Happy new year and welcome to 2014. On a personal level 2013 was wonderful: Bridie and I got married in San Francisco and travelled up the coast to Vancouver, which was truly wonderful, absolutely perfect. Artistically it was a hopeless year spent waiting for other people to do things. I felt like I could move neither forwards nor sideways. My own fault too, for getting in that situation. And why couldn’t I get on with something else in the meantime? Anyway, lessons learned and mercifully the Spearmint album is now ready to go and will be released on 12th May. It is a bit different to previous efforts (‘sounds the same to me’ you will probably say). And we will do a couple of gigs around that time too. More details soon. Here, about a year later than planned are our favourite films of 2012. 2013 will follow in a week or two once we have managed to catch ‘The Great Beauty’, which is proving strangely elusive for us, the moral being ‘go and see it at the time’. As ever this is a joint list, so some of mine are lower than they would be, and some of Bridie’s are higher than they would be! ‘Margaret’ really sneaked up on both of us, staying with us long after watching. I think it’s a bit of a classic that’s been missed by a lot of people. It’s so ambitious in a quiet way with wonderful cinematography of New York and fabulous use of music (the thing I notice most in a film). It’s admirably ‘not straightforward’… there must be a word for that… what is the opposite of a synonym? An antonym. So what is an antonym for straightforward? Complex? Difficult? Indirect? None of these are quite right. What I mean is that, like in life, sometimes random things happen which then determine the path your life takes – it’s not that things are complicated, they are linear, but just not straightforward. I can understand why you might not like this film, and it is quite upsetting, but we loved it. I think it had been in the can for a few years, and preceded Paquin’s stint in True Blood. Looking back at this list now, I wonder why the Woody documentary, American Mary and Haywire ended up so low, as I remember them fondly. I remember the year at the cinema as one of being constantly confronted with close-ups of Apple laptops – do people really have to take that money? Presumably this is starting to recede now… I also remember 2012 being a year of Rodriguez: first the albums, then the movie, then the live show. 1 Margaret 2 Marina Abromavic The Artist Is Present 3 The Master 4 Amour 5 Frankenweenie 6 Holy Motors 7 Searching For Sugarman 8 Take This Waltz 9 Moneyball 10 Sightseers 11 Looper 12 Sound Of My Voice 13 Moonrise Kingdom 14 The Grey 15 Martha Marcy May Marlene 16 God Bless America 17 The Hunger Games 18 Dark Shadows 19 Cabin In The Woods 20 Magic Mike 21 Cafe De Flore 22 The Muppets 23 Beasts Of The Southern Wild 24 The Pact 25 Young Adult 26 Shame 27 Berberian Sound Studio 28 The Hunter 29 About Elly 30 Margin Call 31 The Descendents 32 Silver Linings Playbook 33 Hit So Hard 34 Lovely Molly 35 The Raid 36 Once Upon A Time In Anatolia 37 Woman In Black 38 Argo 39 Cosmopolis 40 Life Of Pi 41 War Horse 42 21 Jump Street 43 Ruby Sparks 44 Gregory Crewdson Brief Encounters 45 Sing Your Song 46 If A Tree Falls – The Earth Defence League Story 47 Killer Joe 48 Twilight Breaking Dawn 2 49 Jason Becker Not Dead Yet 50 The Inn Keepers 51 Chronicle 52 Ted 53 Big Miracle 54 Woody Allen: A Documentary 55 Kid With A Bike 56 The Imposter 57 The Dark Knight Rises 58 Tiny Furniture 59 American Mary 60 Skyfall 61 Jack Reacher 62 Your Sister’s Sister 63 Into The Abyss 64 Snowtown 65 Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World 66 Carnage 67 Damsels in Distress 68 Boy 69 Five Year Engagement 70 This Must Be The Place 71 The Woman In The Fifth 72 Now Is Good 73 Paranorman 74 Sinister 75 To Rome With Love 76 The Vow 77 The Island President 78 Red Dog 79 Haywire 80 Queen Of Versailles 81 Pitch Perfect 82 House AT The End Of The Street 83 Tabloid 84 Madagascar 3 85 Dark Horse 86 Forks Over Knives 87 Detention 88 Like Crazy 89 Gone 90 Rock Of Ages 91 Hope Springs 92 Headhunters 93 We Bought A Zoo 94 Marley 95 2 days In New York 96 Safety Not Guaranteed 97 Cane Toads The Conquest 98 Red Lights 99 Rampart 100 Les Giants

(Soundtrack: Django Reinhardt “Legendary”, Rodriguez “Coming From Reality”) We had our first Spearmint rehearsal in a while a couple of weeks ago. After all this time some idiot arranged it for an early start in London on the first day of the Olympics. It all turned out fine though, in fact Ronan was the first one there! Jim and I arrived to find him trying to leave, panicked by getting there first, so we grabbed him and led him back in. Bradley Wiggins wasn’t available, so we had to make do with Andy Lewis. Great to see everyone and they are all on really good form. So we are now going to start pulling the new album together. There comes a point in the writing process when the album itself assumes a personality, takes over and declares itself ready. Or to put it less