World of more

Compared to our previous (two? three?) separations, this one was remarkably free of histrionics. Neither tears nor angry words clouded the final severing of ties, just a fug of inevitable and knowing sadness that surrounded us as we sat in the quiet Monday night pub and she said the words that despatched me to singledom. Her face normally carries a pale sheen of anxiety when she's about to break bad news; a patina of stress and bottled-up emotion laid over a foundation of worried sleep. Her skin looked healthy this time and there was a previously absent calm certainty in her voice that invested her words with weight and credibility. After a mostly fun year of weekends and nights together, I'd suspected that the next step in our relationship would be make or break. By December, I predicted to myself, we would either be choosing curtains together in Peter Jones or individually working out whether to send each other Christmas cards. We'd not really talked much about the f...

Based on a sample size of one gig and two albums, I am confident in my assessment that the Drive By Truckers are peerless rock gods. Barry introduced me to The Dirty South, their latest album, praising it and playing it on one of our innumerable trips to the hills. It didn't stand out that much alongside all the other folk/rock he subjects me to on those long car journeys but when he offered me a spare ticket to a rare London gig I thought it would make an interesting departure from a normal week night out. At the small and sweaty Camden Lock, in a not-quite-full venue peopled by middle-aged rockers, slightly misplaced London fashionistas and a baffled me, the five Truckers sauntered out unassumingly on stage and then took control of the evening. Every rock and roll cliche came true in the small gap between where I listened slack-jawed and where created their tender and ferocious sound. They played with such obvious enjoyment and drunken exuberance I was converted from dispassio...