Fucked up

I was reading this interesting Wilco piece a few days ago, which talks about how Jeff Tweedy has parlayed cult success into what appears to be a viable business model. It made me think of the strategies used by Mark Kozelek these past few years: how he keeps a steady stream of music, predominantly live albums, coming through his Caldo Verde label to satisfy his obsessive fans (and I suspect Kozelek fans tend to be by nature obsessive; I know I am).

Nick Cave took part in an 'In Conversation' session covering his life and career earlier today (March 12) as part of the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Speaking at the Austin Convention Center with New York based author Larry Ratso Sloman, the Bad Seeds frontman admitted that he first joined a band in order to get "girls and booze", telling the packed out audience that "it actually works!"

Nick Cave and Mick Harvey discuss their career from the Birthday Party “crossover” of From Her To Eternity onwards...

If you’re feeling withdrawal symptoms after the glut of end-of-year charts last month, I cooked this up for the latest edition of Uncut…

Feist has won the 2012 Polaris Music Prize, Canada's answer to the Mercury, for her fourth album Metals. The singer, who was also nominated for the record's 2007 predecessor The Reminder, collected the $30,000 (£19,000) cheque at last night's (September 24) prize gala in Toronto. Feist accepted the award from Jeremy Gara and Tim Kingsbury of Arcade Fire, who won the gong in 2011, after lying on the floor in shock and shying away from a conventional speech.

John Murry first entered Uncut airspace in 2006 with World Without End, the bleakly brilliant album of country death songs he wrote and recorded with Bob Frank. Six years on, Murry has just released his first solo album, The Graceless Age, an album of almost symphonic emotional turmoil, co-produced by late American Music Club drummer Tim Mooney. The songs on the record deal sometimes explicitly with Murry’s heroin addiction, specifically the 10-minute ‘Little Coloured Balloons’, a harrowing account of a near-fatal OD. I reviewed The Graceless Age for the current issue of Uncut and emailed Murry some questions, to which he replied in detail and at illuminating length, as you will see from the fascinating transcript that follows.

Brooklyn brainiacs go back to basics? Not quite...

Today, as you may have heard, is apparently the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones’ first gig.

An in-depth Uncut interview with Jack White from the time of Blunderbuss

The Canadian went looking for a new producer. What she found, on her fourth album, was love.