Tag: music

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Secular, Scriptural or the Heavenly Host: 6 Angel Rules

Eleanor Williams seeks Truman Capote’s advice about writing like an angel, but comes up with her own rules for embedding angels in your writing

PUBLISHED ON: 28/06/22

CATEGORY: Author process, Column

Truman Capote, it is said, wrote like an angel. Is there a higher compliment? Writing like an angel is synonymous with ease, with perfection of sound …

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Brittle with Relics: A History of Wales 1962–1997

Chris Moss finds that the oral testimony which comprises this volume leaches both its incisiveness and its energy

PUBLISHED ON: 28/06/22

CATEGORY: Reviews

Interviewing people is not as easy as good writers make it appear. You have to ask the right people the right questions. You have to corral and conniv …

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The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes our Lives

Ed Garland finds fascinating this tour through the musical past, which is also a poignant account of loss

PUBLISHED ON: 28/04/22

CATEGORY: Reviews

The Museum of Portable Sound will bring you into contact with an extensive collection of strange sonic entities. You can listen to an old MiniDisc pla …

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In Praise of Marc Almond, True Advocate of World Culture

Shara Atashi on Marc Almond’s cultural internationalism and his mentor and muse, Vadim Kozin

PUBLISHED ON: 27/04/22

CATEGORY: Column

Beyond a community of devoted fans who follow his footsteps everywhere, a valuable, even precious side to Marc Almond’s work remains a little-known se …

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Hymns and Arias: The Selected Poems, Songs and Stories

Liz Jones is warmed by the selected work of a Valleys folk poet, community clown and balladeer, the performer her generation knew was their own

PUBLISHED ON: 01/03/22

CATEGORY: Reviews

Rugby posts, bedraggled sheep, male voice choirs and redundant colliery wheels. Like the cartoonist Gren (Grenville Jones) – whose funny, affectionate …

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The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class

Dan Bradley discusses the interplay of conflicted identity and depression in cultural practitioners, caused by social mobility, ambition and capitalism

PUBLISHED ON: 26/01/22

CATEGORY: Reviews

In this ambitious and moving work – a hybrid of memoir, polemic and cultural criticism – the US poet and academic explores the ‘melancholia’ of the wo …

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The Tall Owl and Other Stories

Gwen Davies notes that this debut story collection on art, community and estrangement, finds its place in the fairy tale tradition, the oldest and most powerful form of storytelling

PUBLISHED ON: 23/02/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

Ed Garland’s book of criticism, bibliotherapy and memoir, Earwitness, which New Welsh Review published in 2019, raised my awareness of the neglected s …

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Mai by Georgia Ruth

Georgia Ruth proves in her new folk album Mai that she is on a steady upward trajectory

PUBLISHED ON: 15/11/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Evocation of locales that hold a personal connection to artists is a common feature in the medium of music. Rich soundscapes will frequently echo plac …

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My Mother Taught Me How to Sing and Graveyards in My Closet

Alex Diggins finds that these two creative radio pieces, an unabashed celebration of sound, music, motherhood and fulfilling Charlotte Church dreams, are epic as well as bang up to date

PUBLISHED ON: 29/09/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Welsh boys and their mothers, eh? A cup of milky tea, a hunk of barabrith and mammy’s becardiganed cwtch – these have a Proustian ability to melt the …

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Breabach: Taliesin Live, Swansea

Daniel Snipe enjoys cultural depth, intimacy and Celtic revival at a night with this Scottish folk quintet

PUBLISHED ON: 03/06/20

CATEGORY: Blog

On 27 February, I made the trip to the Taliesin Theatre to see the Scottish Folk group, Breabach. Breabach have performed together for fifteen years, …

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