Much as I love the TV On The Radio album, I wonder sometimes if all the hype surrounding David Sitek might be a bit out of hand. For a start, reading some of the stories about “Dear Science”, you’d be forgiven for imagining that he made the entire record single-handed, when in fact virtually all the songwriting was handled by the band’s vocalists and, perhaps, creative heart, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone.
We now have the entire judges' deliberations over who should win the Uncut Music Award posted here on this blog, so I thought it might be useful to provide links to all the separate posts in one place. I was prompted, in part, by this message from Terry, who did all the recording and transcribing for us.
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.
I must admit a line in the press release reeled me into this one. Jesca Hoop, originally from California, worked “for five years as nanny to the children of Tom Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan. ‘Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night,’ Waits reckons.