Gin & Tea: An Evening Of Indulgence

Newcastle is a place that you wouldn’t entirely expect to have exciting places to have a drink, both alcohol and non. As with most cities, it has plenty of chains such as Tiger Tiger and Starbucks (placed so close together that if you walked at an average speed with a coffee you bought at one, it would still be way too hot to drink by the time you reached the next). But if you’re willing to step off the beaten path and head down some of the side streets, instead of instinctively going towards Sinners as a result of your treble hungry Sat Nav for alcohol, there are some real treats to find and, as more places begin to open, the amount of choice becomes more of a treat than a burden.

And here lies the beginning of one of the more middle class evenings of my life, containing both new places and an abundance of choice. To begin with, we take a trip to Pleased To Meet You. Tucked away on the excellent Highbridge, which is slowly becoming the place to go for all things a little bit different including The Stand Edinburgh’s little sister, a spin off gallery space run by the Baltic, and a number of independent boutique stores, Pleased To Meet You is Newcastle’s first gin bar. Well, at least the first modern gin bar. 

After the recent successes of The Lady Grey and Redhouse (an excellent pie and ale pub I highly recommend), the Ladhar Group have decided to take over what was the Old Turk Hotel and transform it completely with a postmodernist feel; all exposed pipe work alongside plush seating and a copper topped bar. As we entered the bar on opening day, just after clocking off time on a gloriously sunny afternoon, the place was teeming with business men and women just getting off from work, students looking for somewhere to relax during exam season, and curious passers-by. The atmosphere was buzzing but the lack of seating was somewhat a problem. However, it is possible that some of it was removed so as to make room for the expected rush on opening day.

The unique selling points of PTMY is the abundance of gin on offer. With over 50 varieties from your standard Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire to the more exotic, such as Sweden’s Right Gin, the choice is spectacular. The choice is so large that you get to decide how you want your G&T, with a range of tonics and garnishes to go alongside your choice of gin. The problem with choice, however, is it’s difficult to find exactly what you want. Luckily for us, the complimentary bar simply provided us with Tanqueray gin along with our choice of tonic and garnish (BottleGreen’s Elderflower and Pomegranate with a grapefruit garnish was extremely refreshing in the early evening sun) but, other than the four recommendations on the menu, there appears to be no real help in deciding the best and most interesting combinations with no real details about the different gins. Of course, perhaps the staff might be more attentive to suggesting combinations when the bar isn’t so busy, and it’s understandable that they were swept off their feet with the demand for gin on opening night so, hopefully, on a regular night, the staff can be your guide through the extraordinary amount of choice available.

For those not too keen on gin, there are a wide range of whiskeys available (around 4 pages worth in the menu) and, luckily, there is some detail on the different types making choosing a whiskey to your taste a lot easier. There are also plenty of cask ales and craft beers on offer, bottled and from tap, and at a reasonable price, making PTMY a viable threat of BrewDog’s monopoly on the craft beer market in Newcastle. Although, as PTMY’s heart is firmly with gin, there isn’t the same amount of love given to the craft beer which you will be able to get from a trip to BrewDog, where the staff seem to know all their products inside and out.

No food was available to try on Friday, but the menu looks diverse with a real gastro feel to it; littered with pulled pork on brioche and crab linguine. To me, however, PTMY doesn’t really feel like somewhere you would go primarily to eat. Of course, trying the food might change my mind but it feels exactly like what it was on Friday evening; a place to go after work on a Friday to celebrate the weekend with a range of gins to get through every visit, which it does with aplomb.

Immediately following this, we took a trip a bit further out of the centre for a special preview of a new teahouse that could give Campus Coffee, its closest rival, a lot to be worried about. Quilliam Brothers’ Teahouse is situated in what used to be a disused building belonging to Newcastle University close to the Great North Museum. A family run business, led by the three eponymous Quilliam brothers, they produce a vast variety of teas to suit everyone’s taste: from Rooibos to Oolong to your ordinary Breakfast tea with a number of different flavours for each.

Like Pleased To Meet You, the emphasis here is on variety and there is a lot to try. Luckily for us, the staff are knowledgeable of their products and the menus provide a nice insight into what is in each tea. This makes the decision of what to have all the more easier, and with plenty on offer, it’s always nice to try something new and find a new favourite. After trying a number of teas on the Friday evening, I ended up returning again for Saturday lunch, when the place had officially opened and was instantly drawn back to the Ice Age and Tingly Fresh Masala, both refreshing teas that were perfect for the glorious sunshine outside (even if it had poured it down earlier that morning).

Admittedly, things were a bit haphazard on the Saturday but, as with Pleased To Meet You, opening day jitters are always to be expected. No salads were available apart from the Coq au vin salad, which scuppered my plans to have a Waldorf salad, and my second choice, a falafel and hummus stottie, didn’t come with any garnish (the staff did later realise this and apologise). The falafel, too, was a little too chewy for my tastes; I prefer my falafel to be of the more crumbly, almost melt in your mouth variety. However, it is hard to complain about the portion sizes which were huge. Definitely good value for money either way. The rest of the menu is rather interesting for what many would perceive to be a café, with interesting stotties (including one with heaps and heaps of pulled pork on top) and a large breakfast selection.

The teahouse itself is wonderfully situated, halfway between the main university and the university’s library, making it a perfect destination for many students. The huge floor to ceiling windows mean the place is mostly always lit by natural light in the day, and also add a fantastic people watching element from pretty much anywhere in the café. Downstairs houses a small gallery is tea inspired art (often painted or sculpted entirely out of used tea bags) and a cinema. The owners want the place to be not just another café, but a place for people to come and experience art and just talk. This, too, is the inspiration behind the 1am closing, making it perhaps the latest closing establishment that does not serve alcohol giving you a nice alternative to Sinners and perfect for a late night break during an essay all-nighter.

It was extraordinarily busy at Saturday lunchtime, with people often unable to find seats despite the wide number of tables and chairs available, proving that there is a market for this and, accompanied by friendly staff and an excellently diverse range of teas on offer (plus coffee and soft drinks for those not too swayed by tea), there’s real potential for Quilliam Bros to take off.

Images of Quilliam Brothers' Teahouse courtesy of Georgie Moule

Live at Leeds 2013 review [May 27th 2013 in The Courier]

Leeds has an extraordinarily vibrant music scene, perhaps the most vibrant outside of London. Its music venues are frequently ranked amongst the best in the country and nearly every band touring in the UK makes at least one stop in this fair city, sometimes even two stops.

The idea that Leeds is The Music Lover’s City is most obvious when May Bank Holiday Weekend rolls around each year for this weekend is when the music lovers finally grasp control of the city during the spectacle that is Live at Leeds. 80% of the people you see running around the city centre are most probably going to be those in a rush to get from one end of the city to the other in order to see the most hotly tipped band this year. It sounds stressful, but it’s this rush that makes Live at Leeds so exciting. Plus, what better reason to head home for a bit of a rest the weekend before my dissertation was due in!

With an unrivalled number of acts in its seventh year, both big names and the local ones, it looked like the Saturday would be a busy one, with queues winding down the street from City Museum just to pick up wristbands. At that point, I’m sure pangs of fear shot through everyone that they might not get in to see the band they most wanted to see but it appears that the Live at Leeds gang have managed to streamline the experience and queues were moving at a decent speed. Plus, if the queue was too big, there was plenty else going on throughout the city at the same time.

Kicking off the day as I do most visits to Leeds with a trip to Nation of Shopkeepers, it was an encouraging sight to see the place buzzing with anticipation just after lunch time. I’m here to see Night Engines who were sold to me in the guide as a Talking Heads influenced, garish shirt wearing 4 piece. Channelling Davids Bowie and Byrne, they’re the perfect start to the day with their blend of foot tapping rhythms, hip shaking grooves and a lot of yelping. Managing to grab the attention of the notoriously apathetic early crowd who are just killing time until the bigger bands later on is no mean feat, but these guys certainly did that with some, albeit slightly dubious, style.

Deciding to stick around in the newly refurbished Nation of Shopkeepers, now feeling much more open in the stage half of the venue, to see On an On at 4, I waited with anticipation for Nadine Carina, a song writer from all over the land (half Italian, half Croatian, born in Switzerland and living in Liverpool) with a penchant for swooning and whirling melodies. Unfortunately, whether this was a sound problem or a crowd problem, I just couldn’t hear anything beyond the occasional grandiose finale to a track despite the persistent attempts of a few in the crowd to make everyone shut up. Luckily, no such problems exist for On an On who manage to dazzle the crowd with a mix of back-and-forth boy-girl-boy vocals and fuzzy riffs, main single The Hunter taking the crowd by the throat and leading them on a synth-driven trip through the sunshine.

With a brief bit of respite to grab a bite to eat, it’s up to Leeds Met for London Grammar, a band I had heard a lot about but never really heard; the packed out room a good sign of things to come. What we get is Florence Welch-esque soaring vocals alongside something which wouldn’t find out of place alongside Zero7 or Massive Attack’s back catalogue; a dark and brooding concoction made only more intriguing by the restrained drum and bass fuelled finale. What followed this was one of my most highly anticipated bands of the day, Wolf Alice, and rightly so. Although the room was nowhere near as the packed out as it was for London Grammar, perhaps not yet well known enough to fill a room like Leeds Met The Stage, they throw their scuzzy rock sound around into it fills every inch of the room, single Fluffy enrapturing the crowd with its balls to the walls ferocity. Even the softer songs, such as Bros, manage to keep the crowd in a headlock.

After a last minute cancellation for AlunaGeorge last year left me a tad disappointed (although it did mean I could head over to Leeds Met to see Savages on a whim who, at the time, I had never heard of but now can’t escape), they returned this year to place O2 Academy, ironically again at the same time as Savages. After finishing the BBC Sound of 2013 Poll in second place, it seems like this duo can take on anything, including a surprise cover Montell Jordan’s number one single This Is How We Do It. With a number of hit tracks under their belt, AlunaGeorge get the crowd moving, the whole place becoming one big party with Aluna Francis as our master of ceremonies leading us all in a merry dance. And boy can she dance, captivating the crowd as she glides across the huge Academy stage, taming the stage to her command.

All this seems, on paper, like the perfect warm up for what is to come next: Rudimental. Now, I don’t consider myself a drum and bass fan at all but, whack some brass over the top and get one of the most promising songwriters in pop to help you out (MNEK, an 18 year old guy from Lewisham that’s had his hand in the best The Saturday’s song All Fired Up and surprise number one for Duke Dumont and A*M*E, Need U 100%), and baby, you’ve got a stew going. It’s infectious and the gloriously sunny weather all day meant that the crowd were in the mood to be taken away on this equally sunny ride. Sure, some of the album tracks sounded a tad flat, but when they get to the likes of Not Giving In, inviting John Newman on stage who had been playing The Faversham earlier in the day, the crowd went wild to the sounds of, what is most likely going to be, the most used track on BBC inspirational idents replacing any Sigur Ros song ever (seriously, Festival and Hoppipolla are so overused now guys!).

As the crowds disperse, we decide to head over to the relatively quiet Faversham for MSMR, a two piece with soaring synth driven melodies and wonderfully gravelly vocals. Knocking through their singles, Hurricane and Fantasy, the wash of chillwave-y goth-pop akin to Zola Jesus with a touch of Wild Belle makes this a perfect end to a wonderful day, marred only by a few sound troubles here and there.

United States of Television review [May 13th 2013 in The Courier]

If you’re reading this section of the paper, you probably enjoy TV to some degree. Whether that’s simply in a ‘sit on the sofa with your flatmates and a cuppa’ capacity or in ‘feverishly marathon the entire Sopranos boxset in a weekend’ capacity, you’re all still fans of TV.

We’re definitely at another high point in TV right now. With the likes of Breaking Bad captivating audiences, New Girl and Happy Endings finally breaking the curse of Friends, and properly original shows that, although getting cancelled due to low viewers, at least shows writers are thinking about doing something different, leads me to argue that perhaps we are living in a Second Golden Age of TV.

The United States of Television is here to show you why TV is so bloody good. Originally airing on PBS in 2011, this re-edited version also features contributions from Alan Yentob. It is perhaps one of the cleverest shows about television to have ever aired, capturing why exactly we love TV while gauging how a square box has managed to change society in America and the world.

Split into four parts, each focusing on a different types of TV characters (The Misfit, The Crusader, Independent Woman, and Man of the House), the series looks at the history of these characters throughout history. Accompanied by talking heads from many of the people involved, both in front of the camera and behind, it not only gives us a great look as to how these shows came to be, but also how certain shows have influenced society, with I Love Lucy redefining the way women are portrayed on screen.

If you love TV in any way, I highly implore you to watch this show if not simply to add more shows to the list of things you need to watch.

New Girl review [April 29th 2013 in The Courier]

Zooey Deschanel is perhaps the most ‘marmite’ actress of the moment. Some find her ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ shtick wonderful and want to ride off with her into the eternal sunset over fields of roses and daffodils on bedazzled horses that smell of Lenor. Others want to run as far away as possible when a ukulele appears for fear they might be “treated” to an indie twee rendition of The Wire theme tune (cause that’s what the kids today do, right?)

Herein lay the problem with the first season of New Girl, it pushed Deschanel’s character Jess to the forefront while keeping the supporting cast far out on the periphery as simply characters she interacts with as opposed to primary characters in their own right. This is often a problem when creating an ensemble comedy, even more so when the character focused on is one that could polarise an audience. I’m somewhere on the fence about Deschanel; she does what she does well but it can get grating in large doses. What annoyed me more about most of the first season of New Girl was its squandering of an excellent supporting cast.

But something happened over the Christmas break. It seems as though Elizabeth Merriwether and her staff of writers realised that they were holding on to some real comic gems in Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris, and Jake Johnson and suddenly they began to flourish. Things weren’t so focused on Deschanel as the show started to pair up the likes of loveable douche Schmidt and the try-hard Winston leading to a fantastic end to a shaky series.

Now that New Girl is back for a second season, this streak continues and shows no sign of dwindling. As Jess loses her job as a teacher, she’s thrown into an unemployed limbo. As she goes about her own thing trying to find a job while trying to find love, Schmidt is distraught to find Cece dating another man while Nick just goes around being Nick (meeting a version of himself from the future, consoling in a silent man in the park and dating numerous girls he meets in his bar). This is also a great season for guest stars, particularly in regards to parents. Jamie Lee Curtis and Rob Reiner are wonderful as Jess’s parents and Nelson Franklin is perfect foil for Schmidt as Cece’s new boyfriend.
If there’s one problem with this season is that Winston stays very much in the background until the return of everyone’s favourite nonsensical drinking game “True American” when he begins to get decent separate storylines.

The rest of the season really is something to look forward to, with a “will they, won’t they” story arc that might just be the true successor to Cheers’ Sam and Diane (sorry Ross and Rachel) and the discovery that Schmidt and Winston are the greatest comedy pairing the show has made so far. Never has my show on an opinion fluctuated so much from apathy to pure adoration, but I’m just glad it has!

The Final Countdown [April 29th 2013 in The Courier]

There’s something about watching or listening to something for the first time and knowing that it’s going to have some form of impact on your life. The minute it ends, you’re not only sad that it’s over but also that you’ll never experience that feeling you just felt again.

It’s a unique feeling that is only replicated by finding something with a similar impact. But there are certain things that, no matter how many times you watch or listen to them, they still feel extraordinarily fresh, even if you can predict when the jokes will hit, when the twist will be or what’s coming up next. For me, that list is quite short, mainly containing Monty Python’s Life of Brian, LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver and Arrested Development.

