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December 2020 Issue 179
January 2020
Books
THE SKINNY
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THE SKINNY
Art January 2020
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The Skinny's socially distanced NYE party playlist Robyn — Dancing on My Own Utah Saints — Something Good (Full Length Original 1992) ABBA — Voulez-Vous Texas — Inner Smile Yazoo — In My Room Talking Heads — Road to Nowhere LCD Soundsystem — All My Friends Warren Zevon — Splendid Isolation Nirvana — Stay Away Avenue Beat — F2020 Killdren — Kill Tory Scum (Before They Kill You) The Communards — You Are My World Dexys Midnight Runners — Come on Eileen Frank Iero and the Patience — I'm a Mess Whitney Houston — I Wanna Dance with Somebody
Listen to this playlist on Spotify – search for 'The Skinny Office Playlist' or scan the below code
Issue 179, December 2020 © Radge Media Ltd. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk December 2020
The Skinny is Scotland's largest independent entertainment & listings magazine, and offers a wide range of advertising packages and affordable ways to promote your business. Get in touch to find out more. E: sales@theskinny.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within this publication do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the printer or the publisher. Printed by DC Thomson & Co. Ltd, Dundee ABC verified Jan – Dec 2019: 28,197
printed on 100% recycled paper
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"
Championing creativity in Scotland
Meet the team We asked – What's been your highlight of 2020? Editorial
Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "Slow explorations of urban green space and nearby beaches with my toddler son; a meal out during the heady denial of Eat Out to Save Lives; watching Love is Blind."
Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "That month in summer when I was cooking over an open fire almost constantly. My jacket still smells like a burning building, and I regret nothing."
Anahit Behrooz Events Editor "I started at The Skinny! But (more importantly?) there was also that month I got a huge crush on Shia LaBeouf and watched like five of his movies in a row."
Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "Yes, embracing nature during lockdown was good, but have you ever had your brain melted watching Akira in IMAX after being starved of cinema all summer?"
Tallah Brash Music Editor "Watching all of Buffy; cycling to Portobello; sea swimming; takeaway pints; baking. There have actually been many highlights, despite the shitshow this year has been!"
Nadia Younes Clubs Editor "Perfecting my margarita recipe."
Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "n/a"
Katie Goh Intersections Editor "The first pint of summer after four pintless months. Reader, I cried."
Eliza Gearty Theatre Editor "Singing with a onenight punk covers band called the F*ck Boris Ensemble at the Blue Arrow in March. It was the last hurrah. "
Heather McDaid Books Editor "Seriously, my little one's first birthday. Less seriously, but also totally seriously, belatedly discovering the wonder of Nick Miller."
Sales & Business
Production
Rachael Hood Art Director, Production Manager "Developing a greater appreciation of the outdoors; relishing time with my wonderful friends and family; launching a jewellery business; the US election results... 2020 ain't too shabby after all."
Adam Benmakhlouf Art Editor "One day during Lockdown One and for the first time in my life, staying nude all the way from waking up to going to bed."
Phoebe Willison Designer "Is this a trick question?"
Sandy Park Commercial Director "Most importantly, Trump losing office. Less importantly, finding the ability to walk everywhere, not having used public transport since March and enjoying being outdoors."
Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager "Bang Face 2020! The last festival before lockdown. It seems like a liftime ago."
George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "Publishing our third successful season of Fest Magazine in Adelaide, before the world got flipped turned upside down."
Laurie Presswood General Manager "Buying my own home and starting a family! In The Sims!"
THE SKINNY
Editorial Words: Rosamund West
W
hat a year eh? It feels faintly implausible that we’re standing at the end of 2020, looking back on this frankly baffling series of events. Did that really happen? Remember when our elected BoJo kept bragging about shaking people’s hands, then nearly died of COVID, then emerged entirely unchastened by the experience to keep enacting poorly considered and ethically suspect policies which have materially worsened an already catastrophic situation? Remember when we were all locked up for months and only allowed out for an hour a day to shout “TWO METRES!” at strangers on the pavement? Remember when everyone was really into foraging wild garlic, presumably because the supermarket shelves were bare as a result of the Great British public revealing themselves to be the type of team players who will stockpile at the first hint of danger? It’s probably going to take quite a while to process it all. I am just really thankful that we, The Skinny, are still here – it looked frankly unlikely for much of 2020 that we would be here in September, let alone now. We were able to return because of our readers generously supporting our crowdfunder. We have been able to keep going because we’re nippy and the team is brilliant. And we’re now ending the year on a rare piece of good news – we have received funding from Creative Scotland which secures our operations well into 2021. Thank you all – we are so incredibly grateful. We’ve compiled our year-end publication in much the same way as we do every year, hopefully offering a sort of comforting familiarity even though everything is still totally weird. We have
polled our writers for the top albums and films of the year; compiled a gift guide using recommendations from our team of small local businesses making wonderful things; Food editor Peter has written a guide to cooking Christmas dinner with pro tips for seasoned Christmas chefs and total newbies alike; comedy writers share their favourite underappreciated festive specials. Anahit Behrooz pens a love letter to the indie bookshop (which you need to frequent this year and every other year); the Amy Taylor has written a piece on which panto characters need to be cancelled in 2021; and our centre pages have a pull-out-and-use sheet of beautifully illustrated wrapping paper which is actually on the centre spread this year (hopefully). The importance of community is high on our minds – we’ve put together a page of local projects and charities that could use your help now and in the future. Food waste is a huge issue year-round, but especially at Christmas. We take a look at a new video series from Glasgow Science Centre, Scraps, which offers tips from Julie’s Kopitiam and Babu Bombay Street Kitchen on how to make the most out of your cauliflower. In Intersections, Katie Goh considers the reappraisal of public space, notoriety and statuary that has begun in earnest this year, while Eilidh Akilade shares what working with children in the pandemic has taught her. Signing out of 2020 and looking forward to a brighter 2021 with hopefully some loud music in dark rooms and pints of beer and IRL loved ones. In the meantime, we have warm layers and thermosbased cocktails in the park. From everyone at The Skinny, wishing you a happy and healthy year-end.
December 2020 — Chat
Cover Artist Lauren Morsley Lauren Morsley is an Illustrator and printmaker based in Scotland and specialises in the bold, the bright, and the colourful to create lively and playful designs. Her illustrations create other worlds to explore and are often inspired by intriguing stories, places, and people. Find her on Instagram at @laurenmorsley
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Love Bites: A Year of Solidarity Love Bites
This month’s columnist reflects on how British East and South-East Asian communities have been brought closer together over 2020 Words: Sean Wai Keung
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December 2020 — Chat
t’s Japanese Week on Bake Off, and the contestants make steamed buns, a dish universally recognised as of Chinese origin. Later, while commenting on matcha, a bright green tea powder with traditional significance, Paul Hollywood, the judge, remarks that it’s “disgusting”. I take to social media, interested in how much of a stir this is causing. Most comments I see from BESEA (British East and South-East Asian) folk are along the lines of I’m not angry… Just disappointed. Truthfully, on the scale of transgressions made towards people with Asian heritage, Bake Off doesn’t rank that high. In 2020, hate-crime against BESEA people increased threefold*. For people like myself, UK-born, living away from family and unable to visit, it’s been a particularly anxious year. Over the phone someone tells me it’s the first time in decades they’ve felt scared to walk the street. Someone else says that when they go to hospital for a non-COVID reason they get stared at suspiciously by other patients. And I can’t help. Yet even here there’s unexpected joy to be found. Online, I watch as activist groups spring up, including ESAS (East and Southeast Asian Scotland), BESEA.N (British East and South-East Asian Network) and EVR (EndtheVirusofRacism). Digital, BESEA-led arts festivals are organised. Social media groups are made to connect foodies or writers with East-Asian heritage. Through these, I join other BESEA people throughout the country, as well as diaspora around the world. Together, we talk about the fight-back against racism and misidentification. But we also share in joy as well – we talk about our families and experiences. We celebrate 中秋节 (Mid-Autumn Festival) together. We laugh at memes others may not understand. This kind of solidarity and activism isn’t new, but 2020 has pushed more people, myself included, to engage with it. The racists had hoped that COVID could divide us further. They were wrong.
*figure from endthevirusofracism.com
Crossword Solutions Across 9. ELF 11. FANTASY ISLAND ADULT BOOKS 14. AEROBIC 15. VIDEOCONFERENCING 16. KEEP GOING 17. CLIP ART 18. ADAMANT 19. ENDEARED 21. KNEE DEEP 22. DOUREST 24. TOTALITARIAN 26. GDP 28. MAGNETIC 33. EUROSONIC 35. INTEL 36. INTER ALIA 37. OFF-CAMPUS 39. ANNOY 40. GREAT VIEW 42. ROSAMUND 43. HEX 44. FACE THE MUSIC 48. PENGUIN 50. ELITISTS 52. PAINT JOB 55. BAGGAGE 56. SMITTEN 57. NEOPHOBES 59. RUTH BADER GINSBURG 61. HUMDRUM 62. WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION 63. LOL Down 1. UNFRIEND 2. BAWBAG 3. BY ACCIDENT 4. WARD 5. AD HOMINEM 6. ADVOCATE 7. CLIFFTOPS 8. DOING A RUNNER 9. ESTIMATE 10. FORGET IT 11. FRANK GET THE DOOR 12. SAVAGE 13. BARNARD CASTLE 17. CONTAMINATE 20. ATLAS 23. PROCESS 25. TARIFFS 27. DOLLY PARTON 29. TALLIES 30. CHADWICK BOSEMAN 31. ATONE 32. JINGLES 34. NO PUN INTENDED 38. AHMAUD ARBERY 41. TIMON 45. HEAD OF HAIR 46. WEB SERIES 47. NIETZSCHE 48. PUB CRAWL 49. NIGHT OWL 51. INITIALS 53. J M BARRIE 54. ENIGMA 58. HYMNAL 60. UBRE
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Heads Up
Happy last month of 2020! At last! Celebrate the end of the weirdest year in the history of the world with festive treats galore, from theatre to Christmas markets and everything in between Compiled by Anahit Behrooz Photo: Courtesy of Tron Theatre
High Man Pen Meander
Heads Up
Tron Theatre, Online, 8-13 Dec The very first Scots Makar and Glasgow Poet Laureate, Edwin Morgan and his poetry are an intrinsic part of Scottish and Glaswegian culture. This unique, experimental piece of theatre, filmed in situ and available on demand on the theatre’s website, takes the audience – literally – on a journey through Morgan’s work, weaving through the Tron Theatre in search of the poet’s most famed words.
High Man Pen Meander
Re:connections Upright Gallery, Edinburgh, until 19 Dec In a year defined by periods of extended isolation, ideas of connection and community have been playing on everyone’s minds. Re:connections, a collaborative exhibition of over 30 artists’ books, considers how art itself has been forced to adapt its means of connection, and the new ways in which creating and exhibiting art can continue to offer a sense of solidarity and understanding. Photo: Courtesy of artist and Upright Gallery
Photo: Raymond Gubbay
Christmas at the Botanics, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, until 3 Jan 2021 Has the festive season really started without the annual Christmas light show at the Botanic Gardens Edinburgh? Featuring gorgeous light sculptures, laser light shows, tunnels of fairy lights leading from garden to garden, and little stalls offering hot chocolate at strategic intervals, Christmas at the Botanics is a little seasonal miracle to round off a too-long year.
Re:connections
Image: courtesy of artist and Arusa Gallery
Helen Flockhart and Beth Carter: Beasts
Scottish artist Helen Flockhart is returning to Arusha Gallery, this time teaming up with sculptor Beth Carter for a unique joint exhibition exploring the haunting, mythic intersection between femininity and wildness. Populated by sombre minotaurs and searching women, these oil paintings and bronze sculptures are striking in their unexpected modernity, confronting the fantastic chaos that lies at the heart of the human condition.
Dundee Rep, Online, 1-24 Dec Forget the chocolates or tiny pictures, little morsels of theatre are the best advent calendar present. Every day in the run up to Christmas, Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre are releasing 24 theatrical vignettes, put together by their creative ensembles and released on the Dundee Rep social media accounts. As with any advent calendar, the contents are a secret until the day, but expect whimsy and joy aplenty.
Advent
Photo: 0405 Photography
Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, until 20 Dec
Concerts by Candlelight
Helen Flockhart, Fill My Wounds With Gold, 2020
Concerts by Candlelight Scottish Ensemble, Online, 16 Dec, 7:30pm String orchestra Scottish Ensemble are rounding up a season of online events with their Concerts by Candlelight series, perfect for bringing the seasonal mood straight to your home. Featuring music by J.S. Bach, Anna Clyne, Edmund Finnis, and George Crumb, the concert will be available to stream on the Scottish Ensemble’s website.
Oh Yes We Are! – A Quest for Long Lost Light and Laughter
Photo: Courtesy of artist
Photo: Jassy Earl
December 2020 — Chat
Photo: Courtesy Dundee Rep
Christmas at the Botanics
Advent
Perth Theatre and online, Perth, 10-24 Dec
Photo: Perth Theatre
Mustard, Traverse Theatre
Mustard, Traverse Theatre Online, 1-14 Dec
Oh Yes We Are!
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Malka
MALKA: Hidden Door Live Online, 15 Dec, 7pm
THE SKINNY
Photo: Courtesy of artist
Summerhall Christmas Market Online, until 24 Dec
Ways of Seeing: Women and Photography in Scotland Glasgow Women's Library, Online, until 24 Dec A mediation on the female gaze in all its diverse, shifting glory, this exhibition – in collaboration with the National Trust for Scotland and Shutter Hub – highlights the neglected stories of Scottish female photographers, collecting together contemporary photos by women photographers in and from Scotland to uncover the unique relationship between the photographer and her subject.
Heads Up
Image: Aimee Chang
Nothing can quite replace the hubbub of the annual Summerhall Christmas Market, the scent of mulled wine filling the halls, popping in to pick up “one or two things” and emerging with an armful of presents (largely for yourself). But until it’s back next year, we can make do with their carefully curated online version that keeps the emphasis on local creators and businesses
Ilisa Stack, Pertaining to the Heavens Photo: Harrison Reid
Pinboard: Postcards from Edinburgh Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, until 6 Mar 2021 What better way to celebrate a year filled with snail mail than with this infinitely charming exhibition at renowned tapestry studio Dovecot. Featuring unique embroidered postcards by textile designer Laura Lees, depicting familiar scenes from all over Edinburgh – from the Royal Commonwealth Pool to the University – this exhibition is a heartfelt love letter to the everyday life of this city.
Gerry Jablonski, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival!
Scottish Jazz and Blues Weekend! Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, Online, 3-6 Dec Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival is bringing a swing and a step to the frosty Scottish winter with a series of four exclusive gigs, filmed and available to watch on their website over one weekend. The line-up includes some of the best from Scotland’s jazz and blues scene, including jazz fusion band Mezcla, whose album Shoot the Moon was recently longlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year.
Photo: Laura Lees
Fokus: Films from Germany Online, 3-17 Dec
Pinboard: Postcards from Edinburgh
DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, 5 Dec-14 Mar 2021
Emma Talbot, Windblown Tree Cleo
Gilded Balloon: Christmas Search Party
Jock McFadyen Goes to the Pictures
Edinburgh, Online, until 8 Jan 2021
City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until 11 Apr 2021 Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Michael McIlroy Sonnet Youth Repeat Beat Poet Perry Jonsson
Sonnet Youth Social Club Online, 10 Dec, 8pm Jock McFadyen, Whos Afraid of Red Yellow and Blue, 2018
Christmas Search Party
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December 2020 — Chat
This major new exhibition brings together a series of works created specifically for the DCA by renowned British artist Emma Talbot, whose artistic practice spans the breadth of the visual arts, from drawing and painting to animation and modelling. Exploring the relationship between the symbolic and the narrative, Talbot’s striking, uncanny pieces offer a contemplation on some of the most pertinent issues of the modern condition.
Photo: Delta Film
Photo: Courtesy of artist
Emma Talbot: Ghost Calls
A collaboration between the Goethe-Institut in Glasgow and Edinburgh Filmhouse, this year’s Fokus film festival has moved entirely online, but offers the same exciting glimpse into contemporary German cinema that it does every year. Highlights include writer-director Eliza Petkova’s A Fish Swimming Upside Down, which made big waves at this year’s Berlinale, and the whimsical, Amélie-like Cleo.
November 2020
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5 Meet the Team — 6 Editorial — 7 Love Bites — 8 Heads Up 12 Crossword — 44 Intersections — 47 Albums — 49 Film & TV — 50 Books 51 Art — 53 Comedy — 54 The Skinny On… Auntie Flo
Features
16 I t’s been a weird year but the releases keep coming – our Albums of 2020 20 How the Scottish music scene has adapted in a year of closed venues 23 In the year when cinemas barely opened – our Films of 2020
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24 The Scottish film community reflect on this cursed year, and give us their films of the year 27 W rapping paper! A Showcase special with a double-sided, pull-out-and-use sheet of wrapping paper. Pick between the beautiful designs of Sarah Wilson or Beatrice Simpkiss 31 It’s never been more important to support small businesses. Our team share their Gift Guide suggestions with a special focus on local, independent makers
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34 Speaking of which – get to know your local indie bookshops and give them some support too! 35 A rundown of some lesserknown but fantastically funny festive specials 36 Restrictions on household mixing mean many will be cooking Christmas dinner for the first time this year. We’ve got some pro tips to help you through the ordeal
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40 P anto characters that should be cancelled in 2021 42 Local Heroes share the collection of Scottish jewellery they presented at the 2020 visual New York Jewelry Week On the website...
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Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) Molly Matalon; Rory Barnes; Uncut Gems; Eoin Carey; Beatrice Simpkiss; Dust Studio; Natsumi Chikayasu; Rachael Hood; Kaitlin Mechan; Julie Lin; Paige Ootabook; Michelle Currie
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A look at the new compilation album from Love Music Hate Racism Glasgow, a recap on the winners of the 2020 SAMAs, and find out more about our revamped subscriptions package, from 7 December.
December 2020 — Contents
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39 Glasgow Science Centre team up with Glasgow chefs to help you reduce your food waste
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Crossword
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Compiled by George Sully
Down
December 2020 — Chat
Across 9. Will Ferrell Christmas banger (3) 11. Name of the sex shop next door to Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia (7,6,5,5) 14. Involving oxygen (6) 15. Webcam-based meeting (sorry) (17) 16. Continue (4,5) 17. Free-to-use graphics supplied with a computer program (4,3) 18. Stubborn (7) 19. Caused to be liked (8) 21. Shallow (4-4) 22. Not just a bit cold and unfriendly, but the most (7) 24. Dictatorial (12) 26. Total goods value produced by a country (3) 28. Charming (8) 33. Annual music conference in Groningen, Netherlands, alongside Noorderslag (9) 35. Info (5) 36. Among other things – I are Latin (anag) (5,4) 37. Not on university grounds (3-6) 39. Bug – pester (5) 40. Excellent vista (5,4) 42. The Skinny's editor-in-chief Oran's mud (anag) (8)
43. Curse (3) 44. Confront unpleasant consequences (4,3,5) 48. British publishing house – bird (7) 50. Snobs (8) 52. New coat (5,3) 55. Personal history (7) 56. Besotted (6) 57. People afraid of new things (9) 59. Late US Supreme Court justice – guru brings breadth (anag) (4,5,8) 61. Boring – monotonous (7) 62. UN wellness agency (5,6,12) 63. Laugh out loud (3)
1. Remove from one's list of contacts on a social network (8) 2. Scrotum – bampot (6) 3. Unintentionally (2,8) 4. Hospital department – protected young person (4) 5. Against a person instead of their position – oh I'm named (anag) (2,7) 6. Stand up for (8) 7. Areas of land above steep rock faces (9) 8. Legging it (5,1,6) 9. Eyeball – item's ETA (anag) (8) 10. An annoyed way of telling someone not to worry (6,2) 11. Comedian Janey Godley's satirising of Nicola Sturgeon's press conferences (5,3,3,4) 12. Vicious (6) 13. Top of the list of 'Best Eye-Test Destinations According to Politicians' ("Number 10 will shock you!") (7,6) 17. Pollute – infect (11) 20. He carries the world on his shoulders (and shrugged once, allegedly) (5) 23. Method (7) 25. Taxes – charges (7)
27. She helped fund a COVID-19 vaccine and was an uncredited producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (5,6) 29. Counts (7) 30. Actor known for his roles in Black Panther and Da 5 Bloods (8,7) 31. Make amends (5) 32. Musical refrains used in advertising (7) 34. That wordplay was not deliberate (2,3,8) 38. Say his name: man shot in Georgia, USA while jogging, Feb 2020 (6,6) 41. Pumbaa's pal (5) 45. A full fuzz atop one's skull – ah, fro idea (anag) (4,2,4) 46. Episodic online video content (3,6) 47. German nihilist, existentialist and all-round happy chap (d.1900) (9) 48. The ancient, long-forgotten practice of visiting multiple bars on a night out (3,5) 49. A nocturnal person (5,3) 51. First letters (8) 53. Scottish author of Peter Pan (1,1,6) 54. Difficult to understand (6) 58. Relating to church music (6) 60. First name of Fidel Castro's favourite cow, Spanish for udder (4) Turn to page 7 for the solutions
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THE SKINNY
December 2020
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THE SKINNY
2020 WTF Illustration: Lauren Morsley
I
t’s difficult to argue that this has been quite a year – variously and accurately described as ‘strange and unprecedented’, ‘a giant pile of shit’, ‘shrug emoji’. It feels like the world has changed irrevocably yet in many ways daily life seems eerily the same. Like most people, we’ve spent the last few months desperately missing and also finding solace in culture and community. So, we end the year as we always end the year – with a rundown of our favourite music and films to be released in the last 12 months; a gift guide celebrating Scottish makers and businesses; some festive food; a round-up of local projects who could do with your help; and some beautiful, specially designed pull-out-and-use wrapping paper by illustrators Sarah Wilson and Beatrice Simpkiss, which will hopefully this year actually be printed on the centre spread.
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Albums of 2020 We polled our music team to find out what albums have helped them get through 2020, and it’s a dizzying mix of disco, hip-hop, dance and pop, taking on the political, tackling racism, misogyny, toxic masculinity and more. Sounds about right!
Music
Words: Music Team
Photo: Adrian Samson
After a legendary career flirting with the outskirts of pop and disco, Roísín Murphy has fully embraced the diva archetype. Pop music has been dominated by disco this year, from the lavish sensuality of What’s Your Pleasure? to the escapism of Future Nostalgia – but Roísín Machine offers a darker, more unhinged approach to dance catharsis. The grooves are here of course, but they’re colder and more foreboding, songs stretched into euphoric, introspective jams. What keeps it anchored are Murphy’s stunning performances, which range from effortlessly cool to surprisingly intense. These interconnected tracks come together to make what might be her boldest collection yet, without sacrificing any of the fun. [Skye Butchard]
[2 Oct, Skint Records]
Photo: Kim Hiorthøy
December 2020 – Feature
#10: Róisín Murphy – Róisín Machine
#9: Kelly Lee Owens – Inner Song Inner Song is the sound of Welsh producer Kelly Lee Owens encountering writer’s block, and finding the best way to break it to pieces. It begins disarmingly with Arpeggi, a slow-blossoming reconfiguration of a Radiohead song, which later leads Owens into earnest meditations on humanity’s relationship with the planet and the primal joy of love through propulsive house, celestial deep techno and sultry R’n’B. Owens’ rediscovered back-to-basics approach reaches the summit on Corner of My Sky, the album’s seven-minute centrepiece, in which fellow countryman John Cale delivers laconic lyricisms in Welsh as if emerging from a cryptic dream, hoping for meaning to surface in the waking realm. As Inner Song shows, your gut instinct is often the right one. [Dafydd Jenkins]
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[28 Aug, Smalltown Supersound]
THE SKINNY
Photo: Hugo Comte
#8: Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
[27 Mar, Warner Records]
Music
There’s an irony to Future Nostalgia making this list considering Dua Lipa’s sophomore release came out the very month the world came to a standstill. Spending time with the record does feel nostalgic – for sweaty club throngs and, further back, to the pure ecstasy of early disco. Dark synths and Gaga greatness douse Physical, while Levitating taps into the feels of Katy Perry luxuriating in a daisy field with Calvin Harris. The flip side looks to the future as the songwriter challenges an ageing lads’ club mentality in string-led send-off Boys Will Be Boys: ‘I know there will be a man around to save the day / And that was sarcasm, in case you needed it mansplained’. Future Nostalgia then sees out a humdinger of a year in the only way we know how (and Dua Lipa’s forte) – ‘dance-crying’. [Cheri Amour]
Photo: Press
#7: Jessie Ware – What’s Your Pleasure?
[26 Jun, PMR/EMI Records]
Photo: Molly Matalon
December 2020 – Feature
Disco never died, but it had a serious revival in 2020. From Dua Lipa’s nostalgic rampage culminating in a recreation of the infamous Studio 54 with her very own Studio 2054, to Kylie literally naming her latest album DISCO, it seems pop’s leading ladies have all caught the right kind of fever this year. None have done it better than Jessie Ware, who grabbed the disco ball with both hands and sent herself swinging back into our lives with her latest release, What’s Your Pleasure? The album finds Ware in her absolute element, sounding more alive than ever, and leaving us praying for the moment we get to dance to Save a Kiss on an actual club dancefloor. [Nadia Younes]
#6: Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud It sometimes feels like this year began around mid-March. Those first two, pre-lockdown months are difficult to associate with what followed, as if there needs to be a chapter break of sorts to acknowledge the contrast. Katie Crutchfield’s fifth record as Waxahatchee, released at the beginning of 2020, has in a sense acted as a companion to – and tonic for – this turbulent and claustrophobic year. Saint Cloud is charged with possibility throughout. Warm, vibrant, playful and strikingly assured songs like Arkadelphia find lightness in the wake of uncertainty, and offer a distinctly American sense of big-hearted adventure that is impossible to resist. ‘You know you got a friend in me’, Crutchfield sings in standout track among standout tracks, Ruby Falls. [Fraser MacIntyre]
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[27 Mar, Merge Records]
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Music
Photo: Jordan Hemingway
Photo: Greg Lin
#5: Rina Sawayama – SAWAYAMA
#4: Yves Tumor – Heaven to a Tortured Mind Yves Tumor went from safe in the hands of love, to the sonic equivalent of what my friend recently referred to as ‘the filth emoji’. Its swirling, cacophonous rock is pure heat – electrically-charged, blood-quickening, maxed out, uncompromisingly virile, begging to combust. ‘Tell me, what do you crave?’, ‘I can live in your dreams’, ‘I wanna give you every piece of me’. But it’s not only throwaway lust. This energy is manic, desperate – deeply, intensely-felt desire. ‘Our hearts are in danger’. Fireworks and sirens and howls – of pleasure, of nightmares? – are as integral to its sound as guitars and drums. The music itself sweats and writhes and wants. Make no mistake – this record fucks. [Tony Inglis]
[17 Apr, Dirty Hit]
[3 Apr, Warp]
Photo: Timothy Saccenti
December 2020 – Feature
Rina Sawayama switches genre like a rally driver changes gear: at full speed and in complete control. Sarcastic, sexy and serious when it counts, her self-titled debut is an exhilarating, risk-taking triumph. XS splices seductive R’n’B late capitalism (‘Cartier set, Tesla Xs / Calabasas, I deserve it’) with a dystopian nu-metal riff, fused together by her versatile, theatrical vocals. STFU! is glamorous and punishing, with the year’s most cathartic chorus, and the epic guitar solo on Who’s Gonna Save U Now? could fill five arenas at once. The album’s softest tracks hit just as hard: both Bad Friend and Chosen Family contrast silky pop production with raw, painful stories. SAWAYAMA is the boldest British pop album in years – who else has the range? [Katie Hawthorne]
#3: Run the Jewels – RTJ4 The year 2020 is going to be defined by three things: the COVID-19 pandemic, the democratic defeat of Donald Trump and the Black Lives Matter movement. The brutal death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police shook the world, and with it came a tsunami of anti-racist activism. In the midst of this, El-P & Killer Mike released their fourth Run the Jewels album at the perfect time. In lieu of their more jovial previous output, RTJ4 is full of justified anger at western society falling apart and during the summer, soundtracked that collapse. More than mere tokenism, RTJ4 is their most focused yet, filled with vicious bars, old-school production and killer tunes. [Adam Turner-Heffer] — 18 —
[3 Jun, Jewel Runners/BMG]
THE SKINNY
Photo: Frank Ockenfels
[18 Jun, Dead Oceans]
Music
#2: Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher Nobody does melancholy quite like Phoebe Bridgers. Amongst its more unwelcome offerings, 2020 gave us Punisher – an exquisite, sharply contemporary and truly original follow-up to Bridgers’ 2017 debut. Simultaneously sweet and sardonic, Bridgers’ vocals soften the blow of her dry and often bleak lyrics, giving the feeling of being tenderly held as the world crumbles. No mood overstays its welcome; just as the restlessness of Garden Song starts to overwhelm, we’re hit with the synth-laden earworm Kyoto to which you can’t help but numbly nod your head. Bridgers’ songwriting feels limitless, carefully refined to achieve an off-kilter perfection that surprises even on the fiftieth listen. In a year that’s felt as apocalyptic as this one, Punisher seems to capture the zeitgeist in a way that even Bridgers couldn’t have imagined. [Katie Cutforth]
#1: Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters The title track is a true masterpiece that centres around Apple’s struggles with self-image and criticism, the titular refrain delivered with a measured strength that can’t help but be inspiring. The song unspools and contracts with little regard for conventional structure, managing to tie up dog barks, references to Kate Bush and Ram Dass, some Cara Delevingne backing vocals and a freewheeling narrative into something immaculately cohesive in just five minutes. These are songs of defiance and strength; they may be written from a place of trauma and vulnerability, with lashings of misogyny to boot, but the overarching theme is one of not only perseverance, but a determination to overcome and flourish. There’s a unifying intimacy throughout that makes this album a perfect reconciliation of personal and political, now so hopelessly entangled; an urgent call to arms and a whispered message of solidarity. As the light at the end of the tunnel dawns on this shitbag of a year, this was the album that helped us get through it, and the one to lead us, hopefully defiant, into the next. [Lewis Wade] theskinny.co.uk/music — 19 —
[17 Apr, Epic] December 2020 – Feature
Never has the modern world been so divided, and the need to speak truth to power has been sorely needed in 2020, a year that has laid bare social, moral and economic inequities. To say that a piece of art has become prescient during these COVID times is boringly simplistic (almost every artist became a soothsayer post-lockdown). This could be argued for Fetch the Bolt Cutters (home recording, themes of trauma and coping etc.), but the truth is that these songs address much more insidious and long-standing power imbalances – they feel timeless because the issues are so depressingly entrenched, but they yearn to be future relics. It’s one thing to make a profound political statement, but still another to make it sound good. And this is the abundant genius of Fetch... – the songs are as catchy as anything Fiona Apple has ever made, while its themes come through with a sparkling clarity that has sometimes been absent in favour of enigmatic murk (see: Extraordinary Machine). Under the Table and Rack of His show off her subversive wit, while For Her rips apart toxic masculinity with a conversational candour at odds with such a blunt reckoning.
THE SKINNY
A Year of Extremes Music
We take a look back on one of the most tumultuous years Scotland’s music scene has ever faced, and celebrate five of the best albums to come out of it Words: Tony Inglis
W
hen did you lose your mind this year? For me, it was around early September and these three words: “wet ass Biffy”. Americans got the Gal Gadot Imagine video, and we got three Ayrshire blokes having the point sail spectacularly over their heads. There’s something
December 2020 – Feature
Photo: Zaynab McGroarty
quintessentially 2020 about Biffy Clyro’s reimagining – no, desecration – of Cardi B’s WAP. Just an all-round, tone deaf disaster. This isn’t brought up lightly, but rather to demonstrate the depraved lows Scottish music managed to hit before we talk about the (mostly) good stuff. It’s been a year of extremes, and not much of what has happened drops between the pylons of delightful and exceptionally shit. It’s tempting to map the year out chronologically, but that results in something that resembles sliding down a water chute into a pool of piranhas. There isn’t much to celebrate right now, so let’s instead start with the country’s music scene’s valiant attempts to celebrate itself. The SAY Award went ahead, and the run up to its end of October showcase was a chance for levity and a bit of pride. The longlist was one of the most diverse, glass ceiling-smashing set of nominees in the award’s history, featuring artists new and old, voices and perspectives oft heard and those that should be heard more. After technical issues caused most of the prerecorded event – which included live performances from the likes of Happy Spendy and Kapil Seshasayee, and acceptance speeches from the ten longlisted acts – to be postponed until three NOVA
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days after the winner was crowned, rewatching the video announcing the winner now is an interesting exercise. Devoid of tension and suspense, the prerecorded call with NOVA, real name Shaheeda Sinckler, ends up in… a flub, her manager Sofya Staune forced to repeat to her exactly what’s happened – that she’s won. The moment totally deflated. This is not a criticism – if anything, it’s incredibly apt! This entire year has been like letting air out of a balloon, the IRL manifestation of “technical difficulties” – of course one of the most important moments in Scottish music’s calendar should turn out like this. It’s simply a working hazard at the moment; empty halls and bare stages, silent audience members sitting at the other end of computer screens.
“Not much of what has happened drops between the pylons of delightful and exceptionally shit” Ultimately what’s important about this experience is the music. The SAY Award cash prize is a life-changing amount of money for an artist like NOVA. Her album RE-UP is a somewhat under-the-radar winner, striking a blow against gatekeepers and the Spotify algorithm. Soon after, she told The Skinny: “I’m sure it will turn some heads towards these factions [the rap and grassroots artists] of Scottish music, and spark curiosity in places that used to be in the dark, whether that is in Scotland or beyond.” Whatever you think of the album that bagged the award, the whole enterprise – as well as efforts from other awards bodies like the SAMAs, and words in The Skinny’s very own pages – shines a light on several communities of artists who are creatively flexible and adventurous and, whether or not they should need to, grafting for their future. If your long, lonely nights haven’t been sated by boundary-splitting music from the acts in the adjacent Scottish albums of the year list, then surely you have found something to love in old favourites – Mogwai, Arab Strap, Teenage Fanclub – making their returns. For that, we can be thankful.
THE SKINNY
Photo: Rory Barnes
The Skinny’s Scottish Albums of the Year
Nova and Sofya Staun
much more remains to be done. But it warms the heart, and it is something. The long awkward silences in a bedroom recorded live set were worth it – a sign of survival. When Optimo put on a set at SWG3 – socially distanced and well-precautioned – there was a glimmer of hope. There’s life in the old dog yet.
