Live Music Review: Jen Cloher

Jen Cloher performed at The Lexington, London on 25^th September 2017

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en Cloher steps on stage and plucks a lone, melancholy guitar riff. As she begins to sing her soul-stirring lullaby, this seems like the exact antithesis of Cable Ties, our fantastically fervent post-punk opening act. Her bandmates join her with haunting, overlapping vocals as the song gradually swells to an aching crescendo. The intimate, sold-out audience realise that even her tender tunes are every bit as powerful as the most impassioned punk rock.

This opening number is Hold My Hand (from Cloher’s 2013 album In Blood Memory). It is a hard-hitting tale of two ageing lovers, recounting a conversation Cloher overheard between her parents. While Cloher cared for her Alzheimer’s disease suffering mother in the final years of her life, she heard her father movingly describe to his wife how they met, only for her to forget moments later. Cloher echoes her mother’s words as she movingly sings “how did we meet again?” This song sets a precedent that will continue into the evening. With a beguiling blend of heart-rending lyrics, powerful guitar and rock star swagger, we will watch on as the Australian singer-songwriter bares her innermost anxieties and passions on stage.

Jen Cloher – whose debut album, 2006’s Dead Wood Falls saw her nominated for Best Female Artist at the 2006 ARIA Music Awards – has enjoyed critical acclaim throughout her career. Yet only with the release of her latest record has she firmly established her international success. Surprisingly, this is her first ever European tour; and for this, we feel her gratitude and relief. “Most of us don’t make it this far” she tells the audience, adding “it only took me four fucking albums and 12 years!”

Jen Cloher at The Lexington

Naturally, a huge chunk of Cloher’s set is derived from this breakthrough self-titled album. Seeing its tracks performed before us with such vigour only verifies its status as an uncompromisingly candid masterpiece. Tonight, we are introduced to a lyricist informed equally by her disillusion with the music industry and a yearning ardour for Rock and Roll. We move into the burning homage to Rock music that is Kinda Biblical, “I don’t wanna / I don’t Think so” she growls, in a brazen reference to Sonic Youth’s Kool Thing. Although Cloher will venture through moments of folk bliss tonight, her songs have a simmering, unfeigned anger which wouldn’t be out of place on an early PJ Harvey album.

A prominent theme explored in Cloher’s new record is that of being overshadowed by her younger partner, the globally popular, indie sensation Courtney Barnett. Given this, one feels almost dirty for mentioning Barnett in a review of Cloher’s gig. But Barnett – who joins Cloher on stage as guitarist and backing singer – plays a role beyond the real-life love and jealousy she instils in her partner. Her slacker rock guitar shredding powerfully underlines the brutal honesty of Cloher’s song writing. This combination works fantastically in Shoegazers, a delightful exercise in hip-swinging cynicism, which has Cloher snarling the opening line “Indie rock is full of privileged white kids / I know because I’m one of them” over Barnett’s loose, bluesy guitar.

Courtney Barnett joining Cloher on stage

It is hardly surprising, that following the release of such an evocative album, the night is a politically charged one. With the Australian postal vote on same-sex marriage approaching, Cloher uses her music to voice the absurdity of this $122 million advisory ballot. “Take a plebiscite / To decide / If I can have a wife”, she sings in Analysis Paralysis; glancing longingly at her life partner beside her. The song culminates in a disjointed thrash of battling guitars – the evening truly feels like a cathartic release for Cloher.

The righteous vehemence comes to a head with Strong Woman, a track with such blistering feminism it resonates like a refined Bikini Kill song. It is only appropriate that the members of Cable Ties join Cloher on stage to scream along with the song’s rallying refrain; “This world it wasn’t made for woman / you know even before you’re bleeding / I’m sorry, can’t you hear me speaking? / How is it now, now that I’m screaming?” We are witnessing an exquisite songwriter unleash her frustration with explosive effect.

Returning for an encore, Cloher ends her set with Name in Lights – a song which traverses gracefully between the light and dark of poetic folk and primal rock and roll, culminating in a cacophony of sound that leaves us all entranced.

Cloher commands the stage, distilling her emotion, the rich imagery of the Australian zeitgeist and a life spent wallowing in art into a performance that is slick and effortlessly cool. It has been a privilege to watch a true master contribute to the great song writing tradition.

Cloher sings “We’re all from down under, where no-one hears out thunder” in Great Australian Bite – well, tonight we heard it loud and clear.

