Of course the practicalities of listening to music in the Uncut office shouldn’t concern you much, but it’s worth noting that for some weeks, possibly months now, we’ve been grappling with the new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album, “Beware”, widely proclaimed as one of his best ever and yet, round these parts at least, treacherously hard to hear properly.

Sad news this morning, inevitably overshadowed in the UK by all the Brits bullshit, that Touch & Go Records are to cease putting out new music (not sure where that leaves, say, the forthcoming Crystal Antlers album, for a start). A slight unhappy coincidence, in that this morning I was playing a new record which has distinct ties to the ‘80s post-hardcore from which Touch & Go emerged, allbeit closer ones to the SST sound of that time.

Next Tuesday (February 24), as I’ve probably mentioned before, we have Richard Swift playing Club Uncut, so it strikes me as professionally exigent to get to grips today with his new album, “The Atlantic Ocean”.

Annual Eurosonic festival indicates the future festival circuits hits coming your way

I can’t pretend to know why Hot Snakes split up a year or so back, but listening to Night Marchers and, now, Obits, it doesn’t seem likely to have been much in the way of musical differences. Obits, for those of you not quite up to speed with the complexities of US punk rock’n’roll, are the new band formed by Hot Snakes/Drive Like Jehu frontman Rick Froberg after his old bandmates, lead by John Reis, headed off to become The Night Marchers.

I suppose, after all these years, I should be able to spot when PJ Harvey is taking the piss. But sometimes, as on the new PJ Harvey & John Parish album, “A Woman A Man Walked By”, the line between bravura self-parody and slightly daft self-indulgence can be hard to identify.

The first thing I heard this morning when I got into the office was the news that Lux Interior of The Cramps had died. As a tip of the hat in fond farewell, here's another entry from my regular Stop Me. . . column, from 1980, when The Cramps supported The Police on the Italian leg of their first world tour.

Sorry for the spoiler in the title, but Yo La Tengo’s temporary reinvention as a bunch of garage rockers from New London, Connecticut is pretty easy to unpick. The press release suggests that the fragrantly-named “Fuckbook” is the Condo Fucks’ sixth album (the previous five all appear to have been given Matador catalogue numbers).

Something of an adventure getting into work today, and I appear to be alone at Uncut for the moment. Helping me on the yomp through the snow, however, were a couple of quietly magical records on Time-Lag that I’ve got hold of recently.

I’ve just finished a longish review of this new Bill Callahan album, “Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle”, for the next issue of Uncut, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much here; save some adjectives, maybe, for the magazine. It is, though, one of the best records Callahan has made in what’s now a reasonably long, generally underestimated career.