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Kanye West – Late Registration

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Last year on his solo debut, College Dropout, Kanye West cut through rap’s standard-issue one-dimensional personae with some refreshing complexity. Neither “conscious” nor a bad-boy chasing bling and bitches, he was a little of both: a hungry soul (“Jesus Walks”) trapped in a body prey to venality (“All Falls Down”). West could pull off the occasional high-minded lyric without risking sanctimony, because he would clearly be the sort of preacher who got caught with call-girls. This time, Late Registration’s core of mixed emotion clusters around four songs that deal with themes of worldly wealth versus gold-of-the-spirit. “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” starts where College Dropout finished (“Last Call”). It’s another paean to Roc-A-Fella, the label that nurtured him as a producer and signed him where other A&Rs scoffed at his deceptively sloppy flow. The giddy ascending chorus “forever ever ever EVER ever” pledges fealty to Jay-Z’s dynasty, which rescued him from the parlous times when “I couldn’t afford/A Ford Escort.” But when West chants “throw your diamonds in the air,” he’s not really showing off his new status symbols so much as his aesthetic riches, the genius-visionary’s “power to make a diamond with his bare hands.” The song lives up to this boast and then some. Nobody deploys vocal samples better than West, and here it’s Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever” that gets shook down for hidden hooks and latent meanings. The glittering production, laced with harpsichords and strings, matches the lines about “Vegas on acid/Seen through Yves St Laurent glasses”. But what about the title’s reference to “Sierra Leone”? That just got tacked on after the fact, to fit the video, an expose of child-slavery in African diamond mines, and has absolutely nowt to do with the lyrics. It would have been cool if “Gold Digger” sampled “Goldfinger”. Instead, a Ray Charles loop powers this gritty groove, while (cute touch) Jamie Foxx kicks it off with a faux-blues whinge about a “triflin’ bitch” who sucks up his money and weed. West wryly observes “I ain’t saying she’s a gold digger/But she aint’ messin’ with no broke niggas!” “Addicted” offers a far fresher angle on exploitative heterosex. “Why everything that’s supposed to be bad/Make me feel so good?” ponders West, before launching into a rueful account of a mutually degrading affair that intertwines sex and drugs. The admission “and I keep coming over” is shivered with a hiccup of pained ecstasy, hinting at the double meaning of “come”. The song’s exquisite arrangement lends poignancy to this tale of male weakness and shame: a glisten of (i)Amnesiac(i) guitar, filtered hi-hats, a sampled chanteuse crooning “you make me smile with my heart” (a line from “My Funny Valentine”). “Crack Music” disconcertingly equates the analgesic powers of drugs and music, with Kanye and The Game chanting the chorus - “That’s that crack music, nigga/That real black music, nigga” - over an impossibly crisp military beat. If Black Americans traffic in the best pain-killers around, the song implies, it’s because Black America has the most pain to kill. It could be that Kanye West’s “honest confusion” anti-stance will become its own kind of schtick eventually. But judging by the mostly-brilliant Late Registration, that won’t be happening for a while yet. He might even make it unscathed to the end of the quintology of conceptually-linked albums of which this album is merely instalment number two. By Simon Reynolds

Last year on his solo debut, College Dropout, Kanye West cut through rap’s standard-issue one-dimensional personae with some refreshing complexity. Neither “conscious” nor a bad-boy chasing bling and bitches, he was a little of both: a hungry soul (“Jesus Walks”) trapped in a body prey to venality (“All Falls Down”). West could pull off the occasional high-minded lyric without risking sanctimony, because he would clearly be the sort of preacher who got caught with call-girls.

This time, Late Registration’s core of mixed emotion clusters around four songs that deal with themes of worldly wealth versus gold-of-the-spirit. “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” starts where College Dropout finished (“Last Call”). It’s another paean to Roc-A-Fella, the label that nurtured him as a producer and signed him where other A&Rs scoffed at his deceptively sloppy flow. The giddy ascending chorus “forever ever ever EVER ever” pledges fealty to Jay-Z’s dynasty, which rescued him from the parlous times when “I couldn’t afford/A Ford Escort.” But when West chants “throw your diamonds in the air,” he’s not really showing off his new status symbols so much as his aesthetic riches, the genius-visionary’s “power to make a diamond with his bare hands.”

The song lives up to this boast and then some. Nobody deploys vocal samples better than West, and here it’s Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever” that gets shook down for hidden hooks and latent meanings. The glittering production, laced with harpsichords and strings, matches the lines about “Vegas on acid/Seen through Yves St Laurent glasses”. But what about the title’s reference to “Sierra Leone”? That just got tacked on after the fact, to fit the video, an expose of child-slavery in African diamond mines, and has absolutely nowt to do with the lyrics.

It would have been cool if “Gold Digger” sampled “Goldfinger”. Instead, a Ray Charles loop powers this gritty groove, while (cute touch) Jamie Foxx kicks it off with a faux-blues whinge about a “triflin’ bitch” who sucks up his money and weed. West wryly observes “I ain’t saying she’s a gold digger/But she aint’ messin’ with no broke niggas!” “Addicted” offers a far fresher angle on exploitative heterosex. “Why everything that’s supposed to be bad/Make me feel so good?” ponders West, before launching into a rueful account of a mutually degrading affair that intertwines sex and drugs. The admission “and I keep coming over” is shivered with a hiccup of pained ecstasy, hinting at the double meaning of “come”. The song’s exquisite arrangement lends poignancy to this tale of male weakness and shame: a glisten of (i)Amnesiac(i) guitar, filtered hi-hats, a sampled chanteuse crooning “you make me smile with my heart” (a line from “My Funny Valentine”). “Crack Music” disconcertingly equates the analgesic powers of drugs and music, with Kanye and The Game chanting the chorus – “That’s that crack music, nigga/That real black music, nigga” – over an impossibly crisp military beat. If Black Americans traffic in the best pain-killers around, the song implies, it’s because Black America has the most pain to kill.

It could be that Kanye West’s “honest confusion” anti-stance will become its own kind of schtick eventually. But judging by the mostly-brilliant Late Registration, that won’t be happening for a while yet. He might even make it unscathed to the end of the quintology of conceptually-linked albums of which this album is merely instalment number two.

By Simon Reynolds

Uncut to celebrate its 100th issue in style

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Uncut to celebrate its 100th issue in style

The run of gigs, which features a host of artists, is on the following dates: August 3 Sons & Daughters, James Yorkston, Adem, Four Tet DJs August 4 Ed Harcourt, Kathryn Williams, Saint Joan August 5 The Earlies, Amusement Parks On Fire, Hayley Hutchinson Tickets will go on sale later today (July 28) through the NME.COM Ticket shop.

The run of gigs, which features a host of artists, is on the following dates:

August 3 Sons & Daughters, James Yorkston, Adem, Four Tet DJs

August 4 Ed Harcourt, Kathryn Williams, Saint Joan

August 5 The Earlies, Amusement Parks On Fire, Hayley Hutchinson

Tickets will go on sale later today (July 28) through the NME.COM Ticket shop.

Guilfest 2005 Review

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The fourteenth annual Guilford Festival, or Guilfest as it’s now been dubbed, has come a long way from humble beginnings. It started as a single evening of folk and blues, and has grown over the years, and now stretches over an entire weekend as one of the larger, if less well known, British open-air festivals. Promoter Tony Scott has created a family friendly event, with line-ups so diverse, the juxtaposition of bands on the bill is often enough to raise a wry smirk. Though the festival offers five stages, the majority of noteworthy acts were to be found on either the main Radio 2 stage, or on Uncut’s own noble dais, making the journey between the two a somewhat exhausting exercise in crowd negotiation. However, it was on the Radio 2 stage where the proceedings got off to a buoyant start, This Is Seb Clarke wooing the crowd from their su-induced torpor with their elastic concoction of 60s’ beat music, punk and ska. Clarke himself howled away like a northern Joe Strummer, stomping around with a manic look and attempting to energise his audience via some kind of osmosis. The good time atmosphere of the songs, and genuine elation of the band (all twelve of them), by passed the need for any weighty content, which was fortunate as “Now You Know Who I Am”, their introductory anthem, was about as deep as it got. Afternoon ebbed into evening, and Portland’s Richmond Fontaine provided the intimate and intricate lyricism that was decidedly lacking from Seb Clarke’s set. Singer/songwriter Willy Vlautin greatest talent is his extraordinary ability to evoke, in the form usually of brief, beautifully observed songs, a depth of character and complexity of situation usually associated with the best kind of contemporary American literature and story-telling. Nowhere have these abilities been better displayed, than on their most recent release The Fitzgerald, the record they’ve been promoting with a mini-tour of the UK. This has obviously stood them in good stead, the band exuding a subtle confidence, their performance being all about song craft as opposed to theatrics. With the bulk of the evening’s material coming from The Fitzgerald, it was fascinating to see the band rework what is, essentially, an austere acoustic album. Songs such as “Warehouse Life” could easily have surrendered some of their chilling ambience to intrusive, wayward playing, but this was never the case, each member contributing with exceptional taste and control, working as a unit to bring the songs to life. The Pogues couldn’t have played anywhere else but the top of the bill -not just because their legendary status, but also because playing last allowed the crowd enough time at the bar to enjoy their reeling jigs and heartfelt ballads in an appropriately convivial mood. With a all key members on board - including Spider Stacy, Phillip Chevron and the infamous Shane McGowan - The Pogues took the stage and launched themselves head first into kerosene-fuelled versions of classics like “Tuesday Morning” and “Streams Of Whiskey”, a sharp reminder of why folk music, played with punk attitude, has all the incendiary force of its spiky-haired sibling. Since his original departure from the fold in 1991, Shane has never been able to fully sever his ties with the group, returning a decade later for Christmas shows and again in 2004, these gigs apparently inspiring a renewed – ahem - thirst for performance. Shane’s performance on this occasion was captivating, in a very literal sense. Try as you might to avert your gaze from this wreck of a man, a man that in all other walks of life would surely have been written off an age ago, he remains the most interesting thing on stage. Blind drunk, disheveled and absolutely incoherent, his between song spiels should have come with subtitles. His stumbling delivery and whisky soaked inflections were sublime in their folly, and on the numbers that Chevron sung in his absence (presumably exiting to refresh his glass), his uniquely exuberant presence was sorely missed. Saturday saw the crowds swell and the heat intensify. The sun was so much a presence, that Songdog’s Lyndon Morgans felt compelled to apologise to those gathered around the Uncut stage, for subjecting them to his “depressing” music on such a glorious day. Opening with “One Day When God Begs My Forgiveness”, this apology immediately seemed unnecessary, a stoic wit marbling its reflective, nostalgic overtones. The kitchen-sink rawness of his words, combined with the minimalist arrangements, made for a formidable live experience, proving that the meditative atmosphere of their new album, The Time of Summer Lightning, can be transposed to the live arena. On the Radio 2 stage, Dubliner’s Hal leafed off rock solid renditions of their breezy, harmony laydened pop. This trio are fantastically tight live, not only instrumentally but vocally, which goes some way to distinguish them from analogous groups such as the Thrills and The Magic Numbers. The upbeat, melodies of “I Sat Down” and “Only Live In Hope” made them stand out songs - although their many, all too similar, ballads tended to blur into one another. Throughout the day and into the evening, acts couldn’t help but refer to Paul Weller’s imminent appearance. It became so common, that the phrase “Are you looking forward to Weller?” seemed as generic a comment as “Are you having a good time!”. When he finally strutted onto the stage like a cocksure schoolboy, he didn’t disappoint, and the mounting anticipation was fully justified. Amazingly, his youthful exuberance seemed to increase throughout the hour and a half long set, which consisted largely of crowd pleasers from his solo repertoire, like “Changing Man” and “Peacock Suit”. His guitar partnership with Steve Craddock (of Ocean Color Scene fame) seems an organic, unforced affair, both visually and aurally. The two play around each other as though it were second nature, and Craddock’s understated demeanor is the perfect counterpoint to Weller’s live wire antics. Even when the mood was mellowed by a short acoustic interlude (the highlight of which was a superb “That’s Entertainment”), the modfather’s grimace and dancing shoulders, betrayed his discomfort at being seated. This apparently becoming too much, he rose with his guitar tucked under his arm, grooving his way down the stage, before returning to his seat just in time to sing the next verse. As he’s aged, Weller’s voice has attained a soulful quality that wasn’t present during his formative years with The Jam, and despite battling faulty monitors, he sang with an emotive power that was beyond reproach. There was, however, a reminder of his original, crude charm, on his forthcoming single “From The Floor Boards Up”, Weller spitting out the song’s chorus with a vintage aggression that also fuelled the closing version of Jam favourite “A Town Called Malice”. With a line-up including Lulu and Daniel Beddingfield, Sunday did not seem promising, the bill being heavily weighted with novelty acts and sundry dubious characters. The Zombies offered a ray of hope early in the afternoon, with Colin Bluntstone’s still-distinctive vocals and Rod Argent on keyboards as flamboyant as ever. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to save them from the aging muso clichés they’ve become. It wasn’t until later, when Willard Grant Conspiracy ambled onto the Uncut stage, that the day was truly redeemed. There was a brief moment of déjà vu when main man Robert Fisher made the same apology about playing “depressing” music that Lyndon Morgans had the previous day, only this time, there were heckles demanding “happy songs”. These were playfully rebuffed, Fisher cheerfully introducing the first song with the happy sentiment: “Well, this one’s about suicide”. The group sounded more vigorous live than I expected, their sound pivoted on the heavy reverb of David Curry’s viola and John Apt’s atmospheric guitar work. The pair created sonic sound-scapes around Fisher’s often tragic, timeless folk songs. Tearing through numbers like “Sticky”, which sound comparatively tame on record, the band also set aside time for their more lo-fi leanings. With the reverb off the viola and the bass guitar swapped for a double bass, the band gave sensitive performances of “The Ghost Of The Girl In The Well”, and ended with the chilling “Ballad of John Parker”. They were, perhaps, the pinnacle of the weekend, and were at very least, the best thing Sunday had to offer. By Huw Evans

The fourteenth annual Guilford Festival, or Guilfest as it’s now been dubbed, has come a long way from humble beginnings. It started as a single evening of folk and blues, and has grown over the years, and now stretches over an entire weekend as one of the larger, if less well known, British open-air festivals. Promoter Tony Scott has created a family friendly event, with line-ups so diverse, the juxtaposition of bands on the bill is often enough to raise a wry smirk.

Though the festival offers five stages, the majority of noteworthy acts were to be found on either the main Radio 2 stage, or on Uncut’s own noble dais, making the journey between the two a somewhat exhausting exercise in crowd negotiation. However, it was on the Radio 2 stage where the proceedings got off to a buoyant start, This Is Seb Clarke wooing the crowd from their su-induced torpor with their elastic concoction of 60s’ beat music, punk and ska. Clarke himself howled away like a northern Joe Strummer, stomping around with a manic look and attempting to energise his audience via some kind of osmosis. The good time atmosphere of the songs, and genuine elation of the band (all twelve of them), by passed the need for any weighty content, which was fortunate as “Now You Know Who I Am”, their introductory anthem, was about as deep as it got.

