One of the best shows I think we’ve hosted at Club Uncut last night, thanks to Baltimore’s regal Arbouretum. I raved about their third album, “Song Of The Pearl”, back at the start of the year, and from the grand start of “Another Hiding Place” onwards, it’s clear they’re an unassumingly wonderful band.

It was with a degree of amazement that I received a new album by Liam Hayes & Plush a couple of weeks ago. Most people who’ve followed Hayes’ progress over the past 15 years didn’t expect “Bright Penny” to be finished for another few years, even though, technically, the last Plush album came out in 2002.

A few records that have slipped through the net and deserve a mention today, I think, beginning with Sharon Van Etten’s spectral “Because I Was In Love” on Drag City.

A reminder, first off, that the excellent Arbouretum will finally be playing Club Uncut, next Monday, July 27, at the Lexington on Pentonville Road. Full details here, if you’re interested.

Apologies for the delay in posting this review; among other other things, I’ve been distracted by moderating one of the strangest and busiest threads we’ve ever had on www.uncut.co.uk.

Beth Jeans Houghton tiptoes into the centre of Borders from behind a shelf of graphic novels, accompanied by her drummer. Wearing a black, almost-dinner dress that fans at her waist and a precarious pair of heels that could quite easily constitute a health and safety risk, her striking look is topped off by a yellow and blue striped hat with peak.

A big mention first off for our coverage from the Latitude Festival, which should be kicking off any minute now. The Uncut team will be blogging pretty much non-stop for the next three days, so please keep an eye on our dedicated blog for the first reviews of Thom Yorke, Nick Cave, Spiritualized and so on.

It came as something of a surprise the other day to discover that it’s been something like eight years since Jim O’Rourke released a new solo album. In the interim, he’s not been entirely quiet, as involvement with Sonic Youth and the Loose Fur project with Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche, as well as sundry other lower-profile activities prove.

Over the next few weeks, there’s probably going to be a lot of words expended on how much the Arctic Monkeys have radically changed on this, “Humbug”, their third album. There’ll be a lot about the influence of Josh Homme, about the lack of perceived immediate hits and so on. Plenty of more parochial music fans may well see “Humbug” as a Great British band absolving their local cultural responsibilities and becoming seduced with America and the desert rock sound nurtured so assiduously by Homme over the past decade and a half.

As you can see, plenty of interesting new things have turned up since I last posted a playlist, not least new albums from Jim O’Rourke and, amazingly, Os Mutantes. This week’s problem, though, is the immense distraction of two wonderful-sounding new boxsets from Rhino; one dedicated to Big Star, the other a four-CD set called “LA Nuggets”.