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Articles by Dave Beer
Boston Beer Company Expands Cannabis Beverage Lineup for Summer with New TeaPot Iced Teas and Emerald Hour Cocktails
TeaPot Launches New 10mg THC Rosin-Infused Iced Tea, while Emerald Hour Expands Into British Columbia and Adds Two New Cannabis Cocktail Styles TORONTO, May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - BBCCC Inc, the Canadian-based subsidiary of The Boston Beer Company, is elevating summer for Canadians with new offerings from its cannabis brands TeaPot and Emerald Hour.
Veronica D’Souza: Peaches in My Halo - Single Review
Dave Beer · Follow 1 min read · -- There is a flavour of the 1960s to the tapestry behind Veronica D’Souza’s vocal. Although, pulling on various threads, it’s not that easy to place the exact inspriations. On new song Peaches in My Halo the voice, which somehow blends breezy with pained, sits gently on top of a timeless haze of music. D’Souza is traveling in the same time-lapse universe as Lana Del Rey. There’s a kind of Petula Clark and Carole King leaning to sound.
Generative AI and the haystack effect?
When I was looking back at computer generated writing in the 1970s a defining image was of the perpetual writing machine. Once set in motion the computer continued writing forever. Prompted to produce, it wouldn’t stop. The wide-scale availability of content-generating machines today brings the perpetual writing machine into the present. Generative AI continue to write and write and write, making more and more content.
Argylle - Film Review
Argylle (2024) Director: Matthew Vaughn Writer: Jason Fuchs Running time: 2 hours 19 minutes In cinemas now On the surface Argylle is a generic action spy caper, but our reviewer David Beer finds much more to it than that. Elly Conway, you discover after a sharp left-hand turn that arrives around fifteen minutes into the new film Argylle, is a successful and popular writer. Four books into a well-received series of spy novels, she has accumulated enough expectant fans to warrant a speaking tour.
Grian Chatten: Chaos For The Fly - Album Review
Grian Chatten: Chaos For The Fly Partisan Records Vinyl | CD | Stream | DL Out now In case Fontaines D.C. weren’t productive enough, with three albums in four years, now their ever-creative frontman has released his own solo album. Dave Beer listens for LTW… Apparently voices can’t be copyrighted. At least that’s what I learned whilst listening to a recent FT Weekend podcast on Artificial Intelligence in music.
THUMPER: Delusions of Grandeur - Album Review
THUMPER: Delusions of Grandeur Reckless Records Vinyl/DL/Stream Out Now The Dublin based six-piece release their first long-player. A raucous collection of crafted songs driven by a psychedelic wall of sound, after a bit of a delay Dave Beer takes a listen for LTW… I should have written this review a year ago. That was when Thumper’s crackling debut album Delusions of Grandeur was released. I think the appropriate phrase is that “life got in the way”.
Writing gaps
In what feels like a bit of a fallow writing period I gripped tightly to Irina Dumitrescu's brilliant reflections on productivity posted recently on her excellent Substack. The piece wonders about the need to write everyday, at least in the sense that we might think of writing. One idea covered in the piece is that when we think of writing we should include thinking-time as well as the putting of words on a page: It’s easy to feel that any space should be filled with typing.
Twitter is only the 15th biggest social media site
I began writing this post before Elon Musk started the process of bidding for and then, it would seem, agreeing a takeover of Twitter1. This short piece isn’t an attempt to add more to the commentary on that. It was supposed to just be a brief contextual note. My thought was to make a general comment about the coverage of Twitter. Then Musk’s bid put Twitter back in the news again, so I've had to add this opening preface. I wonder if what I say below in some way relates to Musk's pursuit of Twitter.
Why you should be listening to The Bug Club
Caldicot based three-piece The Bug Club have been working away since 2016 honing their stripped-back garage-pop and building a live following. Things have accelerated in the last year. Since signing to Bingo Records they have released a series of garage pop gems over the last 12 months. Dave Beer listens to their releases so far and explores why, if you like your music DIY style, they are a band to keep your eye on.