Afternoon ebbed into evening, and Portland’s Richmond Fontaine provided the intimate and intricate lyricism that was decidedly lacking from Seb Clarke’s set. Singer/songwriter Willy Vlautin greatest talent is his extraordinary ability to evoke, in the form usually of brief, beautifully observed songs, a depth of character and complexity of situation usually associated with the best kind of contemporary American literature and story-telling. Nowhere have these abilities been better displayed, than on their most recent release The Fitzgerald, the record they’ve been promoting with a mini-tour of the UK. This has obviously stood them in good stead, the band exuding a subtle confidence, their performance being all about song craft as opposed to theatrics.

With the bulk of the evening’s material coming from The Fitzgerald, it was fascinating to see the band rework what is, essentially, an austere acoustic album. Songs such as “Warehouse Life” could easily have surrendered some of their chilling ambience to intrusive, wayward playing, but this was never the case, each member contributing with exceptional taste and control, working as a unit to bring the songs to life.

The Pogues couldn’t have played anywhere else but the top of the bill -not just because their legendary status, but also because playing last allowed the crowd enough time at the bar to enjoy their reeling jigs and heartfelt ballads in an appropriately convivial mood. With a all key members on board – including Spider Stacy, Phillip Chevron and the infamous Shane McGowan – The Pogues took the stage and launched themselves head first into kerosene-fuelled versions of classics like “Tuesday Morning” and “Streams Of Whiskey”, a sharp reminder of why folk music, played with punk attitude, has all the incendiary force of its spiky-haired sibling.

Since his original departure from the fold in 1991, Shane has never been able to fully sever his ties with the group, returning a decade later for Christmas shows and again in 2004, these gigs apparently inspiring a renewed – ahem – thirst for performance. Shane’s performance on this occasion was captivating, in a very literal sense. Try as you might to avert your gaze from this wreck of a man, a man that in all other walks of life would surely have been written off an age ago, he remains the most interesting thing on stage. Blind drunk, disheveled and absolutely incoherent, his between song spiels should have come with subtitles. His stumbling delivery and whisky soaked inflections were sublime in their folly, and on the numbers that Chevron sung in his absence (presumably exiting to refresh his glass), his uniquely exuberant presence was sorely missed.

Saturday saw the crowds swell and the heat intensify. The sun was so much a presence, that Songdog’s Lyndon Morgans felt compelled to apologise to those gathered around the Uncut stage, for subjecting them to his “depressing” music on such a glorious day. Opening with “One Day When God Begs My Forgiveness”, this apology immediately seemed unnecessary, a stoic wit marbling its reflective, nostalgic overtones. The kitchen-sink rawness of his words, combined with the minimalist arrangements, made for a formidable live experience, proving that the meditative atmosphere of their new album, The Time of Summer Lightning, can be transposed to the live arena.

On the Radio 2 stage, Dubliner’s Hal leafed off rock solid renditions of their breezy, harmony laydened pop. This trio are fantastically tight live, not only instrumentally but vocally, which goes some way to distinguish them from analogous groups such as the Thrills and The Magic Numbers. The upbeat, melodies of “I Sat Down” and “Only Live In Hope” made them stand out songs – although their many, all too similar, ballads tended to blur into one another.

Throughout the day and into the evening, acts couldn’t help but refer to Paul Weller’s imminent appearance. It became so common, that the phrase “Are you looking forward to Weller?” seemed as generic a comment as “Are you having a good time!”. When he finally strutted onto the stage like a cocksure schoolboy, he didn’t disappoint, and the mounting anticipation was fully justified. Amazingly, his youthful exuberance seemed to increase throughout the hour and a half long set, which consisted largely of crowd pleasers from his solo repertoire, like “Changing Man” and “Peacock Suit”. His guitar partnership with Steve Craddock (of Ocean Color Scene fame) seems an organic, unforced affair, both visually and aurally. The two play around each other as though it were second nature, and Craddock’s understated demeanor is the perfect counterpoint to Weller’s live wire antics. Even when the mood was mellowed by a short acoustic interlude (the highlight of which was a superb “That’s Entertainment”), the modfather’s grimace and dancing shoulders, betrayed his discomfort at being seated. This apparently becoming too much, he rose with his guitar tucked under his arm, grooving his way down the stage, before returning to his seat just in time to sing the next verse.

As he’s aged, Weller’s voice has attained a soulful quality that wasn’t present during his formative years with The Jam, and despite battling faulty monitors, he sang with an emotive power that was beyond reproach. There was, however, a reminder of his original, crude charm, on his forthcoming single “From The Floor Boards Up”, Weller spitting out the song’s chorus with a vintage aggression that also fuelled the closing version of Jam favourite “A Town Called Malice”.

With a line-up including Lulu and Daniel Beddingfield, Sunday did not seem promising, the bill being heavily weighted with novelty acts and sundry dubious characters. The Zombies offered a ray of hope early in the afternoon, with Colin Bluntstone’s still-distinctive vocals and Rod Argent on keyboards as flamboyant as ever. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to save them from the aging muso clichés they’ve become. It wasn’t until later, when Willard Grant Conspiracy ambled onto the Uncut stage, that the day was truly redeemed.

There was a brief moment of déjà vu when main man Robert Fisher made the same apology about playing “depressing” music that Lyndon Morgans had the previous day, only this time, there were heckles demanding “happy songs”. These were playfully rebuffed, Fisher cheerfully introducing the first song with the happy sentiment: “Well, this one’s about suicide”. The group sounded more vigorous live than I expected, their sound pivoted on the heavy reverb of David Curry’s viola and John Apt’s atmospheric guitar work. The pair created sonic sound-scapes around Fisher’s often tragic, timeless folk songs. Tearing through numbers like “Sticky”, which sound comparatively tame on record, the band also set aside time for their more lo-fi leanings. With the reverb off the viola and the bass guitar swapped for a double bass, the band gave sensitive performances of “The Ghost Of The Girl In The Well”, and ended with the chilling “Ballad of John Parker”. They were, perhaps, the pinnacle of the weekend, and were at very least, the best thing Sunday had to offer.

By Huw Evans

Robert Mitchum – NFT season

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Robert Mitchum – NFT season

His noir hunk persona encounters Jane Russell in a couple of ripple pulp adventures, 'His Kind of Woman' and 'Macao', while 'Where Danger Lives' is a haunting display of hamstrung manhood at bay. He is vicious in the low-budget gangster drama 'The Racket', the noir western 'Blood on the Moon', and the bleak oater 'Man with the Gun', but the blend of authority and devil-may-care is freshened every time. Legend had it that Mitchum often looked like he was sleepwalking through a role and then pull out the most deeply committed of extraordinary moments. There are many tall tales about Robert Mitchum, most of them spread by himself, but the story of his career is perhaps the most outlandish of them all. Friday 1 July The Night of the Hunter NFT2 6.15pm Saturday 2 July Cape Fear NFT1 6.10pm Mitchum Interviewed NFT3 8.40pm Sunday 3 July Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High) NFT1 3.30pm Farewell My Lovely NFT2 8.40pm Monday 4 July Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High) NFT3 2.30pm The Lusty Men NFT1 6.20pm River of No Return NFT1 8.40pm Tuesday 5 July Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High) NFT1 6.30pm Track of the Cat NFT1 8.45pm Friday 8 July Thunder Road NFT1 6.30pm Cape Fear NFT1 8.45pm Saturday 9 July The Friends of Eddie Coyle NFT1 6.30pm Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High) NFT1 8.45pm Sunday 10 July Farewell My Lovely NFT1 6.10pm The Night of the Hunter NFT1 8.30pm Monday 11 July The Night of the Hunter NFT3 2.30pm When Strangers Marry NFT2 6.00pm The Story of GI Joe (aka War Correspondent) NFT2 8.40pm Tuesday 12 July Till the End of Time NFT2 6.20pm The Lusty Men NFT3 8.30pm Wednesday 13 July Undercurrent NFT2 8.30pm Thursday 14 July The Locket NFT2 6.20pm When Strangers Marry NFT2 8.20pm Friday 15 July River of No Return NFT3 6.15pm Pursued NFT2 8.40pm Saturday 16 July The Story of GI Joe (aka War Correspondent) NFT2 8.40pm Sunday 17 July Track of the Cat NFT3 3.50pm Till the End of Time NFT2 8.40pm Monday 18 July Pursued NFT2 2.30pm Undercurrent NFT2 6.20pm Thunder Road NFT2 8.45pm Tuesday 19 July The Locket NFT2 8.40pm Wednesday 20 July Pursued NFT2 6.20pm El Dorado NFT2 8.30pm Thursday 21 July Crossfire NFT2 6.20pm Farewell My Lovely NFT2 8.40pm Friday 22 July The Friends of Eddie Coyle NFT2 8.40pm Saturday 23 July El Dorado NFT2 6.10pm Sunday 24 July Angel Face NFT2 6.20pm Monday 25 July The Big Steal NFT2 2.30pm Crossfire NFT2 8.40pm Tuesday 26 July The Night of the Hunter NFT2 8.40pm Wednesday 27 July Angel Face NFT2 8.40pm Thursday 28 July The Big Steal NFT2 8.40pm Saturday 30 July The Big Steal NFT2 8.40pm Sunday 31 July The Night of the Hunter NFT2 4.00pm Mitchum Interviewed NFT2 6.20pm Monday 1 August Rachel and the Stranger NFT2 6.10pm Tuesday 2 August Blood on the Moon NFT3 8.30pm Wednesday 3 August The Red Pony NFT3 6.10pm Blood on the Moon NFT3 8.30pm Thursday 4 August Rachel and the Stranger NFT2 8.30pm Saturday 6 August Blood on the Moon NFT2 6.20pm Sunday 7 August Where Danger Lives NFT2 6.20pm Monday 8 August The Red Pony NFT2 8.40pm Tuesday 9 August The Red Pony NFT3 8.30pm Thursday 11 August Where Danger Lives NFT2 8.30pm Friday 12 August My Forbidden Past NFT3 8.30pm Friday 19 August His Kind of Woman NFT2 8.40pm Saturday 20 August The Racket NFT2 6.20pm Sunday 21 August Macao NFT3 3.50pm The Yakuza NFT3 8.30pm Monday 22 August Man with the Gun NFT3 6.10pm Heaven Knows, Mr Allison NFT3 8.30pm Tuesday 23 August His Kind of Woman NFT2 6.15pm Wednesday 24 August The Angry Hills NFT2 6.10pm Home from the Hill NFT3 8.10pm Thursday 25 August Secret Ceremony NFT2 8.30pm Friday 26 August The Racket NFT2 8.45pm Saturday 27 August My Forbidden Past NFT2 4.00pm The Yakuza NFT3 6.10pm Man with the Gun NFT3 8.40pm Sunday 28 August Heaven Knows, Mr Allison NFT3 6.10pm The Angry Hills NFT2 8.40pm Monday 29 August Blood on the Moon NFT3 3.50pm Secret Ceremony NFT2 6.10pm Home from the Hill NFT3 8.10pm Tuesday 30 August Home from the Hill NFT3 6.00pm Macao NFT2 8.40pm Wednesday 31 August The Yakuza NFT3 8.30pm

His noir hunk persona encounters Jane Russell in a couple of ripple pulp adventures, ‘His Kind of Woman’ and ‘Macao’, while ‘Where Danger Lives’ is a haunting display of hamstrung manhood at bay.

He is vicious in the low-budget gangster drama ‘The Racket’, the noir western ‘Blood on the Moon’, and the bleak oater ‘Man with the Gun’, but the blend of authority and devil-may-care is freshened every time.

Legend had it that Mitchum often looked like he was sleepwalking through a role and then pull out the most deeply committed of extraordinary moments. There are many tall tales about Robert Mitchum, most of them spread by himself, but the story of his career is perhaps the most outlandish of them all.

Friday 1 July

The Night of the Hunter

NFT2

6.15pm

Saturday 2 July

Cape Fear

NFT1

6.10pm

Mitchum Interviewed

NFT3

8.40pm

Sunday 3 July

Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High)

NFT1

3.30pm

Farewell My Lovely

NFT2

8.40pm

Monday 4 July

Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High)

NFT3

2.30pm

The Lusty Men

NFT1

6.20pm

River of No Return

NFT1

8.40pm

Tuesday 5 July

Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High)

NFT1

6.30pm

Track of the Cat

NFT1

8.45pm

Friday 8 July

Thunder Road

NFT1

6.30pm

Cape Fear

NFT1

8.45pm

Saturday 9 July

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

NFT1

6.30pm

Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High)

NFT1

8.45pm

Sunday 10 July

Farewell My Lovely

NFT1

6.10pm

The Night of the Hunter

NFT1

8.30pm

Monday 11 July

The Night of the Hunter

NFT3

2.30pm

When Strangers Marry

NFT2

6.00pm

The Story of GI Joe (aka War Correspondent)

NFT2

8.40pm

Tuesday 12 July

Till the End of Time

NFT2

6.20pm

The Lusty Men

NFT3

8.30pm

Wednesday 13 July

Undercurrent

NFT2

8.30pm

Thursday 14 July

The Locket

NFT2

6.20pm

When Strangers Marry

NFT2

8.20pm

Friday 15 July

River of No Return

NFT3

6.15pm

Pursued

NFT2

8.40pm

Saturday 16 July

The Story of GI Joe (aka War Correspondent)

NFT2

8.40pm

Sunday 17 July

Track of the Cat

NFT3

3.50pm

Till the End of Time

NFT2

8.40pm

Monday 18 July

Pursued

NFT2

2.30pm

Undercurrent

NFT2

6.20pm

Thunder Road

NFT2

8.45pm

Tuesday 19 July

The Locket

NFT2

8.40pm

Wednesday 20 July

Pursued

NFT2

6.20pm

El Dorado

NFT2

8.30pm

Thursday 21 July

Crossfire

NFT2

6.20pm

Farewell My Lovely

NFT2

8.40pm

Friday 22 July

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

NFT2

8.40pm

Saturday 23 July

El Dorado

NFT2

6.10pm

Sunday 24 July

Angel Face

NFT2

6.20pm

Monday 25 July

The Big Steal

NFT2

2.30pm

Crossfire

NFT2

8.40pm

Tuesday 26 July

The Night of the Hunter

NFT2

8.40pm

Wednesday 27 July

Angel Face

NFT2

8.40pm

Thursday 28 July

The Big Steal

NFT2

8.40pm

Saturday 30 July

The Big Steal

NFT2

8.40pm

Sunday 31 July

The Night of the Hunter

NFT2

4.00pm

Mitchum Interviewed

NFT2

6.20pm

Monday 1 August

Rachel and the Stranger

NFT2

6.10pm

Tuesday 2 August

Blood on the Moon

NFT3

8.30pm

Wednesday 3 August

The Red Pony

NFT3

6.10pm

Blood on the Moon

NFT3

8.30pm

Thursday 4 August

Rachel and the Stranger

NFT2

8.30pm

Saturday 6 August

Blood on the Moon

NFT2

6.20pm

Sunday 7 August

Where Danger Lives

NFT2

6.20pm

Monday 8 August

The Red Pony

NFT2

8.40pm

Tuesday 9 August

The Red Pony

NFT3

8.30pm

Thursday 11 August

Where Danger Lives

NFT2

8.30pm

Friday 12 August

My Forbidden Past

NFT3

8.30pm

Friday 19 August

His Kind of Woman

NFT2

8.40pm

Saturday 20 August

The Racket

NFT2

6.20pm

Sunday 21 August

Macao

NFT3

3.50pm

The Yakuza

NFT3

8.30pm

Monday 22 August

Man with the Gun

NFT3

6.10pm

Heaven Knows, Mr Allison

NFT3

8.30pm

Tuesday 23 August

His Kind of Woman

NFT2

6.15pm

Wednesday 24 August

The Angry Hills

NFT2

6.10pm

Home from the Hill

NFT3

8.10pm

Thursday 25 August

Secret Ceremony

NFT2

8.30pm

Friday 26 August

The Racket

NFT2

8.45pm

Saturday 27 August

My Forbidden Past

NFT2

4.00pm

The Yakuza

NFT3

6.10pm

Man with the Gun

NFT3

8.40pm

Sunday 28 August

Heaven Knows, Mr Allison

NFT3

6.10pm

The Angry Hills

NFT2

8.40pm

Monday 29 August

Blood on the Moon

NFT3

3.50pm

Secret Ceremony

NFT2

6.10pm

Home from the Hill

NFT3

8.10pm

Tuesday 30 August

Home from the Hill

NFT3

6.00pm

Macao

NFT2

8.40pm

Wednesday 31 August

The Yakuza

NFT3

8.30pm

See the trailer for ‘Wolf Creek’

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See the trailer for ‘Wolf Creek’

The chilling story of three Australian backpackers travelling in the remote outback. When their vehicle breaks down they accept help from a friendly local. It soon dawns on them that he has no intention of fixing their vehicle... Just click on one of the links below to watch the trailer. Windows Media: Low/Med/High Real: Low/Med/High Quicktime: Low/Med/High

The chilling story of three Australian backpackers travelling in the remote outback. When their vehicle breaks down they accept help from a friendly local. It soon dawns on them that he has no intention of fixing their vehicle…

Just click on one of the links below to watch the trailer.

Windows Media: Low/Med/High

Real: Low/Med/High

Quicktime: Low/Med/High

HEAR THE NEW ALBUM FROM MY COMPUTER

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HEAR THE NEW ALBUM FROM MY COMPUTER

Manchester duo Andrew Chester and David Luke follow up on their extraordinary 2002 debut ‘Vulnerabilia’ with a second album, ‘No CV’, this month. A review of the album, in the August edition of Uncut, finds it Dauntingly impressive…After 10 minutes, they’re sharing Jeff Buckley’s range. After 20, they’ve outstripped Radiohead’s intricacy…. Discover the delights of the John Leckie co-produced, ‘No CV’, here on Uncut.co.uk, via the links below: 'Lonely' - high / low 'Stumble' - high / low 'Dig a Hole' - high / low 'Life' - high / low 'Steve's Critique' - high / low 'The Boy I Used to Be' - high / low 'Don't Go Where I've Been' - high / low 'Some Chemicals' - high / low 'Crystal Clear' - high / low 'Over You' - high / low 'Pulling Myself Together' - high / low 'Heart' - high / low

Manchester duo Andrew Chester and David Luke follow up on their extraordinary 2002 debut ‘Vulnerabilia’ with a second album, ‘No CV’, this month. A review of the album, in the August edition of Uncut, finds it Dauntingly impressive…After 10 minutes, they’re sharing Jeff Buckley’s range. After 20, they’ve outstripped Radiohead’s intricacy….

Discover the delights of the John Leckie co-produced, ‘No CV’, here on Uncut.co.uk, via the links below:

‘Lonely’ – high / low

‘Stumble’ – high / low

‘Dig a Hole’ – high / low

‘Life’ – high / low

‘Steve’s Critique’ – high / low

‘The Boy I Used to Be’ – high / low

‘Don’t Go Where I’ve Been’ – high / low

‘Some Chemicals’ – high / low

‘Crystal Clear’ – high / low

‘Over You’ – high / low

‘Pulling Myself Together’ – high / low

‘Heart’ – high / low

R.E.M. – The alternative best of

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R.E.M. – The alternative best of

On Saturday April 5, 1980 four young men played at a birthday party in a ramshackle ex-church on Oconee Street in the university town of Athens, Georgia. This was the first time that the Peter Buck, Bill Berry, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe would play together in front of a crowd, they would go on to become one of the most important bands in American history. In 2005, R.E.M. are celebrating their silver jubilee, and to mark this moment we've put together our alternative selection of their finest moments in the more recent back-catalogue for you to hear, in full. None of these are on the 2003 album 'In Time: The Best of REM 1988-2003'. Simply click 'High' or 'Low' depending upon your internet connection. You'll need Realplayer from realnetworks.com/freeplayer.

Don't forget to check out our full REM feature and all three CDs on this month's collectible covered Uncut Magazine.

On Saturday April 5, 1980 four young men played at a birthday party in a ramshackle ex-church on Oconee Street in the university town of Athens, Georgia.

This was the first time that the Peter Buck, Bill Berry, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe would play together in front of a crowd, they would go on to become one of the most important bands in American history.

In 2005, R.E.M. are celebrating their silver jubilee, and to mark this moment we’ve put together our alternative selection of their finest moments in the more recent back-catalogue for you to hear, in full. None of these are on the 2003 album ‘In Time: The Best of REM 1988-2003’.

Simply click ‘High’ or ‘Low’ depending upon your internet connection. You’ll need Realplayer from realnetworks.com/freeplayer.



Don’t forget to check out our full REM feature and all three CDs on this month’s collectible covered Uncut Magazine.

Guilfest 2005

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Guilfest 2005

This weekend (15 -17 July) sees the annual three-day Guilfest in Guildford, Surrey. Among the headliners are The Pogues, Paul Weller, Status Quo, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Zombies, The Hothouse Flowers and Hal. If you're interested in going along, there are a few tickets still left, for more information visit guilfest.co.uk. This year there is an Uncut stage, which features Richmond Fontaine and Willard Grant Conspiracy among others, full details are below. The BBC Radio 2 Main Stage Friday 15th July The Pogues Alabama 3 The Proclaimers The Stands This Is Seb Clarke Saturday 16th July Paul Weller Echo & The Bunnymen The Others The Subways Hal The Black Velvets Tom Baxter Citadel Sunday 17th July Status Quo Daniel Bedingfield Lulu Marillion Chas 'N' Dave The Zombies Ukuele Orchestra of Great Britain The Uncut Stage Friday 15th July Hothouse Flowers Richmond Fontaine Twelve Sullivans Big Wednesday Claire Toomey Boo Hewerdine Saturday 16th July Thunder Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band Blue Rodeo Nerina Pallot Jorane Nizlopi The Yards Song Dog Epuldugger United Stoats of America Intervurt The Roosters Sunday 17th July Hayseed Dixie Dreadzone Willard Grant Conspiracy Space Ritual Martha Tilston Nautical Theme Alistair Cowan Richard John Thompson Who Will Miss Mary? Nigel Clarke (ex Dodgy)

This weekend (15 -17 July) sees the annual three-day Guilfest in Guildford, Surrey. Among the headliners are The Pogues, Paul Weller, Status Quo, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Zombies, The Hothouse Flowers and Hal.

If you’re interested in going along, there are a few tickets still left, for more information visit guilfest.co.uk.

This year there is an Uncut stage, which features Richmond Fontaine and Willard Grant Conspiracy among others, full details are below.

The BBC Radio 2 Main Stage

Friday 15th July

The Pogues

Alabama 3

The Proclaimers

The Stands

This Is Seb Clarke

Saturday 16th July

Paul Weller

Echo & The Bunnymen

The Others

The Subways

Hal

The Black Velvets

Tom Baxter

Citadel

Sunday 17th July

Status Quo

Daniel Bedingfield

Lulu

Marillion

Chas ‘N’ Dave

The Zombies

Ukuele Orchestra of Great Britain

The Uncut Stage

Friday 15th July

Hothouse Flowers

Richmond Fontaine

Twelve Sullivans

Big Wednesday

Claire Toomey

Boo Hewerdine

Saturday 16th July

Thunder

Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band

Blue Rodeo

Nerina Pallot

Jorane

Nizlopi

The Yards

Song Dog

Epuldugger

United Stoats of America

Intervurt

The Roosters

Sunday 17th July

Hayseed Dixie

Dreadzone

Willard Grant Conspiracy

Space Ritual

Martha Tilston

Nautical Theme

Alistair Cowan

Richard John Thompson

Who Will Miss Mary?

Nigel Clarke (ex Dodgy)

Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise

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In an age when the commercial imperative has reduced the notion of ideal musical production to one of recycling old techno riffs, slapping a treated "cartoon" voice on top and flogging them as kiddywinks' ringtones, it takes a breathtaking leap of aesthetic faith to undertake a project like Sufjan Stevens' 50 States. Not even Yes or Magma at their most hubristic could match the ambition of Stevens' conception: a song-cycle of 50 albums, each concerning an individual American state - well, maybe 49 and an EP for Rhode Island. It isn’t just a succession of limp travelogues and familiar town songs like "Sweet Home Chicago", either. Stevens’ albums are idiosyncratic collections of mini-operettas, musings upon historical figures and legends, evocations of architecture, skylines and landscapes, ruminations upon localised industrial development, and even more arcane matters whose pertinence is not immediately obvious. All rendered in a weird, pan-stylistic blend of alt.country, minimalism and American brass band music, as if John Philip Sousa, Steve Reich and Bonnie “Prince” Billy had together stumbled across the clippings-file of some mid-west small-town newspaper and decided to set it to music. And then, just for good measure, given titles to the individual tracks which read like bogus headlines from The Onion: "Prairie Fire That Wanders About"; "The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us"; and my favourite, "To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament, And It Involves An Inner Tube, Bath Mats, And 21 Able-Bodied Men". Try fitting that on your bloody mobile, Crazy fucking Frog! Stevens started the project with his third album, 2003's Michigan, taking the easy way in with his home state. And now, after a personal detour for last year’s Seven Swans set and diligent researching of the relevant atlases, almanacs and biographies, Michigan's neighbour Illinois. A key track in establishing the general tone is "Come On! Feel The Illinoise!", whose punning title hides a rumbustious blend of piano, percussion and horns bustling along at some quirky tempo, with Stevens coming across like Ben Folds with a typically tricksy lyric that both celebrates and questions the notion of progress: "All great intentions/Get covered with the imitations/Have you no conscience?/Oh god of progress/Have you degraded or forgot us?". With a fusion-style keyboards solo, and a few streaks of violin shading the later stages, it recalls '60s Canterbury Sound bands such as Caravan, only more industriously energetic - as perhaps befits its subject. Individual towns are treated in a variety of ways. With a gentle piano and strings intro giving way to shambling banjo and guitar, "Jacksonville" is a heart-warming statement of faith in small-town cosiness: "I've seen things that are meant to save/The bandstand chairs, and the Dewey Day Parade/I go out to the Golden H/The spirit is right, and the spirit doesn't change". Set to lolloping banjo, guitar and accordion, "Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother!" mainly provides an opportunity to nonsense-rhyme the location with terms like alligator, hate her, data and aviator, as in a children's nursery-rhyme, ultimately establishing that "Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator" before concluding in round form with a series of staggered line-repetitions. On Michigan, Detroit's former industrial glories were the subject of celebration and eulogy. "Chicago", by contrast, is a much more personal piece, Stevens recalling romantic stays in that city, and subsequently his current home of New York, that helped him grow as a person: "I was in love with the place/In my mind/I made a lot of mistakes/In my mind". The only industry here is all in the arrangement, the youthful optimism summed up in the massed chorus and strings chugging eagerly along like a train. Here and in several other tracks, such as the aforementioned "Prairie Fire. . .", there's something of the anachronistic grandeur of The Polyphonic Spree about Stevens' musical vision. Elsewhere, more muted settings are appropriate, as in the brief, wistful piano and trumpet instrumental offered "To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region. . .", or the simple guitar and banjo that accompany Stevens' reminiscence of a prim bible-study-class romance in "Casimir Pulaski Day", with suitably upright horns lending dignity to the coda. In its evocation of lost innocence, and affectionate old-tyme musical texture, it recalls one of Van Dyke Parks' charming faux-historical curios. Less happily remembered is "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", the serial killer's legend recounted over delicate piano and guitar. "His neighbours they adored him for his humour and his conversation/Look underneath the house there, find the few living things rotting fast in their sleep of the dead," sings Stevens, his hushed whisper shifting into pained falsetto as he recalls Gacy's victims, before considering his own secret shame: "But in my best behaviour, I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid." Stevens manages to maintain a sort of mottled musical consistency throughout, applying his various tones, timbres and textures in the manner of an abstract painter, so that a splash of crunching rock guitar in "The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts" is balanced six tracks away by the mournful piano and spooky lowing of "The Seer's Tower", and the fluttering woodwind and declamatory choral chords of the Native American massacre elegy "The Black Hawk War. . ." (full title too long to include here) by the sparkling vibes and descending horn runs of "The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders" - without there being any apparent disjunction between the various parts. Rather, they combine as elements in a much larger overall picture, threaded together by the recurrent see-sawing minimalist orchestrations that feature in several tracks, culminating in the untitled bonus track that concludes the proceedings like a potted four-minute precis of Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, its reeds, piano, tuned percussion and vocal sussurus shuffling daintily in and out of sync. Illinois is an extraordinary achievement, all the more so when one considers that besides researching and writing the album, Stevens also played most of the parts himself. And if he can be so inspired by a relatively unremarkable state such as this, just imagine what awaits us when he reaches places like Tennessee, Louisiana and California. . . By Andy Gill

In an age when the commercial imperative has reduced the notion of ideal musical production to one of recycling old techno riffs, slapping a treated “cartoon” voice on top and flogging them as kiddywinks’ ringtones, it takes a breathtaking leap of aesthetic faith to undertake a project like Sufjan Stevens’ 50 States.

Not even Yes or Magma at their most hubristic could match the ambition of Stevens’ conception: a song-cycle of 50 albums, each concerning an individual American state – well, maybe 49 and an EP for Rhode Island. It isn’t just a succession of limp travelogues and familiar town songs like “Sweet Home Chicago”, either. Stevens’ albums are idiosyncratic collections of mini-operettas, musings upon historical figures and legends, evocations of architecture, skylines and landscapes, ruminations upon localised industrial development, and even more arcane matters whose pertinence is not immediately obvious. All rendered in a weird, pan-stylistic blend of alt.country, minimalism and American brass band music, as if John Philip Sousa, Steve Reich and Bonnie “Prince” Billy had together stumbled across the clippings-file of some mid-west small-town newspaper and decided to set it to music. And then, just for good measure, given titles to the individual tracks which read like bogus headlines from The Onion: “Prairie Fire That Wanders About”; “The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us”; and my favourite, “To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament, And It Involves An Inner Tube, Bath Mats, And 21 Able-Bodied Men”. Try fitting that on your bloody mobile, Crazy fucking Frog!

