Innehållsförteckning för March 2016 från UNCUT

EBRUARY 26, 1976. At the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, the 17th night of the Isolar tour is coming to its traditional close. As the stark, expressionist spectacle reaches its climax, David Bowie fires an imaginary arrow into the air. On cue, his lighting director plunges the stage into darkness. Cut to black. Thirty feet from the stage, the photographer John Rowlands takes the picture which adorns our cover this month, and which Bowie reputedly counted as one of his favourite images of himself. In the midst of the grief and chaos which has engulfed the music world these past few days, it occurred to us that Rowlands’ shot would be a fitting one to use on the front of this special issue of Uncut . I can think of…

“My wrestling interest peaked in the ’70s with World Of Sport on a Saturday afternoon!” IT IS THE day after Clint Mansell’s birthday and he is in surprisingly sprightly form. “It was pretty gentle, actually,” he says from his home in the Hollywood Hills. “I went for some sushi and then down the pub with some friends for a few drinks. But I was pretty sensible. I was in bed for midnight.” Such reserved behaviour is, Mansell admits, a far cry from his youthful antics as the co-frontman of Pop Will Eat Itself: “We laughed and drank our way around the world,” he admits. These days, Mansell is a Grammy-nominated soundtrack composer, whose credits include Moon, Requiem For A Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan. It is a remarkable career…

“WHEN I WENT to Nashville in ’81 to make Almost Blue – where we did other people’s songs – the first song we cut was Loretta’s ‘Honky Tonk Girl’. It’s a weird song for me to record, because I didn’t even reverse the gender. The best thing I cut was a song I learned from her record, I Remember Patsy – ‘He’s Got You’. Loretta was our guiding light. While I was in Nashville, this girl came by our hotel and she turned out to be the president of Loretta’s fan club, and we all joined. I didn’t actually meet Loretta until maybe 2007. I knew John Carter since he was a lad, because I knew his parents. My friend – and…

WITHOUT DOUBT DAVID Bowie has talent. And also without doubt it will be exploited. For Mr Bowie, a 19-year-old Bromley boy, not only writes and arranges his own numbers, but he is also helping Tony Hatch to write a musical score, and the numbers for a TV show. As if that wasn’t enough, David also designs shirts and suits for John Stephen of the famed Carnaby Street clan. “Also I want to go to Tibet. It’s a fascinating place, y’know. I’d like to take a holiday and have a look inside the monasteries. The Tibetan monks, Lamas, bury themselves inside the mountains for weeks and only eat every three days. They’re ridiculous – and it’s said they live for centuries.” It should be stated that David is a well-read student…

“ I FIRST MET David at the RCA Studio when I was a session musician and he was a producer for Lulu. My first impression? His oddity! At that time, I had an afro, I was heavily into James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud’, I was on the Chitlin’ Circuit, doing the whole R&B thing with the Sound Of Philadelphia. David was still in his Spiders From Mars period – he had orange hair and his complexion was pasty white. He’d use phrases like, ‘Hey, man’ and ‘That’s cool’, all these little things said in his strange British accent. But when I started talking to him, I could see his humanity. He was this guy from London who was trying to act cool and hip…

“ I MET HIM at an after-hours club called The Continental in 1982. I walked in with Billy Idol and we spotted David at the same moment. I went directly over to David and started chatting with him because I knew that he lived in the same building as a lot of the players on Young Americans, who were all friends that I grew up with – Luther Vandross, Carlos Alomar and his wife. We started chatting about our favourite jazz artists. I grew up in an era where fusion jazz had come into play, and also bebop jazz. David not only liked that, but he also liked Stan Getz and the ‘smoother’ side of jazz. “We had just one other subsequent meeting; that was it. Next thing I know,…

BOWIE DOESN’T THINK he’ll ever write an autobiography. Doesn’t feel the compulsion, and dislikes most books about him. Will people remember you in 20, 30 years’ time? By which I mean: will they remember rock stars, pop music? “I don’t think people take much time to look back these days,” comes his answer, which might be poignant were it not for his unflinching modernism. “They don’t look back anywhere near as much as we used to, as I used to. History has receded into the distance, and so has the future. There is a present sensibility now. The past, the idea of history, has lost a lot of currency. It doesn’t carry the weight it had for my generation. So I’m not sure whether last week’s papers will mean a…

AT THE AGE of 76, and after 65 years of performing, Mavis Staples can hardly believe that she may only just be reaching her peak. “Things have been happening for me lately,” she says, “that make me feel like being born all over again. I mean, at this time I should be thinking about retiring, but I’m thinking, ‘Hey, I’m just getting started.’” After success with her family gospel and soul group, The Staple Singers, led by her father Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples, and decades of strong solo work, Mavis Staples now feels revitalised by her new record, the M Ward-produced Livin’ On A High Note – including new songs by Nick Cave and Justin Vernon – and a forthcoming documentary about her life, Mavis!. “I tell you, it’s a beautiful…

