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Listen to the new Shack album

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Listen to the new Shack album

Having had a lengthy, eleven year-long hiatus since the timeless ‘Waterpistol’, Shack return this month with a new album, ‘The Corner Of Miles And Gil’. Released on May 15, the album is described in this month’s Uncut magazine as an album to match (‘Waterpistol’’s) eerie grace…a treasure trove for fans of Love and The La’s. Listen to it here in full before it hits the shops via the links below. Tie Me Down Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Butterfly Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Cup Of Tea Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Shelley Brown Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Black And White Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi New Day Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Miles Away Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Finn Sophie Bobby And Lance Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Moonshine Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Funny Things Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Find A Place Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi Closer Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi

Having had a lengthy, eleven year-long hiatus since the timeless ‘Waterpistol’, Shack return this month with a new album, ‘The Corner Of Miles And Gil’.

Released on May 15, the album is described in this month’s Uncut magazine as an album to match (‘Waterpistol’’s) eerie grace…a treasure trove for fans of Love and The La’s.

Listen to it here in full before it hits the shops via the links below.

Tie Me Down

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Butterfly

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Cup Of Tea

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Shelley Brown

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Black And White

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

New Day

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Miles Away

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Finn Sophie Bobby And Lance

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Moonshine

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Funny Things

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Find A Place

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

Closer

Windows Media – lo /

hi

Real Media – lo /

hi

The Big Lebowski – Special Edition

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The Big Lebowski – Special Edition

By the time they came to make The Big Lebowski in 1998, the Coen brothers seemed unstoppable. Their previous film, the snow-bound noir Fargo, won them Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars, while Joel's wife and the film's star Frances McDormand walked away clutching a Best Actress statuette. The awards confirmed their place among America's most ambitious and exciting filmmakers. You might think it would be hard to top Fargo; but with Lebowski they made their masterpiece. The Big Lebowski finds the Coens firing sparks off their two most enduring influences - the narrative twists and bluffs of film noir and the screwball comedies of Hawks and Wilder. We meet LA resident Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), while the first Gulf War rages in the Middle East. A White Russian-swigging pacifist, he's a professional stoner for whom everything is "far out" or a "bummer". He passes his time at the bowling alley with his buddies, semi-deranged Viet Vet Walter (John Goodman, perfectly imitating the gung-ho machismo of the Coens friend, Apocalypse Now director John Milius) and the good-natured but simple Donny (Steve Buscemi). All is good in the Dude's world, until two German goons break into his house and piss on his carpet. It's at this point the Coens embark on a delirious joyride through the great sin city itself, executing some audacious hair-pin turns through the conventions of noir along the way. Seems The Dude shares his name with a wheelchair-bound millionaire (David Huddleston), whose trophy wife Bunny (Tara Reid) has been kidnapped. The Dude is roped in as bagman, but Walter, who just wants to help, only succeeds in making matters worse at the drop-point, swapping the ransom money for his dirty laundry. Soon a toe - apparently recently attached to the rest of Mrs Lebowski - arrives through the post. The film is rich in so many respects. The supporting characters - played by the A list of American independent cinema - are all magnificently drawn. There's Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lebowski's Smithers-like secretary Brandt; John Turturro as Jesus, The Dude's high-camp rival on the bowling lanes; Julianne Moore as Lebowski's daughter Maude, a feminist artist first glimpsed naked "flying" on some devilish wheel-and-pulley contraption across a canvas. Elsewhere, Peter Stormare heads up the group of German nihilists out to profit from Bunny's kidnapping, Ben Gazzara plays porn king Jackie Treehorn, and David Thewlis is particularly memorable as giggling "video artist" Knox Harrington. There's blink and you miss 'em cameos, too, from Chili Pepper Flea and Aimee Mann as a pair of nihilists (in one exquisite piece of minor detail, we learn the nihilists were once members of German electronic band Autobahn, the Coens even going so far as to mocking up a sleeve for one of their albums as a fabulous Kraftwerk pastiche). Of course, there's more: the soundtrack, compiled by T-Bone Burnett, features Dylan, Beefhart, Creedence and, iconically, Kenny Rogers And The First Edition, "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)". The famous dream sequence is a Dali-esque take on an MGM Musical, and worth a 12-page feature in its own right. And how many films are [ital] this [ital] good they can inspire an annual bowling convention, the Lebowskifest? The film's closest cinematic relative is Robert Altman's superior reworking of Chandler's The Long Goodbye (1973). Like The Dude, Altman's Marlowe (Elliot Gould) is another shaggy-dog of a man ambling through LA. But, by casting Bridges as this "man for his time and place", the Coens are also making sly reference to another of the actor's great characters: beach-bum Richard Bone in Ivan Passer's stunning film noir, Cutter's Way (1981). Bridges is sublime as The Dude - a slob, sure, but a man who'd do anything for his friends. "Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place," says Sam Elliot's Stranger in the opening voiceover. He's a hero, of sorts, though a wonderfully unconventional one. So, how come the Coens have never since come close to matching The Big Lebowski? Soon after, they began work on an adaptation of William Dickey's novel To The White Sea, with Brad Pitt in the lead role as an airman shot down over Tokyo during World War II. The project repeatedly stalled due to Pitt's other commitments, and finally ran aground over budgetary disputes. They attempted to restart it, unsuccessfully, while working on the Preston Sturges-style romp O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) and The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). But you wonder whether they ever fully recovered from the experience. 2002's Intolerable Cruelty featured a chemistry vacuum at its centre thanks to the miscasting of George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones in the lead roles. Most recently, we endured their pointless remake of Ealing classic The Ladykillers. You sense, too, that they've been leap-frogged by a new generation of filmmakers, particularly Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. Anderson responds to the warmth the Coens have for their quirky characters, while Jonze and Kaufman take from the surreal aspect of their work. The Coens made it OK to be kooky; the next generation feel obliged to go further. The Coens next due later this year - an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's latest novel No Country For Old Men - at least promises a return to the lean, moody storytelling of their 1983 debut, Blood Simple. We must, at least, hold out some hope. It'd be a significant loss to movies if these two, great filmmakers never found their form again. But at least we have The Dude. And The Dude abides. By Michael Bonner

By the time they came to make The Big Lebowski in 1998, the Coen brothers seemed unstoppable. Their previous film, the snow-bound noir Fargo, won them Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars, while Joel’s wife and the film’s star Frances McDormand walked away clutching a Best Actress statuette. The awards confirmed their place among America’s most ambitious and exciting filmmakers. You might think it would be hard to top Fargo; but with Lebowski they made their masterpiece.

The Big Lebowski finds the Coens firing sparks off their two most enduring influences – the narrative twists and bluffs of film noir and the screwball comedies of Hawks and Wilder. We meet LA resident Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), while the first Gulf War rages in the Middle East. A White Russian-swigging pacifist, he’s a professional stoner for whom everything is “far out” or a “bummer”. He passes his time at the bowling alley with his buddies, semi-deranged Viet Vet Walter (John Goodman, perfectly imitating the gung-ho machismo of the Coens friend, Apocalypse Now director John Milius) and the good-natured but simple Donny (Steve Buscemi). All is good in the Dude’s world, until two German goons break into his house and piss on his carpet.

It’s at this point the Coens embark on a delirious joyride through the great sin city itself, executing some audacious hair-pin turns through the conventions of noir along the way. Seems The Dude shares his name with a wheelchair-bound millionaire (David Huddleston), whose trophy wife Bunny (Tara Reid) has been kidnapped. The Dude is roped in as bagman, but Walter, who just wants to help, only succeeds in making matters worse at the drop-point, swapping the ransom money for his dirty laundry. Soon a toe – apparently recently attached to the rest of Mrs Lebowski – arrives through the post.

The film is rich in so many respects. The supporting characters – played by the A list of American independent cinema – are all magnificently drawn. There’s Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lebowski’s Smithers-like secretary Brandt; John Turturro as Jesus, The Dude’s high-camp rival on the bowling lanes; Julianne Moore as Lebowski’s daughter Maude, a feminist artist first glimpsed naked “flying” on some devilish wheel-and-pulley contraption across a canvas. Elsewhere, Peter Stormare heads up the group of German nihilists out to profit from Bunny’s kidnapping, Ben Gazzara plays porn king Jackie Treehorn, and David Thewlis is particularly memorable as giggling “video artist” Knox Harrington. There’s blink and you miss ’em cameos, too, from Chili Pepper Flea and Aimee Mann as a pair of nihilists (in one exquisite piece of minor detail, we learn the nihilists were once members of German electronic band Autobahn, the Coens even going so far as to mocking up a sleeve for one of their albums as a fabulous Kraftwerk pastiche).

Of course, there’s more: the soundtrack, compiled by T-Bone Burnett, features Dylan, Beefhart, Creedence and, iconically, Kenny Rogers And The First Edition, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”. The famous dream sequence is a Dali-esque take on an MGM Musical, and worth a 12-page feature in its own right. And how many films are [ital] this [ital] good they can inspire an annual bowling convention, the Lebowskifest?

The film’s closest cinematic relative is Robert Altman’s superior reworking of Chandler’s The Long Goodbye (1973). Like The Dude, Altman’s Marlowe (Elliot Gould) is another shaggy-dog of a man ambling through LA. But, by casting Bridges as this “man for his time and place”, the Coens are also making sly reference to another of the actor’s great characters: beach-bum Richard Bone in Ivan Passer’s stunning film noir, Cutter’s Way (1981). Bridges is sublime as The Dude – a slob, sure, but a man who’d do anything for his friends. “Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place,” says Sam Elliot’s Stranger in the opening voiceover. He’s a hero, of sorts, though a wonderfully unconventional one.

