Swirl

One lush masterpiece, and its inscrutable follow-up, reissued with extras...

I was reading over this interview with Robert Wyatt today, thinking about “The Ghosts Within”, and about how he flourishes as a collaborator with friends, but not as a bandmember. “The trouble with a band is I can’t take orders and I can’t give orders,” he said around the time of “Comicopera”. “So there’s no comfortable role for me in a band, whereas on a project I think, well, if they’ve asked me I shall try and do whatever it is they’ve imagined me doing. As close as possible. There’s no pressure on me. I try and do what they want.”

Leering drone-rock from Cave & co. Good dirty fun...

Still passionate. Still rocking. But now in some pretty hip company. Yes, Richard Ashcroft is back...

On their dark, downbeat third album, the former goodtime rockers have got it bad...

Midlife crisis! Ben Stiller breaks new ground in droll comedy-drama set in the LA suburbs...

he ready for the country? Alabama native meets Willie Nelson, cuts mellow-rockin’, confident fifth....

Read Uncut's verdict on the New Yorkers sophomore album!

Jack White’s Third Man cottage industry has produced a bit of a mixed bag of releases in 2009, with the highlight thus far (of those I’ve heard, anyhow) being his own solo seven-inch, “Fly Farm Blues”. The whole disdain he seems to have for standard record company practise, the sense that decisions are made on a creative whim, is really admirable. But it can’t hide the fact that singles by, say, a local gospel group, Transit, haven’t been hugely compelling.

Lavish, four-disc, 40th-anniversary version of their definitive live album