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Suede announce new album and Southbank Centre takeover

Sam Richards
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Suede announce new album and Southbank Centre takeover

Suede have announced that their new album Antidepressants will be released on September 5 via BMG. Watch a video for new single “Disintegrate” below:

“If Autofiction was our punk record,” says Brett Anderson, “Antidepressants is our post-punk record. It’s about the tensions of modern life, the paranoia, the anxiety, the neurosis. We are all striving for connection in a disconnected world. This was the feel I wanted the songs to have. The album is called Antidepressants. This is broken music for broken people.”

THE JULY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING NICK DRAKE., A 15-TRACK NEW MUSIC CD, THE WHO, BLACK SABBATH, BRIAN ENO, MATT BERNINGER, PULP, BOB WEIR AND MORE

The album was recorded live with Suede’s long-time producer Ed Buller at Belgium’s ICP Studios, London’s RAK and Sleeper Sounds, and RMV in Sweden. “It is genuinely exciting being in this band,” adds Anderson. “It feels like we’re still pushing creatively.”

Antidepressants will be available in multiple formats including CD (standard and deluxe), vinyl (standard and colour variants), picture disc LP, cassette and as a deluxe box set. All pre-orders are available here.

The release of Antidepressants will be marked by Suede Takeover – a special concert series over four nights hosted in different venues across London’s Southbank Centre throughout September 2025.

It begins at the Royal Festival Hall on September 13 and 14 with two sets of “classics, hits and brand new music”. On September 17 the band will perform in the Purcell Room for “an unusual and intimate off-mic evening”. The residency closes on September 19 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with Suede’s first-ever full orchestral headline show, in collaboration with the Paraorchestra.

Southbank Centre members can access an exclusive ticket presale on Wednesday May 21 at 10am. Fans who pre-order the album from the official Suede store can access a presale from Thursday May 22 at 10am. General on-sale begins on Friday May 23 at 10am from here.

Five of the best new acts we saw at The Great Escape 2025

Sam Richards
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Five of the best new acts we saw at The Great Escape 2025

For four days every May, hundreds of new bands from around the world descend on Brighton in the hope that a salvo of a quickfire shows around the city’s many small venues, cafes, beaches, record shops and rooftops will propel them to greatness. Here’s Uncut’s pick of this year’s hopefuls…

THE JULY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING NICK DRAKE, A 15-TRACK NEW MUSIC CD, THE WHO, BLACK SABBATH, BRIAN ENO, MATT BERNINGER, PULP, BOB WEIR AND MORE

TYLER BALLGAME
If you can persuade 200 or so people to duck into a dingy nightclub at midday on the sunniest day of the year, then you’re clearly doing something right. Tyler Ballgame – apparently the name of both the singer and the band – are already generating buzz for their impressively in-the-pocket retro-soul swing, something akin to Roy Orbison fronting the Hi Rhythm Section, with a hint of Alabama Shakes. Tyler himself is a bear-like figure with a surprisingly feminine voice, inhabiting these songs with just the right balance of vulnerability and swagger. Yes, he does look a bit like Jack Black in the Minecraft movie. But get past that, and he could really steal your heart.

FOLK BITCH TRIO
It takes some cojones to open your set with an a capella rendition of “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)”, especially when you’re singing directly into the faces of curious punters packed like sardines into the tiny Bella Union Shop. But this Australian trio’s own songs are every bit as stunning: the wry, twentysomething dramas of Boygenius delivered in the inventive three-part harmonies of The Roches. It’s a thrill to hear a line like “I had a filthy dream” sung so beautifully, but they can also do straight-up heartache; at the end of “Mary’s Playing The Harp”, about having an emotional wobble a long way from home, both audience and band are wiping away a tear.

WESTSIDE COWBOY
There’s a heartening new wave of young British bands embracing Americana. Manchester’s Westside Cowboy begin their set with a lilting country waltz, even if thereafter it’s ’90s alt.rock all the way, with only a faint whiff of twang: think Buffalo Tom, Superchunk or the noisier Saddle Creek stuff. All four band-members sing, including powerhouse drummer Paddy Murphy, whose relentless pummelling really helps elevate Westside Cowboy above their slacker-rock peers. He ends the set by removing his snare drum and marching to the front to join the rest of the band for a campfire singalong, emphasising that their songs work at all volumes.

THE NEW EVES
The New Eves look like they’d be more at home playing a forest clearing than a no-frills rock club, but cheered on by a supportive local crowd they make for a compelling spectacle. Despite the quasi-pagan stylings, they deal in rousing feminist anthems rather than twee fairytales, eschewing power chords in favour of violin, ’cello and a drummer who occasionally doubles on flute. It makes for an appealingly brittle, earthy, tribal sound, sometimes reminiscent of PJ Harvey circa Let England Shake. 

ELLIE O’NEILL
Playing solo in Brighton’s One Church, Ellie O’Neill barely talks or moves for the duration of her set – save to remove a jumper or put her acoustic guitar into ever-more complex tunings – but she holds a small crowd in the palm of her hand throughout. Partly this is due to her evident instrumental prowess, holding down chords that even Joni Mitchell might find challenging. But her lyrics also regularly stop you in your tracks with their stark, visceral imagery. “The chemical drips / From your mouth to your hips” runs her first line, and it only gets more harrowing from there. Admirers of Adrianne Lenker’s solo records should investigate immediately.

The Who fire Zak Starkey… again!

Michael Bonner
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The Who fire Zak Starkey… again!

The Who have parted ways with their drummer Zak Starkey, just one month after he was sacked and swiftly reinstated, The Guardian reports.

The Who have parted ways with their drummer Zak Starkey, just one month after he was sacked and swiftly reinstated, The Guardian reports.

THE JUNE 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING R.E.M., A DOORS RARITIES CD, BON IVER, PRINCE, SHACK, AMY WINEHOUSE, DIRE STRAITS, STEREOLAB AND MORE

Starkey has been the band’s drummer since 1996.

In an Instagram post on Monday, May 19, Pete Townshend announced that Starkey was no longer performing with The Who.

“After many years of great work on drums from Zak the time has come for a change,” Townshend’s post read. “A poignant time. Zak has lots of new projects in hand and I wish him the best.”

Townshend went on to say that Scott Devours, from Roger Daltrey‘s solo band, will play drums on the tour instead.

Starkey responded shortly after Townshend, writing on Instagram:

“I was fired two weeks after reinstatement and asked to make a statement saying I had quit the who to pursue my other musical endevours this would be a lie. I love the who and would never had quit. So I didn’t make the statement ….quitting the who would also have let down the countless amazing people who stood up for me (thank you all a million times over and more) thru the weeks of mayhem of me going ‘in an out an in an out an in an out like a bleedin squeezebox x To clarify ‘other projects’ yes I do have other projects and always have. The Who have been sporadic or minimalist in touring most years apart from a two extensive tours in 2000 and 2006/7
To be precise while I was in the who 1996-1999 I had other projects with Johnny Marr, Lightning Seeds and Mike Scott.
2000-2003 Johnny Marr and The Healers opening for oasis in Europe releasing album and 6 month world tour 2004-2008 Oasis 2 studio albums and 120live shows. 2006-2017 Pengu!Ns , Sshh touring internationally. Releasing 3 singles, Kasabian bbc proms 2007 Weller Coxon Starkey Mani.
2015 Hollywood Vampires Roxy LA shows and rock in Rio 2017-2020 Trojan Jamaica record label releasing three albums and winning Grammy for best reggae album 2020
2020 Peter Green Tribute Concert . As u see there has always been time for other projects … 2022-2025/now mantra of the cosmos with Shaun Ryder Bez Andy Bell and NG. Releasing singles but not touring cos members are so busy. None of this has ever interfered with The Who and was never a problem for them . The lie is or would have been that I quit the who- i didn’t. I love the who and everyone in it.”

