Some next-level spam last night, in that someone/some bot tried posting, “I can't believe LeBron is going to the Bulls, he should really just stay where he is” on an old Elliott Smith blog. For what it’s worth, I can’t believe Notts have signed Ben Phillips this morning, either.
The Rolling Stones on our minds a lot this week, with the Keith Richards book finally out (please have a look at Allan’s immense review in the new Uncut), and a pile of page proofs from our forthcoming Rolling Stones Ultimate Music Guide for me to read.
Not to stereotype us in any way, but marvellous though Club Uncut is, not much dancing has traditionally gone on there. As a one-stop shop for American songwriters of a certain stripe, we’ve done pretty well. But last night’s show by Fool’s Gold is something else entirely.
In spite of being a big fan of the last couple of Arbouretum albums – and also happily aware of Dave Heumann’s jobbing work in the past with Will Oldham and so on – I’ve been inexplicably useless at checking out one or two of his sidelines. Notably, that is, the band Human Bell he steers with one of the guys from Lungfish (not Daniel Higgs, I should say).
Quite an interesting list this week. A little glossing necessary, maybe. Maximum Balloon is the David Sitek side project, which I must confess to having been pretty sceptical about (much love for TV On The Radio notwithstanding), but which, on the basic of the five tracks I’ve heard, sounds terrific. Not unlike TV On The Radio, especially when the guys from TV On The Radio sing.
A few bits and pieces to mop up today, beginning with one last thankyou to everyone who has posted on the end of year blogs – or, come to that, who's commented on any of the things I’ve written in the past 12 months. It’s been a genuine pleasure to hear from almost all of you; and of course heartening to discover other people interested in the same music.
In what now seems, somewhat miraculously, to be an annual free-pass for self-indulgence, I’ve been allowed to compile another one of my psych CDs to come free with the new issue of Uncut; the one with The Who on the cover, hence the CD’s pretty arbitrary title, “Seeing For Miles”.
As ever, a bit of a backlog here, but I’ll try and file some previews of The XX, the surprisingly fine Os Mutantes comeback, Andrew WK’s solo piano improvisations and, especially, the Unthanks album in the next few days.
