Ocean

Just remembered today that I should post this: my column from the last issue of the mag, devoted to Wooden Shjips and Ripley's awesome spin-off, Moon Duo. The new issue of Uncut is out this week, though my column on Sir Richard Bishop was necessarily spiked to make room for the Alex Chilton tribute; I'll run that here in the next day or two.

Great start this morning, as I’ve just cracked open the new Prins Thomas album, which seems to carry on right where Lindström & Thomas’ “II” left off. In other goodish news, this long-running dickaround will finally be resolved in the next couple of days. I imagine you’ve all guessed what it is now?

A few bits and pieces to mop up today, beginning with one last thankyou to everyone who has posted on the end of year blogs – or, come to that, who's commented on any of the things I’ve written in the past 12 months. It’s been a genuine pleasure to hear from almost all of you; and of course heartening to discover other people interested in the same music.

Some surprise, really, that Wolf People, a new London band just signed to Jagjaguwar, have decided to stick with their name, given the seemingly innumerable number of Wolf-related bands currently around.

Previously: 100-81, 80-61

After a slight lull last week, another clutch of good new 2010 things here, overshadowed slightly by the news at the Durtro website that Bill Fay’s new album – and featuring his first released recordings from the past three decades, more or less – is just about ready to go.

First off this week, a quick reminder that we’ve just announced Tinariwen as the winner of our annual Uncut Music Award. I’ve started posting transcripts of the judges’ discussions on the Uncut Music Award blog, beginning with their opinions on Tinariwen and Animal Collective. Kings of Leon, Bob Dylan, Wilco, The Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear and The Low Anthem will be coming up over the next week or so.

California collective cover themselves

Another week, and I really can’t believe that we played the Robbie Williams all the way through. Not the only sub-par album in this list, to be honest; you might notice slightly desperate recourse to Chris Bell at one point.

Two things from the weekend. First, I finally dipped into the Beatles remasters, after several weeks of shrugging, mild curiosity and morbid suspicion of overhype. Oh, and a lot of me reiterating my default position of claiming The Beatles weren’t that great – a position which, yet again, was shown up to be more or less complete idiocy when I actually bothered to listen to them. Come on, “Blue Jay Way”!