Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i UNCUT

GIVEN THE CONTROVERSY that our recent Top 200 Albums Of All Time list seems to have caused, I guess I should be wary of using the words “Greatest” and “Ever” in too close proximity to one another. Still, working on this issue of Uncut , I’ve been reminded that whenever I’m asked about the greatest gigs I’ve ever seen, I always mention a night spent with Jeff Buckley in 1994. In the 1960s, Bunjie’s coffee bar, just off London’s Charing Cross Road, was a hang-out for Dylan and Paul Simon. By the mid ’90s, the subterranean nook was an anachronism, but on March 18, 1994, it hosted one last legendary show. Enthralled by an advance copy of Jeff Buckley’s debut EP, “Live At Sin-é”, I’d travelled to New York the…

Recorded: February 3-5, 1993, Shelter Island Sound, New York Personnel: Jeff Buckley, guitar and vocals Engineer: Steve Addabbo TRACKLIST: Just Like A Woman: written and recorded by Bob Dylan, Blonde On Blonde, 1966 Everyday People: written by Sylvester Stewart, recorded by Sly & The Family Stone, Stand! , 1969 Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Cryin’: written by Joe Greene, first recorded by Louis Jordan, released January 1946 Grace: written by Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas, later recorded on Grace , 1994 Calling You: written by Bob Telson, recorded by Jevetta Steele on the soundtrack to Bagdad Cafe, 1987 Dream Of You And I: written by Jeff Buckley, previously unreleased The Boy With The Thorn In…

IN THE EARLY ’90s, Karl Hyde found himself living at New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel. His band, a funk-rock five-piece called Underworld, had recently broken up and Hyde was working as a session musician. During the day, he was recording at Electric Lady Studios with Debbie Harry’s band; by night, he was exploring new methods of writing. Inspired by the open-ended narratives of Sam Shepard’s Motel Chronicles and the vivid reportage of Lou Reed’s New York album, Hyde had taken to pacing the streets of Lower Manhattan after dark, armed with a notebook and pen. “It was easy pickings,” he remembers. “Literally, you’ve just got to open your notebook and the stuff just falls in. You’ve just got to look at it and go, ‘Wow, that’s a Martin Scorsese moment,…

DUBNOBASSWITH MYHEADMAN JUNIOR BOY’S OWN, 1994 Breakthrough singles “Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You” and “Cowgirl” rub shoulders with “Dark & Long” and “Dirty Epic”. Sprawling, fluid, innovative and powerful. SECOND TOUGHEST IN THE INFANTS JUNIOR BOY’S OWN, 1996 Same club-heavy punch (“Rowla”, “Pearl’s Girl”), but the textures are subtler (“Blueski”, “Stagger”). Reissues included non-album single “Born Slippy”. EVERYTHING EVERYTHING JUNIOR BOY’S OWN, 2000 This robust live album from the Beaucoup Fish tour also included a companion DVD given the full Tomato multi-media treatment. Breathless opener “Juanita” sets the pace. OBLIVION WITH BELLS JUNIOR BOY’S OWN, 2007 Invoking the epic glories of their ’90s heyday (“Crocodile”, “Beautiful Burnout”), their seventh reflects more subdued, ambient leanings, closer to their soundtrack work. SUNSHINE FOX MUSIC, 2008 Soundtrack to Danny…

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN HAD been buying up punk singles as they hit the streets of New York since the recording of Darkness At The Edge Of Town . By the time of The River , he and the E Street Band had forged alliances with many of the acts to break out of CBGB, including the Patti Smith Group (who scored their sole hit with the Darkness… outtake “Because The Night” in 1978) and the Ramones (“Hungry Heart” was born when Joey Ramone asked Springsteen to write them a song). In early 1980, Springsteen would often visit Martin Rev and Alan Vega of Suicide, who were recording an album next door to his gang at the Power Station. The Boss would…

WHITE DENIM WORKOUT HOLIDAY FULL TIME HOBBY, 2007 The dazzling debut throws down a garage-rock gauntlet of furious energy and ebullient invention, and establishes their characteristic pick’n’mix approach to rock history – including echoes of Love, the Velvets, Devo and Beefheart, for starters. WHITE DENIM FITS FULL TIME HOBBY, 2009 The quintessential WD: a storm of polyrhythmic, punk-infused power-trio workouts fizzing with nervous energy and bristling with echoes of Hendrix, Zappa, Doors, Beach Boys, Bacharach and Meat Puppets. Just amazing. WHITE DENIM THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER DOWNTOWN, 2010 The final blast from Josh Block’s trailer studio, equal parts lysergic country-rock, West Coast pop and surprisingly delicate jazz instrumentals. Niiice! And free to download. WHITE DENIM D DOWNTOWN, 2011 This is like a cross between the Grateful Dead and the…

