Much as I love the TV On The Radio album, I wonder sometimes if all the hype surrounding David Sitek might be a bit out of hand. For a start, reading some of the stories about “Dear Science”, you’d be forgiven for imagining that he made the entire record single-handed, when in fact virtually all the songwriting was handled by the band’s vocalists and, perhaps, creative heart, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone.
We now have the entire judges' deliberations over who should win the Uncut Music Award posted here on this blog, so I thought it might be useful to provide links to all the separate posts in one place. I was prompted, in part, by this message from Terry, who did all the recording and transcribing for us.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds began their British tour last night with an occasionally scrappy, but ultimately triumphant 19-song set at the Brighton Centre in Cave’s adopted hometown – a fact he addressed with repeated thanks to “the beautiful people of Brighton”.
I know I wrote something a bit snide about the whole “Tips For 2009” business the other day. But then, when dutifully and only slightly hypocritically compiling my submission to the BBC poll, I found myself – hugely hypocritically, I suppose – tipping one of the doubtless most-tipped tips of 2009, Florence And The Machine.
It’s still a few days before the next issue of Uncut comes out, but I think I can let slip that REM’s “Accelerate”, while being included in our writers’ Top 50 Albums Of 2008 chart, didn’t actually make it into the Top 40. A disappointing showing for such a hyped “return to form”, maybe.
Driving home from the Leonard Cohen show on Friday night, I looked in my bag for something suitable to put on the car stereo, and settled fairly quickly on the new Fennesz album, “Black Sea”.
Day Five, and we get to Fleet Foxes, and the judges' conversation which resulted in them winning the first Uncut Music Award. Tomorrow, by the way, The Raconteurs.