WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Can you get me a peacock skirt?

Firstly, and with a giddy kick of the heels, we have to commend to you all Sylvia Pattenden's interview with Alison Goldfrapp in today's Sunday Herald: "Drugs, ultimately,” she notes wearily, “make you lose your sense of yourself. It’s so depressing. I spent years doing music, getting stoned going, ‘this is great’, listening to it a billion times and next day you’d only done two minutes’ work and it was rubbish." It's funny that Goldfrapp has a reputation for being testy with journalists - to be fair, that probably reflects more on the journalists who are sent to interview her than Goldfrapp herself. Because she give great value when she's given questions that she finds worth answering:

“Ah,” corrects Alison, in her engaging, forthright, no-nonsense way, “I do work with a stylist these days, but she works for me, I like to think. So I’ll say, ‘I want to wear a peacock’s tail on my arse, can you find someone who can make it for me?’”

See?

Less joyfully, Camile Paglia is writing a column in The Independent now - we can only suppose Simon Kelner lost a poker hand or something. Of course, for her debut column last week she started off banging about Madonna (could they be any more spiritually entwinned, both seeming to be quite important twenty years ago and both still coasting on that?); this week, she revealed shes' teaching a class in 'Art of Song Lyrics' at the University of the Arts: "[W]e will be studying a much greater song by Bob Dylan, Desolation Row, so long and complex that it always takes several class days to do justice to it." Bloody hell - a pop song that takes several days of furrowed brows to understand? That's not greatness, that's failure.

Over in the Guardian, John Harris surveyed the collapsed tunnel at Gerrards' Cross (Tesco had bounced plans for a store on top of the railway through every level of local opposition; the tunnel caved in onto the lines, causing at least eight million pounds worth of disruption) and fretted about what the increasing stranglehold of Tesco and Walmart on book and CD sales actually means for our relationship with culture: "One in five chart CDs is bought like this [chucked in a trolley next to crisps and carrots], a sobering thought for those modern musicians whose popularity might convince them they are worthy successors to the stars of past decades." In other words, Robbie might think he stands shoulder to shoulder to with David Bowie; in fact, he's on a par with Tony The Tiger.

Another issue of the always-useful Soundnation reaches us; their lead news story shows again the benefit of having a strong national identity: S4C is keen to ensure that it uses more locally-sourced music on its programmes. We've long believed that the long run of successful Welsh artists over the last twenty years or so has been, in a large part, down to the presence of strong national media outlets enthusiastically supporting local artists; this makes things look good for the next generation of Welsh bands, too.

In other news gobbings from Wales: Newport TJs has been overhauled, and named its bar after John Peel as tribute to the great man and the Noise and Confusion Oasis-led gigs are part of the Cardiff Millennium stadium's attempts to build its reputation as one of the primary international venues.

Soundnation provides a handy guide on how to podcast (next month they'll be following up with warnings about what not to podcast; you might wonder if they should have done that the other way round) and a bluffer's guide to In The City (which is probaby kinder to it than any publication outside Tony Wilson's mind).

The big interview is with The Automatic, freshly added to B-Unique's roster (Kaiser Chiefs, The Ordinary Boys) without a single tour date behind them - yet.

The NME has got quite a coup - Rick Wakeman and Dave Grohl together on the cover... unless that's the Foo's drummer. We're fresh off the back of festival weekend, which means the return of the poster section for a couple of weeks and, in a gimmick which Look-In would sometimes use and was absurdly popular with German magazine Bravo, you're encouraged to buy next week's magazine and then make one giant Killers poster out of two bits given away. We're not sure we'll bother, but, erm, cheers.

We're always slightly snarky about Noel Gallagher's failure to provide any substance to his songs, so we think it's only fair to mention that he's actually done a song about something - and thrown it away on the Goal! The Move soundtrack. The song, Who Put The Weight Of The World On My Shoulders is a microrant at television: "who put the lies in the truth that you sold us? Lost behind the silver screen are all the things you could have been to us." Noel, of course, sold his soul to promote Sky Television a month ago, which might answer some of his questions.

Peter Robinson's worthy combat partner is Chris Lowe, "the other one from the Pet Shop Boys". Dr Dre had apparently written a demo song in which both the PSBs got killed in revenge for the Pettie's song in which Neil shagged Eminem, but it didn't make the final cut. (Although, of course, in the world of song, Eminem killed Dr Dre, so we're not sure how all this would fit together.

Radar are doing what the young people call "giving it up" for Sebastien Tellier. He used to be a show: "because show-offs are popular; and I wanted to be popular."

Hard-Fi's Richard isn't happy with how they did at Glastonbury - his Mum had just died, and he feels his game was off: "You read in the NME [about] the band of Glastonbury, and it's someone else... I know we could have torn that place up. We should've been the ones that stole it." But they'll have another chance, providing they skirt the curse of the Mercury this week.

There's a handy cut out and keep guide to Sigur Ros' fans. It might make you like them less: Chris Martin, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tommy Lee, Tom Cruise... that's it, we're off to dig out out some Royksopp.

Talking too soon: even as we were flicking through the piece on The Curse of Josh Homme and how it's been lifted, they were attaching cables to try and get him upright onstage in Germany again

Billy from The Subways doesn't like people oggling his girlfriend-bandmate Charlotte Cooper. Let's hope he doesn't notice that she's one of the full-page posters.

reviews
live
super furry animals at the secret garden party in Cambridgeshire - "the Furries were clearly not having the time of their lives"
rolling stones - boston fenway park - "they look like they're genuinely enjoying themselves"
vica voce - birmingham club nme - "a lo-fi Flaming Lips, without the silly animal suits"
marilyn manson - leeds festival - "old-fashioned compared to the (baby)shambolic thrills on offer elsewhere; a scripted show from Marilyn Manson the character"

albums
elbow - leaders of the free world - "if there's any justice, should see Garvey rubbing shoulders with Chris Martin", 9
joe meek - portrait of a genius - "if you have any interest in beauty, then cough up"
reuben - very fast, very dangerous - "palls after a while", 6

tracks
totw - arcade fire - rebellion (lies) - "causes Nada Surf to wake up in cold sweats"
nada surf - always love - "Travis-lite farce"
goldie lookin chain - your missus is a nutter- "they posit the theory that women are out of control and must be stopped"

and finally, the Fanboy cartoon draws a picture of what it must have been like watching Steve Coogan and Courtney Love doing pillow talk. Back of the net.

music magazines nme courtney love goldfrapp alison goldfrapp camille+paglia madonna bob dylan the subways noel gallagher oasis