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The Beatles – The Capitol Albums 1.

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The Beatles – The Capitol Albums 1.

As time recedes, how bizarrely indiscriminate the English invasion of the US seems to us now. Ringo was initially deemed the cutest Beatle and, for a while, America embraced The Dave Clark Five and Herman's Hermits as willingly as it shrieked at the Fab Four. This arbitrary Anglophilia endured well beyond the initial invasion. Never let it be forgotten that the Hermits' "'Enery The Eighth" and The New Vaudeville Band's "Winchester Cathedral" were both Billboard No 1s and spawned more novelty imitations than you can imagine. America couldn't get enough of our quaintness. Dissenting voices were, of course, all but drowned out by the screams. Those aggrieved older heads who didn't want their Arthur Alexander and their "Roll Over Beethoven" re-interpreted for the mewling puking masses could like it or lump it. For nearly three years, until the seismic aftershock of Shea Stadium died down, that ubiquitous twang was the only show in town. Kiss goodbye to the golden age of girl groups. Wave ta-ta to surf-pop. Thanks to eccentric licensing, America had an equally skewed encounter with the Fabs chronology. By the time Murray The K and co got to the party, The Beatles were already on their fourth UK hit. Previous US labels had let the cash cow slip from their grip like so much unpatented Epstein merchandise, so Capitol had to play a hasty game of catch-up with the release schedule. Thankfully, they took a less anally retentive approach to the inclusion of singles on albums than their British counterparts. For current collectors and completists, however, the haphazard chronology is slightly more problematic. Meet The Beatles is basically Parlophone's With The Beatles plus singles, the remainder of With The Beatles finding its way onto the imaginatively titled The Beatles Second Album alongside selective B-sides (the classic "You Can't Do That" and "I'll Get You") and EP tracks. Something New, the most incongruous mish-mash of all, is the Hard Day's Night soundtrack with - duh? - the title track and "Can't Buy Me Love" replaced by the German version of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and McCartney's lame take on Carl Perkins' "Matchbox". Beatles '65 lumps half of Beatles For Sale with whatever was left over. Chronologically, then, they make little sense. As an aural document of what made teen America moist, however, the collection is pretty hard to beat. Lyrically, that combination of Merseypool punning and codified smut was lethal. The amphetamine gulp and the exuberant energy unleashed the emotions of a generation. The screamers understood. And as for the wider musical influence, well, the future Mamas & Papas would have still been playing Hootenanny if they hadn't heard "I Call Your Name", while The Byrds' blueprint can be heard in every Rickenbacker chime. Approximately 10,000 other high-school hoppers and garage punks to be taken into account, m'lud. "Oh, I get it. You don't want to be the loveable moptops any more," Dylan allegedly remarked when The Beatles played him Revolver. The truth is, they never did. By Rob Chapman

As time recedes, how bizarrely indiscriminate the English invasion of the US seems to us now. Ringo was initially deemed the cutest Beatle and, for a while, America embraced The Dave Clark Five and Herman’s Hermits as willingly as it shrieked at the Fab Four. This arbitrary Anglophilia endured well beyond the initial invasion. Never let it be forgotten that the Hermits’ “‘Enery The Eighth” and The New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral” were both Billboard No 1s and spawned more novelty imitations than you can imagine. America couldn’t get enough of our quaintness.

Dissenting voices were, of course, all but drowned out by the screams. Those aggrieved older heads who didn’t want their Arthur Alexander and their “Roll Over Beethoven” re-interpreted for the mewling puking masses could like it or lump it. For nearly three years, until the seismic aftershock of Shea Stadium died down, that ubiquitous twang was the only show in town. Kiss goodbye to the golden age of girl groups. Wave ta-ta to surf-pop.

Thanks to eccentric licensing, America had an equally skewed encounter with the Fabs chronology. By the time Murray The K and co got to the party, The Beatles were already on their fourth UK hit. Previous US labels had let the cash cow slip from their grip like so much unpatented Epstein merchandise, so Capitol had to play a hasty game of catch-up with the release schedule. Thankfully, they took a less anally retentive approach to the inclusion of singles on albums than their British counterparts.

For current collectors and completists, however, the haphazard chronology is slightly more problematic. Meet The Beatles is basically Parlophone’s With The Beatles plus singles, the remainder of With The Beatles finding its way onto the imaginatively titled The Beatles Second Album alongside selective B-sides (the classic “You Can’t Do That” and “I’ll Get You”) and EP tracks. Something New, the most incongruous mish-mash of all, is the Hard Day’s Night soundtrack with – duh? – the title track and “Can’t Buy Me Love” replaced by the German version of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and McCartney’s lame take on Carl Perkins’ “Matchbox”. Beatles ’65 lumps half of Beatles For Sale with whatever was left over.

Chronologically, then, they make little sense. As an aural document of what made teen America moist, however, the collection is pretty hard to beat. Lyrically, that combination of Merseypool punning and codified smut was lethal. The amphetamine gulp and the exuberant energy unleashed the emotions of a generation. The screamers understood. And as for the wider musical influence, well, the future Mamas & Papas would have still been playing Hootenanny if they hadn’t heard “I Call Your Name”, while The Byrds’ blueprint can be heard in every Rickenbacker chime. Approximately 10,000 other high-school hoppers and garage punks to be taken into account, m’lud.

“Oh, I get it. You don’t want to be the loveable moptops any more,” Dylan allegedly remarked when The Beatles played him Revolver. The truth is, they never did.

By Rob Chapman

Mercury Rev – The Secret Migration

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Mercury Rev – The Secret Migration

Follow-up to 2001’s All Is Dream, recorded in the band’s Kingston studio by the core Rev trio of Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Jeff Mercel. What a long strange migration Mercury Rev’s has been. From the intemperate chaos of their early days to the dark power and elegance of their work since See You On The Other Side, few comparable cases of successful sonic metamorphosis exist in the past decade. “Ah, bands, those funny little plans…” that sometimes, just sometimes, work out right. Those of us who clung to Jonathan Donahue’s and Sean “Grasshopper” Mackiowiak’s coat-tails as they broke on through to the “other side” of Mercury Rev in 1995 could afford to be blasé about the beauties of 1998’s Deserter’s Songs. See You’s “Everlasting Arm” and “Racing the Tide” had already taught us that the two men were true musical alchemists of cosmic Americana. Along with the Flaming Lips’ Clouds Taste Metallic, Sparklehorse’s Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot and Grandaddy’s Under the Western Freeway, See You presaged a bold new dawn of swirling melody and faux-choirboy singing. Rescued from penury by V2’s Kate Hyman, the Butch Cassidy (Donahue) and Sundance Kid (Grasshopper) of the Catskills were all but forgotten entities when Deserter’s Songs stunned the world in ’98. But Donahue, a shaman among drab rock disciples, was always going to outpace the tide of Britpop bores and become the dark star he is. A lean magus resembling a kind of sexy Peter Stormare, Donahue’s blend of tenderness and menace was exactly what rock’s doctors ordered after the moribund mid-‘90s. Along with the Lips’ 1999 masterpiece Soft Bulletin – ex-Lip Donahue surely being the introvert Wayne Coyne – Songs was the irresistible antidote to crass Britpop: ethereal, exultant music for ears deadened by sex’n’drugs’n’guitars cliché. But Mercury Rev did it differently to the alt.country retro merchants. Rather than retreat into some back-porch banjo idyll, they created a para-psychedelic version of front-parlour Tin Pan Alley/Broadway fantasia. Inspired by the mountains around Kingston and Woodstock, Deserter’s Songs wasn’t country but it certainly wasn’t urban either. It was music out of time, music for ghosts played on defunct instruments before being hot-wired for indie-rock consumption. Influenced not by Dylan or the Byrds but by cult figures like Van Dyke Parks – check the Harper’s Bizarre of the Parks-arranged “High Coin” (1967) for the proto-Rev matrix – Deserter’s was at once quaint and mind-blowing. The quaintness was still there on 2001’s All Is Dream, but the mood this time was darker, more overtly steeped in Donahue’s occult obsessions. Here serpents lurked, monsters surfacing from the depths of bad dreams. “The Dark is Rising,” announced the opening track. A Rev show I saw at London’s Electric Ballroom was frighteningly powerful. Three years later Butch and the Kid have returned with yet another magnificent opus – a “dark country ride” in the company of a “dark country bride”. The Secret Migration is nothing less than a journey through Rev(erie) and a cycle through the seasons of upstate New York. More than anything, Migration is a hymn to nature – to mystery – at a time when materialist artifice threatens to destroy our planet. “Diamonds” is pastoral bling, with Donahue offering jewels of sun-reflecting raindrops and bracelets draped from spiders’ webs – “gifts that you won’t forget” and that all of us should treasure. “Black Forest (Lorelei)” plunges us into dark woods of ancient myth. The soaring “Vermillion” notes an “unseen force behind the turning leaves”; the heartbreaking “My Love” sees “someone behind the scenes” pulling the strings of seasonal change. To a melody worthy of vintage McCartney, “First-Time Mother’s Joy” exquisitely observes spring’s rebirth after harsh winter. On the Spector-esque “In a Funny Way” – an unconscious nod to Jack Nitzsche, intended producer of All Is Dream? – Donahue lists the everyday items of his back-of-beyond existence: fields and streams and lakes and “all my dogs”. Once again Donahue and Grasshopper, abetted by drummer/keyboardist Jeff Mercel, pull us into their unapologetically lush dreamworld. “On a wave of emotion, sending ships across yer ocean,” Jonathan warbles on the ecstatic second track, “I’ve lost all my reason(s)”. Melodically The Secret Migration is closer in feel to Deserter’s Songs than to All Is Dream: it’s less sinister and more glowingly radiant than that sometimes nightmarish record. If the album blasts off with the surging “Secret for a Song” – “The Funny Bird” revisited, or near enough – guitar power is thenceforth less paramount. There are newish textures here: electric piano on “Diamonds” and “The Climbing Rose”, rumbly new-wave bass on “Arise”. Keyboards of all kinds are ubiquitous. By their own admission, the band opted not to resort so much to the usual orchestral apparatus. For the moment the bowed saws are in storage. But Mercury Rev’s power is undiminished. While never resorting to crude hooks, they build melodies to peaks of graceful intensity. “Across Yer Ocean”, “Vermillion” and “My Love” are especially gorgeous. If there are any quibbles at all, they’re with the track sequencing: I’d have separated the slow “My Love” from the charmingly hopeful interlude that is “Moving On” and maybe used the latter to break up “The Climbing Rose” and “Arise” (the album’s least engaging song). But a quibble is all that is. By the time The Secret Migration concludes with the short, shimmering hymn that is “Down Poured the Heavens”, you feel you’ve undergone a mildly life-changing experience. After a year in which true musical magic has been thin on the ground – I’ll take the swishy Scissor Sisters over the arch Franz Ferdinand but I long for pop that transcends pastiche altogether – Mercury Rev return us to a realm of spirit we’ve all but lost touch with. Their songs celebrate the irrational, the domain of feelings beyond words. To cite Tolkien, The Secret Migration is a precious thing indeed. Barney Hoskyns

Follow-up to 2001’s All Is Dream, recorded in the band’s Kingston studio by the core Rev trio of Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Jeff Mercel.

What a long strange migration Mercury Rev’s has been. From the intemperate chaos of their early days to the dark power and elegance of their work since See You On The Other Side, few comparable cases of successful sonic metamorphosis exist in the past decade. “Ah, bands, those funny little plans…” that sometimes, just sometimes, work out right.

Those of us who clung to Jonathan Donahue’s and Sean “Grasshopper” Mackiowiak’s coat-tails as they broke on through to the “other side” of Mercury Rev in 1995 could afford to be blasé about the beauties of 1998’s Deserter’s Songs. See You’s “Everlasting Arm” and “Racing the Tide” had already taught us that the two men were true musical alchemists of cosmic Americana. Along with the Flaming Lips’ Clouds Taste Metallic, Sparklehorse’s Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot and Grandaddy’s Under the Western Freeway, See You presaged a bold new dawn of swirling melody and faux-choirboy singing.

Rescued from penury by V2’s Kate Hyman, the Butch Cassidy (Donahue) and Sundance Kid (Grasshopper) of the Catskills were all but forgotten entities when Deserter’s Songs stunned the world in ’98. But Donahue, a shaman among drab rock disciples, was always going to outpace the tide of Britpop bores and become the dark star he is.

A lean magus resembling a kind of sexy Peter Stormare, Donahue’s blend of tenderness and menace was exactly what rock’s doctors ordered after the moribund mid-‘90s. Along with the Lips’ 1999 masterpiece Soft Bulletin – ex-Lip Donahue surely being the introvert Wayne Coyne – Songs was the irresistible antidote to crass Britpop: ethereal, exultant music for ears deadened by sex’n’drugs’n’guitars cliché.

But Mercury Rev did it differently to the alt.country retro merchants. Rather than retreat into some back-porch banjo idyll, they created a para-psychedelic version of front-parlour Tin Pan Alley/Broadway fantasia. Inspired by the mountains around Kingston and Woodstock, Deserter’s Songs wasn’t country but it certainly wasn’t urban either. It was music out of time, music for ghosts played on defunct instruments before being hot-wired for indie-rock consumption. Influenced not by Dylan or the Byrds but by cult figures like Van Dyke Parks – check the Harper’s Bizarre of the Parks-arranged “High Coin” (1967) for the proto-Rev matrix – Deserter’s was at once quaint and mind-blowing.

The quaintness was still there on 2001’s All Is Dream, but the mood this time was darker, more overtly steeped in Donahue’s occult obsessions. Here serpents lurked, monsters surfacing from the depths of bad dreams. “The Dark is Rising,” announced the opening track. A Rev show I saw at London’s Electric Ballroom was frighteningly powerful.

Three years later Butch and the Kid have returned with yet another magnificent opus – a “dark country ride” in the company of a “dark country bride”. The Secret Migration is nothing less than a journey through Rev(erie) and a cycle through the seasons of upstate New York.

More than anything, Migration is a hymn to nature – to mystery – at a time when materialist artifice threatens to destroy our planet. “Diamonds” is pastoral bling, with Donahue offering jewels of sun-reflecting raindrops and bracelets draped from spiders’ webs – “gifts that you won’t forget” and that all of us should treasure. “Black Forest (Lorelei)” plunges us into dark woods of ancient myth. The soaring “Vermillion” notes an “unseen force behind the turning leaves”; the heartbreaking “My Love” sees “someone behind the scenes” pulling the strings of seasonal change.

To a melody worthy of vintage McCartney, “First-Time Mother’s Joy” exquisitely observes spring’s rebirth after harsh winter. On the Spector-esque “In a Funny Way” – an unconscious nod to Jack Nitzsche, intended producer of All Is Dream? – Donahue lists the everyday items of his back-of-beyond existence: fields and streams and lakes and “all my dogs”. Once again Donahue and Grasshopper, abetted by drummer/keyboardist Jeff Mercel, pull us into their unapologetically lush dreamworld. “On a wave of emotion, sending ships across yer ocean,” Jonathan warbles on the ecstatic second track, “I’ve lost all my reason(s)”.

Melodically The Secret Migration is closer in feel to Deserter’s Songs than to All Is Dream: it’s less sinister and more glowingly radiant than that sometimes nightmarish record. If the album blasts off with the surging “Secret for a Song” – “The Funny Bird” revisited, or near enough – guitar power is thenceforth less paramount. There are newish textures here: electric piano on “Diamonds” and “The Climbing Rose”, rumbly new-wave bass on “Arise”. Keyboards of all kinds are ubiquitous. By their own admission, the band opted not to resort so much to the usual orchestral apparatus. For the moment the bowed saws are in storage.

But Mercury Rev’s power is undiminished. While never resorting to crude hooks, they build melodies to peaks of graceful intensity. “Across Yer Ocean”, “Vermillion” and “My Love” are especially gorgeous. If there are any quibbles at all, they’re with the track sequencing: I’d have separated the slow “My Love” from the charmingly hopeful interlude that is “Moving On” and maybe used the latter to break up “The Climbing Rose” and “Arise” (the album’s least engaging song). But a quibble is all that is. By the time The Secret Migration concludes with the short, shimmering hymn that is “Down Poured the Heavens”, you feel you’ve undergone a mildly life-changing experience.

After a year in which true musical magic has been thin on the ground – I’ll take the swishy Scissor Sisters over the arch Franz Ferdinand but I long for pop that transcends pastiche altogether – Mercury Rev return us to a realm of spirit we’ve all but lost touch with. Their songs celebrate the irrational, the domain of feelings beyond words. To cite Tolkien, The Secret Migration is a precious thing indeed.

Barney Hoskyns

Grant Lee Philips – Ladies’ Love Oracle

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Grant Lee Philips – Ladies’ Love Oracle

On quitting Grant Lee Buffalo in 1999, Phillips holed himself up in the basement of producer Jon Brion for three dark October days, finally emerging with a handful of witching-hour spirituals. Previously available only at gigs and online, Ladies’ Love Oracle is the result: a dimly-lit acoustic suite of minor chord subtlety, artful melodies and sparse backdrops. At times, he sounds eerily Lennonesque (“Heavenly”; “Don’t Look Down”), at others like a delicate Elliott Smith. The slide guitar of “Folding” and a couple of percussive numbers aside, the pace remains fixed (indeed, there’s no sign of his dynamic-shifting baritone amongst the whispers), but it’s an understated treat nonetheless. Rob Hughes

On quitting Grant Lee Buffalo in 1999, Phillips holed himself up in the basement of producer Jon Brion for three dark October days, finally emerging with a handful of witching-hour spirituals. Previously available only at gigs and online, Ladies’ Love Oracle is the result: a dimly-lit acoustic suite of minor chord subtlety, artful melodies and sparse backdrops. At times, he sounds eerily Lennonesque (“Heavenly”; “Don’t Look Down”), at others like a delicate Elliott Smith. The slide guitar of “Folding” and a couple of percussive numbers aside, the pace remains fixed (indeed, there’s no sign of his dynamic-shifting baritone amongst the whispers), but it’s an understated treat nonetheless.

Rob Hughes

Nora O’Connor – Til The Dawn

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Sometime bartender, midwife and reverend, O'Connor's true calling may lie as a remarkable interpreter of song. Though recent years have found her adding dewy vocal harmonies for Andrew Bird's Bowl Of Fire (and Mavis Staples), her solo debut is long overdue. A brace of impressive originals?"My Backyard", "Tonight"?are whispers of classic honky-tonk, but she truly shines on covers of James (Squirrel Nut Zippers) Mathus' "Bottoms" and "Nightingale", twisting each into the kind of lovelorn ballad Alison Krauss would kill for. The muted boom-chicka-boom of Matt Weber's "OK With Me" is equally gripping, as is Lori Carson closer "Down Here".

Sometime bartender, midwife and reverend, O’Connor’s true calling may lie as a remarkable interpreter of song. Though recent years have found her adding dewy vocal harmonies for Andrew Bird’s Bowl Of Fire (and Mavis Staples), her solo debut is long overdue. A brace of impressive originals?”My Backyard”, “Tonight”?are whispers of classic honky-tonk, but she truly shines on covers of James (Squirrel Nut Zippers) Mathus’ “Bottoms” and “Nightingale”, twisting each into the kind of lovelorn ballad Alison Krauss would kill for. The muted boom-chicka-boom of Matt Weber’s “OK With Me” is equally gripping, as is Lori Carson closer “Down Here”.

Death In Vegas – Satan’s Circus

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Goth techno, built for stadiums and sung by Liam Gallagher and lggy Pop, is evidently a thing of Death In Vegas' extravagant major-label past. Now on their own Drone imprint, Richard Fearless and Tim Holmes' ambitions are more modest, that rotten album title notwithstanding. A song called "Sons Of Rother" reveals more?that they've consciously restyled themselves in the image of '70s Krautrock, especially Michael Rother's Neu! and Harmonia. At times it's hard to see the point of such a meticulous homage to motorik; one suspects Kraftwerk themselves might have trouble differentiating the start of "Zugaga" from "Trans Europe Express". Nevertheless, DIV's most aesthetically satisfying album, and perhaps an explanation of why their production work for Oasis last year was so abruptly terminated. JOHN MULVEY

Goth techno, built for stadiums and sung by Liam Gallagher and lggy Pop, is evidently a thing of Death In Vegas’ extravagant major-label past. Now on their own Drone imprint, Richard Fearless and Tim Holmes’ ambitions are more modest, that rotten album title notwithstanding. A song called “Sons Of Rother” reveals more?that they’ve consciously restyled themselves in the image of ’70s Krautrock, especially Michael Rother’s Neu! and Harmonia. At times it’s hard to see the point of such a meticulous homage to motorik; one suspects Kraftwerk themselves might have trouble differentiating the start of “Zugaga” from “Trans Europe Express”. Nevertheless, DIV’s most aesthetically satisfying album, and perhaps an explanation of why their production work for Oasis last year was so abruptly terminated.

JOHN MULVEY

Clive Palmer – All Roads Lead To Land

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Clive Palmer distinguished himself as a founding member of The Incredible String Band together with Robin Williamson in 1965. This new album has little of the Incredible mystery about it. It's mostly Palmer alone in the studio, picking and plucking with a slow and stately gait. He sings with a quiet dignity, although his voice, at times uncertain, wavers over the notes. A valiant effort, but too much of this conventional chugging resembles work by another Englishman with the same first name: Clive Dunn.

Clive Palmer distinguished himself as a founding member of The Incredible String Band together with Robin Williamson in 1965. This new album has little of the Incredible mystery about it. It’s mostly Palmer alone in the studio, picking and plucking with a slow and stately gait.

He sings with a quiet dignity, although his voice, at times uncertain, wavers over the notes. A valiant effort, but too much of this conventional chugging resembles work by another Englishman with the same first name: Clive Dunn.

U2 – How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

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One! Two! Three! Four! Bono began Boy, 24 years ago now, counting in the opening bars of "I Will Follow" just so. They sounded drilled and disciplined from the start, marshalling the righteous ire of The Clash with the rigour of Joy Division, like God's own post-punk marching band... UNOS! DOS! TRES! CATORCE! So when "Vertigo" wails into life with mangled Spanish, it feels like a timely nod to their garage-band hinterland. "Catorce" rather than the expected "cuatro" because this is, after all, U2's 14th album (including Wide Awake In America and Passengers). It had, by all accounts, a difficult gestation: a year's work with Chris Thomas, including sessions with a 50-piece orchestra, was shelved. There are actually seven people, including Eno, Flood and Nellee Hooper, credited with "additional production". Having spent a decade reinventing themselves as stadium ironists, the supreme irony may be that sincerity is the trickiest pose of all to maintain. If All That You Can't Leave Behind saw them reapplying for the job of Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band In The World, four years on, they might still be on probation. In which case recalling Steve Lillywhite, the producer of their debut trilogy of albums, to work with them seems like a back-to-basics statement of intent. But no one steps into the same garage twice. While the songs on HTDAAB revisit the wide-eyed, clanging vistas of October or War, some of that marching certainty has been lost, the compasses are reeling and all the clocks seem awry. Really, the cover of this record could have been an experienced update on the blankly innocent portrait of Boy. The title might simply have been Man. In retrospect, the key line on ATYCLB was from that affectionate quarrel with the ghost of Michael Hutchence, "Stuck In A Moment": "I'm not afraid of anything in this world". It may have been a record riddled with mortality, but it sounded oddly energised by the encounter. By contrast, HTDAAB most definitely has The Fear. Bono has said that he thinks of himself as the atomic bomb of that unwieldy title, that his father's death lit a self-destructive spark that took two years to defuse. And "Vertigo" may be the sound of that immediate tailspin of grief, the brutal disorientation of "everything I wish I didn't know". Before his death, Bono's father apparently struggled with and finally lost his faith. If HTDAAB feels much more intimately urgent than any U2 record of the past decade, it may be that, with their belief so jeopardised, their hopes so thoroughly jangled, there's so much more at stake. While in the past they may have hung with Johnny Cash, and even named a record after the experience of Hiroshima, HTDAAB feels like the first U2 record fully acquainted with Doom, touched by what the American novelist Steve Erickson once called "the nuclear imagination". The strongest songs on the record wrestle explicitly with these disconsolate intimations of mortality. "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" begins quietly with tough-guy bravado, the circling, half-articulated disputes and debts between father and son, and builds gradually to a keening, chiming, classical U2 crescendo that, crucially, feels dramatically earned. If the grief is operatic, well, as Bono acknowledges finally to the father who conducted along to the radio with knitting needles, "you're the reason why the opera's in me". "One Step Closer", meanwhile, is the centrepiece of the record. Inspired by a comment from, of all people, Noel Gallagher, it's the hushed aftermath to "Sometimes...". Half-sighed in elaborate reluctance, accompanied by a shining mist of guitar, it offers no consolation in the face of death other than the bruised knowledge that "a heart that hurts is a heart that beats". But, in its stark, awestruck honesty, it may be the bravest, most affecting song they've ever recorded. This may all make HTDAAB sound like an entirely morbid, maudlin affair—in fact, it's their most unabashedly strident record since The Unforgettable Fire. At times you suspect that they took the much-trumpeted post-9/11 Death of Irony as a personal relief. On the rampant, rumbustious "All Because Of You" and "City Of Blinding Lights" you get the sense of a band flexing muscles they haven't used in years. And though he sings, "I like the sound of my own voice/I didn't give anyone else a choice", the stadium rock statesman is most assuredly back. "Crumbs From Your Table" and "Miracle Drug", along with the lavish 50-page CD booklet, grow out of Bono's campaigning for Third World debt relief, fair trade and AIDS research, declaring baldly, "Where you live should not decide/Whether you live or whether you die". The stomping Jericho blues of "Love And Peace...Or Else", meanwhile, is U2's own tactful intervention in the Middle East crisis. But even at their most glibly bombastic, there's a melancholy undertow that they can't shake. Though the band rattle and strum with their old '80s vigour, the lines that stay with you speak of a creeping malaise: "I'm at the place I started out from and I want back inside"... "The more you see the less you know"..."What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?" So it feels like an overcompensation when the record builds to the inevitable, unequivocal prayer of "Yahweh"—the glinting skyscraping guitars of "Pride" or "Where The Streets Have No Name" reactivated and ringing as Bono pleads, "Take this heart... and make it brave". It's yearning, rousing and, frankly, it's U2 on autopilot. It feels like a rather pat conclusion to such a troubled record, a piece of deus ex machina uplift tacked on to a film noir by a studio determined not to send the audience out on a downer. And you suspect that someone in the band might feel this way, too. Because, for the UK release alone, the record actually concludes with "Fast Cars", an eerie, Arabic-flavoured sketch of a song recorded on their last day in the studio. Overloaded with "CCTV, pornography, CNBC", it feels like the dazed and hungover sequel to the reeling "Vertigo". The singer's "in detox and checking stocks" while "out in the desert they're dismantling an atomic bomb". But the song seems rueful about its rehab: "Don't you worry about your mind", sings Bono in a fade clouded in muezzin wails, "you should worry about your pain/and the day it goes away...". It's an appropriately unsettling ending to a record that, at its best, is honest in its doubts.

One! Two! Three! Four! Bono began Boy, 24 years ago now, counting in the opening bars of “I Will Follow” just so. They sounded drilled and disciplined from the start, marshalling the righteous ire of The Clash with the rigour of Joy Division, like God’s own post-punk marching band…

UNOS! DOS! TRES! CATORCE! So when “Vertigo” wails into life with mangled Spanish, it feels like a timely nod to their garage-band hinterland. “Catorce” rather than the expected “cuatro” because this is, after all, U2’s 14th album (including Wide Awake In America and Passengers). It had, by all accounts, a difficult gestation: a year’s work with Chris Thomas, including sessions with a 50-piece orchestra, was shelved. There are actually seven people, including Eno, Flood and Nellee Hooper, credited with “additional production”. Having spent a decade reinventing themselves as stadium ironists, the supreme irony may be that sincerity is the trickiest pose of all to maintain. If All That You Can’t Leave Behind saw them reapplying for the job of Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band In The World, four years on, they might still be on probation.

In which case recalling Steve Lillywhite, the producer of their debut trilogy of albums, to work with them seems like a back-to-basics statement of intent. But no one steps into the same garage twice. While the songs on HTDAAB revisit the wide-eyed, clanging vistas of October or War, some of that marching certainty has been lost, the compasses are reeling and all the clocks seem awry. Really, the cover of this record could have been an experienced update on the blankly innocent portrait of Boy. The title might simply have been Man.

In retrospect, the key line on ATYCLB was from that affectionate quarrel with the ghost of Michael Hutchence, “Stuck In A Moment”: “I’m not afraid of anything in this world”. It may have been a record riddled with mortality, but it sounded oddly energised by the encounter. By contrast, HTDAAB most definitely has The Fear. Bono has said that he thinks of himself as the atomic bomb of that unwieldy title, that his father’s death lit a self-destructive spark that took two years to defuse. And “Vertigo” may be the sound of that immediate tailspin of grief, the brutal disorientation of “everything I wish I didn’t know”.

Before his death, Bono’s father apparently struggled with and finally lost his faith. If HTDAAB feels much more intimately urgent than any U2 record of the past decade, it may be that, with their belief so jeopardised, their hopes so thoroughly jangled, there’s so much more at stake. While in the past they may have hung with Johnny Cash, and even named a record after the experience of Hiroshima, HTDAAB feels like the first U2 record fully acquainted with Doom, touched by what the American novelist Steve Erickson once called “the nuclear imagination”.

The strongest songs on the record wrestle explicitly with these disconsolate intimations of mortality. “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” begins quietly with tough-guy bravado, the circling, half-articulated disputes and debts between father and son, and builds gradually to a keening, chiming, classical U2 crescendo that, crucially, feels dramatically earned. If the grief is operatic, well, as Bono acknowledges finally to the father who conducted along to the radio with knitting needles, “you’re the reason why the opera’s in me”.

“One Step Closer”, meanwhile, is the centrepiece of the record. Inspired by a comment from, of all people, Noel Gallagher, it’s the hushed aftermath to “Sometimes…”. Half-sighed in elaborate reluctance, accompanied by a shining mist of guitar, it offers no consolation in the face of death other than the bruised knowledge that “a heart that hurts is a heart that beats”. But, in its stark, awestruck honesty, it may be the bravest, most affecting song they’ve ever recorded.

This may all make HTDAAB sound like an entirely morbid, maudlin affair—in fact, it’s their most unabashedly strident record since The Unforgettable Fire. At times you suspect that they took the much-trumpeted post-9/11 Death of Irony as a personal relief. On the rampant, rumbustious “All Because Of You” and “City Of Blinding Lights” you get the sense of a band flexing muscles they haven’t used in years. And though he sings, “I like the sound of my own voice/I didn’t give anyone else a choice”, the stadium rock statesman is most assuredly back. “Crumbs From Your Table” and “Miracle Drug”, along with the lavish 50-page CD booklet, grow out of Bono’s campaigning for Third World debt relief, fair trade and AIDS research, declaring baldly, “Where you live should not decide/Whether you live or whether you die”. The stomping Jericho blues of “Love And Peace…Or Else”, meanwhile, is U2’s own tactful intervention in the Middle East crisis.

But even at their most glibly bombastic, there’s a melancholy undertow that they can’t shake. Though the band rattle and strum with their old ’80s vigour, the lines that stay with you speak of a creeping malaise: “I’m at the place I started out from and I want back inside”… “The more you see the less you know”…”What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?”

So it feels like an overcompensation when the record builds to the inevitable, unequivocal prayer of “Yahweh”—the glinting skyscraping guitars of “Pride” or “Where The Streets Have No Name” reactivated and ringing as Bono pleads, “Take this heart… and make it brave”. It’s yearning, rousing and, frankly, it’s U2 on autopilot. It feels like a rather pat conclusion to such a troubled record, a piece of deus ex machina uplift tacked on to a film noir by a studio determined not to send the audience out on a downer.

And you suspect that someone in the band might feel this way, too. Because, for the UK release alone, the record actually concludes with “Fast Cars”, an eerie, Arabic-flavoured sketch of a song recorded on their last day in the studio. Overloaded with “CCTV, pornography, CNBC”, it feels like the dazed and hungover sequel to the reeling “Vertigo”. The singer’s “in detox and checking stocks” while “out in the desert they’re dismantling an atomic bomb”. But the song seems rueful about its rehab: “Don’t you worry about your mind”, sings Bono in a fade clouded in muezzin wails, “you should worry about your pain/and the day it goes away…”. It’s an appropriately unsettling ending to a record that, at its best, is honest in its doubts.

