Just looking idly through the Top 40 this morning, I can’t see any sign of Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah”, which apparently turned up in the midweeks as a result of some X-Factor shenanigans. I’m proud (and perhaps not a little pompous) to say that I’ve never watched anything more than about five minutes of The X-Factor, since as a rule I try and avoid things which will almost certainly annoy me. But through some kind of grim pop-cultural osmosis, I guess, I do know that some girl who reputedly sounds like Dolores O’Riordan (like Laura Marling, then?) has sung the old Cohen song on the show and that the winner’s Christmas Number One single will be “Hallelujah”. In some corners of the media and the internet, all this has been greeted with a lot of hot-under-the-collar pontificating, which I don’t want to add to, but which has prodded the Buckley take back into the public consciousness (much the same thing happened when, by some uncanny coincidence, someone did the tune on American Idol). Now far be it from me to pre-judge what the X-Factor version might turn out to be like. But in truth, I don’t care, other than being mildly relieved that this imminent flood of cash for Leonard Cohen is coming at the end of 2008, rather than at the end of 2007: if he’d been so fortunate 12 months ago, I wonder if he would have embarked on the financially exigent, artistically extraordinary shows that we’ve seen since the summer? What I find much more irritating is the idea of great songs being sanctified, that these gleaming cultural documents shouldn’t be touched by unclean mainstream hands. I mean, really, who gives a toss if some Redcoat belter sings a song you like in a way that you don’t like? Play the Buckley version, or the John Cale version, or the Rufus Wainwright version, or the original. Switch the radio off when the X-Factor one comes on. Just don’t whinge, as if there should be some law against the ITV masses getting to hear a version of a good song. As a music hack, and a man of a certain age, I suppose I have to constantly guard against becoming a grumpy old man. But it’s a condition I find hugely unbecoming, and perhaps more importantly a huge waste of energy. The truth is, the excess of choice which we’re presented with nowadays, the long tail or whatever, means that it’s easier than ever before to block out all the static of popular culture that disagrees with our fragile metabolisms. Why get worked up about shit, or about Top 40 minutiae, when you can easily pretend it doesn’t exist? Which I suppose is another reason why I generally only blog about music I like, and try and avoid gripes like this. And why I should really be blogging about Death, or Mountains, or Six Organs Of Admittance, or Alela Diane, or Eddy Current Suppression Ring, or Arbouretum this morning. The point is, though, that “Hallelujah” is a very good song. Not perhaps as great as it’s sometimes made out to be – Cohen, Buckley and maybe even Rufus Wainwright have all written better themselves. And when the X-Factor thing has been and gone, it still will be a good song. No-one will die. It’s going to be OK, I promise. Everyone move on, there’s nothing to see here.

Four hundred and twenty-odd posts in, it seems I'm belatedly getting the hang of this, since I've just learned how to embed Youtube links into Wild Mercury Sound. Here, then, is the excellent new take on "Old Enough" by The Raconteurs, augmented by Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe. [youtube]YBEkNefuGCU[/youtube] Beautifully shot as well as played, I think. It strikes me that perhaps "Consolers Of The Lonely" might not have received as much love as previous Jack White endeavours, but I like it more and more, and I can't think of many bands I've seen in the past couple of years who play with such verve and virtuosity as they do(here's my review of their Hammersmith show back in May). Anyway, this is fantastic. On the album, I recall "Old Enough" sounding like an odd relation of English folk-rock, recalling - especially the Swarbrickish fiddle - Fairport Convention. Here, though, driven by the meticulous picking of Skaggs, it's recast as flighty, plaintive bluegrass, an endearingly studied hoedown that eventually wanders into "Wake Up Little Susie". I suppose when people mythologise bluegrass, it's often presented as a raw, untethered music. But actually, as this clip proves, there's something very precise and fragile about it, joyous but also, thanks to the skill involved, mighty self-conscious, too. But that self-consciousness is, I guess, enhanced by The Raconteurs, White and Brendan Benson in their new hats, White singing in that restrained and uncharacteristically nervous tone that'll be familiar to anyone who saw his deferential performance of "Your Loving Cup" with The Rolling Stones in "Shine A Light". I sometimes think, and am sometimes fairly sure that, hyperbolically, Jack White is a rare artist destined for posterity, one whose body of work will eventually measure up, in some way, against those of his heroes. It's interesting, though, to watch him in their company now, and to see how the impetuous swagger he usually brings to his music is replaced by an oddly fannish meekness. It makes him more human, for the time being, I suppose, and it certainly doesn't detract from the strength of this version.

