Ents

It’s been hard not to hear the likes of Ellie Goulding and Marina & the Diamonds, even amongst the massive hullaballoo of hype in the UK. Both have been tipped as the new leaders of a pop movement started by the likes of Florence & the Machine and La Roux last year. In the process they’ve managed to bag themselves a host of awards without having released an album between them. They’ve been bundled together but Qsorts of pop star. While Marina & the Diamonds is the unabashed, outspoken queen of her pop realm, Ellie Goulding is the cute and shy folk-girl turned accidental star.

I first saw Yeasayer in 2008 for their first UK show and absolutely loved it so, just to warn you, I am something of a fanboy. At Thekla on a Thursday evening there was much to enjoy about the harmonising indie-pop group: if you want to get a roomful of people to reinforce white-dancing-stereotypes then you really can’t go far wrong with newest single ‘Ambling Alps’. Curiously, the band seems to have gotten another member, at least during live performances, perhaps to accommodate their more synth-led sound of their second album, Odd Blood.

It's the end of radio
The last announcer plays the last record
The last watt leaves the transmitter
Circles the globe in search of a listener
Can you hear me now?

Not my words but those of Steve Albini, front man of Shellac and one of the world’s most famed producers.

The Good

Ladies and Gentlemen, sit back, pour yourself a whiskey and exhale deeply before hearing this news: Avatar only won three awards and was resoundingly beaten in the Oscars by The Hurt Locker. It might not be much, but as Mike Patton might say, it’s the small victories, the cankers and medallions, which keep us going.

Peter Brook’s newest (and possibly last, he is 84) play is called 11 Or 12 and it is on at the Barbican Centre in London. For those of you who don’t know, Brook is just about the most important figure in theatre since Bertolt Brecht, who completely revolutionised theatre in the first half of the 20th century while bedding lots of mistresses and somehow getting away with it.
Brook released his first, and probably best remembered, book, The Empty Space, in 1968. The oft-quoted line from this book has become the mantra of site-specific theatre companies all over the world: