Skip to main content

Noah and the Whale - LIFEGOESON

(originally published by The Student)

With the feel of a kind of upbeat Livin' on a Prayer, Noah and the Whale's latest release is a classic girl-meets-boy-while-working-in-a-seedy-bar tale, injected with the happy-go-lucky spirit you'd expect from its title. But woah there, things aren't so simple. The chorus itself may take some practising to sing along to, as you'll have to spell out the words in time, Aretha Franklin's RESPECT-style. Once you've got that down, you can start air-guitaring along to the guitar and, yes, the violin solo. Layered backing vocals abruptly chime in on this odd multi-instrumental spelling bee then duck out again for a nice key-change and a bit more repetition. Like life, the song goes on, and will stay with you from those seedy bars back to your lectures and home again.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Populaire - film review

     In the 50s, having a job as a secretary may have been considered modern, or even empowering, but mostly, as Rose Pamphyle (Déborah Francois) says in her job interview, it's the chance to work for an important man. Seen in this light, the rise and fall of a Speed-Typing champion is just as much to do with a woman's personal victory as it is to do with her boss' encouragement and coaching, as well as the freedom he allows her to have.      In the film, and in life, the Speed-Typing Championship probably stemmed from a cigar-fuelled "I bet my secretary types faster than yours" argument, and the exclusively female competitors inhabit a space somewhere between real sportsman(woman?)ship and simply being allowed to play. The rocky ground of post-war sexual power-play is tested with bright colours and the happy clack-clack of a typewriter, and leads us somewhere a little more patronising than first-time director Regis Roinsard may have been hoping for. ...

Edinburgh Sustainability Awards

(originally published by The Student )      THE UNIVERSITY is set to launch its first Sustainability Awards to help reduce its environmental impact. A ceremony later in the year will see awards given to the teams which complete the most environmentally friendly challenges in an online workbook provided by the Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA).      Last year the University of Edinburgh was accredited Gold in the NUS' Environmental Impact Awards, and was the overall UK winner. This, the two-year-old Green Impact Scheme, compared Universities from across the country in terms of sustainability and global awareness. EUSA's newest venture is a similar scheme within the University itself, encouraging teams to think of new ways to reduce our effect on the world outside of Edinburgh.      Teams can be made up of staff and students in every part of the University, and will be accredited with Bronze, Silver or Go...

The "9ème art" of the Graphic Novel

Images from the Cité du Livre website Festival de Bande Dessinée, Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Provence For some reason I've never been here before. For some reason it's taken this bibliophile seven months to figure out that there is a place in Aix-en-Provence devoted to literature, a place whose name in Google Translate produces variations on the theme of Book City, Book Estate and Book Ghetto. The books, they are huge. We have discussed before how I feel about books. Books which I recently blabbered about in a vlog are here reproduced in thirty-foot-high concrete form and act as a simple external wall to the Book Ghetto. They are huge. I felt a few tears when I first saw them. Hidden unjustly away behind the gare routière , the Cité du Livre played host this month to a graphic novel festival whose speakers ranged from authors to graffiti artists, and whose slightly shabby walls were transformed into booths full of first drafts, coloured panels and authors' not...