I found this morning a decent MP3 stream of the Dead’s Obama benefit show from last month, which has just started playing as I write. The tracklisting looks great – including “Slipknot”, “Help On The Way”, “Franklin’s Tower”, “Dark Star”, “St Stephen” and, fantastically, “Unbroken Chain”.And the starting “Truckin’”, which has been going for a good while now, sounds pretty healthy. Maybe some of the more experienced Deadheads among you could hunt it down and let me know what you think.

A bumper list this week, as the 2009 releases start arriving in the Uncut office. Not everything here is going down ecstatically, but a first listen to the new Fennesz album today suggests that one was well worth waiting for. In the continuing absence of those My Bloody Valentine reissues, let alone any unreleased material from Kevin Shields’ archives, “Black Sea” really deserves to bring Christian Fennesz to a wider audience, I think.

Yes yes I know it's only a couple of days since the last one, but I have an interview to prepare for in an hour or so, and yesterday's post brought a bunch of stuff we should probably talk about, or at least flag up, now. Namely. . .

A good day for the world, then. Not sure whether this week’s Uncut playlist really reflects the global mood, though I did bring in “Attica Blues” to play this morning. A bunch of unprepossessing-looking indie promos don’t really cut it on a day like this.

And still the Animal Collective fans keep coming, with a few requests for the durations of the “Merriweather Post Pavilion” tracks. Here they come: bear in mind that “Brothersport” could easily go on for another five or ten minutes as far as I’m concerned.

As yesterday, I’m pretty preoccupied with the new Animal Collective record that has turned up. It’s called “Merriweather Post Pavilion”, I think it might be my first favourite record of 2009, and if I can get my thoughts in some sort of order I’ll blog about it tomorrow.

Apologies for the lack of action round these parts this week; we’ve been finishing off the next issue of Uncut, and starting fairly intensive preparations for the one after that. We have, though, still been working our way through the new arrivals, and I guess this week’s big one is the Neil Young “Sugar Mountain” live set.

Dylan fever continues apace here, as you may have seen with our pretty extensive series of transcripts from our current cover story. Now "Tell Tale Signs" is out, though, I wonder if the outrage over the 3CD price that came pouring out over here is still coming? If you've bought the box this week, was the third CD and the book of completely unrelated sleeve art worth that extra £80 or so?

Not much mucking about today before I get into this week’s selection. But can I quickly plug Club Uncut tonight? Now that the Hold Steady tour has been cancelled, their support band War On Drugs will be joining Ladyhawk and The Dudes on the bill.

First thing today: the arrival of our new issue means I can finally mention the Uncut Music Award business we’ve been plotting for the past few months. Please have a look at our new dedicated blog, and let us know what you like the look of on the longlist.