FIELD MUSIC FIELD MUSIC MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES, 2005 In which the Brewises set out their template: a sprightly, pastoral skewing of post-punk, R’n’B and prog. FIELD MUSIC TONES OF TOWN MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES, 2007 A kind of post-punk chamber pop, Tones is Field Music’s most ornery album, and probably the one to blame for prevailing notions of them as a prog band. SCHOOL OF LANGUAGE SEA FROM SHORE MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES, 2008 Unlike the clarity of Field Music’s records, the production on David’s solo debut is both agitated and exhilarating, full of vocal deconstruction as well as nods to Robert Wyatt and XTC. THE WEEK THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES, 2008 Indebted to Bush, Gabriel and Stravinsky, Peter’s solo debut plies stentorian, paranoid art-rock, underpinned by…

‘‘IT’S NOT A great last memory. He had come over to the house in LA where I lived with Mom, and I just wanted to get out. I was 13 and a budding addict myself at that point. I had some pot I wanted to smoke, and I couldn’t be bothered with him. I said I had to go to a birthday party, and he knew I was lying. He said, ‘I don’t see presents?’ He knew bullshit when he heard it, but I took off. Unfortunately, that was the last time I saw him. My most powerful experience with his music came later, on my 21st birthday. I decided to put on “Baby Close Its Eyes”. I just imagined Mom and Dad and the glow they must have had…

“We’re often forced to translate ideas in more figurative or visual ways” WHAT WERE YOU looking to do with this record? On the most basic level we were trying to do something that was exciting for us, and that’s the best you can do, really. You have to let the chips fall where they do after that. We were trying to do something new, and I’m not gonna presuppose that it’s new for the universe, but it’s something that feels fresh and different. Setting out, did you give yourselves any guidelines? We had three ideas that we clung to the whole time. We tried to do something that had really short songs, and we spoke about basic plodding rhythms, and we wanted to do something different – or special –…

BARRY ADAMSON Know Where To Run CENTRAL CONTROL More epic soundtracks from cinematic fantasist Since his 1989 debut, Magazine’s former bassist has earned a reputation for scores to nonexistent films, including 1992’s Mercury-nominated Soul Murder. His eighth sticks largely to the template: “In Other Worlds” glides from creepy John Carpenter synths to Lalo Schifrin drama, while “Texas Crash” boasts wild slide guitar and a rhythm section so speedy it slams through the walls of a smoky speakeasy at full tilt. Ventures into vocal realms, however, generate mixed results: “Up In The Air”’s brassy gallop sits courageously between Inspiral Carpets and Gallon Drunk, but “Come Away” merely apes his previous work as a Bad Seed. WYNDHAM WALLACE SARAH BLASKO Eternal Return MVKA Musical about-turn for Australian singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko has stayed…

It’s three years since the Indianapolis duo Lily & Madeleine released their folk-tinged debut, written and recorded between lessons at school. Now the Jurkiewicz sisters, who are 18 and 21 respectively, have made some changes with their third LP, Keep It Together . Gone is the revolving-door policy of their band – with cellist/guitarist Shannon Hayden and drummer Kate Siefker, they are now a confirmed four-piece. Also notable is their expanded sound. “Our music has changed over the last year and so have we,” explains Lily. “I’ve been listening to a lot of hip-hop and R&B. We’ve always been classified alongside acts like The Staves and First Aid Kit. I respect those bands but that style of music isn’t true to us any more.” The title of…

You moved back to Mali after living in Europe and almost immediately war broke out. How did that impact on you and your music? It was traumatic. I became aware of how naïve I’d been. And there were other events in my life. Everything was falling apart. It’s never easy to go through tough times, but it is also what makes you grow. I realised that I was either going to make it, or add my name to the long list of female artists who ended badly. That sounds quite dramatic… Né So reminds me of my first album, as I had to start from scratch and reorganise my way of thinking to move forward. But this time, I had the benefit of experience. When you…

BEFORE GETTING STARTED on Rangda’s music, check out their song titles. “Spiro Agnew”, “Mondays Are Free At The Hermetic Museum” and, best of all, “Hard Times Befall The Door To Door Glass Shard Salesman”. They sound a little like Tom Wolfe book titles, but their witty, surreal flow hints at the pattern of the music itself, while encapsulating the freedom that comes from recording instrumentals: with no singer to accommodate, you can call a song whatever you want and then take it any place you please. That’s pretty much the unifying credo for this guitar-charged trio formed by Ben Chasny and Richard Bishop, and held together by drummer Chris Corsano. These serial collaborators have appeared on around 400 albums between them – Bishop mainly with the experimental, unpredictable Sun City…

MEMORIES 1969 VERSION With The Wilde Flowers themselves a memory, Hugh Hopper’s finest song was revisited in the late ’60s by Robert Wyatt, Hopper and Mike Ratledge for this moody, despairing take – in many ways, a blueprint for much of Wyatt’s subsequent solo career. Kevin Ayers was reportedly even on hand to provide the closing organ notes. WHERE BUT FOR CARAVAN WOULD I? Co-written with Brian Hopper, this epic closed Caravan’s self-titled debut, released in 1969, but on The Wilde Flowers’ Disc Two it features in an earlier, murkier-sounding extended version. After three sleepy minutes, the track blossoms into life with a chromatic, menacing riff and two sets of stellar organ soloing from Dave Sinclair. MAN IN A DEAF CORNER Written and performed by Brian…

