Ankle-deep in ducks

1: Speke, memory

To tie in with the inescapable new McCartney album Uncut have published a new issue in their Greats series, dedicated to his long and winding career. I've contributed four biographical sketches, trying to get inside the Macca mind across the decades, at very specific moments in Kintyre, Tokyo, Abbey Road and Glastonbury. You can read my first chapter, swinging low over Kintyre, November 1969, here - and a great deal more in the full issue.

2: Treebound story

Exciting news this week that the magical Italian director Alice Rohrwacher has signed up to direct an adaptation of Italo Calvino's The Baron in the Trees. What a great idea, you think: there's such a deep affinity between their worlds. Can't believe it hadn't been suggested before. In fact, I did suggest it, a little whimsically, when I reviewed the fabulous La Chimera when it was released back in 2024. If any other artists/directors/musicians would like a chat about their future plans, career paths etc, I have very reasonable consultancy rates.

3: Weinstein ruined the robe for the rest of us

May has not been a great month for new films. This week sees the opening of Power Ballad, the latest musical fairytale from director John Carney, not quite as much fun as either you or Paul Rudd want it to be, and Fairyland, a well-meaning but soppy memoir of growing up in 1970s San Francisco with a gallivanting gay dad. If you haven't already caught it, the most fun you can have in a cinema right now is watching Sir Ian McKellen in The Christophers, marauding around his dilapidated Bloomsbury townhouse, hardly bothering to conceal his scrawny octogenarian torso within a magnificently louche trenchcoat, as he tries to outwit Michaela Coel. As a story of doomed patriarchal pride and redemption, it feels very much like McKellen's late, oblique take on King Lear.

4: Run Vera Run

Something to look out for next week, however is Köln 75, which finally gets a much delayed theatrical release in the UK. The film, about the shambolic events leading up to Keith Jarrett's legendary performance in Cologne, has rankled with many professional snobs for its blithe disregard for responsible jazz historiography, but I found it an irresistible rush, doing for mid-70s West Germany what 24 Hour Party People did for mid-80s Manchester.

5: John Cage bubblegum

I briefly met the poet Matthew Welton while I was labouring in po-biz in the 20th century and I was struck that his dark insomniac circles rivalled those of Stephin Merritt. The comparison stuck: like Merritt, Welton delights in a kind of conceptual bubblegum, writing poems you can roll delightfully around your mouth like psychedelic gobstoppers. He has a new book out this week, charting the fugitive sprites of the academic year and you can read an extract, notating midges, snail drool and satsumas, at PN review and a short extract right here...

6: A strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart

It's been a good week for ardent Barthelmaniacs. First the LRB published Alex Cocanos' eyewatering memoir of Harrison Starr, which included tantalising descriptions of Starr's boozy Tuesday lunches with both Barthelme and Pynchon and now Picador has published fluorescent new editions of Don's twin anthologies, 60 Stories and 40 Stories, books that have brought me more delight than practically any other written words of the past 40 years. A new introduction, by fellow Houstonian Susan Choi, is up at Paris Review.

7: Class-war social democracy

There have been many incentives to madness over the past decade, but one of the few things keeping us sane has been the rise of Novara Media, and in particular the work of their specky skinhead host Michael Walker. In the past couple of weeks he's produced incisive, skeptical, wide-ranging longform interviews, on the existential gamble of AI and the rise of China, that make much of the rest of the media feel undercooked. His work in itself is reason enough to take out (or increase) your monthly sub.

8: The missing boy

It was strange, but not all that surprising to see a tribute to Vini Reilly listed among the delights of Harry Styles' Meltdown at the Southbank this June - especially since Dev Hynes (another Meltdown performer) sampled "Sing To Me" on last year's Essex Honey, and seemed to confirm the Durutti Column's arrival as a fixture on the international hipster summer chillout playlist. But it was a heartening bolt from the blue to hear actual new Vini music arrive this week, complete with a visualiser like a shimmying Bridget Riley.

9: J'vis comme un célibataire de trente balais

We no longer seem to have much of a spring in the UK, rushing instead straight from darkest winter to infernal summer, but number one in my fleeting spring 2026 hit parade was 'ça pik un peu quand même' by Franco-Korean singer-songwriter Miki. The song is a treat, but the video, by Émilie Tronche, is a thing of wonder, featuring basketballing teens leaping into the sky like wobbly lovestruck gazelles. (HT to Animation Obsessive, btw, reliably the finest content on Substack, for the introduction.)

10: Remember, green’s your colour

Joint number one in the TTT spring 2026 charts, since you're asking, was this vernal breeze of a tune, Tasha, Jamila Wood and L'Rain coming on like a 21st century Roches covering Gwendolyn Brooks. We keenly look forward to Tasha's new album, out next month, to keep us cool through the summer.