Blogs

First, a quick pointer to Damien’s review of Neil Young in Edinburgh last night, which sounds like it was a pretty incredible night. All being well, I’m going to the first London show, so I’ll try and file something on Thursday morning.

To paraphrase Dolly Parton, it must take a lot of care to look as chaotic as this. I’m referring not to Neil Young himself, not exactly, but to the astonishingly cluttered stage around him, dressed to look like – well, backstage, really, behind the scenes at some lost old-time opry.

A couple of things I played rather a lot over the weekend: the second Brightblack Morning Light album from 2006, which reminds me of unbearably hot afternoons in our old office, and which still sounds gorgeous on a windy Saturday afternoon in March; and “Supreme Balloon”, the 24-minute title track of the new album from Matmos.

Earlier, I’d been telling someone that when I saw Pete Doherty at a small Soho club called Jazz After Dark, back in January 2006, it had occurred to me, no doubt somewhat fancifully, that this was to some perhaps small but nevertheless vital extent what it might have been like to see the fledgling Dylan in some bar in Greenwich Village, when the 60s were still young.

As regular readers may have spotted, I’ve been droning on about the second Howlin Rain album since the end of last summer, when an early copy reached me by mildly nefarious means. I’ve regularly postponed blogging on “Magnificent Fiend”, mainly because Rick Rubin signed up the band in the States and the release date has been unusually volatile (it’s now due out in April in the UK, possibly a little earlier in the US). The other reason for the delay, though, is that I’ve played it so much, it’s weirdly become harder to write about. It’s time, though, to attempt to do it justice: though I usually try and avoid crude empirical hype, it’s hard for me to imagine many better rock albums will be released in 1974. Or even in 2008.

Yesterday, I watched a DVD of “Love Story”, a documentary about Love and Arthur Lee. It’s not the most elegant piece of film-making I’ve ever seen, but the research and the storytelling of Lee, Johnny Echols, Bryan Maclaine, Jac Holzman (who should have a film devoted to him and Elektra, I think) and many others make it compelling.

Bear with me a minute while I blow away a few of these cobwebs. Yeah, that’s better. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I went yesterday to a screening of Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, his film of The Rolling Stones in concert at New York's Beacon Theatre.

Hey, I've just posted a review of Vampire Weekend at London ULU, over at my own daily blog, Wild Mercury Sound. Cheers....

Given how everyone has fixated on their Ivy League background, the sticky-floored ambience – the quintessential redbrick-ness - of ULU shouldn’t be quite right for Vampire Weekend. Surely, we should all be watching them in an immaculate marquee, in the grounds of an Oxford college, shortly before a long and intense reading party in the Cotswolds?

"Good to see you up there Stevie" yells a fan from the crowd. "Well, it's better than the alternative" snarls Steve Earle back. This is how the great Americana survivor began his sold-out show in London Monday night. Singing stories about war, drug-taking and alcoholism, Earle has the look and tone of someone who has obviously stared oblivion in the face and lived to tell the tale. Albeit in a semi-cautionary, I've-been-married-seven-times and I still have to go to AA and NA, but I've bagged two Grammys and a bit-part on The Wire kinda way.