AT WEST LONDON’S Basing Street Studios in late 1972, Free gathered friends and industry figures together to watch them perform songs from their forthcoming album, Heartbreaker, and showcase their new lineup. Many observers believed 1973 was the year when these blues-rock pioneers would leave cult success behind to join the ranks of Led Zeppelin and The Who. The reality, however, was less promising. It transpired that new keyboardist John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick had been drafted in to help out Paul Kossoff, the brilliant guitarist now so reliant on drugs that his pristine playing had become ragged and erratic. Some of the parts on Heartbreaker had been replayed by another guitarist, Snuffy Walden. The cracks were beginning to show live, too. During a break in their performance at Basing Street, Bundrick heard…

FREE FIRE AND WATER ISLAND, 1970 Free’s low-slung third propelled the quartet into the big time, thanks to the lead single, “All Right Now”. The finest tracks, though, are the slower, more menacing cuts, especially the melancholy “Oh I Wept”, taking inspiration from Motown, and the tightly coiled, bluesier “Mr Big”, featuring some powerhouse soloing from Kossoff. FREE HIGHWAY ISLAND, 1970 Though it sold disappointingly at the time, Free’s fourth album remains a more relaxed and pastoral delight, with Rodgers’ voice sublimely grainy on “Ride A Pony” and Kossoff, his playing still fluid and clean, beginning his experiments with the Leslie speaker. FREE HEARTBREAKER ISLAND, 1973 Free were falling apart by this point, and yet their final album was strong – “Wishing Well” and “Heartbreaker” are two of Rodgers’ most…

THE 1975 I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It DIRTY HIT Indie boy-band branch out spectacularly On the basis of their chart-topping 2013 debut, it was easy to dismiss The 1975 as insipid pop-rockers, bred in a record company petri dish for girls who’d outgrown One Direction. Not so easy now. Their second album is a staggeringly ambitious/pretentious 17-track splurge, taking in tricksy R&B, M83-style dreampop and an ambient electronic interlude called “Please Be Naked”. Its most effective mode is a kind of dense, plasticky ’80s funk-pop, exemplified by “Love Me” and “Ugh!”, which lands somewhere between Usher and Go West. Overblown and occasionally excruciating, I Love It…’s fearless perversity nonetheless puts most ‘alternative’ bands to shame. SAM RICHARDS STEVEN JAMES…

“I think that being labelled a punk band is reductive at times, because it ignores the whole canon of musical history that surrounds it,” says Joe Galarraga, frontman of New York-based Big Ups. And while the four-piece have much of the anger, pace and claustrophobia of US punk, they are not simply hardcore thrashers. This is partly because the quartet met while studying music in New York. “We studied such a range of things, from recording and production, to music history,” says Galarraga. “The whole experience exposed us to a wide range of possibilities. I feel like I’ve learned as much listening to romantic-era music as I have by listening to Fugazi.” It’s that sense of the unexpected that makes Before A Million Universes such a…

By his own admission, Nathan Jenkins is a tinkerer. “I finished my album three times in three years,” says the 31-year-old producer behind Bullion’s psych-pop curveball Loop The Loop . “In the end, Mica from Micachu And The Shapes gave me some sage advice: you have to hate it before you release it. She was right.” Luckily, all that extra time in the studio allowed Jenkins’ Bullion debut to develop into a rich and strange odyssey through English outsider pop that taps a wealth of influences – John Martyn, Vini Reilly, Jona Lewie, Godley & Creme – to fashion a peculiar kind of neon acid folk that eludes easy categorisation. As Bullion, Jenkins has struggled to fit in ever since he emerged in 2007 with his astonishing…

“At this point,” asks Brian Fallon, discussing the reasons for striking out under his own name, “why not? It was the one thing I hadn’t done and still had the desire to do.” Fallon’s slight restlessness with The Gaslight Anthem has been apparent for some time, leading him into such side-projects as the whiskey-stained balladry of The Horrible Crowes and the rumbustious Americana of Molly & The Zombies. With The Gaslight Anthem having declared an indefinite hiatus after touring their 2014 album, Get Hurt , Fallon was free to be himself. “If I did another side-project,” he says, “I was limited to only working in the realm of the project, which is exactly the reason to do a ‘solo’ record. I decided that if I brought…

