There is a man in a flat cap standing in the middle of the stage, looking pensively at some large twigs while his bandmates work up ten minutes of bleary musique concrete. Eventually he picks up a bass and the six of them lumber into a passage of magisterial, martial psych. It mutates into waterlogged beatnik blues, then a kind of splenetic krautpunk. One of the guitarists, incidentally, now has a cardboard box on his head. There’s a mannequin’s head on top of the box. After a while, he conscientiously ties a scarf round its neck. This, of course, is Sunburned Hand Of The Man, beginning an exceptional Sunday night of psychedelic music at the Scala. I wish it hadn’t been at the Scala, mind, since these three bands – notably terrific as they are – are nowhere near big enough to fill this place, and consequently the crackling energy which they generate gets a bit lost in here. Not that this seems to concern the bands overly much. Sunburned are on driven, extremely focused form tonight. Unlike the recent “Fire Escape” album, the heavy-booted funk is generally left on the shelf, in favour of an unusually rocking set. It’s probably because I’ve been playing their records so much of late, but parts of it remind me rather of the Flower Travelling Band; that ceremonial, intricate sort of blues-rock, blessed with a patterned formality that’s very different from their characteristic wacked-out improv. The pagan performance art is still there, though, and the set ends with the ritual waving of some branches draped in lights. Damon And Naomi, up next, are a gentler pleasure; sometimes, in fact, their sketchy little songs can veer a little too close to indie tweeness for my taste. At their best, though, they conjure up an ineffably fragile brand of psych, beautifully augmented by Bhob Rainey on textural soprano sax and the very great Japanese guitarist Michio Kurihara, whose work – notably with Ghost – I’ve banged on about plenty in the past. Kurihara is an incredibly discreet virtuoso, and he hovers at the back of the stage adding phased, impressionistic depth to Damon And Naomi’s filigree compositions. It’s significant, though, that the strongest piece they play is only half theirs: “Araca Azul/The Earth Is Blue” is part-cover of a fine old Caetano Veloso song, part nuanced response to it. No such delicacies from Howlin Rain, finally making their British debut after we’ve droned on about them in Uncut for the best part of two years. If you’ve managed to avoid all my hype thus far, they’re the latest project of Santa Cruz’ Ethan Miller, now taking precedence since he wound up the activities of Comets On Fire at this same venue a few months back. For anyone put off by the tempestuous psych roar of Comets, Howlin Rain might be a more accessible proposition; the cacophonous Echoplex which underpinned most Comets music has been parked, and in its place the Southern rock classicism which first surfaced on Comets’ mighty “Avatar” is now way in focus. Miller is now flanked by a guitarist who dutifully locks into twin harmony leads (unlike the raging genius of old foil Ben Chasny, who’s crazy in the front row here, incidentally), and by a keyboardist who looks, appositely, a bit like Keith Godchaux. I’ve been sat on their wonderful second album, “Magnificent Fiend”, for months now, and the latest rumour is that they’ve been signed by Rick Rubin, who may think he’s got his hands on the new Black Crowes. He hasn’t: perhaps mercifully, Miller is much too wayward and ragged a performer to choogle quite so slickly. He’s a compelling frontman, though, bawling his way around his own serpentine melodies, constantly leading his band on spluttering new trajectories, punctuating everything with ecstatic, eruptive solos. Anyway, Howlin Rain played a load of great songs whose titles I still don’t know, though in the unlikely event “Magnificent Fiend” ever actually gets released, Tracks Two and Three were great, and I was mildly gutted that they didn’t play the Allmans/gospel/Yes rave-up about God and thunder and stuff that is Track Four. Great night, still. Anyone else make it down?