Starkey was first fired from the band in April, but reinstated three days later.

Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, Outlaw Music Festival, Hollywood Bowl, May 16

Kevin Perry
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Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, Outlaw Music Festival, Hollywood Bowl, May 16

On a mild night in Hollywood, Bob Dylan is still not ready for his close-up. When the 83-year-old strikes up his band, stationed behind his upright piano and working his way through his Oscar-winning 2000 single “Things Have Changed”, the screens on either side of the Bowl remain defiantly dark. They do eventually flicker into life a handful of songs later, but even then only to offer a fixed wide shot of Dylan at centre stage with his bandmates grouped around him like a Roman phalanx. As an audience, we perhaps sense we are being kept at arm’s length. “I used to care,” drawls Dylan. “But things have changed.”

THE JULY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING NICK DRAKE, A 15-TRACK NEW MUSIC CD, THE WHO, BLACK SABBATH, BRIAN ENO, MATT BERNINGER, PULP, BOB WEIR AND MORE

For this third date of the 10th anniversary tour for Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival, Dylan follows immediately in the wake of the Michigan-born bluegrass player Billy Strings, whose set climaxes in a frantic, high-energy tornado of duelling guitars and banjos.

Dylan’s set begins at a more relaxed clip but builds swiftly into a heady blend of early classics, deep cuts and covers. He seems to be enjoying himself. After a stuttering “Simple Twist Of Fate” and a swooning “Forgetful Heart”, he lets out a loud chuckle and asks someone in the audience: “What are you eating down there? What is that?”

For all his own magnificent material, the early highlight of the set is his cover of George “Wild Child” Butler’s Chicago blues number “Axe And The Wind”. The song was a new addition to Dylan’s repertoire just two dates ago, but its bluesy swing suits him and his band down to the ground. The lyrics were written by the great bluesman Willie Dixon but the indelible closing line – “I may be here forever, I may not be here at all” – doesn’t appear on the original recording and is surely a Dylan refinement. A similar righteous stomp powers his own “Early Roman Kings”, from 2012’s Tempest, another standout.

By now Dylan fans are well accustomed to his rearranging of his own standards, and an expansive version of “All Along The Watchtower” is a wild delight. That’s followed by another pair of reinvented classics, “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry” and “Desolation Row”. On either side of that run, Dylan delves into his own internal library for a pair of covers that seem to speak to his personal history: “I’ll Make It All Up To You”, a 1958 hit for Jerry Lee Lewis, and “Share Your Love With Me”, recorded by both Bobby “Blue” Bland and Aretha Franklin.

After a strutting “Love Sick”, from 1997’s Time Out Of Mind, Dylan takes a moment to introduce his band: rhythm guitarist Doug Lancio, longtime bassist Tony Garnier, drummer Anton Fig and lead guitarist Bob Britt, praised as “one of those guys who went down to the crossroad and made a deal with the Devil, and boy you can tell.” 

They close with “Blind Willie McTell” and a crowd-pleasing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, on which somehow Dylan’s voice sounds stronger and younger than it has all night. If the audience feel they’re finally being invited in, it’s another feint. On the two previous stops of this tour, Dylan has returned for an encore and a surprise new cover: first The Pogues’ “A Rainy Night in Soho” and second Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party”. Tonight, he just disappears never to return. Oh well. As Nelson sang, and as Dylan doesn’t tonight: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

Half an hour later, a banner across the stage drops down to reveal Willie Nelson seated in front of a rapidly unfurling American flag. As the 92-year-old sings an upbeat “Whiskey River” there’s a croak in his voice, but by the time he’s rattled through “Still Is Still Moving to Me”, “Bloody Mary Morning” and “I Never Cared For You” the old richness and warmth is back.

He’s flanked by two young members of his extended family: his own son Micah, currently also to be found in Neil Young‘s new band The Chrome Hearts, and Waylon Payne, the son of his longtime guitarist Jody Payne and the country singer Sammi Smith. They help share the singing load, with Micah winning over the crowd by explaining that his song “(Die When I’m High) Halfway To Heaven” was written after his dad uttered the title line while they were getting stoned together. Payne, meanwhile, sings a rollicking version of Merle Haggard’s “Workin’ Man Blues” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night”, which was a 1970 hit for his mother.

That allows Nelson to focus his energy on his signature hits: a singalong “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”, an exuberant “On The Road Again” and the always heartbreaking “You Were Always On My Mind” and “Georgia (On My Mind)”. The very best moments, though, are when Nelson stares death in the face and laughs.

On his version of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf”, the title track from his excellent recent covers record, he sings defiantly: “I’ll be here through eternity, if you wanna know how long / If they cut down this tree, I’ll show up in a song.” The audience cheer that sentiment, and they’re up on their feet dancing as Nelson runs straight into his own joint-in-cheek broadsides at mortality “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me (When I Die)” and “Still Not Dead”.

“I woke up still not dead again today / The internet said I’d passed away,” he sings on the latter, eyes twinkling. “But don’t bury me, I’ve got a show to play.” Long may this pair of never-ending tours keep rolling along.

Bob Dylan set list:

Things Have Changed 
Simple Twist Of Fate 
Forgetful Heart 
Axe And The Wind
To Ramona 
Early Roman Kings 
Under the Red Sky 
I’ll Make It All Up To You
All Along the Watchtower 
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry 
Desolation Row 
Share Your Love With Me
Love Sick
Blind Willie McTell
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

Willie Nelson set list:

Whiskey River 
Stay A Little Longer 
Still Is Still Moving to Me 
Bloody Mary Morning
I Never Cared for You 
(Die When I’m High) Halfway to Heaven 
Workin’ Man Blues
Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys 
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground 
On the Road Again 
You Were Always on My Mind 
Good Hearted Woman 
Georgia (On My Mind)
Help Me Make It Through the Night
Everything Is Bullshit
Last Leaf 
Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die
Still Not Dead
I Thought About You, Lord 
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? / I’ll Fly Away 
I Saw the Light

Introducing The 200 Greatest Heavy Rock Albums…Ranked!

John Robinson
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Introducing The 200 Greatest Heavy Rock Albums…Ranked!

In rock’s house there are many mansions. Soft and progressive, hard, and – as we celebrate in this new magazine – heavy.

You might want to split hairs with what we’ve done here. But in the run-up to their final performance this summer, we’ve allowed Black Sabbath, our cover stars, to be our guide to our 200 excellent heavy selections in this publication.