pretentiously: there are now enough ideas knocking around for us to get started. It has been a bumpy few months, but I am now working in Brighton, and Bridie and I are buying a place down here. Which is exciting! Currently in the admin stage though, which is not exciting. But I can’t wait for us to get in there. Bridie caught a preview of that documentary about Rodriguez (Sugar Man) and it blew her away, so she bought his two albums from around 1970, and I must say they are brilliant. Have been listening to them a lot alongside the Dexy’s and Field Music records, which are both fabulous. I read quite a lot at the start of the year and found some new favourites. “No Beast So Fierce” is by Edward Bunker. He played Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs and I think he also wrote that amazing speech Jon Voigt does in Runaway Train (I love that!). This is a gritty semi-autobiographical novel from 1973. It is a brilliant piece of writing, so sharp and entertaining, you can see why Tarantino would love it. I also read another couple of the Martin Beck crime novels from Sweden in the 60s and 70s. There are ten of these and each one is based around a different aspect of Stockholm life. They are nearly fifty years old and yet read like they are written today: so concise and modern, so cliché- free. They clearly inform all crime writers since, and you wonder why anyone else bothers as these books already exist. I am looking forward to seeing Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, even though it seems ridiculous. Neil loaned me “Rat Girl” by Kristin Hersh: what an amazing book. Weird to read somebody writing like it feels inside my own head. “At Swim-Two-Birds” by Flann O’Brien made me laugh out loud and gave my imagination a bloody good work-out. As did a couple of Philip K Dick books. I like closing a book and thinking “What on earth happened at the end there?”. Also read some great stuff by Sarah Waters, Iris Murdoch, Irvine welsh, Kafka, and PG Wodehouse. The pleasure of finding a book and carrying it with me for a week or two hasn’t dimmed since childhood. It’s not just the writing that stays with me. The cover and the feel of the paper and the smell of the paper and the look of the typeface are a big chunk of the experience. I see people on the train holding those machines that help you to read. I can see the weight benefits if you are travelling round the world but other than that they are not for me. Every book you read you’d be carrying the same piece of machinery and reading the same looking text. I know I would have a tendency to give up on a book if it started in a difficult way (which lots do), whereas a commitment to the printed book makes me plough through the early section. It nearly always gets good once you are into it. It is similar with music. For me, a big part of the pleasure of albums has always been the sleeve and handling the vinyl itself. I found that diminished with CDs and it fell away completely with itunes. If I play a vinyl album I always listen to the whole thing, usually a couple of times. On itunes I feel more like listening to odd tracks rather than an album. There is also a horrible urge to move onto the next song once you get halfway through the current one. Almost like the excitement is about what is coming next rather than what is happening now. I worry a bit about what will happen with movies when home viewing is totally online. At the moment at home we make ourselves watch more interesting films because they get sent to us by post or we choose them at the rental store. I suspect that when we want to watch something online after a hard day’s work, we will be tempted to opt for comfort viewing, some Ashley Judd or Kurt Russell thriller (nothing wrong with them obviously!), rather than a slow drama from Turkey or an ensemble piece from France. Yet when we have the physical discs sent to us, we make the effort to sit and watch the slow dramas and ensemble pieces, and they pretty much always turn out to be really good, and just as entertaining. We are a little behind with this year’s movies, so need to do a bit of catching up. Must see “Ted”. Have re-watched some classic older stuff though, including “Once Were Warriors”, “Now Voyager”, “The Thin Blue Line”, “An Affair To Remember”, “Cutter’s Way”, “Mary & Max”, “Rolling Thunder”, “Mildred Pierce”, “Boiler Room”, “A Mighty Wind”, “Sabrina”, and “Heathers”, all of which are superb. Banged my head rather dramatically in the night and spent yesterday with a headache worrying I had done some serious cranial damage. Finally Bridie made me ring the NHS helpline and they scared me, so I set the alarm for 2am last night to make sure I wasn’t slipping into a coma. Went back to sleep until 4am when as usual the baby seagulls on the rooftops all pipe up and make one heck of a racket. The headache has gone today anyway. Being tall, I have to take care as it is easy to bang my head. Bridie reckons I should just wear a helmet all the time, and she may be right.

