Beyond the Ebay landfill mountains of luminous “Ghostbusters” singles, there were a weird few days this week when it seemed as if no-one had actually located a copy of Neil Young’s “A Letter Home” on Record Store Day. After everything, did it actually exist? Had Neil, in his current capricious mood, personally had it removed it from the stockrooms of record stores on Friday night?
Gradually, though, sightings came in: we located one owner on Twitter who’d bought a copy direct from Third Man in Nashville (but not played it). And, now, we’ve been privileged to hear it ourselves, as Warner Brothers gear up for one of the stranger major label campaigns involving an A-list artist in recent memory. I’ll try and write something about this odd, crackling gem in the next few days, though unfortunately it’ll have to wait until I’ve navigated the pile of page proofs for our forthcoming Ultimate Music Guide on The Cure, due on sale in the UK on May 19.
From today, though, you can buy the new issue of our mag in which Young is interviewed by a notably determined Nick Hasted. Plenty more in there worth reading, too – Full details here – and I’d like to flag up Andrew Mueller’s interview with Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté in Bamako as especially worth your time.
As is plenty of this playlist, I reckon, kicking off with Jack White’s “Lazaretto”. Don’t miss the new Plaid one and a lovely William Tyler live set from NYC Taper.
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1 Jack White – Lazaretto (Third Man/XL)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYF0LtfUvJs
2 Brian Reitzell – Auto Music (Smalltown Supersound)
3 Tune-Yards – Nikki Nack (4AD)
4 LCD Soundsystem – The Long Goodbye (Live At Madison Square Garden) (DFA/PArlophone)
5 The Soft Pink Truth – Why Do The Heathen Rage? (Thrill Jockey)
6 [REDACTED]
7 John Hiatt – Terms Of My Surrender (New West)
8 Mike Cooper – Trout Steel (Paradise Of Bachelors)
9 Mike Cooper – Places I Know/The Machine Gun Co (Paradise Of Bachelors)
10 Courtney Love – You Know My Name (Cherry Forever)
11 Plaid – Reachy Prints (Warp)
12 William Tyler – April 16, 2014 Union Pool, New York (NYC Taper)
13 Mogwai – Come On Die Young (Chemikal Underground)
14 Kasai All Stars – Beware The Fetish (Crammed Discs)
15 Neil Young – A Letter Home (Third Man/Reprise)
16 John Murry – Califorlornia (Rubyworks)
17 Tim Pope – I Want To Be A Tree (Fiction)
18 Dylan Howe – Subterranean: New Designs On Bowie’s Berlin (Motorik)
19 Fennesz – Bécs (Editions Mego)
20 Lewis – L’Amour (Light In The Attic)
21 Tomas Barfod – Love Me (Secretly Canadian)