Innehållsförteckning för September 2015 från UNCUT

IT HAS BEEN, for me at least, a month of The Grateful Dead. I heard a good story about Tony Blair going to one of their London shows in 1990 and cracking up when the band launched into a cover of “Maggie’s Farm”. I read countless Dead books and articles, including a very long and technical description of Mickey Hart’s “beam” (it’s a cross between a percussion instrument and a guitar neck, as far as I can make out). I put the finishing touches, with much help from Rhino, to the Ramble On Rose CD that you’ll find attached to the cover of this issue; our attempt to construct the Dead album that never was, a putative sequel to Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. I even spent a long time…

The messy afterlife of Creedence Clearwater Revival continues, with news that John Fogerty is suing Stuart Cook and Doug Clifford over unpaid royalties. Cook and Clifford perform as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, and Fogerty previously sued them over using the Creedence name before settling in 2001 for a share of their touring and merch income. Fogerty’s lawsuit claims he hasn’t been paid his share since December 2011. Fogerty releases his autobiography Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music on October 6. David Crosby launched into a Twitter tirade against Kanye West when asked how he felt about West telling the Glastonbury festival he was “the greatest rock star of all time”. Crosby responded, “He is an egomaniac. He is dumb as a post. He creates nothing.” Meanwhile, Crosby…

WORKING ON THE Kinks biopic is a bit like the Greek banking crisis,” says Julien Temple as he updates us on his next, eagerly anticipated project. “You think there’s an end in sight and then… We’ve been working on it for a long time, but that doesn’t mean we’re any less passionate about it.” Although the provisional shooting date for the film – titled You Really Got Me – is looming (“We’re hoping to shoot in the autumn,” he admits), Temple is nevertheless currently busy with other matters. His latest documentary, The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson, charts the recent upheavals in the guitarist’s life, from cancer diagnosis to remarkable recovery. It is yet another idiosyncratic entry in Temple’s wide-ranging filmography, which covers the Sex Pistols, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, David Bowie,…

KEY PLAYERS Ernie Isley Songwriting, guitars, drums Chris Jasper Songwriting, keyboards Malcolm Cecil Engineer Robert Margouleff Former Isleys engineer HARVEST FOR THE WORLD’ refers to a peaceful gathering,” explains songwriter Ernie Isley, “where every human being is invited, and where no-one will be hindered in any way from participating.” Originally a vocal trio comprising brothers O’Kelly, Rudolph and Ronald, by the early ’70s, the Isleys (expanded to include Ernie and Marvin Isley and Chris Jasper) were releasing an album a year and scoring a host of hits along the way. “Harvest For The World” stands out as one of their finest, an open-hearted call for equality across the planet. But beneath the luscious, sparkling veneer of the recording, engineered by Stevie Wonder collaborator and synthesiser pioneer Malcolm Cecil, there lies…

FAT OLD SUN ATOM HEART MOTHER, 1970 Gilmour’s Floyd debut as a songwriter is Ummagumma’s “The Narrow Way”, but “Fat Old Sun” is the better track – a pastoral reverie driven by his elegant lap-steel. FEARLESS MEDDLE, 1971 Although “One Of These Days” and “Echoes” dominate Meddle , this folky, Gilmour-led acoustic song nevertheless holds it own. It demonstrates, too, Gilmour’s growing editorial skills within the Floyd. WISH YOU WERE HERE WISH YOU WERE HERE, 1975 Gilmour’s wistful delivery and his layered acoustic, 12-string and pedal-steel guitars add warmth to Waters’ Barrett tribute. Beloved of buskers everywhere. DOGS ANIMALS, 1977 A rewarding collaboration between Waters and Gilmour from the Wish You Were Here sessions, this track later resurfaced in…

“THERE ARE ONE or two nice moments on the David Gilmour album. I don’t think there are any lyrics on it I’m particularly proud of, though. I tried to be more mainstream rock on About Face . I can’t quite remember why! But I’m now less keen on rockier elements of About Face – I realised that what I like best is what we do as Pink Floyd. On An Island grew very organically. I had been spending a lot of time on my own at the farm in very peaceful circumstances. Rattle That Lock is more of a solo album than anything I’ve ever done. It’s me fiddling around…

