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

Over the next few days, we'll be posting full transcripts of what the Uncut Music Award judges said about each of the shortlisted eight albums. Today we begin with their comments on the eventual winner; Paul Weller's "Wake Up The Nation". ALLAN JONES: Historically, I’ve been very critical of Weller. I was never a fan of The Jam, which was unfortunate in the days of Melody Maker, because every time it was my turn to review the singles there seemed to be a new Jam 45 out that week. So, Weller and I have had a distant and very fractious relationship over the years. I’ve cropped up in probably one too many of his interviews as somone that he’s not been very fond of. But I have to say that this album was the biggest surpise to me this year. I read David Cavanagh’s review in Uncut and thought, ‘He’s gotta be fucking joking!’, because I never thought Weller could ever make a record that would inspire such an interesting review, let alone an album that actually justified what was said about it. That at 50, Weller would be making this kind of music is something that would have been nigh on impossible to imagine 30-odd years ago. If you think about the Class Of ’77, songwriters like Lydon, Strummer, Costello or Weller, and project them forward to 2010 to predict which of them would be making the most interesting music, I would never have thought it would be Weller. But, blow me, I think he’s done it with this album. PHIL MANZANERA: I think he’s wrongfooted everyone. I had him down for just one style, I never particularly liked The Jam or The Style Council, apart from the odd song. ALLAN JONES: Don’t get me started on The Style Council! PHIL MANZANERA: This album, to me, is just awesome, really. It’s so, so forceful. I never thought he had it in him, it’s like a force of nature, there’s an incredible uptempo energy to it. It’s just 40 minutes, isn’t it? ALLAN JONES: Yes, there’s 16 tracks and only one of them is over three-and-a-half minutes long. PHIL MANZANERA: The minus for me is that some of them are too short, I would have liked to have heard them go on a bit longer. But it’s a really surprising record, some of the bridges he goes into after the verse you couldn’t have predicted in a million years. It’s just incredible, really, not what I was expecting at all. I’m very, very impressed by it, good on him. TONY WADSWORTH: Yeah, I’ve not been a big fan of his stuff over the last few years, although I did like The Jam, but this really surprised me. I can hear a lot of Bowie in it, which is not a bad thing, and I agree with Phil about the shortness of some of the songs, I think I would have liked to have heard him develop the ideas a bit more. It’s a massively eclectic record, but I think if he’d spent a little more time on certain things he could have done something even better. I like the little instrumental breaks between some of the songs, I thought that was a nice thing to do, reminded me of “The Great Escape” by Blur. He’s obviously had a bit of a renassaince in his creativity. It’ll be interesting to see what he does next. ALLAN JONES: Well, when Uncut went down to interview him about this album the first thing he did was play us six songs he’d just recorded that were lined up for the next record, so he’s obviously on some kind of hot streak. Some times I do get frustrated when songs are so chopped up and they don’t develop, but this reminded me of Elvis Costello’s “Get Happy”, in a way. I remember Costello telling me that the songs were coming out of him so fast he would be writing them on the way to the studio, and I get the feeling that’s what’s happening with Weller. It makes the record more exciting for me, rather than fractured or bitty. DANNY KELLY: I don’t want to get in to a debate about who hated him most; I very much liked The Jam, but I’ve increasingly disliked his music through the whole dad-rock period that by the last four of five years I just couldn’t bear to listen to him put out another sub-Traffic workout. There was a clue to this album, wasn’t there, and that was the last record, “22 Dreams”. There was something that tweaked in his head, the penny dropped, and I suspect, as someone who’s gone through the same thing, it had something to do with turning 50. In the notes I made when listening to this record, I wrote down the two words “corset off”. He’s taken his corset of, hasn’t he? This is pure conjecture, so forgive me: What’s the point of having all this passion about music, what is the purpose of knowing all these records, having all these skills he’s acquired? I think this record is the sound of Weller taking all he’s accumulated down the years and throwing it all in a heap. There’s a story about some monks in the ninth century, who decided to write down every thing they knew about the world, which at that time in history was pretty much everything, before the explosion of the sciences. When asked by the pope how they were going to do this, they replied ‘We are, your reverence, going to make a heap of all we know’. Paul Weller has made a heap of everything he knows about music, and it’s a brilliant record. I’ve hated his records in the past, but this one... the first track [“Moonshine”] sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis, then it goes off on all sorts of tangents. The worst song is probably the one that sounds most like The Jam, “Fast Car/Slow Traffic”. Of course, it’s possible to dislike the album immensely, and I think part of Paul’s dad-rock following are having trouble with it. At first, I was just bamboozled by the musicality of it all, things falling in and out of it, and then I went back to it and just played “Trees”, that bizarre two-part song written about his dad, it turns out, who had recently died. That’s what it is, that’s the key to the whole record; your father dies, you fall off the edge of the world, and here’s your new record. I don’t claim for one minute that it’s going to change the world or anything, but some of the greatest records ever are full of imperfections and that’s what makes them, as a whole, as a piece, great records, and this is a terrific album. HAYDEN THORPE: I’ve never really been into Weller, I think this is the first of his records I’ve ever really sat down and listened to intently, so I’m quite impartial in that sense. It’s very innovative, very spontaneous, I like the fact that he’s let the