When news filtered through from the authorities at the Oriental Institute that the destination of our year abroad had been changed from Lebanon to Jordan, we felt a peculiar sense of relief and disappointment. Such was – and to a large extent, is – the situation in Lebanon, and in particular Egypt, that we welcomed the last-minute change to proceedings. However, those dangerous preconceptions one often has of a foreign country took hold as friends and relatives who had visited Jordan wavered somewhere between impressed and underwhelmed. “It’s a dump!” one told me. “Jordan is so boring!” claimed another. As we near the end of our first month in Amman, I can only disagree.

Managing expectations was always going to be difficult with our minds dead-set on what Cairo and Beirut had to offer and no one here will deny that, but after the Eid break and several weeks of adjusting to life in Jordan, we have all been pleasantly surprised. Amman, Jordan’s capital, is home to the ancient ruins of the Roman citadel and a wonderfully preserved amphitheatre, while shisha bars and cafes provide the city with its own Middle Eastern authenticity. However, the country’s real attractions lie elsewhere. We are fortunate that the ancient city of Petra, the highly recommended Wadi Rum, and the port city of Aqaba lie in store for us.

We have, though, already visited the viscous waters of the Dead Sea where people can be seen rather peculiarly bobbing like corks and covering themselves from head to toe in mud. Similarly remarkable was the image of the West Bank, staring at us from just a few miles away on the other side. We followed our Dead Sea outing with a trip to Madaba, often referred to as the ‘City of Mosaics’. Its impressive archaeological park and Church of St. George are perhaps the best examples of the city’s affiliation with mosaics, particularly the latter which contains the 6th century Madaba Map, the oldest surviving map of Palestine which is said to have been 25 metres long in its original form.

While we have been reassured by the abundance of attractions outside Amman and the countless bars and cafes within, Jordan’s true wonder can be found in its peace and neutrality. With neighbours like Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the country’s stability is quite remarkable. Comparisons are often crude and born out of ignorance, but one can see why Jordan is sometimes dubbed the ‘Switzerland of the Middle East’. Refugees, both rich and poor, flock here in their desperate attempt to escape the war and poverty engulfing their homeland, namely Syrians and Palestinians. A staggering 1/3 of Amman’s population is from Palestine, an estimate manifested in the prevalence of Palestinian taxi drivers in the capital city.

After years of widespread instability during the Arab Spring, Jordan has maintained its monarchy and has a parliament widely considered to be under the firm control of King Abdullah II, who in fact graduated from Pembroke College. In recent years, the country’s most significant outcry was caused by a rise in the price of oil from 6 Jordanian Dinars to 10 JDs per canister, which speaks volumes about Jordan as a whole. It is little surprise that Jordanians are sensitive to the prices of water and oil as they produce very little of their own, relying on imports from neighbouring countries, but there is a link between the country’s meagre resources and its longstanding harmony. Peace in Jordan cannot be explained in simple terms, but a combination of the healthy relationship between the people and the monarchy and the country’s lack of valuable resources are undeniably significant.

With no prospect of any imminent national security threats and a people full of love, warmth and friendliness, who could possibly complain? While accounts of rape and assault continue to emerge from Egypt and women in Saudi Arabia are castigated by the authorities for holding a national driving day to combat the laws banning them from driving a car, Jordanian women are encouraged by the monarchy to be educated and seek careers for themselves. It’s a shame that a country with press freedoms and a sense of gender equality cannot shed some light on its troubled neighbours.

★★★★☆
Four Stars

Matangi is an important album for M.I.A; it’s her first major release since 2010’s disappointing Maya and the damning critique published by the NY Times in the same year. The article called Maya out on the opinions stated in through her lyrics and public appearances; she was accused of trivialising a complex political situation in Sri Lanka, of naïvety and hypocrisy in global issues, and of encouraging violence. All this has more than an element of truth, and I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to look for political inspiration in Maya’s songs. But when listening to M.I.A, the words are somewhat secondary. Aesthetics plays a huge role in her life, and her ability to conjure images through music rather than words is stunning. Since her first projects in 2004, Maya’s style has been defined by its musical multiculturalism, clashing Western electro with Asian melodies and African rhythms.  The mix is exotic and heady; aural pictures of lush tropics juxtaposed with growing industrialisation and political unrest abound. At its best, listening to M.I.A is like a rush of adrenaline, focusing your attention and forcing you to inhabit the world that she sings about.

