I was maybe halfway through the entirely improvised new live album by Ghost, when it occurred to me that I might have been fixating on the new psych/folk/freak jams a bit much this past week or so. It was then that I turned to the new album by Beirut, as I have done for the past two or three weeks when I feel the need for tunes, of all things.
Greetings from gusty Edinburgh, where this year's Film Festival is kicking into its first full day, and there's a few hangovers from last night's Opening Gala party.
I’ve just been reading Re-Make/Re-Model, Michael Bracewell’s new book on the formative years of Roxy Music and was particularly struck by an early passage in which Bryan Ferry – thankfully not talking about fox-hunting or the Third Reich – waxes nostalgically about a music shop in Newcastle called Windows, where as a teenager he spent many astonished hours browsing through racks of records he couldn’t always afford, but liked anyway just to spend time poring over.
