Uncut January 2015

“Life is full of strange delights/And in the darkness we find lights/To make our way back home again…” AC/DC: “It’s alw

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“Life is full of strange delights/And in the darkness we find lights/To make our way back home again…”

AC/DC: “It’s always been do or die!” 40

PAGES OF REVIEWS WILCO THE VELVET UNDERGROUND JONI MITCHELL SPRINGSTEEN PIXIES

The ultimate

Review of theYear

75

BEST ALBUMS!

30 KEY REISSUES! The finest films, books and DVDs of 2014

AND MORE...

Uncut’s 2014 Hall Of Fame starring...

NEIL YOUNG

KATE BUSH JIMMY PAGE ST VINCENT MARK KOZELEK SWANS PLUS

A fond farewell ll tto

JACK BRUCE ROGER MCGUINN

BLAKE MILLS EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN AND EARL’S COURT REMEMBERED

“Reunions? I don’t want to be in The Byrds!” AND

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4 Instant Karma! Jack Bruce remembered; Deeply Vale Festival; Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires

14 Jimmy Page An audience with the Zeppelin guitarist

REVIEW OF 2014

Are we rolling? A

22 Albums Of The Year The 75 best records of 2014

33 Reissues Of The Year 36 Films Of The Year 39 Books Of The Year 40 Kate Bush The making of “Wuthering Heights”

44 Neil Young The legend’s crazy year, charted by his closest compadres, including Graham Nash and Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro

54 St Vincent Album by album with Annie Clark

56 Mark Kozelek The former Red House Painter – aka Sun Kil Moon – reflects on fame, infamy, and his war with The War On Drugs 40 PAGES OF REVIEWS!

63 New Albums Including: AC/DC, Smashing Pumpkins, Blake Mills

81 The Archive Including: The Velvet Underground, Bruce Springsteen, Pixies

SunKilMoon’s Sun Kil Moon’s Benji

T SOME POINT in October, I started receiving emails from record labels and publicists about their Tips For 2015. A new year loomed, distantly, and with it the annual music business imperative to embrace a tranche of new artists. Around the same time, the 2014 Mercury Prize hoopla culminated with a victory for the Scottish hip-hop act, Young Fathers, and their Dead album, one of seven debuts in the shortlist of 12. It is hard not to conclude from all this that the British music business has abandoned the idea of sticking with artists for the long haul: not always the most expedient commercial approach, but one which had at least a little bit of traction before neurotic short-termism went into overdrive. The subtext, perhaps, is that the industry, the media and, both would presume, the general public, find artists who grow incrementally to be boring underachievers. If you don’t start with a major success, then you’re expendable. Soon enough, there’ll be another new year and another horde of contenders to fling optimistically in the direction of the BBC’s Sound Of 2015 poll. Uncut’s Albums Of 2014, though, tell another story. Four hundred and one releases 4 voters. In the Top 75 albums, only seven were technically were nominated by our 42 d debuts, and three of those were by artists with considerable ccareers in other bands behind them. Plenty of the acts felt ffresh and exciting (Sleaford Mods, for instance, who we ffeature on page 106), but many had discreetly worked at their art for a few years, just off the radar, cumulatively growing with every release. Take Mark Kozelek, who came up with what may be his masterpiece, Benji, 22 years into a career mostly conducted on the margins. “I felt confident that Benji would be received poorly, that people would find it to be middle-aged ramblings about dead relatives,” Kozelek told me this month, in his most in-depth interview in years. “But something about it resonated with people.” Kozelek’s career – and those of Sharon Van Etten, The War On Drugs, St Vincent, Caribou, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Future Islands, Steve Gunn and many other key players of 2014, to say nothing of Neil Young – is an object lesson in how things can be done differently. This end-of-year Uncut special, we hope, is a testament to the enduring creative health of our corner of the music scene; a place where many inspiring albums are still being made, regardless of the Death Of Rock thinkpieces that will doubtless proliferate, as they do every year, in the next month or two. If you’re hungry for more of this, I’ll be posting my own personal chart of 100 or so records I’ve enjoyed in 2014 at www.uncut.co.uk any day now. In the meantime, a heartfelt thanks for all your support over the past 12 months. Until next year…

96 Film & DVD Bill Murray in St Vincent, Muhammad Ali documentary, The Doors

104 Live Roger McGuinn, Sleaford Mods

117 Books Robert Wyatt, Mick Fleetwood

118 Not Fade Away This month’s obituaries

120 Feedback Your letters, plus the Uncut crossword

122 My Life In Music Swans’ Michael Gira

John Mulvey, Editor. Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

COVER: JEFF CHIU/AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION

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I N STA N T K A R M A ! THIS MONTH’S REVELATIONS ELATIO ONS F FROM RO M T THE HE W WORLD OR L D O OF FU UNCUT NC U T E FESTIVAL FEST T IV I VA AL L Featuring DEEPLY VALE Jack Bruce in 1967: “He never sang or played a dishonest word or note in his life”

4 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

JACK BRUCE | 1943-2014

“A striving to make things that were beautiful and interesting and groovy and stimulating...”

‘‘I

FIRST MET Jack when I was a poet in the early to mid-’60s, and I was doing a lot of shows with jazz people like The Graham Bond Organisation, who Jack played with. After Cream formed, Ginger phoned me up. It seemed like an emergency – they were in the studio, and had done this backing track, which ended up being ‘Wrapping Paper’, their first single, but they didn’t have any words. I went down there and ended up writing the lyrics for it. “I was living in the same place as Eric Clapton, and we tried to write a couple of things, and I also tried with Ginger, but it became fairly obvious that the chemistry was with Jack and myself. We came up with ‘I Feel Free’, and then it became easier after that. There was real chemistry between us, and we got a lot of good stuff down. Another thing we always had in common was politics, we were both dedicated socialists. “I remember once Jack and I were sitting there at about five in the morning, trying to get some stuff ready for Disraeli Gears. Jack picked up his double bass and played a riff, and I looked out of the window and wrote, “It’s gettin’ near dawn/When lights close their tired eyes…” Jack and I wrote the verses, and then the pair of us and Eric wrote the hook, and of course that was ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’. Most of the successful Cream

songs were by Jack and myself, with the possible exception of ‘Tales Of Brave Ulysses’ and ‘Badge’. “Did I see any conflict between the three of them in Cream? Oh yeah! Having three people in a band is very claustrophobic, and it was quite a pressurised situation, because they were the cash cow of that particular management, so they were working them as hard as they could. Ginger and Jack had a history of certain amounts of conflict, and they would compete musically, and in other ways. A three-piece lineup was incredibly limiting for somebody like Jack – as a composer and a player, he needed a bigger palette to work with, which is one of the reasons they broke up. “Of course, things like Cream, where the songs become almost standards, do haunt you. Cream was nearly juvenilia for Jack – I think some of his more mature work will eventually be seen to be just as good, if not better than that. Funnily enough, when they did the reunion [in 2005] they sounded so much better than they had before, so much more subtle and thoughtful. They were really listening to each other, catching nuances that weren’t possible technically because of sound systems in the ’60s. “Some of Jack’s early solo songs had already been written for Cream, like Songs For A Tailor’s ‘Theme For An Imaginary Western’, but Jack’s manager hated them and conspired to lose them. Originally I gave ‘Rope

“Jack was an incredible composer and arranger, I was in awe of him as a musician” PETE BROWN

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

5

©CHUCK BOYD/IDOLS/PHOTOSHOT

JACK BRUCE remembered by his colleague of 48 years, PETE BROWN

I N STA N T KA R M A ! Ladder To The Moon’ to Arthur Brown, but Arthur didn’t know what to do with it so I gave it to Jack, and he came up with the most incredible music that was just absolutely 100 per cent right. I generally kept out of things musically with Jack – he was an incredible composer and arranger, I was in awe of him as a musician. I learnt a lot from him, especially as a singer. “We actually worked together for 48 years, on and off. I was extremely glad when Jack asked me to write his last record, [2014]’s Silver Rails, with him. He said to me, ‘I want this to be an old man’s album. It’s got no pretensions to youth, or machismo. It should reflect how I am, and the age that I am.’ That’s a very honest thing to say in today’s world, where we’re all trying to be as young as we possibly can! “Jack was a little frail when we recorded it, and when we last saw each other, at a Silver Rails playback, maybe it was slightly obvious

Pink Floyd fans outside Earls Court, August 1980, and below, Bowie at Earls Court, 1973

WISH YOU WERE STILL HERE… In memoriam: Earls Court, venue of legends. “It’s a huge loss for London…”

ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS; REX FEATURES

Jack Bruce, left, with Pete Brown, 2005

iit might have been the ffinal time. Jack had a liver transplant a way li back, and managed to b survive it. We all thought su of Jack as a tremendous ssurvivor, so I knew iit was pretty bad tthis time, but I was h hoping he would m make it again. “I think Jack w would have liked to be remembered just b as a great musician. He related a lot to Monk and Mingus; those guys were composers and in fact Jack, with the classical training he had on the cello, had an even wider palette than some of those guys. He could score for strings, horns and orchestras. Jack’s achievements were not out of a striving for money, they were out of a striving to actually make things that were beautiful and interesting and groovy and stimulating. Jack never sang or played a dishonest word or note in his life. It is genuine, honest stuff and that’s why a lot of people like it, because it doesn’t come with any bullshit or fakery. It’s real.” INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK

6 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

N

ODDY HOLDER REMEMBERS Slade’s landmark show at London’s Earls Court Exhibition Centre in July 1973 with pride. “We were the first band to think of playing Earls Court, nobody else had done it,” the singer tells Uncut. “Bowie played there first, but only because he’d heard we’d booked it. Unluckily for him he had terrible sound and got bad reviews, and we learnt from that, put in baffles and got much better sound. I’d love to have been in the audience. Apparently the tube was full of 20,000 people in Slade gear, everybody in top hats and glitter. Nobody had seen anything like it.” And nobody will again, at least not at Earls Court. Barring a last-minute miracle, the centre is being demolished this February, the latest London venue to pay the price of regeneration. It will be replaced by flats, shops and offices. A venue that saw important shows by Pink Floyd, Bowie, the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Dylan, as well as events from the Royal Tournament to the Ideal Home Show, will be gone for good. “It’s a huge loss for London,” says Duggie Fields, who can see the exhibition centre from the flat he used to share with Syd Barrett, the same one that appeared on the cover of The Madcap Laughs. Fields, an artist, has been campaigning to save the 1937 Art Deco building, but now feels its destruction is inevitable. “The developers got a legal injunction against anybody listing the building,” he explains. “In London, it seems everything that’s not a shop, offices or luxury apartments is being demolished. This striking building still attracts millions of people from around the world, and

we’re throwing that history and heritage away.” Earls Court hosted some of the biggest shows of the 1970s. Pink Floyd and David Bowie played there in the same week in May 1973, and Floyd would return to tour The Wall and The Division Bell. Their shows there in June 1981 for The Wall were the last full-length ones with Roger Waters, while October 29, 1994 was the band’s last public performance until the 2005 reunion. In May 1975, Led Zeppelin played five shows that some consider the best they ever performed. Bowie’s 1978 show was filmed by David Hemmings, but has yet to be released, while Dylan’s shows that same year were his first in London since 1966. More recently, the venue has hosted Take That, Morrissey, Muse, Arctic Monkeys and Oasis, while Arcade Fire played two shows in June. Fields thinks this continued popularity may be part of the problem for wealthy locals. “The fact that Earls Court draws people to concerts is fabulous,” he says. “The whole area is buzzing. But I think the concerts attract too many of the unwashed masses in the view of the more snobbish locals and the council. When Madonna played [in 2001] there were thousands of girls in the streets staggering round in boas and cowboy hats. I think that adds life to the neighbourhood. That is culture and we should consider ourselves lucky to have had a venue that could draw performers like that to it.” PETER WATTS

The New Album December 1st ACDC.COM COLUMBIA.CO.UK

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I N STA N T KA R M A ! “Recording with old tech is a transforming experience” ALEX STEYERMARK

LOMAX FIDELITY

Their journey took them from the hallowed archives at the Library of Congress to a lacquer disc plant in California, a remote farmhouse in rural Louisiana and even an old karate school in Memphis where Elvis Presley studied (“It’s not there anymore,” laments Steyermark. “It’s been turned into a sports bar.”) Their subjects include a smattering of familiar faces: John C Reilly, Jones Wright and Steyermark with Dawn Landes and Kid Creole’s former the Presto, the star lieutenant, Coati Mundi, who is filmed in of the project his kitchen delivering a rendition of “Billy Boy” accompanying himself on the spoons. Other less well-known participants include the Reverend John Wilkins – son of early blues artist Robert Wilkins, whose “That’s No Way To Get Along” was recorded as “Prodigal Son” by The Rolling Stones. Filmed at Hunters Chapel in Como, Mississippi, the 73-year old Wilkins delivers a rendition of “I Want Jesus To Walk With Me” that feels like an authentic connection to Lomax’s recordings. While Steyermark films, Wright operates the machine, brushing away the chaff as its stylus cuts into an acetate disc. Besides being antique, Prestos are notoriously temperamental. “The manual’s only one page,” laughs Steyermark. “But the troubleshooting guide is four…” “We see the project as bridging 100 years of technology,” adds Wright. “The music is captured invited musicians they knew to record a song onto on an analogue artefact, but the project is taking the Presto. Their only stipulations were that each into account all the technology that’s available.” artist play a song in the public domain, in one take, Indeed, the film continues to play at festivals and that the artist choose the location. Soon, they with a DVD and online release next year. There secured the involvement of artists including are also two albums of recordings from the web Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III and series and film. Essentially, The 78 Project is a very Rosanne Cash. The series grew until, in 2011, they modern exercise in nostalgia. “It’s interesting,” decided to make a feature-length documentary. says Wright, “how this 80-year-old machine “We decided to take a road trip,” says interacts with new ones. Steyermark. “We want E Every time we recorded, to show how people so someone would get their from different iP iPhone out and take a cultural backgrounds pi picture or a video. So it’s can be connected co co-existing with all these around this di different technologies…” transforming experience that takes MICHAEL BONNER M place when you have to cut a record using For more information visit Fo old technology.” w www.the78project.com

“We’re bridging 100 years of technology!” Hey Presto! Two filmmakers, an antique disc recorder, and a quest to record in exactly the same way as Alan Lomax…

SARAH LAW FOR THE 78 PROJECT

I

N APRIL 2010, the New York-based filmmaker Alex Steyermark travelled to Quogue, Long Island, on a rather unusual errand. “There’s an eccentric guy who lives in an old fisherman’s shack way out on the south shore,” Steyermark explains. “He buys old gear from studios and radio stations that are going out of business, fixes some of the stuff up, and sells it to collectors around the world.” There, Steyermark bought two Presto disc recorders, similar to the machines used by folklorist Alan Lomax in the 1930s and ’40s to document regional folk music in America. These machines are at the heart of The 78 Project, a documentary by Steyermark and collaborator Lavinia Jones Wright which both honours Lomax’s fieldwork and the machines he used. In the film, the pair travel around America recording today’s musicians on their Prestos. As Steyermark and Wright explain, The 78 Project began as a web project in 2011, where they

THE CLASSIFIEDS

This month: The Clash and The Slits raise money for Sid Vicious’ murder defence fund, while The Jam get festive… From the NME, December 9, 1978

FROM THE MAKERS OF

ON SALE NOW! AVAILABLE IN ALL GOOD UK NEWSAGENTS OR ORDER FROM UNCUT.CO.UK/STORE

I N STA N T KA R M A ! DEEPLY VALE FESTIVAL

A QUICK ONE

INTO THE VALLEY! 1978. Hippies and punks come together at an idyllic free festival near Rochdale: “It was a really transformative moment!”

T

HE FLYER PROMISED free food and 10,000 beautiful people: “All you need is love, but the love revolution needs you.” 1978’s Deeply Vale Festival, then in its third year, was fast becoming the countercultural hub of the north. Held in a wooded valley on the fringe of Rochdale, it represented a cultural shift. “The hippy dream had crashed and burned,” explains The Fall and Billy Bragg producer Grant Showbiz, then involved with festival regulars Here And Now. “It was all falling to pieces and we had to learn to fend for ourselves. We thought that Deeply Vale was a pointer to the future, so there was this huge kind of political meaning to it all. It was a really transformative moment.” Conceived by five members of a Rochdale commune, Deeply Vale saw disparate tribes – punks, hippies, newwavers, tipi people – co-exist in a spirit of alternative living. As a new 6CD boxset proves, it was reflected in the diversity of bands, from newcomers The Fall, The Ruts and The Durutti Column to relative veterans Steve Hillage, Tractor and Nik Turner. What’s more, everything was free. “In ’76, we found this natural amphitheatre,” recalls Deeply Vale co-founder and Ozit label chief Chris Hewitt. “A beautiful little valley with a stream and lakes for swimming. We knew the farmer and initially asked if we could have a birthday party for 10 people camping. But we ended up with 20 bands and 300 people. The next year we had

The Deeply Vale Festival, 1978: a British Woodstock?

3,000 there, 30-odd acts and a review in NME. By ’78, we had a crowd of 20,000. Years before Glastonbury, we were the first free festival to allow punk bands on. The Crass thing was about to happen, then Chumbawamba and the rest of it.” One of the more anarchic local bands at the 1978 festival was Danny And The Dressmakers, whose ranks included a 17-year-old Graham Massey, later of 808 State. “It was a good kind of chaos,” he recalls. “The stage was basic. Wire and scaffold poles, daylight in a Hobbit wood. Sister Maura, our 17-year-old convent schoolgirl lead singer, just screamed like a car alarm until her voice packed up. The festival seemed to be a platform for musical ideas at a time when the scene was in flux. Punk didn’t divide people in the north. There was a commonality to anti-establishment themes and Deeply Vale was where it played out.” The next generation were in attendance, too, among them David Gedge, The Chameleons, Ian Brown, Andy Rourke and an eight-year-old Jimi Goodwin, later of Doves; while those who performed included teenage punks Wilful Damage, Fast Cars, Alternative TV, Pegasus (featuring a pre-OMD Andy McCluskey) and Crispy Ambulance. The latter’s Alan Hempsall remembers: “In 1978, we’d only been going for six months. Tony Wilson

m made the biggest impression o on me. He had a spot on S Saturday and put on The Fall and Durutti Column. I think it a was the beginning of his idea w for Factory. He hadn’t seen Joy fo Division yet, but he knew Vini Reilly from Ed Banger And The Nosebleeds. Vini wanted something that showed off his talents more.” Reilly’s presiding memory is of Les Pryor, formerly of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias, coming to the rescue when his Watkins echo unit gave up: “Les stepped forward and said to the audience, ‘Has anyone got an elastic band?’ He diffused the situation and made everyone laugh their heads off. I had a giggling fit.” The rest of the time, says Reilly, was spent wandering around in a hallucinogenic fug, listening to Fela Kuti on his Walkman: “There was this very pure, strong herb that I used to get from Moss Side. It was idyllic.” The last Deeply Vale Festival was held in 1979, though by then it had become victim to local bureaucracy. An injunction was served, demanding a better water supply and sanitary conditions. And though it struggled on for another two summers at nearby Pickup Bank, it was all but over. “Thatcherism had come in and community spirit went at the end of the ’70s,” says Hewitt. “Deeply Vale was special because it was about everybody. We’d all been to see Woodstock and bought the triple vinyl. So we just thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be great to do that here?’ We still had that dream of the Woodstock generation.” ROB HUGHES The Deeply Vale Box Set, including six CDs, a 272-page book and a pack of incense, is released Dec 1 on Dandelion

➤ Bruce Springsteen recently revealed to the New York Times that his fantasy dinnerparty guests would be Philip Roth, Keith Richards, Tolstoy and Dylan. A clue as to what he might serve them came on November

5, when the Boss auctioned a lasagne dinner at his place in aid of US veterans. The price? $300,000. ➤ It’s a livin’ thing! After his Hyde Park show, Jeff Lynne appears to be planning a full comeback. Talking to Billboard, Lynne revealed that he’s working on an album, with a view to playing new material at US shows in 2015. ➤ Stumped for that last-minute festive treat? The sequel to 4:13 Dream might not have appeared in 2014, but The Cure finish the year with three Christmas shows in London. The venue is the Eventim Apollo, on December 21-23. ➤ The latest Uncut Ultimate Music Guide is now on sale, dedicated to the indefatigable genius of Paul McCartney, and full of fab old NME and Melody Maker interviews and insightful new reviews. And visit uncut.co.uk, packed with news and reviews, and some of Uncut’s best features from the archives.

I N STA N T KA R M A !

PLAYLIST

THE

ON THE STEREO THIS MONTH…

NATALIE PRASS Natalie Prass SPACEBOMB Stepping out of Jenny Lewis’ band and into Matthew E White’s Spacebomb cabal, the Nashville singer’s debut is a sumptuous country-soul classic. THE GO-BETWEENS G Stands For Go-Betweens DOMINO An exhaustive, revelatory 8CD trawl through Forster, McLennan and Morrison’s formative years. “Further, longer, higher, older…” JESSICA PRATT On Your Own Love Again DRAG CITY A second album of eldritch, candlelit folk from the fine Californian singer-songwriter, often sounding kin to Karen Dalton. THE WATERBOYS Modern Blues HARLEQUIN AND CLOWN

WE’RE NEW HERE The Glory Fires, 2014: (l-r) Lee Bains, Blake Williamson, Eric Wallace and Adam Williamson

Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires Recommended this month: politics, religion and rock’n’roll! The radical new firebrands of Southern Rock

‘‘A

w, I got nervous writing all these Bains concedes that he’s far from the first songs,” says Lee Bains III. “I was Southern musician to be drawn to what one raised not to talk about politics, obvious antecedent, Drive-By Truckers, defined religion or sex in polite company. And there’s as “the duality of the Southern thing”. (Matt a lot on this record about the two of those that Patton, a former compadre of Bains in rock’n’roll isn’t supposed to be about.” Tuscaloosa punkers The Dexateens, recently Bains has just been asked how hesitant he was joined the DBTs on bass.) The South remains about deploying the motto of his home state of unfairly caricatured – not least, as Bains has said Alabama – “We Dare Defend Our Rights!” – as previously, by Southerners – but its tormented the title of a song which does not, to understate history provides any native artist with what matters audaciously, full-throatedly endorse the sometimes seems almost an unfair advantage: insular belligerence with which the South in a blessing, to coin a phrase, and a curse. “That general, and Alabama in particular, are often white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon type,” says associated. Bains’ song of the same name is, Bains, “has been problematic since the inception rather, an angry elegy to the victims of the 1963 of the South. I’m interested in expanding the idea bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in his of a monolithic, static South into a much more native Birmingham – accompanied, like every multiplicitous and dynamic set of identities.” song on Bains & The Glory Fires’ stunning second For all that Bains’ lyrics are clearly important to LP, Dereconstructed (No 40 in Uncut’s Albums him, it’s striking, on much of Dereconstructed, Of 2014 list), by unmistakeably how hard they are to hear beneath Southern rock guitars. the squalling furies of the music. I’M YOUR FAN “But there’s a history,” says That nervousness, again? Bains, “of Southern bands “No, that’s not why,” he says. “Or undermining the social strictures at least not quite – we hemmed and – the Allmans, Marshall Tucker, hawed about that. But I wanted it Skynyrd. And I really value that to be a rager, to sound abrasive, to tradition. When I was in high represent the contents of the lyrics school, all the bands I got stoked sonically. The records I’ve loved about coming through town were were ones that had vocals pushing Patterson Hood, from Gainsville and Richmond, Drive-By Truckers to crack through the guitars, and ud made me feel I was in a basement who had this aesthetic of loud s. watc guitars and politicised lyrics. watching a band play through rded Mars These were two-guitar, bearded Marshall stacks with a busted PA. Pand punk bands, but they were Pandemonium.” ANDREW MUELLER where I learned about LGBT politics and feminism.” Dereconstructed is out on Sub Pop Dere

“Lee Bains III is Southern punk rock at its finest...”

12 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

Mike Scott’s latest musical adventure takes him to Nashville, and a soulful new Waterboys featuring Muscle Shoals legend David Hood on bass. PANDA BEAR Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper

Panda Bear

DOMINO

The Animal Collective’s most high-profile member returns with his fifth exuberant – and poppiest – solo album. SLEATER-KINNEY No Cities To Love SUB POP Hot on the heels of their career-spanning boxset, a new chapter of S-K’s storied career begins with an album picking up roughly where 2005’s The Woods left off. LIAM HAYES Slurrup FAT POSSUM An unprecedented burst of activity in the Plush man’s 20-year career, following up this autumn’s Korp Sole Roller with a ragged, punchier powerpop set. VARIOUS ARTISTS Black Fire! New Spirits! Deep And Radical Jazz In The USA 1957-75 SOUL JAZZ What it says on the proverbial tin. A potent Soul Jazz round-up, featuring Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef et al. HOWLIN RAIN Mansion Songs EASY SOUND A weird major-label sojourn behind him, Ethan Miller leads his SF rockers in a strung-out, reflective new direction. 8:58 Eight Fifty Eight PLEDGE In the wake of Orbital’s split, Paul Hartnoll updates the intricate systems of his old band circa Snivilization. For regular updates, check our blogs at www. uncut.co.uk and follow @JohnRMulvey on Twitter

AN AUDIENCE WITH...

Jimmy Page

Interview: Michael Bonner Photograph: Ross Halfin

The Led Zeppelin guitarist discusses his glittering career, occult bookshops and Robert Plant’s claims of a possible acoustic reunion: “It’s just spin, and it’s not on!” Y JIMMY PAGE’s standards, 2014 has been a surprisingly busy year. He has overseen the launch of a lengthy Led Zeppelin reissue campaign, published his autobiography and even teamed up with designer Paul Smith for a range of limitededition Zeppelin scarves. Next year, he promises, there will even be the prospect of new music. “Time sometimes passes quite quickly,” he tells Uncut, in the library of a boutique London hotel. Page will be 71 in January, but he looks in remarkably good shape. With his bronze tan, white ponytail and wide smile he resembles an old-school Hollywood star recently returned from the South Of France. Dressed in black, taking occasional sips from a glass of sparkling mineral water, he is animated as he answers your questions on subjects ranging from deep Zeppelin album cuts to the prospect of a Yardbirds reunion, his formative musical inspirations and his extraordinary session work from the 1960s. Page even responds to Robert Plant’s claim – in these very pages – that he suggested reuniting with his former bandmate for an acoustic project… “It’s just spin,” says Page. “I don’t think it’s productive in any shape or form to what he’s doing or what I’m doing. Now, on with your questions…”

B

© DENNIS COFFIN; BEN STANSALL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

STAR QUESTION Would you please show me how to play “Black Dog”? It’s been bothering me for a long time. Brian May Well, I’ll have to, then, if Brian’s asked! What are the chords for “Black Dog”? It’s in A, and then it sort of goes to an E chord but then while it’s snaking around it, it has some sort of little triplets that take you back into the A. So, yes, it’s tricky. You just have to sort of know how to count it. Why has it taken you so long to finish your autobiography? Christian Parker, Shoreditch I was doing other things at the same time! One of the things that slowed it up was knowing, say, there was a photo session in the past, in the ’70s, and knowing that there were contact sheets. Maybe the images

14 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

are now with agencies, but not the contact sheets. So I wanted to get into the contact sheets, and that wasn’t always so easy to do. There were also certain photos I wanted to get, but I didn’t remember who the photographer was. It just took time to piece it all together. But however long it took, I knew that nobody had done an autobiography in photographs. As it goes from 13 through to 70 years of age, it’s got a whole history of a working musician. All the changes that go on are almost chameleon-like but nevertheless they’re driven by this one thing – a passion towards music. That was the challenge: to do something that had never been done before but which just unfolds the more you go through it. What new projects are in the pipeline and when can we expect to hear them? Derek Murphy, Dublin, Ireland I’ve been involved in some other epic projects. I’ve got all the

Page, left (circa 1959), outside school in Epsom with friend Rod Wyatt (right)

Zeppelin remasters finished, for all of the albums, so they’ll be coming out in staggered release. I also got material for a ‘what happened in this day in history’ for the website, it’s all stockpiled. So things will be coming out in healthy instalments, which then allows me to focus on musicians and music that I want to be seen to be doing next year. I hoped I could do it this year, but I can’t. It’s too much. I don’t want to have to contract musicians and then go, “I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go over to the States for a month to do some promo.” I want to start generating the passion within all of the musicians that I’m working with, and we’re going to go through like a rocket. It’ll manifest itself next year. Can I tell you anything about it? Well,

I’ll be playing guitar. That we can all guarantee. And I won’t be singing. I want to go out there and play music from all the way through. I did a solo tour in 1988. You know, I’ve only had one solo album out, really. And one single in 1965. So I haven’t tried to sort of flood the market with my own stuff! I want to get out there and play exactly what it is that I’ve got in mind here to do, including new material. But there’ll be some good surprises in there. I think people want me to go out there and play. They know all the sort of stuff that I can do. I can play in many sorts of categories because we’ve seen that with Led Zeppelin, all the acoustic stuff, and this, that and the other. That’s exactly what I would do.

“Nobody had done an autobiography in photographs... It’s got a whole history of a working musician”

AN AUDIENCE WITH... Are there plans to release any more experimental music? Bruce Yardley, Leeds I’ll tell you what’s coming out that I’m really excited about, the mix that I did of Lucifer Rising, but I’m leaving the guitar on it, a 12-string, because that’s the guide guitar that’s showing me where I’m going to do the overdub. This isn’t what got sent to Kenneth Anger, because I didn’t want hardly any guitar at all, there’s only a little bit of guitar at the end, guitars coming in more across it but the mix is really, really superb, I’m really proud of it. And I’ve got some experimental music that was done with bow and Theremin which is like, hang on to your seats, because it really, really is something else, it’s disturbing. I’ve got home stuff that I did at the same studio or equipment that I did the Lucifer Rising [soundtrack] on, with the whole guitar textures and overdubs. I think people want to hear that. They want to know what it was I was doing. I’ll show you what it was like and what I was ming doing and you’ll see. That’s coming on the website. Vinyl.

Everything You Need Babe”. There’s a new version of it right now, but beforehand when it was originally there, I heard this solo and I said, “My goodness, that’s me!” So I tracked it down and it was Bern Elliott & The Fenmen. So I must have done this session, because it’s me without a shadow of a doubt. I wouldn’t have remembered I did a solo let alone a song or was on the session, they were coming fast and furious. You didn’t know who you were going in with, that’s the important thing, so I didn’t have a whole list myself. I can estimate how many. It’s a hell of a lot, it’s gotta be. I was doing it for the equivalent of three years or so. Three sessions a day. The five-piece Yardbirds in 1966, with Jeff Beck, below left, and Jimmy Page, top right

sold rrecords. It’s just like you see this old footage where they’ve got pe people going in booths. So I’d go th from school on the day there w when they had their deliveries in – on weekdays for the weekend – and you could check certain artists to see w their new record was. what Y Yeah that’s it, I was really on th I didn’t wait ’til Saturday, that. in ccase something had already

STAR QUESTION

© DENNIS COFFIN; PAUL REDMOND/WIREIMAGE

Reliving all of the wonderful moments from this canon of music, which moment took you by surprise the most? Michael Des Barres A lot of it you think, ‘Well, this ight might possibly happen, that might possibly happen.’ But I’d say as far as the manifestation of it went, it was getting the first gold disc for Led Zeppelin I. You were fully aware of gold discs and things like that, with artists that you were personally endeared to along the way, American artists. Suddenly everything we’d done, all the work etcetera, etcetera… we’d broken America, I know, but the fact is, that gold disc was so symbolic of everything for me, a major thing. Who first inspired you to play the guitar? Maryann, California Lonnie Donegan inspired everyone because he made it look as though it was possible to do. But who really moved it out of just playing acoustic to electric was all those people that were playing in the 1950s. Initially, it was the rockabilly-style guitar, the Johnny Burnette Rock & Roll Trio. When you heard that, it was just something that inspired you so

16 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

much to want to play out of the box, as it’s so abstract, the guitar playing. Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallop, Jonny Neats, they gave me the inspiration… If you heard them, you were infected by them, seduced. That was what was going to write the whole of the manual for us as much as anything else. Then The Beatles opened it up for bands to write, and down here in the south it was the Chess catalogue more than Tamla Motown. There was this great fusion that had gone on from rock though the blues and all that wonderful music, that Chicago blues movement, really, that went on Vee-Jay and Chess. All that stuff was so exhilarating. Where did you buy your records when you were growing up? Paul Lloyd, Crystal Palace In Epsom. Rumbelows. It was by the Clock Tower. Rumbelows had a little section at the back where they

sold out in the morning. I could only afford the equivalent of my pocket money, like one single. But I also had to pay for guitars, so there was a lot of bobbing and weaving when it came to being a record collector or a guitar player. Is there a definitive list of all your session work? David Burns, via email No, but I’ll tell you something interesting. On the BBC, there’s a little musical clip that comes on, I think the song’s called “I’ve Got

Are there any surviving live multi-track tapes from the Japan 1971 tour? Ian Coe, Toronto Maybe. But not for now. There’s been a lot of Led Zeppelin material that’s come out, including live material, but more importantly, with visual. But also there’s the O2 which shows the three remaining members with Jason, a more recent incarnation. I’m so keen for the Led Zeppelin material from the studio to go out to give more information on what went on and I thought that really tipped the scales. Now there’s other things to do. And I stockpile material. So, yeah, there’s always someone wanting to know what’s considered to be the Holy Grail ’cause it’s yet to be discovered. But there’s no point in even thinking about that at the moment. I’ve put quite a lot of time into the Led Zeppelin material. What do you consider to be your finest non-Led Zeppelin achievement? David Goodson, via email It’s hard to say. There’s so many different areas. I’d surprise everyone, but I’d be very sincere if I said that doing the Olympics [Beijing, 2008] with Leona Lewis was phenomenal. She’s really plucky, she’s superb, and she sang “Whole Lotta Love” brilliantly. We managed to do the full length of “Whole Lotta Love” – it wasn’t edited – and she sang it beautifully. It was so cool the way she approached it. For that audience, and the fact we didn’t fuck it up… we’re really going to do this and we’re going to do it proud. That was important. It was a Led Zeppelin number but it took on another persona. I was proud to be able to play that riff for the handover.

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‘Zoso’ with Led Zeppelin at the Oakland Coliseum, CA, July 23, 1977

Would you consider playing with The Yardbirds again? Byron Lewis, Barry, Wales But who would sing? Keith Relf died all those many years ago. He’d done a couple of other things, Renaissance and Medicine Head. Keith Relf was damn good. Could Jeff Beck do it? Sing? He doesn’t want to sing “Hi Ho Silver Lining” let alone sing “For Your Love”. That’s really unfair! But I can’t sing, so there we are. Maybe Eric would like to sing? No, don’t say that, because it’ll start all the stupid rumours. I’m not starting. I’m just thinking who’s going to sing. At least you got three of the original guitarists still there and the current ones that have been since.

LARRY HULST/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; PAUL REDMOND/WIREIMAGE

STAR QUESTION Is there one guitar you’ve had that you feel is more magical than the rest? J Mascis I think most people would think it’s a ’59 Les Paul – Jed Walsh insisted I buy it off him in 1969, and I go into the second album with that. So “Whole Lotta Love” is done on it, and I also played it at the O2. Same guitar. I’m pretty loyal to my guitars you know, but then they’re pretty loyal to me, too. There’s also an acoustic guitar that all of the first four albums were written on. So that’s quite an important one. But as far as the one that people got to see then it’s the ’59 Les Paul. How many guitars do I have? I don’t

18 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

know! More than I can play at any one point in time. Even though I do have double-necks so that I can try and play more than one at one time!

“I wouldn’t have remembered if I did a solo, let alone a song or a session – they were coming fast and furious!” Where does ‘Zoso’ come from? Preston Currie, Sudbury, Suffolk It comes from me… everyone had a symbol. Originally, there was going to be no information on Led Zeppelin IV. Then somebody suggested having a sort of craftsman mark. But it wasn’t going to be so easy because everyone’s going to have their idea on what that one symbol should be, so it came down to everyone should choose their own symbol. Because it’s the fourth album, all the others have been I, II and III in Roman numerals, so then we’ll have four characters, if you like. Having been working on it along with all the rereleases, I think of it as IV and actually I think of Houses Of The Holy as V. That said, everyone chose their own symbol and I chose mine.

What does it mean? It means I chose my symbol and put it on there. If I do a book, then that’s probably the right time to describe the whole process of it, if you don’t mind.

A telephone can be clearly heard ringing in the studio on Zeppelin’s “The Ocean”. Who was on the line? Phil Tate, South Shields, Tyne & Wear I don’t know. Do I find it strange that people pick up on these very specific points of records? No. I’m thrilled the records are recorded in such a way that the hi-fi quality, even though it’s tough – the music’s not light and wimpy – that you can hear detail on it because that’s what you’re supposed to do. It was supposed to be something whereby you could hear everything that was going on and yet there’d still be an intensity and a character for each number, each one a separate sound, very different in its approach, almost in its performance. I think that’s got a lot to do with the analogue recording. All of those things were done from analogue. On IV, you’ll hear a version of “Stairway To Heaven” that is absolute hi-fi, that’s exactly what hi-fi is all about. It was done well in the first place, superbly well, and of course when you’ve got these great musicians, you want to make sure you can hear what they’ve done. In the ’70s, you ran a bookshop called Equinox. Can you tell us about it? Julie & Mo, Germany I was interested in alternative… basically, things alternative. There was quite a number of likeminded people around at that point in time, so I had a bookshop in West London because there were a couple on Museum Street and one in Cecil Court. Basically, it was an occult bookshop, and it covered all manner of things like astrology and yoga, Eastern mysticism, Western mysticism, it was right across the board. It’s very similar to what you have in a bookshop like Watkins [Cecil Court, London WC2], really, that’s what it was.

How involved were you in Swan Song? Davy Maguire, Dublin Very much so. We were all very keen to have something as a record label. We were thrilled. Dave Edmunds, Pretty Things. Detective, they were good. That first album of theirs, it was really good. It should have been more popular, shouldn’t it? Bad Company… that was more Peter Grant’s thing, and that was really a great band to have on there because of Paul Rodgers. He’s phenomenal – he was then and still is. The Pretty Things were a band that were really changing their music and had done because they probably did one of the best singles way back in the day with “Rosalyn”. That’s wild! That’s serious! And then they’d gone through SF Sorrow and the music that they were doing on Swan Song was incredible. It was the sort of band that when someone said, “Oh, some tapes have come in”, I was keen to hear what they’d done, because it was always so good! Good writing, good performance from everybody. A fine band. Jimmy, would you agree with Robert Plant’s offer to do an all-acoustic set? Taylor Miranda, Ferndale, CA That’s coming from a soundbite that is inaccurate. He would have no intention whatsoever of doing it. So I’m not getting into it. People keep giving me these quotes. I don’t follow what he says… all I know is, it’s speaking in volumes that we just did that one show. He can say whatever he wants. He can say “Jimmy this, Jimmy that…” I don’t care. I’ve got acoustic songs. Don’t you think I’ve got some new material for what I’m going to do? It’s just spin. It’s spin, and it’s not on. The Robert Plant questions are difficult for me to answer because I’ve had enough of all of this stuff, to be honest. Robert says this, Robert says that. I just don’t want to be presenting soundbites so that it’s like some kind of ping-pong match. I’ve had enough. I don’t need it. The only reality of it is that we did one concert. No matter how you dress it up, look at the situation. That’s it. Jimmy Page, the official autobiography by Jimmy Page, is out now, published by Genesis Publications. Price £40 from major bookstores or jimmypagebook.com The latest batch of Led Zeppelin remasters – IV and Houses Of The Holy – are available from Rhino

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22 THE TOP 75 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 33 THE BEST REISSUES & COMPS 36 2014’S FINEST FILMS 39 THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS

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JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

21

REVIEW OF 2014 N|E|W|R|E|L|E|A|S|E|S 75 RICHARD THOMPSON Acoustic Classics BEESWING

74 TEMPLES Sun Structures HEAVENLY

73 DAVE & PHIL ALVIN Common Ground YEP ROC 72 DAN MICHAELSON Distance THE STATE51 CONSPIRACY 71 BOB MOULD Beauty & Ruin MERGE 70 FIRST AID KIT Stay Gold COLUMBIA 69 GULP Season Sun SONIC CATHEDRAL 68 LYDIA LOVELESS Somewhere Else BLOODSHOT 67 PERFUME GENIUS Too Bright CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL S&D

66 THURSTON MOORE The Best Day MATADOR 65 THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS Brill Bruisers MATADOR 64 KING CREOSOTE From Scotland With Love DOMINO

63 GAZELLE TWIN Unflesh ANTI GHOST MOON RAY 62 PAOLO NUTINI Caustic Love ATLANTIC 61 AFGHAN WHIGS Do To The Beast SUB POP 60 FRAZEY FORD Indian Ocean NETTWERK 59 RODDY FRAME Seven Dials AED 58 JAMIE T Carry On The Grudge VIRGIN EMI

57 THE DELINES Colfax DECOR 56 ANGEL OLSEN Burn Your Fire For No Witness JAGJAGUWAR 55 SCOTT WALKER AND SUNN O))) Soused 4AD 54 TOM PETTY Hypnotic Eye REPRISE 53 GOAT Commune ROCKET 52 LIARS Mess MUTE 51 JENNY LEWIS The Voyager WARNER BROS

Morrissey: a turbulent year

BEASTS 50WILD Present Tense DOMINO

If 2011’s Smother was somewhat uptight, a little frigid, reinedin, corseted, Present Tense was a welcome return in parts to the more colourfully ribaldry of Wild Beasts’ first two albums. Synthesisers dominated, but the album was never alien or abrasive, more often intimate, eerily seductive, an exotic pleasure, indebted partly to both Kate Bush and The Blue Nile.

HITCHCOCK 49ROBYN The Man Upstairs YEP ROC

Produced by Joe Boyd, who helmed landmark albums by many of Hitchcock’s musical heroes, The Man Upstairs was a largely acoustic collection of sombre originals and impeccably selected covers. Among them were revelatory versions of The Doors’ “The Crystal Ship” and Roxy’s Avalon-era “To Turn You On”. At 61, Hitchcock seemed finally to have outgrown surreal whimsy. His new maturity suited him perfectly.

MORRISSEY 48 World Peace Is None Of Your Business HARVEST

His first album in five years was barely in the shops when Morrissey threw a fit over Harvest’s

ineffective promotion. In the subsequent public row, it was rather forgotten that World Peace… sounded as fresh as Viva Hate did in the wake of The Smiths. At its best, it was a vivid reminder how great he once was and can be still.

47ALLAH-LAS Worship The Sun INNOVATIVE LEISURE

Allah-Las’ highly regarded 2011 debut drew obsessively from a wellspring of mid-’60s influences and was in thrall to fuzzy US garage rock, surf-pop, early psychedelia, primitive beat music, Love’s psychotic twitchiness and The Byrds’ trebly jangle. Their second album was a similar helping of impeccable Californian retrofetishism that subverted ridicule by achieving so spectacularly what it set out to do.

WATSON 46WILLIE Folk Singer, Vol. 1 ACONY

Willie Watson, formerly of Old Crow Medicine Show, picked his way through a sometimes arcane collection of old and obscure folk and country songs on his outstanding solo debut, produced by Dave Rawlings for the label he runs with musical partner Gillian Welch. The results were like something you might have heard on an anthology compiled by Harry Smith.

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with 22 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

TEMPEST 45KATE Everybody Down BIG DADA

London poet and spoken-word artist Tempest, the youngest winner of the 2012 Ted Hughes Award poetry prize, made her debut as a rapper on the Mercurynominated Everybody Down, an ambitious narrative about love, drugs and redemption, each song a new chapter in a sometimes lurid and generally bleak tale, partly indebted to The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free.

THOM YORKE 44 Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes

SELF-RELEASED

September’s surprise release of Thom Yorke’s second solo album provoked more discussion about how the music was delivered than the music itself, which rather overlooked the fact that it contained some of his most lovely, clever and subtly involving work of the decade. The album gave up its riches incrementally, even reluctantly, but there were great rewards for the patiently attentive.

INDIA YOUTH 43EAST Total Strife Forever STOLEN RECORDINGS

If Brian Wilson, Eno and Björk had ever made an album together, the results of their stellar

N|E|W|R|E|L|E|A|S|E|S REVIEW OF 2014 collaboration might have sounded not unlike this impressive debut from William Doyle. Total Strife Forever shifted kaleidoscopically from shoegaze shimmer to ambient abstraction, full-on electroorchestral symphonies, modern classical austerity and pumping acid house.

much-weathered voice. On his most intimate and open-hearted record in years, there were nods to his hellraising ’60s and ’70s prime and riotous Nashville days, while Billy Joe Shavers’ “Hard To Be An Outlaw” was delivered with the surly panache of a true renegade.

ROUX 36LATrouble In Paradise

42 Rave Tapes MOGWAI

POLYDOR

At the time of its mid-summer release, the belated follow-up to La Roux’s selftitled 2009 debut seemed to our reviewer like the best pop album of 2014 so far, warmer and much more luxurious than its sometimes shrill predecessor, a triumph for the now effectively solo Elly Jackson, following the departure of former collaborator Ben Langmaid. By year’s end, its appeal had barely diminished.

ROCK ACTION

ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 9

Breakthrough trio Future Islands

LANEGAN BAND 39Singles 41 MARK Phantom Radio FLOODED SOIL/VAGRANT/HEAVENLY

2012’s synth-heavy Blues Funeral marked a surprising development in Mark Lanegan’s illustrious career, and he furthered that album’s overlapping of the blues and folk, that have been a cornerstone of his music, with modern electronics on Phantom Radio. The hypnotic pulse of programmed drums and washes of synthesiser created a dramatic musical landscape over which Lanegan’s weatherbeaten vocals loomed with dark majesty.

LEE BAINS III & 40 THE GLORY FIRES Dereconstructed SUB POP

Ferocious Southern rock indebted to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Drive-By Truckers, with an exciting dash of The Rolling Stones, the second album from Alabama’s Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires was also a potent, articulate attempt to bring an enlightened perspective to hoary Southern traditions of regional pride, faith, virility and political intransigence.

FUTURE ISLANDS 4AD

“It’s about real things. Love, loss, nature,” Future Islands’ vocalist Samuel T Herring told Uncut about his band’s fourth album, their first for 4AD. Recorded in a hunting cabin in their native North Carolina, Singles was full of rousing synth-pop, Herring’s operatic croon bringing an urgent hyper-sincerity to a collection of emotionally bold, heartfelt songs.

38Bécs

FENNESZ EDITIONS MEGO

Since 2001’s Endless Summer, in which guitar feedback and processed electronics

shimmered over discreet, nostalgic melodies, Christian Fennesz has never quite as successfully matched its ample serenity, despite his growing status as an experimental composer who favours warmth and romance to clinical austerity. Bécs, though, was, however, a ravishing experience, Fennesz emerging from its billowing clouds of noise as Kevin Shields’ most auspicious peer.

NELSON 37 WILLIE Band Of Brothers SONY LEGACY

This was a surprise: a Willie Nelson album mostly written by Willie Nelson and further distinguished by the simple grandeur of the hardy veteran’s

TRUCKERS 35DRIVE-BY English Oceans ATO

Returning from the much-needed break they took after 2011’s Go-Go Boots, DriveBy Truckers were reinvigorated on English Oceans. Band cornerstone Mike Cooley sounded especially refreshed, contributing nearly half the songs on an album that followed a blazing arc from the rowdy, horn-driven Exile On Main St rock of “Shit Shots Count” to the epic closer “Grand Canyon”, and held together better than anything since 2003’s Decoration Day.

CHRIS FORSYTH 34 & THE SOLAR MOTEL BAND Intensity Ghost NO QUARTER

True renegade Willie Nelson

The brilliant Philadelphia guitarist’s debt to Television was even more apparent on Intensity Ghost than last year’s raging Solar Motel, his new album taking up where Marquee Moon left off. If Forsyth’s solo albums showcased his wiry virtuosity, then the newly minted Solar Motel Band (featuring members of Spacin’ and The War On Drugs) added serious cosmic heft to his frequently ecstatic music.

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with

DAVE McCLISTER

Mogwai’s eighth album sounded like a major achievement, on which the band’s familiar predilection for vast musical landscapes drenched by torrential guitars and the swell of often lachrymose melodies came up against dark electronic experiments, in which there were echoes of Boards Of Canada and even Depeche Mode. This was music to terrorise and delight, uniquely Mogwai.

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REVIEW OF 2014 N|E|W|R|E|L|E|A|S|E|S

33 Metamodern Sounds In Country Music STURGILL SIMPSON

Far-out country: Sturgill Simpson

LOOSE

Simpson’s 2013 debut album, High Top Mountain, was steeped in the Outlaw country of Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. Its follow-up was rather more cosmically inclined, whose beauty lay in the contrast between timeworn country obsessions – loneliness, the road, heartbreak – and a new-found starry adventurism. If metaphysical prog country was your bag, this was the album for you.

32MERCHANDISE After The End

Jack White, still the showman

4AD

Florida’s Merchandise shocked many fans with the new musical direction essayed on 2013’s Totale Nite and moved even further away from their hardcore roots on After The End, an album of ’80s pop and brooding white soul. There were overtones of both New Order and Lloyd Cole, while their love of The Smiths was evident in Carson Cox’s Morrissey-like vocals.

31TUNE-YARDS Nikki Nack MADISON FULLER; HOLLY ANDRES

4AD

With contributions from producers John Hill and Malay and Grammy-winning vocal group Roomful Of Teeth, Nikki Nack was a more collaborative effort than usual from Merrill Garbus. Their presence did little, however, to temper her

characteristic hyperactivity. Nikki Nack was an album bursting with adventure and originality, a drumheavy, soul-jazz mix of teasing sensuality, waspish protest and art-pop mysticism.

30SPOON They Want My Soul LOMA VISTA

Spoon returned after a three-year break, sounding brighter and louder than ever on They Want My Soul, an album of classic, joyous rock’n’roll, the band swaggering through blasts of raucous garage rock and blues stompers, hunched art-rock and pretty balladry with hugely confident panache. The exquisitely romantic “Inside Out”, set to an old-school rap breakbeat, was a career highlight.

