The Shins, Corn Exchange, 23 August

** 
Now that ‘indie’ music has jostled its skinny frame firmly into the pop charts, the term itself has lost all meaning. But if any of the old strain survives, it is to be found in the music of The Shins. The Portland band ooze indie-ness through every jangly riff, Californian harmony and oblique lyric. And [...]

Fringe review - Russell Howard

Russell Howard - Adventures
PLEASANCE COURTYARD (VENUE 33)
RUSSELL Howard’s brief outbursts on the BBC show Mock the Week don’t do justice to his considerable comic talent. Next to Frankie Boyle’s perfectly timed, gloriously un-PC interjections, Howard is often left to look like an eager rookie playing for the easy laughs.
But with an hour of our undivided [...]

Too much Festival affects your eyesight

If you’re an Edinburgh native, you train your eyes not too see properly in August. Otherwise you’d never get anywhere. Unlike the tourists, actors, promoters and performers, us locals actually have to get to places. Like work. Or the pub.
So we walk that bit faster than the shuffling crowds. We weave and jostle; sometimes, much [...]

Fringe review - Rhod Gilbert

Rhod Gilbert - What’s Eaten Gilbert’s Grape?
**** 
PLEASANCE COURTYARD (VENUE 33)
YOU can’t trust anything Rhod Gilbert says. He’s as bad as a prime minister confronted with an oil-rich despot who may or may not have weapons of mass destruction.
But with Gilbert you don’t mind, because he’s just as good at fabricating a funny anecdote as he [...]

Fringe review - Phil Nichol

Phil Nichol - Hiro Worship
**
THE STAND COMEDY CLUB (VENUE 5)
LIKE the eponymous character in his new show, Phil Nichol should be the Hiro of this year’s Fringe. On top of this gig, last year’s If.Comeddies award winner is also directing the play Breaker Morant, starring in another, Killer Joe, and performing a one-off revival of [...]

Fringe review - Jason Byrne

Jason Byrne: Shy Pigs, With Wigs, Hidden in the Twigs 
****
ASSEMBLY @ ASSEMBLY HALL (VENUE 35)
THE phrase “infectious humour” is a terrible cliché, but it’s the most accurate way to describe the experience of watching Jason Byrne. The Irish comic, returning for his 11th Fringe, appears to be borderline insane, strutting about the stage like a peacock, [...]

Fringe review - Wil Hodgson

Wil Hodgson - Straight Outta Chippenham
****
PLEASANCE COURTYARD (Venue 33)
IN THIS festival of like-minded, liberal, art-loving people, Wil Hodgson is the ambassador for a very different demographic: the BNP-sympathising, homophobic, casually-violent degenerates of middle England.
Well no, “ambassador” is the wrong word. Hodgson was born, raised and evidently still lives in the small Wiltshire town that bears the [...]

Fringe Review - Andy Zaltzman

Andy Zaltzman, 32, Administers his Emergency Dose of Afternoon Utopia, Steps Back and Waits to See What Happens

***
THE STAND
ANDY Zaltzman could be facing an uphill struggle this August. An afternoon slot isn’t especially conducive to intellectually demanding political satire, especially if it’s a dreich Sunday and most of the audience are probably nursing Festival hangovers.
For, while [...]

Fringe Review - Stephen K Amos

Stephen K Amos - More of Me **** 
PLEASANCE COURTYARD (VENUE 33)
LAST year, Stephen K Amos’s Fringe show - entitled All of Me - certainly lived up to the billing: at the end of the performance, Amos came out publicly. The journey to that point was a tortuous one, but it continues to provide the comedian [...]