Blogs

We have a couple of reviews of last week's extraordinary Leonard Cohen shows up on the Uncut site.

Episode Three of our judge's discussions, and today we find them discussing Drive-By Truckers. Tomorrow, The Felice Brothers.

Leonard Cohen comes on stage at a veritable trot, almost skipping, more sprightly by a distance than you would expect of a man in his mid-seventies. The crowd, who have clearly come to adore him, reward his athleticism with a standing ovation. It’s the first of many tonight, although the others that follow are for performances of songs from his majestic back catalogue that are played to something we’d have to call perfection.

Gentle readers of UNCUT, you can rest easy. While large chunks of the Internet seem obsessed with quite how slavishly close to the original Zack Snyder’s treatment of Watchmen, the Holy Grail of modern comics, will be, I think we can permit ourselves a small smile. Bob Dylan, it seems, is a fan.

As promised, the judges' prevarications over the Uncut Music Award shortlist continue today. Here's what they said about the Elbow record. Monday, I'll post the Drive-By Truckers discussions.

As promised, here are the judges discussing Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago". Tomorrow, find out what they had to say about Elbow.

Finally, we're pleased to announce that the winners of the first Uncut Music Award are Fleet Foxes for their debut album, "Fleet Foxes". Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be posting transcripts of the judges' deliberations here. Today, we start with the judges' summing-up. . .

The first time I heard Eagles Of Death Metal, I was backstage at a festival in Bologna, trying to interview Queens Of The Stone Age even though Josh Homme, dancing like a menacing and mildly suggestive uncle, was more interested in playing me his new side project.

It seems like much longer than a year since Cat Power’s “Jukebox” album was released; one of those January albums, maybe, that are unfairly forgotten when the end-of-year accounting is done. A handy reminder, though, comes with this lovely six-track EP of covers, culled from the same sessions, that acts as a kind of book-end to the year.

I was thinking the other day about live albums, specifically those ones where crowd noise takes over: things, I guess, like Suicide’s “23 Minutes Over Brussels” and that “Black Sabbath Riot” record that came out a few years ago (was it something to do with Alec Empire? I can’t remember).