London-born musician Ben Watt has worked as a DJ, record producer and radio presenter, but is best known as one half of alt-pop duo Everything But the Girl. His first solo album, North Marine Drive, reached No 1 in the UK indie chart in 1983. Teaming up with partner Tracey Thorn, Watt went on to record nine studio albums as Everything But the Girl, with one platinum and six gold discs in the UK. As a DJ, Watt helped to establish several London club nights and, in 2003, launched his own record label, Buzzin' Fly, followed by a sister label, Strange Feeling, in 2007. Watt regularly hosts Radio 6 Music's 6Mix programme and has also written two books: the autobiographical Patient (detailing Watt's battle with Churg-Strauss syndrome) and Romany and Tom, a memoir about his bohemian parents. In April he released his second solo album, Hendra, a collaboration with Suede's Bernard Butler and featuring Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. His new single, Forget, is released tomorrow.
Music: Hiss Golden Messenger
Hiss Golden Messenger have just signed to Merge Records but I was alerted to them by an old friend of mine who runs a record shop in Indianapolis when they made their first album. It's based around the songwriting of a guy called MC Taylor, who used to be in a band in San Francisco. Their record Bad Debt was recorded in his kitchen on to a cassette while his kid was asleep in the next room, and has recently been rereleased. It's like folk-rock, but quite contemplative. It has a questioning, spiritual doubt to it that I really like. His voice is lovely: soft, but with some gravity to it. I've spoken to him a little bit on Twitter lately and we have vowed to get together at some point later this year and do a gig, which will be fun.
Film: Exhibition
Joanna Hogg's Exhibition had very mixed reviews but I thought it was absolutely brilliant. It's a portrait of a relationship between two artists living in a house together and I hadn't seen anything like it before. It's both existential and also quite sensual; it's domestic, but quite mysterious. I also liked the sound design. A lot of the microphone placements are done in the middle-distance, so you have a sense of the overheard, rather than the traditional method of miking people up very close. There's this mad tension between the two characters, and it's also unsentimental and unironic. It is an examination of a middle-class couple, but there isn't the usual slightly snidey slant on it. I thought it was very original and Viv Albertine is really good too.
Sport: Barnet FC
I grew up supporting Chelsea but when my son got into football about four years ago, we decided we wanted to watch a local team. We live in north London so, on a whim, I opened the paper one day and [saw that] Barnet were at home and we went to see them. We've become really attached to the club. They've had so many ups and downs in the past four seasons and they're now non-league. Last year they had Dutch legend Edgar Davids as their player-coach and it was just extraordinary watching him play at Barnet. But it all went wrong when he walked out mid-season, and they're now back in the hands of a much more straightforward, slightly brutalist manager – Martin Allen. There's a very good community atmosphere in football at that level. You suddenly get an absolutely golden moment, mixed in with a lot of rubbish, and it feels very real.
Book: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Train Dreams is a novella that tells the story of a railway worker during the depression in America. It's beautifully written – a miniature masterpiece. It's got aspects of William Maxwell, whose writing I really like, and a bit of Cormac McCathy. It has a brilliant superstitious angle to it. In those days, when people were so up against the brutality of life, there was that reaching for pseudo-religious stuff, like magic tricks and palm reading. This is woven into the texture of the book and I really like that side of it. I read in fits and starts, but I live with a big reader. Tracey is an absolute bookworm, so it's hard to compete with her appetite for books. We've lived together for so long, but we always seem to disagree on books; I think we have different tastes.
Place: The Powerhouse Arena, New York
I've just come back from New York and I did a book reading at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn. It's a huge, high-ceilinged room and it's used as a multiple space. It's split-level and, as you go in downstairs, it seems to be just like a bookshop and gift shop. Then you look towards the back of the shop and all the office and admin seems to be up at a much higher level, and you realise that the two spaces are separated by this kind of portable amphitheatre. All the bookcases are on wheels and, in the evenings, they get pushed out of the way and it becomes an amazing performance space. I really liked it as an idea, it's very fluid. Every place has character, but I just thought that this was very different.
Gallery: Graves art gallery
On the surface, the Graves gallery seems very mundane. It's a municipal gallery that is part of Sheffield City Hall. I was touring up there last year with Bernard Butler and I had a couple of hours spare. I found myself outside the gallery and I thought, Well, what's to be lost?, so I went in. It was absolutely brilliant. There was a great wood engravings exhibition on and they also had stuff by Vanessa Bell, Gwen John, Frank Auerbach… It reminded me of when I was at Hull University, where we had the Ferens art gallery. Again, it was a northern town with an unpretentious municipal gallery, which can be a really inspiring space – they don't all need to be hipster, White Cubes. I was really knocked out by the Graves art gallery, I came away feeling like it was an hour and a half well spent.
