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Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention’s Absolutely Free set for 50th anniversary edition

Michael Bonner
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Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention’s Absolutely Free set for 50th anniversary edition
Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention’s 1967 album Absolutely Free is being given the 50th anniversary treatment. The album - the band's second - arrives as an expanded vinyl-only edition on September 29 via Zappa Records/UMe. The set includes the album cut directly from the original analog mas...

Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention’s 1967 album Absolutely Free is being given the 50th anniversary treatment.

The album – the band’s second – arrives as an expanded vinyl-only edition on September 29 via Zappa Records/UMe.

The set includes the album cut directly from the original analog master tapes and a second disc with 20 minutes of rare and unreleased bonus material including vintage remixes and radio ads.

A fourth side features a lazer etching of Zappa’s face.

The package features Zappa’s original layout and a reproduction of the “libretto” – an 18-page booklet with a foreword by Zappa and lyrics to all the compositions that was offered only by mail order when originally released.

The tracklisting for Absolutely Free is:

LP1 – Side 1
Plastic People
The Duke Of Prunes
Amnesia Vivace
The Duke Regains His Chops
Call Any Vegetable
Invocation And Ritual Dance Of The Young Pumpkin
Soft-Sell Conclusion

LP1 – Side 2
America Drinks
Status Back Baby
Uncle Bernie’s Farm
Son Of Suzy Creamcheese
Brown Shoes Don’t Make It
America Drinks & Goes Home

LP2 – Side 1
Absolutely Free Radio Ad #1
Why Don’tcha Do Me Right
Big Leg Emma
Absolutely Free Radio Ad #2
“Glutton For Punishment…”
America Drinks – 1969 Re-Mix
Brown Shoes Don’t Make It – 1969 Re-Mix
America Drinks & Goes Home #2 – 1969 Re-Mix

LP2 – Side 2
Laser etching

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Hear Arcade Fire’s new song, “Everything Now”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Arcade Fire’s new song, “Everything Now”
Arcade Fire have shared the title track of their new album, Everything Now. You can hear the track below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC30BYR3CUk Everything Now is releases on July 28 and has been produced by Arcade Fire, Thomas Bangalter and Steve Mackey, with co-production by Markus Dravs. ...

Arcade Fire have shared the title track of their new album, Everything Now.

You can hear the track below.

Everything Now is releases on July 28 and has been produced by Arcade Fire, Thomas Bangalter and Steve Mackey, with co-production by Markus Dravs.

The album was recorded at Boombox Studios in New Orleans, Sonovox Studios in Montreal, and Gang Recording Studio in Paris.

While the tracklisting is currently under wraps, we do know the various formats the album will be released on.

There’s CD, cassette, and heavyweight black vinyl — which will feature 20 different artwork variants, each bearing the album title in one of 20 different languages. There will also be a limited exclusive ‘Night’ packaging of both CD and coloured vinyl LP formats.

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Paul Weller – A Kind Revolution

John Lewis
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Paul Weller – A Kind Revolution
Great artists will often fall into two camps. On the one hand are the precocious types – the likes of Orson Welles, Mozart or Rimbaud – who create their best material in the white-hot intensity of their youth before burning out. On the other hand are the plodders and perfectionists – the Céza...

Great artists will often fall into two camps. On the one hand are the precocious types – the likes of Orson Welles, Mozart or Rimbaud – who create their best material in the white-hot intensity of their youth before burning out. On the other hand are the plodders and perfectionists – the Cézannes, the Hitchcocks, the Mark Twains – who work at their craft, getting better with age, always tinkering and experimenting with new ideas.

Weller is one of those rare types who is both a Welles and a Hitchcock, a Rimbaud and a Twain. He released his angry, precocious debut LP – The Jam’s In The City – 40 years ago this month, and had penned half a dozen deathless national anthems before his 21st birthday. Yet here he is in his late fifties, still poking around the fringes of music, still getting enthused by new ideas. In the last few months alone he’s got his old friend Robert Wyatt out of retirement for a short UK tour, collaborated on the new album by UK soul collective Stone Foundation, and completed the experimental soundtrack to a gritty boxing movie called Jawbone, starring Ray Winstone and Ian McShane. He even appeared, rather bizarrely, in the final episode of the BBC’s Sherlock – as a prostrate client in a Viking costume.

A Kind Revolution shows that Weller’s Indian summer of creativity – one that started with 2008’s 22 Dreams – shows no sign of ending as he inches towards his 60th birthday next year. “Can’t seem to let it go!” he howls on one of the standout tracks here, the sci-fi glam rocker “Nova”. “There’s too much to do.” For someone who admits he was struggling with writer’s block only a dozen or so years ago, it’s a nice problem to have.

He’s assisted, as ever, by younger musicians who are always used inventively. One key collaborator is Andy Crofts, who provides guitars, bass guitar, Moog, Hammond, Philicorda organ and backing vocals on much of the album. Weller has long been a fan of his Northamptonshire Acid Jazz outfit The Moons, and some of their psych funk and surf rock voicings have found their way into Weller’s sonic vocabulary here. There’s also Josh McClorey, guitarist and co-lead singer from Irish rock band The Strypes, who Weller describes as one of “the great rock ’n’ roll guitarists of his generation”. But, interestingly, McClorey is steered well clear of meat-and-potatoes heavy rock on his three guest tracks – “Nova”, the gumbo-fried funk of “Woo Sé Mama”, and filtered disco of “One Tear”.

It’s not quite as radical as other recent moments in the Weller canon – there are no nods to AMM or Alice Coltrane and no collaborations with, say, Kevin Shields or the Amorphous Androgynous. Instead, the innovation comes in how Weller and his producer Jan Stan Kybert reassemble their arcane influences and put them through a distinctly Weller-esque prism. “She Moves With The Fayre”, for instance, is an angular piece of funk – with a drumbeat pitched somewhere between New Orleans gumbo and jerky Nigerian Afrobeat – that suddenly lurches 
into a piece of dreamy symphonic soul in the middle-eight, like the Rotary Connection fronted by Robert Wyatt. “Nova”, another stand-out, seems to deconstruct David Bowie’s entire career and reassemble it in a pleasingly random order. It starts with Eno-esque drones, proceeds with Berlin-era angularities 
and Scary Monsters-era synth riffs, 
and then has a baritone sax playing 
glam-rock stomps, all tied together with 
a space-age lyric.

“One Tear” sees Weller revisiting house music, with a guest vocal from Boy George, who was always one of the few ’80s pop stars that Weller seemed to have nothing but praise for. In Style Council days he might have got Boy George to sing the entire song, but here he just provides a suitably haunted, tearful introduction. “These tears will flood the earth/The earth will start to turn/A turn that starts it all/More tears will have to fall.”

This dystopian vibe doesn’t last long. “New York” is a soul epic in which Weller recalls the start of his relationship (“that crystal kiss”) with his backing singer Hannah Andrews, who would later become his wife. The same Hannah provides high-pitched gospel-style backing vocals on “The Cranes Are Back”, a kind of slo-mo R&B anthem, which continues the positive feel. “There are no chains on my back,” he hollers. “There’s only the joy that freedom brings.”

Even when he’s not going for formal innovation, this is a master craftsman, someone who knows how to cobble together a verse, chorus, bridge and middle eight as well as any McCartney 
or Bacharach. “Hopper” is a lovely, shuffling, heart-tugging tribute to the American painter, who “dreams in muted symphonies”. Closing track “The Impossible Idea” is an acoustic jazz-waltz that recalls one of Weller’s wonderfully bucolic old B-sides – like “English Rose”, “Spin Drifting” or “Down In The Seine” – but this time there’s a wistfulness that comes with 
age, one that chimes with the central idea of “a kind revolution”. The “impossible idea” is that one held by the angry young Weller, that one person can change the world. “All you can do is change yourself,” he concludes.

Q&A
Paul Weller
How did the Boy George collaboration happen?
I’ve always wanted to do a song with him, since the ’80s, man. I love that maturity and soulfulness in his voice, and it perfectly suited “One Tear”. We were meant to be doing something on Saturns Pattern together, but it didn’t happen. I hope we’re going to do some writing together, too.

And Robert Wyatt is there, of course…
Yeah, we got the complicated middle-eight of “She Moves With The Fayre” and I knew it would work with his voice. I love his trumpet playing, too – it reminds me of Donald Byrd on that solo. It was terrific to do those Corbyn dates with him, too, last year. First time he’s played live in God knows how long. I’d love him to guest on a few one-off dates. He sounds great with a band behind him.

How has your songwriting routine changed over the years?
Sometimes I still write in a traditional way. Something like “The Impossible Idea” or “Hopper” I just wrote on an acoustic guitar, like I’ve always done. But, on a track like “One Tear”, it started with my producer Jan Stan Kybert coming in with a loose backing track idea. We’ll work on that, rearrange it, and I’ll add different vocal ideas, bit by bit, as we go along. So some songs are written much more experimentally.

Did you start working on this album as soon as you finished Saturns Pattern two years ago?
Yeah. My missus, Hannah, she was saying, “Aren’t you going to take a bit of a break now?” The thing is, it’s not really down to me. If the songs are coming, I have to follow them. They might dry up next year! I’ve even written most of the next album, which I want to get out in September 2018. Working title: ‘True Meanings’. At the moment the arrangements are acoustic, with some string arrangements. But I want to do some co-writes, too.
INTERVIEW JOHN LEWIS

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Hear Radiohead’s previously unreleased OK Computer track, “I Promise”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Radiohead’s previously unreleased OK Computer track, “I Promise”
Radiohead have shared one of the previously unreleased tracks from their OK Computer sessions. You can hear the track, "I Promise", below. https://open.spotify.com/track/1aPrwxqdKoGZDi679Ldxla The song features on OKNOTOK, a box set which will feature a remastered OK Computer, eight B-sides and t...

Radiohead have shared one of the previously unreleased tracks from their OK Computer sessions.

You can hear the track, “I Promise“, below.

The song features on OKNOTOK, a box set which will feature a remastered OK Computer, eight B-sides and two never before released tracks alongside “I Promise”: “Lift” and “Man Of War”.

Digital formats, double CD, and triple 180g LP versions of the 23 track album will be released widely on June 23.

A boxed edition will ship in July, featuring a black box emblazoned with a dark image of a burned copy of OK Computer containing three heavyweight 180 gram black 12″ vinyl records and a hardcover book containing more than thirty artworks (many of which have never been seen before) and lyrics.

It will also include a notebook containing 104 pages from Thom Yorke’s library of scrawled notes of the time, a sketchbook containing 48 pages of Stanley Donwood and Tchock’s ‘preparatory work’ and a C90 cassette mix tape compiled by the band, taken from OK Computer session archives and demo tapes.

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

The Grateful Dead’s Long Strange Trip reviewed

John Mulvey
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The Grateful Dead’s Long Strange Trip reviewed
The definitive is not a concept which sits easily with the Grateful Dead. How do you tell the all-encompassing story of a band who embraced chaos as a guiding principle; whose legacy rests in myriad bootlegs rather than canonical albums; whose songs reinvented themselves, every night, for 30 years? ...

The definitive is not a concept which sits easily with the Grateful Dead. How do you tell the all-encompassing story of a band who embraced chaos as a guiding principle; whose legacy rests in myriad bootlegs rather than canonical albums; whose songs reinvented themselves, every night, for 30 years? “I don’t see the sense in doing the same thing over and over again,” Jerry Garcia tells an interviewer at some point deep into the new Amazon Prime series, Long Strange Trip. “For me, being alive means always changing.” It’s a heroic stance, but also an exasperating one, as articulated by Sam Cutler, a cosmic English geezer who tour-managed the band between 1970 and 1974. “It took me 18 months,” he says, “to get the Dead to agree to do a photograph.”

There are, then, some pretty obvious challenges facing any director who attempts to organise the band’s tangled history: like a peak live version of “Dark Star”, the path through is never obvious, and it’s hard to remember where you’ve been when it finally ends. Long Strange Trip, though, does an implausibly good job of making sense of this most elusive of great bands, while at the same time staying faithful to their caprices, their fundamental love of digression. As the title suggests, it’s usefully long, running to four hours in the version that has circulated round film festivals these past few months, or six chunky episodes in the cut coming to Amazon Prime. Even then, Amir Bar-Lev’s epic is far from comprehensive: two keyboardists – Tom Constanten and Vince Welnick – don’t even get a mention. Garcia’s personal life and substance issues, meanwhile, are mostly observed from the perspective of Barbara Meier, his girlfriend at the beginning and end of his adult life. The woman who was by his side for most of the years in between, Mountain Girl, is conspicuous by her absence.

Garcia’s complexities inevitably take precedence, as a charismatic bandleader who was assiduous in absolving any responsibility. He believed that a life in music should be an unpredictable adventure – artistically, spiritually and physically – and remained nobly, at times selfishly, wedded to that ideal. Cutler is not the only interviewee who remembers Garcia’s perpetual question being, “Is it going to be fun?” For himself, undoubtedly. One wonders, though, how much fun was had by the crew employed to make a film about the band’s 1970 European tour but who, after being repeatedly dosed, instead chose to film themselves going off the rails?

Long-lost footage is a critical part of Long Strange Trip, and it’s touching to watch Bob Weir seeing, for the first time, Garcia goofing into the lens at the Bickershaw festival, or sat with the band and crew having the nuances of pounds, shillings and pence explained to them by the indefatigable Cutler. Some clips will be well-known to Deadheads: the version of “Bird Song”, during which a naked man cavorts behind a blissed-out Garcia, will be traumatically familiar to anyone who’s seen the Sunshine Daydream concert movie. Others are much fresher, and weirder, and don’t always work as great advertisements for the pleasures of Nitrous Oxide.