“The long awkward silences in a bedroom recorded live set were worth it – a sign of survival” Tackling the Scottish music scene’s toxic past With downing tools comes time for reflection. Unfortunate that it took a pandemic then for the scene to face up to its own shortcomings. This year Scottish music has been reckoning with its history of abuse, harassment, discrimination and all manner of manipulative and coercive behaviours subjected on womxn by toxic, unaccountable men. In August, The Skinny wrote about two organisations – the Glasgow Accountability Network and Scottish Women Inventing Music (SWIM) – and the work they’re doing to give victims a voice and a sense of justice. Since then, The BIT Collective has been raising awareness of inequality and instances of assault and abuse within the folk and trad scene, while the Protection of Women in the Arts (POWA) initiative was launched in November. A creative project founded by Siobhan Wilson and Ashley Stein (Fistymuffs), it’s centred around providing a welcoming outlet for survivors to talk about their experiences of sexism in the arts. The work of these groups is essential, but their goals only come to fruition if perpetrators begin to take responsibility for their actions and for those who usually stand idly by – in venues, in scenes – to understand those toxic behaviours and question and call them out. If this year has been disrupted by problems outwith our control, let’s at least go into the next one taking control of a problem that we have the power to change. — 21 —
Carla J. Easton – WEIRDO [28 Aug, Olive Grove Records] WEIRDO is the most enjoyable slap in the face. Dropping at the end of perhaps the worst summer for actually doing things in our lifetimes, Carla J. Easton’s oversaturated maximalist pop wanted to grab you by the collar, drag you into the final dying embers of the sun and demand that you have a good time. Callum Easter – Green Door Sessions [21 Aug, Moshi Moshi Records] Callum Easter’s one-take reimagining of older material can be at once moody and playful. It is also stark: populated by little more than droning accordion, drum machines, mournful piano and his soulful, sorrowful voice. One imagines his vocals here being captured against the backdrop of puddles dribbling into Argyle Street drains. Erland Cooper – Hether Blether [29 May, PHASES] Musically and thematically expansive, this final instalment in Erland Cooper’s trilogy of retreats to his native Orkney is about as close to island hopping as any of us have come this year. Contemporary classical mixed with field recordings and snatches of conversation make for a transportive listen.
theskinny.co.uk/music
December 2020 – Feature
The pandemic, Brexit and the importance of community At the start of the year, The Skinny was bringing good news about the push for equality, inclusivity and accessibility in live music and festivals. Not long after, that became a moot point. In one article, a source told us: “Closing venues for a few weeks could be a disaster.” That was in March. The untold damage the pandemic has wreaked on the entertainment industry likely can’t be fully measured until this is all over. But it’s not like artists, venue owners, sound engineers, promoters – anyone with ties to the live music scene – had nothing else worrying to contend with. The looming threat to livelihoods posed by 2021’s changes in touring regulations for the EU thanks to Brexit have been compounded by forced closures to performance spaces and cancelled bookings, delays to creative work and, more menacingly, an at-best bungled, at worst negligent package of support for the arts and culture by the UK government. Their response amounted to something like “get a real job”, not realising it seems that many independent artists already work multiple jobs (many of which have also been threatened in their own way by the pandemic) to support their music careers. Lucky then that musicians in Scotland have such a solid community of supporters – peers, fans, media outlets, even when they are all also in crisis mode – to rally round and offer something to help, from myriad fundraisers to a nimbleness and flexibility to reimagine multiday festivals for an online setting. Free Love’s Third Ear yoga and sound experience was a balm for the soul in troubled times; Cryptic’s Sonic Bites series showed that approaches to online performance could be innovative and thoughtful. Some artists, amazingly, even managed to take time in such a period of uncertainty to show up for social causes, either through share of ticket prices or via record sales. Pop Mutations went online and put 40 per cent of proceeds towards the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights. The Tiny Changes initiative put on a series of livestreamed shows, raising money and providing a platform for artists to destigmatise conversations around mental health. Space was created for radio platforms like Clyde Built, EHFM and Radio Buena Vida to sprout up and grow. None of this is necessarily enough;
Still House Plants – Fast Edit [14 Aug, Bison Records] Most descriptions of the Glasgow School of Artestablished trio’s latest album focus on its success as a subversive deconstruction of the classic indie rock combo, and rightly so. But many also ignore its base pleasures. The songs lope, each with a mind of its own. Throw open tenement windows on a crisp, sunny morning and allow them to wander around.
Music
NOVA – RE-UP [25 Jan, self-released] It makes sense that Shaheeda Sinckler’s satisfyingly crunchy and succinct collection of lo-fi raps has been a hit with The Skinny’s writers after also being awarded Scottish Album of the Year. Its popularity with big heads in the know is a win for underground music everywhere and will surely shine a light on Scotland’s simmering hip-hop and grime scene.
December 2020
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THE SKINNY
Films of 2020
Cinemas barely opened in 2020, but there was still plenty to celebrate, from the breakneck chaos of Uncut Gems to the dark satire of Parasite to the lush romance of Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Plus any year with two Spike Lee joints should be cherished Words: Film Team
9. The Invisible Man (Dir. Leigh Whannell) Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man re-frames the tale as a nerve-shredding look at one woman’s attempt to escape a danger that even those closest to her simply cannot see. The perfect example of how to make an old story new again, built around another incredible Elisabeth Moss performance as a character holding herself together by the edge of her nails. [Ross McIndoe]
4. Shirley (Dir. Josephine Decker) Josephine Decker’s fourth feature focuses her experimental, psychological storytelling on one summer with the dysfunctional American author Shirley Jackson and the simultaneously repressed and repressive community she masochistically attracts. The resulting film feels remarkably true to Jackson’s own oeuvre. The seamless blend of reality, imagination, and deliberate recreation create a dark, dreamlike atmosphere fraught with the possibility of transgression – and Moss’s volatile, calculating Jackson threatens no return. [Carmen Paddock] 3. Uncut Gems (Dir. Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie) A film that’s as abrasive as it is exhilarating, Uncut Gems plunges the viewer into the chaotic world of Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), a small-time jeweller chasing the score of a lifetime. Howard lives by his wits, follows his gut instinct and is drawn to disastrous choices like a moth to a flame. The Safdies’ cacophonous filmmaking style forces us to experience his mounting anxiety and desperation. It’s one of the all-time great noose-tightening pictures. [Philip Concannon]
7. Rocks (Dir. Sarah Gavron) Tender yet forceful, Rocks presents us with a coming-of-age narrative which is rooted in the real, rather than the romantic. The film approaches the story of a working-class, Black girl and her younger brother with a care and honesty that is both poignant and harrowing. A powerful celebration of friendship, Rocks depicts these teens with a palpable warmth – truly joyous. [Eilidh Akilade]
2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Dir. Céline Sciamma) It’s no surprise that Céline Sciamma, director of Tomboy and Water Lilies, should have offered up such an incisive, evocative examination of gender, love and power, but Portrait of a Lady on Fire still burns with an intensity that is startling. Dubbed a “manifesto on the female gaze” by Sciamma herself, the lush period costumes and imposing sets belie a feminist politics that is unflinchingly contemporary. [Anahit Behrooz]
6. Vitalina Varela (Dir. Pedro Costa) Despite being a great artist, Pedro Costa’s films have become progressively more powerful and important because of how he has transcended his own artistry. Before, his films were about the relationship between spectator and impoverished (in this case, Cape Verdean immigrants in Lisbon). Vitalina Varela’s essence is the people themselves. Like 2014’s Horse Money, Costa’s precision is only matched by the respect he affords his subjects. [Thomas Atkinson]
1. Parasite (Dir. Bong Joon-ho) A Shakespearian, South Korean tragicomedy, Parasite won its director Bong Joon-ho numerous, history-making Oscars earlier this year. A social commentary as horrifying as it is hysterical, Parasite is the culmination of Bong’s genre-bending career and his slippiest film yet. Its imagery – a peach, a knife, a scholar stone – is already iconic, but it’s Parasite’s chic haunted house, and the horrors it contains, that is truly unforgettable. [Katie Goh] — 23 —
Our Films of 2020
The Next Ten Kajillionaire (Dir. Miranda July) Possessor (Dir. Brandon Cronenberg) Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Dir. Eliza Hittman) Lovers Rock (Dir. Steve McQueen) Mangrove (Dir. Steve McQueen) And Then We Danced (Dir. Levan Akin) Dick Johnson Is Dead (Dir. Kirsten Johnson) Wolfwalkers (Dirs. Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart) She Dies Tomorrow (Dir. Amy Seimetz) Bill & Ted Face the Music (Dir. Dean Parisot)
December 2020 – Feature
8. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Dir. Spike Lee) Spike Lee’s immersive documentation of David Byrne’s 2019 Broadway show is worlds away from a bog-standard point-and-capture situation like an NT Live broadcast or the Disney+ recording of Hamilton. A proper film experience in its own right, American Utopia is absolutely exhilarating. Byrnewise, it’s not quite on the level of Jonathan Demme and Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, but few other concert films have come as close. [Josh Slater-Williams]
Film
10. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Dir. Charlie Kaufman) Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons star as a couple on the brink of a messy break-up in Charlie Kaufman’s latest inquiry into the mysteries of the human mind. The film follows the pair on a journey through the topography of their own memories, but the visual inconsistencies and shifting timelines of this psychological thriller only highlight the potential for horror lurking inside us all. [Patrick Gamble]
5. Da 5 Bloods (Dir. Spike Lee) Spike Lee’s tale of a group of ageing black soldiers who return to Vietnam in search of emotional reckoning and a locker of lost gold showed the director’s tightening grip on his latter-day style of historical redress through messy, essayistic, VJ-like mixology. Brashly entertaining, with a pained consideration of scars left on both America and Vietnam, with a particularly devastating performance by Delroy Lindo as the macho Black Trump supporter whose bombast masks deep despair. [Ian Mantgani]
THE SKINNY
Film
Cinema in the age of COVID While festivals improvised online editions and theatres managed a few months of socially distant screenings, there has been lots of heartache this year. We asked the Scottish film community to reflect on this cursed year, and tell us their films of 2020
Allison Gardner –
Alice Black – Head of Cinema, DCA
Chief Executive, Glasgow Film
”2020 started on an absolute high for the DCA cinema team. We were poised to hit 100,000 admissions for the first time since our doors opened in 1999. In February, we watched with joy as a subtitled film from South Korea (Parasite) won every award going and crossed over into the mainstream consciousness. The future of cinema seemed bright. And then…. ”While we were closed, we put all our energy into keeping the conversation about film alive with our audience. We embraced digital and migrated our schools’ programme online, launched quizzes, a film club and started new VOD partnerships. When the time came to reopen, showing films again was an absolute joy. ”I watch films for a living, but I also live to watch films. Some great films are coming down the line, and when they do, DCA will be there to champion them. Cinema-going won’t ever be the same after this year but it might just be more important than ever.”
“What a year 2020 has been so far. We had just celebrated a popular (over 43,000 admissions) and critically-acclaimed Glasgow Film Festival in February when the spectre of the health emergency loomed large in mid-March. We closed the doors to GFT on 17 March and we didn’t manage to re-open until 31 August. GFT closed again on 2 November and is awaiting Scottish Government advice as to when we can re-open. On the plus side, our loyal audiences flocked back once we were able to open and we ran at over 90% capacity for our available seats (14% capacity). Our wonderful staff (all of whom are being paid 100% of their wages) have risen to the challenge and made GFT a safe environment to return to. Whilst the road ahead is still very difficult I have every faith cinema will return to its former glory.”
1. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) 2. P ortrait of A Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) 3. A White, White Day (Hlynur Pálmason) 4. Schemers (Dave Mclean) 5. W olfwalkers (Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart) Photo: Kevin J Thomson
December 2020 – Feature
1. Proxima (Alice Winocour) 2. Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie) 3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) 4. Invisible Life (Karim Aïnouz) 5. Rerelease of La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz)
“Cinema-going won’t ever be the same after this year but it might just be more important than ever” Alice Black, DCA Rod White – Head of Filmhouse ”If you’d told me at the start of the year that our cinemas would close in March and remain closed for pretty much the rest of the year (bar a few months at 20% capacity), I simply would not have believed you. It would have been unthinkable – had I ever had reason to think about it! Watching all the films planned for release in 2020 disappear from the schedules, reappear on dates later in the year only to disappear again, has been, with as much perspective as I can muster, heart-breaking. But… our government is helping us through these impossible times, and on some glorious day at some point in the (hopefully not-too-distant) future, those postponed releases will happen, and we’ll all have an awful lot of catching up to do!” 1. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) 2. P ortrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) 3. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles) 4. Saint Maud (Rose Glass) 5. Being a Human Person (Fred Scott)
Diane Henderson – Deputy Artistic Director, EIFF “At Sundance in January one issue dominated the post-screening chats and onstage discussions and the subject on everyone’s lips was the ‘theatrical release windows’ that afford film festivals and cinemas access to titles before they appear on our screens at home. For various reasons, in recent years, these windows have been slowly but surely diminishing, but little did we know, the whole world was about to change. Access to content would suddenly become only one of several Glasgow Short Film Festival
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THE SKINNY
Photo: Eoin Carey
Film
DCA Cinema
existential threats facing festivals and events all over the world. The film industry won’t be the only one changed forever by the pandemic and film release windows won’t be the only casualty, but as we wait to see what the future holds, let’s see out 2020 by celebrating some of the cinematic gems that – had things been very different – I would have been proud to present at Edinburgh this year.” 1. T he 40-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank) 2. N udo Mixteco (Ángeles Cruz) 3. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg) 4. P ossessor (Brandon Cronenberg) 5. N ever Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman)
Michael Pattison – Creative Director, Alchemy Film & Arts
1. P hantom Ride (Stephen Broomer) 2. T ransparent, the world is. (Yuri Muraoka) 3. My Mother Resents Me (Victoria Linares Villegas) 4. Junkerhaus (Karen Russo) 5. The House These Words Built (Gabby Follett Sumney)
Programme Manager, GFT “2020 has been an unusual year in many ways, and the same is very true for cinemas. After Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite attracted the biggest consistent audiences we have ever recorded at GFT, we along with the rest of the UK had to shut up shop for six months. The best of times and the worst of times, indeed. Parasite remains my number one film of 2020 – I haven’t seen such confident, thrilling, genre-twisting storytelling since I first discovered the Coen Brothers – and as an experience to remind you of the power of cinema, nothing else this year came close. “The rest of my top five reflects how stunningly good a year it has been for film. Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Never Rarely Sometimes Always are the two most emotionally resonant film experiences I’ve had this year; to think of them is to immediately return to the scenarios they vividly create. The Lighthouse complements Parasite as a film of unique and terrifying vision, beautifully crafted and wickedly funny, while Rocks is the best new British film I’ve seen in years.” 1. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) 2. P ortrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) 3. The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers) 4. N ever Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman) 5. Rocks (Sarah Gavron)
Liz Chege – Festival Director, Africa in Motion “It’s no wonder that my favourite films this year are concerned with caring for one another. I’ve been drawn to films about the love of cinema and films that have superb endings – perhaps a subconscious desire for a denouement to 2020 that doesn’t leave us all bereft. A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood looks at the business of being a good neighbour and warns of us against myth-making each other, to stop projecting our own desires onto others. In Talking About Trees, several Sudanese auteurs set on reviving the Revolution Cinema in Khartoum, Sudan. — 25 —
In Clemency and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, final sequences transmit overwhelming emotion and silent screams across the screen in a manner reflective of how it’s felt to endure global government mismanagement, the ravages of this pandemic, and constant fracturing, breaking hearts. Kmêdeus is a spell-binding tapestry blending folktale, collective memory and an inquiry into the notion of legacy while grasping at ancestral memory.” 1. T alking About Trees (Suhaib Gasmelbari) 2. A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood (Marielle Heller) 3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) 4. C lemency (Chinonye Chukwu) 5. Kmêdeus (Nuno Miranda)
Matt Lloyd – Festival Director, Glasgow Short Film Festival “So much of what has happened this year has demonstrated the imperative of listening to those in a position of less privilege or power. My thoughts have been with the front of house workers at Tyneside, at Cineworld and elsewhere who’ve not been afforded the most basic duty of care by their management. The sector needs to do better. As for my choices, they all shook me out of semi-present home viewing. Zia Anger reworked My First Film – intended to open the aborted GSFF in March 2020 – as a live-streamed performance, and this shared experience between performer and viewer, both hunched over laptops, became one of the defining moving image works of lockdown. The only bona fide feature film on my list, Remi Weekes’ His House, was a haunting portrayal of refugee trauma. Netflix crassly released it on Halloween but its horrors were too devastating to offer guilt-free thrills.” 1. Bella (Thelyia Petraki) 2. His House (Remi Weekes) 3. My First Film (Zia Anger) 4. Tender (Isabel Pagliai) 5. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)
December 2020 – Feature
”I have felt no emotion purer, in this foggiest of years, than the sheer exhilaration that overwhelmed me at around the halfway point of Alchemy Live, the worldwide stream of this year’s Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, delivered miraculously hiccup-free over a home broadband connection in Hawick. Like 2020’s worst moments, it was captured on video. To the irresistibly catchy beat of Zombies, the extended threein-one music promo by rapper Baloji, careful not to trip on hazardously ubiquitous ethernet cables knowing the whole thing was reaching a genuinely global audience and that it might all crash at any given moment, I danced. There’s no doing that at the pictures! “Below is a top-five, shot from the hip, with honourable mention to Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, the last film I properly wept at in a cinema (also the last film I watched in a cinema, but there you go).”
Paul Gallagher –
Glasgow Film Festival
THE SKINNY
Photo: Jessica Cora Taylor
Hatch Glasgow Located in the heart of Kelvingrove in Glasgow's West End, newly opened in August this year, Hatch provides a retail space for over 50 independent UK designer makers. A curated range of homewares and lifestyle products are available in store and online, with 100% of every sale going back to each resident designer, commission free. The perfect spot to shop local this Christmas and to find unique stocking fillers and gift ideas all created by UK makers. 340 West Princes St, Glasgow G4 9HF hatchglasgow.co.uk I: @hatch.glasgow
Photo: Sam McDowell
Barney's Beer Edinburgh's longest-established non-continuously operating brewery is here to bring you Christmas Cheers! All produced in the heart of Edinburgh, we have an extensive range of gift packs including selections of dark winter warmers, zingy sours and hoppy easy-drinkers to satisfy any beer lover's tastes. Our Holiday selection includes three brand new releases, as well as gluten free and vegan options. If your Christmas isn't complete without a pint then check out our selection of mini casks. Happy Holidays from the Barney's Team! barneysbeer.co.uk
Ramsay Cornish A home less ordinary… buy at auction, the sustainable and individual way to shop. From antique watches to Persian rugs via vintage tableware, maps and jewellery, you could find the perfect gift at these fortnightly online auctions. The next takes place on Saturday 12 December with an Antique & Decorators focus. Auctions start at 11am Viewing Monday to Friday by appointment during the week prior 10am-5pm View the catalogue at ramsaycornish.com info@ramsaycornish.com — 26 —
Photo: Tom J D Armstrong
Photo: Peter Dibdin
December 2020 – Feature
Johnnie Walker John Walker & Sons Celebratory Blend is the perfect gift for whisky fans this Christmas. The limited-edition blend celebrates 200 years of Johnnie Walker and is an authentic reimagining of Old Highland Whisky, the brand’s first commercial blend which took Johnnie Walker from Scotland to the four corners of the world. Available to buy now exclusively on Amazon.