So, how come the Coens have never since come close to matching The Big Lebowski? Soon after, they began work on an adaptation of William Dickey’s novel To The White Sea, with Brad Pitt in the lead role as an airman shot down over Tokyo during World War II. The project repeatedly stalled due to Pitt’s other commitments, and finally ran aground over budgetary disputes. They attempted to restart it, unsuccessfully, while working on the Preston Sturges-style romp O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). But you wonder whether they ever fully recovered from the experience. 2002’s Intolerable Cruelty featured a chemistry vacuum at its centre thanks to the miscasting of George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones in the lead roles. Most recently, we endured their pointless remake of Ealing classic The Ladykillers. You sense, too, that they’ve been leap-frogged by a new generation of filmmakers, particularly Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. Anderson responds to the warmth the Coens have for their quirky characters, while Jonze and Kaufman take from the surreal aspect of their work. The Coens made it OK to be kooky; the next generation feel obliged to go further.

The Coens next due later this year – an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel No Country For Old Men – at least promises a return to the lean, moody storytelling of their 1983 debut, Blood Simple.

We must, at least, hold out some hope. It’d be a significant loss to movies if these two, great filmmakers never found their form again.

But at least we have The Dude. And The Dude abides.

By Michael Bonner

The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada

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The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada

Released hot on the heels of Brokeback Mountain, Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut offers further proof that the Western's alive and kicking its spurs. Despite its contemporary setting, it plays by genre rules more respectfully than Ang Lee's movie, its story of injustice, homicide, revenge and honour evocative of Peckinpah's death-drenched Mexican masterworks The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. If not for screenwriter Guillermo (Amores Perros) Arriaga's characteristic non-linear structure, the story might seem a straightforward chronicle of the determined quest of the victim's boss and friend, Pete Perkins (Jones, in a Cannes prize-winning turn) to see justice done by the killer. Instead, the movie flashes back from the discovery of a shallow grave in the West Texan desert to scenes showing how Mexican ranchhand Estrada's ended up dead and buried. But then the film is less concerned with plot than with place - the dusty townships down by the Rio Grande, home to desert rats, cattlemen and their bored wives, 'wetback' workers like Estrada, and border patrolmen - character and questions of morality. And in each regard it rings beautifully true. As such, it reflects upon the inequality, racism, suspicion and misunderstanding that marks US-Mexican relations; at the same time, however, it remains a stirring tale of friendship, obsession and unlikely redemption, played to perfection by all concerned (Barry Pepper and Melissa Leo lending Jones especially sturdy support) and shot by our very own Chris Menges as if he'd been raised on tequila from birth. As Perkins takes the law into his own hands and leads a man he deems guilty into the hellish desert, hauling a corpse along for the ride, you begin to wonder where his crazy quest will end. It's to Jones' and Arriaga's credit that they keep us guessing all the way, and provide a resolution as surprising as it's deeply satisfying. By Geoff Andrew

Released hot on the heels of Brokeback Mountain, Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial debut offers further proof that the Western’s alive and kicking its spurs. Despite its contemporary setting, it plays by genre rules more respectfully than Ang Lee’s movie, its story of injustice, homicide, revenge and honour evocative of Peckinpah’s death-drenched Mexican masterworks The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia.

If not for screenwriter Guillermo (Amores Perros) Arriaga’s characteristic non-linear structure, the story might seem a straightforward chronicle of the determined quest of the victim’s boss and friend, Pete Perkins (Jones, in a Cannes prize-winning turn) to see justice done by the killer. Instead, the movie flashes back from the discovery of a shallow grave in the West Texan desert to scenes showing how Mexican ranchhand Estrada’s ended up dead and buried. But then the film is less concerned with plot than with place – the dusty townships down by the Rio Grande, home to desert rats, cattlemen and their bored wives, ‘wetback’ workers like Estrada, and border patrolmen – character and questions of morality. And in each regard it rings beautifully true.

As such, it reflects upon the inequality, racism, suspicion and misunderstanding that marks US-Mexican relations; at the same time, however, it remains a stirring tale of friendship, obsession and unlikely redemption, played to perfection by all concerned (Barry Pepper and Melissa Leo lending Jones especially sturdy support) and shot by our very own Chris Menges as if he’d been raised on tequila from birth. As Perkins takes the law into his own hands and leads a man he deems guilty into the hellish desert, hauling a corpse along for the ride, you begin to wonder where his crazy quest will end. It’s to Jones’ and Arriaga’s credit that they keep us guessing all the way, and provide a resolution as surprising as it’s deeply satisfying.

By Geoff Andrew

The Charlatans – Simpatico

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Death, embezzlement, nervous breakdowns - the first half of the Charlatans’ career alone packed in enough incident to send most bands fleeing for a desk in the Civil Service. If things have taken a more surreal turn recently, with drummer Jon Brooks’ unscheduled onstage appearance with Franz Ferdinand, and Tim Burgess’ role in light-hearted supergroup The Chavs (with Primal Scream’s Duffy, Carl Barat and Andy Burrows from Razorlight), think of it as therapy. Having resolved their internal squabbles with 2001’s career best Wonderland, The Charlatans have clearly decided that if they’re stuck with each other, they might as well enjoy themselves. Gone, then, is the feisty if predictable Charlies-rock of 2004’s Up At The Lake. Instead, their ninth studio album is a sprawling mix of dub, loose-limbed boogie and weirdo guitar-pop which will leave newer converts scratching their heads and fans of 1994’s bleak third album, Up To Our Hips, reaching for the Rizla’s. Opener “Blackened Blue Eyes” is a reminder that when they do funky, bar-room rock, there’s no-one to match them, and Tim Burgess’ voice is ever more an instrument of hope and resilience on lyrics like, “We all need a shoulder to cry on/Once in a while.” But after that, you can almost hear the rulebook flying from the studio window. A choir of rampaging Cossacks invade the chorus of The Specials-influenced “City Of The Dead”. “Sunset & Vine” is a synth-heavy Moroder-like soundscape, and mid-tempo skank “Muddy Ground” relocates The Stones’ “Waiting On A Friend” to a windswept Glastonbury Tor. The ever-present whiff of Camberwell Carrot, meanwhile, reaches a pungent peak on creditable dub-plate “The Architect” - a nod, presumably, to paranoiac’s favourite The Matrix. Talk of Simpatico as the band’s Sandinista, is, in truth, wide of the mark. It’s better seen as a footpath linking the claustrophobia of their early work with the Black Country funk of Wonderland, whilst hinting at a way forward for this most durable and eclectic of bands. As Burgess sings gleefully in the raunchy punk-funk of “NYC (No Need To Stop)”, “We’re not here to educate/Only here to stay up late!” The Walsall pact remains inviolable. By Paul Moody

Death, embezzlement, nervous breakdowns – the first half of the Charlatans’ career alone packed in enough incident to send most bands fleeing for a desk in the Civil Service. If things have taken a more surreal turn recently, with drummer Jon Brooks’ unscheduled onstage appearance with Franz Ferdinand, and Tim Burgess’ role in light-hearted supergroup The Chavs (with Primal Scream’s Duffy, Carl Barat and Andy Burrows from Razorlight), think of it as therapy.

Having resolved their internal squabbles with 2001’s career best Wonderland, The Charlatans have clearly decided that if they’re stuck with each other, they might as well enjoy themselves. Gone, then, is the feisty if predictable Charlies-rock of 2004’s Up At The Lake. Instead, their ninth studio album is a sprawling mix of dub, loose-limbed boogie and weirdo guitar-pop which will leave newer converts scratching their heads and fans of 1994’s bleak third album, Up To Our Hips, reaching for the Rizla’s.

Opener “Blackened Blue Eyes” is a reminder that when they do funky, bar-room rock, there’s no-one to match them, and Tim Burgess’ voice is ever more an instrument of hope and resilience on lyrics like, “We all need a shoulder to cry on/Once in a while.” But after that, you can almost hear the rulebook flying from the studio window. A choir of rampaging Cossacks invade the chorus of The Specials-influenced “City Of The Dead”. “Sunset & Vine” is a synth-heavy Moroder-like soundscape, and mid-tempo skank “Muddy Ground” relocates The Stones’ “Waiting On A Friend” to a windswept Glastonbury Tor. The ever-present whiff of Camberwell Carrot, meanwhile, reaches a pungent peak on creditable dub-plate “The Architect” – a nod, presumably, to paranoiac’s favourite The Matrix.

Talk of Simpatico as the band’s Sandinista, is, in truth, wide of the mark. It’s better seen as a footpath linking the claustrophobia of their early work with the Black Country funk of Wonderland, whilst hinting at a way forward for this most durable and eclectic of bands. As Burgess sings gleefully in the raunchy punk-funk of “NYC (No Need To Stop)”, “We’re not here to educate/Only here to stay up late!” The Walsall pact remains inviolable.

By Paul Moody

The Streets – The Hardest Way To Make A Living

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The Streets – The Hardest Way To Make A Living

Mike Skinner’s existence has been transformed by success and fortune. It’s a fortune accrued by observing, in startlingly prosaic detail, a life of Wetherspoons and scams, ashtrays and longing for haughty girls, of cab ranks and late night fumblings. The musical backbeat to Skinner’s tracks always seemed disconnected, however, remote from his own patter, as if emanating from down in the cellar of some nightclub from which he’s excluded, on the wrong side of the velvet rope. Skinner can’t pretend that that is his life nowadays, any more than he could ever pretend he was Nas or Jay-Z or any of his heroes. After the resounding success of 2002’s debut Original Pirate Material and its 2004 follow-up, A Grand Don’t Come For Free, Skinner is a winner. Yet fame hasn’t altered the warp and clunk of his lyrical stance. The setting may have changed, the soundtrack is boosted and richer, grimier yet cleaner, but Skinner’s predicaments remains the same. Take opener “Pranging Out”, in which beats come tumbling out as if from an airing cupboard, with Skinner regretting the consequences of a too-manic time on the road: boozed and cracked out; shivering with paranoia; and, worst of all, realising, “The iron has been on in my house for four fucking weeks.” Skinner’s response to fame is mixed. The title track limps along ruefully, as Skinner reflects on the money he’s squandered. “Hotel Expressionism”, conversely, has the cocksure gait of the Italian Job soundtrack, celebrating on-the-road excess as an art form,. On the rudely funked-up single, “When You Wasn’t Famous”, Skinner stops short of naming names but shows a keen eye for celeb squalor, wondering how the woman he saw getting wasted the night before can look so good on CD:UK the morning after. Closer “Fake Streets Hats” sees Skinner recall an onstage tantrum about supposed bootleg merchandise in Holland which turned out to be official - a wonderful and singularly Streets-ian gesture of self-deprecation. Amid all this are two balladic gestures of sober contrition; the Princean, anti-laddish “All Goes Out The Window” and “Never Been To Church”, which sails perilously close to McCartney’s ”Let It Be”, and on which Skinner fears that he is unworthy of redemption. Not true. The lad may get up to no good, but his entire oeuvre comprises acts of supreme redemption. This is Act Three. By David Stubbs

Mike Skinner’s existence has been transformed by success and fortune. It’s a fortune accrued by observing, in startlingly prosaic detail, a life of Wetherspoons and scams, ashtrays and longing for haughty girls, of cab ranks and late night fumblings. The musical backbeat to Skinner’s tracks always seemed disconnected, however, remote from his own patter, as if emanating from down in the cellar of some nightclub from which he’s excluded, on the wrong side of the velvet rope.

Skinner can’t pretend that that is his life nowadays, any more than he could ever pretend he was Nas or Jay-Z or any of his heroes. After the resounding success of 2002’s debut Original Pirate Material and its 2004 follow-up, A Grand Don’t Come For Free, Skinner is a winner. Yet fame hasn’t altered the warp and clunk of his lyrical stance. The setting may have changed, the soundtrack is boosted and richer, grimier yet cleaner, but Skinner’s predicaments remains the same. Take opener “Pranging Out”, in which beats come tumbling out as if from an airing cupboard, with Skinner regretting the consequences of a too-manic time on the road: boozed and cracked out; shivering with paranoia; and, worst of all, realising, “The iron has been on in my house for four fucking weeks.”

Skinner’s response to fame is mixed. The title track limps along ruefully, as Skinner reflects on the money he’s squandered. “Hotel Expressionism”, conversely, has the cocksure gait of the Italian Job soundtrack, celebrating on-the-road excess as an art form,. On the rudely funked-up single, “When You Wasn’t Famous”, Skinner stops short of naming names but shows a keen eye for celeb squalor, wondering how the woman he saw getting wasted the night before can look so good on CD:UK the morning after. Closer “Fake Streets Hats” sees Skinner recall an onstage tantrum about supposed bootleg merchandise in Holland which turned out to be official – a wonderful and singularly Streets-ian gesture of self-deprecation.

Amid all this are two balladic gestures of sober contrition; the Princean, anti-laddish “All Goes Out The Window” and “Never Been To Church”, which sails perilously close to McCartney’s ”Let It Be”, and on which Skinner fears that he is unworthy of redemption. Not true. The lad may get up to no good, but his entire oeuvre comprises acts of supreme redemption. This is Act Three.

By David Stubbs

The Zutons – Tired Of Hangin’ Around

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The Zutons – Tired Of Hangin’ Around

Who Killed The Zutons?, the Liverpool band’s 2004 debut, was a low-key, lingering success - selected for the Mercury prize, and quietly racking up 600,000 sales with barely a mainstream ripple. Like their mentors The Coral, The Zutons appeared to stand to one side of trends and hype, staying in a private world of surreal narratives and stewed 1960s sounds. Little has changed. As a straight rock band in the studio, they remain four-square and a little flat. The boundary-trampling spirit that makes their music stretch out almost infinitely live remains barely tapped. What keeps The Zutons special is singer David McCabe’s lyrics, which gush from him in a mixture of emotional frankness, Beat whimsy and street sharpness, matched at their best by arrangements of disciplined simplicity. As is the Liverpool way, there’s more than a touch of Love here, with Abi Harding’s sax giving jazzy depth to otherwise bright pop tunes. First single “Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love?” is a glam stomp that even recalls Mud’s “Tiger Feet”. But its lyric, in which the jilted protagonist “kept you in my cellar safe”, shows how McCabe spikes his sunny tunes with references to paranoia and other manic states. “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” repeats the stalker motif, as McCabe and Harding enact the most perverse pop duet since The Beautiful South’s “You Keep It All In”, till the stalker finally cracks and reveals his despair. Even the one straight love song, “Valerie”, involves trouble with the law. “Someone Watching Over Me”, that picks through a lonely man’s nightmares over descending piano chords, is trumped by “I Know I’ll Never Leave”, a private dystopia in which the singer’s trapped inside a ghetto flat with floors that slash his skin. Like most songs here, it’s a cautionary, crazed fable, built on inner turmoil. The Zutons seem capable of fabulous music to match. For now, they’re playing safer than they should. By Nick Hasted

Who Killed The Zutons?, the Liverpool band’s 2004 debut, was a low-key, lingering success – selected for the Mercury prize, and quietly racking up 600,000 sales with barely a mainstream ripple. Like their mentors The Coral, The Zutons appeared to stand to one side of trends and hype, staying in a private world of surreal narratives and stewed 1960s sounds.

Little has changed. As a straight rock band in the studio, they remain four-square and a little flat. The boundary-trampling spirit that makes their music stretch out almost infinitely live remains barely tapped. What keeps The Zutons special is singer David McCabe’s lyrics, which gush from him in a mixture of emotional frankness, Beat whimsy and street sharpness, matched at their best by arrangements of disciplined simplicity.

As is the Liverpool way, there’s more than a touch of Love here, with Abi Harding’s sax giving jazzy depth to otherwise bright pop tunes. First single “Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love?” is a glam stomp that even recalls Mud’s “Tiger Feet”. But its lyric, in which the jilted protagonist “kept you in my cellar safe”, shows how McCabe spikes his sunny tunes with references to paranoia and other manic states. “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” repeats the stalker motif, as McCabe and Harding enact the most perverse pop duet since The Beautiful South’s “You Keep It All In”, till the stalker finally cracks and reveals his despair. Even the one straight love song, “Valerie”, involves trouble with the law.

“Someone Watching Over Me”, that picks through a lonely man’s nightmares over descending piano chords, is trumped by “I Know I’ll Never Leave”, a private dystopia in which the singer’s trapped inside a ghetto flat with floors that slash his skin. Like most songs here, it’s a cautionary, crazed fable, built on inner turmoil. The Zutons seem capable of fabulous music to match. For now, they’re playing safer than they should.

By Nick Hasted

Calexico – Garden Ruin

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Calexico – Garden Ruin

While their spiritual kinsmen Wilco and Radiohead have continued to hurtle toward the outer limits, Tucson’s Calexico have been cruising in the other direction, increasingly mixing traditional songcraft with the avant-garde pieces that put them on the indie-rock map. Core members Joey Burns and John Convertino managed to put these disparate impulses into perfect balance on the milestone 2003 album Feast Of Wire, juxtaposing free-form instrumentals like “The Root And The Canal” with verse/chorus constructions like the sublime “Quattro”. And now, on the proper follow-up to Feast…, Calexico have completed their formal journey. Garden Ruin is an album likely to polarise their fans, inasmuch as it contains nothing but discreet songs. On the 11 tracks, Burns reveals himself to be a student of the California classics as he echoes Gram Parsons, Neil Young and Lindsey Buckingham, among other quirky songsmiths. The album opens with “Cruel,” a sociopolitical lament (“Future’s left to wallow in fortune’s waste”) that adheres to standard song structures but nonetheless manages to pack into its four minutes virtually every element in Calexico’s inclusive style — the sinewy rhythmic base, the instrumental filigree, the Latin brass, Burns’ impressionistic lyrics and troubadour-next-door vocals. That sets the template for the album, as the players accent each song with the signature strokes and hues of their evocative sound-paintings. On “Panic Open String”, for example, ambient glockenspiel plinks and forlorn Casio organ tones glimmer like fireflies around desolate images of “propeller power fields” and a “solar panel side.” What Garden Ruin is short of is Convertino’s burly but wonderfully articulated stick work, which up to now has been as crucial to Calexico’s character as Burns’ tremulous tenor. It’s a real kick in the pants when the drummer rolls up his sleeves and thunders away on the band’s first flat-out rockers, the garage-y “Letter to Bowie Knife” and the Rumours-style “Deep Down”—indicating this is one classic move they may want to explore further. There’s nothing here as stunning as “Quattro”. Still, Burns and Convertino prove they can play it relatively straight, without sacrificing Calexico’s hard-earned status as a band that matters. By Bud Scoppa

While their spiritual kinsmen Wilco and Radiohead have continued to hurtle toward the outer limits, Tucson’s Calexico have been cruising in the other direction, increasingly mixing traditional songcraft with the avant-garde pieces that put them on the indie-rock map. Core members Joey Burns and John Convertino managed to put these disparate impulses into perfect balance on the milestone 2003 album Feast Of Wire, juxtaposing free-form instrumentals like “The Root And The Canal” with verse/chorus constructions like the sublime “Quattro”.

And now, on the proper follow-up to Feast…, Calexico have completed their formal journey. Garden Ruin is an album likely to polarise their fans, inasmuch as it contains nothing but discreet songs. On the 11 tracks, Burns reveals himself to be a student of the California classics as he echoes Gram Parsons, Neil Young and Lindsey Buckingham, among other quirky songsmiths.

