X clan

Re-isue of Costello classic to coincide with career spanning compliation

Yep, I guess it's that Ecstatic Peace time of the week again. Today's offering from Thurston Moore's imprint - maybe my favourite label of 2007, certainly the one I've written about most - is the jamming new album by Connecticut's Magik Markers.

I guess there are a few recurring subjects on Wild Mercury Sound, little hives of activity that I seem to keep visiting again and again. Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label is one, and I need to tell you about the mighty new Magik Markers LP sometime soon. But the extended, diverse and interwoven Thompson and Wainwright folk dynasties is definitely another.

Tempestuous marriage of rock and radiophonics on remastered experimental gem

Bruce Willis is back, blowing up everything in sight, in this old school summer blockbuster

COLD WAR KIDS Christian rock may sound distinctly unpalatable, but Californian quartet Cold War Kids have achieved both critical credibility and a massive fan base while singing (obliquely) about such subjects as sexual abstinence, teetotalism and original sin.

Out of all the burger-chain owning, cigar-chewing Eighties' action heroes, Bruce Willis was always the one I had the most time for.

Looking for facts in Nick Cave lyrics is a bit of a dumb game. If you were to take everything he's said at face value, he'd have been dead long ago: hanged for murder, perhaps, at some point in the 19th Century.

You’ll have to excuse me if I sound as hoarse as a hacksaw this morning and seem more than a little rough around the edges, but I am in slow recovery from an extraordinary night in the company of The Hold Steady, who for today at least are officially the best rock’n’roll band on the planet.

The Ice Queen sets sail: The Marble Index and Desertshore on two CDs, plus demos and out-takes