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Hear The Stranglers’ tribute to late keyboard player Dave Greenfield

Sam Richards
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Hear The Stranglers’ tribute to late keyboard player Dave Greenfield
The Stranglers have announced that their first new album in nine years, Dark Matters, will be released on September 10 on their own Coursegood imprint, via Absolute. The lead single is "And If You Should See Dave..." - a tribute to their long-standing keyboard player Dave Greenfield who died of C...

The Stranglers have announced that their first new album in nine years, Dark Matters, will be released on September 10 on their own Coursegood imprint, via Absolute.

The lead single is “And If You Should See Dave…” – a tribute to their long-standing keyboard player Dave Greenfield who died of Covid a year ago this week. Listen below:

The Stranglers’ JJ Burnel says: “A year ago, on May 3rd, my great friend and colleague of 45 years, Dave Greenfield, passed away, another victim of the pandemic. We had already recorded most of the album with him and during the lockdowns our only wish was to complete it as a fitting tribute to his life and work. I consider this to be one of our finest recordings.”

Greenfield plays on eight of the tracks on Dark Matters, which was recorded at the band’s studios in Somerset and Southern France, produced by long-time collaborator Louie Nicastro.

You can pre-order Dark Matters here in various formats, including limited-edition cassette and red and black smoke vinyl. All pre-orders for the album (on any format) will receive a special bonus CD entitled Dave Greenfield – A Tribute, featuring eight unreleased live recordings.

Peruse The Stranglers’ 2022 UK tourdates below:

25 Jan Engine Shed, Lincoln
27 Jan Music Hall, Aberdeen
28 Jan O2 Academy, Glasgow
29 Jan O2 Academy, Glasgow – SOLD OUT
31 Jan Victoria Hall, Stoke
1 Feb UEA, Norwich
3 Feb G Live, Guildford – SOLD OUT
4 Feb O2 Academy, Brixton
5 Feb O2 Academy, Brixton – SOLD OUT
7 Feb Parr Hall, Warrington
8 Feb Rock City, Nottingham
10 Feb Uni Great Hall, Cardiff
11 Feb O2 Apollo, Manchester
12 Feb O2 Academy, Leeds
14 Feb Guildhall, Portsmouth
15 Feb Cliffs Pavilion, Southend
17 Feb Dome, Brighton
18 Feb O2 City Hall, Newcastle
19 Feb O2 Academy, Birmingham
21 Feb O2 Academy, Bristol – SOLD OUT
22 Feb Hexagon, Reading
24 Feb City Hall, Sheffield
25 Feb De Montfort Hall, Leicester
26 Feb Corn Exchange, Cambridge – SOLD OUT

Debbie Harry: “Music seems to cross boundaries”

Sam Richards
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Debbie Harry: “Music seems to cross boundaries”
The seeds for Blondie’s Cuban trip were planted way back in 1976 on their very first album, with the song “Man Overboard” and its endearing attempts to punk up a Fania-style groove. “Latin music has always been part of the feel of New York, so it’s a part of our roots too,” insists Debbi...

The seeds for Blondie’s Cuban trip were planted way back in 1976 on their very first album, with the song “Man Overboard” and its endearing attempts to punk up a Fania-style groove. “Latin music has always been part of the feel of New York, so it’s a part of our roots too,” insists Debbie Harry.

It’s an influence that has surfaced periodically over the years – think of “Maria” or “Sugar On The Side”, the 2011 collaboration with Colombian group Systema Solar – so the band jumped at the chance to play two shows at Havana’s beautiful art deco Teatro Mella in March 2019, supported by local artists Alain Perez, David Blanco and long-running jazz-fusion band Sintesis.

Naturally some of the Cuban musicians ended up on stage with Blondie, and the results are being released as a six-track EP this summer, along with a short film documenting the band’s Cuban cultural exchange. “We had some percussionists come up and play with us and they just added this terrific level of excitement to the songs,” says Harry. “On ‘The Tide Is High’, some of the women sang with me and they did the original harmonies that John Holt had put on the song, and it was so beautiful. I was just moved by the whole thing. Music seems to cross boundaries, and thank God for that.”

Harry describes their visit to Havana as a “dream come true”, even if she regrets that Chris Stein – Blondie’s biggest Latin music champion – wasn’t able to make it for health reasons. “Cuban music and culture is so unique and inspiring. Chris and I always wanted to go, but for many years there was a travel ban. I’ve always felt there was a tragedy in [the USA’s] relationship with Cuba.”

Drummer Clem Burke confirms that in addition to the musical benefits, the exchange “also opened our eyes to the oppression of Cuba by the United States, which seems completely unnecessary. It’s such a friendly country, and it’s a joke to see it as any great communist threat. There’s so much appreciation for art and music and nature. The people have a joy for life, and it was great to see that first-hand.”

Sadly, soon after Blondie’s trip, Donald Trump reimposed travel restrictions, quashing Harry’s hopes of an immediate return to collaborate with the Cuban musicians in more depth: “I would really like to write music with them – you never know how far it can go. But I look forward to an ongoing musical exchange. It’s a door to the future.”

Blondie are currently working on the follow-up to 2017’s Pollinator, although that too has been put on hold owing to the pandemic. “We’re just assembling ideas at this point,” says Harry. “We have a nice list of tracks, although they’re not developed. I’m looking forward to doing what we did on the last album, which had more of a live feel to it. Once we’re cut loose from this quarantine situation, everyone’s going to be really energised.”

2021 will be a busy year for the band, who have also announced a UK tour for November off the back of a new archival boxset, Blondie 1974–1982: Against The Odds. “[The current situation] makes me want to look back a little bit and revitalise tracks that we don’t normally get to play,” says Harry. “I’d like to do a show that’s two-and-a-half, three hours long and play a lot of this music, just to celebrate it.”

Blondie: Vivir En La Habana will premiere at Sheffield Doc Fest (June 4-13) and Tribeca Festival (June 9-20). A six-track live EP of songs performed at the Havana concerts is also due for release this summer.

Send us your questions for Tracey Thorn

Tom Pinnock
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Send us your questions for Tracey Thorn
Last month, Tracey Thorn published My Rock'n'Roll Friend, a touching book about her friendship with Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison. While she's looking back at her life and work, we’ve asked her to answer your questions for Uncut’s next Audience With feature. Over the course of four de...

Last month, Tracey Thorn published My Rock’n’Roll Friend, a touching book about her friendship with Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison.

While she’s looking back at her life and work, we’ve asked her to answer your questions for Uncut’s next Audience With feature.

Over the course of four decades in music, Thorn has created a catalogue of stellar records with Everything But The Girl, Marine Girls and on her own, experiencing indie cult fame and then global pop success, and collaborated with Massive Attack, The Go-Betweens, Robert Wyatt and more. 2018’s Record, mixing danceable rhythms with messages of protest and empowerment, was the latest in a series of impressive solo albums. In the last decade she’s also carved out a career as a writer of sensitive, thoughtful and funny books, beginning with 2013’s Bedsit Disco Queen, and continuing with Naked At The Albert Hall, Another Planet: A Teenager In Suburbia and now My Rock’n’Roll Friend.

So what do you want to ask Tracey Thorn? Send your questions to audiencewith@www.uncut.co.uk by Monday (May 4), and Tracey will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

Hear Flaming Lips’ version of “Lay Lady Lay” from our exclusive Bob Dylan covers CD

Michael Bonner
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Hear Flaming Lips’ version of “Lay Lady Lay” from our exclusive Bob Dylan covers CD
The June 2021 issue of Uncut comes with a free, 15-track CD, Dylan Revisited - a new compilation featuring exclusive covers of Bob Dylan songs by Low, Weyes Blood, The Weather Station, Cowboy Junkies, Richard Thompson and many others as well as a previously unreleased Dylan track. In case you've ...

The June 2021 issue of Uncut comes with a free, 15-track CD, Dylan Revisited – a new compilation featuring exclusive covers of Bob Dylan songs by Low, Weyes Blood, The Weather Station, Cowboy Junkies, Richard Thompson and many others as well as a previously unreleased Dylan track.

In case you’ve not yet picked up an issue, let us tempt you with Flaming Lips’ cover of “Lay Lady Lay” below.

Dylan Revisited is only available, free, with the June 2021 issue of Uncut, which is currently on sale in UK shops.

