I was reading my blog on Super Furry Animals’ “Hey Venus” the other day, and noticed a comment that the band were working on two other albums for imminent release, albums that’d put the tidy poppiness of “Hey Venus” into quite a different context. Like so many talked-up projects in that vein, nothing seemed to come of them. But the new Super Furry Animals album, “Dark Days/Light Years” feels very much like the yang to the yin of “Hey Venus”.

Fairly quick one today, as I’m trying to write a longish review of the new Leonard Cohen album, “Live In London”, for the next issue of Uncut and have a couple of old Cohen live albums here on my desk that need re-examining – once I get past the formidable distraction of the new Super Furry Animals album (more of that later in the week), that is.

We're having some grief, yet again, posting news stories to www.uncut.co.uk, so I thought I should share this fairly auspicious news here: the details of Neil Young's new album, "Fork In The Road", and the first dates of what smells suspiciously like a full UK tour, possibly constructed around a certain major summer festival.

Nearly a year ago now, I posted a blog about Wooden Shjips live, when they played with Howlin Rain and The Meat Puppets in London. They were superb, and I’m pleased to say that their psychedelic dancehall schtick has been totally realised on “Dos”, their upcoming third album, which has burning itself onto my synapses these past ten days or so.

Not exactly an online exclusive today, since Raphael Saadiq’s third solo album has been out in the States since last autumn and has reaped plenty of Grammy noms and critical plaudits in the interim. Still, I guess late love is better than none at all, and “The Way I See It” is a lovely record.

Swedish duo First Aid Kit stand onstage - sleeves pulled over hands, hands behind their backs - like two awkward schoolgirls at a music recital.

According to someone nearby, Richard Swift’s band look like they’ve just come off a trawler – the sort of image I aspire to, obviously. They sound, however, quite different: at this point, uncannily like a soul harmony group, somewhere between The Miracles and The Stylistics.

I have a default rant about the parlous state of most modern British folk which I wheel out here every couple of months or so. Jim Moray and Seth Lakeman are unfailingly indicted, and Alasdair Roberts is held up as the excellent exception which proves the rule. It’s nice, then, to be presented with a new Alasdair Roberts album, “Spoils”, to justify my prejudices.

Thanks for all your suggestions regarding your favourite blogs. I’ve finally got around to putting together a list here - not 100 per cent sold on all of these, but they’re pretty good. Again, if you know any nice ones we’ve missed, please let us know in the comment box at the bottom of the blog.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about dying recently,” says Philip Seymour Hoffman’s neurotic theatre director Caden Cotard early on. And, certainly, you could be forgiven for thinking that the odds were stacked against him. Within the first half hour of Synecdoche, New York, there are enough portents of doom lurking around you’d think you were watching a tragedy, were it all not so funny.