Features

For a while this week, it looked like I might be able to post a playlist entirely consisting of new entries, at least until I got dragged back into playing the Ryley Walker. But hey, look at all this, not least the clip of Shirley Collins’ first live performance in 30 years, which just showed up.

What sounded like the roof coming off the house sometime in the early hours of last Sunday morning during what you can only hope was the last of the winter’s great storms woke me with a start, stirring me from a hugely disturbing dream in which I was on Mastermind answering questions in my specialist round on The Vicar of Dibley, Seasons 1-3 (1994-2007).

Without giving too much away here, one of the main characters in Wes Anderson’s new film works in a patisserie.

The Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench is about to release a solo album, You Should Be So Lucky, produced by the legendary Glyn Johns. In this star-studded archive piece from Uncut’s December 2011 issue (Take 175), Johns takes us through producing and engineering The Beatles, the Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and more – not a bad CV, you could say… Interview: Graeme Thomson

Another one of the annoying redacted albums uncovered this week, in the shape of Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks, on the first few listens possibly superior to the last Animal Collective set. I wish you could hear more of Angel Deradoorian on it, though: her “Mind Raft” EP from a few years back is maybe my favourite release from the extended Dirty Projectors collective.

There’s a very good feature in the current Uncut on the making of XTC’s “Making Plans For Nigel”, which reminded me of a time when I was often in their company, usually in far flung corners of the world, far from their Swindon homes, including the following adventure.

Something like two decades ago, when I was Features Editor of NME and making some pragmatic decisions involving coverage of second and third-tier Britpop bands, I had a kind of argument with Laurence Bell, the owner of the Domino label.