Billy

Alex Turner, Miles Kane and an orchestra to play live

Looking through the extensive musical bill for Latitude, there aren't many artists making a return from last year's line-up. But on Saturday on the Uncut Stage, Kendal's extraordinary Wild Beasts will be making a much-deserved second visit to Henham Park.

Okkervil River, Ida Maria, Glasvegas, The Satin Peaches and Sebastian Tellier have been added to the lineup at the sold out Latitude festival.

Plus Ida Maria, Sebastian Tellier and The Satin Peaches

Irvine Welsh, Nicky Wire and Tim Burgess also contribute

They look, famously, on the cover of last year’s Tonight At The Arizona album, like the wayward off-spring of The Band, with whose songs and music their own colourful excursions into the hinterlands of ‘the old, weird America’, as essayed by Bob and The Band on The Basement Tapes, are frequently compared.

Deluxe edition of 1988 classic

I wandered into the office this morning to hear the new album from Stereolab playing – or at least weirdly and abruptly truncated edits of the songs on the new Stereolab album, which weren’t exactly the best way of getting the measure of “Chemical Chords”. The big discovery this week, though, has been the debut album from the pretty self-explanatory Endless Boogie, which I’ll write about properly in the next few days. There’s also, and I apologise, for this, a “Secret” record in the playlist this week, whose title I’m not allowed to reveal since, “All info on this is being kept under wraps until next week so please don't breathe a word to anyone that you even know a XXXXXX album is coming, let alone have heard it.”

Some interesting correspondence on the blog over the past week or so, not least on the subject of Brian Eno, after I posed a mildly provocative question about his recent work here.

The Courteeners are not, as regular readers could probably guess, the sort of band I like much, and I generally try not to let the existence of groups like them bug me. Occasionally, though, I’ll become passingly outraged by something – like, say, the constant and wildly optimistic comparison that keeps being drawn between the Courteeners and The Smiths.