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Historic Environment Scotland Give the past as a present this Christmas with a Historic Scotland gift membership. With many sites and 5,000 years of history to explore, you’ll be taken on an exciting journey of discovery. Gift membership helps preserve and protect Scotland's heritage for generations to come. From abbeys to cathedrals, battlefields to castles there is so much to look forward to. members.historic-scotland.gov.uk/gift
Violet Thistle Gift someone Coll MacLaren’s dystopian adaptation of Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel for Christmas! Dashing, daring and romantic Scottish Scarlet Pimpernel rescues American liberals from a fascist regime and the ‘Electroline’. Pageturners they won’t be able to put down! “I love where Coll MacLaren has taken this classic!” Order paperbacks at violetthistle.com
Fruitmarket Gallery This Christmas give the Fruitmarket Gallery back to audiences! Currently closed for redevelopment, the Fruitmarket’s plans for reopening in 2020 were hit by the coronavirus crisis. Donate through their Gift Registry by buying them a virtual ‘gift’ – coat hooks for the new learning studios; bricks in their warehouse space; a shelf in the Bookshop – and help bring this much missed cultural space back in 2021. Fruitmarket.co.uk
Photo: Sally Jubb
The Alchemy Experiment The Alchemy Experiment is a new exhibition and events space whose goal is to support artists and create a platform for them to grow. The space also features an internal speciality coffeehouse, high-quality soundsystem and a screening room. Our opening exhibition features work from artists created during lockdown (Love in the Time of COVID). The physical exhibition has been cut short due to recent changes in restrictions but the full display can be enjoyed online via our website. 157 Byres Road, Glasgow G12 8TS alchemyexperiment.com F: /thealchemyexperiment I: @thealchemyexperiment
Photo: Peter Clark
Advertising Feature
Shop Local
Glasgow Science Centre Give the gift of science this Christmas with a choice of gift vouchers from Glasgow Science Centre. They can be used for Science Passport annual memberships, day tickets, GSC events and even in our cafe. All vouchers will be valid until March 2022. As a charity, your purchase will also be supporting our aim to make science accessible to all. glasgowsciencecentre.org
Charco Press Charco Press is an award-winning publisher based in Edinburgh, committed to finding and translating into English the best literature from across contemporary Latin America, from Argentina to Uruguay, each title matched with beautiful book design, available from the online bookstore. The 2021 Bundle Subscription will make the perfect gift for your favourite bookworm, who can look forward to a whole year of brilliant new titles dropping on the doormat. charcopress.com/bookstore I: @CharcoPress
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Illustration: Sarah Wilson
Film
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Illustration: Beatrice Simpkiss
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Tis The Season Gift Guide
If we’ve learned two things in 2020 they are that community is essential, and further enriching Jeff Bezos contributes to the multiplying inequalities that are devastating society. So we’ve compiled a shop local gift guide!
Orkney Akvavit
Laurie Presswood, General Manager
Crabbit Design
Riso Club
Anahit Behrooz, Events Editor
Artrox There are so many gorgeous ceramic pieces to choose from at Artrox, but I am particularly infatuated with Leonie’s face plant pots and I know all my baby plants would be too. etsy.com/uk/shop/artroxinabox Odd Company Jewellery Earrings are the only jewellery I wear and I absolutely love the statement pieces in this collection, created by our Art Director Rachael. My favourites are the Stacked Stones and Pearl Drops – subtlety is not my style. etsy.com/uk/shop/ oddcompanyjewellery
Artrox
Odd Company
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Pure Mettle Jewellery These statement rings and earrings made from plain silver (or a one-off ring-making workshop) are the perfect treats for the person in your life that’s worth spending a little extra on. You know the one – she’s kind, she’s charming, she works at The Skinny, she’s about 5’ 10’’? puremettlejewellery.com Crabbit Design Posters I love these travel-style posters inspired by spots around Dundee. I have the Keiller Centre one above my desk and whenever I look at it I am reminded of simpler times (sneaking out to get my ears pierced, the piercings getting infected, and then turning out to be wildly squint). etsy.com/uk/shop/CrabbitDesign
December 2020 – Feature
Pure Mettle
Photo: Alice Meikle
Riso Club I am obsessed with pretty printed paper things (I too have a fierce eye on the East End Press garlands on Polly’s list further down the page) and print studio Risotto’s monthly Riso Club subscription is too tempting to pass up, even if there’s not an inch of blank space on my walls. risottostudio.com/club
Orkney Akvavit Orkney Gin Company have recently started producing Akvavit (tasty Scandinavian spirit, think gin 2.0), and are the only UK distillery that make it. This might not be local as such, but my flatmate (local to me) lives next door to them back home (local to her). So local2. orkneygincompany.com/ orkney-akvavit
THE SKINNY
Photo: Luca Nocera and Lara Ferri
Rosamund West, Editor-in-Chief
Gift Guide
Grow Urban One of the high points of Lockdown 1 was a delivery of beautiful oxygenating plants, many of which have survived the intervening months of my increasingly neurotic care. A giant leafy one would surely help bring joy to the remaining months of deep winter. growurban.uk The Village School The online workshops available here offer a real opportunity for passive aggressive gifting. Perhaps an introduction to cooking for your primary meal provider? Or you could just buy a loved one the chance to learn a new skill like photography or soap making from the comfort of their own home. thevillageschool.co.uk
Palm of Feronia
Dust Studio The Memphis Party Earrings are brightly coloured, fun, look great on Zoom. They’re also made of polymer clay so (I imagine, still waiting for someone to give me a pair IRL, this is a heavy hint in case that wasn’t clear) light on the ears. duststudio.uk Grow Urban
Big Suze
December 2020 – Feature
Gaelleria Gaelleria is a one stop shop for contemporary Scottish art and design, which is beautifully curated and has a swish website where you can even browse by region of Scotland. I love the Trees for Life selection, where all profits go towards rewilding the Scottish Highlands. gaelleria.com Big Suze Glasgow-based illustrator/designer/ printmaker Big Suze did some really gorge still lifes over lockdown, which you can find on her webshop along with some super cute Christmas cards and a big variety of prints. Look very carefully at the flowers in one of her prints for a cheeky surprise. bigsuze.bigcartel.com Palm of Feronia If you’re after small batch natural skincare, based on the principles of aromatherapy and natural healing (who isn’t?), Palm of Feronia is for you. I’m obsessed with them, I don’t even know what half the stuff does but I also don’t care cause the packaging looks incredible. Plus they’re super sustainable, and they plant a tree for every item you purchase. palmofferonia.com
Polly Glynn, Comedy Editor
The Village School
Dust Studio
FARE
Peter Simpson, Digital and Food and Drink Editor
East End Press
Alex Harwood
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East End Press Literally everyone on my list is getting something from Glasgowbased printers East End Press this year (sorry, now you know). They do stunning Christmas (and non-Christmas) decorations/garlands/cards/ prints and they’re all super cute, screen-printed locally and a bit different. Fancy getting a Tunnocks teacake to hang on your tree? We got you. eastendpress.com Alex Harwood Design Long-time friend and putter-upper of me, Alex Harwood is behind some of the best Fringe flyers and posters of the past few years. This year he’s turned his hand to fantastical prints, funny Christmas cards and contributed to the Edinburgh Pub Project and #SaveScottishComedy fundraisers. alexharwooddesign.bigcartel.com localburgh.com/collections/ edinburgh-pub-project
The Smiddy BBQ Night School A night-time crash course in barbecuing from the Edinburgh meat men, leaving recipients informed, inspired, and smelling faintly of burning wood. smiddybbq.com FARE This globetrotting magazine lets you explore some of the world’s best food in a fully COVID-safe format. Also, bit of a weird point, but new issues always *smell* great – must be all that delicious ink. faremag.com
Phoebe Willison, Designer
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Rachael Hood, Art Director and Production Manager Max Machen What’s not to love about Max Machen’s work? It’s colourful, original and playful too. I’ve got El Leon above my fireplace and it makes me smile every time I walk in the room. etsy.com/uk/shop/ MAXMACHENsShop
Tallah Brash, Music Editor
Eve Balashova If you’re after unusual and striking earrings, Eve Balashova’s masterpieces are well worth checking out. My personal favourites are the Brush Earrings, which are made of 3D printed nylon and Sterling Silver. evebalashova.com
Fortitude Coffee
Ather Prints
Ather Prints This Edinburgh-based illustrator is definitely one for the music fans, with bright prints of Childish Gambino, The Notorious B.I.G. and Frank Ocean, along with several Frightened Rabbit lyric prints including my personal favourite: ‘I am that dickhead in the kitchen’. The lovely thing about the Frabbit prints is that 25% of all sales go to the Tiny Changes mental health charity set up in Scott’s name. etsy.com/uk/shop/AtherPrints Studio Emma
Max Machen
Jamie Dunn, Film and TV Editor
The GFT
Miczka Ceramics Chances are you’ve been working from home since March and been saving a fortune on flat whites from that cute cafe near your office. Treat yourself, then, to some of these beautiful, handmade mugs for your morning caffeine hit at home, which should make even your sad instant coffee taste special. miczkaceramics.com — 33 —
Irregular Sleep Pattern
December 2020 – Feature
GFT CineCard Cinemas may be closed, but that’s why it’s more important than ever to become a member of your local indie. At £45, GFT’s CineCard is insanely good value, coming as it does with four free tickets, discounts on all future tickets for a year and a subscription to ace arthouse streaming service MUBI, which should keep you going until theatres reopen. glasgowfilm.org/plan-your-visit/ memberships/gft-cinecard
Eve Balshova
Irregular Sleep Pattern I love the bold patterns and colours of this organic, ethical bedding and pyjama brand from Glasgow, and often daydream about what it might be like to one day sleep in one of their fabulous pyjama suits. In fact, I often daydream about wearing one on a night out. Remember those? Who says pyjamas are just for wearing to bed anyway?! irregularsleeppattern.com
Photo: Eoin Carey
Market Gift Vouchers Weekends in Edinburgh are for wandering around the city’s cornucopia of outdoor markets (for me, it’s got to be Leith on Saturday, Stockbridge on Sunday) and being gluttonous. Buy your loved ones some market vouchers, so they too can snack on scotch eggs the size of footballs, try to get hold of some freshly handmade ravioli before it all sells out, and happily queue for the best paella this side of Valencia. stockbridgemarket.com
Fortitude Coffee Fortitude roast some of the best coffee beans in the capital and have kept me powered through most of 2020. They offer all different kinds of coffee subscriptions as well as just individual bags of beans, tote bags and they have some lovely prints available too, one of which is delightfully called the ‘roaster poster’. What’s not to love? fortitudecoffee.com
Gift Guide
Studio Emma Studio Emma’s colourful pots, plates, vases and clocks are a ray of sunshine and exactly what we all need during a COVID-19 winter. The tricky part is deciding which gorgeous product to get first. studioemmaconcrete.com
THE SKINNY
Support indie! In a year where Amazon's profits have soared while the majority struggle, we explore why independent bookshops are important, and why your support matters more than ever
December 2020 – Feature
Books
Words: Anahit Behrooz Illustration: Natsumi Chikayasu
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ver since I was very small, I have wanted to work in a bookshop. I would imagine the tottering piles of books, my childhood self paid simply to curl in a corner and read. The sheer romance of stories, made material in gleaming spines and coloured endpapers. Unsurprisingly, my first bookselling job, at the rickety, intensely loveable Armchair Books in Edinburgh, quickly put an end to such unreasonable fantasies. Bookselling, I learned, was work – actual work. Heaving stacks of books from shelf to shelf, staring bemusedly at people openly pocketing antique copies of Alice in Wonderland, my most anticipated books scooped up by customers before I could sneakily set them aside. Yet the more the romance of it rubbed off, the more I fell in love – actual love. With the strange, endearing characters, with the deeply personal care that goes into each newly alphabetised shelf and heartfelt recommendation. In his Nobel Prize speech, Kazuo Ishiguro said about writing: “But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: this is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” That’s what independent bookselling is, too. “I loved this. I hated this. I can’t stop thinking about this. And you? And you? How will it feel to you?” In a year which has seen Jeff Bezos’ personal wealth increase by $82 billion, understanding this unique role that independent bookshops play in our communities and imaginations is more important than ever. “Bookshops are a space for the potential in the written word to come alive,” explains Mairi Oliver from Edinburgh’s Lighthouse Books, the capital’s radical bookshop. “We are a physical representation of ideas and dialogue, which is why it is so important to us that those ideas and conversations champion the oppressed and be widely accessible.” This idea of a physical space was also important for Leanne Brown and Jasmine Stenhouse at The Book Nook Stirling, a secondhand bookshop that opened a few months into the pandemic. “Our main hope for our shop was that we would become a community space,” they explain. “I remember reading years ago about the concept of
a ‘third place’ – a place that wasn’t home and wasn’t work, but was instead a place to congregate and socialise. We want to be a home away from home.” For Charlotte and Fionn Duffy-Scott at Category Is Books, their queer Glasgow bookshop can be a third place for those who struggle to find it elsewhere. “We spent a lot of time looking online at different queer books and magazines but were desperate to see it physically all together,” they say. “We wanted to be able to hold these stories and histories and put them next to each other, to
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see if together they would weave a more vivid representation of queer life, history and culture. We’re also big believers in the importance of physical spaces that community can grow and thrive in and around.” Yet while this year has deprived us of these physical spaces, and has placed enormous pressure on independent businesses to survive, there have been great kindnesses too, acts of community which demonstrate the irreplaceable value of these shops. “It’s impossible to think about opening a bookshop without considering the impact of Amazon,” Brown and Stenhouse consider. “We decided from the outset that we wouldn’t necessarily put too much stock into competing with them on price, because it seems like a losing battle. Instead, we try to focus on the things we offer that they can’t. [The response] from communities to support small, independently run businesses has been so wonderful.” Oliver agrees. “Thousands of pounds have gone through our Pay-ItForward fund, sending people books they couldn’t otherwise afford and giving groups like Books Beyond Bars resources,” she enthuses. “The surge in demand for antiracist texts allowed us to rally behind books and authors we love and channel profits back into phenomenal projects like Fringe of Colour and Free Black University.” Category Is Books has experienced similar generosity. “We see lots of books going out as part of care packages and cheer up gifts which is lovely, and we recently raised over £1500 in just a day for our Pay-ItForward fund. Things are terrible but humans are still being caring and kind towards each other, despite the opposite seeming true.” It is this understanding of our fundamental interdependence, this intrinsic politics of care, that makes independent bookshops what they are: a space for the lonely and tired, a voice for the angry and the silenced, a declaration of determination to exist for those who need them the most. “As an industry, we have a responsibility to make more people care,” Oliver states firmly. Perhaps it was this that made me fall in love with bookshops all those years ago, long before I could put it into words.
THE SKINNY
Sparkle and Grin We all need a little release from this difficult year; our Comedy Team’s favourite festive gems might be just the ticket Illustration: Rachael Hood
Comedy
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I always love the festive episodes of Bob’s Burgers. Something always goes wrong but in true Christmas style it always comes together in the end. Capers across these episodes include: a guy who thought he was a mannequin comes to life (honest to God, freaky AF); Bob confronting his daddy issues; a big snowball fight; and a musical episode where the Belcher family end up at a rave. You just can’t help but feel a bit warm and festive watching chaos descend on the family, and I also think Linda Belcher is the kind of matriarch I aspire to be in life. Pass the jingle juice, Bobby. [Yasmin Hackett] In anglophonic terms, Le Splendid – the comedy troupe behind Santa Claus is a Stinker (1981) – sit somewhere between Monty Python and The State. The modest headquarters of a Christmas-eve suicide helpline spirals into chaos when the lift breaks in their building, killing the operator. Based on a farce they wrote for the stage in the 70s, this is a dingy,
even slightly nasty film at times – yet it produces sufficient laughs for my Parisian mum to still choose it ahead of any saccharine Hollywood fare every year in December. In that regard, I suppose it’s like a festive, French Withnail & I. [Louis Cammell] hallo skinny readers !!! howl this dog has missed you !!! i have been busy retraining as a covid sniffer dog and it great to return to my vital work as a comedy journalist !!! my favourite christmas special is a charlie brown christmas which aired 273 dog years ago. charlie is unhappy because christmas is all about being greedy. good grief, he even cross with his dog snoopy for going “commercial” (which is very funny because it rare for a dog to be uncritical of consumer capitalism). the special is a lovely story about finding meaning and it also where i learn most important word in english language – “ailurophobia” – which mean a fear of cats !!! [love from fringe dog] [Fringe Dog] Drifting into bittersweet territory is the 2008 Gavin & Stacey, Christmas Special. Oft overlooked in the festive Britcom category, G&S has an uncanny knack of feeling cosy and homely and this extended ep has it in spades. It weaves deep into the fibre of mundanity (Mick’s exacting prep of his turkey) without ripping off The Royle Family, and allows for bubbles of surrealism which can only happen at a tight-knit family gathering (Nessa and Stacey admitting to a night with Russell Brand). And what family Christmas would be — 35 —
complete without some feuding? We’ve got family tension because of Gavin’s promotion, rivalry between Smithy and Dave Coaches over the fathering of Neil the Baby, and Smithy’s despair at Nessa and Dave’s engagement. Sure, parts of it haven’t aged well; casual racism and homophobia that wasn’t okay in the noughties feels even more out of place in something remembered so fondly, and oh boy, the product placement for Fred Perry is off the chart. Ultimately though, the audience is shoved through the front door of the Shipmans’ home, told to take your shoes off and not kicked out til New Year’s. [Polly Glynn] We also want to give a shout out to the Still Game Hogmanay Special: The Party (Jack and Victor in their prime, yes please), The Office (US) (brb, crying buckets at THE TEAPOT), The Adam Buxton podcast (every festive edition with longtime collaborator Joe Cornish) and the four 30 Rock holiday specials, particularly when we find out the Lemon family aren’t as sunny as they lead us to believe, or when Colleen Donaghy (the scene-stealing Elaine Stritch) dispatches anyone in her way with her withering barbs. So, our advice to you – crack open the Celebrations, put the heating on, and hunker down with these treats. Watch Bob’s Burgers on Amazon Prime; watch Gavin & Stacey on BBC iPlayer; watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on AppleTV; Santa Claus is a Stinker is available on DVD
December 2020 – Feature
he nights are drawing in, your big coat’s in constant use, and you find yourself once again asking what to watch while you glug your Glühwein. After, quite frankly, the worst of years, we deserve comfort and self-care. For The Skinny’s Comedy Team, that means dusting off our funny festive faves. But instead of gushing about Tim and Dawn finally getting together, or the one with the priests, we’re shining a fairy light on the Christmas comedy specials commonly forgotten.
