In Autobiography, Morrissey writes insightfully about his favourite films, which tend to cluster around the 1940s, 50s and 60s. "The working classes are usually portrayed as children enacting pointless working class crimes. We always see the police as adults, representing a conscience for the daft s...
In Autobiography, Morrissey writes insightfully about his favourite films, which tend to cluster around the 1940s, 50s and 60s. “The working classes are usually portrayed as children enacting pointless working class crimes. We always see the police as adults, representing a conscience for the daft scrubbers in pubs and dance halls – who are not rich and therefore cannot behave themselves… The shadowy social films of lost Sunday television are Oliver Twist (1948) (in which career criminal Bill Sykes says, ‘There’s live enough for what I ‘ave to do!’), London Belongs To Me (1948), The Blue Lamp (1950), I Believe In You (1952) and Sapphire (1959).”
He goes on to talk about “the statuesque womanhood of comely Liz Frazer” as she goes about her nefarious plans in The Painted Smile and the “unusual glimpse of hard and pretty Michael Caine rutting lustily for his pal David Hemmings” in Two Left Feet.
There is scant reference to Morrissey’s cinephile habits in England Is Mine – an unauthorised biopic of Morrissey’s pre-Smiths years – bar one small mention. Early on in the film, the hopeful singer places an advert in his local record shop asking for potential collaborators. Among his list of ‘must like’ artists, Morrissey includes Kenneth Williams. The year is 1976, when incidentally Williams was starring in Carry On Behind – a late entry in a series bent on recapturing a bygone sort of Englishness. In his own way, director and co-writer Mark Gill is trying to evoke another peculiarly English cultural landscape with this film: that of the music scene of the industrial northwest.
We meet Steven Patrick Morrissey as a socially awkward, waspish teenager fumbling through his parents break-up, writing pithy letters to the NME and enduring futile attempts to find gainful employment. It is here that Gill’s film comes closest to Carry On Morrissey. Working for the Inland Revenue, Morrissey himself surrounded by sitcom staples: the exasperated boss, the alluring secretary, the boorish co-workers. The gags are plentiful: “Do you like audit work?” “I have a long list of people I hate.”
But Morrissey is a passive presence; the women push him on. Initially, his mother; then Anji Hardie (Katherine Pearce), a lesser-known figure in the Morrissey creation myth, who encourages him to meet Billy Duffy and kickstart his musical career. When not bantering Wilde quotes with Morrissey on a cemetery bench (yes, yes), Jessica Brown Findlay’s Linder Sterling helps him embrace life and its myriad potential.
So far, Morrissey has remained uncharacteristically silent on his views of England Is Mine. The films arrival coincides with a low point in Morrissey’s career: his pronouncements on Brexit have been troubling, even to his most ardent supporters, while the response to his first novel, List Of The Lost, did little to improve his diminished stock. Perhaps the forthcoming Queen Is Dead box set will at least act as a timely reminder of the Morrissey/Marr alliance in its imperial phase.
England Is Mine, meanwhile, is a likeable enough film; well-paced and warmly disposed towards its idiosyncratic subject. Findlay and Pearce are both strong actors (even if Findlay is playing a Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype); but as Morrissey, Jack Lowden is essentially called upon to do an impression. Its surface tics and mannerisms and Gill, despite his undoubted fondness for the subject, never quite show us why Morrissey is Morrissey. Unlike recent biopics Control and Nowhere Boy, England Is Mine never quite brings its subject clearly into focus.
Some artists – particularly those at the peak of their careers – might view a soundtrack commission as a marginal side-project, something to be dashed off while you concentrate on your main album. Not so Peter Gabriel. For him, soundtracks have always been epic projects,which he can dive into an...
Some artists – particularly those at the peak of their careers – might view a soundtrack commission as a marginal side-project, something to be dashed off while you concentrate on your main album. Not so Peter Gabriel. For him, soundtracks have always been epic projects,which he can dive into and paddle around in for years. Often he’d spend more time on them than on his multi-million-selling albums, meeting collaborators and developing methodologies that would have a profound effect on the rest of his music.
Indeed, much of the furlough between Gabriel’s fourth self-titled solo album, 1982’s ‘Security’, and his all-conquering 1986 opus, So, was spent on film contributions. He provided songs for two separate hit films from 1984 – a track called “Walk Through The Fire” for Against All Odds and “Out, Out” for Gremlins – both collaborations with producer Nile Rodgers. They inspired that high-end state-of-the-art digi-funk that would influence tracks like “Big Time” and attune Gabriel for the MTV generation.
His first full-length score commission, however, came from director Alan Parker for the ’85 film, Birdy, about two disturbed Vietnam vets who develop an avian obsession. Parker, recovering from a gruelling partnership on Pink Floyd’s The Wall, found Gabriel a rather more amenable creative partner than Roger Waters. “We got on so well, he’s such a sweet man,” said a relieved Parker of Gabriel. “It was a refreshing change – he doesn’t have any of the hang-ups or the unpleasantness of that particular business.”
Birdy’s music is interesting but fragmentary. While editing, Parker had used a few tracks from Gabriel’s third and fourth solo albums as stock music, and Gabriel develops these themes further. The haunting piano line in “Family Snapshot” (from 1980’s ‘Melt’ album) is reprised on “Close Up”; the similar piano figure in “Wallflower” (from ‘Security’) provides the basis for “Under Lock And Key”; while the introduction from “No Self Control” (also from ‘Melt’), was slowed down and transformed into “Slow Marimbas”. Most spectacularly, the coda from that album’s punky “Not One Of Us” provides the basis for “Birdy’s Flight”, a titanic, drum-heavy instrumental which soundtracks Matthew Modine’s PTSD-induced fantasy of flying like a bird. In the film it accompanies a three-minute crane-filmed flight over a wrecked inner-city Philadelphia – over burned out cars, shanty towns, muddy alleyways and baseball games. Even divorced from these images, the tribal drum beat seems to mirror the flapping of wings, the distorted bass propelling us through the air. Many of the techniques explored on Birdy – particularly the experiments with ambient sound on “Dressing The Wound” and “Sketchpad With Trumpet And Voice” – would lay the groundwork for So, and both projects certainly shared many of the same personnel.
Gabriel spent much of the three years that followed So soundtracking Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ. Set in first-century Palestine, filmed in Morocco and drawing from revisionist source material, Scorsese’s epic invites a geographically and historically confused soundtrack, and it’s why Gabriel’s timeless, pan-global score works so well. It draws from the Fourth World experiments of Eno and trumpeter Jon Hassell (Hassell himself guests on Passion, as he did on Birdy), but Gabriel keeps things delightfully confused by mixing up synthetic textures, tribal rock percussion and authentic performances by star musicians from India, Pakistan, Senegal, Armenia, Iran and Egypt.
“A Different Drum” (where Gabriel shares wordless vocals with Youssou N’Dour) and “It Is Accomplished” (where Billy Cobham leads a charged drum stomp over a triumphant piano riff) almost stand up as proper, straight-down-the-line Peter Gabriel pop tracks that wouldn’t sound out of place on So or Us. There are also more ambient tracks like the hymnal “Bread And Wine”, or the miniature “Open”, where Gabriel’s wordless vocals weave in and out of L Shankar’s swooping violin solos. There is the stately, baroque chamber piece “With This Love”, where Robin Carter’s cor anglais floats over synthetic chord washes. Best of all might be the title track, where Gabriel, Youssou N’Dour and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan all take turns in invoking a numinous spirit with their melismatic voices, while trumpeter Jon Hassell and L Shankar provide ghostly countermelodies.
The soundtrack – released in 1989 as Passion – won awards and seemed to kickstart the nascent market for what had only recently been christened “world music” (it even led to a companion album, Passion Sources, featuring some of the folksong and religious music that had inspired Gabriel). Passion certainly helped to popularise assorted global musicians in the West, with artists as diverse as Armenian duduk virtuoso Djivan Gasparayan, Egyptian percussionist Hossam Ramzy and Iranian santur and kemanche specialist Mahmoud Tabrizi Zadeh all using it as a useful stepping stone.
Gabriel’s 2000 album, OVO, was technically the “soundtrack” to his ambitious Millennium Dome Show with Cirque Du Soleil, but his next film commission came two years later with Long Walk Home: Music From The Rabbit-Proof Fence, for Philip Noyce’s film about three aboriginal Australians who escape from a forced assimilation programme and attempt to walk the 1,000 miles home. With Gabriel joined by many of his established collaborators – producer David Rhodes, drummer Manu Katche, violinist L Shankar and qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – it continues the pan-global territory explored on Passion. This is arguably a much more accomplished and successful soundtrack than the other two, drawing from found sounds, natural sound effects and sounds of the didgeridoo to enhance the barren beauty of the Australian outback. But, as with many other effective scores, it doesn’t necessarily work in isolation, and Long Walk Home is one of those albums that burbles away in the background, only occasionally grabbing you by the throat.
