Segall Ty

Before the doors of the Dome Studio Theatre even open tonight (Saturday, May 18), there's an excited queue stretching most of the way down the street. Not surprising considering one of the most hyped groups of this year, Irish band The Strypes, are first on the bill.

While last night's Club Uncut at Brighton's Great Escape festival hosted bands with a definite Americana bent, Friday (May 17) sees the invasion of US-based (or -inspired) garage-rockers.

John Dwyer has the sort of discography so deep and complicated that one suspects even he must have trouble keeping up with himself. As a consequence, it might be a mistake to try and divine paths and trends in career which his encompassed Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, Landed, Yikes, Burmese, The Hospitals, Zeigenbock Kopf and Sword + Sandals (according to Wikipedia, anyway, if I can emphasise my spotty knowledge any more) as well as Thee Oh Sees.

Could be wrong about this, but I think the track I posted and tweeted most often last year was “Sunshine, No Shoes” by the Philadelphia band, Spacin’: I’m going to add it again after the jump. Spacin’, to recap - though you can follow this link to a blog about them - are a project fronted by Jason Killinger, a spin-off from a longish-established Philly psych band called Birds Of Maya; BOM’s amazing “Ready To Howl” album got a belated UK release last year on Agitated.

Ladies and gentlemen... please enjoy our Top 75 new albums of 2012, with links to the original reviews where possible. Tomorrow, we'll post the Top 30 best reissues, box sets and compilations.

While rolling out my Top 112 albums list last week, a couple of people understandably asked what some of those records actually sounded like. Maybe this’ll help: ten of my favourite tracks of 2012…

As a knock-on effect of posting my Best Albums Of 2012 list every day this week, the office playlist is about double its normal length, as you’ll see.

The last 25, then. A few of you have asked for some help as to what these records sound like. I’ll try and put some links into these lists over the next few days, and also a blog of favourite track clips that might help a bit. See you what you think, anyhow… Previously: 112-76 Previously: 75-51 Previously: 50-26

As many of you will have seen by now, the current issue of Uncut features our Top 75 albums of 2012 and, as usual, there’s been a fair amount of comment online about the list. I’m going to try not to be too defensive about this, but as the person who compiled the list, I thought it might be useful to post a few notes that’ll hopefully clarify one or two issues that have been raised.

The new issue of Uncut, out today, features Bruce Springsteen, The Black Keys, Bryan Ferry and the Uncut review of 2012. Bruce Springsteen is on the cover, and inside we catch up with The Boss live in Pittsburgh and tell the story of his incredible year – including Wrecking Ball, his longest ever show and that cut-off Paul McCartney duet…