Features

Biggish news this week, with the arrival of Neil Young’s new album, “Fork In The Road”, Neil’s collaboration with Booker T and The Drive-By Truckers, and the second solo joint by ex-Trucker Jason Isbell, which makes me feel like I’ve been moving in ever decreasing circles for the past couple of days.

Full transcript from the Uncut cover feature - exclusive to www.uncut.co.uk

Swedish duo First Aid Kit stand onstage - sleeves pulled over hands, hands behind their backs - like two awkward schoolgirls at a music recital.

According to someone nearby, Richard Swift’s band look like they’ve just come off a trawler – the sort of image I aspire to, obviously. They sound, however, quite different: at this point, uncannily like a soul harmony group, somewhere between The Miracles and The Stylistics.

I have a default rant about the parlous state of most modern British folk which I wheel out here every couple of months or so. Jim Moray and Seth Lakeman are unfailingly indicted, and Alasdair Roberts is held up as the excellent exception which proves the rule. It’s nice, then, to be presented with a new Alasdair Roberts album, “Spoils”, to justify my prejudices.

The full transcript from Uncut's cover feature

First off, in case you missed it, I posted a second blog on Friday afternoon: the long-promised round-up of links to other blogs. Thanks again for everyone who posted their recommendations – keep them coming.

Full oral history from Uncut's cover feature: Exclusive!

Thanks for all your suggestions regarding your favourite blogs. I’ve finally got around to putting together a list here - not 100 per cent sold on all of these, but they’re pretty good. Again, if you know any nice ones we’ve missed, please let us know in the comment box at the bottom of the blog.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about dying recently,” says Philip Seymour Hoffman’s neurotic theatre director Caden Cotard early on. And, certainly, you could be forgiven for thinking that the odds were stacked against him. Within the first half hour of Synecdoche, New York, there are enough portents of doom lurking around you’d think you were watching a tragedy, were it all not so funny.