Features

I guess there’s some fairly auspicious new entries in this lot, though I’d also direct your attention to a couple of the other records here, by Bitchin Bajas (a Cave spin-off, I believe) and Jonathan Wilson. Really good stuff.

In 1995, Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson released a mostly-forgotten album together called "Orange Crate Art", and I found myself in LA interviewing the pair. It was a pretty unusual trip, ending in Wilson’s front room, where he claimed that his secret was “abstaining from orgasm”,performed “Satisfaction” and an updated version of “Surfer Girl” for me on his grand piano, then offered me $100 to get my ropey dictaphone recordings played on the radio.

There is something deeply weird about seeing four people onstage at a Low gig. In recent years, it has often seemed as if Alan Sparhawk, in particular, has sought to transcend or subvert people’s expectations of how Low should sound. Surely, though, filling out the sound with a keyboard player is tantamount to sacrilege?

Some good things here, and a couple of stinkers. Beyond this, though, I’m onto one of my seasonal Dead jags: their early ‘70s stuff has been perfect for long, bright, early walks these past few mornings.

It occurred to me yesterday that I’m pretty bad at covering singles here, having neglected one of my favourite tracks of the year – Radiohead’s “Supercollider” – as a consequence, and also having passed over a bunch of rather good Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy one-offs (the latest in that sequence, “There Is No God”, arrived at the end of last week).

Kind of out of practice with blogging, I’ve been so distracted by other stuff these past few weeks. I have a long list of stuff to cover, though, and this album by Weyes Blood & The Dark Juices seems a good place to start.

X MEN: FIRST CLASS HHH DIRECTED BY Matthew Vaughn STARRING James McAvoy, Michael Fassbinder OPENS JUNE 1 // CERT 12A // 131 MINS As evangelists, millenarians and scholars have learned to their disappointment, predicting the apocalypse has never been an entirely accurate business.

Thank you one and all for your extraordinary patience and willingness to play along with the game, and my apologies for not publishing messages from those of you who guessed correctly. Today, finally, I can reveal the tremendous mystery record that’s been preoccupying me for the past few weeks: check out Number Four in the list below.

It is about five minutes into “The Frame” before Terry Reid arrives onstage at the Jazz Café. As his scratch band lock into limpid funk that sounds like it could go on forever (and very nearly does), Reid comes grooving down the staircase, an odd but endearing mix of West Coast rock gentry and bumbling shires uncle.

All new arrivals this week, I think, though of course one or two of these albums have been round the block a few times one way or another.