This doesn’t only mean Sabbath themselves, of course – or indeed the key records by the other foundational heavy rock groups like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. We find room for selections by those groups whose output runs faster (like Metallica) and less bluesy (like Iron Maiden), not to mention that which touches on the psychedelic (like say, The Groundhogs or the first Scorpions album).

It’s about the freshness of the music. And if there’s a sound which seems a perfect foundation for the 200 albums we’ve ranked and reviewed here, then it’s that of the first three Sabbath albums. Which is to say that of a band catching the full force of their music in the studio, maybe not spending a huge number of weeks in doing so and possibly recorded by Rodger Bain. Some of Bain’s output is in here (LPs by Budgie, for example), but there’s plenty that wasn’t which captures some of his heavy magic. Outside the mainstream, check out Toad and Iron Claw. Within it, try Rocka Rolla the debut album by Judas Priest, a pleasant discovery while editing the magazine.

There’s no grunge in here, though you could argue that the first Soundgarden album warrants a place. Maybe more controversially perhaps, there aren’t very many “heavy metal” albums in here. For one thing, it’s not a term that Tony Iommi agrees with, for another, the production values of the 1980s – the decade from which HM predominantly derives – didn’t always allow the music to punch the weight you might hope for down the decades. There’s no Stoner/Doom, which could also be a fairly lively conversation, since Sabbath are the spiritual leaders of all that.

The hope here is to use genre as a jumping off point for new listening (or re-listening) than to imprison you in a vinyl straitjacket, like the one on Quiet Riot’s 1983 chart topper Metal Health, but let’s not go there. This, after all, is a series which aims to bring great records to your attention, wherever they come from. For those about to read, we salute you.

It’s in the shops tomorrow but you can get your copy direct from us here.

Benmont Tench – The Melancholy Season

Fiona Shepherd
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Benmont Tench – The Melancholy Season

Benmont Tench doesn’t name his pianos as such, but he lovingly distinguishes each of the keyboards he plays on his latest album. “Mr Tench’s piano” is a Steinway B. So is “the Village Recorder’s piano” used in the eponymous studio. “Mr Wilson’s piano”, belonging to producer Jonathan Wilson, is a 1913 Steinway A3. You get to know all these keyboard characters and more on The Melancholy Season, the gorgeous, heart-warming second solo album by a musician better known as a sought-after Los Angeles session player and lifetime member of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

Buy The Melancholy Season here

Benmont Tench doesn’t name his pianos as such, but he lovingly distinguishes each of the keyboards he plays on his latest album. “Mr Tench’s piano” is a Steinway B. So is “the Village Recorder’s piano” used in the eponymous studio. “Mr Wilson’s piano”, belonging to producer Jonathan Wilson, is a 1913 Steinway A3. You get to know all these keyboard characters and more on The Melancholy Season, the gorgeous, heart-warming second solo album by a musician better known as a sought-after Los Angeles session player and lifetime member of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

THE JUNE 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING R.E.M., A DOORS RARITIES CD, BON IVER, PRINCE, SHACK, AMY WINEHOUSE, DIRE STRAITS, STEREOLAB AND MORE

Benjamin Montmorency Tench III’s artistic alliance with Petty stretches back to the early ’70s in their native Florida. He was a founding member of the Heartbreakers, collaborating joyfully across the decades until Petty’s untimely death in 2017 put a full stop on the band just as they had rounded off their 40th-anniversary tour. Since the early ’80s, he has also applied “the Tench touch” to countless records and sessions, starting with Stevie Nicks’ solo debut Bella Donna and Dylan’s Shot Of Love. He played alongside Petty on Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl and has executed subtle work for Alanis Morissette, Jackson Browne, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Costello and, most recently, Ringo Starr and The Rolling Stones.

Tench is no flashy showman, sliding in like part of the furniture on Hackney Diamonds’ “Dreamy Skies”, brooding beautifully on Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and delivering an emotional gut punch on Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt”. He takes the same intuitive approach to his own music. “If a song shows up, you’ve gotta write it,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. Feargal Sharkey and Roseanne Cash have benefitted from his largesse, scoring hits with “You Little Thief” and Petty co-write “Never Be You”, respectively.

The songs that make up on The Melancholy Season have been percolating for some time, with births (his first child), deaths (Petty) and marriage (to writer Alice Carbone) all delaying recording. Tench favours a limited palette, citing Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, both uncluttered benchmarks using a small cast of players. Tench’s team here includes Jonathan Wilson, also on drums, bassist Sebastian Steinberg and classy cameos from Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, singer-songwriter Jenny O and Nickel Creek’s Sarah Watkins.

The opening title track is a gem of poetic parsimony, conjuring a world of turning seasons and moods from a few well-chosen phrases, layered with simpatico textures. First, the graceful stroking of piano, lithe and effortless, then gentle bassline, metronomic beat and the warm bath of organ, keeping it simple yet somehow sumptuous. It’s an arresting start, the work of a man alive to and respectful of his environment. “Pledge” is pacier and more voluble, a peppy meditation on the mysteries of time and nature with a touch of fabulism and Biblical allusions. It builds to a clamorous prayer for social justice, looking for some earthly redemption, and signs off with a well-aimed lyrical dart: “Jesus ain’t the only one that wept.”

Tench steers his team through the rollicking rock’n’roll of “Rattle”, an impish cavalcade of freewheeling philosophy and juke joint spirit, before dispensing with their services on bare bones ballad “If She Knew”. There is a husky sweetness to Tench’s tone, channelling some of the gruff melodrama of Lee Hazlewood here and the beer-goggled night vision of Tom Waits on mischievous lounge bar vignette “Wobbles”, which previously featured as an instrumental on his 2014 debut You Should Be So Lucky.

“Back” is delicious brooding R&B, with aqueous bassline, stealthy sustained notes on Hammond and acid inflections from Wilson on guitar. Tench sounds like a total cat but not so cool that he won’t beg for the return of his woman. He lets the vulnerability in his voice leak out on outlaw country amble “Like Crystal”. Accompanied by a loping bassline, like a trusty old steed, he sizes up the return of an old adversarial love. Even better, “Dallas” reels you in from the first line as Tench plays the mildly repentant drifter, raising a wizened toast to all the folks he’s vexed before.

Tench jokes that he sings like Chet Baker if Baker couldn’t sing. His second instrument has taken a battering in the decade since his debut, but he has emerged from mouth cancer surgery in 2023 with a rebuilt jaw, refreshed purpose and an album of songs encompassing beguiling naivety, terse wisdom and twinkling regret.

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Julee Cruise – Fall_Float_Love (Works 1989 – 1998)

Ana Gavrilovska
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Julee Cruise – Fall_Float_Love (Works 1989 – 1998)

The ethereal voice of Julee Cruise is as essential to the world of Twin Peaks as cherry pie and Dale Cooper’s dreams, yet we may have never heard it if visionary director David Lynch had more funds. He really wanted to include This Mortal Coil’s cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song To The Siren” in Blue Velvet, but he couldn’t afford the rights. Composer Angelo Badalamenti, who in short order would become Lynch’s go-to for the rest of their careers, was tasked with writing an original piece of music for the movie instead, given little instruction beyond its eventual title (the phrase “mysteries of love”) and an idea that the song should “float on the sea of time”, with Elizabeth Fraser’s voice in mind. Badalamenti had just met Cruise at a theatre workshop, so he brought her in. The result is a uniquely incandescent piece of music, shimmering poetry animated by Cruise’s vertiginously angelic voice. Blue Velvet is unimaginable without it.

Buy Fall_Float_Love (Works 1989 – 1998) here

The ethereal voice of Julee Cruise is as essential to the world of Twin Peaks as cherry pie and Dale Cooper’s dreams, yet we may have never heard it if visionary director David Lynch had more funds. He really wanted to include This Mortal Coil’s cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song To The Siren” in Blue Velvet, but he couldn’t afford the rights. Composer Angelo Badalamenti, who in short order would become Lynch’s go-to for the rest of their careers, was tasked with writing an original piece of music for the movie instead, given little instruction beyond its eventual title (the phrase “mysteries of love”) and an idea that the song should “float on the sea of time”, with Elizabeth Fraser’s voice in mind. Badalamenti had just met Cruise at a theatre workshop, so he brought her in. The result is a uniquely incandescent piece of music, shimmering poetry animated by Cruise’s vertiginously angelic voice. Blue Velvet is unimaginable without it.

THE JUNE 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING R.E.M., A DOORS RARITIES CD, BON IVER, PRINCE, SHACK, AMY WINEHOUSE, DIRE STRAITS, STEREOLAB AND MORE

It’s fitting that a cosmic bit of happenstance brought Cruise into the orbit of those who would shape the career documented on Fall_Float_Love (Works 1989-1998), a 2CD set compiling her first two albums alongside additional singles and remixes. Her first LP, Floating Into The Night, was originally released in 1989 and introduced the world to the hazy, romantic mysteries that the three collaborators would bring to life together. The Voice Of Love was released in 1993, a sonic continuation of the first album’s otherworldly moods and retro atmospherics.

Cruise, like the characters whose voice she came to represent, came from a small town: Creston, Iowa, with a population of less than 8,000 (her father was the town dentist). She headed to Des Moines’ Drake University to study French horn, then joined the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis, and finally moved to New York, where she would have her fateful meeting with Badalamenti. He wasn’t even sure she’d be the right fit for the Lynch gig; Cruise was a powerhouse vocalist, belting out theatre tunes. She was encouraged to explore a softer side of herself, so she held back, letting her voice glide and hover instead of commanding attention. Lynch and Badalamenti were so taken with “Mysteries Of Love” that they wanted to keep recording with Cruise. The songs were moody, dreamy and undoubtedly strange; Cruise was unsure how well it would work. Her family members didn’t care for it, and radio stations had a hard time with it, even the avant-garde ones. But over time, Floating Into The Night eventually became both an iconic dream pop album and an iconoclastic one, a deeply Lynchian work hung on the ethereal scaffolding of Cruise’s reverb-laden voice. It was also David Bowie’s favourite soundtrack to dinner.

Cruise’s voice would go on to score numerous other moments in Lynch productions. The languorous, jazzy doo-wop of “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart“, the sinister sweetness of “Into The Night” and “I Float Alone“, and the unsettling beauty of “The World Spins” were all included in the 1990 Lynch production Industrial Symphony No. 1 (as well as “This Is Our Night” from Cruise’s second album). Three of those songs were also notably used in Twin Peaks, and then there’s “Falling“, the instrumental version of which is the show’s monumental theme song, transformed into a haunting love song with Cruise’s vocals.

The Voice Of Love includes three songs that Lynch used in 1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (in which Cruise also made a brief appearance): the devastating ambient pop ballad “Questions In A World Of Blue” and instrumental versions of “She Would Die For Love” and “The Voice Of Love”. An instrumental version of “Kool Kat Walk”, with its off-kilter piano and finger snaps, fittingly appears in Lynch’s Wild At Heart, while the electric atmosphere of “Up In Flames” originated in Industrial Symphony No. 1.

All of this is deeply enjoyable on its own, in no small part due to Cruise’s hypnotic voice, but the context of Lynch’s work shades the music considerably. It’s a revelation to hear a legendary Frank Booth line issue from Cruise’s gentle lips, imbuing the sick words with a sweeter sense of melancholy. All the Americana flourishes Lynch sweeps into his films are represented here sonically, the retro sensibilities of lounge, noir and girl groups comfortably cohabiting with electronic experimentation and off-putting dissonance. And then there’s the jazz element, a nod backwards to ’50s crooners and forwards to the controlled freedom of the avant-garde.

Cruise would go on to have a unique career, at one point subbing in live for Cindy Wilson of The B-52s and later exploring trip-hop with DJ Dmitry of dance music group Deee-Lite. She even reappeared in Twin Peaks: The Return, her voice and live performance a deeply necessary component of the show’s enduring mythology. Cruise died in 2022, followed by Badalamenti later that year, while Lynch of course passed away this January. Humming eternally within their shared creative legacy are the works documented on Fall_Float_Love, three perfect words to encapsulate Cruise’s enigmatic career as an avatar for Lynch’s fascinations.

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Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band, Co-Op Live, Manchester, May 14, 2025

Dave Simpson
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Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band, Co-Op Live, Manchester, May 14, 2025

Bruce Springsteen has spoken recently about the responsibility of the artist in a turbulent world and he wastes no time putting those words into action tonight. He opens with an extraordinary monologue in which he calls on “the righteous spirit of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times”, rails against how the country that he loves has fallen into “the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration” and concludes by asking “all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!” Then the 18-piece E Street Band hurtle into the title track of this two-year tour, now on its final leg, with a righteously impassioned “Land Of Hope And Dreams”.

Bruce Springsteen has spoken recently about the responsibility of the artist in a turbulent world and he wastes no time putting those words into action tonight. He opens with an extraordinary monologue in which he calls on “the righteous spirit of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times”, rails against how the country that he loves has fallen into “the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration” and concludes by asking “all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!” Then the 18-piece E Street Band hurtle into the title track of this two-year tour, now on its final leg, with a righteously impassioned “Land Of Hope And Dreams”.

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Springsteen, a stadium veteran of over 40 years, rarely plays indoor venues in Europe now, but the relative intimacy of the first of three nights at this 23,500 seater allows an unusually closer quarters view of a performer on a mission, delivering what must surely be the most politically-charged show of his career. As he stands just feet from the front rows, video screens show the singer’s face furrow with concentration as he delivers every line with passion, precision and often venom. Springsteen is 75 years old now. His hair is greyer and wirier. He no longer plays guitar on his back or does knee slides across the stage like he did in his youth, but he’s still more than capable of helming a powerhouse two and a half hour show which never once loses fire, brimstone or focus. The main members of the E Street Band are now in their 70s too, but with saxophonist Jake Clemons replacing his late, legendary uncle Clarence, they roar away as inimitably as ever.

The song choices reflect Springsteen’s prevailing mood and theme. Delivered with barely a pause for each “wun-two-three-fah!” between them, the likes of “Death To My Hometown”,  “Youngstown” and “Darkness On The Edge Of Town” are songs about ordinary lives or livelihoods crushed by situations beyond their control. Springsteen pointedly dedicates 2020’s “Rainmaker” – receiving its live debut – to “our dear leader”. It’s the story of Charles Hatfield, an early 20th century sewing machine salesman who claimed to be able to produce rain but who was exposed as a conman. Springsteen never once mentions Donald Trump by name, but during an acoustic “House Of A Thousand Guitars” the line “The criminal clown has stolen the throne/He steals what he can never own” triggers spontaneous cheering.

The singer previews a gospel-tinged “My City Of Ruins” with another angry monologue about the “weird, strange and dangerous shit going on in America”, detailing events from the “rolling back of historic civil rights legislation” to “siding with dictators”. However, he urges “we’ll survive this moment” as the show’s life-affirming second half gradually becomes a hope-filled celebration of the power of music to protest and inspire.

Although a rousing “Hungry Heart” appears early on, the floodgates open with “Because The Night“, an epic singalong “Badlands” and a furiously rejuvenated “Born In The USA”, which sees gravel creep into Springsteen’s vocals as he roars the chorus with the crowd. “Dancing In The Dark” is pure gleeful pop and “Born To Run” sounds so enormous one fears the roof will blow off and it won’t be an indoor venue any more. By now, the house lights are up, guitarist Nils Lofgren is spinning round during solos, the audience’s  hands are in the air and Springsteen is down in the crowd for “the bit that really matters”.

By the end, for a closing cover of Bob Dylan’s rallying cry “Chimes Of Freedom”, he looks emotionally and physically drained, but euphoric. The message of this incredible show is that however bad things may seem people have the power. As Springsteen puts it, “I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said: ‘In this world there’s isn’t as much humanity as people would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.” Amen.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played:

Land Of Hope And Dreams
Death To My Hometown
Lonesome Day
My Love Will Not Let You Down
Rainmaker
Darkness On The Edge Of Town
The Promised Land
Hungry Heart
My Hometown
Youngstown
Murder Inc.
Long Walk Home
House Of A Thousand Guitars
My City Of Ruins
Letter To You
Because The Night
Human Touch
Wrecking Ball
The Rising
Badlands
Thunder Road
Born In The U.S.A.
Born To Run
Bobby Jean
Dancing In The Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Chimes Of Freedom

Watch a video for The Lemonheads’ new single, “Deep End”

Sam Richards
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Watch a video for The Lemonheads’ new single, “Deep End”

This autumn, The Lemonheads will release Love Chant – their first album of original material in almost two decades.

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As a taster for the album, they’ve today released a video for the song “Deep End”, which features Evan Dando’s old Massachusetts muckers Juliana Hatfield and J Mascis. Watch it below:

“Deep End” was co-written with Dando’s long-time writing partner Tom Morgan of Smudge. It will be released on limited-edition 12″ (500 copies only) by Fire Records on June 13, backed with a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Sad Cinderella” that finds Dando duetting with Erin Rae. Pre-order here.

The Lemonheads have also today announced an extensive UK and European tour. See the full list of dates below and buy tickets here:

14 Aug: Roadmender, Northampton, UK
15 Aug: Rock N’Roll Circus, Norwich, UK
16 Aug: O2 Ritz , Manchester, UK
17 Aug: Garage, Glasgow, UK
19 Aug: Limelight, Belfast, Ireland
20 Aug: Dolans Warehouse, Limerick, Ireland
21 Aug: Cyprus Avenue, Cork, Ireland
23 Aug: Bank Lane , Waterford, Ireland
24 Aug: Academy, Dublin, Ireland
26 Aug: Foundry, Sheffield, UK
27 Aug: Electric Ballroom, London, UK
29 Aug: Debaser Strand, Stockholm, Sweden
30 Aug: John Dee, Oslo, Norway
01 Sep: Byscenen, Trondheim, Norway
04 Sep: Loppen, Copenhagen, Denmark
05 Sep: Molotow Club, Hamburg, Germany
08 Sep: Melkweg OZ, Amsterdam, Netherlands
09 Sep: Luxor, Cologne, Germany
11 Sep: Frannz Club, Berlin, Germany
12 Sep: Proxima, Warsaw, Poland
16 Sep: Vintage Industrial Bar, Zagreb, Croatia
23 Sep: Sala Wagon, Madrid, Spain
24 Sep: LAV2, Lisbon, Portugal
26 Sep: Apolo 2, Barcelona, Spain
27 Sep: Visor Festival, Valencia, Spain

Send us your questions for Billy Idol!

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Billy Idol!

Billy Idol’s punk credentials are impeccable. As a member of the infamous Bromley Contingent, he was there for all the major Sex Pistols set-tos, before stepping up to front Generation X – one of the first punk bands to appear on Top Of The Pops.

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Moving to America in the early ’80s, he spearheaded the ‘second British invasion’, racking up solo Top 10 hits on both sides of the pond. And evidently his brand of playful rebellion still resonates: next month he’ll headline Wembley Arena, playing songs from his recently-released ninth solo album, Dream Into It.

But before that, he’s kindly submitted to a gently grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask a genuine punk original? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Tuesday (May 20) and Billy will answer the best ones in the next issue of Uncut.

Mick Jagger is producing a new film about the young Miles Davis

Sam Richards
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Mick Jagger is producing a new film about the young Miles Davis

Snowfall’s Damson Idris is set to play the young Miles Davis in a new film about the jazz legend’s first trip to Paris in 1949 and his subsequent romance with the actor and singer Juliette Gréco.

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Miles & Juliette will be directed by Bill Pohlad – the man behind Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy – and produced by Pohlad’s own River Road Entertainment and Mick Jagger’s Jagged Films, in association with the Miles Davis estate.

Juliette Gréco will be played by Anamaria Vartolomei, while Robert Glasper has been signed up to compose and produce the film’s soundtrack.

“Though much of my work has centred on music, I’ve always been drawn to the intimacy and complexity of a great love story,” said Pohlad. “With Miles & Juliette, I feel incredibly fortunate to explore both – through the lens of two artists whose connection was as fleeting as it was life-changing. This story isn’t just about Miles Davis and Juliette Gréco – it’s about the universal rhythm of falling in love, of being transformed by it, and of carrying its echo with you long after the moment has passed.”

“So thrilled to be a part of a film that celebrates the early days of Miles Davis and his great love, Juliette Gréco,” said Mick Jagger. “Miles is inarguably one of the most influential and important musicians of the 20th Century.”

No release date has been set, but Miles & Juliette is launching international sales at the Cannes Film Market this month.

Peter Capaldi – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Peter Capaldi – My Life In Music

The post-punk Time Lord on the albums that shaped his universe: “Heard once, it stays forever”

The post-punk Time Lord on the albums that shaped his universe: “Heard once, it stays forever”

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FRANK SINATRA
That’s Life
REPRISE, 1966
I don’t really remember my parents ever going out to buy a record, but somehow there was a collection of battered albums under the record player. They would often have nights when drink was taken and fun was had, and this album would always go on. You’d never describe an album of Sinatra’s as lacklustre, but every song is compact, like they want to get it over with. But when he hits the groove of “That’s Life”, he’s kind of unbeatable. If “My Way” is about imposing your will upon life, “That’s Life” is a hymn to how powerless you are to deal with whatever fate throws at you, so the best thing is just to get on with it and have a laugh when you can. It’s the best shrug in popular music.

DAVID BOWIE
David Live
RCA, 1974
Like many things in life, I was quite late into David Bowie. In order to dig into his back catalogue, I bought this double album, which appeared to contain many of his hits. But of course, a lot of them are reworked and don’t really fly. I’ve subsequently discovered that they’d just had a big fight in the dressing room because the musicians didn’t know they were recording a live album. But I love all that angst. I love Earl Slick, who rips the whole thing up. But ultimately for me, it’s Bowie’s voice. There’s a kind of terror in it. The version of “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide” on Ziggy… is a bit Judy Garland, but on this one you really believe he’s not going to make it to the end.

SIMPLE MINDS
Life In A Day
ZOOM, 1979
I like a lot of Glasgow bands – that first Blue Nile album was great. And I used to really like Simple Minds. I actually like their first album that <they> don’t like. You can see a theme here: I like the albums that don’t seem to be very successful. I saw them in Glasgow at that time, in a tiny little place called The Mars Bar. They weren’t doing blues, they weren’t doing Status Quo, they were doing some weird arthouse stuff, and they had a great song called “Life In A Day”. It’s the first time I’d really seen a band that excited me, and also where I thought, ‘It’s possible to do that.’ Because they’re all just guys from Glasgow, although the world they were evoking was very different.

TALKING HEADS
Fear Of Music
SIRE, 1979
This album got me through a lot of all-nighters at art school, when I wasn’t as attentive to my studies as I should have been. It’s Talking Heads exploring a lot of the stuff that will become more finessed and polished later on. It confounded my expectations of what a song could be, because the narratives are so strange, but they’re not dislocated. The band are very concerned about making sure the songs have an engaging structure and that there’s a chorus that will work for you, but the narrative is shifting all the time. The songs are inventive and funny, but they’re also a bit scary. You’re never quite sure whether or not you’d be happy if David Byrne showed up at your door.

CRAIG ARMSTRONG
It’s Nearly Tomorrow
BMG CHRYSALIS, 2014
A lot of actors use music to help them get into the zone. For instance, when I was doing Malcolm Tucker, I would have “Scary Monsters” playing, because it’s quite jagged and hard to relax to. And It’s Nearly Tomorrow is the one that did it for me in relation to the rather well-known character of Doctor Who. I was keen to try and bring some kind of melancholy to the role, I guess because I was older, and this album provided a way into that. It seems to be about time, loss, humanity, love, confusion and fate. The music is infused with this dark, relentless power, like the forces at work in the universe, so it would help me think about how to be a strange, alien Time Lord.

ENNIO MORRICONE
The Mission OST
VIRGIN, 1986
It’s often said of Ennio Morricone that you know it’s him from the first note, and that’s absolutely true of this album. The film is about the European incursion into Latin America and how the Jesuit priests would set up missionaries in the jungle to try and convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity, which all goes terribly wrong, as you might imagine. Morricone illustrates that story by combining his typically heartbreaking European, classical, choral sound with these indigenous rhythms and voices. So it’s a little bit like world music, but not quite. He’s a master composer of soundtracks, so he evokes this whole thing for us in a very beautiful way. He’s the greatest film composer – apart from Bernard Herrman – because he infuses his material with so much emotion.

WILLIE NELSON
A Song For You
HALLMARK, 1983
Willie Nelson was huge in the ’80s, but I did have a fear that getting into him meant going the full Ken Bruce, and that easy listening would take me over like the fungal virus in The Last Of Us. So I dug deeper into Willie’s back catalogue looking for purer country stuff. There was plenty, and it sounded great. But so did the standards. I finally accepted this when we found the album <A Song For You>. My partner Elaine and I played it all the time on a battered cassette as our life together unfolded. His versions of these standards have everything – they’re moving, frank, wise and for the ages, all culminating in his version of Kris Kristofferson’s “Loving Her Was Easier”, the song that we danced to at our wedding.

JAN GARBAREK & THE HILLIARD ENSEMBLE
Officium
ECM, 1994
In 2004, I went to make a film in Iceland. It’s one of the strangest and most haunting places I have ever been, and I loved it. The film was low-budget so I was not put up in a hotel, but lodged in the Reykjavik basement of a fabulous bohemian couple named Sverrir and Eda. They left me a CD player and a number of CDs. This was the first one I put on. The Hilliard Ensemble is a vocal quartet devoted to early music; Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian jazz sax and clarinet player. The combined sound is haunting, medieval, yet kind of jazzy. The track “Parce Mihi Domine” plays like the theme music to some lost Icelandic noir movie. Heard once, it stays forever.

Peter Capaldi’s new album Sweet Illusions is out now on Last Night From Glasgow

Köln you dig it?

John Lewis
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Köln you dig it?

Plenty of music biopics are unable to use songs by the artists they depict. Some, like the 2020 Bowie-related movie Stardust, struggle as a result; others, like Backbeat or Nowhere Boy, find ways to tell a more introspective tale. “For me, it was a beautiful obstacle to overcome,” says Ido Fluk, the Israeli writer and director of Köln 75, which dramatises the events surrounding Keith Jarrett’s famous Köln Concert without being able to feature a single note of his music. “It’s about this legendary concert where a pianist has to improvise for an hour on a broken piano. As artists, the creative process is often about dealing with obstructions and obstacles. Telling this story without using any of the original music was our broken piano.”

Plenty of music biopics are unable to use songs by the artists they depict. Some, like the 2020 Bowie-related movie Stardust, struggle as a result; others, like Backbeat or Nowhere Boy, find ways to tell a more introspective tale. “For me, it was a beautiful obstacle to overcome,” says Ido Fluk, the Israeli writer and director of Köln 75, which dramatises the events surrounding Keith Jarrett’s famous Köln Concert without being able to feature a single note of his music. “It’s about this legendary concert where a pianist has to improvise for an hour on a broken piano. As artists, the creative process is often about dealing with obstructions and obstacles. Telling this story without using any of the original music was our broken piano.”

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Fifty years ago, the American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett turned up to play a solo gig at the Cologne Opera House and, instead of the 10ft-long, half-ton Bösendorfer concert grand that he was expecting, he was given a weedy, 6ft rehearsal piano with broken pedals. A furious Jarrett wanted to cancel but ended up reluctantly playing the gig, using the instrument’s limitations to improvise in a completely different way. Against the odds, a live recording of the show ended up shifting more than four million copies, becoming the biggest-selling solo piano album in history and turning Jarrett into a star.

Köln 75 explores the chaotic events leading up the concert, with John Magaro playing a spiky Keith Jarrett and Mala Emde playing Vera Brandes, the feisty teenage promoter who ultimately talked him into playing the show. Fluk says that his aim was to “move the focus away from Jarrett, the brooding artist, and instead look at the people who help to facilitate art. Vera Brandes was 16 when she started booking concerts. She’s a legend in Germany, and her story is as important to the Köln Concert as Jarrett’s. When I decided to make the film, I tracked her down and found her living in Greece. She said she’d been waiting 50 years for someone to tell her story!”

