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STV News
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- STV News
Men in Love: Irvine Welsh releases new Trainspotting sequel
Irvine Welsh has released a direct sequel to Trainspotting, more than 30 years after the cult novel's publication. Men in Love, released on Thursday, sees the return of beloved characters Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie. Irvine's fifth Trainspotting spin-off displaces 2002's Porno as the original's most direct sequel, and follows the misfit Leith crew as they attempt to replace drug addiction with 'love and romance' while they experience the heyday of rave culture in the late 80s and early 90s. The original novel quickly became a cult classic, and made a hugely successful transition from page to screen thanks to director Danny Boyle and up-and-coming actor Ewan McGregor, with a sequel released in 2017 reuniting most of the original cast. Men in Love will open in the late 80s, 'at the end of punk and just before acid house'. Getty Images The book's description reads: 'It is the late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher's Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin – a time for hope, for love, for raving. 'Leaving heroin behind and separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption. 'Sick Boy starts an intense relationship with Amanda, his 'princess' – rich, connected, everything that he is not. When the pair set a date for their wedding, Sick Boy sees a chance for his generation to take control at last. But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group's dreams or just another doomed quest? 'Irvine Welsh's sequel to his iconic bestseller Trainspotting tells a story of riotous adventures, wild new passions, and young men determined to get the most out of life.' The release comes ahead of a documentary of Welsh's life, which will close the Edinburgh International Film Festival on August 20. Reality Is Not Enough will follow the best-selling author at a 'crossroads' in life where he is 'acutely aware of his mortality and accepting that his hedonistic days are drawing to a close'. It is also said to explore the 'inner and outer life' of the writer, who was propelled to fame with his debut novel focusing on heroin addicts in Leith in 1993. From director Paul Sng, the documentary, which was previously titled I Am Irvine Welsh, has been described as a 'captivating piece of autobiographical filmmaking'. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Spectator
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Tedious, lazy and pretentious – Irvine Welsh's Men in Love is a disgrace
There are 32 years between the publication of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and his Men in Love – a gap roughly equivalent to that between Sgt. Pepper and 'Windowlicker' by Aphex Twin. Perhaps three cultural generations. It is disturbing, therefore, to find Welsh still pumping out further sequels to his spectacular literary debut. But whereas that had verbal fireworks, razor-sharp dialogue, superb character ventriloquism and a fearless examination of Scottish moral rot, Men in Love is – let's be frank – tedious, lazy, pretentious and simply bad writing. Under the influence of American Psycho, Welsh has had characters narrating their fleeting perceptions since Filth (1998), in the hope that accumulation will create meaning. But where Bret Easton Ellis is satirising the vicious lizard-brain petulance of the 1 per cent, Welsh now simply takes you with the narrator on increasingly pointless journeys. The result is entire chapters that feel redundant and anti-plots that seem to build to something before ending in irritating anti-climaxes. (The Renton-Begbie confrontation in 2002's Porno was so bad that I wondered whether a refusal to climax was a meta joke.) Trainspotting vibrated with malevolent vernacular energy, but the prequels and sequels have seen Welsh lose his ventriloquial gift. This was already apparent in Porno, where Nikki's speech at the end was pure authorial intervention as she tells us What It All Meant. From Skagboys (2012) onwards, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and even Begbie have been articulating their thoughts in increasingly florid sentences, as if Welsh were trying to impress us with his new-found vocabulary. But it doesn't impress. Of course, part of the pleasure of reading Welsh was how he combined the demotic and the cerebral. But the writing in Men in Love can be as clumsy and self-regarding as undergraduate poetry. For instance, Spud thinks that 'she should pure huv the vocabulary tae express hersel withoot recourse tae foul language'. Without recourse, aye? The once-fearsome Begbie, meanwhile: Now he was outside and it was Saturday, drifting into late afternoon, a time Begbie found replete with opportunities for violence. Potential adversaries were out, some since Friday after work. Many of those boys acquiring the delicious bold-but-sloppy combination that would service his chaotic outpourings. He found them replete, did he? He had chaotic outpourings, did he? And the sex writing – 'in languid, ethereal movements she groans in soft tones', for example – is excruciating. Another key weakness of Men in Love is how many earlier beats it replays. Sick Boy is involved with porn films and pimping; women magically fall under his spell; and he outplays a privileged male competitor (this time his father-in-law, a Home Office civil servant). Renton gets into nightclubs and DJ-ing. Spud is a romantic loser. Begbie is still psychotically aggressive. All of which we've seen in Porno, The Blade Artist and Dead Men's Trousers. The record is stuck. The heartbreaking thing is there's a good novel to be written about the punk/smack generation of the early 1980s encountering the ecstasy love-buzz period as the decade progressed. But Welsh has signally failed to tackle any of that. He could have taken them to Ibiza, the Hacienda or Spike Island, or considered the achievements and failures of the Love Generation Mk II. But no. It's another lazy retread. The impression one gets from Men in Love is that of Fat Elvis, sweating and unknowingly self-parodic in Las Vegas. Welsh desperately needs an editor with the guts to tell him this schtick isn't working any more. To quote Melody Maker on David Bowie: 'Sit down, man, you're a fucking disgrace.'