Food & Drink
THE SKINNY
Making Merry Some advice for those of you facing cooking Christmas dinner in the flat – whether you’re confident in the kitchen or not, we can help Words: Peter Simpson Illustrator: Kaitlin Mechan
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December 2020 – Feature
hristmas has been around for ages. In fact, it’s so ingrained that The Skinny has written some form of Christmas food article in each of the last eight years. With COVID throwing all your usual plans into a spin, we guess there might be more of you than ever facing up to doing the big Christmas cook. We’ve pulled together some advice, tips and ideas that should suit most levels of competence – if nothing else, you’re about to learn about some great new forms of warm alcohol. So get in closer, we’re going Christmas shopping with a view to making some delicious meals mmmm yum yum yum. Main courses When thinking of Christmas dinner, the first thing that pops into your mind will be a large roast turkey. Unfortunately, cooking a whole turkey is an often-disappointing and always-fraught task, mainly because turkeys are enormous and their two main ‘zones’ – the white meat and dark meat – cook at completely different rates. Last year Paul Wedgwood (a chef so good he put his name on the front of his restaurant) gave us a tip that remains true today – separate the legs from the breast meat, so you can cook them… separately. Doesn’t get simpler than that. For the slightly more adventurous or experienced, we recommend swapping your turkey for a porchetta. It needs a bit more work, but that work is mostly in the form of plucking up the courage to talk confidently to a butcher. You’ll need a piece of pork that’s part loin and part belly; once you’ve beaten your social awkwardness, all you need to do is rub the pork with herbs and garlic, roll it up and whack it in the oven. It tastes great, goes with all the usual Christmas sides, and is very very good. For the super-adventurous, it’s time to get out your biggest tupperware. Brining meat adds moisture, which can be extremely handy for, say, a turkey. Back in 2014, Jamie Faulkner of our
dearly-departed Northwest edition did a round-up of the various options for brining your Christmas bird and found a couple of interesting techniques. Around 2% salt in a wet brine seems to be a good level, while a dry brine can also be effective but it means being in cooking mode for days at a time. Milk and apple juice injected into the bird can help to tenderise the meat from the inside out, although it must also be said that this is Advanced Shit and The Skinny takes no responsibility for any dairy-related brine mishaps. Of course, this is moot if you don’t eat meat, but we have some advice for the veggies: hijack the stuffing. Before anyone tries to pack it inside a dead animal, take over and form your stuffing into a loaf to bake in the quiet dignity of its own dish. A nice mushroom and chestnut-heavy stuffing will taste great, hold its own against lots of gravy and roast veg, and it won’t leave you doubled over with meat cramps like the chumps at the other end of the table. Side dishes Christmas dinner is an enormous one-course meal. It’s a culinary cross between Buckaroo and Jenga, and an annual contest to see how many discrete bits of food you can fit on one plate. The side dishes are hugely important, and the best bit of advice for beginners is to be prepared. Parboil veg the day before; if you’re going for pigs in blankets, get them tucked up early so you don’t end up waving bacon around on Christmas morning when you should really be getting stuck into fistfuls of After Eights. ‘Chopping vegetables the night before’ and ‘being generally prepared’ are all well and good, but the next challenge you’ll face is gravy. It splits, it goes lumpy, you have to make it on the day, and it causes festive chefs no end of hassle. The solution: the blender. Yes, the same blender that mainly gets used for smoothies can make your gravy silky... smooth. Seems obvious when you see
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THE SKINNY
Of course, this advice is no good if you’re unable to find the stuff you’re looking for. The places listed below are local indie shops that will humour your questions, help you find what you need, and keep you on the right track. Butchers Crombies, Broughton St, New Town, Edinburgh Saunderson’s, Leven St, Tollcross, Edinburgh George Bower, Raeburn Pl, Stockbridge, Edinburgh
David Cox Quality Butchers, Main St, Bridgeton, Glasgow James Campbell, Baliol Ln, Kelvingrove, Glasgow
Food & Drink
S.Collins & Son, Lindsaybeg Rd, Muirhead
Groceries Roots, Fruits and Flowers, Argyle St, Finnieston, Glasgow Garden Fresh Exotics, Park Rd, Kelvinbridge, Glasgow it written down, I suppose. A quick 15 second blast with a stick blender will force all your ingredients to get along; waving a stick blender at your friends for 15 seconds should have much the same effect. And to really turn things up a notch, you need to move into ‘two sauce’ territory. We’ll revisit this gem of a chestnut puree provided to us by Roberta Hall-McCarron of The Little Chartroom last year. “Chop up a couple of shallots, sweat them down and add some chopped chestnuts. Cover with chicken stock, bring to a boil and then blitz until smooth; it really complements the potatoes.” The festive food arms race calls for big, decadent moves, and they don’t get better than dual-wielding saucepans filled with delicious but different brown sauces.
Dessert Nobody has the time or energy to make their own mincemeat, or more accurately they don’t have the energy to remember to start making it. Mince pie filling takes weeks or months to mature, and once it’s finished it may well end up tasting like feet. A simple option is to buy some from A Shop, and then add extra stuff to it until you’re happy. Louise Campbell from Tasty Buns gave us this idea last year – get your shop-bought stuff in a bowl, add some of your favourite festive booze and a bit of fresh lemon zest, and put it all back in the jar. The final challenge for a Christmas cook is the Christmas pudding. For some reason, it’s tradition to cover it in alcohol and set it on fire, because arson is fine if you’re a middle-class boomer who bought their fire starting kit at Marks & Spencer. According to the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, John Holman, there are three keys to lighting the pudding. You need a spirit that’s particularly alcoholic to get the most fire for your money. You want a spirit with plenty of sugar, as that’ll give you a visually pleasing flame before it burns your house down. And most importantly, everything needs to be hot before you start. Make sure the pudding hasn’t cooled, and warm your chosen booze over a flame before pouring it on. Oh, and make sure you have a plan for putting out a tiny fire if things go wrong – after what’s happened this year, better safe than sorry. — 37 —
Locavore, Dumbarton Rd, Partick & Victoria Rd, Govanhill, Glasgow Dig In Community Greengrocers, Crossloan Rd, Govan, Glasgow Easter Greens, Easter Rd, Leith & Morningside Rd, Edinburgh Root Down, High St, Portobello, Edinburgh Dig-In, Bruntsfield Pl, Edinburgh Global Fruits, Gillespie Pl, Tollcross, Edinburgh IJ Mellis, Bakers Pl, Stockbridge & Morningside Rd, Edinburgh Starter Culture, Pollokshaws Rd, Shawlands, Glasgow George Mewes Cheese, Byres Rd, West End, Glasgow Booze Cornelius, Easter Rd, Leith, Edinburgh Great Grog, Dalkeith Rd, Newington, Edinburgh Vino, NW Circus Pl, Stockbridge; Broughton St, New Town; Grange Loan, Southside, Edinburgh The Good Spirits Co, Bath St, City Centre, Glasgow Valhalla’s Goat, Great Western Rd, West End, Glasgow Wee Beer Shop, Pollokshaws Rd, Strathbungo, Glasgow
December 2020 – Feature
Drinks Mull everything! If you want to make your flat feel Christmassy, or give the members of your festive bubble a sense that they’re in good hands, filling the air with the smell of cloves and warm alcohol is a good place to start. Mulled wine is the classic, while mulled cider lets you throw in some whisky for an extra bit of party fuel. If you aren’t drinking, a mulled fruit juice or squash is equally festive. Essentially, just chuck some cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and orange in whatever you have to hand. Want a drink that’s along similar lines, but with a bit more edge? It’s time for flavoured vodka to make a comeback! Get a bottle, throw in some cranberries, some of those mulling bits from earlier and a few spoons of sugar. Seal it up in an airtight jar, and wait a few days. The pubs may or may not be shut, but now you have some mulled vodka; don’t drink it all at once. Seriously, don’t. And then there’s eggnog. The apex of Christmas drinks, the answer to the question ‘what if custard was alcoholic?’ It’s complicated, no doubt about it, but there are a number of tricks
to make it easier. Keeping a sieve to hand is key if you’re worried about lumps, as is keeping reactive ingredients away from each other until the last minute. Protect the eggs! Or you can just follow US food legend Alton Brown’s recipe which calls for mixing everything together then leaving the eggnog in the fridge for a fortnight, which is one way to keep you from stressing about it.
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How to Help
Community Help Guide
Compiled by: Anahit Behrooz, Jamie Dunn, Laurie Investing in our communities has never been more important than it is at the end of 2020. If you’d like to donate your time or money to Presswood, Peter Simpson, Phoebe Willison, Polly Glynn, Rosamund West, and Tallah Brash a local project, we’ve got some suggestions of where to start
Ubuntu Women Shelter Ubuntu Women Shelter offers shelter and support to women facing destitution in the face of the UK’s unconscionable immigration system, and is run and managed by women with experience of forced migration and abuse. The work they do is so vital and life-changing, and they welcome both donations and volunteering support. ubuntu-glasgow.org.uk [AB] Glasgow Zine Library Glasgow Zine Library takes the democratising, communal power of zine-making to the max, providing not only a local creative hub with workshops and zine fairs, but plenty of opportunities to practise radical mutual aid. Organise! Make a collage! Tear down the system! Why not! glasgowzinelibrary.com [AB] Shrub Coop I love Shrub Coop, and not just because half my wardrobe comes from there. They offer a swap shop for gently used clothing – taking charity shopping to a whole new level – as well as groceries that would otherwise have been thrown away. shrubcoop.org [AB]
December 2020 – Feature
Helping Hands With the motto ‘solidarity not charity’, Helping Hands’ ethos is people helping other people. The team of volunteers organise food banks, deliver hot meals to vulnerable people trapped at home because of COVID, run community fitness programmes, refurbish old bikes for young people in Edinburgh and are currently collecting toys to hand out this Christmas. solidaritynotcharity.com [JD] Grassmarket Community Project Grassmarket Community Project does tonnes of good work right in the heart of Edinburgh. As well as a load of social enterprise ventures, training opportunities and an ‘Open Door Meals’ scheme that helps the homeless and vulnerably housed, there’s also the venue’s sharply curated Community Cinema programme that we can’t wait to see up and running again. grassmarket.org/what-we-do [JD] Leith Community Crops in Pots Taking a neglected few acres of common good land at the edge of Leith Links, Leith Community Crops in Pots has turned this unloved patch into an ‘urban croft’, run by the Leith community who share their plant growing experience and skills. As well as educating kids about the natural world and giving locals ownership over an area of unused land, they also run the Market on the Croft, where they sell some of their tasty produce. leith-community-crops-in-pots.org [JD] Dundee West End Community Fridge Aimed at tackling the environmetal impact of food waste, this community fridge is open seven days a
week on the Perth Road, just around the corner from Duncan of Jordanstone. It’s open to be used by anyone, and no referral is needed since the objective is to pass on as much food that is approaching/just past its sell-by date as possible. [LP] Paws for Progress Paws for Progress is an organisation that helps humans and animals to grow through the positive effects that can result from dog-human relationships. Especially brilliant are their services and rescue dog training programmes based out of Polmont and Cornton Vale prisons. pawsforprogress.co.uk [LP] LOVE Gorgie Farm The urban farm off Gorgie Road provides training, education, mental health support, a foodbank and a social enterprise cafe, as well as the chance to see a variety of farm animals up close and personal. lovegorgiefarm.org.uk [PS] Edinburgh Food Project Food banks shouldn’t need to exist in 2020, but for as long as they do, they’re worth our support. EFP run a network of food banks and collection points across the city; to support food banks more generally, check out the Trussell Trust and Independent Food Aid Network. edinburghfoodproject.org [PS] Glasgow Autonomous Space Glasgow Autonomous Space (GAS) is an autonomous social centre in Glasgow, which supports and provides space for groups working to fight oppression. They have a busy programme of support, including weekly distribution of free food to destitute asylum seekers, and Arabic/English Language Exchange classes. glasgowautonomous.weebly.com [PW] Glasgow Women’s Library Glasgow Women’s Library is the UK’s only dedicated library to women’s lives, histories and achievements. As well as being a regular lending library and archive, they run a programme of events and workshops. They even have an exhibiton running until 17 December featuring acquisitions made during the pandemic. womenslibrary.org.uk | @womenslibrary [PW] Refuweegee Since 2015, Refuweegee have provided 5,000 welcome packs to forcibly displaced people arriving in Glasgow. They aim to show new arrivals to the city the friendly welcome Glasgow’s known for, by providing a vital starter pack, which even includes a ‘Letter fae a Local’. You can help them by sharing your words, your time or donations, either in the form of money or items for the welcome packs. refuweegee.co.uk | @refuweegee [PW] — 38 —
Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts Food poverty is a huge issue right now, exacerbated by the myriad outcomes of COVID-19. Based in the empty kitchen of Leith Theatre, Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts are a charity turning food waste into meals for people who need them. Since the start of lockdown, they’ve produced over a quarter of a million meals for vulnerable folk across Edinburgh. Help them by volunteering as a packer or deliverer, or donating to their crowdfunder. emptykitchens.co.uk | @emptykitchens [PG] Streetwork Supporting people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness with outreach, accommodation, skill development programmes across the Central Belt, Streework offer an essential service, particularly in the depths of a Scottish winter in lockdown. You can donate money to help them provide this, or volunteer your time. They also deliver the Period Friendly Project, providing free period products to women experiencing homelessness. streetwork.org.uk [RW] Superpower Agency This charity uses creative approaches to foster a love of reading and writing in children from underprivileged backgrounds, working to improve Scotland’s frankly shocking child literacy rates. You can support them by volunteering your time and skills, or with donations to help their work in schools across Edinburgh. superpoweragency.com [RW] Children’s Wood The Children’s Wood and North Kelvin Meadow make up the last wild space in the West End of Glasgow. The charity’s aim is to connect people to nature, raise aspirations and involve people in the management of the land. The mental and physical health implications of a disconnection from nature are increasingly well-documented – particularly in the time of lockdown. You can get involved in the community, donate, participate, walk your dog – free events range from outdoor learning through beekeeping and community gardening. thechildrenswood.co.uk [RW] Scran Academy Scran Academy is a catering social enterprise set up to help provide young people in North Edinburgh with the opportunity to gain new skills and qualifications. From the end of March to the end of August they prepared and delivered over 114,000 hot meals to vulnerable people in the community who had been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through volunteering or with a donation you can help fund their amazing work, or you could buy one of their Christmas hampers, with the majority of its contents made from scratch by Scran Academy’s young people or staff team, and all proceeds go towards their programme of education for young people. scranacademy.com [TB]
THE SKINNY
Waste Not, Want Not Ahead of COP26 next year, Glasgow Science Centre turn their attention to food waste in a new series of online videos – we talk to Rachna Dheer and Julie Lin about their role in Scraps Food
Interview: Peter Simpson
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Rachna Dheer
to cutting down our food waste. “I can’t decide whether it’s frugal or just lazy, but I don’t like going to the shops more than I have to. So for me, I always try to turn leftovers into something. I know that’s a bit of a cliché but it’s true, I enjoy having leftovers to turn into something else. And I feel like once you’ve done the first big cook there’s some sort of reward in having stuff the next day… it’s like you’ve half-prepared dinner already.” Dheer agrees on the importance of being prepared. “I think if possible you need to plan your meals for the week,” she says. “For example, if you’re getting a whole cauliflower and you’re just [using] half, use the rest to make a cauliflower cheese or cauliflower pakoras, or you can make cauliflower rice out of it. It’s about being more inventive.” Inventiveness is one of the key elements of the Scraps videos, with the series encouraging viewers to make new use of commonly discarded ingredients selected via social media. Those ingredients were
‘In lockdown, you become so aware of how much you can be wasting’ - Julie Lin combined with accessible additions from each chef, making for exciting dishes that feel like much more than the sum of their parts. Lin says: “Food waste is something that we all have and that we need to cut down, but it’s about small steps like learning basic recipes.” One such recipe is Lin’s katsu curry sauce for the Scraps challenge, which makes use of leftover pieces of fruit and veg. Dheer’s recipes include bread pakora, a North Indian classic which makes use of stale bread “in a very delicious way”, and a particularly good choice given that the UK throws away enough bread each year to feed 10 million people. There are also easy wins to be had if you think laterally. Dheer suggests using leftover veg in dishes like pasta sauces, stews, curries and pies. As she puts it, “you can shove anything in a pie”, an idea we endorse wholeheartedly. The issue of food waste has been rising in our collective consciousness in recent years, and it’s something Lin has noticed in diners at her restaurant. “I used to get quite a lot of people maybe ordering too much and just kind of leaving it. Now I — 39 —
Julie Lin
encourage people to ask us for takeaway boxes to take their leftovers away, and you sometimes get people who just kinda know they’re gonna do that and bring their own boxes, which I love.” Food waste impacts on all of us, and the Scraps videos are geared towards being as inclusive as possible. All the additional ingredients in the chef’s dishes are available in supermarkets and local shops – the places where we do the vast majority of our collective shopping. That’s where the flabby hand of capitalism comes in. It’s all well and good telling someone to cut down on their food waste, but when their local supermarket will only sell them potatoes by the kilogram it can feel like the environmental buck is being unfairly passed. For Lin, affordable access to food in a zero-waste format is vital to cutting down our waste. She says: “There’s lots of amazing small businesses that are doing zero waste trading and organic trading, which is great, but it needs to be affordable for everyone. It needs to be coming from supermarkets, from the higher ranks in the supermarket chains and the bigger places, so that it’s not just kind of your ‘individually hemp wrapped bag of vegetables’. It needs to be something that’s easy for everyone to access.” Food waste is a microcosm of the problems facing the planet – overconsumption, resource inequality, and a handful of massive institutions doing much of the damage within an interconnected global web that can seem very difficult to untangle. Yet the simple fact that a third of the food produced worldwide is never eaten – a third! – makes the issue of food waste a good place to try and make a difference, and the Scraps series shows that the rewards can be delicious. Watch the Scraps videos with Julie Lin, Rachna Dheer and Gary Maclean on GSC’s social media channels from 7 Dec glasgowsciencecentre.org/ourworldourimpact
December 2020 – Feature
inter is a time for celebrations, big meals and an unfortunate amount of food waste. Yet the stats show that our attitude to food needs a year-round rethink. According to WRAP, food production generates around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and agriculture uses 70% of all global freshwater. In 2016 alone, Scottish households’ food waste released 1.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Unlike the climate issues over which individuals have little or no control (we’re looking at you, fossil fuels and the military), food waste is an issue where we can actually make a meaningful difference. Glasgow Science Centre’s Scraps video series aims to encourage us all to reduce our waste through creative uses of the food we would otherwise discard. It’s the carrot-not-the-stick approach, which is handy given how many carrots we discard. The videos are part of GSC's Our World Our Impact programme, delivered with support from the Scottish Government. Rachna Dheer is the mind behind Babu Bombay Street Kitchen, and tells us that the philosophy behind Babu “has always been to reuse and recycle food as much as possible in different ways. “I think people these days are getting more out of food,” says Dheer, “in terms of reusing it a few times. I think before it was much more of a throwaway culture. Now it’s becoming more trying to save money, save the planet, you know, to use recycled materials, to use ingredients a few times over.” “I think because we’ve all been in lockdown,” Julie Lin tells us, “you do become so aware of how much you’re buying in, how much you’re cooking, and how much you can be wasting.” For Lin – the chef behind Southside favourite Julie’s Kopitiam – there’s also a more practical side
