As our recent Uncut playlists probably make clear, we’ve been happily overwhelmed by a glut of Big Star-related material over the past few weeks, beginning of course with the hefty “Keep An Eye On The Sky” boxset.

In the email newsletter I send out every Monday (you can subscribe to it on www.uncut.co.uk), I wrote about the number of great gigs looming over the next few weeks, starting tonight, in fact, with The Hold Steady at the Islington Academy. I'm going to that, but wasn't sure how many of the others shows I'd be able to make it to. I therefore invited any readers of the newsletter who had either recently seen or were going to see any of the bands I mentioned to write in with their thoughts on the gig.

Over the past few weeks, there have been a bunch of albums, much anticipated, that I’ve found hard to get into, at best, or slightly disappointing, at worst. In the midst of these frustrations, the second Fuck Buttons album, “Tarot Sport”, has acted like a kind of big, cleansing blast.

In what now seems, somewhat miraculously, to be an annual free-pass for self-indulgence, I’ve been allowed to compile another one of my psych CDs to come free with the new issue of Uncut; the one with The Who on the cover, hence the CD’s pretty arbitrary title, “Seeing For Miles”.

Traditionally, August is something of a slow news month. Anything, however apparently inappropriate, seems to be used to fill in valuable airtime or column space during the holiday season. You might, for instance, have happened to hear yesterday morning Evan Davies interviewing august cricket commentator Henry Blofeld on the BBC’s flagship radio news programme Today about whether he’d prefer to commentate on the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships. Today, it seems everyone’s got in a palaver about Avatar, James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic of which 15 minutes was shown during a series of screenings rolled out at hundreds of cinemas round the world.

Some promo CDs come with a serious layer of security to prevent piracy and leaks: a special watermark which means the music can be traced back to a specific numbered disc if it finds its way onto the internet. You can often see the point of these heavy manners, especially when an album that may well sell millions arrives early in the Uncut office.

Thanks to everyone who made it down to the Wooden Shjips show last night, not least of course the band themselves. A very hot and ecstatic night at Club Uncut, and it was pretty clear that this is a band who are really - and deservedly - loved by their fans.

When the last Om album, “Pilgrimage”, came out, I made some kind of borderline lazy crack about it being virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor. Not much danger of being able to do that with “God Is Good”, this time.

In the world of modern garage rock, Greg Cartwright seems to be a figure on a par with Mick Collins: multiple bands of fluid personnel; labyrinthine career history; general fiery habit of cranking it out and moving on.

Since Sufjan Stevens became the poster boy for a certain kind of American indie fan, there’s been no little speculation about what grand project he’s going to embark on next: which State might be worked over so fastidiously; whether the album about birds might ever come to fruition.