Switching between English and German dialogue, Köln 75 often breaks the fourth wall and uses an elliptical narrative approach that goes off on entertaining tangents. “Many music biopics are very formulaic,” argues Fluk. “The origin story, the tortured genius, the excesses of addiction, the triumphant comeback concert, etcetera. I wanted something more freewheeling. My spirit guide was Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People: fast, energetic and fun.”

The famously reclusive Keith Jarrett had no input into the film, but his brother Chris – also a renowned pianist – was a script advisor. “We wanted to make sure we got our portrayal of Keith right,” says Fluk. Help also came from the film’s producer Oren Moverman, who co-wrote two of the more impressively unorthodox music biopics of recent times, I’m Not There and Love & Mercy.

The Köln Concert is the subject of another upcoming film called Lost In Köln, a documentary that forensically interviews dozens of people involved in the show. Brandes was involved in both projects, and Fluk sees them as complementary. “But my film certainly isn’t a documentary,” he emphasise. “I also didn’t really want it to be a jazz film, just as The Köln Concert isn’t really a ‘jazz’ album – it’s as much a piece of country-rock, blues and classical music. I wanted to make something similarly genre-free, something that wasn’t gatekeepy, something accessible to everyone.”

Köln 75 will be released in the UK later this year

We’re New Here: Florist

Lisa-Marie Ferla
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We’re New Here: Florist

“Every day I wake, wait for the tragedy.” The lyric with which Emily Sprague has chosen to open Florist’s latest album Jellywish could easily be read as melodramatic, were it not for her understated delivery: softly-spoken and matter-of-fact, an unfiltered early-morning thought over gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar. “The album starts that way because it’s important to call attention to the fact that we’re dysfunctional as humans on earth,” says Sprague, Florist’s vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter. “We’re not really symbiotically living on this planet and with each other. We get stuck in these ways of believing what we think is true. But it doesn’t have to be so narrow.”

Buy Jellywish on vinyl here

“Every day I wake, wait for the tragedy.” The lyric with which Emily Sprague has chosen to open Florist’s latest album Jellywish could easily be read as melodramatic, were it not for her understated delivery: softly-spoken and matter-of-fact, an unfiltered early-morning thought over gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar. “The album starts that way because it’s important to call attention to the fact that we’re dysfunctional as humans on earth,” says Sprague, Florist’s vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter. “We’re not really symbiotically living on this planet and with each other. We get stuck in these ways of believing what we think is true. But it doesn’t have to be so narrow.”

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The band formed 12 years ago in Albany, New York. Originally they were a trio, with Rick Spataro on bass and Jonnie Baker on additional guitar and keyboard, playing house shows with songs that Sprague had written to perform under her own name. “But it felt like the three of us were doing something more than just them playing as my band,” says Sprague. “It was really this friendship between us that was so much of what the music was about.” Drummer Felix Walworth joined shortly after Florist self-released their first EP We Have Been This Way Forever in the spring of 2013, and since then, that collaboration has been “growing, changing and going through all kinds of different life chapters together.”

Jellywish is more succinct and song-driven than its self-titled 19-track predecessor of 2022. It finds the band juxtaposing their exploration of modern anxieties – technology, ageing, loss, climate catastrophe – with quietly joyful melodies, like an otherworldly version of fellow East Coast indie-folkers Big Thief. While acoustic guitar, softly-brushed cymbals and resonant harmonies do much of the work, regular flashes of understated electronics add textures that call back to the band’s more experimental beginnings, as well as the modular ambient compositions Sprague has released under her own name; witness the ethereal squall from which “Our Hearts In A Room” emerges, or the undulating, music-box sound that peppers “Jellyfish”.

While Sprague has always written alone, it’s once she takes the material to the rest of the band that the “alchemy” that transforms them into Florist songs begins. “We’ve recorded every album ourselves, as Rick is a professional recording engineer with his own studio,” explains Sprague. “A huge part of what makes Florist recordings sound the way that they do is that it’s the four of us together in a house somewhere, hanging out and having ideas and committing them to tape.” Gradually, over the course of the band’s existence, Sprague has become “more comfortable writing in the same space that we’re recording. I don’t feel as nervous, or as much pressure, about it as I used to.”

Album opener “Levitate” – with that striking first line – was one of the songs that came together during those recording sessions, a month overlapping the April 2024 solar eclipse which the band spent together in a house in the Catskill Mountains. Time apart from the world allowed the band to “deep dive” into the music, developing their own shorthand. “We used the word ‘jellyfish’ a lot: like, ‘Let’s give this song a jellyfish vibe’, this sort of undulating, watery feel,” says Sprague.

The band has a heavy tour schedule over the coming months, and Sprague is excited to see how these songs land outside of that room. “In the early days, I used to be more worried about whether people would like the music,” she admits. “But now? I’m proud of this whole record. I’m proud of us.”

Jellywish is out on April 4 via Double Double Whammy

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Yusuf/Cat Stevens unveils his official autobiography

Sam Richards
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Yusuf/Cat Stevens unveils his official autobiography

Yusuf/Cat Stevens has announced that his long-awaited memoir, Cat On The Road To Findout, will be published in the UK on September 18, and in North America on October 7.

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The book is billed as “an extraordinary soul-baring journey through the triumphs, trials, and transcendental quest of one of music’s most enigmatic figures of our time” that will reveal “the intimate story of his deeply emotive transformation… from his folk-troubadour beginnings, to the glamorous chaos of 60s pop stardom, to his 70s reign as a generational voice [to] his unexpected departure from superstardom, embracing Islam.”

Says Stevens: “I’ve been on an amazing journey, which began in the narrow streets of London, and led me through the most iconic cities, to perform upon the great stage of Western culture, ascending the dizzying heights of wealth, recognition and artistic pinnacles; freely exploring vast ranges of religions and philosophies, wandering through churches, temples, all the way to the Holy abode in Jerusalem — ignoring myths and warnings — and crossing the foreboded, desert heartlands, to arrive at the House of One God in Abrahamic Arabia. What finally elevated my perspective was a luminous Book that perfectly alchemized my thoughts, beliefs, with human nature. It taught me Oneness, and my place and purpose within the universe.”

Cat On The Road To Findout will be published in hardback, ebook and audiobook format (narrated by the author). You can pre-order the book and join the presale for Stevens’ upcoming book tour here.

Queens Of The Stone Age announce Alive In The Catacombs

Sam Richards
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Queens Of The Stone Age announce Alive In The Catacombs

Queens Of The Stone Age have revealed details of their new stripped-down concert film, recorded live in the Paris catacombs in July 2024.

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Alive In The Catacombs features songs from across the Queens Of The Stone Age back catalogue, performed largely acoustically – save for an electric piano connected to a car battery – and augmented by a small string section. Watch the trailer below:

Queens Of The Stone Age are the first band to receive official permission to play in the catacombs, a set of tunnels beneath the surface of Paris, where millions of bodies were buried in the 1700s – “the biggest audience we’ve ever played for,” notes Josh Homme.

