As the Reading Festival moves into its second day, you wouldn't be wrong to expect a hint of nostalgia in the air. Yesterday, after all, there was heavy rock, and the return of old favourites Rage Against The Machine. On Sunday, there will be the return of the reassuringly sturdy Metallica, and with them, yet more heavy rock. Today, however, it's all change. A day characterized in the main by a rather more pop mood – a calm, if you like, before Metallica's storm – there are moments of fairly unequivocal modern fun to be had. These could be said to start with a pretty decent showing in NME/Radio 1 tent from The Ting Tings (who prove to be not just a band with one good song, but three), and end with The Killers, fighting against extremely poor sound to deliver the likes of "Somebody Told Me". Still, the seeker after interesting, but rather more traditional fare would not have been disappointed either. In the tent, in the afternoon, we find plenty of interest. Not least a man wearing an empty wine box as a hat, and another on whose arm is written, in capital letters, simply: "KNOB". There is also a terrific performance from Seasick Steve. A festival favourite anyway, thanks to his winning blend of blues hokum and rambling storytelling, Steve responds to the highly timetabled environment of this festival perfectly, sacrificing some of his more lengthy digressions, but still retaining an element of surprise. "I need a girl," he says, at one point. And sure enough, a young woman (named Alice, in fact) pretty much instantly responds to the grizzled ex-hobo's demands, coming to the stage to be serenaded with a song called "Walking Man". Elsewhere Steve is joined by his youngest son on inaudible washboard, and leaves with an overflowing cup of goodwill. If Seasick Steve's blues sets the old time scene, an early evening set from The Raconteurs fleshes out the sepia picture – here, after all, is a band whose performance appears on the video screens in black and white. From that promising touch, this, though proves to be a rather mixed bag. In principle the joint project of White Stripes man Jack White and his chum Brendan Benson, in practice it's clear that The Raconteurs are only a joint effort in the same sort of way Jimi Hendrix Experience was. It's particularly apparent when, as today, the band appear to be having a bad time. The songs – particularly "Steady As She Goes" and "Level" – can definitely be impressive. When some of the other material threatens to get lost in the aforementioned terrible sound, however, it is White who pulls out all the stops, trying to keep the show on track with his extravagant theatricality. By turns he's butch, but, perhaps down to his new Sharon Osbourne-style haircut, at times he's also strangely camp. If he can't entirely save the day with his tunes, however, White does a fine job with his words. After introducing the members of the Raconteurs, and thanking the audience, he invites the band to stick around for the next band: "…the politically correct sounds of the Bloc Party." This might be the last place you expect to find it – but it was nice to see that see that in some rarified quarters of the Reading Festival, subtlety never goes out of style. JOHN ROBINSON

Until quite recently, I must admit it hadn’t occurred to me that mixing Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and Bowie’s “Heroes” would be a particularly good idea. But the arrival of TV On The Radio’s fantastic new single has changed all that. “Golden Age” is by some distance the funkiest thing that TVOTR have released thus far, and also possibly the best. Much as I liked their first album, the frowsty density of “Return To Cookie Mountain” made it seem a little samey and impenetrable to me. Listening to David Sitek’s production job on that Scarlett Johansson album earlier this year reminded me, obscurely, of a giant ornate cake made entirely of icing. Impressive, sure, but overwhelmingly sickly. One of the many great things about “Golden Age”, then, is that Sitek has built a fair bit more space into the song. It begins as choppy, airy funk, and the band only really build one of their opulent artifices when the chorus arrives. The contrast, the dynamics of it all, is pretty awesome. There’s a fair bit of Prince here, not least in Tunde Adebimpe’s edgy falsetto (maybe it’s Kyp Malone: apologies, I’m not the world’s biggest expert on the band), but then there’s a glorious shift into the middle eight, when the whole sound transforms into a neat facsimile of Berlin Bowie. I’ve heard “Dear Science”, the third TV On The Radio album, just the once, a good few weeks ago now, and rough acquaintance with it suggested it’s by some distance the best and most varied album the band have made thus far: good timing, I’d say, given that the Williamsburg dynasty in some way sired by Sitek and his comrades are now graduating to serious prominence; and some of their obvious descendants like Yeasayer are threatening to usurp TVOTR themselves. One eminent Uncut contributor who’s been fortunate enough to spend proper time with “Dear Science” has been making claims about it being one of the very best art-rock releases of this decade, which isn’t the sort of empirical hype I like, but which does make me very keen to get my hands on a CD permanently. I’m working on that, and I’ll report back when I’m successful. In the meantime, I think I’ll keep punctuating today’s sequence of New Order and Philip Glass reissues with “Golden Age”. Having checked TV On The Radio’s Myspace, it’s playing there right now. Let me know what you think.

Maybe it’s all the Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac in the office these past few weeks, but there’s a lot of “Tusk” in the air at Club Uncut tonight. The gated tribal rumbles, the lush, clenched-teeth harmonies, the general air of progressive pop. The full review is over at Wild Mercury Sound.

Maybe it’s all the Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac in the office these past few weeks, but there’s a lot of “Tusk” in the air at Club Uncut tonight. The gated tribal rumbles, the lush, clenched-teeth harmonies, the general air of progressive pop. It begins with The Week That Was, Peter Brewis’ meticulous hybrid of ‘80s artpop, post-punk and a soupcon of post-rock. What’s most striking, as they open proceedings at our biggest club night yet, is how much the quartet (featuring, unless my eyes deceive me, Johnny X from Kenickie on guitar, vibes and occasional drum, as well as Brewis’ brother David from Field Music/School Of Language) manage to recreate the fastidious studio sound of their album. In fact, that’s all they do. The Week That Was turn up and play the seven songs from the record in order, as faithfully as they can without the presence of strings and horns, without any mucking about. It’s impressive, not least because of the complexities of this music, with the intricate timeshifts, booming ‘80s drums , Mackem gamelan vibes, stentorian Heaven 17 backing vocals and so on. There are two drummers to provide that Mel Gaynor thunder on the opening “Learn To Learn”, while David Brewis manages to channel Mick Fleetwood pretty effectively on his own during “The Airport Line”. That song’s the highlight of the set, not coincidentally because it strays furthest from the recorded template, as a clanking math-rock guitar duel replaces the chamber string passages. While it seems a bit churlish to criticise a band for reproducing live the uptight precision of their recorded sound, I can’t help thinking that The Week That Was could do with, if not exactly loosening up, at least boosting their live show a bit. Yeasayer might draw on some of the same sounds, but they’re much less formal in the way they reproduce them. In front of a notably ardent crowd, they manage to retain all the intricacies of “All Hour Cymbals”, but somehow evolve them into something that’s more vivacious, kinetic, and – in current Brooklyn tradition - with a much heavier tribal beat at the centre of it all. Those huge drums are pushed right to the foreground of the mix, followed by basslines that occasionally, extraordinarily, seem to mimic the patterns of hi-life guitar. Add in a constant ambience of rustle, woosh and hoot that calls to mind Byrne & Eno’s “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts” and Peter Gabriel’s “The Passion”, reverberant four-part harmonies, a guitarist who spends most of his time fiddling with discreet loops, and a singer who comes across, buffeted around the stage, like a perfect David Byrne clone, and you’ve got the ultimate 2008 art-rock band. They sound amazing, too. “No Need To Worry” is, on one level, absurdly bombastic, but the power of the staccato chorale and giant stadium thump is intensified by Anand Wilder finally letting rip a great wallowing guitar solo, that puts his general stealth into powerful context. “Wait For The Summer” has the chattering, exotic intensity of, yep, “Tusk” and, for well over an hour, Yeasayer manage to sustain an air of transporting, exhilarating virtuosity. Songs start like The Aphex Twin and end up as psychedelic Afrobeat. People dance – something of a first at Club Uncut. And the experiments and possibilities – as opposed to the latent hipster pretensions – of the current Brooklyn uprising come zooming into focus. A superb show, then, but we would say that. Anyone else come?