It is the new interviews, though, and the reconvening of a sprawling and eccentric family, that provides the greatest charm and insight. The core four all conform to stereotypes: Weir interviewed in yoga pose; Phil Lesh the professorial voice of authority; Bill Kreutzmann as calm and wry as Mickey Hart is antic and wired. The supporting cast, if anything, are even better value, as Cutler – apparently living in the back of a van, and stopped by the police while the cameras are running – is juxtaposed with Joe Smith, a dapper music biz grandee who signed the band to Warners. “I realised I wasn’t dealing with Dean Martin anymore,” he says, masterfully playing the straight man. “The wildest act we had was Trini Lopez.”

The discomfortingly macho stage crew are represented by Steve Parish, still belligerent, and the obsessive Deadheads by two erudite non-music writers, Steve Silberman and Nick Paumgarten, and one US senator, Al Franken, who engages his interviewer in a protracted discussion about the best live version of “Althea” (Nassau 1980). The Dead’s two main lyricists make characterfully odd cameos. John Perry Barlow goes on a pilgrimage to the grave of the first of the gang to die, Pigpen, and grouches, “Why the hell would people put guitar picks down on the grave of a piano player?” The “notoriously reclusive” and obtuse Robert Hunter is tracked down with the aid of Weir, and is found reciting the lyrics of “Dark Star” before asking, pointedly, “What is unclear about that? It says what it means!”

Bar-Lev smartly avoids psychedelic cliché, restricting the visual shorthand of trips to a section where Garcia describes not an acid experience, but his diabetic coma of 1986. The surviving bandmembers (along with Martin Scorsese, whose No Direction Home is a good point of comparison) may be executive producers, but there is never the feeling that content has been censored or sanitised, especially when Garcia’s decline and death is addressed, movingly, in the final episode.

It’s hard to imagine Garcia himself appreciating such a documentary, even one so loose and heartfelt. Doubtless he’d have been unnerved at being the centre of attention, would’ve disdained the idea of a permanent monument for a band who thrived on the idea of transience. But for the rest of us, fans especially but hopefully neophytes too, Long Strange Trip is like the very best Grateful Dead jams: tender, inspirational, and so much fun that it could easily have lasted twice as long.

The War On Drugs announce new album A Deeper Understanding; share track, “Holding On”

Michael Bonner
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The War On Drugs announce new album A Deeper Understanding; share track, “Holding On”
The War On Drugs have announced details of their new album, A Deeper Understanding. You can listen to the first single from the album, "Holding On", below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWiMAu3uII&feature=youtu.be A Deeper Understanding is the band’s first album since 2014’s Lost In The Dr...

The War On Drugs have announced details of their new album, A Deeper Understanding.

You can listen to the first single from the album, “Holding On“, below.

A Deeper Understanding is the band’s first album since 2014’s Lost In The Dream, and their first album with Atlantic. It’s released on August 25.

Earlier this year, the band released “Thinking Of A Place” for Record Store Day.

A Deeper Understanding tracklisting:

Up All Night
Pain
Holding On
Strangest Thing
Knocked Down
Nothing To Find
Thinking Of A Place
In Chains
Clean Living
You Don’t Have To Go

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

The 21st Uncut Playlist Of 2017

John Mulvey
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The 21st Uncut Playlist Of 2017
I was thinking the other day what a good year 2017 was shaping up to be for archive releases, based mostly on my hammering of the Alice Coltrane ashram tapes and the Grateful Dead’s Cornell ’77 set. That idea got a big boost yesterday, though, with the arrival of a remastered, expanded edition o...

I was thinking the other day what a good year 2017 was shaping up to be for archive releases, based mostly on my hammering of the Alice Coltrane ashram tapes and the Grateful Dead’s Cornell ’77 set. That idea got a big boost yesterday, though, with the arrival of a remastered, expanded edition of Lal & Mike Waterson’s Bright Phoebus; a British folk-rock album, lost in copyright hell forever, that has very personal resonances for me.

A pleasure, then, to include the cleaned-up “Bright Phoebus” itself in this week’s playlist, along with a bunch of other and newer treats. Noteworthy: David Nance’s terrific no-wave freakout, “Negative Boogie”; the Elkhorn album (one for, crudely, your American Primitive collection); exceptional new tracks from the Floating Points and CRB albums; the Bedouine song, which is growing on me; and some new footage of the mighty Wet Tuna mid-jam the other night.

Swift caveat I haven’t added in a while: since this is a list of all the music I’ve played these past few days, inclusion doesn’t automatically mean approval (ie without making a fuss or focusing on the negative, there are one or two things here I don’t like at all). Let me know, anyhow, what you’re listening to: someone hassled me on Twitter this morning that it was time to put together a 2017 halftime report, and I’ll try and do that next week when this issue’s out the door.

Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

1 David Nance – Negative Boogie (Ba Da Bing)

2 Golden Retriever – Rotations (Thrill Jockey)

3 Elkhorn – The Black River (Debacle

4 A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service (Epic)

5 The Grateful Dead – Boston 7/5/77 (www.archive.org)

6 Michael Mayer – DJ Kicks (!K7)

7 Floating Points – Reflections – Mojave Desert (Pluto)

8 Pep Llopis – Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes (Freedom To Spend/RVNG INTL)

9 John Murry – A Short History Of Decay (TV)

10 Farmers Manual – Fmoto (Bandcamp)

11 Bedouine – Bedouine (Spacebomb)

12 Chris Robinson Brotherhood – Barefoot In The Head (Silver Arrow)

13 Compton & Batteau – In California (Earth)

14 Fleet Foxes – Crack-Up (Nonesuch)

15 The War On Drugs – Thinking Of A Place (Atlantic)

16 Cornelius – Mellow Waves (Rostrom)

17 Lal & Mike Waterson – Bright Phoebus (Domino)

18 The Allman Brothers Band – Eat A Peach (Capricorn)

19 Wet Tuna – Live In Albany 28/5/17 (Youtube)

20 Landing – Taeppe EP (Bandcamp)

21 Binker And Moses – Journey To The Mountain Of Forever (Gearbox)

Hear David Bowie play “Rebel Rebel” from Los Angeles 1974

Michael Bonner
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Hear David Bowie play “Rebel Rebel” from Los Angeles 1974
David Bowie's Cracked Actor - Live In Los Angeles album is released on June 16. This set captures Bowie's Philly Dogs Tour show at the Universal Amphitheatre on September 5, 1974, some of which was immortalized in the BBC documentary Cracked Actor. We're delighted to be able to host the version of...

David Bowie‘s Cracked Actor – Live In Los Angeles album is released on June 16.

This set captures Bowie’s Philly Dogs Tour show at the Universal Amphitheatre on September 5, 1974, some of which was immortalized in the BBC documentary Cracked Actor.

We’re delighted to be able to host the version of “Rebel Rebel” from the album – you can hear it below.

The album was mixed by Tony Visconti at Human Studios, NYC in October/November 2016. The eagle-eyed among you might spot that Cracked Actor – Live In Los Angeles was previously available as a limited vinyl edition for Record Store Day. This edition comes as both limited edition 2CD digipak and digital download.

The CD comes with a twelve page booklet featuring notes from the original LA Amphitheatre show programme and a October 1974 piece about the LA Philly Dogs shows from Rolling Stone. Neither of these was featured in the vinyl package.

