Innehållsförteckning för March 2020 #274 från UNCUT

IN 2015, Thomas Jean Henri gathered loved ones in his Brussels apartment to film them listening to Cabane’s debut 7”, “Sangokaku”, for the first time. The former drummer for Belgian indie band Venus hadn’t released any new music since a 2009 split single with Tunng under the name Soy Un Caballo. Seating each friend in turn on the blue sofa where he’d written “Sangokaku”, he explained why he’d chosen them to take part. “It was really moving,” he recalls. “For me, and for them.” The footage of their reactions, used as a video for the song, is unexpectedly moving too – a testament to the varied but powerful effects music can elicit. Some stare into the distance, others close their eyes, but many are visibly moved by the tune’s brittle…

ATO 8/10 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS released the immediate predecessor to The Unraveling, American Band, in September 2016. It was their least politically compromising album to date, an angry, wounded indictment of the perennial manias of the United States – guns, God and race – and their amplification by the presidential run of an obnoxious populist yahoo. Drive-By Truckers could have followed American Band with the “I told you so” album; they haven’t. They could have retreated to love songs; they haven’t. What they have done can be gleaned from a scan of The Unraveling’s track titles: “Armageddon’s Back In Town”, “Babies In Cages”, “Thoughts And Prayers”, “Grievance Merchants”, “21st Century USA”. The title of the album is a deliberate or accidental echo of George Packer’s marginally pre-Trump book The Unwinding –…

DESPITE their musical heritage, the Haden Triplets have certainly forged their own paths. By the 1990s Petra and Rachel had formed LA punk/power pop outfit That Dog, and Petra went on to record Petra Haden Sings The Who Sell Out, an entirely a cappella version of The Who’s 1967 album, and to play with the Foo Fighters and the Decemberists, while Rachel played with Todd Rundgren, Jimmy Eat World and Beck. Sister Tanya played with Silversun Pickups while older brother Josh Haden founded the group Spain. When the Haden Triplets were growing up, their father wasn’t around much. On his irregular visits to see his daughters, the accompanying soundtrack tended towards jazz – hardly surprising, given that “Dad” was Charlie Haden, famed bass player with Ornette Coleman’s Quartet, among other…

It’s been too long since we last heard from Nashville resident Diana Jones, but now she’s back with Song To A Refugee . Due in March on Proper, the follow-up to 2013’s sublime Museum Of Appalachia Recordings is a song cycle based around the theme of social justice and asylum seekers. Jones was so moved by the treatment of refugees at the V0Me{ican order that she ecame involved with the Helen Bamber Foundation and the work of its chair, actress Emma Thompson. Special guests on the album include Peggy Seeger, Richard Thompson and . Two of Earle’s bandmates in the Dukes, Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore, return that same month with their fourth album as The Mastersons. No Time For Love Songs RED HOUSE was recorded at LA’s Sunset Sound…

Companion Rises DRAG CITY 8/10 COMPANION Rises is a collection of clarion moments. Take “Pacific”, an organic meditation that opens the record and mirrors rolling waves; it’s cleansing, realigning focus and relaxing the listener into the journey of the album, channeling nature’s vast presence and offering two minutes in which to feel small and thankful. But as calming as it is, it’s also bold, an unmistakable celebration of earth and the cosmos, one that stands at the precipice of new age tropes without toppling over. It’s also testament to the inventiveness of Chasney’s approach, where what sounds like synthesisers are actually layers of processed guitar. These lines are inspired by the seascape of Chasny’s home state, threaded together for a broader meditation on California’s inherent spiritualism and pull. The state…

“THE thrill has never left me,” said Dan Snaith, when announcing his fifth album as Caribou, of his daily music-making habit. “I love it as much or more than I have always done.” Of course, plenty of artists declare their boundless enthusiasm for recording – and cynics might say it’s a slyly effective market motivator – but from debut The Milk Of Human Kindness, with its mix of pastel-bright electronica and motorik grooves, to the radiantly democratic synth pop of 2014’s Our Love, which reached No 8 on the UK chart, rapture has long been at the core of Caribou’s music. Snaith’s is a contagious love that runs deeper than sound, however. The London-based Canadian producer has admitted to a longterm tendency to look inward in his work, but with…

PETE BROWN: The silly thing about it is they never sent me with them, because then I’d have been around to write and we could have got more done. The success they had over there was incredible and very welcome. At one point they would pull the biggest percentage of a door fee, which was only beaten by Hendrix a few years later. We were all in thrall to American music – jazz and blues – so being in the county that produced that and being able to turn the audience back on to it was great for us. BOB ADCOCK: The prime thing from my point of view was that we did all those gigs with just three road crew. We had one guitar tech, one drum tech and…

PLUS KATE SPEAKS!“I’d never wanted to be famous!” IN the Essex countryside, between Harlow and Roydon, lies a mock-Tudor house called Woodley. In August 1973, it was home to David Gilmour. The guitarist had installed a modest studio just off the lounge; no control room, just an eight-track reel-to-reel on half-inch tape, a Wurlitzer and a slightly out-of-tune upright piano. On this auspicious day in the height of summer, Gilmour was joined by two members of the folk-rock band Unicorn, who had travelled up from Guildford in their Transit, and his new prodigy. “Scared?” Kate Bush later admitted to Unicorn bassist Pat Martin. “I was bricking it.” Cathy Bush – as she was then – first met Gilmour earlier that year. The guitarist had received a demo tape from a…

SO this is Christmas, chez Wainwright. On a stage decked out like a grand drawing room, candles sit atop piles of books and trees are swathed in festive glitter. Our jovial hosts, Rufus Wainwright and his sister Martha, usher a parade of cousins, partners and friends onto three plush sofas, everyone decked in Doonican-level scarves and jumpers. Among the guests sits Ed Harcourt, playing a drunk Uncle Fester in a smoking jacket and silk scarf. Chrissie Hynde, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Guy Garvey and Kami Thompson are also part of the soirée; later, Neil Tennant will make several ghostly visitations. The occasion is the Wainwrights’ annual family-and-friends cabaret show, wherein everyone takes a turn on a seasonal classic old or new. Spirits are high, but the deliveries often sombre. The show usually…

1917 Sam Mendes’ wartime epic arrives at a strange time, two years after the centenary of the Great War and two years after Christopher Nolan ticked off a few of the same boxes in the technically spectacular WWII drama Dunkirk. It’s a different conflict, obviously, but the similarities are glaring (a dangerous mission, lots of pale, worried boys smoking roll-ups and shivering in sodden uniforms), and even the film’s bravura conceit – the entire story is ostensibly told in a single take – doesn’t raise the creative stakes much. Though there’s a cast of thousands, the story itself is strikingly intimate, opening with privates Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) waiting, hungry and bored, with thousands of other British soldiers in the trenches of northern France on April 6,…

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN WESTERN STARS WARNER BROS HOME ENTERTAINMENT 8/10 THIS film is what Bruce Springsteen did instead of touring with his fine 2019 album, Western Stars. In April last year, he assembled a band, backing vocalists and a 30-piece orchestra in the century-old barn on his farm in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Over two nights, this ensemble performed the 13 tracks from Western Stars, and one cover version. Western Stars is mostly a perfectly decent concert film, but it’s a deal more than that. Between each song are brief cinematic vignettes, co-directed by Springsteen, which combine sequences shot beneath the vast skies overhanging the Joshua Tree National Park in California with archive footage of Springsteen, and scenes from his life. They are narrated by Springsteen, ruminating to camera or…

“THERE’S a Japanese magazine called Strange Days,” Neil Innes informed Uncut in 2014. “It only covers The Beatles, the Bonzos, Python and The Rutles.” Uniquely, Innes – who died unexpectedly on December 29, aged 75 – can claim to have been a member of three of those outfits and to have close ties to the fourth. An Essex-born army child whose talents lay in music and art, Innes’ arrival in the ranks of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in 1963 brought focus to their unorthodox mix of music hall, jazz and conceptual art. A gifted singer, pianist and guitarist, Innes held the troupe together and, as the decade progressed, the Bonzos became integral to the burgeoning world of social satire and pop culture. Their Victoriana and 1920s styles foreshadowed psychedelia…

