Free

My Bloody Valentine have announced a headlining slot at Japan's Tokyo Rocks festival in May 2013, where they will be playing exclusive material from a brand new album. The album, the very-long-awaited follow-up to 1991’s classic Loveless, has been 21 years in the making. It will be released on frontman Kevin Shields’ website before the end of the year, and will be followed by a further EP of brand new material.

Spiritualized frontman Jason Pierce has described music festivals as "the death of art" and says they've "gotten straighter as the years have gone on". Speaking to Drowned In Sound, the singer also hits out at other bands' egos.

Hard to believe that Woody Guthrie, conceivably, could still be alive in 2012, given that he’s been gone for 45 years. Yet his incomparable work, especially circa 1939-1949, and the indomitable spirit of that work, a Big Bang of social-consciousness-in-song that set off reverberations down through history – from Dylan and Ochs and the whole early ’60s folk revival and on to Joe Strummer’s righteous punk rebellion – resonates still, as long as repression, corruption, and abuse of power still flourish.

Usual excuses about too much work to do (currently: a forthcoming Ultimate Music Guide on The Kinks, and the dark mathematics of Uncut’s end-of-year charts, as well as the rest of the next issue) mean that I failed yesterday to write a review of the Six Organs Of Admittance show at Birthdays in Dalston.

Crosby, Stills & Nash are releasing the first subscription-based iPad app for a recording artist. According to a post on the group's website, for $3.99 a month/$39.99 a year subscribers will have access to exclusive content, updates, and premium fan features.

The new issue of Uncut, out today (October 23), features The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Donald Fagen and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. The Stones are on the cover, and inside, Mick Jagger talks to us about the band’s new film, Crossfire Hurricane, their two new songs, and the future of the band. The story of the group’s groundbreaking, debauched 1972 tour of the US in support of Exile On Main St is also told by the people who were there on the inside.

Guns N' Roses, Jack White and surprise guest Eddie Vedder played Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit in California this weekend. The event, celebrating its 26th anniversary, featured an all-star line up with The Flaming Lips, Foster The People, Steve Martin, kd Lang and Ray LaMontagne all featuring on the strictly acoustic bill. According to Rolling Stone, Young opened the all-day event by performing a short set, including a duet with his wife Pegi on "Comes A Time".

In 2009, Uncut spoke to The Wire’s creator David Simon, shortly before the broadcast of his follow-up series, Treme. The show was set during the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, a city that Simon felt had effectively been abandoned by the rest of America since the storm. “The only thing that brought this city back was the people who understand its unique culture and who participate in that culture refused to give that up,” he told us.

Bruce Springsteen has written an open letter declaring his support for incumbent US President Barack Obama in the forthcoming elections. Springsteen posted the letter on his website yesterday (October 17), addressing it to his 'friends'. He proceeded to state the reasons why he'd be supporting Democratic candidate Obama and wrote: