This is a slightly extended version of the review that appears in today’s Nottingham Post.   Willy Vlautin likes his songs to speak for themselves. Richmond Fontaine’s new album is a song suite that the band play in full during this two hour show. ‘The High Country’ has some narration, provided by guest vocalist Amy Boone, from The Damnations (replacing Deborah Kelley on the album), but most of the sad story of love, loss, derangement and escape comes through the songs. Willy doesn’t give us any recaps. He does tell us how he started writing the album when he was woken at 4.30am by a logging lorry. Less convincingly, he insists that Bing Crosby is one of his patron saints (‘I know he beat his…

Yesterday we launched my fortieth novel, Secret Gardens, in the allotment at the back of our house, in Bagthorpe Gardens. These allotments, along with Nottingham’s Hungerhill Gardens (where the novel is set) are the oldest in the world. We’re lucky to have one. For health and safety reasons, not to mention the risk of having to cram everybody into the house if it rained, I couldn’t invite as many people as I would have liked, but please join us for a virtual book launch today. Raise a glass, eat a cake, and, most of all, please buy a copy of the book. (Yes, it’s a bit cheaper on Amazon, but they don’t have it in stock yet. That said, I’d really appreciate any Amazon reviews…

Late blog this week as we just spent 27 hours in Manchester, where we saw the opening of 11 Rooms, the group show at Manchester Art Gallery, where Marina Abramović’s naked crucified woman was the final and most memorable room we saw. In the first, a guy tried to exchange my hat for a stale croissant. I think the swap shop concept needs a bit more work before it becomes a work of art, or he ends up with anything decent at the end of the day.   At the Whitworth, we happened up Atom Egoyan’s amazing installation, which appears in hardly any of the publicity and is accompanied by his 2002 film of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. 35mm film spools out of a side…

I’m appearing on the free Saturday at this year’s Lowdham Book Festival, the twelfth and second since they lost Arts Council funding. Despite the reduced funds they have a terrific line up. My only complaint is that all my mates are on at the same time. For, while I’m in a marquee with Karen Campbell and Danuta Reah, talking crime you could also be watching John Lucas talk about his brilliant 50’s memoir, John Clark discussing his wonderful graphic novel Depresso (which I wrote about last year), or poet Greg Woods launching his new collection.  I won’t be in the least offended if you don’t come and see me.   Before that, on Monday, in St Mary’s Church, there’s the first ever East Midlands Book…

The third Arctic Monkeys album, ‘Humbug’, was a disappointment, and the gigs accompanying them were too. Unless, perhaps, you were stood at the very front. The band seemed unable to adapt to playing in arenas. The set was badly structured, with too many plodding rockers. Sheffield’s finest seemed determined to eliminate a large part of the audience they’d built up. After seeing this brilliant gig in 2007, I’d dragged my partner along to see them at Nottingham Arena. She was severely underwhelmed, as was I. So why am I going to see them again, in my hometown, in a huge tent, a week tonight? Because it’s a big Sheffield event, sure, but also because their new album Suck It And See, out on Monday, is…