Film Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

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ritish director Gareth Edwards shoulders a lot of responsibility in directing the first Star Wars spin-off film. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story marks the first ‘anthology’ movie in what is sure to be Disney’s mammoth Avengers-like expansion of the Star Wars franchise.  While Edwards succeeds in taking the saga to invigorating new places, he couldn’t quite resist the urge to be derivative.

Set between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) and the original Star Wars (1977), Rogue One stars Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, a plucky rebel fighter and daughter of Death Star research scientist, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), who is forced to work on the Empire’s unfinished planet destroying weapon by Imperial Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). After Krennic has her mother killed and her father taken away, Jyn flees her home and is protected by fanatical rebel Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). Thirteen years later, Jyn is freed by Rebels from an Imperial prison, and they embark on a mission to steal the Death Star plans.

Rogue One should be praised for having the courage to explore the galaxy from a much darker perspective. We see a fractious Rebellion dealing with friendly fire and extremists within their ranks, we witness jungle battle scenes more reminiscent of Vietnam than Endor, Jyn’s father struggles with the guilt and pain of forcibly working for an evil Empire, and the Death Star’s destructive power parallels real world nuclear weapons. All this gives the film a comparatively bleak slant, and it is jarring to see morally grey areas dealt with in a universe so defined by the archetypal. Darth Vader’s return to the screen is of course a welcome one, with one genuinely terrifying scene restoring the Sith Lord to his rightful places as an imposing antagonist. But for all its grittiness, Rogue One is not humourless, mainly thanks to K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk). A reprogrammed Imperial droid fighting for the Rebellion, K-2SO’s droll pessimism brings to mind Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Star Wars saga doesn’t exactly have an unblemished track record when it comes to CGI comic relief sidekicks, but thankfully the unflappable K-2SO is no Jar Jar Binks. This seven-foot robot is both imposing and likable, and has a knack for timing his punchlines.

There are plenty of other compelling new characters to flesh out the Star Wars universe here. Felicity Jones provides us with another welcome addition to the series’ squadron of courageous female leads, although the former The Archers actress’s performance isn’t overly remarkable. Ben Mendelsohn revels in playing baddie Orson Krennic with the campy energy we want in a Star Wars villain. Chinese martial artist Donnie Yen brings an air of Buddhist spiritualism to The Force in his pious portrayal of Chirrut Îmwe, a blind warrior who battles Stormtroopers with a staff. But despite all this innovation, the film somewhat stifles in its delivery. Rogue One was plagued by last minute reshoots, and regrettably the final cut did not escape unscathed. Forest Whitaker’s role as Saw Gerrera, a cyborg veteran of the Clone Wars, grabs our interest, but his character arc simply fizzles out. A slow opening act, at times awkward pacing, and a totally extraneous scene involving a mind-reading tentacle alien all hint at trouble in the editing suite.

One of the film’s most technically remarkable achievements is the digital resurrection of Peter Cushing, so that he could “reprise” his role as Grand Moff Tarkin. While an impressive display of cutting edge visual effects, this spectacle somewhat eclipses our immersion, and our focus shifts from the narrative to noticing his uncanny facial expressions and slightly off skin movement, demonstrating that our ability to recreate flesh and blood with CGI isn’t quite there yet.

The way in which Rogue One dispenses with many of the saga’s conventions is cause for both admiration and criticism. Seven films in, Star Wars has a well-established cinematic grammar, and while, no doubt, some stylistic choices were deliberate — there is no opening crawl or screen wipe transitions here — others seem misplaced. John Williams’s music, the undisputed oxygen of Star Wars, is markedly absent. Instead, we get a rather bland score from Michael Giacchino, a composer hastily brought in after the reshoots to replace Alexandre Desplat. Giacchino composed Rogue One’s music in just four and a half weeks. Battle sequences interspersed with shaky, handheld shots gives the action a rather generic, decidedly un-Star Warsy aesthetic, and onscreen captions providing us with planet names and locations feel like a clumsy, and much too blatant a form of exposition for the saga’s brand of space opera fantasy. One of the many failings of George Lucas’s Prequel Trilogy was a lack of tension — we know which characters survive, and what will become of many of them — and while Rogue One largely avoids this by introducing a whole host of new characters, ultimately, it is still a prequel, and we all know how it will end.

It’s unsurprising that handing the reins to Gareth Edwards, a self-confessed Star Wars geek, resulted in a fan-pleasing exercise. Rogue One is packed with cameos and obscure references sure to delight fans and alienate those not as familiar with the franchise in equal measure. When the film gawkily pauses for us to gasp at a shoehorned shot of those guys from Mos Eisley Cantina, and prequel trilogy veteran Jimmy Smits awkwardly enters the frame (reprising his role as Bail Organa), we can almost feel Edwards elbowing us in the ribs.