“If you’re ever going to be haunted, surrounded by several million dead people is the place,” Homme continues. “It would be ridiculous to try to rock there…That space dictates everything, it’s in charge. You do what you’re told when you’re in there.”

Queens Of The Stone Age: Alive In The Catacombs was produced by La Blogothèque and directed by Thomas Rames. The film will be available to rent or purchase via qotsa.com from June 7 – pre-order now to receive exclusive access to behind-the-scenes footage. An audio-only version will be announced in the coming weeks. 

You can read more from Josh Homme talking exclusively to us about his “near-life experience” in the Paris catacombs in the next issue of Uncut, due out on May 23. Check back here next week for full details of the new issue.

Steve Albini’s archive collections are being sold

Michael Bonner
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Steve Albini’s archive collections are being sold

Steve Albini's personal collection of records, books, fanzines, clothing and other memorabilia is being made available in weekly online sales.

Steve Albini‘s personal collection of records, books, fanzines, clothing and other memorabilia is being made available in weekly online sales.

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They will be sold on Steve Albini’s Closet, a website launched a year after the engineer’s death, which describes itself as an “entity created to distribute the treasures amassed by the late polymath.”

Between 100 and 200 new items will be uploaded to the site each Friday, with proceeds going to benefit Albini’s estate. “Somewhere in the stacks, about 4,000 pieces wait their turn, plus a corner for the smaller curiosities.”

The collection includes albums, CDs, books, cassettes, singles, alongside zines, shirts, posters, flyers and original art.

Robert Fripp is recovering after emergency heart surgery

Michael Bonner
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Robert Fripp is recovering after emergency heart surgery

Robert Fripp has undergone two bouts of heart surgery after he unwittingly suffered a heart attack in early April while traveling to Italy.

Robert Fripp has undergone two bouts of heart surgery after he unwittingly suffered a heart attack in early April while traveling to Italy.

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Fripp initially believed his symptoms were related to acid reflux. “I’d been suffering what I considered to be acid reflux for a couple of weeks,” he explained in a YouTube video posted with his wife Toyah Willcox, on May 11. “On the Saturday morning I flew, it felt a little bit more.”

Fripp was due to perform at an Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists event at Castione della Presolana in Bergamo. But after landing in Bergamo on April 6, Fripp was taken directly to a cardiac hospital, where doctors discovered dangerously elevated troponin levels, a protein that indicates damage to the heart.

“I was in A+E not quite knowing what was going on other than I knew they were going to do something, and an orderly came along and shaved my balls,” he continued. Fripp went on to say that he was diagnosed with a trifurcated artery and had a pair of stents inserted during two operations. He is on medication for the rest of his life.

Fripp also said that, less than a week after his surgery, he was able to direct the Guitar Circle show at Castione della Presolana.

“It was stunning. The audience were prepped with orchestral manoeuvres and it really was a magical event for me,” Fripp added.

Introducing…The History Of Rock: 1968!

John Robinson
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Introducing…The History Of Rock: 1968!

With Pete Townshend announcing The Who’s farewell US tour, now seems a good time to remind ourselves of when the band made one of their earliest trips to the continent. You can read all about it in The History Of Rock: 1968, the latest in our series of premium magazines curated from the archives of NME and Melody Maker.

Pete in 1968 is a big fan of America. Amazing microphone systems. Great groups like Moby Grape. Their own bus, “equipped with all modern conveniences like scotch and beer”.  Even the fact that they’re staying in poky hotels hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm. As we follow the group deeper into the year we find them developing some challenging new work, the rock opera Tommy, at this stage provisionally entitled “Dead Dumb And Blind Boy”.

Our other favourite groups are changing too. After 1967’s colourful revelations and occasionally grandiose musical experimentation, 1968 has its feet more firmly planted on the ground. The gurus and the hallucinogens of the past twelve months have imparted their knowledge, and The Beatles are for the most part slightly more suspicious of whim and fancy.

No-one precisely says this is their plan (although Paul McCartney has been murmuring about “getting back” for a while), but there is a palpable swing away from the head trips of the studio and towards the heart: to early inspirations, live music. Later in the year, the double album released by the Beatles will contain strong flavours of blues and rock ‘n’ roll, the year’s two principal revivals. Does this now mean the Beatles are taking a step backwards? As Ringo Starr philosophically remarks: “It’s not forwards or backwards. It’s just a step.”

Bob Dylan also sets an anomalous tempo, established early in the year with the bucolic minimalism of John Wesley Harding. Dylan’s continued absence from the promotional scene allows him to move with a freedom not permitted his British contemporaries, and his absence creates a vacuum that myth, and under-the-counter recordings, step in to fill. Elsewhere in the mag you’ll find John Peel, Aretha Franklin, Cream…even George Best!

This is the world of The History Of Rock, a monthly magazine which reaps the benefits of their reporting for the reader decades later, one year at a time. Inside, you will find verbatim articles from frontline staffers, compiled into long and illuminating reads. You can catch up on any you’ve missed here. Enjoy!

The Who announce farewell North American tour

Sam Richards
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The Who announce farewell North American tour

The Who have revealed that their upcoming North American tour will be their last. At a press conference today (May 8) at London’s Iconic Gallery, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend announced details of The Song Is Over: The North American Farewell Tour, which kicks off in Florida on August 16, ending in Las Vegas on September 28.

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“Well, all good things must come to an end,” said Pete Townshend. “It is a poignant time. For me, playing to American audiences and those in Canada has always been incredible… Roger and I are in a good place, despite our age, eager to throw our weight behind this fond farewell to all our faithful fans, and hopefully to new ones who might jump in to see what they have been missing for the last 57 years. This tour will be about fond memories, love and laughter.”

“To me, America has always been great,” added Roger Daltrey. “The cultural differences had a huge impact on me, this was the land of the possible. It’s not easy to end the big part of my life that touring with The Who has been. Thanks for being there for us and look forward to seeing you one last time.”

Asked about the possibility of a similar farewell tour in the UK, Daltrey simply said: “Let’s see if we survive this one…”

Peruse the North American tourdates below:

Aug 16 – Sunrise, FL – Amerant Bank Arena
Aug 19 – Newark, NJ – Prudential Center
Aug 21 – Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center
Aug 23 – Atlantic City, NJ – Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall
Aug 26 – Boston, MA – Fenway Park
Aug 28 – Wantagh, NY – Northwell at Jones Beach Theater
Aug 30 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden
Sep 2 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage
Sep 4 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage
Sep 7 – Chicago, IL – United Center
Sep 17 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl
Sep 19 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl
Sep 21 – Mountain View, CA – Shoreline Amphitheatre
Sep 23 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena|
Sep 25 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena
Sep 28 – Las Vegas, NV – MGM Grand Garden Arena

Tickets go on general sale on Friday, May 16 at 10am local time from here. There is a pre-sale for Citi cardmembers and Whooligan Fan Club members.

Read more from The Who’s press conference in the next issue of Uncut.

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