Dave Grohl played on Killing Joke’s self-titled 2003 album, despite the fact Killing Joke almost sued Nirvana in 1993 over the similarity between the riff on KJ’s “Eighties” and Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”. Geordie explains: “We didn’t blame Dave Grohl for ‘Come As You Are’. Courtney Love gets all the money, so I ain’t picking a row with Grohl. I see it as a compliment. It would be nice to have had that money, but it might be bad money, unhappy. If you steal as a musician, it reflects badly on you but Kurt Cobain was a junkie and they nick shit. Then there’s the lyric, about guns. No, I don’t want the money, thank you. It wasn’t a collective decision not to sue. Then we had to prove…

FESTIVAL (EAGLE ROCK, 2005) Murray Lerner’s 1967 portrait of the Newport Folk Festival’s glory years matches DA Pennebaker’s more celebrated Dont Look Back . But Lerner devotes nearly as much attention to the youthquake happening in front of the stage as he does Dylan, Baez and Son House. JOAN BAEZ: LIVE AT NEWPORT (VANGUARD, 1996) The collections of live-set standouts by Judy Collins, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger are all strong, but the one for Baez charts an artistic evolution that was almost as dramatic as that of her former beau, albeit far less storied. REVEREND GARY DAVIS AT NEWPORT (VANGUARD, 2001) The blind guitarist and blues and gospel master from North Carolina was one of the first African-American musicians to benefit from the patronage of eager…

SO, YOUR NEW album, The Most Lamentable Tragedy… TMLT. That’s what I call it. Like “tumult”. Like the tumultuous state that all life is permanently affixed in. So it’s intended to be an acronym? Primarily, it’s an allusion to the Shakespeare play from which we named our band – but it also turned out to be an acronym. I didn’t know about the acronym when we had the notion it might be the title, but when I realised the acronym was there – and what the acronym said – then it was a lock. I took that as a sign from the universe, a secret message that was hidden from me, in the works of Shakespeare. If only we had the eyes to see it and the ears to hear…

ADVANCE BASE Nephew In The Wild TOMLAB Bleak missives from an Illinois basement Owen Ashworth (ex-Casiotone For The Painfully Alone) has been busy – in the three years since his debut, A Shut-in’s Prayer, he’s published an art book, produced for his label Orindal and worked with Sun Kil Moon. His second album as Advance Base is a lugubrious lo-fi treat, from the bleary regret of opener “Trisha Please Come Home” to the beautifully observed “Christmas In Dearborn”. The closing “Kitty Winn” hints, mournfully, that Ashworth has abandoned excess for parenthood, but his wit, and knack for a confessional melody, are intact. ALASTAIR McKAY AMASON Sky City FAIRFAX Sleek sounds from Scandi supergroup More than half of the elegant debut by this Swedish collective – which includes members of Miike…

Napoleon Of Temperance FIRE, 2006 Cloud tore up Nashville’s dive bars as a live act through the ’80s and ’90s, but didn’t start recording until ’99’s Songs I Will Always Sing , first released on Matt “Lambchop” Swanson’s Thee Swan label. That’s anthologised beside 2004 follow-up All My Best on this 45-track retrospective, stuffed with grindingly funny odes to women, booze and, on “Puff Rider”, dogs! Pleasure Before Business FIRE, 2008 The gravel-track vocals could make anything sound filthy, not least the lyrics found on “Orgy” and “You Don’t Need Sex”. The lineup here features Tony Crow (Lambchop, Silver Jews) and, implausibly, Cardigan Nina Persson, who duets on a pulsating “Land Of A Thousand Dances”. Cloud never strayed too far from his primitivist…

