Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2023 i UNCUT

“PEOPLE forget how big Skynyrd were,” says “PEOPLE Ross Halfin, the British rock photographer who has curated a new pictorial history of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pronounced. “I think they get a bit of a raw deal. When people talk about Southern rock they cite The Allman Brothers, but Skynyrd had such a big impact.” The photograph on this page, taken by Carl Dunn in the summer of 1977, reflects the kind of crowds Skynyrd would regularly draw in the US. In this case, they were appearing at Willie Nelson’s annual 4th Of July Picnic at Tulsa Fairgrounds Speedway in front of more than 50,000 fans. “Carl knew people at Showco, the sound company,” Halfin explains, “so they’d give him [stage] access.” His picture captures Allen Collins, one of Skynyrd’s formidable guitar…

“SO there’s this guy from The Cure and this guy from the Banshees. What kind of record are they gonna make? Well, it doesn’t sound like that.” Lol Tolhurst is talking to Uncut about Los Angeles, the album that the former Cure drummer and keyboardist has made with fellow percussionist Budgie, producer Jacknife Lee and a host of guest stars, resulting in one of the most curious, eclectic and frequently fascinating records of 2023. Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee has its origins in a symposium of post-punk sticksmen in December 2018. Budgie was in LA playing with John Grant when Tolhurst met him for lunch, along with Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins, and the trio resolved to write together. “We have this maxim: all drummers are friends,” says Tolhurst.…

Black Bayou EASY EYE SOUND 8/10 GIVEN that he was well into his sixties before he got the chance to make his debut album, it’s been no surprise to find that on the three long-players he has released so far, this veteran Louisiana singer-songwriter has painted a fairly full picture of his life up to this point, particularly on 2021’s autobiographically focused Sharecropper’s Son. But this time around, he feels able to cast his net wider for inspiration, lyrically at least. His own back story sounds fascinating enough to keep mining for creative fuel. One thing he has referred to relatively rarely on record – perhaps ironically given its status as a quintessentially bluesy affliction – is his increasing blindness, caused by glaucoma, which forced him to prematurely retire from…

History Books RICH MAHOGANY/THIRTY TIGERS 8/10 IT has always been to The Gaslight Anthem’s credit that they – a bar band from New Jersey who sing about girls, cars, etc – have never sought to evade the obvious comparison. They have referred to Bruce Springsteen’s songs in theirs (from “High Lonesome”, from their tremendous 2008 album The ’59 Sound: “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/It’s a pretty good song/Baby you know the rest”). They have invited their hero onto their stages, and been invited onto his. They have understood and acknowledged that the only circumstances in which a review of their work would not mention Bruce Springsteen is if the critic in question is trying to win a bet. So it is only fair enough that…

Joni Mitchell Archives Vol 3: The Asylum Years (1972–1975) WARNER MUSIC 9/10 THE critical era between Blue and Hejira provides fertile territory for the latest sweep of the Joni Mitchell archives, which covers the three transcendental albums she recorded between 1972 and 1975 – For The Roses, Court And Spark and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. These saw her music move increasingly towards jazz, while her themes also began to change, from the experienced-based songs of For The Roses towards the more general character studies of Hissing…. It’s a journey that’s explored here through numerous outtakes and demos from the three albums but most neatly articulated in the two live concerts that feature on the set – which is available on 5CDs or 4LPs, with a book containing photographs and…

Selected Works I & II: Experiments In Psychoacoustics, Timbre & Minimalism: 2011–2021 LATE MUSIC/DISCIPLES 8/10 THERE was a time when the avant-garde masters were almost celebrities. John Cage, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Pierre Schaeffer and the like, they were all allowed to infiltrate the mainstream to some extent, just as radical artists do in other areas of the arts. Things are different now, and you’re not likely to see Sarah Davachi espousing her views on septimal just intonation on primetime TV – and yet she’s that rare 21st-century example of someone who’s receiving a heartening degree of acclaim and fame while making undoubtedly ‘difficult music’. Like Jim O’Rourke, she has a love of prog and classic rock, and a mischievous sense of humour, but her work is serious stuff: academic,…

