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Lankum Q&A: End Of The Road 2024 – Day 2

Mark Beaumont
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Lankum Q&A: End Of The Road 2024 – Day 2

If it feels odd for Lankum, at End Of The Road 2024’s first Uncut Q&A session, to face down a stacked terrace of wooden pews packed with several hundred festival-goers expecting sparkling banter - but at least it’s not the Leeds Irish Centre circa 2015. The night when, at their worst (and best) ever gig, they played to a crowd of nine-year-old Irish dancers, surrounded by a gang of hardcore crusties on Ecstasy.

If it feels odd for Lankum, at End Of The Road 2024’s first Uncut Q&A session, to face down a stacked terrace of wooden pews packed with several hundred festival-goers expecting sparkling banter – but at least it’s not the Leeds Irish Centre circa 2015. The night when, at their worst (and best) ever gig, they played to a crowd of nine-year-old Irish dancers, surrounded by a gang of hardcore crusties on Ecstasy.

JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

“We didn’t know how to say no,” says singer Ian Lynch, recalling the request they received from a Liverpudlian children’s Irish dancing group to perform at the event, otherwise populated by their squatter friends from Leeds and Bradford, very much ready to party. “One of them was after double-dropping. He was especially in bits. So we had all these nine-year-old Irish dancers…”

“And their grannies,” adds his brother Daragh.

“There were two sound men completely drunk,” Ian continues. “The parents of the Irish dancers were really pushy, they were like ‘Play a set of reels so the kids can dance.’ We’re like ‘We don’t really play music like that.’ We did it once, the little kids danced and while this was going on there’s all these people totally out of it behind them.”

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Having survived such a hilarious ordeal of a gig, half an hour with Uncut reviews editor and regular Q&A host Tom Pinnock is a relative breeze. The “kings of jig and drone” have been onsite since yesterday, ready for their 7am soundcheck (“way too many instruments,” Ian sighs) and are in convivial spirits. Discussion flows easily from their recent show with Massive Attack, where they hung out with RMT chief and Lankum fanatic Mick Lynch, to an Irish scene aftershow where – in a crowd full of “scantily-clad women running after Kneecap” – the only person to recognise Daragh was “the guy in the woolly jumper with the beard.”

The band still seem taken aback by the phenomenal response they received to their Mercury Prize and Ivor Novello nominated fourth album False Lankum. “Just as we were making it, I said to someone ‘Imagine if we got as good a reception for this as we did for [2019’s] The Livelong Day, how amazing would that be?’ And it was twenty times that.”

“We were convinced people were going to hate it and we were one hundred per cent okay with that,” says Ian. “We were ready for it to be slated and lo and behold it’s been the opposite.”

Pinnock dug into the seams mined by Lankum, linking the drone element of traditional Irish music to the work of Sunn O))) and Coil. “It’s bringing some of the sensibilities of the more doomy side of drone and bringing it to Irish music,” Ian agrees. “If you listen to straight-up Irish music the drone is definitely there but it’s in the background, there’s nobody concentrating on bringing it to the fore. That was the path we’ve found ourselves going down over the past couple of years.”

Daragh laments that Irish culture has been “repackaged for this weird American Disneyland kind of audience”, and the Americanisation of Irish identity is a band bugbear. Ian explains how they connected far more with Mexican punks in the US than the Irish-American community. “We played in an Irish bar and everyone was talking over us,” he says. “Irish-Americans are a fucking weird bunch. Often you’ll find they’re the most racist and backwards of the Americans. They have a frozen idea of what Ireland was supposedly like 200 years ago that it was never really like at all…Then we played in this squat in San Antonio and there’s all these chaos punks outside with big mohawks. We started playing and they all sat down on the ground and started crying – ‘That’s just like what they did to the fucking Mexicans, man’.”

Lankum have made many friends on their rise out of the Irish scene. The Mary Wallopers are brothers in arms. “There’s not so much rivalry,” says Daragh. “They’re doing that thing, we’re doing this thing and we’re in it together. It’s a healthy balance of irreverence and respect.” They champion Kneecap too – “They’ve done more for the Irish language in the last year than anyone else has done in the last half century,” Daragh argues. “It’s definitely indicative of a shift that’s happening in Ireland that’s been going on for a good few years now,” says Ian. “There’s a difference to be felt in the way that people are interacting with Irish traditional culture, whether that’s the music, the language or the literature. There’s less baggage around that than people had in the past. For my generation it was something to be ashamed of – diddly-eye, they used to call it.”

Yet they clearly revel in being a provocative presence. They take great satisfaction in having foiled the Mercury Prize organisers trying to stop them playing the noisier chunks of “Go Dig My Grave” by cutting down the more melodic sections to fit it in. And having a recent gig cancelled in Leipzig over their stance on the Gaza conflict has only made them more determined to voice their opinion.

“They said ‘We were looking at your Instagram stories and saw that you’d shared this story and we think it’s antisemitic because it’s critical of Israel’,” Ian remembers. “At gigs after that we were sure the people from Leipzig had called ahead, because they were being quite off with us. But it gives us all the more drive to speak out against it. I understand why Germans would have a very nuanced, different take than we have as Irish people who have suffered under colonisation ourselves. We’re coming at the whole thing from two very different angles – the Germans are absolutely wracked by guilt over WWII… it’s a very triggering thing.”

A complicated situation, Pinnock notes. “It is and it isn’t,” Ian retorts. “It’s a fucking genocide that’s going on. Don’t shoot children in the back of the head, don’t kill innocent people. It’s not complicated, but there are parts that are complicated.”

And if tonight’s gig goes ahead after that outburst? “We’re gonna do a whole set in German,” Ian jokes.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

The Cure to release new songs for environmental charity

Michael Bonner
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The Cure to release new songs for environmental charity

The Cure will release live versions of two two new songs as a double A-Side 12" for climate charity Earth Percent. Find details on how to get "And Nothing Is Forever" and "I Can Never Say Goodbye" below.

The Cure will release live versions of two two new songs as a double A-Side 12″ for climate charity Earth Percent. Find details on how to get “And Nothing Is Forever” and “I Can Never Say Goodbye” below.

JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

Released via Naked Record Club – a label that releases limited edition records on sustainable vinyl – The Cure – Novembre: Live in France 2022 was recorded during the band’s Shows Of A Lost World tour.

“And Nothing Is Forever” was recorded live in Montpellier at the Sud de France Arena on November 8, 2022, while “I Can Never Say Goodbye” was recorded live in Toulouse, Zénith, on November 13, 2022.

Records 1-100 will be signed by Robert Smith and will be available via The Cure’s website. Meanwhile, numbers 101 – 5,000 will be available exclusively from Naked Record Club Store here.

The Cure and Naked Record Club will donate 100% net profits from sales of this record to the climate charity Earth Percent, which was founded by Brian Eno.

Says Eno, “I’d like to thank The Cure and NAKED Record Club – both true innovators – for their generous support of vital climate projects through the release of ‘The Cure – Novembre: Live In France 2022.’ It’s a powerful example of how the music community can work together to build a better world.”

    Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Richard Dawson, Laetitia Sadier: End Of The Road 2024 – Day 1

    Mark Beaumont
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    Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Richard Dawson, Laetitia Sadier: End Of The Road 2024 – Day 1

    There are strange noises afoot on the outskirts of End Of The Road’s 18th edition. Given the adventurous tastes of this festival, the Folly tent is heaving for Plantoid, Brighton’s latest venture into psych-jazz fusion. With guitarist Tom Coyne effectively earning a doctorate in quantum mathematics with every tumbling riff, singer Chloe Spence delivering cut-glass vocals and their producer Nathan Ridley acting as their tambourine-and-bongo Bez, theirs is a dynamic amalgam of basement bar jazz, creeping minimalism and stabbing rock, with occasional, howling forays into early Genesis.

    There are strange noises afoot on the outskirts of End Of The Road’s 18th edition. Given the adventurous tastes of this festival, the Folly tent is heaving for Plantoid, Brighton’s latest venture into psych-jazz fusion. With guitarist Tom Coyne effectively earning a doctorate in quantum mathematics with every tumbling riff, singer Chloe Spence delivering cut-glass vocals and their producer Nathan Ridley acting as their tambourine-and-bongo Bez, theirs is a dynamic amalgam of basement bar jazz, creeping minimalism and stabbing rock, with occasional, howling forays into early Genesis.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    On The Woods stage, though, it’s very much a gentle introduction to the weekend. Laetitia Sadier, following the Stereolab reunion that rolled through Larmer Tree Gardens a couple of years back, is here in support of her fifth solo album Rooting For Love, containing, in her own words “sonic balm[s] to aid the evolution of Earth’s traumatized civilizations”. Her plan for humanity’s ascendence involves much of her trademark spare Gallic lounge pop, but also a fair bit of star-seeking. In passages inspired by Steve Reich and Terry Riley, she delves into space noise, bubbletronic atmospheres, haunting trombone and vocal echoes resembling 1960s Paris heard from the distance of several shattering dimensions. “Thank you so much for your attentiveness,” Sadier says. Or is it hypnosis?