Angel Deradoorian says cutting loose from Dirty Projectors to make her debut solo album has been “more liberating than frightening”, but still a big leap. “I think it’s hard to be more in the limelight with my music,” she explains. “Something I’m still adjusting to quite a bit. It’s worth it for me, though.” Six years have passed since Deradoorian released her first solo EP, “Mind Raft”. Now 28, with the Dirty Projectors on sabbatical, she has finally found time to record a full album, a feast of kaleidoscopic folktronica called The Expanding Flower Planet . “I didn’t have any expectation of when to release another record,” she explains, “so I took the time I needed to make the album I wanted.” She credits her Armenian-American family’s…

For composer and prepared-piano maestro Volker Bertelmann, aka Hauschka, live performances are more like “creating new records” than re-enacting a repertoire. “I felt a little bored repeating myself all the time by playing a record live,” Bertelmann explains, “so when touring [2014’s] Abandoned City , I started to improvise.” Recorded in Yufuin, Japan, new live album 2.11.14 sees the German pianist treat his instrument with mutes, gaffa tape, foil, “super magnets” and, between one hammer and its strings, a pickup. “When I hit the lowest key it creates this humongous hip-hop bass drum!” laughs the pianist, who started out playing electronic hip-hop in the mid-’90s. “Maybe in the future I will use a drum machine, but at the moment it’s great to stick…

Both mighty and fragile, Simon Stålhamre’s voice is an arresting fusion of widescreen Americana and heart-tugging Nordic melancholy. The frontman of Swedish trio Small Feet, Stålhamre has played on other people’s songs for years, but was always too self-critical to expose his own work in public until he met bandmates Jacob Snavely and Christopher Cantillo. “Having somebody that inspired and pushed me in a good way was super important,” Stålhamre says. “I’ve also gotten more comfortable in my own skin over the years. I’m just always trying to improve and find my voice, so to speak.” Small Feet’s excellent debut album, From Far Enough Away Everything Sounds Like The Ocean , was partly recorded in a wood cabin on the island of Södermalm, in southern Stockholm. This…

Williamson’s evolution from Goya Dress’ noisy, mid-’90s indie rock to her more recent, electronically embellished solo albums has been at least somewhat a necessity. “Playing electric guitar was making me deaf,” she says, though she admits going it alone has been liberating. “Goya Dress was like being in a rebel force of guerrilla bandit freedom fighters, whereas being a solo artist is more like you’ve been in a coup, only to find you’ve inadvertently turned yourself into a dictator.” In 2011, however, she surrendered absolute power, hooking up with producer Leo Abrahams for Pulse’s textured tones, while her latest continues similarly, and includes collaborations with producer James Orr. She’s unafraid of contributing to other artists’ work either: after singing backing vocals for Electronic in 2000, she…

JOHN WILSON (Drummer, 1968-70) WHAT ARE YOUR feelings about Taste now? Most people who refer to Taste are talking about Rory. They see it as one facet of Rory’s career. My main feeling about Taste is that I was privileged to play with Rory – and Richard – at a time when bands were allowed to be at their most expressive. There was no pressure on Rory or any of us. We were just three guys who went onstage every night and had fun. Taste are often called a blues band, but you were much more flexible than that. Rock, folk, jazz… We put no labels on anything. To paraphrase Star Trek , It’s the blues, Jim, but not as we know it. Coming from Ireland in that era, we…

Tell us about the Bombay Sessions. I thought it would be a fascinating project to go into a Bombay studio, not have a musical arranger, and request instruments such as the sarangi, the mridangam, the tabla drums and violins. I knew that it would work and it did work. Robert and I went over with the acoustic guitar and pulled it together over the course of an evening. Once “Friends” was done, I wasn’t going to leave it there. The whole thing was really happening. We also had a crack at the equivalent of “Four Sticks”. How come it hasn’t come out ’til now? At the time, it wasn’t appropriate to put this into Led Zeppelin. It was 1972 and we were still into the fourth album. Houses…

