Cultural Capital

Reflections on books and the arts from the New Statesman culture desk

Tim Key: he's a poet and he knows it.

Tom Ravenscroft's music blog

By Tom Ravenscroft Published 08 June 2011 11:56

This week my mini-rant is even more tenuously linked to music than usual. In fact it's not music at all but poetry, and the work of Tim Key, who I saw doing a warm up gig earlier this week in prep for the Edinburgh festival.

The reason it is acceptable for me to mention him in a music blog is that he did recently release an album called Tim Key. With A String Quartet. On a Boat. The music in the background is actually remarkably good, especially considering the inevitable distraction caused by the other two things that feature in the album title.

Tim and his poems have a very eerie calmness to them, they are even oddly comforting at times, like being told a series of very strange, often unpleasant bedtime stories. His ability to say such dark things in such a pleasant way is extraordinary and quite unsettling. It's like trying not to laugh when you hear a toddler accidently swear. Having spent the last two days laughing to myself every time I think of him and his show, I suggest you make the utmost effort to go and see him.

Tom Ravenscroft's radio show is on BBC 6 Music every Friday at 9pm

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9 comments

Sat, 2011-06-11 09:47 — jie4v7i14

Copenhagen?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QcYL5lI9yw

Fri, 2011-06-10 14:53 — thinkov

don't like Tim Minchin either

Tim buckley is good

Fri, 2011-06-10 02:14 — jie4v7i14

Anyone remember Mark E. Smith and The Fall doing Curious Oranj with a bunch of ballet dances at Edinburgh Festival years ago? That must have been quite an experience.

Wonder if Stewart Lee the stand-up comedian has even put his babblings to music? The above is how it would no doubt sound.

Thu, 2011-06-09 00:53 — thinkov

bit twatty that

The Tom Greenberg bobby album isn,t though

Fri, 2011-06-10 07:47 — jie4v7i14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv3LG6VVo8o
industrial estate

Fri, 2011-06-10 08:22 — jie4v7i14

But is Edinburgh festival an excuse for for se english from certain schools and oxbridge colleges to visit Scotland as they visit Wimbledon for their tennis in their calendor, patronisingly?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KJsVKbIHwc
It builds up, my english friends.

SE England is shoite, the ones with fanny money that is - you know who you are, who always says the right thing in the board room or golf club. Yews conts.

James, Bond,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHFqDjzkyQQ
Shay, a round of golf?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcdmq07u2T8

Fri, 2011-06-10 08:23 — jie4v7i14

...potting holes around the world...

Fri, 2011-06-10 08:37 — jie4v7i14

Do you want gets me on the hypocrisey of international travel, is the we instantly become a spy, some more than others, if we are not on a simple holiday, but travel to work somewhere, alone, and meet a woman, and shag her, and then she introduces you to Doctor No, to spy against your country for a vast sum of money, but you say no. And then you wake up, and realise you are in Sinapore and not in a James Bond movie, after you have shagged an excellent celonica tamil singaporian beuty as black as the ace of spades.

Just call me James.

Ok, who else has made friends transgender. She/he was beautiful.

Ok, only joking she was born she, and as well as working at a mushroom farm on PR, she helped male Tamils come to Singapore for a sex change. Don't ask, it was deep. And yes, not the sort of thing that appears in a James Bond movie, because it doesn't sell, to say the least.

Fri, 2011-06-10 13:53 — jie4v7i14

Further to Jonathan, I suberbly love Gerry Anderson and all the things he did, Thunderbirds especially, Stingray, and the marvellous Joe 90, and not forgetting UFO in live action - my favorite episode. Click for next part when it pops up,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-OCQnm6AOM

Everyone likes a romantic wedding, no matter what, space alien problems or not.