Of all the guitarists associated with the Takoma School, it’s hard to think of one who imbued folk music with quite as much mystical portent as Robbie Basho. 1978’s “Visions Of The Country”, his tenth album, is a fantastic case in point: “I would paint for you a portrait of North America as a beautiful woman,” he wrote in the original sleevenotes, “when she was young and untamed.”

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, a big backlog of music to work through here. And while I try and offer some fractionally different recommendations away from the usual media pile-ons (Oh look, Haim etc), this Janelle Monáe album is terrific and I totally recommend having a listen on The Guardian’s stream: very much in the zone of “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill” (especially “Victory”).

I guess there are probably worse jobs to return to after a fortnight’s holiday. I arrived back in the Uncut office yesterday to be greeted by a big pile of new releases, which I’m still picking my way through. Currently playing: Track Two of Damon’s reissued “Song Of A Gypsy” – “Generally regarded,” it says here in the press release, “as one of the finest privately-pressed psychedelic rock records” of the late ‘60s. We shall see.

No sooner has one Mark Kozelek album turned up than, ridiculously, another one is announced. www.caldoverderecords.com claims another Sun Kil Moon album is due January 14 next year, also featuring Steve Shelley, Jen Wood, Will Oldham and Owen Ashworth. In even less a shock, it promises that Kozelek “sings about his childhood years and his life today.”

For all his flailing locks and dazed expression, Ty Segall does not make a particularly convincing slacker. In a short promotional clip for his new album, released on Youtube back in May, he pretends to be asleep in bed, on his couch, in a garden and then, preposterously, up a tree and at the wheel of a moving van.

Reading a magazine this morning, I noticed that there are a bunch of tribute shows to Elliott Smith coming up; ostensibly I guess to commemorate the fact that, horrifyingly, the tenth anniversary of his death is coming up in a couple of months.

Nuts week. A lot to recommend and check out here, including plenty of Youtube and Soundcloud links. Among the auspicious comebacks, one that’s slightly obscured is Cavern Of Anti-Matter, who feature Tim Gane and his old bandmate from the first Stereolab lineup, Joe Dilworth.

I was reading this interesting Wilco piece a few days ago, which talks about how Jeff Tweedy has parlayed cult success into what appears to be a viable business model. It made me think of the strategies used by Mark Kozelek these past few years: how he keeps a steady stream of music, predominantly live albums, coming through his Caldo Verde label to satisfy his obsessive fans (and I suspect Kozelek fans tend to be by nature obsessive; I know I am).

The cover image of Promised Land Sound’s debut album, an old Nashville street map, clearly asserts the geographic and aesthetic loyalties of Sean Thompson, Joey Scala, Evan Scala and Ricardo Alesio, and their press biog has the requisite classy endorsement from local grandee Jack White's Third Man Records.

The new issue of Uncut should be in UK shops today, with an exclusive in-depth look at the new entry in Dylan’s Bootleg Series, plus Nilsson, Canned Heat, Morrissey, Armando Iannucci, Linda Thompson, Julianna Barwick and, I’m particularly pleased to say, Rocket From The Crypt. More here…