JB LENOIR I Wanna Play A Little While – The Complete Singles Collection 1950-1960 JASMINE Neglected political bluesman’s first 10 years of 7-inches JB Lenoir was the bluesman who got away. One of the generation born in the South before moving to Chicago after World War II, he found steady work in the Windy City, celebrated for his lively stage show (and zebra-pattern suit) and a stream of classy, occasionally classic singles. International recognition didn’t arrive until the mid’60s, when John Mayall was among those championing him, only for injuries sustained in an Illinois car crash to snatch his life, at the age of 38, in April 1967. Although he lived in the shadow of Chicago legends such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson (a mentor), Lenoir…

MISTRESS AMERICA Directed by Noah Baumbach Starring Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke Opens August 14 Cert 15 THEEB Directed by Naji Abu Nowar Starring Jacir Eid, Hussein Salameh Opens August 14 Cert TBC DERAILED SENSE Directed by Graham Bendel Starring Vic Godard, Paul Myers Opens August 14 Cert TBC MARSHLAND Directed by Alberto Rodríguez Starring Raúl Arévalo, Javier Gutiérrez Opens August 7 Cert 12A ANT-MAN Directed by Peyton Reed Starring Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas Opens July 17 Cert 12A…

THERE’S A SCENE near the end of Kristin Hersh’s memoir about the times she shared with the late Vic Chesnutt, where the talk turns to death. It happens over a breakfast of pancakes in a hotel on the road, when Chesnutt is still processing the breakdown of his marriage in 2007. The conversation is distracted until Hersh and Chesnutt begin trading thoughts on the most embarrassing way to die. Death by carrot cake, Hersh suggests. Pancake, Chesnutt shoots back, and the conversation turns darker, running through mystery disease, accidental decapitation while dressed as a lobster monster, helium, suit of armour on a golf course during an electrical storm, the bends, hantavirus, and (Chesnutt’s final flourish) stingray through the heart. The tragedy, of course, is that Chesnutt wasn’t necessarily kidding. He…

ROBERT FORSTER Songs To Play TAPETE The first album in seven years from a droll master craftsman. Sample song title: “I Love Myself (And I Always Have)” (note use of parentheses). JULIA HOLTER Have You In My Wilderness DOMINO An intimate and ravishing fourth album that confirms the LA musician as the most deserving recipient of ‘New Kate Bush’ plaudits in aeons. BILAL In Another Life BBE Rich, retro-leaning nu-soul from the oft-underrated singer. One to slot neatly between the recent D’Angelo and Kendrick Lamar albums. DAVE RAWLINGS MACHINE Nashville Obsolete ACONY Rejoice! Seven new songs from the meticulous Rawlings (right) and Gillian Welch double act. This time out, he steps Dylanishly into the spotlight. JAMES ELKINGTON & NATHAN SALSBURG Ambsace PARADISE OF BACHELORS Good-time porch…

WHEN DAVID joined Pink Floyd, he bought an old Land Rover,” begins Po. “He said, ‘Let’s go to Morocco.’ We had very long hair, right down to our waists, and we drove down to Spain – Franco’s Spain – with his then girlfriend. He had all this cash with him, but not one hotel on the drive from the Spanish border at France down to southern Spain would take us. We used to sleep in the Land Rover every night in car parks: me in the front and him and his girlfriend in the back. Everywhere we went in Spain, they shouted ‘Beatles!’ and spat at us. It was quite intimidating. You could get arrested for being a hippy in those days. When we got down to southern Spain they…

BACK IN 1965, Edward ‘Chip’ Monck was still developing his reputation as one of the most innovative figures in the burgeoning field of stage and lighting design for live concerts. As he recalls, the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 had moved from Freebody Park to Fort Adams State Park in order to accommodate the growing audience. Short of other options, his light booth became the back of the 35-foot trailer he’d filled up with gear and parked up a ramp behind the makeshift stage. “There was another 13 to 20 feet that was unused because I was obviously looking out the back door at the stage,” says Monck. “George Wein was a little stingy on how he entertained many of his artists, so it became the living room – all…