Scotsman
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
What's on in Edinburgh today? 10 events to enjoy including Trainspotting sequel launch
1 . Irvine Welsh Men in Love Q&A and Exclusive Launch Party Celebrating the release of his new Trainspotting sequel Men in Love, Scottish author Irvine Welsh will participate in a Q&A with Jenni Fagan early in the evening, before heading over to Leith Arches for an exclusive launch party. The Q&A will take place at Ps and Gs Church on York Place from 7.30pm, with the album launch party kicking off from 8pm until 1am, and featuring the Sci Fi Soul Orchestra, Carl Loben, Steve Mac and more, with a limited number of exclusive vinyl and CD editions available on the night. | LISA FERGUSON Photo: Lisa Ferguson
Irish Independent
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Irvine Welsh's Trainspotters fumble towards human connection in the expertly funny and tender Men in Love
Fiction This book, Men in Love is the third novel in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting universe, but it sits second in the story's chronology – bridging the gap between the youthful anarchy of Trainspotting (1993) and the cynical scheming of Porno (2002). While Danny Boyle's movie T2 Trainspotting (2017) was loosely based on Porno, it aged the characters into middle age. Men in Love, by contrast, returns to the late 1980s, exploring the emotional fallout of addiction and betrayal, and deepening the internal lives of characters that is only hinted at on screen.
Scotsman
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Album reviews: Irvine Welsh & The Sci-fi Soul Orchestra Dennis Bovell
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Irvine Welsh & the Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra: Men in Love (Port Sunshine Recordings) ★★★★ Jah Wobble: Dub Volume 1 (Dimple Discs) ★★★★ Dennis Bovell: Wise Men in Dub (Wise Records) ★★★ Michael Steele: Mosaic (self-released) ★★★★ Irvine Welsh At various points in his literary career, Irvine Welsh has described himself as a failed musician, claimed that he was saved by acid house and created playlists for his characters to bring them to life, so music is a key trigger for his writing. He now takes that love a step further by writing and producing an album companion to his new novel, Men In Love. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This Trainspotting sequel picks up immediately where his classic novel left off, with Renton, Spud, Sickboy and even Begbie finding salvation on the dancefloor. The setting is the Nineties but the music on Men In Love – written by the shadowy Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra with lyrics penned by Welsh – is far from the contemporary strains of Britpop and more reflective of the soulful sounds of Nineties clubland, in particular the dancefloors which reverberated to gospel house music. Welsh and compadres are clear on their inspirations, crate-digging to emulate the sounds of Philly soul and New York disco which were sampled by the deep house producers of the day. Unsurprisingly, Welsh has all the necessary vocabulary to evoke the era and a little bit more. Opening track A Man in Love with Love captures the mania of love with lusty soul vocals from Shaun Escoffery and a Chic-meets-Boney M disco breakdown. Jah Wobble Jools Holland collaborator Louise Marshall represents for the women on the disco riposte You Gotta Be Strong, cutting through the sentiment and extravagant expressions of this man in love to demand actions not words. Both she and Escoffery are Welsh's mighty mouthpieces as they testify across the album to clubbing as religion on Saviour and the transformative powers of the dancefloor on A Whole New Side Of Me. The latter is the most explicitly house music-influenced track on the album, if still dripping in delicious disco strings. With this exultant music ringing in their ears, how could Renton and co not prevail? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad You wait ages for a decent dub album and then two come along in one week. Bass ace Jah Wobble has been a dub devotee from his early days in Public Image Ltd but is not content with mere righteous vibrations on Dub Volume 1. Titles such as Old Jewish East End of London Dub suggest that this is not traditional dub territory. This geezer philosopher infuses Existential Dub with a hint of slinky Sixties exotica and uses distorted and pitchshifted vocals to unsettling effect on Lovers Rock Dub. Tragic Slavic Dub is embellished with keening klezmer violin, Dub in the East is built around an eminently melodic bassline while Tyson Dub Remix is a true dub odyssey with its wiggy analogue synths, melancholic ska brass arrangement and the sheer elasticity of Wobble's playing. On Wise Men in Dub, reggae veteran Dennis Bovell offers a more traditional adventure in sound though his curveball choice of dub-infused covers ranges from Musical Youth's Pass the Dutchie and Pete Seeger's Black and White, originally reggaefied by Greyhound but rendered here by Aswad's Brinsley Forde, to more transformative takes on The Zombies' Time of the Season, Minnie Riperton's Les Fleurs, Argent's Hold Your Head Up and The Stylistics' You're A Big Girl Now, dreamily rendered by Imagination frontman Leee John. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Michael Steele Edinburgh-based singer/songwriter Michael Steele describes himself as 'genre-diverse' - and how on his Mosaic EP which embraces French chanson, pastoral folk, low-slung punk funk, mellow country and angular guitar picking across its ten tracks with equal credibility. There may be no stylistic consistency to speak of but you have to admire Steele's laidback audacity in offering such a dizzying pick-and-mix of styles to choose from, each as well-executed as the next. CLASSICAL Visiting Rachmaninoff: Chopin Variations | Romances (Harmonia mundi) ★★★★ One of the true delights of the 'variations" genre is to witness the assimilation of two divergent independent minds. Here we have Chopin (the simple sequential theme and solid chordal identity of his Prelude in C minor) reconsidered via the virtuosic expansionism of Rachmaninov. Moreover, Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov presents the latter's 22 Variations on a Theme by Chopin Op 22 on Rachmaninov's own piano, an instrument presented to him as a 60th birthday present and housed in the Bauhaus-style Villa Senar by Lake Lucerne commissioned by the composer in the 1930s. This well-maintained piano exhibits the same formidably brooding persona as its original owner, Melnikov mindful of such in a performance that captures both the intellectual and expressive fluidity of a constantly fascinating piece. He's joined later by soprano Julia Lezhneva, who imbues extracts from the Op 21, Op 26 and Op 34 Romances with a typically glowing, soulful Russian-ness. Ken Walton FOLK Grace Stewart-Skinner: Auchies Spikkin' Auchie (Independent Release) ★★★★ Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
