7 h. ago Hotline TNT: Raspberry Moon review – love lights melodies through the fuzz

(Third Man Records)Will Anderson opens up on the NYC group’s third album, revealing an expansive articulacy to his take on 90s indie-rockThe third album by these New York-based indie-rockers rings some crucial changes. First, bandleader Will Anderson is in love, which alleviates some of the gloom that pervaded earlier records. And while the lyrics don’t amount to much on the page, when sung in unaffected deadpan and robed in artfully embellished shoegazey noise, Anderson’s elliptical poetics carry a compelling weight.Second, and more importantly, Anderson invited his bandmates into the studio to record Raspberry Moon. Where previous albums had been one-man affairs, with Anderson overdubbing layer upon layer of guitar and synth on his lonesome, the presence of other musicians in the room has shaken up the paradigm. Their trademark walls of fuzz remain, but Raspberry Moon also fields tracks such as Break Right, on which the happy/sad melodies flourish with space to breathe, and the lu...

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3 d. ago Ordinary Love by Marie Rutkoski review – some of the best sex scenes I’ve read this year

In this page-turning romance, teenage sweethearts reunite as thirtysomething womenSex is notoriously difficult to write. Some authors avoid it entirely; even those who have been called great can come a cropper. Which is why I want to start this review by saying that the sex scenes in Ordinary Love are some of the best I have read this year, and that Marie Rutkoski has a facility for writing physical intimacy that can elude even some of our most gifted authors. Her voice has been compared to that of Sally Rooney. I don’t see much of that in this novel beyond a Rooneyesque ability to write sex well, but that is a talent worth noting.Ordinary Love is a queer romance that tells the story of Emily and Gen, teenage sweethearts who break up in college and reunite in their 30s, their paths having diverged dramatically. Emily marries Jack, who is wealthy and emotionally abusive. When she sees Gen again, she is in the process of leaving him for the second time (the novel opens with ...

Politics

7 d. ago We Love Green: What London can learn from the Parisian version of All Points East

From location to lineup (and a fabulously French food offering), here’s why you should sack off one of your London day festival for Paris next summer

Politics

8 d. ago Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan audiobook review – love and conflict in Sri Lanka

The civil war transforms a young trainee doctor’s life as she copes with her feelings for a Tamil Tiger in last year’s Women’s prizewinning novelBrotherless Night opens with 16-year-old Sashi Kulenthiren, who hopes to be a doctor like her eldest brother, making tea when the kettle slips out of her hand, causing her to pour boiling water on herself. When a neighbour, K, hears her screams, he rushes over to help, cracking raw eggs over the scalds to soothe the pain. “So I began as K’s patient though he ended as mine,” Sashi reflects.Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, VV Ganeshananthan’s coming-of-age novel – which won the 2024 Women’s prize for fiction – is an epic and hard-hitting tale of family and survival as it documents life during the civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority that lasted three decades. Before fighting breaks out, Sashi’s most pressing problem is whether she will pass her exams at school. But soon violence and kidnapping become the norm, communities are...

Events

8 d. ago Love Forms by Claire Adam review – the power of a mother’s loss

Forty years on, a Trinidadian woman has never stopped looking for the daughter she gave up for adoption, in a quietly devastating novelClaire Adam’s 2019 novel Golden Child was her debut, but it felt like the work of a master. It was tender, ravishing, shattering – you believed every word of it. The book had an effortless narrative authority that most first-time novelists would kill for.Love Forms is every bit as alive and convincing, and returns us to Trinidad, with its potent fizz of colour, heat and political instability. But unlike the earlier book, it’s also set partly in south London – the writer’s own home turf – and has a mother, rather than a father, at its heart. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf review – trans activist opens up about the toll visibility takes

Essex-born model and activist shows remarkable grace, resilience and honesty in the face of online vitriol and hostile TV interviewersWhen she was younger, Munroe Bergdorf didn’t want to be queer or black. “I just wanted to fit in. Now those are the two things that I love most about myself.” It would be almost impossible to watch this documentary about the trans model and activist without feeling a surge of admiration for her resilience and grace. Bergdorf hit the headlines with a hiring-and-firing scandal in 2017 when L’Oréal sacked her as the face of a UK campaign following Facebook comments she wrote in response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Watching the backlash in Love & Rage, we see that Bergdorf didn’t hide away. She went on Good Morning Britain, where Piers Morgan snapped at her like an angry yorkshire terrier. Bergdorf is willing to share a platform with people who deny her existence, and it looks incredibly bruising at times. There’s a clip ...

Politics

1 week ago Nico Raskin earns swooning review as Rangers mate showered in love amid £5m transfer exit push

The 24-year-old capped off the best season of his career with a game-changing cameo in the 4-3 win over Wales

Economics

2 w. ago In Praise of Love at Orange Tree Theatre review: real warmth with the cliches of the age

This Terence Rattigan play is about repression and marriage which has warmth beneath its study in non-communication

Events

2 w. ago Nintendo’s Switch 2 is the upgrade of my dreams – but it’s not as ‘new’ as some might hope

The long-trailed console offers sturdier hardware, improved graphics and seamless online functionality. But it’s more of an update than a revolutionLaunch week is finally here, and though I would love to be bringing you a proper review of the Nintendo Switch 2 in this week’s newsletter, I still don’t have one at the time of writing. In its wisdom, Nintendo has decided not to send review units out until the day before release, so as you read this I will be standing impatiently by the door like a dog anxiously awaiting its owner.I have played the console, though, for a whole day at Nintendo’s offices, so I can give you some first impressions. Hardware-wise, it is the upgrade of my dreams: sturdier JoyCons, a beautiful screen, the graphical muscle to make games look as good as I want them to in 2025 (though still not comparable to the high-end PlayStation 5 Pro or a modern gaming PC). I like the understated pops of colour on the controllers, the refined menu with its soothing chimes an...

Politics

3 w. ago Honest mum's review: Love to Dream sleep bag and Sleep Machine for ideal baby sleep

We tested out a Love to Dream sleep bag and its white noise Sleep Machine to see what worked for my 18-month-old toddler

Economics

3 w. ago Along Came Love review – l’amour, loss and lingering shame in eventful French relationship movie

Director Katell Quillévéré explores the ravages of romance in an intelligently performed period piece about a shamed mother and a closeted husbandThe title of Katell Quillévéré’s first movie, Un Poison Violent from 2010, was taken from Serge Gainsbourg’s song Un poison violent, c’est ça l’amour, and the awful toxicity of love is a theme that has run through her work ever since. It is an underground stream that has become very much an overground stream in this new, heartfelt movie. It’s robust and a little unsubtle, without the nuances and indirections that govern her best work, but handsomely produced and resoundingly performed, avowedly autobiographical and inspired by her grandmother. Quillévéré has said that her influences are Maurice Pialat for the tough realism and Douglas Sirk for the melodrama and the sense of buried shame. I wonder if there isn’t some David Lean in there for the final scene at the railway station.Madeleine is a young single mother played by Anaïs Demoustier;...

Politics