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The V&A announces new details on the David Bowie Centre

Michael Bonner
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The V&A announces new details on the David Bowie Centre

The David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse on September 13, 2025.

The David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse on September 13, 2025.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

New details have been revealed about the David Bowie Centre, at the recently-opened V&A East Storehouse.

The David Bowie archive encompasses 90,000+ items.

Bookings to see 3D items from the David Bowie archive, including costumes, musical instruments, models, props and scenery, can be made through the V&A’s new seven-day-a-week Order an Object service. Visitors can book up to five items per visit at a time that suits them. Bookings require at least two weeks’ notice and Bowie items will begin to go live for advance booking from September.

The Centre will open with two guest curated displays, by Nile Rodgers and The Last Dinner Party

Nine rotating displays reveal aspects of Bowie’s extraordinary creative capacity, including ideas for projects that were never realised. Highlights include an idea to adapt George Orwell‘s 1984 and unrealised Young Americans and Diamond Dogs films.

Other displays explore Bowie’s creation of his Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane and look at his embrace of technology, futurism and science fiction, plus his 1987 Glass Spider tour and concert at the Berlin Wall. Others spotlight Bowie’s creative collaborators including Gail Ann Dorsey, and the creation of the 1975 Young Americans album, alongside his wide-spread creative influence and legacy.

Madeleine Haddon, Curator, V&A East said: “Bowie embodied a truly multi-disciplinary practice — musician, actor, writer, performer, and cultural icon — reflecting the way many young creatives today move fluidly across disciplines and reject singular definitions of identity or artistry. His fearless engagement with self-expression and performance has defined contemporary culture and resonates strongly with the values of authenticity, experimentation and freedom that we celebrate across the collections at V&A East Storehouse. This archive offers an extraordinary lens through which to examine broader questions of creativity, cultural change, and the social and historical moments during which Bowie lived and worked. In the Centre, we want you to get closer to Bowie, and his creative process than ever before. For Bowie fans and those coming to him for the first time, we hope the Centre can inspire the next generation of creatives.”

For more information on the David Bowie Centre and to sign-up for updates, please visit: vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/david-bowie-centre.

Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke announce new album Pareidolia

Michael Bonner
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Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke announce new album Pareidolia

Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke are releasing a new album Pareidolia, out August 29 through Drag City. You can hear an edit of the title track below.

Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke are releasing a new album Pareidolia, out August 29 through Drag City. You can hear an edit of the title track below.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

A collage of improvised music from their 2023 European tour, Pareidolia follows Ishibashi’s latest album, Antigone, and O’Rourke’s Hands That Bind soundtrack.

The tracklisting for Pareidolia is:

Par
Ei
Do
Lia

Poor Creature – All Smiles Tonight

Nick Hasted
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Poor Creature – All Smiles Tonight

The great success of Lankum, and their producer John “Spud” Murphy’s ubiquity across the sonically radicalised new Irish trad scene, can make it seem as if Ye Vagabonds, ØXN, John Francis Flynn and co comprise an essentially single entity, passing through Murphy’s studios for ocean-deep overdubs as centuries of lyrical heritage are challenged and channelled through doomy, bestial drones.

Buy All Smiles Tonight here

The great success of Lankum, and their producer John “Spud” Murphy’s ubiquity across the sonically radicalised new Irish trad scene, can make it seem as if Ye Vagabonds, ØXN, John Francis Flynn and co comprise an essentially single entity, passing through Murphy’s studios for ocean-deep overdubs as centuries of lyrical heritage are challenged and channelled through doomy, bestial drones.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

The contrast between Lankum’s often thunderously heavy yet beautifully textured albums and Landless’s more sparely arranged harmonies, though, shows Murphy’s careful attentiveness to each distinct talent. Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada provided trademark string drones on Landless’s Lúireach (2024), and he and Landless’s Ruth Clinton are romantic partners, these days living away from Dublin in northwest Ireland. Alongside Lankum’s touring drummer John Dermody, their debut as Poor Creature sees Murphy characteristically knee-deep in its arrangements.

The tenderness of the band’s name is reflected in their music, and the greater sense of space they require makes All Smiles Tonight an airier, optimistic contribution to Ireland’s new wave, despite trad songs haunted by limbo and loss. MacDiarmada and Clinton’s love of country music also results in covers of the Louvin Brothers’ “Lorene” and Irish country stars Ray Lynam & Philomena Begley’s “The Whole Town Knows”. Clinton, meanwhile, brings Landless’s vocal focus with her, as she explores sometimes incantatory rhythms, framed by Murphy in vast echoing chambers and intimate close-up.

Poor Creature inadvertently began in the first Covid lockdown, when a Zoom session brought Clinton and MacDiarmada’s friends poignantly if remotely together, and one sang the old love song “An Draighneán Donn”. “We had a laptop and phone open as well and there was a time-lag between the two,” Clinton recalls, “an overlap which Cormac recorded.” This gave a clue to new musical possibilities, earthed in a contemporary sadness which folk songs stood ready to address. In All Smiles Tonight’s “An Draighneán Donn”, the lyric mourning a migrating lover “going far away ’cross the foam” has this separation embodied by time-lagged, layered vocals. MacDiarmada’s viola drone and fiddle also faultily align, as if across a stuttering transmission in the cosmic beyond suggested by Murphy’s cavernous echo, climaxing in huge, sustained organ notes (incredibly, from an ’80s keytar). As the ballad’s mournful lyrics compress and scatter in the production’s heady, heavenly atmosphere, the massed vocal sound suggests the community felt in that original Zoom call, as the music ascends.

“Adieu Lovely Eireann” sits at one extreme of All Smiles Tonight’s approach, as Clinton’s voice is all but submerged beneath a seam of strings, while Dermody’s pounding drums add to a ravey organ’s descent. Seek out the words sunk in this sea of sound, and the story of 19th-century forger William Hill, here a romantic rogue deported to Australia, aches with exile from beloved Ireland.

“Bury Me Not” sees a sailor’s desperate dying fear of burial at sea cruelly ignored, as guitar feedback resembles groaning sea-beasts. Clinton’s sorrowful voice sees him to his fate, singing with gentle prettiness as “around his head the sea snakes hiss”. This awful lyrical beauty shows the value of the traditional song-collecting at the root of this contemporary music, soaked up by its makers in singing sessions in Dublin and now Donegal and Fermanagh. “It could be a song you’ve known for years,” Clinton says. “You just have to hear the right person singing it, and it could change everything.” The unlucky sailor is also serenaded by Clinton’s theremin, here not wobbling exotica but a piercing, near human sound.

Poor Creature are equally adept at the simplicity which Landless explore. MacDiarmada’s voice is bereft as the Louvin Brothers’ sparely emotional words plunge through the heart of “Lorene”: “To stop me from hurting, all it would take is a letter from you.” His guitar marks his halting progress, verses stopping, suspended, notes individuated and lonely. The title track sees Clinton’s replaced lover putting on a brave face as MacDiarmada’s fiddle accompanies her towards a dance, Dermody giving her progress gallows momentum, until her voice grows defiantly huge.

Clinton greets the ghost lover returning from across an ocean and death’s borders to again share her bed on the closing “Willie-O” with unshaken grace. Her modest, narrative vocal provides the pure folk counterweight to Murphy’s maelstroms – once again to thrilling effect.

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Wet Leg – Moisturizer

Fiona Shepherd
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Wet Leg – Moisturizer

From The Rolling Stones to Robert Palmer, love as a medical emergency is a perennial theme for songwriters. Well, sound the alarm and send out the paramedics once again, because Wet Leg are in love. It’s all over their second album, but explicitly ringing out as a klaxon call on current single “CPR”. “Hello 999, what’s your emergency?” asks Rhian Teasdale with call handler calm before making her orgasmic self-diagnosis: “I…I…I…I…I…I’m in love.” And when Teasdale sings she’s in love, you’d best believe she’s in love, however you want to spell it.

Buy Moisturizer on vinyl here

From The Rolling Stones to Robert Palmer, love as a medical emergency is a perennial theme for songwriters. Well, sound the alarm and send out the paramedics once again, because Wet Leg are in love. It’s all over their second album, but explicitly ringing out as a klaxon call on current single “CPR”. “Hello 999, what’s your emergency?” asks Rhian Teasdale with call handler calm before making her orgasmic self-diagnosis: “I…I…I…I…I…I’m in love.” And when Teasdale sings she’s in love, you’d best believe she’s in love, however you want to spell it.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

It’s quite the turnaround. Debut album Wet Leg was written post-break-up, its sass and snark enabling a playfully scornful catharsis. Most of the songs had been concocted purely for the amusement of Teasdale and fellow founder Hester Chambers, a sort of knockabout therapy. But the release of debut single “Chaise Longue” in the summer of 2021 changed everything. Wet Leg became an old-school overnight sensation, as the world beyond their Isle of Wight home – an unexpected cultural ground zero, notwithstanding its festival history – fell bigtime for the song’s singular wit, louche hookline and deadpan call-and-response on buttered muffins and the like.

Teasdale and Chambers were carried along in its giddy slipstream all the way to the Brits, then onwards to scoop two Grammys, an Ivor Novello Award and score highly in Uncut’s Albums of the Year list. Through the rush of acclaim and surprise commercial success, the words of their third single “Too Late Now” resonated: “I’m not sure if this is the kind of life that I saw myself living.”

Two years of diligent touring, including zipping around the Antipodes supporting Harry Styles, laid the groundwork for that life. Some bands would have cracked; Wet Leg consolidated, and now identify as a five-piece with touring guitarist Joshua Mobaraki, bassist Ellis Durand and drummer Henry Holmes all firmly in the fold (plus producer Dan Carey an honorary sixth Leg on Swarmatron duties).

It turns out Teasdale and Chambers were fibbing back in 2022 when they said they had already completed their second album: instead Moisturizer sprang to life when the group rented an Airbnb in Southwold, Suffolk, a writers’ retreat in which to work by day, then hang out and watch horror films by night. This was the Wet Leg equivalent of Bon Iver’s cabin in the woods, a place to vanquish the pressure of expectation and home in on their own musical desires. They have dubbed this hermetic world “Moisturizer Valley”. According to Teasdale, it’s “a space somewhere between fantasy and reality” with a punk White Lotus aesthetic captured in the video for the album’s first single “Catch These Fists”. The song is a cranky kick-ass response to unwanted male attention, with Teasdale lumbering up and limboing down for a night out with trouble in store: “Limousine/Racking up/Ketamine/Giddy up/Man down/Level up”. It’s a cold shoulder in haiku style, soundtracked by a curt, clanking guitar line, a sonic disruption to send the unlucky suitor home with a flea in his ear: “He don’t get puss, he get the boot.”

We’re a long way from the self-comforting group hug of the Wet Leg sleeve. Instead, the talons are out on the somewhat disturbing album cover shot by Iris Luz, with Chambers and Teasdale presenting like ghoulish characters from a Hideo Nakata J-horror. It’s just one demonstration of the take-it-or-leave-it confidence threaded throughout Moisturizer, one of its strongest cards alongside a refreshed sound palette that relishes the ferocious dynamics of riot grrrl, freely indulges in outbreaks of garage rock and detours into Tame Impala-like, neon-lit grooves.

The album opens with their emergency callout “CPR”, capturing heady, unsettling confusion in the line “is it love or is it suicide?” The hounds of love are in pursuit but instead of throwing her shoes in the lake, she’s leaping off the precipice. Meanwhile, the rest of the band are laying down a lithe, bendy bassline, punctuated with bursts of grungey guitar en route to the song’s clamorous climax.

The bells and whistles subside but Teasdale is still disorientated by her treatment on “Liquidise”, as she outlines turning to jelly at the thought of her condition (“so many creatures in the fucking world/How did I get to be so lucky?”) and rides the choppy waves of guitar by alternating between deadpan staccato delivery and sweeter legato tones.

Elsewhere, the band emulate something close to relaxed rapture, or at least contentment on “Davina McCall”, a laidback paean to resting easy in a relationship with a lyric inspired by McCall’s Big Brother catchphrase “I’m coming to get you”. As it happens, McCall is already a confirmed Wet Leg fan and delighted by her namecheck. Shakira, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the line “I’ll be your Shakira, whenever, wherever”.

In addition to her curveball cultural comparisons, Teasdale embraces romantic cliché – battling through storms, never wanting to wake up from the dream, not noticing crummy weather because time spent with her love means eternal sunshine – but she’s still deep in reverie on the goth-tinged “Jennifer’s Body”, oscillating between shy understatement (“I like you”) and more daring gender-fluid gestures (“want a man?/I’ll pretend for you”). Teasdale has spoken about the liberation she has found in embracing her queerness and shrugging off the male gaze. So she doesn’t mince her words on “Mangetout”, with its terse hookline “get lost forever”. In one of the album’s few breaks from bliss, a mock coquettish Teasdale drips bile as she trills sweetly “you’re washed up, irrelevant and standing in my light”. As melodic fuzz guitars build up a head of steam, she seems to damn all male-kind before dropping the mic, message delivered, job done.

Hester Chambers, meanwhile, offers her take on love at first sight on “Pond Song”. Cosmological couplings and Princess Bride references are propelled along by the fuzz guitar and bouncy keyboard combo once favoured by Elastica. It may possibly be the only love song ever to namecheck the Solent, but where else is an Isle of Wight girl going to gaze wistfully across the water? Chambers makes more slightly dorky cultural connections – “the rock to my roll… we go like salsa and Doritos” – on melodic grunge track “Don’t Speak”. With super-soft vocals, she touches on the vulnerability of obsession, where emotional availability tips over into malleability.

The album’s most graceful moment, “11:21”, is also one of the highlights, as Teasdale stretches her vocal from plaintive soprano to plangent alto, while Chambers makes the tin whistle flutter with surprising elegance. In contrast, the entire band whoop it up on the closing “U And Me At Home”, all chiming in with animalistic whoops on the titular hookline to produce an exultant group mantra.

By this point, it’s all too clear that Wet Leg have blitzed any second album nerves. Indeed, Moisturizer is a bold confident blast fuelled by the security and invincibility of a deep love, whether the songs pitch headlong into a torrid affair on the punchy “Pillow Talk” or into the rush of new love on the alluring twanging canter of “Pokemon”. “I don’t wanna take it slow,” insists Teasdale, as the chaise longue disappears in the rearview mirror.

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Bill Callahan – EartH Theatre, London, July 2, 2025

Piers Martin
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Bill Callahan – EartH Theatre, London, July 2, 2025

The worst of the heatwave has passed through London by the time Bill Callahan rolls into town, but it’s still sweltering in Earth’s cavernous art deco theatre. It’s packed in here, too: 720 people squeezed in to witness one of America’s finest living songwriters play a rare solo show as part of a European summer run. A handful will be lucky enough to pick up one of the custom T-shirts Callahan is selling at the merch stall for £40 – plain, off-white shirts that he writes on before each show. On the last one left, he’s written “River Guard” across the front in black marker pen, the title of one of his most powerful songs, from 1999’s Knock Knock. Someone snaps it up. Seems like a good deal.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

The size of venue feels right for this stripped-back show. The sole focus is Callahan, in green shirt and blue trousers, playing a white electric Fender and a hi-hat he operates with his left foot while his right activates a subtle kick from an array of pedals. A few years back he struggled to fill Hammersmith Apollo with a full band, but last September his four-night residency at the ICA with drummer Jim White went down a storm. This show is pure, undiluted Callahan, hypnotic and intense, as this great interpreter of dreams explores the human condition in that laconic baritone, his words ripe with wonder and subversion. 

