Since I blogged about the Espers live gig last Friday, I've been playing the Meg Baird solo album to death. Baird sings lead on most Espers songs, and it's sometimes hard to divine the true quality of her voice beneath the layers of strum and drone. There are no such obfuscations on "Dear Companion", a set mostly consisting of her voice and guitar. The songs are mainly covers (though often pretty obscure ones), and I must confess that the first couple of times I played it, it wafted nonchalantly past without making much impact. Another decent but unexceptional acid folk album, I figured. Wrongly, as it turns out. Baird is a discreet talent, certainly. Espers are probably this generation's most effective heirs to Fairport Convention, but Baird will never be Sandy Denny. The purity and delicacy are there, but there's no sense of stridency, of bending the band to her will. On "Dear Companion", though, the intimacy of her tone becomes a massive advantage. At times, it reminds me of that neglected lady of the canyon, Linda Perhacs: Baird's own and quite wonderful "Riverhouse In Tinicum" has the rippling tranquility and distant ethereal hum that made Perhacs' "Parallelograms" such a classic. For a contemporary analogue, Marissa Nadler isn't a bad call (Nadler, coincidentally, worked with Espers' Greg Weeks on her inferior third album). If "Riverhouse In Tinicum" is the stand-out, the rest of "Dear Companion" is notable for the grace and taste of Baird's selections. She does Jimmy Webb's "Do What You Gotta Do", with harmony vocals (I'm not sure whether she's multi-tracked or if it's another singer) that bring to mind the McGarrigles. And she's confident enough to take on an English standard like "Willie O'Winsbury", notably covered by Anne Briggs and Pentangle. It's a great version, and this whole album gets better and better.

I've always been resistant to the notion that horror movies can in some way function as biting social comment. There are horror buffs who, perhaps sensing that the genre lacks much in the way of serious critical acclaim, are prepared to make over-reaching claims in its defence. Last year's Hostel, for instance, found a trio of boorish American backpackers kidnapped by foxy Eastern European babes and tortured by rich and bored businessmen from around the globe. To some it was a gruesome but rather puerile gore flick -- to others (notably, if memory serves, the film's director Eli Roth and his playmate Quentin Tarantino), it was a searing indictment of American foreign policy with particular reference to the shocking treatment meted out to detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison facility. Um. The most famous horror movies that have been hailed as masterpieces of social comment are George Romero's zombie films. In Night Of The Living Dead, for example, the fact that both black and white survivors are beseiged in a remote farmhouse by hoardes of zombies is held up as peerless comment on Civil Rights issues in Sixties' America. Dawn Of The Dead, which takes place largely in an abandoned shopping mall, offers profound insight into Reagan-era capitalism. The bickering in Day Of The Dead between scientists and the military in a bunker hidey-hole is emblematic of the Cold War's dance towards apocalypse. I was somewhat disappointed, then, to watch Land Of The Dead and find it wasn't, as I'd hoped, a Descartian study of human duality as we head into the 21st century. This morning on Radio 4's Today programme, the actor Robert Carlyle was interviewed about his new film, 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the Brit horror flick, 28 Days Later. Carlyle, an intelligent and thoughtful interviewee, claimed you could find in 28 Weeks Later reflections on America's misguided adventures in Iraq. Hang on. The premise for 28 Weeks Later is that an American led UN force are helping repatriate Britain after the initial outbreak of the Rage virus has apparently subsided. Even someone with a minor grasp of international politics would fail to find much similarity between this plot set-up and the ill-advised and messy goings-on in Iraq. I certainly don't recall seeing many zombies lurching round the streets of Bazra on the 10 O'Clock News. Carlyle went on to talk about war, suicide bombings and invasions, suggesting that the logical conclusion to all this horror and bloodshed is that we end up eating each other. Maybe if Ken Loach had directed 28 Weeks Later things would have turned out differently, but it seems fairly disingenuous to imbue a horror film -- even one as good as 28 Weeks Later -- with any kind socio-political consciousness. 28 Weeks Later is a slick, exciting chase movie. We pick up seven months on from the events in the first film. London is derelict. The American military are helping bring survivors back into the city; snipers posted on rooftops, helicopters filling the sky, many itchy fingers on triggers in case, somehow, the Rage virus returns. The mechanic for the virus' resurgence is a Typhoid Mary figure, a carrier who seems initially immune to the virus. Inevitably, things go very bad very fast, and soon the films leads -- a brother and sister, played by newcomers Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton, plus a handful of American soldiers -- are being pursued through London by thousands of the Infected. The producer (and the first film's director) Danny Boyle says he equates the relationship between 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later to that of Alien and Aliens. In the first film you didn't really know what was going to happen next. This time out, with the element of surprise removed, everything is bigger, louder, faster. There's guns -- loads of 'em -- napalm, chemical weapons, and the nuclear option hovers menacingly in the background. In the first film, Cillian Murphy recalled the speed at which the virus had spread through Victoria Station. Images of a near deserted London, festering bodies piled high in mounds, eerily recall Samuel Pepys' diary descriptions of the plague-hit capital in 1665. Here, the budget is significantly larger that you actually see something similar happen -- and in the tight, claustrophobic spaces of the tube, too. It's icky. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo -- whose previous film was a fantastic Spanish thriller, Intacto -- keeps the film haring along at a fair old pace after a relatively quiet start. To some degree, this doesn't really allow much characterisation to develop, particularly among the military characters, but Poots and Muggleton (and, to some extent Carlyle, as their father) make the most of their roles. Fresnadillo sets up for some incredibly effective scenes -- helicopter flights over the abandoned City of London, shots of refugee camps, flight through the underground, a final stand-off in Wembley Stadium. But to say this is anything other than a particularly good horror film is as deceitful as claiming Sadaam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction buried out there in the desert. Ah. 28 Weeks Later opens in the UK this Friday

I wasn't planning to blog today, since I expected Steve's third report from Coachella to turn up here. But thanks to his fairly quixotic posting strategy, he appears to have turned up on Allan's blog. He's right, of course: I do like Grizzly Bear. Anyway, a couple of things to point out today. First, LCD Soundsystem are releasing "All My Friends" as their next single, one of the best tracks from "Sound Of Silver". Can I draw your attention to the b-sides? One is a version of the song by Franz Ferdinand, which plays up the '80s, pre-disco New Order vibes of the original. It's pretty impressive, and is playing at LCD's Myspace. Another version is on the DFA Myspace and is, marvellously enough, by John Cale. This one uncovers the classic New York DNA in the song, rescoring it with wiry guitars and the usual stentorian grandeur of his voice. Very fine. As - and I would say this, of course - is the new Uncut CD. We've tried this month to bring a bit of a fresh perspective to what Americana means - ie not just a bunch of tumbleweed troubadours. Allan and I were talking about all this, and we figured that Americana wasn't just a synonym for alt-country. We thought it could be expanded to take in artists like Lavender Diamond, Oakley Hall, PG Six, Richard Swift and Lightning Dust - a lot of people I've been writing about here, fairly naturally. Let me know what you think: it's the issue with the Paul McCartney exclusive interview on the cover. Oh, and one last thing. A couple of you have asked me to write about the new albums by Travis and The National but, to be honest, I've never liked either band, and I try to keep stuff as positive as possible here. There are too many records that excite me to waste my time and yours on ones that don't, basically. I'll keep my bitching for the pub.

