With the Uncut issue out at the start of January put, as we say, to bed, and the mildly Sisyphean Top 75 project limped to a resolution, I’ve had a look for some new stuff over the past couple of days.

As the year comes to an end, I’m putting the finishing touches to a Wild Mercury Sound Top 75 of 2008, which I’ll post here sometime next week. In the meantime, you can muck about with the Uncut hivemind’s 50 favourites by visiting our Rate The Albums feature: let’s make an effort to hype the Endless Boogie album up the charts, people (even though they had to cancel last week’s London show due to some kind of visa problem).

Before we get to the records, a quick reminder that December’s Club Uncut is here already, with Department Of Eagles, Hush Arbors and Mr David Viner comprising what looks like one of our best bills of the year at the Borderline tonight.

Just arrived this morning and straight onto the stereo, a new album from Beirut, that seems to consist of half recordings with a 19-piece Mexican funeral band, and half bedroom synthpop. I’m not sure what the synthpop’s going to be like, but it’s started well.

I found this morning a decent MP3 stream of the Dead’s Obama benefit show from last month, which has just started playing as I write. The tracklisting looks great – including “Slipknot”, “Help On The Way”, “Franklin’s Tower”, “Dark Star”, “St Stephen” and, fantastically, “Unbroken Chain”.And the starting “Truckin’”, which has been going for a good while now, sounds pretty healthy. Maybe some of the more experienced Deadheads among you could hunt it down and let me know what you think.

A bumper list this week, as the 2009 releases start arriving in the Uncut office. Not everything here is going down ecstatically, but a first listen to the new Fennesz album today suggests that one was well worth waiting for. In the continuing absence of those My Bloody Valentine reissues, let alone any unreleased material from Kevin Shields’ archives, “Black Sea” really deserves to bring Christian Fennesz to a wider audience, I think.

Yes yes I know it's only a couple of days since the last one, but I have an interview to prepare for in an hour or so, and yesterday's post brought a bunch of stuff we should probably talk about, or at least flag up, now. Namely. . .

A good day for the world, then. Not sure whether this week’s Uncut playlist really reflects the global mood, though I did bring in “Attica Blues” to play this morning. A bunch of unprepossessing-looking indie promos don’t really cut it on a day like this.

And still the Animal Collective fans keep coming, with a few requests for the durations of the “Merriweather Post Pavilion” tracks. Here they come: bear in mind that “Brothersport” could easily go on for another five or ten minutes as far as I’m concerned.

As yesterday, I’m pretty preoccupied with the new Animal Collective record that has turned up. It’s called “Merriweather Post Pavilion”, I think it might be my first favourite record of 2009, and if I can get my thoughts in some sort of order I’ll blog about it tomorrow.