Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i UNCUT

Here comes your mag! As they release a great new album, we present the Ultimate Music Guide to the Pixies – and their magnificent sister group The Breeders. From the spectacular breakthrough through the mounting tensions, split and surprising rebirth, this is the full story of an incredibly influential art-rock dynasty. Featuring an exclusive foreword by Black Francis, it’s in shops now or available online at Uncut.co.uk/single… Many people spuriously claim to have been at the Sex Pistols’ first Manchester show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall on June 4, 1976. But photographer Paul Welsh was most definitely there, and he’s exhibiting all his images of the seminal gig for the first time at Manchester’s Central Reference Library from October 10, along with some bonus material from Howard Devoto’s archive……

CORNELIA MURR Corridor FULL TIME HOBBY Classic songwriting, delivered with a yearning tremor and wreathed in an otherworldly glow. FFO Weyes Blood, Big Star’s Third and David Lynch films. ARCTIC MONKEYS “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball” DOMINO “I’ d throw the rose-tint back on the exploded view/Darlin’ if I were you…” Alex Turner tries to talk up a failing relationship on this crushingly bittersweet, string-drenched sighter for LP7. TINARIWEN Kel Tinariwen WEDGE Reissue of an early-’90s cassette reveals a poppier, synthier side to the foundational Touareg rockers. “A L’Histoire” in particular sounds like an Altın Gün cover in waiting. ERNEST HOOD Back To The Woodlands FREEDOM TO SPEND Following the delightful Neighborhood, a second LP of homely instrumentals discovered at the Oregon residence of late field recordist/zitherist Ernest Hood. ONE…

Courtney Marie Andrews “I wanted it to sound light” Why commit to writing a song a day? All the free time in the pandemic really opened up a portal for me. I was living alone, so writing songs became like having breakfast with a friend every morning. It was my way of communicating with my inner voice. I quit social media for a time and learned about my own answers. “Chunk writing” is my favourite way of diving in, so if I do song-a-days it’s usually for a condensed period of time, like a week or a month. What were your initial ideas for Loose Future? When I took these songs to Sam Evian I had two sounds in mind: 1) a focus on alternative percussion as opposed to a drum…

The Comet Is Coming: “The album is about dimensions of reality” What are the unifying themes behind the LP? Danalogue: It’s an attempt to describe the metaphysical through the psychoacoustic effects of music, bathing the listener in a hyper-dimension space at various intensities to elicit nootropic responses. Hutchings: It’s about music as a multi-dimensional portal. Betamax: The album is about dimensions of reality and how they can expand in a controlled experiment using a beam of patterning sonic vibrational air. Shabaka, your sax riffs sound more minimal and spartan than normal. Was this a conscious part of your improvisation or is it to do with the way the tracks were edited? Hutchings: Yes, it was an improvisational choice to play more sparsely for some tunes. I wanted to sound as if…

The Unthanks “There was a need for warmth and comfort” How did you approach Sorrows Away? Becky Unthank: There’d been a big hole in our lives, because we’ve been doing residentials every winter and then, of course, the pandemic happened. So that was a big inspiration for the album. Usually we’re drawn to quite gritty subject matter, but here it was mostly a need for warmth and comfort. “The Sandgate Dandling Song” feels like a major Unthanks moment. Rachel Unthank: I’ve sung it unaccompanied since I was a teenager and it’s grown with me as I’ve got older. We’ve thought many times about how we could present it, and we’ve tried a few things. Thankfully, we just seemed to find our path through it. Adrian McNally: It’s such a key…

DRAG CITY 8/10 INCREASINGLY bold in saying his cosmic quiet bits out loud, Bill Callahan drifts into reverie on the woozy “Planets” – one of the many spaced-out songs on his new LP – after having stared “at the sky so long I forgot how to talk”. As trumpeter Derek Phelps and regular guitarist Matt Kinsey whip up a suitably galactic storm, the one-time Smog man hears the spheres singing something “vaguely Hawaiian”. “Kilakila Malu”, they chorus. “Kilakila Malu”. The one-time deadpan king of dysfunction is continuing to follow a slightly yoga-pants-and-Birkenstocks path on his 20th studio LP. Having established himself as a career outsider with 1997’s prowler’s charter “Ex-Con”, the lo-fi Marylander has long-since stretched out from scratchy songs of desperation into more expansive terrain, 2003’s Supper and 2009’s…

Aubrey Powell, Hipgnosis: “Roger wanted it to be bleak” Tell us about the new cover. It was one of those serendipity moments. I heard there was going to be a remix album, and pretty much the same day I was crossing Ebury Bridge Road when the train lines were going toward the power station. It was dusk. The power station had no roof and was surrounded by cranes, and I thought in two years this will be completely shrouded in new apartments and we’d never see it like this again. We shot it and sent it to the chaps. They loved it. I retouched the lights on the crane and took some of the colour out because Roger wanted it to be bleak. Then I put the pig in –…

Wish (reissue, 1992) UNIVERSAL 8/10 THE trouble with a masterpiece like Disintegration is that at some point you have to follow it up. Released on Robert Smith’s 33rd birthday – April 21, 1992 – Wish turned out to be the perfect mix of light and shade. Any gloomier and The Cure would have been accused of milking the misery when there wasn’t much around – Disintegration had been wildly successful, establishing them as a stadium act around the world, despite Smith’s best intentions – and they’d already let their hair down with 1990’s irreverent (and prescient) remix collection Mixed Up. Indeed, it was while recording Mixed Up’s lead single “Never Enough”, slathered in Porl Thompson’s guitar, that Smith remembered how much fun playing together as a band could be, especially…

HERBIE Hancock is staring intently at the plug socket on the wall. “Ever since I was a kid, I would look at something like this and I would start playing with it because I wanted to know what it did,” he says. “Then I’d start thinking, ‘I wonder what would happen if I put this with that? Would that work? Of course, I’d get electrocuted…” He laughs. “It’s because I’m curious. That’s part of my basic nature. I’ve been so ever since I can remember.” Which is as useful an explanation as any for Hancock’s mercurial musical career. Today, the legendary pianist is in a hotel room in Edinburgh. Not long arrived on a flight from Denmark, he has a much-needed rest day before performing again with his superlative three-piece…

THE writer and cartographer Tim Robinson described the Burren, the ancient, karst moonscape of northwest County Clare, as one of the Earth’s great wonders: “One hundred and fifty square miles of paradoxes… [an] austere beauty, the result of millennia of abuse”. He was thinking of elemental abuse – centuries of acid rain, carving deep grykes in the glacial limestone pavement. He took a dim view of more recent, human actions, describing the quarries carved across his beloved Connemara as “festering sores”. What would he have made of the eerie Clare edgelands, where we picnic one glorious July afternoon with the singer, songwriter and surrealist Aoife Nessa Frances? Aoife’s led us here, to one of the places where she found peace, was able to recalibrate and refocus, during the long lockdown…

June 16, 1941 Born in Detroit. As a teen, Dozier is steeped in classical and gospel music 1957 His doo-wop group The Romeos have a minor local hit (“Gone, Gone, Get Away”) and are picked up by Atlantic but progress no further 1961 He records as Lamont Anthony for Motown predecessor Anna Records 1962 At Motown, Dozier joins Brian Holland, who has already co-written The Marvelettes’ 1961 No 1 “Please Mr Postman” 1963 With Eddie Holland on board, Martha & The Vandellas’ “Heat Wave” is the first of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s 25 Motown American chart-toppers 1967 Dozier’s talent for Vandellas tunes climaxes when he originates their surreptitious Vietnam and Detroit riot protest song “Nowhere To Run” 1969 H-D-H break with Motown (subject to contracts), and form Invictus and Hot Wax Records 1973 Quitting…

DOZIER’S writing life without the Hollands flourished in the ‘80s, with hits including a brace of co-written songs on each of the Simply Red albums Men And Women (1987) and A New Flame (1989). After Dozier approved the band at an LA gig, Mick Hucknall was invited to start work at his suburban Sherman Oaks home the next morning. He found Dozier still living by familiar codes. “He took me into his study – it was dark in colour and dimly lit, with just a piano,” Hucknall recalls. “Lamont told me he went there most mornings to write at nine o’clock. It was a Tin Pan Alley attitude, or like he was still at Hitsville. The first thing we wrote was ‘Infidelity’. Lamont’s banging away at the piano, and he…

PETER STRICKLAND, DIRECTOR OF BIOPHILIA (2014) I genuinely loved working with both Björk. I look back on that time with great fondness. Björk definitely has a clear vision, but once the parameters are established there is room to try things. Of course, she gave us notes on what she wanted, but you get fewer notes from Björk on a concert film than you do from a British film financier on a regular feature. Biophilia is her vision and our job was very much to support what she needed, which is how it should be. ANOHNI I have sung on three songs of hers, “Dull Flame Of Desire”, “My Juvenile” and “Atom Dance”. She co-wrote and sang “Flette” for my record, Swanlights. My first real memory with Björk is sitting on…

1 ROBYN HITCHCOCK  Midnight Tram To Nowhere Paying tribute to archaic transport over a psychedelic blues shuffle, “Midnight Tram…” combines a few of the singer-songwriter’s obsessions. It’s also a highlight of Shufflemania!, Hitchcock’s first LP in five years. 2 DRY CLEANING Gary Ashby Stumpwork is the ace second album from this London-based four-piece, one of the most lyrically inventive and unique groups around: this track, jangling with Johnny Marresque sass, tells the tale of a family’s lost tortoise: “It was a bad surprise”, intones Florence Shaw. Check out the full review on page 39. 3 COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS Loose Future The result of writing a song a day for a whole summer, Andrews’ eighth LP finds the Nashville-based artist expanding her sound and exploring a new relationship. Here’s the title…

BRIAN ENO Another Day On Earth ALL SAINTS/HANNIBAL/RYKODISC, 2005 Eno’s first album with his vocals upfront in 15 years was nonetheless often restrained, whether he was singing softly on “Caught Between”, processing his voice on the hypnotically sweet “Bottomliners”, or silently casting a shimmering, ambient spell on “A Long Way Down”. Opener “This”, though, paired mellifluous harmonies with insistent rhythms, while “Just Another Day”’s pacific groove showcased his growing vocal strengths. 8/10 DAVID BYRNE & BRIAN ENO Everything That Happens Will Happen Today TODO MUNDO, 2008 Less radical than its predecessor, Eno’s reunion with Byrne was provoked by a 2006 reissue of 1981’s My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, when chat about unfinished tracks led Eno to invite the ex-Talking Head to his studio. With Eno mainly on backing…

ABRAXAS Monte Carlo SUICIDE SQUEEZE 6/10 Garage-rock gumbo spiced with Arabian and Latin flavours Sultry, psychedelic slinkiness seems to run in the veins of Carolina Faruolo, formerly of Los Bitchos, and Danny Lee Blackwell of Texan rockers Night Beats. As a new duo, they harness Uruguayan Faruolo’s love of cumbia and Night Beats’ swaggering garage energy and ride them full pelt, adding Arabian-flavoured exoticism on “Sultan” and “Hourglass” (which cutely references The Beach Boys) and a dash of Santana’s heady vibes. This is an infectious, groove-laden record that, if it strays a little close to period pastiche, is so full of energy on the likes of the shaking-busy, carnivalesque “La Estampida”, it’s tough to quibble.EMILY MACKAY MIKE ADAMS AT HIS HONEST WEIGHT Graphic Blandishment JOYFUL NOISE 8/10 Clever, heart-on-sleeve power…

JOHN FULLBRIGHT The Liar BLUE DIRT/THIRTY TIGERS 8/10 IT’S been a frustratingly long while since we last heard from John Fullbright. 2012’s Grammy-nominated From The Ground Up was followed a couple of years later by the equally superlative Songs, after which he appeared to lose a little momentum. He hasn’t been entirely inactive though. Fullbright uprooted from rural Oklahoma to Tulsa, where he alternated between fronting his own band and playing as a sideman, while also turning his hand to production for the likes of American Aquarium. Now he’s finally returned to the studio, but is keen to point out that The Liar is a team effort. Various Tulsa residents duly act as backing band here, built around the core of guitarist Jesse Aycock, bass player Aaron Boehler and drummer…

Sonics In The Soul CHERRY RED 7/10 Mancunian punk perennials show there’s life after Pete Shelley.By Dave Simpson CAN there really be a Buzzcocks without Pete Shelley? The singer-songwriter, who died in 2018, fronted the band for 41 years, writing or co-writing hundreds of songs including such copper-bottomed classics as “What Do I Get?” and “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’tve)”. His death leaves a massive hole. And yet, lest we forget, Shelley himself stepped into a similar space when original singer Howard Devoto left in 1977, leaving the lead guitarist to transition to singer-guitarist, main songwriter and frontman. The rest is history, and while the lineup has survived numerous changes to the rhythm section over the years, guitarist (originally bassist) and vocalist Steve Diggle – who now…

Bill Callahan “Things aren’t what they seem” : what does it mean? It’s just pronounced Reality. I was doodling maybe four or five years ago and I wrote the word “reality” in mirror type. It popped back into my head when I was thinking of titles. It seemed appropriate for everything the world had been through. Things aren’t what they seem. You quit social media last year – any regrets? It was one of the best things that I’ve ever done, for myself and probably for the world. People and the public is my main interest in life. I thought social media would be a glimpse into humankind but it is very narrow and chaotic, not balanced, not nuanced, just very caveman, cavewoman, which I’m not that interested in. On “Coyotes”, you…

Stumpwork 4AD 9/10 IF you’ve turned on BBC 6Music in the last few years, you’ll have probably heard a lot of talking; not the DJs, but rather the prevailing tide of sprechgesang in modern indie. Arguably starting with The Fall and The Flying Lizards, it was carried on by Pulp, Earl Brutus, Life Without Buildings and then The Streets, and is now flooding our airwaves. It comes in many forms: there are the modern pioneers like Sleaford Mods and Courtney Barnett, the cartoony post-punk of Idles and Yard Act, the infectious Wet Leg and Self Esteem, the peerless Fontaines DC and Black Country, New Road. London’s Dry Cleaning are also in that clan, but their releases so far – a handful of EPs and last year’s New Long Leg LP…