The tracklisting for Cracked Actor – Live In Los Angeles is:

Introduction
1984
Rebel Rebel
Moonage Daydream
Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing
Changes
Suffragette City
Aladdin Sane
All The Young Dudes
Cracked Actor
Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me
Knock On Wood
It’s Gonna Be Me
Space Oddity
Diamond Dogs
Big Brother
Time
The Jean Genie
Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Welcome To 1988: The New History Of Rock Is Here!

John Mulvey
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Welcome To 1988: The New History Of Rock Is Here!
  This week brings another edition of our History Of Rock sister mag; to recap, our forensic project to republish the NME and Melody Maker’s best journalism, starting in 1965 and moving, at the rate of one year in each monthly issue, towards the present day. We’ve arrived at 1988, a year ...

 

This week brings another edition of our History Of Rock sister mag; to recap, our forensic project to republish the NME and Melody Maker’s best journalism, starting in 1965 and moving, at the rate of one year in each monthly issue, towards the present day.

We’ve arrived at 1988, a year which brings REM to the cover, and includes interviews with Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Robert Plant, Townes Van Zandt, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sinead O’Connor, Morrissey, U2, Pixies and The Wedding Present, among many others. If you’ve missed any issues, you can find every edition of The History Of Rock on sale at our online shop: it makes, honestly, for a handsome collection. Here, as usual, is the History Of Rock’s John Robinson with his welcome to 1988…

“Among other happenings, this is a year when a new dance genre – acid house – helps create what is reported as a ‘new summer of love’. Still, the harmony, experimentation, and revolutionary spirit that accompanied that original summer of ‘67 is this year not only created by electronic artists – and is certainly not confined to the warmer months.

“Take our cover stars REM. In the space of a few years, they have grown from a lively and mysterious post-punk outfit into a concerned and influential rock band, backing presidential candidates and making a thoughtful pop record, Green. U2 continue to convince the fans in the stadia, hobnob with the greats, and exercise their power to effect change.

“Harmony exists between artists of different eras. New appearances by (and new interviews with) acts like Townes Van Zandt and Patti Smith illustrate how an enduring artist will always be able to find a place in music’s continuum. Robert Plant can even find the odd nice word to say about The Mission, produced by his former colleague John Paul Jones.

“Elsewhere, the parallels continue. Great new acts are mobilising grassroots support. A confluence is occurring between sonic and chemical experimentation. British tabloid newspapers, meanwhile, are conspiring to turn a music genre into a point of moral outrage.

“This is the world of The History Of Rock, a monthly magazine which follows each turn of the rock revolution. Whether in sweaty club or huge arena, passionate and stylish contemporary reporters were there to chronicle events. This publication reaps the benefits of their understanding for the reader decades later, one year at a time.  Missed one? You can find out how to rectify that here.

“In the pages of the 24th edition, dedicated to 1988, you will find verbatim articles from frontline staffers, filed from the thick of the action, wherever it may be.

“Taking a trip to Boots the chemist for an interviewee to sort out his methadone allowance. Buying more drinks for Peter Buck, even though he’s carrying a knife. Being uncomfortably stood upon as The Mission make their journey to the summit of American fame.

“’Sorry I stood on your bollocks earlier,’ Wayne Hussey tells the MM’s man.

“Still unchanged by fame, he indicates a nearby bowl of ice water. ‘You can dangle them in there if you want…’”

The Fall announce details of 32nd studio album, New Facts Emerge

Michael Bonner
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The Fall announce details of 32nd studio album, New Facts Emerge
The Fall have announced details of their 32nd studio album. New Facts Emerge will be released on Cherry Red Records on July 28. The album was produced by Kieron Melling/Mark E. Smith and engineered by Ding. The line-up on New Facts Emerge is: Mark E. Smith (lead vocals); Peter Greenway (guitar, sy...

The Fall have announced details of their 32nd studio album.

New Facts Emerge will be released on Cherry Red Records on July 28. The album was produced by Kieron Melling/Mark E. Smith and engineered by Ding.

The line-up on New Facts Emerge is: Mark E. Smith (lead vocals); Peter Greenway (guitar, synth, backing vocals); Dave Spurr (bass, Mellotron, backing vocals); Kieron Melling (drums).

Tracklist:
Segue
Fol De Rol
Brillo De Facto
Victoria Train Station Massacre
New Facts Emerge
Couples Vs Jobless Mid 30s
Second House Now
O! ZZTRRK Man
Gibbus Gibson
Groundsboy
Nine Out Of Ten

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Dr John, Jason Isbell, Brian Wilson, Ringo Starr, Cher and more pay tribute to Gregg Allman

Michael Bonner
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Dr John, Jason Isbell, Brian Wilson, Ringo Starr, Cher and more pay tribute to Gregg Allman
Gregg Allman has died aged 69. BBC reports that Allman died at home in Savannah, Georgia on Saturday [May 27, 2017]. A post on Allman's Facebook page said, "Gregg struggled with many health issues over the past several years. During that time, Gregg considered being on the road playing music with ...

Gregg Allman has died aged 69.

BBC reports that Allman died at home in Savannah, Georgia on Saturday [May 27, 2017].

A post on Allman’s Facebook page said, “Gregg struggled with many health issues over the past several years. During that time, Gregg considered being on the road playing music with his brothers and solo band for his beloved fans, essential medicine for his soul. Playing music lifted him up and kept him going during the toughest of times.”

Many tributes have been paid to Allman since news broke of his death. Including his former wife Cher, Jason Isbell, Brian Wilson, Dr John, Ringo Starr, Bootsy Collins and Ryley Walker.

“It’s too soon to properly process this,” Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts said in a statement. “I’m so glad I was able to have a couple good talks with him before he passed. In fact I was about to call him to check and see how he was when I got the call. It’s a very sad day.”

Michael Lehman, Allman’s manager and close friend, also wrote: “I have lost a dear friend and the world has lost a brilliant pioneer in music. He was a kind and gentle soul with the best laugh I ever heard. His love for his family and bandmates was passionate as was the love he had for his extraordinary fans. Gregg was an incredible partner and an even better friend. We will all miss him.”

https://twitter.com/remhq/status/868568025125015552

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Paul Rodgers: “I like to be in control of my own destiny”

Nick Hasted
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Paul Rodgers: “I like to be in control of my own destiny”
Reflecting on 45 years in music, Paul Rodgers concludes, “It’s been a wonderful journey. I left Middlesbrough as a teenager with a cloud over my head, with a lot of tension and aggravation inside of me that I wanted to understand, and music has enabled me to get to a point where I’m peaceful n...

Reflecting on 45 years in music, Paul Rodgers concludes, “It’s been a wonderful journey. I left Middlesbrough as a teenager with a cloud over my head, with a lot of tension and aggravation inside of me that I wanted to understand, and music has enabled me to get to a point where I’m peaceful now. I feel on top of my career at the moment. I feel actually free. In the past, it got unwieldy, with too many cooks. I like to be in control of my own destiny.”