The 4th Street Albums Collection DOCTOR BIRD 8/10 BY the mid 1970s, Dennis ‘Blackbeard’ Bovell was already a key player in British roots and reggae. His history with the music stretched back to the mid-’60s, when he started his Jah Sufferer sound system, but it was in 1976 or so that he really started to make his mark, both as a musician – via his pioneering British reggae outfit Matumbi, African Stone and Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Poet And The Roots – and as a producer. He’s possibly better known as the latter, thanks to his involvement in post-punk touchstones like The Slits’ Cut and The Pop Group’s Y. Contemporaneously, he was a pioneer of lovers rock, writing and producing several of the genre’s sacred texts, including Louisa Mark’s “Caught You…

GETTING to Pete Townshend is like driving through the heart of an ancient and unspoilt England. It’s a landscape of softly rolling fields, hedgerows and leafy thickets, pitted with quiet and absurdly pretty villages. You’ll find him down a narrow lane and up a snaking gravel pathway in deepest Oxfordshire, in an ornate property that dates to the 17th century. Townshend doesn’t own this place. He bought a lease on it some years ago and helps maintain the house and grounds with the National Trust. His real homes, he says, are “slightly more rock’n’roll”. But he and his wife, musician and collaborator Rachel Fuller, now spend much of their time here. “We moved during Covid and decided we wanted to live in the country, like so many people,” Townshend explains.…

UC Theatre, Berkeley, California, August 19 “DO y’all really understand what’s about to happen?” asks Adrian Younge, co-founder of label and concert series Jazz Is Dead, by way of introducing the evening’s star attraction, Brazilian composer and singer Arthur Verocai. “We are in a moment right now.” Younge is doing his best to underline the gravity of the occasion, and for good reason. Verocai’s appearance at UC Theatre is not only the culmination of the 78-year-old’s first-ever tour of the US, but also a monument to his stature among record collectors and beat-makers. His 1972 self-titled LP, a heady blend of samba, soul and psych, was ignored at the time of its release. It earned cult status after it was mined for source material by hip-hop producers like MF Doom…

THE pandemic posed problems for everyone, particularly musicians who were used to rehearsing together indoors. Formed during lockdown in 2021, North Carolina based cosmic improv trio Setting got around these concerns by taking things into the open air – namely drummer/percussionist Joe Westerlund’s backyard. “We only met outside at first, under the carport at my house,” he tells Uncut. “We were set up kind of far apart from each other and there were some rhythmic things that started happening because of the distance.” It wasn’t an entirely pastoral setting – the band had to occasionally compete with the noise of leaf blowers and chainsaws – but the spirit of the great outdoors seeped into their sound. Although Setting’s debut long-player, the hypnotic Shone A Rainbow Light On, was eventually recorded…

“It’s impossible to take in/It’s impossible to see” THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES MODERN NATURE No Fixed Point In Space BELLA UNION THE filmmaker Derek Jarman, a veritable English visionary, wrote his book Modern Nature about his experience living alone in a cottage in Dungeness, on the English south coast. Jarman decamped to this terminal beach knowing he was dying, but in the process created a late body of work – films, writings and artworks – in which he exploited his closeness to the Earth, and the focus gained when living in a remote place, away from metropolitan London. He was not the first English artist to seek renewal and resuscitation in a rural setting. Jack Cooper of Modern Nature, the band named after Jarman’s book, has…

Pearlies SONIC CATHEDRAL 8/10 IT’S just as well that the halcyon days of shoegaze didn’t yield much in the way of arena-filling acts or blockbuster albums. Thus was the fanbase spared the indignity of having to see ageing favourites playing outdoor festivals with names like Monsters Of Reverb or signing sleeves at Dream Pop Fan Expo 2023. It’s nevertheless been oddly heart warming to see so many signs of vitality among the era’s flagship acts, what with Ride and Slowdive in excellent health and scene elders Elizabeth Fraser and Kevin Shields resurfacing with strong new music, albeit in the form of a fuzz pedal demo in the latter’s case. Now another of shoegaze’s original progenitors has returned with an album that boasts a comparable degree of verve amid the requisite…

Ozarker LOOSE 9/10 WHEN Uncut spoke to Israel Nash in December 2020, he was about to release a new album called Topaz, recorded during that year’s Covid lockdown. Topaz was the fourth album Nash had made at his Dripping Springs studio in the Texas Hill Country, after moving from New York in 2011, and it added ’70s funk and soul traces to the soaring cosmic Americana so ravishingly essayed on Rain Plains (2013), Silver Springs (2015) and the ecstatic Lifted (2018). Almost in passing, Nash mentioned that he’d also had two other albums on the go during his enforced isolation. One was a complete remake of The Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. The other was what he described as an album of the kind of “heartland American rock” he grew…

Lados B INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM 8/10 IF broad-spectrum interests, collaborative enthusiasm and an appetite for improvisation are indicators of a jazz mindset, Chicagobased drummer Daniel Villarreal easily fits the bill. The classification of his work, though, is far more slippery: he’s a member of Dos Santos, who play a highenergy hybrid of cumbia, psychedelia and jazz, a Latine psychedelic-soul duo called The Los Sundowns and the Mexican folk band Ida Y Vuelta. He’s also a familiar face on the DJ circuit of his local neighbourhood, spinning everything from Avelino Muñoz to Michael Jackson. Last year Villarreal released his debut solo album, Panamá 77 (named after the place and date of his birth), an irresistibly groovy, instrumental set that threads psychedelic funk, soul and jazz through traditional Latin-American folk. It was recorded…

ONE hot afternoon in August, Alicante’s Plaza de Toros does not seem like a dangerous place. While the tiled inner walls of this 19th-century arena are decorated with vintage posters of matadors, resplendent in their finery, to remind us of its true purpose, the bullfighting season is over. Instead, the venue is currently hosting far less grizzly entertainments. Besides a host of Spanish acts who’ve appeared here this summer, Dylan, Kraftwerk and Tom Jones have all performed on a makeshift stage that rises up from the sand-covered ruedo. At present, Wilco’s crew are preparing for tonight’s show, busily setting up Glenn Kotche’s drum kit and Mikael Jorgensen’s keyboards. Backstage, Nels Cline is eating lunch in a small catering area while Pat Sansone hangs next to a table – designated the…

IT’S a warm day in September 1976 and Pharoah Sanders is in a small studio near New York City, recording his first album in three long years. But the saxophonist who made his name as John Coltrane’s wingman in the 1960s is not playing the Afrocentric astral jazz that he’s been associated with for the last decade – ecstatic, multiphonic blasts over an orchestra of horns, bells and African percussion. Instead he asks his guitarist to play a two-chord riff on a heavily FX-laden electric guitar and starts to improvise, the two accompanied only by a double bass and a harmonium. It is a serene, meditative, ambient piece – out there but utterly accessible – quite unlike anything Pharoah has played before. “He was playing mantras,” says Pharoah’s guitarist Tisziji…

AS he unpacks Teenage Fanclub’s equipment from two suitcases, Raymond McGinley reaches for a superlative. He is a quiet man, assertive in his way, but not prone to hyperbole. “Whenever we make a record, I always think: this could be the last thing we do. Anything that we do, almost everyone on planet Earth is indifferent to it. Except for an almost infinitesimal number of people. That almost infinitesimal number of people is your audience. That’s all you need. If you have that you can keep going. But it’s almost nobody.” McGinley says this cheerfully, with no hint of gloom, though it does prompt a short inventory of the ways in which the music business has evolved. “When I think about how much money we’ve spent shipping equipment around the…

