Tortoise

Just playing the new Love As Laughter album, as recommended by one of you on the albums of the year thus far thread, when Sam Jayne serendipitously sings, “Listen to the radio play ‘Cowgirl In The Sand’.” Serendipitous because I’ve just posted John Robinson’s excellent review of Neil Young’s Hop Farm jam yesterday over at the Live blog.

Tracklisting for 6th record plus UK tour dates

When we were talking about Coldplay the other day, one of the regulars, Jamesewan, posted some thoughts which suggested that the British music scene “has been in a kind of depression for a while now.” It’s not something I worry about a great deal, to be honest, since I don’t really care where the records I like come from – and they usually come from America, realistically.

I guess it’s become a cliché over the years that, when a Bristol band affiliated to trip-hop make a comeback, they should be somehow darker, and heavier, as if the magisterial doom that they all conjured up from the start somehow wasn’t enough.

I guess it’s still fairly early in the morning, but I’m struggling right now to think of many players around at the moment who are as slippery and compelling as Will Oldham. He’s had, by his standards, a relatively quiet year. But the other day, a new mini-album turned up unexpectedly, a few days after it had actually arrived in the shops. Like a big American urban star or Radiohead, clearly Oldham has abandoned the niceties of advance releases for hacks. Which is fair enough, if a bit frustrating.

Recently, there seems to have been something of a Krautrock revival, comparable to that time in the early ‘90s when Stereolab, Tortoise and sundry putative post-rockers were assiduously cribbing their old Neu! albums. The appearance of a neat Harmonia live CD, that I blogged about some weeks ago, has been followed by a bunch of very nice records in much the same burbling, kosmische vein.

Last night, I went to see John Waters' latest, a part memoir/part standup act called This Filthy World, followed by a Q+A with the director. It was, as you might expect, all in pretty poor taste, as camp as a row of tents and very, very funny.

It seems a long time ago now, when I thought post-rock was the most exciting music in the world. The thing with those early records by Tortoise and such was that they made anything seem possible. Post-rock was never going to supersede rock, but in the mid-'90s it still felt like a fantastically open-minded scene. The bands weren't hung up on the old signifiers of rock, they had this voracious appetite for so much music: jazz, electronica, Krautrock, endlessly obscure diversions from the well-beaten path. There were no apparent rules, which made it all the more disappointing that it became so formulaic so fast.

Teenage Fanclub's guitarist and singer chats to Uncut from his Glasgow home.

Government-endorsed, panic-reducing instrumentals from Wisdom Of Harry moonlighters