Features

I’m not sure who compiled “Archive From 1959 – The Billy Childish Story”, reducing something like 100 albums’-worth of material down to 51 tracks, but I suspect it may not have been Childish himself.

MADNESS/WHITE DENIM/EVAN DANDO - Various venues, Shoreditch, 21/5/09 “Thanks for coming to see a washed-up Eighties pop band,” deadpans Suggs as MADNESS take the stage. We’re in The Light Bar, a 300 capacity venue on Norton Folgate, a thin stretch of street that separates Shoreditch from the City. The band are here to celebrate their new album, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, which is currently sitting at No 5 in the midweek album charts. Not bad, certainly, for a washed-up Eighties pop band.

More grade-A new psych from San Francisco today, with this third album from a quintet bearing the cosmically unwieldy name of Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound.

A lot of new arrivals this week, the best of which on first listen seems to be the Tinariwen album. Considering how many Super Furry Animals fans have loitered here in the past, I should probably also point out that Gruff Rhys guests on the new Simian Mobile Disco album.

It’d be nice to claim that I had an infallible eye for spotting a future superstar, but watching the ascent of the Gossip over the past two or three years, I’m reminded that there was a band I could’ve never have imagined becoming big. When I first saw them play in, what, 2002 maybe, I thought they were terrific. But they also seemed to be so tightly embedded in a post-riot grrl scene of fanzine elitists that, for all the strengths of Beth Ditto’s personality and pipes, they’d surely be more or less unintelligible to the mainstream.

I’m conscious that, with the Lemonheads and Sonic Youth posts last week, the blog’s slightly in danger of degenerating into something of a dewy-eyed home for alt-rock fans who were students in the late ‘80s. But unfortunately, I’m going to have to keep this going for a while longer, since the new Dinosaur Jr album represents another band of that generation sustaining their current run of form.

Banjo Or Freakout open the last of Uncut's nights at The Great Escape, perhaps the weirdest line-up of the weekend, with a pretty uncompromising set.

If last night was loosely the folk night of Club Uncut’s Great Escape bill, this is probably the ‘rock’ or ‘psych’ night.

The arrival this week of a new live album from Mark Kozelek, “Lost Verses – Live”, has prompted me to go on something of a Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon binge (a contrast, for sure, to that concurrent Funkadelic trip; thanks, incidentally, for the recommendations – must check that Eddie Hazel solo album out).

Club Uncut is back at The Great Escape, and this year proceedings are taking place in the civilised surroundings of the Pavilion Theatre.