RICHMOND FONTAINE DID the orphaned Americana thing better than anyone on 2004’s Post To Wire, an album that visited the unlit places where people end up when they’re abandoned and adrift. You’d be inclined to call it a career high if the records that followed weren’t just as good. The Fitzgerald (2005), Thirteen Cities (2007) and We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River (2009) were similarly vivid examples of the brilliantly pared-down storytelling that had become songwriter Willy Vlautin’s speciality, his songs across these albums unflinching narratives about the washed-up, lonely and hopeless. Willy’s world in these songs was full of suicidal drunks, beat-up wives, teenage runaways, down-at-heel drifters, degenerate gamblers on endless losing streaks, threadbare hustlers. The kind of people, in other words, who have to…

SCORING: THE ORIGINAL ALBUM 10 Masterpiece 1 Poor! SCORING: EXTRA MATERIAL 10 Untold riches 1 Barrel-scrapings BOX CONTENTS DISC ONE: Alex Harvey And His Soul Band 1963-1964 DISC TWO: Alex Harvey And His Soul Band – 2nd Album 1964 DISC THREE: Alex Harvey – The Blues 1964-1965 DISC FOUR: Alex Harvey – Solo/ Roman Wall Blues 1966-1969 DISC FIVE: Rock Workshop/Hair Rave Up/Rock Workshop Solo/The Joker Is Wild 1969-1972 DISC SIX: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Framed 1972 – EXPANDED DISC SEVEN: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Next… 1973 – EXPANDED DISC EIGHT: The Impossible Dream 1974 DISC NINE: Tomorrow Belongs To Me 1975 – EXPANDED DISC TEN: The Sensational…

It’s only thanks to their countless truly committed fans that some of the songs on The Monochrome Set’s new compilation have seen the light of day. “Some of these things I forgot ever existed,” says singer Bid, of the various digitised tapes that have come his way over the past 10 years. “I’ve put them all on the computer, although some are permanently lost because the tapes have degraded.” Bid’s work is far from just archival. TMS occupies him full-time, despite his aneurysm in 2010. “While I was writing [ 2012 album ] Platinum Coils after the stroke, I found that I had true aphasia, but I was still writing songs.” Bid has no taste for nostalgia, however. He recalls Cherry Red’s…

Rex Neyman has fond memories of her time as a teenage clubber in the London hotspots that fostered the New Romantic scene – “You were your own creation,” she says. Though the fashion drew the most attention, the scene’s soundtrack was similarly wild and eclectic, ranging from Kraftwerk and Gina X to Jackson 5 and Latin. That diversity was reflected in the askew pop by the duo Nayman formed with Vic Martin. Both emphasise the casual nature of the collaboration that yielded Rexy’s sole album – “Recording it was something we did to fill in time before the pubs opened,” Nayman quips. Despite some Radio 1 airplay and attention in Europe, Rexy’s progress was hampered by the limitations of their label, Alien. “They had a budget of about 20p,” laments…

STRETCH AND BOBBITO: RADIO THAT CHANGED LIVES OPENS FEBRUARY 26 Doc about the late-night DJs whose ’90s radio show was instrumental in showcasing emerging hip-hop acts including Jay Z, Eminem and the Wu-Tang Clan. LONDON HAS FALLEN OPENS MARCH 3 The British PM is dead. Westminster Abbey blown up. Only Gerard Butler and his steely gaze can save the day. HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT OPENS MARCH 4 Scorsese, David Fincher, Wes Anderson and others discuss the legacy of Hitch and Truffaut. Reviewed last issue. TIME OUT OF MIND OPENS MARCH 4 Richard Gere is a homeless man in New York. New film from Oren Moverman, screenwriter of Dylan biopic I’m Not There . TRUTH OPENS MARCH 4 Drama with Robert Redford as 60 Minutes anchor Dan…

Reviewed this month... Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements Bob Mehr DA CAPO Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix & Friends In Woodstock Barney Hoskyns FABER Cowboy Song: The Authorised Biography Of Philip Lynott Graeme Thomson CONSTABLE WAS THERE EVER a band so utterly scared of success as The Replacements they effectively scuppered their own career? On the evidence of Bob Mehr’s tremendous Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements, it seems unlikely. A bunch of reckless Minneapolis delinquents inspired by punk, fuelled by a legendary intake of drugs and alcohol and led by Paul Westerberg, the raw-voiced laureate of pre-grunge teenage nihilism, The Replacements could have been what REM became with Green and Nirvana and Pearl Jam became with…

