Above are the promised photos from inside and outside the Hold Steady gig in Vancouver. Below is an early version of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’, a bonus track from the compilation Morning Glory. I first heard this song (like most people of my generation) on a single by Coctea Twins’ spin-off This Mortal Coil, which is lovely, but is more about the sound than the lyrics. The version that turned me onto is was the one played live by Robert Plant’s Priory of Brion (the band never made an album – the version I heard at Glastonbury was far superior to the over arranged one on Plant’s subsequent Dreamland). I was never a big Buckley fan, maybe because the only album anyone had when I was younger was the stodgy Greetings From LA. However, while I was in Canada, an early version of the song (with slightly different lyrics), as performed on the Monkees’ TV show, appeared on iPod shuffle, and I found myself earworming it, then replaying it obsessively. I was a big fan of the Monkees show when I was a kid, so I guess I must have heard this when I was ten or so, but I have no idea what I would have made of it then. The original version on Starsailor is more like the one I heard Plant play and well worth seeking out. You can also watch the Monkees show performance on YouTube.

Tim Buckley – Song To The Siren (solo version)

I’ve now finished the books I took on holiday with me, the jetlag having cleared enough for me to polish off Richard Price’s Lush Life, which I’d been saving since Christmas. It’s the first Price novel I’ve read since Clockers and is equally fine. The publicity makes much of his connection with The Wire which I can see. He’s good on the ghetto characters. But the vivid style, the terrific pace and, most of all, the exquisite rhythm of his prose remind me of one of my great writing heroes, the late, great Ed McBain.

Praise doesn’t come much higher than that, but Truth by Peter Temple takes the crime novel to another level. This won the Australian equivalent of The Booker prize and ought to have been a contender for that prize here, but was overlooked (see next para). Again, this is primarily a cop novel, but what a broad sweep… it’s long and demanding, with not a word wasted. Temple deals with politics and the compromises that people have to make with a cold, clear eye. As with the Price, at its heart is one casual murder and the stories that it sets off. One I know I’ll reread and learn from.

I polished off Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall in four days, as did Sue. I wrote a historical novel about this period once, though it was less than ten percent of the length. Three weeks to write it, but three months to do the research. So I know what a magnificent achievement Mantel pulled off. It’s a riveting read and I look forward to the sequel. That said, it’s not in the same league as the Temple novel. Why are historical novels so much more respectable than crime novels? Answers on a postcard to John Sutherland, chair of this year’s Booker jury, who said that putting a crime novel on the shortlist would be like entering a donkey for the Grand National.

Finally, a very short, pocket sized book. I used to love reading William Kotzwinkle when I was a teenager (his adult stuff, though he wrote books for kids too, and an adaptation of the ET screenplay) but hadn’t come across his novella about a couple and their still born child, Swimmer In The Secret Sea until Five Leaves reissued it recently. An exquisite, heartbreaking read.

The Vogue is a lovely old restored theatre in downtown Vancouver and when we get home I’ll put up some shots Sue took of the place and the band. We got there ten minutes before The Vogue’s Facebook told us the band were onstage and were warned there were no passouts. The guy on the door insisted on opening and smelling my water then let me take it in. You were allowed to drink in the theatre, but £5.50 for a small can of Bud made the prices at Rock City look wonderful (and at least most British venues sell at least one good beer). We were told that the support band were the Au Pairs, which seemed unlikely, but put me in a good mood (I never did see the APs – had they reformed?) until a support band of unspeakable awfulness appeared at ten past.

Interesting to see how people crowded down the front before the HS came onstage. A lot of people ignored their seating and moved forward, but we stayed where we were, middle by the mixing board, assured of good sound and a fine view. Had it been Nottingham, I’d've been down at the front with the gang half my age, but it was interesting to see Craig interact with an audience rather more emotive than the ones on their last full UK tour, which I saw twice.

The set was superbly structured, beginning with ‘Sweet Part of the City’ (opener of the new album, which ends with the line ‘let me sing for you’) then they banged straight into ‘Stuck Between Stations’, the song that turned me onto them. The set spanned their whole career, but concentrated on songs from the new album and the best one,  ‘Boys And Girls In America’ (no ‘First Night’. but you can’t have everything), climaxing with ‘Slapped Actress’ from ‘Stay Positive’, the title track of which was the final encore. About half of the show was brilliant and the other half was absorbing, my only problem with the recent songs being that they don’t have the classic hooks found on the third and fourth albums.

If you’ve not heard THS you really should check them out – my first impression of their music was Graham Parker fronting the Attractions moonlighting as a Sprinsteen tribute band. Someone described their style to me as ‘mythic’ but it’s more modern than that, with songs about drugs, the partying, getting older and still wanting to do the stuff you did when you were young, like go to gigs. I can relate to that. And Craig Finn is a fantastic, theatrical front man, acting out every song like Lenny Bruce on modafinil. He’s also a bit pudgy, a big geeky, and a damn good singer.

Here’s my favourite track from ‘Heaven is Whenever’ (do you call it a title track when it includes the title line?) which, sadly, they didn’t play. Too slow? It doesn’t give you a sense of how infectious their rock songs can be but it does give you a feel for the songwriting and subject matter. And to give you a taste of their more anthemic style, I’m also putting up the title track of ‘Boys And Girls In America’, their best album. Enjoy.

The Hold Steady – We Can Get Together

The Hold Steady – First Night

Summer’s in retreat but I still managed to spend most of  my last Nottingham Sunday afternoon in the allotment, reading Stanley Middleton’s final novel A Cautious Approach. Meticulously edited by Philip Davis, it brings to an end the 45 novel career of my old friend. Odd, for the first time, not to be able to discuss it with him afterwards. But odder still that, for 13 years, I was able to talk about novels with a writer 40 years my senior, one who I read with huge admiration before I’d begun to seriously write myself. The new novel is beautifully written and, as so often with Stanley’s novels, contains unexpected scenes that shift your perceptions of the characters. Like nearly all of his novels, it’s set in Beechnall, his fictional version of Nottingham, but Stan never lets cosiness creep in with the familiar setting. At 88, he could still write a sex scene at no risk of troubling the ‘Bad Sex’ awards and throw in a natural sounding ‘Oh fuck’ from a tightly buttoned lawyer. Admittedly, his characters, while ostensibly living in the present century, don’t seem to have heard of mobile phones, but readers who think that his main virtue was naturalism are missing out, as Alan Massie points out in a perceptive Scotsman review of the novel.

Here are the other books I’ve read over the last few weeks. Or, at least, the ones worth recommending. All but the first are novels.

John Lucas – Things To Say (Five Leaves – a fine collection of new poems)

Jonathon Coe – The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim Much better (and more typical) than his previous novel but falls off

Ray Robinson – Forgetting Zoe Great stuff. See my Amazon review

Louis Sachar – The Cardturner A great novel about bridge. A story for another time – I was a teenage bridge prodigy (sorta). This book, by the author of Holes brought it all back

Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist is to poetry what Sachar is to Bridge. Wonderfullywell written, opinionated, provocative, a book to be savoured and debated with poets and non-poets alike.

Ian McEwan – The Innocent Rereading a novel is a rare treat. Admittedly we only got this because Waterstones were doing it for a penny with a  half price copy of the so-so Solar. When this came out, 20 years ago, I remember being offended by how conventional a novelist McEwan had become after the fine start of his first three books. It now looks like a turning point in his career after the failure that was Black Dogs. The most memorable long scene is reminiscent of his early, quite shocking short stories and the sex is better than On Chesil Beach but in many ways it’s a conventional thriller, with a terrible ending that ties up far too many loose ends and also demstrates the tendency to overcontrived, unconvincing endings that marred later novels such as Saturday. That said, I still look forward to rereading his two great novels Atonement and The Child In Time to see if they stand up to my initial high assessment of them.

I’ve been a fan of Texas born singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett since 1986 and had tickets to see him four times. Unfortunately, for myriad reasons (schedule conflict, death in family, poor ticket sales) three of those shows were cancelled, so I’ve only seen him the once, opening a double bill with Mary Chapin Carptenter. He was great, but it was an arena, and he only played an 80 minute set. So when I saw that he and his large band were playing Toronto while we were there, I had to get tickets.

Massey Hall is a beautiful old venue with legendarily great sound and (we discovered) legendarily uncomfortable seats, half of which seemed to be broken. However, this worked in my favour as the man mountain in front of me, whose head and upper torso blocked my view of the centre third of the stage, decided to move just before the show began, giving us a great view.

And what a show! More than two and a half hours encompassing Lyle’s entire 24 year repertoire, beautifully structured and performed by various combinations of his amazing, long time band (him + 10 musicians and 3 backing singers). They included bass player Leland Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel, both of whom I’ve been listening to since 1970 when they played with James Taylor and formed instrumental group The Section. I’d've paid good money just to see any band with those two in it.

For more than two and a half hours, Lyle took us through a tour of Texas swing, aching love songs and his genteel yet laconic, intelligent introductory patter, including a lot of jibes about being stopped at the border and a little lecture about horses and the Iraq war before the title track of his new album Natural Forces. My favourite moments were probably a couple of ballads, Townes Van Zandt’s Flying Shoes, an unplanned encore added in response to an audience request (which he had earlier politely declined: ‘we do have a plan, sir, but if I can find a way to fit it in…’) and this mp3 of the week (a little earlier than usual, as I’m on the road), from the  new album, a cover of another Texas writer, Eric Taylor, who first recorded it on his self titled 1995 album. If you’ve never heard Lyle Lovett sing, check this out. He has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard.

Lyle Lovett – Whooping Crane

I first came across Tracey Thorn when I heard  a beautiful, very articulate love song called ‘Plain Sailing’ on a sampler cd in the early 80’s. I put it on the first mix tape I made for my partner.  Tracey met her partner, Ben Watt, at university and they formed Everything But The Girl. Nearly thirty years on, they’re still together, but a lot of their friends aren’t. Her second solo album, ‘Love And Its Opposite’ came out recently and is a kind of concept album about divorce.  It’s a brilliant record, full of thought provoking, intelligent songs that are also growers. Here’s the one that keeps getting stuck in my head. Initial copies of the album came with a Berlin Demos bonus disc and this version is from that. I urge you to check out the finished version and the full album.

Tracey Thorn – Singles Bar (Berlin Demo)