This Heat are usually framed as a post-punk group. Did punk feel like a divisive moment? HAYWARD: [ This Heat ] were already gigging by the time punk exploded and were very curious when we read things like “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones” . Unfortunately, when we heard the actual music, it sounded like Chuck Berry on speed. The DIY thing was already in place, the European improv scene, Sun Ra, the German bands like Can and Faust, and most of the punk stuff just didn’t have the same commitment to sound. What made Cold Storage such a unique place to record? HAYWARD: David Cunningham [ of the Flying Lizards ] told us there was this disused meat fridge at the…

FAMILY Music In A Doll’s House REPRISE, 1968 Paisley-sunburst debut 45 “Scene Through The Eye Of A Lens” was Family’s most psychedelic moment; their first LP, the following year, was a step on. A deliciously awkward juxtaposition of Traffic-alike rootsiness, creepy Victoriana and Roger Chapman’s inimitably leather-lunged take on the blues. FAMILY Fearless REPRISE, 1971 Family’s billing as art-rockers remains fairly spurious, with their giddy fifth the closest they come to experimental. Whimsical flashes include the wonky tempos of “Spanish Tide” and the working men’s club funk of “Save Some For Thee”. ROGER CHAPMAN Mail Order Magic KAMERA, 1980 Not punk compatible for all his rough edges, Family’s frontman joined a good number of his peers in heading for new-wave-neutral Germany when the going got tough. This set Chappo’s stall…

As we attempt to adjust to a Bowie-less world, here’s some small consolation or distraction, a host of promising records on the horizon. Underworld have made what sounds at this point like their best record in decades, with the propulsive Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future , while Loretta Lynn returns with her first LP since 2004’s Van Lear Rose – Full Circle , a concept album based around Lynn’s life, features duets with Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello. Fresh from producing Mavis Staples’ Livin’ On A High Note , Oregon’s M Ward releases his eighth long-player, More Rain . Primal Scream are back with Chaosmosis , while The Coral…

My starting point Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited 1965 This was the first Bob Dylan album I heard and, even though I was only 12, it really made an impression on me. It was the first album I heard that I understood: he was taking traditional folk music and putting it together with the literary world, and I understood both those worlds, because of my dad [Miller Williams] being a poet. I’d just started taking guitar lessons, too, learning folk music, so this was a really significant album. An otherworldly album The Doors The Doors 1967 I still listen to this album, and to me it’s still really relevant. There’s just something about what Jim Morrison was saying, the imagery and just the whole vibe and moodiness of it. They…

The Uncut family continues to grow. In shops now, you’ll find our latest Ultimate Music Guide on The Byrds, as well as a new instalment of History Of Rock , which covers 1971. You can also buy them online at www.uncut.co. uk/store . After telling us about their reunion EP, “Happy New Year”, in Uncut last year, the Violent Femmes return with their first new studio album in 15 years. We Can Do Anything is out on March 4. Jack White digs into his archives again, this time to bring us cuts from his early bands, Two Star Tabernacle, The Go and Jack…

DAVID BOWIE Blackstar COLUMBIA/ISO What else could it be? The last masterpiece, revealing new meanings and deeper mysteries with every listen. WHITE DENIM Stiff DOWNTOWN/SONY RED Seventh album of rad choogle from the reconfigured Texan rockers. “High heat, high energy, good times,” says James Petralli. UNDERWORLD Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future CAROLINE The progressive techno artisans hit peak form again, with their most streamlined and compelling set since ’99’s Beaucoup Fish . RADIOHEAD Spectre WWW.SOUNDCLOUD.COM/RADIOHEAD/SPECTRE The surprisingly suitable, implausibly rejected Bond theme sneaks out online. Big strings, “Nude” echoes, stuff about “bullet holes” ; they shoot, they score. VARIOUS ARTISTS Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music NUMERO GROUP Revelatory collection of lost’70s Americana, harvested from private press LPs that originally surfaced in minuscule…

LORETTA LYNN SEEMS at peace with things that go bump in the night. She has invited the Travel Channel, Celebrity Ghost Stories and TV medium and clairvoyant James van Praagh to her Hurricane Mills plantation in Tennessee to film. Van Praagh wanted to spend the night in the “brown room”, in the old part of the house. Daughter Patsy Lynn Russell leads Uncut upstairs in the big house saying, “We don’t usually get people come up here…” The staircase is lined with framed covers of all Loretta Lynn’s albums, arranged in chronological order. Intermittently, the albums are askew. “Yeah, we’ll come in here and they’ll all be messed up,” Russell admits. A small landing connects her childhood bedroom with her twin sister…

“WHEN WE TRAVELLED around America in 1974 on the long, long Diamond Dogs tour, I sometimes managed to wangle my way to travel with David in his limo, because I wouldn’t fly in those days and nor would David. It was a great privilege for me, sat in the back with him, hardly saying two words – because singers on tour don’t want to talk all day, they want to rest. It was comfortable looking out of the window at cactus plants, mountains, this, that and the other. We kind of got to know each other pretty well. “We did Madison Square Garden. In the afternoon Sly Stone got married, Doris Day had been invited to play the organ, and she sang ‘Que Sera, Sera’, as she’d had a hit…

“ I WAS A jazz musician. I didn’t know who David was when I got a call from Tony DeFries. Can I be in Manhattan to audition at RCA Studios? Bowie’s looking for a pianist. Mick Ronson was at the piano, David was looking at me through the studio glass. Mick gave me the music to ‘Changes’ and said, ‘Can you read this?’ I played no more than seven seconds and Mick said, ‘You’ve got the gig!’ “I only played 10 songs out of about 20 on that first tour, so when I wasn’t playing I snuck out to the audience. David never knew this, but I’d sit in the first row and watch him. After the first show, I knew he was a genius. I was only hired for…

“ DAVID WAS 10 years older than me. I have no siblings, so he was like an older brother. I met him through my ex-wife, who did press for him for a few weeks, backstage on one of the first US shows in 1987. We just started talking. I had gone to Parsons School Of Design and School Of Visual Arts. I never said anything about playing music, and he just assumed I was a fine-arts painter. The first time we hung out, we were in his trailer watching Fantasy Island, and we started making up our own dialogue. My point is, we met as humans. After six or seven months, my ex-wife gave David a tape. He called me out of the blue and said, ‘Why the fuck didn’t…

IF ANY STATISTICAL evidence of the sheer quality of David Bowie’s work is needed, then our 200 Greatest Albums poll in the last issue of Uncut [Take 225, February 2016] should provide it. Not only did Hunky Dory and The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars reach No 11 and 12, respectively, in the final list, but in total seven of Bowie’s albums were voted into the Top 200. That’s more albums in the Top 200 than for any other artist. A testament to the sheer number of peaks in his work, though, is the fact that six of the 11 Bowie albums that our contributors and staff voted for received over 100 points each, more than any other solo artist (Dylan, by comparison, only…

“ THE LAST TIME we spoke, I was about to hook up with David to listen to Blackstar for the first time. It was a wonderful day, and I was walking across Washington Square Park, heading over to his office not far from there. I got there and talked to him on the phone, and he said he was on his way, so his assistant put on the LP and I just sat back and listened, and… oh God, it was so amazing to hear it. A part of that was a testament to David and Tony Visconti and the way they worked to comb through all the details. How they’d put everything together was really special. “I was trying to take all that in, eyes closed, thinking, ‘This is…

“THIS IS THE HAPPIEST FIELD MUSIC ALBUM BY DEFAULT”DAVID BREWIS AT NEWCASTLE’S SETTLE DOWN Café, Peter Brewis’ three-year-old son is explaining the “Fleetwood Mac counting game”. It’s based around a picture of the Rumours lineup, and it’s quite advanced – not just based on sight, but the band’s inner workings. He can also identify The Beatles, says Peter, before getting him to explain his antipathy to Hall & Oates’ “Kiss On My List” – it’s the scream that ruins it, as he demonstrates loudly. After lunch, Peter drives his younger brother and Field Music bandmate David and Uncut to the group’s native Sunderland. David (35) has always lived there, while Peter (38) studied in Wales and now lives in Newcastle. On this early January afternoon, the coastal city is freezing…

DAVID BREWIS THELONIOUS MONK MONK’S MUSIC UNIVERSAL, 1957 “Thelonious Monk wrote some of the strangest melodies I’ve ever heard, but they’re so catchy. I think he gave us the idea that we could take almost any crazy musical idea and make it into pop music.” ROXY MUSIC FOR YOUR PLEASURE ISLAND, 1973 “Roxy Music managed to take odd lyrical and musical concepts, stack them up in unusual song structures and make compelling, catchy pop songs. I think only a couple of songs on their first two albums even have a chorus.” LED ZEPPELIN HOUSES OF THE HOLY ATLANTIC, 1973 “Led Zeppelin were the first band we really got into. Our whole playing style and our approach to recording stem straight from Led Zeppelin.” THE LEFT BANKE THERE’S GONNA BE A…

TIM HARDIN 1 (VERVE-FORECAST, 1966) Deserves a place among the canonical albums of 1966. One or two tracks are bluesy filler. The rest (“Misty Roses”, “Reason To Believe”, “Don’t Make Promises”, “It’ll Never Happen Again”, et al ) are the sublime songs which forged Hardin’s reputation. TIM HARDIN 2 (VERVE-FORECAST, 1967) His most complete record. The opening four-song run is a match for any album of the era, marred only by “Baby Close Its Eyes”, a saccharine ode to his newborn son. Also includes the magnificent “Speak Like A Child” and the self-aware “Tribute To Hank Williams” (“ I didn’t know you, but I’ve been places you’ve been” ). TIM HARDIN 3: LIVE IN CONCERT (VERVE-FORECAST, 1968) Recorded with a fine (if sorely tested) band…