Some songs stand up – the haunting theme to “Gracie’s Recapture” is just one overdub away from an epic “Red Rain”-style Gabriel single, while the thunderous drums of the Dhol Foundation breathe energy into tracks like “Stealing The Children” and “Running To The Rain”. Best of all are “Ngankarrparni” and “Cloudless”, two pulsating waltzes that start with the rhythmic aboriginal chanting of Ningali Lawford and end with the massed harmonies of the Blind Boys Of Alabama.
Gabriel has been responsible for other fine film contributions – his vocal on a Randy Newman song for Babe: Pig In The City earned an Oscar nomination in 1998; the soundtrack to 2004’s Shall We Dance sees him performing a song by Magnetic Fields’ Stephen Merritt; he won a Grammy for “Down To Earth”, his contribution to 2008’s WALL-E; and also contributed a song called “The Veil” for Oliver Stone’s 2015 thriller about Edward Snowden. Gabriel was also the first choice to soundtrack the opera, Monkey: Journey To The West (before Damon Albarn got the job). But another full-length soundtrack surely awaits.
A quick reminder, first, that our exceptional new issue of Uncut is on sale now. It stars Neil Young, Nick Lowe, Mark E Smith, Dennis Wilson, Sigur Ros, Iron & Wine, OMD, Sly Stone and Elvis Presley: full details here.
Among the new records I’ve been playing a lot these past few weeks – my ...
Among the new records I’ve been playing a lot these past few weeks – my latest playlist is here – there’s also this reissue of Screaming Trees’ Dust that’s worth mentioning.
For one of the best and most established bands in Seattle, the Screaming Trees were not especially skilful at capitalising on the grunge boom of the early ‘90s. Signed to a major label before most of their contemporaries, Mark Lanegan and his bandmates had inched towards mainstream success with 1992’s Sweet Oblivion: MTV played their videos; “Nearly Lost You” made the soundtrack to Singles; US sales peaked at 300,000. But at the point when less fractious bands would be ramping up the professionalism, Screaming Trees stumbled into an unfortunately timed hiatus. Lanegan made his second spare, bluesy solo record, and reconciliatory band sessions were scrapped.
“A bunch of shit happened in our personal life,” Lanegan told me in the summer of ’96, backstage at the Lollapalooza Festival in Columbus, Ohio (later in the afternoon, we would spend an hour trawling the site, unsuccessfully, for a monkey that Lanegan wanted to be photographed with). “My friends were dying, and at one point I thought the music I was making personally was having an adverse effect on people. I started thinking, ‘What effect does this music have? I always find it uplifting but is this music so depressing?’ But then I realised it was music that got me through all the hard times.”
Four years on from Sweet Oblivion, Dust eventually arrived a little too late for its own good. It sounded – and still sounds, in this expanded edition – like the perfect evolution of grunge, consciously realigning that upstart music with the classic rock and psychedelia which had preceded it. But in spite of expensive contemporary trim – arena-ready production from George Drakoulias, Black Crowes amanuensis; a big and shiny mix from Andy Wallace, comparable to his Nevermind work – the album sold less than Sweet Oblivion. While their touring rhythm guitarist, Josh Homme, worked strategically towards stardom, the Screaming Trees never managed to release another record.
Dust, then, feels like less of a lost curio, and more of a lost blockbuster. Once, the album’s gravitas and its preoccupation with mortality seemed to dominate, from the mention of “one foot in the grave” in the opening “Halo Of Ashes”, through to the mantric churn of closer, “Gospel Plow”. Now, though, its poppiness and swing is most striking: “Make My Mind” is almost uncannily catchy; Heartbreaker Benmont Tench, guesting on organ, turns “Sworn And Broken” into a kind of pop baroque; “All I Know” couples stentorian anthemics with a swaggering groove.
That imperative could lead down some dangerous paths. A mostly unsatisfying second CD of b-sides and ephemera includes “Silver Tongue” (salvaged from the aborted post-Sweet Oblivion sessions), where the funk-rock congeals into a baggy rave-up comparable to Primal Scream. “Morning Dew”, meanwhile, is taken at an undignified rush; as a song Lanegan was born to sing, it feels like one more missed opportunity.
“There’s a world of experience in George Jones’ voice that touches you in a way that nothing else will,” he told me in 1996. “If anything, that’s what we try to do.” Soon enough, Lanegan would find other, multifarious outlets in which to articulate that mission. He would never, though, settle in one with the heft and doomed potential of his first great band.
Alice Cooper has found an Andy Warhol silkscreen "rolled up in a tube” in a storage locker, where it lay forgotten for more than 40 years.
The Guardian reports that the canvas is a red Little Electric Chair silkscreen, from Warhol’s Death and Disaster series.
Cooper and Warhol were friendly du...
Alice Cooper has found an Andy Warhol silkscreen “rolled up in a tube” in a storage locker, where it lay forgotten for more than 40 years.
The Guardian reports that the canvas is a red Little Electric Chair silkscreen, from Warhol’s Death and Disaster series.
Cooper and Warhol were friendly during the early 1970s, when Cooper lived in New York with his girlfriend Cindy Lang.
According to Shep Gordon, Cooper’s manager, “Cindy came to me for $2,500 for the painting. At the time Alice is making two albums a year and touring the rest of the time. It was a rock’n’roll time, none of us thought about anything.
“Alice says he remembers having a conversation with Warhol about the picture. He thinks the conversation was real, but he couldn’t put his hand on a Bible and say that it was.”
After a conversation four years ago with Los Angeles art dealer Ruth Bloom, Gordon encouraged Cooper to find the silkscreen.
“Alice’s mother remembered it going into storage,” he said. “So we went and found it rolled up in a tube.”
The top price paid for a Little Electric Chair is $11.6m, at Christie’s in November 2015 for a green version dated 1964.
The Guardian reports that Cooper is considering hanging his Little Electric Chair in his home.
Keith Richards has revealed that The Rolling Stones are heading back into the studio.
The band’s last album of original material was 2005’s A Bigger Bang. Last year, they released their covers album, Blue & Lonesome.
Meanwhile, in the latest instalment of Ask Keith Richards, which you can watc...
Keith Richards has revealed that The Rolling Stones are heading back into the studio.
The band’s last album of original material was 2005’s A Bigger Bang. Last year, they released their covers album, Blue & Lonesome.
Meanwhile, in the latest instalment of Ask Keith Richards, which you can watch below, the guitarist has revealed that they’re in the early stages of recording their next album.
Asked, “Are you inspired to get back in the studio with the Stones and do some more recording?”, Richards replied, “Yes, yes, we are — very, very shortly.”
“Cutting some new stuff and considering where to take it next. Blue & Lonesome caught us a little bit by surprise in that we figured it was something we had to do, but we didn’t expect the response.”
Richards pointed out that the positive response to the album leads to the question of the “inevitable volume two.”
“I don’t think we’re going to sucker into that straight away,” he said. “But then it wouldn’t take a twist of the arm to do some more of that. It’s such fun to record, and there’s plenty more where that came from.”
From his start in the bars and clubs of Texas to his big break in California, and the massive success of The Eagles, Don Henley’s has been a magnificent journey. With a new album taking him back to his roots, Don looks back across his diverse, rewarding career. The heroes (Kenny Rogers). The villa...
You had a love/hate relationship with David Geffen…
I think the hate is much stronger than the love!
He called you a “natural malcontent”, which doesn’t sound all that bad of a thing to be…
That’s just him mouthing off, I don’t care what he says about me. Everybody knows who he is, and what he is. I don’t need to say a thing about him, because everybody knows.
It’s just a puzzle why you re-signed with him later.
Yeah, well, he’s very slick, and he’s got a good line of bullshit: he came to me and he said, “Nobody understands you like me, I’m still your biggest fan, you know I love and respect your music” – and it was just enough at that time, he was the devil I knew, and so I went with it, and it was a big mistake. I learned a lot from him, about the realities of the business. And at the end of the day, he did give us a contract, which I appreciate, the fact that he signed us to the label and got us into the spotlight. But then he went and sold the company, and we woke up one day and found ourselves on a different label. I have much more respect for Kenny Rogers, for getting me my first record deal, and getting me from a little town in Texas to Los Angeles, and putting me up at his house: he is a totally straight-ahead, honest good guy, and I owe him a great debt of gratitude.
When you start a band, it’s like a gang, done partly for the fellowship; but when you reunite, is it done mostly for the music?