The Airing Of Grievances XL, 2009 Patrick Stickles and co blaze out of Glen Rock, NJ on a smoggy squall, their debut marrying blue-collar grit to literary pretension with audacious flourish. One hoarse thrash is titled “Upon Viewing Brueghel’s ‘Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus’”. The Monitor XL, 2010 “Because tramps like us, baby we were born to die!” Members of Felice Brothers, Vivian Girls and The Hold Steady assemble to help Stickles bring his Civil War concept album to life. Along the way, there are Boss nods, self-loathing drinking songs and a bagpipe solo! Local Business XL, 2012 Recorded live in the studio with no overdubs, this sounds lean where other Titus albums edge towards overblown. “My Eating Disorder” – a stark confessional about Stickles’ struggle with…

THREE-QUARTERS OF the way through one of their finest albums, 1997’s I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, Yo La Tengo move from the breezy bossa-nova of “Center Of Gravity” straight into “Spec Bebob”, a borderline-unlistenable 10-minute jam between drums and distorted organ. It’s a typical spin between extremes for a group who have often found it hard to keep things simple. So far, the only moment on record where they’ve resisted the urge to demonstrate their full – and admittedly thrilling – range is 1990’s Fakebook, their mainly acoustic fourth album. With Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan joined by Dave Schramm on electric guitar and Al Greller on double bass, the record is still a low-key delight, a fan favourite warmer and more intimate than anything else the…

IRIS DEMENT AND Anna Akhmatova would appear to have very little in common, at least on the surface. Anna Akhmatova was a Russian aristocrat whose rebel poetry documented the sweeping changes in her homeland during the first half of the 20th Century. Hers was a remarkable and troubled life, one that mapped and endured a catalogue of hardships and horrors. Her first husband was executed by the secret police, another perished in the Gulag. Her son was twice interned in Siberian labour camps. She witnessed many of her close friends and fellow writers suffer similar fates. Deemed subversive in the post-Revolutionary era, Akhmatova’s poetry was banned in Stalinist Russia, and much of her life was spent in poverty, surviving largely on the kindness of colleagues and strangers. DeMent was five…

African-American musicians who gravitate toward rock’n’roll are perhaps in the minority today, but the impulse to rock comes naturally to London Souls frontman Tash Neal. “I hear Tina Turner, CCR, The Beatles, The Kinks, Shuggie Otis, Billy Joel, Joe Strummer, Harry Belafonte, Louis Jordan, and it’s all rock’n’roll in spirit,” he says. The New York-based band formed as a trio in 2008, their name derived from “the back-and-forth influence between American and English rock’n’roll”, according to Neal. They honed their craft for three years before recording their self-titled first LP at Abbey Road with producer Ethan Johns. The record got some positive press, but was otherwise overlooked. Then the bass player left. But those setbacks turned into positives as Neal and drummer/vocalist Chris St Hilaire made a quantum leap in…

Produced by: John Collins and David Carswell Recorded at: Warehouse Studio, Afterlife Studios, JC/DC Studios, all Vancouver Personnel include: Dan Bejar (vocals, MIDI marimba), Ted Bois (piano, Yamaha D-50), Nicolas Bragg (electric guitar), David Carswell (electric and acoustic guitar, MIDI tuba), John Collins (bass), JP Carter (trumpet, effects), Joseph Shabason (saxophone, flute), Josh Wells (drums, congas, bongos, percussion), Stefan Udell (string arrangements), Tyson Naylor (piano and DX7 )…

Evolution PARLOPHONE, 1967 Cut at Abbey Road while the Fabs were also in residence making Sgt Pepper and issued with a suitably garish psychedelic sleeve, the Hollies made a valiant attempt to keep abreast with a dozen originals by Graham Nash, Allan Clarke and Tony Hicks. Despite such gimmicks as fuzz guitar and phased vocals, it’s essentially an uncomplicated pop album, but pleasingly so. Butterfly PARLOPHONE, 1967 The most adventurous album of the group’s career and another set of all-original compositions on Nash’s final outing with the group. Offering several pointers to his future direction with CSN, Nash dominates as the melodic pop is embroidered by baroque harmoniums (“Dear Eloise”), dreamy sitars (“Maker”), and backwards tape loops and Moog noodlings (“Try It”). Midas Touch EMI, 2010…

