Features

The reunion of Os Mutantes – minus Rita Lee, of course – a couple of years ago was one of the more unexpected in recent years, not least because, as legend has it, Arnaldo Baptista hasn’t been in the best of psychic health since the band originally split in the mid-‘70s.

The singer answers this month's 'Audience With' mailbag...

Frank and funny, Sheffield songwriter talks pop, drugs and reincarnation

A Hard Reindeer's A-Gonna Fall: Can you do better?

A bit late posting this today, as deadlines have meant that my ongoing fascination with the Big Star box set finally had to be transformed into a review for the next issue of Uncut.

For a good few people in the UK, maybe the last time they came across Andrew WK was in 2001, when he appeared on the front of NME covered in blood and was proclaimed as something akin to the future of rock, thanks to some oddly bombastic, super-dumb party tunes.

Apologies for not coming up with the annual skree of indignation when the Mercury shortlist was announced a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, I couldn’t be bothered to get worked up about it this year, not least because it would’ve been quite a struggle to come up with a dozen British albums I could genuinely enthuse about that have come out in the last 12 months.

Josh Homme said 'You’ve got to come to the desert!'

As ever, a bit of a backlog here, but I’ll try and file some previews of The XX, the surprisingly fine Os Mutantes comeback, Andrew WK’s solo piano improvisations and, especially, the Unthanks album in the next few days.

You could win a £150 PURE DAB/internet radio!