JIM Marshall was an unlikely candidate for in-house photographer of the peace-and-love generation. Renowned for his evocative pictures of Monterey Pop, Woodstock and the Haight-Ashbury love-ins, Marshall was a raging coke addict who was twice convicted of firearms offences and who is described in Show Me The Picture: The Story Of Jim Marshall as “irascible” and a “malevolent gnome”. “Marshall was an artist – he just had a different instrument”ALFRED GEORGE BAILEY Yet there is a consensus among the film’s talking heads that Marshall’s hardman exterior shielded a sensitive soul. “It was absolutely a front,” agrees director Alfred George Bailey. How else, he argues, was Marshall able to coax such candid poses from Miles Davis and Johnny Cash, or to capture a movement so effectively as in his pictures of…

When and how did you start singing together? TANYA: The love of singing was apparent from day one. Especially Rachel and Petra, who had this kind of kinship. They were always singing in harmony since we were little kids. Was opening the album with “Wayfaring Stranger” – which your father recorded - intended as your tribute to him? RACHEL:The song reminds us of Dad, of course, and I love the intimacy and upfront, raw sound of the vocals. PETRA: I remember he was nervous about singing it because he had polio that affected his throat when he was in his teens. But he sung it with such emotion, it’s one of the best vocal performances I’ve ever heard. Joachim Cooder plays percussion on the album and Ry produced your last…

BORN and raised in Catford, south-east London, 28-year-old drummer Moses Boyd has become an omnipresent figure on the capital’s incredibly fertile jazz scene. In the last couple of years he’s released albums with tenor saxophonist Binker Golding as the fierce sax-and-drums duo Binker & Moses; he’s played on every album by the singer Zara McFarlane (and produced her last LP, Arise); he performed on the Mercury-nominated Your Queen Is A Reptile by Shabaka Hutchings’s punky marching band Sons Of Kemet; he was a featured drummer and co-producer on the debut album by tuba player Theon Cross; and you’ll frequently see him playing live with breakout stars such as the tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia. He’s also moved far outside the jazz ghetto: touring with R&B star Sampha and American cellist and…

Although it’s taken Torgeir Waldemar seven years to release his three solo albums to date, don’t mistake him for a slacker. Having played music since he was a youth, he’s also got a further three albums as part of The Devil And The Almighty Blues under his belt, and he’s recorded and co-produced a number of other artists too. “Be sure to check out Tone Erinjsdal’s first HS ›Srolojxe’/› he insists. In addition, he’s spent 20 years helping care for people with addiction issues, zorn that first ejan as an alternative to Norway’s compulsory military service. He admits, however, this may actxally haye enefitted his songwriting. “It led me into talking and singing about stuff that most people don’t talk aeoxt/› he confides/ sxch as issues like suicide. I realised…

BLUNDERING back and forth across the Atlantic like some great psychedelic bison during 1967, Eric Burdon became convinced that mysterious forces were conspiring to destroy The Beatles, disappearing in the middle of a UK tour with his new-look Animals in an unsuccessful bid to find John Lennon. “We knew what the 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, meant and we had to get to John and straighten it out,” he explained. Later the same year, he hit another moment of clarity, resolving to enlist Ravi Shankar for a peace-mongering tour of China – then in the terrifying grip of the Cultural Revolution. He hoped that The Beatles might be persuaded to join him, but was turfed out of the Fabs’ office without getting a fair hearing. “It really disappointed me because…

EAST VILLAGE Hotrod Hotel SLUMBERLAND THE hippest men in Princes Risborough, East Village ensured they would never sully their carefully curated aesthetic by splitting up – on stage – at a 1991 show at the New Cross Venue. With their debut album›Drop Out›still unreleased, it left a final, delicious, yearning note, a perfect unresolved tension, a good-looking corpse.›As Jeff Barrett – the band’s label boss at Sub Aqua and then Heavenly – puts it in the sleevenote to this long-unavailable collection of songs from East Village’s first three singles: “In their short life, they didn’t do anything stupid or shit.” Certainly, their best bits – “Strawberry Window”, “Vibrato”, “Break Your Neck” – have a brilliant chiming clarity, but with East Village the music was only ever half of the story.…