It’s been a fair old time coming, but the reissue of Jock Scot’s sole album, 1997’s My Personal Culloden , is giving the Scots poet pause for reflection. Culloden was the culmination, it seems, of several decades spent in the maw of the music industry, primarily at Stiff Records: “I had met Ian Dury when he was on tour with the Blockheads in the summer of 1978,” he recalls. “Ian invited me along on the rest of the tour. I moved to London when the tour ended… Soon I got a job in the post room at Stiff. I was also working nights as a roadie for Whirlwind and London R’n’B outfit The Inmates. Whirlwind supported The Clash regularly and did a tour…

“Our shows were so intense, we’d pass out or be sick. It was an endurance test for us as much as the audience,” recalls Paul Jamrozy of 1980s industrial stalwarts Test Dept. “But that’s why industrial workers could see we weren’t posing – it was very physical work.” Bashing large metal objects in railway stations for political purposes earned Test Dept a formidable reputation in the mid-’80s, and though today three of the founding members – Jamrozy, Graham Cunnington and Angus Farquhar – may not be packing sledgehammers, they are applying themselves with no little passion to presenting Test Dept’s legacy to a (partly) new audience. Recently, the group mined their archive to help assemble a film, the political collage DS30 , a book, Total…

MANGLEHORN OPENS AUGUST 7 Al Pacino hoo-haa’s his way through David Gordon Green’s latest, as an eccentric smalltown locksmith (of course). ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING OPENS AUGUST 14 The Pythons reunite (sort of) for Terry Jones’ latest directorial effort, starring Simon Pegg. Cleese et al voice extraterrestrial beings… MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E OPENS AUGUST 14 Guy Ritchie’s remake of the ’60s spy caper series, with Henry Cavill as Napoleon Solo and Armie Hammer as Illya Kuryakin. PRECINCT SEVEN FIVE OPENS AUGUST 14 Scorsese-esque period thriller about New York cops on the take during the 1980s. THE BAD EDUCATION MOVIE OPENS AUGUST 21 BBC’s excellent comedy transitions to the big screen, with Jack Whitehall’s hapless teacher taking his class on a school trip. THE DANCE OF REALITY OPENS AUGUST 21 The first film in…

The song that got me into soul Martha And The Vandellas Third Finger, Left Hand 1967 I got into this song around the same time I was just discovering The Jam. I’d been a Pistols fan for a couple of years prior to that, but this got me interested in soul, mainly Motown. The first time I was exposed to it was at the school disco – this song would get played a lot, along with “Jimmy Mack” and [The Velvelettes’] “Needle In A Haystack”. It always reminds me of those evenings at the school disco, getting into it. My ‘scooter rally’ soundtrack The Meteors Wreckin’ Crew 1982 I did two or three scooter rallies when I was 14 or 15. I mean, I didn’t have a scooter, I was…

“CHICAGO’S A TOWN you can lose your mind in. It’s my town. There’s no end of great musicians here, and rents are cheap so there’s no need to work as a waiter or bartender. You can get by just playing a couple of gigs – my rent’s 200 bucks a month. There’s no major hustle, you just jam every day. Summers are great, but there’s the ‘winter tax’: in the winter you’re huddled in your apartment thinking, ‘Why am I here?’ That’s what keeps the rent cheap! You can drive 300 miles in any direction, and it’s just cornfields. “There’s no music industry in Chicago – well, maybe a little bit nowadays. When that guy started Chess Records, he was like, ‘Fuck everybody, I’m starting my own industry in Chicago.’…

“WHEN I FIRST heard Ryley Walker, I thought he was really exciting. I think he’d be a very high-spirited person, the sort of person I’d love to work with. A lot of people, you think, ‘Oh, he’s a balladeer, he’s a romantic, a journeyman, a this or a that,’ but to me, Ryley’s an ocean. He’s beautiful and refreshing but he’s also angry and dangerous. And he’s an ocean I’d love to dive into. I can’t see him sitting down with charts, talking to people. Ryley seems more like the kind of person who turns up, takes his guitar out of its case, you pick up your bass, and you just get on with it. Freddie Hubbard used to walk onstage and say, ‘Right, B flat, I’ll see you in…

