Occasionally, I think we do records a bit of a disservice by striving so hard to contextualise them. This occurred to me again over the weekend, when I was listening to Stereolab’s 11th (or ninth, it’s hard to count for sure, as Stephen Troussé points out in his perceptive review in the current Uncut) album, “Chemical Chords”.
Welcome to Waitsville. A place where bad jokes are good, Vaudeville never died, and the talk is of smoking monkeys, weasels and the mating habits of the preying mantis.
As the clouds gather, we’re readying ourselves for a weekend at Latitude. One more reminder that an extensive Uncut team will be blogging there non-stop from tomorrow morning. I’ll be vacating Wild Mercury Sound for the duration, and working on our special Latitude blog, where I imagine I’ll be covering Joanna Newsom, Elbow, Julian Cope, Michael Nyman, Wild Beasts and the children’s play area, amongst other things. Should be fun.
LATITUDE FESTIVAL is gearing up to kick off tomorrow (July 17), and www.uncut.co.uk's tent has arrived and the air mattresses and sleeping bags are packed and we're ready to set off to Suffolk tomorrow.
John’s written on his Wild Mercury Sound site about last night’s extraordinary performance by White Denim at the latest Club Uncut at the Borderline. It was, as he says, truly mind-blowing – especially coming almost straight after we’d just seen The Hold Steady at HMV in somewhat comical circumstances – and in the circumstances inevitably headline-grabbing. It’d be a pity, though, to completely overlook the earlier appearance at the Borderline of White Denim’s Full Time Hobby label-mate, Abilene’s Micah P Hinson.
Last year at Latitude, the Uncut Arena played host to one of Africa’s very finest bands, Tinariwen. This year, we’re thrilled to welcome their Malian compatriots, Amadou And Mariam, who’ll be headlining our stage on the Friday night at Latitude.