THE Masque was a fleabitten rehearsal space underneath the Pussycat Theatre adult cinema on Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee. On the door of the room used by The Motels, somebody had scrawled the words “busy, busy Motels”. It was certainly apposite. The Motels were one of the hardest working bands on the LA new wave scene, rehearsing almost every day of the week. They didn’t sound much like the other bands at the Masque either, with singer Martha Davis and guitarist Jeff Jourard focusing on space and atmosphere – never more so than on “Total Control”, their second single, released in 1979. The song continues to ensnare listeners with its incessant rhythm, minimalist melody, saxophone solo and yearning lyrics. “All of us, especially nowadays, would give everything to have control over…

“IT was a shock when I heard Robbie had passed away. I was planning on seeing him in LA next month. I’d usually catch up with him whenever I was in town. We’d been friends for a long time. He was very supportive of what I was trying to accomplish, ever since I knew him way back. He was very positive and creative, but in a way that was at the same time very down to earth, which is what I liked. He was pretty funny too – we definitely had a similar sense of humour! “I was in Boston the first time I heard The Band. They played ‘I Shall Be Released’ on a radio programme. See, I didn’t know they were the Hawks. My cousin from Toronto used…

“I GO way back with The Who, from when my band, The Presidents, shared a bill with them in the early ’60s. By the time Who’s Next came along, I’d been the engineer on ‘My Generation’ and all that stuff that Shel Talmy produced for them. So we were pals. I thought they were the most energetic band I’d ever seen, and all completely original musicians. “Prior to recording the album, Pete had sent everyone a movie script of Life House, so we all met having read it. I mentioned that I didn’t really understand the story that well. I made the comment not as a criticism, but more as a failure in me. But it just so happened that everyone else agreed. It was quite horrible really, because obviously Pete…

THIS month’s UNCUT CD is rather special. We’re delighted to present 10 tracks taken from The Who’s upcoming Who’s Next/Life House deluxe edition – a mod-tastic feast of home demos, studio rarities and live versions. Please play it loud – but first, here are a few words from Pete Townshend himself… “One of the interesting things about the demos for Life House was that there were two phases for me. I was right in the middle of producing the Thunderclap Newman album, Hollywood Dream, where I was working with stereo tape machines, bouncing from one to the other. Then the second half of the experiment was on eight-track, which I’d imported in. The two crafts are very different. “So a whole other avenue kind of opened up for me when…

Javelin ASTHMATIC KITTY 8/10 LIKE all Sufjan Stevens albums, Javelin opens quietly. There’s a sharp preparatory inhalation, then a few gentle piano chords and Stevens singing as softly as an internal monologue. It suggests an intimate moment, as though he’s unaware that anyone is listening. From there “Goodbye Evergreen” builds patiently, adding new elements until it spills over into a cacophony of voices and beats: the personal erupting into the communal. At times it seems like Stevens can barely control the music as it continually shapeshifts and absorbs new ideas, but that’s an illusion: he’s one of the most meticulous craftsmen to survive indie rock’s 2000s heyday, and his carefully structured arrangements – as tidy as a Wes Anderson shot – only make the emotions he evokes sound wild, sprawling,…

ON paper, a Grammy garlanded, go-to guy for R&B/neo-soul engineering and mixing is an unlikely choice of co-producer for Animal Collective, but Russell Elevado won the vote easily. “We all just love the D’Angelo records he worked on,” enthuses Avey Tare aka David Portner. “There is a fat, warm liveness to them. We thought Russell could really enhance the rhythm section we were trying to provide, along with helping us achieve a really sweet, live-in the-room sound.” Job very much done on Isn’t It Now?, which is also a less sonically overloaded AC record, with dulcet, three-part harmonies driving most of the melodies, notably on “King’s Walk”. Says Tare: “A lot of the songs I wrote were influenced by early music and Gregorian vocal pieces – that’s why the harmonic…

LOU Reed counted plenty of fellow musicians as fans during his long career. But how many of those disciples actually backed Lou up onstage? In 1988, during a Long Island radio station event, The Feelies served as the songwriter’s band for a blistering set. “It started as kind of a joke,” guitarist Bill Million laughs. “We told the station we’d do the show if Lou played some songs with us. And then he said yes! It was a bit terrifying.” But the performance went swimmingly, and soon, Reed invited The Feelies to hit the road with him as his opening act in 1989. What was Lou like as a tourmate? “The opposite of everything you’ve heard, actually,” Million reveals. “There were dinners with Lou and his crew, and a lot…

