Darran Anderson Journalist Profile

Articles

Quests in Time and Space: Jem Finer on The Pogues and his 1000-year Longplayer

3 weeks ago | thequietus.com | Luke Turner |Darran Anderson

What will life be like in 1000 years? Will humans still exist? Will there be a recognisable London? Such are the idle thoughts that flow to mind as I stand on Trinity Buoy Wharf, downriver from the City, upriver from the Thames Barrier. It’s hard to visualise how much can and will change in such a span of time. 1000 years ago, this harbour landscape was primarily marshland, with what locals there were fixated on the threat of Viking attacks, portentous comets, Messianic returns and the end of days.
Quests in Time and Space: Jem Finer on The Pogues and his 1000-year Longplayer

3 weeks ago | thequietus.com | Luke Turner |Darran Anderson

What will life be like in 1000 years? Will humans still exist? Will there be a recognisable London? Such are the idle thoughts that flow to mind as I stand on Trinity Buoy Wharf, downriver from the City, upriver from the Thames Barrier. It’s hard to visualise how much can and will change in such a span of time. 1000 years ago, this harbour landscape was primarily marshland, with what locals there were fixated on the threat of Viking attacks, portentous comets, Messianic returns and the end of days.
Three Album Run: How Krautrock Never Bettered Can's Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi & Future Days

1 month ago | thequietus.com | John Doran |Darran Anderson

Three Album Run is a new series on tQ where we explore the best unbroken run of LPs in different genres. This month we open with krautrock but if you want to suggest a genre for a future essay please email [email protected] under the heading Three Album Run. The full rules are at the foot of this feature. All cities are strange, in different ways and extents. Cologne is a place of time slippages.
The Absolute Shit: Coil's Scatology Revisited

2 months ago | thequietus.com | Noel Gardner |John Doran |Darran Anderson

Britain’s only desert. Steam from a train passing by. A nuclear power station dissolving in the mist. The lighthouses, vast sentinels. Maritime objects, scattered. A ship graveyard. The shingle tumbles underfoot towards the shoreline. It would be actual suicide to swim. You thought you knew the sea but it is moving like you’ve never seen before, sideways, violent, completely deranged. Sea deities are often the gods of sunken treasures.
Anna Akhmatova’s Bravery

Dec 31, 2024 | city-journal.org | Darran Anderson

A solitary icon hung in Anna Akhmatova’s Leningrad apartment, the story goes—a portrait of her younger self sketched in Paris, decades earlier, by Amedeo Modigliani. In more than a dozen studies, the starving artist had drawn her as if she were a sensual figure in ancient hieroglyphs. The other portraits had vanished, lost during the tempestuous year of the Russian Revolution. Other than the barest of furniture, little else adorned her flat. She was there, alone, when the bombs began to fall.
Say Nothing's empty empathy

Dec 3, 2024 | unherd.com | Darran Anderson

CultureIRANorthern IrelandSay NothingThe TroublesTVUK Ever since Nic√©phore Ni√©pce took a snapshot from a window, overlooking the rooftops of Sa√īne-et-Loire, in the 1820s, we‚Äôve been living, and lost, in the kingdom of the image. With the development of photography, cinema, television, and the internet, the written word‚Äôs primacy has been gradually surpassed by pictures.
The Lonely Street: John Cale’s Island Trilogy, 50 Years On

Oct 18, 2024 | thequietus.com | Daniel Dylan Wray |Patrick Clarke |Darran Anderson

Busy Bee liquor store, El Paso. A young man walks in from the rainy evening and orders a bottle of whiskey. The proprietor, Delta Richard Pinney, goes to retrieve it from the shelf. When he turns back, there’s a .38 Special pointed at him. “Give me all the green money” the stick-up man orders, as he has a dozen times before, all over the country. But this evening his luck has run out. The man holding the revolver goes by the name of Alvin Krolik.
Deep Deep Down: J Spaceman & John Coxon's Music for William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton

Oct 17, 2024 | thequietus.com | Bobby Barry |Darran Anderson

Head south in the US, the cliche goes, and things start turning biblical. Keep going into the Deep South and things turn surreal. There’s God-fearing country but beyond that, there’s a place where even God starts to warp.
Forget Blur v. Oasis, the True Heart of Britpop was the Satanic Plummet of Dog Man Star

Sep 30, 2024 | thequietus.com | John Doran |Darran Anderson

It’s the late 1650s and these are dark days in England. As many as 200,000 people have died in the civil wars and their aftermath, including a now decapitated king. The regicide and Butcher of Drogheda, Oliver Cromwell is also among the dead, but his corrupt puritan regime will joylessly stagger on for a while longer. The theatres are still shut, no sports are permitted. Drinking is frowned upon and many inns have closed. Cursing, immoral dressing and working on the Sabbath are gravely punished.
Michel Houellebecq is literature's Lucifer

Sep 25, 2024 | unherd.com | Darran Anderson

CultureFranceLiteratureMarxismMichel Houellebecqnone According to folklore, somewhere in the Southern Carpathians there’s a university called Scholomance that’s run by the devil. Students are taught how to conjure spells, command the weather and ride dragons.