And Away...The Autobiography by Bob Mortimer
And Away…by Bob Mortimer Hardcover, 336 Pages Published 16th September 2021, Gallery UK. Comedy institution Bob Mortimer turns storyteller for his newly published autobiography. It’s a book that casts fresh light on his often unpredictable life and adventures. But what does his past reveal about his comedy? Where does his taste for the ludicrous come from? And how does he understand his own comedic instincts?
Why can't I stop listening to Fontaines D.C.?
Fontaines D.C. have been one of the breakout acts of the last couple of years. Listening on repeat, our writer wonders why he is so hooked on their music and why he isn’t even close to getting bored. What is it about Fontaines D.C.? I know it’s not exactly an underground thing to have as your most played artist on a Spotify 2021 end-of-year review, but there they are. It turns out that I’m finding it hard to stop listening to Fontaines D.C..
A brief thought on the recursive society
Is this a recursive society? It’s a question that my reading on algorithms keeps bringing me back to. A recursive society is built upon feedback loops, multiple feedback loops, each feeding into the next. This, in effect, adds extra steps into social life. The many and vast integrations of data, analytics and algorithms lead to a society defined by feedback loops and processes of recursivity. Circulation upon circulation. Loop upon loop. The repeating of algorithmic processes.
The unmediation of newsletters
Perhaps there is something impersonal about personalisation. With the focus often being on the rapid networking and targeted filtering of social media, it’s interesting how the newsletter has had a resurgence in popularity. The turn to newsletters, relatively dusty fossils of our fast moving media times, probably couldn’t have been foreseen 4 or 5 years ago. Yet platforms like Substack, which only launched in 2017, and Ghost have grown significantly in a short period of time.
DJ Shadow: Endtroducing - 25th Anniversary Retrospective
DJ Shadow’s 1996 album Endtroducing wasn’t so much an LP as a cultural moment. On the 25th anniversary of its release, Dave Beer listens back to its undulating beats and is surprised to find a record that seems to capture something of 2021… It feels slightly strange to be trying to write a retrospective of a 25 year-old album that really sounds like it could have been released yesterday. Time has not aged it. The dust has not settled, the tones never faded.
DJ Format: Devil's Workshop - Album Review
DJ Format: Devil’s Workshop (Project Blue Book) CD/LP/DL/Stream Out now Bristol based hip-hop artist DJ Format returns with an album for our disorientating and fragmentary times. Stitching together a vast range of sounds, the result is a carefully composed and immersive soundscape of ideas… Amongst all of this mess, there is a real art in being able to locate disparate cultural bits and assemble them into something new and coherent. DJ Format’s kaleidoscopic new album does just that.
Gruff Rhys: Seeking New Gods - album review
Gruff Rhys Seeking New Gods Rough Trade Records Out now Turning up the volume, Cardiff-based songwriter Gruff Rhys continues his string of harmonious solo albums with a bold and fuller sounding new LP. Dave Beer listens on repeat for Louder Than War. It’s probably not wise to open a review with a description of cardboard, but I can’t help noticing that it takes me an extra minute or two to crack into the shiny white vinyl of Gruff Rhys’ latest album Seeking New Gods.
Memory sticks
I can't bring myself to abandon my memory sticks. In the shifts of technological change, the memory stick has stuck. They seem to have become too deeply embedded in my writing practice to be easily jettisoned. When it comes to storing my words I’m trapped in that technological moment when the pull of the new is outweighed by the force of habit.
Data capitalism's moment
Approached with caution, quite a bit of caution that is, lists of the biggest companies in the world might reveal some shifts in the direction of capitalism over time. This is never going to give a full picture, there is a lot going on beyond this surface, yet looking at the tip of the iceberg can give a sense of the defining features of the times. If nothing else, it is at least suggestive of wider trends.
And here is your social media host...
