Just a quick one today: I must admit that, a few months ago, it was hard to imagine Richard Ashcroft ever being involved in music I’d like again. But The Verve reunion has thrown up a few intriguing possibilities, not least the suggestion that they may sidestep all the windy balladry and return to the sort of cosmic orientation that made the band so interesting in the first place.
"Never create anything," says, uh, "Bob Dylan". "It'll just be misinterpreted."
Just as Dylan himself has been open to an awful lot of misinterpretation over the years, it seems highly likely the same fate could befall Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There, which I saw this morning, ahead of its first public screening next Saturday (Oct 27), at the London Film Festival.
After yesterday’s technical grief, I’ve now managed to play the new Black Mountain album three or four times. There’s a lot of stuff about angels laying their halos down and demons hiding in the shadows here. Blood is spreading across the walls, witchy children have black magic touches and, pointedly, Stephen McBean and Amber Webber chant in “Bright Lights”, “We love the night and all the witchery.”
Just spent most of the afternoon in some kind of company blogging seminar (conclusion: I think I may be doing it wrong), to find the new Black Mountain album waiting for me. We're now trying to play it for the third time without it jumping. But in the meantime, here are the day's other selections: a couple of vague dogs in this lot, if memory serves.
Something of a Robbie Basho binge in the office this morning reminded me that I’ve been sleeping on this Six Organs Of Admittance album for a few weeks now. Ben Chasny has been one of the most interesting players on the New Weird American psych/folk scene (or whatever you want to call it; chances are Chasny will try and wriggle free of any glib categories anyhow) for a few years now.
One record that’s definitely been growing on me this past couple of weeks is the debut by a Brooklyn band called Yeasayer. At first, “All Hour Cymbals” seemed to be a nice but generic close relative to the TV On The Radio albums – insofar as anything that mixes tribal thump, dreampop textures and barbershop harmonies could be referred to as generic, of course.
I'm taking a day off from obsessing over the Radiohead album, so instead here's a lengthy list of the records we've played in the Uncut office over the past couple of days. You'll note, though, that "In Rainbows" does crop up a mere three times.
In February 1989, I find myself in Portland, Oregon, at the Pine Street Theatre, a venue that sounds somewhat grander than it actually is, which is not much fancier than a room above a bar where tonight I see Cowboy Junkies play for the first time.
