Innehållsförteckning för Apr-2018 från UNCUT

Bang a gong! Uncut’s Ultimate Genre Guide to Glam is out now, celebrating the glitter-strewn heyday of T.Rex, Bowie, Roxy, Slade, Mott, Queen, Sparks, Wizzard and more with brand new reappraisals and rare archive interviews from the pages of NME and Melody Maker … You like Bob Marley, Nick Drake and Robert Wyatt? Interesting fact: so does Paul Weller, who curates the second volume of NME Gold, his personalised pick from the archives (on sale February 23). Features his thoughts on his favourite bands, his top 20 albums, as well as a wide-ranging new interview... Also on the stands this month: the deluxe edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to David Bowie, expanded to include in-depth reviews of…

MOUSE ON MARS Dimensional People THRILL JOCKEY The German electronic duo return with a surprisingly heavyweight guest list – Bon Iver, Beirut, Swamp Dogg! – though it’s all in service of their twitchy, invigorating end product. LAURA VEIRS The Lookout BELLA UNION Ravishing melodies and personal reckonings abound on Veirs’ 10th solo LP; Sufjan Stevens and Jim James guest. ONCE & FUTURE BAND Brain EP CASTLE FACE Following last year’s excellent self-titled album, the Oakland quartet serve up a bonus helping of liquid prog-yacht-rock grooves. Think Yes in espadrilles. MIEN Mien ROCKET RECORDINGS Members of The Horrors, The Earlies and The Black Angels pool resources for an album of lithe krautrock jams and “sitar bangers”. THIRD EYE FOUNDATION Wake The Dead ICI D’AILLEURS In response to dark times, Matt Elliott…

Aside from 2016’s fine album with Neko Case and KD Lang, it’s five years since we heard from Laura Veirs. April sees the arrival of 10th solo work, The Lookout , in which the Portland singer-songwriter stresses “the importance of looking out for each other”. Produced by husband and collaborator Tucker Martine, the album features Sufjan Stevens, Jim James, Karl Blau, Steve Moore and Eyvind Kang. “I’m addressing what’s happening around me with the chaos of post-election America,” says Veirs. Around the same time, Nashville-based Canadian Lindi Ortega unleashes Liberty , a three-part concept piece about “loss, resurrection and freedom”. Inspired by the epic musical vistas of Ennio Morricone, and partly co-written with The Civil Wars’ John Paul White, she’s helped out by local…

How does vodou fit into your music? Vodou has always been a tool of resistance for Haitians. Whether they were freeing themselves from slavery or during the years of American occupation, music was a way of enhancing Haitian culture and identity when it was under threat – and voodou was one of its pillars. Haitian singers like Martha Jean-Claude, who was one of the key inspirations for my album, sang popular songs from the vodou songbook. Can you tell us a little more about Martha Jean-Claude? She’s the reason I became a singer. She was sent to prison in 1952 for attacking the Haitian authorities and when she got out, she left for Cuba, where she sung Haitian songs in exile for 34 years. She has been like a thread…

Both Sides Of The Sky EXPERIENCE HENDRIX/LEGACY RECORDINGS/SONY REISSUE OF THE MONTH 7/10 JIMI HENDRIX only ever released three studio LPs under his own name during his lifetime, but in the 48 years since his death more than a dozen posthumous albums of material have been packaged from the hours and hours of tape that exist from his studio sessions – not to mention at least well over two dozen live collections. The ructions over his catalogue are worthy of their own specialist biography. The first three posthumous LPs – The Cry Of Love, Rainbow Bridge and War Heroes – feature tracks that were salvaged from the vaults by longtime Hendrix producer/engineer Eddie Kramer and completed with minimal overdubs. The next batch – Crash Landing, Midnight Lightning and Nine To…

LOOKING back at her solo debut 25 years on, Hatfield recalls an LP born in difficult circumstances. “I was pretty miserable and depressed,” she admits. “Music was something I did out of desperation to escape my state of mind, or to try and purge myself of emotional pain.” Despite this, Hey Babe , reissued on vinyl by American Laundromat, fizzes with energy and wit, and stands as a prime example of early-’90s grunge-pop, an underground album unafraid to be catchy. Hatfield recorded it with guests like Evan Dando, who Hatfield had met when she played bass on It’s A Shame About Ray . “I knew Evan, I was able to have him involved on the album, singing and playing,” she says. “He was fun…

