Blogs

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.

As the first song of Jessica Pratt’s first album begins, you could be forgiven for believing it was a private press folk album from the early ‘70s. The work of a lost canyon comrade of Linda Perhacs, perhaps, or the implausibly lovely efforts of a “Blue” disciple from some one-horse town in the mid-west.

Usual excuses about too much work to do (currently: a forthcoming Ultimate Music Guide on The Kinks, and the dark mathematics of Uncut’s end-of-year charts, as well as the rest of the next issue) mean that I failed yesterday to write a review of the Six Organs Of Admittance show at Birthdays in Dalston.

In 2009, Uncut spoke to The Wire’s creator David Simon, shortly before the broadcast of his follow-up series, Treme. The show was set during the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, a city that Simon felt had effectively been abandoned by the rest of America since the storm. “The only thing that brought this city back was the people who understand its unique culture and who participate in that culture refused to give that up,” he told us.

For those who are disappointed not to have scored a ticket to see the Rolling Stones in 2012, then there is some slight consolation.

James Bond at 50 seems in pretty good shape.

Tim Burton's kid friendly Frankenstein opens this year's London Film Festival...

It was National Poetry Day last week, a date I’m sure you found your own ways to celebrate. I was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where John Cooper Clarke was in residence for the evening, headlining a show that also featured appearances by fellow poets Mike Garry and Luke Wright, a couple of sharp young wordsmiths who by the look of them may not have been capable of joined-up writing when Clarke was in his glorious early pomp and may possibly not even have been born then, Wright especially looking like he’s only just stopped being looked after by baby-sitters and cooed over in a crib.

Stoker arrives with some heavy expectations. It is the English language debut of South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, the architect of the nerve-shredding Oldboy.

Neil Young is not, at a guess, an artist who suffers much from writer’s block. In the past few years, many of his albums have felt like spontaneous dispatches from an over-productive mind.