Uncut presents Dylan Revisited – tracklisting

Bob Dylan – Too Late (Acoustic Version)
Richard Thompson – This Wheel’s On Fire
Courtney Marie Andrews – To Ramona
The Flaming Lips – Lay Lady Lay
The Weather Station – Precious Angel
Cowboy Junkies – I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You
Thurston Moore – Buckets Of Rain
Fatoumata Diawara – Blowin’ In The Wind
Brigid Mae Power – One More Cup Of Coffee
Low – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
Joan Shelley & Nathan Salsburg – Dark Eyes
Patterson Hood & Jay Gonzalez of Drive-By Truckers – Blind Willie McTell
Frazey Ford – The Times They Are a-Changin’
Jason Lytle – Most Of The Time
Weyes Blood – Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands

For this special issue of Uncut, the magazine is celebrating Dylan’s 80th birthday by asking friends, collaborators and admirers – including Paul McCartney, Robbie Robertson, Jackson Browne, Roger McGuinn, Jeff Tweedy, Van Morrison, Graham Nash, Kris Kristofferson, Elton John, Peggy Seeger and Roger Daltrey – to share their most memorable Dylan encounter.

Spanning six decades, from 1960 to 2020, these remarkable stories shed new light on rock’s most capricious and elusive genius, whose startling transformations from folk hero to electrified renegade and beyond continue to captivate us all.

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Sarah Louise – Earth Bow

Jon Dale
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Sarah Louise – Earth Bow
“Meditation is fundamental because it puts me in touch with my body,” American guitarist and singer-songwriter Sarah Louise reflects when asked about her ‘Earth practices’, “which as an extension of Earth, communicates differently than my thinking mind.” Read one way, this deceptively si...

“Meditation is fundamental because it puts me in touch with my body,” American guitarist and singer-songwriter Sarah Louise reflects when asked about her ‘Earth practices’, “which as an extension of Earth, communicates differently than my thinking mind.” Read one way, this deceptively simple statement hosts an entire universe of potential: the use of meditation and intimate reflection to loosen the shackles of the always-busy mind and open it to the mysterious other; placing a pause upon the hurriedness of our everyday existence; prioritising the knowledges and intuitions of the body over the ideological conceits of society.

Louise’s musical path to this point has been refreshingly direct. She first broke cover last decade, with a string of lovely, singular guitar solo albums. Louise also recorded two gorgeous LPs of beautiful folk-drone constructs with Black Twig Pickers member Sally Anne Morgan as House & Land. Significant changes came with Louise’s own 2019 record Nighttime Birds And Morning Stars, though, where she turned a radical corner, her guitar interfacing with electronics in feverishly creative ways. Tellingly, she seemed to bring the same capacious energies that marked her acoustic guitar sides to her explorations of electronics.

Earth Bow continues those experiments, though now they feel even less like improvised attempts and more like part of the fundamental bedrock of Louise’s compositions. There’s something natural, fungal almost, about the way the electronics spill and expand across the 10 songs of Earth Bow; it’s no surprise to discover that she has lived in rural Appalachia for a decade, and has a strong, intuitive relationship with the natural world. Strikingly, she has captured some of the complexity of the natural world with her music – there’s unpredictability but harmony too, alongside oneness with the creative impulse, Louise creating hand-spun cartographies of musical ecologies.

Earth Bow is structured as two side-long, oneiric suites, five songs apiece, each side seamlessly wound with a taffeta of electronics. “Where The Owl Hums” offers a prefatory summary of the album, built from samples of other songs, its ground a gentle, ever-cresting wave of drone, over which Louise’s incantations soar. She then drifts into the martial splendour of “Jewel Of The Blueridge”, where she’s at one with the world, sighing “Grass is sweet like cinnamon/Oh it feels like home to me” before chanting “Down past the water we arise”. There’s a bustling, fervid field of micro-textures running under this song, from amoebic Fripp-esque guitar to tingling bells and pin-prick synthesis.

While these two songs set up the general dynamic of the album, there’s still plenty more to discover. “Summertime Moves Slow” takes the textures of New Age and submerges them in distorted dronology; there’s something of Arthur Russell’s weightless cello drift here too. “Your Dreams” is an acoustic lullaby, electronics pinging across the audio spectrum like shooting stars as Louise sounds awed by that which surrounds us all: “My dreams are your dreams/I know you can see them/Can you feel them?” Her voice is surprisingly limber, even as she often focuses on a child’s clutch of notes, the better to extract emotional resonance from permutation. If anything, her voice is redolent of Canadian singer-songwriter Jane Siberry, with a similar timbre and delivery.

As Earth Bow progresses, it builds in intensity, and by the time we reach the ageless arpeggios of “Where Heron Fish At Dawn”, where Louise collaborates with Bitchin’ Bajas’ Cooper Crain on a techno-poem to the elemental power of nature, we’re surprisingly close to the maxi-minimalist proto-house of Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4. There’s a continual sense of wonder throughout the album, of unexpected developments, and yet what’s most impressive is the way everything here – and it’s a busy album in some respects, genre-defiant in its openness – sits together so well. Everything flows.

Louise wants to push things still further with Earth Bow, developing guided meditations, a film collaboration with multimedia artist Katrina Ohstrom, and an immersive online space co-designed with Louise’s sister, Anna Henson: “There’s spatialised sound that will allow people to make their own mixes of the record based on their location in the space, as well as a screen for viewing music videos and livestreams,” she explains. “People will have a lot of agency in how they experience the space, and I hope it can provide opportunities for meaningful interaction.” That feels core to what Louise is doing with Earth Bow – finding ways to enable the agency of the individual, and to help them locate a meaningful space within their everyday world, the album endlessly expansive in its desire to help and to heal.

Ryley Walker – Course In Fable

Sharon O'Connell
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Ryley Walker – Course In Fable
Load a promotional copy of Ryley Walker’s fifth solo album into iTunes and the descriptor “prog fucking rock” appears beneath the title and his name. It’s a slyly humorous detail that speaks volumes; most obviously, about his deep, oft-declared love for that music, which has a role here, but...

Load a promotional copy of Ryley Walker’s fifth solo album into iTunes and the descriptor “prog fucking rock” appears beneath the title and his name. It’s a slyly humorous detail that speaks volumes; most obviously, about his deep, oft-declared love for that music, which has a role here, but also his habit of self-mocking. Whether it’s in interviews, onstage chat or his Twitter feed, Walker is always ready with a pin, to prick truth’s painful swelling or any hint of pretentiousness.

If there’s a place where that self-consciousness falls away and Walker roams (almost) free, it’s in the authentic present of his music. It was the absence of what he called “smoke and mirrors” that first drew him to Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and John Martyn for 2014’s All Kinds Of You, which introduced a guitarist skilled beyond his 24 years, undisguised influences or no. A year later, Primrose Green confirmed him as a striking songwriting and instrumental talent committed to the cause, with an irresistibly sun-glazed, stoner jazz-folk style that leaned heavily on Pentangle and Tim Buckley as well as the mystic flow and vocal tics of Van Morrison.

As a comparison of the Primrose Green and Astral Weeks covers shows, Walker’s image played to retro romance and the idea of the gilded prodigy. That might have seen a lesser artist forever shackled to his sources but Walker soon moved on. After the all-instrumental Land Of Plenty (one of two fine hook-ups with Bill MacKay) came 2016’s Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, which was to some degree a transitional album. Its opener, “The Halfwit In Me”, showed that although ’70s UK folk still loomed large, Walker was keen to explore his other interests, namely Chicago-school experimentalism, improv jazz and chamber pop.

It was with Deafman Glance in 2018, though, that he stepped out of the shadow of his heroes and into the leftfield contemporary sunlight. As Walker said at the time: “I really can’t go back to making a Fairport Convention-sounding record.” “Telluride Speed”, especially, is significant: starting with spry, finger-picked guitar and pastoral flute, it then establishes an urgent, post-rock-ish motif that opens up into abstract pastoralism, allowing him to chuck in a couple of minutes of psych guitar vamping. However, Deafman Glance is not the only evidence that Walker has really been stretching his legs of late: in recent years, he has made two records with free-jazz drummer Charles Rumback and, in February, he joined Japanese psych rockers Kikagaku Moyo for a live album. For anyone still finding it hard to mentally reconfigure Walker, it’s worth noting that since he moved to New York in 2019, there have been improv hook-ups with David Grubbs, JR Bohannon and Garcia Peoples, among others. Staying in his lane has never appealed.

