Jenni Ajderian

I'm adding them on  Facebook . I'm reading through their  MySpace  looking for gigs in Bristol. I'm wailing along with their songs and learning to play them all on guitar. I think it's love.       Mumford and Sons ' album Sigh No More currently has pride of place in my CD collection. The London quartet, formed a scant two years ago, have been nominated for scores of awards by the NME, XFM, triple-J and probably quite a few other acronymous music awarding bodies in categories toasting New Music and Breakthrough Acts. But the music they're playing is far from new- the four bonded over a love of Bluegrass, Folk, Country... The acoustic guitar, the banjo, the references to crops and harvests are normally present in a kind of music associated with old men in pubs and slender women with flowers in their hair. So what is it about Marcus Mumford, Country Winston, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane which gives their version of Folk suc...

There was a philosopher who once dreamed he was a butterfly, but when he awoke he wasn't sure whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man.      When Jake Sully awakes from the butterfly world of the Na'vi, where he spends his time jumping from treetops, walking through ultra violet forests and riding huge blue alien dragons, only to see the same old research shack in the mountains, his understanding of which side he's on starts to slip.      What follows is a three-hour film which can only be described as epic, and which follows the same vein as the scifi parable District Nine. It's no coincidence that the film centres on an American mining company wanting to bulldoze alien holy sites for the rich minerals that lie deep in the ground. A small programme is set up by Doctor Sigourney Weaver to use Avatar bodies to infiltrate and learn from the Na'vi,...

ca·thar·tic / kəˈ θ ärtik /  • adj. 1. providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions      Examples of cathartic text being the Shakespearian plays Hamlet and Julius Caesar, as well as the entire contents of WHSmith's Tragic Life Stories section. Six shelves of books sit and document the tragic life stories of children, adults, small fluffy things probably and anyone else the author can get their hands on- sometimes even themselves. With eyesnatching adjectives for titles such as "Betrayed" (Lyndsey Harns), "Worthless" (Marilyn Hardy) and "Disgraced" (Saira Ahmed), each promises to be some variation on the theme of harrowing childhood stories of misuse and neglect; tense emotional battles in which the subject's sole ally is a kindly stranger/ sister/ author; all in all a life-changing, tear-filled tale that is, by definition, cathartic. By the time you've read it, you feel pretty happy it didn't happen to ...

Yes, I did nearly write Desperate Housewives. Though it's hard to think of a show more different.      Normally, historical dramas bore me. They're either simply too stuffy to be really called drama or they try to make the era in question seem too cool, to have too much swash-and-buckle. So, admittedly, I didn't sit down to watch the BBC's new 19th-century drama, documenting the arduous lives of the new Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with the most open of minds. I also didn't sit down alone- my clasicist mother and cynic father were both next to me, so between us I think we held a great enough spread of opinions to shine some sort of light on the proceedings.      The first comment to come from my parents, then, was on the costume- "Fabulous waistcoats" adorn all three of the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly Gabriel Dante Rosetti (Aidan Turner). This particular artist also seems to have been handed the long stick in terms of one-liners, and it's clear...

Before heading off to Rhodes with 8 friends, nearly everyone I told about the trip put on a warning face.      Once they'd heard we would be spending a week in the "rape capital of Europe", everyone had their own piece of advice to give- always stay in groups of four, carry rape whistles, tasers, pepper spray, attack dogs, all of which definitely would not fit in your handbag along with a camera and those precious euros. The images the media give you of Faliraki, one small town on the island of Rhodes packed full of bars, clubs and restaurants, are of huge groups of British tourists- all members of the 18/30 club or on some package holiday- having drink poured directly down their throats, staggering along the streets and disappearing into dark alleys together. So this is, partially, what I was expecting when we got out to Billy's Apartments in Faliraki.      We got in at four in the morning, and one of my friends swore she had been smelling the...

"Bristol, it's fucking hot up here"      I don't know about you, but I never expected the sweet-voiced writer of so many heart-achingly honest popsongs to resort to expletives quite so early in the show. But everyone appreciates the informality, and under the hanging seventies-style lamps of his set and with thick persian rugs underfoot, you could see why, by the end, James Morrison's tshirt had a crest of darker grey pooled on either side, and he was visibly gasping for breath in between songs. The strutting must have had something to do with it, too- the skulking from end to end of the stage in tight jeans and leather jacket while his masterful guitarist picked out a solo or an extended introduction to a song. The swings back and forth while hitting the strings of his own acoustic guitar, or the draws of emotion from his neck during the moodier numbers.      Morrison drew a strange mixture of people last night, from pe...