Over the past year or two, MC Taylor of “Hiss Golden Messenger has become not just one of my favourite American contemporary songwriters, but also a great source of musical recommendations; most recently, of course, with his terrific “Wah-Wah Cowboys” mixtape.
MC Taylor, a songwriter and a student of folklore, is not a declamatory man. His songs are compressed and poetic, with nary a syllable out of place. You will hear echoes of familiar things – a bit of Van Morrison’s mystical warmth, or John Martyn’s angst, and the language will be unfussy, and derived from the folk tradition.
Various circumstances mean I have to miss Hiss Golden Messenger’s show at Club Uncut on Wednesday, so I went to see Michael Taylor’s first UK show at King’s Place, a rather refined venue beneath The Guardian offices, last Friday.
This week’s new issue of Uncut features another 50 Great Lost Albums – those that are unavailable new or as legal downloads right now – chosen by the mag’s readers. Consequently, I thought it’d be useful to put our original Top 50 online, as they appeared in issue 156 of Uncut (Neil Young was on the cover, narrowing it down a little).
Reeling slightly from the bad news about John Martyn, here are the records played in the Uncut office over the last couple of days. Mildly weird mix this week: the glut of Smog is due to me trying to review the new Bill Callahan album, which I'll try and blog about in the next few days.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds began their British tour last night with an occasionally scrappy, but ultimately triumphant 19-song set at the Brighton Centre in Cave’s adopted hometown – a fact he addressed with repeated thanks to “the beautiful people of Brighton”.
