Friday 15th August 2025
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Review: We Are Scientists – Helter Seltzer

Daniel Curtis
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Review: We Are Scientists – Helter Seltzer

We Are Scientists know how to write a chorus. However, what makes Helter Seltzer, their fifth studio LP, quite so exciting is that their pop sensibilities have now been coupled with a synthy sheen. The result? An elevated scale, while channelling enough of the duo’s endearing scuzziness to maintain their recognisable indie-rock sound. This equilibrium, demonstrated effectively by the strong first half of the album, finds gently distorted guitar underscoring new synthy pop hooks, resulting in many of the more immediate tracks sounding massive; indeed, ‘Buckle’, ‘In My Head’ and ‘Too Late’ are a powerful album-opening trinity. Seriously, many of the hooks and melodies (see their tremendous album closer ‘Forgiveness’) simply belong in a live setting.

This keenly-honed pop potency goes hand-in-hand with just how streamlined the album is; just two of the 10 tracks are over four minutes long. This lean songwriting belies the title and the band’s assertion that this is their “messiest” album in ten years. Granted, some of the tonal switches could be smoothed over, such as that between the dreamy ‘Want for Nothing’ and the propulsive ‘Classic Love’, but it feels crude to criticise the band when they achieve so much within such confines. In fact, it is when the album slows down and tends to strain for the more expansive, tentative realms of M83, Chvrches and their synth-pop peers that the album suffers for its ambition. Despite this, the yearning ‘We Need To Have a Word’, which closes the first half, still manages to sound beautiful. Such an adjective might be new for We Are Scientists, but they earn it. Gone is the frenetic distortion of With Love and Squalor (but it does make a resurgence in ‘Headlights’ and the glorious middle eight of ‘Waiting For You’).

“Go be unimpressed – you and all your unfair assumptions”, the band decree in ‘Hold On’. No need: Helter Seltzer is very impressive indeed.

The Oxonian Dandy

Dante OKeefe
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The Oxonian Dandy

Fashion. Clothing. Two independent and not-necessarily-linked concepts. But I find myself asking, what is the point of one without the other? Championing the two, surely, is the aim of any young bullock studying among the dreaming spires. Why (the question truly begs!) trudge up the great staircases of Examination Schools in some decidedly common chinos when one can prance around in a pair of malachite corduroys? Oh, the sound of supple velvet ribbing caressing opposing inner thighs!

In this men’s wardrobe supplement, as I shall call it, I aim to provide insight and advice for the man-about-Oxford who wishes to stand apart from the rest by blending in to the history of this great city, picking up and accepting the mantle generations of well-dressed swain have left.

In this first issue, let us start with the great corner stone of attire: colour. In this modern era, vibrancy is paramount for pre-eminence in the on-looker’s eye. Avoid black at all costs: the progressive nature of our time invites distance from stuffy charcoal and sooty browns of ages gone past.

Having established the need for a posi- tively garish palette, one must take care in pairing garments based on pigment. There’s no worse sight than a variation in hues – you don’t want to look like you’ve just hauled yourself out of a water-well in a Lloyd-Webber musical, donning some awful entire-body, technicolour shell-suit.

It’s all about blocking. They’re all doing it at the moment: Simons, Vavartos, Bidjan- Saberi… they all take meticulous care to assemble an outfit from head to toe based on a common tint. So: stick to what you put together yourself: yellows, reds and oranges could all be integrated into one line-up.

Twin a magenta floral shirt with a vermillion waistcoat and a pair of peach chinos. Now that’s a rather extreme example – but I’m trying to hit the nail with a hammer.

The problem with the modern man at Oxford is he doesn’t block, and he wears too much neutral. You’ll see a chap in the same navy Next jeans and retro bomber jacket strolling down Radcliffe Square that he wears strutting along Park End Street. It’s just saddening.

Style has a time and a place – all the time and everywhere. What separates us from caveman but the desire to dress not in what is convenient or warm, but visually appealing? Absolutely nothing, I tell you. Nothing at all.

For ideas, try browsing the new Statement T line from Tom Ford. If you’re on a budget, cheaper alternatives can be found all over the web – Asos marketplace does the job nicely. Or, for those who prefer to see what they buy face-to-face, just take a look upstairs in Toast (it’s on the HighStreet, opposite Brasenose). I can particularly commend the (on-sale!) silk button-up pyjamas.

Review – Animal Collective at the O2 Ritz

Richard Birch
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Review – Animal Collective at the O2 Ritz

Kurt Cobain has a lot to answer for. Flannel shirts, quiet/loud dynamics (it’s nothing new godsake, Zeppelin did it) and the creation of a culture where it’s apparently embarrassing for a ‘high art’ band to be ashamed of playing their biggest hits. As with Nirvana, so with Animal Collective.

Song after song from the latest album was interspersed with judicious spatterings from the back catalogue – and when they actually brought these tracks out (such as the more Pop-like ‘Daily Routine’ from Merriweather Post Pavilion), the mood finally picked up; with people going from a semicatatonic sway to actual dancing. ‘Alvin Row’ from their debut formed something of a focal point to the show, its jarring psychedelic euphoria showing what it is that makes Animal Collective one of the best bands of the 21st century. The quality of the show itself was undeniably high. Sound levels were used to great effect to enhance the power of the vocal melodies, creating a pseudo-religious atmosphere with ethereal organ and Gregorian chant style harmonies. Trippy as fuck, in other words.

Harking back to the glory days of Pink Floyd’s psychedelic light shows, the back wall of the stage was constantly glowing multifarious colours and patterns. Totemic smiling faces stood behind the band, alternating from red to blue to appearing as if fishes were swimming against an azure background. There is no denying that the light show formed a crucial part of the ‘art’ of the show – it was, honestly, breathtaking.

Despite the quality of the music and the light show, however, there was something fundamentally missing from the night. My temptation is to blame it on the pretensions of the band’s set list, but whatever it was, it is evident that people simply weren’t feeling it – and if the Manchester crowd aren’t feeling it, then God help any other.

Vote Leave hold public meeting at St Hugh’s

Guy Bennett-Jones
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Vote Leave hold public meeting at St Hugh’s

House of Commons  leader Chris Grayling and UKIP MP Douglas Carswell led a Vote Leave public meeting in St Hugh’s College on Saturday. Addressing a crowd of over 150 people, including many activists and volunteers, they presented the case for leaving and stressed the need for more volunteers and donations.

“We’re having to say no to doctors from India and engineers from Singapore and we can’t say no to people with criminal records from Eastern Europe. It’s an absurd system and we need to take back control.”

Douglas Carswell

Vote Leave was designated the official leave campaign last week. It is a cross-party platform chaired by Labour MP Gisela Stewart and featuring members from UKIP and the Conservative party. There was also a member of Liberal Leave attending the public meeting.

Carswell’s opening speech focused on the need to reclaim border controls, the £350 million sent to the EU each week and the lack of democracy in the EU.

He claimed that open borders hurt the university, “Oxford University needs to be able to attract the brightest and the best… But look at the effects of the immigration system. We’re having to say no to doctors from India and engineers from Singapore and we can’t say no to people with criminal records from Eastern Europe. It’s an absurd system and we need to take back control.”

Grayling targeted Oxford students regarding a ‘housing crisis’ in the UK, “The official statisticians of this country are saying that our population is going to rise over the next twenty years from 63 million to around 80 million. I do not believe we can possibly sustain an increase in population that big…We don’t have the houses.

“This is not about the people that are already here paying into our economy. It’s about looking to the future.”

Chris Grayling

“For the next generation, for those of you who are students in this room it really matters to you. How on earth are we going to deal with an already very difficult housing situation in this country if we are bringing into Britain every year a city the size of Newcastle? Yes, if we stay in the European Union we cannot limit flows of immigration to this country.”

Grayling dismissed the idea that any students would be deported, and said, “One of the things being put out by the other side is that somehow [all your European friends will] have to go home. That does not happen… There are clear international conventions that are under the United Nations, not under the European Union, that say if migration rules change you can’t deport somebody afterwards. And we wouldn’t want to. This is not about the people that are already here paying into our economy. It’s about looking to the future.”

Carswell noted that everyone in Oxford has received the government’s recent pro-EU leaflet. “The government can spend £9.3 million and deliver one of those to every household in the country by simply pushing a few buttons. But when we do it, we need an army of leafleters to deliver it. They spent more on that one leaflet than Vote Leave is allowed to spend in the entire campaign.”

Liz St Clair, an organising member of Vote Leave, commented, “We’re working with various groups all over the country including in London, Oxford, Reading, Southampton. We’ve got strong student teams active for Leave under both Vote Leave and Students for Britain.”

An attending representative of Oxford students for Britain, the Eurosceptic counterpart to Oxford Students for Europe, told Cherwell, “I think that much of what was discussed here was of real importance in coming to understand our oft vexed relationship with Europe. The high turnout was very heartening for the Eurosceptic cause that OSfB promotes.

“Students for Britain is a really nice group of friends, working our hardest to spread our Eurosceptic ideals to the student body at large.”

Grayling was a last minute replacement for John Whittingdale, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who was under pressure over an alleged relationship with a sex worker.

