Blogs

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.

More talk from the judges today, as they get to grips with the debut from Vampire Weekend.

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.

And here we are with the judges on Radiohead. Next up, Vampire Weekend.

Today, the judges get to grips with The Raconteurs. Radiohead coming up tomorrow.

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.

I must admit a line in the press release reeled me into this one. Jesca Hoop, originally from California, worked “for five years as nanny to the children of Tom Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan. ‘Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night,’ Waits reckons.

And on we go with the judges' discussions. Today: The Felice Brothers. Tomorrow: Fleet Foxes.

A strange moment, on Friday night. Sitting somewhere quite close to the roof of the O2 Arena, it seems to me as if several thousand people are singing, simultaneously, in a scarcely-audible whisper. Onstage, Leonard Cohen and his extraordinary band are playing “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”, with a softness, precision and clarity that I can rarely recall hearing at an arena show.