Theatre
THE SKINNY
Oh No They Don’t As we reach the end of perhaps the worst year in living memory, and with live theatre postponed until 2021 at least, now is the time to cancel some of the worst characters from panto being livestreamed this Christmas Words: Amy Taylor
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The Beast, Beauty and the Beast The Beast from Beauty and the Beast (screened by Fizzgig Theatre at Mugdock Park, Stirling) is no stranger to a ribbing in The Skinny. He’s a proper nasty rich boy whose outside most definitely matches what’s going on inside. We get it, it’s hard living in a big castle with the unlimited privilege of being a cis het male that the patriarchy provides. It’s hard being held accountable for your actions and having to literally transform into a better person. But the Beast is probably the most obviously problematic hero in panto. Benefiting from generational wealth, entitlement and fury, there’s really nothing redeemable about him, and it’s nothing to do with his appearance, but everything to do with his actions. He imprisons a young woman in his castle, and she falls in love with him. You can’t imprison someone and defend yourself by saying they are well-treated; even women in the 18th century were entitled to free will. This isn’t romance, it’s Stockholm Syndrome. #FreeBelle. The Real Parents, Rapunzel Panto parents, I beg of you, please... stop promising to hand over your unborn child to an evil witch
to make up for your failings as a human being. The witch isn’t going to be a strong mother figure, and the child is going to grow up in really horrific circumstances. Take Rapunzel (screened by The Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh and the National Theatre of Scotland), for example. Doomed before she’d even left her mother’s womb, thanks to her parents unwisely stealing plants from an evil witch’s garden. Incredible work, we stan a pair of parenting legends. Anyway, instead of facing the consequences of their crime like the grown adults they clearly are, they offer up their unborn child as collateral to escape the consequences; bet they didn’t put that on Instagram. Thanks to her parents, she grows up in a tower with no contact from the outside world, not allowed to cut her hair, and is finally freed by a thirsty Prince who does the bare minimum of rescuing her from her wretched existence. Traditionally, the evil witch is blamed for Rapunzel’s predicament, but the real blame lies with her selfish, absent parents. Why? They knew what they were doing when they stole from a witch. They gave the witch their child and never came back, while the witch raised the child as only an evil witch can. The Prince, Sleeping Beauty It’s 2020, and #MeToo is ongoing because people still don’t understand or care about consent. Just like the Prince in Sleeping Beauty (Aberdeen Arts Centre) who ignores every physical, emotional and psychological boundary known to man in order to essentially sexually assault a sleeping woman. Now, it’s well-known that the Prince kisses the Princess to break the sleeping curse that she was put under thanks to her father’s hubris, but that’s a whole other story. However, according to the fairy that cast the spell, all the Prince had to — 40 —
do to break the curse was wake her up. Instead of banging a wooden spoon against a saucepan and shouting “Get up!”, he chose to kiss her. Imagine the horror of waking up with a weird stranger kissing you. A stranger kissing you on the lips, no less! All he needed to do was give her a gentle nudge, but he went in for a kiss. What a creep. Tell your friends to stay away from him. Remember folks, sleeping people can’t consent. If they’ve been sleeping for 100 years, don’t even try it, just leave them alone to their dreams, go bother someone else, preferably someone who’s conscious, alright? Remember, the bad behaviour isn’t just limited to these characters in these pantos – “nice guy” princes appear in all pantos. Lazy parents lurk in every Christmas show. There has to be a zero-tolerance approach to bad behaviour in panto in 2021. People don’t change, but panto can! Photo: Paige Ootabook
December 2020 – Feature
esus fuck, what a year. The economy? Decimated. Live theatre? Cancelled. Panto? Well, there is a little balsa wood raft of hope floating on a sea of inevitable cancellations and postponements this Christmas. A number of theatres across the country have adapted their traditional panto so it can be screened online, which means that you can enjoy your annual Christmas show in the safety of your own home. However, as we take stock of the theatrical wasteland this Christmas, it’s time that we all face an uncomfortable truth. Your panto faves are problematic. These characters are bad people and when panto returns in 2021, they shouldn’t be allowed back on stage. It’s time to write them out of the scripts and out of our memories. Let’s cancel them just in time for November 2021 and start over, with a healthier, happier panto season. Don’t believe me? Here are the worst of the worst panto characters set to be seen online this year.
The Panto Queen Johnny McKnight
THE SKINNY
Making Space Art
We meet artist Nwando Ebizie for a virtual chat on her work-in-progress, Kink and accessibility Interview: Emily Rueggeberg
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the internet. It’s really bizarre. It’s the hypocrisy of the puritanical society. “One of my interests in Kink is that it offers a healthier understanding of a fundamental issue,” says Ebizie. Many practices within Kink offer self-care tips on aftercare and consent that can be adapted to everyday life scenarios, ultimately protecting one’s physical and mental wellbeing. Boundary-setting is now more important than ever. 2020 may have gifted those with long commutes and cramped cubicles with home offices, but for creatives whose hours already extend beyond the 9-to-5, many artists share the sentiment of feeling more exhausted and overworked than ever before. It seems fitting then for us to consider what Kink can teach us about how we conduct our personal and professional relationships.
“I think one of the problems in society is the inability to talk about sex in a society where porn is the most popular thing on the internet” Nwando Ebizie When asked how the arts sector and arts institutions can improve accessibility for disabled artists and viewers, Ebizie responds immediately with “so many thoughts”. She says: “I’m interested in disabled people being involved in the inception not only of projects in creative organisations but also in the design of space. We’ve experienced how it works when things are added on. You add on a ramp or you add in a lift and everyone can pat themselves on the back because people in wheelchairs can get in now. If you have a disability you’re going to think about things in a different way especially if you have a sensory disability or sensory difference.” The interview ends on a positive note with Ebizie saying, “If more people were given the chance to voice their needs and desires, sexual and otherwise, every part of society would look radically different because it would be molded by people with different abilities, backgrounds and perspectives.”. Emily Rueggeberg is one of the participants in the Diverse Critics scheme, produced in partnership with Disability Arts Online and Creative Scotland Stay up to date with Nwando Ebizie’s work on her website nwandoebizie.com
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December 2020 – Feature
wando Ebizie is a polymath, musician, dancer, composer, consultant and curator, to name just a few. This year, she was commissioned by Unlimited Arts to support her ongoing work exploring Kink and what true change could look like in the arts for disabled artists and audiences. The opportunity has allowed Ebizie to move further from the realm of visual art and more towards the written word as a way to extend and deepen her art’s impact. She speaks about what is needed for society to include disabled people in the planning, design and formation of projects and architecture so that they are genuinely accessible. Ebizie shares her personal challenges with self-identifying as disabled and falling into the neurodivergent category – mental or psychological differences that are often invisible. She attributes the doubt her and other individual’s disabilities are met with to socially-ingrained attitudes. “I think it’s a lack of self-compassion bred into society. So I think sometimes people living with a secret mental illness or chronic illness... I mean look at the Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. People were saying ‘Oh he’s so amazing he was living with a secret.’ And it’s like yeah, but why was he living with that secret? The fact is, it would have affected his career in the film world. Would they have even given him the Black Panther role if they thought he’d die in a few years? Health conditions: are they a part of disability? I would say yes.” Ebizie has also seen the need for expanding the definition of a disability in her own life where friends and colleagues fail to set boundaries or listen to their own needs. “The amount of people who I’ve worked with or in my family who have access needs who would never classify themselves as disabled and will find ways of functioning. They find ways of self-medicating, they find coping mechanisms... or they accept that there’s this thing called burnout. I hope that the edges become more blurred as we start to understand needs on a spectrum. And I think that’s going to help everybody.” Ebizie talks about what drew her to Kink – BDSM and fetishes considered outside the norm – and how its community is very much centred around respecting people’s limits. She references the quote from Oscar Wilde: “Everything is about sex, apart from sex which is about power.” Ebizie goes on to discuss how identifying existing power structures through the lens of Kink can help dismantle them by actually having frank, public conversations about sex. Ebizie says of sex: “You’re meant to kind of go with the sexual mystery with your partner. We’ll find out as we go along. And anything else is killing the magic. “I think one of the problems in society is the inability to talk about sex in a society where porn is the most popular thing on
THE SKINNY
Still Lifes Design
With the largest and most diverse showcase of talent, ideas and jewellery in one virtual week, New York City Jewelry Week offered Local Heroes the perfect platform for their first international show Words: Stacey Hunter Photographer: Gabriela Silveira
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December 2020 – Feature
recent report on The Market for Craft noted that jewellery tops the leaderboard for craft sales with an estimated value in Scotland of £53m in 2020. And with 2.5m people in New York and 1.7m in Los Angeles having purchased craft from a UK-based maker, it’s clear that the US is an important marketplace for designers and makers. Curating design is a cultural project but it also has a commercial context that we believe is crucial to acknowledge. This year many of the world’s design festivals postponed their programmes, but New York City Jewelry Week (NYCJW) was determined to rise to the challenges of 2020 and rather than shrinking, it expanded its exploration of all things jewellery beyond New York’s borders and across the globe with the first ever virtual jewellery week. Partnering with the Incorporation of Goldsmiths, we wanted to do something ambitious and beautiful; an opulent and innovative jewellery exhibition seemed like the perfect foil to the ennui-inducing privations of lockdown. We launched an open call and together with an expert panel selected six modern designers who use ethically sourced materials – Soizig Carey, Ruth Leslie, Silvia Weidenbach, Michelle Currie, Alison Macleod, and Heather Woof.
Soizig Carey
Ruth Leslie
Silvia Weidenbach
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THE SKINNY
Design
Inspired by the rich tradition of still life painting, we created individual compositions using handmade plaster objects by Chalk Plaster and a selection of luxurious fabrics. The idea was to encourage audiences to take pause, and appreciate the craftsmanship and precision within this elegant and eclectic collection of jewellery. Styled by Local Heroes curator Stacey Hunter and photographed by Gabriela Silveira the exhibition maintains the importance of physically constructing a scene even when the destination is digital. Still Lifes offers audiences in New York – and internationally – a glimpse of what’s new and fresh about contemporary jewellery from Scotland. See the whole collection at localheroes.design and watch recordings of two special live events that were originally broadcast by NYCJW. Still Lifes: Scottish Jewellery at NYCJW was created by Local Heroes in partnership with the Incorporation of Goldsmiths Funded with the support of the National Lottery through Creative Scotland
December 2020 – Feature
Michelle Currie
Alison Macleod
Heather Woof
Visit the exhibition at localheroes.design/nycjw20 for prices — 43 —
THE SKINNY
Youth in Revolt Intersections
No one is immune to the impact of COVID-19, least of all kids. One writer explores how working with children during a pandemic shed new light on her own youth Words: Eilidh Akilade Illustrations: Astrid and Phoebe McCarthy, age 7 1/2
December 2020 — Feature
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t’s 9pm and I’m slightly drunk on Lidl white wine. Bars are shut, the last flat party I went to was in March, and I entered my twenties in the middle of a pandemic. And so, I often find myself smoking out my bedroom window, hoping I’ll inhale something that feels close to youth. I’ll turn to one of my flatmates, in some allegedly enlightened drunken drawl, and say, “You know, I would’ve loved this when I was ten – the pandemic and all.” This assumption – that I would’ve loved staying in, watching TV, and avoiding playground gossip – is ignorant and untrue and yet I find myself asserting it at least once a week. I know it’s untrue because, just four hours before, I’m at work in an after-school care club, handing out snacks and playing “What’s the time, Mister Wolf?” These days, I get an unshakable jealousy as the kids tell me about their ‘boyfriends’ and ‘girlfriends’, their school dramas, and park outings. Their lives seemingly go on as usual while I’m restricted to socially distanced Tinder dates and Zoom seminars. It’s only in the in-between moments – the lining up and the register checks – that the children let the outside real world slip in: their parents are stressed; their gran is ill; Halloween was shit. They’re not immune to COVID-19 and they’re going to be dealing with its aftershock for years to come. They are people with the same stresses as us, but with significantly less power. Of course, they’re better at hiding these anxieties – and that’s the worry. Our relationship with children has changed and we can’t express that we care in the same way as before. There is no tying of shoelaces, no warm embraces. Our quality time with children, whether chatting or playing, is at a two-metre distance, a chasm which says we’re out of reach and out of touch. Because we are and that skin-to-skin reassurance is gone. I’ve always sought – and still do seek – comfort in the physical. My hand was always reaching, grasping for someone else’s. To deny that to a child feels like a crime. We are left with only words and even words are hollow these days. Political disillusionment is rife everywhere; I can’t watch the news and Twitter leaves a pit in my stomach. Clearly, the adults don’t know what they’re doing (my improvised arts and crafts sessions are a testament to that). Kids know this and weak excuses – “because I told you so” – enrage them, and rightly so. We could learn from this angst and kids’ incessant pestering is a reminder that we are allowed to make demands. We are allowed to question and bother and deeply irk those in charge – and we should do so. If there is ever a time to invoke the tenacious child within us all, it is now. But, because there’s little room for childishness in a pandemic, it became even more exaggerated. There’s more nonsensical chatting, fewer philosophical debates; more muddy
clothes, fewer questions into my relationship status. There’s a desperate clinging to youth; I did it myself in lockdown. I’d get too drunk on a Zoom call and wake up the next morning, in last night’s clothes, Euphoria-inspired make-up smudged across the pillow. Youth became performative. This drawn-out masquerade – while perhaps immature – was a craving for recklessness, for colouring outside the lines. There is a completely understandable and justifiable craving for the release of this behaviour – for myself and for the kids in my care. It’s easy to get wrapped up in oneself, to think of our wasted collective youth. This year was meant to be poor budgeting and casual sex and friends’ couches and fuck it, I’ll do it tomorrow, let’s go out tonight. But this year was also meant to be sleepovers and football games and first kisses – just not for me. These kids, unlike myself, manage to tap into some kind of innate resilience, no matter how bleak things get. They’ve not been shielded from anything: some of their parents are now jobless, they’ve lost loved ones and they may live with someone particularly vulnerable. And yet, they have a relentless positivity: “The COVID will be over soon!” “My mum is saving lives!” “Look at my new mask!” With kids, better times are a “when”, not an “if”. This pandemic has aged us all and it’s been very special to experience it while surrounded by the kind of youth that reminds me of my own. We can laugh at the things that make us laugh and we can cry at the things that make us cry – whether that’s losing tig or getting ghosted. We can still feel even in a pandemic. We are only young, after all.
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Photo: Issey Fraser
THE SKINNY
Statues of Ourselves Intersections
Statues have loomed large over 2020, from Edward Colston sleeping with the fishes to the recent Mary Wollstonecraft disaster. We take a look at how questioning statues has been a questioning of our collective memory. Words: Katie Goh
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ideology behind it. “I think a statue is a bid for immortality,” art historian Erin L. Thompson told the New York Times. “It’s a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people [...] It’s not the statues themselves but the point of view that they represent. And these are statues in public places, right? So these are statues claiming that this version of history is the public version of history.” What happens to statues – why they are erected, why they stay in place, why they are protested and why they are removed – is as much history as the events they represent. The removal of Colston’s statue is part of our current moment in history. Who we choose to immortalise in our public spaces is a political choice, in the same way that the version of history we choose to teach and remember is a political act. This is why campaigners in London have been fundraising for a decade for a public statue of Mary Wollstonecraft, the writer of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, often labelled the mother of early feminism. The UK has a woeful record of statues dedicated to women; in 2018, the number of statues of historical women was recorded as just 80 out of 828. So, to successfully campaign for a statue of Wollstonecraft was to assert that women belong in public spaces and in our collective memory. That’s why the resulting effigy, unveiled early in November, was so disappointing. Perched on a silver blob, the great 18th-century thinker, writer and pioneering feminist is depicted as, well, a tiny, grumpy, naked lady. Although described by its artist as an “everywoman” that “emerges out of
“What happens to statues – why they are erected, why they stay in place, why they are protested and why they are removed – is as much history as the events they represent”
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‘A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft’ by Maggi Hambling
organic matter […] ready to challenge the world,” she looks more like she’s just stood up in the bath and realised she’s forgotten her towel. A white, thin, naked woman standing in as an “everywoman” is a bizarre, and inherently flawed creative decision and speaks more to the artist’s – and society’s – limited imagination of what womanhood looks like. It’s especially disappointing when there are only two statues of Black women in the UK – Kelly Holmes and Mary Seacole – and a grand total of 21 that depict people of colour. While statues and what they represent – as much our present as our past – are important, we also need to remember that they are not the final goal for feminism. We absolutely need to think critically about who we are choosing to memorialise in our public spaces but we also need to remember that erecting a statue of an upper-class, white woman will not fund women’s shelters, feed hungry families or grant safe access to asylum. For many of us this year, our concept of public space has been altered and for those who don’t have the luxury of private, safe homes, the policing of these communal spaces has been especially harsh. Statues, streets and memorials have been at the forefront of ideological battles in 2020 and our questioning of them is also a questioning of what, and who, we are choosing to commemorate. It’s been some long-overdue, national soul-searching; but hopefully this look to the past will lead to a better future.
December 2020 — Feature
his year, public space has been occupying our minds. The space we take up as we attempt to socially distance from others on narrow paths; the refuge of green spaces dotted around our cities; the rules of how much time we can spend in one place. Having only been allowed to see friends outside for much of 2020, the geopolitics of our outdoor, communal spaces has been heightened and the ever-present policing of them reinforced. As a friend and I are told to move along from sitting on the steps of an open, public space, I think about the lack of communal space in my city, Edinburgh, and the hostile vigilance of it. The protruding spikes used to discourage rough sleepers and the removal of homeless populations during festivals and celebrations. But in the summer, there was a glorious retaking of public space after months of us being cooped up inside. Millions of demonstrators marched through America’s streets and in cities across the world to protest police brutality and the murder of George Floyd. Monuments were defaced and a dozen statues, most depicting Confederate figures, were pulled down, while, closer to home, demonstrators in Bristol toppled a statue of Edward Colston – a British slave trader who worked for a company responsible for the deaths of 19,000 African people onboard its slave ships – before rolling him down the street and pushing him into the harbour to hearty cheers. The watery end to Colston’s statue led to some fiery public debates. Some argued that these statues are a record of our history and should be preserved – perhaps more appropriately in museums or archives than parks – while, for others, the very existence of a statue is a glorification of the
THE SKINNY
Digital Deutschland Fokus returns for its sixth edition with a slimmed-down but no less nourishing programme of features and documentaries giving a snapshot of the best of German filmmaking over the last year
You Tell Me
the victim and who is the perpetrator shift with each change in POV. Another Berlinale 2020 premiere, Sisters Apart, from writer-director Daphne Charizani, chronicles Rojda (Almila Bagriacik), a German soldier and native Kurd, volunteering for a mission in Iraq to train female soldiers to fight ISIS. But unbeknownst to her higher-ups, Rojda deliberately requested redeployment there to find her longlost sister. A largely improvised film made before the pandemic’s global effect on the hospitality and music industries that likely has a different feel now, Christian Klandt’s Leif in Concert uses a pub setting as a microcosm for society; a portrait of a music bar and its patrons, their issues and longings. For anyone who enjoyed Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets at the digital London Film Festival in October, this could be very much up your street. On the documentary front, Chichinette: The Accidental Spy explores the life of Marthe Cohn, a FrenchJewish woman approaching 100, who was a spy in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, delivering vital information about troop movements to French forces. Having never spoken about her experiences for 60 Photo: Sven O Hill
December 2020 – Feature
A
s with almost every film festival in 2020 since the start of March, Fokus: Films from Germany, presented via a partnership between the Goethe-Institut in Glasgow and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse, is moving online for its sixth edition. The now fully-digital festival, running from 3 to 17 December, will be shorter and smaller than in previous years, moving from its usual late-November start. But despite the (hopefully) one-off format that won’t involve any cinema screens, the event should still offer an exciting snapshot of Germany’s contemporary film scene. Producer Florian Koerner von Gustorf – a regular collaborator with Christian Petzold (Transit, Phoenix, Barbara, the upcoming Undine) – makes his own directorial debut with What Might Have Been. It’s a romantic drama that looks to have a touch of Petzold about it in its intertwining of passion and trauma linked to societal upheaval. It follows a woman in her late 40s named Astrid (Christiane Paul), who has fallen in love with a man named Paul (Ronald Zehrfeld, of Phoenix and Barbara), with whom she heads on a weekend trip to Budapest. But while there, she bumps into Julius (Sebastian Hülk), her first great love, who she met in the GDR just a few years before the Wall fell. Debuting at this year’s Berlinale in February, writer-director Eliza Petkova’s A Fish Swimming Upside Down also explores a complicated love triangle. In this case, it’s between a father, his son, and the father’s new girlfriend who initially fills the gap left in their household after their wife/mother dies, only for an attraction to form between the younger man and the surrogate matriarch. Another three-hander tale can be found in writer-director Michael Fetter Nathansky’s drama You Tell Me. It’s one story told from three different perspectives, in which the apparent answer to questions of who is
Photo: MissingFilms
Film
Words: Josh Slater-Williams
Coup
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years after the war, she now travels the world to entertainingly and passionately tell her story of risking life and limb, all while losing some of those dearest to her during the conflict. Elements of documentary are also present in Sven O. Hill’s hybrid feature Coup, which incorporates animation for its study of a rocker who ended up pulling off a robbery of 2.5 million marks in Hamburg in the 1980s. His plan: to disappear to Australia, where extradition was not allowed, for a life of luxury. The dilemma: his girlfriend doesn’t want to follow him to the land down under. Back to fiction, Erik Schmitt’s Berlin-set Cleo reportedly has an air of Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep about its fantastical reckoning with its title heroine’s past, in which a treasure map dating back to the Weimar Republic era is said to lead to a magic clock that can reverse time. It apparently includes appearances from historical figures dispensing valuable advice, from Albert Einstein to Marlene Dietrich. Finally, Naked Animals, which also debuted at Berlinale this year, is said to be an intense and electric debut feature from writer-director Melanie Waelde. Centred on five dysfunctional young people in provincial Germany, living largely without adult supervision in their last winter together before they leave school, it’s a coming-of-age film as more of an ethnographic study. Fokus runs online 3-17 Dec. Tickets available at the GoetheInstitut’s website (goethe.de/en) or the websites of participating cinemas, which include Filmhouse Edinburgh (filmhousecinema.com), GFT (glasgowfilm.org), Ayr Film Society (ayrfilmsociety.co.uk) and The Byre Theatre (byretheatre.com)
THE SKINNY
Music Now We discover new releases from Lost Map Records, Paradise Palms Records, Belle & Sebastian and more, and take a look at what you might have missed in November Words: Tallah Brash
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Kinbote
Finally, if you were looking for something festive then Slime City’s Michael M is releasing A Digital Christmas For You (10 Dec) featuring song titles like Baby, I Will Zoom You This Christmas and Humans Are Not Worth Saving (Merry Christmas). It also features two hilarious bonus tracks, Are You Hanging Up Your Stocking On Your Wall? and The Moon is Right, where every line from the Slade and Paul McCartney Christmas mainstays are replaced by those song titles. It’s exceptional tomfoolery. But it makes us laugh, and perhaps that’s exactly what Christmas needs this year? November releases you may have missed... New music seemed to come faster in November than the days got shorter. Firstly, happy birthday to Glasgow’s Olive Grove Records who celebrated ten years of the label with their excellently titled Get Into the Grove compilation. As far as singles go, Dead Pony’s 23 Never Me is a glimmering gut-punch of pop-punk; CLING’s MI AMOR is an afro/dancehall delight; Russell Stewart’s Citrus is a masterclass in alt-soul, and Slime City made us laugh with IDST, their ode to data privacy. Meanwhile, the last Friday in the month was nothing short of poptastic with DRIFT releasing the rumbling and gorgeous The Isles of pt.2 and Roma Rose channelling CRJ on Stay Like This, while Edinburgh hearing-impaired songwriter PINLIGHT released the effervescent Grow Slow and Chloe x SHUTE’s Stay Home was ‘a mellow dream-pop bop inspired by the nostalgia of life before 2020.’ theskinny.co.uk/music
December 2020 – Feature
Set for release on 4 December via their in-house label, Bonnie Tropical 5 features 15 tracks from exceptional local musicians, some names you may recognise from previous appearances in these very pages (Super Inuit; Midi Paul) and others that were certainly new to us so may also be to you (sarya; Miss Represented). The compilation covers everything from techno to trip-hop, pop to house, 80s to 8-bit and more, with the whole 80-minute runtime arcing in such a way that it evokes a whole night out from pre-drinks hype to big dance energy to being back at home, passed out on the couch – in short, it has us longing for messy nights out with pals. Back in September, when The Skinny were
Music
Photo: Will Byington
just starting to get back up and running again, we returned to news of a new Lost Map Records signing, a Glasgow-based glitch-pop producer, originally from East Lothian, called Matt Gibb. Creating music under the moniker Kinbote, after some beautiful singles, on 4 December he releases his debut album, Shifting Distance. With its lo-fi beats, glitchy mechanics and woozy vocals, it will perfectly soundtrack the crispest of winter mornings just as well as it would the hottest of summer afternoons. From fresh talents to old hands, last year Belle & Sebastian spent a big chunk of the year on tour, part of which saw the Glasgow band take to the high seas for their own Boaty Weekender festival. To celebrate their 2019 adventures, on 11 December they release What to Look for in Summer. It's a double live album which, across its 23 tracks, features performances from Boaty Weekender as well as from shows in North America and Barcelona. It includes big hitters like Step Into My Office, Baby, Funny Little Frog and, of course, The Boy With the Arab Strap, which Stuart Murdoch never tires of playing live: “I genuinely look forward to it,” he says. “If the concert’s going great, it just feels like a natural vibe. And if the concert’s going okay – maybe it’s a Sunday night and everybody’s a little bit flat, or still in their seats – it’s definitely the time to send Belle & Sebastian it home.” Elsewhere, Love Music Hate Racism Glasgow release a compilation album on 1 December featuring tracks from Jill Lorean, Djana Gabrielle, RAZA and WomenSaid among others. The Ninth Wave can’t be stopped as they release yet more new music, this time in the form of poptimistic single Everything Will Be Fine (4 Dec), and new Glasgow emo/rap artist Crush Mouse has caught our attention with his ‘don’t-take-life-too-seriously’ bops, and on his latest single Filth (11 Dec) he sings about ‘dirty plates and mouldy cups’, ‘hair clogging up the plughole’ and the best delivered line: ‘congealed soy milk on my cereal’. In short, it’s good fun and we are about it.
Photo: Tanja Jensen
W
hile 2020 has been a massive steaming pile of shit, a lot of good has still come out of the last nine months since life was turned upside down by the coronavirus, and although the arts have been hit particularly badly by the pandemic, musicians across Scotland have, against all odds, continued to harness their creativity, and this month is no different. As well as the arts being hit hard, so has the hospitality industry, but Edinburgh’s Paradise Palms have remained hopeful, and helpful, throughout. When things got really bad they helped provide meals for Edinburgh’s most vulnerable, and since then have been keeping our tummies filled with delicious takeaway munchie boxes and boozy cocktails. But Paradise Palms are as much about pleasing ears as they are about satisfying bellies, and the pandemic hasn’t stopped them putting together their annual Bonnie Tropical compilation.
THE SKINNY
Whole Lotta Love Local Music
With the live industry remaining shuttered due to COVID-19, Idlewild guitarist Rod Jones has launched an ambitious project to support roadies – by lending them the spotlight
Interview: Joe Goggins Whole Lotta Roadies is released via Bandcamp on 11 Dec
December 2020 — Review
wholelottaroadies. bandcamp.com
“I
realised that the people who make the gigs happen don’t have a fanbase to fall back upon.” 2020 has not gone the way that Rod Jones had expected. There should have been an air of triumph about it; Idlewild, the band he’s served as lead guitarist for since 1995, were due to celebrate their 25th anniversary, with a huge homecoming show at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall pencilled in for last month. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic turned his life and career upside down, with his group’s plans postponed by a year and his studio, Post Electric, closed for several months during lockdown. “We’ve been very lucky to get some money from Creative Scotland to help us recover,” says Jones of his studio, “but not everybody has been so fortunate.” He recalls scrolling through Facebook and realising the devastating toll that the virus was taking upon the Scottish events industry. “I saw people I’d known as roadies taking jobs as delivery drivers and janitors – and those were just the ones who were able to get any work at all. There was a disconnect between that and seeing musicians raising funds through things like live streams and Bandcamp Friday. People working as crew members don’t have that revenue stream, and yet they’re all talented musicians – certainly in the case of our crew, they could run rings round us on any given instrument.” Jones struck upon an idea – a covers album bringing together road crew from across Scotland, recording their own takes on songs from the bands they work with, and splitting the money generated between them. “Contrary to public belief, musicians don’t all live in mansions,” he laughs. “It’s not the 80s any more. The pandemic has affected us all professionally; I had to shut the studio, Roddy (Woomble, Idlewild frontman) can’t tour solo like he would when he’s not playing with us, that kind of thing. So it’s not as if we could just say to the crew, ‘here’s a couple of grand from my big pile of money over here.’ We had to think of something else.”
“It was nice to be doing something productive with my time that wasn’t cancelling hotel rooms or telling the van hire company we wouldn’t be needing them” Rod Jones — 48 —
The result is Whole Lotta Roadies, a 13-track compilation featuring Scottish royalty ranging from Belle & Sebastian to KT Tunstall, and Mogwai to Kathryn Joseph. The all-new recordings are collaborative efforts between the artists and their crew – targeting, says Jones, collectors and completists, but standing up to scrutiny in their own right, breathing new life into classic tracks that were voted for by fans on social media. “I almost gnawed Rod’s hand off to be a part of it,” says Joseph, who contributes a new version of The Bird alongside her crew. “It’s a rare way of supporting the great ones in the industry – the ones we know need it the most right now.” What began as a concept that Jones came up with sitting on his sofa one evening – that he hadn’t workshopped beyond floating it to his cats – quickly snowballed into a record that brings together bands from across the Scottish musical spectrum. It is, as Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite points out, a testament to the sense of togetherness in the country’s alternative scene. “The Scottish music community is very close, and a lot of the bands and artists share crew,” explains the guitarist. “Literally everyone has been affected, to one degree or another. What the response has shown is what a tight-knit family we have here.” With over £12,000 raised for the Whole Lotta Roadies fund just from the initial pre-sales, Jones’ labour of love looks set to succeed in helping Scotland’s live crew through what looks likely to be a bleak, testing winter. The process of putting it together, though, was as much a fillip for those involved as the proceeds will be. “I think it’s a really good record,” says Jones, “but to be honest, it was just nice to be doing something productive with my time that wasn’t cancelling hotel rooms or telling the van hire company we wouldn’t be needing them. “Not playing live, you miss out on a lot of the camaraderie that comes with touring, so it felt good just to give people a reason to gather together again in small groups and sit around slagging each other off! It was a real pleasure to watch such gifted people at work – to be honest, the roadies were a lot better prepared than a lot of groups who come through the studio. There might be certain band members looking over their shoulders now – their jobs might be on the line. That’s all I’m saying!”
THE SKINNY
What to Watch The best of December’s new releases, from David Fincher’s Mank to Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology Words: Jamie Dunn
Mank streams on Netflix from 4 Dec; Small Axe continues on BBC One, Sundays at 9pm, and on iPlayer; Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is released via Curzon Home Cinema on 24 Dec; We Are Who We Are is out now on iPlayer; Host streams on VOD platforms from 4 Dec — 49 —
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
Mangrove
December 2020 — Review
barfly deserves their own spinoff movie – there’s a dancing Vietnam Vet, a singing Australian barman, a grandma who loves flashing her breasts – but the film belongs to Michael, a melancholic former actor whose self-awareness of his own Shakespearean downfall makes it all the more tragic. Imagine Cheers after dark and you’re halfway to Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets’ punchdrunk mood. Another intensely sensual director whose work has just landed on the iPlayer is Luca Guadagnino with We Are Who We Are (rrr), his dreamy coming-of-age series following some wayward army brats at an American airbase in Italy. Teen dramas tend to focus on outcasts, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a character as prickly as Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer) in The OC or Dawson’s Creek. He’s a moody 14-year-old with eccentric fashion sense, a bumfluff moustache and a serious drinking problem that’s practically encouraged by his mom (Chloë Sevigny), who’s also the new commander on the base. Fraser’s not exactly pleasant company, but we’d encourage you to stick it out. He becomes significantly more tolerable as the season progresses, thanks mostly to the complex, queerplatonic relationship he forms with Caitlin (Jordan Kristine Seamón), another army base teen exploring their identity. At this point of Lockdown 2.0, you’ve probably had your fill of Zoom, but Host (rrrr), a witty and inventive horror that takes place entirely on a Zoom call, is worthy of your time. Director Rob Savage wrings every ounce of tension he can from the now all-too-familiar video conference platform. Six bored friends decide to crack open some wine and join each other for an online séance hosted by a cheerful medium, but when some of the gang don’t take the game seriously, necking shots every time the astral plane is mentioned and making up stories of dead lovers, they unwittingly get more than they bargained for. As well as being genuinely creepy and nervebiting, Host is also a fantastic send-up of the retched portal through which we’ve been forced to communicate with our loved ones over the last few months.