 

Spotlight: Drama and identity

Alex Barasch
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Spotlight: Drama and identity

Explorations of gender through drama have come to the fore in Oxford this week. On Saturday, Not Your Nice Girl will present BEARDS; on Sunday, a workshop at St Peter’s will evaluate the role of gender in Hamlet and Shakespearean casting more broadly as part of the OUDS Shakespeare Celebrations. While the first woman to play Hamlet did so in the 18th century, Maxine Peake’s recent turn as the Prince of Denmark still sparked controversy, setting off a flurry of articles about “the perils of gender-crossed Shakespeare.”

One facet of Peake’s performance that went almost unacknowledged in the press, however, was the decision to play Hamlet as trans. (There was a link to trans awareness resources on the production page, and a rather ill-conceived blurb on the Royal Exchange website answered the question “Is Hamlet a man or a woman in this production?” with “The answer is, both! Maxine is playing Hamlet as a woman that ‘presents’ as a man.”)

This is a departure from convention worth discussing and repeating – and one that can teach us something new about the original text. Does not Claudius’s dismissal, “Tis unmanly grief,” sting more sharply when it is used to invalidate his stepson’s identity? The character’s own meditations on masculinity and wry comparisons between himself and Hercules are thrown into stark relief when these are expectations he has had to contend with so directly throughout his life. We begin to understand him not as the “archetype of masculinity” he has become, but as a young man grappling with his perceived failure to conform to its standards.

With last term’s BT lineup including Binding and Cashiered, each an authentic, important exploration of trans issues both past and present, and the Michaelmas sell-out show pussyfooting now being redevised for performance in the OUDS National Tour, it seems Oxford drama is asking the right questions about identity – a challenge to the status quo that has been happily well-received. I personally hope this trend persists for a long time to come.

University officially outlines pro-EU position

Daniel Kodsi
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University officially outlines pro-EU position

Oxford University released a statement Friday morning announcing the University Council’s position on the UK’s membership of the European Union. Though the University has previously indicated support for the UK retaining its membership, this marks its first official declaration.

The statement reads, “As a world-leading University, Oxford has for many years carried out research on the place of Europe in British public life (through the work of several of its academic departments and institutes such as its European Studies Centre). The University welcomes the opportunity to participate in the current debate on the EU Referendum through that research.

“Membership of the EU currently benefits the University in a number of ways. The mobility that EU membership affords, which enables staff and students from across the EU to come to Oxford, and Oxford staff and students to work and study in Europe, is central to our Strategic Plan. This contains at its heart the exchange of ideas that strengthens our ability to contribute to society and to the national and local economy, and provides intellectual benefit in partner universities and research institutes. The EU facilitates our participation in pan-European research collaborations; enables us to contribute to the development of EU research policy to the benefit of the UK as a whole; and provides us with access to EU research funding (of some £66m in 2014/15). All this serves our vision of the University of Oxford as a global hub for intellectual engagement.

“While recognising that individual members of the University will hold different views on the Referendum, and while encouraging open debate on the issue, the University’s Council wishes to affirm the value that the UK’s membership of the EU provides to the University.”

The “Brexit” debate has proved divisive at both national level, revealing rifts within the governing Conservative Party, and at Oxford, where both an Oxford Students for Europe (OSFE) and an Oxford Students for Britain (OSFB) group have been created.

But sentiment is not as divided at Oxford as it is in Britain. In a survey conducted during Hilary, Cherwell found that 80 per cent of students wished to remain while only 13 per cent wished to exit the EU.

OSFE and OSFB have been contacted for comment.

Obituary: Prince 1958-2016

Daniel Curtis
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Obituary: Prince 1958-2016

“Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.”

That was one of Prince’s most powerful quotes – and despite everything, no-one can quite describe what he signified for others. A powerful guitarist. A provocative songwriter. An indomitable rebel. Mere nouns and adjectives fall short.

Instead, celebrate his ability to be a genuine showstopper, someone who could steal the camera lens away from countless stars to unleash untameable vocals, or emotive solos. Someone who played most of the instruments on all of his records through a frankly ridiculous back-catalogue, crowned by his early 70s and 80s run of LPs which essentially brought funk to the masses and made him a veritable pop-culture icon.

Yet despite that, Prince was quietly a writer of some of the famous pop songs of the century under humble, nondescript pseudonyms. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, ‘Manic Monday’, ‘I Feel For You’ and countless others all bear Prince’s signature dichotomy of romance and seduction.

Celebrate his steadfast desire to be untrammelled by the music industry, leaving behind the name of his birth and the same name which made him famous, while refusing to let the value and worth of music be degraded by modern streaming means which give little reward to the artist.

