As is the brutal way with deadlines on monthly magazines, yesterday afternoon I had to send out a request to all of Uncut's writers for their albums of the year lists, so that we can start the long and meticulous process of compiling a Best Of 2014 chart. I must admit, I've not much of a clue how my own Top 20 is going to shape up at the moment. But one record that will probably feature in there, and one that I've been playing an increasing amount over the past few weeks, is Frazey Ford's "Indian Ocean". Ford, to be honest, is not someone whose work I'm overly familiar with, either as part of the Be Good Tanyas or solo; hopefully, that'll change once I get over the obsessive phase with "Indian Ocean". Saddling her with a genre, I've always assumed Ford was a folk singer, but this second solo album puts her deep into a country-soul place, a world of vintage vinyl, elevated playlists and Light In The Attic comps, and one squatted by Cat Power on "The Greatest". The comparison with that 2006 album is quite specific, since Ford, like Chan Marshall, is a singer embedding herself at the heart of a Southern soul powerhouse, with a bunch of the quicksilver artisans who worked at Memphis' Hi Records with Al Green and Willie Mitchell in the 1970s. "September Fields" is full of lovely and powerful songs, but it's the extraordinarily rich, resonant sound of the album that's most striking at first, even as The Hi Rhythm Section - Charles Hodges (organ), Leroy Hodges (bass) and the late Teenie Hodges (guitar) - work with such empathetic subtlety. "You're Not Free" is a great example of the potency of the hook-up, recorded in part at Memphis' Royal Studios. It's a showstopping ballad that moves with languid grace, where the controlled stabs of the horn section do the heavy emotional lifting while Ford and the Hodges clan operate in flecks and small details. Ford's voice is a wonder, scrunching and chewing up words into airy new shapes that are not always clear, but which have an emotional intensity that's gestural more than emphatic. Teenie Hodges, meanwhile, epitomises the rhythm section's craft. After about three minutes, he steps up to take a kind of bluesy solo that mostly consists of nonchalant space; that becomes most ornate just as Ford and John Raham, her co-producer, fade the track. It's hard to imagine a better monument to the guitarist's restrained genius. The album is dedicated to his memory. "You're Not Free" sits in the middle of an astounding 2-3-4 -5 run that also includes "Runnin'", "Done" and "Three Golden Trees". "Done" begins as if Ford accidentally rewrote "Hotel California" in her sleep, and continues with a series of break-up put-downs whose ferocity is only amplified by the indolence of their delivery. "Indian Ocean", though, is one of those seamlessly-realised projects where it seems churlish to pick specific songs out for scrutiny. It's an album where fraught epiphanies ride on the most effortless grooves; a precise recreation of historical settings, given a new spin by the character of Ford's voice and the quality of her songs ("September Fields" still holds up strongly when it is reprised, in solo acoustic form, at the album's death). Anyhow, I've added a couple of tracks for you to check out; let me know, as ever, what you think. In the meantime, an artless reminder that we have a couple of mags on sale right now: the current issue of Uncut featuring Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen, New Order, Fleetwood Mac, Kate Bush and so on, and the Elvis Costello Ultimate Music Guide. Let me know, of course, what you think of those, too: uncut_feedback@timeinc.com. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

I hadn't planned to write about the Necks show last night: plenty of other things to do; a review of Frazey Ford's album ready to publish; a sense that, after my previous reviews of The Necks, I didn't have much else to say. Every time, though, works out different, and it turns out that the Australian trio might be very nearly as compelling to write about as they are to watch and listen to. For this first night of their residency at Café Oto in Dalston, the format is familiar: two sets, each consisting of one improvised work, notionally anticipated to last about 50 minutes apiece. An indication that the show might shape up in a relatively unusual way, though, comes at the very beginning. Once the three Necks have taken their places on the stage, there is customarily a minute or so of silence, that can be interpreted as meditative preparation or as a kind of brief psychic war, as Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton and Tony Buck wait to see which one of them cracks first. Tonight, however, soon after Abrahams has completed the ritual of taking his glasses off and rubbing his palms up and down his face, he jumps straight in. Though his initial gestures are lyrical, even florid, the first Necks set will be driven by his piano playing at its most wired and antagonistic, so jagged in places that it is left to Swanton to provide a lead melody by bowing his double bass. For a band so often described (somewhat reductively) as minimalists, The Necks are strikingly dense throughout. If you'd come to the show having heard only their most recent album, "Open", the relentlessness would be jolting: there is precious little space, no room for those persistent Eno comparisons and so on. Even for seasoned Necks watchers, it's pretty intense, and there are further diversions to be picked out in the melee, like Abrahams playing something akin to nonchalant blues notes for a while with his right hand, while continuing to pile up the atonal bass clusters with his left. At some point, Tony Buck breaks off from the almost martial path he's been pursuing, albeit with some kind of bell on one of his drumskins, and starts swinging, at least with his left hand. Abrahams returns to his opening melodic moves, in more expansive form, and Swanton puts his bow back in its quiver and starts picking, furiously, eyes closed and with an expression of concentrated rapture that manifests, I suspect, how many of the audience are feeling at this point. It's a great Necks moment, a climax which is soon enough deconstructed as they move to an uncharacteristically swift close. The whole piece has lasted only 35 minutes. Such brevity! The second piece is more predictable, insofar as it lasts just over 50 minutes. Again, though, it's phenomenally intense. For a while, Abrahams sounds more like a more orthodox jazz pianist - if you could call, say, Cecil Taylor orthodox - and there is a point where he appears open to moving the piece into more lyrical, spacious territory. Buck, however, has been rattling a selection of bells and percussive detritus across the surface of his drum in an RSI frenzy, and when Abrahams presents the opportunity to ease up, he instead responds by placing a hand cymbal on there and ramping up the pace even further. At times like this, the thought occurs as to whether a Necks performance can sometimes be a kind of competition between the three members, hermetically sealed in their own worlds (Abrahams has his back to his bandmates for the duration), but still operating in uncanny synchrony. Improvisation can sometimes become a battle of one-upmanship. But The Necks' contests - if, of course, that's what they are - are more subtle and passive-aggressive. There's little that could be described as showing off, more an intrigue of wrong turns and deliberately missed opportunities; of microscopically-adjusted moves that can send a piece down a whole other trajectory. Every once in a while, I start to think one of The Necks is taking charge. A minute or two later I always, unfailingly, change my mind. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

At the conclusion of Se7en, his second film as director, David Fincher memorably gave us Gwyneth Paltrow’s severed head in a box. In many respects, he has been producing heads from boxes ever since. Fincher’s best films are dominated by queasy third-act revelations, bracing plot twists or convulsive violence. Like Hitchcock, Polanski and De Palma in his prime, Fincher is interested in the anxieties of people who have had the rug pulled out from underneath them – whether that be Homicide Detective Mills in Se7en, investment banker Nicholas Van Orton in The Game, the unnamed protagonist of Fight Club, Panic Room’s besieged single mother Meg Altman or obsessed newspaper cartoonist Robert Graysmith in Zodiac. Each of them has disappeared down the rabbit hole in a Fincher film and endured the director’s various puzzles, traps and tricks. Critically, though, Fincher is very good at drawing us into the lives of unlikable protagonists. You might cheer at the humiliations foisted upon the toxic Van Orton, but you find yourself rooting for him in the end. Equally, what is it that eventually endears us to Tyler Durden and his terrorist outrages in Fight Club, or the egotistical, sullen Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network? As it transpires, Fincher does sympathy for the devil particularly well. That is very much in evidence in his latest film, Gone Girl – his tenth film as director, and his sixth literary adaptation. As with Fight Club and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the material is pulpy and sensational.. Ostensibly, it is a thriller, about a husband – Nick Dunne, played by Ben Affleck – who discovers on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary that his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has vanished; possibly kidnapped. As things progress, we discover their marriage is not as perfect as it may at first have seemed. After Amy’s disappearance from her home, the police discover small traces of blood; doubt falls on Nick and as with Cary Grant is Suspicion, it becomes apparent that Nick’s foursquare charm may conceal a darker aspect to his character. Indeed, there is a lot of work done here to present Affleck in his now-familiar guise as a likeable everyman, only to watch that unravel: is there any greater cinematic past-time than watching Affleck getting debagged? The first hour effectively runs two narratives in tandem. Initially, it’s a police procedural as the local police investigate Amy’s disappearance; a Greek chorus of tabloid television presenters offer their own theories. Meanwhile, Fincher uses flashbacks and voiceover from Amy’s diary to document the trajectory of her and Nick’s relationship. What emerges here is instructive. We discover Nick was a successful writer living in New York while “Amazing Amy” was the inspiration for a series of best-selling children’s novels; they marry, but move back to Nick’s hometown in Missouri to look after his dying mother; the recession hits; they endure a series of unfortunate setbacks until their marriage has become entirely toxic. By the time they reach their fifth wedding anniversary, neither of them is the person they hoped to be, and their disappointment in themselves and their partner manifests itself in surprisingly unpredictable ways. Nick becomes unfaithful; he is prone to violence. In the first instance, then, Fincher invites us to root for Amy and regard Nick as the bad guy; but, of course, how much of this itself is just Fincher playing yet more games with his audience? The second hour, however, finds the story developing in an unexpectedly volatile direction, as Fincher delights in pulling the rug not only from underneath his characters – but the audience as well. Both Nick and Amy are unreliable narrators, and both are highly adept at deception. As events progress, the plot takes on a feverish quality – Gillian Flynn’s source novel and screenplay are essentially soap opera on a grand scale – but as his adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo proved, Fincher is skilled at elevating this kind of yarn and, more importantly, he keeps a firm hand on the plot as it segues from one outlandish moment to the next. If Affleck is the focus of the first half, Pike takes centre stage for the second. It is a surprising performance; demanding a lot of the actress, as she is required to shift from “Amazing Amy” to the increasingly angry and disappointed woman stuck in Missouri; and how she manages those frustrations. Elsewhere, there is good work from Carrie Coon as Affleck’s twin sister Margo, Neil Patrick Harris as Amy’s former boyfriend and Kim Dickens and Patrick Fugit as the two police officers assigned to investigate Amy’s disappearance. Fincher regulars Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provide a suitably unnerving, though discreet, electronic score. But as Gone Girl reveals its secrets, it becomes open to different interpretations. Is it a film about marriage? Or how people become hemmed in by circumstance and the wrong choices? Or perhaps it’s a study of violent revenge, or trial-by-television culture? Admittedly, it’s not Fincher’s best – and I wish he’d step away from the airport thrillers now – but if nothing else, Gone Girl is at least a superior diversion. And, critically, at least there are no surprise Nazis in this one.