Tom tom club

See the full line-up on Uncut

One more plug, first off, for the Arbouretum Club Uncut show tomorrow night (Thursday, March 24). London Borderline, support from Alexander Tucker, a few tickets available here. Can’t wait.

I was hoping to include the new Wild Beasts album, “Smother”, in this week’s rundown, but it doesn’t seem to have turned up yet. Today, hopefully.

Various circumstances mean I have to miss Hiss Golden Messenger’s show at Club Uncut on Wednesday, so I went to see Michael Taylor’s first UK show at King’s Place, a rather refined venue beneath The Guardian offices, last Friday.

They join Foo Fighters, Pulp and Public Image Ltd

Having just finished Peter Matthiessen’s book about (among other things) Nepal, “The Snow Leopard”, it’s been quite nice these past few days to perceive cold and snow as a path to spiritual revelation as much as a physical ordeal. Of course, crawling down the A10 on the Number 76 yesterday morning pretty effectively demolished the romance.

Thanks for all your comments to last week’s purgative 2010 disappointments thread. Now we’ve got that our of our systems, this week’s playlist features plenty of 2011 releases, as you can see.

Sad news reached us last night of the death of Arthur Penn, aged 88. Penn, of course, was the director of many great films including Bonnie And Clyde, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks. Here, by way of a tribute, I thought we'd run the transcript of an interview Damien Love did with Penn for Uncut. The interview took place in 2004, while Penn, then 81, was directing a Broadway revival of the play Sly Fox. Speaking in detail about his career, he shared his memories of working with Beatty, Brando, Newman and Hackman, as well as discussing the enduring legacy of his masterpiece, Bonnie And Clyde.

Bracing return from illness for ex-Orange Juice frontman...

Belatedly following this fine haul, another really good list this week, involving as it does a couple of high-security things which I can’t discuss at the moment and plenty I can.