“Weary voice that’s laughin’, on the radio once/We sounded drunk, never made it on” REISSUES | COMPS | BOXSETS | LOST RECORDINGS THE REPLACEMENTS Tim (Let It Bleed Edition) RHINO/SIRE THE story of The Replacements, particularly the Minneapolis-based quartet’s early days as self-sabotaging punkcum-power pop scamps, will always be marked by their collective Jekyll and Hyde personality. Their breakthrough album, 1984’s Let It Be, featured the blinding brilliance of “Answering Machine” and the jangly “I Will Dare” alongside tossed-off silliness like “Gary’s Got A Boner” and “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”. When the ’Mats arrived in New York City riding a wave of critical attention for that record, they played a not-so-secret showcase for major-label reps at CBGB (billed as Gary & the Boners, natch) that was, by all accounts,…

Space Ritual (50th Anniversary Edition) CHERRY RED 9/10 IT’S December 1972 and the dawn of space rock has broken all over England. In the third year of Hawkwind’s existence, the release of their live double album The Space Ritual Alive In Liverpool And London, aka Space Ritual, would cement their status as fathers of the genre. Songwriter and guitarist Dave Brock formed the band in 1969 and is today the only remaining original member, but the early lineup captured on Space Ritual is the one that most endures in the popular imagination. In addition to Brock, there’s Nik Turner on saxophone and flute, bassist Lemmy Kilmister, drummer Simon King, Michael Davies (Dik Mik) and Del Dettmar both contributing electronics, and spoken-word vocals by the poet Robert Calvert. Space Ritual was…

If There’s Hell Below NUMERO GROUP 8/10 THE hype-sticker adorning this mind/ass-freeing anthology promises “Thirteen wah-drenched, acid-fried, Hendrix-worshipping, blown-out, free-love-fuelled black rock jams that’ll change your life,” and, while it downplays things somewhat, that’s what it delivers. End of story. To offer a little more context, however: this year marks the 21st anniversary of the mysterious, severely limited appearance of the fabled, barely legit Chains & Black Exhaust, an instant underground classic CD compilation throwing down some of the nastiest and most obscure funk-infected black American psych rock recorded across the late-1960s and early-70s, its enigma only sweetened by the complete absence of any credits or tracklist. Behind the mix was Dante Carfagna, a revered name among crate-diggers (often collaborating on his record-hunting escapades with Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow,…

THE OLD OAK of the title is a beleaguered, woebegone boozer in County Durham, but it might also refer to Ken Loach himself, for over 60 years now a defiantly sturdy central presence in British cinema, withstanding the gales of commercial, critical and political fashion, deeply rooted in and nourished by traditions of struggle, social justice and solidarity. The Old Oak is strongly rumoured to be his final film – and though it’s by no means his finest, it’s a stirring reminder that no-one these days makes films quite like him and his retirement will leave a gaping hole in the nation’s cultural landscape. Dave Turner, a Geordie ex-fireman making his acting debut, is TJ, the crumpled, long-suffering landlord of the Oak. He’s part of the welcoming party for a…

AYRESOME VIEWS Further to Barry Norman’s letter about the 1978 Cleveland International Jazz Festival (at Middlesbrough FC) in Uncut Take 317, I spotted a 2018 web posting on the festival by co-promoter Andy Hudson which has some great behind-the-scenes info… The Middlesbrough FC chairman refused to allow fans onto the hallowed turf at Ayresome Park, so the stage and sound was assembled by veterans of Pink Floyd and Stones shows as fans were 70 metres away from the stage; Ella Fitzgerald looking mystified at being interviewed by the BBC in a back alley of the terraced houses outside of the ground; and Buddy Rich punching a hole straight through a Portacabin wall after his subsequent gig was missed because of disruption getting to the ’Boro event. One of the shows…