As ever, Prince himself put it best: “A strong spirit transcends rules.”

Oxford students push for NUS disaffiliation

Zachary Klamann
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Oxford students push for NUS disaffiliation

After Malia Bouattia overcame allegations of anti-semitism to become the National President of the NUS, voices within Oxford, including its NUS delegates, have begun calling for disaffiliation from the national union.

Bouattia, who will be the first black women to take up the presidency, won in spite of vocal condemnation coming from leaders of student Jewish societies across the country and student union leaders, including OUSU president Becky Howe.

“The point of a union for students is to deliver real representation for all students, and what has occurred this conference shows that this is no longer a priority for those who hold power in the NUS.”

Oh Well, Alright Then

Barely more than a day after the results were announced, Oxford NUS slate Oh Well, Alright Then released a statement pushing the student body to a referendum on NUS membership after Bouattia’s election.

“Today, we no longer believe that Oxford’s membership of the NUS can be justified”, the delegates said in a group press release. “The point of a union for students is to deliver real representation for all students, and what has occurred this conference shows that this is no longer a priority for those who hold power in the NUS.”

They plan to build grassroots support which can then introduce motions for every JCR and MCR to mandate their OUSU representatives to vote for a referendum to be introduced before the full student body.

The Oxford Jewish Society has thrown their support behind the movement. “We thank OUSU and students across Oxford for their support and firmly support the motion for Oh Well Alright Then to dissafiliate from OUSU. Oxford JSOC has no confidence in NUS to represent us as students”, Oxford Jewish Society President Isaac Virchis told Cherwell.

The strong opposition to Bouattia’s campaign reached a fever pitch late last week when leaders of student Jewish societies at 48 universities around the UK signed an open letter calling for her to answer questions about her past comments calling the University of Birmingham a “Zionist outpost” and referring to its large Jewish society as a problem. It also raised concerns with her claim that the government’s anti-extremism measure, Prevent, was fuelled by “all manner of Zionist and neo-con lobbies”.

While she quickly released a statement clarifying her views, claiming to not “see a large Jewish Society on campus as a problem” and insisting that her anti-Zionist views were not anti-Jewish, separating politics and faith, these responses were deemed insufficient by both Jewish student leaders and the OUSU sabbatical team, which decided to not support Bouattia in the election.

Bouattia referred to the allegations in her speech at the NUS Conference in Brighton, saying the audience will have seen her name “dragged through the mud by the right-wing media” but that such criticism was wrong as her platform was motivated by inclusion and protection of all students.

“Any candidate who in a hustings speech refers to legitimate scrutiny from Jewish students as having her name dragged through the mud by the right wing media is in my view not fit to be President of NUS”, said Isaac Virchis, president of the Oxford Jewish society, echoing his earlier calls for her disqualification.

“NUS has failed its Jewish members and can no longer claim to be representative of each and every student.”

Isaac Virchis, Oxford University JSoc President

While not everyone has called for NUS disaffiliation, her election made Oxford students across the ideological spectrum uncomfortable.

“An anti-semite has won the NUS Presidential election. We are disgusted”, Oh Well, Alright Then tweeted after the announcement.

Mentioning the motion passed earlier that day calling for movement against anti-semitism, Virchis said, “It is hypocritical of NUS to pass a motion making a commitment to anti-Semitism and then twenty minutes later to elect a President who has problematic views towards Jewish students on campus. NUS has failed its Jewish members and can no longer claim to be representative of each and every student.”

The Union of Jewish Students chose to take a conciliatory tone with the news, saying “UJS is proud of its long history and long standing positive relationship with the National Union of Students. Now that Malia Bouattia has been elected president, we hope that that relationship will be able to continue”. It is unclear how the election will affect Jewish students’ relationship to NUS.

For some, however, it is the politicisation of the post, which they claim takes the NUS away from its mission to lobby for student needs, that is problematic. “[The NUS] shouldn’t be an outfit for the promotion of political activities that are irrelevant to most students or for the promotion of extremist ideas, such as anti-Semitism and the refusal to condemn ISIS”, said second-year geographer Alex Curtis, referring to Bouattia’s earlier effort to keep the NUS from condemning the Islamic State. “Unfortunately, that is what the NUS has become”.

Why CUSU should not end TCS’s print edition

Tom Barrie
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Why CUSU should not end TCS’s print edition

It’s not every day that an Oxford student newspaper will defend a rival, let alone one written by our upstart cousins from that small, cold town in the Fens. Having been involved with the student press to varying degrees over the last two years, though, news of Cambridge University Student Union’s (CUSU) plans to cut the print edition of The Cambridge Student is saddening and alarming.

University is the time when we cut our teeth in practice for the wider world. It’s why OUSU debates as though its members were pretending to be Parliament, why people network at LawSoc like they work for a Magic Circle firm, why student charities petition the powers that be and engage in local and student issues. We’re adults, and yet we have the luxury of shelter from “real-world” forces like economic realities and restrictions on our time. We can, if we want, spend all day writing indulgent articles or speeches about silly things that we care about passionately, and then rush that essay or tute sheet off in a couple of hours in the evening. This will not be a possibility when we have full-time careers.

A degree is not only a matter of learning what John Stuart Mill thought about free speech, or what temperature will melt carbon, or the intricacies of Roman Law. It is also about learning important skills that will complement a later career, in an environment that is less punishing than the world outside university.

The same is true of the press. There is no need here to defend the role of the press in holding representatives and university management to account- that much ought to be obvious. The printed, physical student press, however, is as essential as the digital.

Whilst print newspapers are in decline across the country, there are still a plethora of jobs that won’t even consider a graduate without experience in certain elements of the process of creating a physical paper. The organisational skills required to run a student newspaper in print, the Photoshop and InDesign skills that come with it, the management of a team of some 50-100 contributors and writers – having wrestled with these first-hand, I can safely say that all are massive parts of a steep learning curve for a career in journalism.

Imagine if CUSU itself was scrapped, or if it all took place online. The Union would still be able to achieve a huge amount on a basic level; most likely everything it already does. But the practiced skill of delivering a speech in person would be lost, to the detriment of all those involved and their public speaking ability. Creating a newspaper or magazine is not just an intellectual exercise, it is a mechanical and practical process of organisation, visualisation and craft, all of which are skills key to journalists.

Furthermore, it is a social activity. Commissioning articles to go online by people who you never meet in person is a drag; it’s impersonal and, ultimately, no fun. It limits your creative scope, the ideas you pass by people, and removes any non-careerist motivation to get involved with the press, making it inaccessible to the majority of students. The average student journalist would hardly ever come face-to-face with another.

CUSU has enough money in its reserves to keep TCS running for 38 years, if it wanted to. I sincerely hope they reconsider taking away such a golden opportunity for budding journalists, hundreds of whose university experience TCS enriches each year.

Web Series World – Green Gables Fables

Naomi Gee
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Web Series World – Green Gables Fables

This is not a blog which shall save mankind, force everyone to stay in the EU and end world poverty. This is just a blog about new platforms for story telling. Welcome to the world of web series.

But first a short introduction to the medium. The particular web series that will be covered in this blog are modern adaptions of classic stories, usually involving a central YouTube channel and a plethora of different social media accounts (Anne Shirley from Green Gables Fables for example has a YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr account). The plot develops as a modern online life reasonably might. Thus the audience for the first time has the opportunity to tweet at and comment on the videos of their favourite fictional characters. As a result, the plot is able to develop in real time and in much greater detail than any normal film adaption. This also makes the narrative less of a one off experience and more a lived in story.

And so dear reader, to begin. This week I shall introduce you to one of the most active Web series at the moment, and therefore perhaps the only one it is reasonable to get involved in during finals – Green Gables Fables*. Based on the Anne of Green Gables series of books by L.M. Montgomery, so far this small web series has been remarkably true to the books and now in its second season, it just seems to get better and better with age. I think a lot of its charm is found in the fact that the medium is so accessible. If this were a group with a much bigger budget, which didn’t rely on crowd funding, I think they would struggle to retain the story’s simple authenticity.

So what has happened so far?

*SPOILER ALERT*

This is where all the excitement goes down. Things have gone crazy in recent weeks with @GGFables.

r death

Ruby’s death in February was perhaps one of the most heartbreaking, yet brilliantly acted parts of the season so far. We all knew it was coming, which somehow managed to make it worse. That is part of the joy and agony of a web series, that if you know how the book plays out, waiting for the small hints of what is to come is a long drawn out painful process.

Then Anne broke up with Roy and it all got very dramatic.

gil working

The whole fandom panicked because we all knew Gilbert was going to get sick and we assumed that this was because he was working too hard.

accident

And then he got hit by a car. (Well played @GGFables)

happy

Finally, after much drama, Anne just declared her love for Gilbert and everyone squealed lots.

Now having got you all up-to-date, you may all be thinking ‘wow this girl is incredibly sad’. Well yes, yes I am. Welcome to my world. It’s wonderful.

*Blitzing an entire web series in one go is easily possible, but as I learned in the Easter Vac catching up on Northbound (a modern version of Northanger Abbey) you will lose several days.

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