Here’s this week’s selection of new and newish things we’ve played in the Uncut office. My favourite of the fresh arrivals here is the Deradoorian EP, which I’ve finally got hold of, and which may well appeal to people who, like me, struggle with certain aspects of Angel Deradoorian’s regular band, Dirty Projectors.
It’d be nice to claim that I had an infallible eye for spotting a future superstar, but watching the ascent of the Gossip over the past two or three years, I’m reminded that there was a band I could’ve never have imagined becoming big. When I first saw them play in, what, 2002 maybe, I thought they were terrific. But they also seemed to be so tightly embedded in a post-riot grrl scene of fanzine elitists that, for all the strengths of Beth Ditto’s personality and pipes, they’d surely be more or less unintelligible to the mainstream.
I was making some notes on the new Sonic Youth album, “The Eternal”, this morning, when it occurred to me that writing “pop” down again and again was pretty absurd – one of those delusional fallacies that people who don’t listen to too much actual pop have, I guess, when a rock band starts working in a notionally punchy way.
Four or five listens in, I figured it might be useful to postpone the new playlist for a day and blog some preliminary thoughts on the new Wilco album, “Wilco (The Album)” (not crazy about the title). Jeff Tweedy has already been talking it up as something of a return to more “experimental” terrain which, at this point, seems to be a bit of a stretch.
As Bob Dylan, garbed in another of the natty Pimp-My-Confederate-General ensembles that have served as his working clothes these past few years, steps onto the stage of the Playhouse in Edinburgh on Sunday night into a jolting “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”, there is the small matter of him having just this afternoon officially clocked up his first Number One (with a bullet!) album in the UK for almost 40 years.
