Walker t. bone

A month, perhaps, of surprises. On the rather intimidating new Scott Walker and Sunn O))) album, there appears to be a joke about Michael Flatley's testicles. Somewhere in the elevated aesthetics of Kate Bush's Before The Dawn, there's an equally dubious comedy routine that hinges on the punchline, "HP and mayo, it's the badger's nadgers." And then, just as we were finishing the new issue of Uncut (out today in the UK, as you may have seen), a U2 album suddenly materialised in iTunes, a bullish play to reassert them as the biggest pop group in the world.

Always a bit of a gamble doing this, to be honest but, since it’s June, I’ve tried to put together a list of my favourite albums of 2014 thus far. Many caveats forthcoming, not least that my slightly ad hoc way of trying to remember what I’ve liked means I’ve almost certainly missed a few things.

Everyone knows the mythical image of The Man In Black. But the truth about Johnny Cash was a whole lot more complicated. A “folk hero for the world”, and a humble man who struggled with addiction for his entire life. In this archive feature from Uncut’s February 2009 issue (Take 141), we present a revelatory new portrait of Cash’s life. We talk to many of the people who knew him best – the children, the bandmates, the managers, the peers – and discover the unexpurgated truth about this titan of American music. “He survived,” says his one-time son-in-law, “what Elvis didn’t…” Words: Alastair McKay

100 tracks from the first twenty years of "that Little ol’ band from Texas" By Luke Torn...

The arch druid goes POPTASTIC...

John Lydon: "It was done more or less instantly"

Ryland’s points a righteous finger at the “deacons in the High Church of the Next Dollar”...

Post-war Los Angeles was doubtless a swell place to live if you were a movie star, Hollywood mogul, business tycoon, captain of industry, political big-wig, gangster or otherwise a money-bags, cosseted by wealth, not much in life you couldn’t afford.

4CD box set charting the ascendance of the blues’ most distinctive voice. O-wooo!

Previously: 50-35, 34-17