My latest for The New York Times: a look at the life & legacy of the late great D. Boon. Visited San Pedro to talk to the surviving Minutemen, Mike Watt and George Hurley, as they continue to carry forward the spirit of Boon and the band. Gift link here: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/a...

Special offer: order the four new Nightjars from the website & we’ll throw in two backlist titles. Offer lasts until end of March. Like or respond to this post to get the offer. As well as placing an order obvs.

My first proper publication. Does not yet feel real. But I know it is because I remember what a wonderful time I had writing about Preston Sturges, a quintessentially American moviemaker. Enormous love for BW/DR ❤️🎥❤️

With thanks to @grooves.bsky.social who caused me to dig out one E.C. Ball LP and remind me that I owned another E.C. Ball LP.

Can someone check on Cosmo Landesman? He hasn't written his piece on dating at 64, 66, 68, 70 etc for a while.

One of the things social media has taught me is that people have a depressingly low bar for what they consider to be a good political cartoon*. *This is not a request for political cartoons. Christ, no.

What's the matter? Everything's the matter. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray having a #FilmNoir meeting in a supermarket in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)...

Grace Jones in a dress painted by Keith Haring, at a New Year's Eve Concert, 1987, at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. 📸 : Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

as a French national I would like to make it clear that it's fine and good for us to make fun of Brits, but Americans can however put a sock in it

Best metaphorical cigarette in all of cinema.

We're in a world where a London council is making private renters homeless so it can buy their flats to use as temporary accommodation so it can house Londoners who have been made homeless, sometimes to make way for temporary accommodation (and so on) www.londoncentric.media/i/192109222/...

Inspired by Jan Johansson’s Jazz på svenska LP, two friends, Bo Floor and Siebren Smink, went to a cabin deep in the Swedish woods and recorded this gorgeous album called Äktaro (roughly translates into ‘real peace’) Full of intimate folk/jazz pieces, this is a real treat indeed

Fun fact: Peter Cushing vocalled an anti-war rave record in 1991.

This gets to the heart of one of the many issues I had with Sinners; namely, the fucking music*. *No need to defend Sinners to me. That film has done pretty well all by itself.

The Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan Songbook, put together with their help and blessing ♥️ Couldn’t be prouder of it. And they love it so much it’s going in Tom’s own web store. Pre-order link: acerecords.co.uk/where-the-wi...

Ken Dodd's charity donates £1.5m to Liverpool museums

One of the greatest Irish novels, unpacking the obligations of family & documenting an Ireland of stifling morality, thankfully long gone. McGahern excels at small-town claustrophobia and there is no better chronicler of Leitrim's green lanes. Honoured to write this foreword. @faberbooks.bsky.social

When my jokes get no likes but people DM me instead to say they laughed

“San Francisco, Fly TWA”, by David Klein, c.1958.

This is good.

I love doing this! It had to be discovered. They will simply not use the one you make every effort to guide them to.

One of my favourite things to do with cats is create a cosy space somewhere new in the house and let them discover it all by themselves. Their pride and delight is a joy to behold.

Bought a sealed copy of this for £10 so I can kickstart the 2011 hypnagogic chill wave pop revival all by myself.

'Read another book' says person who has read two books

JKR is a terrible person but can we cut down on the purposefully fallacious refutations? "So you think JKR invented the boarding school novel? Ha! Maybe have a word with 18th century novelist Sarah Fielding..." "Saying JKR invented the magic hat is an insult to TH White!"

Rarely have I seen a more beautiful music biography. Most of them look like they were designed with a trowel. Of course, it helps that Stuart was a ridiculously handsome man.

Profoundly stupid, just a stunner of a choice

Art Taylor’s drumming on this is so hard and up front. I love it.

In a restaurant in Prague and pleased to report that the exercise ring on my watch has just congratulated me on movement. I have literally just walked to the dessert trolley to choose tiramisu #result

“These three records […] feel like three distinct responses to the same underlying impulse: to strip away what is unnecessary, and to see what remains.” For @aquariumdrunkard.com, I wrote some words on three early @davidsylvian.bsky.social solo albums (1984–1987).

Shane Parish :: Autechre Guitar aquariumdrunkard.com/2026/03/25/s... Parish maintains the sparse, glitchy ambience of the originals while placing something else entirely in its place, with just his fingerstyle technique and the ability to, with it, form these ghostly layers of concentric circles

Secret Mall Apartment: a fun but frustrating watch about exactly what it sounds like: some people who built an apartment in a hidden space in a shopping mall boxd.it/dG6WvF

“De rattentaxi nemen” on Dutch Wikipedia nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_ratt...

For this INVENTORY I pretend CSN made a second LP sans Y from their existing stockpile of songs, then split up. It’s called Changes/The Cost of Freedom, features nothing from Déjà Vu and is GREAT. Playlist here: open.spotify.com/playlist/4Xg...

If you have ever wanted to hear me talk about folklore, Forteana and Hookland in an East End pub, this is your chance.

Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales

Amazing hail storm in SE London

OpenAI news: 1. Sora is dead. May the memory of its four-month existence as a copyright infringement machine be a blessing. 2. Disney is pulling out of its billion-dollar investment in OpenAI entirely. Turns out when you try to serve AI slop on a product people pay for, no one wants it.

D IS FOR DISTANCE by Christopher Petit & Emma Matthews goes on UK release 3 April. Saw it last year at Rotterdam: intensely personal, moving, even poetic account of their son Louis (an extraordinarily talented artist) & his battle with epilepsy. Not as daunting as it sounds; do see it if you can.

Jerry Schatzberg, Sharon Tate, 1966.

A nice thing for today: the blue tits have discovered the peanut-feeder-net full of brushed out cat fur that I hung for them, and are now taking fur to use as nesting material 🥹🥹

Headline in today's Broadcast "Gary Barlow takes Jason Manford to New Zealand for ITV Travelogue" feels like the last straw. Stop telling us there's no money to make TV when you're sending dull millionaires on free holidays. FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Who is watching this shit? *eye twitch*

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This is such a great read!! 🙌💙

"What appealed to me in the idea of Summertime? Loneliness. Why? Because I think that loneliness is in all of us, it is a more common emotion than love, but we speak less about it. We are ashamed of it..." #botd David Lean Katharine Hepburn in Summertime (1955).

There can only be one winner. This article still speaks to me 25 years on theonion.com/im-like-a-ch...

In February 1918, when the Zeppelin raids on London began, air raids were still something of a novelty and people had to find refuge where they could. William Nicholson's painting is of the ballroom at the Piccadilly Hotel, one of the first steel-framed buildings in London.