House Of Flying Daggers

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House Of Flying Daggers

To release one breath-taking, genre-defining Martial Arts epic in a year is an impressive achievement; to release two might be considered little more than a vulgar display of self-indulgence. But after the eye-popping dazzle and explosive spectacle of Hero, director Zhang Yimou returns with yet another beautifully-wrought incursion into classical Chinese folklore. And, incredibly, it's even better than its predecessor. Yimou is in a league of his own, and you get the sense that he knows it - such is the deftness and confidence with which he guides us through this sensuous, sweeping story. We're in 859AD, and rebel insurgents the House Of Flying Daggers are locked in a protracted and bloody internecine warfare with the corrupt Tang dynasty. Two local sheriffs - Leo (Lau) and Jin (Kaneshiro) - are charged with bringing in the rebels' new leader, and suspect a blind courtesan, Mei (Hero co-star Ziyi) is the daughter of the Daggers' old leader. Leo arrests Mei, but she stubbornly refuses to co-operate. So Jin, pretending to be a warrior sympathetic to her cause, effects her "rescue" and the two head off to join up with the Daggers, with Leo tailing them at a discreet distance. Leo and Mei make a handsome couple, and it's no surprise that - when not dodging bamboo spears - they start falling for each other. Which makes things very difficult with Mei is finally forced to reveal a very surprising secret. The debate over which of Zhang's two masterful pieces of cinema is the better is one that will run and run, but for my book House Of Flying Daggers just takes it. Hero has a stylised beauty and vivid colours that practically sing to you. But there's something austere and emotionally restrained about the film. Daggers, meanwhile, is all about passion - about crazy, reckless actions taken in the name of politics and love. It's sexy, kinetic and it flaunts its state of the art digital special effects (those daggers really fly and the camera skims along behind them). It also has one of the coolest titles in the history of cinema. The fight choreography is flawless, the set pieces make you want to stand up in your seat and cheer. It doesn't get much better than this, believe me. By Wendy Ide

To release one breath-taking, genre-defining Martial Arts epic in a year is an impressive achievement; to release two might be considered little more than a vulgar display of self-indulgence. But after the eye-popping dazzle and explosive spectacle of Hero, director Zhang Yimou returns with yet another beautifully-wrought incursion into classical Chinese folklore. And, incredibly, it’s even better than its predecessor. Yimou is in a league of his own, and you get the sense that he knows it – such is the deftness and confidence with which he guides us through this sensuous, sweeping story.

We’re in 859AD, and rebel insurgents the House Of Flying Daggers are locked in a protracted and bloody internecine warfare with the corrupt Tang dynasty. Two local sheriffs – Leo (Lau) and Jin (Kaneshiro) – are charged with bringing in the rebels’ new leader, and suspect a blind courtesan, Mei (Hero co-star Ziyi) is the daughter of the Daggers’ old leader. Leo arrests Mei, but she stubbornly refuses to co-operate. So Jin, pretending to be a warrior sympathetic to her cause, effects her “rescue” and the two head off to join up with the Daggers, with Leo tailing them at a discreet distance. Leo and Mei make a handsome couple, and it’s no surprise that – when not dodging bamboo spears – they start falling for each other. Which makes things very difficult with Mei is finally forced to reveal a very surprising secret.

The debate over which of Zhang’s two masterful pieces of cinema is the better is one that will run and run, but for my book House Of Flying Daggers just takes it. Hero has a stylised beauty and vivid colours that practically sing to you. But there’s something austere and emotionally restrained about the film. Daggers, meanwhile, is all about passion – about crazy, reckless actions taken in the name of politics and love. It’s sexy, kinetic and it flaunts its state of the art digital special effects (those daggers really fly and the camera skims along behind them). It also has one of the coolest titles in the history of cinema. The fight choreography is flawless, the set pieces make you want to stand up in your seat and cheer.

It doesn’t get much better than this, believe me.

By Wendy Ide

Beautiful Dreamer

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Beautiful Dreamer

For a man who has apparently spent 37 years traumatised by 'Smile', Brian Wilson certainly capitalised on its notoriety in 2004. The past year has seen this elusive ghost-record, beloved of rock mythographers, transformed into a cultural blockbuster. First, the extraordinary shows. Then, the album: rock's great unfinished work resurrected as rock's greatest, unlikeliest salvage job. And now, perhaps inevitably, the movie: 'Beautiful Dreamer', which tells the story of 'Smile' from its beginning - in the tents, sandpits and expanded minds of mid-'60s LA - through to its unveiling, in February 2004, at London's Royal Festival Hall. It's a tremendous yarn, and one which writer/director David Leaf - a long-time Wilson associate and Beach Boys scholar - is eminently qualified to tell. Valuably, the testimony of insiders like David Anderle show how events that have long been used to illustrate Wilson's madness, were actually silly pranks encouraged by the community of freaks around him. The tent in the front room was either for "eating sandwiches" (Wilson) or smoking dope (everyone else). Wilson, incidentally, is a lot funnier and more alert than those who have him pegged as a zombie would have you believe. 'Beautiful Dreamer' is good at this sort of detail, and good at contextualising 'Smile' as a celebration of an idealised America, a means of escaping reality as the country tore itself to pieces over Vietnam. Unfortunately, the army of illustrious talking heads - Burt Bacharach, Jim Webb, Roger Daltrey and more - mouth platitudes rather than provide insights. They are, there, too, for the purpose of padding out 'Beautiful Dreamer'. A product of Wilson's own empire (his wife Melinda is credited as Executive Producer), the singer's ongoing feud with his former bandmates ensures that there is no actual film of The Beach Boys in the entire 110 minutes of the movie. When Leaf deploys a magnificent clip of Wilson singing "Surf's Up" on a 1967 Leonard Bernstein TV special, the absence of contemporaneous footage becomes glaring. If it's a hagiography of Wilson, it's also a - justifiable - demonisation of The Beach Boys, who are portrayed as conservative oafs in comparison to the sophisticated circle of Van Dyke Parks, Anderle and co. Drugs didn't contribute to Brian's breakdown and the dumping of 'Smile', his old friends assert, it was the scepticism and meddling of The Beach Boys. When Wilson lists the reasons he abandoned the record, his first is, "Mike [Love] didn't like it." The second half of the movie is substantially less interesting, with Leaf following Wilson and his band as they prepare the live version of 'Smile'. There are occasional insights into Wilson's volatile nature: he spends one vocal rehearsal anxious and silent, and it's commendable that Leaf and Melinda Wilson haven't sought to portray their subject's depression as entirely cured. But too many of the set-ups feel contrived, and the endless eulogies from his current bandmates are better suited to a concert programme than a documentary. Yes, Brian Wilson is a genius. But after nearly two hours of 'Beautiful Dreamer', you long for one dissenter - Mike Love, say - to call him a pretentious fraud, just for the hell of it. John Mulvey

For a man who has apparently spent 37 years traumatised by ‘Smile’, Brian Wilson certainly capitalised on its notoriety in 2004. The past year has seen this elusive ghost-record, beloved of rock mythographers, transformed into a cultural blockbuster. First, the extraordinary shows. Then, the album: rock’s great unfinished work resurrected as rock’s greatest, unlikeliest salvage job. And now, perhaps inevitably, the movie: ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, which tells the story of ‘Smile’ from its beginning – in the tents, sandpits and expanded minds of mid-’60s LA – through to its unveiling, in February 2004, at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

It’s a tremendous yarn, and one which writer/director David Leaf – a long-time Wilson associate and Beach Boys scholar – is eminently qualified to tell. Valuably, the testimony of insiders like David Anderle show how events that have long been used to illustrate Wilson’s madness, were actually silly pranks encouraged by the community of freaks around him. The tent in the front room was either for “eating sandwiches” (Wilson) or smoking dope (everyone else). Wilson, incidentally, is a lot funnier and more alert than those who have him pegged as a zombie would have you believe.

‘Beautiful Dreamer’ is good at this sort of detail, and good at contextualising ‘Smile’ as a celebration of an idealised America, a means of escaping reality as the country tore itself to pieces over Vietnam. Unfortunately, the army of illustrious talking heads – Burt Bacharach, Jim Webb, Roger Daltrey and more – mouth platitudes rather than provide insights. They are, there, too, for the purpose of padding out ‘Beautiful Dreamer’. A product of Wilson’s own empire (his wife Melinda is credited as Executive Producer), the singer’s ongoing feud with his former bandmates ensures that there is no actual film of The Beach Boys in the entire 110 minutes of the movie. When Leaf deploys a magnificent clip of Wilson singing “Surf’s Up” on a 1967 Leonard Bernstein TV special, the absence of contemporaneous footage becomes glaring.

If it’s a hagiography of Wilson, it’s also a – justifiable – demonisation of The Beach Boys, who are portrayed as conservative oafs in comparison to the sophisticated circle of Van Dyke Parks, Anderle and co. Drugs didn’t contribute to Brian’s breakdown and the dumping of ‘Smile’, his old friends assert, it was the scepticism and meddling of The Beach Boys. When Wilson lists the reasons he abandoned the record, his first is, “Mike [Love] didn’t like it.”

The second half of the movie is substantially less interesting, with Leaf following Wilson and his band as they prepare the live version of ‘Smile’. There are occasional insights into Wilson’s volatile nature: he spends one vocal rehearsal anxious and silent, and it’s commendable that Leaf and Melinda Wilson haven’t sought to portray their subject’s depression as entirely cured. But too many of the set-ups feel contrived, and the endless eulogies from his current bandmates are better suited to a concert programme than a documentary. Yes, Brian Wilson is a genius. But after nearly two hours of ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, you long for one dissenter – Mike Love, say – to call him a pretentious fraud, just for the hell of it.

