Today, the Uncut Music Award judges consider Deer Tick's "Black Dirt Sessions"... Allan Jones: It’s very encouraging to see that they’ve got this far. When I first saw the 25-album long list I thought they’d be rank outsiders. Chris Difford was very enamoured of this, and you were also, Mark. Mark Cooper: To be honest, this was the big discovery for me in terms of this award. I hadn’t heard them before, although somebody sent me the record when it first came out and I didn’t get round to listening to it, which I regret. It blew me away, this record, I loved it. I thought, ‘Oh god, what a strong and original voice’. I suppose in some ways they have lots of trad Dylanesque elements, and I just believed right from the start in the songwriting, and in the sense of the man. I think “Goodbye, Dear Friend” is one of the best songs I’ve heard in ages. You just believe that song, you’re at the funeral with him. I like the ambition of the record, although I suspect some people will find his [John McCauley] voice grating because it has a harsh grain to it, but I love it. I’m very glad to be part of this panel, if only because it introduced me to something very special that would otherwise have passed me by. Allan: By the time it gets to “Christ Jesus” McCauley lets his voice go completely, I mean that could have been on the second side of the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album, it’s a totally unfettered vocal. I can imagine people being quite scared of it, actually, it gets very scary live. Mark: There’s real emotional meat on the record, I think. Tony Wadsworth: Well, I’m one of those people who didn’t like his voice particularly. I think the songwriting is great, and it was a discovery for me too, because I hadn’t previously heard any of their stuff. I loved “Goodbye, Dear Friend”, I thought “20 Miles” was really good, but his voice is what stops me from loving it. Also, a lot of the time I thought, musically, we’ve been here before. There’s one song where what is essential the “Sympathy For The Devil” guitar solo kicks off – and I didn’t that was especially great the first time round, to be honest. I think there are people in this sphere of music who do this sort of thing so much better, and I’m not just thinking of Dylan or the Stones, I’m thinking of more up-to-date artists like The Jayhawks. But at the end of the day, it is the voice that just doesn’t do it for me. Phil Manzanera: Certainly, I’d never heard them before, and I was quite surprised because it wasn’t what I was expecting. For some reason, I was expecting to hear something closer to hard rock. I liked the first track, but as the album progressed I found his voice a bit too gruff for my own tastes. I did persevere, and I think the record probably repays several visits, but on first listen I got distracted about two-thirds of the way through, it just wasn’t grabbing me enough. Danny Kelly: I can totally buy into how devoted to the music the artist is; you can hear it in the songwriting, there are times when he could go for the easy option but he doesn’t. That’s to be commended, but I also have to go along with things that have been said earlier, in that the songs, or the music around the songs, have to be remarkably better than they are to sustain that voice over the whole length of the LP. The things being said in the songs would have to be more powerful and more direct for me to overlook the voice in which they were being said, because I too did find it a bit grating. I gotta be honest, I found it a bit samey as well. I don’t doubt for one minute that there will be some people who find the downcast-ness of it really fascinating, and I don’t know the back story of John McCauley to help me in that respect. I couldn’t say that I liked it very much. Hayden Thorpe: I thought it was a really endearing record, I like the fact that John is not afraid of putting his character across without editing himself in any way, even if it is a bit confrontational and difficult to stomach at times. I think the lexicon he uses is incredible, the way he uses the rhymes and argot of the southern states of America, that really pushed my buttons. As has already been mentioned, that one song “Goodbye, Dear Friend” is amazing. It is what it is, at the end of the day, it’s quite lo-fi, very basic in how it was recorded. If you read the lyrics in the CD booklet while you’re listening to the songs you’ll notice that they don’t always correspond, which gives the record a spontaneous feel. It probably isn’t quite visionary enough to be right up there and win this award, but for what it is it’s a really well-made and good-intentioned record.

A few months ago, I managed to smuggle a track by Oneohtrix Point Never onto an Uncut CD; a David Bowie-themed compilation of vaguely futuristic music. Oneohtrix is the project of a guy based in New York called Daniel Lopatin, who reconfigures various kosmische tropes with some ‘80s sci-fi vibes and comes up with a kind of New Age music for underground noise fans. “Physical Memory”, the track on the Uncut CD, is pretty majestic: looming interstellar ambience taken from a 2009 compilation of rare Oneohtrix releases, "Rifts". But while this sort of music has certainly been gaining some traction in the interim – both from electronica fans, and from hipper followers of the hazy bedroom scene known as chillwave – I didn’t anticipate Oneohtrix’s year to turn out in quite this way. Namely, with his 2010 album, “Returnal”, sitting happily in Uncut’s Top 20 Albums Of The Year. There are plenty of other audio cosmographers working in this sphere right now: off the top of my head, Arp, White Rainbow, Robert AA Lowe, Stellar Om Source, Mountains. But from the burst of granular noise that opens Returnal, it seems as if Lopatin has upped the ante. Returnal, essentially, feels like the point of entry into a hidden musical universe. Much of it consists of beatless, crystalline glides; ambience which, nevertheless, sounds more unnerving than restful. It’s not a stretch to suggest that Oneohtrix Point Never could work in the same way as Boards Of Canada did a decade ago; as eldritch comedown music, albeit more indebted to Tangerine Dream. There is, too, a pop song; “Returnal”’s title track, which Lopatin sings with an alien quaver that recalls Fever Ray. “Returnal” has already been re-imagined as a piano ballad, with the lead being taken by Antony Hegarty. The next time Bjork goes searching for new electronic talent to help her out, it’s hard to imagine she’ll look much further than Lopatin. For me, though, there’s another act on the scene who are even better than Oneohtrix. Emeralds are a trio from Cleveland who’ve racked up a frankly bewildering catalogue in the past few years, and who’ve inched fractionally closer to the mainstream in 2010 with the superb “Does It Look Like I’m Here”. This one has a lot of similarities with Lopatin’s work, but amps up the intensity somewhat thanks to a lot of Terry Rileyish ripples and the presence in the lineup of Mark McGuire, a freakout guitarist evidently keen on Manuel Gottsching (who’s playing in Glasgow, incidentally, on December 11). McGuire has a fiercely active solo career, too (this year’s “Living With Yourself” isn’t too far from post-rock; “Tidings/Amethyst Waves” is the best I’ve tracked down). A few Sundays back, Emeralds played a basement club on the City Of London’s edge, and effectively massacred most of my preconceptions about them. McGuire lunged back and forth in guitar hero ecstasies, while one of the two electronics operatives had his back to the audience and headbanged vigorously throughout. Occasionally, he’d turn round, grimace, and punch the air. This happened quite a lot during the spectacularly pummelling 20 minutes of “Genetic”, all turbo-Bach arpeggios and a treatment of psychedelia that verged on punkish. Instead of three serene New Age practitioners, Emeralds seemed to have become fierce rock marauders. “Does It Look Like I’m Here”, incidentally, should figure fairly high up in my personal albums of the year. If you’re interested, I’ll post a full list – as close to a Top 100 as I can stretch – in the next week or so.

Album Number Four on the Uncut Music Award 2010 shortlist. Here's what the judges said about The Coral's "Butterfly House"... Allan Jones: This was a favourite of both Bob Harris and Chris Difford, although neither of them is here to champion it, but I think you’re quite enthusiastic too, Danny. Danny Kelly: First of all, I want to make a confession, and that is that The Coral are my favourite group working today, and I say that fully in the knowledge that hardly anyone else likes them. They’ve been accused of making the same record over and over again, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I came to this on the back of thinking that their previous album, Roots & Echoes, was a brilliant record, my favourite of that particular year. It took me a little while longer to get to love Butterfly House, but I do love it. I mentioned earlier about the number of records on this list that were in some way linked to struggle. This band are struggling with the fact that they make these records, everyone tells them that they’re great, and then nothing happens for them. So what they’ve done on this record, what they’ve decided to do about the fact that they’re struggling, is to do nothing about it all. Well, that’s not strictly true, they’ve sort of added a folk element to their basic 60s template. I love the fact that something as arguably unfashionable as Simon & Garfunkel starts turning up in songs like “Roving Jewel” or “Walking In The Winter”. But ultimately there’s nothing really different about this record, it’s just another tremendous Coral record. If Bob was here he’d probably tell me that there are million things different about it, and I wish he was, but all I can say is that I think it’s a beautiful record. Phil Manzanera: The first track [“More Than A Lover”] is incredibly catchy, every time I put it on I’m convinced I’ve heard it before many years ago. That’s partly my problem with it; it’s a great production by John Leckie, great songwriting, I love the pastoral elements, but for me, having grown up listening to The Byrds and The Beatles, it just doesn’t have the same resonance. It’s beautifully done, it’s possibly near perfect, but it sounds too much like a period piece, and I’d rather listen to the real thing. It’s very difficult for me to praise these guys doing this kind of music, and I know that sounds terribly unfair. Tony Wadsworth: I’m sort of with Phil on this one. I think John Leckie has done a really good job, the Byrds influences, particularly Gene Clark, are writ large, but I would rather just listen to the originals. I don’t want to be too down on it, but I feel that other people have done this better previously and I don’t find it distinctive enough. Mark Cooper: I suppose the question is whether The Coral have done it better. I think The Coral live in a world of their own, admittedly it’s a world of the 60s but it’s a 60s that I particularly like. They remind me of The Small Faces around the time of “Itchycoo Park”, when bands were getting psychedelic but still writing three-minute pop songs, and they have a kind of jugband expansive feel about them. I think The Coral are very self-sufficient; they’ve been on our show Later... three or four times, and they never talk to anybody! They don’t give a fuck, and I love that about them. They turn up and they leave, they don’t really want to make friends, they just want to ‘do’ their world, and I think this record is like that. It’s very self-contained, very beautiful, very likeable, but I’m not sure that it’s the best Coral record. It’s perhaps one of the most succinct ones, though. Tony: My problem with it is that I didn’t get the impression there was any fun going on. Mark: Yeah, it’s a bit mournful. But I’m so glad they exist, I don’t think there are many other British groups like them, and I hope they keep going for a long time. I hope people do cherish them, I’m really glad this record is in the Top Eight because hopefully it will shine a bit of light on them. It’s hard for groups like them who’ve been dropped by a major label and have to try to pick themselves up again. Danny: The news from inside the camp is that the biggest change now that they’re no longer on a major is that they can no longer indulge the taste they developed for fresh lobster! I suspect that’s way off the menu these days. Hayden Thorpe: I admire them and find myself frustrated by them in equal measure. They approach what they do as an art, which is very admirable, they obviously work very hard at achieving their sound, but because it’s so accurate it’s almost pastiche, it’s almost a cartoon. The opening chord on the last song [“North Parade”] I think must be exactly the same as “A Hard Day’s Night”. Tony: It is; G6. Hayden: There’s a lot of moments like that, where the sound is very deliberate, very precise, but it’s just a bit too generic to really get my blood flowing. Mark: I’m not sure how contrived or academic they are about things, I get the feeling that this is just the world they live in. Allan: It’s like a sort of fantasy bubble for them; they’re focusing on a period time that they obviously didn’t live through themselves, but they’ve got a very vivid idea of what it was like. But there groups they remind me of less historically, like Shack, very powerful but not likely to get much further than where they already are. Phil: One of the biggest problems for an artist is that you have all these influences, and rather than just regurgitate them you have to bring something new to the party. You take those influences and you add a new dimension, or at least you ought to. If I was the producer I’d be saying to them, yes this is all very good but what’s new?

Moving on, today Beach House's third album goes under the critical microscope... Allan Jones: Another of the seemingly endless line of bands Bella Union have discovered over the last three or four years. This was a record you particularly liked, Hayden, wasn’t it? Hayden Thorpe: Yeah, I absolutely adored this album, possibly for all the reasons why I wasn’t really taken by the Arcade Fire album, in that it seems so natural in all its compulsions. It seems effortless to me, it seems like this was a moment in time when they managed to capture one feeling. It’s quite basic in the way it’s put together, it just simply relies on its songs and the beauty of the performances, and yet it sounds quite modern because of that. The palette of the songs is very convincing, very believable. That was the key thing for me, I actually believed in the sentiments Victoria [Legrand] was putting across. I found it really endearing, “Walk In The Park” was a song that really took hold of me and gave me faith in that area of music again. I played it a lot earlier in the year when I was away from home, and it was a very comforting and consoling record. It’s very soothing, it’s got that human touch that you can’t really quantify. Phil Manzanera: I really liked it too. In my plus column for this one I wrote down ‘dreamy’. It’s very beautiful, very ambient, textural. It’s very moving listening to it in autumn, maybe if you’re feeling a little sad and insecure. In the minus column I wrote down that it’s not really terribly original, it’s a bit polite, it’s a bit slow-paced. Yet despite all these minuses I get the feeling that it’s an album I will end up playing every year for years to come. It reminds me of Fleet Foxes in that sense, it’s the perfect accompaniment to a very specific kind of mood. Yes, I like it, but looking at the others we’re discussing today I ask myself is it the album of the year? I would have to say that it’s not. Danny Kelly: It’s very hard not to like, isn’t it? In places it’s a really great record. My system isn’t pluses or minuses like Phil; what I’ve been tending to do is play an album, not listen to it again for at least two days and then write down what I remember about it. What I’ve got written down here is ‘floating on a raft’. It’s like being on a raft, it takes you off to somewhere that you couldn’t really complain about, not a terrible raft like Tom Hanks was on in Cast Away. Another think I like about it a great deal is that there’s an openness about the record and about the things she’s saying. It’s something that British bands almost find impossible to do these days, because as a nation we’ve all become so cynical. I agree with Phil, it shares some of the strengths of the Fleet Foxes LP of a couple of years ago. Against that, I would say that it is a bit samey at times, every once in a while I wanted a wave to sweep me off the raft. But it’s a good record, I particularly liked “Norway”, although I wouldn’t say it was my favourite LP. Having said that, it’s very hard to say anything against it. Allan: Sometimes it’s a bit too much to take, it’s almost like a single mood all the way through, it flows very nicely but it needs to shift gear every now and then. Mark Cooper: I agree with everything that’s already been said. It’s very lovely, and I think what we’re all trying to say is that it’s small but perfectly formed. It reminds me a bit of China Crisis, who I used to work with at Virgin Records back in the day, bands like that at the cusp of the ‘80s, very sweet melodicists. Not so much in the lyrics or the ambience, but more what bands at that time were doing with drum machines and synthesizers. I went to see Beach House at Bush Hall not so long ago, and they were very likeable, but I suppose ultimately it’s like snuggling into duvet – but it is very one-note. Its in its own cocoon, and that smallness is probably what will attract a lot of people to it, but I think it also limits it, in terms of ambition and scale. Allan: There’s a very attractive sort of modesty about it, it doesn’t make any extravagant claims, it just exists in its own universe. Tony Wadsworth: I loved it, and I can fully understand Danny’s Kon-Tiki take on it! I loved its intimacy, the fact that it’s just music for its own sake. You just felt like they were making it because that’s how they [Victoria and Alex Scally] communicated with each other. It’s like they were welcoming us into their private little world, which is a nice place to be for 40 minutes. Yes, it is just one mood, but sometimes you want that from an album, you don’t want to be taken all over the shop. You could criticise it for maybe lacking ambition, but I just think it’s small and fresh and lovely. “Zebra” is probably the best opening track on any of the albums here; as soon as you hear those first 10 seconds, you’re with them and you want to be with them.

Following from yesterday's transcript of the Paul Weller debate, here are the Uncut Music Award judges on the Arcade Fire. Allan Jones: I’ve got to say that this is the album that made me want to listen to Arcade Fire again. Like most people, I loved Funeral, but I didn’t get on with Neon Bible because I thought it was dreadfully overblown. Mark Cooper: I think ‘overblown’ is part of the appeal of Arcade Fire in a way. They’ve always done ‘epic’, and perhaps that approach has been discredited in a lot of rock ‘n’ roll with bands like U2, but I think they have a natural soaring inclination to their music, it’s part of why I fell in love with them in the first place. I like the cinematic ambition of the writing, it’s kind of like a rock opera – I don’t know what it means a lot of the time, but I like their sort of JG Ballard portrait of the suburbs. Allan: I know what you mean, it made me think of John Cheever, the meticulous sense of detail in it. I’m not sure if it works wholly, but when it does it’s brilliant, and I think the idea of writing a suite of songs reflecting the American condition through a suburban experience is really, really clever. Mark: Suburbs and epic really shouldn’t work, suburban life is usually downplayed in music, but I really liked it, I think it’s a substantial record. Tony Wadsworth: I really liked it, it’s certainly in my Top Four. I like epic, as long as it’s not epic for epic’s sake, or for a stadium’s sake. If it’s epic for an emotional sake I can get on with it, and that’s what this is, it’s a really emotional album. It’s actually very funny in places, and I’d never previously thought of Arcade Fire as a humorous band. There’s the track “Modern Man” which is in a deliberately weird time signature because the lyrics are about a skipping record. It’s good to hear they’ve discovered a sense of humour, and I love the fact that it’s ambitious in concept. It sounds like a proper album, not just a collection of songs, and it’s very literary and cinematic. Fantastic, really, and much better than Neon Bible. Phil Manzanera: I loved it, and one of the things I loved about it wasn’t especially its epic nature. When I first put it on the first track immediately conjured up Wilco to me. Parts of it also reminded me of Neil Young. It’s clear that they work together as a band, it’s a very cohesive record. The lyrics are about something; I don’t very often analyse the lyrics of songs, but I think these lyrics will stay with me for some time. It’s a record that I could probably listen to again and again over a period of years. Before I came here today I wrote down plus and minus lists for each album on the shortlist, and Arcade Fire got loads of pluses but only one minus, and that’s a suggestion that it’s perhaps too long, but I couldn’t find any other faults in it. Danny Kelly: I think it’s one of those records that you’re really gonna get or you’re really not gonna get. It’s interesting to hear people talk about its epic qualities, because sound-wise it’s smaller than their last album but it’s bigger in its ideas, the conception of trying to write a suite of songs not about a heroic America but an often forgotten America. I think it starts really well, the first tracks are the best, which is always a good thing in an album; “Modern Man” and “Ready To Start” are really good, but then I think it falls away a bit. I love Tony’s back-handed compliment about it being in his Top Four, which basically means he’s put it fourth! I think it’s good record, but it’s no Funeral, and it’s not quite for me. Hayden Thorpe: I think all Arcade Fire albums are very meticulous, perfectly executed in detail, the production is flawless, but that leads to a problem for me as I think of them being so safe because of that. All the rugged edges have been sanded away to make it user-friendly for mass consumption. Also, I get the feeling that if the song itself isn’t quite working they tend to fall back on an epic production sound to help bolster it. I also think a 16-track album is a bit too long. It’s great, but I think it’s too orchestrated in a literal sense rather than a philosophical sense. It’s trying to be rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s doing it in such a calculated way that I didn’t find it especially convincing. I loved Funeral because it was so much more human, I think, and I’m quite sad that I feel them slipping away out of my grasp as they become more aware of the role they have to fill in the world at large. Mark: Yeah, I suppose it does have that third album world-conquering feel about it, whereas Funeral was a much more ‘local’ record, and it can be hard for fans who were there at the start to watch the band go off on that journey. I know what you’re saying about not all the tracks being successful, but what I would say in their defence is that there are a lot more ideas in the eight, nine, 10 tracks that really do work. Allan: Actually, I found it less calculated than their earlier records but more orchestrated. There are self-references within the songs, both musically and lyrically, so they’ve had to arrange all those different elements into a whole. Mark: I just think they know themselves and their own vocabularly better now. When we first heard them they were so surprising, there were so many surges in the music, and I think they know that that type of sound has become their schtick – if schtick isn’t too unkind a description. Tony: They’re more relaxed and assured now, I think, they’re a lot more comfortable in whatever their own skin actually is. Allan: Yeah, I think they sound more comfortable in themselves and more confident now, they’re not striving to make a significant impact in the way that the worst parts of Neon Bible were. Danny: That’s true, they have actually relaxed a little bit, and let themselves be what they actually are. I made a general note about the shortlist before I came here, and that was that at least half of these records are about struggle; struggle with self, struggle with place in the world, struggle with place in music.

Having just finished Peter Matthiessen’s book about (among other things) Nepal, “The Snow Leopard”, it’s been quite nice these past few days to perceive cold and snow as a path to spiritual revelation as much as a physical ordeal. Of course, crawling down the A10 on the Number 76 yesterday morning pretty effectively demolished the romance. But still, listening to the new Six Organs Of Admittance album, “Asleep On The Floodplain” as I travelled was a help, a good soundtrack to poeticise what, for London at least, felt like extreme weather. The arrival of this one came as a surprise, since it’s seemed like Ben Chasny has been concentrating on Rangda this year, and on a forthcoming project, 200 Years, with his wife Elisa Ambrogio from Magik Markers. “Asleep…” feels very much like a counterpoint to the full-throttle heroic jams of Rangda; a very intimate, fireside record, with Chasny predominantly working on an acoustic rather than electric guitar. From the opening “Above A Desert I’ve Never Seen”, you’re pushed into very close proximity to the player, with Chasny as usual making the tactile action of hand on strings, squeaks and all, a critical part of his technique. Not much else gets in the way. Sometimes, Chasny sings, occasionally duets with himself. The odd analogue synth buzzes discreetly in, but mostly he’s backed by what sounds like a harmonium, apparently looped up into a reverberant drone; “Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us” is a startlingly beautiful wash of deep tones and intricate guitar studies. Chasny, I think, has reached that point in his career where it’d be easy to take his records for granted: the sheer number of them now, the general consistency, and the relatively small stylistic evolutions, can make it hard to pick out highlights. It may be its wintry suitability for journeys this week, but “Asleep…” is starting to feel like it may become one of my favourites, up there with “For Octavio Paz” and “School Of The Flower”, and almost certainly stronger than the last one, “Luminous Night”. The highlight, at the moment, is the longest track, “S/word And Leviathan”, a giant invocation that’s spiritual kin to “River Of Transfiguration” on “The Sun Awakens”, another favourite. “S/word And Leviathan” is built around a tinny string-scrabble that could conceivably be a Japan Banjo; I only know of these from the Flower-Corsano records, and the sound Chasny has here doesn’t have the distorted splutter of what Mick Flower plays. Any enlightenment welcome. Anyhow, over 11 minutes, Chasny loops and layers the sound, adds distant ritual chants, drops in a characteristically fragile vocal quite late on, and eventually cuts a swathe through the whole transporting piece with a stunned electric guitar solo. It’s brutal, but still manages to be in keeping with the crisp, close, meditative sound of the album as a whole. I’ve steered clear of the usual acid-folk references here, by the way; it feels like Chasny’s worked his way to a place where namedrops of Peter Walker and so on are no longer so relevant. That said, in transit this morning, I followed up “Asleep On The Floodplain” by playing, for the first time in ages, the Seventh Sons album on ESP Disk, and that worked really well. If you haven’t seen Rangda yet, by the way, really try and check them out; one of the best live shows I’ve seen this year. The London gig clashes with the Wooden Shjips/Howlin Rain/Moon Duo summit, unfortunately, but here are the forthcoming dates; Leeds, especially, should be amazing. 07/12/10 London, UK @ The Luminaire w/Borbetomagus, Heather Leigh, Thomas Ankersmit 08/12/10 Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club w/Emeralds & Howling Rain 09/12/10 Manchester, UK @ Islington Mill w/Howling Rain