    If Sadier envisions a cosmic future for mankind, Richard Dawson – having sketched out a post-apocalyptic dystopia on 2022’s The Ruby Cord – predicts an earthbound doom. Once he picks up a guitar and salutes the people of Newcastle who “stood up to the arseholes” during the recent right-wing riots, he’s straight into “Museum”, his psych-folk tour of the first AI museum dedicated to humanity, centuries after we’ve made ourselves extinct.

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    As his future AI protagonist documents our strange addictions to warfare, consumerism and civil unrest, Dawson’s shrill falsetto reaches the volume of an alarm. Elsewhere amongst his vivid folk-literature vignettes, he turns it to more present human experience. “We Picked Apples In A Graveyard Freshly Mowed” is all sparse, lustrous traces of guitar and desolate singing, full of grief and insecurity. “Poly Tunnel” – touted as an upcoming single, “although I suspect when you’ve heard it, you might find that hard to believe” – pictures an old couple finding simple joys in tending an allotment.

    Having completed a past-present-future trilogy of albums, Dawson’s songs of haunted houses and sci-fi nightmares present something of a psych-folk Cloud Atlas, and he leans heavily into the experimentalism of the endeavour. When he really freaks out on guitar he makes sounds like Hendrix at a weird Tyneside Woodstock, complete with comedy jigs. Unsettling? “If I expire onstage I’d like you to eat me,” he tells the crowd, directing us to his tastiest innards.

    Headliner Bonnie “Prince” Billy has no truck with such rampant pessimism. He’s singing destruction, but happy today. Will Oldham’s songs – comprising gothic Americana, campfire sway-alongs, arpeggiated elegance and country-folk channelling Dylan and Neil Young – are soft, plaintive things but often shot through, tonight, with uplifting positivity.

    “Good To My Girls” addresses the importance of good parenthood with a wry jubilance. “Pine, Willow And Oak” divides humanity into three tree-based types, only to advise against bothering with the life-sucking willows and prickly pines in your life in order to find yourself a sturdy oak. “I wanna be wholly consumed in rhyme,” goes “Behold! Be Held!” in a spirit of musical carpe diem, “And then when that gruelling death bell knells we’ll have such a wondrous thing to remember”.

    Death, religion, loss and humanity’s insignificance hang behind these songs like a shadow presence. But as the duo of Oldham and guitar-and-woodwind sidekick Thomas Deacon are joined for “I See A Darkness” by a keyboardist adding churchy uplift, songs such as “Good Morning, Popocatépetl” become rousing wassails. “Have you got a ding-dong in you?” Oldham winkingly asks as he summons the crowd to the exuberant church bell chorus of “Crazy Blue Bells”.

    Having paid tribute to the fragile wilderness we’re invading and “the people right now that could use a little help”, he ends with the utmost message of hope in the face of a dissolving environment. “Shorelines gone and maps destroyed, livelihoods dissolved and void,” he sings on “This Is Far From Over”. Yet he finds solace in the persistence of the planet itself: “This whole world’s far from over”. Heartening stuff to close one of EOTR’s most thoughtful induction days.

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    Oasis – Definitely Maybe 30th Anniversary Reissue

    Jack Milner
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    Oasis – Definitely Maybe 30th Anniversary Reissue

    Oasis emerged out of a Manchester music scene that couldn’t have cared less. ‘Madchester’ had fizzled out and the city’s music scene had fragmented in an attempt to move on from the legacy left by The Smiths, Joy Division and Factory. Formed by Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, Paul McGuigan and Tony McCarroll, The Rain, as they were originally called, began to take shape when they recruited mercurially charismatic singer Liam Gallagher. Something about them attracted the attention of Liam’s brother Noel, a bedroom guitarist who, after years of study and practice, was on the verge of unlocking some kind of songwriting ark of the covenant. This early lineup was a touchpaper – the first time he recognised a potential in his younger brother that could bring his songs to life.

    Buy Definitely Maybe here

    Oasis emerged out of a Manchester music scene that couldn’t have cared less. ‘Madchester’ had fizzled out and the city’s music scene had fragmented in an attempt to move on from the legacy left by The Smiths, Joy Division and Factory. Formed by Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, Paul McGuigan and Tony McCarroll, The Rain, as they were originally called, began to take shape when they recruited mercurially charismatic singer Liam Gallagher. Something about them attracted the attention of Liam’s brother Noel, a bedroom guitarist who, after years of study and practice, was on the verge of unlocking some kind of songwriting ark of the covenant. This early lineup was a touchpaper – the first time he recognised a potential in his younger brother that could bring his songs to life.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    Much to the benefit of a nascent Oasis, limitations have always defined rock’n’roll. McCarroll was eventually replaced as drummer by a much safer pair of hands, but the way he played is impossible to separate from the myriad factors that elevate their debut album, reissued once more for its 30th anniversary. His style is melodic, hooky and has a push and pull that gives the songs a similar feeling to a speeding juggernaut whose chassis is about to crumble. Meanwhile, Liam Gallagher described Bonehead as the heart of Oasis; a capable instrumentalist who knew exactly what to play and what not to play. The relatively simple innovation of playing barre chords alongside Gallagher’s open chords is really the sound of classic Oasis. Combined with distortion and cheap amplifiers, this marriage of chord voicings gives these simple songs a world of distorted harmony and dissonance. A small spin on a timeless formula, but originality comes from small margins; and so strident, anthemic melodies were blanketed with a jet-engine roar reminiscent of labelmates Ride and My Bloody Valentine.

    The trick that Noel Gallagher and Creation’s Alan McGee were determined to pull off was translating this unique sound, honed in weed-smoke-filled rehearsal rooms, on to record, and this latest reissue – with its second disc of studio sessions and outtakes – does a brilliant job of telling that story. The first series of versions included here are taken from an attempt to capture the magic at Monnow Valley Studio in Wales. There’s a certain naive charm on display, and the recordings capture a band getting to grips with hearing the sum of their parts for the first time. “Rock’n’Roll Star” lacks the swagger of the final version, and the comparatively limp way in which it’s recorded emphasises the wide-eyed escapism of the lyric. “Up In The Sky”, from the same session, has energy for days, while the “Rain”-era Beatles influence is considerably more pronounced than on the released version.

    The reaction to the Monnow session was a collective shrug from everyone involved. The band and McGee agreed that they hadn’t nailed it, but no-one seemed sure what to do. For such a completely realised record, Definitely Maybe was essentially cobbled together by producer Owen Morris through sheer force of will. The raw versions of the songs that became Definitely Maybe were recorded at Sawmills in Cornwall and the illuminating tracks included here emphasise what a monumental job Morris did. “Columbia”’s abrasiveness doesn’t feel a million miles away from the neo-psychedelia being made on the West Coast of America by the Brian Jonestown Massacre. The version of “Bring It On Down” surpasses the finished version, and its Stooges-esque bluster makes you daydream about how this band would’ve developed if their career hadn’t blasted into the stratosphere. All over these earlier versions, it’s fascinating to hear how Noel’s guitar lines never change, with the riffs and guitar hooks as considered as the vocals, and just as melodic and memorable. 

    It’s difficult to divorce the Oasis of Definitely Maybe from what followed, of course. A year or so later they were playing Knebworth, and many of the edges that gave this record such a vibrancy had been rubbed away on (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?. Songs that are as beautifully crafted as the debut’s “Live Forever” and “Slide Away” would have succeeded in any circumstances, but Gallagher’s songs were nonetheless never again framed in such a compelling way as on Definitely Maybe. 30 years on, it remains a perfectly realised rock’n’roll album, and sounds just as exciting now as it did then.

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    Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God

    Alastair McKay
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    Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God

    For a man who deals in certainties – exaggerated realities populated by flying men and flame-haired boys; tales of death, destruction, damnation and salvation; purgatory, zombies, vampires, all manner of explosive devilry – Nick Cave can be surprisingly elastic in his understanding of his own work. Towards the end of a day of promotion for Wild God, he suggests to Uncut that the record is masculine, while its predecessor, 2019’s melancholy Ghosteen, was feminine.

    Buy Wild God on vinyl here

    For a man who deals in certainties – exaggerated realities populated by flying men and flame-haired boys; tales of death, destruction, damnation and salvation; purgatory, zombies, vampires, all manner of explosive devilry – Nick Cave can be surprisingly elastic in his understanding of his own work. Towards the end of a day of promotion for Wild God, he suggests to Uncut that the record is masculine, while its predecessor, 2019’s melancholy Ghosteen, was feminine.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    The example he gives is the song “Joy”, a cinematic thing which explodes like an after-party for Ghosteen. Lyrically, it’s a blues. The first line is “I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head.” That is also the second line. But the music is not the blues. It is like the soundtrack to a ceremony, an ascension, in which Cave reports nightmarish visions interrupting his sleep, and the words tumble out, free associations with the muscle memory of religion. It’s an obsessive-compulsive thing, a somnambulist’s rant, with lines repeated for emphasis. It’s also a battle. There is cynicism everywhere, Cave suggests, angry words about “the end of love”. Yet, above the earth, there are stars. “Bright, triumphant metaphors of love,” Cave intones with just a hint of hesitancy. “Bright, triumphant metaphors of love.”

    Meta-metaphorically, that’s where Wild God stands. Recorded at Brad Pitt’s space-age Miraval studio in Provence and Soundtree in East London, it resounds in Cave’s ears like a carnival of love and joy. It’s true, those bright qualities leak through to the back of the canvas. But thinking about love and joy in the context of Cave’s songwriting can be misleading, even when studying the insistent, triumphant lyrics. On paper, “Final Rescue Attempt” is a love song, employing commonplace metaphors of romantic verse. There is rain, wind, and “the great aching sea”. The closing lines echo Dolly Parton’s kiss-off to Porter Wagoner, as made eternal by Whitney Houston. “And I will always love you,” Cave instructs the choir, repeating into the fade. Of course, it sounds a good deal more tormented than that.

    Why the long face? In a recent entry in his journal, The Red Hand Files, Cave suggested that the patterns of his songwriting can be split into two categories. Until 1997’s The Boatman’s Call, Cave employed characters to obscure his intentions. The Boatman’s Call was more openly autobiographical, being an unfiltered reaction to romantic disappointment. There is a further dividing line. All of Cave’s work since Skeleton Tree (2016) is haunted by and understood with reference to the tragic death of Cave’s son, Arthur. “After that,” Cave sings on “Final Rescue Attempt”, “nothing really hurt again.”

    The shock remains, but it is a slight relief to observe that it has now fallen into lock-step with awe. It’s in that context that Cave’s move to lyrical directness makes sense. It takes a minimum of detective work to speculate that “Final Rescue Attempt”, with its poetic instincts bleeding into the bewildered sentiments of a Hallmark card, is an address to Cave’s wife, Susie. The language is well-worn, because the need for it is so universal. So many broken hearts. The sentiments of ordinary pop – and this does not sound like ordinary pop – are elevated to an expression of faith.

    What does that sound like? Massive. And condensed. Cave credits Dave Fridmann, who mixed the record, with crushing the customary elegance of the Bad Seeds “into one surging emotional thing”. What love sounds like to Cave’s ears is gigantic and overpowering. It is love, if by love he means a Valentine’s bouquet attached to the nose of Concorde and delivered at Mach 2 with the sonic boom on backing vocals. 

    Reunited with his band, orchestrated and multiplied, Cave surfs a swelling tide of preposterous proportions. He is the wild god, a wearied charismatic presence, flitting between the songs. Nobody else sounds like this. The album opens with “Song Of The Lake”, with our gospel hero broken and feeling “the drag of hell”. You can, just about, find precursors, dabblers in theatrical majesty, but no exact match. It’s a multiplication game of influences. If you inhale Glen Campbell, wrestle with Alex Harvey, and walk a mile in the white Florsheim boots of Vegas Elvis, you get somewhere close to the expansive effect of Cave’s performance. It is obviously knowing. The old Cave, the character goth, was dabbling with Burt Lancaster’s corrupt preacher Elmer Gantry and Robert Mitchum’s creepy reverend in Night Of The Hunter. The wild god has a weapon his fallen self could only mock: sincerity.

    Cave has inhabited this space for years. The warping of the Bad Seeds into a juggernaut is old news. But things have become more cinematic. In their film work, Cave and Warren Ellis learned to overcome whatever reticence they might have had about directing emotions. Cave talks about Wild God having “deep emotional surges”. While his interpretation of joy allows for an understanding of loss and suffering, his aim is uplift. This is soul music. (It does not sound like soul music.)

    “Joy” holds the key with its ringing piano, but Wild God is that old-fashioned thing, an album, and the spirit of joy allows for a degree of leakage across the piece. The Ghosteen-adjacent “Conversion” finds Cave in the missionary position, echoing “Final Rescue Attempt”’s quest for an existence beyond pain. It has a sense of myth, dislocated synths and a ferocious devotion to beauty. You want it darker? “Long Dark Night” does what it says on the tin, being dreamy and obeisant (you could just about hear Neil Diamond trying it on). The single “Frogs” has an obscure lyric, nature observed from the inside of Kris Kristofferson’s Sunday raincoat, though Cave clarified on The Red Hand Files that it is a story of sweet domesticity made Biblical by the “Caveian” introduction of a shooter. And “Cinnamon Horses” is an incantation, a weeping song, a psychedelic ballad; choose your denomination. Whichever way you play it, the song has it all; tolling bells, gnashing, wailing, the whole damned parade.

    To call this music funereal is to state the obvious. Of course it is. Every song could top a teenage mope list of final requests, all of it sounds majestic and mournful and ultimately resilient. There is a surge of resolution at the end, a shift into something gentler. First comes “O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)”, a mournful celebration of Cave’s former collaborator and girlfriend Anita Lane, who died in 2021. It’s sweet and playful, with words about rabbits and coloured crayons, and actual whistling courtesy of Carly Paradis, before the introduction of a taped phone message from Lane. “Do you remember we used to really, really have fun?” she asks, and it’s nothing except heartbreaking. The album closes with “As The Waters Cover The Sea”, an accidental Christmas song playing out as the congregation files from the church. Maybe it’s snowing outside. It’s bound to be snowing. And the choir sings, as if to a God no longer wild, “peace and good tidings He will bring/Good tidings to all things.”

    What did the man say? A masculine God? Of course, of course. With all the flaws that masculinity implies. Those who are able are invited to stand. Nick Cave: he/hymn.

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    Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Woodland

    Stephen Deusner
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    Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Woodland

    Thirty years into their shared career, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have devised a new way to add a little fire to their distinctive strain of country music. They have in the past released records billed to one or the other, even though they collaborate intimately on everything. Woodland, however, is their first collection of original material billed to both of them. It is, they both attest, simply a reflection of how they’ve always worked, but on this album there’s more freedom and variety in the arrangements. The couple trade off lead vocals from one song to the next, sometimes from one verse to the next, their combined voices not only enriching these songs sonically but thematically as well. “What We Had” sounds more downhearted because they’re singing with rather to each other — commiserating a collective loss, the damage done to their Woodland studio by a tornado in 2020. “What we had is broken, though we thought we’d never lose it,” Rawlings sings, his voice crackling in his upper register.

    Buy Woodland on vinyl here

    Thirty years into their shared career, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have devised a new way to add a little fire to their distinctive strain of country music. They have in the past released records billed to one or the other, even though they collaborate intimately on everything. Woodland, however, is their first collection of original material billed to both of them. It is, they both attest, simply a reflection of how they’ve always worked, but on this album there’s more freedom and variety in the arrangements. The couple trade off lead vocals from one song to the next, sometimes from one verse to the next, their combined voices not only enriching these songs sonically but thematically as well. “What We Had” sounds more downhearted because they’re singing with rather to each other — commiserating a collective loss, the damage done to their Woodland studio by a tornado in 2020. “What we had is broken, though we thought we’d never lose it,” Rawlings sings, his voice crackling in his upper register.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    These are songs about things taken for granted, things lost before they can be truly appreciated. On “The Day The Mississippi Died” the mightiest river in America dries up and runs backwards, which strikes the narrator as apocalyptic. On “Here Stands A Woman”, she checks off a long list of things erased by time: youth, family, romance. Musically, however, the duo add more and more to these songs, eschewing the country austerity of All The Good Times and 2011’s The Harrow & The Harvest for a slightly fuller sounds more akin to 2003’s full-band effort Soul Journey. There are drums on several songs, including opener “Empty Trainload Of Sky” and the devastating “Hashtag”, as well as smears of pedal steel, low fanfares of French horns and eddies of strings.

