We’ve been watching the cricket as usual at Uncut today, but even I’ve noticed that the Olympics have kicked off this afternoon. A useful reminder of this is the fact that an embargo has been lifted this morning on reviewing Damon Albarn’s Monkey CD; the studio recalibration of his Chinese opera, “Monkey: Journey To The West”. With those Jamie Hewlett/Albarn idents for the BBC Olympics coverage and all, a cynic might suspect that some pretty calculated commercial exigencies were being chased here – though of course suggesting as much would be disrespecting a high-minded artist like Damon Albarn, who’d never involve himself with anything so commercially tawdry these days, surely? I imagine, though, that Albarn might be amused that such a clever marketing campaign was pushing the most uncommercial album of his career (apart from "Demo Krazy", or whatever that lo-fi thing was called years back) into the spotlight. For the past few years I’ve been loosely admiring, but generally underwhelmed by the records he’s been involved in, from Blur’s “Think Tank” onwards, probably being one of those people who believe that the antagonistic and mercurial presence of Graham Coxon pushed him to his best work, and also curbed some of his more self-indulgent tendencies. “Journey To The West”, though, is unexpectedly fun. The suspicion, among people like me who haven’t seen the stage show in the past year or so, has largely been that the project is written fairly faithfully in the Chinese opera idiom. But the recorded version, at least, is much less straitjacketed than that. The press release helpfully informs me that Albarn stuck to writing in the typically Chinese pentatonic scale. But the music here also draws mischievously from plenty of electronica, from Krautrock on, and there’s a clear debt to the systems operas of Philip Glass and John Adams (notably, I imagine, to “Nixon In China”, though I must admit I haven’t heard that in years). There’s also Albarn’s finessed melodic sensibilities, though apart from the fairground waltz of “I Love Buddha” – the spit of “The Debt Collector” from “Park Life”, amusingly – it’s unusually hard to find affinities with his back catalogue; Albarn, it should be noted, doesn’t join in with the all-Mandarin vocals. My favourites here are “The Living Sea” and “Heavenly Peach Banquet”, both pivoting around female vocals, that have a glassy, delicate prettiness. All in all, though, it’s a captivating listen. Albarn clearly likes working within the rigid parameters of a prescribed project these days, but it’s still surprising that theoretically the strictest format of all should stimulate him to make his most playful and enjoyable record in years. Still don’t like Jamie Hewlett’s artwork, but I suppose it’s better than Banksy, who did “Think Tank”’s sleeve.

It’s been a weird 18 months or so for Richard Swift, ever since he released a major label concept album, “Dressed Up For The Letdown”, about his previous failures to gain recognition, only to see it flop. I suppose Swift has spent the intervening months desperately trying not to write another bunch of songs about this weird career arc. But instead, his career has taken some pretty eccentric diversions. “Dressed Up For The Letdown” and its predecessors, if you were lucky enough to hear them, placed Swift firmly in the tradition of Harry Nilsson and right next to Rufus Wainwright, an exceptionally talented piano balladeer with a taste for Tin Pan Alley arcana. Of late, though, he’s done everything possible to confound expectations, making one album of mediocre instrumental electronica as Instruments Of Science And Technology, and one cute double-EP thing as Onasis, where he recast himself as a sort of lo-fi garage Dion. This new EP, available for free from EMusic, it seems, moves on the Onasis schtick a little, and is clearly the best Swift product since “Dressed Up” – no coincidence, I guess, that it’s the first since then to come out unambiguously under his own name. It still has the whiff of pastiche hovering over it, especially on the first two tracks, “Would You?” and “Lady Luck”, which seem to be some inauthentically crackly homages to Frankie Valli and Motown. Swift, though, is a better songwriter than he is a mimic, and consequently it’s the artful punch of these songs which is most striking. “The Bully” seems to be a schizophrenic face-off between his street-tough Onasis character and this new, falsetto Valli boy persona. But it’s the last couple of songs, “The Original Thought” and “A Song For Milton Feher”, that suggest Swift hasn’t entirely forsaken his original strengths. Wry piano strolls both, there are still some whimsical acts of sabotage here, not least the analogue synth spray that he lets loose on “The Original Strength”. But it’s the self-deprecating swagger, the tricksy melody, the general air of roistering craftsmanship that’s so impressive. Some two or three years ago, I saw Swift play a bunch of truly awesome songs – maybe one was called “I Am The Ocean”? – that have yet to show up anywhere, as far as I can tell. Maybe now, finally, he can get down to recording those ones?