While undeniably an enthralling new direction for the Star Wars franchise, Rogue One ultimately lacks the charm of the original trilogy or Abram’s The Force Awakens (2015). Instead, Edwards’s somewhat flawed addition to the franchise seems complaisant to place its emphasis on spectacular action sequences and packing the frame with as much nostalgia as possible.

Theatre Review: The Spirit Whistle

The Spirit Whistle is showing at the Tiverton Oak Room until the 17^th of December 2016. This review was commissioned by Tiverton Community Radio, and was originally published on their website.

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 dimly lit, Victorian church with a ghostly pipe organ, Tiverton’s Oak Room is the perfect backdrop for a spooky, supernatural romp. It is perhaps no surprise that Mid Devon based theatre company Iron Moon Arts handpicked this venue for their latest haunting production, The Spirit Whistle.

The play is writer and director Matthew Lawrenson’s loose adaptation of Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, a ghost story by genre-defining author M. R. James. The production honours this chilling tale while injecting folklore and myths from the Devon landscape.

Much like the story from which it draws inspiration, this production is in many ways a return to the archetypal ghost story. Yet, through an inventive blend of rib-tickling pastiche and a tailor-made script, the play is a delightfully unique experience.

After taking our seats to disconcertingly upbeat parlour music echoing from the cavernous ceiling, the show begins. We are transported to a 1920’s hotel.  The play is set right here in Tiverton, and Pulman’s script is packed with nods to the region’s history from the get go. Immediately the actors relish in hammy, old-timey theatrics.

Not wholly owing to its hotel setting, the humour is at times in the vein of Faulty Towers, with the cast demonstrating a knack for physical comedy. Grace Simpson (Sarah White), a frustrated proprietor of the hotel, dances and quarrels with her guests, while the rhythmic interplay between the sceptical Professor Parkins (Richard Pulman) and the gullible Captain Deveril (Philip Kingslan John) is played with charming flamboyance.

We are introduced to Tom Sett (Benjamin Akira Tallamy), an ostentatious spiritual medium who claims to contact the dead with the aid of a large, mysterious box, which sits ominously on the stage as our curiosity builds.

While the play is largely a comic farce, packed with witty asides to the audience and fourth wall breaking gags, its humour is underpinned by something genuinely sinister. The aftermath of the First World War looms heavily over the production, and it somehow manages to create an ominous atmosphere despite its comic absurdity.

While this production has only five actors, the Oak Room itself can almost be considered a sixth cast member. The imposing, high-ceilinged hall is used to great effect. The cast traverse the oval balcony and walk amongst the audience, expertly making use of the historical atmosphere around them.

With the imaginative use of lighting cues, puppetry, sound design, projected images and Luke Jeffery’s film footage, the play delivers a multifaceted, spine-chilling escapade. At one notable point, we are spooked with a technique that would not be out of place in the West End’s The Woman in Black. Playing with our expectations, we are surprised by the play’s contrasting horror and humour.

Deceptively light-hearted, and at times terrifying, The Spirit Whistle is a playful homage to a classic ghost story, lovingly crafted for a beautiful venue.

Film Review: Paterson (2016)

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ot much happens in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson. The film follows a week in the life of Paterson (Adam Driver), an aptly named, poetry-loving bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. While this minimal narrative may seem insubstantial, as we follow Paterson’s daily routine — listening to passenger’s conversations, absorbing the city around him and forming verse in his mind — the film adopts the rhythmic aesthetic of his poetry, inviting us to bathe in its subtle charm.

While Star Wars: The Force Awakens propelled Driver to superstardom, his career is taking an exciting path. “Once you get a taste for really good directors”, he said in an interview, “you just want to only do that.” Driver — who portrays a Portuguese Jesuit priest in the upcoming Martin Scorsese film, Silence — is certainly an actor worth following, and he is wonderful in Paterson. A far cry from his portrayal of raging Star Wars villain Kylo Ren, here he is given the opportunity to demonstrate his versatility, with a naturalistic, candid performance.

While Paterson’s wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) has no job, she is happy experimenting with clothes, cupcakes and chasing her dream of becoming a famous country singer. The two are so adorable, their relationship would approach the quixotic, where it not for the delicate credibility of their performances. Farahani and Driver create tender, funny scenes of domestic bliss — including Laura’s questionable Brussels sprout and cheese pie — and without the need of a single sex scene, they somehow manage to craft a love more profound than many Hollywood romances.

