The very best recent stuff to come from the mouth-holes of the stars, featuring Tom Waits, Matthew Herbert, The Rapture, Boots Electric, and a very, very emotional Lou Reed.

“The song needed a chorus and they didn’t have one. So Kathleen and I said, “Come on, we’re talking about New Year’s, let’s just do it!” And if you’ve ever been at one of those gatherings where things went badly, where we all sing even though the fireworks scared the dog and he’s been gone for two hours, and someone lit the sofa on fire, and Marge got food poisoning, and Bill O’Neal called the cops.”

Tom Waits explains both why his new album track “New Year’s Eve” ends with a chorus of Auld Lang Syne, as well as how he has THE best parties, in a rare, but hugely entertaining chat with Pitchfork. Entertaining, even though the lazy bastards put it in a fucking Q&A rather than showing some fucking pride and self-re-cocking-spect and putting the effort in to write the damn thing up properly, like they damn well know they SHOULD HAVE (Pitchfork, Oct 18 ‘11)

“Sometimes I find it so emotional I have to get up and turn it off.”

Lou Reed stumbles on a reason to take his collaboration with Metallica off the stereo (The Guardian, 20 Oct ‘11)

“I think of this very much as a John Coltrane record, with the pig as John Coltrane”

Matthew Herbert on his new ‘One Pig’ album, which takes the recorded sounds of one pig’s life from birth to slaughter and turns it into music, making an important point about something in a really, really clever way (The New York Times 18 Oct ‘11)

“I think this album really congeals as a record”

The Rapture’s Gabrial Andruzzi on, er, his own album (Drowned In Sound, 18 Oct ‘11)

“He is the extra girth in the balls”

Boots Electric on the legendary roadman Hutch (Vice / The Guardian, 18 Oct ‘11)

“I never really got calls off anyone. I never had Bono phoning me, saying, ‘I’ve always thought The Edge could do with some back-up’. So, if you’re reading this and you’re in a band that sells in excess of 15 to 20 million albums and you need a rhythm guitarist, then…”

Noel Gallagher brushes up his CV (Shortlist, 21 Oct ‘11

“There’s a little bit of c**t in everyone I suppose”

Well… yes. Noel Gallagher, again. Look, no-one gives better interview than him, just go read the whole thing, he was on belting form (Shortlist, 21 Oct ‘11)

“There was one company wanted me to dress up as a packet of chewing gum for fuck’s sake!”

Plan B gets all the good offers (Drowned In Sound, 21 Oct ‘11)

Ok, so I’ve been recently a bit stymied by the shiny SXSW scheduler that’s currently live. Because it (currently, anyway) doesn’t have an easy way of checking countries of origin, I just don’t have the time or the inclination to be able to put together a decent list of Brits. In the meantime, here are 20 bands I like who I know are both British AND on the scheduler at the moment. I’ll do another round if it gets any easier to use. Plus, while I’m at it, what the hell happened to Steve Mason and James Blake? They were on the original list, but don’t seem to have made it to the scheduler. If they pop up, definitely go see both of them, too.

UPDATE: Some unforgiving – if lovely – bastards out there are taking the piss out of me on Twitter for not including a bunch of bands also on the schedule. To be clear, the list below is based on the first three rounds of bands announced, NOT the bigger list on the scheduler, which I just can’t be arsed to trawl through right now. I’ll get there eventually, and will get round to the awesomeness of (for example) Twilight Sad, Xcerts, Pete & The Pirates, Admiral Fallow plus a whopping great barrel full of other good stuff. In the meantime please remember that I’m lazy, not stupid – so cut me a little slack, eh? x

What made the younger Plan B (real name Ben Drew) stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the scene though, was his clear delight in and skill with instruments as well as the microphone and its accompanying electronics – there were proper and muscular songs in there, as well as razor-sharp verbals and the beats from a knife-fight. This was a British Eminem who could also comfortably play a solo acoustic session. That was the Noughties though, and (skipping past his appearance in Harry Brown alongside Michael Caine) we open the new decade with “Stay Too Long” – and if you’ve ever wondered what Justin Timberlake would sound like if he a) was a fucking hardnut from Forest Gate and b) possessed by Satan, then your sleepless nights are over.

With a fizzing jazz organ, gospel backing singers, tubthumping drums and Plan B’s surprisingly soulful and high-pitched vocal, it opens like a glorious wedding finale, a pure slice of Illinois soul – “Cuz I always stay too long / Long enough for something to go wrong“, he almost croons, and twenty seconds in, it’s still innocent, joyful, slicker than the ice on the roads and – you’re thinking – probably about some kind of relationship guff. But then reality bursts into the room, Plan B’s scarred and throaty delivery of old kicks in, and from then on it’s another riot of drinking, violence, sex and assorted other slices of inner-city mayhem, all set to a soundtrack Berry Gordy would slap a seal of approval on. It’s an uncomfortable mix, musically and thematically, but Plan B’s never really been interested in making the listening easy.

When Dizzee started going all proper pop, I got bored and wandered off somewhere else. Plan B’s gone pop and I’m still fucking terrifed of him. It’s straight from the top shelf, a brutal, brilliant start to the decade’s roster of singles, and a whopping great signpost to the flavour of the new album. Will someone please, please just make sure Calvin Harris doesn’t get within ten feet of the man.