Caitlin Barr

The Marble Factory is alive with anticipation. As Lucy Dacus takes to the stage, the crowd expels the breath they have been holding and muffled cheers from behind masks. The first chord of ‘Triple Dog Dare’ strikes up, and the excitement in the room erupts – and it’s just the start of an excellent show from Dacus and her band. The Virginian singer’s return to the UK after COVID was triumphant. Having spent most of her American tour on a couch due to a herniated disc, and then cancelling her fir

Brooklyn band Big Thief have always had a knack for capturing small, intimate moments in lyrics. Little Things, the band’s latest single released earlier this month, follows suit, putting to music the thoughts of a lover trapped in an obsessive, intoxicating relationship. The upbeat utilisation of clapping and a buoyant guitar track juxtaposes with lead singer Lenker’s somewhat morose, subdued vocals, giving the whole track a sense of irony.

A review of Lee Isaac Chung's 2020 film Minari

Taylor Swift has done it again. By ‘it’, I mean managed to record a THIRD lockdown album. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) hit streaming platforms at midnight on Friday 9 April, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks transported back to my tween years as a deeply committed Taylor Swift stan.

A piece on Lisa Taddeo's Three Women.

I really wanted to like I Care a Lot. Rosamund Pike is one of my favourite actresses, and I was excited to see her in yet another ‘sexy blonde woman is a baddie in both senses of the word’ flick. Plus, it’s always refreshing to see queer couples on screen. Unfortunately, (in my humble opinion) … it’s just not very good.

This weekend, I ventured out to Marks & Spencer’s, partially to get some bougie baking ingredients but mostly to get Percy Pig Pancakes. Yes, you read that right. M&S announced that they’d be releasing Percy Pig themed pancakes in time for Pancake Day and my interest was immediately piqued. As a fan of the big pig, I was keen to see how the taste of a Percy Pig would be transferred to one of my favourite breakfasts.

Shia LaBeouf has been removed from Netflix’s promotions of this film after his former partner FKA Twigs sued him for sexual battery, assault, and emotional distress. Depicting miscarriage and stillbirth on screen has long been a difficult and sensitive topic. There is no easy way to portray the death of a baby, which is probably why Kornél Mundruczó didn’t try to present it as such.

During the first few months of the pandemic, many of us made banana bread and sourdough starters, and probably achieved little more creative output than choosing which pyjamas we could seamlessly transition into being daytime wear. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift wrote, produced and recorded not only one, but two albums, the second of which was released last week.

Social media has been ablaze with rave reviews of Michaela Coel’s latest work for weeks. From the moment the first episode aired in early June, my Twitter feed was awash with people declaring it a masterpiece, and its creator ‘the new Phoebe Waller-Bridge’. My interest was piqued. Still, I was hesitant as I hit play, not quite sure whether the show would live up to my expectations.

Lisa Taddeo’s debut book charts the emotional and sexual lives of three women who, despite being radically different to one another in their circumstances and experiences, are bound together in ways that are difficult to pinpoint.

Sometimes, a book comes along that makes you feel like you’ve been uprooted and transposed into the lives of the characters it’s following. Normal People, for me, was just like that. I wept throughout, and stayed up multiple nights to finish it, fully engrossed in the lives of Connell and Marianne. When I heard about the BBC adaptation, the first emotion I felt was nervousness.

Poetry has the power to put indescribable feelings into words. At the moment, many of us are uncertain, stressed and lost, but I’ve found it really helpful to retreat to the familiar. In this case, Olivia Gatwood’s 2019 collection, Life of the Party. Life of the Party is an intense, candid reflection on the poet’s relationship with girlhood and womanhood.

If you haven’t seen this yet, ask yourself why. Tiger King, from the same producers as the infamous Fyre Fest documentary, follows the eponymous ‘King’, Joe Exotic. He tries his best to juggle running a zoo in Oklahoma, a gubernatorial race, and a law suit from his arch-nemesis, big-cat conservationist and alleged husband-murderer Carole Baskin. Throw several polyamorous big-cat breeders, an assassination plot, and a lot of recreational drugs into the mix, and Tiger King is sure to distract you

Netflix’s Love is Blind (2020) places a handful of attractive singles in isolated pods to get to know each other over ten days, by talking to each other. Yes, talking. That thing you used to do before you realised swiping on Tinder was less effort. Conversations range from the inane (“what do you think about dogs in the bed?”) to the painfully deep (“I became my own masculine influence in my life”), and in a way only Americans can achieve (we Brits are far too emotionally repressed).

Now in its tenth year, the Exeter Poetry Slam gathers twelve of the best poetic performers from across the South West and whittles them down to one winner after three intense knock-out rounds. I had the pleasure of going to watch it at the Exeter Phoenix, and left feeling a renewed passion for slam poetry, having been a keen fan of the form for years.