All of which makes Course In Fable a clear case of natural evolution, rather than calculated reinvention – and a record that opens a fresh chapter in Walker’s story. It’s a short (just 41 minutes), ineluctably lovely set, light, bright and often dizzyingly joyful, but also thrillingly unpredictable, with complex, jazzy arrangements against which Walker’s phrasing gently pushes and pulls. His lyrics are as poetic, poignant and sometimes droll as they are difficult to parse, although as always, they capture the writer’s experiential instant. It seems that his “now” is less painful than it has been for some time. The music sees him drawn back to his formative years in Chicago, reconnecting with its rich underground history and the likes of Gastr Del Sol/Jim O’Rourke, Isotope 217 and Tortoise, whose John McEntire produces.

Bill MacKay, touring buddy Andrew Scott Young and Ryan Jewell (a Walker mainstay live, who also played on Golden Sings) serve on guitar/piano, bass/piano and drums, respectively. It’s an ensemble effort, born from trust and intuitive flair, but the Young/Jewell team deserve respect for the balletic grace and buoyancy present in …Fable. There are understated strings, synths and (crucially) space to turn cartwheels. Explaining his choice of players, Walker told Uncut his trick is “to just be around folks I love and see what sticks. There’s a fearlessness when I hear Andrew, Bill and Ryan play music. I follow their lead. There’s a revolving door of a dozen or so folks over the years who humble me and keep me listening and learning.”

Walker claims that although Course In Fable fulfilled his desires to make a record on his own timescale and with his own money, on his own label, it wasn’t the album that he originally planned. That was “a double LP prog epic”. It withered on practicality’s vine but there’s more than an undercurrent of prog on “A Lenticular Slap”, which runs to nearly eight minutes and recalls Kiran Leonard’s knotty yet delicate compositions. The set opens with the seductive “Striking Down Your Big Premiere”, where stiff-breeze pacing is punctuated by a booming three-chord coda and some sweet finger-picking gives way to Walker’s rueful note – in a tone that recalls ’70s Elton – that “You send me pulse from God knows where/Antenna has changed its air from shortwave to ballistic cruise” and that he’s “always shit-brained when [he’s] pissed”.

It’s followed by the lightly fried circular folk orchestrations of “Rang Dizzy”, where strings rise and fall against piano-and-guitar dialogue and Walker exclaims in wonder and relief: “Fuck me, I’m alive”. The terrific “Axis Bent” surprises in its manifestation of Stephen Malkmus as a kindred spirit (Grateful Dead are the connecting point), with echoes of West Coast ’70s fusion, a blown-out guitar motif and a dash of freeform skronk. Its name suggests anything but a freewheeling, Laurel Canyon-ish beauty but that’s what “Clad With Bunk” is, albeit pulled off course by what sounds like half a dozen guitars in effortlessly fluent interplay, a burred blues phrase and a ripple of psych rock.

It’s only keening, luminous closer “Shiva With Dustpan” that clearly points back to where he’s been. But here, he and his band refract Nick Drake’s chamber folk through a ’70s cosmic Cali lens – Crosby, perhaps. It’s a fine combination, the sound of paths made familiar by constant tread plus intuitive choices enabled by years of improv discipline, intersecting. It’s also where Walker can’t resist a sardonic spit into his own poeticism. “Walk my cobbles, ash anywhere/Shiva with dustpan, collect no fare,” runs the chorus, perhaps in reference to the vagabond life of an independent musician. Then in the final verse: “Beg and choose in the land of opposition/I declare a happy birthday to every mouth full of shit”. As always, Walker’s expression is both plain-spoken and opaque; he’s the anti-hero of his own stories but a “character” only in the colloquial sense.

If Course In Fable sees Walker in a more relaxed, less self-conscious mode (“upbeat” might be pushing it), going where the evolutionary drift takes him, it’s partly because he’s come “home” to the Chicago sounds of his youth and has the same trusted team, but also because he simply has less to prove with each record. “Sounds or direction are never calculated,” he tells Uncut. “I hope to diverge from anything I’ve ever done on each new record. My style is fake until I make it, with smoke breaks in between.” Where the future takes him now is anyone’s guess – ruling out even that double album of “prog fucking rock” might be unwise.

Nick Cave collaborator Anita Lane has died, aged 61

Sam Richards
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Nick Cave collaborator Anita Lane has died, aged 61
Australian singer-songwriter Anita Lane, best known for her contributions to The Birthday Party and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, has died aged 61. The news was confirmed today (April 28) by her publicist, although no cause of death was given. Lane met Cave at art school in Melbourne in 1977, and t...

Australian singer-songwriter Anita Lane, best known for her contributions to The Birthday Party and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, has died aged 61. The news was confirmed today (April 28) by her publicist, although no cause of death was given.

Lane met Cave at art school in Melbourne in 1977, and the pair began dating. She moved to London with The Birthday Party in 1980, co-writing songs including “A Dead Song” and “Kiss Me Black”.

Despite splitting with Cave in 1983, Lane briefly joined The Bad Seeds and wrote lyrics for the songs “From Her To Eternity” and “Stranger Than Kindness”. She sung on 1996’s Murder Ballads as well on albums by fellow Bad Seeds Barry Adamson and Mick Harvey.

She launched her solo career with 1998’s Dirty Sings EP, and released two further albums: 1993’s Dirty Pearl and 2001’s Sex O’Clock.

“Goodbye lovely Anita, my most magical friend,” wrote Kid Congo Powers on Twitter. “Will be so missed. Love to all who loved her.”

Hear Ben Watt cover Sharon Van Etten on new mini-album, Storm Shelter

Sam Richards
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Hear Ben Watt cover Sharon Van Etten on new mini-album, Storm Shelter
Ben Watt has today released a new mini-album called Storm Shelter, featuring stripped-down piano versions of three songs from 2019's Storm Damage, plus one from 2016's Fever Dream and covers of Ten City’s "That’s The Way Love Is" and Sharon Van Etten’s "Comeback Kid". The mini-album was rec...

Ben Watt has today released a new mini-album called Storm Shelter, featuring stripped-down piano versions of three songs from 2019’s Storm Damage, plus one from 2016’s Fever Dream and covers of Ten City’s “That’s The Way Love Is” and Sharon Van Etten’s “Comeback Kid”.

The mini-album was recorded during rehearsals for the Storm Damage tour in January 2020 at RAK studios in London. “In an ideal world the recordings would have come out last year mid-tour,” says Watt, “but instead they close a chapter on a year of lockdown. For a while I thought about abandoning them, but listening again I thought their unadorned spirit seemed to speak to something of the strength in adversity we have all looked for recently.”

Watch a video for “That’s The Way Love Is” and listen to the whole of Storm Shelter below:

CD and vinyl versions of Storm Shelter are due later this year. Watt is donating an advance on royalty proceeds to UK homelessness charity, Shelter.

Laura Nyro boxset to feature rare demos and live recordings

Sam Richards
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Laura Nyro boxset to feature rare demos and live recordings
On July 30, Madfish Music will release American Dreamer – an 8xLP Laura Nyro boxset featuring remastered versions of her first seven albums plus an LP of rare demos and live recordings. The package includes a 36-page booklet with rare photographs, interviews and extensive liner notes from Peter...

On July 30, Madfish Music will release American Dreamer – an 8xLP Laura Nyro boxset featuring remastered versions of her first seven albums plus an LP of rare demos and live recordings.

The package includes a 36-page booklet with rare photographs, interviews and extensive liner notes from Peter Doggett, plus words from Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Todd Rundgren, Rosanne Cash, Rickie Lee Jones, Graham Nash, Donald Fagen, Alice Cooper, Bette Midler and Patti Labelle.

“This is music so far ahead of its time that it still sounds so unbelievable,” says Elton John. “The soul, the passion, just the out-and-out audacity of the way her rhythmic and melodic changes came, was like nothing I’d heard before. She influenced more songwriters that came out – successful songwriters – than probably anyone who came before her.”

The albums included in American Dreamer are More Than A New Discovery (1967), Eli And The Thirteenth Confession (1968), New York Tendaberry (1969), Christmas And The Beads of Sweat (1970), Gonna Take A Miracle (1971), Smile (1976) and Nested (1978). Peruse the tracklisting for the disc of rare demos and live recordings below, and pre-order the boxset here.

Stoney End (Single Version) (Mono Version)
Lu (Demo)
Stoned Soul Picnic (Demo)
Emmie (Demo)
Eli’s Comin’ (Single Version) (Mono Version)
Save The Country (Single Version)
In The Country Way (Album Version)
Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing (Recorded Live 30 May 1971, Fillmore East, USA)
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (Recorded Live 30 May 1971, Fillmore East, USA)
O-o-h Child (Recorded Live 30 May 1971, Fillmore East, USA)
Up On the Roof (Recorded Live 30 May 1971, Fillmore East, USA)
Someone Loves You (Demo)
Get Off My Cap (Demo)

Spiritualized announce Pure Phase vinyl reissue

Sam Richards
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Spiritualized announce Pure Phase vinyl reissue
Following the reissue of Lazer Guided Melodies last week, Spiritualized have announced the next stage of The Spaceman Reissue Program. Their 1995 second album Pure Phase – for which the band were briefly renamed Spiritualized Electric Mainline to reflect their expanding line-up – is due for r...

Following the reissue of Lazer Guided Melodies last week, Spiritualized have announced the next stage of The Spaceman Reissue Program.

Their 1995 second album Pure Phase – for which the band were briefly renamed Spiritualized Electric Mainline to reflect their expanding line-up – is due for release on 180g double vinyl via Fat Possum on June 11.

This remastered version of Pure Phase is presented in a gatefold jacket with reworked green artwork by Mark Farrow, and is available in both a standard black vinyl pressing and limited edition glow-in-the-dark vinyl exclusive to D2C / indie retail.

“You can’t really compare this record to any other because of how we mixed it; in such an “incorrect” way,” says Jason Pierce. “We mixed the tracks twice but I couldn’t decide which one I liked better so we said ‘let’s have them both’. Both of them were on tape so we spent hours cutting them into usable sections. If you run two things together in parallel you get this kind of Hawkwind effect (phase), which gets deeper as they drift away from being ‘locked’, so we had to keep re-locking on a bass drum every eight or ten bars and it took forever.

“If you listen to the isolated parts, everything is incredibly simple, the horns, the slide, all these little motifs and they lock together like some strange kind of machine. Something like Kraftwerk was the nearest thing in my musical vocabulary at the time. Great rock and roll music is like systems, it has its own endless cycle. Pure Phase was Michael Nyman, Steve Reich and John Adams, rock ‘n’ roll and gospel music, and it sounds like driving as fast as you can in torrential rain.

“I wish I could do it now, to mix things twice and throw it together and end up with this magic world. It was a thing that was out of our control and it just sounded better than we could have imagined so we chased it.”

You can read much more from Jason Pierce as he answers your questions in the latest issue of Uncut – in shops now with Bob Dylan on the cover!

Pete Townshend’s Top 10 deep cuts from The Who Sell Out box

Rob Hughes
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Pete Townshend’s Top 10 deep cuts from The Who Sell Out box
The Super Deluxe Edition of The Who's 1967 classic The Who Sell Out is now on sale, featuring a whole tranche of out-takes and previously unreleased Pete Townshend home demos. In the April 2021 issue of Uncut (Take 287), we asked Pete to talk about 10 of his favourite deep cuts from the box, providi...

The Super Deluxe Edition of The Who’s 1967 classic The Who Sell Out is now on sale, featuring a whole tranche of out-takes and previously unreleased Pete Townshend home demos. In the April 2021 issue of Uncut (Take 287), we asked Pete to talk about 10 of his favourite deep cuts from the box, providing a fascinating insight as to where his head was at in the lead-up to the recording of The Who’s first truly great album.

JAGUAR (demo mix)
“I was starting to work on quite ambitious stuff by this time and had a really good little studio, where I’d begun doing tape phasing to get that swirling sound. ‘Jaguar’ was originally just meant to be one of the jingles for The Who Sell Out, but it became something else entirely. It was done very late in the process, properly in the last couple of weeks before the album came out.”

GLOW GIRL (demo mix)
“This was written in Las Vegas while on tour with Herman’s Hermits in the summer of 1967. It’s about reincarnation. That would’ve been in the early days of my interest in Meher Baba and realising, ‘Oh fuck, the whole basis for an interest in esoteric, metaphysical Eastern religion is rooted in the idea that the soul never dies.’ And of course the refrain later became part of Tommy.”

MELANCHOLIA
“This was one of my first attempts to write about depression and anxiety. Interestingly, in light of Covid, the working title was ‘The Virus’. Once depression sets in, it’s so difficult to escape it. It’s like drowning, in a sense. It was the end of a period just before I properly got to trust that my girlfriend Karen [Astley] really loved me. I thought she was only with me because we’d been on Ready Steady Go!”

CALL ME LIGHTNING
“I was still living in Ealing and going to art school when I first demoed this. The Jan & Dean-style backing vocals were probably to get Keith Moon onside. He was a huge fan of theirs. I was really surprised when [co-manager] Kit Lambert popped up one day and said, ‘That song “Call Me Lightning” – let’s do it now!’ It was maybe two years after I’d done the demo.”

FAITH IN SOMETHING BIGGER
“I had this period where I was on a bit of a high. Karen and I had this flat in Ebury Street, I’d got my studio sorted and life seemed to be good. And I had a sense that sooner or later we’d get married, which we did. I was also very interested in the early writings of Meher Baba, just getting to grips with it. This song just came from all that.”

DOGS
“This was definitely inspired by Small Faces – it was my version of ‘Lazy Sunday’. I loved what the Faces did in the studio, I loved their process. They had so much fun. I must admit I was interested in dog racing at the time, but the song is really about the craft, trying to create that studio sound.”

I CAN SEE FOR MILES (demo mix)
“I recorded this when I had a flat in Chelsea in 1966, but kept it quiet for a while. A couple of times, when I came back from touring, there would be these really cool-looking guys around the flat, who were all very interested in Karen. And I became paranoid. So I wrote the song. Quite shallow, unfortunately.”

THINKING OF YOU ALL THE WHILE
“This is the third version of this song [better known as “Sunrise”]. It was an attempt to evoke the music I grew up with, show tunes and musicals. The chords are a bit jazzy and it’s a celebration of love being like a sunrise. I recorded it on one of those Philips tape recorders and played it to my mum. She didn’t say it was rubbish, it was more like: ‘That’s very nice, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?’”

RELAX (demo mix)
“I was starting to explore other areas of my songwriting at this point in time, starting to become more ambitious. I’d already recorded a version of this song at the Gorham Hotel [New York], but I felt I needed to make it sound harder-edged and a bit more psychedelic, so The Who could record it.”

RAEL (IBC Remake)
“Initially, this song had nothing to do with The Who. I was studying opera, learning to write music. Kit Lambert came in one day and said [adopting a very posh, demanding voice], ‘It’s time for a new Who single, Pete.’ I told him I was working on my opera, but he just went, ‘Jolly good. Let’s have it.’ So I took the four or five strands that I’d managed to deal with and condensed them down into a five-minute pop single.”

An Audience With J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr

Uncut
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An Audience With J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr
To celebrate the release of Dinosaur Jr's supersonic new album Sweep It Into Space, here's an Audience With J Mascis from the September 2014 issue of Uncut (Take 208). Kevin Shields, Mark Arm and TV Smith pose the questions as we discover how Mascis almost joined Nirvana but stood in with GG Allin i...

To celebrate the release of Dinosaur Jr’s supersonic new album Sweep It Into Space, here’s an Audience With J Mascis from the September 2014 issue of Uncut (Take 208). Kevin Shields, Mark Arm and TV Smith pose the questions as we discover how Mascis almost joined Nirvana but stood in with GG Allin instead: “Fine in theory, but when he’s actually shitting onstage beside you, it’s not fun!”

