I got teased by Nick Cave last week. A fortnight before his new studio album with The Bad Seeds, titled Push the Sky Away, was to be released , he released a video of one of the songs, Jubilee Street. It stars the English actor, Ray Winstone, whom you may have watched in many movies playing tough, gritty roles. He’s been in tons of movies but my favourite Winstone movie is Sexy Beast from 2000 where as a retired burglar and an ex-convict, he is being menacingly coaxed by Ben Kingsley (who plays a former associate) to pull off another heist. I’ve a DVD of Sexy Beast somewhere and sometimes while looking for other films, I discover it and before long it’s running on my TV screen. Winstone is great in the movie but Kingsley as a violent sociopath is super – a far cry from his role in Gandhi! Read more

You don’t realise how talented a guitarist and bluesman the young Texan, Gary Clark Jr., is till you are into the second song on his first major label album, Blak and Blue. That’s when you see the way he can wield the axe. That’s also when you begin realising why many people compare him to Jimi Hendrix. Clark can make his guitar scream and shriek and do things that take you back to the golden era of blues based guitar rock. He’s also the one of the few contemporary African American blues guitarists to have created a ripple. Most of those in the new wave of great blues guitarists have been white—at least my favourites are (Joe Bonamassa, Derek Trucks, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jack White, Dan Auerbach and so on). Read more

Every other day, I have to lie on my back with a hot compress under my neck in a darkened physiotherapist’s room, a place I am forced to visit three or four times a week because of a combination of factors: 1) rapidly advancing age; 2) a vain attempt to compensate for 1) by loading more plates on the bars at the gym; and, 3) an old niggling problem with the neck, which has something to do with decades of sitting in front of a computer. The lying down period is followed by pulls and pressures, not always gentle, applied to my neck, back and arms by a well-trained therapist. Read more

The box set comprising the entire second season of Treme had been lying on my bedside table for months without being watched. One reason for that was, of course, time. Watching a box set can become an addiction and even if you start by watching the first couple of episodes, before you realise it, you’ve spent the entire night, eyes glued to the television screen, watching the entire truckload of episodes and, in effect, killed any prospect of functioning normally at work the following morning. Read more

Had it not been for an email from a young colleague at work (“Have you heard Hanni El Khatib? The guy is awesome. Very Black Keys. Shazamed it on Californication”), I’d probably have never heard El Khatib. Till he became more famous, that is, and I’ve reasons to believe that he may well become so. Read more

Tomorrow is Monday. No matter how good or bad your weekend was, tomorrow is Monday. It’s been too many decades – far more than I would care to mention – since I left school, but the tendency to malinger on Monday mornings still lingers in me every time that first working day of the week looms ahead, precisely, invariably and without exception. So to dull the blow of Monday mornings, I try to put together a playlist for my commute to work, something to make it easier to get back to the grind. Last week, I surveyed my latest haul of albums, songs and podcasts and zeroed in on something that I hoped would be a good antidote to the Monday morning blues, the new Best Coast album, The Only Place. Read more

I don’t remember waiting for any album as eagerly as I have been for The Black Keys’ new album, El Camino. In October, I heard a track from it, Lonely Boys, and ever since I have wanted to lay my hands on the blues duo’s seventh full-length album. Seven albums in less than nine years is a staggering achievement by any standard but not only have guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney been relentless with their releases, each of which is followed by hectic touring, but on each of their albums, they have tweaked and evolved the minimalist, near-purist blues sound that has become their hallmark. Read more

What’s worse than being jet-lagged? Being jet-lagged and hung-over. So it was last Saturday, around noon, when I woke up with minor explosions going on inside my head, non-stop. Now, I have friends who’ve told me about several remedies for hangovers—ones that they even swear by—such as drinking a Bloody Mary; several cups of black coffee; an Alka-Seltzer or two or three and so on. To be honest, I have tried all of these and more and none really ever worked. So, with my head feeling like it was being pounded from inside, I took a risk and reached out for The Black Keys’ new album, Brothers, and pushed the play button. Joy is what followed. Read more