    As with every album they’ve created together, Woodland is ultimately about these two people, these two voices, and these two guitars. Never is it more moving that when there are simply playing together the way they might at home, blurring the line of who is sing lead on “Howdy Howdy” or who is picking which note on “The Bells & The Birds”. Adding new flourishes to their core sound, Woodland is a beautiful and crucial addition to their catalogue, regardless of whose name is on the spine.

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    Hear Kim Deal’s new track, “Crystal Breath”

    Michael Bonner
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    Hear Kim Deal’s new track, “Crystal Breath”

    Kim Deal has announced details of her debut solo album, Nobody Loves You More. The album is released by 4AD on November 22.

    Kim Deal has announced details of her debut solo album, Nobody Loves You More. The album is released by 4AD on November 22.

    You can hear “Crystal Breath“, from the album, below.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    The album was co-engineered by the late Steve Albini and features Kelley Deal along with contributions from Jack Lawrence, Raymond McGinley and Josh Klinghoffer.

    Nobody Loves You More is released digitally and on CD, cassette (Bandcamp only), standard black vinyl, Florida Orange vinyl (indie retail only) and Dazzling Galaxy vinyl (4AD & artist store only). For pre-order information, head here.

    The tracklisting for Nobody Loves You More is:

    Nobody Loves You More
    Coast
    Crystal Breath
    Are You Mine?
    Disobedience
    Wish I Was
    Big Ben Beat
    Bats In The Afternoon Sky
    Summerland
    Come Running
    A Good Time Pushed

    Hear two new Smile tracks, “Foreign Spies” and “Zero Sum”

    Michael Bonner
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    Hear two new Smile tracks, “Foreign Spies” and “Zero Sum”

    The Smile have announced the details of a new album titled Cutouts, set for release on October 4 via XL Recordings.

    The Smile have announced the details of a new album titled Cutouts, set for release on October 4 via XL Recordings.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    Two new tracks off the record are released today “Foreign Spies” and “Zero Sum” with a video or “Zero Sum” directed by audiovisual artist Weirdcore.

    Cutouts is the band’s third studio album following A Light For Attracting Attention in 2022 and Wall Of Eyes, released in January this year.

    You can pre-order Cutouts here. It’s available on standard black vinyl, CD, Limited Edition white vinyl at Indie Retail, Limited Edition purple cassette available from W.A.S.T.E.

    Tracklisting for Cutouts is:

    Foreign Spies
    Instant Psalm
    Zero Sum
    Colours Fly
    Eyes & Mouth
    Don’t Get Me Started
    Tiptoe
    The Slip
    UGcgWGFkcWE=
    Bodies Laughing

    I’m New Here – MJ Lenderman

    Michael Bonner
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    I’m New Here – MJ Lenderman

    When Jake Lenderman’s dad would ferry his son around their hometown of Asheville in the family van, he’d play his favourite music: Neil Young, Son Volt, My Morning Jacket, Band Of Horses, Drive-By Truckers. “That was the stuff that stuck with me,” says Lenderman, who records as MJ Lenderman when he’s not playing guitar in alternative rockers Wednesday. “I remember my dad had the Truckers’ Gangstabilly CD in the van and that album cover spooked me so much as a kid.”

    Buy Manning Fireworks here

    When Jake Lenderman’s dad would ferry his son around their hometown of Asheville in the family van, he’d play his favourite music: Neil Young, Son Volt, My Morning Jacket, Band Of Horses, Drive-By Truckers. “That was the stuff that stuck with me,” says Lenderman, who records as MJ Lenderman when he’s not playing guitar in alternative rockers Wednesday. “I remember my dad had the Truckers’ Gangstabilly CD in the van and that album cover spooked me so much as a kid.”

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    Traces of all those artists can be heard on Manning Fireworks, his fourth solo album. Lenderman recorded most of the parts himself during breaks from touring with Wednesday, with that band’s Karly Hartzman and Xandy Chelmis contributing vocals and pedal steel respectively.

    Lenderman is a busy soul, enjoying the acclaim he’s getting with Wednesday and as a solo artist. He also played guitar on Waxahatchee’s Tiger Bloods – earning him an appearance on The Late Show With Steve Colbert – and released the ecstatic live album And The Wind (Live And Loose!), recorded with his live band The Wind. It’s a fine showcase for his love of squalling guitar solos and deadpan vocals.

    He began playing guitar at the age of seven, taking lessons alongside his best friend, which allowed them to jam and learn together. Music soon became his obsession, taking over from basketball and a brief interest in skateboarding. Raised a Catholic, there was also a spell when he contemplated becoming a priest – “pre-puberty” he hastens to add – something that found its way into a line from “Joker Lips” on the new album: “Every Catholic knows he could have been Pope”.

    That’s typical of Lenderman, who has a gift for arresting couplets and eye-catching opening lines. In classic Drive-By Truckers style, the songs on Manning Fireworks are populated by deadbeats, men who have made bad decisions and are filled with regret and rage – “passed out in Lucky Charms” is the arresting image from “Rip Torn”. “She’s Leaving You” is a gleeful dissection of a midlife crisis: “Go rent a Ferrari / And sing the blues / Believe that Clapton was the second coming”, he sneers over one of the album’s most catchy numbers.

    Hence the album title, which hints at masculine volatility. “‘Manning Fireworks’ was one of the last songs I wrote for the album, and I liked the phrase because I thought it fits with the overarching themes that connect the songs,” he says. “A lot of the songs are about characters who are fucking up.”

    There’s a trace of David Berman in Lenderman’s lyrical approach and love of music that has its roots in country. “The Silver Jews are a big influence for a lot of people of my age,” he confirms. “A lot of my friends who are songwriters talk about David Berman and Will Oldham as the people who changed the way we looked at lyrics and music in general. I didn’t pay quite as much attention to the words until I got into their music.”

    With Manning Fireworks out in September, The Wind will hit the road in October, while Lenderman also needs to find time to work with Wednesday. Right now, he’s enjoying balancing the two roles. “Being in Wednesday is really gratifying as I only need to focus on guitar,” he says. “We collaborate and grow together and that is lots of fun. But I’ve always had my solo music, since before I was in Wednesday, and it’s nice to have that as an outlet. I never need to worry about control when I am in other projects because I can do that with my own records.”

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    End Of The Road extra! Dawn Landes: “It’s just so powerful”

    Johnny Sharp
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    End Of The Road extra! Dawn Landes: “It’s just so powerful”

    Two years ago, when North Carolina singer-songwriter Dawn Landes was first inspired to make an album based on a 1971 book of feminist folk songs and poems dating back across two centuries, her first thoughts concerned how best she could interpret them. Next, her thoughts turned to whose help she might enlist to help her put her own contemporary yet timeless stamp on them.

    Two years ago, when North Carolina singer-songwriter Dawn Landes was first inspired to make an album based on a 1971 book of feminist folk songs and poems dating back across two centuries, her first thoughts concerned how best she could interpret them. Next, her thoughts turned to whose help she might enlist to help her put her own contemporary yet timeless stamp on them.

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    By the time she had collaborated with producer Josh Kaufman and singers such as Rissi Palmer, Emily Frantz of Watchhouse and The Lone Bellow’s Kanene Pipkin to create The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, released in March of this year, she was already planning to take the project to a whole new level – presenting the album in a live setting.

    The possibilities are considerable because, as Landes explains, there was always going to be plenty of room to roam within these centuries-old compositions. “A lot of the original lyricists were not musicians,” she says of the book, which she found in a thrift store near her Chapel Hill home. “They were taking other people’s songs and changing the lyrics. So in some cases we felt able to take their lyrics and change the song.” Now she’s found that bringing the songs to life on-stage lends them new impact. “When we do the full show, it’s just so powerful, because there’s this great feeling of solidarity between women.”

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    The show has a chronological structure and, in its latter stages, features some very special guests. “We did it in North Carolina with [bluegrass legend] Alice Gerrard, who turns 90 this year, and in London we’ll have [89-year-old] Peggy Seeger. These women were making music when the book was published, so it feels really great to have their participation and support.”

    “The Liberated Woman’s Songbook is extraordinary, as is Dawn Landes’ CD of the same name,” Seeger tells Uncut. “Some of the songs are descriptive, some leading to or actively demanding change at every level. I’m very much looking forward to several of us women singers getting together onstage at the Barbican. This will be a seminal event – the first of many to come, as more and more of us write about where we all are in this ongoing battle for equality plus more.”

    One album highlight is “Hard Is The Fortune Of All Womankind”, an anthem of defiant female independence dating back to the 1830s that was later reinterpreted by Seeger, Joan Baez and others under the title “The Wagoner’s Lad”. Landes has made a promotional video for it in which she sings the song in various guises, from 19th-century farmhand to 1970s Miss World protester, which gives a glimpse of some of the ways she’ll depict the different eras of song onstage.

