Upside

How many Wooden Shjips do you actually need? As someone who receives their records for free, I may not be in the best position to make that call. But as I was playing “West”, their third album, again this morning, at least a couple of songs began in a way which made me think of “We Ask You To Ride”, and I wondered: is it a blessing or a curse for all of your songs to be so instantly identifiable that they start blending into one another?

Former label boss thought Bonehead was the frontman

Take a look at this, which has been the best thing I’ve heard this week by a mile, and the clip’s superb, too.

The line-up for this year’s London Film Festival has now been announced - which means it’s time for me to give you a quick heads-up on some of the films we’re most looking forward to seeing during the festival. Apart from the new Mike Leigh and other festival die-hards, there’s plenty of promising stuff – docs on Lemmy, Mott the Hoople and Creation records plus Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Patrick Keiller’s Robinson In Ruins and Anton Corbijn’s The American.

The Boss and the band play on, and on, and on...

Beguiling fourth from the impressively unclassifiable London brainiacs.

Over the next few days, we'll be running full transcripts of the judges' meeting to decide the winner of 2009's Uncut Music Award. Today we begin with their thouhts on the winner, Tinariwen's "Imidiwan: Companions".

Touareg bluesmen triumph over Grizzly Bear and The Low Anthem

Fear and loathing - and dancing - in Essex. Cannes Jury Prize winner 2009.

Reports on an indie-pop institution and the hottest band in blogland, fresh from Suffolk's dusty fields...