Another issue in the bag yesterday, which'll be in UK shops on August 26, and which features, if you're in the mood for guessing games, someone who's never been on our cover before.

As you've hopefully seen now, this month's issue of Uncut has a revealing piece about Richard & Linda Thompson's "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight", timed to tie in with that great album's 40th anniversary and its vinyl reissue, plus a burst of Thompson activity that includes a show at the End Of The Road Festival at the end of the month. "It is what it is and I like what it is," he calls the album in the piece, somewhat self-effacingly, "and there's a lot of stuff out there that I've done that I like less. That being said, it sold about 30 copies."

After a week away, I've been catching up these past few days, and also trying to remember what I talked about before I went on holiday. Best place to start, maybe, is the Natalie Prass record that Matthew E White has been sitting on for well over a year (he played me some of it at Spacebomb in March 2013). Fantastic song, which I described on Twitter as a kind of nuts Anita Baker/Willie Mitchell/Feist/Charles Stepney thing with a beat that would've been samplefood for Dre 15 yrs ago. Sticking with that for now. Also the red kite feather we found on holiday in Avebury feels serendipitous.

Tom Waits, as you probably know, is right about most things and amusingly duplicitous about most others. He is not, though, infallible. In October 1985, NME's Gavin Martin met Waits at a diner on New York's Lower West Side, for an interview squeezed in between Sunday babysitting duties and a visit from the in-laws.

There's a song on this new Purling Hiss album, playing again now, that sounds more or less like "Debaser" played by Dinosaur Jr. Along with the intensely spirited debut by Mary Timony's Ex-Hex and a comp of the pre-Beachwood Sparks, Sebadoh-indebted Further, it feels a little like College Rock revisited week. Deep late '80s/early '90s vibes, good times etc.

One of the many privileges and occasional disorientations of working for a monthly music mag is that we hear some music so far ahead of release that it can be easy to forget when the albums actually come out. So while the world of Ty Segall-related projects might have moved on here to the monstrous Wand album (out on Segall's God imprint in late August), it's instructive to remember that Segall's own "Manipulator", which we've had for a while, isn't out 'til then, either.

A bit of a manic week, for various reasons, not least the fact that we've finished two magazines: the next issue of Uncut, which should be coming your way on July 29; and an Ultimate Music Guide dedicated to the genius of…

It is hard to tell where Neil Young and what we can just about call Crazy Horse end their main set in Hyde Park, Saturday night. "Rockin' In The Free World" has spluttered to a conclusion, of sorts, and the band appear to have left the stage. Then, you notice Young remains amidst the debris, pointing agitatedly at the word printed across his new t-shirt: "EARTH".

Last week, just as I was finishing off the 25th playlist of the year, the new Steve Gunn album arrived. This week, the last-minute radical guitar hero is Chris Forsyth, whose first studio album with the Solar Motel Band is absolutely killing it as I type.

I've been playing the new Jeff Tweedy album, "Sukierae", a good deal these past few weeks - or, I should say, the new Tweedy album, since these quietly wired tracks are, strictly speaking, collaborations between the Wilco man and his eldest son, Spencer. I'm slowly beginning to think it might be the best studio album he's been involved with since "A Ghost Is Born".