As promised, today we're starting to publish the judges' deliberations on each of this year's eight shortlisted albums for the Uncut Music Award. Beginning today with Bill Callahan's "Apocalypse".
A mixed bag today, as I contemplate giving up and playing a bunch of old Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings records in preparation for tonight’s Hammersmith gig.
I’m not sure what happens on Saturday towards the end of the first night of Bob Dylan’s three shows at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. Suddenly, though, he’s blazing through one of the songs he traditionally reserves for encores, “All Along The Watchtower”, with no break between it and the roaring version of “Ballad Of A Thin Man” that normally you’d have expected to be the show’s climax, the band then taking a well-deserved bow and a quick break before coming back for one, two or three more songs, further lapping up of the crowd’s applause prior to a final wave goodnight, perhaps even a nod from Bob in the general direction of a crowd he otherwise doesn’t go too far out of his way to acknowledge.
These are, at last, exhilarating times for Bruce Robinson. In the 26 years since his extraordinary debut, Withnail & I, the writer and director has withdrawn almost entirely from films after the grim experiences of his post-Withnail projects.
Pretty interesting and diverse list, I think, pieced together under some moderately intense deadline heat. “Raid” by Pusha T with Pharrell and 50 Cent is the best rap track I’ve heard in a while, though truth be told I haven’t heard much in a while.
Among the multitude of underground micro-genres that have grown like bacilli these past few years, one of the most refined is ‘Modern Classical’. Ostensibly, much of the music that is sold under this pretext is a kind of evolved ambience, with compositional pretensions: a tidy hybrid of Gavin Bryars, Brian Eno and Erik Satie that is almost invariably pleasant, but which often seems to affect substance without actually delivering it.
George Clooney’s fourth film as director takes place across a handful of tense days during a primary election in Ohio, where governor Mike Morris (Clooney) is a hair’s-breadth away from securing the Democratic party nomination to stand for office...
