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.
Preamble: I’m going to start rolling out this list over the next couple of days whenever I get a chance to post. Apologies, first, for the weird number…
One of those rushed weeks, I’m afraid – it looks like I won’t be able to construct a Wild Mercury Sound 2012 chart ‘til next week now, if you can bear the agonising wait. Lots of links and clips to be getting on with here, though: please make sure you have a listen to the new Sun Kil Moon and Plush tracks, and check the clip that Neil Young scholars are claiming shows the first time he’s collapsed onto the floor and wiggled his legs in the air mid-solo.
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 Stones’ new compilation, GRRR!, is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut (December 2012, Take 187), out now, so for this week’s archive feature we head back to Uncut’s April 2008 issue (Take 131). Mick Jagger is micro-managing the release of their new, Scorsese-directed concert movie, Shine A Light. Keith Richards is lounging on a Caribbean beach with his dogs. They both find time, however, to tell Uncut about pet hygiene, “fucking crap” modern music and having rebellion thrust upon them. Words: Andrew Mueller
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Eno’s sublime new album, Lux, is reviewed in the current issue of Uncut (December 2012, Take 187) – so we’re delving back to December 2010’s issue to meet the time-travelling conceptualist himself, a man who’s into ecstatic food cults, Music For Maternity Wards – and trying to remember his own past. “One of the big driving forces for Roxy Music,” he says, “was that we hated hippies…” Words: Stephen Troussé
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Blur are set to release Parklive, a live album recorded at this summer's Hyde Park gig in London.
The five disc CD and DVD set will come out on December 3. The entire audio from the Olympic Games' closing gig will feature on two CDs, while a DVD of the concert - which was shot on 12 cameras - will also be included.
