meursault - Last Year's Girl

on the 2017 say award longlist;

I’m a bit torn on this year’s Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award longlist. On the one hand, the fact that four of the five albums I put forward made the list makes me very happy (as for the fifth? Well, another band featuring the same songwriter made the cut, so it’s not like […]

culture consumption: february 2017;

February has been a pretty decent month for me on the ol’ arts front. I broke my gigging duck for the year (48 days in – a new record), saw a whole THREE films at the Glasgow Film Festival and rid my to-read pile of another four books. Oh, and I also started using a […]

the silver linings pixlet: something to smile about;

About 48 hours into my second horrendous cold of the year, my mental health went into a death spiral. It was Friday, the second of two days I had to take off last week – not so much because of the cold itself, although staring at a computer screen all day wouldn’t have been pleasant, […]

all the pain you’ve been through will be the making of you: last year’s mix, 2014;

It’s the last 2014 post of 2015! HURRAH! (Actually, I’d have done this sooner but I a. was too busy researching EU VAT law; b. ran out of CDs to make my backups on. I’d come up with a more technological method of doing so, but I don’t wanna. As of this Christmas, I am […]

the only kind of steady i believe in: last year’s records, 2014;

Despite releases this year by the men whose works are tattooed on my heart (or wrist, in the case of Ryan Adams; and back, for The Hold Steady), practically all of my favourite albums have been by women. Whether Laura Jane Grace’s no-bullshit, this-is-who-I-am fire on Against Me!’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues; EMA or St Vincent, […]

i don’t have the heart to match the one pricked in your finger: last year’s festive fifty, 2014;

And so to a rough estimation of my favourite songs of 2014, slightly complicated by the bug that hit my iTunes earlier this year and messed up all of my play counts (seriously, if you think I managed to listen to the same James Vincent McMorrow track 169 times without putting my fist through the […]

party city: 24 hours in edinburgh with premier inn;

You know, I’d heard rumours that Premier Inn had really upped their game in recent years, but I could never have guessed how much until they invited myself and Stringer through to spend 24 hours in our nation’s capital. Yes, the idea was always to cut out the unnecessary bits that cost money in favour […]