Resolver by Veruca Salt

The very nature of a break-up album is that of catharsis, that journey the artist takes you on from the first note to the last second with the whole gamut of emotions in-between. The music becomes your guide through some intense feelings. Some of the greatest, most critically acclaimed albums ever recorded have been inspired…

The Beach by Alex Garland

Sometimes a book becomes so impossibly huge that the author runs in the opposite direction. The Beach is one of those books. Alex Garland is one of those authors. I remember seeing his debut in Borders, the Glesga branch I spent most of my college years hanging about in. Oh, you could lose yourself in…

Beaucoup Fish by Underworld

I tried so hard to get away from Trainspotting. It belonged to my brother, my sisters, their friends. Somehow, I felt it couldn't belong to me. I was at Cumbernauld High School, still trying to create myself, work out what I liked and what I didn't like. Now, here's the important detail: what I liked…

Tinderbox by Siouxsie And The Banshees

I always knew where to find new music. Sometimes, that new music came from old bands long since gone. As a teenager in search of a perspective grander than what I saw outside the window of a council house in Cumbernauld, I'd find myself turning to music and books to give me something that wasn't…

The author portrait of Dorian Gray

Every author has to do it. It isn't something we can't avoid, and many of us have tried. Sometimes we might even feel flattered that someone cares enough to need it. You see them online, on posters, in brochures, and of course sometimes even in books. The author portrait. That's the official looking photograph of…

Your New Favourite Band by The Hives

Some bands are too fun to be denied. Fundamentally, for me, there's something really exciting about a cool-as-fuck garage rock band. Their music is a loud racket, the sound of my emotions. These bands look cool with their music playing, just as cool when they stand for photographs. The Donnas. The Cramps. The Kills. Black…

We Run The Tides by Vendela Vida

One of the problems I had with Happiness Is Wasted On Me was the question of how to make a coming-of-age novel sufficiently different from the rest. If we're honest, we have to face the fact that all coming-of-age novels are similarly built. The protagonist struggles against life, valiantly battling through their teen years, facing…

Deadlines and Diets

Chocolate makes my clothes shrink, or so I tell strangers whenever I want to draw attention to the fact I've put on a lot of weight. The thing is, I never minded how I looked. Outside a few little insecurities (snaggle teeth, size ten feet, and hairy hands) I felt fine about my appearance. Until…

She died at a party

My sister died at a party, which felt strangely apt in hindsight. She loved a good party. She sat through lots of bad parties too. If she could have chosen somewhere to die, a party would have been high up on her list. That or a beach in Spain. But death is never ever that…

Vibrate You by King Adora

King Adora arrived before quickly vanishing completely, a standout cameo in a really shit film. Though they're gone, Vibrate You is still here, always somewhere close to me. Hands up if you form emotional connections with albums? 2001 was a strange time which demanded strange music made by odd people. I knew I wanted to…