Will Oldham's best songs always feel like he has stopped off to take in the view. But he is not drawn to the usual beauty spots. His resting points can be as enigmatic as the man himself. And that's why he is so durably brilliant. His songs are both random and specific. Sadness is full of humour, pessimism full of optimism. You are left knowing that life is as terrible as you thought and why are you taking it so seriously.

There are obvious musical and vocal reference points, we are hardly short of melancholic genius, thin voices soulfully whining over gorgeous strings and soft percussion, but I think I love him most of all for the reference points beyond music. Beware in particular makes me think of my favourite self effacing comedians, the way they can make you feel pathetic and euphoric. But the clearest image in my head is Harry Dean Stanton walking in Paris, Texas. Lost with purpose. Blotting out the pain until he knows how he can redeem himself.

Blimey, it's a Sonic Youth LP.  Not since the days when it looked as if Grunge was going to set the musical agenda for a fair few years, drawing Sonic Youth closer and closer to the mainstream through their early-Geffen releases, has the world seemed quite so ready for a Sonic Youth release.  In the interim, they've rolled along, making the world safe for detuned guitars and their own brand of six-string almost-jazz, having children, releasing records with seemingly little-regard for the bottom line and just being there.

This, their sixteenth studio release, harks back to the bubble gum of 'Goo' and 'Dirty'.  Its strength is founded on a backbone of three tracks beginning with Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso), runnning through the languid, drone-lite qualities of Antenna and into mid-tempo inferno What We Know.  Other tracks verge on parody/remix; Thunderclap (for Bobby Pyn) is a virtual photostat of Mary Christ from 'Goo', and Massage: The History augments the Kim Gordon slow fast slow songbook with limited results, but maybe that's the point because, blimey, it's A Sonic Youth LP. Mitherer

From the first one-two punch, bang bang, opening notes of French Navy, this LP sets out its intentions as an uplifting, picnic on the beach sort of affair.  Wicker basket, bone china and ginger beer, in fact.  Affable and catchy, this eleven-track release is the band's fourth long player in thirteen years and is appropriately mature.  As well as rummaging through a bucket bag full of emotions, the songs on here showcase a number of complementary musical styles without ever resorting to pastiche.  Stand-out songs include the uptempo Honey in the Sun, the toy band hup-two-three-four of Swans and the title track itself, a thumping diamond set in a sea of swirling, rising, saxophone and strings. Mitherer

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Salford

Sunday 3rd May 2009

Showcasing bands who haven’t been trampled to submission and soul-sucked by the music industry yet, the SFTOC festival featured nine venues (thankfully all close to each other) and over thirty acts, compressed into a chronological gridlock of 3PM to 11PM. Therefore, my companion and I decided to adopt a stripped-down ‘Dogme 95’ style of criticism. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Two songs minimum from each band we managed to catch. How very magnanimous of us. However, owing to laziness and drink, we only managed to actually watch five bands. Very unprofessional, but we’re old now and I resent young people. It’s about

as much as I can do to be in the same room as some Ting-Ting lookalike for more than five minutes and not vomit blood.

This week on our audio visual meanderings we discuss the merits of the Penguin painting - plus give our regular update on what's been going on in the arts in Liverpool

For those who missed the original Manchester International Festival Procession on July the fifth, you can and must catch Turner Prize-winning Jeremy Deller’s multi-faceted (this barely gives credit to the sheer mass of work involved) ‘Procession’.  Deller was accused by one national newspaper critic of giving a somewhat clichéd view of the north, what with the preponderance of brass bands, trade-union-style banners and suchlike but these are surely as much and a more realistic, part of the "north’s" culture as jellied eels and Beefeaters are to London. And the metropolis certainly doesn’t waste time in exploiting its own imagery.

Featuring a collection of young, hip and happening NY artists, State of the Art is, according to the Head of Creative Programmes at Urbis, at the forefront of ‘a series of projects that will, over the years, search out and profile the creative talent to emerge from the globe’s most dynamic cities, bringing world-class and significant artworks to the heart of Manchester’.

POI: Moving, Mapping, Memory is running until the 29^th of June and is certainly, as far as this reviewer is concerned, recommended for those who like a good dollop of speculative phenomenology in their cultural outings. Psychogeographists and those of a similar ilk should be making arrangements now. Point of Interest is, according to the press blurb, 'a mapping reference used in networked and mobile media'. The eight artists involved have all created pieces that interrogate our perception of the environments we inhabit, exploring the ways in which we interweave with them, the viewer becoming the viewed, the noise of the onlooking crowd becoming itself a part of the work. Of course, utilising concepts of the spectres generated by the digital age juxtaposed against the human experience could be taken to be old hat already. A frightening concept within itself, considering how new the web 2.0 paradigm is. However, POI tackles the themes with some intensely thoughtful and original concepts, with the programme itself being in map form. The very act of having aspects of your existence questioned can of course, lead to the Marxian sensation of all that is solid melting into air, but that's not always a bad thing. Space prevents us from giving each of the eight artists their full due, but here's a brief taster of what you can expect.

It is unusual to walk around a gallery that does so little to debate or impress upon you the aesthetic nature of the artist. Urbis's brilliant Emory Douglas retrospective is, however, an incredible testimony to the power of his work, and the fact that they have understood that it can't be understood outside of his passions makes the exhibition itself a stunning experience.

Douglas was the visual representation of the Black Panther Party's struggle. The party's rise was born of the need to find a definitive solution to the abhorrent social situation that existed in USA in the sixties. All happening at a point when it was being written off as a thing of the past in many liberal quarters. There message had to be an inclusive one without watering down the anger that was there at its inception and was always going to leave them open to being represented though violence. They were an organisation who understood that violence was the work tool behind a more structural oppression that we all lived under. And Douglas clarified this message more clearly than any of the speeches that live on from the era.