Heading For The Ditch: Smog and Will Oldham

IT'S ONLY THE first week in February and already spring's sonic daffodils are poking through the boy-band mulch. Those who feared they would live their whole lives without seeing Mercury Rev and Tony Christie in the same top 20 singles chart can now rest easy. And a double bill of albums every bit as deliciously twisted as that unlikely coupling has got 1999 off to a flyer in the long-playing stakes. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's I See A Darkness and Knock Knock by Smog are the sort of records decades get remembered for, never mind years.