WHITE 29JACK Lazaretto

THIRD MAN/XL

A characteristic of Jack White’s postWhite Stripes career has been its selfconsciously antithetical drift away from the Stripes’ dynamic minimalism. Lazaretto in this respect featured some of the most dense, busy and wild music he’s ever made, but was paradoxically at its best when White’s bravura showmanship gave way to reflective calm and rare moments of vulnerable introspection.

BLACK KEYS 28THE Turn Blue

NONESUCH

2011’s El Camino was a platinum-selling album of in-yourface rockers that turned The Black Keys into one America’s biggest bands. Turn Blue was therefore a brave shift in musical emphasis, largely mid-tempo, moody, lush and deeply soulful that played like a love letter to Motown soul. If El Camino was their catchiest album, this was their most seductive, insidious and satisfying.

WATT 27BEN Hendra UNMADE ROAD

Bursting with adventure: Tune-Yards

His first solo album since North Marine Drive, 31 years ago, Hendra found Ben Watt in reflective middle-age, trying to re-engage with a youthful optimism that

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with 26 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

preceded his long career with Everything But The Girl. Bernard Butler’s guitars wonderfully enhanced these elegant songs of emotional resilience and David Gilmour’s lap-steel solo on “The Levels” was an album highlight.

GUNN 26STEVE Way Out Weather PARADISE OF BACHELORS

Brooklyn’s Steve Gunn originally impressed as a virtuoso guitarist with a flair for extended improvisations. On Way Out Weather, however, he transformed himself into a classic singer-songwriter, his formidable instrumental chops placed at the service of a collection beautifully constructed songs, the woozy, cyclical dynamic of the title track evidence of a recent stint with Kurt Vile’s Violators.

MODS 25SLEAFORD Divide And Exit HARBINGER SOUND

Sleaford Mods’ seventh album was a typically angry howl from society’s pissstained basement. Jason Williamson’s scatological broadsides were delivered furiously over Andrew Fearn’s brutally crude backing tracks. Often compared to northern ranters like John Cooper Clarke and Mark E Smith, Williamson here more resembled Arthur Seaton, the bitter workingclass hero of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night And Sunday Morning.

N|E|W|R|E|L|E|A|S|E|S REVIEW OF 2014

24TWEEDY Sukierae

DBPM/ANTI-

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy had just started work on this intimate collaboration with his 18-year-old drummer son, Spencer, when Tweedy’s wife was diagnosed with cancer, a family crisis that inevitably impacted on the record he eventually made. Sukierae, however, rarely sank into post-diagnosis melancholy, Tweedy addressing life-changing events with great dignity on an album of profound depth and emotional richness.

23Pom Pom ARIEL PINK

4AD

Pom Pom was the most consistently entertaining Ariel Pink album to date. It was also the most chaotic, vexing and ridiculous. Across the equivalent of four sides of vinyl, Pink giddily mixed elements of goth, glam, pre-Beatles teen beat, ’80s MOR, twee pop, prog, advertising jingles and themes from kids’ TV shows. The results were gleefully deranged, time-warped and sometimes slightly sinister.

22Morning Phase BECK

CAPITOL

Beck was reluctant to acknowledge Morning Phase as a companion piece to 2002’s Sea Change, but his first album of new songs in six years seemed tethered to the traumas of the earlier album, despite being presented as a new musical dawn. The cosmic Californian music he grew up with was a shaping influence, but even more affecting were the solemn echoes of Nick Drake’s fragile folk sensibility.

21EARTH Primitive And Deadly SOUTHERN LORD

Seattle drone-rock pioneer Dylan Carlson has lately busied himself with film soundtracks and, as Drcarlsonalbion, adaptations of traditional British folk songs. He occupied more familiar ground here, Earth’s monolithic heaviness never weightier or more glacial. Highlights included “There Is A Serpent

MC Taylor aka Hiss Golden Messenger

20 BEST AMERICANA ALBUMS

Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Alynda Lee Segarra

1 HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER Lateness Of Dancers MERGE

Coming” and “Rooks Across The Gates”, featuring Mark Lanegan. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 14

STEPHEN MALKMUS 20 & THE JICKS Wig Out At Jagbags DOMINO

Stephen Malkmus’ first album since relocating to Berlin, the wonderfully titled Wig Out… struck an almost perfect balance between his idiosyncratic pop instincts and affection for sonic squalls and noisy rumblings. There were still a lot of guitar-heavy jams, but the pithy tunefulness of its best songs made this one of his most consistently engaging records since Pavement’s gilded heyday. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 4

HURRAY FOR 19 THE RIFF RAFF Small Town Heroes ATO

Like Gillian Welch, Alynda Lee Segarra is inspired by American folk traditions, to which she here brought a radical new perspective, notably exposing the sociopathic misogyny of murder ballad “Delia” on “The Body Electric”, which alone confirmed Hurray For The Riff Raff as standard bearers for a new generation of forward-thinking roots musicians. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 10

18To Be Kind SWANS

YOUNG GOD/MUTE

Scale, a sense of hugeness, in fact, has always been a key element of Swans’ music, but

the vastness of Michael Gira’s sound was especially apparent on To Be Kind, which like 2012’s The Seer, ran to nearly two hours of assaultive noise symphonies. It was much to Gira’s credit that he made such music not just tolerable, but absolutely gripping. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 13

17 Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone LUCINDA WILLIAMS

HIGHWAY 20

2 ROSANNE CASH The River & The Thread DECCA 3 LUCINDA WILLIAMS Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone HIGHWAY 20 4 HURRAY FOR THE RIFF-RAFF Small Town Heroes ATO 5 STEVE GUNN Way Out Weather PARADISE OF BACHELORS

6 STURGILL SIMPSON Metamodern Sounds In Country Music LOOSE

Williams’ first release on her own label was a 20-track double album that was also her best record since 1998 masterpiece, Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Supported by a stellar lineup including Tony Joe White, Bill Frisell, Jakob Dylan, Ian McLagan and Jonathan Wilson, she rousingly mixed hillbilly country, barroom ballads, atmospheric Southern gothic, hard blues, gospel and lashings of country soul.

7 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS English Oceans ATO

16American Interior

13 LYDIA LOVELESS Somewhere Else BLOODSHOT

GRUFF RHYS

TURNSTILE

In 1792, 22-yearold John Evans, a former Snowdonia farmhand turned explorer, set off on a solo expedition through America in search of a reputed tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans. 200 years later, his descendent, Gruff Rhys, immortalised Evans’ journey in a documentary film, book, app and this vivid, genredefying, wonderfully droll, sometimes poignant and enjoyably baffling re-telling of an extraordinary story. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 12

8 WILLIE NELSON Band Of Brothers LEGACY 9 LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES Dereconstructed SUB POP 10 WILLIE WATSON Folk Singer, Vol 1 ACONY 11 THE DELINES Colfax DECOR 12 FRAZEY FORD Indian Ocean NETTWERK

14 DAVE & PHIL ALVIN Common Ground YEP ROC 15 ALICE GERRARD Follow The Music TOMPKINS SQUARE 16 REIGNING SOUND Shattered MERGE 17 SIMONE FELICE Strangers TEAM LOVE 18 NATHAN BOWLES Nansemond PARADISE OF BACHELORS

19 PETER ROWAN Dharma Blues OMNIVORE 20 SHOVELS & ROPE Swimmin’ Time DUALTONE

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ROSANNE CASH 15 The River & The Thread

2014’s master of fuzz, Ty Segall

DECCA

Rosanne Cash’s first album of original material in seven years, and her first since recovering from brain surgery in 2007, The River & The Thread was a magisterial comeback. A mesmerising journey through America’s Deep South that vividly engaged with its history, landscape and people on songs that were by turns haunting, poetic and profoundly moving.

ESTATE 14REAL Atlas

DOMINO

The sun-dappled innocence and bright immediacy of Real Estate’s first two albums gave way on Atlas to a more autumnal

PREVIOUS WINNERS 1997 BOB DYLAN

Time Out Of Mind COLUMBIA

1998 MERCURY REV

Deserter’s Songs V2

1999 THE FLAMING LIPS

The Soft Bulletin WARNER BROS

2000 LAMBCHOP Nixon CITY SLANG

2001 RYAN ADAMS Gold LOST HIGHWAY

2002 THE FLAMING LIPS

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots WARNER BROS

2003 WARREN ZEVON The Wind ARTEMIS/RYKO

2004 BRIAN WILSON Smile NONESUCH

2005 ARCADE FIRE Funeral ROUGH TRADE

2006 BOB DYLAN

Modern Times COLUMBIA

2007 LCD SOUNDSYSTEM Sound Of Silver DFA/EMI

2008 PORTISHEAD Third ISLAND

2009 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

DENEE PETRACEK; YOURI LENQUETTE

Merriweather Post Pavilion DOMINO

2010 JOANNA NEWSOM

Have One On Me DRAG CITY

2011 PJ HARVEY

Let England Shake ISLAND

2012 LEONARD COHEN Old Ideas COLUMBIA

2013 MY BLOODY VALENTINE m b v MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Kora masters Diabaté and son

wistfulness. Where previously their songs soundtracked an endless smalltown summer, largely untroubled by adult woes, the best tracks on Atlas were peppered with images of change, distance, separation and anxiety and glowed with a beatific melancholy. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 8

SEGALL 13TYManipulator DRAG CITY

Segall’s seventh long-player in seven years was a 17-track double-album that drew on the sounds and styles of all his previous records. Since no two of them have to date sounded much like each other, Manipulator was a torrid whirl through Ty’s musical universe, packed with amp-burning fuzz guitars, glam-punk riffs and frayed ballads, often notably embellished by Mikal Cronin’s decorous string arrangements.

12CARIBOU Our Love CITY SLANG

Four years on from his breakthrough album, Swim, Canada’s Dan Snaith here completed a journey from indie-electronica to widescreen rave pop. Our Love was a kaleidoscopic rush, full of dancefloor euphoria and a heightened sense of the ecstatic on the blissed-out likes of “Your Love Will Set You Free” and the rapturous title track. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 7

TOUMANI DIABATÉ 11 & SIDIKI DIABATÉ Toumani & Sidiki WORLD CIRCUIT

Malian kora maestro Toumani Diabaté was joined here by his 24-year-old son, Sidiki, another kora virtuoso, on partly improvised interpretations of traditional African songs. The mood was reflective, typified by the one original. “Lampedusa” commemorated the 300 African migrants who drowned off the Italian island in 2013, its slow, poignant melody a hushed lament for the lost. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 11

KIL MOON 10SUN Benji

CALDO VERDE

This brutally sad album about death and the way people die took confessional songwriting to new extremes of naked and unflinching emotional candour. The results were often heart-rending, hugely affecting reflections on mortality and loss. As demonstrated by a recent spat with The War On Drugs, Kozelek can seem gratuitously churlish. But he remains a songwriter of uncommon genius.

ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 2

9STStVINCENT Vincent

LOMA VISTA/REPUBLIC

Annie Clark’s fourth album replaced the sometimes fraught art-pop of its predecessors with rhythmic-centred party music in

whose funky grooves you could variously hear echoes of Parliament/ Funkadelic, The Gap Band, Talking Heads, ’80s Bowie, Blondie, Gary Numan and Madonna. Twisting the common language of pop, Clark ended up speaking in tongues, as uncontrollably strange as ever. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 5

ALBARN 8DAMON Everyday Robots PARLOPHONE

Damon Albarn’s most personal project to date, Everyday Robots was an album whose musical shapes and lyrical images created a coded, semi-abstract self-portrait, from childhood innocence, through adolescence to problematic maturity. Often bravely vulnerable and candid, its songs were suspended in fragile nets of found percussion loops, field recordings and pastel melodies, the whole suffused in reflective melancholy.

GOLDEN MESSENGER 7HISS Lateness Of Dancers MERGE

MC Taylor’s scholarly appreciation of American roots music has sometimes made the albums he’s released as Hiss Golden Messenger sound like academic pastiche, hugely enjoyable, if a little dry. Lateness Of Dancers, however, was a triumph, a collection of personal songs that addressed big questions of faith and mortality, responsibility and doubt, the Dylan of Planet Waves perhaps a touchstone. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 6

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6 lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar ROBERT PLANT

NONESUCH

Plant’s third consecutive album of fearless creative reinvention gave a global spin to the roots music, mostly American, he so profitably explored on Raising Sand and much of its follow-up, Band Of Joy. Plant here adventurously mixed familiar elements of his beloved West Coast psychedelia, Celtic and North African folk, desert blues, trance, techno, dub and even hints of Led Zeppelin bombast.

VAN ETTEN 5SHARON Are We There JAGJAGUWAR

Across three previous albums, Sharon Van Etten’s songs had not lacked a raw candour, especially 2012 breakthrough, Tramp. The self-produced Are We There, however, was more fiercely than ever the sound of love unravelling into despair and abject sadness, on which the listener felt her pain as their own, especially on show-stoppers like “Your Love Is Killing Me” and “Every Time The Sun Comes Up”.

PIETER M VAN HATTEM; ED MILES

ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 3

TWIGS 4FKA LP1 YOUNG TURKS

The Artist Formerly Known As Twigs was Tahliah Barnett, a 26-year old dancer from Cheltenham and therefore not quite the alien life-

form from a far-off galaxy she appeared to be in her far-out videos. The music on her momentous debut album, however, certainly sounded extraterrestrial. With its amoebic rhythms, hallucinatory electronics and startling vocal performances, LP1 was weird, sexy, genuinely futuristic.

Granduciel: Burning a path to the top spot

TWIN 3APHEX Syro WARP

The imminent release of the first Aphex Twin album since 2001, announced via a fluorescent green blimp flying over London, was exciting news for anyone interested in the electronic music of the last 25 years, however it was delivered. Radical new directions may not have been immediately apparent, but Syro was nevertheless mostly thrilling, unique and typically mind-bending.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

1 T

THE WAR ON DRUGS

2Popular Problems LEONARD COHEN

SONY

“Only darkness now,” Leonard Cohen announced ominously on Popular Problems, released in October to coincide with his 80th birthday. It was his bleakest, most ravaged album since Songs Of Love And Hate, over 40 years ago, a lament for a burning world, where slaughter and war are commonplace, calamities to which he responded with grim vigour and much great writing.

King of fearless reinvention, Robert Plant

Lost In The Dream SECRETLY CANADIAN

HE WAR ON Drugs’ third album was recorded over 12 apparently traumatic months that saw Adam Granduciel, already burned out after a year on the road touring behind the band’s breakthrough second album, 2011’s Slave Ambient, now dealing with the raw climax of a long-term relationship that had hit a wall, leaving him nursing a bruised heart, inconsolable. “I became incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin and in my own head,” he told Uncut just before Lost In The Dream’s release in April, describing the fears, anxieties and debilitating neuroses that gripped him at the time, making him feel like he’d sunk “into a fucking hole”. If these were indeed the circumstances that shaped the new record, you’d have to say romantic despondency had not been essayed with such heartbreaking elegance since the refined melancholy of Roxy Music’s Avalon, in a hazily psychedelic version of that gilded album perhaps remixed by Brian Eno that punched significantly into the relentless Krautrock rhythms that have inspired Granduciel since the band’s 2008 debut, Wagonwheel Blues. On that album’s soaring opener, “Arms Like Boulders”, Granduciel matched elements of Bruce Springsteen’s open-highway escapism with the motorik pulse of Kraftwerk and Neu!, as if the E Street Band had grown up listening to spaced-out Krautrock in a Dusseldorf suburb rather than Mitch Ryder in sweaty New Jersey clubs. It was an unlikely juxtaposition that also served Granduciel spectacularly well on deliriously exciting tracks here like “Red Eyes”, “Burning” and the incandescent guitar rush of “An Ocean In Between The Waves”, which added a dollop of ’80s Dylan to the mix, as if something like “When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky” had drawn its momentum from some blazing kosmische epic. The blurry atmospherics of Oh Mercy outtake “Series Of Dreams” might also be regarded as a useful reference point for Lost In The Dream’s more miasmic interludes, like the windswept, wholly bereft “Eyes To The Wind”, a highlight of an album that turned private hurt into public catharsis. ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 1

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LEONARD COHEN LIVE IN DUBLIN The extraordinary full-length concert recorded at Dublin’s 02 Arena, September 12th 2013 Available on

3CD/DVD 3CD/Bluray 3CD

Out 1st December

LEONARD COHEN POPULAR PROBLEMS The critically acclaimed studio album

Out Now “Leonard Cohen has created a masterpiece” +++++ Daily Telegraph +++++ The Times

A|R|C|H|I|V|E

REVIEW OF 2014 SUB POP

Start Together was a boxset that collected newly remastered versions of the seven albums SleaterKinney recorded between 1994 and 2005 in a no-frills package that allowed their back catalogue to speak, as it were, for itself, with no extras, just an accompanying photo-book. Their musical journey from early feminist fury to mature songcraft was thus simply and thrillingly evoked.

THE SMALL FACES 29 There Are But Four Small Faces

CHARLY

The US version of their ’67 UK LP, Small Faces, overlooked so far in the band’s belated reissue programme, actually improved on the domestic original, crucially including contemporaneous singles, “Itchycoo Park”, “Tin Solider” and “Here Come The Nice”. The bonus tracks weren’t earth-shattering, but the mono version was a dedicated mix for the US market, otherwise unreleased.

JOHN COLTRANE 28 Offering: Live At Temple University RESONANCE

Recorded in Philadelphia, nine months before Coltrane died, the tapes of this concert Sleater-Kinney: from feminist fury to mature songcraft

from November 1966 were only recently discovered and featured Coltrane alongside wife Alice on piano, Pharoah Sanders on second sax, and assorted percussionists. The 90 minutes of music they played that night was fearsome, Coltrane pushing out to the wild boundary of things.

CHARLES 27BOBBY Bobby Charles LIGHT IN THE ATTIC

Bobby Charles wrote some of the early rock era’s most enduring songs, including “See You Later, Alligator” and “Walking To New Orleans”. By 1973, on the lam from a dope bust in Nashville, he was in Woodstock, where he recorded this rarely heard masterpiece of Delta wistfulness and barbed wit with Dr John and members of The Band.

MARK LANEGAN 26 Has God Seen My Shadow? An Antholodgy 1989-2011 LIGHT IN THE ATTIC

This was a well-chosen trawl through Lanegan’s solo career, presented as a roughly backwards chronology through his catalogue, opening with tracks from 2004’s Bubblegum and 2001’s Field Songs, and ending with two tracks from 1992 solo debut The Winding Sheet. There was nothing from his collaborations with Isobel Campbell, but an extra

disc of unreleased tracks was welcome compensation.

GRATEFUL DEAD 25 Wake Up To Find Out: Nassau Coliseum,

Uniondale, NY 3/29/90 RHINO

Also released as part of the rather less digestible 23-disc boxset, Spring 1990 (The Other One), this three-CD live album featured the whole of a March 1990 concert at Nassau Stadium, NJ, where the Dead were joined by saxophonist Branford Marsalis, for a sincelegendary second set, including a stellar version of “Dark Star”.

24MORRISSEY Your Arsenal

EMI

Mick Ronson’s glamracket production and Moz’s new rockabilly-based band provided a lively backdrop for his third postSmiths solo LP after Viva Hate and Kill Uncle, and was notable for its evisceration of Britain’s far right on “The National Front Disco” and the archly triumphant “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful”. This reissue included a particularly thrilling unreleased live DVD.

COODER 23RYSoundtracks RHINO

In 1980, Cooder wrote the music for Walter Hill’s great Western, The Long Riders. They

subsequently collaborated on another seven films over the next 16 years. The scores of five of them featured on this four-disc set, notably the startling mix of experimental jazz and electronically distorted guitars and drums recorded with trumpeter Jon Hassell and Jim Keltner for 1993’s Trespass.

22LEWIS L’Amour LIGHT IN THE ATTIC

The first of two previously unknown albums reissued by the mysterious Lewis reissued this year, 1983’s L’Amour was the work of one Randall Wulff, who disappeared soon after it was recorded, no-one subsequently sure if he was a con man, dope dealer or what. The album was as strange as the mysterious backstory: dreamy synthpop, tinged with blurry melancholy and fuzzy at the edges.

THE MOLES 21 Flashbacks And Dream Sequences FIRE

Flashbacks And Dream Sequences was a beguiling compilation of just about everything recorded by The Moles, formed in Sydney in the late-’80s by Richard Davies, whose penchant for psychedelic chamber-pop was largely at odds with Australia’s emerging pre-grunge scene. The set also included Instinct, effectively a Davies solo album and a band effort in name only.

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AMALIE R. ROTHSCHILD

30SLEATER-KINNEY Start Together

Miles Davis: magnificently risky

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20Sing To God

16 The Velvet Underground

Cardiacs have one of the most original and undervalued back catalogues in British pop. Rooted in punk, their music also took in elements of prog rock and psychedelic forays reminiscent of Syd Barrett that influenced Blur and Radiohead. Their 1996 double album, Sing To God, was their magnum opus, revealed here as a sprawling banquet of deranged genius.

POLYDOR

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

THE ALPHABET BUSINESS CONCERN

MILES DAVIS 19 Bootleg Series Vol 3: At The Fillmore 1970 COLUMBIA/LEGACY

The tapes of the four concerts Miles played at New York’s Fillmore East in June 1974 were originally released in severely edited form to fill four sides of the Miles At Fillmore album. This vastly expanded version presents the shows in their entirety across four revelatory CDs of magnificently risky music, Miles deploying every facet of his considerable genius.

18 You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever ORANGE JUICE

DOMINO

Orange Juice brought colour to a monochromatic post-punk landscape via a series of singles for painfully hip Postcard Records, some fans of which complained their ’82 major label debut betrayed their original scruffy spirit. You Can’t Hide Your Love…, however, was a gorgeous racket, originals like “In A Nutshell” and “Falling And Laughing” bolstered by a sublime version of Al Green’s “LOVE”.

DOHENY 17NED Separate Oceans NUMERO GROUP

Doheny was one of the first signings to David Geffen’s Asylum, although he never had the success of LA friends like Jackson Browne and Don Henley. This compilation drew from the first decade of his career and mostly featured sun-baked ’70s soft-pop. Bob Carpenter’s Silent Passage, reissued by No Quarter, was a darker take on the same era.

Aphex Twin: mostly charming

With John Cale’s departure, The Velvet Underground’s sound changed forever. Their third album largely abandoned sonic carnage for breathtakingly beautiful ballads, the unstoppable momentum of Eno favourite “What Goes On” a rare exception to the record’s mostly crepuscular mood. Much of the extra content on this six-CD set was already available, but fans will want it for the unreleased two-disc Live At The Matrix.

BEEFHEART 15CAPTAIN Sun Zoom Spark

RHINO

This four-disc boxset covered Beefheart’s attempt across three great early-’70s albums to reconcile commercial blues and boogie with his own oblique vision – 1970’s hellacious Lick My Decals Off, Baby (remastered for the first time on CD), The Spotlight Kid and indispensable Clear Spot, both from 1972. A fourth disc featured 14 fascinating alternative versions and outtakes.

14The Beatles In Mono THE BEATLES

APPLE

The vinyl companion to The Beatles In Mono CD released in 2009 featured all-new analogue masters of the band’s back catalogue, up to ‘The White Album’. It may sound like spin, but the greater physical impact of the mono mixes of the original tapes brought the listener closer than ever to what The Beatles wanted us to hear.

13No Depression UNCLE TUPELO

SONY MUSIC CMG

Uncle Tupelo’s ’87 debut No Depression was a founding-stone of Americana, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar reclaiming county from its dire Nashville stereotype of big hats, big hair and rhinestone sentimentality. This expanded version of the original LP featured an additional 22 tracks and Not Forever, Just For Now, a blistering 10-track demo, early evidence of their incredible potential.

12XTC Skylarking

MOGWAI 10 Come On Die Young

The pastoral symphonies of Skylarking may have evoked the buzzing meadows and sunboiled afternoons of an English summer, but it was recorded in Woodstock, with Andy Partridge in constant conflict with producer Todd Rundgren, who gave their music an unprecedented scope. This welcome reissue corrected the ‘reversed-polarity’ issue that has blighted the sound on all the album’s previous incarnations.

CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND

APEHOUSE

TWIN 11APHEX Caustic Window REPHILEX/YOUTUBE

The idea of Aphex Twin’s Richard D James as a radical genius working outside the musical continuum was rather undermined by the belated release in bizarre circumstances of this fabled 1994 set recorded by James under his Caustic Window alias. Mostly charming, embryonic spins on early ’90s electronica, a more recognisable Aphex Twin emerged on dystopian rave anthems “Stomper 101mod Detunekik” and “Revpop”.

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with 34 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

Mogwai turned things down on their second album, 1999’s Come On Die Young, replacing their trademark ear-shredding volume with a gloomy introspection on a suite of songs pitched somewhere between euphoria and sadness that constitute their most remarkable and enduring music. This reissue expands the original album to a four-album boxset and double-CD with ample bonus material.

HARRIS 9EMMYLOU Wrecking Ball NONESUCH

Emmylou Harris had reached a point in 1995 where she could easily have settled for a long dotage, trading on past glories. Instead, she spectacularly reinvented herself on an album of exquisitely chosen songs (Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Gillian Welch, Jimi Hendrix), produced by Daniel Lanois, who brought an audacious new dynamic to her music, revitalising her career.

WOLFGANG TILLMANS

CARDIACS

REVIEW OF 2014

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8 CSNY 1974

5Remasters I-III

CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG

LED ZEPPELIN

RHINO

CSNY’s two-month cocaine-fuelled and fractious 1974 ‘doom tour’ was the most extravagant of its time. This compilation, assembled by Graham Nash from tapes of 10 of the shows, featured 40 tracks across three CDs, including five unreleased songs by Neil Young, clearly on fire. There was also a bonus DVD of live footage of shows in Maryland, and London’s Wembley Stadium.

7 Nightclubbing (Expanded) GRACE JONES

The highlight of these new editions of the first three Led Zep LPs, overseen with dutiful vigour by Jimmy Page, was III, sometimes overlooked as a Wiccan hoedown but in this meticulous remaster sure to win new converts. There were also judiciously chosen extras from Page’s archives, including early versions of “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” and “Out On The Tiles”.

UNDERWORLD 4myheadman Dubnobasswith

JBO/UNIVERSAL

UNIVERSAL/ISLAND

Grace Jones’ career-defining 1981 album was a sublime mix of reggae, funk, new wave and disco. Exotic, sensual, endlessly mysterious, it brilliantly deconstructed songs by Roxy Music, The Pretenders, Sting and, of course, Iggy Pop. An unreleased version of Gary Numan’s “Me! I Disconnect With You” was a highlight of the bonus disc of extended versions and 12-inch mixes.

V/A 6 Country Funk Vol 2 (1967-1974)

LIGHT IN THE ATTIC

JOEL BERNSTEIN; ELLIOTT LANDY

RHINO

Dylan: liberated from recent legend

The second Light In The Attic countryfunk compilation was another fascinating time capsule from an extended moment in the ’70s when a music industry shaken by recent cultural upheavals was so unsure what would sell that all kinds of unlikely musical miscegenation was allowed. Tracks by country familiars were more prominent here, alongside comparatively obscure names like Nick Lowe favourite Jim Ford.

The five-disc 20thanniversary release of an LP that reset the boundaries of dance music came with an abundance of bonus content. Ass well as the original album – nine tracks of slick, bassheavy undulations – there were four discs featuring singles and remixes, demos and rehearsals that capture a band on their way to becoming a cutting-edge phenomenon.

THE 3THE Soul Mining Released in the interzone between postpunk and synthpop and reflecting both, Soul Mining remains The The’s defining work. Matt Johnson’s abiding concerns of social alienation, political disillusionment, troubles of the heart were all present, set to lush, cinematic and deeply textured music. This handsome box included the remastered original LP plus alternative versions and mixes.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: on fire

1

BOB DYLAN ANDTHEBAND

T Bootleg Series The V 11:The Basement Vol Tapes T Complete

T

COLUMBIA C

SONY MUSIC

2 SLINT Spiderland

REISSUE OF THE YEAR

TOUCH AND GO

Slint were a band of hardcore fans from Louisville, Kentucky, best known for ’91’s seminal Spiderland, who broke up before its release, thus adding to its mystique. This lavish triplevinyl box included the remastered original album, demos, practice tapes, booklet and 90-minute doc by Lance Bangs.

HERE WAS A double-CD, The Basement Tapes Raw, featuring 38 tracks you wouldn’t have had to pawn your children to afford. But what Bob Dylan fan, who, after waiting 45 years to hear this music, could resist the entire package? The Basement Tapes Complete collected 138 tracks across six discs, over 30 of which had previously not surfaced, even on something as apparently comprehensive as 2001’s A Tree With Roots bootleg, which featured 101 of these tracks from the fabled 1967 sessions in the bucolic Woodstock haven to which Dylan and The Hawks, not yet The Band, retreated after the traumatic 1965-’66 world tour. Anyone familiar only with Robbie Robertson’s flawed 1975 Basement Tapes double would have been amazed by the mind-blowing diversity of material on The Basement Tapes Complete, its vast trawl through US music, drawing on everything from Appalachia to the radio – strange, rackety versions of ancient blues laments, work songs, gospel hollers, the occasional sea shanty, arcane folk tunes and goofy, stoned covers of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Bo Diddley and The Impressions. There were also many startling additions to the Dylan catalogue, including the miraculous “I’m Not There”, “Tiny Montgomery”, “Edge Of The Ocean”, “That’s The Breaks”, “Lo And Behold!” and “Sign On The Cross”, as well as more familiar zingers like “I Shall Be Released”, “This Wheel’s On Fire”, “Tears Of Rage”, “Nothing Was Delivered”, “Too Much Of Nothing” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, all written before Nashville Skyline, an album that found Dylan by his own laconic admission apparently short of notable new songs. Much has been made of the oppositional intention of this music as a conscious rejection of psychedelic excess that signalled a widespread return to more roots-based music, which it did. But The Basement Tapes didn’t sound like a public clarion call. None of these tracks were meant for commercial release. It was music Dylan and The Band made essentially for themselves, part of a recuperative process, a healing testament, Dylan sounding here liberated from his recent legend, even as a new mythology began to surround him.

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with

REVIEW OF 2014 F|I|L|M|S

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12 YEARS A SLAVE DIR: STEVE MCQUEEN

Released in January, McQueen’s drama – about a free-born AfricanAmerican, Solomon Northup, who was abducted and sold into slavery in pre-Civil War America – proved to be an early highpoint among the year’s films. Although driven by commendable performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup and Michael Fassbender as violent plantation owner Master Epps, it was McQueen’s sober, non-judgmental treatment that impressed unflinchingly painful truths.

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LOCKE DIR: STEVEN KNIGHT

Another bold career swerve from Tom Hardy, who followed his recent role playing a supervillain in The Dark Knight with this minor-key performance as a Welsh construction professional driving down the M1 to attend the birth of his illegitimate child. Shot in real-time, Hardy essentially drives and makes phonecalls – to his family, a work colleague, the motherto-be – building up a detailed picture of a man’s life on the point of personal collapse.

18LEVIATHAN

DIR: ANDREY ZVAGINTSEV

Russia’s official contender for next year’s Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars was a hefty and damning satire. Following the travails of the beleaguered Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov), who found himself in conflict with a corrupt local dignitary in a coastal village near the Barents Sea, Leviathan drew on themes of corruption, class and oppression. But it was also surprisingly funny: Zvagintsev lacing his staunchy pessimistic vision with some brilliant vodkabased gags.

17BLUERUIN

DIR: JEREMY SAULNIER

A number of B-movie-style revenge films proliferated this year, of which writer/ director Saulnier’s Kickstarter-funded project was the best. Saulnier, and his chief conspirator, actor Macon Blair, cooked up a lean thriller where Blair’s down-at-heel Dwight sets out to avenge his parents’ murder. The

Coens were a strong influence; especially No Country For Old Men – another film about a protagonist who gets bad breaks.

Comic crime caper American Hustle: (l-r) Adams, Cooper, Renner, Bale and Lawrence

16ONLYLOVERSLEFTALIVE DIR: JIM JARMUSCH

Perhaps the only vampire film to involve a trip to see Jack White’s house in Detroit, Jim Jarmusch’s film involved a predictably laconic take on the undead saga. Superbly cast, with Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as a centuries-old couple, and John Hurt as playwright Christopher Marlowe (not dead, after all, it seems), Jarmusch’s film explored the correlation between vampirism and addiction; as well as the irrefutable ennui attached to living forever.

15STARREDUP

DIR: DAVID MACKENZIE

Channeling Alan Clarke’s Scum and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, Mackenzie’s jail drama had a surprisingly soft heart. While foregrounding a tremendous performance from former Skins actor Jack O’Connell as the violent young offender Eric Love, Mackenzie was concerned with exploring the relationship between Eric and his estranged father, Neville, a career criminal who is incarcerated in the same prison.

DVDS OF THE YEAR MUSIC

1 ROWLAND S HOWARD: AUTOLUMINESCENT MATCHBOX FILMS 2 HE WASN’T JUST THE FIFTH MEMBER OF JOY DIVISION: A FILM ABOUT MARTIN HANNETT OZIT MORPHEUS/DANDELION RECORD

3 THE NATIONAL – MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS AMERICAN MARY PRODUCTIONS 4 THE PUNK SINGER DOGWOOF 5 ERIC CLAPTON – PLANES, TRAINS AND ERIC EAGLE ROCK

TV & FILM

1 THE CHANGES BFI 2 TWIN PEAKS: THE ENTIRE MYSTERY PARAMOUNT 3 PARKS AND RECREATION SEASON 4 FABULOUS FILMS 4 THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID 101 FILMS 5 TRUE DETECTIVE SEASON 1 HBO

POSSIBILITIES 14THE ARE ENDLESS

DIR: JAMES HALL, EDWARD LOVELACE

A documentary following Edwyn Collins’ recovery from a stroke in 2005, it’s an affecting take on its subject. Following an impressionistic first half – intended to mirror Collins’ post-stroke confusion – it settled down to become a warm depiction of Collins’ relationship with his wife, Grace, and the positivity and good humour with which they tackled a series of mental and physical hurdles.

13NIGHTCRAWLER DIR: DAN GILROY

This darkly funny thriller found Jake Gyllenhaal prowling nocturnal LA with a video camera looking for extreme footage to sell to an unethical news network. Gyllenhaal’s performance – perched on the brink of hysteria – complimented Gilroy’s sulphurous satire, which resembled a West Coast version of Scorsese’s early forays on the mean streets of New York.

12AMERICANHUSTLE DIR: DAVID O RUSSELL

Russell’s rangy, loose ’70sset crime caper had much to commend it; not least, the impressive hairstyles. Con artists Christian Bale (comb over) and Amy Adams (corkscrew curls) joined forces with federal agent Bradley Cooper (perm) for an undercover sting. Predictably, the outcome was preposterous, neurotic and often very funny.

11

10DALLASBUYERSCLUB DIR: JEAN-MARC VALLÉE

Matthew McConaughey’s transformative, Oscarwinning performance as Ronald Woodroof, a reallife Texas rodeo hot shot who tested HIV-positive in 1985, was critical to Vallée’s drama. Shot in trailer parks, construction sites and seamy rodeo pens, coincidentally the film it most closely resembled was Aronosky’s The Wrestler: another film about the pathos of personal ruin that similarly initiated a bold second act in an actor’s career.

9CALVARY

DIR: JOHN MICHAEL McDONAGH

Coincidentally, The Guard – a previous collaboration between writer/director McDonagh and star Brendan Gleeson – also reached No 9 in our Films Of The Year back in 2011. Their follow-up continues their exploration of Ireland’s rich landscape and the idiosyncratic characters who inhabit it. Gleeson, predictably, was majestic as the only notionally ‘good’ man in a remote country parish, marked for death by one of his parishioners.

8’71

DIR: YANN DEMANGE

HER DIR: SPIKE JONZE

In the future, no-one will wear belts. This was one of the many incidental details to be gleaned from Jonze’s rom-com.com – a

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with 36 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

sci-fi love story between Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore Twomby and his personal organiser, Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. In fact, Jonze’s film resembled a tech-age Annie Hall, with Theodore as the nerdy, middle-aged lead and Samantha as the IT girl he loves but who eventually outgrew him.

For his second appearance in our Top 20, Jack O’Connell delivers another fine performance as a squaddie lost in 1970s Belfast. ’71 felt closer to Walter Hill’s The Warriors or John Carpenter’s

F|I|L|M|S REVIEW OF 2014

Assault On Precinct 13 than other celluloid depictions of the Troubles. The result was a lean, ‘behind enemy lines’ thriller, with the conflict itself summed up as “rich cunts telling dumb cunts to kill poor cunts”.

720,000DAYSONEARTH

DIR: IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD

Purporting to be a day in the life of Nick Cave, this documentary proved an engaging study of authenticity and reinvention – and the fine line between the private person and the public persona. Visual artists Forsyth and Pollard followed Cave from his Sussex home to the studio, archive, psychotherapist and a gig – finding out how Cave takes his coffee along the way – digging deep into his extraordinary psychology.

4THEWOLFOFWALLSTREET

It’s hard to begrudge Scorsese a little fun nearly 50 years into his career. Accordingly, this story about white-collar crime, based on a memoir by convicted stock market trader Jordan Belfort, was more screwball comedy than cautionary tale. In the midst of the dwarf-hurling tournaments, orgies and cocaine blow-outs, perhaps Scorsese’s most unpredictable move was the appearance, as a high-end money launderer, of Joanna Lumley.

3UNDERTHESKIN

DIR: JONATHAN GLAZER

Shot across 12 years, Linklater’s ambitious time-lapse study of a boy from age 6-18 was the most accomplished experiment yet in the director’s eclectic career. At its heart was a natural performance from Elia Coltrane, whose life was a series of quiet moments of disillusionment you suspect he will carry deep into adulthood.

Adapted from Michel Faber’s novel, Glazer’s scifi film owed more to his experimental video work, for Radiohead, among others, than your typical Hollywood CGI blitzkrieg. This was a lowkey, elusive mood-piece, with Scarlett Johansson as an alien stalking Glasgow housing schemes looking for men to harvest. Glazer artfully balanced scenes of out-there fantasy with rough-edged realism, while Mica Levi’s soundtrack helped convey the film’s dissociative qualities.

5MRTURNER

2INSIDELLEWYNDAVIS

6BOYHOOD

DIR: RICHARD LINKLATER

DIR: MIKE LEIGH

DIR: JOEL AND ETHAN COEN

Leigh has done period biopic before, of course, with Topsy-Turvy. He revisited the same time period – the mid-19th Century – for this thoughtful study of painter JMW Turner, played by Timothy Spall. Leigh attempted to join the dots to describe the private life of this secretive artist, who was ultimately revealed to be a man of vibrant, fleshly contradictions.

Going up: a lordly comic performance from Ralph Fiennes (seated, right)

DIR: MARTIN SCORSESE

This wintry film wass yet another yarn about failure from the Coens. This time, their whipping boy was a oncefêted folk singer in Greenwich Village during the 1960s, shrewdly played by Oscar Isaac. As his melancholic tale of near-success unfolded, the brothers mused on notions of authenticity versus compromise with winning results. Cave exploration: 20,000 Days On Earth

FILM OF THE YEAR

1 A

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

DIR: WES ANDERSON DIR

lthough Wes Anderson has been a regular fixture in our end of year polls, this is only the second time on one of his films has reached the ha hallowed top spot, after 2002’s The R Royal Tenenbaums. Essentially, The G Grand Budapest Hotel provided an in intensely pleasurable immersion in A Andersonalia. As we know, the director h habitually sets his films in their own se self-contained environments – an elite prep school, for instance, or a train car rattling across India – but here he went one step further to create an entire European state populated by eccentric aristocratic dynasties. At the centre of Zubrowka – Anderson’s l’entre-deux-guerres Alpine republic – lay the Grand Budapest Hotel, a splendid dolls’ house of a building overseen by the prickly and imperious concierge, Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes). This being Anderson, what followed involved a secret code, mysterious societies, a murder and a priceless painting, while the action skipped gamely from hotel to prison and snowy mountain peaks. Much as you’d expect, all of this was presented via a series of whimsical structural flourishes – different narrators, time periods, ‘Chapter’ headings, each one as deliciously elaborate as the cakes served up in the hotel’s grand dining hall. The film was lorded over by an impeccable comic performance from Fiennes, while predictably excellent support came from old (and new) Anderson cohorts, including Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody, Ed Norton, Tilda Swinton and Harvey Keitel. Indeed, The Grand Budapest Hotel became Anderson’s highest grossing film and also the subject of a trans-Atlantic cruise on the Queen Mary 2, attended by the director himself. But surely the ultimate accolade – besides being our film of the year, of course – was the construction of the Grand Hotel Budapest in over 50,000 Lego bricks. This wasn’t simply evidence that Anderson’s fastidious attention to detail could be replicated in colourful interlocking plastic bricks, but a testament to the charm of Anderson’s marvellous film.

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with



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B|O|O|K|S REVIEW OF 2014 squatting scene of the early-’70s and the meagre beginnings of the band, whose career was scuppered by the defection of Joe Strummer to The Clash. While it also covered subsequent stints with The Raincoats, PiL and Basement 5, his long friendship with Strummer was at the heart of the book, a final reconciliation enormously touching.

THE BEATLES LYRICS: 7 THE UNSEEN STORY BEHIND THEIR MUSIC Hunter Davies

Chilton: enigmatic, unexplained

A MAN CALLED 10 DESTRUCTION: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF ALEX CHILTON, FROM BOX TOPS TO BIG STAR TO BACKDOOR MAN Holly George-Warren PENGUIN

A third of this Alex Chilton biog was devoted to his early career with The Box Tops, whose 1967 single “The Letter” made Chilton a teen idol at 17. As their history is less well-documented than the less successful but critically adored Big Star, these were the most illuminating pages in a sometimes earnest book, Chilton in this telling remaining distant, enigmatic and unexplained.

ANGER IS AN ENERGY: 9 MY LIFE UNCENSORED John Lydon with Andrew Perry SIMON & SCHUSTER

A lot of Anger Is An Energy was painfully predictable. Familiar hostilities were cheerfully revived, scorn accumulating to the point of tedium. What made it worth reading, though, was a harrowing account of growing up poor in North London that was almost Dickensian in its graphic evocation of grim deprivation, disease, squalor and delinquency that seemed to belong to an even better book.

8

SQUAT CITY ROCKS: PROTO-PUNK AND BEYOND, A MUSICAL MEMOIR FROM THE MARGINS

Richard Dudanski DUDANSKI Former 101’ers drummer Richard Dudanski’s autobiography was wonderfully evocative of the West London

WEIDENFELD AND NICOLSON

The Beatles wrote and recorded an estimated 182 songs. Davies in his research for this book tracked down the original manuscripts of 100 of them. Many were reproduced here, sometimes blurrily. It was amazing to see them, however, with their many revisions, ideas re-thought even before they were fully complete, as if The Beatles couldn’t quite keep up with their own creative momentum.

FUTURE DAYS: KRAUTROCK 6 AND THE RE-BUILDING OF MODERN GERMANY David Stubbs FABER

Stubbs’ admirable history of the German experimental music of the late-’60s and early-’70s was at its best when it set the music in the traumatic context of a post-war Germany and the radical politics of the era, with which the so-called Krautrock bands were broadly sympathetic. Their revolution – sweeping, with international consequences on the shape of modern popular music – was, however, cultural, a momentous if fleeting creative blossoming.

LOVE GOES TO BUILDINGS 5 ON FIRE: FIVE YEARS IN NEW YORK THAT CHANGED MUSIC FOREVER Will Hermes VIKING

Hermes’ terrific history of New York music between 1973 and 1975 was packaged as if its solitary focus was the CBGB punk scene and bands like Television, Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads, who were only part of its story. It was most fascinating, though, when it addressed what else

was happening, the parallel histories of salsa, disco, hip-hop, the jazz loft scene and beyond.

SINGING FROM THE 4 FLOOR: A HISTORY OF BRITISH FOLK CLUBS JP Bean FABER

JP Bean’s Songs From The Floor was a 400-page oral history – or as the author preferred, a “printedword documentary” – of British folk clubs, perhaps not a subject to set the pulse racing, the wary reader possibly anticipating something dour and earnest. The book, however, was an absorbing account of the folk revival, the venues that supported it and the formidable talent it nurtured across nearly six decades.

CLOTHES, CLOTHES, 3 CLOTHES, MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC, BOYS, BOYS, BOYS Viv Albertine FABER

“Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke,” Viv Albertine announced, introducing her admirably refreshing memoir,

before candidly sharing her thoughts on masturbation and much else, including the punk scene that made her famous, about whose rigid orthodoxies and macho attitudes she was scathing. Music was only a part of the story, however. In the context of her own many personal tragedies and rebirth of her career, it had a much wider resonance.

DIFFERENT EVERY TIME: 2 THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHYOFROBERTWYATT Marcus O’Dair SERPENT’S TAIL

The recent announcement of his ‘retirement’ coincided with this meticulously researched biography, which affectingly reminded fans of the great music Robert Wyatt has put his name to over five decades. With valuable input from Wyatt, family, friends and collaborators, the book took us through Wyatt’s bohemian childhood, through the Canterbury Scene and Soft Machine to the 1973 accident that changed his life and the new one he created in its aftermath.

BOOK OF THE YEAR

1

RESPECT YOURSELF: STAX RECORDS AND THE SOUL EXPLOSION

Robert Gordon BLOOMSBURY

T

HE SUCCESS OF the great Memphis soul imprint in its heyday Wilson W i Pickett was astonishing, Stax growing from homespun ki machine hi with ith breathtaking b t beginnings to a major money-making velocity, making major stars of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, Booker T & The MG’s, Wilson Pickett and The Staple Singers. For Gordon, who grew up in Memphis as Stax was establishing its commercial supremacy, it remains a miracle that a label that recognised no racial boundaries, whose founders were white but whose talent pool was largely drawn from local black communities, should have flourished in a place where deep into the 20th Century “plantation prejudices still prevailed”. He told its story brilliantly here. Drawing extensively on a vast archive of interviews originally conducted for a PBS documentary on the label, he allowed us to share its exciting ascendency and equally spectacular 1975 collapse amid a welter of litigation, corporate corruption, federal investigation and unpaid debts.

The 2014 End of Year Review in association with

THE MAKING OF...

Wuthering Heights BY

K ATE BUSH

How the 20-year-old “Cathy”, inspired by Emily Brontë, recorded her epic debut single, and fought EMI to score a monumental No 1: “The unusualness was key, this strange girl…”

KEY PLAYERS Andrew Powell Producer, arranger, bass

David Paton 12-string guitar

Ian Bairnson Guitar

Brian Bath Guitarist in KT Bush Band

Brian Wiseman

NICK HARVEY/WIREIMAGE

Video maker

Gered Mankowitz Photographer

40 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

RIOR TO HER triumphant London shows earlier this year, the last song Kate Bush performed at one of her own concerts, on May 14, 1979, was the extraordinary single that launched an extraordinary career. Her only No 1, “Wuthering Heights” was inspired by a BBC mini-series of Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel. Haunted by the image of Catherine Earnshaw’s ghostly hand outside the window – “Let me in! Let me in!” – Bush wrote the song aged 18, shortly before beginning work on debut album The Kick Inside. “I was in my flat, sitting at the upright piano at about midnight,” she told her fan club in 1979. “There was a full moon, the curtains were open, and it came quite easily.” The fact that Bush shared her childhood name (Cathy) with Earnshaw, and a birthday (July 30) with Brontë, fostered a sense of cosmic kinship with the subject of “Wuthering Heights”, a bond acted out when she recorded the song with members of the Alan Parsons Project. “She seemed to adopt different personas when she was singing,” recalls guitarist Ian Bairnson. “Suddenly there was another person there.” Aided by a wildly eccentric video and some revealing publicity photos, “Wuthering Heights” was instantly impactful, and later spoofed by everyone from Pamela Stephenson to Alan Partridge. These days, Bush may regard its unbridled romanticism with mixed feelings (it was nowhere to be heard in the Before The Dawn shows), but it remains one of music’s boldest opening statements of artistic intent, and an unforgettable exploration of obsessive love, supernatural imagining and powerful femininity. GRAEME THOMSON

P

ANDREW POWELL: In 1975, I got a call from David Gilmour, saying he’d got this artist and he just thought she was something really special. This was substantially prior to Kate signing to EMI. Initially he said he was going to produce her, but in the end Dave put up money for some sessions. These were really superior demos, and I ended up producing them, including “The Man With The Child In His Eyes”. A couple of years later I went in to do the album. She had so many songs. I’ve still got some of the cassettes. I must have 100 songs here, still, written pre-The Kick Inside. BRIAN BATH: She wrote “Wuthering Heights” at her flat at Wickham Road in Brockley when she was living with [KT Bush Band bassist] Del Palmer there. At the time [their relationship] was all a bit hush-hush, a bit keep it careful. POWELL: My memory is that “Wuthering Heights” was written very close to us going into the studio. I think it was only a few days before. Kate came around to where I was living and said, “What about this one?” She sat down at my piano and out it came. It was obvious to me immediately that it was something extraordinary. DAVID PATON: Andrew gave us a brief outline as to what Kate was all about, Dave Gilmour nurturing her and all that. He said, “She’s very young but EMI are really excited about her, she’s really special.” I remember him saying the music was a bit wild, a bit wacky even. We arrived at the studio, Kate introduced herself, and Andrew said, “Sit down and play them the song,” and that’s how it was done. She sat down at the piano, said, “It goes like this,” and just played. We were all gathered around the piano with our jaws dropped, because it was a stunning performance. Faultless, absolutely faultless, and she could do that time and time again. It sounded fantastic, there was just a great vibe in the studio. IAN BAIRNSON: She sat and played the piano and sang the guide vocal. We wrapped ourselves around her, looking for ways to embellish it or give it direction. For us it was a very refreshing thing, because it was wide open. PATON: Talking about Cathy and Heathcliff was so clever. I didn’t like to ask her, “What’s this song really

about?” That book must have had a huge impact on her to influence her in that way, but she kept her vision to herself. A lot of artists you work with, you usually find that they’re besotted with themselves – like Freddie Mercury, all he could do was talk about himself all the time. She wasn’t like that at all. She didn’t say, ‘”I want to do this and that, me, me, me, me.” She wasn’t that kind of person at all and that in itself was very refreshing. BAIRNSON: I didn’t pay a lot of notice to the lyrics. It was only about a year ago when I read the lyrics and appreciated them so much more. JON KELLY (Engineer): The depth of her lyrics and the originality of her melodies were just so different from anything else that was around. PATON: Her influences were pretty unique, pretty stylised. And that high-pitched voice. It wasn’t until I was listening to “Wuthering Heights” on the radio that I really realised, Woah, that’s really high-pitched! When she sat and sang live for us I didn’t really notice anything unusual about it, I just felt her style was very unique.

