A couple of months ago here, I raved some about a self-titled album on Woodsist by White Fence, who turned out to be a guy from LA called Tim Presley with some kind of connection to The Strange Boys. I neglected to mention, however, that Presley was also the leader of another band, Darker My Love, who I’d never really heard, to be honest. I suspect the gothic implications of the name put me off.

Business as usual today after yesterday’s somewhat neurotic post. Many thanks to Dave C for hooking us up with a killer Endless Boogie jam from Primavera, which I’m in the thick of as I type.

Funny how some records take a while to bed in, no matter how much you play them, nor how often people you trust tell you how good they are. I’ve had something of an uncharacteristic writer’s block for the past week or so (hence the shortage of blogs; sorry about that), but when we had another go at the Avi Buffalo album yesterday, a few thoughts crystallised.

When a bunch of musicians start hanging out, journalists have always been keen on anointing a new scene. The musicians themselves, of course, are usually determined to run a mile from stifling classifications. They’re not a movement, they’ll almost invariably claim, they just happen to be good friends.

As I maybe mentioned the other week, I’ll put some stuff up here soon about the whole ongoing Great Lost Albums thing. It also occurred this morning, though, that I should have a crack at a 2010 halftime Top 20 or 30, as I managed last year.

To Dalston, and Barden’s Boudoir, where Sir Richard Bishop is brandishing a magic stick, with a feather on the end of it, that has been balanced precariously on Ben Chasny’s amp for the duration of Rangda’s show. As ever with Bishop, it’s hard to tell whether he’s drawing on or satirising a world of arcane knowledge. Powerful forces are undoubtedly at work here, but maybe that’s just down to the kinetic virtuosity of Bishop, Chasny and Chris Corsano.

One of my highlights at Club Uncut last year was an epic show by Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile, which spiralled off into some phenomenally unstructured solo reveries, during which Vile seemed to be carving an unusual and comparatively original new space for folkish singer-songwriters.

A good week for new arrivals, actually, though there is one record here that, somewhat unexpectedly, I never want to hear again. Hopefully you’ve got your hands on the new issue and the “Transition Transmission” CD; pretty nice one, I think.

Apologies that blogs were a bit thin on the ground last week: as I maybe mentioned, I got pretty caught up in collating your Great Lost Albums into a Top 50 to run in the issue out at the end of June. A surfeit of great stuff there, and I’ll post some of your suggestions that didn’t make the 50 here in a couple of weeks or so.

An email over the weekend from Mark Golley, who's gone over to the States to catch a few dates on the solo tour Neil Young's doing with Bert Jansch in support. It's really interesting stuff about Young's latest capricious and intriguing career swerve - "performance and spook in equal measure" - so I figured that, with Mark's permission, I'd reprint it here.