The quality of her previous work, combined with Interscope’s endless delays to release has built a lot of anticipation for this album. Opening with the lumbering synths of ‘Karmageddon’, first impressions are that Maya may be back on form. However, title track ‘Matangi’ doesn’t hit as hard as you’d like it to, and we have to wait until the fifth song ‘Come Walk With Me’ to get something really worthwhile. Despite this, the whole of the middle of the album is excellent, with songs like the infamous ‘Bad Girls’, Weeknd-featuring ‘Exodus’, and ‘aTENTion’, which may be one of the best songs M.I.A has done since her early years. Unfortunately, the back end of the album drags on and feels somewhat lacklustre, but the rhythmic assault of ‘Bring the Noize’ brings an invigorating break.

Matangi is a worthy effort, and while it might not reach the disorientating ecstasy of 2007’s Kala, it is easily one of the most sonically interesting albums of the last 5 years and definitely worth your time.

The new upcoming album from Beans on Toast, Giving Everything, is going to be “same old, same old. Sex, drugs and politics in the same three chords.”

I catch up with the self-proclaimed drunken folk singer – real name Jay – before his gig at Art Bar (formerly The Bullingdon), which he has had some experience of before, playing here as a teenager in a band back in 1999. He also mentions with clear fondness a tour he did with bands on barges sailing up the canals and eventually making it to Oxford.

He seems keen to correct some possible misconceptions. Songs like ‘The Price of Rice’, ‘Protest Song’ and ‘Dirty Paki’ have clear political themes, and Beans, somewhat predictably, took a particular dislike to George Bush while he was in power, but, he claims, “I’m still not interested in politics. I don’t shy away from people saying I’m a political songwriter, but I’m completely uneducated in it. I still have zero interest in what you might call political affairs. It depends on what level that is, whether it’s who’s in power and who’s not or the politics of which way a spliff goes round the room. I’m just here for the good times. Say what you see. I just sing about what I know. I’ve certainly never had an open interest in politics and I don’t think I ever will.”

He clearly takes a very humble approach to his songwriting, and recognizes that just because he’s written songs about things, “I’m not claiming I’m right in any of my opinions” and goes on to relate a story about a song called ‘The Great Big Fucking Hole’, in which he connected the hole in the ozone layer to global warming, only to be informed by several concerned fans that the two were actually completely unrelated and that the ozone layer had in fact been fixed. “But no one ever got thanked!” he insists. “We should’ve got together and celebrated that! A lot!” The purpose of this story, he explains, is to show that people shouldn’t take his songs too seriously. “I don’t take ‘em seriously!”

Giving Everything will keep things topical, covering topics from “Prince Harry, Glastonbury and fracking” to “the future of the music business”, and with Jay now in a committed relationship, there will be “less whimsical songs about getting laid and more love songs”.

Despite occasionally seeming to disapprove of elements of Britain’s drinking culture, Jay’s as much a fan of pubs as anyone else, if not more. He becomes introspective, searching his soul as he tells the story of how he “sent a text the other day saying ‘We’re in Wetherspoon’s if you want to come and join us’ before realizing he’d sent the same text to the same person about four or five times in the last week or so. If Beans on Toast stopped drinking, there would be no hope for the rest of us.

Later on during his set, Jay is his typical exuberant self, at one point summoning all the female members of the audience up on stage to dance with him, and spending the rest of the time roaming through the crowd with the microphone. A lot of his music sounds quite serious, but he clearly doesn’t take himself too seriously at all, and thinks you shouldn’t either.

★★★★★
Five Stars

Eminem knows what we’re thinking. “Here’s a sequel to my Mathers LP just to get people to buy!” But the purpose behind The Marshall Mathers LP2 is not to repeat, but to analyze, the success of the Detroit rapper’s third album. Opening track ‘Bad Guy’ is a direct follow-up to ‘Stan’, focusing first on Stan’s brother Matthew (remember him?), who loved Eminem even more than Stan. Matthew Mitchell (notice the initials!) kidnaps his brother’s indirect killer and drives off in an all-too-familiar manner as his conscious blends with Eminem’s own, wrestling with the rapper’s self-doubt as he questions the homophobia and misogyny present in so much of his previous work. Just as some classic examples of Eminem’s brilliant rhyming ability come in towards the end, talking about a “portrait of an artist/tortured/trapped in his own drawings”, the song fades away, showing that though Eminem still has his technical skills, it’s all ultimately meaningless if he can’t “recapture the lightning trapped in a bottle” that is The Marshall Mathers LP.

With lacklustre recent albums from Jay-Z and Kanye West, it seems everyone forgot about Eminem. He’s not broke, he’s not addicted to drugs and no one’s accusing him of corrupting the youth (did you know they said that about Socrates?), and this has led to a sense of aimless anger on his recent records. On this album, references to his own and other’s classic works are so beautifully intertwined with the music that his unrestrained anger, a necessary ingredient on any good Eminem album, fits in perfectly and produces what is not only an instant classic and his best album since The Eminem Show, but also a completely successful attempt to recapture the atmosphere surrounding Slim and Mathers, two of the best hip hop albums ever.