Callahan turned 59 last month and has a young family to look after, which might explain his desire to hit the road three years after his last album YTILAER, touring a solo performance with minimal overheads. It’s still a captivating spectacle – it’s tempting to cast him as the Gen X Leonard Cohen, given his deep catalogue and devoted fanbase – though you sense this is very much work for him, clocking in for an 80-minute shift. “What time is it?” he asks after he’s played “Rock Bottom Riser”. “10.40pm,” someone shouts. “OK. Wonderful to be here, thank you all for coming,” he says, putting his guitar down and walking off. There’s no encore. 

Before that, he glides fairly serenely through 16 songs which amount to a Callahan best-of, taking in Smog staples such as “Cold Blooded Old Times”, “Teenage Spaceship” and “Red Apples”. On “Let’s Move To The Country”, another from Knock Knock, the record he made after his break-up with Chan Marshall, he adds a new line – “Pretty woman in a petticoat”, to pair with “live with a monkey and a goat” – then returns to his eternal source of inspiration: “Off to sleep we go / To the land that we don’t know.” As he sings on “Coyotes”: “They say never wake a dreamer – maybe that’s how we die.” 

When Callahan reduces his material to its essence in this way – his sinuous guitar playing is treated with effects – you’re confronted with the stark brilliance and bleak beauty of his songs. There’s the prison warden wrestling with his conscience in the opener “Jim Cain”. On the next song, “747”, he sings of seeing “stock footage of heaven” after waking up on a plane. And then he seeks to divine meaning from his place in the natural order of things, his lyrics rich with symbolism as he tucks into the frontier blues of “The Well” and “Say Valley Maker”. 

In addressing universal themes, Callahan bridges the ancient and the modern – many of his songs might’ve been written a hundred years ago – and you feel he’s part of a lineage of cosmic Americana sketched out by Cormac McCarthy and David Lynch, visionaries who mapped out their own realities, whose stories are laced with magic realism. “This place feels real nice – like my first gigs in London a long time ago,” he says. The old times were good for Callahan too, but now he’s lived his experiences, he’s rarely sounded better. 

SET LIST 
1 Jim Cain
2 Eid Ma Clack Shaw
3 747
4 Cold Blooded Old Times
5 Ride For The Feeling
6 Coyotes
7 Teenage Spaceship
8 Partition
9 Cowboy
10 Natural Information
11 Red Apples
12 Say Valley Maker
13 The Well
14 Let’s Move To The Country
15 In The Pines
16 Rock Bottom Riser 

WIN tickets to the Amateur Photographer Festival of Photography – DOCUMENTARY!

Michael Bonner
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WIN tickets to the Amateur Photographer Festival of Photography – DOCUMENTARY!

Our friends at Amateur Photographer are hosting the Festival of Photography – DOCUMENTARY a one-day event held on August 9, 2025 at the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington, London – and you could win tickets to the event.

Our friends at Amateur Photographer are hosting the Festival of Photography – DOCUMENTARY a one-day event held on August 9, 2025 at the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington, London – and you could win tickets to the event.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

Building on the success of the Festival of Outdoor Photography, Amateur Photographer is giving you another opportunity to learn, be inspired and engage with leading image-makers as they share their wealth of knowledge.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE COMPETITION TO WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS WORTH OVER £79!

Throughout the day you will hear from a series of world class experts in Documentary photography. Each giving an insight into their work, how they captured some of the world’s best known documentary images and how you can too. Confirmed speakers include: Zed Nelson, Laura Pannack, Jillian Edelstein, Jon Nicholson and more!

Here’s the line-up…

ZED NELSON: Guns, Beauty and the Anthropocene
This year’s Sony World Photography Awards winner Zed Nelson takes us on a revealing journey into humankind’s increasingly illusory relationship with the natural world, and behind the scenes on three previous award-winning projects.

JON NICHOLSON: Auto Exposure
Jon takes us through his 40-year career in sports reportage, documenting the culture of everything from Formula 1 (featuring the likes of Ayrton Senna and Damon Hill) to banger racing, as well as some of his other work.

SIMON HILL & JOHN BULMER: The North Revisited 
John Bulmer’s colour images of northern England taken in the 1960s and ’70s remain a cornerstone of British documentary photography. Simon Hill recently revisited those communities and they discuss their two bodies of work.

KRISHNA SHETH: Life on the Picture Desk
Recently appointed Director of Photography for The Economist, Krishna will talk about her career, which began as a picture researcher at the Express newspaper, before becoming Deputy Photography Director at The Telegraph Magazine.

JILLIAN EDELSTEIN: Sharing the Story
Jillian shares stories related to managing reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa, personal stories linked to Ukraine and Palestine, and local stories on a range of topics. Plus, how commercial work helps to fund the personal projects.

CAROL ALLEN-STOREY: Telling Women’s Stories
Carol discusses her humanitarian documentary work photographing issues affecting women and children around the world for NGOs such as UNICEF, Save the Children and Comic Re

LAURA PANNACK: Documentary Portraiture
Laura discusses her portraiture and social documentary work, which has been extensively exhibited and published worldwide, including at the National Portrait Gallery, the Houses of Parliament, Somerset House and the Royal Festival Hall.

Watch Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts perform “Ambulance Blues”

Michael Bonner
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Watch Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts perform “Ambulance Blues”

Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts performed "Ambulance Blues" last night [July 1, 2025] at Drafbaan Stadspark, Groningen in The Netherlands. You can watch fan footage below.

Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts performed “Ambulance Blues” last night [July 1, 2025] at Drafbaan Stadspark, Groningen in The Netherlands. You can watch fan footage below.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

This is a relatively rare outing for the On The Beach track, which Young hasn’t performed live since his 2019 American solo tour.

Prior to that, Young and The Promise Of The Real (the Chrome Hearts forebears) performed it during a private concert in France in 2016.

The track received a more consistent outing during Young’s 2008 tour with the Chrome Dreams band – aka Ben Keith, Rick Rosas, Ralph Molina, Pegi Young, Anthony Crawford and Cary Kemp.

You can read our review of Young and the Chrome Hearts in Copenhagen on June 22, 2025 by clicking here.

The Best Albums Of 2025… Halftime Report

Uncut Staff
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The Best Albums Of 2025… Halftime Report

As we hit the halfway point of 2025, here's 20 of the best albums we've heard - released between January 1 and June 30.

As we hit the halfway point of 2025, here’s 20 of the best albums we’ve heard – released between January 1 and June 30.

This list is chronological, beginning with The Weather Station‘s Humanhood – which was released on January 17 – and ending with Van Morrison‘s Remember Now, which was released on June 13.

Plenty of great stuff here – from familiar faces to newcomers and, we hope, a few surprises…

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

The Weather Station
Humanhood
[Fat Possum]
What we said: “Tamara Lindeman’s stunning seventh album is the work of a songwriter at the peak of her powers, possessing fierce honesty and outstanding creative instincts as she addresses anxieties both personal and global…“

Chris Eckman
The Land We Knew The Best
[Glitterhouse]
What we said: “… a collection of interior monologues, essays in contrition, apology, enough regret to flood a valley. ‘Somehow I missed the memo that said when you reach breaking point, you just say stop…’ Eckman sings on the confessional ‘Haunted Nights’, an attempt to explain ruinous behaviour…“

Richard Dawson
End Of The Middle
[Domino]
What we said: “After The Ruby Cord, an 80-minute album set in a hallucinatory VR future, Richard Dawson is concentrating on smaller things here: namely, the mundane trauma of family units. Yet his songwriting is as powerful and moving as ever…“

Yazz Ahmed
A Paradise In The Hold
[Night Time Stories]
What we said: “Trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Yazz Ahmed has created her most exquisite song world yet on A Paradise In The Hold, 10 tracks of magnetic, boundry-transcending jazz that intricately blend influences from her British-Bahraini heritage…“

The Tubs
Cotton Crown
[Trouble In Mind]
What we said: “… the addictive jangle of the music, the sheen of darkness beyond the melody and the lyrical concision of Owen Williams, who writes a song that is exorcism, confession and accusation all at once…“

The Delines
Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom
[Decor Records and El Cortez Records]
What we said: “In a little over 40 minutes, [Willy] Vlautin, [Amy] Boone and the boys take you on a road trip across the great divide, from the casinos of Biloxi, right up on to the rodeos of Utah and somehow chart an entire continent of cruelty, desperation and clear-eyed determination.”