A veritable bounty is promised for the end of March and April: Wye Oak return with The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs , and Jack White releases his funked-up third solo album, Boarding House Reach . Elsewhere, Chris Carter unleashes the excellent Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 , while Manic Street Preachers, Laura Veirs and Unknown Mortal Orchestra are also back with new albums. In the reissue pipeline, there’s Led Zeppelin’s How The West Was Won in a variety of formats, The Handsome Family’s influential third album Through The Trees , celebrating its 20th anniversary, and a trio of John Fogerty reissues. Choogle on. TOM.PINNOCK@TIMEINC.COM…

POD 4AD, 1990 The strong debut, condensing the spookiest Pixies and Throwing Muses vibes into a bubblegum confection. One of Albini’s most Albini-esque productions, too. ”SAFARI” 4AD, 1992 A mighty EP from the brief period when Kelley Deal and Tanya Donelly were both in the group. The title track, in particular, is a strident example of Kim’s knack for mixing the weird and the catchy. LAST SPLASH 4AD, 1993 “Cannonball”, and much more – from the compact garage-pop of “No Aloha” and “Saints”, to the freewheeling weirdness of “Roi” and “Mad Lucas”. Perfectly sequenced, as well. ”HEAD TO TOE” 4AD, 1994 The Last Splash lineup’s last stand, featuring Josephine’s hardcore title track, and covers of Guided By Voices and Sebadoh that arguably surpass the originals. TITLE…

TOM RUSH “URGE FOR GOING” (THE CIRCLE GAME, ELEKTRA, 1968) Rush’s unhurried, contemplative, rough-hewn reading has the powerful economy of prime Tim Hardin. Also featuring songs by James Taylor and Jackson Browne, the album is a landmark in the embryonic singer-songwriter scene. FAIRPORT CONVENTION “CHELSEA MORNING” (FAIRPORT CONVENTION, POLYDOR, 1968) The B-side of their first single, “If (Stomp)”, and a light, energetic, rhythmically inventive joy. The vocal switch between Judy Dyble on the 4/4 verses and Iain Matthews on the waltz-time breakdowns works a treat, too. JUDY COLLINS “BOTH SIDES NOW” (ELEKTRA SINGLE, 1968) Different from the Wildflowers album version, sharpened by David Anderle’s new mix. Drums, harpsichords, vaulting strings and Collins’ clarion vocal accentuate both the ache and the wonder, as Mitchell’s introspective contemplations are…

“THAT Song About The Midway”, from Clouds , is widely thought to be about Leonard Cohen, but David Crosby offers a different interpretation. Crosby vividly recalls first hearing the song as their relationship dissolved in 1968. “We were at Peter Tork’s house – it might have been Stephen Stills’ house by then – and the whole of our gang was there, maybe 20 people. I had met Christine Hinton, and fallen for her, and Joni and I were on the rocks. Anyway, we were all sitting around eating dinner, and Joni kind of storms in forcefully, plonks herself down, and says, ‘I’ve got a new song to sing you.’ We’re all like, ‘A new Joni song? Yippee!’ “She sat down and sang ‘That Song About The Midway’,…

“I MET Josh in the late ’90s in Denton, Texas, when Lift To Experience came to see Dirty Three play in a barn-like venue. The weather was ferocious and a rain of Biblical proportions was upon us. They appeared backstage and were very intense – giggling and kinda terrifying. Later, Josh told me they were all tripping that night. Which explained some of it, I guess. “I was impressed by his Texan manners and hospitality. And his beard. Of which, I confess to appropriating. He’s deeply religious, in an Old Testament style, and I found that compelling and refreshing. “When I toured with him, he always wanted to take the sandwiches from the band room because he couldn’t deal with the waste. After a few days the van was full…

