Plenty of traffic on the blog these past few days in response to my White Stripes and Arctic Monkeys stories. Someone called The_Glory wades into the argument about overhyped British bands with a bunch of decent points, notably, "Why judge bands on their nationality anyway?" It's a fair question, but I don't think that's what we were talking about on this thread, exactly. For my part, it's a simple fact that the music I like is generally American rather than British, and it seems interesting to try and work out why that is. I do agree with The_Glory that we should be wary of focusing on 'hype' as a subject. But at the same time, there's a post from RockyJ that claims, interestingly, "the ambition of American radio stations to popularise British indie bands is overwhelming". Is this true, folks? I'm not too keen on getting hung up on the machinations of the music business on Wild Mercury Sound. Nevertheless, the idea that you can't switch the radio on in America without hearing, I don't know, Little Man Tate is pretty fascinating. Anyway, I did spend the weekend (well, some of it) playing the Arctic Monkeys album, and I'm now more convinced than ever that it's a quite brilliant record - far better than that gilded debut, for a start. And, sorry, but it still makes me wonder why more of their British contemporaries aren't this ambitious, why other lyricists sound artless and parochial where Alex Turner can be so subtle and affecting about ostenisbly the same subject matter? Talent, I suppose. Moving on. Justifiable excitement over here and here about the White Stripes album. Unlike many of you, I find it impossible to choose which is the best of their albums. I know this is an absolution of anal-retentive critical responsibility, but I like them all for different reasons. I'd caution anyone who expects the new one to be a straight retread of the first album, though; for all its raw power, "Icky Thump" is a much more layered, denser listen in general. There's a note on the press release that describes it as being the first Stripes album recorded in a proper modern studio, and trust me, you can tell the difference. Ed asks what "A Martyr For My Love For You" is like on the album. The pathetic truth, Ed, is I can't rememember much about that track from my solitary listen. If it's any help, the notes I scrawled at the time read, "layered, richer - acoustic looping - humming, rearing - Led Zep (2?)- organ - but again and again he blasts structure, adds weird stops, frequencies." Is that any use? I'm not sure. Finally in today's shapeless ramble, a quick mention for the second album by Jana Hunter. Just when you think the market for Devendra Banhart's mates is saturated, another good one comes along. Hunter is from Texas, and her first album (on Banhart and Andy Cabic's Gnomonsong label, like this one) was nice enough, but not really enough to separate her from those other second-string acid-folk types like Diane Cluck. "There's No Home" is lovely, though: a fuller band sound, often reminiscent of Cabic's band Vetiver - that woody, sleepy, home-cooked thing. Jana's Myspace is here. Give "Babies" a play and let me know what you think.

Coming in to work this morning and checking this weekend's US box office for Tarantino's Grindhouse made for a pretty grim start to the day. It's down 63% on last week's takings, slipping from no 4 in the US box office charts to no 10. It appears the UK distributor, Momentum, has now delayed the film from it's original June 1 release date, while the Weinstein Co figures out its response to what, in anyone's terms, is a box office disaster. It seems most likely Weinstein will split Grindhouse into two seperate movies, padding each one out with deleted scenes, and premier Quentin's film Death Proof in May at the Cannes film Festival -- where QT's traditionally guaranteed a safe ride. Robert's film, Planet Terror, looks likely to come out later in the year. It's kinda interesting that, in all this, Robert is getting sidelined -- it's all about Quentin! -- considering Rodriquez' BO is cumulatively better than QT's, thanks in no small part to the phenomenal success of the Spy Kids franchise. I'm going to blog about this again later in the week, as news continues to break over the fate of Grindhouse. Meantime, please let me know what you think about all this. Crudely speaking, is it over for QT? Should he have made a film like this, an homage/parody of an established if somewhat obscure movie genre, or should he be investing his energies in creating bespoke projects? What kind of project would you like to see him tackle next?

I won’t be seeing Dylan on his UK tour until Sunday at Wembley Arena, so I asked Damien Love to be a guest blogger and review the show for us. Damien is a veteran Uncut contributor, the author of a great biography of Robert Mitchum and a longstanding Dylan fan. Here’s his report from the Glasgow SECC, every word of which makes me wish I’d been there. Bob Dylan & His Band Glasgow, SECC April 11 2007 Back in 1991, as what we now call Gulf War I raged far away, Bob Dylan stood onstage at Glasgow’s SECC and unexpectedly pulled what must rank as one of the most shambolic concerts of his (or anyone’s) career out of the fire with a howling, electric “Masters of War.” Sixteen years on, playing with the sustained, growing focus and energy that has marked his concerts since the turn of the millennium, every other song seems a highlight. The concerts couldn’t be more different - but he stops the room in its tracks again by returning to another song he wrote about war in 1963. Before that, though, the first big news about Dylan’s first UK show since 2005 is that he’s playing guitar again, for the first time since 2002. Stepping out in a black suit with white piping on the trousers and a flat, wide-brimmed hat, he looks like he was dressed in a happy collaboration between Zorro and Miami Steve, and as his five-man band careen into a rollicking “Cat’s in the Well,” he’s throwing shapes with his Stratocaster to fit the look. We get four songs with the guitar, including a blues-reverie of “Just Like Tomb Thumb’s Blues” and a newly reworked “It’s Alright, Ma,” words falling like precise little dagger-jabs, hounded by Donnie Herron’s dark, *Desire*-esque violin wails. Dylan switches back to keyboards for “The Levee’s Gonna Break,” the first of six *Modern Times* numbers, and a revelation. Never one of the big songs on the recent album, it comes alive in a new way. Dylan absolutely whips the thing till it buzzes and stings. His voice is stronger and more elastic than it has been in years – far stronger than the album take of this song. As further demonstrated by a coruscating “Rollin’ and Tumblin’ ”, he seems energised by the new material. He’s playful enough to build a small pantomime inside “Spirit on the Water,” bending the line *“You think I’m over the hill,” * into a question, pausing for the inevitable audience scream: *“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”* But there’s no joking on “Ain’t Talking,” a scintillating, urgent reading that finds a dark, arcane and spine-chilling groove within the song, the floor of the SECC turned into a kind of haunted disco. If Dylan was throwing shapes before, he’s positively vamping now, jerking, jiggling, twisting, grinding and humping around his keyboard as if he was plugged into it the way Jane Fonda was to the orgasmatronic organ in *Barbarella*. Actually, that might explain some of his more eccentric playing. Dylan has ditched the warm piano sound of his 2004 shows for a weird, high-pitched organ reminiscent of ‘60s garage bands and fairground carousels. When it works, as on an intensely beautifully reworked “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” it lends a floating, dream-like cast; at other times he’s plainly noodling around playing an entirely different song from anyone else onstage. That, though, is part of what keeps Dylan’s shows so vital. While the Stones, bless ‘em, whip through sets like a machine, with Dylan the rough, bleeding edges and moments of confusion and uncertainty are still allowed. Unbelievably, the biggest stumble comes on the song he must have played more than any other, “Like a Rolling Stone,” which takes an age to coalesce into any recognisable shape. It’s followed an apt visual metaphor during the encore, as Dylan’s ominous eye-logo banner fails to unfurl properly, and hangs above the stage as a weird, scrunchy rag – possibly the closest he will ever get to a Spinal Tap moment. We end with the sucker punch of “Thunder on the Mountain” and the traditional knock-out, “All Along the Watchtower.” But what will linger in the audience’s minds is that moment in the dead centre of the night, when Dylan pulled out one of his oldest, perhaps least-known songs. A spooked martial shuffle, a plucked banjo ringing out like the sound of very desolation, it’s “John Brown,” a blunt, plain sing-song about a boy who went off to war straight and tall in his uniform, and how his mother was proud – until he came home and she met him off the train to find “his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off and he wore a metal brace around his waist.” Fresh from seeing the latest flag-draped coffins on the evening news, the 10,000 souls of the audience seem mesmerised, hanging on every simple word, feeling years and wars blur together and hold hands, realising it’s the same canny joker up there today who was singing about this back then. The effect is truly uncanny. Eerie, even. It’s nothing to do with “protest songs” or “the voice of a generation,” but something older and stranger – the stuff he’s been dealing in all night, and all his life. It’s impossible now to think of anyone else who can conjure it up. DAMIEN LOVE SET LIST 1. Cat's In The Well 2. It Ain't Me, Babe 3. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues 4. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) 5. The Levee's Gonna Break 6. When The Deal Goes Down 7. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) 8. John Brown 9. Rollin' And Tumblin' 10. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall 11.Spirit On The Water 12.Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again 13. Ain't Talkin' 14. Summer Days 15. Like A Rolling Stone 16. Thunder On The Mountain 17. All Along The Watchtower

The opening weekend takings in America for Tarantino's new film, Grindhouse, were, frankly, a disaster of Krakatoa-eque proportions. It only took a measly $11 million – less than half the sum forecast by the film’s studio, the Weinstein Company. Grindhouse is a double feature, the first movie – a zombie horror, Planet Terror – is directed by Sin City’s Robert Rodriquez, while Tarantino helms the slasher film, Death Proof. The idea is to replicate the low-budget movies of the Sixties and Seventies beloved of the directors. Cheap and sleazy action, horror, kung-fu, soft-porn, cannibal and blaxsploitation flicks with titles like Asylum Of Blood, Jailbait Babysitter and (a personal favourite, this) Cat In The Brain. In comparison to Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2, which opened at $22 and $25 million respectively, Grindhouse’s disappointing performance has twisted US commentators, and the Weinstein Co, into knots over-analysing it’s failure. Weinstein are blaming the film’s running time. It’s over three hours long, which drastically reduces the number of showings in cinemas. In an attempt to salvage something from the debacle, Weinstein are planning to cut the movie in half and re-release them as two separate movies. This seems the likely way we’ll get to see it in the UK, if it opens as scheduled on June 1. Really, the fault lies with Tarantino – but the buck stops with producer Harvey Weinstein, whose often ruthless and brutal treatment of many a movie earned him the nickname Harvey Scissorhands. Weinstein has been known to terrorise directors in the past, but seems reluctant to take Tarantino to task for what is, after all, an act of extravagant self-indulgence, even by Tarantino's Olympic standards. Who in their right mind really gives a damn about an obscure movie genre like grindhouse – apart, that is, from Tarantino? Tarantino has been Harvey’s golden goose since Reservoir Dogs broke the director in 1991. They have one of those “special relationships” you hear about a lot these days, predicated around the critical and commercial kudos QT has enjoyed, but seems to be increasingly mercurial. It’s now pretty clear that Tarantino needs to be taken in hand. He’s made two brilliant movies in Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but Jackie Brown was tedious beyond repair. And let’s not even talk about Four Rooms. But his obsession with the geekier aspects of pop-culture, while initially charming and amusing, appears to be wearing thin. So what do you think? Are you looking forward to Grindhouse, or has Tarantino blown it?

I was exchanging emails with one of Uncut's American writers the other day who had just finished a piece for a US mag about The View. He was pretty unimpressed by their record, and went on to have a go at the latest batch of British bands being pushed hard in the States as the next big thing. All of them, he thought, were overhyped and underachieving, with the exception of the Arctic Monkeys. Did I agree, he wondered? Well, of course I did, though I was fairly self-conscious about it. Seeing as I never much liked Oasis, even, it's hard for me to get the point of most of these bands. I often think I'm unreasonably prejudiced against mainstream British indie groups, but they seem so blandly aspirational, pushy and posturing and humdrum, really. Anyway, I was thinking about this at the Astoria last night, right after the Arctic Monkeys finished playing. The set lasted just over an hour, and the atmosphere in the crowd was bullish, celebratory, a lot of blokes all hoarse and emotional spilling beer over their mates. It was great, too, and it occurred to me: how weird that I like one of these British 'Bands Of The People'; how weird that I've just shared one of those geezerly epiphanies that I normally find so alienating. There are a few explanations for this, I think. One is that the Arctic Monkeys aren't just an exceptional band, but the sort of exceptional band in whom you can find what you want. We chat to a guy stood next to us who's there with his 16-year-old son, and who loves them because he hears The Jam in Alex Turner's songs, who is going to see The Beat tonight and can place the