A good week, in that I wrote a couple of new blogs about the Allah-Las and Dan Deacon albums, finally tracked down a copy of “Meet “Mississippi” Charles Bevel”, and heard the Baird Sisters’ beautiful record (one of them is Meg Baird from Espers) and Four Tet’s “Pink” comp.

Read More >>

How many fans were aghast over the weekend to hear via the American broadcaster NBC that Neil Young had just died and unknown to many of them had also been the first man to set foot on the moon? Neil has been many things down the years, of course, but his secret history as an astronaut would have been news to everyone, including him.

Read More >>

On www.allah-las.com, the Los Angeles band of the same name have posted a bunch of unusually excellent mixtapes. The latest, “Reverberation #25”, is pretty typical, taking in the likes of Jim Sullivan and Tim Hardin as well as the group’s backwards-facing contemporaries: White Fence, Sonny & The Sunsets and another bunch out of what always seems to be an unbelievably small and cliquey LA indie scene, The Beachwood

Read More >>

To be honest, I’ve not previously had much time for the music of Dan Deacon; for what struck me, perhaps erroneously, as an odd but not quite combustible mix of process, theory, audience participation, electronica and a certain imperishable indie tweeness.

Read More >>

With the new Uncut out tomorrow, it just occurred to me that I'd forgotten to post this review from the last issue. I did at least put up the full transcript of my email exchange with Ben Chasny, which you can check out by following this link. "Ascent" is on sale now, by the way.

Read More >>

A couple of notable absences here, I guess, since there remains no sign of Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s “Psychedelic Pill” (as we’re currently assuming it’s called), and only the editor has heard Bob Dylan’s “Tempest”, in some kind of fortified panic room at the Sony offices.

Read More >>

We’ve just had our copies of the new issue dropped off in the office, ahead of it going on sale later this week. Nick Cave’s on the cover, glowering menacingly. John Robinson went down to Brighton, where, as John memorably tells us, Nick lives in a house that’s ‘large and white, much as Russia in winter is large and white’. The occasion for Uncut dropping in on Cave was the release of Lawless, the terrific – and terrifically violent - new movie directed by Nick’s long-time collaborator, John Hillcoat, for which Cave has written the snappy screenplay.

Read More >>

Twenty mostly new records for your delectation this week, with particular emphasis on: the Michael Chapman full and free download from Black Dirt Studios’ consistently excellent “Natch” project; Cody ChesnuTT’s plush, upscale return; Corin Tucker tapping back into the punch of earlyish Sleater-Kinney; Jeff Lynne’s weird forensic re-recordings of his greatest hits; that Crazy Horse boot I wrote about yesterday; and Rangda, of course.

Read More >>

Interesting news this morning, as you might have seen here: Poncho Sampedro has claimed that the forthcoming Neil Young & Crazy Horse album will be called “Psychedelic Pill”.

Read More >>

Lou Reed at 70 arrives onstage at the Festival Hall to do his bit for Antony Hegarty’s Meltdown programme dressed like a stroppy teenager in a baggy black basketball vest, gold medallions around his neck and what looks like a pair of tracksuit bottoms. He looks frail these days, though tonight slightly less so than last year at the Hammersmith Apollo, and perhaps no wonder when you consider what he’s put his body through over the years before he embraced his current sobriety.

Read More >>