Features

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks at End Of The Road 2014 - review Connan Mockasin & St Vincent at End Of The Road 2014 - review Cate Le Bon & Sam Lee at End Of The Road 2014 - review Gruff Rhys at End Of The Road 2014 - review The Flaming Lips at End Of The Road 2014 - review Yo La Tengo at End Of The Road 2014 - review Richard Thompson & Tinariwen at End Of The Road 2014 - review End Of The Road must cause a bit of a problem for British Sea Power - when you normally deck your stages out with leafy branches, what do you do when you play a festival which surrounds all its stages with lush foliage? You bring along even more foliage, of course, and cover it all in streams of fairy lights.

British Sea Power at End Of The Road 2014 - review Connan Mockasin & St Vincent at End Of The Road 2014 - review Cate Le Bon & Sam Lee at End Of The Road 2014 - review Gruff Rhys at End Of The Road 2014 - review The Flaming Lips at End Of The Road 2014 - review Yo La Tengo at End Of The Road 2014 - review Richard Thompson & Tinariwen at End Of The Road 2014 - review Welcome to our coverage of this year's End Of The Road Festival! We love it here at the Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset, and even more now we have, for a second year, our own stage, the fantastic Tipi Tent.

Such has been the drooling media focus on Kate Bush this week, it might be tough to imagine British music journalists listening to anything else these past few days. I'm not, in fairness, exempt from the hysteria: here's my review of the second Before The Dawn show, in case you missed it (or avoided it) yesterday.

As The Felice Brothers tour the UK and perform at End Of The Road festival this weekend, it seems a good time to battle through the Uncut archives and see how the group were doing back in August 2009 (Take 147). Marc Spitz heads out to upstate New York to see how these self-mythologising drifters created a glorious new take on roots rock from the comfort of a chicken coop. Just don’t, whatever you do, mention Bob Dylan and The Band...

There is a song on "Aerial", Kate Bush's eighth and possibly best album, called "Bertie". "Here comes the sunshine," it begins, "Here comes that son of mine/Here comes the everything/Here's a song and a song for him." Nine years later, here, perhaps is a show for him: an unexpected comeback; a ravishing absurdity; a launchpad for his theatrical aspirations. Our pleasure may, to some degree, be collateral.

Tonight, August 26, Kate Bush returns to the stage for her first live shows in 35 years. To celebrate, here’s our cover story from the archives (June 2010, Take 157), in which Uncut takes a phantasmagorical trip into suburbia to learn the untold story of Kate Bush’s masterpiece, Hounds Of Love. "She ain’t daft. People shouldn’t be fooled by the mystical hippy stuff, this girl is very, very tough." Story by: Graeme Thomson __________

Her studio secrets revealed! “There were no rules or barriers, it was just pure creativity…”

It's a satisfyingly busy time for music films at the moment. The excellent Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 Days On Earth, is upon us; following swiftly in its wake are biopics of James Brown and Jimi Hendrix.

Some logical excitement here this week about the impending Leonard Cohen and Aphex Twin albums; in the event you've missed it these past couple of days, you can hear Cohen's superb "Almost Like The Blues" further down this blog.

Last year, Warp Records embarked on a campaign for Boards Of Canada's "Tomorrow's Harvest" comeback that was notable for its obtuseness. Unmarked 12-inches were hidden in record stores, strings of numbers and inexplicable broadcasts were strewn enigmatically across the internet. At one point, I recall some talk of red moons and feverish online triangulations pointing to a bookshop near Edinburgh as the centre of the universe. It was all fun, and the album at the end of it all was great, but perhaps it wandered a little off course as it went on.