Edwyn Collins
Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation
[AED]
What we said: “Working with his regular collaborators -co-producers Jake Hutton and Sean Read, musicians James Walbourne and Carwyn Ellis, and son Will (on bass) – Collins collates his influences into a carnival of understatement.”

Destroyer
Dan’s Boogie
[Merge]
What we said: “... these songs insinuate with a vaguely vintage sound that recalls Jonathan Donahue’s spangled dreaminess and the (s)weary brio of Father John Misty…“

Eiko Ishibashi
Antigone
[Drag City]
What we said: “With Antigone, Ishibashi’s music has reached an astonishing level of maturity – at the level of tone, texture and text. The creative partnership she has achieved with the mercurial Jim O’Rourke, since they met over 15 years ago, continues to pay wonderful dividends.”

Dean Wareham
That’s the Price of Loving Me
[Carpark]
What we said: “It says everything about Wareham’s distinctive way around a guitar that he can take a Nico cover – in this case, ‘Reich De Träume’ – and shape it into something warm and languorous, in keeping with the rest of this great solo album.“

Brown Horse
All the Right Weaknesses
[Loose Music]
What we said: “Brown Horse have taken the live momentum of the new songs directly into the studio, keeping their raw charge intact which accentuating their dynamics and fine-tuning their arrangements.”

The Waterboys
Life, Death And Dennis Hopper
[Sun Records]
What we said: “Conceptually, it’s closer to Songs For Drella or Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois than it is Rick Wakeman. Hopper is a device, an operatic metaphor concerning pop’s golden age, where artists had the freedom to explore themselves and make mistakes.”

Salif Keita
In So Kono
[NØ FØRMAT!]
What we said: “His guitar playing takes centre stage, hypnotic, complex, repetitive patterns played clawhammer style, plucked with the flesh at the tips of his fingers like a medieval lute player, usually with a capo high on the fretboard…“

William Tyler
Time Indefinite
[Psychic Hotline]
What we said: “While his previous records examined the pathway to modern America, Time Indefinite seems to stare into the heart of what the country is now, in all its fragmented polarised turmoil; the state of the nation in perfect sync with Tyler’s own troubled state of mind.”

Kassi Valazza
From Newman Street
[Loose Music]
What we said: “From Newman Street is an album full of chapters closing and new ones opening, created by a singer-songwriter who embellishes her folky observations with psychedelic flourishes and knowing nods to the past.”

Robert Forster
Strawberries
[Tapete Records]
What we said: “On his ninth solo album, Forster once again knits together the ordinary and the remarkable, furring the edges with a craftsman’s dexterity.”

Stereolab
Instant Holograms On Metal Film
[Duophonic UHF Disks and Warp Records]
What we said: “At a time when neo-facism is on the rise across the world and even a Labour government is slashing welfare budgets to boost defence spending, Instant Holograms… pushes back forcefully against this grim tide with a vital blast of agit-pop.“

Alan Sparhawk
With Trampled By Turtles
[Sub Pop]
What we said: “Sparhawk’s relationship with progressive bluegrass/country folk types Trampled By Turtles stretches back to their early days when they were mentees and mates in Duluth, Minnesota. When he was fathomed deep in grief, the sextet invited him to ride along for some tour dates and occasionally he joined them onstage…“

Pulp
More
[Rough Trade]
What we said: “Over almost half a century they’ve been an object lesson in a band slowly discovering their strengths, honing their craft, taking their time. They’ve matured – not like a fine wine, but maybe like a magnificently ripe Wensleydale.“

Van Morrison
Remembering Now
[Exile Productions and Virgin Records]
What we said: “The title refers not only to the recurring lyrical theme of a man in his 80th year simultaneously inhabiting both his past and present, but the rich sense of musical retrieval, too.”

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Five of the best live sets we saw at Glastonbury 2025

Mark Beaumont
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Five of the best live sets we saw at Glastonbury 2025

Pulp
(Pyramid Stage, Saturday)

It’s been precisely thirty years and four days, Jarvis Cocker informs us, since Pulp walked onto the Pyramid Stage in 1995 to replace The Stone Roses as headliners, a genuine surprise in the pre-iSnitch days. For two songs – “Sorted For E’s And Wizz” and “Disco 2000”, both debuted here in ’95 – there’s the possibility that ‘Patchwork’ (as they’re billed) might recreate that legendary set in jumbled order, but towards the end of their sensational hour, Cocker pulls out the original 1995 setlist, writ on the back of an envelope, and tears it to pieces declaring, “It’s all about now”.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

And a rammed Pyramid Stage field very much live in their own Pulp Summer moment; there’s an effervescent “Do You Remember The First Time?”, a breakneck “Mis-Shapes”, a sublime “Babies” and an intimate “Something Changed”. “Acrylic Afternoons” takes us back to the dawning of indie sleaze and the Red Arrows make a perfectly timed fly-by at the climax of “Common People”. Thirty years on, they still steal the weekend.

Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts
(Pyramid Stage, Saturday)

“How you doing at home in your bedrooms?” Having backed down from his refusal to be televised, Neil Young treats the viewing millions to his own skewed and intense version of a great Glasto moment. It’s a set by turns fragile and ferocious: he first emerges alone with a guitar for an unshowy “Sugar Mountain” – a paean to youth from a 79-year-old veteran of dark country arts – before his Chrome Hearts band arrive bearing CSNY-esque harmonies and no little righteous fury.

“Be The Rain” demands urgent climate action in the face of rampant consumerism, Young barking about Big Oil and deforestation through one loudhailer effect mic of the many in his array; “Cinnamon Girl” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)” are things of crushing dynamic impact.

“The Needle And The Damage Done” and “Harvest Moon”, respectively, provide a period of intimate reflection and idyllic respite and, while there is a good twenty minutes or so of bluesy indulgence an hour in, Young punches his humanitarian politics down the camera lenses with closing rages through “Rockin’ In The Free World” and “Throw Your Hatred Down”, just when we need them most. All that, and Hank Williams’ guitar as special guest for “Looking Forward” – in Young terms, a hit blitz.

Wolf Alice
(Other Stage, Sunday)

With Kneecap’s field closed off two hours before stage-time, Bob Vylan making headlines and virtually every second band expressing support for Palestine, it’s a politically charged weekend. Ellie Rowsell’s declaration of “Solidarity with the people of Palestine” ahead of Wolf Alice’s bubble-swathed finale “Don’t Forget The Kisses” is far from controversial then, and certainly less so than the fact that this London band weren’t automatically handed a Pyramid Stage headline slot.

As album four approaches, they have the crowds, the songs and the sheer showstopping variety. Rowsell first appears in star-smothered attire, roaring “Formidable Cool” like a levitating demon goddess. Then, within the first half hour alone, she transforms into a dream-pop angel for “Delicious Things”, a feverish Kate Bush for primal recent single “Bloom Baby Bloom” and a Laurel Canyon balladeer for the seated acoustic “Safe From Heartbreak (If You Never Fall In Love)“. One minute she’s striking supervillain poses with a megaphone for an utterly savage “Yuk Foo”, the next cooing though a gorgeously glitched-up “Silk” or a phenomenal “The Last Man On Earth” that could teach Lana Del Rey a thing or two about enormous cinematic drama ballads. Majestic.

John Fogerty
(Pyramid Stage, Saturday)

Finally recovering his song rights after a 50-year legal battle has clearly made John Fogerty an invigorated figure. Full of life and blue plaid energy, he tears into his mid-afternoon set like a honky-tonker possessed, surrounded by an equally excitable family band and backed by suitably Creedence-friendly visuals: wide open highways, dappling brooks, backwoods wildlife. He spends the next hour going on down to Virginia, California, Louisiana and wherever else takes his wandering fancy, revelling in the sheer joy and vigour of his impassioned roots Americana.