On ‘Rap God’, Mathers goes all EDM on us to great effect, showing that Kanye’s not the only one who can rap over insane synths, and making it all the more impressive with his own mad speed. The homophobic lyrics return without any real reason, though, and make listening uncomfortable. That said, it’s impossible to ignore the stunning musicality on this track. If ‘Bad Guy’ is the perfect summing-up of Eminem’s past, this track gives us a glimpse into a possible future in which Eminem takes hip hop by the scruff of the neck and asserts his own divinity.

The inevitable reunion with Rihanna on ‘The Monster’ is a magnificent set-piece, and shows exactly why the radio loves the two of them, while also returning to the subject of Mathers’ inner demons. Apparently he’s “friends with the voices inside of [his] head” but don’t call him crazy, “that’s not fair”.

I was all ready to be first in line to rip into this album, but it proved impossible, as hits are churned out with a regularity we haven’t seen from Em in years. So great is this album’s achievement that it makes even Recovery and Relapse seem like necessary, and almost deliberate, chapters in the compelling, up-and-down story of a kid from inner-city Detroit. You’re right, Marshall: “Why be a king, when you can be a god?”

Not only is the Fools & Kings Theatre production of Broadway legend Chicago one of the first instances of the musical being re-appropriated by non-professionals, it looks to be a fantastic adaptation of Watkins’ original play, and a rollicking ride for the audience. 

The complete cast began by running through a couple of their warm-up routines, which, although clearly not part of the musical, served to show the troupe’s high levels of enthusiasm, and the choreographer’s vitality (turning around during ‘Cell Block Tango’, I saw Skingsley gripping her knees, miming out the moves and nodding through the cadences with fervent intensity).

The first piece per se was perhaps one of their more perfected ones: ‘Class’ is the duo between an irate Velma and an indignant Matron Mama Morton who, as they listen to the radio broadcast of Roxy’s trial, lament the degradation of the morals and ethics in the show business of Prohibition-era Chicago.

Josie Richardson, who plays Velma, stalked onto stage like she already owned the place, and her clear, almost faultless voice blended well with Big Mama’s suitably mellow twang (Florence Brady). Brady’s easy, seen-it-all attitude did not fall into dramatic complaisance, however: both Brady and Richardson kept the comical tempo and the scene’s energy up, and sailed through the harmonies and canons.

The second number presented was ‘Roxie’. Georgina Hellier, playing the song’s eponymous heroine, combined her impressive physique and her throaty voice – with particular praise for her powerful vibrato – to create just the kind of self-conscious sex appeal one would imagine the aspiring showgirl to display, artfully bordering on simpering self-indulgence. Nonetheless, this is a relatively private moment, an insight into what populates the landscape of Roxie’s desires. Which conveniently leads me to the quattuor of male performers (Lecznar, Woodman, Nicols, and Bland) embodying Roxie’s fantasies of fame and sexual gratification. These guys are great (albeit not always in tune), dishing out the hip-pops and the lingering caresses in unison, amusingly over-the-top but by no means a mere accompaniment.

In the infamous ‘Cell Block Tango’, Katherine Skingsley, a decidedly excellent choreographer, made ingenious use of space, replicating the traverse effect on stage, with the dancers either end of the stage, and each Merry Murderess consecutively in the centre. Despite missing a few cues, and Melissa Varney’s Hunyak unfortunately amalgamating helplessness with soundlessness (her singing and dancing were otherwise fine), their performance was definitely promising. And if they haven’t quite reached the viciousness of the song’s musical pulse yet, sometimes overstraining their voices to compensate, the six Merry Murderesses are genuinely at their best when they work as an ensemble.

As for the choreography, I was informed there would be the obligatory poles and a ladder, but from what I could see it was simply and effectively symbolic, making great use of diagonals and group effects of symmetry. A special mention should be made for Richardson, really coming forth as the Cell Block’s compact powerhouse, and for Leonie Ricks, who plays June (unforgettably “carving up a chicken for dinner”) and whose staggering bodily confidence and brilliant vocal hoarseness fuse into a rough, eminently appropriate sex appeal.

