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Win tickets to see Phil Collins live in Hyde Park

Tom Pinnock
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Win tickets to see Phil Collins live in Hyde Park
Phil Collins is performing at Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park on Friday, June 30. As part of the central London event, Collins will be joined by Blondie, Mike + The Mechanics, Starsailor, The New Power Generation, KC and the Sunshine Band, Chas & Dave, Cats In Space and Al Mu...

Phil Collins is performing at Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park on Friday, June 30.

As part of the central London event, Collins will be joined by Blondie, Mike + The Mechanics, Starsailor, The New Power Generation, KC and the Sunshine Band, Chas & Dave, Cats In Space and Al Murray.

We’re delighted to give away ONE pair of tickets to the show.

To be in with a chance of winning, just answer this question correctly:

What is the name of Phil Collins’ debut solo album?

Send your answer along with your name, address and contact telephone number to UncutComp@timeinc.com by noon, Wednesday, June 7.

A winner and a runner-up will be chosen from the correct entries and notified by email. The editor’s decision is final.

The winner’s tickets will be available to collect from our box office on the day.

For more information on the festival and artist updates, visit bst-hydepark.com.

Also on the bill for the Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park 2017 are Green Day, Justin Bieber, The Killers and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Adam Buxton, Cosey Fanni Tutti and more announced for End Of The Road comedy and literature stages

Tom Pinnock
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Adam Buxton, Cosey Fanni Tutti and more announced for End Of The Road comedy and literature stages
Adam Buxton, Cosey Fanni Tutti and The Incredible String Band's Mike Heron are among the acts announced for End Of The Road's comedy and literature stages. The Adam Buxton Podcast returns to the Comedy Stage, alongside Cardinal Burns, Robin Ince, Nish Kumar and more, while Cosey Fanni Tutti and Mik...

Adam Buxton, Cosey Fanni Tutti and The Incredible String Band‘s Mike Heron are among the acts announced for End Of The Road‘s comedy and literature stages.

The Adam Buxton Podcast returns to the Comedy Stage, alongside Cardinal Burns, Robin Ince, Nish Kumar and more, while Cosey Fanni Tutti and Mike Heron join the likes of Amy Liptrot, Miriam Elia and David Keenan on The Library Stage.

The 12th year of the End Of The Road festival takes place at Larmer Tree Gardens on the Dorset/Wiltshire border on August 31-September 3. Musical acts already announced include Bill Callahan, Mac DeMarco, Father John Misty, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Lucinda Williams, Ty Segall, Perfume Genius, Deerhoof, Michael Chapman, Slowdive and Julie Byrne.

Tier 4 tickets are now on sale at £189. There are no booking or transaction fees. A deposit scheme allows people to pay £45 now and the balance by 15 June. You can find more information by clicking here.

Comedy Stage 2017 line-up:
Cardinal Burns
The Adam Buxton Podcast
Nish Kumar
Die Roten Punkte
Robin Ince
Doc Brown
David Trent
Desiree Burch
Joe Lycett
Jenny Collier
John Hastings
Amy Annette’s What Women Want Podcast
Escape Mobile
Laura Davis
Mark Simmons
Bec Hill
Jon Pointing
Sarah Bennetto
Pierre Novellie
Chris Betts

Library Stage line-up:
Cosey Fanni Tutti
Robin Ince
Mike Heron
Miriam Elia
Amy Liptrot
Will Ashon
David Keenan
Pete Brown

 

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

 

Klaus Dinger & Prejapandorf – 2000!

Michael Bonner
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Klaus Dinger & Prejapandorf – 2000!
The legend of the late, great Krautrock drummer, guitarist, singer and lyricist, Klaus Dinger, rests on the three albums he made with Michael Rother as NEU!, and particularly in the hypnotic repetition at the heart of Dinger’s eternal, flash-free rhythms – he preferred to call it the Apache beat...

The legend of the late, great Krautrock drummer, guitarist, singer and lyricist, Klaus Dinger, rests on the three albums he made with Michael Rother as NEU!, and particularly in the hypnotic repetition at the heart of Dinger’s eternal, flash-free rhythms – he preferred to call it the Apache beat, or the Dingerbeat. Songs like “Hallogallo” seemed to point outward to visionary rock music yet to be made; “Hero” was punk before it happened. Bowie and Eno were listening, as Low and Heroes both attest. The three albums Dinger subsequently made with brother Thomas and collaborator Hans Lampe, as La Düsseldorf, reconciled that motoric drive with a glam pop sensibility – they’re still underrated gems, especially the heavenly melancholy of 1978’s Viva.

Dinger’s music after NEU! and La Düsseldorf is much harder to follow, even though, at its best, it yields music just as spectacular as his first two groups. The acrimonious collapse of the original La Düsseldorf line-up in the early ‘80s, brought about by disagreements between Lampe and the Dinger brothers, had Dinger moving to Zeeland, in the Netherlands, writing material for a fourth La Düsseldorf album, Mon Amour, which would eventually see release as the murky electronic pop of Klaus Dinger + Rheinita Bella Düsseldorf’s Néondian.

Dinger also resurrected NEU! in 1985, reconnecting with Rother for an ill-fated reunion album, which Dinger eventually released, as a ‘bootleg’ of sorts, on Captain Trip in 1995. With Rother focused on synthesizers, it’s a fairly underwhelming effort; something doubtless not helped by the strained interactions between Dinger and Rother. Dinger was also chipping away at his own material during this time, writing and recording sporadically for a fifth La Düsseldorf album, which would eventually see light in 1999 under the artist name La! NEU?, entitled Blue (La Düsseldorf 5).

Much of Dinger’s music of this time, buried as it often was in period-piece production touches – “Arms Control Blues” from Blue (La Düsseldorf 5) is drenched in gaseous eighties reverb – is marked by his embrace of the simplest of structures: two- and three-chord vamps; melodies that border on the inane, only to access the eternal through the joys of repetition; a base level surrealism that’s both cheesy and profound. Dinger’s writing was deceptively light, too, his love of wordplay matched by the baldness of his political engagement (again, via “Arms Control Blues” and “America” on Blue, for example) and a straightforward pop-ness that made the ‘anthemic’ lyrics oddly cool.

If the 1980s were a struggle for Dinger, the 1990s were far more fruitful. During the first half of the decade, he was focused on a new group, Die Engel Des Herrn, whose debut self-titled album from 1992 was, at times, a surprisingly straightforward rock set. Their 1995 live album, Live! As Hippie Punks, is more rewarding – looser, freer, the Apache beat thundering through cavernous space while Dinger channels Mark E. Smith. After connecting with the Japanese label Captain Trip, run by Ken Matsutani of psych-rock group Marble Sheep & The Run-Down Sun’s Children, Dinger experienced a further renaissance, using La! NEU? as an umbrella title for roughly recorded, playful albums.

