Callahan bill

Over a week on, I suppose we’re still dealing with a kind of Neil Young & Crazy Horse feedback. This week’s major live distraction in the office, though, has been a stream/download of Wilco’s covers set from their festival last Friday night. The whole thing is hugely recommended but, if you’re pressed for time, please have a listen to the uncanny version of “Marquee Moon” I’ve embedded below.

It’s easy – and probably useful, sometimes – to lambast major labels for what looks from the outside like chronic short-termism. The climate is, understandably I guess, a neurotic one, and those days are long gone when labels would work long-term with a select group of trophy artists, whose usefulness to the company was more silvery and nebulous, more about cachet than quick profit.

Soulful debut is stunning introduction to producer's talents...

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy discusses his band’s upcoming new album in the current issue of Uncut (dated February 2013, Take 189), out now – but here, in this piece from Uncut’s August 2009 issue, Tweedy answers questions from fans and famous admirers, and discusses Bob Dylan’s beard, hanging with Neil Young and the recipe for the perfect burger (clue: use cranberries)… __________________________

If you’re feeling withdrawal symptoms after the glut of end-of-year charts last month, I cooked this up for the latest edition of Uncut…

Chan Marshall’s new album, Sun, is reviewed in the latest issue of Uncut (Take 185, October 2012) – this week’s archive feature, from December 2006 (Take 115), finds Marshall recovering from a breakdown after perhaps her most successful year to date. Here, she tells Marc Spitz how she pulled herself back from the edge… ________________________________

Twenty years of touring and recording, of inspiration and graft for moderate acclaim, and it comes down to this. Mark Kozelek, the pivot of first Red House Painters and now Sun Kil Moon, is engaged in one more slog around Europe. It is not going well.

Thanks for all your kind words over the past couple of weeks about the relaunched mag. I know this will undoubtedly read like self-justifying hype on our part, but we have been genuinely thrilled and overwhelmed by how positive the response has been.

Just before Christmas, you may remember, I asked for your 2011 Top Tens, in response to my lengthy end-of-year effort.