One today that I think might interest a few of you. “Embrace” is the debut album by a Santa Cruz sextet called Sleepy Sun, who you could place as very much part of a new wave of Californian heavy psych. Since we were talking about the area’s titan trees on Friday, this quote from the band stood out: “It comes more from Northern California itself more than any scene or city. There is truly nowhere on Earth like our little corner of the country where the redwoods smother the ocean.”

After our blog feast the other week - thanks to When You Awake for getting in touch and for all your other recommendations, by the way - I figured I should mention a couple more.

I was reading my blog on Super Furry Animals’ “Hey Venus” the other day, and noticed a comment that the band were working on two other albums for imminent release, albums that’d put the tidy poppiness of “Hey Venus” into quite a different context. Like so many talked-up projects in that vein, nothing seemed to come of them. But the new Super Furry Animals album, “Dark Days/Light Years” feels very much like the yang to the yin of “Hey Venus”.

The full transcript of the interview from Uncut's cover feature

Quite busy here with, as you can see, a bunch of new stuff again this week: right now the new Jason Lytle album has just started up and doesn't appear to be a huge departure from what he was up to in Grandaddy.

The full transcript from the Uncut cover feature

Fairly quick one today, as I’m trying to write a longish review of the new Leonard Cohen album, “Live In London”, for the next issue of Uncut and have a couple of old Cohen live albums here on my desk that need re-examining – once I get past the formidable distraction of the new Super Furry Animals album (more of that later in the week), that is.

The guitarist talks about performing with Neil Young

We're having some grief, yet again, posting news stories to www.uncut.co.uk, so I thought I should share this fairly auspicious news here: the details of Neil Young's new album, "Fork In The Road", and the first dates of what smells suspiciously like a full UK tour, possibly constructed around a certain major summer festival.

Nearly a year ago now, I posted a blog about Wooden Shjips live, when they played with Howlin Rain and The Meat Puppets in London. They were superb, and I’m pleased to say that their psychedelic dancehall schtick has been totally realised on “Dos”, their upcoming third album, which has burning itself onto my synapses these past ten days or so.