I discovered Arrested Development in my first year of university. Recently in clover, or so I thought, thanks to discovering the joys of the student loan, I popped over to HMV for a regular browse with no intentions of buying anything (OK I lie, I was definitely going to buy something….) and spotted a wonderful boxset in the sale section. I’d heard about Arrested Development from a few people but just never bothered to get around to watching it. Sacrificing money that should really have gone towards that week’s food shop, I took it straight to the counter and rushed home to put it on. First episode over, I felt OK that I was going to having 20p instant noodles for tea instead of a salmon pasta. Second episode over, third episode, fourth episode, fifth episode; I quickly began to lose track of time.  But as I watched more, that sense of dread that I’d never have this much fun watching this show again began to creep.

Alas, I was terrifically wrong. Thinking about certain episodes, a smile cracks on my face making things a tad awkward when walking around thinking about George Bluth Sr’s lessons to his children with the assistance of his one armed friend J. Walter Weatherman or GOB’s short lived honey business. Revisiting some of my favourite episodes is one of the easiest ways to lift my spirits. It has an infectious quality to it. Seeing other people enjoy it, listening to other people talk about it or just seeing something about it in a paper or on the internet is exciting in itself.

The appeal of it seems to be that the show is atypically eccentric. It’s very difficult to think of another show anywhere within its radius. Sure, it’s base plot is very simple: George Bluth tries to keep his dysfunctional family together which includes an opulent, frequently drunk mother, a brother in law with a tendencies to slip innuendos in wherever he can without meaning to and a father who spends most of the show in jail for fraud. Yet it’s these eccentric characters and their eccentric adventures that make Arrested Development what it is. From Tobias Funke attempting to become a member of the Blue Man Group, to Steve Holt who shouts his own name often and loud, to Bob Loblaw, proprietor of Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog (say that 5 times after a few drinks), the show is so loaded with characters that the only show it really resembles is The Simpsons.

The jokes are equally ridiculous and attention to detail even moreso. Spotting little recurring jokes makes every viewing of an episode of Arrested Development (references to Charlie Brown, anything to do with Ann Veal, foreshadowing of an incident with Buster Bluth and a seal) with the show even ostensibly breaking the fourth wall, such as when Scott Baio’s Bob Loblaw is brought in to replace Henry Winkler’s Barry Zuckercorn as the family lawyer (Baio’s Chachi replaced Winkler’s Fonz in Happy Days) or when Barry Zuckercorn literally jumps over a shark, a reference to the now infamous Happy Days scene.

It’s very easy to go on and on about this show. For what seems like a simple sitcom, it is ridiculously layered which is what makes it a treat every time you watch it and it’s insanely quotable to boot. Luckily for us, Netflix are set to release 15 new episodes on May 26th, similar to how they released House of Cards, so we can experience new episodes 7 years after it was cancelled by Fox (which the show did end up referencing a lot in its final few episodes). They’ve definitely not made a huge mistake here.

The One That Potentially Ruined Sitcoms Forever [April 23rd 2013 in The Courier]

Fade In. Interior shot of a bar or an apartment. Sat around are a group of friends. They’re in their mid ’20s to early ’30s. Some might be related. Some might barely know each other. Some might be dating. They’re all together, however, and ready for some madcap hijinks as a group, probably with an animal involved somewhere. Which show am I talking about here? It’s pretty hard to tell these days as it’s a formula in sitcoms that seems as old as time.

Joseph Campbell in A Hero With A Thousand Faces laid out a formula that nearly every single story with an element of mythology can fall into; the monomyth, “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” So while myths have an overarching template, so do sitcoms.
It’s one arguably pioneered by Seinfeld; old friends and neighbours hanging out in Jerry’s apartment getting into madcap hijinks in Chinese restaurants, open houses and laundrettes. Oh, and there’s always some problem with cats and dogs. Not to take away anything from Seinfeld, however, it was Friends that really cemented this formula as one that would crop up every pilot season. There have been more shows that have reflections of Friends than any other show. Happy Endings, New Girl, Rules of Engagement, How I Met Your Mother, Perfect Couples etc. They all share this post-Friends sitcom template. There’s nothing wrong with the template per se, but this oversaturation shows the lack of imagination in the writer’s room.

