Gentlemen checking the football score, or their Belgian fries order. L-R: Andy Kent, Russell Hopkinson, Davey Lane and Tim Rogers. Photo by Deb Pelser IT HAS TO BE SAID, the timing was hardly ideal Mr Russell Hopkinson, on the other end of the phone this cloudy Tuesday morning. Not the upcoming You Am I shows marking the 30th anniversary of their career reframing third album of superior guitar pop and melodic rock, Hourly Daily; nah, they’re good, in October, plenty of warnin

Matt Fell and Suzy Connolly, the two of 9 Last week I pulled out two albums from Sydney duo Butterfly 9, probably not played in four or five years but showings sings of how often they had been played in the decades I’d owned them, and the response – here, as I sang along, and online, from those who saw my post about them and were probably doing the same in their heads – spurred a search in the files for B9 business. This 2005 interview found them soon after their second album

BETH ORTON The Ground Above (Partisan/Mushroom) THE TRAVAILS – which is an inadequate word to describe them, but bear with me – which have beset Beth Orton have been both physical (a long struggle with Crohn’s and series of epileptic episodes) and emotional (grief, most notably, but also the complexity of parenthood). She has not averted her songs or our eyes from them, and her previous album, Weather Alive, plunged deeply into their challenges while immersed in a thick fog

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TIFT MERRITT Sugar (One Riot) LOOK AROUND AND IT IS EASY to find some well-meaning or well-remunerated type telling us how what we need to build – in ourselves, in society, in our sporting team – is resilience, that somewhat forced addendum to the self-help catalogue that too often boils down to the claim that not being crushed is a win, still walking is some kind of reward. I get it, and it is not to be sniffed at to come out of a relationship or a job or a life-changing m

Pseudo Echo, hirsutes you sir. By Stuart Spence Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence. Each time, he will dig out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical but it will be inspired by a photo I’ve

IT WAS, IN ONE SENSE, an accident of timing – not least because it was meant to happen a week earlier but misunderstanding or misadventure had put the kybosh on that first attempt at conversation – that the death of Clive Davis, a giant of mixed reputation but rare name recognition for a record company executive, coincided with this call to Taj Mahal who has a new album out called, appropriately enough, Time. But in truth, for Mahal – whose real name is Henry Saint Clair Fred

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I SUSPECTED WHAT THIS PACKAGE was as I felt its contents, and the alarm bells were ringing when I turned it over to see that the sender, via my old friend and current emptier of his attic/basement/wherever he hoards, John, was allegedly “Bearnest Zuel of 40 years ago”. Oh shit. Opening it I pulled out a bundle of paper-clipped pages, the top page looking almost sepia – jeez, I’m not that old am I? - but in fact merely a thick brown notebook sheet next to mostly white ones. A