Features

Been a while, but I have a selection of excuses: finishing one issue of Uncut; pondering a longish Album Of The Month review that I’ll post here asap; getting deep into the business of another Uncut Ultimate Music Guide, to follow up our Bowie edition; crunching the votes for the mag’s albums/reissues of 2011 charts; and so on.

As a general rule, I tend to think that my complete lack of musical ability hasn’t been too much of a handicap to a career as a critic. Unburdened by doomed musical projects – or, indeed, talent – it means I can avoid judging the success of artists against any creative failures of my own.

Highlights this week: Thee Oh Sees; a 30-minute live version of “Spoon” on the repackage of “Tago Mago”; and prolonged, intimate exposure to “Wolfroy Goes To Town”.

A new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album often prompts me to visit a remarkable resource called The Royal Stable, a website dedicated to thoroughly cataloguing and cross-referencing this most fiendishly complicated of musical careers.

The press release that comes with Tarwater’s “Inside The Ships” reveals that this is the duo’s 11th album – a slightly alarming number, which suggests I’ve rather lost touch with the band over the past few years. “Inside The Ships”, however, has an instantly and satisfyingly familiar sound, not too different from Tarwater in 1998, when their “Silur” album seemed to be part of a small glut of German records (by The Notwist, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler, Mouse On Mars, Pluramon and so on) that sat in an appealing space halfway between electronica and post-rock.

Looking back at my blog on “Smoke Ring For My Halo”, I started with an Uncut quote from Kurt Vile that is salient here, too. “We recorded a lot of rockers,” he said of “Smoke Ring”, “but they just didn’t seem to fit.”

Quickly today, because we’re finishing the next issue. Very much liking the Steve Hauschildt (from Emeralds) album at the moment.

Before we settled on the “Music That Made Bolan Boogie” CD to go with this month’s issue, we toyed with a compilation of new, glam-influenced music.

Pretty auspicious new arrival this morning, as you can see from Number 23 at the bottom of the list; sounding good, albeit 44 years too late.

Bit of a hack through the backlog today, beginning with a mild disappointment, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks’ “Mirror Traffic”.