Features

First off, thanks for all your kind and indulgent comments about my 154 best albums of 2014 blog; I'm genuinely grateful and touched by the feedback.

Tuesday night, I went to see the War On Drugs guy again. I mention this, in relation to Mark Kozelek and Sun Kil Moon's Hackney show, because Kozelek doesn't stop mentioning it himself for much of the two and a half hour show; a show which, by the by, is one of the very best and certainly most surprising I've ever seen him play.

Hey, here are my 154 favourite albums of 2014. As usual, I haven't aimed for a fixed number; just listed everything, in a loose order, that I've enjoyed these past 12 months.

“We were trying to sound like Kraftwerk…”

From the Uncut vaults! Good times, bad times, new teeth and more

To Cargo, earlier this week, for what I think might have been one of my favourite gigs of the year. I wrote about Xylouris White and their "Goats" album a few weeks ago, but even that excellent record was scant preparation for Jim White and George Xylouris' incandescent live show.

The band tell the strange tale of their biggest hit

Very taken with Africa Express' version of "In C", by Terry Riley, this week. I have a few takes on the piece (50 years old this month, incidentally), the latest being one by Portishead's Adrian Utley from a couple of years back, though I still probably default to what I think is the original recording from '68.

Following this morning's momentous news of Ride's return to active service, I thought I'd dig out this piece I wrote for Uncut in 2011.

One bright Sunday morning, MC Taylor is driving through his patch of North Carolina, past New Hope Creek and the Eno River, over the Chatham County Line and the James Taylor Bridge in Chapel Hill, near the Haw River and the valley that he has meditated upon in song these past few years. Through apparently endless forests, Taylor's destination is Saralyn, a kind of hippy settlement just outside of Pittsboro.