Bigmouth

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE (even though it’s Saturday). As BBC4 dedicates a evening to The Story of Ready Steady Go! we ask just what it was that made the bob-haired Cathy McGowan modfest the platonic ideal of youth TV? Plus alien gross-out horror in a new movie adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s Color Out Of Space and Radiohead’s sonic masseur Nigel Godrich returns with his micro-supergroup Ultraísta,  Fr...

DON’T CALL ME BLANCA: Does BBC1’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s race-inversion counterfactual Noughts + Crosses work as drama as well as thought experiment? New albums from “queen of screwing up” Soccer Mommy and Toronto-based megapop torch singer U.S. Girls. And a lonely teen girl discovers her Hulk-like superpower is… incipient lesbianism? That’s I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix.  Legendary...

BLAME IT ON THE COOGAN: Does Alan Partridge’s alter ego acquit himself better as a thinly-veiled pastiche of charmless retail plutocrat Sir Philip Green in Michael Winterbottom’s gaudy comedy Greed? Or as an even-thinner-veiled version of himself in the final series of The Trip with Rob Brydon? (Food notes: this time it’s Greece). We talk to guest Daryl Easlea – writer for Record Collector, Mojo,...

After the great ANDREW WEATHERALL’s untimely passing, we assemble Weatherall-watchers Anthony Teasdale and Peter Paphides to appreciate the life, legacy and inspirational madness of Lord Sabre, the polymathic Oscar Wilde of acid house. Plus… UNSUNG HEROES OF CHIP SHOP: Pete’s marvellous, hilarious and moving memoir Broken Greek, on how pop music changed – and saved – the life of a son of Greek imm...

HOME ALONE: Is Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-scarfing class-battle nerve-twister Parasite really as good as they say?  POSTHUMOUS POETICS: There’s another version of Gil Scott-Heron’s final album I’m New Here out. Makaya McCraven jazzes it up into We’re New Again. What are the pros and cons of the collab beyond the grave? MEMOIRS OF SHOEGAZING GENTLEMEN (AND LADIES): What does the vast new compilation C90...

It’s crime fiction week! We talk to Mat Osman of Suede about his genuinely excellent debut novel The Ruins, and our old Smash Hits/Select colleague William Shaw about his spectacular new career as an author of superior crime fiction. Plus, does much-lauded new chase movie Queen And Slim deliver on its promise as the Black Lives Matter Bonnie & Clyde? New albums from day-glo ice queen of the rave L...

This week, presenter of radio, podcasts and Thronecast Jamie East and Lydon/Tricky biographer Andrew Perry descend into the BigmouthCave. On the menu…  THE ONCE AND FUTURE CRINGE: Curb Your Enthusiasm is back after three years. Does the comedy of squirm still work in a more censorious age? And how does Larry David stay away from caricaturing himself?  CARRY ON FOLLOW THAT CAMPBELL: Former desert b...

This week, TV oracles Julia Raeside of The Guardian and Michael Hogan of the Telegraph join Andrew and Siân to read pop culture’s spiritual aura. Submitting to past-life analysis this week…  BLING ME THE HORIZON: Can phoner-in of broad and basic comedy roles Adam Sandler rediscover his hidden talents as an actual thesp for avant garde diamond business thriller Uncut Gems? And is this the tensest m...

Dance music guru Ralph Moore of Mixmag and well-dressed journo-about-town Justin Quirk join Andrew and Siân on the Pools Panel of pop culture. This week: BABYLON BERLIN: Recorded in the German capital, ‘Hotspot’ completes the Pet Shop Boys’ trilogy with superproducer Stuart Price. Are we in for sad bangers, what’s the laser quotient… and can you still rave in your seventh decade? (Spoiler: yes). C...

ROCK ON, TOMMY: Why there’s more to Sam Mendes’s nerve-shredding trench epic 1917 than total WW1 immersion horror.  TYPE AAARGH! POSITIVE: Was Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Dracula update too kitsch, or not kitsch enough? BRING YOUR DAUGHTER TO THE CHART RETURNS SHOP: The lost art of the Stealth January Number One.  REN & SKIMPY: We gather the nerds for final judgment on Star Wars: The Rise Of S...

Blackstar! Inside No.9! Arrival! St Vincent! Kill List! Robyn! Shame! Bicep! All these and more feature in our end-of-decade bloody assizes. As the Clanging Chimes of Doom bring us to the end not just of 2019 but the TwentyTeens™ themselves, what were our favourites of the decade that’s about to cash in its “chips”? Guests Jude Rogers of The Word and The Guardian and Eamonn Forde of The Final Days...

Do we hear a middling mid-2000s rock track or is it time for the best, the best, the Best of 2019?  Joining Andrew and Siân to reveal their favourite films, albums, tracks, and other things are musician, yogi and Mojo writer Sophie Harris, and King of the Music Writer’s bingo board and Craig Finn fan Michael Hann. Among the top dogs are Booksmart, the screwball teen comedy turning the genre on its...

