Music

Most music sounds better when you're moving; and, if you’re anything like me, you listen to a lot of music on tour. If there’s one band that will remind me more of this whole experience than anyone else, it’s Big Star; and particularly their final, beautifully inaccessible album Third. There’s something about its sense of fractured exhaustion, peppered with moments of euphoria, that has come to reflect much of the last year for me. (If you’re new to Big Star and want to know more, I wouldn’t start with Third: it’s difficult music to love; although, for me, that’s often the best kind. I’d listen to their other two albums, or watch the documentary Nothing Can Hurt Me on Netflix; or, if you just want one representative masterpiece, I’d go for this.)

Hearing these songs, I’m walking the streets of Glasgow, trying to find a bar; I'm leaving Wolverhampton late one Saturday night, driving home for the first time in ten weeks; I’m doing my daily commute past Leeds bus station; I’m staring out of an aeroplane window looking at the Scottish coast and the glimmering North Sea, hoping I fall asleep. More than anything, I’m trudging around grey Aberdeen in early September, 500 miles from home, trying to walk off the fried bread and black pudding I had for the breakfast that I didn't really want.