KILLING JOKE EG RECORDS, 1980 Doom-laden dance metal, with KJ’s combination of dub and dissonance taking elements of disco, Joy Division and PiL and mashing them together on songs like the flaying “Requiem”, “The Weight” and “Change”. NIGHT TIME EG RECORDS, 1985  The bridge between commercial success and early innovation, with more space but no let-up in ferocity. Highlights include “Love Like Blood” and “Eighties”. PANDEMONIUM ZOO, 1994  Youth’s return, and Killing Joke strike for new ground, incorporating Egyptian vibes while still finding space for the industrial thrash of “Whiteout” and the metal pop of “Jana”. KILLING JOKE EPIC /ZUMA, 2003  Produced by the Gang Of Four’s Andy Gill, this beast of an album is heavily political and features juggernauts like “Total Invasion” and “Loose Cannon”, plus the excellent stadium…

‘‘IALWAYS SAY that Dylan’s the man who made me famous,” says Newport Folk Festival founder George Wein, “because I was the one who was there when he went electric.” No wonder Wein was so pleased to welcome the prodigal son back to the festival in 2002. Returning to the site of Fort Adams State Park, Dylan and his four-man band played to a capacity crowd of 10,000 on a steamy day in August. There was no explanation for his chosen attire of cowboy hat and phoney ponytail and beard – perhaps he felt it necessary to appear incognito given what happened last time. The performance included “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Mr Tambourine Man”, two songs that also graced the 1965 set. One snarky punter cried, “Judas!” A few others…

Produced by: Kevin McMahon and Adam Reich Recorded at: Excello Recording and The Bakery, Brooklyn; Marcata Recording, New Paltz, NY; The Soul Shop, Medford, Massachusetts Personnel includes: Patrick Stickles (vocals, chord organ, electronics, guitar, harmonica, glockenspiel), Adam Reich (lead guitar, vocals, organ, piano, glockenspiel), Eric Harm (drums, vocals), Julian Veronesi (bass, vocals), Jonah Maurer (guitar), Elio DeLuca (piano, organ), Owen Pallett (violin, viola), Yoni David (percussion)…

Why the decision to pare down the Beach House sound and get back to the drum machines? It was a natural process for us. We were yearning to put a certain level of communication and depth into the music. Drums make everybody turn up and sometimes that leads to a certain feeling that is not necessarily the right feeling. Victoria and I can feel like we can’t be ourselves if there are drums in the room as it makes you sing hard and you don’t hear the subtlety of a guitar part – you have to play simpler and clearer due to all the noise. Were you also curious about what these rudimentary rhythm tracks would create? Drums are such a complicated thing so this has been a huge thought…

Why did you decide to revisit Fakebook as a concept after 25 years? We often play acoustically and we do lots of covers anyway, so I think we’d circled around [ the idea ] and gotten kind of near it almost constantly. Then the idea came up and it felt right. We didn’t really question it much more deeply than that. But I think for a while we felt the need to establish that we were not that band, that even when we made Fakebook , that was a side of us, but not the whole band. Even at the time, Fakebook wasn’t a plan or a strategy, it just seemed to make sense in the moment.…

After the success of last year’s Big Bill Broonzy tribute, Common Ground , brothers Dave and Phil Alvin have been sharp in producing a follow-up. The aptly titled Lost Time – prior to Common Ground , the two ex-Blasters hadn’t recorded together in 30 years – finds them paying tribute to other formative influences, including Lead Belly, Otis Rush and James Brown. It’s Big Joe Turner who looms largest, though, as the siblings cover four of his tunes, among them “Hide And Seek” and “Wee Baby Blues”. Due on Yep Roc in mid-September. The same month sees the return of US roots stylist Patty Gr iffin. Servant Of Love , her 10th album, continues her…