According to Daniel Rossen, sat onstage in front of a notably packed Club Uncut, this is only the second ever ‘proper’ gig by Department Of Eagles. The first, it transpires, saw the band expanded to a five-piece, augmented by a couple of the Dirty Projectors and another of Rossen’s bandmates in Grizzly Bear. For the full review, please visit our Wild Mercury Sound blog.

According to Daniel Rossen, sat onstage in front of a notably packed Club Uncut, this is only the second ever ‘proper’ gig by Department Of Eagles. The first, it transpires, saw the band expanded to a five-piece, augmented by a couple of the Dirty Projectors and another of Rossen’s bandmates in Grizzly Bear. This one, though, features just Rossen and his old college room-mate Fred Nicolaus, stripping the crafted chamber folk of their exceptional “In Ear Park” album back down to something rougher, but no less melodically radiant. In the process, a fair bit of Rossen’s McCartneyisms have been lost, but a certain husky intensity has come to the fore, so that when Nicolaus drops out for a song, and he plays “Phantom Other” alone, the directness and engagement is startling. When “In Ear Park” first turned up, I think I wrote something about it being the next logical record to pick up for those who’d been turned on by Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver in 2008; this new wave of bands whose vision of American musical tradition is romantic and highly aestheticised, drenched in harmonies that give them an eerie transcendence rather than the earthy quasi-realism favoured by so many so-called Americana types. Department Of Eagles might not have made the impact of those bands thus far – possibly due, in part, to Rossen having been busy finishing up the next Grizzly Bear record. Here, though, there’s even more evidence that his side-project are eminently capable of seizing some of that Fleet Foxes dollar (Robin Pecknold has been vocal in his support of the band, incidentally, not least on this blog). It’s not just the brittly expansive songs from “In Ear Park” (the opening title track, especially) that are so impressive, nor even the odd song salvaged from their (if memory serves) self-consciously wacky debut: “A Record I don’t want you to know,” says Rossen, candidly enough. Perhaps a bigger hint of their potential comes with a couple of new songs, where their simple sound is bulked up by the deployment of delays and loops. On one, Nicolaus takes the lead, with Rossen layering his own vocals into the sort of ethereal chorus not unlike the multiple Justin Vernons who inhabit the Bon Iver album. For the final encore, those wordless harmonies come right to the fore; a gaseous, gorgeous sound that’s closer to the otherness of Grizzly Bear, or even perhaps Animal Collective. There’s also a cover, of Jojo’s “Too Little, Too Late”, which proves more potent than most indie versions of R&B/pop hits possibly because, up until this morning, I’d never actually heard the original. Before Department Of Eagles, Keith Wood of Hush Arbors stood in the same spot as Nicolaus, looking uncannily similar to him. Wood and Leon Dufficy are another guitar duo who’ve pared down their sound, for the time being at least; from a dense psychedelic thicket, to a dappled and, again, moderately eerie extrapolation of folk tradition. It’s great, too – as their recent self-titled album on Ecstatic Peace suggested. Gentler and more song-oriented than previous shows by them that I’ve caught, the focus is tightly on that new album, with songs like “Rue Hollow” having a frail beauty reminiscent of the first couple of PG Six albums (that song, incidentally, is dedicated by Wood to James Jackson Toth, aka Wooden Wand, another distinct kindred spirit). By “Follow Closely”, Dufficy is playing a kind of low-level freak-out solo, as if from another dimension, or at least from another room. It’s endemic of the subtlety that dominates the whole evening, even in Mr David Viner’s theatrical English take on earlyish Dylan. Viner’s schtick and songcraft has evolved somewhat from his early days as an Anglo satellite of the Detroit garage scene (I first encountered him in Paris, selling merchandise for The Von Bondies), and if there’s a problem here tonight, it’s that his stentorian delivery sometimes detracts from the neatness of his blues fingerpicking. But seeing how he had his mobile phone prominently displayed throughout the set, in case his wife went into labour, we should probably excuse minor quibbles. Good show, again, all round. Next Club Uncut, remember, is January 27, with Delta Spirit and the mighty Crystal Antlers.