The album opens with “Cruel,” a sociopolitical lament (“Future’s left to wallow in fortune’s waste”) that adheres to standard song structures but nonetheless manages to pack into its four minutes virtually every element in Calexico’s inclusive style — the sinewy rhythmic base, the instrumental filigree, the Latin brass, Burns’ impressionistic lyrics and troubadour-next-door vocals. That sets the template for the album, as the players accent each song with the signature strokes and hues of their evocative sound-paintings. On “Panic Open String”, for example, ambient glockenspiel plinks and forlorn Casio organ tones glimmer like fireflies around desolate images of “propeller power fields” and a “solar panel side.”

What Garden Ruin is short of is Convertino’s burly but wonderfully articulated stick work, which up to now has been as crucial to Calexico’s character as Burns’ tremulous tenor. It’s a real kick in the pants when the drummer rolls up his sleeves and thunders away on the band’s first flat-out rockers, the garage-y “Letter to Bowie Knife” and the Rumours-style “Deep Down”—indicating this is one classic move they may want to explore further. There’s nothing here as stunning as “Quattro”. Still, Burns and Convertino prove they can play it relatively straight, without sacrificing Calexico’s hard-earned status as a band that matters.

By Bud Scoppa

Interview: The Futureheads

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Interview: The Futureheads
Uncut: Where are you right now? We’re doing a few gigs – one in Hamburg, on in Cologne, and one in Berlin. Just doing some small gigs, we haven’t really done that many shows in central Europe, so we’re catching up I suppose. It’s so varied, from place to place in Europe – it’s weird ...

Uncut: Where are you right now?

We’re doing a few gigs – one in Hamburg, on in Cologne, and one in Berlin. Just doing some small gigs, we haven’t really done that many shows in central Europe, so we’re catching up I suppose. It’s so varied, from place to place in Europe – it’s weird when the next country is only ten minutes away.

Uncut: Is it tempting to debut new songs outside the public eye?

Definitely. The first proper gig, where we debuted all the new songs, was in Bangkok (laughs). We want to get them all up to a standard before the album’s out – we don’t want to shy away from playing new material because it’s not 100% up there. How was Bangkok? We had one day where there was nowt to do, so we did some fairly touristy things to be honest – went on a boat, went up to see some temples, hung around some of the food markets. We didn’t do anything sleazy! To be honest with you, that whole side of Bangkok is hideous. Some people just assume that you’re a sex tourist, they’ll catch them looking at you like you’re the most disgraceful human being. Or you’ll see these older British men who are there by themselves – you look at them and they’re so ashamed of what they’re doing. It’s like, why are you here by yourself, where are your friends? Ah, I know why. You’re a naughty boy. It’s the exploitation that goes on because of the pound, if we were a poor country, no-one would be going away to have sex with young boys. It’s a luxury we shouldn’t be able to afford.

Uncut: You recorded News And Tributes on a farm in Scarborough…

Yeah, just outside of Scarborough in the North Yorkshire dales. It took about six weeks all together. The first album was quite arduous – we recorded it twice, one with [Gang Of Four’s] Andy Gill, then scrapped two-thirds of the stuff we did with him because we weren’t happy with it. It became a real mess to be honest. So this time, it was like right, we’re going to go somewhere in the middle of nowhere, be really confident with whoever we decide to work with, and just get everything out of it that we should have got from our first album. We weren’t really prepared to make our first album when we came to Andy, we didn’t have our heads together enough. There was lots of touring around the recording. But now we’ve found our feet in the studio, and the whole experience of recording News And Tributes – we came away from it a different band, we felt fresh again.

Uncut: Although the first album was recorded all over, it felt quite uniform, while this one goes to some quite weird places…

I think it’s common that a band’s first album isn’t a particularly well thought out album as a whole. I think when we were writing a lot of the stuff for the first album, we didn’t even know if we were going to get a record deal – we were going into the garage thinking ‘Let’s write another song for our album!’ But when you’ve got a deal, you can think a little more. What is it that interests me about an album? It’s always variety – a great Led Zeppelin album goes right across the board, and I think we wanted to demonstrate that we could do that, that we’re not just a band that plays really spiky punk music. That’s not where we end, and it never was.

Uncut: How would you describe the mood of the record?

There’s more space to breathe – particularly from a performance aspect! What we did on our first album was something we were proud of, but it had to be that way, and we’re glad we’ve learnt from any mistakes that we’ve made. When I say mistakes, I think I just mean that we weren’t being completely forthright with our ideas. That’s the only mistake you can make really, that ‘You can fix it in the mix’. I suppose it was the ordeal of recording it twice – if we recorded the album that you heard first time, we’d have been over the moon. I suppose the new album is less of a juvenile record. We were all teenage boys when we got that album together.

Uncut: One of the first lines on the record suggests you “Brick yourself in”, while “Fallout” sees to be inspired by Cold War imagery – are you attracted by the idea of isolation?

“Fallout” is about a ‘80s propaganda film called Threads. It’s a hypothetical thing about what would happen if they dropped a nuclear bomb on Sheffield. I went with a group of friends and I came out and we all sat in silence, thinking about the possibility of Armageddon. If it ever happened, how would you make your final moments the best possible? You’d want to be with the right people, the people you absolutely love – but they’d be dead, I suppose, and so would you. It’s a pretty fucked up song, I suppose, but I’d rather do that than write, like, ‘This is a song about nuclear war – bombs, bombs, bombs…’ Also, though, it can be read as

a song about falling out with someone – splitting up with a girl, for instance, but not losing one another in the process.

Uncut: Do you know if Kate Bush heard ‘Hounds Of Love’?

Yeah, we got a message off her when we were on the farm, actually. I think we were busy up in the barn, or something, but she left a message on the answering machine. It went ‘Hello, Kate Bush here – just phoning to say I absolutely love your version of “Hounds Of Love”, we haven’t had a chance to meet yet but I hope we will, and hope you have a nice Christmas.’ Did we phone her back? (Laughs) No, we were terrified! We found out she was going to ring us, so every time the phone rang, we were like ‘You get it, you get it’. No-one wanted to speak to her, because… well, she’s a legend, isn’t she? What do you say to Kate Bush? I don’t know.

Uncut: Did you think about recording a cover for this record?

No. Some people might think “Hounds Of Love” was something we did later on, to beef the album up or score some daytime radio play. But we’ve been doing Hounds Of Love for four and a half years, before we ever had a record deal. We treat it like one of our own, and for it not be on the first album would be to deny what that album was about. I think cover versions can be excellent for bands – it’s way better than writing a mediocre song.

Uncut: Do you feel any kinship with ‘80s bands like Scritti Polliti, or the New Pop movement – bands from a DIY background, who aren’t afraid to make pop music?

Yeah. Pop isn’t a dirty word. Only when it’s industry-controlled pop music. I think we do consider ourselves to be a pop band, but just from a weird angle – we’re not all just post-punk boys who swear by Sniffing Glue, and shit. We love pop.

Uncut: How do you plot your vocal harmonies?

For this album, a lot of them were done around a piano. Pianos are really helpful because you’ve got the full range of notes in front of you, it’s a much more visual thing than playing the guitar. But there aren’t as many harmonies on this album. We started doing mad harmonies because we were show-offs, but we’re learning how to pull back a bit – this album is all about us making a song out of five ideas, not 55. Because that can make a bigger sound, more spacious, and it helps what is on the record to get more recognition.

Uncut: One of the biggest departures on the record is “Burnt”…

It’s dark. That song, for me, is the song on the album that typifies how different this record is. If you play that next to, say, “Knows” – this insane, mathy punk song – you wouldn’t recognise the two bands. It’s basically about relationships again – how we constantly prove that we have no control over love or passion, and we never, ever learn from our mistakes. We’ll gladly plummet straight back into a relationship, or make promises to people we can’t keep. It’s constant, and constantly repeated – the thrill of the chase, the possibility that this person might be the one. I wouldn’t say it was cynical. It’s probably representative of my relationships in general!

Uncut: Then there’s “Return Of The Berserker”, which is only a couple of notches off Big Black…

Damn right, Big Black, yeah. That song was totally spontaneous. We played it once, didn’t structure it, and overdubbed a couple of guitars afterwards just to make it sound insane. When the album was coming together, we realised there was more space to breathe, to listen – so we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could still kick the shit out of it if we wanted to. We recorded it in the cattleshed, and at the end of the take, we could hear Ben [Hillier, producer] on the intercom, just laughing his head off. And when we listened back, to be honest, I’ve never had a thrill like that from music at all.

Watch the trailer to ‘The Devil & Daniel Johnston’

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Watch the trailer to ‘The Devil & Daniel Johnston’

The story of cult musician Daniel Johnston is brought to the big screen this week with the release of the Jeff Feuerzeig directed ‘The Devil & Daniel Johnston’. The documentary melds current footage, vintage performances, home movies, and dozens of recorded audiotapes from Johnston's life to capture the singer/songwriter/artist through bouts of manic depression, dangerous delusions and…a stint in the circus. Daniel Johnston has inspired the likes of Wayne Coyne, Beck and Tom Waits and this documentary offers a unique glimpse into the man, and his devils. View the trailer to the film here. Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi Plus - enter NME.COM's competition to win a Daniel Johnston style Epiphone acoustic guitar

The story of cult musician Daniel Johnston is brought to the big screen this week with the release of the Jeff Feuerzeig directed ‘The Devil & Daniel Johnston’.

The documentary melds current footage, vintage performances, home movies, and dozens of recorded audiotapes from Johnston’s life to capture the singer/songwriter/artist through bouts of manic depression, dangerous delusions and…a stint in the circus.

Daniel Johnston has inspired the likes of Wayne Coyne, Beck and Tom Waits and this documentary offers a unique glimpse into the man, and his devils.

View the trailer to the film here.

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Plus – enter NME.COM’s competition to win a Daniel Johnston style Epiphone acoustic guitar

The Flaming Lips – At War With The Mystics

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There was something so ultimate about The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, emphasised by its release in the last year of the 20th Century, you expected it to close with this paraphrase of Jean-Luc Godard: “End - End of Music.” Although its predecessor, 1997’s quadrophrenic experiment Zaireeka, proposed new directions, TSB was the culmination; a compression of pop’s best ideas into 12 mini-epics of nuance and bombast. The acclaim it won in the critics’ polls and for their live forays in 2000 gave further credence to the idea that this was as far as the Lips, if not rock per se, could go. After this, one suspected, being embraced by a large audience following 15 years on the margins as a cult horrorshow with just the Butthole Surfers for company would cause a loss of nerve. And yet, miraculously, they did it again in 2002 with Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, another record magnificently poised between gorgeous melody and garish electro-noise, between their old life on the fringes and their new status as the mainstream’s weirdo cause celebre. It was their second consecutive brilliant state of the universe address on mortality and dread, transience and transcendence, but surely now, with a million sales and celebrity fans from Jack White to Juliette Lewis, overexposure and their new media friendliness would rob them of their edge. Besides, when you’ve created two records so monumental in terms of production and lyrical content, what do you do for an encore? Advance word on At War With The Mystics sent alarm bells ringing. There was talk from frontman Wayne Coyne of a return to raw power and doing-it-live, of a retreat from studio artifice towards a more organic and conventional rock attack that could be recreated on the world’s stages. Seduced by success, The Flaming Lips would, it seemed, spend their dotage pandering to young crowds as rock’s token mad uncles. Then there was the heroin effect. That scene in the Fearless Freaks DVD in which multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd prepared to shoot up showed what a dead end he, and the band, could find themselves down. Narcotic oblivion had destroyed his sense of purpose. Worse, some implied, was that Drozd’s genius was fuelled by smack, and if he did clean up, he’d lose his touch. Either way, a third classic album was looking unlikely. Then again, from a group who more convincingly than any other convey wonder and joy – and with a Disneyish flourish, no less – a happy ending was inevitable. At War With The Mystics is another extraordinary collection from this late-peaking band. Recorded throughout 2005 with Dave Fridmann at the controls, the swooning/shocking duality of the Lips’ concerts, the pink bunnies and gore-fetishism, is once more reflected in the music, which veers from shattering FX to celestial sonics just as the lyrics jerk between metaphysical despair and juvenile glee. “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”, the opener, is acid bubblegum that subverts as it affirms. The first single, it’s going to be a pan-generational smash, in spite or because of the dumb know-thyself lyric and call-and-response chorus. The music is dense with detail: there’s an air of abundance here as Fridmann and Co fill every space with sci-fi sounds and micro-melodies, speaker-panning whooshes and digital splutters. “Free Radicals”, a dig at fundamentalists and Donald Trump, pivots around a daft Coyne falsetto and Michael Ivins’ cosmic slop of a bassline: this is funk as envisioned by Frank Zappa and Hanna Barbera. After the last two albums’ titular obsession with conflict, on this loose concept the Lips assault Bush and his bombing cronies. “The W.A.N.D.” (a recent internet-only single), including the cry, “We got the power now, motherfuckers!”, is hi-tech grunge, like Sabbath produced by Pharrell. On “Haven’t Got A Clue” (“Every time you state your case/The more I want to punch your face”) the subject of Coyne’s surreal vitriol is probably Dubya, although saying At War With The Mystics is about Iraq is like describing Sgt Pepper’s as anti-Vietnam. Well, it was and it wasn’t. More than any polemic, The Flaming Lips encourage resistance through rapture. Their not inconsiderable presence stems from the beauty of their, yes, Cosmic American Music. “The Sound Of Failure/It’s Dark… Is It Always Dark??” followed by “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” and “Vein Of Stars” forms a symphonic soul sequence as madly exquisite as psychedelic Philly, from the Bacharach-ish chord changes to the acoustic-deliquescing-into-electric guitars that sound like Ernie Isley on Mars. Only the Lips could hymn, as they do on “Cosmic Autumn Rebellion”, the twitter of birds on a late-summer’s day. Why? Because they’ve been there, done that, got the blood-soaked T-shirt. On “The Sound Of Failure”, Coyne, happy to be sad, sings, “Don’t tell Britney, don’t tell Gwen”, and, even though it’s a critique of the girl teenpop aesthetic, it’s thrilling to hear these former pyromaniacs and rank outsiders referencing an MTV world that’s as much theirs as it is The Strokes’ or la Spears’. Suddenly, like some rampantly eclectic Playlist, At War… goes prog, Hari-Kiri for some bands, but not these brainiacs with the common touch. “The Wizard Turns On…” brings to mind a manic mid-’70s Herbie Hancock space-jazz Moog instrumental. When “It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big, I Am So Small… Do I Stand A Chance?” switches from handclaps and robot clatter to heavenly sighs, it’s like discovering an alien life-form that communicates via ecstatic harmonies. “Mr Ambulance Driver” is sublime AOR, its appearance on the soundtrack to The Wedding Crashers in the same year they provided the theme tune to Spongebob & Squarepants proving the Lips can do silly and solemn with aplomb. Saving the best till (second) last, “Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung”, recalling Pink Floyd’s “One Of These Days”, features Drozd’s first lead vocal and waves of crashing synths – even non-fans are blown away by this one. Finally, “Goin’ On”, the quiet after the storm, is Rhodes-embellished, Rundgrenesque white gospel. Maybe we doubted them because Coyne is no mock-recluse feigning intensity of vision. The Lips debunk notions of authenticity – it’s never clear who does what in that studio of theirs in Fredonia, New York State, although Coyne appears to be the Bowie figure, busy conjuring while Ivins, Drozd and Fridmann, his Fripp, Eno and Visconti, realise his grand schemes. But make no mistake, the Lips have done it: three astonishing albums in a row. This marks the first occasion since the ‘Berlin trilogy’ that an artist has climaxed with albums 10, 11 and 12 of their career. It’s official! The Flaming Lips have outstripped Lodger. Now all they’ve got to do is make the next one better than Scary Monsters… By Paul Lester

There was something so ultimate about The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, emphasised by its release in the last year of the 20th Century, you expected it to close with this paraphrase of Jean-Luc Godard: “End – End of Music.” Although its predecessor, 1997’s quadrophrenic experiment Zaireeka, proposed new directions, TSB was the culmination; a compression of pop’s best ideas into 12 mini-epics of nuance and bombast. The acclaim it won in the critics’ polls and for their live forays in 2000 gave further credence to the idea that this was as far as the Lips, if not rock per se, could go. After this, one suspected, being embraced by a large audience following 15 years on the margins as a cult horrorshow with just the Butthole Surfers for company would cause a loss of nerve.

And yet, miraculously, they did it again in 2002 with Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, another record magnificently poised between gorgeous melody and garish electro-noise, between their old life on the fringes and their new status as the mainstream’s weirdo cause celebre. It was their second consecutive brilliant state of the universe address on mortality and dread, transience and transcendence, but surely now, with a million sales and celebrity fans from Jack White to Juliette Lewis, overexposure and their new media friendliness would rob them of their edge. Besides, when you’ve created two records so monumental in terms of production and lyrical content, what do you do for an encore?

Advance word on At War With The Mystics sent alarm bells ringing. There was talk from frontman Wayne Coyne of a return to raw power and doing-it-live, of a retreat from studio artifice towards a more organic and conventional rock attack that could be recreated on the world’s stages. Seduced by success, The Flaming Lips would, it seemed, spend their dotage pandering to young crowds as rock’s token mad uncles.

Then there was the heroin effect. That scene in the Fearless Freaks DVD in which multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd prepared to shoot up showed what a dead end he, and the band, could find themselves down. Narcotic oblivion had destroyed his sense of purpose. Worse, some implied, was that Drozd’s genius was fuelled by smack, and if he did clean up, he’d lose his touch. Either way, a third classic album was looking unlikely.

Then again, from a group who more convincingly than any other convey wonder and joy – and with a Disneyish flourish, no less – a happy ending was inevitable. At War With The Mystics is another extraordinary collection from this late-peaking band. Recorded throughout 2005 with Dave Fridmann at the controls, the swooning/shocking duality of the Lips’ concerts, the pink bunnies and gore-fetishism, is once more reflected in the music, which veers from shattering FX to celestial sonics just as the lyrics jerk between metaphysical despair and juvenile glee.

“Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”, the opener, is acid bubblegum that subverts as it affirms. The first single, it’s going to be a pan-generational smash, in spite or because of the dumb know-thyself lyric and call-and-response chorus. The music is dense with detail: there’s an air of abundance here as Fridmann and Co fill every space with sci-fi sounds and micro-melodies, speaker-panning whooshes and digital splutters. “Free Radicals”, a dig at fundamentalists and Donald Trump, pivots around a daft Coyne falsetto and Michael Ivins’ cosmic slop of a bassline: this is funk as envisioned by Frank Zappa and Hanna Barbera.

After the last two albums’ titular obsession with conflict, on this loose concept the Lips assault Bush and his bombing cronies. “The W.A.N.D.” (a recent internet-only single), including the cry, “We got the power now, motherfuckers!”, is hi-tech grunge, like Sabbath produced by Pharrell. On “Haven’t Got A Clue” (“Every time you state your case/The more I want to punch your face”) the subject of Coyne’s surreal vitriol is probably Dubya, although saying At War With The Mystics is about Iraq is like describing Sgt Pepper’s as anti-Vietnam. Well, it was and it wasn’t.

More than any polemic, The Flaming Lips encourage resistance through rapture. Their not inconsiderable presence stems from the beauty of their, yes, Cosmic American Music. “The Sound Of Failure/It’s Dark… Is It Always Dark??” followed by “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” and “Vein Of Stars” forms a symphonic soul sequence as madly exquisite as psychedelic Philly, from the Bacharach-ish chord changes to the acoustic-deliquescing-into-electric guitars that sound like Ernie Isley on Mars. Only the Lips could hymn, as they do on “Cosmic Autumn Rebellion”, the twitter of birds on a late-summer’s day. Why? Because they’ve been there, done that, got the blood-soaked T-shirt. On “The Sound Of Failure”, Coyne, happy to be sad, sings, “Don’t tell Britney, don’t tell Gwen”, and, even though it’s a critique of the girl teenpop aesthetic, it’s thrilling to hear these former pyromaniacs and rank outsiders referencing an MTV world that’s as much theirs as it is The Strokes’ or la Spears’.

Suddenly, like some rampantly eclectic Playlist, At War… goes prog, Hari-Kiri for some bands, but not these brainiacs with the common touch. “The Wizard Turns On…” brings to mind a manic mid-’70s Herbie Hancock space-jazz Moog instrumental. When “It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big, I Am So Small… Do I Stand A Chance?” switches from handclaps and robot clatter to heavenly sighs, it’s like discovering an alien life-form that communicates via ecstatic harmonies. “Mr Ambulance Driver” is sublime AOR, its appearance on the soundtrack to The Wedding Crashers in the same year they provided the theme tune to Spongebob & Squarepants proving the Lips can do silly and solemn with aplomb. Saving the best till (second) last, “Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung”, recalling Pink Floyd’s “One Of These Days”, features Drozd’s first lead vocal and waves of crashing synths – even non-fans are blown away by this one. Finally, “Goin’ On”, the quiet after the storm, is Rhodes-embellished, Rundgrenesque white gospel.

Maybe we doubted them because Coyne is no mock-recluse feigning intensity of vision. The Lips debunk notions of authenticity – it’s never clear who does what in that studio of theirs in Fredonia, New York State, although Coyne appears to be the Bowie figure, busy conjuring while Ivins, Drozd and Fridmann, his Fripp, Eno and Visconti, realise his grand schemes. But make no mistake, the Lips have done it: three astonishing albums in a row. This marks the first occasion since the ‘Berlin trilogy’ that an artist has climaxed with albums 10, 11 and 12 of their career. It’s official! The Flaming Lips have outstripped Lodger. Now all they’ve got to do is make the next one better than Scary Monsters…

By Paul Lester

Watch Springsteen studio footage

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Watch Springsteen studio footage

Columbia Records will release Bruce Springsteen's twenty-first album, 'We Shall Overcome, The Seeger Sessions,' on April 24. The album features Bruce's personal interpretations of thirteen traditional songs, all of them associated with the legendary guiding light of American folk music, Pete Seeger, for whom the album is named. Tracks featured include ‘Jessie James’, ‘Shenandoah’, ‘Jacob's Ladder’, ‘My Oklahoma Home’, ‘Froggie Went A-Courtin'’ and ‘Old Dan Tucker’ amongst others. 'We Shall Overcome, The Seeger Sessions' will also include a DVD, which contains extensive behind the scenes footage of the recording of the album. You can watch highlights from the exclusive behind the scenes studio footage of the recording of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and ‘Shenandoah’, here, first via the links below. 'Shenandoah' Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi 'Jacobs Ladder' Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi

Columbia Records will release Bruce Springsteen’s twenty-first album, ‘We Shall Overcome, The Seeger Sessions,’ on April 24. The album features Bruce’s personal interpretations of thirteen traditional songs, all of them associated with the legendary guiding light of American folk music, Pete Seeger, for whom the album is named.

Tracks featured include ‘Jessie James’, ‘Shenandoah’, ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, ‘My Oklahoma Home’, ‘Froggie Went A-Courtin’’ and ‘Old Dan Tucker’ amongst others.

‘We Shall Overcome, The Seeger Sessions’ will also include a DVD, which contains extensive behind the scenes footage of the recording of the album. You can watch highlights from the exclusive behind the scenes studio footage of the recording of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and ‘Shenandoah’, here, first via the links below.

‘Shenandoah’

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‘Jacobs Ladder’

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Watch the trailer and clips from the new Glastonbury documentary

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Watch the trailer and clips from the new Glastonbury documentary

In 1970 Michael Eavis opened his 150-acre farm to 1,500 people each paying £1 to watch a handful of pop and folk stars perform over the summer-solstice weekend... Glastonbury Festival is now the longest running and most popular music and arts festival in history. This year everyone will have the chance to experience the Glastonbury vibe and some of the festival's 35-year history when ‘Glastonbury’ the documentary opens in cinemas nationwide on April 14. The documentary sees long time festival worker Robert Richards in the role of producer whilst Somerset based Julien Temple (‘The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle’, ‘Absolute Beginners’, ‘Filth and the Fury’)offered his services as director. Musicians featured in ‘Glastonbury’ include - The Velvet Underground, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Primal Scream, Alabama 3, Billy Bragg, Cypress Hill, The Scissor Sisters, Radiohead, Babyshambles, The Levellers, David Gray, Bjork, Coldplay, Chemical Brothers, Stereo MC's, Blur, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, English National Opera 'Die Valkyrie', Ray Davies, Pulp, Faithless, The Bravery, Morrissey, Prodigy, Toots an the Maytals and David Bowie. Uncut.co.uk has got exclusive footage from the documentary featuring Morrissey, plus the trailer, to view below. Morrissey at Glastonbury. Windows Media - lo / medium / hi Real Media - lo / medium / hi Glastonbury Trailer Links. Windows Media - lo / medium / hi Real Media - lo / medium / hi

In 1970 Michael Eavis opened his 150-acre farm to 1,500 people each paying £1 to watch a handful of pop and folk stars perform over the summer-solstice weekend…

Glastonbury Festival is now the longest running and most popular music and arts festival in history. This year everyone will have the chance to experience the Glastonbury vibe and some of the festival’s 35-year history when ‘Glastonbury’ the documentary opens in cinemas nationwide on April 14.

The documentary sees long time festival worker Robert Richards in the role of producer whilst Somerset based Julien Temple (‘The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’, ‘Absolute Beginners’, ‘Filth and the Fury’)offered his services as director.

Musicians featured in ‘Glastonbury’ include – The Velvet Underground, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Primal Scream, Alabama 3, Billy Bragg, Cypress Hill, The Scissor Sisters, Radiohead, Babyshambles, The Levellers, David Gray, Bjork, Coldplay, Chemical Brothers, Stereo MC’s, Blur, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, English National Opera ‘Die Valkyrie’, Ray Davies, Pulp, Faithless, The Bravery, Morrissey, Prodigy, Toots an the Maytals and David Bowie.

Uncut.co.uk has got exclusive footage from the documentary featuring Morrissey, plus the trailer, to view below.

Morrissey at Glastonbury.

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Download a free Grandaddy track

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Download a free Grandaddy track

Bearded cosmic Americana rockers Grandaddy bid a fond farewell to their fans next month with their last, ever, album. ‘Just Like The Fambly Cat’ will be the Californian combo’s fifth and final album since forming way back in 1992 and www.uncut.co.uk can offer up readers a free download of ‘Jeez Louise’, taken from the LP. Access the free download here Plus – visit NME.COM to view exclusive video footage created by Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, plus enter our competition to win one of Jason’s truckers hats. View video footage on NME.COM Win one of Jason’s truckers caps on NME.COM

Bearded cosmic Americana rockers Grandaddy bid a fond farewell to their fans next month with their last, ever, album. ‘Just Like The Fambly Cat’ will be the Californian combo’s fifth and final album since forming way back in 1992 and www.uncut.co.uk can offer up readers a free download of ‘Jeez Louise’, taken from the LP.

Access the free download here

Plus – visit NME.COM to view exclusive video footage created by Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, plus enter our competition to win one of Jason’s truckers hats.

View video footage on NME.COM

Win one of Jason’s truckers caps on NME.COM

Listen to the new LP from The Archie Bronson Outfit

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Listen to the new LP from The Archie Bronson Outfit

'Derdang Derdang' is the second album from Wiltshire trio, The Archie Bronson Outfit. Blending bluegrass, backwoods folk and hammered blues with a motorik groove, the album receives a four out of five star rating in the April edition of Uncut magazine. Hear the album in full for yourself before it hits the shops on April 3. Uncut.co.uk have got the album in full to listen to, via the links below. 1. Cherry Lips Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 2. Kink Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 3. Dart For My Sweetheart Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 4. Got To Get (Your Eyes) Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 5. Dead Funny Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 6. Modern Lovers Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 7. Cuckoo Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 8. Jab Jab Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 9. How I Sang Dang Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 10. Rituals Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi 11. Harp For My Sweetheart Real Media - lo / hi Windows Media - lo / hi

‘Derdang Derdang’ is the second album from Wiltshire trio, The Archie Bronson Outfit. Blending bluegrass, backwoods folk and hammered blues with a motorik groove, the album receives a four out of five star rating in the April edition of Uncut magazine.

Hear the album in full for yourself before it hits the shops on April 3. Uncut.co.uk have got the album in full to listen to, via the links below.

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‘New York Doll’ film trailer and interview

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‘New York Doll’ film trailer and interview

'New York Doll' is the poignant and extraordinary story of Arthur "Killer" Kane - the one time statuesque bassist of 70s gender-bending glam rock pioneers, The New York Dolls. Director Greg Whiteley follows Arthur's journey from mild-mannered church librarian to a demon-battling glam rocker with one of the decade's most successful bands, a conversion to Mormonism to a life-changing reunion with the remaining members of the band at Morrissey's 2004 Meltdown Festival. Uncut.co.uk have got an exclusive clip from the film featuring Morrissey and the trailer to view via the links below. Clip: Real Media - med / hi Trailer: Windows Media - lo / hi Real Media - lo / hi

‘New York Doll’ is the poignant and extraordinary story of Arthur “Killer” Kane – the one time statuesque bassist of 70s gender-bending glam rock pioneers, The New York Dolls.