Stumbling onto site today someone told me that it was 107 degrees yesterday but it’s only 105 today. So that’s alright then. What’s that sound, floating across the polo grounds? Lush, harmonised, laid back, Californian… yes, it must be The Feeling from, er, Lowestoft or wherever the heck. Anyway, they do Buggles’ ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ as I order my first beer of the day so it can’t all be bad. Who’s mooching? Cameron Diaz, Tommy Lee, Paris Hilton and Courtney Love (day three girl, what on earth took you so long?). No sign of my new mate Danny so I head over to check out Grizzly Bear in the smallest tent here, the Gobi. The Bear are, I guess, post rock. Which means they’re the band Thom Yorke and Michael Stipe would like to be in if they didn’t have bills to pay. It also means they’re incapable of playing a song straight without a) swapping instruments; b) pretending to swop genders and c). whistling and so forth. In equal parts intriguing and bloody annoying, they are the dahlings of the Pitchfork set and blogging here for Rolling Stone. I’ll put a tenner on it that the Mulv likes them so we’ll no doubt say hello to them at an All Tomorrow’s Party quite soon and I’ll move right along if you don’t mind because The Kooks are in the Mojave tent next door and girls are actually screaming at them. Hmmm. It’s all about shirt removal apparently so let’s take a shufty at Explosions In The Sky all the way from Texas. What they’re doing on the main stage is anyone’s guess but they’re quiet-loud-quiet-LOUD, with no vocals, just like Mogwai but not as good. Ne’er mind, refill beer and let’s follow the jettrash across to the Mojave again where CSS are playing. And the party starts…here. Singer Lovefoxx strips down to her catsuit after only one number and noo rave rools. I think she’s got spectacles painted on her face but, whatever, she’s totally boombastic. They even do a cover of L7’s ‘Pretend That We’re Dead’, that they attribute, strangely, to Daft Punk. No matter, this is joyous, the very idiot dancing stuff that all the best festivals are made of. The facts? They’re from Brazil but they sound not unlike The B52’s so there’s nothing here to be scared of. Duty calls so let’s troop over to the Outdoor Stage where the Kaiser Chiefs are trying super hard to convince America that they’re any good. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone work so hard as Ricky Wilson – he bellows, he climbs the lighting rig, he encourages clapalongs and singalongs, he crowd surfs. But sadly to no avail. All the huffing and puffing looks a bit desperate to be honest and, let’s face it, ‘Everything Is Average Nowadays’ is hardly ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’, ‘The Angry Mob’ goes down like a lead balloon and even ‘I Predict A Riot’ fails to ignite. Sometimes it takes something more than honest to goodness effort. Just ask the newly reformed Crowded House who are boring the pants off a fairly meagre mass in front of the main stage. No charisma, no presence, no good. Nor was my fact checking over the last couple of days. Please forgive me and put it down to the jetlag/heat/beers. Anyway, of course I meant to put ‘Dani California’ instead of ‘Californication’ in the Chili’s set. It was still shit though. The Klaxons totally got it going on. Party monsters par excellence they pack the Mojave and put in the performance of the day, the crowd – without as many glowsticks as usual – sweat it up batting about a blow-up dolphin and whoo-whooing along to ‘Golden Skans’ and ‘Atlantis To Interzone’ while over on the main stage Manu Chao put in one of those righteous reggae jam performances that really shouldn’t work but, at festivals, they always seem to. This is the dude who was responsible for ‘King Of The Bongo’, the best (only good) track on Robbie Williams’ ‘Rudebox’. And who did backing vocals on that? None other than Lily Allen and, oh look, here she is, back at the Mojave (we don’t just throw this stuff together you know!). Greeted like a homecoming queen, she’s dazzling in white and well overawed by the size and response of the crowd that is most made up of gals who sing better than she does and know every word. Which is more than can be said of Lily who fluffs song after song (“Why do I keep forgetting me fuckin’ words? I’m not drunk or doing anything bad but I’ve had a couple of spliffs today and…”). It’s all giggles and smiles and the more she messes up, the more the crowd cheer. They even cheer when she admits the cardinal sin she’s never heard of Rage Against The Machine. She’s a charmer and can do no wrong. My father in law doesn’t trust anyone who doesn’t like football. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like Lily. What’s not to like? Well, the reformed Happy Mondays for one thing. Introduced to a pretty threadbare audience of older geezers in the Sahara Tent by Anthony Wilson who delivered a rather needless historical lecture on the merging of black and white music, the Mondays looked and sounded just what they are – washed up and looking for a(nother) last pay day. I told you Bez was banned so it’s all down to Shaun who spends most of this sorry set moaning. After ‘Kinky Afro’ even he admitted it was shit. “I think I’ll have to stand up here and tell jokes for half an hour,” he growled. They did some new stuff. It was grim. Sad. Sad. Sad. Final slot is the reformed Rage Against The Machine, which brings the fest full circle as they headlined the very first Coachella (which I was actually at). Whatever the motivation for this get together, they are treated as local heroes by the enormous crowd and it is a fitting end as we all struggle off to find our dust-covered cars miles away that they close with ‘Killing In The Name Of’, Coachella vibrating fit to bring on an earthquake as we all roar the chorus: “Fuck you, I won’t do what tell me!” You have a nice day now. Steve Sutherland.