It’s hard to tell, however, whether it is really the fault of the writers or if it simply that Friends has done pretty much everything with the formula. Running for a full ten years between 1994 and 2004 with around 236 episodes to its name, it’s done everything. Introduced a monkey, brought in quirky side characters, hooked up and subsequently split up many of its primary characters (leading to one of the most memorable “will they, won’t theys” between Ross and Rachel since Cheers’s Sam and Diane) and put their characters in ridiculous flashback outfits, including Monica’s fat suit. New Girl has done pretty much every single one of these (the monkey one is a bit of a stretch, although in the episode “Models”, the models compare Jess to a cartoon monkey in a Russian advert for crackers). It’s this domination which really makes it difficult for shows to break out of the now tedious and monotonous formula.

But when a show that is focused on Formula F.R.I.E.N.D.S. breaks from this routine to do something different but in a similar vein, it becomes exciting. Skilled writers can take what could be another clone situation, and one which probably was designed that way initially to capture the success of Friends, and twist it into something truly unique and a joy to watch. Take Happy Endings, for instance. Its first season was disjointed and, at times, plain boring. The two leads, Dave and Alex (the latter of whom jilted the former at the alter), aren’t great comic actors, Elisha Cuthbert as Alex better known for playing Kim Bauer in 24, and the rest of the primary cast aren’t given chance to shine.
Yet, as the show progressed, it separated itself from the spectre of Friends by making their characters unique. Married couple Brad and Jane almost appear to be gender swapped, with Brad’s affinity for candles and Jane’s need to get “in with the boys” and Max is perhaps the best portrayal of a gay man in television; completely unstereotypical, he’s simply a regular guy that just prefers men to women, you know, like actual gay people not TV Land gay people. Each character carves their niche (with the writers finally getting to grips with how best to milk Alex and Dave) separate from their obvious Friends comparisons, with one episode even acknowledging that, previously, one member of the gang could be a Rachel and another a Joey.

It’s shows like Happy Endings and New Girl (the latter of which I haven’t talked much about, but will in my review of the new series next week) that bring hope that the curse of the Friends formula has finally been broken. Sure the formula does work, as we can tell by the success of Friends during its airing, but we really need to stop trying to create carbon copies and it is these shows that hint at executives finally doing this.

Phoenix - Bankrupt [April 21st 2013 in The Courier]

 Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix finally put Phoenix on the map after nine years hard graft and three great, though largely ignored, albums.

It was an album with a generous amount of gorgeously catchy singles with some more left field tracks to break things up; essentially a near perfect indie pop record that really puts them alongside other French breakouts such as Air and Daft Punk.

Bankrupt! is less perfect, but it is clear that Phoenix have tried not to fall into the rut of monotony that following a breakthrough album usually can lead to. There are glimmers of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix but mixed with more unusual, synth-heavy turns, such as the excellent ‘S.O.S. In Bel Air’ and ‘Trying To Be Cool’ which sit as breezy summer pop songs that, at times, wouldn’t sound out of place on an excellent ‘80s radio station, and the Oriental riffs in ‘Entertainment’.

An album that feels like it’s designed specifically for a beach party, it does help that occasionally the tone is brought down a little. The constant, bouncy vibrancy starts to go a tad stale when you begin to reach the Passion Pit-esque ‘Chloroform’, but luckily the title track breaks things up with a more brooding feel and ‘Bourgeois’ leads into the final track with an almost Washed Out-inspired wooziness, although closer ‘Oblique City’ does feel like a bit of a damp squib to finish with.
With the success of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, it seemed as though they might rest on their laurels coming into Bankrupt!, but instead they’ve decided to experiment and see what they can do with this new found success. All the more for it, because we get a great album packed with summery pop songs.

4/5
Recommended download: ‘S.O.S. In Bel Air’