Another fabulous year for movies. It is such a pleasure being able to go to the local cinema or rental shop and see bold, thrilling movies like “Kill List”, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”, “Take Shelter”, “Rare Exports” or “Essential Killing”. I love that such cliche-dodging, thought-provoking, wrong-footing treats are so easily accessible. If we did not like a film from the year, then it is not mentioned on the list. No value in being negative. I hate critique, but I *love*recommendation. I know that not all these films will be to everyone’s taste, yet I find it hard to believe that you would not enjoy movies like “Beginners”, “Who Took The Bomp?”, “Animal Kingdom”, “Submarine”, “The Big Picture”, “Rare Exports” or “A Lonely Place To Die”. I didn’t expect there to be four Ryan Gosling films in our favourites, nor three with Christopher Plummer, nor three with John Goodman, nor two in the top twenty made separately by a husband and wife, nor one written by a husband and wife team. nor so many monkeys, goats and dogs… A bumper year, but In the end “Blue Valentine” remained our favourite, in fact grew and grew on us. Not always an easy watch, but so pure, so romantic, so painful and so true – ace performances, a brilliant soundtrack and wonderful end-credits too. 1 Blue Valentine 2 Beginners 3 Take Shelter 4 Who Took The Bomp? 5 Kill List 6 My Dog Tulip 7 Essential Killing 8 Midnight In Paris 9 Animal Kingdom 10 Drive 11 Submarine 12 Little White Lies 13 Attack The Block 14 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 15 The Artist 16 A Separation 17 Rise Of The Planet of The Apes 18 The Future 19 Senna 20 The Skin I Live In 21 Melancholia 22 The Inside Job 23 The Big Picture 24 Le Quattro Volte 25 Project Nim 26 Rare Exports 27 Tyrannasaur 28 A Lonely Place To Die 29 Bridesmaids 30 Red State 31 Limitless 32 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 33 Romantics Anonymous 34 Mammuth 35 Easy A 36 Potiche 37 Baghead 38 Crazy, Stupid, Love 39 T.T. Closer To The Edge 40 Barney’s Version 41 World’s Greatest Dad 42 We Need To Talk About Kevin 43 50/50 44 The Guard 45 True Grit 46 The Way 47 Julia’s Eyes 48 Meeks’ Cut-Off 49 The Resident 50 Water For Elephants 51 Ides Of March 52 Howl 53 Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol 54 Rango 55 Last Night 56 Cold Weather 57 Never Let Me Go 58 The Loved Ones 59 You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger 60 The Adventures Of Adele Blanc-Sec 61 Black Swan 62 Living In The Material World 63 A Small Act 64 Hanna 65 Seconds Apart 66 Daydream Nation 67 Tree Of Life 68 Source Code 69 The House Of The Devil 70 The Lincoln Lawyer 71 Point Blank 72 Incendies 73 The Rum Diary 74 How Do You Know 75 The Fighter 76 Just Go With It 77 Nenette 78 Trust 79 Insidious 80 Horrible Bosses 81 Super 8 82 How I Ended This Summer 83 Tucker And Dale Vs Evil 84 The Company Men 85 Fair Game 86 H2Oil 87 Rabbit Hole 88 Super 89 The Mechanic 90 Hobo With A Shotgun 91 Johnny English Reborn 92 Stakeland 93 Blitz 94 Gasland 95 His And Hers 96 Life In A Day 97 Oranges And Sunshine 98 Beautiful Lies 99 Bad Teacher 100 Everything Must Go

(Soundtrack John Coltrane “Lush Life”) Top notch Le Tigre event here in Brighton on Saturday night, very refreshing and inspiring. In fact, I might get in touch with Riots Not Diets and offer my services as a support act. I am sure they will be delighted! Yes, we have been in Brighton for six months now, which has flown by. It has been a difficult time in some ways, but the town remains as brilliant as ever, and the perfect place for vegan/veggie lefties to settle. The music, theatre and film scenes are great and the pubs are (rather too) excellent. I have been working in London, but am looking for something locally. I have done four solo gigs so far. The first in Leeds was hard going, but I was happy just to get through playing solo and survive it (thanks Mark). The second in Brixton with A Little Orchestra was better, and had some moments I was genuinely proud of (thanks Ian). The third in Lille was fantastic, my first living room gig, and the perfect way to play solo, because people are obliged to sit and listen! (thanks Nicolas) The fourth, in London, had some good moments (thanks Simon), but I can’t really expect folk to listen attentively to very quiet stuff in a pub on a Saturday night – all learning for me… I will continue to play the odd solo show, as I do feel it is leading somewhere. There is something about being totally exposed, with just the songs to work with that appeals to me. Nothing to hide behind. Meanwhile, we have been writing for the next Spearmint album. Jim and I have written quite a few songs together, and Ronan has created a set up whereby he can add drums at home and then mix the tracks. So far he has just worked on a couple to establish the process. I am hoping to go over there next week and sit with him to nail one of these tunes. Would really like to get the album out next year, but I feel it is only half written so far, so work needs to be done. We need to love it, or there is no point. Bridie and I are watching a lot of films at the moment, ramping up our top 100 of the year. Saw Miranda July’s “The Future” last week, with a nice Q&A, and it is great, darker and more akin to her writing than the last film. Other favourites so far include “Blue Valentine”, “My Dog Tulip”, “The Inside Job”, “Attack The Block”, “Tyranassaur”, “La Quattro Volte”, and “Midnight In Paris”. Have read some great books this year too: “The Laughing Policeman” by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo, “Tony & Susan” by Austen Wright, “The Little Stranger” by Sarah Waters (who did another good Q&A recently), “Under The Net” by Iris Murdoch and “The Lover” by Marguerite Duras amongst the Lee Child/Peter James/ Ian Rankins and the Bret, Murakami and Donna Tartt re-reads. Also read “The Count Of Monte Christo”, and the first volume of Sherlock Holmes, which are both superb. I hate the way I write favourites and a squiggly red line appears under it, telling me I am spelling it wrongly. Why did America take our language and then willfully get 1% of it wrong? Can I change this on the laptop so it works in English? I worry that people who use spell-check are learning to spell certain words wrongly. As I say, it is very easy to be Vegetarian or Vegan in Brighton, which is a treat. I have been vegetarian for thirty years now, and hover somewhere between it and veganism. I have got rid of milk now. After all, drinking the birth milk from another beast is a disgusting idea, yes? And the way they keep the cows pregnant and giving birth all the time, just so they constantly produce milk, but then they kill the male offspring is obscene. The thing is, you grow up being told that you need this stuff to be healthy, and then when you look into it, you don’t, it is all just a marketing campaign by the companies who make money out of selling milk. I am reeling from the success of my album – I didn’t think an album could sell so little, or be so poorly received. I guess I set out to make an album that takes at least four or five listens to get into. All the albums I have really loved over the years are like that: they sound bad on the first listen and then gradually open up until you love them and get years of pleasure from them. So my double-album will never get good reviews, after all what reviewer would listen to it four times (or even once?). Oh well, I am proud of it, it’s got some of my best stuff on it. I hereby award it a 5-star review, simply because it is the album it was intended to be. I can’t ask for more than that. I remember we got a similar reaction to “A Different Lifetime”. It’s tough, and you have to bounce back, and move on. Which is exactly what I will do.

(Soundtrack: Gene Ammons “Bad Bossa Nova”, The Arcade Fire “The Suburbs”) One year ago we moved to Leeds, with the intention of getting away from London and being closer to my mother. It was great to be back here – I grew up near here, and I felt transported back to my days of coming into town as a teenager to go to gigs or record shops. Back then it had an addictive Red Riding grimness to it that is largely gone, but I still feel echoes of today. It was a perfectly bleak place to lose my teenage self in and to watch Joy Division, A Certain Ratio, The Bunnymen and the like as a kid. Last time I lived outside London, it was also under a Conservative government. This can feel akin to at best “being ignored”, more often “talked down to” and at worst “insulted”. It reminds me how easy it is to hate London and its seemingly self-serving inhabitants once you are elsewhere in the country. Turn on the radio and hear token “regional” accents raving about the weather *in London,* or open a magazing and read national bar and restaurant reviews of places that are almost all *in London *. We used to love to listen to the Arts show on Radio 2, but there is no point at the moment. They should rename it “The London Arts Show”, or better still broadcast it on Radio London. Most of the culture in this country happens outside London, so why not reflect that? Perhaps all the northern towns and cities and spaces in-between should bound ourselves together and call ourselves a city. A city called “The North”. After all, that is all London is – a random collection of disparate towns and villages separated by green spaces and bundled together under the name “London”. “The North” would be a much bigger and more impressive city than “London”. Eventually, the power would shift up here and folk in the old capital would learn how that feels. I love this city, but it just hasn’t worked out for us here. Work is thin on the ground for a start and is getting worse with the government cuts. Additionally, “local jobs for local people” is followed as a mantra to an almost bigotted extreme that Tubbs and Edward would feel uncomfortable with. Some cities welcome talent from outside and that helps them move forward and ultimately create more jobs for locals, but not here. It seems folk are happy if the ship just sinks, as long as the ship is full of “locals”. So the town excels at staying pretty much the same while Newcastle, Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool charge forward. I love this city, but who knows its identity, its famous landmarks? Most other cities have a building or bridge that you can immediately associate with them. I would say that Leeds Town Hall is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world (see photo), so why not shout about it? I love this city – it has an incredible array of other beautiful buildings, like The Corn Exchange, Kirkgate Market, The City Varieties, The Parkinson Building, The Grand Theatre, The City Museum, Kirkstal Abbey. Unfortunately they are masked by the most random selection of ugly modern structures you will find anywhere, as though nobody has had the strength or pride to keep the beauty of Leeds intact. The town sometimes seems like a boxer on the ropes, head down, taking punch after punch, preferring to carry on like this as long it is left alone as much as possible. I love this city and its wonderful parks like Roundhay, Bramham, Temple Newsam, Meanwood and Golden Acre. The River Aire and the Leeds Liverpoool Canal provide some excellent walks. The Yorkshire Dales are easily accessible and are some of the most gorgeous places on earth: surely Ilkley Moor is *the *most wonderful place on the planet? I love this city and it is a great place to come for a weekend: excellent bars, restaurants, and shopping. Perfect for a Hen party or ten – in fact you can seeing them lying on the pavements in the wee hours of Sunday morning; every Saturday night is like New Year’s Eve in Reykjavik. I love this city and its marvellous film festival (the second largest in the country) and it is lucky to have a cinema like The Hyde Park Picture House. The National Film Museun in Bradford is a bus-ride away too, and is a genuinely great day out, as well as having fabulous programming. I love this city and its thriving band scene that prefers to keep its lights under bushels. How many bands can you name from here compared to, say, Manchester? The town does not shout about the bands that do come from here – there is a whole area in the City Museum devoted to them, but the names you would probably associate with Leeds are not even mentioned. There are some great venues here: The Brudenell, The Hi-Fi, The New Roscoe, The Well, The Wardrobe, The Uni and a really good smallish O2 in a church. I love this city and the way on each bit of spare grass you will find a horse or two tethered, keeping it trim. And yet, too many Gentlemen’s clubs, too many white meatheads stuffing substandard Greggs pasties into their mouths and being “harmlessly” abusive. I love this city. That is why I worry for it and its contradictions. I happily made the new album here and, to me at least, it has a strong sense of this city about it. I will always come back to Leeds, but for now, we need to get out.