Neil Young, like Dylan, has a lot to live up to. Most obviously, he has to contend with his own reputation, and the expectations of his audience: two things which are not entirely compatible.

It’s a strange thing that, as Mark Lanegan becomes more ubiquitous, his own material seems to be scarcer and scarcer. Since Lanegan’s last solo album, the fine “Bubblegum”, came out in 2004, his voice has been everywhere, but his substance has been hard to track down.

As a general rule, music doesn’t have that much of a nostalgic function for me. Without sounding too bloodless, I’m only interested in a record if it sounds good to me right now; the fact that it might have soundtracked various epiphanies/crises/whatevers in my life is, by and large, irrelevant. If I were ever to end up, God forbid, on some “Desert Island Discs” thing, I’d maybe choose something from “On The Beach” (a review of Neil's first Manchester show is over at the Reviews Blog, incidentally), even though I might have actually spent 1974 listening to Mud. I’m not ashamed of my musical past, I just don’t like those records any more.

I have to admit to a certain amount of anxiety tonight. It’s not just the weather, which is, of course, rotten, the wind howling like it’s fit to tear chunks from rooftops from miles around.

It’s been something like four months since I first mentioned the debut album by Bon Iver, and since then, there have been few records I’ve played as much. In Uncut’s world, I suspect “For Emma, Forever Ago” may turn out to be one of the most significant albums released in the UK in 2008. I certainly hope so, anyway.

We were chatting the other day in the office about music documentaries, on the back of a forthcoming doc celebrating Arthur Lee and Love. The consensus we reached was that, often, music docs seem not to utilize the same language as other documentaries, or even movies, do; the results often frustrating affairs, often borderline inept in their rather simplistic "point and shoot" technique. Which brings me, in a rather windy way, to Bruce Weber’s 1988 doc on Chet Baker, Let’s Get Lost, that’s due a theatrical re-release in the UK in June, and a DVD release shortly after.

The last time I saw Neil Young at the Apollo was in 2003, when he was touring to promote his ecological country rock opera, Greendale, still unreleased at the time, which meant no one had heard any of the songs. The unfamiliarity of what he then played provoked among the audience a certain restlessness that quickly gave way to collective dismay when it dawned on them that he wasn’t going to play merely a selection of songs from the record, but the album in what turned out to be its indigestible entirety.

Now that Masterchef is over – oh, well done James, but rats, I still think it should have been Emily – normal service has been resumed on the blog. I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up on some DVDs, as well as finally getting round to seeing a fantastic Spanish horror film, The Orphanage.

Neil Young Hammersmith Apollo Thursday, March 6 2008 The last time I saw Neil Young at the Apollo was in 2003, when he was touring to promote his ecological country rock opera, Greendale, still unreleased at the time, which meant no one had heard any of the songs. The unfamiliarity of what he then played provoked among the audience a certain restlessness that quickly gave way to collective dismay when it dawned on them that he wasn’t going to play merely a selection of songs from the record, but the album in what turned out to be its indigestible entirety.

In the midst of Neil Young fever this week, I’ve been distracted by another Canadian musical superstar. While I was waiting for my useless computer to fire up this morning, I finished the last pages of “Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey To The End Of Taste”, a fascinating book by the Canadian music journalist, Carl Wilson.