While idyllic, there is, however, some complexity to their relationship. Tension is created by Laura urging her happily unpublished husband to let the world see his poetry, and one can’t help but read a hint of frustration in her increasingly eccentric artistic endeavours. After Laura tells of a dream she had in which they have twins together, this theme becomes a recurring motif, with Paterson noticing twins all over the city. Is this symbolic of the couple’s inner desire to start a family? This question is left hanging. When even a subplot involving a dramatic lover’s spat ebbs away to little consequence, it’s clear that Paterson is intended to be as equivocal as its poetic subject matter.

On Paterson’s bus route, montages layered over images of flowing water give us plenty of breathing room to become lost in his mind, and the city that inspires him. While hardly a historical document, the film is peppered with nods to the city of Paterson’s past, its diverse community and its literary heritage. Much like the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) — in which Driver incidentally had a small part — we explore the setting from an unconventional viewpoint, while ultimately the focus is on the humanity at the film’s core.

A refreshing breather from action-packed blockbusters, Jim Jarmusch’s latest offering is a contemplative exercise that proves quietly courageous by placing great trust in the audience’s ability to find intrigue in the mundane. A film of tremendous simplicity, but not without depth, Paterson wins you over with its sheer, unironic loveliness.

Live Music Review: John Carpenter

John Carpenter performed on October 23 at Colston Hall, Bristol, concluding the Simple Things Festival 2016

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ith Netflix’s Stranger Things resurrecting spooky synth music for new audiences, now seems like the perfect time for ‘The Horror Master’ himself, John Carpenter, to bring his haunting scores to the stage for his first ever tour. The 68-year-old director-actor-producer-editor-writer-composer — whose filmography includes genre-defining chillers like Halloween and The Thing — took to the stage one cold October night at Bristol’s Colston Hall.

Carpenter has gathered an undying cult following during his career, and this owes as much to his use of stomach-churning visuals as it does to his eldritch backing music. This reverence is evidenced as he walks on stage, the horror fans welcoming him with beholden applause. The drums beat, and euphoria erupts through the crowd as they recognise the pulsating opening bars of Escape from New York’s main theme. We are instantly transported to the dystopian future of 1997, as the New York skyline — rendered in retro graphics — materialises on the screen behind the stage.

Carpenter’s synthesiser leads a six-piece band, including his son, Cody, on second keyboards. Three guitarists and a drummer provide a heavier, prog-rock edge not present in Carpenter’s original scores — the electronic compositions ominously unfolding like Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. As we creep into Vortex — the opening track from his first non-movie album, Lost Themes (2015) — the delightful, 80’s disco vibes are retained and intensified by the neon pink-blue flicker of the stage lighting. While the moustached, long-haired Carpenter bops along to the music, it’s hard not to view him as some kind of messiah. His eccentricity makes him seem like a character straight out of one of his own movies.

“For most of my career I composed music for scary movies, thrillers …ghost stories” Carpenter tells us, the stage filling with dry ice for The Fog’s score. It’s clear that intense cinematic nostalgia grips the audience, and indeed, in the periods where Carpenter performs material from his studio albums, the accompanying projected film clips are markedly absent. It should be noted, however, that this show is not just an exercise in sentimentality. Carpenter looks forward by performing impressive material from his recent studio albums, including the guitar shrieking tracks Wraith and Distant Dream, compositions which — while bearing Carpenter’s signature uncanny atmosphere — have an unmistakable rock ‘n’ roll energy.

As the band puts on sunglasses to perform music from the irreverently anti-capitalist They Live, it’s easy to see why Carpenter’s films have such enduring appeal. Slogans from the 1988 film fill the stage — “OBEY”, “MONEY IS YOUR GOD”, “BUY”, “CONSUME” — and this performance makes the film’s message seem urgently pertinent.

“In 1982 I made a movie called The Thing”, Carpenter announces to thunderous applause. The Thing’s score was the result of a collaboration between Carpenter and legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Performed in Morricone’s honour, the theme is comparatively minimalist in its gradually escalating dread, but footage from the film provides a gruesome animatronic backdrop that sustains the audience’s excitement.

"I direct horror movies. I love horror movies. Horror movies will live forever” says Carpenter, before we hear the striking piano melody we’ve all been waiting for — the theme from Halloween.