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“Portugal aren’t coming back from that,” exclaims J Mascis with unexpected enthusiasm. Presently, the notoriously reticent Mascis is sitting in a hotel bar in London watching Germany beat Portugal in the World Cup on a giant television screen. His surprising outburst, he explains, is because he has a vested interest in the outcome of this particular game: Mascis’ wife is German. She is currently in Berlin with their son where, it transpires, they are watching the match on a big screen, in the church where his brother-in-law is a minister.

Meanwhile, Mascis is in the UK to promote his latest solo album, Tied To A Star. Despite his woolly appearance – faded black Cactus T-shirt, trucker cap and purple-rimmed glasses, grey hair, beard – Mascis is on sharp form as he answers your questions on subjects ranging from his favourite guitar riffs to the existence of some deep Dinosaur Jr rarities and exactly what happened when Kurt Cobain asked him to join Nirvana…

Hi, J. You’ve got a reputation for being difficult in interviews, do you think some people misunderstand your sense of humour?
Kevin Shields
I’ve learned from being interviewed and dealing with people that I talk slower than a lot of people. If a person’s really wired and ADD, and I don’t answer fast enough, they write me off as an asshole in that second where I’m not answering them. Then, that’s it. How long have I known Kevin? Since we first came to England. We opened for Primal Scream and then played at ULU. I think he was there. Someone told me to buy My Bloody Valentine, and the “You Made Me Realise” EP had just come out. We’ve seen each other pretty much every time I’ve come to England. Coming to Europe back then was great for us. They’d give us food and somewhere to stay and people actually liked us. We were pretty hated where we lived in Western Massachusetts.

Is it true you turned down Kurt Cobain’s invitation to join Nirvana?
Stan Maloney, New York
Yeah, Kurt asked me to join. I was with Thurston Moore at this Nirvana show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. I was talking with Kurt, and he said, “You should join my band.” I think he was kind of sick of the guitar player at the time, Jason [Everman]. I was like, “Oh, yeah.” That was kind of it. You know, I wanted to go to college in Seattle and I didn’t get in. So I could have been there before all them. Imagine how different history would have been. I had gone to a semester in Amhurst. I hated college so I didn’t do too well. When I applied to Seattle, they weren’t too impressed. What was I studying? Nothing. You can do that in America. I took a lot of Hitler-inspired classes. I had a teacher who was an SS officer and another who was a Jew who escaped. They were both in the same history department, which was weird.

What do you remember about your earliest gigs in Boston?
Sheryl Dillon, Cardiff
When we started, we were too loud and we had no fans. That’s a bad combination when you’re trying to play shows in these bars and the bartender can’t hear the people trying to buy drinks. “Who are these guys?” So we’d get banned from all the clubs around there. In Boston the soundman threw a bottle at us. We were playing with Salem 66 or something. In Boston, in [Mascis’ early-’80s hardcore punk band] Deep Wound, people liked us in the hardcore scene but the hardcore scene did not like Dino when we started. But what are you gonna do? I guess the first time we went to New York, which was three hours away, that’s when we first met Sonic Youth and found some people who actually liked us. It was our home away from home. We’d spend a lot of time in New York.

J, even your acoustic guitar sounds loud. How do you do it? I’ve been trying to persuade sound technicians to make mine louder for years…
TV Smith, The Adverts
Travel with your own soundman, I guess. It’s a battle, if you don’t have your own soundman, to try and communicate what you’re trying to do to some other guy. I think TV Smith could make it happen. Yeah, I’m a total fan of British punk. What are the differences between British and American punk? The production was much better in England. I guess most US punk bands never recorded in real studios. English punk seemed better for some years, until probably ’81 when hardcore happened. It all came together perfectly at that age. I could relate to Minor Threat. They had more suburban problems, like me. You know, being pissed for no reason. “Oh, my parents are OK, I’m not starving, nothing is apparently wrong, but I’m still depressed and pissed off at everything. I have no reason to be.” You get jealous of people with real problems.

I’m a massive fan of the first three Dinosaur Jr albums. Are there any unreleased studio recordings from this era (“Center Of The Universe”, for example), and if so, what are the chances of them being released?
Bennett Sandhu
No, across the board. “Centre Of The Universe” was an early Lou [Barlow] song. It didn’t appear on any album, he didn’t want to play it. It could have been on our first album, but he decided he hated it immediately. There might be some practice tape of the song, but not that I have. I guess we could always re-record it now.

What was it about GG Allin that made you think, ‘I want to be in a band with that guy?’
Mark Arm, Mudhoney
Yeah… that’s a weird one. Gerard Cosloy, who went on to Matador fame, went to college in my town and became my band [Deep Wound]’s manager, for a minute, then we broke up. He said he’d put out the Dinosaur record when we formed, so we already knew we could make a record. But he was putting together this GG Allin band, and he asked me to be in it. I was excited, until the reality set in. I often thought it was kind of like how Kurt Cobain must have felt about Courtney Love. It’s like this punk idea that seems cool ’til you’re doing it. You like GG Allin in theory, but then when he’s actually shitting onstage and you’re standing there, it’s not fun and you think, ‘Wow, this is a bad scene.’

How many guitars do you own, J?
Craig Parsons, Hemel Hempstead
Quite a few. Under 100, but more than 50. That’s a good answer. Where do I keep them all? They’re pretty much everywhere. I like to try to get every conceivable rock guitar sound you could possibly need. The Wipers sound, the Keith Richards sound, the Fast Eddie sound. I’m just trying to cover all the bases. They all sound slightly different. Some for recording and some for playing. You hope some guitars have different songs in them you can just get out by playing them. That’s one crazy justification for buying them. It’s harder to justify to my wife, of course. The oldest guitar I’ve got is a Martin from the 1930s.

Question: Master Of Reality or Vol. 4? (Paranoid is not an answer.)
Jonathan Poneman, Sub Pop
Vol. 4, definitely. This is Sabbath, who I just saw for the first time. In fact, Jonathan helped me get in to the show. They played in Berlin. Tony Iommi has now gone to the top of my guitar list, Top 5 guitarists I’ve ever seen. I love Sabbath, I was maybe 12 years old when I first heard them, but I never considered Tony to be as good a guitarist as he evidently is. I was blown away when I saw him do “Supernaut” from Vol. 4. I always thought that solo was impossible to play. I’ve seen people try, but no-one can do it. Then to see Tony play it live, that was awesome. Do I think Bill Ward should be back in the band? The new guy kicked them in the ass a bit, gave them some energy, but he’s not so good it takes away from Bill. He’s ballpark.

Which of your album sleeves do you like the most – and why?
Peter Fors, Stockholm
Green Mind is a good one. It’s a cool photo. It seems to resonate. This ’70s icon of the kid. It’s got that over-the-edge look of teenage rebellion. Why do I like green and purple so much? They’re my favourite colours. I have some purple clothing, but it’s very hard to get for men. I’ve designed some purple trainers (below). They came with a 7” cover of Mazzy Star, “Fade Into You”. Will that ever get a proper release? Yeah, I think it’ll appear on this record, like a B-side maybe. I played it live first time the other day. It was pretty good. I’ll probably play it on this tour. It went on for a while. A lot of noodling. But if it’s good, let it noodle.

If you could only play one riff for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Patrick Proctor, Manchester
Maybe “City Slang” by Sonic’s Rendezvous Band. Is that a riff? Sorta. What makes a good riff? It’s memorable, you want to sing it and play it. What’s a favourite riff of mine? I like “Sludgefest” and “Out There”. “Out There” being more of what you’d consider a riff. It seems a bit complicated for me to play and sing, so I’m impressed. It seems a bit over my ability.

What are your memories of the 1992 Rollercoaster tour?
Debbie Williams, London
It was fun. I remember I was surprised that The Jesus And Mary Chain were even more socially retarded than I was. We didn’t speak until maybe the last show. They’d hide in the dressing room. That was impressive somehow. I was already friends with My Bloody Valentine, so we’d hang out. Blur were the most sociable, the Mary Chain the worst, then us, then MBV. Did we drink a lot at that time? I don’t think I was drinking. It was a cool tour. I’d never really heard Blur before, but obviously they became huge. Last time I was here, I saw the guitarist in Wagamama right over the road.

Hello J! Do you remember filming the “Freak Scene” video in my back garden in Manchester?
John Robb, The Membranes/Goldblade
Yes, I do. It was pretty exciting. We shaved our soundman’s head for the video. Dancing around in weird costumes with all the papier mâché stuff he had lying around his house. Our label edited out everything like that from the video and just had us playing in the garden. I was furious. The real version only came out when we re-released the LP. How did we end up in John’s garden? It’s Manchester, that’s what happened in those days.

How did you end up reforming the classic earlier lineup of Dinosaur Jr in 2005?
Matt Barlow, via email
We finally got the reissues to come out and got them away from SST, so we put it on Merge and my then-manager thought we could do something to promote it. I was the hard one to convince. Lou and Murph were on board but it took a bit of Lou mellowing out after being so angry with me for so long. I’d see him, and he’d still be angry. Then at some point he mellowed and it opened the door for apologies… we saw each other in the intervening years. I’d gone to Sebadoh shows when he was in town, but he’d never go to any show that I’d do. Was I on the guestlist? I’d never pay, so I must have got in somehow. Things are doing all right. It has its ups and downs, but it’s not as extreme.

Neil Young – Young Shakespeare

Tyler Wilcox
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Neil Young – Young Shakespeare
Young Shakespeare, the latest in Young’s ongoing Performance Series (this is vol 3.5 for those crazy enough to keep track), captures the songwriter at the cusp of solo superstardom. He was still best known as the Y in CSNY but he’d packed several lifetimes’ worth of activity into a very brief ...

Young Shakespeare, the latest in Young’s ongoing Performance Series (this is vol 3.5 for those crazy enough to keep track), captures the songwriter at the cusp of solo superstardom. He was still best known as the Y in CSNY but he’d packed several lifetimes’ worth of activity into a very brief span of time: from the break-ups and make-ups of Buffalo Springfield to the dangerously unstable Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, from the lukewarm reception of his debut 1968 solo LP to the formation of Crazy Horse. Now, as he walked on stage at Stratford Connecticut’s Shakespeare Theatre in January of 1971, he was alone again, naturally, and rapidly emerging as a force to be reckoned with.

Both Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (his first collab with Crazy Horse) and the then-freshly released After The Gold Rush had been powerful statements of intent, unearthing a glittering vein of sonic possibilities that Young continues to mine to this day. Neil’s confidence as a performer was growing with leaps and bounds too, his distinctive, percussive acoustic guitar technique crystallising and his high, lonesome vocals becoming more bewitching.

This era is well represented in Young’s always expanding archival universe; indeed, Live At Massey Hall 1971 (released as Performance Series 3.0 in 2007) was recorded just a few days prior to the Shakespeare Theatre show, and Live At The Cellar Door (released as Performance Series 2.5 in 2013) comprises solo performances from December 1970. (There’s even more to come: Neil recently announced a Bootleg Series that will include three more late ’70/early ’71 solo shows.) With a setlist and overall mood that doesn’t deviate wildly from Massey Hall 1971, some fans might find reason to complain about Young Shakespeare. Maybe one can have too much of a good thing? But in a world where listeners can immerse themselves in every last note of Dylan and the Hawks’ 1966 tour or the Grateful Dead on their Europe ’72 trek, more examples of Neil Young at this early peak are welcome.

Young Shakespeare is differentiated by its visual accompaniment – a murky but absorbing 16mm document of the show made by Dutch filmmaker Wim van der Linden (and subsequently edited by Young’s directorial alter ego Bernard Shakey). Flannel-clad Neil is a shadowy but friendly presence as he moves from guitar to piano, at times gently ribbing his audience with a wry joke, at others earnestly seeking a connection. At this point, Young’s stage presence is the perfect mix of seductive mystique and aw-shucks bonhomie.

The performance itself? Flawless. Even at this early stage, Neil had an impressive stash of songs to draw from, and he dispatches tunes from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Déjà Vu and After The Gold Rush with focus and precision. These may be relatively new compositions but they already sound like sturdy classics on stage, from the wistful opener, “Tell Me Why”, to the moody acoustic remakes of “Cowgirl In The Sand” and “Down By The River”. Instead of coasting on past successes, however, Young takes the opportunity to debut several new numbers destined to become signature concert favourites. “Old Man”, inspired by the foreman on Neil’s northern California ranch, is close to fully formed; the songwriter would record its definitive Harvest version in Nashville just a few weeks later. Young prefaces “The Needle And The Damage Done” with a ramble that references the recent heroin-related deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix but it’s likely he had another musician in mind: guitarist Danny Whitten, whose drug habits had caused Neil’s break-up of Crazy Horse in 1970. Whitten passed away in 1972 while trying to kick heroin.

Equally heavy is “Ohio”, a song less than a year old, but a fresh wound for the counterculture. Written and recorded in the immediate wake of the Kent State massacre of May 1970, the CSNY single is militant and aggressive, with piercing guitars and urgent vocals. In Stratford, the acoustic “Ohio” is a more mournful thing, a personal lament, the lines that cut the deepest here: “What if you knew her/And found her dead on the ground?” However, Young is enough of a showman to follow up this dark cloud with the featherweight hoedown “Dance Dance Dance”, which serves to lighten the mood considerably.

As on Massey Hall 1971, Young Shakespeare’s most interesting highlight is the “A Man Needs A Maid”/“Heart Of Gold” medley, performed on piano and introduced by Young sheepishly as “my most elaborate accomplishment”. But elaborate it is. “Maid” is a dramatic performance, even when stripped of its bombastic Jack Nitzsche arrangement, Young’s vocal rising over crashing minor chords. “Heart Of Gold”, by contrast, is given an intimate, hopeful reading. In just about a year’s time, the song (in a radically altered form) would take Neil to the top of the charts. But there’s an even more enticing hint of things to come; during the medley’s elegant instrumental preamble, Young plays the unmistakable melody of “Borrowed Tune”, a song that wouldn’t appear on record until 1975. It’s brief moments like these that remind us of why releases such as Young Shakespeare are essential to our appreciation of the songwriter’s long career. They give us a valuable, if slightly blurry, freeze-frame of an artist who is always in motion – here one minute, gone the next.

Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra – Promises

Stephen Dalton
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Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra – Promises
Even by his own over-achieving standards, Sam Shepherd has pulled off an impressive coup with his latest pan-generational opus. Over the past decade, the classically trained Mancunian polymath composer behind Floating Points has traversed the outer limits of jazz, electronica and orchestral post-roc...

Even by his own over-achieving standards, Sam Shepherd has pulled off an impressive coup with his latest pan-generational opus. Over the past decade, the classically trained Mancunian polymath composer behind Floating Points has traversed the outer limits of jazz, electronica and orchestral post-rock, DJ-ed at achingly cool clubs and worked with numerous stellar talents. Meanwhile, lest we forget, he also completed a PhD in neuroscience. But Shepherd surpasses himself on Promises by scoring an increasingly rare collaboration with living legend and towering tenor sax innovator Pharoah Sanders, who turned 80 last year, with classy back-up from the string section of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Closer in form and mood to the expansive electro-orchestral reveries of his 2015 debut album, Elaenia, than to its more eclectic, club-friendly 2019 sequel, Crush, Shepherd’s latest release pays unashamed homage to the spiritually inclined “astral jazz” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, as a former collaborator with both John and Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and other immortals, Sanders himself was a pioneer in this field, moving from frenetic free jazz into more meditative, cosmic, ambient fusion territory. With its woozy lava-lamp tempo, Quaalude-fuzzy warmth and emphatically analogue feel, Promises could almost be some long-lost modal jazz classic from 1972. The only surprise is that Shepherd did not sprinkle the sound mix with authentically retro vinyl crackle.

Promises first began to take shape five years ago as an improvised jam session in LA featuring Sanders and Shepherd, which was commissioned by Luaka Bop, the globalised fusion-pop label founded by David Byrne. Shepherd later embroidered this sparse conversation between piano and saxophone into a rich tapestry of vintage acoustic and electronic instruments including harpsichord, Hammond B3 organ, EMS Synthi, ARP 2600, Buchla 200e and more. As with previous Floating Points albums, the studio gear list alone will be pure geek-porn for analogue-synth nerds.

Just last year, Shepherd completed this long-gestating project by convening the LSO strings for a socially distanced session in London. Though they never dominate the album’s sound, the string players give it extra ballast and bandwidth, couching the core modal melody in supple arrangements that alternate between delicate tonal retouching and drenching widescreen lyricism.

