A&R there, so it’s a no brainer) and this morning they shock-released a self-titled debut album (in full) to the streams. (Bandcamp link, it’s on YouTube too, with lyric videos) The bit that isn’t a surprise is, it’s bloody outstanding.

Obviously, we know Katie’s in the middle of a ridiculous purple patch, while Jake Lenderman has been honing his craft around the world (I’ve banged on about his solo thing being one of 2025’s great rocknroll shows). But Allison’s songs on Snocaps are a potent reminder that the other twin serves phenomenal lyric writing chops too — it’s a total joy to hear her work placed in this context. I crushed on Allison’s songs first, all those years ago.

Snocaps leans back towards straightforward chiming alt/rock and indie jangle, from the maximalist Americana beast that Waxahatchee has become over Katie’s past two masterpieces. But it doesn’t feel remotely thrown together: a bucket of sensational tunes, retaining Cook’s warmth and intimacy. There’s a chunk of instrument swapping, Cook takes mostly bass, drums switching between Allison and MJ. The thunking single ‘Coast’ is probably the most Lenderman-ish this thing gets, it’s mostly classic Crutchfield vibes, sisters driving their own songs. Their voices are similar enough, the slick harmonies often veer close to sounding like a single multi-tracked voice. Perhaps a small, sort-of, disappointment here is Lenderman’s vocal silence, sticking to his multi-instrumental support role, rather than throwing in any prominent BVs, let alone a lead vocal or song contribution. But the sudden inclusion of his videostore fuckboy drawl might’ve pulled focus from the driving ‘twin sis’ core of the material.

Three listens in, I’m praying Snocaps does well enough for the band to take it on the road and bring it to Europe and buy Waxahatchee eighteen months off. Katie’s general commitment to divvying up Waxahatchee activity with other projects is an admirable move. Her duo Plains with Jess Williamson was lovely stuff, but Snocaps is bang in the heart of my taste, a rollicking ride, diversity of tone and sound, interesting decisions, and truly, truly thrilling songs on here.

Physical formats won’t show up for a while — vinyl pre-orders are set to arrive April next year. If the vinyl existed, I would’ve literally put shoes on right now and run into town to get it. Still, I’m listening and having a great time. Patience.

Stream Snocaps on Bandcamp.

Limited edition Chris T-T ‘first time on vinyl’ reissues of two classic albums: 9 Red Songs (2005) and London Is Sinking (2003) are unleashed on 14th November. Order yours now (£20 each) to avoid disappointment…

icymi —

• I did an enjoyable full-length interview with Joyzine about the year 2003.

• Lankum take eight minutes to cover ‘Ghost Town’.

• Billie Eilish calls out billionaires.

• Stevie Chick’s excellent interview with the surviving members of Hüsker Dü for The Quietus.

• Loud Women profile of Charley Stone’s ace new single ‘I’ve Gotta Know’. I’ve got more to write about my brilliant friend Charley Stone in a future Double Chorus.

• Tom Williams sings ‘The Long Grass’ from his forthcoming album Out Of Nowhere, in his garden. This is a pitch perfect list song: vivid descriptions build a picture that then punches you hard at the end, with unfolding heartbreak. How Tom’s not already globally acclaimed as a songwriter is beyond me.

Thank-you for reading, it means a lot.

Hit me up: doublechorus@substack.com

Listen to Refigure the bitesize arts review podcast I make with Rifa.

Subscribe to Border Crossing: 1st and 3rd week each month, my email zine balancing along the frayed edges of culture.

A huge flaw with most bands in fiction is the brushing over of the boring minutiae of ‘process’, where in fact, as a backdrop for drama, comedy, plot and character, the boring minutiae of ‘process’ is the best stuff. Forget the glossy bits, the encores. The rehearsal room is an intense, claustrophobic space for stupid humour and/or the developing of complex personal relationships. You don’t need to show off with a slick song: just hanging about not playing is better suited and far more authentic.

Another common flaw is how the band gets far too good, far too quickly. In musicianship but particularly in audio production. Television’s understanding of music is so locked into a slick showcase mindset, even when a fictional band is meant to be just starting out, or doing messy punk shit with no resources, as soon as they play — bosh! — high quality radio session production values and beautifully balanced drum sound. Bleurgh.