THE BE GOOD TANYAS BLUE HORSE FESTIVAL DISTRIBUTION, 2000 The debut establishes the template, mixing reworkings of folk and bluegrass songs (“Oh Susanna”; “Lakes Of Pontchartrain”) with the band’s own material. Ford makes her introduction on “Broken Telephone”. The elegant harmonies and intimate arrangements are disrupted on closer “Light Enough To Travel”, a rousing vignette about blue-collar living. 7/10 THE BE GOOD TANYAS CHINATOWN NETTWERK, 2003 Ford’s song writing begins to take shape here. “The Junkie Song” underscores Ford’s natural empathy, written after a 2am walk among “the junkies and homeless” in Yanco er he hoyers “between apathy and compassion” at their numbers. The sultry soul of “In Spite Of All The Damage” points to her future. 8/10 THE BE GOOD TANYAS HELLO LOVE NETTWERK, 2006  he eand’s final stdio…

BAD MOON RISING TO DAYDREAM NATION The band convene in downtown Manhattan during the early ’80s. Ice cream sandwiches, Pat Benatar and Creedence Clearwater Revival all have their parts to play in the band’s fascinating formation… I FIRST met Thurston when both of our bands moved to New York around 1979. He was a Connecticut college dropout who had aspirations to be a writer – but more than anything, he wanted to be involved in New York’s music scene. He was playing with The Coachmen, I was in The Flux and we were on a CBGBs bill together. But Kim, Thurston and I didn’t get to know each other well until Thurston curated Noisefest for nine nights in the summer of 1981, at a gallery called the White…

“Neil, Sam and Vivian have all ‘caught the bus’, but they have left us magic”“LEGS” LARRY SMITH IT might have been a gig or a rehearsal, but it was an early day in the formation of Bonzo, if I recall. We were all at London art schools, and art – the relationship between Michelangelo’s David and Duchamp’s urinal – was always foremost in our thoughts. It hung there, like some cooling trout. Bathroom tissue and where one might purchase it (at reasonable prices) was also paramount – it ran a close second. So, early days and we were still getting to know each other – still checking each other out, as boys tend to do. But when a young and sparkling Neil Innes marched in wearing a white canvas suit…

Yeah, but I’ve learned to accept my life is weird! I’ve become okay with things I never would have imagined myself feeling comfortable doing, on a daily basis. I’ve learned to ride the waves and that’s an ability I never used to have. Yeah, of course.›The times when I wanted to get off the wave were really just when there was a creative strain. Finishing an album is by far the hardest thing I have to go through because everything else is just work, you know? I mean it’s work as something that’s not unpredictable and has a method to it, whether it’s designing a live show or shooting a film clip or doing interviews. It’s actually the creative side when I have the times where I’m like, “Oh, fuck…

ROBERT VINCENT Third album from fast-rising Northern star ROBERT VINCENT has been on something of a roll since becoming the first ever recipient of UK Americana’s Emerging Artist Award in 2016. Bob Harris invited him onto BBC4’s Grey : For One Night Only, s supported Roger Waters in Hyde Park and been special guest on Duane Eddy’s farewell tour of Britain. He’s also signed to Thirty Tigers in Nashville, which seems to be a fitting spiritual home for a Liverpool boy raised on his father’s vinyl collection of Emmylou Harris, Charlie Rich and Waylon Jennings. Produced by Ethan Johns, In This Town You’re Owned is a study in the power of restraint. Vincent and his six-piece band prefer the quieter route to deliver their message. Even the very fine “My…

IN an age of digital disruption, political doublespeak and fake news, few things are as reliable as community. Born in the basement of a London venue, but now spread out across Glasgow and Los Angeles, dance-punk trio Shopping still make a point of writing face to face: most of All Or Nothing, their latest album, emerged from an intense 10-day writing period in February 2019. The result is a taut, lean 30-minute manifesto of a record which contains some of their most tuneful, groove-oriented songs yet. Shopping have never shied away from being labeled as a political band, although it’s never been strictly accurate: the term implies artifice rather than the politicisation by default of queer people and people of colour’s lived experience, as reflected in the gender politics of…

“We met Mark in London in the mid 2000s. His wife Elli [ Poulou ] brought him to a Mouse On Mars gig. Our set was quite gritty, which he liked. A couple of months later he came to see us in our studio in Dusseldorf. We quickly decided to record together. Most of [ Von Südenfed’s ] Tromatic Reflexxions came out of ideas from that first session Ze didn’t always understand Mark well – probably a good thing! He had his own rhythm – temper, work dynamics, attention spans, schedules. Molocular Meditation came about when curators Sarah Perks and Kenriette xldisch pxt on a final group show at Cornerhouse Manchester. They asked if I had an idea for a sound piece. I suggested a meditation room in which Mark…