Monkeys into a tradition of British mod and ska. These aren't really my touchstones, though I can see his point. What I choose to hear when I listen to these songs is The Smiths and Queens Of The Stone Age, jittery post-punk and the lyrical rhythms of hip-hop. I bump into Mark Beaumont from NME afterwards, and he tells me that I secretly like the Monkeys because those abrasive guitars have the ring of The Wedding Present about them. I haven't played my Wedding Present records in maybe 15 years, but I fear he may have a point. I like, too, the fact that, unlike all the cheeky social documentarists who've come up in their wake, the Arctic Monkeys' ambitions lie in stretching their music. They are congenitally incapable of being a foursquare indie band, because Matt Helders is congenitally incapable of playing a foursquare indie beat. His drumming is all limber funk and desperate metal fills. It's muscular and relentless and it propels these excellent songs - especially new songs like "Balaclava" and "Teddy Picker" - into complicated and exciting places. And finally, I like Alex Turner a lot, especially the gauche, passive-aggressive nonchalance he has about him, so different from the blustery arrogance of supposed contemporaries like the guy from Kasabian. The new songs are mostly better than the old ones, but it's significant that tonight the Arctic Monkeys don't bother playing the strongest one of all, "Fluorescent Adolescent". We'll have to play this one for the rest of our careers, is the subtext, so we might as well get out of playing it now while we still can.

Thanks for all your feedback on the White Stripes blog I posted yesterday. If it's any consolation, I want to hear "Icky Thump" again, too, but it's under lock and key at the record company HQ and, sadly, I don't have the time to go over to Ladbroke Grove and get it played to me daily. In response to Lil's question - if the title track does turn out to be the first single, that would make sense. It's much more typical of the album than "You Don't Know What Love Is", and its sheer sonic clout would be more of an uncompromising statement to return with. My hunch is that Jack White doesn't worry too much about whether his first single will be "radio-friendly". The first single is for proving to the fans he still has an edge, the second single is the one that can be the drivetime anthem or whatever. That seems the logical plot. Anyway, today's record choice is a bit more obscure. A couple of weeks ago, a colleague emailed me about a folk CD he was compiling. He was looking for recommendations of new English stuff loosely connected with that genre and, knowing that I was up to my neck in the whole acid/free/wyrd-folk scene, thought I might be able to point him in the direction of some cool stuff. Well, I tried, but it was really hard - especially when I realised he needed English artists, thus disqualifying Alasdair Roberts, for a start. A lot of the UK "nu-folk" (and how I hate that nu prefix) seems like ersatz MOR or indie to me, really bland and uninteresting. Seth Lakeman and Jim Moray have nothing in common with the music I love; the properly psychedelic American stuff like Six Organs Of Admittance which, as Michael here constantly teases me, I always refer to as "feral" in things like this. Eventually, I came up with the name of James Blackshaw, a terrific raga-ish, John Fahey-ish guitarist from London whose "O True Believers" album was one of my favourites of last year. But then, about a week ago, a debut album turned up by another London (I think) collective called Voice Of The Seven Woods and it is, I'm pleased to say, fantastic. It has the woody mystique which I love in this music, and a real eclectic spirit which manages to draw lines between Davey Graham-ish fingerpicking and Turkish psychedelia, between Nick Drake confessionals (and on the rare occasions when the anonymous frontman steps up to the mic like "Silver Morning Branches", he really catches Drake's spaciness and dislocation, not like the usual MOR singer-songwriters who are compared with him) and Led Zep, between folk and motorik. The Turkish influence, most prominent on "The Fire In My Head", is particularly interesting, because there's been a slew of reissues in the past year or two that have made the late '60s Anatolian psych scene the hipster equivalent of Tropicalia a year or two back; I can vigorously recommend the Turkish edition of the "Love, Peace & Poetry" compilation series on Shadoks. I suspect this might become a recurring reference point in the next few months: there's a hint of it on the forthcoming Dungen album, which I'll write about soon; and Super Furry Animals have been claiming that their forthcoming album will have a Turkish vibe, too. We shall see. In the meantime, check out Voice Of The Seven Woods' Myspace. That gig on April 24 in San Francisco with Howlin' Rain and Citay should be awesome, and I'll try and make the London show with Espers, for sure.