Features

In my ignorance, the last time I blogged about the Flower-Corsano Duo, I wrote some stuff about Mick Flower’s instrument, the shahi baaja, and described it, as per the press-release, as a "Japanese electric dulcimer/autoharp".

'Kurt Cobain raised the bar for us'...

Some very satisfying words in album titles this week, if you’ll forgive the fairly tangential way of starting a blog: “Veckatimest”, “Bitte Orca”, and today, “Balf”. “Balf Quarry” is the new album from the Magik Markers – according to the sleevenotes, “A stone quarry in Hartford, CT which has mined traprock since the earliest days of the city.”

First off, an important plug for Allan's blog, where he's posted a preview of the new Bob Dylan album, "Together Through Life". No copy in the Uncut office as yet, but I'll try and write something myself when it turns up.

We now know that the new Bob Dylan album, which unexpectedly will be with us on April 27, is called Together Through Life. We know also that it was written and recorded quickly.

Weird prompt, but a TV ad last night for the forthcoming Formula One coverage reminded me that I’d been sat on Pocahaunted a bit too long. Specifically, it was the snatch of the BBC’s old theme tune, Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”, which Pocahaunted covered to mesmeric effect on their “Chains” album last year.

Read the full interview from Uncut's Neil Archives Cover Story here

Read the full Archives Cover Story interview here

The first Monday morning of spring seems a good time to finally tackle the new Grizzly Bear album, “Veckatimest”, which I know I’ve been promising for a while. Without getting into some blog hype thing in the tradition of the Animal Collective (it was Grizzly Bear who reputedly leaked a couple of AC tracks and caused a lot of the fuss, if I remember right), “Veckatimest” is looking from here like the best album of this bit of 2009, at the very least.

Well, this is a surprise. The White Stripes might have made their comeback on American TV the other week, but it seems Jack White's most pressing engagement right now is yet another band, pleasingly called The Dead Weather.