Despite being pretentiously packaged as a suite in nine movements, Promises is essentially a single long composition topped off with a short surprise coda. The gently hypnotic heartbeat running through the album is Shepherd’s spare keyboard motif, a recurring ripple of broken chords that steadily lap and ebb like becalmed waves on a sheltered beach. Over these amniotic undulations, Sanders initially lays hesitant vapour trails of saxophone, breathy and reedy, intimate and warm-blooded. “It was like the instrument was an extension of his being,” Shepherd recalls in the accompanying press notes, “a megaphone for his soul.”

But as the piece expands, with voluptuous LSO strings and lush electronica swamping the main melody, Sanders shifts into a more assertive gear, striking off on choppy free-jazz tangents, melismatic volleys and blues-inflected licks. As Shepherd’s keyboard noodling swells into cosmic lounge-jazz mode, Sanders also adds some half-submerged vocalese burbles, sleepy-voiced scats and falsetto ululations that sound more like spontaneous responses to the music than pre-planned interjections. These are very human touches, fleeting but charming. More of these playful interjections would have been very welcome.

Hitting its feverish peak around the 30-minute mark, Promises becomes a ravishing symphony of glissando synth sirens, melting portamento chords, hovering strings and twinkling birdsong effects. There are countless musical ghosts at this feast, from the mind-bending celestial visions of mid-period Miles and Alice Coltrane to the cumulative avant-minimalism of Gavin Bryars and William Basinski. Sanders finally gets to let rip here with some thrilling, energised, discordant honking before Shepherd dims the lights again for a slowly receding fade-out of low drones and deepening silence. A hidden coda lurks in the afterglow, rearing up from the shadows with a shiny effusion of strings. Far more modern classical than jazz in style, this brief encore is a bracing but oddly incongruous afterthought.

Promises rewards repeat listens with its immersive, densely layered, quietly mesmerising beauty. But it is also an unusually slender piece of work for Shepherd, especially when set against the kaleidoscope range and dynamism of Crush. Beneath its ornate instrumentation, this elegant exercise in retro pastiche never quite shirks the sense of being a single skeletal composition stretched a little too thinly across 40-plus minutes, a watercolour sketch dressed up as a grand canvas.

With fairly limited room for textural variation or harmonic progression, Sanders also feels underused in places, more guest player than equal collaborator. And while it would be unfair to expect a veteran jazz revolutionary to break new ground so deep into his autumn years, Shepherd’s tastefully manicured moodscapes would have benefited from a little more Pharoah input in general, even in his current mellow grandfatherly mode. Promises is an impressive collision of talents, and sublimely lovely in places, but also frustratingly slight. A minor addition to the canon of its two main authors, it earns the double-edged compliment of all half-great albums: it leaves you craving more.

Marianne Faithfull: “I managed not to die!”

Laura Barton
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Marianne Faithfull: “I managed not to die!”
The new issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here, with free P&P for the UK – includes a candid interview with Marianne Faithfull about new album She Walks In Beauty, the latest instalment in her remarkable career as rock’s most regal survivor, completed after h...

The new issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here, with free P&P for the UK – includes a candid interview with Marianne Faithfull about new album She Walks In Beauty, the latest instalment in her remarkable career as rock’s most regal survivor, completed after her hospitalisation with Covid-19. She tells Laura Barton about recovery, Romantic poetry and how, perhaps, the ’60s weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Here’s an extract…

On a midweek afternoon, Faithfull, 74, is at home in Putney, south-west London, batting away questions about ’60s infamy to recall the formative influence of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and her English teacher, Mrs Simpson.“She was very ordinary, she had white hair and glasses,” she says. “But she was really, really good. I liked her so much, and she taught me all this stuff about the Romantics. She taught me for that first year, and then of course I was torn away, and I was discovered…”

The story of how Marianne Faithfull was discovered – a teenage ingénue fêted by the in-crowd and caught up with the Stones, then duly lost to scandal and addiction, has coloured much of her career. For a long time, the popular imagination carried her as a kind of tragic muse, a victim of her own beauty and the era’s excesses. Later it recast her as a fighter, a treasure, an artist of indefatigable spirit.

Today, she sounds determined and faintly amused. She has a deeply fragrant voice, grown a little hoarse following a serious altercation with Covid that kept her in hospital for several weeks last spring. “I got terribly ill. I don’t really remember it, but apparently I almost died,” she says. “I managed not to die.”

Still, the effects of the illness have lingered – she warns we might have to conduct our interview in segments, to allow her breaks to recalibrate. “It’s been very hard to cope with,” she explains. “Particularly my lungs, because I used to smoke, and I have of course got emphysema or whatever they call it now.” She pauses. “It’s got another name, and that’s the big problem – my memory, and the fatigue. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about this! Not the point!”

The point is that before she contracted Covid, Faithfull had begun work on She Walks In Beauty. “When I came out of hospital I finished it,” she says. “I was worried: would I be able to do it? But I was, amazingly enough. It’s a miracle, really. It’s beautiful, because the ones I did post-Covid are very, very vulnerable and that’s kind of lovely.”

She Walks In Beauty, her 22nd studio album, is a spoken-word collection of some of her favourite Romantic poetry, scored by the composer and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, with contributions from Nick Cave, Brian Eno and Vincent Ségal. It is a crowning moment in her career; the product of a long-held ambition to interpret works by Keats, Shelley, Tennyson and their contemporaries that she has carried close since St Joseph’s. Cave calls it “the greatest Marianne Faithfull album ever. And that’s saying something.” Ellis, meanwhile, describes it to Uncut as “this incredible thing, this kind of wonder. This bit of a little miracle.”

You can read the full interview in the June 2021 issue of Uncut, out now with Bob Dylan on the cover and available to buy direct from us here.

Hear “Your Fandango”, the new single by Todd Rundgren and Sparks

Sam Richards
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Hear “Your Fandango”, the new single by Todd Rundgren and Sparks
50 years since Todd Rundgren produced a self-titled album by the LA group Halfnelson, soon to rename themselves Sparks, he's reunited with Ron and Russell Mael for the latest single from his forthcoming album Space Force. Hear "Your Fandango" below: https://open.spotify.com/album/2IO01uIbijEcW...

50 years since Todd Rundgren produced a self-titled album by the LA group Halfnelson, soon to rename themselves Sparks, he’s reunited with Ron and Russell Mael for the latest single from his forthcoming album Space Force.

Hear “Your Fandango” below:

Says Rundgren, “It’s been a long way since ‘Simple Ballet’, but we finally got the old dance troupe back together!”

Add the Mael brothers: “It’s been a truly heartwarming experience to once again be working with Todd, our first-ever producer, after a brief 50-year hiatus.”

“Your Fandango” will released physically on 7” vinyl later this year.

Peek inside John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s mansion in new “Isolation” video

Sam Richards
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Peek inside John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s mansion in new “Isolation” video
This Friday (April 23), Capitol/UMC will release John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band: The Ultimate Collection, featuring 6 CDs and two Blu-Ray discs of demos, outtakes and alternate mixes of the 1970 album. One of the alternate takes is a 'Raw Studio Mix' of "Isolation", recorded in EMI Studio 3, Abbey ...

This Friday (April 23), Capitol/UMC will release John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band: The Ultimate Collection, featuring 6 CDs and two Blu-Ray discs of demos, outtakes and alternate mixes of the 1970 album.

One of the alternate takes is a ‘Raw Studio Mix’ of “Isolation”, recorded in EMI Studio 3, Abbey Road on Oct 6, 1970. You can hear it below accompanied by a video shot at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Tittenhurst Park mansion on July 16, 1971.

The annotated video takes you inside John and Yoko’s private bedroom, bathroom and dressing rooms pointing out artefacts of interest, including the piano on which Lennon composed “Imagine”. Watch below:

You can read a full review of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band: The Ultimate Collection in the latest issue of Uncut, in shops now and available to buy online here.

Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Damon Albarn urge PM to change music streaming law

Sam Richards
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Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Damon Albarn urge PM to change music streaming law
Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Marianne Faithfull, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Massive Attack, Roger Daltrey, Noel Gallagher, Joan Armatrading, The Chemical Brothers, David Gilmour and many more of the UK's greatest living songwriters have put their name to an op...

Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Marianne Faithfull, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Massive Attack, Roger Daltrey, Noel Gallagher, Joan Armatrading, The Chemical Brothers, David Gilmour and many more of the UK’s greatest living songwriters have put their name to an open letter, drafted by the Musicians’ Union, calling on the Prime Minister to fix the glaring inequalities in the music streaming system.

The economics of streaming have long been a bone of contention within the music industry, with many artists pointing out that they only receive a tiny fraction of a pence per stream, while major record companies have been able to cling on to a much greater revenue share based on laws and contracts drawn up in the pre-streaming era.

“For too long, streaming platforms, record labels and other internet giants have exploited performers and creators without rewarding them fairly,” reads the letter. “We must put the value of music back where it belongs – in the hands of music makers.”

The letter’s main proposal is a change to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which will bring songwriting royalties for streaming in line with those from radio.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Commons Select Committee is currently carrying out an inquiry into the economics of music streaming, during which artists, label bosses and tech companies have given testimony to MPs. The results of the inquiry are expected in the summer.

Read the full text of the open letter and list of signatories below. You can sign the petition yourself here.

“Dear Prime Minister,

We write to you on behalf of today’s generation of artists, musicians and songwriters here in the UK.

For too long, streaming platforms, record labels and other internet giants have exploited performers and creators without rewarding them fairly. We must put the value of music back where it belongs – in the hands of music makers.

Streaming is quickly replacing radio as our main means of music communication. However, the law has not kept up with the pace of technological change and, as a result, performers and songwriters do not enjoy the same protections as they do in radio.

Today’s musicians receive very little income from their performances – most featured artists receive tiny fractions of a US cent per stream and session musicians receive nothing at all.

To remedy this, only two words need to change in the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. This will modernise the law so that today’s performers receive a share of revenues, just like they enjoy in radio. It won’t cost the taxpayer a penny but will put more money in the pockets of UK taxpayers and raise revenues for public services like the NHS.

There is evidence of multinational corporations wielding extraordinary power and songwriters struggling as a result. An immediate government referral to the Competition and Markets Authority is the first step to address this. Songwriters earn 50% of radio revenues, but only 15% in streaming. We believe that in a truly free market the song will achieve greater value.

Ultimately though, we need a regulator to ensure the lawful and fair treatment of music makers. The UK has a proud history of protecting its producers, entrepreneurs and inventors. We believe British creators deserve the same protections as other industries whose work is devalued when exploited as a loss-leader.

By addressing these problems, we will make the UK the best place in the world to be a musician or a songwriter, allow recording studios and the UK session scene to thrive once again, strengthen our world leading cultural sector, allow the market for recorded music to flourish for listeners and creators, and unearth a new generation of talent.

We urge you to take these forward and ensure the music industry is part of your levelling-up agenda as we kickstart the post-Covid economic recovery.”

Damon Albarn OBE
Lily Allen
Wolf Alice
Marc Almond OBE
Joan Armatrading CBE
David Arnold
Massive Attack
Jazzie B OBE
Adam Bainbridge (Kindness)
Emily Barker
Gary Barlow OBE
Geoff Barrow
Django Bates
Brian Bennett OBE
Fiona Bevan
Aflie Boe OBE
Billy Bragg
The Chemical Brothers
Kate Bush CBE
Melanie C
Eliza Carthy MBE
Martin Carthy MBE
Celeste
Guy Chambers
Mike Batt LVO
Don Black OBE
Badly Drawn Boy
Chrissy Boy
Tim Burgess
Mairéad Carlin
Laura-Mary Carter
Nicky Chinn
Dame Sarah Connolly DBE
Phil Coulter
Roger Daltrey CBE
Catherine Anne Davies (The Anchoress)
Ian Devaney
Chris Difford
Al Doyle
Anne Dudley
Brian Eno
Self Esteem
James Fagan
Paloma Faith
Marianne Faithfull
George Fenton
Rebecca Ferguson
Robert Fripp
Shy FX
Gabrielle
Peter Gabriel
Noel Gallagher
Guy Garvey
Bob Geldof KBE
Boy George
David Gilmour CBE
Nigel Godrich
Howard Goodall CBE
Jimi Goodwin
Graham Gouldman
Tom Gray
Roger Greenaway OBE
Will Gregory
Ed Harcourt
Tony Hatch OBE
Richard Hawley
Justin Hayward
Fran Healy
Orlando Higginbottom
Jools Holland OBE, DL
Mick Hucknall
Crispin Hunt
Shabaka Hutchings
Eric Idle
John Paul Jones
Julian Joseph OBE
Kano
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Gary Kemp
Nancy Kerr
Richard Kerr
Soweto Kinch
Beverley Knight MBE
Mark Knopfler OBE
Annie Lennox OBE
Shaznay Lewis
Gary Lightbody OBE
Tasmin Little OBE
Calum MacColl
Roots Manuva
Laura Marling
Johnny Marr
Chris Martin
Claire Martin OBE
Cerys Matthews MBE
Sir Paul McCartney CH MBE
Horse McDonald
Thurston Moore
Gary “Mani” Mounfield
Mitch Murray CBE
Field Music
Frank Musker
Laura Mvula
Kate Nash
Stevie Nicks
Orbital
Roland Orzabal
Gary Osborne
Jimmy Page OBE
Hannah Peel
Daniel Pemberton
Yannis Philippakis
Anna Phoebe
Phil Pickett
Robert Plant CBE
Karine Polwart
Emily Portman
Chris Rea
Eddi Reader MBE
Sir Tim Rice
Orphy Robinson MBE
Matthew Rose
Nitin Sawhney CBE
Anil Sebastian
Peggy Seeger
Nadine Shah
Feargal Sharkey OBE
Shura
Labi Siffre
Martin Simpson
Skin
Mike Skinner
Curt Smith
Fraser T Smith
Robert Smith
Sharleen Spiteri
Lisa Stansfield
Sting CBE
Suggs
Tony Swain
Heidi Talbot
John Taylor
Phil Thornalley
KT Tunstall
Ruby Turner MBE
Becky Unthank
Norma Waterson MBE
Cleveland Watkiss MBE
Jessie Ware
Bruce Welch OBE
Kitty Whately
Ricky Wilde
Olivia Williams
Daniel “Woody” Woodgate
Midge Ure OBE
Nikki Yeoh

Hear the new single by James, “Beautiful Beaches”

Sam Richards
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Hear the new single by James, “Beautiful Beaches”
James have today released a new single from their forthcoming album All The Colours Of You, due out on June 4. Hear "Beautiful Beaches" below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HQBbi3eGV0 Frontman Tim Booth wrote the lyrics of "Beautiful Beaches" in response to climate change migration and t...

James have today released a new single from their forthcoming album All The Colours Of You, due out on June 4.

Hear “Beautiful Beaches” below:

Frontman Tim Booth wrote the lyrics of “Beautiful Beaches” in response to climate change migration and the increasingly regular Californian fires that eventually forced him to move his family from Topanga Canyon to Costa Rica.

“We love how this song is so uplifting, focusing on new beginnings,” says Booth. “I like the idea that many might not know the backstory and hear it as a post-Covid holiday song! Praying that the lyrics don’t turn out prophetic.”

James have also just announced a headline show at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on September 9, with tickets going on sale at 9am on Friday (April 23) from here.

You can read much more from Tim Booth and James in the new issue of Uncut, in shops now or available to order online here!

Madness announce London Palladium livestream

Sam Richards
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Madness announce London Palladium livestream
Madness have revealed details of a livestreamed show taking place at the London Palladium on May 14. Madness & Charlie Higson In ‘The Get Up!’ is billed as an evening of music, drama and comedy. It will include a full live set from the band in which they'll premiere some brand new songs along...

Madness have revealed details of a livestreamed show taking place at the London Palladium on May 14.

Madness & Charlie Higson In ‘The Get Up!’ is billed as an evening of music, drama and comedy. It will include a full live set from the band in which they’ll premiere some brand new songs alongside Madness classics.

Watch a trailer below:

Tickets for Madness & Charlie Higson In ‘The Get Up!’ go on sale at 9am on Friday (April 23) from here.

Madness also star in a three-part docuseries about their early years, Before We Was We, coming to BT TV on May 1. Watch a trailer for that below:

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