Magazine:
UNCUT

Take 85, juni 2004

15 tracks, 50:46

UNCUT

Every year we're told real music is in crisis. Even that it's dying. And every December when Uncut compiles its Best Of TheYear list, we invariably find there are more great records than we can shoehorn into our chart. Thisyear we thought we'd use the halfway point in the calendar to take a status check. And, already, 2004 looks like another annus mirabilis.

Franz Ferdinand and Delays have already given us two classic debut albums of British guitar rock. From America, Blanche and The Shins look set to excite us for years to come while Richmond Fontaine, who have been around a while but had previously escaped our radar, are the year's discovery to date.

Reliable favourites such as Lambchop and Grant-Lee Phillips have made albums to stand alongside their very best work, and in Laura Veirs we have found a singer-songwriter brilliantly hitting her stride on her fourth album. Major record companies who sign and drop acts like they're disposable candy wrappings, take note.

Among the veterans, Dylan, Springsteen and Neil Young have so far been quiet. ButTodd Rundgren has returned with his best album in 25 years. And there's not much wrong with a music scene that can still find room for a left-field maverick like Tom Russell, who has been gloriously ignoring the vagaries of musical fad and fashion for 20 years.

lt's been a busy and productive time in the worid of reissues, too. Out of nowhere has come a forgotten 1975 gem from John Howard that had never previously been available on CD. Mike Scott has been back to the original tapes of The Waterboys' l985 classic This Is The Sea and come up with an extra disc of previously unreleased material. And the maverick talent of Arthur Russell has been recognised with a belated release for the album he was working on when he died in 1992.

And there's still another six months of the year to go, with albums due from the likes of Jesse Malin, Wilco, R.E.M. and U2. Crisis? What crisis?
UNCUT

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