A childhood favourite Johnny Cash A Boy Named Sue 1969 We had this single, with the B-side, “San Quentin”, and we used to play it again and again. We would sit with our dad and play “A Boy Named Sue” and fall about laughing. And then we’d put on “San Quentin” and we loved it. When he says “San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell” and all the fucking prisoners go “Yeaaah!!”, me and my brother used to go “Yeaaah!!” We were taking sides at a very early age. My glam rock awakening The Sweet Blockbuster 1973 My parents would play Dylan, Ray Charles or Hank Williams while I was playing with my fucking Action Man or whatever, but the music I first really became aware of was…

“Glenn just kind of ran the show. He was stacked with aces from every suit that you could name” DON FELDER GLENN FREY WASN’T the first aspiring songwriter to be drawn to California in the 1960s, but he made his mark more emphatically than most. Arriving in LA from Michigan in 1969, aged 20, Frey met fellow Detroit native JD Souther and began gigging at the Troubadour as country-folk duo Longbranch Pennywhistle. The downstairs neighbour in their Echo Park apartment, meanwhile, was another young hopeful, Jackson Browne. Longbranch Pennywhistle’s debut LP tanked, yet it was the start of a songwriting coalition that fed directly into Frey’s next project. In 1971, Souther recommended Frey to his girlfriend, Linda Ronstadt, then on the lookout for a backing band. Frey hit it off…

GLAD TIDINGS THIS month, as we can announce that Uncut will once again be hooking up with our kindred spirits at the End Of The Road festival this September. As usual, we’ll be hosting the Tipi Tent, and a bunch of Q&As with the festival’s major stars, at this lovely event; more details to be revealed at www.uncut.co.uk  imminently. In the meantime, the powerful 2016 lineup includes Joanna Newsom, Animal Collective, Thee Oh Sees, Cat Power, Devenda Banhart, GOAT, Phosphorescent, Eleanor Friedberger, Bat For Lashes, M Ward, Jeffrey Lewis, Steve Mason, Bill Ryder-Jones and Field Music. The details for your diary? September 2-4, at the Larmer Tree Gardens near Blandford, in Dorset. The place to buy £195 tickets? www.endoftheroadfestival.com. See you there!…

“I haven’t seen Bev Bevan for about 45 years, so I doubt a Move reunion would ever happen!” “DO I REGRET not touring more in the last 30 years?” wonders Jeff Lynne, as he considers ELO’s forthcoming run of European tour dates. “No, to be honest. I’ve had more fun in the studio. I’ve learnt a ton of stuff in that period!” It has been an exceptional time for Lynne recently: ELO’s 2014 comeback show at London’s Hyde Park sold out in 15 minutes, while last year he released Alone In The Universe , the first album of new ELO music in 15 years. This summer, meanwhile, they will play Glastonbury. It seems unlikely, though, that Lynne’s return to live performance will keep him from the studio for long. Indeed,…

‘‘THERE’S A LOT more where this record came from! Even today, I can go to any spot on these tapes and be transfixed. It’s not as if these 10 tracks are the only good spots on the tapes. There wasn’t a defining moment; there was just a lot of great stuff going on. I heard “Hallelujah” for the first time at this session. I wasn’t familiar with the Leonard Cohen ( inset ) version, and I thought, ‘What the hell is this?’ It was a little different from the released version, but it had a raw energy, and the delicacy of his voice was something else. To be so quiet and yet so clear. It was an amazing moment. There’s so much good stuff still on…

“WE OPENED THE studio in the summer of ’77. I produced a couple of punk bands with Tony Bongiovi, who was one of the owners [ and the cousin of Jon Bon Jovi ]. Then I did this album for Ian Hunter called You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic , and he hired Max, Danny and Garry for his band. They were really impressed with the studio. Max said, ‘I’m gonna tell Bruce about this place – he’s gonna start another album and he should come over here.’ Sure enough, they came over a couple of months later. “They’d tried to play live at the Record Plant but they ended up doing massive amounts of overdubs just to sound the way they wanted – they…

AS EVER WITH White Denim, Stiff balances fiery energy and furrow-browed complexity with a winning light-heartedness, reflected in the sleeve design. Although it’s their first cover not created by Petralli’s old college chum Michael Hammond, the design devised by San Francisco artist Eugenia Loli continues the collage aesthetic of previous albums, with an absurdist, chucklesome image of spiky cacti stuffed into the waistband of a bikini bottom. And there’s a smirking silliness about the song titles, with five of the nine tracks boasting brackets – most stupidly with “Ha Ha Ha Ha (Yeah)”, which suits a song as infectious as it is dumb. “I really just wanted to drive home the humour aspect,” admits Petralli. “There’s no other reason. We enjoyed deciding what words to use…

“IF YOU WANT to analyse great bands,” says Kramer, recalling his work with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Traffic, “you always come to the conclusion that they have these wonderful elements that are often polar opposites. And yet somehow it works.” As an engineer and producer, he has spent 55 years marshalling these elements into some of the finest LPs in rock history, from Young Americans and Beggars Banquet to the Woodstock soundtrack, and even Derek & Clive’s ’76 debut. “I was underneath the board,” recalls Kramer of the latter, “crying with laughter, ’cos it was just so bloody funny!” His work with Jimi Hendrix on all three of his original studio albums remains his crowning glory, though. “I always had the tape running,” he explains.…

“PAUL GOT interested in guitar very young, I think he was 10. And then he had no interest in anything else, although he loved to draw and was quite a good graphic artist. But it was the guitar that got hold of Paul – and rock music, rather than classical, but my father insisted that he have formal lessons. So we found him a teacher called Miss Monroe, who lived in Golders Green, and he had classical lessons for years. I think Paul’s talent was almost a divine gift, really, when I look back on when I saw him play. It just came to him. So much so that when Miss Monroe would take him off to a recital, he would play Spanish guitar well. But even she didn’t realise…

What is it about Sheffield and synths? “Maybe because it’s a steel-based city,” muses local lad Jarrod Gosling of I Monster, who was originally inspired by the bracing bleeps of Warp Records. “But once The Human League and Cabaret Voltaire went with the synth sound, it seemed to get passed down the generations.” I Monster’s new album, Bright Sparks , is a love-letter to the boffins who established this brave new musical world; each track tells the story of a different synth pioneer, fleshed out with the distinctive sounds of the instrument they created, from Moog to Mellotron. Gosling’s favourite to play was the Buchla. “It looks mental. It doesn’t have a keyboard, just big metal contact plates that make weird noises. It was invented on the…

Why is this Richmond Fontaine’s last record? When [ guitarist ] Dave Harding moved to Denmark after The High Country , we were stopped in our tracks. We were worn out as well. Dave was gone, we weren’t quite a band any more and everyone went their own way. But we didn’t want The High Country to be our last record. So when we got back together, we tried as hard as we could and we got lucky. We all feel more than great about it, so it seemed like the right place to stop. It must have been strange knowing that you were writing your last songs for the band. I wasn’t thinking about that so much at first, but…

How much do you see yourself as part of any Liverpool sound? Well, when we started we were definitely influenced by stuff like the Bunnymen and Shack. But we’re kinda halfway between Liverpool and Wales – you can pretty much see the Welsh coast from Hoylake. And a big part of us was just as influenced by Welsh bands like Gorky’s and Super Furry Animals. Is analogue recording important to you? We’re not fetishistic about it at all. When it’s a really busy recording, with loads of layers of instruments, digital recording is way better. But, for this album, we really wanted that soggy drum sound you get on tape. Digital can be a bit dry, but we wanted the drums to really bleed and soak into everything else. The…

M WARD’S CV is almost as heavy on the high-profile hook-ups as it is the solo recordings. He’s released seven of those since 1999, alongside one Monsters Of Folk album and five with Zooey Deschanel as She & Him. In addition, there are countless guest appearances for the likes of Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, Jenny Lewis and Howe Gelb, plus production credits for Lewis, Carlos Forster and, most recently, Mavis Staples’ Livin’ On A High Note. Small wonder, then, that the Portland-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is viewed as much in the light of his collaborations as his independent albums. But his MO is hardly that of a driven spotlight seeker; you get the impression that if he’s noticed at all, Ward doesn’t give a damn. The man certainly gets…

ALEX HARVEY AND LESLIE HARVEY 1963 LORD RANDALL Recorded in Hamburg in May 1963, a quite extraordinary reading of the traditional Borders ballad, with Harvey’s brother Leslie shaking the life out his guitar while Alex croons mellifluously about “ a cup of cold poison, mother, oh” . It’s a maudlin composition, but delivered with such emotional clarity that you wonder why Harvey didn’t make greater use of the folk canon. ALEX HARVEY 1974 ALEX HARVEY TALKS ABOUT EVERYTHING From a promo disc sent to American radio stations in 1974, it features a reflective Harvey explaining the thinking behind The Impossible Dream album, and the discipline required to be in SAHB. “I wanted a band that was a unit,” he says. “We’ve got to sit…

FOR AN ARTIST eager to stage-manage much of his life and career – including, as we discovered this year, his death – David Bowie was perversely happy to present his workings in public. Take 1973’s 1980 Floor Show TV special, where “1984” was previewed in an embryonic stage a year before it would appear on Diamond Dogs; or in December 1974, when a skeletal Bowie covered The Flares’ “Foot Stompin’” live on America’s Dick Cavett Show, and then thought nothing the following year of reusing Carlos Alomar’s riff for “Fame”. Even the sheer number of references to movies, literature, philosophy and the occult in Bowie’s songs – from bardos to Billy dolls – practically invites the listener to peer beneath the surface and examine his influences and his bookshelves. Bowie…

A host of artists new and old are making April a promising month for album releases. For a start, PJ Harvey’s long-awaited ninth album, The Hope Six Demolition Project , is due, and sees Polly Jean and her stalwart band take a strident look at the problems of today, both at home and abroad. Graham Nash releases his first solo album in 14 years, This Path Tonight , while film director turned gigging electronic sensation John Carpenter unleashes his second solo album, Lost Themes II . Meanwhile, Mogwai play their mighty soundtracking hand with Atomic , a welcome companion to their scores for Les Revenants and Zidane . There are…

This month’s offerings from Uncut’s publishing empire include the latest History Of Rock , focusing on 1972 and featuring – of course – David Bowie on the cover. Also, we’ve a deluxe upgraded version of Ultimate Music Guide to The Who back in the shops, and a Beach Boys Ultimate Music Guide on the way. The latest ’90s indie sweethearts to reform are Tanya Donelly’s Belly. Dates are impending in the US and UK, and their website promises “a handful of brand new Belly songs in various stages of writing and recording, that we’ll be releasing one by one over the next few months.” A year on from his death, Daevid…

PJ HARVEY The Hope Six Demolition Project ISLAND Rumbustious new broadside from the Peej, cementing her current rep as the Queen Of Protest Rock. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND Live In Chicago 19/1/16 LIVE.BRUCESPRINGSTEEN.NET The essential audio companion to this month’s cover story, gratis from the Boss… “Oh, the price you pay!” IGGY POP/TARWATER/ALVA NOTO Leaves Of Grass MORR MUSIC Beyond Josh Homme, another radical Iggy collaboration: here, he recites Walt Whitman’s greatest hits over discreet German electronica. KEVIN MORBY Singing Saw DEAD OCEANS Game-changing third solo set from the Woods alum, redolent of … Love And Hate-era Leonard Cohen. GIMMER NICHOLSON Christopher Idylls LIGHT IN THE ATTIC The great lost Ardent album – a ringing set of guitar instrumentals recorded…

‘‘REALLY, Jeff could have been a comedian. One thing I’ll never forget is him doing every single note, squeal, yelp and lyric, all at once, from James Brown’s [ 1963 album ] Live At The Apollo . It was the most amazing thing I ever saw him do. If there was someone he fancied in the vicinity, or he just felt like amusing himself, he’d do it. It was a respectful imitation of JB, body movements, the lot. He either spent a lot of time on it, or he was just so talented he could do it. Probably the latter. It would be on someone’s cell phone nowadays, but I’m quite glad it’s not. To me, of all the music he ever made, that performance…

“I ALWAYS DID studio work, even before I joined Bruce. Working with other artists was intellectually stimulating and challenging. To go in with somebody else and be presented with a different set of circumstances was a way for me to stretch. I have an eclectic, diverse kind of background, anyway. The band was always my first priority, but it was important for me to break out and do whatever I could elsewhere – I always felt like it helped me bring something fresh back to the band. “Working with David was a particularly fantastic experience and I was really lucky to work on Station To Station and Scary Monsters , two really great records of his. David allowed for a lot of freedom,…

LIVE/ 1975-85 1986 Released at the height of Springsteen-mania in the mid-’80s, this four-disc compendium was a blockbuster of the Christmas shopping season (and a secondhand-store staple not long thereafter). Fans were right to grumble over the preponderance of recent tracks over previously unreleased live-show staples. But “Because The Night” and “Fire” still burn brightly in their first officially sanctioned appearances, and the five-song sequence recorded in July 1978 in Hollywood captures the E Street Band at its most incendiary. TRACKS 1998 Springsteen’s trove of unreleased songs topped 350 by the time he and longtime engineer Toby Scott started sifting through three decades’ worth of tapes for this four-disc collection of demos, B-sides, rarities and others that got lost along the way. As always, there are notable omissions (no sign…

January 1985: Isaak releases his debut album, Silvertone , named after his backing group of Rowland Salley, Kenney Dale Johnson and James Calvin Wilsey June 1989: His third album, Heart Shaped World , is released, with “Don’t Make Me Dream About You” chosen as the first single Summer 1990: David Lynch’s Wild At Heart is released, featuring an instrumental “Wicked Game” during a scene on a deserted highway January 1991: Now an international star, Isaak releases Wicked Game , a compilation of songs from his first three LPs…

‘‘L EON BRIDGES IS a local kid that we met at this bar, the Magnolia Motor Lounge in downtown Fort Worth,” says Josh Block. “He picked up a guitar in between somebody’s set and played a bit, and his songs were fantastic. We got really involved with him. He’s such a sweet guy, we just didn’t want to send him out there all alone! So we stuck around and he ended up being really successful.” Block and Austin Jenkins had been looking to set up a studio, using the recording equipment that Josh had acquired over the years, and Bridges became their first client. “People had wanted to make records with Leon before, but I don’t think they really appealed to him,” says Block. “He was also not rich, so…

“KOSS LOVED Clapton, BB King, Freddie King and Peter Green. Chicago’s Terry Kath made a big impression on him, especially his playing on the first album, [ 1969’s ] The Chicago Transport Authority . He also turned me onto John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. But Hendrix completely bowled him over when he arrived on the scene. Jimi’s chord work mesmerised Koss. We’d listen to his albums and try to slow them down and work out stuff. Hendrix’s sound became a lightning rod for Koss… he wanted to get that sound Jimi got from going through a Leslie speaker. He actually got one – it weighed a ton, and the poor roadies had to carry it around. He loved Hendrix. The first time he heard ‘The…

LORETTA LYNN… …Writes ’Em And Sings ’Em DECCA, 1970 With the exception of the Peggy Sue Wells co-write “You Wanna Give Me A Lift”, Writes ’Em... was Lynn’s first originally written album, compiling hits from the ’60s with new material. It established Lynn’s utterly uncompromising perspective on matters of domestic life. KAREN DALTON In My Own Time PARAMOUNT, 1971 Where Price’s band is raring to go, Dalton’s is laid-back and easy, but Dalton’s knack for expressing loss and the desire to run suffuses Midwest Farmer’s Daughter , and although the singers’ voices may sound nothing alike, they have a shared knack for imbuing their words with affecting longing and disappointment. GEORGE JONES I Am What I Am EPIC, 1980 Jones’ commercial and critical…

You recorded in secrecy in Joshua Tree, California; why was that? Nobody needed to know what was happening and if we didn’t like what we were doing, we knew we could just drive out into the middle of the desert and bury it and no-one would ever know it existed. The lyrics are very dark. Did that surprise you? If you had looked at this on paper and seen the guys who were on the record, you would have expected it to sound a certain way, but at this stage of [Iggy’s] career we felt we could make a record with him that relied more on the content being heavy. We think he is maybe one of the most underrated lyricists in American music – he is so good at…

Given all that’s happened, Violent Femmes seem remarkably well preserved. Absolutely! It sounds fresh and natural. People ask, “Is it similar to how it used to be?” It’s more than similar, it’s exactly the same! The majority of it was recorded live, and in some cases it was the first time people were hearing these songs, so it’s very in-the-moment. I find the title humorous, because for us all to get in one room at the same time and play some songs, we’ve done something miraculous. What is the provenance of these songs? They date from all over. Probably the oldest are “I Could Be Anything” and “Big Car”, they go back 25 years or so. I’ve attempted to play “Big Car” with Violent Femmes over the years, and there…

Acclaimed documentary Heartworn Highways , James Szalapski’s fascinating study of the Outlaw Country scene in Tennessee and Texas during the mid-’70s, gets the deluxe treatment this April. Light In The Attic’s reissue boasts a restored DVD (with 45 minutes of bonuses, including performances by Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and others), an 80-page book and a double-album soundtrack on whiskey-coloured vinyl. Housed in a handcrafted wooden box, it’s limited to 1,000 copies for Record Store Day. The same month also sees the release of Upland Stories , the ninth album from US roots master Robbie Fulks, fresh from his recent collaboration with The Mekons. Produced by Steve Albini, it’s partly inspired by novelist James Agee’s trip to Alabama in 1936, the result of which…

When did you start working on the album? The first tracks were recorded in December, 2014. The Richard Thompson cover was the first song that was recorded. A couple date back to demos or fragments I have from 1995. So I’ve either been working on it for 20 years or 11 months! Why a double album? The idea was to record as much as we could, then see what stuck. The week after we mixed, I listened to it and realised, ‘Oh, shit. We made two records.’ The way it breaks down is, the first record is the bulk of the live set we’ve been playing for the past year in addition to some things from the other records that are like the songs in the repertoire. The second record…

Before finalising the wistful sonic landscapes of their second album, Prospect Of Skelmersdale , The Magnetic North abandoned their early recordings; a natural part of the creative process according to Simon Tong, formerly of The Verve, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen. “To destroy something is as important as creating it in the first place,” he explains. “It’s about getting down to the bare bones of a project, stripping the flesh away until you find the core of the idea.” It was Hannah Peel who first suggested that she, Tong and Erland Cooper focus album number two around Tong’s childhood home, a dramatic change from Orkney, the location that inspired their debut. “I moved to Skelmersdale aged 11 because my dad was a Transcendental…

Edward Penfold grew up on the Isle Of Wight, and although he now lives in Bristol, the island still influences his music. Caulkhead , his debut, is an LP of dislocated psych-pop with its title taken from the nickname for an Isle Of Wight native. “The 1970 festival was up the road from where I lived, so my dad would tell me stories of people camping in his garden,” says Penfold. “That gave me a sense of pride and certainly turned me on to a lot of good music.” Mercury-nominated locals The Bees were another inspiration. “That changed what I thought was possible,” he says. “Not only is the nature of how it was recorded inspiring, the songs are great. It takes from dub, tropicália, jazz,…

How is More Rain your refuge from a troubled America? Music has always been a refuge or escape for me – listening to it or making it. US culture is sick and getting sicker, but art can help. The title isn’t just an environmental reference. It comes from reading the New York Times front-page stories every day. “More rain” is another way of saying more bad news, but it’s meant only to be a backdrop for the record. I’m more interested in the ways people transcend it. That’s what every good story ever written has been about, from Hamlet to The Hobbit . What did Peter Buck et al bring? I’m lucky to have…

SLAPP HAPPY Sort Of POLYDOR, 1972 Faust recorded two albums with Slapp Happy – this was the only one released at the time. The rubbery pulse of Faust’s rhythm section – Peron and Zappi – is strangely perfect for the bucolic art-rock of Blegvad, Krause and Moore. Features “Blue Flower”, Slapp Happy’s finest pop moment, later covered by Mazzy Star and Pale Saints. 9/10 FAUST Rien TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS, 1994 Returning after over a decade’s silence, Rien was ’70s Faust as reconstructed from recordings of ’90s Faust by producer Jim O’Rourke. A hugely satisfying document – guest appearances by Michael Morley, of The Dead C, and Keiji Haino fold into the one-mind beautifully. 8/10 FAUST/NWW Disconnected ART-ERRORIST, 2007 With Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound a longtime Krautrock booster,…

HIGH-RISE Director Ben Wheatley Starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons Opens March 18 Cert 15 ANOMALISA Directors Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson Starring David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh Opens March 11 Cert 15 HAIL, CAESAR! Directors Joel and Ethan Coen Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney Opens March 4 Cert 12A GREEN ROOM Director Jeremy Saulnier Starring Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart Opens May 13 Cert 18 MOJAVE Director William Monahan Starring Oscar Isaac, Garrett Headlund Opens March 25 Cert 15…

A picture of determination, Gartside wears his torments as lightly as he can SET LIST 1 The Sweetest Girl 2 Day Late And A Dollar Short 3 Die Alone 4 The Word Girl 5 The Boom Boom Bap 6 Jacques Derrida/Come Clean 7 Oh Patti 8 Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder 9 Asylums In Jerusalem 10 Skank Bloc Bologna 11 28/8/78 12 New album excerpts: I Wrote This Song For Today/ You Don’t Love/Hair Pull/ Slyday Morning/Two Years Ago/Mother Succubus/I Wrote This Song For Today (Reprise) 13 Petrococadollar 14 Wood Beez 15 Absolute ENCORE 16 Slow Deceit 17 Untitled IMMACULATELY DRESSED IN denim, with fantastic Day-Glo trainers, you would never guess Scritti Politti auteur Green Gartside was a day over 45 – let alone 60. However, as he drops…

He was the group’s guiding force, give or take the odd sabbatical, for 40-plus years PAUL KANTNER Jefferson Airplane singer/guitarist (1941-2015) AS THE MOST durable member of Jefferson Airplane, Paul Kantner did more than anyone to preserve the band’s remarkable legacy. The singer-guitarist helped detonate the acid-rock explosion of the ’60s, co-creating the West Coast’s signature sound and its lyrical preoccupations with sci-fi, politics and esoterica. When the Airplane split in 1972, Kantner and partner Grace Slick, dubbed “the psychedelic John and Yoko” by Rolling Stone, continued as Jefferson Starship. He remained the group’s guiding force, give or take the odd sabbatical, for the next 40-plus years. The only San Francisco native in the Airplane’s core ranks, Kantner became fascinated with science fiction while at Jesuit military boarding school. He…