“I said to Kate, ‘You’re going to be so famous you’re not going to be able to walk down the street’” JON KELLY, ENGINEER POWELL: I loved it, I was very much in favour of it. She was doing some very interesting things with her voice. She was experimenting more and more in all sorts of directions – vocally, lyrically and musically. BAIRNSON: Whether she was putting on an unusual voice – or voices – on “Wuthering Heights”, or whatever, it still came across as

genuine and we accepted it. That is what made her stand apart. The fact that her talent had so many facets to it and each one was so believable. POWELL: Did she twirl around all the time? No. I know singers who do, but she’d just stand there and sing and concentrate on what she was doing. She wasn’t one for doing the dance of the seven veils while she was doing her vocals. BAIRNSON: I never saw her pick up the guitar, but she loved it. On “Wuthering Heights” I built a solo and endeavoured to make it part of the song. PATON: I didn’t play bass on the song. That was at Andrew’s insistence! He was a bass player in his youth and he plays OK – he’s a bit busy – and as a consolation prize he said, “Davie, you can play 12-string.” Hmmm. I must say he’s a very accomplished musician all round. POWELL: I played bass. Partly because I had a good idea for a part, and also because Ian had sprained his wrist or something. Normally I’d have had Ian play acoustic and David play bass, but Ian couldn’t play barre chords – and “Wuthering JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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GERED MANKOWITZ

“She was experimenting more and more in all kinds of directions…” Kate Bush in 1978

r room during the shoot. It w her choice, done with was h full participation and her k knowledge. She was very c comfortable with her body. T pictures were a huge The co commercial success and I thin they had a great deal to think do w with putting Kate on the map. KELL I can remember saying, KELLY: g “You’re going to be so famous you’re b able to walk down the not going to be street.” I said that to her after the first week of “She certainly recording, though she wouldn’t have believed it. wasn’t uncomfortable with it…” Kate Bush POWELL: The unusualness was key, this shot by Gered strange girl. As soon as she did “Wuthering Mankowitz, 1978 Heights” on Top Of The Tops, that made a difference, too, because it wasn’t a conventional performance. BAIRNSON: It was quite a shock when I saw her first on Top Of The Pops, because the Kate we knew in the studio and the one that turned up on TV was a completely different persona. BATH: She was just a bag of nerves her first time on Top Of The Pops. Unfortunately it’s not a great performance. It wasn’t • Written by: Kate Bush ideal. The KT Bush Band all went • Performers: Kate Bush along expecting to play, and at (piano, vocals), Andrew the BBC they said, “Oh no, we Powell (bass), David Paton use our own musicians.” We (guitar), Ian Bairnson (lead were all upset not to be included, guitar), Stuart Elliott (drums), and so was she. All we could do Duncan MacKay (keyboards) was stand in front of her and say, • Producer: Andrew Powell “Come on Kate, go for it.” But she something like that, and played • Engineer: Jon Kelly was very nervous. I think if we it. We couldn’t believe it was • Recorded at: AIR, London had been onstage it would have coming out of the radio. And • Released: January 20, 1978 been better, but it didn’t matter. then he kept playing it. You • UK/US charts: 1/na The song was already massive could phone Capitol to vote for by then. I think the video helped. the song you wanted to hear that BRIAN WISEMAN: She had done an outdoor day. I was round at her parents’ farm pretty much video for “Wuthering Heights” but EMI asked every day, there was always something to do, and Keith MacMillan to shoot another, which I worked Kate’s mum would say, “Have you phoned Capitol on. We did it really quickly, through the middle of radio yet? Use the phone! Do it now!” It kept the night at Ewart studios in Wandsworth. We got getting played and all of a sudden it just exploded. halfway through it, decided we didn’t like what we GERED MANKOWITZ: I took the infamous were doing, and started over. We got an idea from ‘leotard’ photo in my Great Windmill Street studio some Canadian movie Keith had seen, shot it on in Soho in early 1978. I was doing a lot of work for video and went down a load of generations to get EMI, and they called me and said, “We’ve got this that ghostly, mirrored effect. It was quite striking. extraordinary young woman called Kate Bush, She didn’t have any real creative input on that at she sounds like nobody else, she’s wonderful to all, as I recall, but she was very nice, very quirky. look at, but we don’t know what to do with her. POWELL: When I saw the first video I thought, We need some photographs, we need an image.” I ‘Oh, OK, this is going to be an interesting always found the clothes that dancers used during development!’ By that point it was clear that there rehearsals a very attractive look, and I thought it was a whole lot of layers to what she was doing. was a natural fit for Kate because she was so into From that point on, there was no stopping her. dance and movement. I suggested we got leotards and woollen working socks and all that gear, and she seemed to like the idea. When the pictures WOW! Kate Bush by W were processed, the advertising agency EMI had G Gered Mankowitz is an ultraemployed to promote “Wuthering Heights” came llarge-format, signed, limitedup with the campaign of putting the posters on eedition book of photographs from buses, and selected the one in the pink leotard – G Gered Mankowitz’s 1978/79 famously showing her nipples – and the rest is ssessions with Kate Bush. WOW! history. She certainly wasn’t uncomfortable with iis published by Ormond Yard it. She was perfectly aware of how she looked, P Press and is available from because she had spent two hours in the dressing w www.snapgalleries.com

GERED MANKOWITZ

FACT FILE

Heights”, being in F#m, it’s all barre chords – so David ended up playing guitar. Rather than having to double-track his own performance, I just had an idea and thought, Hang on a minute, can I have your bass? Actually, I think I used my own in the end because I re-did it. KELLY: Andrew was a superb musician and arranger. All the parts were written out and he’d hand them to the rhythm section, they had chord charts and a brief outline of what he wanted. He’d worked with Kate on the arrangement beforehand and how he wanted it to turn out. It was an absolutely brilliant job, a first-class record. POWELL: EMI wanted “James And The Cold Gun” to be the first single. It was the most obvious song on the record, and it would have been one of the worst choices. I mean, it was a fun thing to have on there, and it was one of the few songs of hers she’d already played live with the KT Bush Band, but she stuck to her guns on “Wuthering Heights” and she was absolutely right. KELLY: It was on Kate’s insistence that “Wuthering Heights” should be the first single, and good for her. Quite right. It was fabulous. BAIRNSON: I remember thinking, ‘This is really good, but I wonder how people will react?’ It was going to be all or nothing. You can never pre-judge the great British record buying public. BATH: I remember going around to her flat when “Wuthering Heights” was first played on Capitol Radio. Kate said, “Oh, they’re playing my song tonight.” We were all sitting round there and the DJ said he’d found this really odd song, or

TIMELINE

Summer 1976 Catherine Bush signs to EMI March – June 1977 Gigs in London pubs with the KT Bush Band

42 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

Summer 1977 Writes “Wuthering Heights” at 44 Wickham Road, South London. She records it during sessions for The Kick

Inside, at AIR 20 January, 1978 “Wuthering Heights” is released 18 February, 1978 With the song at No 27, Bush

performs on Top Of The Pops. She later describes the experience as “like watching myself die” March 11, 1978 Bush

becomes the first woman to have a UK No 1 with a self-written song. “Wuthering Heights” remains at the top for four weeks

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A fork in the road

Two intense and personal albums. A possibly valedictory tour with Crazy Horse. Revelatory solo shows. A new book, a new sound system, a new political engagement – and a new relationship... 2014 shaped up to be one of the strangest and most compelling years of NEIL YOUNG’s storied career. With the help of his closest compadres – including GRAHAM NASH, FRANK ‘PONCHO’ SAMPEDRO and the late RICK ROSAS – Uncut discovers the truth about what really happened in the last 12 months, and wonders just what rock’s greatest maverick might do next. “I don’t think it’s a musical decade coming up, as much as it is one of fighting for mankind...”

Recording A Letter Home at Third Man Records, Nashville, September 18, 2014

44 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

NEIL YOUNG

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

45

NEIL YOUNG Circle of friends: Young onstage at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, April 1, 2014

W

PAUL R. GIUNTA/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES

RITING IN HIS latest memoir Special Deluxe, Neil Young recalls meeting his son, Ben, for dinner one evening last spring. The venue was a familiar hangout – the Mountain House, a homely weatherboard cantina in the hills south of San Francisco, just a 10-minute ride from Young’s Broken Arrow ranch. “Pulling the old Jeepster up in front of that place,” Young writes, “with the heater blasting welcomed warmth, I felt the passage of life and how fleeting it really is. In a silent prayer to the Great Spirit, I asked to be worthy of more time. There was still so much to do.” Based on the evidence of the past 12 months, perhaps not even Young himself realised quite how hectic his 2014 would be. Next year, Young turns 70; an age when many people would be looking forward to scaling back their commitments in favour of a gentler pace; not adding to them. “But why slow down?” asks Bruce Botnick, a friend of Young’s since the late 1960s. “It’s no fun to slow down. Neil’s very creative, and we know now that our remaining lifetime is getting pretty short. We don’t know about tomorrow, so why not go for it? Be in the now, enjoy yourself, that’s what Neil’s doing.” Certainly, this year, Young has had two brushes with mortality: Crazy Horse’s Billy Talbot suffered a mild stroke in June, while another long-serving

46 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

collaborator, bassist Rick Rosas, died on November 6. Young’s many endeavours – biofuel cars, revolutionary new audio systems, albums, tours, art exhibitions, environmental activism, vinyl boxsets, books and films – seem inextricably tied together. It’s possible to divine a path, for instance, between his electro-hybrid car venture, LincVolt, and his audio project, Pono. Both are about resurrecting and refining the past: whether it be updating beautiful vintage gas-guzzlers for an eco-future or restoring some of the denuded audio quality to music. But with all these various undertakings, the suspicion exists that Young currently has too many priorities on the go. While Bruce Botnick thinks “it’ll all even out”, at least one old accomplice thinks Young has risked stretching himself too far this year. Crazy Horse guitarist Poncho Sampedro reveals, “Honestly, some of my last conversations with Neil, when we were just talking like guys, I can’t help but look him in the face and say, ‘Neil you’re a great musician. I think you should kee writing songs and stay out of business.’ That’s from my keep heart. He puts so much energy and passion and love into the Pono project, into the LincVolt project and writing books, all these other things. But I think it takes a little away from his music. That’s really what his calling is. A the same time, if he can make a difference, if he really At d change something, more power to him.” did More than most, Sampedro is aware of the unpredictable n nature of Young’s muse. The guitarist recalls an incident t took place earlier this year, on the last day of rehearsals that f Crazy Horse’s European summer dates. “As we were for fi finishing, we played a version of ‘Tumbleweed’,” Sampedro sa identifying a song that eventually appeared on says, Yo Young’s Storytone album in November. “At the time, we di didn’t know it was called ‘Tumbleweed’. We played it at low

w as four benefit shows in his native Canada well under the banner Honour The Treaties, was u mainly devoted to classics drawn from the m years 1966-’78. But much of what followed was y recondite and wilfully contrarian. What was r he h doing? Was there a plan? Reflecting on Young’s working practices during his glorious ’70s era, Poncho Sampedro d says, sa “I remember we would go to Neil’s ranch Young with Jack White, to record. We’d stay there for a summer, maybe at Third Man ev nine months, just recording, coming up even Records, Nashville w songs and partying, then Neil would come with in and go, ‘Oh, shit, you guys. You’re not going to be believe it, Warner Brothers called. We got to turn in a record. What do you think we should put on it?’ We never had the concept that we were making a record.” However, Joshua V Smith can offer a first-hand account of Young’s recent methods. An engineer at Jack White’s Third Man Records, Smith had been on hand when Young visited the label’s Nashville headquarters on Record Store Day 2013. Later, Smith acted as engineer on A Letter Home, recorded in White’s 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth at sessions between September 16 and 18, 2013. Smith recalls a week of preparation adapting the booth to White’s specifications, including adding a video screen so Young could watch himself work. “Jack and Neil were pitching ideas to each other,” explains Smith. “They both are very strong-minded, opinionated people. They want what they want, but they also worked really well together. “Jack would say, ‘What if you do this song?’ and Neil would be, ‘Yeah, yeah, that would be great.’ He had an assortment of guitars, including his Martin D-28, one of Hank Williams’ guitars. He and Jack were like, ‘Hey, try this one for this song.’ So it seemed like they were deciding on things together.” Smith estimates that together Young and White recorded “close to 20 songs” during the three days, with Young working “8 to 10 hours when he was there”. Smith was also on hand level, all le when Young recorded the spoken-word intro, a message to hu huddled in his late mother, Rassy, where Young reiterated his mission fro of the front statement for 2014: “I still really have a lot of work to do here.” dr drums. Neil “At first we had no idea he was gonna do it,” reveals Smith. gr grabbed his “I think he and Jack just came up with that idea. He arrived iP iPhone and on the second day and went in the booth. I was expecting a hit record, then threw it on the floor in between us. We were song and all of a sudden he just starts talking. For me, it just just jamming and he was saying/singing some words. We clicked. I don’t know if they went into the project knowing stayed on one chord and played it every way we knew how. that was what they were going to do. But it just made it into When we finished, a lot of the crew came out and asked what a real album. It gave it so much purpose. Mindy Watts, who was that. They said it sounded spooky and really good. So, was assisting on the record, got a little teary-eyed.” the only recording of it was on Neil’s iPhone. At one point his The recording was not without its difficulties, as Smith engineer, Mark Humphreys, came out and tried to pick up explains. “When it came to record the piano, we put Neil in the phone but Neil blocked him! Later, on the road, Neil the booth on a stool and pushed the piano up against the spoke to Ralph [Molina, drums] about going into the studio door. His back was facing the mic. It wasn’t the best place and overdubbing the drums so it could be used on the to fit. We just had to do whatever we could to get the piano record. I don’t know what happened to that. You know, recorded on there. At first, we tried where he’s kind of sitting most people turn a corner. Neil ricochets.” outside with it, but it didn’t work. So we just ended up rolling it up against him pretty much and up against the booth. It OOKING BACK ON the weird and gripping narrative of was funny, Jack said for having a mic in basically a phone Young’s past 12 months, a number of familiar, nagging booth, this has ended being a really complicated record.” patterns emerge. The old accomplices who resurface – Perhaps the biggest revelation about A Letter Home was the Crazy Horse, producer Niko Bolas, or Bruce Botnick, who original distribution method they had in mind. “They were now works for Young at Pono – and even the beloved songs he gonna try to release it a month after and not announce at all,” revisits. Young’s first album this year, A Letter Home, felt like explains Smith. “One idea was to plant some records in a historical adventure as he covered songs by contemporaries random record stores around the country, maybe even in the including Dylan, Willie Nelson and Tim Hardin; many of ‘Used’ section, and just let somebody find something and which he’d played at Farm Aid 2013. A solo acoustic tour think ‘What is this? I never heard of this!’” Young performed sporadically between January and Young finally released A Letter Home on April 19, Record October, starting at Carnegie Hall, New York and visiting Store Day 2014. It is an odd though poignant addition to his Hollywood, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, as canon. There are clues, though, to its purpose. Ahead of its

“Most people turn p a corner. Neil ricochets” PONCHO SAMPEDRO

JO MCCAUGHEY

L

THRASHER AND OTHER RARITIES… This year, Neil Young has surprised and delighted fans by digging out some deep cuts from his catalogue. Here’s the key tracks… Solo acoustic: Out Of My Mind (Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield); last played, 1996 Thrasher (Rust Never Sleeps); last played, 1978

Crazy Horse: Name Of Love (CSNY, American Dream); last played, 1988

Separate Ways (unreleased); last played, 2008

Days That Used To Be (Ragged Glory); last played, 1991

Standing In The Light Of Love (unreleased); last played, 2001

Be The Rain (Greendale); last played, 2004

Goin’ Home (Are You Passionate?); last played, 2003

Y OUNG NEILIL YO release, a news story announcing its arrival appeared on Young’s website credited to Homer Grosvenor; a sly reference to the house on Grosvenor Avenue, Winnipeg, where Young and Rassy lived during his first significant forays into music. Speaking to Uncut, Young even called it “an historic art project”. To add to its peculiarities, it arrived while much of Young’s energy was otherwise engaged with Pono.

L

Standing up to save the planet: Neil Young at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2014

SET LIST 1.0! A sneak peek at an early version of the Crazy Horse summer tour setlist, worked up after the Oakland, California, rehearsals before the band arrived in Iceland… Goin’ Home Don’t Cry No Tears Days That Used To Be Stupid Girl Love To Burn Separate Ways Barstool Blues Psychedelic Pill Cortez The Killer After The Gold Rush Trans Am Who’s Gonna Stand Up MAARTEN DE BOER/GETTY IMAGES

Down By The River Tonight’s the Night/ Like A Hurricane OTHERS… Ramada Inn Hold Back The Tears Danger Bird

48 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

IKE MOST THINGS, Poncho Sampedro has a view on Pono. The Crazy Horse guitarist remembers his first exposure to the system one day at his home in Hawaii. “Neil has a place not that far from me here,” he begins. “I was into this whole natural farming thing, this natural farmer guru was coming by my house and I was really nervous. I called Neil up and I said, ‘Neil, would you come over here and give me a little support?’ So he hung with me while this guy, Master Cho, was here. His whole family came and they checked it out and it was a big deal, then they all left. We sat on the couch, Neil and I, talking. That’s when he first started to sell me Pono. He got up and started going, ‘So I walked into Warner Bros, here’s the sales pitch I gave them…’ He pretended he had a blackboard and everything, and I said, ‘Neil, man, that sounds great. But I haven’t listened to a record in probably 20 years.’ After that, he never really talked to me about it again.” Bruce Botnick, meanwhile, has an understandably different perspective on Young’s high-resolution audio service. Botnick – co-producer of Love’s Forever Changes and a mainstay of many Doors albums – first worked with Young on 1967’s Buffalo Springfield Again. “We stayed in touch,” he explains. “I’d go to some of his concerts. We’d hang, and we’d catch up. Three years ago, when he took the Buffalo Springfield reunion on the road, he played a concert near us in Santa Barbara. I went to the show, and Neil said, ‘Can you come backstage after?’ He wanted to show me the prototype for Pono. At that time, it was in LincVolt, his Lincoln convertible, but it was an astonishingly great speaker system and amplifiers, and he had a prototype – not the one we hold in our hands today, but electronically, the concept – in place, and he was able to demonstrate it.” Botnick recalls Young playing him Aretha Franklin on his new system. Since April this year, Botnick has worked for Pono as VP of Content Acquisition, liaising with record labels. He arrived at the company after Young debuted the system at thwest in March, but is agreeably confident South By Southwest tem’s prospects: “They started the Kickstarter about the system’s appeal to try and raise about seven- or eight-hundred lars, and instead raised $6.8 thousand dollars, ever lose sight of the fact it is million. We never t, from the start, and Neil’s concept, rumental. I hate he’s very instrumental. obs as an to use Steve Jobs analogy, but Steve ry. was a visionary. And Neil, in his own way, is a o.” visionary, too.”

As persuasive as Botnick sounds, Pono is still an unknown quantity; albeit one with significant support. The Kickstarter site, for instance, offered the chance to sign up for Artist Signature Series PonoPlayers, limited to 500 each and costing $400 a pop, featuring artists like Tom Petty, Elton John, James Taylor, ZZ Top, Pearl Jam and CSN. Essentially, Pono will give you the opportunity to buy better versions of the music you have probably bought several times over in other formats. Botnick explains that both Archives Vol 1 and – eventually – Vol 2 will arrive on Pono: “We’ll be doing enhanced metadata in the store,” reveals Botnick. “So you will be able to click on that album, and download an extremely large PDF with all the news that’s fit to print about when it was recorded, who recorded it, who produced it, who were the musicians, what hours of the day, what studio, all that kind of good stuff… who was having a baby that day, what kind of food they were eating! We’re harking back to the old days of vinyl, when you could hold a 12” in your hand and read a lot.”

M

OST DAYS, YOU’LL find Poncho Sampedro outside. After 18 ½ years working at NBC, he has effectively retired to Hawaii where he enjoys gardening, swimming and other outdoor pursuits. He still makes music, though. In his living-room, there are two acoustic guitars, a ukulele and an acoustic bass. Every Tuesday night, a friend drops by and they play “really hard” for five or six hours. “It’s funny,” he says, reflecting on Young’s 2014. “While the rest of us are slowing down, Neil’s speeding up. He seems more conscious of work than ever before.” One person, Sampedro notes, who isn’t here to witness Young’s creative streak is long-standing producer David Briggs, who died in 1995. “He was such a big influence with this band and Neil,” he explains. “We had to rock and you had to deliver. You can’t play around. He would go up to Neil, get right in Neil’s face and say, ‘It seems to me like you’re just noodling around. Don’t you have anything to say when you solo? People don’t come to listen to you just to hear you noodle around.’ Nobody talks to Neil like that any more. I don’t know who he would listen to these days. People can tell him what to do, but he doesn’t listen to anybody.” It has been an unpredictable year for Crazy Horse; a band who have experienced more than their fair share of upheaval. Next year marks 40 years since Sampedro made his ’Horse debut on Zuma. Since then, there have been several unreleased albums recorded with Young. More recently, the band had to curtail their 2013 tour after Sampedro broke a finger and thumb. They reconvened with Young earlier this year for European tour dates. Arriving on June 10 at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California for three days of rehearsing, they found Young had a new song prepared: “Who’s Gonna Stand Up”. “Neil starts playing it,” begins Sampedro, explaining how Young routinely introduces a new song to the band. “He stares at you. You start playing along with him. You plug times Then he’ll stop. I through it a couple of times. remember on ‘Who’s Gonna Up’ he stopped and I Stand Up’, ‘Ne what is that riff said, ‘Neil, that you played at the beginni beginning?’ He said, o ‘Which one?’ I started s playing something like though was the riff I thought and he go goes, ‘That’s about it.’ nic if we played It’d be nice together ‘No, no. That’s it together. fine.’ We d definitely really got it. I think tthe last night we

“Neil Young, in his own way, is a visionary” BRUCE BOTNICK

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NEIL YOUNG

played it pretty good. But Neil never took the time at a soundcheck to say, ‘OK, this is it, we’re going to play this four times, then this happens, then that happens.’ He never laid it out and said, ‘This is it.’ So it was always a little unsettled.” After the last date of rehearsals – June 13 – Sampedro headed home. Five days later, he received a call from Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts, telling him Billy Talbot had suffered a stroke. “Billy was travelling from Oakland to South Dakota,” says Sampedro. “His wife was driving. He told me it was kind of odd, he didn’t even know that he had a stroke. They stopped at Salt Lake City, Utah, then when he went to step out of the car, his foot wouldn’t work. He said, ‘If I hadn’t got out of the car I wouldn’t even know I’d had a stroke.’ My first inkling when Elliot called me was the tour is cancelled. Then the next day, I got a call from Neil and he said he talked to Rick Rosas and said, ‘We got a bass player, we can do this.’” Rosas was on vacation in Santa Barbara when he got a call from Young on June 18. “He asked if I was willing to come out and help him out,” confirms Rosas, in an interview that took place just a week before his death. “I said, ‘Of course, I’m willing to help you out. This is kind of a strange circumstance, but I’m there for you.’ He says, ‘I’ll send you some songs for you to learn and just take it from there.’ I think I had maybe 10 days to rehearse the material I was unfamiliar with.” “Neil said, ‘Why don’t you just sing most of Billy’s parts?’” continues Sampedro. “I’m not the world’s best harmony singer, but I was enthusiastic that morning. I told Neil, ‘Yeah, I’ll fill in for Billy, I’ll take over, I’ll do what I can.’ I went through all the songs we had, I started singing background parts to figure out Billy’s parts. I called Neil back the next morning, my voice was hoarse. I said, ‘Neil, I can’t do it. I’m going to be the cause of really screwing up some shows if I have to sing on all of those. It’s not going to be fun. He said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get some background singers.’ I never realised how many changes that was going to make in the band, just not having Billy there. First of all, it took three people to fill in for him. Then we really never could rock like when Billy’s there. It’s so easy to rock. That’s what we do. With this configuration, it was a little softer, the intensity was gone. That’s not taking away anything, we were a good band. But we just weren’t what everybody knows as Crazy Horse.” The band – augmented by Dorene Carter and YaDonna West – headed to Iceland at the start of July. “We had three days to rehearse,” says Sampedro. “I remember walking in the dressing-room, and Ralph was sitting with his head down and I said, ‘What’s up, Ralph?’ He goes, ‘I miss Billy.’ I went, ‘Well, I miss him, too!’ It was funny, he said, ‘I just miss his face, I miss his expressions.’ I said, ‘I miss the constant beat that we always have, too.’ Rick plays too good; Rick knows a

50 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

lot of notes, he can play all over the place, and Billy, we just get in a groove and lock it down and hold it there. Nothing ever wavers. Nothing that Rick does is wrong, it’s just something we’re not used to. I think we were suffering because it wasn’t Crazy Horse, Ralph and I. But Neil went to the next level. He was enjoying the fact that he had a new band with girls who could sing all the parts and a bass player that could play a lot of different stuff. That’s why the material was so different. He had freedom to do a lot of other things. We weren’t doing classic Crazy Horse hits on that tour.” Indeed, the Crazy Horse summer tour of Europe was one of the most irregular in Young’s ever-evolving relationship with his trusty backing band. It wasn’t just the The ’Horse ride again: Frank Sampedro, Rick Rosas and Neil different focus and energy that inevitably Young perform at the British accompanied the change in personnel; but Summer Time Festival at London’s Hyde Park, July 12, 2014 the tantalising possibilities it presented. Young dusted down rarities like “Separate Ways” and “Goin’ Home” and incorporated “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “After The Gold Rush” that he’d not played with Crazy Horse since 2001. Songs introduced on 2013’s Alchemy tour – “Hole In The Sky” and “Singer Without A Song” – vanished entirely, putting paid to speculation (dismissed by Sampedro) that there was a new Crazy Horse album in the works. “We always do these vocal warm-ups before each show, The latest on Billy about 20 minutes we’ll be singing through scales,” reveals Talbot’s postSampedro. “He’ll stop right in the middle of that and go like, stroke recovery… ‘You know the part to “Down By The River” is this low part, TALKED to Poncho.’ He’ll sing it like twice then go back to the vocal him last week,” warm-ups and then we’ll do Poncho the song that night. Or he’ll Sampedro tells Uncut. turn to somebody and say, “He seemed to be ‘Do you know “Everybody fine. He went to the Knows This Is Nowhere”?’ Bridge concert and I That’s the only mention of talked to some people it, and then he does it. I who saw him there and remember one night, the they said he looked buses were parked by this the same as ever, just river and I thought, ‘Oh man, maybe moving a little I hope we don’t do “Down slower. He’s working By The River” tonight.’ We on his own music. He walked onstage and he said he played piano started it and we played it for on a lot of songs and 25 minutes! I love that song, he’s playing guitar and but I feel self-conscious bass. All his faculties because Danny [Whitten] played such great parts on it. are back. He’s got to I always feel like I’m struggling when I do that song.” gather his strength. “I was told to learn ‘Ramada Inn’ and a few others, so I “At the time, there already had them in my head,” adds Rosas. “But we never got was no talk of him into them. We just got into this set that morphed into what he rejoining the tour. He thought was best for the situation, I guess. But he’s got so was walking with much material, you never know what he’s going to throw at a cane and had just you. I’ve been on tours with Neil where there were no setlists! started using his Hopefully, he’ll tell somebody before he starts out the song.” hands. His left foot “It’s almost guaranteed that if you rehearse it and know it and hand weren’t perfectly, you’ll never play it,” laughs Sampedro. “As the tour working so well. And progressed, Neil got more and more into the activist part of it. at our age, the energy The war in Israel was happening. We had to cancel our show it takes to travel every there. From then on, all of a sudden we were playing a lot day and play every more politically minded songs. We had a whole group of new other night, you gotta songs to learn again. During that tour, I think we had about be in shape. We all 25 songs from the beginning to the end that we played. It’s work out before a tour. funny, here at home in the States, we don’t see as much of the I don’t think there was small conflicts that are going on globally on our TV news. But ever a thought he when you’re in Europe, you turn on the TV and flick through might try to come the channels, you see war, war, war, war. I think that was a back at that point.” big part of it. We were looking forward to playing Israel. We

HOW’S BILLY?

“I

“Neil’s always tried to do good things for the Earth” RICK ROSAS

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Young, centre, marches with the Cowboy Indian Alliance in Washington DC to protest against the Keystone XL pipeline – with Daryl Hannah behind the banner, second right – onSaturday, April 26, 2014

“I’MNEVERSURPRISED “I’M NEVER SURPRISED BY ANYTHING NEIL DOES”

played in Turkey around that same time and just to get into our hotel you had to go through a screening process like at an airport. I think all those things affected Neil.”

PETE MAROVICH/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES; TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES; PIETER M VAN HATTEM

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F COURSE, YOUNG has a lengthy history of political engagement, stretching back to “Ohio”, Farm Aid or, more recently, the environmental project Greendale and his outcry against George W Bush’s military policies on Living With War. This January’s Honour The Treaties shows in Canada were yet more evidence of Young’s political agenda; this time in defence of the First Nations tribes’ land rights, which are under threat from the Keystone XL pipeline project. In some ways, Honour The Treaties mirrored the 2010 Gulf Coast tour, in aid of residents affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Oil companies, once again, were the target of Young’s ire. “I think he’s always been an activist as far as trying to do good things for the Earth,” says Rick Rosas. “He had been working on this electric car for years and that has something to do with not using fuel. So that’s always been on his mind; finding other ways to use the Earth’s energy.” Sampedro sees Young’s activism in 2014 as part of an ongoing history of protest stretching back many decades. “I think it still comes from his heart,” he says. “If you can make things better, why don’t you?” Even the seemingly arbitrary appearance of a director’s cut of Human Highway at the Toronto Film Festival in September chimed with Young’s current thinking. Originally conceived during a period of protest against the growing use of nuclear power, it’s not hard to see Young drawing parallels between that battle and his current struggle against oil companies. Willie Nelson’s son Lukas has known Young most of his life. One early memories is approaching the man he called “Uncle Neil” with a song he had written. “I wanted to show Neil the song,” he explains. “So I had my brother come sing it with me, and we played it for Neil, and he said, ‘Oh man! That’s some good guitar picking.’ So it was cool. I must’ve been 10 or 11.” More recently, Nelson found himself sharing a stage with Young during Harvest The Hope, a benefit in September to raise funds for the fight against the Keystone pipeline. “We didn’t know what we were gonna do,” Nelson admits. “I talked to Neil briefly at Farm Aid, a fortnight before. He said, ‘I’ll bring my electric guitar over to the protest. I’ll come and sit in with your band, and we’ll jam a bit.’ I said, ‘All right, that sounds great.’ So, we were expecting Neil to come sit in with us. Then when we got there it became us backing both dad and Neil. So we went into Neil’s bus that afternoon, we

GRAHAM NASH reflects on Young’s 2014

“I

DON’T KNOW what goes on in But we’ve been here before, hearing Neil’s head. Who the hell does? people saying CSNY will never go I’m not even sure that Neil forward, but we always manage to do knows half of the time. Neil has had something. If a few oddly chosen words an incredible last couple of months, in the press from David and a paragraph especially with his pending divorce of mine in my book stopped CSNY from Pegi and his relationship with making music again, that would be Daryl Hannah. The heart is a mysterious incredibly sad. instrument, isn’t it? And when Neil’s “Neil’s packed every second. We’re heart moves, he has to move. I certainly getting older, how long can this go on? feel sad for Pegi and for Neil’s family, Rick Rosas died yesterday. It’s very sad, he’s been married to her for a long time. he was a nice man. We need to get on But as far as his relationship with Daryl with life and fill it with the best of what is concerned, I did not like what David we can and keep creating. But I’m never Crosby said in the press. I thought it surprised by anything Neil does. He’s was uncalled for. But quite honestly, been very dedicated to his music, he it’s one of the things that endears us to has always thought to explore new ways Crosby. He’ll tell you how he feels, and of doing it and God bless him. It’s unfortunately in this day of social media interesting Neil has finally stepped up it spreads like wild fire, so that was his concern for the planet this year. unfortunate and I understand why Neil Where was he 30-odd years ago when is upset. I wish Pegi and Neil the very we did No Nukes? Where was he when best. How could I not? He’s my friend. we started out on all environmental “Will there be any more CSNY? Right concerns? But the point is, if he’s on now, it looks pretty bleak. Neil is a little board now, I’m all in favour. You have upset with me because of my to face the problem, and Stephen Stills, Graham book, Wild Tales. And he’s that’s what Neil’s doing.” Nash, Young and David INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK obviously upset with David. Crosby on their Freedom Of Speech ’06 tour, Concord Pavilion, California, July 25, 2006

NEIL YOUNG practised a bit. We didn’t have any guitars, he just showed us the chords to a bunch of these songs, five songs.” Nelson shared another enjoyably spontaneous and hairy experience at this year’s Bridge School benefit on October 25 and 26. “We just went there to hang, and Young recording we were like, maybe we should bring our Storytone’s “Like You Used To Do” instruments. We figured he might wanna play with us. He did. So we rehearsed for half an hour on his bus… “Neil’s always got so much going on,” observes Nelson. “Even if he looks like he’s just standing there, his mind is working. To us, he’s like Yoda, or something. Dad’s like that, too. Those guys, it’s in their make-up. I have no doubt Neil’s gonna be rocking for a long time. Dad’s 81 and he’s still going. They’re cut from the same cloth, and Neil admires my dad for that very reason, too.”

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F YOUNG CIRCLED many familiar themes during 2014, the one song that seemed to suit all his concerns was “Who’s Gonna Stand Up”. It appeared in no less than three versions during the course of the year – live with Crazy Horse, and then in two versions on Storytone, the album he recorded with orchestral and bigband accompaniment. “Everybody knows how involved he is with fighting fracking and building electric cars and finding alternatives to fuel, he always has been,” says Storytone producer Niko Bolas. “When he did Living With War he called me while I was working in the studio and said, ‘How come nobody’s writing protest records? We’ve been in this war forever and nobody’s writing anything.’ And this thing is kind of true with ‘Who’s Gonna Stand Up’. He said, ‘I want this to be big and for the people.’” Young and Bolas began work on Storytone several months ahead of its October release. Bolas recalls that they recorded the album’s accompanying solo tracks on June 26 and 27. “About a year ago, we were talking about what things he still wanted to do,” Bolas explains. “Among the things he wanted to do was sing in the middle of an orchestra. He called me to say he’d written some new songs, and what did I think. So I booked a couple of days at Capitol with Al Schmitt. I called Lon Cohen, who’s a vintage gear guy, and we filled the studio with all kinds of weird, old instruments that Neil had not played. Ukulele, four-string, weird banjos. We got the Storytone piano, an upright piano, resonator, there wasn’t anything that he was used to. He could sit down and there may be something there – you know, every instrument has its own inspiration. We captured the songs then he left for the Crazy Horse tour. I got Michael Bearden and Chris Walden, the arrangers, and came up with charts so when he came back we could jump in a room in September and see what happens. Neil gave me a list of adjectives – ‘big orchestra’, ‘chorale voices’, ‘have it mean something’… The first instruction was, play Michael and Chris the 10 songs and if either

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“Neil is ready to live until he’s 100-andsomething!” PONCHO SAMPEDRO

g has a favourite, let them guy h have that. While he was on tthe road, I’d use FaceTime a and hook him up with the a arrangers and talk through tthe preliminary ideas. W When Neil came back, tthe guys came over to the house and we sat at the piano and played him the original ideas.” Storytone, then, proved to be yet another experimental album from Young; harking back, perhaps, to the orchestral flourishes on 1972’s Harvest or the brassy romp of 1988’s This Note’s For You. But the other, equally significant element of Storytone was what was on Young’s mind. On July 29, he filed for divorce from his wife Pegi; many of the songs seem informed by that

WILL CRAZY HORSE TOUR AGAIN?

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CERTAINLY hope so,” says Sampedro. “My hopes and dreams, if you want to know those, is that Neil writes a bunch of songs and in January, February we start recording and we go out on a big tour. I always want to call it a farewell tour, but I don’t think Neil would ever accept that. But for me, I like to live in a perfect world. We had a farewell tour, we got to say goodbye to all the people. There’s been people listening to us and supporting us and we’ve been counting on them to buy our records and show up at gigs, and it would be nice to do something where we all were together saying goodbye, we appreciate it. I don’t know how to put it in words. Like a Frank Capra movie, a big happy ending.”

separation and also his budding romance with actress and eco-activist Daryl Hannah. The opener, “Plastic Flowers”, seems to capture the early trajectory of his and Hannah’s relationship: “In the summertime/We met to see a threat”, while “Glimmer” basks in the glow of “new love” when “all the feelings in your heart/Come reawakened”. “Like You Used To Do”, meanwhile, bears evidence of a corrosive relationship with a former partner: “I got my problems/But they mostly show up with you,” he sings. “Someday you’ll want me/ Someday you’re gonna get back there/Someday you’re gonna need me/Like you used to do”. Young has frequently documented stages of his life in song – “Journey Through The Past”, “Are You Ready For The Country” and “Old Man” address Young’s relocation to Broken Arrow in 1969, for instance. The unreleased “Separate Ways”, from the Homegrown sessions, deals with his split from actress Carrie Snodgress in the mid’70s; Young pointedly repurposed it during the summer Crazy Horse shows. Collateral to all this appeared to be Young’s relationship with David Crosby. Young hadn’t been involved in the release earlier in the summer of the long-delayed CSNY 1974 live boxset. In October, Crosby reportedly weighed in on Young’s marriage split; Young responded by ruling out any future CSNY work. “He is very angry with me…” Crosby admitted.

“A

FTER THE CRAZY Horse tour finished,” remembers Poncho Sampedro. “I wrote to Neil and I said, ‘I’m home, I’m with my girl, I’m enjoying life. I know you’re still working on something. You haven’t stopped since the day I said goodbye to you and gave you a hug. You’re probably working on a couple of projects. I just want you to know, I feel as if I could walk out in front of my house and put up a sign that says, “Mission Accomplished”.’ But I know Neil doesn’t feel that way.” Although Sampedro isn’t certain what the future holds for Crazy Horse, he admires his old friend’s astonishing workrate during 2014. “Neil is ready to live until he’s 100-and-something,” he laughs. There are others, though, who draw different conclusions from the bustling narrative of Young’s year. Niko Bolas, for instance, makes a surprising deduction about how he believes all Young’s many different projects will shape the next period of his life. “If anything, he may have completed a lot of things so he can take the next decade and triumph in the other things he’s concerned about. I don’t think it’s a musical decade coming up, as much as it is one of fighting for mankind. He’s stood in a tar sand field and looked at dead animals and come out thinking, ‘Why isn’t anybody doing anything about this?’ If anybody has the ability to use fame to affect change, he’s the guy that has the courage to do that.” “He’s become quite an activist,” confirms Rick Rosas. “He’s done things I’ve never seen him do before, like book signings and a lot of media. Before, you’d be surprised if you saw Neil on TV. So things are changing. Obviously, he feels it’s time for him to be outspoken on his environmental thoughts and hopefully provide awareness to people. It’s a good thing. But there are only forks in the road with Neil. Anything could happen. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

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Vincent …on Disney films, David Byrne and selfimposed isolation: “I just follow my ears!”

NNIE CLARK HAS accomplished a staggering amount since surfacing as St Vincent last decade. Her four solo albums – including this year’s acclaimed self-titled record, No 9 in our albums of 2014 (see the full list on p21) – are just the most obvious signifiers in a career that has also seen her collaborate with David Byrne, develop an extraordinary live show and emerge as a truly modern guitar hero. “I constantly take experiences and write about them,” Clark explains of her songwriting. “That’s just how I function, how I make sense of the universe and how I like to live.” The Dallas-raised singer, guitarist and composer is certainly not afraid of hard work, filtering her myriad influences and experiences into complex, concise music that is simultaneously melodic and experimental. “I just like to work,” she admits. “I don’t need scented candles and incense in the studio. I just get to work, it’s not brain surgery, you know?” TOM PINNOCK

“It was tough and intense…” St Vincent in 2011 circa Strange Mercy

TINA TYRELL; PIETER M VAN HATTEM

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Clark with David Byrne, 2012

MARRY ME

ACTOR

BEGGARS BANQUET, 2007

4AD, 2009

Annie Clark’s debut, helped along by Sufjan Stevens, The Polyphonic Spree and one of David Bowie’s right-hand men… Annie Clark: To make my own music was always my ambition from a very young age. I was working on Marry Me before I joined The Polyphonic Spree and then I finished it while touring with them. Sufjan Stevens heard it and asked me to be in his band and open for him. When I was opening for Sufjan in London the people from Beggars Banquet were there, so I got a record deal based off of that performance. Mike Garson had recorded with The Polyphonic Spree on The Fragile Army, so I got to know him, and he was a really, really kind, sweet guy. He was doing this thing on MySpace at the time where people would basically send him tracks, and he would do his amazing Mike Garson thing on top of it. I think that’s how we did it; I sent him my song “Your Lips Are Red” and he just did his awesome crazy Mike Garson thing. To be honest with you, I don’t think I own a copy of this album! I think I have a file somewhere, but it’s on a laptop that has died. I haven’t heard it in years. Listening back to your old records feels a little like looking at a highschool yearbook.

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Clark teams up with her long-term producer for the first time, and narrowly avoids making the soundtrack to The Lion King… This was the first record I worked on with John Congleton. I started it with another producer, but things just went horribly wrong so I called John. I’d spent a long, long time on all of these tracks, all of these beautiful wind and string passages that I was trying to make into songs. I called John and said, ‘You know what? I think I need to try again with these songs… I think that if I’m not careful I’ll be making the soundtrack to The Lion King, so can we just rethink this?’ I went in and basically re-recorded everything but the wind and strings. It was definitely an eleventh-hour thing, with John and I together in the studio saving the record. When I was writing it, I was watching a lot of films, Disney films from the ’30s and ’40s. I was going for Technicolor on that record, and luckily we saved it from being the last record I ever made. The way it had been going, I’m not sure if anyone would’ve given it a listen. John’s sonic power is strong and contagious and, because we were already friends, I felt very comfortable with him. We were able to go about making a record with no ego or strange human relationships. We could be clear-headed about the songs and the best way to present them with the arrangements.

THE

CLASSIC

STRANGE MERCY 4AD, 2011

Isolating herself during an intense month in the Pacific Northwest, Clark takes another step forward… I read about Nick Cave’s approach to songwriting and how you just have to treat it like a day job, put on a suit and trousers in aspects of it, and get to work. I figured that in order to do that I needed to go to a place where I wouldn’t be distracted by friends or fun or anything like that. I just wanted to be alone in a little bit of isolation. So I went out to Seattle for a month and rented a studio

The flamboyant 2014 St Vincent

2012, 4AD

Teaming up with her hero, Clark crafted this hyperactive, brass-led LP, which spawned some spectacular live shows I suggested brass as a prominent voice because I think that at the time David and I decided to write songs together I had just done the Actor record with a lot of woodwind and a lot of strings on it. So I hadn’t explored brass and I wanted to. Originally, we were going to do a night of music at a bookstore for charity, so I was thinking OK, it could be a small ensemble, just me and David and a couple of guitars and then we’ll call it a day. But then obviously it grew and grew and grew. Brass was a way to bridge what we do in some sort of a neutral middle ground. When we toured the album, just the sheer number of people onstage was exciting and overwhelming, and then these people organised the stage movement in really fun and idiosyncratic ways and it made for such a light-hearted, beguiling show. For me as a performer, choreographing onstage movement is so liberating, because I get to actually ‘be here now’ really Buddhiststyle, because I’m not having to think about what my arms and legs and feet should be doing. If my body is acting subconsciously then I can really be there in the moment with the people. That’s really great for me. That’s a great little exercise.

ST VINCENT LOMA VISTA/REPUBLIC, 2014

Clark gets extroverted, exploring a flamboyant image and crafting her most commercially successful album yet… This is a more primary colour record than I’ve done in the past, I think. It’s generally a bit brighter as a record. It was less emotionally fraught than when I was writing Strange Mercy. I think there’s an exuberance in Love This Giant, and maybe some of that carried on into this record. Did my image change happen naturally? Yeah – it’s entertainment, it’s fun. In songs, I tell people nightly the worst thoughts I’ve ever thought or very intimate details of my life. I find music to be very revealing and I connect with various characters that are universally human. Adding a layer of theatricality to it makes it more fun for me, and entertaining for the audience. I’m resting on this idea that everything is a performance. I did a lot of sketching for St Vincent in Garageband before going into the studio. The process of actually recording it was less about discovery and putting the Frankenstein’s monster together, and a bit more about execution. There were a lot of things that had already been decided long before I walked into the studio. It was a different experience than Strange Mercy or Actor. Recording took about six weeks all in, around May 2013. John and I usually work every day and take maybe one day off every 10 or 12 days. I work hard? That’s bullshit. JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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SHAMIL TANNA/WWW.TIMEINCUKCONTENT.COM

from my friends in Death Cab For Cutie and just worked there 12 hours a day. It was a good exercise because I’d never done it so vigorously; I’ve always written at home, so it was nice to just go elsewhere, to have a separate space in order to be creative, and also to learn how to turn on the faucet and not judge what’s coming out. Just to write every day and not worry about the outcome, because ultimately you are going to put the pieces together eventually, but if you’re stuck on something then just work on something else. It was very productive and constructive to work like that. It was lonely as hell, and it was tough and intense, but it was worthwhile – I mean, everybody works for a living! It’s my job. You’re always following your intuition and hoping that your intuition and your intellect intersect at a point that’s fruitful. I’m always just following my ears. At the end of the day, that’s all you really have. That’s how I’ve been able to develop and grow over the course of my albums. I think writer’s block – this is the quote I’ve read – was a term invented in Los Angeles by people who don’t know how to write. There are so many ways to be creative, that I just don’t believe in writer’s block, I think that’s a fundamental lack of imagination. Once I was sort of stuck, so I just transcribed all of Madonna’s first record, because I wanted to see how it worked.

DAVID BYRNE & ST VINCENT LOVE THIS GIANT

MARK KOZELEK Story: John Mulvey | Photograph: Bill Ellison

‘‘I’m not interested in people’s bitching and whining...’’ At the end of an uncommonly action-packed year, MARK KOZELEK reflects on fame, infamy, 22 years at the helm of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, and the perverse sense of humour that provoked a war with The War On Drugs. “When I put words together, no-one can touch me. You tweet and play Bob Dylan covers? Good for you!”

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ROM MARK KOZELEK’S living-room window, he can see the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Marina and, he points out, the Tiburon neighbourhood where Robin Williams killed himself. “It’s hard for middle-aged people to see San Francisco taken over by young, Silicon Valley money,” he says of the city he’s lived in for most of his adult life. Kozelek’s favourite restaurant closed down a few weeks ago, and the grocery store down the street, and the Lumiere movie theatre. “That stuff bothers me,” he continues, “and makes me feel old. But I’ve got this gorgeous view and a pretty good set-up and I’m still inspired every day – so why fix what isn’t broke?” Today, Kozelek is answering questions by email, having avoided old-fashioned interviews for the past few years – “So I don’t get quoted with words like ‘dunno’,” he claims. Last night, Sun Kil Moon played a show at the Fonda Theatre in LA, part of a 2014 campaign which has been, even by his industrious standards, intense. It began with the release of Benji, the most critically acclaimed LP of his 22-year career, and is ending, more or less, with a tender, dolorous collection entitled Mark Kozelek Sings Christmas Carols. Over roughly 17 albums, mostly using the band names Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, Kozelek has forensically documented his life: a compelling patchwork of family anecdotes, love stories, tragedies, bereavements, tour grouches and small talk about cats and boxing. In the past two years, though, four remarkable albums (Among The Leaves, Perils From The Sea, Mark Kozelek And Desertshore and Benji) have seen Kozelek accelerate his creative process

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with an evolved, off-the-cuff way of writing songs; a diaristic vigour that gives even greater intimacy to what he calls, archly, “middle-aged ramblings about dead relatives”. Kozelek runs his own label (Caldo Verde), usually tours solo, and releases a steady stream of live albums to make a pragmatic living as a cult artist. But the rapturous reviews for Benji, especially, have given him a greater prominence than ever before, and exposed some other aspects of his personality to a wider – and slightly shocked – audience. It has been an eventful autumn. On September 5, at the Hopscotch Festival in North Carolina, Kozelek’s characteristically grumpy stage persona found him lambasting a talkative crowd as “fucking hillbillies”. Online indignation duly followed, and by September 9 Kozelek was selling T-shirts with the slogan “All You Fuckin’ Hillbillies Shut The Fuck Up” on his website. Then, on September 14, Kozelek’s performance at the Ottawa Folk Festival was disrupted by The War On Drugs playing, at somewhat louder volume, on a neighbouring stage. “Who the fuck is that?” Kozelek asked the crowd. “I hate that beer commercial lead-guitar shit.” He then introduced his next song as “The War On Drugs Can Suck My Fucking Dick”. A bewildered War On Drugs later took to social media to try and find out what had been going on, which only served to amuse, or provoke, Kozelek further. By October 7, he had written, recorded and released “War On Drugs: Suck My Cock”, in which he also referred to a journalist who’d taken offence at his “hillbillies” jibe as a “spoiled bitch rich kid blogger brat”. After ranting in similar fashion for two decades, Kozelek’s cantankerous humour had suddenly been turned into rolling indie-rock news. The War On

“I’m here to make music and I don’t believe in wasting time” MARK KOZELEK

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MARK KOZELEK Drugs’ Adam Granduciel eventually responded, exasperated. Kozelek, now pathological in his pursuit, released “Adam Granofsky Blues”, in which he read out Granduciel’s quotes punctuated by increasingly hysterical laughter. This last phase of the story happened after our interview, however; one in which he talks unrepentantly about his “banter”, scathingly about social media and seriously, and in depth, about his art. Again and again, too, there’s a sense of him asserting his credentials as a decent human being. “I have love in my heart,” he says, “and I’m kind to people every single day of my life.”

PHOTOS COURTESY MARK KOZELEK

When we first met in 1992, how did you expect to spend the next 22 years? What were your expectations then? I didn’t think that far ahead. I remember Ivo [Watts-Russell, founder of 4AD] telling me he was 38 and I thought that sounded old, but here I am, at 47. The only thing I felt confident about, at that time, was that I’d make a living playing music for the rest of my life. I had a sense of it somehow. You must feel very proud about how you’ve stuck with your art for over two decades? Yes, but it’s not been the easiest road. There were several label switches, and the industry has changed so much. But I’m my own boss now: I work at my own pace. By most people’s standards, you work at an incredibly fast pace. Every artist has different priorities. Some artists I know don’t make as

Mark Kozelek, Christmas 1974

much music as they used to – social media has taken over their lives. I work at what I feel is a normal pace and things keep clicking. It’s rewarding. Sun Kil Moon had a beautiful show in LA last night, and I felt so much love from the crowd.

Red House Painters in 1993

What needs to happen for you to pick up that love? There are many elements that have to come together for a show to come off. Sometimes I’m playing indoors, sometimes I’m playing outdoor festivals at 6pm, trying to play “Carissa” with some other band’s music bleeding into my set. Sometimes sound and crew know what they’re doing, sometimes not as much. Sometimes a crowd is seated and respectful. Sometimes they’ve had too much to drink. Have you been surprised by the reaction to Benji? I never worry about how records will be received, but I felt confident that Benji would be received poorly, that people would find it to be

PASSING FANCIES

“There isn’t all the baggage that comes with, ‘This is forever’.” Jimmy LaValle, Desertshore, Justin Broadrick, Ben Gibbard? Kozelek on collaborations…

“T

HEY DO THE music, I do the vocals. Jimmy [LaValle, with whom he made 2013’s Perils From The Sea] and I recorded the entire album with only one phone conversation. It doesn’t get easier than that. There was talk of us doing an EP, but he had a child since then, and you know how it is, he got busy with his things and I got busy with mine. But that guy made music that inspired me to sing at my very best. Maybe someday we’ll do it again. “With Desertshore [the San

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Kozelek with (from top) Jimmy LaValle, Justin Broadrick, Ben Gibbard and Desertshore

Francisco instrumentalists F who backed him on an w eponymous 2013 set], I’d e just show up, listen to what ju they’d recorded and write th words and melodies on the w spot. Easy stuff. When sp something is a side project, so there isn’t all the baggage th tthat comes with, ‘This is forever’. You’re just working on one thing Y tto see how it all turns out. “Ben [Gibbard, The Postal S Service/Death Cab For Cutie ffrontman] and I will make ssome music someday, I’m ssure. I don’t know how or w when. Maybe him on drums, b both of us singing and doing o overdubs. He’s a great d drummer. Justin Broadrick [B [British avant-metal musician, b best known for Godflesh] and I aare working on something, as we ccan, here and there, as we’re so ffucking busy. It’s going to be ssomething, though, that album. IIt’ll probably be out in 2016.”

middle-aged ramblings about dead relatives. But something about it resonated with people. I’m sure a lot of people love their mothers and fathers, or had a friend who died way too young. Has 2014 been your most successful year? My most successful album happened back in the mid-’90s, pre-internet times, with Songs For A Blue Guitar. We were supported by Island, we toured a lot, songs were licensed to TV ads and movies. The second most successful was Sun Kil Moon’s Ghosts Of The Great Highway. Benji, despite all of the hype, has sold about half of what Tiny Cities did. But considering the times we’re in, selling 20,000 records in the USA, in a world where music is free, is pretty good. Do you feel staying in the public eye, with things like the War On Drugs business, will help? I’m not doing anything intentionally to stay in the public eye. I’m staying true to my art, like I always have. The press, for whatever reason, decided to zone in on what is very common banter for me. It got worked out through song – the same way I work everything out. Do you think your songwriting style changed from Among The Leaves onwards? I wrote “Sunshine In Chicago” just before I went onstage in Chicago and played it that night, and it worked. I followed that same flow throughout the rest of Among The Leaves: stream of consciousness. I’d just write, record, write, record. I was responding to whatever I was feeling and firing the songs off, one after another. I’ve got to a place where I don’t work at writing. I get things out of my system quickly and move on. I had a look back at my interview from 1992, and a couple of your quotes stood out: “If my girlfriend fucks somebody else, or if I fuck somebody else, or we’re not getting along, it’s always my reaction to write about things. I’m not afraid to examine myself. I take my life very seriously, that’s all. I don’t wanna think too much about ‘This is weird, Mark; you’re solitary, you write about hating

“I THOUGHT MY LIFE WAS OVER WHEN TRUE DETECTIVE ENDED…” Mark Kozelek’s life beyond music. Involves a lot of boxing…

“G

IRLFRIEND, long walks, bed, baths, HBO, food: that’s my life outside of music. I thought my life was over when True Detective ended. I Iike Jim Lampley’s The Fight Game, and there is a great short documentary I just saw on referee Kenny Bayless. The TV series right now are all reruns, but the boxing stays fairly current. The six-part documentary on [boxing trainer] Freddie Roach was hypnotic. I love when a documentary shows someone at work, rather than talking about their work. But yeah, mostly it’s boxing. It’s funny – my dad and I used to go to his friend Billy’s house and all that guy watched was wrestling and boxing, period. I used to think, ‘Man, what does this guy do besides watch boxing?” and here I am, just like Billy, watching boxing all the fucking time.”

Does it surprise you to be still portrayed as a misanthropist and bad-tempered, when so many of your songs are so empathetic and humane ? I don’t know where all of that comes from, the misanthropy. I’ve played everywhere from Moscow to Jeju Island, Korea to Newtown, Connecticut, and I put my heart into every concert I play. I sign every autograph I’m asked to sign. People embed a piece of information into their brain and go with it, because it’s easier. I’m playful with my audiences, I tease them from time to time. I make people laugh. But there is always going to be someone who pretends to be offended by it, because they’re bored or alarmist or dramatic and have a phone in their hand. I show up to every concert making a mental note to remember every person in the staff’s name. I’m respectful. I have a friend who is sick and she doesn’t have the strength to come see my shows, but I send her my live records as she said the best parts are my banter, they make her laugh. Anyone who thinks I’m ‘bad tempered’ is being lead by the nose. Sometimes you’re only as good as the environment around you and, even in those not so great circumstances, I get through it with humour. You had to be there in Ottawa that night. Playing Benji effectively wasn’t an option, so I turned on the comedy. If people think I’m a prick because I don’t have a Facebook page and I don’t play Red House Painters songs any more, it’s their issue, not mine.

What do you feel is so bad about Facebook and Twitter? It soaks up too much of people’s time. I knew people, who were once great artists, who turned into internet junkies. So while they’re posting photos of their new amps sitting in their garage, I’ll actually be on tour. I’m moving forward, always. Do you ever worry that you reveal too much? I’m in the songwriting business, not the wallpaper business. How do you feel about the War On Drugs episode now? The band tweeted they wanted confirmation of my stage banter, and they got it. They tweet, I write songs. That’s how it works.

Have you read any of the thinkpieces? I’ve got a picture of someone who died at the age of 34 next to my bed. So I’m not interested in people’s bitching and whining. Be grateful you can walk across the street. Someday it will end. Go outside and put a smile on someone’s face. Tell a joke or give a $20 bill to a homeless person. This Christmas, when I see someone lonely and hungry, I’m handing them a $100 bill and giving them a hug, if they want it. You know why? I want to make people’s faces light up with happiness on Christmas Day. I’ve had a great year, gotten lots of hugs and applause and big paychecks. I’ve made a living doing what I dreamed of doing since I was a kid. So I’m gonna pass around some money and love to those who’ve been less fortunate than me. Do you regret any of the language you used? Language? Who are you, Tipper Gore? I’ve got a great sense of humour and anyone who doesn’t share it is entitled to go cry about nothing. I was surprised at how much you knew about The War On Drugs’ sound. Do you keep up with new music? Their music drowned out my

entire set in Ottawa. I got familiar with their music whether I wanted to or not. I listen to classical guitar music and I check new music out when I’m at festivals, but when you’re a full-time musician, you’re busy with your own music. Does the press stereotype of you as a grumpy middle-aged man annoy you? There are times when it looks like you’re using it to your advantage. I was a grumpy twentysomething, I used to pick on Evan Dando, for shits and giggles, between songs. I’m funny. I don’t know what’s going on out there in the press – slow times, maybe. But yeah, War On Drugs asked for a song, I gave them one. Press girl in North Carolina loved my hillbilly remark so much, I made her a shirt. If people don’t want my banter soaking up all the press, then MAKE A GOOD ALBUM OR PLAY A SHOW THAT’S WORTH TALKING ABOUT. My hillbilly comment stole the show at Hopscotch? Not my fault. My War On Drugs banter upstaged you in Ottawa? Not my fault. If my banter is more noteworthy to the press than your music – not my fault. I play two-and-a-half-hour sets and fly all around the world. Do fans want me to sleep in their basement all weekend? I’d love to, but I’ve got another city to play the next day. What do people want from me? To join Facebook and tweet? ‘Hey fans, here’s what I’m eating today! Here’s a picture of my new salt and pepper shakers!’ I make albums and I sing my heart out and I’ll sign everything in your backpack when it’s over. I’m sorry if that’s not enough for you. I’ve put as many hours into my music as any successful lawyer or doctor. I’m here to make music and I don’t believe in wasting time. How would you like to be remembered? As a great artist who inspired other artists to make music. And do you think, right now, that you’re a great artist? Yes. Does songwriting work as therapy, as a purgative process, for you? Yes. I spent all day in the studio today and it felt great. When I put words together, forget it. No-one can touch me. You tweet and play Bob Dylan covers? Good for you, congratulations. Are there any songs that are too emotionally difficult for you to play these days? “Somehow The Wonder Of Life Prevails” [From Perils From The Sea] is really fucking hard for me. Ah man,

With Steve Shelley at work on Benji: Hyde Street Studios, San Francisco, August 2013

Sun Kil Moon at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2014: (l-r) Kozelek, Will Oldham, Mike Stevens, Phil Carney, Kirby Hammel and Nick Zubeck

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MIKE MELNYK; REX/© HBO/EVERETT

people, so why are you on the stage singing?’” And “I just sing about shit that’s directly involved with me.” Those quotes suggest you’ve stayed remarkably constant throughout your career? The quotes read awkwardly to me. But the sentence that basically remains true is that I’m still writing about what I’m passionate about.

in 2003]. I saw her the night she passed away. What she would have given to see her daughter turn one. Her death destroyed me – friends had to take care of me. I couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. I remember calling Ivo and just crying my guts out and he sent me the most beautiful card. I’ll never forget all of the support I got from friends. But with time, you get a different perspective. Katy always wanted to have a child and she got to do that in her life. I think of her every day. Every single day. Do you get bored of your songs after a while? Yes, that’s a necessary process in growing as an artist. Songs just sort of die out, for me, my passion for them. I can’t hang around a project too long, tweaking this and that. It’s just boring and I need to get to the next song. I see poetry around me every day and I have to capture it.

SCOTT DUDELSON/FILMMAGIC

Live at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, October 5, 2014

it’s hard for me to talk about without crying, but my friend committed suicide when he was 21. I was in Pacific Grove, California when I found out about it. He committed a crime when we were young and did some time in a detention centre. Anyhow, he was living with his parents and one night he left their house and drove into a tree. That’s all I want to say on it. But every verse in that song kills me. There is the verse about my father and a bad scrap we got into when I was young, but I love him with all of my heart because he got me my first guitar from Sears when I was about seven. The hardest verse of all is the one about Katy [an early girlfriend and key muse, who died of cancer

What’s your oldest song that you’re not bored with? “Black Kite”. Anything that precedes Among The Leaves is a strain to play. But I played “Mistress” this year at one show, in Maine, because there was a guy in a wheelchair and he kept yelling out for it and that he’d waited 22 years to come see me – and I believed him, as he was in a wheelchair and it was my first time playing Portland, Maine. After the show, he wheeled himself up to me and asked for a hug and I gave him one and he would not let go. I mean, he would not let go. It just killed me. His name was Mike. Mike, it’s not my favourite song any more, but if I ever play “Mistress” again, it’ll be for you, ’cos you’re the definition of strength and bravery and that hug made my fucking year. How easy is it for you to write songs now? In my sleep, on walks, on ’planes. Lyrics are the easiest thing. Just find an understanding girlfriend and write what’s on your mind.

How does your girlfriend feel about you revealing so much in your lyrics? She knows that I have to be true to my art. Our relationship is deep. All you need to know is that I want to live a very long time. I wish I could live 10 lifetimes so I could spend them all with her. You seem to reveal so much in your songs, and guard your privacy so assiduously outside of them? When you’re a professional, you develop a thing called boundaries. You don’t just let anyone walk into your home. I’m not in this business to be everyone’s best friend. I don’t let any stranger walk into my backstage area. Having boundaries is part of being professional. If you want to get anywhere in this world as a professional, you have to have boundaries. In 2004, you told me, “I’m happy, but there’s a lot of people who probably think I’m an asshole.” Do you still believe that? I’m making a new album as we speak, and trust me, it won’t be wallpaper. Is that bad of me to do? Does that make me an asshole? My mom is coming into town tomorrow for 10 days and I’m going to play Scrabble with her all day long. Does that make me an asshole? I’ll be in Europe for the fourth time this year and will be taking my music to Israel. Does that make me an asshole? A friend of mine is sick and I send her money. Does that make me an asshole? When Jason Molina died, I contributed the first track turned in, to help raise money for his family. Does that make me an asshole? When Tim Mooney died, who wrote a song for him? Every day of my life I have positive interactions with people. I go for walks and I make people smile at coffee shops, banks, restaurants. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t make someone smile. I see my girlfriend every night and when she looks at me, I smile and she smiles. That’s all that matters.

MARK KOZELEK: A BUYER’S GUIDE

“Sad reminders of what seems years ago...” RED HOUSE PAINTERS RED HOUSE PAINTERS 4AD, 1993

The second RHP album (aka ‘Rollercoaster’), after demos collection Down Colorful Hill. These two CDs of often pretty, often harrowing, confessionals established Kozelek’s reputation as a sadcore magus. Another eponymous CD (aka ‘Bridge’) from the sessions was released later in 1993.

RED HOUSE PAINTERS SONGS FOR A BLUE GUITAR SUPREME/ISLAND, 1996

Dropped from 4AD because, allegedly, their guitar solos had got too long, RHP found a new home at the label run by filmmaker John Hughes. Kozelek once spent seven hours on the phone with Hughes as he needed a loan. “I just wanted to get $15,000. Listening to him talk for seven hours was the price I had to pay.”

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RED HOUSE PAINTERS OLD RAMON SUB POP, 2001

Record label politics left the final RHP album on the shelf for three years. By the time this exceptional collection was finally released, the band had dissolved, and Kozelek had tentatively embarked on a solo career: his LP of acoustic AC/DC reconstructions, What’s Next To The Moon, preceded Old Ramon by three months.

SUN KIL MOON GHOSTS OF THE GREAT HIGHWAY JETSET, 2003

Alongside RHP drummer Anthony Koutsos, Kozelek launched his second band with what is, arguably, his masterpiece. A rolling expansion of Old Ramon’s Crazy Horse vibe, with meditations on memory, Judas Priest guitarists and sundry boxers that culminates with the 14-minute slow-burn of “Duk Koo Kim”.

SUN KIL MOON ADMIRAL FELL PROMISES CALDO VERDE, 2010

Kozelek rates this and his 2013 collaboration with Jimmy LaValle, Perils From The Sea, as his best albums. A solo recording that privileges Kozelek’s increasing mastery of the nylon-string guitar sound he loves on classical work by the likes of Segovia. The last SKM album before Kozelek moved towards his current spontaneous, sprechgesang style.

SUN KIL MOON BENJI CALDO VERDE, 2014

An unflinching and profoundly moving collection of stories, so unmediated they seem to unravel in real-time; Will Oldham and Steve Shelley figure in an expanded cast. “When you’re middle-aged, you are who you are. I’m a full-time musician. I play decent-sized rooms, I make a good living. I’ve never, ever compromised.”

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SLOVENLY RECORDINGS LP / CD

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Magic Castles are a five-piece psychedelic rock band from Minneapolis MN. Their sound has been described as minimalistic, dream pop & neo-psychedelic rock.

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Debut Lo-fi Punk/Disco album from 1997 fully remastered with additional disc filled with Hi-Fi bonuses. Includes “Kill Yr Boyfriend”, “Starbright Boy” and “Monstarr”

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Githead are Colin Newman (Wire), Malka Spigel and Max Franken (Minimal Compact), and Robin Rimbaud (Scanner). This is their 4th album and the first since 2009.

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AC/DC Rock Or Bust ALBERT/COLUMBIA

Man down, but still fighting. Rock’s heaviest artillery fires again. By John Robinson TRACKLIST 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Rock Or Bust Play Ball Rock The Blues Away Miss Adventure Dogs Of War Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder Hard Times Baptism By Fire Rock The House Sweet Candy Emission Control

HISTORICALLY, AC/DC HAVE triumphed making the best of a bad job. When Bon Scott, the charismatic singer who fronted the band on their rise to fame died in London in 1980, they responded the only way they could. Namely, heavily: employing a new singer, and turning Back In Black into one of the 10 biggest-selling albums of all time. “Oblique strategies” aren’t something you imagine the band have a lot of time for, but their pragmatic problem-solving has often yielded spectacular results. The news that Malcolm Young had left AC/DC

8/10

prior to recording this new album, and is battling dementia, presents the band in late career with a different kind of challenge. While his younger brother Angus commands the spotlight with his duckwalk and wild solos, AC/DC remains Malcolm’s band. His three-chord tricks have always been the cornerstone on which their empire of hard rock and innuendo has been built, and his musical relationship with his brother seems highly likely to continue to define the dynamic of the group. In light of recent developments, singer Brian Johnson suggested that a possible JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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New Albums

Back in more black: (l-r) Brian Johnson, Stevie Young, Angus Young, Cliff Williams

title for this new album was ‘Man Down’ – militarily correct, for sure, but ultimately suggestive of an unseemly vulnerable side. So here instead is the more forbidding Rock Or Bust, recorded with Brendan O’Brien, and featuring what one imagines will be the final Young/Young compositions. Life has again thrown down a gauntlet. With their 15th studio album, AC/DC have picked it up, and risen to the challenge. As Angus Young describes it, it was simply the only thing to do. Though principally a good-time band, AC/DC have for the past 30 years or so seemed governed by strong management and their own (smallprint-filled) take on an honour code. The band aim to deliver shows that please fans old and new (but are, compared to say, The

Rolling Stones, completely inflexible on setlist). They refuse to make fans pay twice for material, though have a lucrative line in live albums and DVDs. They refuse to consider “greatest hits” collections – but have contrived to achieve the same thing by exclusively soundtracking Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man movie franchise, the logical endpoint of their music’s appearance in movies and TV. Rock Or Bust plays in a slightly different way in the light of this last development – a hard-rock version of the chicken and egg conundrum. As the band’s music has become a movie staple, an audio shorthand for scenes like “strip club”, “car is driven fast”, and “men dressed in leather jackets”, you’re left to wonder which comes first,

the song, or the scene in the Mark Wahlberg movie it is ultimately destined for? On a couple of the more minor compositions here (say, “Miss Adventure” or “Sweet Candy”) you might be left in some doubt. In both, there are strong choruses, but the journey to them certainly isn’t entirely memorable. The latter apparently evaluates the talents of a pole dancer, while the former inexplicably recommends “hot cross buns”. These aren’t standout tracks, but they and the excellent “Dogs Of War” and “Hard Times” still go some way to illustrating the retrenchment that is in play here. As they did on their early 1980s albums, the verses on the songs here have diminished in importance, and are written to the

HOW TO BUY... AC/DC

The dirty deeds you need in your collection…

64 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

High Voltage 1976

Powerage 1978

If You Want Blood 1978

Back In Black 1980

Combining material from the band’s first two albums (Aus-only High Voltage and TNT, both 1975), the album defined the band’s original blueprint: escape from blue-collar boredom via innuendo and raw blues rock. As “Rock’n’Roll Singer” confirms, self-mythology wouldn’t be so prophetic until Definitely Maybe.

Allegedly Keith Richards’ favourite, if one underserved by recent ’DC setlists. “Riff Raff” is the definitive Young/Young guitar double act, while retaining pub rock rawness. The ceaselessly dynamic “Down Payment Blues” meanwhile, articulates an autobiographical point on the cusp of stardom.

“Angus! Angus!” The insane reception at this 1978 Glasgow show (essentially a homecoming for the Scottish-parented band) urges the group to deliver some extraordinary performances. The epic “Bad Boy Boogie” is a relentless highlight, as if German motorik was horribly pissed at the wheel.

Bon but not forgotten. The album’s bespoke elegiac nature is a bit overplayed (the music was virtually complete before Scott’s untimely 1980 death), but this and the followup, For Those About To Rock, defined the band’s monolithic latter-day sound. A major record with minor chords.

9/10

8/10

8/10

9/10

New Albums choruses – which have become a good deal weightier. The album is heavy because it’s dense with detail. Hooks and backing vocal tricks from glam and hair metal are all pulled in and devoured by the band’s machine. At 34 minutes, this is the shortest AC/DC album – but stylistically it’s one of the leanest. Unlike Black Ice, you won’t find anything like a ballad on here. Here, rock is all. On “Rock The Blues Away”, a blue-collar, good-time anthem somewhere between “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “I Fought The Law”, all pool halls and cigarette smoking, it is the soundtrack to the end of a thankless week. On “Rock The House”, where operative adjectives are “hot”, “wet” and “wild”, it occupies a heritage role as a euphemism for sex. On “Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder”, the band simply celebrate the monolithic nature of their music since Back In Black: since which time their songs and production have served to make “rock” interchangeable with God, nation, and war – another pursuit that takes place on a global stage, demanding SLEEVE heavy machinery and NOTES great heroism. The word appears 70 times in the Produced by: Brendan O’Brien album’s duration, just Recorded at: over two rocks a minute. The Warehouse Only with an AC/DC Studio, Vancouver, album can you unselfBC, Canada consciously talk in Personnel: Angus terms of an opening Young (lead guitar), Brian Johnson salvo of songs, and the (lead vocals), Cliff one presented here is Williams (bass guitar), strong indeed. “Rock Or Phil Rudd (drums), Bust” itself is a classic Stevie Young stop-start riff, the (rhythm guitar) chorus outlining a band motto as clearly as did “For Those About To Rock” over 30 years ago: “In rock we trust/Rock or bust…” Verse two makes reference to sirens wailing, which might all have seemed a little fanciful prior to the recent arrest of drummer Phil Rudd. This is followed by first single “Play Ball”. On one level, the song is fairly transparently a strategy to have material used on television during the maximum possible number of montaged sports action highlights. On another, it’s a classic AC/DC song, the brutality of the main riff complemented by the delicacy and fluidity of Angus Young’s lead. There’s a solo, of course, but ultimately, the song is all about the collective power of the group. The sequencing of the album is about pacing a good time, which doesn’t peak too early in the evening. The mood change of “Hard Times”, say, is immediately regulated by the great “Baptism By Fire” which appears to recall elements from 1976’s “Live Wire”, and resumes things to the album’s customary clip. Still, for all the drinks poured, cars driven, ladies enchanted and cigarettes smoked during the course of the record, this is nonetheless an album made by a group arguably in extremis: singer nearly 70, rhythm guitarist retired, drummer out on bail. Rock sincerely hopes that this isn’t the last word from AC/DC, but if it is, we will know that they died as they lived – and didn’t go down without a fight.

good title and it sets you thinking – what if I try this, see how it goes? Most of the songs that we’ve ever sat and played about with have been guitar riffs – any songs we came up with, they were always in combination with each other. It’s something we always did. Sometimes we borrowed bits from each other. Like Malcolm would say, “You know that riff you had from that other period? Let’s try that with this…” As we’ve read, Malcolm is seriously ill [Young has dementia and has retired from AC/DC]. How was he able to participate in writing the album? A lot of writing, it was stuff we had done in the past together. There were also other ideas Malcolm had done on his own, and the same for myself. So a lot of it is a combination. There’s hidden material we’ve always had. Sometimes we’ve borrowed from the past, sometimes created something new.

“Everything we’ve ever done has been do or die…” ANGUS YOUNG gives us the lowdown on Rock Or Bust For Rock Or Bust you worked again with Brendan O’Brien, who produced Black Ice. What did you enjoy about working with him that you wanted to repeat? How long did recording take? About four weeks. We had all the material, we were well-prepared to do the album and that helped a lot. We’d done a lot of the work before going in the studio. Brendan is a very accomplished musician, so that’s part of why we work with him. He knows all his instruments. He seems to know, for us, how his input could help. You’ve been making records 40 years. Do you even need a producer? It’s always good to have an outside ear because then you have someone who takes control of the project, you let him be the boss. It’s good in that respect – you trust him, that he’s going to do his best to get the best album out of you, you know? Tell me about the title. I read that you considered ‘Man Down’. Rock Or Bust sounds a lot more determined…Is that the idea? For the band it was a stronger title. Rock Or Bust is a thing we’ve always done – when we play live, it’s always been a do or die effort. And everything we’ve ever done has always had that approach.

When did these get written? Did you have stuff left over from Black Ice? Well, they came together basically in the last year before the album. We just start over – in this case, we did go through a lot of tapes, ideas we’d had from the past, but I do that for every album. You researched particularly hard, because you couldn’t write with Malcolm in the normal way? Yes – and Malcolm and I had stuff that he had done up until he could no longer do it. How is Malcolm? He’s in good spirits at this point, and he’s getting the best of care where he is. He’s being well looked after. Since Malcolm has been such a big part of AC/DC, how will you be able to work going forwards? We do what we do best. Malcolm’s had the illness for a while. He had the onset of it when we were doing the previous album – he toured. I said to him, do you really wanna do this? He said, I wanna do this as long as I can keep doing it. He’s got a do or die spirit – it’s the strength of his character. It is a big thing that he’s not there. Are you looking forward to touring the album? How do you keep things fresh? If everything comes together, we’ll be out there. It’s always exciting because we’ve been lucky over the years – because the younger generations, there’s a lot of people who have never seen us. It’s always exciting.

“Malcolm was ill when we were doing the previous album – he wanted to play for as long as he could”

Stevie Young [rhythm guitar] does a great job on the album. But it must have felt odd being in the studio without Malcolm? How did you work through that? Stevie did do a great job. He’s the only person I could think of who is a second Mal, he plays that style. Still, he adds his own little touches, so that’s also good.

All the songs are co-writes between you and [your brother] Malcolm [Young, rhythm guitar]. How have your songs come about, historically? It can come any number of ways. Sometimes you’ll have a good guitar riff, and think “this is good”, then other times you might just need a

You have a very vocal fanbase who are quite opinionated about your setlists. How do you decide what to put in? We’ve always played a lot of songs from the beginning to the present, so it becomes a bit of a juggle sometimes – in how long we can sustain that show. We like to do a show that’s exciting. We don’t want to be on there too long – we don’t want it to be a long-winded affair. I’d like it to be short and powerful. But we always try to do our best, put in a few strong songs that are fan favourites. My own favourites? I’ve been involved with them since the beginning, so I love them all… INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

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New Albums

TRACKLIST 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Tiberius Being Beige Anaise! One And All Run2Me Drum + Fife Monuments Dorian Anti-Hero

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SMASHING PUMPKINS Monuments To An Elegy MARTHA’S MUSIC/BMG

Back to psychedelic hard-rock form, with Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee on drums! By Louis Pattison

New Albums 8/10

SAY WHAT YOU want about Billy Corgan, but you’ll not find him resting on his laurels. For Smashing Pumpkins’ tireless leader, 2014 has Billy Corgan been busy. Back in March he was holed up for a day in a coffee shop on the outskirts of Chicago, ou say people have told you where he performed an eight-hour modular synth that this is a very Smashing jam accompanied by a real-time reading of Pumpkins-like album… Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, the tale of a Well, you make an album, then it wandering ascetic seeking enlightenment. comes out and people start attaching September saw a reissue of the Pumpkins’ 1998 buzzwords to it. Musically, I don’t think album, Adore – that expanded the original to a there’s a link to the past. But I think flabbergasting 107 tracks. And that’s before you people are hearing an emotional quality get to his day job as creative director at the that reminds them of something in the professional wrestling company that he founded, past. By extension, they assume I’m Resistance Pro, or the forthcoming “spiritual trying to get back there. But the truth memoir”, which he assures Uncut is currently in is the opposite – I stopped trying to the works. avoid it. I went off to have this Now there is Monuments To An Elegy, which is Hermann Hesse-style spiritual journey, but a tile in a larger jigsaw puzzle: both the first through different sounds and half of what began as a double album, before subcultures. And then I came home, splitting into two; and part of a broader project and allowed myself to make the music titled Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, a TarotI might naturally make. inspired song suite which commenced in 2009 and will itself be completed when its second half, How did Tommy Lee get involved? Day For Night, sees release in 2015. I’ve known Tommy since 1992, didn’t Yes, it’s all quite complicated. But it’s hard know him real well, but enough to call to see anything heavily conceptual that ties him up. He was like, “the Pumpkins together the nine songs of Monuments… – drumming style is a lot busier than I a relief, perhaps. Instead, this record feels of a play”. But he heard it in demo form and piece with 2012’s Oceania, a stirring collection of said, “I wanna play on all of them.” You psych hard rock powered by thick, saturated can hear on tracks like “Run To Me”, guitars and a mood of thwarted romance that where he did a lot of drum programming itself harked back to the salad days of Gish and – he took real investment in the material. Siamese Dream. Today, of course, the Pumpkins name is more of When Teargarden By Kaleidyscope a banner than an actual band: the Billy Corgan is finished, will you present it as a Experience, essentially he and guitarist Jeff complete work? Schroeder, plus whomever he chooses to ask I hope so. Originally it was going to be along for the ride. Joining the pair here is 44 songs, but now it’s going to be more producer Howard Willing, who worked with the like 60, 80. There’s a lot of demos that Smashing Pumpkins on the dreamy, synthesised are release-worthy, but I don’t want to Adore, and – somewhat unexpectedly – Tommy be Don Quixote, rushing forward with Lee, more used to flying over audiences on the my boxset to an audience of no-one. drumstool of Sunset Strip hair metallers Mötley Maybe I’ll let it marinate. See how it Crüe. Teasing Monuments To An Elegy, Corgan feels in 10 years’ time. promised “guitars, guitars, guitars, and more guitars” – something you can certainly hear as the opening “Tiberius” explodes with syrupysweet fuzz. But Lee’s muscular rhythm keeping Mellon Collie’s “Bullet With Butterfly and characterful fills hark back to that other Wings”, while elsewhere there are nods Pumpkins virtuoso, deposed drummer Jimmy to the electropop of Adore: the sleek New Chamberlain, while the addition of baroque Order-style mope of “Dorian”, or the synthesiser lines and guitars that climb proggy sparkling “Monuments”, with an ascending scales make this a fusion of Pumpkins acrylic synthesiser riff reminiscent of past and present. Tubeway Army. Monuments To An Elegy veers upbeat and direct. Monuments To An Elegy can sometimes Love and heartbreak are a common lyrical focus, feel somewhat lightweight, and it’s in the driven home on ecstatic or bittersweet choruses: more electronic-accentuated moments that the gauzy roar of “Anti-Hero”, with its its flaws really show; a repeated entreaties to “a girl like serviceable rock stomp called SLEEVE you”; or the positively rapturous “Anaise!” is spoilt by all NOTES “Drum + Fife”, on which Celtic pipes manner of busy digital Produced by: ring out, Tommy Lee tosses in little effects, while “Run To Me”, Howard Willing militaristic flurries of percussion, with its bubbling synth and Recorded: Chicago, and Corgan’s mind drifts off to pulsing four-to-the-floor 2014 distant shores and wintry mornings. beat, feels rather cheap in a Personnel includes: Infidelity is the theme of first single way that this record’s fiery Billy Corgan (vocals, “Being Beige”, which winds from guitar barrages do not. Still, guitar, bass, keys), Jeff delicate acoustic guitar and drum there have been times in the Schroeder (guitar), machine to a chorus of breezy uplift, last few years – and not so Tommy Lee (drums, spiked with the line, “You once made recently, actually – when it drum programming) me smile/Then you strayed”. Yet the seemed Corgan’s talents had tone is one of zen-like acceptance, been fully squandered on not spiteful recrimination, while the cumbersome concepts and couplet “Your furs are wrapped up/And that’s creative bridge-burning. In that context, that”, suggests it’s pointedly not to be read as Monuments To An Elegy constitutes an being about ex-girlfriend Jessica Origliasso of The unexpected return to form: the sound of an Veronicas, a campaigner for PETA. older, wiser, warmer Billy Corgan, one In places, we hear further echoes of other content to wind down The Machines Of God, earlier Smashing Pumpkins periods. “One turn his back on the Infinite Sadness and And All” borrows its gnarly guitar growl from speak simple truths once more.

Y

COMING UP THIS MONTH... p68 BLAKE MILLS p69 CLAUDIA BRÜCKEN p70 DAVE DAVIES p71 FAUST p72 EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN p77 SWAMP DOGG p78 BOB SEGER p79 JAMES WILLIAMSON p79 YUSUF

MARSHALL APPLEWHITE Leave Earth YOSUCKA!

Sludgy beats and acid flashbacks from Detroit techno underground Also known as OktoRed 7/10 and Cocky Balboa, techno producer Joel Dunn has remixed his identity once more, this time naming himself after the leader of the notorious Heaven’s Gate suicide cult. Dunn calls his latest hybrid style “sludge”, which seems to encompass stomping midtempo beats, minimal melodic motifs and maximal use of Roland 303 acid-squelch basslines. While much of this LP feels like functional dancefloor fare, more left-field artistic intentions shine through on a handful of more experimental sci-fi robo-funk tracks, as well as the growling Yello-style vocal number “In Need Of Control” and the wonky spoken-word mumbletronica of Dimension 8. Go home, techno, you’re drunk. STEPHEN DALTON

BARNT Magazine 13 MAGAZINE

Cologne modernist’s perverse synthpop debut LP Across a handful of singles, 8/10 eccentric Barnt’s Daniel Ansorge has made a little go a long way. A discreet member of Cologne’s extended Kompakt family, through which his art and music “depot”, Magazine, is distributed, Ansorge’s wilfully naïve, almost dyslexic approach to electronics sets him well apart from his peers. His bizarre debut, Magazine 13, flits between Art Of Noise preset chintz, serene Vangelis miniatures (“Blame A Hill”) and serrated Knife-like techno primitivism (the shrill “How Do I Know What Solutions X Form”) with such aplomb that it’s tempting to view this as either a very good inside joke or striking outsider art. PIERS MARTIN

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New Albums

BLAKE MILLS Heigh Ho VERVE

“Phenomenal” (says E Clapton) guitarist fashions an instant classic. By Bud Scoppa THE TITLE OF a song on Blake Mills’ subtly brilliant new album could describe the 28-year-old artist’s career so far: “Just Out Of View”. Outside of his elite musical circle, Mills’ name will register primarily 9/10 among close readers of album credits; in 2014 alone, he played guitar on LPs from Benmont Tench, Lili Haydn, Neil Diamond, Dan Wilson, Ed Sheeran, Sky Ferreira, Carlene Carter, the Belle Brigade and Conor Oberst. He’s also making a name for himself as a producer, though what will be his highestprofile project to date – the Alabama Shakes’ second album – hasn’t come out yet. A Malibu kid, Mills got guitar tips from Dickey Betts’ son Duane, a neighbour, before forming Simon Dawes with his schoolmate Taylor Goldsmith in 2005. As that band morphed into Dawes, Mills struck out on his own, touring with Jenny Lewis, Lucinda Williams, Band Of Horses and Julian Casablancas, while doing sessions with a diverse assortment of acts including Weezer, the Avett Brothers, Norah Jones and Kid Rock; he cut his first album, Break Mirrors, in 2010, but few heard it. Two years later, Mills turned his focus to production, working with Jesca Hoop, Sara Watkins, Sky Ferreira and Billy Gibbons, as well as accompanying and opening for Fiona Apple on their Anything We Want tour. And his jam sessions at Venice’s Mollusk Surf Shop continue to be a hub of an intergenerational SoCal musical community. Though Mills has built an impressive CV in a relatively short time, the music he’s made up to now doesn’t fully prepare the listener for a close encounter with Heigh Ho. From moment to moment on this sublime record, you might think you’re listening to some just-discovered gem from Randy Newman (“Cry To Laugh” could be an outtake from Nilsson Sings Newman), Ry Cooder (“Gold Coast Sinkin’”), Jackson Browne (“Half Asleep”, “Before It Fell”) or Lowell George (“Curable Disease”). But Mills isn’t a revivalist, nor is he bound by genre; he simply draws from his expansive palette, mixing colours and textures to give each song precisely what it needs to come across as directly as possible on an album that is less a collection of tracks than a series of captured moments. Opener “Am I Unworthy” sets the tone; the song itself resembles a Muscle Shoals soul ballad from late ’60s, but it’s radically understated at first, as Mills delivers the ardent but troubled lyric (“What if I’m unworthy of the power I hold over you?”) in a subdued tone, with just the hint of an ache, like a self-questioning lover trying to not to lose control. At first, the only other sound is his guitar, riffing and tapping rhythmically at the same time. At the midpoint, Jim Keltner’s rumbling drums appear just before Mills’ guitar erupts in a tormented solo, joined by Rob Moose’s swelling string section at its climax.

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SLEEVE NOTES Produced by: Blake Mills Recorded at: Ocean Way, Hollywood; additional recording at NRG, North Hollywood, and Zeitgeist Studios, Brentwood Personnel: Blake Mills (vocals, guitar, guitarron, tiple, harmonica, organ, perc, bass, drums), Jim Keltner drums, perc, cowbell), Griffin Goldsmith (brushes, perc), Don Was, Mike Elizondo (bass), Rob Moose (strings), Benmont Tench, Gabriel Kahane (piano), Jon Brion (tiple, piano), Fiona Apple (vocals, bells), Tony Berg (Ace Tone)

The meaty middle of the album is the three-song sequence of “Seven”, “Don’t Tell Our Friends About Me” and “Gold Coast Sinkin’”. The first is Mills’ take on the traditional Nashville turnaround – “It’s the seventh song on the record that always makes me cry/It’s been seven years since we caught each other’s eye” – presented as a Gram & Emmyloustyle duet with Fiona Apple, who’s never sounded warmer or more empathetic. She provides a countervocal on the overtly confessional “Don’t Tell Our Friends About Us”, Heigh Ho’s most structurally and psychologically intricate song, as Mills follows the title refrain in the proper chorus with a coda, admitting “I know I fucked up” eight times leading up to a falsetto “but please”,

resolving into the title phrase. The track also offers a zesty dialogue between Mills and Jon Brion, both on small tiples guitars. “Gold Coast Sinkin’” provides a release from accumulated emotional freight, ambling catlike across the spacious sonic topography, punctuated by the growling of a wickedly distorted guitar. Heigh Ho is distinguished by its beauty, dynamism, naturalness and economy; every note and word comes across with utter clarity because there’s nothing extraneous between the music and the listener. Mills has attained a particular kind of perfection – he’s made a timeless California album, that demands to be treasured right alongside the auteurist masterpieces it so thrillingly evokes.

line is a sense of personal honesty. If it emulates other records that are also works of honesty, then I take that as a very generous compliment.

Blake Mills

D

o you feel like you’re part of a Los Angeles musical community? Definitely. There’s always been a rapport between musicians who push each other to do something new, and those musicians tend to find each other.

Your album strikes me as carrying on a rich legacy. When you fall in love with something, it enters your vocabulary, and you have to find an appropriate way to use that stuff where it’s not just emulation. So making Heigh Ho was really an exercise in trying to make the right decisions rather than following any genre, and the through

I love the way you’ve stripped everything down to its essence. Popular music is becoming less and less dynamic, because people are compressing everything to make it sound louder than the next thing. That’s not a musical idea to me – it’s fast-food music; nature doesn’t work like that, and my favourite music doesn’t sound like that. So I tried to make a record that sounds more like how these songs are supposed to be. It may be a quixotic effort, but I feel like it’s important to be on the side of history where you do something that feels honest and right because you believe in it – and whether or not it’s wildly inappropriate for the times doesn’t come into the equation. INTERVIEW: BUD SCOPPA

New Albums BRASSICA Man Is Deaf CIVIL MUSIC

CHAPELIER FOU Deltas

CHLLNGR Form Of Release

ICI D’AILLEURS

TIME NO PLACE

Promising producer’s luxurious electropop debut fittingly for 7/10 Somewhat an act named after the cabbage family, fêted Tonbridge, Kent producer Mike Wright’s Brassica outfit has been bubbling away for quite a few years now, and in places debut album Man Is Deaf – a rich dish full of flavour – feels a little overcooked. Smouldering, sinuous synthpop is Wright’s speciality, best realised on the Depeche-and-dry-ice of “Dance” and the towering giallo disco of “Ballo Dei Morti”, but he tends to pad things out with meandering Balearic chuggers such as “Psychic Heartburn” and “Art Ebb Lull Us”. Given time, however, not unlike an artichoke, Man Is Deaf reveals its pleasures layer by layer.

French one-man band hosts avant-pop tea party in electroorchestral wonderland an alias that 7/10 Sporting translates as “mad hatter”, young Frenchman Louis Warynski plays a multi-instrumental mix which he then samples and weaves into artisan electro-acoustic confections. Signed to the label run by Yann Tiersen, Warynksi operates in similarly mellow chamber-pop terrain, but his manicured moodpieces often conceal a deeper experimental edge. Much of Deltas has a deceptively playful, shiny, toybox feel which belies the crisp modernist complexity of stand-outs like “Tickling Time” and the magnificent “Triads For Two”, a kindergarten-on-acid gem that puts a Gallic spin on the vivid sense-warping euphoria of Aphex Twin or Flying Lotus.

Digi-soul Dane’s assured second Frank Ocean may have unlocked the floodgates, he’s hardly responsible 7/10 but for the deluge of mediocre, future R&B/electronic soul that has become a default setting for so much “alternative” pop in 2014. Not that Steven Jess Borth II’s productions fit that bill. His 2011 debut – a blend of postdubstep atmospherics and UK bass, with pop leanings – was alluringly melancholic if familiar, but now out of that rather formulaic fog, soulful definition and focus have emerged. His guestlist includes UK rapper Dels and sweet-voiced Brooklyn singer/songwriter Josiahwise Is The SerpentWithFeet , who steps up on five tracks, notably the cavernous, synth-swathed “Without Yours” and “Waiting”, which wraps lush orchestrations round a pagan-gospel chant.

PIERS MARTIN

STEPHEN DALTON

SHARON O’CONNELL

PIETA BROWN Paradise Outlaw RED HOUSE

Sultry Iowan troubadour, pared down to her essence daughter of 8/10 The folk singer-songwriter Greg Brown, Pieta has guested with Calexico, recorded with Don Was, and recently paired with Australian singer Lucie Thorne in Love Over Gold. For her sixth solo album, Brown has stripped her performance to the bone, recording quickly in Justin Vernon’s April Base Wisconsin studio. Brown’s banjo is prominent alongside Bo Ramsey’s plangent guitar, and Vernon himself adds sweet harmonies, notably on the gorgeous “Ricochet”. But the key instrument is Brown’s voice, revealed in all its beauty in a country duet with Amos Lee on “Do You Know?”. ALASTAIR McKAY

CLAUDIA BRÜCKEN Where Else CHERRY RED

Intriguing third solo album from ex-Propaganda singer synth-pop stylings 7/10 The that have characterised Brücken’s recordings over 30 years take a back seat here to a more organic approach. A cover of Nick Drake’s “Day Is Done” (think Nico singing Jackson Browne’s “These Days”) flags the change of direction and her own compositions such as “Nothing Good Is Ever Easy” and “Sweet Sound Vision” eschew outright electronic abstraction for a more traditional storytelling architecture. But the layers of programming are still discernible, albeit more subtle and ethereal, so that Where Else is never reduced to anything as banal as a conventional singer-songwriter album, but represents an impressively seamless third way. NIGEL WILLIAMSON

HOW TO BUY... POWER ELECTRONICS WHITEHOUSE Erector COME

ORGANISATION, 1981

Their sonic palette would become sophisticated in later years, but early Whitehouse defines ‘power electronics’. Listening back to sides like Erector, it’s surprising how minimal this noise is: using stripped-back means for maximum impact, it’s often just a WASP synth, feedback and overloaded vocals, but the impact is utterly disquieting and compelling.

8/10 PURE

Fetor BIRTHBITER, 1981 While most power electronics used synths, Pure’s excoriating noise was mostly rung from six strings. Loops and blasted vocals scratch out precarious architectures, while guitars blaze out into the midnight sky, and staggered drum machines accelerate and collapse. A very early showing from UK underground legend Matthew Bower, later of Skullflower, Voltiguers and Hototogisu.

8/10 MAURIZIO BIANCHI

Carcinosi M.B., 1983 Italian musician Bianchi pushed early power electronics and industrial forms to their most psychedelic and eloquent ends, warping the fabric of time with cold, brittle electronics that oscillated in delirious, sea-sick flux around a solid, hissing core of drone. Soon after Carcinosi was released, Bianchi renounced music and became a Jehovah’s Witness.

9/10

CLARK Clark WARP

Engaging seventh from Berlin-based techno auteur Chris Clark has always felt second-tier among 7/10 slightly Warp’s stable of oddball techno artistes, perhaps lacking a gimmick to distinguish him from his peers. Hard to deny, though, that Clark is quite a piece of work: an elegant, sculpted electronica that’s cerebral of construction but robust enough to beat a dance floor into life. “Unfurla” is a neat encapsulation of Clark’s skill for an electronic music that feels organic and mutable, morphing with each bar, waving in ringing chimes and lush blooms of synth. But the real mark of Clark is the way each track feels part of a broader whole – see how those fluttering choral voices that surface during the body-popping electro of “Banjo” really take flight on the following “Songbird”. LOUIS PATTISON

CUT HANDS Festival Of The Dead BLACKEST EVER BLACK

More ‘Afro-noise’ from ex-Whitehouse member William Bennett’s legend on the confronting, 8/10 rests uncompromising industrial/noise tactics he unleashed via Whitehouse, the arch-provocateurs of the English underground. Often misread as manifesting the very conditions they set out to analyse, Whitehouse’s ambiguity follows through into Cut Hands, where rudimentary percussion pounds out rhythms that stretch into eternity, perfect for accessing other states. There are a few slippages into rote ‘dark ambience’, and occasional recourse to postEBM tedium, but for the most part Festival Of The Dead is alive with possibility, with songs like “Madwoman” and “Fire Ends The Day” scarred by underhand electronics. JON DALE

JON DALE

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New Albums

AMERICANA

ÉTIENNE DAHO Les Chansons De L’Innocence Retrouvée POLYDOR

BÉLA FLECK & ABIGAIL WASHBURN Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn

BEST OF THE MONTH

French pop doyen’s swaggering, 7/10 all-star 13th Even at the height of his fame in the late-’80s as one of France’s biggest stars, part of Étienne Daho’s appeal was that he looked a little lost. That he’s managed to preserve this quality at age 58, even as he poses with a young topless girl on the cover of his 13th album, imbues this reflective set of swaggering funk-pop with an emotional heft that was perhaps absent from some of his recent work. Guests including Nile Rodgers, Debbie Harry and Savages’ Jehnny Beth join Daho, whose creamy timbre still purrs splendidly on “Le Baiser De Destin” and the stirring title track. PIERS MARTIN

ANTHONY D’AMATO The Shipwreck From The Shore

ROUNDER

Duelling banjos: a virtuoso display of bluegrass Fleck is to the banjo what Ravi Shankar was to the sitar and Toumani Diabaté is to the kora – not only the world’s premier virtuoso on his instrument but an ambassador, adventurer, innovator and educator. He’s ranged across jazz, classical, folk, rock and world music, dramatically expanding the instrument’s repertoire and reputation and winning a record-breaking 15 Grammy awards in the process. Here he reverts to the style with which the banjo is perhaps most closely associated – downhome bluegrass picking with its roots deep in Appalachian folk tradition. It’s also the first album he’s recorded with his wife, a fine singersongwriter and banjo player in her own right whose solo albums lovingly plough the rich, fertile terrain of classic Americana. Washburn sings in a keening, emotive voice on a dozen songs that include trad ballads and originals, and the result is a heartfelt collection that will readily find favour with fans of Gillian Welch and The Be Good Tanyas. Whereas most records in this field would augment the songs with fiddles, mandolins, dobros and guitars, here everything is played solely on the couple’s banjos – although you’d hardly guess it, for on tracks such as “Ride To You”, “Little Birdie” and “Shotgun Blues” (a modern murder ballad in which Washburn reverses the male/female roles) they create such a full sound that you’d swear a full string band was at work. “Banjo Banjo” gets the full-on virtuosi treatment, like the Deliverance theme without the cornball. “Pretty Polly” and “And Am I Born To Die” are more stripped and plaintive. But taken as a whole, the couple’s armoury of banjocello, uke banjo and fretless, bass and baritone models creates an orchestra of picking, plucking, sliding strings that goes a long way to support Fleck’s claim that an instrument routinely described as ‘humble’ is actually unrivalled in its rich depths and versatility. NIGEL WILLIAMSON

8/10

NEW WEST

Rising folkster’s pastreferencing third Jersey singer8/10 New songwriter D’Amato may have written his Princeton thesis on Bruce Springsteen, but initial exposure to his majorlabel debut suggests another touchstone. The rat-a-tat vocal delivery and wailing harmonica of “Was A Time” echoes with early Bob Dylan, as does the dustbowl-tinged “Middle Ground”, but there are additional strings to his bow on the harmony-laden “Cold Comfort” and the smooth Southern soul of “Good And Ready”. Producer Sam Kassler puts D’Amato’s appealingly direct voice front of the mix, with crack players from Bon Iver and Natalie Merchant’s band weaving sweet sounds behind him, especially effective on the Mavis Staples salute “Back Back Back”. TERRY STAUNTON

THE AMERICANA ROUND-UP Gravel-tongued songwriter Ryan Bingham returns in late January with Fear And Saturday Night, his first album for three years. Issued on his own Axter Bingham label and helmed by Wilco/Tom Petty producer Jim Scott, it’s the product of a hermetic spell in the California mountains, where the Oscar-winner drew on his own troubled family history for inspiration. The record also features contributions from Rose Hill Drive. Bingham fans may also be directed to the similarly authentic Americana of Texan James McMurtry. Due in February, Complicated Game is a belated followup to 2008’s Just Us Kids and pairs the

folk-leaning politico with New Orleans producer CC Adcock. Details are still a little sketchy, though McMurtry describes the new songs as “organic and with no added sulfites, aged in oak for several years”. Butch Walker’s latest, Afraid Of Ghosts, is due in February, too. Produced by friend and admirer Ryan Adams at the latter’s own Pax Am studio in LA, special guests include Johnny Depp and Bob Mould. UK dates are planned for sometime next year. Elsewhere in California, Rosanne Cash has opened the newly constructed Johnny Cash Trail and Overpass in Folsom, designed to mimic the guard towers of the famous prison’s east gate. It’s all part of a $4m project which will eventually include a themed 2.5-mile trail and park, replete with Cash-centric works of art and a 50ft steel monument entitled ‘The Man In Black’. ROB HUGHES

DAVE DAVIES Rippin’ Up Time RED RIVER

Hard riffing and hints of the past While never lacking firepower, Davies’ 7/10 previous solo outings have suffered from an absence of light and shade. Rippin’ Up Time, however, offers a wider variety of hues. His knack for rousing guitar riffs gets a workout on the bluesy “Johnny Adams” and the title track’s psych metal shapes, but his cranked-up strings don’t do all the talking. Brother Ray would be proud of the people portraits on the punkish “Nosey Neighbours” (“…Lookin’ at me/ Through a hole in the fence or from behind a tree”) and the ode to a lonely pub crooner “King Of Karaoke”, the latter containing a cheeky reference to The Kinks’ own “Sunny Afternoon”. TERRY STAUNTON

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New Albums THE DRINK Company

EXIT VERSE Exit Verse

MELODIC

DAMNABLY

Freewheeling debut from a new breed of Minogue Already one third of Wharves, Dublin’s 7/10 The Dearbhla Minogue stole Fighting Kites rhythm section Daniel Fordham and David Stewart and released three startling EPs that Melodisc have now collected into a remarkably coherent first album. Often resembling a dream collaboration between The Slits, The Roches and Vampire Weekend, Company is a showcase for Minogue’s restless, ambitious songs, alternatively crabby and ringing guitars, and, especially, her stunning voice, which is at its best when multi-tracked into skipping harmonies that communicate an infectious delight in the act of singing. A fascinating first shot, packed with potential.

’70s FM rock redux from a Chicagoan guitar hero Geoff Farina led the 7/10 Chicago cult band Karate through seven albums and 600 shows as a jazz, punk and post-rock-fusing jam band. His latest power trio is a more focused affair, taking its lead from the kind of ’70s rock which easily veered between hard and soft at the flick of a pick-up switch; think Steve Miller, Nils Lofgren or Thin Lizzy in poet-vagabond mode. Farina often sounds like a less eloquent Stephen Malkmus, but his tough yet elegant guitar is the star here, and “Sparrows”, “Chrome” and “Perfect Hair” cry out for high volume on a long drive through the American badlands.

Fizzing return of Detroit quartet Milia’s tales 8/10 Matthew of suburban angst reached a peak on last year’s Eternity Of Dimming, a sprawling double album that packed enough lyrics for a short novel. Frontier Ruckus’ follow-up is altogether more concise, though it’s still a fabulously rich concoction of clever wordplay, rooted in Milia’s nostalgia for ’90s TV and detailed by bittersweet memories of the girls who got away. Banjos, horns, frothy guitars and a musical saw bring a busy rusticity to these decidedly non-rural songs. At its best, Sitcom Afterlife is a direct spiritual link to The Feelies and Neutral Milk Hotel.

GARRY MULHOLLAND

GARRY MULHOLLAND

ROB HUGHES

MATTHEW EDWARDS AND THE UNFORTUNATES The Fates

WE’R E NEW HERE

Singer-songwriter’s odes melancholy; Eric Drew 7/10 to Feldman produces Birmingham-born, San Francisco-based, Edwards has opened for Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart – though his lugubrious and consciously English style recalls earlier generations of singer-songwriters. Produced by Pixies/Beefheart man Feldman, Edwards’ fourth album in 11 years has touches of country, Americana and blues, alongside mannered Parisian swirls. The songs, though, are firmly the fruit of the mother country. The presence of guitarist Fred Frith is perhaps the key here. At its best – on “The English Blues” and “Sandrine Bonnaire” – The Fates’ rolling wordplay recalls Kevin Ayers; all wry wit and louche melancholy.

Uneven outing for the German legends Excepting Kraftwerk, Faust remain the last of original Krautrockers 6/10 the standing. If they do not quite get the respect they deserve, it’s maybe because their innovations – absurdist humour, tape collage, concerts involving concrete mixers and angle grinders – never became mainstream rock tactics. Alternatively, perhaps it’s because albums like Just Us never entirely take off. Described by guitarist Jean-Hervé Peron and drummer Zappi Diermaier as “12 musical foundations”, much here feels underdeveloped. Sprightly folk jam “Gammes” and “Sur Le Ventre”, a padding groove with hammer-meetsanvil percussion, are diverting. But improv sections flounder, and seven-minute drum jam “Palpitations” feels like a cue to tune out.

“In the academic world there tends to be a separation between high culture and mass entertainment, but to me those are very permeable walls,” says Anthony D’Amato about cutting his singer-songwriter teeth in the Ivy League atmosphere of Princeton University. “There were musical programmes for classical or jazz performance, no real troubadour scene, but I convinced the school to let me work independently with one of my professors.” That professor was Paul Muldoon, a Pulitzer-winning poet who’d previously collaborated with Warren Zevon (he co-wrote “My Ride’s Here”). “I’d work up a batch of songs, and then we’d get together to talk about them, he helped me edit myself and think more clearly about what I was trying to say. He also gave me books of lyrics by Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon.” Under Muldoon’s mentorship, D’Amato made two zero-budget albums on a laptop in his dorm room, prior to the release of The Shipwreck From The Shore, while simultaneously working on his thesis about Bruce Springsteen. “I used Springsteen as a jumping-off point to study the tradition of American alienation in song and literature, tracing back through Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac, Flannery O’Connor, all the way to the New World Puritan sermons of the 1600s. The lineage is fascinating.”

LOUIS PATTISON

TERRY STAUNTON

MARK BENTLEY

FAUST Just Us BUREAU B

QUITE SCIENTIFIC

Anthony D’Amato

METAL POSTCARD

JIM WRIGHT

FRONTIER RUCKUS Sitcom Afterlife

GROUPER Ruins KRANKY

Piano ballads from Oregonian in Portugal Desolate as its title suggests, this feels like breakup 6/10 Grouper’s record, about “living in the remains of love”, feeling full of “political anger and emotional garbage”. Recorded in Portugal on an upright piano, with just a little of her usual sonic treatments of low-fidelity echo acting as a flickering veil over her meditations (minus the beautiful sweep of air that is the 11-minute final track). She latches onto some lovely melodic patterns on “Lighthouse” and “Clearing”, a little like Cat Power at her lowest. Depending on your mood or generosity, these are either indulgently doleful or movingly ascetic in their dutiful repetitions – worth investigating either way. BEN BEAUMONT-THOMAS

ALDOUS HARDING Aldous Harding SPUNK

Compelling, gothic-folk first from NZ newcomer It’s almost a relief to find Aldous (née Hannah) 8/10 that Harding regards her intense alt.folk/country songs as “kind of gothic fairy tales”, and that lyrics like “I would rather die than sleep tonight” aren’t necessarily confessional. The 23-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist’s debut is an accomplished set that features delicate acoustic fingerpicking, plus lean electric guitar, violin, woodwind, the odd male vocal harmony and (on opener “Stop Your Tears”) a ghostly choir. There are echoes of Bunyan, Perhacs and Newsom, as well as Nick Drake, but the haunted “No Peace At All” and exquisite “Two Bitten Hearts” – where a Theremin intertwines with Harding’s pure voice – prove the singularity of her talent. SHARON O’CONNELL

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New Albums

SLEEVE NOTES

EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN Lament MUTE

Extreme noise terrorists conjure WWI. By Tom Pinnock WITH THE INTRODUCTION of submachine guns, barbed wire jungles, high-explosive shells, massed tank offensives, and chlorine, mustard and phosgene gases, the First World War 8/10 became the first truly industrial conflict. So as far as musical memorials go, an industrial group seems the perfect outfit to somehow make sense of the mechanised slaughter, not to mention having any hope of matching the sturm und drang of war. A project commissioned by the Flemish city of Diksmuide, Lament sees Blixa Bargeld and his Berlin cohorts create an eclectic song cycle examining those seismic events from a century ago. The extreme noise quintet have certainly done their research, delving into the archives at Berlin’s Humboldt University to uncover lost songs and texts from the period, imbuing them with all the terrible noise the group customarily conjure up. The first third of the LP acts as a kind of prelude, with the opening six-minute crescendo, aptly titled “Kriegsmaschinerie”, rising from disturbing creaks to a cacophony of squealing metal. The score used for this piece was a graph, ‘defence budget as a percentage of GDP between 1905 and 1913’ for the countries who would wage the war (here’s a clue: the percentages rise dramatically). Then, after a bastardised version of “God Save The King” performed in English, German and Flemish, we’re

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Recorded at: andereBaustelle Tonstudio, Berlin Produced by: Boris Wilsdorf/Einstürzende Neubauten Personnel include: Blixa Bargeld (vocals, guitar, prepared piano, organ, rhythm machine, signs, bells), Alexander Hacke (bass, perc, vocals, Mellotron, electronics, plastic pipes, amplified crotches), Jochen Arbeit (guitar, vocals, plastic pipes), NU Unruh (perc, barbed wire harp, vocals, plastic pipes), Rudolf Moser (perc, electronic treatments, vocals, plastic pipes, ammunition shells)

down in the trenches. Here, an adaptation of little-known writer Paul Van Den Broeck’s “In De Loopgraaf” with Blixa solemnly intoning the original Flemish words, is accompanied by the hollow knocking of the gruesome ‘barbed-wire harp’, the latest in a long line of percussionist NU Unruh’s infernal, homemade instruments. The 13-minute “Der 1. Weltkrieg (Percussion Version)” is another early highlight, albeit a mathematical one – every beat counts as one day of the war, with each country represented by a plastic pipe that resonates at a unique note when beaten. Blixa announces each state’s entry into the conflict, setting off a flurry of tuned pipes, while female voices dryly recite the names of notable battles or campaigns. It’s a surprisingly moving piece with its own strange, gripping momentum – “Champagne… Polygon Wood… The Kingdom Of Bulgaria…” Even without knowledge of Neubauten’s methods, though, Lament is a startling, eclectic listen. Every reverbed, metallic squeal or bone-cracking thud is intensely visual; but rather than, say, an elegant landscape of poppies, Lament brings to mind something rather more like Paul Nash’s wryly titled painting, We Are Making A New World, a barren waste of mud, wire, craters and splintered stumps. There is still beauty to be found among the destruction, though – the luscious, velvet-dark “How Did I Die” is worth every second of its seven minutes, as Bargeld enigmatically speaks of death in the trenches over melancholic piano, strings and softly ticking percussion. Other tracks utilise the collage techniques and sampling that the group

have pursued since at least 1983’s Zeichnungen Des Patienten OT. The third part of the title suite, the stringled “Pater Pecavi”, sees crackling voices, taken from wax-cylinder recordings of German prisoners of war telling the story of The Prodigal Son, fade in and out among a thicket of funereal strings. There are also two covers of songs originally by the band of the 369th Infantry Regiment – better known as the Harlem Hellfighters, the first African-American regiment sent abroad to fight – with fragments of the original recordings interlaced. Bargeld insists Lament shouldn’t be seen as a proper Neubauten album, and he’s right; it’s admittedly hard to identify when any listener would find occasion to play it often – too uncomfortable to relax to, too disturbing for dinner parties, too dynamically varied for the car, and, at 77 minutes, a little too long. But then, the record is a document of the group’s performance for Diksmuide, after all, more of an art project than anything to do with rock’n’roll. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine its best bits comprising part of an experimental Radio 4 play. Not everything works – surely, no-one would have missed “Der Beginn Des Weltkrieges 1914”, a six-minute spoken-word piece in German, from 1926, which tells the story of the war complete with animal impressions, or a version of Marlene Dietrich’s cover of Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone”, which is interesting but adds little. At its peak, though, Lament is a fittingly noisy reminder of the brutality and pointlessness of the First World War. Yet it’s also a potent warning, a look at what happens when industrialised states are propelled unwittingly into conflict through some terrible collective inertia. “War is not something that appears and disappears,” Blixa Bargeld told a Danish TV show recently. “War is something that is always there… It sometimes moves.” As the climate today turns ever frostier in Eastern Europe, Lament is a warning well worth heeding.

New Albums HELLO SAFERIDE The Fox, The Hunter And Hello Saferide

OLIVIA JEAN Bathtub Love Killings THIRD MAN

JOUIS Dojo BEETROOT

Dark third LP of literary Swedish pop Östursund’s Annika Norlin records in Swedish as Säkert! and in English as Hello Saferide. She writes short story songs, often with dark themes, which are somewhat masked by the sweetness of her delivery. As she notes on the gorgeous opening track of The Fox, The Hunter And Hello Saferide, “I Forgot About Songs”, Norlin is a romantic, but she’s also a feminist. “I Was Jesus” reincarnates the Messiah as a woman, “Rocky” considers the roots of male violence, while the stand-out, “Hey Ho”, wraps heartbreak in a warm blanket of existential ennui.

Jack White produces splendid debut by Third Man singer-songwriter Olivia Jean – nor 8/10 Neither producer Jack White – will be delighted by the comparison, but there’s something about this strong debut that recalls Meg White’s occasional vocal contributions to White Stripes records. Jean – a multiinstrumentalist and compelling lyricist, who fronted The Black Belles and recorded for Third Man with Karen Elson and Wanda Jackson – has many more strings to her bow, but also possesses a deadpan delivery that neatly undercut her catchy, garage-blues riffs. Highlights include bluesy crawler “Green Honeycreeper”, country ballad “Haunt Me”, the strutting “Excuses” and rocker “Cat Fight”, with Jack White on squealing lead guitar.

Masterly ’70s-styled psych-folk-rock from Brighton quintet The scent of incense and odour of Afghan 8/10 musty coats may hang heavy over Jouis’ debut, but – high praise indeed – it only confirms a notable immersion in records like David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name. That they’re former music students is no surprise: their musical proficiency, time changes and multi-layered harmonies are intricate and considered. But legendary producer Phill Brown brings experience of sessions with Traffic, ensuring the credibility of lengthy jams like “Hyperception” – with its “kaleidoscopic psychotropic” chant – and the autumnal grooves of “L∞p”, which slides effortlessly into the archly titled “What’s New Guru?”.

ALASTAIR McKAY

PETER WATTS

WYNDHAM WALLACE

RAZZIA

8/10

HIS NAME IS ALIVE Tecuciztecatl LONDON LONDON

Twins! Librarians! A demon baby! HNIA’s prog rock opera… memories 8/10 Ifofyour American pop iconoclasts His Name Is Alive are of their bewitching, ghostly avant-pop for 4AD back in the ’90s, forget everything you think you know. Since then they’ve dug The Beach Boys, gone R&B, paid tribute to free-jazzer Marion Brown, and built their own, unique psycho-climate in Detroit. So it’s little surprise that their 14th album Tecuciztecatl is such a singular listen: their rock opera is true to form, a progressive rock epic that dips into drones, blasting freak-riffery, tweaked folk-pop, and a ridiculous amount of harmony guitar solos. Warped and great. JON DALE

ERIK HONORÉ Heliographs HUBRO

Prolific Norwegian polymath floats on a perfumed cloud of artisan esoterica author, serial 6/10 Composer, collaborator and music festival director Erik Honoré has worked with dozens of artists on the avant-jazz margins including Brian Eno, David Sylvian and Jon Hassell. Heliographs is Honoré’s first solo album under his own name, though it features several guests including jazz chanteuse Sidsel Endresen, whose chirruping vocalese has a lovely, Liz Fraser-ish quality on “Navigators”. Blending real instruments with samples, these electro-acoustic confections have an artisan delicacy which sometimes shades into timid tastefulness. That said, there is a nerve-tingling beauty to melancholy mood pieces like “Red Café” and “Last Chance Gas & Water”. STEPHEN DALTON

WE’R E NEW HERE

Olivia Jean

As former singer of The Black Belles and player on albums by Wanda Jackson, Karen Elson and Jack White, it was always likely that Olivia Jean’s solo debut would be on White’s Third Man label. Bathtub Love Killings, produced by White himself, is a strong collection of folk, country and blues tunes, laden with Third Man’s ’50s/garage twang. “Third Man definitely has a signature sound,” says Jean. “They are so different when it comes to genre and attitude, yet have the same beautiful accents and familiarities in sound. Jack influenced me to use every ounce of my creativity. The finished product wouldn’t have been the same if it wasn’t for Jack’s amazing ear and innovation.” Jean is no slouch herself, playing numerous instruments. “I have always been able to pick up any instrument and find notes,” she says. “I just needed to use whatever instrument I could to help finish my recordings.” Jean’s a smart lyricist too, writing directly about “friendships gone sour”. Throughout, members of the Third Man stable contribute ideas and musical input. One of the best songs is “Cat Fight”, with White on guitar. “It’s an avant-garde shred-fest of Jack White and I duelling guitar riffs,” says Jean. “It was so much fun to record.” PETER WATTS

HAL KETCHUM I’m The Troubadour MUSIC ROAD

Low-key, indie-style comeback for erstwhile country superstar Troubled by debilitating issues related to 7/10 health multiple sclerosis, C&W chart-topper Ketchum essentially retired after departing his longtime label Curb five years ago. Freed from mainstream Nashville pressures, though, he went on to write some of the most soul-searching songs of his career. Produced by Austin mainstay Jimmy LaFave, I’m The Troubadour flows without constraint, like an old-fashioned country/soul gem. Ketchum is in fine voice, too, understated yet direct, even bringing gospel fervour to songs like the defiant “I Shall Remain”. Nothing fancy, just love and loss, spirituality and mortality, played via straightforward arrangements with a simple, noble eloquence. LUKE TORN

KID MOXIE 1888 UNDO/EMI

“Gutter pop” gal’s spangled second As Kid Moxie, LA-based singer-songwriter (and Elena Charbila 7/10 actor) delivers noir-ish synth-pop songs with a sweetly forlorn core, that seem custom-made for 3am drives through deserted city streets. Her mix of desolation and romance is seductive enough to have had her tagged “the Greek Goldfrapp”, and moody soundtrack don Angelo Badalamenti appears with a rewrite of “Mysteries Of Love” (originally recorded with Julee Cruise) – but beneath the glittery, cinematic sweep, there are intriguing twists. “Museum Motel” (featuring The Gaslamp Killer) echoes Goldfrapp’s “Lovely Head” but moves to a military rat-tat-tat, while the haunting “Blackberry Fields” borrows from the calland-response of folk tradition. SHARON O’CONNELL

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New Albums KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD I’m In Your Mind Fuzz

LANDLADY Upright Behavior

LOSCIL Sea Island

HOME TAPES

KRANKY

Aussie freaks’ deeply groovy fifth 8/10 The question is why anyone might choose such a terrible band name to signpost their tripped-out excellence, but it seems this Australian septet were stuck with it after forming to play at a party in 2011. It’s memorable, anyway– as is their reverby mix of ’60s garage psych, kosmische and glam, which shifts from deep-fried mania (“Cellophane”) to blissed-out jams (despite the title, “Satan Speeds Up”). Tame Impala/Pond and Unknown Mortal Orchestra are kindred spirits, but it’s KG’s hyperactive tendencies that distinguish them – along with the flute, harmonica and Theremin. Small wonder White Fence embraced them on a recent North American tour.

Genre-dodging quintet’s exultant second There’s an intelligent, adventurous bent to Schatz’s art pop 7/10 Adam that marks the singersongwriter and multi-instrumentalist out as very much New York-based. He’s certainly bedded in there; that’s his saxophone on Vampire Weekend’s “Diane Young” and he’s played with both Fab Moretti’s Little Joy and Adam Green/Binki Shapiro. All of which might make the NYU jazz studies graduate sound like a mere scenester, but Landlady’s latest is a sparky, skewed delight with both smarts and an open heart. Whether flirting with doo wop (as on “Dying Day”), mixing psych and a cappella gospel (“Under The Yard”) or channelling John Cage via TV On The Radio (the title track) it charms at every turn.

Quietly intense driftworks, organic and blissed-out Scott Morgan has spent past decade working 7/10 the as Loscil, releasing understated, occasionally ravishing albums on long-running experimental label Kranky. His aesthetic is solid – ambience pulsing with echoes of dub techno; acoustic instruments as pointillistic, discrete punctuation – and he works with a regular cast of players, which means stepping into a Loscil record often yields similar results. Sea Island feels comfortable, perhaps a little overly so, though there are plenty of lovely moments. And on songs like “Catalina 1943”, Morgan finds his metier, with shivering tremolos and bleeping arpeggios wilding across a bed of gorgeous, light-headed texture.

SHARON O’CONNELL

SHARON O’CONNELL

JON DALE

HEAVENLY

GEMMA HAYES Bones + Longing CHASING DRAGONS

LES SINS Michael

MAGIC CASTLES Sky Sounds

CARPARK

A RECORDS

Tipperary-born singer goes back to her roots with LP 7/10 fifth Since receiving a Mercury prize nomination in 2002 for her debut, Night On My Side, the Irish singersongwriter Gemma Hayes seems to have fallen off the radar, a result, possibly, of her increasingly fruitful sideline composing film and TV scores. With her fifth album she is back on familiar territory, trading in the gentle melodies, ghostly vocals and heady atmospherics that first made her name. She picks up the pace on the delightful, clip-clopping “Palomino”, though her excursion into electronic dance on “Chasing” is less successful, too flimsy to make any lasting impact.

Toro Y Moi spins into dance variety show This is a side-project from hipster bedroom pop artist Toro Y Moi, 5/10 and a veritable selection box of dance styles from across the last couple of decades: disco-house in a Scandinavian or Metro Area style, lightweight ghettotech, ‘French touch’, triphop, ’90s rave, minimal techno and late ’80s boogie. His previous project reached some amazing highs when he blended his songcraft with groove, but this is arranged limply, and sounds like the work of a trainspotter poring over his scrapbook. True, it’s less derivative than some current house revivalists, and perfect wallpaper for independent coffee shops, but you can’t really get down to such studiousness.

Brian Jonestown Massacre-endorsed psychedelia knows if this 7/10 Who Minneapolis quintet wish they were working in the 1960s or early ’90s: their meanderings owe as much to The Byrds and 13th Floor Elevators as Galaxie 500 and ‘Mad Richard’-era Verve. Either way, they’re a stoner’s dream, whether exploring pastoral territory like “Dragonfly”, with its flutes and swirling guitar lines, or drifting heavenwards amid reverb-drenched guitars on “White Stone”, a distant cousin of “Gravity Grave”. Like Jason Edmonds’ vocals, which jealousy guard instrumental melodies throughout and were seemingly recorded at the far end of a cave, it’s endlessly familiar but agreeably hallucinatory.

FIONA STURGES

BEN BEAUMONT-THOMAS

WYNDHAM WALLACE

JAMES KING & THE LONEWOLVES Lost Songs Of The Confederacy

LIFECYCLE Lino Cosmos

EL MAY The Other Person Is You

SUPERSYMMETRY

LOJINX

Glaswegian voodoo blues miscreants 7/10 revived  In their 1980s pomp, King’s Lonewolves carried a hint of menace, but a promising career was lost to alcohol, and a mythical album, recorded for Alan Horne’s postPostcard imprint Swamplands (allegedly produced by John Cale), never materialised. They were all twang and swagger back then, and they still are – on the brooding “Fun Patrol” and the mordant “Even Beatles Die” – but there’s an unexpected note of melancholy on “Bridgeton Summer”, while the closing “A Step Away From Home” hijacks Hank Williams’ Cadillac.

London trio recycle some post-punk rhythms Lifecycle make no secret of 7/10 musical their roots in the breakbeat scene: drummer Nick Holder and bassist Tish Austin make up a prodigiously powerful rhythm section, their tribal beats also recalling 23 Skidoo’s classic “The Gospel Comes To New Guinea” and ESG at their more energetic. Singer Geoff Dent meanwhile pulls off a passable impression of Perry Farrell on the Jane’s Addiction rock of “The Big Picture” and John Lydon, especially on “Dissolve”, which sounds like the missing link between PiL’s Album and 1987’s Happy?. He does Sting, too, on “Change Tact”, but let’s not dwell on that.

Therapeutic alt.pop from Los Angeles singer-songwriter so many Californians, 6/10 Like Lara Meyerratken has spent some time on the counsellor’s couch. Consequently, her second album as El May responds to romantic disappointments with a revelation; the people we interact with are all aspects of ourselves, and our failure to fully understand this leads us into doomed love. Frustratingly, Meyerratken’s smooth mix of old-fashioned songcraft, soft-rock instrumentation and breathy vocals can’t quite carry the intensity of the premise. Nevertheless, the pretty hooks, twangy guitars and guest spots from the likes of Eugene Kelly and Dean Wareham make for a sweet 40 minutes of talking cure.

ALASTAIR McKAY

WYNDHAM WALLACE

GARRY MULHOLLAND

STEREOGRAM

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New Albums THE MEN THEY COULDN’T HANG The Defiant

MALCOLM MIDDLETON & DAVID SHRIGLEY Music And Words

VINYL STAR

MELODIC

SARAH JANE MORRIS Bloody Rain FALLEN ANGEL

Roots-rock veterans celebrating 30 years of 6/10 Likeresistance political fellowtravellers The Levellers and Chumbawamba, the blustery folk- agit-punk of TMTCH may be desperately uncool in these cynical times, but there’s also something hugely admirable about their refusal to compromise on an aptly titled album that finds Phil Odgers still fighting the class war on behalf of the dispossessed everywhere. “Fail To Comply”, a tale of life on benefit street, namechecks Joe Strummer, the raucous “Raising Hell” is the sort of record Shane MacGowan ought still to be making, and if mandolins, bouzoukis and fiddles thrashed to a rock’n’roll beat are never going to win the revolution, they make a fine old noise trying.

Ex-Arab Strap man on familiar ground “Greetings! And good 5/10 fucking wishes to you and your fuckhead, arsehole family.” As one half of Arab Strap, Malcolm Middleton is used to offering up his music as a backdrop for artful profanity, so this collaboration with crude cartoonist David Shrigley is a perfect fit. Music And Words comes across like an episode of Chris Morris’ Blue Jam, with Middleton providing wispy electronica and doleful guitar figures while Shrigley (via voice actors Gavin Mitchell and Bridget McCann) provides the increasingly disturbed, babyeating monologues. An amusing curio, although you’re unlikely to listen to it more than once.

Righteous risk-taking on her most potent album to date her chart7/10 Since topping days with The Communards, Morris has boldly forged her own singular path. There is nothing easy listening about this set of protest songs dedicated to the people of Africa and touching on subjects such as child soldiers (“Comfort They Have None”), homophobia (“David Kato”) , honour killings (“No Beyoncé”) and political tyranny (the title track). Supported by an empathetic cast that includes Courtney Pine and Pee-Wee Ellis and African guitarist Tony Remy, her octave-leaping jazz-soul voice oozes with the kind of fierce, emotional drama you’d associate with Nina Simone. Uplifting, harrowing, passionate and challenging in equal measure.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

SAM RICHARDS

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

MONDKOPF Hades IN PARADISUM

Glowering inferno of devil-horned electronica Welding a superstructure doom-metal sonics 7/10 of onto techno foundations in a manner that thankfully avoids taking the sledgehammer Prodigy/Skrillex route, Parisian DJ and electronic producer Paul “Mondkopf” Régimbeau conjurs up some alluringly exotic mutant noises here. The slithering crescendo of “Immolate” finds buried malevolence in cavernous reverb, while “Cause & Care” builds to a Godzilla-sized dubstep floorshaker. But the centrepiece is “Absences”, which starts out like early Sabbath played on kitchen implements before erupting into a vivid fireworks display of fizz and crackle. Not quite techno, not quite metal, Hades steals a little kinetic propulsion and latent melodrama from both. STEPHEN DALTON

MR MITCH Parallel Memories PLANET MU

South Londoner’s stripped-down grime shows a soft side Miles Mitchell is one of the behind the London 7/10 heads club night Boxed, whose take on the now rather venerable genre of grime is currently turning heads afresh. Their innovation is to take the familiar grime template and strip it down, removing all MC presence and reworking stabby, synthetic beats and blownglass melodies as something meditative and weightless. Parallel Memories is, in places, almost too minimal – see the barely-there “The Night”. But Mitchell’s softness of touch leads to some moving moments: the gloomy boom-clap of “Sweet Boy Code”, a collaboration with fellow producer Dark0; and “Don’t Leave”, which spins a vocal sample from Blackstreet’s “Don’t Leave Me” into a tearful, lighters-out anthem. LOUIS PATTISON

HOW TO BUY...

NAZORANAI The Most Painful Time Happens Only Once Has It Arrived Already?

BRITISH ARTISTS MAKING MUSIC MARTIN CREED

Mind Trap

IDEOLOGIC ORGAN

Acid Brass

Supertrio’s second 7/10 varied Keiji Haino, Stephen O’Malley and Oren Ambarchi are literal heavyweights of their own worlds – respectively, experimental psych/noise rock, avant doom metal/drone and the defying of both compositional and playing conventions. But as Nazoranai, they channel their power into freeform excursions of an often surprising delicacy, as on the epic opener of this four-track set, which cuts intricate melodic paths across plains of textured guitar. By contrast, “Who Is Making The Time Rot” detonates an improv bomb of brilliant ferocity that sends guitar shards flying, before giving way to the almost comically wonky funk of the closing title track.

BLAST FIRST, 1997

SHARON O’CONNELL

TELEPHONE, 2014

The man behind the Turner Prize-winning Work No. 227, The Lights Going On And Off turns his hand to a curious folk-rock with shades of Ivor Cutler. Sometimes a touch banal, but three orchestral compositions performed by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra are beautifully done.

6/10 WILLIAMS FAIREY BRASS BAND It was released under the name of the Stockport brass band that played it, but Acid Brass is the brainchild of Jeremy Deller, who set out to blend “two authentic forms of folk art” – brass band music and acid house. Genuinely stirring takes on “Voodoo Ray” and “Strings Of Life” ensue.

NUDE BEACH 77 DON GIOVANNI

7/10

Excellent double-player of Byrds-like jangle from Brooklyn trio much for fans of 8/10 Very Bandwagonesque-era Teenage Fanclub, Nude Beach’s new record is so full of jangle and joie de vivre it’s almost alarming. A classic good-time power trio with two albums behind them, Nude Beach’s third is a double LP, with a first half of poppunk nuggets like the raucous “Used To It”, garage-soul classic “I Can’t Keep The Tears From Falling” and the Undertones-like “Yesterday”. The second half, though, is more reflective and psychedelic although still in thrall to Big Star and Teenage Fanclub, with cracking longer rockers like “Changes” and 10-minute Byrdsapeing thriller “I Found You”.

LOUIS PATTISON

PETER WATTS

8/10 DINOS CHAPMAN Luftbobler THE VINYL FACTORY, 2013

The younger Chapman Brother takes a breather from making penis-nosed children and sandal-wearing Klansmen to toil at a skittering, downbeat electronica with shades of Aphex Twin or Autechre – lacking the shock factor of his artwork, perhaps, but hardly less unnerving.

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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New Albums OBJEKT Flatland

LEE RANALDO AND THE DUST Acoustic Dust

PAN

EL SEGELL DEL PRIMAVERA

NED ROBERTS Ned Roberts UNGAWA

Berlin boffin’s delirious techno Cold, clinical and emanating from Germany, on first listen, 7/10 dancefloor darling Objekt’s bamboozling computer music would seem to conform to most major techno stereotypes. But TJ Hertz, the young Berlinbased Brit behind Objekt, is as mischievous and gifted a producer as Autechre, and he approaches his debut Flatland knowing he has the skills and momentum to construct a pretty audacious record. And it is impressive on a technical level – drunk and disorderly, “Rachet”, “Dogma” and “Strays” display exquisite sound design – but as he prowls through a barren no man’s land of grey, glinting electronics, you long for that soft, personal touch.

Acoustic treatments of solo songs, plus covers Lee Ranaldo’s post-Sonic albums – Between 8/10 Youth The Times And The Tides and Last Night On Earth – have perhaps surprisingly highlighted the guitarist’s love of classic rock as much as his impressive, understated songwriting. Here he takes four songs from each album and adds a trio of covers to demonstrate their strengths, recasting them as campfire acoustic ditties. This allows some of their lyrical directness to shine through on fine versions of the spooky “Hammer Blows”, the hallucinatory “Key/Hole” and the unsettlingly intimate “Stranded”. Ranaldo complements this with three covers, including “Revolution Blues”, cementing the bond between Neil Young and “Death Valleyy 69”. 9

Gorgeous Leonard Cohen-esque debut by gifted British guitarist is a young 8/10 Roberts British finger-picker with a voice and style that could sound dated were he not so gifted, possessing a fine ear for a tune and a real knack for storytelling. This debut album, with its strong echoes of early Leonard Cohen, was produced by Luther Russell in LA and is a seriously confident affair, paring songs right back to guitar and voice, rendering them direct, urgent and ageless. Wistful opener “Forty Miles” sets a mood of romantic yearning that is followed up by excellent songs like the folky “Sketch”, the intense “Where The Wild Thyme Blows” and the stunning “Old Coney St”.

PIERS MARTIN

PETER WATTS

PETER WATTS

ERLEND ØYE Legao BUBBLES

Indie heartthrob’s Icelandic reggae affair Having retired Kings Of Convenience and The Whitest Boy Alive, and 8/10 swapped Berlin for Sicily, where he lives with his mother, Norway’s serial collaborator Erlend Øye hooks up with Keflavik toasters Hjálmar, on only his second solo album, for a set of characteristically bittersweet soul-searching dispatched in a lovers rock style. Like most things attributed to the bard of Bergen, Legao feels light and effortless: “Whistler” and “Save Some Loving” are among his loveliest moments. Swaddled in Hjálmar’s feelgood grooves, when Øye sighs, “You scold me with silence, I suffer and fight” on the lilting “Peng Pong”, his navel-gazing doesn’t sound so sad. PIERS MARTIN

RADIAN & HOWE GELB Radian Verses Howe Gelb DENSE

HOW TO BUY... HOWE GELB

RHYTON Kykeon

Giant Sand and more

Giant Sand

Center Of The Universe OW OM, 1992 A going concern since the early ’80s, when he founded the band with the late Rainer Ptacek, Giant Sand served as an ever-shifting repository for Gelb’s love of punk, blues, folk, roots and beyond. This eighth LP stirs a grungy urgency into the mix, care of distorted guitars, stomp box and some killer harmonies from The Psycho Sisters.

8/10 Giant Sand Chore Of Enchantment LOOSE, 2000

An all-star ensemble (Calexico, Juliana Hatfield, Jim Dickinson, John Parish, Dylan’s old pedal-steel player David Mansfield and more) help flesh out Gelb’s fever dreams of dusty Americana. Cue rambling folksiness, a fair dash of country twang and spooky jazz accents. The results are as accessible as they are wonderfully strange, not least “X-Tra Wide” and “Shiver”.

THRILL JOCKEY

NYC avant-vets discover Greece is the word… Thanks to Rhyton and the recent Xylouris White Greek music seems 7/10 album, to be having a small moment in rock circles. The former’s new album begins with 80 seconds of needling guitar noise, but soon coalesces into a much more satisfying, Aegean-inflected jam session. Bouzouki/saz/guitar player Dave Shuford has form here: besides his work with the No-Neck Blues Band (semi-feral improv) and fronting D Charles Speer & The Helix (rowdy bar-room Americana), 2011’s solo set, Arghiledes, was ostensibly a study of Greek folk music. Kykeon combines that knowledge with freewheeling homeland psych. “Gneiss” is a notable high, imbued with a prickly funk that connoisseurs of Anatolian psych will find recognisably potent. JOHN MULVEY

RÖYKSOPP The Inevitable End DOG TRIUMPH

A mixed impromptu team-up… Improv is a risky business, 5/10 with rewards in slim supply unless the participants have developed the empathy of long association. Here, the alliance of post-rockers Radian and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb sounds impromptu and largely unsatisfying, sound-montages in which the murmured vocals, glitchy static crackle, abstracted beats and found-sounds rarely coalesces into something interesting – and when it does, as with the piano/vibes passage of “I’m Going In”, it usually ends abruptly. At its best, with the fuzz-guitar shards of “The Constant Pitch And Sway”, the results can be enjoyably Faustian; but it’s mostly too desultory to make a memorable impression.

9/10

8/10

Last hurrah (sort 0f) for the mega-selling kings of electropop can say one thing 8/10 You for Röyksopp: they know how to go out on a high. Fresh from their dynamite collaboration with Robyn on the mini-album “Do It Again”, the Norwegian duo of Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland have announced that – while they will continue making and releasing music together – this fifth full-length will be their final album. From the stately “You Know I Have To Go”, featuring Jamie McDermott of The Irrepressibles, to the Daft Punk-style closer “Thank You”, The Inevitable End is a bittersweet triumph that makes damned sure we’ll miss their album-length voyages when they’re gone.

ANDY GILL

ROB HUGHES

FIONA STURGES

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HOWE GELB

The Coincidentalist NEW WEST, 2013

Gelb has sired 25 GS LPs, alongside incarnations as OP8, Arizona Amp And Alternator and The Band Of Blacky Ranchette. Somehow, he’s also built a prolific solo career, culminating in this luminous set that takes root in the metaphysical desertscape of the American South West. M Ward and KT Tunstall feature, though it’s Bonnie “Prince” Billy duet “Vortexas” that really lingers.

SWAMP DOGG The White Man Made Me Do It ALIVE NATURALSOUND

The psychedelic soul veteran returns in vintage form, finds Gavin Martin IN 1970, JERRY Williams was a writer, performer and producer, whose clients included Gene Pitney and Doris Duke – for whom he masterminded the deep soul classic “I’m A Loser”. His own solo however, was 8/10 career, frustrating. A victim, he recently revealed, of child rape who debuted on record aged 12, Williams’ dissatisfaction with chitlin circuit stereotyping erupted after an involuntary LSD experience and a dispiriting A&R stint under Jerry Wexler at Atlantic. His solution was Swamp Dogg – an outrageous, one-of-a-kind, jester antagonist. Swamp Dogg’s debut album promised Total Destruction To Your Mind and, over the next four decades, he has presented a defiant, often uproarious, sometimes angry, happily madcap alternative soul vision. The irrepressible showman in white top hat and tails, gleefully dancing atop the table of a corporate boardroom on the cover shot for 1981’s rockaccented I’m Not Selling Out, I’m Buying In, was propelled equally by Frank Zappa’s absurdist confrontations and Sly Stone’s innovative funk (the latter is toasted on this current album with the frank but rousing tribute “Can Anybody Tell Me Where Is Sly?”). Rooted in deep soul (as a teenage performer he supported Solomon and Otis), raised on trad country, transformed by rock – Swamp Dogg’s music became a glorious, often unclassifiable, and, consequently, commercially doomed, melange of these and sundry influences. Indefatigably scurrilous (“I Had A Ball (I Did It All)”) and profane (the 12-minute title track of 2007’s Resurrection), his wracked but tenacious tenor cried for social change (“We Need A Revolution”) while his extracurricular songwriting credits, notably Johnny Paycheck’s country crossover smash “She’s All I Got”, paid the bills. Sampled in recent years by Talib Kweli and Kid Rock, Swamp’s prolific but spotty career has left him proudly claiming the title of the “most successful failure in America”. Newly energised by the Alive label’s reissue campaign of his explosive early sides and unsung classic productions (Duke and Charlie Whitehead’s venomous Raw Spitt) Williams has declared The White Man… to be the true follow-up to Total Destruction…, and it’s easy to hear what he means. At 72, his razor-sharp smarts and laugh-out-loud sense of fun attain a perfect symmetry. Cutting back on past waywardness, he plays to his musical strengths, commanding from the grand piano a brass-boosted ensemble. The purposefully epic seven-minute opening title track is a triumphant recasting of Black American history with white oppression as the driving force. “I used to sit on the rooftop and read by moonlight

SLEEVE NOTES Produced by: Jerry ‘Swamp Dogg’ Williams and Larry ‘Moogstar’ Clemons Recorded at: The Dogg House, Northridge, CA Personnel Includes: Moogstar (keyboards), Swamp Dogg (vocals, grand piano), ‘Lucky’ Lloyd Wright (guitar), Steve ‘Stoney’ Dixon (bass), Michael Murphy (organ and keyboards), Craig Kimbrough (drums), Charlie Hayes (tenor sax), Andy Najara (baritone sax), Phil Ranelin (trombone), Troy Lombard (trumpet), Dan Weinstein (string ensemble) while the master was in the shack screwing my wife” (a line which cues up the cover image), links to the rise of black role models famous (Oprah, Obama) and obscure – “Bessie Coleman received an aviator’s pilot license BEFORE Amelia Earhart – and she didn’t get lost.” It’s Dogg at his emotively incandescent best. Elsewhere his interpretive gifts soar on a slow, greasy deconstruction of Leiber and Stoller’s “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”. An unabashed joy flows through the grooves typified by the swoonsome reimagining of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” and the Dogg’s many-sided personality is given full rein.

Swamp Dogg

T

he racism you experienced growing up in Virginia seems to inform this album keenly. “Yeah, there’s things people just don’t believe when I tell them – a white man on the sidewalk and you are also on the sidewalk, as a black you had to step off the kerb into the street so that the white man don’t have to move to pass you, all that type of silly shit. There were a few hangings back over in Virginia when I was a kid. You still got little pockets in America where they drag a black man behind a truck down the highway. I think I’ve only seen a 15 per cent change in my lifetime.”

Racism has been a constant in Swamp Dogg music – what more was there to be said? “I wanted to tell the whole story in one song and

“I’m So Happy” is simmering organ-stoked gospel with a twist, “Prejudice Is Alive And Well” brings bitter but bumptious guitar-strangled protest, and “Hey Renae” with its rude rasping horn chart and Caribbean flavour (Swamp is an icon in Trinidad) revels in jubilant sexual celebration. His magnificently see-sawing piano line expertly pilots closer “If That Ain’t The Blues… Nothing Is” between the positive uplift of the verse and hard life lessons of the chorus. Sounds like America’s most successful failure has hit a career high. Perhaps now maybe the Dogg will finally get to have his day.

a couple of others on this LP act as footnotes. The whole idea was to tell black people to get up off their ass because we have people that are role models that won’t let you down. Most people have to be dead to be a role model.” You’ve got a great expansive downhome sound on this album – was it a decisive return to musical roots? “I almost used Auto-Tune but too many of my sick fans would be furious, I thought, ‘No it’s gonna piss them off – even though it may sound great.’ They’ll take it from Nicki Minaj but they ain’t gonna take it from Swamp Dogg.” Your tribute to Sly Stone seems to come with a caveat… “Sly and James Brown were the only two real musical inventors. I loved what he did and I miss him as a recording artist, though I never need to meet him again. I know the condition he’s in and that the new Sly more than likely would be the worst shit we ever heard in our lives.” INTERVIEW: GAVIN MARTIN

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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New Albums KATE RUSBY Ghost

ELIZABETH SHEPHERD The Signal

PURE

THE TOURÉRAICHEL COLLECTIVE The Paris Session

LINUS ENTERTAINMENT

Eleventh studio album from Yorkshire folk queen Kate Rusby’s voice is without having 7/10 special much range or agility, meaning there’s a predictable ring to her cadences. She and her husband and collaborator Damien O’Kane ring some subtle changes here, however, delivering a rich production full of ringing guitars with flecks of guest banjo, bringing some urgency to trad material like “The Outlandish Knight”. A clutch of originals also spices proceedings, among them a charming May song, “We Will Sing”, and the more laboured melancholia of the title track, a rare piano piece. Yet, though her many fans won’t mind, there’s a feeling we have heard much of Ghost before.

Snaking, intense indie jazz from Canadian chanteuse This fifth album from 8/10 Quebec native Shepherd is a striking blend of late-night ballads and math-rock grooves – but there are some pretty heavy twists. These songs feel like they belong together, Shepherd’s paper-smooth voice finds its foil in Rhodes chords, liquid basslines and pleasingly odd African guitar, courtesy of the celebrated Lionel Loueke. Lyrically, Shepherd tackles some subjects less suited to the supper club, including gang rape, the Indian cottonindustry, and new motherhood. It’s here, with messages masked by easy-on-the-ear arrangements, that the album shares space with Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly, or the first album by Rickie Lee Jones.

Malian Muslim and Israeli Jew find common musical ground 7/10 Vieux Farka Touré’s solo work has marked him out as a worthy desert bluesman in the inherited style of his late father Ali Farka Touré. More audacious, though, was 2012’s The Tel Aviv Session, a mesmeric set of mostly instrumental improvs recorded with the Israeli keyboardist Idan Raichel. The follow-up is more song-based, the piano/guitar duets augmented by African percussion, vocals and trumpet. But spontaneity remains central to the script, particularly on “Diaraby”, a reimagining of a tune recorded by Vieux’s father on Talking Timbuktu, on which Raichel’s piano arpeggios are juxtaposed with a magical simplicity against Touré’s gruff-but-poignant vocal.

NEIL SPENCER

MARK BENTLEY

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

SAINT SAVIOUR In The Seams

CUMBANCHA

THE STRAY BIRDS Best Medicine YEP ROC

TOKOLOSH Stay Strong JACK TO PHONO

Former Groove Armada singer gives music the 7/10 dance heave-ho After five years fronting Groove Armada, Becky Jones, aka Saint Saviour, has apparently had her fill of beats. Produced by the ex-Coral guitarist, Bill Ryder-Jones, In The Seams is her second solo album, though it’s the first one that casts electronic music aside in favour of folk tracks simply arranged with acoustic guitar, piano, harp, and strings courtesy of Manchester’s Camerata Orchestra. The crystalline sweetness of Jones’ voice belies the dark melancholy that underpins songs such as “Sad Kid” and “Nobody Died”, both drawing on memories of childhood.

A drop of the good stuff from rootsy Pennsylvania trio keening Appalachian 7/10 The harmonies and raw resonance of their guitar/dobro/banjo/fiddle interplay suggests Maya de Vitry, Oliver Craven and Charles Muench were raised on a Virginia back porch and have never ventured beyond the county line. In reality they’re all classically trained northerners, which might make them ‘inauthentic’ borrowers of a tradition that ain’t theirs, but that’s a politically correct irrelevance when their rusticity sounds as deliciously convincing as this. “Feathers And Bone” is testament to their sharp storytelling, while trad songs “Pallet” and “Who’s Gonna Shoe” are retooled with a brio that sounds as if they’ve been playing this stuff all their lives.

Ebullient debut from Northern collective Liam Frost’s promise 7/10 early as Manchester’s brightest new folkie hit the buffers after a couple of albums and some record label shenanigans. He seems reinvigorated now, though, with the imminent arrival of his first solo album in five years and, more pressingly, his role at the head of the five-piece Tokolosh. A fine band they are, too, comprising various outriders from local combos The Earlies and The Whip. They expertly make their way through a nimble set of songs that borrow from R’n’B, folk and Memphisstyle soul, driven by Frost’s keening voice and shady lyrical obsessions.

FIONA STURGES

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

ROB HUGHES

SURFACE AREA

BOB SEGER Ride Out

RYAN TEAGUE Block Boundaries

CAPITOL

VILLAGE GREEN

THE TWILIGHT SAD Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave

Heartland rocker returns with loud but mixed results The first album since for Bob Seger is 7/10 2006 hardly a wallflower. Everything from the introspectively personal to the highly sociopolitical is in the rocker’s playbook, starting with John Hiatt’s Motor City tribute “Detroit Made”. Recorded in a crunchy “Promised Land”-style nod to Chuck Berry, guitars set to stun, it’s an instant, easy, nostalgia-filled classic. A soaring take on Steve Earle’s classic “Devil’s Right Hand” works, too, while the disturbing litanies essayed in the title track (“Subterranean Homesick Blues” turned inside out) are heartbreakingly undeniable. Highlights dim somewhat, though, with the earnest and/or bombastic originals on the album’s second half.

Derivative but delightful instrumentals from Bristol composer These days, Steve Reich’s is everywhere, 8/10 influence not least all over Ryan Teague’s mesmerising fifth album. Block Boundaries frequently mimics the cyclical melodies and contrapuntal rhythms familiar from pieces like Music For 18 Musicians, or Reich’s devotees Penguin Café Orchestra, especially on “Remote Outliers”, with its triggered vocal samples. But Teague’s mallet instruments are often paired with synths and programmed rhythms, as on the celloadorned “Site And Situation”. There are contemporary electro-acoustic comparisons, too: “Liminal Space” echoes Nils Frahm, while “Animated Landscape” boasts treated piano like Hauschka’s.

Fourth from much-loved angsty Scots Glasgow’s James Graham, Andy MacFarlane and Mark Devine have built a large, devoted fanbase out of sad songs, delivered in Graham’s rich Glaswegian accent, backed by the moodier, almost-gothic end of ’80s rock. The trio see no reason to change tack now, and there’s no denying the doomy elegance within the melodies of “There’s A Girl In The Corner” and “I Could Give You All That You Don’t Want”, or the epic bleakness of “In Nowheres”. Those who like a little light and humour in their rock – or, indeed, an acknowledgement of the last 25 years of popular music – may find themselves unmoved.

