Ladies and gentlemen... please enjoy our Top 75 new albums of 2012, with links to the original reviews where possible. Tomorrow, we'll post the Top 30 best reissues, box sets and compilations.
The Allah-Las make their UK debut in the back room of a north London pub on a freezing December night, the inhospitable weather not something familiar to in their native Los Angeles, where it probably only gets this cold in disaster movies, palm trees turning brittle with frost, the ocean becoming ice, CGI snow drifts on Sunset Strip and Denis Quaid in a parka and Bermuda shorts standing square-jawed and wrinkled-kneed against the elements.
Eric Clapton and Florence And The Machine's Florence Welch are reportedly set to join The Rolling Stones at their second gig at London's O2 arena tomorrow night (November 29).
According to The Mirror, Welch will perform a duet with Mick Jagger for "Gimme Shelter" for the band's second sell-out London show, which was performed by Mary J Blige on Sunday (November 25).
The National have recorded a song for HBO drama Boardwalk Empire.
The band covered Isham Jones and The Ray Miller Orchestra’s 1924 song "I’ll See You in My Dreams" for use in episode 10 of season 3, 'A Man, A Plan', which aired in the US on November 18. The band are accompanied by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks on the track, which you can hear below by scrolling down the page.
The deluxe reissue of The Jam’s final album, The Gift, is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut (December 2012, Take 187) – so for this week’s archive feature, we’ve stepped back to Uncut’s December 2008 (Take 139) issue, to spend a year by Paul Weller’s side, as he celebrates his 50th birthday. We are invited into the Guv’nor’s inner sanctum, to his star-studded birthday party, and into dressing rooms across Britain and America. And we learn that, like any good mod, Weller remains “more interested in the future than the past”. Words: Paul Moody
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The first bands on the bill for TV On The Radio and Deerhunter's 2013 ATP festivals have been unveiled.
The first weekend, which will be curated by TV On The Radio (May 10-12, 2013), will see performances from TV On The Radio, Spank Rock, El-P, Saul Williams, Tinariwen, Shabazz Palaces, Thee Oh Sees, CSS, Daniel Higgs (Lungfish), Celebration, Talibam! and North America.
The banana’s back. Not before time. Late last year, Lou Reed’s reputation suffered a serious blow when his ill-fated collaboration with Metallica met with hostility not witnessed since Metal Machine Music. He even had death threats. This 45th anniversary edition of The Velvet Underground & Nico is a timely reminder (if one is needed) that Reed at his best had few peers and no equals, and that his writer’s eye – literate, probing, explicit – was unflinching right from the start. He was always hardcore.
