13 h. ago Add to playlist: the bullish confidence and versatility of JayaHadADream and the week’s best new tracks

A breakout star of the underground rap scene shows vulnerability and wit in her genre-bending tracksFrom CambridgeshireRecommended if you like Manga Saint Hilare, Kojey Radical, Little SimzUp next Happiness from Agony out now“One of the coldest writers but man don’t say it ’cause I’ve got vagina,” JayaHadADream raps on her recent track Bug, calling out those who underestimate her talent – and laying bare her lyrical confidence. In a fertile underground rap scene, the Jamaican-Irish, Cambridge-via-Nottingham artist has cut through thanks to her command and vulnerability, as well as a sharp eye for bullshit. The track Main Characters (featuring Big Zuu), also from her recent mixtape Happiness from Agony, is a critique of the fake love and hollow posturing that saturates the music industry. Continue reading...

Politics

42 h. ago Amazon shoppers can snap up 'brilliant' £45 Echo Pop speaker for £4 this week

It could make Christmas Day a lot easier thanks to its many features

Economics

3 d. ago The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago. But its lessons live on in The Quiet American

Phillip Noyce’s political drama is a searing critique of American interventionism that feels all too pertinent todayGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailAlden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) was a “quiet American”, says Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) to a French policeman. “A friend,” he adds, as the lifeless corpse of Pyle stares back at him with a wretched expression.This is the scene that opens Phillip Noyce’s Vietnam-set political drama before the film flashes back a few months earlier to 1952 Saigon, where Fowler, an ageing Englishman, lives leisurely as a journalist reporting on the first Indochina war. When Pyle, a young American aid worker advocating for US intervention, falls for Fowler’s 20-year-old Vietnamese lover, Phượng (Đỗ Thị Hải Yến), the jaded reporter’s tranquil existence begins to unravel.Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago Rachael Carpani, McLeod’s Daughters and Home and Away actor, dies ‘unexpectedly but peacefully’ aged 45

The beloved Australian actor died on 7 December after a battle with chronic illnessGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailMcLeod’s Daughters and Home and Away actor Rachael Carpani has died, aged 45, her family has announced.A statement from her parents, shared by her sister on Instagram on Monday, said that the actor had “unexpectedly but peacefully passed away after a long battle with chronic illness in the early hours of Sunday 7th December”. Her exact cause of death was not made public.Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Add to playlist: DJ Moopie’s charmingly moody experimental compilations and the week’s best new tracks

Connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt will love the music put out by A Colourful Storm, the Melbourne-based DJ’s indie labelFrom MelbourneRecommended if you like the C86 compilation, AU/NZ jangle-pop, Mess EsqueUp next Going Back to Sleep out nowMelbourne-based DJ Moopie, AKA Matthew Xue, is renowned for engrossing, wide-ranging sets that can run the gamut from gelid ambient music to churning drum’n’bass and beyond. He also runs A Colourful Storm – a fantastic indie label that massively punches above its weight when it comes to putting out charmingly moody experimental pop music, from artists as disparate as London-based percussionist Valentina Magaletti, dubby Hobart duo Troth, and renowned underground polymath Simon Fisher Turner. In 2017, the label released I Won’t Have to Think About You, a compilation of winsome, C86-ish indie pop. Earlier this year, it put out Going Back to Sleep, a quasi-sequel to that record which also functions as a neatly drawn guide to some ...

Politics

2 w. ago West Lothian shoppers wait in huge queues as new store opens ahead of Christmas

Over 300 people turned up in their droves to The Centre, Livingston at the weekend for the opening of the pop culture retailer MINISO over four hours before the store opened.

Politics

3 w. ago Add to playlist: Storefront Church’s cinematic baroque pop and the week’s best new tracks

Californian singer-songwriter Lukas Frank is picking up rave reviews for his second album’s epic choruses and lush orchestrationsFrom Los AngelesRecommended if you like John Grant, Scott Walker, Father John MistyUp next A cover of Duran Duran’s The Chauffeur is out now, with another single due in FebruaryAfter several years of perseverance, things are happening for Storefront Church. The audience at this month’s sellout gig at St Pancras Old Church in London included Perfume Genius and members of the Last Dinner Party and the Horrors and their self-released second album, Ink & Oil, is picking up rave reviews. One used the term “emotional flood” to describe the album’s epic, baroque pop, big pianos and drums, sweeping choruses and Travis Warner’s lush, cinematic orchestrations. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago How do I respond to someone who says ‘I’m not racist, but ... ’? | Leading questions

It’s important to express your disagreement: for their sake as much as yours, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But first decide on what you aim to accomplishRead more Leading questionsHow do I respond to someone who contributes to a conversation with “I’m not racist, but ” and then inevitably proceeds to say something racist, such as talking about immigrants on benefits or getting priority for housing?I’m referring to social occasions with people that I am not necessarily close to but rather acquaintances I may bump into semi-regularly. I feel myself getting simultaneously angry and tongue-tied and I mostly sit with my frustration to maintain some sense of harmony in the group.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Eggshells, onion bags and five years painting only in orange: the playful avant

The late Australian artist ‘wanted to challenge orthodoxy in everything he did’, says Sue Cramer, his wife and co-curator of a new survey of his playful, rigorous careerGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailJohn Nixon, the late Australian avant-garde artist, would sometimes save the shells from his boiled eggs and sprinkle them across blank paint, creating his own starry night. Other times he’d set himself rules, such as painting only in orange for five years. It was 1996 and he was becoming a father, so he wanted a streamlined practice – plus, what other artist was associated with orange?These anecdotes – just two among many – reflect not only Nixon’s lifelong frugality, idiosyncrasies and strategies, but his steadfast blending of art into everyday life for more than 50 years. His hardline minimalism never feels stifling or overwrought, but rigorous and playful, critical yet fortuitous.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weeke...

Politics

3 w. ago Christmas shopping with a difference is coming to these Welsh town centres

Next week will see the opening of a number of festive pop-up shops, offering local businesses the chance to showcase their goods in three town centres

Economics

3 w. ago Skye Gyngell was singular. She had the palate of a chef and the palette of an artist

Her commitment to food directly connected to its source shaped the tastes and thinking of a generation of cooks. We all wanted to sit next to her at dinnerSpring is a season of transition, when bare earth transforms into something alive with promise. It was also the name chef Skye Gyngell, who has died at age 62, chose for her London restaurant. She said it was her favourite season, but the truth is she embraced all four and lived them wholly.Gyngell was singular: she had the palate of a chef and the palette of an artist. Those twin gifts met in food that was painterly in its composition, delicate in its details and tuned to nature’s shifting notes.Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Rocky Horror creator Richard O’Brien: ‘The Spice Girls couldn’t sing. But lovely girls’

The actor, writer and musician on growing up on a sheep farm in New Zealand, being in Spice World and a lovely afternoon with Aretha FranklinGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailStrange Journey: The Story Of Rocky Horror is out to celebrate 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. What’s the strangest journey Rocky Horror has taken you on?I was at the 30th anniversary at Queen’s Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. After the show, I was in the downstairs bar, chatting to a couple of people. I turned around and going up the stairs was a man in such high heels – these fetish shoes – that he couldn’t walk in them. He had a leather thong up his arse, and I thought to myself: “I suppose I’m responsible for that, aren’t I?”Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago Inseparable, sensuous and confident, the Kessler twins were pioneers of variety show culture

Alice and Ellen Kessler, who died by joint assisted suicide this week, entertained – and occasionally scandalised – Europe with their glitzy and subversive pop music and classically informed dance• The Kessler twins die together aged 89 – newsWhen Dean Martin announced the Kessler sisters’ appearance on his show in 1966, he remarked that he had been desperate to book them not just because the German-born dancer-singers were “so pretty and so talented”, but “also because they’re twins, that means there are two of them”. “They’re a double,” he added with a nod to his half-drunk crooner persona, “and there’s nothing I like more than a double”.The two sisters, who died by joint assisted suicide earlier this week, also performed with Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte and Fred Astaire, but the American market never impressed them much. In 1964 they turned down a role in Elvis’s Viva Las Vegas for fear of being pigeonholed in American musical comedies. Continue reading...

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