Mescalero Scott Shields: “It was very poignant” Is it fair to say you first came into the Mescaleros as a hired gun? Yes, toward the end of recording Rock Art And The X-Ray Style. That record was very much under Ant Genn’s control. They’d kind of pulled Joe out of where he was to make that record – and it took a bit of encouragement. I’d been in a band with Martin [Slattery] and Martin asked if I wanted to play bass on this, and I said, “Well, I don’t play bass, but, yeah, I’ll give it a go.” I went out for a curry with Joe, and Joe said, “Right, you’re in the band.” I said, “But you’ve not heard me play yet.” Joe said, “Nah, it’s fine.” Neither…

VIRGILIO ARMAAS Espejismo WE ARE BUSY BODIES 8/10 1973 album linking the bossa nova with the waltz Venezuelan jazz is heavily influenced by a traditional music called the joropo, a version of the Spanish fandango that is played – almost uniquely, for Latin American music – in a 3/4 or 6/8 time signature. A few jazz pianists from the northern hemisphere – including Victor Feldman, who recorded an album called The Venezuelan Joropo, and pianist Vince Guaraldi, who featured several joropo-influenced waltzes in his Peanuts soundtracks – have explored this, but it’s still a surprisingly underexplored area. Venezuelan pianist Virgilio Armas (born 1943) was something of the expert in placing the joropo in a jazz context, and this highly collectable 1973 album is a compendium of twisted bossa novas in…

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN Headdress (reissue, 2002) THREE LOBED 8/10 Boston collective’s vinyl debut taps into the weird spirit of the early noughties AMERICA at the dawn of the third millennium was a bruised and paranoid land, licking its wounds and scanning the hills for signs of invaders. Hunter S Thompson wrote that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. You’d hesitate to call Sunburned Hand Of The Man professionals, exactly – a sprawling collective from Boston, they always operated from way out on the DIY margins. But the music they made – in common with the music of their peers, groups like No-Neck Blues Band and Jackie-O Motherfucker – certainly captured something of the weird spirit of the times. The principal members of Sunburned Hand had…

RUMOURS have been circulating that Hancock’s next album will feature a guest appearance by Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar. It ain’t necessarily so, says the man in the know. “I keep reading that Kendrick is on something, but that’s not true,” says Hancock. “He came by my house and I chanted with him. He came upstairs to my room where I practise Buddhism and we chanted ‘Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō’ together, along with some other people. It was really nice. He hasn’t agreed to do it, but he’s interested. We just haven’t found anything that we feel is right for him – yet.”…

JIM SULLIVAN UFO (1969) Sullivan’s self-released debut album of cosmic country-folk, featuring Wrecking Crew personnel including producer Jimmy Bond, became a collectors’ item after the singer’s mysterious disappearance in New Mexico in 1975. CAETANO VELOSO CAETANO VELOSO (1971) The Brazilian mastermind of tropicália has a huge and awesome back catalogue, but his third self-titled album, recorded while in exile from the Brazilian military dictatorship, is a downbeat wonder. LARAAJI DAYS OF RADIANCE (1980) The third entry in Brian Eno’s Ambient series, Days Of Radiance brought the electronically treated zither to meditation workshops around the world. HAROLD BUDD, ELIZABETH FRASER, ROBIN GUTHRIE AND SIMON RAYMONDE THE MOON AND THE MELODIES (1986) The beginning of a long, productive working relationship, The Moon And The Melodies saw the Cocteaus augmented by the soft-pedal…

“I REMEMBHER seeing their records in the house but I didn’t know their songs until I was a teenager hanging out with Yasiin Bey [Mos Def], who’s also a huge fan. When De La Soul sampled ‘Peg’ for ‘Eye Know’, I already knew it. Steely Dan make music that’s very focused on pop melody but employing some of the greatest musicians around them. There’s that heady academic vibe to their music – kids get into Steely Dan when they’re in college for a reason! – but they were smart enough to understand which musicians should play these songs. That’s why they’re one of the white groups that black people really gravitate towards. They studied enough to know which direction to go. As someone who listened to R&B, funk, soul and…

Alongside The Supremes, The Four Tops were Holland-Dozier- Holland’s most vital act, helming hits from “Standing In The Shadows Of Love” to “Bernadette”. But as their sole surviving original member Duke Fakir recalls, his friendship with Dozier went deeper than music, revealing a very different side to the quiet man the Hollands knew. “We were running buddies in Detroit for a couple of years,” he says, “going where people were dancing and drinking. Lamont loved beautiful, exotic women, and he loved life. There was a lot of excitement in his tracks, because he lived that way. He was happy-go-lucky and good to be around. Lamont may have seemed introspective when Eddie and Brian saw him in the studio, but while they were playing cards afterwards, he was more of an…

FOR 2018’s Reimagination, his final album, Dozier rerecorded many of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s best-known songs, accompanied by collaborators including Graham Nash, Todd Rundgren and Cliff Richard. But Dozier’s beautifully weathered voice is the star. The album began with a medley of Supremes songs. “That medley became so emotional for Lamont,” the album’s producer Fred Mollin recalls. “He was smiling from ear to ear as he sang. This record gave him the chance to be heard again, and to be respected for everything that he did along with the Hollands. “Lamont’s session took six days in Nashville. When we recorded, he was always with his wife Barbara, who was fiercely protective of his health. He was very laidback, even sort of passive by that stage. I think Lamont had been very excited about…

“THE ANCHOR SONG” DEBUT (1993) Even on her ecstatic solo debut, leaving Iceland behind to rush out into London and New York club culture with reckless abandon, Björk was already dreaming of a deeper security, diving down to the bottom of Reykjavík harbour, underneath all currents, to drop anchor: “This is where I’m staying”, she sings against Gary Barnacle’s murmuring saxophone, “this is my home”. “JÓGA” HOMEGENIC (1997) Dedicated to, and named after, Björk’s friend Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir, “Jóga” was also a kind of alternative Icelandic anthem, with swooping strings and seismic beats, describing a physical but also emotional landscape, which would find ultimate expression in the maternal homeland of Fossora’s “Her Mother’s House”. “BLACK LAKE” VULNICURA (2015) The desolate abyss at the heart of Vulnicura, “Black Lake” found physical expression in Andrew…

THE JUNIPER TREE (1990) Shot in Iceland in 1986, before The Sugarcubes had begun recording, this medieval fantasy drama film, written and directed by US director Nietzchka Keene, puts a feminist spin on the Grimm fairy tale, with Björk playing Margit, the clairvoyant daughter of a witch who is stoned to death. DANCER IN THE DARK (2000) Lars Von Trier’s musical drama is now arguably overshadowed by allegations of the director’s sexual harrassment and verbal and physical abuse. But it remains an incredible film, with Björk’s performance as a factory worker suffering from a degenerative eye condition, matched by the brutalist showtunes of the soundtrack album, Selmasongs. DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 (2005) Björk’s first collaboration with her then husband, artist Matthew Barney, was a simple tale of boy meets girl on Japanese…

TICKETS TO PARADISE RELEASED SEPTEMBER 16 George Clooney and Julia Roberts reunite for a would-be screwball comedy of remarriage, playing divorcees brought together in the hope of averting their daughter’s impending nuptials. MOONAGE DAYDREAM RELEASED SEPTEMBER 16 Brett Morgan delivers a relentless, thrilling, kaleidoscopic take on the Bowie story, featuring footage of Jeff Beck at the final Ziggy concert among other unseen delights from the official archive. DON’T WORRY DARLING RELEASED SEPTEMBER 23 Olivia Wilde follows the riotous Booksmart with a psychological thriller starring her beau Harry Styles and Florence Pugh as a couple finding the sinister truth behind an idyllic 1950s company town. SMILE RELEASED SEPTEMBER 28 Parker Finn makes his full-length debut with this Wes-Cravenesque horror flick starring Kevin Bacon’s daughter Sosie as a doctor troubled by recurring…

THE first issue of Melody Maker appeared on newsstands in January 1926, price 3d. It was emblazoned with a photo of the self-styled “Daddy of Denmark Street”, Horatio Nicholls, who the cover proclaimed to be “the world’s greatest popular composer”. Not coincidentally, Nicholls was both the owner and publisher of this new magazine, under his civilian name of Lawrence Wright. Such chutzpah set the tone for the next century of the British music press. Over subsequent decades, whether they were heralding jazz, rock’n’roll, prog, punk, grebo or romo, there’s an abiding sense that music papers were always secretly celebrating themselves. This month sees the publication of three books that in their various ways mourn this world and wonder what exactly we’ve lost. Totally Wired is the most scholarly, building on…

IN late 1962, during her first day as secretary at a Melbourne advertising agency, Judith Durham was invited by account executive Athol Guy to join him and several other musicians at a local folk club that evening. She took him up on the offer, teaming up with Guy’s bandmates Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley in what became the definitive iteration of The Seekers. Despite being a classically trained pianist, Durham quickly found her calling as the wholesome quartet’s lead singer and focal point. Her luminous soprano voice, framed by gentle arrangements, helped place The Seekers at the populist end of the folk spectrum, first achieving international stardom with “I’ll Never Find Another You”, which topped the UK charts in early 1965. The group swiftly built on their success with “A…

HOW TO ENTER The letters in the shaded squares form a n anagram of a song by Björk. When you’ve worked out what it is, email your answer to: competitions@uncut.co.uk. The first correct entry picked at random will win a prize. Closing date: Wednesday, October 12, 2022. This competition is only open to European residents. CLUES ACROSS 1+8D Still time yet for an album by The Moody Blues? No, that time has well gone (4-2-6-6) 8+19A Before you start enjoying yourself, here’s a new album from Julia Jacklin (3-8) 9+34A Trust me, this was a hit for Charles and Eddie (5-1-3-2-3) 10 One of the Beastie Boys in an alarm call (3) 11 “What will we touch there? We’ll touch the ___”, from the Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park” (3) 12…

“It feels good when the portal opens” “IT’s such a crazy time,” says Chan Marshall. The way she talks – constantly undercutting herself and punctuating her musings with jokes and apologies and silly accents – it’s hard to immediately tell if she’s talking about her own life or the world in general. Quite possibly both. “It’s always a crazy time,” she continues. “Time keeps comin’. And the American country is upside down, inside out. Things are a mess. Things are an atrocity. So I don’t know what to do. And neither do you!” This, in a roundabout way, is Marshall’s justification for her latest wheeze: recreating one of Bob Dylan’s famous 1966 shows from his controversial “Judas” tour at the Royal Albert Hall in November. “If this is the first…

“I DON’T want to be mysterious, I want to be revealing,” Courtney Marie Andrews once said, an artistic principle exemplified by her 2016 breakthrough, Honest Life, a set of lustrous, Americana/country-folk songs about her largely itinerant existence. Written with journal-entry candour and a reflective mindset, it played as strikingly accomplished and mature. It was also the Phoenix native’s fifth album, following a string of coffee-house folk releases in a career launched when she was just 15. There have been two albums since, plus her debut poetry collection, published last year. Now comes Loose Future, another telling title that marks the opening of a fresh chapter in Andrews’ lived story. In some ways this record is the pair to 2020’s Grammy-nominated Old Flowers, which documented, with characteristic unflinching honesty, the breakdown…

Sorrows Away RABBLE ROUSER 9/10 “WE’VE learnt a new song to drive sorrows away”, declare The Unthanks on the epic title track of their latest album. It’s a simple enough sentiment, yet one loaded with profound meaning. For a band who draw strength and inspiration from the act of communal togetherness, the past couple of years have been especially tough. Not only did the enforced lockdown prevent them from playing live, but it put a stopper in the residential workshops and weekends that have been such a crucial part of The Unthanks’ MO for a decade or so. Sorrows Away often feels like a liberation. Back on the road since the spring, The Unthanks have already been previewing the album live, as an extended 11-piece band, their set hitting peak catharsis…

Steve Diggle on feeling “like Robinson Crusoe” Was making a Buzzcocks album without Pete Shelley daunting? People might imagine so, but I’ve fronted Flag Of Convenience and done four solo albums. I must have written 60 songs for Buzzcocks over 46 years, starting with “Fast Cars” after I’d read something in a newspaper about the lack of cars in Moscow. Towards the end [with Shelley], Buzzcocks were like The Beatles – we’d both write on our own, so it made sense to record songs separately, with the rhythm section. So while I felt a bit like Robinson Crusoe, washed up on the shore on my own all of a sudden, I am used to working like that. Why does the album have such an elegiac feel to it? There was a…

ABANDONING an identity after 20-odd productive and respected years, and eight albums, is no small decision. But as Lyndon Morgans tells it, moving on from the Songdog name seemed a natural enough step. “There’d been some personnel changes,” he says, “leaving just two of us, so it felt like some kind of fresh start anyway. And we’d acquired a Mellotron, an instrument I’d loved since I first heard the intro to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, whereas Songdog had always operated within a rootsier soundscape. It felt like the fates were bidding me to ring the changes, and using my own name was just a part of that.” The Mellotron on Morgans’ Of Gods And Men is played by Songdog compadre Karl Woodward, and while it certainly is a point of difference,…

You’ve gone in all directions on this album. Tom Dowse: We’ve had more time together, more time writing songs, and it just grows. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s just the fact we’ve been doing it for longer, so it’s very organic. Nick Buxton: We don’t plan anything. Florence Shaw: That sounds like a joke, but it’s actually true! You must have expected the artwork to be divisive? Dowse: Actually, no. I thought it was a really beautiful image with a good sense of humour. Very intimate and quite moving. Then when people started to say it was disgusting, I was like, ‘Oh, really? Are we that prudish about things?’ Lewis Maynard: One of my friends messaged and said, “Your dad’s not gonna put that on the wall with the…

Animals (2018 Remix) WARNER MUSIC 9/10 ANIMALS was always something of a runt in Pink Floyd’s 1970s litter, which is appropriate for an album obsessed with beastly metaphors. Conceived as a vicious commentary on Britain’s social decay, it never fitted comfortably in the Floyd’s timeline, lacking the humanising warmth of Wish You Were Here without quite achieving the furious grandeur promised by that marvellous cover or later attained by The Wall. That could be down to the circumstances of its creation. The first Pink Floyd album recorded at Britannia Row, it was almost entirely the work of Roger Waters, whose domination was starting to exacerbate tensions within the band – most notably with Richard Wright. Even the cover was Waters’ idea, albeit executed by Aubrey Powell – Hipgnosis’s co-founder Storm…

Roger Manning: “We were out of time” “WEwere completely out of time,” says Roger Manning, the keyboard player who, alongside singer and drummer Andy Sturmer, led Jellyfish. “It wasn’t deliberate. We weren’t consciously retro like The Dukes of Stratosphear. We loved lots of music in the late ’80s and early ’90s – we loved grunge, Prefab Sprout, The Wonder Stuff, Swervedriver and NWA and the Beastie Boys. But it had nothing to do with our thing.” Jellyfish’s “thing” was a beautifully crafted invocation of ’70s studio rock (The Carpenters, Queen, ELO, McCartney and The Beach Boys), using vintage keyboards. “Me and Andy were also huge fans of jazz and the Great American Songbook. But it was like our love of prog bands like ELP: you’d never describe our music as…

JOYCE Passarinho Urbano (reissue, 1976)/Natureza (with Mauricio Maestro) TRÊS SELOS/FAR OUT 10/10, 8/10 Bossa, jazz, funk and more, on two ’70s sessions by Brazilian legend THOUGH guitarist, singer and songwriter Joyce Moreno is a national treasure back in Brazil, she’s never quite crossed over to broader international audiences like her peers Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil. It’s a puzzle, really, as her music’s every bit as adventurous as that of her better-known colleagues, and the story of her first decade of music-making, in particular, has her landing in all sorts of fascinating, unexpected places – collaborations with songwriter Nelson Angelo; songs interpreted by legends like Elis Regina and Marília Medalha; performances at Brazil’s yearly MPB festivals; then, in 1975, an offer too good to refuse, to tour Europe…

1960s EMPYREAN ISLES (BLUE NOTE, 1964) Four Hancock originals, including “Cantaloupe Island” and “One Finger Snap”, cut with MDQ bandmates Carter and Williams, and Freddie Hubbard on cornet. Combining hard bop, free jazz and modal experimentation, it marks Hancock’s masterly coming of age. 10/10 1970s HEAD HUNTERS (COLUMBIA, 1973) Returning to Earth after the Mwandishi period, Hancock and his Headhunters band brew up a gloriously kinetic and complex blend of black styles and genres, incorporating jazz, electric funk, African and Afro-Caribbean influences. 10/10 1980s FUTURE SHOCK (COLUMBIA, 1983) In a decade punctuated by film soundtracks – Round Midnight is particularly fine – Hancock teams up with producer Bill Laswell to create shiny, synthetic funk using drum machines, sequencers, samplers and scratching. Featuring hit single “Rockit”, Future Shock sold in its…

VILLAGERS Conor O’Brien is a notable guest on Protector, contributing some sublime horns and trumpet, while AFN’s producer Brendan Jenkinson is now an integral part of O’Brien’s Villagers, helping create the woozy psychedelic chamber soul of last year’s sumptuous Fever Dreams. JOHN FRANCIS FLYNN With its unholy repertoire of drones, tape loops, antique synths and tin whistles, Flynn’s astonishing solo debut topped folk lists everywhere in 2021. His right-hand man was once again Brendan Jenkinson. MARIA SOMERVILLE The Connemara-based musician curates essential early-morning shows for NTS radio, while mixing avant-pop, shoegaze, ambient and folk in her solo recordings. Hear her bewitching cover of Air Miami’s “Seabird” on last year’s 4AD anniversary set, Bill And Blues And Aches. BRIGID MAE POWER ANF toured widely with BMP before she released her debut…

AFTER the trials of making Gaucho, Steely Dan disbanded in 1981, with both parties pursuing solo careers, often assisting each other. Having reunited as a live entity in 1993 – the Alive In America live album offers a taste – Becker and Fagen made two Steely Dan studio records: Two Against Nature (2000) and Everything Must Go (2003). The post-reunion output tends to divide fans. While Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle hears “a lot of good stuff on the comeback records, especially the first one”, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith articulates what many feel is their slightly awkward position in the catalogue. “From album one through Gaucho, that initial run is unimpeachable,” he says. “In our house, it was sacred. The two following records came out a little later, and they aren’t necessarily…

When LAMONT DOZIER died on August 8, 2022, we lost one of the chief architects of the Motown sound: a master craftsman who helped define popular music during the 1960s. Here EDDIE HOLLAND pays a moving, in-depth tribute to his friend and former collaborator – taking us from the factory floor at Hitsville USA during Motown’s imperial phase to revelations about more recent plans to revive the Holland-Dozier-Holland partnership. “Lamont, Brian and I were together so long, the relationship we had was beautiful,” he tells Nick Hasted. “I still don’t really want to think about him being gone.” PLUS The Four Tops, The Chairmen Of The Board, Mick Hucknall and more salute Dozier’s songwriting genius. THE last time I saw Lamont Dozier was in 2020. He was living in Las Vegas…

HARRISON KENNEDY (left) was co-singer with The Chairmen Of The Board, the Invictus label’s showpiece act after their transatlantic 1970 smash, “Give Me Just A Little More Time”. He worked particularly closely with Dozier at H-D-H’s personal record company, even forming a putative writing team together. “Lamont was brilliant,” Kennedy says. “I was at the HDH Sound Studio one night, in the back of a big old Detroit cinema. They had the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on its 15th take. Brian, Eddie and Lamont all had to agree a take was good and only Lamont was holding them up. The conductor said, ‘I don’t know what the problem is.’ Lamont said, ‘Play it again and I’ll tell you.’ He stopped them and said, ‘Right there.’ The conductor bowed and said, ‘I…

“BOB Dylan told me he found a copy of my album Rattlebone & Ploughjack at a yard sale recently,” says an incredulous Ashley Hutchings. “Can you imagine Bob walking around a car boot sale? Of all the albums, he found that!” Decades after covering some of his unreleased songs with Fairport Convention, the bassist and bandleader is now a bona fide pen pal of Dylan’s. “He refers to me as ‘Million Dollar Ash’, and he signs his letters ‘your pal, Bob’. That’ll do me fine. I’m very proud of getting an MBE for services to music, but Bob writing to me means more.” In celebration of his 100th record release, Hutchings is taking Uncut through some of the finest albums of his long career, from landmark Fairport and Steeleye Span…

SERPENTWITHFEET SINGS ON “FUNGAL CITY” The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter has produced two albums of delirious, rapturous queer gothic gospel, soil (2018) and DEACON (2021). “He’s a great friend of mine,” says Björk. “We were like partners in crime in Brooklyn before I left New York. We would go to all the nerdy gigs none of our friends wanted to see and drink champagne together.” GABBER MODUS OPERANDI CONTRIBUTE BEATS (EDITED BY BJÖRK) TO “ATOPOS”, “TROLL GABBA” AND “FUNGAL CITY” Growing up in Indonesia, but obsessed with underground UK scenes like dubstep and grime, the duo of Kasimyn and Ican Harem have so far released two albums, PUXXXIMAXXX (2018) and HOXXXYA (2019), which contrive to fuse the noise of Indonesia’s two great musical obsessions: heavy metal and gamelan, at 200 BPM, like…

MAX’S Kansas City, the long-gone New York nightclub that once stood at 213 Park Avenue South, had two distinct lifetimes: 1966–1974, when, touched by the hand of Warhol, it became Manhattan’s hippest underground hangout; and 1975–1981, when it degenerated into one of its wildest, vying with CBGB for the title of the city’s premier punk establishment to shoot up and throw up in. The aura of its first incarnation fed the appeal of its second, and in the 41 years since it closed, everything has blurred into a single Max’s legend. Peopled with faces who were there, if not always the ones you’d crave to hear from, director Danny Garcia’s documentary attempts to lay out a catty oral history of the joint, but the no-budget nature of the undertaking means…

IN the days following the death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015, Nick Cave ventured out for takeaway food at a favourite local vegetarian restaurant. As he paid the cashier, he received an overwhelming reminder of the unshowy, base-level goodness of humanity. Speaking to Seán O’Hagan in Faith, Hope And Carnage, he explains: “She gave me my food and I gave her the money and – ah, sorry, it’s quite hard to talk about this – as she gave me back my change, she squeezed my hand. Purposefully.” Culled from 40 hours of conversations recorded during lockdown, Faith, Hope And Carnage gives painful insight into the immense personal tragedy that informed Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen, and how it has changed Cave’s worldview. “I think in a way my work…

JERRY Allison’s most famous creation was inspired by a trip to the cinema. Along with good friend Buddy Holly, who he’d known since junior high school in Lubbock, Texas, Allison was particularly struck by a John Wayne phrase while watching The Searchers. “Wayne kept repeating the line, ‘That’ll be the day,’” Allison told Texas Music Monthly. “Buddy said, ‘Let’s write a song’, and I said, ‘That’ll be the day!’ We worked on it for about half an hour.” The pair, plus guitarist Sonny Curtis and bassist Don Guess, cut a countrified “That’ll Be The Day” in Nashville in the summer of 1956. But the song took off in earnest a year later, when their rock’n’roll remake – billed as The Crickets – became a major transatlantic hit. Another Allison co-write,…

RAY CHARLES “What’d I Say” ATLANTIC, 1959 I was trying to make a bridge between the jazz scene, which is where I came from originally, and the R&B things that I’d heard. And this tune was a big one for me. I first heard it in a club in Hampstead and I remember going, “Whoa! What the hell is that, man?” I was embarrassed to tell people I loved that cut, because there was a kind of jazz snobbery that reigned around that time. Looking back now, it makes me laugh, because it’s so wonderful. All the singers on the R&B scene in England owe a huge debt to Ray Charles. Everybody tried to sing like him. I mean, it came out different, but that was the idea. JIMMY SMITH…