To be perfectly honest, it’s partly for the music, and partly for the money! When The Eagles broke up for 14 years, we didn’t know there were so many people who still wanted to see us play. We were just too angry and fed up with each other: “I’m not getting onstage with that guy again, no matter how many people want to see us!” But when we started touring again, we were just flabbergasted at how many people were turning up. We’ve been together now longer since the reunion than we were originally. I don’t know if we’ll ever play together again, we could have done our last show; or we may decide in a year or two to go out and do some more dates together.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a solo career, as opposed to a band career? It’s a little tougher being in the solo spotlight all the time, singing all the songs in a set: in The Eagles we get to rotate, so I get to rest my voice between songs; but when I have to get up there and sing for an hour and a half without stopping, it’s really tough. I think I might start doing what the R’n’B singers used to do, and let some of the background girl singers come up and do solo spots – “Gentlemen, presenting the lovely…”!
At the show the other night, you referred to “the backward island of darkness on 12th Street”. What did you mean? It’s the Texas Capitol Building. Texas is a real paradox: it’s full of wonderful, generous, good-hearted people, but when it comes to politics, they vote against their own best interests: this state is basically run by the oil and gas industry, and slowly but surely, they’re taking control away from all the towns and cities. I would not hesitate to say that this is the worst administration that we have ever had in the history of Texas. We went from Bush to Parry, and now we’ve got this new guy, Abbott, and they’re all cut from the same cloth. It’s ironic, because Austin is such a liberal town, but the rest of the state elects these people and sends them here so we have this dark, backward little island here in the middle of a wonderful musical, artistic culture.
So, when will you be standing for Governor?
No, no, I like the job I have now! I wouldn’t want that job, it’s a no-win situation.
You once said that “the creative impulse comes from the dark side”. What did you mean by that? I think it’s true, to a certain extent. It doesn’t mean that all the creations have to be dark, but it comes from a certain side of the personality. That great Southern writer Willa Cather said, “There are only three or four stories in life, and they keep repeating themselves just as desperately as if they had never happened” – so you just keep expanding on the same themes. When you’re writing a song, if you’re trying too hard, can you iron the life out of it? Yes, you can paralyse yourself. If I reach a roadblock, I’ll just go and do something else, drive around, load the dishwasher – I’ve often thought of songs while doing menial tasks. But I do try hard on the lyrics. I tried to make this new LP very straightforward: it’s a country album, and country language is very direct. But I think I made some fairly subtle points. I mean, “Praying For Rain” is really about climate change, but it’s the gentlest, kindest way I could say it to the redneck faction here in America that doesn’t want to fuckin’ hear about it. So I put it in the character of a humble farmer. The giveaway line is, “Maybe we just took too much and put too little back/It isn’t knowledge, it’s humility we lack”.
It has a lovely warm feeling, like a choir. I just tried to fill that song with humility: “Lord, I’ve never asked for much, and I don’t mean to complain”. It reminds me a lot of my father, who never went to church: he’d get out on Sunday mornings and plough the garden with a mule, that was his form of meditation, his sacrament, and I thought, that’s more religious, more honouring the fertility of the earth, than sitting in some fucking building listening to some guy yell at you about how you’re going to fucking burn to a crisp. I admired my old man and his ethic. I’ve been researching my family tree – when you get to be my age, you start caring about that stuff; when you’re younger, you don’t care about your ancestral trail and roots, you just want to get away from it. And sometimes, when I go home, I remember why I left! I still have a love/hate relationship with my home town. And with the state of Texas. And with America!
For about six months at the turn of 1970, Joe Cocker was the biggest male rock star on the planet. Buoyed by the global success of that song, the Beatles throwing material at him, and a performance of wild-eyed, tie-dyed intensity at Woodstock, the game was his to lose. That he did, and so spectacul...
For about six months at the turn of 1970, Joe Cocker was the biggest male rock star on the planet. Buoyed by the global success of that song, the Beatles throwing material at him, and a performance of wild-eyed, tie-dyed intensity at Woodstock, the game was his to lose. That he did, and so spectacularly, is the subject of this fascinating new documentary, told chronologically and unshowily. The theme is hard to miss. The talent was there; the ability to control it categorically not.
On Cocker’s death in late 2014, Paul McCartney paid tribute to his “mind-blowing” version of “With A Little Help…” (“He totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was forever grateful”). The talking heads assembled here are testament to the reach and respect Cocker commands. Billy Joel, Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Glyn Johns, Rita Coolidge, Michael Lang and more offer differing perspectives on Cocker’s legacy, but all agree on one thing. That voice – a primal, gravelly, intense, unearthly thing – was one of rock’s greatest, most distinctive instruments. Long-standing Sheffield mucker Chris Stainton (who was there at the rise of the Grease Band, threw up from the chopper at Woodstock, and is the clearest-eyed chronicler on show) puts it more prosaically: “His was the voice most blokes would love to have after they’d drunk three pints.”
That tension between music and medicinals is at the heart of Cocker’s story, which begins – as most ’60s star stories must – with a teenage love of American rock’n’roll, in a monochrome British city where opportunities are few. We get interviews with his brother and warming side notes from a fellow Sheffield newspaper boy, as the path is plotted from ungainly wannabe to breakthrough star. Contemporary archive interview footage of the man is relatively scarce and is supplemented by later radio interviews, stock footage, and even stills from Melody Maker. The message keeps coming: he was a lovely bloke, but he couldn’t say no. Over its 90-minute run time, you can play a pretty good game of rock-doc bingo here, as the clichés tick over: “People thought he was black”; “Groupies were throwing themselves at us”; “There were too many drugs… and that’s when it all went wrong.”
The catalyst for Cocker’s descent is clearly identified as the 1970 Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour. (“It started out as peace and love, and we ended it at each other’s throats!”) Marshalled by Mr Fixit/evil genius Leon Russell – not here, of course, to defend himself – this wilfully ambitious 52-date US charabanc was erratically brilliantly, and creatively chaotic, with upwards of 40 musicians onstage. It was a wretched, wild, money-burning circus, where no-one said no, to anything, ever. Judging by Rita Coolidge’s outspoken comments, it probably deserves a film in itself.
There are some genuinely pained insights, too, from Jerry Moss, co-founder of Cocker’s US label, A&M. Then an ambitious independent, A&M rolled out an aggressive marketing campaign for its most bankable star (“Cocker is coming!”). Moss’ reflections tell the Mad Dogs… story from the other side: they believed in him, sure, but they simply couldn’t offer the constant support he needed. Four years in the rings of hell followed, and the tale of his disastrous comeback gig in 1974 is heartbreaking. The buzz was brilliant, the support strong, but in front of an array of industry movers, Cocker tanked royally. Napoleon brandy in hand, stumbling over words, he just sat down on the stage, smiling vacantly. “At his best he was unbelievable. It was getting him up there,” laments Moss.
When A&M finally released him from his contract in the mid ’70s, it wrote off an $800,000 debt. That he came back and back again, in the ’80s and beyond, fills the last half-hour or so. “I called him Joe Cocker-roach – you can’t kill him!” says Billy Joel. Ill-judged, perhaps, in a posthumous retrospective, but the point is a good one. Still, you won’t need reminding that his greatest commercial successes (“Love Lift Us Up…” and the ensuing sports-jacket years), are critical low points.
How Mad Dog treats Cocker’s music is perhaps revealing. You get the same songs on repeat as background colour – and you know them too well (“…Friends”, “Delta Lady”, “You Are So Beautiful”, “Unchain My Heart”). Fine first single, “Marjorine”, aside, where are the forgotten gems, the ripe-for-rediscoveries? For as enjoyable and watchable as this film is, it doesn’t make the strongest case for the full riches of Cocker’s album catalogue, the true currency for any enduring star. Maybe the addictions aren’t solely to blame. Maybe the raw, rasping potency of that astonishing voice worked well over four minutes, but struggled over 40.
Extras: 6/10. More than half an hour of additional interviews, not included in the Sky Arts broadcast version.
Sorry if this comes across as bragging or smugness, but I’ve been sat on a few really excellent albums these past few weeks that, as they’re still officially unannounced, I haven’t been able to talk about here. Thrilled, though, that The Weather Station’s new self-titled album has broken cov...
Sorry if this comes across as bragging or smugness, but I’ve been sat on a few really excellent albums these past few weeks that, as they’re still officially unannounced, I haven’t been able to talk about here. Thrilled, though, that The Weather Station’s new self-titled album has broken cover in the last couple of days: if you have only time for one song on this list, please make it “Thirty”.
Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey
1 Richard Horowitz – Eros In Arabia (Freedom To Spend)
2 Sudan Archives – Sudan Archives (Stones Throw)
3 Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – The Kid (Western Vinyl)
4 Bark Psychosis – Hex (Fire)
5 Wand – Plum (Drag City)
6 Juana Molina – Halo (Crammed Discs)
7 LCD Soundsystem – Call The Police (Columbia)
8 Secret Drum Band – Dynamics (Xray)
9 Torres – Three Futures (4AD)
10 Randy Newman – Dark Matter (Nonesuch)
11 Ka Baird – Sapropelic Pycnic (Drag City)
12 Širom – I Can Be A Clay Snapper (Tak:til)
13 Antibalas – Where The Gods Are In Peace (Daptone)
14 Phoebe Bridgers – Stranger In The Alps (Dead Oceans)
15 The Weather Station – The Weather Station (Paradise Of Bachelors)
16 Rick Deitrick – Gentle Wilderness (Tompkins Square)
17 Rick Deitrick – River Sun River Moon (Tompkins Square)
18 Pep Llopis – Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes (Freedom To Spend)
19 Chris Hillman – Bidin’ My Time (Rounder)
20 Monty Adkins – Shadows And Reflections (Cronica)
21 Various Artists – Space, Energy And Light: Experimental Electronic And Acoustic Soundscapes 1961-1988 (Soul Jazz)
22 Acetone – 1992-2001 (Light In The Attic)
23 Amadou & Mariam – La Confusion (Because)
24 Tony Buck – Unearth (Room40)
25 Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real – Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real (Fantasy)
David Gilmour's Live At Pompeii will play in cinemas for one night only on September 13.
The film documents Gilmour's concerts in the Pompeii amphitheatre on July 7 and 8 2016; 45 years after he first played there for Adrian Maben’s film Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii.
The film will be screened in 2...
David Gilmour‘s Live At Pompeii will play in cinemas for one night only on September 13.
The film documents Gilmour’s concerts in the Pompeii amphitheatre on July 7 and 8 2016; 45 years after he first played there for Adrian Maben’s film Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii.
The film will be screened in 2,000 cinemas worldwide by Trafalgar Releasing and will be presented in Dolby Atmos sound. You can find more information by clicking here.
Here’s the trailer:
The film will then be released in a variety of formats on September 29.
2 x CD
Standard package
1 x Blu-ray
Standard package
Pompeii concert 96/24 PCM Stereo & 96/24 DTS MAA
Pompeii Then & Now Documentary
2 x DVD
Standard package
Pompeii concert Stereo PCM, 5.1 Dolby Digital, 5.1 DTS
Pompeii Then & Now Documentary
Blu-ray + CD Deluxe Edition Boxset
2 x CDs
2 x Blu-rays (special packaging)
South America 2015 / Wroclaw 2016 / concert footage / tour documentaries, feature length BBC documentary, photo booklet, Pompeii Guide, 4 x postcards & poster.
Vinyl
Pompeii concert on 4 x LPs
2 x gatefold sleeves / poly liner inner sleeves / booklet / download card / slipcase.
CD TRACK LISTING
CD 1: 5 A.M.
Rattle That Lock
Faces Of Stone
What Do You Want From Me
The Blue
The Great Gig In The Sky
A Boat Lies Waiting
Wish You Were Here
Money
In Any Tongue
High Hopes
One Of These Days
CD 2: Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Fat Old Sun
Coming Back To Life
On An Island
Today
Sorrow
Run Like Hell
Time / Breathe (In The Air) (reprise)
Comfortably Numb
Carole King is to release a recording of her Tapestry: Live In Hyde Park show on CD/DVD, CD/Blu-ray and digitally.
The show, which took place on July 3, 2016 - includes the first-ever live performance of Tapestry in its entirety along with favourite tracks from the Carole King Songbook.
Here's an ...
Carole King is to release a recording of her Tapestry: Live In Hyde Park show on CD/DVD, CD/Blu-ray and digitally.
The show, which took place on July 3, 2016 – includes the first-ever live performance of Tapestry in its entirety along with favourite tracks from the Carole King Songbook.
Here’s an exclusive look at the trailer:
It’s due through Legacy Recordings and Rockingale Records on September 15.
The tracklisting for Carole King – Tapestry: Live in Hyde Park is:
CD I Feel The Earth Move
So Far Away
It’s Too Late
Home Again
Beautiful
Way Over Yonder
You’ve Got A Friend
Where You Lead
Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
Smackwater Jack
Tapestry
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman Goffin/King Medley: Take Good Care Of My Baby/It Might As Well Rain Until September/Go Away Little Girl/I’m Into Something Good/One Fine Day
Hey Girl
Chains
Jazzman
Up On The Roof
Locomotion
I Feel the Earth Move (Reprise) You’ve Got A Friend (reprise)
DVD Opening/Testimonials (Instrumental Music Bed: It’s Too Late, Will You Love Me Tomorrow?, So Far Away, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman) I Feel The Earth Move
So Far Away
It’s Too Late
Home Again
Beautiful
Way Over Yonder
You’ve Got a Friend
Where You Lead (with Louise Goffin)
Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (with Louise Goffin)
Smackwater Jack
Tapestry
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
Take Good Care Of My Baby
It Might As Well Rain Until September
Go Away Little Girl
I’m Into Something Good
One Fine Day
Hey Girl
Chains
Jazzman
Up On The Roof
Locomotion
I Feel The Earth Move (with cast of Carole King the Musical) You’ve Got A Friend (reprise)
What would an LA band sound like whose ranks have included Terry Reid, Mike Watt, Muscle Shoals legends Spooner Oldham and David Hood, a clutch of minor indie-rock luminaries led by Avi Buffalo, a drummer who’s figured in Pharaoh Sanders’ band, a member of Philip Glass’ ensemble, and a bassist...
What would an LA band sound like whose ranks have included Terry Reid, Mike Watt, Muscle Shoals legends Spooner Oldham and David Hood, a clutch of minor indie-rock luminaries led by Avi Buffalo, a drummer who’s figured in Pharaoh Sanders’ band, a member of Philip Glass’ ensemble, and a bassist, Max Bennett, whose discography includes Joni Mitchell’s stellar run of mid-‘70s albums?
Confusing, would probably be the most sensible answer. On paper, Psychic Temple suggest a record store nerd has gone crazy with a vintage A&R Rolodex. In practice, their low-key run of albums these past few years have been remarkably cohesive, even as their frontman and networking maestro, Chris Schlarb, dips into as many genres as he has contacts. Jazz, country-rock, folk-soul, improvised and ambient music all play key parts on Psychic Temple IV, but what binds them together is a certain beatific take on Southern Californian pop. It’s the sound of a fantasy Los Angeles made flesh; one of those rare albums where its maker can cite Brian Wilson’s “teenage symphonies to God” ambition and be more or less justified in his presumption.
The heaviest Beach Boys reference comes at the end of Psychic Temple IV, as the instrumental “Isabella Ocean Blue” takes a similar measured path into the sunset as “Pet Sounds”, down to the sighing horn charts and a persistent twitch of Latin percussion deep in the mix. For all the formal grandeur, though, there’s also a sense of free spirits being allowed the space to manoeuvre, most notably when Schlarb himself lets rip a 12-string guitar solo, a splattery action painting of notes that’s closer to Sonny Sharrock than Jerry Cole, but which still doesn’t undermine the prevailing calm.
It’s an indication of how Schlarb’s vision for his band has evolved from relatively avant-garde beginnings into the nuanced, classical songforms that grace Psychic Temple IV and last year’s Psychic Temple III, without losing that experimental imperative. A Long Beach studio owner and composer for video games, Schlarb embarked on the first Psychic Temple project wanting “to hear an ambient record with two jazz drummers on it”. Gradually, the songs came into focus, via covers (The Beach Boys’ “’Til I Die”, Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” on 2013’s Psychic Temple II), sessions at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, and those auspicious guest players.
Psychic Temple IV was born in the same 2016 sessions that produced another terrific album, Psychic Temple Plays Music For Airports (I wrote a bit about it here)., in which Eno’s ambient meditation was re-imagined by a large band of jazz improvisers, and came out sounding akin to Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way. That same air of concentrated nonchalance provides the backdrop for the ten lovely songs on Psychic Temple IV; a cool space in which Schlarb can display his increasingly finessed songwriting.
Again, it’s hard to pay full attention to Schlarb’s skill when one is constantly distracted by the discreet virtuosity he encourages from his guests. Most notably, Terry Reid (who Schlarb met when he was recording one of Superlungs’ live shows) drops by to add wavering harmonies to “Dream Dictionary”, “Turn Off The Lights” and “If I Don’t Leave, They’ll Take Me Away”. Reid is a little more ragged than in his youth, but there are some tantalising moments, especially in “Dream Dictionary”, when he jousts with and seems about to soar away from the gentler, unassuming tones of Schlarb. Such small tensions add shade to the mellowness.
Even Reid is upstaged on “Turn Off The Lights”, as Dave Easley coaxes an uncanny sitar effect out of his pedal steel, a rare example of Psychic Temple living up to the psychedelic exoticism of their name. Inevitably with musicians so historically aware, comparisons keep presenting themselves – a minimalist Steely Dan, perhaps, on “SOS” and its ravishing sequence of micro-solos; the jazz-club sadcore of early sides by another undervalued LA band, Spain. But the dexterity with which Schlarb conducts his affairs, and the craftsmanship and spontaneity underpinning all these bewitchingly hazy progressions, make Psychic Temple a lot more than the sum of their considerable parts. Better than the average cult band, for sure.
Q&A: Chris Schlarb
Can you tell us about where you’re from, your musical history, how the Psychic Temple project evolved?
“The first Psychic Temple album came about because I wanted to hear an ambient record with two jazz drummers on it. I couldn’t find one, so I made it myself. It took a couple of years. The desire to hear something caused me to learn all this new stuff. I had to become a better musician and audio engineer. I started playing with Mick Rossi from the Philip Glass Ensemble and Mike Watt on that album and it demanded more of me. You can really hear a progression of musical ideas over the course of these records.
“The second album was half instrumental and half vocal and on Psychic Temple III the focus really shifted to vocal music. I started singing and went down to FAME in Muscle Shoals to work with some of the Swampers. On IV, my desire was to get everyone in a room together and record this new batch of songs. I wanted to get that Wrecking Crew vibe so we brought in all the musicians and tried to do as much as possible at once.”
Psychic Temple seems from the outside to be a kind of sprawling collective in constant flux: is that how you envisage it?
“It’s funny, at a certain point I just started calling it a cult because of the way any band works under a leader with a vision. I mean, bands and cults are VERY similar. When you go on tour, you’re driving from city to city proselytizing and trying to gain a fanbase… followers, if you will. You dress in a certain costume or uniform. I think most bands are serving one vision at a time. Psychic Temple is definitely my vision. It’s my aesthetic. However, all I care about is the music and serving the song. Not my ego. I’m not trying to play every instrument on the record. I’m trying to find the best musicians I can to serve or draw the best out in the music. That’s really all I care about.”
How did you hook up with Terry Reid?
“I was asked to record a live performance that Terry gave in Long Beach a couple years ago and we started talking on the phone. He was really pleased with the recording I made for him and I planted the seed of working on the new Psychic Temple album together. It took a while for it to come together but I wrote three songs for us to sing as duets and I really just wanted him to shine. He deserves it. I mean, Seed of Memory is one of my favourite albums. He wound up playing guitar on two songs and singing on three. We knocked them all out in a single day at the studio.”
This morning I drove into the desert and visited a British cowboy. We swapped records, sang Louvin Brothers tunes, and made some plans. pic.twitter.com/JeXIgAQHZH
And also Max Bennett? What’s his playing like at 89?
“There’s a funny story about Max being on the album. Basically, I had Carol Kaye in mind. I took lessons from her years back and reached out to her on a previous record but she declined. When I started writing this new batch of songs I reached out to an artist in LA to play bass and he agreed but only if I wouldn’t take pictures of him in the studio or use his name. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that and thought it was a hedge against the songs not being any good. Long story short, I just told him to forget it. No one else was coming to the session with that kind of trip. So I sent Max Bennett an email and he called me an hour later. He said he listened to my previous records and really enjoyed the music. He was 87 at the time! I mean, Max played on some of my favourite albums of all time: Zappa’s Hot Rats, Joni’s Court & Spark, Hissing of Summer Lawns, the double bass on Hejira. He came down to the studio, wrote his charts out, brought a bag of almonds and played his ass off.”
Given you’ve also worked with Spooner Oldham, David Hood, Mike Watt etc in the past, who else is on your hitlist of dream collaborators?
“I just produced guitarist Mike Baggetta’s new record with Jim Keltner on drums and Mike Watt on bass. That was a dream come true. I’ve definitely got a list of folks I’d love to work with but I’m usually inspired by musical situations and not a name game sort of approach. When I hear a piece of music, I want to think of an exciting group of musicians to play it.”
Do you have multiple projects on the go simultaneously? I remember you telling me you’d been working with Terry Reid a year ago?
“My wife and I own a recording studio in Long Beach called BIG EGO and I make my living producing records. I’ve done about two dozen in the last year so I’m always working on a few things at the same time. I just finished a great record called Swing Set for Jazzy Ash. It’s a kids’ record but we recorded the whole thing live in the room and it doesn’t sound anything like the terrible kids music that is being released today. We’re starting up BIG EGO records this summer. I’ve just got so many great records in the archive that it’s time to get them into the world.”
In some ways, IV feels like a combination of III and the Music For Airports sessions: elevated South Californian pop, but with the jazz influence, while still discreet, moving a little closer to the surface. Does that make sense to you?
“That makes perfect sense to me! The first recording date on IV was Saturday, August 15th, 2015. That was with Max Bennett on bass and Avi Buffalo on electric guitar. We recorded four songs (Spanish Beach, Wait For Me, Paper Tiger, and Nazarene Dream) at that session. The very next day, Sunday the 16th we recorded Music For Airports. So it was done in the same room with a lot of the same musicians on the same weekend. I probably wouldn’t put myself in that kind of position again as I seem to remember my fretting hand was not in great shape for the Music For Airports session but dammit if it didn’t turn out alright.”
The Smiths' 1986 album The Queen Is Dead is to be released in a remastered and expanded version on October 20 by Warner Bros.
It follows two recent limited edition vinyl singles sourced from the archives: a demo mix of "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" which was released for Record Store Day and...
The Smiths‘ 1986 album The Queen Is Dead is to be released in a remastered and expanded version on October 20 by Warner Bros.
It follows two recent limited edition vinyl singles sourced from the archives: a demo mix of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” which was released for Record Store Day and “The Queen Is Dead” in June.
The Queen Is Dead will be released on digital and streaming formats as well as the following physical formats – all of which feature the 2017 master of the original album:
Deluxe 3CD / 1 DVD box set – featuring the 2017 master of the album; additional recordings featuring demos, b-sides and alternative versions; the Live In Boston album recorded at the Great Woods Center For The Performing Arts on August 5, 1986; and a DVD featuring the 2017 master of album in 96kHz / 24-bit PCM stereo and The Queen Is Dead – A Film By Derek Jarman.
2CD version – featuring the 2017 master and additional recordings.
5LP box – featuring the 2017 master of the album, additional recordings and the Live In Boston recording.
“You cannot continue to record and simply hope that your audience will approve, or that average critics will approve, or that radio will approve,” says Morrissey. “You progress only when you wonder if an abnormally scientific genius would approve – and this is the leap The Smiths took with The Queen Is Dead.”
Johnny Marr adds, “The Queen Is Dead was epic to make and epic to live.”
CD1 – Original album: 2017 master
‘The Queen Is Dead’
‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’
‘I Know It’s Over’
‘Never Had No One Ever’
‘Cemetry Gates’
‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’
‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’
‘Vicar In A Tutu’
‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’
‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’
CD2 – Additional recordings
‘The Queen Is Dead’ (full version)
‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ (demo)
‘I Know It’s Over’ (demo)
‘Never Had No One Ever’ (demo)
‘Cemetry Gates’ (demo)
‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ (demo)
‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ (demo)
‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ (demo mix)
‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (take 1)
‘Rubber Ring’ (b-side)
‘Asleep’ (b-side)
‘Money Changes Everything’ (b-side)
‘Unloveable’ (b-side)
Tracks 1-7 and 9 are previously unreleased.
Track 8 was released on 7” for Record Store Day.
Tracks 10 and 11 are 2017 masters of b-sides from ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’.
Tracks 12 and 13 are 2017 masters of b-sides from ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’.
CD3 – ‘Live in Boston’ – previously unreleased
‘How Soon Is Now?’ (5.25)
‘Hand In Glove’ (2.58)
‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ (3.24)
‘Never Had No One Ever’ (3.29)
‘Stretch Out And Wait’ (3.09)
‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ (3.34)
‘Cemetry Gates’ (3.01)
‘Rubber Ring/What She Said/Rubber Ring’ (4.17)
‘Is It Really So Strange?’ (3.23)
‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (4.09)
‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ (4.51)
‘The Queen Is Dead’ (5.08)
‘I Know It’s Over’ (7.39)
Recorded at the Great Woods Center For The Performing Arts on 5th August 1986.
DVD:
‘The Queen Is Dead’ on 96kHz / 24-bit PCM stereo.
‘The Queen is Dead – A Film by Derek Jarman’.
The Replacements have announced details of a new live album, For Sale: Live At Maxwell’s 1986.
The album is released by Rhino on September 29 on 2CD and double-LP formats, as well as on digital download and streaming services. The set also includes new liner notes as well as never-before-seen pho...
The Replacements have announced details of a new live album, For Sale: Live At Maxwell’s 1986.
