ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher

The Dassins
Suburban Nightmare
(Independent)
★★★★★
QUITE unexpectedly this East Leeds-based quartet’s debut album gets, thrillingly, under your skin with its very first chords. The sound load is delivered with extraordinary confidence for bunch of lads this young.
The distinct timbre of Ewan Turner and Riley Gill’s versatile voices, the excellent musicianship of all four, anchored by Edward French, rich and intelligent drumming and their spirited guitar play, which includes Jamie Hannan, energises.

Inspired by a photograph, a unique memorial in Michigan immortalises US true labour heroes. MICHAL BONCZA recalls a great story rarely told

MICHAL BONCZA highly recommends a revelatory exhibition of work by the doyen of indigenous Australians’ art, Emily Kam Kngwarray

Despite an over-sentimental narrative, MICHAL BONCZA applauds an ambitious drama about the Chinese rescue of British POWs in WWII

Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet