Features

Uncut contributor Damon Wise is at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Here's his first look review of the new Coen brothers film, set in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s: Inside Llewyn Davis...

Before the doors of the Dome Studio Theatre even open tonight (Saturday, May 18), there's an excited queue stretching most of the way down the street. Not surprising considering one of the most hyped groups of this year, Irish band The Strypes, are first on the bill.

While last night's Club Uncut at Brighton's Great Escape festival hosted bands with a definite Americana bent, Friday (May 17) sees the invasion of US-based (or -inspired) garage-rockers.

There are many delights on offer in David Bowie – Five Years, the BBC’s terrific new documentary focussing on five critical periods in Bowie’s career. Here’s a longhaired Bowie, sporting a natty fedora, at Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1971, miming being disembowelled. And here he is on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, wearing a dark blue shirt, tartan tie and brown trousers, twirling a cane while he performs “Footstompin”, a cut that eventually became “Fame”.

Another year, another three days of fantastic music at Brighton's Dome Studio Theatre, curated by Uncut, as part of The Great Escape – this year promises perhaps the most high-energy lineup yet at Club Uncut, with highlights over the weekend including Mikal Cronin, White Fence and Allah-Las. But first, Thursday (May 16) sees Phosphorescent headlining.

Playing the Daft Punk album this morning (it’s streaming on iTunes if you haven’t found it yet), which is quite interesting. Bits of it are astonishing, I’d say (“Get Lucky” of course, “Contact”, “Giorgio By Moroder” especially). I am finding it hard, though, to completely sign up to a record that intermittently reminds me of Christopher Cross record. Evidently, I still carry traces of ‘80s indie militancy.

Sofia Coppola always seem to have had an uneasy relationship with celebrity.

Best known for his work on The Beach Boys’ Smile, Parks is a student of serious music, whose flirtation with the counterculture saw him fall in with unlikely company. His first job was arranging “The Bear Necessities” for Disney’s Jungle Book, but his association with Brian Wilson led to him producing debuts by Ry Cooder and Randy Newman, as well as making idiosyncratic solo albums. As he prepares to release his new album, Songs Cycled (reviewed in this month’s Uncut, dated June 2013), we look back to July 2010’s issue, where Parks reflects on a career that’s straddled the worlds of serious music and pop, without fitting in to either. Words: Alastair McKay

The unveiling of Bowie's latest video earlier today prompted me to dig out this piece I originally wrote for our Bowie Ultimate Music Guide, about Bowie on film...

There’s a great video on www.uncut.co.uk at the moment of Neil Young singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in affectionate celebration of Willie Nelson, who was, astonishingly, 80 last month.