“I think this band will be hugely influential,” suggested Billy Bragg during the judging sessions for this year’s Uncut Music Award. “In the next couple of years we’ll be hearing young bands lifting the tensions and the rhythms of Tinariwen.” Rash prophecy, maybe? Well, it took about a week. Just the other day, the debut album from Fool’s Gold arrived, and when “Ha Dvash” began rolling, all orbital twang, syncopated handclaps and chants, Bragg seemed to have been proved right. A sprawling collective of LA hipsters were, it seemed, making a pretty decent fist of playing Touareg. Not necessarily what you’d expect from a bunch who apparently include deep in their ranks the ex-drummer of We Are Scientists, plus Orpheo McCord, the drummer who figured in that brief, weird-even-by-Mark-E-Smith’s-standards, Transatlantic configuration of The Fall a few years ago. But Fool’s Gold, helmed by a singer/bassist called Luke Top and a superb guitarist called Lewis Pesacov, manage to pull it off, along with a few more off-the-peg African music selections, on this very lively, self-titled debut. When the opening track, “Surprise Hotel”, drifted in from the NME office next door last week, we initially thought it may be the new Vampire Weekend album. But actually, “Surprise Hotel”, not least thanks to Top’s quizzical drawl, is closer to the zinging ersatz hi-life of Talking Heads circa “Naked”, maybe “Nothing But Flowers” in particular. After that, Fool’s Gold zips fairly brazenly, but effectively, through a variety of styles that seem familiar even to an African music dilettante like myself. So “Nadine” co-opts the svelte Addis big band horns and eastern scales familiar from the Éthiopiques comps, while “Night Dancing” and “Momentary Shelter” have the frantic, ringing percolations of Konono No 1, albeit re-scored for different instruments (see also Vampire Weekend’s “Horchata”), plus some galloping Africa ’70 horns on the former. There’s a sense that, unlike Vampire Weekend, influences are being regurgitated rather than fully digested, and doubtless “Fool’s Gold” will be seen as a purist’s nightmare, a hipster appropriation, or whatever. Nevertheless, it succeeds: here’s a band with a certain ricocheting virtuosity, and a critical understanding of the exuberant possibilities presented by these musics.

Today: the judges discuss Bob Dylan's "Together Through Life". Tony Wadsworth: I love it, Bob Dylan is my default setting at the best of times. I love the sound of it, what David Hidalgo’s accordion brings to it. Mark Cooper: I know what Tony means about the sound of it, Dylan’s always been very good at creating a whole sound for an album, in the way that Desire has its own sound, or John Wesley Harding has its own sound. Having said that, it’s what I both love about the album and slightly miss about it. I love it, but maybe it won’t stand up alongside the great Dylan records. It’s very hard to judge Dylan in a field like this, because Dylan is Dylan. I think it being in the final eight for this award made me realise how much I like it, and I enjoyed listening to it more than I might have done otherwise. Rachel Unthank: With it being in the final eight, I probably gave it more attention than I would have any other new Dylan record, and it did grow on me. I agree with Mark, in that I really enjoyed it but I don’t think it brought me anything new in my appreciation of Dylan. I would want to listen to it again, but I wouldn’t want it to win. Bob Harris: It’s funny, because I really loved the last Dylan album, Modern Times, but for me, for some reason, this one just got lost on the conveyor belt. I don’t know why, but it seems like this album has just come alongside everything without really breaking through into my consciousness. I’ve always started listening to it and then thought I’d better get on to listening to other stuff. Tony: Maybe you were enjoying yourself too much! Bob Harris: I’m really going along with both Mark and Rachel by saying, yep it’s great, it’s Bob Dylan, I didn’t not like it, but in terms of what we’re doing here and picking out something really outstanding, it doesn’t strike me as being the great album of 2009. Dave Robinson: Bob Dylan is probably the singlemost thing that I got off on at a very young age. I remember trying to play his early records to Irish showbands and influencing them into changing their entire outlook, and them thinking I was a complete nutter. I just think he’s phenomenal, I love everything about him, but I think this record is completely naff. It’s fine, but it’s a kind of a 12-bar outing that any number of people could have trotted out. I’ve spoken to several musicians who’ve played with him in the past, people I’ve got out of retirement homes in Nashville to play on sessions for records I’ve been involved with, and they all say that the thing with Bob was that they’d do a rehearsal and then two days later the recording would start, by which time Bob would have changed the rhythm, he would have changed the timing, he’d have changed the whole ethos of the song. Basically, he wanted them to make it up, he wanted that kind of vibe, but on this record I don’t think he did that. I think everyone just played what the songs were. They’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with them, but there’s nothing spectacular about them, and in this particular context of an award for the best record of the year it doesn’t really hold up. I’ve never given Dylan a two out of five in my life, but this is a two. Billy Bragg: When you make as many albums as Bob Dylan does, every now and then you’re gonna make one that’s a bit pedestrian. I have nothing but respect for him, whatever it was that drove him to make those incredible albums, those incredible bursts of inspiration in the 60s still drives him. You can’t expect him to reach those heights time and time again, but the very fact that he’s out there, still making records, still engaged, is great. His radio shows prove that, and (to Bob Harris) he’s totally stolen your presentation style – another Whispering Bob! I always like to listen to Bob Dylan, but where he is and what he’s doing doesn’t really fit into this company. Where he was and what he did do is great, but that’s not what we’re judging here. I don’t think this particular Dylan album really does it. Allan Jones: In comparison to some of Dylan’s latterday work this album has a really kind of stoic feel to it, it’s like ‘we’re all gonna fucking die, so let’s have a good time’. It has a rambuctious feel to it. He wrote the songs in ten days, went in and knocked the album out very quickly. Billy: It’s an incredible way to work, nobody else does it. He’s keeping a flame alive that the rest of our industry has lost, and he deserves our respect for that. It doesn’t make it record of the year, though. Mark: What I think is incredible about this record is that there’s probably one song here that’s got more chance of becoming a standard than anything on any of the other albums. It’s incredible how he can come up with something like “Life Is Hard” that almost any other singer can sing. I don’t think there’s another song on all these records that somebody else will sing in about ten years. Billy: I was watching Smokey Robinson at the Electric Proms the other night, and there’s an artist of a similar stature who wants you to love him. It’s all about love, I felt really connected to him. Dylan dares you to hate him. How many young bands would go out there after you’ve paid your money and more or less tell you to fuck off? Nobody else does that, he’s still got that edge. He pisses you off, just like the Pistols. Mark: Well, there’s a difference between pissing somebody off and bad art.

Today: the Uncut Music Award judges on Dirty Projectors' "Bitte Orca". Rachel Unthank: I absolutely love Dirty Projectors, I find it really exciting. Every time I put it on it sets my pulse racing. It’s just so bold and strident and fearless. They must be very influenced my African music, their harmonies are so powerful, they really go for it. It’s full of humour, as well, the singer’s got a bit of a ridiculous voice, almost like The B52’s, but he seems to enjoy being larger than life. It took me to different places; I love the hi-energy stuff and I love the song that the girl sings on her own [“Two Doves”], I think it’s really beautiful. I was playing the album on the tour bus last night and someone said it sounded like they were making it up as they go along but were still all playing the same thing. I liked that sense of anarchy, the feeling that you never know what’s going to happen next. Bob Harris: Again, I’m virtually echoing what Rachel is saying. It’s a very, very exciting album, I think, and one of the aspects of that is the variety. It doesn’t settle into any particular pattern, and I like the counterpoint of the different voices. Rachel: It’s very angular, isn’t it? Bob: Yeah, it’s a very brave album... Allan Jones: ...and as Rachel says, you can’t tell where it’s going to go next. Billy Bragg: It was where it was gonna go next that worried me, I was expecting that sooner or later he was gonna ask if Scaramouche could do the fandango. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t get past his voice, and I say this as someone who has that criticism levelled at them all the time. When the girl sang I really connected with it, I could understand the vocal, but matey boy was a bit too much for me, I do apologise. Allan: I think that’s a widespread problem people have had with it. Billy: I think Mika has queered that pitch for me, unfortunately. Tony Wadsworth: What, the poncey vocal thing? Billy: Nah, it’s not that. I’m a huge Smokey Robinson fan, I’m happy with a poncey vocal, but when the vocal is relied upon to add most of the energy to the song, that sort of over-excited thing like these guys are leading with, it makes me think of Mika. It’s unfortunate for them. I don’t think they’re anything like Mika, though. Rachel: For me, though, even though the vocal is a bit histrionical – don’t know if that’s a proper word, in Newcastle it is – I didn’t feel like it was dishonest. Billy: Oh, I’m not saying it’s dishonest, it was just me who couldn’t get past it. Dave Robinson: I didn’t really get into it, unfortunately. I thought it was kind of don’t-give-up-your-day-job music, I have a note next to it on my list that says “hobby music”. I thought the guy’s voice was strange, but the whole ambience of it went it one ear and out the other. Mark Cooper: It was one of my big discoveries on the list, I really liked it. I thought it was very fresh, very brave. I know what Dave means, because it’s got a kind of hermetic, not bothered with the world and blissed out quality to it. It does what it does in its own musical landscape, and it seemed to me to be very fresh in that approach. I think some of the arrangements are very interesting, I love the soul ballad [“Fluourescent Half Dome”] where the drums keeping coming in and out at the end. I like this record. Tony: I’ve not got very much to say on this one. I agree with Billy, I couldn’t get beyond the voice. I was really intrigued that they’re from Portland, because I love The Decemberists, and after hearing what Rachel had to say it made me want to go and listen to it again. Rachel: Do! Do! Tony: Some of it sounded like David Byrne, which is not a bad thing, but it didn’t really do it for me. Allan: Again, it’s one of those records that I heard in the office a lot. I liked the story-telling element to a lot of it, which seems quite buried at first but becomes more apparent the more you listen to it. I can understand why a lot people might not like it. Rachel: But it’s so good, though! Mark: It’s one of those rare records, in the arrangements, where you have absolutely no sense a lot of time of what the fuck’s coming next, but it works! A lot of music works within a genre and you kind of know the rules, but this doesn’t seem to have rules and I like that about it. Bob: It does constantly take you by surprise. Allan: I agree that there is that sense that they’re making it up as they go along... Billy: ...which is not a bad way to make a record. Allan: It sounds like that, although I do think the truth is that it’s been very carefully conceived. Billy: Yeah, to sound like the whole thing is falling apart you have to be absolutely brilliant. You have to be really precise so that you can have those gaps.

Following on from yesterday's post about Tinariwen, here's a transcript of the Uncut Music Award judges discussing Animal Collective's "Merriweather Post Pavilion". Billy Bragg: There seems to be a lot of stuff out there, and in this award’s long list, where the ghost of Brian Wilson is strongly represented. It’s as if they’ve all invested in a Brian Wilson fader switch that they turn up and turn down at will; some put it to good use and others to not so good use, but I think Animal Collective put it to better use than most. Although I have to say that I’d already bought four of the eight albums that made the short list and Animal Collective wasn’t one of them. Tony Wadsworth: Yeah, the Pet Sounds/Smile influence was really clear. I thought it was really absorbing album, and I wish I’d been able to spend more time with it. I wasn’t aware of it before it made this list, but I think I’m gonna end up falling in love with it in a big way. At the moment I’ve not quite got beyond how clever it is, so it hasn’t had a chance to get to me as emotionally as, say, the Grizzly Bear album has. They’ve got similar influences, but I think Grizzly Bear do it in a much more intuitive way. Rachel Unthank: I found it quite difficult to get into, actually. It’s clever and creative, but I couldn’t find a way in, I couldn’t get any emotional interaction with it. Some of the others held my interest more, but I found myself falling asleep while listening to this. Dave Robinson: An album that puts you to sleep can be quite useful! I must admit that I didn’t really have any great opinion about it, I hadn’t heard them before. In going through the list generally I was looking for an album that had mood swings. I find it really odd listening to records where people have hidden their best track right down at the very bottom, and getting there can be a bit of an uphill struggle. It didn’t make a huge impression on me, I thought it was quite derivative, but in a nice kind of way. Bob Harris: I must convess that I had problems getting it out of its sleeve, not that we should be judging the packaging. Just getting through the folding box to the CD itself was a bit of a chore. However, when I finally managed to put it on my immediate reaction was that I was really gonna like it, but the more I’ve listened to it the less connected I’ve become to it. It’s really quite an odd thing. I’m always on the look-out for new things I haven’t heard before that I can play on my radio show, but I just found this album to be a bit cold. I was amazed that I did, because I’m a big fan of what are clearly Animal Collective’s own influences. Ultimately, it didn’t engage me, I think Rachel’s exactly right in her take on it. Allan Jones: I really like it. When I first played it, like several of you, I thought it was a bit cold but really clever, I could appreciate the technique behind it. But listening to it more I’ve really grown into it.

Over the next few days, we'll be running full transcripts of the judges' meeting to decide the winner of 2009's Uncut Music Award. Today we begin with their thouhts on the winner, Tinariwen's "Imidiwan: Companions". Billy Bragg: The Tins, yeah, I really liked the Tinariwen album. It seems to be a bit more pulsating than their last one. I could put this on and listen to it all day, it takes me to a place where nothing else I’m hearing these days does. I’m not really sure how to explain it. I listen to a lot of African music, and the stuff I generally like has more classical African instrumentation. They get right to the roots of the music, not just African music, but they’ve really got it down to that pulsating rhythm. Maybe it’s because you don’t know what they’re singing about, you don’t focus on the lyrical content, so you’re more focused on the rhythmic power of it and the way it all comes together. Allan Jones: It kind of helps you realise what a great rock ‘n’ roll band they are. Bob Harris: They’re a great rock ‘n’ roll band, almost like an old school R&B band. Billy: Exactly! It’s not like they’ve gone back to the delta – well, they have, they’ve gone back to the Nile delta! – but they’ve gone back to the wellspring of the music that we love, and the fact that they’re using electric guitars in that way adds to it. Allan: It’s such an exciting guitar sound. Billy: Amazing. I think this band will be hugely influential; in the next couple of years we’ll be hearing young bands lifting the tensions and the rhythms of Tinariwen. You find yourself reaching back to the blues to explain what they do, it’s like they’ve turned the whole bloody thing upside down. Bob Harris: They were in the studio with me, and as we usually do we asked them to bring in a couple of tracks they might want us to play. They brought in John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix. I mentioned earlier how I like an artist’s lifestyle to inform the music, and this is the definitive example of lifestyle spilling into music. Their story is so fascinating, the way that Ibrahim Ag Alhabib grew up into music. He was literally a wild four-year-old, his parents had been killed, and he’d never heard guitar before. He saw a guitar being played on a film being projected up against the wall of a building when he was seven years old, and couldn’t believe it what this thing was. So he made his own guitar, and he subsequently became known just as “Guitar” among everyone who knew him – he was the only person who had one of these things. It’s a very rebel background, as we know, but it’s much more than that. There are layers and layers here that I don’t think we will ever completely understand, there’s flavours and hints of so much in this music. If we’re talking about what’s the most amazing, creative, forward-looking, political record we’re discussing, then this album is very, very special. There’s a lot of words here, the language, that don’t completely or properly translate into English. There’s so much to discover, to know about this record, but you find yourself asking how much do I want to know, or how much do I just want to be entranced by it. Rachel Unthank: It’s hypnotic, isn’t it? It’s almost trance-inducing. I saw them at the Cambridge Folk Festival one year, I had a hangover and wasn’t really paying attention but it just took me over. Every time I put this album on the quality just shines through. It’s just so dark and brooding, and genuinely rock ‘n’ roll, compared to the gloss of Kings Of Leon. Billy: Well, the Kings Of Leon is where rock ‘n’ roll is, where it finds itself today, whereas Tinariwen are something more primal. Rachel: It’s quite easy to be enchanted by their story, because it’s exciting, but it’s not just some kind of world fusion where they’re playing some kind of world music and just stuck some electric guitars over the top of it. This is the way they’ve learned to play music, it’s from them, and you can hear that and it’s powerful. Dave Robinson: I loved this. I was very pleased you asked me to be on this panel, because I didn’t know much about a lot of these artists. When I go into a record shop it’s to buy something I’ve got in my mind, but trying to avoid the casual purchase that you take home and have to dump very quickly. I’d not heard Tinariwen before, and I just found this stunning. The mood washes over you, it’s a remarkable record. In the wake of all these other records it really stands out as something unique. I don’t care what he’s singing about, but I get a vibe of what he’s singing about. It’s probably the most impressive record of this bunch. We’ve talked about Kings Of Leon and I really think that it’s a really professional record where everything falls into place, it’s what you might expect from a career in western music, but this is in entirely a different class. Mark Cooper: The Kings Of Leon analogy is interesting, because this is Tinariwen’s third record, they’ve been touring since 2004. We’ve supported them a lot on Later..., but as sometimes happens with bands you think you know you let it pass you by, you think you already know the score. I didn’t listen to this when it first came out, I just thought it was going to be another Tinariwen record that’ll be great and I’ll catch up with it when I can. But I think it’s a quantum leap, it’s their best-produced record, it’s got the strongest songs. It distills Tinariwen and takes them to another level, and I’m really glad I did this panel because I probably would have otherwise taken them for granted because I considered myself a convert already. I love the first song [“Imidiwan Afrik Tendam”], I think it genuinely should be a single in the world I live in. It’s lighter, it’s a bit country-ish. When I first heard Tinariwen it helped me revive the word “heavy”, which I hadn’t been able to use since I first heard the Edgar Broughton Band! I also love the fact that this is a world music record that saves world music from the liberals. That’s really cool, I think a rock audience can like it, it’s not precious or worthy. It’s real. Tony Wadsworth: I find myself agreeing with what everyone else is saying, so I’ll try not to repeat anything. I think the guitar sound is probably the best I’ve heard in years, and it also makes it judge it in a different way, in much more real terms. I just think it’s mega, it’s so powerful. You know how with early rock ‘n’ roll records there’s only a few instruments but everything just sounds bigger? That’s what I get from this. Mark: They’re a band that everybody should and could love, given a chance. Talking about radio and the music industry, it’s hard not to believe that a couple of tracks here if they were given even half a chance could really hit big. Billy: No problem. Black geezers, don’t speak English, probably Muslim – easy sell! Who’s doing the promo on this one?! Mark: But I do think that the minute people get a chance to hear this stuff they’ll get it. It’s not hard to get. Allan: It speaks a common language, I think. You don’t have to have the lyrics translated to know what they’re talking about. You don’t need to listen to the words of rock ‘n’ roll to be excited by it. Billy: Well, this is very encouraging. I didn’t think they’d even get on the shortlist, but for them to emerge as the favourites is great. I really do think they are an Uncut band.

I imagine that when Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones and Josh Homme talk about Them Crooked Vultures (and there’s the first interview in tomorrow’s NME, apparently), there’ll be much talk of a creative partnership, a meeting of equals and so on. The truth about this sprawling, impressive debut album, though, is that, once you get past the marquee names, it’s ostensibly another Homme vehicle, with an all-star conceit not that much different from Queens Of The Stone Age’s career-topping “Songs For The Deaf” , on which Grohl also played drums. There’s little arguing with the vigour and pace of this rhythm section, of course – as Grohl thunders his way through, say, the accelerated motorik chugger “Dead End Friends”, it’s hard not to think of how much more fun he must be having here than in the increasingly mellow Foo Fighters. But “Them Crooked Vultures” comes frontloaded with Homme’s musical DNA: it’s his knotted, blocky sense of melody, his guitar sound – a fierce mathematical hybrid of ZZ Top and Devo, very roughly - which dominates these 13 songs. While weaker spirits, in the company of John Paul Jones, would automatically default to Led Zeppelin pastiches, Homme is, mostly, heroically incapable of straying too far from his chosen path. When he echoes an old song, it’s usually one of his: the malevolent stop-start dynamics of “Elephants”, for instance, is not a million miles away from “Song For The Dead”. When he resembles another singer, as on “Bandoliers”, it’s his old sparring partner Mark Lanegan, rather than Robert Plant. That said, Homme goes a bit goth Bowie on “Gunman”’s chorus, and he does manage a pretty good stab at Eric Clapton on “Scumbag Blues”, a faint relative of “Strange Brew” that confirms, after the Arctic Monkeys suggested as much, that Cream are much favoured at Rancho De La Luna. “Scumbag Blues” also features a needly, overdriven keyboard solo from Jones, very much in the vein of “Trampled Underfoot”. If there is a Led Zep side to “Them Crooked Vultures”, it’s definitely weighted towards “Physical Graffiti”, the odd “Communication Breakdown” hurtle apart. The monolithic, clod-hopping funk of, say, “Custard Pie” and “Houses Of The Holy” can occasionally be detected – though it’s as easy to compare “No One Loves Me” or “Reptiles” to Homme’s antics in the Eagles Of Death Metal. Like that last band, Homme can be a touch geeky; a song title like “Caligulove” might be funny with Jesse Hughes, but it feels somewhat gauche in the company of John Paul Jones. Also, while my appetite for eight-minute algebraic jams like “Warsaw Or The First Breath You Take” is unusually strong, “Them Crooked Vultures” is slightly, hairily long – as if Homme, thrilled by the opportunity to flex his muscles in such exalted company, wasn’t quite so assiduous in his editing. But this isn’t a new problem for him; maybe part of the richness of “Songs For The Deaf” is its excess. Whether the longueurs of “Them Crooked Vultures” turn out to be so rewarding remains to be seen. Still, not bad for a supergroup…