John Mulvey

Garden State

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Garden State

It's been some time since a supposed romantic comedy invited you to open your heart to "the joy and pain of the infinite abyss that is life". Garden State is an introspective, melancholy piece of slacker existentialism, which rips apart occasionally to reveal belly laughs and tiny miracles. Its forebears are The Graduate and the late Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls. Braff, as writer, director and star, takes almost absurd risks both with his persona (you couldn't conceive of a lead character further away from his JD in the acidic, breakneck hospital sitcom Scrubs) and with his concept: the people in his film start off jaded, and pick it up hesitantly. And the big kiss, the big moment, comes as the lovers stand in a rainstorm by a big wooden ark. It pays off because there are many prior scenes of quietly humorous reserve, where he could bring on the marching band, but doesn't. It's clear throughout that he's learned understatement from the masters. He has it so down that when Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy In New York City" strides in, it sounds like the greatest song you ever heard. Braff - dazed, spaced out, too numb to be miserable - plays Andrew Largeman, a lithium-guzzler since his domineering father (Holm) prescribed it. His mother's tragic death sparks a break from the medication, to see what happens. Gradually, slowly, something does. Returning from LA where he's a F-list actor and part-time waiter (autobiographical much, Zach?), Largeman visits his New Jersey home town for the first time in years. He hangs out, swimming and playing spin-the-bottle with old, stoned friends. "Wanna party? After we bury your mom?" they suggest tactfully. "I get benefits," says one who's now a cop, "If I get shot, I'm rich." Mark (Sarsgaard) is a gravedigger, who hates the fact that his mom is dating a friend of his who's fluent in Klingon. This friend dresses up as a mediaeval knight as part of his job at a fast food chain. "I'm only 26," Mark sighs, "I'm not in any rush. What's your rush for?" For this town, that constitutes a rallying cry. Then Andrew, or "Large", meets Sam (Portman), a girl of spontaneity, colour, hope. She has a tendency to tell white lies, some less white than others. She's epileptic, a former ice-skater. She likes him. She even recognises him from TV. "Are you really retarded? No? Great job - I thought you were." She urges him to do unique, memorable things, however small. There's no denying that Portman's playing practically the same role and serving the same narrative function here as she did in Beautiful Girls, only a few years on. A little tighter around the eyes. Large, though, is more anaesthetised than Timothy Hutton's character was there: a more suitable case for her treatment. While young love blooms, old family skeletons finally drop from closets as Large and his father confront each other over the past. But not with a blazing King Lear row: that's not this film's style. Rather, they communicate, just. Garden State is wonderfully insightful and believable. It has its themes and motifs. Everyone's self-medicating in some way, it suggests. Water is everywhere, from dripping taps to floods. Animals play a part: Sam has her own pet cemetery. "Goodbye Jelly," she says, burying a hamster. "I hope you liked me." Everyone, beneath surface apathy, is asking questions, whether they're trivial ones regarding pop culture (Mark's collecting Desert Storm trading cards, which he figures will provide his pension fund; Sam asserts that a song can change your life) or big ones about death and wasted years. It's a film which could easily topple into pretentiousness, but Braff and the performers carry it along with just the right lightness of touch. It floats. Its indie credentials further promoted by accompaniment from The Shins, Thievery Corporation, Nick Drake and others, Garden State is about a lost young man finding, if not exactly paradise, at least a wake-up call he needed but didn't know he wanted. If not home, at least a heart. It's a warm, sad smile; it's subtly, softly, full of earthly delights. Chris Roberts

It’s been some time since a supposed romantic comedy invited you to open your heart to “the joy and pain of the infinite abyss that is life”. Garden State is an introspective, melancholy piece of slacker existentialism, which rips apart occasionally to reveal belly laughs and tiny miracles. Its forebears are The Graduate and the late Ted Demme’s Beautiful Girls. Braff, as writer, director and star, takes almost absurd risks both with his persona (you couldn’t conceive of a lead character further away from his JD in the acidic, breakneck hospital sitcom Scrubs) and with his concept: the people in his film start off jaded, and pick it up hesitantly. And the big kiss, the big moment, comes as the lovers stand in a rainstorm by a big wooden ark. It pays off because there are many prior scenes of quietly humorous reserve, where he could bring on the marching band, but doesn’t. It’s clear throughout that he’s learned understatement from the masters. He has it so down that when Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy In New York City” strides in, it sounds like the greatest song you ever heard.

Braff – dazed, spaced out, too numb to be miserable – plays Andrew Largeman, a lithium-guzzler since his domineering father (Holm) prescribed it. His mother’s tragic death sparks a break from the medication, to see what happens. Gradually, slowly, something does. Returning from LA where he’s a F-list actor and part-time waiter (autobiographical much, Zach?), Largeman visits his New Jersey home town for the first time in years. He hangs out, swimming and playing spin-the-bottle with old, stoned friends. “Wanna party? After we bury your mom?” they suggest tactfully. “I get benefits,” says one who’s now a cop, “If I get shot, I’m rich.” Mark (Sarsgaard) is a gravedigger, who hates the fact that his mom is dating a friend of his who’s fluent in Klingon. This friend dresses up as a mediaeval knight as part of his job at a fast food chain. “I’m only 26,” Mark sighs, “I’m not in any rush. What’s your rush for?” For this town, that constitutes a rallying cry.

Then Andrew, or “Large”, meets Sam (Portman), a girl of spontaneity, colour, hope. She has a tendency to tell white lies, some less white than others. She’s epileptic, a former ice-skater. She likes him. She even recognises him from TV. “Are you really retarded? No? Great job – I thought you were.” She urges him to do unique, memorable things, however small. There’s no denying that Portman’s playing practically the same role and serving the same narrative function here as she did in Beautiful Girls, only a few years on. A little tighter around the eyes. Large, though, is more anaesthetised than Timothy Hutton’s character was there: a more suitable case for her treatment. While young love blooms, old family skeletons finally drop from closets as Large and his father confront each other over the past. But not with a blazing King Lear row: that’s not this film’s style. Rather, they communicate, just. Garden State is wonderfully insightful and believable.

It has its themes and motifs. Everyone’s self-medicating in some way, it suggests. Water is everywhere, from dripping taps to floods. Animals play a part: Sam has her own pet cemetery. “Goodbye Jelly,” she says, burying a hamster. “I hope you liked me.” Everyone, beneath surface apathy, is asking questions, whether they’re trivial ones regarding pop culture (Mark’s collecting Desert Storm trading cards, which he figures will provide his pension fund; Sam asserts that a song can change your life) or big ones about death and wasted years. It’s a film which could easily topple into pretentiousness, but Braff and the performers carry it along with just the right lightness of touch. It floats.

Its indie credentials further promoted by accompaniment from The Shins, Thievery Corporation, Nick Drake and others, Garden State is about a lost young man finding, if not exactly paradise, at least a wake-up call he needed but didn’t know he wanted. If not home, at least a heart. It’s a warm, sad smile; it’s subtly, softly, full of earthly delights.

Chris Roberts

John Lennon – Acoustic

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John Lennon – Acoustic

John Lennon died almost a decade before the advent of the MTV Unplugged format. Acoustic, though, simulates the idea by collecting 16 tracks featuring just him on acoustic guitar and vocals, except for “The Luck Of The Irish” where he is joined by Yoko. This is one of three stirring live recordings, the others being “John Sinclair” and the ubiquitous “Imagine”, all from benefits in 1971. Prepared under the watchful eye of Yoko Ono, the rest are demos and home recording. But, somewhat contentiously, nine of the sixteen selections are already available on the 1998 4CD Anthology Box. It rather smacks of exploitation, since this is a collection of unpolished, unfinished material - mere snippets at times - designed not for casual record buyer but, essentially, for serious fans who, chances are, own over half of it already. Acoustic was originally intended for release ‘only in Japan’ but has since been made available worldwide due, supposedly, to the amount of ‘global interest’. It rather begs the question as to why a Lennon album with seven unreleased tracks was not considered to be of interest to the wider world in the first instance? What is even more inexplicable is the complete absence of liner notes and recording details. The booklet, instead, offers drawings by Lennon, lyrics, a chord chart and tuning instructions in the guise of fake guitar manual . Yoko also dedicates the album to ‘future guitarists’, a little misleading unless there‘s some intended irony. As these raw recordings show, Lennon was no virtuoso guitarist. His gift was his passion, his voice and his songs and it’s those very songs that make Acoustic indispensable to hardcore fans for the seven unreleased cuts. Assembled more or less chronologically, Acoustic opens with six songs taped during August and September 1970 and destined for John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band, his most powerful, radical musical statement. Included are three new glimpses into Lennon’s stripped-bare psyche, all equally revealing. “Well Well Well” is stark and menacing, Lennon sounding like an old delta bluesman albeit with slightly phased vocals. “My Mommy’s Dead” is completely desolate, Lennon‘s unearthly voice intoning over thrashed guitar chords to the nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice“. By contrast, “God“ is folky, like one of Lennon’s sporadic Dylan spoofs, even the familiar litany of rejected beliefs in God, Elvis, Beatles et al is delivered deadpan. Intriguingly throwaway and with none of the passion and spirituality of the finished version. Next up is a real jewel, the “Cold Turkey” demo from September 1969. Over a repeated two chord pattern, Lennon’s depiction of the pain and loneliness of chemical withdrawal is as intense and harrowing as the fully pumped-up single version. Little wonder The Beatles baulked at recording it. Lennon’s vocal is almost bleating in anguish, causing Marc Bolan to later claim that he was trying to copy him. “What You Got” jumps to the June 1974 work-outs for Walls And Bridges. This version is a rockabilly romp with its “You Don’t Know What You Got Till You Lose It” message fleshed out by impromptu lyrics and even a slight steal from Little Richard’s “Rip It Up”. The final batch of home recordings date from the 1979/80 house-husband years. There is a delightful, very affectionate “Dear Yoko” with a melody line part Byrds/part Buddy Holly that‘s Lennon at his most engaging. There‘s a similar warmth to “Real Love”, a song Lennon regularly returned to. The version here is genuinely touching and far more subtle than the pounding piano based track which was eventually completed by the remaining Beatles as the follow-up to “Free As A Bird”. Infuriatingly, there’s much to commend Acoustic. But you can‘t help but feel cheated by the crossovers from Anthology. The recycling and consequent dilution of the Lennon myth will undoubtedly continue with further raking through the seemingly endless hours of home tapes. Hopefully, Yoko Ono will be less haphazard next time around. By the same token, whatever claims to the contrary, The Beatles archive is anything but depleted. Spare us the Let It Be rehearsals, but a collection of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison acoustic demos for the White Album and Abbey Road alone would make for a very desirable Beatles Unplugged. Mick Houghton

John Lennon died almost a decade before the advent of the MTV Unplugged format. Acoustic, though, simulates the idea by collecting 16 tracks featuring just him on acoustic guitar and vocals, except for “The Luck Of The Irish” where he is joined by Yoko. This is one of three stirring live recordings, the others being “John Sinclair” and the ubiquitous “Imagine”, all from benefits in 1971.

Prepared under the watchful eye of Yoko Ono, the rest are demos and home recording. But, somewhat contentiously, nine of the sixteen selections are already available on the 1998 4CD Anthology Box. It rather smacks of exploitation, since this is a collection of unpolished, unfinished material – mere snippets at times – designed not for casual record buyer but, essentially, for serious fans who, chances are, own over half of it already.

Acoustic was originally intended for release ‘only in Japan’ but has since been made available worldwide due, supposedly, to the amount of ‘global interest’. It rather begs the question as to why a Lennon album with seven unreleased tracks was not considered to be of interest to the wider world in the first instance?

What is even more inexplicable is the complete absence of liner notes and recording details. The booklet, instead, offers drawings by Lennon, lyrics, a chord chart and tuning instructions in the guise of fake guitar manual . Yoko also dedicates the album to ‘future guitarists’, a little misleading unless there‘s some intended irony. As these raw recordings show, Lennon was no virtuoso guitarist. His gift was his passion, his voice and his songs and it’s those very songs that make Acoustic indispensable to hardcore fans for the seven unreleased cuts.

Assembled more or less chronologically, Acoustic opens with six songs taped during August and September 1970 and destined for John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band, his most powerful, radical musical statement. Included are three new glimpses into Lennon’s stripped-bare psyche, all equally revealing. “Well Well Well” is stark and menacing, Lennon sounding like an old delta bluesman albeit with slightly phased vocals. “My Mommy’s Dead” is completely desolate, Lennon‘s unearthly voice intoning over thrashed guitar chords to the nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice“. By contrast, “God“ is folky, like one of Lennon’s sporadic Dylan spoofs, even the familiar litany of rejected beliefs in God, Elvis, Beatles et al is delivered deadpan. Intriguingly throwaway and with none of the passion and spirituality of the finished version.

Next up is a real jewel, the “Cold Turkey” demo from September 1969. Over a repeated two chord pattern, Lennon’s depiction of the pain and loneliness of chemical withdrawal is as intense and harrowing as the fully pumped-up single version. Little wonder The Beatles baulked at recording it. Lennon’s vocal is almost bleating in anguish, causing Marc Bolan to later claim that he was trying to copy him.

“What You Got” jumps to the June 1974 work-outs for Walls And Bridges. This version is a rockabilly romp with its “You Don’t Know What You Got Till You Lose It” message fleshed out by impromptu lyrics and even a slight steal from Little Richard’s “Rip It Up”.

The final batch of home recordings date from the 1979/80 house-husband years. There is a delightful, very affectionate “Dear Yoko” with a melody line part Byrds/part Buddy Holly that‘s Lennon at his most engaging. There‘s a similar warmth to “Real Love”, a song Lennon regularly returned to. The version here is genuinely touching and far more subtle than the pounding piano based track which was eventually completed by the remaining Beatles as the follow-up to “Free As A Bird”.

Infuriatingly, there’s much to commend Acoustic. But you can‘t help but feel cheated by the crossovers from Anthology. The recycling and consequent dilution of the Lennon myth will undoubtedly continue with further raking through the seemingly endless hours of home tapes. Hopefully, Yoko Ono will be less haphazard next time around. By the same token, whatever claims to the contrary, The Beatles archive is anything but depleted. Spare us the Let It Be rehearsals, but a collection of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison acoustic demos for the White Album and Abbey Road alone would make for a very desirable Beatles Unplugged.

Mick Houghton

The Rolling Stones – Live Licks

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Not their best. It’s now more than seven years since The Stones last studio album and, since 1997’s underwhelming 'Bridges To Babylon', they’ve fashioned themselves into something resembling a mobile theme park. A spectacularly successful one, at that. Rather in the way that no childhood these days is complete without a visit to Legoland, seeing The Stones live in the flesh has become one of those must-do-once experiences for grown-up children. The obligatory live album that duly follows is the rock equivalent of the souvenir snapshot of your sulky, snot-nosed little smasher being photographed next to the Spinning Spider. Album and photo are guaranteed to end up stuffed in a bottom drawer, unseen and unlistened to, but at least they offer tangible proof that you were there. Documenting their World Tour of 2002/2003 across two CDs, "Live Licks" is the band’s seventh live album. Their previous live recordings fall into two easily demarcated camps. There’s the ones worth owning 'Got Live If You Want It'. "Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out" and "Stripped". Then there’s the rest, of which 1977’s "Love You Live" and 1991’s "Flashpoint" scraped closest to the bottom of the barrel. Until now, that is. This time around, they at least offer a unique selling point: - an entire side of songs never before recorded live. At best, these offerings lend some modest support to the argument that the last Stones tour was their most riveting for years. A taut version of "Can’t You Hear Me Knocking", with Keef and Ronnie interlocking like teeth in a zipper. A cover of "That’s How Strong My Love Is" that aspires to and damn near reaches the Stax soulfulness of the original. And "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" that the band carry off through sheer over-exuberance by way of finale. Apart from that, it’s hard to escape the thought that you’re listening to the world’s most expensive tribute band. Perfunctory versions of songs from "Tattoo You" and "Bridges To Babylon" that sounded fairly perfunctory in their original forms. Near complete desecrations of "Rocks Off" and "Beast Of Burden". And the spectacle of Keith warbling his way through Hoagy Carmichael’s "The Nearness Of You", which at least provides some measure of comic relief. Aside from a beautifully restrained "Angie" and Keef in his piratical swaggering element throughout “Happy”, the other CD of Stones classics has precisely naught to recommend it. Unless, that is, your idea of money well spent is listening to a band pummel their finest songs (“Paint It Black”, “Brown Sugar”, “Gimme Shelter”) into the dust. Main offender is Sir Mick himself, who appears to be singing entirely from memory: mostly off-key and reduced to a messy stockpile of vocal tics and campy affectations. The album finally hits rock bottom with a “Honky Tonk Women” that’s so pedestrian it’s practically still-born. Halfway through the song, just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, on strolls Sheryl Crow. Jon Wilde

Not their best. It’s now more than seven years since The Stones last studio album and, since 1997’s underwhelming ‘Bridges To Babylon’, they’ve fashioned themselves into something resembling a mobile theme park. A spectacularly successful one, at that. Rather in the way that no childhood these days is complete without a visit to Legoland, seeing The Stones live in the flesh has become one of those must-do-once experiences for grown-up children. The obligatory live album that duly follows is the rock equivalent of the souvenir snapshot of your sulky, snot-nosed little smasher being photographed next to the Spinning Spider. Album and photo are guaranteed to end up stuffed in a bottom drawer, unseen and unlistened to, but at least they offer tangible proof that you were there.

Documenting their World Tour of 2002/2003 across two CDs, “Live Licks” is the band’s seventh live album. Their previous live recordings fall into two easily demarcated camps. There’s the ones worth owning ‘Got Live If You Want It’. “Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out” and “Stripped”. Then there’s the rest, of which 1977’s “Love You Live” and 1991’s “Flashpoint” scraped closest to the bottom of the barrel. Until now, that is.

This time around, they at least offer a unique selling point: – an entire side of songs never before recorded live. At best, these offerings lend some modest support to the argument that the last Stones tour was their most riveting for years. A taut version of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”, with Keef and Ronnie interlocking like teeth in a zipper. A cover of “That’s How Strong My Love Is” that aspires to and damn near reaches the Stax soulfulness of the original. And “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” that the band carry off through sheer over-exuberance by way of finale.

Apart from that, it’s hard to escape the thought that you’re listening to the world’s most expensive tribute band. Perfunctory versions of songs from “Tattoo You” and “Bridges To Babylon” that sounded fairly perfunctory in their original forms. Near complete desecrations of “Rocks Off” and “Beast Of Burden”. And the spectacle of Keith warbling his way through Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness Of You”, which at least provides some measure of comic relief.

Aside from a beautifully restrained “Angie” and Keef in his piratical swaggering element throughout “Happy”, the other CD of Stones classics has precisely naught to recommend it. Unless, that is, your idea of money well spent is listening to a band pummel their finest songs (“Paint It Black”, “Brown Sugar”, “Gimme Shelter”) into the dust. Main offender is Sir Mick himself, who appears to be singing entirely from memory: mostly off-key and reduced to a messy stockpile of vocal tics and campy affectations. The album finally hits rock bottom with a “Honky Tonk Women” that’s so pedestrian it’s practically still-born. Halfway through the song, just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, on strolls Sheryl Crow.

Jon Wilde

Interview: Zach Braff

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Interview: Zach Braff
As actor/writer/director, how long did initiating this project take? BRAFF: I'd been waiting tables when I got cast in Scrubs, and I quit as a waiter only to be told we wouldn't actually be filming for four months. So I sat down for that time and hammered out the first draft. Then once Scrubs start...

As actor/writer/director, how long did initiating this project take?

BRAFF: I’d been waiting tables when I got cast in Scrubs, and I quit as a waiter only to be told we wouldn’t actually be filming for four months. So I sat down for that time and hammered out the first draft. Then once Scrubs started, I spent the next two years trying to get someone interested in making it.

For fans of the madcap Scrubs, the downbeat, pensive tone here may come as a surprise…?

Yes – it was important to show people early on that I wasn’t just “the guy from that show”. That I was interested in doing other things. That said, I love Scrubs and have a great time doing it. We’re in the fourth season now, going for two more at least. But I didn’t want to be pigeon-holed. I had to take responsibility for that on my own shoulders, not just rely on something coming from outside, and so I created this character for myself.

Lithium and grief have sapped his life. He starts from a bleak place.?

Yeah… then stumbles into optimism. Having led a life of mostly pessimism. Natalie Portman’s character is just what he needs: she… rattles him. She imparts on him that life’s running by, that his is probably a quarter over. And he’d better start enjoying it pretty quickly, cos he’s missing the whole thing.

You’ve called it “a smart love story for young people”. Are there enough of those??

“There are hundreds of movies marketed at twenty-somethings, but not many that speak intelligently to them about what it feels like to be one. All those silly scatological comedies are fine, but they don’t address anything, or take the temperature of what it’s like to be that age in 2004.

Were you closely involved with the choice of music??

Oh yeah. I’m not one of those guys who knows every line by every band; I just know what I like. Some of it, like Coldplay, is obviously popular, but the lesser-known stuff is just music which really affected me. I scored the movie like I score my life. The soundtrack’s gone gold in the States, selling like crazy, so I guess people are responding well.

As they are to the film…?

Yeah, I’ll have to figure out how to balance things now – I’m in a good place for opportunities. I was inspired by Woody Allen, Hal Ashby, Kubrick, but I could never be as prolific as Woody. Not when my symbolism is as subtle, ahem, as an ark in the rain! It’s exhausting: I put more of myself into Garden State than anything I’ve ever done.

Chris Roberts

Hear the alternative Blood On The Tracks

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Hear the alternative Blood On The Tracks

'one of the most truthful dissections of love gone wrong in rock history, by turns recriminatory, bitter and heartbroken. It is one of Dylan's peaks, the record where his genius and frail humanity meet.' Nick Hasted for Uncut, January 2005. 30 years ago this month, in December 1974, Bob Dylan was putting the finishing touches to one of his defining records, for the second time. Dylan was showing more than just a few frayed edges. He and his wife, Sara, had just experienced their first seperation. A marriage which, a few years later, would eventually fall apart completely. For the first years of the '70s he had released nothing at all, trying to evade the fame and respect he had so carefully built up during the previous decade. After starting and finishing 'Blood On the Tracks' in New York, it was all set for release on Christmas Day, 1974. However, on his return to Minnesota for the Christmas Holidays, Dylan and his brother, David, decided that his album was missing something. Dylan: 'I just didn't... I thought the songs could have sounded differently, better. So I went in and rerecorded them'. He rang Columbia to stop production, hired a bunch of local musicians, and booked the studio. On December 27, Minneapolis' Sound 80 Studio began work on the second recording of 'Blood On The Tracks', five tracks in all, plus two extra tracks which never made the final cut. For more information go to bobdylan.com

‘one of the most truthful dissections of love gone wrong in rock history, by turns recriminatory, bitter and heartbroken. It is one of Dylan’s peaks, the record where his genius and frail humanity meet.’

Nick Hasted for Uncut, January 2005.

30 years ago this month, in December 1974, Bob Dylan was putting the finishing touches to one of his defining records, for the second time.

Dylan was showing more than just a few frayed edges. He and his wife, Sara, had just experienced their first seperation. A marriage which, a few years later, would eventually fall apart completely. For the first years of the ’70s he had released nothing at all, trying to evade the fame and respect he had so carefully built up during the previous decade.