Listening to D Double E’s new album Double Or Nothing, I was struck by a line on the closing track 24/7. Usually known for his sharp delivery, this slightly restrained closing track reflects on the nagging demands of his Instagram feed. Someone tells him he really needs to be more active on there, he needs to keep updating. Jaded by a hectic schedule, in that moment the sheer monotony of connection seemed to weigh heavily. He responds: ‘24/7 I've got to be a host'.
Data spectres
Where media might be understood to be about the present and real-time nowness, they also have deep tangles with the past. It could even be said that the past is making a comeback. The accumulation of data has implications for the way that the past connects into the present. There are perhaps two main questions here. The first is about how we do a history of data.
Views and times
A few years ago I wrote a piece about how Walter Benjamin was a kind of blogger. Assembling bits in his notebooks, he built up detailed cross references and themes. It was more that his working practices seemed to be suited to a medium that was yet to exist. Sometimes styles of working are waiting for their medium to come along, I suppose. And anyway, in many ways a blog is simply a remediation of a notebook. I was just looking back across the archive of this newsletter.
Five Star
It's hard to escape the logic of the ranking. They are never very far away. Not only are we ranked ourselves, but we are frequently asked to rate things so that they might be ranked for us. The issue this creates is how the ranking can take on a life of its own and distort behaviours. When you judge things through crude ratings, it shouldn’t be a surprise when people start trying to play the system to their advantage.
Futures and closures
Visions of alternatives worlds can provide a form of escape and solice whilst also acting as an all-too-real reminder of what might be. The ongoing uncertainty and incomprehension have pushed many towards fiction as they try to make sense of what is happening. Some of this writing and reflection has drawn on pandemic literature, others have worked with various other imagined futures to think about what might come next.
Reflections of nothing
After posting a couple of longer newsletters over the last couple of weeks (one on the changing social media ecology and the other on the difficulties of making sense of the ongoing social changes), I’m going to keep this one quite short and use it to highlight some articles, books and podcasts. Grungy loops… First, I wrote a short piece for the Transforming Society blog. It's about music and thinking - I reflected on whether music can be an inspiration for creative social research.
What is happening with social media?
Last week Ofcom released their 2020 Online Nation report. Published as both a ‘narrative report’ and an ‘interactive report’, it covers a wide-range of matters concerning Internet use, industry revenues and consumer attitudes. I thought I’d use this post to offer some very brief reflections on the things that stood out to me whilst reading the report. 1.
Watching who?
It shouldn't be a surprise that in a surveillance culture, defined by the many ways we are being watched, surveillance itself becomes a preoccupation and focal point for fictional and non-fictional scrutiny. A surveillance culture is always likely to feed a culture of surveillance. Jamie Bartlett's new BBC radio programme Watching Us looks back at the TV show Big Brother and explores how it signalled a change in how surveillance is understood.
A personal story (an extra newsletter)
Dear readers, Apologies for sending out a second newsletter so soon after the last. This is a very short extra post. I just wanted to draw your attention to something I've written about chronic illness. It's the most personal thing I've ever written. It took me about 18 months or more. I was chipping away at it and then sitting on it. I couldn't really decide whether to proceed with it. Then I thought that if I had the right venue, I might be able to part with the article.
Abolish Silicon Valley, doorbells and Sleaford Mods
A few years ago I wrote a defence of book reviewing. It made the case for book reviews as being a communal act that pushes against the individualisation of knowledge. At the moment, I’m also thinking of reviewing as a form of dialogue: which is very welcome where distancing is making debate and discussion more difficult to find.
Taking stock
One of my favourite pieces of writing by Walter Benjamin is his short reflective piece ‘Unpacking my Library'. Reunited with his books after a period of seperation, Benjamin uses the moment of reunification to reflect on what they mean to him. Surrounded by dust, he retrieves the books from their crates and thinks about the attachment that collectors have to the objects they have collected. We share a biography with these objects, he points out.
The case of bookcases
Solitude-networking is throwing up lots of new visual cues, especially as we see inside people's homes. The now prominent genre of home-located-video-link-interview content has brought the bookcase some deatailed attention. Situated in the background, the bookcase has become the mise-en-scene of the political classes (and academics and celebrities too).
