Playlists

Most important things first: apparently www.neilyoung.com will be streaming the whole of “Psychedelic Pill” today. Once you’ve had a listen, let me know what you think.

A couple of weeks ago, I read an interview with Scott Litt about working on “Tempest”, in which he mentioned how Dylan’s voice now reminded him, positively, of Louis Armstrong. Dylan, Litt suggested, should have a go at “Hello Dolly” sometime (The full piece is stuck behind the paywall at http://www.newyorker.com/, unfortunately).

Pretty busy trying to finish an issue here, but as usual, Neil Young is providing a distraction. Today there’s an opportunity to see why we’ve been making such a fuss about “Psychedelic Pill”: a video for the 16-odd minute “Ramada Inn”…

I’ve not always had much time for the cult of Brian Eno, and for a lot of the music he’s been involved with in the last 20 or 30 years (I used this piece about Blues Control & Laraaji’s wonderful record to take a few swipes).

This week I seem to have read more people expending energy on how much they despise Mumford & Sons rather than focusing on music they actually like.

Lots of links to follow from this week’s playlist, although one should be treated with fairly obvious caution. Not many survivors from previous charts, either; seems we’ve hit a decent new wave here.

A couple of the mystery records from recent playlists have, as you’ll see, magically revealed themselves this week. I imagine you may have questions…

Reading Twitter – as I do, too much – it seems as if most people I follow are in some way shocked and amused by the belated discovery that Bob Dylan has got a, yes, funny voice.

A good week, in that I wrote a couple of new blogs about the Allah-Las and Dan Deacon albums, finally tracked down a copy of “Meet “Mississippi” Charles Bevel”, and heard the Baird Sisters’ beautiful record (one of them is Meg Baird from Espers) and Four Tet’s “Pink” comp.

A couple of notable absences here, I guess, since there remains no sign of Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s “Psychedelic Pill” (as we’re currently assuming it’s called), and only the editor has heard Bob Dylan’s “Tempest”, in some kind of fortified panic room at the Sony offices.