Latest news with #melancholy
New York Times
12-07-2025
- General
- New York Times
2 Books for a Hot, Languid Summer
By Sadie Stein Dear readers, During the hot and humid dog days of my childhood, my mother would tell us to dampen our sheets in the bathtub, wring them out and then spread them over ourselves in bed. 'By the time they dry, you'll be asleep!' she would say. Summer makes me blue. I don't know if it's reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder or the feeling of everything slipping by, slipping away, so fast — or is it just that, for a grown-up in the city, it's much like the rest of the year, only hotter? I recommend leaning into the bittersweetness. These books may not qualify as conventional beach reads, but for those of us for whom ambivalence loves company, the following are as complicated and melancholy as a summer's day. —Sadie 'The Go-Between,' by L.P. Hartley Fiction, 1953 Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Telegraph
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
This riveting play about England's demonised working-class is a West End triumph
Beth Steel's acclaimed Olivier-nominated play about three sisters from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire – who josh, stress and wrangle on the wedding day of the youngest, Sylvia, to Polish incomer Marek – has lost none of its winning comedy and searing melancholy, or its relevance in its portrayal of post-industrial Britain, in this well-deserved West End transfer. That said, Bijan Sheibani's production was seen to its best advantage in-the-round at the National's Dorfman last year; its intimacy made everyone feel part of the emotionally volatile occasion – augmented beyond the normal marital jitters by issues related to immigration, job insecurity, relationship breakdown and the long shadow of the miners' strike. There's on-stage seating at the Theatre Royal Haymarket but the cast – impeccably led again by Sinead Matthews as Sylvia, the sweetly vulnerable bride, with some new faces – have their work cut out keeping the main auditorium on-side. Still, it remains a manifestly riveting evening, a testament to the actors' ability to invest larger-than-life ebullience with truthfulness, and to the subject matter's rare immediacy. Steel is looking theatrically at an under-represented white working-class community, from which she herself comes (she grew up in Warsop, near Mansfield). Consequently, there's a palpable authenticity to her family drama – the three sisters and their father Tony, a former miner, each face their own struggles while also quietly grieving the loss of their mother. Further, without trowelling on political points about the so-called Red Wall (Mansfield swung from Labour to the Tories after almost a century in 2017, and has since returned to Labour but also seen a surge in support for Reform), Steel taps into a wider mood of uncertainty, resentment and yearning for change. Once again, I'm struck by her concision – the way glancing exchanges amid the fluttering chit-chat of the big day can hit home. There's no diatribe about Thatcher, but when Philip Whitchurch's Uncle Pete – estranged from his brother Tony ever since the miners' strike – recites the names of closed pits, he spirits up a vanished world, with all its former masculine certainties. Likewise, when Julian Kostov's Marek, the handsome, industrious, socially isolated bridegroom, defends his fellow Poles' work-ethic ('You need to decide if you're a victim or superior because you can't be both'), the tensions around immigration, on both sides, are conveyed so succinctly it's like a slap in the face. Yes, you can see some joins in the script, when the group spar and confront each other, as the booze flows and inhibition slackens. Aisling Loftus's Maggie carries a guilty secret that inevitably rocks her siblings, while Leanne, daughter of Lucy Black's unhappily married Hazel (the third sister), is primed to become a catalyst of upset, too. And yet for all the concerted twists and turns, from pre-nuptial flapping to a final tableau of anguish, the casual complexity of ordinary life predominates: one moment it's coarse humour and cackles, the next a consciousness of immense spans of time, and the mysteries of the universe. Between Dorothy Atkinson's incorrigibly outspoken aunt and Alan Williams' endearingly taciturn father stands Matthews' Sylvia, so hopeful but so fragile, trying to hold everything together; she's all of us, in a way.
Irish Times
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The 10 best Irish albums of 2025 so far
Amble: Reverie (Warner Records/Amble Music) ★★★☆☆ Exactly how Amble have struck such a popular nerve – after less than a year, the trio are already selling out arena-size venues – with what are essentially simple folk tunes isn't a mystery: people love sincerely delivered melancholy. Lonely Island, Mariner Boy, The Boy Who Flew Away, Of Land and Sea, Little White Chapel, and Ode to John are tailor-made for heartstring-plucking singalongs. Robbie Cunningham, Oisín McCaffrey and Ross McNerney have clearly pooled their songwriting skills in a way that leans towards the balladeering side of traditional music. Fans of more disorderly takes on Irish folk – The Mary Wallopers, for example – might raise an eyebrow, but there's no denying Amble's low-key charm offensive. Bren Berry: In Hope Our Stars Align (Mercenary Records) ★★★★☆ Now in his early 60s, Bren Berry was a member of the 1990s Irish contenders Revelino, a supercharged indie-rock band that could make guitars ring and choruses chime just by thinking about them. Come the close of that decade, Berry was approached to work on a new Dublin venue by the name of Vicar Street. Waving goodbye to a career as a musician seemed inevitable, but a few years ago any resignation must have turned to rediscovery. The outcome is a 12-track solo album that takes classic guitar-centric compositions and invests them not only with life experience but also with a sleek blend of Jesus & Mary Chain, REM, Beach House and The Byrds. If there are better songs of the genre than Bullet Proof, Beautiful Losers, Turn on Your Radio and Winter Song, then we haven't heard them yet. [ New Irish albums reviewed and rated: Paddy Hanna, Lullahush, Cushla, Maria Somerville and Danny Groenland Opens in new window ] Curtisy: Beauty in the Beast (Brook Records) ★★★★☆ Building on the promise of What Was the Question, his debut album, from 2024, Curtisy – aka Gavin Curtis – returns with a collaborative mixtape that veers into more sombre narrative territory. Once again working with the producer Hikii (aka Mark Hickey), the Tallaght rapper has created songs whose cinematic qualities are underscored by smart sampling. Curtisy also collaborates with the singer-songwriter Shiv (on Left, Right!) and his fellow Dublin wordsmith Flynn (Drive Slow), but the tone from start to finish is emphatically his. Rob de Boer: Man to You (Bridge the Gap) ★★★★★ If any album released in the past six months reflects strolling along rural footpaths with the fragrance of flowers wafting around you and the promise of a 99 with a flake at the next local shop, then it's Man to You. The musician and producer Rob de Boer – think of him as the sonic twin of blue skies and light breezes – delivers a masterclass in fusion. He brings soul, jazz and contemporary influences – plus old-school rhythms – to bear on a line-up of songs that conjure the hazy strains of John Martyn, Oscar Jerome, Nina Simone and Bill Withers. And pay attention to de Boer's lyrics, which reflect on his sexuality amid religious conservatism and society's ideas of adulthood. READ MORE Matthew Devereux: Keep Sketch (House Devil Records) ★★★☆☆ Matthew Devereux of The Pale follows up House Devil, his solo album from 2024, with a far leaner piece of work. Mostly autobiographical, it allows memories to fly across the decades. We hear of schoolboy fistfights (Government Milk: 'most times it was all just mouth, all over in a second, no messing about'), forays into illegal substances (Drug Stories: 'Lying on my back, high on aerosol, watching the clouds form') and other tales of growing up on Dublin's northside. What stands out is Devereux's uncluttered music, which allows the songs to shine. There's smart Krautrock here (Seven Grams), touches of Being Boiled-era Human League there (the title track) and understated hints of Depeche Mode elsewhere (Government Milk again). The result is a toned-down album from a songwriter who merits more attention. [ New Irish albums reviewed and rated: The Would-Be's, Varo, Curtisy and Pete Holidai Opens in new window ] Danny Groenland: Burning Rome (Self-Released) ★★★★☆ Danny Groenland released his debut album, Love Joints, in 2014, so he's an artist who's in it for the long haul. Repeated listens to Burning Rome unearth layer upon layer of fine-tuned soul/R&B/jazz that revels in the joys of being influenced by the likes of politically motivated artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, and by earworm acts such as Steely Dan. Groenland's lyrics tackle topics such as institutional racism, social division and all manner of other inequalities. The cherry on top is the quality of the satin-smooth songs. Maria Kelly: Waiting Room (Veta Records) ★★★★☆ Maria Kelly 's follow-up to The Sum of the In-Between, her 2021 album, is 'an exploration of the roadblocks, both internally and externally, that keep us feeling powerless and take away our agency'. These barriers include the housing crisis, societal opportunities, dwindling relationships and, perhaps most crucially, Kelly's experiences of chronic pain and the Irish health system's engagement with it (hence the name of the album). Despite the subject matter, songs such as the title track ('I wait to hear my name, I wait to feel okay ... Tell me what's wrong') His Parents' House ('I'd rather be anywhere else, feel like myself, take my time, feel like my life is mine') and Slump ('I'm in a slump and I can't wake up, I've been feeling this way all week') present Kelly's relatable worldview via melodic hooks and nimble indie-pop choruses. Van Morrison: Remembering Now (Virgin Records/Exile Productions) ★★★★☆ Even though he has released six other albums in the past five years, there hasn't been a dependably good Van Morrison LP since the early 1990s. Remembering Now changes that. We can, perhaps, find the source in Kenneth Branagh's 2021 film Belfast, for which Morrison wrote the score and a new song, Down to Joy – the first of many tracks on the album that hark back to the songwriter's autumnal glory days. It isn't Astral Weeks, but there are plenty of astral moments in songs as languorous as Memories and Visions; When the Rains Came; Love, Lover and Beloved; the title track; and Haven't Lost My Sense of Wonder (a rare instance of Morrison referencing one of his songs, in this case the title track of A Sense of Wonder, his 1984 album). At the top of the pile is the gliding nine-minute closing track, Stretching Out. Most of the songs feature the sublime string arrangements of Fiachra Trench. [ New Irish albums reviewed and rated: Van Morrison, 49th & Main, Baba, Liffey Light Orchestra, Kean Kavanagh and A Smyth Opens in new window ] Somebody's Child: When Youth Fades Away (Frenchkiss Records) ★★★★☆ Under the name Somebody's Child , Cian Godfrey has been inching closer to commercial success for some time, yet despite close to 30 million streams on Spotify, there doesn't seem to be as much of a buzz about his music as there is for other acts. That certainly deserves to change with Somebody's Child's ambitious second album, the tracks on which range from festival-fit big moments (The Kid, My Mind Is on Fire, and Wall Street) to slighter but no less powerful intimacies (Irish Goodbye, Time of My Life, The Waterside, and Life Will Go On). Despite sounding not unlike The Killers and The National – he recorded the album with the latter's frequent producer Peter Katis – Godfrey's music is distinctive enough to remain all his own. The Would Be's: Hindzeitgiest (Roundy Records) ★★★★☆ Second chances don't come any sweeter than this. Most of The Would Be's were teenagers when their debut single, I'm Hardly Ever Wrong, attracted the interest of John Peel, Morrissey and several big record companies, in the early 1990s. Fast-forward a few decades and the older, wiser Co Cavan band are still releasing textbook indie pop. That's How It Gets You is an open-topped summer tune par excellence, Stay Tuned is tailor-made for the next James Bond movie, Stupid Little Heart is redolent of The Smiths' best, and Home Is Not a House is a contender for the prettiest ballad of the year. On the horizon: some Irish artists with new albums to watch out for in 2025 July: Sons of Southern Ulster, Cian Ducrot, Poor Creature, The Swell Season. August: CMAT, Kingfishr, Caimin Gilmore. September: Junior Brother, Elaine Mai, The Divine Comedy, Altered Hours, Sprints. October: RuthAnne, Lowli, Beauty Sleep, J Smith.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘Reflecting on this photo, I feel emotional': Karen Weideman's best phone picture
