Blogs

When Bob Dylan dances onstage - and he does seem to dance, after a fashion - at 9.15, it is easier than usual to draw battlelines in the crowd. Mostly, they have been at this Feis festival in Finsbury Park (very much a pack-em-in and get-em-pissed throwback to the pre-boutique era) all day, have had a selection of rain, mud, corporate beverages and Cranberries thrown at them, and in some cases are probably expecting The Saw Doctors to headline the main stage.

How many Wooden Shjips do you actually need? As someone who receives their records for free, I may not be in the best position to make that call. But as I was playing “West”, their third album, again this morning, at least a couple of songs began in a way which made me think of “We Ask You To Ride”, and I wondered: is it a blessing or a curse for all of your songs to be so instantly identifiable that they start blending into one another?

When an artist spends eight years working on – or at least working towards – a new record, it is easy to expect a certain extravagance: complex arrangements, perhaps; an unusual number of songs; possibly even a challenging new direction.

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?

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.

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.

When I have to talk to interns about live reviewing, I often advise against reviewing crowds, unless something really unusual happens. It’s hardly unusual for a crowd to be excited and passionate – they’ve just paid ten, 20, 30 pounds to see one of their favourite artists, it’s what they expect to do.