Swirl

A bit frustrating this week, since I can't really talk about a couple of the most significant musical arrivals here, due to record label embargoes and so forth. Sorry, as ever, about the teasing: I'll reveal more as soon as I can.

No point in messing about this week: scroll down to hear new music from, among others, Neil Young, Cool Ghouls, Bryan Ferry, Frazey Ford, Kendrick Lamar, Joan Shelley and the extremely promising D.D. Dumbo, plus a couple of amazing full gigs from Hiss Golden Messenger and a Purling Hiss/Spacin' supersession, both courtesy of the invaluable www.nyctaper.com.

Weird serendipities aplenty this week: versions of "O, Death" on two albums I downloaded one after another, by Mike & Cara Gangloff and Bessie Jones; dovetailing into Sea Island overlap between Jones and Loscil. It makes for a nice blurring between time and genre with, say, the Gangloffs using esoteric strategies to achieve a similar kind of transcendence that Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers reach through more orthodox, albeit uncommonly raw, Gospel routes in these Lomax recordings from the early '60s.

Thanks for all the nice feedback about the Liam Hayes/Plush piece I wrote earlier in the week. Lots of other good new arrivals in the list here, and you could do worse than start off by listening to the Cool Ghouls from San Francisco, especially if you're interested in the Allah-Las, the Ty Segall axis, Nuggets ad nauseam and so on.

I received an email last week from an old college friend, with a link to the Souncloud page of Liam Hayes & Plush, and an amused/irate message along the lines of, "One of your two jobs in life was meant to be to flag me when he releases anything/makes any move out of his lair."

Robert Plant on Led Zeppelin, his solo career and more...

Kate Bush last night (August 26) made her return to stage after a 35 year absence in a show that begun as a typical concert but evolved into a theatrical spectacular. This report contains spoilers. The three-hour show saw Bush recreate the second side of her classic 1985 album Hounds Of Love as a fully realised stage production, with theatrical sets, costumes, effects and lighting. The same treatment was then given to the second side of her 2005 album Aerial.

Her studio secrets revealed! “There were no rules or barriers, it was just pure creativity…”

I know it’s not over… The Moz enters a gripping new, possibly climactic, career phase...

What strange music Jack White makes these days. At the end of this hot, compelling, tempestuous show, he stands triumphantly on a monitor, guitar held high above head like the hammer of Thor, every inch the conquering stadium rocker.