“WE always ordered McDonald’s for lunch at FAME. Rick loved the fish fillet sandwich, but he hated the secret sauce they always put on it. While they were out getting the order, we recorded the track. It was a little long, so Rick cut out this section of the song and just threw the tape in the garbage. Then he put it all back together and was just about to hit play when McDonald’s showed up. He got his fish fillet, took off the top bun, and scraped all the secret sauce into the garbage… “It turned out he cut the wrong section out of the song! We got it out, laid it out on the floor and spent forever wiping all this secret sauce off. But he spliced it…

“Writing about Justine [ Frischmann ] was very tough, not cheapening our relationship” WHEN Brett Anderson was searching for a model for his memoir, Coal Black Mornings, he turned not to the usual heap of predictable rock biographies but to Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie. “The biggest lesson I learnt from that book is how anything, no matter how mundane, if well described, can be interesting,” says Anderson. “My life had interesting elements, but there was also drudgery. I didn’t want to write the usual rock biography, which is why it finishes when it does. It was a bloody-minded determination not to do what people expected.” The book ends with Suede signing to Nude, full of hope and expectation but yet to be acclaimed the best…

1 GRAHAM COXON Angry Me We begin, this month, with one of our (and Coxon’s) favourites from the guitarist’s first soundtrack album, for the series The End Of The F***ing World. A wonderfully scrappy piece of Velvets-y pop, it finds Coxon in a typically bemused mood. “Can you actually play the organ?” he shouts to himself over a keyboard solo. “No!” 2 THE LOW ANTHEM Give My Body Back Sounding something like Simon & Garfunkel if they were signed to Warp, this highlight from the Rhode Island group’s fifth album, The Salt Doll Went To Measure The Depth Of The Sea, finds their music subtler, stranger and more arresting than ever before. 3 GWENNO Tir Ha Mor Gwenno Saunders’ second album as a solo artist finds the singer, songwriter and…

The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science EGON, 2002 The trio composed these instrumentals as loose soundtracks to the short documentaries of director Jean Painlevé. They evoke the underwater milieu of these films in intriguing ways, in the wavelike guitars and in the air-bubble burble of McNew’s bass. The songs bend to the will of the film, which means the band shifts almost constantly from amphibious ambience to slo-mo exotica to cinematic post-rock. Nuclear War EP MATADOR, 2002 Sun Ra’s Cold War protest stomp, released in 1982 as a jab at Reagan, had been a staple of Yo La Tengo’s live shows long before they set their version down on tape. Or, more accurately, their versions. This EP includes four very different arrangements of the song, each one wild and…

What’s the appeal of the unembarrassed grand gesture? It’s all I can do, I guess! I tend to think in longer phrases and grandiose musical gestures. I think my love of jazz has something to do with it. I’m looking for balance and harmony, no matter how long the piece of music is – that means nothing to me. Sometimes music needs to float for a minute or two; it’s actually very hard to let these moments remain in the recording/ editing process. Why drum machines and synths this time? I’ve always used drum machines, just never really on my records. I love Arthur Russell, Shuggie Otis… that use of kind of a dumb little beat from a “rhythm computer”. The other thing I love about quantised rhythm is that…

A full decade on, the legend returns, tackling songs written by other stars. By Graeme Thomson Whistle Down The Wind PROPER 8/10 SPEAKING to Uncut last month, Joan Baez served up the sobering news that Whistle Down The Wind would likely be her final album. At 77, and with almost 60 years’ worth of recordings behind her, it’s not hard to fathom her reasons. Her new album may have taken only 10 days to make, but it arrives a full 10 years after its predecessor, 2008’s Day After Tomorrow. If this does prove to be a last goodbye, Baez is exiting with an understated flourish. Produced with the kind of rootsy classicism that has become a hallmark of Joe Henry’s work, Whistle Down The Wind tackles 10 songs by a…

When did it stop being a Byrne/Eno collaboration and start being a David Byrne record? With the earlier record Brian had fairly full instrumental tracks done. With this one he mainly had drum programs fed through an algorithm that he and a friend had made. Writing over these, the songs came quickly and I proceeded to add more players and instruments and shape the tracks as I felt the songs themselves were dictating. Around that point, Brian offered that it had become my record. You seem very concerned with the state of American politics – is that an accurate reading? These songs were written two years ago, so they are not a reaction to The Donald, but to the world that gave birth to him. I believe we are following…