At Home
D
avid Fincher’s Mank (rrr) may be arriving on Netflix, but its heart belongs to a world away from streaming: the Golden Age of Hollywood, when America’s great literati were drawn to the glamour and dollar signs of Tinseltown. One such dreamer is drama critic and playwright Herman J Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), who found himself an indispensable cog at Paramount and MGM in the 1930s. This soon puts him in the orbit of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his beautiful young girlfriend, starlet Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried). Mank’s black-and-white photography makes it look like it’s been unearthed from Mankiewicz’s own era; the occasional (digital) cigarette burn cue mark in the top right corner suggest it’s being projected from there too. The film’s scattered, crosscutting structure, meanwhile, recalls the towering work we see Mankiewicz writing in bed with a broken leg: Citizen Kane, a thinly veiled tell-all of Hearst’s eccentric life which he’s ghostwriting for 26-year-old wunderkind Orson Welles. The result is a masterpiece, the best thing Mankiewicz has ever written, and much to Welles’ disdain, he wants credit. The same claim can’t be made for Mank’s own screenplay. Beyond our eponymous hero (Oldman is brilliant), the only other character who feels fully fleshed out is Seyfried’s Marion, and it’s telling that the film’s sparkiest scenes are the handful shared between the pair. Mank is not without its visual pleasures, and Old Hollywood buffs will delight in spotting the references, but anyone wishing to know what drove Mankiewicz to turn on Hearst so viciously won’t get any straight answers in this frustratingly unfocused picture. A richer trip to the past can be found in Steve McQueen’s landmark Small Axe anthology. We’ve seen two films so far: Mangrove and Lovers Rock (rrrrr) and both are electric. The former opens at the fag end of the 1960s, Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech still echoing in racists’ ears, and tells the true story of the solidarity that forms in Notting Hill’s West Indian community when the neighbourhood’s hippest joint, the Caribbean cafe Mangrove, becomes a target for harassment and intimidation by thuggish coppers. The second half of Mangrove concerns the Mangrove Nine trial, the first judicial acknowledgement of racism within the Metropolitan Police, and it’s as rousing as any Aaron Sorkin courtroom drama. Lovers Rock is even better. This is pure McQueen: a sensual film overflowing with bodies, music, sexuality and textures, all comingling at a sweaty Ladbroke Grove house party in 1980. There’s no plot, we just follow the ebb and flow of the gathering and the spark of attraction that forms between two beautiful strangers (Amarah-Jae St Aubyn and Micheal Ward) who meet on the dance floor. The handheld camera makes us part of the throng, immersing us as the night moves from the clowning of Kung Fu Fighting to the heat of slow-jam Silly Games to the more lairy part of the night when some of the lads have had too much Red Stripe. For those missing clubbing, Lovers Rock is the perfect substitute. However, if it’s a night down your local that you most hanker for, there’s rambunctious documentary Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (rrrrr). The film follows the final day of operations of a Las Vegas dive bar where everybody not only knows your name, but has been harbouring some pent-up grudge that’s about to erupt over a night of heavy drinking. Each
THE SKINNY
Books
Book Reviews
Strange Beasts of China By Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang
December 2020 — Review
rrrrr
I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are
You Exist Too Much By Zaina Arafat
rrrrr
By Rachel Bloom
rrrrr
There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job By Kikuko Tsumura, translated by Polly Barton
rrrrr
In the city of Yong’an, a writer and amateur zoologist is commissioned by her editor to write a series of tales about the strange beasts that inhabit the city. From Sorrowful Beasts with green-tinged skin who will die if they smile to placid Flourishing Beasts growing from trees, the narrator of Strange Beasts of China tracks down their stories, composing an evolving bestiary of her extraordinary city. Genuses and species may abound, but Yan Ge’s Strange Beasts of China is itself a slippery creature, resisting categorisation at every turn. The narrator’s stories begin as serialised accounts of magical realist encounters, an academically motivated exploration of the intersection between anthropology and cryptozoology. Yet the further we delve into this world, the more the narrator discovers the eerie ways in which these beasts’ lives are entangled with her own past. As she excavates the dark, often tragic histories of these beasts, a profound ecological parable begins to emerge from the bones and jagged skin of these creatures, albeit one that offers no easy morals. What appears to be a postmodern series of fantastic fables morphs into something more unexpected, expertly crafted by Yan Ge: an obscure mediation on the wildness of everyday existence, an evocative, bizarre consideration of the fragile boundaries between the self and the world beyond. [Anahit Behrooz]
What is a normal person? According to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Rachel Bloom, it isn’t her. All her life, she’s felt abnormal and out of place, and in exploring exactly why that is, she’s come to find how many people feel like outsiders in their own way. Through bullying, insecurity, mental health, pleasure, shame, fame and beyond, each personal essay offers something different. Beyond the expected format, you’ll also find her own guides to Disney, diary entries, and – a real stand out – Harry Potter fanfiction on the spiralling of the arts, where Harry thinks he can waltz right into Hamilton (because, ffs, of course he does), with an added acknowledgement of the complicated nature of fandom. Written pre-COVID, and preparenthood, the world has shifted greatly since and, acknowledged in her afterword, the idea of normalcy takes on a greater meaning. I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are is less a look back to a normal world, but a wish for the future to come. Books tipped to sit alongside those by Mindy Kaling, Ali Wong and Amy Poehler are often stretching, but here it feels true. Blisteringly funny as a base line and offering insightful gut punches at its most striking, the ability to write with genuine humour and insight without feeling forced is a rare combination. There’s a lot to take from this book, including some unattractive snort laughs. [Heather McDaid]
Jumping through time and space, You Exist Too Much is a very modern tale of otherness. Its unnamed narrator, a bisexual Palestinian American woman, chronicles her geographically in-flux upbringing in vignettes, taking us to Bethlehem, Brooklyn, Italy and Egypt. In-between chapters drop us back into her present day, diagnosed with “love addiction” and recovering at a rehabilitation centre in the US after a particularly messy breakup. Zaina Arafat’s narrator exists in an imperfect Venn diagram of overlapping identities, and, as a result, she’s a wonderfully complicated, shambolic, flawed character. In the rehabilitation centre, she reflects on her upbringing, delving deep into her childhood trauma, internalised biphobia and thirst for (and fear of) intimacy. Borders and binaries have kept her from truly finding a place to call home – a longing that drives the narrative. Arafat’s writing is fresh, witty and packs a heavy punch as she manages to pull off her narrator’s emotional exorcism – no easy task. Most impressive is the tumultuous relationship between the narrator and her mother, who isn’t willing to accept her daughter’s queerness and lifestyle. Rather than casting the mother as a villain, Arafat instead paints an intricate portrait of familial obligation, a troubled past and a tender, complicated relationship. You Exist Too Much isn’t a happy novel, but it is a cathartic, disruptive and enjoyable one. [Katie Goh]
It’s easy to see the appeal in work that makes us feel nothing: it’s low effort, low stakes, little thinking, you get paid and go on with life. That’s exactly what the protagonist in Kikuko Tsumura’s There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job wants. And it’s exactly what she gets, time and time again – initially. First, she spends hours watching an author, who allegedly has contraband in his home, through hidden cameras. In theory there is no job easier than watching a recording of a man in his home all day and taking notes. As time goes by she gets invested, shaping her own life to his, lifting doses of inspiration for dinner, or critiquing his latest writing exactly as it happens. Next comes the bus company, where their adverts seem inexplicably tied to the fate of the local area’s companies, then crafting rice cracker advice which garners more followers than she could have imagined. On and on she continues with roles that expect little of her, but make an inexplicable impact. In navigating ‘dull’ jobs, it’s in the deadpan delivery of mundanity where the book succeeds – each job gradually reveals its quirks, connections or downright surreal nature, allowing the humour and strangeness to catch readers off guard. A droll look at work life, it’s a slow build to a simple idea: the search for meaning can rest in the most unexpected places. [Heather McDaid]
Tilted Axis, out now, £9.99
Coronet, out now, £16.99
Dialogue Books, out now, £14.99
Bloomsbury, out now, £12.99
tiltedaxispress.com/store/strange-beastsof-china
hachette.co.uk/titles/rachel-bloom-2/iwant-to-be-where-the-normal-peopleare/9781529354652/
hachette.co.uk/titles/zaina-arafat/you-existtoo-much/9780349701783/
bloomsbury.com/uk/theres-no-such-thingas-an-easy-job-9781526622242/
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THE SKINNY
Art Reviews Life After Love Generator Projects
Art
With both Joseph Cotgrave and Ross Fleming having their solo exhibitions cut short due to a global pandemic, Generator Projects’ Life After Love exhibition lets their mutual explorations of queer culture and HIV not be overshadowed by that ‘other’ virus. The hiss of a smoke machine is barely audible under the blare of Cher’s anthem Believe; pink neon lighting peers through the glory holes that litter the black partition that dominates the space. Ceramic minutiae of club life (a key, a pill bottle, a bottle top, a singular PrEP or Eviplera pill) cluster on various surfaces in a play of visual contrariness: precaution meets hedonism and safety courts danger in Cotgrave’s artistic conservation of the gay club scene in Liverpool. Fleming, while also referring to the past, offers a glance at a potential future: a participatory-installation of a pop-up shop offering canned PrEP-infused lemon elixirs, challenging the stigma around HIV
with a playful nod to consumerist culture. Outside the transparent shop structure, the debris of crushed cans and used condoms litter the sides, paradoxically as the debris is symbolic of a certain type of responsibility. Transparency and personal narrative are intensified by the scrawled graffiti on the outside walls of the structure showing the (expired) phone number of Daryll Rowe – a man arrested for intentionally transmitting the HIV virus whom the artist had known previously. Themes of responsibility and exploitation unite the two exhibitions by the two-way mirror which fuses the separate rooms. This exhibition combines individual experience and public information to highlight the importance of open, honest dialogue free from stigma. As the world holds its breath for a vaccine, the complex history of HIV – at the personal and political level – offers a wealth of insight moving forward. [Cheryl McGregor] Run ended generatorprojects.co.uk/projects/life-after-love
Ross Fleming, Flemings Lemons, Life After Love
December 2020 — Review
The annual Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize has rolled around again, celebrating the diversity and continued relevancy of drawing in the creative practice. Featuring 71 works by 56 artists, this exhibition encompasses the vast capabilities of this ancient medium. M. Lohrum’s You Are It begins the exhibition: a participation-performance drawing of circular charcoal loops, with boxes of charcoal at either end inviting participants to contribute to the dynamic image. This interactive opener, combined with the strong theme of portraiture throughout, highlights the current pandemic’s reiteration of the significance of human contact and company. Depictions of family, of lovers, of intimacy abound, such as Nancy Haslam-Chance’s from-memory sketches of her work as a care-giver which strikes a particular tone of human kindness, frailty and intimacy. Intimacy takes a different form in James Robert Morrison’s homoerotic portraits, displaying a unique technical mastery with his cigarette paper canvases. Anyone who’s ever rolled a cigarette can testify to the tricky, sticky papers: controlling this
Photo: Eoin Carey, courtesy Cooper Gallery.
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize Cooper Gallery
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020, installation view Cooper Gallery
inventive canvas to draw these amorous moments is a true feat. The detail of licking the papers and the busy mouths of the images combines sensually in these portraits. There is naturally an abundance of grayscale work here, allowing Isobel Rock’s colourful fantasy worlds to stand out – kaleidoscopes of almost-infinite details (naked
yogis float on clouds, cafes of ‘friendly gherkins’) leaving the viewer in a state of confused wonder. Other works are more architectural, investigative studies into temporality and light, such as Rae Fior Lowe’s Light Redirected – Ricochets Twice Along a Course, whose gilded details add a delicate touch. From video works to sculpture,
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this exhibition surprises with its multitude of takes on the medium. With its careful curation, the ideas that emerge from these 56 individuals leaves a distinct (pencil) mark. [Cheryl McGregor] Until 19 Dec, Cooper Gallery, Dundee, free entry, advance booking required
December 2020 — Review
Comedy
THE SKINNY
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THE SKINNY
ICYMI Staple of the Manchester comedy scene, Jain Edwards watches political Punch and Judy, Spitting Image Illustration: Edith Ault Comedy
T
say, puppets? Hmm? A striking feature of the original series is that there is a fluidity to the humour that pulls it into the surreal which, in my mind, is the key to good satire. The original Spitting Image feels like it has heart because the writers are weaving through reality and absurdity seamlessly. A troubling aspect of Spitting Image is the depiction of non-white characters. Caricuture puppets don’t lend themselves terribly well to “not looking racist” and the depiction of nonwhite characters seems to focus predominantly on their race. I would be truly amazed if professional satirists couldn’t find another angle on ROBERT MUGABE other than a naff racist joke. It could be that the programme has aged badly but this was the 80s, not the 1900s, so I doubt it. When watching anything later than everyone else, the question that cries out to be answered is – “would I have liked this if I watched it at the time?” Sadly, no. While I can appreciate the nuance of the humour now, I think this has been exacerbated by years of watching satire done weakly. I often spend a solemn midnight hour in silent meditation trying to work out what satire could or even should be. While I feel the original Spitting Image is closer to the vision that visits me, looking back at my life, I can’t get away from one thing. As a child, the puppets would have scared the shit out of me. Catch Jain on Twitter @jain_edwards and Twitch twitch.tv/jain_edwards
December 2020 — Review
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Image: Edith Ault
here’s been a lot of talk recently about the new series of Spitting Image: a writers list that boasts of some of the biggest names in comedy but can’t find the joke. I’m a comedian who sees themselves, somewhat delusionally, as a kind of satirist, so I’ve been told for years to check out the original series. Prompted by the remake, I decided to take a look. First an admission. Through my parents’ lack of initiative and my own bone idleness, I confess I was not born when the first series of Spitting Image was released. And even by the time the last episode aired in 1996, when I was eight, I was still woefully uninformed on politics. So while these days I can point out a politician as obscure as Ed Davey, back then I wasn’t so savvy. Admittedly this makes the show a little tricky to understand. To overcome this challenge, I simply pretended I knew who each puppet represented using my most trusted skill – lying to myself. I was told I would get the cruelty I so badly crave from satire and while it wasn’t enough for my twisted commie soul, I felt fairly sated when in episode five the Queen asks Margaret Thatcher how “all the Nazis in her cabinet are doing.” But perhaps I’m biased. I believe satire can only truly be done justice by angry lefty weirdos. I guess through my rose-tinted glasses, the 80s and early 90s had that sharper knife edge over today’s political comedy, where the inane and the superficial are not a starter but the main course. I suppose it was also easier to mock politicians way back when they were pompous and proud as opposed to today when our political leaders are caricaturing themselves before we’ve even had our Shreddies. Something I enjoyed enormously about the original series is the sheer speed with which we travel through sketches. As a dedicated millennial since birth, my attention span is shorter than Rishi Sunak (hey, this satire stuff is easy!) so I really appreciate comedy getting to the point. In a concept like Spitting Image, as we have recently seen, it is so easy to come up with an idea and take so long to get to the punch that an audience feels like they are tied to train tracks, longing for the train to make contact. The Spitting Image I watched had much more of a knockabout feel, where, lonely saddo that I am, I derived a lot of fun imagining writers asking “what if?” The “what ifs” of the show feel so much like spitballing that you get the sense that the writers are playing with the characters like, dare I
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The Skinny On...
The Skinny On... Auntie Flo In a year that saw clubbing cancelled for the vast majority, Glasgow-based producer and DJ Auntie Flo trained to become a sound therapist and launched his own 24-hour radio station, Ambient Flo. Here he takes part in our final Q&A of 2020
What’s your favourite place to visit and why? Berlin. Although that sounds like a cliché, I actually love how quiet and spaced out the city is. It feels like a big village, and while I don’t think I could actually live there I love dipping in a few times a year and catching up with lots of friends who have relocated. Favourite food and why? Curry. I’m from Glasgow and it’s only when you leave that you start to realise just how good it is. I love Mother India (of course) but also Banana Leaf.
December 2020 — Chat
Favourite colour and why? Green. The colour of nature, trees, grass, and a certain football team. Who was your hero growing up? Sonic the Hedgehog. It was my favourite game growing up. I had posters of Sonic all over my room. I recently found a Christmas list I made detailing 50 reasons why I should get given a Mega Drive for Christmas (it worked!). I also used to ask if I could have the same haircut at the hairdressers – short and spiky (not blue, alas). Whose work inspires you now? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. His writing on flow (optimal human experience) was one of the reasons I chose Flo in my artist’s name. During lockdown I’ve been re-reading his Theory of Flow in a quest to unlock some happiness during some dark times. What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking? Fela Kuti, David Byrne and Barack Obama. Fela has always been a major influence on my music and without a doubt has some amazing stories to tell. David Byrne was also massively influenced by Fela for
various Talking Heads albums, and having recently read his book How Music Works, he would be a great guest. Obama seems available and, like me, has family in Kenya. I’d cook Goan Fish Curry in honour of my mum. What’s your all time favourite album? Wu-Tang Clan – Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Still unrivalled in terms of production – RZA’s absolute masterpiece and all the MCs deliver. Clan in da front. What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen? The Beach. So sad that they’ve had to close the actual beach where this was shot. What book would you take to a desert island? Catcher in the Rye. I typically read non-fiction but on a desert island you’d need some light relief and this is a work of genius that you can read over and over again. When did you last cry? Last week. I’ve been going through the hardest of times – my dad died suddenly and that’s been hard to take. What are you most scared of? Not doing everything I want to do. I have a massive to-do list, and work 14-hour days, every day. When did you last vomit and why? Last year – food poisoning. I think it was a dodgy Pret sandwich. Unfortunately I ate it before a gig in Sheffield, which I ended up doing for three hours but it was touch and go the whole time. Tell us a secret? I don’t eat chocolate. Not really a secret as I tend to use this in a lot of
interview questions! But it still shocks people – who knows why?! Which celebrity could you take in a fight? Conor McGregor. I’d def win a thumb war. If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be? Golden eagle. My 18-month son has just discovered these and loves pointing them out in books. Free as a bird! What’s your favourite album of 2020? Molero – Ficciones Del Trópico. I love music that transports you into a new immersive sonic world and this album is a trip into the tropics made by Venezuelan producer Molero. I loved his use of vintage synth Yamaha CS-60 so much I went and bought it on eBay.
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What’s your favourite film/TV show of 2020? Tiger King. Fact or fiction?! You couldn’t even make this story up. A gift that keeps on giving. What have you missed the most about clubs while they’ve been shut? The vibrations. Sound waves hitting my chest and going through my body. I’d pay a lot of money to go and stand in the middle of a dancefloor and experience that hit once again. What are your hopes for 2021? Humans stop picking the wrong fights. I feel like 2020 was a precipice and I hope 2021 is the year we step back from it and start showing compassion once again.
Listen to Ambient Flo at ambientflo.com
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October 2020
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December 2020 — Chat
The Skinny On...
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