I was thinking last night about the first time I saw The White Stripes. It was spring 2001, and I was in LA to interview Queens Of The Stone Age. The night before I met up with Josh Homme, I went to the Troubadour to see this duo who were just starting to be talked about a lot by some of the smarter music business people back home. They were amazing, of course, and I came back home and wrote a review for NME saying something like they were the best band in the world. They had such charisma, such presence, such virtuosity, such wonderful tunes. But I found it hard to imagine that such a compact, wild band could ever be huge. Surely Jack and Meg White would get lost when they were put on a big festival stage, for instance. Well, I got that wrong. Tonight The White Stripes sound huge. We are at Wireless, the festival in Hyde Park where pushy men try and flog you credit cards rather than drugs. The bill today is largely packed with great screes of corporate indie tosh, although apparently The Only Ones were pretty good (I think Farah is going to write something about this later on the Festivals blog). Things improve, though, when the Queens arrive. Initially, the set is pretty similar to the 100 Club gig I reviewed here a few weeks ago. But "Sick Sick Sick" now sounds even better, a great example of the way Josh Homme (who I turned on to The White Stripes, if I can show off for a second; he went to see them the night after me on that LA trip, since I raved about them so much in our interview) and his latest accomplices have mastered a sort of precision derangement. The most entertaining of these is the new bassist, who's like an excitable puppy alongside such road-hardened pros (the new keyboard guy, incidentally, is Dean Fertita, who played alongside Jack White in The Raconteurs). There's a strange moment in "Feel Good Hit Of The Summer", when he's called upon to give the bloodcurdling "COCAINE!" shout, and he does this exuberant, shrill impression of Nick Oliveri. All good, though, especially, as ever, "Song For The Dead". Homme's steely purpose is quite a contrast to the spur-of-the-moment ragings of Jack White. But tonight, he seems comparatively businesslike. Last time I saw the Stripes play was at Alexandra Palace on the "Get Behind Me Satan" tour, on a night when Jack was in a foul mood about something NME had written. It was a slashing, tempestuous set that threatened to spiral out of control, even when he was playing the marimba. Tonight, though, he's commanding and, though clearly inspired, relatively businesslike. The epic shredding of "Death Letter"/"Motherless Children" is stunning, but he no longer ends it on his back by the drum riser. A summer of hard touring has evidently inspired him to conserve his energy a little. But he's far from restrained in this fabulous, surprisingly hit-packed set. No matter how many times I see The White Stripes, they still have a freshness, as if I somehow forget how good they are. It's a grand spectacle tonight: giant screens replay the action through a red and white filter, playing out those little face-offs between Jack and the eternally serene Meg on a massive scale. There are only three songs from "Icky Thump" - the broiling "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" and "I'm A Martyr For My Love For You", plus an incendiary version of the title track. At this point, Jack is playing guitar and synth simultaneously, and it's hard to tell which sounds are coming out of which instrument. That big riff is pure Jimmy Page, as I said in my review here. But that free splutter is very Hendrix tonight. And whilst this might be a fractionally more controlled Stripes, the melodramatic highs can still be strikingly torrid: "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" is staggering here, especially. On the way home, I go past Marble Arch, and it's draped in red and white Stripes livery, a big daft bit of showing off which is actually rather impressive. And you know what? They deserve nothing less. Oh yeah, our friends at NME have a setlist and some other news about the show here. Enjoy!

... Or: Where's this year's Great American Indie flick? After the treatment meted out to Spiderman 3 and Pirates Of The Caribbean 3, you could be forgiven for thinking that, of late, my blog has become something of a both-barrel assault on the woeful ineptitudes of this year's crop of Hollywood blockbusters. Truth is, I'm waiting to find some indie jewel that I can switch you onto, write about with the kind of warmth and enthusiasm that characterises John's excellent introductions to new music over on his Wild Mercury Sound blog. This Is England and The Lives Of Others have both proved to be fine non-Hollywood movies that've made an impact on me, but 2007 has been conspicuously bereft -- so far at least -- of a film with the charm or originality or just plan weirdness of a Little Miss Sunshine, Brick and Shortbus. Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen three indies for which I had significantly high hopes. They'll all be reviewed fully in UNCUT nearer their release dates, but I wanted to take a break from covering the relentless churn of sub-standard blockbusters, change gear for a while. Sherrybaby, which opens on July 27, stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as an ex-junkie, just out jail, who wants desperately to reconnect with her daughter and get on with her life. Inevitably, the path to salvation is not an easy one. The film itself is slight, but Gyllenhaal's raw, unshowy performance proves that, as ever, she's one of her generation's finest actors. There's a New Zealand movie, Eagle Vs Shark (August 17), which firmly locates itself in the tradition of Napleon Dynamite -- a film I must admit to being completely underwhelmed by when I first saw it at Sundance a few years back, and an opinion that hasn't changed with subsequent viewings. It's about a pair socially-inept misfits who fall in love. It feels self-consciously quirky, but there's a certain oddball charm working in its favour, and there's enough laughs to buoy it along. Last night, I saw Hallam Foe (August 31), Jamie Bell's first British film since Billy Elliot. Bell's post-Billy CV is characterised by frequently brave choices, running from Dear Wendy to Undertow, and this rather strange story of a teenager traumatised by his mother's death who takes to spying on family and neighbours is another decidedly offbeat career move. I've got a few issues with the third act, where he falls in love with a girl (Sophia Myles) who looks exactly like his late mother -- but despite my qualms this is a pretty uncompromising movie, topped off by a fine soundtrack from the estimable chaps at Domino records. So, what films are you looking forward to seeing later this year? I'm certainly excited about The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and The Bourne Ultimatum, but what about you? As ever, let me know.

I know this is going to sound a bit churlish, but is it wrong to expect a very good band to really extend themselves? I ask because, for the past week or so, I've been playing the new Super Furry Animals album most days. It's lovely, without a doubt. But for some reason, it leaves me fractionally disappointed - as if them coming up with another 11 fine songs is somehow not quite good enough. "Hey Venus" is, I think, consciously unambitious. Rather than some kind of epic, genre-straddling, state-of-the-world address, it's direct, catchy, guitar pop, economic in length (a swift 36 minutes). There are some opulent orchestral arrangements, but on songs like "Show Your Hand" even the French horn clarion calls sound jaunty rather than portentous. Much here sounds like a small reaction to the leisurely excesses of the last SFA album, "Love Kraft". The longest song is less than five minutes, and most are a minute or two shorter than that. There are certainly a couple of gorgeous, ambling ballads in the "Love Kraft" vein - notably "Suckers", "Wolves" (a bit like "Run Christian Run", now I think about it) and "Show Your Hand", a sort of cosmic Bacharach trip. But the frazzled stomps that dominate here - "Neo Consumer", "Into The Night", "Baby Ate My Eightball" - mark a return to the simple punch of "Fuzzy Logic", albeit with richer and more skilful instrumentation. There's that curious take they have on glam back again, so that "Runaway" feels like something ersatz and Spectorised from about 1974 - like The Rubettes, as one of my colleagues pointed out the other day. Only good, obviously. The opening "Gateway Song" is a clear indication of SFA's group mindset right now: 45 seconds of joyful, dumb catchiness designed to get you hooked. And it works, up to a point. Listening to "Hey Venus" is a deeply pleasurable experience, but maybe it's a tiny bit undemanding. I don't mean to go into some rant about how rock must have gravitas and be challenging for it to succeed: I don't believe that. But there's a nagging disappointment that a band with so many ideas should ostensibly be going over old ground. Maybe, too, I feel it's time for Super Furry Animals to really stretch themselves. We know they can write lush, playful, jingly pop songs and dreaming saturated ballads in their sleep, but we also know that they can do more than that: the countless live shows I've seen them play over the past decade have proved that time and time again. Am I being too tough on them? Maybe: let me know what you think.