It must have been an unusually quiet day, because we are not usually out and about when we should be working, nose to grindstone, shackled to the pleasurable daily graft of putting together Uncut. Anyway, the young American singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, whose first two albums – The Golden Age Of Radio and Hello Starling - I had by then become somewhat besotted with, was playing an afternoon showcase at the Social to coincide with the release of his terrific new album, The Animal Years, and I dragged Michael along with me to see him. The Social was barely full, maybe a couple of dozen people milling around, drinks in hand, with Josh and his guitar on the small stage. He was instantly mesmerising, in the manner, a few years earlier, I had always found Ryan Adams to be. They had much in common – a talent for literate, evocative songwriting, an apparent mastery of whatever musical style they found most appropriate for any given song, buckets of easy charm, a winning way with anecdotal on-stage conversation, a great deal of humour, voices that rung with handsome confidence. The one big difference between them, of course, is that Josh is Ryan without the attendant traumas, tantrums, self-destructive stroppiness, narcotic dependencies, tendency towards unnecessary showboating, generally tousled waywardness and haughty self-regard that at one point threatened to wholly derail Ryan’s career, and from which behaviour that career has never entirely recovered, a lot of former fans too exasperated by his petulant excesses to persevere with him, even when he returned to some kind of form with last year’s trio of mostly fine albums. Ritter as a result of his relatively low-profile and absence of headline-grabbing antics hasn’t has nearly the attention devoted over the last several years top Adams, but on the evidence of the turn-out last week for his show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire has accumulated no less a fanatical fan base. You couldn’t have got more people into the venue at gunpoint, and there’s a growing hum of anticipation when the stage lights go down and a teasing wait ensues before a spruce Ritter, clean-shaven and sharply suited, appears to great cheers. From where I’m pinned to the bar – well, you have to stand somewhere – what immediately follows is somewhat underpowered, the “London Calling” guitar intro to “Mind’s Eye”, all but lost in a muffled, bass-heavy sound. Things get reasonably quickly sorted, however, and the tongue-twisting rollicking Dylanesque romp of “To The Dogs Or Whoever” – the opening track from the new The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter, which provides nearly half of tonight’s set list – is expertly dispatched by a band whose only deficiency is a lack of obvious charisma. The surging “Good Man” is another early highlight, as the band and Ritter lock into what by now is a seamless groove, great tunes from all four albums jostling for attention, the simmering shuffle of “Monster Ballads” and, later, the Springsteen wallop of “Wolves” from The Animal Years, particularly striking. There are terrific moments when the band drop away and Ritter takes a ore or less solo spotlight on songs like the recent “The Temptation Of Adam” and the earlier “Harrisburg” and “Lawrence, KS”, both from The Golden Age Of Radio (there is, sadly, no “Me And Jiggs”, with its rousing namecheck for Townes Van Zandt). The audience is in full, passionate voice for the inevitable singalong that “Kathleen” has become, but respectfully hushed for the haunting “Girl In The War”. They are roaring again, however, on “Snow Is Gone”, but wisely leave it to Josh for most of the closing “Lillian, Egypt”, though a lot of them can’t help joining in on the song’s irrepressible chorus, which is genuinely heart-lifting. Ritter exits, finally, chased by cheers, a smile on his face as big as the arenas that if he keeps on going like this he’ll very soon be filling. Josh Ritter Set List Shepherd’s Bush Empire November 22, 2007 Naked As A Window Mind’s Eye To The Dogs Or Whoever Good Man Open Doors Here At The Right Time Monster Ballads Harrisburg The Temptation Of Adam Rumors Still Beating Real Long Distance Right Moves Wildfires Wolves Empty Hearts Lawrence KS Kathleen Encores Girl In The War Snow Is Gone Lillian, Egypt

Rare candour from a musician in a press release today. This is Stephin Merritt talking about the Magnetic Fields album, “Distortion”. The goal, he says, was “to sound more like Jesus And Mary Chain than Jesus And Mary Chain.” I always think that Merritt’s most interesting when he’s grappling with a sonic concept rather than an intellectual one, which is why my favourite Magnetic Fields album has always been 1994’s ersatz-country “Charm Of The Highway Strip”, rather than the usual touchstone, “69 Love Songs”. More recent offerings have generally left me a bit nonplussed, though I did enjoy that last Gothic Archies album based on the Lemony Snicket books, whose name I forget. Merritt’s fathomlessly lugubrious baritone makes him a good, bookish goth – as did a hellish hour I spent with him in 1995, maybe, when he revealed himself to be one of the most deadpan and world-weary interviewees I’ve ever encountered. “Distortion” is great, though – and so much more satisfying than most indie chancers who try and co-opt the Reid brothers’ initial peerless formula of Spectorish bubblegum melody and great waves of feedback. Merritt proves himself to be a noise aesthete to stand comparison with Kevin Shields here: “Mr Mistletoe” takes layer after layer of penetrative crackle and arranges it into something uncommonly festive – even if Merritt’s voice conjures up images of the undead with a chilly precision that equals anything on that Gothic Archies album (as, actually, does the pretty explanatory “Zombie Boy” here, too). Beneath the racket, though, not that much has changed in the Magnetic Fields modus operandi – though the tunes are a damn sight poppier, if memory serves, than the underwhelming stuff served up on 2004’s “I”; some of his best ever, I’d say. “Distortion” is still, essentially, a chamber pop record: the feedback is generated by piano and cello as much as it is by the guitar. Again, Merritt’s meticulous orchestration of his sonics is what really impresses – a sense of how random sound can be organised into something so attractive that you barely notice the cacophony from which it is constructed. It’s a pretty record then – “69 Love Songs” vocalist Shirley Simms fronts maybe half of the tunes here. Funny, too: “Too Drunk To Dream” finds Merritt hamming it up, relatively, in some kind of high school musical-style paean to the solace delivered by alcohol. And yes, it sure sounds like the Mary Chain. Though Uncut is rather lucky in having one of that band, Phil King, on our staff. The other day, he spotted an even closer parallel to “Distortion”; Ultra Vivid Scene circa “The Mercy Seat”. A strange continuum, too, to Bruce Springsteen’s “Magic”, where Springsteen’s vocal on the “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” is probably meant to ape the Walker Brothers, but ends up being uncannily reminiscent of Stephin Merritt. But I digress. “Distortion” is out in January, when The Magnetic Fields promise, with reliably exacting contrariness, to play some gigs which will feature no feedback. “The Nun’s Litany” is playing now, and I’ve just noticed it appears to be about S&M, among other things. What a curious and excellent album, all round.