Conceiving La! NEU? as a collective of sorts, Dinger brokered relationships with the new German underground, calling on Andreas Reihse and Thomas Klein of post-rock group Kreidler as floating members, along with their colleague, sculptor Viktoria Wehrmeister; Die Engel Des Herrn member Dirk Flader, pianist Rembrandt Lensink, jazz bassist Konstantin Wienstroer, and Dinger’s mother Renate filled out the ranks. With Captain Trip starting the sub-label Dinger-Land to manage these projects, along with 1-A Düsseldorf, Thomas Dinger’s new group, things got wilder and woollier than ever – La! NEU?’s Rembrandt: God Strikes Back is a Lensink solo album in all but name; the other La! NEU? albums veered, unpredictably, from stiff-jointed electronica to mantric rock jams. Their split in the late ‘90s led to the Japandorf project, with a group of Japanese artists based in Düsseldorf.

2000! was the formative articulation of Dinger’s next project, Japandorf – their album Klaus Dinger + Japandorf, recorded across 2007-8 and released in 2013, is perhaps a more articulate rendering of this music. But what comes through clearly in this preJapandorf set is the wild joy at the heart of Dinger’s music. If you’d written off his post-seventies music as so much scribbling in the margins, the furious discipline of “Pure Energy” will shock. The mantric throb at the heart of Dinger’s music is untamed, still, at this point in his history; what’s more startling is the fierce clang of the guitar playing, a scrabbly chicken scratch at the heart of one of Dinger’s most elated, visionary songs.

Elsewhere, he takes the tension down a little – “Mayday” is a beautiful seven-and-a-half rumination, a tender guitar cycle with Dinger sighing borrowed lines from The Beatles – ‘won’t you come out to play’ – and loading them with revelatory weight. “Talk”’s toytown melody is shadowed by glinting, spectral synth tones; “Midsummer”’s elliptical weight is a slow drag across the sunset. The closing “THANK YOU ALL!” is another classic Dinger fuck-you, singing ‘thank you for hating us’ over the dinkiest of chord changes. As ever, he sounds both angry and sly, yet endlessly enamoured of the power of rock reduced to its barest essentials – and still, thirty years on, punk as fuck.

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Introducing the new Uncut – starring Roger Waters!

John Mulvey
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Introducing the new Uncut – starring Roger Waters!
A new Uncut manifests itself this week (it’s in UK shops on Thursday, but should be turning up with subscribers any moment now) and, as you’ll see, our cover star is Roger Waters. The small matter of 25 years after his last rock album, an urgent, raging Waters has returned, with much he needs t...

A new Uncut manifests itself this week (it’s in UK shops on Thursday, but should be turning up with subscribers any moment now) and, as you’ll see, our cover star is Roger Waters.

The small matter of 25 years after his last rock album, an urgent, raging Waters has returned, with much he needs to say. Is This The Life We Really Want?, according to producer Nigel Godrich, gives Waters a “reboot in the same way The Force Awakens gave Star Wars back to the fans.” And in our exclusive interview, Waters elucidates. “It’s not much of a leap from ‘Is This The Life We Really Want?’ to ‘Money’, ‘Us And Them’ or ‘Welcome To The Machine’,” he says. “They’re all interconnected in ways that are… unsubtle.”

There’s plenty to talk about, of course, as Pink Floyd’s retrospective exhibition opens at the V&A in London and Waters plots his imminent Us + Them live extravaganza. In a wide-ranging conversation with Michael Bonner, Waters touches on Floyd and The Beatles, 9/11, Brexit (“All through my youth I fought the Farages of this world”), Bernie Sanders and, of course, Donald Trump. “There’s a resistance everywhere,” he says. “I want people who come to the show, particularly in the United States Of America, to understand that what I’m doing is symbolic of the general resistance to the absolute inhumanity of the status quo.”

While he might look like a workaholic compared with Roger Waters, Evan Dando is another rock legend whose music has become frustratingly sparse in recent years. Unlike my illustrious predecessor Allan Jones, my reserves of rock’n’roll anecdotes are pretty skimpy, but most involve Dando. I once interviewed him at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, sat late at night by the deserted swimming pool. If this weren’t decadent enough, the whole process was farcically hampered by the fact that Dando couldn’t actually speak, and had to respond to all my questions by scrawling his answers on a legal pad. In the throes of finishing Come On Feel The Lemonheads, his doctor had advised Dando to completely rest his voice, following damage done by smoking crack and heroin. “I don’t think I would want to die young of drugs – but I’m not sure,” he wrote to me. “Just maybe better than putting out 10 Lemonheads album.”

Twenty-four years later, Dando has only managed three more Lemonheads albums, plus one undervalued solo album – 2003’s Baby I’m Bored – that gets a deserved reissue this month. His thin discography is compensated, though, by the fact he’s very much still with us: a bright, complex, seemingly irrepressible 50-year-old who emerges, in Stephen Deusner’s exemplary profile this issue, as an artist whose creative spirit doesn’t require being portioned out into regular releases.

It’s an interesting contrast with another of this month’s featured artists, Kevin Morby, whose burgeoning reputation as singer-songwriter in the lineage of Dylan, Cohen and Reed rests on a hot streak of four albums in the past four years. Also in the issue, we talk with Jason Isbell and Steve Van Zandt; revisit the fervid Scottish folk scene of the 1960s (Incredible String Band, Bert Jansch, Anne Briggs all featuring prominently); lose ourselves in a nostalgic salute to the shoegazing greats; watch the reunion of Prince’s mighty Revolution; and uncover the story of The Skids’ “Into The Valley”. We sift through key new albums by Fleet Foxes, Buckingham/McVie, Sufjan Stevens, Richard Dawson, Chris Stapleton, Dan Auerbach and Saint Etienne, and there’s a surfeit of headline reissues in the Archive section, from Van Morrison, U2, Billy Mackenzie and, last but probably not least, The Beatles.

May we introduce to you some acts you’ve known for all these years, and maybe help you look at them a little differently?

This month in Uncut

Tom Pinnock
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This month in Uncut
Roger Waters, The Beatles, Evan Dando and Jason Isbell all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated July 2017 and out on May 18. Waters is on the cover, and inside he discusses his first rock album for 25 years, Is This The Life We Really Want?, as well as Pink Floyd, Trump, Brexit and Palestine. ...

Roger Waters, The Beatles, Evan Dando and Jason Isbell all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated July 2017 and out on May 18.

Waters is on the cover, and inside he discusses his first rock album for 25 years, Is This The Life We Really Want?, as well as Pink Floyd, Trump, Brexit and Palestine.

“It’s not much of a leap from ‘Is This The Life We Really Want?’ to ‘Money’ or ‘Us And Them’ or ‘Welcome To The Machine’,” he admits with a wolfish smile. “They’re all interconnected in ways that are… unsubtle.”

We also delve deep into the new Super Deluxe edition of The Beatles‘ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and hear from Giles Martin how he remixed the record, and what’s left in the vaults. “You realise why we’re so attracted to them,” he explains. “There’s so much energy on the tapes.”

As Evan Dando turns 50, we track down the errant Lemonhead in Martha’s Vineyard to talk reissues, Ryan Adams, a band called The Sandwich Police and, at last, a new album. “I’m ready,” says Dando, “to make a really cool record now.”

Jason Isbell answers your questions in our An Audience With… feature, revealing his thoughts on Willie Nelson, a cat called Richard Thompson, and Donald Trump. “Trump’s a bad guy,” he says. “You can’t root for the bad guy.”

Elsewhere, Uncut meets Kevin Morby, one of the decade’s most significant new singer-songwriters, and traces his journey from Midwestern traumas to New York’s streetlife to the mountainous wilds of Los Angeles. “My whole goal is just to be like my heroes,” Morby says.

As Ride and Slowdive release new albums, Uncut tracks down those bands and more, to tell the full story of the quietly revolutionary (and sometimes very noisily revolutionary) shoegaze scene. Meanwhile, we discover how a psychedelic folk underground was created in Scotland in the mid-’60s featuring Bert Jansch, The Incredible String Band, Anne Briggs, Davy Graham and John Martyn. “It was a magic time,” says The Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson. “It felt like an enchantment; it was a town with a certain magic to it. It seemed like a wonderful melting pot.”

Also in the new issue, The Skids reveal how they created their hit “Into The Valley”, Steven Van Zandt takes us through the finest albums he’s made – from Springsteen to his new Soulfire – and Britt Daniel from Spoon recalls the songs that have shaped his life.

In our Instant Karma front section, we remember Jonathan Demme, speak to The Bootleg Beatles, Endless Boogie and Buffalo Tom, and meet Julia Jacklin.

In our mammoth reviews section, we take a look at new albums from Fleet Foxes, Dan Auerbach, Richard Dawson, Lindsey Buckingham & Christine McVie, Saint Etienne, Big Thief and Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner and more. Archival releases reviewed include The Beatles, U2, Van Morrison, The Durutti Column, Helium and Billy Mackenzie.

This month’s free CD, Run Like Hell, features 15 tracks of the best new music, including Jason Isbell, Kevin Morby, Saint Etienne, Songhoy Blues, The Unthanks, Melody’s Echo Chamber, Can, Richard Dawson, Ride and more.

The new Uncut is out on May 18.

Mogwai announce new album; share new song, “Coolverine”

Tom Pinnock
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Mogwai announce new album; share new song, “Coolverine”
Mogwai will release a new album, Every Country's Sun, on September 1 through their own Rock Action label. The group recorded the record – their ninth proper studio LP – with producer Dave Fridmann at his Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York; Mogwai previously worked with Fridmann on their...

Mogwai will release a new album, Every Country’s Sun, on September 1 through their own Rock Action label.

The group recorded the record – their ninth proper studio LP – with producer Dave Fridmann at his Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York; Mogwai previously worked with Fridmann on their 1999 album Come On Die Young and 2001’s Rock Action.

The follow-up to 2014’s Rave Tapes, Every Country’s Sun is also their first bona fide studio album without guitarist John Cummings.

The opening track, “Coolverine”, has been made available to buy or stream – you can listen to it below.

The tracklisting of Every Country’s Sun is:

Coolverine
Party In The Dark
Brain Sweeties
Crossing The Road Materia
aka 47
20 Size
1000 Foot Face
Don’t Believe The Fife
Battered At A Scramble
Old Poisons
Every Country’s Sun

 

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

 

 

Angaleena Presley – Wrangled

Alex Macpherson
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Angaleena Presley – Wrangled
The day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Angaleena Presley tweeted a picture of herself at the Women’s March on Washington, brandishing a placard that read: My body, my business / Southern women for civil rights. It was one of the few public stands taken by a mainstream country artist against ...

The day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Angaleena Presley tweeted a picture of herself at the Women’s March on Washington, brandishing a placard that read: My body, my business / Southern women for civil rights. It was one of the few public stands taken by a mainstream country artist against a president borne to power on the disaffection of their own red state heartlands, but Presley’s career has been defined by her ability to take on social issues with anger and nuance. As one-third of Pistol Annies with Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe, she crafted vignettes of rural poverty with a deceptively light touch, and she dug her nails deeper into the subject on her own solo debut, 2014’s American Middle Class, singing about towns hollowed out by addiction and a coal miner father who never crossed the picket line.

Presley’s righteous fury and mordant wit burn even brighter on its follow-up, Wrangled. It opens with a savage deconstruction of every “inspirational” power ballad that’s encouraged young artists to follow their dreams. Drenched in pedal steel, “Dreams Don’t Come True” offers only hopelessness and regret as Presley bluntly narrates how that worked out for her: “I thought I’d make hit records and get hooked on drugs; I wound up pregnant, strung out on love.” It’s a reference to her own path as a “10-year overnight sensation”, a former Wal-Mart cashier and single mother who blossomed late, releasing American Middle Class a month after she turned 37; and on the explicitly feminist Wrangled, Presley elegantly ties her experience of struggling against a male-dominated industry in the era of beer-swilling, brain-deadening bro-country into the wider binds placed on women by conservative mores.

“High School” empathetically delineates how suffocating gender roles are imposed early on both girls and boys, while the album’s title track is both slow-burning centrepiece and slow-dawning realisation: “The Bible says a women oughtta know her place / Mine’s out here in the middle of all this wide open space.” Her subsequent joy at busting out of these strictures is in full flow on the rollicking, wholly unrepentant “Mama I Tried” and booze-swilling “Motel Bible”, which finds her opting for “holy spirits” over anything you’d find in church.

Presley’s unshowy lilt is a naturally tender instrument, but she relishes using it for snappier, sarcastic purposes too – “If you bless my heart, I’ll slap your face,” she pouts winningly at one point. Elsewhere, two inspired collaborations making for Wrangled’s most ambitious moments: the irresistible rockabilly of Wanda Jackson co-write “Good Girl Down” and the audacious, distorted stream-of-consciousness “Country”, which culminates in a verse from Alabama rapper Yelawolf that shouts out Sturgill Simpson.

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

The Animals on “We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place”: “We thought we were on a crusade!”

Tom Pinnock
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The Animals on “We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place”: “We thought we were on a crusade!”
How a Brill Building folk song, recorded in a few takes in Churchill’s old map room, became an anthem for an America at war… Originally published in Uncut's November 2013 issue (Take 198). Words: Graeme Thomson __________________________ Last year during his keynote speech at SXSW, Bruce Sprin...

How a Brill Building folk song, recorded in a few takes in Churchill’s old map room, became an anthem for an America at war… Originally published in Uncut’s November 2013 issue (Take 198). Words: Graeme Thomson

__________________________

Last year during his keynote speech at SXSW, Bruce Springsteen announced that “We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place” was “every song I’ve ever written. All of them.”

Springsteen, who has been performing The Animals’ 1965 single for decades, most recently this summer in Cardiff with Eric Burdon, is far from alone in recognising himself in a powerful, protean anthem to personal transformation. This portrait of the tyranny of work, the lurking shadow of death and the desperate desire to escape to “a better life” has spoken to generations. Troops serving in Vietnam, both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan have found perennial solace in its message, as have bored teens, and any number of working class would-be pop stars from the provinces.

“That song was about us,” says Burdon. “We wanted to get out of Newcastle, then a year later it was London, and then it was New York. We were on a mission. But it also made sense to everybody, because things back then were changing so much.”

The song started life as a modest piece of escapist folk-pop, written by Brill Building husband-and-wife team Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Originally intended to launch Mann’s solo career, it was swiped by producer Mickie Most. He brought it to The Animals, who turned it into their second biggest hit.

The combination of Chas Chandler’s propulsive bass, Burdon’s blues wail, the tightly wound tension of the verse and explosive release of the chorus sounds as potent today as it did nearly half a century ago.

____________________________

JOHN STEEL: We were looking for a new single. It was Mickie Most’s habit to go over to the States and raid the Brill Building, not just for The Animals but for Herman’s Hermits and people like that. The year before he’d brought over the first single we ever did, “Baby Let Me Take You Home”, which to us was just a new version of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” from the first Dylan album. It was a bit on the poppy side, but it did the trick. Mickie was very shrewd. He had a cracking judgement for a hit song.

HILTON VALENTINE: Mickie’s greatest input to The Animals was the material that he picked for us to record. The verbal deal we had with him was that he would pick the singles and we would have free rein on what went on the albums, although “The House Of The Rising Sun” came from us. The singles were usually presented to us only a couple of days before we went into the studio. Mickie came up with a few specimens from his latest visit. I can’t remember the others, but “…Place” stood out for us and we went with it.

ERIC BURDON: There were always songs coming back and forth to us. Sometimes we’d say, “No, that’s more like Herman Hermits.” Sometimes we’d wait too long and someone else would do it before us. With this one, I think we all knew right away it was right for us.

VALENTINE: The demo was pretty basic. I think it was just Barry Mann playing and singing the song on piano.

BURDON: The demo was that West Coast singer-songwriter thing. Barry was playing it alone, serenading. It was much more folky, but straight away it made sense.

Jawbone reviewed

Michael Bonner
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Jawbone reviewed
There is a scene late on in Jawbone where Jimmy McCabe, a former youth boxing champion fallen on hard times, articulates his deepest anxieties. “I’m a fighter,” he says, “But I can’t fight this.” By “this” he means alcoholism, but he could equally be talking about any of the other tr...

There is a scene late on in Jawbone where Jimmy McCabe, a former youth boxing champion fallen on hard times, articulates his deepest anxieties. “I’m a fighter,” he says, “But I can’t fight this.” By “this” he means alcoholism, but he could equally be talking about any of the other troubles that gnaw away at him during director Thomas Napper’s impressive, if bleak, debut.

Jimmy is played by Johnny Harris, who also wrote the script. Jimmy appears in every scene – a hornet’s nest of internalized rage and self-loathing. When a meeting with officials to discuss his housing situation goes badly wrong, it takes three policemen to subdue him. Jimmy finds some respite in the gym where he trained as a youth and the people who work there – kindly owner Bill (Ray Winstone) and corner man Eddie (Michael Smiley). Leading a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence forces Jimmy to make extreme choices, and he signs on for an unlicensed fight, brokered by Ian McShane’s vulpine promoter, Joe. 10 rounds for a £2,500 pay day, whatever the result. “You were one of the bravest kids I saw,” says Joe. “What I don’t know is what kind of knick you’re in now.”

Like Steve McQueen’s Shame or Gerard Johnson’s Hyena, Jawbone is an intense and close-up depiction of a scarred individual going about his business with, largely, disastrous consequences. Paul Weller’s atmospheric, electronic score, meanwhile, adds a discreet frisson of tension. Harris is brings to the role the same fierce commitment that characterized his performance in Shane Meadows’ This Is England cycle. There is equally strong work from the supporting cast, particularly Michael Smiley as the loyal, principled Eddie. Inevitably, there is much that is familiar here – the down-at-heel boxer taking one last fight – but by maintaining such a tight focus on Jimmy himself, Harris and Napper have succeeded in creating a persuasive portrait of a man, reduced and on the edge, desperate for a way out.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Alien: Covenant

Michael Bonner
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Alien: Covenant
Has there ever been a franchise as badly treated as Alien? A slow decline that reached a trough with two (two!) crossovers with the Predator series; could even a hardy xenomorph with acid for blood survive that, one wondered? Ridley Scott’s return to the series, to direct the prequel Prometheus, w...

Has there ever been a franchise as badly treated as Alien? A slow decline that reached a trough with two (two!) crossovers with the Predator series; could even a hardy xenomorph with acid for blood survive that, one wondered? Ridley Scott’s return to the series, to direct the prequel Prometheus, was a mixed blessing. Scott’s 1979 original still stands up as a terrifically tight, claustrophobic shocker. But Scott’s filmography since is frequently patchy; he is prone to privileging visuals over narrative. And – as if often the case with big budget sci-fi movies nowadays – Prometheus was muddled, quasi-mystical, po-faced, nowhere near as lean or mean as its late Seventies’ ancestor.

Prometheus was a kind of grandiose creation myth that essentially recycled von Däniken’s hoary ideas from Chariots Of The Gods. This follow-up at least draws from a more diverse pool of influences. Frankenstein fans will note the sci-fi equivalent of a mad scientist living in a remote castle – while allusions to the works of Piero della Francesco and Michelangelo become, in their own ways, critical plot points. The aesthetic is a bit Bosch with the Chapman brothers’ Hell thrown in.

The Covenant is a colonists ship transporting couples – multiple Adams and Eves, if you like – to a new home among the stars. Prematurely awakened from artificial hibernation, they receive a transmission from a nearby planet. Among the cast are Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride, James Franco and Billy Crudup, as well as Michael Fassbender, here playing two androids. Inevitably, watching Fassbender out-Fassbender himself provides a welcome distraction while we wait for the Xenomorphs to arrive and chew up the cast.

Alien: Covenant knowingly replays many of the greatest hits of the original film (and, to an extent, James Cameron’s sequel), albeit with some tweaks here and there. You remember the chest-burster; how about a back-buster? But these suggest a creative inertia for the series; merely playing to Alien’s strengths rather than pushing forward. It is a better film than Prometheus, at least. Though as is common with all the series’ sequels and prequels, it lacks freaky, dystopian spirit of Scott’s original.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Hear Eric Burdon cover Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” for his 76th birthday

Michael Bonner
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Hear Eric Burdon cover Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” for his 76th birthday
Eric Burdon has covered Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" to mark his 76th birthday. You can hear Burdon's version below. https://soundcloud.com/ericburdon/eric-burdon-for-what-its-worth-baked-5-10-2017 “The whole idea of recording this song came as a result of a conversation I had wi...

Eric Burdon has covered Buffalo Springfield‘s “For What It’s Worth” to mark his 76th birthday.

You can hear Burdon’s version below.

“The whole idea of recording this song came as a result of a conversation I had with a young fan backstage, when she asked me, ‘Where are the protest songs today?’” he says in a statement. “Right then and there, I wanted to write to say something about the brutality that’s going on in the world today—but I couldn’t find any better way to say it than Buffalo Springfield did in ‘For What It’s Worth.’ I thought of reintroducing this classic, which is as relevant today as it was during the Vietnam war and speaks to this generation just as it spoke to mine.”

“The message is clear. Racism is back, stronger than it ever has been. The struggle between the sexes is at a boiling point. Violence is out of control. Our very home planet is under threat. It’s time to grow up and take responsibility. We must wake up before it’s too late. Everything we believed in, everything people fought and died for in the ’60s, is under attack today.

“So join me, sing with me, speak out against the madness,” he continues. “We are not afraid.”

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

The 18th Uncut Playlist Of 2017

John Mulvey
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The 18th Uncut Playlist Of 2017
Quick reminder, first off, that our Ultimate Music Guide to Joni Mitchell is on sale today, and available to order here: it’s a good one. Lots of Joan Shelley here this week, partly to atone for me cocking up and missing her London show on Monday night. Also a lot of understandable pressure from ...

Quick reminder, first off, that our Ultimate Music Guide to Joni Mitchell is on sale today, and available to order here: it’s a good one.

Lots of Joan Shelley here this week, partly to atone for me cocking up and missing her London show on Monday night. Also a lot of understandable pressure from some colleagues to keep hammering the Floating Points record to the exclusion of most other things – apart from, as you can see, the odd Spacemen 3 cover. Key new entries, anyhow: a Wooden Wand song I don’t think I’ve posted before; a live BBC session from the Necks and the Scottish Symphony Orchestra (not 100 per cent sold on this, but it’s definitely interesting); a couple of Shabazz Palaces albums; and a surprise duo album from two vintage masters of the whole American Primitive guitar shtick, Harry Taussig and Max Ochs. Dig in…

Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

1 Joan Shelley – Joan Shelley (No Quarter)

2 Joan Shelley – Over And Even (No Quarter)

3 The Deslondes – Hurry Home (New West)

4 Floating Points – Reflections – Mojave Desert (Pluto)

5 TLC – Way Back (Featuring Snoop Dogg) (Cooking Vinyl)

6 Wooden Wand – Clipper Ship (Three Lobed)

7 Spacemen 3 – When Tomorrow Hits (Sub Pop)

8 Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society – Simultonality (Tak-Til)

9 Gas – Narkopop (Kompakt)

10 Grizzly Bear – Three Rings (Youtube)

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

12 The Necks & The BBC SSO (Conductor: Ivan Volkov) – Elemental (bbc.co.uk)

13 Seabuckthorn – Turns (Lost Tribe Sound)

14 Perfume Genius – No Shape (Matador)

15 Shabazz Palaces – Quazarz: Born On A Gangster Starr (Sub Pop)

16 Shabazz Palaces – Quazarz Vs The Jealous Machines (Sub Pop)

17 Bitchin Bajas – Bitchin Bajas (Drag City)

18 Childhood – Universal High (Rough Trade)

19 Art Feynman – Blast Off Through The Wicker (Western Vinyl)

20 Offa Rex – The Queen Of Hearts (Nonesuch)

21 Sheer Mag – Just Can’t Get Enough (Static Shock)

22 James Elkington – Wintres Woma (Paradise Of Bachelors)

23 Various Artists – Psychic Migrations (Cinewax/Volcom Stone)

24 Harry Taussig & Max Ochs – The Music Of Harry Taussig & Max Ochs (Tompkins Square)

25 This Is The Kit – Moonshine Freeze (Rough Trade)

26 The National – The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness (4AD)

The National announce new album; share new song, “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness”

Michael Bonner
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The National announce new album; share new song, “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness”
The National have announced details of their new studio album. Sleep Well Beast will be released by 4AD on September 8. The record - their seventh - was produced by member Aaron Dessner with co-production by Bryce Dessner and Matt Berninger. The album was mixed by Peter Katis and recorded at Aaron...

The National have announced details of their new studio album.

Sleep Well Beast will be released by 4AD on September 8.

The record – their seventh – was produced by member Aaron Dessner with co-production by Bryce Dessner and Matt Berninger. The album was mixed by Peter Katis and recorded at Aaron Dessner’s Hudson Valley, New York studio, Long Pond.

The tracklisting for the album is:
Nobody Else Will Be There
Day I Die
Walk It Back
The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness
Born to Beg
Turtleneck
Empire Line
I’ll Still Destroy You
Guilty Party
Carin at the Liquor Store
Dark Side of the Gym
Sleep Well Beast

The band have shared a video for “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness“, which you can watch below:

The band have also plotted a world tour, which begins in June at the Glastonbury Festival. You can see the full run of tour dates below.

23-25/06/17 – Glastonbury Festival – Glastonbury, UK
12/08/17 – HAVEN Festival – Copenhagen, DENMARK
16/09/17 – Cork Opera House / Sounds From a Safe Harbour – Cork, IRELAND
17/09/17 – Vicar Street – Dublin, IRELAND
18/09/17 – Vicar Street – Dublin, IRELAND
20/09/17 – Usher Hall – Edinburgh, UK
21/09/17 – Usher Hall – Edinburgh, UK
22/09/17 – O2 Apollo – Manchester, UK
23/09/17 – O2 Apollo – Manchester, UK
25/09/17 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo – London, UK
26/09/17 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo – London, UK
27/09/17 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo – London, UK
28/09/17 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo – London, UK
05/10/17 – Wang Theatre – Boston, MA, USA
06/10/17 – Forest Hills Stadium – New York, NY, USA
11/10/17 – Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles, CA, USA
12/10/17 – CalCoast Credit Union Open Air Theatre – San Diego, CA, USA
14/10/17 – Greek Theatre – Berkeley, CA, USA
21/10/17 – Elbphilharmonie – Hamburg, GERMANY
23/10/17 – Tempodrom – Berlin, GERMANY
24/10/17 – Tempodrom – Berlin, GERMANY
25/10/17 – AFAS Live – Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
28/10/17 – Coliseum – Lisbon, PORTUGAL
30/10/17 – Palais des Beaux-Arts – Brussels, BELGIUM
31/10/17 – Palais des Beaux-Arts – Brussels, BELGIUM
02-04/11/17 – Pitchfork Paris, Paris, FRANCE
04/11/17 – Annexet – Stockholm, SWEDEN
05/11/17 – Annexet – Stockholm, SWEDEN
06/11/17 – Sentrum Scene – Oslo, NORWAY
07/11/17 – Sentrum Scene – Oslo, NORWAY
27/11/17 – Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall – Portland, OR, USA
28/11/17 – Paramount Theatre – Seattle, WA, USA
29/11/17 – Paramount Theatre – Seattle, WA, USA
01/12/17 – Queen Elizabeth Theatre – Vancouver BC, CANADA
02/12/17 – Queen Elizabeth Theatre – Vancouver BC, CANADA
04/12/17 – Verizon Hall – Philadelphia, PA, USA
07/12/17 – Metropolis – Montreal QC, CANADA
08/12/17 – Metropolis – Montreal QC, CANADA
09/12/17 – Sony Centre – Toronto ON, CANADA
10/12/17 – Hamilton Place Theatre – Hamilton ON, CANADA
12/12/17 – Civic Opera House – Chicago, IL, USA
13/12/17 – Civic Opera House – Chicago, IL, USA

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Mark Lanegan – Gargoyle

John Lewis
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Mark Lanegan – Gargoyle
Where male falsetto voices can be unsettling – disembodied, artificial, androgynous, ethereal, cosmic, otherworldly – ultra-low-frequency voices like Mark Lanegan’s are supposed to have the opposite connotations. They are supposed to suggest a reassuring rootsiness and authenticity, which is w...

