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Hear two new songs by The Chills

Sam Richards
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Hear two new songs by The Chills
New Zealand indie-rockers The Chills have announced a follow-up to their 2015 comeback album Silver Bullets, entitled Snow Bound. Hear two tracks from it, "Complex" and "Lord Of All I Survey", below: https://soundcloud.com/firerecords/sets/the-chills-complex/s-45aHe Get Uncut delivered to your do...

New Zealand indie-rockers The Chills have announced a follow-up to their 2015 comeback album Silver Bullets, entitled Snow Bound.

Hear two tracks from it, “Complex” and “Lord Of All I Survey”, below:

Get Uncut delivered to your door – find out by clicking here!

Frontman Martin Phillipps says that the album is about “consolidation, re-grouping, acceptance and mortality… Hopefully a kind of Carole King ‘Tapestry’ for ageing punks.”

Snow Bound will be released by Fire Records on September 14.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Natalie Prass – The Future And The Past

Graeme Thomson
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Natalie Prass – The Future And The Past
In tumultuous times, artists face big choices. To confront, deflect or ignore; to drill down into the darkness; or find alternative sources of light. Some outline their concerns with po-faced precision. Lyric sheets become manifestos, live shows lectures. There are slogans and slides. Natalie Prass,...

In tumultuous times, artists face big choices. To confront, deflect or ignore; to drill down into the darkness; or find alternative sources of light. Some outline their concerns with po-faced precision. Lyric sheets become manifestos, live shows lectures. There are slogans and slides. Natalie Prass, it seems reasonable to conclude after spending time with her second album, isn’t inclined that way. Though she doesn’t shy away from the various ailments afflicting the world in 2018, Prass takes her conclusions to the dancefloor, not the barricades, foregrounding the medium rather than the message. “Some of my favourite protest albums are funky as hell,” she tells Uncut. “You’re dancing, and then you think, ‘Shit, they’re singing about gentrification…’”

Prass’s eponymous debut album – recorded in 2012 but released in 2015 – was a sumptuous Southern soul docudrama, a near-perfect marriage of mellifluous vocals, personal heartbreak and old-school musical values. Written by Prass and produced by her childhood friend Matthew E White and his Spacebomb partner Trey Pollard, it drew on country-soul, classic R&B and lush orchestral pop, replete with cushioned horns and tugging strings. Like many such records, it mined a mood of exquisite melancholy, half in love with the agony it so luxuriantly described.

Having postponed recording the follow-up at the eleventh hour in order to substantially rewrite it, Prass has delivered an album that is markedly different. White and Pollard remain on board – the latter, once again, contributing magnificent string arrangements – while Prass’s gossamer tone is still light and distinctive. The moods, textures and themes, however, have evolved. We’re still talking retro, only now the touchstone is late-’70s and ’80s dance music: disco, smooth soul, sleek funk and the pop end of R&B. There are harmonically complex jazz-piano flourishes, and only a couple of lush ballads.

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On the staccato funk groove of “Oh My”, which recalls early Prince, Prass recognises that the world is giving “heartbreak to me”, but this is mere scene-setting. We already know things are all messed up; the point is what to do about it. The 11 tracks that follow provide a series of uplifting answers.

A #MeToo anthem decked out in stack heels and satin jumpsuit, “Sisters” preaches solidarity with all the “nasty women… worldwide, world class”. Over a throbbing jazz-funk groove, Prass exchanges lines with her army of backing singers. “I wanna say it loud/For all the ones held down/We gotta change the plan,” she sings. Both jubilant and defiant, it’s destined to be one of the songs of the year.

The sinister, slow-burning “Hot For The Mountain” is less obvious, but equally charged. “We’ll take you on, we can take you all,” Prass purrs, “slowly rising up.” Over a dissonant blend of minimalist beats, slinky strings and jagged jazz piano notes, an astringent melody slides up and down the scale, never quite finding resolution, and all the better for it.

“Ship Go Down” is similarly serpentine, negotiating a complex time signature and fractured stop-start structure, before sliding into a gorgeous chorus. Over six slow minutes, it accumulates fuzz-tone guitar, free-roaming bass, vibes, 007 strings and disembodied scatting as it builds into something extraordinary, Prass exposing “a wolf in wolf’s clothing”. Who on earth could she mean?

Love is prescribed as the ultimate cure for hard times on “Short Court Style”, 
a glistening disco-soul confection with hand claps and dog-whistle synths, and on the choppy “Never Too Late”, which falls somewhere between Anita Baker and Christopher Cross. “The Fire” is a riot of soft-rock tropes and conscious clichés. “Nothing To Say” isn’t a million miles from Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On”. Even at her most knowing, Prass executes it all with verve and obvious love, although the big ballads may prove a trifle sweet for some tastes. “Far From You” – a kind of sad-eyed sequel to The Carpenters’ “Close To You” – could be the lead track from a ’90s Disney flick, while “Lost” revisits the out-and-out heartbreak of her debut. Both are the kind of bullet-proof weepies that could make Prass a proper pop star.

The Future And The Past ends with 
“Ain’t Nobody”, a throbbing mid-tempo floor filler boasting a killer blend of analogue synth squelches and funky guitars. As the groove spirals upwards, Prass exhorts everyone to “keep holding on… Ain’t nobody here giving it up.” 
Her final words reprise the defiant 
call-to-arms from “Hot For The Mountain”: “We’ll take you on/We can take you all.” 
On this form, you certainly wouldn’t 
want to make a fight of it.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Kamasi Washington – Heaven And Earth

Louis Pattison
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Kamasi Washington – Heaven And Earth
One hundred and one years since the first jazz record, Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s 1917 cut “Dixie Jass Band One Step”, was committed to wax, jazz itself ought by rights to be a museum piece – as relevant to a 21st-century popular music audience as fencing, 
or falconry. True, the genre...

One hundred and one years since the first jazz record, Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s 1917 cut “Dixie Jass Band One Step”, was committed to wax, jazz itself ought by rights to be a museum piece – as relevant to a 21st-century popular music audience as fencing, 
or falconry. True, the genre itself has 
now come to occupy a niche, largely fraternised by a select band of scholars and greying enthusiasts. Yet the music itself remains in good health, thanks to the vitality of a number of dreamers and visionaries who still find something meaningful and profound in the genre’s intermingling traditions.

One such figure is Kamasi Washington. A gentle giant from Inglewood, a city in Los Angeles immortalised in verse as ground zero for gangsta rap, Washington ingested some of that music, but found his true calling in the saxophone. While studying at UCLA’s Department Of Ethnomusicology, he fell in with a refined local jazz scene, playing sideman to the likes of Raphael Saadiq and Erykah Badu, and appearing in Snoop Dogg’s live band Snoopadelics. But broader recognition came through his arranging role on Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 LP To Pimp A Butterfly, a hip-hop record that drew heavily on the musicality of jazz. …Butterfly was released to broad critical acclaim, and Washington used the spotlight well. Mere months later he broke cover with his own album, The Epic – 170 minutes of soulful, symphonic music that paired his questing tenor sax with a hotwire band, a 32-piece orchestra and a 20-member choir.

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Heaven And Earth is no more modest. Recorded with his band The Next Step and eight-piece studio collective The West Coast Get Down – a sort of Wrecking Crew for the LA beats scene – it’s a bold and sprawling work split into two distinct philosophical halves: “The Earth side of this album represents the world as I see it outwardly, the world that I am a part of,” explains Washington. “The Heaven side of this album represents the world as I see it inwardly, the world that is a part of me.” Life, spirituality, the nature of consciousness itself – if Washington is suffering from second-album jitters, he’s not letting it show.

Heaven And Earth is a deeply ambitious record, but you wouldn’t paint Washington as an avant-gardist, exactly. On the contrary, the album’s strength is to be found in its proximity to established musical traditions, and the lines it draws between them. From the Coltranes – John and Alice – he takes a sense of spiritual enquiry and compositional freedom. From ’70s Miles, comes a broiling fusion, typified by the deep bass grooves of longtime Washington collaborator Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner. Throughout, it’s easy to hear the constant influence of soul, gospel and funk – most notably on a refreshed cover of Joseph Koo & Ku Chia Hui’s theme tune for 1972 Bruce Lee film Fist Of Fury, which vocalists Dwight Trible and Patrice Quinn reframe as a noble call to arms for the Black Lives Matter era (“Our time as victims is over/We will no longer ask for justice/Instead we will take our retribution”). As fine as Washington is as a saxophonist, he’s also a skilful arranger. Listen to the rousing choirs that soar forth on cosmic winds on “The Space Traveller’s Lullaby” and you’re reminded of Sun Ra, or the jazz symphonies of composer David Axelrod, whose records were later sampled and 
cut into breaks by later generations of 
hip-hop producers.

If Washington draws from a broad range of influences, he wears it easily. Often, Heaven And Earth settles into a sort of luxurious smoothness, as if trying to obliterate the evils of the world through sheer good vibes. “Testify” is a standout casually dispatched towards the end of the Earth side, Washington’s sax shadowing Patrice Quinn’s smoky vocal as it spells out a message of love overcoming all. But this lushness is balanced with a devilish complexity – hear how “Song For The Fallen” starts laidback, but suddenly starts cramming in notes, like a pot gradually brought to the boil, while a cover of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s manic 1962 hard bop “Hub-Tones” is dispatched with furious, zig-zagging sax and eruptive percussion solos. When it needs to, Heaven And Earth really moves.

The title promised something gigantic, and the contents deliver. If you fully digested The Epic, there will be relatively few surprises here – Heaven And Earth counts as a refinement of past ideas, the playing a little neater, the soul a little sweeter. Yet there’s no denying Kamasi Washington has captured his moment. This is the rare jazz record that feels equipped to venture outside the genre’s familiar borders and engage with the wider world. In an era of division and tension, its embrace of tradition and its boldness of spirit feel not just welcome, but revitalising.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Whitney

Michael Bonner
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Whitney
Six years since her death, it seems Whitney Houston has yet to find peace. The latest controversy to batter her legacy is the a photo depicting a bathroom, apparently Huston’s, strewn with drug paraphernalia that appears on the cover of a new album by rapper Pusha T. In a statement, the Houston es...

Six years since her death, it seems Whitney Houston has yet to find peace. The latest controversy to batter her legacy is the a photo depicting a bathroom, apparently Huston’s, strewn with drug paraphernalia that appears on the cover of a new album by rapper Pusha T. In a statement, the Houston estate described itself as “extremely disappointed” with the photograph: “Even in Whitney’s death, we see that no one is exempt from the harsh realities of the world.”

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Legacy management is an increasingly significant business as estates and record companies sensitively administer the posthumous careers of their artists. As you’d imagine, Huston is no exception. A painful – and unauthorised – reminder of the miserable trajectory behind Houston’s stellar burnout, such as the Pusha T sleeve, is clearly deeply troubling. The same could be said for Nick Broomfield’s doc from last year, Whitney: Can I Be Me?, which was made without the estate’s co-operation. Now Andrew Macdonald presents the authorised take on what is essentially the same story Broomfield told – but made with the estate’s involvement.

What’s the difference, you might ask? Macdonald has better access – though it is possible that protective agendas inevitably colour the project. In one scene, Macdonald tries to steer a conversation with Bobby Brown towards drugs, but the singer bats away the director’s questions with a revealing, “That’s not what this film is about.” But Macdonald’s film contains at least one bombshell – but it is saved until late in the day, as if its grand reveal alone explains all of Houston’s struggles.
Whitney follows the current pattern of gone-too-soon docs. While it is no Amy, it does at least capture something of Asif Kapadia’s film: the fury of public judgment that turns to pity far too late in the day.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

The Cure – Mixed Up 2018

Michael Bonner
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The Cure – Mixed Up 2018
To Robert Smith, The Cure’s 40th anniversary presents a number of opportunities. Does he, for instance, choose to mark this momentous occasion with band’s first album of new material for a decade? Or does he prefer instead to dig deep into The Cure’s capacious catalogue for a new compilation a...

To Robert Smith, The Cure’s 40th anniversary presents a number of opportunities. Does he, for instance, choose to mark this momentous occasion with band’s first album of new material for a decade? Or does he prefer instead to dig deep into The Cure’s capacious catalogue for a new compilation album? This being Smith, of course, the answer lies somewhere left of centre.

For this latest project, Smith has decided to revisit Mixed Up – the band’s beloved remix album from 1990. For good measure, he has also worked in some brand new mixes of his own, a personal apercu of The Cure, if you like.

The 16 new mixes are the key sell here, especially to hungry fans who’ve been dutifully awaiting new Cure music since 2008’s 4:13 Dream. Although not entirely ‘new’, nevertheless this latest iteration of Mixed Up is part of a tightly-focussed spate of activity for Smith and his cohorts, along with this year’s Meltdown festival and a full band show at Hyde Park. If it’s not exactly a new album, at least it’s a new something – which, under the circumstances, will do.

Over the last decade or so, Smith has taken on an increasingly curatorial role. The Cure’s mammoth, three-hour live sets have now become extended celebrations of a singular legacy. What Mixed Up 2018 underscores is the depth and breadth of that creative vision. It’s not all cannibal spiders at the end of the bed. There are heartfelt songs about love and sadness, too, amid the dread tales from the world’s end.

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These tracks run chronologically and feature one song from each of the band’s studio albums to date along with a couple of non-album singles. From the band’s 1979 debut, “Three Imaginary Boys” takes us back to the band’s ramshackle baby steps. Here, Smith replaces the original’s ominous guitar curlicues with a low-key electronic burbling – a bit Speak & Spell-era Depeche Mode, truth be told. Considering Smith’s subdued playing was a critical asset in defining the early sound of The Cure, it’s quite a radical take – and one he repeats in the first handful of songs here.

For Seventeen Seconds’ “M”, he speeds up the backing track, turning the original’s spectral, tenebrous guitar lines into chunky Chuck Berry riffs, carried along on bouncy electronic beats. The hissing, snake-like guitars of Faith’s “The Drowning Man” are removed entirely, replaced by polite synth washes and piano lines. Although “A Strange Day” retains the hot-house juju of Pornography, it’s too cluttered – Smith’s fervid guitar lines butt against a barrage of processed beats. Alas, the very qualities that made the songs so otherworldly and special in the first place – space, atmosphere, texture – gets mislaid along the way.

