(PIAS) The Jarman brothers’ ninth album adds a little 80s pop sheen to their distorted guitars and confident songwriting, while always sounding exactly like the indie stalwarts
Last summer, the BBC broadcast an eight-part podcast called The Rise and Fall of Indie Sleaze. Its third episode heavily featured the Cribs’ bassist and vocalist Gary Jarman talking about his band’s first flush of mid-00s fame. It centred on their 2005 single Hey Scenesters!, from which the episode also took its name. It was a curious choice: on close examination, Hey Scenesters! wasn’t a celebration of what some people unfortunately dubbed the New Rock Revolution so much as the sound of Jarman and his bandmate brothers poking fun at it.
There was the peculiar dichotomy of the Cribs in a nutshell. They were a band so of the mid-00s moment that they were nearly signed to a record label founded by Myspace. But they always seemed slightly apart from the scene. They were certainly less voracious in the pursuit of mainstream success than contemporaries Razorlight or Kaiser Chiefs: “A cash injection, a nasty infection – don’t regret it,” offers a song from their ninth album, Selling a Vibe, with the pointed title Self Respect. They were more in tune with what their sometime-producer Edwyn Collins called “proper indie” from a pre-Britpop age, when “indie” indicated not a predilection for skinny jeans and trilby hats, but something set apart from the mainstream that viewed the attentions of Top of the Pops and the tabloid press with deep suspicion and balanced limited commercial ambitions against artistic freedom. It was a point underlined by the kind of artists who gave them co-signs. Quite aside from the former frontman of Orange Juice, there was Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, Johnny Marr – who briefly joined the Cribs, co-writing 2009’s Ignore the Ignorant – and the late producer/engineer Steve Albini.
La saison 2 de Fallout est à mi-parcours, avec un nouvel épisode diffusé chaque semaine sur Amazon Prime. Le site officiel de la série affiche d’ailleurs un compte à rebours fixé au 4 février 2026, date du dernier épisode de la saison… ou peut-être celle d’une annonce totalement inattendue.
En colère, la FNSEA attend un « signal fort » du gouvernement et appelle à manifester le 20 janvier contre le traité Mercosur. Le syndicat réclame des mesures d’urgence avant le Salon de l’agriculture.
En colère, la FNSEA attend un « signal fort » du gouvernement et appelle à manifester le 20 janvier contre le traité Mercosur. Le syndicat réclame des mesures d’urgence avant le Salon de l’agriculture.
Somewhere between record label and artist project, False Aralia harks back to microhouse and dub techno with its deep, detailed productions
From San Francisco Recommended if you like Rhythm and Sound, Ricardo Villalobos, Vladislav Delay Up next Double LP from Topdown Dialectic released in spring
False Aralia disappears into a misty gulch somewhere between record label and artist project. It’s ostensibly a label, where each EP has a different named artist, and each sleeve, designed by Nick Almquist, features a different abstract expressionist monochrome doodle. But all the tracks are numbered, not named, and each EP is actually the work of just one producer, Izaak Schlossman (credited as IS), joined by a changing cast of collaborators.
Given his rise during the ego joyride of the 1980s, it’s no shock that Trump’s foreign policy is to emulate that decade’s belligerent cinema
The box office barnstormer of 2026 arrived early this year. A sleazy banana-republic dictator flooding the American streets with blow. The over-the-border Delta Force extraction squad sent to pluck this schmo out of his impregnable fortress. The bronzed tough-talker who’s firing an RPG up the tailpipe of the international rules-based order – but who gets the job done. Call it: Caracas Thunder.
Sounds like a bit of a throwback, you might be thinking. But, judging by his press conference after the US military’s abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump seemed to have finally achieved his dream of directing his own 80s action movie.
(We indulge in) a bit of roll play is an explicit drama about a young disabled man’s sexual expression – and puts uncomfortable questions to its audience
“I’m asked quite a lot why everything I make ends up being about sex,” says Scottish writer and director Robert Softley Gale, artistic director of the company Birds of Paradise. His new production, (We indulge in) a bit of roll play, is designed to provoke frank discussions around sex and disability. “People say the right things and that they support equality, but what if you push that into areas that are less comfortable? Like would you ever date a disabled person? Would you marry a disabled person? Would you have sex with a disabled person? Some would go, ‘Yeah, of course I would.’ But would they? There’s still discomfort in recognising that disabled people have sex lives.”
Softley Gale and his co-writers, Hana Pascal Keegan and Gabriella Sloss, aim to challenge audiences in the show which he is also directing. They hope to counter narratives around disabled people needing charity or pity, and instead show lives that are complex and nuanced. “We don’t see a lot of disabled characters full stop. Seeing them having respectful, enjoyable sex is almost unheard of. By doing that in the ways that we do, we’re being quite provocative,” he says.
Il n'est jamais trop tard pour (re)découvrir le chef-d'œuvre de David Lynch et de Mark Frost. Si vous cherchez à suivre les aventures de Dale Cooper et à résoudre le meurtre de Laura Palmer, vous êtes au bon endroit : voici comment voir Twin Peaks en streaming, en France.
PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, Xbox, PC; Square-Enix This landmark role-playing game remains a revolutionary tour de force
At first glance, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, first released in 1997 and now available in newly remastered guise, does little to separate itself from other boilerplate fantasy fiction. There is a hero, Ramza – an idealistic nobleman with luscious blond hair who cavorts about the medieval-inspired realm of Ivalice in search of high adventure. But quickly, and with narrative elegance, the picture complicates: peasant revolutionaries duke it out with gilded monarchists; machiavellian plots plunge the kingdom into chaos. Ramza must navigate this knotty political matrix, all while experiencing his own ideological awakening.
