Blogs

Even in the hinterlands of myth, the notion of sex with snowmen seems rather a neglected subject.

George Clooney’s fourth film as director takes place across a handful of tense days during a primary election in Ohio, where governor Mike Morris (Clooney) is a hair’s-breadth away from securing the Democratic party nomination to stand for office...

As a general rule, I tend to think that my complete lack of musical ability hasn’t been too much of a handicap to a career as a critic. Unburdened by doomed musical projects – or, indeed, talent – it means I can avoid judging the success of artists against any creative failures of my own.

A new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album often prompts me to visit a remarkable resource called The Royal Stable, a website dedicated to thoroughly cataloguing and cross-referencing this most fiendishly complicated of musical careers.

The press release that comes with Tarwater’s “Inside The Ships” reveals that this is the duo’s 11th album – a slightly alarming number, which suggests I’ve rather lost touch with the band over the past few years. “Inside The Ships”, however, has an instantly and satisfyingly familiar sound, not too different from Tarwater in 1998, when their “Silur” album seemed to be part of a small glut of German records (by The Notwist, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler, Mouse On Mars, Pluramon and so on) that sat in an appealing space halfway between electronica and post-rock.

Looking back at my blog on “Smoke Ring For My Halo”, I started with an Uncut quote from Kurt Vile that is salient here, too. “We recorded a lot of rockers,” he said of “Smoke Ring”, “but they just didn’t seem to fit.”

Before we settled on the “Music That Made Bolan Boogie” CD to go with this month’s issue, we toyed with a compilation of new, glam-influenced music.

Bit of a hack through the backlog today, beginning with a mild disappointment, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks’ “Mirror Traffic”.

It is hard not to be nostalgic on nights like this. About an NME night when Pulp were on the bottom of a bill headlined, I think, by Kingmaker. About the party for “OU” at the Leadmill, with a problematic balloon launch and a large papier mache head, and the party for “Do You Remember The First Time” at the ICA.

As has probably been pointed out ad nauseam, Jeff Tweedy seems to take a constant pleasure in wrongfooting Wilco fans. So it is with the start of “The Whole Love”, the band’s eighth studio album. “Art Of Almost” begins with a burst of staticky guitar and pulses along, mixing orchestral stabs, a plausibly funky bassline, a motorik core akin to “Spiders” and “Bull Black Nova”, and a distracted melody from Tweedy.