Where male falsetto voices can be unsettling – disembodied, artificial, androgynous, ethereal, cosmic, otherworldly – ultra-low-frequency voices like Mark Lanegan’s are supposed to have the opposite connotations. They are supposed to suggest a reassuring rootsiness and authenticity, which is why we are comfortable with Lanegan as the godfather of grunge, as the gothic crooner, as the ravaged blues singer, the windswept acoustic troubadour. But men with very low voices aren’t meant to delve into the synthetic soundscapes of electronica. When they do, the effects can often be deliberately jarring, like when Leonard Cohen started croaking over tinny drum machines and toy-town synths in the mid-1980s.

However, Lanegan seems to have used the ethereal oddities of his to mirror the synthetic voicings of electronic music. Not merely a baritone, Lanegan is actually more like one of those freakishly low “oktavist” singers you get in Russian liturgical music, or a Tuvan throat singer, with a bowel-quaking growl that can sound as transgressively ethereal as any falsetto.

It’s why he seems to have fitted quite comfortably into the world of left-field synth pop. Think Depeche Mode at their darkest, crank up the doom and pitch-shift Dave Gahan’s voice down an octave, and you’re close to the appeal of Gargoyle, Lanegan’s darkly compelling new album.

Lanegan is a serial collaborator, someone who likes working with people who will push him out of the box. Over a career of more than three decades he has mentored musicians who went on to become American rock royalty – from Kurt Cobain to Queens Of The Stone Age – but much of his most interesting and adventurous material has been recorded with British artists. There have been lengthy partnerships with Glaswegian singer Isobel Campbell, electronica duo Soulsavers and maverick multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood, not to mention one-off collaborations with the likes of Massive Attack, PJ Harvey and James Lavelle’s UNKLE.

Here his transatlantic partnership is with little-known English multi-instrumentalist Rob Marshall. Formerly a member of Yorkshire indie-rock outfit Exit Calm – who played on the same bill as Lanegan in 2008 – he now makes music from his home studio in Kent. On resuming contact recently, Marshall sent over a bunch of nascent electronic instrumentals he’d recorded. Lanegan, suitably enthused, started writing lyrics, eventually transforming them into six Lanegan/Marshall co-writes that provide some of the most spectactular moments on Gargoyle.

The opener “Death’s Head Tattoo” clanks and rolls ominously, fizzing with murderous imagery. “Drunk On Destruction” puts Marshall’s Johnny Marr-ish cascading guitar over a clanking drum ‘n’ bass loop. “Nocturne” is a piece of minor-key electronica that judders propulsively, powered by the Peter Hook twangs of Dutch bass guitarist Martyn LeNoble and a pleasing burble of arpeggiated synths. Even better is “Beehive”, a prowling post-punk belter powered by another Joy Division-like bassline from LeNoble.

But Lanegan’s usual amanuensis, longterm producer Alain Johannes, also plays an important role. He co-writes the poppiest moment on the album, “Emperor”, a maddeningly catchy glam rock shuffle that Lanegan likens to early-70s Kinks, where a spangly Johannes guitar riff dovetails nicely with Josh Homme’s high-pitched backing vocals. “Sister”, conversely, is an elemental tale of witches, woods, briars and savage kingdoms set against a woozy, hypnotic selection of Mellotrons, vintage analog synths and tremolo guitars.

After years of crippling heroin habit, Lanegan has been clean since the millennium, and now seems to be comfortable using addiction as a metaphor throughout the album. On “Nocturne” the pain of loneliness and bereavement is likened to “that lonely drug is in my veins”; on “Beehive” the drug is more of a metaphor for love (“in my head, buzzed as a bee’s nest… honey just gets me stoned”); on “Emperor” the protagonist needs another bitter pill to help fight the demons that enslave him; while “Sister” is haunted by the image of a “morphine-drugged”.

Most of all, Lanegan seems to revel in a certain bleakness. Against a deceptively happy melody and hymnal harmonies, “First Day Of Winter” seems to revel in the “icy tears” and the cold that “chills my veins”. And the closer “Old Swan” seems to take welcome extinction for a higher aim. Sung in a major key at the upper end of Lanegan’s register (which, in fairness, is still lower than most baritone voices), it’s a pulsating paean of praise to mother nature that takes on a spiritual dimension. “Though my soul is not worth saving/my mistress and my queen/your spirit is larger than my sin”. It’s a bleakness that is almost cleansing and redemptive.

Q&A
You’ve started using more and more electronic instruments in recent years. Has it changed the way in which you write and work? 
I started messing around with the synths a little bit on Field Songs back in 2001 and then with drum machines and synths on Bubblegum in 2004. By the time I made in 2012 it had become a major element of my music. It feels like it’s been a natural progression and it has changed the way I write music in that now I don’t always start a song with guitar. Sometimes it begins with organ or synth, sometimes with drum machine.
 
What attracted you to Rob Marshall and his old band, Exit Calm?
Rob is an artist, really meticulous in the way he puts things together. I love his guitar playing and the sounds he gets. I love his songwriting and attention to detail.
 
Your producer Alain Johannes seems to play a more important role than usual on this record, both as a musician and a songwriter. What does he bring to your creative process?
Alain has played a huge role on my records since 2004. He brings so much to the table, often plays every instrument, records, mixes, co writes, you name it.  He makes the entire process easier and enjoyable and is the most important musical partner I’ve ever had.
 
As well as working a lot with UK musicians, I notice you’ve been posting songs on Twitter by the likes of Robert Wyatt, John Martyn, the Kinks and John Cale. Is there a conscious Anglophile tendency at work here?
I’m pretty sure that nationality has been coincidental, to be honest. Duke Garwood – who contributes horns and guitars to “Sister” on this album” – is someone I approached about collaborating when we recorded the album a few years ago. But everyone else first approached me. I find it hard to turn people down, you see!

Did you actually meet up with Rob for this record, or was it all done by mail and internet? Is that how you often work with UK collaborators?
So far, Rob and I have only worked long distance. It was the same with UNKLE. With Isobel Campbell, Soulsavers and Duke Garwood, some of it was done like that but most of the time we were in the same place while recording.

You have been posting angrily on Twitter about Trump since the election. Has any political sentiment made its way onto the album?
Anything that I’m feeling usually works its way into a song. But I might be the only one to know it…
INTERVIEW BY JOHN LEWIS

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Thom Yorke to score Suspiria remake

Michael Bonner
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Thom Yorke to score Suspiria remake
Thom Yorke will score a feature film for the first time, providing the soundtrack for a forthcoming remake of 1977's Suspiria. The remake is being directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, I Am Love) and will star Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson and Chloë Grace Moretz. Variety reports that...

Thom Yorke will score a feature film for the first time, providing the soundtrack for a forthcoming remake of 1977’s Suspiria.

The remake is being directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, I Am Love) and will star Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson and Chloë Grace Moretz.

Variety reports that Yorke will provide the score for Suspiria, which has finished filming and is currently in post-production. No release date has yet been announced.

In a statement, Guadgnino said, “Thom’s art transcends the contemporary. To have the privilege of his music and sound for Suspiria is a dream come true. The depth of his creation and artistic vision is so unique that our Suspiria will sound groundbreaking and will deeply resonate with viewers. Our goal is to make a movie that will be a disturbing and transforming experience: for this ambition, we could not find a better partner than Thom.”