There is a strong case to be made that Final Fantasy Tactics tells a better story than the landmark Final Fantasy VII (which saw Cloud Strife and a ragtag bunch of eco-terrorist pals taking on the shady megacorporation Shinra). And with our real-world political focus shifting from the looming threat of the climate crisis to the more pressing rise of fascism (though the two are inextricably linked), one can make the argument that Tactics is now also the more timely game.
Les agriculteurs multiplient les actions ce jeudi en France pour protester notamment contre le futur accord UE-Mercosur et la gestion par le gouvernement de l'épidémie de dermatose nodulaire contagieuse chez les bovins. Suivez notre direct
Les agriculteurs multiplient les actions ce jeudi en France pour protester notamment contre le futur accord UE-Mercosur et la gestion par le gouvernement de l'épidémie de dermatose nodulaire contagieuse chez les bovins. Suivez notre direct
Le conseil d’administration de Warner Bros. Discovery a de nouveau rejeté l’offre publique d’achat hostile présentée le 22 décembre par Paramount, à l’issue d’un vote tenu le 7 janvier 2025. Le groupe juge cette proposition « inférieure à l’accord de fusion avec Netflix » et estime qu’elle est « insuffisante » au regard des coûts, des risques et des incertitudes qu’impliquerait un tel accord.
Bien avant Lost ou Severance, un monument de la pop culture posait toutes les bases des séries actuelles. Dès l'aube des années 1990, le réalisateur David Lynch nous livrait ainsi son chef-d'œuvre sériel : Twin Peaks, bien sûr. Un incontournable, que vous pouvez désormais découvrir gratuitement en streaming, sur Arte.
Un DLC de The Witcher 3 pourrait-il voir le jour en 2026 ? La question agite de plus en plus la communauté, alors que les rumeurs se multiplient depuis plusieurs semaines.
This six-part adaptation of the bestselling 2020 novel about a murder investigation is twisty, absurd and bingeable. It’s great January viewing
A woman lies bloodied and twitching her last on the bonnet of a car parked deep in a wood. Another woman arrives home bloodied, gasping with fear and for wine, and starts scrubbing her hands before clearing her flat of – well, everything.
A female voiceover intones that there are two sides to every story. “Which means someone is always lying.” Absolute nonsense, obviously, but it sounds great and more importantly it confirms what we were hoping: that we are in the presence of a glossy, efficient adaptation of a bestselling thriller and it is time to switch off our brains and enjoy (unless you are the type who likes to try to solve the mystery before the characters do, in which case, Godspeed and let me know where you get the energy from).
More horrifying to a celebrity than any scandal is having the public believe they’re down on their luck. Just ask Mickey Rourke
It’s a tough time to be famous in Hollywood, what with dwindling respect levels for movie stars and the inability of anyone under 35 to recognise that George Clooney’s lips weren’t always that thin or that Brad Pitt, at one time, was a thing. Add to this a painful new pitfall for celebrities; not defending their unremarkable offspring from accusations of nepotism or explaining how big a role Ozempic has played in their new look, but rather the small, horrifying possibility that in the event of a bad year, some enterprising fan or assistant will whip up a GoFundMe for them.
Most of us know instinctively that there’s nothing worse for business than admitting that business is bad. Unless you’re a parent soliciting donations to fund your Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome, or have just committed an act of heroism and are rightfully in line for a reward, being the beneficiary of a whip-round by strangers is not a good thing at all. With this in mind, one can only sympathise with Mickey Rourke, the latest dwindling star to fall victim to an act of public charity, who this week was forced to issue an extremely Rourkian statement denying all knowledge of a fundraising appeal set up in his name by one of his manager’s enterprising young assistants.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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The musician’s elegant electropop marked him out as one of the ‘cool French dudes’, before an attempt to literally crash the Song Contest fell badly flat. Now back with an adventurous new album, he talks about the man who stole his identity and why he doesn’t care for ‘good taste’
A few years ago, a stranger stole Sébastien Tellier’s identity. The impostor – sporting the musician’s trademark sunglasses and beard – posed as the Frenchman at fancy parties, nabbed free clothes from Chanel (Tellier used to be an ambassador for the brand), and even held meetings with bosses from Hollywood studios (Tellier has dabbled in soundtrack work). “He [also] took a lot of drugs like ketamine in front of a lot of people,” Tellier continues with perfect nonchalance from his Paris home, sunglasses and beard present and correct. The crime was only rumbled when a confused woman got in touch to tell him she’d been partying with “Sébastien Tellier” in France only to see on Instagram that the real Tellier was playing a gig in Belgium.
This experience has been alchemised into pop gold via Copycat, a sparkly synthpop workout on his upcoming eighth album, Kiss the Beast. “My name you steal it / Hat and success,” Tellier croons for the song’s chorus over a chunky bassline, disco strings and synths that crackle and spark like fireworks. It’s typical Tellier, mixing the serious – things got so bad with the impostor that Tellier was briefly forced to show his passport at the school gates when collecting his two small children – with the playfully naive.
Yet again, minority ethnic players are being booted off in the early stages of ‘The Traitors’. Micha Frazer-Carroll looks at why this is becoming a bleakly predictable pattern
Viewers picked up on a comment by civil servant Maz about a previous job, which would potentially have brought him into contact with another contestant
Un DLC de The Witcher 3 pourrait-il voir le jour en 2026 ? La question agite de plus en plus la communauté, alors que les rumeurs se multiplient depuis plusieurs semaines.
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