I’ve not always had much time for the cult of Brian Eno, and for a lot of the music he’s been involved with in the last 20 or 30 years (I used this piece about Blues Control & Laraaji’s wonderful record to take a few swipes).


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This week I seem to have read more people expending energy on how much they despise Mumford & Sons rather than focusing on music they actually like.


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Emmett Kelly has been making records as The Cairo Gang for a good few years now but, if he’s known at all, chances are it’s for his unusually enduring role in Will Oldham’s band: the amazing Royal Stable site suggests he’s been in on most Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy projects since 2006.


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The new Uncut, as discussed, is in the shops today with The Byrds on the cover, and a free CD of tracks inspired by that band. Woods are included on the comp, and their latest, “Bend Beyond”, is a record I’ve played a lot these past couple of months, but somehow neglected to write much about.


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Lots of links to follow from this week’s playlist, although one should be treated with fairly obvious caution. Not many survivors from previous charts, either; seems we’ve hit a decent new wave here.


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A weirdly deserted Uncut office today, so it falls on me to break off from my usual arduous routine - tooling around on Twitter, listening to Hiss Golden Messenger bootlegs, wondering what time the cricket starts – and write this week’s newsletter blog.


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Given that my last three blogs have been on Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin, I guess something resembling my tenuous underground credibility might be a bit compromised this week. A good time, then, to flag up some terrific music I’ve been enjoying these past few days that doesn’t have quite the same profile as Dylan et al.


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Given today's news about the Led Zeppelin DVD, it occurred to me that this might be worth putting online: my review of the 2007 show...


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God knows we’ve probably written enough about “Tempest” by now (not least these two terrific pieces by my colleagues Allan Jones and John Robinson). Nevertheless, part of Bob Dylan’s enduring appeal is his capacity for provocation: the sense that he tacitly encourages people to at least try and unpick his records, fathom his mysteries. Our almost certain failure is part of the game, for him as well as for us.


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OK I’m going to try and be relatively brief with this – or at least as brief as one can hope to be when dealing with the longest studio album that Neil Young’s ever made. I’ve written what I hope is an exhaustive review of “Psychedelic Pill” for the next issue of Uncut, and don’t really want to repeat myself too much.


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Newsletter


Editor's Letter

An encounter with Van Morrison


Consider this the last in a short series of encounters with somewhat cantankerous sorts, following accounts in this space over the couple of weeks of meetings with Lou Reed and Gordon Lightfoot, both of which have stirred some passing interest and lively comment. Today’s subject is Van Morrison...