experimental jams to come through, but even though he’s working under his own code you get the feeling that he’s guiding the listener through the experience. But it also sounded like he was intentionally working outside of his usual comfort zone to try and draw something new out of himself. I think it’s an imperfect record, but like Danny said a lot of imperfect records are more endearing because of it. You love it for the creature it is, rather than the creature it’s trying to be. DANNY KELLY: We were talking about how The Coral and The Gaslight anthem were restricting their palate, but there’s such an array of noise on this LP, it’s really exciting. MARK COOPER: I’ve never had the problems some of you have had with Paul, because I’ve always been a fan. But I think he has been guilty of boring people, particularly in the most derivative stages of the dad-rock era, when it was three albums after “Stanley Road” and it just seemed like he was making the same record again and again, just falling back into his old influences. I think, though, consistently since the days of The Jam he’s always been one of our great melodicists, always writing great tunes. And there are lots of great tunes here. “22 Dreams” had a very broad palEtte and was a great record, but this record is on fire. And you get the impression that it’s not finished, that he’s not finished. He’s just opened a big bag and everything’s fallen out. It’s so great that someone, at 50, can just decide to ask himself what’s it all for? From what I know about Paul, he’s very competitive, he wants to stay in the game and make good records that sell, but perversely he’s done it so much better here by not giving a fuck. That’s what you get from this, what you get from the white heat of the record. ALLAN JONES: That’s what it is, white heat; this furnace of ideas with so many sparks flying off it. DANNY KELLY: Whether this record wins the award or not, it’s such a fantastic lesson to so many musicians. There are a lot musicians still making a living past their creative golden days who just don’t seem to try any more. It doesn’t have to be like that, you don’t have to just knock it out, although I’ve no problem with people careering if that’s all they can be bothered to do. But whatever was inside these people who were once creative or brilliant, it must still be in there. There is a lesson here for both young and old musicians, and that is that you can look back into yourself and find something new and something brilliant. Just as I expect Allan to write to Damon Allbarn to apologise if “Plastic Beach” doesn’t win, I want to take Paul Weller’s LP and send it to Prince with a very short note saying ‘Buck up, buster!’. CHRIS DIFFORD: Paul is a true orginal, both in terms of songwriting and production, and this might just be the best record he’s ever made. He never follows trends, he just listens to his own voice. I think the relationship between him his father was the catalyst for this album; I think his dad’s passing has made him become more aware of his own vulnerability, and it’s manifested itself in some extraordinary songs. CHRISTIAN O’CONNELL: Paul Weller is such a deserved winner, because he’s still pushing the envelope in terms of his talent and his creativity. He’s not afraid to explore unknown areas and collaborate with new artists, rather than rest on his back catalogue and laurels. This album is rich in surprises and quality. Fantastic stuff. BOB HARRIS: He’s an artist of such stature. He never stands still, he’s always moving forward and trying new things. There’s a body-of-work factor that comes in to play with someone who’s been around so long, and I believe this is one of the best albums of his career. It’s really heartfelt; it’s sonically very interesting and evokes so many earlier eras of music, especially the 60s, but without being stuck in the past. He’s his own man, he never compromises.

A raised eyebrow last week, when the new Earth album arrived, accompanied by a press release citing Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Tinariwen as key influences. It’s been a fair while, of course, since Dylan Carlson’s outfit made music quite so doomy and reductive as their reputation. Nevertheless, folk-rock and Tuareg jams feel like they still might be a bit of a stretch, and so “Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light 1” proves. Much of the music in these five long tracks initially feels very much like a continuation of “The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull”, a sort of blasted Americana, more or less tectonic at the speed it evolves. After a few listens, though, I’ve started spotting nuances in this gravity-heavy, hugely impressive music. Somewhere in the 12-odd minutes of “Father Midnight” emerges something of a jazz-tinged roll to the rhythm section, a brushed and high looseness underpinning Carlson’s still blackened riffing. A few years back, I came across the German doom-jazz band, Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, evidently Earth fans. It now seems as if Carlson might just be a Bohren fan in return, given the monolithic swing that Earth – currently a quartet – are practising. When I blogged about “The Bees Made Honey…”, I mentioned how Earth had belatedly moved into a grand tradition, that what was once unanchored noise-rock had grown backwards towards the blues. On “Angels Of Darkness”, that process seems even more advanced: as “Descent To The Zenith” unfolds, it’s not too far-fetched to suggest Earth have found a groove. It’s not one immediately comparable to that of Tinariwen, but a kindred sense of letting a serpentine groove work itself out, in its own time, driven by its own imperturbable forward motion, is not entirely dissimilar. British folk-rock, however, remains harder to spot among the rubble. Lori Goldston’s cello comes very much into the foreground on the 20-minute closing title track, circling ponderously and reminding me very slightly of a Nick Drake track or two. For all the imprecations of doom in the language that Carlson uses for his music, though, “Angels Of Darkness…” feels serenely expansive; the work of a band heading inexorably, but extremely slowly, towards a kind of rock orthodoxy. Give Carlson another 20 years, and he might be tantalisingly close. In the meantime, though, the journey is remarkable – and hellishly hard, as an aside, to write about sentiently today.