The Sigla Blog

So the 2006 Mercury prize shortlist has been announced and so begins the usual round of “I-can’t-believe-they
-left-that-off” (the Morrissey album, Tunng’s album, Adem’s Love and other Planets, Kate Bush’s Aerial) and the “well-I- wouldn’t-have-picked-that” grumbling (see Thom Yorke, Muse and Sway.
The list also includes Arctic Monkeys (why not The Kooks instead?), Editors, Isobel Campbell […]

This week, a bridge in Paris was named after French writer and intellectual Simone De Beauvoir. According to this piece about Pont Simone de Beauvoir, critics claim that it “bears some resemblance to a discarded bra or an outstretched woman’s arm”.
While it’s timely to honour de Beauvoir in this way, it’s worth mentioning that […]

First it’s the musicians-and-writers overlap, now it’s writers and footballers. This article by Roger Cohen compares Zinedane Zidane to the protagonist of
Albert Camus’ 1942 novel The Stranger. It’s worth a read and Cohen kicks things off by saying:

“In The Stranger, the existentialist novel by Albert Camus, an alienated French-Algerian man, Meursault, kills an Arab on […]

Last night, in a slightly camp, dimly-lit room with metal walls, the last Mystery Train was playing out with sign-off themes and farewell narratives. In the studio, John Kelly was upbeat but ruminative. Bono rang for a chat. Elvis Costello also called and castigated the powers that be for their bad decision in axing the […]

Tune in to the very last broadcast of John Kelly’s soon-to-be missed Mystery Train on RTE Radio 1 at 8.30pm. The decision to ditch the show is a real loss for music and for eclectic broadcasting. It’s also interesting to note that there’s no mention of it being the last show on the Radio 1 […]

More sparse blogging of late due to the wonky arm situation, but it’s vastly improved this week, thanks to some green mussel lip extract (thanks Simone!). I’m trying to avoid the computer when I can but I have some posts I wanted to put up today, as well as some bits and pieces, so I’ll […]

There’s no doubting the creative overlap between musicians and writers, (notwithstanding Salman Rushdie’s inexplicable appearance on stage with U2) but this week two articles particularly struck me. First up, was a piece in The Guardian by historical novelist Michael Faber (he of The Crimson Petal and the White fame) on working with Brian Eno. It […]

METRIC
Live it Out
***
If Manchester was the musical Mecca of the late 80s, Toronto is the noughties, anti-baggy equivalent. After Stars and Broken Social Scene, come Metric, whose singer Emily Haynes light up the latter’s ‘Swimmers’ with her sultry lilt. Their second album opens disarmingly with ‘Empty’, all quiet guitars and brushed drums before it explodes […]

1904 was a pivotal year for Irish literature. Joyce’s Ulysses is set in 1904; Patrick Kavanagh and Molly Keane were born; and the death occurred of Kate Chopin, an American writer born of Irish stock, who in her relatively short life wrote one of the most enduring and controversial works of feminist fiction.
The book, […]