Can you tell us about “Untitled God Song”? Growing up with a religious background, I always grappled with the idea of what God looked like. I mean this in a humorous sense. The older I get, the more convinced I am that God is just a busy mother trying to balance all the chaos around her, and I have no idea why, but I do love this imagery. Maybe it’s an allusion to my own mother, but please don’t tell her that. “Oom Sha La La” has a very different vibe from the rest of the album. What’s the story with that song? This tune was written in a song challenge and scrapped away in the books for many months. Over a year later I brought it back to the…

JIMI HENDRIX The Cry Of Love EXPERIENCE HENDRIX/SONY, 1971 The first collection of odds and sods, released six months after Hendrix’s death, sees Eddie Kramer assembling sessions recorded largely with Buddy Cox and Mitch Miller. Hendrix pushes in several directions: heavy-duty funk (“Freedom”, “Ezy Ryder”, “Straight Ahead”), aqueous soul (“Drifting”, “Angel”) and blues (“My Friend”, “Belly Button Window”). A radically tweaked version was released in 1995 as Voodoo Soup , produced by the controversial Alan Douglas. 8/10 THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE BBC Sessions EXPERIENCE HENDRIX LLC/SONY, 2010 First released on Castle as Radio One in 1988, this expanded 2CD version collates 38 of the Experience’s live BBC radio and TV sets. Revealing covers include The Beatles’ “Day Tripper”, Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl…

ALTERED IMAGES The Epic Years CHERRY RED 6/10 Exhaustive 60-track, four-disc box for early-’80s New Pop dreamers You can get close to the daft, dreamy heart of New Pop by charting the irresistible rise of Altered Images from Glasgow street urchins to Banshees protégés to Top Of The Pops darlings in the course of a few months in 1980/81. No other band quite encapsulates the vertiginous, polychromatic rush of the era; hear “Dead Pop Stars”, their mordant debut single from March 1981, and Clare Grogan sounds like Shirley Temple channelling John Lydon. By the end of the year with “I Could Be Happy”, she is the original manic pixie dream girl, festooned in bunting, deliriously destabilising the Christmas TOTP. Altered Images’ matchless singles run remains a delight, 35 years on,…

“Nobody loved The Fall more than Mark did” GRANT SHOWBIZ SPEAKING to Granada TV’s So It Goes in February 1978, the singer of The Fall attempted, not for the last time in his life, to explain what his group were fighting against. “Coming from the north,” he said, “you’ve got this inoffensive, cap-touching attitude which we’re trying to break out of.” Shot side-on, with his attention shifting back and forth between the interviewer and the ceiling, he resembled a younger, fidgetier version of the Leeds United striker Allan Clarke. This was Mark E Smith at 20. One day a tower of writing would bear his name. Almost 40 years later, at Glasgow University’s Queen Margaret Union, Smith made his final public entrance in the most dramatic circumstances. The Fall launched…

LAY OF THE LAND EXTRICATE COG SINISTER/ PHONOGRAM, 1990 A magnificent album, delightful to hardcore and newcomer alike. Punchy hi-fi production, a rueful ballad (“Bill Is Dead”) a nod to hip-hop (“Telephone Thing”), and every one a winner. 10/10 CODE: SELFISH COG SINISTER/ PHONOGRAM, 1991 Possibly the last truly great Fall LP, with musical adventure and acute social observation (“Free Range”; “Married. 2 Kids”) in equal measure. Slide guitar, fidgety techno and fine opener “The Birmingham School Of Business School”, too. 9/10 DRAGNET STEP FORWARD, 1979 A field recording from inside a ghost story. After their comparatively crisp debut, the band’s second record was an experiment in fidelity, a dank and literary post-punk. The likes of “Spectre Vs Rector” offered a cold and frightening trip into the MES universe. 9/10…

IT’S been suggested that childhood polio forced Mitchell to find more agreeable chord shapes, which led to her inventing new tunings. The early influence of Buffy Sainte-Marie and Tom Rush also played a part. “I always tuned my guitar all sorts of funny ways, and she had seen me play at Mariposa,” says Sainte-Marie. “It was something we had in common, but I don’t know whether she got it from me.” “I showed her some open tunings,” says Rush. “I was using a good many, but she took them to Mars! I remember having to call her up when I was trying to learn ‘The Circle Game’ and asking, ‘How do you make that chord?’” He laughs. “David Crosby claims he taught Joni open tunings – I haven’t argued with…

