Miscellany

Songs often seem to call out in the absence of a lover, whether that person is next door or in the next town over or even waiting somewhere 'Beyond the Sea'. I want you, I need you is what so many love songs tend to say whether you're really quite close and perhaps have already been intimate or whether the object of your desire remains frustratingly out of reach. frances chang though captures something more rare, not longing nor quite a sense of absence in presence...

'It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends'. Taking her title from the essay by Joan Didion which closed the author's debut collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem, this week Jess Williamson introduces her new album A Mile South of Heaven by way of the single and record opener 'Goodbye to All That'. The singer duly notes: Didion's essay is about leaving New York after eight years and how 'it's distinctly possible...

A couple of weeks ago Downbeat published their August issue and with it their 74th annual critics poll of the best in jazz. The list is a lengthy undertaking in so far as it contains 62 categories, which invite critics to vote for a mix of established figures and rising stars. The headlines for this 74th edition of the...