Ache

Welcome to Waitsville. A place where bad jokes are good, Vaudeville never died, and the talk is of smoking monkeys, weasels and the mating habits of the preying mantis.

Promising debut album from Zooey Deschanel and M Ward; the latest Indie/Hollywood hook-up

Just back from the Mercury Prize shortlist announcement which, as you might imagine, was a hotbed of hype and low-level grumbling about the 12 nominations. I was doing some media-slag punditry, a lot of which revolved around the high-profile absentees: Coldplay, Duffy, The Ting Tings, Kate Nash and the one which actually annoyed me, Portishead. But before I start ranting, here’s the shortlist if you haven’t seen it yet:

Plus Radiohead, Elbow and Plant and Krauss make the 2008 shortlist

A snoozefest. Zzzzzzzzz. Pretty bloody boring – just a few of the predictions about Sigur Ros’s Latitude headline set from some of my colleagues and friends this afternoon. I have to admit that, after seeing Metronomy’s dancey geek-pop about half an hour before, the prospect of a bunch of deathly slow ethereal meanderings sung in a foreign language (or, of course, a completely made-up language) didn’t seem like the most appealing prospect.

Plus Wild Beasts, Beth Rowley and Captain on the Uncut stage

So, as ever with Latitude, there's as much fun to be had after the official events of the day have wound down...

Mildly strange afternoon here at Latitude, which culminated in what a few of us are optimistically calling the Ross Noble Riot.

The legend gets a standing ovation: Read the Uncut review here!

The night before Pete Doherty plays a sold-out solo concert in the plush splendour of the Royal Albert Hall, we find his former Babyshambles bandmate, guitarist Patrick Walden, getting ready for a gig with his new band, Big Dave, in a small tacky room above a bar called Catch 22 in Shoreditch.