The restored heritage village of Old Petrie Town lies about a 90-minute drive from the farm in Queensland, Australia, where Karen Weideman lives. She and her husband, Michael, were visiting back in 2022 when she took this photo on her iPhone 11. 'The town is spread across 48 acres of parkland, and some of the buildings date back to the 1800s. It has markets, museums and galleries; we love to just wander around, taking in the sights,' she says. 'You're also spoiled for choice when it comes to food; we had some incredible chicken satay for lunch. Then it started raining so we began heading home, but we passed these beautiful old buses on the way. Number 77 was a Brisbane city council school bus from the 60s.' Related: 'The plane I was supposed to be on passed above me': Nima Bank's best phone picture Always on the lookout for new things to photograph, she asked Michael to step inside and pose for her. 'He's for ever patient, and my biggest supporter; he has complete faith in whatever I'm trying to achieve,' she says. She later made some minimal enhancements using the Snapseed app. While Weideman set out to create a melancholy mood but leave the story open to the viewer's interpretation, her own feelings towards what she captured that day have changed with time. 'Reflecting on this photo, I feel emotional, as my husband now battles stage 4 metastatic melanoma,' she says. 'It feels as if he's trapped behind the glass, reaching out to me, and I can't stop him as the bus pulls off and his journey begins.'
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Morgan Wallen Retreats Into Sadness, While His Protégés Party On
It seems like the more melancholy Morgan Wallen becomes, the more successful he gets. In just a few short but smash-filled years, he has become the most prominent and committed miserablist in pop — the contemporary star most preoccupied with failure, and the most adept at turning it into something like beauty. Unlike Drake, who is perhaps his closest analogue, Wallen almost never dwells on his successes. He forever lives in the space just beyond loving himself, and allowing himself to be loved. As a result, even his best and most engaging songs have a somber pallor hovering just over them. On 'I'm the Problem,' his moody and melodramatic fourth album, Wallen is almost unrelentingly despondent. Women are ruining him, and whiskey is rescuing him (by ruining him even further). Some representative moods: 'I just wanna love somebody that don't want me falling apart'; 'Every square inch of this house is as messy as you left me'; 'Too young to feel this old.' It's tragic, concerning and pointedly effective stuff: 'I'm the Problem' is already on track to become one of the most commercially successful releases of the year. At 37 songs and almost two hours long, it's a structural beast, a chart-clogging data dump. But rather than use that grand scale to explore different sonic approaches, Wallen largely digs in to several microtones of weariness. 'Kick Myself' laments the one thing an addict can't ever escape: himself. 'Just in Case' tells a story of never letting anyone get too close. 'Jack and Jill,' a morbid song about a broken couple, recalls 'Whiskey Lullaby,' the unbearably tragic Brad Paisley-Alison Krauss duet from 2004. Songs like these are Wallen at his best — a quietly seething stoic who can't let go of his gift for fluttering melody. Wallen is a fundamentally conservative singer (referring to aesthetics, not politics) in that he rarely pushes his voice past its comfort zone of lightly peeved terseness. That it's so relentlessly tuneful is his greatest strength. On this album, his sonic palette borrows heavily from the pop-rock of the 1980s, which had an undercurrent of light menace cutting through its sensual schlock. Wallen's brokenness is effective — and to many, appealing — in part because of how it aligns with a career that has been pockmarked with self-inflicted personal wounds: his use of a racial slur in 2021; his reckless endangerment plea in 2024, after tossing a chair off the roof of a bar. Which is perhaps why even now, at the commercial peak of his career as a stadium-filling artist, Wallen still makes underdog music. He's a superstar, but still in a kind of exile. That gives the loneliness on this album added dimension. It's both the product of his own choices, and of those who would judge him for those choices. Occasionally, Wallen veers to another topic — say, the true-country literalism of 'I'm a Little Crazy' — but what's loudest by its absence is the sense of playfulness that defined his earliest