It’s a bass-heavy podcast as we welcome dance music guru and Bigmouth regular Joe Muggs and photographer Brian David Stevens to talk about their book Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Sound System Culture. Pre-order it here and get free badges! Plus… CEMETARY GREATS: Mysterious dubstep person Burial compiles all his free-range experimental EPs under the name ‘Tunes 2011-2019’. How does this enh...

Devon is a place on Earth: West Country sons Coldplay release their new album Everyday Life - a concept album of two halves, Sunrise and Sunset. We discuss this disparate mix of stadium-bothering plus acoustic wibblings and why the hell Nietzsche is on the cover. I Beg Your Parton: Dolly Parton's new Netflix series Heartstrings brings to life eight of her songs and features Julianne Hough, Kathlee...

Trawling through the muddy flats of pop culture this week…  HELLO, I MUST BE COHEN: Leonard Cohen's posthumous album Thanks for the Dance is released this week. Compiled by his son Adam, did Leonard have more to say after 2016's You Want it Darker? POP YOUR CHERRY: "You can't sing, you look awful, you'll go a long way..." Can Charli XCX's new girl band Nasty Cherry make it big in the Netflix show ...

Revealed in the tea leaves of pop culture this week…  LEST WE FUGGEDABOUDIT: Does Martin Scorsese’s elegiac epic The Irishman put the capstone on mob movies forever? And who’s best in it: Bobby de Niro, little Joey Pesci, Al ‘The Animal’ Pacino or Stephen ‘The Scousefather’ Graham? ME AND MY SHADOW: Trip hop originator DJ Shadow rails against the digitally-saturated present on ‘Our Pathetic Age’....

Spelling themselves out on the ouija board of pop culture this week…  DÆMON DAYS: Does the prestige BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials do justice to one of the greatest and most philosophically challenging books in the young adult pantheon? Or what? MUSWELL HILL COMMUNICATION: We finally got that Michael Kiwanuka album. Does it deliver on the modern epic soul front? REDRUM H...

Tumbling out of the pop culture piñata this week: THE BECH-DEATH TEST: Does the all-new all-female Terminator Dark Fate bring the much-rebooted “killer robots from the future” saga back online? Or is the story trapped in a repetitive subroutine? HOLY JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY: Kanye West has got God, but what will God think about that? And will Mr West’s holy-rolling gospel-powered album Jesus Is King...

Bubbling out of the pop culture percolator this week…  NO SQUID PRO QUO: Has Damon “Lost” Lindelof done justice to Watchmen – the Citizen Kane of wearing your underpants outside your trousers – with his “remix” of the concept for HBO/Sky? And do we have any idea of what the hell is going on? KEEP IT DUSTY: What guest Lucy O’Brien discovered as she updated her definitive biography of Dusty Springfi...

Inside the tumble dryer of pop culture this week…  REPENT, HARLEQUIN! Is there more to Joaquin Phoenix’s turn in the hit Joker origin movie than half Taxi Driver and half King of Comedy? The movie has divided critics – will it divide our panel? FIRE UP THE QUATRO: Does the biopic of original beleathered rock vixen Suzi Quatro convey the supercharged excitement of her doing Can The Can? And do we a...

On this week’s pop culture perusal fest…  THE GREAT BARRIER, GRIEF: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ extraordinary new album Ghosteen leaves our panel floored and yet somehow elated. How did he turn unimaginable personal pain into something so beautiful? THE ROAD OF XS: Many saw Michael Hutchence as just a likeable accumulation of rock star clichés – but was there more to him and to his personal tragedy...

It’s a special Bigmouth this week as we’re joined by Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys AKA Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark as they mark their 40th anniversary with their ‘Souvenir’ box set – half greatest hits, half Pharaonic treasure trove of all the things they’ve made (including the really weird stuff). ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY AND SIÂN AND ANDREW: Dive in for a fascinating conversation that...

We’re joined by Guardian telly and podcasts queen HANNAH VERDIER and Telegraph/Guardian TV writer MICHAEL HOGAN to read the tea leaves of pop culture. On the agenda…  FROM A VESPA TO A SCREAM: What it is with men and mod? Sky Arts’s Mod Weekend opens a window into the world of Weller worshippers and digs into the history of the thin-lapelled cult that won’t die. Is the world ready for Bradley Wigg...

This week Mojo mag news editor IAN HARRISON and Empire/ScreenWords/Jewish Chronicle film writer LINDA MARRIC join us to feel the bumps on the skull of pop culture. On the agenda…  CRISPY AMBULANCE CHASERS: Early Factory Records relics go on show in London as the Chelsea Space’s Use Hearing Protection exhibition displays the artefacts bestowed with the first 50 FAC numbers. What set Tony Wilson’s e...

This week we have special guests Miranda Sawyer - author of Out of Time, she writes for the Observer, appears on Radio 4 and much much more – plus ex-Word magazine writer and Bob Dylan boffin James Medd to discuss the pop culture issues of the day. PALE AILES: Will Sky's The Loudest Voice plump Succession as the latest Citizen-Kane-for-our-times? Starring Russell Crowe as Fox News founder Roger Ai...