Not uncharacteristically, I’ve spent the past few days repressing a bunch of unnecessary rage about the publicity afforded the BBC’s Sound Of 2013 poll. Not so much because of the artists selected, but because of the way it effectively presents an ultimatum to new talent: have something resembling success in the next 12 months, or else people will weary of your miserable underachievement and move on to the next batch of hopefuls.
A pretty amazing week of new arrivals kicked off with the arrival of the beautiful thing pictured above; the Third Man/Revenant Paramount Records box set (Volume One, I should note). Lots to talk about there, not least the 800 tracks, and once I’ve had a deeper and more extensive listen I’ll try and blog about it properly.
Moving swiftly through another craven plug for our Neil Young Ultimate Music Guide, a mostly decent list this week, with a few strong new entries from Rosanne Cash, Africa Express, Matt Baldwin, and Thee Oh Sees, plus a welcome expanded reissue from Hiss Golden Messenger.
Yesterday I posted an interview here with Cian Nugent that prompted a Twitter conversation about other records which operate in the fairly narrow space between Television’s “Marquee Moon” and Fairport Convention’s “A Sailor’s Life”. This morning I’ve collated all the suggestions into a Youtube playlist, which should keep you elevated for an hour or two.
Apologies for the frustrating gaps that appear in this week’s playlist. A lot of 2014 releases arriving in the office now, some of which haven’t been officially announced. As a consequence I have to keep their identities suppressed for the time being; I’ll try and fill in the missing words once these albums are formally unveiled.
In haste again this week, but various delays in posting this have at least meant that the playlist has kept growing: 32 entries, with seven interesting things to listen to, including Neil Young and a couple of strong new artists, the pretty psych Morgan Delt and Matt Kivel, whose album reminds me a bit of the first one by Bon Iver.
A brief moment away from collating Uncut’s end of year album charts to post this: 24 records etc we’ve played over the last couple of days in the Uncut office.
After raving about the new Alasdair Roberts and White Fence albums on the past few lists, I’m pleased to have some tracks from them this week, along with really excellent new arrivals from Kevin Morby and Ryley Walker.