Seems my blog has been hijacked over the weekend by Steve Sutherland, who's clearly having the time of his life out at Coachella. Here's his second report, involving The Arcade Fire, Kings Of Leon, the mighty Roky Erickson and a few random Hollywood A-listers. God, it sounds great. . . So here’s another reason why Coachella is the best festival in the world. I’m taking a load off on one of the black leatherette sofas they have backstage in the VIP/Band area… no, it’s not the sofas, though imagine luxury like that at Glastonbury… anyway, I’m taking a load off when this very short, very dumpy dude with thinning hair barely disguised by a baseball cap and really thick glasses plonks himself down next to me and starts rabbiting on about how awesome Arcade Fire were. By the way, dude’s Danny Devito. So I say to Danny, I’d like a chinwag me old China but LCD Soundsystem are about to come on… or words to that effect and I stumble out front to be confronted by Flea shamelessly fretwanking on the main stage. But let’s park that for a minute and bring you up to scratch with some stats and the hot topic among the Brit contingent. Stats first: This is the first three-day Coachella. All the rest have been two. About 60,000 good people are flocking to frazzle on the lush lawns of the Empire Polo Ground. It’s hotter today than yesterday. So that’s hotter than 102! The hot topic? On yesterday’s evidence, can Arctic Monkeys pull off their coming Glasto headliner? For what it’s worth, I say yeah. The crowd will carry it, will sing every word, will lift the band into a state near communal grace. Talking of which, Arcade Fire. How do they do it? How can they be this special when they’re so goddamn special all the time? As the sun sinks, they burst on with ‘Keep The Car Running’ and never look back. Beach balls bounce around the crowd and the Fire bring down the ecstasy with old ‘Funeral’ friends like all the ‘Neighbourhood’s punctuated by more sombre fare from ‘Neon Bible’ like ‘Black Mirror’. Can’t really pick out highlights. It’s just all going on, Win descending into the crowd as mayhem reigns. They wind up with ‘Rebellion (Lies)’, ‘Wake Up’ and ‘No Cars Go’. I don’t need to waffle on do I? You know it was truly emotional. Arcade Fire Aha, at last a very good reason to hate Kings Of Leon. In the past I’ve always considered them pretty much the perfect band just shy of that killer song. Well, now the bastards have it in the shape of ‘On Call’ from the newie ‘Because Of The Times’. While the crowd around me suddenly transform into, like, this scene straight out of Haight Ashbury circa 1967 with gamine supermodel angels gyrating in a trance to the band’s every ebb and flow, the crowd picks up bare-chested Caleb’s macho holler “Be there!” and thunders it back like the Kings are, I dunno, U2 or something. So that’s it now. Every band in the world can wake up every morning and think: “Fuck, why aren’t we the Kings Of Leon”? They’ve got the lot… so cool, not an ugly amongst them, every gal in the place just falling over herself to rake her claws down their backs. Like I said, bastards! Kings Of Leon This is the best set I’ve ever seen them play, the new stuff bringing the beef alongside old faves ‘Molly Chambers’ and ‘California Waiting’. So cool, too, the way the newly-shaven Nathan blows bubblegum as he drums. They ain’t the Southern Strokes no mo’. Talking of which, whatever happened to…? Fab’s here, off his tits. Wastes his time these days drumming for Har Mar. Albert’s got his own thing going, Julian guests on the new QOTSA album… Is the game all up? Maybe they need five years in the wilderness, just so Paul Tollett can drag them back together for Coachella 2012 and remind us all how much we miss them. By the way, Queens hired a plane to advertise their newie. It flew over the crowd as Arcade Fire played. Wait till you hear the first track. Wow! Pure Led Zep circa ‘Houses Of The Holy’. After the Fire, Red Hot Chili Peppers are shocking. Dull, dull, dull. A show that manages to be simultaneously showy in all the wrong ways and utterly pedestrian. They could have phoned this performance in it ‘s so unspontaneous. Which makes you wonder, if they can’t get it up