“I’ve been running for a long time, avoiding things” JOSH T PEARSON SITTING in his home in a converted art studio in south Austin, Texas, Josh T Pearson is spinning one of his spirited tales. More specifically, he is telling us about an epiphany he experienced a few years ago. This was in August 2016, when Pearson found himself adrift in France, unsure of where his life – or his career – were heading. Pearson, the son of a Pentecostal minister, was having a crisis of faith. “I was 41 years old and staying in my friend’s son’s room in Paris, just a drifter,” says Pearson. “I had finally finished the words to a bunch of songs I’d started back in 2005, 2006. But I realised that no-one would ever…

KEY PLAYERS “WE were all still in the afterglow of the Summer Of Love,” says Jay Ferguson, recalling the early days of Spirit, “before things started getting a bit dark. LA was still a great band incubator, clubs were thriving and music was about passion and not yet about the money.” One product of the countercultural currents close to Spirit’s Topanga Canyon base was “Fresh Garbage”. The opening track on the group’s self-titled debut, lyrically it’s an acerbic, sly protest against environmental destruction, sparked by finding the rubbish abandoned by previous tenants of their house. “The environment was a relatively new issue and definitely on everyone’s minds,” says Ferguson. “Mine included.” There was also a unique musical element to Spirit: the push and pull between the rock and folk instincts…

GREAT LOST VENUES – THE FINAL WORD? Nice to see the Pound Club in Belfast featured in your 50 Great Lost Venues [February issue] – but it certainly wasn’t the premier punk venue in these parts. I played guitar and sang in RUDI, and we were, for our sins, the very first punk band in Belfast – and more significantly the only such combo actually out playing in public through 1976/77. By far the most important punk venue in these parts was the Harp Bar. A run-down dingy pub located outside the city centre security gates in semi-derelict Hill Street, the Harp was initially renowned for the low-rent strippers at lunchtime. Like all the best rock’n’roll venues, the Harp was a real dive – but what made it different from…

DIANA ROSS I’m Still Waiting 1970 I first heard this when I was about 10 years old. I remember lying on a tartan blanket sunbathing in the garden, listening to my transistor, and it came on. That first line: “I remember when I was five and you were 10/ Boy, you knew that I was shy, so you teased and made me cry/But I loved you…” The idea that children could be in love, that their feelings could matter and last, blew me away. Her voice just shimmered out of the radio, and the arrangements are all sophisticated strings in that pre-disco ’70s pop/soul vibe. BILLIE HOLIDAY Lady Sings The Blues 1956 I got into Billie Holiday when I was about 17. I’d been mostly listening to punk and post-punk…

SCAN an interview with any band more than three years into their career and you’ll soon find the bit where they complain how relentless touring has neutered their creativity and eroded their soul. Not Chris Robinson. Now around 16 albums deep into a journey that began in the late-’80s as frontman for Southern rock revivalists The Black Crowes – and that now finds him the flagbearer for a whole kind of freewheeling, cosmic lifestyle as leader of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood – he’s still so enamoured by the idea of playing music in a different town each night, he’s just formed two more bands. Uncut catches up with him at Salt Lake City airport at the conclusion of a mini-tour with the Green Leaf Rustlers, a kind of Marin County…

AMEN DUNES Freedom SACRED BONES 8/10 Philly native’s haunted, hip-swinging fifth “Memory don’t mean much to me, still don’t go away,” muses Damon McMahon on album closer “LA”, acknowledging the failure of diffidence and bravado to hide emotional pain. The past of the NYC resident, who records as AD, looms large on Freedom, but fictional characters also figure, with emotions played out against a backdrop of upbeat, urbanised alt. folk and groovy pastoral soul by a band that includes guitarist Delicate Steve. If his peer group includes Ryley Walker, Phosphorescent and Josh T Pearson, AD’s references are harder to pin down, as the difference between the brooding “Blue Rose” and steadily accelerating “Miki Dora” attests. SHARON O’CONNELL COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS May Your Kindness Remain FAT POSSUM 5/10 A disappointing mis-step…