Turnstiles: I.D.C - Single Review
Turnstiles I.D.C Blowtorch Records Streaming/DL Out now New band Turnstiles release their fourth single I.D.C.. It’s a blast of cynical punk energy. Dave Beer reviews the single and wonders about the role of punk in the wider malaise. Things have not been on a very steady footing for what feels like a long time. For over a decade economic and political crises have spread like an unrolled carpet. And now this. Shut-in, adrift, connecting on screens, distanced.
The writing moment
Waiting on… The lockdown seems to have brought a weird mixture of lethargy and restlessness. I'm very fortunate to be busy with my university work, but I'm still left with the feeling that I'm waiting around. I'm not sure what for. In this unsettled stasis writing about technology, media and culture is proving difficult. Not impossible, but harder. I've been trying to reflect on why writing is so tricky at the moment. Three things seem to stand out. The first is the most obvious. Focus.
Surreal Kinnock: Tribal Fusion - Single Review
Surreal Kinnock Tribal Fusion Strangetown Records Stream/DL Out now Cardiff based Strangetown Records’ signing Surreal Kinnock come crashing in with another storming single. Dave Beer takes a listen for Louder Than War… “This is just an intro…this is just an intro”, starts the new single Tribal Fusion from Surreal Kinnock. So is this. Two can play at that game. This is just an intro to my review.
TV Face: Like Dominoes - EP Review
TV Face Like Dominoes EP Stream/DL/CD Released on 24 April Lancaster three-piece TV Face release a new EP, the first in a series of releases during 2020. Dave Beer reviews it for Louder Than War. Angular is a word that crops up quite often in music reviews. It’s often a shortcut for evoking that twitchy post-punk type of sound. When it comes to describing music, words can be tough to come by.
From these distractions...
I really hope that you are all well. As a distraction, I've turned back to music reviewing/music feature writing for a bit.
El Goodo: El Goodo - Album Review
El Goodo: El Goodo Strangetown Records DL/Streaming Out now Originally released in 2005, El Goodo’s beautifully crafted eponymous debut album has been made available for download and streaming. Dave Beer takes a look back for Louder Than War. When it comes to social media you have to be careful what you believe. On their Twitter profile El Goodo describe themselves as a “lazy Welsh psychedelic band”.
The power of music in difficult times
We are living through some very difficult times. Can music help us to manage our shared isolation? Dave Beer examines its potential to provide healing power at a time of crisis. It hardly needs saying that these are tough times. It’s an understatement. The endless waves of news are hard to keep-up with, and are even harder to process. I’ve found myself limiting what I watch and read – too much of the current state-of-things is too hard to take. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by those waves.
Why I think Menswear were alright
With news of the 25th anniversary vinyl reissue of Menswear’s debut album Nuisance, which has now been delayed with the rest of the Record Store Day releases, Dave Beer reflects on their contribution and why they might have been better than the Britpop storytelling often suggests… I was 17 when the Britpop circus came to town. Menswear, the archetypes of the scene, were on tour. It was sometime in early 1995.
The Spitfires: (Just Won't) Keep Me Down
The Spitfires (Just Won’t) Keep Me Down Acid Jazz Records Out now In advance of their upcoming long-player, the aptly named Watford based outfit The Spitfires return with a spiky new tune. Dave Beer reviews it for Louder Than War. A humdrum town. And it’s raining. A place whose normality itself becomes oppressive. That’s where we find The Spitfires two years after their last album. Singing of their refusal to let their town keep them down, it’s clear they’ve retained their irrepressible vitality.
Tim Burgess: The Mall - Single Review
Tim Burgess The Mall Bella Union Out now Previewing his forthcoming album, Tim Burgess continues his growing solo catalogue of pop craft with a compelling new single. Dave Beer reviews it for Louder Than War. Like china in the hand, Tim Burgess’ new single The Mall has a gentle fragility. The song arrives in watercolour washes. Easing along, all pastels and shading, no sharp edges. There is a tentative vulnerability to its sound, it tiptoes into the back of the room.