Stevens started the project with his third album, 2003’s Michigan, taking the easy way in with his home state. And now, after a personal detour for last year’s Seven Swans set and diligent researching of the relevant atlases, almanacs and biographies, Michigan’s neighbour Illinois. A key track in establishing the general tone is “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!”, whose punning title hides a rumbustious blend of piano, percussion and horns bustling along at some quirky tempo, with Stevens coming across like Ben Folds with a typically tricksy lyric that both celebrates and questions the notion of progress: “All great intentions/Get covered with the imitations/Have you no conscience?/Oh god of progress/Have you degraded or forgot us?”. With a fusion-style keyboards solo, and a few streaks of violin shading the later stages, it recalls ’60s Canterbury Sound bands such as Caravan, only more industriously energetic – as perhaps befits its subject.

Individual towns are treated in a variety of ways. With a gentle piano and strings intro giving way to shambling banjo and guitar, “Jacksonville” is a heart-warming statement of faith in small-town cosiness: “I’ve seen things that are meant to save/The bandstand chairs, and the Dewey Day Parade/I go out to the Golden H/The spirit is right, and the spirit doesn’t change”. Set to lolloping banjo, guitar and accordion, “Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother!” mainly provides an opportunity to nonsense-rhyme the location with terms like alligator, hate her, data and aviator, as in a children’s nursery-rhyme, ultimately establishing that “Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator” before concluding in round form with a series of staggered line-repetitions.

On Michigan, Detroit’s former industrial glories were the subject of celebration and eulogy. “Chicago”, by contrast, is a much more personal piece, Stevens recalling romantic stays in that city, and subsequently his current home of New York, that helped him grow as a person: “I was in love with the place/In my mind/I made a lot of mistakes/In my mind”. The only industry here is all in the arrangement, the youthful optimism summed up in the massed chorus and strings chugging eagerly along like a train.

Here and in several other tracks, such as the aforementioned “Prairie Fire. . .”, there’s something of the anachronistic grandeur of The Polyphonic Spree about Stevens’ musical vision. Elsewhere, more muted settings are appropriate, as in the brief, wistful piano and trumpet instrumental offered “To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region. . .”, or the simple guitar and banjo that accompany Stevens’ reminiscence of a prim bible-study-class romance in “Casimir Pulaski Day”, with suitably upright horns lending dignity to the coda. In its evocation of lost innocence, and affectionate old-tyme musical texture, it recalls one of Van Dyke Parks’ charming faux-historical curios.

Less happily remembered is “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”, the serial killer’s legend recounted over delicate piano and guitar. “His neighbours they adored him for his humour and his conversation/Look underneath the house there, find the few living things rotting fast in their sleep of the dead,” sings Stevens, his hushed whisper shifting into pained falsetto as he recalls Gacy’s victims, before considering his own secret shame: “But in my best behaviour, I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid.”

Stevens manages to maintain a sort of mottled musical consistency throughout, applying his various tones, timbres and textures in the manner of an abstract painter, so that a splash of crunching rock guitar in “The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts” is balanced six tracks away by the mournful piano and spooky lowing of “The Seer’s Tower”, and the fluttering woodwind and declamatory choral chords of the Native American massacre elegy “The Black Hawk War. . .” (full title too long to include here) by the sparkling vibes and descending horn runs of “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders” – without there being any apparent disjunction between the various parts. Rather, they combine as elements in a much larger overall picture, threaded together by the recurrent see-sawing minimalist orchestrations that feature in several tracks, culminating in the untitled bonus track that concludes the proceedings like a potted four-minute precis of Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians, its reeds, piano, tuned percussion and vocal sussurus shuffling daintily in and out of sync.

Illinois is an extraordinary achievement, all the more so when one considers that besides researching and writing the album, Stevens also played most of the parts himself. And if he can be so inspired by a relatively unremarkable state such as this, just imagine what awaits us when he reaches places like Tennessee, Louisiana and California. . .

By Andy Gill

Interview: Frank Black

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Interview: Frank Black
Where did the idea of going down south to record Honeycomb come from? Well, it was my idea to go to Nashville, but that was years ago and it was just to walk in the footsteps very loosely of Blonde On Blonde: you know, go to Nashville and record an album with a bunch of guys who don’t know who I ...

Where did the idea of going down south to record Honeycomb come from?

Well, it was my idea to go to Nashville, but that was years ago and it was just to walk in the footsteps very loosely of Blonde On Blonde: you know, go to Nashville and record an album with a bunch of guys who don’t know who I am and a great record hopefully ensues. Jon Tiven and I talked about it for ten years and subsequently he actually moved to Nashville.

You first worked with Jon on an Otis Blackwell tribute album.

Yes, Brace Yourself. It had the worst album cover ever. Anyway, Jon’s the kind of guy who maintains his contacts. He’s got his little black book and calls once or twice a year to remind you he’s available to do the Black on Blonde project. And so finally we were able to do it. I didn’t worry about who he was going to ask. I knew he’d ask all stellar people, though I had no idea it was going to be guys like Steve Cropper. I think in a certain way they were glad to be asked, probably because they do a lot of straightforward country or pop stuff. And maybe Tiven talked me up to them.

Had they done anything like this?

I don’t know. They were challenged… well, more amused than challenged. I don’t think it was hard for them, but they had to think a little bit.

What did Reggie Young play on?

A bunch. Anything that’s like laid-back and smooth, that’s him. I didn’t know who he was. I know he’s famous, but I had no idea. I was so impressed that he played with Johnny Horton, who I love. He’s so smooth and soulful. When I listen to the record now, I’m thinking, “Those motherfuckers, they’re, like, commenting on my lyrics in the way they’re playing”. I didn’t necessarily notice at the time, but I can hear it now. If I’m saying something sexy, they play something sexy in response.

How was Spooner Oldham, the Harry Dean Stanton of deep soul? I saw him play on the Muscle Shoals night during the Barbican’s “It Came From Memphis” week in April.

He was great. Tiven complimented him on his restraint with some particular lick he played, and he just said, “Comes from many years of being in the recording business”.

And was Dan Penn just floating around in the background or what?

Yeah, just chewing his toothpick. And I knew he liked a particular song if he sang background vocals on it. He sang on ‘Dark End of the Street’ and it was just so smooth, man. He put down the lead vocal first, and I was like, “How can I sing it now?” But then he said, “I’m gonna go take a nap”, meaning I was free to sing it without him in the room and not feel weird about it. When Tiven said, “So, Charles, you wanna do ‘Dark End of the Street’”, I was like, “Oooh, I dunno, man”. And then those guys were suddenly out there doing it, and of course they all wanted me to do it. Someone like Dan Penn is no dummy. He figures, “I dunno who this kid is, but hey, I wanna get half the publishing on the song”. I’m being crass, of course. When he mixed it he goes, “Okay, Charles, I putcha voice nice’n’loud like one o’ them black guys”. I think he thought I was singing it like Aaron Neville or something, but really my reference wasn’t that, it was Gram Parsons and a whole other thing. It was also from listening to Freddy Fender records, which is a similarly high kind of fragile voice, light on its feet.

In a Tex-Mex connection, what made you choose Doug Sahm’s ‘Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day’ for the album?

Just fell in love with the song when I first heard it. Obsessed on it, drove my band the Catholics insane playing it over and over and over, recording it for like four different records but never getting it right. I just really love the song and the lyrics. “You’ll be king of what you survive”.

And then Elvis’ ‘Song of the Shrimp’ has southern connotations too.

That was prompted by Townes Van Zandt’s version on his last record. He just barely plays the song, he just hits a chord and sings a line and cracks up, hits another chord, makes a joke… it’s a really deconstructed but very entertaining version, and that was my reference point. I’ve still never even heard the Elvis version. It didn’t click until I hit a minor chord once instead of a major, and I was able to free myself to do an interpretation of the song instead of being so literal with it.

Did the musicians know anything about you or the Pixies?

David Hood has a son who plays in the Drive-By Truckers, so I think he knew something. And Cropper checked in with somebody and said, “Who is this guy?” If they’d known they probably wouldn’t have said anything. In a way it made me feel more confident that I had a Pixies tour to do, like I wasn’t just a kid and these guys had played with Elvis or whatever.

How come you decided to make the record on the eve of the reunion tour?

Well, ‘cause I called Tiven and said the Pixies tour wasn’t happening: “We’re all fightin’ and everything.” And then I had just finished the Catholics, and even if we didn’t say it was the last tour it sure felt like the fuckin’ last tour. We’d been playing together a long time, ten years of hard touring and loading our own gear and not making a lotta money out of it, and we’re hittin’ the mid-life crisis. And they’re all getting mad at me ‘cause I’m forcing them to record live to two-track for the umpteenth time. So it was like, “Alright, Tiven, I don’t know what I’m doing this year, I just got divorced, the Pixies tour ain’t happening, I’m ready to do Black on Blonde.” He called back the next day, got the band. I called back the next day and said the Pixies tour was back on but I had four or five days. And that’s one thing I like about Jon, he doesn’t ever bitch about restraints or anything. He just says, “Whatever you wanna do, you’re the artist”. He’s a can-do kinda guy.

Presumably you had to do a fair amount of rehearsal with the Pixies.

No, we got together for a total of three or four days, I think. And after two days it kinda sounded like the same, so we thought, “Okay, let’s go for it”.

Were all the songs on Honeycomb written specifically for it?

All of them, with the exception of “Selkie Bride”, were written in that time period of when I called Tiven in January, so right before the sessions. So I just sat in my little loft in Portland. I had not yet moved in with this woman I had met who lived in Oregon – she had two kids and I didn’t want to move in right away or even in the same town, which is Eugene. I sat in my loft and started writing the songs. I guess I had those guys in mind after Jon had told me what the band was. Well, I didn’t try to make my writing different, it inevitably just was. For one I was intimidated, so I knew it had to be good. Also I didn’t wanna do anything too quirky. And nor was I totally prepared. “My Life Is In Storage” I wrote in the hotel room in Nashville the night before we recorded it. So it was all very quick.

Is there a prevailing emotional mood to the record for you?

Well, you get the shit kicked out of you in a divorce. I don’t mean by my ex, either, it was very friendly, but just the whole thing was kinda gut-wrenching. We had been together for, like, sixteen years, so it’s kind of a heavy time. And I’d been going to a therapist. Started out as kind of a marriage counseling thing, not even to save our marriage coz we kinda knew what we were going to do, but just to talk about what we were gonna do so it was done the right way and we weren’t just cutting a gash in our soul. That whole debris, I sort of got into it and sort of enjoyed it, so I got into a whole lot more, like, personal therapy. So combining that with the act of moving to a different state after many years, and a new relationship, I just kind of gave up whatever I was neurotic or uptight about before, like “I don’t wanna be too personal”… all that stuff just didn’t matter anymore. It felt really good to be in pain. It was horrible, but it was nice to feel human. It was like, “Oh yeah, I am human”. And in a funny sort of way, those kinds of experiences, they give you authority to write with – conviction, as opposed to just writing from an imaginary place or a projecting kind of place. You’re writing from the place that you’re at. It’s nice to be able to feel, “Oh yeah, I went deep because I could, and I couldn’t before”.

And yet as deeply personal as it is, there’s something quite calm and considered about these songs. Songs like “Another Velvet Nightmare” have a very Leonard Cohen feel.

Yeah, I think that listening to some of his records in recent years, there’s a thing, an attitude that he has going on that I really, really like. He can be dark and down but it’s very humorous and it’s very smart and witty. He’s very cool. It’s almost like a Bryan Ferry stance, with the whole wrinkled suit and the cigarette. It’s a little bit like, “I can handle myself. Yes, I was destroyed, but let me tell you about it…” For a lot of people my age, I’m Your Man was the record that got you into Leonard Cohen. I heard that record round about 1989 on a Pixies tour and became obsessed with it. It all clicked and I got who he was. Now I can go back to his earlier records and listen to them, no problem. I think my mother’s in love with him. She’s got this Austin City Limits performance by him that we always watch together when I visit her.

After writing and recording these songs, was it at all strange to be plunged back into Pixie-world?

Yeah, but I didn’t have to do it, really. It’s funny, because when I play with those guys I sing different. In rehearsals it was like, “Oh, there’s that voice again”. It’s kind of effortless, because that band was kind of au naturel, real rough. That’s what we were. It was very uncontrived. Whatever was pretentious about it was… real! The tour was great, and we’re gonna continue to do it because we can’t really think of a reason not to.

What about a new album?

I don’t know. I don’t think so. We’d have to kind of reinvent ourselves or something if we were ever going to do that. And I don’t know if the demand is there, really. It has to be about more than commerce. To take a ten- or eleven- year sabbatical and it goes well, then it feels funny to go make a record to take advantage of this situation. Whatever box we were performing or writing within before, it’s really gotta break through all that and just be upside down. Kim has to be the lead vocalist or something, or Joey has to sing. Or it has to be all waltzes.

You’ve said that Honeycomb was the most moving experience you’ve had in your musical career. Would that come as some surprise to hardcore Pixies fans, do you think?

Yeah, but that’s because making the Pixies’ records was different. That was young guys and a gal, a lot more ego involved. It’s not that it wasn’t interesting or fun or exciting, but “moving” is not the way I would describe it. “Spiritual” is not the way I would describe it. Energetic, for sure, but not poignant or whatever. We were just too young. It’s poignant looking back at it, but that’s a different kind of experience. Playing with these guys in Nashville, they’ve done it all, played with everybody, been to hell and back. They’ve just lived so much more life.

Interview by Barney Hoskyns

Silver City

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Silver City

Scattergun rants abound in American movies (ask Michael Moore), but pensive political satire is less common. John Sayles is supremely astute at picking at flabby, corrupt systems. Silver City is an intelligent, thought-through, novelistic piece of work, blessed by a brilliant Dubya send-up from Chris Cooper. If it's a little slow and preachy, and short on actual humour (for a satire), its messages ring loud and clear. We're introduced to the inarticulate Senator Pilger (Cooper). He has a ferocious campaign manager (Richard Dreyfuss) and a murky, influential backer (Kris Kristofferson). Also a knack for shooting himself in the foot. "Those were the good old days," he tells an assembly. "All you needed was a good strong rope and a tree to hang it from." Sayles then switches focus. Danny Huston's jaded detective takes centre stage, probing Pilger's background. He vies with journalist Maria Bello (his ex), lobbyist Billy Zane (her new beau), and Pilger's scandal-magnet pothead sister, Daryl Hannah. Tim Roth and Thora Birch are website radicals. Everyone Huston meets gives a speech, states a viewpoint. Because of this bring-on-the-next-opinion structure, the film never gathers dramatic momentum or achieves the noir intensity of the thrillers it admires - Chinatown, The Maltese Falcon. There's no doubting its fine intent though: as one cipher says, "Someone has to plant a seed". By Chris Roberts

Scattergun rants abound in American movies (ask Michael Moore), but pensive political satire is less common. John Sayles is supremely astute at picking at flabby, corrupt systems. Silver City is an intelligent, thought-through, novelistic piece of work, blessed by a brilliant Dubya send-up from Chris Cooper. If it’s a little slow and preachy, and short on actual humour (for a satire), its messages ring loud and clear.