John Carpenter has forged a musical aesthetic that has become synonymous with horror. While his music is defined by bleakness and discord, witnessing it performed live is intoxicating and thrilling. Carpenter has proven tonight that he is not only the master of the horror genre, but a legitimate musician in his own right.

Why George Lucas wishes he never made Star Wars

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t was a while before I finally realised that whatever happens I’m never going to get out. I’m always going to be George ‘Star Wars’ Lucas, no matter how hard I try to be something else” says the 70-year-old director. In this interview last year with TV host Charlie Rose – which attracted undue controversy due to Lucas’s flippant remark comparing Disney to “white slavers” – we see a candid Lucas looking back on a career filled with regret and missed opportunities. “I fell into popular movies by accident”, he admits.

Star Wars is a franchise that changed the film industry and popular culture forever. It’s difficult to overstate the mammoth impact of Lucas’s epic space opera saga, but this was not always his intention. In fact, if we look at the pre-Star Wars Lucas, it’s almost surprising that his career took this path. While the likes of Star Wars and Indiana Jones are the epitome of the blockbuster, Lucas’s career was forged by railing against the mainstream.

In 1969, moving to San Francisco to escape the oppressive grip of the Hollywood studio system, Lucas co-founded the film company American Zoetrope with fellow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. “I was very anti-corporation, and I was here in San Francisco, where anti-authority is even more extreme”, Lucas reflected. The 1960s saw a shift away from the classical Hollywood approach to filmmaking, with its soundstages, formulaic plots and big stars.

American Zoetrope served a new generation of filmmakers that were inspired by films like Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969), which demonstrated that a film could challenge mainstream culture, both thematically and by making money while operating outside the studio system.

Dennis Hopper gives the finger to authority in Easy Rider.

American Zoetrope would produce THX 1138 (1971), Lucas’s feature film directorial debut. Despite its robots and science fiction setting, the dystopian world of THX is a far cry from the colourful fantasy of Star Wars. THX 1138 envisions a future where bald-headed citizens shuffle through a concrete, subterranean nightmare world – their emotions chemically supressed to the point where love has become a revolutionary act. It serves as a bleak warning against mindless capitalism and organised religion. It’s hard to believe that a such a dark film – which even features an automated masturbatory machine – came from the same man who brought us Star Wars.

George Lucas directs a robot Police Officer in THX 1138

It goes without saying that there’s nothing blockbuster about THX 1138. Based on a short film Lucas made while he attended the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema – the snappily titled Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB – it’s experimental and bizarre, and one gets the impression that this approach to filmmaking is where Lucas’s heart truly lies.

"Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy" chants OMM 0910, the manufactured Christ figure in THX 1138.

Looking back, THX can be viewed as a rejection of not just consumerism, but the money-driven, fickle nature of the Hollywood machine. “I always disliked Hollywood theatrical movies. I don’t want to have anything to do with them” Lucas admits pensively, and while he has enjoyed a tremendously successful career, he clearly views that success as having a cost – a compromise of his most deeply held beliefs:

“In the world we live in, and the system we’ve created for ourselves, in terms of, it’s a big industry, you cannot lose money. The point is that you’re forced to make a particular kind of movie.”

Obviously, THX 1138 was not a box office hit, nor was it intended to be. “They would’ve never let me make that movie if they knew what I was doing” the veteran director reflects. The young George Lucas was interested in making art for art’s sake – even if this attitude contributed to the eventual bankruptcy of American Zoetrope.

After THX, Lucas unwittingly created a smash hit with his 1972 film American Graffiti. The result of producer Ford Coppola daring Lucas to make a film that would appeal to mainstream audiences, Graffiti’s neon glowing portrayal of ‘60’s hot rod racing and rock and roll culture captivated audiences, and it is now considered an archetypal teen movie. It received five Academy Award nominations, including best picture.

The fun, coming-of-age comedy may seem like a radical departure from his first film, but the independent spirit that was foundational to American Zoetrope remained intact. American Graffiti was Lucas’s attempt to cling to the vestiges of his youth – to document a culture that was soon to be annihilated by radical societal change. The outbreak of the Vietnam War and John F. Kennedy’s assassination loom over the film – It concludes with a series of rather morbid title cards, disclosing the fate of the principle characters, one of which is revealed to have disappeared in Vietnam.

Lucas on the set of American Graffiti.

Lucas belonged to a clique of radical filmmakers producing works which challenged the establishment. American Zoetrope produced Ford Coppola’s surveillance thriller The Conversation and his brutal depiction of the Vietnam war, Apocalypse Now. Avant-garde giants such as Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa joined their ranks, establishing the studio as pioneers of independent cinema. Lucas – who grew up in the 1960s – was a member of a generational cohort defined by its scepticism of authority.

Members of American Zoetrope at their offices in San Francisco.

Star Wars can be seen as the demise of George Lucas the independent filmmaker. Indeed, the subsequent franchise would inescapably tie Lucas to the populist studio system which he despised. But the counterculture spirit which drove THX 1138 and American Graffiti was integral to the conception of the original film. Star Wars was born out of a mixture of back-to-basics mythology and the Saturday matinee serials of Lucas’s youth. Drawing inspiration from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958), Lucas would begin by exploring a galaxy through the eyes of the lowliest of characters (C-3PO and R2-D2). Interestingly, the success of J.J. Abrams’s The Force Awakens (2015) owes much to a return to this approach.

A return to The Hidden Fortress: Desert scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) in The Force Awakens.

The revolution sparked by Star Wars was both a blessing and a curse. While there was much more to Star Wars than its special effects, Lucas’s mantle as a technological innovator would eclipse his narrative imagination. He claims that the impact of Star Wars fostered an attitude of risk-free filmmaking – endless “horrible” space ship films, sequels and reboots. He claims the post-Star Wars film industry started to show “an enormous lack of imagination and fear of creativity”. Lucas would eventually fall prey to this trend himself, allowing story to take a backseat in his notoriously lacklustre, effects-driven prequel trilogy.

Now that the franchise is so firmly embedded in our culture, it’s easy to lose sight of just how odd the original Star Wars was. It’s quasi-science-fiction fusion of mythological fantasy and Buck Rogers swashbuckling made it every bit as experimental as THX 1138. In 1977, Star Wars transformed Lucas from a young filmmaker merely aspiring to create arthouse movies and cinéma-vérité documentaries, to the highest-grossing Hollywood director of all time.

After selling Star Wars to the Disney for $4.05 billion in 2012, Lucas showed that he never forgot his roots, vowing to donate the majority of the proceeds to charity, and expressing a wish to return to experimental filmmaking.

While we should be thankful for Star Wars, perhaps we should also mourn the George Lucas films that never were. 

Three things I learned from being vegetarian.

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 while ago, I decided to take another step towards alpha-hipster status by giving up meat for a whole week. I kept going, and it’s now been nearly a year since I ate the stuff, so I thought I’d perpetuate the stereotype of vegetarians not being able to shut up about themselves by writing a ranty blog post about it. Here are a few things I’ve learned.

I don’t really need to explain myself.

I love meat. Roast dinners, steak, smoked salmon, duck, veal, you name it, I love it. I’ve always been very open-minded when it comes to food. Well, I say “open-minded”, what I really mean is I’m a greedy slob. I’ll eat anything, and a lot of it (I once ate a entire chicken at Nando’s, and usually see ‘all you can eat’ as a personal challenge.)

So why did I become vegetarian? Well it’s quite boring really. There were various personal motivations – I was at a particularly shitty period of my life, so making every meatless day an ‘achievement’ helped me cope – I was also a poor student, and meat is quite expensive.

While I’d been reading into and humouring the idea for a while, it was a book, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, that probably tipped me over the edge.

It’s all the standard reasons: Environmental, health and animal welfare. Or, put more expressively, I turned vegetarian for precisely the same reasons I don’t burn tyres, smoke cigarettes or punch cats.

When I was younger, I couldn’t understand how anyone could not eat meat. ‘Meat is so tasty! How can you not like meat?’ I’d scoff whenever anyone confessed to a veggie diet. ‘But what about steak?!’ ‘What about chicken?!’ I’d argue, as if the primary motivation behind not eating meat is disliking the taste of bacon.

Looking back, I think that this knee-jerk hostility towards veggies stemmed from a number of places. It certainly came from my own adolescent insecurity and arrogance (which was why I was – and still am – ambiguous when it comes to arguing), and the immature thrill of poking fun at someone else’s compassion.

But, deep down, I think I saw some logic in their position, and hence wanted to hear how they would defend it.

Of course, now that I’m not 16, I’ve discovered that the best way to understand someone’s viewpoint is to have a civilised conversation or just read a few books on the subject.

Whatever their viewpoints, people enquiring about my motivations for being vegetarian share something in common – they already know why I don’t eat meat.

Everybody knows that eating meat is cruel to animals, terrible for the environment and bad for your health. So much so that I usually just say ‘the usual reasons’ when asked to explain myself.

Just because someone isn’t sad enough to research all of those scary facts – like how animal agriculture is the number one cause of greenhouse gases (making a 40% greater contribution to climate change than all of the Earth’s transportation combined), or that pigs and cows can feel depressed, just like we do – doesn’t mean they’re not aware of the underlying issues. It’s not a question of whether or not you’re aware, it’s a question of whether or not you care.

That may sound like typical douchebag vegan talk, like I’m implying that anyone who doesn’t care about this issue is immoral. But the truth is, not caring is an entirely legitimate position.

Morality isn’t that clear cut. By spending £60 on a nice jumper instead of donating that money to Cancer Research, am I immoral for putting my enjoyment of knitwear before fighting cancer? Of course I’m not. Neither is someone who places the convenience of driving to their nearby supermarket, or the pleasure of eating a steak, over the combating of climate change. You simply can’t equate things on those terms.

The climate aspect becomes particularly hazy. Having a child can dump over 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (that’s more than the weight of the Eiffel Tower) and is just about the worst thing two humans can do to the environment. But is anyone suggesting we should all get sterilized? No, because there is a general consensus that a baby is worth the pollution it causes.

Other than being delicious, meat is a tremendously important part of countless cultures, and an argument can be made that the enjoyment and cultural significance of meat is well worth its pollution. But how do we determine what is “worth” the pollution it produces?

In this respect, the only difference between me and a meat eater is where we draw this line.

Not eating meat seems inexorably linked with bullshit.

I try to be quite a rational person – one of the reasons I decided to give vegetarianism a whirl was the logic behind it. I’m an atheist, and this plays into my decision to give up meat in a number of ways.

Other than humans, animals are probably the thing religion treats the worst. Major religions, such as Christianity and Islam, place a strong emphasis on not giving a shit about animals (they don’t even get souls!)

The Christian God thought nothing of drowning all the Earth’s animals. Sure, He caused the great flood because of the wrong doings of humans, but who cares? Animals were just put on Earth for our enjoyment and taste buds anyway.

It’s hardly surprising that holy books conceived by ignorant, desert-dwelling scribes placed an emphasis on agriculture. ‘Sacrifice a few goats and your crops will be rained upon!’

The Bible and the Quran teach us that animals are a gift from God, created especially for us, and this attitude reverberated throughout history, forming a belief that animals are inherently inferior to humans.

Islamic tradition says that we should thank God for the sustenance before we painfully bleed the animal to death in a perverse ritual, but at least pigs are spared. Incidentally, the closest religion comes to respecting animals is in the banning of eating certain species for equally arbitrary reasons.

A bit later, philosophers like that René Descartes guy compounded this by suggesting that animals can’t feel pain, and are just machines – cutting up a dog without anaesthetic was just like looking inside a clock.

Thankfully, Descartes’s interpretation and animal sacrifices are both usually regarded as a bit outmoded, and animal welfare is taken a lot more seriously in modern society.

Although we still practice archaic bullshit like halal meat and fox hunting, people tend to understand that animals can feel pain, and causing them unnecessary suffering is not cool.

As the mistreatment of animals partly originates from god-fearing superstition and scientific ignorance, you’d think that arguments for vegetarianism and veganism would all come from a rational position. Well, it turns out, they often don’t.

It seems you can’t go to a veggie food festival without seeing some charlatan hawking healing magnets or magic crystals, offering to read your palm or tell you what colour your aura is. These dipshits make me want to slaughter and devour an animal right in front of them, just to annoy them.

Choosing not to eat meat should be a logical stance – an informed decision arising from an awareness of the ethical, health and environmental factors. But it seems to have a bit of an image problem.

What comes to mind when you think of the typical vegan? A topknotted hippy explaining to you through a haze of incense smoke that they’re “spiritual”. “I don’t believe in a god with a ‘capital G’” they say, pausing to rearrange their hemp poncho, “but I’m into the Eastern religions, because they’re like, deeper.” Now, I don’t care if you choose to derive your world outlook from Deepak Chopra’s twitter feed, but I’d rather not be associated with you.

There are many ways to legitimately promote a meat-free diet. One of the most common arguments against vegetarianism, the whole ‘we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat’ thing, is easy to dispel. The World Health Organization, who last year classified red meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans”, recommends a plant-based diet to everyone (in particular pregnant woman and athletes), and found that vegetarians and vegans “meet and exceed” requirements for protein intake (and in fact usually get more protein than omnivores).

It seems if you want to avoid obesity, osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in your urinary tract, diabetes and some cancers, being vegetarian is probably a good thing to do.

From an environmental standpoint, given the hugely damaging impact meat production has on our planet, you’d think all green activists would unite in wholeheartedly endorsing going meat-free. However, Greenpeace – the world’s largest and most visible environmental organisation – meekly recommends you should “commit to reducing your meat and dairy consumption by a few meals per week”. But I suppose an organisation known for decimating world heritage sites and illegally destroying lifesaving crops wouldn’t want to risk coming across too militant.

Research and scientific understanding provides us with many compelling arguments for vegetarianism – from meat’s environmental impact to the palpable suffering it inflicts on animals. It irks me when this evidence-based reasoning gets watered down by the homeo-holistic-horseshit that is all too often analogous with vegetarianism.

Companies sell us “super foods” and claim their smoothies “detox” us (an invented marketing term and medical impossibility), quacks flog fruit tablets as miracle weight loss remedies and endless fad diets are dreamt up.

Since being vegetarian, I’ve found I can’t even buy a tin of black beans without having to shop at a wholefoods place proudly displaying homeopathic tablets and a whole host of empirically useless supplements.

When vegetarianism is served with a side order of nonsense, it’s easy for its valid arguments to be undermined.

The evidence suggests that ditching meat is good for our bodies and our world, so why can’t we dispense with all the pseudoscience and hippy hogwash?

Vegetarian food is tasty.

As I mentioned, I’m very open-mined about food. I even like olives, despite their disgusting taste. I saw this as both a blessing and a curse when I decided to go vegetarian. While I can happily chomp on raw broccoli, I also love meat, but surprisingly it wasn’t that hard to stop eating it.

It turns out, it’s quite easy to not put certain things into your face. I’m not used to having a dietary requirement, and it’s pretty awkward turning up to a friend’s house with your own Tupperware box to microwave because you can’t eat bolognaise with everyone else, but it really isn’t that big of a deal.

There are things you need to watch for, I’ve had a vodka jelly while inebriated, probably a bit of parmesan (try googling “rennet” without feeling ill), and a fish ball thing that was labelled in Italian, but that doesn’t count! Wine – which is often made using dried fish bladders – is currently my only exception.

Vegetarianism has been on the rise recently (my age group in particular – in the UK, 20 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds are now vegan or vegetarian).

Obviously, veggies are catered for pretty well these days. You’d be very hard-pressed to find a restaurant that doesn’t have veggie options (although I think some restaurants need to up their game – I like to see more than the one token meal).

I thought my diverse palette would demand meat, but surprisingly, I haven’t missed it much. In retrospect, a lot of my favourite foods – curry, Nando’s chicken, chili con carne, roast lamb smothered in mint sauce – get their flavour from something other than the meat anyway.

There are, of course, a lot of meats I miss. Things like smoked salmon, tuna, steak and ham have no adequate veggie substitute. What are vegetarians supposed to put in sandwiches anyway?

However, being vegetarian has caused me to expand my culinary repertoire beyond the five or so meals I made on an endless loop. I’ve discovered a real love for cooking, and I’ve went from not really knowing what a fennel is, to exploring a whole host of vegetarian cuisine.

I’ll probably go back to eating meat (indeed, for 8 out of 10 of vegetarians, it turns out to be just a phase), but I’ve at least tried a lot of tasty recipes.

I used to think a nice meal had to have meat. The ‘no meat, no meal’ attitude is prevalent, probably stemming in part from that stupid ‘food pyramid’ thing we were all shown at school, which taught us it’s fine to eat beef burgers every day and we all need a bit of dairy (despite the fact that 75% of humanity are lactose intolerant).

As we have become entitled to meat, something has become lost in the process – meat has become boring. We no longer view it as something special, instead we chomp down reheated freeze-dried nuggets of mechanically recovered mush.

Even if I give up vegetarianism, I’ll certainly view meat as more of a luxury – I’ll avoid junk, but enjoy a good steak every now and then.

If you do it right, I’ve found vegetarian food can often be more exciting than its meat equivalent. For example, chili con carne was one of my staple meals. I now make a meat-free version, which includes green lentils, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, peas, mushrooms, courgette and the usual onions and kidney beans – all those flavours and textures make for a much more interesting chili!

A Good vegetarian meal isn’t a meal without meat, it’s a meal that doesn’t need meat (I’ll have to do a post listing my favourite recipes!)

Being vegetarian is fun, and I’d recommend giving it a try. I wonder how long I’ll keep this up?

Maybe I’ll be writing a post about going vegan one day…