Laundromat: Slow Clap - Single Review
Laundromat Slow Clap Brace Yourself Records Out now Brighton based Laundromat release their second track in advance of their debut EP. Dave Beer reviews it for Louder Than War. There’s an understated nonchalance to Laudromats music. Minimalist and self-assured, the new single Slow Clap, only their second track to be released, takes in the troubled scenery. “There’s a message in here somewhere”, we are told by the casual vocals that prop themselves up against the rhythmic bass.
DJ Shadow: Our Pathetic Age - Album Review
DJ Shadow: Our Pathetic Age Mass Appeal Double Vinyl/CD/Stream/DL Available now The hiphop innovator DJ Shadow returns with a new double album of eclectic sounds, styles and collaborations. What can we make of this new heavyweight slab of vinyl? Dave Beer tunes in for Louder Than War… A warped world reflected in shiny black vinyl. Like the age it sonically documents, DJ Shadow’s new album, Our Pathetic Age, is harsh in places and hard to comprehend in others.
Can we be separated from our data?
When it comes to the relationship between us and our data, one commonly used notion is the ‘data shadow’. The idea is that the data generated as a by-product of our everyday lives form into a kind of shadow that follows us around. We exist, so this vision goes, as an isolated entity that produces a data imprint. We leave an impression in the data structures we are surrounded by, that impression shadows our presence.
You've Got Mail
Recently I caught a bit of the 1998 film You've Got Mail. It stars Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, and is a based around their characters’ email communications. The back and forth of emails punctuate the narrative. If you've not seen it, a review in Empire magazine from the time observed, tellingly, that ‘the film leans heavily on images of the stars typing (never the stuff of great cinema)’. Watching it back now, the film’s depiction of the technology suggests that it was an in-between time for email.
The interaction deficit
For over a decade now social media have been turning our interactions into data. Once relations, dialogue and connections are abstracted into data, they are opened up to analysis, comparison and engineering. Occasionally we get little glimpses of how these data fold-back into the way people connect and relate. Instagram’s announcement of their new feature for tracking user interaction is one of those moments.
A review of a book that reviews a paper that reviews books
It's a book that keeps you at arms length. Maybe that’s the point - to reveal without losing too much mystique, to tell stories whilst remaining enigmatic. You can almost hear the editors wondering if the magic will be lost if the readers know too much. As an autobiography, history or memoir, it doesn't quite let you in. London Review of Books: An Incomplete History gives some tantalising glimpses whilst leaving the reader standing on the doorstep. The paper that it describes is a bit like that too.
When updates end
Intermittent software updates are a common feature of our digital landscape. Our devices often pause to renew. We only really notice these updates when they cause us to have to wait for functionality to resume. Then a slightly altered normality returns - often the changes are so minor that they are barely visible, or they are tucked away somewhere in the back-end. Two recent stories have highlighted what happens to our devices when the updates cease.
The end of hidden tracks?
Holding down the fast forward button on your CD player, eventually the sound of a mysterious hidden track would rush by. An all-too-quick blur of noise. Then you'd have to skip back a bit to get to the start of the song. In other cases it was rewinding into the space before the first listed track - listening to the track in rapid reverse motion before letting it play back. The hidden or secret track was tucked away in the recesses of the CD - only to be found but those who knew where to look.
Dave Beer - Fragments of Modernity
This is a free newsletter about technology, media and culture. I've borrowed the title - ‘Fragments of Modernity' - from a book by David Frisby. It captures what I'm hoping to try to do. I want these to be fragments of writing about fragments of modern life. Sometimes the fragments will be quite short, other times a little longer. They might not be fully thought through or polished - they'll be snapshots and brief reflections.
Twitter and facial recognition
Technological developments can break down all sorts of boundaries, distinctions and seperations. The most recent of these ruptures has led to a battle over who owns our faces. It has been reported that Twitter have demanded that the AI company Clearview stop harvesting faces from user profiles. The reports suggest that these openly available images have been captured and stored for use in the development and deployment of facial recognition technology.
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