Director Greg Whiteley follows Arthur’s journey from mild-mannered church librarian to a demon-battling glam rocker with one of the decade’s most successful bands, a conversion to Mormonism to a life-changing reunion with the remaining members of the band at Morrissey’s 2004 Meltdown Festival.

Uncut.co.uk have got an exclusive clip from the film featuring Morrissey and the trailer to view via the links below.

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Download a track from the new Josh Ritter album

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Download a track from the new Josh Ritter album

Idaho singer-songwriter Josh Ritter releases his fourth album, 'The Animal Years' this week. Gaining three out of five stars by Uncut magazine (April edition), 'The Animal Years' has a tendency to drift rather than fully engage whilst the likes of 'Wolves' and 10-minute epic 'Thin Blue Line' dazzle with poetic imagery and invention. You can sample 'The Animal Years' for yourself with www.uncut.co.uk's free download of 'Girl In The War'. Click on the link below. Download of 'Girl In The War' via this link

Idaho singer-songwriter Josh Ritter releases his fourth album, ‘The Animal Years’ this week. Gaining three out of five stars by Uncut magazine (April edition), ‘The Animal Years’ has a tendency to drift rather than fully engage whilst the likes of ‘Wolves’ and 10-minute epic ‘Thin Blue Line’ dazzle with poetic imagery and invention.

You can sample ‘The Animal Years’ for yourself with www.uncut.co.uk’s free download of ‘Girl In The War’. Click on the link below.

Download of ‘Girl In The War’ via this link

South by Southwest – Day Four

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South by Southwest – Day Four

Tornadoes are brewing in the north of Texas, but the sheer density of Brits seems to have imposed our own weather system over Austin. Dank low clouds and drizzle greet LA’s Lavender Diamond at a lunchtime party in the grounds of the historic French Legate’s House, encouraging singer Becky Stark to speculate on whether weather is an “intelligence”. Stark is one of SXSW’s unheralded stars, a pure-voiced singer with the air of a hippyish primary schoolteacher, whose songs recall a sweet, untortured variant on Judee Sill. Her odd band are so good Uncut sees them again a couple of hours later, after a roistering set by Witch, a four-piece power trio who play Cro-magnon stoner prog and feature a very benign-looking J Mascis on drums. We also manage to finally catch Wooden Wand, having narrowly missed this free folk renegade about four times already this week. Forsaking the fragmented jams that dominate most of his myriad albums, Wand seems to have focused his talents into coherent country-psych songs. It’s a neat fit. The trippiness continues at our favourite non-corporate hang-out, the Rambler stage in the Mexican district. Bad Wizard come on like sadly-departed metal freaks Zen Guerilla, while The Rogers Sisters have happily expanded their post-punk garage rock into needling freak-outs. The arrival of manic Hawkwind types DMBQ, from Japan, is a bit much, though, so we head for the consoling pleasures of Richard Hawley, as at home in Texas as he is in Sheffield. The pick of the week’s British bands, later, are Hot Chip, rapidly evolving from twee electropop roots into a gentle juggernaut, at once mournful and euphoric, in the vein of New Order. Today’s pick of the American acts, meanwhile, is LA singer-songwriter Richard Swift. Swift has been making records on tiny labels for a while now – two terrific albums were reissued on one disc last year by Secretly Canadian. Clearly, though, his potential is much bigger, judging by this confident, rumbustious set of piano pop. Swift variously recalls Nilsson, early Tom Waits and, especially, Rufus Wainwright, but it’s his own idiosyncracies – and those of his eccentric but accomplished band – that linger. Finally, from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous. Ghostface Killah wraps up SXSW with a hits-packed set of Wu-Tang gems, culminating in sitdown sob through the awesome “All That I Got Is You”. “This one’s for all the gangstas in the house,” he says. Actually, it’s for a few hundred indie types falling over from beer and exhaustion. Still, nice thought.

Tornadoes are brewing in the north of Texas, but the sheer density of Brits seems to have imposed our own weather system over Austin. Dank low clouds and drizzle greet LA’s Lavender Diamond at a lunchtime party in the grounds of the historic French Legate’s House, encouraging singer Becky Stark to speculate on whether weather is an “intelligence”.

Stark is one of SXSW’s unheralded stars, a pure-voiced singer with the air of a hippyish primary schoolteacher, whose songs recall a sweet, untortured variant on Judee Sill. Her odd band are so good Uncut sees them again a couple of hours later, after a roistering set by Witch, a four-piece power trio who play Cro-magnon stoner prog and feature a very benign-looking J Mascis on drums. We also manage to finally catch Wooden Wand, having narrowly missed this free folk renegade about four times already this week. Forsaking the fragmented jams that dominate most of his myriad albums, Wand seems to have focused his talents into coherent country-psych songs. It’s a neat fit.

The trippiness continues at our favourite non-corporate hang-out, the Rambler stage in the Mexican district. Bad Wizard come on like sadly-departed metal freaks Zen Guerilla, while The Rogers Sisters have happily expanded their post-punk garage rock into needling freak-outs. The arrival of manic Hawkwind types DMBQ, from Japan, is a bit much, though, so we head for the consoling pleasures of Richard Hawley, as at home in Texas as he is in Sheffield. The pick of the week’s British bands, later, are Hot Chip, rapidly evolving from twee electropop roots into a gentle juggernaut, at once mournful and euphoric, in the vein of New Order.

Today’s pick of the American acts, meanwhile, is LA singer-songwriter Richard Swift. Swift has been making records on tiny labels for a while now – two terrific albums were reissued on one disc last year by Secretly Canadian. Clearly, though, his potential is much bigger, judging by this confident, rumbustious set of piano pop. Swift variously recalls Nilsson, early Tom Waits and, especially, Rufus Wainwright, but it’s his own idiosyncracies – and those of his eccentric but accomplished band – that linger.

Finally, from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous. Ghostface Killah wraps up SXSW with a hits-packed set of Wu-Tang gems, culminating in sitdown sob through the awesome “All That I Got Is You”. “This one’s for all the gangstas in the house,” he says. Actually, it’s for a few hundred indie types falling over from beer and exhaustion. Still, nice thought.

South by Southwest – Day three

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South by Southwest – Day three

Day Three of SXSW, and it's time to go off in pursuit of this year's buzz bands: the mystically powerful new acts that have a pack of A&Rs trailing them from party to party. As we mentioned the other day, the most talked-about one this year is Tapes'n'Tapes from Minneapolis, who we finally track down at 1am tonight. First, though, there's another 16 bands to work through. We'll spare you the details of them all. A good afternoon at the Insound party, starting with the excellent Love Is All. They have all the requisites for success this year: a sound that veers between cutesy and dissonant, jolly and anxious; a certain nerdiness; a few massed shouts in the vein of The Arcade Fire. But there's also a distinct Slits and X-Ray Spex influence, and an exuberance that marks them out as a punk-funk Sugarcubes. Pink Mountaintops we've written about at length in Uncut already, being the side project of Black Mountain's frontman, Stephen McBean. Live, though, they're far from the lo-fi solo thing we expected, being a seven-piece - with two drummers - who lock into the edgy ramalam of Loaded -era Velvets. Finally at this party, there's Sereena Maneesh, a daftly portentous but entertaining bunch of Norwegian goths who've a much better understanding of My Bloody Valentine ("Feed Me With Your Kiss", specifically) and theatre (the giant, thrusting Nico lookalike on bass) than most new shoegazers. Over at the Pitchfork party, Jose Gonzales is being diffident and endearing, and Hot Chip are kicking up their little-boy-lost techno a gear. We push on, though, to a van in the Mexican district, where New Zealand indie lifers The Bats are proving an unlikely antecedent to The Strokes' wiry jangle. And onwards. LA's Giant Drag recast Catpower as grunge-pop stand-up comedy. San Francisco's Colossal Yes play brilliant unravelling piano ballads in the style of Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle. Kelley Stoltz is a frayed powerpop auteur, at least a match for Brendan Benson, but lacking that critical Jack White connection. Seattle's Band Of Horses, meanwhile, involve some pretty violent thrashing of a lap steel, invoke My Morning Jacket, Mercury Rev and Built To Spill, and are possibly the best thing Uncut has seen all week. Which only leaves the already legendary Tapes'n'Tapes. Who are, perhaps inevitably, a bit of a disappointment. Dorkiness remains de rigueur, the songs are OK, and the singer's stern baritone makes a change from the nasal shrillness of his contemporaries. But the self-consciousness still grates: aren't last year's champion buzz band, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, all we really need of this stuff?

Day Three of SXSW, and it’s time to go off in pursuit of this year’s buzz bands: the mystically powerful new acts that have a pack of A&Rs trailing them from party to party. As we mentioned the other day, the most talked-about one this year is Tapes’n’Tapes from Minneapolis, who we finally track down at 1am tonight. First, though, there’s another 16 bands to work through.

We’ll spare you the details of them all. A good afternoon at the Insound party, starting with the excellent Love Is All. They have all the requisites for success this year: a sound that veers between cutesy and dissonant, jolly and anxious; a certain nerdiness; a few massed shouts in the vein of The Arcade Fire. But there’s also a distinct Slits and X-Ray Spex influence, and an exuberance that marks them out as a punk-funk Sugarcubes.

Pink Mountaintops we’ve written about at length in Uncut already, being the side project of Black Mountain’s frontman, Stephen McBean. Live, though, they’re far from the lo-fi solo thing we expected, being a seven-piece – with two drummers – who lock into the edgy ramalam of Loaded -era Velvets.

Finally at this party, there’s Sereena Maneesh, a daftly portentous but entertaining bunch of Norwegian goths who’ve a much better understanding of My Bloody Valentine (“Feed Me With Your Kiss”, specifically) and theatre (the giant, thrusting Nico lookalike on bass) than most new shoegazers.

Over at the Pitchfork party, Jose Gonzales is being diffident and endearing, and Hot Chip are kicking up their little-boy-lost techno a gear. We push on, though, to a van in the Mexican district, where New Zealand indie lifers The Bats are proving an unlikely antecedent to The Strokes’ wiry jangle.

And onwards. LA’s Giant Drag recast Catpower as grunge-pop stand-up comedy. San Francisco’s Colossal Yes play brilliant unravelling piano ballads in the style of Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle. Kelley Stoltz is a frayed powerpop auteur, at least a match for Brendan Benson, but lacking that critical Jack White connection. Seattle’s Band Of Horses, meanwhile, involve some pretty violent thrashing of a lap steel, invoke My Morning Jacket, Mercury Rev and Built To Spill, and are possibly the best thing Uncut has seen all week.

Which only leaves the already legendary Tapes’n’Tapes. Who are, perhaps inevitably, a bit of a disappointment. Dorkiness remains de rigueur, the songs are OK, and the singer’s stern baritone makes a change from the nasal shrillness of his contemporaries. But the self-consciousness still grates: aren’t last year’s champion buzz band, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, all we really need of this stuff?

SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST – DAY TWO

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SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST – DAY TWO

So it's 10am on Thursday morning, and you find Uncut sat in a packed lecture theatre watching a school choir sing their music teacher's remarkable composition, "One Good Rock Song Can Change The World". This Austin equivalent of the Langley Schools Music Project is, ridiculously, the prelude to South By Southwest's keynote interview: a cosy sit-down with Neil Young and Jonathan Demme, who's directed Young's new concert movie. As is the way with these things, it feels like An Event, but a slightly boring one. Young is droller than you might imagine, but hardly insightful about the songwriting process - they just come to him, apparently. Repeating yourself is "death", pissing off your audience by trying new things - like Greendale, specifically - is essential. Two small revelations: he's currently waking up with "distorted crunching noise" in his head, which signals his next album will be a return to Crazy Horse; and he loves "Superwolf, devastating folk metal from Chicago," by which we assume he means last year's Will Oldham and Matt Sweeney album. He also sings a bit of "Walk On The Wild Side", which is sweet. In the afternoon, it's Uncut's own party, held in the backyard of a roadhouse shrine to Johnny Cash. The Belly-ish Like and Vietnam - Southern rockers who look like Devendra Banhart's bad brothers - open up. Perry Farrell swans in from the Lollapalooza launch to do "Mountain Song". Drive-By Truckers and the hyperactive, marvellous Go! Team wrap things up. Morrissey would've popped in, but didn't fancy the barbecue, by all accounts. After that, it's the nightly glut of surprise gigs and new bands. The Beastie Boys provide Thursday's biggest draw - so big we can't actually get in, to be honest. The Flaming Lips apparently play the same show as the previous night, this time for Radio 1. While Morrissey plays for Radio 2 across town, Vancouver's all-girl fivepiece The Organ provide one of Uncut's highlights, with their implausibly successful fusion of The Smiths, Blondie and early Cure. Finally, though, we end up lying on a pew in a vast Presbyterian church where Tony Conrad, John Cale's minimalist mentor, is building a thick and enveloping nest of delay and drone from his solitary violin. Later in the same venue, New York drummer Jonathan Kane corrals four searing leftfield guitarists and a bassist for some clanging, relentless motorik chugs that make avant-garde capital out of roots music. In Austin, it seems, even avant-gardists get the blues.

So it’s 10am on Thursday morning, and you find Uncut sat in a packed lecture theatre watching a school choir sing their music teacher’s remarkable composition, “One Good Rock Song Can Change The World”. This Austin equivalent of the Langley Schools Music Project is, ridiculously, the prelude to South By Southwest’s keynote interview: a cosy sit-down with Neil Young and Jonathan Demme, who’s directed Young’s new concert movie.

As is the way with these things, it feels like An Event, but a slightly boring one. Young is droller than you might imagine, but hardly insightful about the songwriting process – they just come to him, apparently. Repeating yourself is “death”, pissing off your audience by trying new things – like Greendale, specifically – is essential. Two small revelations: he’s currently waking up with “distorted crunching noise” in his head, which signals his next album will be a return to Crazy Horse; and he loves “Superwolf, devastating folk metal from Chicago,” by which we assume he means last year’s Will Oldham and Matt Sweeney album. He also sings a bit of “Walk On The Wild Side”, which is sweet.

In the afternoon, it’s Uncut’s own party, held in the backyard of a roadhouse shrine to Johnny Cash. The Belly-ish Like and Vietnam – Southern rockers who look like Devendra Banhart’s bad brothers – open up. Perry Farrell swans in from the Lollapalooza launch to do “Mountain Song”. Drive-By Truckers and the hyperactive, marvellous Go! Team wrap things up. Morrissey would’ve popped in, but didn’t fancy the barbecue, by all accounts.

After that, it’s the nightly glut of surprise gigs and new bands. The Beastie Boys provide Thursday’s biggest draw – so big we can’t actually get in, to be honest. The Flaming Lips apparently play the same show as the previous night, this time for Radio 1. While Morrissey plays for Radio 2 across town, Vancouver’s all-girl fivepiece The Organ provide one of Uncut’s highlights, with their implausibly successful fusion of The Smiths, Blondie and early Cure.

Finally, though, we end up lying on a pew in a vast Presbyterian church where Tony Conrad, John Cale’s minimalist mentor, is building a thick and enveloping nest of delay and drone from his solitary violin. Later in the same venue, New York drummer Jonathan Kane corrals four searing leftfield guitarists and a bassist for some clanging, relentless motorik chugs that make avant-garde capital out of roots music. In Austin, it seems, even avant-gardists get the blues.

SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST – DAY ONE

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SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST – DAY ONE

Hey, good morning from Austin, Texas. Uncut is here not for the rodeo - Leann Rimes plays tonight - but for the South By Southwest music conference, a four-day festival that involves about 1,500 bands, most of the British music business and quite a few Americans, too. Plenty are here to see, Kris Kristofferson and the assembled multitudes of Americana: SXSW was one of the key nurturing grounds for alt-country in the '90s. Plenty more are here to try and discover the next indie phenomenon, checking out dozens of geeky grad students in pursuit of what is technically known in A&R circles as The Next Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! (Exhibit A: Page France, from Baltimore. Nasal vocals, handclaps, xylophones, possible Christianity. Six out of 10). Tapes'n'Tapes are meant to be the ones this year; we'll try and catch them later in the week. Most of us, though, are here to binge on rock. And the opening night brought a surprise treat - the Flaming Lips playing a pub backyard on the wrong side of downtown Austin. As their At War With The Mystics campaign begins, little has superficially changed with the Lips:there are still tatty Halloween costumes for the band; Wayne Coyne is still armed with confetti, balloons and that ancient nun glove puppet; couples still climb onstage and propose to each other. The setlist, though, has been refreshed, and not just with new songs like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" (fuzzy, overdriven, ecstatic) and "Free Radicals" (squalling sludge-funk, with Wayne on doubleneck!). There are also new covers: an opening "Bohemian Rhapsody" that's absurdly note-perfect, right down to the harmonies; and an inspirational version of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", done as a duet with Peaches. After that, the new bands we caught looked a bit sickly in comparison, and the jetlag kicked in. Nevertheless, New York's The Occasion sounded promising, even though two of their members had gone AWOL: faintly psychedelic piano ballads, pot plants on the keyboards, a singing drummer, and an aesthetic somewhere between Nilsson and very early Pink Floyd. Pretty nice. More tomorrow.

Hey, good morning from Austin, Texas.

Uncut is here not for the rodeo – Leann Rimes plays tonight – but for the South By Southwest music conference, a four-day festival that involves about 1,500 bands, most of the British music business and quite a few Americans, too. Plenty are here to see, Kris Kristofferson and the assembled multitudes of Americana: SXSW was one of the key nurturing grounds for alt-country in the ’90s. Plenty more are here to try and discover the next indie phenomenon, checking out dozens of geeky grad students in pursuit of what is technically known in A&R circles as The Next Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! (Exhibit A: Page France, from Baltimore. Nasal vocals, handclaps, xylophones, possible Christianity. Six out of 10). Tapes’n’Tapes are meant to be the ones this year; we’ll try and catch them later in the week.

Most of us, though, are here to binge on rock. And the opening night brought a surprise treat – the Flaming Lips playing a pub backyard on the wrong side of downtown Austin.

As their At War With The Mystics campaign begins, little has superficially changed with the Lips:there are still tatty Halloween costumes for the band; Wayne Coyne is still armed with confetti, balloons and that ancient nun glove puppet; couples still climb onstage and propose to each other.

The setlist, though, has been refreshed, and not just with new songs like “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” (fuzzy, overdriven, ecstatic) and “Free Radicals” (squalling sludge-funk, with Wayne on doubleneck!). There are also new covers: an opening “Bohemian Rhapsody” that’s absurdly note-perfect, right down to the harmonies; and an inspirational version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”, done as a duet with Peaches.

After that, the new bands we caught looked a bit sickly in comparison, and the jetlag kicked in. Nevertheless, New York’s The Occasion sounded promising, even though two of their members had gone AWOL: faintly psychedelic piano ballads, pot plants on the keyboards, a singing drummer, and an aesthetic somewhere between Nilsson and very early Pink Floyd. Pretty nice. More tomorrow.

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