My Best Tunes

UK acts went home smiling from the MOBO Awards in Glasgow last night, as they picked up the most coveted awards ahead of international stars. Former X Factor finalists JLS walked away with the Best Newcomer and Best Song gongs for their hit “Beat Again”. N-Dubz, who hit the top spot with Tynchy Stryder earlier this year, won Best Act and Best Album.

People forget we were a rock’n'roll band and we still are,” Cliff maintains. Tonight, it appears it’s only rock’n'roll, and, well, Sir Cliff likes it.

UK acts went home smiling from the MOBO Awards in Glasgow last night, as they picked up the most coveted awards ahead of international stars. Former X Factor finalists JLS walked away with the Best Newcomer and Best Song gongs for their hit “Beat Again”. N-Dubz, who hit the top spot with Tynchy Stryder earlier this year, won Best Act and Best Album.

People forget we were a rock’n'roll band and we still are,” Cliff maintains. Tonight, it appears it’s only rock’n'roll, and, well, Sir Cliff likes it.

Jonzi D has had enough. As one of the pioneers of hip-hop in the UK, he can fondly remember when the genre was more sincere in its artistry, reflecting the core elements of DJing, rapping, breakdancing and graffiti art. But ever since Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” was marketed as the first mainstream rap record in 1979, a growing number of hip-hop artists have taken commercialism to a new level where it’s not uncommon for rappers to endorse products or violence in their lyrics and to prioritise their business model over everything else. “As a lover of hip-hop music, just seeing what’s happened over the last 15 years has really been hard for me to take,” says Jonzi, now 40. “The way rap has become a product as opposed to a culture; I wanted to do a piece that comments on that.”

Industry gigs are always strange events, particularly for bands who are in the ascendancy. Noah and the Whale, who I saw at the Hospital Club on Friday for a Mercury Music Session gig, struggled more than most to handle the unique challenge of playing to a crowd who haven’t paid to be there.

If the Radiohead frontman wants to recreate his Eraser album live, then the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist is the man to help him – despite being famous for wearing a sock over his penis

We seem to be entering an era of peculiar collaborations. Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has joined forces first with American leftfield rockers Modest Mouse and now Wakefield indie shouters the Cribs. Velvet-voiced soul singer David McAlmont is shortly releasing an album with composer Michael Nyman. But none of them invite such all-round bafflement and scratching of heads as the new “supergroup” formed by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist, Flea.

Yorke is known for abstract outpourings of existential angst: thoughtful songs that take subtle sideswipes at Bush and Blair and the general rubbishness of human existence. Flea, however, is widely known for playing topless, sporting lots of tattoos, playing on songs with titles like Party On Your Pussy and parading over the Beatles’ landmark zebra crossing at Abbey Road with a sock over his penis.

The thought of them making music together becomes all the more bizarre (and, frankly, alarming) when we’re informed (OK, as a joke by Adam Buxton of Adam and Joe fame) that potential names for the fab combo might include Yorkie Fruit and Nut Bar and (gulp) Thomosexual. What on earth will the songs be like? Funky synthetic soundtracks with titles like The Existential Uselessness of Being (Although That Waitress Over There Is Pretty Hot)? Abstract gay-disco anthems that ponder the future of Russia while chanting “Wave your willies in the air?”

It’s not unknown for musicians with otherwise highbrow reputations to let off some silly steam now and then. Nick Cave’s Grinderman project was an excuse for the Australian dark lord to pen songs with titles like No Pussy Blues and mention “sheilas” in interviews. And New York superbore crooner Billy Joel recently performed Black Sabbath covers while pouring water over his head.

However, we should probably stop being appalled (or excited). Flea’s cartoon reputation is derived from the Chilis’ early years, when they took lots of drugs and were exceedingly silly. In recent years, the band, and especially their bassist, have become serious, esteemed musos. Flea teaches bass and indulges in serious noodling onstage. Chat to him – as I was once lucky enough to do – and the man behind the goofy facade is able to enthuse about Miles Davis and Stockhausen as much as the Minutemen and Gang of Four. Although Flea is primarily known for big funky slap bass, he can do it all – crucially for Yorke, you could make a serious case for him being the best bass player in the world.

If Yorke wants someone to recreate the noises on his Eraser solo album (as he has suggested) then Flea is the man to do it. The other musicians mooted – American super-drummer Joey Waronker, master percussionist/vibes man Mauro Refosco and Radiohead producer and “sixth member” Nigel Godrich – suggests that Thomosexual, Fleapit, Thom Yorke’s Big Crock, or whatever they end up being called, will be a serious – even furrowed-browed – project.

What it all means for Radiohead is equally intriguing. They’re all embarking on solo projects, and Yorke has hinted that they might not make another proper album. But who knows, Yorke’s (temporary) distraction might give them a whole new direction. Without their serious, pensive, intellectual frontman at the mic, they might even get to goof around and write some songs about hot chicks and gazongers. They might even start wearing socks over their willies.

It’s been six years since the singer-songwriter and Americana ambassador last released a record. Thankfully, her writer’s block seems to have come to an end

I have to say, even though 2009 has produced some great musical surprises, I’m still waiting for the new Gillian Welch album. It’s been six years since her last record, Soul Journey, and the anticipation has reached fever pitch. This is because last year, Welch and her partner David Rawlings were road testing songs from their forthcoming album on a surprise support slot with Rilo Kiley.

It’s always worth the wait for a new Gillian Welch album. Why? Because they are all songwriting masterclasses. And for me, the long gestation period signals nothing less than a perfect album. Though some fans saw the Neil Young-style electrics of Soul Journey as a critical misstep, I thought it was another chapter in the restless career of Welch.

I’ve been a fan since her first two albums, Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings, both influenced by the country and western strains of the Carter Family and the mountain music of the Stanley Brothers. Though Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were influenced by the Carter Family, I think Welch is the only artist who has been able to summon their spirit. Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings are iconic entries in the bluegrass canon. Like the Carter Family, Welch combines intricate guitar picking with a careful interplay of harmonies. She brings a detachment to her songs, the pure quality of her voice drawing the listener into the story she is telling. In bluegrass, the story is king, and Welch clearly possesses a fiery imagination, populating her songs with misfits, soul savers, the poverty-stricken, and the lovesick (characters only Flannery O’Connor could have imagined).

Was I prepared for the third album? Time (The Revelator) was a reference to Blind Willie Johnson’s John the Relevator, and explored similar theological ideas, particularly failure, compassion and resurrection. It also established Welch’s desire to embrace a different style with each release. On this album, she leaves the emotional detachment of previous outings and instead emphasises the heartbreak in her voice. Here, Welch pursues the dark soul of Alex Chilton (on Big Star’s Third) and the ravaged, night-owl music of Karen Dalton. Welch’s voice betrays a damaged soul; only one song, the Bob Wills-influenced Red Clay, remains upbeat – the rest of the album? Dark.

Welch tackles big subjects: on April 14th, she compares a night out to see a failing rock’n'roll band to the tragedy of the Titanic, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and the worst storm of the Dust Bowl era. It sounds like a heavy-handed analogy, but her quiet desperation is melancholy and real. The secret is a sense of economy with the writing; by keeping things simple, Welch and Rawlings keep the emotion strong.

Their work has received the highest compliments in the Nashville music scene, and the pair have sold songs to Emmylou Harris and Joan Baez. Welch was even a producer on the soundtrack for the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou? She’s won numerous awards and critical appraisals, but her achievement for me is having brought bluegrass into the mainstream (much to the consternation of old-school Nashville).

It seems like a six-year writing block is ending for Welch with a forthcoming album. For me, she is an important artist, shining a light on bluegrass, not by taking a puritanical and archival stance, but by updating it with contemporary relevance. I eagerly await the new album.

We didn’t know we’d missed them. TP Orchestre de Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, to give them their full name, have been stars in Benin since 1968, but made their European debut in Paris this month, and were known here if at all for low-key, recent compilation CDs. And yet, from the moment this 11-piece band file on stage, the crowd act as if they have been waiting for them for years. The tremendous show that follows ensures it will be much less than 41 years before they return.

Few people can pull off the tousled hair and billowing-caped flower-power look these days. Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, however, looks at home being all twitchy fingers and spiralling wrists, resplendent in some sort of diaphanous chiton. She is majestic, like John William Waterhouse’s Circe, with the awestruck audience as her swine.