Where did the idea for The Trackless Woods come from? The primary source was our daughter, who we adopted from Siberia when she was almost six. I’d never given any conscious thought to putting these poems to music, but I’m sure that it’s a leftover from my Pentecostal church upbringing. I was taught to be open to the notion that there’s stuff going on around us that you can’t see. And these poems felt like messages that I needed to set down. What is it about Anna Akhmatova’s poetry that resonates so strongly with you? Her poems are so human and spirit-filled in a very universal kind of way. Even when she’s talking about these really sorrowful events or experiences, there’s always hope in them. That’s…

The return of The Orange Humble Band has been a long time coming. Formed in 1994 by ex-Lime Spiders man Darryl Mather, it swiftly became a repository for a bunch of US power pop heroes, but split in the early noughties. It was only when the members met up at 2012’s SXSW, at a preview for Big Star documentary Nothing Can Hurt Me , that they decided to record again. The result is third album Depressing Beauty . “The material and lineup of players all work really well together,” explains former Big Star drummer and OHB member Jody Stephens. “We all have a lot of respect for each other; it makes it easy to just be yourself and let go. We all share similar…

The new LP is loaded with classic-rock references. What made you go there? It’s always been Destroyer’s comfort zone. That is the music that got me out of the basement, and into trying to sing in a rock’n’roll band, in 1997. For some reason I recently started to revisit those early-’70s records that were so pivotal to me in the late ’90s, mostly sparked by the song “Where Are We Now” by David Bowie. It made me think about him for the first time in a long time, and sonically it is definitely a major inspiration for Poison Season . The sonic idea behind the album seems to be the juxtaposition of heavily arranged elements with a rock band playing live off the floor. They were…

How did you come to end up collaborating with Tim Presley? I met him on my first headlining tour of the US. We liked his band, White Fence, and they supported my band. We got on well and I ended up playing guitar with them. Then, when I moved to Los Angeles, we hung out a lot with mutual friends and we talked endlessly about making a record together. In the end we thought, ‘Oh, this is getting embarrassing, let’s just get a studio and record something.’ We listened to lots of stuff together and applied complete abandon to the songwriting process. Most of the songs come from us playing guitar at each other and improvising. What the hell is going on with “Tim, Do I Like That Dog”? It’s…

LIVE! IN EUROPE POLYDOR, 1972 Gallagher was two albums into his solo career when he assembled this live selection recorded in England, Italy and Germany. It’s one showstopper after another – “Messin’ With The Kid”, “Pistol Slapper Blues”, “Bullfrog Blues” – and the incendiary guitar-playing helps explain why Gallagher pipped Eric Clapton to Best Guitarist in Melody Maker’s 1972 readers’ poll. TATTOO POLYDOR, 1973 His fourth studio LP, by which time he had a rep as the hardest-working guitarist in rock. “Tattoo’d Lady” and “Cradle Rock” are a great opening double act, while the two long blues tracks that dominate the second half (a Gallagher album invariably had a more generous run-time than most) see him, respectively, playing slide like a master and interacting sensitively with…

You have said that Pere Ubu fixed rock in this period: how did you think it was broken? Rock gets broken when it loses its forward drive. When Pere Ubu formed, there were lots of local bands playing the main rock venues who could do covers of Spirit just perfect, and we just thought there was more to it than this. We despaired at the ordinariness of it. Putting out your own record in 1975 was fairly unusual: what drove that decision? Rocket From The Tombs ended very badly in the summer of ’75. I wasn’t going to mess with a band any more – I just wanted to leave something behind. My ambition was to have a record in one of those Salvation Army record bins, which somebody could…

This September sees a veritable bounty of major artists return, from Beirut and Jack White’s Dead Weather to Richard Hawley and Mercury Rev, the latter with their first album since 2008. Receiving particular attention in the Uncut office are Kurt Vile’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down … – a work low on grammar, but high on memorable tunes – and The Arcs’ Yours, Dreamily , an infectious, lush new project from Black Key Dan Auerbach. His work on Dr John’s Locked Down is perhaps the record’s closest cousin. Elsewhere, David Rawlings releases Nashville Obsolete , with help from compadre Gillian Welch, Low follow The Invisible Way with the strong…