It’s very much a Creedence show: he powers through “Up Around The Bend”, “Green River” and “Born On The Bayou” in short measure, exults over the joyful memory of being gifted the guitar he wrote “Who’ll Stop The Rain” on, and hops on a locomotive for “Keep On Chooglin’”. For the finale, he’ll toast Glastonbury with a flute of freshly poured champagne ahead of “Bad Moon Rising” and “Proud Mary”, much to celebrate at 80.

Not Completely Unknown
(Acoustic Stage, Saturday)

Come for the rumours that Timothy Chalamet might turn up (he doesn’t), stay for the rich and heartfelt renditions of Bob Dylan songs from a collection of devoted acolytes. Helmed by Sid Griffin of The Long Ryders and set up as an intimate chamber country affair (stand-up bass, banjo, piano, the works), the Not Completely Unknown show is a reverent homage, each player telling their best Bob gig anecdote ahead of a few favoured numbers drawn from Greenwich Village to gospel conversion. Paul Carrack delivers a sweetly bluegrass “Mr Tambourine Man”, Ralph McTell a harmonica-drenched “One Too Many Mornings”.

Hothouse Flowers singer Liam Ó Maonlaí is the only one to approach a Bob-like delivery for “Is Your Love In Vain?” and “Pressing On”. More inventive is Katya, who reworks “One More Cup Of Coffee” for doudouk and trip-hop keyboard. Delicious stuff, but no “Murder Most Foul”?

Introducing The Definitive Ultimate Music Guide: Oasis

John Robinson
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Introducing The Definitive Ultimate Music Guide: Oasis

Hello, hello, it's good to be back

Hello, hello, it’s good to be back

“You gonna wake up then, or what?”

As we launch this new magazine, in the shops tomorrow, it’s exactly 31 years – almost to the minute – since Oasis first sauntered on to the NME stage at the Glastonbury Festival and into the consciousness of the wider world. Up until this point the band had been joyously heralded by the weekly music papers for six months, and available to witness at only around 30 gigs in provincial pubs and clubs. This, then – for a group who had released their debut single six weeks previously – was undoubtedly a big one.

Oasis play for 30 minutes, but from what I recall from watching them out in the field that day, it feels much longer. The performance is poised and spectacularly unhurried, as if they have everything completely under control and are proceeding, from “Shakermaker” to “I Am The Walrus”, at their own serene pace, according to their own plan.

There’s a point during the instrumental break of “Supersonic” where Liam Gallagher stands completely still and simply drinks it all in, for a moment the calm centre of the storm. He reviews the Manchester City T shirts, the massive gathering, the crowd surfing. If he was thinking that he’d arrived in style and on schedule, he wouldn’t have been wrong.

It’s this side of Oasis – the poise, the accomplishment, the bravura self-confidence – that we particularly celebrate in this 172-page definitive edition. There are insightful in-depth reviews of every Oasis album, and of Noel and Liam’s solo careers. There’s an introduction from Liam and an affectionate afterword from Bonehead – and an eight-page foldout miscellany and timeline to complement the story.

Maybe best of all are the archive interviews. Writers from NME and Melody Maker are there throughout the band’s career, but it’s the ones who are there at the start who have the privilege of witnessing the charisma, and accomplishment of a group the like of which they haven’t seen for quite some time.

“Nice one, see you later,” Liam says as he and Noel leave the stage that day. It’s admittedly quite a lot later, but we welcome them back now for all of the same reasons we welcomed them then.

Enjoy the magazine. You can reserve your limited edition hardback here.

Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet, Sadler’s Wells, London, June 25, 2025

Nick Hasted
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Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet, Sadler’s Wells, London, June 25, 2025

Pete Townshend’s major rock operas – Tommy, Lifehouse and Quadrophenia – are a personal legacy he continues to wrestle with, repeatedly reviving and retranslating them into new forms. Quadrophenia (1973) was his attempt to remind The Who of their youthful Mod roots, and the music which lured him back to the band for 1996 performances of the album. After the 1979 film fleshed out and supplanted his liner note narrative, his wife Rachel Fuller’s orchestral arrangements for Quadrophenia Classical (2015) reconfigured the music. That recording, with additional soloists replacing vocals, soundtracks Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet. The title will provoke derision from Who fundamentalists, suspicious of Townshend’s sometimes overreaching penchant for high-art versions of his classic music. Working with his blessing and light touch consultation, though, this Sadler’s Wells production revives Quadrophenia’s fervid, youthful essence.

Pete Townshend’s major rock operas – Tommy, Lifehouse and Quadrophenia – are a personal legacy he continues to wrestle with, repeatedly reviving and retranslating them into new forms. Quadrophenia (1973) was his attempt to remind The Who of their youthful Mod roots, and the music which lured him back to the band for 1996 performances of the album. After the 1979 film fleshed out and supplanted his liner note narrative, his wife Rachel Fuller’s orchestral arrangements for Quadrophenia Classical (2015) reconfigured the music. That recording, with additional soloists replacing vocals, soundtracks Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet. The title will provoke derision from Who fundamentalists, suspicious of Townshend’s sometimes overreaching penchant for high-art versions of his classic music. Working with his blessing and light touch consultation, though, this Sadler’s Wells production revives Quadrophenia’s fervid, youthful essence.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

A prologue sees Jimmy (Paris Fitzpatrick) poised on a jutting rock over stormy back-projected waves and the equally tempestuous, crashing brass of “I Am The Sea”. Four Mods emerge behind him to represent his four psychological sides, a narrative element likely lost on newcomers to Townshend’s story.

Act One then reverts to Jimmy’s London life, from office drone frustration to his idolatry of rock star the Godfather (Jack Widdowson), introduced with “My Generation”’s original violent guitar chords of as he rips open his Union Jack jacket. His tossing of Jimmy’s My Generation album in the Stage Door gutter is the first of several grim disillusions. Jimmy’s solo dance acts as a physical soliloquy in response, green parka trailing raggedly behind him, no match for the dazzling grace of his other hero the Ace Face (Dan Baines, looking more like Trainspotting’s cocky blond Jonny Lee Miller than Sting).

Director Rob Ashford and choreographer Paul Roberts ignore the cinema interpretation of the album’s story in these London scenes. Townshend’s concern with his parents’ war-traumatised generation and their impact on his own is movingly dramatised in Jimmy’s parents’ suburban home life. Mother (Kate Tydman) rouses from depressed sofa slumber to engage Father (Stuart Neal) in a desperate, half-violent erotic dance to “Love Reign O’er Me”, before slumping back to Valium and TV as Jimmy enters, ignorant of their roiling inner lives. Inter-generational anger simmers when he joins his dad in deadening factory work, explained by a flashback to Father surviving his friends’ wartime massacre on another coastal rock, the score dropping to hear their last gasps. A Soho café sanctuary and the exhilaration of Jimmy and the coveted Mod Girl’s rock club dance to “Can’t Explain”, pushing themselves to the limit as Yazz Ahmed’s Milesian trumpet gives the song a new, hip twist, counter these inherited horrors.

Act Two sends Jimmy to Brighton, where day-tripping Mods terrify packed commuter carriages to “5.15”, and he floats skyward amid swirling visions of pills and dream girls. A thrilling Mods and Rockers battle royal contrasts with Jimmy’s beach reunion with his family, a tantalising moment of happy unity with his childhood self. It all leads back to that jutting rock, though, where the crisis which sent Phil Daniels’ Jimmy’s scooter hurtling over a cliff is reached. The ocean churns under cosmic black sky, and Fitzpatrick’s acting matches his dancing as Jimmy shudders through his dark night of the teenage soul, finally achieving shattered transcendence as “Love Reign O’er Me” hits Gotterdammerung orchestral heights harder than any power chord. Alongside the young cast’s exuberant dancing and brightly coloured Paul Smith fashion, this ending’s hard-won optimism should speak to any new, young audiences who may be lured to Sadler’s Wells, giving The Who a fresh generation of fans.

Lana Del Rey opens 2025 UK tour in Cardiff

John Robinson
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Lana Del Rey opens 2025 UK tour in Cardiff

Lana Del Rey opened her British tour in Cardiff last night, June 23, 2025. Here are our pick of five great moments from the show.

Lana Del Rey opened her British tour in Cardiff last night, June 23, 2025. Here are our pick of five great moments from the show.

ULTIMATE RECORD COLLECTION: LANA DEL REY IS IN SHOPS NOW OR AVAILABLE TO BUY FROM US HERE

Country playlist

Hope you like her new direction! Whether it’s called Lasso, The Right One Will Stay, Classic or something different entirely, Lana’s new album is said to moving in a country direction. Even if support group London Grammar don’t exactly set the tone for that, Lana’s pre-show playlist does – hitting the crowd with historic pop/country crossover hits like Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” (1961), “Jackson” by Johnny Cash and June Carter (1967) and Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” (1975).

Actual husband

Much as she did at Stagecoach in the spring, Lana opens the show with a new song, “Husband Of Mine”. Point of difference for Cardiff: her actual husband – alligator tour guide Jeremy Dufrene – is in the house! “It’s a long way to travel,” she explains as she sniffles a bit after embracing him mid-song. “These are good tears!”

“Happy Birthday Lana!”

There weren’t a load of signs commemorating Lana’s 40th birthday last Saturday, but the one caught by the roving crowd camera does raise a endearingly massive cheer when it’s shown on the big screen.

“57”

Maybe the best of the new songs we’ve heard so far – certainly the catchiest – “57” gets a huge welcome from Lana’s Welsh fandom, who are hip enough to have pre-learned the words from Stagecoach footage on YouTube. Featuring her Spotify stats as a chorus “I’ve got 57.5 million listeners on Spotify…”. It’s genius, because it’s true.

“Young And Beautiful”

Great song anyway but improved by Lana’s concession to the traditional “pier into the crowd” stadium gig strategy. Followed by a Lady Diana Spencer-style train of gauzy dress fabric, she performs the song from beneath the kind of floral arch under which American couples get married in idyllic locations. Do we take this theatre? We do.

A full review will appear in the next Uncut, on sale July 18

ULTIMATE RECORD COLLECTION: LANA DEL REY IS IN SHOPS NOW OR AVAILABLE TO BUY FROM US HERE

Hear The Lemonheads’ new single, “In The Margin”

Sam Richards
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Hear The Lemonheads’ new single, “In The Margin”

Evan Dando has confirmed that the new Lemonheads album Love Chant will be released by Fire Records on October 24. Hear new single “In The Margin” below:

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

Love Chant (pre-order here) was recorded in Brazil by Apollo Nove and features guest appearances from J Mascis, Juliana Hatfield, Erin Rae, John Strohm of the Blake Babies and Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond. Other songs were co-written with Adam Green of The Moldy Peaches and Dando’s long-time collaborator Tom Morgan.

It will be released to coincide with Dando’s memoir, Rumours Of My Demise, which is published by Faber on November 6.

The Lemonheads tour the UK and Europe throughout August and September, see the full list of dates on the poster below:

Terry Riley by Pete Townshend

Rob Hughes
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Terry Riley by Pete Townshend

Happy 90th birthday, Terry Riley! Pete Townshend hails the minimalist maestro’s enduring influence...

Buy A Rainbow In Curved Air here

Happy 90th birthday, Terry Riley! Pete Townshend hails the minimalist maestro’s enduring influence…

“The first time I heard Terry Riley would’ve been A Rainbow In Curved Air, when it first came out in 1969. I wasn’t particularly studying minimalist or electronic music, but I was experimenting and finding new stuff, and I happened upon him. I was playing with tape machines, which were central to Terry Riley’s method. It was how he got his delay loops. I also had two tape machines, but I used to bounce from machine to machine, rather than use them as a delay system.

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“‘Baba O’Riley’ was an accident. It came out of the Lifehouse project, where I was working on creating music using computers. But I couldn’t get my hands on a music computer that was up to the job, and ended up drifting into synthesisers. I was working with the Lowrey Berkshire, which had a repetitive kind of arpeggio setting. Instead of precise mathematical beats, it had drop beats in between, with drop rhythms and repeated rhythms, so you got the effect of layering. And when I listened back, I went into a kind of meditative trance. I think I’d experienced some of that while listening to A Rainbow In Curved Air – a sense of being raised up and lifted, lost in the moment. So I just felt it was right to name it in honour of Terry Riley.

“After A Rainbow In Curved Air, I think everybody was hoping that he would do more, but he didn’t do anything like it. I think the closest he came was working with John Cale on Church Of Anthrax [1971]. I met him later on – it might’ve been the late ’70s/early ’80s – when he came to a Who gig in San Francisco. Terry was an experimenter. He wasn’t interested in [making] friends, he wasn’t interested in having hits – although he did say to me when we met, ‘I wish I’d made something out of my work as you have.’

“I think what a lot of people don’t know about Terry Riley is that he’s also a reed player. He plays saxophone on In C and did an album called Reed Streams [1966], which is really interesting because it demonstrates that he was drifting into more classical Indian modality scales. He also worked with the Kronos Quartet [1984’s Cadenza On The Night Plain and 1989’s Salome Dances For Peace] and that actually sounds like baroque music. So when you hear his diversions – his experiments, his adventures in tonal fields other than electronic music or organ music – you hear his baroque and Indian influences more clearly. But they’re actually there in everything that he does. He’s quite clearly an ascetic, he’s quite clearly an inheritor of the sincere San Francisco hippie movement of spirituality and Indian and Vedantic meditation and Buddhism and so on. “To be honest, I don’t know quite what I’m doing yet for the Barbican performance. I know that they’re doing In C, which I’ve performed myself when I did Lifehouse Chronicles at Sadler’s Wells in 2000. I also did an orchestral version of ‘Baba O’Riley’, which I might like to put up if I can gather the musicians. But I’m now in the process of getting out my old organs and tape loop systems and seeing if I can come up with something. It should be interesting.”

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Mick Ralphs of Mott The Hoople and Bad Company has died, aged 81

Sam Richards
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Mick Ralphs of Mott The Hoople and Bad Company has died, aged 81

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Mick Ralphs – founding member of both Mott The Hoople and Bad Company – has died aged 81 following a long illness.

He had been unable to perform since suffering a stroke in November 2016, not long after a Bad Company reunion tour culminated in a triumphant headline show at London’s 02 Arena.

Mick Ralphs co-founded Mott The Hoople in 1969, writing songs such as “One Of The Boys” and “Sucker”, often in collaboration with frontman Ian Hunter.

Ralphs left the band following 1973’s Mott to form supergroup Bad Company with former Free members Paul Rodgers and Simon Kirke. He wrote or co-wrote most of their big hits, including “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad” and US Top 10 single “Feel Like Makin’ Love”.

Ralphs also wrote “Flying Hour” with George Harrison, toured with David Gilmour and released three solo albums, before participating in various Mott The Hoople and Bad Company reunions.

“Our Mick has passed, my heart just hit the ground,” wrote Paul Rodgers in tribute. “He has left us with exceptional songs and memories. He was my friend, my songwriting partner, an amazing and versatile guitarist who had the greatest sense of humour. Our last conversation a few days ago we shared a laugh but it won’t be our last. There are many memories of Mick that will create laughter. Condolences to everyone who loved him. I will see you in heaven.”

Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts, Tiøren, Copenhagen, June 22, 2025

Michael Bonner
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Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts, Tiøren, Copenhagen, June 22, 2025

It’s 8pm on the button when Neil Young ambles on stage wearing a grey baseball cap, Maple Leaf t-shirt, check shirt and jeans, straps on his acoustic guitar and harmonica rig to deliver the first surprise of tonight’s show. A song about the passage of the years and a changing world, “Comes A Time” – making its tour debut – introduces one of several themes that weave loosely through the setlist of Young’s first European tour since 2019. As with “Looking Forward” and “Old Man” much later on tonight, these songs have been waiting patiently for him to grow old enough to fully reveal their gifts. What once seemed like uncannily wise observations from a blossoming songwriter have taken on a pathos, humanity and warmth that comes with age. These are now songs of experience: “Look at how the time goes past,” he sings on “Old Man”; written by Young when he was 24 but now delivered by the man a few months’ shy of his 80th birthday.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

Our venue, Tiøren, is a park by the beach to the south east of Copenhagen, where the vibe is more mini-festival than outdoor gig. Even the roar of an aeroplane taking off from the nearby airport can’t quite damped the atmosphere. The merch tent is doing a busy trade in t-shirts branded with ‘Make America Great’ and ‘Keep Freedom Free’ – but Young’s early start time clearly catches a lot of people unawares, causing both the merch tent and bars to clear pretty swiftly. As with the two previous shows in Sweden and Norway, the main set is locked, with only the first song and the encore changing. So tonight we get “Comes A Time” – a beautiful song for this warm evening, but it’s spoiled by a poor vocal mix. The problem persists unfortunately, even when he’s joined by The Chrome Hearts, kicking off a blazing electric run with Greendale’s “Be The Rain”, and is never satisfactorily fixed (the absence of video screens add further frustration for those towards the back of the site). For a set that otherwise leans heavily into Crazy Horse or Stray Gators material, these Greendale songs (“Be The Rain” and later “Sun Green”) are evident outliers – I can’t be the only person who wished Young had included “Ordinary People” in the tour setlist, after performing it in April for the first time since 1989. But “Be The Rain” and “Sun Green” at least allow for further head-to-head communion between Young, guitarist Micah Nelson and bassist Corey McCormick – and there is a lot of that on display tonight.

Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts play Glastonbury on June 28 and also BST Hyde Park on July 11. Click here for tickets to BST Hyde Park

In fact, Young’s playing is incendiary, even by his lofty standards. There are multiple solos on “When You Dance I Can Really Love”, or he locks in riffing with Nelson and McCormick on “Cinnamon Girl”, moving through the grunge grind of “Fuckin’ Up” or the Sabbath-like heaviosity of “Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)” and its freak-out ending with fierce purpose. You suspect “Like A Hurricane” could have gone on for another hour, say, as Young carries on soloing into infinity while Nelson plays the Stringman synth suspended on wires, rocking back and forth as if buffeted by Young’s playing. Nelson is a good lieutenant for Young – he’s a likeable and adaptable player, a less forceful personality than Poncho Sampedro, say, but capable of following in whichever direction Young leads. A momentous “Love And Only Love” finds the pair duelling, seemingly oblivious to the 5,000 people watching their every move, with McCormick and drummer Anthony LoGerfo in dogged pursuit for the song’s 10-minute duration.

It’s moments like this where the Chrome Hearts cleave closest to the expansive dramas of Crazy Horse – the band that in some respects they are here to honour after the Horse’s abandoned 2024 tour. Mostly comprised members of the Promise Of The Real, the Chrome Hearts might lack the Horse’s ragged charm, but they more than compensate with the renewed energy they bring to their leader. Encouraged by Nelson, McCormick and LoGerfo, Young wrings solo after solo from Old Black, sending swathes of feedback into the midsummer night.

Changing pace for an acoustic section finally gives us a chance to hear Spooner Oldham, whose keyboards have largely been drowned out by Young at full pelt. “The Needle And The Damage Done”, “Harvest Moon” (which raises a collective, and rather sweet, “Ooooh” from the crowd) and a gorgeous arrangement of CSNY’s “Looking Forward” showcase Oldham’s warm, discreet playing.

The main set finishes with another CSNY cut “Name Of Love” and a rousing “Old Man”, with Young’s voice high and strong. As a setlist, you suspect it’s predicated around his Glastonbury headline shot this coming weekend: a hits set, after a fashion, with plenty of opportunity for Neil and his latest cohorts to dig in and only a handful of deep cuts. For tonight’s encore, we get a tour debut of “Down By The River”, wild and elemental, driven by LoGerfo’s pulverising drumming and Young’s monolithic solos and followed by an unexpected and entirely welcome “Rockin’ In The Free World” (only three false endings, mind).

Sound issues aside, there’s a lot to like in this set list and this latest grouping of musicians. Whether Young will get bored eventually and start swapping out songs remains to be seen – an unlikely move, I think, until after Glastonbury at least, as this set is bedded in too well to undo now. But this might just be my favourite Neil Young set since the Alchemy tour of 2013. There’s a lot of joyful playing and camaraderie – and as “Rockin’ In The Free World” finally melts away into the night air, there’s a lot of hope, too.

Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts setlist Tiøren, Copenhagen, June 22, 2025:

Comes A Time
Be The Rain
When You Dance, I Can Really Love
Cinnamon Girl
Fuckin’ Up
Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
The Needle And The Damage Done
Harvest Moon
Looking Forward
Sun Green
Love And Only Love
Like A Hurricane
Name Of Love
Old Man

Encore
Down By The River
Rockin’ In The Free World

Wilco – Royal Albert Hall, London, June 22

Peter Watts
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Wilco – Royal Albert Hall, London, June 22

On a night that Jeff Tweedy proclaims to be one of the best of his life, Wilco deliver a triumphant one-night stand at the Royal Albert Hall that confirms they are one of the most versatile and exhilarating bands around. The 23-song set, plucked imaginatively and democratically from across the band’s deep catalogue, ends with the crowd on their feet while Tweedy, flanked by guitarists Nels Cline and Patrick Sansone, laps up the crowd’s acclaim.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

The band’s mastery of the occasion is confirmed with a thunderous “Quiet Amplifier” from Ode To Joy that comes just a couple of songs after the intimate “If I Ever Was A Child”. That contrast between two different flavours of intense has always been one of the most exciting things about Wilco, and it’s amplified in the live arena as they switch from quiet to deranged within the course of a few bars of the same song – “Handshake Drugs” and “Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull” being prime examples. On “Via Chicago” they show they can even do both at the same time as Cline, keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen and drummer Glenn Kotche thrash wildly at their instruments while the other half of the band continue strumming placidly as if they are playing two completely different tunes.

Wilco don’t just offer a noise-melody dynamic, of course. On “Falling Apart (Right Now)” they deliver exuberant country, while “Muzzle Of Bees” introduces Floydian scale. “Hummingbird” brings a touch of the lounge music that was being piped round the auditorium before the show. But the band are at their most memorable when they escape into unsettling freak-outs. Cline particularly seems to relish these moments, when the undercurrent of anxiety in Tweedy’s lyrics is allowed to rise to the surface and dominate.

On “Impossible Germany”, the guitarist delivers an extraordinary performance of dazzling, aggressive technique that continues for several minutes while the rest of the group pretty much stop playing to watch him shred in awe. Impressive as it is, this is also the only moment when the musicianship is in service to the individual rather than the whole, something emphasised when the rest of the group join in to provide some shape and bring the song home.

Like many musicians before him, Tweedy initially seems a little disconcerted by the rococo interior of the Royal Albert Hall, a venue whose gaudy grandeur can overwhelm first-timers. Wilco ease themselves into the evening with regular opening numbers “Company In My Back” and “Evicted”, building momentum through “Handshake Drugs” and “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”. It’s around then that Tweedy admits he’s a little distracted by an empty seat in the front row, a situation that provides him with something of a running gag for the evening.

As the set continues, Tweedy gets more talkative. A euphoric “Meant To Be” is followed by the crowd-pleasing “Jesus, Etc”, when his voice seems to shed 25 years of experience, regaining some of the vulnerability of youth. That introduces an almost riotous home stretch, with Tweedy delivering perfectly timed set-ups and punchlines before every song, the best of which comes ahead of “Box Full Of Letters” when he surveys the crowd of grey-haired peers and deadpans: “This is a song off our first album. Looking around, I think you might remember it.”

The show ends with an ecstatic four-song encore, culminating in the greasy rock rave-up “I Got You (At The End Of The Century)”, although the absolute highlight of the set is the jubilant pre-encore singalong to “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”. This is one of the few Wilco songs to obey typical rock conventions with a gargantuan groove, elephantine riff and singable refrain, so Tweedy insists that the audience join in. “Participate!” he urges. “Do not postpone joy”. The Royal Albert Hall responds; joy is embraced and the smile on Jeff Tweedy’s face is bigger than the moon.

SETLIST
Company In My Back
Evicted
Handshake Drugs
Muzzle Of Bees
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
One Wing
Via Chicago
If I Ever Was A Child
Bird Without A Tail / Base Of My Skull
Hummingbird
Quiet Amplifier
Either Way
Impossible Germany
Meant To Be
Jesus, Etc
Box Full Of Letters
Annihilation
Less Than You Think
Spiders (Kidsmoke)
ENCORE
Falling Apart (Right Now)
California Stars
Walken
I Got You (At The End Of The Century)

The Damned announce 50th anniversary show at Wembley Arena in April

Sam Richards
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The Damned announce 50th anniversary show at Wembley Arena in April

Evergreen punk pioneers The Damned have announced a special show at OVO Wembley Arena on April 11, 2026, to mark the 50th anniversary of their formation.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

They’ll be supported on the night by The Loveless featuring Marc Almond, Peter Hook And The Light and The Courettes.

“Half a century on and who’d have thought The Damned would still be upright and breathing?” wrote the band in an accompanying statement. “We have shared some tragic losses along the way, but like a finely tuned engine, The Damned still has the power and finesse to excite, entertain and accelerate into our 50th year…

“We haven’t made up the set list as yet but with 50 years of catalogue to choose from, only the best songs from our chequered history will be performed – and with the passion and commitment all good music lovers deserve. You know we won’t disappoint… We never thought we’d make it this far and neither did you….”

The current line-up of The Damned features founding members Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies, plus longstanding bassist Paul Gray and Monty Oxymoron on keyboards.

You can sign up for the Wembley ticket pre-sale here.

Bobby Weir & The Wolf Bros, Royal Albert Hall, London, June 21, 2025

Nick Hasted
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Bobby Weir & The Wolf Bros, Royal Albert Hall, London, June 21, 2025

The Deadheads have gathered in Hyde Park under the perfect blue skies of the Summer Solstice, a propitious prelude to Bobby Weir’s first UK gig in 22 years. While Weir and drummer Mickey Hart usually now maintain the legacy of the Grateful Dead as Dead & Company in residencies at the Vegas' high-tech Sphere, Weir’s Wolf Bros plot an alternate course, allowing the rhythm guitarist and deputy singer to perform to his own satisfaction. Tonight, this means making his debut at the Royal Albert Hall for the one-off spectacle of his first European orchestral show.

The Deadheads have gathered in Hyde Park under the perfect blue skies of the Summer Solstice, a propitious prelude to Bobby Weir’s first UK gig in 22 years. While Weir and drummer Mickey Hart usually now maintain the legacy of the Grateful Dead as Dead & Company in residencies at the Vegas’ high-tech Sphere, Weir’s Wolf Bros plot an alternate course, allowing the rhythm guitarist and deputy singer to perform to his own satisfaction. Tonight, this means making his debut at the Royal Albert Hall for the one-off spectacle of his first European orchestral show.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT STARS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SLY STONE, SCOTT WALKER, NEIL YOUNG, WET LEG, BLONDIE, BOOKER T, SADE AND MUCH MORE – CLICK HERE TO HAVE IT DELIVERED

The Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra take the stage first for Giancarlo Aquilanti’s “A Grateful Overture”, which sets familiar Dead themes in the tradition of Aaron Copland’s early 20th century Americana, summoning images of Western vistas with plaintive pastoral passages and rock’n’roll punch. As the orchestra start “Truckin’”, Weir enters at the head of his Wolf Bros trio – pianist Jeff Chimenti, drummer Jay Lane and double-bassist Don Was, sporting dreads, shades and Stetson. Weir’s black poncho resembles a schoolmaster’s cape, thrown over crumpled grey-black threads and Cuban-heeled shoes, while his full-bodied white hair and grizzled beard could be that of an old-time prospector from one of Robert Hunter‘s songs, or an unreconstructed hippie idealist – which he and many of tonight’s audience remain.

“What a long, strange trip it’s been,” Weir reflects, as “Truckin’” hymns the Dead’s former, footloose life. His leonine head leans into the orchestral headwinds, till he finds a pocket of space for his guitar. The potentially knotty problem of integrating improvisational rock’n’roll with classical musicians is solved by alternating passages purely given to Aquilanti’s orchestral arrangements with sections where the band interweave with the RPCO. “These guys are nothing short of a national treasure,” Weir says, frequently turning to watch them, beaming at the treatment of this material.

“Black Peter” is set to cinematic strings. Weir plays sultry slide, inhabiting the role of the wounded loner facing down death, at ease with the fatalism which shadows the Dead’s songbook as he wails, “One more day!” “China Cat Sunflower” enters Hunter’s more lyrically baroque realms over symphonic funk, as the strings floating dreamily up and away. “Brokedown Palace” concludes the first set with another existential American saga sung with unfussy, direct feeling, Weir concluding: “I love you more than words can tell.”

“Sugar Magnolia” starts the second half in country mode with classical violinists converted to hoedown fiddles. As Weir sings of an old ‘70s girlfriend, he plucks individual, ringing notes. The multi-generational crowd have been boisterously out of their seats for most of the night and now spin with delight at the start of the “Terrapin Station” suite. “His job is to shed light, not to master,” sings Weir of the song’s storyteller, and that is also his modest way, his expansive vocal turning introspective as he explains a sailor’s doomed romantic bargain and heads towards the titular destination, forever just out of reach.

Then the Wolf Bros exit, the orchestra quieten and Weir puts down his guitar to sing “Days Between”, the last song written by Garcia before his death. Weir’s gruff, strong voice summons Hunter’s lyric’s combination of chivalrous nobility and sorrow, appropriate in the encroaching twilight of the Dead’s story, with Weir standing ever more alone. “Those were days,” he sings three times. “The brightest ever seen… still tender, young and green… soft as velveteen.” This is a taste of Weir’s own power, apart from but still in service to the Dead’s tale.

Weir windmills his guitar on the home strait and boils down “Hell In A Bucket” to a hedonistic sentiment fully embraced by the dancing crowd: “Might as well enjoy the ride!” Finally, the orchestra retire and the Wolf Bros dig into Weir’s solo songbook. His fuzzed-up guitar is loud and clear on  “She Said”, by his ‘90s band RatDog. Then “One More Saturday Night” brings this Saturday night to a close in party mode. With ferocious attitude belying his 77 years, Weir is happily howling by the end. Stripped of the Dead’s weight, he still simply wants to play rock’n’roll.

Bobby Weir & The Wolf Bros set list at Royal Albert Hall, London, June 21, 2025:

SET ONE:
A Grateful Overture
Truckin’
Black Peter
China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider
Brokedown Palace

SET TWO:
Sugar Magnolia
Terrapin Station
Days Between
Jack Straw
Hell In A Bucket
Sunshine Daydream
She Says
One More Saturday Night

Introducing The Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey

John Robinson
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Introducing The Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey

As we take a moment to ready ourselves for her imminent arrival in the UK, we’d like to introduce the newest edition of Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey.

The dark and involving albums. The slyly controversial singles. We’ve reviewed them all to bring you a definitive guide to the music of Lana Del Rey. Alongside, we’ve told the story of her journey from philosophy student and trailer home resident, the aspiring singer-songwriter Lizzy Grant, to globally influential artist. We’ll be unpacking the songs, and creating the definitive timeline as we go.

But that’s not all. We’ve scrutinised the livestream of her most recent show, and reviewed the new songs. We’ve gone deep inside Lana’s cultural references compiling the definitive A-Z from Slim Aarons to Frank Zappa, via new entry Morgan Wallen. We’ve also located the key Lana interviews, which chart her path from young singer facing down incorrect assumptions to a brilliant and self-assured artist. The mag’s in shops now – or you can get your copy here.

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