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains reviewed

Michael Bonner
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Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains reviewed
Among the official merchandise available at Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains visitors can buy a tote bag featuring a sketch of a pig flying over the roof of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The image says a lot about the exhibition and the band it documents: a peculiarly English exploration of cult...

Among the official merchandise available at Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains visitors can buy a tote bag featuring a sketch of a pig flying over the roof of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The image says a lot about the exhibition and the band it documents: a peculiarly English exploration of culture, design and innovation. You can see it in artefacts like the Azimuth Co-Ordinator – a rectangular box used to control a quadraphonic sound system – or the remarkable technology used to animate a 3D hologram replica of the Dark Side Of The Moon light prism. Pink Floyd, the exhibition concludes, is not just the work of musicians – but also architects, illustrators and technical engineers. The visionary eccentricity of Pink Floyd may not have happened without them.

Following on from David Bowie Is – also at the V&A – and the Rolling Stones’ Exhibitionism, Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains similarly tells the band’s story through a mix of paraphernalia, gadgetry and film. The most interesting, perhaps, is the first. The cane used on Waters during his school days, a hand-written letter from Syd Barrett to girlfriend Jenny Spires, the page from Nick Mason’s 1968 diary, a 1975 tour rider (including “six hundred lbs of dry ice for each performance”), the Polaroid of Barrett from July 1975 when he arrived unannounced at Abbey Road during the sessions for Wish You Were Here. Meanwhile, gear like the Binson Echorec Baby – a delay system used by Barrett that looks like a prop from a 1960s episode of Doctor Who – is wonderfully Heath Robinson. Look up, or you might miss Barrett’s red bicycle suspended from the ceiling.

Inevitably, the earlier years feel the richest. The wonderful poster art for the UFO Club, IT magazine front covers and early Floyd rave-ups sets the bar very high. Commendably, the band’s formative history is remarkably well-preserved – there is a 1965 concert bill, two contracts for BBC sessions, acetates and tapes. Among the most historically puissant is a contract for a BBC Radio Top Gear programme with Barrett’s name crossed out and ‘David Gilmour’ hand-written in.

The scale of the exhibition blossoms as the Seventies’ progress. One room is devoted to breathtaking large-scale images taken during the Wish You Were Here cover shoot, another includes a giant Battersea Power Station, while another contains the two giant metal heads used on the Division Bell cover. They are undoubtedly impressive, but arguably they lack the textural warmth and intimacy of the early clobber. The through-line they present, though, is unquestionable. In 1967, Barrett told Melody Maker, “We feel that in the future, groups are going to have to offer much more than just a pop show. They’ll have to offer a well-presented theatre show.” For Floyd, the concept of a “well-presented theatre show” enlarged as the decades passed, as witnessed here by flying pigs, replica Spitfires and ever more elaborate stage props.

Aside from the band’s creative and technical achievements, the central notion presented here is one of harmony. Viewers will enjoy Gilmour and Roger Waters – filmed separately – warmly praising the other’s contributions to writing “Wish You Were Here”. The departures of both Barrett and Waters, along with Richard Wright’s enforced hiatus during the early Eighties, are discretely handled. A final room features the band’s Live8 reunion as a 360° experience – all good vibes and hugs.

For those who wonder whether this is a final, salutary hurrah to the band’s 50 years might do well to examine the Floyd family tree at the very start of the exhibition. At the end of a labyrinthine list that includes the Tea Set, Sigma 6 and other obscure names from the band’s pre-history sits the latest entry. It reads, “Pink Floyd 2008 – Present”. Maybe there’s some life still in these mortal remains, after all.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

The Rolling Stones announce European tour

Tom Pinnock
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The Rolling Stones announce European tour
The Rolling Stones have announced a new European tour, set to begin in Hamburg on September 9. Stones – No Filter sees the band play 13 gigs in Germany, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Austria and Sweden, with a completely new production and "state of the art stage design". ...

The Rolling Stones have announced a new European tour, set to begin in Hamburg on September 9.

Stones – No Filter sees the band play 13 gigs in Germany, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Austria and Sweden, with a completely new production and “state of the art stage design”.

The group’s Paris show will be the first show ever at the new U Arena venue, home to the city’s Racing 92 Rugby Club, while the band will also be the first major group to perform at Lucca City Wall in Lucca, Tuscany.

The Stones released their 23rd album, Blue & Lonesome, last December, which hit No 1 in the UK, Austria, Holland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and more.

Information about tickets can be found at rollingstones.com.

The Rolling Stones will play:

Hamburg Stadtpark (September 9)
Munich Olympic Stadium (12)
Spielberg at Red Bull Ring, Austria (16)
Zurich Letzigrund Stadium (20)
Lucca Summer Festival-City Walls (23)
Barcelona Olympic Stadium (27)
Amsterdam ArenA (30)
Copenhagen Parken Stadium (October 3)
Dusseldorf Esprit Arena (9)
Stockholm Friends Arena (12)
Arnhem GelreDome (15)
Paris U Arena (19)
Paris U Arena (22)

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

 

LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy: “I don’t want to do anything that would be disappointing to me as a 15-year-old”

John Lewis
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LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy: “I don’t want to do anything that would be disappointing to me as a 15-year-old”
Originally published in Uncut's June 2010 issue (Take 157). Interview: John Lewis LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy is one of that small list of pop stars who was well into his thirties by the time he’d achieved any success. “For most of my life, making music has cost me money,” says Murphy, w...

Originally published in Uncut’s June 2010 issue (Take 157). Interview: John Lewis

LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy is one of that small list of pop stars who was well into his thirties by the time he’d achieved any success. “For most of my life, making music has cost me money,” says Murphy, whose 2007 LCD release, Sound Of Silver, was Uncut’s Album Of The Year. “So I learned to live very, very cheaply. I worked in bookshops, I worked for accountants, and I did pretty much every job you could do in a nightclub. I DJ’d, I did lighting and sound mixing, I worked behind the bar and as a bouncer. I put up posters for clubs, which involved having to bribe the mob to avoid getting hit by garbage men with pipes. For years I was homeless, crashing on friends’ couches and in studios. By failing, deeply, at the one thing I wanted to do all my life, a lot of good, balancing stuff happened to me. It’s good for the brain to learn that you’re not guaranteed anything.”

It’s also made him a rather more balanced individual than some of the people in his orbit, even turning down approaches to collaborate from numerous big stars. “I got a phone message from Janet Jackson saying ‘Hi, I love “Losing My Edge”, can you do me something funky and dirty like that?’ I can’t really do off-the-peg stuff, so I never called back. It’s not a problem. I’ll always find a way to make a living. That’s why I’m not at all worried about making my last ever album as LCD Soundsystem.”