Far more successful are “A Night Like This” and “Plainsong”, which both operate in an old school style. From the former, Smith replaces Boris Williams’ drums with a beat strongly reminiscent of Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s “Push It”. For the latter, meanwhile, he strips back the grand and glacial synth lines to reveal the song’s softer, intimate core. Listening to these two in particular, you might (correctly) recall the best moments of Mixed Up – parsing a Soul II Soul drum beat onto “Close To Me”, perhaps, or morphing the wistful “Pictures Of You” into a slow-motion dub epic. In a similar vein, the 2018 mix of “Never Enough” retains some of the original’s baggy DNA. Wish’s “From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea” also cleaves closely to its 1992 version. In its new form, “The Last Day Of Summer”, from 2000’s Bloodflowers, is dreamy and delicate, cushioned by soft pillows of rippling noise – a welcome reminder that as intense and metallic as their records increasingly have become since the Nineties, Smith and his cohorts are still capable of moments of great beauty.

Mixed Up 2018 scatters in a lot of directions: something the band always did well on albums like 1987’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. In comparison, although franchised out to several remixers, Mixed Up operates at a more cohesive level. Released in 1990 – a week apart from Happy Mondays’ Pills Thrills & Bellyaches – sits somewhere somewhere between the extended 12” mix culture of the 1980s and the indie-dance explosion of the early Nineties: François Kevorkian (“Hot! Hot! Hot!”) rubs shoulders with William Orbit (“Inbetween Days”) and Paul Oakenfold (“Close To Me”). Still standing tall is “A Forest”, mixed by Bomb The Bass affiliate Mark Saunders, that manages to both remain respectful to the source material while also having something interesting to say about it.

A further set gathers up extended mixes from the original singles, along with a previously unreleased mix of “The Lovecats” – commissioned in 1990 for Mixed Up but nixed at the time because Smith thought it made them sound like “fucking UB40”. It’s not quite that bad, but instead think of it as a cautionary reminder of the need for self-regulation. Arguably, only now equalled by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – similarly, one man’s unshakeable vision supported by a sympathetic cast of revolving players – Smith and The Cure continue to follow their own distinctive muse. At its best, Mixed Up 2018 is reminder of the fun to be had during those long, strange trips into the interior of one man’s fertile imagination.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Neil Young debuts 50-year-old song at Chicago solo show

Sam Richards
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Neil Young debuts 50-year-old song at Chicago solo show
Neil Young is currently on a solo tour of the US, playing varied sets drawing from all periods of his career. At Chicago's Auditorium Theatre last night (July 1) he surprised fans by taking to the piano to play "One More Sign", a song dating from the Buffalo Springfield era that has only ever been r...

Neil Young is currently on a solo tour of the US, playing varied sets drawing from all periods of his career. At Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre last night (July 1) he surprised fans by taking to the piano to play “One More Sign”, a song dating from the Buffalo Springfield era that has only ever been released as a demo.

Other highlights of his two Chicago shows included “After The Gold Rush” on pump organ, “The Needle And The Damage Done” and “Ohio”.

“The crowd was the real hero,” wrote Young on Neil Young Archives. “I was happy to join them.”

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Watch some clips of Neil Young’s Chicago gigs below and peruse the set lists here.

Tomorrow night’s show (July 3) at the Fox Theatre in Detroit will be streaming live on Neil Young Archives.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

The Band announce Music From Big Pink anniversary reissue

Sam Richards
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The Band announce Music From Big Pink anniversary reissue
To mark the album's 50th anniversary, The Band will reissue Music From Big Pink in a variety of expanded editions on August 31, including CD, digital, standard 2xLP, limited edition pink vinyl 2xLP and Super Deluxe CD/Blu-ray/2xLP/7" box set with a hardbound book. All configurations feature a new s...

To mark the album’s 50th anniversary, The Band will reissue Music From Big Pink in a variety of expanded editions on August 31, including CD, digital, standard 2xLP, limited edition pink vinyl 2xLP and Super Deluxe CD/Blu-ray/2xLP/7″ box set with a hardbound book.

All configurations feature a new stereo mix for the album, produced by Bob Clearmountain from the original four-track analogue masters. CD, digital and box set configurations also include five outtakes and alternate recordings from the Big Pink sessions and a previously unreleased a cappella version of “I Shall Be Released.”

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Exclusively for the box set, Clearmountain has also produced a new 5.1 surround mix for the album and the bonus tracks, presented on Blu-ray with the new stereo mix in high resolution audio (96kHz/24bit). All the new audio mixes have been mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering. The box set also includes an exclusive reproduction of The Band’s 1968 7″ vinyl single for “The Weight” / “I Shall Be Released” in their new stereo mixes and a hardbound book with a new essay by David Fricke and classic photos by Elliott Landy.

Watch a trailer for the anniversary editions of Music From Big Pink below:

Check out the tracklisting for the CD (available separately or as part of the Super Deluxe edition) below:

Music from Big Pink (50th Anniversary Edition)
2018 stereo mix
1. Tears Of Rage
2. To Kingdom Come
3. In A Station
4. Caledonia Mission
5. The Weight
6. We Can Talk
7. Long Black Veil
8. Chest Fever
9. Lonesome Suzie
10. This Wheel’s On Fire
11. I Shall Be Released

Bonus Tracks:
12. Yazoo Street Scandal (Outtake)
13. Tears Of Rage (Alternate Take)
14. Long Distance Operator (Outtake)
15. Lonesome Suzie (Alternate Take)
16. Key To The Highway (Outtake)
17. I Shall Be Released (A Cappella)

Pre-order the album here.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

New Joe Strummer comp to include rare and unreleased tracks

Sam Richards
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New Joe Strummer comp to include rare and unreleased tracks
September 28 sees the release of Joe Strummer 001, a new career-spanning compilation focusing on Strummer's non-Clash output, from The 101ers to The Mescaleros, plus solo albums and soundtrack work. The album includes 12 previously unreleased songs; hear one of them, "London Is Burning", below. The...

September 28 sees the release of Joe Strummer 001, a new career-spanning compilation focusing on Strummer’s non-Clash output, from The 101ers to The Mescaleros, plus solo albums and soundtrack work.

The album includes 12 previously unreleased songs; hear one of them, “London Is Burning”, below. The song dates from 2002 and is an alternative/early version of “Burnin’ Street” from Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros final album Streetcore.

Joe Strummer 001 will be released in double CD, quadruple vinyl and digital formats, plus as a limited edition Deluxe Double CD (in 64-page hardback A4 notebook with writings, lyrics, photos and sketches taken from Joe’s extensive personal archive) and limited edition Deluxe Box Set (4xLP plus 7” vinyl single, cassette, 64-page hardback A4 notebook, enamel badge, art print, screen print, lyrics and sticker sheet).

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All formats include tracks that have never appeared anywhere before as well as new remasters. The unreleased material includes an early demo of “This Is England” entitled “Czechoslovak Song/Where Is England”, a solo demo of “Letsagetabitarockin” recorded in Elgin Avenue in 1975, outtakes from Sid & Nancy featuring Mick Jones and unreleased songs “Rose Of Erin”, “The Cool Impossible” and “London Is Burning”, one of the last songs Joe recorded.

The compiling of Joe Strummer 001 was overseen by Joe’s widow Lucinda Tait and Robert Gordon McHarg III, who curated the Black Market Clash exhibition. All tracks were restored and mastered by Peter J. Moore at the E. Room in Toronto, Canada.

The full tracklisting for the Deluxe Box Set is as follows:

JOE STRUMMER 001

SIDE 1
‘Letsagetabitarockin’
1975 101ers from ‘Elgin Avenue Breakdown’
‘Keys To Your Heart’
1976 101ers from ‘Elgin Avenue Breakdown'(Version 2)
‘Love Kills’
1986 Joe Strummer from ‘Sid And Nancy’ OST
‘Tennesse Rain’
1987 Joe Strummer from ‘Walker’ OST
‘Trash City’
1988 Joe Strummer & Latino Rockabilly War from ‘Permanent Record’ OST
‘15th Brigade’
1989 Joe Strummer B.side of ‘Island Hopping’

SIDE 2
‘Ride Your Donkey’
1989 Joe Strummer from ‘Earthquake Weather’
‘Burning Lights’
1990 Joe Strummer from ‘I Hired A Contract Killer’ OST
‘Afro-Cuban Be-Bop’
1990 The Astro-Physicans from ‘I Hired a Contract Killer’ OST
‘Sand Paper Blues’
1995 Radar from ‘Sandpaper Blues’ Exhibition
‘Generations’
1997 Electric Dog House from ‘Generations 1 (A Punk Look At Human Rights)’

SIDE 3
‘It’s A Rockin’World’
1998 Joe Strummer from ‘South Park’ OST
‘Yalla Yalla’
1999 Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros from ‘Rock Art & The X-Ray Style’
‘X-Ray Style’
1999 Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros from ‘Rock Art & The X-Ray Style’
‘Johnny Appleseed’
2001 Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros from ‘Global A Go-Go’

SIDE 4
‘Minstrel Boy’
2001 Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros from ‘Black Hawk Down’ OST
‘Redemption Song’
2002 Joe Strummer with Johnny Cash from ‘Johnny Cash: Unearthed’
‘Over The Border’
2002 Joe Strummer with Jimmy Cliff from ‘Fantastic Plastic People’
‘Coma Girl’
2003 Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros from ‘Street Core’
‘Silver & Gold’
2003 Joe Strummer & Mescaleros from ‘Street Core’

SIDE 5
‘Letsagetabitarockin’
1975 Previously Unreleased Cassette Tape Demo. Recorded at 101 Elgin Avenue.

‘Czechoslovak Song’ / ‘Where Is England’
1983 Previously Unreleased 1/2 Inch Tape Master Demo dated August.
Early version of ‘This Is England.’
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Paul Simonon: Bass. Pete Howard: Drums.

‘Pouring Rain’
1984 Previously Unreleased 1 inch 8-track Demo Recorded July 1984.
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Paul Simonon: Bass. Pete Howard: Drums.
Mixed by Peter J. Moore 2018

‘Blues On The River’
1984 July. Previously Unreleased. 1 Inch 8 Track Tape Demo.
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Drum Machine.
Mixed by Peter J. Moore 2018

‘Crying on 23rd’
1986 with The Sooth Sayers. Previously Unreleased. 1/4 Inch Tape.
Produced by Joe Strummer. Outtake from the Alex Cox film ‘Sid & Nancy.
’Joe Strummer: Vocals, Rhythm Guitar, Bass. Mick Jones: Guitar. Chris Musto: Drums, Percussion.

‘2 Bullets’
1986 with Pearl Harbour. Previously Unreleased. 1/4 Inch Tape.
Produced by Joe Strummer. Outtake from ‘Sid & Nancy.’Pearl Harbour: Vocals. Joe Strummer: Rhythm Guitar, Bass. Mick Jones: Guitar. Chris Musto: Drums.
B.J. Cole: Pedal Steel Guitar.

SIDE 6
‘When Pigs Fly’
1993 from When Pigs Fly.
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Danny Thompson: Bass. Tommy McManamon: Electric Rhythm, Licks Guitar, Spanish Guitar.Terry Williams: Drums. James MacNally: Flute, Piano, Bodhran. Lee Goodall: Saxophone. Steve Warbeck: Accordion. Stuart Gordon: Violin.

‘Pouring Rain’
1993 from When Pigs Fly
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Danny Thompson: Bass. Terry Williams: Drums. Steve Warbeck: Accordion.

‘Rose Of Erin’
1993 from When Pigs Fly
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Danny Thompson: Bass. Terry Williams: Drums. Steve
Warbeck: Accordion. Tommy McManamon: Fuzz Electric Guitar, Rhythm & Slide Guitars James MacNally: Whistle, Piano.
Previously Unreleased. From the Sara Driver film ‘When Pigs Fly’
Transferred from Cassette Tape. Produced by Joe Strummer
Recorded 1993 at Rockfield Studios.

‘The Cool Impossible’
1993 JS Demo
Previously Unreleased. Recorded 1993 at Rockfield Studios. 2 Inch Tape Multitrack.
Produced by Kosmo Vinyl. Mixed by Peter J. Moore 2018
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Danny Thompson: Bass. Aaron Ahmun: Drums. Tommy McManamon: Guitars. James MacNally: Piano.

‘London Is Burning’
2002 Mescaleros
Previously Unreleased. Recorded 2002. The last song to be discovered for Joe Strummer 001. Reworked into ‘Burning Streets’ on ‘Streetcore’. Originally titled ‘Fire Fighting Street’ and written for Joe’s show at Acton Town Hall for the Fire Brigade Union on November 15th 2002. Produced by Joe Strummer, Martin Slattery & Scott Shields. Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar. Scott Shields: Drums, Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Slide Guitar, Synth, BVs. Martin Slattery: Electric Guitar, Chamberlain Strings, Tambourine, BVs.

SIDE 7 (12” SINGLE)
‘US North’
1986 JS/Jones from Candy Mountain
Previously Unreleased. Recorded 1986. 1/2 Inch Tape Master. Produced by Mick Jones.
Unused song from the Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer film ‘Candy Mountain’.
Joe Strummer: Vocals, Guitar. Mick Jones: Vocals, Guitars, Bass. Greg Roberts: Drums. Dan Donovan: Keyboards. Felippe Gonzales: Bongos. Xavier Solano: Agogo. Strings played by The Radio Futura Philharmonic Orchestra, Madrid

7” SINGLE
‘This is England‘
1984 July Demo
Previously Unreleased.1 Inch 8 Track Tape Demo.
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar, Paul Simonon: Bass, Pete Howard: Drums.
Mixed by Peter J. Moore 2018

‘Before We Go Forward’
1984 July Demo
Previously Unreleased. 1 Inch 8 Track Tape Demo.
Joe Strummer: Vocals & Guitar, Paul Simonon: Bass, Pete Howard: Drums.
Mixed by Peter J. Moore 2018

CASSETTE
‘U.S. North Basement Demo’
Unreleased. Recorded 1986. Discovered in Joe’s cast cupboard.
Joe Strummer & Mick Jones: Vocals, Guitar, Drum Machine

The album is available to pre-order now from here.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

The Doors’ Waiting For The Sun gets deluxe anniversary reissue

Sam Richards
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The Doors’ Waiting For The Sun gets deluxe anniversary reissue
To mark its 50th anniversary, The Doors' 1968 album Waiting For The Sun will be reissued in deluxe 2xCD + 1xLP format on September 14. The package contains a stereo version of the original album on both CD and 180g vinyl, newly remastered by Bruce Botnick. It also includes a second disc of 14 previ...

To mark its 50th anniversary, The Doors’ 1968 album Waiting For The Sun will be reissued in deluxe 2xCD + 1xLP format on September 14.

The package contains a stereo version of the original album on both CD and 180g vinyl, newly remastered by Bruce Botnick. It also includes a second disc of 14 previously unreleased tracks: nine recently discovered “rough mixes” from the album recording sessions and five live songs from a Doors show in Copenhagen on September 17, 1968. The audio will also be available on digital download and streaming services.

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Peruse the full tracklisting below:

WAITING FOR THE SUN: 50th ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION

Disc One
“Hello, I Love You”
“Love Street”
“Not To Touch The Earth”
“Summer’s Almost Gone”
“Wintertime Love”
“The Unknown Soldier”
“Spanish Caravan”
“My Wild Love”
“We Could Be So Good Together”
“Yes, The River Knows”
“Five To One”

Disc Two (All Tracks Previously Unreleased)
Rough Mixes
“Hello, I Love You”
“Summer’s Almost Gone”
“Yes, The River Knows”
“Spanish Caravan”
“Love Street”
“Wintertime Love”
“Not To Touch The Earth”
“Five To One”
“My Wild Love”

Live In Copenhagen
“The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)”
“Hello, I Love You”
“Back Door Man”
“Five To One”
“The Unknown Soldier”

In addition, Rhino will re-release The Doors’ single “Hello, I Love You” b/w “Love Street” on 7″ vinyl, 50 years to the day it hit No.1 in the US on August 3, 1968. This anniversary release will use mono radio mixes of the songs that were given exclusively to radio stations for airplay in 1968. This version of “Hello, I Love You” was first available last year as part of The Singles CD collection and is making its vinyl debut here, while the “Love Street” mix is being released commercially for the first time.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Kinks reunion – the latest!

Sam Richards
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Kinks reunion – the latest!
Ray Davies has revealed that The Kinks are talking about getting back together for the first time in over two decades. In an interview on Monday (June 25) on Channel 4 news, the frontman was interrupted by a phone call from original Kinks drummer Mick Avory. "We're making a new Kinks album," smiled...

Ray Davies has revealed that The Kinks are talking about getting back together for the first time in over two decades.

In an interview on Monday (June 25) on Channel 4 news, the frontman was interrupted by a phone call from original Kinks drummer Mick Avory. “We’re making a new Kinks album,” smiled Davies mischievously.

Pressed on whether he was joking or not, Davies said: “We’re talking about it because I’ve got all these songs that I wrote for them when the band – not broke up – we parted company, and I think it’s kind of an appropriate time to do it… I’ve got some great Kinks tunes in my head.”

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“It won’t be well-organised like The Rolling Stones,” he continued. “I must praise The Rolling Stones for being great at publicity and a great band, great at organising their careers… It’s kind of inspiring to see them doing it. But The Kinks will probably play in the local bar.”

Talking about The Kinks’ famously fractious history, Davies said: “The trouble is, the two remaining members – my brother Dave and Mick – never got along very well. But I made that work in the studio and it fired me up to make them play harder, and with fire, so if I can recapture those moments… I haven’t brought them together in the same room yet but we’re working on it.”

Watch the whole interview below:

Yesterday (June 27), Dave Davies took to Twitter to confirm that a Kinks reunion was likely, though very much in its embryonic stages: “Me and Ray have spoken about the possibility of us working on a new album. Ray has a few songs he wants to finish. I have 3 or 4 songs I’ve written with Ray. We’ve been talking about it for some time now. We haven’t discussed shows or anything else at the moment.”

Dave Davies’ album Decade, a compilation of unreleased ’70s material, is due for release in September.

You can read a review of Ray Davies’ latest solo album Our Country: Americana Act II in the current issue of Uncut, on sale now.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Win tickets to see Paul Simon live in Hyde Park!

Sam Richards
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Win tickets to see Paul Simon live in Hyde Park!
Paul Simon will headline Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time Hyde Park, London, on July 15. Billed as 'Homeward Bound: The Farewell Tour', it may be the last chance you get to see the legendary singer-songwriter before he retires from live performance. Tickets for the event – which also feat...

Paul Simon will headline Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time Hyde Park, London, on July 15. Billed as ‘Homeward Bound: The Farewell Tour’, it may be the last chance you get to see the legendary singer-songwriter before he retires from live performance.

Tickets for the event – which also features James Taylor & His All-Star Band, Bonnie Raitt and Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit – are almost sold out. But we’re giving away ONE pair of tickets to one lucky Uncut reader.

Get Uncut delivered to your door – find out by clicking here!

To enter, please answer the following question correctly. One winner will be chosen at random from the Uncut office hat.

What is the first track on Paul Simon’s classic 1986 album Graceland?

a) You Can Call Me Al
b) The Boy In The Bubble
c) Graceland

Send your answers to UncutComp@timeinc.com by Friday June 30.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda

Michael Bonner
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Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
Stephen Nomura Schible’s film opens in Miyagi, Northeastern Japan in 2012, the year after the region was devastated by an earthquake. Ruyichi Sakamoto has come to meet one of the survivors: a piano. “I wanted to hear its sound,” he explains, plucking around in the guts of the instrument. The n...

Stephen Nomura Schible’s film opens in Miyagi, Northeastern Japan in 2012, the year after the region was devastated by an earthquake. Ruyichi Sakamoto has come to meet one of the survivors: a piano. “I wanted to hear its sound,” he explains, plucking around in the guts of the instrument. The next we see of the composer, he has donned a white ABC suit to tour the ghostlike, abandoned “Restricted Containment Zone” near the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It transpires that death and disaster are recurring themes in Coda.

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In 2014, Sakamoto was diagnosed with throat cancer. As a consequence, he junked the music he was working on and started anew. The high stakes creation of what finlly became async – his restorative album from 2017 – provides the focus for Schible’s film. There are field trips – similar to Fukushima – where Sakamoto searches out sounds to incorporate into his music. Among them, a glacier and a forest. The patience and sensitivity Sakamoto brings to his work is mirrored in Schible’s direction.

In some respects, the film Coda resembles is The Kingdom Of Dreams And Madness – the documentary about Studio Ghibli about Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. Both films portray well-respected, resolutely anti war Japanese artists aghast at their country’s shift towards the right. Ironically, Takahata once fired Sakamoto claiming his music was “too serious” for Studio Ghibli films.

Schible’s strongest suit is Sakamoto himself. Slender, bespectacled, foppish grey hair, he is unflappable at work in the studio – though prone to almost boyish bursts of excitement when he hits a pleasing chord progression. His hair is even more foppish in flashback, glimpsed in Yellow Magic Orchestra footage or around the time he starred in and composed the music for Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. There are warm, funny anecdotes, too, about working with Oshima and Bertolucci. A superior film.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

The Best Of 2018: Halftime Report

Michael Bonner
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The Best Of 2018: Halftime Report
First off, a gentle reminder that our excellent new issue of Uncut is in the shops now, featuring a look at Prince's greatest albums, the return of the Cowboy Junkies, Graham Nash, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, John Coltrane, Hawkwind, Teenage Fanclub and Jennifer Warnes. Full details about the i...