How did working with Creep Show compare to making your solo albums? It was just pure fun. There was a lot of giggling and oceans of coffee all set against the stunning backdrop of Cornwall. I was with three other people playing around with all this incredible equipment. So it wasn’t the mindfuck making one of my records is. “Safe And Sound” must be your first ever love song with no hidden bitchy barbs. You OK? Haha! I thought about that too. I wrote it originally for someone else to perform. They had just experienced a break-up so I wanted to comfort them. I won’t say who it was to protect the innocent children of our beleaguered planet. But they didn’t want the song, so we used it and I…

1980. “Last orders half past ten!” Mark makes important informational announcement in the midst of brisk, early live album Totale’s Turns: It’s Now Or Never . 1980s Prestwich homage. “Fall album covers are like an archive of old Prestwich,” he once said. Early singles and albums feature photos of historic buildings since demolished. 1984. The video for “Cruiser’s Creek”. Performance artist Leigh Bowery gatecrashes a scenario in which The Fall play guests at a depressing office party. Re-cuts some of the footage for “Mr Pharmacist” promo – as was standard Fall practice (cf promos for “Wings” and “Container Drivers”). 1985. The Fall release “Terry Waite Sez”, shortly before the famed hostage negotiator is captured. MES later responsible for other vaguely prophetic tracks including…

AFTER meeting and falling for each other at Newport in 1967, Mitchell and Cohen were briefly the golden couple of Canadian folk. They co-hosted the Mariposa Folk Festival later that summer, although it was Cohen, 33, and already an admired poet and novelist – not to mention a man – who received most of the coverage. Cohen influenced Mitchell profoundly. At Newport, she was bowled over by “Suzanne”, a song which, she said, “set the standard”, forcing her to raise her game and “plumb the depths of my experience”. At her request, Cohen gave her a reading list that included Camus’ The Outsider , the I Ching, and Hesse’s Magister Ludi and Siddhartha . Mitchell memorialised their romance in “The…

WAGNER Wagner wins. In the end he’ll ‘ring’ you in. Sorry. Marrying text with lyrics, his use of leitmotif, is what made him a heavy hitter to me, and the way he uses a melody line or instrument as a character. BOB DYLAN Ah, the lost art of memorisation. He said he could hear someone else’s song once (maybe twice) and have the words memorised. People tend to talk of Bob’s lyrics, but his melody is/was truly inspired. JASON PIERCE I read an article on him when I was young and he said he wanted the highest highs and the lowest lows in his art. That seemed like a pretty good idea to me at the time. It still does. KEVIN SHIELDS Loveless is the reason I picked…

ARTHUR ALEXANDER You Better Move On 1961 Hall had just set up operations in a candy and tobacco warehouse, and this was his first official production. On the charts it was a modest hit; off the charts, it was wildly popular. JIMMY HUGHES Steal Away 1964 Like Arthur Alexander, Jimmy Hughes was a local black artist who came to FAME. After a few flop singles, Hall suggested he write his own song. The result is this pleading R&B burner that went to No 2 on the R&B charts. WILSON PICKETT Land of 1000 Dances 1966 After Pickett alienated the crew at Stax in Memphis, Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler sent the singer down to the Shoals. One of his first efforts there was this excitable dance song, which features Roger Hawkins’…

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON OPENS FEBRUARY 23 Fictionalised account of the early days of Bruce Lee. Stars Philip Ng as the future master. I, TONYA OPENS FEBRUARY 23 Margot Robbie plays figure skater Tonya Harding in unusual biopic. A FANTASTIC WOMAN OPENS MARCH 2 Chilean drama. A transgender singer faces scorn and discrimination after the sudden death of her older boyfriend. GAME NIGHT OPENS MARCH 2 Comedy, with Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, whose regular game night turns into a murder mystery. MOM AND DAD OPENS MARCH 2 A teenage girl and her little brother try to survive deranged parents, Nic Cage and Selma Blair. SAMSON OPENS MARCH 2 Biblical drama starring – get this – Billy Zane, Rutger Hauer and former Bionic Woman, Lindsay Wagner. BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR…