Features

Multi-Grammy winning producer, musician and musical director Roscoe Beck

Driving home from the Leonard Cohen show on Friday night, I looked in my bag for something suitable to put on the car stereo, and settled fairly quickly on the new Fennesz album, “Black Sea”.

Day Five, and we get to Fleet Foxes, and the judges' conversation which resulted in them winning the first Uncut Music Award. Tomorrow, by the way, The Raconteurs.

I must admit a line in the press release reeled me into this one. Jesca Hoop, originally from California, worked “for five years as nanny to the children of Tom Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan. ‘Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night,’ Waits reckons.

And on we go with the judges' discussions. Today: The Felice Brothers. Tomorrow: Fleet Foxes.

A strange moment, on Friday night. Sitting somewhere quite close to the roof of the O2 Arena, it seems to me as if several thousand people are singing, simultaneously, in a scarcely-audible whisper. Onstage, Leonard Cohen and his extraordinary band are playing “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”, with a softness, precision and clarity that I can rarely recall hearing at an arena show.

We have a couple of reviews of last week's extraordinary Leonard Cohen shows up on the Uncut site.

Celebrity stage designer Bruce Rodgers

Episode Three of our judge's discussions, and today we find them discussing Drive-By Truckers. Tomorrow, The Felice Brothers.

Leonard Cohen comes on stage at a veritable trot, almost skipping, more sprightly by a distance than you would expect of a man in his mid-seventies. The crowd, who have clearly come to adore him, reward his athleticism with a standing ovation. It’s the first of many tonight, although the others that follow are for performances of songs from his majestic back catalogue that are played to something we’d have to call perfection.