After starting and finishing ‘Blood On the Tracks’ in New York, it was all set for release on Christmas Day, 1974. However, on his return to Minnesota for the Christmas Holidays, Dylan and his brother, David, decided that his album was missing something. Dylan:

‘I just didn’t… I thought the songs could have sounded differently, better. So I went in and rerecorded them‘.

He rang Columbia to stop production, hired a bunch of local musicians, and booked the studio. On December 27, Minneapolis’ Sound 80 Studio began work on the second recording of ‘Blood On The Tracks’, five tracks in all, plus two extra tracks which never made the final cut.

For more information go to bobdylan.com

Interview: Dennis McNally

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Interview: Dennis McNally
UNCUT: Why did the Dead announce their retirement from the road? McNALLY: They'd run out of creative gas on the summer '74 tour. When they got back home, they called a company meeting. Bob Weir said there were two problems - cocaine and a crew that seemed to him to be drowning in mountains of blow....

UNCUT: Why did the Dead announce their retirement from the road?

McNALLY: They’d run out of creative gas on the summer ’74 tour. When they got back home, they called a company meeting. Bob Weir said there were two problems – cocaine and a crew that seemed to him to be drowning in mountains of blow. So they called a halt. To Weir, the hiatus was never meant to be permanent, But everybody wanted time off. Garcia gave an interview to Melody Maker around the same time saying that the most rewarding experience for him was to play in bars and not have the pressure of being Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

So were the October ’74 gigs featured in the film planned as a genuine farewell?

Nobody knew. They might easily have been the band’s final performances. The future was uncertain.

Where did the idea to document the occasion come from?

There had been talk of a movie since Spring. Garcia’s secret dream was to be an auteur film-maker, but it was by no means a unanimously popular idea. Phil Lesh called it ‘Jerry’s jerk-off’ and the film ate money. A total of 46 people in four different crews were hired to film four nights. The budget was originally 125,000 dollars and it ended up costing 600,000 dollars.

Did the nature of the film change much during the editing process?

Originally, Garcia had thought of the film as a canned concert, but as he watched the footage he began to see a real movie. His years of movie-watching had given him the gift of seeing rhythm and flow in the film.

Why did the film take three years to come out?

There was no director. After the shows, Garcia sat down with 125 hours of raw footage, which he matched to the soundtrack and catalogued. By late ’76 he was purchasing books of airline commuter tickets and flying daily to Burbank Studios to mix the soundtrack, inventing new technologies like ‘phase panning’ so that the sound of the film would subtly follow the camera. Ironically, the film that followed them into Burbank Studios was Star Wars.

It’s been said making the film took a real toll on Garcia…

The grinding stress of editing was a shock to him. He had the type of photography he wanted but what he didn’t anticipate was the sheer tedium of the film-making process. Even more stressful was the tap dance he had to go through to finance it. He was using band money for his own project, and it ate him up. By the time he’d finished, he’d discovered heroin, with predictably horrific effects. But in the short term, his pain went away his doubts were stilled and he was able to finish the movie.

Nigel Williamson

The Grateful Dead Movie

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The Grateful Dead Movie plays pretty weird right now. Originally shot three decades ago in 1974, it captures an America that looks, sounds and feels like it's on a totally different planet from the nation that recently returned George Bush to the White House. Peopled by the alien young and the conservative old, it shows a world which turned on the axis of a very simple equation - "us" and "them". The cops were brutal, slitty-eyed, suspicious cartoon pigs and the kids were a whirling dervish army of freewheeling freaks being led by Chemical Jerry and his merry band to the golden kingdom of Aquarius. Thirty years on and life's a lot more complicated; many of Uncut's activist anti-Bush heroes - Stipe, Springsteen, Vedder etc - were blatantly booed or embarrassed by their fans at the ballot. To paraphrase the Dead's signature song: what a long, strange and not altogether pleasant trip it's been. Not that life was all skull and roses way back when. The sides may have been more forcefully drawn - pony-tails versus short back and sides - but what The Grateful Dead Movie captures more than anything else is the political, social and musical inertia that may well have sewn the seeds of the Dubya disaster. The Dead portrayed in the Movie are - shame to admit it - hardly the counter cultural force they had promised in the '60s and their fans - the younger brothers and sisters of the SF originals - seem a goonish lot, somewhat lost in a fog somewhere between stoner hedonism and handed down philosophy. In fact, the project was fortuitously spawned from the Dead's rather poor business acumen rather than any desire to spread the revolutionary word. Having been ripped off over the years, by 1974, the band faced bankruptcy, hauling a massive extended family on tour around the world and lumbering themselves with a monstrously expensive sound system. The only way out was to quit the road, concentrate on recording and, as guitarist Bob Weir admits in the accompanying documentary, wait for most of the crew to get employment elsewhere before they could resume their gypsy lifestyle with clear consciences. So it was that these "farewell" shows were organised at Bill Graham's Winterland in October. As an afterthought, Jerry Garcia hired a film crew to capture the event for posterity, the Movie eventually touring theatres as an alternative to the real thing until the Dead got back on track gaining, along the way, serious cult status. What we encounter is some stunning Yellow Submarine-style cartoon graphics courtesy of Gary Gutierrez, much footage of saucer-eyed longhairs dancing and smoking dope, a lot of real up close on stage playing. The band trundle through Deadhead faves like "US Blues", "Casey Jones", "Eyes Of The World" and, on the bonus Disc, "China Cat Sunflower"/"I Know You Rider" and "Dark Star". The performances may lack the interstellar improvisation of the band's classic '60s psychedelia nor the easy grace of the country-flecked line-up they toured around '72, but it's still a compelling snapshot of the Dead at that point in their career. They used to say that there's nothing like a Grateful Dead concert and, with a head full of acid, four hours in, they were right on the money. Steve Sutherland

The Grateful Dead Movie plays pretty weird right now. Originally shot three decades ago in 1974, it captures an America that looks, sounds and feels like it’s on a totally different planet from the nation that recently returned George Bush to the White House. Peopled by the alien young and the conservative old, it shows a world which turned on the axis of a very simple equation – “us” and “them”. The cops were brutal, slitty-eyed, suspicious cartoon pigs and the kids were a whirling dervish army of freewheeling freaks being led by Chemical Jerry and his merry band to the golden kingdom of Aquarius. Thirty years on and life’s a lot more complicated; many of Uncut’s activist anti-Bush heroes – Stipe, Springsteen, Vedder etc – were blatantly booed or embarrassed by their fans at the ballot. To paraphrase the Dead’s signature song: what a long, strange and not altogether pleasant trip it’s been.

Not that life was all skull and roses way back when. The sides may have been more forcefully drawn – pony-tails versus short back and sides – but what The Grateful Dead Movie captures more than anything else is the political, social and musical inertia that may well have sewn the seeds of the Dubya disaster. The Dead portrayed in the Movie are – shame to admit it – hardly the counter cultural force they had promised in the ’60s and their fans – the younger brothers and sisters of the SF originals – seem a goonish lot, somewhat lost in a fog somewhere between stoner hedonism and handed down philosophy.

In fact, the project was fortuitously spawned from the Dead’s rather poor business acumen rather than any desire to spread the revolutionary word. Having been ripped off over the years, by 1974, the band faced bankruptcy, hauling a massive extended family on tour around the world and lumbering themselves with a monstrously expensive sound system. The only way out was to quit the road, concentrate on recording and, as guitarist Bob Weir admits in the accompanying documentary, wait for most of the crew to get employment elsewhere before they could resume their gypsy lifestyle with clear consciences.

So it was that these “farewell” shows were organised at Bill Graham’s Winterland in October. As an afterthought, Jerry Garcia hired a film crew to capture the event for posterity, the Movie eventually touring theatres as an alternative to the real thing until the Dead got back on track gaining, along the way, serious cult status. What we encounter is some stunning Yellow Submarine-style cartoon graphics courtesy of Gary Gutierrez, much footage of saucer-eyed longhairs dancing and smoking dope, a lot of real up close on stage playing.

The band trundle through Deadhead faves like “US Blues”, “Casey Jones”, “Eyes Of The World” and, on the bonus Disc, “China Cat Sunflower”/”I Know You Rider” and “Dark Star”. The performances may lack the interstellar improvisation of the band’s classic ’60s psychedelia nor the easy grace of the country-flecked line-up they toured around ’72, but it’s still a compelling snapshot of the Dead at that point in their career.

They used to say that there’s nothing like a Grateful Dead concert and, with a head full of acid, four hours in, they were right on the money.

Steve Sutherland

The Ultimate Oliver Stone Collection

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No film maker has scrutinised America with the unflinching determination of Oliver Stone. Collected here are 10 movies which have assessed the impact of key facets of its culture - from the nation at war (Salvador, the Vietnam trilogy), to the media (Natural Born Killers), politics (JFK), sport (Any Given Sunday), music (The Doors) and capitalism (Wall Street) - on American society. And then there's U-Turn, which alone concerns murder, betrayal, jealousy, sex - the American Dream turned sour; the American Scream, if you like. Watching these films, you're struck by the ferocity of Stone's vision and the exhaustive energy he brings to bear realising it, whether it be the freewheeling chaos of Salvador, the dizzying dynamics of JFK or the sport-as-war "combat" scenes of Any Given Sunday. A master of spectacle, the riotous, sensory-overload of his movies (realised with long-term cinematographer Bob Richardson) captures the accelerated, fragmented nature of America itself. And perhaps no other director has had such an incredible array of talent to help bring that vision to the screen - Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Jimmy Woods, Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones. Each movie here is worth rigorous analysis, but two personal favourites stand out. There's the frequently overlooked U-Turn - fierce desert noir with one of the finest ensemble casts ever (Penn, Nolte, Voight, Billy Bob Thornton, Powers Boothe, Joaquim Phoenix, J-Lo) - and Any Given Sunday, as much a metaphor for Stone's (then) beleagured film making career as a movie about American football, with Pacino-as-Stone facing down Cameron Diaz' ruthless exec. Up there with Mailer, Roth, Updike: a great American artist. Michael Bonner

No film maker has scrutinised America with the unflinching determination of Oliver Stone. Collected here are 10 movies which have assessed the impact of key facets of its culture – from the nation at war (Salvador, the Vietnam trilogy), to the media (Natural Born Killers), politics (JFK), sport (Any Given Sunday), music (The Doors) and capitalism (Wall Street) – on American society. And then there’s U-Turn, which alone concerns murder, betrayal, jealousy, sex – the American Dream turned sour; the American Scream, if you like.

Watching these films, you’re struck by the ferocity of Stone’s vision and the exhaustive energy he brings to bear realising it, whether it be the freewheeling chaos of Salvador, the dizzying dynamics of JFK or the sport-as-war “combat” scenes of Any Given Sunday. A master of spectacle, the riotous, sensory-overload of his movies (realised with long-term cinematographer Bob Richardson) captures the accelerated, fragmented nature of America itself. And perhaps no other director has had such an incredible array of talent to help bring that vision to the screen – Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Jimmy Woods, Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones.