for an adoring crowd like this – easily the biggest for any single band Coachella has ever assembled before the main stage - when can they get it up? ‘Californication’ is obviously greeted like the Festival theme song but really that’s happening over in the Sahara Tent where Lindsay Lohan’s joined the merry throng to yell along to the mighty LCD Soundsystem’s ‘North American Scum’. LCD are awesome and just about have it over the hyperactive !!! and Hot Chip who raised the roof earlier in the day at the Mojave Tent with an astonishing ‘Over And Over’. Best bit of what’s been a truly brilliant day? Easy. Roky Erickson & The Explosives in the Gobi Tent. I mean, really, I had no idea just how amazing this man was. I’d read all the stuff about how great Texan psychedelic punk pioneers13th Floor Elevators were back in the daze and how Roky gobbled acid or something till they locked him away and did the Cuckoo’s Nest electrode brain-frying thing to him so I guess I was expecting a reanimated corpse. What we got though, was this perpetually chewing, grinning werewolf, maggot pale and howling that he’d discovered the doorway to Hades as an awesomely screwed-down-tight band brought the brimstone to the Elevators’ ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’, a ‘Starry Eyes’ that would not have disgraced Neil Young, a terrifying ‘Don’t Shake Me Lucifer’ and barroom howl-at-the mooners ‘Red Temple Prayer’ (C’mon, how often do you get to scream along to song about working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog?) and ‘Cold Night For Alligators’. Roky Erikson The Gobi was transformed into a scene from the Titty Twister as Roky took crackling lead guitar for ‘The Beast Is Coming’. Man, it was like Tom Fogerty singing the Book Of Revelations while Buddy Guy flayed the strings. Grown men wept. I shit you not. One of those gigs that makes you glad you lived to see it. The tent wasn’t that full and there were a number of disciples with their phones aloft so I’d check Youtube if you’d don’t believe me. So anyway, I bump into some good friends who are staying at a hotel reasonably nearby and at the next table to theirs at breakfast were Melanie Griffith and Linda Carter having a natter. That’s Coachella for you - Wonderwoman, and Roky all in one day. Beyond surreal or what? Check in tomorrow and I’ll endeavour to have a butcher’s at Happy Mondays sans Bez who’s too naughty to get a visa, the reformed Rage Against The Machine, Willie Nelson, Lily Allen, CSS, Klaxons and all their loved-up crew. Steve Sutherland

Hi, I’m Steve Sutherland and I’ve gatecrashed John's Blog because I’m out in California covering the Coachella Music & Arts Festival for Uncut.Coachella is just over two hours’ drive inland from LA and the Festival, now in its eighth year, has become a favourite with Brit music fans for four good reasons. 1. Its location on the lush green fields of the Empire Polo Fields (one of Prince Charlie’s favourites to gallop around, apparently) in the shadow of the mountains is the best place to hold a Festival on earth. 2. It never, ever rains. Today, for example, the temperature was 102. 3. Coachella is an indie rather than “rock” festival, and favours Brit acts. 4. It’s the daddy festival for “Nowstalgia”, ace promoter Paul Tollett famously getting the Iggy & The Stooges, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Jane’s Addiction, Bauhaus, Gang Of Four and, most spectacularly of all, The Pixies, to reunite for previous occasions. Today’s magic turn is the return, after eight years, of The Jesus And Mary Chain. OK, so no-one was actually on their knees begging for the Chain to come back from oblivion, but you know what? They were mostly awesome. Playing on the main Stage just as dusk was falling, they’d hammered through (w)hol(l)y brutal versions of the dark, divine trinity of ‘Never Understand’, ‘Head On’ and ‘Far Gone & Out’ before anyone could catch their breath. They then eased into a cool ‘Sidewalking’ and, yeah, it was like they’d never been away. You didn’t even have to close your eyes to get the full whack, like you did when the creaky old Stooges played here a few years back. A cadaverous Jim still stalks the stage