releases. Wallen first emerged as a mulleted party boy making hip-hop-informed country, in the mold of Florida Georgia Line. On his first two albums, he helped anchor that style at the top of the country charts, not treating the association with rap music as a one-off dalliance, or a tastemaker assignment, but rather the logical endpoint of years of cross-genre flirtation. That instinct flickers here and there on 'I'm the Problem': the pointedly rhythmic singing on 'Don't We,' the brazen attitude of 'Where'd That Girl Go' or the leavened mood on a few songs toward the end of the album, particularly 'Miami,' a hip-hop-inflected updating of Keith Whitley's 'Miami, My Amy' that's begging for a Rick Ross remix. (That Wallen is remaking the Whitley classic at all is another level of provocation.) Wallen is still insistent about how those roots remain central to his music. Last weekend, in Gulf Shores, Ala., he curated the Sand in My Boots music festival as a statement of taste — Southern rap stars like Moneybagg Yo and 2 Chainz alongside country stars like Riley Green and Hardy, with a Wallen performance to close it out. In an interview on Theo Von's podcast last month, Wallen suggested that his time as a genre hybridizer might be coming to a close, but that only means his templates have become open-source, free and available for a whole microgeneration of country singers to adopt for themselves. In some cases, the most innovative takes are coming from the many tentacles of Wallen's universe. Ernest, one of his go-to songwriters, is also a performer of cheeky, historically minded country with a contemporary spin on outlaw sensibility. His rollicking song 'Gettin' Gone,' an ode to the rarefied places just beyond the reach of sobriety, features Snoop Dogg, in a libertine tag team. In the video, filmed in Nashville, Snoop is a game visitor — rapping in a blues-like cadence, doing some air guitar, and blowing kisses out a car window riding down Broadway. 'Gettin' Gone' is both a modern patchwork and a continuation of a decades-old tension in country between mischief and historical faithfulness. That the song is rooted in the structural rigor of the country music of the early 1980s — a time where flash and tradition found an uneasy alliance — is crucial to its charm. By contrast, there's nothing uneasy about the alliance on 'All the Way,' the new collaboration between the molasses-mouthed Texas rapper BigXthaPlug and the young country belter Bailey Zimmerman. Musically, the song is indistinguishable from most modern country — a plangent guitar melody leading the way, followed by the sinister percussive drop of a trap beat. But Zimmerman largely serves as an accent piece here: 'All the Way' is much more a showcase of BigXthaPlug's calmly confident storytelling. (It's been advertised as an early offering from a country-themed EP from the rapper.) The true common ground here is slightly abstract: Dating back to the 1980s, Southern rap and Southern country largely occupied spaces that didn't overlap, even if they shared accents and (sometimes) subject matter. The attitude, pacing and affect of the hip-hop coming from, especially, Houston and Atlanta created a distinct center of gravity that felt foreign both to the hip-hop emanating from the coasts and to the other Southern music of its day. On 'All the Way,' hearing a rapper with such a lustrous Texas drawl sink into a song alongside one of country's twangiest feels like a long-overdue reconciliation between worlds that once eyed each other warily (or, perhaps, with a touch of jealousy). Of all the recent crop of country-rap collisions, Graham Barham's 'Oil Money' is the friskiest, and also the most directly indebted to early Wallen. A Louisiana singer with a boisterous and wry sense of humor, Barham treats this experiment — and it feels more like an experiment than a fully-formed identity — with a cavalier sense of play. He's singing and rapping about a woman just slightly more desirable than he is, and she herself straddles worlds, too: 'She don't need the drip or the whip or the Louboutin / She could look bougie with a Bottomland hoodie on.' It's a classic country trope — a rural ruffian looking to see what life is like on the other side of the class divide. But Barham plays the role both for plaints and for boasts. He's a player, and also a comic, and he's holding down the party Wallen had to leave in the rear view.
