I've given up pretending I'm not interested in watching a new Stars Wars movie.

Read More >>

“Why so glum?” asks Roger Waters with a smile as he strides into a conference room in an elegant Mayfair hotel.

Read More >>

Just finishing the Ultimate Music Guide on The Kinks while listening to Gurdjieff’s harmonium improvisations from 1949. There are, though, a bunch of interesting newer things here as well. Have a listen to the new Mark Kozelek song, for a start (he played a really compelling gig in London last Friday, incidentally, which I haven’t had a chance to write about).

Read More >>

Hunter Davies, who in 1968 wrote the first authorised biography of The Beatles and now more than 50 years on has compiled and edited The John Lennon Letters, admits in his introduction that he has for the purposes of the book ‘rather expanded the definition of the word letter’, which immediately sounds bit slippery, especially when he also describes some of the material he has unearthed as ‘notes and lists and scraps’. This sounds rather unpromising, as if Davies is preparing the reader for disappointments to come.

Read More >>

As part of our current Rolling Stones cover story, I interviewed director Brett Morgen about his Stones' film, Crossfire Hurricane.

Read More >>

Ben Affleck. Who'd have thought..? I remember going to a sparsely attended screening of Jersey Girl, Kevin Smith's laugh-free 2004 romcom with Affleck cast alongside his then girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and wondering what had happened to derail such a promising career.

Read More >>

Quite tempting yesterday to play nothing but “Signed Sealed Delivered I’m Yours”, but here’s this week’s playlist, with quite a few new clips (Broadcast, Jessica Pratt, Hiss, Ty!), links and new entries.

Read More >>

You catch us on a pretty busy day, deadlines fast approaching for our last issue of 2012. That’s the one, of course, that traditionally carries our end-of-year lists of best albums, reissues, films, DVDs and books. This means we’ve all been recently asked to nominate our personal Top 20s, from which John has been compiling the definitive countdown, the full list to be published when he’s finished his painstaking calculations in the Uncut that comes out at the end of November.

Read More >>

As you might expect of a book about Leonard Cohen, Sylvie Simmons spends a fair proportion of I’m Your Man writing about love, faith, depression, finance, and the demands and consolations of poetry and women. Mostly, though, the focus of this hefty and thorough book is Leonard Cohen’s charm: about how an exceptionally gifted artist has seduced most everyone who has come into contact with him, through the course of an uncommonly eventful life.

Read More >>

If you've ever suspected that Brian Eno's enduring reputation as an avant-garde genius is more mythical than actual, his discography from the past few years makes for a satisfying read.

Read More >>