    “Projections and costumes in the show represent the times the songs were originally written in, and help people really place themselves in the music and its history, to feel the progression of women’s struggles through music,” she explains. “In some ways it highlights the fact that similar battles are still happening with things like Roe v Wade being overturned, but it also makes me feel hopeful. People have told me they walk away feeling empowered and wanting to do positive things.”

    Landes is still writing her own new material, but she also hasn’t ruled out doing further projects like this. “I feel like the research never stops. Looking into the history of folk music and protest music in general, I’m particularly drawn to women’s take on things because it wasn’t well documented. And so whenever I do come across something, it’s like finding a diamond in the rough.”

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    Dawn Landes & Friends perform The Liberated Woman’s Songbook at the End Of The Road festival this weekend and also at Moseley Folk & Arts Festival, Birmingham (Aug 31), West Malvern Social Club (Sept 3), Lending Room, Leeds (Sept 4), The Cluny, Newcastle (Sept 5), the Barbican, London (Sept 7) and Komedia, Brighton (Sept 8)

    Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman – Another Tide, Another Fish

    Tyler Wilcox
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    Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman – Another Tide, Another Fish

    Having toiled in the shadows for much of his long, varied career, Michael Chapman enjoyed a heartening and well-deserved renaissance in his later years. Before passing away at the age of 80 in September 2021, some of his best records were reissued by the tastemaking Light In The Attic label; Oh Michael, Look What You've Done, a 2012 Tompkins Square tribute album, saw his songs lovingly covered by such diverse talents as Lucinda Williams, Thurston Moore and Maddy Prior; and he toured relentlessly, sharing stages with younger musicians like Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan and more, who looked to Chapman not just as a link to the past, but as a still-vital creative entity. Indeed, 2017’s 50 and 2019’s True North, both produced by Gunn, were dark-tinged late-period masterworks, showing that Chapman’s songwriting and guitar work were undimmed by age.

    Buy Another Tide, Another Fish here

    Having toiled in the shadows for much of his long, varied career, Michael Chapman enjoyed a heartening and well-deserved renaissance in his later years. Before passing away at the age of 80 in September 2021, some of his best records were reissued by the tastemaking Light In The Attic label; Oh Michael, Look What You’ve Done, a 2012 Tompkins Square tribute album, saw his songs lovingly covered by such diverse talents as Lucinda Williams, Thurston Moore and Maddy Prior; and he toured relentlessly, sharing stages with younger musicians like Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan and more, who looked to Chapman not just as a link to the past, but as a still-vital creative entity. Indeed, 2017’s 50 and 2019’s True North, both produced by Gunn, were dark-tinged late-period masterworks, showing that Chapman’s songwriting and guitar work were undimmed by age.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    That celebration from players often less than half his age was fuel for Chapman’s fire in his latter days. “Michael was always delighted by anyone rediscovering his music,” says his partner of more than 50 years, Andru Chapman. “But more so with the likes of Ryley Walker, Steve Gunn and William Tyler publicly acknowledging his influence – not just musically, as a person too.”

    Chapman wasn’t interested in simply fading away into a comfortable nostalgic existence. He was working right up until the end, still looking for new ways to move forward. One of his final projects was Another Fish, an electrified sequel to Fish, the instrumental record released via Tompkins Square in 2015. These sketches briefly emerged digitally a couple of years back, but they’ve now been further fleshed out on Another Tide, a posthumous team-up with Brisbane-based banjo adventurist Andrew Tuttle.

    For musicians, it’s always a bit of a gamble to embark on projects like this, where the ultimate intentions of an artist can’t be known. Are you there to “finish” the departed player’s works, somehow forcing them into their final form? How can you embellish sensitively without overstepping the bounds and losing the original spirit of the thing? Fans still argue over attempts like Alice Coltrane’s orchestral overdubs on her late husband’s recordings, or the remaining Beatles’ occasional exhuming of John Lennon’s demos over the decades. In some cases, it might be better to leave well enough alone.

    Tuttle wisely sidesteps these issues. Another Tide isn’t so much a completion of Another Fish (which Basin Rock has usefully included on a second disc here, for those who want to hear Chapman unadorned) as it is a conversation with it. Tuttle is an inspired choice. An inquisitive and imaginative soul, his 2022 LP Fleeting Adventure saw him collaborating remotely with a far-flung selection of musicians from across the globe; somehow, the results managed to sound as intimate as if they were all sitting in a room together. Those skills are put to great use on Another Tide, with Tuttle taking Chapman’s raw materials and forging something brand new out of them, sometimes hewing closely to the originals, sometimes taking them into another galaxy entirely. What we’re left with is something that doesn’t quite fit into any particular box – like Chapman himself really. The press materials describe it as a hybrid: “part remix album, part cover album, both a solo work and a collaboration, of sorts.”

    If that all sounds a little overly ambiguous, don’t worry. Another Tide, regardless of context, is marvelous. The record begins with the homespun fanfare of intertwining banjos, happily recalling Bruce Langhorne’s classic The Hired Hand OST, an almost orchestral drone wafting above. “Five And Twenty Days For Lunch”, meanwhile, is the tune Tuttle feels best represents the “synthesis of the different approaches of creating this new album in that it samples Michael’s original guitar, includes banjo improvisations that came about through playing and learning his originals, and brings in some new effects and synthesised sounds that I wouldn’t have expected to include when first thinking of how to recreate this particular song.” Out of this surprise and delight arises a gorgeous piece of music, a true dialogue between Tuttle and Chapman.

    Though he got his start playing in folk clubs, Chapman was an experimental musician by nature, and nowhere is that better shown than in the remarkable “Wholly Unrelated To Four Seasons”, which closes out Another Tide in fine fashion. Chapman’s original was a dizzying labyrinth of echo-plexed guitars in the manner of John Martyn’s “Outside In” or Manuel Göttsching. Tuttle takes the krautrock flavours even further, with hypnotic Tangerine Dream-ish accents cohering around Michael’s manic melodies. It ends up sounding like nothing else in either Chapman or Tuttle’s respective oeuvres – and there’s where the magic lies.

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    Ten Years After – Woodstock 1969

    Nigel Williamson
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    Ten Years After – Woodstock 1969

    When this reviewer first saw the Woodstock movie at a midnight showing in the summer of 1970, the wildest reaction from those crammed into Bromley’s Astor cinema came not as Hendrix, Sly Stone and The Who exploded across the screen but when Alvin Lee announced, “This is a thing called ‘I’m Going Home’… by helicopter.”

    Buy Woodstock 1969 here

    When this reviewer first saw the Woodstock movie at a midnight showing in the summer of 1970, the wildest reaction from those crammed into Bromley’s Astor cinema came not as Hendrix, Sly Stone and The Who exploded across the screen but when Alvin Lee announced, “This is a thing called ‘I’m Going Home’… by helicopter.”

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    A machine-gun burst of notes flew from his cherry red Gibson, and by the time the screen split into triplicate with close-ups of Lee’s fingers flying over the frets at the speed of light, we were all headbanging in the aisles.

    Perhaps it was because Ten Years After were so relatable. We’d seen them just down the road at the Greyhound in Croydon, and their 1968 live album Undead, which included the first recording of “I’m Going Home”, captured them not in front of a half a million people in upstate New York but in a tiny club above the Railway Hotel, West Hampstead, from whence going home meant the last train on the Bakerloo line.

    Tearing through the song like a rock’n’roll tornado, Lee incorporated “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” into 10 breakneck minutes of tumultuous sturm un drang which sound as visceral today as they did that night in a Bromley cinema.

    What we were unaware of at the time was the drama behind TYA’s performance. Having taken a flight from St Louis at 5am on Sunday, August 17, 1969, they were due to play after Joe Cocker early that afternoon. However, their appearance was delayed by a torrential rainstorm, and by the time they finally took the stage seven hours later than scheduled, it was getting dark and the humidity had gone through the roof, causing their instruments to go out of tune and resulting in several false starts.

    The sound recording also malfunctioned and the drums on “I’m Going Home” had later to be overdubbed in the studio. Happily, by the wonders of digital jiggery-pokery, the quartet’s full set has now belatedly been restored and remixed from the original two-inch multitrack tapes, and some 55 years after we finally get to hear TYA’s set in full for the first time.

    “Hello beautiful people, a fair old blues to warm us up,” Lee tells the bedraggled crowd, who by now had been on site for three days. Backed by bassist Leo Lyons, keyboardist Chick Churchill and drummer Ric Lee, they launch hesitantly into Howlin’ Wolf’s “Spoonful” with a jazzier take than Cream’s version, and which almost manages to stay in tune.

    However, when they follow with “Good Morning Little School”, the song soon shudders to a halt, not once but twice, and it’s obvious they’ve got problems. “We’ve forgotten how to play,” Lee deadpans. “We’re gonna get tuned up. See you in a bit.” He returns with an embarrassed “I wish I was dead”, and we finally get a complete seven-minute performance at the third attempt.

    It’s all still a bit of a train wreck but the crowd is up for it and continue to shout their appreciation through a tedious seven-minute drum solo called, for no apparent reason, “The Hobbit”, as the rest of the band indulge in yet more frantic retuning.

    Things finally improve as they charge off on Blind Willie Johnson’s “I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes”, a song recorded on their eponymous 1967 debut with a moody Al Kooper arrangement. In concert it had developed into an extended jam for Alvin to prove he’s the fastest guitar-slinger in the west, and the epic 17-minute version here finds him quoting from “Sunshine Of Your Love” and essaying some Hendrix-styled warp-speed pyrotechnics.

    Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Help Me” is another standard that had featured on the band’s debut album, and is rendered as a slow, atmospheric blues that builds into a barrage of heads-down blues-rock boogie. The crowd ecstatically demand more; cue compere Bill Graham calling them back for their career-defining encore on “I’m Going Home”.

    The song’s inclusion in the film turned them into stars but Lee, who died in 2013, struggled to cope. Complaining that “14-year-old girls started showing up to our gigs with ice-creams”, he hated audiences yelling repeatedly for “I’m Going Home” and ruefully wondered “what the rest of our career would have been like if the Woodstock movie had used another song.” By 1974, Ten Years After were history.

    There would be various reunions and a version of the band continues to tour to this day. Yet although their Woodstock performance was in many ways a chaotic mess and there would be countless gigs where they would play with greater aplomb and control, for better or for worse it remains Ten Years After’s landmark moment.

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    It’s in the trees! Six End Of The Road Festival 2024 picks

    Sam Richards
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    It’s in the trees! Six End Of The Road Festival 2024 picks

    "It's going to be amazing..."

    “It’s going to be amazing…”

    End Of The Road supremo Simon Taffe picks six of the best acts to look out for at this year’s festival…

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    Sahra Halgan

    Her backstory is nuts. She’s a Somalian cultural activist who started singing at 13. During the Somalian civil war, she was a nurse on the frontline and only released her first album in her late-thirties after becoming a refugee in France. To explain the music, it’s African psych-rock with a strong female lead vocal. It’s a bit like Mdou Moctar mixed with King Gizzard – it’s got a real groove, but having a female lead singer really changes the feel. The album she just released, Hiddo Dhawr, is so good.

    Joanna Sternberg

    I think they’re incredible. They write songs in the same way as someone like Daniel Johnston, straight from the heart, but they’re also classically trained. I saw them supporting Jessica Pratt, and while I do love Jessica Pratt, I did prefer Joanna Sternberg live. I guess I liked the dynamic and the craziness of it all. I think they’re a songwriter in the vein of Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman – they could write for anyone if they wanted to. Quite a few of my friends found their voice a bit Marmite at first, but they’ve got a really strong pop songwriting sensibility.

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    Ichiko Aoba

    She’s a Japanese singer-songwriter who’s also a brilliant guitar-player in the same way as John Fahey and stuff like that. She also plays clarinet, piano, accordion, flute… There’s kind of a Ryuicihi Sakamoto vibe to it – in fact she’s collaborated with him in the past. The music’s beautiful and ethereal but when you see her live, the way she plays and sings is quite jaw-dropping. It’s going to be amazing on the Garden Stage.

    Water From Your Eyes

    I wasn’t so sure until I saw them live, but they’re everything you want from a Brooklyn band: offbeat post-punk, distorted synth-pop, shoegaze textures… It’s very cool but they’re unique, and they’ve got the songs. They cite their influences as Ween and Scott Walker, but it’s actually moving into the LCD [Soundsystem] dance-punk world, it’s really fun.

    ML Buch

    She’s a Danish guitarist who makes psychedelic, experimental indie-pop. There are elements of Beach House in there, or you could compare her to Mabe Fratti. Guitar is definitely her main instrument, but she’s also a composer and producer who uses loads of different sounds. I read an interview where she said that, for three years, she just went out and recorded the wind! But it’s actually proper structured songs, not some weird arthouse thing. It’s abstract, but not as abstract as you think.

    Senyawa

    We’ve actually got two Indonesian bands playing this year. Nusantara Beat are more of a party band, but Senyawa are dark, experimental metal. I saw them on Youtube and thought, ‘That looks so scary, it’s like something out of a horror film – I have to book them, it’s gonna freak people out!’ But I do think their music’s really cool as well.

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    We’re off to End Of The Road Festival 2024

    Michael Bonner
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    We’re off to End Of The Road Festival 2024

    Bags packed, toothbrush ready, weather forecast checked… and we’re off to this year’s End Of The Road festival.

    Bags packed, toothbrush ready, weather forecast checked… and we’re off to this year’s End Of The Road festival.

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    You can read our daily coverage of the festival on this site throughout this coming weekend. As well as headliners like Slowdive and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, we’ll be digging Phosphorescent, Bill Ryder-Jones, Altin Gün, Mdou Moctar, Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble and a host more.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    As well as reporting from around the festival, we’re also holding the Uncut Q&As each day, where Tom Pinnock will be chatting to some very special guests at 4pm on the Talking Heads stage:

    Friday: LANKUM

    Saturday: SAMANTHA MORTON & RICHARD RUSSELL

    Sunday: YO LA TENGO

    All in all, it’s a very busy weekend for Uncut and we can’t wait for the gates to open.

    See you down the front!

    Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

    Oasis announce UK and Ireland shows

    Michael Bonner
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    Oasis announce UK and Ireland shows

    Oasis have announced their first live dates for 16 years.

    Buy Definitely Maybe 30th anniversary edition here

    Oasis have announced their first live dates for 16 years.

    Liam and Noel Gallagher will play 14 shows in the UK and Ireland beginning in July 2025.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    The news comes two days before the 30th anniversary of the band’s debut album, Definitely Maybe, which was released on August 29, 1994. A Deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition of Definitely Maybe is released on Friday, August 30.

    Tickets for the UK dates go on sale from 9am on Saturday, August 31 and will be available from Ticketmaster, Gigs And Tours and See Tickets.

    Dublin tickets will be available from 8am that same day from Ticketmaster.

    The shows are: 

    JULY 2025

    4th – Cardiff, Principality Stadium

    5th – Cardiff, Principality Stadium

    11th – Manchester, Heaton Park

    12th – Manchester, Heaton Park

    19th – Manchester, Heaton Park

    20th – Manchester, Heaton Park

    25th – London, Wembley Stadium

    26th – London, Wembley Stadium

    AUGUST 2025

    2nd – London, Wembley Stadium

    3rd – London, Wembley Stadium

    8th – Edinburgh, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium

    9th – Edinburgh, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium

    16th – Dublin, Croke Park

    17th – Dublin, Croke Park

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    Stephen Malkmus’ The Hard Quartet announce debut album

    Michael Bonner
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    Stephen Malkmus’ The Hard Quartet announce debut album

    The Hard Quartet have announced their self-titled debut album with a new single, "Rio’s Song".

    The Hard Quartet have announced their self-titled debut album with a new single, “Rio’s Song“.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    The band – who feature Stephen Malkmus, Matt Sweeney, Jim White and Emmett Kelly – will release their album on October 4 via Matador Records. You can pre-order and pre-save here.

    “Rio’s Song” comes with a video. “The ‘Rio’s Song’ video is The Hard Quartet’s homage to street rock in the hot afternoon & clowning around with lifer friends in downtown New York City. Director Jared Sherbert shot it guerrilla style on St Mark’s Place and in The International Bar on July 15 2024. It features local NYC artists, musicians, activists, skaters and icons who are dear to the band.”

    Tracklisting for the album is:

    ‘Chrome Mess’
    ‘Earth Hater’
    ‘Rio’s Song’
    ‘Our Hometown Boy’
    ‘Renegade’
    ‘Heel Highway’
    ‘Killed By Death’
    ‘Hey’
    ‘It Suits You’
    ‘Six Deaf Rats’
    ‘Action for Military Boys’
    ‘Jacked Existence’
    ‘North of the Border’
    ‘Thug Dynasty’
    ‘Gripping the Riptide’

    Hear Panda Bear & Sonic Boom’s Reset Mariachi EP

    Michael Bonner
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    Hear Panda Bear & Sonic Boom’s Reset Mariachi EP

    Panda Bear and Sonic Boom - aka Noah Lennox and Pete Kember - have released the Reset Mariachi EP, a reworking of two tracks from their 2022 album, Reset.

    Panda Bear and Sonic Boom – aka Noah Lennox and Pete Kember – have released the Reset Mariachi EP, a reworking of two tracks from their 2022 album, Reset.

    You can hear the EP below.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    Resert Mariachi was rerecorded with the Mexico City outfit Mariachi 2000 de Cutberto Pérez.
      
    The EP features two Spanish-language versions of “Peligro (Danger)” and “Viviendo en las sequelas (Livin’ in the After),” one sung by Panda Bear and Sonic Boom and one sung by the vocalists of Mariachi 2000 de Cutberto Pérez, with both featuring instrumentals from the mariachis, including guitarron, vihuela, guitar, trumpet, and strings.

    The digital EP adds Songbook Instrumental versions of both songs and includes sheet music with Spanish translation; the vinyl version, out September 20 and available for pre-order now, features a “Magic Matrix Puzzle Platter” dual concentric vinyl cut where either version has equal possibility of playing.

    Panda Boom have also shares two versions of an animated video by Lucas Moreira & Studio Sparks for both versions of “Peligro (Danger)”.

    Horace Panter – My Life In Music

    Sam Richards
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    Horace Panter – My Life In Music

    The Specials’ bassist on his journey to the Dirt Road Band: “I knew that there was a new world somewhere”

    The Specials’ bassist on his journey to the Dirt Road Band: “I knew that there was a new world somewhere”

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    THE BYRDS

    “5D (Fifth Dimension)”

    CBS, 1966

    I joined The Searchers’ fanclub when I was 11, but the first single I ever bought was “5D (Fifth Dimension)” by The Byrds. I didn’t have the faintest idea what it was on about, and you couldn’t dance to it because it was in waltz time, but it was fantastic. By buying it, I became a music fan – you could tell, because I owned a single by The Byrds! It was the first step. I was living in Kettering, a little out-of-the-way East Midlands market town, and all of a sudden there was psychedelia, which I thought had to do with long hair and colours. I didn’t know about drugs or anything like that, but I knew that there was a new world somewhere and perhaps I could be part of it.

    CREAM

    Wheels Of Fire

    POLYDOR, 1968

    “Crossroads” was really the only song I would listen to on Wheels Of Fire, it was just fantastic. How three human beings could make that amount of noise, and go off in totally different directions but still sound amazing, was incredible to me. So I started going to concerts. Me and my mate went down to London in 1969 for the Pop Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. We saw Blodwyn Pig, The Liverpool Scene and Led Zeppelin – it was totemic, amazing! I was 15 years old and I’d never heard anything so loud in my life. It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life up to that point, being in this place with so many people, listening to this ferocious noise.

    THE ROLLING STONES

    Exile On Main St

    ROLLING STONES RECORDS, 1972

    In 1972, I moved away from home and went to Coventry Art School. I’d see concerts at Lanchester Polytechnic: I saw Man, I saw Ace… I saw Captain Beefheart, which was incredible. I joined the college band, and also I heard Exile On Main St for the first time. I think it’s the greatest album ever made. I’m one of those guys, I’m afraid – although Bill Wyman only plays on half the album. I’m a bass player, so I know these things. The bass is either played by Mick Taylor, Keith Richards, or some guy called Bill Plummer, who I’ve never heard of, but he plays on my favourite song, which is “All Down The Line”. Yeah, that music makes me drive my car faster. It’s great, I love it.

    TERRY REID

    River

    ATLANTIC, 1973

    Another album that I really loved was River, which is Conrad Isidore on drums, Lee Miles on bass, David Lindley on guitar, and of course Terry Reid with his amazing voice. The first side of River, that’s right up there. For me, it’s the sound of his voice, and the rhythm section is so funky without being heavy – it’s amazing music. It’s one of those things where I remember where I was when I first heard it. I was in Southampton with the drummer in the college band. We were at a friend of his, and he played it. I was open-mouthed – I thought, ‘Wow!’ Then I went out and bought it the next week.

    LITTLE FEAT

    Feats Don’t Fail Me Now

    WARNER BROS, 1974

    At college, I learned to dance – or I felt more comfortable dancing than when I was when I was a teenager. Why was it that I danced to Motown and Stax and Atlantic and not Pickettywitch or Love Affair? It was because I started listening to bass guitar, so I got really into all that music. I saw Average White Band at Coventry Technical College and they did an encore of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, which was transcendent. But one of the most amazing concerts I’ve ever seen in my life is Little Feat at Birmingham Odeon in 1976. They were incredible. How all those people could make such amazing music was absolutely beyond me.​​ Feats Don’t Fail Me Now is the one that I keep going back to, it’s so good.

    BURNING SPEAR

    Garvey’s Ghost

    ISLAND, 1976

    I started listening to reggae via Jerry Dammers and the guys that eventually became The Specials. I didn’t really understand it first off, but then someone stood me in the corner at a blues dance next to this huge speaker system and it was like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’ Lynval Golding and his friend Desmond Brown [The Selecter], they used to come round my flat with reggae singles and say, ‘OK, listen – this is how the bass goes.’ [Rico Rodriguez’s] Man From Wareika was the album that united a lot of the white guys in The Specials. But I think my favourite is Garvey’s Ghost, which is the dub version of Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey. It’s really interesting to see how they interpret the songs.

    THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS

    The Fabulous Thunderbirds (Girls Go Wild)

    CHRYSALIS

    After The Specials, I went back to blues. I spent probably two years listening to the first two Fabulous Thunderbirds albums. I thought they were the greatest band ever, because they were like a bar band – they just set up, played and everybody had a good time. It was the equivalent of what I experienced with the pub rock thing in London in the ’70s. I ran a little four-piece blues combo in Coventry for the past 20 years, we just played locally. We once went as far south as Cheltenham, but we didn’t like it! And that was lovely, playing in pubs for 150 quid. So that’s always been a part of me, and the Dirt Road Band is just an extension of that.

    DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

    Decoration Day

    NEW WEST, 2003

    The only album that’s really wiped me out recently is Decoration Day by Drive-By Truckers. I read an article about them and they sounded really interesting. This is gonna sound really posey, but I was in Amoeba Records in Hollywood and there it was: I bought a secondhand copy, and I was stunned. It sounds like Neil Young & Crazy Horse, that ragged guitar kind of thing, but the songs are fantastic. Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley both write great stuff – and on Decoration Day, Jason Isbell was in the band as well. I’ve been buying other albums of theirs, but I think Decoration Day is probably the one.

    Dirt Road Band’s Righteous is out now on DRB Records

    Dorothy Carter – Troubadour (reissue, 1976)

    Rob Young
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    Dorothy Carter – Troubadour (reissue, 1976)

    That elderly lady in the loft, who had no shower or kitchen, who threw parties for the bohemian crowd, where she played strange, ringing, twanging instruments with a faraway look in her eyes? Around New Orleans they said she lived in a hippy commune before hippies existed, or worked her passage as a cabin girl on a Mississippi steamboat, or ran away to a monastery in Mexico with an anarchist priest. They said she had two kids, that she had studied in Europe and travelled all over the world; some said she was secretly involved in a famous pop group over there, though none knew which; others warned not to speak ill of her, lest she cause her hammers to bludgeon the dulcimer of your heart.

    Buy Troubadour here

    That elderly lady in the loft, who had no shower or kitchen, who threw parties for the bohemian crowd, where she played strange, ringing, twanging instruments with a faraway look in her eyes? Around New Orleans they said she lived in a hippy commune before hippies existed, or worked her passage as a cabin girl on a Mississippi steamboat, or ran away to a monastery in Mexico with an anarchist priest. They said she had two kids, that she had studied in Europe and travelled all over the world; some said she was secretly involved in a famous pop group over there, though none knew which; others warned not to speak ill of her, lest she cause her hammers to bludgeon the dulcimer of your heart.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    These things they said were pretty much true. For Dorothy Carter, whose life ended after 68 years with a stroke in 2003, lived a nomadic, chaotic, private life whose richness found its expression in music – a mesmerizing tapestry of medievalism, folk, songwriting and proto-new age ambient recalled by many who knew her as something transcendent and bewitching.