__________________________

You namecheck A-ha and 10cc on the lyrics to “Losing My Edge”, but I’ve always thought both were a bit shit. Which album or songs would you recommend to non-believers?
Phil Raines, Buckhurst Hill
I didn’t actually reference A-ha. It’s just me saying “haha”. But I love 10cc. I’ve always seen them as a songs band, rather than an album band. Of course, “I’m Not In Love”, which has very little to do with the rest of their catalogue, is amazing. But I also love “Good Morning Judge”, which is pretty funky, so is “The Dean And I” and “Art For Art’s Sake”. “The Things We Do For Love” was totally a radio classic when I was a kid. “The Worst Band In The World” is sampled by Dilla on Donuts. I like 10cc. So there, world! If you’re interested in real guilty pleasures, I also have a huge Yes record section. And once in a while, with some regularity, I have a day of just listening to Yes. Fragile and Time And A Word, primarily. When I’m really going for it, I’ll put on Close To The Edge and Relayer, the ones where you get just one track to the side of an album. Yeah, me and Vincent Gallo…

Tell us a secret about Britney!
Marina Diamandis, Marina And The Diamonds
Well, she swears like a trooper! The girl’s got a mouth on her. And she’s a doodler. She puts hearts and flowers over her “i”s and stuff. She’s got the handwriting of an optimistic nine-year-old! Yeah, we hung out in the studio for a day, with the idea to record something. But it didn’t really work out. I don’t write off silly pop people at all, because you never know where they’re coming from. My idea is to get someone like Britney in and play them Suicide. And you go, “What d’you think?” And they could be a bit [adopts little girl voice] “This is weird,” or they could be, “Holy shit! This is amazing?” You could play them Can and they could lose their marbles. These kind of realisations only come out after building up a relationship over a long time. It’d take more than a couple of records to get them to find themselves and their tastes.

Steely Dan announce first UK show for almost 10 years

Michael Bonner
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Steely Dan announce first UK show for almost 10 years
Steely Dan have announced details of their first UK show for nine years. They will appear at this year's BluesFest, at The O2 in London on October 29 on a bill that also includes The Doobie Brothers. Steely Dan last played the UK in 2009, on the Left Bank Holiday tour. BluesFest Director Leo Gree...

Steely Dan have announced details of their first UK show for nine years.

They will appear at this year’s BluesFest, at The O2 in London on October 29 on a bill that also includes The Doobie Brothers.

Steely Dan last played the UK in 2009, on the Left Bank Holiday tour.

BluesFest Director Leo Green, said, “It’s a real coup for BluesFest to be presenting Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers at this year’s festival – they rarely perform in the UK and are two bands who have influenced so many artists from across the musical spectrum. This will be Steely Dan’s first UK show since 2009 and, on an incredible double bill that also includes The Doobie Brothers, we’re hoping that fans of quality music will be as excited about this first announcement as we are.”

BlueFest will take place this year on Friday October 27 – Sunday October 29.

Tickets go on general sale on Friday, May 12 at 10am. The O2 pre-sale begins on Wednesday, May 10 at 10am and the Live Nation pre-sale begins at 10am on Thursday May 11. Tickets are available by clicking here.

The June 2017 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Summer Of Love, talking to the musicians, promoters and scenesters on both sides of the Atlantic who were there. Plus, we count down the 50 essential songs from the Summer Of Love, from The Seeds to The Smoke, and including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Elsewhere in the issue, we remember Chuck Berry, go on the road with Bob Dylan and there are interview Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Fred Wesley, Jane Birkin and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ co-conspirators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. Our free CD has been exclusively compiled for us by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and includes cuts from Todd Rundgren, Neu!, Van Dyke Parks, The Shaggs, Arthur Russell and Cate Le Bon. Plus there’s Feist, Paul Weller, Perfume Genius, Ray Davies, Joan Shelley, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Alice Coltrane, John Martyn and more in our exhaustive reviews section

Blondie: “We weren’t like the rest of the New York bands…”

Michael Bonner
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Blondie: “We weren’t like the rest of the New York bands…”
With Blondie's new album Pollinator now on sale, I thought I'd dust down my cover story on the band from Uncut Take 229. The piece largely focussed on the band's early years, set against the backdrop of New York's economic crisis, rising crime and flourishing downtown arts scene. Aside from Debbie ...

With Blondie’s new album Pollinator now on sale, I thought I’d dust down my cover story on the band from Uncut Take 229.

The piece largely focussed on the band’s early years, set against the backdrop of New York’s economic crisis, rising crime and flourishing downtown arts scene. Aside from Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke from the band, Jim Jarmusch, Lenny Kaye and John Waters were among the other eyewitnesses who contributed to the piece. Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

____________

One of Debbie Harry’s most treasured possessions in the earliest days of Blondie was a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro coupe. “It was turquoise, teal colour, four on the floor,” she recalls. “It originally belonged to my mother. The car got stolen a couple of times and then abandoned. It probably looked a whole lot better than it was. A Camaro was a hot car. One time, I know the car got abandoned because the linkage was bad and it got stuck in reverse. That was interesting, driving round New York in reverse. You took your chances. Of course, New York’s changed now because it’s all very gentrified.”

It transpires that New York alone in having gentrified since the mid-1970s. Harry – and Blondie’s – trajectory from downtown scenesters to uptown habitués has been almost as profound as the transition made by the city itself since Harry first moved there in the late Sixties. “There was a lot of freedom, a lot of underground sentiment in music and the arts,” Harry recalls. “It was a direct hangover from the 1960s, which was all about freedom. Freedom of this, freedom of that. Freedom of underwear, freedom of love. The entire hippy nation.”

Culturally stitched into fabric of alternative New York since the early Seventies, Blondie have always been attuned to the city’s artistic achievements – Phil Spector girl groups, Brill Building song craft, the wiry energy of CBGB, Studio 54’s disco gloss and South Bronx hip hop battles. The band’s connections among New York’s vibrant community of artists, photographers, filmmakers and designers included Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Amos Poe and Stephen Sprouse.

Blondie’s evolution corresponded with an unsettled time in New York’s history. The city was close to bankruptcy. There were riots, strikes, a blackout and the Son of Sam serial murders. “New York was a different animal then,” says Chris Stein. “The whole culture was considerably different, too. Everything was getting shittier and there were more people fucked up on bad drugs, there was more violence.”

“We had an economic crisis,” says filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. “A lot of the East Village was still very wild and dangerous. There were abandoned buildings. It was crazy, but there were a lot of things growing between the cracks.”

Against the backdrop of New York during these bombed out years, Blondie’s ascent takes place in half-forgotten bars on the Lower East Side, a basement recording studio in Queens, the rooftop of Radio City Music Hall, a Little Italy neighbourhood and other corners of the city. Just how did Blondie – operating out of run down apartment blocks during an especially blighted period in New York’s history – become one of the biggest groups of their generation?

“They were always underestimated in the scene, and somewhat unfairly,” says Lenny Kaye. “The music they played had such traditional roots – they weren’t avant gardists, by any means – and I think it terms of CBGB’s, that not only caused them to be underdogs but it was also the secret to why they had worldwide success. In a way, they were the most accessible in a scene where accessibility wasn’t actually regarded as a virtue. Within terms of performance Debbie is such a shining light. She is able to project this spirit of innocence and mild aggression and verve so well from the stage.”

Reflecting on Blondie’s earliest days, Debbie Harry admits, “We had a really hard time being heard. DJs, radio, record labels, they were really not into it. You push harder, or you walk away. We had moments of doubt, I’m sure. We all struggled with it. But it’s like a virus, in a way. You get bitten by this bug, being a rock star or musician or whatever it is, and you really can’t get away from it.”

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