SWISS trio Kedama were formed in 1971, released a single four-song album of live-in-the-studio dark prog/krautrock strangeness in 1976 (Live At Sunrise Studios) and then split in 1978 after playing a concert for which barely 30 people turned up. A 1999 reissue on Black Rills dug out a further seven songs recorded for an unreleased second LP, while this 3LP set on Castle Face repeats that on vinyl and adds eight live recordings, two taken from 1972 and the rest from a blistering set in 1976. It’s easy to hear why Kedama struggled to find an audience in their native country at the time. Their instrumental music is strange and unsettling, moody and unpredictable, taking all manner of deft and abrupt turns within a single song even if it’s all…

THE tea is made, the carrot cake is ready to be sliced and Robert Wyatt has just slid his electric wheelchair under the edge of the dining table when he realises he’s forgotten the cake knife. Uncut offers to fetch it from the kitchen. “No, it’s all right,” Wyatt says, reversing his chair. “I can get it without standing up, mate.” He returns with a huge knife – “It’s a bit Agatha Christie” – and proceeds to slice the cake. “It’s great, I can sit anywhere in town,” he adds, detailing one of the advantages of being wheelchair-bound, “while everyone else has to sit on a bench. It’s a bit toytown round here, like one of those imaginary places in train sets, but that’s no bad thing.” The town in…

“Every guitar player I talk to adores him”CHRISTINE McVIE EVERY three months or so, Bernie Marsden makes a two-hour drive from his home near Oxford, heading south-west. He’ll arrive at his destination – an unremarkable house in a quiet residential street – feeling a little nervous. A short while after he rings the bell, the front door opens. “I go, ‘Hello Pete’,” says Marsden. “Or sometimes I’ll call him Pedro. Then he invites me in and makes me a cup of tea. Mentally, I still pinch myself as I walk through the door.” As former songwriter and guitarist with UFO, Paice Ashton Lord and Whitesnake, Marsden isn’t normally given to starry-eyedness. But these visits are different. The person he comes to see is Peter Green, his idol as a young…

A TIPPING point of sorts was reached in autumn 1973 when Yes were recording their sixth LP at Morgan Studios, London. Finding – according to synth wizard Rick Wakeman – that they had “enough material for an album and a bit”, the prog giants were left with a choice as to whether to trim Tales From Topographic Oceans down to make a killer single LP, or stretch it out to fill four sides. True to the hubristic spirit of the times, they went for the double, leaving Wakeman so bored and dispirited that he spent much of that September hiding in a neighbouring studio. “Going over the road to Studio 4 and being with [Black] Sabbath,” he recalls. “That was sanity.” The borderline between inspiration and self-indulgence is walked frequently…

BAD BOYS FOR LIFE OPENS JANUARY 17 Ageing Miami cops Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reteam to take down a drug cartel. BOMBSHELL OPENS JANUARY 17 Charlize Theron heads a dramatisation of the Roger Ailes scandal at Fox News. WAVES OPENS JANUARY 17 Trent Reznor scores the visually dazzling story of an African-American family rocked by tragedy. THE TURNING OPENS JANUARY 24 Henry James’ gothic chiller The Turn Of The Screw gets a makeover in 1990s Maine. A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OPENS JANUARY 31 Twee fictional drama starring Tom Hanks as real-life American kids’ TV host Mr Rogers. QUEEN & SLIM OPENS JANUARY 31 Two African-Americans go on the run after killing a cop in self-defence. RICHARD JEWELL OPENS JANUARY 31 Clint Eastwood directs the true story of…

WEYES CHOICE I was delighted to see Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising winning your Album Of The Year. This was another Uncut- inspired discovery for me after hearing “Seven Words” on one of your sampler CDs and reading the accompanying full-page review of Front Row Seat To Earth a few years back. It’s great to see so many other female artists high in the list with albums by Julia Jacklin, Sharon Van Etten, Aldous Harding, Jenny Lewis and Big Thief all personal favourites this year. Apart from the fact that Ezra Furman should have been higher up the rankings, my only gripe is the omission of Strand Of Oaks. Eraserland is another fine album which deserves a much wider audience. I have to once again thank Uncut for my introduction to…