LUKE TORN

WYNDHAM WALLACE

GARRY MULHOLLAND

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FAT CAT

6/10

New Albums MORENO VELOSO Coisa Boa

WILDBIRDS & PEACEDRUMS Rhythm

JAMES WILLIAMSON Re-Licked

LUAKA BOP

LEAF

LEOPARD LADY

Long overdue return for Brazilian prodigy Veloso’s 2001 album Music found him 8/10 Typewriter acclaimed as the brightest young talent in Brazilian music. Since then he’s taken a backseat as a performer and concentrated on producing albums by his father Caetano, and Gilberto Gil. Coisa Boa translates as ‘good thing’, and his first album under his own name in 13 years is exactly that. Steeped in the best of Brazilian traditions, as you’d expect given his pedigree, the floating, ambient soundscapes of the opener “La e Ca”, the engaging bossa funk of “Em Todo Lugar” and the tinkling, ramshackle charm of “Verso Simples” all add a thoroughly modern but pleasingly whimsical twist to the classic Tropicália style.

The best set yet from percussive Swedish husband-wife duo Mariam Wallentin 8/10 Singer and drummer Andreas Werliin are becoming so good at their strippeddown thing that they just keep stripping. Rhythm is made of almost nothing except percussion and voice, yet the pair deliver an overload of information. Tapping into themes of repression and confusion, Wallentin’s voice roars, rages and coos so soulfully that it’s hard to fathom this sound didn’t come from a Delta soul singer. Werliin talks back by way of African beats, funky breaks and tumbling rolls. The obvious comparisons are The Creatures and Merrill Garbus’ similarly percussive TuneYards. But Rhythm is even more thrilling than the latter’s recent Nikki Nack.

Star-studded fuzz-fest: The Stooges’ secret back pages Stooges proper may 7/10 The be on hiatus, but long-MIA guitarist Williamson, reinvigorated by recent reunions, is out to reclaim his legacy. Re-Licked ranges from incendiary to hit-and-miss, rounding up vocalists from the famous (Bobby Gillespie) to the obscure (Mario Cuomo) to rescue The Stooges’ mythical post-Raw Power repertory. Scruffy, in-the-red backing is suitably Stoogian (raw, occasionally unfocused), but the material is impeccable: Jello Biafra burns through the mighty “Head On The Curve”, while The BellRays’ Lisa Kekaula positively owns “I Got A Right”. Most shocking has to be Carolyn Wonderland’s intense, unhinged, soul-of-theblues reading of “Open Up And Bleed”.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

GARRY MULHOLLAND

LUKE TORN

THE WANDS The Dawn FUZZ CLUB

Raucous acid-rock from irreverent Danish duo Psychedelia appears to be the current choice for hipsters appalled 8/10 young by the cookie-cutter contrivance of contemporary pop. Or maybe the acid is just especially good in Denmark these days, because this debut from Christian Skibdal and Mads Gräs is more fun than magic mushrooms on toasted ciabatta. Whether taking a blowtorch to the Yardbirds (“Sound Of The Machine”) and The Doors (“Get It Out Of Your System/Don’t You Wanna Feel Alright”), or rhyming “soul”, “mind control” and “totem pole” on “And Full Of Colours”, The Wands always keep on the right side of pastiche by way of freak-fuzz guitars, churchy organ and ace tunes. Funny, serious and very groovy.

t

REVELATIONS

James Williamson on the almighty riff and the collapse of The Stooges

GARRY MULHOLLAND

SONY RED

HEATHER HARRIS

SONY LEGACY

If morning ain’t broken, don’t fix it The Artist Still Occasionally Known Cat (the advance 7/10 As press bumph continually credits the album to “Yusuf/Cat Stevens”) is in A-list company on his third album since returning to mainstream music. Rick Rubin co-produces, and guest players include Richard Thompson, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Tinariwen, but the results will be familiar to fans of his early ’70s big-hitters. “I Was Raised In Babylon” and “Cat And The Dog Trap” tick folk boxes, while “Gold Digger” and an understated cover of Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man” dabble in low-key blues. It’s all very polite and reserved, even when Yusuf catalogues the industry frustrations of old on “Editing Floor Blues”. TERRY STAUNTON

TIM WHEELER Lost Domain Ash singer composes heartfelt solo memoir of grief and loss Dripping with raw Tim Wheeler’s 8/10 emotion, solo debut is a moving memorial to his father George, who died after a rapid decline into dementia. Mapping the stages of bereavement, from wrenching farewell and crushing depression to renewed love and optimism, these string-laced soft-rock confessionals confirm Wheeler’s evergreen flair for heart-tugging melodic uplift, even bursting into luxuriant Brian Wilson-style harmonies during “Hospital”. The album’s epic centrepiece is “Medicine”, a Springsteen-esque rock opera that sprawls across a broad spectrum, from hushed strum to roaring orchestral melodrama. In a poignant but lovely touch, it features a sample of George himself on piano. STEPHEN DALTON

YUSUF Tell ’Em I’m Gone

“That’s a bit like asking someone why their fingerprint is unique,” opines James Williamson as to why his massive, distinctive guitar riffing still out-riffs everyone else. “It’s a little like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – as soon as you get involved in the question, you change the outcome of the answer.” Those fingerprints, define Re-Licked, a brain-rattling collection wherein Williamson and a bevy of guest vocalists reclaim The Stooges’ raucous, post-Raw Power era. “That time was awful,” Williamson remembers, “because not only were we refused the chance to record these wonderful songs, we felt like [when Columbia rejected the ensuing album] we were being refused our last chance to be a legitimate band.” Revenge might have been late in coming, but it’s here now; everything from “Rubber Leg” to “Cock In My Pocket” gets refreshed and reframed. “Jello Biafra [ideal foil for its defiant “Motherfuckers tryin’ to run my world” chorus] almost demanded to be the singer on ‘Head On The Curve’,” he says proudly. LUKE TORN

ZEITKRATZER Whitehouse ZEITKRATZER

Avant-garde vs power electronics Following orchestral reinterpretations of freemaestro Keiji Haino 7/10 improv and Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, the Berlin-based contemporary music ensemble up the ante by joining forces with transgressive noise malcontents Whitehouse. It’s not the first time Zeitkratzer have tackled Whitehouse material – a 2010 album saw Reinhold Friedl and orchestra reinterpret their late-period work – but here Whitehouse mainman William Bennett is on board, supplying a chilling monologue on “Daddo”. Elsewhere, clarinet and violins do a good job of mimicking Whitehouse’s electronic high-end, with French horn and beaten piano strings supplying droning bass frequencies – best seen on the menacing “White Whip”. LOUIS PATTISON

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SCORING: THE ORIGINAL ALBUM

10 Masterpiece

1 Poor!

SCORING: EXTRA MATERIAL

1 Barrel-scrapings

R EISSU ES|C OM P S|BOX SE T S|L OS T R EC OR DI NGS

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

10 Untold riches

Archive

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND The Velvet Underground – TRACKLIST DISC ONE THE VAL VALENTIN MIX 1 Candy Says 2 What Goes On 3 Some Kinda Love 4 Pale Blue Eyes 5 Jesus 6 Beginning To See The Light 7 I’m Set Free 8 That’s The Story Of My Life 9 The Murder Mystery 10 After Hours DISC TWO THE CLOSET MIX 1 Candy Says 2 What Goes On 3 Some Kinda Love 4 Pale Blue Eyes 5 Jesus 6 Beginning To See The Light 7 I’m Set Free 8 That’s The Story Of My Life 9 The Murder Mystery 10 After Hours 11 Beginning To See The Light (alternate mix)

45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition POLYDOR/UME

Remake! Remodel! The VU unveil their new incarnation: no drones, but many tunes follow. By Michael Bonner TO REPLACE JOHN Cale in The Velvet Underground took some doing. After all, Cale had been critical to the strange alchemy at work on the band’s first two records, especially the experimental pulse of White Light/White Heat. But, by late September 1968, Cale’s position in the band had become untenable. A man of uncompromising views passionately expressed, Cale was informed that his services were no longer required. Many bands might consider calling it a day after the departure of a key member, but within a matter of weeks the Velvets had recruited a replacement: a 21-year-old Long Island native, Doug Yule. A friend of road manager Hans Onsager, Yule brought harmony where there

9/10

had previously been discord; acquiescence instead of provocation. The first album The Velvet Underground recorded after Yule joined was, in its own way, a radical departure from the music associated with Cale’s tenure. No chairs were scraped across floors. Gone were epic monologues about the pitfalls of sending yourself through the mail in a cardboard box. But while the band’s avant-garde impulses may have been softened, the music they made on their third studio album was just as remarkable. Quoted in the sleevenotes for this six-CD deluxe reissue, Lou Reed admits, “I thought we had to demonstrate the other side of us.” Recorded between November and December 1968 at TTG Studios, Hollywood, JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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Archive

TRACKLIST Continued

DISC FOUR 1969 SESSIONS 1 Foggy Notion (original 1969 mix) + 2 One Of These Days (new 2014 mix) + 3 Lisa Says (new 2014 mix) + 4 I’m Sticking With You (original 1969 mix) + 5 Andy’s Chest (original 1969 mix) + 6 Coney Island Steeplechase (new 2014 mix)+ 7 Ocean (original 1969 mix) 8 I Can’t Stand It (new 2014 mix) + 9 She’s My Best Friend (original 1969 mix) + 10 We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together (new 2014 mix) + 11 I’m Gonna Move Right In (original 1969 mix) 12 Ferryboat Bill (original 1969 mix) 13 Rock & Roll (original 1969 mix) 14 Ride Into The Sun (new 2014 mix) + + previously unreleased mixes DISC FIVE LIVE AT THE MATRIX NOVEMBER 26 & 27, 1969 (Part 1) 1 I’m Waiting For The Man * 2 What Goes On * 3 Some Kinda Love ** 4 Over You * 5 We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together * 6 Beginning To See The Light ** 7 Lisa Says ** 8 Rock & Roll ** 9 Pale Blue Eyes * 10 I Can’t Stand It Anymore * 11 Venus In Furs * 12 There She Goes Again * DISC SIX LIVE AT THE MATRIX NOVEMBER 26 & 27, 1969 (Part 2) 1 Sister Ray *** 2 Heroin * 3 White Light/White Heat ** 4 I’m Set Free * 5 After Hours * 6 Sweet Jane ** All mixes previously unreleased. * previously unreleased performance ** different source mix of this performancee d Live appears on 1969: The Velvet Underground ce *** different source mix of this performance appears on The Quine Tapes Box Set

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The Velvet Underground with Doug Yule (right) live in Texas, 1969

The Velvet Underground sets out a new musical agenda for the band. Mostly, the vibe is intimate and meditative, although it’s not an entirely soothing listen. There are halfwhispered backing vocals and ghostly, circular guitar lines that establish a nocturnal, strungout mood. But although sonically different from both The Velvet Underground And Nico and White Light/White Heat, it still shares some properties with its predecessors. “Candy Says” – a tribute to Warhol superstar Candy Darling, sung by Yule – is an explicit link back to the band’s Factory days. Taken in context with Cale’s departure only months earlier, it might seem an unusual choice to open the record with. After all, the band’s decision to relocate to the West Coast for the duration of the album’s recording suggests a desire to put distance between themselves and New York, where Cale was still based. But listened to more closely, it becomes evident that “Candy Says” is looking for something beyond the Factory floor: “I’m gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder.” There must be something more, implies Reed. “What Goes On” has one of the band’s greatest riffs – an unstoppable,

propulsive churn from Sterling Morrison supplemented by Yule’s rising two-note organ motif. “Some Kind Of Love” finds Reed quoting TS Eliot as he revisits the risqué bedroom antics of “Venus In Furs”: “Put jelly on your shoulder/ Let us do what you fear most.” It contains the line “The possibilities are endless,” which was also the only full sentence Edwyn Collins could speak successfully after his hemorrhagic stroke. “Pale Blue Eyes” is a majestic, slow and sad love letter to Reed’s college sweetheart, Shelly Albin. Meanwhile, the tone poem “Jesus” is followed by “Beginning To See The Light” and “I’m Set Free”. It’s possible to see them as a sequence, with Reed on the look-out for redemption – perhaps from the accoutrements associated with life in the late-’60s rock milieu. He gets his wish – sort of – on “I’m Set Free”, only to discover that he’s merely now ready “to find a new illusion”. “The Murder Mystery”, in which Reed and Morrison read two separate narratives simultaneously, is a clever idea, but the outcome is messy and annoying. “After Hours”, though, is a jaunty number in which champ Reed once again champions the positive aspects no of nocturnal living: “If you clos the door/The night close cou last forever.” Getting could Moe Tucker to sing it, how however, is a great move: her g guileless reading is a wry count counterpoint to the song’s crepus crepuscular endeavours. This ne new anniversary set t three different presents the versio the Valentin mix, versions: t Closet mix and a the Promotional Mono mix. They have all been available previously – the V Valentin has been the standard mix used on CD and

DOUG YULE/COURTESY OF SAL MERCURI COLLECTION

DISC THREE PROMOTIONAL MONO MIX 1 Candy Says 2 What Goes On 3 Some Kinda Love 4 Pale Blue Eyes 5 Jesus 6 Beginning To See The Light 7 I’m Set Free 8 That’s The Story Of My Life 9 The Murder Mystery 10 After Hours 11 What Goes On (Mono Single April 1969) 12 Jesus (Mono Single April 1969)

Archive Let’s just do this and be done, who cares.” We gave it our best, but we didn’t expect it to be coming out, as I recall. Not with MGM, anyway.

D Doug Yule and Maureen T Tucker on sewing, Nobel P Prizes and Jimi Hendrix…

H

OW DID DOUG YULE come to be in the band? MAUREEN TUCKER: We had known Doug for a long time before he joined us. He was in Boston and we played there th a lot. I think we even stayed at his apartment one time. ap

remasters since the 1980s. Meanwhile, the Closet appears in the Peel Slowly And See boxset and the Promotional Mono was included in a 2012 Sundazed Verve/MGM vinyl set. Reed’s own Closet mix (named by Morrison, who claimed it sounded like it was recorded in one) offers a slightly more intimate take on the songs. This is achieved by mixing the vocals a little higher. The spindly guitar lines on “Jesus” sound cleaner, for one, while the jangling lead guitar on “Beginning To See The Light” is sharper and foregrounded, making it sound rather gloriously like The Byrds at their most propulsive. The most noticeable difference is on “Some Kinda Love”, which features an entirely different vocal take from Reed, who sounds totally stoned. The Promotional Mono mix, on the other hand, is a fold of the Closet mix, done to accommodate radio stations. There’s no significant difference, but “What Goes On” sounds approvingly chunky and full-on in mono. There’s an additional three discs. The first, “1969 Demos”, is essentially the material the band demoed for a proposed fourth MGM album. But relationships between band and label – always difficult – soured and the Velvets signed to Atlantic in late 1969. Again, these 14 tracks have been available before on VU and Another View, but six tracks benefit here from updated mixes. Unquestionably, the highlight remains the amniotic swirl of “Ocean”: it’s been out before, but when a song’s this good, who cares? In terms of unreleased material, the motherlode is the two-disc Live At The Matrix set, recorded on November 26 and 27, 1969 at the San Francisco venue. Of the 18 songs here, 10 are previously unreleased. A surprisingly laidback stroll through “Waiting For The Man” accelerates into a furious version of “What Goes On”. Later, there’s a faithful reading of “Pale Blue Eyes” and bewitching versions of “Venus In Furs” and “Heroin”. All are comprehensively bested by the 36-minute version of “Sister Ray” that builds from a slow groove into a lengthy freeform jam, sustained by Moe Tucker’s staunch timekeeping and Yule’s blistering Hammond riffs. The 12-month period charted in this boxset covers a remarkable period in Doug Yule’s life, from joining the band to playing The Matrix. It was, he admits, “the best year I had with them.”

You were in the unusual position of seeing The Velvet Underground play prior to joining the band. What were they like live? DOUG YULE: The first time I saw them was at Harvard University. John was sick. All I saw was Lou, Sterling and Maureen playing in a dark room. Lou was wearing black leather. They had good volume, substantial volume. But it was more the presence of the band, they were very intense. What did Doug bring to the band? TUCKER: He brought sweetness. He could sew! He’s one of those people I admire who can do all sorts of things. He’s a good cook, he’s a good singer, he’s a great musician. I guess he brought a little bit of calm after the storm. What do you remember from the album sessions themselves? YULE: It’s my favourite album out of all the recordings we did, because we recorded the tracks with all four people, then overdubbed vocals and harmonies. It’s really the closest to the band sounding like playing live. TUCKER: I remember recording “After Hours”. Oh, yeah! I was a nervous wreck. Took about eight takes, ’cause I kept forgetting the words or laughing! Finally I had the sense to make everybody leave the studio. I’d never sung anything. I wanted to do a good job!

What could I have expected to see if I’d attended one of the Matrix shows? TUCKER: We were all, basically, having fun. And doing our best, and enjoying it. I was totally happy playing live. Oh, I got very tired of playing “Beginning To See The Light”. I don’t know why, I didn’t think it was a crappy song, I just got very sick of it. My favourites were “Sister Ray”, “Heroin”, “I’m Waiting For The Man”, “Run Run Run” and “Pale Blue Eyes”. YULE: It depends on what night you went. Some nights it was really crowded and some nights you’d get 15-20 people because it was an off night. It was laidback and very casual, like a separate club where the act is unknown. Lou was talkative and it seems to be around the time where he started to pretend I was his brother. Isn’t there a story of David Bowie mistaking you for Lou? YULE: We played at the Electric Circus in New York, and somebody came up to us afterwards and said, “Someone here wants to meet you guys.” So he came back. He was enthusiastic and we talked a little bit. He had an English accent, and since The Beatles I have been enamoured by English things, so I was thrilled to talk to someone with an English accent! We had a conversation and then he took off. About 15, 20 years later he told that story to MPR that he thought it was Lou and he had no idea who he was talking to and neither did I… You met Hendrix during the 1969 tour, didn’t you? YULE: Yeah, we first ran across him at the Whisky in ’69 on tour. He was with Mitch Mitchell. During our set, he was jumping up and down, banging his glass on the table, and really getting into it. He came up to us after, and we were talking a little bit. We were sitting there with our mouths open thinking: ‘Did that really just happen…?’

“During our set, Jimi was jumping up and down, banging his glass on the table, really getting into it”

You were all living in a bungalow together at the Chateau Marmont. How was that? YULE: We were like a little family during his period. We’d go to the studio together, to the Chateau, we’d go out and eat together. We weree a little band of gypsies. Normally in New York, we would go home over the weekends. I wouldn’t see them again until it was time to go out again. For this period, we lived and worked d as a group and we were very close. TUCKER: It was fun! It was up at 4am and I had d the radio on, and it was announced the father of our road guy had just won the Nobel Prize [Larss Onsager; winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize for chemistry]! Isn’t that funny? That’s where we were, in that little cabin. The boxset includes the 1969 sessions for a potential fourth album for MGM. What do o you remember about the circumstances around that? TUCKER: We were pretty much doing it to be done with the contract – we owed MGM an album. We didn’t go in and say, “Oh, screw it!

What do you do these days, Doug? YULE: I make violins. I have a shop. And I play violin and guitar. I have a string band, RedDog. There’s a guitar/banjo player and a mandolin player. I play fiddle. We’ve made two albums. The website is www.reddogseattle.com. INTERVIEWS: MICHAEL BONNER

Doug Yule today: “We were like a little family…”

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN The Album Collection, Vol. 1 (1973-1984) COLUMBIA LEGACY

No remastering revelations, but still a classic set. By Andy Gill WE’VE ALL GROWN understandably wary of remastered editions, which in some cases seem just an opportunity to capitalise further on fan fidelity through purported improvements in high fidelity, without the bother of actually having to shoulder the recording overheads of new material. There appears no end of reissuing potential for the slim catalogues of such as Led Zeppelin, perhaps the worst offenders in this respect: every few years, the supposedly “definitive” versions are redefined yet again, in ways likely discernible only to dogs. So, how to regard this boxset of Springsteen remasters, dealing with the same seven albums that comprised 2010’s slipcase boxset The Collection 1973-84? Vital or venal? Buy, or pass by? Well, in purely commercial terms, there’s no

9/10 ALBUMS INCLUDED: GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, NJ (1973)* THE WILD, THE INNOCENT AND THE E STREET SHUFFLE (1973)* BORN TO RUN (1975) DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN (1978) THE RIVER (1980)* NEBRASKA (1982)* BORN IN THE USA (1984)* *denotes first time remastered on CD

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dispute: at around £15 – just over £2 per album – The Collection 1973-84 is about £40 cheaper than this remastered set, so unless you’ve got the kind of hi-fi system that costs the earth and threatens the foundations, that’s undoubtedly the most cost-effective option on buying Bruce in bulk. But if you’re a nut for sonic sizzle, an addict for audio authenticity, you may find these remastered versions tickle your fancy in any number of new and unexpected ways. Heard en masse, the new set reveals more clearly than before how Springsteen’s career development went in emotional waves, with the wordy urgency of his debut supplanted by the growing ebullience of his R’n’B street-opera style on The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle which then crested on Born To Run, before his three-year recording exile incubated the flintier,

Archive

Remaster master Bob Ludwig on remastering Bruce’s early albums What does the remastering process entail? There’s a new technology that got invented recently, called the Plangent Process. When you record onto tape, there’s a high-frequency bias, between 80,000 cycles and 500,000 cycles, which greatly lowers the distortion. When remastering with the Plangent Process, you have not just left and right outputs but also a third output for the bias frequency, which can now be used to correct the time-based anomalies in the audio so that there’s no wow or flutter, no jitteriness. What it does is make the whole sonic image more clear – you can hear more deeply into the mix, hear things you couldn’t before. The first two albums seem to profit most from the new process. The last time I remastered those first two albums was back in 1984, and the quality of the digital converters we had back then was awful. more thoughtful cast of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, whose burgeoning interest in social duty and blue-collar honour bore too-abundant fruit on The River before hardening into a more bitter medicine on the melancholy Nebraska. Finally, with Born In The USA, Springsteen found a way of dealing out that medicine in a more generous, pop-sweetened manner that connected back to the engaging charm of his earlier, ebullient albums. It’s those earliest albums on which the new remastering technology – something called “Plangent Process” [see sidebar] – bears most evident fruit. Restoring the high-frequency bias applied to the original tape recordings, this process both corrects timing faults and presents the individual elements in clearer detail, occasionally enabling one to hear things that have previously been obscured. On Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, there’s more of a crackle to the guitars and drums on “Blinded By The Light”, and the bass is crisper on “Growin’ Up”; and there’s some rather leaden percussion in the left channel on the refrain of “Spirit In The

We’re using high-resolution digital now, as opposed to the compact disc format we were recording to back then. It adds a whole new area of detail. The irony is that rather than putting more manipulations into the mastering with equalisation and compression, it actually needed less, because you can already hear things more clearly. Those first two albums are now dramatically better, in my opinion. Do the different types of album pose different problems – say, the nakedness of Nebraska compared to the density of Born To Run? Oh yes! Born To Run is the one I’ve remastered several times, most recently for the boxset a few years ago – that’s the one that Bruce told me sounded closest to the way he’d imagined it in his head, which is the ultimate compliment! So I stuck closely to that when we remastered for the Plangent Process. However, it did add extra clarity even to that: on “Thunder Road”, if you listen to previous versions, the first chord of harmonica and piano is not quite stable, it slides a little; but it’s rock solid with the Plangent Process. Nebraska was a revelation to me: that’s the one that was done from a cassette originally, and when I remastered it this time, it was another case of not having to do as much as before. INTERVIEW: ANDY GILL Night” which, on reflection, I’d rather had been mixed out. Nothing, though, can salvage the dolorous “Mary, Queen Of Arkansas”. But the real benefit comes on The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle, with clearer interplay between the riffing horns, slick guitar and burbling clavinet on “The E Street Shuffle” itself, and the high guitar detail on “4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” – the “Spanish Harlem” of Springsteen’s own rock mythos – glittering more brightly against the saxophone, while the backing vocals acquire a new, spectral quality that sends shivers down the spine. Most of the other albums have already received so much previous remastering attention that the differences are less discernible – though ironically, given its cassette source, Nebraska profits from increased clarity to the guitar work and glockenspiel details. Or so it seems, anyway, on the streamed files I’m reviewing from. But ultimately, despite the flabbiness of some parts of The River, it’s hard to fault an early-career retrospective with as little filler as this.

16 HORSEPOWER Hoarse (reissue, 2000) GLITTERHOUSE

Powerful 1998 live album by intense 9/10 American rockers It’s not often that cover versions provide such a neat summary of a band’s key influences as the trio that feature on this reissue of 16 Horsepower’s invigorating and unnerving 1998 live album. Creedence’s “Bad Moon Rising”, The Gun Club’s “Fire Spirit” and “Day Of The Lords” by Joy Division pretty much nail 16HP completely, providing musical and spiritual context for the supercharged, doom-laden, compellingly primitive rockers. Recorded live in Denver, the eight originals are drawn largely from the band’s first two albums, and the entirety perfectly captures the pummelling power and spiritual energy eked from songwriter David Eugene Edwards’ complex relationship with God and with his bandmates. “Black Soul Choir” encapsulates this, bristling with tension and Baptist fire-and-brimstone loathing for humanity’s evil. The album can seem sinister in the extreme – “For Heaven’s Sake” has a Waitsian menace, “Horse Head” threatens and pulsates, while the covers of “Bad Moon Rising” and “Day Of The Lords” are almost draining in their intensity – and it says much of the band’s sense of wilful perversity that the jauntiest number is titled “Black Lung”. EXTRAS: None. PETER WATTS

ABBA Live At Wembley POLAR MUSIC

Awkward but endearing live show, in their pomp The full version of this concert has become 7/10 something of a holy grail for Abba completists. A 12-track version of this 1979 Wembley Arena show was broadcast by the BBC; a heavily edited eight-track version was released on LaserDisc, other bits have cropped up on bootlegs. But this is the first mixing board release of the entire 90-minute, 25-song concert. The opening instrumental “Gammal Fäbodpsalm” – a solo synth version of an old Swedish hymn – has touches of Wendy Carlos’ Clockwork Orange, while the airing of lesser-known LP tracks such as the Nordic anthem “Eagle” and the Aryan disco of “As Good As New” add to that eerie sense of Scandinavian otherness. There is one previously unreleased track, a blandly pretty power ballad entitled “I’m Still Alive” (written by Agnetha, who accompanies herself on piano). Elsewhere, the band play like the orchestra pit in the Mamma Mia musical, desperately replicating the studio arrangements. As a result the most quietly thrilling moments see them deviate from the familiar versions: check out the timpani flourishes in “Chiquitita”, the lengthy Steely Dan-style guitar solo on “Does Your Mother Know” or – most excitingly – a lengthy prog-funk workout in the middle of “Gimme Gimme Gimme”. EXTRAS: None. JOHN LEWIS

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Archive

Rediscovered! Uncovering the underrated and overlooked

ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS Turning ROUGH TRADE

Intense document of 2006’s live audiovisual outing 7/10 In November 2006, Antony Hegarty brought Turning, his collaboration with American visual artist Charles Atlas, to London. During the show, Atlas created live video portraits of the 13 models slowly rotating on stage (hence the title), projecting the results on to giant screens while Hegarty and his six-piece band performed. It makes absolute sense that this album documenting the entire Barbican event is accompanied by a DVD, but the musical element stands tall on its own merits. Recorded on the heels of the Mercury Prize-winning 2005 album I Am A Bird Now, the song choices range across Hegarty’s first three records. It’s a giddily emotive affair, primarily slow and sensual, his extraordinary, tremulous voice soaring and sobbing over elegant piano and strings. The climax of “Everything Is New” recalls Jeff Buckley’s vaulting art rock, but it’s the simple, soulful intensity of “I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy”, “Hope There’s Someone” and “One Dove” which linger. “You Are My Sister” provides a hymn-like conclusion to a quietly remarkable show. EXTRAS: Two bonus tracks from a rare 2006 seven-inch, “Whose Are These” and “Tears Tears Tears”. GRAEME THOMSON

MICKEY JUPP Kiss Me Quick Squeeze Me Slow: The Collection REPERTOIRE

© ADRIAN BOOT/URBANIMAGE.TV

9/10 Fine songs from the Southend-scene eccentric, on four discs Mickey Jupp’s gift is writing witty, often touching songs, this four-disc boxset racking up around 60 examples recorded between 1969 and 1994. “It’s in your heart and soul,” he says of an ability to conjure up the spirit of Jerry Lee Lewis on the wonderfully titled “Monte Bronte And The Sisters” or borrow Chuck Berry’s riff from “Memphis” for “Taxi Driver”, then transpose a lyric worthy of the man himself. Jupp’s haphazard career began in unrecorded Southend beat groups after which “every so often people would say ‘Come and make an album’, and I’d say ‘All right then’.” His band Legend was the first English act on Bell in 1969, followed by two albums for Vertigo, including the fabled Red Boot album, where Legend’s country-blues ditties were “square pegs in round holes”. Legend folded in 1973, just as pub rock kicked off. “We’d have been at the forefront of that, but I was always out of step.” In 1978, Jupp signed to Stiff, surely a natural home. He recorded much of Juppanese with Nick Lowe and Rockpile, joined the Be Stiff tour, but then refused to travel on to New York. “I was already eccentric so I didn’t have to dress up like Wreckless Eric or Lene Lovich. I never had to try and be different.” Later albums often brought in ‘name’ producers, including Godley & Creme and Francis Rossi, but that didn’t work out either. “I’m an awkward bastard,” he admits, “I don’t try and upset anybody, but it’s my life.” In 1982, Jupp was flown to Santa Monica to collaborate with Ry Cooder. “I was flattered, we spent time at his house but we were both loners really; he’s his own man, like me, so we cancelled each other out.” The final disc here features a documentary filmed in 1994 where fellow Southender Wilko Johnson gives testament: “There are so many famous musicians in this country, but they haven’t got that thing, and he’s got tons of it.“ MICK HOUGHTON

BEDHEAD 1992-1998: A Complete Bedhead Retrospective Boxset NUMERO GROUP Career-spanning comp from the best little 8/10 slowcore band in Texas The state of Texas is not a place that breeds them halting and diffident, so it’s a testament to the greatness of Bedhead that they survived long enough to even make it out of town. Formed around the songwriting siblings Matt and Bubba Kadane, Bedhead’s music felt like an aesthetic revolt against the rage of ’80s punk and hardcore: slow, quiet, sparse and reflective music that posed big, philosophical questions. Still, they found their allies – some unlikely. Their three albums saw the light of day on Trance Syndicate, the label run by Butthole Surfers’ King Coffey; the last, 1998’s Transaction De Novo was recorded by Steve Albini, who has sung the band’s praises on numerous occasions. This four-CD box – also available as five LPs – demonstrates Bedhead to be a band incapable of missteps. 1994’s WhatFunLifeWas is a neat encapsulation of their quiet ambitions, from the gentle VU moves of “Bedside Table” to “The Unpredictable Landlord”, a plea to an uncaring god (“These conditions deserve attention/This place where we live is unhealthy”). Transaction De Novo is probably their best, Albini’s production prowess giving “Parade” and “Extramundane” a pleasing bite. The fourth disc collects singles and B-sides, including a gem of a cover of Joy Division’s “Disorder”. EXTRAS: Deluxe box, bound book.

8/10 LOUIS PATTISON

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Archive COLIN BLUNSTONE Ennismore/ Journey

THE CRYAN’ SHAMES A Scratch In The Sky

(reissues, 1972, 1974)

(reissue, 1967)

VOICEPRINT

NOW SOUNDS/CHERRY RED

THE CZARS The Best Of The Czars BELLA UNION

Early ’70s brace from the erstwhile Zombie In common with his solo debut, 1971’s One Year, Blunstone’s follow-up 12 months later found him again calling upon the services of former Zombies bandmates as players and producers. However, unlike the string-driven baroque hues of its predecessor, Ennismore leans towards a standard guitar/ piano pop-rock set-up. A bridge between the two styles is provided by the stately opener, Russ Ballard’s “I Don’t Believe In Miracles”, before heading in a mellow, folk-minded direction for “Every Sound I Heard” and “How Wrong Can One Man Be”. Blunstone’s sweet whisper seduces throughout, not least on “Andorra” and its shades of his old group’s big hit “Time Of The Season”. Journey, from 1974, is less assured, shorter on strong and memorable songs, but is distinguished by the tender melancholy of “Keep The Curtains Closed Today” and “You Who Are Lonely”, the latter again the handiwork of Ballard, while the piano pomp of “Something Happens When You Touch Me” bears the hallmarks of his future label boss Elton John. It’s when the tempo steps up that Blunstone gets a little lost, the delicacy of his voice buried under boisterous horns on “It’s Magical” and the faux Philly soul dance rhythms of “Weak For You”. EXTRAS: None.

Pioneering Chicago popsters’ lost gem Neophytes know them, if at all, from their cover of The Searchers’ “Sugar and Spice”, immortalised on Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets. But broadly speaking, The Cryan’ Shames were among a small contingent of longhairs who put Chicago on the rock’n’roll map in the post-Beatles era. A Scratch In The Sky was album number two, their creative high-water mark, filled with sly sonic touches, moody melodies and daring harmonies (experimentation apropos of the early post-Sgt Pepper era). Though surely derivative (Fabs, Byrds and Beach Boys vibes) and MORslanted in places, they were never less than inventively, endearingly so. The Jim Fairs/Lenny Kerley songwriting team, meanwhile, was also chameleonic, morphing here into heavy psych (“The Sailing Ship”, with bagpipes), there into incipient country-rock (“Cobblestone Road (She’s Been Walkin’)”. By the time harder, heavier bands turned up, the Shames had trouble keeping up. Nonetheless, retrospectively, the purity and unsullied innocence, within the grooves holds plenty of late appeal. And several cuts, especially, “In The Café”, a hushed, haunted ballad à la early Zombies and “The Town I’d Like To Go Back To”, Scratch’s deceptive crown jewel – softly nostalgic before drifting into a sparkly, jazzy dreamland – prove they were underrated all along. EXTRAS: None.

Big-hearted collection from Jon Grant’s odd band 8/10 Denver’s The Czars sustained a troubled yet fruitful 10-year career with sad and spiky songs that meandered through country, indie-rock, folk-rock and cabaret, accompanied by the magnificently plaintive baritone of frontman John Grant. Acclaimed by the press, they were nonetheless ignored by the masses and in 2004, weighed down by their singer’s drink and drug addictions, they finally threw in the towel. Grant subsequently cleaned up and began a career as a solo artist, the culmination of which was last year’s hugely successful Pale Green Ghosts. While nothing on this best-of collection quite matches the exquisiteness of Grant’s solo work, you can still hear him testing the waters and laying the groundwork for what was to come. There are moments when his way with a melody, and his astringent turn of phrase, takes your breath away, from the mordant, piano-led melodrama of “Drug” (“This is not ecstasy but it’s better than cocaine”) to the monumental parting shot to an ex-lover that is “Goodbye” (“I’d love to see you fade and die”). Grant may have moved on, but these songs are full of heart and soul, and a precious part of his evolution. EXTRAS: None.

TERRY STAUNTON 

LUKE TORN

FIONA STURGES

7/10

BOARDS OF CANADA Hi Scores

8/10

HOW TO BUY...

(reissue, 1996)

LOUIS PATTISON

(reissue, 2004)

LOU REED

The Raven SIRE, 2003

SKAM

Early excursion in dark dreaminess from the 7/10 Scottish electronic duo Discounting a couple of semi-official releases largely distributed among friends and family, the Hi Scores EP constitutes the first proper release by brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, aka Boards Of Canada. Hi Scores is nothing as precious as a lost work – it’s been repressed before in relatively small quantities, in 2002 and 2005 – and some of these tracks have gone on to have a new life elsewhere: “Turquoise Hexagon Sun”, named after the duo’s studio, would be reworked for their Warp debut Music Has The Right To Children two years later, while “Everything You Do Is A Balloon” would find its way onto the soundtrack to 2002’s Morvern Callar. Compared to what would come later on 2002’s Geogaddi and last year’s apocalyptic Tomorrow’s Harvest, the likes of “Nlogax” and the Autechre-like “June 9” feel slightly vestigial: the gauzy, out-of-whack synths are on point, but the beats a little less realised, tethered in an electro sensibility more suited for breakdancing than zoning out or contemplating environmental collapse. It’s best when they hit on a mood of gentle motion: the serene drift of the title track, or the closing “Everything You Do Is A Balloon”, its quizzical melodies implying comfort, nostalgia and a touch of autumnal chill. EXTRAS: Spot varnish packaging, double6/10 backed poster and Braille stickers.

DIPLO F10rida

ANTONY HEGARTY COLLABORATIONS One of Hegarty’s key early patrons in the NY art-rock milieu, Reed bolstered this ambitious, eccentric framing of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories and poems with a slew of guest vocalists, among them Laurie Anderson, Bowie and Willem Dafoe. Hegarty joins the party on a full-scale deconstruction of “Perfect Day”, reimagining the song as a skeletal electro-hymn.

7/10 RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Want Two GEFFEN, 2004

Hegarty duets with Wainwright on “Old Whore’s Diet”, an odd, reggae-inflected dance around decadence. With a loose structure and minimal lyrics, it’s the interaction of these two idiosyncratic voices that holds centrestage. Hegarty is at his most unashamedly operatic.

7/10 BJöRK

Volta O NE LITTLE INDIAN, 2007 Hegarty joins in on two tracks, the fragile “My Juvenile” and epic “The Dull Flame Of Desire”, a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev. He performed the song regularly on her Volta tour and appears in the video for the single. Björk returned the favour on “Flétta”, from Swanlights.

8/10 GRAEME THOMSON

BIG DADA

Tenth anniversary respray of superstar DJ’s haunting debut 7/10 Apparently, the already intrepid Wesley Pentz was living in Japan when he spotted a magazine piece mentioning that Ninja Tune offshoot Big Dada were looking for “avantgarde dancehall” acts. True enough, while Diplo would become famous for making avant-garde dancehall, his debut long-player is actually dominated by carefully orchestrated instrumentals. F10rida sees the 23-year-old future noise-pop vandal paying tribute to his home state via both British trip-hop and the ambient side of Balearic beat, with tempos largely staying resolutely down and a great many romantic melodies bathed in reverb. But the breadth of Diplo’s musicality is already in evidence, in the Philly-style fuzz guitars that see out the aching “Sarah”, the sparse syncopations that backdrop Martina Topley-Bird’s childlike chirpings on “Into The Sun”, and in Vybz Kartel’s guest spot on the – yes! – avant-garde dancehall of “Diplo Rhythm”. The tentative emerging of a Major (Lazer) talent. EXTRAS: Ten bonus tracks including the 6/10 long-unavailable three-track EP “Epistomology Suite”. The triple-vinyl includes an email conversation between Diplo and Big Dada printed on a scroll. GARRY MULHOLLAND

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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Archive BRIAN ENO/ JON HASSELL Fourth World Vol 1: Possible Musics (reissue, 1980)

GRAVENHURST Flashlight Seasons/ Black Holes In The Sand/ Offerings: Lost Songs 2000-2004

GLITTERBEAT

GUYER’S CONNECTION Portrait (reissue, 1983) MINIMAL WAVE

Ghostly ambience for 8/10 imagined territories By 1980, Brian Eno had pretty much all but trademarked ‘ambient’, and Jon Hassell had released two albums of miasmic drift music – Vernal Equinox and Earthquake Island – after having studied with Stockhausen and played with LaMonte Young and Terry Riley in Young’s drone outfit Theatre Of Eternal Music. The collaboration beween Eno and Hassell lit off into different terrain, their Possible Musics grounded in Hassell’s vision of a ‘Fourth World’ music, which he’s described as “a term to describe the possibility of music in global terms beyond First World, beyond Third World, beyond High-Tech Art classical, beyond pop”. Despite simplistic readings that adopt Fourth World as synonymous with world music, Hassell was interested in creating music for imagined and unknown regions. With Possible Musics, Eno shrouded Hassell’s electronically manipulated trumpet in a fog of texture, moving the latter’s winding playing – inspired by his master Pandit Pran Nath, which makes perfect sense listening back – into humid territory. Nana Vasconcelos and Michael Brook guest, but the most impressive thing about Possible Musics is how everyone falls into place behind Hassell’s simple, weaving melodies, deep but light. EXTRAS: None.

Triple-decker of early work by Bristol alt.folkie There are 50 shades of autumn on this threepart archive package from Nick Talbot, the acoustic balladeer behind Gravenhust. In 2004, Talbot released his Warp debut Flashlight Seasons, a masterclass in finger-picking restraint and menacing understatement. Ten years on, the samey pace and low-voltage tone still drag a little, but Talbot sporadically blindsides you with softly devastating heartbroken pastorals like “The Ice Tree”, or the lyrically brutal “I Turn My Face To The Forest Floor”, which sounds like one of Morrissey’s darker East End gangster fantasies set to an early Dylan strum. Released soon after, minialbum Black Holes In The Sand combines folknoir themes with more dissonant arrangements. The title track ends in a lightly psychedelic fog of drones and church organs while the fade-out instrumental, confusingly titled “Flashlight Seasons”, affirms Talbot’s avowed love of shoegazing sonics. The third disc of previously unreleased material contains a few gems, with Talbot displaying a passionate bite on “Romance” and embracing agreeably luminous abstraction on the shimmering “Abilene/Slow Water Outro”. But this is inevitably the most uneven and inessential of the trio. EXTRAS: None.

Swiss teens’ synth-pop classic 9/10 Precocious new-wavers Philippe Alioth and Tibor Csébits were only 14 and 15 when they formed Guyer’s Connection in Basel in the early ’80s, using two keyboards, a drum machine and a four-track recorder. Gauche, slightly cocky and teeming with ideas, the pair produced and self-released their only album, Portrait, in 1983, a set of sugary OMD synthpop with a post-punk sneer that’s been out of print ever since. Thirty years on, it remains not just the pinnacle of Swiss minimal synth – openers “Pogo Of Techno” and “Ballade Pour Nous” display a compositional elegance and knack for lean Kraftwerkian melody that belies the duo’s youthfulness – but also sheds light on teenage life in Mitteleuropa. Like most adolescents, singer Alioth was bored and expressed himself in song. On “Keep The City Clean”, he muses on the problems smokers face in Basel and describes a visit to a popular fast-food joint: “You come out of McDonald’s, you cannot suppress the vomit”. Even worse, Switzerland was in the grip of the Ewings. “No more time for sex and crime ’cos everywhere is Dallas time”, he sings on “Dallas”, adding, “No more war in Palestine ’cos also there is Dallas time”. Some things, it seems, never change. EXTRAS: None.

JON DALE

STEPHEN DALTON

PIERS MARTIN

HOWARD EYNON So What If Im Standing In Apricot Jam (reissue, 1974)

WARP

7/10

REVELATIONS

MICAH P HINSON …And The Gospel Of Progress

Howard Eynon on his other life as an actor and variety performer

(reissue, 2004)

EARTH RECORDINGS

English expat’s psychfolk curio resurfaces Add the fact that Howard Eynon was an actor (he had a small part in Mad Max) as well as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, to his album’s whimsical, apostrophedenying title and the potential for selfindulgence is immense. But So What… – the only record by the Cambridgeshire native, who moved to Australia as a child – dodges any such accusations due to his irreverence and a culturally skewed take on English psychedelic folk. Originally released in 1974 as a private pressing, it’s very much of its time; the opener’s “Jabberwocky”-apeing lyrics and the hammering of a police/pigs metaphor in “Roast Pork” (grunting included) especially date it, but Eynon isn’t always flippant. The Ralph McTell-like “Now’s The Time” swells with subtle strings and the epic “Village Hill” whips up a terrific twin-violin storm, while “Shadows & Riff” successfully fuses “Windmills Of Your Mind” with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and “Baba O’Riley”. Kevin Ayers, Donovan, Syd Barrett and Nick Drake are obvious touchstones, but Eynon is well aware of the path that he’s treading. As he sings in his Antipodean twang on the suggestive “Hot BJ”, “If you want to be critical and say that this sounds a bit like Donovan, I won’t change it.” EXTRAS: None.

TALITRES

7/10

SHARON O’CONNELL

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Texan’s folk-noir debut, 10 years on In 2004, when “alt. country” was still a label to be applied to lo-fi balladeers, Hinson’s confessional debut arrived with a compelling backstory. In the original tale, he’d had his heart broken by a Vogue model, forged a prescription and spent time in jail. Thereafter, he’d been homeless, and poured his angst into these songs. In addition, or perhaps alternatively, a friend punched him in the back at a Burns supper, injuring his spine, leading him to fear an addiction to painkillers. Whatever the truth, the way Hinson interrogates his emotions is forensic. The production by The Earlies is minimal, but pretty, colouring the dark corners of Hinson’s psyche with flute, melodica and cello. So, while “Stand In My Way” is technically a country shuffle, it sounds like the opening dance at an abandoned wedding. On release, even Hinson’s supporters suggested he had overdone the glumness, but the most affecting moments are those where he loses balance (the furiously self-pitying “Patience”, or the airless “You Lost Sight On Me”). “The Day Texas Sank To The Bottom Of The Sea” closes the album on a properly funereal note, gospel choir and all.  EXTRAS: Bonus song, “Can’t Change A Thing”.

8/10

“I’d have to look up what a renaissance man is before I could say whether I am one,” laughs 67-year-old Howard Eynon. He reckons that, “I always considered myself low-profile, which is not a good way to be as an actor”, but was in long-running Australian TV drama The Sullivans, as well as theatre and movies. Aged 24, he won the 1971 New Faces national title by triumphing in the NSW heats, despite having crashed out of the Victoria final. “At the last minute I decided to change the key,” he recalls of his rendition of “Blackbird”, “which meant a totally different bunch of fingerings, and I totally stuffed it. They said I was shite and kicked me off.” The prize was $3,000 and a contract with a TV variety show, from which Eynon was fired after a row with the choreographer. “I said, ‘I was employed as a singer, not a bloody dancer.’” In 1976 he supported Hunter S Thompson on his two Australian dates, but there was no chummy drinking after. “Not even a spliff or a snort. The guy kept himself to himself.” SHARON O’CONNELL

7/10 ALASTAIR McKAY 

PIXIES

Doolittle 25 4AD

ANDREW CATLIN

Slicing up eyeballs: the definitive version of an all-time classic. By Sam Richards THE 1989 AMERICAN Tour pairing Pixies with Happy Mondays might have initially seemed like a bit of a mismatch: the uptight Massachusetts misfits and the 10/10 mad-fer-it Manc scallywags. Yet not only were firm friendships forged (as the photos of Kim Deal goofing around in New York with Shaun Ryder and Bez attest); in their own ways, both bands were instrumental in demolishing the ’80s’ tedious dual narrative of excess and austerity. Suddenly, “alternative” didn’t have to mean dogmatic opposition to the mainstream – it could simply be about whooping it up on your own terms. Well, hallelujah and rock a my soul. Albums don’t come much more whooped-up than Doolittle. Sure, its jittery tales of death, dismemberment, sexual frustration and religious confusion aren’t exactly party tunes in the Pills N Thrills… sense. But Charles “Black Francis” Thompson always had the good grace to vent his id in the form of phenomenally catchy, skinscorching pop songs. And you’re not meant to get hung up on the thematics in any case. “Eighty per cent of it’s baloney,” admitted Charles to Melody Maker in 1988. “It’s the T.Rex thing of ‘if it sounds cool…’” And boy, did Doolittle sound cool, barrelling unstoppably through a netherworld of eyeball-slicing maniacs, suicide surfers, underwater gods and six-foot tattooed girls inspiring outbursts of frothing Spanglish. The third release is meant to be the difficult one. True to form, Pixies had virtually exhausted their initial cache of songs from the legendary ‘Purple Tape’ on 1987’s Come On Pilgrim and the following year’s Surfer Rosa (save for the ultimate rainy-day ace-up-the-sleeve of “Here Comes Your Man”). Next, the almost impossible task of quickly penning a whole new – and better – album, in the midst of the gathering hysteria whipped up by the first two. Yet Charles only seemed to thrive on the pressure. Throughout Doolittle, his ability to switch from virginal croon to lecherous leer to primal yelp at the drop of a hat is breathtaking; Joey Santiago’s white-hot guitar knocks you sideways for much the same reason. And if Kim was smarting from having most of her songs rejected (countryish death waltz “Silver” was her only co-write) you’d never tell, her emphatic basslines and droll counter-melodies proving absolutely essential to the potion. Doolittle has been such a constant presence in our lives over the past quarter-century, especially since Pixies reformed in 2004, that a reappraisal isn’t really necessary. What this re-release does provide, however, is a fascinating insight into how some of the group’s most enduring songs came together. A rough set of demos taped during rehearsals in early 1988 reveal that “Debaser”’s references to Buñuel’s surrealist touchstone Un Chien Andalou were an inspired late addition,

TRACKLIST DISC ONE Doolittle B-side of “Here Comes while “Wave Of Mutilation” DISC TWO B-Sides & Peel Sessions Your Man” – which, was carefully extracted from DISC THREE Demos according to producer the carcass of another song 1 Debaser Paul Q Kolderie, she had entirely. Pixies had already 2 Tame* to be cajoled into singing. proved on Surfer Rosa that 3 Wave Of Mutilation (First Demo) In a more democratic they could write tightly 4 I Bleed * band, some of the songs structured songs packed with Here Comes Your Man (1986 Demo) 5 that ended up on The hair-raising dynamic shifts, 6 Dead* Breeders’ Pod might have and by the time they came to 7 Monkey Gone To Heaven* found a home here, but demo Doolittle properly in a 8 Mr Grieves* to be fair, it’s not as if tiny studio beneath a hair 9 Crackity Jones* Doolittle is carrying any salon in the Boston suburbs 10 La La Love You* flab. The lyrics may have in September ’88, most of the 11 No. 13 Baby – VIVA LA LOMA been baloney but, even songs were greased up and RICA (First Demo)* at 25 years remove, ready to roll. Yet producer 12 There Goes My Gun* Doolittle’s lively morsels Gil Norton’s influence on 13 Hey (First Demo)* still taste startlingly fresh. the end product can’t be 14 Silver* EXTRAS: CD2 features the underestimated: without 15 Gouge Away* 7/10 six B-sides from recourse to expensive studio Bonus Demo Tracks trickery (he estimated that “Monkey Gone To Heaven” 16 My Manta Ray Is All Right* Doolittle cost no more than and “Here Comes Your 17 Santo* $30,000 to make), the likes of Man” (including the eerie 18 Weird At My School (First Demo)* “Monkey Gone To Heaven” ‘UK Surf” version of 19 Wave Of Mutilation* and “Debaser” were buffed “Wave Of Mutilation”) 20 No 13 Baby hard into imperishable rock along with two Peel 21 Debaser (First Demo)* anthems. Who would have Sessions dated October 22 Gouge Away (First Demo)* guessed, for instance, that ’88 and May ’89 – although * Denotes Previously Unreleased what really made “Debaser” all but two of those session groove was the crucial tracks were previously addition of a tambourine? released on Pixies At The Doolittle’s one downside is the absence of a BBC. CD3 comprises the album demos, plus sequel to “Gigantic”. Increased dysfunctionality intriguing nascent versions of “Debaser”, within the band meant that Kim’s only lead vocal “Wave Of Mutilation”, “Hey” and three others, of the period (apart from “Silver”’s queasy duet) as well as the ‘Purple Tape’ version of “Here was on the listless “Into The White” from the Comes Your Man”. JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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Archive

WILCO Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994–2014 RHINO

Sunken treasure: the alternative history of a great American band, on 4CDs. By John Mulvey AROUND THE TURN of the millennium, Jeff Tweedy merrily nurtured a reputation as a contrarian. How best could a man, sanctified as the archetype of what was once called alt.country, confound his fans? With antsy 8/10 powerpop? Radio static? Fifteen-minute ambient noise jams? The recruitment of a fiendish avant-jazzer to take over on lead guitar? A song for a Spongebob Squarepants movie? What might look perverse at the time can, of course, be thrown into an uncannily logical light by history. So it is with Alpha Mike Foxtrot, a 4CD set that celebrates Wilco’s 20th anniversary by telling elling their story through 77 tracks of marginalia. It’s t’s a clever idea, not least because Wilco have become come the sort of band defined by the nuanced depths ths of their catalogue, one whose fans have long been encouraged to treat apparent obscurities es – the 2002 singalong B-side “A Magazine Called Sunset”, say – as critical parts of the canon. The tour page of wilcoworld.net contains a “request a song” function for every y show; a challenge to be obtuse, perhaps, thatt Alpha Mike Foxtrot will only exacerbate. As a result, a companion 2CD greatest hits set, What’s Your 20: Essential Tracks, is terrific ic but somewhat extraneous, Wilco generally

90 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

attracting obsessive fans rather than casual ones (no new tracks are included on What’s Your 20 to bait the completists). The hardcore might feel a little disappointed that there is no unreleased content on Alpha Mike Foxtrot, either, though even the most committed collector may have struggled to stay abreast of the various bonus discs, downloads, B-sides and tribute albums from which the tracklisting has been assembled. An oddly faithful, entirely creditable 2000 stab at Steely Dan’s “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”, for example, is salvaged from the soundtrack to Me, Myself & Irene. At times, in his wry sleevenotes, Tweedy seems to decry the notion of continuity. “Listening back to stuff like this, I don’t know how we got from where we were to where we are. It’s been a strange, strange path,” he wonders, confronted with a workmanlike country-rock take on Jim Glaser’s “Who Were You Thinking Of”. For all the shifts in tone and lineup, however, it is Wilco’s underlying consistency that is most striking – or rather, the consistency of Tweedy’s hesitant, sometimes fractured, way of unravelling a song. It’s a self-effacing quirk that remains charming rather than affected, even 20 years after the discreet twang of a gem like “Promising”, or 18 on from the lovely “Blasting Fonda”, another lost song from a movie, Feeling Minnesota. That fragile songcraft does not stand up to all the things that have been thrown at it. Tweedy sounds lost in Randy Scruggs’ mainstream Nashville production of “The TB Is Whipping Me” for a 1994 Red Hot + Country comp. The fraught end of Wilco’s tenure with Reprise, meanwhile, results in a gimmicky radio remix of “A Shot In The Arm” by the antagonistic head of A&R, David Kahne. “A dated mess,” reckons Tweedy, not unreasonably, of a

track clearly included for historical rather than aesthetic reasons. Other songs from the end of the ’90s fare better. “The Lonely 1 (White Hen Version)”, from 1997, is a precursor of the layered soundscaping that would come to full fruition on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with the band making a field recording of their walk from the studio to buy cigarettes, then chopping it up and using it as an effective backdrop to the song. “That might be the first example of our using a process as a way to be creative,” Tweedy notes. The tense, low-key experiments from the time of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are predictably among the best songs here. One Tweedy/Jay Bennett co-write, “Cars Can’t Escape”, with a distorted noise solo at the death that never disrupts the restrained vibes, is especially strong. A tipping point comes, though, two-thirds of the way through Disc Three, with the arrival of the master guitarist Nels Cline and the multi-tasking Pat Sansone, and the stable lineup that has endured for the past decade. A slew of live tracks – “At Least That’s What You Said”, from 2004, and a rearing 2007 take on the Television-like “Impossible Germany” may be the pick – illustrate the questing virtuosity that has become Wilco’s default setting. “Sort of like a small version of the Dead,” reckons bassist John Stirratt in the sleevenotes. “I think we’ve been able to attract fans who have created their own culture around us.” It’s a culture manifest in Alpha Mike Foxtrot: encyclopaedic, loving, droll, emotionally candid, often adventurous, but never really as alienating or difficult as the legends might suggest. “I’ve got a million things that I’d rather do than play rock’n’roll start of “Let’s Not Get for you,” sings Tweedy at the sta Carried Away”, a fine, refusenik take on Stones though, kidding no-one raunch from 2007. He is, though these days. “These the lyrics were meant to lyr be funny, but I think people might have pe taken them more ta seriously than I meant se them,” he writes. th “Maybe the reason “M it didn’t make it on any record is because an the drum solo is th way too short.” w

JETHRO TULL War Child CHRYSALIS

ANGEL OLSEN Burn Your Fire For No Witness – Deluxe Edition

OZZY OSBOURNE Memoirs Of A Madman

JAGJAGUWAR

EPIC

Expanded edition of the 1974 album of the movie that never was… Even by Ian Anderson’s 6/10 ambitious standards, Jethro Tull’s seventh album was a grandiose concept, intended to be a double LP accompanied by a full-length movie about a teenage girl in the afterlife, meeting God, St Peter and Lucifer, starring Leonard Rossiter, choreographed by Margot Fonteyn and with John Cleese as “humour consultant”. When the band couldn’t find a studio prepared to finance the project, the movie treatment was shelved and the album truncated to a conventional 10-song release. Despite some densely obscure lyrics, it made No 2 in the American charts and contains at least two of Anderson’s finest compositions in the lovely acoustic “Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of A New Day” and the prog classic “Bungle In The Jungle”, with a potent string arrangement by David Palmer. EXTRAS: Three bonus discs include previously 7/10 unreleased tracks, a quadrophonic version, orchestral pieces composed for the abandoned movie, some contemporary film footage and an 80-page booklet. The package offers a considerably more complete picture of Anderson’s original vision, but it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that if the movie had ever been made, it would have gone down as one of the great rock follies of our times.

Missourian singersongwriter’s 8/10 hypnotising second LP re-released digitally In recent years, Angel Olsen has given the impression of an artist coming to terms with her own talent. For a long while she was content to lurk in the shadows, providing backing vocals for Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and briefly joining Emmett Kelly’s musical collective The Cairo Gang. While her first LP, 2012’s Half Way Home, was a collection of low-key acoustic tracks built around her distinctly bruised vocals, her second, this year’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness, was made with a full band, the result being greater breadth and drama and, on occasion, a cranking up of the volume. The sharp, fuzz-filled “Forgiven/Forgotten” is the Ramones meets The Ronettes, while the seething “Stars” is part PJ Harvey, part Cat Power. Elsewhere Olsen slows the pace down to a crawl, such as on “White Fire” (“Everything is tragic/It all just falls apart”), a minor-key nod to Leonard Cohen-style lugubriousness, and on the intimately tear-stained “Enemy”. Burn Your Fire… is the sound of an artist in bloom which leaves you wondering what she will pull off next. EXTRAS: Five previously unheard songs, 7/10 three of them taken from the album’s recording sessions, including the engagingly rough-around-the-edges “All Right Now”.

Bat-biting, (very) bad boy’s solo singles 7/10 The popular image of Ozzy Osbourne as a gleefully controversial rocker in extremis has these days been replaced by one of a mumbling senior in jogging pants. Still, the singer-songwriter’s post-Black Sabbath longevity is celebrated with this compilation of 17 singles, which ranges from his multiplatinum debut solo LP, 1980’s Blizzard Of Ozz to 2010’s Scream. The first two albums featuring guitarist Randy Rhoads are widely acknowledged as Osbourne’s best, but what this set reveals is not only his (and his collaborators’) pop nous, but also the subtle stylistic shifts made according to the times. The impact of American stadium acts like Guns N’ Roses is discernible (notably on “No More Tears”), as is the challenge issued by Slayer et al, but Osbourne rarely betrays his genre. The exceptions are “Mama, I’m Coming Home”, a country-metal hybrid co-written by Lemmy, and 2003’s remake of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” as a schmaltzy piano duet with daughter Kelly. Conspicuous by its absence is “Suicide Solution”, the song that allegedly encouraged a US teen to take his own life and his parents to file a lawsuit in 1986. Osbourne’s appetite for provocation has decreased with age, it seems. EXTRAS: None.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

FIONA STURGES

SHARON O’CONNELL

HAILU MERGIA AND THE WALIAS Tche Belew

REVELATIONS

Ian Anderson on Jethro Tull’s shelved War Child movie

AWESOME TAPES FROM AFRICA

More irresistible jazz/funk from 8/10 Swinging Addis A few years ago, the Éthiopiques series of comps revealed a hitherto secret world of Addis Ababa nightclubs to western listeners; a world where traditional Ethiopian music, cool jazz, Arabic scales and JBs funk came together with rapturous consequences. Most of the music on those comps dated from the end of Haile Selassie’s rule, from the ’60s and early ’70s. This latest treasure – a crate-digger’s holy grail, it seems – dates from 1977, and the more unforgiving Derg regime. Oppression did not, however, stem the musical effervescence of Hailu Mergia and his band. Éthiopiques collectors will spot Mulatu Astatke, who recently toured and recorded with The Heliocentrics, on vibes. He solos, beautifully, on the fade of “Musicawi Silt”, something of a local anthem according to the sleevenotes. Mostly, though, it is the horn section and Mergia, on Farfisa organ, who dominate, the latter following elaborate and oblique melody lines delivered with the slurred virtuosity of his hero, Jimmy Smith. Special mention, too, for Mahmoud Aman, whose rhythm guitar, subtly reminiscent of ’70s Southern soul – updates the rich and syncopated Addis sound. EXTRAS: None. JOHN MULVEY

Ian Anderson isn’t quite sure whether he’s frustrated or relieved that his War Child movie never got made. “It wouldn’t have been commercially successful,” he admits. Yet he persuaded on board some stellar names. “I spoke to Margot Fonteyn in South America and sent her the synopsis. She agreed to a cameo role written by the Royal Ballet’s director Sir Frederick Ashton, who was grand but charming and willingly gave me his time. I was going to have Leonard Rossiter play God but then Donald Pleasance said, ‘I want to be God’. John Cleese would’ve had some acting part but his main role was to write.” Finding a director was a bigger problem. Lindsay Anderson was asked but was “abrupt and rude, really cruel and dismissive”. The American directors approached “just wanted to make it an American movie”. By then Anderson had “reached the point where I thought ‘sod it, move on’.” But could it have worked? “In retrospect my synopsis appears rather naïve. It would’ve needed a strong character who could have torn it up and started again.” NIGEL WILLIAMSON

DAVE RAY Legacy RED HOUSE

Take it, Snaker: Impressive, expansive trawl through a blues legend’s 50-year archive 8/10 As the driving acoustic six- and 12-string guitarist behind Koerner, Ray & Glover, Dave “Snaker” Ray was a force of nature, well-versed in Lead Belly, Lightnin’ and Blind Lemon, providing a yin to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s yang. Their approach was acoustic, the opposite of the super-amperage of Butterfield, but no less studied and intense, young white kids delivering blues purity with a vengeance. Despite a brief solo career and a stint with Elektra rockers Bamboo, though, Ray all but disappeared from the mainstream post-1960s. And yet Ray’s blues got deeper, more intuitive and wide-ranging with time, through thousands of live shows and occasional indie record releases. Friend and bandmate Tony Glover constructs a devastating narrative throughout this 55-track set, from strong interpretations of Sleepy John Estes, Memphis Minnie, Jimmy Reed – in truth the full pantheon of American blues singers – to material from the trio’s shocking ’96 comeback One Foot In The Groove. From a mesmerizing 1987 take on Howlin’ Wolf’s “Goin’ Down Slow”, to out-stoning the Stones to country/blues perfection on “It’s All Over Now”, to a nimble take on Arthur Crudup’s “So Glad I’m Living”, recorded just before Ray’s 2002 passing, Legacy is startling, an embarrassment of riches. EXTRAS: None. LUKE TORN

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

91

Archive TODD RUNDGREN Todd Rundgren At The BBC 1972-82 ESOTERIC

SLEAFORD MODS Chubbed Up+

STEELEYE SPAN & TERRY PRATCHETT Wintersmith

IPECAC

PARK

Utopia for Rundgren fans Seasoned Todd-botherers 7/10 have long learned to accept that the sublime must sit side-by-side with the ridiculous, and this compendium is a case in point. It kicks off with a 30-minute solo performance from the BBC’s own Paris Theatre in 1972. Despite having taken the precaution of pre-recording plush backing tracks for several songs, Todd’s own performance is a tad cavalier. On the other hand, he earns his stripes as a raconteur with a lengthy yet amusing digression about school dinners in the middle of “Piss Aaron”. Disc Two comprises a live show from 1975 with an early lineup of Utopia (including Luther Vandross on BVs!). Expanding on the setlist of Another Live with a few choice cuts from Todd’s solo catalogue, it’s full of killer harmonies, astonishing wig-outs and spectacular self-indulgence. Disc Three is mostly just the latter: a live show from 1977, by which point Utopia have gone full-on cosmic prog – although Todd’s tongue remains at least halfway in his cheek on the likes of “Singring And The Glass Guitar”. EXTRAS: Disc Four is a DVD of two Old Grey 8/10 Whistle Test appearances (the first with Utopia in 1975, the second an extended solo appearance from 1982) bookending a ludicrously outré Utopia set from the 1977 Bearsville Picnic.

Collected singles and a few newies from the Nottingham ranters 8/10 For a group who initially appeared an acquired taste, Sleaford Mods appear to be palatable to many. Two blokes from the Nottingham area, one shouting, one with a laptop, their trenchant social commentary – a volatile mix of popculture mischief and class warfare – has taken them a remarkable distance: recording with The Prodigy, touring with The Specials, beloved of Stewart Lee, that sort of thing. Singles collection Chubbed Up+, released on Mike Patton’s Ipecac, feels like a bit of a stopgap between this year’s Divide And Exit and a new album scheduled for early next year, but it nonetheless has much to recommend it. Highlights include “Pubic Hair Ltd”, a glare askance at the rock reunion; “Tweet Tweet Tweet”, a tirade against social media, apathy and UKIP to clacking drum machine and “Ghost Town”-style vocal harmonies; and “Jobseeker”, in which vocalist Jason Williamson lives out fantasies of what he’d like to have told the dole officer. The production, courtesy of Andrew Fearn, is rickety as ever, but that as ever is part of the charm. Three brand new tracks here too, the best being the closing “Fear Of Anarchy”, a Northern Soul bounce that imagines “the sunbed under the arse of Philip Green”. For all that, expect to see Sleaford Mods T-shirts in Topshop this time next year. EXTRAS: None.

Expanded edition of Span’s proggy 6/10 22nd album – and Pratchett’s first A lifelong ‘Spanner’ who cited “Thomas The Rhymer” as his all-time favourite track on Desert Island Discs in 1997, when Pratchett learnt that Maddy Prior was in turn a fan of his novels, he suggested that she try to weave some of his words into her own. She took as her source Pratchett’s 2006 novel Wintersmith and its tale of Tiffany Aching and her adventures in Discworld. First released in 2013, the results are prog-rock as much as folk-rock and have as much in common with Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds as “All Around My Hat”. The spoken-word interludes, which find Pratchett intoning lines such as “A good witch never cackles,” are particularly redolent of 1970s proggism, as are the histrionic guitar solos and rock riffing. That said, there’s some fine music here, too, usually pieces involving Peter Knight’s violin and Peter Zorn’s sax, while Maddy Prior’s voice has shed its one-time tendency to shrillness and has only got better with age. EXTRAS: A second bonus disc features four 6/10 new studio recordings, a brace of demos and eight live tracks, Peter Knight’s final recordings before his departure after more than 40 years with the band.

SAM RICHARDS

LOUIS PATTISON

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

GIL SCOTTHERON Free Will

SLIM TWIG A Hound At The Hem

NIKKI SUDDEN Fred Beethoven

(reissue, 1972)

(reissue, 2012)

TROUBADOUR

ACE

DFA

Expanded reissue of hybrid third album 8/10 After the success of his second album, 1971’s Pieces Of A Man, Scott-Heron was reportedly reluctant to record a follow-up and contemplated a return to his literary roots as a poet and novelist. His vital musical foil Brian Jackson and producer Bob Thiele persuaded him otherwise, but his mixed feelings led to an intriguingly hybrid album. Side One contained five fully-worked songs in familiar neo-jazz-soul territory, the stand-out of which is “Did You Hear What They Said?”, a coruscating critique of the disproportionate number of black conscript soldiers who were dying in Vietnam. But Side Two is even more intense and finds Scott-Heron rapping his insurrectionary verses accompanied by nothing more than flute and percussion. It’s earnest, deadly serious stuff but laced with wit, too. Try “Ain’t No New Thing”, an alternative history of popular music touched with the spark of genius, which he introduces by explaining that “white people couldn’t dig having their daughters cream over no black man wiggling on the stage so they invented Elvis Presley”. EXTRAS: A bonus disc featuring alternate takes 7/10 of the entire album, remastered from the original session tapes. It would be overegging to call it revelatory but it does offer a fascinating glimpse into Scott-Heron’s mercurial creative processes.

Cult Canadian concept album pays skewed 6/10 homage to Nabokov and Gainsbourg An actor, producer and recording artist with multiple musical personalities, Toronto-based twentysomething Max Turnbull – aka Slim Twig – had admirably grand ambitious for this selfreleased concept album back in 2012. Drawing on both Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and the 1971 Serge Gainsbourg album it inspired, Histoire De Melody Nelson, Turnbull’s sprawling cabaretpunk chansons map out the loose narrative of a predatory older man pursuing an underage girl. Couched in string arrangements by Owen Pallett, the songs lurch and swerve like a drunken music-hall orchestra. “Heavy Splendour” and “Clerical Collar” vibrate with some of the centrifugal chaos of early Nick Cave, while “Shroud By The Sheetful” is all sinister chimes and prowling menace. Turnbull’s voice is the weak link here, more muffled moan than blues explosion. His conceptual conceit is churning with rich ingredients, but lacks a strong vocal figurehead to corral its mutinous energies into line. Still, NY hipster label DFA clearly feel this cultish labour of love deserves a second chance to find an audience, and maybe they are right. Slim Twig’s louche theatricality will probably repel as many listeners as it attracts, but life is a cabaret, old chum. EXTRAS: None.

Swell Maps man’s lost rock’n’roll masterpiece 8/10 Best known for co-piloting Birmingham’s highly influential Swell Maps through post-punk with his brother Epic Soundtracks, or for his hearton-sleeve balladry with David Kusworth as the Jacobites from the mid-’80s onwards, Nikki Sudden had rock’n’roll in his DNA. Recorded across 1998 and 1999, and for some reason languishing in the vaults for fifteen years, Fred Beethoven is a rough, wild blast, pulling together some of Sudden’s long-term fascinations – the street-tough smarts of Johnny Thunders, the brutal glam minimalism of Marc Bolan, the ragged glory of The Rolling Stones at their peak – and fully inhabiting them within a set of deceptively simple, borderline-chaotic rock songs that are up there with the wilder moments of 1989’s Groove. The whole set, available on CD or light blue vinyl, is great, but reaches a peak towards its final third – a loose cover of Ronnie Lane’s “Debris” is bested by the album’s ballad, “Pin A Rose On Me”, before Sudden – who passed away in New York in 2006, aged just 49 – pulls out all the stops, building “Don’t Look Back” on the same chord changes as T.Rex’s “Get It On”. That’s the way to do it – shameless and with attitude to burn. EXTRAS: None.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

STEPHEN DALTON

JON DALE

92 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

JONI MITCHELL

Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced RHINO

Folk-rock grande dame curates her own typically eccentric retrospective. By Stephen Troussé “I AM A lonely painter,” Joni Mitchell once sang, “I live in a box of paints.” And she’s often toyed with the notion that her musical career has been one long, strange detour from her essential artistic vocation. Easy to presume, then, that this new four-disc collection, distilling 40 years’ vexed, rapturous, disconsolate meditations on the human heart, is, at last, her grand, 6/10 self-curated retrospective, perfectly framed and hung, obsessively themed and sequenced. Never one to shy from the imperious statement, Joni insists that this boxset is, in fact, an original, quasi-cinematic production. “What I have done here is to gather some of these scenes (like a documentary filmmaker) and by juxtaposition, edit them into a whole new work.” But she’s not finished: “For today’s abbreviated minds, this could be a challenge. I recommend that you who are impaired in this way try to take the trip anyway.” How can you resist the invitation? But even forewarned of the eccentricity of the enterprise, Love Has Many Faces proves to be a challenging voyage. It was originally conceived, following the success of her 2007 collaboration with the Alberta Ballet Company, as the soundtrack to a new ballet about love. But faced with the daunting challenge of self-editing, Mitchell was unable to contain herself to a sub-Wagnerian running time. What she had most enjoyed about The Fiddle And The Drum, after all, had been the opportunity to spotlight her comparatively neglected work of the ’80s and ’90s. “[These] songs have long soliloquies, like Shakespeare,” she said. “They need action to sustain the interest of some people. The ballet gives them that.” The result, with the ballet long abandoned, is a collection that hopscotches, backwards and forwards, across her back pages, in search of deeper continuities. And, on the first disc at least, the new context throws interesting light on some neglected corners. Beginning with “In France They Kiss On

Main Street” (from 1975’s The Hissing Of Summer Lawns), and its blooming smalltown schoolgirl fantasies of rock’n’roll liberty, it naturally skips a heartbeat to “Ray’s Dad’s Cadillac” (from 1991’s Night Ride Home) with its Lynchian ’50s memories of “pink fins in the falling rain”, before maturing to the midlife memories of “Chinese Cafe” (from 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast). In such company, even “Dancin’ Clown” (which, for those who have repressed its memory, features, not only Billy Idol and Tom Petty, but also Thomas Dolby on Fairlight marimba for full, high-’80s authenticity), seems like charming curio in a larger story. Assembled like this, the songs seem less like scenes in a larger movie, more like stories in an Alice Munro collection, obsessively reworking that same Canadian primal scene, tracing the consequences of that teenage wildness. But the juxtaposition is less suggestive when “Dancin’ Clown” is followed immediately by “River”, still heart-stopping after almost half a century of canonical ubiquity and imitation. The song saps its neighbours, as the main course of a river drains its tributary. As the headwater of

this main current it makes you want to put Blue on immediately. And then follow that with Court And Spark. And then dig out The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. And then wrap up the evening with Hejira. Because, of course, the problem with presenting a four-disc set of Joni Mitchell songs about love, is the widely held belief that she already did a pretty good job herself between 1970 and 1976, with a matchless sequence of albums that deepened and widened the possibilities and potency of popular song. It would be nice to report that this fresh curation brings some hitherto hidden nuggets to attention. But in fact, Love Has Many Faces doesn’t even do a particularly good job of displaying the later albums to their best effect. It draws more heavily on 1998’s Taming The Tiger than it does on The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, but, even in this indulgence, still manages to overlook “Man From Mars”, one of the most touching later songs (even if it is about her missing cat, Nietzsche). Similarly you’ll look in vain for songs you might think central to such a project: “Help Me”, “Song For Sharon”, “Blue Motel Room”… Even songs like “Hana”, from the 2007 comeback Starbucks album, Shine, aren’t without their charms, but nestled in the heart of the second disc, cheek by jowl with the uncanny “The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey” and the mighty “Hejira”, it withers. The obstinate contrariness of Love Has Many Faces is entirely characteristic and only to be admired. It’s the enduring reluctance of a great artist to accept other people’s frames, other people’s narratives. But take this case of Joni down in one five-hour draft, as she instructs, and you’ll still be on your feet. While a single sip from Court And Spark can still knock you out. EXTRAS: None. JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

93

Archive The

Specialist

SUEDE Dog Man Star – Limited Edition Box Set

Lost soul and jazz

This month: Chuck Berry Beyond Goode: Berry at his ’50s peak

CHUCK BERRY Rock And Roll Music: Any Old Way You Choose It: The Complete Studio Recordings Plus BEAR FAMILY

BEAR FAMILY RECORDS

9/10 The life’s work of a musical giant It’s impossible to overestimate Chuck Berry’s mammoth influence on rock’n’roll, indeed on western culture at large. Irrespective of the bizarre way his 60-year career has played out, his music, poetry and early spirit cast an enormous shadow on everything rock’n’roll was, is, even what it might still be. Berry had it all. A fine singer, arranger and melodist, well-versed in pop, jazz, country, boogie and blues, he was adept at assimilating everything, formulating it anew for young ears. His sly wordplay – compact but complex narratives and deft character sketches – reflected the hopes and aspirations, trials and tribulations of school-age (and beyond) persons. Berry was the portent of a new kind of adulthood, and those rolling, roiling and over-boiling guitar arpeggios, carried the listener into ecstatic new realms, signaling more than just a watershed. After “Roll Over Beethoven” Sinatra was on the ropes, Mitch Miller in the ditch. The music, especially once the formative Rolling Stones, Beatles and Beach Boys paid their debts, swiftly became canonical, overshadowing mightily the oft-troubled figure that created it. At the same time in a bitter twist of irony, Berry himself – brilliant yet paranoid, outrageously vilified in Jim Crow America – struggled to command his chaotic, if quasar-like career. Despite some notable exceptions, dime-store nostalgia, artistic redundancy and cavalier performances would dominate his career post-1965. While Berry’s been endlessly anthologised, Bear’s 16-disc, 21-hour monster represents the first effort at beginning-to-(presumably)-end documentation, foisting the brilliant early rocker against the bland pop vocalist, raucous, brain-rattling riffage against excruciating Latin balladry and “exotic” pop excursions, and finally to the diminishing return of countless remakes, remodels and, well, “My Ding-A-Ling”. Its formula invites liberal use of the skip button, yet countless rare treasures await: instrumentals galore, with extraordinary Berry/Johnnie Johnson guitar-piano interplay; superb, little-noticed Berry compositions both early (“Dear Dad”) and late (“Tulane”); the virtually forgotten Rock It, his final studio LP from 1979. His momentous, oh-so-brief 1964 post-prison son comeback – “Nadine”, Nadine , “Promised Promised Land” Land and, eventually, his finest LP, St Louis To Liverpool – may y stand as his definitive work. As tangible as this set iss – the life’s work of a musical giant ia ant – it’s the intangibles, the pure urre joy of Berry’s finest work, that att rule the day. There was a sense see of freedom flying out of those osee guitar solos; of possibility, y,, optimism, adventure. Human um man aspirations transcending and g time t generations lie within those osse rhythms. It’s simply somee of the most glorious pop music ever produced. LUKE TORN

22015 015 15 94 | UNCUT | JANUARY 20

EDSEL

Britpop band’s second album with bells on 8/10 “We were competing with the great records of the past,” said Brett Anderson recently of Suede’s 1994 album. Now, after 20 years, during which the era’s albums have been reassessed and Suede rehabilitated, Dog Man Star has become one of those records, the cornerstone of Anderson and co’s career, despite its troubled inception (guitarist Bernard Butler left the band before it was completed). Most noticeable now is how it sounds so out of its time, steeped as it is in fractured instrumentals and intense, druggy melodrama. A case in point is “Daddy’s Speeding”, a song in several acts that ratchets up the claustrophobia with wilfully murky production. Singles “The Wild Ones” and “We Are The Pigs” stand up beautifully, their noir-ish narratives buoyed by overwrought yet deeply affecting melodies. Worlds away from Britpop’s plodding guitar rock, Dog Man Star sounds as good now as it did then. EXTRAS: Everything and the kitchen sink 8/10 drama. You want piano, orchestral, live and extended versions of the album tracks? You’ve got ’em. The huge package includes a cassette of the original album, a vinyl version, DVD footage with unseen interviews, new sleevenotes from Anderson, plus lyrics, a hardback book and A2 poster.  FIONA STURGES

SWANS Filth (reissue, 1983) MUTE

Brutish studio debut from New York noise rockers, disinterred Since returning to active 7/10 service in 2010, Michael Gira’s Swans have bucked the reformation trend, turning out albums like 2012’s The Seer and this year’s To Be Kind that, by comparison, leave the group’s early work in the shade. While still labouring at compositions of sustained, brutal intensity, Gira’s latter-day work has taken on a broader, orchestral instrumentation and a certain elegance of expression – both qualities that 1983’s Filth conspicuously lacks. Still, perhaps it’s a case of not worse, just different, as this remastered vinyl edition of Filth nonetheless has much to recommend it. “Big Strong Boss” and “Blackout” are grim churns of existential horror and dissonant repetition, fusing the raw blues of Howlin’ Wolf and the scratchy no-wave of Lydia Lunch’s Teenage Jesus And The Jerks. But not unmusical, exactly: guitarist Norman Westberg, here making his debut, makes the blues scale roar like a spinning drill-bit, while two drumkits achieve a brute, slave-galley propulsion. The tape manipulations of “Freak” feel somewhat dated, and the whole thing starts to sag around the 30th minute, but Gira’s stentorian delivery – “Use money for cruelty!/Use hate for freedom!” he bellows on standout “Power For Power” – cannot easily be denied. EXTRAS: Two reproduced concert posters.

6/10 LOUIS PATTISON

Archive ULTRAMARINE Every Man And Woman Is A Star (reissue, 1992)

VARIOUS ARTISTS Scratchin’: The Wild Jimmy Spruill Story

ROUGH TRADE

GVC

Pioneering album of bucolic electronica 8/10 Pastoral techno might seem like an oxymoron, but from the orbital raves to Boards Of Canada’s remote bunker, British electronica has always had one foot in the countryside. Originally released on Brainiak in 1991 – predating Aphex Twin’s first volume of Selected Ambient Works by several months – Every Man And Woman Is A Star was one of the first post-rave LPs to employ bleeps and burbles to evoke Arcadian bliss rather than dystopian dread. The likes of “Saratoga” and “Nova Scotia” are lifted by funky flute loops and dollops of folk-jazz whimsy, presaging the duo’s collaboration with Robert Wyatt on 1993’s United Kingdoms. Like Underworld, Ultramarine were ’80s art-rockers galvanised by the acid house explosion; Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond first worked together in industrial funk outfit A Primary Industry, and Every Man… owes as much to Talk Talk and AR Kane as it does to the burgeoning rave scene, although clearly the duo had watched the sun come up on a few thumping bacchanals. Every Man…’s style of easy-listening electronica may have subsequently become the default sound of home makeover reveals and call-centre hold queues, but that can’t dull the lustre of a blissedout British original. EXTRAS: Four of the album tracks in the form 7/10 of a 1992 Peel Session.

Prolific, overlooked guitar man One of the busiest session guitarists in New York from the mid-’50s to the mid-’70s, Jimmy Spruill is thought to have played on over 3,000 sessions, notably for Bobby and Danny Robinson’s Harlem-based Fire, Fury and Everlast labels. This jubilant 61-track compilation is the most comprehensive attempt yet to chronicle an overlooked guitar hero who played on his share of R’n’B hits including Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City”, Buster Brown’s “Fanny Mae” and Lee Dorsey’s “Ya Ya”. Spruill’s signature scratchin’ style is usually evident; a hard, attacking approach that can explode at will, choking the strings way down the guitar neck and unleashing notes in quick succession – playing with the unpredictable edge that would later distinguish Mike Bloomfield’s work. Scratchin’ combines familiar tracks, mostly at the sharp, bluesier end of R’n’B and doo wop, with hard-to-find 45s credited to Wild Jimmy Spruill or as featured in long-forgotten bands led by Noble ‘Thin Man’ Watts, Charles Walker and Horace Cooper. Let off the leash, Wild Jimmy runs rampant on raw instrumentals such as “Hard Grind”, “Driving Home”, “Hard Times” and “Scratchin’” that make a strong case for some long overdue recognition. EXTRAS: None.

SAM RICHARDS

MICK HOUGHTON

8/10

HOW TO BUY... SWANS

VARIOUS ARTISTS The Deeply Vale Box

Michael Gira’s brutal best est

Cop/Young God/Holy Money YOUNG GOD, 1999 A double-CD set collects three early Swans albums and the “Young God” EP, highlighting their early, brutal extremity, and the gradual integration of Jarboe into the band. Her commanding delivery on “A Hanging” and the piano-led “You Need Me” marks the maturation of Swans into a more complex, musical beast.

8/10 The Burning World UNI, 1989

Following their breakout cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, Swans made a brief foray into majorlabel land. Gira himself calls it “a debacle”, but the Bill Laswell-produced The Burning World has much to recommend it, the likes of “Saved” exploring a gothic Americana augmented with tabla, bouzouki and strings.

7/10 To Be Kind YOUNG GOD/MUTE, 2014

Spanning two hours, the tireless To Be Kind is a monumental achievement, from the crashing crescendos of 30-minute centrepiece “Bring The Sun”/“T’oussaint L’Ouverture” to more tender moments featuring cameos from Little Annie, Cold Specks and St Vincent.

9/10 LOUIS PATTISON

OZIT/MORPHEUS

East Lancashire’s punky Woodstock immortalised Punk drew a dividing line between generations in London’, but the 7/10 ‘that situation in the hinterlands was never quite so clear-cut. The four annual Deeply Vale free festivals near Bury from 1976’79, were a weirdly egalitarian idyll where Steve Hillage and punk co-existed in a state of prelapsarian harmony. These 6CDs, compiled by one of the festivals’ organisers, Chris Hewitt, mix lo-fi and hi-fi, old and new, in appropriately benign and bewildering fashion. Hence, the 1978 Fall’s live reading of Vince Taylor’s “Brand New Cadillac” is preserved along with five minutes of stage commentary on the festival’s joint-rolling contest. Libertarian principles are upheld in words by Accident On The East Lancs’ pot-smoking punkarama “We Want It Legalised”, and in spirit by Graham ‘808 State’ Massey’s punky-fleabag band Danny And The Dressmakers, shriek-and-hope masterpieces like “Ernie Bishop’s Dead Body” and “How Hot Is A Match?” encapsulating the impishly anarchic spirit of the times. EXTRAS: Witnesses share memories in a book 8/10 which also documents how heroin, selfishness and intransigent farmers spelled the festival’s demise. Light up your free joss sticks and you can almost feel the 1980s coming. JIM WIRTH

COMING NEXT MONTH... The eponymous debut record by San Francisco’s Jessica Pratt had most of the people who heard it proclaiming it timeless, affecting, in a Laurel Canyon tradition, and not completely unlike Joanna Newsom. While that album – released by Birth records, the label run by Tim Presley from White Fence – was direct in its simplicity, the new one On Your Own Love Again, to arrive at the end of January on Drag City is different. Of course, you’ll still find Pratt’s pure, clear voice and detailed songwriting – but there’s also a psychedelic playfulness present, as she artificially stretches her voice into new shapes. No stranger to that is Panda Bear – the Animal Collective musician is back with Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper, which is rich, heavy and very strange. Into this absurdly active month come a host of other strong new voices: not least Curtis Harding, Sons Of Bill and Matthew E White associate Natalie Prass, and strong returns from The Waterboys and Alasdair Roberts. There’s also a couple of utterly dissimilar species emerging from hibernation: lesser-spotted people’s band The Charlatans and, hot on the heels of a boxset VISIT UNCUT.CO.UK compiling their previous FOR OVER 5,000 work, the soaring indie guitar ARCHIVED rock of critics’ favourites REVIEWS! Sleater-Kinney. [email protected]

Films BY

MICH A EL BON N ER

This month: a perfect role for Bill Murray; up close with Muhammad Ali; Cumberbatch as Turing; and a decent vampire caper

S

T VINCENT A few months ago, Bill Murray was the subject of a cruel internet hoax. According to an online news story, subsequently discredited, Murray was to star in a sequel to The Big Lebowski, where he would play the long-lost brother to Jeff Bridges’ accidental hero, The Dude. As a piece of wish-fulfilment casting, it was perfect. After all, who wouldn’t want to see Murray dance round his house in his underwear to Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love”? St Vincent is the closest we may get to seeing Murray as an errant Lebowski. His Vincent MacKenna is an unruly Brooklyn retiree living in splendidly grumpy isolation. His only companion is a cat, though he employs a pregnant Russian prostitute (Naomi Watts) to fulfil his physical needs. Whatever other social interaction he tolerates appears to take place either at the racetrack or the bar. Vincent, the eccentric grouch, is a perfect character for Murray: and he plays the part noteperfectly. But watching him does beg the question, how many Bill Murray films have actually done justice to Bill Murray? Surprisingly, this is his first starring role in a decade; though he is capable of lighting up even a wobbly film like The Monuments Men with only the most meagre of ingredients. But while St Vincent offers Murray the chance to play a splendidly curdled curmudgeon, the movie itself becomes an increasingly hokey proposition. Vincent reluctantly agrees to babysit Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), the kid next door, for his overstretched mother (Melissa McCarthy), as a way to fund his trips to the track. Plot-wise, there are clear parallels with Bad Santa. What follows is a by-numbers unravelling of Vincent until – ta da! – the good man beneath the grumpy exterior is revealed. There is something to be said for the element of surprise, which is sadly absent here. But debuting writer/director Theodore Melfi at least allows his star the chance to do all the things we love about Bill Murray – testy, irreverent, mean. A sequence over the closing credits, where Murray delivers a one-take rendition of Dylan’s “Shelter From The Storm” has all the loose, freewheeling spirit you wished Melfi had brought to the rest of the film.

➤ I Am Ali For her documentary on Muhammad Ali, filmmaker Clare Lewins has been granted unprecedented access to the boxer’s personal archives, family, friends and former colleagues. But admittance into the inner circle comes with its own set of problems. While it’s undoubtedly an impressive coup to hear vintage audio of Ali’s phone conversations, Lewins’ portrait is a relatively sanitised account, lacking in fresh insight and sidestepping controversy. Even with a wealth of uncovered archival material, I Am Ali plays like a greatest hits version of its subject’s life. The film opens with Lewins’ camera prowling towards Ali’s house, a television showing his 1965 appearance on US quiz show What’s My Line? (“Are you primarily in nighclubs?”, asks panellist Arlene Francis). Over a black screen, we hear him on the phone chatting to his young daughter May May in 1979. Lewins presents Ali as a genial family man. The queue of talking heads lining up to sing his praises is vast: ex-business manager Gene Kilroy tell us, “Everybody wanted to be around him,

everybody wanted to meet him,” his brother Rahman Ali claims. “He was born for greatness.” This, pretty much, is the narrative line pursed through the rest of the film by Lewins. Those closest to Ali – including Angelo Dundee, who looks like Rod Steiger, his ex-wife Veronica Porsche – offer us platitudes and familiar anecdotes. Indeed, Ali’s past is well-documented, but presumably out of respect for his condition with Parkinson’s, there’s no real discussion about the present. As such, I Am Ali feels incomplete.

➤ The Homesman In only his second film as director, Tommy Lee Jones offers us a sobering glimpse of frontier life. This is the vast Nebraska Territory circa 1870, a forbidding, dusty flatland empty but for a few stunted trees. In Loup, such are the hardships endured by the settlers, three women have been driven mad. It falls to the lonely, devout Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) to transport them back east to their families: it transpires that their husbands have no stomach

Reviewed this month... ST VINCENT

I AM ALI

Director Theodore Melfi Starring Bill Murray, Naomi Watts Opens Dec 5 Cert 12A

Director Clare Lewins Starring Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson Opens Nov 26 Cert PG

7/10

6/10

96 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

THE HOMESMAN

THE IMITATION GAME

Director Tommy Lee Jones Starring Hilary Swank, Tommy Lee Jones Opened Nov 21 Cert 15

Director Morten Tyldum Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley Opened Nov 14 Cert 12A

8/10

7/10

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS Directors Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi Starring Jemaine Clement Opened Nov 21 Cert 12A

7/10

Films A splendidly curdled curmudgeon: Bill Murray in St Vincent

is conspicuously present in the experiences of the tormented women of The Homesman.

➤ The Imitation Game “Have we reached Peak Benedict Cumberbatch?” asked a British broadsheet recently, before devoting further space to a news story claiming that the actor was in fact related to Alan Turing, the British mathematician played by Cumberbatch in his new film, The Imitation Game. Turing has already been the subject of an oratorio this year – by the Pet Shop Boys, which premiered during the Proms. Elsewhere, Turing’s WWII world of Bletchley codebreakers has been relatively recently documented by Robert Harris in his thriller, Enigma, later brought to the screen by producer Mick Jagger – who owns one of the fabled Enigma machines. But despite his remarkable achievements during WWII, Turing is a relatively unfamiliar figure. This allows Cumberbatch to do, basically, Cumberbatch: testy, brilliant, arrogant, a retread of some of his familiar Sherlock characteristics. But in real life, Turing was a far more complicated individual: beyond his Bletchley triumphs, he had a difficult relationship with a female mathematician (played here by Keira Knightley) while his criminalisation for homosexuality led to his suicide in ’54. Norwegian director Morten Tyldum presents a solid piece of heritage drama, peopled by the likes of Charles Dance, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear and Mark Strong. It’s good film – but not quite in the same league as next month’s The Theory Of Everything, another biopic of a brilliant scientific mind, Stephen Hawking, a role Cumberbatch previously played in a 2002 British TV drama. for the task. Cuddy is joined by George Briggs (Jones), a claim jumper who she saves from a lynching on condition he join her on this difficult journey. Adapted from a 1988 novel by Glendon Swarthout, The Homesman shares a few key similarities with Jones’ previous directorial outing – another Western – The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. Both films address the hardness of the West, and both rely on a promise to help propel the story. But there are other, familiar elements bubbling away under the film’s grizzly hide. The pairing of the upright Cuddy and crabby Briggs recalls Hepburn and Bogart in The African Queen, while the bewhiskered Jones looks like a cross between Lee Marvin and Warren Oates. But as the film progresses, it becomes apparent that Jones isn’t telling an entirely conventional story. There are stray encounters with Native Americans, rival cowboys and settlers, but none of them necessarily pan out in the way you’d expect, adding a strangeness to the narrative. A sequence with James Spader, as a grandiloquent Irish settler who is hoping to attract high clientele to his newly built hotel, starts off as broad comedy before unexpectedly turning dark. Commendably, the film grapples with some risky ideas. Cuddy is tough and staunchly independent, but Jones offers no false impressions about feminist impulses on the frontier. The cost of expansionism

➤ What We Do In The Shadows While Bret McKenzie has enjoyed success as a songwriter on the two most recent Muppets films, his former Flight Of The Conchords collaborator, Jemaine Clement, has been a less conspicuous presence. Clement returns – or, more aptly, is resurrected – for this vampire mockumentary, which he co-wrote, directs and stars in. He plays 862-year-old Vladislav, one of three vampires sharing a flat in a suburb of Wellington. At 80 minutes, part of the film’s charm is the speed at which it rattles along. There is little substance; it’s really just a selection of sketches and scenes strung loosely together. But it is pretty funny stuff: a significant improvement on the last vampire comedy, Tim Burton’s woeful Dark Shadows in 2012. The plot follows an NZ documentary crew who’ve been allowed to follow a group of vampires in the months leading up to an annual masked ball, attended by the country’s supernatural entities. Clement’s Vladislaw is a European aristocrat – aka “Vlad the poker” – fallen on hard times. His flatmates are slovenly Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) and Nosferatulike Petyr (Ben Fransham); Flight Of The Conchords fans will be pleased to see Rhys Darby as Anton, head of the New Zealand werewolf pack. Amid the jokes, though, are strangely affecting moments. When introduced to the internet, one of the first things the vampires want to see is a sunrise.

When introduced to the internet, one of the first things the vampires want to see is a sunrise

Also out... THE GRANDMASTER OPENS DECEMBER 5 Reviewed in Take 211. Wong Kar-Wai’s opulent period drama; martial arts and painterly set pieces in 1930s China.

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES OPENS DECEMBER 12 Pray heaven, let this be it. Peter Jackson’s final spin round Middle Earth. Expect a lengthy run time. Cushions required.

DUMB AND DUMBER TO OPENS DECEMBER 19 After years in the wilderness, a possible career comeback for Jim Carrey, reprising a successful early role with the film’s original directors, the Farrelly brothers.

GUYS AND DOLLS OPENS DECEMBER 19 Brando and Sinatra square up in Joseph Mankiewicz’s vibrant adaptation of the Broadway musical; digitally remastered and in all major UK cities.

KON-TIKI OPENS DECEMBER 19 Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 voyage across the Pacific, recreated here in this epic drama.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB OPENS DECEMBER 19 Third time unlucky for Ben Stiller family comedy franchise: it’s Mickey Rooney’s final film and one of the last films Robin Williams made before he died.

ANNIE OPENS DECEMBER 26 The post-Christmas graveyard is populated by a surprising number of big-name projects, starting with this remake starring Jamie Foxx.

BIG EYES OPENS DECEMBER 26 Tim Burton joins the Boxing Day throng with this biopic about US painter Walter Keane. Stars Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.

Christian Bale in Exodus: Gods And Kings

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS OPENS DECEMBER 26 Christian Bale is Moses! Ridley Scott directs; can’t be worse than Aronofsky’s turgid Noah.

UNBROKEN OPENS DECEMBER 26 Angelina Jolie directs rising Brit star Jack O’Connell – Starred Up, ’71 – in a true-life drama about an Olympic track star who survived two years in a Japanese POW camp.

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

97

S C I- F I

O C T O B E R – D E C E M B E R 2 0 14

Over 1000 screenings of classic film and TV, brought to you by the BFI Film Audience Network Cornerhouse Manchester Insomniac Invasion Sci-Fi all-nighter Sat 15 – Sun 16 Nov

Watershed, Bristol DJ Cheeba presents Plan 9 From Outer Space Fri 21 Nov

ICA London Björk’s Biophilia Live + Q&A Sat 22 Nov

Duke of York’s Brighton Man with X-Ray Eyes + Pere Ubu live score Sun 23 Nov

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes John Carpenter’s Dark Star + live score by Animat

Wakefield, Huddersfield & Ilkley DJ Yoda creates a virtuoso live Sci-Fi movie mash-up

Sat 22 Nov

Thu 27 – Sun 30 Nov

Chapter, Cardiff Trip to the Moon + Pat (Datblygu) live score Sat 6 Dec

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Black Box, Belfast The Incredible Melting Man Sun 14 Dec

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T H IS MON T H: R EM ON MT V | BR A ZIL | THE SIXTIES | SGT BILKO

Madness on the road: John Densmore and Jim Morrison

THE DOORS Feast Of Friends EAGLE ROCK

Morrison and co’s oblique tour documentary. By John Robinson NOT ONLY WAS he singer, poet and lizard king, Jim Morrison was also a decent movie critic. Asked about the filming that ultimately ends up as Feast Of Friends, he looks characteristically bemused but makes a wry observation. “It’s a fictional documentary,” he tells the camera. “It’s making itself…” He’s certainly on to something. Neither as tedious as a procedural rock doc, nor as abstract as a piece of period freaksploitation, Feast For Friends – like most Doors-related film artefacts – occupies a place between home movie and next-level music piece, effortlessly over-reaching one role but falling short of the other.  Filmed by Paul Ferrara, a UCLA Film School friend of Morrison’s, Feast Of Friends doesn’t have much in the way of narrative, but it makes up for it in sheer beauty, a powerful Doors quality. Notionally an account of the band’s 1968 American tour, in truth that fact is more something that you discover for yourself than from the film.  Faced with a wealth of good material, deriving from the madness and controversy of Doors performances at the time, Ferrara seems uncertain what to do. Undoubtedly a talented filmmaker and editor, he montages stage invasions to the extent that a disproportionately large chunk of

8/10

the film’s running time is spent watching a Keystone Cops slapstick of kids foiled by burly, nightstick-wielding policemen. Nor is any of this accompanied by live music.  Better by far are the moments when he lets the film run, and observe The Doors being a great live band. No-one over the age of 19 is probably especially excited about hearing “The End” another time, but the long preamble here, where Morrison attempts to get the lights turned down in the auditorium raises warm laughter, as might greet an accomplished chat show guest, and casts Morrison in a different light. As much as by their music, The Doors worked by seduction, and a strength of his film is that Ferrara allows himself to be seduced. Never mind what they think their movie is about – there’s a great deal of pleasure to watch The Doors simply walking about in the modern America that charmed and horrified them. There is a beautiful vignette of the band on a yacht, and some nice stuff from a small plane. Watching the band on a monorail, rubbing shoulders, just about, with John Q Public in his sports coat, is wonderful – the band’s potential to charm and outrage right there in the carriage. The band and their public, specifically the fragile boundaries between them, is the film’s tacit subject. The stage invasions are one thing, but what is almost accidentally recounted here is the band’s growing stature, and the elevation of Morrison into a star – and about the contexts in which this has meaning, and those where it doesn’t.

We follow the band silently cross a carpeted expanse en route to the stage, a mass of press and “industry” others behind a cordon. We are in the limousine as the band arrive at a venue: fans address Morrison, and one girl places her hand on his crotch, more to her disbelief than his. We are backstage with a girl who has been hit by a chair. She is sitting with Morrison, who explains to the camera what has happened, and wipes the blood that is streaming down her face. These moments are both incredibly intimate, of course. But what’s staggering about them is not so much the sense of a boundary being crossed, as a boundary simply not being there in the first place. You can’t imagine Mick Jagger wiping blood in ’72, or – as Morrison does here – having a conversation with an intense, pipe-chewing clergyman about the nature of his art. Later in 1968, The Doors entered a more dangerous arena – the British living-room, in the run-up to Christmas. The first rock film to be commissioned by UK TV, The Doors Are Open (the supporting feature on this DVD) is a black and white film which captures the band in London, backstage, and on it at the Roundhouse just a few days after their US tour ended. The narrator advises that to his fans Jim Morrison is “poet, prophet and politician”. Where Ferrara’s camera has no agenda, The Doors Are Open has one set in stone: The Doors as a political band, and duly intercuts their music with footage of news events. Jim Morrison, to his credit, comes up with some mildly controversial supporting quotage (“These days to be a superstar you have to be a politician or an assassin”), but it is Robby Krieger who best articulates the band and the mood of this DVD as a whole. Is the band political? “Our music,” he says, “is more symbolic.” EXTRAS: Extra scenes: Morrison swimming, 7/10 communing with rocks etc. JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

99

DVD & Blu-ray OUT OF THE UNKNOWN

REM REMTV

BFI

WARNER MUSIC

Futureshock from the vaults From 1965-’71, the BBC’s questing, grown-up sci-fi anthology adapted wildly divergent writers from EM Forster to Isaac Asimov by way of JG Ballard. Many 10/10 episodes were wiped; the surviving 20 have languished unseen for decades, beyond washed-out bootleg cults. Beautifully restored for this seven-disc set, they’re a revelation, variously stark, sly, unsettling, visionary and shaky, some unexpectedly moving, some outright barking: ’65’s excellent “Stranger In The Family” is Cronenberg’s Scanners 16 years early. A world of wonders, and radiophonic as you please. EXTRAS: Sumptuous notes, making-of doc, 10/10 commentaries, lost episode reconstructions, galleries.

Six-disc live summary When they started, REM couldn’t get radio play. As their popularity grew, so did the importance of MTV, which – with Michael 8/10 Stipe curating the visuals – they exploited brilliantly. This extensive survey eschews videos, concentrating on live performances, plus two Unplugged shows, and the entertaining Storytellers appearance (all with unreleased songs). The highlight is a new feature-length documentary which shows how wilful perversity begat mass success. Highlights include Mike Mills’ fragile piano version of “Rockville”, and Stipe’s anecdote about the deification of koala bears. EXTRAS: None.

DAMIEN LOVE

ALASTAIR McKAY

BLACULA: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

RED SHIFT BFI

Blaxploitation horror double-bill, fun in small bites Legendary low-budget studio AIP caught the Blaxploitation wave 7/10 with 1972’s Blacula, in which 18th-Century African prince William Marshall travels to Transylvania hoping to recruit Dracula in the fight to defeat slavery (…uh?), only to get bitten and wake up 200 years later as a curiously noble bloodsucker in sleazy (and homophobic) ’70s Los Angeles. Better than it should be, with a killer soundtrack. 1973 sequel Scream Blacula Scream isn’t as good, but does have a voodoo Pam Grier. EXTRAS: Sumptuous booklet, trailers, 7/10 and introductions for both movies.

Exceptional ’70s sci-fi-ish TV episode The BBC’s Play For Today is today instantly associated with gritty social realism, but in fact that anthology shifted week by week as different 9/10 voices screamed and whispered. Case in point: this ambitious, time-slipping, mind-bending 1978 episode, adapted by Alan Garner from his own novel. It begins as a strangely poetic contemporary teen-angst love story, then splinters into piercing, impressionistic psychic folk sci-fi, as three parallel narratives echo across 1,000 years in the same leafy, bloody corner of England. Essential for fans of Garner, and British TV’s forgotten possibilities. EXTRAS: Sublime 1972 Garner doc, short 10/10 film, interviews, packed booklet.

DAMIEN LOVE

DAMIEN LOVE

EUREKA

BRASIL BAM BAM BAM: THE STORY OF SONZEIRA TALKIN’ LOUD / VIRGIN EMI

THE SIXTIES FREMANTLE MEDIA INTERNATIONAL

A wide-ranging trip to Rio DJ Gilles Peterson – imagine a particularly impish Martin Freeman – makes an engaging host as he takes us to Rio to 8/10 oversee the recording of his all-star AngloBrazilian album. The trip becomes a chance to explore his favourite Brazilian music: interviewing his samba and jazz heroes (Marcos Valle, Ed Motta, Elza Soares, Seu Jorge, Naná Vasconcelos), visiting line-dancing carnivals and the fanatically supported samba schools, as well as digging crates to find a rare-as-hen’s-teeth LP by José Prates. Even the grimmer moments – like an investigation into the police’s pacification of Rio’s favelas – are beautifully filmed. EXTRAS: None.

A treasure trove of archival footage This three-disc set features all 10 episodes of the recent Tom Hanksproduced history of the ’60s. With each 40-minute 7/10 episode focusing on a different topic – JFK’s assassination, Vietnam, “Sex, Drugs And Rock’n’Roll” or 1968 – the analysis can be rather superficial, and it suffers from a lack of chronological narrative, but there’s so much excellent archival footage it’s easy to forgive. There are two musicspecific episodes, with the one on the British Invasion particularly fun, looking at Beatlemania from a US perspective and featuring some wonderful, lesser-seen contemporary footage.  EXTRAS: None.

JOHN LEWIS

PETER WATTS

100 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

Silvers as Sgt Bilko, second left

SGT BILKO:

THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW FREMANTLE MEDIA

Ten-hut! 62 hours of square-bashing and scheming… IN THEORY, PHIL Silvers should have mistrusted TV. Cinema had been stealing fans from the vaudeville/burlesque circuits where he cut his teeth for decades, and by ’55, when Master 10/10 Sergeant Ernest G Bilko made his bow, the smaller screen of the idiot’s lantern was threatening to wipe the variety revues of yore off the map. However, arguably more successfully than any all-rounder of his generation (Silvers was a comic, dancer and singer), he embraced TV to become a pioneer of the nascent sitcom form. More than 50 years after “The Last Post” sounded at Fort Baxter and Bilko returned to Civvy St, The Phil Silvers Show remains one of the most influential comedies ever. While it’s easy to rack up a series of firsts when so little has gone before, the Bilko concept was especially daring. Debuting just 10 years after the end of WWII, audiences had never seen the military lampooned so mercilessly, figures of authority like Colonel Hall (a superb Paul Ford) fleeced and flummoxed by a subordinate. And although US TV networks, including Bilko’s home at CBS, strenuously denied there was ever anything remotely resembling a colour bar, it was rare to see such a racially integrated cast as the platoon of squaddies. As for Bilko himself, who would have thought a borderline crook (albeit a silver-tongued one) could become an instant hero with audiences? Bilko set the template for small-screen wheelerdealers, from Private Walker in Dad’s Army to the likes of Arthur Daley, Del Trotter and Timothy Spall’s short-lived Frank Stubbs. This is where Silvers was key, his vaudeville background helping him connect with the man in the cheap seats; early episodes had him occasionally break the fourth wall to speak directly to viewers, making them co-conspirators, and his elastic facial expressions were essential in driving home the comedy of any given situation. The fast pace and farcical elements of vaudeville are evident in the breakneck speed of the action, the scripts of creator Nat Hiken (and a team of writers that included future Broadway stalwart Neil Simon) noticeably longer than standard sitcom fare – a dense, overwriting technique that John Cleese used to equally brilliant effect in Fawlty Towers. Such was the labour-intensive nature of ’50s US TV, The Phil Silvers Show notched up 142 episodes in four years, all of which can be found in this 20-disc box, and there’s hardly a duffer among them. Sgt Bilko may not have triumphed in every underhand scheme, but in terms of comedy genius he more than earned his stripes. EXTRAS: Lost footage, archive BBC doc, Silvers 8/10 chat show appearances, alternate opening titles, commentaries. TERRY STAUNTON

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ROCKING IN THE FREE WORLD Roger McGuinn onstage at the Passionskirche, Berlin with his potted plants and trusty guitars

SETLIST

FRANK HOENSCH/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES

1 2 3 4 5

My Back Pages You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere Pretty Boy Floyd Ballad Of Easy Rider They Hung Him On A Cross 6 5D (Fifth Dimension) 7 Mr Spaceman 8 Russian Hill 9 Don’t You Write Her Off 10 The Grapes Of Wrath 11 Jolly Roger 12 Randy Dandy Oh 13 Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door 14 So You Want To Be A Rock’n’Roll Star 15 An American Girl 16 King Of The Hill 17 Chestnut Mare 18 Beach Ball 19 You Showed Me 20 Mr Tambourine Man 21 Eight Miles High

ENCORE 22 Turn! Turn! Turn! 23 Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her

104 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

ROGER MCGUINN THE ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, MANCHESTER, NOVEMBER 7, 2014

A rock legend’s long, heroic flyte from the music business. Next stop, Manchester!

R

OGER McGUINN IS regaling a packed house with an anecdote about Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Recalling the famous Stateside jaunt of 1975-’76, in which he featured alongside the likes of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Mick Ronson, his fondest memories are of the marathon four-hour gigs and tour buses that “rolled back and forth like pirate ships”. The story acts as a prelude to “Jolly Roger”, a sea shanty that fetched up, as a direct result, on his subsequent solo album, Cardiff Rose. Songs of the sea are a key source of nourishment for McGuinn. The show includes a fair smattering, dotted in among more-celebrated tunes from his illustrious days with The Byrds and

beyond. Even “Don’t You Write Her Off”, the gig’s sole concession to 1979’s McGuinn, Clark & Hillman album, made with two ex-Byrds, dives into a sailing analogy. It’s all part of an overarching theme to his professional life that offers a refreshing alternative to the typical model. As one of the first musicians to map the potential of the internet, McGuinn has been issuing online product since the mid-’90s, primarily through his web page and as curator of the music repository site, Folk Den. Most intriguing, however, is the nature of his touring operation. Not for him the heavy-duty regimen of buses, backing bands and roadies. Instead he plays solo throughout the US and Europe, travelling from city to city via

motorhome, train and the occasional boat, in the company of his road manager wife, Camilla. All this is diarised in the couple’s ongoing blog (http://rogermcguinn. blogspot.com/), which places McGuinn’s work into the context of a wider travelogue. It’s an interesting paradox. On one hand, he’s a direct link to the oldest form of musical entertainment: the wandering minstrel, armed with suitcase and guitar, breezing into town under his own steam. But this autonomy can also be seen as something thoroughly modern, a sustainable way of living that isn’t held accountable to a record label. “In the ’80s I was on tour with McGuinn, Clark & Hillman and it wasn’t very satisfying,” he explains later. “We’d been flying around, running

trucks and everything, and I was tired of the band experience. On the Rolling Thunder Revue, Ramblin’ Jack had told me that the most fun he ever had was when he threw the guitar in the back of the Land Rover and went on the road with his wife Polly, barnstorming around the US. So I told Camilla that I wanted to go solo from now on.” Not everyone is positioned to do this, of course. As one of the foremost figures of his era, a man whose chiming Rickenbacker came to embody the bold possibilities of West Coast folkrock during his time with The Byrds, McGuinn’s name still carries a lot of clout. He’s thankful, he says, for having enough cachet to be able to bypass the big promoters entirely. “Somebody offered us a record deal a couple of years ago and we both went, ‘No!’” he grins, making the sign of the cross in mock horror. “Who do you think would get all the money?” Reaching for a Biblical reference, Camilla likens this freedom from bondage to the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. Their current tour is winding down after threeand-a-half months on the road. It’s an itinerary that’s taken them from Belgium through to Germany, Austria, the UK, Holland and back again to Blighty for a final swing. The blog is stuffed with informal accounts of inter-rail travel, balmy beer gardens, broken escalators and historic architecture, accompanied by Camilla’s artful

photos of Nuremberg, Cologne, Paris, London and more. “At some point we hope to take the blog and put it all together in one collection,” says Roger, “either electronically or physical print.” It’s an informal approach that finds a mirror in McGuinn’s stage show. This isn’t a straight run at the hits. Rather, it’s tied to another time-held folk tradition: the storyteller. Each song is prefaced by a pertinent yarn, almost all involving the kind of casual namedropping that’s the preserve of true legends. Dylan looms large. “My Back Pages” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, both elegantly wrought Byrds numbers, raise a chuckle as he recalls cocking up the latter in 1968, prompting Dylan to respond in fake outrage by altering his lyric to “Pack up your money, put up your tent McGuinn”. Then there’s the time Peter Fonda gave Dylan a private screening of the yet-to-bereleased Easy Rider, only for Bob, unmoved, to scrawl a couple of lines on a napkin and instruct him to “give it to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.” The result: “Ballad Of Easy Rider”. Later on we get tales of Sam Peckinpah as a run-up to “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, McGuinn’s high-register voice, delicately cracked at the edges these days, imbuing the song with a plaintive air missing from Dylan’s original. This narrative aspect of McGuinn’s live show works particularly well, though it’s something he’s refined and calibrated over the years. “It’s become more autobiographical as I’ve gone along,” he explains backstage. “Pete Seeger was a big influence. After he left The Weavers and went off

“I always wanted to be like Pete Seeger, telling stories and singing songs...”

on his own, I was blown away by how wonderful he was in concert. I kind of said to myself: ‘That’s what I want to do when I grow up.’ I really tried to be a solo artist for many years, but found myself in situations where that wasn’t practical. But I really always wanted to be like Pete, telling stories and singing songs.” With all this going on, it’s easy to forget that McGuinn is also a brilliant guitar player. The stage set-up is simple – a low stool, some potted plants, two guitars, one acoustic, one Rickenbacker. The bluegrass flurries of Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd” are little short of dazzling. “So You Want To Be A Rock’n’Roll Star” is decanted so effortlessly, all dashing chords and keening vocals, that you wonder if The Byrds ever knew how great they truly were. And “Eight Miles High” – which has, he tells us, grown from its Coltrane/Shankar origins to accommodate a bit of Andrés Segovia, “thrown in just for fun” – is quite astonishing. The lengthy preamble to “Mr Tambourine Man”, meanwhile, finds him recounting how The Byrds got together at the Troubadour, McGuinn meeting Gene Clark and then “this chubby little guy” who turned out to be David Crosby. Given that these songs still mean so much to so many, and that 2015 will mark the band’s 50th anniversary, a Byrds reunion may seem like a logical step. Crosby, certainly, has made no secret of the fact that he’d do it again in a heartbeat. He may have a long wait, though: McGuinn is having none of it. “I understand it,” he tells me afterwards. “But that would be going back, in a way, to something that’s not necessary. Camilla and I really have a blast the way things are. It’s like a honeymoon. I’m not afraid to talk about The Byrds, I just don’t want to be in The Byrds. As Paul McCartney once said: ‘You can’t reheat a soufflé.’” ROB HUGHES

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

105

CAMILLA MCGUINN/MCGUINN.COM

Free Byrd: (c/wise from above) McGuinn in Berlin, travelling the UK by train, crossing the Thames, and recording a radio session in Belgium

Live Andrew Fearn, left, and Jason Williamson – working up a proper head of steam

SLEAFORD MODS 100 CLUB, LONDON, OCTOBER 23, 2014

Which may be a sshame – although a faintly intimidating fa figure, this is not fi just some bloke ju shouting abuse. sh Instead, his songs In are passionate and ar forensic, defining fo his position by SETLIST railing against its the gesticulations 1 Middle Men opposite. “The Wage of the hip-hop MC, 2 Jolly Fucker Don’t Fit” attacks an assume an intensity employer’s shortquite their own. 3 A Little Ditty termist mentality Throughout, he runs 4 McFlurry with passing swipes his hands through 5 Jobseeker at “That speed freak his hair – part OCD, 6 Tied Up In Nottz from The Kills/Jamie/ part expression of 7 Tiswas Banal! Banal!”. inner rage. 8 Fizzy Tonight, “My What’s strange, Jampandy” (chorus: though, is that far 9 Routine Dean “The man is a from being toxic, the 10 Donkey wanker!”) probably atmosphere here is 11 The Corgi does the job best. Here, magnificent. True 12 My Jampandy over a thunderous enough, compared 13 The Wage Don’t Fit beat, Williamson talks to the support bands, 14 Pubic Hair Ltd about his disdain for Sleaford Mods sound lad culture (“That Ian like Genesis, but the 15 Tweet Tweet Tweet McCulloch… terrace energy – apart from bit”), and getting “a during “Tiswas”, latte in the French-style café” when where someone appears to throw out in the park, with his daughter something – is hugely positive. in a pushchair. Andrew Fearn, whose role onstage is To be able to express that in a noisy simply to nod along to the music and room helps outline the Sleaford Mods’ drink cans of Stella, seems key to this. genius. It’s not magical, but it makes He radiates a genuinely good vibe, compelling music from the details of to the point where some quite drunk how lives are really lived – which has person climbs onstage to give him got to be good news for everyone who a hug. No-one, it should be noted, lives one. JOHN ROBINSON goes near Jason Williamson.

2014’s premier prole art threat. Wankers beware!

ROSS GILMORE/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES

O

NCE A VENUE for jazzers, the 100 Club is now more associated with rawer expressions of musical freedom. Since the punk festival held there in 1976, it’s become a statement venue, rich in heritage for those who would wish to claim by association some of punk’s revolutionary energy. To suggest, in fact, that something is happening here. Tonight’s Sleaford Mods show, while incredibly good, suggests nothing of the kind. The place isn’t rammed with scenesters. It’s not sold out. Nor is the company especially desirable: the band play after power electronics bands, both heckled throughout by a woman screaming “wankers!” at them. It’s not an especially aspirational scene. Which all suits this Nottingham duo nicely. Without doubt the year’s unlikeliest breakout band, the fortysomething ’Mods have received critical acclaim, essentially, for their sheer negativity. Their music, a combination of primitive beats (supplied by Andrew Fearn) and ranted raps (delivered by Jason

106 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

Williamson), essentially presents the view from the high street. It’s not transformative, and it doesn’t “make the ordinary extraordinary”. In songs like “Jobseeker” and “Routine Dean”, it simply presents the interior monologues of characters frustrated by bureaucracy, and of self-loathing fuelled by consumerism. Live, the momentum generated by the parade of short, aggressive songs is impressive. The crowd all have their favourite moments of bitter empathy, to which they scream along. Williamson, meanwhile, a muscular performer, works up a proper head of steam. His arm movements, beyond

This isn’t just some bloke shouting abuse – these are passionate and forensic songs

LIVE TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160

LIVE For tickets to any UK gigs, tours or festivals please call the 24-hour Uncut Ticketline on 0870 160 1600

LIVE TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160

LIVE For tickets to any UK gigs, tours or festivals please call the 24-hour Uncut Ticketline on 0870 160 1600

LIVE TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160

LIVE For tickets to any UK gigs, tours or festivals please call the 24-hour Uncut Ticketline on 0870 160 1600

LIVE TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160

TOM MARTIN/NME

NME.COM/TICKETS

WHISKEY ISN’T THE ONLY LEGEND IN THE HILLS OF LYNCHBURG. Some say, under certain October moons, when Lynchburg’s Ghost Mountain is set aglow like an infernal flame, the Wyooter emerges from its lair. An aberration of legend: winged, tree-tall, dreadful of gaze, noxious of breath, and thirsty for the souls of men. When the wind is just right, you can hear its desperate wails in the desolate night. And while no man has ever met face-to-face with this legendary creature, its legend looms larger and larger each year. Just be glad you don’t have to venture into the haunted hills of Lynchburg to fetch our famous whiskey for yourself. Happy Halloween from Jack Daniel’s.

Halloween is scary enough. Drink responsibly. ©2014 Jack Daniel’s. All rights reserved. JACK DANIEL’S and OLD NO. 7 are registered trademarks.

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Books Reviewed this month...

Different Every Time: The Authorised Biography Of Robert Wyatt Marcus O’Dair

Play On: Now, Then, And Fleetwood Mac Mick Fleetwood & Anthony Bozza

SERPENT’S TAIL

7/10

9/10

HODDER & STOUGHTON

F

Mick Fleetwood with Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and John McVie, 1968

anger in him. It was more that sort of melancholy about him, which I think has always been there.” O’Dair’s account of the last four decades of Wyatt’s life, music and growing politicisation in the 1980s, is detailed enough to exhaust the casual reader, but fans will be deeply moved and wholly absorbed by it, the book’s publication assuming even greater poignancy by the coincidental announcement in last month’s Uncut that Wyatt has “stopped” making music, a loss only made bearable by the albums he leaves us with. ➤ About 200 pages into Play On, Mick Fleetwood remembers arriving at Sausalito’s Record Plant studios to start work on the album that became Rumours. “It came complete,” he writes, “with two custom limos to transport recording musicians wherever they might want to go, a speedboat for their use, and a conference room with a waterbed floor. There were tanks of nitrous oxide on hand. There was also a loft, accessible through a large pair of lips, with a bed in it and audio jacks next to the bed so that a vocalist could record their parts while lying between the sheets.” Fleetwood Mac were there for nine weeks from February 1976 and came away with no more than some basic drum tracks, all that was salvageable from two months of subsequently well-documented emotional mayhem, personal misery, sobbing jags

and too much cocaine. The making of Rumours, of course, is central to the soap opera that Fleetwood Mac was at the time and it gets a pretty good retelling here. Better still, however, are Fleetwood’s descriptions of the band’s even earlier traumas. There are long and moving passages about the decline of guitarist and songwriter Peter Green, who had put the group together before throwing it all away during a tour of Germany in March 1970, ending up on a commune with a group of German hippies, his circuits blown by too much acid and delusional religious fantasies. They subsequently lost slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer to a religious cult in Los Angeles and guitarist Danny Kirwan to alcoholism. Another guitarist, Bob Weston, was sacked after an affair with Fleetwood’s wife, Jenny Boyd, sister of Pattie. Even if Fleetwood Mac’s music makes you want to bite bark off a tree, you’d have to say Fleetwood seems from this account of his life an engaging and entirely likeable fellow, everybody’s mate, barely a bad word to say about anyone apart from a conniving former manager, although he is still noticeably cool about the philandering Weston. His generous affability, however, lends an odd breeziness to his various accounts of breakdowns, addiction, destructive egos, and the long-running, much-troubled saga of his first marriage, which seems at times frankly interminable. ALLAN JONES JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

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KEYSTONE

OR ROBERT WYATT biographer Marcus O’Dair, Wyatt’s life can be split in two distinct halves, like the sides of an old vinyl album. Side One of Different Every Time therefore covers the years from Wyatt’s birth in 1945 to the accident in 1973 that left him at the age of 28 paralysed from the waist down, a paraplegic, in a wheelchair. Side Two continues the story into the new life he created for himself with the astonishing support of wife Alfie, who became his manager, carer and collaborator. At first glance, Wyatt’s childhood was as idyllic as he claims, carefree, happy and bohemian, although for the first six years of it his father, George Ellidge, remained married to his first wife and was largely absent, Robert growing up with his mother and her two children by a previous marriage. George, a jazz fan who passed on his enthusiasm to his son, was subsequently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the family moving into a dilapidated Georgian manor house in Kent, Wellington House, fabled hotbed of the Canterbury Scene. Wyatt describes these years as largely blissful, despite his father’s degenerative illness, although over the Christmas of 1961, there was a suicide attempt, Wyatt’s overwhelming sense of failure perhaps early evidence of the melancholic fatalism that would later manifest itself in periods of grim depression. As much as Pink Floyd, Soft Machine became darlings of the London underground scene of the mid-’60s, toured America with Jimi Hendrix, Wyatt enjoying the attendant debauchery – “He and Noel Redding basically shagged their way across America,” remembers first wife Pam Howard – more than the rest of the band. Original bass player Kevin Ayers left, allowing them to develop their increasingly complex instrumental music, a direction that eventually saw Wyatt estranged from the group he’d formed. “By then, we simply couldn’t stand him,” Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper rather brutally remarked, looking back at Wyatt’s enforced departure from the band in late 1971. Following the collapse of his post-Soft Machine band, Matching Mole, in September 1972, Wyatt’s drinking, already prodigious, became totally self-destructive. By the time he fell out of a window during a party in a Maida Vale flat in June 1, 1973, he was an accident waiting to happen. For Wyatt, what happened was “fantastically liberating”, the beginning of a new career that began with 1974’s Rock Bottom. “It seemed to me he almost embraced it,” says Brian Eno, whose droll commentary is a highlight of this excellent book, considering the accident. “I never saw any sense of

OBITUARIES

Not Fade Away Fondly remembered this month…

MARK BELL

Mark Bell, 2003

LFO founder and Björk producer 1971-2014

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T’S DOUBTFUL WHETHER the teenage Mark Bell, “messing around with drum machines” with Yorkshire schoolmate Gez Varley, “tapping away at them like they were arcade games, making tapes to play for our mates”, foresaw the impact of his early musical experiments. One of them, “LFO”, fell into the hands of producer and club DJ Martin Williams, who swiftly discovered that it sent the dancefloor crazy. LFO also served as the name under which Bell and Varley recorded, with their throbbing techno taking its place at the forefront of the ‘intelligent’ new wave of electronica that became known as IDM. In 1990, “LFO” (short for ‘low-frequency oscillator’) was issued as a single by the emerging Warp label. It promptly shot to No 12 in the UK. Well-received debut album Frequencies landed the following year, alongside a less successful 45, “We Are Back”. Varley quit to form Feedback after 1996’s second offering, Advance, leaving Bell to steer LFO as a solo project. By then he’d already sent a cassette of LFO tunes to Björk, with the intention of a possible collaboration. The Icelandic singer duly enlisted Bell for “Possibly Maybe” on her Post remix album, Telegram. It was the beginning of a professional relationship that saw him serve on all of Björk’s subsequent studio albums (either as co-producer, co-writer, programmer or mixer), from 1997’s Homogenic to 2011’s Biophilia. He was also involved in two major Björk tours and can be seen, floating in mid-air with a giant loom-like bass guitar, in the Michel Gondry-directed video for “Declare Independence”. Another high-profile hook-up came in between, when Bell produced Depeche Mode’s Exciter. Paying tribute to Bell, who has died after complications from surgery, Björk wrote on Facebook: “May your hypersensitive nature blossom fine. And wherever you’re at, hope you’ve got good speakers.”

hooking up again with Young for 2005’s Prairie Wind and on through to Fork In The Road (2009). The next couple of years saw him fill in for the late Bruce Palmer on Buffalo Springfield’s reunion dates. While playing with Pegi Young & The Survivors this summer, Rosas also stepped in for Crazy Horse’s European tour, replacing stroke victim Billy Talbot. His other credits include Jerry Lee Lewis, Etta James and Ron Wood.

ANTHONY PIDGEON/REDFERNS; ©FRAZER WALLER/PYMCA/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Rick Rosas onstage at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, San Francisco, 2008

ISAIAH ‘IKEY’ OWENS Mars Volta/Jack White keyboardist

RICK ROSAS Neil Young/CSNY bassist 1949-2014 As one of the most in-demand figures of his generation, Rick Rosas holds the distinction of being the only bassist to have played with Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse

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1974-2014 and CSNY. His association with Neil Young stretched back to 1987, when the pair met at Farm Aid. Rosas, then a member of Joe Walsh’s band, was invited to be a part of Young’s latest combo, The Bluenotes. He went on to feature on the “Eldorado” EP and landmark album Freedom. Rosas returned to Walsh in the early ’90s, before

The premature demise of ‘Ikey’ Owens, who suffered a heart attack during the Mexican leg of Jack White’s tour, has robbed the music world of one of its most gifted and prolific keyboard players. He’d been with White since 2012, serving on the Blunderbuss world tour. More recently he’d played on

follow-up, Lazaretto, and was supposedly prepping a solo album, recorded in Nashville. Owens had made his name alongside Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar RodríguezLópez as a member of The Mars Volta. It was a tenure that lasted from 2003 debut De-Loused In The Comatorium to The Bedlam In Goliath (2008), though he remained as a touring player until 2011. He also recorded solo as Free Moral Agents and collaborated with a dizzying list of admirers that numbered TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek, Mastodon, Crystal Antlers, Prefuse 73 and Shuggie Otis. Onstage in Detroit, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder dedicated “Light Years” to Owens’ memory.

JOHN HOLT Reggae singer and songwriter 1947-2014 The key to John Holt’s longevity was his capacity to move with the times. Over a career that lasted half a

OBITUARIES ALVIN STARDUST Glam and rock’n’roll singer 1942-2014

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ERNARD JEWRY HAD a curious habit of being in the right place at the right time. In the early ’60s Shane Fenton And The Fentones were due to audition for the BBC when their singer, Johnny Theakston, died from rheumatic fever. Theakston’s mother asked Jewry, the band’s roadie, to take his place. The ‘new’ Shane Fenton went on to lead the group through a spurt of hits for Parlophone, the most successful being “Cindy’s Birthday”. But Jewry blew a major opportunity when he turned down Brian Epstein’s invitation to record “Do You Want To Know A Secret?”. Billy J Kramer soon took it to No 1. The rest of the decade was spent amid the relative anonymity of the club scene. It wasn’t until 1973, through songwriter Peter Shelley, that his second chance arrived. Shelley had written and recorded “My Coo Ca Choo” as Alvin Stardust, ostensibly to promote his new Magnet label, but panicked when Top Of The Pops came calling. Ex-Fentones manager Hal Carter suggested Jewry, who swiftly adopted the persona, complete with black leather gear, monstrous sideburns and trademark leather gloves. Stardust’s tongue-in-cheek machismo struck a chord with the public. The tune was the first of several major hits, alongside “Jealous Mind”, “Red Dress” and “You You You”. Having again faded from view, the ’80s saw an unlikely chart return with “Pretend” and “I Feel Like Buddy Holly”. At the time of his death, he was readying his first album in 30 years.

century, the Jamaican singer made the successful transition from rocksteady to reggae to dancehall. His voice was a contributing factor, helping broaden reggae’s appeal in the early ’70s via albums that combined string arrangements with his silky tenor. The most popular was 1974’s covers set, 1000 Volts Of Holt, which spawned a UK Top 10 hit with Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night”. He began his solo career in 1963, cutting sides for Leslie Kong and Vincent ‘Randy’ Chin, before joining quartet The Paragons. From the mid-’60s onwards they scored a number of rocksteady hits for producer Duke Reid. Chief among them were “Ali Baba”, “I See Your Face” and Holt’s own “The Tide Is High”, later a global smash for Blondie. The ’80s saw him embrace dancehall (“Fat She Fat”) and address social issues (“Police In Helicopter”).

trad-jazz boom. 1960’s debut hit, “Summer Set”, kicked off a run of nine Top 30 singles in three years. By far the most successful was “Stranger On The Shore”, initially written for his daughter Jenny, but co-opted as the titular theme for a BBC TV drama. Bilk’s arrangement, backed by the Leon Young String Chorale, hung around the UK charts for 55 weeks. It also made him only the second British artist (after Vera Lynn) to top the US listings. After largely sticking to the cabaret circuit, he re-emerged in 1976 with another major hit, “Aria”. In later times he appeared on a trio of Van Morrison albums: Down The

ACKER BILK Clarinettist, vocalist and bandleader 1929-2014 Acker Bilk claimed that his distinctive clarinet style was the result of losing two teeth and half a finger as a child. It was a vibrato-heavy sound that found a perfect home in the post-war

Acker Bilk at the peak of his fame in the early ’60s

Alvin Stardust, 1973

Road, What’s Wrong With This Picture? and Born To Sing: No Plan B.

the most prominent being 1990’s The Complete Saxophone Player.

RAPHAEL RAVENSCROFT

STYLE SCOTT

Session saxophonist

Reggae/dub drummer 1956-2014

1954-2014 His association with Gerry Rafferty spanned three albums between 1977 and 1980, but Raphael Ravenscroft will forever be remembered for his inimitable sax riff on “Baker Street”. The international mega-hit gave Rafferty a reputed yearly income of £80,000 in royalties. For Ravenscroft however, a sessioneer working under Musicians’ Union rates, his reward was a one-off payday of £27.50. Not that it appeared to bother him at all. He was more irritated by the fact that, to his ears, his famous solo was slightly out of tune. Aside from Rafferty, he recorded and performed with Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, America, Kim Carnes, Mike Oldfield, Robert Plant, Hazel O’Connor and, more recently, Duffy and Daft Punk. In 1979 he issued a solo LP, Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway, and co-wrote the theme of revamped TV soap Crossroads eight years later. Ravenscroft was also the author of several musical tuition books,

The Roots Radics were arguably reggae’s most influential backing band of the late ’70s and ’80s. Comprising bass player Errol ‘Flabba’ Holt, guitarists Eric ‘Bingy Bunny’ Lamont and Noel ‘Sowell’ Bailey, keyboardist Wycliffe ‘Steely’ Johnson and drummer Lincoln ‘Style’ Scott, the group helped forge the path from roots to dancehall. They played on key recordings by Barrington Levy, Bunny Wailer, Israel Vibration and Gregory Isaacs, including the latter’s signal albums Night Nurse and Out Deh!. Scott, who was shot dead at home in Jamaica, began in the Jamaica Military Band before joining The Roots Radics in 1978. Around the same time, while backing Prince Far I during a tour of the UK, he met producer Adrian Sherwood. This led to appearances on a couple of African Head Charge LPs, before Scott became a full-time member of Sherwood’s experimental Dub Syndicate in 1982. The following decade he started his own Lion & Roots label, primarily as an outlet for Dub Syndicate material. ROB HUGHES

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LETTERS

Feedback…

Email [email protected] or write to: Uncut Feedback, 8th Floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU. Or tweet us at twitter.com/uncutmagazine “SPEEDED-UP VOCALS! FREE JAZZ! KAZOOS!” The news of Robert Wyatt’s withdrawal from music is really sad [Uncut 211], but is a chance to celebrate five decades of consistent brilliance. Robert is one of the truly irreplaceable originals. He’ll be missed. One can only hope that Robert’s health improves and that he and Alfie have a long and happy future together. If he decides eventually to return to the studio, what a bonus that will be. In the meantime, what a collection of work we have to savour. Needless to say, Rock Bottom stands out as one of modern music’s great masterpieces. To quote a reviewer on its re-release, I envy anyone who is about to hear it for the first time. But just a few quibbles with regard to your Album By Album feature. Why The Soft Machine instead of the infinitely superior, wonderful Volume Two? And why Matching Mole instead of Little Red Record? Can I also put a word in for The End Of An Ear, which always seems to be regarded as the runt of the litter? Speeded-up wordless vocals, free jazz, clattering percussion… kazoos! Sounds unpromising? What you get is a warm, playful, immersive experience and I love it. Time for reassessment, please. I look forward to reading the great man’s biography and hope there are a few more chapters yet to be written. Rarely has the tired old cliché “national treasure” been so appropriate. Charles Lambert, via email

GIVE OUT (TICKETS) BUT DON’T GIVE UP… The recent appalling news of the death of Robert “Throb” Young set me thinking of an encounter I once had with him which predated most of the Primal Scream mythology and bore no relation to it; it was an encounter which told of an open, generous spirit. It was November 1987 and I was in Glasgow’s Griffin pub with my friend Terry. Teenagers in thrall to the independent (not indie, please) scene which still had a toehold in the city, we spied his newly acquired but already distinctive mane on the far side of the bar. Pre-Screamadelica, he may still have been comparatively unknown, but we were sure we recognised him

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True original, Robert Wyatt

in thinking that he has been on the front of Uncut on more occasions than the entire female sisterhood of rock’n’roll? I think there have been about four or five female cover stars in your history and I am probably being generous by including Fleetwood Mac. It’s really not acceptable, you know. Otherwise, I like your fine publication. Alistair Littlejohn, Edinburgh

WELL RESPECTED KINKS?

and boldly requested an autograph following confirmation. He asked if we had tickets for a BBC recording the Scream were doing a few days later, and we lamented our inability to secure any. His reply? “Youse are going to get tickets.” He disappeared and returned with them a minute later, enabling us to make our way to Queen Margaret Drive for the recording of the now largelyforgotten, but nevertheless on YouTube, FSD, which was shown (in Scotland only, I believe) the following summer. My favourite memory is the song that was never shown – a cover of The Stooges’ “Loose”, which wasn’t an obvious move at the time, with Rickenbacker-wielding James Beattie still in the lineup, but in hindsight hinted at their future. They followed it with “Gentle Tuesday”, but then had to stop for around 20 minutes while the confetti shower which announced it – rightly deemed a fire hazard – was cleared up. RIP RY. This is how you should be remembered. Paul Gallagher, via email

NO NEED TO ARGUE! As I much enjoyed all the old rocker gaff in the December issue, namely a Neil Young review, a Big Star piece, the Robert Wyatt overview and the Bob Dylan spread, I was somewhat disappointed with the clickbait nature of the Bonnie “Prince” Billy piece on the last page, this being the real reason I purchased your issue. This was certainly nothing more than Will Oldham taking the mickey, and Uncut in cahoots probably – he never mentions The Cranberries in the excellent booklength interview by Alan Licht, for example. So not only was your Bonnie “Prince” Billy piece relegated to one page, it was also mostly nonsense. If Oldham wishes to make good on his desire to become a comedian, perhaps he should actually write some funny jokes and join the club circuit. Blair Reeve, via email …I have just received my subscription copy of December’s edition and find Bob Dylan on the cover again. I have nothing against his Bobness, but would I be correct

The Kinks made five 10/10 albums – Face To Face (1966), Something Else (1967), The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (1968), Lola Vs Powerman… (1970), Muswell Hillbillies (1971). The writers in your magazine have no problem when it comes to celebrating other bands from the same era, and to calling their albums classics and masterpieces – but that never happens with The Kinks. You seem to have a problem understanding how good these albums are – I think it’s a bit embarrassing. Lately, it’s been Lola Vs Powerman… which got 7/10 in the October issue. Before that, it was Muswell Hillbillies. Your writers are obviously not sensitive and intelligent enough to understand a masterpiece when they hear it. I love your magazine, but I’m getting really tired that these Kinks albums never get the same respect as, for example, Beatles, Stones and Who classics. Mashed And Anonymous, via email

“I CAN’T BE SATISFIED”… So the ever-expanding Stones back catalogue has been added to by yet another two superfluous, and no doubt expensive, live DVD boxsets from 1975 and 1981, has it? Pardon me if I don’t appear too excited by this news. Given the impending 50th anniversary on January 15, 2015 of The Rolling Stones No 2, would it be too much to hope for the CD release of their first two British albums? As, in chart terms, they are still far and away The Rolling Stones’ most successful LPs (12 and 10 weeks at No 1, respectively), some might consider their standing in the group’s career a tad more important. Sean Perrott, Walthamstow

CROSSWORD …Not strictly feedback, but you may be interested. At Oxford University in the ’60s, the big way to celebrate the completion of your degree and three years at the university was to go to one of the colleges’ Commemoration Balls. In 1964, the word on the music grapevine was to get to the Magdalen College Ball. The big draw had been advertised as Freddie And The Dreamers, but the eventual lineup offered plenty more, with a clue being given by the police cordon around the college entrance keeping the crowds back. Musically, a total of 10 bands kept us entertained during the night. In the Cloisters Night Club we could dance and smooch to Tomaso Y Latinos and the Mellotones. The Jazz Marquee offered three sets each by Johnny Dankworth and Tubby Hayes and their bands. The Ballroom gave us Ian Stewart and his Orchestra and, incredibly, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. Much of the action, and anticipation, was however focused on the Cabaret Marquee. Here the lineup was the Falling Leaves (Oxford’s top R’n’B band of the time), Freddie And The Dreamers, John Lee Hooker and three sets by The Rolling Stones. The lovely Vivien and I were working our way through the chicken and ham salad when all conversation was drowned out by the unmistakable, deafening and hypnotic riff of Bo Diddley’s “Mona”. It could only mean one thing – the Stones were in action. We rushed down to the marquee and found ourselves just feet from the stage. For reasons we can only guess at, Keith was not in a state to play lead guitar and Brian Jones had been promoted from rhythm. Why don’t we hear more about what a great guitarist he was? Bill was impassive and Charlie unusually lively. Mick tried to wind up the audience with comments about wealthy toff thickos, but soon gave up. “Mona” lasted the best part of 20 minutes – they were thankfully unable or unwilling to get out of the groove of those repeated diminuendos followed by a crashing return to full volume. An awesome musical experience which I rate among the best of over 50 years listening to live music. Geoff Bush, via email

“IS IT TOO LATE FOR ME TO GET OUT A BIT MORE?” Herman Lansink Rotgerink asks [Feedback,Uncut 210] “Who on this planet knows the name of Peter and Robin Sarstedt’s brother?” Well, I do. I also know that Robin Sarstedt’s name is actually Clive. I’m 54; is it too late for me to get out a bit more? Simon Betts, Leicester

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EDITOR John Mulvey ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Bonner ASSOCIATE EDITOR John Robinson ART EDITOR Marc Jones SENIOR DESIGNER Michael Chapman PRODUCTION EDITOR Mick Meikleham SUB EDITOR/WRITER Tom Pinnock PICTURE RESEARCHER Phil King EDITOR AT LARGE Allan Jones

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COVER PHOTO: Jeff Chiu/AP/Press Association PHOTOGRAPHERS: Gered Mankowitz, Ed Miles, Jo McCaughey, Bill Ellison, Ross Halfin, Chuck Boyd, Shamil Tanna, Pieter M Van Hattem THANKS THIS ISSUE: Adrian Callaghan (picture research), Vikki Baker, Matthew Clewley, Zoe Black, Mark Golley, Bonnie Levetin

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CONTRIBUTORS Jason Anderson, Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Tom Charity, Leonie Cooper, Jon Dale, Stephen Dalton, Andy Gill, Nick Hasted, Mick Houghton, Rob Hughes, Trevor Hungerford, John Lewis, Damien Love, Alastair McKay, Geoffrey Macnab, Gavin Martin, Piers Martin, Andrew Mueller, Garry Mulholland, Sharon O’Connell, Louis Pattison, David Quantick, Sam Richards, Jonathan Romney, Bud Scoppa, Peter Shapiro, Hazel Sheffield, Laura Snapes, Neil Spencer, Terry Staunton, Fiona Sturges, Graeme Thomson, Luke Torn, Stephen Troussé, Jaan Uhelszki, Wyndham Wallace, Peter Watts, Richard Williams, Nigel Williamson, Jim Wirth, Damon Wise, Rob Young

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DISPLAY ADVERTISING HOW TO ENTER The letters in the shaded squares form an anagram of a song by Neil Young. When you’ve worked out what it is, send your answer to: Uncut January 2015 Xword Comp, 8th floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 0SU. The first correct entry picked at random will win a prize. Closing date: Monday, December 29, 2014. This competition is only open to European residents. CLUES ACROSS

CLUES DOWN

1 Continual moving waters, but still Waters not there (3-7-5) 9 “Did you ever see a woman coming out of ___ ____ ____ with a frog in her hand”, 1975 (3-4- 4) 10 King Crimson album, and what crimson is (3) 11 (See 18 down) 12+16D “I’ve nothing much to offer, there’s nothing much to take”, 1986 (8-9) 14 “Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight _____”, Leonard Cohen (5) 15 Formed by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty in 1988 (3) 17 Staying motionless and silent to Joy Division music (5) 18 (See 25 down) 19 Become tired of albums by James Taylor and Yello (4) 20+21A Ardent admirer of keyboards used on album by Creation band Silverfish (5-3) 23 Without any requirement of a number by indie band Alfie (2-4) 24 Two Door Cinema Club number not entirely sung (3) 25 One of the “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” proposed by Paul Simon (3) 27 Take cover off REM album (6) 29 Change of heart by Black Sabbath for their original name (5) 30 A bit of embellishment on one of the Bad Seeds (5) 31 The Moody Blues found themselves ‘On The Threshold Of A _____’ (5)

1 One clot turns up for a rapper (4-3) 2 His albums include Gorgeous George and Understated (5-7) 3 Without any alternative, Gene Clark released this album (2-5) 4+17D “Now you don’t seem so proud about having to be scrounging for your next meal”, 1965 (4-1-7-5) 5 (See 22 down) 6+26D Coral’s May arrangements are altered to take in some Steely Dan music (5-4) 7 The actual articles on indie band that released “The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes” (4-6) 8 They came from Nowhere in 1990 (4) 13 Unable to see either The Sundays or Icicle Works performing their albums (5) 16 (See 12 across) 17 (See 4 down) 18+11A There’s a price to pay for getting fed up with Green On Red (2-4-5) 22+5D Heavenly situation for Peter Green’s album (2-3-5) 25+18A Glaswegians who took A Walk Across The Rooftops (4-4) 26 (See 6 down) 28 Editors’ album, An ___ Has A Start (3)

ANSWERS: TAKE 210 ACROSS

1+20D Give My Love To London, 7 LA, 10 Adventure, 11 Blood, 12 Tell Her No, 14 Choke, 16 New, 17 TOS, 18 Lovefool, 19+34A Del Amitri, 22 Freedom, 24 Rain, 25 Code

Red, 28 Yes, 29+21A Tender Prey, 31 Eden,33 Adele, 35 Mogg, 36 YMCA. DOWN

1 Giant Steps, 2 Viva Las Vegas, 3 Manchild, 4+24D Lou Reed, 5 Veedon Fleece, 6 Tobacco Road, 8 Andrew,

9 Moron, 13 River Man, 15 Kele, 23 Anthem, 26 Orbit, 27 Emery, 30 Drag, 32 Dim. HIDDEN ANSWER

“Signs Of Life”

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XWORD COMPILED BY:

TrevorHungerford

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MY LIFE IN MUSIC

Michael Gira Jim Morrison’s sex slave? Nina Simone’s bootlicker? The Swans frontman confesses his musical passions… The first non-rock record to blow me away

My favourite Nico album

Lamas And Monks

Desertshore 1970

Tibetan Ritual Music 1967 In 1973 or ’74, I was living in California, in this closet I was renting from an English lady. She used to play me lots of records that I’d never heard before. On this, there’s very low chanting and they play gongs and blow these terrifying six-foot trumpets. This goes to a very, very deep kind of place. It’s very beautiful, it’s fragile and elemental, and it takes you to the place you need to be.

The whole album is beautiful, actually incredible. John Cale’s arranging on it is astounding – it’s little pieces of cinema. People have this disparaging view of Nico as a singer, and I guess they’re only familiar with the first Velvets album, as her singing is impeccable here. It’s very cold and very emotional simultaneously, as she was as a person – “Janitor Of Lunacy” is spine-tingling. When stuff is that dark, it doesn’t really depress me, it kind of lifts me.

A song from a “transporting” album

A record I’ve rediscovered

The Doors

Led Zeppelin

The Crystal Ship 1967

Kashmir 1975

My brethren were starting to take acid listening to The Doors’ debut as it came out, and at 13 I got it – I might have taken acid when I was 12. “The Crystal Ship” is just an absolutely beautiful piece of music. My wife has found an a cappella version online, which is just unbelievably beautiful. If I was gay, I’d be Jim Morrison’s sex slave. At the time, when it was completely fresh and new, it was really a transporting experience.

In my youth I had the first four albums, but lately, my wife has been devouring Led Zeppelin. And I realised, “How fucking good are they?” It’s impossible to deny. If you listen to “Kashmir” very loud, it’s just unbelievable. Jimmy Page’s guitar is lyrical and soulful, just beautiful. I don’t understand what Robert Plant is saying, though I suppose that’s a good thing. I don’t know the lyrics… I think they’re about hobbits or something.

A canon that’s always inspired Swans

A mind-blowing Krautrock song

Howlin’ Wolf

Popol Vuh

Smokestack Lightning 2011

Wehe Khorazin 1981

This is a wonderful boxset, it contains pretty much everything worth getting. I must’ve heard the Wolf in the ’60s, but the person that first made me aware of him was our first drummer in Swans, Jonathan Kane. The blues in Howlin’ Wolf was primal and undeniable and I don’t think it’s possible to replicate if you’re white. But it inspired us in our early days. I put it on when I’m depressed and it kind of helps.

INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK. PHOTO: MATIAS CORRAL

Nico

This opens an album, Sei Still, Wisse Ich Bin, that’s the soundtrack to a short film Florian Fricke made. This piece sounds like Gregorian mixed with Eastern music. It’s beautifully arranged, just a stunning piece of very… I almost said pompous, but it’s not pompous in the least, it’s very grand. Fricke is one of the unsung heroes of Krautrock – this is about as mystic as you can get, but it’s not corny in the least, it’s really beautiful.

A cover version by a true individual

An album by an idol

Nina Simone

Suicide 1977

Suicide

Strange Fruit 1965 Her rendition is probably superior to Billie Holiday’s. It just has so much resignation, bitterness and anger, and you can smell the rotting corpses when she sings it. The way that Nina sings is unparalleled in popular music. She inhabits a song in a truly stellar fashion. If given the chance, I’d hire myself out to her as the person who licks her boots clean every night. She was just such a strong, spiritual person, a total individual.

This is a beautiful jewel placed in modern culture that deserves to be there forever. I saw Suicide in Los Angeles in ’78. The stage was level with the audience, and these LA punks were spitting directly into Alan Vega’s face while he was singing. And he’s saying, “Thank you very much.” Early Swans were influenced by Kraftwerk or Suicide or Throbbing Gristle as much as any rock music. If I ever had an idol, I guess Alan Vega would have been it in the early days.

Swans’ To Be Kind is out now on Mute. They play Drill festival in Brighton (Dec 4-7), Nottingham Rescue Rooms (8) and London Roundhouse (May 21, 2015)

IN NEXT MONTH’S UNCUT: 122 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

“I’m not a killer! I never killed anyone dead…”

Presents

THE

20 Iconic images curated by editor John Mulvey, completely refreshed for 2014. Including The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Iggy Pop and more. Limited edition prints, individually numbered, hand printed and framed to order, from £45/$75 unframed or £75/$119 framed.

COLLECTION

Visit www.SonicEditions.com/Uncut

Nothing has changed. The Very Best of David Bowie Available on 3CD/2CD/LP/DD

Out Now www.davidbowie.com