Twenty minutes before they come on, the crowd’s excitement becomes increasingly palpable, an audible hum, an impatient restlessness swarming through the massed ranks of Drive-By Truckers die-hards pressed hard against the front of the stage and spreading quite contagiously through the serried ranks of the people craning their necks for a better view on the outer perimeter of an impressive turn-out, even thought here’s nothing yet to see, apart from a few scurrying roadies, bumping into things in the dark. I’m standing myself on the fringes of the heaving crowd at this point, and find myself in serial conversation with a number of Uncut readers, some of whom are here not so much because they are veteran fans of The Drive-By Truckers’ back catalogue and great albums like Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day, The Dirty South and A Blessing And A Curse. Interestingly, they’ve come to the DBTs via the recent Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, several of them mentioning Andrew Muller’s Album Of The Month review in Uncut and how his claims for the record made them want to test his contention that, among other things, here was a synthesis of Lynryrd Skynyrd’s authenticity and virtuosity, The Replacement’s whiskey-sodden wit, the social conscience of Bruce Springsteen and the righteous fury of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Unanimously, they’ve been amazed that the record lived up to the advance billing, which they had probably suspected was bluster and hyperbole. They now can’t wait to see if the band can deliver live, which when I bump into some of the same people on the way out, they all, grinningly, agree they do, spectacularly. This is the first time out for the Truckers since the departure of guitarist Jason Isbell, who for a lot of people had become the group’s creative focus, providing some of their best recent songs – the classic “Danko/Manuel” probably my own favourite among them. It was more than a little feared that the departure of such a talented player and songwriter would have impacted fairly calamitously on the band, which point of view in the event has proved entirely unfounded. Founder members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley rallied brilliantly in Isbell’s absence, and with bassist Shonna Tucker also contributing a number of surprisingly terrific songs, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark contains some of the band’s best-ever recorded work. Live, too, Isbell, good as he was, is barely missed, with John Neff on guitar and pedal steel a more than adequate replacement and the band’s fabled three guitar line-up as ferocious tonight as it has ever been, while pianist Jay Gonzalez adds layers to their sound that weren’t previously there, by turns rocking hot and soulful, making you think more than once of Little Feat in their swampy prime. It takes them only a couple of numbers to get into a fearsome stride, the opening “Putting People On the Moon” giving quickly way to “Self- Destructive Zones”, a vintage Cooley romp, by which time they are on all fronts positively blazing. “The Man I Shot” – one of their angriest responses to the war in Iraq, and a highlight of Brighter Than Creation’s Dark - finds the chain-smoking Cooley again in the spotlight, wailing furiously like Neil Young at his most combustible before Hood weighs in with a terrific solo of his own, the pair of them combining again with incendiary consequences on roaring versions of “Where The Devil Don’t Say” and “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac”, before Shonna delivers an exquisitely-wrought “I’m Sorry Houston”. “The Opening Act” and “A Ghost To Most”, meanwhile are aching laments, rueful and sultry, stately and composed compared to the raucously unhinged “The Living Bubba”, brilliantly exhumed from 1998’s Gangstabilly album, and a rowdily delirious run of songs that includes “Dead, Drunk And Naked”, Guitar Man Upstairs”, a howling “Ronnie And Neil”, a version of “3 Dimes Down” that would have sat proudly alongside anything on Exile On Main St, “Homefield Advantage” and a thunderous “Lookout Mountain”. They go off after that, everyone in the room probably deafened, and are gone for so long I wonder if there’s been for some reason not evident in the performance so far some tempestuous falling out backstage. For nigh on what seems like 10 minutes, the crowd, no one really wanting to go home yet, chants for their return, the band finally reappearing for five more songs that keep them onstage for another half-hour, a rugged “Mean Old Highway” melting into a swaggering “The Righteous Path”, which in turn gives way to an