    That’s certainly the impression gained by this masterful re-release of Carter’s 1976 private press LP Troubadour. Its cover artwork, reminiscent of an Edwardian fairytale illustration, drops you straight into a sepia-tinged sensibility. Carter is drawn on the front as a minstrel playing hammered dulcimer in a field outside a fortified citadel. On the reverse are blurry photos of Carter’s instrumentarium, an antique road show of psalteries, sitar, tambour, various dulcimers, flutes, harps and hand drums. The track list is a polyglot assemblage – tunes and songs from medieval France, England and Scotland, psalms, Irish and Israeli melodies, an Essene hymn, a Ukrainian carol, Appalachian folk songs. Although separated in space, their common thread is the rilling, liquid percussion of the dulcimer, a trapezoid-shaped zither native to most corners of civilization and imported to the US East Coast by early 19th century German immigrants. In Carter’s hands, the dulcimer acts as a magical portal which allows Eurasia’s ancient musical spirits to flow into the estuary of 1970s, post-counterculture America.

    Carter was not the first of her generation for whom folk music was a tributary from the past. The antiquarian urge was strong in the likes of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Sandy Bull in the US, and British counterparts John Renbourn, Maddy Prior and Tim Hart. In Carter’s hands, though, the past is composed not of dust but of quicksilver. Opener “Troubadour Song”, with its sprightly dulcimer and pulsing drum, could have come from a David Munrow early music album. Then come the flocking notes and keening flute of “The Cuckoo”; the twinkling lament of “Binnorie”, the glorious songs “Make A Joyful Sound” and “Shirt Of Lace”. The ghost harmonics of her “Troubadour Songs On The Psaltery”. The eerie sensation, in “Tree Of Life”, of time taking a breath in some sun-dappled courtyard in Samarkand.

    What makes Carter so intriguing is that she was not just a bargain-hunter at folk music’s white elephant table, but had connections with a fledgling realm of experimental music, alternative tuning and sound art. This was forged after a chance (or cosmically predetermined) meeting with Robert Rutman in Mexico. Rutman, an artist who worked with steel cello and long string vibrations, was living in Mexico City with expatriates David Demby and his wife Constance, who would go on to make a successful career as a spacey new age composer. Rutman, Constance Demby and Carter sparked each other’s creativity for many years after, including in the avant-garde improv band Central Maine Power Company. Rutman later played on Carter’s album Waillee Waillee, which was re-released last year. Eric Demby, son of David and Constance, has contributed vivid notes to Drag City’s Troubadour reissue, providing first-person testimony to Carter’s bewitching presence and her role as a musical vessel rather than a composer.

    Demby confirms that Dorothy Carter crossed paths with Laraaji while busking on the streets around Washington Square Park in New York during the ’70s. It makes sense that she was a part of this impermanent network of troubadours, searching for meaning through otherworldly tones, who did not feel a strong pull to monetise their music in the conventional way. The eclecticism and precariousness of her life story also parallels that of Harry Smith, who believed that the collecting and passing-on of songs and folklore put humans in touch with potent ur-civilisational forces for change.

    Carter had studied music at Bard College and the Royal Academy of Music in London, but her career path was wayward and pot-holed. Troubadour emerged from the ‘back to the land’ communities of Maine and New England where she ended up in the mid-’70s, living in a hut teetering on wooden stilts. By the mid-’90s she fetched up in Berlin, where she made the acquaintance of Alex Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten, and contributed a cobweb-light dulcimer solo to the ambient techno track “Things You Like To Hear” by Sun Electric. She is credited as a co-founder of The Medieval Baebes and can be heard on their late-’90s albums Salva Nos and Worldes Blysse. Despite these fascinating side trips, Troubadour makes it clear that Dorothy Carter didn’t view music as bread and butter, but as an eternal stream from which communities could be refreshed.

    AAA

    El Khat – Mute

    Stephen Dalton
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    El Khat – Mute

    Both Jewish and Arab, musically omnivorous but unmistakeably Middle Eastern, globe-trotting trio El Khat are a fascinating hot mess of sounds and influences. Their founder, frontman and primary songwriter Eyal El Wahab is part of the huge Yemeni-Jewish population in Israel, mostly children of refugees who fled persecution in Yemen in the late 1940s, a diaspora now numbering over 400,000. Named after the plant famous for inducing mind-bending euphoria, El Khat's mission is to keep the unsung cultural heritage of their ancestors alive, but on their own terms, adding a healthy dollop of DIY attitude, psych-rock energy and noisy experimentalism. They are promiscuous folk-punk mongrels, not prim world-music puritans.

    Buy Mute here

    Both Jewish and Arab, musically omnivorous but unmistakeably Middle Eastern, globe-trotting trio El Khat are a fascinating hot mess of sounds and influences. Their founder, frontman and primary songwriter Eyal El Wahab is part of the huge Yemeni-Jewish population in Israel, mostly children of refugees who fled persecution in Yemen in the late 1940s, a diaspora now numbering over 400,000. Named after the plant famous for inducing mind-bending euphoria, El Khat’s mission is to keep the unsung cultural heritage of their ancestors alive, but on their own terms, adding a healthy dollop of DIY attitude, psych-rock energy and noisy experimentalism. They are promiscuous folk-punk mongrels, not prim world-music puritans.

    JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

    El Wahab grew up on sober classical and sacred Jewish music. Indeed, his unlikely apprenticeship for El Khat was teaching himself the cello in his twenties, then joining the Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra, who specialise in Arabic music from North Africa. But his sonic horizons were blown wide open by the 2012 crate-digging compilation album Qat, Coffee & Qambus: Raw 45s From Yemen, a treasure trove of lost gems, impassioned vocals and lo-fi arrangements that struck a deep chord with his own half-remembered family heritage. Liberated from concert halls, shaking off the shackles of middlebrow good taste, he quit the orchestra and formed El Khat.  

    El Khat’s restless wanderlust has taken them from Tel Aviv to their current Berlin home, via stopovers in Brooklyn and other destinations. Their third album digs deeper into their signature junk-shop aesthetic, with El Wahab making his own instruments from scavenged scraps of wood, metal and plastic. This extreme form of recycling is both pragmatic and conceptual: partly a homage to his impoverished Yemeni musical ancestors, and partly a quest for a kind of authentically punky rawness, but also an imaginative way of giving the band a unique sound. Mute features water jugs, plates and kitchen implements alongside more conventional cello, trumpet, violin and organ. Previous albums have included the sampled whoosh of subway trains, bleating goats and sheep. El Wahab is an avowed fan of life’s gritty, grungy imperfections.

    Already released as a single, album opener “Tislami Tislami” is a gloriously ragged call to arms, its insistent circular melody full of angular scrapes and nerve-snapping twangs, brassy fanfares and tin-can percussion, herky-jerky rhythms and needling vocals. The title derives from a warm-hearted Arabic word for thanks, but El Wahab’s lyric is edged with punky sarcasm apparently aimed at a cheating ex-lover. Part of the English translation says: “Thank you for the endless tears/So we can have many beers… Thank you for going with another man/So I go to the sea more often.”

    Another mighty racket is “Commodore Lothan”, a thrillingly kinetic bone-shaker of clattering clonks, knotty tangles, bowed strings and light-touch electronic twinkles. The furiously inventive, impatient, lopsided rhythm here is pure post-punk, sounding like early PiL stuck in a horn-honking traffic jam, with guest vocalist Katrin Lasko adding a sweeter echo to El Wahab’s microtonal warbles and lusty ululations. The title pays playful, in-jokey tribute to the band’s drummer Lotan Yaish, while the lyric is a philosophical poem with a lunar theme: “From the perspective of the moon, there is neither secular nor religious,” El Wahab croons. “From the perspective of the moon, your wealth doesn’t matter…”

    A key highlight among the instrumental tracks is El Khat’s skewed love letter to their new Berlin home. “Almania”, the Arabic name for Germany, is a sprawling acoustic action painting that flirts with cosmic dub reggae at times. A skipping, shuffling, exploded tapestry of plucked strings, pitch-bending fanfares and keyboard runs that seem to gallop off into infinity, it radiates immense charm and almost childlike surrealism, a luminous exercise in kindergarten krautrock remixed by Doctor Seuss.

    The longest, most complex compositions here are “Zafa” and its louder, faster sequel “Zafa: Talaatam”. The opening section begins as a surging, swaying shanty with a funky metal-bashing rhythm. Then midway through the melody crests a hill and accelerates into a frenzied post-rock maelstrom of explosive percussion, wild swerves and crazed centrifugal energy, an exhilarating runaway train ride that threatens to hurtle off the tracks at any moment.

    From the boisterous brassy bustle and vertiginous key changes of “La WaLa” to the perfumed melancholy and tricksy stop-start architecture of closing number “Intissar”, there is precious little second-rank surplus here. A couple of shorter, more conventional tracks are minor weak points, diluting the band’s electrifying fusion mash-up. But for the most part, Mute finds fertile crosstown traffic between ancient and modern, tradition and innovation, harmony and dissonance, local and universal.

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