First off, a gentle reminder that our excellent new issue of Uncut is in the shops now, featuring a look at Prince‘s greatest albums, the return of the Cowboy Junkies, Graham Nash, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, John Coltrane, Hawkwind, Teenage Fanclub and Jennifer Warnes. Full details about the issue are here, in case you missed them.

Conscious that we’re about to hit the halfway mark through 2018, I tried to round up my favourite albums of the year so far; specifically releases from January until the end of June. They’re listed in alphabetical order, in case you’re interested. Reassuringly, there’s already a lot to look forward to in the second half of this year – including strong new album from Glenn Jones, Nathan Salsburg, One Eleven Heavy, Alexander Tucker and Thee Oh Sees among others.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

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1 Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (Domino)
2 Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel (Marathon Artists)
3 Beach House – 7 (Bella Union)
4 Belly – Dove (self-released)
5 Kadhja Bonet – Childqueen (Fat Possum)
6 Breeders – All Nerve (4AD)
7 David Byrne – American Utopia (Nonesuch)
8 Dylan Carson – Conquistador (Cargo)
9 Chris Carter – Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 (Mute)
10 Neko Case – Hell-On (Anti-)
11 Jennifer Castle – Angels Of Death (Paradise of Bachelors)
12 Cavern Of Anti-Matter – Hormone Lemonade (Duophonic)
13 Graham Coxon – The End Of The F***ing World OST (Warner Music Group)
14 Ry Cooder – The Prodigal Son (Fantasy Records)
15 Lucy Dacus – Historian (Matador)
16 Juliana Daugherty – Light (Western Vinyl)
17 Dead Meadow – The Nothing They Need (Xemu Records)
18 Father John Misty – God’s Favorite Customer (Bella Union)
19 Eleanor Friedberger – Rebound (French Kiss)
20 Shinya Fukumori Trio – For 2 Akis (Deutsche Grammophon)
21 Gang Gang Dance – Kazuashita (4AD)
22 Gnod – Chapel Perilous (Rocket Recordings)
23 Jonny Greenwood – Phantom Thread OST (Nonesuch)
23 Gwenno – Le Kov (Heavenly Recordings)
25 Jon Hassell – Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One) (Ndeya)
26 Haley Heynderickx – I Need To Start A Garden (Mama Bird Recording Co.)
27 Jon Hopkins – Singularity (Domino)
28 Steve Jansen – Corridor (self-released)
29 Andy Jenkins – Sweet Bunch (Spacebomb)
30 Kaada – Closing Statements (Mirakel Recordings)
31 Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo (Dead Oceans)
32 Mary Lattimore – Hundreds Of Days (Ghostly International)
33 Mélissa Laveaux – Radyo Siwèl (No Format!)
34 Sarah Louise – Deeper Woods (Thrill Jockey)
35 Luluc – Sculptor (Sub Pop)
36 Francis MacDonald – Hamilton Mausoleum Suite (TR7/Shoeshine Records)
37 Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Sparkle Hard (Domino)
38 Johnny Marr – Call The Comet (Warner Bros.)
39 Melody’s Echo Chamber – Bon Voyage (Domino)
40 Mien – Mien (Rocket Recordings)
41 Mind Over Mirrors – Bellowing Sun (Paradise of Bachelors)
42 Modern Studies – Welcome Strangers (Fire Records)
43 Aidan Moffat & RM Hubbard – Here Lies The Body (Rock Action Records)
44 Mouse On Mars – Dimensional People (Thrill Jockey)
45 Ought – Room Inside The World (Merge)
46 Josh T. Pearson – The Straight Hits (Mute)
47 Natalie Prass – The Future And The Past (Fire Records)
48 Mark Pritchard – The Four Worlds (Warp)
49 Gwenifer Raymond – You Were Never Much Of A Dancer (Tompkins Square)
50 Red River Dialect – Broken Stay Open Sky (Paradise of Bachelors)
51 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs (Sub Pop)
52 The Sea And Cake – Any Day (Thrill Jockey)
53 Ty Segall – Freedom’s Goblin (Drag City)
54 Snail Mail – Lush (Matador)
55 Sons Of Kemet – Your Queen Is A Reptile (Impulse! Records)
56 Stuart A. Staples – Arrhythmia (City Slang)
57 Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Sex & Food (Jagjaguwar)
58 U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited (4AD)
59 Laura Veirs – The Lookout (Bella Union)
60 The Wave Pictures – Brushed With Happiness (Moshi Moshi)
61 Leon Vynehall – Nothing Is Still (Ninja Tune)
62 Ryley Walker – Deafman Glance (Dead Oceans)
63 Wand – Perfume (Drag City)
64 Kamasi Washington – Heaven And Earth (Young Turks)
65 Jess Williamson – Cosmic Wink (Mexican Summer)
66 Jonathan Wilson – Rare Birds (Bella Union)
67 Virginia Wing – Ecstatic Arrow (Fire Records)
68 Yo La Tengo – There’s A Riot Going On (Matador)

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs

Allan Jones
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Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs
Put Hope Downs in the CD player, press play and before the digital clock’s even ticking, “An Air-Conditioned Man” is coming at you like the wind you’d expect to accompany the envisioned Rapture, a scorching holy gale. One, two, three guitars, two voices, sometimes overlapping, combine into a...

Put Hope Downs in the CD player, press play and before the digital clock’s even ticking, “An Air-Conditioned Man” is coming at you like the wind you’d expect to accompany the envisioned Rapture, a scorching holy gale. One, two, three guitars, two voices, sometimes overlapping, combine into a single noise over a relentless rhythm, part Mo Tucker backbeat, the rest motorik pulse. It’s entirely addictive – one fix and you’re hooked.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever were formed in Melbourne in 2013, by singer-guitarist Fran Keaney, guitarist Tom Russo, with Tom’s brother Joe on bass and, eventually, Fran’s cousin Joe White on third guitar and vocals, and drummer Marcel Tussie. Keaney, Tom Russo and White are the band’s principal songwriters and singers, the songs often dialogues between them. The sound they make, however, belongs to all of them, every instrument a key part of the miasmic sonic swirl.

They were part of the same local scene as Courtney Barrett, with whom they share certain askew lyrical perspectives, if little of Barrett’s closely observed narrative specificities, Rolling Blackout usually preferring allusion to illustration. They’ve released two mini-albums: “Talk Tight” (2016) attracted great reviews and brought them to the attention of Sub Pop, who released last year’s thrilling “The French Press”. Legitimate comparisons were made between these records and literate, pop-savvy ’80s groups like The Go-Betweens, Orange Juice and The Triffids, and New Zealand bands like The Chills, Bats and The Clean. You could also hear The Velvet Underground and Television 
in the mix, maybe a hint of the fractured, disintegrating psychedelic juxtapositions of “Laughing Stock” and “Your Mind And We Belong Together”, the weird last single by Love’s original lineup, released between Forever Changes and Four Sail.

The album Hope Downs most reminds me of, however, is REM’s Murmur, which on its release in 1984 changed the lives of a lot of people, mine included. The two records share the same spectacular impatience to be heard and impress, a kinetic restlessness, an almost fevered superabundance of ideas, melody and brightly ringing guitars, oblique lyrics that mystify and illuminate simultaneously. Exciting tracks here like “Talking Straight”, “Time In Common” and “Sister’s Jeans” wholly recall the rip-roaring assault of “Radio Free Europe” and “Moral Kiosk”, the whole yet underpinned by the kind of drifting melancholy elegantly articulated by Murmur cuts like “Perfect Circle” and “Talk About The Passion”, even when the music burns as bright as an oil-field fire.

Rolling Blackouts virtually weaponise brevity on Hope Downs. Only three of the tracks are longer than four minutes, and most clock in at three or less. They pack so much into each of them, however, that it’s akin to finding the full text of Infinite Jest engraved on the back of a fridge magnet. There’s a pent-up hysteria to some of them, barely contained, that finds release in rhapsodic guitars, an often ecstatic sound. Rolling Blackouts, though, rarely merely jam. These songs are meticulously arranged, well practised, a lot of hard work put into their precise perfections, even as they sound entirely intuitive, as if all these incredible ideas have been released to them on a whim. The songs themselves, for the most part, seem to be about discordant love, the terminal twitches of dying relationships, breakups, betrayal and heartbreak, the usual boy-girl shit. But on other levels, they speak of larger crises of separation, estrangement, the cruel nostalgia of things remembered you’d rather forget. They could be about lovers, refugees, her, me, you there with the glasses.

Let’s be clear. Hope Downs doesn’t invent anything “new”. 
It’s the kind of record I could have been listening to when I was 15 and still be playing now, timeless in its past and future reach.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Watch footage of Neil Young’s Arroyo Seco show

Sam Richards
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Watch footage of Neil Young’s Arroyo Seco show
This weekend (June 23) Neil Young headlined Pasadena's Arroyo Seco festival with his regular backing band, Promise Of The Real. Kicking off with a 20-minute version of "Like An Inca" from Trans, Young and his band appeared to be assembling their set-list on the fly. Get Uncut delivered to your doo...

This weekend (June 23) Neil Young headlined Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco festival with his regular backing band, Promise Of The Real.

Kicking off with a 20-minute version of “Like An Inca” from Trans, Young and his band appeared to be assembling their set-list on the fly.

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At one point they started playing “Lotta Love” only to abandon it after a few seconds in favour of Buffalo Springfield’s “I Am A Child”, returning to “Lotta Love” afterwards.

The encore comprised CSNY’s “Ohio”, a 15-minute version of “Down By The River” and “Roll Another Number”.

“Funny how an unplanned set breathes like real rock and roll,” wrote Young later on Neil Young Archives. “We just play what we feel like playing, for as long as we feel like playing it, and it works for us.”

Watch some fan-filmed footage of the performance and peruse the full setlist below:

01. Lika An Inca
02. F*!#in’ Up
03. Cortez The Killer
04. Forget About Georgia (Lukas Nelson)
05. Everything Is Bullshit (Micah Nelson)
06. I Am A Child
07. Lotta Love
08. Rockin’ In The Free World
09. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
10. Angry World
11. Powderfinger
—
12. Ohio
13. Down By The River
14. Roll Another Number

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYkS-2j6DIw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sInPa1qfZrI

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Send us your questions for Gruff Rhys

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Gruff Rhys
As the leader of Super Furry Animals, one of our most treasured beat combos, Gruff Rhys surely needs no introduction. But here's a quick one anyway. Ever since gatecrashing the Britpop party with the longest-titled EP in history, the Super Furries - with Rhys' whimsical yet cutting lyrics to the fo...

As the leader of Super Furry Animals, one of our most treasured beat combos, Gruff Rhys surely needs no introduction. But here’s a quick one anyway.

Ever since gatecrashing the Britpop party with the longest-titled EP in history, the Super Furries – with Rhys’ whimsical yet cutting lyrics to the fore – have taken on us a fantabulous journey involving unicorns, pink tanks, yetis, Howard Marks, ice hockey hair, steel drums, golden retrievers and integrated metropolitan public transport systems.

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Rhys’s solo albums have been no less remarkable, with each envisioned as a kind of adventure or challenge, whether that’s building a mini hotel out of complimentary shampoo bottles or travelling across America with a puppet of an 18th century Welsh explorer. His latest, Babelsberg, finds him working with a full symphony orchestra for the first time. Uncut called it “warm and weird, but suddenly no stranger than the world around it.”

So what would you like to ask of the composer of such indelible anthems as “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck”, “God! Show Me Magic”, “I Told Her On Alderaan” and pro-Remain campaign song “I Love EU”?

Send your questions by Wednesday June 27 to uncutaudiencewith@ti-media.com – the best ones, along with Gruff’s answers of course, will be published in a future issue of Uncut.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Johnny Marr – Call The Comet

Stephen Troussé
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Johnny Marr – Call The Comet
In Set The Boy Free, his brisk, bullish autobiography published in 2016, there’s a great photo of Johnny Marr from 1981 or 1982, still working at X-Clothes in Manchester, but clearly already in the green room of pop history. He’s posed immaculately in the corner, dressed head to toe in Wild One ...

In Set The Boy Free, his brisk, bullish autobiography published in 2016, there’s a great photo of Johnny Marr from 1981 or 1982, still working at X-Clothes in Manchester, but clearly already in the green room of pop history. He’s posed immaculately in the corner, dressed head to toe in Wild One leather, eyeing the camera with teenage Brando defiance, as if demanding of the nascent ’80s pop scene, “Well, whaddya got?”

The teenage Marr was a musician of freakish facility: you can easily imagine alternative ’80s timelines where he led a Factory avant-funk act, fingerpicked his way through a Pentangular folk career 
or crafted immaculate scally sophistipop à la The Pale Fountains. But it’s the Johnny Marr in this photo that you can imagine has been biding his time to record Call The Comet, his third, most powerful and most cohesive solo record yet.

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In a funny way it’s an album of BIG MUSIC, a peer of the Bunnymen’s Heaven Up Here, Simple Mind’s Empires And Dance, the John McGeoch of the Banshees’ Juju and Magazine’s The Correct Use Of Soap. If The Messenger and Playland saw him dedicated to writing precisely concise and askew new-wave post-punk pop, and occasionally giving the impression he would very much have liked to compose the first Franz Ferdinand album, here he gives free rein to a more grandiose spirit, channelling some of the sublime scale of his soundtrack work with Hans Zimmer.

“Rise” sets the Olympian tone, sounding uncannily like the theme tune for Sky’s Super Sunday as it might be performed in the future dystopia of Diamond Dogs: “Now here they come, it’s the dawn of the dogs/They howl and they howl and they never let up.” Lead single “The Tracers” ups the tempo and intensity, evoking that mid-’80s moment when New Order (“Sunrise”), the Banshees (“Cities In Dust”) and even Killing Joke and Sisters of Mercy mapped out a magnificent cinemascope gothic pop. It may be possible to tease out the threads of some sci-fi album concept in the lyrics (“Tracers know we’ve lost our way/Take all the love we’ve lost and scattered”), but in truth the track, and the album, are most thrilling when Marr simply surfs the scintillating waves of guitar with wordless sighs and woo-hoos. Indeed at times it’s tempting to imagine an entirely wordless, shoegaze instrumental version of the album.

Even after three solo albums, it’s fair to say that Marr still doesn’t seem like a natural frontman. In football terms, fronting his own band requires him to be a kind of deep-lying false nine, or, like Roberto Firmino, one of those players who strive to be everywhere on the pitch at once. You sense he might be more comfortable as David Silva, masterfully conducting play from the middle of the park.

In conversation with Bernard Butler last year for a radio show on the reissue of The Queen Is Dead, Marr talked about how the relatively unheralded “Never Had No One Ever” was in fact the key to the whole record, distilled from a memory of playing along to “I Need Somebody” from Raw Power in his bedroom, illuminated by the moon and the streetlights. That lonely sodium streetlight sound – his equivalent of Dylan’s wild mercury – is all over Call The Comet, notably on the bloodcurdling solo of “Hey Angel” and the stark acoustic strum of “Day In Day Out”. But, though he’s now an assured singer, Johnny is no Iggy. There’s no shame in that – nobody else is either. But unlike Siouxsie or Ian McCulloch or even Bernard Sumner, he can’t coast through a song on vocal charisma alone.

It might be best to appreciate Call The Comet as a sublime soundtrack, possibly the most atmospheric, widescreen guitar album you’ll hear all year: from the haunted shimmer of “Hi Hello” to the cracked Bowie of “Actor-Attractor”, from the Simple Minds stadium futurism of “Spiral Cities” to the coruscating Banshee screech of “My Eternal” and the spectacular sunset of “A Different Gun”. It feels very consciously the third part of Marr’s modern Manchester trilogy: if The Messenger revisited his Wythenshawe street-urchin ambition and Playland critiqued the cosmetic glitter of the 21st-century metropolis, then despite everything, here he’s dreaming of a better world. With maybe only Paul Weller as a peer, he’s still refusing to look back, to reform, to trade on his awesome back pages. Almost 40 years on, he’s still unmistakeably the cocksure kid from that ’80s clothes shop making his own demands on the future.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Watch My Bloody Valentine play a new song at Meltdown

Sam Richards
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Watch My Bloody Valentine play a new song at Meltdown
My Bloody Valentine performed at London's Royal Festival Hall as part of Robert Smith's Meltdown Festival on Saturday night (June 23). During their set, they debuted an untitled new song. Watch a clip of it below: https://www.instagram.com/p/BkYhrCRABuf/ Get Uncut delivered to your door - find ou...

My Bloody Valentine performed at London’s Royal Festival Hall as part of Robert Smith’s Meltdown Festival on Saturday night (June 23).

During their set, they debuted an untitled new song. Watch a clip of it below:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkYhrCRABuf/

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It’s not yet known whether the song will be included on My Bloody Valentine’s new EP, which Kevin Shields has teased in various interviews this year. The band play Roskilde festival in Denmark this weekend before embarking on a US tour in July.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson: “I’m obsessed with putting myself in difficult situations”

Tom Pinnock
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Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson: “I’m obsessed with putting myself in difficult situations”
Like us on Facebook to keep up to date with the latest news from Uncut From the Korean Demilitarized Zone to earthquake-hit Mexico City, Unknown Mortal Orchestra recorded their ambitious new album Sex & Food in some perilous locations – and lived to tell the tale. Tom Pinnock joins creative m...

There’s no shortage of food in Madrid, of course, but vegan dishes are harder to come by, so Nielson and Uncut head to La Colonial De Huertas, a Cuban-Spanish restaurant near the Prado, for pastel de verduras. Over glasses of Mahou – “My new session beer,” says Ruban – talk turns to the current state of America, echoed in Sex & Food’s more dystopian moods. Nielson explains that as a response to the shock of Trump’s election win, and tipped off by a reference in Adam Curtis’s Hypernormalisation, he began reading the Strugatsky brothers’ Soviet sci-fi novels, notably Roadside Picnic.

“Being in America, it just feels nuts there,” he says. “It feels impossible to tell exactly what’s going on, and it’s getting worse. So I think trying to escape that every now and then is really important. It can be creatively inspiring, but you have to read the Strugatsky brothers and think about it as some science-fiction nightmare.”

“Sick of fake democracies,” the singer murmurs, resigned, on “Ministry Of Alienation”. “Can’t escape the 20th century/Handing in my resignation/The ministry of alienation…” But Ruban has a lot to keep him occupied before 2020: in particular, the gigs UMO have planned for this year, uniting the core studio trio for their first full tour.

“I had a meltdown last New Year’s Eve,” Ruban explains. “I got really drunk and wandered around the streets by myself, thinking, ‘I’m gonna stop doing this band, there’s no reason to do it – just because I’ve had some success doesn’t mean I should keep doing it.’ But I woke up the next morning and thought, ‘I should get Kody back in the live band…’ And I started building the band around the idea of having Kody back in.”

“We’re older now,” says Kody, “and I guess I’ve grown up a lot since we were last touring together. It’s not as nuts as it was before.”

After a shot of Arecha Punch Au Rhum, Nielson is on his way to the airport, heading to Brussels. He’s leaving his favourite painting once again, but no doubt they’ll be reunited soon. In the meantime, the guitarist is positive about his next moves.

“Kody and I have these demons in our family,” he explains, “and I thought if we could work through stuff by having a successful year of touring together, then it might give me a reason to go out and play. He’s always been my favourite drummer, since we were kids.

“With the fact that there’s some tension between us, we’re always gonna make better music together than we can apart. If we have a success this year, I want to be able to look at Kody and say, ‘We did it.’”

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

Graham Nash on CSNY: “It would get pretty tense”

Sam Richards
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Graham Nash on CSNY: “It would get pretty tense”
Talking exclusively in the latest issue of Uncut - on sale now - Graham Nash confirms that another CSNY reunion is unlikely for the time being. "I'm talking to Stephen [Stills], I'm talking to Neil [Young] and no-one's talking to [David] Crosby. So what can you do?" says Nash. "Crosby's on his path...

Talking exclusively in the latest issue of Uncut – on sale now – Graham Nash confirms that another CSNY reunion is unlikely for the time being.

“I’m talking to Stephen [Stills], I’m talking to Neil [Young] and no-one’s talking to [David] Crosby. So what can you do?” says Nash. “Crosby’s on his path and we’re on ours. So be it.”

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Nash also reveals that tensions between Crosby and producer Rick Rubin scuppered the supergroup’s aborted 2012 album. “We wanted to do ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Norwegian Wood’… But Rick said no, that there would only be one Beatles song on the record. So Crosby told him, ‘There’ll only be one Beatles song on the record if we say there’s only one fucking Beatles song on the record. Do not tell us what the fuck to do and what to sing!’ It was over from that moment… Once you stir Crosby up, forget it. It’s not worth it.”

Mulling over the suggestion that CSNY perhaps needed friction to prosper, Nash says: “I don’t think we needed friction, it was just there. It would get pretty tense, occasionally. But the music is the most important thing about us. And the truth is that if we never make another note of music together again, at least look what we achieved.”

When asked what it would take to get CSNY back together, Nash says: “It’s really simple. We have to like each other.”

Read much from Graham Nash on CSNY, Joni Mitchell and his new retrospective compilation Over The Years… in the August 2018 issue of Uncut, on sale now.

The August 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with Prince on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find exclusive features on John Coltrane, Graham Nash, Cowboy Junkies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hawkwind, Jennifer Warnes, Teenage Fanclub, David Sylvian, Wilko Johnson and many more. Our free CD showcases 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including Israel Nash, Dirty Projectors, Luluc, Ty Segall and White Fence, Nathan Salsburg and Gwenifer Raymond.

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