Looking back over the past few months of writing Wild Mercury Sound, it does seem like I go on again and again about Sonic Youth and Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. I guess I can be a bit fanboyish over the whole business, but then there are few bands who've shaped my musical aesthetics as profoundly as the Youth, and the wild and varied music that Moore has been putting out on his imprint of late (from Wooden Wand to Turbo Fruits, from MV + EE And The Bummer Road to Sunburned Hand Of Man, to Awesome Color) means they've kept me excited and engaged more, perhaps, than any other label in 2007.
A few interesting posts turned up on the blogs these past few days. The Super Furry Animals love continues, and Harri writes, "On first listen it sounded good, but maybe little bland by SFA's lofty standards; by the 4th or 5th listen I realised how much depth it actually has. Another SFA classic then, in my opinion - here's hoping one of the two on the way is the long lost techno record!"
I'm starting today with "Strawberry Jam", the new album by the Animal Collective, and it's quite a thing of joy. "For Reverend Green" is playing as I write (the Reverend Al, perhaps?), and it's pretty typical of the album (their seventh, perhaps). Over rippling noise and tribal patter, they lay a kind of kindergarten sing-song that has a passionate, ingenuous, euphoric quality. It's a pop song, born out of the avant-garde, and the Animal Collective are a pop group who've kept an experimental imperative. I love them.
A lot of festival activity this weekend, and Uncut's legions have reported back from T In The Park, Live Earth and Cornbury over at our Festivals Blog. Every time I switched on Live Earth, I managed to catch something worse and worse: Paolo Nutini singing "What A Wonderful World" with what sounded like most of his internal organs rattling around the back of his throat; James Blunt joylessly dying on his arse; Madonna cavorting with the prize dicks of Gogol Bordello in the manner of a geography teacher after her annual joint at Glastonbury.
The directorial debut of photographer Anton Corbijn, who moved to the UK from Holland to shoot Joy Division in 1979, is a moving tribute to Ian Curtis, but suffers from Corbijn’s proximity to the material.
Cornbury, or Poshstock as it’s sometimes known, is like a mini Knebworth, held in the bucolic grounds of a very big house in the Cotswold country 20 miles from Oxford. There’s champagne by the bottle in the VIP bar and past Cornbury Fests have proved celeb heaven with Prince Harry, Kate Moss (she’s a local) and Jeremy Clarkson all stumping up in 2006.
No famous faces ligging here so far today but we’ll keep ‘em peeled.
Here’s how it’s panning out so far:
After a muddy and murky start on Friday, Brian Wilson ended the first full day of this year's T In The Park festival by bringing the sunshine to Scotland. Not literally, but it's as close as we'd come so far.
Within seven minutes of BBC1 picking up live coverage, Chris Rock gets in the first "C’mon motherfuckers". This shortly after David Gray and Damien Rice have murdered "Que Sera Sera", Snow Patrol have yelled, "Looking forward to Spinal Tap? We are!" and Geri Halliwell has walked onstage to say, "Isn‘t it great my band are back together?" While the eight concerts around the world constitute an immense, well-intended event, the Wembley show is a thoroughly surreal mish-mash of deafening hard rock, weightless aerobic pop and celebs spouting platitudes.
To be honest, the success of Rilo Kiley has been pretty bewildering to me up 'til now. Much as I liked Jenny Lewis' country solo album, "Rabbit Fur Coat", I never grasped the appeal of her band. For all her likeable LA snarkiness, their music always sounded like a grey jangle; as if the American mainstream had embraced, what, The Sundays maybe, as the future of music. Quite strange, but in quite a dull way.
Reeling somewhat from the news that Bob Dylan has permitted Mark Ronson to remix "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", it occurs to me that there's not much time to file a blog today. Here, instead, is what we've played today in the Uncut office -