We’re introduced to the inarticulate Senator Pilger (Cooper). He has a ferocious campaign manager (Richard Dreyfuss) and a murky, influential backer (Kris Kristofferson). Also a knack for shooting himself in the foot. “Those were the good old days,” he tells an assembly. “All you needed was a good strong rope and a tree to hang it from.”

Sayles then switches focus. Danny Huston’s jaded detective takes centre stage, probing Pilger’s background. He vies with journalist Maria Bello (his ex), lobbyist Billy Zane (her new beau), and Pilger’s scandal-magnet pothead sister, Daryl Hannah. Tim Roth and Thora Birch are website radicals. Everyone Huston meets gives a speech, states a viewpoint.

Because of this bring-on-the-next-opinion structure, the film never gathers dramatic momentum or achieves the noir intensity of the thrillers it admires – Chinatown, The Maltese Falcon. There’s no doubting its fine intent though: as one cipher says, “Someone has to plant a seed”.

By Chris Roberts

Punishment Park

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Punishment Park

Since the mid-1950s, Peter Watkins has been making radical and challenging films that have mixed improvisational, dramatic and documentary techniques to incredible and often innovative effect. You'd know him best for The War Game, a nightmarish BBC semi-documentary from 1966 about the effects of a nuclear strike on Britain, which was banned from broadcast. Since then, he's lived in self-imposed exile while his work has become increasingly marginalized, rarely seen outside retrospectives or film festivals. Punishment Park is his only American movie, made in 1971 as the social and political turmoil of the era reached a peak. Here, Watkins envisaged an authoritarian clampdown by the Nixon administration on radicals and activists. Stripped of their rights, they're presented with a stark choice by establishment tribunals: either lengthy prison sentences, or running the gauntlet of Punishment Park, a three-day marathon through the high desert with armed National Guardsmen on their trail. In a nutshell, it's Battle Royale with peaceniks, though the tribunal hearings are at least as important to Watkins as the action sequences he cuts into them. Anticipating the conventions of reality TV, the film shows 'ordinary people' (at least, non-professional actors) reacting to a highly charged situation in ways that are always credible and often disturbing. There is one story that Watkins halted filming at one point because he was worried that the actors playing the National Guardsmen had loaded real shells into their rifles. The extent to which Watkins found the pulse of the times can be measured in the extreme hostility of contemporaneous US reviews. The film was pulled after only four days in New York and has rarely screened since. Thirty years on, the counter culture rhetoric sounds strange to our ears - but in other ways this film is more relevant than ever. In the light of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act, the Bush administration's blatant disregard not only for civil liberties but for human rights, Watkins' paranoid metaphor feels all too valid. Screening with his other movies - including The War Game and the Vietnam allegory Culloden - as part of a retrospective at London's ICA, this is a valuable opportunity to explore the work of one of the most overlooked, but important, film makers of his generation. By Tom Charity

Since the mid-1950s, Peter Watkins has been making radical and challenging films that have mixed improvisational, dramatic and documentary techniques to incredible and often innovative effect. You’d know him best for The War Game, a nightmarish BBC semi-documentary from 1966 about the effects of a nuclear strike on Britain, which was banned from broadcast. Since then, he’s lived in self-imposed exile while his work has become increasingly marginalized, rarely seen outside retrospectives or film festivals.

Punishment Park is his only American movie, made in 1971 as the social and political turmoil of the era reached a peak. Here, Watkins envisaged an authoritarian clampdown by the Nixon administration on radicals and activists. Stripped of their rights, they’re presented with a stark choice by establishment tribunals: either lengthy prison sentences, or running the gauntlet of Punishment Park, a three-day marathon through the high desert with armed National Guardsmen on their trail.

In a nutshell, it’s Battle Royale with peaceniks, though the tribunal hearings are at least as important to Watkins as the action sequences he cuts into them. Anticipating the conventions of reality TV, the film shows ‘ordinary people’ (at least, non-professional actors) reacting to a highly charged situation in ways that are always credible and often disturbing. There is one story that Watkins halted filming at one point because he was worried that the actors playing the National Guardsmen had loaded real shells into their rifles.

The extent to which Watkins found the pulse of the times can be measured in the extreme hostility of contemporaneous US reviews. The film was pulled after only four days in New York and has rarely screened since. Thirty years on, the counter culture rhetoric sounds strange to our ears – but in other ways this film is more relevant than ever. In the light of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act, the Bush administration’s blatant disregard not only for civil liberties but for human rights, Watkins’ paranoid metaphor feels all too valid.

Screening with his other movies – including The War Game and the Vietnam allegory Culloden – as part of a retrospective at London’s ICA, this is a valuable opportunity to explore the work of one of the most overlooked, but important, film makers of his generation.

By Tom Charity

Batman Begins

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Batman Begins

After Joel Schumacher's gaudy, camp debacle of 1997, Batman & Robin, George Clooney sighed, "Y'know, I think we might have buried that franchise." Chris Nolan - who in Following, Memento and Insomnia proved himself a modern master of suspense, foreboding and atmosphere - has brought the caped crusader back to life by sending him back to his roots. Taking Batman: Year One as the chief source graphic novel, and co-writing with David Goyer (Blade, Dark City), this intimate, brooding resurrection of the Dark Knight mythology shows us how and why Bruce Wayne became Batman in the first place. We're halfway through the (long) movie before he dons the batsuit and revs up the batmobile. And then, all hell - or at least all the crazy sickness of a sweating, sprawling, psychotic Gotham City - breaks loose. Blockbuster fans craving a rollercoaster ride will get it in the second half, and it'll be evident that Blade Runner is Nolan's favourite film, but in telling of Wayne's traumatic ticket to reluctant superhero status the movie's opening passages are anguished and elemental. Fear is the key. From a childhood scare, industrial heir Wayne's afraid of bats. He learns to turn that fear around and use it as a symbol against Gotham's grisliest criminals. When his parents are killed by a mugger, Wayne turns mean. He's picking fights willy-nilly ("you're not the devil - you're practice") until enigmatic mentors Liam Neeson and Ken Watanabe, members of The League Of Shadows, train him to be more selective and potent. But they're not simply forces for good, and Wayne returns to the perma-rain of Gotham aiming to clean up the streets himself. Caine, as trusted family butler Alfred, and Freeman, as an out-of-favour Wayne Enterprises employee, are to be his new mentors and allies, while the bat outfit and vehicle are modified from his father's experiments for the military. Corruption is rife. Tom Wilkinson's a crime lord; charismatic Cillian Murphy's creepy doctor Jonathan Crane with an alter ego as The Scarecrow. There's a plot to release hallucinogenic toxins into the air. With the help of sole good cop Jim Gordon (Oldman) and assistant DA and childhood friend Rachel Dawes (Holmes), "The Bat Man" is in business. With sheer strength, no little intellect and a dash of high-tech smoke and mirrors, he's a mighty avenger, flawed but now fearless. While Tim Burton introduced his cool, dark Batman sixteen years ago, showing affinity with the DC books but shocking fans of the poppy, iconic Sixties TV show, Nolan takes the character's pain and loneliness further. He anchors his formative years in a strangely plausible reality. Much credit goes to Bale, who manages to draw empathy despite (as in American Psycho) almost parodying macho - the gruff, growling voice, the slightly smug superiority. So dense is the psychological truth that we believe those are his defense mechanisms, hiding vulnerability. He's also - after The Machinist - completed another remarkable physical transformation. He and Nolan have some fun, too, with Bruce the playboy's attempts to hide his true nature. In case this is all sounding earnest - and much of the film is, grippingly so - it contains countless bravura moments, with only minimal use of CGI. There's Batman gazing down on the Lang-in-sulphur metropolis (actually Chicago). Wayne clambering up snowy mountains in Iceland. The batmobile roaring thrillingly through a waterfall to enter the batcave. Bats like Hitchcock's birds. And the sense that, unlike Raimi's Spider-Man or Donner's Superman, this nocturnal creature could go off at any minute. He's a loose cannon, a tad trigger-fingered. "I'm not one of your good people, Rachel." So there's no Boy Wonder here, no Riddler or Penguin or Catwoman, no sock, pow or holy exclamation mark, and just one cute (sequel-suggesting) in-joke about The Joker. For all the stunning scenery and cast, it's all about the inner howl under the cowl. This time it's serious. For Nolan, this guarantees A-list status. Bale, too. For Batman, it's back to the night; a princely, poignant return to darkness. By Chris Roberts

After Joel Schumacher’s gaudy, camp debacle of 1997, Batman & Robin, George Clooney sighed, “Y’know, I think we might have buried that franchise.” Chris Nolan – who in Following, Memento and Insomnia proved himself a modern master of suspense, foreboding and atmosphere – has brought the caped crusader back to life by sending him back to his roots. Taking Batman: Year One as the chief source graphic novel, and co-writing with David Goyer (Blade, Dark City), this intimate, brooding resurrection of the Dark Knight mythology shows us how and why Bruce Wayne became Batman in the first place. We’re halfway through the (long) movie before he dons the batsuit and revs up the batmobile. And then, all hell – or at least all the crazy sickness of a sweating, sprawling, psychotic Gotham City – breaks loose. Blockbuster fans craving a rollercoaster ride will get it in the second half, and it’ll be evident that Blade Runner is Nolan’s favourite film, but in telling of Wayne’s traumatic ticket to reluctant superhero status the movie’s opening passages are anguished and elemental.

Fear is the key. From a childhood scare, industrial heir Wayne’s afraid of bats. He learns to turn that fear around and use it as a symbol against Gotham’s grisliest criminals. When his parents are killed by a mugger, Wayne turns mean. He’s picking fights willy-nilly (“you’re not the devil – you’re practice”) until enigmatic mentors Liam Neeson and Ken Watanabe, members of The League Of Shadows, train him to be more selective and potent. But they’re not simply forces for good, and Wayne returns to the perma-rain of Gotham aiming to clean up the streets himself. Caine, as trusted family butler Alfred, and Freeman, as an out-of-favour Wayne Enterprises employee, are to be his new mentors and allies, while the bat outfit and vehicle are modified from his father’s experiments for the military.

Corruption is rife. Tom Wilkinson’s a crime lord; charismatic Cillian Murphy’s creepy doctor Jonathan Crane with an alter ego as The Scarecrow. There’s a plot to release hallucinogenic toxins into the air. With the help of sole good cop Jim Gordon (Oldman) and assistant DA and childhood friend Rachel Dawes (Holmes), “The Bat Man” is in business. With sheer strength, no little intellect and a dash of high-tech smoke and mirrors, he’s a mighty avenger, flawed but now fearless.

While Tim Burton introduced his cool, dark Batman sixteen years ago, showing affinity with the DC books but shocking fans of the poppy, iconic Sixties TV show, Nolan takes the character’s pain and loneliness further. He anchors his formative years in a strangely plausible reality. Much credit goes to Bale, who manages to draw empathy despite (as in American Psycho) almost parodying macho – the gruff, growling voice, the slightly smug superiority. So dense is the psychological truth that we believe those are his defense mechanisms, hiding vulnerability. He’s also – after The Machinist – completed another remarkable physical transformation. He and Nolan have some fun, too, with Bruce the playboy’s attempts to hide his true nature.

In case this is all sounding earnest – and much of the film is, grippingly so – it contains countless bravura moments, with only minimal use of CGI. There’s Batman gazing down on the Lang-in-sulphur metropolis (actually Chicago). Wayne clambering up snowy mountains in Iceland. The batmobile roaring thrillingly through a waterfall to enter the batcave. Bats like Hitchcock’s birds. And the sense that, unlike Raimi’s Spider-Man or Donner’s Superman, this nocturnal creature could go off at any minute. He’s a loose cannon, a tad trigger-fingered. “I’m not one of your good people, Rachel.” So there’s no Boy Wonder here, no Riddler or Penguin or Catwoman, no sock, pow or holy exclamation mark, and just one cute (sequel-suggesting) in-joke about The Joker. For all the stunning scenery and cast, it’s all about the inner howl under the cowl. This time it’s serious.

For Nolan, this guarantees A-list status. Bale, too. For Batman, it’s back to the night; a princely, poignant return to darkness.

By Chris Roberts

Uncut at the movies

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Uncut at the movies
We want to know what you think. Please give these artists a score out of ten to show how much you like them, and how much you would like to see them in Uncut Magazine....

We want to know what you think. Please give these artists a score out of ten to show how much you like them, and how much you would like to see them in Uncut Magazine.

Coldplay – X&Y

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Coldplay – X&Y

Soft, strong, and very long, Coldplay’s third album finds this remarkable band cruising into their prime, playing to their strengths and at the same time taking, for them, a few considered risks. Their momentum is such that even if X&Y contained several stinkers (it doesn’t, but could lose a couple of mawkish later tracks) it would still top charts everywhere, selling squillions. Call them what you like – the housewives’ choice, the Tim Henmans of rock – but make no mistake, X&Y is an exceptional pop record. An unabashed epic of Joshua Tree-sized proportions glazed with a woozy Kid A-like synthetic veneer, its first seven songs are the finest the band have written, which says something of their calibre. You can well believe Chris Martin when he claims songs such as “Fix You” and “A Message” were “sent” to him almost fully-formed, as if dispatched by some divine tunesmith, for Coldplay’s deft mastery of melody and emotion, that chiming melancholic euphoria, is frankly awesome. As a lyricist, family man Martin certainly has lots to scribble down these days but, alas, he’s no Morrissey. Intriguingly oblique at best, trite at worst (see “Swallowed In The Sea”), if it’s broken, lost or vulnerable, Chris is still your man to sing about it. Nevertheless, there’s plenty on X&Y for Coldplay’s insipid disciples Snow Patrol, Keane and Embrace to feast upon for years, god help us. It’s clear Coldplay wanted to advance musically without alienating their audience. They scrapped most of their first, more electronic attempt at this album because it lacked soul, retaining a few prized cuts for b-sides. But beneath stadium-slayers like “White Shadows” and “Low” pulses a healthy experimental zeal of which Brian Eno, whose productions Martin admits influenced the sleek feel of X&Y, would surely approve. “Talk”, above all, which builds upon Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” refrain with New Ordered flair, is the perfect example of Martin’s intent. It shouldn’t work, but does, beautifully. Coldplay are now so obscenely successful that for many they’ve become a guilty pleasure. But you shouldn’t be ashamed to enjoy X&Y. Not only is it 2005’s biggest album, it’s also one of its best. By Piers Martin

Soft, strong, and very long, Coldplay’s third album finds this remarkable band cruising into their prime, playing to their strengths and at the same time taking, for them, a few considered risks. Their momentum is such that even if X&Y contained several stinkers (it doesn’t, but could lose a couple of mawkish later tracks) it would still top charts everywhere, selling squillions.