WHAT WITH ALL the tantrums and tiaras, the chats with Putin, the AIDS foundation, the arts collections and a film biopic currently in development, plenty of tabloid readers might be surprised to discover that Elton John still actually makes music. The fact is that the last decade and a half has been his most productive spell since the 1970s. We’ve had two hit musicals (The Lion King and Billy Elliot) with another on its way (based on the life of a TV evangelist, written with Jake Shears), as well some fine collaborations (an excellent album with Leon Russell, a chart-topping remix collection with hipster DJs Pnau, guest slots with everyone from Eminem and Queens Of The Stone Age to the Scissor Sisters). And, rather like lots of ’70s rock icons…

Inspired by his love of White Mansions , 1978’s Civil War concept work featuring Waylon Jennings and Eric Clapton, Nashville’s go-to producer Dave Cobb has crafted a themed album. Southern Family – 10 original songs and two covers – includes Miranda Lambert, Brandy Clark, Shooter Jennings, Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton and John Paul White. Touching on blues, country, folk and rock, it’s due in March on Low Country Sound/Elektra. Look out for Going Down In History, on Bloodshot, the first full-length release in over a decade from The Waco Brothers. Led by Mekons’ Jon Langford, the country-punks (pictured left) have adopted “an improvisational and fluid approach”, with Wilco/Neko Case engineer/producer Mike Hagler. Bloodshot also have…

What was your intent with Meet The Humans ? I always try to do something very different from what I’ve done before, but whilst it’s bigger and quite a lot more confident, it’s not that different instrumentation- and production-wise. The difference is more to do with the content. With Monkey Minds… I’d done a political album and I just couldn’t do that again. Your emotional honesty is on its usual full beam. I’m always striving to have absolutely no barrier between my private thoughts and what goes into a song, onto a record and then out to the public. I think an artist’s job is to be horrifically honest. What drew you to Craig Potter as producer? I wanted to go bigger,…

Darren Grealish’s cover art for Echoes Of The Dreamtime , depicting Miranda Lee Richards as a cross between a Pre-Raphaelite goddess and a 1960s flower child, tells us much about the aesthetic sensibilities of the LA-based singer and the ethereal nature of her music. Born in San Francisco “between the summer of love and the dawn of disco” to bohemian parents who were underground comics artists and taught her to “Do what you love to do”, Richards’ solo career has been a slow burn since her 2001 debut proved that the “lack of creative control and meddling” which came with life on a major label was an unsympathetic fit for what The Dandy Warhols’ Courtney Taylor-Taylor calls her ‘Pixie Fairy Dust Chick Music’. Richards prefers the term…

When Treetop Flyers’ drummer and vocalist Tomer Danan is asked what influences the London band, it’s no great surprise that he first says, “Great production – that can’t be discounted.” Palomino , the band’s second album, is a fittingly great-sounding record, with the band magically tight and melodically assured as they play songs bathed in an evocative ’70s West Coast glow, while drawing on other influences including outlaw country, soul and Nigerian psych. What’s all the more impressive is that it was recorded when the band were beset by death, divorce and departure. While this informs the album, Palomino is never depressing. “We try to frame those experiences as something more universal with a dash of hope, because nothing stays the same,”…

How do you all decide it’s time to get together? We sit around until somebody calls somebody else and says let’s do a record. We recorded this last January. Everybody writes at home and then we go to Chris’ house and write for a week together, then we tour that material to see what improvisation works. Then we go to Jason [Meagher’s] studio at the end of the tour and put it down. On this one, Chris wrote a lot of the guitar work, that was a new thing. He’s a really good guitar player. Would you agree this is quite a groovy record? It’s really interesting, before we made the first record, that’s kind of what I thought the band would sound like. But that first record was very…

RICHARD EARL The Egg Store Ilk PILOT, 1981 A hidden DIY gem, Richard Earl aka Biggles Books’ The Egg Store Ilk was an early satellite from Swell Maps’ planet. From the same universe as the instrumentals on the Maps’ Jane From Occupied Europe , via cutlery percussion, bare bass plunk, and warped tattoos from brass and harmonium. JOWE HEAD Pincer Movement HEDONICS, 1981 Pincer… makes its debt to the Swell Maps clear in its version of “Cake Shop Girl” from Jane From Occupied Europe . From there, it opens out to experimental miniatures, droning stumble-pop (“Diesel Loco”, “Glistening Pincers”) and “Crawfish”, which finds Dr John’s swamp voodoo in a Camden squat. THE JACOBITES Robespierre’s Velvet Basement GLASS, 1985…

THE FELLOW TRAVELLERS Just A Visitor OKRA, 1992 Nichols’ second CD of low-slung country-dub and campfire blues with his wife Lorraine Morley and On-U Sound man Martin Harrison was, oddly enough, crowned album of the year by Germany’s Spex magazine in ’92. Commenting on The Fellow Travellers, one Townes Van Zandt noted: “This guy’s singing with a voice I never heard before.” JEB LOY NICHOLS Now Then TUITION, 2005  He recorded his fourth solo album Now Then – clever title – in Nashville and London with the likes of Dan Penn and bass heavyweight Dennis Bovell. After the familiar dub of opener “Sometimes Shooting Stars”, Nichols opens up with a tender set of soulful country numbers, best of which is “Lelah Mae”. JEB LOY NICHOLS Jeb…

THE BIG SHORT Director Adam McKay Starring Steve Carell, Christian Bale Opened Jan 22 Cert 15 JANIS: LITTLE GIRL BLUE Director Amy Berg Starring Janis Joplin, Chan Marshall Opens February 5 Cert tbc A BIGGER SPLASH Director Luca Guadagnino Starring Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes Opens February 12 Cert tbc SPEED SISTERS Director Amber Fares Starring Noor Daoud, Marah Zahalka Opens March 25 Cert tbc HITCHCOCK/ TRUFFAUT Director Kent Jones Starring Martin Scorsese, David Fincher Opens March 4 Cert tbc…

Reviewed this month... Way Down in Louisiana: Clifton Chenier, Cajun, Zydeco And Swamp Pop Music Todd Mouton UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA AT LAFAYETTE PRESS Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie And The Beckenham Arts Lab Mary Finnigan JORVIK PRESS YOU KIND OF hope from its title that Todd Mouton’s Way Down In Louisiana: Clifton Chenier, Cajun, Zydeco And Swamp Music will be a full biography of the great Zydeco bandleader or otherwise a comprehensive history of the musical traditions he did so much to popularise. In the event, it’s a bit of both and not quite enough of either. Most histories of Louisiana music concentrate not irrelevantly on New Orleans. But as Rolling Stone’s David Fricke remarks in a typically well-turned introduction, New Orleans “is just one deep pocket of blues and giving…

“I wanted to create a ritualistic sound on our album, a summoning-up of something” ‘‘MY STUDIO IS very state of the art,” laughs Tim Gane, from his Bloody Hair space in Berlin. “For 1982, that is. I like seeing a studio that has loads of old electronic boxes, all piled together with loads of cables. Not one that’s Finnish wood and all nice…” Whether leading Stereolab or his current group Cavern Of Anti-Matter, or collaborating with Mouse On Mars and Nurse With Wound, Tim Gane has always been more interested in the possibilities of the studio over songwriting. Cavern’s upcoming Void Beats/Invocation Trex – their second LP but first to be widely released – was inspired by linking up a set of analogue Roland drum machines and Roland, ARP and…

“YOU AIN’T WOMAN ENOUGH” YOU AIN’T WOMAN ENOUGH (1966) Lynn lays down a gauntlet for the woman who had designs on her husband, telling her a woman like her “ ain’t worth a dime” . As a demoralising technique, it’s very effective. “DON’T COME HOME A DRINKIN’ (WITH LOVIN’ ON YOUR MIND)” DON’T COME HOME A DRINKIN’ (1967) Always an incipient feminist, this song is a battle cry for any woman sick of being taken granted by a tomcatting husband. “ Treat me right or treat me as gone. ” “FIST CITY” FIST CITY (1968) “ You’ve been makin’ your brags around town/That you’ve been a lovin’ my man, ” says Lynn, in this song inspired by a Tennessee bus driver who pursued Lynn’s…

“ DAVID HAD COME in and recorded ‘Space Oddity’ with Gus Dudgeon producing and then, of course, the label wanted an LP, so between myself and one of the other engineers at Trident, Malcolm Toft, we recorded the album. I recall thinking how much of a nice guy David was, and what a good singer he was. But at that point I never considered him a superstar in any shape or form. “Tony, David and the guys cut The Man Who Sold The World in another studio, then came to Trident and I did overdubs and mixed it, and once again it was the same feeling. But then, after he took a break for some time, because of the lack of success, he came back into Trident to try to…

“David’s death came as a complete surprise, as did nearly everything else about him. I feel a huge gap now. “We knew each other for over 40 years, in a friendship that was always tinged by echoes of Pete and Dud. Over the last few years — with him living in New York and me in London — our connection was by email. We signed off with invented names: some of his were Mr Showbiz, Milton Keynes, Rhoda Borrocks and The Duke Of Ear. “About a year ago we started talking about Outside — the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward…

IT’S HARD NOT TO READ NEWTON’S LONGING FOR RELEASE FROM HIS PAINFUL WORLD AS PART OF BOWIE’S “FAREWELL NOTE” WHEN WE FIRST see Thomas Newton, the space-alien-turned-scientist-billionaire-recluse who’s the protagonist of Lazarus, he’s flat on his back. An open refrigerator to his right is stocked with half-full bottles of gin and not much else. There’s a turntable at the front of the stage, behind which are stacked three LPs: Scary Monsters, Aladdin Sane and Young Americans. They function as both a clever nod to the play’s author, as well as subtle clues to the play’s central themes of madness, violence and vanished youth. And while a huge TV screen behind Newton, portrayed with manic fervor by Michael C Hall, soon snaps him to life, mentally and emotionally Newton spends the…

AS YOU MIGHT expect, the Bowie frenzy doesn’t need to end here. If you didn’t manage to pick up our Ultimate Music Guide to Bowie last summer, we’ve made it available again; 148 heavy-duty pages that feature reviews of every album (up to The Next Day ), plus a glut of revelatory features lifted from the archives of NME and Melody Maker . It’s in the shops now, but you can also order direct from us, at www.uncut.co.uk/store . While you’re there, we’ve plenty more Bowie stories for your delectation, including a mammoth countdown of his 30 greatest songs, the complete 1999 interview that we teased on page 38 , and Donny…

In late November, Prince tweeted the link to Field Music’s “The Noisy Days Are Over”, accompanied by the words “FIELD … MUSIC”, only to delete it again shortly after. Screenshots were preserved for the ages, and David Brewis returned the favour by writing a piece for The Guardian about the duo’s favourite Prince songs. Soon after, Prince’s Twitter fired up again, with a link to the article sandwiched between the words “BEAUTIFUL … STRANGE”. “I didn’t know what to think,” says David. “Was it really Prince? Had he really heard the song? Was it possible that he actually liked it?” There’s been no direct contact with Paisley Park, a state of affairs that the Brewises are happy to preserve. “The fact that Prince has even heard…

WHILE THE FIRST wave of punk centred primarily around London, post-punk truly flourished further afield, with the likes of Cabaret Voltaire in Sheffield, Joy Division in Manchester and Gang Of Four in Leeds mixing the fury of the Pistols and The Clash with more sophisticated, avant-garde influences. In Bristol, The Pop Group went even further than their contemporaries, infusing punk with the palettes of free jazz, dub and funk, singer Mark Stewart howling his charged lyrics over the frenzy. “We all had this idea that if we were challenging ideas with the lyrics, then we wanted to challenge that with the music as well,” explains Stewart today. “Maybe we got the wrong end of the stick ’cos we were from Bristol, but we thought punk was all about change and…

SCOTT WALKER BLACK SHEEP BOY (SCOTT 2, 1967) If anybody can empathise with the “ family’s unowned boy” , you feel, it’s Walker, who croons Hardin’s hymn of otherness magnificently over a satisfyingly meaty arrangement, swept with luxurious strings. ROD STEWART REASON TO BELIEVE (EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY, 1971) The final track on Stewart’s 1971 album is an interpretative masterclass, colouring in Hardin’s sketch with rolling piano, Hammond organ, stand-up bass and fiddle. Initially released as the A-side of “Maggie May”, he still performs it today. ROBERT PLANT IF I WERE A CARPENTER (FATE OF NATIONS, 1993) Sung by everyone from Johnny Cash to John Holt and Willie Nelson, Plant’s dramatic, romantic reading brings an Eastern flavour, with dust-blown strings and sitar. KATHRYN WILLIAMS HOW CAN…

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Merriweather Post Pavilion DOMINO, 2009 AC’s growing pop sensibility coalesces with their tie-dyed electronics on a euphoric record that Uncut named as a landmark American album of the century. They suddenly come alive with the syrupy bliss of “Summertime Clothes”, as if they’d swapped LSD for MDMA. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Centipede Hz DOMINO, 2012 The bad-trip comedown after the lucid E-rush? Not quite, but the delirious Fraggle Rock mind-funk of Centipede Hz , which sees AC grappling anxiously with a collection of hyperactive songs. Its psych-punk immediacy is handled with more care on Painting With . AVEY TARE’S SLASHER FLICKS Enter The Slasher House DOMINO, 2014 Dave “Avey Tare” Portner steps out of the Collective to hook up with…

What did you discover about Emitt as you got to know him? He was a brilliant guy but heartbroken. He seemed bitter about the past and as far from a comeback as you could imagine. I don’t know if he was inspired, or maybe as I kept showing him music I was working on, but he got back into a musical headspace. Is Rainbow Ends effectively a sequel to 1973’s Farewell To Paradise ? Musically, it’s meant to serve as a “What if Emitt had kept making albums in the mid-to-late ’70s?” I think Farewell … gives indications that he would’ve become one of the AM Gold artists of that era, on the same…

While much of the clumsily framed ‘neoclassical’ scene is devoted to music of fragile melancholy, Brave Timbers are more given to optimism. The duo, says founder Sarah Kemp of their second LP, “wanted to make an uplifting album which offered hope and light. That’s one reason it’s inspired by nature, by taking notice of the little things around us: the wind in the trees, new leaves.” But though Hope , like its predecessor For Every Day You Lost – recorded solely by Kemp, who these days is joined by partner Andrew Scrogham – suits comparisons with instrumental, acoustic acts like Rachel’s and Julia Kent with its emphasis on strings, piano and guitar, it also reflects other, less obvious, influences. “I love Brian Eno’s…

“Making a record feels to me like making a film,” says Josephine Foster, discussing No More Lamps In The Morning , on which she revisits material from her decade and a half of recording, “creating a special world that I may not return to again. This might be akin to a documentary, live takes of what could have been a recent show or an evening at home, ” she explains. Opera-trained, she has worked as a singing teacher and funeral singer, but her recording career has been even more eventful, taking in a collaboration with psych rockers The Supposed, and working with the poems of Emily Dickinson and Federico García Lorca, and the songs of Stephen Foster. The minimal settings of No More Lamps……

“My voice? I stole the style and the inflections from a number of artists, from Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson to Clyde McPhatter. The rasp is a legacy from my time on the railway, where we relayed information to each other by shouting…” At 53, and after decades as a working musician, Essex soul brother and former railway signal box mender James Hunter looks like he is ready to become an overnight sensation (“It has been a rather long night, now you mention it,” he tells Uncut ). Hold On! is his fourth solo album, but the first to be recorded for stamp-of-quality US soul imprint Daptone. It’s a terrific record, with all the warm, old-school vibes and valve-y authenticity of the best ’60s R’n’B.…

IN 2009, WITH her life “falling apart” in the midst of a personal crisis, Rokia Traoré was forced to move back to Mali after several years living in Europe. Three years later, civil war broke out when Islamist extremists overran the northern part of the country, imposing sharia law. Those events left Traoré traumatised and shocked by what she describes as her own “naivety” – but they have also imbued her sombre but magnificent sixth album, Né So (which translates as “Home”), with a tautness, gravity and maturity that makes it her most compelling, complex and purposeful work to date. That Traoré should come up with such an audacious work, singularly different from any of the other great records to emerge from West Africa in recent years, owes much to…

“I eventually came to the realisation that I didn’t have the discipline for that kind of singing,” explains 25-year-old Marlon Williams of his decision to quit his university choral studies and pursue the country-folk/blues path that has turned him into an award-winning New Zealand star (now living in Melbourne) who supported Lucinda Williams on her recent Australian dates. “It wasn’t like I just put down the choir book and picked up the guitar; I’d been playing in bands pretty much as long as I’d been singing.” Williams has an effortlessly expressive voice that recalls Roy Orbison one minute, Nina Simone the next. He credits membership of a cathedral choir during his high-school years for the refinement, but says, “It was really singing on the marae [ Maori meeting grounds…

Accidentally On Purpose: Classic Live 1978 Concert Broadcast GO FASTER, 2015 Appearing before an invitation-only audience, backed by a fine band, guitarist Waddy Wachtel churning out spiraling leads, this is Zevon’s most glowing rock’n’roll moment. He’s ragged, intense, funny, feverishly on point yet barely under control. And the repertoire – including bludgeoning editions of “Werewolves” and “Lawyers, Guns & Money” – is devastating. Stand In The Fire ELEKTRA/RHINO, 1980 Thanks to hard-hitting, nuts-and-bolts bar band Boulder, this is an incendiary set. It starts amped up to 11 with the title song, and is even more intense by the time Zevon reaches the rampaging closing medley, “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”/“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”/“Bo Diddley’s A Gunslinger”. Learning To Flinch GIANT, 1992 With his more commercial , band-driven years behind him,…

THE AMERICAN DREAMER OPENS FEBRUARY 5 From 1971. Little seen Dennis Hopper doc, shot at his home in Taos, New Mexico while working on The Last Movie . DAD’S ARMY OPENS FEBRUARY 5 Toby Jones is Captain Mainwaring and Bill Nighy plays Sgt Wilson in update of classic sitcom. “Don’t tell him, Pike!” etc. LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY’S VISION OF PARADISE OPENS FEBRUARY 5 Shot over a 15-year period, director Volker Schaner reveals Perry’s unique wisdom and insights. The Orb, Adrian Sherwood and other dubnologists pay tribute. POINT BREAK OPENS FEBRUARY 5 Kathryn Bigelow’s moderately forgettable early-’90s actioner is remade, with surfing updated to extreme sports. TRUMBO OPENS FEBRUARY 5 An Oscar nomination for Bryan Cranston as a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter. Reviewed last issue. DEADPOOL OPENS FEBRUARY 10…

UNCUT’S TOP 200: BLUES DON’T RUN THE GAME The 200 Greatest Albums Of All Time [Uncut, February 2016] makes for interesting reading. However, I cannot help but feel there is a terrible sense of injustice in the absence of so many great blues artists. Perhaps the ‘no compilations’ rule is to blame, but I hope it is not, because we’re somehow losing touch with just how great this music remains. To effectively present the best music of all time without even mention of the blues, or anything from the Chess or Sun canons, seems incongruous. These labels and artists reshaped music: where are Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, BB King, Chuck Berry, Buddy Guy, Etta James, Koko Taylor, Ray Charles, Son House, Robert Johnson? How…