with the intensity of a dead-eyed assassin and William… well, OK, he looks a bit like Robert Smith in with a stocking pulled over his face but he still butchers that guitar. Jesus and Mary Chain About halfway through Jim asked: “Are you having fun?” The surprisingly massive crowd roared the traditional festival affirmative. “Well,” sneered Jim, “Let’s see what we can do about that.” It would have been the day’s best black comedy moment, but they topped it when paisley mini-skirted Hollywood screen goddess Scarlett Johansson, hidden under a trendy trilby, joined them for ‘Some Candy Talking’. What the fuck? Apparently William just called up her agent and she said yes. Simple as that. William’s now threatening to call up a new girl in every town on the rapidly expanding tour they’re planning. Last night, at a warm-up at the Glass House in Pomona, it was Annie Hardy of Giant Drag. They bowed out with a truly caustic ‘Reverence’. Really good to have them back. Oh, and Uncut’s picture researcher Phil King was on bass. Other Uncut favourites doing turns during the day were Bjork, who was accompanied for her headline set mostly plucked from her new album, ‘Volta’, by a big brass band and all-female choir, Interpol who took us into the night with their Joy Division thing, and shamanic homeboy hero Perry Farrell and his new band full of girls who look like supermodels, Satellite Party. They played to a smallish crowd on the main stage during the blistering heat in the late afternoon and didn’t really get too much going except an unsurprisingly well received version of Jane’s Addiction’s ‘Stop Don’t Go’. Arctic Monkeys also played the main stage and pulled a big-ish crowd of committed Brits and curious locals. The set was mostly the new stuff off ‘My Favourite Nightmare’ which confused the hell out the people around me who just didn’t know quite what to make of them. During the furious thrashy bits, several longhairs, tanned like gods, tried to head bang, only to be pulled up short when the verses kicked back in. Others resorted to air drumming. Weird. Don’t get me wrong, they went down OK but Alex Turner’s passive-aggressive stance of wry, detatched amusement, as if he’s viewing somebody else’s gig rather than participating in his own, made it hard for Arctic virgins to get involved. They did ‘Scummy Man’, ‘Fake Tales Of San Francisco’ and ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ off the first album, and ‘Brianstorm’, ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ and some more off the newie, Alex pissing himself when a girl he’d pointed out who’d hauled herself onto her boyfriend’s shoulders flashed her tits at the stage. The new stuff is great and all but, honestly, the tender sarcasm of the lyrics got a bit lost in translation, Alex stuck behind his guitar unable – reluctant maybe – to bring a theatrical life to the songs the way an un-encumbered Morrissey, Ian Brown or even Liam Gallagher can. “Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen,” Alex signed off like a Bingo caller addressing a hall full of pensioners. “It’s been a pleasure. Really, it has. We’ve enjoyed ourselves. Enjoy the rest of the evening. Be careful. Wrap up.” Arctic Monkeys The real drama was happening over in a packed to bursting Gobi Tent where that magnificent creation Amy Winehouse was greeted like a conquering queen and was proceeding mightily to re-import some soul back where it originally came from until one of many beakers of vodka kicked in and things started to get a bit screwy. Claiming nerves, she fluffed her intros, bemused the crowd by threatening to steal their bags when it got dark, rambled on between numbers, forgot what she was doing and saying a whole lot of the time, andc was only transported to a good place, it seemed, when the songs took her over. My, ‘Valerie’ was awesome but there’s something very wrong going on with Amy and someone had best take Alex Turner’s advice and take good care of her. Amy Winehouse Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you about The Good The Bad And The Queen, Arcade Fire, Kings Of Leon, LCD Soundsystem and Roky Erikson (really!) among others. One down, two to go. Where’s the Factor 50?