Each movie here is worth rigorous analysis, but two personal favourites stand out. There’s the frequently overlooked U-Turn – fierce desert noir with one of the finest ensemble casts ever (Penn, Nolte, Voight, Billy Bob Thornton, Powers Boothe, Joaquim Phoenix, J-Lo) – and Any Given Sunday, as much a metaphor for Stone’s (then) beleagured film making career as a movie about American football, with Pacino-as-Stone facing down Cameron Diaz’ ruthless exec.

Up there with Mailer, Roth, Updike: a great American artist.

Michael Bonner

Interview: Christopher Nolan and Guy Pearce

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Interview: Christopher Nolan and Guy Pearce
UNCUT: You once described it as an "exhausting" film. Quite an unorthodox pitch? NOLAN: Yes, but if you're putting the audience though such an experience then the trick is to let them know, on some levels, what they're getting into. So that they don't get frustrated with it and with you. Leonard se...

UNCUT: You once described it as an “exhausting” film. Quite an unorthodox pitch?

NOLAN: Yes, but if you’re putting the audience though such an experience then the trick is to let them know, on some levels, what they’re getting into. So that they don’t get frustrated with it and with you. Leonard sees himself as a perfectly reliable narrator. You’re sitting inside his head and seeing things from there. Then you realise things might be quietly different…At home, on DVD, you can watch it at your own level of concentration.

Are you a fan of DVD packages?

Very much so. This is a classic case. I believe there should be a definitive version of a film, but the wonderful thing about the DVD format is that it allows you to see it in different ways. You get access to fresh areas here. The film itself should always stand the way it was made, but it’s good to explore dense narratives and fresh devices. Remember how long ago Orson Welles made Citizen Kane, and how daring and experimental it was – and how shameful it is that film-makers haven’t really built on that in the medium as much as we should have.

How tough was it to play Leonard?

PEARCE: What I responded to was his emotional plight. Convoluted as the story might seem, it’s very clear emotionally. Obviously while filming I was wondering if everything was going to make sense, but I figured I could forget about that because Leonard’s lost his memory anyway…! Chris draws you into the film beautifully. He’s got a great brain and a great knowledge of film history. This finished film was closer to the original script than any other I’ve worked on – even L.A. Confidential needed some editing and cutting. So I hardly did a thing, to be honest! I heard the tune Chris was trying to sing and I just had no question. People always ask me if it was my most difficult job… it was my easiest.

You did have plenty of crib sheets!

Yeah, the only troublesome part was remembering which bloody notes were in which bloody pockets, and which pocket the camera was on, and which tattoo was where, and all that stuff. But I got a routine going pretty rapidly. I’m usually a control freak, which makes my work harder, but here I realised the best thing was to let go.

Chris Roberts

Memento: Special Edition

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Memento: Special Edition

"Great story. Gets better every time you tell it. So you lie to yourself to be happy. Nothing wrong with that - we all do. Who cares if there's a few little things you'd rather not remember?" So reasons Joe Pantoliano's Teddy, enlightening - to an extent - Guy Pearce's haunted Leonard Shelby, and us. Not that the revelations do Teddy any good. When Christopher Nolan's Memento first surfaced in 2000 (the first great film of the century?) Uncut was moved to an involuntary spasm of purple poster quotes. "One of the most compelling, challenging films of the year", we babbled. "Unforgettable. You'll be gripped, enthralled and exhausted. Momentous." But it was hard to say why: we couldn't give away the ending. Hell, we couldn't give away the middle. So cunningly and originally structured was this dark, delicious work of nouveau noir that adjectives of a just-go-see-it strain had to suffice. Now, figuring that most of you have seen it at some point during the last four years, we can get into the question of why Memento bears repeat viewings like few other films. Once the killer ending has kicked in, and the scales have fallen from your eyes, you immediately want to watch it through again to see if the director's nerve and audacity is justified. If it hangs together. It sure does. But wow, what sublime sleight of hand. On this triple-disc set, there's an easter egg of the movie in reverse scene order, just to prove it. This version obviously lacks the startle factor of the original (which had particular impact during Carrie-Anne Moss' femme fatale machinations), but it's a brilliant exercise, a riveting remix. Nolan took the plot from a short story by his brother Jonathan (who reads that tale, Memento Mori, aloud here). Leonard has a "condition", a rare form of short-term memory loss, since the brutal rape and murder of his wife. Every day he wakes up and wonders how he got wherever he is. To trigger some recall, he keeps notes, Polaroids, even clues tattooed on his body. He's bent on vengeance. But is he a guided missile or a deluded loose cannon? Where'd he get the flash car, the clothes? Should he trust the enigmatic smile of bartender Natalie (Moss) or the lippy urgings of strange cop Teddy? Who is Leonard talking to on the phone? And why is he also obsessed with the poignant tale of the damaged Sammy Jankis and his long-suffering wife? This is one mystery where the phrase "all will be revealed" carries a savage sucker punch. It's shot with studied shadowy atmosphere. The monochrome sections echo Nolan's debut Following, and Pearce's voiceover is of rare confessional intimacy. Pearce's contribution is often underrated. Yes, he's a servant to the story's cleverness, but he does a magical job in maintaining Leonard's ambivalence. So likeable and vulnerable, yet so ruthless and potentially evil. As a blonde lead in noir land, he's a sculpted, heroic nod to Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, Nolan's favourite film. Moss, too, shows intense acting skills (wasted in The Matrix) as another character making us question who to trust. "She will help you out of pity". Oh yeah? She and Pantoliano are angels/devils on our man's shoulders. If deceit and betrayal are what make a plot progress, Memento marks a quantum leap in the thriller genre. "A romantic quest", muses Teddy. "A puzzle you can never solve". For a movie about brain damage, and about the way we all build our self-image from scratch every dawn, Memento has crisp flashes of humour, more noticeable now. Leonard putting on Natalie's shirt, because, of course, he would. The motel hooker's look of this-is-weird-but-I've seen-weirder. Leonard's comment of "The pleasure of a book is in wanting to know what happens next." The craziness in his interior monologue: "OK, so what am I doing? Oh, I'm chasing this guy." A beat. "No, he's chasing me." The script has to be watertight, and is. Nolan's now gone to the US full-time, with barely a whimper from the obtuse British film industry. Insomnia was wide awake, and we can't wait to see what he does with Batman. Meanwhile, here's the ingenious movie which made his name. Remember its rigour. Believe its lies. Chris Roberts

“Great story. Gets better every time you tell it. So you lie to yourself to be happy. Nothing wrong with that – we all do. Who cares if there’s a few little things you’d rather not remember?” So reasons Joe Pantoliano’s Teddy, enlightening – to an extent – Guy Pearce’s haunted Leonard Shelby, and us. Not that the revelations do Teddy any good.

When Christopher Nolan’s Memento first surfaced in 2000 (the first great film of the century?) Uncut was moved to an involuntary spasm of purple poster quotes. “One of the most compelling, challenging films of the year”, we babbled. “Unforgettable. You’ll be gripped, enthralled and exhausted. Momentous.” But it was hard to say why: we couldn’t give away the ending. Hell, we couldn’t give away the middle. So cunningly and originally structured was this dark, delicious work of nouveau noir that adjectives of a just-go-see-it strain had to suffice.

Now, figuring that most of you have seen it at some point during the last four years, we can get into the question of why Memento bears repeat viewings like few other films. Once the killer ending has kicked in, and the scales have fallen from your eyes, you immediately want to watch it through again to see if the director’s nerve and audacity is justified. If it hangs together. It sure does. But wow, what sublime sleight of hand. On this triple-disc set, there’s an easter egg of the movie in reverse scene order, just to prove it. This version obviously lacks the startle factor of the original (which had particular impact during Carrie-Anne Moss’ femme fatale machinations), but it’s a brilliant exercise, a riveting remix.

Nolan took the plot from a short story by his brother Jonathan (who reads that tale, Memento Mori, aloud here). Leonard has a “condition”, a rare form of short-term memory loss, since the brutal rape and murder of his wife. Every day he wakes up and wonders how he got wherever he is. To trigger some recall, he keeps notes, Polaroids, even clues tattooed on his body. He’s bent on vengeance. But is he a guided missile or a deluded loose cannon? Where’d he get the flash car, the clothes? Should he trust the enigmatic smile of bartender Natalie (Moss) or the lippy urgings of strange cop Teddy? Who is Leonard talking to on the phone? And why is he also obsessed with the poignant tale of the damaged Sammy Jankis and his long-suffering wife? This is one mystery where the phrase “all will be revealed” carries a savage sucker punch.

It’s shot with studied shadowy atmosphere. The monochrome sections echo Nolan’s debut Following, and Pearce’s voiceover is of rare confessional intimacy. Pearce’s contribution is often underrated. Yes, he’s a servant to the story’s cleverness, but he does a magical job in maintaining Leonard’s ambivalence. So likeable and vulnerable, yet so ruthless and potentially evil. As a blonde lead in noir land, he’s a sculpted, heroic nod to Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, Nolan’s favourite film. Moss, too, shows intense acting skills (wasted in The Matrix) as another character making us question who to trust. “She will help you out of pity”. Oh yeah? She and Pantoliano are angels/devils on our man’s shoulders. If deceit and betrayal are what make a plot progress, Memento marks a quantum leap in the thriller genre.

“A romantic quest”, muses Teddy. “A puzzle you can never solve”. For a movie about brain damage, and about the way we all build our self-image from scratch every dawn, Memento has crisp flashes of humour, more noticeable now. Leonard putting on Natalie’s shirt, because, of course, he would. The motel hooker’s look of this-is-weird-but-I’ve seen-weirder. Leonard’s comment of “The pleasure of a book is in wanting to know what happens next.” The craziness in his interior monologue: “OK, so what am I doing? Oh, I’m chasing this guy.” A beat. “No, he’s chasing me.” The script has to be watertight, and is.

Nolan’s now gone to the US full-time, with barely a whimper from the obtuse British film industry. Insomnia was wide awake, and we can’t wait to see what he does with Batman. Meanwhile, here’s the ingenious movie which made his name. Remember its rigour. Believe its lies.

Chris Roberts

Pink Floyd – The Wall: The Movie

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Limited Edition re-release of Alan Parker's 1982 movie, based on Roger Water's tale of a rock star's descent into madness. Without dialogue, it feels more like an extended 95-minute music video; the Floyd's music set to some powerful visuals, including startling Gerald Scarfe animations. What lifts The Wall above MTV fodder is a surprisingly magnetic performance by Bob Geldof as "Pink" which helps Parker's treatment to stand the test of time rather better than the music. Nigel Williamson

Limited Edition re-release of Alan Parker’s 1982 movie, based on Roger Water’s tale of a rock star’s descent into madness. Without dialogue, it feels more like an extended 95-minute music video; the Floyd’s music set to some powerful visuals, including startling Gerald Scarfe animations. What lifts The Wall above MTV fodder is a surprisingly magnetic performance by Bob Geldof as “Pink” which helps Parker’s treatment to stand the test of time rather better than the music.

Nigel Williamson

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