The album is released by Rhino on September 29 on 2CD and double-LP formats, as well as on digital download and streaming services. The set also includes new liner notes as well as never-before-seen photos from the Maxwell’s show.
Long bootlegged as Murder At The Maxwell, the February 4, 1986 show is one of the last performances by the four original members of The Replacements before guitarist Bob Stinson’s departure from the band that summer.
The tracklisting for For Sale: Live At Maxwell’s 1986 is:
Disc One ‘Hayday’
‘Color Me Impressed’
‘Dose Of Thunder’
‘Fox On The Run’
‘Hold My Life’
‘I Will Dare’
‘Favorite Thing’
‘Unsatisfied’
‘Can’t Hardly Wait’
‘Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out’
‘Takin’ A Ride’
‘Bastards Of Young’
‘Kiss Me On The Bus’
‘Black Diamond’
Disc Two ‘Johnny’s Gonna Die’
‘Otto’
‘I’m In Trouble’
‘Left Of The Dial’
‘God Damn Job’
‘Answering Machine’
‘Waitress In The Sky’
‘Take Me Down To The Hospital’
‘Gary’s Got A Boner’
‘If Only You Were Lonely’
‘Baby Strange’
‘Hitchin’ A Ride’
‘Nowhere Man’
‘Go’
‘Fuck School’
What’s left to hear? It’s now over 25 years since Bob Dylan and his manager ushered in the modern era of archive-digging with the first volumes of The Bootleg Series. After all that time, and all those deluxe expanded reissues, surely the record company cupboards must have been emptied of all th...
What’s left to hear? It’s now over 25 years since Bob Dylan and his manager ushered in the modern era of archive-digging with the first volumes of The Bootleg Series. After all that time, and all those deluxe expanded reissues, surely the record company cupboards must have been emptied of all their old tapes?
Mercifully, that doesn’t appear to be anything like the case. In this month’s new issue of Uncut, out on Thursday in the UK, we go looking for two of the most fabled repositories of unreleased music. One proves easy to access – at least partially – as Stephen Deusner reviews the deluxe edition of Purple Rain, and the first cache of lost songs from the presumably vast Prince archive. “For decades Prince’s vaults have been rock’n’roll’s very own El Dorado, a mythical place filled with untold treasures,” writes Stephen. “During his life he added to it every day but guarded the contents closely… It’s a bitter irony that it took his tragic death in April 2016 for that vault to be opened.”
The second is a trickier challenge. For this issue’s cover story, Tyler Wilcox has tried to work out what still languishes in Neil Young’s archives. Tyler’s research and interviews give a shape and substance to the sequence of legendary albums – including Chrome Dreams, Homegrown and Hitchhiker – that have been the subject of so much intense speculation for decades. As with Giles Martin discussing the Beatles’ “Carnival Of Light” in Uncut a couple of months back, it’s a tale full of revelation and promise: a reminder that the stories of our greatest heroes remain far from complete – perhaps even that of Elvis Presley, the subject of another deep and provocative piece in this issue.
Elsewhere this month, we have eventful meetings with Mark E Smith and Nick Lowe; discover the secrets of Sigur Ros, Iron & Wine and OMD; look back on the making of Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue; grapple with a bumper new albums month that includes releases from The War On Drugs, Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire and Queens Of The Stone Age; and witness U2 and Kraftwerk live. Our CD features new music from Randy Newman, Richard Thompson, Susanne Sundfor, Katie Von Schleicher, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Oh Sees and a couple of big personal favourites, Psychic Temple and Chris Forsyth’s Solar Motel Band, plus a track from a truly great lost album, magically returned as our Archive pick of the month – Lal & Mike Waterson’s Bright Phoebus.
Finally, we hear of a particularly obsessive pursuit of Sly Stone. There’s another man whose vaults might hold the odd surprise or two…
Neil Young, Grizzly Bear, Mark E Smith and Sigur Rós all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated September 2017 and out on July 20.
Young is on the cover, and inside we take a revelatory look at the great man's archives to investigate some of rock's most legendary lost albums – from Oceanside-C...
Neil Young, Grizzly Bear, Mark E Smith and Sigur Rós all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated September 2017 and out on July 20.
Young is on the cover, and inside we take a revelatory look at the great man’s archives to investigate some of rock’s most legendary lost albums – from Oceanside-Countryside and Chrome Dreams to Times Square, Toast and more – and piece together the alternate discography that Neil fans have been dreaming of for decades.
“Quite often I’ll record things that don’t fit with what I’m doing,” as Young said, “so I just hold onto them for a while…”
Grizzly Bear discuss the creation of their eagerly awaited new album, Painted Ruins, alongside an in-depth review of the record; Christopher Bear and Edward Droste reveal how they made the album, what influence California has had on their current sound, and the New York indie scene of the early 2000s. “Now I go back [to New York] and no-one’s there, a lot of them are here [in California],” says Droste. “It’s funny bumping into Dave Longstreth at the supermarket.”
Uncut also joins Mark E Smith for a few drinks at one of his favourite Manchester pubs to talk about The Fall‘s new album, the city’s architecture, the Vorticists, Welsh people and the problems with many of the group’s former members. “The Fall is like a Nazi organisation,” Smith says…
In our regular ‘album by album’ feature, Sigur Rós take us through their finest work to date, from 1997’s Von to 2013’s Kveikur. “We had to make an album in a swimming pool,” Jónsi Birgisson says of 2002’s (), “with all the technical challenges that poses.” “We probably recorded that three times over!” says Georg Hólm.
We also take a look behind Dennis Wilson‘s wildman persona to find out how the Beach Boy created his masterpiece, Pacific Ocean Blue: “He truly was a soulful dude,” says one key collaborator.
Elsewhere, Nick Lowe invites Uncut over to his pad for a look through his fine career, from pub-rock pioneer and punk auteur to classic songwriter of repute… Plus Ry Cooder and Elvis Costello pay homage: “His geniality may have has been at the cost of his legend.”
Steven Wilson lets us in on eight of his favourite albums, while Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark recall the making of their debut single “Electricity”, with help from sleeve designer Peter Saville and Factory co-founder Lindsay Reade. “We wanted to be Kraftwerk,” says Paul Humphreys, “[but they] had all this incredible gear and we had next to nothing. We couldn’t sound like them, so we ended up sounding like OMD!”
Also, Uncut investigates what Elvis Presley means in 2017, 40 years after his death. Why do new generations worship The Beatles, but rarely Elvis? How’s business for the World’s Greatest Elvis Impersonator? And why are those treasured old records diminishing in value?
Our front section features pieces on Sly Stone, FJ McMahon, KD Lang and Oz magazine, and we introduce new singer-songwriter Angelo De Augustine.
In our huge reviews section, we look at new offerings from Grizzly Bear, Queens Of The Stone Age, Arcade Fire, Randy Newman, The War On Drugs and more, and archival releases from Lal & Mike Waterson, Brian Eno, Prince, The Beach Boys and Super Furry Animals. We catch U2 and Kraftwerk live, and check out the new Morrissey biopic England Is Mine, plus A Ghost Story, and books on The Damned and New York rock’n’roll.
Our free CD, Art Of Gold, features 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including cuts from Randy Newman, Richard Thompson, Iron & Wine, Nick Lowe, Oh Sees, Lal & Mike Waterson, Psychic Temple, FJ McMahon and Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band.
Neil Young, Grizzly Bear, Mark E Smith and Sigur Rós all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated September 2017 and out on July 20.
Young is on the cover, and inside we take a revelatory look at the great man's archives to investigate some of rock's most legendary lost albums – from Oceanside-C...
Neil Young, Grizzly Bear, Mark E Smith and Sigur Rós all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated September 2017 and out on July 20.
Young is on the cover, and inside we take a revelatory look at the great man’s archives to investigate some of rock’s most legendary lost albums – from Oceanside-Countryside and Chrome Dreams to Times Square, Toast and more – and piece together the alternate discography that Neil fans have been dreaming of for decades.
“Quite often I’ll record things that don’t fit with what I’m doing,” as Young said, “so I just hold onto them for a while…”
Grizzly Bear discuss the creation of their eagerly awaited new album, Painted Ruins, alongside an in-depth review of the record; Christopher Bear and Edward Droste reveal how they made the album, what influence California has had on their current sound, and the New York indie scene of the early 2000s. “Now I go back [to New York] and no-one’s there, a lot of them are here [in California],” says Droste. “It’s funny bumping into Dave Longstreth at the supermarket.”
Uncut also joins Mark E Smith for a few drinks at one of his favourite Manchester pubs to talk about The Fall‘s new album, the city’s architecture, the Vorticists, Welsh people and the problems with many of the group’s former members. “The Fall is like a Nazi organisation,” Smith says…
In our regular ‘album by album’ feature, Sigur Rós take us through their finest work to date, from 1997’s Von to 2013’s Kveikur. “We had to make an album in a swimming pool,” Jónsi Birgisson says of 2002’s (), “with all the technical challenges that poses.” “We probably recorded that three times over!” says Georg Hólm.
We also take a look behind Dennis Wilson‘s wildman persona to find out how the Beach Boy created his masterpiece, Pacific Ocean Blue: “He truly was a soulful dude,” says one key collaborator.
Elsewhere, Nick Lowe invites Uncut over to his pad for a look through his fine career, from pub-rock pioneer and punk auteur to classic songwriter of repute… Plus Ry Cooder and Elvis Costello pay homage: “His geniality may have has been at the cost of his legend.”
Steven Wilson lets us in on eight of his favourite albums, while Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark recall the making of their debut single “Electricity”, with help from sleeve designer Peter Saville and Factory co-founder Lindsay Reade. “We wanted to be Kraftwerk,” says Paul Humphreys, “[but they] had all this incredible gear and we had next to nothing. We couldn’t sound like them, so we ended up sounding like OMD!”
Also, Uncut investigates what Elvis Presley means in 2017, 40 years after his death. Why do new generations worship The Beatles, but rarely Elvis? How’s business for the World’s Greatest Elvis Impersonator? And why are those treasured old records diminishing in value?
Our front section features pieces on Sly Stone, FJ McMahon, KD Lang and Oz magazine, and we introduce new singer-songwriter Angelo De Augustine.
In our huge reviews section, we look at new offerings from Grizzly Bear, Queens Of The Stone Age, Arcade Fire, Randy Newman, The War On Drugs and more, and archival releases from Lal & Mike Waterson, Brian Eno, Prince, The Beach Boys and Super Furry Animals. We catch U2 and Kraftwerk live, and check out the new Morrissey biopic England Is Mine, plus A Ghost Story, and books on The Damned and New York rock’n’roll.
Our free CD, Art Of Gold, features 15 tracks of this month’s best new music, including cuts from Randy Newman, Richard Thompson, Iron & Wine, Nick Lowe, Oh Sees, Lal & Mike Waterson, Psychic Temple, FJ McMahon and Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band.
Ramones second album, Leave Home, is to be reissued to mark its 40th anniversary.
Among the many jewels on this new, expanded edition are unreleased recordings and an unreleased live show recorded in 1977 at CBGB’s.
We've previously brought you an unreleased mix of “Swallow My Pride” - which...
Ramones second album, Leave Home, is to be reissued to mark its 40th anniversary.
Among the many jewels on this new, expanded edition are unreleased recordings and an unreleased live show recorded in 1977 at CBGB’s.
We’ve previously brought you an unreleased mix of “Swallow My Pride” – which you can hear by clicking here.
To whet your appetite further for this sumptuous anniversary set, we’re delighted to bring you yet more unreleased Ramones rarities!
Here’s a previously unreleased mix of “California Sun”, recorded at Sundragon studio in New York.
Here’s the skinny on the 40th anniversary edition.
The 3CD /1LP version contains two different mixes of the album, a remastered version of the original and a new 40th anniversary mix by original engineer/mixer Ed Stasium, along with a second disc of unheard recordings and a third comprising the live show from CBGBs.
The newly remastered original version will also be released as a single CD. Both titles will be available via digital download and streaming as well.
A Deluxe Edition will be produced in a limited and numbered edition of 15,000 copies worldwide and comes packaged in a 12” x 12” hardcover book.
Remastered Original Mix “Glad To See You Go”
“Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”
“I Remember You”
“Oh Oh I Love Her So”
“Carbona Not Glue”
“Suzy Is A Headbanger”
“Pinhead”
“Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy”
“Swallow My Pride”
“What’s Your Game”
“California Sun”
“Commando”
40th Anniversary Mix
Sundragon Rough Mixes “Glad To See You Go” *
“Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment” *
“I Remember You” *
“Oh Oh I Love Her So” *
“Carbona Not Glue” *
“Suzy Is A Headbanger” *
“Pinhead” *
“Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy” *
“Swallow My Pride” *
“What’s Your Game” *
“California Sun” *
“Commando” *
“You’re Gonna Kill That Girl” *
“You Should Have Never Opened That Door” *
“Babysitter” *
Disc Two: 40th Anniversary Extras:
“Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” (Single Version)
“I Don’t Care” (B-Side Version)
“Babysitter” (UK Album Version)
“Glad To See You Go” (BubbleGum Mix) *
“I Remember You” (Instrumental) *
“Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment” (Forest Hills Mix) *
“Oh Oh I Love Her So” (Soda Machine Mix) *
“Carbona Not Glue” (Queens Mix) *
“Suzy Is A Headbanger” (Geek Mix) *
“Pinhead” (Psychedelic Mix) *
“Pinhead” (Oo-Oo-Gabba-UhUh Mix) *
“Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy” (Bowery Mix) *
“Swallow My Pride” (Instrumental) *
“What’s Your Game” (Sane Mix) *
“California Sun” (Instrumental) *
“Commando” (TV Track) *
“You’re Gonna Kill That Girl” (Doo Wop Mix) *
“You Should Have Never Opened That Door” (Mama Mix) *
Disc Three: Live at CBGB’s April 2, 1977
“I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement” *
“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” *
“Blitzkrieg Bop” *
“Swallow My Pride” *
“Suzy Is A Headbanger” *
“Teenage Lobotomy” *
“53rd & 3rd” *
“Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy” *
“Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” *
“Let’s Dance” *
“Babysitter” *
“Havana Affair” *
“Listen To My Heart” *
“Oh Oh I Love Her So” *
“California Sun” *
“I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You” *
“Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World” *
“Judy Is A Punk” *
“Pinhead” *
Buried in the green grass of his breakthrough solo hit, “Brown Eyed Girl” – a reflection on a relationship that, even at 21, seems to have happened a painful forever ago – Van Morrison lets out a quiet yelp. “So hard to find my way,” he sings. “Now that I’m all on my own.” His 1967...
Buried in the green grass of his breakthrough solo hit, “Brown Eyed Girl” – a reflection on a relationship that, even at 21, seems to have happened a painful forever ago – Van Morrison lets out a quiet yelp. “So hard to find my way,” he sings. “Now that I’m all on my own.” His 1967 in essence. While many fellow Brit R&B refugees were enjoying the new possibilities of that gilded psychedelic summer, the former Them frontman was stranded in America, brooding over the release of an embarrassing debut album, panicking about being deported back to Belfast, and worrying that his producer, label boss and mentor Bert Berns had permanently cramped his style.
To make things more fraught, Berns died aged 38 of heart failure on December 30, 1967, leaving Van trapped in a series of onerous contracts, at the whim of Berns’ mob backers and his widow and Bang Records partner Ilene. “I was supposed to go in the office to meet him and the next day I found out he was dead,” the 71-year-old recalls in the sleevenotes to this definitive guide to his annus horribilis. “I was totally shocked; I couldn’t really take it in.”
But for Berns’ belief, Van Morrison might have been sucked back on to the showband circuit that spawned him. Famous for writing “Twist And Shout” and “Hang On Sloopy”, as well as Them’s signature hit, “Here Comes The Night”, the Bronx-born music biz all-rounder offered Van Morrison seemingly his only hope of post-Them fulfilment, inviting him to New York to record eight tracks for his Bang label in March 1967. However, it was an offer with artistic and financial strings attached.
For all its steel-sprung brilliance, “Brown Eyed Girl” echoes the finger-poppin’, clubland R&B that Berns dealt in as an Atlantic staff producer in the early-’60s, and the hotshot session musicians who embellish the deathwatch Beatles of “TB Sheets” hark back to similarly groovy times. “I think it should be freer,” Van Morrison says, his thick Northern Irish accent interrupting a take of “He Ain’t Give You None” on Disc Two, to little effect. His wishes are ignored again on a run through dupes’ confession “Who Drove The Red Sports Car?”: “Why the fade out, man? Why the fade-out? It’s just the beginning!”
His lack of control was underlined after “Brown Eyed Girl” breached the US Top 10; royalties were not forthcoming, and Bang released all the products of those first sessions in an incongruous psychedelic sleeve as Van’s debut album, without his permission. Berns supplied a gauche cosmic sleevenote for Blowin’ Your Mind!, but it was more supper-club filler than mind-expanded killer, Van grumbling 50 years on: “If I’d thought it was an album I’d have approached it a whole different way.”
Under contract, he had to put up, and cut several more songs for Bang later that year – “The Back Room” and early versions of “Madame George” and “Beside You” among them. However, Berns’ production techniques continued to make hackwork of his sophisticated wordplay. “It was, I thought, overproduced,” he writes. “So, it pushed me back into something else, starting again with Astral Weeks… creating more space.”
However, the segue from this first phase of his career to the next was not seamless. After Berns’ demise, it took a reported $75,000 to Ilene Berns, and $20,000 to the mob, to extract him from his Bang deal, while these recordings remained out of his hands, re-emerging at inopportune moments in his career like a bad case of musical shingles. Berns’ publishing company Web IV, meanwhile, demanded 36 new songs before they would let him go; Van complied with stunning bad grace.
Disc Three here details the one-man-and-an-out-of-tune-guitar Contractual Obligation session, Van supplementing the Web IV-administered songs from his late-’67 session with 31 improvised fragments, including a skein of mean-spirited pastiches of Berns’ hits, relentlessly mocking – for a captive audience of his widow and her colleagues – the producer’s Tin Pan Alley inanities and sideline in passé hep-cat talk: “Twist And Shake”, “Jump And Thump”, “Hang On Groovy”. There is also time to rage at Bang’s business practices (“The Big Royalty Check”, “Here Comes Dumb George”, “Blowin’ Your Nose”) , and indulge in mean-spirited whimsy (“Ring Worm”, “Want A Danish” and the immortal “You Say France And I Whistle”). These songs receive their first official acknowledgement with this release (which comes a few months after Ilene Berns’ death), while 50 years on, Van is feeling more generous towards the man who spared him from the cabaret circuit. “Bert Berns was a genius,” he writes. “He was a brilliant songwriter and he had a lot of soul, which you don’t find nowadays.”
Read it out loud. It’s the sound of hell freezing over.
Roger Waters has accused Thom Yorke of "whining" over criticism of Radiohead's upcoming gig in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The band are due to play a show in Israel this week [July 19] and the band have faced requests to cancel the gig, with an open letter recently issued by Artists For Palestine UK – and...
Roger Waters has accused Thom Yorke of “whining” over criticism of Radiohead‘s upcoming gig in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The band are due to play a show in Israel this week [July 19] and the band have faced requests to cancel the gig, with an open letter recently issued by Artists For Palestine UK – and signed by musicians including Roger Waters – asking the group to “think again” about their decision amid an ongoing and widespread cultural boycott of the country.
Waters most recently addressed the Radiohead singer directly on an hour-long Facebook Live talk with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, reports Rolling Stone.
Waters said: “We should observe the picket line. Anybody who’s tempted to do that, like our friends in Radiohead, if only they would actually educate themselves.”
He continued: “I know Thom Yorke’s been whining about how he feels insulted, people are suggesting he doesn’t know what’s going on”.
“Well Thom, you shouldn’t feel insulted because if you did know what’s going on, you would have a conversation with [director] Ken Loach, who’s been begging you to have a conversation, or with me, I begged you, Thom”.
Yorke recently had a Twitter incident with Ken Loach where the director asked the band whether they would “stand with the oppressed or the oppressor”.
Waters then went on to shun Yorke for his lack of communication regarding this issue. “I sent you a number of emails, begging you to have a conversation. As did Brian Eno; you ignored us all, you won’t speak to anyone about anything.”
“So it’s that kind of isolationism that is extremely unhelpful to everybody.”
It’s relatively rare that writing on an album is going to lead you to the metaphoric door of the family home, but Saint Etienne’s ninth album, Home Counties, had this writer remembering dinner table conversations about parents growing up in Surrey - my mother lived in Croydon. Passing mention of...
It’s relatively rare that writing on an album is going to lead you to the metaphoric door of the family home, but Saint Etienne’s ninth album, Home Counties, had this writer remembering dinner table conversations about parents growing up in Surrey – my mother lived in Croydon. Passing mention of some of the album’s song titles – “Whyteleafe” (a village in Tandridge), “Woodhatch” (a suburb of Reigate) – opened the door to all kinds of reminiscence: growing up in a house between the airport and the railway (when the latter was bombed during WWII, the windows all blew out); working at the Coffee Bean, on the high street of Wallington, the first coffee lounge in the home counties; bunking off with friends to catch trad jazz and modern jazz in local halls in Croydon, Sutton and Richmond.
This is all strangely apposite for Saint Etienne, as over the past fifteen years, in particular, they’ve become emotional geographers of London and its surrounds, as interested in the stories of everyday life as they are the larger myths we tell about the cities we both love and hate. While they’ve always been invested in the possibilities of London as an archetypal city of modernist endeavour, around the time of 2002’s Finisterre, the album that morphed into a beautiful, elegiac tribute to the city, co-directed by film makers Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans, that interest seemed to redouble on itself; much of the music and art they’ve been involved with since has seemed, somehow, to hymn the possibilities, latent, actualised or betrayed, of modern London.
With Home Counties, they turn their eye to the ring of counties that cosset London from the rest of Britain, places that the trio know well: Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs grew up in Reigate, Surrey; Sarah Cracknell in Old Windsor, Berkshire. As with much of Saint Etienne’s music, Home Counties works on multiple levels. At times it’s a kaleidoscopic rendering of the quotidian existence of home counties regulars, navigated as much around infrastructure as home life – the brilliantly titled “Train Drivers In Eyeliner”, musically a shuffle and glide across the floor that swoons into a woozy pop refrain, is a re-imagining of the railway network around the listening habits of union members: smart and touching, it’s a slyly socialist gesture that can’t help but feel like cocking a snook at the ongoing dismantling of public services.
Elsewhere, Saint Etienne focus back on what’s made them so great over the decades: an eye to the dance floor, the other eye on the glamorous glory of pop at its finest, fingers thumbing through crates of dusty old records uncovering lost sounds, while casting sideways glances at the music happening on the margins. For Home Counties, this means a clutch of glistening electronic pop gems: the irresistible rush of “Out Of My Mind”, the sturm und drang of “Heather”’s stressed textures, the stealthy sashay of lead single “Magpie Eyes”, which struts into view with a bassline that’s pure Peter Hook.
Indeed, here’s something of the index of possibility to the album’s nineteen songs: from the dream-pop melancholy of “Whyteleafe”, where an office worker clocks in and out of the day-to-day in a ‘municipal dream’, on into the late-night, gilded disco of “Dive”, and the 1960s romance of “Underneath The Apple Tree”, all Motown snares and slapback echo, a Northern Soul blinder of a song, Home Counties might well be the album to play to people who’ve always wondered exactly what Saint Etienne do, and how they manage, somehow, to reanimate so much that’s good about the past of pop music without becoming glib, acritical poptimists.
Most importantly, while they’re often now looking backward, over their collective shoulder – long gone are the acid house dreams of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and Foxbase Alpha – their recuperations of a lost Britain are mindful of the dangers of nostalgia, while understanding there’s much of worth to be salvaged from a modernist Britain that was meant to grow out of a collective social contract signed after WWII. That social contract, of course, was ripped apart by decades of Tory rule and the betrayals of New Labour.
Under the shadow of Brexit, then, it’s hard not to hear a song like “Sweet Arcadia” – the album’s breathtaking finale, eight minutes of swoon and surrender, and one of their most expansive, hallucinatory idylls of tone and texture – as being about rather more than just the plotlanders of 1920s and 1930s Essex, an anarchic group who embraced the notion of the ‘makeshift landscape’, living in jerry-rigged railway carriages, converted boats, or improvised cottages. Listening in the now, it’s as much about a dream of a utopia to be, perhaps impossible to reach, but still well worth the striving: an emotional state that Saint Etienne have long understood, and captured in their music.
Q&A
Pete Wiggs
Home Counties is grounded in the geographies of your youth – you were born in Reigate, Surrey…
I’ve got really fond memories of living in a 1960s close – one of our neighbours lived in an architect house with a crazy paved chimney that looked very Brady Bunch, and [there was] another couple, Vera and Norman, who were like a stylish George and Mildred, who called their house Veno. Bob lived nearby and we’d get together in school holidays and weekends – our mums met at the shopping parade that’s in the gatefold of the sleeve.
You’ve mentioned the love-hate relationship with the home counties at the core of the record.
In the ‘80s living in Croydon there was definitely a pervading sense of narrow-mindedness and after-dark violence that wasn’t so evident a short train ride away in London. After initially thinking it drab and boring I grew to love a lot of the architecture – both urban and suburban in Croydon, lots of it has been ruined with pebbledash and the wrong windows.
The album was produced by Shawn Lee – how did you connect with Shawn, and what did he bring to Home Counties?
We first met Shawn when we were spending a lot of time at the Xenomania studios and he was doing a stint there. Sarah wrote “Dive” with Carwyn Ellis and he suggested recording at Shawn’s – we loved the result and were into Shawn’s ‘oeuvre’ as it were and as we’d met already it seemed like a good idea to try some ideas out.
INTERVIEW: JON DALE