Probably even trickier is the sticky songwriting balance, whereby songs need to be good enough to be compelling and stand up, suggest talent and potential (otherwise who cares), yet at the same time not appear to be obvious sophisticated chart fodder delivered via some jobbing hitmaker. Getting it stylistically appropriate for the actual characters writing them is more important than the objective quality of a song. Which isn’t half as straightforward as it may seem.

Anyway, waffle waffle…

I was surprised and immensely heartened to find that Sally Wainwright’s feminist menopausal punk drama Riot Women gets basically all of this stuff dead right — and there isn’t even really that much of the band in the series. Perhaps that’s part of the trick.

Thank the gods, they don’t make it sound artificially too polished and ‘produced’. Even Channel 4’s fun sitcom We Are Lady Parts fell for that one (worse in the second season) with the band’s sound and journey increasingly unrealistic.

Riot Women is set in Hebden Bridge (which looks gorgeous throughout) and sees a group of acquaintances, women mostly in their fifties who carry significant trauma via patriarchal violence, forming a rock band for a local talent contest.

Sally Wainwright clearly trusted that the emotional heft of having musical material sum up and parlay the stuff actually going on in these characters’ lives didn’t require it to be impossibly crystal clear, or be performed by session players. Of course, it’s about energy and release. Which also means it’s far more authentically DIY rock’n’roll, and helps the non-music drama aspects of the show hit as hard as they do. The uncompromising brutality is brilliantly done and horrifying. So then, Tamsin Greig (retired cop Holly) and (Jess, hippie pub landlady grandma) Lorraine Ashbourne’s thunkingly good rhythm section especially is simple, not too tight, yet driven along hard by real concentration and giving a shit, thus basically spot on perfect for this kind of band. Mistakes stay in and don’t matter, exactly as it should be.

Indeed, the show doesn’t fall for the classic error of allowing the heady joy of an early live performance become a denouement in and of itself. We get the big set piece, the talent contest, it’s a thrilling (again quite realistic) outcome, but before they can catch breath, the real world is collapsing around them again, horrible situations overwhelm and quickly the band dynamic steps back into the rear view. Sally Wainwright doesn’t pull her punches. Men don’t come out well at all, and fair play to that.

Throughout, the gear — and learning about gear, and acquiring gear — feels realistic. The rehearsal and recording studio feel realistic. Finding out an embarrassing minor plot point because of mics being audible in the control room is something every music maker will cringe with familiarity at.

Also, they get away with a Big Muff gag.

It’s just great.

I badly hope Riot Women gets a second season. But also that there’s no hint whatsoever of this lovely band suddenly getting signed and famous — and that becoming the focus. A few gigs and maybe the odd moment that feels triumphant, yeah. Exactly as they handled this first season.

If they must go down the ‘acclaim and celebrity cameos’ route, please keep it grass-roots and community and small scale. God, let it be a sort of Riley and Coe session type sketch, John Robb becomes a fan (as he undoubtedly would), or a random blagged support slot with, erm, well, Lambrini Girls and Nova Twins are too big now but someone like that, not some phoney major label A&R and sudden mainstream stardom and appearances on daytime telly. Being members of Riot Women needn’t drive their lives, nor rescue them economically, rather simply offer release from the horrors, in the quiet/loud, profound, decent way that artistry should.

What a writer is Wainwright.

If executive level BBC really can’t resist the temptation to have Riot Women make it onto Later with Jools, for example, please can they do it right now, in real life, these actors, between seasons as cross-marketing, not within the storyline of the show itself?

Overall, I just pray this show continues to utilise its fiery, realistic band as active backdrop, additional to these characters’ lives and community, not become too much the central focus, as if it’s a magical panacea.

Yeah, I’d love to catch Riot Women live, though that will require Rosalie Craig (lead singer Kitty, a survivor of brutal abuse throughout her life) to be able to sustain that superb, intense, prowling front-woman persona through a set, which is a big ask. I bet she could though.

Here’s Tamsin Greig’s interview in Big Issue.

Here’s Sally Wainwright’s interview in British Vogue.

loads of my stuff —

• I reviewed the new Bar Italia album Some Like It Hot for The Quietus.

• Brighton: Sat 25th Oct I’ll join the lineup of Goo Records’ alldayer LollapaGOOza 3 at the Hope & Ruin, to play a half-hour solo guest spot (mid evening) warming up for the London 100 Club show.

• I was interviewed by James Walsh for The Morning Star. Here’s the published version (under the charming headline ‘Awkward Bastard’ lol) and here’s a much longer version James published on his own newsletter.

• On 15th November, if you’re in London for my 100 Club show and you fancy more music earlier on, George Gadd (Nottingham), Mexican Dave (Bristol) and Heartwork (Wales) are joining forces for an afternoon gig at the Cavendish Arms, which they’re billing as a sort of T-T pre-party. Should be a blast. Tickets here.

• Two weeks ago at Lost Evenings VIII in Edinburgh, Frank Turner and I filmed a backstage acoustic version of ‘Giraffes #1’. Frank’s cover of the song is featured on his new rarities collection, The Next Ten Years, out 7th November. My original version was on the 2003 album London Is Sinking, which (you already know I’m sure) is reissued 14th November on 12” vinyl.

• New Tom Williams single ‘Deepest Blue’ second taste from upcoming LP Out Of Nowhere. I played piano and sat in the producer’s chair. Very proud of this. Also I always want to shout about the solo from the rooftops but have to hesitate because weirdly it also feels like a spoiler.

• We’ve added remaining CD stock of my Xtra Mile Recordings albums to Bandcamp: Love Is Not Rescue, The Bear, 9 Green Songs and Best Of Chris T-T all now available.

loads of icymi —

• Audrey Hobart makes it onto late night, singing ‘Sue Me’ on Fallon.

• I mentioned in the last Border Crossing email, it was the 70th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s first performance of ‘Howl’. So few couple of weeks ago in Dublin, the peerless Patti Smith, with her band, performed ‘Footnote to Howl’ (‘Holy, Holy’). This is so good.

• The collab between James Yorkston and Nina Persson has lovely joie de vivre, here they sing ‘Love That Tree’ on Later. Mics faced each-other, a vibey conversation in song. Something of the Bonny Light Horseman about them.

• The new Non Canon video is an interactive video game. Brilliant, funny idea, beautifully executed. Well done Barry, wherever you are.

• Lorde in a new Take 5 (ABC) interview talks beautifully about ‘Girl So Confusing’. When Zan Rowe gets emotional, I wholly empathise with that: I still can’t listen to the song without feeling those feelings. For me it truly is up there with the greatest pieces of artistry of the twenty-first century. Not to shade too much but I couldn’t help but think, Charli and Lorde’s self-exploration and dialogue in song is so, so, so much more sophisticated than what fucking Taylor has just done (if that’s what she’s done, no certainty, I’m skeptical ‘Actually Romantic’ is an XCX diss at all).

• A bit of a This Is The Kit atmosphere on the excellent new Katherine Priddy tune ‘Matches’.

• I really like this performance by EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami of ‘Golden’, the song they created for Netflix hit animated film KPop Demon Hunters, on The Tonight Show, partly because it looks so different from your usual k-pop TV performance. These three women are essentially studio veterans, not manufactured pop starlets. They’re significantly older, low key choreo, with no need to sell the show in quite the same kinetic way, which gives the performance a languid, controlled energy. And all of that is incredibly rare in k-pop. Even the verse low vocalising is very unusual. We’d never, ever have got to see and hear them like this, or seen these three brilliant singers at all, if the film hadn’t gone unexpectedly, stupendously ballistic.

Thank-you for reading, it means a lot.

Hit me up: doublechorus@substack.com

Pre-order 9 Red Songs and London Is Sinking limited edition 12” LP reissues out 14th November.

Listen to Refigure bitesize arts podcast I make with Rifa.

Subscribe to Border Crossing: 1st and 3rd week each month, my email zine balancing on the frayed edges of culture.