Velvet night

The Velvet's legend performs his 1973 opera

Back in 1996, the last time I saw Lou Reed, I remember making a mental note at the end of the show, to remember to never go and see him again. It wasn’t so much his legendary tetchiness, although that was well to the fore, as a glowering Lou shot irritated, grouchy-headmaster daggers at the band around him while they played, and maintained a stony silence between songs, cracked only for a brief tirade about something a journalist had said to annoy him earlier.

Dolorous Nashville sextet deliver bright(ish) sixth album

I suspect I’ve banged on about Howlin Rain so often now that my admiration for the band is reaching mildly stalkerish levels. Last night’s show at the Scala, though, was a big leap on from this one that I frothed over a few months ago.

To paraphrase Dolly Parton, it must take a lot of care to look as chaotic as this. I’m referring not to Neil Young himself, not exactly, but to the astonishingly cluttered stage around him, dressed to look like – well, backstage, really, behind the scenes at some lost old-time opry.

Heavy trip continues for magnificent Canadian band

Don Siegel's timeless classic of paranoid sci-fi

Ashcroft and co's triumphant reunion tour reaches the Roundhouse

Here's Stephen Dalton's final report from this year's Vienna Film Festival... Ah, Vienna. Welcome to Uncut’s final dispatch from this year’s extended Viennale, which finally closed on Friday with Vic Chesnutt howling grainy, ragged, alt-folk Americana to a packed house in the Austrian capital’s deluxe Gartenbau cinema. A splendidly soulful finale to Europe’s most elegant film festival.

Turbo-charged eighth studio album from Wolfchild and co.