unfettered “Shut Your Mouth And Get On The Plane”, a searing “World Of Pain” and, finally, a truly demented version of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” that closes with something approaching the Truckers’ equivalent of My Bloody Valentine’s fabled guitar holocaust on “You Made Me Realise”. This time when they finally quit the stage, Cooley the last of them to go, a bottle of Jack in one hand, the other raised in acknowledgement of the crowd’s chanting roar, there’s no calling them back. They’re gone, now, and so, baby, are we. The Drive-By Truckers played Putting People On The Moon Self-Destructive Zones The Man I Shot Where The Devil Don’t Stay The Company I Keep Carl Perkins' Cadillac I'm Sorry Huston The Opening Act A Ghost To Most The Living Bubba Women Without Whiskey Dead, Drunk And Naked Guitar Man Upstairs Ronnie & Neil 3 Dimes Down Homefield Advantage Lookout Mountain ENCORES Mean Old Highway The Righteous Path Shut Your Mouth And Get On the Plane World Of Hurt People Who Died

Residual indie prejudices can be tough to shake off and, for me, one lingered longer than most: a profound distrust of Fleetwood Mac. I read all the essays about them – and especially about Lindsey Buckingham – where they were extolled as great emotional confessors and discreet musical radicals. But their records always seemed to me the epitome of hollow decadence, redolent of a certain air-conditioned, blow-dried Hollywood vulgarity, the criticism of which is now every bit as clichéd as the original material. Not for the first time, of course, I was wrong. Interestingly, though, the record which provided me with a gateway into Fleetwood Mac was the last Lindsey Buckingham solo album, 2006’s “Under The Skin”. Mainly solo and acoustic, it foregrounded both the meticulous and slightly odd way in which Buckingham constructed songs out of pristine guitar flurries, and the emotional heft which he could still locate, even as a contented, middle-aged family man. The opening “Not Too Late”, for instance, might be one of the more moving instances of a mulit-millionaire superstar grumbling about his lack of credibility I can recall, as he begins, “Reading the paper saw a review / Said I was a visionary, but nobody knew.” You would’ve thought that selling more records than virtually anyone else on the planet in the past 30 years might have provided some kind of consolation. But I suppose one of the reasons Buckingham is so interesting is the way he manages to juggle a desire for artistic integrity with an innate commercial imperative, and how a very heartfelt lyrical character can co-exist with an incredibly fastidious musical style that can so easily sound bloodless. “Gift Of Screws” sees all these diverse aspects of Buckingham in full effect. The title, my little Wiki helpers inform me, was originally given to a Buckingham solo album from the late ‘90s which was never released. Songs from that have been dispersed across the last solo album and Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Will”, as well, presumably, as this one, though I’m not clear on whether they’re re-recordings. I’m not clear because, of course, I know comparatively little about this whole business, but also because Buckingham’s music exists in such a glorious vacuum. What I can tell is that “Gift Of Screws” is the perfect next step for neophytes like me drawn in by “Under The Skin”. There are some gorgeous minimalist pieces that would have sat perfectly on that last record, most notably the rippling, systems-like acoustics and yelps of “Time Precious Time”, which presents Buckingham as an unlikely father figure to the Animal Collective. Then there are a bunch of tracks where he’s backed up by Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, that sound, by his standards huge but relatively unfussy, and betray a desire to re-engage commercially and reassert himself as a serious rocker. Consequently, “The Right Place To Fade” and “Love Runs Deeper” have big swirling Fleetwood Mac-like choruses, and also a weirdly aggressive punch, characterised by Buckingham’s flash and excitable soloing on the latter: not out of control, exactly, but at once fiery and – perhaps more menacing – utterly precise. “Wait For You” is a sort of hygienised but still compelling cousin to “Gimme Shelter”. And the title track is a supercharged, vigorously-focused rocker – with Fleetwood and McVie again onboard – which features Buckingham repeatedly cackling like a deranged rooster. It’s very odd, and very good, too. So anyway: I have a bunch of old Fleetwood Mac albums, I’ve a soft spot for “Tusk”, but does anyone fancy guiding me straight to the stuff I might like best?