Another song this week from what’s rapidly shaping up to be one of my favourite 2014 albums, Hurray For The Riff-Raff’s “Small Town Heroes”. Have a look, too, at the trailer for Lance Bangs’ Slint documentary, “Breadcrumb Trail”, which is the music film I’ve enjoyed most since the Source Family doc.
Another one of the annoying redacted albums uncovered this week, in the shape of Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks, on the first few listens possibly superior to the last Animal Collective set. I wish you could hear more of Angel Deradoorian on it, though: her “Mind Raft” EP from a few years back is maybe my favourite release from the extended Dirty Projectors collective.
Slowdive has confirmed they are to reunite.
The band's original line-up - Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell, Christian Savill, Simon Scott and Nick Chaplin - will perform at London'sVillage Underground on May 19. Tickets will be available here from Friday, January 31 at 9am.
They will also play the Primavera Festival in Barcelona on May 30 on a bill that includes Pixies, The National and Slint.
As you may have seen, this week’s NME features the 2013 edition of their 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. For this one, they also accepted votes from a bunch of the mag’s alumni, including me, so I thought it’d be an easy, albeit self-indulgent, blog to reproduce my Top 50 albums here.
I hope you had a good Bank Holiday break. I spent a very enjoyable chunk of it reading the new Carl Hiaasen novel – excuse the shameless self-promotion, but you can read an interview I did with Hiaasen over on my blog. But now we’re back in the office, and it’s my pleasure to introduce you all to the new issue of Uncut, which goes on sale tomorrow.
To accompany this month’s Uncut (Take 181, June 2012), out now, which features the Bonnie “Prince” Billy/Palace icon fielding questions from fans and musicians, here’s an illuminating Album By Album piece with Will Oldham, talking to Andrew Mueller, from Uncut’s April 2009 issue. “I feel more confident about things now,” he says. “Which frees up space for me to feel insecure about a whole new range of stuff…”
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When the last Om album, “Pilgrimage”, came out, I made some kind of borderline lazy crack about it being virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor. Not much danger of being able to do that with “God Is Good”, this time.
A beautiful bit of work today, with this video to “Unwound”, by Music For Your Heart. Very taken with this; imagine a subtle and warm torch song built on the spare dynamics of something from Slint’s “Spiderland”, and you’re close to the appeal of this opening track from Sandra Zettpunkt’s forthcoming album. An unfamiliar name, perhaps, though “Turning Marvel” was recorded by Teenage Fanclub’s Raymond McGinley and mastered by Shellac’s Bob Weston, and features double bass from Calexico’s Volker Zander.
I’ve been blown away this week by the first album from a New York band called Endless Boogie. The name was vaguely familiar, and reading through the press release it transpires that the band played Slint’s All Tomorrow’s Parties a few years back. There are some earlier singles, I think, which Bubba helpfully linked to here.
