The Dubliner Magazine

Fashion Forward

In 2012 ...

... we'll ALL be wearing shoes made out of squashed duck faces.

Kitt Sticks

We were a bit sore that David Kitt's brilliant The Nightsaver got overlooked on the Choice Awards short list (not like our esteemed columnists Misters Duckworth and Lewis! Have you figured out what that last column was about yet?). But Kittser must have been smiling safe in the knowledge that he'd just helped record a whopper of an album with one the finest and most enigmatic indie bands of the past 20 years... Here he is bopping away with old pals and new band mates Tindersticks on their new single Black Smoke. It's a total banger!

The Dubliner: Music

Field Music
Measure ★★★
Too Long By Half

There’s something irresistible about bands containing brothers. The three Wilsons in the Beach Boys; the ever-rowing Gallagher brothers; I’ve even got a soft spot for Dire Straits, thanks to the days when there was more than one Knopfler in that group of headband enthusiasts.

The Brewis brothers are the main movers in Field Music and, with the help of a revolving cast, have been for four albums now. Measure is their first record back after a two-year hiatus during which they both released solo albums: David’s excellent School of Language and Peter’s far more brooding The Week That Was, which managed to channel Peter Gabriel – when he was edgy. Two more critically-acclaimed gems under their belts, it seemed the Sunderland siblings could do no wrong.

Going Gaga

Every month our music editor, Rory O’Keeffe, takes aim at a different titan of Popworld. This month, it’s diminutive pop tartlet Lady Gaga. Let battle commence!

I’m getting this feeling of late that the Apocalypse has already happened and I somehow missed it. I look around and things feel mutated, worn out, a touch radioactive. I see people greet the world’s many horrors with jaded indifference; as if they’ve adjusted to it. And in a sure sign of societal collapse, the famous are now chosen by gladiatorial conquest. I must have missed something truly catastrophic. I bet it was cool.

Lady Gaga neatly illustrates this subtle mutation. She’s just wrong enough to be fascinating, grotesque but intriguing, like extreme plastic surgery in bright sunshine. Hard to look at, harder to look away. She understands this; she is of this modern world and knows the ways and desires of its inhabitants. Why else would she willingly, enthusiastically perpetuate the rumour that she has male genitalia? 

She’s a figment of her own imagination, no question – we’ll deal with that in a moment. More importantly, she reflects our distorted, highly-polished world. She wishes to make it clear that she is a mutant, oh yes! She’s tasted the cocks and vaginas and narcotics – she’s got back story. Dark indulgences and sexual twitchiness are not unusual amongst pop people, nor accountants for that matter, and we all love a bit of strange. What makes me queasy is that her music is vacuum-packed and sterile, catchy but easily cured. Remove the persona, the costumes and the prominent crotch action, and the songs turn to glitter and blow away.

iGod

And the Lord said Let's Turn Off the Light

Boy, is anyone else beginning to get the feeling we might have backed the wrong horse religiously back in the 16th century?

While Il Papa excoriates the Irish clergy for their "abominable acts"  and claims that saving humanity from homosexuality is as important as saving the rainforest from destruction, British church leaders are encouraging their flock to give up their iPods for Lent to cut down on carbon emissions.

Other suggestions from the clerical hipsters for the run up to Easter include eating by candlelight (romantic!), cutting up meat thinner to save cooking time and flushing the toilet less (not quite so romantic).

Beats all that hairshirt business Matt Talbot and the lads used to faff around with, doesn't it?

Rent!

Down a bit, down a bit...and stop!


After falling 19% in 2009, it looks like rents in Dublin might be levelling off. Across the rest of the country too.

We won't tell your landlord if you don't tell ours.

I don't know much about art, but I know what I bike...

Art and design clever people Candy have teamed up with long time Dubliner two wheel heroes Rothar to bring the following competition...

ME & MY ROTHAR COMPETITION
To celebrate bicycles, environment, local artists and community, we are looking for funky, colourful, inspirational and beautiful art. Anything with a bicycle theme and a small paragraph about it is welcome. The rest is up to you, we trust your creativity and inspiration!

http://www.candycollective.com/index.php?/news/news/rothar/

and to help  you on your way, here's a video of a very young Frank Zappa 'playing' his bicycle...

How to Make a Drama Out of a Crisis

Victoria Mary Clarke’s guide to being a VVVIP

One of the many advantages of being a VVVIP is that what seems like a crisis for an ordinary civilian is often a golden opportunity for those of us who are celebrities, and not mere mortals. Even the really awful things that happen to one – truly mortifying and hideously embarrassing things – are opportunities to increase one’s profile by selling the stories, and of course the pictures. In fact, the more embarrassing the crisis, the more likely it is to sell; there’s a silver lining in any situation.

At first, the idea of making money from your misfortunes takes a little getting used to. Indeed, it goes against every normal human instinct, when confronted with an embarrassing or ‘shameful’ situation, to talk openly about it to strangers. For instance, if your cosmetic surgery has gone horribly wrong, leaving you with a chimpanzee’s bottom where your mouth used to be, your natural desire is to buy a balaclava and never leave the house again. But while it is important to act coy at first and pretend to be traumatised (never be premature when it comes to courting the media, it ruins the thrill of the chase), it is equally important to have your press agent negotiate a satisfactory deal for the ‘exclusive.’

Few crises are too bad to be newsworthy. If you are knocked down by a police motorbike and have a leg amputated, be smart enough to hold a press conference at your hospital bedside. If you are in a boyband and have a terrible drug problem, or if you’re battling a junk food-addiction and a massive belly, you might want to keep these things private. But as long as you talk about rehab and make sure to relapse later, you can generate a lot more interest by speaking out.

Forget It, Jake. It's The Odeon

The right way to watch a movie

Every Thursday night the Odeon on Harcourt Street is showing classic movies. We went to see Chinatown last night, had a blast, and wholeheartedly recommend you try to make one of the upcoming noir screenings (Casablanca, LA Confidential), or even the season of Irish films in March. The Quiet Man on the 11th? GAME OVER.

They even bring your drinks over to your table. DOUBLE SUPER GAME OVER.

Book Off!

Well, someone had to say it.

Not only does writer Julian Gough boast bookish good looks that are oddly similarly to our Art Director (photos available on request), but he also boasts a website on which he lets rip opinions like these:

Indeed, I hardly read Irish writers any more, I’ve been disappointed so often. I mean, what the FECK are writers in their 20s and 30s doing, copying the very great John McGahern, his style, his subject matter, in the 21^st century? To revive a useful old Celtic literary-critical expression: I puke my ring.

And the older, more sophisticated Irish writers that want to be Nabokov give me the yellow squirts and a scaldy hole. If there is a movement in Ireland, it is backwards. Novel after novel set in the nineteen seventies, sixties, fifties. Reading award-winning Irish literary  fiction, you wouldn’t know television had been invented.

Is he right? Either way, you can read the whole thing here.