Call them what you like – the housewives’ choice, the Tim Henmans of rock – but make no mistake, X&Y is an exceptional pop record. An unabashed epic of Joshua Tree-sized proportions glazed with a woozy Kid A-like synthetic veneer, its first seven songs are the finest the band have written, which says something of their calibre. You can well believe Chris Martin when he claims songs such as “Fix You” and “A Message” were “sent” to him almost fully-formed, as if dispatched by some divine tunesmith, for Coldplay’s deft mastery of melody and emotion, that chiming melancholic euphoria, is frankly awesome.

As a lyricist, family man Martin certainly has lots to scribble down these days but, alas, he’s no Morrissey. Intriguingly oblique at best, trite at worst (see “Swallowed In The Sea”), if it’s broken, lost or vulnerable, Chris is still your man to sing about it. Nevertheless, there’s plenty on X&Y for Coldplay’s insipid disciples Snow Patrol, Keane and Embrace to

feast upon for years, god help us.

It’s clear Coldplay wanted to advance musically without alienating their audience. They scrapped most of their first, more electronic attempt at this album because it lacked soul, retaining a few prized cuts for b-sides. But beneath stadium-slayers like “White Shadows” and “Low” pulses a healthy experimental zeal of which Brian Eno, whose productions Martin admits influenced the sleek feel of X&Y, would surely approve. “Talk”, above all, which builds upon Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” refrain with New Ordered flair, is the perfect example of Martin’s intent. It shouldn’t work, but does, beautifully.

Coldplay are now so obscenely successful that for many they’ve become a guilty pleasure. But you shouldn’t be ashamed to enjoy X&Y. Not only is it 2005’s biggest album, it’s also one of its best.

By Piers Martin

Foo Fighters – In Your Honour

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Foo Fighters – In Your Honour

Recent stints playing celebrity sticksman with Queens Of The Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails, or marshalling a regiment of extreme metal’s great and good in 2004’s Probot project have confirmed Dave Grohl’s reputation as one of rock’s great dilettantes. Faintly flabbergasting, then, to realise that Foo Fighters – usually billed as “Dave Grohl’s post-Nirvana outfit”, or something equally short on fanfare – is this year celebrating its tenth anniversary. Grohl, however, is aware of the Foos’ vintage. In Your Honour, he claims, is intended as a career landmark of the stripe of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti: an eclectic, heavyweight double-album, a “definitive” work. Sporting a concept (one ‘rock’ disc, one ‘acoustic’), a vague theme (the US Presidential Election), and a guestlist that should befuddle any attendant mosher kids (the Zep’s John Paul Jones plays piano and mandolin on “Miracle” and “Another Round” respectively, Norah Jones turns up for ‘Virginia Moon’, a sweet duet borne along on jazzy, brushed drums), it’s unquestionably the work of a band with ambitions rekindled. While the opening salvo of In Your Honour is clearly inspired by Grohl’s experiences supporting John Kerry on the trail, not even the souring of the Democrat dream has sullied its triumphalist edge. Such is the Foos’ talent for breezy, one-size-fits-all optimism that even the unambiguous likes of “No Way Back” (“Pleased to meet you, shake my hand/There is no way back from here”) work outside their original context. Grohl’s dogged pleasantness, however, occasionally proves his Achilles’ Heel. “Hell” and “Free Me” do the Hüsker Dü with entertaining vigour, but by the close of Disc One, you’re hunkering for some light and shade. Luckily, Disc Two mostly delivers. “Friend Of A Friend”, penned on a Nirvana tour back in 1992, is an uncharacteristically spiked critique of slackerdom that bears an eerie Cobain influence. Meanwhile, the chiming “Cold Day In The Sun”, fronted by drummer Taylor Hawkins, is a Ringo moment that’s pretty enough not to knock matters off course. And given the potential perils and pitfalls of the double-album, that’s surely enough to chalk this one up as a success. By Louis Pattison

Recent stints playing celebrity sticksman with Queens Of The Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails, or marshalling a regiment of extreme metal’s great and good in 2004’s Probot project have confirmed Dave Grohl’s reputation as one of rock’s great dilettantes. Faintly flabbergasting, then, to realise that Foo Fighters – usually billed as “Dave Grohl’s post-Nirvana outfit”, or something equally short on fanfare – is this year celebrating its tenth anniversary.

Grohl, however, is aware of the Foos’ vintage. In Your Honour, he claims, is intended as a career landmark of the stripe of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti: an eclectic, heavyweight double-album, a “definitive” work. Sporting a concept (one ‘rock’ disc, one ‘acoustic’), a vague theme (the US Presidential Election), and a guestlist that should befuddle any attendant mosher kids (the Zep’s John Paul Jones plays piano and mandolin on “Miracle” and “Another Round” respectively, Norah Jones turns up for ‘Virginia Moon’, a sweet duet borne along on jazzy, brushed drums), it’s unquestionably the work of a band with ambitions rekindled.

While the opening salvo of In Your Honour is clearly inspired by Grohl’s experiences supporting John Kerry on the trail, not even the souring of the Democrat dream has sullied its triumphalist edge. Such is the Foos’ talent for breezy, one-size-fits-all optimism that even the unambiguous likes of “No Way Back” (“Pleased to meet you, shake my hand/There is no way back from here”) work outside their original context. Grohl’s dogged pleasantness, however, occasionally proves his Achilles’ Heel. “Hell” and “Free Me” do the Hüsker Dü with entertaining vigour, but by the close of Disc One, you’re hunkering for some light and shade.

Luckily, Disc Two mostly delivers. “Friend Of A Friend”, penned on a Nirvana tour back in 1992, is an uncharacteristically spiked critique of slackerdom that bears an eerie Cobain influence. Meanwhile, the chiming “Cold Day In The Sun”, fronted by drummer Taylor Hawkins, is a Ringo moment that’s pretty enough not to knock matters off course. And given the potential perils and pitfalls of the double-album, that’s surely enough to chalk this one up as a success.

By Louis Pattison

Ry Cooder – Chávez Ravine

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Ry Cooder – Chávez Ravine

After a decade of travels that have taken him from Timbuktu to Cuba, Ry Cooder has come home to shine a light on a shameful episode in LA’s civic history. For this son of white middle-class Santa Monica, the 1950 razing of Chicano enclave Chávez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium is a matter of enduring injustice. The good news is that the event has inspired a record bursting with anger, sensuality and humour – in City Of Quartz author Mike Davis’ words, “a magical-realist street opera” about East LA and its vibrant life. The album is a giant tostada of influences: Davis himself, James Ellroy, Leiber & Stoller, doo-wop nights at the legendary El Monte Legion stadium, and the kings of good-time conjunto and corrido dance music. Assisting him in realizing this 70-minute song-suite is a loose group of Mex-American legends: Chicano figurehead Lalo Guerrero, Pachuco boogieman Don Tosti, Little Willie G of Eastside rockers Thee Midniters. Highlights on the album include the playfully swaying “Poor Man’s Shangri-La”, the slow and spookily beautiful “El UFO Cayo”, featuring Juliette Commagere, and the Tom-Waits-esque “It’s Just Work for Me”, a shrugging apologia from one of Chávez ‘s bulldozers. Despite being ensconced in the Warner-Reprise mafia of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Cooder’s music has generally been made in opposition to SoCal norms, burrowing into forgotten nooks with a scholarly curiosity. With Chávez Ravine he has performed another ethnomusicological miracle, opening a can of worms while drawing us deep into the musical heart of a lost community. “Only memories remain,” Ersi Arvizu of the Sisters sings, “which you don’t forget over time.” Ry Cooder has done his bit to ensure his hometown doesn’t forget either. By Barney Hoskyns

After a decade of travels that have taken him from Timbuktu to Cuba, Ry Cooder has come home to shine a light on a shameful episode in LA’s civic history. For this son of white middle-class Santa Monica, the 1950 razing of Chicano enclave Chávez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium is a matter of enduring injustice.

The good news is that the event has inspired a record bursting with anger, sensuality and humour – in City Of Quartz author Mike Davis’ words, “a magical-realist street opera” about East LA and its vibrant life. The album is a giant tostada of influences: Davis himself, James Ellroy, Leiber & Stoller, doo-wop nights at the legendary El Monte Legion stadium, and the kings of good-time conjunto and corrido dance music.

Assisting him in realizing this 70-minute song-suite is a loose group of Mex-American legends: Chicano figurehead Lalo Guerrero, Pachuco boogieman Don Tosti, Little Willie G of Eastside rockers Thee Midniters. Highlights on the album include the playfully swaying “Poor Man’s Shangri-La”, the slow and spookily beautiful “El UFO Cayo”, featuring Juliette Commagere, and the Tom-Waits-esque “It’s Just Work for Me”, a shrugging apologia from one of Chávez ‘s bulldozers.

Despite being ensconced in the Warner-Reprise mafia of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Cooder’s music has generally been made in opposition to SoCal norms, burrowing into forgotten nooks with a scholarly curiosity. With Chávez Ravine he has performed another ethnomusicological miracle, opening a can of worms while drawing us deep into the musical heart of a lost community.

“Only memories remain,” Ersi Arvizu of the Sisters sings, “which you don’t forget over time.” Ry Cooder has done his bit to ensure his hometown doesn’t forget either.

By Barney Hoskyns

The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan

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The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan

“Today I got some new plans,” wrote Jack White on November 18, 2004, the last entry on his website before work began on the fifth White Stripes album. “I thought about having a failure, but not a fake one a real one. . . Sort of enjoying the success of not succeeding on purpose? That’s funny!” In March, Jack and Meg White started recording at his home in Detroit. Even by their standards, it was an unfussy process: 13 ideas finessed into songs, caught on tape by their live soundman Matthew Kettle and completed in a fortnight. By most other people’s standards, it appears a slapdash way of working - how better to manufacture a failure than by rushing through a bunch of half-formed song-sketches? And there are other signs that the duo’s latest game is one of self-sabotage. Abandoning electric guitar for much of the album should theoretically scurf off a few fans, and choosing Get Behind Me Satan for a title compounds an impression of Jack White on the run from fame, rejecting the temptations of success just as emphatically as Jesus turned his back on the Devil in the wilderness. It’s a plausible reading of the plot, but one which conveniently ignores two fairly major issues. One, thus far into his career, Jack White seems congenitally incapable of making a bad record. And two, most of us learned long ago not to take anything this teasing, charming trickster says at face value. Get Behind Me Satan is certainly an odder record than the four White Stripes albums which preceded it. Track One, “Blue Orchid”, which you’ll already know, roughly translates “Back In Black” into a morse code signal for its priapic disco-metal. Track Two, “The Nurse”, a tropical marimba noir, is randomly punctuated by white noise flares. At least one song, “The Denial Twist”, seems to draw on primitive rhythm’n’blues, the golden age of Hollywood and - with its breakbeat, bells and spat-out rhymes - old school hip hop. Get Behind Me Satan, though, is hardly an alienating, experimental listen. While the instrumentation has generally shifted away from garage rock fuzz, White hasn’t written such an accessible set of songs since 2000’s De Stijl. There’s a sense of The White Stripes reconfiguring their sound, as if realising that the original guitar/drums blueprint could only be extended so far, but the minimalist formula could be stretched much further. By pushing other instruments into the foreground, and creating a mix full of space, surprise and disorienting analogue effects – from that jet-engine whoosh 14 seconds into “Blue Orchid” onwards - White stays true to the band’s aesthetic vision, while mapping multiple paths away from stagnation. All include Meg. Professional divorce, so frequently predicted, seems much less imminent. The marimba that makes an arresting, shimmering first appearance on “The Nurse” will attract most of the attention, but Get Behind Me Satan is fundamentally a piano record. The stereotypical image of The White Stripes as a blues and garage rock band ignores their love of Tin Pan Alley and showtunes, of ‘30s and ‘40s Hollywood, which has always quietly flourished. Cole Porter’s picture featured in the booklet of 2003’s Elephant, and even 1997’s debut single “Let’s Shake Hands” had as its b-side a camp sashay through Marlene Dietrich’s cabaret hit, “Look Me Over Closely”. Consequently, the most immediately lovable song on Get Behind Me Satan is “My Doorbell”, springy piano funk with a ‘30s novelty tune lodged in its DNA and White playing the vulnerable lover in a pinched falsetto reminiscent of Little Richard, albeit Little Richard thoroughly desexualised. “When you have a job to write something for a Broadway musical, you don’t have much time, you have to write a hit,” White told Uncut in 2001, and admiration for this kind of rapid craftsmanship is all over the album and its paraphernalia: the ragtime sheet music sat on his piano in the picture; the fact that the title could just as easily echo an old Irving Berlin song, “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”, as the New Testament. If Elephant gained notoriety thanks to its Luddite flaunting of pre-1963 equipment, much of Get Behind Me Satan’s action seems to take place deeper in the past, or further away from rock’n’roll. Two blousy showstoppers – “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)” and “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” – reference Burt Bacharach and White’s former employer Loretta Lynn respectively. The album’s totemic figure, Rita Hayworth (briefly wife of Orson Welles, himself the inspiration for 2001’s “The Union Forever”), stars in two songs: the mix of solemn piano chords and doggerel that is “White Moon”; and the outstanding “Take, Take, Take”. In the latter, White satirises the relationship between celebrity and public by casting himself as an infatuated fan. He politely bugs Hayworth, asks for her autograph, asks for her picture, portrays himself as someone “not too hard to please” who, hypocritically, wants more and more from his heroine. “She didn’t even care that I was even there – what a horrible feeling,” he concludes, as if in empathy with the fans who want a piece of him. It would be easy to imagine Hayworth, with her duplicitous Tinseltown ways, as a cipher for White’s ex-girlfriend, Renee Zellweger. Given that the couple split towards the end of 2004, Zellweger – or what Zellweger represents – could tritely be seen as the “Satan” cast off in the title. But it’s just as likely that Hayworth is a cipher for White himself: a superstar whose tolerance of his public is generous, but not boundless; and whose nurtured image is at odds with a well-known secret. Hayworth was an all-American girl with a barely-concealed prehistory as Spanish starlet Marguerita Cansino. White constantly reminds us he is Meg’s little brother, even though the certificate confirming their brief marriage has long been filed on the internet. The new album, he claims, is about “characters and the ideal of truth”, as if to warn us off fishing for too much autobiographical detail in the songs. It’s a familiar strategy: “I like things that are as honest as possible, even if sometimes they can only be an imitation of honesty,” he told NME in 2001. “But a good impression is interesting if you can’t get the real thing.” In this way, Get Behind Me Satan is the logical development of The White Stripes as a conceptual art project, a theatrical scam which brilliantly synthesises authenticity through the characters of two gauche Detroit siblings. Regular themes in this fiction rise to the surface. Meg’s fleeting showcase, “Passive Manipulation”, plays with family roles and warns, “Women, listen to your mothers, don’t just succumb to the wishes of your brothers.” Jack is constantly at the mercy of the women he adores: chivalrously waiting at home in “My Doorbell”; gently humiliated by Hayworth in “Take, Take, Take”; dancing with thin air on “Little Ghost”, a kind of bluegrass “Hotel Yorba”. On “Instinct Blues” he’s even “The worm that’s under your shoe”, as a grinding 12-bar riff is slowly tugged off its axis by White’s Hendrix-esque explosions. And yet again, The White Stripes have engineered a blend of music and myth so compelling that the reality behind their oblique, eccentric stories is barely worth seeking out. Occasionally, one seems to stumble on White in an unguarded moment. “Ugly As I Seem” – imagine an agitated Led Zeppelin in Bron-Y-Aur – finds Meg with a set of Steve Took’s bongos and Jack cradling an acoustic, squirming away from analysis. “You want to take away from me things that are mine and it’s not your right,” he complains and, as in “Seven Nation Army”, a conceivably real Jack White emerges: one who constructs a legend for himself, like his idol Bob Dylan, out of paranoia as much as playfulness. But by the next track, “The Denial Twist”, he’s slipped away again, and his proudest claim - “The truth is still hidden” - is reiterated with more force and success than ever. God’s honest truth, after all, could never be as satisfying as this. By John Mulvey

“Today I got some new plans,” wrote Jack White on November 18, 2004, the last entry on his website before work began on the fifth White Stripes album. “I thought about having a failure, but not a fake one a real one. . . Sort of enjoying the success of not succeeding on purpose? That’s funny!”

In March, Jack and Meg White started recording at his home in Detroit. Even by their standards, it was an unfussy process: 13 ideas finessed into songs, caught on tape by their live soundman Matthew Kettle and completed in a fortnight. By most other people’s standards, it appears a slapdash way of working – how better to manufacture a failure than by rushing through a bunch of half-formed song-sketches? And there are other signs that the duo’s latest game is one of self-sabotage. Abandoning electric guitar for much of the album should theoretically scurf off a few fans, and choosing Get Behind Me Satan for a title compounds an impression of Jack White on the run from fame, rejecting the temptations of success just as emphatically as Jesus turned his back on the Devil in the wilderness.

It’s a plausible reading of the plot, but one which conveniently ignores two fairly major issues. One, thus far into his career, Jack White seems congenitally incapable of making a bad record. And two, most of us learned long ago not to take anything this teasing, charming trickster says at face value. Get Behind Me Satan is certainly an odder record than the four White Stripes albums which preceded it. Track One, “Blue Orchid”, which you’ll already know, roughly translates “Back In Black” into a morse code signal for its priapic disco-metal. Track Two, “The Nurse”, a tropical marimba noir, is randomly punctuated by white noise flares. At least one song, “The Denial Twist”, seems to draw on primitive rhythm’n’blues, the golden age of Hollywood and – with its breakbeat, bells and spat-out rhymes – old school hip hop.

Get Behind Me Satan, though, is hardly an alienating, experimental listen. While the instrumentation has generally shifted away from garage rock fuzz, White hasn’t written such an accessible set of songs since 2000’s De Stijl. There’s a sense of The White Stripes reconfiguring their sound, as if realising that the original guitar/drums blueprint could only be extended so far, but the minimalist formula could be stretched much further. By pushing other instruments into the foreground, and creating a mix full of space, surprise and disorienting analogue effects – from that jet-engine whoosh 14 seconds into “Blue Orchid” onwards – White stays true to the band’s aesthetic vision, while mapping multiple paths away from stagnation. All include Meg. Professional divorce, so frequently predicted, seems much less imminent.

The marimba that makes an arresting, shimmering first appearance on “The Nurse” will attract most of the attention, but Get Behind Me Satan is fundamentally a piano record. The stereotypical image of The White Stripes as a blues and garage rock band ignores their love of Tin Pan Alley and showtunes, of ‘30s and ‘40s Hollywood, which has always quietly flourished. Cole Porter’s picture featured in the booklet of 2003’s Elephant, and even 1997’s debut single “Let’s Shake Hands” had as its b-side a camp sashay through Marlene Dietrich’s cabaret hit, “Look Me Over Closely”.

Consequently, the most immediately lovable song on Get Behind Me Satan is “My Doorbell”, springy piano funk with a ‘30s novelty tune lodged in its DNA and White playing the vulnerable lover in a pinched falsetto reminiscent of Little Richard, albeit Little Richard thoroughly desexualised. “When you have a job to write something for a Broadway musical, you don’t have much time, you have to write a hit,” White told Uncut in 2001, and admiration for this kind of rapid craftsmanship is all over the album and its paraphernalia: the ragtime sheet music sat on his piano in the picture; the fact that the title could just as easily echo an old Irving Berlin song, “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”, as the New Testament.

If Elephant gained notoriety thanks to its Luddite flaunting of pre-1963 equipment, much of Get Behind Me Satan’s action seems to take place deeper in the past, or further away from rock’n’roll. Two blousy showstoppers – “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)” and “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” – reference Burt Bacharach and White’s former employer Loretta Lynn respectively. The album’s totemic figure, Rita Hayworth (briefly wife of Orson Welles, himself the inspiration for 2001’s “The Union Forever”), stars in two songs: the mix of solemn piano chords and doggerel that is “White Moon”; and the outstanding “Take, Take, Take”. In the latter, White satirises the relationship between celebrity and public by casting himself as an infatuated fan. He politely bugs Hayworth, asks for her autograph, asks for her picture, portrays himself as someone “not too hard to please” who, hypocritically, wants more and more from his heroine. “She didn’t even care that I was even there – what a horrible feeling,” he concludes, as if in empathy with the fans who want a piece of him.

It would be easy to imagine Hayworth, with her duplicitous Tinseltown ways, as a cipher for White’s ex-girlfriend, Renee Zellweger. Given that the couple split towards the end of 2004, Zellweger – or what Zellweger represents – could tritely be seen as the “Satan” cast off in the title. But it’s just as likely that Hayworth is a cipher for White himself: a superstar whose tolerance of his public is generous, but not boundless; and whose nurtured image is at odds with a well-known secret. Hayworth was an all-American girl with a barely-concealed prehistory as Spanish starlet Marguerita Cansino. White constantly reminds us he is Meg’s little brother, even though the certificate confirming their brief marriage has long been filed on the internet. The new album, he claims, is about “characters and the ideal of truth”, as if to warn us off fishing for too much autobiographical detail in the songs. It’s a familiar strategy: “I like things that are as honest as possible, even if sometimes they can only be an imitation of honesty,” he told NME in 2001. “But a good impression is interesting if you can’t get the real thing.”

In this way, Get Behind Me Satan is the logical development of The White Stripes as a conceptual art project, a theatrical scam which brilliantly synthesises authenticity through the characters of two gauche Detroit siblings. Regular themes in this fiction rise to the surface. Meg’s fleeting showcase, “Passive Manipulation”, plays with family roles and warns, “Women, listen to your mothers, don’t just succumb to the wishes of your brothers.” Jack is constantly at the mercy of the women he adores: chivalrously waiting at home in “My Doorbell”; gently humiliated by Hayworth in “Take, Take, Take”; dancing with thin air on “Little Ghost”, a kind of bluegrass “Hotel Yorba”. On “Instinct Blues” he’s even “The worm that’s under your shoe”, as a grinding 12-bar riff is slowly tugged off its axis by White’s Hendrix-esque explosions.

And yet again, The White Stripes have engineered a blend of music and myth so compelling that the reality behind their oblique, eccentric stories is barely worth seeking out. Occasionally, one seems to stumble on White in an unguarded moment. “Ugly As I Seem” – imagine an agitated Led Zeppelin in Bron-Y-Aur – finds Meg with a set of Steve Took’s bongos and Jack cradling an acoustic, squirming away from analysis. “You want to take away from me things that are mine and it’s not your right,” he complains and, as in “Seven Nation Army”, a conceivably real Jack White emerges: one who constructs a legend for himself, like his idol Bob Dylan, out of paranoia as much as playfulness. But by the next track, “The Denial Twist”, he’s slipped away again, and his proudest claim – “The truth is still hidden” – is reiterated with more force and success than ever. God’s honest truth, after all, could never be as satisfying as this.

By John Mulvey

Richmond Fontaine

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Richmond Fontaine
UNCUT: I understand the songs for the new album were written when you were holed up for two weeks at The Fitzgerald Casino hotel in Reno WILLY VLAUTIN: Yeah, I wrote most of the lyrics at the Fitzgerald. All except for “The Janitor” and “Black Road.” But “Black Road” is set there at the...

UNCUT: I understand the songs for the new album were written when you were holed up for two weeks at The Fitzgerald Casino hotel in Reno

WILLY VLAUTIN: Yeah, I wrote most of the lyrics at the Fitzgerald. All except for “The Janitor” and “Black Road.” But “Black Road” is set there at the Fitz. I wrote it after I got back. Mostly I wrote lyrics and stories when I was there. The music changed. I always stay there when I’m visiting home. Their rooms are $28 a night so you can stay a long time and they’re safe enough that you can keep your guitar there.

Tell us something about the hotel and its atmosphere.

It’s downtown in Reno on the strip and it’s a pretty nice place really. It’s the Irish casino. It has “Mr. O’Lucky”, a drunken lucky leprechaun statue, as you walk in. But he’s never been very lucky to me, I’m sorry to say. Everything in the place is green. It’s right near the railroad tracks so you can hear the trains going by. They still have lounge singers and they have Guinness on tap and roulette. I can always write when I‘m there. Reno‘s my favourite place to work on stories and songs. You can look out the window at the Fitz and see all of downtown. The strip itself and Fourth Street, which runs near it, are pretty rough.

There are a lot aimless men wandering around. I’m not talking about the tourists. I’m talking about these sorta damaged looking guys. Not bums, just men that have low level jobs and are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. You don’t see many women. Those sort of guys always make me feel comfortable. Being around them makes me feel normal. Plus in the summer, the Fitz hires Eastern European cocktail waitresses on some sort of exchange program so in the summer they have the best looking cocktail waitresses in the world.

Had you gone there specifically to write?

I go to Reno for maybe a month or more a year if I can afford it. I always go to write and just to walk around. Sometimes when I drive down there, I go another place called the Gold Dust West that’s sort of a motor lodge. But usually I stay at the Fitz. That time I did go to write songs and stories and to visit with my mom who thinks I’m crazy ‘cause I won’t stay at home. And that time, I sorta hit a vein I’d been thinking about. Once Post to Wire was done I felt relieved and I felt I could take a breather. And more than anything I like to write folk songs, story songs. I was pretty worried about anyone liking a folk record, but I figured I’d try hard to write a good one and if no one in the band liked it then I would shelve it. So right when Post To Wire was done I

worked on the Fitz songs.

Did you have any particular idea what the new album would be about before you started writing?

I really wanted it to be based around the lyrics and not the other way around. Most times I change around the lyrics to fit the music. I did that a lot on Post To Wire. On this record I didn’t want to do this. I just wanted to tell the story and have the music follow it. I wanted the whole thing to feel like the first song “The Warehouse Life.” That feeling that there’s mistakes and death and darkness all around and you’re trying hard not to run into any of it. You might see it and it

might scar you that way, but the hope that you don’t run into it. That you don’t become it. That you’re not the guy paying the price for gambling in “The Warehouse Life.” Or the murdered kid in “The Incident At Conklin Creek.” You’re just trying to hide from all that like in “Black Road.” Or in the “The Janitor” where the guy tries to help the woman away from it. Or like the kid in “Exit 194B” who’s trying hard just to get by after the death of his brother only to find his cousin

unable to. They are all kind of the same idea.

In other words, was The Fitzgerald conceived as a kind of concept album?

I guess more than anything it’s got the same mood to it. When you can’t shake a feeling then maybe everything is seen in that sorta lens. That everything thing you think about, or the way you perceive things is seen like that. And for me I guess I was just going down that path and couldn’t stop thinking like that. I have a hard time not thinking like that.

Musically, the album is incredibly sparse – is this a new direction for Richmond Fontaine or something you have been working towards?

When we got together with JD Foster [producer of Post To Wire and The Fitzgerald], and we were playing the songs to him as a band it didn’t seem to be right. He was staying at my place and we’d sit around and I’d play him the songs with just a guitar and it made more sense like that.

It was a hard decision not to have pedal steel on it, ‘cause I’m a huge pedal steel fan, but the songs were better without it. It’s an intimate sober kind of record and the steel was too dreamy and took you out of the story. But all in all I don’t think this is the future direction of the band. If it was I think the band would put concrete blocks on my feet and dump me in a river.

How do you think your songwriting has developed on The Fitzgerald – although the lyrics are really stripped down, they seem more vivid than ever.

I have to say writing “The Fitzgerald” was the most fun I’ve had as a songwriter because I could base the whole thing around the lyrics. JD was really supportive about it. I think after doing a rock record like “Post To Wire” I just wanted to hide out and be selfish and write a bunch of story songs. It was a real relief for me. I didn’t put any pressure on myself to write for the band or worry if people would like it all. I just wrote the sorta songs I like.

Are these songs wholly imagined, or are some of them based on real events – if not in your life, then in the lives of others?

I guess a lot of time I take a real life story and then make it much more dramatic. Like the “The Warehouse Life.” I used to work at a warehouse and me and this guy would get drunk on lunch break and he had a huge gambling problem. He had a bookie in Reno. If you have a bookie in Reno you’re in a mess. But he didn’t get beat up. He was threatened an awful lot, but his folks got him out of it. “Incident At Conklin Creek.” My mom’s boyfriend and I go camping a lot out in Nevada, in the desert, and we look around old mines and I remember seeing a pair of women’s underwear and a shoe at the foot of this mine. We were fifty miles from any resemblance of a town. It took us a half hour on foot to get to this old mine. What the hell were a pair of women’s underwear and a single shoe doing there? I stayed awake all that night and worried about it. I could see these horrible scenarios in my mind and those sorta situations always haunt me. That sorta darkness just worries me and eats at me. ’Cause anyone could end up there. Even you or your mom’s boyfriend.

What’s the story behind “Wellhorn Yards”, for instance – it reads like the aftermath of a heist gone wrong.

There are railroad tracks that run through downtown Reno. When you look out the window at the Fitzgerald you can see them. When I lived there in my 20s I used to get drunk and walk along them until I hit the industrial part of town and I’d sit in the dark against this wall and watch the trains. In the song I called this area the Welhorn Yards, although there’s no name I know for this area. I was pretty lonely for a lot of the time I lived in Reno. I was really shy and was really hard on myself and I didn’t fit in with my old friends. So I spent a lot time getting drunk and walking around downtown. When I wrote the song I started thinking how my friends growing up were the kind of guys who were mini-crooks, who would do these somewhat horrible things and I was

always the kid who was just drinking beer and hearing about it. I never did the things they did. I just heard about it and saw the aftermath. Like the kid in “Welhorn Yards.”

On first listen there are songs here that sound as bleak as anything you’ve written – but there’s always a sense of hope struggling to survive.

I always hope that my characters make it out all right, ‘cause in a lot of ways they are me. I hope to hell the couple in “The Janitor” live happily ever after and that the AWOL kid in “Exit 194B” makes it out all right. I hope the kid in “Laramie,Wy” nerves get better and he finds a safer,

easier life with his aunt. And the girl in “Don’t Look And It Won’t Hurt” I hope her nerves ease up and she gets stronger and can make it on her own. I hope she didn’t use up all her strength on the move, on the escape, and then get tired and cave in and go back. I like all those people. I don’t think they’re bad people or failures or bums. I think they are good people who have fallen into bad situations. But they’re all trying to be better. To get to a better spot.

You’ve previously cited Dylan, Springsteen, Tom Waits and Dave Alvin as songwriters you admire and who have influenced you to some degree. On The Fitzgerald, there are songs that remind me of Lou Reed’s more reportorial writing – am I imagining an influence that isn’t there?

Hell, I wish I could say I knew Lou Reed’s work better than I do. The truth is he’s always sorta freaked me out, and so when I’m at the record store I just kind of pass over him. But maybe I shouldn’t. I guess more than anything Springsteen and Dave Alvin and Tom Waits inspired me to do this record. I really admire those guys. They all create their own world and that’s what I was hoping to do. To create my own world.

Interview by Allan Jones

Interview: Bo Diddley

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Interview: Bo Diddley

His eponymous debut single, 1955’s “Bo Diddley”, introduced a whole new rhythmic dimension that would revolutionize the future of popular music. Soon everybody from Elvis Presley (with “His Latest Flame”) to Buddy Holly (with “Not Fade Away”) was mimicking Bo’s patented jungle beat. Over in England, to the groups that emerged from the early ’60s R&B boom - The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, and not least The Rolling Stones - Diddley was nothing short of a living god. His influence would extend well into the ‘70s, with The Clash paying tribute by inviting Bo as support on their 1979 tour of America. Even in the ‘80s, the spectre of Bo Diddley lurked within the voodoo shimmer of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” and the back-to-basics clatter of U2’s “Desire”. Fifty years on, Bo still continues to tour. During his recent visit to the UK, Uncut caught up with one of the few surviving pioneers of rock’n’roll to find out why, at the age of 76, he refuses to quit. UNCUT: So, the legendary Bo Diddley - you practically invented rock’n’roll. How does that feel? DIDDLEY: Well, it’s no different from anything else, I guess. I started sumthin'. I just happened to be the first one. And I’m still here, I feel great. But I never thought it would turn into what it did. Somebody had to be first, and it happened to be me. Did you have any idea rock’n’roll was going to go on for as long as it has? Man, it ain’t quittin’ yet. It’s been goin’ 50 years already, goin’ on 51. So why do you think you’ve survived all this time? Well, a lot of it is the way that I care for myself, and my interests in talkin’ to kids about stayin’ away from drugs, that they should obey their parents, do the right thing, be constructive and not destructive. All these things I was taught as a kid, so I’m tryin’ to pass it on to the youngsters ‘cos it works. It definitely works, I’m livin’ proof that it works. And it don’t matter what colour you is, ’cos when I go on stage I don’t see colours, I see people. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I’ll be that way until there’s no more Diddley… …God forbid! Yeah, well I ain’t goin’ nowhere! What do you think of music today - the fact the word ‘R&B’ is used to describe a type of music that is nothing like the ‘R&B’ that described yourself, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters? No, it’s nothing’ like it. You’re the first one I ever heard that put it that way. It’s nothing like the R&B or the rock’n’roll as we called it. The cats today claim that they’re rock’n’roll with all their screaming geetars and stuff like that. Well that’s not rock’n’roll! That don’t sound like Elvis Presley, that don’t sound like The Beatles… well, The Beatles wasn’t really rock’n’roll. I don’t know what you’d call it but I don’t accept the word rock’n’roll with The Beatles. They don’t belong in the list of rock’n’rollers. They was like, more or less, folk country or sumthin’. I don’t know what it was. What about The Rolling Stones? The Rolling Stones is definitely rock’n’roll. They’re right up there with myself, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, all these people. This is sumthin’ we built, and a lot of the cats came along who didn’t know what they were playin’, they tried to sneak in and say “we’re rock’n’rollers”. No way, José! Is that why you still get on stage, to show people what rock’n’roll really is? Well I still feel good and I’m able to do it. When you won’t see me no more that means I’m not able. But after fifty years of this, it’s too late to change the horses on the freeway in the middle of the freeway, d’y’understand? You might as well keep rollin’. I built this monster and I have to feed him. Nobody else gonna feed him, so I gotta feed him. I’m 76 years old and I feel great. I try and take care of myself the best I can. No drugs. Never have got involved with that. To all the kids out there in groups I say this - don’t fool wi’ dat mess! It ain’t no good, leave it alone, you don’t need that crap to play. Perform clean and you will be recognised in a clean manner. I refuse to be around anybody that’s doin’ it, and I’m still that way. I used to be a sheriff. I’m not doin’ it now but I still got those police traits. Get out of my face wi’ dat mess! People I work with are all clean ‘cos, boy, if I catch you doin’ sumthin’ in my band, you got to go, real quick. Ain’t no waitin’ till tomorrow cos you’re goin’ home to mama. Grab yer coat and hat. Gudbye! Your 1959 single “Say Man” was, in a round about way, one of the first rap records? Uhuh. But it wasn’t called rap, it was called ‘signifyin‘’. But the new kids today on the block call it rap and I guess you could say rap is a good name for it since you can’t understand a damn thing they’re sayin’. I think Eminem is the only one you can understand what he’s saying. Will Smith was really good. Sir Mix-A-Lot, you can understand him. But the rest of ‘em, you can’t understand except that it’s dirty, and I don’t like the dirty lyrics. That’s no good for our youngsters. Let a child be a child until he’s no more a child and then he can listen to what he wants to. Why the rectangular guitar? I just decided to design it that way because it’s different. Thought I’d go freak everybody out with a square guitar, heh-heh. What’s a typical day in the life of Bo Diddley? You mean what do I do every day? I fool around with old cars and my boat. I’m working on my boat right now. I can’t wait till I get back home to Florida so I can go fishing. Gonna catch me a big one! What’s Bo Diddley’s secret of happiness. Music? Fishing? I ain’t decided, man. It’s just everyday livin’. I have nothing special that I wanna do. Everyday livin’ is where it’s at. What do you want to be remembered for? Why? Where am I gone? I don’t like that question, sorry. Being remembered, like I’m goin’ out the door any minute… …well, hopefully not. Hee! I ain’t goin nowhere, man. I am so superstitious about that, as I am about wills. When you do a will it tells me that you’ve just started descending into neverland. Understand me? That’s my belief. A lot of people say I shouldn’t think that way, but let them do it the way they wanna do it and I’ll do it the way I wanna do it cos I ain’t ready to pull the plug yet. I’m chained to the plug. You could walk around the corner and somebody could say to you “Man, Bo’s just dropped dead”. And you’d probably say “What? You’re full of shit, I was just talkin’ to him two minutes ago”. But that’s the way it is. We never know when we’re gone, and I’m very superstitious about playing around with anything that means I’m out the door for the last time. I’ll talk about anything but that. See, I remember Sam Cooke sayin’ that he was hangin’ up his rock’n’roll shoes and this chick killed him. The chick shot him, man! To me, superstition, that means something. You dig? Absolutely. In our schematic of our lives, I believe there’s a road map to what road you travel, and you’ll finish when you take that trip. Say you walk in the street and it’s in your schematic to get bumped by a car - not fall out a window, but bumped by a car - it might be one day that you’re careless and you walk out in front of a car. Well, that’s in your schematic. That’s what’s gonna happen to you. I kinda believe that. A lot of people mysteriously gets done that way. We never know when we’re gonna be called. It’s like me, six years ago I got up outta bed, feeling great, sat on the bed, leaning to pick up my socks and broke two discs in my back. I was in hospital, got operated on, and now I’m walking. But I coulda been in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. It still hurts, that’s why I gotta sit down now when I play. But you don’t have to get hit by a truck to end up messed up. I found that out. I thought I was the Rock of Gibraltar and for me to end up injured that easy really freaked me out. The doctors said “Bo, them days of leg wigglin’, them is over”. But I can still play, I can still walk. Bo Diddley’s still here. Interview by Simon Goddard

His eponymous debut single, 1955’s “Bo Diddley”, introduced a whole new rhythmic dimension that would revolutionize the future of popular music. Soon everybody from Elvis Presley (with “His Latest Flame”) to Buddy Holly (with “Not Fade Away”) was mimicking Bo’s patented jungle beat. Over in England, to the groups that emerged from the early ’60s R&B boom – The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, and not least The Rolling Stones – Diddley was nothing short of a living god.

His influence would extend well into the ‘70s, with The Clash paying tribute by inviting Bo as support on their 1979 tour of America. Even in the ‘80s, the spectre of Bo Diddley lurked within the voodoo shimmer of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” and the back-to-basics clatter of U2’s “Desire”.

Fifty years on, Bo still continues to tour. During his recent visit to the UK, Uncut caught up with one of the few surviving pioneers of rock’n’roll to find out why, at the age of 76, he refuses to quit.

UNCUT: So, the legendary Bo Diddley – you practically invented rock’n’roll. How does that feel?

DIDDLEY: Well, it’s no different from anything else, I guess. I started sumthin’. I just happened to be the first one. And I’m still here, I feel great. But I never thought it would turn into what it did. Somebody had to be first, and it happened to be me.

Did you have any idea rock’n’roll was going to go on for as long as it has?

Man, it ain’t quittin’ yet. It’s been goin’ 50 years already, goin’ on 51.

So why do you think you’ve survived all this time?

Well, a lot of it is the way that I care for myself, and my interests in talkin’ to kids about stayin’ away from drugs, that they should obey their parents, do the right thing, be constructive and not destructive. All these things I was taught as a kid, so I’m tryin’ to pass it on to the youngsters ‘cos it works. It definitely works, I’m livin’ proof that it works. And it don’t matter what colour you is, ’cos when I go on stage I don’t see colours, I see people. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I’ll be that way until there’s no more Diddley…

…God forbid!

Yeah, well I ain’t goin’ nowhere!

What do you think of music today – the fact the word ‘R&B’ is used to describe a type of music that is nothing like the ‘R&B’ that described yourself, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters?

No, it’s nothing’ like it. You’re the first one I ever heard that put it that way. It’s nothing like the R&B or the rock’n’roll as we called it. The cats today claim that they’re rock’n’roll with all their screaming geetars and stuff like that. Well that’s not rock’n’roll! That don’t sound like Elvis Presley, that don’t sound like The Beatles… well, The Beatles wasn’t really rock’n’roll. I don’t know what you’d call it but I don’t accept the word rock’n’roll with The Beatles. They don’t belong in the list of rock’n’rollers. They was like, more or less, folk country or sumthin’. I don’t know what it was.

What about The Rolling Stones?

The Rolling Stones is definitely rock’n’roll. They’re right up there with myself, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, all these people. This is sumthin’ we built, and a lot of the cats came along who didn’t know what they were playin’, they tried to sneak in and say “we’re rock’n’rollers”. No way, José!

Is that why you still get on stage, to show people what rock’n’roll really is?

Well I still feel good and I’m able to do it. When you won’t see me no more that means I’m not able. But after fifty years of this, it’s too late to change the horses on the freeway in the middle of the freeway, d’y’understand? You might as well keep rollin’. I built this monster and I have to feed him. Nobody else gonna feed him, so I gotta feed him. I’m 76 years old and I feel great. I try and take care of myself the best I can. No drugs. Never have got involved with that. To all the kids out there in groups I say this – don’t fool wi’ dat mess! It ain’t no good, leave it alone, you don’t need that crap to play. Perform clean and you will be recognised in a clean manner. I refuse to be around anybody that’s doin’ it, and I’m still that way. I used to be a sheriff. I’m not doin’ it now but I still got those police traits. Get out of my face wi’ dat mess! People I work with are all clean ‘cos, boy, if I catch you doin’ sumthin’ in my band, you got to go, real quick. Ain’t no waitin’ till tomorrow cos you’re goin’ home to mama. Grab yer coat and hat. Gudbye!

Your 1959 single “Say Man” was, in a round about way, one of the first rap records?

Uhuh. But it wasn’t called rap, it was called ‘signifyin‘’. But the new kids today on the block call it rap and I guess you could say rap is a good name for it since you can’t understand a damn thing they’re sayin’. I think Eminem is the only one you can understand what he’s saying. Will Smith was really good. Sir Mix-A-Lot, you can understand him. But the rest of ‘em, you can’t understand except that it’s dirty, and I don’t like the dirty lyrics. That’s no good for our youngsters. Let a child be a child until he’s no more a child and then he can listen to what he wants to.

Why the rectangular guitar?

I just decided to design it that way because it’s different. Thought I’d go freak everybody out with a square guitar, heh-heh.

What’s a typical day in the life of Bo Diddley?

You mean what do I do every day? I fool around with old cars and my boat. I’m working on my boat right now. I can’t wait till I get back home to Florida so I can go fishing. Gonna catch me a big one!

What’s Bo Diddley’s secret of happiness. Music? Fishing?

I ain’t decided, man. It’s just everyday livin’. I have nothing special that I wanna do. Everyday livin’ is where it’s at.

What do you want to be remembered for?

Why? Where am I gone? I don’t like that question, sorry. Being remembered, like I’m goin’ out the door any minute…

…well, hopefully not.

Hee! I ain’t goin nowhere, man. I am so superstitious about that, as I am about wills. When you do a will it tells me that you’ve just started descending into neverland. Understand me? That’s my belief. A lot of people say I shouldn’t think that way, but let them do it the way they wanna do it and I’ll do it the way I wanna do it cos I ain’t ready to pull the plug yet. I’m chained to the plug. You could walk around the corner and somebody could say to you “Man, Bo’s just dropped dead”. And you’d probably say “What? You’re full of shit, I was just talkin’ to him two minutes ago”. But that’s the way it is. We never know when we’re gone, and I’m very superstitious about playing around with anything that means I’m out the door for the last time. I’ll talk about anything but that. See, I remember Sam Cooke sayin’ that he was hangin’ up his rock’n’roll shoes and this chick killed him. The chick shot him, man! To me, superstition, that means something. You dig?

Absolutely.

In our schematic of our lives, I believe there’s a road map to what road you travel, and you’ll finish when you take that trip. Say you walk in the street and it’s in your schematic to get bumped by a car – not fall out a window, but bumped by a car – it might be one day that you’re careless and you walk out in front of a car. Well, that’s in your schematic. That’s what’s gonna happen to you. I kinda believe that. A lot of people mysteriously gets done that way. We never know when we’re gonna be called. It’s like me, six years ago I got up outta bed, feeling great, sat on the bed, leaning to pick up my socks and broke two discs in my back. I was in hospital, got operated on, and now I’m walking. But I coulda been in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. It still hurts, that’s why I gotta sit down now when I play. But you don’t have to get hit by a truck to end up messed up. I found that out. I thought I was the Rock of Gibraltar and for me to end up injured that easy really freaked me out. The doctors said “Bo, them days of leg wigglin’, them is over”. But I can still play, I can still walk. Bo Diddley’s still here.

Interview by Simon Goddard

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