The last piece was ‘Nowadays’: Roxie and Velma have just buried the hatchet, and decide to collaborate their way towards glamorous glory. It’s a duo act which Jack Sain, the production’s wonderfully punctilious (and on-point) director, immediately presented as being very much unfinished. This was the first time it was put together, and its status as work in progress was unfortunately manifest. Richardson and Hellier were uncharacteristically subdued, nervously unsure of their cues and dance moves, and repeatedly out of sync. Hopefully, by the time the two leading ladies find their feet, ‘Nowadays’ will be as energetic and convincing as Chicago’s other numbers.

Afterwards, I asked the director Jack Sain whether he felt there was tension between the production’s emphasis on “feminist interpretations” of its central characters, and its concurrent aesthetic bias for a return to the “the colour and vaudeville” of Chicago’s theatrical source. Didn’t he find it contradictory to use this highly stylised, self-professedly farcical form (the Press Pack dubs the show a “gaudy satire”) as a means of exploring the rather more serious feminist implications behind its murky plot? “I see there is a tension, but multiplicity of genre is natural in theatre. We wanted to use the gaudiness and the unrealism as a dramatic means of apprehending the horror behind it all.”

For her part, choreographer Katherine Skingsley confessed that her one of her pet peeves with the staging and dancing of many past productions has been the compulsory presence of “fishnets and big sexy splits” for songs like ‘Cell Block Tango’. She explained that she meant to focus far more on the songs as spaces of “empowerment” in which their performers, exploited and abused, were the agents of a “female coming together”. And whether or not one reads such feminist potential in Chicago’s deliciously satiric storyline, the fact is that this is a troupe whose brilliancy lies in their unison: the best and most powerful moments in the preview were the duos, the quattuors, the ensembles.

All in all this is already a seriously impressive production, with ambitious choreographing, superb (if at times a little uneven) singing, and a great, driven cast. Oxford could do more with more musicals, and I have no doubt that under Sain’s demanding, finely tuned direction, Chicago will unfold into a memorably fabulous performance.

Chicago is playing from 20th to 23rd November at the Keble O’Reilly theatre. Tickets are £8.50, available here

‘Palma Violets’ probably means one of two things to you: a) those horrible purple sweets from childhood, or b) one of 2013’s biggest indie bands. It’s been twelve months since the loud and rowdy London quartet released their debut single “Best of Friends”, and it’s been quite an amazing year.

International shows, awards, hype and gallons of sweat later, the boys have become a grimy gem in the current scene, and are heading to Oxford in just a few weeks’ time. “It’s all very surreal, because you dream about it, and then you live it,” says singer and bassist Alexander “Chilli” Jesson. “I don’t think any group would expect this level of progression.” The band signed with the iconic British music label Rough Trade back in 2012. “I always dreamed of getting signed to Rough Trade,” gushes Chilli. “It was one of the most amazing moments of my life.” For the young singer, a label is all about its attitude: “You get these major labels, and you’re not really part of anything. It’s all run by suits, and it’s a real business thing. But with Rough Trade it is all about the music. It’s a real family thing going on. It really is. And it’s so good for us, because we’re a young group, we really need that guidance from the greats. And they really are the greats.”

Before the group came to widespread attention, their animated sweatbox shows were what gave Palma Violets their name. But Chilli says an exciting performance is about more than just energy and skill. “When you know nothing’s going wrong, I find that boring.” says the singer. “I like bands where you think it might all go one way.” So what can we expect when they drop by Oxford as part of the upcoming Rattlesnake Rodeo Tour? “It will be everything you could ever dream of. It really will. It’s probably the last time you’ll see us in this way. It’s like the last party, the last dance.”

Hotly-tipped bands Childhood, Baby Strange and Telegram will be joining Palma Violets on tour. But for Chilli, they’re more than just supporting acts. “It’s a collection of our favourite bands coming on that tour, and I’m fucking excited. I mean, can you imagine going on a bus around England, with three bands of all your friends. I wanna look back and say, I went on tour with my mates, not some shit band that wouldn’t wanna hang out. For us it’s just a three week party. It’s just all about having fun, having a beer, having a laugh, because it is only music, you know?” Anyone else wish they were on that bus?
Following the success of debut album 180, details about a second record have been hard to come by. Chilli refuses to disclose much, but says the sophomore album will be “a whole new level for Palma Violets.” We’ve been told to “expect blood, sweat and tears,” from the new tracks, and they believe “it’s a great progression. There’s all the angst in there, but there’s something more. Something that was missing from us for a while. I’m fucking excited.” So are we, Chilli.

In an exlusive giveaway, Cherwell has five pairs of tickets to see Palma Violets at the O2 on November 28th!

All you have to do is tell us, in 100 words or fewer what is your favourite album of 2013 and why. We’ll pick the most entertaining entries on November 22nd. Winners will be announced via Cherwell Music’s facebook page.