With The Royal Sessions – his first solo release in 14 years – out soon, Rodgers weighs up the key albums in his career, from his early work with rock’n’roll titans Free and Bad Company to his collaborations with Jimmy Page and Queen.

Of all of his many, marvellous musical adventures, Rodgers says, “I look back on the early days of Free with Paul Kossoff with the most fondness of any of my bands. Because I met him at a time when I was in London and very hungry, and we believed in each other.”

Words: Nick Hasted. Originally published in Uncut’s April 2014 issue (Take 203).

_______________________________

FREE
FREE
ISLAND, 1969
For this, their second album, Free dispensed with the heavy blues vibes of their debut, Tons Of Sobs. Singer Rodgers and bassist Andy Fraser came to the fore as songwriters, while the band developed a more personal, soulful sound.

PAUL RODGERS: It was felt, by the record label and everyone, that [Tons Of Sobs’ producer] Guy Stevens was a bit too out-there. So this next LP was cleaner, more thought about and produced. Chris Blackwell was in the studio quite a bit. I did a lot of my writing on acoustic guitar, as I lived in bed-sitters, and that was really all you could play in rooms like that. So I’d bring something like “Mouthful Of Grass” along and we’d electrify it with the band, then I started to visualise how it would be with the band as I wrote. Some of the songs remained acoustic, like “Mourning Sad Morning”. If it sounds hymnal, that might be my Catholic upbringing as a choirboy! I double-tracked my vocal for the first time on that song. I was learning about being in the studio. The idea is you negate all outside noise, booth everything off. But the danger is you lose the band feel. We wouldn’t go in another room, so we could still vibe with each other. I’d close my eyes and imagine I was onstage in front of a crowd, as that’s the real telling time. Paul and I would listen to the way Albert King would sing then answer with a guitar line, and we did that together a lot. We were learning to put something together that was totally original. That was the direction on this album. We were a rock band with soul.

_______________________________

FREE
FIRE AND WATER
ISLAND, 1970
“All Right Now”, a No 2 hit in spring 1970, prepared the ground for Free’s career-defining album, also a transatlantic smash. Fire And Water balanced the folky melancholy of “Oh I Wept” with wailing soul-blues, showcasing Rodgers’ voice and Kossoff’s guitar.

We produced it, with Roy Thomas Baker’s help. We were all in it together, we felt. We didn’t need someone with a producer’s chair. We’d balance ourselves every night onstage and find the right place to be and get in the groove. That’s what we wanted the record to do. Very often a producer might crank the vocal up so it’s drowning out everything else. That wasn’t where we wanted it to be, we wanted it to sit right, where we heard it onstage. So that was the production we did.

I think we’d learned more about songwriting by Fire And Water. Wilson Pickett had a hit with “Fire And Water”, and I can’t even tell you how cool that was. Because that was exactly my intention – “I wanna write something that one of those soul guys could sing.” I didn’t think they actually would! In those days, I held them as if they lived in Paradise and I would never get to be in touch with them. “Mr Big” is a very tough lyric, I’m amazed I got away with. I used to listen to BB King, and I think I was inspired by his approach to womanhood, if you like [laughs] – his manly stance! And that song’s a lesson in simplicity. Because the simpler the song, the bigger it sounds. The notes have room to echo.

“All Right Now” was the climax of all our efforts. We did it in the small studio downstairs in [Island studio] Basing Street that everybody used to call the Crypt. The guys put the track down first. I went out to put the vocal on, and I could see Chris Blackwell and his entourage come into the control room. It was a nice vibe, actually. I could tell by the way their jaws dropped that we had something. Success took us by surprise, though. The Blind Faith tour that followed knocked the wind out of us. ’Cos from being the headliners and packing out clubs all over Europe, literally on word of mouth – we were underground, you know – our gear was suddenly being flung on these huge stages, and it was just bedlam. We were exposed to the politics of the business, just thrown to the lions. It ripped the lid off our underground pretensions, and there we were, a big commercial band all of a sudden. I don’t think we were quite up for it. We were demoralised.

Reviewed! The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Super Deluxe Edition

Michael Bonner
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Reviewed! The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Super Deluxe Edition
FIFTY years on, where do you start with Sgt Pepper? How about with the ending. On January 19, 1967, The Beatles began work on a song provisionally titled “In The Life Of…”. Even in an embryonic state, with just John Lennon on acoustic guitar and Paul McCartney on piano, the song is clearly on ...

FIFTY years on, where do you start with Sgt Pepper? How about with the ending. On January 19, 1967, The Beatles began work on a song provisionally titled “In The Life Of…”. Even in an embryonic state, with just John Lennon on acoustic guitar and Paul McCartney on piano, the song is clearly on a par with the innovative studio recordings for “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” that have filled the previous weeks. This new song takes in newspaper headlines and suburban drudgery; its tone is sorrowful and poignant; its structure progressive. The only trouble is, The Beatles don’t have a satisfactory conclusion for it. “Take 1” finds assistant Mal Evans counting bars before McCartney’s piano chords simply halt. Another take, meanwhile, finds The Beatles hitting upon a more experimental approach, humming a final chord in unison with a little help from their friends. The sound is striking: part churchy hymnal, part meditative chant. The Beatles settle, finally, on a climactic major E piano chord, played simultaneously on three different pianos. “Have you got your loud pedal down, Mal?” asks McCartney. “Which one’s that?” replies Evans. “That right hand one, far right,” explains McCartney. “It keeps the echo going.”

That The Beatles had the opportunity to work through ideas such as these in depth and with focus was reflective of the group’s changed circumstances by early 1967. On August 29, 1966, the band played their final paid concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Without the impositions of a rigorous touring itinerary, The Beatles could now fully explore their creative impulses within the confines of Abbey Road’s Studio 2. Back in the olden days – 1964, say – the Fabs bashed out Beatles For Sale in seven non-consecutive days between touring commitments. They could now devote over 300 hours to Sgt Pepper between December 1966 and April 1967. As a consequence, this 50th anniversary edition luxuriates in alternative takes, overdubs and instrumental versions, as befitting the first deep archaeological survey of The Beatles’ archives since the Anthology series 22 years ago. Critically, this is only the first time an individual Beatles album has been given such treatment. After all, where do you start? How about with Sgt Pepper?

The sessions that Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr played on were never intended to be heard publicly. This anniversary edition of Pepper, then, represents a breakthrough in Apple’s thinking. For once, we can map the creative path taken by The Beatles, from shared memories of childhood haunts, through Jim Mac’s Jazz Band and Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal, to a 17-year-old runaway from Stamford Hill, a commercial for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and a visit to India. But if the finished Pepper album is of historical significance, is the same true of the outtakes?

This edition (now with added “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”) is available as a 2CD set, a double vinyl edition and a bells-and-whistles 4CD/Blu-ray/DVD boxset. All of these come with Giles Martin’s new stereo mix of the album. In the cheaper seats, the 2CD set includes 18 complete early takes that run in the same sequence as the finished album. For those willing to rattle their jewellery, the Super Deluxe Edition – reviewed here – offers a total of 33 early takes, sequenced in chronological order, alongside the original mono mix of the album and various mono rarities. It begins with “Strawberry Fields Forever [Take 1]” on November 24, 1966 and ends with “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) [Take 8]” from April 1, ’67 – the final piece of music cut for the album. What a glorious five months to be a Beatle.

“Take 1” and “Take 7” of “Strawberry Fields Forever” are among a handful of takes that appeared in part on Anthology, the song’s progress bolstered here by the addition of “Take 4” and “Take 26”. “Take 1” is gossamer-light and wistful. The Mellotron lines sound like a church organ, McCartney’s bass has a pleasingly loose thwock to it, while Harrison’s piercing slide guitar and Starr’s light brushes are discreet, unobtrusive. There are lovely harmony vocals from Lennon, McCartney and Harrison that, disappointingly, never survived beyond this take. By “Take 4”, the song slips into a familiar lysergic soup, ushered in by the flute sounds of McCartney’s Mellotron. Starr’s drums are busier, Harrison is more prominent in the mix as he picks out the rhythm melody on his guitar. “Take 26” lifts off with brass, strings, backwards cymbals, swaramandala. Already a seismic creative shift has occurred, with the warm intimacy of “Take 1” replaced by a groovy trip that would be full-blown psych spectacle by the time The Fabs completed the song. They followed it with “When I’m Sixty Four [Take 2]”.

In comparison to the heavyweight vibes of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, this is a buoyant knees-up from Macca. But taken together, the two songs demonstrate the increasing competitive tensions between Lennon and McCartney – the difference between the former’s art-school disposition and the latter’s harmonic sweetness. They complement each other perfectly, of course, on “A Day In The Life”, which enjoys five different iterations here: “Take 1”, “Take 2”, “Orchestral Overdub”, “Hummed Last Chord [Takes 8, 9, 10 and 11]” and “The Last Chord”. The first two takes show us the bones of the song’s brilliance but, arguably, it’s the subsequent addition of McCartney’s “Woke up, got out of bed…” that provides an earthy grounding for Lennon’s weary reveries. In total, the band spent 34 hours on “A Day In The Life”. By contrast, they whizzed through Please Please Me in just shy of 10 hours.

As it progresses, the Super Deluxe Edition traces the day-by-day creative momentum of the Pepper sessions. From February 1, “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [Take 1 – Instrumental]” is a lot grungier, moving in fits and starts, with bent notes in the mix. By the end of the day, they’ve reached a more familiar place with “Take 9” – though the ending is not yet in place. As the song rumbles to a close, McCartney ad libs, “I feel it, I feel it, I feel it, oh baby, now I feel it, I feel it, I feel it, baby I’m free now, gotta be free now,” before he concludes, “I don’t like that. It’ll probably be another day of singing it.” A conversation about breath control follows. A few days later, on Feb 8, we catch the Fabs at their heaviest with “Good Morning Good Morning [Take 1 – Instrumental]” before the song finally takes flight and shape with “Take 8” on February 16.

Aside from the heavy hitters, the songs averagely receive two takes each here. A couple, like “Fixing A Hole” and “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!”, don’t differ substantially from their finished versions. The band worked out arrangements, tempo and phrasing in rehearsal. For “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, for instance, all the heavy lifting took place during one all-night rehearsal session. The band only spent two days on recording. The song is nailed in a few takes, but not before Paul offers some tips on delivery to John on “Take 5”: “Sing those quicker, ‘cellophane flowers of yellow and green’.” Elsewhere there are some Lennon LOLZ on “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! [Take 7]” while “Lovely Rita [Speech and Take 9]” foregrounds some lovely gospel-y piano.

There are other unexpected surprises. The instrumental takes of “Getting Better” – 1 and 12 – are as warm and airy as a spring day. Conversely, the Met Office recorded “widespread gales” on March 9 and 10, when the song was recorded. The weather had improved considerably by March 15, when Harrison oversaw two instrumental versions of “Within You Without You”. “Take 1” is a haunting devotional drone lasting over five minutes, far superior to the final album version. Admittedly, it’s strange to visit these familiar places from new directions, without the reassuring grain of Lennon, McCartney or Harrison’s voices. The original mono mix of the album is as God and The Beatles intended. The band spent three weeks on the mono mix, while the stereo mix was done in three days without their direct involvement. The mono mixes are solid, powerful and focused. The physical impact, say, of “A Day In The Life” is equalled only by the vertiginous “Unreleased Mono Mix – No 11” of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”. The sprightly guitar riff that opens “Getting Better” is suddenly harsher, more metallic in mono. In stereo, “She’s Leaving Home” sounds rather wafty and sentimental, but the “Unreleased First Mono Mix” here is as stark as “Eleanor Rigby”.

Accompanying all this is Giles Martin’s newly mixed stereo version inspired by the original mono. It means everything is fuller and better balanced. The title track comes across as far more acidic and frantic, propelled by McCartney’s spitting lead guitar. “Within You Without You” appears a more urgent exploration of raga motifs; a rabbit hole into the mystic realms. Even “A Day In The Life” offers new perspectives, from the ingenuity of Ringo’s fills in the first 90 seconds to the harmonic complexity of Paul’s basslines. The clarity of Giles Martin’s work illustrates the continual, corrective changes of mood and pace on Pepper; the release “When I’m Sixty Four” gives after the dense thrum of “Within You Without You”, for instance.

Running to almost three and a half hours, this is The Beatles finally, belatedly, entering a marketplace already busy with archive-raiding anthologies and boxsets. But critically it offers valuable insight into the speed at which The Beatles travelled during this period. Here they are, blasting out acid-soaked rock stomps one day, Indian ragas the next. The Beatles never worked with such unified purpose again, but what this Pepper boxset captures is the fun, intense, playful creative ferment; the triumph, in other words.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Kraftwerk – 3D The Catalogue

Stephen Dalton
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Kraftwerk – 3D The Catalogue
Kraftwerk continue to revisit their beloved canon of ’70s and ’80s classics, digitally tweaking and polishing and enhancing. This latest reboot features live versions of the band’s 8LP official catalogue, including the first visual record of their current 3D stage show on Blu-Ray and DVD. The...

Kraftwerk continue to revisit their beloved canon of ’70s and ’80s classics, digitally tweaking and polishing and enhancing. This latest reboot features live versions of the band’s 8LP official catalogue, including the first visual record of their current 3D stage show on Blu-Ray and DVD.

The full immersive home-viewing experience requires a 3D Blu-Ray player and 3D TV, a Betamax-style failed technology that even the big electronics firms have recently abandoned. Fortunately, the Blu-Ray also works in standard 2D players, which offer a fuzzy approximation of the stereoscopic visual effects. The standard edition features a 77-minute greatest hits set filmed at various locations around the globe. Typically for Kraftwerk, the audio mix is pristine, spacious and compatible with the latest Dolby Atmos 5.1 technology. In layman’s terms, this means these exactingly assembled electronic sound paintings sound pin-point precise even on my ancient laptop computer, and positively cinematic through a regular DVD and TV speakers. Sonically, this is the cutting-edge frontier.

And yet, visually, Kraftwerk remain oddly constricted by their mid to late 20th century aesthetic. The childlike animation for the 14-minute live version of “Autobahn”, for example, features sunny motorway vistas and chrome-gleaming antique cars clearly modelled on the 1974 album sleeve artwork. It looks like a lost episode of Mary, Mungo And Midge. Likewise, the metronomic whoosh and crunch of Trans-Europe Express unspools to striking monochrome graphics of streamlined trains, meticulously detailed iron bridges and sleek railtracks that appear to swoop high over the audience’s heads as they stretch away to infinity. Tron comes to mind. Of course, all this retro-futurism is largely a conscious stylistic choice, and it can produce sublime results, but some of these clunky throwbacks feel uninspired and overly literal. The boxy typography and techno-fetishist imagery that Kraftwerk deploy on tracks like “Techno Pop” are rooted in the low-res arcade-game era.

For dedicated fans, another annoyance is how many of the finest audio-visual performances are only accessible on the eight-album, 436-minute Blu-Ray disc in the expensive deluxe boxset. Tracks like the vocoder-driven synth voyage “Spacelab”, with its Kubrick-sized 3-D panoramas of distant planets, or the serene city symphony “Metropolis”, illustrated by rolling waves of Ballardian skyscrapers. Mesmerising, timeless beauty from the electronic Beatles. But too much of their genius is buried in the depths of this awkwardly conceived collection.

Extras: 5/10. Standard edition, no extras. Deluxe box set: 228-page hardback book and additional discs featuring standalone concert visuals.

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

The Other Side Of Hope

Michael Bonner
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The Other Side Of Hope
For his latest film, the melancholy Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki appears to have broken with tradition. Previously, his films like The Leningrad Cowboys series, have largely taken place in a version of Finland that seems largely untroubled by contemporary events. This new film, however, finds an...

For his latest film, the melancholy Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki appears to have broken with tradition. Previously, his films like The Leningrad Cowboys series, have largely taken place in a version of Finland that seems largely untroubled by contemporary events. This new film, however, finds an urgent topically breaking through.

The Other Side Of Hope interweaves the stories of two men who have fled their homes. First, we meet Khaled Ali (Sherwan Haji), a refugee from Syria who has stowed away aboard a coal ship and arrived in Helsinki seeking asylum. Then there is Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen), who has taken a less perilous, though no less dramatic, route to freedom. He has abandoned his boozy wife, won at poker and bought a dilapidated restaurant named The Golden Pint with the winnings.

In some ways, The Other Side Of Hope is a companion piece to La Havre, Kaurismäki’s 2012 film that also brought together an ageing local with a much younger refugee. Kaurismäki has often displayed compassion for the dispossessed – in The Man Without A Past, his nameless protagonist joined a community of homeless folk living inside empty container units. But here, he brings a torn-from-the-headlines immediacy to Khaled’s tale. A speech to the Finnish Immigration Service reveals the horrors he endured in Aleppo and during his hazardous journey to freedom.

The film’s tone shifts imperceptibly when Khaled and Wikström meet. Much droll humour – a Kaurismäki trademark – unfolds. Wikström offers Khaled a job at The Golden Pint, which is transformed into a sushi bar, much to the chagrin of the venue’s indolent resident staff. As the doorman, Ilkka Koivula is especially good, in that deadpan, Kaurismäki way.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

10cc announce comprehensive four-disc box set

Michael Bonner
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10cc announce comprehensive four-disc box set
10cc have announced details of a new 4-disc box set. As the title suggests, Before During After – The Story Of 10cc covers the careers of Eric Stewart, Lol Crème, Kevin Godley and Graham Gouldman, together and apart. The collection starts with During // The Best of 10cc 1972 – 1978. After ...

10cc have announced details of a new 4-disc box set.

As the title suggests, Before During After – The Story Of 10cc covers the careers of Eric Stewart, Lol Crème, Kevin Godley and Graham Gouldman, together and apart.

The collection starts with During // The Best of 10cc 1972 – 1978.

After // The Post 10cc Years is a collection of tracks that came following the band’s split, hand-picked by members of the band. It includes music from Godley and Creme, Graham Gouldman’s Wax, Paul McCartney (with whom Eric Stewart co-wrote) and from Lol Creme’s period in The Art Of Noise.

Before // The Strawberry Hit Factory is a tribute to the band’s early studio productions while Before // The Early Years compiles more pre-recordings showcasing the early work of each individual band member.

The cover of Before During After – The Story Of 10cc includes a new design by Kevin Godley, and contains 40-page hardback book containing new interviews with all four 10cc members.

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Ray Davies – Americana

Graeme Thomson
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Ray Davies – Americana
For an artist so widely associated with a very English sensibility – godfather of Britpop, grandmaster of kitchen sink self-deprecation – Ray Davies has harboured a long and deep obsession with American culture. Always a significant presence in his life, at the age of 72 he has finally pushed it...

For an artist so widely associated with a very English sensibility – godfather of Britpop, grandmaster of kitchen sink self-deprecation – Ray Davies has harboured a long and deep obsession with American culture. Always a significant presence in his life, at the age of 72 he has finally pushed it to the centre of his music.

His first album of new material for eight years, Americana is an aural companion to Davies’ 2013 memoir of the same name. Through 15 songs (an expanded edition is already in the works), he traces an intimate relationship with the country which fired his imagination in the ’50s, turned his life upside down in the early ’60s, shunned him in the later ’60s, and became home in more recent decades. Americana may be unashamedly conceptual, but it wears its ambitions lightly. Davies tells Uncut his Americana is “an idea, an America of the mind rather than a style of music or the place itself”, a conceit which affords him the freedom to roam.

The scene-setting title track cribs from “Home On The Range”, recounting the explosive impact of US culture, particularly cowboy films, on the teenage Davies and his “baby brother” in their Muswell Hill terrace. Just one problem: “I can’t understand how I’m gonna get there from here.” Yet by the next song, “The Deal”, there he is, soaking up the Californian sun as a newly anointed pop star, his habitual British reticence simultaneously repelled and seduced by an unstoppable barrage of “awesome” Yankee optimism: “Feeling so fabulous, fraudulent, a counterfeit on the make.”

The mood throughout is of rueful, often humorous ambivalence. The tremendous “Poetry” – which has echoes of Cockney Rebel’s “Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)” – laments the brash vulgarity of the worst of Universal America, while “A Long Drive Home To Tarzana” uneasily embraces the American Dream via a haven in the San Fernando Valley. The airy chamber country of “The Invaders” relives the demonisation – not entirely without merit – of The Kinks as the thuggish footsoldiers of the British Invasion, ultimately resulting in them being banned from the States between 1965-’69: “They called us the invaders, as though we came from another world/The man from immigration shouted out, ‘Hey punk, are you a boy or a girl?’” This is a cultural earthquake with a very personal aftershock: “Things would never be the same,” not just for the world, but for Davies. A delicate duet, “Message From The Road” finds him battling time zones, desperate to connect with his wife and child back in Britain. He sings it with weary tenderness, while The Jawhawks’ keyboardist and vocalist Karen Grotberg plays the woman left at home, “out of sight and out of mind”.

One of the smartest moves Davies makes on Americana is using The Jawhawks as his core backing band. They bring a warm, uncomplicated cohesion. Given their input, and the themes, unsurprisingly the album has a prominent country flavour. “A Place In Your Heart” is a light-hearted hoedown, befitting a tale of travel, fleeting romantic assignations and wide-open possibilities; “Rock And Roll Cowboys” is an elegant country-rock waltz, piled up with Wild West metaphors; the title track is scored with swooning pedal steel. Yet the scope of Americana allows for a generous range of styles. Davies mines the blues on the swampy “Mystery Room” and the minimalist, somewhat malevolent “Change For Change”, while a brief spoken-word piece, the poignant “Silent Movie”, recalls a final meeting with his neighbour Alex Chilton, “the day before I left New Orleans”.

At times the influences are closer to home and enjoyably knowing. “The Deal”, with its familiar descending chord sequence, feels classically Kinksian; or perhaps – given that Davies wrote it during the age of Britpop – it’s closer to the sound of The Kinks filtered through Blur, a homage to a homage. “I’ve Heard That Beat Before” – a lovely, light, jazz-inflected shuffle musing on the dance between creative inspiration and domestic discord – features a snatch of “All Day And All Of The Night”, while Davies sings in his laziest Sunday afternoon voice.
He is entitled to flirt so openly with past glories. Entirely self-written and beautifully realised, Americana is a deeply satisfying reminder that Davies remains a songwriter with a huge reach, but few equals.

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

New Roy Orbison album to be released in November

Michael Bonner
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New Roy Orbison album to be released in November
A Love So Beautiful: Roy Orbison With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be released on November 3. The album is produced by Don Reedman and Neil Patrick, who also produced If I Can Dream: Elvis Presley With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and The Wonder Of You: Elvis Presley with The Royal Phi...

A Love So Beautiful: Roy Orbison With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be released on November 3.

The album is produced by Don Reedman and Neil Patrick, who also produced If I Can Dream: Elvis Presley With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and The Wonder Of You: Elvis Presley with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Roy’s sons Wesley (guitar), Roy Jr. (guitar) and Alex (drums) provide instrumental backing on selected tracks, along with grandson Roy III (guitar, tambourine).

The album will be available to pre-order on CD, vinyl and digitally.

The full tracklisting is:

In Dreams
Crying
I’m Hurtin’
Oh, Pretty Woman
It’s Over
Dream Baby
Blue Angel
Love Hurts
Uptown
Mean Woman Blues
Running Scared
I Drove All Night
You Got It
A Love So Beautiful

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

Randy Newman announces new album, Dark Matter

Michael Bonner
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Randy Newman announces new album, Dark Matter
Randy Newman has announced details of his new studio album, Dark Matter. It is his first album of new material since Harps and Angels nine years ago, and will be released by Nonesuch on August 4. Below, you can watch the video for "Putin", which was released digitally in 2016. https://www.youtube...

Randy Newman has announced details of his new studio album, Dark Matter.

It is his first album of new material since Harps and Angels nine years ago, and will be released by Nonesuch on August 4.

Below, you can watch the video for “Putin“, which was released digitally in 2016.

The Great Debate
Brothers
Putin
Lost Without You
Sonny Boy
It’s a Jungle out There (V2)
She Chose Me
On the Beach
Wandering Boy

The July 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our exclusive interview with Roger Waters on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Evan Dando, Jason Isbell, Steve Van Zandt and Kevin Morby and we look at shoegazing and the Scottish folk revival. We review The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, U2, Van Morrison and Dan Auerbach. Our free CD features 15 tracks of the month’s best music, including Can, Richard Dawson, Saint Etienne, Ride, The Unthanks, Songhoy Blues and more.

The 20th Uncut Playlist Of 2017

John Mulvey
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0
The 20th Uncut Playlist Of 2017
Swiftly this morning, as I’m meant to be writing about this expanded version of the Screaming Trees’ Dust. Slightly annoying list insofar as I can’t find any links to play you a bunch of the most interesting new things here: a reissue of a Portuguese minimalist record from the ‘80s by Pep Ll...

Swiftly this morning, as I’m meant to be writing about this expanded version of the Screaming Trees’ Dust. Slightly annoying list insofar as I can’t find any links to play you a bunch of the most interesting new things here: a reissue of a Portuguese minimalist record from the ‘80s by Pep Llopis; Bill Orcutt’s new electric solo album of Derek Bailey-ish skronk; Man Forever (especially the Yo La Tengo and Laurie Anderson collabs).

I have, though, found a taster of the beautiful valedictory album from Träd, Gräs Och Stenar, which hits a sweet spot roughly situated between latterday Crazy Horse (think “Drifting Back”) and late ‘60s Dead. And also this Jlin album, which has got a lot of critics more innovation-oriented than me very excited, is good and has this surprising hook-up with William Basinski on it.

Going into the attic now to try and find my Screaming Trees interview at Lollapalooza in 1996. Wish me luck…

Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

1 Screaming Trees – Dust: Expanded Edition (Cherry Red)

2 Pep Llopis – Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes (Freedom To Spend/RVNG INTL)

3 Nomade Orquestra – Entremundos (Far Out)

4 Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Leonard/Carolyn (Domino)

5 Bill Orcutt – Bill Orcutt (Palilalia)

6 Al Green – I’m Still In Love With You (Hi)

7 Melvin Van Peebles – Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Stax)

8 The War On Drugs – Thinking Of A Place (Atlantic)

9 Floating Points – Reflections – Mojave Desert (Pluto)

10 Everything Is Recorded – Close But Not Quite (XL)

11 Michael Mayer – DJ Kicks (!K7)

12 Man Forever – Play What They Want (Thrill Jockey)

13 Mark Fosson – Solo Guitar (Drag City)

14 Chris Robinson Brotherhood – Barefoot In The Head (Silver Arrow)

15 Jlin – Black Origami (Planet Mu)

https://soundcloud.com/jlinnarlei/holy-child-ft-william-basinski-available-on-jlins-album-black-origami

16  Träd, Gräs Och Stenar – Tack För Kaffet (So Long) (Subliminal Sounds)

17 Ben Lukas Boysen – Nocturne 4 (Tim Hecker Remix) (Erased Tapes)

18 Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires – Youth Detention (Don Giovanni)

19 James Elkington – Wintres Woma (Paradise Of Bachelors)

20 The Grateful Dead – Cornell 5/8/77(Rhino)

21 Wet Tuna – Live At The Root Cellar 1​/​19​/​17 Electric Set (Bandcamp)

22 Broken Social Scene – Hug Of Thunder (City Slang)

23 Dauwd – Theory Of Colours (Technicolour/Ninja Tune)

24 Reggie Young – Forever Young (Ace)

25 Junie – The Complete Westbound Recordings 1973-1976 (Westbound)

 

 

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